No Hitmen in Heaven: An Explosive Crime Thriller (Jake Hancock Universe Thriller) Read online

  Contents

  Copyright Info

  Acknowledgements

  Personal Message from the Author

  Start of Story

  Personal Message from the Author

  About the Author

  Jake Hancock Private Investigator series

  Excerpt from Kiss Hidden Lies

  Copyright Info

  No Hitmen in Heaven

  Dan Taylor

  Copyright © 2017 by Daniel Taylor

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Bob Lamb is especially a work of fiction. I mean, come on…

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to the fine ladies who took their time to read early drafts of No Hitmen in Heaven. Your feedback helped mold the final draft more than you could ever know. Thanks to beta readers Victoria, Sandra, Beatrice, and Tammy. Your enthusiasm is much appreciated. And thanks to you, Elaine, you eagle-eyed proofreader you. But if you spot a comma in the wrong place, it’s totally her fault.

  And finally you, Siri, the person who read this book first and loved it. I need a confidence boost from time to time.

  Personal Message from the Author

  I hope you enjoy this book or any other of my books as much as I love to write them! If you have, click this link and tell me. I personally respond to each email I receive, and love reading what fans of my books have to say.

  I also keep in touch with my readers on my Facebook page, informing them of my new releases and blog posts. Head on over and like it and say hi.

  Alternatively, you can sign up for my newsletter to find out when new books are released. You’ll also receive a discount on the latest release.

  Thanks for taking a chance on my writing.

  Dan Taylor

  1.

  It never surprises me how plain-looking the people are who hire me to kill. Take this guy, for instance. Peter Hammer. Looks like he might be an accountant, if we weren’t sitting by his pool high up in the Hollywood Hills. Looks like he never punched another guy in the face, let alone come close to killing someone himself. But here he is, telling me he wants me to “whack” his aunt. His word.

  There are just a few details to go over before he gives me the “green light.” Again, his words.

  “Will it hurt, Mr. Logan?” he asks.

  I take a sip of the virgin cocktail he made me, thinking the view might be pretty if not for the leaves floating in the pool. Then I say, “Your aunt’s death will be as painless as I can make it.”

  It isn’t an answer at all, but he sits there, thinking about it. Or maybe he’s thinking about something else. Like he needs to hire a new pool guy.

  Then he looks at me, says, “How will you—you know—do it?”

  “It’s better for both parties if I divulge as little information as possible about the method.”

  “Right. So, I can look and sound surprised as possible when the police let me know.”

  I was thinking so that he doesn’t back out. In my experience, which is plenty, a guy who makes sure said virgin cocktail sits on a coaster might be the type to back out if he can picture putting a bullet in his aunt’s throat with a Beretta.

  But instead, I say, “Yeah, sure. Good thinking. Act surprised.”

  He sits and thinks a second. Goes to say something. Hesitates. Then spits it out: “Mr. Logan, I want you to know that I love my aunt dearly. This is simply to be humane. Aunt Margaret dearest hasn’t been herself the last five or so years. You know how it is.”

  I do a little background work on clients and their targets before we find ourselves sitting by their pools, discussing the ins and outs, and let me tell you, Mrs. Margaret Hammer is fresh enough after her sixty-seven years to try out for a varsity wrestling team. And mentally? She’d kick my ass in a spelling bee.

  The humanity he alluded to can be measured in zeroes. Three. The number the equity for her apartment on Hollywood Boulevard has gone up by, the mortgage of which Peter pays like a good little boy every month.

  Peter Hammer made a bad investment on a film that should’ve never been made in the first place. By all accounts King’s Return was a hell of a film. The sequel, denoted by the addition of 2 to the title, not so much. Movie goers, apart from the cult home-viewing crowd, don’t appreciate ironic titles. At least my background work informed me.

  But that wasn’t the biggest mistake he made. He needed someone to go in on the investment with him.

  Add in one wise guy trying to go straight by building property and making inadvisable movie investments, and two insistent, roided-up muscle heads to Peter Hammer’s family dynamic, and suddenly he’s talking of humanity.

  But who am I to question the man’s definition of the word?

  I’m a hired gun. The best.

  So, I say, “I understand. People get old, and sometimes someone has to make a brave decision.”

  “Right. A brave decision.”

  I have a few details of my own to acquire before I go through with it. I ask, “Your aunt, does she ever keep any firearms on her person?”

  “No.”

  “Cans of mace, a knuckle duster?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ve never asked.”

  “What about in her apartment? A samurai sword, even if it looks solely decorative?”

  “Oh, you won’t be doing it in her apartment. She comes to clean on Wednesdays. I figured you’d do it then.”

  I give him a look, but not in response to what he thinks, as he says, “What? Aunt Margaret enjoys the exercise.”

  I take a sip of my cocktail. It’s disgusting.

  Then I say, “Doing it in your apartment is a no-go.”

  “Why not?”

  It’s becoming clearer why Peter Hammer was one of the bozos who helped green light King’s Return 2.

  I say, “It’s in my interest as your hired gun to keep your culpability as non-existent as possible.”

  “That’s very kind of you.”

  “It’s not kind, Mr. Hammer. I only think of myself, which for you, in this situation, just so happens to mean keeping you off the persons-of-interest list. Detectives, even of Dukes’s caliber, tend to make connections between—I don’t know…—the circumstances in which someone was killed and bad movie deals made by the victim’s nephew, especially if said victim just so happened to be killed at her nephew’s apartment coincidentally on the one day of the week she’s scheduled to clean it.”

  He’s taken aback. How do I know? He’s taken his gaze off my glass’s proximity to edge of the coaster for the first time during my turn to talk.

  He says, “How do you know—”

  “About the bad movie deal? The same way I know about the decorative katana sword hanging on the wall above your bed. Which is weapon sharpened. I have sources, Mr. Hammer. And FYI, you should probably get a decent decorator to hang that thing with drywall screws.”

  Eyeing him above the rim of my glass, I watch him carefully. There it is. He’s biting his
nails. Ten minutes from now, I’ll be riding in a cab, either with the Manila folder lying on his bed I also spotted while he went potty, or having wasted my time with another late-thirties male who flirted with the idea of having a family member “whacked” because of a bad investment.

  He’s thinking about humanity again.

  When he’s finished, he says, “I don’t suppose I could just hire you to take out the goons that are pressing me for the cash, as well as that other goon?”

  “There’s a tiny, teeny problem with that scenario.”

  “What?”

  “That other goon is my boss.”

  “Shit,” he says, then gets back to thinking. Probably that my sitting here, as opposed to some other hired gun, isn’t a coincidence. Then he says, “Her apartment won’t work. She lives on the tenth floor.”

  “I’ll make it work.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll take the elevator.”

  “Not that. I mean, won’t you want to get in and out without anyone seeing you?”

  “That’s precisely why I’ll take the elevator.”

  “I don’t get it, Mr. Logan.”

  That’s the fourth time he’s referred to me as Mr. Logan, and it’s irritating me—but clients tend to remember a name like Blake Elvis. How he says it—drawing out Logan—is grating on me. As is explaining the logistics of how I’m going to take out his aunt. But I understand he needs some reassurance. It’s a good sign, as irritating as it is, as long as the reason behind it is not wanting to get caught, as opposed to looking for reasons to back out.

  I take another sip of the cocktail, and wonder if Peter Hammer wouldn’t mind my making a homeopathic remedy with it and the pool water.

  Then I say, “On a day we’re yet to decide next week, the scheduling of which will be your-aunt dependent, Mrs. Hammer will be getting a furniture delivery. You’ll phone a couple days before, letting her know you’ve bought her a present. A cuckoo clock. Aunty like cuckoo clocks?”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re sure she likes cuckoo clocks?”

  “She’s never owned one. But I don’t think she’d mind having one in the apartment.”

  “Let’s just say it’s a cuckoo clock for now. A delivery guy, yours truly, will get buzzed in by the awaiting Mrs. Hammer. Like clockwork. I’ll wheel that hunk of junk—which will be a shade over six-feet tall, my height—through the lobby, into the elevator, not allowing any of the residents to get a good look at me. And then after I’ve placed it ‘in the corner over there,’ I’ll make all your problems go away with Mr. Balbone. Pending a police investigation, of course. But Mr. Balbone is a patient man, as long as he knows his money’s coming.”

  “Right.”

  “Am I right in assuming Aunty Margaret has a jewelry box?”

  “She does.”

  “Then that’s what I’ll take, to make it look like a robbery. Upon being asked by LA’s finest, closest any of the residents will get to spotting anything suspicious is some delivery guy, which, in an apartment building, is about as noteworthy as going into a gas station and finding crap still floating in the toilet bowl.”

  We sit there for a minute, not saying anything. If I had to take a guess, I’d say Peter Hammer is seventy-percent convinced he’s got the balls to go through with it, which will go up to ninety-nine when Phil and Gary come for their next scheduled visit, which is the day after tomorrow, the day I’ll inform Mr. Hammer he’s to make the call to Aunt Margaret.

  As I said, like clockwork.

  What he says next bumps my estimation up to seventy-five percent: “This jewelry box, will you keep it, or will I get it?”

  “I think it’s best for both parties if neither of us see that jewelry box ever again.”

  “Right. One last question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “When you know, do it, should I arrange to be out of town, on vacation?”

  “You should be living your life exactly how you’d live it on any other day. Oh, and one last thing: You’re to pay for the cuckoo clock yourself, with the credit card. It’s a gift.”

  He looks at me a second, thinking, says right again, and then goes and gets the Manila folder that’s lying under his bed.

  After he’s handed it to me, I stand up, don’t shake his hand, and then tell him in advance I’m sorry for his loss.

  2.

  Am I bad man? It isn’t black and white. I’ve made many cuckoo clock deliveries. And when one second Mrs. Hammer is looking at a kind, handsome man delivering her a cuckoo clock, and the next second she’s lying on the floor, wondering why the small sound emitted from my suppressor-fitted Beretta resulted in a hole in her throat, sure, I’ll be a bad man.

  But what about tonight, when I’m running Sloppy Seconds, the soup kitchen I founded and manage three nights a week? When I use my spare time to hand Stinky Pete, Mangy Bob, and Dick-Eyed Bill a cup of steaming, rich, herby broth, making their evening, will I be a bad man then?

  Bill would tell you I’m the kindest man to walk the face of the earth. Sure, you wouldn’t be able to understand a word he said, but you’d see it in his smiling eyes.

  I’m not telling you these things to make you think more of me. I don’t want or need that. I’m just challenging your definition of good and bad in relation to a person, and how the validity of your judgment is timing-dependent. One day the running of a successful, tax-ethical charity could define a man, the next he could be defined by his being on trial for gunning down an African-American teenager because he felt intimidated by the clothes he was wearing. And his hotshot attorney is probably going to get him off with self-defense.

  Are we to forget the good the man did, and label him bad for his latest character-defining behavior? Or on the flipside, are we to forgive him for his wrongdoing because of all the good he did before it?

  I can’t decide, so I’ll let you do it.

  I’ve made my peace with what I do for a living, and depending on when you make your judgment I can be both good or bad.

  But what I haven’t made my peace with is what happened to my wife.

  So after the deal with Peter Hammer is signed and sealed, I head over to Shady Acres Psychiatric Institution for my weekly visit, where Sandra is a resident.

  Like usual, I make pleasant, cordial conversation with the nurses as I sign in at the front desk, and am escorted to the communal area, where, just as usual, I find Sandy playing backgammon with herself. She wins every time.

  Which for Sandra, at least the one I knew just over a year ago, is a good thing.

  I take the seat opposite her, and she notices me after ten or so seconds.

  Today I’ve found her in a good mood, as she says, “I smelled you come in five minutes ago, but I didn’t want to look up and see your pockmarked skin.”

  I smile warmly, reply, “Hey, Sandra. Is life treating you well?”

  She grunts a response. And I go back to grinning like an idiot.

  Sandra hasn’t always been this angry, nor has she always thought backgammon is a one-player game.

  Sandra suffers from extreme bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia, and a host of other undiagnosed psychiatric orders that affect her mood, behavior, and cognitive thinking.

  And the reason she developed all these in the space of a year is because of a car accident in which she suffered irreparable brain trauma.

  I was at the wheel.

  I remember it like it was 385 days, eleven hours, and thirty-six minutes ago. It was a Friday night, and we’d been invited to a fund raiser for blind and deaf kids at billionaire philanthropist Dane Thompson’s mansion.

  Sandra had had a difficult week… Hell, we’d both had a difficult week, but she won the argument for who would be the designated driver. Back then, and still now, she had me wrapped around her little pinky toe, like some sort of weird blanket.

  I drank sparkling water all night, and Sandra sipped champa
gne like Dane Thompson was paying for it. I had just loosened up into the evening, half enjoying a conversation with Cindy Bleckford about how her acting career was about to skyrocket, when I noticed the host of the party taking an interest in Sandra.

  She was laughing at his jokes, grazing his forearm with her fingernails now and again in the way naturally flirtatious women do. I reacted like any self-assured married man would. I started laughing at anything Cindy Bleckford said that could be interpreted as humorous.

  When she came back over five minutes later, she was acting like she hadn’t noticed me, and I was trying my hardest to stop my eyebrow sassily reaching for my forehead.

  As good as my poker face was, Sandra read me like a Disneyworld travel brochure. “What?” she asked breezily.

  “Don’t play dumb with me, Sandra. Dane Thompson’s going to require a tetanus shot in his forearm after the way you just carried on with him.”

  She condescendingly lowered her voice, or maybe she just didn’t want to cause a scene. “Blake, honey, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  I could see it in her eyes. She liked him. I wanted to go over there, drag him into his billiards room, and strangle him until eyes bulged out of his head like a Chihuahua’s.

  But I decided to hit him where it hurts more instead. His jokes.

  I asked her, “What was so funny?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You laughed after practically everything he said. Care to share one of his jokes with me? I feel in the mood for a bit of comedy.”

  “You don’t look like you’re in the mood for it.”

  “Oh, I assure you I am. Go ahead. Tonight, I’m an easy crowd.”

  “Can’t we just drop it, okay?”

  “Drop what? I don’t get it. Was that the punch line?”

  We bickered like this the next ten minutes, and then I decided to do something that would change our lives forever: I decided that if I wasn’t going to be given the opportunity by Sandra to criticize his jokes, I’d try to drink his party dry.