Free You Can Die Trying by Gar Anthony Haywood Page A

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