Bad to the Bone (Bonnie Parker, PI Book 3)

by Michael Prescott

  He recited four digits, which she scribbled on her palm with a pen fumbled out of her purse. She didn’t have a great memory for numbers.

  “You will enter before Clarissa gets there. She, too, will be given the passcode. Wait inside. She will be unprepared for any danger.”

  “And afterward?”

  “Just go on your way.”

  “So I do the hit, leave the body, and skedaddle?”

  “Precisely. It will be the easiest money you ever made.”

  “Terrific. Is the cabin door unlocked?”

  “No. But the alarm system has been disabled. It will not be difficult for you to get inside.”

  “Would have been easier if you’d given me the key.”

  “I wish for there to be a break-in. When police investigate, it must appear that Clarissa or a confederate forced entry into the boat.”

  “The cops are gonna wonder why a woman with a room at the Prince Edward was jimmying the lock on a cabin cruiser in Miramar.”

  “The boat owner will take care of that. In a few days he will find the body. Before reporting it to the authorities, he will plant drugs and related paraphernalia at the scene. It will appear that Clarissa hooked up with a drug dealer. Together they used the boat for a private party. For reasons that will never be known, Clarissa ended up dead, and the killer ran off.”

  “I see.” She remembered the needle marks on the girl’s wrist. Yeah, the police would buy her as an addict.

  “Is good, yes? Simple, believable, impossible to disprove.”

  “You’re a friggin’ mastermind. How’d Clarissa or the drug guy know the passcode to the dock?”

  “This must remain a mystery. Nyet problem. The case should not be tied up too neatly.”

  He was right about that. Only an amateur plotted the perfect crime. In the real world there were always loose ends.

  “Is that it?” she asked, tired of talking to him.

  “Just two more things. One, you will call me later tonight to confirm that it is done.”

  “And two?”

  “Do not fuck this up, poppet.”

  “Quit calling me poppet.”

  “Do svidaniya.” The call ended.

  She frowned. Do Svetlana? It must mean good-bye. She’d always thought Svetlana was a girl’s name.

  Whatever. These Russkies were all crazy, anyway.

  She put away Sammy and rejoined Frank. “Sorry to eat and run.”

  “That was tonight’s job?”

  “Yup.”

  “And if you’d gotten the call with your boyfriend at your elbow?”

  “Would never happen. I’m careful that way.”

  “You can be as careful as you please, but things will all go to shit eventually. That’s the way of the world.”

  She smiled. “You know what you are? You’re a curmudgeon. If you had a lawn, you’d be telling kids to get off it.”

  He ignored her. “Take my advice. Get out of the life. Reinvent yourself. Move away, start fresh. It can be done.”

  This time she was sure he was talking about himself.

  “I’ll think it over,” she promised.

  He made a face that said he knew she was only humoring him. As she was walking away, he said, “Watch yourself tonight, kiddo. Don’t disappoint me.”

  “How would I disappoint you?”

  He looked at her with his calm, knowing eyes. “By getting yourself killed.”

  19

  It occurred to Bonnie that this was the second time today she’d brought a gun to a meeting while hoping she wouldn’t have to use it. The first time she’d been seeing a client. This time she was scheduled to encounter a target.

  But not really a target. She’d already decided about that.

  Sure, the easiest thing would be to kill Clarissa Lynch. But she wasn’t going to do that. Because she only killed the bad guys. It was important to her self-image to maintain that policy. If she’d harbored any doubts on that score, Frank Kershaw’s sermonette on crossing lines had dispelled them. Admittedly, Joy Krauss might be the exception that tested the rule, but silencing Joy, should it become necessary, was simple self-defense, like cutting yourself free of a drowning person who was trying to pull you under.

  Clarissa was in a different category altogether. Whatever her deal was, anyone going up against a piece of scum like Pavel Gura couldn’t be all bad. Clarissa was a lot like Bonnie herself, a woman making her mark in a man’s game. Sisterhood was powerful, and she owed the girl some professional courtesy. And according to Pavel, she was a wildcat in the sack. So, you know, that was another thing they had in common.

  Besides all that, killing Clarissa wouldn’t solve her larger problem. But keeping her alive—well, that might go a long way toward fixing everything.

  The marina was located off Highway 35 at the north end of Miramar, on an inlet of the Crab River, which fed into the ocean. The parking lot was ungated and unguarded. It was also empty, except for a lone sedan parked under a streetlight. Gura’s wheels, the Mercedes that had been parked near her office this morning. Black, of course. Bad guys always went for black. It was like a fetish with them.

  Bonnie drove to a far corner of the lot where she hoped the Jeep would be inconspicuous, and left it there. The sun was down. She hoofed it across yards of macadam, shivering in the night chill. She’d selected a lightweight coat that she could shed easily; a few goose bumps were the price she paid for maneuverability.

  A brick promenade ran along the waterfront. Most of the slips were vacant, the owners, like migrating birds, having flocked south for the winter. The remaining boats showed no signs of life. They rocked like cradles in a gentle chop.

  At Dock C North, a ramp sloped down to a steel mesh security door. She punched in the passcode and hurried along a narrow pier liberally sprayed with seagull crap. It was colder here, by the water.

  The Dragon’s Mouth was moored in the last slip. A small flybridge cruiser, as Gura had said, white and sleek and new, a nice toy for anyone who’d outgrown the rubber ducky in his bathtub. Maybe thirty-five feet long, with wide windows everywhere.

  She grabbed hold of the ladder at the stern and hoisted herself aboard, reminding herself to wipe down the handrail later. She wasn’t wearing gloves, preferring to keep her hands unencumbered when she picked the lock.

  The obvious entry point was the glass door facing the dock, but she didn’t want to go in that way. If Clarissa saw signs of tampering, she might get spooked. Instead she made her way forward, passing the starboard windows. Her pocket flashlight picked out the alarm system sensors in the window frames. Gura had said the system was disabled. She hoped he was right.

  At the front of the cabin there was a small door, or did boaters call it a hatch? The lock wouldn’t be any obstacle, and there was no need to fret about leaving marks because Gura wanted it to look like an obvious break-in.

  The wind off the water numbed her fingers. She was adjusting the tension wrench when Sammy, in her breast pocket on vibrate mode, purred against her left tit. She checked the display. Brad. She took the call, snugged the phone under her chin, and kept working.

  “Yo,” she said. “What’s up?”

  “Sorry to call when you’re on the job. You free to talk?”

  “Free, white, and twenty-one.” It was an expression she’d picked up somewhere. Kinda racist, now that she thought about it.

  “I just wanted you to know the chief’s on the warpath. The search warrant didn’t come through.”

  “No dice, huh?”

  “Judge Morris turned him down. Which means he had nada, because Morris will greenlight just about anything.”

  “Good to know.”

  “So you don’t have to worry about us jackbooted thugs breaking into your place.”

  “Yeah, I hate it when that happens.” It looked like she had moved her arsenal for nothing. Still, better safe than sorry.

  “I told you nothing would come of it. Though I almost wish Dan had gotten the wa
rrant.”

  “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  “That way he might finally be convinced you have nothing to hide. He’d have to admit you’re clean.”

  “As a whistle,” Bonnie agreed, releasing the lock. “Thanks for the news update. I’ll see ya when I see ya.”

  She clicked off and dumped Sammy into her purse, then got one hand on the Ruger. There was always a chance Clarissa had come early and was planning a surprise for Gura or whoever showed up. It wasn’t likely, but she’d found that anticipating unlikely scenarios could significantly improve her life expectancy.

  Carefully she eased the door ajar and slipped into the cabin. She took a minute to listen to the darkness. She heard no breathing but her own, no movement but the creak of the hull as the boat swayed on the tide.

  Her fingers found a light switch. The overhead fluorescents came on, flooding the interior space. She had entered through the kitchen—the galley, she guessed it was called—which was adjacent to the cockpit. Beyond both, there was a decent-sized living room with a built-in sofa that probably converted into a spare bed, a sleek coffee table, and even a flatscreen TV mounted on the wall.

  Pretty roomy, more so than it looked on the outside. And there was still more floor space—a lavatory to her right, and a gangway that descended below deck where the main sleeping quarters must be.

  She shrugged off her coat and stuffed it under the captain’s chair, out of sight. In the living area she closed the curtains over the windows. She didn’t need an audience for what was about to happen, and though the boatyard seemed empty, there was no point in taking chances. The glass door at the stern was another story. She wanted Clarissa to enter that way, so she kept the drapes open and even unlocked the door. As an afterthought, she hunted down a bottle of wine in the galley and placed it ostentatiously on the coffee table alongside two plastic wineglasses. The whole setup was designed to issue an invitation: come on in.

  All she needed was a place to lie in wait. Clarissa was expecting to see Gura and no one else. She was a pro, could well be carrying, and might be a tad skittish under the circumstances. If she came face-to-face with the same nosy bitch who’d tried to chat her up in the hotel restroom, her response might be to shoot first and ask questions never.

  And those steel gray eyes shouldn’t be taken lightly. The girl might be young and an addict, but there was something hard in her, something that could be dangerous.

  Bonnie didn’t want to terminate the lady, but she also didn’t intend to become a casualty of war. What she required was the element of surprise. Pop out of hiding, hold Clarissa at gunpoint with a properly intimidating firearm, and let things play out from there.

  The closet in the galley looked like the best option. She opened the door, and that was when things went sideways.

  Wide-open gray eyes.

  Tangle of ash blonde hair.

  Clarissa Lynch, stuffed in the closet.

  Dead, the top of her head blown off in a bloody mess and wrapped in a white bath towel monogrammed with the initials of the Prince Edward Hotel.

  Bonnie took all this in eyeblink-fast, but not fast enough to escape a sudden fall of blackness as something was flung over her face—a sheet of fabric, pulled taut, smothering—while simultaneously her arms were wrenched backward.

  Hands on her body, snatching the purse away before she could grab the Ruger.

  She released a shout, lashed out with a blind kick that didn’t connect.

  The thing on her face was drawn tighter. She yelled again, an instinctive reaction, useless, because the marina was deserted and there was no one to hear or help. The stretched cloth filled her mouth, muffling the cry.

  She knew immediately, without words or conscious logic, that her assailants were two or more males. One of them shoved her forward and flung her facedown on something padded but firm. The sofa in the main cabin. He straddled her, his knees digging into her back, crushing the breath out of her.

  Rough hands patting her down, searching for weapons, finding none. Then tugging at her sleeve, pulling it back. Her right arm was jerked away from her body, held palm up on the sofa.

  A band of pressure on her forearm—a tourniquet being tied in place. Fingers probing her wrist, searching for a vein.

  They were going to give her an injection. She couldn’t let that happen. She screamed into the cushion and thrashed and kicked. It did no good. They didn’t release her arm.

  Pain in her wrist. The bite of the needle. She remembered the syringe in Clarissa’s suitcase. Doxy-whatever-it-was. A sedative.

  Arching her back, she pistoned both legs and drove herself forward, half off the sofa. The needle popped free, liquid spattering her arm.

  A male voice: “Chyort!”

  Was that Russian? What the fuck was going on?

  A heavy hand struck her across the back of the head. Her ears rang. Other hands pressed her down, fixing her in place. More than two men. Three, at least.

  New pressure on her arm, a new search for an injection site on her wrist. She struggled, her head whipsawing as she screamed in pure rage.

  Pain again, the needle stabbing home, the syringe emptying its contents into her bloodstream.

  Then it was done, and the needle was pulled free. Still they didn’t let her up. Someone counted off seconds at intervals of ten, while someone else pasted a pair of bandages to her arm.

  Nice of them to stop the bleeding. Then she remembered the towel around Clarissa’s head. They’d done the same for her.

  “Good thing she ordered extra towels,” Bonnie murmured, the words garbled by the fabric in her mouth and the pressure of the cushion against her face.

  That was kind of funny. She almost laughed.

  Uh-oh, she was losing it. Starting to feel all spacey and weird. That doxy shit had gone straight to her head.

  Ground control to Major Tom, we got a serious fuckin’ problem here ...

  That was funny, too. Everything was funny.

  Someone patted her blouse, her jeans, searching for other weapons, finding none. The hands released her. She shook her head, and the thing that had covered her face slipped off and fluttered to the floor.

  A scarf, blood red. She had seen that scarf before.

  Bonnie lifted her head from the sofa and saw two young men in business suits with close-cropped hair, and just beyond them was her pal, Pavel Gura, and he was smiling.

  “Greetings, poppet. Welcome to the Dragon’s Mouth.”

  20

  What happened after that was a succession of separate moments like links in a chain, except there was no chain. There were only the links, disconnected, scattered, leading nowhere. Things happened, but the order didn’t make sense. It was like skipping through a DVD in fast-forward and reverse, stopping here and there at random.

  There was the moment when she pawed at the sofa, trying to rise, and instead found herself sliding off the cushions onto the floor, boneless as a cat, while someone laughed. The floor was carpeted and smooth, and she felt the throb of engines through the wood. Everything was misty in a white glare, which seemed weird until she realized it was her vision that was screwy, not the lighting in the cabin.

  There was the moment when Gura, chuckling, shut the door to the gangway that led below deck. That must be where they’d hidden, on the lower level, tracking her footsteps until she was at the closet. In the instant when she was distracted, they’d taken her by surprise.

  And there was the moment when one of the younger guys returned to the boat, reporting that he’d driven Gura’s Mercedes off the lot and parked it on a side street, where it wouldn’t be connected with the Jeep. Her Jeep, right—the Jeep that would be found once she was officially a missing person. Impounded, auctioned off eventually or sold for parts, when the investigation into her disappearance was finally called off.

  At some point Gura was at the helm, and the boat began to move. She thought one of the two goons—goons, that was a funny word, goons—had gone on deck to cast off th
e mooring lines. She was still on the sofa then, and the red scarf was on the floor.

  At some other point Gura was standing in the cabin as the boat sped through choppy waters. The scarf was wrapped around his neck now. She said, “Shouldn’t you be driving?” and he said, “We are on autopilot.” And the other two were removing Clarissa Lynch from the closet, folding her body into a canvas sack. Gura said something in Russian, and they answered, and spray from the ocean misted the windshield and triggered the automatic wipers.

  At one point Clarissa’s eyes blinked alert and she gave Bonnie a hard, knowing stare. Or had she only dreamed that?

  She had a conversation with Gura. She was sure of it. The conversation was disjointed and strange, but it was real. He called her poppet again, and then, smiling, he asked, “You know the meaning of this word?”

  “Child,” she said, her voice faraway.

  “Da, maybe. But also puppet. That is what you are to me. My little puppet, dancing on my strings.” He mimed the gestures of a puppeteer, fingers fluttering. “I danced you to the boatyard. I danced you aboard this vessel. I danced you to your death, Parker.”

  “Not dead yet.”

  “You will be. But first you will have a nice long talk with Streinikov.”

  “Gonna be a ... one-sided conversation.”

  “I do not think so. Harsh measures will be used. You will not remain silent for long.”

  “Great ... I’m a chew toy for mobbed-up Eurotrash.”

  “Well put.” He regarded her almost sympathetically. “It is a tough situation for you, poppet.”

  “Been in worse.”

  “You have led an interesting life.”

  “I get around ... Why’d you pay me?”

  “A pittance. It made the ruse more convincing, nyet? And if you expected to meet me again for the rest of the money, you would be focused on that appointment. It would be your opportunity to neutralize me. Maybe you even hoped to win Clarissa’s allegiance?”

  “Yeah.” The word thick, like syrup. “Yeah, I was gonna ... get her on my side.”

  “Then have her ambush me at the payoff? Because I would be watching you and not expecting anyone else?”