The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(38)

“No,” he said after he took a little while to think about it.

“Good. I like talking face-to-face, so I’m going to come a little closer. I’m not dropping my knife, and I don’t expect you to drop yours. Let’s just maybe not kill each other until we’ve run out of better ideas, okay?”

He fell silent.

I edged closer. He leaned back against the inner wall of the third stall, one arm cradled protectively to his chest, the other clutching my knife’s twin. He eyed me like a rabid dog, but he didn’t bite.

“I’m Daniel Faust,” I said, “but I’m figuring you knew that, since you were sent to kill me. You got a name?”

“Kim,” he spat.

“What’s your first name?”

“Mister.”

“Okay.” I held up my open hand, keeping my distance. “I’d like to say it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mister Kim, but I think this day’s been pretty shitty for both of us.”

“What did you do to my partner?” The words sounded more like an accusation than a question.

“Whatever I had to, to survive. I’d apologize, but let’s face it, you were both trying to carve me up like a turkey. Fleiss didn’t warn you about what I was capable of, did she?”

One of his eyelids twitched.

“That’s right,” I said. “I know who sent you. What I don’t know—and what I’m really interested in finding out—is why. Because last I checked, she and I were on amicable terms. That, and she had every chance to kill me a couple of days ago, but she didn’t even try. Why the change of heart?”

“I,” he seethed, “will tell you nothing.”

I glanced down at the knife in his hand and felt the weight of mine, the black steel cold against my palm.

“You wanted to know,” I said, “about that thing I did to your partner. What is it, do you think? What could do that to a man, without leaving a mark on his skin? What could make him scream like that?”

I looked him dead in the eye.

“Because I can arrange a demonstration.”





20.




I try not to bluff with an unloaded gun, but you work with what you have. Kim and I stared at each other, neither of us blinking, neither standing down.

He swallowed. The slightest hint of a nervous gulp.

“I don’t ask for reasons,” he said. “Not my business.”

“So you’ll murder anyone, as long as the money’s green?”

Kim snorted. “How many men have you killed in the name of Nicky Agnelli’s bank account? Don’t act like you’re better than me.”

“You don’t know the whole story.”

“Don’t presume you know mine.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “So Fleiss didn’t say why she had it in for me?”

“No. But she wanted the job done as soon as possible. I normally take at least two weeks to prepare for a hit. Studying the target, securing the killing ground, preparing evac routes…no. She wanted you done immediately. And the more it hurt, the better.” He frowned, as if jolted by a strange memory.

“She said something you didn’t like. Something that threw you off-balance. What was it? C’mon, you can tell me. We’re both pros here.”

He shook his head. “That was odd, now that you mention it. I’ve had special requests like that, where the client wants me to take my time, really make the target suffer. But two things always go along with that. First, they always whine about the target and all the reasons they deserve to die slow. Even when I say I don’t care, they’ve got to go on, and on, and on. Justifying themselves. She didn’t.”

“So she didn’t act like she had a hate-on for me, but she still wanted me to suffer. What’s the other thing?”

“They always want me to deliver some stupid speech. The target always has to know who sent me, and why they’re about to die, and—” He shook his head. “It’s ridiculous. And embarrassing.”

“People have no respect for professionalism,” I said.

“Exactly.” He waggled the tip of the knife at me, wincing as his fractured arm shifted an inch. “You get it. I’m trying to provide an efficient, skilled service, but no, they want me to stand there and talk the target to death, like I’m some kind of Saturday morning cartoon villain. Anyway, that was the other weird thing with Fleiss. No message.”

“She didn’t want me to know she sent you?”

“She didn’t care. I even asked her, since she’d requested a slow death, and she just looked at me like she didn’t understand the question. It was as if…you were important, but you weren’t important. Like ordering your death was something on a to-do list, right between laundry and shopping.”

“So she arranged for you to infiltrate the prison?”

He rolled his eyes. “Please. My partner and I did that ourselves. You aren’t the first target we’ve killed in that shower. It’s always been gang-related before, though. Oh. That was the other weird thing. We actually had a better plan, but she said no.”

“Yeah? What was it?”

“Fake some transfer paperwork and make them move you,” Kim said. “Plan was to ambush the bus on the road back to Aberdeen. We’d perch on the roadside with a concealed machine gun, wait for the bus to roll by, and open fire on full auto. Maybe lay a spike strip along the road. With the wheels blown, you’d be a sitting duck in there. Quick, easy, and no need for us to risk infiltrating the prison.”