Hot Lava (19 page)

“Doesn’t need to,” I replied, praying he wouldn’t shoot me for my insolence. “I know who’s out to get you. I can prove who’s out to get you. And I can hand him over on the proverbial silver platter. Provided we get Will back, as you promised, in return. Beyond that, we have no connection to you, never have, hopefully never will again.”

He leaned on the back of a leather chair, rubbing the side of the gun with his outstretched palm, the smile still there, the eyes running from me to my friends and back again. “Pretty brave for a little lady such as yourself. Not to mention one without a gun.” He paused, obviously pondering his next move. “You don’t have a gun, do you?” Again with the laugh.

I laughed as well. Flirting might not have helped, but sucking up couldn’t hurt. My friends took the hint and laughed along with me. “No gun,” I replied. “Just a certain person you’re looking for. That is to say, who’s looking for you. To get you, as you say. Put you out of business, one way or the other.”

He sighed. “Fine. A trade, then. This person for Will.” He set the gun down by his side. “Now, where exactly is this person?”

Everyone turned my way, allies included. I reached into my purse and removed my cell phone. I looked up at Jed. “No funny business, promise. I just have to call him and give him the address. He’ll be here in fifteen minutes, tops. Then we make the trade.”

He nodded his head. “If he’s not here in fifteen minutes, the four of you are dead. One by one.
Pop, pop, pop, pop.
Understand? Oh, and if the person you’re calling tries anything, again,
pop, pop, pop, pop,
and an extra
pop
for your friend downstairs. Yes?”

A lone bead of sweat trickled down my forehead. “Yes,” I agreed. “He’ll be here.”
Please, dear God, let him be here.

I dialed Liko’s number, at last unafraid of his having my number show up on his cell. Did I feel the slightest twinge of guilt for setting him up? Oh, hell yes. Still, it was either him or Will -- meaning, I could live with myself for doing this. He was, after all, still a bad guy, pimping people that were just barely out of their teens, plus Lord only knew what else.

He picked up on the fourth ring, my chest pounding, my head throbbing. “Who’s this?” he asked.

“Judy,” I replied. “We need help. They don’t want to pay.”

“Fuck,” he groaned. “Fine, I’ll be right there. What’s the address?

I held my hand over the receiver as Jed mouthed it to me and then I repeated it back to Liko. “Hurry,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “These guys are scary.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Keep it calm. I’ll be right there.”

I hung up. The room was eerily silent. We all stared at each other. “He’s on his way,” I announced.

“Who’s on his way?” Jed asked. “I mean, who exactly?”

I smiled, not ready to play my trump card just yet. “Wait and see,” I replied instead. “But this is the man who is out to get you. I’m certain of that much.”

Jed shook his head. “You’re playing with fire, lady. Just spill it.”

I smiled and begged him off. “Please, just wait until he gets here. Everything will be obvious then.”

We all sat down, saying nothing, staring at the ground, anywhere but at the gun. Five minutes, ten, fifteen. The doorbell rang, right on time. I allowed myself a breath. Liko had come, as promised. The trade would happen. It would. It had to.

One of the goons opened the door and escorted Liko in. His face went white when he realized where he was.

“You bitches tricked me,” he coughed out, trying and then failing to beat a hasty retreat. Naturally, he was no match for the two towering Hawaiians.

“Liko,” Jed said, with a nod of his head.

“Jed,” Liko said, held in place, his eyes steely, full of hatred.

“So you two do know each other?” I asked.

Jed laughed. “Of course we do. Small island. Same business.”

“Same boyfriend,” Liko added, lips pursed, rage rising up his neck in a red flush.

“You knew that, too?” I asked.

They both looked at me. “Yes,” Jed said. “But why do you know it? Just who the fuck are you?”

I coughed, changing the subject. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s just make the trade.”

Liko struggled with his captors. “What trade? What the fuck’s going on?”

Again Jed laughed, good and hard. “They brought you to me,” he said, looking around the room at our odd gathering. “Just as I planned.”

Koni and Brandon and Briana and I stared at him in shock. “Huh?” we all huhed.

To which I added. “How did
you
plan it? We barely planned it. And only just recently at that. Care to explain?”

His laughter abated; the gun again pointed our way. “Are you sure you want to know, little lady?”

I gulped. “Never mind.”

“Yeah,” Brandon seconded. “Never mind.”

“Yeah,” Koni thirded. And then, “Yeah,” Briana fourthed.

“Too bad,” said Jed, “because I’m going to tell you anyway. And then, well, I’m going to have to kill you. All of you.” He pointed the gun to Liko’s head. “And especially you. Then your friend Will. And that will be the end of this little mess.”

It was then I went for broke. Out of options, I blurted out, “I don’t think the FBI will like that too much. And then this little mess, as you call it, will most definitely turn into one giant one.”

It was then that the room went deadly silent.

(Deadly, obviously, not being the best choice of words.)

Chapter 8

Missions Accomplished

“What?” was all Jed could say.

All heads turned my way, as did,
fuck
, the gun.

“Will,” I managed, “is a federal agent. Not only that, at this very moment, the concierges at three separate hotels have letters containing our whereabouts: one letter will be mailed to the local authorities, one to the state, and one to Will’s boss, should we not come to claim them in exactly two hours. All three mention you by name, Jed. And, like we keep hearing, this island is small enough that you’ll have nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide. You kill us, and you seal your own fate.”

Jed stared at me, his mind obviously working out his next move. “Get him from downstairs,” he soon said to one of his henchmen. “Quickly.”

I held my breath, looking neither right nor left -- though I knew for certain that it was Koni staring the hardest at me. A minute later, Will at last appeared. I looked up, locking eyes with him, my heart pounding,
boom
,
boom
,
boom
. “Sorry,” I said. “I had to tell him.”

He nodded, obviously understanding.

It was all I could do to not run up and hug him, to hold him in my arms and tell him that everything would be okay. Jed, unfortunately, crushed the moment. “Fine, let’s start from the beginning, then. Maybe we can still work something out.” He looked, for the first time, nervous. Thank goodness for that.

“Fine,” I echoed. “Let’s hope so. In any case, like we told you, we’re in no way out to get you. We were just looking to save Will, who, in turn, was looking for Lenny, until Lenny turned up, well, you probably already know how Lenny turned up.”

Jed looked at me, his face twisted in uncertainty. “No,” he said. “How did Lenny turn up? Did the police finally capture him?”

The question was unexpected. True, the news still hadn’t broken, but I assumed that Jed was either responsible for Lenny’s untimely end or at least tangentially tied to it. It was Liko, however, that spat out a reply. “Fucker,” he blurted. “You were setting him up all along. And now he’s dead because of you. I saw them drag his body off the boat. I saw what you did to him.” He stifled tears as Jed’s guards held him in place.

Jed shook his head, his eyes momentarily shut tight. He opened them again and stared at his captive. “No, Liko. I didn’t kill Lenny. I set him up, yes. I had to. The orders came down from up top. Makani needed a scapegoat, someone not bright enough to know that he was being set up. Not until it was too late.”

Liko’s eyes flared. “
I
knew, asshole. I kept telling him that there had to be a reason you kept showering him with cash. It couldn’t have been out of generosity. You like your money way too much for that.”

Jed grinned, sending a cold blast of hatred through my heart. “No,” he said. “I told him it was because I didn’t want him to leave me for you. True, to a point.”

Then it was my turn to pipe up. “Makani knew he was going to be busted, so you gave him some leverage by offering up Lenny. But you weren’t counting on Liko’s stepping in to try and bring you down because of this. But that’s just what he did. He wrote a letter to Edward Beles in prison and told him that it was you who set him up after Makani was caught. He couldn’t save Lenny from prison, but he could, at least, get even with you for eventually putting him there. Sadly, that’s not how things went down.”

Jed’s grin grew wider. “Smart lady, but how do
you
know all this?”

I stared at him in shock. “Wait,” I said, picking up on something, putting the pieces together. “You knew, too? You knew that Liko had written the letter?”

The grin grew to a chuckle. “Fortunately, there’s a certain lawyer that has an, um,
itch
that I can help scratch. So, yes, I saw the letter. And I knew who wrote it. Knew who had to have written it. Only one person stupid enough to try and set me up. Or desperate enough.”

“Liko,” I said, staring at the person in question. “So, when you picked up Will the other night on his way to the police substation, you figured that was your chance to even the score. But why not just pick up Liko in person?”

Jed moved from his leaning position, pacing instead, the gun still pointed our way, moving back and forth to each of us in turn. “My, my, such a smart girl,” he said. “I hoped as much, anyway. You all found me so easily up at the North Shore, so easily got information from that idiot Buck, that I figured you’d somehow figure out Liko’s association with all this and would bring him to me. And look, here you are, and here he is. Bravo.”

“But why?” Brandon asked.

“Yeah, why?” I echoed. “Again, why not just pick him up yourself? Why go through all this?” I motioned around the room, then at the gun.

“Ah,” he ahed. “So you don’t know everything, then, do you?”

I paused, afraid to show him some Achilles spiked heel I was unaware of. Instead, I shone a light on his own. “
I
knew you were holding a federal agent, which is something you obviously didn’t know.”

He stopped pacing, his grin turning to a scowl. “Like I said, smart girl. So now what do we do about all this?”

“Stick to the plan,” I said. “We trade Will for Liko. Sounds like you would’ve gotten to him sooner or later anyway. Guess it’s sooner now. And, just as I said before, Will is all we ever wanted.”

Jed’s smile only briefly returned. “So, we make the trade, and then what? You all leave and never darken my doorstep again? Your friend, Will here, would have to turn me in eventually. Kidnapping, attempted murder, prostitution, drug dealing. The list goes on and on -- and will get me life in prison, for sure. I could just kill you all now and take my chances, right?”

Will, at last, spoke. “No, I can’t turn you in. I wasn’t on this case, officially. And there are certain, well, aspects of it that wouldn’t look good on my record. Besides, Lenny is already dead; there’s nothing I can do to change that. You boys can work it out however you like and leave us out of it from here on in.”

Again Jed paused, once more aiming the gun away from us. “A stalemate,” he said. “I can’t let you go and I can’t keep you. So I guess I have no choice.” I gulped, praying he’d decide on the latter. “Fine, go,” he eventually relented, shaking his head back and forth, a scowl stretched across his mean-ass face. “But if you come looking for me again, trust me, it’ll be the kid who goes down first.”

My blood froze as he walked over and the held the gun to Koni’s head, playing with the trigger as the kid in question gulped and sweated. This I wasn’t counting on. We, after all, could wash our hands of all this and leave the island. It wasn’t so easy for our young friend. “Deal,” Will said, and we all nodded our agreement.

Jed spoke to one of the goons, who promptly escorted us out. Easy as that. Hostages to free men (um, drag queens) in no time flat. We walked quickly to our car in silence.

With the door shut, I was at last able to breathe again. “Fuck,” I said. “I can’t believe that worked out.”

“It almost didn’t,” Will said, grabbing my sweaty hand in his. “That could’ve gone down either way.”

“But it didn’t,” said Brandon. “It went our way.”

Briana coughed. “Except Lenny is still dead and we aren’t any closer to figuring out who did it. Plus, there was that mysterious comment Jed made.”

“You picked up on that, too, huh?” Will asked, after a quick introduction. “
So you don’t know everything, then, do you?
Everything you all did to rescue me turned out okay, but only by sheer luck. Jed had all the pieces beforehand. Knew everything you knew. But he still knows something we don’t. Something obviously key.”

“He didn’t know one thing, though,” I said. “Thank goodness.” It was then I turned to look at Koni, who was sitting in the back seat in between Brandon and Briana. His face was contorted in a steely grimace. “Sorry,” I told him. “We couldn’t tell you about Will.”

He turned my way. “I thought we were friends,” he managed, from between gritted teeth. “You tricked me into helping you.”

I sighed. “No, Koni. We are your friends, but we knew you’d be scared off if we told you about Will.”

“Fuck yeah,” he said. “I’m a teenage drug-dealing prostitute, and you led me and all my friends right to the front door of the authorities. You think living behind a convenience store is bad, try prison.”

“We’re sorry,” Brandon chimed in. “We had no choice.”

“There’s always choices,” he retorted. “You just made a bad one. And your next one will be to drop me off at the store. Your
case
is over; you can go home now.”

He tilted his head back and shut his eyes. The conversation was, apparently, finished. I looked to Brandon, who shrugged. Will leaned in to my ear, and whispered, “Let him go. The case isn’t over. Not yet. He’s safer this way.”

I, too, closed my eyes, just before I cranked up the engine and drove off. Will, of course, was right. But that didn’t make it any easier. I hoped that once he cooled off, Koni would forgive us. In any case, we were just lucky no one had gotten hurt, especially Koni. (And not counting the two already dead men and the one soon to be, namely Liko. And, yes, that, too, weighed heavily on me, truth be told.)

***

We dropped Koni off as he had asked. He didn’t say another word to us or even look in our direction; he just walked away, out of sight, breaking our hearts as he did so.

“That sucked,” I said to my friends. “Big time.”

“But better safe than sorry,” Will reminded me.

Brandon tapped him on the arm. “Why’s that? Like he said, case closed. We’re back on vacation now, what little of it is left.”

The three of us looked up at Will, who replied, “Yes, you are. If that’s what you want.” He tilted his head, the meaning of his statement not lost on any of us.

“Oh, shit,” said Brandon.

“Ditto,” said I.

“You don’t have to help if you don’t want to,” added Will.

“But help with what?” I asked. “All roads seemed to lead to Jed. And that’s now a dead end, so to speak. Can’t we turn it over to the police now? Maybe they can unravel this from here on out.”

He shook and shot me a frown. “No can do. Can’t even let them know I’ve been rescued. I have a feeling that the missing piece to this mess of a puzzle can be found down at their headquarters. I’ll let my superiors know that I’m okay, but that’s it. Unfortunately, I can’t let this end, not just yet. Lenny’s killer is still out there and Jed needs to be brought to justice somehow, without risking Koni’s safety.”

“Or our own,” Brandon reminded him.

“Goes without saying,” he said.

“Fine, but again, just don’t go without saying it,” Brandon replied. “In any case, for the time being, we’re all safe and sound; can we at least go get a drink and catch some warm Hawaiian rays? This day has worked my last gay nerve.”

“Amen,” Briana shouted.

“Sing hallelujah,” I added.

To which everyone did.

***

We dropped off the rental car, got undressed, then re-dressed as boys and made it to the beach just as the sun began its meeting with the horizon. The drinks arrived moments later, the four of us facing the ocean, side by side, at long (long) last. I held my frosty cup firmly in one hand, the other holding Will’s. For the first time in days, I felt relaxed.

Almost.

“I better call in to home base,” Will informed us, “before they send any more agents in than they already have.”

He whipped out his cell and dialed. We listened to the conversation as the sky turned red. Though one-sided, we didn’t like what we heard. No sir, no how. And the red just as quickly turned to black.

“They didn’t know you were missing?” I asked, after he’d signed off.

“Nope,” he replied. “They knew I was on vacation, so they weren’t alarmed that I hadn’t checked in.”

“Doesn’t make sense,” Briana said. “Chase reported everything to the police. Even if Sergeant Beles is on the wrong side of things, he’d have to report your kidnapping.”

Will scratched his head. “Very true. Something doesn’t add up. Again.”

“Especially that last thing they told you on the phone,” I said.

He continued scratching, throwing in a nod for good measure. “You picked up on that, huh?”

“Hard to miss,” Brandon replied.

“And yet we missed it up until this point,” Will wisecracked.

“Well, now,” I said. “It’s not like Liko told us he was a police informant. Hard to work that into a conversation.”

To which Will added, “And one that’s about to testify in the state’s largest land development scam.”

“Ah,” Briana ahed. “But that does make a bit of sense. In fact, it explains a lot.”

“Um, care to elucidate?” I asked.

“Think about it,” she replied, taking a healthy chug of her creamy concoction. “Why would a pimp need/want to also be a limo driver?”

“To drum up business?” said Brandon. “That’s what we came up with before. I mean, that makes sense. Rich, lonely men looking for companionship, striking up conversations with the well-connected limo driver.”

“Sure,” she said, with a nod. “But remember, that microphone over your head is always on, unless you remember to flick it off.”

I laughed despite myself. “Limo driver, pimp, and blackmailer, too, right? He must have very complicated tax returns.” I took my own fortifying chug of booze, then added, “But you’re right, that makes even more sense. The guy has much more money than just the limo driver/pimp thing would allow for. Blackmailing puts him in a whole new stratosphere.”

Brandon nodded as well (and, naturally, chugged as well). “But police informant? How did he add that to his growing roster of dubious titles?”

“Protection,” Will informed her. “That small-island thing. So long as he keeps a relatively low profile, the police tend to ignore his more ignoble deeds. Which is why, I figure, he sticks with the Japanese business trade. They probably make less of a stink when they’re pissed off, probably requires less of his involvement. Fuck and fly home, and all that. Pay him off, if need be.”

“But again, why police informant all of a sudden?” I asked.