Page 29 of Prey

“Yes, Mr. Kaiser,” he replied.

“It also means that if you snitch to the police or the feds, then…” I took a cigar from my drawers, lit the end, and blew out smoke, taking my time. One thing I had a lot of these days is time. “You get the gist.”

“Yeah, I do,” he answered nervously. “Can you elaborate on who you want me to find?”

“Do you know who I am?” I asked him, just to make sure that we’re on the same page because I hadn’t been around for three fucking years, and the majority of my business was conducted back in Larsson before moving our HQ to Gothenburg.

“Yeah,” he replied after clearing his throat twice, indicating that he was either petrified or ate too much cheese for dinner. “I researched you.”

“You did?” I answered, surprised but pleased he had some initiative and wasn’t a lazy fuck. “And what did Google tell you?”

“The death…murder of Mr. Lars Kaiser, your uncle. Is that correct?” he was treading carefully to measure my tolerance levels.

“Correct.” I permitted him to continue for entertainment purposes since I hadn’t Googled myself or the case and had no intention of doing that. Fuck, most of what’s floating around online was likely made-up shit to create a sensationalism headline to sell newspapers.

“Lars Kaiser was shot dead, and a year later, you were arrested for his murder,” he sustained, pausing to test the air.

Even though my chest tightened in anger at his words, and I had to take a therapeutic pull of my cigar, I remained resolute on the outside, with an unanimated expression and eyes securitizing the stranger. Unflinching. Even under moments of extreme stress, one must never publicly crack. That was one of many important lessons Mr. Kaiser and Lars taught me.

“The conviction was overturned, and you were released three years later, and here you are,” he rambled on. “So…I’m going to make a preempted guess that you’re considering hiring me to find out who murdered your uncle and maybe… to find out who set you up.”

“No,” I corrected him. “We already know who set me up. But we…” I glanced at Ronan again, thinking of Lars’ son andher, the girl they kindly took into their homes only forherto thankthem for destroying their lives. “We need to put this mystery to bed, Danny.”

I downplayed the scheme to Danny, making out that we just wanted to know who killed Mr. Kaiser and maybe give that information over to the police for them to finish the job. But of course, that’s not what’s going to happen at all because I couldn’t trust the police to wipe their own arses.

Once we find who murdered Mr. Kaiser, we’ll conduct our justice on the quiet under my order.

Danny listened intently, then took out a small notepad and pencil and flicked pages until he found a blank page. “So, have you got any clues or hunches on who you think was behind it?”

I hissed, slightly annoyed, “If we did, we wouldn’t be looking at hiring you.” I took a strong pull of my cigar to cool my fire as Danny twitched in his seat. “We’ve got nothing.”

“What about enemies?” he asked.

I chuckled and turned to Ronan, “This guy doesn’t know who the fuck we are.” I turned back to Danny Lam. “Of course, we have fucking enemies, but we drove them out of Gothenburg years ago, and we haven’t heard from them since.”

“What about our enemies in Larsson?” Ronan spoke for the first time since Danny Lam walked in.

I narrowed my eyes and pointed my finger at my boy. “Have they been harassing you? You didn’t tell me that.”

Ronan shook his brown head. “No, Mikky. We haven’t heard a dicky bird, but that doesn’t mean they’re not watching and taking notes.”

“C’mon, Ronan, if they were gonna strike, it’d be when I was otherwise occupied in the state penitentiary,” I argued confidently.

Ronan knew the rules. I hated secrets and surprises. His job while I was inside was to visit me every week and update me on our businesses. The Kaiser empire was my blood and soul, so noproblem was kept from me, whether large or small. I relied on Ronan to do that, and he did.

“True,” he answered, “but it didn’t stop me from looking over my shoulder every few seconds. If they organized a hit on Mr. Kaiser, then what’s stopping them from coming after Gunner and me?”

“Who are you thinking of when you say “they”?” Danny asked after listening carefully to our conversation.

Ronan shrugged. “I don’t know,” he replied, but something was on the tip of his tongue.

“Spit it out, Ronan,” I demanded.

“It’s the timing, Mikky. Mr. Kaiser was shot just after he bought this place,” he rationalized, and I could almost see his brain ticking over, analyzing the time, date, and scene, searching for a reason. That’s the problem. Nothing added up, and nothing made sense.

But Ronan was only 18 or 19 then, and it wasn’t until I was arrested that he threw himself into the deep end because he, Gunner, and the widow Mrs. Kaiser were the only people I trusted one hundred percent. Mrs. Kaiser, my Aunt Sylvia, ran the Larsson syndicate while we kept our heads down and under the radar in Gothenburg.

“We got a packaged deal because the Ivanov family wanted out with all that debt they accumulated and the IRS on their backs. It was me who drove them out of town after Lars was shot. I sent the pit bulls on to them because I didn’t want them sniffing around while I was conducting business. They had no reason to kill Mr. Kaiser, and in fact, we saved their asses. I didn’t want them on my territory because they left a bad smell around here, and we had to mop up their mess to establish a new and better reputation,” I explained to Ronan, but Danny Lam was taking notes.

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