Dying Breath - A Thriller (Phineas Troutt Mysteries Book 2)

by J. A. Konrath

  I squinted at the price tag. Too expensive anyway. I hadn’t worked in a while, so my bank account was on the low side. And by bank account I meant the cash I had on me.

  I walked on.

  “Hey, baldy.”

  Since I was bald, I turned to look. The greeting came from one of the three Chinese teenagers who had been tailing me for the last few minutes. I tried to act surprised anyway. After all, they’d put in the effort.

  “We know you,” said the tall kid in front. He was wearing gang colors, his stance loose and controlled at the same time. His accent was urban ghetto, not Asian. I blamed rap music.

  He took several bouncing steps toward me, his gang buddies flanking him on either side. They also sported the green jackets and bandannas that identified them as members of the Clan, a very small and very obnoxious entry in the gang files of Chicago.

  I’d recently put five of their little club into the hospital for running a protection racket on the local merchants. Last I heard, three of the five still had problems bending their knees.

  “You the guy that hurt Sing and Johnny,” said the tall kid. He halted his approach at punching distance and peered up at me with a scowl that he probably practiced in the mirror. He stood about 5’8”, in heels. Since he wasn’t wearing heels he was closer to 5’6”. When I said he was tall, I meant for a Chinese kid. The guys on either side each gave up an inch or two to him. But I learned a long time ago that size doesn’t matter too much in fighting. You don’t have to be tall to slit someone’s throat.

  Then again, if these kids wanted to slit my throat, they’d need a boost.

  “Answer me, baldy.”

  For a moment, I considered replying with some tough guy line. Maybe ask him if he wanted to be a DJ, because I was going to lay down some sick beats. Or tell him I couldn’t hear him from down there, maybe he should go fetch a ladder.

  But I had shopping to do, so I just hit him.

  He had decent reflexes, and managed to flinch fast enough that the punch I aimed at his nose landed on his cheek instead. It still knocked him down.

  The other two guys assumed fighting stances. I kicked the first one between the legs with my size eleven cowboy boot.

  He tried to block it with his hand, and got a broken hand for his effort. His buddy came at me with a butterfly knife, snake-quick. I side-stepped the lunge and grabbed his wrist, using his own momentum to propel him past me. Then I dropped to one knee and snapped his elbow over it. He let go of the knife and howled, staring at an arm that wasn’t supposed to bend that way.

  The tall guy got back up, a gun now in his hand. He thrust it at my head.

  Time stopped.

  I could have pivoted on my knee and used my free leg to sweep his feet out from under him.

  I could have dropped my head and lunged at his midsection under the gun.

  I might have been able to get to my feet and veer left or right, coming up on either side of him and out of the gun’s sights.

  But I didn’t.

  I didn’t do anything at all.

  I simply stared into the barrel.

  It was a semi-automatic.

  Blackened steel.

  Nine millimeter.

  The front and rear sights had been inexpertly filed down, so the gun wouldn’t get snagged on clothing during quick draws.

  The hammer was likewise filed.

  An old gun, scarred and scratched.

  It was pointed directly into my left eye.

  I stared into the depth of the barrel.

  My world became that tiny dark tunnel, a pinpoint of black.

  I noticed a black grease smudge on the safety.

  The gun needed cleaning.

  I stared as his knuckle flexed and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  The kid looked at the gun in disbelief, then turned and ran off.

  I remained on one knee, like someone waiting to be knighted, or proposing marriage.

  I remained there, while the two other gangies scurried off, moaning over their wounds.

  I remained there, as the people who had seen the whole incident slowly came over, curious and wary. Finally, I had hands on me, helping me to my feet, asking me questions.

  I didn’t hear any of them.

  All I saw was the barrel of that gun. Inches away from my head. Deep and black. The dirty finger squeezing the trigger…

  And I had done nothing to stop it.

  Earl woke me up, stabbing me with a sharp pain that kept time with my heartbeat. I pulled my sweaty body off my bed and walked naked to the bathroom, seeking Vicodin. There were three tablets left, and I popped them on my tongue, washing them down with a swig of Sauza tequila. Prescription pain killers was one advantage of having a doctor girlfriend. Another was an unlimited supply of tongue depressors.

  I took a second swig of tequila and made a mental note to ask Pasha for a pill refill. Codeine and tequila were no substitute for cocaine, but I’d given up coke. Earl liked coke a lot. So did I. But I also liked Pasha, and she wouldn’t put up with me doing hard shit again. At this point in my dwindling lifespan, a warm body was more of a comfort to me than a nose full of blow.

  Besides, codeine seemed to lull Earl enough.

  Earl is what I named my pancreatic cancer. For some reason, giving my tumors their own identity made the disease easier to deal with. I guess because it gave me an entity to focus on, rather than just the vague notion of my body somehow turning against me.

  You can fight an enemy.

  Fighting yourself is harder.

  I tilted the tequila bottle again, mouthing it like an old lover.

  The clock by my bed told me in red digital numbers that it was two-fifteen in the morning. I rubbed my eyes and extended the motion into scratching my bald head. My fingertips encountered a very sparse stubble. I’d have to shave again. Chemotherapy seemed to like destroying my hair more than it liked destroying cancer cells, and it’d only started to grow back a few weeks ago, in small patches the size of quarters.

  So now I had to shave those patches every couple of days, or I began to look like a crazy quilt.

  One more thing to thank Earl for.

  I laid on my bed and let my mind wander back to yesterday’s incident.

  Why hadn’t I reacted?

  When I closed my eyes I could see the black barrel. Round and black and…

  Peaceful?

  I opened my eyes and tried to think of something else.

  I still hadn’t gotten Pasha a birthday gift, and we were going out to celebrate tonight. Maybe she would settle for a nice dinner and some sex.

  In a few minutes, the codeine began to work its magic, the pain of Earl gnawing at my insides replaced with a dull glow.

  After my first biopsy, I had a chordotomy done. It was a tricky operation that severed the nerves in the cancerous area, so I wouldn’t feel pain. Pancreatic cancer in my advanced stage was inoperable, so the hospital offered to spare me some agony, and I took their offer. I now had limited feeling in my left side, from my armpit to the top of my pelvis. It felt numb all the time, sort of like being frost bitten.

  I’d just been back to the doc for a follow-up, to see if the recent pain meant the tumors were branching out. Marching to conquer more territory. If Commandant Earl had launched a Blitzkrieg, I’d have to choose between more chemo and radiation, or going back to robbing pimps for coke money.

  Results were coming any day now.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what those results were.

  My body surrendered to the drugs and I felt myself drifting away. I pictured the gun again. The trigger being pulled. Nothing happening. Was it jammed? Empty? Was the safety broken?

  Why didn’t I do anything to stop it?

  I fell asleep, and dreamt that the black automatic was in my dresser drawer. It was making noise. Not a gun-type noise, but a mumbling noise. I took it out, and the barrel opened and closed like a tiny black mouth. The noise it was making was words.
It was talking to me, in a low, steady voice.

  It said, no more pain.

  The sun was streaming through a crack in my motel shades and warming my face when the knock woke me up. I stretched, and got a little stab of pain in my side for the effort. The clock confided that it was almost 8am.

  I was wondering why I was awake this early when someone knocked again.

  Unusual.

  The only people who knew I lived here were Pasha and Kenny Jen Bang Ko, the owner of the Michigan Motel. Both had keys, and didn’t need to knock.

  So who was it? Someone banging on the wrong door? A hooker from my not-so-long-ago past? A Girl Scout who didn’t realize she was in a shitty neighborhood? A cop?

  I found a pair of boxer-briefs on the floor and slipped them on. Then I went over to a little hidey-hole in a corner of my room, cleverly concealed under the cheap carpeting. I lifted the carpet, and the small section of plywood under it, and removed a plastic bag containing a Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm, the serial numbers long-ago scratched off. I inched open the striker to make sure I had a round in the spout.

  Another knock. I held the gun at my side and walked quietly to my peephole. Standing at my door was a white guy in a suit.

  Since he dressed like a banker, and wasn’t carrying an automatic weapon, my threat meter dropped several notches. I let some of the tension out of my trigger finger and answered the door.

  His eyes widened slightly at being confronted by a bald man in underwear. They widened even more when they noticed my right hand ended in a semi-automatic.

  “Are you Phineas Troutt?” His voice was deep and measured, the kind of corporate tough that barked orders in a boardroom and told subordinates to fetch coffee.

  “You a cop?”

  “No.”

  We stood there for a moment, both looking tough. He was almost my height, which would put him at about six feet. The full head of hair neatly styled on his head was graying, which would make him older than me.

  He waited for me to ask why he was here, and I waited for an explanation of his arrival. Finally, after neither of us blinked for almost ten seconds, he sighed and dropped his eyes.

  “My daughter is missing,” he said to my chest. Then he met my gaze again, the toughness still there but not focused at me. “I heard you might be able to help me find her.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “Lieutenant Daniels.”

  Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels was a Homicide Lieutenant out of the 26th District. A friend. Sort of.

  I nodded, then took a step back and allowed him entrance. While he took in the sights I yanked on a pair of jeans and pulled a fresh white T-Shirt onto my torso. The chilly morning air had given me a slight case of the shivers, but the only sweatshirt I had was the one Pasha gave me, with a big picture of Snoopy on it. Since this guy was a potential client, and I wanted to be taken seriously, I decided to forsake the sweatshirt and instead went with a brown leather jacket. Gym shoes rounded out my thrift shop ensemble.

  I noted his disapproval of my living conditions. It wasn’t the Ritz-Carlton, but it was still several notches above squalor. Still, no reason to rub a prospective client’s nose in my bleakness.

  “There’s a restaurant down the street,” I said. “We can talk there.”

  He nodded. I put the gun in my jacket pocket and led him out into the parking lot. We walked several blocks, neither of us speaking, and came to a little Chinese diner where we sat ourselves. A dumpy Asian woman who looked old enough to have babysat Sun Tzu waddled over and set down a pot of tea. I asked for coffee. The man didn’t want anything. The coffee came, strong and greasy, and I emptied sugar into it and let it rinse the morning out of my mouth. I’d forgotten to brush my teeth due to this intrusion, and it annoyed me.

  “So talk,” I said.

  He had been staring out the window onto Cermak, not really focused on anything in particular.

  “Lieutenant Daniels said you’re good.”

  He turned to meet my eyes. I shrugged, and sipped more greasy coffee.

  “My name is Vincent Scadder. I’m an investment banker. My daughter Amy has been missing for almost two years. I want you to find her.”

  I’d located missing kids before, but didn’t like taking those kinds of cases. They always ended in some kind of tragedy.

  “You’d be better off with one of the bigger detective agencies. They can put more people on it, more hours on it, than I can. They also have better access to police records, better contacts, and they do a thorough investigation.”

  “They also have to file reports and keep records.”

  “So?”

  “So, they would do a background check on her.”

  “So?”

  “My daughter jumped bail. If they found her they’d have to alert the law.”

  Interesting.

  “What was the charge?”

  “Dealing. She was caught with a substantial amount of cocaine.”

  “Guilty?”

  “As sin.”

  I rolled that around between my ears. Not only would a detective agency be obliged by law to turn the girl in, they’d also get a healthy bonus from the bail bondsman.

  “Lieutenant Daniels says you wouldn’t turn her over. That you’d play it straight with me.”

  Daniels was correct. But I didn’t understand why Jack, who was a dedicated cop, would refer to me a client who was trying to aid a fugitive. I also didn’t understand why Scadder waited two years before trying to find his daughter. I asked him as much.

  “I’m dying,” he said.

  That got my attention.

  “Brain tumor. I’ve got no more than three months. I want to square things with Amy before I go.”

  I nodded. It made sense. Even though Jack was by-the-book, she wouldn’t begrudge a dying man a chance to see his daughter.

  “I get three hundred a day. You pay ten days upfront, and if I find her before then I keep the retainer. I may ask for more money if something comes up. I don’t write any reports, I don’t itemize expenses, and I don’t have any guarantees. If I realize I can’t do the job, I bow out and refund the balance. I’ll give you updates as I see fit, but you stay out of my space.”

  “You’ll do it?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “First, I need you to tell me everything you know about your daughter.”

  He turned over his tea cup and poured from the pot in front of him. Then he began.

  The story wouldn’t win any awards for originality. Someone once wrote that happy families are all the same, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. This family was richer than most, but a domineering father and an alcoholic mother was prime breeding ground for a young girl to get into drugs.

  She started smoking pot at twelve. Went into a clinic at fifteen for cocaine addiction. At sixteen she was caught doing ninety in a forty-five zone in the Porsche Daddy bought her for getting out of detox. A search of the car uncovered half a kilo of coke. She skipped bail and ran away.

  “Did you have any contact with Amy in the last two years?” I asked him.

  “None.”

  “How about your wife?”

  He grunted. “I doubt it. Even if Amy did contact her, the bitch was probably too drunk to remember it.”

  And they say romance is dead in America.

  “Do you still have Amy’s things?”

  “Left her room exactly how it was when she ran away. Maid still dusts it every week. Phyllis wants to turn it into another clothes closet, but I won’t let her.”

  I considered ordering food, but realized I didn’t want to eat with this man. I didn’t mind taking his money, and I’d do my best trying to find his daughter, but that didn’t mean I had to spend more time with him than absolutely necessary.

  “Do you have a picture?”

  He reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a wallet-sized portrait shot, probably taken at school. Amy Scadder
was a brunette; thin, pretty, and entirely indistinguishable from thousands of other high school girls her age. Except for her eyes. They were an unnatural shade of blue, so light they were almost translucent.

  “Does she wear contacts?”

  “No. She got her eyes from her mother.”

  “Do you remember the names of any of Amy’s friends?”

  He shook his head. “Phyllis might.”

  “The night she ran away, did she take any of her things with her?”

  “Didn’t even stop at home. Her car was impounded. I sent my driver to pick her up at the station when she made bail. She took off right after they got out of the building. He lost her in the crowd. I fired the bastard.”

  I got the bastard’s name and the car service he worked for.

  “I’m going to have to ask a lot of questions at her high school. It would help if you called them first and said I’d be dropping by.”

  He nodded, and also removed a business card from his jacket pocket. VINCENT SCADDER, PRESIDENT OF SCADDER INVESTMENTS.

  Gold lettering on black paper, straddling the line between elegant and tacky. He removed a pen from the same pocket and wrote on the back of his card “Please extend every courtesy to this man, V. Scadder.” The pen wrote in white ink.

  “What exactly is Scadder Investments?” I asked.

  “My business. I fund start-up companies.”

  “What sort of companies?”

  “Legitimate companies, Mr. Troutt. Nothing that would involve my daughter.”

  I filed it for later. Scadder didn’t think this was about business, but I wouldn’t know until I checked. Things had a way of always coming back to money.

  He finished his tea and waited for more questions. I didn’t have any. He took a checkbook out of his jacket and wrote me one for three thousand dollars. The checks were black and matched his business card. I told him I only took cash, and he agreed to cash it for me by the time I stopped by his house this afternoon.

  “Do you have any idea how long it will take?” he asked.