Not Long for This World by Gar Anthony Haywood Read Free Book Online Page B

watching you?” Gunner asked the boy at the door.
    “Gwen’s watchin’ us,” the boy said.
    “Gwen?”
    Her tiny charge was nodding his head when Gwen finally appeared, rushing into the living room from somewhere off in the back. She was a nine- or maybe ten-year-old, with a round face and uncombed hair, dressed in the same Pick ’n Save coordinates as the other children, only in sizes best suited for the not-so-pleasingly plump.
    “Who you talkin’ to, Byron?” she demanded, reaching the apartment door to yank the boy standing there behind her, shielding him from Gunner with her body like a huffy mother hen.
    “I was looking for Harold,” Gunner said, as if that explained everything.
    “Harold ain’t home,” Gwen said.
    “Are you his sister?”
    She nodded.
    “You know when Harold might be back?”
    She shook her head. She wasn’t going to elaborate, either. “What you want him for?”
    “I want to talk to him. Regarding some friends of his. Toby Mills and Rookie Davidson. You know Toby and Rookie?”
    She shook her head again. “I don’t know none of Harold’s friends. Momma says to stay away from ’em. You a policeman?”
    “I’m a private investigator. That’s like a policeman, only different.”
    The girl just stared at him, as confounded by his answer as she had every right to be. Feeling foolish, he changed the subject.
    “Gwen, you know where I might find Harold now?”
    “No. He could be anywheres.”
    She was distracted by a loud cry behind her. The toddler in blue had found a can of Michelob somewhere and had poured most of its contents all over himself/herself trying to down it.
    “I gotta go, mister,” the girl told Gunner, starting to close the door in his face.
    Gunner stuck a hand out, said, “Waitaminute, waitaminute. What time will your mother be home? Maybe I could talk to her.”
    “I don’t know. I ain’t supposed to tell nobody what time Momma comes home. I gotta go.”
    Against Gunner’s meager objections, she pushed the door closed with authority.
    Gunner stepped off the porch and raised his eyes forlornly skyward, assessing the light of day as he let the sting of rejection slowly subside. He decided Saturday afternoon was probably good for another two hours in the sun, and was sure something worthwhile could be accomplished in those two hours, if he was to put his mind to it. However, he was not surprised to realize he didn’t want to put his mind to it. What he wanted to do was fold up his tent and go home. So he did.
    Something about having doors closed in his face always had that effect on him.
    Working on the Sabbath day was one of the few sins Gunner had never enjoyed committing, especially during the football season. He had found early on in his investigative career that lethargic Sunday mornings spent staring at a color television invariably led to stuporous Sunday afternoons, days that simply did not lend themselves well to the pursuit of professional accomplishment.
    On this particular Sunday, however, less than twenty-four hours after the detective’s interrogations of Teddy Davidson and a pair of Harold Seivers’s younger siblings, the usual excuses for deferring work until Monday did not apply. The football season was three months away and the Lakers/Supersonics game at the Forum was an evening affair. If he wanted to live with himself, he had no choice but to start what most people would come to appreciate as a day of rest with a latemorning visit to the home of Claudia Lovejoy, Darrel Lovejoy’s widow.
    He preferred to think of the move as his idea, but he was man enough to know better. Teddy Davidson had turned his attention to Claudia Lovejoy the day before when Davidson had suggested the possibility that Darrel Lovejoy might have had enemies outside the youth-gang hemisphere. It was a thought Gunner would have come upon of his own accord, eventually, but for now he had only Davidson to thank for it, and the debt rubbed his pride the wrong