I crept my way around back, climbing up the trellis onto the balcony with Bonnie in hand. It was dark inside the condo, and if I was lucky the occupants were asleep, but that didn’t mean they were to be taken lightly by any means. I took a moment to catch my breath and evaluate the situation, and then I placed Bonnie back in her holster and pulled out a small tool kit, which allowed me to pick the lock on the sliding glass door in a matter of seconds.
Opening the door just wide enough to slip inside, I simultaneously reached for Bonnie. Inside, I remained motionless for a good sixty seconds, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness of the room as I tried to ascertain if I’d alerted the occupants to my presence. So far, so good, but I could hear the sound of a television and some snoring off to my right in another room, which meant I definitely wasn’t alone. I would go check on the identity of the sleeping person in a while, but I wanted to gather some information first.
I made my way over to a desk in the corner, confident there’d be some sign of what I was looking for amid the contents of the makeshift home office. I scanned the top of the desk the best I could in the dark. There was nothing telling, just some bills for a Mr. Curt Bunn. The name didn’t ring a bell, so I moved on to the laptop. I wanted to turn it on, but the light and the sound may have woken my snoring friend. Pulling out the desk drawer, I discovered a nine millimeter handgun very similar to Bonnie, but without the silencer. Just as I reached out for it, I heard the unmistakable sound of a round being chambered in a gun, followed by the sensation of cold steel on the back of my neck. How the fuck I could have let someone sneak up on me, I don’t know.
“I’d put both of those down if I were you.” It was a determined male voice, and he was whispering as if he didn’t want to wake the person in the other room.
I did as I was told, letting go of the gun in the drawer and slowly placing Bonnie down on the desk.
“Where I come from, people get killed for shit like this—without even giving it a thought. So consider yourself lucky that I haven’t plastered you brains all over my brand new desk.” He pressed the gun firmly against my neck for emphasis. “Now, you damn sure better have a good reason for being here.”
I stared off into the dark, speaking to my unseen enemy. “I’m here to find out if the rumor is true.”
“Rumor?” he whispered. “Most people don’t go breaking into houses looking for rumors.”
“The rumor is that Daryl Graham, who supposedly died in a fire back in New York, is really alive. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
There was a slight pause before he answered in a slightly louder voice, “No, I wouldn’t. As you can see from the paperwork you were snooping around in, my name is Curt Bunn.”
A smile spread across my face as I turned around slowly, looking into the face of the man with the gun. “Curt Bunn, huh? Well, you sure as hell look a lot like Daryl Graham, Curt.”
“Then this Daryl Graham must be one hell of a handsome motherfucker, Vegas.” Lowering the gun he had been aiming at me, my best friend since I was six years old spread his arms wide to give me a brotherly hug.
“Man, Daryl, it’s good to see you, brother. I missed you,” I said, getting a little misty-eyed.
“It’s good to see you too, V.” Daryl was just as choked up as I was. “I missed you more.”
“You know, you really had me fucked up when I heard you were dead. I was crying and the whole nine.”
He broke the hug. “Sorry about that, man, but it was important that people thought I was dead.”
I didn’t press for details, because I knew Daryl well enough to understand that just like mine, his life was complicated, and sometimes things were on a need-to-know basis. If and when he wanted to tell me the full story, I was sure he would.