Death to Blonds Ch. 04

"Doin' what?"

"Uh, this and that. Nothing permanent."

"So, I got a job to offer you."

"Doing what?" Clint asked.

"You know what."

"How permanent would that be?"

"That would be up to how long you keep me interested. And speaking of interested." He was putting his beer can down, and Clint didn't have to guess hard what was coming next.

But he was wrong. There was a knock on the door that Jocko had exited and it opened to reveal Jocko filling the space with his hulking figure.

"Your appointment is here, Boss. Should I have him wait over here or downstairs? You gonna make some noise here you don't want him to hear, I can take the guy downstairs till you're done."

"No, no. It's fine. This can wait," Brunelli said, as he rose from his chair and started crossing the room. He gave a "Later" stare to Clint in passing.

When Clint was alone, he let his eyes roam around the room. This wasn't a short-term hotel room. This was set up for long-term occupancy. The furniture was too good and there was too much personal-type stuff sitting around. The bed itself was very expensive looking and was obviously a special piece of equipment. Clint opened the drawers of the nightstand next to where he was sitting and wasn't surprised to find condoms in bulk, lube, and various sex toys.

His attention was arrested by the sound of voices coming from the next room—the room that Brunelli and Jocko had gone into. He realized it probably was a sitting room attached to this bedroom. Clint would check on who had recently bought this hotel and was renovating it, but his vote went to Brunelli.

He could hear Brunelli's fairly high-pitched-voice and a deeper, richer one of another man. There was no question who was in charge and who was trying to please the other one, even though Clint couldn't hear what was said. Brunelli obviously wanted something and wanted it now—and the other man was going to do what he could to make it happen.

After a while, Clint didn't hear the voices anymore. He walked over and put his ear to the door. Nothing. And nothing for a bunch of minutes. He quietly turned the handle of the door and opened it a crack, fully anticipating to feel Jocko's fist come pushing through the opening, but not being able to help himself. Nothing. Opening the door further, he could see that the room, which, as he had surmised was furnished as a setting room—and quite expensively so—was deserted. He clicked the door shut, went to the door from the bedroom to the corridor, and slowly opened that. No one was in the hall.

He took the elevator down to the basement floor. He saw a bit of blood on the main corridor floor where the Russian had been dropped, but no other sign of the sailor. When he entered the bar, however, his eyes opened wide. Danny was sitting at the table he had occupied before the Russian had muscled him into the back. The table was otherwise unoccupied. Clint's suit jacket was on the chair next to Danny. Danny gestured him to the table.

"How did you know I'd be here?" Clint asked as he took a seat. He looked around the room, but there was no Russian. The Wall Street clientele had also turned over completely to something rough this late in the day.

"I followed you here—after your little escapade at the docks." The way Danny said that, clued Clint that he wasn't wild about Clint's little encounter with the stevedore. "I knew you were up to something. I saw you and those stevedores eyeing each other. When I got here, Chris told me you'd gone to the back, so I've been sittin' here, waiting for you. I was about to go exploring for you, though. What gives?"

"Brunelli picked me up here," Clint answered. "I was going to see if maybe there were any crew members of the Larnaka Star cruising around here before I went over to the port authority. That wasn't going to take long."

"And yet you didn't get to the port authority."

"No I didn't. But I found out something very useful, I think."

"And I didn't get the search warrant. We'll have to do that . . . you say you found out something useful?"

"Brunelli has a hidey hole here. And he wants to hire me. I can be close to him until we find out what we need to know. I think that's two useful pieces of information."

Danny whistled. "OK, you win. That's two very useful pieces of information indeed."

"But for now, we'd better clear out of here," Clint said. "I wouldn't want Brunelli or his driver to see us together—in case they saw you in the courtroom."

"OK. Your place or mine, then?"

Clint gave Danny a questioning look.

"You don't have that finished look about you," Danny said. "You gonna let me polish you off, or are you going to go back to cruising as soon as we part ways?"

"I don't think I need to answer to you on that."

"Right. My place then. It's closer."