All the Lucky Ones Are Dead (16 page)

2Daddy didn't miss faking a lack of concern by much; his only real mistake was taking too long to reply. “Nigga, you're trippin',” he said.

“Brother named Ray Crumley showed me a copy of it before somebody whacked him trying to steal it. Was that you, or your boy Teepee?”

“Wasn't neither one of us. We don't know no nigga name Ray what you said, and we don't know nothin' 'bout no fuckin' tape.”

“Yeah, you do. One of you killed the Digga and got caught on tape doing it. Then when Crumley tried to sell you a copy of the tape, you tried to jack it from his crib instead, ended up killing him too.”

“No! I didn't—Man, this is
wack
! You tryin' to set me up!”

He was all but crying now, just as a man who was indeed being set up might. The distinctions between this and the behavior of someone who was merely afraid of the imminent consequences of his actions were almost infinitesimal—but Gunner knew them when he saw them, all the same, and he was certain he was seeing them here. There was simply too much surprise mixed in with 2Daddy's fear. He knew more than he was telling, to be certain—he just didn't seem to know enough to be guilty of the specific crimes Gunner was accusing him of.

Needless to say, the investigator's job had just become that much harder.

Resigned to making one last attempt to learn what it was the rapper wasn't saying, in the hope it would lead to something bigger, Gunner said, “I'm running out of patience here, Dee. And you're running out of time. Guilty or innocent, the police are gonna stick you for the Digga's murder, soon as they do what I did and connect you to Crumley and the tape. You ever wanna lay another dope track down in your life, you better talk to me, right here and now, give me some kind of chance to control the damage they're gonna do before it's too late.”

“Talk to you about
what?
Man, I done
tol
' you, I don't know—”

Gunner jammed Teepee's gun back into the waistband of his pants behind his back, said, “Fine. I'm out. You wanna let the Man jam you up without a fight, more power to you.” He turned and started for the door.

“Wait, wait! Hold up, goddamnit!” 2Daddy screamed.

Gunner looked back at him, waited for his follow-up.

“Look here.” He paused, behaving like a man who was being forced to pull his own teeth. “I didn't kill
nobody
, all right? Not the Digga, not this Crumley nigga you talkin' about—not
nobody
,” 2Daddy said. “But … I might know who did.”

Gunner still didn't speak.

2Daddy sighed deeply, the surrender killing him, said, “Night homeboy died … he was with a ho' I know. Girl name Antoinetta. Antoinetta Aames.” He paused again, faced Gunner directly. “We ain't tight or nothin', but I know her. Me an' her use' to party together an' shit, long time ago.”

So 2Daddy knew Danee Elbridge's friend Antoinetta even better than she did. It was almost too good to be true.

“And? Get to the point, 2Daddy.”

“The point? The point is, the bitch is crazy, man! She's
a fiend
. Girl's body is dope, but her head …” He shook his own head at the thought. “It ain't right. She's what you call one a them paranoid schizo muthafuckas. I forget what you call it.”

“Paranoid schizophrenic?”

“Yeah, that's it. Paranoid schizophrenic. Like, she always thinkin' somebody's fuckin' with
her
, so she always fuckin' with somebody
first
. Cuttin' niggas up with knives, or tryin' to run 'em down in they own cars. Shit like that.”

“How is it you know she was with the Digga that night?”

“How do I know? I know 'cause she tol' me, that's how. She called me an' tol' me.”

“When?”

“Fuck, man, I don't know. Couple days later, I think. Somethin' like that. Bitch was all shook up 'bout bein' there, said she was scared Five-oh was gonna think she was the one shot homeboy.”

“Did she?”

“Hey, fuck if I know. I asked her if she did, an' she said she didn't, but…” He shrugged. “She wasn't gonna tell me if she did, right?”

“What about her friend Felicia? The sister who was with her?”

2Daddy's face bunched up like the question was something Gunner had pulled from a quantum physics text. “Felicia? Who the fuck is Felicia?”

“Antoinetta was there with a friend that night, 2Daddy. It was her and a girl named Felicia, or Phyllis. One or the other.”

2Daddy shook his head. “I don't know nothin' about no Felicia,” he said. “Antoinetta didn't say nothin' 'bout no other bitch bein' up there with her.”

Gunner processed this information for a moment, said, “So why'd she call you? Why you and not somebody else?”

“Why'd she call me?” 2Daddy asked. “She called me 'cause she needed some Benjamins to go hide somewheres, an' I'm the only nigga she knows got a dollar in they goddamn pocket. Who the fuck else was she gonna call?”

“You give her the money?”

“No. Hell no. You crazy?”

“So she could still be around somewhere.”

2Daddy just shrugged.

“Where would I be likely to find her? Just to hear her side of things?”

“Her side of things? Shit, nigga, I just told you. The bitch is crazy. All she gonna do is say I'm a lie. That I was the one done the Digga, not her.”

“Just the same, 2Daddy, I'd like to look her up. Where could I find her?”

2Daddy frowned, annoyed by Gunner's insistence on doing things his own way. “Maybe over by her moms' house. That's where she was livin' last time I seen her. But—”

“You have an address for her moms' house?”

“No. I told you, man, me an' her ain't been tight in a long time. Last time I was over there was a couple years ago, an' somebody else was drivin'.”

“Okay, 2Daddy. We're all done. Thanks for the four-one-one, and take care of that leg, huh?”

“Fuck you,” 2Daddy said, mad-dogging the investigator once more. Being reminded of his flesh wound while learning Gunner was leaving had suddenly returned him to his original state of impertinence.

“Oh, and listen. When your boy Teepee comes back with the tape—tell him I said to make a big bowl of popcorn and watch it tonight, pay special attention to a character named Wilmer. Can you remember that? Wilmer?”

“Nigga, I ain't your fuckin' secretary. I ain't tellin' Teepee shit!”

Rather than argue with him, Gunner just laughed and left him in peace.

t e n

F
OR THE SECOND TIME IN TWO DAYS
, G
UNNER TIED UP A
pay phone in the lobby of a hotel he could never afford to stay in in order to conduct some business, and just like the first time, it wasn't a particularly rewarding experience.

Bob Zemic still hadn't called his office when Gunner checked with Mickey, so Gunner called him instead. It was now nearly three-thirty, well past Zemic's lunchtime, so his promised review of the surveillance tape Gunner had asked for should have been completed long ago.

“Sorry, Gunner, but it was as I suspected,” Zemic said. “Ray's interest in your tape was strictly sexual in nature.”

Gunner looked off to one side for a moment, resisted the urge to curse under his breath. It was the last thing he had wanted to hear Zemic say. “How's that?”

“I mean, the only thing on it worth mentioning is a little foreplay the guest in room five-oh-nine did on a ladyfriend out in the hallway before they turned in for the night. Beyond that, the tape was completely unextraordinary.”

“Foreplay? What kind of foreplay?”

“Without going into all the gory details, I'll say only that it involved two women, and that someone like Ray would have probably found it highly entertaining.”

“I see. And Elbridge?”

“That's also like I said. There was nothing out of the ordinary to see. The tape shows a few people entering his room, then leaving afterward. That was it.”

“You recognize any of these people?”

“It was three females. All black, relatively young. First two together, then one alone. I'm not sure, but I think the one alone was Elbridge's wife. At least, she resembled the lady I saw identified as his wife on TV a couple of times right after he died.”

“And the other two?”

“I couldn't tell you. Looked like a couple of groupies to me. Maybe I'm wrong.”

“You'd never seen either of them before?”

“No. Neither before or since. Cameras never really caught a clear view of their faces, but I'm pretty sure they weren't familiar.”

Which made it all but certain that Crumley hadn't wanted the tape for blackmail purposes after all. If the people on it couldn't be positively identified, what good was it to an extortionist?

“And you say everyone was accounted for?” Gunner asked. “That is, everyone who entered the kid's room was seen to come out again?”

“Yes. Time stamp says the two groupies went in around five-thirty, came out just before seven. The wife went in right after that, left again less than twenty minutes later. Oh, and before I forget to mention …”

“Yeah?”

“Elbridge himself was visible at the door on both occasions. As alive as you and I are right now.”

Even over the phone, Gunner could feel the grin that had just broken out on Zemic's face.

The logo for Body Count Records was a nine-millimeter automatic handgun in profile, branded along its snout with five human silhouettes intended to represent five kills. Beneath the gun, graffiti-style block letters spelled out
BODY COUNT
in bold silver and black, with the O in each word dissected by the white crosshairs of a rifle scope. If the design struck you as clever and harmless, a visit to the label's corporate headquarters in Burbank was a painless experience. But if you saw it instead, as Gunner did, as a prime example of the hard sell of violence and mayhem the entertainment industry was doing on America's children, just to move product, thirty seconds in the building was enough to send you screaming for the exits. Because the goddamn logo was everywhere, if the receptionist's area was representative of the whole. On the glass entry doors, on the wall behind the receptionist herself, even on each and every one of the roughly three dozen gold record plaques that peppered an entire wall.

It all made Gunner almost sorry that he'd come, except for the fact that he'd had little choice. Despite the bad news Bob Zemic had just given him, Gunner still felt Antoinetta Aames and friend were two people he should talk to, and he was anxious to find them—but not until one nagging question had been answered for him. Benny Elbridge himself would have been the ideal person to ask, but he hadn't been answering Gunner's calls all day, so the investigator had decided to look up the only other person he could think of who might have the information he required: Raymont Trevor, the man Desmond Joy had described as Bume Webb's chief operations officer.

Gunner had called ahead to make sure Trevor was in, then driven straight to Burbank to wait him out, knowing Trevor wouldn't be an easy man to see without an appointment. Still, the investigator suspected that the answer he'd given the receptionist when asked what the nature of his business was—he was the private investigator Benny Elbridge had hired to clear Bume Webb of C.E. Digga Jones's murder—would demand Trevor's attention eventually, and he was right. Less than twenty minutes after his arrival, Trevor's private secretary came out front to show Gunner to Trevor's office—a large, opulently appointed room on the floor above no
Fortune
500 CEO would have resented owning. Assuming, of course, he or she could live with all the Body Count logos scattered throughout the decor.

“Mr. Gunner? Raymont Trevor,” the record exec said upon Gunner's entrance, grinning as he came around his desk to shake hands. Gunner had only seen Bume Webb in newspaper photos and video footage, but he noticed immediately that Trevor was nothing if not a smaller version of him: barrel-chested, bald-headed, and as neckless as a badly drawn cartoon character. Only scale and the full-bodied goatee Trevor wore served to separate the two men physically. “Angie said something about your being a private investigator working for Benny Elbridge?”