It's Not a Pretty Sight (32 page)
Shit
! Gunner thought to himself.
He did three rooms on the first floor—the living room, the dining room, and what looked like some kind of den. He found nothing. He was still making the only sounds he could hear in the house, and it seemed to him they were getting louder every minute. If Dobbs didn’t know he was here by now, the man was deaf, wherever the hell he and his shotgun were hiding. Around the next corner, maybe?
Gunner started for the nearest open doorway and swallowed hard, his mouth completely dry.
It was a bathroom, with a tub and a separate shower stall. The tall glass door on the stall was still covered by its protective brown paper mask, so that Gunner couldn’t see what lay beyond it in the stall itself, if in fact anything—or anyone—did. He edged closer for a better look, but it didn’t help; he still couldn’t see anything. Moving to the far side of the shower, he held the Ruger in his right hand, reached for the door handle with his left, and started to jerk it open—
—when he finally heard someone else make a floorboard creak, off in another part of the house.
He wasn’t sure, but he thought it had come from somewhere above his head, up on the second floor. He cautiously made his way back out to the front of the house and stood alongside the ascending staircase, listening up. He didn’t hear a thing. The old familiar silence of the place was back again, in full force. He began to wonder if he hadn’t imagined the creaking floorboard, or if what he’d heard had just been the building settling, the way even completed homes liked to do from time to time.
And then he saw the blood.
It was up about ten or eleven steps from the bottom, a blotchy wet pool soaking into the wood. Gunner hadn’t seen it when he’d first come in, his eyes hadn’t made friends with the dark yet, and he’d never been this close to the stairs. But standing where he was now, just to the side and at eye level with the step it was staining, he was in perfect position to see the blood, though it still would have been easy to miss, he’d been unlucky enough to do that.
He craned his neck to see what he could of the landing at the top of the stairs, but saw nothing but an ominous mass of shadows up there. The ideal place for Dobbs to await his imminent arrival.
Again, Gunner paused to consider his options, and for the second time in twenty minutes, realized he had only one. He wanted to bring Dobbs in, he was going to have to go up and get him.
Gunner started up the stairs, slowly.
Then he stopped, only two steps off the first-floor landing. He had an idea.
There was a small bucket of spackle sitting on the floor nearby, and he retrieved it. It was about the size and weight of a gallon of ice cream. Standing off to the side of the staircase again, keeping his eyes open for any movement above him, he gingerly placed the bucket on its side about eight or nine steps up, then gently nudged it forward and stepped back. The bucket rolled noisily down the stairs, striking first one step, then a second, then a third …
Dobbs made his play when it hit the fourth.
He leapt into view up at the top of the stairs and his shotgun spit fire, twice spraying buckshot down the empty staircase. As Dobbs’s face filled with surprise, Gunner reached around the staircase railing and squeezed the Ruger’s trigger three times, bringing Dobbs down toward him like a boulder in an avalanche. Dobbs tumbled down the staircase and stopped halfway, his body folded up in the shape of a dead man. Gunner put a hand to his throat, checking for a pulse, and held his breath, hoping the sonofabitch was somehow still alive.
Then he went to tell Bunche the good news.
nineteen
W
HATEVER IT TOOK TO PUT AN ANIMAL LIKE
A
NGELO
Dobbs in his grave, both Bunche and Gunner had failed to do it that Friday morning.
Bunche had hit him once in the right thigh, and two of Gunner’s three rounds had put holes in his left arm and upper chest, respectively. But Dobbs would not die. He defied their collective efforts to end his life, and he did so with robust glee, treating his wounds in the days that followed like bee stings he barely felt the need to scratch. Some people were just like that, Gunner knew. So full of evil; so reinforced by it, you couldn’t dent them; they were all but immortal.
And they loved to boast about it.
Killers like Russell Dartmouth took no pride in what they did; they saw their acts of violence not as works of art, but as unfortunate measures the world had forced them to take. From the moment he had been picked up off the street in front of Mickey’s, early Friday morning after the barber had called 911 to say he was out there handcuffed to a lamppost, Dartmouth had done nothing but rage. He couldn’t articulate his motives for murdering Roman Goody, and he had no desire to try. Receiving credit for homicide was of no interest to him whatsoever.
Monsters like Dobbs were different.
The men and women cut from his mold were ashamed of nothing; they treated their every accomplishment like a badge of honor, something to show the world with pride and self-satisfaction. No crime was too vile or too senseless to confess to; no theft, no rape, no disfigurement of the innocent. And certainly no murder. Murder was the greatest trophy of all.
Murder was the private domain of the chosen few, and Dobbs would never commit one he didn’t want to accept responsibility for.
“Yeah, I killed the bitch,” he said when they asked him about Nina Pearson. Straight out, no hesitation, no worry over how he would say it. He told them he didn’t need a lawyer, whatever they wanted to ask him, they could ask him. He was going back to the joint for the rest of his life with or without a lawyer, who the hell were they trying to kid?
Yeah, he’d been looking for Jimmy Gatewood that night.
Yeah, he’d gone to the wrong house.
Yeah, he’d been high when he got there.
And man, they should have seen what it had looked like, that bitch’s head flying apart all over her perfectly spotless kitchen, ha-ha.
Gunner heard it all secondhand, of course. Poole gave him a full report. The investigator listened to the disturbing details in silence, not knowing whether to laugh or to cry. He hadn’t thought it would make much difference to him, Dobbs surviving the holes he’d put in his ass rather than dying as a result of them, but now he knew he’d been mistaken. It would always make a difference. Not killing Dobbs when he’d had the chance would stand as one of his life’s greatest regrets, whether the act would have brought Nina back to him or not.
Naturally, the story broke fast and made the news everywhere, but as early Friday as he could manage it, Gunner delivered it to Mimi Hillman and Wendy Singer personally. Singer took it hard, but Gunner’s Momma Hillman took it much worse than that. Having to live with the idea that her daughter had died at the hands of an abusive husband had been difficult enough for her, but to hear now that Nina’s death had been the result of mere chance, of something so tragic and meaningless as a loaded crackhead’s stupid mistake … It was almost too much for her to bear.
And yet, bear it she did. Accepting it, after a time, as one more cross her Father in heaven had decided she should carry, for reasons known only to Him. Gunner didn’t understand it, this woman’s refusal to shuck her faith under the weight of all her losses, but he envied it too. Because he was going to have as much trouble dealing with the senseless circumstances of Nina’s death as anyone, and he had no such crutch to lean on. He and God were not that close.
All Gunner had with which to fuel his recovery from Nina’s passing was hope. The vague and smokelike wish that tomorrow would be better than yesterday, and that all of his best days—and prospects for love—weren’t behind him.
It was a hope he held for the entire world.
Saturday night at the Great Western Forum, Gunner and Gaylon Brown watched the Lakers run over and around the San Antonio Spurs for just over three quarters. Two minutes into the final period, Cedric Ceballos already had 31 points, and Nick Van Exel had 25; together with the team’s new sixth man off the bench, a, new/old power forward named Earvin “Magic” Johnson, the pair had forged an 86–71 Lakers lead, and all was well with Showtime.
Then, during a time-out, Gaylon said, “I like the bitch on the end.” Pointing to one of the Laker Girls.
Gunner told him to grab his jacket and come on, it was time to go.
The boy must have asked Gunner fifty times what he had done to make the man so angry, before he received an answer. They were in the car, moving east on Manchester Boulevard, headed for home. Gunner’s eyes were on the road, but his mind was clearly elsewhere.
“I don’t like the word ‘bitch,’” he said. “And I don’t like ‘ho,’ either.”
Gaylon just looked at him.
“That was a woman you were talking about back there. Not a bitch, or a ho. A woman. Someone who deserves respect, same as you and me. Do you understand?”
The seven-year-old shook his head, confused.
Gunner took a deep breath, said, “All right. Listen to me. Listen to me
carefully.
Most of the hate in this world starts with one thing, Gaylon. Do you know what that is?”
Gaylon shook his head again.
“Names. The names we give ourselves, and the names we give to others. I’m talking about
ugly
names. Names like nigger and kike, and faggot and gook—and bitch and ho. Names like that. Names that do nothing but hurt people, and degrade people. Do you know what ‘degrade’ means?”
“No …”
“It means to shame. To tear someone down and make them feel bad about themselves.”
“Oh.”
“A real man doesn’t treat people that way. A real man doesn’t use degrading names for women. He doesn’t use degrading names for anyone.”
“So how come everybody says it? That’s what everybody says, ‘bitch.’”
“You ever hear me say it?”
“No. But—”
“But nothing. You want to do what everybody else does, get your ass out of my car right now. You don’t want to be any better or smarter than those knotheads you run around with, later for you, I’ll find somebody else to hang with.”
He jerked the car over two lanes of traffic to the curb and reached across the boy’s lap to open his door.
Gaylon looked at him wild-eyed, afraid to move.
“It’s like this, Gaylon. I picked you to be my ’boy because I think you’re smarter than everybody else. I think you’ve got a good brain, and a good heart, and I don’t want to see either go to waste. But if you don’t want to listen to me when I tell you something, I’ve got no time for you. Because I’ve got enough disappointments in my life without you disappointing me too. You hear what I’m saying? You can’t follow me, and your homies, too. You’ve got to choose between us. And you’ve got to choose right now, before I spend another minute messing around with you.”
He killed the Cobra’s ignition and waited, locking his gaze onto Gaylon’s own.
The boy remained silent.
“A woman is not a bitch,” Gunner said. “Say it.”
“A woman is not a bitch,” Gaylon repeated, not doing much more than exhaling the words.
“Say it again.”
Gaylon did, louder this time.
“A woman is a beautiful creature, and if you treat her like one, she’ll love you,” Gunner said. “Don’t you want to be loved?”
The boy nodded his head.
“Hell yes, you do. We all do. That’s what makes life worth living, love.”
“My momma loves me,” Gaylon said.
“I know she does. And she’s waiting for us. Close that door so we can go, huh?”
Gaylon did as he was told and Gunner started the car.
They rode in silence the rest of the way home.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thank yet another member of the online services universe, Prodigy subscriber
Lorraine Thompson,
for sharing her medical expertise with me.
If I sound like I know what I’m writing about this time, it’s at least partly her fault.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1996 by Gar Anthony Haywood
This edition published in 2012 by
MysteriousPress.com
/Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
