by Rhys Ford
“That’s Yuki. Her full name is Yuki-onna.” Kuro tried for a smile, but nothing seemed to reach past the dead flatness in Trey’s eyes. “I named her that because she’s white and has those two black spots over her eyes like the women used to style their brows in feudal Japan. Also, it’s the name of a female snow demon that freezes her victims to death, then sucks their souls out of their mouths. Yuki is always freezing, and she’s woken me up more than once by lying across of my face. Ignore her yelling. She’ll shut up as soon as I get her some food.”
“I don’t mind. I like cats. I think.” Trey looked around, but Kuro wasn’t sure he was seeing anything other than the bloodshed he’d lived through earlier that day. “My mom’s cat hated my guts but he hated everyone. He’s the only one I’ve really been around.”
While the ramen shop had been being worked on, he’d taken out most of the walls on the third floor, leaving the main area open from the street-facing wall all the way to the back, shoring up the ceiling with a recessed steel beam. From remaining space, he’d carved out a large master bedroom and bathroom, leaving the smaller room at the front to serve both as an office and a hidey-hole for the gun closet he’d built up in the middle. The exposed honey stone of the outer walls was several shades lighter than the caramel-hued oak planks running through the space, and while he’d spent a pretty penny on a chef’s kitchen, he spent most of his time downstairs cooking, then crawling back up at the end of the day to crash.
The cat owned most of the high-ceilinged apartment, from her four-story cat tree to the dark gray sectionals she spent most of her time sleeping on. The bookshelves he lined the walls with were filled with everything he’d read and wanted to read, leaving enough room for a widescreen television he couldn’t remember the last time he turned on. It was a comfortable apartment, with Koreatown’s street noise seeping in through the double-hung sash windows, and smelled mostly of the herbs he had hanging from lines strung over the island separating the cooking area from the living room.
It was the first place Kuro ever truly lived in, a space he could call home where he could set his things down and not worry about how many egress points it had. Yuki had been a gift, a scrawny mewling naked thing Holly gave him as a housewarming present, and it was the first time Kuro could say he’d fallen in love.
Looking at Trey wandering around in a devastated silence made Kuro realize he probably had room in his heart for more than just Yuki.
“I know you probably don’t feel like it, but you should get something to eat,” Kuro broached. “I’ll make you something light. Maybe some soup or noodles? How does that sound?”
There were other things he wanted to do. Things that included hunting down the men who brought such sorrow into Trey’s life. There was a laundry list of slow, painful things he could do to them, a thousand ways to make the remaining hours left them a literal hell on earth. The only thing that stopped him was the brittle fragility of Trey’s expression as he cradled Yuki against his chest, both of them nearly swallowed up by the sectional’s deep pillows.
He couldn’t fix lives. That was a truth Kuro knew very well. Once something was shattered, no amount of glue or spackle would make it right. He hadn’t been around Trey long enough to know if words were comfort or if he needed silence to work through his thoughts, but the only way Kuro was going to learn was if he tried.
Sitting down on the couch seemed like such a small thing to do, but it was a start.
“I know this is going to sound crazy, especially coming from me, but it’s okay to cry,” Kuro offered up first. “She was a pretty big part of your life and someone took her from you. I promise you—”
“I don’t want any promises, Kuro,” Trey whispered, his eyes irritated and red from unshed tears. “I want to hurt someone, and I want to be sick because there’s a hole inside of me where she was. They came after me and they got her instead. None of this makes any fucking sense, and Sera’s dead because of it. I don’t know what to do, but I want to punch something. I want to make somebody feel like I feel right now.
“She was all I had.” He dug at his eye with the heel of his hand while scratching at Yuki’s head with the other. “I fucking loved her more than I love my sisters. I mean, she was there every day, and I don’t know if I can wake up tomorrow and not have her with me. Especially since I was the one who got her killed.”
“You didn’t get her killed, Trey. You didn’t take a gun and shoot her. That’s not on you. Don’t ever think that.” As much as he wanted Trey to believe that, saying it out loud wasn’t going to make it happen.
There were dead bodies Kuro still carried around with him, tragedies he’d been a part of that were lodged into his conscience. Some were friends, but many were strangers, nameless people who’d died because he made a mistake. If there was one thing he wished he could give Trey, it would be that his dreams weren’t haunted by the dead.
“I feel dirty inside. Maybe just filled with garbage. Everything is just so numb, but I can taste the stink on me.” Trey closed his eyes, leaning his head down as Yuki scraped her chin against his cheek. “I know this is the wrong time and the wrong place, but I need to feel something, Kuro. Can we just go to bed? Can I just spend the night with you? So I’m not alone?”
“You’re not alone, Trey,” Kuro murmured as he leaned forward and kissed Trey’s temple. “You’ve got me, and I’m not going anywhere.”
Thirteen
WAKING UP with an exhausted Trey in his arms wasn’t the worst experience in the world. Or at least not in Kuro’s books. Sure, he’d have liked the circumstances to be different, a daybreak where he could roll over on top of the sleek, muscled man, rake his fingers through Trey’s dirty-blond hair, and kiss him awake so he could spend a long time driving him back into a sweaty, contented sleep.
Not that Trey had been in any condition to do anything other than roll over after he passed out as soon as his head hit the pillows, his hair wet from the hot shower Kuro ran for him. Dressed in a pair of Kuro’s old sweats and a T-shirt, he’d started off curled into a ball on the edge of the bed, only relaxing once Kuro climbed in next to him and wrapped his arms around Trey’s shivering body.
Men needed to be held. At some point in their lives, they’d all been told it was unmanly to want someone to stroke their backs or be comforted by a tight embrace. There’d been little love in Kuro’s childhood and even less once he picked up a gun and chose death as a way to make a living. The best thing he’d ever taken away from a lover was the realization men needed to be caressed as much—if not more—than a woman. It just took a real man to admit it and an even bigger man to ask for it.
Trey asking to be held the night before, openly admitting his needs, opened up Kuro’s heart to him in a way nothing else could.
Asking showed a strength no one seemed to credit Trey with, but Kuro saw it. Despite being battered and badgered from all sides, Trey held up, struggling through the death of someone he loved while in the middle of a psychological war zone. He needed time to heal. Any idiot could see that, but his family didn’t or weren’t able to grasp that simple concept. He needed a little bit of freedom to breathe, and Kuro was determined to give it to him.
Along with finding out who wanted Trey dead and possibly taking care of the problem himself.
He dressed carefully, as if going on a job. There were certain pairs of black jeans with a little bit more give than regular denim, and he’d stashed them at the back of his closet, thinking he would never wear them again. They still fit, although he’d gained more muscle from working out at the boxing gym down the street, and he filled out the slightly loose black Kevlar-knit shirt he dug out from a stack beneath the peacoat he hadn’t worn since he’d been back East. Working a kitchen and boxing was a good way to put on bulk, and it was going to be hard to remember he carried an extra fifteen pounds of muscle since the last time he did a job.
“Windows don’t get skinnier, Blackie. Be careful of what you can fit through,” he grumbled to himself, shoving his
feet into a pair of black boots. Trey slept on, kept company by a slumbering Yuki sprawled out on Kuro’s pillow. “Keep him company, girl. Daddy’s going to turn on the cameras and the alarms. Then I’m going to go find out who’s bringing shit to our front door.”
Weapons were easy. He had a few disposable Glocks and a leather jacket loose and long enough to hide his shoulder holsters. Nothing was showing, he checked in a mirror, but Aoki still knew something was up as soon as Kuro came through the kitchen doors.
“What are you doing?” Aoki hissed, glancing over his shoulder at the kitchen crew prepping for the incoming lunch rush. “Did Holly pull you into something? Is she insane? You tapped out!”
Aoki crowded him back, lightly pushing Kuro into the dining room, the heavy plastic flap blocking the view to the kitchen catching on Aoki’s shoulder before he shook it off. One of the sous chefs called out to Kuro, but Aoki waved him off, shouting they’d be back in a moment.
“I need you to run the shop for a bit,” Kuro said, reaching under his jacket to adjust one of the holster straps. “Trey’s upstairs. I’ll have my cell phone on me. If he comes down, get some food in him. I left him a note not to leave, so if you can make sure that he stays put until I come back, I’d appreciate it. If he leaves, I want you to call me right away. Someone’s got him in their crosshairs, and I don’t want him to serve himself up on a silver platter.”
“Are you sure it’s not Boom Boom? It’s kind of weird that she’s in LA and working for his father.” His friend rubbed at his forehead, familiar stress lines digging down into his skin. “Look at me! I’m sweating like a pig. It’s like we’re on the job again. I don’t want to get shot at. The first five hundred times was enough.”
“You were shot at twice,” Kuro corrected. “And both times it was blue on blue. Which now I’m beginning to understand more and more. Yes, I’m pretty sure it’s not Boom Boom. If she was going to kill him, she would’ve done it months ago. She’s been working for his old man for a while now.”
“Do you even know where you’re going to start looking for these guys?” Aoki shuffled his feet, his frown deeper. “I mean, what have we got? The guy you killed up on Mulholland was driving a stolen car, but you got his name, even if the police can’t seem to chase down anything on him. Did that Bluetooth snooping work for you when you were down there last night? Or did they show you paper?”
“It worked fine. Mostly I got shots from the bungalow. Nothing beyond that, but it shows me what shells they were using. Something they had is using 50s, so that at least narrows it down from something off the street,” Kuro said, shaking his head. “I’m going to need help, because this kind of thing isn’t what we do.”
“Shit, does that mean what I think it means?” Aoki pulled back his lips into a fierce grimace. “It does, doesn’t it? Did you tell Holly that you’re going down there? Does she know what kind of shitstorm you’re starting?”
“We don’t work for Holly anymore, remember?” Kuro patted Aoki on the shoulder, reassuring his former communications tech. “And yes, I’m going to go see Pops, but she doesn’t need to know that, does she?”
AS MUCH as Kuro found a kinship in the city of Los Angeles, there were places that even God didn’t show his face. Amid glittering glass high-rises and a wave of gentrification sat a determined squalor, stretches of streets littered with society’s debris and deranged. Most of the storefronts were boarded up or were repurposed as places of worship and charity, with a few dots of civil service depots thrown in for good measure, but the only religion truly practiced was self-preservation, and as Kuro knew, survival of the fittest had no pantheon of saints.
The Challenger’s throaty roar slowed down to a low purr when Kuro slid the car into a parking spot. Not many people would brave leaving their vehicle wedged in between two graffiti-covered buildings anchoring a busy corner in Skid Row, but the business he was heading into had a picture window overlooking the area, and given the reputation of the man he was coming to visit, his car would be safe.
Kuro just couldn’t say the same thing about himself.
The weight of his guns against his ribs was only a small comfort when he walked through the barbershop’s front door, the bell hanging over the jamb rattling an uneven chime. The men inside the dark, long shop were a diverse crowd, a spectrum of races and a scale of ages that went from midtwenties all the way to a skinny, hunched-over ninety-year-old man sitting on a barstool in front of a curtained doorway at the back of the shop. The air was hot, stirred to a lazy breeze by a phalanx of metal fans coated with clumps of greasy dust and hair. If anything, opening the front door let in a bit of the cooler wind whooshing down the street, but Kuro wasn’t going to suggest they leave it open.
To a man, their faces were hard and worn, evidence of their rough lives ground into their skin and bodies. The elderly barber trimmed the back of his client’s neck with a pair of clippers, his index and middle fingers missing their top two joints, but he moved the machine around with adroit skill, ignoring Kuro’s presence. The others simply watched, no one stirring to intercept Kuro as he walked toward the old man sitting in front of the curtain.
His eyes were milkier than Kuro remembered, the corners burned yellow from years of sun damage, but his brown gaze was still as sharp as ever. His skin was glossy despite his age, wrinkled with deep crevices and nearly as dark as a cat’s heart. His teeth were antiqued from years of smoking, the bulging squares an ill fit into his small mouth, but they were all his own. He boasted about that fact whenever given the chance. Preferring to dress in loose trousers, a button-up shirt, and red suspenders, he seemed as much a part of the shop as the cracked goldenrod floor tiles and the stench of the leatherworks next door.
No one knew his name. Everyone simply called him the old man, an ancient artifact of a time when the streets outside were vivid with life and on the edge of violence. The violence had come swiftly, carried on the shoulders of young men coming back from an unpopular war only to find themselves in the middle of civil unrest. It lingered at the edges of the street, pooling in the gutters like runoff from a rain the district couldn’t seem to escape.
Kuro called him Cerberus, but never to his face. The old man was always armed, dangling a glistening silver revolver between his knees with a loose hold on its pearly stock. There were rumors he shot a man for breathing too hard, but that was a lie. He’d actually shot the man for snoring, offended at the disrespect to the barber the man showed for falling asleep during a haircut. That man had been the first body Kuro ever disposed of.
And he hadn’t been the last.
The stench of unfiltered Camels greeted Kuro before he got within three feet of the old man, and he reverted back to a habit he’d had when he was younger, breathing through his mouth when approaching the shop’s back area. Nodding once, Kuro cut straight to the point, “He back there?”
“Might not want to see you,” the old man growled back, his breath ripe with cigarette smoke and cheap alcohol. “Considering you’re too good for us now. Maybe you should go crawling back to that bitch that holds your leash. Get her to scratch that itch you’ve got going there.”
“That come from Pops?” Kuro asked, cocking his head as he hooked his thumbs into his jeans’ front pockets. “Or from you? Because if it’s from you—”
“Get the fuck in here, boy,” Pops shouted from the back. “Don’t mess with the old man there.”
Kuro ducked through the split curtain, schooling his face carefully to show no emotion. There were too many memories coming at him, triggered by the smell of comb cleaner, stale tobacco, and gun oil. He trailed his fingers along the chair rail running down the hall at his hip level, catching his thumb on a nail he knew was there but never seemed to avoid. It was a short walk, filled with nightmares and dead dreams. It was only a few strides, such a different experience than the first time he’d taken that walk toward the office at the end of the hall. The door was partially open, a slice of harsh fluorescent light cutting through t
he deep grays. Inside the office sat a man who was both Satan and Santa to him, and Kuro briefly questioned his sanity for coming back.
Trey’s muffled, choking sob echoed in his thoughts, a whimpering cry he’d murmured in his sleep, mourning not only the loss of his friend but also, in essence, his illusion of safety. Kuro would never be able to get it back to him. That mimicry of innocence was long gone, but he could try to give Trey some peace, and the only way he was going to be able to do that was find someone who knew the city, someone who knew the games people played and the puppet masters who pulled the players’ strings.
That person was Pops.
Kuro swung the door open, and it groaned with a loud creak, an early warning system a couple of good shots of oil would take care of, but none of Pops’s enemies had the balls or the resources to get that far into the barbershop without someone taking them down. The squeal always sounded like a scream, a captured echo of everyone Pops fucked over. It terrified Kuro the first time he heard it. Now it was as much background noise as the old man with his glistening gun sitting in front of the curtain.
Pops hadn’t changed. Sure, there was less hair on his head, and what there was now glistened silver, a patchy spread of kinky curls cropped short to his skull. His ethnicity always appeared fluid, a mixed-race child born to Los Angeles’s gutters, but there were hints of Asian and black in his features, eyes shaped much like Kuro’s but as black as night. He was still large, corpulent, and hanging over his bones in a loose wattle of pale sienna flesh, but there was a fatigue draped around him, an intense gravity dragging him down to the floor. Like always, Pops wore an oversized bowling shirt, a throwback to the days when knocking down pins constituted a good time on a Saturday night, and if Kuro looked around the massive Army-green metal desk Pops sat behind, he’d more than likely find the bright orange shirt was coupled with khaki trousers and a pair of Birkenstocks worn over a pair of ancient athletic socks.