Gio gave a snort. “Yeah, I don’t think so. You guys sit tight. Won’t be long now, one way or another.” He moved away from the break room towards the main entrance of the nightclub. “Come on,” he told Hudson.
But Hudson was looking the other way. “Maybe…” He began hesitantly. “Maybe we should have a look at this dead guy.”
“Why? He couldn’t have taken the money.”
“I know, but just—just to be sure he’s really dead. What if he was faking?”
“This guy was not faking, believe me. Plus I told Mr. D we’d be fast,” Gio said, his voice less gentle now.
“I know,” Hudson said. “But…” He gave Gio a pleading look.
Gio rubbed his nose on the back of the hand holding his gun. “Fuck, Blondie, you’re gonna get me in trouble. But okay, let’s go check on the corpse.”
Part of Hudson had expected the body in the bathroom to have disappeared, but no such luck.
“He’s definitely dead,” Gio said. “Happy?”
“Not really,” Hudson said, and went into the next stall along, where he carefully vomited into the toilet. He came out again after flushing and rinsed his mouth at the tap, trying not to look at the dead guy, who looked like he had died in a lot of pain. “Do people who overdose always look like that?” he asked shakily.
“Wouldn’t know.”
Hudson rinsed his mouth again. “Do you recognize him?” he asked when he was washing his hands for the second time.
“Nope.”
Hudson chanced another glance, but it only confirmed what he knew the first time he’d looked. “Me neither. He’s not a regular.”
The dead guy had long, stringy hair of indiscriminate color. There was vomit and blood everywhere, and a heavy smell of shit. The guy was scrawny; his ankles stuck out from the end of his jeans and his stained hoodie was barely protection for winter in New York. Hudson guessed that was why he was so desperate to get his coat back from Dino.
“Did someone check his pockets when you came down?”
Gio nodded. “Me. He had nothing on him, except the plastic baggie with the rest of the drugs.”
“How’d Dino know it was a speedball?”
Gio laughed, and then realized Hudson was serious. “Shit, I don’t know. I guess he has experience with that kind of thing, you know what I’m saying?”
Dino had been supposed to stay up with Hudson to guard the office, but he hadn’t. At the time, Hudson had assumed it was just the adrenaline that had made Dino run down with everyone else, stick with the herd. But on the other hand, Dino might have left Hudson there alone on purpose.
Hudson took another quick look at the dead man. “We should check for his coat in the cloakroom.”
Gio made an ostentatious show of looking at a non-existent watch on his wrist.
“I know,” Hudson said. “But we should check.”
The problem was, there were quite a few coats in the cloakroom, and no way of telling which one belonged to the dead guy at first glance. Hudson knew his own, of course, but there were at least twenty more. Some would belong to the staff still in Kismet right now. Some would have been left by other staff who liked to keep an extra coat at work. And still others were lost property left behind from club patrons who’d forgotten to pick them up on exit over the last few weeks. Dino usually had a clean-out of lost property every three months.
None of them looked like the kind of coat the dead guy might have worn. They were all good quality, heavy winter coats. Although, Hudson reminded himself, he shouldn’t makeassumptions about a guy based on his ill-fitting clothes. For all Hudson knew, too-short jeans and dirty sweaters were in fashion right now.
“We don’t havetimeto check all these coats,” Gio said, irritation starting to creep into his voice. “Not right now. Let’s go check the outside andthenask Mr. D if we can look through the cloakroom.”
Hudson sighed, but he had to admit Gio had a point. “Okay.”
“Hey,” Gio said softly. He’d come close again without Hudson noticing. “Hang in there, Blondie. I know you got balls. Maybe you should remember that, too.” He slid his hand into Hudson’s and squeezed his fingers. “Come on, let’s head outside. You wanna grab your coat?”
“Nah, it’s just for a few minutes,” Hudson said, and let Gio lead him back to the main doors. “What did you mean?” he asked, while Gio started unlocking the various deadbolts.
“About what?”
