You Can Die Trying (8 page)

“Who are you talking about, Kupchak? Stop saying ‘they’ like I’m supposed to know who you mean.”

“I’m talking about the members of the new regime. Okay? Chief Bowden and his appointees. With all their promises of a new order, and better community relations, and all that shit, cops like Maggie were on their shit list from day one. They were just waiting for somebody like him to fuck up.”

“And of course, he did.”

“The second he drew his weapon on that kid. Self-defense or no self-defense.”

Kupchak’s fellow officers were suddenly leaving the tables surrounding them one by one, trays full of trash in hand, signaling the end of lunch hour. Before Kupchak could follow suit, Gunner asked him to try to remember Lendell Washington’s buddy Ford’s first name, and where Gunner might start to look for him.

“His first name? I wanna say Moses, but I don’t think that’s right. No. It was Noah. Noah Ford, yeah.” His eyes narrowed as he pictured the kid in his mind, not enjoying the memory. “They gave the little punk two years, as I recall, and I think he served all of six months. Bein’ fourteen years old has its advantages, I guess.”

“Then he’s out now?”

“He was for a quick minute. But you know kids like that. Soon as they pull one foot out of the shit, they step in some more with the other.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning he’s right back in the can, I think. At least, I saw him go through booking just a couple of months ago. Check with the Department of Corrections, I bet they can tell you where to find him.”

Gunner nodded. “You happen to remember who the Internal Affairs officers were who worked McGovern’s case?”

Kupchak’s face grew rigid again. “Couple of guys named Jenner and Kubo. Why do you ask?”

Gunner only barely heard the question, his mind having suddenly turned to something else. “Because I’m going to have to talk to them, too,” he said, plainly distracted. “You say their names were Jenner and Kubo?”

Kupchak nodded.

“That wouldn’t be Daniel Kubo, would it?”

“Yeah, that’s right. You know him?”

Gunner nodded, not sure if he’d just received good news or bad. “If it’s the guy I’m thinking about, we entered the police academy together. We used to be fairly close, but … I haven’t seen or heard from Danny in years, now.”

“The police academy?
Our
police academy?”

Gunner nodded his head again.

“Don’t tell me you used to be a cop.”

“Not quite. I spent six weeks at the academy, and that’s about as far as it went.”

“They dropped you out?”

“You might say that.”

“How long ago was this, you don’t mind my asking?”

Gunner got to his feet and said, “Twenty years ago, give or take a few. Too long ago to remember, really.” He handed Kupchak one of his business cards. “You think you could get this to Deanna Lugo for me? And ask her to give me a call when she gets a chance?”

Kupchak got to his own feet, feeling somewhat awkward, and said, “I guess I could do that.” He put the card in his breast pocket with his left hand and shook the hand Gunner was offering him with his right.

“You’ve been a big help, Sergeant. Thanks,” Gunner said.

“Forget it. I didn’t do this for you or your client, Gunner. I did it for Maggie. Because I don’t give a fuck what anybody else thought about him, I considered him a friend. That straight up enough for you?”

He wouldn’t let go of Gunner’s hand. He was trying one last time to pick a fight, to goad the black man into exposing himself as a liar and a cop-hater, but Gunner would have none of it. He had played this game before, with other men who thought it proved something about both the winner and the loser, and so he knew the vacuousness of it all too well.

He stared Kupchak down and waited.

It took a few minutes, but eventually the older man grew tired of his own childishness and surrendered Gunner’s hand, laughing a laugh as thin as paper to cover his embarrassment. Then he walked quickly away, without so much as a backward glance in Gunner’s direction.

It was all the good-bye his pride would let him say.

5

Gunner called Danny Kubo from the office immediately after his lunch with Harry Kupchak, but not before stopping in at home to stare at the lifeless message light on his answering machine like an old friend that had let him down. Claudia had given him no reason to think she would call, now or ever, but that hadn’t stopped him from hoping she would, anyway. Rejection was relatively foreign to Gunner, and he didn’t know how to take it seriously. That her commitment to their separation could be strong enough to enable her to cut him adrift as promised, however temporarily, truly amazed him.

It only made matters worse that he was starting to believe she was doing the right thing. The distraction of his work over the last twenty-four hours had forced him to think about the trial separation she was insisting upon economically, without emotion, and in that light he could see the obvious wisdom in it. She wanted to know that her feelings for him were real, and until she was satisfied that they were, she wasn’t really doing him any favors by letting him hang around. It wasn’t her fault that he had already answered for himself the same question regarding his feelings for her; that was just the way these things often worked out.

“That don’t look right, Mickey. That don’t look right.”

“Shut up and hold the goddamn picture still!”

“Lookit them legs, man! They all crooked an’ shit. Damn!”

Weldon Foley cracked up laughing. He was holding the pages of a copy of
Sports Illustrated
open for Mickey Moore’s perusal, watching the barber shape the back of a black teenager’s head, as Gunner walked into the shop, sending the little brass bell above the door into a frenzy. Foley himself had had no use for barbers for some time now, as the last gray hair had fallen out of his head more than a decade ago, but he was a regular visitor to Mickey’s establishment nevertheless. He was a retiree with nothing but idle time on his hands and he couldn’t seem to find a hangout in the world more consistently amusing.

“Hey, Gunner. Come over here, man. I wanna show you somethin’,” Foley said between convulsions.

“Nobody asked for his opinion. He’s just as blind as you are,” Mickey snapped, scowling at Gunner as the younger man moved toward them.

The tall, dark-skinned kid in the chair looked worried, but all he did was watch as Gunner walked around him to see what it was that had Foley so broken up. Mickey had crowned the kid’s head with an eight-inch cylinder of hair, sheared the top of it flatter than the green on a miniature golf course, and shaven him bald from the top of the ears down—but there was nothing particularly unusual about any of these things. The barber had done the same to hundreds of customers over the last few years; such a cut was actually the popular debauchery of the moment. But the clump of dark hair Mickey had left uncut at the base of the kid’s skull was …
what
?

Foley held the
Sports Illustrated
open again to give Gunner a hint. Inside was a full-page ad for Converse shoes, featuring a photograph of Magic Johnson in uniform and in midflight, basketball cradled lovingly in both hands, legs tucked up underneath him as he ascended to the basket for a lay-up.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Gunner said.

Foley turned to Mickey, grinning. “See? What’d I tell you? You done jacked this boy’s head all up!”

He fell out laughing again, tears streaming from both eyes, as Mickey took a swipe at his head and missed. The kid in the chair spun around and said, “Say what?” but Mickey glared him back into place and told him to shut the hell up. The kid looked like he wanted to cry. Gunner took the magazine from Foley’s hands and gave Mickey’s handiwork a second look, only to conclude that time was not going to improve it. Foley was right: the kid was doomed.

He had wanted Magic Johnson making a lay-up, and what he’d gotten was William “The Refrigerator” Perry taking a crap.

Gunner handed the magazine back to Foley and started out of the room, head down, trying to get away before he and Foley were both out of control, but Mickey saw the smirk on his face in passing and said, “That’s right. Get the hell on out of here, ’fore your mouth gets you in trouble. I told this junior flip when he came in here, I’m a barber, not an artist!”

“You got that right,” Foley said.

“I wanted to draw pictures of people slam-dunkin’ for a livin’, I would’ve gone to
art school
, not to barber college! People got some nerve, bringin’ their nappy heads in here, askin’ me to cut the goddamn Mona Lisa into hair they ain’t washed in six weeks!”

Gunner pushed through the curtained doorway at the back of the shop and stepped into the dark austerity of his office, rushing to get outside the range of Mickey’s vitriol. He had a sweet arrangement here—low rent, free utilities, and a semireliable answering service—and he didn’t want to ruin it by doing anything his landlord could falsely take for ridicule.

Turning on the table lamp atop his desk, Gunner flipped through the short stack of mail waiting there as he dialed the phone. It looked as if every collection agency in town was in line to sue him for the same overdue $119.97. The letters were all from companies with names like Financial Resource Developers and Professional Credit Associates, but Gunner wasn’t fooled; he could smell a bloodsucker a mile away.

“Internal Affairs. Fowler.”

Gunner asked for Danny Kubo, but Fowler said he wasn’t in. Kubo wasn’t his partner, Fowler said, so he had felt no obligation to keep tabs on him this afternoon.

“How about messages?” Gunner asked.

“Excuse me?”

“You feel any obligation to take messages for him, at least?”

Fowler actually laughed. “You’re missing the point, pal,” he said. “Dick Jenner is Kubo’s traveling secretary, not me. And he’s out, too.”

“All I want to do is leave a name and a couple of numbers,” Gunner said.

Fowler hesitated, then said, “Okay. Let’s have ’em.”

Gunner told Fowler his name, spelling his last one, then recited both his home and office phone numbers. Fowler was able to repeat it all afterward, but that only proved he had a good memory, not that he’d actually written anything down. Still, Gunner thanked him for his time and hung up, then drew a copy of the local phone directory out of a desk drawer and began scanning through a page and a half of Washingtons until he found the one he was looking for.

Harriet T. Lendell Washington’s mother.

“This card is a fake. As phony as a three-dollar bill.”

His name was Milton Wiley, and he had introduced himself as Harriet Washington’s attorney. He was a dark-skinned black man in his middle forties, as lean as an eel and dressed just as slippery. He had a goatee spattered with silver and a thinning pate to match, and as he stood in the doorway of his client’s home, barring Gunner’s path to the tiny living room beyond, he examined the business card Gunner had given him with open disgust, not buying the lies printed on its face for an instant.

“You’re not from the
Guardian.
And you’re not a reporter. But nice try.” He started to close the door in Gunner’s face.

“Who is it, Milton?” someone behind him asked.

Wiley turned to find a short, wiry black woman peering anxiously over his shoulder, trying to see past him to the man at the door. She was not an attractive woman, particularly—her mouth was overly large and her eyes were set too far apart—but even from where he stood, Gunner could see there was an aura of strength and intelligence about her that seemed to render her physical shortcomings moot.

“It’s a spy for the police,” Wiley told her, turning to glare at Gunner again. “I was just telling him good-bye.”

He tried to close the door again, but the woman said, “You don’t have to do that. I’ve got nothing to hide from the police. Let him in.” She moved forward before Wiley could stop her and ushered Gunner into the house, smiling gamely and offering him her hand. “I’m Harriet Washington. Please come in and sit down, won’t you, Mr.…?”

“Gunner. Aaron Gunner.” He shook her hand.

“Harriet, please,” Wiley said.

But Washington wasn’t listening. She was moving into the living room now, showing Gunner to a seat on the small, floral-patterned sofa sheathed in clear plastic that was the room’s modest centerpiece. Two matching armchairs waited on either side, turned toward the sofa at opposing angles, and Washington sat down on the one to Gunner’s right. Wiley closed the front door and eventually joined them in the room, but insisted on standing, apparently determined to maintain some semblance of a supervisory attitude over the proceedings.

“Harriet, you didn’t hear what I said. I said that this man works for the
police.
He tried to pawn himself off as a reporter for the
Guardian
, but his business card is a fake. I call that paper regularly, the phone number on the card is a complete fabrication.”

Washington looked at Gunner expectantly. “Is this true, Mr. Gunner?”

There wasn’t much point in lying. They were going to be guarded in their dealings with him now, no matter who he claimed to be.