Nobody Move

by Philip Elliott

  Floyd ignored it. “As for Eddie. Shit, I’m so pissed I can barely talk about it.”

  “What in the hell was he thinking? Boss only wants to talk to him.”

  Floyd looked at Sawyer, the dumb fuck sitting there all confused. The man could be slow picking up things.

  “You not looking at all the facts,” Floyd said.

  “Like what? Boss said to bring Eddie in so he could talk about what happened.”

  “That’s one fact. Here’s another: Eddie ain’t ever killed anyone before. That was obvious the second he pulled the trigger. Maybe he’d be easier to handle if he’d just killed some dope runner from Texas, but that young girl got nothing to do with anything, that’s a different matter. Eddie’s likely to unravel, lose his head and start talking. Maybe the cops track Eddie down, I ain’t saying they will, I think we covered our tracks pretty good, but let’s say they do. They show him one picture of that young girl, he’s liable to break down right there. That means game over for all of us, the boss too.”

  Sawyer tossed his legs over the edge of the sofa and sat up. “So you saying the boss was gonna …”

  “Nah, I ain’t saying nothing like that. I’m just saying the boss is aware of these facts and wants to speak with Eddie to scope him out, see how he’s doing. Maybe wants to bring up the idea of Eddie laying low somewhere for a while, see how he responds. The fact Eddie ran away with that waitress—which is a whole other thing about this; I think he put that bitch up to it—it means things don’t look too good for Eddie right now.”

  “So what’s next?”

  Floyd was looking at the way Sawyer’s green flannel shirt was open at the neck, strands of silky blond hair rising up out of it, the hint of his firm chest below them.

  Floyd said, “I go see the boss tomorrow, tell him what happened.”

  “You go?”

  “Yeah, listen, boss don’t know you was involved. I told him you picked me and Eddie up and drove us to the forest, but you didn’t bury nobody and you wouldn’t know where those bodies are even with a gun to your head. I told him those kids just saw three men ’cause you waited by the S.U.V. for us. Understand? Better for you this way.”

  Sawyer nodded. “And what about right now?”

  “Right now?”

  “Yeah. Anything you wanna do right now?”

  Floyd met his gaze. There was that look again, daring Floyd to take what he wanted …

  “Thanks for taking me home like that,” Sawyer said, getting up off the sofa to stand in front of him. He stuck his thumbs inside his belt, his blue eyes drinking Floyd in.

  “Don’t …” Floyd felt a heat rising in him.

  “I really appreciate you carrying me home like that.”

  “Sawyer …”

  “I owe you … big.” A subtle smile flickered on Sawyer’s face.

  The heat spread to Floyd’s groin.

  “How big?” he said.

  Sawyer grinned. He pulled down his fly and slipped his cock out, already hard.

  Floyd leaned forward and took it in his mouth, his left hand closing around the shaft.

  5 | Welcome to California

  The air in California has a weight to it. A stickiness. As if the sleaze on the city streets evaporates to become part of the atmosphere and drifts across the entire state, reaching even here, the mountainous desert town of Indio, two hours outside L.A. Rufus was not glad to be back.

  He pulled into a roadside gas station and filled the Impala. Not much else around, just an auto body shop couple miles back and the empty promise of the desert in every direction. He retrieved his Stetson from the passenger seat (he’d drove with the roof down all morning) and placed it onto his head, a stench of gasoline wafting up with it, and made for the store.

  The young man behind the counter nodded a greeting as he entered.

  “Got a place I can piss?” Rufus said.

  “At the back,” the clerk said, “beside the cold drinks.”

  Rufus found the toilet and expelled a stream of yellow that took its time getting out of him. Parched and tired of driving, he craved a Coke as much as hard liquor. The first one, he could do something about.

  He swiped a can from the fridge, enjoying the icy touch of it against his skin, as a beat-up pickup parked outside the station doors. A man in black jeans and a black t-shirt stepped out of it, a hard look etched into his face. He glanced at Rufus’s car as he approached the station, then over each shoulder, one of his hands adjusting something behind his back. Rufus slipped his hand inside his jacket and fingered the knife holstered there. Here we fucking go.

  The doors swung open and the man barged inside, taking a good look around the place. The bulge above his ass confirmed what Rufus had suspected. Asshole had to pick today.

  Rufus turned back toward the fridges and watched the man in the reflection. The man went down the middle aisle and disappeared from view. He reappeared on Rufus’s right and faced the fridges. Rufus watched him from the corner of his vision. The man was eyeballing Rufus now, looking him up and down. Rufus stood up straight, all six feet seven inches of him, and looked down at the man.

  “Where’d you escape from, a circus?” the man said.

  “Hell,” Rufus said.

  The man’s smug expression faltered. He reached behind his back and withdrew a revolver, the barrel glinting in the fluorescent light.

  “Stay back here if you wanna die another day,” he said, and moved toward the front of the store where he pointed the gun at the clerk’s head. “Open the register,” he said. “Now.”

  The clerk opened his mouth but otherwise could have been a mannequin.

  The man smashed the butt of the gun into the clerk’s face. “I said open it.”

  The clerk stumbled backwards with a cry, his fingers pressed against his nose and blood oozing between them. He didn’t need to be told a third time.

  “Move back,” the man said, and bent over the counter, grabbing fistfuls of dollars and shoving them into his pocket. “Is this it? Bullshit.” He looked out the window for a moment and turned around. “Hey, freak,” he said, looking at Rufus. “That your Chevy outside?”

  Rufus gritted his teeth. Fucking California. Asshole had to get greedy. Anyone with half a brain knows you don’t rip off a classic car without a plan. They’re too hot; you won’t get five miles before the cops spot you.

  The man aimed the revolver at Rufus’s chest. “Sweet ride you got there. Give me the keys.”

  Rufus clenched his fists and judged the distance between them: about twelve feet. “They’re inside my jacket pocket. I got to reach inside to take ’em out.”

  “Do it. Slowly. Then slide them to me.”

  Rufus raised a hand and placed it inside his jacket. His fingers closed around the handle of the dagger. He stared into the man’s eyes, committing his face to memory, as he had always done before taking a life.

  Rufus glanced outside the window.

  “Cops,” he lied, nodding toward the doors.

  “What?” the man said, following Rufus’s gaze.

  It was all the opening Rufus needed. His hand shot out of his jacket in a blur and flung the knife. The blade buried into the man’s sternum. He dropped the gun and staggered backwards, staring at his chest.

  “Oh,” he said, tragically, and looked around the building as if seeing it for the first time.

  Rufus removed his other dagger from the opposite holster. He marched toward the man, grabbed him by the hair, and slashed the blade across his throat. The man spluttered, hands darting to his neck. He fell to his knees, gasping like a goldfish, and crumpled onto the floor.

  “Oh my god,” the clerk said, mouth hanging open again. “I don’t even … oh my god.”

  Rufus pulled a handkerchief out of his jeans and wiped the blade. He returned the knife to its holster and bent down to retrieve the knife he’d thrown. With a firm tug it came free of the man’s chest, dark blood rushing from the wound like lava from a volcano.


  The clerk appeared about to vomit. Rufus studied his face. He couldn’t have the cops hearing about this mysterious savior who had slit a man’s throat and hopped into his classic Impala to drive west onto I-10. That wouldn’t do at all.

  “I … I better notify the police,” the clerk said, reaching for the phone on the wall behind him.

  “You better not,” Rufus said.

  “No? Don’t you think we should—”

  “Out of the question.”

  Anxiety replaced the shock on the clerk’s face. “I don’t understand.”

  “Do you believe in God?” Rufus said.

  The clerk frowned. “Why are you asking me that?”

  “Because you’re about to meet Him,” Rufus replied, and stepped toward the clerk, his knife dripping blood onto the linoleum.

  They’d identified the man as William Kane, the wealthy owner of the largest trucking company in Texas and suspected of involvement in the drug trade, a couple of his drivers having been caught transporting Mexican cocaine across the U.S. Kane had dodged conviction both times, claimed he had nothing to do with it, his drivers made that decision by themselves. Word up the ladder was that Kane was a D.E.A. informant being used to build cases against the organized crime rings he supplied the cocaine to, and this fact may have been leaked from a mole inside the D.E.A., making it likely that Kane’s murder was a sanctioned hit. The girl, on the other hand, no one knew anything about other than she’d never been convicted of a crime and nobody was looking for her. Another innocent made to pay the price for someone else’s sins.

  Alison stood in the kitchen of Kane’s condo and looked around. It was modern and clean. Too clean. A couple of expensive-looking paintings hung on the wall in the living area opposite an aquarium built into the wall.

  “The suitcase was his,” she said.

  “How you know that?” Mike said, combing through the kitchen drawers.

  “I looked up the company, Lone Ranch Designs. It’s a high-end boutique store in San Antonio where Kane’s company is based. Plus, look at this place. The suitcase was made of leather for Christ sake, course it was his.”

  “So, you’re saying …”

  “They were murdered in here.”

  “We shouldn’t touch anything then. I’ll get forensics out.”

  “I want to have a look around.”

  Alison opened a door to the right of the kitchen and found herself in Kane’s bedroom. It looked like something out of a palace: a full-bodied lion skin rug lay in the the center of the floor, the poor creature’s limbs spread apart and head perched on the floor, mouth open, eyes staring up at her, and behind it a four-poster king-sized bed, more valuable paintings on the walls. The room smelled faintly of whiskey and cigars.

  Alison looked through the chest of drawers beside the bed: socks and underwear, rolls of cash, a forty-bag of coke, jewelry. A gold-rimmed card caught her eye: the outline of a woman was printed onto the black background beneath the words “THE PINK ROOM,” and in the center, “VIP Access — William J. Kane.” Alison knew the place. Jane Doe might have worked there. Jennifer had been a dancer. Too many times Alison had questioned girls like that, mixed up in things they knew little about, or worse, she’d find them already dead, caught in the crosshairs.

  She pocketed the card and left the room.

  Mike said, “I’m just thinking, when the killers moved those bodies out of here the girl was in the suitcase, but what about Kane? Maybe somebody saw something.”

  “Yeah, someone probably did. We should check the cameras, speak to the staff. Maybe run an article in the Times, ask if anyone saw anything.”

  Alison noticed a door to the right of the living area, a couple yards from Mike.

  “What’s in there?” she said.

  Mike opened the door.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” he said, a grin forming on his face. “You need to see this.”

  On the way out of the building, Alison stopped to speak with the concierge, a well-groomed, thirty-something man.

  “I’m Detective Lockley with L.A.P.D.,” she said, flashing her badge. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “What’s this in relation to?”

  “A double murder that took place in one of these condos.”

  The man’s eyes opened up.

  “Double … I should get my supervisor.” He reached for a phone.

  “You’ll do just fine. Can you tell me what hours you work here?”

  “Every weekday five p.m. until two.”

  “So you were here Tuesday night?”

  “I was here.”

  “You know all the people who live in here?”

  “It’s my job to know them.”

  “And you need to activate those elevators for people who don’t have a fob, right?”

  “Yes, and they need permission.”

  “Permission?” Alison said.

  “From the owner of the condo they’re visiting.”

  “How does that work?”

  “Which?”

  “The permission.”

  “Well, if the owner is expecting them, most times I’ll already know, and have it written down. But if not, I phone up and ask.”

  “And then?”

  “Then, if the owner tells me to let them up, I get them to sign in, and then I activate the elevator.”

  “Have you got Tuesday night’s sign-ins with you?”

  The concierge seemed to think about it. “I can’t just give them out, even to a detective.”

  Alison nodded. “You’re right. That’s okay, I can have a warrant within the hour, and then you’ll come into the station with me and make a statement, okay? To be official about it.”

  He bit his lip. “Well, I guess I could let you have a look at them. They have to stay here, though.”

  “A look is all I need.”

  “Which condo?”

  “Two three seven.”

  The concierge looked up at her. “That’s Mister Kane’s room. Is he …”

  “Afraid so.”

  The concierge nodded. “This might be a terrible thing to say, but that’s somewhat of a relief. Mister Kane is far from the nicest person who lives here. Was, I mean …”

  He flicked through a couple pages of the large binder opened on his desk and lifted it onto the counter, rotating it.

  “There,” he said, pointing at the top left corner of the page, “Tuesday night.”

  A section for each day of the current week, just one signature on the page. It looked like “Kayla,” no surname.

  Footsteps clattering against the marble floor grew louder as a man walking by said, “Hey Dave, how’s it going?”

  “Not bad, Mister Baldwin,” the concierge said back, “nice to see the rain’s giving us a break.”

  “Damn right it is. I got a friend coming up to see me later, name of Mandy.”

  “Duly noted.”

  “Have a nice night,” the man said.

  “You too, Mister Baldwin.”

  Alison looked at Dave. “You know this person?” she said, pointing at the signature in the binder.

  “Oh yeah, that’s Kaya, she comes here all the—” Alarm took hold of his face. “You said ‘double’ … Don’t tell me she’s—”

  “We don’t know who the other person is yet. This Kaya, what’s she like?”

  “Kaya’s the coolest. Always has an interesting story to tell me, and she’s really generous and thoughtful. She brings me coffee all the time, even though I always tell her I don’t want any.” His face fell again. “Please tell me she’s not the one—”

  “What does Kaya look like?”

  “A little short, not tiny. Slim, dark hair, brown eyes. Very young.”

  “She’s white?”

  “Yes, white. Her skin is a little tan, though. In the right kind of light she looks a little … exotic.”

  “You have a thing for her.” Not a question.

  “Well, no, I don’t have, we’re just friend
s, she’s nice to me, and—”

  Alison waved his words away. “When was the first time she came here?”

  “Must be about nine months ago. Maybe a little less.”

  “No one else went up to Kane’s room Tuesday night? You remember anything suspicious, anyone that stands out?”

  Dave screwed up his face thinking about it.

  “No, I just remember Kaya going up. She had a donut for me.” He smiled.

  Alison nodded. She’d expected as much; professional criminals would have no trouble getting up that elevator. Probably had their own fob.

  “One last thing,” she said. “There’s no security cameras in here, right?”

  “No cameras. Management had some installed but enough of the residents opposed it they had to take them down.”

  “Why would the residents oppose it?”

  Dave smirked. “A lot of rich, famous and otherwise influential people own condos here, and they don’t want any record of their … private lives finding its way into the wrong hands. You know, married musicians taking fans to their rooms, football stars hanging out with drug dealers, that kind of thing. The privacy is what they pay for.”

  “Sounds exhausting,” Alison said, and, upon hearing herself, laughed. She was the one following in the footsteps of the dead, and followed everywhere she went by their faces. What could be more exhausting than that?

  6 | The Boss

  “‘A hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has, for twenty years, diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant; whose kettle has scarcely time to cool; who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight, and with tea welcomes the morning.’”

  Saul planted his hands on the table and stared down at Floyd. “Who said that?”

  Floyd waited.

  “Doctor Samuel Johnson,” Saul said, “the renowned English scholar who among many other things single-handedly created the first great dictionary of the English language. It took him nine years.”

  Floyd nodded, unsure how to respond. “Sounds like the man had a lot of time on his hands.”

  Saul sat in the chair opposite Floyd. A painting of a white whale in a stormy green ocean hung on the wall behind Saul, the tail arcing up out of the water above a tiny rowing boat and the few men inside it about to be flattened. Saul had told him once that the whale was Moby Dick. “Believe it or not, not all of those men in that boat will die. Just one of them will live to tell the tale,” Saul had said. Floyd had always found the painting a little out of place in Saul’s otherwise extremely modern Michelin-star restaurant filled each evening with the rich and famous.