All the Lucky Ones Are Dead (4 page)

Key to Body Count's demise, of course, had been the defection to other labels of all but a handful of the company's major recording acts. Making a move many believed could only be dared in Bume's absence, rapper after rapper, group after group had jumped the Body Count ship to escape the allegedly suffocating control of its incarcerated CEO. As a result, the label as it existed today was nothing but a shadow of the industry giant Bume had left behind. Surely, Gunner thought now, had Carlton Elbridge/C.E. Digga Jones lived to carry out the move he'd apparently been considering, he would have provided the last nail in the Body Count coffin. Which meant Bume Webb, imprisoned or not, had at least one possible motive for wanting him dead.

Gunner turned to look at Pharaoh, just as Elbridge had done moments earlier, and raised a hand to wave the bartender over. He'd never met Bume Webb himself, and so had no reason to fear him—but just learning he was involved, however peripherally, in the case Elbridge was trying to sell him had an unsettling effect on the investigator all the same.

“You ready for a drink yet?” he asked Elbridge.

“Yeah,” the older man said, nodding. “As a matter of fact, I am.”

t h r e e

O
NE OF THE MAJOR DRAWBACKS TO HAVING AN OFFICE AT
the rear of a barbershop was the reluctance some people felt about meeting Gunner there. The first thing others thought of when they heard the word “barbershop” was a place filled with local gossip, where anything said in confidence could be spread to the far corners of the earth by the next rising of the sun. Which was exactly what Mickey's Trueblood Barbershop was, of course. The oddball group of characters who let Mickey clip their hair on a semiregular basis could be counted on for nothing if not the broad and instantaneous dissemination of every word they heard spoken in his establishment, especially if said word was best kept hush-hush.

This was why, when Gunner called his old high school partner Slicky Soames to ask for a meeting Monday afternoon, and Slicky actually agreed without argument to come down to Mickey's, Gunner was totally amazed.

As Gunner often was, to a lesser extent, at the success Slicky had achieved since their days in school together. The kid who had once been the most comical and unreliable loser in Gunner's stable of Dorsey High School homeboys was today one of the preeminent concert promoters on the southern California music scene. All the top hip-hop, rap, and R&B acts worked with Slicky almost exclusively.

“Hard to believe, ain't it?” Slicky asked, grinning from ear to ear. The grin was the same one Gunner remembered from the old days, but everything else was not: the flamboyant clothes, the four gold rings on his hands, and the close-cut hair pasted back on his head with a gleaming coat of gel were all new.

“I'm not sure I do believe it,” Gunner said.

They were seated across from each other at Gunner's desk, finishing off the bottle of Wild Turkey Gunner had purchased a few minutes earlier, just for the occasion.

“People used to say I was ‘clever,'” Slicky said, his smooth, childlike face caught in the tiny halo of Gunner's desk lamp. “But what I was was
smart
. They'd've measured my IQ back then, they'd've known that.”

“Right. Stupid them. Not being able to see the genius behind all those F minuses.”

The two men reminisced in the relative dark awhile longer, then got around to discussing the actual purpose of their meeting. Gunner told Slicky everything Benny Elbridge had told him at the Deuce, and explained that he was hoping his old friend could give him some background on the players involved in the case he'd just taken on. Maybe even offer him a little advice on where to start things off, as a bonus.

“Don't,” Slicky said immediately, completely straight-faced. “Tell the Digga's daddy you made a mistake and refer him to somebody else.”

“And why would I want to do that?”

“Because you don't wanna mess with Bume, that's why. Unless you're ready to spend the rest of your life hooked up to one of them machines in a hospital someplace.”

“You're saying he's dangerous.”

“Shit. You tellin' me you don't already know that?”

“I don't know it personally. What I read and hear about the man's pretty bad, sure, but—”

“Brother, if I saw that nigga comin' down the street, I wouldn't just cross to the other side—I'd move to another state. What more do you need to know?”

“Then you do think it's possible he had the Digga killed.”

“Possible? With Bume, all things are possible.”

“Even though the kid's father tells me he and Bume were tight? That Bume liked to treat him like a son?”

“Even though that's true, yeah. Hell, that's all the more reason for Bume to take it personal, the Digga was gettin' ready to take his music across the street like people say he was. Right?”

Gunner had a taste of Wild Turkey, nodded to concede the point. “How well do you know him, Slick? Bume Webb, I mean.”

Slicky shrugged. “We've worked together a couple times, that's it. I did some shows for two of his acts, Godfather Royal and this girl they call Tynee Itty Bit. They were good shows, man, but Bume was in my face every minute. Got kind of funky there, one time.”

“Funky?”

Slicky took a deep breath, said, “There was a little dispute about some money. Damages to the facility his contract with me held him responsible for. He didn't wanna pay, and disliked the fact I didn't either. So he tried to force the issue.”

Gunner refilled his own glass, let Slicky decide for himself to go on.

“Couple of gorilla-lookin' niggas came by the office one day, busted in on me in the middle of a conference call. Both strappin' Tec nines. One of 'em takes the clip out of his, sets it down on my desk and says, ‘With Bume's compliments.' Then they both leave.” He shoved his empty glass toward Gunner, beads of sweat starting to appear at his scalp line. “Like I said, I ain't never doin' business with that fool again.”

Gunner took note of his old friend's distress, then said, “You may not get the chance. Way Elbridge tells it, Body Count's as good as dead.”

“Yeah, it is. While the cat's away, the mice will play, right? But Body Count goin' away ain't gonna be the end of Bume. Anybody who thinks that is crazy.”

“And why's that?”

“Because the nigga's connected, that's why. Same money he got to build Body Count's gonna be waitin' for 'im when he gets out. All he's gonna do is rebuild.”

“What money is that?”

Slicky grinned and shook his head. “Hell, Gunner. You weren't that ignorant even in high school.”

“You're talking about drug money.”

“See? I told you.”

“Whose drug money?”

Slicky hesitated, considering the delicacy of the question, and said, “Nobody knows for a fact, but it's supposed to be an O.G. named Ready Lewis. Major player, owns a dance club over in the Crenshaw district, they call it Ruff 'n Ready's.”

Gunner almost dropped his glass into his lap.

Slicky grinned. “Friend of yours?”

“You might say that. He's my nephew.”

Slicky stopped smiling. “No shit. Ready? That right?”

Ready Lewis's real first name was Aired, and his late mother, Ruth, had been Gunner's older sister. When Ruth died eight years ago, her death certificate had attributed her passing to congenital heart failure, but everyone in the Gunner clan knew that wasn't true; Alred had murdered her. Twenty-one years of heartbreak wasted on an oldest son who couldn't—or wouldn't—care for anything or anyone but himself had finally broken the boy's mother down. Her death had stung him for a while, but only briefly; in the end, he found it liberating. In the eight years since her passing, he'd become the fully developed sociopath he'd always wanted to be: Ready Lewis. Player. Killer. Rock dealer extraordinaire.

To say that Gunner and his nephew weren't close was to flirt with unparalleled understatement.

“Damn, man,” Slicky said after Gunner had explained things to him. “I never knew.”

“You wouldn't. He wasn't somebody whose picture we kept up on the mantel.”

“You ever talk to him?”

“Once, little over a year ago. I had a favor I needed to ask.”

“And?”

“That was it. He helped me because he owed me one, now we're all even. End of story.”

Slicky nodded, rightfully deciding that was probably as far as Gunner wanted the subject to go.

“How sure are you about this, Slicky? About 'Red being Bume's banker?”

“I told you. I'm
not
. Might be him, and it might not.”

“But?”

“But all the talk says it is. Him and Bume are homies, right? They go out together, run with the same crowd. Only natural they'd be in business together too.”

“You think he could have had something to do with the Digga's death?”

“I don't know. Never met the man. All I got to go by is word on the street.”

“And word on the street is …”

“He's just as capable as Bume. Maybe more.”

Gunner nodded, agreeing. He didn't want to believe Alred could be that far gone, but he did all the same.

“What was your take on the Digga's suicide, Slicky? Did you buy it?”

“Did I buy it?” Slicky paused to think it over. “That's hard to say. I was surprised to hear about it, I guess, but the shit didn't shock me, if that's what you're askin'.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know. Why should it? I mean, just 'cause the boy had money don't mean he was happy.”

“It's a long way from not being happy to putting a gun in your mouth, Slick,” Gunner said.

“Yeah, that's true. But it's like this old expression we got in the business: ‘All the lucky ones are dead.' Which means all the shit that comes with fame an' fortune ain't always worth the struggle. The Digga had a lot of pressure on 'im, man. All them big stars do. They got people comin' at 'em from every angle, Gunner—fans, managers, media types, record execs—all tryin' to get a piece of 'em. And if you're only nineteen, twenty-somethin' years old … you might be able to handle it, and you might not.”

“Was this particular kid supposed to be that soft?”

“Soft?”

“I mean fragile. His old man's telling me he was a pussycat, of course, but I rather doubt he could've been all that.”

“A pussycat?” Slicky shook his head and chuckled. “Naw, man. He wasn't no pussycat. I don't know no
female
rapper you could call a damn pussycat.”

“Question I'm really asking is, was this kid just fronting tough, or was he the real thing?”

“You mean, was he a 'banger?”

“Either that, or someone who could've easily passed for one, yeah.”

“He wasn't a ‘banger that I know of. But that don't mean he wasn't one. It's for sure he could act the fool like one, he felt like it. I can think of a couple times at least he threw down with niggas in public.”

“Would one of them happen to be 2DaddyLarge?”

“2Daddy was one of 'em, yeah. The Digga's pops told you the truth about that—2Daddy and his boy didn't have no love for each other. That was a well-known fact.”

“Because 2Daddy's East Coast, and the Digga was West Coast.”

Slicky shook his head again. “That was only part of it,” he said.

“So what was the other part?”

“Other part was the same thing almost had me in
your
ass once. Remember?”

He was talking about a girl named Lindsey Waddell. A long-legged eighteen-year-old with a pretty face and a killer smile they'd both tried to date in high school. First Slicky, then Gunner, after Lindsey had decided eight weeks in Slicky's company was more than enough for a lifetime.

“This sister named Lindsey too?” Gunner asked, fighting to keep the name from bringing a self-satisfied grin to his face.

“No. This one's name is Danee. As in Danee Elbridge.”

“The Digga's wife?”

“And 2Daddy's ex–main squeeze. Yeah.”

Gunner sat back in his chair, turning contemplative. “Funny. But Mr. Elbridge failed to mention that. And he was so hell-bent on selling 2Daddy as a prime suspect too.”

“Might be he don't know,” Slicky suggested. “You said he was late on the scene, right? Only been around the boy ‘bout a year or so?”

Gunner nodded.

“And it ain't like it was public knowledge. People in the business knew about it, but that was about it.”

Gunner wasn't satisfied with that answer, but he decided to move on, let Benny Elbridge himself respond to the question later.

“All right. So 2Daddy had a motive for killing the Digga. That mean he had the wherewithal to act on it?”

“No. Not necessarily it don't.”