Free All the Lucky Ones Are Dead by Gar Anthony Haywood Page A

the couch, staining the white fabric red in several places.
    â€œDetective Steven La Porte. This is my partner, Detective Chin.”
    Gunner looked over, caught the nod of the stocky, grim-faced Korean La Porte was referring to.
    â€œWhat happened?” Gunner asked.
    â€œFrom the looks of things? Burglarus interruptus. Which is to say, Mr. Crumley walked in on somebody robbing his apartment, got his head bashed in for his trouble. Come on, take a look.” La Porte led Gunner over to the corpse on the floor, crouched down to lift the sheet away from its head. Or what remained of its head. Crumley had been beaten so badly only the left side of the black man’s skull was not a caved-in mass of bloody pulp and bone. “Had to be a druggie. Nobody else would expend this much energy killin’ a guy, right? Just to get his wallet and the change in his pockets?”
    Gunner nodded, taking the sheet out of the cop’s hand to cover Crumley’s face again. He hoped he didn’t look as sick as he was starting to feel.
    â€œYou okay, Gunner? You don’t look so good.”
    â€œI’m fine. Showing a little respect for the dead, that’s all.”
    He caught La Porte throwing a sideways glance at his partner, anticipated the cop’s next question.
    â€œI didn’t know the man, La Porte,” Gunner said. “I called him once an hour ago, and left a message on his machine. That’s as close as I ever got to meeting him.”
    â€œYeah, we know. You told us that. But maybe we’d be more inclined to believe you, you told us what your reasons were for calling.”
    Gunner gave them the general idea of the case he was working on, no more and no less. La Porte seemed to be satisfied.
    â€œWhen did all this go down?” Gunner asked, surveying the room again.
    â€œLate last night sometime,” Chin said, speaking for the first time. “Coroner’s first guess is ten, ten-thirty, and a couple of neighbors in the building seem to confirm that.”
    â€œYou’ve got wits?”
    La Porte shook his head for his partner. “They just heard all the commotion. Nobody saw anything, or anybody.”
    â€œWhat about a weapon?”
    â€œHasn’t turned up yet.”
    â€œAnd the body? Who found it?”
    â€œHis girlfriend. One Lori Fields. She’s a stewardess for United who just got back from Chicago, she says. Came by to fix Crumley breakfast this morning, and got a little surprise.”
    Gunner looked around, didn’t see anyone fitting the description. “So where is she?
    â€œHospital,” Chin said. The two cops were making like a tag team now. “She did a dead faint when she saw the body, banged her head on the coffee table over there when she fell. She was cut pretty bad, so we had the paramedics take her in for treatment.”
    â€œYou let her go?”
    â€œWe released her for medical reasons. She isn’t going anywhere. Besides, her story checks out. United says she worked the red-eye from Chicago last night, didn’t get into LAX until a few minutes shy of eleven a.m.”
    â€œMind if I ask a question?” La Porte cut in, talking to Gunner. “What was your interest in Crumley? What’d you think he could tell you about your rapper’s suicide you didn’t already know?”
    â€œI wasn’t sure. Maybe nothing. But his supervisor over at the Westmore said something this morning I thought was a little odd, so I thought I’d ask Crumley about it.”
    â€œYeah? Like what?”
    â€œLike Crumley had told him he’d turned over one of the hotel’s surveillance tapes of the floor Elbridge’s suite was on the night he died to the Beverly Hills PD. Which he may indeed have done, except that the cop in charge of the investigation never mentioned having viewed such a tape to me.”
    â€œAnd you think that means …”
    â€œEither Crumley lied to his supervisor