Shot of Tequila

by J. A. Konrath

“I’m looking for Marty,” Tequila asked the man closest to him.

  The man motioned with his head over to the rear of the room. Tequila wove his way through the crowd, enduring several height cracks and giggles. In the back of the room, seated on the only chair in the place, was a pudgy, mustached man sporting thinning black hair slicked back over his scalp with some kind of oil. Around his neck were several heavy gold chains, and on his fat pinky perched a two carat diamond ring. He wore an expensive silk suit, open at the collar. His eyes were two cold black marbles, and they regarded Tequila impassively.

  “You Marty?”

  Two men flanking Marty’s chair reached into their jackets. Marty raised a hand to stop them.

  “You that guy I just called?” Marty asked.

  “The name is Tequila.”

  Several of Marty’s entourage laughed.

  “Well, Tequila, if you’re as talented as I’ve been led to believe, you’d be quite valuable to me. I’ve got a surplus of meanness in my little army, but a severe shortage of actual skill.”

  “And what is it that you do?” Tequila asked.

  More laughter.

  “I like to think of myself as an odds maker.”

  “You’re a bookie.”

  “A very well-connected bookie.”

  “And you want to hire me as a collection agent.”

  Marty grinned. “Correct. If you think you can do the job.”

  The large man on Marty’s right butted into the dialog.

  “Come on, Mr. Martelli. This little shrimp couldn’t collect forty cents for a toll.”

  “Do you think you can take him, Vincent?”

  “No problem, Mr. Martelli. I’d squash him like a bug.”

  “I’ll make you a deal, Tequila,” Marty told him. “If you can knock Vincent down in less than sixty seconds, I’ll hire you.”

  “At the rate we discussed?”

  “Yes.”

  Tequila thought it over. That was four times as much as he made at the YMCA. It would mean a new apartment for him and Sally, around the clock care, maybe even a car. Tequila didn’t see any downside.

  “Fine.”

  Vincent stepped forward, shrugging off his jacket. He was a big man, with the over-developed chest and arms of a weightlifter. Everyone formed into a small circle, surrounding them.

  Tequila looked for vulnerable spots on the man, but even his neck was thick and corded with muscle.

  So he went for the one spot that he knew wasn’t muscular.

  Tequila did a hand spring, landed on his knees before Vincent’s feet, and drove all of his weight into a fist aimed at the weightlifter’s balls.

  He connected and Vincent screamed falsetto, swinging a big arm to swat Tequila away. Tequila rolled to the side, made his feet, and jumped up and twisted in the air, spin-kicking Vincent in the side of the head.

  Vincent went down and didn’t get up.

  The entire pool hall went silent.

  Tequila, who hadn’t even broken a sweat, turned and faced Marty.

  “How long was that?” Marty asked one of his goons.

  “Six seconds.”

  “I got five seconds,” said another.

  Marty grinned, offering Tequila his hand.

  “You’re hired. You start tomorrow. Be here at ten a.m. And let me have your Driver’s License.”

  “Why?”

  “Can’t learn to shoot a gun without having a gun permit, right?”

  Tequila handed over his license. The next day he had his Firearm Owner ID and began his five years of employment under Marty the Maniac.

  Which ended that night as Tequila slept.

  Marty Martelli was not your typical bookie. He didn’t have a head for numbers or point spreads or odds. He didn’t follow sports much. In fact, he hated gambling, except for an occasional game of poker with the people he paid to be his friends.

  But Marty was exceptionally good at ordering people around. Not leading; a leader was someone who took charge and inspired hope and confidence. Marty had about as much charisma as a bowl of vomit. But he got things done. Partly out of fear. Partly out of a natural ability to delegate authority to the persons most suited to complete particular tasks.

  Marty surrounded himself with talent in every field. He had three of the best accountants in the world, all constantly checking each other’s work. He had ins with all the important odds-makers and Mafioso. He had a dozen beat cops, a sergeant, two police captains, two Mayor’s aids, four aldermen, the assistant superintendent, and a judge, all happy to help out with any little problem he had. If they couldn’t help, even with all the money he gave them, Marty retained two very famous lawyers who could do everything but turn water into wine. And even that, with the right jury, was possible.

  But the employees that Marty liked the best, the ones he identified with most, were the debt collectors.

  Marty the Maniac worked his way up through the Chicago book system in the 1950s, as a leg-breaker. His plump sixty-plus-year-old frame was once muscular, and the scars on his face told tales of more fights than professional sparring partners.

  “Fear, not pain, is the ultimate goal,” he constantly told his underlings. “Pain fades. But fear continuously builds. Collecting a difficult debt means making the debtor anxious to pay. I want him to be bending over backwards in his eagerness to give me what he owes. Broken bones heal. Paranoia grows like weeds.”

  Marty’s collectors were experts in scaring the living hell out of people. Most of the time, their mere presence had people scrambling for their checkbooks. Stronger personalities, such as criminals, or celebrities, or once even a House of Representatives politico, had to be convinced that paying off their debts was a good idea. This was simply a matter of finding out what they feared most. A tough guy with children could have them taken away for a while. A Congressman with claustrophobia could be locked in a coffin and buried for a few hours. A hot shot movie actor with a big libido could have his favorite body part shaved by a shaky man with a straight razor.

  All of Marty’s clients eventually paid, with very few of them being seriously hurt.

  “Another reason not to seriously hurt a client,” Marty was fond of saying over and over, “is that next time they want to bet, they’ll go someplace else. Scaring off your business isn’t good business.”

  Marty had five collectors, who served as his bodyguards and poker buddies when they weren’t out getting his cash. Two of them, a bull-necked bodybuilder named Matisse and an ex-cop named Leman, had been on the clock at Spill—a trendy dance bar that Marty owned—where they’d been guarding the Super Bowl take.

  They hadn’t done their job, and were presently sleeping on the floor of his vault.

  Marty lashed out with his right foot, kicking the unconscious Matisse in the head. Unfortunately for him, his four hundred dollar custom Italian shoes weren’t made for kicking, and Marty the Maniac jammed his big toe. This propelled his rage into a spit-flying flurry, and after switching feet he stomped on the bodybuilder’s back, heel first, over and over, trying to drive his foot through the worthless, muscle-bound idiot and into the floor. He succeeded only in winding himself.

  Marty drew in air through his mouth, loudly and in great gulps. He tried to wipe his sweating forehead with a silk sleeve, and found that silk absorbed sweat for shit. His gaze shifted once again to the stainless steel table, the table that should have had over one million dollars stacked on it. It didn’t. The only thing on the table was one dollar and thirty-two cents in change—the robber’s idea of a joke.

  “Get me the tape!” he screamed at Terco.

  Terco jerked back as if hit, his canned-tan face pinching and his massive chest jutting out defensively.

  “The tape?”

  “The videotape! I want to see what happened! I want to see who these incompetent bastards let steal my money!”

  “The videotape. Sure, Marty.”

  Terco lumbered off. Marty limped over to the prone Leman, watching his
collector’s chest rise and fall with each breath. Like Matisse and the two accountants, Leman was knocked out. Marty’s hackles rose again at the injustice of it. Not only was he out his Super Bowl cash, but the idiots he had protecting it weren’t even injured in the robbery. For what he paid them, they should have defended that money with their lives. Instead they were all snoring like babies. Babies with sleep apnea.

  “Asshole!” Marty screamed, stomping on Leman’s chest and cracking two ribs. Leman groaned. Marty stomped three more times and again had to stop to catch his breath.

  “You should kill them both.”

  Marty turned to glare at Slake, who offered Marty the wicked-looking switchblade he’d been using to clean his nails.

  “You aren’t the boss, Slake.” Marty pushed the knife aside and got in Slake’s face. “You’re a grunt. If I say fetch, you fetch. If I say roll over, you better turn a fucking cartwheel. And don’t you forget it.”

  “If you had let me guard the money like I said, this wouldn’t have happened.” Slake said it quietly, meeting his boss’s fierce glare with apparent disinterest.

  Marty drew the .38 snub nosed revolver he always kept in his waistband and jammed it under Slake’s chin. Staring into Slake’s empty eyes, Marty seriously considered killing him right there. Slake had been smarting-off a lot lately, and too many of his recent collections involved fatalities, something Marty couldn’t abide. A dead gambler can’t lose any more money.

  Slake apparently recognized the intent in his employer’s eyes, because his face morphed into something almost apologetic. He also threw in a touch of fear. Marty wasn’t sure that Slake could actually feel fear, but he recognized the effort at subservience.

  “I will forget you said that, my friend,” Marty hissed, “because I’ve got enough shit to do here without having to clean your brains off of the ceiling.”

  Slake gave Marty a tiny, placating smile. Marty jammed the gun back into his pants and ran his non-absorbent sleeve over his forehead again. Slake was history as soon as this was over. He’d use him to help get his money back, and then he was out on his skinny little ass.

  Leman groaned. The two men turned to see the ex-cop blink his eyes and try to lift up the hand that had all the blood on it.

  “Who took my money, you shit!” Marty bellowed, flying onto Leman like a bug and grabbing two handfuls of shirt. “Who took it?”

  “Water,” Leman croaked.

  Marty shook him harder. “I said who took my money!”

  “Water. Please. My chest.”

  Marty spit in the man’s face. “There’s your water, you son of a bitch. You’re lucky I don’t hang you from a flag pole by your colon. Who took it?”

  Leman’s eyelids fluttered, and Marty slapped him across the face. “Who?”

  “Tequila.”

  “Tequila?”

  “Yeah.”

  Marty released Leman’s shirt, his mind absorbing the news. Tequila was his golden boy. Always did what he was told. Never screwed up. He hadn’t had one single problem with Tequila since hiring him in that pool hall years ago.

  But that in itself made him suspicious. Tequila never took the whores Marty offered. Or the drugs. He never talked back. Hell, he never talked at all. If anyone had a hidden agenda, it would be Tequila. You never knew what that son of a bitch was thinking.

  “Get Tequila,” he ordered Slake. “Bring his ass over here now.”

  “You really think he went home after robbing you blind?” Slake asked.

  “I don’t know what to think!” Marty’s forehead veins stuck out like worms. “If he’s not at home, find the little bastard! Do it!”

  Slake shrugged and folded up his switchblade, exchanging it in his jacket pocket for a silver cigarette case. He opened the case and pulled out a French cigarette with thin fingers, then he strolled, unhurried, out of the room.

  “Are you sure it was Tequila?” Marty nudged Leman.

  “Huh?”

  He gave the ex-cop a harsh slap. “Are you sure it was Tequila?”

  “Heard someone say his name before I passed out. Plus we saw him on the vid monitor. Short guy with muscles.”

  “That son of a bitch.”

  Marty turned and faced the metal table. Gripping the edge, he upended it with a violent shove. The table flipped over, a metallic bang echoing throughout the vault, the coins on top tinkling and jingling on the hard wood floor.

  If it was Tequila, he would know there was no place in the world he could hide. Marty was connected with all the Outfit families. He could put out a contract on that little shit’s head and it would be filled within four hours, even if Tequila was hiding in a mud hut in Bombay, India.

  So the question was: Would Tequila run? Or play innocent?

  “Got the tape, Marty.”

  It was Terco, returning from the control room. He waved a VHS tape in the air and smiled widely.

  “Get that stupid look off of your face before I kick it off.”

  Terco’s grin dropped, and the two-hundred and sixty pound ex-professional weightlifter seemed ready to burst into tears. He blinked it away and set his massive jaw, looking like a punished puppy. Steroids might make you huge, but they did nothing for your emotional state.

  “Call up Dr. Rankowski, tell him to come here and check these assholes out,” Marty ordered, taking the tape from Terco and storming out of the room.

  He brought the tape to his office, where he found Slake sitting in his chair behind his desk, smoking one of those awful Frog cigarettes and looking smug.

  “Get your ass out of my chair. You find Tequila?”

  “Called him at home,” Slake said, slowly rising. “He’s on his way over.”

  So the bastard didn’t run.

  “You tell him I was hit?”

  “I just said you wanted to see him. An emergency.”

  Marty lashed out with a heavy right hand and slapped Slake in the face, knocking the cigarette across the room.

  “Why didn’t you go there and escort him personally, you stupid dink? If he doesn’t show up, I’ll do to you what I was gonna do to him.”

  “He’ll show,” whispered Slake, his dead eyes seeming to burn with hatred. “And if you ever hit me again…”

  Marty shoved Slake back into the chair so violently he almost toppled him.

  “You want to threaten me, you son of a bitch? You don’t have the balls. You never had any balls, Slake. In fact, that’s how I know you ain’t the one that robbed me. Whoever robbed me has balls the size of toasters. You got little Tootsie Roll nuts.”

  Slake stared back, saying nothing.

  “See? A real man, he’d defend the size of his cojones. Now get the fuck out of my chair.”

  The thin man removed himself from Marty’s leather office chair and walked slowly around the desk.

  “I talked to you, remember?” Slake said, a tremor in his voice.

  “What?”

  “I called to you while the vault was being robbed. Wrong number, remember?”

  “Why do I give a shit?” Marty growled, fussing with the VCR. “You ain’t a suspect, Tiny Balls.”

  He put the tape on visual rewind and got to the part where two masked individuals were walking out of the vault room with four suitcases obviously filled with money. He pressed play and let the segment run.

  “Pause it,” Slake said.

  Marty paused it, too absorbed to realize that Slake had just given him an order.

  “Right there. The short guy in the mask. Look at the back of his right hand.”

  The tape was black and white, and the pause flickered the image like a candle, but a tattoo of a butterfly could clearly be seen on the man’s hand.

  “Monarch tattoo. Like Tequila’s.”

  “I’m gonna skin that son of a bitch and floss with his arteries,” Marty whispered. Then he drew his .38 and emptied the cylinder into the television from almost point blank range.

  “A butterfly tattoo?”

  “I s
wear. One of those orange and black ones.”

  “A Monarch butterfly?”

  “Yeah. A Monarch butterfly.”

  Daniels wiped the sweat off her brow. The interrogation room was kept intentionally hot because some psychiatrist bozo wrote some paper about the effects of heat and stress and facilitating confessions. The shrink should have taken into account the stress levels of the cops doing the interrogation, who were just as uncomfortable and irritated as the suspects.

  “So let me get this straight,” she said. “The robber wasn’t a tall black man in a green leather jacket and gym shoes. He was a short, blond, blue-eyed white guy with cowboy boots and a tattoo of a Monarch butterfly on his right hand?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t tell us this before because he threatened to kill you?”

  Teddy Binkowski nodded like he had a spring in his neck. “Exactly. You didn’t see it, Detective. He shot that guy twenty times in less than two seconds. It was terrifying.”

  Benedict got in the shop owner’s face. “I think he’s lying.”

  Jack agreed. “So do I. I think what we have to do is search his store again. Carefully this time. Break open every bottle of booze and every can of beer, to try and find out what he’s hiding.”

  “I swear I’m telling the truth!”

  “Call the boys still at the store, Herb. Have them use sledgehammers if necessary. But take that place apart.”

  Benedict turned to leave the interrogation room and Binkowski stood up.

  “You can’t do that!”

  “Sit down, Mr. Binkowski.” Jack put a firm hand on his shoulder and directed him back onto the metal chair bolted to the floor. “And yes we can. Your store was the scene of a homicide, and we’re within our power to perform a thorough search of the crime scene.”

  “I want my lawyer.”

  “You aren’t being charged with anything, Mr. Binkowski. You’re the victim here, not the accused. What’s a lawyer going to do for you?”

  Binkowski’s face twisted in panic. “Please! Don’t! Don’t destroy my store! I was lying. I admit I was lying.”

  Benedict stopped with his hand on the knob.

  “About this guy with the butterfly tattoo?” Jack asked.