You Can Die Trying (27 page)

“He told me not to worry, that no one would ever find out I was even there when Lendell got shot,” Hilton said. “And he was right. No one did. He talked Noah into keeping quiet about my putting them up to the robbery, and that was it. The show was on. The only way something could go wrong was if the cops found my gun, he said, but they never did. We figured it got picked up with the trash where I dumped it and was gone for good. But then you said you found it.”

“I did,” Gunner said. “But I didn’t have it for long. I think Wiley has somebody inside the police department who made sure it got lost again.”

“Somebody inside the department? Like who?” Kubo demanded.

Gunner nodded in Hilton’s direction and said, “Ask him.”

“What? Man,
I
don’t know who Milton’s cop is.” Hilton shook his head.

“But he does have one.”

“Hey. I don’t know one way or the other. I’ve heard him say he’s got a man on the inside, yeah, but I always thought he was just talking. ’Cause what kinda cop would want to help
him
, right? He’s jackin’ up the police for a million bucks!”

Gunner and Kubo just looked at each other, leaving the name Gunner had in mind unspoken.

“We still haven’t heard what happened to Ford, yet,” Gunner said to Hilton, moving on to a new item on his agenda before a debate he knew he couldn’t win broke out between himself and Kubo. “Or are you going to try and tell me his getting killed down at Central last Saturday was just an odd coincidence, too?”

“I don’t think it was a coincidence. Hell no.”

“How about telling us what you
do
think it was, then,” Kubo said.

“I think it was a hit. Sure. I just don’t think Milton had anything to do with it. I mean, he could’ve done it, I guess, yeah. But why would he?” To Gunner specifically, he said, “Noah wasn’t going to tell you anything, man. You could’ve spent the next fifty years of your life tryin’ to get that little motherfucker to talk to you, and it wouldn’t have done you a damn bit of good. Milton told you that last night, remember?”

“He told me a lot of things last night,” Gunner said.

Hilton just shrugged, having already rested his case.

Gunner looked at Kubo and asked him if he’d heard enough.

“I guess so,” Kubo said. He nodded toward the kitchen, suggesting they confer there in private.

Gunner stood up and followed him out of the room. Hilton watched the two men step just inside the kitchen doorway and stop, too far away to be heard, yet close enough to keep an eye on him.

“Well? Do you believe me now?” Gunner asked.

Kubo shrugged. “I don’t know if I do or not,” he said. “This guy isn’t exactly star witness material, if you know what I mean.”

“What?”

“I mean, some of what he says makes sense, I suppose. But a lot of it doesn’t. All this talk about Wiley having a man on the inside, for instance—that’s a load of crap, Aaron, and you know it.”

“Do I?”

“You do if you’ve got half a brain in your head.”

“Half a brain is a fourth more than you’ve got if you still can’t see what’s going on here, Danny.”

“All right, all right. Take it easy. I didn’t say his story isn’t worth looking into. I just said it’s got a few holes in it, that’s all.”

“Then you are going to look into it.”

Kubo nodded his head after a long pause. “Yeah. Somebody has to, I guess.” He moved to the phone on the wall and picked up the receiver. “By the way. Anybody else know about this besides me?”

Gunner shook his head. “Who would I tell?” He was lying through his teeth again, of course, but there was no way for Kubo to know that. Though Sonny Flowers had been here earlier, Gunner had made a point of steering Hilton off the subject just as it was about to come up.

“Are you sure about that?” Kubo asked, skeptical to the last. He was punching a number in on the phone.

“Yeah, I’m sure.” Gunner’s eyes were on Hilton, who was wiggling around on the couch like a man trying to ignore a full bladder.

“Good,” he heard Kubo say behind him.

Somehow, Gunner knew there was a gun in the policeman’s hand before he turned around to actually see it: a Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter automatic, blue-skinned and angry looking.

“What’s the gag, Danny?” Gunner asked Kubo solemnly.

Kubo’s head inched from side to side. “It’s no gag, partner. Sorry.” He was all business now, just a cop doing his dirty work with cold, deliberate efficiency. He hung up the phone with his free hand, then took a side step deeper into the kitchen, removing himself from Hilton’s field of vision. He moved in closer to Gunner and gingerly lifted the Ruger out of the holster under the black man’s left arm, holding his own Smith & Wesson up under Gunner’s chin all the while.

“I thought you said Wiley having a man inside the department was a load of crap,” Gunner said.

Kubo stepped back again, shoving the Ruger inside the waistband of his trousers, and said, “Wiley doesn’t own me. He doesn’t even know me. We’re just two people who happen to share a common goal, that’s all. We cooperate with each other.”

“Ah. I get it. Sharing and cooperating. Just like on ‘Sesame Street.’”

“Look. This is going to be hard enough. Do me a favor and can the wisecracks, all right?” He used the Smith & Wesson to direct Gunner back into Harriet Washington’s living room.

Hilton came up off the couch when he saw them coming, sizing the situation up immediately, but Kubo said, “Stay where you are, Hilton,” and he sank right back down again, his eyes glowing white with fear. Kubo told Gunner to take the seat next to him but stayed on his feet himself, preferring to look down upon both men from a safe distance.

“There’s something I haven’t told you yet, Danny,” Gunner said. “Something I think you should know before you do anything stupid.”

“If you’re going to tell me about your girlfriend Lugo, forget it. I know all about her.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. She’s a nice kid. Too bad you had to drag her into this.”

“I needed her help, Danny.”

“You dumb ass. The lady’s going to lose her badge for trying to help you. Or worse.”

“Or worse?”

“That’s right. Or worse. The stakes in this thing are that high, Aaron. When the hell are you going to figure that out?”

Gunner didn’t answer that.

“What are you going to do to us?” Hilton asked Kubo, taking advantage of the lull in the pair’s conversation to speak for the first time. He wasn’t looking too healthy.

“I haven’t made up my mind, yet,” Kubo told him, unconvincingly.

“Shit. Don’t bullshit the man, Danny. You made your mind up about that on your way over here,” Gunner said.

“Okay. Maybe I did. But that doesn’t mean things have to go down the way I planned. You want to change the script, Aaron, be my guest. What I told you last week about us being even, we both know that was bullshit. The way I see it, I still owe you one more favor, at least. A big one. So consider this one it.

“Get the hell out of here and forget you ever heard of Jack McGovern. He was a sorry fuck who didn’t deserve your time, or your worry. What happened to him eight months ago was for the best, believe me, and to undo it all now—that would be a mistake.”

“I don’t think your friends downtown would see it that way. Do you?”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t have that many friends downtown. So I don’t really give a shit how they would see it. Most of those idiots actually thought highly of McGovern; I’d hardly expect them to see the value in ensuring he remains a disgrace to the department.”

“I assume you mean excluding Chief Bowden, of course.”

“Bowden? Bowden’s reasons for dumping on McGovern were strictly political. He wasn’t as much interested in how right it was as how good it would look to the people he’s counting on to make him mayor someday. The long-term benefits to the department of the move totally escaped him.”

“You want to know something? They seem to escape me, too.”

“Maybe that’s because you’re not a cop. A
real
cop. Badge-heavy jackasses like McGovern, they aren’t police officers; they wear the uniform, all right, but that’s it. They don’t give a damn how much damage they do to the public trust, because the public trust isn’t a priority with them.

“But
real
cops—all the ones busting their asses trying to make the words ‘To Protect and Serve’ actually
mean
something in this city again—they
do
give a damn. And they’re the ones who pay the price every time the system gives a bad egg like McGovern the keys to the asylum so that he can re-clone himself, over and over again.”

“Re-clone himself?”

“That’s right. You trying to tell me you haven’t figured out yet that McGovern was a goddamn
training officer
, for Christ’s sake? The man was out there on the street, creating new officers in his fucked-up image every day.”

“And that’s what this was all about? Stopping McGovern from corrupting future recruits?”

“The sonofabitch
had
to be stopped. They all do. Cops like that are poison, and they’ve been rubbing off on the rest of us long enough. The time has come to weed the fuckers out of the ranks. Any way we can.”

“And you think this is a good way to start. By fitting every last one of them for a frame.”

“I didn’t frame anybody. I just didn’t go out of my way to spare McGovern the dishonor he’d had coming to him for a long time. There’s a difference, Aaron.”

“Sure there is. Just like there’s a difference between vigilantism and murder.”

“Murder?”

“You were the one who had Noah Ford killed, Danny. Not Hilton here, or Wiley. They both knew Ford too well to think he’d talk to me, but you didn’t. You couldn’t be sure about him, one way or the other.”

Kubo was obviously uncomfortable making the disclosure, but he shrugged and said, “The way I figure it, he should have died back in that alley last September anyway. Not his cousin Washington. Kids like Ford don’t make this world a better place to live any more than cops like McGovern do.”

“I want to know how you did it,” Gunner said.

“How I did it? What the hell difference does that make now?”

“You want me to throw in with you, it makes a difference. They said Ford had been killed by a gangbanger in the H-Town Gamblers set. Is that right?”

His answer came at the end of a long pause. “Yes.”

“So what’s your connection to the H-Town Gamblers?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Then how the hell—”

“All I did was get a rumor started about him. I had somebody spread the word around that he’d dissed a Gambler on the outside once.”

“And their homeboys did the rest.”

“Yeah.”

“So who spread the word for you? A guard on the inside?”

“Maybe. Look. We’re digressing, and time is running short.” He glanced at his watch and frowned. “I’m afraid I need your answer, partner. Right now. You want to be reasonable here, or not?”

“Look, man—” Hilton started to say, again breaking a lengthy silence.

“Shut up,” Kubo told him. He didn’t even make the effort to turn the clothes salesman’s way.

Stunned, Hilton did as he was told and looked over at Gunner, like Kubo anxious to hear what choice the investigator was going to make. He was still unwilling to accept the fact that Kubo was going to kill
him
, no matter what the man seated beside him decided to do.

Only when Gunner shook his head at Kubo did Hilton surrender all hope for himself.

“Not that I don’t admire your motives, Danny,” Gunner said. “But I’m sorry. I just can’t hang with you on this one. Your methods are a little too drastic for my tastes.”

“I’m only doing what’s going to be necessary to get the community back on our side again,” Kubo said coldly.

“Even if I thought that were true, I still couldn’t help you. But you knew that before you asked me, didn’t you?”

Kubo shrugged again, a veil of disappointment changing the shadows on his face. “We used to be pretty tight once, you and me. I figured I at least owed it to you to ask.”

He pulled Gunner’s Ruger from the waistband of his trousers with his free hand.

“Oh, shit,” Hilton moaned.

“As long as we’re paying off old debts,” Gunner said, “I told you there was something I thought you should know before you did anything stupid. Remember?”

Kubo waited for him to elaborate.

“I went to see your friend Dick Jenner today. It was a dumb thing to do, I know, but at the time I was thinking he was the one working with Wiley, not you, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to convince Hilton to talk. So I decided to see if maybe he would.

“Naturally, he told me he didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about. And I believed him. I didn’t want to, but I did.”

“Make your point,” Kubo said. He was furious.

“Well, I was just thinking,” Gunner said. “My going to him like that might have started him wondering about you. That would only be natural, right? And if he were wondering about you, he might want to … keep an eye on you for a while.”

Kubo was already moving toward the window at the front of the house, backpedaling as he shoved the Ruger back into his pants. He kept his body turned in Gunner and Hilton’s direction as he parted the drapes and peeked out at the street, looking for a sign, any sign, of his partner’s presence there. He had his eyes off Harriet Washington’s living room for all of five seconds.

But that was long enough.

“Put the gun down, Danny,” Dick Jenner said.

He was standing at the threshold of the kitchen, training his own nine-millimeter automatic on Kubo’s chest. He had entered the house through the back door without making a sound.

Kubo turned around slowly and smiled, holding the Smith & Wesson up high in his right hand, aimed at the ceiling. “Man, am I glad to see you,” he said. “These two assholes—”

“I said toss the piece, Danny,” Jenner ordered again, taking a step closer to him. “Do it, partner. Please.”

“Look, Dick. You don’t understand …”

Gunner wasn’t sure, but the Smith & Wesson in Kubo’s hand seemed to be descending.

“I understand plenty. I’ve talked to Lugo, Danny. She gave me the gun,” Jenner said. “But we can straighten this thing out, man. Believe me. Just
don’t get crazy on
me, all right?”