[Quinn Novella 03] - Off the Clock Read online

  Off The Clock

  A Jonathan Quinn Story

  By

  Brett Battles

  Slam Bang Stories

  Copyright © 2011 by Brett Battles

  Cover art copyright © 2011 by Robert Gregory Browne

  All rights reserved.

  OFF THE CLOCK is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information about the author, please visit www.brettbattles.com.

  For more information about the artist, please visit www.robertgregorybrowne.com.

  Jonathan Quinn was angry and frustrated when he returned home to Los Angeles. To say the job he’d just been on hadn’t gone according to plan would have been doing the colossal disaster an injustice.

  Lives had been lost, unnecessary ones, a list that could have very easily included his own name. That he got away uninjured was due purely to luck, and had nothing to do with his skill. It had been a badly planned mission right from the start, one that finished with the body Quinn was supposed to have gotten rid of still alive and well and walking around.

  Not his fault, but his jerk client didn’t seem to be on the same page when Quinn called him from the airport while waiting for his flight home.

  “Why should I give you the full amount when you didn’t clean anything?”

  Quinn, whose specialty was making bodies disappear, held his anger in as best he could. “Terminating the target is not my job. I laid out the rules at the beginning. Whether you end up using me or not, once you hire me, you pay me.”

  “You’re going to make it very hard for me to ever hire you again,” the idiot said.

  “No. I’ll make it easy. You will pay me, and you will never call me again. I have no interest in working with amateurs.”

  “Who the hell do you—”

  “And,” Quinn said, “if you think you can just skip out on your obligation, think again. It’s not just me who will stop working for you. I’ll spread the word as quickly as possible, and once that happens, good luck getting anything done.”

  “You don’t have that kind of power.”

  “Go ahead and think that. There’s one way to find out, though.”

  It still remained to be seen whether the guy was going to pay him or not. By the time Quinn landed in Los Angeles, the final payment of his fee had yet to be transferred into the appropriate account. He almost hoped the money wouldn’t show up. His threat wasn’t an idle one, and eventually his former client would figure that out, but by then it would be too late.

  Why couldn’t all Quinn’s clients be like Peter at the Office? While Peter might be a little gruff at times, he was professional and always paid when he was supposed to. Hell, Quinn would be better off if he only took the Office’s assignments and said no to everyone else. God knew Peter had enough work.

  He dumped his bags just inside the door of his Hollywood Hills home, and turned on the TV in hopes of finding something that might relax him. No such luck. He ended up pacing next to the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the back of his house and looked out on the city. Only he wasn’t paying attention to the view.

  What he really needed was to vent, and release some of his anger. But when you worked in a world of secrets, there weren’t a lot of people you could vent to.

  In Quinn’s case, there really was no one.

  If his old mentor Durrie hadn’t been killed at a warehouse outside Chicago on a job they’d both been on, maybe things would have been different. Not that Quinn would have talked to Durrie. His late boss was not big on chitchat. It was Durrie’s girlfriend, Orlando, who Quinn would have called.

  Would have, but not now. Durrie’s death put a stop to that, driving a wedge between Quinn and Orlando that had kept them from speaking for nearly two years now. He wished he knew how to bridge that divide.

  Eventually, he got in his car and drove, not sure where he was going. Or maybe he was and just didn’t realize it at the time, because as he pulled to the curb on a side street just off Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, he knew he’d come to the right place. Ahead on the corner was Taste of Siam, Quinn’s favorite restaurant in the city.

  It was late, almost 10 p.m., a time when most restaurants in L.A. were closing or at least thinking about it. Not Taste of Siam. It sometimes stayed open until four or five in the morning, frequented in those later hours mainly by members of the local Thai population.

  Even before he got to the front door, he could hear the karaoke machine playing a Thai pop song. He could even tell Ice was singing. She was one of his favorites, a waitress some nights, in charge of music on the others. Though her voice was a little nasal and high-pitched, she could carry a tune. Of course it helped that she was both kind and cute.

  Hell, all of the waitresses at Taste of Siam were kind and cute. It was one of the reasons he liked going there so much. Beautiful, no. You had to go eat at another Thai restaurant, Chan Dara, for that. But Quinn would take cute over beautiful any day of the week.

  Here he could partake in a little mindless flirting that would never amount to anything, and it worked well with his otherwise solitary existence.

  The moment he opened the door, he was greeted with “Khun Jonathan! How are you?” from Natt behind the bar. Two other waitresses—Lek and Won—rushed over from the other half of the restaurant, smiling.

  “Sawadee ka,” they said.

  “Sawadee khrap,” he replied.

  Even Ice gave him a wave as she continued to sing.

  It was the kind of attention a man in his job usually shied away from. But this was the one place he allowed it. An escape from his personal reality.

  Taste of Siam wasn’t large. Basically, it consisted of two rectangular rooms side by side with a half wall dividing them. Neither section was more than fourteen-feet wide. The first was home to a small bar on one side, and a few seldom used tables on the other. The back third of this rectangle was walled off and served as the kitchen. The only things walled off in the second section were the two bathrooms in the back. Otherwise, it was filled with ten tables and the elaborate karaoke set-up in the front window along Sunset.

  When Quinn walked in there were two people sitting at the bar, and a dozen or so sitting at tables in the other section. Knowing if he sat at a table, he would just stew and allow his anger to escalate, he took one of the remaining two stools at the bar.

  “Why you not come for a long time?” Natt asked as she filled a glass with Singha beer and set it in front of him. That’s what he liked about this place. He didn’t have to tell them what he wanted.

  “Been away on business,” he said. Partially true, but mostly he knew he couldn’t afford to come here as often as he would like. Habits in his kind of life were a bad idea.

  “You work too hard.”

  He smiled but said nothing as he took a sip.

  “You eat or just beer tonight?” she asked.

  “Always eat. You know that.”

  She did, but she always asked him.

  “Pad kee mao?”

  He shook his head. “Panang moo.”

  “Okay. Panang moo. Rice, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  She disappeared into the kitchen.

  This is exactly what I needed, he thought, feeling his tension fall away. The screwed-up job didn’t seem so important now. They happened now and again. He tended to forget that.

  In the other part of the restaurant, Ice was walking around with the microphone, urging customers to join in on ABBA’s “Mamma Mia” to
little success. Quinn looked over as he took another sip of the beer. When she noticed him, she held the microphone up, suggesting maybe he should try.

  With a laugh, he shook his head. There was a twinkle in her eye, asking him again, almost daring him to give it a go. But before he could even respond, the front door opened, and the smile on Ice’s face vanished.

  Ever the professional, Quinn casually turned back around, glancing at the new arrival as he did.

  The man who had entered was five-foot-seven, Caucasian, with well-groomed hair and a salesman’s smile. He wasn’t bulky, but he had the look of a guy who went to the gym just enough so that he could admire his body in the mirror.

  Just then the kitchen door opened and Natt walked out carrying a plate of chicken satay. She nearly skipped a step when she saw the man. If he noticed, he didn’t let on.

  “Hi, Natt,” he said. “How’re you doing tonight?”

  “Fine,” she said quickly as she scooted behind the bar.

  “I see my usual table’s open.”

  In the mirror on the wall, Quinn watched the man walk into the other half of the restaurant. Instead of sitting down, though, he stopped in the aisle between the two rows of tables, and looked toward the front where Ice had retreated and was now singing the song on her own.

  When she finished, the man clapped and finally took a seat at the table. Ice said something in Thai into the mic, then quickly made her way through the dining area and rushed into the kitchen.

  There was the clatter of a plate on the bar. Quinn looked down to see that Natt had put the dish of satay in front of him.

  “I didn’t order this,” he said.

  “On the house,” she said. “Maybe you not wait so long next time you come back.”

  Though her words were meant to be playful, she seemed to have lost some of the enthusiasm she’d had a few minutes earlier.

  “Can I get another?” The guy at the other end of the bar asked, holding up his empty beer bottle.

  “Sure. No problem.” Natt headed over to the glass-doored cooler in the corner.

  When she finally came back to Quinn’s end of the bar, he said, “So what’s the deal with that guy?”

  She didn’t look at him. “He want beer.”

  “I’m not talking about him. I’m talking about the guy who just came in and sucked all the fun out of the room.”

  She started straightening the stack of takeout menus near the register, acting as if she hadn’t heard him.

  “Natt, who is he?”

  He could see a struggle going on in her mind. After a few seconds, her gaze flicked across the room to the table where the man was sitting, then settled on Quinn. “His name Nick. He bad man,” she whispered. “No good.”

  “What do you mean, ‘bad’?”

  “He come in here all the time. Act very nice at first. Make friends with all of us.” She paused.

  “And then?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “He ask Ice out on date. She tell him no. She have boyfriend, but he keep asking. Finally she say okay, go for coffee only.”

  Quinn could feel a coldness growing just below his skin. “What happened?”

  She hesitated. “I say too much already. Forget everything.” She moved down the bar to see if the other customers needed help. He decided not to push her.

  Ice returned to the karaoke machine just after Natt brought Quinn his panang moo. As he ate, he kept an eye on Nick in the mirror, but the guy just sat at his table, beaming in Ice’s direction.

  Once Quinn finished, he put more than enough to cover the bill and a good tip under his beer glass and headed out to his car. But once he was behind the wheel, he didn’t start the engine. He knew he should probably just go home and forget about it. But he knew he wouldn’t. He wasn’t exactly close to Ice and Natt and the others, but they were his friends.

  Anything outside of work isn’t worth the risk. Durrie’s voice again. Would he ever get out of Quinn’s head?

  It was nearly an hour and a half before Nick appeared. His smile was still plastered to his face as he stepped outside, but as soon as the door closed behind him, it disappeared. This new Nick looked like a smug, cocky ass.

  He stood at the corner for a moment, watching the traffic on Sunset. Then he walked across the street, forcing several cars to stop quickly so as not to hit him.

  Finally, Quinn started up his BMW and pulled away from the curb. At the intersection with Sunset, he stopped and watched Nick walk down the row of parked cars. The man stopped next to a Mercedes sedan.

  Nice car. Definitely not what Quinn was expecting. Apparently whatever this Nick was selling, he was doing well at it.

  As the Mercedes came out from the curb, Quinn turned onto Sunset and fell in behind it.

  It wasn’t too much longer before they were winding their way up into Beachwood Canyon above Hollywood. As always, Quinn was careful as he followed the other car, but he sensed that even if he were right on the Mercedes’s tail, Nick wouldn’t have realized he was being followed. The self-absorbed seldom saw beyond their own reflection in the mirror.

  After taking a few smaller side streets, the Mercedes slowed to a stop in the middle of the road. Quinn, still a block back, pulled to the curb and turned off his lights. On the right near the Mercedes was a house surrounded by a tall white wall. Across the driveway entrance was a seven-foot-high, solid wooden gate that was swinging open. Once it was out of the way, the sedan pulled in, and then the gate began to close again.

  Quinn slipped out of his car and jogged down to the wall. The gate finished closing just as he got there, but there was enough of a gap between it and the wall it hung on for him to get a partial view of the property.

  The house was a nice, two-story Spanish-style structure that was undoubtedly out of the price range of most people in the country. There was a porch light on next to the door, but the lights inside the house were off.

  Quinn heard a car door open, followed by a step as someone got out, then the door slamming shut. A moment later Nick’s shadowy form walked into view, heading for the front door. When he reached it, he stuck a key into the lock, turned it, and went inside.

  That was all Quinn was waiting to see. There had been the off chance that Nick was just visiting a friend. And while having a key didn’t necessarily mean he lived there, Quinn felt it was more than pretty damn likely.

  He noted the address, then slowly began walking back to his car, thinking.

  How much should he get involved here? Or should he even get involved at all? It really depended on what this Nick guy had done, and there was only one way to find that out.

  He arrived back at Taste of Siam a little after midnight. The place was packed mostly with Thais now. The music loud, the smiles wide, everyone enjoying themselves. Even Ice, who was still in charge of the karaoke, seemed to be her old self again.

  Quinn viewed all of this through the restaurant’s windows from the street, but instead of going in the front door, he headed around the side. As always, the kitchen entrance was open, covered only by a flimsy screen door.

  Quinn slipped inside.

  The main cooks were an older Thai couple Quinn had exchanged greetings with on occasion. There were also three Hispanic men in the kitchen, doing the prep work and washing the dishes.

  The old man was the first to notice Quinn and started saying something to him in Thai.

  “I need to talk to Natt,” Quinn said.

  The man looked at him for a moment, then recognition dawned on his face. “Ah, Khun Jonathan. You eat?”

  “No, thank you,” Quinn said. “I’d just like to talk to Natt.”

  The old man looked confused, obviously not fully understanding what Quinn wanted.

  Quinn was about to repeat his request when the door to the dining area opened, and Lek came in. She looked surprised to see Quinn.

  “Khun Jonathan. You’re back?”

  “Lek, could you get Natt for me, please? I just need to talk with her for a moment
.”

  “Okay. Sure.”

  He pointed toward the screen door. “I’ll wait for her outside.”

  A minute later, Natt came out.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  “Natt, what did that guy do to Ice?”

  A worried look passed over her face, but she looked unsure about what to say.

  “Listen to me,” Quinn said. “If you tell me, I can help.”

  “What can you do?” she asked, clearly wanting help, but unable to believe he could provide it.

  “I can make sure he never bothers her again.”

  “How?”

  “Just trust me. I can.”

  “Maybe you make it worse. Maybe he do what he say before and hurt her next time.”

  Quinn tensed. “You need to tell me what he said. I will take care of this problem. I promise.”

  She looked over at the kitchen entrance, then back at him. “She not want me to tell you.”

  “Only because she’s scared.”

  “Yes.”

  “When I’m done, she’ll never have to be scared of him again.”

  She hesitated for a moment. “You sure?”

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  More silence, then, “Okay.”

  • • •

  Forty-five minutes after Natt finished telling the story, Quinn had climbed over the wall around Nick’s property and was standing in the front yard. He did a quick outside tour of the house, and came to the conclusion that whoever had designed it was an idiot. While it might have been aesthetically pleasing, and Nick had gone to the extra effort of having a security system installed, the building was just waiting to be broken into.

  Before Quinn had returned to Beachwood Canyon, he’d made a stop at his house, and picked up a few items he knew would come in handy. Now, kneeling next to the side of the house, he pulled off his backpack and removed a small kit that contained—among other things—wires, a pair of cutters, and a bypass box. The last item was about the same size as a rubber eraser, and designed to melt into an unrecognizable plastic lump two hours after it was activated.

  He stuck the items into the pockets of his black windbreaker. Then, with little effort, he used the poor layout of the house to climb onto the roof.