Unknown Victim by Kay Hadashi (top 10 books of all time txt) 📗

Maybe because she’d suffered some humiliation by having to wait for him for so long, or maybe she just wanted to see if she could get his face to crack a smile for a change, she pretended she really was a hooker when she walked to his car.

Instead of getting in, she leaned her elbows on the door and looked in at him. “Looking for a date?”

He checked his mirrors. “Get in the car, Santoro.”

“Not till I get my price.”

He glared at her and then let his foot off the brake for a moment, allowing the car to lurch forward. Gina flicked her fingers under her chin at him.

He pushed the car door open. “Get in the car.”

She got in and slammed the door closed. “Alright, already. Just selling my new look.”

“You don’t have to sell it so well. Not yet, anyway.”

Gina checked her face in the vanity mirror on the flipside of the sun visor, still wondering if she had on too much eye shadow. “I look good, though, right?”

Kona got out into traffic. “Yeah, at least fifty dollars’ worth.”

She flipped the visor up again. “That’s it? That’s all a half hour with me is worth? Fifty bucks?”

“That’s more than what most of them get. And who said anything about half an hour? Fifteen minutes in the backseat of the guy’s car, and don’t expect a lot of personal hygiene.”

“Eww.”

“Makes being a gardener a lot more attractive, doesn’t it?” he asked.

“Landscape horticulturist.”

“Someday, you’ll have to explain the difference,” he said. “You got it straight what we’re trying to accomplish at Bunzo’s tonight?”

“Yeah. I go in and find a place at Chuck’s end of the bar. I make sure he understands I ain’t got no daddy and I’m tired of strolling downtown. I’m lookin’ to choose up to a new family. Hopefully, he’ll ask if I want to be in his stable.”

“You have the terminology right. Just don’t overuse it. If any of the bar customers approach, call them ‘Sugar’ and tell them you’re taking a break. Don’t make eye contact with Chuck until he strikes up a conversation about you working in the bar. That’s important.”

“What do I call him?” she asked.

“Nothing. Play hard to get, if anything. But not too hard.”

“Hard to get hooker? That doesn’t make sense at all.”

“You want him to be your pimp, not a john. You need to convince him you’re worth taking on. But the point of this evening is to catch Chuck in a mistake.”

“You mean entrap?”

“You have the luxury of using that word, but I don’t,” Detective Kona said. “He needs to say out loud that he had something to do with Danny’s death.”

“How do I do that?” she asked.

“Tell him you were sent in looking for a pimp named Danny. Be sure to refer to Danny in the present tense. Once Chuck refers to him in the past tense, that means he knows Danny is dead, and that leads you closer to what he knows about it.”

“Sounds like entrapment to me.”

“Which is why you have to make it sound like a job interview to him. Once you pretend to discover the news that Danny is dead, you need to find out what happened to him.”

“Chuck’ll see right through that, won’t he?” Gina asked.

“Not if you lead him along slowly. Things like, ‘Gee, that’s too bad. I was really looking forward to having a new daddy. I wonder what happened to him? It’s too bad the way people treat each other anymore,’ will lead him along. Remember, always go with leading questions, but give only yes or no answers.”

“Then as soon as Chuck says something like ‘Danny got shivved,’ we’ll know he knows something about it?” she asked.

“Right. If he knows what day of the week, or where his body was found, any details of the circumstances is helpful.”

“Then it’s my word against his as a witness,” Gina said. “There’s no way I can wear a wire with this blouse. Not just the mike would show, but the wire would also.”

Kona parked up the street from Bunzo’s and shut off the headlights and windshield wipers, nowhere near a streetlight. A woman using an umbrella came down the sidewalk in their direction, doing a hooker-style runway walk. In the dark car with the steady rain pattering off the car windows, Gina got a shiver thinking about what it would be like to work a street corner in bad weather.

He opened a small box and handed it to her. A tiny device the size of a bean was inside. “Goes in your ear. With that, we can hear everything you hear, and pick up your voice from internally.”

“Something this small can broadcast to wherever you’re listening?”

“It has a limited range, and can’t be picked up through walls.”

“How are you going to hear the conversation?” she asked.

Startling Gina was a rapid knocking on the window next to her. She looked out to see the woman with the umbrella, gesturing to Kona. He unlocked the rear passenger door to let her in.

“This is Candy. She’ll be in Bunzo’s with you, only at a table a few feet away.”

“She’s the one wearing a wire?” Gina asked.

“Right, one that can pick up your signal and is strong enough to relay it to us. Both of you need to remember to stay away from any electronic equipment, and anything making a lot of noise. That includes blenders at the bar and the flatscreen on the wall. Make sure you work your conversation around the use of the blender, and while Chuck is within a few feet of you. The closer, the better.”

Detective Kona went to the back seat of the car and began taping down the wire and tiny transmitter to Candy’s chest.

“What if Chuck wants to, you know, give me a whirl before deciding to take me on?” Gina asked.

“I suppose you’d have a problem with going to the back room with him?”

“Uh, yeah!”

“Y’all ain’t missin’ much with Chuck,” Candy said, buttoning her blouse again. Her accent