A craggy-faced man standing in the kitchen doorway agreed. “No, that’s a puppy. They was training him to be a fighting dog.”
A cloud of fierceness darkened the man’s face. Then he looked away from Kissy and Avi into the cage. Kissy could tell when his eyes lit on the howling Killer. His whole visage softened and a smile tugged at one corner of his mouth.
“They was gonna make him a killer, until Mayor Sutton dognapped him away.”
Twelve
Avi eased his bicycles in amongst the crush of bikes locked up at the rack in front of Lyman’s music store. He waved brusquely at Jay Lyman through the plate glass window and headed across the street to the square. Kissy was going to try to verify the mayor’s true position on the dog fighting while Avi found some survivors of the fire to verify the facts of that situation. He looked around for a moment at the groups gathered around the square.
An old-time washtub band was rocking some bluegrass on the gazebo with O Brother Where Art Thou style beards on everyone, including the female fiddle player. They were not popular with the revelers but Avi wished he could stop and listen.
A flash of red drew his attention across to The Coffeeshop and he decided his best bet was to find and re-question Terrance, Jason, and Mrs. Langdon. He hurried along the walkway. He had almost reached the joining of the paths around the gazebo when a group of kids caught his eye. Moira, Kimi, and his partner in crime Conner were in a tight huddle with their friends Jacob and Emily. He veered toward them.
When they caught sight of him, Jacob and Emily burst into laughter.
“They told us it was ugly!” Jacob chortled out.
“But they didn’t tell us about the sparkly gem on Rudolph’s nose!” Emily doubled over.
Avi straightened his sweater and polished the faux ruby with his sleeve. “Thank you. My mother actually found it for me.”
The kids all laughed harder at that. Avi let them. He looked around for any Parkside residents he might recognize and smiled at an off-duty cop from his precinct. The trees were laced with little white bulbs that sparkled as a breeze shook the leaves. The transmitter in Avi’s ear clicked.
Tim’s voice sounded tense. “Kissy, are you safe?”
A click and Kissy responded. “I’m at the game. Where are you?”
Tim didn’t answer. He said, “The assignment is a go. Avi, I need you to step away from those kids for a second.”
Avi excused himself and turned back to the gazebo, but Tim stopped him, saying, “Move to your left and stand under that tree right there.”
Avi strolled the two steps to the nearest tree. He searched the faces around him for the man dressed as Red Logan.
In his ear, Tim said, “Now you need to repeat the target.”
Avi’s instinct was to ask why. He ignored it. “We’re going to kill Mayor Sutton tonight.” He reached for his sleeve to hit his transmitter button off but this time he let his instincts win. Before clicking off he added, “But this doesn’t feel right. This isn’t justice.”
“Good.” Tim ignored Avi’s reservations. “I’ll meet you both at the game. Can’t talk now. Mayor’s here.”
Avi shot one last glance around and then headed back over to the kids and asked, “Did any of the Parkside kids go to Topside High?”
Moira answered, “No, they went to Upton. Why?”
He answered as Tim would, with his own question. “Do you know any of them?”
“Yeah,” Emily piped up. “We met a bunch the day after the fire.”
“We helped with the clean up,” Conner added. “Moira’s dads made us bring them coffee and sandwiches and stuff.”
“Made you?”
Kimi explained, “They’re still mad at them for blowing up the chemistry classroom.”
Avi laughed. “Dad mandated community service. I like it.”
“Only I just do it cuz it’s fun.” Moira had been trapped in a cellar when her lab partners caused the explosion.
“And you’re a do-good nerd,” her cousin Kimi added kindly.
Moira punched her. “A bunch of the kids from Parkside came to my Circus Freaks class show last week. It was cool.”
“And we never would have met them if it weren’t for the fire.” Jacob pointed out.
“And the do-gooding,” Conner wrapped his arms around little Kimi and lifted her off the ground.
“Was the mayor there, during the clean up?” Avi asked.
“Yeah.” All five kids answered, Kimi choking the word out as Conner squeezed the breath out of her.
“Those bodyguards wouldn’t leave him alone,” Jacob said. “So he made them join him in the heavy lifting jobs.”
Conner added, “He’s really cool for an old guy. Like you.”
Kimi, unable to speak anymore, nodded her agreement.
Avi started to object but let it go.
“You know, he came to see me in the hospital after the explosion.” Emily shot a hand out and tickled Conner’s side without looking. “My mom says he was just trying to win votes but I thought he was really nice.”
Conner finally broke and dropped Kimi. “Tickling is cheating. Tickling is always cheating!”
He ran off into the grass, squirming like he was covered in leeches. Emily ran after him, wiggling her fingers menacingly.
“Thanks guys. I’ll see you at nine.” Avi waved at the already dispersing kids.
“Hey Officer Kee?” Kimi choked out.
The rest of the kids corrected her, “Avi.”
“Yeah, Kimi?” Avi smiled at the shy girl.
“After the show,” she glanced over at the gazebo and then down at her feet before meeting his eyes, “can we burn that sweater?”
A grin spread across her face and she ran away, giggling.
Avi watched the kids rough housing and apologizing to everyone they ran into. He missed working the high school beat. That posting had been a punishment for his part in the warehouse explosion the night he met Tim and Kissy. But he had loved getting to know the kids. He was glad that the girls had kept Conner and Jacob in their pack after the accident. Left to themselves, those boys would end up in juvie.
Avi took a breath and swiveled on his heels to head over to The Coffeeshop. Something, some movement caught his eye and he turned back. Nothing seemed out of sorts. Maybe it was the kids.
He continued over to The Coffeeshop to get a drink for the commissioner as Tim ordered and to verify if it was true as Sutton’s houseguest Armando had said, that on the night of the Parkside disaster, the mayor had been there at the projects. He said that the mayor didn’t burn the buildings down. The mayor had run into the fire to get people out.
Thirteen
“No.” Nancy Burton grimaced. “Rory doesn’t have the time to have a dog.” She set her glass on the bar in front of Kissy. “I love this but can you make it weaker?”
“It’s a Manhattan.” Kissy tried to keep her thoughts kind as she suggested, “I could add more ice.”
The game had resumed. Commissioner Lee had allowed the nightclub permit into the game. Gina had called by buying an additional eighteen thousand dollars in chips with a thousand donated to the Parkside fund. She’d brought even more cash in case the bet was raised again.
The room was preternaturally quiet. Disaster hawks were hovering right at the velvet ropes, as close to the action as they could get. Others had taken their drinks and settled in the pushed back tables along the walls, too nervous to watch. But they spoke in hushed tones. Everyone seemed to be listening as if with enough concentration they could hear what was going on in the players’ minds.
Kissy didn’t care much about the game. She’d counted sixty thousand dollars in cash in the diner. She wasn’t worried about Tim’s bankroll. She did wonder if Tim really meant to open a nightclub in town as Red Logan. She’d gotten the impression that he was going to take off again after his sister’s leg had healed. Now it was healed, the cast was off, and Tim was betting on zoning permits. Did that mean he was planning
to stick around?
She shook her head and tossed back a shot. As she cleaned the small glass in the sink she caught Nancy raising an eyebrow at her. She blushed and set two clean shot glasses on the bar and pulled she and Jessica’s special bottle from the collection behind her. She poured two shots and slid one over to the city manager.
“It’s raspberry iced tea,” she whispered. “It’s just fun to do a shot. Try it.”
Nancy looked around uncertainly. Kissy let her take her own time. She grabbed the woman’s Manhattan and poured it into a highball glass filled with ice. Nancy’s hand darted out and she set the rim of the shot glass on her lip. With a grin, she tilted her head as if she were downing a shot of tequila.
Kissy indicated that she should slam it down on the bar and after another furtive glance around, she did. And then she wiped at her mouth with her wrist like a tough old gunfighter in a saloon.
Kissy laughed as she washed the glass. “You said the mayor’s been working from home a lot recently. Any chance that’s because he adopted a puppy?”
“Not a chance.” Nancy picked up the watered down Manhattan and took another sip. She still grimaced but sipped again. “Now I believe Patrice Coldman recently acquired a puppy. She hasn’t said anything but my ex-husband lives in her neighborhood and he says he saw her walking some giant wolfhound mix.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah.” Nancy took a full drink. “When I told Rory, he got really upset. He thinks she acquired it after one of the recent fighting ring busts when she helped one of the breeders avoid arrest.” She froze, her mouth working like she couldn’t get her words out. She darted a look at Kissy. “I shouldn’t have said that. Can you forget I said that?”
“Bartender—client confidentiality,” Kissy began to reassure her.
Suddenly the room exploded in an uproar. People were hollering and racing to and from the poker game.
“Excuse me.” Nancy left her drink and hurried over to the table.
Kissy couldn’t see through the crush of people crowding around the poker game. Then Jessica burst out of the crowd and bounced over to her.
“Gina and the mayor were both all in, right?” she shouted at Kissy as she ran over to the bar. “Coldman tried a third raise but Lee wouldn’t let her. Then the Aussie took it all. He had aces over queens!”
“Is Coldman pissed?”
“Coldman is pissed!” Jessica crowed.
Kissy high fived Jessica.
“What’s going on?” Avi high fived Jessica when she offered her palm.
Jessica answered, “That bitch Patrice Coldman didn’t get what she wanted.” She shook her head and downed the iced tea shot Kissy set in front of her. “God. I do not want that woman to be our mayor.”
“From the way he’s campaigning, neither does Rory Sutton.” Avi reached out for Kissy’s hand. “Can you take the bar for a bit, Jessica?”
“Sure.” She stepped around and hip bumped Kissy away. “But don’t go too far. It’s down to Red and Coldman. When Red wins, we’ve got to pour champagne for everybody.”
“We’ll be right over here.” Avi led Kissy a few steps away to just outside the doors to the room.
Kissy started, “Killer is Patrice Coldman’s dog. She got him from a fighting dog breeder.”
Avi barely let her finish before he burst out with his news. “Someone definitely started the fire. But it wasn’t the mayor. He spent the whole night helping people get out.”
“That’s no proof. It could have been guilt driving him.”
“No.” Avi took her across the hall to avoid the stream of people heading into the poker tournament room. “I can’t find anyone who knows about the report, or will admit to knowing about the report. But the fire chief’s wife says there is a report that the fire was lit with a birthday candle fuse.”
Kissy waited for the ta da but Avi failed to deliver. “So?”
“So, a birthday candle fuse would give an arsonist only ten minutes to get away,” he explained. “The mayor was at a campaign dinner when the fire started.”
“He hired someone. Remember the sites on his computer?”
“Yeah. Everyone says he’s a luddite when it comes to technology. How did he access a black site?”
Kissy opened her mouth to retort and found she had nothing to say.
Avi crossed his arms over the shiny reindeer. “He’s innocent.”
Kissy grabbed his hand. “The letter is all bullshit.”
“So now we need to figure out who the client is.”
“And we need to tell Tim to not kill Rory Sutton.”
Avi hit his transmitter button. Kissy reeled from the static in her ear.
“Same room, remember?” Kissy grabbed his hand and started back across the crowded hall. “Let’s go. I’ll take him a drink and tell him.”
“Clear a path!” A bright alto voice cut through the din of the hallway as Kissy grabbed the door handle.
Their two favorite EMTs strode through the crowd straight at her.
“Can you get the door for me?” tall, sharp-featured Jen ordered Kissy with a question.
Kissy opened the door and held it for Jen and her partner Curt before she was pushed inside by Avi. A sea of lookie-loos swarmed in behind them.
The room was still awash in commotion but the tone had changed from triumphant to terrified. Several couples were holding on to each other around the room, crying. Kissy froze when she noticed that one of those couples was Patrice and Tim.
Fourteen
When most guys turned twenty-one they went out and got drunk with their friends, cut up their fake ID, or bought liquor for the first time legally. Tim got a new name.
Tim had run away from home three months before his eighteenth birthday. Four months before his nineteenth, he met Finn. For his twenty-first, Finn had treated Tim to a spray tan. She’d darkened her own skin with lotion but the spray photographed better than the lotion dyes. She’d bought him a new outfit or at least pieces to make his neutral black t-shirt and jeans look like an outfit. She let him pick out the ear cuff but she selected the mirrored sunglasses, red bandana, and wallet chain. She sat him in the sand of Venice Beach and spiked his hair into a mohawk with white school glue as they watched freaks play in the sun. Her own hair was spiked with gel and dyed an electric red.
After they’d gone to Third Street Promenade and taken a strip of pictures in a sidewalk photo booth she introduced him to her guy in Los Angeles. Finn had a guy in every major city. She’d never allowed Tim to meet any of them before. They met Larry in a warehouse in West Hollywood.
Larry was a short Guatemalan-American with a serious face until the door closed behind them and the man pulled Finn into a warm hug. Then his face softened into an expression of deep affection.
“I’ve thought about it and I’ve decided to agree with you,” he said when he released her. “It is better to have love and fear losing them than to never love.”
Finn linked her arm in his. “Exercising your heart keeps you human.”
Larry led them past stacks of boxes draped with cloths and plastic to a small room in back. “You know you’re my only regular customer.”
“No, son, that can’t be. You do impeccable work.” She walked to the espresso machine in the corner and turned it on.
She opened a bag of beans and caught Tim’s eye over her shoulder to see if wanted any. Tim shrugged. Larry snagged a different bag of beans from a drawer and traded her.
“You, Roja, are the only one who comes back.” Larry stashed the lesser beans back on the shelf and pulled three mugs down. “Most people get the one and I never see them again.”
“You never see them again because the product you provide brings them success.” Finn kissed him on the cheek.
Larry chuckled and got down to business. “What have you got for me?”
Finn turned to Tim who was still standing awkwardly in the middle of the small room. “Show Larry the pictures. And relax.”
“Yeah, man,” Larry added, “this is gonna take a little while. Have a seat.”
Larry took the strip of photo booth pictures from Tim and settled himself behind a wide white desk. He pulled a shoebox from a stack under the desk and dumped out a variety of papers and laminating skins.
Tim wanted to watch but Finn called him over to add creamer and sugar to his coffee while she steamed a pot of milk for her own.
“When you find someone you trust to do the kind of things we need done, my son, you have to trust them completely. If you can’t do that, then they’re not your guy,” Finn explained. “It is my belief that you and Larry will get along fine.”
Tim stood beside her sipping his white Americano while Finn marked her foam with two shots of espresso. She rinsed out the equipment in the tiny sink beside the espresso machine and set it all on a towel to dry. Then she led Tim to the plush chocolate colored couch in the corner.
“My guy in Pittsburgh is a gal and she isn’t gonna like you just because you have a penis.”
Larry laughed at that but kept his head down over his work.
“But you need to keep an open mind and always keep an eye out for people you can trust who have skills you can use.”
Larry hopped off his stool and brought a pad of ink and a clipboard over to the pair on the couch. “Mi amore here was supposed to kill me. But she found out about my specialized artistic endeavors and spared my life.”
He rolled Tim’s thumb on the pad of ink and then on four different sheets of paper. He held the papers apart with three fingers and took the supplies back to his desk. Finn watched her guy curiously.
“Do you really think I only spared your life because you’re useful to me?”
Larry looked up from his magnifying glass. “Si. What other reason would there be?”
“You weren’t guilty,” Finn explained simply. “The client lied about why you were to die. That’s why I didn’t kill you.”
Tim watched Larry stare at Finn. The grin slipped from the man’s lips and his eyes. Though Finn turned away, Larry kept watching her, his work momentarily forgotten.
Killer on Call 6 Book Bundle (Books 1-6) Page 30
