Not Long for This World (20 page)

So he followed Most’s low-slung Nissan into the darkening bowels of the San Fernando Valley, with nothing more substantive than curiosity to claim as incentive.

It turned out to be the best move he had made in a week.

Exchanging the northbound San Diego Freeway for the westbound 118, Most led Gunner into the valley’s answer for the L.A. barrios, the city of San Fernando, where he made two stops. The first was at a Chevron gas station on the corner of Glenoaks and Van Nuys, where he spoke briefly with the tall, gangly black man sitting inside the attendant’s booth. Most parked his car beside one of the pumps but didn’t buy any gas. Between the interruptions of other customers, the black man slid him a note of some kind and was repaid with an indeterminable amount of cash.

From there, Most drove directly north to an address less than three miles away, near the northeast end of the 900 block of Brand Boulevard, on the opposite side of the 118. Single-story tract homes from an era gone by lined the street, brave but disintegrating monuments to a dust-ridden, virtually all-Hispanic neighborhood trying desperately to hold on to the last vestiges of middle-class status. With nightfall a foregone conclusion, all was quiet and dark. Most pulled up in front of a canary yellow house with white window shutters and trim, but it would be five hours before he gave Gunner any indication that the place he really wanted was actually four houses down, though on the same side of the street.

He spent the entire five hours in the Maxima, waiting, leaving Gunner, parked almost a full block away, no alternative but to do the same. Whatever he did to help pass the time, he did alone; no one ever appeared on the street, to walk by or to join him in the car. Gunner had brought along a pair of infra-red field glasses, but there was only the back of Most’s head to see, and he tired of using them quickly. Finally, sometime after midnight, Most stepped out of the Nissan to give his surroundings a cautionary once-over, displaying the paranoia Gunner had learned to expect from him.

When he was satisfied he still had the street to himself, Most walked the short distance to his eventual destination, a tan-colored wooden bungalow and a detached garage, the former sitting sideways on the lot, showing only a flat, windowed, nondescript end to the street. The house was dark, seemingly empty, but Most approached it with care nevertheless, loitering on the sidewalk before it, either trying to build his nerve or listening for sounds within, Gunner couldn’t say which.

As a result of its transverse orientation, no direct entrance to the home was available from the street. Gunner couldn’t be sure, but he guessed that the “front” door was positioned somewhere along its northeast wall, beyond a wooden fence and gate that joined the house to its forward-facing garage on the southwest half of the property. Most finally went to the gate, and his long, seemingly forlorn inspection of what lay on the other side lent credence to Gunner’s theory. Most was only discouraged, however, not deterred. As Gunner took up his field glasses again and watched, the dealer reached over the gate with his right hand and unlatched it, the effort he put into silence impossible to miss, with or without field glasses. He babied the gate open and stepped into the backyard, out of Gunner’s view.

Without hesitation, Gunner left the Hyundai and started toward the house, sensing that Most was actually on the verge of doing something worth witnessing for the first time in two days. He closed on the house slowly, trying to listen over the barking of a distant dog for some clue to the dealer’s whereabouts, but he could hear nothing. He edged up to the garage to steal a quick glance over the fence Most had disappeared beyond and caught a glimpse of a barren, grassless backyard and Most, hunched over near the main door to the house, fingers working frantically to jimmy the lock.

It was an art he apparently had some skill in, because he was inside when Gunner next looked for him, mere seconds later. Again, Gunner didn’t hesitate to follow, careful to handle the gate leading into the backyard as gingerly and silently as had Most. He had the Ruger out of its holster as he reached the door Most had forced open and left ajar; the small living room beyond was pitch-black, and empty. There was no sign of Most among its shadows.

The dealer did not turn up again until Gunner entered the house after him and spied him at the end of a short hallway off to the right of the living room, near what appeared to be an open bedroom door. Gunner’s eyes were taking their time warming to the darkness, but he had no trouble discerning the fact that there was a revolver of some kind in Most’s right hand as the dealer reached out with his left to bring the lights up in the bedroom and step inside.

“Well, well, well,” Gunner heard Most say wryly.

The splotchy-faced black man had caught Rookie Davidson sleeping, half-naked and unarmed. The Blue had jumped up from the mattress on the floor he had been sleeping on with nothing but a handful of sheet with which to defend himself, and there he sat at Most’s mercy, his back to the wall, looking like a wounded gazelle shivering beneath a salivating lion’s gaze.

It was hard to imagine him as an accessory to murder.

It would have been Gunner’s preference to keep his distance and just let Most make his play, to watch and hear how things were going to go down, but his better judgment ruled that option out. Most was behaving as if he had come here to do more than scare the pants off of Gunner’s quarry, and there was no way to know how much time, if any, he would devote to conversation before actually getting around to what he really had in mind.

Gunner let the dealer get halfway into the room, advancing upon Rookie in small, catlike steps, before the investigator showed himself at the bedroom doorway and said, “That’s far enough, Whitey.”

Most turned, startled, and now both he and Davidson had the same comical mask of dread contorting their faces. He started to swing his body around, but his eyes caught sight of the Ruger and he terminated the movement immediately, though he made no effort to lower the gun in his own hand.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked.

“It’s not important that we get to know each other,” Gunner said. “We don’t attend the same dinner parties. Drop the gun on the floor and step back, hands behind your head. Slowly.”

Most looked at Rookie, disdaining Gunner’s order. “You know this motherfucker?”

Davidson shook his head. He had the same pitiable expression on his face the police photographer had captured in his mug shot, only worse.

The dealer looked at Gunner again. “Who the fuck are you? You ain’t no cop. You woulda said so by now, if you was.”

Gunner took a single step into the room and said, “I’m the man who’s going to drop your polka-dot ass like a ton of bricks if you don’t do what I say and lose the gun. What else do you want to know?”

Most’s eyes darted from Gunner to the Ruger and back again, weighing the power and potential of both the weapon and the man wielding it. Reaching an unspoken conclusion, he finally dropped his revolver at his feet and retreated from it, following Gunner’s instructions to the letter.

“You the motherfucker tried to kill me the other day?” he asked.

The question took Gunner completely by surprise.

Most grinned and said, “You ain’t too good with that thing, are you? Man’s payin’ you to do me, and all you end up doin’ is fuckin’ up the windows on my ride.”

Gunner said nothing, adding an attempt on the dealer’s life to everything else he already knew about him, and realized how well it all fit. Most’s inclination toward driving the white Maxima around in all types of inclement weather with the driver’s side window down could suddenly be seen as more than a mere peculiarity, as could his symptoms of borderline paranoia.

“I know who you workin’ for, man. Don’t think I don’t fuckin’ know,” he said.

“Turn around and shut up,” Gunner said, hoping Most would take the initiative to elaborate further on his own. “And put your hands behind your head, like I said.”

Lackadaisically, the dealer complied, his back now to the gun he had left on the floor.

Gunner used the lull in their interchange to look the room over, concluding quickly that there wasn’t much to see. Outside of the room’s source of light—a rotund, shaded ceramic table lamp sitting on the floor—the mattress Davidson was sitting on had nothing to keep it company but an empty carton of milk and the clothes the Blue had liberally scattered about it. From the investigator’s position near the door, there was a large window to the left, near Davidson, and a closet with sliding doors to the right, in front of Most.

While he was anxious to hear more of what the dealer had to say about his near assassination, his professional curiosity piqued, it occurred to Gunner abruptly that his only real objective had already been met, and that this victory could hardly be improved upon, no matter what wondrous tales Most had to tell. Davidson was in hand, and Most was the reason; if he never said another word about anything, he had served his purpose, after all.

Keeping his eyes on the dealer, Gunner said, “Get some clothes on, Rookie. You’re coming with me.”

“Where we goin’?”

“I’ll tell you when we get there. Move it.”

Reluctantly, Davidson started putting on his pants.

“Now wait just a goddamn minute,” Most said, fighting the urge to turn around. “What you want with him? I thought your business was with me!”

“You’ve got the right to think whatever you want to think, Whitey. They don’t call this a free country for nothing.”

“Somebody put up a reward, right? You after the reward.”

“What I’m after’s none of your business.”

“Look. You just tryin’ to make a dollar, I understand that. You thinkin’ you can get paid for doin’ me an’ make a little somefhin’ on the side with Rookie here. But let me tell you somethin’. If it’s money you want, I’m the man you wanna see. Whatever you gettin’ to do me, plus whatever they offerin’ for the boy, I’ll double it. How’s that sound to you?”

“No! Don’t listen to ’im, man!” Davidson said.

“
Shut the fuck up!
” Most demanded, his voice splitting the night like a crash of thunder. “You
shut the fuck up!
”

The power of the order struck Davidson like a closed fist. He stopped in the middle of what he was doing—pulling a filthy white sock onto his left foot—and froze, rigid with fear. It was as if Most had somehow pulled the plug on a remote-control doll.

“The kid wants to talk, he can talk,” Gunner said, feeling his blood begin to boil.

“He ain’t got nothin’ to say can help either one of us,” Most said. “He’s a rock head, an’ he’s all messed up. Probably ain’t had no shit to do for ’bout a week now.”

“So what’s your interest in him?”

Most shrugged, composed again, and said, “He runs for me. I’m a friend. I came here to fix ’im up.”

“You needed the gun for that?”

“I brought the gun ’cause he didn’t know I was comin’, an’ I know how he likes surprises. Boy’s scared shitless, cops out everywhere lookin’ for ’im; and I figure he’s carryin’ somethin’ of his own. You don’t get the drop on ’im first, show ’im what’s what ’fore he can go off, don’t matter who you are. The Rook gonna start shootin’. That’s just how he is.”

“How’d you know he was here?”

“Man, what’s the difference? A friend of a friend told me. Somebody seen ’im out here and the word got around. You know how it is. Why you askin’ all these questions? We got a deal, or not?”

“Fuck no,” Davidson said.

Gunner didn’t have to look at the Blue to know that something ageless had changed him, in the way it had of always changing a man, cowards most especially. He looked, anyway, unable to do anything else.

This time, courage had been found in a .38-caliber Taurus revolver, probably a Model 85, snub-nosed and gripless. It had been hidden under Davidson’s shirt on the floor, inaccessible until this moment. Gunner felt like an idiot for not having checked the kid for weapons earlier.

The Blue had the revolver pointed at Gunner’s waist, one finger dancing on its trigger nervously, holding it out with both hands like something foul he detested handling.

“Put the gun down, man. Right now.”

He got to his feet and Most turned around, catching the drift of what was happening. Gunner was doubtful that the Blue could actually bring himself to shoot a man deliberately, but he seemed fully capable of shooting one by accident, and that made him only five times more dangerous. Gunner let the Ruger go limp in his hand and set the automatic gently down on the floor at his feet.

“Over here, man!” Davidson told him. “Push it over here!”

Gunner used his right foot to pass the gun across the hardwood floor toward him.

As Davidson bent down to retrieve it, Most, laughing, said, “Way to go, little home! Put this smartass, interferin’ motherfucker in his place!”

Most started to move forward, as if to join Davidson on the other side of the room, but the teenager shifted the unblinking eye of the .38 to gaze in his direction and said, “Stay where you are, motherfucker! I’ll pop you, man, I’ll pop you!”

Most froze, frowning. “What kind of shit is this, Rook? I come all this way to give you what you need, and this is how you gonna act?”

Sliding sideways over to the window, reaching out with one hand to open it, Davidson shook his head, so hard that Gunner feared it might come off. “Don’t bullshit me, Whitey, man,” he said. “I ain’t that stupid. You didn’t come here ’cept to do one motherfuckin’ thing!”

He tossed Gunner’s Ruger out the window, then picked up Most’s revolver and did the same with it, never taking his eyes from the pair of men in front of him for very long. He used the .38 to move them where he wanted them, keeping his distance, eventually positioning himself by the door and a ready escape.

“Why
did
he come, Rookie?” Gunner asked the Blue straightforwardly.

It was an inquiry Most tried to punish Gunner for asking with a big-league glower, one he had to soften before turning back to Davidson to see what his response would be. For the first time, the kid named Rookie grinned, just a little boy’s smirk with a twist of adult sadism at the corners.