It's Not a Pretty Sight (29 page)

Now Gunner did. The book in question, a self-published paperback sold almost exclusively in independent black bookstores, had been a powder keg of controversy, espousing as it did the philosophy that every fault and shortcoming of the Afro-American male could be directly traced to his female counterpart, the Afro-American woman. It was her overdemanding, gold-digging, trash-talking inner nature that drove the black man to do the terrible things he did to her, and only a good stiff uppercut delivered on a regular basis could keep her from destroying him altogether.

It was the worst case of black-on-black crime since the assassination of Malcolm X.

“That bitch was crazy,” Lilly said. “Tryin’ to blame what you worthless niggas do on
us.
”

Gunner and Coleman glanced at each other, catching the irony in the bartender’s comment that Lilly herself was unaware of.

To Gunner, Lilly said, “And you’re just as crazy for agreein’ with her.”

“Agreeing with her? I don’t—”

“You didn’t just say a woman don’t want a man ’less he can shower her with diamonds and furs?”

“I said
some
black women are like that, yes. They want a good man, sure, but a good man’s not enough. They’ve got to have the green, too. Man can be as good and decent as he wants, but if he can’t deliver the goods—”

“See ya!” Coleman said, finishing Gunner’s thought with a farewell salute aimed at Lilly. He and Gunner then put their fists together, top to bottom, bottom to top, congratulating themselves on the clear vision they obviously shared on the intricate workings of the female mind.

“I don’t remember askin’ you to be a part of this conversation, Aubrey,” Lilly said, unmoved by the beautiful show of male bonding she had just witnessed. “Get on back over there with Eggy where you were an’ leave me an’ Gunner alone.”

“But—”

“You heard me. Go on over there an’ finish tellin’ him ’bout that crazy-ass movie you was talkin’ about, that ‘alien surgery’ shit, or whatever you called it. Alien somethin’, it was.”

“Alien Autopsy,
” Coleman said. “It was on Channel Eleven last night at ten o’clock. Did you see it?”

“No. I see alien autopsies in here every week, what the hell do I need to see the movie for?” She cracked up, and Coleman did too. Even Eggy Jones at the far end of the bar was laughing.

But not Gunner.

Gunner wasn’t laughing because he’d just had a revelation.

That thing that had been clawing around at the back of his skull for almost twenty-four hours, working from the inside trying to get out, was finally free. He could see it now for what it was, and understand why he had always known its role in Nina’s murder was significant. It was, in part, a word. And Coleman had just said it.

Autopsy
.

The Gatewood autopsy.

seventeen

B
UNCHE DIDN
’
T WANT TO TALK TO HIM
. T
WO CALLS IN THE
same day from a private operator he barely knew was more than the cop could stand. It was late in the day, and he was tired. But Gunner had left three messages for him in the span of an hour, and Bunche admired persistence in a man almost more than anything else.

“What business is the Gatewood case to you?” the detective asked when Gunner had stated his reason for calling.

“I don’t know that it
is
my business,” Gunner said. “Yet.”

“So what makes you think it might be?”

“The name. Gatewood. I know a woman by that name.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Florence Gatewood. Black woman in her mid-forties, about five nine, five ten, one hundred and sixty pounds or thereabouts, dark hair, dark complexion, no discernible marks of distinction. Sound familiar?”

Gunner didn’t hear anything, until Bunche threw some mints in his mouth and began chewing loudly into the phone.

“Detective?” Gunner said.

“Sorry, friend, but that’s not our deceased.”

Which would have been bad news, save for two things: Gunner’s relative fondness for Gatewood, and the time Bunche had taken to answer the question.

“But she does sound familiar,” Gunner said.

More chewing at the other end of the line. “Maybe.”

“Bunche, please. Don’t play, with me, man. This is a charity call, I need a break.”

Bunche thought about it, taking his time. “And when I need a break later? You gonna be there to help
me
, brother?”

“You don’t ask for anything unreasonable, I will be, sure.”

“Who’s to say what’s reasonable or unreasonable? Me or you?”

“Me. Same as you’re deciding right now whether what I’m asking for is reasonable or unreasonable.”

“That ain’t my standard deal, partner,” Bunche said. “But what the hell. You or the United Way, what’s the difference.” He treated Gunner to one more long silence, then said, “The victim in our case is one James Gatewood, Junior, or Jimmy to his friends and loved ones. A dirtbag. A low-level errand boy in the drug trade, been a wart on the community’s ass for every one of his twenty-eight years. God bless his soul.”

“And Florence Gatewood is his mother.”

“A Florence Gatewood who fits the description you just gave me claimed to be his moms, yeah. I got her address around here somewhere …”

“Lady I’m talking about lives on Ninety-fifth Street. Two-oh-nine East Ninety-fifth, near Watts.”

“Ninety-fifth, right. We must be talkin’ about the same lady, all right. How is it
you
know her?”

“I don’t. I just had a few words with her a couple of days ago, in the course of looking for witnesses to a murder I’ve been investigating. When was her son killed?”

“Last Thursday. Late. What murder you talkin’ about, Gunner?”

The investigator told him about Nina Pearson’s murder in brief, avoiding the question of what a private citizen like him was doing sticking his nose into an open homicide investigation altogether.

“Detective in charge of the case is a guy named Matt Poole out of the LAPD’s Southwest,” Gunner said, “you want all the details.”

“You say this Nina Pearson was shot?” Bunche asked.

“That’s right. Shotgunned. Same as your boy Jimmy, I’ll bet.”

“And you think that proves they’re connected? Your homicide and ours?”

“It’s beginning to look that way to me, yes.”

“Just because Gatewood and your girl were neighbors?”

“And the commonality of the weapons used, yeah. You don’t—”

“Forget about it. You’re reachin’.”

“Reaching?”

“That’s right. You’re reachin’. You’re forgettin’ one very important fact.”

“And that is?”

“Think about it, smart guy. What department do I work for? Compton PD. And if Jimmy Gatewood had been murdered at home—”

“LAPD would be handling the case.”

“Exactly.”

“So he was killed somewhere in Compton.”

“At a girlfriend’s house on Whitemarsh Avenue, between Greenleaf and Alondra. Which is what? About ten or twelve miles from where your victim got it?”

“That supposed to mean the same person couldn’t have killed them both?”

“No. It’s just supposed to mean it ain’t likely. Besides which, the suspect in our case had a motive for killing Gatewood. But the lady—”

“You have a suspect? In custody?”

“Not in custody, no. At large. But that should be changin’ any minute now.”

“This suspect have a name, Detective?”

“He’s got a name, sure. What suspect don’t?”

“Do I get to hear it?”

“I don’t know. You got a reason for askin’?”

“I don’t know the man’s name, Bunche, I can’t give you a call, I happen to see or hear something you might wanna know. Can I?”

“I’m gonna pretend to be ignorant enough to believe that bullshit, and tell you the man’s name is Dobbs. Angelo Dobbs.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Well, don’t lose any sleep over it. He’s one for the psycho ward. Got a jacket so full of felony arrests we can’t close the fuckin’ thing.”

“And he killed Jimmy Gatewood because …?”

“Because that’s what he was paid to do. He’s an enforcer, Angelo. A drug trade gun-for-hire. Way we understand it, a local Blood set known as the Trey-Kays put a contract out On Gatewood, and Dobbs was the one picked it up. Seems Gatewood was the inside man on a theft at one of the Trey-Kay rock houses, and that put him at the top of their shit list.”

“You have the weapon Dobbs used on him?”

“No. But when Dobbs turns up, it will too. Just a matter of time.”

“You’ve got a line on him?”

“Let’s just say, he ain’t in our custody this weekend, I’ll eat my hat.”

When Gunner became quiet, Bunche said, “So now you know why Dobbs killed Gatewood, you can tell me why he killed your Nina Pearson. Was she in the rock biz, by any chance?”

“No.”

“You sure about that?”

“Positive. That wasn’t her scene, believe me,” Gunner said.

“Then maybe she had a friend—”

“No. I don’t think so,” Gunner insisted.

“Then where’s your motive, Gunner?” Bunche asked. “Every murderer’s got one, right? What’s Dobbs’s for killing
her
?”

After some deliberation, Gunner said he didn’t know.

But he could make a wild guess.

The address marker on Nina’s house was missing a 6—the last digit of three—leaving the marker to tell the big lie that this was 10 East Ninety-fifth Street, instead of 106 East Ninety-fifth.

It was well after seven o’clock and it was dark, but with the help of a flashlight, Gunner was able to find the missing brass 6 right where he had suspected he might, beneath the truncated address marker in the dirt, behind some of the shrubbery planted at the foot of the front porch. The investigator picked it up, brushed it off a little, and placed it up on the pillar from whence it had fallen, only upside down and just below its original position, the way he figured it might have been hanging the night Angelo Dobbs came around looking for Jimmy Gatewood’s house in the dark.

“I’ll be goddamned,” Bunche said.

Now the address marker suggested this was 109 East Ninety-fifth Street. Another big lie.

It was Florence Gatewood who lived at 109 East Ninety-fifth Street.

“I remember her saying something Tuesday about Nina getting her mail by mistake,” Gunner said. “It didn’t mean anything to me at the time, but now …”

“I’ll be
goddamned,
” Bunche said again, clearly impressed.

“It could just be a coincidence, sure. But—”

“It ain’t no fuckin’ coincidence,” the detective said. “The dumb shit went to the wrong address. I’d bet my pension on it.”

“And killed the first person he found at home.”

“Yeah.”

“He have a reputation for being that stupid?”

“Stupid and loaded at the same time, hell yes. He’s a crackhead. Crackheads do dumb shit like this all the time.”

It was true. The haze most rockheads were in half the time, it was a miracle they could work the fly of their pants without fucking something up. Making the mistake they were assuming Angelo Dobbs made the night Nina was killed would have been easy for somebody who’d just been on the pipe.

“You going to talk to Poole?” Gunner asked Bunche.

“Looks like I’d better, now. And while we’re talkin’ about our future plans, let me tell you what
yours
are …”

“Go home and read a good book. You took the words right out of my mouth, Detective,” Gunner said.

Telling a big lie of his own.

Del Curry was not Gunner’s only living relative.

His mother, Julliette, had suffered a fatal heart attack in 1966; his father, Coleman, succumbed to lung cancer less than two years after that. And two of his four siblings were also dead: his older brother Joshua and his older sister, Ruth, who had passed on in 1968 and 1991, respectively. Gunner’s baby sister, Josephine, and his older brother John, however, were both still alive; Jo lived in Seattle, had for eleven years now, and John, a career Navy man, was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia—or at least he had been back in 1989, when Gunner last had heard from him. Maybe he was dead too, Gunner didn’t know. No one ever knew with John.

Gunner also had several living aunts and uncles, first and second cousins—and a plethora of nieces and nephews.

Alred Lewis was one of his nephews.

His late sister Ruth’s oldest child, Alred was young, good-looking, and better off financially than his Uncle Aaron could ever hope to be. You saw him on the street, you’d think he was a power forward for the Clippers, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t in the music business, either. Or the movies, or television. The thousand-dollar suits he wore, and the canary-yellow Porsche Carrera he drove, had not come to him via any such pedestrian pursuits as these. Oh, no.

Ready was a dope dealer. And a damn good one, apparently.

That was the boy’s name in the trade, “Ready,” but Gunner still called him Aired. It was his way of refusing to acknowledge his nephew’s role in the business he was in. He couldn’t look at Alred without thinking about Alred’s mother, Ruth, and how she would spin like a top in her grave if she could see what her baby had become. Most everyone else in the family had always known this was coming, having seen the signs early on, but not Ruth; she had always thought her boy’s selfishness and egomania were faults he would outgrow with time.