The smaller man’s smile finally went away, metamorphosed into the same grim expression his partner wore. “You wanna bet?”
Christ, Gunner thought, they’re serious.
“Look. It’s nice to see a couple of kids who don’t change the channel just ’cause the movie’s in black-and-white, but you’re confused. Taking people for rides only worked for Warner Brothers back in 1946, it’s as fictional an occurrence today as Santa coming down the chimney.”
The two brothers eyed him in stony silence for a long minute; then the smaller one sighed and told his partner, “Fuck it. Pop a cap in his leg, we’ll drag his ass out to the ride.”
Nine-thirty in the morning, the guy next door scanning the headlines of the Times out on his front lawn in clear view, and big man eases a SIG 9 out of its holster under his arm and points it at Gunner’s left knee. Still not saying a word.
Not surprisingly, Gunner found a way to make his pulling the trigger completely unnecessary.
The California Institution for Men looked all wrong for a prison. Prisons were supposed to be unsightly fortresses of concrete and steel, giant monolithic blights on the landscape that blocked out the sun and squelched even the slightest thought of entry or exit. Instead, the CIM was a nondescript collection of cinder-block buildings spread out across a 2,500-acre parcel of land in Chino, a quiet San Bernardino County suburb forty miles east of Los Angeles. If you took away all the razor wire and guard towers, in fact, the four-facility complex could have passed for a large, if woefully unattractive, college campus.
This was where Gunner ended up at the behest of his two new friends in the nicely tailored suits, Brother Kangol and Brother Kangol-Not. Back at Benny Elbridge’s place, he had thought the car they’d lead him to would be the silver Chrysler with the askew front bumper, but instead it was a brand-new pearl-white Lincoln Town Car. When he asked about the Chrysler, he didn’t get an answer, though the impression their silence left him with was that neither man knew what the hell he was talking about.
And so it had gone the entire ride out to Chino. Gunner had asked maybe a half-dozen questions, starting with the most obvious, before he’d decided to save his breath and enjoy the scenery. The big man in the hat drove, his partner with the smile sat in back with Gunner, and for fifty minutes neither man said anything that was intended to satisfy the investigator’s curiosity. Had he feared they meant to kill him, their reticence might have moved him to throw his door open, take his chances surviving a death plunge onto the eastbound San Bernardino Freeway, but once the route and duration of their journey began to suggest their eventual destination, the investigator felt confident that murder was not item one on their agenda.
Bringing him out to see Bume Webb was.
“All you gotta do is go in, give ’em your name,” the talker in the backseat said when they’d found a space in the CIM visitors’ parking lot. “It’s all set up, they’re expectin’ you and everything.”
Gunner knew he had to go, but he felt like he ought to at least bitch about it beforehand, lest they think him entirely spineless. “This was a lot of trouble for you boys to go to for nothing, you know. I’d have driven out here myself if you’d only asked.”
The big man behind the wheel didn’t even bother to turn around, and the smaller one in the back just frowned. As if to say, Yeah, right, you would have.
Gunner got out of the car and started walking.
Visiting a famous inmate at a maximum-security prison should have been a complex affair, but in less than thirty minutes, Gunner was face-to-face with the legend known as Bume Webb. As promised, someone had called ahead to alert the CIM authorities he was coming, and the result was a welcome incredibly short on questions and/or complications. Gunner didn’t know if this was a reflection of the facility’s security, or of Bume’s power to get things done, but he preferred to believe the former. Bume’s realm of influence was frightening enough as it was.
They met in a glassed-off room in the visitations building, where Gunner had found Bume already waiting for him. A folding table and two metal chairs were the only furniture in the room, and Bume dwarfed them all, made them look like movie props built to three-quarter scale. Even prepared to be impressed by his size, Gunner was taken aback; the man was simply immense. Almost as wide as he was tall, he had hands big enough to engulf a cantaloupe, and forearms as thick as an outdoor utility pole. If the orange jumpsuit he was wearing hadn’t been specially made, it had to have come from a very small lot; Gunner imagined there couldn’t have been more than three inmates in the entire California penal system who would’ve required clothing of equal dimension.
The baton-wielding corrections officer who’d brought him here let Gunner into the small room, then stepped just outside the door when he was satisfied Bume intended to behave himself. Gunner heard the door latch closed behind him and tried not to feel like a mouse who’d just been dropped into the python’s glass case at the zoo.
“We gotta make this fast,” Bume said, not getting up from his chair. “We only got fifteen minutes.”
Like his body, his voice carried the weight of a Mack truck and trailer.
Gunner took Bume’s lead, remained where he was. “Okay. You wanna start, or should I?”
“You wanted to know if I was the one told Mr. Elbridge to hire you. The answer’s yes. You got a problem with that?”
“I don’t know. Would you? You did some work for one man, found out later you were really doing it for somebody else? Would you be down for that?”
“If it was for a good reason? Yeah.”
“What kind of good reason?”
“Like the man what really hired you knew you would’ve said no, he’d’ve asked you to do the work himself, straight up. ’Cause that’s what would’ve happened, right, I’d’ve tried to hire you myself? You would’ve said no.”
“Maybe,” Gunner lied. “Maybe not. It might have all depended on what you wanted me to do, and why.”
“Okay. So now you know all that, right?”
Gunner shook his head.
“Shit. Come on, Gunner. I want you to find out who whacked my boy Digga. What the hell you think I want?”
“I don’t know. Maybe to make some people think it wasn’t you who whacked your ‘boy’?”
Bume’s eyes grew small, even harder with menace. “Some people gonna think that no matter what. I don’t give a fuck about them. All I give a fuck about is findin’ out who served the Digga.”
“You don’t believe he served himself?”
“Hell no. Would I be talkin’ to you if I did?”
“I think you’d better get used to the idea. Nobody can say why, but so far everyone seems to agree that the boy hadn’t been all that thrilled to be alive lately. Desmond Joy in particular says death was almost always on his mind.”
“Bullshit. Nigga just got depressed sometimes, that’s all. Same as you’d be, muthafuckas like Desmond an’ the Digga’s moms was always messin’ with your head, way they was always messin’ with his.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean they was givin’ homeboy some fucked-up advice, tellin’ ’im he needed to leave Body Count an’ start his own fuckin’ label. They was only lookin’ out for themselves tellin’ ’im that shit, that was the worst thing he coulda done.”
Gunner glanced around their stark environs, said, “Or the best thing. In case you haven’t heard, Bume, things at Body Count have gotten a little funky since you went away. If the Digga had lived to stick around, he might’ve been the only one left on the payroll to answer the phones and open the day’s mail.”
“Wrong, nigga. Me an’ him was a team, same as always. Soon as he signed his new contract, we was gonna have Body Count blowin’ up again. Me bein’ up in here wasn’t gonna change that.”
“New contract? What new contract?”
“One homeboy was all ready to ink ’fore he got killed, what else? Damn, man, ain’t you figured out nothin’ yet? That’s why the Digga
got served, so he couldn’t do no more records for Body Count!”
Unable to hide his surprise, Gunner finally walked over to the table where Bume sat, claimed the remaining chair there for himself. “You wanna run that by me again?”
Bume shook his head with disgust, said, “I told you. We ain’t got much time in here. So listen the fuck up. Everybody be thinkin’ homeboy’s death was all about him, but that’s wack. It was all about me. I’m the one they was tryin’ to fuck with, not him.”
The suggestion was not as outrageous as it initially sounded, once Gunner thought about it. If the Digga really had been on the verge of resigning with Body Count as Bume was now alleging, no one had stood to lose more as a result of the rapper’s death than Bume. No one. Even a still-undecided Digga would have offered the record mogul one last chance to raise his once proud label from the ashes of his incarceration. But with the Digga—like all the other brand-name rappers once under Bume’s employ—now gone for good … Bume’s financial ruin seemed all but guaranteed.
Could that have been something other than an inadvertent by-product of the Digga’s death?
“Let me make sure I understand you,” Gunner said. “You’re suggesting that somebody murdered C.E. Digga Jones just to fuck with you. To put the last nail in Body Count’s coffin before the Digga could make any more records for the label.”
“You goddamn right,” Bume said, nodding his head emphatically.
“Okay. So who was it? Who in the hell hates you so much that they’d murder someone who records for you just to jack you up financially?”
“I don’t know who, fool. If I knew who, I wouldn’t need you, would I?”
“You can’t think of one or two likely candidates?”
“I can think of more’n that. But…” Bume cut a glance at the corrections officer standing on the other side of the glass wall, saw that his eyes were as fixed upon him as they’d been from the moment the guard had first let Gunner in here.
“Well?”
“By now I guess you figured out I got a few enemies. Niggas who like to say I did this or that to ’em, busted ’em up or cheated ’em outa some chedda, bullshit like that, right?”
Gunner nodded.
“Well. Enemies ain’t all I got. I got me some ‘friends’ too. Maybe you should talk to some o’ them.”
“Friends?”
“Specifically, some of ’em what helped me along the way. Back in the day when I was just comin’ up. I can’t name no names, but some of ’em, they got what you call a ‘distorted view’ of what they done to contribute to all my success. So we been havin’ this fuckin’ ongoin’ argument about it lately.” He shrugged, as if that were some form of elaboration.
“Are you talking about early investors?” Gunner asked.
Bume grinned. “That’s what they like to say they was.”
“Like Ready Lewis, you mean?”
Bume didn’t say anything, just looked at Gunner like he’d finally found some reason to respect the investigator’s intelligence. Then the big man turned his head to one side and nodded at the guard outside, issuing a signal that the time had come for Gunner to be taken back to where he’d come from.
t w e l v e
BUME’S DELIVERY BOYS TOOK GUNNER BACK TO HIS CAR the same way they had driven him out to Chino: in complete silence. The radio was on, as it had been earlier, tuned to 92.3 the BEAT and bassed out enough to rattle the teeth of the dead, but beyond that, the Lincoln was again as quiet as a covered grave for fifty minutes. The difference this time was that Gunner actually liked it that way.
It was the kind of mood thoughts of his nephew Alred always seemed to put him in. He had been hoping ever since Slicky Soames dropped the drug dealer’s name that he’d be able to close the Elbridge case without ever having to renew his acquaintance with the blackest of black sheep in the Gunner clan, but now he knew that wouldn’t be possible. Bume Webb had just pointed a meaty finger at Alred and dared Gunner to go fetch, and that wasn’t a command Gunner could easily disregard. If Bume thought his home-boy Ready was responsible for the Digga’s demise, Gunner owed it to his client to examine the possibility. No matter what kind of personal aggravation such an examination would entail.
So Gunner endured another ride in the Lincoln saying nothing, trying to psych himself up for the task ahead.
In fact, the only attempt Gunner made to converse with his pair of escorts on the return leg of the trip came when they were dropping him off back at Benny Elbridge’s place, where the investigator’s red Cobra was somewhat incredibly still parked. He leaned in through the white Town Car’s open rear window after getting out, said to the smartly dressed black man with the scoundrel’s smile, “You don’t think I oughta know you brothers’ names? Just in case we meet again at a party or something?”
Both men laughed in unison, Brother Kangol in the front seat seemingly the most amused. He looked back at his partner, shrugged a what-the-hell, and the latter said, “I’m Jessie, and he’s Ben. But folks like to call us—”
“J and B. That’s cute.”
“It ain’t cute. It’s dope,” Ben said. Not laughing anymore. “You wanna watch who you call cute, muthafucka.”
The big man threw the Lincoln in gear as his homeboy Jessie grinned, left Gunner standing there in a cloud of the car’s exhaust.
It was almost one o’clock when Gunner sat down at his desk for the first time all day Thursday. Bume Webb’s enforced summons this morning had cost him half the day. He didn’t need Mickey to tell him this was no way to run a business, not showing up for work until most people were finishing lunch, but Mickey told him anyway, not even waiting for the front door to close to start tearing into him. Fortunately, both Gunner’s landlord and Winnie Phifer, the barber’s assistant in the shop, had people in their chairs and other customers waiting, so Gunner didn’t have to deal with Mickey bringing his whining into the back room after him.
Two written phone messages were waiting for Gunner when he sat down: one from Desmond Joy, and another from Steven La Porte of the LAPD. Both had come in late that morning, and were simple requests for a callback. He felt encouraged to see both messages, and was anxious to talk to each of the people who had left them, but there was one call he had to make before making any others. He just hoped it wasn’t too late.
“You meet with my man Jolly this morning?” Gunner asked Wally Browne as soon as KTLK’s general manager picked up the line.
“Yeah. He came in about two hours ago. I gotta tell you, Gunner, I’m not so sure he’s the right man for the job here.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Nothing ‘happened.’ It’s just… the man seems a little rough around the edges to me, that’s all. He acts like he’s afraid to speak, and when he does, it’s usually to say somethin’ about Jesus bein’ his personal savior, et cetera, et cetera. How long’s he been doin’ this kind of work, anyway?”
“Since eight o’clock this morning. How long do you think he’s been doing it?”
“Hell, I didn’t mean—”
“So how did you leave it with him, Mr. Browne? Is he out watching Ms. Johnson now, or did you send him home?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“No. Frankly, I don’t. Like I told you last night, I’ve got another case to work—this is the first chance I’ve had to check in with either one of you.”
Browne fell silent for a moment, still unconvinced Gunner’s judgment could be trusted in this matter. Eventually, however, he said, “Far as I know, he’s on the job. I gave ’im all the info he asked for, Sparkle’s itinerary and the like, and he left, I assumed to start watching the house before she came in to do her show this morning.”
“She went on the air today?”
“Please. Are you kidding? I begged her to take some time off till I was blue in the face, but I’d’ve had more luck asking an elephant to climb a tree.”
“She say anything about the attempt on her life yesterday?”
> “What, on her show, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“She had to. How could she ignore it? But she didn’t say a whole lot. Just a few words of reassurance about her condition, and about how she wasn’t going to let the crazies in this world stop her from deliverin’ the message. That sort of thing.”
“But nothing about Nance.”
“No, no. No way. Give the lady credit for havin’ a little intelligence, Gunner.”
Gunner asked if either Browne or Johnson had received any word yet from the LAPD about Nance’s status as a suspect, and Brown said he’d called downtown less than an hour ago, was told by one of the investigating officers that Johnson’s old boyfriend was being held for questioning down at Parker Center at that very moment.
“You got this cop’s name?” Gunner asked. “I’d like to call him or his partner later, see how Nance’s Q-and-A turned out.”
“Sure. Hold on a minute.” Browne found the name and number, read them aloud for Gunner to take down. “What, you don’t think they’re gonna hold ’im? After everything Sparkle told us about him?”
“I don’t know. They will if we’re lucky. If they hold him, it probably means he’s our man, and we can all relax, stop worrying about somebody else trying again. Whereas if they don’t …”
He thought better of finishing the sentence.
“He’s the guy. He’s gotta be the guy,” Browne said. Trying as much to make himself believe it as Gunner.
“Yeah. Let’s just hope he is,” Gunner said.
“Aw, hell,” Matthew Poole said, sounding over the phone like he was trying to talk with half a sub sandwich stuffed in his mouth. “I almost made it. Two weeks without any harassment from you.”
“You think this is easy for me? You’re the fourth flat-foot I’ve had to talk to in four days. Talk about a root canal without Novocain…”
Poole was a veteran robbery/homicide detective with the LAPD, and Gunner’s oldest and most reliable contact within the department. Their friendship was tenuous at best, but persevering, and was entirely held together by a near-constant exchange of favors. For two men who had absolutely nothing of consequence in common—Poole was a jowly white man who liked Sinatra, Gunner a younger black man who liked Turrentine—it was a surprisingly efficient relationship.
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