You Can Die Trying (24 page)

Gunner tried to pry his hands loose, but it was no good; it felt like Foster had used half his roll of tape just on his wrists alone. To complicate matters further, Gunner was finding it harder and harder to breathe. Lack of oxygen was not a problem yet, but he knew it would be soon.

He waited a few more seconds, then leaned forward to squint through the bullet hole again.

The kid in the Oldsmobile was gone, replaced by a featureless figure driving a red, late-model Chrysler Le Baron with a windshield too filthy to see through. A tan pickup truck of a make and model Gunner couldn’t make out lagged several car lengths behind, in the fast lane to Gunner’s right, while nothing at all showed itself in the slow lane to his left. Both the Chrysler and the pickup were a good distance back; if he tried to bow the rear fender of Foster’s car out with his feet, he doubted either driver would notice. And even if they did, he could guess what they would do about it. Go home and greet the wife with a story that would start with
I just saw the funniest damn thing
… That’s what. The situation seemed hopeless …

… until Gunner saw the black-and-white police cruiser move up to pass the Chrysler on its right-hand side.

He recognized immediately that the cops inside were on their way somewhere; the car was moving too fast. Foster was driving leisurely, no doubt looking as innocuous inside the car as a man as physically imposing as he possibly could, and he didn’t even have the radio on, let alone cranked up to any conspicuous level. Unless he did something reckless or stupid inside the next fifteen seconds, there was little chance of his drawing the preoccupied cops’ attention. Gunner was going to have to do that on his own, or the opportunity to save himself—very likely his last—would be gone.

Still, his earlier problem remained: What could he do from behind two little puncture wounds in the car’s trunk lid to create the kind of diversion he required?

He glanced about the trunk he was trapped in frantically, and for the first time he noticed how much light from outside was visible around the edges of the taillight assembly near his feet. He kicked at it gingerly and felt it give; the damn thing was loose. Foster had apparently taken a hit back there, and much of what the taillight had been anchored to no longer existed.

Gunner flipped himself over on his other side, quickly, turning his back on the assembly in order to use his heels on it at the best possible angle. He felt around for the target, found it, and then kicked down and out on it with everything he had.

He heard the taillight shell explode and the sound of glass and metal hitting the street. Somebody—probably the faceless driver of the Chrysler—stood on their brakes and locked them up, causing several other drivers, either alongside or behind, to do likewise.

Gunner rolled over onto his other side again as Foster’s driving became erratic for a moment, no doubt a result of his being distracted by the chaos occurring behind him. When Foster had recovered, once more manipulating the car like a man with nothing to hide, Gunner looked down to see that his kick had broken the taillight assembly in half, ejecting the far half into the street and completely dislodging the other. He could see the pavement in the big car’s wake roll by through the gaping hole that remained.

By the time Gunner got into position to peer through his tiny porthole again, the black-and-white was already riding Foster’s tail, the lightbar on its roof spraying the night red, its siren calling for Foster’s attention in short, angry bursts. Gunner figured the game was over.

Then Foster stepped on the gas.

The big car leaped forward, and Gunner was tossed toward the front of the trunk like a rag doll. He hit the back wall face first and cut his cheek open just below his left eye on a jagged ridge of sheet metal. As Foster started dodging in and out of traffic, bouncing his car off those that couldn’t or wouldn’t get out of his way, Gunner slammed off the surfaces of the trunk unmercifully, the full cry of the squad car’s siren now screaming in his ears. More than once, he almost lost consciousness, and before long he was certain that this was how he was going to die: trussed up and helpless, like a kitten some twisted child had thrown into a clothes dryer.

A second siren joined the first, initially faint, then gaining fast, and Foster’s driving grew even more frantic. The big car wasn’t built for speed, and he was clearly having a tough time holding it on the road.

When he finally couldn’t manage it anymore, the car went into a long skid of some sort, jumped over what felt like the curb, and slammed to a stop with a deafening, gut-wrenching crash.

Gunner could not move. He was pinned toward the back of the trunk, his legs caught awkwardly beneath him, the car’s spare tire pressed up against his chest. If he gave his pain too much thought, he knew he would pass out.

The first thing he noticed was that the car’s engine was still running, though the car itself remained still.

Then he heard other things.

Car doors slam. Feet racing across pavement. The hammers on revolvers and pumps on shotguns being slid back noisily. And finally, orders. Lots of orders. The kind that were not to be confused with polite suggestions or casual requests.

These were the kind a man followed to the letter, without delay, if he wanted to see the next second of whatever it was he thought of as his life.

“You! In the car! Stick your right hand out the window!”

A pause.

“Now your left! Come on!

“Open the door with your left hand! Your
left
hand! That’s right! Let’s go!

“Now … Keep your hands out where we can see ’em and exit the car!
Hands in front
, I said!”

Behind him, Gunner heard Foster force the big car’s driver’s side door open, its apparently twisted and misshapen form moaning and popping in complaint.

“Do not face me, sir! Turn around!
Turn around
!”

“You heard what the man said, goddamnit!” a second voice shouted.

“Now lock your hands behind your head! That’s right! Take three steps back and get down on your knees! Keep your hands behind your head! All right, get down on your knees!”

There was another pause, and then a flurry of moving feet.

“What the fuck’d I do?” Gunner heard Foster demand belligerently.

But nobody answered him. Inside the trunk of the big man’s car, Gunner heard the familiar rattle of handcuffs, followed by what sounded like Foster grunting as he was forced to the ground, perhaps leading with his face.

“He wants to know what he did,” one of the officers outside said, sarcastically.

Foster started making strange noises, as if he were trying to talk while his mouth was being pressed to the pavement.

“Get the fuck off ’im, Red,” somebody said.

After that, a host of voices joined in on the conversation, making it impossible for Gunner to keep track of who was saying what.

“For what? Homeboy could’ve killed somebody back there.”

“I think you busted one of his teeth.”

“Jesus.”

“What, that? He did that in the car.”

“Yeah. In the crash. On a CD case, or something.”

“That’s right. It was a CD case. I saw it.”

“You guys …”

“A Public Enemy CD it was, I think.”

“No. You mean Public
Enema.”

“Yeah, yeah. That was it. ‘Fear of a
Coonskin
Planet.’”

They all cracked up.

Gunner waited for the party to end before he made any effort to let them know he was there.

14

“We have a problem,” Detective Denny Loiacano of the Los Angeles Police Department, Hollywood Division, said.

He was a short, compact Italian with a face too kind for police work, and it had fallen to him to check out Gunner’s story. It seemed an unfair thing to do to so nice a guy. Soft-spoken, courteous, and neat, wearing his tie loose around his unbuttoned collar seemed to be as disheveled and unprofessional as Loiacano knew how to get.

Twenty minutes ago, he and his partner—a bean-pole redhead named Conlan—had left Gunner alone in this spotless interrogation room with Ira “Ziggy” Zeigler, Gunner’s fifty-three-year-old lawyer, after having heard the investigator’s explanation for his kidnapping four times. Now the two detectives were back, bearing fresh cups of coffee for all. Loiacano had even thought to bring extra cream and sugar.

“What kind of problem?” Gunner asked him. He had an ugly patch over his left eye, a bandage on his cut cheek just beneath that, and a still-drying plaster cast on his right hand, the last to protect the middle knuckle he’d broken like a china dish on Howie Foster’s face. When he breathed too deep, he could literally feel the point of impact of every punch the big man had pummeled him with.

Loiacano cleared his throat and said, “Officer Lugo says she doesn’t know anything about this gun you’re talking about. She says she spoke to you once, out at the scene of the Washington shooting last Friday, and that was it. She hasn’t seen nor heard from you since.”

“What?”

“She says she told you you were wasting your time then, but that you refused to listen. Is that true?”

“Shit. I don’t believe it!”

“Answer the man’s question, Mr. Gunner,” Conlan said, holding up the wall behind his partner’s chair. Apparently, that was his role on this team: the Designated Mouth.

“Of course she told me I was wasting my time. I haven’t talked to anybody yet who hasn’t. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t change her mind later.”

“You’re saying she’s lying, then,” Loiacano said carefully.

“That’s exactly what I’m—”

Seated at Gunner’s immediate left, Ziggy kicked the leg of the investigator’s chair and said, “What my client is saying is that the officer’s memory appears to be a little short. Perhaps if you were to question her in person …”

Loiacano shook his head. “I don’t think that would be a very good idea at this time, counselor,” he said.

“Why not?” Gunner asked, jumping in.

“Because I happen to believe her. This is a police officer we’re talking about here—not some bimbo off the street. And I’m not going to drag her halfway across town for questioning until I have just cause.”

“I need the gun, Loiacano. You know that.”

“I don’t know what I know, except that your story’s pretty wild and farfetched. Don’t you think?”

“It’s the truth.”

Conlan mumbled something unintelligible as Loiacano shrugged. “Okay. It’s the truth. But right now, you’ve got nothing in the way of evidence to prove it. And neither do we.”

“What about Foster? You’ve got him, don’t you?”

“Yeah, we’ve got him. But if you think he’s talking to us, you’re nuts. According to him, sticking a strange man in the trunk of his car had to be somebody’s idea of a joke. He had no idea you were in there until we told him, he says.”

“Bullshit. He put me in there himself, after beating the crap out of me at Wiley’s office. Or do you think I did this to myself?” Gunner waved a hand over the patch covering his eye.

“Look, Mr. Gunner. Nobody’s saying we don’t intend to investigate your story thoroughly. We do. I’m just warning you not to expect too much, that’s all. Because it shouldn’t take a genius to know how your friends Wiley and Hilton are going to play it when we get them down here to talk. They’re going to act just as dumb and stupid as Foster. And if they do …”

He shrugged again.

“Then you’ll talk to Lugo again,” Gunner suggested forcefully.

Loiacano smiled. “We’ll see. Let’s take this thing one step at a time, all right?”

Gunner and Ziggy shared a glance, then wasted no time finding the door.

Ziggy drove Gunner back to the restaurant parking lot in Hollywood where the investigator had last seen his cousin’s car. Ziggy owned an old ’67 Ford Thunderbird that was in better shape than most cars half its age, and he liked to keep a cooler full of ice-packed fruit behind the passenger seat, where he could reach it easily while driving. He was big on vitamin C, Ziggy, and like his car, he was in the kind of condition that put most men his age to shame.

Tonight, he was methodically working his way down to the core of a Washington apple.

“I think we’re in a world of hurt on this one, son,” he said.

Gunner stared at the road ahead and nodded. “Yeah. That’s what I was thinking.”

“You figure somebody got to Lugo? Or did she just get cold feet?”

“I don’t know. But I intend to find out.”

Ziggy glanced at him, alarmed. “How’s that?”

“By asking the lady,” Gunner said. “What else?”

“You think that’s advisable?”

“You’re the lawyer. You tell me. Do I have a prayer of proving any part of what I just said back there if I can’t convince Lugo to produce Hilton’s gun?”

Ziggy thought his answer through, though he knew that wouldn’t change it. “No. My guess is you don’t,” he said. “Because the man was right, of course. All your friends Wiley, Hilton, and Foster are going to do is play stupid, in order to put the onus on you to provide them with a motive for your kidnapping. And since Hilton’s gun
is
that motive, and you don’t have it …”

“We’re in a world of hurt,” Gunner repeated for him.