Kill City USA Read online

  Warren Roberts was born in New Zealand and has travelled, worked and lived worldwide with careers in international trade and finance, television and publishing.

  He is also the author of The Bell of Girardius (see inside back cover).

  Warren lives in London with his fedora.

  www.killcityusa.com

  WARREN

  ROBERTS

  Copyright © Warren Roberts 2009

  The right of Warren Roberts to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  First published in Great Britain by Pulp Press

  All paper used in the printing of this book has been made from wood grown in managed, sustainable forests.

  Printed and bound in the UK

  Pulp Press is an imprint of

  Indepenpress Publishing Limited

  25 Eastern Place

  Brighton, BN2 1GJ

  A catalogue record of this book is

  available from the British Library

  Cover design by Mike Young [email protected]

  Author’s photograph by Heather Ruddy

  To Tough Guys and Dangerous Dames: Peter Burge, Katie Cruz, Viv Dore, Anney Grant, Maggie McGee, Richard Pearson, KJ, Eva Rej, John Ritchie, David Rix, Chris Riley, Colin Scott and Didi Sokolowski, with special thanks to KJ and David

  and

  to my partners in crime: Lynn, Jacqueline, Kathryn and Danny at Pulp Press, willing and able accomplices in getting this job pulled off; from casing the joint, keeping lookout throughout, and for burning rubber on the getaway car.

  also by Warren Roberts

  THE BELL OF GIRARDIUS

  Joe Milo’s hangover wasn’t improved by the clients waiting at his London office.

  The Russian madam’s sister was missing – sucked into a supernatural swamp by Satanists and the Forces of Darkness, Olga says. The claimed familial link to Rasputin didn’t help his mood either. Nor did Tanya, her ex-Spetsnaz minder with a Soviet attitude.

  The first corpse turns up in Paris. He finds it. Actually – he pulled the trigger. The next victim, ritually mutilated, turns up in a garden square near his apartment, addressed to him.

  The cops aren’t impressed by Milo’s alibi, with an ex-Police Commissioner the Sergeant in the Occult Order, the Temple of Baphomet (the idol worshipped by the medieval Knights Templar). His buddy, Grigory Zeltin is its Grand Master. And he needs a special bell cast for the upcoming carnal rite.

  See, even then things might have been OK, but Milo falls for Zeltin’s daughter.

  And Joe and his enigmatic sidekick Jonah are about to enter the jaws of hell in this deliciously dark novel.

  Check all your razors and your guns

  We’re gonna be wrastlin’ when the wagon comes.

  Gimme a pigfoot and bottle o’ beer,

  Send me, Gate, I don’t care.

  Gimme a reefer and a gang o’ gin

  Slay me ‘cause I’m in my sin.

  Gimme a Pigfoot by Bessie Smith

  CONTENTS

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedications

  Also by Warren Roberts

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  My elbow was propped on the bar in The Enterprise...

  Chapter 2

  Missing In Action, I hoped not...

  Chapter 3

  Eva’s flight was returning to London...

  Chapter 4

  We walked toward Ocean Drive then turned north...

  Chapter 5

  I put on a dark blue linen suit and a blue T-shirt...

  Chapter 6

  The telephone woke me next morning at eight...

  Chapter 7

  The sky was bluer than I’d left it, the storm having...

  Chapter 8

  Tomas drove like a knight on a quest...

  Chapter 9

  In the morning’s Miami Herald it was just another cadaver...

  Chapter 10

  Drinking coffee in my office was Sayers and his...

  Chapter 11

  It was over-white and far too bright...

  Chapter 12

  We arrived at Dooley’s house at nightfall...

  Chapter 13

  Dooley’s man Rafe was on time...

  Chapter 14

  We sat in Dooley’s office looking at the...

  Chapter 15

  Detective Jimmy Pino sat in the recliner...

  Chapter 16

  Dooley handed me two sheets of yellow legal...

  Chapter 17

  Tomas told me he’d recently started smoking again...

  Chapter 18

  The flight from Atlanta had been full of...

  Chapter 19

  Anne left the hotel early in the morning...

  Chapter 20

  According to his rap sheet, the club that Jonny Steaknife...

  Chapter 21

  We drove past the MCP office in the morning...

  Chapter 22

  We sat in Lori Reichardt’s office at South Federal...

  Chapter 23

  Cza agreed to meet us back at the South Beach...

  Chapter 24

  We sat in the Cafe Versailles on Calle Ocho...

  Chapter 25

  At the office was a message to call Les Cargill on his...

  Chapter 26

  Gloria was waiting for me outside her front...

  Chapter 27

  We were in Maria’s office. Paul Quaranto with Jonah’s 9mm...

  Chapter 28

  Instead Maria produced a bottle of bourbon...

  Chapter 29

  ‘Been alligator wrestling or cut yourself shaving?’...

  Chapter 30

  It was Sunday morning and I was listening...

  Chapter 31

  At 6.30 in the morning in floppy hats we presented...

  Chapter 32

  TERROR ARMS PLOT FOILED, was the headline...

  Chapter 33

  I requested a lunchtime date with Paul Quaranto...

  Chapter 34

  ‘So you’re outta the shit,’ I said to Tomas...

  Chapter 35

  We were in Dooley’s office, Jay, Jonah, Dooley, and me...

  Inside Back Cover

  Back Cover

  1

  My elbow was propped on the bar in The Enterprise, a Walton Street hangout of mine. I felt calmer than a basking shark as I nursed a large scotch and ice and gazed through an aromatic fog from over-perfumed women, and thought about the sexual subtext of their shoes.

  I focused through this mist on two Russian hookers giving me the five hundred quid and I’m yours baby eye as they aimed their cavernous cleavages in my direction, expecting them to be nominated for awards. One was short and fat, the other taller and slim. They looked like Abbott and Costello in drag.

  Bud, the taller one, teetered her way through the drinking herd in my direction. She needed a tightrope pole to keep her balance on six-inch spikes. I looked away, and gave my attention back to my drink. It was premium Chivas, after all.

  There was a tap on my shoulder. ‘Any room here?’ said one of the few women in the bar n
ot eligible for a bus pass. She squeezed between me and a flashy Ibo who was giving her the benefit of his gold-encrusted mouth.

  I nodded. Her simple black number was not the sort worn by a Greek widow who has forsworn all interest in sex, and her playful eyes would have had her expelled from convent school in her youth.

  She said, ‘For wine drinking,’ as she followed my eyes to her burgundy painted fingernails. On her wrist was one of those simple plastic-strapped watches that you buy in airport shops when your plane is delayed. She said, ‘I’m Jay. Can I buy you a drink?’ as Kent, the barman gave me an obtuse smile. That line seldom worked for me. I was used to women saying they would have the money, if that were an option.

  I said, ‘Erm… sure. Let’s have a glass of burgundy, in the interests of colour co-ordination.’

  The boisterously lipsticked hooker now stood beside us with hands on hips as she pondered starting a turf war. Instead, she gave me her go-fuck-yourself-mister smile before turning her attention to Jay, as if she was a health inspector in a hole-in-the-wall joint, and Jay was a block of doner kebab about to have a digital probe thermometer inserted to see if she was fully-cooked.

  So I gave Bud the benefit of the view of my back just as Costello signalled a fruitful conversation with a couple of pinstripes, by waving a bottle of cheap sparkling wine to act as a homing device.

  I said, ‘Milo,’ as our drinks were poured. Jay nodded.

  We spent several glasses of red wine together, followed by a bottle of champagne sent by an ex-client of mine seated in the adjacent restaurant. We small-talked and drank, rather she did small-talking and I did large-drinking. I helped her into a taxi before closing time and returned to the bar where everything was in soft-focus. After a few scotches I didn’t need, I guess I got myself home.

  I woke from my embalmment to an Alka-Seltzer morning. I dropped two, then another couple for luck, into a tea-stained Detroit Tigers coffee mug filled with warm water. Some people have their Kodak moments. This was my Seltzer one. I emptied my pockets to help reconstruct the evening. On an Enterprise beer mat I read 10 am meeting tomorrow. Your office. Jay. I gradually recalled it was a real arrangement – not the normal card-swap in a pickup joint bullshit. It was 9.15.

  I needed something restorative and there were no IV drips handy. So I threw some frozen fruit into a tall chromium plated blender, plus soy milk and manuka honey. The rasping of the machine’s motor pulsated my head, a punishment to fit the crime. After a long pull from the blender jug, I washed the mix down with a double espresso made in my new-fangled machine. Then I set off to my office in the Fulham Road, a fifteen-minute walk from my apartment in World’s End, the low-rental end of Chelsea.

  London’s traffic was into its mid-morning congestion configuration, and the only things moving were motorbikes weaving their serpentine way between stationary cars. The sullen summer sky was, um… sullen. No birds sang.

  I called my answer service. ‘Milo. You there or screening calls? Well Houston, we have a small problem and I need your sorry ass here. You’re booked at the Shelborne in South Beach. You said you don’t have a lot on at the moment so I hope that’s still the case. You better bring Jonah if he’s available. Bye my main man – and don’t forget my Cohibas.’

  I translated Dooley’s we have a small problem as I’m in the shit big-time. I hadn’t mentioned anything about things being quiet but they were, this morning’s meeting apart. The blue skies and South Florida beaches appealed, so I texted Dooley telling him a posse was on its way.

  I stepped off the pavement to avoid a rollerblading mother and her couturier pre-teens as I reached my office in Fulham Road just as Oddbins, the wine merchant on the ground floor of my building, was opening for business. Its taunting sign aimed directly at my hangover and offered nine bottles of a drinkable red for the price of six. Some other day. I walked up the stairs to the first floor.

  Milo & Dooley, Confidential Investigations, London & Miami, (No Divorce Work) the sign in the hallway read. In gold lettering on a dark green background it looked like it was advertising one of the finer groceries of Knightsbridge or Piccadilly. I went up the stairs to my office on the first floor wondering whether our shingle should therefore describe us as the Fortnum & Mason of sleuths, and about the effect of the higher altitude on my throbbing head.

  ‘Breakfast as promised,’ said Jay in greeting. She was standing on the landing outside my office. I looked at my watch and held it out to her. It was 10.01. I didn’t get applause.

  Jay looked like someone who hadn’t been on a bender. She was holding a cardboard tray on which were two takeaway vats of coffee, a couple of plastic bottles of freshly squeezed orange juice, and a paper bag showing the translucent buttery stains of what I hoped were croissants. I feigned as much smile as I could muster, a twoincher as I unlocked the door and stood back to allow her to enter.

  I said, ‘Welcome to the world of Milo & Dooley,’ making an opera of ushering her in.

  She looked around at the old oak-stained wooden desk, an optimistically large assortment of office chairs with mismatched and faded fabric upholstery, plus a couple of generic grey filing cabinets I’d bought from the landlord who’d seized them in lieu of rent unpaid from the previous tenant, Fulham Elite Escort Service.

  I had a leather couch against one wall, and in one corner stood life’s office necessities: a water cooler and a Java Joe coffee machine which sat on top of a filing cabinet. Above C for coffee. Adjoining was a small kitchen, with a drinks refrigerator.

  A fax and a Mac computer were my concessions to business efficiency. My ceiling fan would circulate the air if ever I could bear to open my windows to the noise and pollution of Fulham Road. It was an ambience fan, de rigueur for private eyes. The floors were bare wood with discolorations of dubious provenance, a feature the estate agent had said. On the walls hung a couple of framed Edward Hopper prints. An old rotary phone sat on my desk, a black Bakelite number with a plaited cord. A more functional digital blower sat on the window ledge beside a brass plaque inscribed with Dick the Butcher’s line from Shakespeare’s Henry VI: The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

  ‘Hopper,’ said Jay, diverting her attention from my furniture to the brooding loneliness of the all-night coffee stand of Nighthawks.

  I said, ‘The Raymond Chandler of the art world.’

  ‘Art noir,’ said Jay. ‘The Trashcan School.’

  I said, ‘So, my clients don’t pay for expensive overheads,’ looking round at a scene slinkier than Hopper’s, as she stared at a once colourful circular rug whose stains would severely challenge candidates for the Rorschach inkblot test. I took her tray and put it on the desk.

  She nodded with a wry smile. ‘Form and function.’ Such politeness, particularly not mentioning my hangover. ‘Both coffees with milk, semi-skimmed, no sugar.’

  I removed their lids. ‘Good guess.’

  A grin. ‘That’s what you ordered last night. Eventually.’

  I gradually remembered my insistence that we have Irish coffees, large ones, after my several attempts at pronouncing Irish without running the R into the S. I’d finished both.

  She looked better than I remembered. Her thick auburn hair was swept back into a silky ponytail, like one of those dressage horses, suiting her angular facial features. She wore a simple gold chain with a pendant discreetly sculptured in the form of a small X, with matching earrings. Kisses, I guessed. The sort of subtle jewellery I wish I’d given to someone or had someone to give to, but no one came to mind.

  ‘First, I have a confession to make.’

  Zippering my lips, I said, ‘Supplicant and bishop.’

  Jay took a long sip of her coffee. ‘I didn’t meet you by chance last evening – it was by design.’

  ‘So my charm and repartee didn’t bring you here.’ A bad line, even for a hangover.

  Her laugh told me she wasn’t on antidepressants. ‘Well. That too.’

  ‘What can I do for you?’
/>
  Another measured sip of her coffee. ‘You did some work for a friend of mine last year and she mentioned you to me recently – when she knew I was looking for a… someone to help me with a certain matter. I’ve procrastinated about calling you. Then she called last night saying you were in The Enterprise. And as I live not too far away perhaps I might like to come and introduce myself. So I caught a cab, she pointed me out to you and voila, here we are.’

  I took her friend to be the donor of the champagne last evening. A woman who had once hired me to help her, after her daughter had quit university to become involved with some Yardie drug dealers and porn merchants. Sally was in very bad company indeed, and the gang had tried to blackmail her celebrity parents, threatening to make public explicit sex videos with her daughter in an above the title role. The bad guys had also systematically looted Sally’s bank account using her debit card at ATM machines. To avoid publicity, her parents hadn’t wanted to involve the cops.

  My confederate Jonah and I had traced the group to a remote Devon farmhouse, where we’d been able to show the bad-ass Yardies the misdirection of their ways. We recovered the videos and enough drug money to reimburse Sally, and then arranged for the cops to bust the gang, after we’d taken our fee from their cash. I’m a believer in poetic justice and the principle of user pays.