King stared across at the meatheads. He looked them in the eyes until they couldn’t take it anymore. He kept watching them even when they looked at the floor, at each other, at the space between him and Slater. Basically anywhere but into his eyes.
Eventually one of them cracked. The sunburned skin around his eyes softened as he let go of the tension in his face. ‘If you guys wanna talk about this after...we could grab a beer. It, uh…it sure ain’t pretty. We done it a few times. But the pay…’
He trailed off like that was a valid reason for pummelling people to death.
‘A beer with you?’ King said, then looked the meathead up and down. He paused like he was considering it, just to up the humiliation. ‘No.’
The other guy sat forward and flared his nostrils. It would’ve scared the shit out of a regular civilian. It was a shame he’d picked the wrong arena for intimidation.
Slater said, ‘We’re not here to hold anyone’s hand. You want a buddy, go find one in a bar. We’re here to work.’
The second guy, trying to save face, said, ‘We don’t want to be your fucking buddies.’
Slater shrugged. ‘Your friend was the one who opened his mouth. Not us.’
That put the meatheads in a precarious spot. The guy who’d extended an olive branch now felt like a fool, and opted to clam up and stare furiously at his feet. The second guy was angry to be associated with someone who’d made himself look stupid, but he didn’t seem happy about sitting there and stewing, so he decided to mean-mug them for the duration of the trip. King didn’t mind that, and it appeared Slater didn’t either. Anything that wasn’t conversation was fine. They faced forward, pretended he didn’t exist, and neither of them experienced an ounce of discomfort.
There’d be hell to pay soon enough anyway.
They knew their destination thanks to Frankie’s briefing — the lee of an underpass near El Camino in South San Francisco — but they had no idea how long Carter would take to get there, or when specifically the meet was scheduled for. They knew Choi, whoever he was, was expecting to meet with Carter alone, that the rest of the van’s occupants would come as an unwelcome surprise. There’d been no hint at what cover story Carter was using, who he was posing as, which might give them a clue as to what this was about.
Turned out Carter didn’t waste time.
The van stopped twenty minutes after it set off from Hunters Point. The engine died. King finally met the gaze of the second meathead, sensed the quiet fury burning behind his eyes. A beat of total quiet, then…
King’s vision disappeared.
All black.
His heart skipped a beat, but he quickly realised Carter had killed the interior light using a button in the front compartment. Probably so as not to arouse suspicion from anyone who might be watching the van. Tension rippled in the darkness. At any moment King anticipated the feeling of a knife blade flashing through the dark, slitting his guts open end-to-end. Letting his imagination run wild was useless, though, and anxiety served no purpose, so he sat there in the blackness and controlled his thoughts. He was sure Slater was doing the same.
Sure enough, it only took a few seconds to hear the meatheads’ laboured breathing.
They too were expecting assault.
The windowless box was a den of fear, but neither King nor Slater allowed themselves to feel it. The nervousness bristled in the air but they didn’t let it in. It allowed them to be silent, and that scared the meatheads even more.
Outside the van they all heard muffled conversation, then King made out Carter saying, ‘Let me get it for you.’
The panel door slid open.
44
Even though it was the dead of night, the dark of the underpass was brilliant in comparison to the van’s interior.
Faint and distant streetlight spilled in, allowing them to see Carter in the doorway and, past him, a skinny and unthreatening silhouette hunched over on the sidewalk.
There was no one else in sight.
No witnesses.
The meatheads clambered out of the van. King and Slater followed them. Carter turned around and the five of them stood up to their fullest heights, dwarfing Choi.
Choi matched the description Frankie had provided. He was Korean, short and thin, with straight black hair parted in the centre of his forehead. When he saw people emerging from the van he stammered, ‘What’s this?’
Carter said, ‘We need to have a talk with you, Choi. If you try to run it won’t go well for you, so play nice.’
Choi started to tremble.
The meatheads were already skirting around him, maintaining a wide berth. When they got behind him they closed in, tightening the circle, forcing Choi to take a step toward Carter, King, and Slater.
Choi said, ‘Oh, God.’
‘Yeah,’ Carter said. ‘I guess you know what this is.’
Choi dropped to his knees. He couldn’t breathe properly, could only suck tiny inhalations down his rattling and constricting throat. The panic attack seized him, made him raise his hands with his palms out as if that would protect him from what was to come. He seemed to know exactly what was about to happen. Perhaps word of the fatal beatings was spreading through the underground rumour mills, in which case someone was getting desperate, ordering too many hits, trying to send too many messages at once.
King could take one guess who the culprit was.
Carter nodded to the meatheads and one of them geared up for a roundhouse kick to the side of Choi’s skull, which was made possible by the fact that Choi was on his knees. At least the first strike would knock him out cold, and the blows that killed him wouldn’t
