Not Long for This World (12 page)

“I think you have this confused with another investigation,” Gunner said when he looked back again, having made up his mind he was not going to come away from Davidson’s door entirely empty-handed.

“What?”

“You’re the King’s latest live-in, is that right? His new girlfriend?”

“
New?
The King and I have been together a full year come June!”

“You ever hear him mention a woman by the name of Lucille Bennett? Or Aquanetta Long?”

“Lucille Bennett? He doesn’t know any woman named Lucille Bennett. Or Juanita Long, either.”

“Aquanetta,” Gunner said.

“Whatever. What the hell does any of this have to do with Rookie?”

“For now, nothing,” Gunner said. “Everything to this point suggests the King acted alone. Although we may have to talk to the boy eventually, I suppose.”

“Acted alone in what? What the hell are you talking about?”

Gunner paused for effect before answering, to give her the impression the subject was a difficult one to broach. “I’m afraid we have reason to believe Mr. Davidson—the King—may have been responsible for the deaths of two former girlfriends, Ms. Bennett and Ms. Long. It seems both women died under mysterious circumstances while shacking up with him, Bennett in October of eighty-six, and Long last January.”

“You must be crazy!”

“From what we’ve been able to ascertain, his M.O. is to live with a victim for a while, long enough to figure out where and how their money is put away, and then knock ’em off in a phony mugging once he’s actually got his hands on the cash. I’d venture a guess he’s been badgering you about money lately. Right? Trying to get access to your savings or checking accounts?”

“He’s had a hard time finding work,” Davidson’s friend said, still angry, but with her righteous indignation noticeably slipping.

“Uh-huh. I’ll bet he has. You’ve made life pretty easy for him, haven’t you?”

The woman behind the screen door was silent.

“He’s a lady-killer, sister. A regular Jack the Ripper. You don’t help us get him now, you’re gonna be next on his hit parade. One of these nights he’ll send you out after a pack of cigarettes and you won’t make it back home. Ever. Think about it.”

She did. She’d finally received the bad news she was expecting, if not actually hoping for, and now the rueful cast to her features had taken on a new dimension. She was trying to decide whether or not the personality profile of a psychopath fit the man with whom she was sharing a home, and the very fact that she had to ponder the question at all said a great deal about the kind of human being Royal Davidson was to live with.

“You’ve got to promise not to hurt him,” she said after a while.

“I promise,” Gunner said, smiling.

Lies were coming easily to him today.

A striped nine ball, tapped off the side to avoid a solid four making a nuisance of itself in the middle of the table, was just tumbling into a far corner pocket when Gunner stepped fully into the room. It was the kind of shot any fool could make look easy, but this one had been executed to appear lucky, to identify the man who had made it as a buffoon just clumsy enough to actually drop a ball or two, however inadvertently. Fresh blood had just shown itself at the door and the gap-toothed black man working the closest table to it wanted to make a game against him seem as risk-free a proposition as possible.

The name of the place was Boulevard Billiards, as the faded arrangement of blue block letters painted on the inside of one window facing Century Boulevard weakly declared, and it was supposed to be the Inglewood hot spot where the King was hanging his hat this night. It looked like a better place to go blind than play pool; the overhead lighting was just good enough to make out a mere ten tables arranged in two rows of five and an unmanned bar set against one wall. These appointments appeared to be less than a major hit with the general public, as Gunner was relieved to see that Rookie’s father didn’t have much company; there were only six men in the room altogether, the shyster near the door playing alone and five others milling about a pair of tables toward the back.

“I’m looking for the King,” Gunner told the man with the hole in his grin.

He could have washed and waxed the Hyundai outside in the time it took to get an answer. “That’s him in the yellow shirt,” the toothless one said eventually, using the pool cue in his hands to gesture toward the group behind him, saying it as if being helpful came as hard for him as seeing a dentist twice a year.

The man in the yellow shirt looked like anything but a king. He was bushy-haired and out of shape, and was dressed more like a bowler on Friday night than a pool shark; the yellow shirt was the kind one usually found with the name of a service garage stenciled on the back, and his pants were oversized dungarees that fit him like a potato sack with belt loops. He had an unrestrained beer belly and a bald spot in the middle of his head, and a three-day-old growth of beard on a puffy face that had almost as much lint in it as gray hair.

His four friends were no more attractive than he.

He had heard Gunner drop his name and stood waiting for the detective to cross to his end of the room, interrupting the game he had been winning handily from a smaller, younger man in a security guard’s uniform.

“I s’posed to know you?” he asked Gunner before any introductions could be attempted. His speech was only slightly off-kilter, the way a man’s who drank religiously always was.

Gunner shook his head. “We’ve never met,” he said. “My name is Gunner. Aaron Gunner. I’m a private investigator working for the attorney representing Toby Mills.” He went through the ritual of displaying his license, well aware of how meaningless these people would find it.

“I don’t know no Toby Mills,” the King said.

“That’s not too surprising. He’s not a friend of yours. He’s a friend of Rookie’s. And I know you know Rookie.”

“Yeah, I know him. I’m his father, so what?”

“So I’m looking for him. I’d like to talk to him.”

“You and every other fuckin’ cop in town. The little shit don’t spend five minutes a month at home; why you assholes wanna ask me where he’s hidin’?”

“Because some fathers would know,” Gunner said flatly, with no small trace of disdain in his voice.

“Sounds to me like he don’t think you’re a good father to the Rook, King,” one of the King’s friends said, trying to liven up the evening. He was a big man with a boyish face and a weight lifter’s body; there were muscles in his bare arms Gunner never used, if he even had them at all.

“Sounds that way to me, too,” the King said, handing his pool cue over to the younger man in the guard’s uniform without allowing his eyes to leave Gunner’s.

“I’m not interested in what kind of father you are, or aren’t, to the boy,” Gunner said. “I just want to talk to Rookie. And if you can help me with that, I could possibly make it worth your while.”

“You talkin’ ’bout a bribe?” the King asked, pretending to be insulted.

“Man ain’t gonna sell out his own son, mister,” the big man interjected again, rising from the corner of the table on which he had been sitting. “Only a dog’d do that.”

“You shouldn’t oughta show the King such disrespect, man,” another bystander said, this one as tall as he was frail and hairless. “’Specially not in here, ’round all his friends, and shit.” He had a cigarette hanging limp from his mouth and a beer bottle in one hand, and he changed his grip on the latter as if to use it for something other than drinking.

They were all standing now, their green felt tables and little round balls forgotten, and one by one they were moving to the King’s side, bringing pool cues and beer bottles with them. Even the man nearest the door came to join them, appearing to relish this opportunity to lose another tooth.

“Everybody just cool out,” Gunner said, on the slim chance he still had time to recover from making a potentially fatal mistake. “Take a deep breath and relax.”

“Relax, my ass,” the King said, his confidence bolstered by the show of loyalty all around him. “I’m sick of you motherfuckers messin’ with my boy! I don’t care if he is a goddamn gangbanger, the kid ain’t got a fuckin’ chance in the world of flyin’ right long as you assholes keep ridin’ him!”

“Tell him, King,” somebody said.

“The boy been havin’ to deal with the goddamn cops for fourteen years. Now he’s got private fuckin’ investigators on his ass!”

“Let’s jack ’im up, King,” the small man in the guard’s uniform suggested. “A private investigator ain’t no cop!”

“I heard that,” the man with the missing tooth agreed.

Gunner didn’t move. He was finally willing to concede that nothing he could say was going to turn the tide rolling against him, but he had been too slow getting around to it. Any alternative he may have had to mixing it up with the six. men before him went by the wayside when the King lunged forward to take him by the throat at the same instant that somebody’s beer bottle glanced off the side of the detective’s head.

Gunner managed to slow the King’s dive with a short right hand to the older man’s nose, but the bottle had hit him with the punch still in mid-flight and had taken most of the sting out of it. Unfazed, the King drove him backward down to the floor, and in seconds, all six men were upon him, arms and fists, some empty and some not, flailing wildly at his face. Gunner brought both hands up to shield himself, deflecting only a fraction of the blows raining down upon him, but the man in the guard’s uniform took to kicking him in the ribs and he was forced to bring his hands back down again.

For his part, the King concentrated solely on strangling him, using both hands to reshape his windpipe, but one of the King’s friends, possibly the big one, landed, a solid left to Gunner’s jaw and broke something loose inside his mouth; Gunner could feel the bloody tooth tumble about on his tongue like a stone in a clothes dryer.

The disfigurement enraged him, and that was fortunate, because in his rage he found the necessary incentive and strength to lift a stray knee from his chest with one hand and draw his new Ruger P-85 from its shoulder holster inside his coat with the other. He had the automatic pressed flush against the spot between the King’s two eyes before a count of two, but by that time everyone else had figured out that it wasn’t his wallet he was reaching for, and they were already backing off.

Way off.

Gunner pulled himself slowly to his feet as they watched, careful to keep the Ruger in constant contact with the King’s forehead. His body felt like a six-foot open nerve ending, and his mouth was bleeding like hell. He used his free hand to take the broken tooth from his mouth and sadly inspected it: it was a right-side molar, capless and filling-free.

“I want to see five motherfuckers facedown on the floor, and I mean
yesterday
,” Gunner told the King’s motley crew of friends.

They hit the floor with the speed of a fast wink and the unity of a precision drill team. It was a beautiful thing to see.

“Please, man,” the King said, staring cross-eyed at the Ruger’s nose. “Don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.”

“Shut up,” Gunner told him, probing around the bleeding hole in his gum with his tongue as he contemplated what to do next. A number of things came to mind right away, things that would add considerably to the King’s pain while making the detective feel better about his own, but he was wise enough to give these no serious consideration. He felt lucky just to be alive; lucky to have a friend like Dee Holiday, who had let him take possession of the Ruger before he’d had a legal right to it, and lucky that he hadn’t yet fired a round from it. He didn’t want to press his good fortune playing payback; he just wanted to get what he had come for in the first place and get out.

“Get over there against the wall, hands at your sides,” Gunner said, nodding toward a point in the room less than fifteen feet away. The King’s eyes moved to the spot, but he made no effort to go there, not liking the sound of the order.

“Move your ass,” Gunner warned him impatiently.

He had to step over the men on the floor to get there, but the King eventually retreated to the specified area and took the position he was told to take. He flattened his back against the barren wall and waited for further instructions, his eyes wide and full of terror.

“This isn’t going to be very complicated,” Gunner said, picking up a yellow-striped six ball from a nearby pool table with his free left hand. “I’m going to ask some questions, and you’re going to answer them. Straight. Think you can do that?”

“What kind of questions?” the King asked.

Gunner threw the six ball as hard as he could, missing the King’s head by a foot to the left. The sound it made when it hit the feeble wall was like a crack of thunder, to which every man in the room reacted.

“Jesus Christ!” the muscular big man on the floor said.

“You didn’t hear what I said,” Gunner told the King, who had lost the capacity to stand still; sweating profusely, he kept shifting his feet as if a trip to the men’s room were in order. “You don’t ask the questions. I do. Now can you handle that or not?”

He picked up another ball from the table.

“Yeah,” the King said, nodding his head enthusiastically. “I can handle it.”

“Good. We’ll make the first question simple. Where’s Rookie?”

The King hesitated before answering, knowing it was the last thing Gunner wanted to see him do. “I don’t know,” he said sheepishly. “I ain’t seen the boy in three weeks, so help me God.”

“That supposed to be your idea of a straight answer, King?”

“I’m tellin’ you the truth, man! I swear it!”

“Then how’d you get hold of Rookie’s car?”

Another pause. “His car? Who the hell said—”

The next ball struck the wall an inch from the King’s right eye, exploding against the soft plaster like a cannon shot. It had stirred the air near his head as it sped by, and he could still feel its breath on his brow as he cringed, belatedly, to defend himself.

“Somebody saw you sell the Maverick for scrap, King,” Gunner said, collecting a cue ball with his left hand while keeping the Ruger out where no one could possibly miss it with his right. “Don’t try to tell me you didn’t have it.”