“And?” Gunner asked.
“And I was wondering if I could come work for you.”
He started to laugh straight up, no filter, struck by both the absurdity of the idea and the brazen, misplaced confidence with which she’d suggested it. Instead, much to his surprise, he said, “Doing what, exactly?”
“Doing what you do. Asking people questions. Finding out things. Learning the truth when nobody else cares what the truth is.”
Again, he almost laughed. She made it sound so poetic, like something out of a pulp novel. But it was what he wanted to believe about himself, now more than ever. That his work had some meaning, and that the good he occasionally did for others in the course of it wasn’t all in his head. Del used to keep that hope alive for him whenever the need arose. With his cousin gone, he was going to have to find such reassurance elsewhere.
“My office address is on my card, same as my phone number. Come by next Tuesday around ten and we’ll talk about how hard you’re going to work and how little you’re going to get paid.”
The next morning, Gunner received an unexpected visit at Mickey’s from the two Harper Stowes. The younger had just been released from jail and he wanted to offer Gunner his thanks in person. Or so Harper Stowe Jr. said. To Gunner’s eye, the trip had been more the old man’s idea than that of his son.
Gunner ushered the pair into his office and offered them both a seat, but Harper Jr. declined it. “We can’t stay.” He looked at his son, a not-so-gentle nudge to carry his part of the conversation.
“Ms. DeCharme told us what you did. I owe you.” The words were sincere but his delivery was forlorn. Dressed in the shabby, oversized clothes he was probably arrested in, he looked tired and distracted, like being a free man might take more effort than he had to give.
“Just doing my job. You all right?”
“Yeah.”
“Headaches?”
“Some. Nothing I can’t handle.”
“It’ll probably take a while. It did for me. But eventually, the headaches pass and the nightmares stop, and you find your groove.”
“My groove?”
“Your place in the world, away from the war.”
The younger Stowe gave him a look. “You were in Afghan?”
“Vietnam. A lifetime ago. Same shit, different day.”
The younger Stowe nodded. Something passed between him and Gunner that required no more words.
“I owe you a debt of gratitude myself,” Harper Jr. said. “As you may have heard, I’d lost my mind there for a while. If you hadn’t found Eric when you did—”
“Forget it. I don’t think you would have hurt him, in any case. You aren’t the type.” Gunner turned back to his son. “So what are your plans now? Besides finding yourself another girl?”
At first, it seemed the joke had gone right over Harper Stowe III’s head. But then he laughed, and the other two men felt free to laugh right along with him.
Later that day, Gunner ran his uncle over to Zina’s to get Noelle’s car. The police had officially closed their investigation into the deaths of Zina’s parents late the previous afternoon, so Daniel and Corinne Curry were now free to exchange their rental car for one of the three family vehicles parked at their granddaughter’s residence. Gunner suggested they take the newest of the trio, their late daughter-in-law’s Buick Encore.
He made no mention of his own visit to Zina’s home three nights before. There wasn’t any point. Hearing how he’d made one final, midnight intrusion into Noelle Curry’s affairs, to secure her cell phone and cement the connection he had already made between her illicit lover “Buddy” and Glenn Hopp, could only open wounds for Del’s parents that were just starting to heal.
Instead, he simply delivered his uncle to Zina’s doorstep and settled in to wait. In addition to retrieving the Buick, Daniel Curry had been charged by his wife to run into the house and come out again with a small list of items for Zina, and Gunner didn’t want to go without seeing his uncle safely away. Zina’s belligerent neighbor Gordito was still heavy on his mind. The hotheaded cholo could be lurking about, looking for another excuse to spew hate and spittle in a black man’s grille, and it was Gunner’s preference that that black man be him and not Daniel Curry.
But hell if the old man wasn’t taking forever to reappear from his granddaughter’s crib.
“Yo, hom’.”
Gunner jerked around in his seat, found the man he’d assaulted ten days ago standing in the street right outside the red Cobra, close enough to put a bullet in Gunner’s left ear without fully extending his arm. He’d come up on the convertible from Gunner’s blind side, from the other side of the street, and if his intent were to do Gunner harm, the time to stop him had long since passed.
There was no gun in his tattooed hand, however, nor a knife. There was just a brown paper bag in his left, bearing the distinct contours of the six-pack he’d apparently left his mother’s house to retrieve. Gunner sat there in the open car, afraid to move, Gordito staring down on him with the one good, unswollen eye the black man had left him with the previous week.
“You remember me, right?” he asked.
Gunner nodded once. “I remember you.”
“You fucked me up pretty good. I owe you one, bro. But my mother, she says let it go. ’Cause I drink too much and sometimes I fuck with people for no good reason.” He took a deep breath, bounced on the heels of his feet. Recharging his nerve and his will to go through with this, both. “I got a lot of anger in me and, y’know, sometimes the shit gets out. Understand?”
“Sure.”
“So like, I’m sorry. You didn’t do nothin’ I didn’t bring on myself. And that’s all I got to say. Except, you ever touch me again, I’ll fuckin’ kill your black ass.”
He hurried off before Gunner could extend his misery by saying a word of thanks. Gunner turned and watched as Gordito climbed the steps of his mother’s porch and reached the door, where the old woman stood waiting for him with a hug he had to fold himself in half to accept.
A good man gone bad, then good again. At least for a moment.
It was miracle enough for Gunner.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have been blessed to have an abundance of friends and colleagues in my life who not only made this book possible, but my career as well. Belief in self is everything in this business, and these people have given me that in spades, often at the most critical moments. God bless you all.
And a special shout-out to Doug P. Lyle, MD, whose vast medical expertise has once again lent an air of authenticity to my work that would be sorely lacking otherwise. He’s a damn fine writer and the best doctor to ask, “Where does it hurt? And why? And… ”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GAR ANTHONY HAYWOOD is the Shamus and Anthony award-winning author of twelve crime novels, including the Aaron Gunner series and the Joe and Dottie Loudermilk mysteries. Booklist called Haywood “a writer who has always belonged in the upper echelon of American crime fiction.” Born and raised in Los Angeles, he now makes his home in Denver, Colorado.
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