When Last Seen Alive (11 page)

“Why? For what reason?”

“I won’t know that until I know who or what this DOB is. Or until Frerotte recovers enough from his injuries to talk to either me or the police, if he’s so inclined.”

“But you think it had something to do with Tommy’s problems in Chicago, you said.”

“That seems like a safe bet, doesn’t it? Unless there was more to your brother’s role as Elroy Covington than anyone’s made me aware of yet.”

Recognizing a thinly disguised question when she heard one, McCreary said, “As far as I know, Mr. Gunner, Tommy’s life in St. Louis was just as innocuous as it appeared to be. Tommy liked it that way.”

Gunner nodded, reviving the headache he’d been presented with down in Jack Frerotte’s basement. Watching him rub the back of his head with one hand, wincing, McCreary asked if he’d like her to go get him some ice.

“No thanks. I’m on my way out.” He stood up.

“What are you going to do?” McCreary asked, getting to her own feet.

“Go home and get out of these clothes, for one thing. Shower and get some sleep, for another. After that, I don’t know. I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

McCreary walked him to the door, held it open for him as he stepped out into the hall. “If you want, I can call Lydia and Irene, ask if either of them knows who this DOB could be,” she said.

“That would be helpful, thanks,” Gunner said.

“You said you couldn’t see the face in the photograph. The one you said you found in this man’s house—Frerotte, was it?—before it burned down.” She paused. “Should I take that to mean there’s still a chance my brother’s alive?”

Gunner had hoped she wouldn’t ask the question, disliking the answer he knew he would have to give her. “You want my professional opinion, or a more optimistic one?”

“I’d prefer the professional one, of course. But I think I just heard it, didn’t I?”

Gunner nodded, grateful that nothing more needed to be said. He was hurting and needed sleep, and the anger he had come here with was all used up, leaving him drained and listless.

“Thank you for your honesty, Mr. Gunner. Good night,” McCreary said.

Gunner watched her close the door on him, then quickly walked away.

On the long ride home, he thought about her terry cloth robe, and the smooth, well-rounded body it enveloped.

It was a small pleasure, and one that he could only now enjoy. Lusting after his client while breaking the news of her brother’s death would have been inexcusable, the conduct of a boor. And had he allowed himself to contemplate what she looked like in such a partial state of dress, how badly he was starting to want her, while she was still within
reach …

Better that he go to bed tonight with the mere hope of someday being with her, than the knowledge that he never would.

Proud, then, to have proven himself yet again a man of tremendous moral character, he drove straight home, went directly to his lonely bedroom, and found two messages waiting for him on his answering machine there. The first one was from Mickey, informing him that Sly Cribbs had been looking for him, and that Mickey had given the kid Gunner’s number at home—he hoped that was okay. The second message, predictably, was from Sly himself.

“Yo, Mr. Gunner. I got ’em. I got the pictures.” Sly laughed. “Wait ’til you check this shit out. You’re not gonna believe it. Man, it is
wack!
I’m havin’ the prints developed now. I’ll bring ’em by your office first thing in the mornin’. Peace.”

Gunner wasn’t sure he could wait until morning to hear the details, but the clock on his nightstand said it was well after midnight, no time to be calling the kid’s household and raising his mother out of bed. Sly was probably in enough trouble for disappearing on his mom earlier as it was.

So Gunner just showered and went to bed as planned, unaware that neither Sly nor his mother would have been available to take his call, even if he had chosen to make it.

seven

M
ICKEY SAID
, “T
ELL ME WHAT
I
HEARD THIS MORNIN
’
AIN
’
T
true. Tell me Jack Frerotte’s house didn’t burn down last night.”

“We’ll talk about it later, Mickey. I’m busy right now.”

“I’m the one got you the keys to the man’s house, Gunner. If I’m about to go to jail for that—”

“Nobody’s going to go to jail, Mickey. Now, get the hell out of here, please, I’m waiting for somebody.”

“You’re waitin’ for somebody? That’s why you’re sittin’ back here in the dark? Because you’re waitin’ for somebody?”

“That’s right. If Sly Cribbs comes in, send him straight back, will you?”

But Sly Cribbs never did come in, and he didn’t call, either. Gunner waited for him patiently right up until 10 o’clock, then tried to reach the kid by phone at home. It was like trying to get someone to answer the pay phone in a boarded-up gas station.

Gunner didn’t get it.

Then Matt Poole called, and it all made sense.

“You’re on some kind of roll, partner,” the cop said dryly.

In no mood for his repartee, Gunner said, “Every phone call has a point, Poole. You wanna tell me the point of this one?”

“You’ve got another friend in the hospital, Gunner. That’s what.”

Gunner sat upright in his chair, said, “Not Sly Cribbs.”

“Then he
is
a friend of yours. She isn’t just makin’ it up.”

“Who?”

“The kid’s mother. Charlotte Cribbs.”

“Tell me what happened, Poole. No more bullshit, all right?”

“You better come down here and see for yourself. Kid’s in a pretty bad way.”

“Where?”

“Daniel Freeman ICU. Just follow the red stripe on the floor, you can’t miss it.”

Gunner said he was on his way.

In a contest of who had the most medical hardware keeping them alive, Sly Cribbs would have undoubtedly beaten Jack Frerotte by a landslide.

In the dark, silent spaces of his room in ICU, the kid looked like something out of a sci-fi movie: smothered in gauze, encircled by instruments, wires and tubes and IV lines fanning out from his body like the tendrils of Medusa’s crown. The only indication that a living being lay at the center of all this chaos was the languid beeping of the machines tracking Sly’s vital signs.

“Kid took two hits from a forty-five at close range,” Poole said before Gunner could ask, standing outside the observation window looking onto Sly’s room. “One was a through-and-through that entered his right shoulder, went clean out his back. The other shattered his left collarbone on its way to a kidney. Doctors had to go in and get that one soon as they brought ’im in.”

“When was that?”

“Just after eleven
P.M.”

“So what happened? Who the hell did this?”

“Looks like a carjacker. Over on Exposition and Vermont, less than six blocks from his home.”

“A carjacker?”

Poole nodded. “Perp fled the scene on foot, he’s still at large.”

“Anybody get a description?”

“He was a big guy with a ski mask on his head. The one witness we’ve got thinks he was black, but he says he can’t be sure.”

Gunner turned away for a moment, suppressing the need to curse aloud, then regarded Poole again and asked, “How bad is it? They expect him to make it?”

The cop shrugged, said, “Doctors say his chances are a little better than fifty-fifty. He lost a shitload of blood, apparently.”

Gunner nodded solemnly, fell silent for a moment. “You say the ’jacker left without his car? After shooting him twice?”

“Yeah. Seems kind of ass-backwards, doesn’t it? But it happens.”

“Cribbs’s car have a stick shift in it?”

“Yeah. A ’ninety-four Olds Ciera with a manual five, gotta be the first I’ve ever seen. You know about these assholes and sticks, huh?”

Gunner nodded again to say that he did. As a general rule, professional car thieves could drive anything with four wheels, but not every carjacker was so versatile. More than a few of them only knew automatics; they were lost behind the wheel of anything with a manual transmission. And time and again these idiots would make a move on a car, pop a cap in its driver if the driver complained, and only
then
see the five-speed stick rising up between the seats, rendering the car all but useless to them.

“I guess by now you must be wondering why I asked you down here,” Poole said.

“Come on, Lieutenant. Don’t even go there, all right?”

“Take it easy, cowboy. I know you didn’t do this. But seein’ as how Cribbs has been under your employ for the last few days, I thought you might have an interest in his condition. Maybe I was wrong.”

“Under my employ? Where’d you get that?”

“From his mother. Remember? She’s been with him ever since they brought ’im in, she should be back from the cafeteria any minute now.” He fixed his eyes on Gunner’s own and left them there, waiting.

“Okay. The kid’s been working for me, sure,” Gunner admitted.

“On the Covington case?”

“No. This is something entirely different.”

“Any chance what he was doin’ for you had somethin’ to do with this?”

“No. No way.”

“Why don’t you tell me what he was doing, just for the record.”

“Surveillance. A simple tail-and-shoot, nothing fancy, nothing dangerous.”

“A tail-and-shoot on who?”

“You don’t know?”

“How the hell would
I
know? You and I aren’t psychically connected, right?”

“Then you didn’t find any photographs in his car.”

“No. We didn’t find any photographs in his car. And we didn’t find a camera, either, in case you were wonderin’. It was a tail-and-shoot on who, Gunner?”

Gunner looked around, suddenly aware of all the hospital personnel moving busily about them, and waited to satisfy the cop’s curiosity until no one was within easy earshot. “A local politician with a jealous wife,” he said, his voice just above a whisper.

“Yeah? Which one?”

“I tell you what, Poole. The minute I find out that question’s relevant to this, I’ll answer it for you. Gladly. But right now, I don’t see a connection.”

“Look, Gunner—”

“Give me a break, Lieutenant. You want my client’s name, I have to give it to you. We both know that. But if the job I had Sly doing landed him in here, I’ll bring you the people responsible myself, inside of forty-eight hours. You’ve got my word on that.”

Poole pondered the offer, said, “You don’t trust me to be discreet? Is that what I hear you sayin’?”

“Don’t take it personal, Poole. But no, I don’t. Not in this case, anyway.”

The cop took a long time to grin. “It’s that juicy, huh?”

“Like a mango fresh off the tree, yeah.”

Poole started to laugh, then his expression changed, his eyes catching sight of something at Gunner’s back. Gunner turned around, saw a diminutive black woman in blue sweatpants and a matching hooded pullover inching slowly toward them, a lidded Styrofoam cup in her left hand, a leather-bound Bible in her right. Her eyes were as red as her skin was dark and smooth.

“Mrs. Cribbs,” Poole whispered to Gunner. “And maybe I should’ve warned you, but—”

“Are you Mr. Gunner?” the black woman asked, stepping right up to glower at the investigator from point-blank range.

“Yes, ma’am,” Gunner said, saving his apologies for later.

“You tryin’ to get my child killed? Is that what you’re doing?”

“No, ma’am. I don’t think this—”

“Sylvester told me he’s been workin’ for you. Takin’ pictures of some kind. You got no business usin’ a boy his age to do your dirty work, Mr. Gunner! That child ain’t but
seventeen years old
!”

“Yes, ma’am, I know he is. But Sly—”

“He should’ve been at home with me. Instead’ve out in the street, where all them crazy fools are!”

Poole stepped forward to put a hand on her shoulder, said, “Come on now, Mrs. Cribbs. Don’t go gettin’ yourself all worked up again, huh?”

“That’s my only baby in there! He’s all I’ve got! If that boy
dies
…” She burst into tears, offered no resistance as Poole gently guided her away, past a doctor and a pair of nurses who had been moving forward to silence her.

Poole glanced over his shoulder, said, “You’ve got forty-eight hours, Gunner. We don’t have a shooter by then, I’m gonna need your client’s name.”

Gunner nodded, sealing the deal, then stole one final look at Sly Cribbs’s body before making his way over to the elevators.

So now he had
two
cases to work.

With Sly Cribbs laid up in the hospital with only a fifty-fifty chance of pulling through, it seemed logical to pursue the Everson case first, but Gunner had a more personal and immediate interest in the Elroy Covington/Thomas Selmon affair. It had been that piece of business, after all, that had almost cost him his own life at about the same time that someone had been trying to put an end to Sly’s.

But he’d given Poole his word he’d make Sly’s shooting a priority, and that was what he intended to do. He was far less ready to accept the blame for the kid’s fate than Sly’s mother was to brand him with it, but he had to admit the timing was curious: Sly leaves him a message saying he’s got the pictures Gunner hired him to take, then gets himself shot full of holes by a carjacker who jets without taking his car. And the photos Sly had been so excited about taking earlier were missing, along with the camera with which he had taken them.