You Can Die Trying (17 page)

“My appointment was for eight o’clock. It’s nine o’clock now. What time was your appointment for?”

He was smiling pleasantly, but he was doing it from right up in Gunner’s face.

“Seven-thirty,” Gunner said.

“That would mean they’re an hour and a half behind.”

Gunner shrugged. “I guess so.” He started through the door again, but the big man slid gently to one side, blocking his way.

“I think you missed your chance, man,” he said, no longer smiling. “I think if you had a seven-thirty appointment to see Mr. Wiley, you should have been here at seven-thirty. Just like I’ve been here since eight. Fair is fair, right?”

He looked over at the receptionist behind the window to suggest that she second the motion.

“Mr. Gunnert has an emergency, Mr. Foster,” she said, her voice filled with trepidation.

“Shit. Not yet, he doesn’t,” Foster said, yanking the door out of Gunner’s hand.

“Trudy’s right, Howie. Mr. Gunner’s case is an emergency,” Milton Wiley said, suddenly appearing in the doorway. He waited for Foster to release the door, then held it open for Gunner to pass through. “We’re running quite a bit behind this morning, and we were unable to get to him earlier. Please forgive the inconvenience, will you?”

Foster didn’t look like he wanted to forgive anything, but he let Gunner go without trying to stop him. Gunner could feel the heat of his gaze on his back long after Wiley had closed the door behind them.

The lawyer led the way to his office without speaking. He took a seat behind his desk and waited for Gunner to choose one for himself, neglecting to choose one for him.

“He was right, you know,” Wiley said, infuriated. “You had no right to barge in on me like this. It’s not fair to my clients.”

“I didn’t barge in. I called ahead,” Gunner said, settling onto a burgundy leather couch against the wall at Wiley’s left.

“That’s right. With a threat. I didn’t appreciate that, either.”

“Funny you should say that, Mr. Wiley. Because there are a few things I don’t appreciate myself. Such as having my business spread all over the street, like leaflets at a goddamn carnival.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m talking about your boy Marvin X. Mr. STIFLE. He came to see me Saturday to tell me how disappointed he was to hear I’ve been working the Jack McGovern case. I’m a disgrace to my race, he said.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The hell you don’t. You turned him onto me. You’re the only one who could have.”

Wiley fell silent for a moment, considering his alternatives. “I thought his organization might like to know what you’ve been doing,” he said indifferently.

“I’ll tell you what you thought. You thought he’d do exactly what he did. Lay a shitload of crap on me about police brutality, and then infer I’m a Tom for ignoring it.”

“And you don’t think you are, is that right? Take a look around you, Mr. Gunner. What Marvin had to say about police brutality is very real. People who are your neighbors are being maimed by the police in this city every day.”

“I’m well aware of that, counselor.”

“Then how can you continue to pursue the case you’re presently engaged in? How can you sleep at night knowing that the man you’re trying to vindicate was one of the most onerous examples of racist law enforcement this community has ever known?”

“Easy. I just tell myself he was innocent. Not of being a colossal bigot—but of murdering Lendell Washington. That’s my only concern in this matter, Mr. Wiley. The rest I don’t give a damn about.”

“No. Obviously, you don’t,” Wiley said.

“Look. Let’s you and I get something straight, all right? I don’t need you, or Brother Rush, or any of your mutual friends at STIFLE, to tell me what kind of law enforcement the black community’s been getting around here lately. I’ve seen more than my share of prone-outs and outright ass-kickings, just like you have. But my turning down the McGovern case isn’t going to solve the problem any more than my accepting it will make it any worse. Besides—and I’ve told you this before—I’m not working for McGovern. My client’s interests and McGovern’s just appear to coincide in this case, that’s all.”

“And appearances can be deceiving, I guess.”

“That’s right. They can. Take you, for example.”

“Me?”

“When I met you last Thursday, you appeared to have nothing but contempt for Lendell’s cousin, Noah Ford. You said he was a devil. Nobody to trust for the truth.”

Wiley was slow to shrug. “So?”

“So he was your client. Wasn’t he?”

After another pause: “I represented him, yes. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing. Except that you did your damndest to keep me from talking to him, and a day after I did, he wound up dead.”

Wiley leapt forward in his chair, enraged. “If you’re trying to imply I had anything to do with that—”

“Somebody sure as hell did. I’m not that big a believer in coincidence.”

“But it
was
a coincidence. Noah’s murder was a gang hit, Mr. Gunner. Nothing more, and nothing less.”

“Is that what they told you down at Central?”

“Yes. They told me the boy who did Noah was auditioning, trying to get jumped into a Blood set known as the H-Town Gamblers. Apparently, Noah’d had a run-in once with a Gambler on the outside, and a Gambler on the inside happened to remember it. So when the boy asked them who he could do to prove himself—”

“They picked Noah.”

“Yes.”

“And you believe that?”

“Of course I believe it. Why shouldn’t I?”

Gunner had no answer for that. “Have you talked to the kid yourself?” he asked instead.

“No. Have you?”

“No.”

“I see. I guess you could only tell those idiots the bald-faced lie that you were working for me so many times before they’d finally catch on.”

“Speaking of bald-faced lies: Why didn’t you tell me you were Noah’s attorney in the first place, Mr. Wiley? Did you think I might wonder what kind of legal counsel he was getting, retaining the same lawyer as Harriet Washington?”

“I was afraid you might wonder about that, yes. And then jump to all the wrong conclusions afterward.”

“Such as how it may have been more profitable to you in the long run to advise Ford with Mrs. Washington’s best interests in mind, rather than his own.”

Wiley cleared his throat and straightened up in his chair. “Yes. But that wasn’t the case, I assure you.”

“Of course it wasn’t. Never mind that the kid started out blaming the robbery on Lendell, then did an abrupt about-face and took the blame for everything. Everything but holding the gun, that is.”

“I would have been insane to suggest he plead any other way,” Wiley said. “Thanks to me, the boy only got six months, when he could have very easily gotten three years.”

“I think what’s more important is that his cousin got a relatively unblemished reputation out of the deal,” Gunner said. “One that makes him a much easier sell as a martyr today than he would have been otherwise.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“Is it?”

“And if it leaves this room, I’ll prove it slanderous. Do you understand?”

“I think so. You’re trying to say you’ll sue the pants off me.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying!”

“You don’t think that’s a rather predictable threat to make, coming from a shyster such as yourself?”

“I think this discussion is over, Mr. Gunner. That’s what I think.”

And sure enough, it was.

Gunner pulled one more doughnut from the box in his lap and washed half of it down with the last of a cold cup of coffee.

He was parked across the street from Davey’s Market, a nondescript little liquor and grocery store on Avalon Boulevard in Watts, just around the corner from his home on Stanford Avenue. The store got its name from a middle-aged Korean man named David Huong, who along with his wife, Lucy, had been doing business in the predominately black neighborhood for well over twenty years. Back when the Huongs were just starting out, Gunner had been just another basket case of an army vet fresh off the boat from Vietnam, sporadically broke and as lost in his own hometown as any perfect stranger could have been, yet the Korean couple had sustained him on credit when no one else would. Gunner had never quite understood the kindness, but he had been devoted to the Huongs, both as a regular customer and casual friend, ever since.

Twelve months ago, when fire and rage and runaway greed had devoured the streets of South-Central Los Angeles like a tidal wave, the Huongs had watched most of their neighbors on the block lose everything to looters and arsonists, scavengers who had left Davey’s Market standing today like a smoke-blackened bunker in the middle of a war-torn battlefield. The Huongs owed their survival of the purge to Gunner and a small army of his friends, men and women who, having realized early on that the Korean-owned market would be a choice target of the mob engulfing the city, had been there to watch over and defend it. It was an act of friendship that had enraged many of Gunner’s neighbors, but he had been prepared for that. He was all too familiar with the anti-Korean sentiment that was prevalent among his people, and was no stranger to its causes. He had seen his share of other Korean shopkeepers like David and Lucy Huong conduct business in the black community, and he knew well how openly they held their black customers in contempt. No
thank yous
or
you’re welcomes
, no
hellos
or
how are yous.
With these people, it was always just a silent
Give me the money and get the fuck out of my store
, or sentiments to that effect.

But the Huongs were different. Perhaps their English was just as indecipherable at times, and their sense of humor nearly as nonexistent, but they were not of the same school as their less sensitive brethren. They were fair, cordial, and respectful of their customers, and they deserved to be treated as such.

That was why Gunner was here today.

For while getting through the riots of a year ago relatively unscathed was fine, it did not bring an end to all of the Huongs’ troubles. Just as there had been before the previous July, there were still members of the black community today who were annoyed by the Korean pair’s presence in it, and who liked to demonstrate that annoyance by disfiguring their store’s exterior with graffiti, breaking their windows and doors, and just generally stealing them blind. All of this the Huongs had learned to live with, but lately the terrorism they were routinely subjected to had taken on a new dimension, one that, in the last month, had come to their door at least once or twice a week, in the deceptively disarming form of three small boys. They were all about the same age, David Huong had told Gunner—no more than six or seven, maybe eight—and they always came in together, like a tiny swarm of angry bees. Pushing over racks of potato chips, smashing display cases, tossing canned vegetables at the walls—they were only in the action for destruction, pure and simple, and they were as good at disappearing as they were at showing up from out of nowhere. Their timing wasn’t bad, either, as the police had yet to catch a minute of their act in progress.

So Gunner had offered to try and catch it, himself, in his spare time.

Sitting in his car eating stale doughnuts and drinking cold coffee as he watched people drift in and out of the market like Chevys on a slow-moving assembly line, Gunner paid homage to the money Mitchell Flowers was paying him to do something else entirely by devoting some serious thought to the murder of Noah Ford, and its place in the McGovern case. The explanation Milton Wiley and Donnell Henderson had given for Ford’s death had sounded feasible enough; kids outside the walls of Central Juvenile Hall were killed under similar circumstances every day. But the timing of Ford’s murder seemed to suggest that it had been more than just a cruel twist of fate, that perhaps there had been more hands involved in it than just those of an overanxious buster named Pebbles.

Assuming that was true, it followed that Ford had been killed to ensure his silence. But his silence in what regard? What could Ford have known that would have made him such a threat to someone? That he’d given the gun he’d brandished in the liquor store to Lendell Washington before they split up? Or that Washington had been carrying a gun of his own that night? Perhaps. In either case, if he had chosen to admit as much to Gunner or the police, Ford would have been placing the gun in Washington’s hand that McGovern had claimed all along he had. Something Milton Wiley, for one, would no doubt have preferred he not do.

On the other hand …

Maybe what Ford knew better than anyone else was that Washington had in fact never touched a gun that night—but someone else, besides Ford himself, had. The unknown third accomplice or overreactive drug merchant Gunner had mused about earlier. Either someone Ford had known about from the very beginning, and had been protecting all along, or someone he had only learned about recently, well after the fact. Someone, in any case, who had decided Ford’s ability to keep a secret could no longer be relied upon.

Despite the fact that Gunner had just come from a brief canvassing of the homes on either side of the alley where Washington had died, where everyone he had spoken to had claimed that the alley had seemed to be empty before the Washington shooting took place, he was finding the idea of a second party being with Washington just before he died more and more appealing. Because such a theory explained a great deal, starting with how Jack McGovern could have been fired upon out in the street when the only gun Washington ever touched had allegedly been held with a hand he rarely used, and then only to fire two harmless and meaningless rounds into the alley floor at his feet. A second party in the alley also seemed to explain where the missing part of the liquor store money McGovern had been accused of stealing might have actually disappeared to.

Of course, there was one other scenario that answered these questions just as neatly as Gunner’s second-party theme, and that was the one that had the LAPD, in the persons of Danny Kubo and Dick Jenner, manipulating the physical evidence at the scene to ensure McGovern’s downfall, just as Mitchell Flowers continued to insist they had. Gunner still viewed this theory with some skepticism, yet he knew it was the only one that seemed to fly if Washington—or
someone
—had indeed fired two shots in McGovern’s direction while the patrolman was still standing in the middle of Van Ness Avenue. Because somebody should have found at least one of two slugs somewhere outside of the alley if things had really gone down that way—and nobody ever did.