Chapter 2

The possibility of Kenneth not being a horndog surprised me. When Linda, looking kind of punk with spiky short dark brunette hair and a wicked looking scar on her left cheek that still left her pretty damned attractive, dashed to the toilet, he barely watched her tusch swish. He explained his remarkable character change. "She's trouble Joe."

I nodded.

"What have you found?" I asked him. He led me to his office. Under a 'Favorites' file on the internet labeled 'Dagmar', Kenneth flashed through three separate articles. Three deaths of men in her life. "Holy shit," I murmured.

"She's trouble," Kenneth reiterated.

I gasped, "She's like the grim reaper leaving corpses behind."

Kenneth nodded. "Except for the last death, it would be hard to pin her to them. The Columbian..."

"His throat was slashed by a razor," I commented. "It's how she..."

"But he's cartel, Joe," said Kenneth. "A violent association."

I nodded. "Is that a common assassination technique?"

"Hardly," Kenneth smiled grimly. "These Columbians love their guns."

"Damn. And Rocky's overdose ... She could have easily ... Fuck!"

"What are you going to do, Joe?"

"Kill Chloe for getting me in this mess."

"Your dick got you in this mess, Joe. She's pretty hot."

"So you did notice."

"Of course. But the information I found made her more scary than sexy. Besides, there's something about her that screams trouble even if I didn't find out. And ... I'm less of a horndog, Joe. I have my little lesbian couple in Eugene and a delicious blonde nerd here in Seattle. I think at last I'm sated."

"How are Mila and Gail?" I asked within my surprise.

"Lovelier than ever, and Mila hardly mentions you at all. Just once in fact last time I visited when Gail and I teamed up to bring her to ecstasy and afterwards in a euphoric cloud she asked about you and her smile only broadened just a little thinking of you."

"I'm glad," I said. "She's all grown up and doesn't need her so called hero."

"Yeah, but she'd still love it if you visited."

"I'd much rather visit her than..." I began.

Looking particularly hot in a towel and glowing from the lingering heat of the shower, Linda entered the study. "I hope you didn't mind me using your shower, Ken," she smiled. She saw the monitor and stiffened. Her face hardened. All three articles cluttered the screen.

"Where's the stash, Dagmar?" I asked, quietly seething.

"I don't know," she growled. "You're the boy scout who stole it."

"How much? A pound? More?"

Her face softened into sadness, an alligator tear pooling in her right eye. "I thought ... I thought you trusted me. At last someone trusted me," she sniffled.

"Yeah," I nodded. "You found a fool, didn't you Dagmar?"

"I ... I didn't kill him. It was just a one night stand."

"Uhm, Dagmar," I reminded her. "There are three men."

Leaving the towel behind, she raced out of the office and into the kitchen, grabbing a large butcher knife from a block and raising it up at me. Though stronger than expected, I managed to grab her wrist before it descended. I wrestled her down on her back on the linoleum floor, one hand at her throat, the other twisting her wrist until the knife fell. My clothed ass sat on her naked abdomen.

"Get a change of clothes for her, Kenneth," I ordered. "And some duct tape."

Kenneth nodded, barely looking at her soft, pale, sexy body before gathering what I requested.

Catching her free hand before it reached my face and threatened to scratch, although she had no real nails to affect much damage since she had the nervous habit of chewing them, I pulled up on the arm and turned her over, threatening to pull the shoulder out of its socket.

"I didn't kill him," she reiterated as her body relaxed.

"Which one didn't you kill?" I asked, my mouth near her ear.

"Ray," she whispered.

"The other two?"

She kept silent.

"She couldn't have, Joe," said Chloe on the phone. I called her immediately after securing Linda with duct tape and she lay on Kenneth's bed watching me chat with her old friend.

"Why not?" I asked.

"She was here in San Francisco when they found Eddie."

"They know when he took the overdose?"

"She couldn't have administered it."

"How do you know?"

"I know Jan at Rolling Stone. They met a couple days before."

"Still..."

Chloe chuckled. "Linda's ... relentless. She confronted Jan early and stayed in the office most of the day until he read her writing. The fact his staff started to get the sniffles and the nerves from Linda's stash probably decided his checking out the unsolicited manuscripts and he found himself liking her writing. Then he had her work on an article as an editor and she impressed him again. He planned on offering her a feature."

"Let me guess. 'Confessions of a Coke Whore?' I offered.

"Asshole," Linda responded, but her face changed from anger to sadness.

"With the trouble she gets into, that might be a pretty compelling piece," said Chloe.

"Yeah," I responded.

"And she really is good."

"At least as a writer," I said. "So you'll bring her in?"

"They'll kill me!" Linda yelled loud enough for Chloe to hear.

"She's the chief suspect," I sighed, "and at least the only witness if she didn't kill him."

"I know. I'm sorry I got you into this," Chloe said.

"If she is being threatened by La Familia..." I prompted.

"I don't know, Joe. This murder ... it's getting attention."

"Talk to your friends in the crime business, Chloe: lawyers on both sides and maybe my mom's boyfriend."

"FBI?"

"He won't raid your house, Chloe. But he might have some insight into Jesus' Familia."

"It'll be moot if you don't get her here."

"I'm sleeping today. I'll be driving tonight and deliver her tomorrow morning," I replied tiredly.

"Sorry Joe. I owe you big time."

"That you do."

Groggy doesn't quite capture it. My brain felt like a large gray cotton ball when I heard my name repeated quietly. My eyes met Linda's pretty hazel eyes looking frustrated and worried and less angry than I expected. I turned over and saw Kenneth's tall thin body fill the bedroom door.

"Your mom's boyfriend's on the phone," said Kenneth.

"Shit," I replied, grunting to my feet and walking wearily behind Kenneth following him to his study.

"Hey Drew," I said into the phone.

"Who found out about Jesus?" Drew asked.

"Hold a second, Drew," I said and cupped my hand over the receiver. "Tell me where you got the article on Jesus," I asked Kenneth.

"You don't want to know," Kenneth replied.

I sighed. "Can I plead the fifth Special Agent Jones?"

"Whatever," Drew grumbled. "It's a big fucking mess anyway no thanks to your girlfriend."

"What girlfriend are you referring to?"

"Linda Martens alias Dagmar."

"She is not even a friend let alone a girlfriend."

"Whatever."

"What's going on?"

"She got caught in Manhattan selling cocaine and we turned her to get her supplier."

"Jesus."

"Got it in one. Seems we got a gaping hole of a leak there and La Familia found out when we tried a sting. One dead DEA agent and one of his crew dead. We ended up finding a couple grams of cocaine after all that. The business got shot to shit in the Big Apple and La Familia not pleased we think actually gunned down Jesus. We found his corpse not far from the warehouse stuffed in a garbage bin, and they put a frame on your ... on Linda. She obviously didn't cut him with her straight razor like she had once before. We knew she fled to Philadelphia a couple weeks after with a shit load of coke she had stolen from the actual stash before the sting and sold a chunk there."

"How do you know it was her?"

"Chemistry my friend. The cocaine and the cut matched perfectly with what we seized."

"Why couldn't it have been from the same stash?"

"Philadelphia's got its own network. Bringing it in there would step on toes. In fact we encouraged that idea. She was seen rather intimately close to a suspected distributor, some white guy. La Familia wanted her revenged and not as a stoolie but a murderer of their own. We kept Jesus' death buried as well, hoping to reveal their assassins."

I looked at Linda, confused. "Chloe told me Linda told her she saw Jesus and his henchmen checking out her apartment in Salt Lake City," I asked Drew.

"Did she get a good look at the goons?"

I asked Linda who had walked into the study, her hands cuffed by bungee cord.

"No way," Linda responded. "A good look would have meant he'd have a good look at me. He had the build and the mannerisms, the way he moved and the way he gestured and his jacket and I caught a quarter view of his face before I fled."

"And the henchmen?"

"I never met any."

"Jesus has a brother, José," said Drew. "An enforcer. They could be twins, only José's a couple years younger and idolized his brother, emulating him. I'll e-mail a picture of him to Kenneth."

"You never knew Jesus was killed?" I asked Linda who shook her head.

"She wouldn't have," said Drew. "Nobody would have outside us and La Familia of course. Kenneth shouldn't have found out. Your friend's hacker skills scare me."