Kill the Messenger

47

Eddie Davis had been told numerous times in his life that he would never amount to anything. The reasons varied. Some people blamed him, said he was stupid and lazy and didn’t apply himself. Other people—his mother, specifically—had always blamed fate. Life just had it in for Eddie. Eddie chose to believe the second reason.

He had plenty of brains, lots of great ideas. Of course, none of them involved needing an education or doing any kind of hard work—that was what made them great ideas. Only an idiot would want to have to work. People were jealous of him because he had figured out that particular life mystery, and they turned on him every time. That was what happened again and again to screw up his life.

This fucking mess he was in now was a perfect example. He had masterminded a fucking brilliant plan. And the one person he should have been able to trust had turned on him. His own lawyer, for God’s sake.

A person was supposed to be able to trust his lawyer. There was that confidential privilege thing, right? That had been the genius of the plan—he hooked his lawyer in when the game was already in motion. The murder had already happened. Whatever he told Lenny was confidential, so the lawyer couldn’t rat him out. Eddie had needed someone to take the pictures of the client paying him off. He would split the money 70–30. Of course he deserved more since it was his idea and he had done the killing. The deal was too sweet for Lenny to resist.

They had milked the client a couple of times, then agreed to one final big payday in exchange for the negatives. It was then that Eddie had heard detectives were nosing around, asking questions about him. The detectives who had investigated the murder. That meant only one thing to Eddie: Lenny had dropped the dime on him and figured to end up with all the money and the one negative they had saved out in case they wanted to use it later on. Lenny would have cut him out of his own game, and run off to Tahiti or someplace no one would find him.

A man’s lawyer was supposed to take his secrets to the grave, right?

Lenny Lowell had taken Eddie’s there early. And it served him right.

Eddie had set up the final drop, told Lenny the client would be there, told the client nothing. His plan had been to intercept the negatives and kill the messenger as a warning to Lenny. Then he’d have the lawyer in his pocket to stand up for him, lie for him, give him alibis, do whatever Eddie needed him for in the future.

But everything had gone wrong because of the fucking bike messenger, and Eddie had been so damned mad. And it was all Lenny’s fault anyway, so if he couldn’t kill the messenger, he might as well kill Lenny. Get the lawyer to give up the last negative, then beat his head to a pulp. There was just something so satisfying in beating a head in.

“Ouch!” Eddie howled, twisting around to give the bitch stitching him an ugly look. “Fucking cunt! That hurts!”

The woman averted her eyes and apologized in Mexican. At least, it sounded like an apology.

He turned back around, and took a pull on the tequila bottle and a drag on his cigarette. One of the cops had nicked him good. The bullet had torn a gash in his side about three inches long, and it felt like it had maybe chipped a rib. If the bullet had hit a couple of inches to the left, it would have taken out a kidney, and he’d be dead. He should figure he was lucky, but he didn’t.

If he was lucky, his fucking twelve-K Jap Ninja wouldn’t be scrap metal at the bottom of the fucking Bunker Hill Steps. The only lucky thing about it was that he hadn’t broken his neck, and he’d been able to jack a car and get the hell out of there.

Now he sat in this shithole, backdoor, spic “clinic” in East LA, getting stitched up by some bitch who probably spent her days cleaning toilets for white people.

Hector Munoz, the guy who ran the place, sure as hell wasn’t a doctor, but he would keep his mouth shut for a couple hundred bucks, and he always had a good supply of Oxycodone—Eddie’s drug of choice.

The cell phone Eddie had left lying on the metal table beside him—the table with all the needles and scissors and the bedpan he was using for an ashtray—went off. He knew who it was. He’d been waiting for the call. He’d been working on his lie for two hours. His client was expecting the negatives. Now Eddie had to break the news that that wasn’t going to happen.

He grabbed the phone. “Yeah?”

“You can have the negatives.” He’d never heard the voice before, young, male. The bike messenger. “I just don’t want to die, that’s all. It’s not worth it. I thought Abby Lowell would pay for them. I never figured she’d call the cops. She told me she was in it with you—”

“How the fuck did you get this phone number?”

“From her.”

He sounded scared. He should be. This kid had caused Eddie nothing but grief. He’d wrecked a windshield, wrecked the Ninja, cost Eddie time and money. Shit, he’d had to kill two extra people because of this little fuck. And now the kid thought he could shake him down.

“What do you want?” Eddie snapped.

Nurse Ratched jabbed him with the needle again. He swung around and backhanded her, knocking her into the metal table, making a lot of noise. The woman put her hands over her face and started to cry.

“Tie the fucking knot and get the fuck away from me!”

She started blabbering and jabbering. Hector Munoz cracked the door open from the other side of his business—a strip club featuring a naked all-girl Mariachi band. He smiled nervously, his thin mustache rippling over his upper lip like a worm.

“Eddie? Muchacho?”

“Shut the fucking door!”

Eddie put his phone against his head again. “What do you want?”

“I want out,” the kid said. “I just want out. I don’t even know who’s in the fucking pictures. I just knew if the negatives were worth killing for, they had to be worth money. Throw me a couple grand. Enough for me to get out of town—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie snapped. “Be at Elysian Park in twenty minutes.”

“Go out there so you can kill me? Fuck that. I’ve got what you want. You can come to me.”

“Where are you?”

“Under the bridge at Fourth and Flower.”

“How do I know you won’t set me up?”

“With the cops? They think I killed the lawyer, why would I call them? If I wanted cops, I would have stayed in Pershing Square.”

“I still don’t like it,” Eddie said.

“Then don’t come. You know what? Forget it. Maybe I can sell them to a tabloid or something.”

“All right. Don’t get your balls in a twist. There’s gotta be cops all over down there still. It’s too risky. I’m driving a stolen car, for Christ’s sake.”

“That’s your problem.”

Eddie wanted to reach through the phone and choke the little shit. “Look, I can get you five grand, but you have to give me a couple hours to get the money, and the meet has to be somewhere cops aren’t driving by every three minutes.”

Eddie thought about it for a minute. He wanted a place where there wouldn’t be a lot of people around at this time of night. Had to have escape routes and good access to a freeway. “Olvera Street Plaza. Two hours. And, kid? Double-cross me, and I’ll skin your dick and feed it to you while you bleed to death. You got that?”

“Yeah. Whatever. Just bring the money.”

Eddie ended the call and got off the exam table. The door cracked open again, and Hector slithered in. He was skinny and oily, and shook all over like a shit-ass Chihuahua dog. The little Mexican chick hurried up to him and rattled off a lot of gibberish, gesturing at Eddie. Eddie took a last drag on his cigarette, and shrugged into his shirt.

“Hector, I need to borrow your car.”

Hector smiled that nervous smile again. “Sure, man, whatever.” He pulled a set of keys out of his pants pocket and tossed them to Eddie. “It’s the blue Toyota with the flames all down the sides.”

“Great.”

“What you gonna do, man?”

Eddie looked at him with his dead eyes and said, “I’m gonna go kill somebody. I’ll see you later.”