Kim Oh 3: Real Dangerous People (The Kim Oh Thrillers) (12 page)

“Don’t even start with me.”

I stepped out into the hallway and headed for the stairs.

EIGHT

I lay on my bed, staring up at the ceiling. Thinking about stuff.

Not really a bed – just the apartment’s saggy old sofa. With a pillow and the blankets I kept folded up in the closet. Someday, Donnie and I would have a place with a bedroom for each of us. That was one of the big things I was shooting for. It just hadn’t happened yet.

As to what was going to happen next – that was something I didn’t know.

Not just tomorrow, or the next day. But a long way down the road.

A car drove by, on the empty street below. This late at night, you hear things like that, and it just sounds so sad. You don’t even know who it is, where they’re going, and you lie there, wondering if they’re as lonely and scared as you.

I didn’t want to get up and look out the window. I’d seen it already. The icy blue moonlight picking out the frozen slush in the gutters and the crusted drifts of snow along the sidewalks . . .

Actually, I was afraid I wouldn’t see that. It didn’t happen often, but there were still times when the world would go all flat and two-dimensional and unreal on me, as though it were just painted on sheets of transparent plastic. I hated that. The creepy feeling was something left over from that motorcycle accident I’d had, when I’d gone down and hit my head on the asphalt. There was still a little scar just above my ear, that I could trace with a fingertip when I washed my hair. I should’ve had x-rays taken when it’d happened, but when you don’t have money or insurance, you tend to let things like that slide, as long as actual pieces of yourself aren’t falling off.

This stuff that was going on with Falcon and Karsh – and the crew – that was all making me feel the same sort of weird. At least, whenever I had the time to think about, which I tried to make sure I didn’t.

Maybe if I got up and ate something, whatever was left over in the refrigerator – maybe then I’d feel better.

I didn’t throw the blankets off and sit up. I just went on lying there. Thinking.

About the crew, mainly.

I didn’t want to wind up like those guys. I’d thought about that before, a little bit. And now I was thinking about it again.

It’d been different when I had been working with Cole. When the two of us had been getting ready to kill our old boss McIntyre. Back then, I still hadn’t killed anybody yet, and anytime you do something for the first time, it’s exciting. That’s probably why kids are in such a hurry to get laid. I might’ve liked to do that, too – problem was, back when I’d been Little Nerd Accountant Girl, the only hook-up I might’ve been able to get was with somebody who pitied me even more than I did them. It’d seemed easier – or at least less humiliating – to just keep my head down in my spreadsheets and ledger books. Just let it collect dust. And now, with what Cole had told me about not trying to get any action along those lines, so I’d have better luck at killing people . . .

Like being a frickin’ nun or something. Except for the part about killing people. That part was okay.

At least, I hoped it was. I had been staring up at the ceiling for so long in the dark, my eyes were starting to ache. What if I got to that point – the way it must be for Curt and Foley and even that Elton guy, who was at least a little bit younger than the rest – when it was just business as usual?

That’s really what scared me about those guys on the crew. Not what they were capable of doing – though they were certainly dangerous enough on that score. You don’t get that old in this line of work, without having made sure that a whole bunch of other people bit it rather than you. But what they were – that’s what scared me.

What if I wound up like that?

I mean . . . it’s like a lot of things you do when you’re young and you think it’s okay. Because you’re a kid and you’re as cute as you’re ever going to be. You think you can get away with all sorts of things then. You might even think it looks good on you.

Like getting a tattoo.

I hadn’t done that, either. Which didn’t bother me. I could see the point of the getting laid thing – I mean, everything I’d heard about it made it sound interesting enough – but getting ink poked into your skin . . . I don’t know.

I’d had this conversation with one of the secretaries in McIntyre’s company, when she had actually lifted up her skirt to show me some multicolored unicorn she’d just had done. I’d stared at it, then I’d blurted out what I thought.

“You wouldn’t look twice at that picture if it was hanging on a wall, or it was in a magazine. What makes you think it’s more interesting when it’s on your butt?”

No wonder I never had any friends at work.

I looked over at the clock on the shelf above the stove. The apartment was so small I could see it easily from the couch. Four in the morning and I was thinking about some former coworker’s stupid tattoo. I’d be in great shape when the sun finally came up.

It would’ve been better if that had actually been what I was thinking about. It was still the stuff about the crew that was going round and round inside my head.

Old guys. Who killed people. Good at it . . .

There must’ve been a time when they had been my age. The age I was now. And they must’ve wondered what they would be like, what they would be doing, when they got as old as somebody else they were looking at. Maybe they’d figured they wouldn’t be doing this crap by then.

That’s the problem. Nobody ever figures that. It just happens.

I forced my eyes closed. Hoping for sleep, or just not being awake.

It wasn’t a car going by in the empty street below. That wasn’t what I heard.

I didn’t hear anything at all. Except the world rushing by.

PART TWO

You’re just wasting time when you talk to people. You should be killing them instead.
 – Cole’s Book of Wisdom

NINE

The next morning, Curt pulled the Chevy up to the curb outside the apartment building. Elton was already there waiting for him, hands deep in his coat pockets against the winter chill.

“Don’t be surprised if Falcon’s in a bad mood.” Soon as Elton had climbed in, Curt swung the car around in the street. “We had trouble last night.”

“So I heard.”

“Yeah?” Curt glanced over at him. “Who from?”

“Earl. He phoned me a while ago, told me all about it.”

“That’s good. You need to be up to speed about the situation. Because I’m really counting on you guys to pull it together. I don’t want Falcon on my ass anymore about this.”

“Don’t worry.” Elton nodded. “Do what we can for ya.”

“Make the extra effort, okay?” Curt was still simmering from getting chewed out the night before. “Like Kim.”

Elton looked over at him. “What about her?”

“She must already be over there at Falcon’s place. I went by to pick her up, and she was already gone.”

“Yeah . . .” Elton nodded appreciatively. “Well, she’s kind of a go-getter, ain’t she? I’ve noticed that about her.” He turned to the side window, watching the gray buildings slide by. “She’s a real ball of fire, all right.”

The only problem was that when they got to Falcon’s place, I wasn’t there.

Earl and Foley were still there, looking a little rumpled and unshaven from keeping their shift, when Curt and Elton came into the living room.

“Where’s Kim?” Curt looked around.

Foley shrugged. “How the hell should I know?”

Right about that time, I was coming up the long, curving driveway on my motorcycle. Hurrying – I knew I was late.

Falcon came down from upstairs. All showered and shaved, another one of his expensive suits, looking like a successful businessman.

“Are we ready to go?” His impatience was evident. “This is a very important meeting I’ve got lined up –”

“Not quite,” said Curt. “We don’t have the whole crew here –”

“Why not? What’s going on?”

“Sorry I’m late –” I was just about running as I came into the mansion’s living room. “I had some business to take care of –”

That was true. I’d had to go down to the Child Protective Services office, all the way downtown. Just to fill out some stupid paperwork about Donnie’s disability benefits. I’d been stalling them for weeks, then they finally said I had to get in there or else. Which would’ve meant a pretty heavy hit to our household budget if they’d cut us off.

Falcon glared at me, then jabbed his forefinger into his own chest.

“
I’m
your business. Understand?”

He stormed past me and out the front door. After a moment, the others followed him. When Foley walked past him, he gave me a smirk and a shake of the head.

“Don’t do that again.” Curt had stayed behind with me. “We’ve got enough on our hands without the boss hitting the roof. He can be hard to deal with when he’s pissed .”

He headed for the door, with me trailing behind.

Outside, Foley and the rest of the crew had already piled into the Lincoln, with Earl behind the wheel. I got into the Chevy with Curt, and we followed the other car out the gates.

It took us about a half hour to reach the suburbs out on the west side of town. Our destination was one of those mega-malls that were all the rage back when the economy was roaring and the only problem people had wasn’t scraping by with no job, but buying a house with a three- or four-car garage big enough for all the crap they bought. Kind of shopping place with not just an anchor store at either end, but some big chain operation at all four corners of a building the size of some third world country’s capital city. Must’ve been really something back when it opened, but now there were whole quadrants of it that were empty, nothing but shop windows still plastered with
Going Out of Business
signs, the only sound the slow, steady walk of one of the mall cops checking the locked doors.

There was still enough activity going on at the surviving stores to fill up the parking lot stretching out from the main entrance, with the tattered flags and the shut-off water fountains. The real estate developer who owned the mall – or at least that part of it that hadn’t been snapped up by some hedge fund headquartered in Qatar – was partners with Falcon on about a dozen other marginally legit developments scattered through the state. Some of them I’d known about from back when I had been keeping the books for McIntyre. When Cole and I had offed our old boss, Falcon and his partners had been able to cherry-pick the operations for a bargain price. It really is an ill wind that doesn’t blow some good, or at a least profit, to some people. As long as those people aren’t too fussy about getting their hands dirty.

None of Falcon’s people ever were.

The developer had his offices up on the mall’s top floor, overlooking its central plaza. Story was that he liked to look out his inside window and watch his grandkids on the old historic Dentzel carousel that he’d installed in the middle of the food court. The carved wooden horses had stopped prancing around and around a couple of years ago, after some liability lawsuit had racked up attorney bills that caused even the developer to turn pale when he looked at them. That might have been why he was looking to unload the whole mall – which was the reason for Falcon coming out here to talk to him and see what the buyout price was.

Earl brought the Lincoln up close to the mall entrance. The Chevy with Curt and me in it pulled up right behind.

Curt slid out from behind the steering wheel and scanned the area for anything suspicious. After the incident at the restaurant, just before I’d been recruited to take Heinz’s place on the crew, everybody was on full alert.

Finally satisfied, Curt signaled to Falcon and the others in the Lincoln. I got out of the Chevy at the same time, so that three of us – Foley, Elton, and me – could form a tight circle around Falcon. With all of us looking around, our hands on the grips of ours guns inside our jackets, we watched as Curt and Earl moved cautiously to the
Staff Only
door at the side of the mall entrance’s big glass doors. They’d check it out before the rest of the crew, with our boss at the center, would catch up with them.

Earl reached for the handle of the door –