All the Lucky Ones Are Dead (25 page)

Marvin Felipe never turned around, just took off at a dead sprint at the very sound of his name.

Gunner jumped out of the car to follow him on foot, snapped at a startled Poole to head him off in the Ford. Felipe already had a half-block head start on them both. He was younger than his pursuers, and fast, but his health was shot, and that made the difference. Over the next four blocks, along the quiet residential streets just north of Washington, Felipe stumbled twice, then fell altogether before Gunner and Poole collapsed upon him, the cop from the north, the investigator from the south.

Gunner reached him first, had to duck a few wild punches Felipe threw at his head before a hard right of his own put the bearded man down again, eyes rolling around in their sockets like dice being shaken in a cup. Gunner watched as Ray Crumley's alleged killer retched onto some poor devil's perfectly manicured lawn, then snatched him up by the back of his neck and marched him over to Poole's car. It sounded as if every dog in the neighborhood was barking in applause.

“What the fuck is this, man? I didn't do nothin'!” Felipe cried, as soon as Gunner tossed him into the Ford's backseat and got in right behind him.

“I take it this is La Porte's suspect? Marvin what's his name?” Poole asked Gunner, turned around in the car's front seat so as to take a good look at their quarry.

“Marvin Felipe,” Gunner said. “Yeah. Unless he just takes off running every time he hears the name.”

“I don't know what you assholes are talkin' about! My name is Julian!” Felipe cried. “Julian Ashby!”

“Julian Ashby. That's a good one. You got any ID on you, Mr. Ashby? Something with your picture on it, specifically?”

The man with the ratty pony tail just blinked at him, mouth nervously chewing on something completely imaginary.

“No. I didn't think so.” Gunner took out the Ruger he'd been carrying since he picked up the Para-Ordinance for Jolly, trained it more or less in the direction of Felipe's midsection. He then turned to Poole again and said, “Let's go back to Ms. Aames's apartment, see if we can't figure out why he was so anxious to leave.”

Felipe's mouth flew open to object, his eyes wide with fear—but he decided at the last minute to hold his tongue instead. He sat back, stared straight ahead as Poole turned the cruiser's engine over, drove them all back to Antoinetta Aames's apartment building on Barrington Avenue.

The door to Aames's apartment was standing open when they reached it, but both Gunner and Poole had known bad news awaited them long before that. They'd had to take turns ordering Felipe out of the car before he agreed to come along, wearing Poole's handcuffs now, and they recognized his reluctance as the reaction of a man who did not want to view the same nightmare twice.

“I didn't have nothin' to do with this, I swear to God,” Felipe said, starting to cry.

Gunner and Poole traded glances, their respective weapons already out and at the ready, then gently pushed the crackhead forward to lead their way inside.

s i x t e e n

C
OMPARED WITH THAT OF THE LATE
R
AY
C
RUMLEY
, Antoinetta Aames's homicide was damn near antiseptic. Blood was at a minimum, and physical dissarray was non-apparent. Aames's killer had simply arranged for her to lie facedown on her living room carpet, then put a single bullet in the back of her head. No muss, no fuss. From the lack of markings on her fully clothed body, it appeared Aames had cooperated with her murderer all the way.

By the time Steven La Porte and his partner, Peter Chin, arrived on the scene in answer to Poole's call, the Culver City Police Department had already descended upon it in full force, rendering Gunner and Poole mere observers to their investigation into the Aames homicide. La Porte and Chin's only interest here was Felipe, but the CCPD wouldn't let them anywhere near him. This was Culver City's case, and Felipe was their perp, and nobody from the LAPD was going to talk to him until the CCPD had talked to him first. All night long, if necessary.

“Fuckers,” La Porte said, striking a match to light a cigarette when he, Chin, Gunner, and Poole had all gathered in the parking lot behind Aames's building.

“Hey, SOP,” Poole said in commiseration. “If we were in their shoes, we'd do the same thing.”

La Porte appraised Poole carefully, said, “With all due respect, Lieutenant, what's
your
interest in this? You workin' a connected case?”

Poole shook his head, slightly embarrassed. “Not at all. I was just giving Mr. Gunner here a hand on my off hours, as I'm prone to do from time to time. You might say it's my own unique way of giving somethin' back to the community.”

Gunner cut his friend a look that Poole pretended not to notice.

“Okay,” La Porte said to the investigator, letting the nature of Poole's relationship with him lie for the time being. “Why don't you take me and Pete through this from the top.”

“Sure thing. In a nutshell, La Porte, I was right and you were wrong. Looks like your homicide and my suicide
are
connected.”

“Yeah? How so?”

“Same way I've been saying all along. Felipe went into Ray Crumley's apartment Monday night to get my hotel surveillance tape. Seems he and Aames were close friends, they've known each other for years, and Monday afternoon, she offered him fifty dollars to break into Crumley's place and get her every blank tape he owned. She was only interested in one, he said, but she told him to take everything, just in case.”

“Very interesting. He happen to say why?”

“The surveillance tape Crumley had showed her and a girlfriend named Felicia White visiting C.E. Digga Jones a few hours before the kid died, and Aames was terrified Crumley might use it to broadcast the fact. White's an ex-pro who's apparently got full-blown AIDS, and Felipe says Aames had it in her head that taking the lady up to the Digga's room that night was some kind of prosecutable offense.”

“You're joking,” Chin said.

“No. It sounds screwy, I know, but Aames was a certified paranoid schizophrenic, she had a history of mental problems longer than your arm. Worrying about getting ten years to life for introducing the Digga to a sex partner with AIDS wouldn't have been all that unusual for her.”

“Yeah, but even if that were true …” La Porte started to say.

“How could Crumley have known about White?” Chin asked, completing his partner's thought.

“That I couldn't tell you,” Gunner said, “and neither can Felipe. Unless he knew the lady personally, blackmailing Aames with the tape should have never even crossed Crumley's mind.”

“All right, all right. Enough about Aames already,” La Porte said. “What I wanna know is, does Felipe admit killing Crumley, or not?”

“He didn't admit it to us, no. But his denials made it pretty obvious he did. Impression I get is that he did Crumley by accident, just like you always said—in a panic after Crumley discovered him in his apartment—and if our friends inside are any good at what they do, they should probably turn him over to you with a signed confession to that effect.”

“And Aames?” Chin asked. “What about her?”

“He cops an innocent plea there too. He said she only gave him half the fifty she promised him when he delivered the five tapes Crumley had Tuesday morning, told him to come back tonight to get the rest. Only when he got here …”

“She was dead,” La Porte said. “Naturally.”

“Call us stupid, La Porte, but Poole and I believe him,” Gunner said. “One, because he genuinely seems to have loved the lady, and two, because this murder seems way out of his league. Killers change their MOs all the time, sure, but this guy's not that bright. Beating a man's brains out with a blunt instrument is a job he can handle, but killing a lady with one shot without leaving a mess of any kind behind?” Gunner shook his head again. “Very unlikely.”

“Besides, we were on top of him the minute he broke to leave,” Poole said. “There's no way he could've ditched a weapon somewhere without one of us seein' it.”

“Okay. Not that my partner and I really give a rat's ass, you understand,” Chin said, “but seeing as how we're here with nothin' else to do but ask you guys questions until we get to talk to Felipe ourselves … If
he
didn't whack Aames, who did? White?”

“For lack of a better suspect, yeah,” Gunner said. “For all we know, she was as spooked about Crumley's tape as Aames was. Maybe more. If it turns out the tapes Felipe says he gave Aames aren't in her apartment somewhere, I'll have to assume her killer lifted them on his or her way out the door, the same way Felipe did over at Crumley's place, and right now, I can't see anyone else doing that besides White.”

“You tell CCPD that?” Chin asked, breaking the ying-yang rhythm he and La Porte had going by opening his mouth twice in succession.

“Of course. They put a call in before you boys got here, there should be an APB out on her now.”

“Then your busy day is done,” La Porte said.

“Yeah. I guess it is. I'm gonna go back inside now, see if your friends'll give me their blessings to leave. Unless there's anything else you gentlemen would like to know?”

La Porte and Chin both shook their heads at him.

“Good Come on, Poole, let's go.”

“Do me a favor, Gunner,” La Porte said as the two men started off, flicking his spent cigarette away like it was the last he would ever smoke. “Give them a message for me, huh?”

“Not on your life, Detective,” Gunner said, neither stopping nor turning around. “You want a policeman to fuck you, you're gonna have to tell him so yourself.”

“So what now, hotshot?” Poole asked, as he was dropping Gunner off at his car.

And the truth was, Gunner didn't know. Nothing had happened tonight that seemed relevant to anything other than Ray Crumley's murder, yet he still couldn't convince himself it all didn't somehow tie in to the death of Carlton Elbridge.

The theory he'd just laid on La Porte and Chin regarding Antoinetta Aames's interest in Crumley's surveillance tape seemed sound enough, except that it didn't explain how Crumley could have known to hold it over Aames's head (and possibly Felicia White's as well). For Crumley to recognize the tape as something he could blackmail either of the women with, its value in that regard should have been obvious to him, which White's HIV status almost certainly couldn't have been, or Aames would never have dared bring her along to Elbridge's room in the first place.

Gunner decided Crumley must have seen something more incriminating on the tape than Aames had led Marvin Felipe to believe—and that something could only have pertained to her or White's involvement in Carlton Elbridge's alleged suicide. Nothing else made sense.

Being the first to find White and talk to her was the most obvious way to learn if this last was true, but now that Gunner had made the lady a prime suspect in an open Culver City Police Department homicide investigation, he was legally obligated to back off and leave her apprehension to the professionals. Which was probably for the best in any case, because his leads on White were few and far between. Thanks to Poole and Alred Lewis, respectively, he had an old address for White and the name and phone number of a pimp she used to turn tricks for out in San Bernardino County. That was it. Even if he felt like risking the CCPD's wrath by looking for the prostitute at the same time they were, Gunner sure as hell was in no mood to drive all the way out to San Bernardino just to hear a grown man named Rocket say he didn't know where Felicia White was, and more important, didn't give a damn.

So his work on the Elbridge case was once again in a holding pattern. Without White, there was no obvious next step for him to take. He could have gone out to Wally Browne's to relieve his man Jolly, but he didn't think that would be either wise or necessary; it was well after midnight, and Gunner was dead on his feet, and the FBI had probably already dispatched a surveillance team of its own to watch Browne's place, in any case. Tonight he'd just drive home, call Browne to make sure all was well, and then turn in.

Or maybe he'd make the call from the Acey Deuce instead.

When this thought occurred to him less than three blocks from home, even as tired as he was, it seemed innocent enough. He often made such late, spur-of-the-moment appearances at Lilly's before retiring.

But tonight it wasn't just the vision of warm, amber bourbon being poured into a glass that moved him to make the turn leading to the bar's front door. Or the promise of a good laugh or two, should Eggy Jones or Harold Gaines be in the house, throwing their customary verbal jabs at Lilly like poisoned lances. Tonight, the Deuce's draw upon Gunner was something else entirely, and he knew what it was soon enough to have time to avoid it, go home to bed like he'd originally planned, if that was his choice. All he had to do was turn the Cobra around one more time.