Everybody Dies - A Thriller (Phineas Troutt Mysteries Book 3)

by J. A. Konrath

  I stared with zero expression, and waited for McGlade to get over himself. It took a few minutes. After name dropping several celebrities that were siblings of more famous celebrities, and bragging he’d once had sex with an elderly woman famous for her risqué cat litter commercials, my Job-like patience was rewarded by him actually getting down to business.

  “So Bradford Milton… this dude is a piece of work. His connection to the Caucasian Nation has never been publicly proven, but the Feebies are pretty sure he’s the SC. The money trail indirectly leads to him, and the guy is just weird enough that it’s believable he’s fronting a white supremacist group. You know how some millionaires are philanthropists? He’s an anti-philanthropist. He actually lobbied against building the Holocaust Museum in DC. It’s rumored he’s the one who bought Hitler’s dagger a few years back, at that big auction. Also, and this is disturbing, I’ve seen pictures of his estate, and it has dozens of those stone fountains of little boys peeing.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Outside of Des Moines. About a five hour drive. I tapped into the city database, doing a building permit search, and his mansion is all buttoned up. He’s got every type of security measure, except armed guards. His place is so wired that a mosquito can’t fart a mile away without him hearing it. This is one seriously paranoid old man.”

  “Most Nazis are.”

  “No kidding. That’s probably the reason for no guards. He doesn’t want anyone peeking in the windows while he’s whacking off to The Triumph of the Will. Take a look.”

  McGlade dropped a printed picture on the table, and I hoped it wasn’t a picture of Milton whacking off. Instead, it was the mansion.

  It was big. And intimidating. Perimeter fence. Spotlights. Iron bars over the windows.

  “Looks tough,” I said. “But not unbeatable.”

  “You sound like a man who knows a little something about breaking and entering.”

  “I’ve done my share.” Both as a juvenile delinquent, and as an adult delinquent. The way I earned my living, solving problems for desperate people that the law couldn’t solve, sometimes involved illegal entry. I couldn’t pick a lock or crack a safe, but I knew my way around burglar alarms.

  “Me, too. Though I prefer the entering part more than the breaking. Here’s what I’ve got planned, maybe you can spot any holes.”

  Harry reached under the table and grabbed a large rucksack, the size and shape of a golf bag. He unzipped the top and began taking things out. Contents included a crowbar, a bolt cutter, a rechargeable drill, a glass cutter, a propane torch, duct tape, magnets, a liquid compass, copper wire, tree spikes, glazier’s suction cups, and a canvas boat winch, among other things.

  “That’s a good start. What if Milton has infrared?”

  “I’ve got some Mylar survival blankets. Block it no prob.”

  “Dogs?”

  “Packer has two licensed dogs, according to the City Clerk website. But I have this.”

  McGlade pulled out a plastic garbage bag, containing—

  A stuffed animal German Shepherd.

  I take it back, Earl said. He’s an idiot.

  “You’re joking,” I stated.

  Harry shook his head, looking disappointed. “I’m disappointed,” he said, in case I was immune to non-verbal cues.

  I resisted the urge to shake him hard and make him hurry up, and instead lied and said, “I see where you’re going with this.”

  “That’s because we’re on the same broadband, Phin. We’re so much alike, we’re like two people sharing two minds.”

  That made no sense. I let it pass.

  “There’s no keypad or lock on his gate,” I said, reviewing the picture. The gate stretched along the driveway on a thin track.

  “I noticed that, too.” McGlade produced a black object with buttons on it that looked like a remote control. “It’s a remote control.”

  No shit.

  “It probably operates between 300 and 400 megahertz, and this transmitter can send all possible codes in under a minute.”

  “Can it detect ultrasonic?” I asked.

  “No. But I got that covered.” He dug into the bag and came out with a plastic hamster ball. Containing a hamster. Not a stuffed hamster. A real, flesh and blood rodent, white with grey highlights, and little pink feet. “I just got him this morning. Still trying to think of a name. What do you think of Beetlejuice Skywalker Van Damme?”

  “Not much. We need to go.”

  Harry scratched himself in an unattractive place. Granted, most places on him were unattractive, but this one was more unattractive than most. “Good call. Let’s roll. I’ll drive.”

  I’d never been to Iowa before, but any novelty I may have obtained from the visit was nullified by spending five hours in a car with McGlade.

  After we hashed out a breaking-and-entering plan, which was just bizarre enough to possibly work, McGlade further endeared himself to me by singing for the entire first few hours of our journey. Lots of old hard rock and heavy metal. He only knew about half the lyrics, and faked the rest. I was pretty sure Creedence Clearwater Revival never sang, “Hey there’s a bathroom on the right.”

  I’d been waiting for his voice to wear out, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen.

  “You need to stop,” I said.

  “We just stopped a few miles back. I’m telling you Phin, those gas station chili dogs were fine, even though they looked really bad. I’m pretty sure they were supposed to be that chewy.”

  “You need to stop singing.”

  “Really? How can you not like good music?”

  “That’s the problem. I do like good music.”

  “We can do a duet. You know Islands in the Stream?”

  “No.”

  “How about I Got You Babe?”

  “I don’t want to sing.”

  “That’s chill. I can do both parts.”

  “I don’t want you to sing, either.”

  Harry considered it.

  “Fine. No singing. Want to swap sex stories?”

  “No.”

  “Want to hear about the time I bought some of that aerosol Hair In A Can, sprayed it on my junk, and then picked up a hooker?”

  “No.”

  “How about the time I had sex with a girl who had an eating disorder? Spoiler alert: she didn’t swallow.” He frowned. “Maybe that wasn’t really a spoiler.”

  “How about we just don’t talk.”

  “Fine. Be a king prick.”

  He lasted all of seven minutes.

  “I’m wearing a diaper,” said McGlade.

  “Mmm-hmmm.” I had my eyes closed and was focusing on all the pain I was feeling, which was preferable to dealing with Harry.

  “I brought one for you. If we have to stake out Milton’s place, we don’t have to worry about finding a bathroom.”

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  “It has Power Rangers on it. Custom made. They don’t normally come in this size.”

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  “Are you listening to me?”

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  “My testicles are the size of oranges.”

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  “I can fit my whole hand up my ass.”

  “The real hand or the fake hand?”

  “Ha! I knew you were listening. Want to play Scrabble? I’ve got the traveler’s edition, with magnetic letters.”

  “No.”

  “You’re just afraid because I have a really really big, uh, use of, that thing for words…”

  “Vocabulary.”

  “Yeah. Want to play? I’m really good.”

  “No.”

  “Fair enough. I think there are a few Beatles songs I haven’t sung yet. Did I get through all of Abbey Road?”

  “Fine,” I acquiesced, “let’s play Scrabble.”

  “It’s in the glove compartment.”

  I opened said glove compartment and found it laden with old nudie magazines. Titles l
ike Ass Master Classic and Foot Bondage Monthly.

  “In between girlfriends?” I asked.

  “You never know when you might get stuck in traffic.”

  I tossed the mags over my shoulder, looking for the Scrabble set.

  “Careful,” admonished Harry, “I can sell those back to the bookstore when I’m done with them. Can you believe that stores actually sell used porn?”

  “Says the guy who buys used porn.”

  “Only if the pages aren’t ripped. Or stuck together.”

  I found a slim plastic case with the Scrabble name on the side, and opened it up.

  “You’re missing some letters,” I told McGlade.

  “How many?”

  “All you’ve got left are seven E’s and a J.”

  “I’ll go first.”

  “We can’t play, McGlade.”

  “My first word is EEEJEEE. Double word score, plus a fifty point bonus for using all of my letters.”

  “That’s not a word.”

  “It is a word. It’s the sound you make when you step barefoot in dog shit.”

  “Fine,” I said. “You win.”

  “Told you I was good at Scrabble.”

  I tossed the game in his back seat and recruited one of the magazines, settling in to read a fascinating article about the proper way to paddle an ass. Funny, how that’s what I felt like doing at that very moment.

  Harry resumed his massacre of early 80s rock, going through the entire Pink Floyd The Wall album.

  I had to hand it to him; it was just annoying enough that I couldn’t really think about Pasha.

  Maybe that was McGlade’s intent all along. Maybe he was trying to distract me. Maybe he really was a decent guy.

  “You know, with the bald head, and the saggy face, you sort of look like my scrotum.”

  Compliment rescinded. He was a self-absorbed asshole.

  “What is it with you?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s like you try really hard to make people not like you.”

  “Not true. I test people, to see if they’re worthy to hang around with me. Can you check the glove compartment for diaper cream? I just dropped a brown pound.”

  “Can you ever be serious?”

  “What’s the point?” Harry asked. “Everyone takes everything so seriously. But does anything really matter? In the end, everybody dies. At least, before I do, I’ll have a few laughs.”

  “So you make fun of everything.”

  “Sure. It’s fun. Especially now. We’re getting close to the end of this adventure. Serious shit is about to go down. People will die. Lives will be changed forever. So this is the funny part before the heavy part. It works like that in movies and books. It’s a structure thing. But, honestly, it would be more fun if I got to have my own POV sections.”

  I stared out the window, looking at everything, seeing nothing.

  After a few minutes of blessed silence, Harry said, “I like how I am.”

  “I guess that’s all that matters.”

  “I disagree. When you die, your opinion of yourself dies with you. What matters is if you’ll be missed.”

  It was an oddly poignant thing for him to say. I wondered if I would be missed.

  “I’ll miss you,” said Harry McGlade. “I was just bullshitting about skipping your funeral. I’ll be there, and I’ll be sobbing, and maybe I’ll get drunk and throw up on the coffin.”

  The image amused me. “It’s a shame I won’t be there to see it.”

  “We can’t choose our family. We can choose our friends.”

  I considered that. “How pissed was Jack on the ride home?”

  “Pissed. But she gets it. She has to have enough morality for all three of us. That’s her strength. And her weakness.”

  “And your thing is comic relief.”

  “Mostly. I’m also the guy who everyone underestimates, then comes at the end to win the day.”

  “And me?”

  He grinned. “You, my friend, are the damaged, badass antihero who operates outside the law and saves the girl, but never—”

  Harry cut himself off. It was rare to see him self-censor.

  “But never what?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a stupid storytelling trope. Hollywood narrative structure. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Finish it. The damaged, badass antihero who operates outside the law and saves the girl but never…”

  “Never gets the girl,” Harry said. “You ride off into the sunset alone. Or, in a modern twist, you die of cancer. Kinda shitty, but audiences love that bittersweet melodramatic stuff. It hits a nerve that people respond to. You’ve seen Casablanca.”

  “Aren’t there stories where the antihero saves the girl, then lives happily ever after?”

  “If you were the hero, yeah. But you’re too damaged to be the hero.”

  I couldn’t disagree.

  “On the plus side,” Harry continued, “Hugo is no doubt the Big Bad. Which means we’ll kick his ass at the end of this. That’s how storytelling works.”

  Obviously Harry comparing our circumstances to some made-up story was ridiculous, but thinking that Hugo might finally be wiped off the face of the earth made me feel a little better.

  “Unless he survives to come back in the sequel,” McGlade said.

  I think I liked it better when he was butchering old rock songs.

  As we neared Des Moines, traffic slowed to a limp. Stop. Go. Stop. Go.

  Our traffic delay turned out to be a stranded motorist, blocking up the lane. McGlade expressed his concern for the guy as we passed.

  “Fifteen minutes wasted because some dork can’t change a tire,” he fumed. “Why couldn’t any of these jerks stop to help him?”

  “I notice that you didn’t help. You laid on the horn and gave him the finger.”

  “I’m a busy man. Here, take my cell, check the map, tell me how close we are to Milton’s.”

  I held Harry’s iPhone and followed the squiggly blue line to the digital push-pin destination. “Three kilometers up.”

  “Kilometers? The metric system? What are we, the rest of the world?”

  Five hours in the car with Harry was my limit. “Just take the next exit.”

  We’d been driving through Iowa for what seemed like several eternities, West on I-80 through endless Midwestern landscape, which consisted of cornfields and fields waiting for someone to plant corn. The day was overcast, the weather cool, and I’d had my fill of the beef jerky Harry had in his prepper bag, which took up most of the Corvette’s back seat. Milton’s place was east of Des Moines, close to the unfortunately named South Skunk River. After we turned off the expressway, I directed McGlade down a small road, and then a smaller road, and finally a gravel driveway. He pulled into the long grass and parked underneath a No Trespassing sign.

  “This should be the edge of his property.” Harry got out of the car, moved the seat up, and began to root through his rucksack. “I love my car, but there is no storage area. What do you think of Winnebagos?”

  “The motor home?”

  “Yeah. I was thinking about getting one. Think they’re cool?”

  “No.”

  “You’re right. They’re stupid. I won’t ever get one.” He fished out the hamster ball and frowned at it. “Wow, that little guy sure can poop. Maybe I should have put some wood shavings in there.”

  He let the animal out of the ball, and it crawled up Harry’s sleeve, leaving a stinky, brown trail.

  “What did I say his name was?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Shit. Wasn’t it like Chuck Norris Vader von Batman?”

  Out of the confines of the Corvette, I’d begun to dwell on Pasha again.

  “Godzilla Obama Yojimbo?”

  “Does it matter? It’s a hamster. It’s not like he’s going to come when you call.”

  “Phin… when you buy an animal you have to name it. It’s the humane thing to do.” He sna
pped the fingers on his good hand. “I got it. We’ll call him Uranus. After the planet, not your butthole. But, coincidentally, they sound identical.”

  I checked the magazine on the 1911, flicked off the safety, and strapped on the shoulder holster. Harry had suspected that the driveway was rigged to signal Milton when visitors approached. Cameras, pressure sensors, maybe possibly photoelectric beams, either infrared or ultra-violet. Avoidance was the easiest way to deal with either type of alarm, so we decided to walk in the woods, several meters parallel to the road. I got on my way.

  “Wait!” Harry called. “You’re going first?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you need to hold Uranus.”

  Harry held out the hamster. Because I knew this would become a gigantic, pointless argument if I objected, I took the rodent.

  “What am I supposed to watch for?” I asked.

  “Keep a close eye on Uranus. If Uranus starts to get agitated, let me know.”

  Harry hefted the rucksack, and we began to hike.

  After about twenty steps, Harry asked, “How’s Uranus doing?”

  “Relaxed.”

  “Uranus is relaxed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is Uranus making any noise?”

  “No.”

  “Is Uranus running?”

  “No.”

  We walked ten more steps.

  “Can I hold Uranus?” McGlade asked.

  “No.”

  “Can I put a finger on Uranus?”

  “No.”

  “Can you at least show me Uranus?”

  “No.”

  “Uranus is hairy,” he stated.

  “You live for moments like these, don’t you?”

  “I demand to see Uranus!”

  I shook my head in resignation and handed McGlade the hamster.

  “Ohh. Look at Uranus. Uranus is so cute. I want to give Uranus a carrot.”

  I picked up my pace, trying to leave McGlade behind.

  “Oww! Uranus bit me! Has Uranus had shots?”

  I stopped and turned around, glaring at him. “One more Uranus joke and I’m putting my boot up your anus.”

  “Why? What’d the little guy do to you?”

  He must have noted I was out of patience, because he followed up with, “Since you obviously don’t love Uranus as much as I do, I’ll change his name.”