Page 46 of Long Way Down

“Do you want the intel or not?”

“Obviously.”

Kat’s mouth was a thin, unhappy line. He dug into his pocket and then tossed something at Pongo that he caught on instinct. A matchbook, he saw, when he opened his hand. A silhouetted hound’s head and a name done in black letters. “The Dirty Dog,” Pongo read aloud.

“Fitting, I thought,” Kat said, dryly.

“Aw, he’s got jokes,” Pongo said, just to get an annoyed look. “It’s cute.” He held the matchbook between thumb and forefinger. “But what’s it got to do with anything? You know, you really ought to take some sorta class or something – Intro to Presentation, maybe. ‘Cause you suck at this.”

“The guy you’re looking for – and no, fucker, I don’t have his name, so don’t ask – didn’t start with April. There’s some girls who work out of the Dog. Buy them a drink and they’ll slide you a price sheet under a napkin. There’s rooms upstairs you can pay for by the hour.”

“A real dirty dog, huh?”

That earned a derisive snort. “Most of the customers are regulars. Some young guys who don’t wanna bother with dating, some losers who can’t pull a date, and the guys cheating on wives or girlfriends who freeze them out.

“Back in the spring, three of the girls had encounters with the same guy. He bought them drinks and then the works.”

“Works?”

“Full hat trick. But he was particular about it. When he got to the room, he had a hat pulled down real low.”

“Like you?”

“Shut up. He told them to turn down the lights, so none of them ever got a good look at his face – couldn’t ever pick him out of a lineup. But the way they described his behavior, his speech patterns, it was definitely the same guy with all of them.

“They said he was, in their words, fucking creepy. That he wanted to choke them and slap them around a little bit. They told him he couldn’t leave a mark on them, and he said ‘sure,’ but then he got too rough in the middle of things. Blacked a girl’s eye. Made another one pass out. The last girl was wise to him, and she pulled a knife when he put his hands on her throat, laid the blade right under his ribs, and told him to back the fuck off. When he didn’t, she stabbed him in the side, and he took off.”

“Sounds like a real piece of shit,” Pongo said. “But it doesn’t mean he’s the guy I’m looking for.”

Kat’s head tilted, and he lifted a single brow. “In the middle of the action, this guy started muttering under his breath. He said, ‘This one’s for you, Davey,’ over and over.”

Pongo whistled. “Welp. That’s him.”

“It’s like that shitty movie,” Kat said, lip curling. “‘This one’s for you, Jackie.’”

“Yeah, that was my thought.” He didn’t say that he’d just watched that movie – or most of it – with a cop who was hunting the same man. He didn’t think Kat would appreciate involvement with the law. “Only he’s paying tribute to someone else – someone he knows, I guess.”

“Any idea who Davey is?”

“Nope.”

They regarded one another a moment, Pongo absently toweling sweat off his neck and shoulders, Kat receding back into himself, gaze visibly closing off.

“Anything else?” Pongo asked. “That’s not a lot to go on.”

“It’s enough,” Kat said. “Go around and talk to the girls at the Dog if you want. I don’t care. It’s not my problem.”

Pongo sighed. “Thanks for asking around. I appreciate it.”

Kat pushed off the lockers, and made for the door – only to pull up short when it swung open.

Jim Rydell stood in the threshold, in all his shorts-wearing, bandy-legged glory, with his socks up to his knees and his stopwatch dangling around his neck. He looked like the ghost of some 1980s P.E. teacher, and, florid-faced and loud-voiced, sounded like one, too. Pongo was pretty sure he’d heard him call one of his fighters “Mary” once, when he wasn’t jumping rope to his satisfaction.

He propped his hands on his hips and fixed Kat with a stern look. “Katsuya! What did I tell you about comin’ in here?”

Pongo sat upright on the bench, hands falling to his lap. He watched, amazed, as Kat’s face crumpled into something cowed and petulant, his eyes downcast and his lower lip worried between white teeth. “I know,” he muttered, and his voice had transformed completely, small and unhappy.

“You’re supposed to come and see me!” Jim huffed. “You slink in here like a kicked dog, all secret like. Like you think you’re too cool to talk to your old uncle.”