by Rhys Ford
Pops didn’t get up to greet Kuro, but he hadn’t expected the man to offer up his hand when he came to the door. It’d been too long since he’d walked down that hallway, time rushing past them quicker than water beneath the bridges Kuro burnt behind him. Still, he noticed a flicker of something in the man’s dark eyes, and then Pops nodded toward the door.
“Close that,” he barked, the intensity of his voice loud enough to rattle the narrow window on the outer wall. “I don’t want anyone to overhear our business, because the only thing that I expect to hear out of your mouth is an apology, and I’m going to give you enough privacy for you to spit those words out. Consider it a gift that I’m sparing your dignity.”
“I’m not here to apologize.” Kuro resisted curling his lips up into a smile. “I came for information, and since that’s what you’re the best at gathering, I came knocking on your door.”
“I should get the old man to come in here and shoot your fucking head off,” Pops spat, struggling to get to his feet. His cheeks flushed pink with the effort, the edges of his mouth going white. He coughed, a wet, sticky sound moving up from his chest into the back of his throat. Rubbing at his shoulder blade, Pops glared at him. “You come in here—”
“Yeah, yeah, I come to you today—on the day of your cat’s quinceañera—to ask you a favor,” Kuro drawled, tilting back on his heels to stay out of spittle range. “This is business, Pops. Nothing more. Nothing less. You interested in hearing what I need, or should I just turn around and find someone else?”
Pops never had a poker face. It was the main reason he never gambled. Put a winning hand of cards in his grasp and he lit up like a kid given a free bicycle with a thousand dollars stuck into its spokes, so Kuro wasn’t surprised when Pops’s expressions ran through avarice and suspicion in under five seconds. Turning away would hurt Pops’s wallet and eventually his reputation, when word got around his prodigal somewhat-son came into his place, then walked back out because he wouldn’t do business with the man. Kuro figured he had about ten more seconds of standing in the office before he was going to be forced back out the door. He couldn’t risk lingering long enough for people to believe he’d begged Pops to help and had been turned down. Cutting the conversation short himself would give Kuro the upper hand, definitely not what Pops wanted.
“How much are you willing to spend?” The man’s eyes narrowed, his lips thinning in thought. “And don’t jerk me around. You and I both know there’s no way that bitch can get you local information like I can. That’s got to be why you’re here. You’re chasing after something in the city.”
“Five grand,” Kuro offered, lowballing the deal. He was anxious, but this was a game he’d been taught to play. As anxious as he was to find the person behind the attacks, he couldn’t let himself be taken by Pops, not if he needed to earn the man’s respect and verifying the information would be clean and hard. On more than one occasion, he’d heard Pops slip someone more than a few half-truths, muddying the waters. “I need to know who was behind a kind of over-the-top house hit above K-Town. Victim didn’t see the vehicle but said it sounded big, and I’ve got word they used 50s, not something you find rolling off the street. Shit like this should be easy for you. Can’t be a lot of players with that kind of firepower.”
“You’d be surprised,” Pops grumbled, easing down into his chair. It creaked beneath his weight, the hydraulic squealing in protest when he leaned into it, its back brushing up against the wall. “Lots of people in K-Town have firepower that big, and not all of it left over from the riots.”
“How about if we settle on a price and then I can tell you the particulars?” he suggested, counting down the seconds he had left. If they didn’t come to a deal soon, he’d have to walk to save face and maybe get into a tussle with the old man on the way out. “Price is fair. I’ll give you an extra thousand if you actually give me the name of the guy who dropped the shooting.”
“What? You don’t think I could get the guy who directed it?” he snarled back, lifting his fleshy lips.
“Do we have a deal? Or do I head out the door?” Kuro pushed again.
“I’ll take the six in cash. How long do I have?” Pops grunted, leaning on his elbows.
“Twenty-four hours. After that, offer’s off the table. I’ve got to move fast on this. These don’t seem to be the kind of guys that are going to sit around and wait.”
“Pop me another thousand if I get it to you in twelve.” Pops pushed back, edging closer to the deadline Kuro had in his head. “We both know why you’re trying to shove this down my throat. You don’t look good for the boys outside, and people are going to start saying you’ve gone soft.”
“I leave a bullet in the front of your head and that kind of shit stops,” he replied, rolling his shoulders back. “Old man didn’t check me. I came in hot.”
The deadline hit and Pops sagged, probably no longer certain about Kuro’s reluctance to kill. There were too many years between them, too many psychological skirmishes when they butted heads and the moment Kuro decided to leave Pops behind, stepping up to take a badge and orders from Holly.
“Going to have to take the old man off the door,” Pops mumbled. “He shouldn’t have let you in carrying.”
“No, he shouldn’t have, but old habits die hard, even when you know better.” Kuro leaned on the desk, spreading his hands across the façade of papers Pops used to hide his business dealings beneath. There would be calendars and contact numbers under the stacks, a meticulously arranged network of information very few would be able to piece together if they didn’t know how Pops’s mind worked. Kuro knew. He’d been tapped to take up that chair, and turning his back on that only sharpened the knife he plunged into Pops’s chest. “I came to you because you’re the best. I’m not here to pick up old arguments. I’m not here to wipe you out. I’m retired. I want to make ramen and just live my life. I don’t want this. I don’t need this. And whoever you have on deck should know they don’t need to come after me just because I came to that door.
“But understand something, old man,” he whispered, making sure that no one down the hall could hear him. Pops’s pride and dignity needed to be respected and maintained. That was something he knew, or the house of cards in Skid Row would come tumbling down and he didn’t know who would pick up its pieces. “Any of your boys get it into their head that they need to teach me a lesson or take me off the board, I will carve them up thinner than noodles and feed their guts to whoever is left behind. I don’t want to start a war with you and yours, but I will if I even see someone in my rearview mirror. Now, five thousand. Another one G if you drop within twenty-four hours, and two G if you drop in twelve. Agreed?”
Pops stared up at him, judging Kuro’s words. It was nearly five breaths before the man nodded, then stretched his hand out for Kuro to shake. “Agreed.”
“Good,” Kuro replied with a small smile, taking Pops’s in a firm grip. “Let me show you what I’m looking at so you can figure out who you’re looking for.”
Fourteen
THERE WAS something warm on his face. It wasn’t the sun. If anything, it blocked out the light. As Trey lay curled up on the very comfortable bed, silky linens wrapped around his aching body, the reality of the day before seeped out of the grogginess clouding his disorganized thoughts and suddenly hiding in the dark didn’t seem like that bad of an idea. Then the warm heaviness along his shoulder and neck began to purr.
“Cat, I don’t remember your name, but I’ve got to go pee,” Trey mumbled, carefully turning over to dislodge the naked mole rat of a cat Kuro left him with. The thing rolled with him, reluctant to give up its perch before finally giving in to gravity, sliding off into a graceful stretch. “My bladder thanks you.”
It felt late. He had no idea of the time, and his body didn’t seem to want to move correctly. The day before left him bruised—physically and emotionally—and Trey stared at the folded pile of clothing left on the bathroom counter for a full minute before rea
lizing they were his, washed and ready for him to wear.
The water was as hot as it was last night, and as cleansing. Standing under the powerful blast, Trey tilted his head back, then dropped to his knees, stricken by Sera’s death. His sobs came hard, from someplace deep and dark inside of him, and Trey couldn’t catch his breath, choking under the water and the memory of her blood on his hands.
“It’s not fair,” he whispered, his throat raw from crying. “I shouldn’t have been there. She’d still be alive if I—”
He’d fucked up so many things in his life, consequences of his actions nipping at his tail every time he turned around, but this time seemed so unreal, so incredibly wrong. There had to be something he could do to change things, to find out who’d taken Sera’s life and put her death on him.
“Okay. Okay. Get up.” Trey grounded himself with a shuddering breath that tasted of tears and fresh water. “You can do something. You can figure this out. Because God knows, the fucking cops are going to do it. They probably think I arranged all of it just to get some attention. No one’s going to help me but me. Get up off your ass and get going.”
He felt every single one of the bruises on his body as he stood, and as Trey scrubbed at his skin with Kuro’s soap, it also sank in he wasn’t really alone. For some reason, Kuro pledged himself to Trey’s cause and protection. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see Kuro Jenkins was a man of his word, and Trey sighed in relief.
“Don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m pretty sure he does,” Trey muttered, climbing out of the shower to find the naked white cat sitting on his clothes, grooming its long serpentine tail while holding it steady with a hooked paw. “Okay, it’s not that I don’t like cats, but you don’t have any hair and your butt is smearing all over my jeans. I’ve got to wear those, and I’ve got to find your daddy because I need to do something about this.”
The cat stopped its grooming, looking up at Trey with enormous green eyes. It studied him, listening intelligently while Trey urged it off his clothes while he dried himself off with the towel, but it didn’t budge.
“Seriously. I’ve got to go.” Trey reached for the cat, sliding his hands around its sleek body. It wasn’t as naked as his mind was locked on to, more like a thinly flocked velveteen bunny after ten years of being dragged around by an affectionate child. “Don’t purr at me. You know what you’re doing.”
They eventually came to a compromise after the cat jumped right back up following Trey gently putting her on the floor. Trey discovered the cat was female, and she agreed to sit on his clothes, mewing at him whenever he took something from the pile.
The shirt wasn’t his.
It was a little bit too large, age-softened and black instead of dark blue, something he hadn’t noticed with the cat sitting on top of it. The silkscreen on the front gave a shout-out to the Four Horsemen, a band Trey didn’t know, and from the wear on the graphic, definitely vintage instead of a reproduced knockoff. The fabric smelled clean, a hint of softener and thankfully, no cat hair, an unthought-of bonus of having a naked feline around. It wasn’t that he was allergic, but he and cats hadn’t always gotten along, what with the constant war he battled with his mother’s Persian while he was growing up. That cat hated him. It lurked in the corners of rooms, thundering across the floor to attack his legs and sometimes leap at his face if it could reach. The wrinkled white thing with a permanent scowl sat on the counter and simply kept him company, throwing out a deep purr whenever Trey made eye contact.
“Sorry I don’t remember your name,” he told the cat, scratching between her ears. “I’ll get it from Kuro later. Or Blackie. Whatever his name is. There is a lot of shit I don’t know about, cat, but I’m going to find out. Hold the fort.”
The long flight of stairs had a door between the steps and the landing to the second-floor storeroom, and Trey was careful to lock up behind him. He didn’t have a key but figured he could lurk in the back of the ramen shop if he came back before Kuro did. Armed with only his phone and a set of house keys to a home he couldn’t return to, he was about to head down to the ground floor when he realized he hadn’t texted Sera about not coming back to the bungalow the night before. His phone was already out of his pocket and his fingers poised to apologize when it struck him again that she was gone.
He staggered, leaning against the rail for support. The stairwell was tight, too boxed in for any air to move around, and the tall frosted windows on the outer walls were shut, keeping the wind and street noise out. He wanted to throw up, dragged down by the grief punching through his guts, but he’d had nothing to eat or drink other than… he couldn’t remember when.
“You okay?” a dark stocky shape silhouetted against the opening at the bottom of the stairs called up to Trey. “Kuro said to make sure you got some food in you, but maybe we start with some soup?”
The man took a step up, and when the light hit his face, Trey recognized Aoki, Kuro’s manager. Or at least he thought that’s what the man was. Now he wasn’t so certain. Kuro appeared to be tied up in things Trey suspected went deeper than guns in the past relationship with his father’s personal bodyguard.
“I need to go out,” Trey said, forcing himself down the rest of the stairs. His legs were shaky, unresponsive, but he refused to stop. A plan was beginning to form in the back of his head, something he could do to ferret out who wanted him dead, and Aoki was well-meaning but in the way. “Tell Kuro I’ll be back.”
“Oh no.” Aoki scratched at the back of his head, raking through his short dark hair. “Kuro said you had to stay here.”
“I’m not.” He took another step down, drawing closer to the doorway. “Staying, that is. I need to talk to a few people, but I’ll be back. The apartment door’s locked, so everything up there should be safe, but I can’t get back in. I don’t know how long I’ll be, but if you’re not still around, can you tell the staff I can hang out at the employee table?”
“Kuro said for you to stay here.” From the look on the man’s face, he was deadly serious, as if Trey was insane for questioning Kuro’s orders. “I can’t just let you walk.”
“He doesn’t look like the kind of guy who’d kill you because I left,” Trey said, trying to edge past the stockier man. While shorter, Aoki had a lot more heft on him and was practically immovable. “Actually, I don’t really know what kind of guy he is. A couple of days ago, I thought he was just a good cook. Now I find out he’s some kind of ninja with a noodle fetish, so you have to excuse me for not wanting to stick around just yet. I’ve got some stuff I’ve got to figure out, and the only way that’s going to happen is if I talk to someone. Actually, a couple of someones, so you’ve got two choices—let me go or I’m going to go through you. You pick.”
It was a gamble. Mostly because Trey knew he probably couldn’t take Aoki in a fair fight. Or even an unfair fight. He knew next to nothing about hitting someone, other than what he’d learned watching stunt actors, so he didn’t put much faith in his bluff. When Aoki looked him up and down, Trey bristled as much as he could, taking a frilled lizard approach to his threat, hoping mantling would help him out.
Something in him must have given Aoki pause, because the man grumbled under his breath, then sighed. “Let me get Frankie to cover for me and I’ll get my keys. Last thing I want is having to tell the boss I let you go without a fight. If I come with you, at least someone might kill me before he gets back so I won’t be around for him to tear me a new asshole.”
“THERE IS no way in hell they are going to talk to us,” Aoki grumbled loudly as Trey strode across the building lobby’s polished marble floor. He glanced furtively about, his eyes bouncing quickly from the security guard counter to the bank of elevators directly across of the front doors. “Neither one of us is dressed for this place, and I’m wearing a ramen shop’s T-shirt without carrying the delivery bag. Even a rookie knows if you’re going to try to breach security dressed as a delivery guy, you have to be able to prove you’re delivering food. If you
don’t have something on you, they will stop you before—”
“Sir?” one of the guards called out, coming around the end of the sleek wood counter set against the wall to the elevator corridor. He moved quickly, intercepting them before they could reach the elevator banks. “Can I help you with something?”
“No, thank you.” He may have fallen pretty far from the expectations of the Bishop family tree, but Trey still clung to its branches, good manners and entitlement mentally beaten into him alongside French and how to choose a good wine. Even dressed in faded jeans and an outdated band T-shirt, Trey cloaked himself in the haughtiness every single one of his relatives carried as easily as breathing. “I am here to see my lawyers. Caldwell and Gilder. On the fifteenth floor, unless for some reason they’ve moved since last week?”
“I’ll ring ahead.” There was a challenge in the guard’s eyes, and he reached for the phone next to him, picking up the receiver. He was calling Trey’s bluff, a passive-aggressive pushing back Trey knew was coming. “Who shall I tell them to expect?”
“Harrington Bishop the Third. I’ve got my family’s access code, so I don’t need to be brought up,” Trey replied, glancing back at Aoki. “Please tell them I’m bringing my personal assistant with me if they’d like to have two cups of coffee ready instead of one. Come on, Aoki. We’ve got a lot to do today. The sooner we have a talk with Gilder, the sooner we can get back.”
The skyscraper was like many in Los Angeles, mostly glass and with panoramic views. The elevators hugged the outer wall on the south side of the building and were probably lock-coded against unauthorized access, but that was a gamble Trey was willing to take. He needed to talk to Mathers’s lawyers, and while in Aoki’s tiny convertible, he’d made a quick call to his father’s office, asking for the name of the man who pretty much held Trey’s life in his hands. Although he’d kept the call short, his father’s administrative assistant was a talker and chattered everything she knew about Stuart Gilder while looking up his address.