Jack Daniels Six Pack

by J. A. Konrath

  Alex dials the number, presses the speaker phone button, and holds it to my mouth.

  “Harry’s Den of Dyslexic Sex, where you can duck my sick. Harry speaking.” His voice is nasally, Chicago through and through.

  “Hi, Harry. It’s Jack.”

  “Jackie! Good to hear from you. Looking for work? Since that Joliet thing I’ve been swamped. I could hire you part-time. You’d do some paperwork, answer some phones. I’m paying seven fifty an hour, clothing is optional.”

  Harry McGlade is a private investigator. A hundred years ago he used to be a cop, and my partner. I didn’t like him much then, and don’t like him much now, but he keeps popping up in my cases. Harry’s tough to get rid of. Like an oil stain. Or a wart.

  “Look, McGlade, if I asked you to come over to my house right now, as a personal favor, would you do it?”

  “No can do to night, Jackie. I’ve got a date with a very special lady. Very special. And if I cancel without giving her twenty-four hours notice, she charges my credit card anyway.”

  I glance at Alex. She rolls her eyes, then points her gun at Mom. Even though I don’t have anything left in my stomach, I feel it rumble.

  “Harry, I…I broke up with my boyfriend. I’m feeling kind of alone, kind of vulnerable.”

  “I get it. You’re a chick, so you need to get laid to feel loved. I’m happy to step up to the plate.”

  That hurts to even think about.

  “I just need a friend right now. Can you come over?”

  “For sex, right? I don’t want to be one of those guys, you cry on his shoulder, piss and moan for two hours, then I leave with snot on my tie and a trouser trout I have to smack around during the car ride home.”

  Someone owed me an Academy Award, because somehow I say, “Yes, Harry McGlade. I want to have sex with you.”

  Come on, you big dummy. You know there has to be something wrong.

  “Pardon my skepticism, Jackie, but that didn’t sound right to me.”

  Thatta boy, McGlade. Reason it out.

  “Can you ask again?” Harry continues. “But using dirty words?”

  Unbelievable.

  “Just come over,” I say.

  “You mean make like Ward Cleaver and discipline the Beaver?”

  “Yes, Harry.”

  “Say it.”

  Even if he saves my life, I’m still going to kill him.

  “Come over, Harry, and discipline the Beaver.”

  “Are you drunk, Jackie? Is liquor impairing your judgment? Because I’m fine with that.”

  “I’m not drunk, Harry. I just need you here.”

  “I knew it. I knew those years of insults and dirty looks masked your true feelings. And I want you to know, the feeling is mutual. In fact, back when we rode together, and you got out of the car first, I’d sometimes lean over and sniff your seat.”

  Alex has to put a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing.

  “Just make sure you bring protection,” I say.

  A gun, asshole. Bring a gun.

  “Message received. Leave the front door unlocked. If I get there and you’re already passed out, I’m hopping on anyway.”

  He disconnects. Does he know I’m in trouble? Is he playing along? Or does he really think he’s going to get laid?

  “Nice work, Jack. Now let’s try another one. That intense guy with the killer abs. Phineas Troutt. I owe him too.”

  I stare at Alex. Her scarred face offers no reprieve. No pity. She’s a monster.

  But she’s a monster who wants something from me, which gives me just a tiny bit of leeway. If I got in touch with Phin, all I’ll have left to offer Alex is my pain and suffering. Best to stall that for as long as I can.

  “Where’s Latham?” I try to sound scared, which doesn’t require any acting.

  “Ahh, yes. Where is loverboy? I noticed he wore a ring. You too. When is the wedding, Jack?” She bats her eyes, but the scarred one simply twitches. “Can I be your maid of honor?”

  “Where is he?”

  Alex makes a show of looking at her watch.

  “He’s in the garage. How much air do you think is in one of those kitchen garbage bags? Think there’s twenty minutes’ worth?”

  I bolt, running across the kitchen, heading for the door to the garage. My hands are behind my back, so I have to spin around to turn the knob. Alex doesn’t run after me. She stays in the kitchen, hands on her hips, looking vaguely amused.

  I manage to pull open the door, and find Latham in the middle of the garage, lying on the floor next to a giant stack of boxes. A white plastic garbage bag is over his head, duct tape wrapped around his neck.

  He’s completely still.

  I run to him, drop to my knees, scooting around and grabbing the bag along with some of his hair. I dig my fingers in and pull. The plastic stretches, tears.

  “Latham! Latham, please answer me!”

  I feel him move.

  “Jack?”

  Thank God. I keep tugging, removing as much of the bag as I can, my fingers encircling his face. His cheeks are wet, with sweat or tears or both.

  I shed a few tears too.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say, over and over.

  “She put a hole in the bag. A little one. Didn’t want me to die yet.”

  He talks in a monotone, emotionless. Probably in shock.

  “I gave him a choice.” Alex stands in the doorway. “Fuck me, or die. He told me he’d do it if I put a bag over my head. Personally, I think it looks pretty good on him.”

  My fear vanishes, replaced by a hate so intense I can taste it. I get to my knees, then to my feet, and charge at her. Alex doesn’t flinch. When I get close enough she sidesteps my attempted body tackle and trips me. Unable to break my fall, I land on my face, my lips kissing the dirty concrete floor, the wind rushing from my lungs.

  “You want to play, Jack? We’ve got time to play.” Alex puts her hands behind her back. “I’ll even play fair. You’re Little Miss Tae Kwon Do, right? Let’s see if you can take me.”

  I’m so pumped up with anger and adrenaline that I get up before my breath comes back. I take a feeble gasp, shake away the stars, and run at her.

  Alex kicks me in the stomach, so hard that it knocks my shoes off. I fall onto my ass, the handcuffs digging in and twisting my wrists, prompting a scream. I use the pain, continuing to stretch at the cuffs, pulling them up under my butt and over my feet.

  My hands are now in front of me.

  It won’t help much fighting against Alex. She’s stronger than the last time I’d sparred with her. But maybe if I could get to my bedroom, to my other gun—

  I run for it, run like I have a freight train coming after me. Make it to the kitchen, to the front room, to the hallway. Then I stumble and eat carpeting.

  “Is that how you got your black belt, Jack? By running away like a scared little bitch?”

  I roll over, glare up at Alex. She grabs my handcuff chain and jerks me up to her level. Her strength is amazing.

  “Pumped a little iron in lockup?” I say between breaths.

  Half of her face smiles.

  “A little.”

  Then she whips me forward, headfirst into the wall.

  Everything goes from very bright to very dark.

  8:18 P.M.

  SWANSON

  JAMES MUNCHEL WALKS into the suburban sports bar with a big yellow grin on his face and a hail conquering hero swagger. He actually lifts up his hand for a high five when he reaches their table.

  Greg Swanson can barely hold in his rage. His jaw is clenched, and his shoulders feel like a giant knot.

  “Sit down, you idiot,” Swanson orders.

  Munchel darkens, lowering his upraised palm. But he complies. They’re at a table in the back, and the place is crowded enough that no one is paying any attention to them. Like all sports bars, this one boasts an impressive number of TVs. The one nearest them is tuned to CNN, at Swanson’s request, and it’s still reporting live
from Munchel’s massacre scene.

  “What the fuck were you doing?” Swanson asks.

  “I was following the plan.”

  “The plan was to take out the target, not half the cops in Chicago.”

  “They were witnesses,” Munchel says.

  Swanson bunches up his napkin, squeezes it hard. He’s bigger than Munchel, by five inches and sixty pounds. But the smaller man is flat-out crazy, and this scares Swanson.

  Swanson looks at Pessolano, hoping for some assistance. Paul Pessolano is wearing those stupid as hell yellow shooting glasses, which make him look like a bee. His face is granite, impassive. He’s had military experience, but he must have had his communication skills shot off during Desert Storm. Either that or he’s seen The Terminator too many times.

  As predicted, Pessolano offers nothing. Swanson turns back to Munchel, who is flagging down their server. He waits while Munchel orders a beer and one of those fried onion appetizers. When the waitress leaves, Swanson has to count to five in his head so he doesn’t start yelling.

  “I’m the leader of The Urban Hunting Club,” he says, his voice as calm and patronizing as a grade school teacher’s. “I’m the one who brought us together. I’m the one who picked the targets. I’m the one who came up with the plan.”

  Munchel rolls his eyes at Swanson, then nudges Pessolano.

  “Hey, Paul, how many confirmed kills you got?”

  “Eighteen.” Pessolano’s voice is rough, like he doesn’t use it much.

  “I’m almost caught up to you. I just got twelve.”

  “You got eleven,” Pessolano says. “One of the cops lived.”

  Munchel shrugs. “Fine, eleven. Still pretty good my first time out.”

  Swanson realizes that he probably shouldn’t have trusted guys who answered an ad in the back of Soldier of Fortune. But he didn’t have a choice. Where else was he supposed to find mercenaries? Swanson works in a home improvement store, in the plumbing department. He isn’t a killer.

  Well, technically, he is a killer now. But he wasn’t a few hours ago. And he wasn’t a few months ago when he placed that ad.

  When Swanson’s wife got…attacked…five years ago, he’d been devastated. Jen was, is, his everything. Then the bastard who did it got out five years early—for good behavior, what a fucking joke. Swanson couldn’t allow that. He had to kill the guy. For Jen. For himself. For society. It was more than just revenge. More than justice. The punk needed to be killed, and Swanson felt the need to perform that particular public ser vice.

  But he knew that if he offed the guy, suspicion would immediately fall on him. The authorities would look at his victims, following the revenge angle.

  Unless it looked random.

  Thus, The Urban Hunting Club was born. All Swanson needed were a couple of like-minded guys who hated perverts, and then Rob Siders’s death would be blamed on vigilantes, not on an angry husband.

  But Munchel has ruined the plan. TUHC has gone from being a group that might have been respected, even admired, straight to Public Enemy Number One. Cops never forget when you murder their own. They’ll be hunted for the rest of their lives. All because Munchel got himself a kill hard-on.

  “We need to break up,” Swanson says. “Go our separate ways, never see each other again.”

  “Why would we do that?” Munchel asks. The waitress brings his beer, and the idiot continues to talk in front of her. “We make a great team. We got rid of some real scum today.”

  The server leaves, and Swanson leans over, jutting his chin at Munchel.

  “And now we’re wanted for killing ten cops,” he says through his teeth.

  Munchel smiles, takes a sip of beer. “Collateral damage. Couldn’t be helped.”

  Swanson looks at Pessolano, who is stoically picking his teeth with his fork. He realizes he has to distance himself from these two loonies. Hell, he should probably run straight home, grab Jen, and move to California. That might look like an admission of guilt, but Munchel is going to get caught, and when he gets caught he’ll talk. Swanson doesn’t want to be implicated in any cop killing case, especially in a state that has the death penalty.

  “I’m ditching the gun, and getting the fuck out of town.”

  Swanson stands. Pessolano clasps his hands together, puts them behind his head.

  “You ain’t ditching shit. Those are my rifles, and they’re worth more than you make in a year.”

  “Fine. Let’s go out to the parking lot, you can have your guns back right now.”

  Munchel finishes his beer, lets out a weak belch. He meets Swanson’s stare.

  “Before you go running home to Mama, crying like a little girl, we have to take care of one more problem.”

  Dread creeps up Swanson’s shoulders and perches there, like a gargoyle. “What problem?”

  “That chick cop. The one who fired back at me.”

  “What about her?”

  Munchel wipes his mouth off with his sleeve. “She saw my face.”

  Swanson sits back down. This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.

  “Had some sort of scope,” Munchel goes on. “Some infrared night-vision bullshit.”

  “Could she ID you?” Pessolano asks.

  “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

  Swanson tries to think, tries to remember if his passport is up-to-date.

  “We can go to Mexico,” he says. “We can leave to night.”

  Munchel snorts. “Hell no. I love America. I’m not leaving. Not because of some split-tail. Besides—there’s another option.”

  Swanson’s heart is beating faster than when he took the shot and killed the pervert. He should be feeling good right now. Satisfied. Complete. Maybe even a little excited. Killing Rob Siders had been easier than he thought, and every detail had been executed perfectly. But instead of celebrating, he feels terrified and ready to throw up.

  “What option?” Pessolano asks.

  “I put that GPS tracker you lent me on her car.” Munchel grins wide, his teeth the color of corn. “I know where she lives.”

  8:22 P.M.

  JACK

  “LET’S PLAY A GAME,” Alex says.

  I sit on the sofa. My hands rest in my lap, the handcuffs digging painfully into my wrists. My ankles are wrapped in silver duct tape. Latham has tape on his legs, wrists, and mouth. Alex dragged my mother, still bound to the kitchen chair, into the living room with us. Mom’s eyelids are drooping. She doesn’t look well.

  Alex holds a nickel-plated revolver. It has a two-inch barrel and a rubber grip. A small gun. It probably only holds five bullets. My guess is confirmed when Alex swings the cylinder out and pushes the ejector rod, dumping five .32-caliber rounds into her palm. She thumbs one back into an empty chamber, spins the cylinder, and slaps it closed.

  “I’m going to ask you some questions, Jack. If you get one wrong, I’m going to point the gun at either your mother or your fiancé, and pull the trigger. Like this.”

  Alex aims at my mother and fires before the cry can leave my throat.

  The hammer falls on an empty chamber with a metallic click.

  “A one out of five chance,” Alex says. “Those are pretty good odds. Do you understand the game?”

  I push the panic down, deep down, forcing myself to think rather than react to fear.

  “What if I get the answer right?” I ask.

  “Then I’ll ask another one.” Alex spins the cylinder. “Let’s begin.”

  She walks over to me and stares down. Her eyes are empty. I wonder if she’s enjoying this. She doesn’t seem to be.

  Alex doesn’t have the classic male psychopathic response, because her particular mental disorder isn’t linked to sex and testosterone. That means she stays calm, works within her peculiar kind of rationalization, without letting emotion take over. Her cruelty isn’t hot and breathy. It’s cold and calculating.

  In my opinion, that makes it worse.

  “How did I escape from Heathrow?” Alex ask
s me.

  What is she looking for? Praise? Begging? Cowering? Or does she just want a wrong answer so she can shoot someone I love while I watch?

  “You lured someone into your room, burned them, and took their ID. A guard, maybe.”

  “It wasn’t a guard. Try again.”

  “Another inmate.”

  Alex snorts. “If I took another inmate’s place, I’d be sitting in her cell right now. One more guess, then we play some Russian roulette.”

  I rack my brain, trying to remember what I know about Alex, about her past. She grew up with a family of psychos. She liked to kill animals. She was infatuated with her brother. She could act normal, function within society, until her peculiar tastes took over. She used to be a marine. She was an expert marksperson, and an expert martial artist. She murdered many people, torturing most of them first. She was of above-average intelligence. She had been analyzed by many specialists.

  Many specialists.

  “Your shrink,” I decide.

  Alex has killed several of her psychiatrists. She seems to get a particular thrill out of it, and I could easily picture her carrying on that legacy at Heathrow.

  I know I’m right, because the unscarred half of her face smiles.

  “Dr. Panko. Shorter than me, but the same hair color. She was a Freudian. Kept wanting me to talk about my parents. Saw me as a victim, a weak little girl who had been abused by the world. I had to fake a lot of tears in front of that bitch. It paid off.”

  “You got her to trust you,” I say. As long as Alex is talking, she isn’t shooting.

  “So much that she allowed me to get a job in the laundry room. On our next session I snapped her neck and put her body in the laundry cart. Not easy to do in handcuffs and ankle restraints. When I did laundry rounds that night, I dropped her off in my room, switched clothes with her, and set her on fire after spraying her with three cans of Lysol. Then I walked out of prison while everyone stood around watching the blaze. How did I do that, Jack?”

  “You took her keys. Her ID.”