Kim Oh 2: Real Dangerous Job (The Kim Oh Thrillers)

by K. W. Jeter

  “Take it easy,” said Cole. “It’ll happen.”

  “I don’t know.” I dragged over one of the chairs and dropped myself into it. “This doesn’t seem like progress to me.”

  “You’re not giving yourself enough credit. You’re already sounding more like me than what you used to.”

  “Like I said.”

  “Seriously,” continued Cole. “Normal people don’t react to these things they way you are. Just adding up the numbers. With civilians, there’s usually more of an emotional response. But you’re cold, Kim. Like a psychopath. Like me.”

  “Huh.” I had to think about what he was saying. “So this is what being a psychopath is like?” I shook my head. “I would’ve thought it’d be more fun than this.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe my expectations were too high. I mean – look at that Hannibal Lecter guy.”

  “He’s not real. Fictional character, right?”

  “Yeah, I know . . .” I was still trying to work it out. “But you see him in the movies and he’s always got a smile on his face.”

  “Comes with being nuts.”

  “Not for me, it doesn’t. He’s out there, killing people – and eating them, even – and having a fine old time. Meanwhile, I’m worried about paying the rent.” Another shake of my head. “I’m not getting it. If I’d known ahead of time that this was what killing people was like, I might not have put in for the job.”

  “But you did.”

  I remembered what Monica had told me, what seemed a long time ago now. About still having options. And then what she had told me much more recently – that I didn’t have those options anymore. She was right, I knew.

  “All right.” I took a deep breath and straightened myself up in the chair. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s listening to people whine about stuff.”

  Cole smiled. “Especially when it’s you.”

  “Especially then,” I said. “Let’s get to work.”

  * * *

  “Give me a hand with this.”

  I had been expecting that we were going to talk strategy and stuff. About how we were going to arrange things, in order to kill McIntyre. Instead, I found myself helping Cole over at his workbench.

  He finished up with the welding he needed to do, then pushed his goggles up on top of his head and rolled his wheelchair back. Some of the metal was still hot, so he’d given me a pair of heavy-duty work gloves to wear.

  “What is this thing?”

  “It’s a door-jammer,” said Cole. “Go over on the other side there. That’s good.”

  I was able to get a better look at it now. This wasn’t any kind of homebrew electronic device, like some of the other equipment he built for himself. This was all mechanical. Basically a square, heavy steel frame, with flanges on two opposite sides. In each flange, there was a hole drilled through, about an inch in diameter. Cole had mounted a pair of heavy-duty steel springs inside the frame. Those were connected to another piece of steel, a thick blade that ran through the device, the blade’s edges set in narrow slots cut in opposite sides of the frame, parallel to the flanges on the outside.

  I helped Cole get the construction into the big vise at the end of the workbench. Then he had me turn the vise’s wheel, compressing the springs inside the steel frame, so that the blade piece was drawn back like an arrow in a bow. The springs were so powerful that I was sweating by the time I got them squeezed together to Cole’s satisfaction. That left the squared-off end of the blade piece sticking out a couple of inches from one side of the frame. Cole reached over with a mallet and tapped a couple of cotter pins through the lined-up holes in the frame and the blade.

  “Okay,” he said. “Release the vise.”

  I spun the vise’s wheel. The blade piece stayed in its tensely drawn-back position inside the steel frame.

  “That should do it.” Cole wiped his grease-smeared hands on a shop rag.

  Over in the other section of the warehouse, he pulled a couple of beers out of the camping fridge and handed one to me.

  “How’s your part coming along?” Cole lowered his own beer after knocking back nearly half of it in one long pull.

  “Which part?” I took a hit from the cold bottle in my hand. “You mean the numbers?”

  “What else?”

  Back at the apartment, I had already started sorting through the data on the backup disks I had lifted from my old office, from back when I had still been working for McIntyre.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I think . . . maybe I’ve come up with something.”

  “You already have.” Cole dangled his beer at the side of his wheelchair. “Real useful. That’s why I got on the stick about building what we need.”

  I nodded. I hadn’t seen anything important in what I’d pulled off the disks, about the leasing agreements for the building where McIntyre had his company headquarters – the building where I’d had my dingy little cubbyhole office – but Cole had spotted it. He had an eye for that sort of thing.

  That was why he was so good at his line of work. He saw the possibilities.

  “So you’re sure that nobody in the building management office ever saw you?”

  I gave another nod. “McIntyre’s lease was all pulled together before I ever got there. Like years before. And the monthly payments were set up to be made automatically. I never touched them. So I wouldn’t have had any reason to ever talk to the building people.”

  “That’s good.” Cole finished off the last of his beer and set the empty bottle down on the floor. “Long as they don’t know who you are, that’s all we need. For this part of the set-up.”

  “If you say so.” He had already run me through all the stuff that I’d have to do, when we went over there tomorrow. The appointment had already been made. That’d been easy – it was the rest I was nervous about. I didn’t want to screw it up.

  “Remember – full lady drag.” He pointed at me. “Ditch the motorcycle gear. You need to look like a businesswoman.”

  “No problem. At least for me. But what about you?” I gave him a once-over. Right now, in jeans and T-shirt, he looked like the scary garage mechanic in one of those movies where rednecks murder a bunch of college students who took the wrong turn out in the countryside. “You gotta look all business-like, too. If we’re going to pull this off.”

  “Don’t worry.” He flashed his off-kilter smile. “I can clean up pretty nice. When I need to.”

  TEN

  Actually, he did.

  Clean up, that is. Cole had pulled off enough jobs in the past that had required him to go around in public like a normal human being, rather than just sneaking around in the shadows, that he had a pretty decent wardrobe stashed away in one corner of the warehouse.

  “Not bad.” I looked him over before we set out for downtown. I had never expected to see him in a jacket and necktie. He could’ve been an exec in some media company, the kind where you wondered how they made any money at all, but they did. “Hold on a second.”

  I stood in front of him in his motorized wheelchair, licked my fingertips and reached out to brush the hair down at the corner of his brow. The same thing I always did for my brother Donnie. It’d been long enough from when Cole had been in the hospital, that the buzz cut they’d given him there had started to grow out.

  “Knock it off,” he growled. “That’s frickin’ gross. Rub your spit on somebody else.”

  That got a smile from me. But also a strange little twinge inside me, a sad one. This was like a scene from some movie I’d seen, one of those chick flicks all about teenagers and their romantic problems. And there’d been a little bit about a couple of kids getting ready for their senior prom, only the boy had been in a wheelchair, also. That was what was supposed to make it all sweet and sentimental. I had been such a little twerp when I saw the movie that I’d cried during it, partly because going to a prom wasn’t something I’d gotten to do. Maybe getting ready to
go and scope out some place where a professional hit man and I were planning on killing somebody – maybe that was as close as I was ever going to get.

  It probably wasn’t worth thinking about. I pulled myself together and picked up my purse.

  * * *

  Fortunately, Monica had been able to track down a medical supplies place that did week-long van rentals, the kind with the nifty hydraulic wheelchair lifts that come out of the side cargo openings. So I didn’t have to risk mussing up my business-lady outfit wrestling Cole in and out of the vehicle.

  Plus, it had a handicapped parking sticker in the windshield. Which meant I was able to park the thing practically right outside the building. The same one where I had worked for McIntyre. From behind the steering wheel, I looked around to make sure there was noone who might recognize me, then got out and unloaded Cole and his wheelchair.

  The leasing agent was waiting for us in the lobby, so there wasn’t any issue about getting past the building’s security guard. She was one of those perky types for whom coffee would’ve been superfluous.

  “You’re very fortunate that a whole floor is still available.” The leasing agent took us up in one of the service elevators. She needed a key to activate the button for the level we wanted to look at. “This is a very attractive building.”

  “Not bad,” said Cole. He was deep into his mobility-challenged businessman role. “Location’s decent.”

  The leasing agent didn’t see, but he had looked over at me and smiled when he had said that. What he really meant was that the vacant floor was right underneath McIntyre’s company offices.

  “I’m sure you’d find it convenient.” The elevator started to slow. “There are a lot of services in this district.”

  The elevator doors slid open, and she led us out, Cole motoring the wheelchair behind her.

  This floor of the building wasn’t built out yet. I had known that from the lease documents on my backup disks. A couple of years ago, McIntyre had been negotiating to take both floors, but had finally settled on just the one above. When I had called to make the appointment, I had verified that this floor was still available. There were bare walls, exposed wiring, no ceiling panels – just the raw space, really.

  “Of course, we can build out to meet your company’s requirements.” The leasing agent gestured around the area. “We’ll be happy to work with you, to get it just the way you want. The building owners are very accommodating about that.”

  Cole slowly swiveled his chair around, then pointed to some of the exposed wiring in the walls. “What’s the network carrying capacity?”

  “T-1, your own trunk line, straight to any backbone your designate . . .”

  Yadda yadda yadda. I let Cole absorb all her attention with his testosterone-heavy male magnetism. I scooted away from the spot. I had my own to-do list to take care of.

  Carrying my purse tight under my arm, I found the door that opened onto the emergency stairwell. From this side, it was unlocked. Stepping out into the stairwell and holding the door ajar with my foot, I opened my purse and took out a small square of some white, clay-like material that Cole had given me back at the warehouse. I poked the stuff into the square hole in the doorframe where the lock’s bolt went when the door was closed. I took a ballpoint pen out from my purse – that, I’d already had – and set it down on the doorframe, right where it would keep the door from shutting all the way when I pulled my foot out. I turned and ran up the stairs to the floor above.

  Now I was on the stairwell landing, outside the McIntyre offices. There was a doorway here as well, but right now it couldn’t be seen. There was more stuff that I knew about from going through the numbers on the backup disks. McIntyre, paranoid bastard that he was, had paid for some expensive security contractors to come out and install a retractable steel barrier that extended downward from a slot in the ceiling, all the way to the floor. It felt cold and solid as I laid the flat of my hand against it for a moment. Then I got down to work.

  Cole had run me through the procedure until I had it down cold – still, I was starting to sweat as I took a sheet of paper out of my purse. When I unfolded it, there were four Xs marked on it in the shape of a square a foot wide. I licked my thumb, rubbed the corners of the paper template, then stuck it up on the stairwell wall, close to the steel barrier. Then I took a battery-powered drill out of my purse – with that in there, not much room had been left for anything else besides a set of threaded studs. I snapped a socket to the drill and slid the power switch on. A high-pitched whine sounded, that went down in pitch as I drove the first stud through one of the template Xs and into the wall. When the stud protruded only about an inch outward, I pulled the drill away.

  I didn’t know it at the time – though I was about to find out – but there was somebody else there, real close to me. On the other side of the retractable steel barrier, as a matter of fact. One of the security crew, the thug named Louie who was one of Michael’s favorites, had gone out to the stairwell to sneak a smoke. The sound of the electric drill in my hand was just loud enough to penetrate the steel and for him to hear it. Which is something suspicious, since the stairwell is usually dead quiet. He reached over and pressed a red button on a control panel next to the barrier.

  The steel barrier started to slide up into the stairwell’s ceiling – and I just about fainted. That hadn’t been part of the drill that Cole had run me through.

  I had just finished driving the fourth and last threaded stud into the wall by the retractable barrier. I ripped the paper template off the wall and ran with it, my purse and the power drill down the stairs. I didn’t see it at the moment, but the chrome socket fell off the end of the drill.

  Crouching down on the landing below, I looked up and saw the socket lying bright and shiny on the top of the stairs above me. But there was no way I could go back and grab it – the steel barrier had finished retracting, revealing the door behind. The door opened and Louie stepped out on the landing, scanning the area.

  He didn’t see the threaded studs I had driven into the wall – they were concealed behind the door he held open. I held my breath as I looked up through the stairs at him.

  His shoe brushed the chrome socket, sending it rolling to the edge of the landing. I could see the socket teetering there above me.

  Stretching his arm behind him to keep the door open, Louie peered around some more. Nothing. Nice and quiet, the way it should be. As he turned back toward the door, his shoe brushed the chrome socket again, and it fell from the landing’s edge.

  I stuck out my hand and caught the socket as it fell through the stairs. I squeezed my fist tight around it and pulled my arm back. With my eyes shut, I heard the door close above. A moment later came the sound of the steel barrier sliding back down.

  Just a little out of breath, I headed back to where Cole and the leasing agent were still talking. As I crossed through the unfinished space, I tucked into my purse the ballpoint pen I had used to hold the stairwell door open.

  From his wheelchair, Cole glanced over at me. “How’s it look to you?”

  “It could work for us.” I brushed some plaster dust off my fingertips. “I’d still like to take a look at the other sites we’re considering.”

  “All right.” He turned to the leasing agent. “We’ll get back to you.”

  She waved goodbye to us down in the building’s lobby. “If there’s anything else you need to know, just give me a call . . .”

  * * *

  As I drove the van back to the warehouse, Cole didn’t bother to ask me if everything had gone all right. He knew that if it hadn’t, I would’ve told him.

  I parked the van behind Monica’s car, got Cole inside – he had already pulled off the necktie – then got on the motorcycle and headed back home. We’d gotten enough done for one day.

  Some other things happened there at the warehouse, after I left, that I didn’t find out about until later. They weren’t good.

  Monica had been fixing dinner f
or the two of them, as Cole had maneuvered himself out of the wheelchair and onto the mattress on the warehouse floor. He had picked up the remote control and turned on the portable TV, so he hadn’t caught the cold glare she had been sending his way.

  “Out having fun with your little friend?”

  “Working, actually.” He’d lit up a cigarette as he flipped through the channels.

  “Seem to be doing a lot of that lately.”

  When I found out about this conversation between the two of them, I couldn’t believe it. She was jealous. Of me. How likely was that? I mean, if you had compared her, with what she had going on, with me and everything I didn’t – really, it was like a Bengal tiger figuring it had something to worry about from a field mouse.

  And what triggered it? That I never did find out. But I have my suspicions.

  As long as there was something, anything about me that was that other Kim, the one I’d been before, Little Nerd Accountant Girl – then she could feel sorry for me. She could even be kind. Try to help me and all.

  But when that changed, when I wasn’t that other Kim any longer – then she changed, too. She probably didn’t even think about it. She wasn’t that kind of a person. But when I became something more like Cole – something she couldn’t be – then that pushed a little button inside her head. And that wasn’t good. Not just for me – but for all three of us.

  Back to Cole, lying there on the mattress on the floor, trying to watch the TV.

  “Yeah, well,” he said, “I got a job to do. Don’t I?”

  She didn’t say anything more.

  And Cole, that idiot, thought that everything was settled then.

  Just goes to show that nobody, no matter how smart they are, figures out everything.

  * * *

  So that was why, later that night – when Cole was asleep – Monica got up and slipped out of the warehouse.

  She didn’t go far. Just outside, where she could talk on her cell phone without anyone hearing her. Without Cole hearing her.

  She punched in a number, then waited.

  “Yeah?” That was the person answering at the other end.