Kim Oh 3: Real Dangerous People (The Kim Oh Thrillers) (16 page)

Something finally seemed to click inside him.

He raised one arm and slowly reached his hand out for the gun. An inch or so above it, his hand started to tremble. A little at first, then increasing. With a teeth-gritting effort of will, Curt forced his hand to close around the gun’s grip.

He picked it up. His expression was even darker and grimmer as he raised the gun and looked at it.

The gun didn’t tremble as much when he pointed it toward himself.

His cell phone rang. He set the gun back down on the table, then fished inside his jacket for the phone and flipped it open.

“Yeah?”

He listened to the person on the other end for a few seconds.

“Okay,” said Curt. “I’ll be there. But this better be good.”

He flipped the phone closed and stood up with it still in his hand. He looked at it for a moment, then flipped it open again and punched in another number.

ELEVEN

I saw the stolen car outside the Diamondhead Lounge. Wearing his overcoat, Earl climbed out from behind the steering wheel.

“Weren’t you supposed to get rid of this thing?” I set my helmet down on the seat of the Ninja. “You said you were going to.”

“Yeah, but it’s a nice ride.” Earl slammed the car’s door shut. “I’ll be sorry to dump it off.”

“Okay, but it’s hot. Right?” I pulled off my heavy gloves and tucked them inside my jacket. “You know you have to.”

We headed toward the door of the lounge, the neon sign’s colors flickering on the dirty snow in the gutter.

“Actually,” said Earl, “I was just about ready to head out with it, when Curt called me.” He pulled the door open for me. “You got a call from him, too?”

“Yeah. I came over here from the hotel.” I had been happy for an excuse to get away from Karsh’s bodyguards. “What’s going on?”

“Beats the heck out of me.”

Curt must have taken a cab from Falcon’s place. He was already there, sitting in one of the booths with Elton and Foley. Their voices were raised, loud enough that we could hear every word they said.

“So that’s it, huh?” Curt brought his gaze up from the piece of paper that was laid flat on the booth’s table. “That’s what you think it means.”

“Yeah –” Foley nodded.

As we watched from near the door of the lounge, Curt clenched his fist and landed it hard on Foley’s jaw. Foley landed sprawling on the floor.

“Damn.” Foley wiped blood from the corner of his mouth. “I’m really getting tired of this.”

On the other side of the booth, Elton looked smugly at what had just happened. “I knew he was a lying sonuvabitch –”

“You idiot.” Curt swung his angry gaze at Elton. “He’s
right
.”

The two of us had reached the booth. Earl reached down to help Foley to his feet.

“What’s going on?” I looked across all of their faces. “Right about what?”

His expression simmering, Curt filled us in on the restaurant menu on the table. Everything about it, including how Foley had found it on Johnny Dodd’s body – except for the torn-off corner that he’d found on top of Falcon’s bedroom dresser.

“This is Moretti’s place.” Curt held the corner scrap toward me. “Up in Albany. You recognize the phone number, don’t you?”

“Yeah –” I nodded. “It is.”

“Moretti takes messages, doesn’t he? For a lot of guys.”

“That’s right.”

“Guys like Johnny Dodd?”

“Well . . . you know how it is. Guys like that, they don’t exactly have regular habits. That’s the only way to get hold of some of them.”

“So Foley must be right about what this means.” Curt turned around toward the others in the crew. “Falcon and Johnny Dodd must’ve been out there at the same time. Talking about something.”

That puzzled me. “Like what?”

“Like this.” Curt showed me the other side of the paper. “Talking about something that included drawing a map. Of the restaurant’s layout. Then Falcon tore off the piece with the phone number on it, so he’d have it if he needed to leave a message for Johnny. And Johnny kept the map.”

It didn’t sound good. For any of us.

“Okay,” said Elton. “But you don’t know if this is true. There might be some other explanation.”

“Sure,” said Curt. “You have an idea about what that other explanation would be?”

“No.” Elton shook his head. “But you’re saying something pretty ugly about the man we’re working for.”

“That’s right. So we need to find out if it’s true or not.”

“Well, you can’t ask Johnny Dodd. He’s dead. And I’m sure as hell not going up to Falcon and ask him about all this. Not while he’s got all those guys around him, that Karsh sent over. They’d kill you soon as they’d look at you.”

“Then we need to talk to somebody else who might know.” Curt folded up the paper, both the big piece and the little piece, and stowed it in his jacket. “Let’s go.”

He headed for the door. The rest of us looked around at each other, then followed after him.

* * *

They had to drive all night to get up to Albany.

I followed after the car, on the Ninja. I didn’t care how much the freezing wind cut through my jacket and settled around my bones. I didn’t feel like being cooped up with a bunch of guys who were all in that bad a mood. I just kept myself tucked behind the bike’s windshield, following the car’s taillights. Any time one of my hands started to turn numb inside its glove, I’d take it off the handlebar grip for a few seconds, holding it down by the engine until I could feel the blood thawing out again.

Must’ve been after 7:00 a.m. by the time we reached the outskirts of the town. In the gray winter light sliding over the hills, the place looked dismally familiar to me. I had been hoping that I’d never have to come out here again.

Moretti’s place was in one of the shabbier districts, closer to the interstate than the tarted-up downtown, with its trendier, higher-priced restaurants and clubs. Across the street from it was a truck stop with a lot always full of eighteen-wheelers, their diesel engines murmuring while the drivers ate or napped with their heads down on folded arms. Sometimes, when I’d had more than I could take of my job and the lovely characters I had to deal with, I’d go over there and just try to decompress with a cup of coffee for a half-hour or so. It wasn’t much, but it’d helped keep me sane.

“Hey, look at that! It’s my little girlfriend Kim.” Moretti came out of the kitchen when we walked in. That time in the morning, the place was empty except for us. “How ya been, sweetie?”

“Fine.” I stayed behind the others, to lessen the chance of him wrapping me in one of his bear hugs. Old, bald, with about 300 pounds of fat that always seemed to be drenched with sweat, no matter what temperature it was. The thick hair on his arms must have been black at one time, but had turned gray as the wattles around this throat. “Can’t complain,” I said.

He was carrying a hugely mounded plate of spaghetti in one hand. With his other, he gestured toward one of the booths. “Have a seat, gentlemen.” Our unannounced arrival didn’t seem to faze him at all. “It’s Curt, right? Long time, no see. Yeah, make yourselves comfortable.”

I sat down on the side opposite from him.

“You gents want anything?” He dumped the grated cheese from the bowl on the table, blanketing the spaghetti. “I’ll tell Carlo in the back to fix you anything you want. Don’t worry, it’s on me.”

“That’s all right.” Curt folded his hands in front of him. “We’re not hungry.”

“Suit yourself.” Moretti nodded toward his plate. “Best breakfast in the world, you know.”

“Like I said. We’re just here to talk.”

“Yeah? So talk. Don’t let me stop you.” As he twirled the spaghetti on his fork, he looked over at Earl, sitting next to me. “Whoa, Earl – what the hell happened to you?”

One side of Earl’s face was purpled with the bruise he’d gotten when the staff door at the mall had been blown off its hinges.

“Had an accident,” said Earl. “You know how it goes.”

“Gotta be careful, man.” Moretti worked away at his plate. “Guys our age, we don’t get put back together so fast anymore.” He leaned toward me and Elton. “You gotta understand, me and Earl go back a ways. A
long
ways. He used to work for me, back before your boss Falcone cherry-picked him.” He turned back toward Earl. “Ain’t that right?”

“Yeah –” Earl nodded. “We go back a ways.”

Moretti stopped eating for a moment, looking around at our grim, watchful faces. Then he shrugged and returned to his food.

“But times change, don’t they?” He wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. “Now I hear your boss is going in with that Karsh putz. Who woulda thought it? I guess everybody’s different, eventually.”

He shoveled down several more mouthfuls, then gestured with his fork.

“Just to show you that’s true – let me tell ya. That frickin’ Karsh sends
me
an invitation. To some fancy-shmancy Polynesian restaurant he’s openin’ up tonight. Can you believe that?”

“Why not?” Curt kept his hands folded on the table. “He has all sorts of business operations.”

“Yeah, but come on. A
Polynesian
restaurant? Is that some kinda retro thing, or what? I knew that tiki bars, like that place you guys’re always hanging out in, I knew those were popular with the college kids. We got a couple right here in town. What the hell – people want those fruity rum drinks, they can have ’em. But the food. I just don’t get it. You tell me, Kim – is that stuff any good?”

“How would I know?”

“Well . . . I figured with you being Hawaiian and all . . .”

I sighed. This was something that he and I had gone over a million times, back when I’d been working for him. It wasn’t worth going over it again.

“So if you don’t think you’d like it,” said Curt, “then don’t go.”

“I wasn’t planning to. But it’s just the idea that Karsh would want me to drop in at all. I mean – that guy tried to kill me! Course, my guys were trying to nail him at the same time. Guess it’s a good thing you didn’t get him, huh, Earl? ’Cause now we’re all supposed to be friends. Leastways, that’s what your boss tells me.”

Moretti was slowing down, getting to the bottom of the plate. He gestured around the place with his fork.

“Whaddaya think? Think I should go for that tropical-type crap here? Maybe put up some old cargo nets, some of those little glass ball thingamajigs. Maybe get a palm tree in a big ol’ pot, shove it in here. Hey, I know. I could take the candles outta the wine bottles, stick ’em in coconuts instead. How would that look?”

His loose-lipped smile broadened as he spread his hands apart.

“I know what,” he said. “I could get one of those hats, you know, with the little anchor on the front. That those guys wear when they’re down in the harbor, horsing around on their yachts. And some Hawaiian shirts. You know, with parrots and shit on ’em. And I could call myself Trader Vito. Think that would go over with the customers?”

We all gazed back at him without speaking.

“Well, you’re a fun bunch, all right.” Moretti went back to eating. “Let me know when you lively up a bit.”

Someone – a customer – came in the front door. Foley slid out of the booth, went over to the guy, and steered him back out. “Place is closed,” he said.

That got a protest. “But the sign says
Open 24 Hours
 –”

“Sign’s wrong.”

“But –”

Foley pushed him out to the sidewalk, then closed the door, pulled the
OPEN
sign out of the window, and threw it on the floor.

Turned around in his chair, Moretti had watched all this.

“You guys don’t just want to talk.” He nodded as though impressed. “You want to
talk
.”

He turned back around to us.

“So all right,” he said. “Whaddaya want to talk about? What’s the big deal?”

Curt leaned across the table toward him. “Johnny Dodd working for you?”

“Johnny Dodd ain’t working for nobody. Johnny Dodd’s dead.”

“You heard about that?”

“What, that you guys nailed him?” Moretti shrugged. “Word gets around. Though what I also heard was that it wasn’t any of you exactly, but the new kid on the crew. My little gal Kim.” He winked at me. “Good work, sweetie. You’re making an old man proud.”

He looked back down at his plate, twirling the last few strands of spaghetti as he shook his head.

“I don’t wanna tell you your own business, Curt, but you gotta admit that doesn’t look good. For you, I mean. A big gold star for Kim here – but a
woman
showing you guys up? Come on.”