You Can Die Trying (23 page)

“What?” Hilton’s voice had been little more than a whisper.

Foster fell out laughing again. “Rambo!” he said, holding his sides to keep from bursting.

“Fuck you,” Hilton told him, with unexpected authority.

“You better watch your mouth, boy,” Foster said, still chuckling.

“I see no need to hear any more of this, Mr. Gunner,” Wiley said. “I think it’s safe to say you know more about Pervis’s and my situation than we would prefer. What do you say we just leave it at that?”

“‘Leaving it at that’ is not what people in my profession do best, Wiley,” Gunner said. “But then, respecting the law isn’t always what people in your profession do best. Is it?”

“That all depends on whose law you’re talking about.”

“I thought there was only one.”

Wiley laughed derisively and went back around his desk to sit down. “There has never been only one law in this country, Mr. Gunner. You know that. From the moment your ancestors and mine were first brought here, there has always been two separate codes of behavior in effect: the white man’s and the black man’s. That I spent seven years of my life learning to practice the former does not mean I am ignorant of the latter.”

“I see. This is a black pride thing. Not a matter of simple greed.”

“There is money to be made for me in all of this, certainly,” Wiley said matter-of-factly. “Even if we should settle out of court—which I don’t expect we will, by the way—Pervis’s sister and I stand to make in excess of three-quarters of a million dollars in our suit against the LAPD. If I were to sit here and tell you that financial reward isn’t one of my incentives in this matter, I’d obviously be lying to you.

“However, I’m not just in this for the money. The money is only secondary to me, at best. My primary purpose in this endeavor is to effect change. To force a conscience upon a system of law enforcement that has basically functioned without one for decades.”

“A conscience,” Gunner said.

“That’s right. A conscience. A heretofore absent sensitivity that would make the system work for everyone, equally, without regard for race or social status. My associates and I want to drive the bigots and sadists who have historically shaped and populated the police force in this city out into the street, Mr. Gunner. Forever. Chief Bowden will merely reshape the machine, at best. We intend to rebuild it.”

“By suing the department for a million dollars over an officer-involved shooting you know was justifiable homicide.”

Wiley snapped forward in his chair and said, “No. By publicly crucifying an icon. By exposing and then vilifying a man who represents, even in death, everything evil about the system of law enforcement we are subject to today. Shame and public humiliation—that’s what we’re after here. Not the money. The LAPD costs the taxpayers in this city thousands upon thousands of dollars in court cases similar to ours every year, and the losses have yet to make any measurable impact on the way the department serves the black community.”

“But you think raking Jack McGovern over the coals on the six o’clock news every night for a month will,” Gunner said.

“Yes. We do. At least, we believe it’s a start.”

“You keep referring to yourself as ‘we.’ What ‘we’ is this? You and these two losers?”

Wiley smiled. “I’m afraid the odds you’re presently facing are substantially larger—and broader—than that, Mr. Gunner. Suffice it to say that I speak for a group of people who are committed to attacking the same problem from a number of diverse angles, all in order to achieve one common goal: to change the way the LAPD does business. To expose its senseless cruelty and bigotry to every living American with a television set, until its professional pride will no longer allow it to tolerate the status quo.”

“Even if a few innocent heads have to roll in the process.”

“If that’s yet another insinuation that I had something to do with Noah Ford’s death at Central, I can only tell you what I told you before: that I don’t know anything more about Noah’s death than what I was told by the authorities there.”

“Then it was just pure luck on your part.”

“What’s that?”

“That the only other person besides Hilton and yourself who knew Mrs. Washington’s suit was groundless got himself killed in prison before he could talk to me.”

Wiley grinned and said, “You underestimate Noah, Mr. Gunner. We had an arrangement, that young man and I. In exchange for his keeping his uncle’s participation in the liquor store heist our little secret, he was to receive a nominal percentage of his aunt’s eventual compensation award. His desire to earn that money had kept him quiet to this point, and I was confident it would continue to do so, no matter how you or anyone else chose to grill him.”

Gunner turned to Hilton, who had been curiously silent to this point. “Maybe not everyone’s confidence in Noah was as unshakable as yours, Mr. Wiley,” he said.

Hilton tried to ignore that, but Gunner’s gaze was insistent. In time, even Foster was staring at him, demanding an answer. “I don’t know anything about Noah’s death,” he said. “Except that it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving little motherfucker.”

He smiled.

Gunner was starting to feel like himself again; it still hurt to blink, but the room wasn’t swimming in a dingy haze anymore. Of course, he wasn’t on his feet yet. If he tried to get to the door now, he’d have to put Foster on his back to do it, and he didn’t know if he had that kind of stamina. Besides …

Foster was looking right at him.

“Come on. Do it,” the big man said, grinning from ear to ear. “Make my fuckin’ day.”

“Time is running short, Mr. Gunner,” Wiley said, reacting to Foster’s obvious impatience. “If there’d be any point to us discussing a deal similar to the one we had with Noah, now is the time to say so. Otherwise …” He shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid we’ll have to resort to measures we had hoped to avoid altogether.”

He glanced in Foster’s direction.

“All I have to do is look the other way,” Gunner said.

“Yes—and no.”

“No? What’s the no?”

“We’ll also need to know where we can find your client. So that we might offer him the same chance to cooperate with us we’ve offered you, of course.”

“Of course.”

“You may be under the impression that he would be adverse to taking money for his silence, but we happen to know for a fact he is more than open to that possibility.”

“And how would you know that?”

“Because he told us as much. How else?”

“When was this?”

“Oh, quite some time ago. Months before you were hired, anyway. But of course, he wouldn’t mention that to you, would he? You might not turn the screws as tightly if you knew it was all for show.”

Gunner didn’t know how to answer that. He was too busy feeling like a jackass. What Wiley was inferring was that Mitchell Flowers had tried to blackmail him a while back—and failing that, had hired Gunner to either make the lawyer pay for dismissing him, or merely encourage him to be a little more open-minded about paying Flowers off. All that business about receiving threatening notes and phone calls from some anonymous blackmailer of his own must have just been something Flowers fabricated to get Gunner to go along.

P. T. Barnum had been right. There was a Gunner born every minute.

“It’s unfortunate we couldn’t come to some agreement when he first approached us,” Wiley was saying, forging right ahead. “But I’m afraid his idea of a fair price for his silence was highly inflated, at least at that time. Perhaps we’ll find him more realistic this go round.

“In any case, as I’ve said, time is running short. So I’ll need your answer, now. Can you meet our terms for a truce as I’ve described them, or not?”

“I can’t give you my client’s name,” Gunner said.

“Nobody asked for his name. I asked where we could find him.”

“Wait a minute. You don’t want his
name?”

“We already
know
his name. What we don’t know is how to contact him. Quit stalling, Mr. Gunner. It’s very late, and I’m tired.”

Now Gunner was really lost. They knew Flowers’s name, but they didn’t know where to find him? It didn’t make sense. Unless Flowers wasn’t listed in the telephone directory. An unlisted phone number
would
make him more difficult to track down than most people—but what the hell would a man like Flowers want with an unlisted phone number?

“Hurry up, Mr. Gunner. I’m waiting,” Wiley said impatiently.

“Okay. Let’s say I tell you what you want to know,” Gunner said, trying to buy himself a little time. “You’re still screwed, Wiley. Any way you look at it. Nothing’s going to change that now.”

“Is that right? Do tell how.”

“The police have Hilton’s gun. That’s how. They’re probably peeling his prints off the grips as we speak.”

The news hit Wiley about as hard as a feather riding a light breeze. “Let me worry about the gun,” he said simply.

Gunner found his calm more than a little disturbing.

“You can’t trust him, Wiley,” Hilton said. “No matter what he says.”

“My feelings, exactly,” Foster agreed.

“If we let him go now, it’ll be over for all of us,” Hilton added.

“I thought you said you wanted no part of murder?” Wiley asked him angrily.

“I don’t. But …”

He turned to Foster for help.

“Looks like the deal you’ve been offering’s just been taken off the table, Wiley,” Gunner said. “But then, it was never really meant to be taken seriously, was it?”

Wiley just glared at him.

To Hilton, Gunner said, “I suppose all of your bitching just now could have been part of the act, Pervis, but I’m betting it wasn’t. You really were afraid Milton here was going to let me go, once I’d told him what he needs to know. Weren’t you?”

When Hilton wouldn’t answer him, Gunner grinned and facing Wiley again, said, “The boy just doesn’t understand, does he, counselor? How far you’ll go to get your way in all this, I mean.”

“I’ve been negotiating with you in good faith, Mr. Gunner.”

“Sure you have. And you keep a big ape like your pal Howie here around just in case you need some walnuts opened. You need me to point you in my client’s direction, and then you need me
dead
, Wiley. That’s the only play you’ve got, let’s face it.”

It was small consolation to Gunner, but Wiley really did look shaken up. He glanced over at Foster and said, “I don’t want him found for at least a week. Do you understand?”

Foster nodded his head and said, “No problem.” For a change, he wasn’t smiling. He stepped over to where Gunner was sitting and said, “Let’s go. Very slowly, and very easy. All right?”

Gunner didn’t move.

Foster grinned, feeling playful, and reached down to get a handful of Gunner’s collar.

Gunner caught him coming forward with a right hand that had all he had to offer behind it. He felt a knuckle crack in his right hand as the blow broke the big man’s nose and sent him backpedaling, his arms flailing about like the wings on a bird filled with buckshot.

But Foster didn’t go down.

He caught his balance and threw his weight into Gunner’s path as the investigator made a dash for the door, connecting on a solid body block that sent Gunner flying head over heels halfway across the room. Gunner hit the wall at an awkward angle and discovered to his horror afterward that he couldn’t move to get up.

Foster’s bloody face was leaning over his own momentarily.

“Sheeeeit,” the giant said, laughing heartily.

Gunner watched him cock his fist back over his head, and just closed his eyes.

He awoke in the trunk of a car.

A big car, from the feel of it. And the feel of it was all he had, because the trunk was as dark and stale as a tomb. He was taking flight with each bump in the road, lying on his right side in a stretched-out, halfhearted fetal position. His feet were bound together and his hands were joined similarly behind his back, probably with the same duct tape Foster had slapped across his mouth. As the car continued to bounce along, its springs squealed like mice in his ears and his head kept hitting what felt like a spare tire behind him. His left eye seemed to be swollen shut, and he had the taste of his own blood in his mouth.

His first instinct was to start kicking at the walls of the trunk for all he was worth, to try to attract someone’s attention, but he put that idea out of his head quickly, because it wasn’t likely to get him anywhere, and he had a hunch he was going to need that kind of energy later.

If he was lucky.

When his eyes had adjusted to the darkness somewhat, he began to notice two pinholes of light that kept appearing and disappearing on the face of the trunk lid before him. He tucked his body into a tighter ball and shimmied forward, toward the rear end of the car, until he was able to identify what it was he was looking at: two bullet holes in the sheet metal, one right above the other.

He brought his good eye up close to the top one and peered out. His field of vision was naturally poor, and the lighting out on the street kept vacillating, but he could nevertheless see the three lanes of traffic Foster was leaving in his wake. It took him a while, with the scene jouncing in and out of his view, but eventually he became convinced that he was looking at La Brea Avenue, as seen from a car moving north along it, in the middle lane. He saw a big blue street sign reading “3rd Street” go by, then one for Beverly Boulevard, and realized they were cruising past the Miracle Mile district into Hollywood.

They stopped at a light, and all Gunner could see was the grille of the car behind him. It almost seemed close enough to touch. When Foster pulled off again, the grille fell back and Gunner saw that it belonged to a full-sized Oldsmobile station wagon with a manic-looking white teenager behind the wheel. The kid had a New York Giants football cap on his head, and was slapping his right hand on the car’s dash to the beat of a song Gunner couldn’t hear, his lips moving to the occasional lyric he could remember.

Gunner knew there was nothing he could do behind his little bullet hole that would catch this character’s attention.

He lay back and tried to think, resting his one good eye for a moment. Where could Foster be taking him? The Hollywood Hills were less than fifteen minutes away, and Wiley had specifically requested that Gunner’s body not be found for a while. If Foster was looking for the kind of scrub and brush that could camouflage a grown man’s corpse for days and sometimes weeks at a time, he could do a lot worse than the dense ragweed that covered the hillside for miles up along Outpost Drive. Or Beachwood Drive. Or Nichols Canyon Road. Or …