Real Dangerous Fun (The Kim Oh Suspense Thriller Series Book 5)

by Kim Oh

“Here –” Umberto tapped a finger on the screen. “This tells all about it.”

  I took the computer from him, set it on my lap, and clicked the link he’d indicated. It only took me a couple of minutes to read through the over-excited text and look at the schematic-like drawings. I skipped the embedded videos, mainly because I hate those things – who’s got the time for them?

  “Big deal,” sneered Donnie. He had been looking at the web page over my shoulder. “This stuff isn’t very high tech.” He rolled himself away from the back of the chair.

  Well, yes and no. My brother had a point, in that whatever these Visual Induction people were selling, it didn’t actually include any machines or electronic devices that were any snazzier than other security companies peddled. But I could see how someplace like a hotel could use their stuff.

  What it was, was this kind of stiff fiber panel and a way of tinting it that wasn’t paint, but allowed the installers to match the color of whatever wall it was put in. As long as the ambient lighting wasn’t too bright – and it never is in hotels; they like to keep things dim, not just to set the mood but also to save on electricity – the panel would look just like a part of the wall. Unless somebody specifically was looking for it, they’d never know it was there. And the best part, at least as far as hotel security was concerned? A video camera installed behind the panel could see right through it, or at least well enough. The company’s web page promised something like 90% capture of image details – good enough for facial recognition, which was mainly what counted.

  “Interesting.” I set the laptop down on the coffee table. “So I take it your cousin put this stuff in this hotel?”

  Umberto nodded. “I’ll show you.” He got up from the couch, went over to the front door and pulled it open. “Look – right there.”

  Standing beside him, I followed the direction of his fingertip and studied the hallway’s opposite wall, up where it met the ceiling. If I squinted, I could barely make out a rectangular section slightly duller than the surrounding area. There was no way anybody could have told there was a video camera behind it. I stepped out into the hallway, reached up to tap a finger against the panel, and got a little hollow thup in return.

  “So basically,” I said when we came back into the suite and shut the door, “people can be walking around here, and they wouldn’t even know they were being watched.”

  “Exactamente.” Umberto sat back down on the couch. “It’s a whole different psychology – about security, I mean. Usually, you want people to see the cameras, so they’ll think twice about doing something bad. But that doesn’t always work. Especially with kids – young people. When they are doing vandalismo. You know – vandalism. Graffiti – what they call tagging – it’s very popular here.”

  “Yeah, I noticed.” Every wall in town I’d passed on my way to the grocer tienda had been hit with spray cans. Even worse than in Los Angeles.

  “The kids, the taggers, if they see video cameras, they just tie a cloth – like a handkerchief or something – over their face. Then they tag away. And what can you do?” Umberto raised both hands, palms upward. “You can’t identify them – you don’t have any evidence you can give to the police. Because they’re masked.”

  “But if they don’t see the cameras . . .”

  “You got it, chica.” His smile held a bit of malice. “Then they are busted – yes? That is why I turned my cousin on to this new thing. The motels I was helping to run in Asheville – we were having a terrible time. Very bad. The taggers would get inside somehow, late at night, then the guests would see all sorts of stupid things in the morning, on the walls outside their rooms. Costs a lot to clean that stuff up, and the guests check out early . . . Ay.” He waved a hand in disgust. “But then I read about these things, we put them in, and we busted a bunch of their asses. Some of those stupid little cholos never did figure out how we caught them.”

  “And your cousin was having the same problem here.” I could believe that, given all that I’d seen out on the streets. “Any luck? Busting the taggers, I mean.”

  “Kim –” Umberto’s smile widened. “Have you seen anything on the walls here? In the hotel?”

  I hadn’t, but I didn’t answer. My mind was already moving forward, with what this meant for my problems. If the local taggers didn’t know about these hidden cameras – and kids like that are usually pretty hip – then it was almost certain that the criminal types, who were usually a bit older, wouldn’t know about them, either. Hell, I hadn’t known about the whole thing until Umberto showed me that web page. I made a mental note to figure it into some of my operations when I got back home. As a general rule, I didn’t like people watching what I was doing, and me not knowing about it.

  But in the meantime, what Umberto had just filled me in on – the whole bit about the hotel security cameras being set up so that nobody would know they were there – that explained how his cousin knew about Lynndie having been kidnapped, without being hooked up with the people who had done it. The hombres malos, the bad guys – whoever they were – had made the same wrong assumption when we’d checked in, that there weren’t any cameras around. So they’d just waltzed in and grabbed her, clopping me in the process, and gone their merry way, figuring that nobody would have anything on them. But instead –

  “Okay . . .” I gave a slow nod. I didn’t care what Umberto’s reasons were for coming here, how messed up he might be in his head about me, how much he was screwing up his grocer business by getting involved – none of that. Because now I had a lead on what to do next. “I guess,” I said, “I need to talk to your cousin.”

  Umberto smiled. “No problema.”

  FOURTEEN

  “Because they pissed me off, that’s why.”

  Good thing the hotel suite was so big, because we were getting close to a full house in there. Me, my brother Donnie and his new pal Mavis, Umberto – and now his cousin Jorge.

  Who definitely was pissed off. So much so, that the longer he was with us, the harder it was to imagine any time when he wasn’t pissed off – like it was a congenital condition with him. Kinda bull-necked, shaved head, with a scowling Mussolini expression. I wasn’t quite sure that going into the hospitality industry had exactly been a good career move for him. He didn’t really seem cut out for it, personality-wise. But then again, it was the family business, so maybe he hadn’t had a lot of choice in the matter, just like Umberto getting stuck with the grocer thing when his uncle had died.

  The two cousins were sitting side-by-side on the leather couch now, Umberto looking diminished next to the burlier Jorge. Umberto had called down to the hotel manager’s office, using the suite phone, soon as I’d said that I wanted to talk to the guy. Then it’d only been about ten minutes before there’d been a knock on the door. I assumed that meant he’d been waiting for the call. Which also meant that he wanted to talk to me.

  “I’m trying to run a business here,” continued Jorge, in his rumbling basso voice. “Do I need crap like this going on? No, I do not. A nice girl like you getting thumped on the head? What if you’d had to be taken to the hospital? All wrapped up in bandages?”

  The nice girl bit got a snicker from Donnie. I shot him a murderous glare, then turned back to Jorge, across the coffee table from me.

  “This is a big week for us. My hotel is at capacity. Many, many nice young people here from the United States, and when they are not drinking and screwing – excuse me –”

  “That’s all right,” I told him. “You’re not shocking anyone here, that’s for sure.” Least of all that little scientist Mavis, sitting over at the other table by the window with my brother, listening in on everything.

  “Yes . . . well.” Jorge straightened his silk tie. The knot at his throat was about as big as one of my fists. “The thing is, when they are not doing that, which is what they should be doing, then they are on the Twitter and the Facebook. With pictures from their cell phones. Anything that happens, boom –” He snapped two of his
huge fingers. “Just like that, the whole world knows. Maybe goes viral. That kind of publicity, we don’t need.”

  I could sympathize with him. As I’ve said before, I generally prefer to keep things on the down-low as well.

  “But nobody got any pictures, right? That you know about. I mean –” I pointed to the door and the hallway beyond. “Other than what you got on those security cameras you’ve got hidden around here.”

  “Sí. The people who did this, they were very sneaky. They came in and did it when they were sure nobody would see them.” A heavy, smug expression settled on his broad face. “Or so they thought.”

  “Were you able to recognize any of them? When you watched the video on the monitors?”

  Jorge shrugged. “One vato looks like another to me. Like rats. I can’t tell them apart.”

  That wasn’t much use. “What about your security people? Were they able to?”

  “They haven’t seen the video,” interjected Umberto. “My cousin, he comes to work in the morning, he goes to his office, and he reviews everything from the night before.”

  “I have a monitor on my desk,” said Jorge. “Flat-panel Samsung, forty-two inches. Very nice. Your people make them, yes?”

  At least he got the Korean part right. I had to give him credit for that.

  “Especially for the spreadsheets.” He drew a horizontal line with one finger. “You can see everything at once. Plus, I can draw up a direct feed from the hard drive for the security cameras.”

  “Nice.”

  “So when I saw what happened, to you and the other girl, I thought this is bad. Very bad. And then Umberto came by to talk to me. I showed him the video, and he recognized you in it. Because you had gone to see him.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “I did.” I knew I didn’t have to tell him why.

  “Between us, we put one plus one together. Your friend is an important person –”

  “She’s actually my client. Sort of.”

  “And her father is even more important. Very wealthy, very powerful.”

  “Oh, I know.” I gave a nod. “I’ve met him.”

  “So that is why I took the video off the security system. Before my people could see it. They are good at their jobs, but sometimes they talk about things they shouldn’t.”

  I stared at him. “You deleted it?”

  “Si – but after I made a copy.” Jorge dug into the side pocket of his jacket, then held out a tiny USB drive. “Here it is.”

  My breath started up again. “Gracias.” I took it from him and squeezed it tight in my hand.

  “I told Jorge,” said Umberto, “that this is something you can take of. All of this. That you are a professional regarding such things.”

  “Yeah . . . it’s what I do, all right.”

  “When he first told me that –” Jorge shrugged. “I wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not. Since you are, in fact, a woman.”

  That again. These people really needed to catch up with the twenty-first century.

  “Also, they got your client away from you to begin with. When you were supposed to be protecting her.”

  “They got lucky. It won’t happen again.”

  “I hope not, Miss Oh. I would feel very bad that I had given you the opportunity to clean up this mess, and you weren’t able to do so. It would seem as if you and my cousin had made me look foolish.” He glanced over at Umberto, then back to me. “Nobody likes to be made a fool of.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “When I’m done, the people who did it will know better than to cause trouble here at your hotel.”

  “That would be fine. Otherwise . . . I would have to try and get in touch with the father of the other young lady. I imagine he would not be pleased to hear of this matter, but he would be able to take care of it. In a discreet manner.”

  “Why don’t we just leave him out of it for now – okay?”

  “Just so.” Jorge stood up from the couch. “Tome su tiro, Miss Oh. Take your shot. I expect great things from you. But we shall see.”

  I walked with him over to the door. “This won’t take long,” I told him.

  “Bien.” He studied me with his head tilted to one side. “You don’t like being made a fool of, either – do you?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I don’t.”

  He smiled, the simmering anger transmuted into some other, uglier emotion. He pointed to the little USB drive I still held in my hand. “I promise you will find watching this to be . . . interesting.” He pulled open the door and headed to the elevators at the end of the hallway.

  I had no idea what he’d meant by that last bit, but I wasn’t going to wait to find out. “Come on –” I gestured to my brother. “Let’s go.”

  Donnie already had wheeled over to the coffee table and opened up his laptop. He took the USB drive from me and plugged it into the side.

  “Looks like a standard WMV file.” He tapped on the keyboard. “No compression or anything . . .”

  “I always use VLC,” said Mavis. “For videos like that.”

  “Yeah, that’s good.” Leaning toward the screen, Donnie ran a finger over the mousepad. “Or KMPlayer – ever try that?”

  “I don’t care what you use to play it.” Hovering above my brother, I jabbed a finger toward the laptop. “Just get it going!”

  “Hold your horses . . .” Another couple of taps, and the image finally came up. Donnie resized it full-screen as I sat down next to Umberto and turned the laptop toward me.

  You want to know what’s a weird thing? Watching yourself get clobbered. And watching yourself fall and then lie there on the floor unconscious. Creepy – like going to your own funeral. The bright red streak inching out of my hair – on the screen, that is – made it even worse.

  I shook that notion out of my mind, as I forced myself to take a professional interest in what I was watching. The angle from the hidden video camera gave a nice, unobstructed view of the hotel corridor where the action had gone down. I got a clear view of the two guys who’d managed to get a jump on me. Locals, just as I’d suspected – I’d be able to easily ID them when I tracked them down.

  That was when things got really weird on the video. The two guys were still standing there, saying something to each other I couldn’t make out – the file’s audio was distinct enough, but their Spanish was too rapid-fire for me to decipher. Someone else came into the image frame as one of the guys slid the pistol he’d clubbed me with back into his pocket. The third guy was dressed more expensively, and radiated the attitude of being in charge.

  Umberto reached forward and tapped a finger on the screen. “That guy’s name is César. El jefe – the boss. Very tough. You don’t want to mess with him.”

  I studied the image of the man. Broad face, one eyelid drooping low. Not pleasant.

  So there’d been three of them who’d pulled it off – this César and two of the thugs who worked for him. But then a fourth person stepped into the image and stood right next to my body, looking down at me –

  Not a guy. A woman.

  I brought my face close to the laptop screen, my eyes widening as I stared at the image.

  It was Lynndie, looking down at me where I’d fallen, my head bloodied.

  As I watched, she turned and said something to the men with her. One of them – César – laughed and shook his head. Then they all turned and walked away, down the hallway and out of camera view. Leaving the body that had been me, face down on the floor.

  The laptop screen went blank, the video file over.

  I could sense the others watching me in silence as I went on gazing at the empty screen.

  “They didn’t kidnap her,” I said at last. “They didn’t. She’s in on it, too . . .”

  But that didn’t mean her father had been right about whatever she was up to. This wasn’t some little rich girl maneuver, so she could go out and have more fun than she would’ve been able to otherwise. She was hooked up with a tough bunch.


  And she was tough as well. I knew that because of what she’d said to the three men with her –

  There’ll be trouble. Spoken in a cold voice. You should take care of her.

  In their world – and mine – when you took care of somebody, it only meant one thing. If those guys had done it, the way Lynndie told them they should, I wouldn’t be alive now. Just one shot, from the gun I’d been clubbed with –

  And I’d have been taken care of, all right.

  FIFTEEN

  “Well. This changes everything.”

  That didn’t come from me. That was Mavis’s dry comment.

  “Don’t start.” The last thing I needed right now was sarcasm from some snotty university girl. “Don’t even.”