Big Mango (9786167611037) by Jake Needham Read Free Book Online

thought your man Austin was taken out.”
    “I thought you said he wasn’t a drug
dealer.”
    “He wasn’t.”
    “Then why would anyone want to kill him?”
    Wuntz rolled his eyes. “I look like the
Amazing Randy to you or what, Eddie? How the fuck would I
know?”
    “I thought maybe your DEA guy told you.”
    “Well, he didn’t.”
    Eddie blew air out between his teeth and
studied the clipping some more. “This is sure a hell of a
coincidence.”
    Wuntz reached over Eddie’s shoulder and
tapped his finger on a date that was stamped on the bottom of the
clipping. “DEA logged this in three weeks ago, just before those
pictures started showing up in your mail. Still think it’s a
coincidence?”
    Eddie didn’t much care for the way the
conversation was developing or for what he gathered Wuntz was
suggesting. “Do you know what this story actually says?”
    “There was no translation in the file. Maybe
one of those Asian hoods you call clients can read Thai.”
    Eddie’s eyes flicked up to Wuntz.
    “This is from a Thai newspaper?” he
asked.
    “Yeah.”
    “That’s where Captain Austin was killed?”
    But Eddie knew, of course, what the answer
was going to be before he finished the question.
    “Yeah. In Bangkok,” Wuntz replied, right on
cue.
    Eddie’s reaction must have been easier to
read than he would have liked.
    “Bangkok,” Wuntz repeated, giving Eddie a
long look. “You know, the place with all the little broads and the
big massage parlors. That mean something to you?”
    Eddie quickly shook his head. He knew Wuntz
didn’t believe him, But he let it go anyway and Eddie was grateful
to him for that.
    He didn’t really want to talk about it
anymore right then and, even if he had, he couldn’t imagine what he
would say.

 
     
     
Five
     
    EDDIE was walking slowly
along Market Street still trying to get his mind around the
conversation with Kelly Wuntz when his telephone began tweeting. He
hated that sound. Every time he heard it he wondered why nobody
could make a mobile telephone that just rang instead of making a
noise like a canary with gas.
    “Get back here now,” Joshua snapped before
Eddie could say hello.
    “Hello, Joshua. How are you?”
    “I said get back here now.”
    “I heard you.”
    He gave it a second, but Joshua didn’t add
anything.
    “We having a fire or something?” Eddie
prompted.
    “There are some men here to see you.”
    Joshua sounded a little strange.
    “I don’t have any appointments this
afternoon.”
    “Eddie, I’m telling you there are some people
here to see you and you have to come back right now.”
    “‘People,’ Joshua? I thought you said ‘men.’
Now which is it? ‘Men’ or ‘people?’ You know that might have a very
significant effect on whether I come back because—”
    “Eddie,” Joshua interrupted. “Cut the shit
and get back here.”
    Then he hung up.
    ***
    WHEN Eddie walked into his
outer office a few minutes later, he half expected to find Joshua
tied to a chair with a gag in his mouth, but everything looked
normal enough. Joshua gestured toward the closed door of Eddie’s
office with a tilt of his head and went right on typing without
looking up just like he always did. Eddie opened his door with a
shrug and went in.
    There was quite a crowd waiting for him:
three men and a woman. At least they looked like a crowd all
squeezed at once into Eddie’s office. He had only two
straight-backed chairs for visitors and one of the men and the
woman sat in them while the other two men leaned against the wall.
The expressions of bored contempt on his visitors’ faces
unmistakably marked them as cops to anyone who had been around the
Hall of Justice as long as Eddie had.
    Wondering what kind of roust this was going
to turn out to be, Eddie moved around his desk at what he thought
was a stately enough pace to suggest a complete lack of interest
and then settled slowly into his own chair. No one spoke, and he
studied the man and woman