It's Not a Pretty Sight

by Gar Anthony Haywood

  Gunner also had several living aunts and uncles, first and second cousins—and a plethora of nieces and nephews.

  Alred Lewis was one of his nephews.

  His late sister Ruth’s oldest child, Alred was young, good-looking, and better off financially than his Uncle Aaron could ever hope to be. You saw him on the street, you’d think he was a power forward for the Clippers, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t in the music business, either. Or the movies, or television. The thousand-dollar suits he wore, and the canary-yellow Porsche Carrera he drove, had not come to him via any such pedestrian pursuits as these. Oh, no.

  Ready was a dope dealer. And a damn good one, apparently.

  That was the boy’s name in the trade, “Ready,” but Gunner still called him Aired. It was his way of refusing to acknowledge his nephew’s role in the business he was in. He couldn’t look at Alred without thinking about Alred’s mother, Ruth, and how she would spin like a top in her grave if she could see what her baby had become. Most everyone else in the family had always known this was coming, having seen the signs early on, but not Ruth; she had always thought her boy’s selfishness and egomania were faults he would outgrow with time.

  She had been wrong.

  Without his mother around to restrain him, Alred had blossomed in the criminal world like a garden show carnation, impressing everyone he came in contact with with his gleeful willingness to commit any crime, anytime, anywhere. He had ambition, he had nerve, and he had no conscience whatsoever. He was a big player now, and he was going to be a bigger one later, he didn’t get himself killed or busted first.

  Gunner wanted nothing to do with him.

  Which was why it pained him so to seek his nephew out Thursday night, less than twenty minutes after parting company with Bunche. Not yet twenty-five, Alred was part owner of a dance club out in the Crenshaw district called Ruff ‘n Ready’s, on Crenshaw Boulevard between Stocker and Forty-third Street, and Gunner looked him up there, knowing if he wasn’t around, this was as good a place as any to leave a message for him.

  But Alred was around; the yellow Porsche with the oversized wheels and tires he drove was parked out back when the investigator arrived, just after eight o’clock. A line of young black people had already formed outside the doors, smartly dressed men and women anxiously awaiting their turn to party inside. The bass line of the music playing within was loud enough to rattle teeth two doors down the block. Gunner went straight to the front of the line and flashed his ID at the doorman, a behemoth in suit and tie who would have had no difficulty at all picking Gunner up and throwing him a good ten yards, that was what he decided to do.

  “I’m looking for Alred,” Gunner said.

  “Ready ain’t here,” the doorman replied.

  “Okay. I believe you. But do me a favor anyway, huh? So it doesn’t look to all these people like you just dissed me?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Take one of my business cards here, go inside for a minute, and just pretend you told him his Uncle Aaron’s outside looking for him. All right?”

  “His uncle?”

  “That’s right. His mother, Ruth, was my sister. I’ll wait right here.”

  Gunner smiled good-naturedly and handed him a business card, then watched the big man disappear inside, leaving his doorman’s duties to another, similarly sized co-worker standing nearby. The couple at the head of the line to Gunner’s left were eyeing him with open contempt, resentful of what they thought was just a brazen attempt on his part to gain entrance to the club without having to wait in line like everyone else, and they seemed about ready to say something about it when the doorman suddenly returned, having been gone all of sixty seconds.

  “Come on in, Uncle Aaron,” he said, smiling.

  Gunner’s nephew had an office at the far rear of the club, beyond a door marked “Employees Only” on the other side of the dance floor. The doorman and the investigator had to pick their way through a bumping, grinding, hip-hopping morass of humanity to get there, rendered all but deaf by the music a DJ in a glass booth was bombarding the club with. Gunner tried to ignore the abundance of exquisite female flesh the club had to offer tonight, meeting only minimal success. There was one sister in particular, a coffee-and-cream-colored brickhouse in a two-piece, skintight red Lycra number, who had the most symmetrical, perfectly formed—

  “In here,” the doorman said gruffly, holding the door to the rear of the club open for Gunner to pass through.

  When they reached Alred’s office in the back, he was sitting in a large, high-backed swivel chair behind a black marble desk, watching the same people Gunner had just seen out on the dance floor move around on a giant-screen TV. The TV was hooked up to the club’s numerous security cameras, affording Gunner’s nephew a view of his kingdom that changed every thirty seconds or so: the dance floor, the front entry area, the box office, the bar, and so on.

  “Uncle Aaron. Whatta nice surprise,” Alred said, beaming. He didn’t stand up or extend his hand, he just sat there in his swivel chair and beamed. Dark-skinned, clean-shaven, and completely bald, he was wearing a black, banded-collar silk shirt with an oversized pearl top button Gunner knew must have cost two bills if it cost a dollar.

  “I didn’t check ‘im,” the doorman said. Warning his employer that he hadn’t patted Gunner down yet.

  “Fuck it. He’s cool,” Alred said, waving the big man out of the room.

  The doorman gave Gunner one more hard look, then left the two men alone.

  “Have a seat, Uncle. Make yourself comfortable,” Alred said.

  “No thanks. I’m not going to be here that long,” Gunner said. Sounding as ill at ease as a convict in a warden’s office.

  “What, you can’t hang a while? With your favorite nephew?”

  “You’re not my favorite anything, Aired. Any more than I’m yours. So please, put the family album back on the shelf and let me ask you what I came here to ask you, all right?”

  Aired started laughing. “Damn! You always so hostile! What’s up with that, man? I ain’t seen you in over a year, an’ look how you treatin’ me!”

  “I’m looking for somebody, Aired. And I thought you might be able to help me find him.”

  Aired let his laughter die down, then said, “You lookin’ for somebody? Who?”

  “Boy named Angelo Dobbs. The contract psycho who knocked off Jimmy Gatewood last Thursday. I don’t have to tell you who Jimmy Gatewood was, do I?”

  “Jimmy Gatewood? Lemme see …” Alred raised his gaze to the ceiling, like a man laboring to remember something. “That’s the fool tried to jack the Trey-Kays’ shit, right?”

  “Then you know the story.”

  Aired shrugged and grinned again. “Word ’bout some things gets around to ever’body, sooner or later.”

  “So what can you tell me about Dobbs?”

  “What can I tell you? I can’t tell you shit. What the fuck you think I can tell you?”

  “It’s like that, is it?”

  “Goddamn right it’s like that. Look at you! Can’t even sit down, you hate my ass so bad! Like it hurts just to talk to me, or somethin’!”

  He was no longer smiling. He stood up and walked around the desk to stand toe-to-toe with his uncle, breathing right in Gunner’s face. “You come in here to see me, motherfucker, you give me my props!” he said, slapping his own chest with an open palm. “I don’t care who the fuck you are!”

  “Your props,” Gunner said, unflinching.

  “That’s right! My props!”

  He was asking for something Gunner couldn’t give him: respect. But Gunner couldn’t tell him that, of course. He wanted to, but he couldn’t; not unless he cared to walk away from the premises with nothing whatsoever to show for either his time or his aggravation.

  “What would you like me to do, Aired? Kiss your ring?” he asked.

  His nephew’s right arm flexed and started to go back, then held up. Alred grinned again, teeth flashing, and said, “You think I
owe you, huh? That’s why you actin’ like this, like you can come in here to my place an’ talk shit, say any damn thing you want. Huh? ’Cause you think I owe you.”

  Gunner didn’t say anything, leaving the younger man to draw his own conclusions.

  Five years earlier, Alred had been there at the hospital to witness his mother’s passing only because Gunner had seen to it the boy was free to do so. Ruth’s son had been busted for possession just three days before, and Gunner was the only member of the family willing to raise his bail money and get him released in time to properly tell his mother good-bye. Gunner had never made an issue of it himself, but Alred’s sister Janette had made a point of letting Alred know what his uncle had done, hoping Alred would be so moved by the gesture that he’d straighten up his act.

  Like her mother before her, Janette had been dreaming.

  Just as Gunner was probably dreaming now, thinking Alred would view something he’d done five years ago as a debt his nephew had never paid.

  “Just ’cause you bailed me out that time so I could see Moms …” Alred said.

  “You don’t want to help me, Aired, just say so, I’ll get the fuck out of here,” Gunner said.

  He wasn’t going to beg, and he wasn’t going to crawl. He wanted that made clear right now, before Alred got the foolish idea he could string his uncle along for a while, dangling the carrot before his nose, then tell him to go fuck himself. It wasn’t going to be like that. Gunner didn’t need his help that bad.

  “Say what?” Alred asked.

  “You heard me. Stop fucking around and give me an answer. Can you help me or not?”

  Aired folded his brow up in a scowl, incredulous. A small eternity went by as he thought things over. Finally, another toothy grin spread across his face and he broke up laughing, backpedaling away from Gunner to return to his place behind his desk. “You’re crazy! Everybody be thinkin’ I’m the crazy motherfucker in the family, but you the one! You ain’t got no goddamn sense!”

  “Is that a yes, or a no?” Gunner asked.

  “It’s a maybe, Uncle. That’s what it is. You got a card, put it down on the desk. Right here.” He pointed. “I hear somethin’ ’bout the man you lookin’ for, an’ I feel like tellin’ you about it, maybe I’ll call you. Or maybe I won’t. Depends on if I got somethin’ more important to do at the time.”

  “You mean like drop a little rock on the street,” Gunner said, flipping a business card on his nephew’s desk.

  Aired smiled, waved his right hand at all his luxurious surroundings, and said, “It pays the bills, don’t it?”

  He threw himself down in his chair and laughed again, as Gunner turned and fled the room.

  eighteen

  GUNNER SAT AT MICKEY’S AND WAITED FOR THE PHONE TO ring. At his desk in the back, he had a fast-food chicken bowl at his left hand and Mickey’s portable TV at his right, the latter tuned to a broadcast of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown that played like it had been edited for television with a butcher knife.

  All the lights in the shop were on.

  Right around eleven-thirty, more than two hours after the investigator’s escape from Ruff ’n Ready’s, Alred called.

  “I got an address for you, Uncle,” he said. “You ready?”

  Gunner grabbed a pencil and the bag the chicken bowl had come in, said, “I’m ready.”

  His nephew quickly recited an address in Fontana, then said, “That’s his homey’s sister’s place, he s’posed to be out there right now, chillin’ till the heat comes down.”

  “Got it.”

  “You know the boy’s crazy, right? That he’s fuckin’ whacked out?”

  “I heard that, yeah.”

  “You thinkin’ ’bout goin’ out there after ‘im yourself? That what you thinkin’?”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet, Aired.”

  “ ’Cause if you are, you dead, Uncle. All right? You thinkin’ ’bout fuckin’ with a zombie like Angie, you as good as dead, I’ll tell you that right now.”

  “Thanks for the health tip.”

  “I ain’t gotta tell you this evens us up now, do I? That we all through now, you an’ me?”

  “No, Aired. You don’t.”

  “Good. ’Cause you ain’t got no respect for me, an’ I ain’t got none for you. You come around me again, one of us gonna get hurt—an’ it ain’t gonna be me.”

  Gunner let the threat pass, finding it rather sad, and just said, “Be good, Aired,” before hanging up the phone.

  He left a message for Bunche at the Compton police station, labeling it “urgent,” turned out all the lights in the shop, and started out the front door, braced for the long drive out to Fontana. He wasn’t going out there alone, hell no, but he was going; all Bunche had said was don’t be a hero, not that he couldn’t be there when Angelo Dobbs was taken into custody. Besides, Dobbs could slip away in the time it might take Bunche to reach him; somebody had to get out to Fontana now, to watch the house Dobbs was allegedly holed up in, just in case he decided to go somewhere.

  Gunner was out on the sidewalk, locking the barbershop’s door, when somebody behind him popped some gravel underfoot.

  Russell Dartmouth had finally decided to make his move.

  In the next instant, the crazed black man threw the same lead right hand he had eight days ago in Venice, aiming for the side of the investigator’s head, but all he connected with this time was air. Forewarned, Gunner dropped, ducking under Dartmouth’s arm, then reached up and helped the big man with his follow-through, flipping Dartmouth clumsily over his shoulder. The giant landed hard on the base of his spine, turned snarling like a wild dog, and caught the toe of Gunner’s right foot flush under his chin, his head snapping back as far as it would go. Any other man would have been finished, but Dartmouth was merely dazed. He rolled one way, then the other, actually trying to get up, until Gunner brought the butt of his nine-millimeter Ruger down on the crown of Dartmouth’s head, making only a halfhearted attempt to fracture the big man’s skull.

  That slowed Dartmouth considerably.

  Still, he never lost consciousness. As Gunner watched in amazement, staying well out of his reach, the supine giant remained animated, moaning and grumbling, fighting desperately to rise and go after Gunner again. The investigator looked up and down the street, hoping to see some kind of sign that help was on the way, but he saw nothing of the sort. Just a car or two whizzing past him, and a stray dog sniffing a lamppost.

  Dartmouth was his and his alone to deal with.

  He looked at the big man again and found him up on one knee now, groggy as hell, but improving rapidly. He couldn’t yet put much behind the glare he was showing Gunner, but its message was clear, nonetheless: Wait right where you are, motherfucker. I’ll be there shortly …

  Gunner sighed heavily and took a full step forward to let Dartmouth have a closer look at the Ruger he was pointing directly at the big man’s chest.

  “Well, Russell,” he said. “I guess now’s our chance to find out how crazy you really are.”

  The world was round and not flat, that had been proven conclusively a long, long time ago, but had the opposite been true—if the earth really had four edges to tumble over, as Christopher Columbus had been warned many times it did—Fontana would almost certainly have been in close proximity to one. Or so it often seemed to anyone who had to drive there from Los Angeles proper, as Gunner did tonight. The San Bernardino County city was that far out of the way.

  All told, the trip covered approximately fifty-five miles over three separate freeways, and it was every bit as unscenic as it was interminable. Shopping malls and car dealerships, and one suburban sprawl after another—that was all there was to see. And in the end, desert. Level earth baked to a dry and dusty crisp, sparsely dotted with the feeble attempts of civilization to reach this far into the badlands. You wanted to buy or build a new home anywhere near Los Angeles, this was where you ended up: out beyond the municipal stratosphere by more mil
es and minutes behind the wheel than any rational person would care to count.

  This was the last frontier.

  Gunner had to smile, wondering if Angelo Dobbs hadn’t been thinking when he’d come here, even if the cops learned where he was, who the hell was going to drive all the way out to fucking Fontana to pick him up?

  That amusing thought, along with Russell Dartmouth, was on Gunner’s mind as he spurred the Cobra on through the night. Had he been forced to guess, the investigator would have thought a head-case like Dartmouth was nuts enough to try him, Ruger or no Ruger, but the big man had proven himself to have more sense than that. As far gone as he was, he knew he wasn’t Superman, and that he’d have to be nothing less, he took another step in Gunner’s direction. Rage was no match for bullets, even under the best of circumstances, and Dartmouth was just barely sane enough to realize it.

  Gunner had handcuffed his arms around the nearest utility pole and left him for the police to pick up later, whenever or if ever he came to their attention.

  Then he’d started out for Fontana.

  The investigator had studied a street map of San Bernardino County before leaving Los Angeles, so he pretty much knew where he was going. The address Alred had given him brought him just a mile off Interstate 15, only four exits north of Interstate 10. It was part of a huge tract of split-level homes its developer had aptly named Sunset Ranch, according to the overhead sign that welcomed visitors onto its main access road. The tract was the only fully developed parcel of land for miles in either direction, though another, similar complex was going up across the street, its hacienda-style homes sitting in total darkness, silently awaiting completion.