Kill the Messenger by Tami Hoag Read Free Book Online Page A

if a person didn’t care and wanted them anyway, 76 stations would ask for an ID, in accordance with the law. The night clerk had no more than fifty bucks in the cash register.
    “And I have a gun.”
    He pulled a big-ass handgun out from under the cluttered counter and pointed it at Jace’s face, even as he snagged the two dollars from the tray with his other hand.
    “Isn’t that glass bulletproof?” Jace asked.
    The clerk scowled. “Yes, you cannot shoot me.”
    “I don’t have a gun,” Jace said. “And if you try to shoot me, the glass will stop your bullet, maybe even bounce it back into your face. Did you ever think of that?”
    Jace spread his hands where the clerk could see them. “I’m not robbing you anyway. I just want a Snickers and a Mountain Dew. Come on, man. It’s raining.”
    From the corner of his eye Jace caught the watery red intermittent flash of a police strobe down the street, and his pulse kicked up a beat. The car wasn’t moving. Nor were any of its companions parked around the same small chunk of real estate.
    “What’s going on down there?”
    Maybe Lenny had called the cops when he figured out the package hadn’t been delivered. Maybe the envelope was stuffed with cash and everyone assumed the bike messenger had taken off with it. Maybe there was even now, as Jace stood trying to buy a candy bar from a guy in an orange turban who pointed a gun at him, an APB out on him, and LAPD cruisers were trolling the streets in search of him.
    The clerk put his gun down on the counter, as casually as if he were putting a cigarette on the lip of an ashtray. “A murder,” he said. “I listen to the scanner.”
    Jace felt the blood rush out of his head.
    “Who?” he asked, still staring at the congregation of vehicles the next block down, on the other side of the street.
    “Maybe you,” the clerk said.
    Jace looked at him, a weird current of déjà vu going through him. Maybe he had been murdered? Maybe he was dead. Maybe he hadn’t gotten away. Maybe Predator’s bullet had gone through him, and this surreality he found himself in was the afterlife. Maybe this guy was the guardian at the gate.
    “Maybe you are the killer,” the clerk said, then laughed as if he hadn’t three minutes ago assumed Jace was there to rob him.
    “Who was killed?” Jace asked again. The shaking he had in part attributed to hunger was growing stronger, but he’d already forgotten his empty belly.
    “They call no names, only codes,” the clerk said. “Codes and the address.”
    He repeated the address aloud. Jace’s mouth moved along like a ventriloquist’s dummy’s, the words and numbers forming but no sound coming from him.
    Lenny Lowell’s address. There was no one in Lenny’s office to kill except Lenny.
    Jace wondered if the attorney had been murdered before or after Predator had tried to turn him into roadkill. Could have gone either way, he thought, if what the killer was after was the package tucked inside the waistband of Jace’s pants. Or maybe Lenny had blown away Predator. That could have happened. Except that the attorney had been too drunk to walk a straight line, let alone shoot a gun and actually hit somebody.
    An LAPD black-and-white crawled up the street and turned in at the gas station. Jace quelled the urge to run. His hands were shaking as he removed his junk-food dinner from the pay tray. He stuffed the candy bar in his pocket, opened the soda, and gulped down half of it.
    The cops pulled up maybe ten feet in front of the building. The cop riding shotgun opened the door and got out. A doughy-faced guy on the heavy side, all of him draped in a rain slicker.
    “Hey, Habib,” the cop called in a voice too jovial for the weather. “Hell of a night, huh?”
    “Jimmy Chew!” Habib exclaimed, a wide grin splitting his face. One of his upper front teeth was discolored gray and rimmed with gold. “It’s raining! I swear I should never have bothered to leave London!”
    The cop