Ramen Assassin

by Rhys Ford

  “Fuck you,” she replied with very little emotion, turning the latch on the french door. “Only one lock was engaged. This is probably the door security uses to go in and out. And I almost put my foot in a pile of cigarette butts. But we’re on.”

  “You don’t have to go in if you don’t want to,” Kuro offered again. “I can take this.”

  “I haven’t had any action since—not counting you in the bungalow—since I had to shoot that bus driver in the knee because he was giving me shit,” Tatiana grumbled back. “If I don’t bust some heads soon, I’m going to go crazy.”

  “Just remember, when you go berserker? We’re on the same side now,” he reminded her. “I don’t want you to forget that and brain me across the back of the head with a unicorn lamp.”

  “I only did that once,” she sniped back under her breath. “And it was a tissue box. Not a lamp. There wasn’t enough room in that bathroom to swing a lamp.”

  “Not sure that matters to the back of my head,” Kuro muttered back. “Let’s go.”

  The inside of the house looked like a yard sale held in the parking lot of a store named Gilded and Tasteless. Everywhere they turned, something large dominated the space. Gold-trimmed armoires competed for space with oversized chairs held up by massive lion’s-foot legs, with tall tables crammed into every niche and covered by overflowing flower arrangements or a knickknack heavy enough to do damage to a sturdy cranium. Kuro threw a smug smirk back at Tatiana when they passed a rampant horse statue placed on a round side table, a recessed overhead angled to spotlight its crystal horn.

  She silently flipped him off, keeping her footsteps light while they worked through the lower floor, pausing only to let an older Hispanic woman in a gray dress scurry past them, her arms filled with a stack of folded towels. They waited, shrouded in a bit of shadow thrown out by an eight-foot-tall stuffed bear standing stiff and tall on a marble pedestal, keeping still behind its massive flanks while the woman muttered under her breath about pigheaded men and needing a new job.

  Twenty minutes were left on their clock, barely enough to get in, find the right room, and get out before their shit would hit the fan. The second the woman was out of sight, Kuro was on the move, heading into the depths of the house to the one room he was gambling would have who he was looking for.

  He was not disappointed.

  The heavy drapes were closed, blocking off the outside with thick tapestry panels. There were very few lights on, but the room was bright enough, illuminated by a fast-moving game being played out on a television nearly the size of a twin bed. The volume was loud enough to make Kuro’s ears bleed, and the rapid-fire Spanish blasting out of a row of speakers sitting on the credenza was almost too quick to follow. His target had a handful of Cheetos near his lips, his eyes pinned to the chaotic movement on the screen.

  Of all of his jobs, this moment was the most surreal. His assignments were never personal. Not in the beginning. Some—like the one that got him retired out—became personal within minutes of him breaching the door while others remained simply a job, a dangerous situation he needed to go through in order for the good guys to get a point in a game no one would ever win.

  Kuro wasn’t used to dealing with emotions, and he was hard-pressed to push back on the conflicting swell bubbling up from his heart. It was easy enough for him to say Trey had to be his focus now. There was a future there. Or least he hoped there was one. It was something he’d never thought he’d have. There’d been too much death and carnage in his past for him to even imagine waking up next to someone he cared about the rest of his life. Now that was a real possibility—or at least he hoped so—but the only way he was going to get it was to walk over the raging embers of his past life, and there was no way to do that without burning himself.

  Walking into the room, Kuro trained his gun on the man reclining across the corner of the red leather sectional and said, “Hello, Pops.”

  The older man immediately sucked in a mouthful of air, his face turning a grayish white, then proceeded to choke on the virulent orange puffed snack he’d just tossed back, his fingers filthy with a thick coating of cheesy dust. Alarmed, Kuro skirted the edge of the couch, his weapon still aimed at Pops’s temple but his right hand clenched into a fist, ready to pound at the man’s back.

  “Jesus!” Tatiana hissed in a low whisper, shutting the door behind her. Crossing the room, she did a quick visual check, securing the other half of the space. “Aren’t you going to ask him questions before you kill him?”

  “I’m not trying to kill him!” Kuro kept his weapon out of arm’s reach as best he could while striking Pops once between the shoulder blades. “At least not yet.”

  The soccer game blaring from the gigantic flat-screen television mounted to the wall a few feet away covered their entrance, as well as Pops’s choking episode. Rubbing at his throat, he leaned forward, blindly scrambling to reach a remote a few feet away. Pops’s elbow caught the bowl of chips, scattering its contents over the seat and onto the floor. Tatiana sidestepped quickly, then fell into a shooting stance when Pops made a grab for her.

  “Oh no, old man,” Tatiana scolded. “Blackie might have some sentimental attachment to your sorry ass, but I am more than willing to give you a third nostril.”

  “I’d believe her if I were you. Especially since you’re the reason her girlfriend has been coming home late for the past couple of weeks,” Kuro warned, circling the couch from the other side until he and Tatiana bracketed his former mentor. “And while we’re at it, I’m going to go on record and say I’m not too happy with you either.”

  “Can’t trust anyone to do the job,” Pops spat. “You should be dead by now. You and that twink—”

  “Do people still use that word?” Tatiana interrupted. “I’m not up on things.”

  “Yes. It’s still a word, but I don’t know if I would use it to describe Trey,” he replied, stepping through the scattered puffs. They crunched beneath his boots, grinding down into the area rug in front of the sectional. Nudging the remote closer to him, Kuro lowered the volume a few levels. “Let’s drop that down so you understand everything I’m saying to you. You’d already accepted the contract to kill me when I walked in that day, didn’t you?”

  “You were a bonus,” Pops said, wiping his dirty fingers on his purple velvet tracksuit, smearing trails of orange dust across his thigh. “The hit was for Bishop. I told the boys to make it a two-for-one deal. Had to up the payment after you took out Bald Paulie.”

  “Is there a Not-Bald Paulie?” Tatiana gestured with her gun, sweeping her aim down the length of Pops’s torso. “The nicknames you people come up with.”

  “You’re called Boom Boom,” Kuro reminded her. “And can we concentrate on what we came here for?”

  “Sorry,” she said unconvincingly. “I was just curious. Get your answers. We don’t have much time.”

  “Who hired you?” Kuro growled. “Tell me who paid you to kill Trey Bishop.”

  “I’m not telling you jack shit.” Pops returned fire, disdain creeping across his face. “I start giving out names to every asshole who threatens me with a gun and I’ll be out of business or dead before I blink the next time. And don’t act like you’d shoot me, boy. I fucking made you. Everything you are is because of me.”

  Pops wasn’t wrong. Kuro’s finger was on the Glock’s trigger, but he wavered, probing at the edges of his torn loyalties. They’d been through a lot together, and Pops was the first person who’d made sure he had food and shelter. Kuro never expected to stand in front of the man who’d given him a gun and showed him how to use it. He’d learned more than just how to negotiate, standing behind Pops while people came to him to beg or pay for favors. Kuro picked up knowledge lurking in the corner of Pops’s tight confines, from learning about weapons to how to plan a break-in. Graduating to organizing his own jobs after picking pockets and pulling street scams, he’d steadfastly worked his way into Pops’s good graces, hoping to one day take over the man’
s underground empire.

  He hadn’t been ostracized for being gay. Everything he’d done for the man had been judged at face value, his devotion to Pops strengthening their bond right up until the day Kuro walked away, driven off by Pops’s greed and flagrant disregard.

  Also, Holly gave him an offer he really couldn’t refuse… not if he was going to be true to the man Pops made him.

  “Yeah,” Tatiana snorted. “But you didn’t make me.”

  The gun’s sharp report was lost beneath a wave of cheers erupting from speakers as a red-shirted player scored a point and the sports announcer began a warbling celebration of the goal.

  Pops’s scream filled the air, drowned out by the jubilance of a soccer team’s fans as their boys brought home a victory.

  “Tatiana! Jesus Christ!” Kuro yelled across the room, grabbing a runner from a side table to staunch the wound. An arrangement of porcelain figures set on the fabric hit the floor in a smatter of tinkling crashes, and Kuro winced, knowing how much the ugly twisted forms cost. “You weren’t supposed to shoot him!”

  “Well, you weren’t going to do it!” she shot back. “Someone had to, and he wasn’t going to shoot himself!”

  “Pops, stop wiggling around,” Kuro ordered, crouching to press the runner against his mentor’s injured leg. Pops’s blood was hot, practically scalding Kuro’s fingers, and he swore under his breath as it began to soak into the porous fabric. “It went right through the meat. You’ll be fine. Just let me tie this off.”

  “None of this would’ve happened if he told you the name,” Tatiana said calmly, unaffected by Pops’s mewling. “Why is he making so much noise? It’s not even serious. It wasn’t like I aimed for his dick.”

  “She’s fucking crazy,” Pops gasped. “You brought a crazy person into my house!”

  “You’re not wrong,” Kuro admitted with a slight grimace, wrapping the runner around Pops’s thick thigh and tying it off. “I just need a name, Pops. Then I’ll get someone to help you.”

  Pops glared at Kuro for so long, he was afraid the man would never give up the information or, worse yet, Tatiana would shoot both of them in frustration. Kuro never broke eye contact with the older man, staring into his timeworn face with its beaten-down expression. The gilded cage they sat in was proof to the old man that he’d made it off of the streets they’d come from, but he still shuffled down to the barbershop every day, probably unwilling to let go of the life he’d made for himself.

  They weren’t so different, Kuro realized. And crouching there, Kuro saw who he would have become if he’d stayed at Pops’s side. If he hadn’t taken a different path, it would be him behind that desk on Skid Row, a marionette in Pops’s puppet show until the day he moved up after Pops’s death and took his place on that very couch.

  “Tell me who set up the contract, Pops, and we’ll call it even,” Kuro promised. “I’ll walk away. No retaliation. No revenge. I’ll even keep her off, but if you do me wrong, I’ll be back, and you won’t like what I bring with me.”

  He knew the moment Pops crumpled, his face giving way to a resigned resentment, but Kuro didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was that Pops leaned forward, whispering a name into Kuro’s ear.

  “You sure?” Kuro pressed. “Because I don’t want to be back here, Pops. I don’t ever want to be back here.”

  “I’m sure,” he replied, grimacing. “And if you don’t take them out, you better come back here and kill me, because if I’m going to die, I’d rather you be the one to do it.”

  Twenty

  TREY COULDN’T breathe.

  He tried. God knew he was struggling to find some way to get air into his lungs, but it was impossible. There was too much in the way. He couldn’t get his chest to move or even his mouth open. Sucking air in through his nose was useless, but Trey needed to breathe.

  He just couldn’t.

  “It’ll be okay,” Kimber promised. “I’ll help you through this.”

  That was a lie.

  Trey longed to be childish. To scream at Kimber that she’d never been there before, why should he believe her now? But that also was a lie. She had been there. Standing against the storm of shit he’d thrown at her, a tempest of bad behavior and drugged-out disasters, Kimber was there. As hard as it was to embrace his culpability and what he’d done to her in the family, Trey was done lying to himself.

  It was just hard to remember that sometimes.

  Especially when he was standing in the remains of his bedroom, the long wall torn apart by large-caliber bullets and his best friend’s blood still smeared across the hardwood floor.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Kimber said. “You can wait in the car while I get your stuff together.”

  It would have been so easy to walk away. His bruises were fading from that day, or at least those on his skin were. Trey wasn’t sure if he would ever stop bleeding inside, but he was working on it. Having Kuro in his life helped—so damned much—and the touch of Kimber’s fingers along his back went a long way in soothing the scabs formed over their relationship.

  “Thanks, but no. I’ve got to face this,” he murmured, stepping over a fallen stack of books. “I can’t just keep hiding at Kuro’s.”

  He didn’t know Kimber well enough to read all of the expressions she could make, but he recognized the one she had on her face when he turned around. There was definitely conflict there, an unnatural holding of her tongue, something she rarely did. If he’d learned anything over the past few weeks, Trey realized he liked his sister’s brash honesty. She never really lied to him, not when it counted, and despite a few missteps, she really did try to help him, even when she didn’t believe a word coming out of his mouth.

  His sister hit something on the dresser, knocking it over with a loud clatter, but Trey didn’t see what it was. He was too busy staring at the mottled stain on the floor. His brain was trying to make shapes out of the splotches, fitting Sera’s body into its curves and negative spaces. He hated that he couldn’t remember exactly how she lay, as if by forgetting that moment when she’d taken her last breath, he was somehow denying Sera her whole life.

  “Did you hear me?” Kimber said, coming up to Trey’s side.

  “No, sorry,” he apologized. “I just—”

  “Let’s get your stuff together and we can grab something to eat,” Kimber suggested, gently leading him away from the side of the bed. “Just not ramen.”

  “I don’t know,” Trey said, working hard to keep his tone light. “The Tako Shop makes really good ramen.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure they do, but I can’t talk to you about Kuro there.” Grabbing a suitcase out of the closet, Kimber wrestled to get it past a pile of Trey’s sneakers. “The offer is still open. You can stay with me.”

  It was an apology of sorts. The kind of gesture their father made. He never said he was sorry for something he did or thought, muddying the waters with gifts or praise. It took Trey a long time to realize that was how his family operated, masking their sentiments with verbal asides most people would take as shoving away any responsibility for their actions. Those people weren’t wrong. Trey could sidestep with the best of them, and standing in the middle of his shot-up bedroom, he honestly didn’t know how to respond to his sister.

  “You don’t like Kuro,” he finally said.

  “I don’t dislike him.” Kimber finally got the suitcase free, swinging it up onto the dresser. “I just don’t know if it’s healthy for you to be there. And I don’t like you being with someone who I can’t get a background check on. That kind of thing makes me nervous.”

  “Really? Because that kind of thing reassures me,” Trey teased, grinning when she shot him a sour look. “You’re just mad because you can’t bully him.”

  “I’m a cop. I don’t need to bully people.” She held up a T-shirt with more holes than fabric. “Are you going to help me pack, or do I have to dig through this thrift store pile you’ve got in these drawers? Why do you even have this?”

/>   “That was something given to me as a promo package and is worth around five hundred dollars,” he informed her. “It’s a designer shirt.”

  “I could wash lettuce in this,” she grumbled. “I just don’t see any longevity in a relationship with Kuro Jenkins.”

  “Did you think that with Tatiana?” He knew he scored a point when her shoulders stiffened. “Because something tells me if you ran a background check on her, you’d come up with a lot less than you would on Kuro.”

  “Talking about you, not me. I can take care of myself.”

  “I can take care of myself too,” Trey replied softly, lightly squeezing his sister’s shoulder. “I don’t know where this thing with Kuro is going, but he makes me feel good about myself, and he’s the first person I’ve been with who doesn’t want anything from me. There’s no agenda. There’s no trying to score anything or have me introduce him to anyone. I just want all of this to end so we can maybe do some normal things, like go to the movies or pay for really overpriced hot dogs while we walk across Santa Monica pier.”

  “I just don’t want him to break your heart,” Kimber said.

  “I think he’s the one who’s helping me put it back together.” Trey leaned against the dresser, staring out of the bedroom through the holes in the wall. The angle was too low to see the sky, but there wasn’t much to look at there anyway. At some point dusk slipped away, pulling the night down over them, and the bungalow was growing chilly, exposed to the cooling air. “I know to you it seems very quick. I get that. But he’s kind of been a part of my life for months now, and I’ve always wondered what if he thought of me as someone he could be with.”

  “Does he?” Kimber opened up his underwear drawer, looking down at the balled briefs he’d crammed in there a week ago. “And tell me you haven’t been going commando since this happened.”

  “No, Kuro grabbed me some from the store. It’s just mostly I’ve been wearing his shirts and sweats.” He began to tuck clothes into the suitcase, focusing on what he wanted to take with him instead of what had happened on the floor a few feet away. “Kuro knows I have baggage. He’s got some too, but he respects me, listens to me when I tell him how I feel. And he has a really cool cat.”