When Last Seen Alive (27 page)

eighteen

T
HURSDAY WAS THE DAY IT ALL CAME CRASHING TOGETHER.

The quiet and uneventful Wednesday that preceded it had given no warning of what was to come. As of Thursday morning, Poole was still combing the streets for Rafe Sweeney and/or Gil Everson’s prostitute girlfriend, Byron Scales had yet to utter a word that might assist the FBI in its effort to track down his fellow Defenders of the Bloodline, and Gil Everson’s damage control strategy of one part professed ignorance mixed with two parts stubborn silence was in its third day of going strong. Time, in other words, had not exactly stood still since Tuesday evening, in the aftermath of Jack Frerotte’s death in Gunner’s living room, but it hadn’t produced anything remotely useful to the investigator’s various causes, either.

Perhaps if it had, Gunner would have found something more vital to do Thursday morning than attend Connie Everson’s funeral. He detested funerals, and any excuse to avoid one would have been welcome. But lacking other business on his agenda, and as the late Mrs. Everson
had
been a client, Gunner felt obligated to pay his last respects, rather than sit at his desk back at Mickey’s and pretend he wasn’t feeling guilty about it.

The service took place at Inglewood Park Memorial Cemetery, literally across the street from the hospital room at Daniel Freeman in which Sly Cribbs—who had himself only narrowly missed becoming the Everson affair’s first fatality—was slowly mending. Gray skies were fitting for funerals, and this one was as gray as they came: dark as charcoal, even black in places, blocking out the sun like an iron ceiling. It was only 10:00
A.M.,
but it could have easily passed for early nightfall.

Gunner hung back at the grave site like an interloper, watching them lay his former client into the ground with quiet dignity and grace. Councilman Everson, of course, was the chief mourner among the thirty or so people in attendance, darkly resplendent in a black, double-breasted suit, his grief composed but in clear view of all. If it was an act, Gunner thought, it was a good one. But then, guilt could often move a man to depths of emotion sorrow alone could not.

When Everson’s face flashed briefly with surprise, his eyes affixed to something off in the distance no one but he had yet to notice, Gunner almost missed it. The councilman’s recovery from the shock had been immediate, nearly instantaneous. But Gunner was lucky; his own gaze had been focused upon Everson at the time, and he’d caught the change in his expression right away. He turned to see what the councilman had found so disturbing …

… and saw a frail-looking black woman thirty yards away,
limping
down the paved road leading to the street.

Gunner stepped back, distancing himself farther yet from the gathering at Connie Everson’s grave, and took off at a dead run after her, not really giving a damn if Gil Everson saw him, or not.

“Connie was my sister,” Shelby Charles said. But Gunner had already known that, of course.

He had known it the minute he’d caught up to her just short of an hour ago, outside Inglewood Park Memorial Cemetery. He saw her face again and suddenly knew two things: why she had come to see his former client buried, and why she had always struck him as vaguely familiar. They hadn’t been identical twins, Connie Everson and Shelby Charles, but their resemblance to one another was there, however understated it might be.

It had taken him fifteen minutes to talk her into turning herself over to the police. He had feared that her brother-in-law’s black limousine would exit the cemetery, then stop on the street to let Gil Everson whisk her away before Gunner could even begin to question her, but the lead car in the funeral procession just cruised right past them instead, Everson probably deciding against giving the television news crews hovering outside the cemetery a scene he would never be able to explain away.

In the same room at Southwest in which Gunner had endured the smarmy brow-beating of agents Smith and Leffman two days earlier, Gunner and Poole sat down with Shelby Charles and coerced her into revealing, little by little, how she had unwittingly been the catalyst to both Sly Cribbs’s shooting and her older sister’s suicide.

According to Charles, she and Gil Everson had been engaged to be married years before Everson had married Connie Charles instead, when all three had been students at Howard University in the Charleses’ native Washington, D.C. Connie had always had designs on Everson, and he had always appreciated the attention. When Shelby was nearly crippled in a tragic car accident in the spring of 1982, one which left her with both a permanent hitch in her gait and a dependence on prescription pain killers, Connie moved in for the kill, and Everson jumped ship, finding it difficult to envision himself achieving his political goals with a less than flawless mate by his side. Unfortunately for Everson and his new bride-to-be, however, he could not make himself care for Connie Charles the way he cared for her sister. Even after a crushing depression drove her to a life on the street, where her drug addiction quickly expanded far beyond prescription medication, Shelby Charles remained the future Inglewood councilman’s one true love, and Connie Charles was both perceptive and realistic enough to know it. In fact, it was her greatest fear that Everson would eventually respond to this dilemma by either returning to Shelby outright, or keeping her as his mistress.

So Connie Charles found a way to make these options anathema to him.

“Christ. Is that one for the books, or what?” Poole said, after he and Gunner had stepped outside to leave Shelby Charles alone, having heard what they felt would forever remain the most relevant part of her testimony.

“I’ve heard of a lot of weird clauses to prenuptial agreements,” Gunner said, “but yeah, that was a new one on me.”

“It was smart, though. Damn smart. She turned the agreement around on his ass. He didn’t want her hand in his cookie jar, he was gonna have to keep
his
off her little sister.”

“Otherwise, the agreement was null and void.”

“Right.”

“Odd how Everson never mentioned that, isn’t it? All he said was, adultery didn’t invalidate the agreement.”

“As opposed to adultery with a
specific lady.”

Gunner nodded.

“I bet Everson damn near had a cardiac when she wanted that clause put in. But she probably wouldn’t sign it any other way.”

“And I’m sure he thought it wouldn’t matter, in any case. At least in the beginning.” Gunner grinned. “Because we all like to think that way, don’t we, Poole? That no one woman’s got our number? We wanna stay away, we can stay away, no problem?”

“Yeah, right,” Poole said, laughing. “Still, you gotta give the fucker credit. He held out for longer than either of us could, I’ll bet. Damn near thirteen years.”

Shelby Charles had said it had been that long before Everson showed up at her home in D.C. eleven months ago, talked her out of tricking and into a detox center, in preparation for spending quality time with him again.

“So I guess if the good councilman didn’t have a motive for sending Sweeney after Sly before,” Gunner said, “he’s got one now, huh?”

“Oh, yeah. I’d say so.”

“So when do you bring him in again?”

Poole thought about it, shook his head. “I don’t know, Gunner. This ought’a shake him up pretty good, but …”

“You still need Sweeney.”

“Yeah. Sweeney was the triggerman. Havin’ a solid motive for Everson’s nice, but it ain’t worth bubkes if we can’t connect it to Cribbs’s shooting. And right now, nobody can do that for us but Sweeney.”

Gunner nodded, sat down at the empty desk behind him. Poole found a second chair nearby and did likewise.

“So where is he?” Gunner asked after a short silence.

“Beats the hell out of me. We should’ve found ’im by now.”

“You think Everson sent him underground?”

“That’s certainly possible. Except … somethin’ about that doesn’t jibe with
me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Sounds odd, I know, but I really think the councilman was on the level about Sweeney being fired. Either that, or he’s a helluva better actor than he is a politician.”

“You think Sweeney and Connie Everson were really getting it on?”

“Yeah. I do. Everson seemed genuinely pissed when he talked about it. He never said they were gettin’ it on in so many words, actually, but he sure as hell implied it.”

“What did he say, exactly?”

“You expect me to remember that now? Shit, I don’t know. He just basically said he couldn’t trust Sweeney anymore. Not professionally, but personally.”

“And you took that to mean Sweeney had been doing the nasty with his wife?”

“Yeah. I did. It was just somethin’ about the way he was actin’. Like Sweeney had hit ’im where it hurts a guy most, at home, with his old lady.” He spun in the chair he was sitting in, just like a kid, only made it turn one half a revolution. “Funny thing is, I never knew he gave a—”

“Wait a second,” Gunner said, waving a hand at Poole’s face to get his attention. “Run that by me again. Slow.”

“Run what by you again?”

“That bit about Sweeney hitting Everson where it hurts a guy most. At home, with his old lady.”

“What about it?”

“I just had a thought. You said Everson never said it was his wife Sweeney was fucking around with, right?”

“Right. He just implied it.”

“You mean he implied that Sweeney was fucking around with his
old lady.”

“Yeah. What—”

“What if it wasn’t his
wife
he was talking about, Poole? What if it was somebody else? Somebody he might’ve felt just as possessive of, if not more so?”

“Like who? What the hell are you talkin’ about, Gunner? Spit it out.”

“I’m talking about a platinum blonde with a dynamite figure,” the investigator said, scanning the squadroom for a free phone. “Looked to me to be somewhere in her early twenties. I don’t know her name, but Mickey does. Don’t ask me why.” He got up, walked over to the telephone on the desk at his right and started punching in Mickey’s number.

“Give me a second, Poole, and I’ll get it for you,” he said.

Rafe Sweeney was arrested without incident at the Westchester condominium of Chelsea Seymour a few minutes past three that afternoon. He was hiding in the blonde’s bedroom when Poole, accompanied by a pair of backup uniforms, called on Seymour to see if Gunner’s theory that she and Sweeney were backdooring Gil Everson was viable. One of the uniforms outside spotted the giant black man through a bedroom window, and Poole subsequently managed to talk him into surrendering without attempting to blast his way out of the condo first. Or maybe Seymour’s impassioned pleas that Sweeney give himself up had moved him to do so, it was hard for Poole to tell which.

In any case, Sweeney was in lockup by eight that evening, and the circumstances surrounding his assault on Sly Cribbs were no longer a mystery. Which was not to say that Sweeney himself had confessed to anything, because he hadn’t; in fact, he hadn’t said three words to the police since his arrest. It was his girlfriend Seymour who had been doing all the talking, and there seemed to be no end to her cooperation with authorities. Knowing a tight spot when she was in one, Seymour had jumped at the chance to appease the LAPD and the DA’s office by answering every question they put to her, and the result was a noose around Sweeney’s neck he would never be able to shake off.

In short, Sweeney had attacked Sly Cribbs in order to keep his girlfriend living in the manner to which she (and he) had become accustomed. Chelsea Seymour was a kept woman, and Councilman Gil Everson was the man who’d been keeping her for the last six years, and neither she nor Sweeney had any interest in seeing what life would be like for her if Everson’s pockets were to suddenly go dry. Which, of course, would have been the likely outcome had Connie Everson been able to prove in divorce court that her husband had been seeing her sister Shelby again. Seymour knew about this loophole in the prenuptial agreement her sugar daddy shared with his wife because Everson had been fool enough to tell her about it once, and naturally, she in turn had mentioned it to Sweeney. It was no wonder, then, that both were gravely concerned when Everson began flying Shelby Charles into Los Angeles three or four times a month for two- and three-day romantic rendezvous.

Sweeney was so concerned, in fact, that after he’d spotted Sly Cribbs photo-documenting a tryst between the pair at the Marina Pacific Hotel eight days ago, he had required no instruction, from either Everson or Seymour (by Seymour’s account, anyway), to first relieve Cribbs of his camera and film by whatever means were necessary, then issue a strongly worded Cease and Desist order to the kid’s suspected employer, Connie Everson, the following day. An order, it now seemed clear, the councilman’s wife had taken very much to heart.

If Gil Everson had only proven to be as gullible as Sweeney believed him to be, and accepted the bodyguard’s claim that he had acted as he had for Everson’s sake alone, Sweeney might never have been forced to make the incriminating move of running for the cover of Seymour’s condominium. But Everson was no dummy. As the councilman himself thought it might be wise to explain only hours after Sweeney’s arrest Thursday night, Everson had known his security man had not gone after Sly Cribbs and his wife with such calamitous zeal strictly to protect his employer. Despite what Everson had told Poole earlier, Sweeney was not that devoted to duty. He could only have taken the action he had, therefore, in the interests of one person—the
only
person Everson could think of who might have feared the financial consequences of Cribbs’s photographs nearly as much as he: Chelsea Seymour.

Saturday night in Sacramento, when Everson had put this accusation to Sweeney directly, the bodyguard failed so miserably to plead innocent that Everson felt compelled to cut him adrift without a moment’s hesitation, both to punish the bodyguard for betraying him, and to separate himself from the fallout he knew was most certainly to come.

In light of all this, this convoluted medley of cross-infidelity and greed, aggravated assault and duplicity, it was actually possible, Gunner realized, to see Gil Everson as a victim, the unwitting centerpiece to Sly Cribbs’s shooting and Connie Everson’s suicide, respectively. He had no claim to actual “innocence,” to be sure, as the days of intense media scrutiny awaiting him would prove, but he wasn’t the story’s key villain, he was only one of several, so it could have been argued that he was nearly as deserving of his constituents’ pity as he was their contempt.