Kim Oh 2: Real Dangerous Job (The Kim Oh Thrillers) Read online

  This was probably a side-effect of him watching all those NASCAR races on TV. Until they invented a roller coaster with an accelerator pedal – and that would burst into flames if you steered it wrong – amusement parks would be a lost cause with my little brother.

  Which was fine by me. I’d had enough of them for a while. My hair still smelled of chlorine, from taking a header in that stupid splash-down pool.

  “Great.” I sat down across from him and picked up my coffee. “Let’s not do it again. Matter of fact, I would’ve been perfectly happy if we hadn’t done it in the first place. Which brings up something I need to talk to you about. Why’d you go with those guys?”

  “Like I had a choice.” He frowned at me, all aggrieved. “What was I going to do? That Mikey guy –”

  “Michael. His name’s Michael.”

  “Whatever. He came in here and picked me up, wheelchair and all. What was I supposed to do? Jump over the side?”

  “Okay, okay.” I had to admit he had a point. “I’ll get some real locks put on the door.”

  “Big deal,” said Donnie. “That won’t stop guys like that.”

  “Maybe not. But it’s the best I can do right now.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  I didn’t like the way this conversation was going.

  “Really?” I set my coffee down. “And exactly what do you think I should do instead?”

  “You could get me a gun.” Donnie said it matter-of-factly, as though we were talking about changing the light bulbs. “Like I asked your friend Cole for.”

  “All right – hold it right there. First of all, he’s not my friend –”

  “You spend a lot of time with him.”

  “That doesn’t matter. We’re just business partners. And second, you’re not getting a gun. Kiss off that brilliant notion.”

  “If I’d had a gun, I could’ve held them off. When they tried to get in here. And then you wouldn’t have had to come rescue me.”

  “Okay, third point. I don’t mind coming to rescue you. You’re my brother. I have a sentimental attachment to you. Right now, I’m wondering why, but let’s not go into that. If I don’t want you to have a gun, it’s because I don’t think it’s exactly a great idea to have you blazing away every time there’s a knock at the front door. What if it were the UPS guy?”

  “They never bring deliveries up here. They always leave ’em downstairs.”

  That was a sore point with Donnie. He’d ordered a copy of Michael Waltrip’s NASCAR book from Amazon.com, then when it’d arrived, he’d had to wait all day for me to come home from work and bring the package up to him.

  “Fine,” I said. “You’re absolutely right. And you know what? I really don’t have a problem with you having a gun. I’m sure you’d use it responsibly and only blow away people who should get blown away. You’re probably more mature about that than I am. There’s just one thing.”

  He set the spoon down and looked straight back at me. He knew I was being serious.

  “What if one of the social workers came by? You know, from the Child Protective Services. And they found I’d given you a gun. I’m not sure they’d understand.”

  He nodded slowly. He knew I was right. It’d been a big deal, just having them give me custody. Technically, I was still only an emancipated minor instead of a real adult. If their caseloads hadn’t been so overwhelmed, they might not have gone along with it at all.

  “And then they’d take you away from me.” I reached over and laid my hand on top of his. “I couldn’t deal with that. And then it’d be a lot harder coming to get you, than just going to some stupid amusement park. Those guys last night are nothing compared to the social workers.”

  “Yeah,” said Donnie. “It’d probably take you a long time to even find me.”

  I wasn’t sure he remembered it – he’d been real little when it happened, and we never talked about it – but there had been one time when the two of us had gotten split up. With him going to one foster home, and me to another. In frickin’ Minnesota, in the middle of winter. The people I was with were nice and all, but they made the mistake of leaving out on their dining room table some form that had the address of where Donnie had gone. Some place on the other side of town. It had made the local news, about some truck driver pulling over on the highway when he’d spotted some Asian-looking little girl just marching along head-down in the middle of a blizzard, wrapped up in the crocheted comforter I’d pulled off the back of my foster parents’ couch. Holding that piece of paper with the address on it tucked against my chest. I still have a spot on the bottom of my right foot, where I can’t feel anything if you poke it with a needle – that’s from the frostbite I had to be treated for. But at least the CPS people had decided that it was probably a better idea to keep the two of us together after that.

  “Exactly,” I said. “So let’s just take it easy for a little while longer. Okay? This is all going to wrap up pretty soon. I mean . . . the job I’m working on. And then we’ll make some other arrangements.”

  “Okay.” He studied the contents of his cereal bowl for a few seconds, then looked back up at me. “So this means I’m not getting a gun, right?”

  I sighed. If this was what being a parent was like, I was never having kids.

  “When you turn eighteen,” I said, “we’ll talk.”

  * * *

  We’d been going over the notes for so long, my head was beginning to swim.

  “Run that by me again.” Cole was sitting on the mattress, with the sheets of paper spread out around him. They were all covered with my neat, precise handwriting. “There’s something missing. Something we’re not seeing.”

  I sighed, rubbing the ache in the small of my back as I leaned forward in the wobbly chair. When I had finally gotten over to the warehouse, instead of target practice, Cole had wanted to get right down to figuring out McIntyre’s schedule. Looking for vulnerable moments.

  “All right,” I said. “Since the holding company’s board meeting is on the last Thursday of every month, that means everything that week has to get shifted back three hours, so that McIntyre can meet with the affiliate directors before the daily operational reviews. That’s why I always had to get those reports ready so early on those days.”

  “Yeah, I got that.” Cole was starting to get a little cranky, paperwork not being his thing. “So what does that give us?”

  I poked at one of the sheets with the ballpoint pen I had been chewing on. “So that gives us an overlap of two hours on both Tuesday and Wednesday, before McIntyre leaves –”

  “No, that’s wrong.” His voice went emphatic. “There’s something else. Take another look.”

  “What do you mean?” I sat back and looked at him. “I was there. I was the one who made up these schedules. I busted my ass keeping up with them.”

  “Forget about that,” said Cole. “It’s still wrong. Look right here. You left out the mid-quarter assessment team . . . whatever they’re called. These guys here.” He dragged over another sheet of paper. “You said the assessments were always done on a Monday, so the lead attorney could come up from Albany and go over the projections with the rest of the team. Just in case there were any regulatory filings that had to be made.”

  “So?”

  “You said that those meetings always went five or six hours, including a catered lunch break. And you always had to get the mid-quarter estimates done over the weekend before, so McIntyre could roll them out at that meeting. So the Thursday meeting gets cancelled, the other days’ meetings don’t get rolled back, and they wouldn’t have any overlaps.”

  “Wait a minute.” I started to see what he was talking about. “Yeah, so –”

  “So McIntyre would leave around his usual time – at least that one week in the middle of the quarter. Right?”

  “Yeah. Right.” I looked from one sheet of paper to the other. Now I could see where all the numbers and dates lined up. “That’s amazing.”

  “What
?” Cole laughed. “That you missed it?”

  “No –” I shook my head. “That you caught it.” I looked up from the papers. “You know what this means?”

  “Yeah – we have to refigure our schedule for the hit.”

  “Besides that.”

  “Beats the hell out of me,” said Cole. “What?”

  “It means that the whole time you’ve been turning me into a killer . . . you’ve been turning into an accountant.” I couldn’t keep from laughing, so hard that tears came to my eyes. “I’ve become you. And you’ve become me.”

  Cole didn’t laugh. But to me, right now, it seemed like the funniest joke in the world.

  * * *

  I was feeling so good about life in general, I didn’t mind that Cole made me load him and his wheelchair into the van again, then head out to the rock quarry for another round of target practice.

  I aced every shot I took. If that made Cole feel better, or pissed him off even more – I didn’t know. Or care.

  “Hey –” Back at the warehouse, Cole stopped at the door on the side. “Do me a favor.”

  I was busy transferring my stuff from the van, strapping the backpack to the motorcycle seat. I looked over to where he was sitting in the wheelchair. “What do you need?”

  “Tell your brother thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “Nothing special. Just for hanging out with me the other night.” He smiled. “I got a kick out of it.”

  “Yeah, well – he likes meeting new people.” I picked up my helmet. “You count.”

  As I rode away, I could see him in the handlebar mirror as he rolled on into the warehouse.

  I should’ve gone in with him. Just to make sure that everything was all right. I could’ve kicked myself later, when I found out what happened.

  The lights were all off when Cole got inside. This late, the skylights didn’t help much, either. He pushed the wheelchair joystick, motoring in a little farther.

  “Yo! Monica!” He was expecting her to be there.

  Instead, he got a punch to the side of the head, hard enough to almost lift him out of the chair. As he fell back down into the seat, a pair of hands grabbed the front of his jacket and pulled him upright, legs dangling. Then he was slammed against the nearest wall. The hands let go and he slid to the floor.

  Cole lay there, dazed. His vision unblurred, and he saw Michael leaning over him, an ugly smile on the security guy’s face.

  “You have really screwed up, pal.” Michael jabbed a finger downward. “Big time.”

  Michael stepped over Cole, grabbed the loaded duffel bag and dragged it over.

  “What is this crap?” In front of Cole, Michael started hauling things out of the bag. “What the hell do you think you’re up to?”

  Cole tried to lift himself up from the floor, but Michael clubbed him across the jaw with the butt of an assault rifle, sending Cole sprawling again.

  “You planning on doing something? Having a little fun? Is that it?”

  Michael clubbed Cole again, so hard that he slid across the floor toward the mattress.

  “I’m not sure I like that.” Holding the rifle, Michael loomed over Cole. “Matter of fact, I’m sure I don’t.”

  Cole feebly raised an arm to ward off another blow, but Michael landed his fist across the side of his face. He collapsed at the edge of the mattress.

  “I don’t like guys with grudges against my boss, picking up guns and shit.”

  Another blow left Cole bleeding from the mouth.

  “Because if anything happens –” Another vicious blow. “It makes me look bad. Like I’m not doing my job. I really don’t like it when my boss starts talking to some little accountant twit, about keeping an eye on you.”

  “I don’t know . . . what you’re talking about . . .”

  “You don’t need to,” said Michael. “Let’s just say that maybe I’ve let this situation go on a little too long. I should’ve cleaned it up, right at the beginning. Word gets back to McIntyre that you’re cooking up something – something he wouldn’t like – and that I’ve known about it for a while and I didn’t go tell him all about it –” Michael shook his head. “That would make me look real bad. So it’s time to pull the plug.”

  “I’m not . . . cooking up anything . . .”

  “I heard different.”

  “You shouldn’t . . .” Red trickled down Cole’s chin. “Believe . . . everything you hear.”

  “Yeah?” Michael smiled down unpleasantly at Cole. “That why you took out Braemer? So I wouldn’t hear anything more from him?”

  He swung the rifle’s muzzle down point-blank at Cole’s head.

  “Go ahead.” Battered and bleeding, Cole glared up at him. “Do it.”

  Michael pulled the gun back and shook his head. “That’s not the deal I made.”

  Baffled, Cole stared back at Michael, then watched as the other man slung the assault rifle strap across his shoulder and strode over to the empty wheelchair. Michael grabbed the wheelchair armrests, then lifted it up and hurled it to the floor.

  It took a lot of work, including bashing the joystick controls to splinters with the butt of the rifle. But by the time Michael was done, the wheelchair was a broken heap of metal in a pool of leaking battery fluid. One wheel was bent double, the other thrown to the other side of the warehouse.

  Michael came back over to the mattress and squatted down in front of Cole.

  “From now on,” he said, “you’re going to be a good boy. You’re going to stay right here and not go out and make trouble for other people. You got me?”

  He stood up and gazed down at Cole.

  “You see, that’s the deal I made.” He pointed to the ruined wheelchair. “Believe me, pal, I would’ve loved to have done a lot more. But if I off you now, then McIntyre finds out I did it, he’d be even more pissed. Because then he wouldn’t be able to find out if there’s somebody backing your play. And who it is. So you’re off the hook for right now.”

  Michael ground his heel on Cole’s shoulder.

  “But dig it,” he said. “If there is somebody you’re working with, and I find out who it is, I’ll take care of them. So they won’t cause any more trouble. And that’s when I’ll come back and take care of you. So think about it, pal. Maybe the smartest thing for you to do would be to shut down whatever punk-ass little operation you’ve got going on. Just lie back and watch some TV – and don’t get into my shit. That make sense?”

  Michael didn’t wait for an answer. He took his foot off, then turned and walked away. He picked up the duffel bag and headed toward the door.

  “Hey –”

  He heard Cole’s quiet voice behind him. When he stopped and looked over his shoulder, his eyes widened.

  “I don’t keep all my gear in one spot.” Cole was holding the ugly black .357 he had just pulled out from under the mattress’s blanket. He aimed it straight at Michael’s head. “And I don’t have to go out to make trouble.”

  He didn’t give Michael time to say anything. He lowered the gun’s muzzle an inch and unloaded it in a tight pattern into Michael’s chest. The body collapsed in a heap that looked like a pile of dirty laundry.

  There had been somebody standing in the doorway behind him. It was Monica.

  “You told him.” Cole lowered the gun. “That we were planning something.”

  “What if I did?” Monica stepped around the body. She reached over to the wall and switched on the overhead light. “What’s wrong with that?”

  She stood at the edge of the mattress, looking down at Cole.

  “So I made a deal with him – so what? What was I supposed to do? Huh? You tell me.”

  Cole didn’t answer. He had found an ammo box with a couple of bullets rattling around inside it. He opened up the .357 and slid in the bullets.

  “I was supposed to just stand around and watch you get yourself killed?” Monica’s voice rose in pitch. “I feed you and wipe your ass, and what do I get out of it?
Okay, so I’m stuck with half a man – better than none at all. That’s the deal I made, all right. I’m willing to settle for that.”

  Cole gazed into her eyes as he raised the gun.

  “You know . . . I could do this,” he said quietly. “It’s not a problem for me.”

  Monica nodded. “I know.”

  After a moment, he spoke again. “Why don’t you take a walk?” He lowered the gun. “There’s nothing here.”

  “I guess I know that, too.”

  She turned and headed for the door. When she reached it, she stopped and looked over her shoulder.

  “Take care of your –”

  Her words broke off, her eyes widening as she froze in place.

  They both heard the metallic noise sounds of an ammo magazine being slammed into an assault rifle. Michael, lying where he fell, shakily raised the weapon he had pulled out of the duffel bag.

  “Deal’s . . . off . . .”

  He got off a quick burst from the rifle, the shots stitching across the mattress.

  Cole rolled to his side, then raised the .357 and fired once. The other man’s forehead burst red, the assault rifle clattering to the floor.

  Monica ran over and knelt beside Cole. She put her hand on his shoulder and pushed him onto his back. There was blood leaking from under one arm.

  Grimacing with pain, he gathered up the blanket and held it tight against his body.

  “Didn’t – you hear me –” The words came through gritted teeth. “Just go –”

  She pulled her hand back as he swung the trembling gun in her direction.

  “I told you – it’s not a problem –”

  Monica got to her feet and backed away. She finally broke and ran for the door. The sound of her footsteps faded outside the warehouse.

  The gun dropped from Cole’s hand as he slumped back against the wall. He looked down at his bloodied torso.

  “Shit –”

  Keeping the red-soaked blanket tight against himself, he crawled over to Michael’s body.

  “Goddamn,” he muttered as he prodded open the jacket and spotted the body armor. “Forgot about the Type 3.”

  He searched the jacket’s pockets and came up with a cell phone. He was close to passing out as he punched a number into the phone.