65 Proof

by Jack Kilborn

  One gun beats two knives.

  He took three in the chest and two in the neck before he dropped.

  The last guy, the guy who broke my nose, grabbed my shotgun and dove behind the couch.

  Chck chck. He ejected the shell and racked another into the chamber. I pulled the Glock’s magazine and slammed a fresh one home.

  “Hijo calvo de una perra!”

  Again with the bald son of a bitch taunt. I worked through my hurt feelings and crawled to an end table, tipping it over and getting behind it.

  The shotgun boomed. Had it been loaded with shot, it would have torn through the cheap particle board and turned me into ground beef. Or ground hijo calvo de una perra. But at that distance, the granules didn’t do much more than make a loud noise.

  The banger apparently didn’t learn from experience, because he tried twice more with similar results, and then the shotgun was empty.

  I stood up from behind the table, my heart a lump in my throat and my hands shaking with adrenalin.

  The King turned and ran.

  His back was an easy target.

  I took a quick look around, making sure everyone was down or out, and then went to retrieve my shotgun. I loaded five more shells and approached the downed leader, who was sucking carpet and whimpering. The wounds in his back were ugly, but he still made a feeble effort to crawl away.

  I bent down, turned him over, and shoved the barrel of the Mossburg between his bloody lips.

  “You remember Sunny Lung,” I said, and fired.

  It wasn’t pretty. It also wasn’t fatal. The granules blew out his cheeks, and tore into his throat, but somehow the guy managed to keep breathing.

  I gave him one more, jamming the gun further down the wreck of his face.

  That did the trick.

  The second perp, the one I’d blinded, had passed out on the bathroom floor. His face didn’t look like a face anymore, and blood bubbles were coming out of the hole where his mouth would have been.

  “Sunny Lung sends her regards,” I said.

  This time I pushed the gun in deep, and the first shot did the trick, blowing through his throat.

  The last guy, the one who made like Pavarotti when I took out his knee, left a blood smear from the hall into the kitchen. He cowered in the corner, a dishrag pressed to his leg.

  “Don’t kill me, man! Don’t kill me!”

  “I bet Sunny Lung said the same thing.”

  The Mossberg thundered twice; once to the chest, and once to the head.

  It wasn’t enough. What was left alive gasped for air.

  I removed the bag of granules from my pocket, took out a handful, and shoved them down his throat until he stopped breathing.

  Then I went to the bathroom and threw up in the sink.

  Sirens wailed in the distance. Time to go. I washed my hands, and then rinsed off the barrel of the Mossberg, holstering it in my rig.

  In the hallway, the kid I emasculated was clutching himself between the legs, sobbing.

  “There’s always the priesthood,” I told him, and got out of there.

  My nose was still clogged, but I managed to get enough coke up there to damper the pain. Before closing time I stopped by the bakery, and Ti greeted me with a somber nod.

  “Saw the news. They said it was a massacre.”

  “Wasn’t pretty.”

  “You did as we said?”

  “I did, Ti. Your daughter got her revenge. She’s the one that killed them. All three.”

  I fished out the bag of granules and handed it to her father. Sunny’s cremated remains.

  “Xie xie,” Ti said, thanking me in Mandarin. He held out an envelope filled with cash.

  Ti looked uncomfortable, and I had drugs to buy, so I took the money and left without another word.

  An hour later I’d filled my codeine prescription, picked up two bottles of tequila and a skinny hooker with track marks on her arms, and had a party back at my place. I popped and drank and screwed and snorted, trying to blot out the memory of the last two days. And of the last six months.

  That’s when I’d been diagnosed. A week before my wedding day. My gift to my bride-to-be was running away so she wouldn’t have to watch me die of cancer.

  Those Latin Kings this morning, they got off easy. They didn’t see it coming.

  Seeing it coming is so much worse.

  Harry is my favorite character to write for. I love the idea of an idiotic, selfish jerk as a protagonist. He’s too obnoxious and unsympathetic to carry a book on his own, but I think he makes a great foil for Jack, so he appears in every novel. Some readers hate him. Some readers adore him. This story sold to The Strand Magazine in 2005.

  “I want you to kill the man that my husband hired to kill the man that I hired to kill my husband.”

  If I had been paying attention, I still wouldn’t have understood what she wanted me to do. But I was busy looking at her legs, which weren’t adequately covered by her skirt. She had great legs, curvy without being heavy, tan and long, and she had them crossed in that sexy way that women cross their legs, knee over knee, not the ugly way that guys do it, with the ankle on the knee, though if she did cross her legs that way it would have been sexy too.

  “Mr. McGlade, did you hear what I just said?”

  “Hmm? Yeah, sure I did, baby. The man, the husband, I got it.”

  “So you’ll do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Kill the man that my husband—”

  I held up my hand. “Whoa. Hold it right there. I’m just a plain old private eye. That’s what is says on the door you just walked through. The door even has a big magnifying glass silhouette logo thingy painted on it, which I paid way too much money for, just so no one gets confused. I don’t kill people for money. Absolutely, positively, no way.” I leaned forward a little. “But, for the sake of argument, how much money are we talking about here?”

  “I don’t know where else to turn.”

  The tears came, and she buried her face in her hands, giving me the opportunity to look at her legs again. Marietta Garbonzo had found me through the ad I placed in the Chicago phone book. The ad used the expensive magnifying glass logo, along with the tagline, Harry McGlade Investigators: We’ll Do Whatever it Takes. It brought in more customers than my last tagline: No Job Too Small, No Fee Too High, or the one prior to that, We’ll Investigate Your Privates.

  Mrs. Garbonzo had never been to a private eye before, and she was playing her role to the hilt. Besides the short skirt and tight blouse, she had gone to town with the hair and make-up; her blonde locks curled and sprayed, her lips painted deep, glossy red, her purple eye shadow so thick that she managed to get some on her collar.

  “My husband beats me, Mr. McGlade. Do you know why?”

  “Beats me,” I said, shrugging. Her wailing kicked in again. I wondered where she worked out. Legs like that, she must work out.

  “He’s insane, Mr. McGlade. We’ve been married for a year, and Roy always had a temper. I once saw him attack another man with a tire iron. They were having an argument, Roy went out to the car, grabbed a crow bar from the trunk, then came back and practically killed him.”

  “Where do you work out?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Exercise. Do you belong to a gym, or work out at home?”

  “Mr. McGlade, I’m trying to tell you about my husband.”

  “I know, the insane guy who beats you. Probably shouldn’t have married a guy who used a tire iron for anything other than changing tires.”

  “I married too young. But while we were dating, he treated me kindly. It was only after we married that the abuse began.”

  She turned her head away and unbuttoned her blouse. My gaze shifted from her legs to her chest. She had a nice chest, packed tight into a silky black bra with lace around the edges and an underwire that displayed things to a good effect, both lifting and separating.

  “See these bruises?”

  “Hmm?”
>
  “It’s humiliating to reveal them, but I don’t know where else to go.”

  “Does he hit you anywhere else? You can show me, I’m a professional.”

  The tears returned. “I hired a man to kill him, Mr. McGlade. I hired a man to kill my husband. But somehow Roy found out about it, and he hired a man to kill the man I hired. So I’d like you to kill his man so my man can kill him.”

  I removed the bottle of whiskey from my desk that I keep there for medicinal purposes, like getting drunk. I unscrewed the cap, wiped off the bottle neck with my tie, and handed it to her.

  “You’re not making sense, Mrs. Garbonzo. Have a swig of this.”

  “I shouldn’t. When I drink I lose my inhibitions.”

  “Keep the bottle.”

  She took a sip, coughing after it went down.

  “I already paid the assassin. I paid him a lot of money, and he won’t refund it. But I’m afraid he’ll die before he kills my husband, so I need someone to kill the man who is after him.”

  “Shouldn’t you tell the guy you hired that he’s got a hit on him?”

  “I called him. He says not to worry. But I am worried, Mr. McGlade.”

  “As I said before, I don’t kill people for money.”

  “Even if you’re killing someone who kills people for money?”

  “But I’d be killing someone who is killing someone who kills people for money. What prevents that killer from hiring someone to kill me because he’s killing someone who is killing someone that I…hand me that bottle.”

  I took a swig.

  “Please, Mr. McGlade. I’m a desperate woman. I’ll do anything.”

  She walked around the desk and stood before me, shivering in her bra, her breath coming out in short gasps through red, wet lips. Her hands rested on my shoulders, squeezing, and she bent forward.

  “My laundry,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Do my laundry.”

  “Mr. McGlade, I’m offering you my body.”

  “And it’s a tempting offer, Mrs. Garbonzo. But that will take, what, five minutes? I’ve got about six loads of laundry back at my place, they take an hour for each cycle.”

  “Isn’t there a dry cleaner in your neighborhood?”

  “A hassle. I’d have to write my name on all the labels, on every sock, on the elastic band of my whitey tighties, plus haul six bags of clothes down the street. You want me to help you? I get five hundred a day, plus expenses. And you do my laundry.”

  “And you’ll kill him?”

  “No. I don’t kill people for money. Or for laundry. But I’ll protect your guy from getting whacked.”

  “Thank you, Mr. McGlade.”

  She leaned down to kiss me. Not wanting to appear rude, I let her. And so she didn’t feel unwanted, I stuck my hand up her skirt.

  “You won’t tell the police, will you Mr. McGlade?”

  “Look, baby, I’m not your priest and I’m not your lawyer and I’m not your shrink. I’m just a man. A man who will keep his mouth shut, except when I’m eating. Or talking, or sleeping, because sometimes I sleep with my mouth open because I have the apnea.”

  “Thank you, Mr. McGlade.”

  “I’ll take the first week in advance, Visa and MasterCard are fine. Here are my spare keys.”

  “Your keys?”

  “For my apartment. It’s in Hyde Park. I don’t have a hamper, so I leave my dirty clothes all over the floor. Do the bed sheets too—those haven’t been washed since, well, ever. Washer and dryer are in the basement of the building, washer costs seventy-five cents, dryer costs fifty cents for each thirty minutes, and the heavy things like jeans and sweaters take about a buck fifty to dry. Make yourself at home, but don’t touch anything, sit on anything, eat any of my food, or turn on the TV.”

  I gave her my address, and she gave me a check and all of her info. The info was surprising.

  “You hired a killer from the personal ads in Famous Soldier Magazine?”

  “I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “How about the police? A divorce attorney?”

  “My husband is a rich and powerful man, Mr. McGlade. You don’t recognize his name?”

  I flipped though my mental Rolodex. “Roy Garbonzo? Is he the Roy Garbonzo that owns Happy Roy’s Chicken Shack?”

  “Yes.”

  “He seems so happy on those commercials.”

  “He’s a beast, Mr. McGlade.”

  “The guy is like a hundred and thirty years old. And on those commercials, he’s always laughing and signing and dancing with that claymation chicken. He’s the guy that’s abusing you?”

  “Would you like to see the proof again?”

  “If it isn’t too much trouble.”

  She grabbed my face in one hand, squeezing my cheeks together.

  “Happy Roy is a vicious psycho, Mr. McGlade. He’s a brutal, misogynist pig who enjoys inflicting pain.”

  “He’s probably rich too.”

  Mrs. Garbonzo narrowed her eyes. “He’s wealthy, yes. What are you implying?”

  “I like his extra spicy recipe. Do you get to take chicken home for free? You probably have a fridge stuffed full of it, am I right?”

  She released my face and buttoned up her blouse.

  “I have to go. My husband gets paranoid when I go out.”

  “Maybe because when you go out, you hire people to kill him.”

  She picked up her purse and headed for the door. “I expect you to call me when you’ve made some progress.”

  “That includes ironing,” I called after her. “And hanging the stuff up. I don’t have any hangers, so you’ll have to buy some.”

  After she left, I turned off all the office lights and closed the blinds, because what I had to do next, I had to do in complete privacy.

  I took a nap.

  When I awoke a few hours later, I went to the bank, cashed Mrs. Garbonzo’s check, and went to start earning my money.

  My first instinct was to dive head-first into the belly of the beast and confront Mrs. Garbonzo’s hired hitman help. My second instinct was to get some nachos, maybe a beer or two.

  I went with my second instinct. The nachos were good, spicy but not so much that all you tasted was peppers. After the third beer I hopped in my ride and headed for the assassin’s headquarters, which turned out to be in a well-to-do suburb of Chicago called Barrington. The development I pulled into boasted some amazingly huge houses, complete with big lawns and swimming pools and trimmed bushes that looked like corkscrews and lollipops. I double-checked the address I’d scribbled down, then pulled into a long circular driveway and up to a home that was bigger than the public school I attended, and I came from the city where they grew schools big.

  The hitman biz must be booming.

  I half expected some sort of maid or butler to answer the door, but instead I was greeted by a fifty-something woman, her facelift sporting a deep tan. I appraised her.

  “If you stay out in the sun, the wrinkles will come back.”

  “Then I’ll just have more work done.” Her voice was steady, cultured. “Are you here to clean the pool?”

  “I’m here to speak to William Johansenn.”

  “Billy? Sure, he’s in the basement.”

  She let me in. Perhaps all rich suburban women were fearless and let strange guys into their homes. Or perhaps this one simply didn’t care. I didn’t get a chance to ask, because she walked off just as I entered.

  “Lady? Where’s the basement?”

  “Down the hall, stairs to the right,” she said without turning around.

  I took a long, tiled hallway past a powder room, a den, and a door that opened to a descending staircase. Heavy metal music blared up at me.

  “Billy!” I called down.

  My effort was fruitless—with the noise, I couldn’t even hear myself. The lights were off, and squinting did nothing to penetrate the darkness.

  Surprising a paid assassin in his own lair wasn’t
on the list of 100 things I longed to do before I die, but I didn’t see much of a choice. I beer-belched, then went down the stairs.

  The basement was furnished, though furnished didn’t seem to be the right word. The floor had carpet, and the walls had paint, and there seemed to be furniture, but I couldn’t really tell because everything was covered with food wrappers, pop cans, dirty clothing, and discarded magazines. It looked like a 7-Eleven exploded.

  William “Billy” Johansenn was asleep on a waterbed, a copy of Creem open on his chest. He had a galaxy of pimples dotting his forehead and six curly hairs sprouting from his chin.

  He couldn’t have been a day over sixteen.

  I killed the stereo. Billy continued to snore. Among the clutter on the floor were several issues of Famous Soldier, along with various gun and hunting magazines. I poked through his drawers and found a cheap Rambo knife, a CO2 powered BB gun, and a dog-eared copy of the infamous How to be a Hitman book from Paladin Press.

  I gave the kid a shake, then another. The third shake got him to open his eyes.

  “Who the hell are you?” he said, defiant.

  “I’m your wake-up call.”

  I slapped the kid, making his eyes cross.

  “Hey! You hit me!”

  “A woman hired you to kill her husband.”

  “I don’t know what you’re—”

  He got another smack. “That’s for lying.”

  “You can’t hit me,” he whined. “I’ll sue you.”

  I hit him twice more; once because I didn’t like being threatened by punk kids, and once because I didn’t like lawyers. When I pulled my palm back for threesies, the kid broke.

  “Please! Stop it! I admit it!”

  I released his t-shirt and let him blubber for a minute. His blue eyes matched those of the woman upstairs. Not many professional killers lived in their mother’s basement, and I wondered how Marietta Garbonzo could have been this naive.

  “I’m guessing you never met Mrs. Garbonzo in person.”

  “I only talked to her on the phone. She sent the money to a P.O. Box. That’s how the pros do it.”

  “So how did she get your home address?”

  “She wouldn’t give me the money without my address. She said if I didn’t trust her, why should she trust me?”