Kim Oh 2: Real Dangerous Job (The Kim Oh Thrillers) Read Free

a process which had given us both a fit of the giggles.
     
    So I didn’t put him in the wheelchair, but instead I hoisted him up against me, leaning back to balance his weight, then dragged him to the other room, laid him down, and covered him with the blanket.
     
    Sitting on the corner of the bed, I brushed his hair – shiny black like mine – away from his brow. I glanced through the doorway at the empty wheelchair in the front room. Soon as things settled down a bit – soon as I was done with the job I had to do – I was going to get him a better one. I’d figure out a way. Something really nice . . .
     
    * * *
     
    The next morning, I saw the one I wanted to get.
     
    Cole was in it.
     
    “Check it out.” He pushed the joystick mounted on the armrest and nearly ran me over. “Some machine, huh?”
     
    “Yeah . . .” Standing with my spine against one of the bullet-pocked walls, I watched him spin the motorized wheelchair around in a tight circle. “It’s . . . nice.”
     
    He brought it to a halt, out in the middle of the warehouse floor, so I was finally able to get a good look. All gleaming black, like something Darth Vader would’ve ridden around in, if he’d ever made it to the Imperial Retirement Home.
     
    I’d already decided. Donnie would so dig something like this. Guys are all alike, at least that way. If it had a motor on it, then it was love at first sight.
     
    “When did you get this?”
     
    “Monica picked it up this morning,” said Cole. “She’s taking the cargo van back to the rental place right now.”
     
    “Wait a minute.” A less pleasant thought struck me. “Is this something I paid for?”
     
    “You paid for?” Cole straightened up, after reaching over the side for the cigarette pack he’d left on top of the mattress. “How do you figure that?”
     
    “You know. With the money I got for us. That I almost got killed getting for us. That money.”
     
    “What if it is?” He took a drag from the cigarette he’d just lit. “Can you think of something better to spend it on? Or were you planning on carrying me around piggyback when we go after McIntyre? I need wheels, baby. Besides – that’s not how I got it.”
     
    “So how did you? I thought you were so broke. At least, that’s what you told me.”
     
    “Social Services paid for it.” He exhaled a cloud of gray smoke. “’Cause I’m like disabled and shit.”
     
    “What?” Now I really was pissed. “Donnie never got anything like this from them.”
     
    “Hey. Is it my fault you don’t know how to work the system?”
     
    I didn’t say anything, mainly because I was too busy stewing over the whole deal. Our tax dollars at work, giving psycho hit men stylin’ rides.
     
    “So don’t fret about it.” Cole pushed the joystick again, starting another circumnavigation of the warehouse. “All right?”
     
    “Hold on a second.” I peered more closely at him, when he headed back in my direction. He stopped a couple feet away from me. “You look . . . different.”
     
    “Yeah. I’m not over there, lying flat on my back.”
     
    “No.” I shook my head. “You look bigger. Like you used to look.”
     
    “Think so?” Cole looked down at himself. “I ain’t seeing it. Pretty scrawny, compared to what I was.”
     
    “Not bigger like that. Bigger like . . .”
     
    I couldn’t find the words. Instead, I raised my hand and made a pistol out of it, sticking my index finger out from the others. I used my thumb as though I were cocking and firing the make-believe gun. “Like that,” I said.
     
    Cole studied me for a moment, as though regarding his own reflection at the center of my eyes. Then he slowly nodded.
     
    “You might,” he said, “be right about that . . .”
     
    * * *
     
    This was good news for me.
     
    I thought about it as I was riding the Ninja home. I try not to think when I’m on the motorcycle – I’d already gone down in one