All the Lucky Ones Are Dead (3 page)

“Them other fools, most of them are the real thing. They just as soon shoot you in the head as make another record. Which is why they killed Carlton, see. 'Cause he wasn't like the rest of 'em, and they knew it. He was—”

“Hold it, hold it. I thought your son committed suicide.”

Elbridge shook his head angrily, said, “That's a lie. That's just what they set it up to look like, suicide. Carlton didn't have no reason to kill himself, he was happy as a young man could be.”

“I'm sure that's true, Mr. Elbridge, but—”

“My son was murdered, Mr. Gunner. I don't give a damn what the police or nobody else says. That's why I'm here, talkin' to you. I want you to find out who killed Carlton, and see to it they get what's comin' to 'em. All you gotta do is tell me how much you need t'get started.”

He reached into his pocket, took out a wad of bills that had the well-worn look of a man's life savings, and started peeling back fifties one by one. Waiting for Gunner to say when.

“Hold on a minute, Mr. Elbridge,” Gunner said, holding a palm up to ward Elbridge off.

“What? You don't want the job?”

“I didn't say that. I said hold on a minute.”

“I'm in a hurry here, Mr. Gunner. You ain't the man I should be talkin' to, just say so.”

“Look. We're getting a little ahead of ourselves here, that's all. Before we can start talking about my fee, I need to hear a little more about what you're asking me to do for it.”

“You wanna ask questions? Fine. Ask me anything you wanna know, I'll tell you,” Elbridge said. He put his money away and leaned forward in his seat, crossed his hands atop the table like a kid on the first day of school.

Gunner let him sit that way for a long while, trying to decide what to do. He'd already heard enough to know the work the older man was offering him was the kind he often regretted accepting later. The cast of characters he'd have to rub elbows with in order to look into the circumstances of a gangsta rapper's death was obvious: thugs who knew how to sample and rhyme, so-called security men eight days out of San Quentin, and power-mongering record execs who spent more time cutting lines of coke than they did distribution deals.

But Gunner was not the overly discriminating judge of prospective cases he used to be. Whereas the thought of having to deal with such an unsavory group might once have sent him running for cover, even if nothing awaited him there but a mountain of unpaid bills and a half-empty carton of oatmeal, today it merely caused him to proceed with caution. Over time, and with experience, he had learned to appreciate the challenges that sometimes came with an otherwise undesirable work assignment. And since he had already turned his nose up at one job offer today …

“All right,” Gunner said. “Let's start off with an easy one. You have any actual
evidence
your son's death was something other than suicide? Any witnesses, any letters or documents …”

“No.”

“No?”

“No sir. I don't have nothin' like that.”

Gunner took in a deep breath, held it for a moment. “His body was discovered in a hotel room, I believe.”

“That's right. Over at the Beverly Hills Westmore. Real nice place.”

“And he was there because?”

“Huh?”

“Why was he staying in a hotel room? He lived here in Los Angeles, didn't he?”

“Oh. Yeah, that's right. He did. But the boy liked to go to the Westmore to write sometimes. You know, just for a coupla days or so, to get away from the wife and kids.”

“He was there alone, then?”

“Alone? Sure, he was alone. Who—”

“So there was no one else in the room with him when he died.”

“No. I mean—”

“I don't understand, Mr. Elbridge. If there were no witnesses to his death, and no evidence to suggest foul play, what exactly are your suspicions based upon?”

Elbridge took umbrage at the very question, said, “They're based on what I feel right
here
”—he pounded his chest with a fist—“and what I
know
right here!” Now he poked his right temple with an index finger. “That's what they're based upon!”

With considerable effort, Gunner suppressed the impulse to sigh. “I see.”

“You're a detective, ain't you? An investigator?”

“Yes sir, I am, but—”

“Then what do I need with
evidence
? You're supposed to find
me
the evidence!”

“Technically, Mr. Elbridge, that's correct. But without reason to believe such evidence
exists
—”

“If my money ain't good enough for you, Mr. Gunner, all you got to do is say so.”

“This isn't about money,” Gunner said, starting to get angry himself now. “If you'd just hold up a minute—”

“Whatever you heard the boy's mother say about me is a lie. Ain't a word of truth in nothin' her and all them newspapers been sayin' about me, not
one damn word
!” He was shaking with rage now, and Gunner could see there were tears in his eyes as well. “Coretta thinks a man can't love his son just 'cause he wasn't there when the boy was growin' up,” Elbridge went on, wiping his eyes with a monogrammed handkerchief he'd removed from his left trouser pocket. “So she goes around tellin' everybody I was only after the boy's money, comin' around 'im now that he's grown and makin' millions.

“But you don't see
her
here, do you? Offerin' to spend her own goddamn money to find out what happened to him? Hell no! Why should she? He left practically half of everything he had to that woman, she couldn't care less how he really died!”

As Elbridge spoke, fragmented memories of the news reports that had made him vaguely familiar came back to Gunner, all portraying the man before him as the quintessential whipping boy of the African-American community: the absentee father. A man who'd conceived a child in his youth, abandoned its mother soon after the child's birth, and only returned to the scene of the crime long after all the hard work of parenthood had been done. Gunner was now even able to recall how Carlton Elbridge's mother—a tall, gangly woman with a fierce, unsettling scowl that never seemed to leave her face—had been accusing her former lover of all these offenses and more, to any reporter who might ask, ever since their son's body had been discovered in that hotel room eight days before.

Did Elbridge deserve to have his character so assassinated? Gunner couldn't say just by watching the man cry, and he didn't know how much it should matter to him if he did. Working for people who had done less than right by their immediate family was, after all, about as rare in the private investigation racket as wearing laced shoes.

“Maybe the boy's mother just doesn't share your belief that he was murdered,” Gunner said.

Again, Elbridge became outraged. “The hell she doesn't! Every time she opens her mouth, she's tellin' somebody how Carlton was killed! She knows as well as I do he never would've taken his own life like that!”

“Maybe. Or else she could just be in denial about it. Most mothers would be in her position, right?”

“Coretta ain't in no denial, Mr. Gunner. She knows the truth, same as me. Only difference is, all she wants to do is
talk
about it.”

“All right. So what is this ‘truth'? If Carlton was murdered, who murdered him?”

Elbridge shook his head, said, “I don't know. I wish to God I did.”

“You don't have
any
ideas?”

“Ideas? Hell yes, I got ideas. But—”

“Let me hear one, Mr. Elbridge. Please.”

Elbridge glanced over at Pharaoh at the bar, acting like he was suddenly in need of a drink, then turned back to Gunner and said, “Me, I think it was probably 2DaddyLarge.”

“2Daddy who?”

“2DaddyLarge. The East Coast rapper. You know about all that, right? East Coast, West Coast?”

Gunner did, but only vaguely. According to his limited understanding, there were two separate and distinct planets in the gangsta rap universe—East Coast and West Coast, New York versus “Cali”—and rarely did the twain ever meet. At least, not without some exchange of trash talk and/or, on some occasions, automatic gunfire.

“And you suspect this 2Daddy because what? He was East Coast, Carlton was West Coast?”

“That's all it was. These kids today don't need no other excuse to start shootin' each other.”

“There wasn't something personal between Carlton and 2Daddy?”

“Personal? Not for Carlton there wasn't. All that East Coast/West Coast foolishness didn't mean nothin' to
him
. But 2Daddy and his crew—they take it serious as a heart attack. 2Daddy
hated
Carlton, Carlton used to say the boy couldn't do an interview with nobody without talkin' ‘bout how he was gonna serve Carlton up at least once.”

Gunner started jotting down notes on a large legal pad, said, “Any chance this 2Daddy—Large, was it?—could've had more reason for hating Carlton than that? This East Coast/West Coast business?”

“More reason? I don't—”

Keeping his eyes turned down to the legal pad, Gunner asked, “Is 2Daddy a gangbanger, for instance?”

The question caught Elbridge off guard. “A gang-banger?”

“Yes sir. Representing the wrong coast isn't the only thing can get a kid thrown down on these days. His colors can get him killed just as easily.”

“That might be right. But I wouldn't know.”

“What about Carlton?”

“He wouldn't'a known neither.”

“He had no gang affiliation?”

“No. Carlton didn't mess with no gangs.”

“And you can say that with such certainty because …”

“Because I was his
father
. That's how.”

Gunner smiled to take the edge off, said, “I hope you'll forgive me for pressing what's clearly a delicate point with you, Mr. Elbridge, but where exactly did your son grow up? Here in Los Angeles, or—”

“That's right. Los Angeles. He grew up less than ten blocks from where we're sittin' right now, his mama's old house is over on Ninety-seventh and Beach. But what's—”

Gunner cut him off. “Not to say it isn't done, sir, but that must have been pretty tough for him, don't you think? Living here in the heart of the hood without ever messing with gangs?”

Elbridge glowered at him, furious. “You tryin' to say he did?”

“I'm trying to say not every rapper's fronting when he drops lyrics about 'banging. A lot of these kids are the genuine article, Crips and Bloods through and through.”

“Maybe they are. I don't know, like I said. All I know is, Carlton wasn't like that.”

“He never even played to that perception?”

“No. If you mean did he ever
claim
to be a Crip or a Blood, the answer's no.”

“And the lyrics to his music—I guess they never referred to gangbanging either?”

“Look—there was a lot of
violence
in the boy's music, sure. Talk about guns, and women, and jackin' people up, and such. But none of that mess was
real
, Mr. Gunner. The boy was just givin' his fans and his record company what they wanted. It was business, that's all.”

And Gunner knew it could easily have been just that. In the gangsta rap arena, the image of a hard-core “killa” was an invaluable marketing asset; you couldn't sell the anger and venom in the music with the reputation of a Boy Scout, after all. If Carlton Elbridge had been a harmless kid wearing the face of a thug like C.E. Digga Jones strictly for the purposes of commerce, he wouldn't have been the first gangsta rapper to do it. And he certainly wouldn't be the last.

“Okay. Let's get back to the boy's mother,” Gunner said. “You say she's just as convinced Carlton was murdered as you are.”

“Yes. That's right.”

“So who does
she
think murdered him? 2DaddyLarge, like you, or somebody else?”

Elbridge began to fidget in the wake of the question, as if answering it would bring him almost certain embarrassment. “Coretta got a lot of ideas about who killed the boy,” he said.

“Give me a for instance.”

Elbridge shrugged and made a face, trying to dismiss the validity of what he was about to say. “She mostly thinks it mighta been Bume.”

“Excuse me?”

“On accounta the boy was thinkin' ‘bout leavin' his record company for another one. But Bume—”

Gunner sat up abruptly. “Bume? Bume Webb?”

“Yeah. Bume Webb. How many other niggas named Bume you ever heard of?”

Gunner just looked at Elbridge forlornly, wondering why he hadn't been fully prepared for this particular name to come up. For few and far between were the rap music controversies that did not in some way involve the legendary black recording mogul whose first name was pronounced like a cannon shot. The six-foot-six, 280-pound Webb spelled it B-U-M-E, rather than B-O-O-M, but it was a fitting handle for him all the same, as it was said the street thug turned entrepreneur and the sounds of heavy artillery were quite often all but inseparable.

“Carlton recorded for Bume?” Gunner asked, trying to make the question sound wholly innocent.

“Yeah. But he was thinkin' ‘bout changin' companies, like I said.”

“Where was he thinking about going?”

“He hadn't decided yet. But there was this new company he was talkin' to, called New Millennia, he was thinkin' ‘bout goin' over there.”

“Because?”

“Because Bume was goin' to jail, that's why, and Carlton didn't wanna be the last one still workin' for 'im when he got out. At least, that was part of it.”

In a highly publicized turn of events even Gunner hadn't missed, Bume had been busted on a weapons charge three months earlier, the latest in a long line of such offenses, and a no-nonsense judge had sentenced him to a five-year stretch at the California Institution for Men out in Chino as a result. The big man had only been away for a little over six weeks, but in that short stretch of time, Body Count—the multimillion-dollar record label he had single-handedly built from scratch—had all but fallen into bankruptcy, so lost was the enterprise without his heavy-handed leadership.