Ramen Assassin

by Rhys Ford

  “Sometimes,” his father replied. “Not often. Robert was a pretty steady player. He might have a few bad holes, but his game was usually on par, no pun intended. Why?”

  “Because I’m wondering if the guy that you played golf with was really David and Robert was the one in the plastic that night,” Trey conjectured, his mind working at the angles of the murders. “David already embezzled once. It would be pretty easy for him to step into his brother’s place and start funneling money out of the business. Maybe they took Robert and David moved in, thinking he could make a quick score. Then something happened and Robert ended up dead.”

  “Then why would they kill David?” Harrington argued. “And why chop off his hands?”

  “Because maybe David found out they killed Robert and that wasn’t what he signed up for?” The argument was solidifying as he spoke. “The only reason they would want me to shut up would be because I saw the body that night and eventually recognized it as either Robert or David. I don’t know what else it could be.”

  “They’d want to preserve Robert’s fingerprints. Driver’s license. Passport. Even some security boxes are fingerprint locked,” Kuro interjected from the open door, leaning against its jamb. “Even identical twins have fingerprint variations like scars or puckering. Cutting off David’s hands led police to believe they’d found Robert. Someone’s thought this out and is getting tripped up because Trey saw Robert’s body, and now they’re trying to clean things up but it’s not going very well for them.”

  “Probably would have gotten away with it if I didn’t have my own ninja,” Trey teased.

  “Not a ninja.” Kuro shook his head. “Or an assassin. Just so we’re clear on that.”

  “This all seems more like one of those television shows you were on,” his father replied. “Robert’s business took more than a few hits over the past couple of years. He was asset rich but cash poor. If what you’re saying was possible, David wouldn’t have been able to get a lot out of their accounts. Robert was stretched pretty far. He was looking for investors to increase his cash flow.”

  “I don’t know what else it could be,” Trey said. “Now that they dumped the body—whoever it is—they don’t have any need to come after me. Everything’s already out in the open, right?”

  “Except for who is pulling the strings,” Kuro said as he came inside. “Did your father share with you one very important piece of this puzzle?”

  “I hadn’t gotten to it yet,” Harrington muttered, putting his half-eaten plate of food down on the table. “Robert Mathers and I have been friends for years, and I don’t know if you remember this, but he was one of the men I asked to be your godfather. I’d forgotten all about it until Kimber reminded me. It wasn’t like I ever asked the man to do anything besides show up at the church that day, but he obviously remembered because he left you a good portion of his business. You’re one of Robert Mathers’s heirs.”

  “One of five, if I’m supposed to believe Boom Boom here,” Kuro said, jerking his head back toward the redheaded woman coming up the path. “There are four people with a good enough motive to kill that we’ve got to worry about, and one of them might have set this whole train wreck into motion. So Trey, the question is, are you going to move into my place or am I going to bunk in here, because until this is all put to bed, you’re a sitting duck, and I don’t think I can let you out of my sight.”

  Twelve

  “WORST PART about being gay?” Trey called out to Sera from his bedroom as he sorted his unfolded laundry onto the top of his dresser. He was angry about the night before and how his father, Tatiana, and even Kuro fought with him about moving out of the bungalow until everyone thought he was safe. There’d been no discussion with him, just around him, and it got Trey’s back up, to the point where he kicked everyone out and told them he’d think about it in the morning. When morning came, he was still pissed off and grumpy because he knew they were right. “Guys are assholes, and there’s no asshole detection software.”

  “I slept with your father, remember?” She sauntered into the sunny room, her arms filled with fresh bedding.

  “So you know, then,” he shot back, trying to suppress a shudder but not quite making it. Sera caught the lift of his shoulders and frowned at him. “Look, it’s weird. I mean, my family’s not normal, but I’m standing here with my best friend who slept with my dad and my mom pretends doesn’t exist while I’m trying to decide if I should go take up the offer to go stay with a guy who owns a ramen shop but might have been an assassin for the government. Oh, and I find out my dad’s assistant is actually his bodyguard and is my oldest sister’s girlfriend, a sister who I didn’t even know was a lesbian. My life has telenovela written all over it. All that’s missing is a secret baby that I somehow fathered with a woman I’ve never met.”

  “Have you even ever slept with a woman?” Sera asked, plopping down to sit on the edge of his bed. She began doing that thing he never could understand but somehow folded a fitted sheet into a perfect square. “I mean, if that happened, then I would expect a secret baby.”

  “No one actually needs to sleep with the woman in order to have a secret baby. Don’t you know that’s how telenovelas are?” he sniped, digging through his laundry basket to find a match for the black-striped athletic sock he found clinging to a pair of his jeans. “It’s right up there with me probably finding out I have amnesia and Kuro was my secret lover while I was a double agent in some European country that doesn’t exist.”

  “I’m beginning to think you spent way too much time on the sets,” she commented, snapping the sheet into shape. “Maybe you should get back into acting.”

  “There’s no way in hell anyone would take a chance on me. Insurance would be too high, and if you remember, I torched my last set trailer.” He found the errant sock, then realized they were different lengths. Sighing, he went back down into the pile, draping the shorter one over the edge so he didn’t accidentally rediscover it. “I’m not a big enough name for anyone to be willing to take me on. Besides, it’s been years since I was on a show, and I’m not so convinced I was that great of an actor.”

  “You won an Emmy. And you were a kid,” Sera pointed out, bringing back a flood of memories Trey didn’t want swamping his thoughts. “I don’t know why you’re putting away your clothes when it makes sense for you to be someplace safer than this bungalow. It’s not like anyone can see this place from the main house, not with the trees, and it’s too easy to get to. If there’s someone trying to kill you, I’d feel better if you were someplace more secure.”

  “My choices are Kuro’s apartment above the ramen shop or my parents’ place.” There was the beginning of a headache edging into Trey’s left temple, a throbbing reminder he should either have more coffee or a handful of ibuprofen. “I was going to go to a hotel, but apparently the Russian ex-spy who sleeps with my sister and works for my father tells me the easiest place to kill someone is a hotel.”

  “Your parents would drive you insane within two days.” With the sheet folded, Sera moved on to the pillow shams. “And you don’t know this Kuro guy.”

  “Tatiana says staying with Kuro is probably the safest place I could be.” He found another black-striped sock, then compared it to the other two, frustrated to discover it matched neither. “And I swear to fucking God, I’m going to throw away all of my socks and buy new ones in totally different colors. None of these damn things match.”

  “Leave them to the end and I’ll help you.” Sera snapped out another pillowcase, flattening it on the bed. “And I thought he and Tatiana were on different sides.”

  “They were. Their relationship is as complicated as mine is with my family.” Giving up on the socks, Trey moved on to his T-shirts, the bulk of his wardrobe these days. “I like the guy. A lot. I just don’t know if I’m willing to live in his back pocket while Kimber and the rest of LAPD tries to figure out if I’m in danger or not. Why the hell would Robert Mathers leave me a part of his business when I re
ally didn’t even know him?”

  “He was your godfather.” Sera cocked her head. “I mean, it’s something.”

  “According to my mother, so was her ex-hairdresser, Sven.” Trey rolled his eyes, chuckling. “He was the guy my dad suspected of being my father when my mom got pregnant. Well, him and two other guys. Harry the Second was kind of surprised when everything came back pointing to him. Not that my mom is a slut, but neither one of them are saints. She made him buy a diamond necklace as an apology, then asked everyone he accused her of sleeping with to be my godfather. He countered, and apparently I have four godfathers and three godmothers who I never knew anything about, including a dead guy whose twin brother may have switched places with him.”

  “Is anyone buying that besides you?” Sera laughed when Trey flipped her off. “So Kimber is not swallowing that theory of yours?”

  “I’m not even sure if it matters, but someone killed them, and there had to be a reason for their murders. I’m waiting for someone to come up with the theory that I somehow did it because Mathers left me part of his business.”

  “I can’t see that happening,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re already rich, even if you can’t touch it.”

  “In the words of my father and practically everyone he knows, there’s no such thing as too rich.” The subject was beginning to depress him, and Trey still hadn’t made up his mind about what he was going to do. It made sense to leave the bungalow, especially since his presence could bring down a bunch of trouble on Sera and whoever else was staying at the bigger house. Still, as idealistic as it sounded to crash at Kuro’s place, he wasn’t sure that was a good idea. “I know I can’t stay here. I’m on borrowed time, because Tatiana threatened to plant heroin on me and call the cops if I didn’t get myself someplace safe. Imagine me trying to explain that to Kimber.”

  “How much danger are you in, really?” Sera stood up, stacking the bedding she folded into a small tower. “With both Mathers brothers dead, what kind of threat are you? I don’t see—”

  The outer wall of the bungalow blew inward, sending a storm of wood and plaster through the bedroom. A beam struck Trey along the side of his head, pushing him down to his knees. The air seemed full of bullets, and he couldn’t catch his breath with all of the dust in the air. Sparks flew from a cut electrical line as it was hit by something metal, and a whiff of smoke began to curl up through the gritty cloud. Fear got Trey moving, his knees aching, and a throbbing twist along his right arm warned him it might not hold his weight as he began crawling across the bedroom floor.

  He needed to find Sera. He needed to see her alive and get her free of the chaos. It seemed like forever until he found the end of the bed and the pile of sheets she’d been holding.

  She was lying on her back, her eyes closed and her white shirt slowly turning crimson around the holes punctured through her belly and chest. The air sparkled with a wave of plaster flecks, a cruel mimicry of the pink hologram glitter polish she’d painted on her nails. He couldn’t tell if she was breathing, unable to see the rise and fall of her chest in the slightly shadowed niche she’d fallen in next to his bed. But she wasn’t moving, and his stomach twisted down into a small ball of black pain, fear pushing him forward.

  “No. No, no, no.” Trey ducked behind the heavy platform frame, his hands bloodied from his crawl through the sharp debris. “Sera, we’ve got to go. Wake up.”

  Blood was everywhere, creeping across the floor like a thief, and Trey’s heart stopped, his mind frozen by the metallic sting wafting up from the growing pools. Logic flew out the gaping hole in the wall, and he somehow seized on the notion that she’d be fine if only he could get her blood back into her, stop the wounds from oozing just a little bit, anything to help Sera hold on.

  “Get in there,” a man’s voice shouted. His words sank through the fear wrapping around Trey’s chilled body, starting a fire of frenzied panic at the back of Trey’s skull. “Find him and—shit!”

  A siren cut through the air, followed by another, their wails off sync but growing louder. It was difficult to tell how far away the emergency vehicles were or even what they were, ambulances or cops, but the sound of their approach was unmistakable.

  “Go! Get back in!” Another voice, higher-pitched and panicked, screamed through the air, and the bungalow shook again with a barrage of gunfire, bursting sprays screaming past Trey’s head, punching through the ceiling and far walls. “Come on. Leave the shells. Get in!”

  He barely heard the screech of tires, but the hum of bullets seemed to stop. Trey somehow expected silence to descend, but the world crept in, small drops of sound working past the sudden crashes of broken walls and his tortured sobs. It didn’t seem right to hear birdsong begin again so soon after the sun reemerged when whatever the shooters drove onto the property raced away, but the tweets and whistles were soon joined by a scream of sirens, the symphony of alarms warning people out of the way. His own staggered breaths deafened him to even the possibility of Sera’s faint heartbeat.

  There was no way he could hear anything when he pressed his ear against her breast, her blood slick and wet across his cheek. The distant memory of what to do for CPR haunted the edges of his thoughts and Trey jerked back up, wondering if he should press his folded hands on her chest and begin a steady beat to keep her alive until someone who knew what they were doing arrived. A press to her chest only pushed more blood from her wounds, and Trey grabbed at the bedding Sera’d been carrying before the wall was torn apart.

  Pressing down on the wounds with the folded sheets, Trey bent his head and prayed, pushing as much of his heart into the murmur of hope pouring out of his mouth. The words burbling up from his soul probably made no sense. They didn’t have to. Someone had to hear him. Someone had to put the life back into Sera’s ashen, bloodied body and get her to open her eyes.

  At least one more time. Trey needed to say he was sorry, tell her he loved her, and promise Sera everything would be okay.

  She didn’t wake up. Her skin did not bloom again with a rosy blush across her cheeks and her eyelashes did not flutter with the promise of opening, so Trey began again, pressing down harder on her wounds and begging her to stay with him.

  Trey didn’t know when the EMTs got to his side or even when they were able to break through his shock so he could hear them tell him to get back, to let them handle things. The silence was finally there, the numbness sinking in and sealing the world off behind a glistening wall of pain and terror. Trey blinked, looking up through a waterfall of tears at the Hispanic woman dressed in a blue uniform urging him to come with her, but he couldn’t seem to move.

  “Come on, honey.” She seemed to whisper or maybe it just sounded that way with the echoing whoosh of his heartbeat slamming through his ears. “You can’t help her now. One of the EMTs is going to look at you, but is there someone we can call? Someone who can meet you at the hospital?”

  “Yeah,” Trey grunted as a wave of pain ran down his right arm. “Kuro Jenkins. And when you get ahold of him, can you tell him I’m done with this shit? It’s time to end this. One way or another.”

  IT WASN’T the first time Kuro had a ringside seat to the loss of someone’s innocence. He knew Trey had seen more than his share of shit in his lifetime, but death was a different matter. Violent death brought a whole new awareness no one who’d ever seen it firsthand could explain. It was an assault on creation. The ultimate arrogance of man and the need to dominate and subjugate without purpose. Murder was a vicious circle, a rabid Jörmungandr set loose and in motion the first time blood was spilled for no other reason than to take a life.

  Kuro could only hope that Trey was not poisoned by this particular ouroboros’s venom. He’d seen that before, the black crawl of an insatiable revenge eating away at a man’s reason. Trey’s glassy-eyed stare was a concern, as was the seemingly deep disregard for the blood caking his hair or the light coating of plaster dust on his clothes. He moved slowly, as if every joint needed its own
push to work and Trey only had so much energy to give to each limb.

  The drive back from the hospital was accompanied by a heavy silence, one only broken by the infrequent hitch of Trey’s occasional suppressed sob. His tears were dry by the time Kuro arrived, streaking the gritty film on his face, but as they got farther and farther away from the hospital, Trey’s stony demeanor began to crack. His shoulders shook every so often, but Trey tightened his lips with each shudder, staring out of the Challenger’s window, Wilshire’s bright lights stealing shadows from his face.

  He’d driven down to the hospital as soon as he heard, then paced the halls while Kimber and a couple of other detectives ran Trey through the wringer. A doctor cleared Trey physically but broached concerns about his psychological well-being, especially in light of his oft-documented addiction problem. His parents chimed in their own objections, taking time out of their pushing to reassure Kuro he wasn’t needed at Trey’s side.

  It was nearly midnight at the time Trey was cut loose, and after a storm of rising arguments about what he should do, Trey told them all to fuck off and asked Kuro to take him home.

  Yuki-onna was waiting for them at the top of the stairs, her sleek hairless body gleaming under the recessed lights. She was vocal, sounding off the typical yowling of a Sphynx cat who’d gone way too long without her evening meal. First she bitched and warbled at Kuro, scolding him as he climbed up the steps, then switched her attentions to Trey, hopping down the stairs to wind around his feet, purring and pleading as if she’d been severely abused and neglected.

  “You have a cat.” Trey spoke for the first time since getting into Kuro’s car, and he stepped carefully, trying to avoid the lithe, serpentine feline tangling up his feet. “I never imagined you had a pet. Maybe some fish. Or a lizard.”