Читать книгу Good Man Gone Bad - Gar Anthony Haywood - Страница 13

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GUNNER HAD MADE ARRANGEMENTS to meet with Viola Gates, Del’s part-time office assistant, at his cousin’s office at 5 p.m., but he showed up a half-hour early to look the place over before her arrival. Del had given him a set of keys years ago, when Gunner had succumbed to all of Del’s badgering and agreed to work for him as an electrician’s apprentice. The career change hadn’t lasted longer than a month.

The office now was as it had been then, just a small, two-room suite on the ground floor of what had once been a bank building on Vermont and Slauson. The building was the kind of place small businesses went to die, a dimly lit shell abandoned by its original tenant like a snake’s shed skin. The uppermost floors were vacant, and the offices below, when they weren’t equally empty, were home to a revolving door of disparate business professionals who came and went at the whim of their ability to pay rent: insurance salesmen, dentists, attorneys at law. The economy of late hadn’t driven everyone away, but as he unlocked the door to Del’s suite to let himself in, Gunner couldn’t help feeling like a man trespassing on a movie set long after production had shut down for good.

Del had only really used the office as a place to greet customers and do paperwork, and it showed. You could almost count the pieces of furniture in both rooms on one hand: an old metal desk and wooden rolling chair in each, a filing cabinet, printer cart, and hard-backed chair for visitors to sit on out in the front. Both rooms were choked with stacks of magazines and catalogs, the desktops littered with open and unopened mail, order forms, and writing instruments. But the laptop computer on the desk and the coffee machine atop the filing cabinet were evidence enough that the anteroom was Viola’s domain, the room directly behind it, Del’s.

Gunner hit the overhead fluorescents, washing the suite in a light both yellow and sickening, and started poking around.

He began with Viola’s desk. It was strewn with phone messages torn from a pink pad, handwritten notes to and from Viola and her employer, loose sheaths of printed invoices and written estimates. A paperback romance novel lay face down, open to chapter fourteen. Alongside the computer’s mouse, an emery board sat next to two bottles of garish pink nail polish.

In lightly perusing the paperwork, Gunner thought he detected a theme running throughout, that of creeping disorganization and customer dissatisfaction. He found a few “please remit” and “cancellation of services” notices, and saw enough phone messages from the same two or three people demanding a call back to suggest that Del had in recent weeks been in some state of avoidance, as men with money troubles often were. It seemed, too, that Viola had been losing patience with Del, as her written conveyance of these messages to him were growing increasingly curt and imploring:

Please call Ms. Esposito back!!! She’s called three times today!

Two things, in particular, caught Gunner’s eye. One was a series of printed reviews someone had posted online trashing DC Electrical Services, the formal name of Del’s company. Written by someone who identified themselves as A. Fuentes, all three reviews were onestar, scathing indictments of DC Electrical and its owner. Fuentes described an experience with Del’s company that involved everything from shoddy workmanship to outright fraud, one that left readers little choice but to conclude that Gunner’s cousin was both a liar and a thief.

The other thing of note Gunner found on Viola’s desk was the draft of a termination notice for Glenn Hopp, Del’s only full-time employee, effective three weeks prior. Gunner didn’t know much about Hopp, a tech school grad in his early twenties he had never actually met, but his understanding had been that Del was happy with his work. At least, in the twelve months or so since his hiring, Del had issued no word of complaint about the man in Gunner’s presence. If he’d been fired for cause, his letter of termination made no mention of it; it simply stated Hopp’s services would no longer be required.

Gunner did a cursory inspection of all the drawers in Viola’s desk, finding nothing of interest in any of them, then moved on to Del’s room in the back. He had to pause a moment after sitting down in the man’s chair, feeling Del’s presence here despite his best efforts to suppress all emotion. Del is dead, he thought, once more remembering something he’d almost managed to forget. Never again would his cousin rock back in this chair with a phone at his ear, yell out orders at Viola, or fall asleep with an open newspaper in his lap, as Gunner had seen him do on numerous occasions. He was gone and this empty office was as close as Gunner would ever come, in this life, to being in his company again.

Gunner drew himself out of the descent he was drifting toward and began to subject Del’s desk to the same examination he’d just given Viola’s. Predictably, the papered chaos here was much the same, only worse: things were in piles sliding this way and that, like a moat surrounding his computer monitor and keyboard, no effort made to arrangement according to content. Invoices and notes from Viola were jumbled with receipts from fast-food restaurants and open magazines, rough sketches of electrical schematics, and direct-mail ads from suppliers. Gunner tried to recall if it had always been thus and found himself doubting it; Del had never been much for neatness, but this seemed to be a new level of disarray, even for him. Did it mean he’d had too much work to handle recently, or nowhere near enough? Gunner couldn’t decide.

He picked up a framed photo from the desk, studied the three smiling people frozen in time behind the glass: Del, Noelle, and Zina. They were posing alongside some poor bastard wearing a Goofy costume, the unmistakable trappings of a Disney amusement park in the background. Zina appeared to be in her midteens, making the photo at least five years old. Everyone seemed to be genuinely happy, though Zina’s grin could have been viewed as more artificial than the two her parents were wearing; it didn’t have the look of being forced, just halfhearted. Or maybe that was just his imagination, Gunner thought, looking as he was for signs of Del’s discontent everywhere.

He was rummaging through his cousin’s desk drawers, discovering treasures no more meaningful than old coffee mugs and packs of gum, when the office door opened and Viola Gates walked in, a jangling keychain in her right hand and a look of surprise on her face. And it was surprise, not fear, Gunner noted; in fact, he got the impression she could have found him robbing her own home and not been more personally insulted.

“How did you get in here?” she demanded.

Gunner had met her at least twice before, long after he’d left Del’s employ, but he took fresh stock of her now. What he saw was a middle-aged black woman of medium height, 140 to 150 pounds arranged in the shape of a teardrop vase, and a face chiseled in smooth brown marble beneath a Rasta’s mane of beaded dreadlocks. A black mole the size of a small diamond drew attention to her left cheek, just beside her flat nose, like a lighthouse calls out to stray ships in the night.

“I have my own keys.”

“I thought you said 5 o’clock.”

“I did. You’re right on time.” With his right hand, he slid closed the desk drawer he’d been rooting about in, not wasting the effort to be discreet about it.

Viola’s eyes drifted over to her desk, seeking signs of invasion, as Gunner stood up to join her in the anteroom. “Is it really true?” she asked, and up close he was able to see her eyes were rimmed in red. “Mr. Curry’s really dead? And he killed Noelle and shot Zina?”

“They were all shot, and Del and Noelle are dead, yes,” Gunner said. “But we’re still trying to find out how and why.”

“We?”

Gunner ignored the bitter skepticism in her voice and said, “The police and I. Their investigation into what happened this morning is still open, and I’m just doing my part to help them with it. You don’t have any objection to that, do you?”

Viola pushed past him to take her seat behind the desk, leaving him with the other so that he’d have no confusion about the pecking order in this room. “So why haven’t the police called me yet? Shouldn’t I talk to them first?”

Gunner sat down in the hard-backed chair across from her, accepting her terms of fealty without complaint. “To be frank? I doubt you’ll ever hear from them. The detectives in charge of the case seem pretty satisfied that things went down exactly the way you just said they did—Del shot Noelle and Zina, then turned the gun on himself—so it’s unlikely they’ll look very hard for a reason to change their minds.”

“What about Zina? What does she say happened?”

“She’s in no condition to say. She hasn’t regained consciousness yet.”

Gunner waited for her to respond. Tears slowly pooled in her eyes and her head began to swivel from side to side, almost imperceptibly. “I can’t believe it,” she said.

“What?”

“He wouldn’t do such a thing. He couldn’t have!”

Gunner didn’t push; he knew she’d get around to explaining herself eventually.

Viola yanked a tissue from the box on her desk and dabbed her eyes with it, expelling a deep sigh. “Things were bad. He was having a rough time. I could see how he might’ve wanted to kill himself just to put an end to his troubles, but killing his family, too? No.” She shook her head more emphatically. “No.”

Gunner let a moment pass, determined to tread softly. “How bad were things? Exactly?”

Del’s assistant appraised him carefully. “I’m not sure I should answer that.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I don’t mean to be rude. But I barely know you. Why should I tell you all of Mr. Curry’s business?”

“Because—”

“I know what you said your motives are. But that doesn’t explain everything.” She pulled herself upright in her chair, becoming Del’s fire-breathing, outraged protector again. “Like why you broke in here before I showed up so you could go through this office, instead of waiting for me to let you in. Mr. Curry hasn’t been dead a full day yet and already he’s got relatives sniffing around his things, looking for their piece of what little the poor man didn’t take with him.”

“It’s not like that,” Gunner said, though he fully understood how she might have thought otherwise. He’d seen it himself too many times, the dead’s so-called “family” picking over whatever riches had been left behind, desperate to be the first in order to get the best. No amount of wealth was ever too big or too small to fight over like hyenas over a carcass.

“No?” Viola said. “Then tell me how it is.”

It incensed Gunner to be questioned like this, when he had more right to his pain than she had to hers. But he gave in and said, “Del was my first cousin. And the closest thing I have, I guess, to a best friend. I loved him. And it pisses me the hell off that I’m so goddamned clueless about what happened to him today. I’m the only family he had out here, and family’s supposed to know when the world’s turned so far upside down for somebody that they’re thinking about picking up a gun and using it. So that’s what I’m doing here, snooping around his office and talking to you.” Gunner forced himself to stop and take a breath, before the train that was his guilt could accelerate beyond his control. “His parents are going to arrive from Atlanta tomorrow or the next day for his services, and when they get here, they’re going to ask me to explain why their son and daughter-in-law are dead, and their only grandchild is the next thing to it. Assuming Zina’s even still alive by then. I want to have answers for them when they ask their questions, Viola. And you can help me do that.”

She took a long time deciding whether or not she wanted to help him. “How?”

“I asked you how bad things had gotten for him, and in what ways.”

“I don’t know everything. I only know what I’ve seen and heard in here, and I’m only here Monday through Thursday.”

“Okay.”

She sighed. “He had money problems. Business was down and he couldn’t pay his bills on time. I think he was tapped out on all his credit cards.”

“And you know this because?”

“Because I was taking the calls from people demanding payment. Banks, suppliers, utilities. We had the electricity cut off in here at least once.”

“How long had this been going on?”

“I don’t know. Three, four months, maybe.”

Gunner couldn’t believe it. Four months in debt and Del had never once asked him for a dime.

“How deep in the hole do you think he was?” he asked Viola.

She shook her head. “I really couldn’t say.”

“You weren’t responsible for his books?”

“His books? Oh, no. I could have done them, if he’d let me, but Mr. Curry did his own books. All I do—” She immediately corrected herself: “All I did around here was answer phones and do paperwork.” She picked up on Gunner’s hesitation and read it perfectly. “I know. That’s the kind of work any girl out of high school could do. What’s a grown woman like me want with a job like this?” She smiled at an old wound, the twisted knife still in her back. “If that paper I got from Morehouse was still worth anything, I wouldn’t be here. But it’s not, and I’ve got to eat, so here I am.”

Gunner could only nod, sorry for whatever he’d done to make her think such a painful admission had been necessary.

“When you say business was down, exactly how far down was it?”

“Way down. He still had work coming in, but nowhere near what he used to have. New business was down, especially. Somebody was spreading lies about him online, driving folks away.”

“A. Fuentes?”

“Yes. At least, that’s the name they used. How did you know?”

“I saw a few of his—or her?—reviews on your desk. What’s the story?”

“There is no story. I never heard of any A. Fuentes and neither did Mr. Curry. The name, the call, the things they said Mr. Curry did—it was all BS. Every word of it.”

The subject seemed to have touched a nerve with her.

“So who did Del think was writing these fake reviews?”

“He didn’t have any idea.”

The twist she’d put on the word “he” was an open invitation to a follow-up question.

“But you did,” Gunner said, obliging.

“It was just a feeling I had.”

Gunner waited.

“I think it was Zina.”

“Zina?” Gunner couldn’t hide his surprise. “Why Zina?”

“How well do you know her?”

“Not very.”

“Kids, they throw this word around way too much, but sometimes it’s appropriate: she’s a little bitch. I’m sorry, I know I should have more consideration for her than that, considering her condition, but that’s the word that fits. Poor Mr. Curry was on the phone with either her or his wife every day, trying to keep them from killing each other. That’s why—”

She checked herself.

“What?”

“No. I’m not going to say it.”

Gunner took a stab in the dark: “That’s why you thought Zina had done the shooting.”

“When I first heard about it—my mother called to tell me to turn on the TV—that was my first thought. That Zina must have killed her mother and Mr. Curry, then turned the gun on herself. I couldn’t imagine it happening any other way. Kids these days are so crazy. But that’s not possible, is it?”

“It wouldn’t appear to be, no,” Gunner said. “But that could change.”

Viola’s eyes welled up with tears again. The tissue was still balled up in her right hand, but she just sat there and let the tears come. “I hope it does. I hope to God it does. Because Mr. Curry didn’t deserve what she did to him. He was a good father and a good husband, and just because he wouldn’t let her have everything she wanted….”

“Like what?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I can’t.”

“I just need a few more minutes of your time.”

“No. Please.”

“Glenn Hopp. I saw Del had to let him go a few weeks ago.”

Gates eyed him suspiciously. “That’s right.”

“Can you tell me why? Was his termination for cause?”

“No. Mr. Curry just couldn’t afford to pay him anymore. Glenn didn’t do anything to get fired. But what if he had? What difference would that make?”

“People who get laid off for financial reasons don’t usually take it personally. But getting canned for reasons related to work performance sometimes bends folks out of shape, especially if they think the reasons given are bogus.”

“Work performance had nothing to do with Glenn’s termination. The money just wasn’t there to pay him anymore. If you’re thinking he blamed Mr. Curry for that, you’re wrong.” She stood up. “Now, I’d like to go, and I’d prefer to lock up behind me. Are you done in here?”

“I think so,” Gunner said. Gates seemed awfully anxious to stop talking about Hopp for some reason, but asking her why now was likely to prove fruitless.

“Good. Let’s go.”