Johnny Wylde Page 12

“You like them, huh?”

  “What’s not to like? Beautiful women are beautiful women. Women aren’t like guys that way, we can appreciate a beautiful woman, too, you know.”

  That got her a long and appraising look.

  “What’s up with all that Buddhist stuff?” Nina asked casually. “She really into that or what?”

  “She is. Serious about it. Meditates all the time, goes to these retreats, there’s a Buddhist temple not far from Harriet, in Linden Park, near the arboretum. She goes there for classes.”

  “How the hell did you two meet?”

  “Long story.”

  Nina took the hint.

  “Okay, so where we going first?” she said.

  “A place called Pho Palace, right on Harriet near where Medea Street crosses.”

  “Got it.”

  They drove in silence.

  The Pho Palace was a low, dumpy building, done in pink stucco with a blue cornice running around the edge of the roof. A parking lot, the asphalt cracked and crumbling into dirt in the back, sprouting weeds, sprawled around two sides of the rectangular building.

  Nina backed her squad in, not far from the door.

  Jimmy led the way through the double doors plastered with advertising bills done in garish colors, most featuring a beautiful Vietnamese girl in a traditional ao dai and a backdrop of musicians.

  Inside was the hum of conversation, the lilting rise and fall of Vietnamese and the harsher Cambodian dialect; circles of grey and blue smoke eddying in the breeze from the door (Nina thought, smoking? Makes me want one…); the rich scents of the pho coming from the tables and the back kitchen; the smell of grilling meat; children laughing and playing near their parents at a table; the hard eyes of four older men watching the door as they played some variant of dominos.

  Made Nina touch her elbow to her piece, just to reassure herself that it was still there.

  Okay, maybe it wasn’t just the old men…maybe it was the two tables pushed together that held a collection of teens, boys and girls, dressed in a strange mélange drawn from The Matrix and hip hop videos -- long leather coats on the boys, over black jeans, T-shirts…the girls in skin tight pants and low cut tube tops, bright colors and fabric like rich satin or taffeta. Lots of gold around the neck, and on each and every one of the males, the hint of a tattoo on their left hands…

  Nina gave them The Look as she followed Jimmy right to the table where the old men sat; and they shifted in their seats with interest, the girls appraising her, making a face or two at the sight of her broken nose; the boys looking at each other, internally debating whether this was a challenge they were supposed to rise to or not, a question that was answered by a hard stare from the oldest of the old men, bald, with a wispy white beard and mustache, who reminded Nina, in a moment of levity, of Ho Chi Minh.

  Jimmy nodded, smiled at the oldest man.

  “Hello, Mr. Trinh,” he said.

  Respect, Nina thought. Important with the Asians, especially the old OGs that directed the young suicide shooters like these all eye-fucking her. She thought about how to play it, followed Jimmy’s lead, but fuck these young punks…she was Nina Capushek, and if they wanted to rock and roll, she’d play.

  “Jimmy, how are you?” Mr. Trinh said, nodding back, holding out his hand to shake. He didn’t get up.

  The other old men studied Nina with interest. Not the sexual kind.

  “Officer,” Mr. Trinh said. “Welcome to my restaurant.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Nina said. “Smells wonderful. Jimmy says you make the best pho in town.”

  “You like pho?” Mr. Trinh said with seeming delight. “Mine is very good. It is the best in town.”

  “I love pho.”

  “You must try, then.”

  Nina smiled. Jimmy said, “We’d love to have lunch, Mr. Trinh. But we don’t want to intrude on you.”

  “No intrusion, Jimmy. You are a friend. Please. You and your friend join us.”

  Mr. Trinh waved his hand at the waitress, a young and blushing Vietnamese girl who hurried over and pushed a smaller table next to the Old Guys Table. He rattled something off in Vietnamese, then said, “You like Vietnamese coffee? With ice? Special pho, maybe some spring rolls?”

  “Sounds great,” Nina said.

  She and Jimmy sat down, Jimmy beside Mr. Trinh, Nina at a right angle to Jimmy where she could see the young shooters and the door.

  “These are my friends,” Mr. Trinh said. “Mr. Truang, Mr. Minh, Mr. Dang. We are all old friends from my country.”

  “Pleased to meet you all,” Jimmy said.

  “Likewise,” Nina said. “My name is Nina Capushek.”

  “You are Sergeant, yes?” Mr. Dang, a rotund man who would look like the Buddha were it not for the flat depth of his dark eyes. “Police Sergeant?”

  “Yes,” Nina said. “I am.”

  “You help a girl, maybe three months ago? Young girl?” Dang said.

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. “I know this girl. Her family. They were very grateful to you.”

  Nina shrugged. “I was just doing my job. It is what I do.”

  Dang turned to the others and spoke in his language. The four old men appraised her, then Jimmy.

  “You are welcome here, Sergeant Capushek,” Mr. Trinh said.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Jimmy sat quietly and let the conversation ebb and flow. She saw that, and was grateful for a moment, just a moment, for how he let her work. So many of the men she worked with felt they had to dictate the flow…and they had no sensitivity, no appreciation for nuance and subtlety. Jimmy reminded her of…

  She put that thought away.

  The spring rolls came right away, along with tall glasses of ice next to chipped coffee cups with a silver espresso pot dripping the thick black Vietnamese roast into the sweetened condensed milk in the cup. Jimmy sat and stared at his for a moment, till Nina reached over and stirred the coffee into the condensed milk, making a thick light brown confection that she poured over the ice.

  “This will put lead in your pencil,” she said. “Also, if you get too much hot in your soup, this cuts the heat right away…”

  The four old men laughed.

  Mr. Dang said, “You know about Vietnamese food?”

  “My favorite,” Nina said.

  “True?” Mr. Trinh said.

  “Yes.”

  They tasted their coffees, ate the spring rolls, dipping them in the spiced peanut sauce that came along. Then the bowls of soup came. Nina again showed Jimmy how to shred the fresh basil and cilantro and stir into the bowl, season it with liquid pepper sauce and a dash of fish oil, how to scoop the soup up in a spoon in one hand and wield chopsticks with the other.

  “This is great,” Jimmy said.

  “You never had?” Nina said.

  “Jimmy likes crushed rice meat,” Mr. Trinh said. “It’s very good.”

  “I’ll try that next time,” Nina said.

  Mr. Trinh sipped his straight espresso. The other men toyed with their cups.

  “You must try,” Mr. Trinh said. He paused. “Mr. Dang told us about how you helped a Cambodian girl. Her family is very grateful. They are our friends. If there is ever anything we can do to help you, we would like to be your friends, too.”

  Jimmy looked at Nina, inclined his head towards her. Nina took the cue.

  “Thank you,” Nina said. “I appreciate, and respect, your offer. I would like your help.”

  “What can we do?” Mr. Trinh said.

  “There is a man I am looking for,” Nina said. “A very bad man. He hurts women. He is wanted by many people. He is not American, he is Slovak, but most people think he is Russian. His name is Vladimir Darko. He is injured, beaten, limping, his right hand in a cast, injuries to his left. He was involved in a shooting at a club. He was with a man we believe to be either Vietnamese or Cambodian. We think this man may be known to you…”

  The four men were silent. They regarded her
.

  “My only concern,” Nina said carefully, “Is this man. For what he has done to women. Anything else…I am not concerned with. My job is to find this man and to stop him. If I can find the man he was with, I can find the man I want. I wish to show you respect, I wish to have your friendship…but I will find this man. That is the help I want.”

  The table of teenage shooters was silent. The boys watched the old men, the girls watched the boys with a mixture of apprehension and excitement. The four old men spoke among themselves. The discussion became heated, with some arm waving from the two who had not yet spoken to Jimmy and Nina.

  Jimmy watched them, his face impassive. Nina, she ate her soup down to the last morsel in the bottom of the bowl, expertly fishing out the meat balls and limp basil with her chopsticks before scraping out the last of the broth with her soup spoon.

  Finally, Mr. Trinh spoke.

  “My friend, Minh, will take you someplace. Show you something. We respect you, Sergeant Capushek. You are friends with our friend, Jimmy, and you have helped some of our friends, too. We would like to be your friend…”

  Nina was silent. Noncommittal. She’d been down this road before, and knew what was on the table.

  She didn’t play that shit.

  And this…she’d see how it played out.

  But it was always good to have friends on both sides of the fence. Because in the real world, friends were better than money in the bank when it came to getting things done.

  “Thank you,” she said. “What do we owe you for lunch?”

  “No, please,” Mr. Trinh said. “You are our guest. Please.”

  She nodded, rose. Jimmy followed her lead. Mr. Minh led them out, and the eyes of the young shooters tracked them like ducks in an arcade. Outside, Mr. Minh, a rail thin man whose clothes hung on him like a scarecrow, became suddenly animated.

  “I am so happy you came here,” he said, in excellent, almost unaccented English. “I am to tell you that this man you are looking for, his name is Ho. Dang Vinh Ho. He lives here.” He took out a small leather-bound notebook, took out a silver Cross pen, and wrote an address down, then neatly tore out the page and handed it to Nina. “The man you are looking for, the Russian, he is with him. They sleep there. They eat often at this restaurant.” He jotted down another address and a name: Golden Rooster.

  “I am also to tell you,” Minh went on, “that Ho has no affiliation with any of our interests. Not any longer. That we would be glad to deal with him ourselves, if…”

  “No if,” Nina said. “That’s my job. I’ll handle it.”

  “But of course,” Mr. Minh said. Something in his manner reminded Nina of a French waiter, a sneaky obsequiousness that hid something else. “If I can do anything else, please call me. Here is my cell phone number.”

  He took yet another small page and jotted down his cell phone number and printed his name in neat block letters.

  “Thank you,” Nina said.

  “Thank you,” Jimmy said.

  “We’re happy to help you,” Mr. Minh said. “One can never have too many friends, yes?”

  He inclined his head, almost a bow, and backed away before turning and going back into the restaurant.

  “That guy’s a killer,” Nina said.

  “Yep,” Jimmy said. “1st ARVN Rangers in Viet Nam. Company commander, then he was seconded to the 7th Special Forces. He’s a Phoenix grad.”

  Nina looked at him. “He’s probably killed more people than I’ve had sex with.”

  Jimmy didn’t laugh. “You could take the Nile, the Mississippi, and the Amazon rivers, turn them to blood and run them past his front door. Wouldn’t amount to a drop in the bucket that old boy carries around in his head.”

  “How the fuck do you know all these guys?” Nina said.

  “Another life.”

  “You’ve got more lives than an alley cat.”

  “There’s some truth in that.”

  Nina fanned out the strips of paper in her hand like a winning draw at poker.

  “Let’s go hunting,” she said. “Feel like taking a ride?”

  “Sure,” Jimmy said, as though it were the natural progression in things. “Love to.”

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Vladimir Darko didn’t like not knowing what Ho’s friends said. The Vietnamese men ignored him, which pissed him off, but he refused to ask what they were saying. He relied instead on the dip and play of their body language to keep him tuned into the changing tenor of the room. Ho hadn’t even bothered to introduce them by name. He just said, “These are my friends.”

  His four friends dressed like refugees from a Goth metal band -- black, more black, leather, wrap around sunglasses. Like that movie, he forgot the name of it, about the man in the machine. Like the Gorky book, the Man In The Wall.

  But they packed heavy heat.

  Lots of nines: Glock 17s with the extended 33 round magazine, one of them sporting a matched set in a shoulder holster rig beneath his long leather duster; a couple of Sig P-226s; the one loner, who spent a lot of time staring at Vladi with an expressionless face -- a tiny mole at the corner of his mouth bothered Vladi. It looked like it might be painted on, and that the boy might be wearing eye shadow and make up. The loner had another double shoulder holster rig, but he had a matched set of Para Ordnance P-14s, the 14 shot .45 automatics built up on an 1911 frame. With one in each hand, he had 28 rounds of .45 to go.

  Those were just the short guns.

  Long guns: two tricked out M-4 carbines, with lasers, white lights, and telescopic sights mounted on rails atop the flat top receiver and on the front hand guards; a Krinkov, the short barreled AK-47, and then Mr. Loner With the .45s toted a Benelli M-1, a semiautomatic shotgun that held nine rounds. He looped a sportsman’s tote bag over his head, the top cut away to expose dozens of shotgun shells.

  Ho had his pistols and an AK-47, with another tote bag stuffed with ten 30 round magazines. Vladi carried an AK as well; he was used to working off both shoulders, and would fire it left handed.

  They were loaded for bear.

  ***

  In the back storage room of the Soul Palace that Steep Ride and his crew used as an office, Steep Ride surveyed with pride his crew. They bopped and laughed, joked with the rising excitement.

  They liked to shoot.

  They liked to kill.

  And they were very, very good at it.

  Which is why they commanded the prices they did. If somebody needed to be got, it was widely known that Steep Ride was the go-to guy. His crew, while not particularly subtle (the drive by with multiple automatic weapons was their signature technique), was reliable and reasonably priced as hitters went.

  So business was good.

  But this was a straight up beef, a head on fight, an incursion on their territory, their livelihood.

  So this wasn’t just business.

  It was fun.

  Steep Ride had a moment, something he had from time to time, when he reflected on the life he’d chosen. Money, bitches, all the bling…that was all good.

  But hell, this was fun.

  That’s something the citizens didn’t get, stuck in their fucked up jobs with their fucked up little houses, with their snot nosed kids…

  Steep Ride remembered his own childhood and grinned fiercely.

  Hell yeah. A long way from that, huh, bitch?

  He double checked the bungee cord on his folding stock AK, one of the new ones he’d bought from the Komarovs. He’d had it out in the woods outside of Lake City, in a little clearing they shot at. He put 500 rounds through it, full auto, some semi, too, make sure the sights were good to go. That’s what was good about the Russian AKs instead of those piece of shit Romanian WASRs and their fucked up front sight posts…not that it mattered at the ranges he liked to shoot at.

  He slung the bungee cord sling over his head and shoulder, let the AK hang, shouldered it once, punching it out against the tension of the bungee, locking his arms and elbows out, a
lmost as rigid as using the stock, but a hell of a lot easier to use inside the Escalades they had pulled up outside.

  “Yo, G-Boy,” Steep Ride said. “Hurry the fuck up with those, huh?”

  G-Boy, a huge and hulking banger in baggy jersey and pants that had to be at least XXXXL, lifted his head and smiled an almost beatific smile. He thumbed ammunition into the curved magazines for the AKs and stacked them neatly on the table. He wore a double set of rubber gloves.

  “Yo,” he said.

  Leroi worked the action on his AK, sprayed a little more Break Free into the ejection port. “When you think this motherfucker coming?”

  Steep Ride shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t matter. We gone go look for him.”

  He looked around the room. “Where the fuck is Doobie at? I tole him to get his ass down here.”

  Leroi shrugged. “He’s not answering his cell.”

  “Call that bitch again and tell him get the fuck down here.”

  There was a tap on the door.

  Guns were leveled at the door.

  “Who is it?” Steep Ride said.

  “Gina,” a woman said. “I got a package for you, Ride.”

  Steep Ride opened the door himself. A tall black woman, her ass perfectly round and hard as a basketball with sprayed on pants, handed him a cardboard Priority Mail box.

  “The fuck is this?” Steep Ride said.

  “Just come for you. Special Delivery, I guess.”

  “This Priority Mail.”

  “I don’t know, Ride. Motherfucker just gave it to me, said it was for you.”

  The box was heavy. Steep Ride slammed the door in Gina’s face, set the box on the table.

  “The fuck you got?” Leroi said.

  “Dunno.” Steep Ride pulled an oversized folding knife, a Spyderco Chinook, thumbed open the blade, ran the razor edge over the packing tape, opened the box. A Styrofoam lunch box was inside. He lifted the top and looked in, jumped back.

  “Motherfucker!”

  Doobie’s head was inside.

  Stapled to his forehead was a wrinkled 3x5 index card. Handwritten in block letters were the words: khuy tebe v zhopu! Beneath that were the words: “From Russian to English, a dick to your asshole.”

  “Oh, bitch…” Steep Ride breathed. “I’m going to fucking kill you…”