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“So I’ll hang out in the lobby or the car.”
“Marshall’s driving me.”
She narrows her eyes. “Why don’t you want me to come?”
“Because I don’t want you to have to relive a moment of what happened.”
“I’ll be fine.”
I feel my exasperation rising. I try a different tactic. “Besides, I have homework for you. I want you to pick between a tawse, a paddle, and a riding crop for your next spanking. Then pick your furniture: cage, stocks or pommel. Let me know what you’ve chosen when I get back.”
“What were the choices again?”
I repeat the options, which she writes down with pen and paper.
“What’s a tawse?” she asks.
“Look it up.”
I leave before she gets wise to my distraction. Marshall is waiting for me downstairs. He drives over to an old warehouse by Pier 73. Marshall knocks on the door, which is then opened by Travis, a thug JD has worked with in the past. I walk inside. The place is empty and mostly dark except for a single lamp.
Beneath it sits Manny, tied to a chair, his face already a bloody pulp.
On the drive over, I was seething. Seeing him now, I feel a touch sorry for the guy. But it was his own damn fault. There are consequences to being stupid.
“Sorry I started without you,” JD says, leaning on one crutch.
I notice blood on his brass knuckles. Next to Travis stands his partner-in-crime, “Big Bear.”
“Travis and Bear had to drag his ass up from Mexico,” JD tells me. He turns to Manny. “You thought you could hide out there? You thought you were smarter than us?”
Manny sees me with his good eye—the other one having swelled shut. “D-Darren, I didn’t mean for you to get hit. I was—I just wanted t-to scare JD.”
“Bullshit!” JD shouts. “You wanted me dead.”
“N-No. It—”
“You know how I know? Because Tran gave you up.”
This is news to Manny. He looks more frightened than before.
“That’s right,” JD drawls. “You think we graduated from UCLA a bunch of dumbasses? We knew if you hired the hit who you were likely to turn to. A bunch of bottom-feeding Park Street Boyz.”
“Where’s Tran now?” I ask.
After Marshall had showed me the security camera picking up Manny walking out of the club, and then back in, completely unfazed by the sound of gunfire outside, it was obvious he knew what was going down. I had called JD, who came over immediately to see the recording for himself. JD was pissed as hell and ready to kick shit in if he hadn’t been on crutches. After calming him down, we talked through Manny’s possible motives and who he would have hired for the hit. It was safest to go outside the triad, otherwise he risked word reaching me or JD.
The easiest place to look would be with his new people, the PSB.
JD had offered to track down Tim Tran, the one Manny was working closest with. I explained I had Bridget over at my place, so I was limited with how involved I could be.
“I got this,” JD had assured me.
After picking up Tran, JD said the guy confessed to being the driver in the shooting, and that Manny had offered twenty thousand dollars for the job. According to JD, Tran had been told by Manny that once JD was out of the way, he would be in line for a golden opportunity.
“I want to be there when you find Manny,” I’d told JD when he got the confirmation that Manny had initiated it all.
“We dumped him in the bay,” JD says in answer to my question about Tran.
