All the Lucky Ones Are Dead Read Free Page B

His mama don’t want no one to know it, but his real name was Elbridge, same as mine. Carlton Elbridge. Jones was just somethin’ them record people called ’im to make ’im sound more like a gangster or somethin’.”
    Gunner didn’t know much about C.E. Digga Jones under any name, other than that he was a gangsta rap superstar who’d allegedly committed suicide a little over a week earlier, sending his millions of fans—primarily young, inner-city kids—into a funk from which they were still struggling to extricate themselves. Gangsta rap wasn’t Gunner’s thing, and he only barely understood how it could be anyone else’s. That he’d heard of “the Digga” at all was proof of the intensity with which the music industry bombarded his community and others like it with this particular form of angst-filled, obscenity-laced music; you lived in the hood, the hype was everywhere. A kid couldn’t open a magazine or turn on a radio, walk past a construction-site fence plastered with posters, or watch five minutes of MTV without being sold the bill of goods its manufacturers liked to innocently call the “gangsta life.”
    â€œI know the boy liked to play up to all that foolishness,” Elbridge said, “to act like he was as bad as they made ’im out to be, but Carlton wasn’t really like that, Mr. Gunner. He was just playin’ a role. Young man can’t make it in the music business these days if he don’t.”
    â€œSure,” Gunner said, completely unconvinced.
    â€œThem other fools, most of them are the real thing. They just as soon shoot you in the head as make another record. Which is why they killed Carlton, see. ’Cause he wasn’t like the rest of ’em, and they knew it. He was—”
    â€œHold it, hold it. I thought your son committed suicide.”
    Elbridge shook his head angrily, said, “That’s a lie. That’s just what they set it up to look like, suicide. Carlton didn’t have no reason to kill himself, he was happy as a young man could be.”
    â€œI’m sure that’s true, Mr. Elbridge, but—”
    â€œMy son was murdered, Mr. Gunner. I don’t give a damn what the police or nobody else says. That’s why I’m here, talkin’ to you. I want you to find out who killed Carlton, and see to it they get what’s comin’ to ’em. All you gotta do is tell me how much you need t’get started.”
    He reached into his pocket, took out a wad of bills that had the well-worn look of a man’s life savings, and started peeling back fifties one by one. Waiting for Gunner to say when.
    â€œHold on a minute, Mr. Elbridge,” Gunner said, holding a palm up to ward Elbridge off.
    â€œWhat? You don’t want the job?”
    â€œI didn’t say that. I said hold on a minute.”
    â€œI’m in a hurry here, Mr. Gunner. You ain’t the man I should be talkin’ to, just say so.”
    â€œLook. We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here, that’s all. Before we can start talking about my fee, I need to hear a little more about what you’re asking me to do for it.”
    â€œYou wanna ask questions? Fine. Ask me anything you wanna know, I’ll tell you,” Elbridge said. He put his money away and leaned forward in his seat, crossed his hands atop the table like a kid on the first day of school.
    Gunner let him sit that way for a long while, trying to decide what to do. He’d already heard enough to know the work the older man was offering him was the kind he often regretted accepting later. The cast of characters he’d have to rub elbows with in order to look into the circumstances of a gangsta rapper’s death was obvious: thugs who knew how to sample and rhyme, so-called security men eight days out of San Quentin, and power-mongering record execs who spent more time cutting lines of coke