Not Long for This World (15 page)

“I’m afraid that’s all the truth there is to tell, fellas,” he said, shrugging.

“Or all the lies,” Toon said.

Toon was three years Booker’s junior but he wasn’t likely to live as long; he was a prisoner to junk food and his body showed it, from the rubbery bulk of his clean-shaven cheeks to the massive thighs straining the seams of his polyester slacks.

“You ask me, Jim, we ought to yank this joker’s papers and put him away for a couple of years. Take him off the street.”

“Look, what do you want me to say? I was in the process of turning Downs over to your boys when the shooting started. How the hell is what happened my fault?”

“I think that’s something you ought to be smart enough to figure out for yourself,” Booker said, still talking like an insomnolent DJ pulling the graveyard shift on a beautiful-music station. “Or are you just too dense to see how deep you’re in it this time?”

“Hell, Jim, he knows what he did,” Toon piped in eagerly, stepping forward to look down his nose at Gunner from shorter range. “You should have let somebody know you were in the goddamn house, Gunner. Harper and Lewellen didn’t know who the fuck you were; you come dragging Downs out into the street like you did, what the hell were they supposed to think?”

“What you did was, you made an asinine play,” Booker said, declining to follow Toon’s example of lost cool, “and it’s cost us a great deal. One good cop and an irreplaceable witness in a homicide case. Now I’m glad to hear that you were trying to do the sensible thing by turning Downs in when the shit hit the fan, but I’m afraid that does little to alter the fact that there must have been a thousand better ways to go about it.”

“You had no business being there in the first place, asshole,” Toon added. “It was our fucking stakeout, not yours.”

“In that case,” Gunner said, “either Harper or Lewellen should have had their ass in position to watch the alley, just like I did. Or did they learn to cover only one entrance to a house from you?”

Toon started to go after him, but Booker said, “Take it easy, Rod. Mr. Gunner here’s in enough trouble. He doesn’t need any infirmary time to compound his misery.” As Gunner watched, Toon took a moment to think about it, then heeled like a good watchdog, as always showing Booker more respect than he generally reserved for D.A.s.

“You could use some serious attitude adjustment, my friend,” Booker said to Gunner, finally betraying a trace of emotion, albeit a slight one. “Our mutual associate in homicide, Matthew Poole, says you’re okay, as far as private licenses go, but you don’t act okay to me. Doug Lewellen was a good friend of mine. Not to mention Rod’s. I think we’d both feel a lot better about you if you’d show us some sign of remorse, and accept your fair share of responsibility for his death.”

He gave Gunner a cold, hard stare and said nothing more, waiting for an answer.

Gunner let him look but would not be induced to offer a quick reply. He knew that Booker was right, of course; up to this point, Gunner had been making a complete jerk of himself, callously deflecting any and all blame for the deaths of Downs and Lewellen as if there were something or someone else upon which to pin it. Booker and Toon could only assume that he was too ashamed of his ineptitude to admit to any wrongdoing, but Gunner knew there was more to his mode of denial than that.

In truth, his feigned insensitivity was designed to keep the pair from realizing that he was already shouldering all the guilt he could handle, and not merely because he had been the common denominator who had brought both Doug Lewellen and Tamika Downs to the spot where their killer eventually found them. There was also the matter of an earlier contribution to the tragedy of Monday evening to consider, and the undeniable probability that Downs’s late-night trek to her candy man had only escaped Harper and Lewellen’s attention because the detective had stupidly made her aware early Monday morning of the LAPD’s interest in her home.

Considering the price of this momentary lack of discretion, and who had ultimately paid it, it was the kind of secret that could get a man shot in the back of the head some dark and lonely night somewhere down the road. Accidentally, of course.

Sixteen or seventeen times.

“Tell me what you’d like to hear, Booker,” Gunner said, tiring of the charade. “You want to hear me say I fucked up? Okay. I fucked up. Badly.”

“So far so good,” Booker said dryly.

“You want apologies now, I imagine.”

“You imagine correctly.”

“Okay. Give me a number. Tell me how many it’ll take to bring Lewellen and Downs back, and you’ve got it. Because I’ll say I’m sorry as many times as you and Toon can stand to hear it if that’s what it’ll buy me. Otherwise, I fail to see the point.”

“Please. Jim,” Toon pleaded, “let me show this sonofabitch the ‘point.’ As a favor to me—go get yourself a cup of coffee or take five to call the missus. I won’t leave a mark on the bastard, I swear to God.”

“No,” Booker said sharply.

“Look, Toon,” Gunner said, “all I’m trying to say is, what’s done is done. I zigged when I should have zagged, and making me feel like shit isn’t going to change it. Instead of leaning on me to make yourselves feel better, I think we’d all be better off if you’d devote your energies to finding that Chevy Nova.”

“Now he’s giving advice,” Toon said.

“We’ll find the car, don’t worry,” Booker promised. “That’s just a matter of time.”

“You run a make on it?”

“Of course we ran a make on it,” Toon said, still fuming. “But all we’ve got is a partial on the plate, so a positive I.D.’s going to be tough. Not that the name of the registered owner would mean much. No Blue drives a Nova, that we’re aware of. Chances are good it was stolen, and only sometime tonight. It probably hasn’t even been reported missing yet.”

“Then you do figure it was the Blues again.”

Booker nodded. “The only thing left to be decided is which one. Davidson has to be our first choice, obviously.”

“Obviously?”

“It adds up, doesn’t it? He does the driving for Mills on the Lovejoy drive-by, then tries to get himself and Mills off the hook by killing Downs.”

Gunner shook his head. “I don’t think it was Rookie. From what I’ve heard about the kid, he might have the stomach for one murder a month, but not two.”

“You know somebody better qualified, do you?”

“I might. What about Whitey Most?”

“What about him?”

“You pick him up yet?”

“No. We see no need to talk to Mr. Most at this time,” Booker said flatly.

“Do you mind if I ask why?”

“Because Most doesn’t have a fucking thing to do with anything,” Toon snapped, interjecting. He had taken the weight off his feet by sitting on a corner of the desk, and Gunner was mildly amazed that it could handle such an oversized load without doing cartwheels across the room. “The man in that car was an Imperial Blue; it shouldn’t take a Rhodes scholar to figure that much out. What the hell do we want with Whitey Most?”

“I thought I already explained that. It was Most who put Downs up to fingering Toby Mills and Rookie Davidson for Darrel Lovejoy’s murder.”

“Downs said that?” Booker asked. “Verbatim?”

“Not verbatim, no. She said it in so many words.”

“And what exactly does that mean?”

“It means she told me she hadn’t really seen Mills or Davidson in the car that night, that it had been too dark on the corner to see
who
it was. She said she was only placing the Blues at the scene because someone was paying her to do so.”

“And this someone was Most?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Did she say what possible motive Most could have had for all this?”

“No.”

“You have one in mind, then? Something maybe we’ve overlooked?”

Gunner didn’t, of course. It was the one question they could hit him with all day and probably never get a sensible answer to.

“Sheeeiiit,” Toon said disgustedly, “where the hell’s he gonna get a motive for a dealer to frame his best goddamn runner for murder? Every day Mills spends in jail probably costs Most close to three grand!”

“What?”

“You read your client’s rap sheet, didn’t you, brother? He’s a distributor. A runner. What his homies would call a roller. You ever saw him out of his prison uniform, you’d know: He bears all the signs. Turkish Ropes, rings, watches … more gold than losers like you or I will see in a lifetime.”

“He’s got ‘snaps,’” Booker said almost appreciatively. “Money.”

“Whitey Most’s money,” Toon said.

Gunner’s silence made an open book of his surprise. He had noted Mills’s lengthy drug-related arrest record, but had never given much thought to who his supplier might be.

“Still think we ought to talk to Most?” Booker asked.

“Look,” Gunner said, “all I know is, anything Downs had to say about Mills and Davidson being’ involved in Lovejoy’s murder isn’t worth a shit. She lied about seeing them in the car that night and was getting free rock as a payoff, as the buy I saw her make indicated. Or didn’t you guys know your star witness had a thing for crack?”

Booker was slow to respond. “Certainly we knew. But that hardly made her any less valuable to our case. The woman saw what she saw, and there was nothing to suggest she was under the influence of any controlled substance at the time. Why should we make an issue of something that was the woman’s own personal business?”

“Coming from somebody in the District Attorney’s office, I’d say that’s a curious question.”

“Look,” Toon said, “what the hell were we supposed to do? Throw out her entire testimony just because she was nobody’s Snow White?” He shook his head. “Beggars can’t be choosers, brother. Eyewitnesses to drive-bys willing to cooperate with the authorities are rarer around these parts than an insured motorist, so when one turns up, voluntarily yet, we don’t exactly bust our asses looking for reasons to disqualify ’em.”

“Maybe your Ms. DeCharme would have trashed Downs on the stand, and maybe not,” Booker said, “but it was a chance we felt we had to take. Your client’s a bad egg, Gunner. Easily one of the worst. There are few kids out on the street we’d love to see out of circulation more.”

“Even if all the evidence against him was thumped up by Most?”

“There’s that name again. Whitey Most. Did Downs say it was Most she was allegedly working for, or not?”

“No.”

“But she implied it?”

“Yes. She implied it.”

“How?”

“By omission. When I suggested the man who hired her might be Most, she didn’t correct me.”

“Then you were the one who actually entered Most’s name into the conversation.”

“Yes.”

“And you think it was Most she met with at the school on a Hundred Fourth Place last night?”

“Yes.”

“Did Downs admit that much?”

“No.”

“Have you ever seen Whitey Most?”

“No.”

“Then you can’t even say for sure whether it was Most you saw or not?”

“No. The light was lousy; I could barely see the guy.”

“Come on, Jim,” Toon said. “We’re wasting time with this line of questioning. We’re supposed to be talking about who killed Downs and Lewellen, not solving the Darrel Lovejoy murder all over again. The goddamn Blues killed all three of them, you know it and I know it, and this clown’s just confusing the issue, bringing Most into the picture.”

“Don’t go away confused, Toon,” Gunner said. “Just go away.”

“He’s right, Gunner,” Booker said quickly, trying to defuse the growing threat of war between the two men. “This Whitey Most angle of yours sounds like a dead end to me. You dropped his name, Downs didn’t.”

“All I’m doing is putting two and two together, counselor. Downs was getting paid with free rock to frame the Blues for Lovejoy’s murder, and Rookie Davidson’s old man told me the kid is a one-man Whitey Most fan club. I work that around awhile and I come up with a man who had access to both a steady supply of rock and the supposed driver of the car in the Lovejoy drive-by: Whitey Most. You could do the same, if you cared to try. It’s called deductive reasoning.”

“You want deductive reasoning? I’ll give you deductive reasoning: Nobody bribed Downs to say or do anything. There was no bribe and there was no frame. Because Downs was in a bad way when you talked to her, by your own admission. She was hurting. And any fool knows that an addict will say damn near anything when they find themselves backed into a corner. Especially what they think the person who has them there might most want to hear.”

Gunner paused to consider that, putting his memory to the test. What had Downs actually said of her own volition, and in her own words? Merely that her testimony against Mills and Davidson was a lie, that she couldn’t say one way or the other whether either man had been in Davidson’s car the night Darrel Lovejoy was murdered. The bribe had been Gunner’s idea, and she had simply gone along with it, perhaps only to hasten her exit from the rain.

In his mind, Gunner reconstructed the earlier conversation: “So tell me about the deal, instead. What was it? Free rock for a month to be at the bus stop when it happened, to say it was Mills and Davidson in the car? Something like that?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

Downs’s inability to differentiate between a green unmarked police Buick and a Ford of the same color parked a few cars behind it, when she had supposedly been a woman who could tell the difference between a Ford Maverick and a Mercury Comet, did tend to deflate her credibility as a witness even further, but how could Gunner share this observation with Toon and Booker without confessing to his biggest blunder of the day?

“This is bullshit,” the investigator said abruptly, annoyed by the way Booker had deftly maneuvered him into doubting the validity of his own testimony. “The woman told me flat out, she didn’t see who was in the car the night Lovejoy was killed. What difference does it make if she was climbing the walls when she said it? If you didn’t give a damn about her condition when she was fingering the Blues, why the hell should you care about it now that she’s vindicated them?”

“She hasn’t vindicated shit,” Toon said, getting to his feet again. “She’s dead. That’s why we called this little meeting, remember?”