“Then change your fucking life,” Dahl said, shrugging it all off and then walking over to check his weapons and Kevlar. “People do it all the time.”
Kenzie smiled without humor. “Not those with a price on their heads. But don’t worry, that’s next week’s problem, right? Tonight holds a whole different set of evils.”
Dahl half-turned as he worked. “Maybe you could explain what’s about to happen.”
“All right. I’ve been buyer, seller and agent in the past. Tonight, we have two pretty vile middlemen. Both wanting something out of the meet. Both will expect a good deal and neither know the other is coming.”
“Crap.”
“Yeah, and they’ll be as tooled up as Bosch, baby. It’ll have to be game faces, hints of violence and understated threat. The kind of language they all understand. Keeps everything in check.”
Dahl nodded. He knew the game. “What do we have to offer them? And don’t say the vase.”
“Oh, no. I’m keeping that for when we find Tremayne’s buyer. They’re middlemen. You just have to use your imagination.”
Dahl finished with his preparations. “Not something I’m renowned for.”
“Then we’ll improvise,” Kenzie said. “Pass me the list of those previous sales.”
Nice lay languid and dispassionate under a leaden sky. Drizzle fell in erratic bursts as if it couldn’t make up its mind, coating the streets with a slippery film of water. Dahl and Kenzie watched the pub as it closed for the night, then saw the workers head home and finally the night manager. The Swede’s watch said 2 a.m. Kenzie counted off the minutes.
“Here they come.”
A sedan pulled up at the curb in the empty street, tires shedding water and crunching to a stop. The rear doors opened to discharge four men. Then the front passenger door released another. Kenzie knew they’d be packing, but the amount of hardware they carried bulged under their jackets and weighed their belts down. She stayed silent as they approached the pub’s front door and then produced a key, gaining entry.
“Must be a front,” Dahl said.
“Easy to procure. And a safe meeting place. Unless something goes sour…” Kenzie stayed put until another car arrived, disgorged its passengers, and then started to tick itself quiet. Another minute passed.
Dahl turned to her. “We ready?”
“Let’s kill ’em.”
Dahl sighed and followed her out into the rain. Kenzie strode across the road, staying visible, and walked right up to the front door. It opened for her. A man stood back in the shadows.
“Hey, asshole, you gonna invite us in?”
“It sounds like her!” a voice shouted. “Be careful, Abel. She is moutarde.”
Dahl snorted quietly. “Mustard? You’re yellow? You come in a jar?”
“Hot, darling. Hot. And that’s disgusting.”
“I didn’t mean it like—”
But then they were through the door and inside the pub. Dahl fell silent. Kenzie appraised the place in six seconds — the empty bar where a shooter would be hidden, the spaced out tables arranged to shield the bar’s owner, the goons arrayed in strategic positions, the half-open doors and darkened corners — she was a veteran at this kind of meet. The owner though — he ought to be a retiree. Seventy if he was a day, Cyrano was a criminal who would never give up, an old man who knew nothing else. His face was a furrow, the deep carvings not all wrinkle, and the pockmarks not in the least from old age. Wiry and lean, he still cut an image, eyes twinkling as if thought he deserved to take her around the back for a little fiery relief.
“Kenzie,” he drawled in French tones. “It has been too long.”
She crossed to a corner, the windows and a wall at her back. “Cyrano. So long I thought you might be dead.”
“You will die before me, young girl. And no sword today?”
“Katana,” Kenzie corrected. “Do I need it? Do I cry myself to sleep? Do I fuck.”
“I am sure you do and need all those things and more. But we now have business to attend to.”
She became aware that Dahl was staring at her instead of the room. “What is it?” she hissed.
“I don’t know. I’m sure I’ve heard something like that recently. Just… can’t…”
“Focus,” she hissed angrily. “On the here and now.”
The third man in the room attracted her attention. His name was Patric and he was a fat oaf; a sweating pig of a man that relied on his sidekick — Paul — to look out for his interests. Well, Paul and a dozen well-armed guards.
“Patric,” she said. “Those gym sessions working for ya?”
Half a dozen chins wobbled as the man pretended mirth. Rather than answer though, he nodded in Paul’s direction. Paul said, “We are not here to trade insults, bitch. And I did not expect Cyrano. What do you have for us?”
Kenzie zipped the various retorts that came to mind, deciding to let it flow. This sure as hell wasn’t the time or place for bickering. Maybe another venue, another life. Both these men were utter lowlifes, capable of selling their young for a tidy profit. Both deserved a little visit from her weapon of choice.
One day.
She quickly pushed her little outburst of earlier and her tongue-lashing of Dahl to a distant corner of her mind.
“Tremayne is dead,” she said simply into the silence.
Fingers twitched close to triggers. Both middlemen were surrounded by a force of guards, all toting machine pistols close to their hips. The atmosphere and their lives rested on a knife’s edge which, Kenzie figured, could be used to cut the very air.
“Do we know what happened?” Cyrano asked, voice cracked with age.
Kenzie shrugged. “Bastard came across someone more ruthless than he. It happens.”
Her knowing smile helped light the room.
Of course, they wouldn’t know which way to take it. Patric grunted, shuffled, and made a gesture to Paul, his front man. “Ask her what she wants from us.”
Kenzie regarded him with disdain. “What I want is Tremayne’s buyer. You know, for the Inca vase? What I want is his location. And information on who else I might be able to… facilitate a few sales through.” She failed to mention she needed leads on the identities of all the other buyers, past and present and authorities involved. But one step at a time. One lead always pointed to another.
“You have more of the Inca relics?” Cyrano stepped forward in his greed, the perfect target.
“I do.” Kenzie nodded as Dahl shifted slightly, preparing. “Two more vases and a great shield. Just like the one Tremayne sold in 2014.”
Recognition swept across Cyrano’s face, which Kenzie was grateful for. She saw Paul lean in to Patric and whisper. A sudden tension made her muscles go hard. One wrong move. One wrong word. One misunderstood intention…
She cleared her throat softly. “Either you can help me or you can’t. But we are here to do business, nothing else.”
Dahl watched everything like a state-of-the-art CCTV camera, sweeping back and forth and registering every minute movement. She felt him move, heard the soft breath coming through his parted lips. She sensed the coiling of muscles.
Cyrano sent one of his men to the bar. “I need a drink. Would you join me, Kenzie?” He offered nothing to Patric.
“Not tonight,” she said with as much promise as she could muster.
“And your large but silent friend?”
“He’s my manservant. He does not drink.”
Dahl said nothing, totally focused, which gave Kenzie hope that they might make it out of here with the barest amount of blood on their hands. Cyrano frowned, but then shrugged it all off.
“Whatever. But show me the proof that you can acquire these vases. And which one of us gets the shield?”