Page 14 of Simon Says… Fight (Kate Morgan Thrillers #11)

“That’s because you’re coming at it from a very different point of view, remember?” She chuckled. “We’re not doing it for the money. It’s more of a calling.”

“A calling where you’re broke all the damn time? You live paycheck to paycheck. The only reason you probably even function at all with the money you make is because of the fact that you don’t have any time to do anything to spend it on,” he offered, shaking his head.

“Maybe not,” she agreed, “but it never bothered me.”

“Until now?”

“Not until I consider wanting to do something to help others,” she shared, “and then a bit of extra money would come in handy.”

“It would,” he agreed. “It’s not required because people like me do make money.

As such, I know plenty of others who make money too.

Besides, any time I got low on funds, I could just gamble a little to boost things up again.

” He laughed as she eyed him curiously. “I haven’t had to do that for a while, not since the last building sale went through. ”

“I’m glad to see that you do sell some of them,” she added, with a snort.

“Only some of them. The others I keep for rentals, and, as long as I can make it cost-effective, I’m happy to work on those,” he explained. “It’s just not always cost-effective, and that’s when my heart and my emotions get caught up in it, and that’s a death knell for a business.”

She smiled. “I don’t know about that, not with you anyway. I think, when it comes to business, you’re pretty shrewd.”

He grinned. “Just don’t tell anybody else that. Now”—he sat back, a wineglass in his hand—“did you want to tell me about your day?”

She shrugged. “Let’s just say it was a strange day.” She hesitated, then asked, “Did you pick up anything else on this fight mess?”

“Nope, nothing,” he replied. “The whole reason I even found Arnie is because of that strange inclination I didn’t want anything to do with.”

“Yet you went into that spooky warehouse, even after you knew something awful was inside.… Well, classic you, I guess.” She just shook her head.

“He did say something about fighting though.” He frowned. “I forgot about that.”

“What did he say?” She stared at him intently.

“Just that some discussion was going on about fighting, like an unfair fight,” he replied, with a shrug. “I know that’s very nebulous.”

“That would be beyond nebulous,” she declared, still studying him.

“Maybe we need to talk to him. He had been outside and needed to get in out of the cold, even though he didn’t like anything about this place because of some guys that he’d seen there.

Also needing to get his little dog out of the cold, he went in and figured, if they killed him, it was nothing off his back.

To some degree they would just be putting him out of his misery, so it didn’t really matter either way.

At least that’s the impression I got from him. ”

“Maybe,” she muttered, “but if there’s more to it than that…”

“I know. We can go talk to him, if you want.”

“Yes, because if illegal fighting is going on anyplace, or if people are being taken to fight,” she noted, “I do need to know about it.”

“Right,” he agreed, with a smile. “In that case, let’s finish up here, and we can go talk to him.”

“You think he’ll be awake?”

Simon frowned at that and shrugged. “I’m not sure whether he will be or not, but, if you need to ask about what he overheard, we need to go regardless. Besides, I need to get him some food anyway.” He looked over at the leftovers and pointed. “What do you think about this?”

“I think it would be fine,” she replied. “There’s probably about the right amount, though we don’t really know what his stomach can handle.”

“He did say something about not eating much anymore, so food wasn’t a big part of his world right now. Same for Elsie, his dog.”

“Of course not,” she muttered. “What about the dog?”

“I was wondering about that. What do dogs do in this situation? What do they eat?”

She looked at him and grimaced. “Probably anything… because they don’t have a choice. When you’re hungry, it just doesn’t matter.”

He nodded. “And both you and I have experienced that, haven’t we?”

She smiled. “A very long time ago, thankfully.”

“Right, sometimes it’s easy to forget the rougher times, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes. Yet sometimes there’s no forgetting it either,” she stated, her tone odd. “Some of these cases just bring it all back up again.”

“Let me take this with us, and”—he looked around and then walked over to the fridge—“a little bit of sliced meat is here. I can bring some of that for the dog.” He quickly packed up what he thought the dog would eat, or at least a few options.

As they walked down to the boat, she surveyed the weather and noted, “It’s about to get really ugly.”

“I know,” Simon noted, “but I won’t kick him out when that happens.”

“Of course you won’t,” she stated, with a smile. “You won’t kick him out at all at this point.” When he glared at her, she laughed. “You might as well just give it up. Until you find him a place, he’ll be here. So no point in eyeing me like that.”

“Maybe,” he muttered, “but I wasn’t thinking long-term.”

“You weren’t thinking,” she clarified. “You were reacting to your feelings.” When they reached the Running Mate, she motioned him on. “Go on in and see how he is. See if he’s awake and if he needs anything, before I come in. He might be pretty terrified of the cops.”

“I didn’t consider that,” Simon admitted, stopping as he went to board.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, “because now he’s somebody I do need to talk to—if only to rule out the possibility that he has heard something that could be relevant.”

Simon nodded, and, with that, he turned and boarded the Running Mate.

*

Simon walked down the stairs to the low berth, where the old man was curled up in a ball. He was sleeping, but he woke up with a start.

He stared for a long moment at Simon. “Are you here to kick me out?” he asked, his voice raspy.

“No,” Simon declared in a forceful tone. “I’m here to bring you food.”

Genuine surprise appeared in Arnie’s gaze, as he stared at him.

“That was mighty kind of you.” He shifted upward, and Elsie whimpered in her sleep.

She’d been tucked up beside him and reacted to the cold air from his moving the blanket.

He quickly wrapped her up again. “She doesn’t have much longer in this world,” Arnie noted, as he looked down at his dog.

The tears weren’t evident but they weren’t far away, and it was obvious from his tone.

“I guess I’ve been selfish, keeping her with me, but, when times are tough and ugly, you don’t always have the answers or the comforts that you want. In this case I thought maybe it would be nice to have her with me. Yet she’s suffered for it too.”

“Maybe,” Simon replied, “but that doesn’t mean she would have wanted to be anywhere without you.”

“Maybe,” Arnie agreed, as he shuffled to sit up comfortably.

Simon added, “Look. My partner is a cop.”

Immediately Arnie looked worried. “ Uh-oh .”

“It’s all right, but I mentioned to her what you told me about the warehouse and about the fighting.”

He just nodded, staring at him, as if waiting for the shoe to drop.

“She just wanted to ask you a few questions.”

The old man relaxed back and sighed. “She can ask questions, but that doesn’t mean I’ll know the answers.” He spoke as if he’d spent way too much time dodging questions in his life.

Simon laughed. “No need to tell a lie in this case,” he stated, amused at the way Arnie spoke. “She just needs to know about the fighting.”

“Not about anything else I might have seen?” he asked, his gaze narrowed.

“Unless it’s criminal,” Simon clarified, “and then she would like to know. She has a case that has some peculiarities, and it might have some fighting involved in it.”

He sucked in his breath at that. “There’s been some rumors for a while.”

“Rumors about what?” he asked and then held up a hand for Arnie to wait. He opened the cabin door and called out to Kate.

Moments later, she appeared in the berth down below. She looked over at the old man and smiled. “I’m Kate.”

He looked at her carefully for a moment, then relaxed. “I’m Arnie,” he murmured. “At least that’s what they’ve called me since forever.”

“Arnie,” she murmured, “you mentioned something about hearing sounds of fighting or something along that line to Simon here.”

At the mention of Simon’s name, the old man looked at him intently. “Are you Simon?”

“I am,” he confirmed, “and I did tell you that in the beginning.”

He shrugged. “Ain’t no use for names in my world. Generally we don’t have them, or we make them up as we go along,” he shared, with a sigh. “I don’t remember what my name was.”

“Yet you would remember if you needed to,” Simon pointed out, “but we also know how easy it is to let some of these things slide because it’s easier and a whole lot less… painful.”

“Yeah. At one point in time,” Arnie shared, “I had a wife and children. My oldest died, suicide. Never knew he was so… fed up with everything. God only knows what happened to the others. I think… she remarried and headed off. I don’t know about my daughter.”

Simon wondered what it took to end up with such a drastic life change as that, but he knew it wouldn’t be a good story, and that’s not what he and Kate were here for right now.

Besides, Simon didn’t want to bring up any more torment for the old man.

Arnie was obviously suffering physically, and emotionally as well.

“If I can get your name,” Kate began, “I could track them down and let them know…”

When she didn’t finish that sentence, he looked over at her with a nod. “I would be grateful. They may not have wanted to know much while I was alive, but I want to let them know if I’m not here anymore.”

“I can do that,” she said.

He sighed. “Don’t even know what to tell ya about the warehouse.… It’s not as if I have any answers for you,” he suggested, eyeing her shrewdly.