When Last Seen Alive (3 page)

“Any signs of this book at the motel?”

“Nothin.’ All we found in his room was a garment bag, a matching carry-on, some clothes and shoes, and the address book your card was in. That was it.”

“Any other L.A. names or places in the address book?”

Martinez shook his head one more time, gulped down the last of his coffee.

“And there was no sign of struggle in the room,” Gunner said.

“No. Place was neat as a pin. From all indications, Covington stepped out for a breath of fresh air and never came back.”

“Leaving no paper trail behind.”

“No paper trail, no physical trail—no trail of any kind.”

“So he would have had to live on cash from that point forward.”

“Guess so.”

“Last time he used a credit card was when?”

“At the airport, afternoon he got in. Used his bank ATM card to make a withdrawal for the maximum two hundred. Which don’t sound like much, two hundred, until you consider he left St. Louis with a little over two grand. Way I remember the numbers, he could’ve had as much as seventeen hundred on ’im when he went away the next day.”

“And you think he vanished into thin air on that? Seventeen hundred?”

“Hey. All I can tell you is, it happens. I seen people disappear on a lot less, believe me.”

Gunner almost commented that the cop’s attitude was shamefully cavalier, until he remembered he was talking to a man who used to work missing persons cases by the truckload, and often a dozen or so at a time. Martinez sure as hell didn’t need Gunner chiding him now for treating Covington’s case lightly.

“Okay. One last question,” Gunner said, “then I’ll leave you to it.”

“Shoot.”

“Assuming Covington just went AWOL like you say, no other parties were involved.”

“Yeah?”

“You were me, where would you start looking for him? You given it any thought?”

Martinez threw his empty coffee cup at a nearby trash can, missed its mouth by three feet. Gunner expected him to just let it lie there, but he picked it up, dropped it into the can before answering. “I can’t tell you
where
I’d start looking,” he said. “But I can tell you
who
I’d have another talk with first, get to know a little better.”

“Who’s that?”

“Your client. The sister.”

“Yolanda McCreary?”

“She wants her brother back, don’t get me wrong. I never had any doubt about that. But listening to her talk about him sometimes was like listening to a stereo with one speaker missin’. You could tell you weren’t always hearin’ all the notes to the song.”

It was funny, but now that Martinez mentioned it, that had been Gunner’s sense of McCreary as well. The way she had tripped up yesterday and referred once to her brother as “Tommy” was a case in point. He had let the slip go by at the time, intending to question her about it later, then had forgotten to do so. He was going to have to bring the subject up the next time they spoke for certain now.

“Thanks for your time, Detective,” Gunner said, shaking Martinez’s hand warmly. “You’ve been a terrific help.”

Martinez shrugged good-naturedly and opened the unmarked Chevy’s door. “Don’t mention it. I got a soft spot in my heart for anybody workin’ a skip trace, I’m glad to be of service.” He got in the car, started the engine, then said through the open window, “You need names and dates, stuff like that, gimme a call later, I’ll pull the file for you.”

“Thanks. I’ll do that.”

Martinez pulled out of the parking lot and sped off.

Moving to his own car afterward, Gunner made a mental note to himself: He came back in his next life as a cop, he was going to ask to work Fugitive.

Easiest damn job he’d ever have.

At seventeen, Sly Cribbs was one of the most talented photographers Gunner had ever seen, but the kid said he’d never put a tail on anyone in his life. This was going to be a new experience for him.

Sly was short and tubby, with a dark, hairless face, eyes as wide and innocent as a China doll’s, and fingers so fat it was a wonder he could tie his shoes in the morning, let alone work the controls on a $600 Panaflex camera. He sat across from Gunner quietly at the Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles restaurant on Pico just off La Brea and watched Gunner look over his portfolio quietly, self-confident enough even at his early age to let his work speak for itself.

“These are damn good,” Gunner said.

In truth, his feelings for the photos were much stronger than that. The young man’s still lifes were haunting black-and-white images of people trapped in the prison of destitution, captured in striking, natural poses that said everything there was to say about their condition. Light and shadow were like surgical instruments to the man behind the camera; the cool, calculated precision with which he wielded them was evident in every shot.

“Thanks,” Sly said.

“Ms. Serrano told me you were the best student in her class, maybe the best she’s had for a long time, and I can see she wasn’t exaggerating. To tell you the truth, home’, you’re probably way too good for this gig, I’m almost embarrassed to offer it to you.”

Trini Serrano was a world class photographer in her own right, a new friend Gunner had made a little over a year ago in the course of another investigation. Gunner didn’t know she taught part-time at West Los Angeles City College until he called to ask if she knew anybody good with a camera who might want to make a few dollars doing surveillance over the next few days. Connie Everson hadn’t called him for an update on her husband yet, but he had no doubt she would soon; putting her case on hold until his search for Elroy Covington was over was simply not an option. He had to put the Inglewood city councilman back under surveillance, and he had to do it fast.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” Sly said. “A job’s a job, and I can use one.”

“You’ve got a car, right?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a car. Who you want me to follow?”

“Later. Tell me how you’d do it, first. I told you to follow this girl working the cash register here, for instance. How would you go about it?”

“Starting from here?”

“Yeah. Starting from here.”

Sly said he’d park his car over on Mansfield Avenue, where the most commonly used exit from the parking lot was, and park it northbound so he had a view of the restaurant’s back door, the one all the employees used. When the girl came out, he’d give her car a good look, take down the license plate number and any unique features of the vehicle, then let her go about half a block before starting after her. He’d try to stay in the middle lane as much as possible, so he could turn in either direction somewhat easily if she made any sudden moves, and—

Gunner stopped him right there. He’d heard enough.

“The job’s yours,” he said.

Sly grinned. His full first name was Sylvester, but Gunner knew now that this was why people called him Sly: the grin. “So who you want me to follow?”

“You don’t wanna ask about the pay first?”

“Anything’s better’n what I’m gettin’ now. But okay. What’s the pay?”

Gunner told him it was thirty dollars a day, waited for him to push his plate of food to the middle of the table and storm out, insulted.

“All right,” Sly said. “So who you want me to follow?”

Gunner glanced around, in a low voice dropped Gil Everson’s name.

“Gil Everson? The councilman? Man, that’s deep.”

“You haven’t heard the deepest part yet.”

“I gotta catch ’im with a woman, right?”

“That’s part of it, yeah.”

Sly’s face lit up, thinking he was about to become privy to some quality dirt. “You mean …?”

Gunner put a palm up to urge him to lower his voice, told him the rest of it.

He thought the kid was going to hurt himself, he laughed so hard.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Lydia Covington said less than an hour later. Over the static-free, longdistance phone line, her bland, exceptionally uninspiring disposition was coming through loud and clear.

“I’d just like you to answer a few questions, Mrs. Covington. To the best of your ability,” Gunner said.

“But I don’t know anything. I never did. Yolanda knows that.”

“Yes, ma’am, but—”

“I don’t understand why she’s doing this. Throwing her money away to find somebody who doesn’t want to be found. It’s crazy.”

“But if your husband didn’t run away—”

“He
did
run away. She doesn’t want to believe that, but he did. I know it.”

“And you know it because …?”

“Because he was my husband, Mr. Gunner. That’s how. We were married for four years, had two children together. Nobody knew Elroy better than me. Nobody.”

“You don’t think there’s any chance his disappearance involved foul play of some kind?”

She didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, she said, “Not anymore I don’t. I used to think …” Her voice tailed off, left the thought unspoken.

“What?”

“I used to think he wouldn’t do it. Leave a wife and two kids behind to start a new life someplace else. I didn’t think he could be that cruel.”

“But you changed your mind?”

“I realized Elroy could do anything, he really felt like doing it. That was just the kind of man he was.”

“Was he seeing other women, Mrs. Covington?”

He had tried to think of a less direct way to pose the question, but nothing came to mind.

“Yes.”

“Do you know that for a fact?”

“You mean, can I give you their names? No. I never asked him for any names, and he never gave me any. But he was seeing them just the same. He all but admitted as much.”

“How many were there, do you think? Roughly?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know if these women were co-workers of his?”

“No. I don’t.”

“Could he have been meeting them at bars, or the health club? Someplace like that?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t care where he was finding them. I just wanted him to stop.”

“Of course.” He gave her a minute to calm herself, knowing she could call an abrupt end to this interview, he pushed her too hard on such a delicate subject. “Were these one-night stands we’re talking about here, Mrs. Covington? Or were some of them more serious than that?”

“Do you mean, was he having an affair?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe he was, no. But what difference should that have made to me?”

“To you? Absolutely none. But I ask the question because it isn’t likely your husband would have run off to California with someone he’d only been with once or twice. But someone he was having an extended affair with, well, that could have been a different story.”

“All I can say about that is, Mr. Gunner, if there had been such a woman, I never knew about her. If I had …”

“Yes?”

“I would have never allowed Elroy to go to Washington in the first place. I almost didn’t let him go as it was.”

“I see.” Gunner found himself wondering how many other things Covington had done in his life only because he had his wife’s permission to do so.

“Listen, was there anything else? I was on my way out when you called, I really have to go.”

“Of course. About this book Elroy wanted to write.”

“Book?”

“Yeah. The one he was trying to place with an agent.”

“You mean the agent they said he called right before he disappeared.”

“Exactly. You remember his name, by any chance?”

“His name? No. I only heard it once, back when they first told me that Elroy had called him.”

“You’d never heard of him before that?”

“No. Never.”

“His name was Silverman.” Gunner consulted the notes he’d taken during his follow-up call to Emilio Martinez a few minutes earlier. “Stanley Silverman. He’s a literary agent out of New York.”

Lydia Covington was silent.

“Can you tell me what kind of book it was your husband was trying to pitch to him? You ever hear the idea, or read something Mr. Covington might have already written of it?”

“Read something? Something
Elroy
wrote?” She chuckled, made just a little gurgling sound of amusement that she quickly swallowed back down, lest he discover she was actually human enough to have a sense of humor. “Elroy wasn’t going to write any book, Mr. Gunner. I don’t know what he called that agent for.”

“He never talked to you about wanting to write a book?”

“Did he
talk
to me about it? I’m sure he did, at one time or another. He talked about doing all kinds of things.”

“But—”

“He liked to dream and he liked to lie, Mr. Gunner. That agent wasn’t the first person he ever called to promise something he knew he couldn’t deliver, and he won’t be the last. You can believe that.”

“It isn’t possible this was something he was working on without your knowledge? At the office, in his spare time, perhaps?”

“It’s possible. But it isn’t very likely. Elroy showed no interest in
reading
books, how was he ever gonna
write
one?”

“You haven’t come across anything that could have been part of a manuscript he was putting together? Say, an outline? Notes? Something like that?”

“No. I haven’t seen anything like that.”

“Then it was all in his head. This book idea he claimed to have.”

“It must have been. Is that all, Mr. Gunner?”

“Just one more question, please.”

“Yes?”

“You have any idea how or why he ended up here in Los Angeles? Near as anyone can tell, he didn’t know a soul out here.”

Lydia Covington had to pause a moment before answering. Gunner wondered why. “I don’t know why he went to Los Angeles,” she said. “Except that he always talked about going there someday. Hollywood, and all that. I imagine he thought it would be an exciting place to start over.”

The way she had said it, it almost sounded as if she wished he had taken her along.