King Maybe by Timothy Hallinan Read Free Book Online Page B

“Well, when you put it that way—”
    â€œInstead of just . . . you know, hiring another person to shoot you or sending you into a dark, empty house full of ninjas.”
    â€œThere’s no such thing as a ninja.”
    â€œNinjas are everywhere.”
    â€œAnd if ninjas were everywhere, a house full of them wouldn’t be empty.”
    â€œYou’re dodging the fact that I’m right.”
    â€œTwo guys,” I said. “Baseball bats. I’m ninety-percent sure they knew I was in there. Who else could have tipped them?”
    â€œNo one,” she said, turning right for the third or fourth time on Hayvenhurst, “which means that you have to go to the other ten percent. The ten-percent chance that you somehow tipped them to your presence, expert though you are, with your little flashlight. N’est-ce pas? ”
    â€œâ€˜N’est-ce pas’?”
    â€œThat’s how we Cathars talk. ‘ Bonjour , n’est-ce pas?’ We say it on the slightest provocation.” She pulled to the curb again, leaned forward, and rested her forehead on the wheel. “I’m hungry. Either I want something to eat and a cup of coffee or I want to go to bed.”
    I looked at my watch. Ten thirty. “Trade you something to eat for the name of the place you were born.”
    She said, “Eat where?”
    â€œWe’re not doing it that way. I’ll suggest someplace, you’ll say no and suggest something else, and we’ll wind up going to the place you suggested.”
    â€œSince we’re nearly on the other side of the hill, let’s go to K-Town. The barbecue places are open late.”
    â€œFine, K-Town.” I waited long enough to see a coyote trot past the car, looking professional. Coyotes always look professional. “Well?”
    â€œAll right,” she said. “Newark.”
    I braced myself for a surge of elation that didn’t arrive. “That’s it?”
    â€œWhy? Too easy?”
    â€œI don’t know. I don’t feel like I actually won.”
    â€œYou didn’t,” she said. “I lied. Tell you what. Turn on your phone and see whether Stinky’s been trying to get you. Or call him, see if he answers.”
    â€œI thought you were hungry.”
    â€œI am, but this way my going hungry pays me back for having lied to you, so you can’t be mad at me. See? We’re even.”
    I turned on my phone, and it rang with the information that it was Jake, so I turned it off again. “Fine, we’ll go to Soot Bull Jeep and get our clothes all smoky and Korean. But change places so I can drive, and give me a little more time first, okay?”
    â€œWhat for?”
    â€œTo take a discreet look at Stinky’s house.”

4
    The Baronial Elite
    Stinky Tetweiler had once referred to himself, in my hearing, as “a member of the baronial elite.” He’s also been known to let his choice of first-person pronoun slip from I to the royal we . If that gives you the impression that he could be an overprivileged, insufferably smug, self-satisfied twit, you would have an accurate impression.
    He came by his smugness in the traditional baronial way, which is to say he inherited it through the dumb-luck accident of birth. He was the scion, albeit in disgrace, of the family that created that most pernicious of innovations, the perfume strip. After earning hundreds of millions with a product that made sensitive people’s uvulas feel like a thumb down their throats, the Tetweiler family had diversified by buying one of the seven global companies that create molecules that mimic natural fragrances for commercial use in detergents, artificially flavored food and drinks, room deodorizers, new cars—everything from mosquito repellent to the seductive smell of a fake leather jacket.
    He’d grown up in a 20,000-square-foot house with a scratchy little two-horse imitation ranch