Not Long for This World

by Gar Anthony Haywood

  Gunner turned his attention to Davidson and said, “Rookie, this is Kelly DeCharme … Toby’s lawyer, the one I told you about last night.”

  Davidson glanced at her, but didn’t say anything.

  “We’re going to ask you some questions and we want you to answer them as truthfully as you can. All right?”

  Out of a long stretch of nothing, a nod emerged.

  “Toby Mills didn’t kill Darrel Lovejoy, did he?”

  Another long stretch of nothing. Then a shrug. “No.”

  “Who did?”

  “You know who it was, man. You know the motherfucker.”

  “Tell me, anyway.”

  “Whitey. It was Whitey.”

  “Whitey Most?”

  “Yeah. Whitey Most. How many cats name’ Whitey you know?”

  Gunner and DeCharme glanced at each other, exchanging a common, unspoken sense of relief.

  “You drove, and Whitey did the shooting, is that it?” Gunner asked Davidson, turning around to face him again.

  “Yeah. That’s right.”

  “With Toby’s gun.”

  “Right. That’s it.” He was starting to cry again. “I didn’t wanna roll on Dr. Love, man. Me an’ Dr. Love, we topped it off, we was cool. Cube an’ some of the other homeboys, they was always talkin’ ’bout jackin’ ’im an’ shit, but I never had no problem with Love. Never.”

  “But Whitey did.”

  Davidson nodded his head again. “One day, he just say he gotta roll on somebody, an’ me, I gotta drive. Me. He say if I don’t do it, he gonna say it was me what told him ’bout Toby doin’ bus’ness on the side, talkin’ ’bout how he gonna open a car wash with Whitey’s money, an’ shit. He say I know if Toby hears that, I’m as good as got. The homies’d jump me out, like a fuckin’ perpetrator, or somethin’.”

  “Toby Mills was doing business on the side?”

  “Yeah, you know.” He shrugged again. “Holdin’ back. Keepin’ a little somethin’ to sell to ’is friends, shit like that.”

  Gunner shared another knowing glance with DeCharme.

  There was Whitey Most’s motive for framing his best runner for murder.

  “So then you stole Toby’s gun for him.”

  Davidson sipped his drink, trying to delay his answer as long as possible. “I stole all the homeboys’ guns. ’Cause Whitey, he didn’t say, ‘Go get Toby’s gun.’ He just say he needed one—a Blue’s gun—an’ told me to go get one. Snatch everything outta the crib so’s it’ll look like somebody just ripped us off. You know, another set, like the Tees or the Deuce-Nines, somebody like that.”

  “It didn’t occur to you what he might have in mind, using you and another Blue’s gun in a drive-by? Couldn’t you guess he was setting you up?”

  “Yeah. I could guess. But what could I do ’bout it? I done told you what he said, right? I don’t do what the man say, he gonna jack me up with my homeboys, get me jumped outta the set. What the fuck could I do?”

  The numerous answers to that question seemed obvious to Gunner, but he didn’t bother to advance any of them. Clearly, it would have been a waste of his time.

  Sensing a rift between the two about to rear its ugly head, DeCharme leaned forward toward the gangbanger, resting her elbows on her knees, and said, “Rookie, when did you first find out you’d be rolling on Darrel Lovejoy?”

  “The night we done it,” Davidson said. “I didn’t know it was Dr. Love we was rollin’ on ’til that night, when I seen ’im comin’ out of ’is house an’ Whitey says, ‘Let’s go, that’s him.’”

  “Then you’d have no idea why Whitey would have wanted to kill him.”

  “No.” Shaking his head prodigiously. “I ain’t got no idea.” He paused for a moment of reflection, then said, “I was thinkin’ maybe this note had somethin’ to do with it, but I don’t know. The note, it didn’t make no sense to me really.”

  “What note?” Gunner asked, taking over again.

  Davidson showed them another one of his limp, lifeless shrugs. “It was like, you know. Just a note. With some names on it.”

  “What kind of names?”

  “Gangbanger names. Cuzzes an’ Hoods, homeboys from all kinda diff’rent sets, an’ shit. Tees, Seven-an’-Sevens, Wall Streeters, like that. Even Toby’s name was on it.”

  “Can you remember any of the others?”

  “Some of ’em. Most of them cats I ain’t never heard of, but some of ’em I knew, yeah. Late-Train, Li’l Ajax, Def-Mike. Casper-Gee, his name was on it. The Tee. ‘Casper-Gee, the Tee,’ they use’ to call the motherfucker. Shit. Them was some serious ’bangers, man. Them cats, they was loc-ed out.”

  Late-Train, Li’l Ajax, Def-Mike, Casper-Gee. Gunner recognized the names, too.

  They were all in Darrel Lovejoy’s notebook, the one he had borrowed from Lovejoy’s office and shown to Smalltime Seivers two days ago.

  “These ’bangers you’re talking about—with the exception of Toby, of course—they’re all dead now?” Gunner asked, just for the record.

  “Yeah. Hell, yes.”

  Gunner could see that they had lost DeCharme some time ago, but he pretended not to notice, unwilling to break the present rhythm of his thinking long enough to eliminate her confusion.

  “Where’s this note now? Does Most have it?”

  Another perfectly bland shrug. “I guess so.”

  “Where did he get it?”

  Davidson looked at him as if he had suddenly starting asking his questions in German. “Huh? Where did he get it?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I said. Where did he get it?”

  The Blue drank some more of his Coke, lowered his glass, drank a little more, lowered his glass again, drank a little more.…

  “Goddamnit, Rookie, answer the question! Where the fuck did Most get the note?”

  Out of nowhere, tears again. Lots of them.

  “Oh, shit,” Gunner said, exasperated. He stood up to take a walk.

  DeCharme gave Davidson a moment to rest, then picked up where Gunner had left off, taking the soft-spoken, motherly tack again. “Rookie, we have to know,” she said. “And you’re the only one we can ask. You’re the only one who knows.” She let that sink in. “Where did Whitey get the note?”

  “From Teddy,” Davidson said.

  “He had spoken so quietly, half-whining, that she asked him to say it again, louder.”

  “From Teddy. We got it from Teddy.”

  “Your brother?”

  “Yeah. My brother.” He said the word brother as if it was a supreme joke, Teddy being his brother, somebody who was supposed to actually give a damn what happened to him. “We busted into his office an’ stole it.”

  “When?” Gunner asked, rushing back to his seat.

  “Man, I don’t know. A long time ago.”

  “How long? Weeks? Months? What?”

  “Months. Coupla months ago, all right?”

  “Then it was Teddy’s note.”

  “I don’t know. I guess so. He had it, right? Who the fuck’s note’s it gonna be?”

  “And it was you and Whitey who stole it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whose idea was that?”

  “Whitey. It was Whitey’s idea. He say, ‘You gotta get me into Teddy’s office,’ just like that, don’t say why or nothin’. I say, ‘What the fuck you want in Teddy’s office; Teddy don’t keep shit in there?’ But he just say never mind what he wants, just get him inside.

  “So we go in there one night. Turn off the alarm, open the door, cool. I got the keys. Teddy don’t even know they missin’. He leave the house at night, he don’t never take nothin’ but the keys to the house, leaves the keys to the garage an’ shit in the kitchen, on a hook. Stupid. So we in his office, got a flashlight, just lookin’ around. Whitey be lookin’ though all of ’is papers an’ shit, tearin’ the place up. I say, ’Man, what you lookin’ for?’ But he don’t say nothin’. He just say, I’ll know when I find it,’ an’ keep on goin’. Then
I found the note.”

  “You found it?”

  “Yeah. I was just, you know, pickin’ shit up. I find the note an’ say, ‘Wow, check this out. What the fuck Teddy be doin’ with this?’”

  “And that was what Whitey was looking for.”

  “Had to be. He look over, check it out, an’ snatches the shit right outta my hand. Acted like it was gold, or somethin’. I say, ‘What the hell is it?’ But he wouldn’t tell me. He just laugh, put the note in ’is pocket an’ say let’s go. Like that.” He downed the last of his drink and shoved the empty glass at them. “Can I have another Coke?”

  “In a minute,” Gunner said. “What happened after that? What’d Whitey do with the note?”

  Davidson shook his head and shrugged simultaneously. “Shit, I don’t know. He just took me home, give me a little rock an’ say if he ever find out I told Teddy shit—you know, ’bout us bein’ the ones took the note—he was gonna kill me. So I never did. I never said nothin’ ’bout nothin’ to nobody.”

  “Until now.”

  “Yeah. ’Til now.”

  “He doesn’t scare you anymore?”

  Davidson flashed him a look of anger for the first time that evening. “Fuck him,” he said bluntly. “Motherfucker tried to off me twice. Night we rolled on Dr. Love, after we done it, he say go out by the airport an’ park the car. Ain’t nothin’ out by the airport. I say what for? He just say, ‘Do it.’ Then I figure it out. He was gonna try an’ jack me. Jack me an’ leave me in the fuckin’ car for the cops.”

  “You talking about the Compton airport?”

  “Yeah. Ain’t nothin’ over there. So I got the jump on ’im. Faked ’is ass out. I stop the car sudden like, grab the keys, an’ run. Just left ’im there, in the middle of the fuckin’ street, with ’is mouth hangin’ open, an’ shit. He in the backseat, what the fuck can he do?”

  “Then you went back for the car later.”

  “Right. There you go. He gotta leave it, right? I got the keys. I wait ’til he takes off, then I slip back in. Cool.”

  “And he leaves Toby’s gun where the cops could find it later.”

  “I dunno. I guess so.”

  “The King know any of this?”

  “Hell, no. I wouldn’t tell the King shit. He don’t wanna know nothin’ ’bout nothin’.”

  “But you sold him the Maverick.”

  Davidson dispensed shrug number six. “So?”

  “How the hell have you been getting around?”

  “Mavis.”

  “Who?”

  “Mavis. The King’s ol’ lady. We click up. I call ’er up, she take me where I wanna go.”

  Well, well, well, Gunner thought to himself. The Wicked Witch of the North had a heart, after all.

  “Can I have that Coke now?” Davidson asked.

  Gunner stood up to find Lilly and said, “Yeah. You can have that Coke now.”

  chapter fourteen

  Rod Toon thought it all sounded like a load of crap, but he started the manhunt for Whitey Most rolling, anyway.

  Gunner and Kelly DeCharme had turned Rookie Davidson over into Toon’s and the LAPD’s custody only a few minutes after midnight Friday, not wanting to be responsible for him any longer than they had to, and like every cop Gunner had ever known, Toon had insisted on hearing Davidson’s story three times. Once all by himself, and twice with Assistant D.A. James Booker in attendance, sharing the question-asking duties. Gunner was dead tired and sick of hearing the sound of Toon’s voice by the middle of the third go-round, but the one he really felt bad for was Davidson. Listening to the same convoluted tale of woe four times in eight hours was one thing, but telling it that many times had to be something altogether worse.

  To his credit, Davidson never faltered; somehow, someway, his answers to all of Toon’s monotonous questions remained consistent and uncontradictory. DeCharme had called in a colleague at the Public Defender’s office to represent the Blue, still committed as she herself was to Toby Mills, but the lawyer played a very small part in the proceedings. A red-faced white man with a long neck and a hideous tie, he briefly conferred with DeCharme upon his arrival, then followed her advice and let his client go the cooperative route and come clean, while he himself stayed silent and in the background.

  Just after dawn Saturday morning, when all was said and done, Toon was fully informed but not necessarily happy. For his money, all Davidson had really managed to do was complicate matters, just as Toon had accused Gunner of doing earlier, by firmly establishing Most as a principal player in the Darrel Lovejoy murder case. Two hopped-up Imperial Blues gunning the often-despised leader of the L.A. Peace Patrol down, now that was a scenario where the motive was a given, a black-and-white, no-questions-asked, clear-as-the-nose-on-your-face proposition. However, the same could not be said for Whitey Most, all of Davidson and Gunner’s talk about a list and notebook full of dead gangbangers notwithstanding. No. The case Toon and Booker had built before, that was a case; this one starring Most, and allegedly featuring Rookie’s brother Teddy in a costarring role, for Christsake, this was just an enigma, a giant enigma, which was just another way of saying it was a pain in the ass Rod Toon didn’t need.

  There was more to Toon’s discontent than that, however.

  The business in San Fernando, at Willie Raines’s would-be home for unwed mothers, had, of course, come out in the wash, and by the police detective’s reckoning, he was hearing about it all a day late and from the wrong man. Gunner’s oversight earned him a long, ugly stare and yet another recitation of the LAPD’s most popular allocution: “Fuck with me again, and I’ll yank your private license.”

  And still Toon wasn’t satisfied.

  The marathon, multiple-subject interrogation session was over and everybody was filing out of the room when he said it: “There’s somethin’ you’re not telling me, Gunner. I know it.”

  Gunner tried several different methods of denial, but nothing worked. Toon’s faith in his integrity—not that he had ever really had any—was destroyed, and he seemed willing to bet the farm that Gunner was holding out on him again.

  Gunner couldn’t figure out how he knew.

  It was a small thing, this secret of his. Sharing it with Toon and Booker would have been harmless, and possibly even rewarding. However, there was such a thing as one-upmanship in the law-enforcement profession—being the first to make sense out of the gibberish a complex case so often appeared to be—and Gunner was not beyond admitting it. After all the crap he’d been through to bring Rookie Davidson in—from the near-miss drive-bys to the humiliating slaps in the face administered by kids half his age—he felt entitled to know, before anyone else, what the whole picture looked like, Whitey Most, note, and all.

  So he hadn’t said a word about the bowling alley.

  Toon and his band of merry men in black, they could look for Most elsewhere. For Gunner, the bowling alley on Western near Imperial was it, the place to be. He didn’t know why. He paused at home to muss the sheets on his bed for a paltry three hours, knowing the establishment would be closed at least until eleven, then showered, dressed, and drove over.

  This time, he waited inside, shooting pool with his shadow to kill time. His shadow and three people throwing lopsided balls down the lanes were the only other customers in the place. He had only seen the dealer come here two days in a row, and maybe that wasn’t long enough to judge an obsession accurately, but he nevertheless felt safe assuming that Most had been here yesterday, and would show up again today, sooner or later.

  Most didn’t let him down.

  Gunner had run up a three-hour, $5.70 tab at the pool table when the dealer walked in, his eyes on the move and his right arm strapped tightly to his chest in a heavy sling. He was wary, but in a hurry, and that helped Gunner’s cause as he ducked for cover, farther into the poolroom, relatively out of sight. He still couldn’t imagine what Most’s fascination with the place could be, but he found out soon enough, and it was like a light coming o
n over his head, illuminating a thought that should have been obvious to him from the beginning: The lockers.

  Bowling alleys always had lockers, lockers you could rent for an entire winter or summer season, if you wanted to, and this dump was no exception. They were designed to hold bags and balls, shoes and purses, anything a league bowler might want to stash away between games down on the lanes—but there was no law that said they couldn’t be used for other purposes. They were locked by combination and nearly as sturdy as a safe, and they were the last place anybody inclined to steal would be likely to look for something worth stealing. A twelve-ounce lime green bowling ball and a pair of Brunswick shoes wouldn’t bring a thief five dollars on the street, if that. And in a place like this—a veritable graveyard for the living, a parking lot waiting to happen—a man could load one of the things up with a wheelbarrow full of gold bullion and never be noticed.

  It was genius.

  Most was spinning the dial on a locker now, before a wall lined with them near the door. He had sized the place up upon entering, missing the flash of Gunner in the poolroom he might have caught sight of out of the corner of his eye had he not been so intent on getting in and getting out, and ruled it business as usual, the same old piece of shit, safe and sound and empty as a church on Thursday. He got the door open and started sorting through the locker’s contents with the only free hand he had to use, his left. He was focused on what he was doing, incapable of being distracted.

  He never saw Gunner coming.

  “Bet I can guess what you’ve got in there, Whitey,” Gunner said.

  Most spun, his feet rising up off the ground, at the sound of the voice. The vast expanses of pink flesh taking over his face were flushed with red and his eyes were like two puddles of white acrylic paint, each marred only by a nucleus of black ink.

  “Bring your hand out of the locker and put it down at your side,” Gunner told him, holding the Ruger P-85 waist-high, its muzzle pointed downward for the sake of discretion, but not so low as to give Most any foolish ideas. “And make sure it’s just your hand. Leave the baubles—or the hardware—inside.”

  Most didn’t want to comply, but the Ruger was compelling, so he did as he was told, suddenly in no hurry at all.