Ramen Assassin

by Rhys Ford

  Kuro had no intention of giving the man anything to hang even the tiniest hat on.

  He didn’t smile back but held O’Connor’s steady gaze.

  “No harm in asking. You got my curiosity up.” The detective shrugged. “I’d really like a couple of answers.”

  “I’d really like some coffee, but something tells me I’m going to be sadly disappointed for hours to come.”

  “Well then, I think you and I are done, but I’m sure the lieutenant’s probably going to have some questions for you. You can ask her about your gun.” His smile did little to lighten the bitterness in his words, and O’Connor gave a slow performance of putting his notebook away into his jacket pocket, tucking his pen in beside it. “So just stand around here, kicking up your heels like you’ve had me doing right now. Maybe you’ll be cut loose in time to serve up lunch tomorrow.”

  Kuro returned O’Connor’s smile, baring enough teeth to make the cop uncomfortable. “Any idea on when she’s going to get around to me? Because if you all like it or not, I’m serving lunch today.”

  “She’ll get to you in a bit,” O’Connor ground out, nodding curtly. “Probably right after she’s done chewing her baby brother over there a new asshole.”

  “I’M TELLING you, they were shoving a dead man into the back of a van,” Trey ground out again through his clenched teeth. “I’m not making this up, Kimber. The worst thing is, I recognized him, but I don’t know where I’d seen him before.”

  “Trey, I’m going to ask you this one more time and then we’re done here.” His older sister tilted her chin up, a gesture he’d seen his father make more times than he could count. “Tell me the truth and I will make sure you don’t get into trouble. The guys shooting at you? You stiffed them on drugs, didn’t you? You’re using again, and you just don’t want anybody to know it.”

  It was bad enough having his life played out in front of millions of people, every misstep and stumble reported on in intimate detail. The Inquirer probably paid its admin staff’s yearly salary on his volatile breakup with the very closeted Lance Markham, one of America’s muscle-heavy leading men. He’d trashed the restaurant they’d been having dinner in, his uncontrollable rage fueled by frustration and a drug cocktail he’d gotten from the studio doctor. Lance went on to deny any romantic relationship, turning the incident into a long-suffering friend making one last-ditch effort to attempt to help Trey get onto the road to sobriety.

  That was a joke. Lance was often higher than a kite and had simply wanted to play the field. It made good press and was one of the many nails in Trey’s coffin.

  There were other blowups, other overdoses, until the day Trey found himself waking up from a weekend-long binge in Vegas, only to discover himself strapped down to a hospital bed in a Santa Monica rehab following a two-week coma.

  And at every step, there’d been cameras, capturing his disastrous life a frame at a time.

  Rehab was a revolving door of therapists and more drugs, lesser strains meant to wean his blood system. Nothing took. Not until he ended up in what was basically his last-chance stop. Locked in by a judge who’d seen him at least ten times before, the program preached a cold-turkey approach, and its staff was incorruptible. He shared the compound with everything from a fallen rock star to a grand dame of theater. They all had something in common, an addiction they couldn’t control and a support system that had reached the end of its rope.

  The rock star made it out before he did, but as far as Trey knew, the mistress of the stage remained behind its closed doors, barricaded from the outside world by a wrought iron fence and a locked-down trust.

  He’d come out of the experience flat broke and desperate to regain his dignity.

  It was just a pity that he’d been captured on video having very violent hallucinations about dog-headed aliens landing at Venice Beach. A few bad trips alongside a well-publicized breakdown or five and no one was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Especially his family.

  Not that Kimber had ever given him the benefit of the doubt.

  “I’m not using. I’ve been sober since I got out. Shit, I’ll take a drug test if you want me to.” Trey rubbed at his shoulder, the spot still aching where she’d stabbed at it with her finger. “Dad will tell you—”

  “Dad’s blind spot where you’re concerned is huge, so you’re going to have to forgive me if I don’t believe anything he says about you. You’re the son he finally got, and there’s nothing he won’t do to bail you out,” she replied sarcastically. “If I found you in the middle of Malibu trying to snort up the sand through a red licorice straw, he would say you were vacuuming the beach to keep it neat. That’s your biggest problem, Harry. No one’s ever held you accountable for anything, and the only reason Dad put you into rehab was because if he didn’t stop you, you were going to kill yourself and he would have to make another son. And the man’s getting too old to do that with any of his bimbos.”

  “First, don’t call me Harry.” Trey struggled to keep his temper. “And if that crack about bimbos is about my mom, then you can just fuck off. If I were anyone else, you would be looking for that van and those guys, but since it’s me, you’re saying it’s a lie just to cover up some drug deal gone bad.”

  “All I’ve ever heard of you has been lies. What makes this time so different?”

  He didn’t know what else to tell her. She was his oldest sister, his father’s firstborn and fifteen years older than Trey. She looked like her mother, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed former Russian high fashion model turned actress, but Kimber was 100 percent their father’s daughter. Turning her back on the family’s vast empire, she instead decided to be a cop. It was a turning point in her relationship with their dad. Harrington James Bishop the Second hadn’t greased palms and worked his connections for his daughter to get an Ivy League education only for her to spit in his face, head to UCLA to get her degree, and promptly join the Los Angeles Police Department. Now a lieutenant, she still worked the occasional case, usually high profile or politically sensitive incidents or whenever her baby brother fell down into the gutter.

  It was just a shame that’s the only place she thought he belonged.

  “What do I have to gain by lying about seeing a dead man?” Trey asked. “It wasn’t like I imagined those two guys. The ramen shop owner literally saved my ass. They were shooting at me, Kimber. I wasn’t making that up. I don’t even have any money on me. I told you, I went running because I needed to work out some energy. It keeps me sober. I don’t know what to tell you to make you believe me.”

  She was a beautiful woman, the kind of woman who turned people’s heads when she walked by. Her beauty only intensified as she got older, and in her early forties, she was now stunning, infused with a powerful confidence and keen intelligence. When he was younger, there was nothing Trey wanted more than his older sisters’ attention, but the years between them and the acrid animosity among their different mothers made building relationships nearly impossible. He’d envied her poise and confidence, as well as the affectionate relationship she had with her mother, a far cry from the emotional upheaval of his own mother’s neediness and violent behavior. Kimber represented a stability he’d always wanted, yet it appeared nothing he did would ever bring them closer.

  But then he had no one to blame but himself for that. They were no longer young. No longer living under their father’s roof and forced to have holidays together. He’d destroyed any fragile thread connecting them, and now when he needed her to believe him, Trey mourned what he’d destroyed.

  “I’m going to have one of the uniforms drive you home,” she said, glancing back over toward where the handsome black-haired ramen shop owner stood with one of the detectives. “I’ve got a few questions for him, and then I’m going to thank him for saving your life. Because if he hadn’t been here, I’d probably be making a condolence visit to Dad. As it is, I’m not sure what to do with you. I’ll ask around to see if there are any security cameras, to see if any
place down the street caught video of a van, but beyond that, I only have your word about the dead man. And that’s less than shit to go on.”

  “I swear to you, Kimber, I am telling the truth,” Trey murmured, wishing he’d brought a jacket or something because the morning air was cold against his skin, or maybe the glacial crawl through his bones was the realization his sister not only didn’t trust him but didn’t love him. It’d been too long since he’d seen anything but disappointment in her luminous eyes, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her smile. “I’ll do anything to prove it to you. Hell, if I could find them myself I would.”

  “See, Harry, that’s where I think the problem is. I think you know who they are. I believe you know where to find them, but if you rat them out, you’ll be burning bridges you don’t want to. Just don’t sell everything off in the bungalow to pay for whatever mess you’ve fallen into,” she said, then sighed. “You are going to break Dad’s heart, and as much as I sometimes hate the old man, he doesn’t deserve to have you as a son. He’s given you so fucking much, and you just throw it all away. Just stay out of trouble, because the last thing I want to do is knock on his front door at two o’clock in the morning to tell him someone found your body. Go home, get some sleep, then get some help. Because the next time I get called into one of your little episodes, I’m tossing you into jail, and there’s not going to be a damned thing Dad can do to get you out.”

  Three

  “I’M TELLING you, babe, your sister’s a bitch,” Sera declared from the bungalow’s kitchen. The smell of grilled cheese sandwiches woke Trey up a little bit, but not enough for him to crawl off the gray sectional set at the far end of the great room. “Never did like her. Actually, all of your sisters are raging bitches. You’re the best one out of the bunch.”

  “That’s a scary thought,” he mumbled into the decorative pillows, willing his head to stop pounding. “Icarus looks at me and says, ‘Damn, that boy’s gone and fucked up his life.’”

  “Can’t fall up from Hell, kiddo.” Sera chuckled under her breath. “Listen to me. I sound like one of my hat-wearing aunties at church. You planning on sitting up so you can eat these things, or am I going to have to feed you like some little bird I’ve found on the sidewalk?”

  Sitting up was going to be a challenge. He was worn down past the ache in his bones, and after stumbling out of the police car, the bedroom had been too far away. Or at least that’s what it felt like, despite the fact the guest house was a 1920s one-story square bungalow split down the middle by a single wall, and all he’d needed to do was walk through the long great room with its kitchenette and living area through a door to get to his king-sized bed.

  It’d been too much. Too far. Much like everything in his life. The crash after the rush of overwhelming adrenaline knocked Trey down to his knees, and after a mind-numbing ride through Koreatown while sitting in the back of a black-and-white driven by a stone-faced cop, he’d been ready to crawl into whatever hole could swallow him up. The cop insisted he sit in the back, droning on something about procedure, but Trey gave it his best shot to squat in the passenger seat. He’d lost that fight, much like he’d lost all other battles to avoid being transported in the back of a police car, but at least this time he wasn’t cuffed behind his back.

  Thank God for that small little favor, even if the little old lady who lived next door sneered malevolently at him when the squad car pulled up to the main house’s curb. She didn’t even try to hide her phone as she filmed him doing what she believed was a walk of shame to the back of the property. Blowing a kiss to the cop and waving goodbye probably hadn’t helped things, but at least it made Trey feel better, and gave the illusion he’d been taken for a good ride.

  Mrs. Hornswaggle hadn’t bought it. Not one damned bit. He could hear her tsking, and the sound of her pressure-hosing her front walk haunted him until he closed the bungalow’s front door.

  “I’m burning these like you like them, so you’ve got about two minutes to get up off that couch,” Sera warned him again, the kitchen’s transom windows above the Shaker-style cabinets playing flicks of light over her lush sienna skin and teasing the gold flecks out of her honey-brown eyes. “Don’t think for one moment I’m babying you like I did your daddy. You don’t get up and you’re not going to like what I’ll do to you.”

  Trey knew she meant it.

  Of all of his father’s ex-mistresses, Sera was the one he was closest to. Probably because she wasn’t much older than he was. A leggy, strong-featured black woman originally from Georgia, she’d come out to Los Angeles to make a splash in the art world with her edgy paintings of urban landscapes, scoring a big show only a few months after touching down in Southern California. Meeting Harrington Bishop the Second was probably the best and worst thing ever to happen to Sera, but in the long run, Trey got a best friend out of the deal.

  She was also the first one his father didn’t insist he call Auntie, which was a damn relief by then, because as he got older, his father’s mistresses got significantly younger. The current one was barely out of braces and couldn’t buy alcohol by herself. His mother ignored them all, drowning herself in shopping, country club activities, and long trips to Europe accompanied by a variety of buff, handsome men with umlauts in their names.

  The grilled cheese sandwich came with a huge mug of creamy tomato soup, bits of parmesan cheese floating across its steaming surface. He’d been right about sitting up being painful. His thighs hurt in places Trey didn’t think possible, and for some reason, his hip bones creaked when he moved, belatedly remembering he’d dropped facedown to the alley’s cracked concrete walk when the ramen shop guy ordered him to get out of the way.

  “I’d offer you painkillers but that’s a hill I don’t want you tumbling down,” Sera pronounced, looming over him with her hands on her hips. “Get some of that into you and I’ll go get you some ibuprofen. Then I want the scoop on the guy who saved your scrawny ass from being used to wipe up bum puke.”

  His first sip of soup was manna pouring down his throat. The weather snapped cold while he’d been passed out on the couch, and a chill settled into him, leaving Trey shaky and unsteady. He was reluctant to contemplate why his hands were trembling, but the shaking and his iced-over backbone were the result of almost being gunned down in the street like some bad TV show victim. There were better ways to die. Or at least more flashy ways. It would have been irony at its highest snark for him to be killed in a random shooting, especially since Death came for him so many times before and he’d dodged its bony finger.

  Sera came back with a handful of orange tablets and a glass of sparkling water, sticking both under his nose with an imperious sniff. “Take these. You’ll feel better.”

  If there was one thing Trey appreciated more about Serafina Tate than her friendship, it was that she believed him when he told her he hadn’t been drinking. He’d grown used to the suspicious glances and disapproving looks from nearly everyone around him, including his mother, who’d spent most of Trey’s life ignoring him. Sera stood firmly by him, welcoming him with open arms when he’d arrived at the converted mansion, licking his psychological wounds after his stint in rehab and looking for a place to hide. She’d taken over the running of the old house, a deal she’d worked out with his father in exchange for a hefty salary, one well above what an estate manager normally was paid, and possession of the top-floor apartment, where she lived and worked. The guest bungalow on the back had been set up for sporadic rentals, but Trey’s father offered it up to him as a place to live.

  He took it, swallowing his pride. He’d learned to choke down the taste of crow being served up hot and heavy on his plate, drowning in a gravy made up of his own remorse. His descent into a breakdown included losing everything he’d gained over the years, including the glass-walled mansion he’d purchased in Malibu.

  Trey was broke and alone, living off the scraps his father threw his way and desperate for a way to fix the life he’d fucked up. Se
ra was a huge part of that fix, a steady rock he’d clung to more than a few times since he’d earned his release.

  Much like taking the bungalow’s keys from his father’s hand, Trey took the ibuprofen.

  “Tell me about the ramen shop guy.” She sat down next to him, folding her legs under her. Leaning over, Sera pinched off a corner of Trey’s sandwich, taking a bit of cheese with her. “I’ve been by that place. Boy’s hot.”

  “Boy’s not a boy,” Trey grumbled back. “But yeah, he’s hot as fuck. And scary. Turned the corner and there he was, big-ass gun in his hand and a face made out of granite. Like, no expression. No shaking. No nothing. Told me to drop to the ground and stay out of the way.”

  “Whatcha do?”

  “I dropped to the ground and stayed out of the way,” he said around a mouthful of grilled cheese and nearly blackened bread. “I dropped, then he stood over me. Like some kind of half-Asian Colossus of Rhodes. Scared the shit out of me. I thought I was going to die. Couldn’t run anymore. Hell, couldn’t even breathe anymore, then boom-boom-boom, his gun went off. Damned thing was so loud because the alley’s tight, you know? But he was as cool as a cucumber. Didn’t even flinch.”

  “And you could tell that facedown and sucking up gutter juice?” Sera lifted one sculpted eyebrow, rubbing at her nearly shorn hair with one hand. “Nice legs?”

  “Great legs. Even better ass,” Trey admitted. “I looked up a couple of times, because shit, if I’m going to die, I should at least take a good look at the guy trying to save me.”

  “Kind of funny he was there. At three in the morning? Shop doesn’t open until eleven, right? But there’s this guy, and with a gun.” Leaning back, Sera rolled her shoulders, getting comfortable against the couch. “Not exactly a rough neighborhood.”