Read Online Thriller by James Patterson - Free Book Online

of .45 rounds and a six-inch butterfly knife. Then I hung an iron crowbar on an extra strap
    sewn into the lining of my coat, and headed out to greet the
    morning.
    Chinatown smelled like a combination of soy sauce and
    garbage. It was worse in the summer, when stenches seemed to
    settle in and stick to your clothes. Though not yet seven in the
    morning, the temperature already hovered in the low nineties.
    The sun made my face hurt.
    I walked up State, past Cermak, and headed east. The Sing
    Lung Bakery had opened for business an hour earlier. The manager, a squat Mandarin Chinese named Ti, did a double take
    when I entered.
    “Phin! Your face is horrible!” He rushed around the counter
    to meet me, hands and shirt dusty with flour.
    “My mom liked it okay.”
    Ti’s features twisted in concern. “Was it them? The ones who
    butchered my daughter?”
    I gave him a brief nod.
    Ti hung his head. “I am sorry to bring this suffering upon you.
    They are very bad men.”
    I shrugged, which hurt. “It was my fault. I got careless.”
    That was an understatement. After combing Chicago for almost a week, I’d discovered the bangers had gone underground.
    I got one guy to talk, and after a bit of friendly persuasion he
    gladly offered some vital info; Sunny’s killers were due to appear
    in court on an unrelated charge.
    I’d gone to the Daly Center, where the prelim hearing was
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    being held, and watched from the sidelines. After matching their
    names to faces, I followed them back to their hidey-hole.
    My mistake had been to stick around. A white guy in a Hispanic neighborhood tends to stand out. Having just been to
    court, which required walking through a metal detector, I had
    no weapons on me.
    Stupid. Ti and Sunny deserved someone smarter.
    Ti had found me through the grapevine, where I got most of
    my business. Phineas Troutt, Problem Solver. No job too dirty,
    no fee too high.
    I’d met him in a parking lot across the street, and he laid out
    the whole sad, sick story of what these animals had done to his
    little girl.
    “Cops do nothing. Sunny’s friend too scared to press charges.”
    Sunny’s friend had managed to escape with only ten missing
    teeth, six stab wounds and a torn rectum. Sunny hadn’t been
    as lucky.
    Ti agreed to my price without question. Not too many people
    haggled with paid killers.
    “You finish job today?” Ti asked, reaching into his glass display counter for a pastry.
    “Yeah.”
    “In the way we talk about?”
    “In the way we talked about.”
    Ti bowed and thanked me. Then he stuffed two pastries into
    a bag and held them out.
    “Duck egg moon cake, and red bean ball with sesame. Please
    take.”
    I took.
    “Tell me when you find them.”
    “I’ll be back later today. Keep an eye on the news. You might
    see something you’ll like.”
    I left the bakery and headed for the bus. Ti had paid me
    enough to afford a cab, or even a limo, but cabs and limos kept
    records. Besides, I preferred to save my money for more impor- 62
    tant things, like drugs and hookers. I try to live every day as if
    it’s my last.
    After all, it very well might be.
    The bus arrived, and again everyone took great pains not to
    stare. The trip was short, only about two miles, taking me to a
    neighborhood known as Pilsen, on Racine and Eighteenth.
    I left my duck egg moon cake and my red bean ball on the bus
    for some other lucky passenger to enjoy, then stepped out into
    Little Mexico.
    It smelled like a combination of salsa and garbage.
    There weren’t many people out—too early for shoppers and
    commuters. The stores had Spanish signs, not bothering with English translations: zapatos, ropa, restaurante, tiendas de comes-
    tibles, bancos, teléfonos de la célula . I passed the alley where I’d
    gotten the shit kicked out of me, kept heading north, and located
    the apartment building where my three amigos were staying. I
    tried the front door.
    They hadn’t left it open for me.
    Though the gray