Cold Case - 3. Chapter 3

“Did you just say – killed Nico?” Nico demanded. Sounded like some other Nico was having an even worse day than him. He started to wonder if it was War-On-Nico day and nobody had told him.

“Uh – yeah.” Matsumoto looked – he looked a little – what? Puzzled? Nico had never seen him look that way before.

“What’s going on?” Nico asked the bemused detective.

“We have to leave,” Matsumoto said. “Something very, very strange is going on, but if we stay here, it’s likely that Ryan’s going to get arrested for something he hasn’t done. And something else that nobody has done.”

“What things?” Nico asked, but Matsumoto was already getting back in his car, leaving them with no choice but to join him or to stay where they were.

“I’m going to get arrested?” Ryan said as he and Nico piled into the back seat. “What the hell for? And what about those two guys in the freezer? You do realise you’re leaving a crime scene unattended?”

“There’ll be some detectives here from the 51st pretty soon,” Matsumoto said as he laid rubber out of the parking lot. “There you are, they’re here now.”

His passengers stared out the car window. A Crown Victoria was going past them in the other direction at about the same speed they themselves were leaving.

“Are they the ones that’re going to arrest Ryan?” Nico asked, wondering what the hell was going on.

“Yeah, I think so,” Matsumoto said. “We need somewhere to go where they won’t look for us.”

“My place?” Nico offered.

“No, they’re definitely going to be round there,” Matsumoto said. “I know where we can go. Hold on.”

Nico found that injunction was to be taken literally as Matsumoto hung a u-turn that flung Nico sideways onto Ryan’s lap.

“Let go of me,” Nico said as Ryan, predictably, took advantage.

“Hey, I’m gonna be arrested and I don’t even know what for,” Ryan said, wrapping his arm more tightly around his companion. “You could have a little sympathy. This might be the last time you see me for twenty years or so while I’m in the pokey.”

“Don’t even say that,” Nico said. “You haven’t done anything – I mean, you haven’t done anything, have you?”

“Not that I know of,” Ryan said.

“You’d tell me?” Nico asked. He knew Ryan wasn’t above the little cop sins like taking free coffee, free beer, a free pizza; like looking the other way when a relative should have got a ticket. But surely he hadn’t done anything bad enough to actually be arrested? By detectives?

“I don’t know if I’d tell you.” Ryan took his arm off Nico’s shoulders, looking annoyed. “I mean, if I murdered or raped somebody, I doubt if I’d want to tell anyone about it. But I didn’t. I haven’t done anything and I don’t appreciate you feeling you need to ask me twice.”

“Yeah, well, because what you say to me is always so reliable,” Nico said, earning himself a dirty look.

The rest of the journey was accomplished in a silence like the brooding sky before lightning strikes. Nico took the opportunity to pull out a handkerchief, spit in it and wipe the blood off his face. Nobody spoke until Matsumoto pulled up outside a Chinatown building redolent with gold and red paint, oriental lettering and hanging lanterns with even lower hanging fringes.

“House of Flowers?” Nico said. “This is where we’re gonna hide out?”

“Seemed the most unlikely place,” Matsumoto said. “You two go in, I’ll park the car somewhere off the road.”

*****

Matsumoto backed up the car, then took a left down the street beside House of Flowers. It dead-ended, but there was an alley and he pulled in there.

He locked the car, then realised he wasn’t alone. Further down the alley, through the still-falling snow, he could see a lurking figure looking around the next corner. A familiar lurking figure. The man who’d called to warn him about Ryan’s imminent arrest, in fact.

“Angel?” Matsumoto called.

“Damn it!” Angel Francini turned round, looking annoyed. “He’ll get away now.”

“What? Who?” Matsumoto asked. He went towards the other detective.

“That damned Poet. The graffiti guy.”

“Catching graffiti artists isn’t the normal run of detective work,” Matsumoto commented.

“I don’t want him for that,” Francini said. “He’s got something to do with what’s happening with Ryan. I heard the guys from the 51st say they were going to pick him up.”

Matsumoto glanced around the corner where Francini had been looking. He saw nobody, but there were a couple of discarded spray cans and plenty of words on the walls.

“Espiridion!” Matsumoto called. “Piri?”

The alley terminated in a tall chain link gate. A moment later, a face peered through the mesh.

“Oh, it’s you,” Piri said. He leapt for the top of the gate and swung himself over. “I thought it was some cop.”

“I am some cop,” said Matsumoto.

“Yeah, but I thought it was some cop’s gonna arrest me for expressing myself.” Piri walked up to the corner to join them, smiling at Matsumoto. He raised an eyebrow. “You want me?”

“Always,” Matsumoto said, and now he was smiling too. What else was he going to do faced with five feet eleven of cappuccino gorgeous? Slightly paint-stained gorgeous, it was true, but hell, he thought, nobody’s perfect.

“I want him,” Francini said. “I want to know why the guys from the 51st want him.”

“Where’s your coat?” Matsumoto realised that Piri was wearing only a saggy tank top over his jeans. He looked good in it but he also looked very cold in it.

“Is nobody listening to me?” Francini said. “I got pulled off undercover for this crap, my cousin’s about to be arrested and nobody’s even listening to me.”

“Somebody took my coat,” Piri told Matsumoto. “I lost my apartment. Now, I want to sleep undercover, I have to associate with a bunch of lowlife thieves at the homeless shelter.”

“What happened to your apartment?” Matsumoto asked. “Didn’t you pay the rent?”

“Sure I did,” Piri said. “House fell down. No insurance.”

“You’d better come with me,” Matsumoto said.

“Hey!” Francini said.

“You come with me as well,” Matsumoto said. “We all need to sit down and try and work out what’s going on with Ryan.”

*****

“What can I do for you gentlemen?” A disembodied voice spoke from behind the counter. Its owner straightened up, one hand holding a wastebin, the other an appointment book. “House of Flowers is happy to offer you –” he took a look at them and finished, “- nothing. I don’t give freebies to cops.”

“I’m not a cop,” Nico said with a smile at Miao Shou, who didn’t return it. He looked more as if he was going to fling his wastebin at them.

“We need somewhere to be for a while where nobody’s going to look for us,” Ryan said. “Apparently someone wants to arrest me for something.”

“That’s nice and specific,” Miao Shou put down his wastebin on the counter, stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled.

“What?” A young man holding a mop put his head round the door that led into the kitchen.

“Bin,” Miao Shou said. “Next time don’t let it get full.”

“Sorry, boss,” the young man said with a grin. He winked at Nico and Ryan and took the wastebin away into the back.

“And flirt on your own time!” Miao Shou called after him. “So what did you do, Ryan?”

“Why does everybody think I did something?”

“If everyone finds it so believable,” Nico said, “maybe you should think about changing your way of life?”

“I don’t need to hear from you,” Ryan said.

“Oh, you don’t?” Nico turned to the big cop and waved a finger in his face. “You don’t want to hear from me? Well what if I didn’t want to hear from you last week, huh?”

“Last week?” Ryan was good, Nico had to admit that. His face showed just the right mix of annoyance, puzzlement and enquiry.

“Last. Week.” Nico said. “When you drank way too much and called me. When you said you were sorry you didn’t call me six years ago like you said you would. When you said that you loved me and you wanted to be with me.”

“I said that?” Ryan was glancing from side to side now, a hunted man with nowhere to run.

“You said that,” Nico said. “And then, just like the last time I had anything to do with you, I never heard another word from you. Not until you walked into Rims’ place today.”

“I saw your car outside,” Ryan admitted.

“Oh, what, did you think it’d be fun to fuck me around some more?” Nico said. “Maybe ask me out on a date then never turn up, something like that?”

“I thought the date under duress was your speciality.”

“Yeah, but I wouldn’t have left you sitting in the restaurant,” Nico said. “I’d’ve been there, whether I wanted to or not.”

“You still will,” Ryan said. “You promised.”

“Like you promised to call me?” Nico said.

“That’s enough.” Miao Shou had somehow transported himself over the front desk without either of them noticing and was standing right next to them. “Entertaining as this might be for you,” he went on, “I don’t need to hear from either of you about your personal business. I’m not interested. And when I get disinterested enough, I’m gonna bang your heads together. Capisce?”

“Mi dispiace,” Nico said.

“Yeah, I’m sorry too,” Ryan said, arms widening as if he meant to apologise to the whole room. Nico guessed that was the best he was going to get. He gave a curt nod of acceptance.

“Back to reality,” Miao Shou said. “What makes you think you may have committed some kind of arrestable crime, Ryan?”

“Matsumoto,” Ryan said.

“Yeah, it was his idea,” Nico said. “I mean – he got a phone call and, uh –”

“He brought us here,” Ryan finished.

“Oh, that’s who I have to blame,” Miao Shou said. “What do you think you’re doing?” he added as Matsumoto walked through the doors, Piri and Francini following. “We’re not open yet. We’re still cleaning up and you bring me some kind of fugitive from justice? Without him even being able to tell me what kind of fugitive he is?”

“Pardon, Miao sifu,” Matsumoto said, with a bow towards the aggrieved Chinese man. “I had nowhere else to go.”

“Yeah, right,” Miao Shou said, looking, Nico thought, like an angry Mandarin about to inflict death by a thousand cuts on some hapless prisoner. “Don’t think you’ll get around me with that sifu stuff.” He went back to the front desk, leaned over it and opened the kitchen door. “Tea! In the conservatory, right now.”

“I can’t hear you,” somebody said from within. It sounded like the man with the mop.

“Please,” Miao Shou added.

“I’ll get straight onto it,” the voice said.

“Please?” Nico said.

“Good manners are important,” Miao Shou said, as if it was a fact he’d only just discovered and wasn’t quite sure about. “Come.”

He led the way through a set of double doors that opened off the lobby and down a corridor to his private room. It was, in fact, a conservatory, though it had no windows. Instead, daylight bulbs kept the greenery healthy. Miao Shou sprawled on a rattan couch under a rampant bougainvillea and looked at them with disfavor.

“Sit,” he said. “Make yourselves comfortable. Not too comfortable,” he added. “I don’t know if you’re staying yet. What’s going on?”

“Okay, I got a phone call,” Matsumoto began. “From Angel here.”

“You know about this?” Ryan asked Francini.

“Yes,” Francini said. “I heard some detectives from the 51st were coming to arrest you so I called you but you didn’t answer. So I called everyone that might know where you were.”

“And he finally called me,” Matsumoto said, “and told me that Ryan was going to be arrested for killing Rims Colluci and Nico Sartori.”

“Rims Colluci is dead?” The speaker was the young man who’d formerly held a mop. He was now holding a tea tray and was edging through the door with it. “He was getting me some new tires for my Nissan.”

“I think you’re out of luck, Shiro,” Matsumoto said. “Try Red L Tireworld, they’re cheap and they don’t give you retreads and charge you for new.”

“Thanks,” Shiro said, staring down into the cups on his tray. He sighed and looked over at Nico. “I’m not, you know, heartless about him being dead. But – well, he always tried to get in my pants when I was over there. I don’t think just because I work here I should have to put up with that on my day off.”

“No, why should you?” Nico agreed. He had decided he liked Shiro. He’d got Miao Shou to say please. He was cute as well.

At this point, what Matsumoto had said managed to run fast enough to catch up with Nico’s tired mind.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Who did you say Ryan was supposed to have killed?”

“You,” Matsumoto said.

“Me?”

“Yes. You.”

“But – I’m not dead,” Nico said, somewhat unnecessarily, he realised.

“You were meant to be,” Ryan said. “That must have been what all that stuff was about in the meat locker with those guys.”

“Meat locker?” Miao Shou asked. “I think it’s time somebody told me the rest of this story and stop with the digressions, please. So far I seem to be entertaining the aforesaid fugitive from justice and one of the living dead. It’s not a normal afternoon for me. So – what meat locker? And what guys?”