You Can Die Trying (19 page)

Gunner had always wondered what it would feel like to die.

To have the last booming echo of a gunshot ring in his ears and then slowly fade away; to feel his heart slam to a stop and remain still, never to recover; to see the same mask of horror on all the faces around him, frozen in time like some macabre still photograph.

And now Gunner knew.

The only thing surprising about the experience, as it turned out, was that he was going to live to tell about it.

He had been clutching at a chest wound that wasn’t there when the muzzle flash from Dancing Fred’s gun completely dissolved into darkness. Lugo beat Fred at snatching the revolver from Sulley’s grasp, then moved to see for herself why Gunner was still standing. When they were satisfied he was okay, they looked at each other and silently reached the same conclusion, though they waited for a ballistics man down at Southwest to verify the theory before they accepted it as fact.

“They were blanks, all right,” Lugo said. “And the gun was a dummy. Incapable of firing live rounds.” She had just returned from using the pay phone at the restaurant where she and Gunner had retreated until the lab tests came back on the gun. Dancing Fred’s buddy Sulley was in lockup, awaiting an evidently overdue psychiatric evaluation, and Dancing Fred himself was back at the “camp,” where he had promised to sleep every night until further notice, in case Lugo or Gunner needed to find him again.

They had killed just short of an hour here when the police officer’s beeper had gone off.

Gunner watched her slip back into her side of the booth and said, “Well, that certainly explains a few things. Doesn’t it?”

“Such as why we never found any slugs or trace marks in the alley?”

“Yes.”

“We don’t know that this gun has anything to do with Washington’s shooting yet.”

“Technically speaking, no. We don’t. But I think we’d both bet our right arm that it does. Wouldn’t we?”

Lugo just looked at him over the rim of her coffee cup and said nothing.

“Or don’t you want to believe your partner might have been innocent?” Gunner asked.

“I just don’t want to get my hopes up. That’s all.” She was glaring at him. “I mean, let’s face it: All this really does is leave us with a whole new set of unanswered questions.”

“Like why someone would want to use a dummy gun in a liquor store holdup.”

“Yes. Like that.”

“Okay. So why would they, Officer Lugo?”

“Actually, that question’s easy to answer. Because they probably didn’t know that’s what they had. They thought the gun and the rounds were the genuine article.”

Gunner nodded. “That’s one way of looking at it. At least, it would seem to explain why they’d stop to fire the damn thing twice at McGovern when they could have just as easily kept running.”

“And the other way of looking at it?”

“Maybe a dummy gun loaded with blanks was the only kind a soft touch like Washington would agree to carry. Maybe he brought it along just for show, and only used it when he had no other choice, hoping it would be enough to hold McGovern off for a while.”

Lugo fell silent for a moment, not sure if she wanted to buy that one or not. “Okay.”

“Next question: How did the gun get as far away from Washington’s body as Fred says it did. Right?”

“Right. Fred said the can he found the gun in was at the far end of the alley, near Gramercy. And that would have put it what—at least four houses away from where Washington went down?” She shook her head. “It doesn’t figure. To get it that far, Washington would’ve had to throw it—and he shouldn’t have been in any kind of shape for that. Should he?”

Gunner gave some thought to suggesting that someone other than Washington might have disposed of the weapon—his “Unknown Second Party in the Alley” theory again—but he decided against it, fearful that Lugo was already reluctant enough to follow his convoluted reasoning.

“Maybe Fred was just confused about where the gun really was. In which can, and where,” he said.

“I see. He was confused about that, but not any of the rest of it. Is that what you mean?”

“All right. How about this then? The gun was where he said it was because that was where Washington had actually been hit, before stumbling back into the alley and collapsing where his body was found.”

“In which case, he’d have left a trail of blood somewhere.”

“You’re saying he didn’t?”

Lugo hesitated before answering. “Actually, I don’t remember if he did or not. There was a lot of blood around, all right, but I never looked to see if any of it actually led somewhere. I mean, why would I? Washington was right there, dead; it wasn’t like he was missing.”

“Sure.” Gunner had made every effort not to sound condescending. “Are we through?”

“Not quite. There’s still the question of where a kid like Washington would get a dummy gun full of blanks in the first place,” Lugo said. “Blank shells and prop guns aren’t available over the counter at your local gun shop, you know. They’re restricted merchandise, you have to have a special permit to buy them.”

“Like all the film companies have.”

“Yes. Exactly.”

Gunner was sampling his own coffee when he noticed Lugo was staring off into space.

“You just think of something?”

It was a moment before she nodded. “I think I just answered my own question,” she said.

Gunner waited for her to explain.

“Last year, back in May or June, I think, they told us about a weapons theft,” she said. “Something about some guns being lifted out of a trailer at a locations site, downtown. You know, where they were shooting some scenes for a TV show or a movie, I don’t remember which. A few handguns and one semiautomatic, I think they said. All very real, but all very harmless. Incapable of firing live rounds, just like Dancing Fred’s.”

“And I take it these guns were never recovered.”

“Not that I ever heard about, no. They were little more than just toys, after all, so I don’t think a whole lot of effort ever went into finding them, you want to know the truth.”

“Then they’re probably still out there somewhere.”

Lugo shrugged. “I guess so. Yeah.”

“Then that solves the problem of accessibility, doesn’t it? Washington or Ford could have bought one of these guns on the street without ever knowing what it was.”

“Yes.”

Gunner waited for their waitress to pour him some more coffee, then said, “How long do you think you can keep a lid on news of the gun? Realistically?”

Lugo shook her head. “I don’t know. I can keep things quiet about it for a while, I suppose, but if our friend Jenner starts snooping around again.…” She shrugged. “It all depends on how lucky I am.”

“In that case, I need the rest of those lab tests back. Fast.”

“Yes.”

“Because if Washington’s prints are on it anywhere …”

“We can build a good case that he really was armed that night. Exactly.” She didn’t sound too thrilled with the prospect. “So I guess there’s nothing for us to do now but wait, huh?”

Gunner wasn’t sure he liked the way she was throwing the words “us” and “we” around—it suggested they had become a team of some kind—but rather than point this out, he just said, “It looks that way. Yes.”

“Something bothering you?”

“Me? No.” Gunner shook his head.

“Good. Let’s get the hell out of here, then.”

She was already moving toward the door.

“I think I’d like to go to bed with you,” Gunner said.

He had thought she might broach the subject before now, but they were halfway back to Southwest, and she had made nothing more than small talk.

Lugo slowly turned away from the blur of the street to face him. She could have been smiling, but from out of the corner of his eye, it was difficult to tell. “Well. What a coincidence,” she said.

“Then you’ve thought about it, too.”

“In my weakest moments. Yeah. But …” She let the thought hang in the air.

“But what?”

“But I’m not so sure about the timing of it. For you, I mean.”

Gunner stole a glance at her. “For me?”

“Yeah. For you. I get the feeling you’re in a weird place at the moment. Romantically speaking, I mean.”

Gunner turned around again, eyeing the road.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Lugo said.

Gunner shrugged. “It depends on what you mean by ‘weird.’ If you mean unsettled, then you’re probably right.”

“Ah. Unsettled.” Lugo nodded her head knowingly. “I’ve been there before.”

“Have you?”

“Oh, sure. Many times. It’s a lot like walking on razor blades, isn’t it?”

She grinned, and Gunner followed.

“Do you love the lady in question? Or is that one of the things you’re trying to figure out?”

“I don’t know. I know that I want to be with her. Beyond that, who knows? She says I’m just looking for a safe haven, that I’m tired of all the bullshit and just see her as a way to retreat from it for a while. I think there’s more to it than that, but …” He shrugged again. “I’m not always the best judge of these things.”

“But she is, I guess,” Lugo said.

“Actually, no. She isn’t. She seems to be just as confused about her feelings for me as she is about my feelings for her.”

“So she told you to go away for a while. Is that it?”

Gunner just nodded his head.

“I see. So what are the ground rules?”

“Well, that part
is
weird. We don’t seem to have any.”

He slowed to catch a red light ahead, then stopped the car and turned to look at her, waiting to see what she would say.

“Sounds like you’re both free agents,” Lugo said simply.

“It does, doesn’t it?”

“So what do you want to do about it? Wait around to see what develops, or …”

“Fool around with you?”

She laughed. “I like that. ‘Fool around.’ It has just the right amount of commitment to it.”

“You have a problem with commitment, do you?”

“Not a problem, no. I just don’t have any interest in it anymore. Some people would say that makes me promiscuous; I say all it does is make me as open to suggestion as you are.” She smiled again, a childlike sparkle in her eye. “And you
are
open to suggestion, aren’t you?”

Gunner smiled back at her and said, “Completely.”

He didn’t miss another signal the rest of the way to Southwest.

She had opened the blinds at her bedroom window to let the moonlight in.

Her body was firm and taut, and utterly without blemish. She was the same rich hue of golden brown from the top of her head to the tip of her toes, except for the bands around her breasts and hips where a bathing suit had shielded her flesh from the sun. She had large-buttoned nipples that grew hard as glass, and chiseled legs she could lock like a vise around him. He could literally see the bands of muscle in her buttocks relax and contract as she moved all about him.

She was as generous and exciting as any woman he had ever been with, and she gave him every chance to be likewise. But Gunner was not up to reciprocating. He was not up to much of anything.

The most that could be said for him was that he was functional.

The worst was that he was lousy.

“That was pretty bad, wasn’t it?” Lugo asked.

“You noticed,” Gunner said.

Lugo rolled over to his side of the bed, laughing. She didn’t bother to pull the sheet up over herself. “Well, I guess you have your answer. Don’t you?”

Gunner looked at her, smiling gamely. “Is that what that was? My answer?”

“I think so. You aren’t usually—”

“No! Hell, no!”

They both laughed.

When the moment had passed, and they were both riding the gentle waves of Lugo’s water bed in silence, Gunner said, “You were supposed to have scars.”

“Scars?” Lugo looked over at him blankly, not following his meaning.

“You said anybody who’d ever ridden with McGovern had the scars to prove it, whether they knew it or not. Remember?”

“Oh.”

“And I don’t recall seeing yours. Unless …”

“Unless they’re the kind that don’t show.”

“Yes.”

Lugo fell silent for a moment, then said, “Most of the time, that’s true. They
don’t
show. But sometimes …” She let the thought float on the air. “Sometimes they show just fine. Catch me on a bad day out on the street, for instance. You’d see.”

“What kind of a bad day?”

She tried to smile, but it wouldn’t work. “The kind that makes you want to say, fuck it all,” she said. “This miserable existence they call being a cop, I mean. The kind of day where the hate rolls in off the street through the open windows of the car, it’s so intense. When it seems like every radio in the world is playing that song the kids love so much: ‘Fuck Tha Police.’ You know the one?”

Gunner nodded. It was a rap song by the group N.W.A., and you couldn’t take five steps in any South-Central neighborhood without hearing somebody singing it, or blasting it on their boom box, or even just mouthing the words.

Fuck the police.

“There are times when the faces all around you make you feel less than human,” Lugo went on. “When the wisecracks and the taunts cut down to the bone and then slice right through even that. When all you’re doing is trying to keep a crowd back behind a strip of yellow tape, and they treat you like you’ve just put a bullet through the eye of a ten-year-old kid.

“You want to see my scars? Find me on a day like that.” She eyed him evenly
.
“But don’t let me catch you fucking up if you do.”

Gunner knew she wasn’t finished. “Because?”

“Because then I might forget that you’re a human being, too, and not just an animal too stupid to know better. Or I might remember some piece of racist trash I heard somebody say down at the station once, and suddenly think I can see the truth in it. Do you understand? Those are the scars I’ve been talking about—my doubts about
you.
About what your life is worth to society, in general—and what it’s worth to
me
, specifically.”

She blinked her eyes to see him past a veil of tears, more angry than she was hurt. “Cops like Maggie, they have no doubts. They make their minds up early on that white is right, and blue is better. Everyone else be damned.”