Fear of the Dark (21 page)

It took him a little over six minutes to get inside.

“They’re MK760s,” Sweet Lou Jenkins said.

He looked tired, but not uneasy. He was trim and fit, dressed to kill even at four in the morning, and his smooth, coffee-colored face seemed totally incapable of projecting distress.

But he
was
distressed.

It seemed to Gunner now that only five minutes had passed, but the reality was that it had been nearly two hours since he had entered the building to learn that somebody was paying the electric bill. The breaker panel he eventually located with the aid of a small flashlight had actually brought some overhead lights on, not that there was much to illuminate: a few rows of empty display cases, a barren freezer box with shattered glass in some of its doors …

And seven casket-like wooden crates stacked neatly in the middle of the floor.

Gunner already had two crates open and was setting aside the lid on a third when Sweet Lou made his entrance, Jimmy Price at his right hand, Mouse at his left. Price was wielding a gun.

“Nine millimeters, thirty-six rounds, fully automatic,” Jenkins elaborated, stepping forward to take one of the factory-fresh machine guns out of the crate Gunner had just opened. “Navy’s big on ’em, I understand.”

Gunner watched him fondle the weapon with the awkward touch of a novice and said, “I’m sure the Brothers will be, too.”

Price shook his head. “Some niggers just can’t be reasoned with,” he said, disgusted.

“We should’ve killed the wiseass motherfucker when we had the chance,” Mouse agreed, moving to pat Gunner down. He found nothing, shook his head at Price and Jenkins, and returned to his position beside the latter.

“You boys forgot your Halloween masks,” Gunner said. “Or do I have you confused with somebody else?”

“We called it doing you a favor,” Price said. “Disguising ourselves. The plan at the time was to let you live.” He shook his head again. “That’s not the plan anymore.”

“Amen,” Mouse said.

Jenkins put the automatic rifle back in the crate and eyed Gunner with grave disapproval. “I’m afraid you’ve investigated yourself right out of this life, Gunner. It took you a while, but you’ve finally become more valuable to us dead than alive. And for what? Really?”

“Just the truth,” Gunner said succinctly, having no other excuse to fall back on. “For whatever it’s worth.”

Jenkins grinned. “You think you know the truth?”

Gunner shrugged. “Enough to be dangerous. No pun intended.” He nodded toward the crates on the floor. “You’re selling guns to the Brothers of Volition. Guns you bought with Lewis Henshaw’s money, at a lower price per unit, of course.”

“Lewis Henshaw? The White is Right bullshitter running for Congress?” Jenkins laughed. “You think I stole money from that idiot to arm the Brothers of Volition?”

“You didn’t have to steal it. Your old college buddy Larry Stewart stole it for you. Or maybe Henshaw donated it willingly, I don’t know. I haven’t pieced that part together, yet.”

“I hope you can do it in the next ten minutes,” Price said, smiling. The pistol in his hand was the same chrome-plated Browning automatic he had flashed in Stan Ferris’s living room over a week ago.

“I could go on,” Gunner said, “but I’d need some help with a few details.”

“Such as?” Jenkins asked, amicably.

“Such as why you got involved in this mess to begin with. Why you set it all up.”

“Who says I did?”

“I’m giving you credit for having more imagination than Stewart. Maybe I’m wrong.”

Jenkins grinned. “Just for fun, let’s assume you’re not. You’re stuck for a motive, is that it?”

“You could say I’m stuck, yeah. Because there had to be more in it for you than the money. I mean, you made a few bucks on the deal, of course. Whatever premium you charged Mayes and the Brothers for the hardware, and anything Stewart or Henshaw may have tossed you for the boost to Henshaw’s campaign the Brothers will provide when and if they start flashing this stuff around. But we’re talking chump-change for an aristocrat like you. Walking money. You didn’t take the risks you have just for that.”

“Risks? I took no great risks. I based my play on careful calculation, Gunner, the same as I always do. I went to Roland Mayes and Larry Stewart with separate propositions perfectly suited to the needs and personalities of each. I offered Stewart a chance to lend some credence to his boy Henshaw’s ignorant admonitions about the Great Black Menace, and I offered Mayes the opportunity to assume a more literal role in the liberation of our people. No risk there. They could say yes, or they could say no, simple as that. Either way, I had nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Just as I do, even now.

“Because, believe it or not, I am just as tired of being somebody’s nigger in the underworld as you or anyone else may be of being one in the so-called straight world. My business is no different from any other in that respect, at least: I can only go so far up the administrative ladder or gain so much of my peers’ respect because of what I am, and how I am perceived. Which is why I will very much enjoy seeing Mayes and the Brothers raise some long overdue hell in the house of the Almighty White Man. It’s time somebody did. And the irony of a racist white pig like Henshaw footing the bill for the bullets appeals to me more than I can say.”

“A pity Buddy couldn’t see it the same way,” Gunner said.

“Yes. It is a pity. But what happened to Buddy, Buddy brought upon himself, because he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—find it in his heart to believe my good intentions. He had to second-guess and snoop around, to find things out he was bound to misinterpret. And in the end, he had to be foolish enough to try blackmail.”

“Blackmail?” At last, a revelation: Buddy Dorris dabbling in capitalism.

Jenkins was amused by his surprise. “Funny, right? He didn’t seem capable. One would think he’d have gone directly to Mayes with the news that Henshaw was subsidizing the Brothers’ arsenal and leave it at that. But Stewart showed me the note himself: it was badly misspelled and looked like it had been typed on one of those creaky manuals the Brothers use. Buddy knew how the guns had been paid for and wanted fifty thousand dollars to keep quiet about it. Can you imagine?”

“So you had him killed.”

Jenkins shook his head. “I didn’t do anything. He was blackmailing Stewart, not me. You think that filthy white boy worked for me?”

“His name was Townsend,” Gunner said.

“His name was
shit!
He was a whacked-out faggot that could have blown everything, but Stewart didn’t want to dispose of him. He thought he could just pay him off and forget about him. I convinced him otherwise.

“Unfortunately, my good friend Mouse here botched our first shot at the boy, and he went into hiding. We looked around for him, naturally, but we had to be discreet, and that hurt us. We were actually about to give up when you suddenly came on the scene, and then, of course, we got lucky.”

“I led you right to him,” Gunner said, bitterly.

“Yes. You did, didn’t you?”

“What about J.T.? Was he just an accident, or did Townsend have orders to take him and Buddy out together?”

Jenkins smiled. “That was just more good luck. One of life’s little coincidences. I was looking for a place to hold the guns the cops couldn’t connect me with, and someone mentioned this little gem. You heard I was getting nowhere trying to negotiate with Tennell outright, I suppose.”

Gunner nodded.

The grin on Jenkins’s face widened. “You’re not nearly as stupid as your reputation leads people to believe, are you?”

“No,” Gunner said. “Not nearly.”

Jenkins began to move about in a small circle, one hand caressing the other thoughtfully. “At another time, in another place, I may have been able to use a hardcase like you, Gunner,” he said. “There’s something to be said for having so pigheaded a man as yourself on one’s side, no matter how misguided or naive. I’m afraid, however, that we’ve missed our chance to cooperate, you and I. In fact, unless I’m greatly mistaken, I expect our relationship is about to turn quite ugly.

“Because it is obvious to me that you can only know what you do because you have either read, or seen, or actually come into the possession of some form of physical evidence pertaining to my arrangement with Larry Stewart—evidence my associates and I have been trying to locate for some time now. Do you know what I’m referring to?”

“I think so,” Gunner said.

“Then you have seen it?”

“Yes.”

“And do you know where I might find it?”

“Absolutely.”

“Is it in your possession, or does someone else have it?”

“I’ve got it.”

“But not here, of course.”

“No. I’m not nearly as stupid as they say, remember?”

“Certainly.”

Jenkins stopped his circular pacing for a moment. “Now. The obvious question is forthcoming, I promise you. But before we go any further—I’d like to ask a rather embarrassing one, instead. I hope you won’t laugh.”

Gunner shrugged again. “It can’t be any funnier than Mouse looks with a silk scarf over his head, and I haven’t laughed at that, yet. Give it a shot.”

Jenkins continued to hesitate, then said, “I’d like to know what it is, exactly, that you have. Photographs, a tape recording, documents of some kind? What?”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“No. I have no idea.” He was genuinely red-faced. “I only know what it supposedly proves.”

Gunner contemplated laughing, but remembered his promise to refrain. “It’s a tape,” he said, seeing no point in withholding the information. “The video variety. Shot on location in Manhattan Beach, on a street named Agnes Road. Stewart and your boy Price here are the featured performers. The plot’s a little thin, but I think it has something to do with twenty-five thousand dollars going from a Lincoln to a BMW.”

“He’s lying,” Price said. His eyes were on Jenkins, and he looked worried.

“You dumb shit,” Mouse said. “Buddy followed you!”

“That’s not possible,” Price said, shaking his head at Jenkins. “I would have noticed something …”

“It’s those tinted windows,” Gunner suggested. “Very hard on the eyes.”

“What’s done is done,” Jenkins said, dismissing the hysteria of his subordinates with a wave of his hand, while masking his own agitation commendably. “Why or how it happened isn’t important.” He turned to Gunner again. “I presume there’s no mistaking the identity of either man?”

Gunner shook his head. “Afraid not. This is a Grade-A piece of cinema.”

“Shit,” Mouse said.

“In that case, I’ll ask that obvious question now, Gunner,” Jenkins said gravely. “And I’ll only ask it once.” He stepped back to give Price a clearer shot at the detective.

“Where is the tape?” Jenkins asked.

Gunner used his head to indicate someone behind Jenkins and said,
“He
has it.”

Only Jenkins turned, but that was good enough. His face led Price and Mouse to follow his gaze shortly after.

Jamaal Amir Hill stood only twenty feet away, one of the Navy’s beloved MK760s in hand, complete with full magazine. He didn’t look like somebody who would have any difficulty, or reservations, about firing it.

“What the fuck you doin’ here, Jamaal?” Mouse demanded, his fat man’s voice in fine form.

“Put the gun down, Brother Price,” Brother Jamaal said, glaring at him. It was as if Mouse had never spoken. “Very carefully please.”

“I’d do what he says, Jim,” Gunner said. “Nine millimeters, thirty-six rounds, and all that. You’d better tell him again, Lou.”

Price suffered a brief moment of indecision, furious, then let the Browning dangle limp from his hand before tossing it to the floor a good distance away. Gunner walked over and picked it up.

“You’re makin’ a mistake, Jamaal,” Mouse said, watching his fellow Brother of Volition move to Gunner’s side with the gaze of a crazed animal. A
“ big
mistake.”

“Shut up, Mouse,” Hill said, annoyed.

“So the man has friends,” Jenkins said, trying to smile. “How convenient.”

“You can zip it too, Lou,” Gunner told him, training the Browning on his heart. “Unless you’re going to do something predictable like offer me the sun and the moon to let you all go.”

Jenkins shook his head effortlessly. “Not that I don’t believe you can be bought. I just don’t think you’re worth owning.”

“Here, here,” Price said, having a hard time keeping still.

“I suppose you intend to turn us over to the police now?” Jenkins asked.

“In time,” Gunner said. “You in a hurry?”

His expression had hardened, grown dark in the shadow of a sudden anger. He turned to Brother Jamaal and said, “Go kill the camera.”

Only after Hill stepped behind the broken display case standing several feet before them did the three men see it: the official camcorder of the Brothers of Volition, mounted on its tripod, peering through a forest of carefully placed debris to spy upon them. Hill fingered its controls and a red eye near the lens went black, unceremoniously.

“I’ve had some trouble lately getting the police to take what I say seriously, so I thought a little visual aid might come in handy,” Gunner said. “I hope you gentlemen don’t mind.”

Finally, Price came at him, as he had been threatening to for some time. Jenkins and Mouse, however, did not move, content for now to watch.

“You take another step and I’m going to have to end this thing a lot faster than I planned to, Price,” Gunner told him, pulling the hammer back sharply on the lawyer’s chrome Browning, turning its nose to point directly at his chest.

Price froze in midstride at the sound, glared into the black pit of the weapon’s barrel, and retreated, reluctantly. His face was a mask of hatred, accented by eyes that said he would try Gunner again, given the chance.

Hill returned to the detective’s side and said, “Now what?” Clearly, he, too, was getting edgy.

Gunner reached for the MK760 and swiftly traded the Browning for it, giving Jenkins and the others no time to react before the business end of the automatic rifle was staring back at them again.

“Now we play a game,” he said, to no one and everyone, his attention turned to Mouse and Price, exclusively. “Tell him how it’s played, Mouse. Or do I have to do it?”