A long yellow morning had just been proclaimed—the kind that follows the swift, sweeping desert dawns and sounds like electric guitars and truck engines. A. Z. Kimrean sat smoking a cigarette on the curb outside the Luxuria, next to their hat, stanching the hemorrhage from their freshly realigned nose with a clump of tissues. Any given Saturday.
The brawl lasted a good two hours before the San Carnal police saw few enough people standing to intervene safely. Once they had taken over, it had been a swift operation: the club had been evacuated and cordoned off, the patrons frisked, and the less white of them arrested. A cluster of police vans and ambulances was still obstructing the westbound traffic on Palm Boulevard. From where they were sitting, Kimrean was now watching the all-black figure of Danny Mojave hatching from the crowd of uniforms and neon vests. Zooey had ample time to appreciate the aesthetic of the back-lit figure walking the length of the block in what the wide shot made feel like slow motion: the guy playing the cop playing the gangster playing the man in control—and carrying a box of doughnuts. Adrian wondered how the cop’s cover had held up this long.
A few steps behind him, smoothing his stress-proof suit as he crossed the crime scene tape, came Xander Lyon.
Danny arrived first and peeked at A.Z. over his sunglasses. “You look good,” he said.
“You should see the biker’s face.”
“The one who hit you wasn’t a biker.”
“I know, but I couldn’t retaliate against that one—he was expecting it.”
Xander Lyon joined them and extended a hand. Kimrean misinterpreted the gesture and used the hand to help themselves up; Lyon decided to chalk it up as a shake.
“Mr. Kimrean, Danny has told me he called you as soon as he found the body. I want to apologize for my behavior earlier. I am grateful for your coming so quickly.”
Everything in that line sounded exquisitely civil. Kimrean nodded, shooing the formalities away.
“I am grateful,” Lyon repeated, “yet sorry to have wasted your time. Your job was to confirm that the death of my brother Michael was an act of war. I’m afraid that is beyond doubt now.”
“Is it?”
Danny’s fingers discreetly breezed Kimrean’s hand.
“Yeah, I guess it is,” Adrian said.
“My father is devastated, as you can imagine. By his request, I am now in charge of responding to this…hostile takeover. Meanwhile, I think we have to let you go.”
From the inside of his jacket he produced a thick wallet. Kimrean almost heard the flock of dead presidents inside it gasping for fresh air.
“How much do we owe you?”
“Oh.” Kimrean queried Danny, unsure whether to decline the offer or to celebrate that the Federal Reserve was having an open house day. “Well, Danny was really just calling in a favor.”
“Oh, no, I won’t hear about that. Name a number.”
“Okay. How about that of that blonde in the flowery sarong?” Zooey pointed at the photograph inside the wallet. “I wouldn’t mind taking her to a horror movie and yawning my way around her shoulders, down Bambalooza Canyon, and into Funny-Name-for-Vagina Valley, if you know what I mean.”
Xander Lyon looked up, and in the next sentence his voice frosted the asphalt.
“That’s my mother.”
A pause, while Kimrean maneuvered out of that one.
“Right. So, should I just call your home and ask for her, or—”
Danny decided to end the sketch at that point by shoving a doughnut into Zooey’s mouth, hurriedly telling Xander he would take care of the bill, and dragging Kimrean out of the solecism. Adrian kept an orange-brown eye on the gangster until Danny had pushed them around the corner.
“And you thought he was the smart brother,” he commented.
Danny ignored the remark and made them sit down on the curb, facing the glowing sirens.
“The Lyon is not just devastated,” he explained. “He’s stupefied. Xander is now acting commander in chief and he’s just put our lieutenants to DEFCON One. The Japanese are back at the top of our enemy list. Tonight, our boys in L.A. are moving against the Red Mum soldiers on the Westside.”
Kimrean bit on the doughnut, squirting banana jelly over two blocks, and meditated aloud. “If the Red Mums are responsible—”
“You doubt that now?”
“If they are, what makes you think they’re fighting for territory? How come your cartels are at war, yet their dealers are just standing on the corner opposite yours, like nothing’s happening? And even if you strike first, who cares if you win a corner? You’re sending pawns to fight pawns. Meanwhile, there’s a sniper taking out your major pieces.”
Danny sat down next to them and lit a cigarette—one of his hand-rolled ones. Kimrean helped themselves to another doughnut to celebrate the chess-themed metaphor.
“You’re wasting manpower,” Adrian resumed, indifferent to the fact that Zooey had her mouth full. “They killed the youngest brother; they just killed the middle brother. Who would you say is next? Don’t think like a cop or a gangster; think like a fable writer.”
“The eldest brother.”
“Brothers Grimm 101. If my advice is worth a penny, and it’s actually worth a little more when adjusted for inflation, your top priority is to protect your remaining pieces. And a free tip: stay away from Xander. Mikey fell all alone; Frankie dragged down two bodyguards; Xander is gonna take his own terra-cotta army to the grave.”
Danny coughed, or chuckled, and took off his sunglasses. Apart from his nose being whole, unlike Kimrean’s, he too looked like he’d lost a fight in the last few days.
“You’re looking at Xander’s new head of security,” he said. “Effective ten minutes ago.”
Kimrean bit on their doughnut and munched in silence.
“Hey, congratulations.”
Danny took another drag, and for a while they just sat there on the curb, watching the blinking blue and red lights of police cars in the quiet morning.
Rebellion dawned on Danny after a minute or two. “But we can’t just play defense. We need a strategy! They have a strategy!”
“Do they?”
All three locked eyes.
“Do you really believe the guy who just killed Frankie had a plan?” Adrian continued. “The only thing he planned ahead was bringing a flower.”
“Well, he did his homework,” Danny argued. “He knew the place pretty well—went straight into Frankie’s office.”
“So did I and I’ve never been here before.”
“And no cameras caught him? And what about Villa Leona? He exploited every breach in our defense!”
“And yet he forgot to pack a gun there,” Adrian retorted. “Think about it. He had to take Mikey’s after finishing him—a nine-millimeter Beretta—the one he used here.”
Danny mulled that over and tossed his joint on the asphalt. “Motherfucker. He went to Villa Leona armed with a flower?”
“Like a mime confronting the riot police. The funny thing is this time he had a gun, but he only intended to use it to deal with the potatoes: the guy at the door and the bodyguard in the corridor. When he got to Frankie, he punched him. Same with Mikey. That’s your killer’s whole strategy: go up to a gangster and start a fistfight. He’s got balls, but he’s not a planner.”
“Except for the chrysanthemum.”
“Except it’s not a chrysanthemum,” Adrian counter-objected. “I looked it up yesterday: it’s actually a rare variety of rose called Erithra lunis. ‘Red moon.’ It’s native to Canada; there are a few breeders in California.”
“What does that mean? The killer ran out of chrysanthemums?”
“Or he only wants us to believe it was the Japanese.”
“Why? Who wins if the two cartels destroy each other?”
The answer reached them both at the same time, uttered in a perfectly choreographed epiphany: “Villahermosa!”
They parted eyes, watchful of the implications. Danny regretted having put out his last joint. Adrian rubbed his side of their face.
Danny spoke first: “But Villahermosa would send a real assassin to Villa Leona. Not a brawler.”
“Maybe they didn’t send an assassin,” Adrian considered. “Maybe they sent a messenger, a diplomat, and Mikey started a fight. He did the same thing in neutral land’s parking lot.”
“So we’re saying someone just went to talk and things got heated?” Danny asked, skeptical, though in retrospect he believed the late Mikey Lyon more than capable of heating a situation up to that point. “Mikey and someone from Villahermosa meeting in secret? In the pool cabana at Villa Leona?”
“I’m suddenly interested in this conversation,” Zooey said, joining the dialogue, but Adrian flicked her off again. “Don’t mention it to anyone,” he advised. “It’s useless speculating when we can just find out what happened in that room.”
“The wiretap,” Danny guessed.
“It won’t be too juicy, or the FBI would have shared, but there might be details. Can you remember the name of the company who painted the pool house? The one who had an office here in San Carnal?”
“Yes, but it’s just a front; they won’t be there.”
“Nah, they will be. You said they came two weeks ago. They’ll keep the place for another week or so to avoid suspicion.”
“Right. It’s San Carnal Golden Star Painting Co. East Palm and 10th. Want a ride?”
“No need, my car is right there.”
“That’s my car,” Danny reminded them, hiding his exhaustion behind his glasses.
“Easy, buddy—I’m taking great care of it. It’s in pristine condition,” Zooey reassured him, grabbing another two doughnuts for the road. She was going to walk away when she remembered something. “Heh. You know, there was this guy whose car I borrowed once, and I called him a week later and told him, ‘Your car’s in pristine…’ (Chortle.) Only I actually meant—”
“I know—in Pristina, Kosovo.”
“Right. Did I tell you that one before? Oh, wait, it was your car, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Right. Good times. Well, see you in a while.”
Parking was no trouble on 10th Street, which ran through a quiet neighborhood of Victorian row houses whose only purpose was to trick the tourist into thinking that San Carnal’s history predated the invention of the compact disc. San Carnal Golden Star Painting Co.’s headquarters belonged to the kind of diminutive, merely symbolic strip mall space that often serves as a maildrop for money-laundering fronts and ghost companies, and that is only accidentally leased to legitimate professionals who, spurred by a motivational book on the magic of entrepreneurship, invest all their life savings in a Power Balance franchise or a vape shop. Happy to partake in that halfhearted collective pretension of lawful business, A.Z. tucked in their tank top, smacked the dust off their waistcoat, and waltzed into the store in their best impression of a law-abiding citizen ready to keep the gears of the economy turning.
The interior was skimpily lit and as boring as expected. A young man in a fresh sky-blue shirt and a twenty-dollar haircut flashed a standard welcome smile at them and returned his attention to the computer screen. Kimrean’s vision hopped along the featured palettes, the pigment swatches, a darkened back room, the unobstructed desk, and the clerk’s impeccable manicure.
“I’ll be with you in a second,” he said.
“No problem.” Kimrean grinned. “Minesweeper is a bitch on expert.”
The man stared red-handed at the visitor. His monitor was facing away from the customers.
“…But it reflects on your glasses,” Kimrean finished his thought. “Sorry for interrupting; you were highly recommended by an old friend who was really satisfied with you guys. A Mr. Lyon—does that ring a bell?”
“Uh…yes, I think it does,” he said, an eyebrow raised high enough to pose a danger to aviation.
“I’d love to hire the same team.”
“Oh, well, I think they’re busy today,” he said, ceremoniously opening a virgin appointment book, “but if you tell me what needs to be done, I’m sure we can squeeze you in.”
“That’s nice, but you see, it’s a precision job. If I could first speak to them in person…”
“I understand, but sadly they just started an office building in Palm Dale so—”
“No.” All smiles in the room vanished. “I want you to get your ass off that chair, go into the secret room in the back behind the stucco samples, and tell your partner in there with the minty aftershave that we need to talk.”
The clerk adjusted his glasses, took a couple breaths, and tried to squeeze in another full line. “I don’t know what you’re tal—”
“Go.”
“Okay.”
He rose, skedaddled to the back room, and pulled open the stucco display. A cyan glow of bored monitors oozed out from the chamber hidden behind it.
After five seconds, Kimrean ran out of patience and followed him inside.
“Keep your seat, thank you,” Adrian told the second agent, who had just sprung off his watch post. “A. Z. Kimrean, P.I. I’m working with SFPD on the Lyon case. You can check up with Detective Ted Demoines,” he added, flashing the badge they kept in their wallet and that they never really had the chance to brandish, either because most people are stupid enough to grant authority to whoever asserts it first and speaks fast enough, or because the usual visitors at Kimrean’s office—femmes fatales and teeth-pummeling thugs—were seldom interested in their qualifications. Which was a shame, considering how hard they had worked for them: Adrian had had to steal almost twelve hours from his summer reading program to get the law school diploma, and Zooey had to seduce a municipal clerk named Brunhilde to persuade her that all the time served in psychiatric wards mingling with sociopaths, pyromaniacs, and sex offenders satisfied the three thousand hours of fieldwork required to get their license. Not even the FBI agent now paid enough attention to the stupid badge to notice it was five years expired.
“I talked to Demoines yesterday,” the agent said, offering a hand that Zooey accepted. He was black, square-jawed, and way too caring about his biceps to be wasting away on a stakeout assignment. “Agent Marlow. That is Agent Dawes,” he said, re: the store clerk.
“Exulted to meet you,” Adrian said. “Who bugged the pool house in Villa Leona?”
“I did,” Marlow said.
“Terrible job. Who painted the ceiling?”
“He did.”
“That was neat. (To Marlow.) I’m sorry, I was hoping it would’ve been you too and I could praise you for something.” He pointed at the surveillance equipment in the room. “Why are you still listening? Nobody lives there anymore.”
“We haven’t got ears in the rest of the villa,” Dawes explained. “This is better than nothing.”
The demonstrative pronoun embraced the whole monitor-lit room, the little carnival of standby LEDs, an Empire State of plastic food containers and Styrofoam coffee cups, their dregs well into the process of becoming fossil fuels.
“You guys been here what, a week?” Zooey polled, attention flicking through several areas of interest in the bleak scenery before landing on Agent Marlow’s highway-billboard pecs.
“Yeah,” Marlow said, noticing the focus and rubbing at a beet stain on his necktie. “We…may have relaxed our standards a little.”
“But he hasn’t,” Kimrean pointed out, prize-showing Agent Dawes. “Look at him: all clean-shaven, perfect shirt, zero nose hair. He’s a young and dreamy Edward Norton.”
Dawes said nothing, but visibly tried to shrink his own body à la Ant-Man and sift through the attention.
Marlow reasoned: “Well, he has to be outside facing the customers.”
“Sure, it’s the customers of your imaginary paint store he’s trying to impress, who else?” Zooey said before Adrian changed the subject. “Whatever. So you guys have the death of Mikey Lyon recorded? Because that would be interesting.”
“If we were trying to solve that case, yes,” Dawes said. “But it’s the San Carnal sheriff’s turf; there’s no official investigation.”
Kimrean colonized an office chair.
“I am the official investigation. Play it for me.”
Marlow hesitated for a second, as though catching up with the different motifs in the conversation. Then he wheeled himself to the keyboard and loaded a new file.
“This is Tuesday after midnight,” he announced. He clicked on play and dialed up the speakers. Humming white noise padded the packed surveillance room. Adrian pushed every unwanted stimuli out of his half of the brain, curled up on their chair, and closed their eyes.
He heard a door slamming, clothes rustling, keys tinkling. He heard someone opening a window.
He heard Mikey Lyon’s cold, arrogant voice in secondhand Spanish.
“No, me ocuparé de ellos. ¿Quién se llevó las pertenencias? (…) ¿Ya regresó? (…) ¿De las Caimán? (…) Okay. No, le llamaré mañana.”
“We don’t know who he’s talking to here,” Dawes offered, “but he speaks Spanish with most of his men. We think it’s about—”
Kimrean shushed him. “Hilfiger’s body, the casualty in the shooting the night before. Don’t worry, I got it.”
After that there was a stretch of humming breeze. Agent Dawes checked on the P.I.: their right hand seemed to rock slightly, as though surfing the fluctuation of white noise.
Suddenly, there was a commotion: too many steps in too short a time. The same voice pronounced a single word: “You.”
What followed was not as much a fight as interference, a random sequence of static bursts, punctuated by a human puff or a gasp here and there. Dawes and Marlow had heard it several times; it was all too low-fi to evoke a picture.
Then, a gunshot.
Silence. A moan. A gurgle of blood. Then nothing.
Then a second shot.
Adrian raised his hand, to prevent the studio audience from standing up before the end credits. Another twenty seconds’ worth of white noise followed, which culminated in a stampede of male voices: the guards finding the corpse. Adrian had enough.
“Captivating.” (To Marlow.) “Why the minty aftershave, anyway?”
Marlow faltered, the change of topic catching him unprepared again.
“I’m not trying to impress anyone,” he said, in a tone that clearly didn’t encourage further conversation.
“Not at all. Got any leftover pizza?”
“We don’t eat pizza,” Dawes said.
“You don’t eat pizza in a stakeout,” Zooey noted, pointing at the pile of empty food containers, not pizza boxes. “Of course. It’s murder on your waist, but we’re not trying to impress anyone.” She kicked off the wall, singing as she spun on her chair: “Two bros / Working undercover in the back room of a paint shop / Five feet apart because they’re-not-gay!”
Adrian’s hand grabbed the table and brought the chair to a stop. “Just ignore that. Go back to where he says ‘You.’ ”
Marlow, a deep frown settling on his impressive forehead, returned to the computer and clicked on a solitary peak in the audio mountainscape on the screen. Mikey Lyon’s voice boomed out of the speakers again: “You.”
“That’s Yu Osoisubame,” Marlow captioned after pressing pause. “The Phantom Ninja.”
“No, it’s not,” Dawes complained. “He says ‘you,’ in English.”
“But he speaks Spanish to most of his people.”
“Not his father.”
“Fathers use the door,” Adrian pointed out. “It’s no one from the household, but it’s still someone he knows.”
He fell silent after that. The FBI resumed the argument:
DAWES: He also speaks English with the Japanese.
MARLOW: The Phantom Ninja is Japanese.
DAWES: But he’s never met the Phantom Ninja; he wouldn’t see him and say “You.” Or “Yu.”
MARLOW: Maybe he just saw the Phantom Ninja and said “You” because all the Japanese look alike to him.
DAWES: That’s racist.
“Oh, God, I could listen to your sweet bickering all day,” Zooey said sincerely, blinking twice the normal amount. “Imagine you guys arguing whether to order beets in your salad.”
“I don’t like beets,” Marlow complained.
“Whatever,” Adrian resumed. “Play it again, Sam.”
Marlow sighed, resumed the file from the aftermath of “You.” Kimrean, legs now stretched out to opposite corners of the spacious phone booth width of the room, narrated as they listened.
“That’s Mikey Lyon running for his gun in a drawer. (Sharp thuds.) Kick to the shin. Punch to the sternum. (Clang.) There’s the gun falling. (Points to a corner of the room; instinctively, Dawes and Marlow follow the P.I.’s index.) Mikey leans on the armchair. (Whiplike smack; crash.) Punch to the jaw, Mikey falls along with the armchair. He has time to stand up. (Floorboards squeaking.) He’s stumbling. (Deep intake of air.) Improvised charge, easy to dodge. (Crunch, gasp.) Kick to the shin—broken tibia. (Thud, thud, crack.) Two jabs to the face; broken nose. (Clinking.) Loose tooth. (Rustling, groaning, claws scratching on wood.) They’re on the floor now. Tables turn; Mikey’s the top. (Loud whack.) Mikey’s the bottom. They’re struggling away from the microphone. (Adrian’s finger pans to the right.) They’re heading for the gun. Mikey has it. (Wham.) Mikey lost it.”
(Gunshot.)
Marlow pushed the volume up to eleven. The following moan sounded like the whole building was in pain.
(Gurgle of blood.)
“Did he just say ‘Why?’ ” Marlow realized.
“The bullet’s gone through his lung,” Kimrean explained. “Now the murderer is showing him why.”
(Breathing.)
(Fast, heavy breathing.)
(GUNSHOT.)
Dawes flinched at the sound of the blast.
“Does this tell us anything new?” Marlow polled, dialing down the volume.
“It does to me,” Adrian said. “It tells me Danny should cut down on the pot.”
“Who?”
“An ear-witness. He told me the two gunshots were a second apart; that’s a five-second gap. He was high at the time. Which also explains how he practically bumped into the murderer without seeing him.”
“How are five seconds significant?” Marlow asked.
“They are,” Dawes said. “It’s a trained assassin’s mark: a body shot to bring the target down and a cooler, well-placed round to the head.”
Kimrean whirled on their chair, addressing Marlow, pointing at Dawes: “And he’s a good listener too! What’s not to like?” (Whirls again, now facing Dawes.) “Only you’re mistaken; the second shot is not ‘cool.’ Listen to the breathing.”
Kimrean leaned over to click-select a hill range by the end of the sound file and press play. Breathing. Fast, heavy breathing.
“That’s Mikey,” Dawes ventured.
“No, it can’t be,” Adrian rebutted. “Mikey’s lungs are filled with blood; he wouldn’t sound like that. That is our murderer. And he’s not panting from physical exertion; he’s having an anxiety attack. This guy isn’t cool; he’s losing his mind. (Back to Marlow.) No reliable hit man takes their job to heart like that. This is personal. Mikey didn’t say ‘Yu’; he said ‘You.’ ”
Marlow nodded, a man convinced by the force of arguments. But the frown was still there.
“What about the flower?”
“Shit poopoo caca feces, always the stupid flower,” Kimrean snarled. “It’s a decoy. It’s not even a chrysanthemum.” They lay back, tipped their hat to scratch their hair. “I was expecting some verbal context, but obviously the intruder didn’t come to confer. You listened on Mikey for days; did he make any enemies?”
Dawes took a nearby notepad, flipped to a random page, and started reading.
“Wednesday the third, Mikey has a quarrel with one of his lieutenants in L.A.; he accuses him of being soft on his pushers, threatens to cut the guy’s balls off and hang them from the rearview mirror of his car. Thursday the fourth, Mikey on the phone with a lawyer in San Carnal; he promises he will steal his car, drive it into the guy’s house, and then set it on fire. Thursday the fourth, afternoon, Mikey almost drowns the pool boy because there’s a leaf in the water. Should I go on?”
“No, I get the picture.”
“But what about Frankie?” Marlow jumped in, visibly more engrossed with the case than he’d been in days. “Wasn’t he shot earlier today, with a chrysanthemum on his chest?”
“Not a chrysanthemum.”
“Whatever,” he insisted, now eager to score a point. “The question is, Mikey and Frankie didn’t share many contacts; they hardly saw each other. In fact, Mikey despised Frankie.”
“Everyone despised Frankie,” Adrian acknowledged. “He lacked guts. In a family of sharks, that made him a pariah. And yet he didn’t pose a threat; he didn’t feel like a threat; he had only one bodyguard and his club bouncers. Who could hate him so passionately?”
“Maybe it’s not the same killer,” Dawes suggested.
“Flower,” Marlow objected.
“The flower’s a decoy, you said it,” Dawes argued, pointing at Kimrean. “The first killer uses a flower to blame the Japanese; the second killer uses a flower to blame the first killer.”
Kimrean nodded. They did find that interesting.
“Good point,” they judged, standing up. “I’ll leave now, but you guys have made great progress. Close the shop tonight, go home, have a shower and a good night’s sleep.” Their left hand pointed at Marlow. “Then you go home, change your necktie.”
Marlow simply leaned forward and asked, “Has anyone told you before that you are weird AF?”
“Many times. Often right after I bring a crucial clue to their attention or I save their life,” Kimrean said from the threshold, and pointed at the surveillance equipment one last time. “Stay tuned, if you will. You may hear some interesting things.”
They closed the stucco display behind them and left the shop. They didn’t see how Agents Marlow and Dawes were left alone in the back room, one sitting by the computer, the other standing against the wall by the empty salad boxes.
Dawes said, “I thought you liked beets. Why do you always make me order them?”
“Because you like them.”