“The surveillance tape from the hotel. The one that shows everybody who went in or out of the Digga’s room the night he died. That tape.”
2Daddy didn’t miss faking a lack of concern by much; his only real mistake was taking too long to reply. “Nigga, you’re trippin’,” he said.
“Brother named Ray Crumley showed me a copy of it before somebody whacked him trying to steal it. Was that you, or your boy Teepee?”
“Wasn’t neither one of us. We don’t know no nigga name Ray what you said, and we don’t know nothin’ ’bout no fuckin’ tape.”
“Yeah, you do. One of you killed the Digga and got caught on tape doing it. Then when Crumley tried to sell you a copy of the tape, you tried to jack it from his crib instead, ended up killing him too.”
“No! I didn’t—Man, this is wack! You tryin’ to set me up!”
He was all but crying now, just as a man who was indeed being set up might. The distinctions between this and the behavior of someone who was merely afraid of the imminent consequences of his actions were almost infinitesimal—but Gunner knew them when he saw them, all the same, and he was certain he was seeing them here. There was simply too much surprise mixed in with 2Daddy’s fear. He knew more than he was telling, to be certain—he just didn’t seem to know enough to be guilty of the specific crimes Gunner was accusing him of.
Needless to say, the investigator’s job had just become that much harder.
Resigned to making one last attempt to learn what it was the rapper wasn’t saying, in the hope it would lead to something bigger, Gunner said, “I’m running out of patience here, Dee. And you’re running out of time. Guilty or innocent, the police are gonna stick you for the Digga’s murder, soon as they do what I did and connect you to Crumley and the tape. You ever wanna lay another dope track down in your life, you better talk to me, right here and now, give me some kind of chance to control the damage they’re gonna do before it’s too late.”
“Talk to you about what? Man, I done tol’ you, I don’t know—”
Gunner jammed Teepee’s gun back into the waistband of his pants behind his back, said, “Fine. I’m out. You wanna let the Man jam you up without a fight, more power to you.” He turned and started for the door.
“Wait, wait! Hold up, goddamnit!” 2Daddy screamed.
Gunner looked back at him, waited for his follow-up.
“Look here.” He paused, behaving like a man who was being forced to pull his own teeth. “I didn’t kill nobody, all right? Not the Digga, not this Crumley nigga you talkin’ about—not nobody,” 2Daddy said. “But … I might know who did.”
Gunner still didn’t speak.
2Daddy sighed deeply, the surrender killing him, said, “Night homeboy died … he was with a ho’ I know. Girl name Antoinetta. Antoinetta Aames.” He paused again, faced Gunner directly. “We ain’t tight or nothin’, but I know her. Me an’ her use’ to party together an’ shit, long time ago.”
So 2Daddy knew Danee Elbridge’s friend Antoinetta even better than she did. It was almost too good to be true.
“And? Get to the point, 2Daddy.”
“The point? The point is, the bitch is crazy, man! She’s a fiend. Girl’s body is dope, but her head …” He shook his own head at the thought. “It ain’t right. She’s what you call one a them paranoid schizo muthafuckas. I forget what you call it.”
“Paranoid schizophrenic?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Paranoid schizophrenic. Like, she always thinkin’ somebody’s fuckin’ with her, so she always fuckin’ with somebody first. Cuttin’ niggas up with knives, or tryin’ to run ’em down in they own cars. Shit like that.”
“How is it you know she was with the Digga that night?”
“How do I know? I know ’cause she tol’ me, that’s how. She called me an’ tol’ me.”
“When?”
“Fuck, man, I don’t know. Couple days later, I think. Somethin’ like that. Bitch was all shook up ’bout bein’ there, said she was scared Five-oh was gonna think she was the one shot homeboy.”
“Did she?”
“Hey, fuck if I know. I asked her if she did, an’ she said she didn’t, but…” He shrugged. “She wasn’t gonna tell me if she did, right?”
“What about her friend Felicia? The sister who was with her?”
2Daddy’s face bunched up like the question was something Gunner had pulled from a quantum physics text. “Felicia? Who the fuck is Felicia?”
“Antoinetta was there with a friend that night, 2Daddy. It was her and a girl named Felicia, or Phyllis. One or the other.”
2Daddy shook his head. “I don’t know nothin’ about no Felicia,” he said. “Antoinetta didn’t say nothin’ ’bout no other bitch bein’ up there with her.”
Gunner processed this information for a moment, said, “So why’d she call you? Why you and not somebody else?”
“Why’d she call me?” 2Daddy asked. “She called me ’cause she needed some Benjamins to go hide somewheres, an’ I’m the only nigga she knows got a dollar in they goddamn pocket. Who the fuck else was she gonna call?”
“You give her the money?”
“No. Hell no. You crazy?”
“So she could still be around somewhere.”
2Daddy just shrugged.
“Where would I be likely to find her? Just to hear her side of things?”
“Her side of things? Shit, nigga, I just told you. The bitch is crazy. All she gonna do is say I’m a lie. That I was the one done the Digga, not her.”
“Just the same, 2Daddy, I’d like to look her up. Where could I find her?”
2Daddy frowned, annoyed by Gunner’s insistence on doing things his own way. “Maybe over by her moms’ house. That’s where she was livin’ last time I seen her. But—”
“You have an address for her moms’ house?”
“No. I told you, man, me an’ her ain’t been tight in a long time. Last time I was over there was a couple years ago, an’ somebody else was drivin’.”
“Okay, 2Daddy. We’re all done. Thanks for the four-one-one, and take care of that leg, huh?”
“Fuck you,” 2Daddy said, mad-dogging the investigator once more. Being reminded of his flesh wound while learning Gunner was leaving had suddenly returned him to his original state of impertinence.
“Oh, and listen. When your boy Teepee comes back with the tape—tell him I said to make a big bowl of popcorn and watch it tonight, pay special attention to a character named Wilmer. Can you remember that? Wilmer?”
“Nigga, I ain’t your fuckin’ secretary. I ain’t tellin’ Teepee shit!”
Rather than argue with him, Gunner just laughed and left him in peace.
t e n
FOR THE SECOND TIME IN TWO DAYS, GUNNER TIED UP A pay phone in the lobby of a hotel he could never afford to stay in in order to conduct some business, and just like the first time, it wasn’t a particularly rewarding experience.
Bob Zemic still hadn’t called his office when Gunner checked with Mickey, so Gunner called him instead. It was now nearly three-thirty, well past Zemic’s lunchtime, so his promised review of the surveillance tape Gunner had asked for should have been completed long ago.
“Sorry, Gunner, but it was as I suspected,” Zemic said. “Ray’s interest in your tape was strictly sexual in nature.”
Gunner looked off to one side for a moment, resisted the urge to curse under his breath. It was the last thing he had wanted to hear Zemic say. “How’s that?”
“I mean, the only thing on it worth mentioning is a little foreplay the guest in room five-oh-nine did on a ladyfriend out in the hallway before they turned in for the night. Beyond that, the tape was completely unextraordinary.”
“Foreplay? What kind of foreplay?”
“Without going into all the gory details, I’ll say only that it involved two women, and that someone like Ray would have probably found it highly entertaining.”
“I see. And Elbridge?”
“That’s
also like I said. There was nothing out of the ordinary to see. The tape shows a few people entering his room, then leaving afterward. That was it.”
“You recognize any of these people?”
“It was three females. All black, relatively young. First two together, then one alone. I’m not sure, but I think the one alone was Elbridge’s wife. At least, she resembled the lady I saw identified as his wife on TV a couple of times right after he died.”
“And the other two?”
“I couldn’t tell you. Looked like a couple of groupies to me. Maybe I’m wrong.”
“You’d never seen either of them before?”
“No. Neither before or since. Cameras never really caught a clear view of their faces, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t familiar.”
Which made it all but certain that Crumley hadn’t wanted the tape for blackmail purposes after all. If the people on it couldn’t be positively identified, what good was it to an extortionist?
“And you say everyone was accounted for?” Gunner asked. “That is, everyone who entered the kid’s room was seen to come out again?”
“Yes. Time stamp says the two groupies went in around five-thirty, came out just before seven. The wife went in right after that, left again less than twenty minutes later. Oh, and before I forget to mention …”
“Yeah?”
“Elbridge himself was visible at the door on both occasions. As alive as you and I are right now.”
Even over the phone, Gunner could feel the grin that had just broken out on Zemic’s face.
The logo for Body Count Records was a nine-millimeter automatic handgun in profile, branded along its snout with five human silhouettes intended to represent five kills. Beneath the gun, graffiti-style block letters spelled out BODY COUNT in bold silver and black, with the O in each word dissected by the white crosshairs of a rifle scope. If the design struck you as clever and harmless, a visit to the label’s corporate headquarters in Burbank was a painless experience. But if you saw it instead, as Gunner did, as a prime example of the hard sell of violence and mayhem the entertainment industry was doing on America’s children, just to move product, thirty seconds in the building was enough to send you screaming for the exits. Because the goddamn logo was everywhere, if the receptionist’s area was representative of the whole. On the glass entry doors, on the wall behind the receptionist herself, even on each and every one of the roughly three dozen gold record plaques that peppered an entire wall.
It all made Gunner almost sorry that he’d come, except for the fact that he’d had little choice. Despite the bad news Bob Zemic had just given him, Gunner still felt Antoinetta Aames and friend were two people he should talk to, and he was anxious to find them—but not until one nagging question had been answered for him. Benny Elbridge himself would have been the ideal person to ask, but he hadn’t been answering Gunner’s calls all day, so the investigator had decided to look up the only other person he could think of who might have the information he required: Raymont Trevor, the man Desmond Joy had described as Bume Webb’s chief operations officer.
Gunner had called ahead to make sure Trevor was in, then driven straight to Burbank to wait him out, knowing Trevor wouldn’t be an easy man to see without an appointment. Still, the investigator suspected that the answer he’d given the receptionist when asked what the nature of his business was—he was the private investigator Benny Elbridge had hired to clear Bume Webb of C.E. Digga Jones’s murder—would demand Trevor’s attention eventually, and he was right. Less than twenty minutes after his arrival, Trevor’s private secretary came out front to show Gunner to Trevor’s office—a large, opulently appointed room on the floor above no Fortune 500 CEO would have resented owning. Assuming, of course, he or she could live with all the Body Count logos scattered throughout the decor.
“Mr. Gunner? Raymont Trevor,” the record exec said upon Gunner’s entrance, grinning as he came around his desk to shake hands. Gunner had only seen Bume Webb in newspaper photos and video footage, but he noticed immediately that Trevor was nothing if not a smaller version of him: barrel-chested, bald-headed, and as neckless as a badly drawn cartoon character. Only scale and the full-bodied goatee Trevor wore served to separate the two men physically. “Angie said something about your being a private investigator working for Benny Elbridge?”
Gunner shook Trevor’s hand, said, “That’s right. And you’re doing a fine job of acting like you didn’t already know, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Trevor almost laughed. “Excuse me?”
“I’m gonna make this brief, Mr. Trevor. Because you’re a busy man, and so am I. Is Bume Webb’s money paying for my services, or not? I need a simple yes or no.”
The smile on his host’s face slowly vanished before Gunner’s eyes. “What?”
“Not to worry. It’s not a deal breaker, yet. But a man needs to know who he’s working for, or it’s no go, right?”
“I’m sorry, brother, but it seems there’s been some kind of mistake. I don’t—”
“Yeah, you do. It took a couple days, but it’s finally come to my attention that the man I thought was my client has been paying me with money he doesn’t have. Which means he’s being bankrolled by somebody else. That somebody doesn’t have to be Bume, but he’s the only one I can see playing that role at the moment.”
“I’m still not following you.”
“No? I’ll wrap this up, then. I don’t work for other people’s front men. That’s not how I operate. If you or Bume put Benny Elbridge up to hiring me, you’d better say so, and fast, because I’m not working another minute on Elbridge’s behalf until I know who’s behind him, and why. I’m sure you can understand.”
Trevor rebuilt from scratch the charming smile he’d shown Gunner earlier, said, “I’ll say it again. It sounds like there’s been some kind of mistake. I’d really like to help you, but …” He hiked his huge shoulders up in a big man’s shrug, smiled with even more dubious sincerity.
Gunner let the smile sink in, decided he disliked it greatly, and turned his back on it before he could do something to it he knew he’d only regret later.
Driving to his office at Mickey’s after leaving Raymont Trevor in Burbank, Gunner was again made uneasy by the odd sense that somebody was trailing him, tracing his every move in the thick of rush-hour traffic. Three times in two days he’d felt this way now, and professional paranoia didn’t generally go that far. He was being tailed, by a person or persons unknown, and the realization left him both furious and apprehensive.
Maybe being convinced someone was back there, rather than merely suspecting as much, made the difference, but this time he thought he was able to spot the vehicle shadowing his own: a silver, late-eighties Chrysler LeBaron with what looked like California plates, its front bumper listing badly to the left, damn near scraping the ground. A good fifteen car lengths behind him on the southbound Harbor Freeway—too far away to afford Gunner a decent look at the driver sitting behind the glare of its windshield—there was nothing concrete about the Chrysler he could point to as suspicious, save for the feeling he had that he’d seen it somewhere before. Not today, but recently. Sometime Tuesday perhaps, or maybe even Monday.
But where?
At just a few minutes shy of six p.m., the flow of traffic on both sides of the Harbor was its customary, lethargic self. You crept forward at ten miles per hour for a distance of fifteen feet, then stopped, only to repeat the process all over again. Gunner’s Cobra was in the number three lane, the Chrysler in the number two, but they may as well have been bumper to bumper, so identical was their rate of speed. The entire freeway was one big synchronized crawl, affording Gunner no opportunity to find a slower lane, force the Chrysler to gain on him so he could get a good look at its driver.
So Gunner stopped the Cobra cold.
For appearance’ sake, he got out of the car, shrugged an apology at the driver of the Toyota pickup directly behind him before moving around to the front of the Cob
ra to raise its hood. The double-chinned, mustachioed Hispanic in the Toyota leaned on his horn to offer his condolences, but Gunner just ignored him, feigning vague interest in the big Ford V8 stuffed into the Cobra’s engine compartment as he watched the Chrysler crawl inexorably toward him, get to within ten car lengths … and then start merging right, making a hasty and forceful retreat off the freeway.
“Shit!” Gunner said.
He’d made a strategic blunder, faking the Cobra’s breakdown here, just beyond a freeway off-ramp, rather than just short of one. Another quarter-mile, and his suspected tail would have been trapped between exits, with no avenue of escape readily available to him. But now … the silver car’s driver was just able to make the Vernon Avenue turnoff, disappear up the ramp before Gunner could see his face or make out the license plate number on his car.
“Shit!” the investigator said again, dropping the Cobra’s hood closed with a bang.
The guy in the pickup was still honking at him mercilessly, unable to go around, and several cars in back were joining in. Gunner just let them have their fun. They weren’t calling him an idiot, exactly, but they would have been well within their rights if they had.
Mickey was putting the finishing touches on Joe Worthy’s customary, aircraft carrier–like flattop when Gunner walked in. The two older men were alone in the shop this late in the day, and had been talking in hushed tones like a pair of women trading gossip in the church hall. Immediately, the investigator knew something was up; loud voices here always meant good news, subdued voices always meant bad.
“Man, where the hell have you been?” Mickey asked.
“Body Count Records. Two floors in a sweet-looking high-rise out in Burbank, pictures of mad-dogging young knuckleheads named Boney this and Thrilla that all over the place. Why? What’s up?”
“You ain’t heard?” Joe Worthy asked.
“Heard what?”
“It’s all over the news,” Mickey said ominously. “How could you not hear?”
“I didn’t have the radio on in the car. What the hell are you two talking about? What happened?”
All the Lucky Ones Are Dead Page 12