It's Not a Pretty Sight (18 page)

Refusing to either use his hands or turn his back on her, the investigator stuck a foot out behind him and kicked the door closed.

“I think you’ve made a mistake,” he said.

“No, man. You the fool made the mistake. You an’ Otha, both.”

“Otha?”

“Nigga can’t do his own killin’, so he sends you over here to do it for ‘im. Goddamn his sorry ass!”

There was that word Nina had disliked so much:
nigga.

Gunner shook his head, said, “You’re wrong. I don’t know any Otha. I’m a private investigator, I just came over here to ask you some questions about Nina Pearson.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“No it isn’t. It’s the truth, I swear it. Put the gun down a minute, and I’ll prove it.”

“This gun ain’t goin’ nowhere. You think I’m stupid or somethin’?”

“I think you’re going to blow my head off, you keep aiming that thing at me. Whether you intend to or not. And then you’re going to find out what I’m telling you is for real. I don’t know this guy Otha.”

He watched as Felker studied him, trying to decide what to do.

“How you gonna prove it?” she asked him eventually. Keeping the shotgun pointed right at his face.

“I’ve got ID in my wallet. I’m a licensed private investigator for the state of California.”

“That ain’t what I meant. What I meant is, how you gonna prove Otha didn’t send you over here to kill me?”

“Only way I can prove that is to have you call some people, ask them to vouch for me. Starting with Wendy Singer, over at Sisterhood House. She’ll tell you who I am.”

“Miss Singer? You workin’ for her?”

“I’m not working for her, no. But I’ve talked to her. I was over at the house yesterday, asking about Nina Pearson, like I said.”

“What you wanna know ’bout Nina Pearson?”

“Put the gun down and I’ll tell you. Please. Before something happens we’re both going to regret.”

It took her a long time to make up her mind. Gunner just stood there and waited, watching her trigger finger wiggle and twitch, wiggle and twitch; all on a weapon similar to the one that had killed Nina Pearson.

“Sit your ass down on the couch,” Felker finally said. “On top of your hands, so you can’t move ‘em.”

“What about the gun?”

“Do what I tell you, nigga, or I’m gonna show you what about the gun. All right?”

Gunner did as he was told and sat down, pinning his hands palm down beneath his buttocks.

“Now. What you wanna know ’bout Nina?” Felker asked.

“You’re still holding the shotgun,” Gunner said.

“That’s right. An’ I’m gonna
keep on
holdin’ it.”

“How about if you just take your finger off the trigger? Can you do that, at least?”

“No.”

“Look. You want to keep it pointed at my face, fine, that makes you feel more comfortable. But take your finger off the trigger for a minute. So the goddamn thing doesn’t go off by accident. You want to shoot me by
accident
?”

After some consideration, she decided she didn’t. She pulled her finger out of the shotgun’s trigger guard, but otherwise kept the weapon right where it was, aimed roughly at his nose.

“Okay. My finger ain’t on the trigger. Now answer my goddamn question.”

“I’m talking to people who knew Nina to see if I can get a line on who killed her,” Gunner said.

“Who
killed
her? Somebody killed Nina?”

“You didn’t know?”

“Know? Man, how’m I s’posed to know? I ain’t seen that bitch in two months!”

She didn’ t seem disturbed to hear the news, just somewhat surprised by it. As if Nina were the last person on earth she would have thought would come to such a terrible end.

“I can see you two were very close,” Gunner said.

Felker grunted. “Who? Nina an’ me? Shit.”

“What exactly was your problem with her, you don’t mind my asking?”

“I ain’t got no problem with her now, what you say is true. Her old man finally got her ass, huh?”

“It looks that way to the police. But me, I’m not so sure. That’s why I’m here.”

“Shit. He killed her. Her nigga got her, same as my nigga’s tryin’ to get me. Same goddamn diff’rence.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“What makes me so sure? You all alike, that’s what. Every goddamn one of you!”

She had her finger back on the shotgun’s trigger, dark eyes suddenly rekindled with rage.

“Okay, okay! You’re right, you’re right,” Gunner said, trying to appease her. Thinking the gang down at Sisterhood hadn’t prepared him for her enough, simply describing her as “crazy.” Crazy didn’t even begin to do this fruitcake justice.

“I don’t believe it, what you’re tellin’ me,” Felker said. “I think you’re makin’ it all up.”

“I wish I was. Believe me.”

“So what you say your name was again? Gunner?”

“That’s right. Aaron Gunner.”

“Gunner. Uh-huh. So who you workin’ for, then, Mr. Gunner, you ain’t workin’ for Miss Singer? Somebody gotta be payin’ you, right?”

“Nobody’s paying me. I’m doing this for myself.”

“For yourself?”

“That’s right. Look, you’ve got your finger on that trigger again, and I can’t think straight when you do that. Could you please …”

Felker put her finger back where it had been, outside the shotgun’s trigger guard.

“Thank you,” Gunner said.

“You was sayin’ you’re doin’ this for yourself,” Felker said, reminding him where he had left off.

“Yes. Nina was a friend of mine, I owed her.”

“You ain’t workin’ for that nigga’s lawyer, or somethin’? Tryin’ to get ‘im off?”

“No. I told you, I’m not working for anybody.”

“Then what you tryin’ to prove? I don’t understand.”

“I don’t want the cops to make a mistake on this one. That’s all. I don’t want them to lay Nina’s murder on her husband just because the shoe fits.”

“No? Then who you think they should lay it on? Hell, that nigga was the only one in the goddamn world didn’t treat that bitch like
gold.
Like a angel sent from heaven, or somethin’. Them fools over Miss Singer’s house, they like to wet their pants every time she—”

She never finished the thought. Something came snapping into focus for her and stopped her cold, leaving her jaw swinging open like a barnyard gate.

“Oh. Uh-huh,” she said. “Now I understand.”

“You understand what?”

“I understand what the fuck you doin’ here. That’s what. You think
I
killed the bitch. Just ’cause I was the only one wouldn’t let her tell me what to do, or how to act.”

“And how did she want you to act?”

“She wanted me to act
white.
That’s how. White, just like her.”

“White?”

“That’s right. White. She didn’t like to hear a black woman talk like a black woman. Every time I opened my mouth, she’d be in my face, right in front of everybody, tellin’ me she didn’t like my language.
My language
, like it wasn’t
her
fuckin’ language too! Like I was some kinda
embarrassment
to her, or somethin’!”

“I heard it was just one word in particular that she objected to,” Gunner said.

“What, ‘nigga’? What the fuck’s wrong with that? That’s what we are, ain’t we? Ain’t we all niggas?”

Gunner treated the question like something he hadn’t heard.

“Shit. You don’t think so neither, that it? You think you’re somethin’ more’n that, same way she did. Don’t you?”

“Let’s just say if I had my pick of words to throw out of the English dictionary, that would be my first choice,” Gunner said. “Hands down.”

“You don’t never call nobody a nigga?”

“No. Not if I can help it.”

Felker shook her head, amazed. “I don’t understand that,” she said.

And Gunner knew she never would. Black men and women who threw the n-word around like she did were too short on brain cells to appreciate how they were embracing one of the most powerful and dehumanizing weapons ever used against their own people. They liked to say that the twist they put on the way it was spelled and pronounced made something harmless out of it, but the truth was, it just made them feel better for having bought into the white man’s contention that it was a perfectly suitable name for them.

Funny, Gunner thought, but the Japanese never did take to “Jap” that well. Nor the Jews to “kike.” Nor …

“Let’s get back to Nina,” Gunner said.

“I ain’t got nothin’ more to say ’bout Nina. It was on account’a her I got kicked outta Miss Singer’s place, I don’t give a shit about her no more.”

“Where were you last Tuesday night? Say, between the hours of seven and twelve midnight?”

“Last Tuesday night? What, that when she got killed? Last Tuesday?”

“Yeah.”

“I was here. With Otha. Watchin’ TV. Not that it’s any of your goddamn bus’ness.”

“Was anyone else here with you?”

“No. Ain’t never anyone else here with us. Otha don’t like me havin’ no company in here.”

“Even when he’s around?”

“Even when he’s around. He gets jealous. That’s his problem. Anybody comes aroun’ me, he starts actin’ a fool.” Tears were welling in her eyes as she thought about it. “I tell ‘im I love ‘im, an’ he tells me he loves me. But when he gets
mad
… he don’t hear nothin’ I say. He just … He just starts
beatin’
on me. An’
beatin’
on me. Like … like I’m …”

She was crying in earnest now, the shotgun roiling around in her unsteady hands like a dinghy on choppy waters. Gunner would have felt sorry for her if he weren’t so afraid of dying.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Trying to lead up slowly to saying good-bye.

The apology brought her back to reality. Suddenly aware of what she’d just done—cried like a baby in front of a strange man who, in all probability, thought what she’d told him was funny—she rubbed at her eyes with the back of one free hand and said, “Shit. What do
you
know ’bout bein’ sorry? You don’t know
shit
’bout bein’ sorry!”

“Look. I’ve caught you at a bad time. Maybe—”

“Oh. You wanna leave now, huh? I thought you wanted to talk about Nina.”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“Hell, I ain’t got nothin’ to hide. What you wanna know? Go ahead an’ ask me somethin’.”

Gunner didn’t say anything, afraid that if he did, she might never let him leave.

“I told you to ask me a question, nigga,” Felker said, the shotgun relatively steady in her hands again.

Gunner gave it some thought, said, “Okay. One more before I go.” Laying down the terms of his own surrender.

“Let’s hear it.”

“Who else could have wanted Nina dead besides her husband? Anyone come to mind?”

He watched the tiny black woman’s face change as she thought about it, concentrating for all she was worth. Finally, she shook her head and said, “I don’t know nobody would wanna
kill
her. Didn’t nobody ever get that mad at her, hardly. But … there was one girl I know was, once. I don’t know if she was pissed off enough to
kill
anybody, but she was pissed off enough to put some serious foot in Nina’s ass. That’s for damn sure.” The memory brought a toothy grin to her face.

“Who was this?”

“Girl up at Miss Singer’s place name’ Shirley. Coldest bitch stay up there, you ask me.”

“Shirley Causwell?”

“Yeah. That’s her. Shirley Causwell.”

“She was pissed off at Nina? For what?”

Felker shook her head again, grinning anew, and said, “Ain’t my bus’ness to tell you that. You wanna know that, you gotta ask
her.
Or Trini. Trini knows.”

“The photographer?”

“Yeah. The photographer. White girl always up there takin’ pictures of everybody, an’ shit. Her. She knows.”

“How long ago was this?”

“You say you only gonna ask one question. An’ you asked it. I think you better raise on up outta here, now. Get the hell outta my face.”

“I think you’re right,” Gunner said.

Without either of them saying another word, he edged his way out of the apartment and started for the stairs, never looking back. His sense of relief was so intense he could barely walk.

Outside on the sidewalk, a bearded black man with a dorag on his head and a cigarette pinched between his teeth stormed past him, heading into Felker’s building as Gunner was going out. Forty, maybe forty-five, he was wearing a grungy old pair of overalls, the kind auto mechanics always wore, and both of his hands were rolled into fists that looked to Gunner’s eye like something a man could use to pound tent stakes into the ground.

Otha. It had to be.

Gunner went to his car and jumped in, praying to God he could get out of there before Agnes Felker’s shotgun could go off—or worse,, be turned meekly over to her old man the way it likely always was.

A peace offering that never seemed to buy her a thing.

eleven

T
HE PERSONNEL DIRECTOR AT
B
OWERS, BAIN AND
L
YLE
wouldn’t tell him
squat.

She was a courteous but stiff young woman named Olivia Ishimura, and she sat behind the desk in her office like a Marine private dressed for full inspection, offering Gunner nothing but vague inferences and sweeping generalizations regarding Nina Pearson’s employment history at the firm. Not because she didn’t want to be helpful, she said, but because so much of the information contained in Nina’s file—or any employee’s file, for that matter, past or present, alive or dead—was confidential.