Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Smoke and Mirrors
“Elias stopped by almost a week later to ask what I had decided.” Skinner thought back to that second meeting with a smile. “He brought German beer that night. Was the most god awful stuff I had ever drank.” “Well we see how things progressed from there.” Edgar piped up. He had sat enthralled by the detective’s story for the entire duration. He had always been impressed with the Viper’s work ethic and had heard often of this man, but only vaguely. “I remember that night in the police station. That was the first time that I’d walked into a police station of my own volition.” Shin Lao sat down on a grubby chair by Edgar’s desk. Everything was tinged with the nicotine yellow of the man’s smoking. “So, did he ever find your daughter?” Everybody was curious. They all knew the Viper to be a man of his word. “Not that I know of. I suppose that he died before he could find her. Who knows, perhaps he did find her and it was better that I not know.”

“You know I was one of the reasons he was doing what he was doing don’t you?” Shin Lao threw into the conversation, blushing slightly. “I was the person that he owed the Boss for.” Both Skinner and Edgar’s head turned to look at her. “You see, Elias was in this for several reasons really. He seemed to find something new to keep him in it, but someone always benefited in the end, aside from himself of course. Something happened with his family and he got turned over to Boss Tanaka. I never really found out what the circumstances were, he never told me anything much from before we met. In that way he was something of a mystery to everybody. But about the time that he met you, he was doing jobs to pay Boss Tanaka for my freedom.” She looked down, almost embarrassed for the first time that either of them had ever seen. But the Boss kept telling him One More Job after a while. He paid for my freedom all right. After that, he never told anyone what he was in it for. But the Tommy Mac job was the one where everything started going bad.” “Yeah, you never finished that story. What happened?” Skinner’s head was swimming with all of the new information that had been revealed in the last eight hours. The life of the professional killer seemed to be so much more complicated then even his own. “Perhaps we should go down to see Mac himself, he could tell you.”

Skinner was shocked. He, along with everybody else knew that Tommy MacGregor had died but here was Shin Lao telling him otherwise. “He’s still alive?” “Yes, he’s still alive, much to the ire of the Asian families. Hey Edgar. Do you happen to have any of those Colts that I like laying around here? We could use something to take with us.” Edgar puffed on his cigar for a second before he stood up and walked to the other room. “Yeah I’ve got a couple of them. Street rats around here go through em like toilet tissue. Got a couple of clips lying around as well.” Edgar brought back a pair of matte black and stainless .45 ACP’s and dozen clips. “That gonna do ya for tonight?” His cloud of smoke clung tightly around his head as he laid the guns and ammunition on his desk. “Yeah I hope that’ll do us for this evening.” She tossed a large wad of cash on the dealer’s desk and picked up the weapons. “That should cover the cost of everything. I’ll be back in a couple of days to pick up the rest. Fix those DE’s up nice Edgar; they’re for a special occasion.”

They let themselves out of Edgar’s apartment and walked quickly to the Black Aston Martin that seemed very out of place in this neighborhood. “You know, while tonight has been very informative, there’s still something on my mind that really confuses me. The EBay page that was sent to me, who is selling his guns? And why? None of this is making a whole lot of sense to me.” “I don’t know much about it myself. Though from what I’ve seen of the sale, the name of the seller, HKBOluvah, I can decipher a bit. Most eastern action movies come from the Hong Kong area, so the HKBO most likely stands for Hong Kong Blood Opera, as the films are often known by movie buffs over on this side of the world. So the name simply means that whoever this is, likes those Hong Kong movies. But who that is, and why they have them, and even why they’re selling them is a mystery to me as well. We’ll see Tommy Mac tomorrow night; let’s hit one of my safehouses for the night. We’re gonna be no good dead tired tomorrow. By the way, I’d stay away from the police station tomorrow until we figure out what’s going on. There’s still a dead officer in front of your apartment.”

Skinner had forgotten all about officer Warren and didn’t like where this night seemed to be taking him. He didn’t know if he had a job to return to, or if he was even going to be put into prison after all of this cleared. “Don’t worry about a thing detective; you’ll have a plausible alibi by the time we’re done.” The streets of New York sped by in a blur as the black performance car sped through dark neighborhoods and deserted warehouse districts. It was almost 5am and the sun was just cresting the horizon as they pulled into a dark lot just outside of New York proper on the New Jersey side of the line.

The house appeared to be one of roughly twenty that looked just like it in a new building division that was still in the process of being built. The garage opened with the light squeal of something new. The lights flicked on as the door opened and the car fit into the new garage. There was nothing else out here as far as normal clutter went. More than likely there wouldn’t be much as far as furniture went inside as well. People that needed safehouses tended to need several, so it was rather uneconomical to fully furnish them. To his surprise the place was moderately furnished. The small strip of space that was the kitchen just beyond the door from the garage had all of the appliances and several pieces of cookware. The house opened up beyond that into a large central area that held a dining table and several chairs. Everything seemed to be made of dark oak. There was a couch facing an entertainment center in the den area. There were pictures on the wall, which Skinner was sure were fake, as they depicted Shin Lao and what appeared to be family. Just something to reassure the neighbors he was sure. Several closed doors both to the side of the den and rear most likely were where she kept some equipment. “My bedroom’s over there, you can stay either on the couch there or in that rear bedroom, though all there is, is a mattress on the floor and a blanket. This IS a safehouse after all.” She smiled and went towards her room. “Oh, and I wouldn’t recommend running off. There are more than likely a couple of hitters out there looking for you, and possibly a few cops. Even more likely is that there are people who are both, out there looking for both of us.”

That was all that she said as she shut the door to her room. Skinner heard a bolt slide into place and knew that he was totally alone in the house. He wasn’t as tired as he thought he was however and looked around the living room at the pictures that hung on the wall and stood on the entertainment center. Everybody has to have a family he thought to himself. He was surprised however that there was a picture at the rear of the entertainment center that caught his attention. It happened to be a picture of Shin Lao and Elias. He looked much as he remembered him, young and clean looking. What really caught his attention was that in the picture they were looking rather affectionate. This forced Skinner to think on whether this was a staged picture for the sake of the illusion, or whether he had just glimpsed a little further into the private lives of the two professional killers. Either way she had been right on one thing, if he was going to be of any use, hell today, he would need to sleep some.

The door itself was much heavier than he thought it would be. He gave it a solid knock and found that there was most likely a sheet of steel in the core of the otherwise normal looking door. He glanced about wondering what other amenities she had installed into this house for the possibilities. Skinner decided that he wouldn’t abuse the killer’s hospitality any more than he had and lay down on the mattress that sat in a corner of the moderate sized bedroom. Other than the mattress the room was bare. It wouldn’t be necessary to furnish those places out of normal visitors’ sight he reasoned. He settled in a laid his head on the pillow and surprisingly fell asleep quickly despite the fact that he was sleeping not one hundred yards away from what was technically a mass murderer.