KOP Killer (19 page)

“Nope.”

I acted like I’d expected that response, my voice cocksure. “See, I told you not to worry about him.”

Nodding, he said, “That you did, Juno. That you did.”

This was going better than expected. Mota hadn’t made his reappearance yet. He’d eventually try to reclaim his racket, no doubt about that, but the bastard probably had the good sense not to come to Chicho until after he’d snuffed me. Cleaner that way.

For the time being, Mota’s silence worked to my advantage. This little partnership between Chicho and me was still new. Fragile. If Mota started making waves, fears would have to be calmed, hurt feelings would have to be salved, and knowing Chicho, new rates would have to be negotiated.

But this was shaping up nicely. A sweet little collect-and-go.

Except Chicho was still sitting there, as in not hustling to get my dough. He kept nodding his head, eyes crinkled like he was thinking on something important. “Hey, did you know the cops who got axed?”

Shit.
I kept my response minimal. “I knew them.”

“Two of them. Their heads cut off.” He scratched his chin. “I saw their pics on the news, thought I recognized one.”

So much for a quick collect-and-go.

“The one with the scar. Wasn’t he here for the blackout the other night? One of your boys, wasn’t he?”

I couldn’t deny it. He knew.

He moved up in his seat. “The other one. Was he one of your boys too?”

I nodded.

He slapped his desk. “Fucking hell. What kind of operation are you running?”

Never let your mark see weakness.
I shrugged it off like it was no biggie. “So I lost a couple. What you getting all worked up about?” Two dead crew. Ho-fucking-hum.

“Mota do that shit?”

“Hell no. It had nothing to do with him.” And that was the truth. I kept the fact that he’d offed my other two dead crew to myself. If I was lucky, those bodies would stay underground for a good long while.

Chicho didn’t look convinced.

“Those were serial killings. They say that on the news?”

“They hinted that way but didn’t say for sure.”

“It wasn’t Mota.” My voice was chock-full of conviction. “I told you I took care of that pretty boy. You’ll never hear from him again.”

Chicho angled his head slightly so he could look at me sidewise with mistrustful eyes. “You on the level?”

I shouldn’t have to justify myself to this pimp. I let some anger seep into my voice, a little righteous indignation. “You’ve known me for how long?”

“Too long.”

“Try twenty years. Twenty long years. All that time, I’ve always been straight with you. So get the hell over whatever bullshit has you doubting me, and get me my damn money.”

“I put my neck out for you, Juno. I’ve got this whole alley singing your praises. Better protection at a cheaper price and all that. How’s it going to look if this shit gets out? You know what happens if people lose confidence in their protection? They’ll stop paying.”

“So don’t tell them Wu and Froelich were mine. Keep your trap shut, and you won’t have to worry about it.”

“They were here.” His voice rose as he stood. He took a step toward the window. “They were right outside that goddamned window. Any of the pimps or madams in this alley could’ve seen them, and I don’t have to tell you how recognizable that scar-headed motherfucker was.”

“Those pimps or madams mention him to you?”

“No.”

“Then nobody recognized him. Quit your bellyaching.”

He stepped back behind his desk and leaned in. “I’m trying to sell your services to a half dozen houses outside this alley. What am I supposed to say when they ask why your boys are dying left and right?”

I could see it now, what he was doing. He was trying to put me on the defensive. Trying to seize the upper hand in our partnership.

Not going to happen. I took a big step toward his desk, big enough to bump it with my thigh. We stood face-to-face, the desk holding us apart. “You tell them my rep speaks for itself.”

“Not fucking good enough.” He punched at the air. The desk standing between us seemed to shrink. “I’m putting my name on the line for this.”

“You quit that shit right now!” I chopped at his desk with my good hand. “I came to you with a gift, dammit. I could’ve brought the same deal to anybody, you hear me? But I came to you, you stupid prick. I thought you’d have the smarts to take proper advantage.”

“Fuck that. Don’t act like you did me a favor, like you took a chance on me. I took a chance on
you,
you dumb fuck.” He was working himself into a fit, his hands jerking around, his words coming out in a blustery blast. “You were nothing when you came in here a few days ago. Just a burned-out ex-cop. A sad-sack widower. You were nothing.
Nothing!
”

I felt spittle land on my face. His red-faced mug was ready to burst. His voice got real low. “You want to get paid, you show some appreciation.”

There it was. Prick just made his play, talking to me like I was
his
employee, like I was
his
muscle. He’d figured it out. He’d seen the ragtag group I’d put together, figured out that my influence over KOP was mostly a mirage. He’d seen hints of weakness, and he was going to wring it for all it was worth.

He thought I’d fold, thought I needed this gig in a bad way, thought I needed it to feel important. He figured me for desperate, desperate enough to give him control of this racket in order to stay on his good side.

But I knew this SOB, knew what made him tick. Thanks to me, he was going to collect a piece of every trick turned in this alley. Every dick sucked. Every pussy fucked. A piece of every last buck.

He’d been sitting here in this office for days now. I could picture it, him working through the projections, charting it out, the zeroes added to his bottom line giving him a hard-on. Hour after hour, he’d been salivating over those zeroes, fawning over them like he could screw them.

He was hooked. I
knew
it. Through-the-gills, jonesing-for-a-fix hooked. Look at him, his eyes greedy as they were beady.

Time to set him straight.

I pulled off my shades so he could get a good look at my eyes. Ice. “Apologize.”

“What?”

“For talking back to me. Apologize and make it sweet before I replace your ass.”

*   *   *

I stepped through the curtain, big-ass wad of cash in my damp pocket. Deluski and Maria waited in the lobby. “We heard you were here,” said Maria, her V-neck top cut low enough to show the top edges of a lacy bra, breasts squeezed up and in. Her eyes were dominated by eye shadow, deep blue swaths coming down like gaudy drapes with each eye blink. “We were worried.”

I smiled and—not wanting to send the wrong signal—patted her shoulder buddy-to-buddy style.

Deluski gave a relieved grin. “Glad to see you made it, boss.”

“Same here.” I held him with a suspicious eye, knowing that in his case, the concern might not be so selfless.
Killer KOPs
would’ve gone public had I died.

“Sorry it went down like that.” He dipped his head. “I didn’t want to leave you to fend for yourself.”

I gave him an appraising look. His brown eyes hung heavy in their sockets. He raised his brows, but they weren’t strong enough to lift the weight of a long night. The guilt seemed genuine.

“Don’t sweat it. I ordered you to run. You did right.”

A skeptical smile. “What happened down there?”

“I ran like hell.” I stepped in close, leaned forward so nobody but Deluski and Maria would overhear. “We can’t stay here any longer.” I asked Maria, “Know anybody with tight lips who can put Deluski up tonight?”

“What about you?”

“I have to go see somebody, but I’ll have to crash eventually. Can you get a place with room for two?”

She bit her lipsticked lip. “I’ll come up with something.”

“When you find a place, take Deluski over there. Then call the Iguana King Hotel and leave the address for Joe Chin.”

“Who?”

“Just tell them a Joe Chin will be checking in tomorrow.”

She nodded her head, understanding.

I put my hand on Deluski’s shoulder. “Wherever she brings you, stay there until I come for you in the morning.”

Things settled for now, I went out the door.

Maggie. I had to see Maggie.

seventeen

M
ORNING.
The traffic—both foot and wheel—told me so. I’d been sitting on these steps for hours, waiting for her to come out. Didn’t want to wake her up. She was plenty pissed at me as it was.

Rain came down in a constant patter. Water streamed out from a pipe under my feet and ran down a cement gutter before disappearing into an underground pipe. The courtyard was secluded, trees and vines trimmed and shaped, the jungle tamed into a garden. Damp moss filled the air with mustiness.

The door opened behind me. She came halfway down the steps and turned to face me. “What are you doing here?” A porch light lit her face, but her voice was anything but bright.

“We need to talk.”

She looked down at me, at my rumpled clothes, my up-all-night eyes. “No, we don’t. I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”

“Like what?”

“Don’t play stupid. You know exactly what I’m talking about. And take off those damn sunglasses.”

I semi-complied by pushing the glasses up to the top of my head. My scalp hurt like hell.

“What were you thinking?” Her voice was amped with impatience.

“I fucked up.”

“You think?”

“I didn’t know Mota would fight me. I thought he’d crumble.”

“You are unbelievable.” She shook her head. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what?”

She kept her voice low. “You still think this is a problem of execution. You think you picked the wrong protection racket to take over. Christ. It ever occur to you that taking dirty money is illegal?”

“What do you want me to say? I’m sorry?”

“An apology isn’t going to do it. Good-bye.” She rushed down the stairs, took the first step into the rain.

I couldn’t let her go. “I did it for you,” I called before she got far.

She spun on me, her face flushed, brows stabbing downward.

I stayed seated but forged ahead, undaunted. “I was trying to build a power base. You can’t be chief without—”

“Stop!” She jumped on my words and stomped them into the ground. “Don’t you dare put this on me.
You
fucked up.
You.
”

“I was trying to—”

“Shut up! Just shut the hell up.”

I shut up. My insides hung heavy. I couldn’t stand to see her angry, couldn’t stand that I’d brought that ugliness to her face. The creases marring her forehead, the squint-wrinkles spoiling her eyes, the thorny little lines surrounding crimped lips, they were all my work, all of them strokes from my black paintbrush.

She was so angry I saw myself in her face, my ugly side reflecting back at me. I wanted to crawl into a hole.

Fix it, Juno. You have to fix it.
I told myself I could, that it wasn’t too late. She hadn’t left. She hadn’t given up on me. Not yet. “One question.”

She stayed silent, glaring.

“What did you see in me?”

Her brows quirked as if to ask,
What the hell are you talking about?

“When we first met, when we first partnered up, what did you see in me?”

She stepped out of the rain, up onto the bottom stair, droplets in her hair, water dotting her face.

I needed an answer. “What did you see?”

“I saw a broken man trying to fix himself.”

I rubbed my stump. “So what’s changed?”

“Everything. You’re going the wrong way. Can’t you see that?”

“My head’s been a little screwed up.”

“A little?”

“My intent was right, Maggie. My intent was right.”

She started to protest, but I stopped her by holding up my left hand. I wouldn’t let her talk me out of it.
My intent was right.
It was true. It
had
to be true. How else could I live with what I’d started, the shitstorm I’d unleashed?

I needed her to see. To understand. “You saw more in me than that.”

She folded her arms, her green eyes wary.

I pressed. “When you learned who I was, my history, why didn’t you drop me as fast as you could?”

“Because I could see you didn’t want to be that person anymore. I thought you wanted to redeem yourself.”

“I did. I
do.
You know damn well that’s why I wanted to take KOP back. You know I wanted you to change it, to make it better than the clusterfuck Paul and I left behind. But that’s only half of it, isn’t it? Enough with the redemption story. Tell me the other reason.”

She came up two steps so she could look down at me again. “Stop twisting things. What you’re doing is wrong. You took over a
protection
business. You’re pocketing
prostitution
money.”

I didn’t like that tone, that holier-than-thou, white-horse-riding tone. I leaned way forward, my ass coming up off the step, my floored soul coming off the mat. “Of course it’s fucking wrong.” I spat each word. “But doing right isn’t enough. Not for this screwed-up world. It’s never been enough.”

My voice got loud, words stampeding from my mouth. “You think I enjoy being me? You think this shit is easy?”

She backed away, the heat in my voice knocking her down a step.

“I pay the price,” I said. “Fucking every day, I pay the price. But I do what it takes. If I have to, I’ll paint the fucking streets with blood. You know why?” I clenched my fist, pounded it on my leg. “Because doing right doesn’t change anything. Because doing right isn’t worth shit!”

My wad shot, I dropped back down to my seat, my face on fire, my body shaking, my soul standing tall.

Maggie stared back at me, her stern face giving away nothing.

“It’s a taker’s world,” I said. “A taker’s world.”

We watched each other, pieces said, guts spilled. I didn’t need to say the other reason she kept me around. She knew damn well what wasn’t said, that she saw in me something she lacked. Something she needed to get where she wanted to go. The capacity to go all the way, to sink the knife to its hilt, to slice the throat all the way through to the bone.