by J. R. Rain
“What’s going on?” he said.
“We’re going to talk,” I said.
He scanned the room, tilting his head a little, listening hard. He was someone who trusted his senses, his instincts. I could see that. That was probably why he was such a good fighter. Except now the information that was being returned to him had to be a tad confusing. A woman alone. A house broken into. His jiggly girlfriend was imprisoned in a closet, a closet which was now barred by his heavy dresser.
“Who’s here with you?” he asked.
“Just little ole me.”
Without taking his eyes off me, he nodded toward the blocked closet. “Who moved that dresser?”
“That would be me.”
He stared at me for another two seconds. “I’m calling the police,” he decided.
“No, you’re not.”
“Do you have a gun?”
“No.”
This time he actually shook his head, no doubt trying to clear it. “How did you get in?”
I grinned and pointed at the balcony. I grinned because his robe had fallen open and I could see his wahoo. Not very impressive. Then again, I had been dating the hulking Kingsley.
“Your weiner’s showing,” I said.
He ignored me. “Why are you here? What do you want?”
“We’re going to talk about Caesar Marquez. And you’re going to put your little wee-wee away.”
He did so, absently, tying off his robe.
“You’re here alone?” he said, clearly confused by this notion.
“Yes.”
“Do you have any idea who I am?”
“Yes. You’re Andre Fine. Five-time karate champion and, according to some, an expert at dim mak. Or the touch of death.”
He shook his head some more and walked out into the middle of his room. He turned and faced me. “And you broke into my house?”
“Technically, I didn’t break anything. Think of it more as appeared. I appeared in your house.”
“You have a lot of balls.”
“I have a lot of something.”
He stared some more and the energy around him crackled, picking up. His bright green aura turned brighter. Added to the mix were some hot pinks and reds.
“Who do you work for?” he asked.
I shook my head and walked toward him. “New rule. I ask the questions from now on.”
He watched me closely, eyes narrowing. He was also slowly getting into a fighter’s stance, perhaps unconsciously. Jill screamed again from inside the closet, banging against the sturdy door.
I stopped a few feet from him. “You’re confused as hell, aren’t you? Poor guy. A woman comes here. Rearranges the place. Makes your big-boobed girlfriend disappear. Stands here alone, unarmed and unafraid. Confusing as hell, I imagine.”
His eyes continued to narrow, even as he continued lowering into a fighting stance.
“Makes you want to do what you do best, huh?” I said. “To fight?”
He’d had enough. He lashed out with a straight punch that was much faster than I had anticipated.
Chapter Forty-two
But he wasn’t fast enough.
I tilted my head to the right just as his punch whooshed past my ear. His hand snapped back immediately and he looked at me comically, blinking rapidly. He hadn’t expected to miss. He had expected, no doubt, to knock me out cold.
A woman. Nice guy.
He stepped back, cracked his neck a little and did a little dance to loosen up his limbs. His little pecker poked out again, curious.
I didn’t move. I didn’t answer. I didn’t get into a fighter’s stance. I said, “During an exhibition fight two weeks before Caesar Marquez’s death in the ring, you delivered what many thought was a cheap shot.”
Andre said nothing. With his aura crackling a neon green, he lashed out again. This time I didn’t bother moving my head; instead, I brushed off the punch with a swipe of my hand. My counter-block had been fast. Supernaturally fast, and it sent Andre’s forward momentum off to the side, where he stumbled a little, but quickly regained his balance.
“It was supposed to be an exhibition,” I said, watching him. “I called the event organizers. No live punches. Just light stuff. Easy-to-block stuff. Entertain the crowd. Great photo ops. Three rounds of laughter and fun and good times.”
Andre was bouncing on his feet now, bouncing and kind of circling me, too. There was no confusion on his face. Just grim determination. I had seen the same look in many of his YouTube videos. He was treating me like an opponent. I felt honored.
“But in the last twenty seconds of the third round, you punched Caesar Marquez. Hard. For no apparent reason, and against protocol. Some called it a cheap shot. I call it something else.”
Andre Fine turned into a cornered wild cat, unleashing a ferocious onslaught of kicks and punches and spinning jumps, lashing out with elbows and knees and fists and feet. It was a pretty display. I had seen him unleash similar onslaughts against his opponents during his many filmed matches. During those matches, one or more of the punches or kicks would land home, sending his opponent to the mat, and making a winner out of Andre Fine. A five-time champion, in fact.
But here in the spacious area between the foot of his bed and his adjoining bathroom, the area where his big dresser had sat but was now conveniently moved across the room, I blocked punch after punch, kick after kick. Sometimes, I didn’t block, but simply moved my head a fraction of an inch. At one point he tried a helluva fancy kick, jack-knifing his body splendidly, swinging his foot around so fast that, had I been mortal, I was certain my jaw would have been broken. I wasn’t mortal though, so I saw the kick coming a mile away. Instead, I caught his ankle and spun him around like a ballerina.
We did this dance a few more minutes until I finally found the opening I was looking for, and delivered a straight punch. Nothing fancy. Just a straight shot delivered from shoulder height, and hard enough to send him stumbling backwards where he collided into his footboard, which he held onto briefly, before sinking down to the floor.
I walked over to him, knelt down, lifted his chin with my finger and said, “Now, we’re going to talk.”
Chapter Forty-three
We were sitting on his balcony.
Jiggly Jill was long gone. It turned out that Jill wasn’t much of a girlfriend. She had been someone he’d picked up tonight at a party. I doubted she would go to the police. Truth was, she hadn’t a clue what had happened to her or what was going on, and just before she left, just as she was pulling on her clothes, I gave her a very strong suggestion to not go to the police.
She merely nodded, grabbed her stuff, gave Andre one last, fearful look, and headed out front to wait for her taxi.
“Don’t look so sad,” I said. “There’s more where she came from.”
Andre was presently pressing a bag of frozen peas to his right eye and alternately smoking. It was multi-tasking at its best. I suspected the cigarette might be accelerating the rate at which the bag of peas was melting, but decided to keep my hypothesis to myself.
When we listened to a car door open and heard what we both assumed was the taxi speeding off, Andre ground out his cigarette and looked at me.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“A private investigator.”
He blinked. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
“Where did you learn to fight like that?”
I shook my head and motioned to the pack of cigarettes. He reached down and shook one out for me. I plucked it out deftly. He next offered me a light and I leaned into it and inhaled. I exhaled a churning plume of blue-gray smoke, and said, “If I told you, I would have to kill you.”
“Fine,” he said. “I’ve never come across someone like you.”
“And I doubt you ever will again.”
He studied with his free eye; the other being, of course, hidden behind a melting bag of Green Giant peas. “I believe it.”
I had a thought, and wondered just
how far I could go with this mind-control business. I waited until he caught my eye with his one good eye, and said, “I will tell you what I am, but when I leave your house, you will forget it completely. Understood?”
He looked at me—and looked at me some more—and finally, his one good eye went blank. He nodded. My suggestion had sunk home. A moment later, the dazed look disappeared, and he looked at me again as he had a moment or two before: with confusion and maybe a little awe.
“I’m not human,” I said. “Not really. I’m something else. Some call me a vampire.”
He lowered the bag of peas. His other eye was nearly swollen shut. I saw it working behind all the puffy folds, trying to see through. “You’re serious?”
“Deadly.”
“And that explains why you’re so fast?”
“Yes.”
“And strong?”
“Yes.”
He had witnessed my skills firsthand, had seen me doing things he had never seen another human do. It wasn’t hard for him to accept that I was perhaps something different.
“But I thought vampires were, you know, only in books.”
“A form of them are, yes.”
He was about to ask me another question and I shook my head. “We’re not here about me, Andre. Do you understand?”
He nodded again, resigned. He returned the peas to his swollen eye and sat back a little in his chair.
I said, “When did you learn the dim mak?”
“Years ago. From a master in Japan.”
“Have you used it before?”
He brought his cigarette to his lips. “Can’t vampires read minds or something?”
“Often.”
“So it would do me little good to lie.”
“Little good.”
“And what will you do with this information?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“Will you go to the police?”
“Maybe. But I doubt they’ll believe me.”
He chuckled lightly. “True.”
Andre Fine was thirty-six years old and well spoken, but I sensed an urban roll to his words. No surprise there, since he had grown up in New Jersey. I knew he had a long list of priors, some of them violent. He had spent six years of his life in various prisons. He was a street fighter—no doubt, a natural fighter—one who had honed his skill into something deadly.
As I sat there looking at him, I suddenly knew why he did what he did. And how he could afford such a lifestyle. Whether it was a psychic hit or not, I didn’t know. But I suddenly knew the truth.
“You’re a hired killer,” I said.
He glanced at me and shook his head and smiled. “You’re good, lady.”
I waited. He waited. I knew his every instinct was rebelling against talking to me, but I knew he would, even without my prodding.
“Yes, I am. Of sorts.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I can’t always guarantee death. Some survive the dim mak.” He shrugged. “Others don’t.”
“Caesar Marquez was one of those who didn’t.”
He shrugged again. The sign of a true killer. Nonchalance about life and death. Would I ever be that way? God, I hoped not.
“So, people hire you to kill people?” I asked.
“That’s how it works, lady.”
“Only you can’t guarantee death.”
He nodded. “It’s impossible to guarantee death.”
“The victim dies two weeks later,” I said, “so no one expects foul play.”
He grinned at me, his cigarette dangling from his lower lip. “That’s the beauty of it, lady.”
“Your hands are registered as lethal weapons, are they not?”
“They are. So, you’re really a vampire?”
“I really am.”
“Jesus.”
“He’s not a vampire, as far as I’m aware. Give me your hands.”
He did, hesitantly, setting aside the peas. I wasn’t compelling him to do what I wanted, but I think he thought I was, and that was good enough. I took his hands and instantly had image after image of bar fights and street fights and back alley brawls. In all of them, Andre was wearing a hood and shades. In disguise.
“So, you often pick fights with your unsuspecting victims.”
He shrugged. I’d seen the dim mak being delivered, a ferocious blow that left his opponents reeling and dazed.
“You’ve killed dozens of people,” I said.
He shrugged again. “Who’s keeping track?”
I stared at him, unblinking. He looked back at me, and promptly blinked and looked away. I sensed his fear, I also sensed he was about to do something stupid.
I said, “Who hired you to kill Caesar Marquez?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, babe. That’s where my cooperation ends, vampire or no vampire.”
Except as he spoke the words, I saw a brief flash. An image. It appeared briefly in his thoughts and was gone. I released his hands and he sat back with the bag of peas.
“You can’t prove any of this,” he said. “No one would believe you.”
“True,” I said. “They wouldn’t believe me, but they would believe you.”
He sat there and thought about it and smoked, and high above us, a low cloud briefly obscured the stars. The wind also picked up. Somewhere in the Malibu Hills, a coyote howled.
“No one can know about what I’ve done,” he said.
I said nothing and watched him closely. I was certain I hadn’t blinked in many, many minutes. He went on.
“My family is so proud. Everyone is so proud. That feels good. It feels good knowing that I did my family proud. We were so poor. The money was so easy.” He was babbling now, and I saw the tears. “Just one punch and I make thousands, tens of thousands. Sometimes, even more.”
I watched and waited, catching a brief glimpse of what he was planning on doing.
“I can’t let my family down. I can’t. They’re so proud.”
I said nothing, and watched as Andre Fine, a five-time champion fighter, was reduced to tears and incomprehensible mumbling.
I got up and left him there on the balcony.
Chapter Forty-four
It was two days later, and I was back at the gym in downtown Los Angeles.
I watched from the shadows as a cadre of boxers did their best to punch the stuffing out of everything from punching bags to speed bags to padded mitts.
Seated with me was Allison Lopez. I held her hand in a comforting, reassuring way. I didn’t worry about my cold flesh, and, indeed, she seemed to revel in it. She wanted to meet me here, a place she always found comforting. Apparently, she loved hearing the sounds of boxing. The scuffing feet, the smell of sweat. It was here, after all, that she had watched Caesar Marquez blossom into a world-class fighter.
Now, we were watching a young flyweight, smaller than me, even, punching the unholy crap out of his trainer’s mitts.
“His own brother,” she said again, shaking her head.
“Yes,” I said.
“But why?”
I looked at the posters that surrounded the gym. Most were of Caesar Marquez. None, as far as I could tell, were of Romero. “My best guess,” I said, “was that he was jealous.”
“Romero was an accomplished trainer. He was never a boxer.”
“Never a boxer of note,” I corrected. “His official record was nine wins and twenty-three losses.”
She blinked and squeezed my hand. “I had no idea.”
“Few did. A very unremarkable career.”
“But he was so successful as a trainer.”
I shook my head. “He was successful at training his successful brothers. Many of whom have had title shots. And Caesar, according to all reports, was the best of the lot.”
“Still, why kill him?”
“Maybe he never expected him to die,” I said. “Or he never believed he would die.”
“He had to believe that some injury would o
ccur.”
I nodded. I assumed so, too.
“But how did he know to hire Andre Fine?”
A good question. Two days ago, after meeting with Andre Fine, I had spent the morning doing some investigating. A quick call to Caesar’s promoter, Harry, confirmed that Romero had arranged for the exhibition against Andre Fine. This had surprised Harry, as Romero was rarely involved in fight promotions, or even publicity events. And what Harry told me next surprised me, although it shouldn’t have: Andre Fine had once been an up-and-coming boxer, until he turned to martial arts.
“Let me guess,” I had said to Harry over the phone. “Romero had been his trainer.”
“Bingo,” said Harry.
I had next called Allison Lopez and asked her the one question that I knew would break this case wide open. She confirmed my suspicions, and a few hours later, I was at the LAPD in downtown Los Angeles, meeting with a homicide investigator named Sanchez. Sanchez was a big guy with wide shoulders, who sported pictures of his UCLA football days on his desk. His desk also sported pictures of a very lovely wife.
Sanchez listened to my story, listened to the wild tales of dim mak and of hired killers and touches of death. To his credit, he didn’t laugh or joke or even crack a smile. I told him of Romero’s connection to Andre Fine, of Romero setting up the exhibition, and who had benefited the most from Caesar’s death. Romero. Romero also happened to be the beneficiary of his brother’s life insurance.
Detective Sanchez listened to all of this, then told me he would get back to me.
And he did, a few hours later. They had sent a squad car out to Andre Fine’s residence in Malibu, where they had found his body swinging from a rope off his third-story balcony. All indications suggested a suicide. I tried to feign shock and horror at hearing this news, but in truth, I had seen it coming.
They next picked up Romero for questioning. To his credit, he admitted to almost everything. Apparently, Romero was looking to get out of the family business. And he also confessed that he planned to fly the coop, all the way to Bermuda.
Now, I caught Allison up on my investigation.
She said, “God, I remember now. Romero practically forced Caesar to do the fight. He claimed it was great exposure and publicity. Caesar didn’t want to do it but his brother reminded him it was for charity and finally, Caesar gave in.” She shook her head. “Jesus, set up by his own brother. What a bastard. I fucking hate him.”