A Killer's Kiss by William Lashner Page A

still scratching at something beneath his jacket, then nodded and bared his teeth like a hyena before heading back to the car.
    “So tell me,” said Gregor Trocek. “What can I do for you, Victor?”
    “I was just wondering who the hell you were?”
    “A friend of the beautiful Mrs. Denniston. Through her husband. The doctor and I were business associates.”
    “So you were merely giving your condolences to the grieving widow?”
    “That, too.” He tilted his large head and narrowed his eyes. “But we should talk, yes. For you would not believe what wonderful coincidence this is. Even as you were following me, quite badly, I might add—you need work on your technique, Sandro could teach you—but even as you were following me, I, too, was looking for you. Are you hungry, Victor Carl?”
    I quickly glanced at my watch.
    “Never trust man who checks clock to see if he is hungry,” said Trocek. “Pleasure follows no timetable. What does gut tell you?”
    I looked up at him for a moment. There was a merry sort of knowingness in his gaze. I wondered what it was he knew.
    “That I’m ready to eat,” I said.
    “Good boy. Follow me, I know a place.”
    And from the size of him, I was sure he did.

11
    We ended up in a busy Spanish joint in Old City called Amada, just the two of us at a high butcher-block table next to a bar with hams hanging from the ceiling and wooden casks in the wall. The décor was spare, the crowd was hip, the sign outside read tapas y vinos. Trocek was familiar enough with the specialties of the place to order for us both without a menu, providing us each a tall beer and a wide selection of appetizers on little plates. I pawed at the octopus and marinated white anchovies while piles of cod croquettes and crab-stuffed peppers disappeared within the maw hidden in Trocek’s beard.
    “I love Iberia,” said Trocek with a lecherous growl. “The food, the sun, Portuguese girls. I have a home in southern Portugal, in the Algarve.”
    “That sounds nice.”
    “Nice? Nice is for schoolboys with pimples on their chests.”
    “Have you ever been to Nice?”
    He looked at me for a moment, pulled at his beard for a bit, and then stuffed a folded piece of Serrano ham into his mouth.
    “Even thugs in Iberia, like Sandro, have special quality. A cruelty that comes from too much sun and not enough honest work. He is from Cádiz, the unemployment capital of Europe. He had much time to learn his current trade.”
    “He seems quite sweet, all warm and fuzzy. You mentioned that you visited Julia for business. What kind of business?”
    He ignored my question, stabbed a slice of chorizo with his fork, and pointed it in my direction. “That must have hurt, when Wren snatched Julia from right within your embrace.”
    I lifted my beer, looked for a moment at the tiny bubbles rising in it before taking a sip. “Yeah, well, life sucks.”
    “He used to love telling that story,” continued Gregor. “His how-we-met story. He’d have his arm around her neck when he told it, and in the middle of it he’d give her a little squeeze. ‘I rescued her from some shyster,’ he’d say. That was word he used, and he always laughed when he said it. Shyster.”
    “Jew shyster?”
    “No.”
    “I’m surprised.”
    “It was implied.”
    “And what was Julia’s reaction?”
    “Oh, you know Julia, she doesn’t react much. But he would laugh and laugh.”
    “I’m so sorry that he’s dead.”
    “Me, too,” he said as he speared a ring of calamari with his fork. “He was quite a valuable friend. Long ago we were partners in a business venture to sell used medical equipment to the poorer countries of Eastern Europe. We were performing great public service.” He stuck the calamari in his mouth and chewed. “Sadly, we were shut down by pack of petty bureaucrats—there were libelous reports of diseases being spread by our product—but we remained friends. And later he was helpful in treating certain conditions