This Guy #5

We had no problems getting a hotel room. The dealer kept fading in and out of conscience and I was really beginning to worry about him dying. We had him in the room propped up on the bed when he finally came awake. He looked kind of gray, with sweat beaded up on his forehead, but his body went cold and hot in turns.
"Thought you was cops." his voice was thick and slurred. His head dropped chin resting on his chest.
"What! What!" I slapped him not too gently across the face, shaking him.
He wasn’t responding, I shook him harder and foggy white drool leaked from the corner of his mouth. I put my ear to his chest; his pulse was racing then seemed to pause, like a sputtering engine. It caught again then stopped, this time it didn't come back. I started pumping his chest, but couldn’t bring myself to try rescue breathing. I had to give up, he was dead. I pushed his limp head over and had a glimpse of something shiny inside his mouth. I used a pen from the nightstand and pried open his teeth, there was a plastic bag stuck in his cheek all chewed up. The dead guy was staring at me and for a few minutes I stared back, his eyes looked different in death, they were blank, waiting for something to fill them, but nothing ever would. I pushed his head back over so he was looking at the curtains.
Niklas was standing at the end of the bed, white as a ghost.
"What the fuck dude?" he sounded panicked. "I didn’t kill him with the car. Did I?" He sank into a chair.
"No man, don't worry." My heart was racing and I was angry as hell, but I tried to calm him down. "Fucker had some drugs or something and when he ran or after we had him on the ground he fucking swallowed it. Shit!" I yelled slamming my fist down on the nightstand.
Niklas slumped down in the chair, his lips were moving silently as he stared blankly at the dead guy on the bed. I was kneeling on the floor next to the bed rubbing the side of my hand gently. I still had long thin bruises on both hands from the phone cord, hitting the table had hurt.
"Well shit." I looked from the corpse to Niklas. "What do we do now?"
"You're asking me? It's your plan." He held his hands up.
"Alright, we got his cell and beeper. We get to a computer and look up as many of these numbers as we can. If nothing’s listed we can at least get locations on anything but the cell phone numbers." We got our stuff together wiped down what we could of the room.
"I wonder how the news will play this." Niklas snorted and nodded to the guy on the bed.
“Don’t worry dude, I’m sure they won’t think he got run over to death.” We both laughed a little. I was a little surprised we both were so calm about another killing. Then again this guy had suicided, we were only partially responsible.
Niklas had a couple pre-paid credit cards set up under Niklas and Alexander, something I never would have thought of. They were incredibly easy to get, in fact he had got these at a Radio Shack, and after setting up he was able to use them over the phone or online without even having the card yet!
We left our car in a parking garage at the airport and he called down to one of the other car rental places and set up a new one. I was surprised how good he was at this, I probably would have been out trying to hotwire an old Camaro or something. The new car wasn't as nice, we actually moved down a few notches and were driving a tan sedan that smelled like smoked salmon and feet.
At the hotel we spent a few hours combing through the numbers on the cell and beeper, over half must have been cell phones and weren't much use to us, but we got out a map and circled the blocks the other numbers came from. Our biggest problem now was that the most numbers came from the same block we had picked the guy up in. We had to bring someone else in to help us, someone we could trust. More important someone who wouldn't hate us for dragging them into this mess we'd made.
After talking it out it wasn't hard for us to agree on who to ask, Stet. I hadn't seen him for a couple years. Niklas said he wasn't doing much, just hopping from job to job pretty irresponsible. That raised my eyebrows a little, Niklas the embezzler calling Stet irresponsible, I let it go though, they had some personal shit going on, and I wasn't going to get involved.
Stet and I had our own problems, mainly stemming from the fact I'm a real prick sometimes. After high school I had moved into a spare room in his house, we got along really good until I started messing up everything else I was doing. Things went downhill for me, and I took it out on him, he never said a word, and actually seemed sad to see me go when I finally moved out. I talked to him a few times after that but I never apologized to him, even after I'd recognized how much of a dick I'd been.
It surprised him that I called, but he agreed to meet me out at a diner near his place. He started to ask me a question, probably about where Niklas was, but stopped himself not wanting to talk about it on the phone. I asked Niklas to let me go alone
"Why?"
"I have to be sure we're cool before I drag him into anything." I answered, throwing my coat on. I was back in my normal street clothes, and felt like a man again.
"Okay." he nodded, I started out the door. "Alex." he called after me.
I stopped and turned towards him. "Don't kill anyone."
He gave a tight lipped smile, enough that I thought he was trying to make a joke.
"Depends how good the coffee is." I quipped back. His smile looked more genuine now, grinning back as I flipped him off and headed out.
Judging from the torn up sugar packets Stet must have been at the diner a good hour or so. He looked at me blankly a second or two before recognition hit and he got up to meet me.
"Damn, you got fat."
"Because I eat runts like you for breakfast." We both grinned and shared a man hug, right hands clasped, quick pound to the back with a fist.
He slid back into his seat as I took off my coat and threw it onto the bench ahead of me. He lit a cigarette while the waitress poured me a coffee, I must have been eyeing his cigarette hungrily, and he slid the pack over the table to me. I considered for as long as it took my hand to reach them, pulled one out. "No thanks, I quit a couple years ago."
He slid the lighter over to me, one eyebrow raised as I lit and slowly drew in a deep lungful. Toasted tobacco and menthol cool swirled up my nose tickling loose memories of many other cigarettes I'd shared with him and Niklas, some in this very diner.
"Surprised you're not coughing."
"I was made to defile myself." A second drag actually made me dizzy for a second. "It's been a long time Stet."
He shrugged, "I haven't really done anything."
"Ha, me neither." Our conversation was light, just two old friends talking. We filled in the few years’ worth of gaps back and forth without any great detail until the waitress had finally started ignoring us, realizing we were only there for coffee.
"Do you like your job?" I asked, surprising him a little.
"It's a job. You have a better offer?" he flashed a little smile, he thought he knew something.
"So what do you know so far?"
"I figure you came back to help Niklas" He stressed the name with a wink “out of some trouble. You hid out in Philly for a while, decided to go after whatever trouble had been chasing you." He looked to me for confirmation.
"Close" I answered. He smiled a big Cheshire grin at me, and then I connected it. "You talked to Wriggly?"
He nodded. "Niklas' roommate called me, he hadn't been there for over a week and the cops came looking for him.” I stiffened drew back a little involuntarily, I couldn't help myself and I looked around the room suspiciously.
"Damn, did they say what for?"
"No, but there was a story in the paper about the place he worked getting robbed of a couple million. With him missing it didn't take much to figure out."
I sat stunned for a few minutes, "A couple million? He only took about half a mil. What the hell?" I could feel the little wheels in my head clicking as my mind raced.
"Shit!" I exploded slapping the table. The waitress started over, but I waved her off trying to force an apologetic smile. Then lowering my voice to barely a mumble, "That was why they sent This Guy to kill him. He was just a front for their real inside guy who stole the big money. Fuck!"
"What? What guy?" Stet asked.
I'd missed it completely, so had Niklas, he was just a fall guy for some prick, probably higher up in the company than him. That meant they were probably still hunting for him, or if they knew about me, us.
They needed him dead and messy so they could close the books on the whole thing, leaving the guy inside free and clear. I didn't really understand why he'd want to keep working there after scoring a couple million, but maybe he was setting up for another hit.
I explained to Stet about the hit man, then the muscle guy watching his eyes get wide. I wasn't specific, just left it at Had To. He nodded agreement when I told him about Niklas being set up, it made sense. I filled in the rest including the drug dealer, and the neighborhood we were now shut out of.
We smoked another cigarette, I sat quiet letting Stet think about what he'd heard. He stared out the window rolling a spoon around in his hand. Finally he turned back, a mischievous little boy grin on his face.
"Fuck it I'm in. Guns, mobsters, drug dealers?" he chuckled, "Damn glad you came back to town son."