Tropical Depression (Billy Knight Thrillers 1)

pers were tacked up on the plywood that covered over whatever might be left of the plate glass.

Directly across from me, in the street, was where Hector McAuley had died. There was a modest four-story building there, with a small grocery store on the ground floor. A sign in the window said PARK HONEST GOOD FOOD GROCERY. Underneath was a neon Schlitz sign.

Next door on the west side was a Pasadena National Bank branch office. It sat in a square six-story building with small windows. The bottom windows closest to the front door were new and still had stickers on them. On the east was a vacant lot with half a car sticking up out of the weeds.

I crossed the street. There were no bloodstains in the road or on the sidewalk in front of Park Honest Good Food Grocery. Either it was already washed away by sun and rain or Hector hadn’t bled as much as his father.

There were a couple of young black men lounging outside the store. They looked about seventeen. Both wore clothes that were much too big. One of them wore a porkpie hat and sat on a blue plastic milk crate. The other leaned against the building. He had a Raiders cap on, turned backwards. He said something to the guy sitting as I approached, and they both laughed, looking sideways at me.

I passed them and entered the store. A soft electronic chime sounded in the back of the store as I opened the door and stepped in. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dimness inside. When I could see, I blinked again.

Somebody had crammed an entire full-sized supermarket into a room that wasn’t more than thirty-five feet deep and twenty feet wide. Things were hanging off every inch of wall. The shelves went all the way to the ceiling, a good ten feet up, and in the narrow aisles between the shelves more things hung down from hooks screwed into the ceiling.

The cash register was to the left of the door. It was completely enclosed by a heavy metallic mesh. More stuff hung off the mesh: pretzels, potato chips, barbecued bacon rinds, cinnamon toothpicks, and Slim Jims. Farther along there were sunglasses, condoms, and snuff. Almost invisible in all the hanging clutter was the cashier’s window.

Through the window, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, was a Korean man of about forty-five. Koreans have a reputation for being tough and stubborn. It looked like a lot of that reputation was based on this guy. He was simply watching, with eyes that had seen about everything twice. His face seemed frozen in a permanent frown of watchful disapproval. He looked like it would take heavy earth-moving equipment to budge him.

I stepped to the cashier’s window. His eyes followed me, unblinking and almost unmoving, like the eyes in a good portrait. I leaned slightly in to let him see me better. “Hi,” I said, “Are you Park?”

He just stared. I stared back. “I wonder if you could help me?” I said.

“You no belong here,” he told me.

“That’s right,” I said.

“What you want here?”

“It’s about the boy that was shot out front of your store, back in May. I’d like to talk to anybody who might know something about it.”

He stared at me some more. Something was going on beyond the dark eyes, but it would take a team of researchers ten years to figure out what. “Why?” he finally demanded.

I had a few choices. I could claim to be a cop, but that would matter less to this guy than a mouse fart on a pig farm. I could give him some shiny lie about insurance, but I had a feeling that would matter even less. Taking a deep breath and holding onto my luck with both hands, I went for the more devious approach. I told the truth.

“His father was a friend of mine,” I said. “I promised him I’d find his son’s killer.”

The man moved. He nodded his head almost a full quarter of an inch up and down. “Father dead too,” he said.

“That’s right.”

He nodded again. He was turning into a real whirlwind. He took a step and leaned his head around the protective mesh. He yelled eight or ten syllables. I didn’t understand even one of them. Then he stepped back and leaned in his original position, recrossing his arms. “You wait,” he said. His eyes drifted away, back to the front door.

I waited. I had no idea what I was waiting for. It could be a Libyan hit squad for all I knew. But something told me that I had got to Mr. Chatterbox, and whatever I was waiting for would be helpful.

There was a breath of movement, a faint smell of something clean, and a girl was standing beside me. She said something softly to the man in the cage and stood waiting. She was about seventeen and one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen. She was all the stories about GI’s falling for gorgeous Asian girls, all rolled into one.

The man said something harsh to her. She answered, still softly but with a certain amount of firmness.

He interrupted her and spoke a little longer. She hung her head. When he stopped talking she raised her head again, looked at me, and then gave the man six more syllables. He grunted.

She turned to me. “My father says you want to ask about Hector.”

There was nothing showing on her face, but there was an awful lot going on behind her eyes, too—too much for somebody that young. Maybe it ran in the family. “That’s right,” I said. “Did you know him?” Her mask flickered for just a second, and she gave her head a funny half-turn towards her father.

“Oh, yes,” she said, a little too loud, “I knew Hector quite well. I used to see him all the time.” Her father said nothing, but I could feel the ozone building up. The air between them was as charged as a summer day with a thunderstorm moving in.

I nodded just like everything was normal. “Can you show me where it happened?” I asked, hoping to get her outside before the cage around her father melted.

She turned to me and smiled politely. “Sure,” she said, and slid past me and out the door. The chime sounded again. Her father didn’t look as I walked past, but I thought I could see a vein throbbing on his forehead.