Read Michael Lister - Soldier 02 - The Big Beyond for Free Online

trim meant it was a special Blackout edition and was among the last to be produced.
    “Who’s in the car?” I asked.
    “Man with a job for you.”
    “That he’s gonna offer to me at gunpoint?”
    “He’s really hoping you’a take it.”
    “I’m seriously considering it,” I said. “I really am.”
    He laughed.
    The car was a six-passenger Presidential Deluxe-style Land Cruiser with a black roof, whitewall tires, which were extremely rare right now, and a back glass with ventilating wings.
    When we reached it, the man behind me stepped around and opened the back door.
    I took a step back.
    He was a short, thin kid who looked to be in his late teens. He had no hat on and his thick bowl-cut black hair looked like a melted record atop his head.
    He was Japanese.
    “Didn’t get enough of us at Pearl Harbor?” I said. “Taking us out one by one now?”
    He waved me into the car with the small gun and I climbed inside. When he closed the door, any ambient light from the street vanished and I was alone in the dark with what looked to be an older version of the kid who was now leaning on the car looking in at us.
    “I … ah … had ah nothing to do with the attack,” he said. “I am American citizen just rike you.”
    I didn’t respond.
    “Ah … you … have ah … no doubt heard about the murders.”
    He kept his gaze straight ahead and spoke very softly.
    “I’ve been a little out of circulation,” I said, “but I’ve heard a thing or two … read a few more in the paper. For all I know some of them may even be true.”
    “Young women,” he said.
    He didn’t say anything else right away, but I waited, knowing there was more to come.
    “Butchered.”
    The kid leaning against the car shook out a smoke and lit it, his little revolver dangling from his finger as he did.
    “Beautiful girls ah hacked into ah pieces.”
    The report in the paper indicated that the murders had been particularly brutal, but there was no mention of anything like that. Was he exaggerating or did he know more than was being printed?
    “The investigation ah being conducted by the ah porice is yielding nothing,” he said. “Which mean they ah either ah incompetent or ah corrupt.”
    “A little over a year ago I was one of them,” I said, “and I can tell you they’re neither.”
    He reached up and turned on a light, and when my eyes had adjusted I could see that he was a thick middle-aged Japanese man with thick black hair and thick orangish skin. He was togged to the bricks in a three-button tan Glen Plaid sports coat and solid medium brown wool slacks with pleats and cuffs, a hand-painted tie in a thick Windsor knot, and brown and tan wingtips.
    “Whato other ah expranation is there?”
    “They haven’t caught a break in the case yet. They will. What’s your interest? Why’re you telling me all this?”
    “Niece. Missing. Sister daughter. You find outo if she ah one of his ah victims. If not, you find her.”
    If he was making any effort to melt into Uncle Sam’s big pot, I couldn’t tell it, the way he spoke only adding to the alien nature of his presence here.
    “There’ no agency anymore,” I said. “I’m in no condition to work a case even if there was.”
    “I know what ah happen. What you did. What condition you ah in.”
    “I’m wanted by the police for a little murder of my own.”
    “That make you ah more quarified, not ress. Same as us. We cannot go to porice. If we did they ah send us back to ah Manzanar. Even if we could, they no care for ah Jap girl.”
    “I could be the most qualified person on the planet,” I said. “I’m not doing it. I can’t.”
    “I’m ah noto asahking.”
    On cue, the kid tapped the glass with the barrel of the gun, smoke curling up from his cigarette, backlit by a streetlamp as he did.
    “So,” I said, “I ah taka the case or you ah kill me?”
    “No. Starto with sreeping girl in ah car. Then brother. Mother. Father. Nigger friend. Then ah you.”
    I