Back in Black

by Rhys Ford

  There was still a bite in the air, something Los Angeles wouldn’t fully lose until July or August, but the black hoodie he had on was a bit too much. Too new. His pointed-toe Italian boots and indigo dark jeans came off much too flashy for anyone intending to go a few rounds, but more telling was the fact that he held a small duffel up against his side, his right hand tucked into its partially open zipper. His face was flat of emotion, carved out of a Slavic hard stone and nearly bloodless—a splash of white with bright blond hair cropped short against his square skull. His jaw was set with the determination I normally only saw in nutcrackers at Christmas, and he stared straight through us as he strode down the alleyway with a firm purpose.

  He made no attempt to hide himself among the vehicles, and there was no indication he’d stepped out of any of them. No jingle of keys or juggling of his bag, just straight ahead and careful to keep his hand inside of his duffel.

  “Fuck.” That was all the warning I got from Bobby, but it was enough. We both dove between the parked cars when the guy shook the bag off his hand and came up with a wicked-looking gun.

  I don’t know who choreographed gunfights on television and movie screens, because things never went as smoothly as depicted. Bobby and I had been walking side by side, and when we instinctively jumped to protect ourselves, we ended up on opposite sides of the alley. I landed in a scatter of gravel, barking my elbows and forearms on the broken-up asphalt. Rolling over onto my side, I spotted Bobby in a full crouch, protected by an enormous Ford truck with his hand clutching a weapon that looked a hell of a lot like the one the guy had in his duffel bag.

  There were no guns on me. The duffel bag I’d been carrying held only a stainless steel water tumbler and sweat-soaked clothes. It wasn’t like I could check under the minivan I was hiding against for a Glock or Colt duct-taped to its undercarriage. Something told me that the man or woman with a stick-figure family dancing across the back windshield and an I Love to Brake for Flower Sales bumper sticker plastered below a personalized license plate declaring somebody loved Gigi wasn’t exactly going to be sporting firearms anywhere in their vehicle.

  I could’ve been wrong. It is California, after all, and we’re known for our contrary natures as well as our kick-ass tacos, but regardless, I seemed to be the only one who’d come to a gunfight with a gym bag.

  A bullet shattered the minivan’s side windows, showering me with bits of glass. Since I still sported a few of the deeper cuts left on me from the Brinkerhoffs’ door, I pressed my face up against the car’s wall, making sure my feet were hidden by the tire. Across the way, Bobby gestured at me with his gun, a questioning look on his face. I was taking that to mean he was asking where the hell was my weapon, but he also could have possibly been suggesting he was going to kill me for once more getting us into trouble simply by doing my job.

  To be fair, he gave me that look a lot, for quite a few different things. One thing I knew for sure—I wasn’t going to scream across the alley to tell him I didn’t bring a gun with me. I hadn’t planned on being Doc Holliday to his Wyatt Earp that morning, or really any morning, but I was going to have to do something quick because another shot rocked through the van, and as far as I could tell, Bobby’s side of the alleyway was hot-lead-free.

  I was definitely the target.

  I really didn’t like being the target.

  “Okay, McGinnis, do something,” I muttered to myself, glancing up to see Bobby returning fire with a quick one-two from his weapon. “You’re a sitting duck.”

  There was silence in between the shots, and sadly, none of it was filled with police sirens or outraged yelling. What I did hear was the sound of leather-soled shoes scuffling across the gravel-flecked asphalt alleyway, a sure sign the gunman was getting closer. My Rover was, of course, at the far end of the parking stretch, literally the last car along the row opposite of JoJo’s gym. I usually park there to avoid it getting scratched, and with any luck, it would survive this little dust-up without any bullet holes. I could only hope the cars in front of it would take the damage.

  Mostly because my insurance company was beginning to believe I had somehow moved into the middle of a war zone instead of living in a Craftsman in Brentwood. My rates were through the roof, and I was pretty certain the Range Rover dealer had a second house in Cabo, considering how many times I’d had to replace my car.

  “The stupidest things go through your head when you’re trying not to die,” I scolded myself, looking around. “Think!”

  I hated JoJo’s parking area. It wasn’t maintained well, and there were potholes big enough to be home to a sarlacc, enormous craters formed by the rapidly changing cold-hot Los Angeles winters. There was only so much stretch and give that asphalt and cement can take before its integrity breaks down, leaving bits and pieces of patched-together parking lot scattered about in clumps. I was crouched next to a particularly large crevice and holding a mostly empty bag.

  “Cops are going to be here anytime soon!” Bobby shouted, glaring at me across the pavement.

  He made a motion toward his face, mimicking somebody talking on their phone, and I was sad to say I had to disappoint him by pointing toward where I’d parked the Rover, where my cell phone sat hidden in the console, charging itself out of the red zone on the power pack I’d brought with me. My best friend flipped me off, so I returned the phone call mimicry, then pointed at him, cocking my head to the side while shoveling as many asphalt bits into the bag as I could.

  Our miming conversation was quickly interrupted by another round of bullets. After the thunderous strikes of projectiles hit the row of parked cars, setting off a chorus of screaming alarms and whooping klaxons, I spotted Bobby’s gym bag lying a few feet away, sitting in what little sunlight was able to reach in between the tightly packed buildings.

  No one was going to be riding to our rescue anytime soon unless someone heard the gunshots over the gym’s loud music and arrhythmic grunting… and then cared enough to call the cops. We weren’t exactly in a neighborhood where cops strolled by to check up on its law-abiding citizens in the middle of the afternoon. On the edge of an industrial area, it was more likely to get a private security car with a rent-a-cop to stop by long enough to get his fool head blown off because he was curious instead of calling in the authorities.

  The pointy Italian shoes made their appearance on the other side of the minivan, and I took that as my cue to move.

  Like I said, gunfights were never graceful in any way. They were never a ballet of bodies twirling about, coats flying up behind the participants’ backs, arms windmilling about in a martial-arts pose evoking the idea of a praying mantis or slumbering tiger. They usually were made up of short bursts of activity, followed by punches of adrenaline and a mouthful of thick spit because that’s what fear did to saliva.

  I came in swinging. The gym bag was heavy and new enough that I had faith the straps would hold. I probably shouldn’t have packed it as tight with broken asphalt and cement, but it was my life on the line. If I pulled a shoulder muscle while trying to survive, I literally could live with it.

  The first crunch was satisfying, catching the guy straight across the face. The bag’s weight shifted, pulling me around so it was unwieldy, making it an inelegant weapon, but I wasn’t looking to score points with any fight judge. I needed to take this guy down, and fast. Up close, that wicked-looking gun wouldn’t miss, and I’d promised Jae not to get shot. He really disliked me coming home with more holes in my body than I left with, so using the momentum I’d built up with my initial bag swing, I twisted around and caught the gunman again, slamming the bag into the side of his head.

  Blood splashed across my hands and over my bare arm, its metallic stink nearly as hot as its splatter on my skin. The guy stumbled back but held on to his gun, its muzzle skittering through the air in an unfocused spiral aimed at the far warehouse’s wall. His finger flipped across the trigger, and the gun went off, puncturing one of the paper-covered upper windows set high on the bu
ilding’s brick façade.

  I didn’t know if he reloaded or how many more bullets he had left in his gun, but it wasn’t anything I was up to chatting about. I swung the bag up, connecting with his chin. Then I let it go, fixing my stance as he stumbled about. His fingers failed him, and the gun went flying, opening him up for my fist.

  He was just tall enough for my uppercut to catch him across the jaw and loosen a few of his front teeth. Bits of broken white enamel were mingled in the blood bubbling out of his mouth, and I hit him again, popping him hard in between his eyes and above the bridge of his nose, then following up with a body shot, hammering his ribs. My shoulders were strained from swinging the heavy bag, but my brain and body remembered each lesson Bobby gave me on how to fight.

  Boxing might be a gentlemen’s sport, but I wasn’t interested in being a gentleman, and Bobby taught me every single dirty trick he knew. The guy was still on his feet, and I needed to make sure he was in no way, shape, or form able to run once I was done with him.

  So I grabbed his balls with my left hand, squeezed and twisted hard enough to make his eyes pop out, and hammered at his face with my right fist.

  It took him four seconds to go down, but I didn’t let go until his back was up against the asphalt and Bobby’s foot was on the man’s discarded gun. Sitting back on my haunches, I tried to catch my breath, my chest heaving while my brain sifted through all of the adrenaline coursing through it, trying to find a single sensible thought amid the oh-my-God-we’re-all-going-to-die sparkles overloading my senses.

  “Did it ever occur to you that I had a fucking gun?” Bobby growled at me, the welcome but too-late-to-the-party sound of police sirens finally breaking through the neighborhood’s uncaring silence. “I could have shot him.”

  “You threw away your gym bag. The one with the phone in it,” I reminded him, scrambling for an excuse. Gasping, I continued to jab wildly at him, using my words in probably ineffectual punches to ward off his quite reasonable logic. “I couldn’t risk you throwing it at his head.”

  “You are so full of shit, Princess. You didn’t even fucking think about it,” he countered, effectively putting an end to my argument. “You recognize this guy?”

  I studied what was left of his face, something that was practically impossible to do since he was writhing around in pain, but I got enough of a look to know I didn’t recognize him. Shaking my head, I flexed the tightness out of my hands, then stood up, nearly bumping into what was once a sleek sports car whose back end now resembled swiss cheese.

  “Never saw him before in my life, but I can tell you one thing about him,” I said, then cocked a smirk at my best friend. “We’ve now got somebody to question besides Arthur Brinkerhoff.”

  Ten

  “I DON’T see why O’Byrne couldn’t let us watch them interrogate that guy,” I pointed out to Bobby as I scraped at the paper on my beer bottle, “or at least get back to us about any answers he gave. How the hell does she expect me to move forward if I don’t have any place to start?”

  “This is where I remind you that you’re not a cop,” he said, clicking the tongs at me. “O’Byrne doesn’t owe you anything, including answers.”

  The tongs’ scalloped ends were coated with sesame seeds and green-onion bits from the marinade Jae soaked the short ribs in before turning everything over to us to grill. As much as I liked barbecuing, Bobby had an obsession with it, and it was simpler to let him take over the tongs. He just had a bad habit of using them to emphasize his points as he spoke, clattering them like castanets during a furious flamenco dance.

  As dreary as the day grew, the addition we had added to the back of the house included a covered lanai, perfect for evening barbecues and lounging in reclining chairs with a cold beer. We had a larger outdoor kitchen built on the far side of the lawn, complete with a fire pit and enough outdoor furniture to host a birthday party attended by fifty preschoolers. I knew that last bit for a fact because our niece, Lisa—Mad Dog Junior—celebrated her latest circuit around the sun in our backyard, complete with a bouncy castle and at least three puking children who’d eaten too much cake and ice cream. I also knew from experience that the cost of cleaning a bouncy castle was about the same as getting a car detailed.

  The addition not only gave us a back patio but also pantry space, a larger mud room for our washer and dryer, and after reconfiguring a few walls, a dining room we apparently desperately needed. When various members of my family—including Bobby—gave me shit about the lack of a dining room, I reminded all of them about the office at the front of the house where I actually did some business and employed my favorite person in the world, my surrogate mother, Claudia. That dining room had been converted over to a conference area, but now it was the employee lounge where Claudia and Scarlet spent a few afternoons during the week watching Kdramas on the large-screen TV mounted to the wall.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually had a meeting in the elected conference room, and when given a choice between taking the conference room back so the main part of the house had a dining room or building an addition, I’d choose the addition. There was no way in hell I was going to take away Claudia’s stories, and since I’d already supplanted a few of her biological sons as her favorite, I wasn’t going to give up my spot anytime soon.

  I’d already given my damned tongs to Bobby. There was only so much a man could sacrifice for his family.

  “Did you miss the part where I feel like I’m responsible?” I countered, debating if I should grab the tongs the next time he clicked them at me. “You don’t have to help me out if you don’t want to.”

  “You’re going to get your fool head shot off if I don’t help you,” Bobby shot back. “Today was a good example. What the fuck were you thinking?”

  “He wasn’t thinking,” my older brother, Mike, said as he came through the open french doors connecting the dining room to the lanai. “I don’t even know what happened, and I can tell you he wasn’t thinking. What happened?”

  Mike was still thinner than I was used to seeing him. It’d been years since he nearly died under a hail of gunfire, a victim of a psychotic murderer intent on making me pay for Ben’s suicide. But he hadn’t gained back all of the muscle and stockiness he’d lost in the hospital. The pain and stress drew grooves down into his skin, lining his face with an age he shouldn’t have been showing, especially considering he’d pulled heavily on our mother’s Japanese genetics. Shorter than me by a few inches—despite the violent spikiness of his favorite haircut—Mike was a solid bulldog of a man who’d taken a few years to get used to me being gay. We’d been estranged when Ben tried to kill me, but after his marriage to Madeleine and the birth of his daughter, we’d fallen into a more easy relationship.

  Being Mike’s brother was hard. That was something Ichi and I both agreed on. He seemed to take a paternal outlook to being an older brother, pushing for his younger brothers to be more ambitious and accomplish more in our lives than what we had so far. Ichi and I had different ideas on what we counted as a success. I liked my private investigation business and being married to Jae. That took up a good portion of my time. Ichiro, despite not having my influence growing up, broke from his own traditional Japanese father’s expectations and grew up to become a world-class tattoo artist. I think in a lot of ways Mike regrets not being born to Ichiro’s father, because the two of them really sound like they would get along.

  Mike’s stuffiness was the sole reason I felt it was my obligation as an uncle to make sure Mad Dog Junior had a solid bad influence to help guide her through life and its obstacles. Mike, however, did not share that view and constantly reprimanded me for things like the drum set I bought for her when she was two.

  “Cole-ah is investigating a murder, and someone tried to kill him and Bobby today. Bobby is mad because he had a gun and didn’t get to use it. I am irritated because, instead of letting Bobby use his gun, Cole decided to beat the man half to death with a bag of rocks,” Jae remarked, nu
dging Mike out of the doorway with his elbow. His hands were full with a tray of vegetables and marinated chicken thighs. “Bobby, move the kalbi to the upper rack. The chicken is going to take longer to cook, so put it next to the flame. The zucchini and corn can go wherever you have room. I can keep it warm in the oven if it’s done early.”

  “Notice you don’t snap at him when he tells you how to grill.” After toasting Bobby with my beer, I took a long draw. “Grab a beer, Mike. And where’s the kid?”

  “The kid and Maddy are at tumbling class, then having a girls’ dinner at some fondue place,” Mike said, stepping out of Jae’s way. “And I’ve got a bottle of water because I’m driving. I’ll be picking up my girls after I mooch food off of you guys.”

  “Long story short, instead of attacking the guy with my gym bag filled with asphalt from the parking lot, I should’ve let Bobby shoot him. Or I should’ve let the guy shoot Bobby. Those were apparently my only two options,” I said, sneaking one of the mushrooms off of the vegetable tray. Jae gave me a pointed look, but I wasn’t sure if it was because of my sarcasm or stealing the mushroom. “I’d like to point out two things. One, I took the guy down without getting shot, and two, Bobby thinks I should carry a weapon until we close this case.”

  “There’s a third option,” Mike piped up, settling down on a bench next to the grill. “You can always stop investigating the murder.”

  “You obviously have not met our brother, Cole,” Ichi said, joining us on the patio. I was thankful we’d built it as wide as we had, not only because it extended the restructured pantry into a dining room, but because apparently the patio was going to be where we all hung out. The conversation had gone from Bobby beating up on me to everyone else joining in to take a punch. Ichi gave Bobby a quick kiss, then joined Mike on the bench. “He’s not going to stop investigating the murder. And I hate to say this, but I agree with Bobby. If Cole is going to get shot at, he should be able to shoot back.”