Shot of Tequila

by J. A. Konrath

  He was almost up to the next floor when he began to slide.

  The sweat, conspiring with the blood seeping from his many wrist wounds, had soaked his palms and dripped down the walls of the vent. When his hands began to slip, he tried to hold his position with his splayed feet long enough to wipe his palms on his shirt. But all the dust, mixed with the blood and sweat, created a thin layer of greasy grime that his shoes couldn’t get a purchase on. He slid another meter, and forced his hands and feet out with all of his might, willing his descent to stop.

  Which was when the grip of his shoes gave out completely and he fell, straight down, toward the furnace.

  Tequila was no stranger to falling. It happened often enough in practice. But falling in darkness unnerved him completely, and while his arms waved around frantically for something to grab, he unconsciously tensed his body, something one should never do in a fall.

  His flailing hands banged and echoed against the metal ducts, and the heat licked up at Tequila like the beckoning flames of hell. He’d judged he’d fallen about thirty feet before instinct kicked in and he relaxed his body for impact. The only tense part of him were his ankles, held tight together with the toes pointed out, paratrooper-style.

  Then he hit.

  His ass smacked against his heels, a thunderbolt of pain surging up from his coccyx through his spine and snapping his jaw shut. But before he could even assess the damage to his body, Tequila was surrounded by a heat so intense it was like climbing into a hot oven.

  He reflexively touched the floor and his hand sizzled on the grating covering the furnace. The massive machine somewhere beneath his feet was blowing up superheated air, powerfully and relentlessly heating the entire building.

  Tequila got to his feet and patted out the fire that had started on his ass from his chinos touching the grating. He held his hands out to the sides of the duct to climb and seared them badly. Taking off his jacket, he tried to wrap that around his hands, but the heat got through just the same, making his ascension impossible.

  He smelled something foul and knew it was the rubber melting off of his shoes.

  Thinking quickly, he removed his gun rig from his chest and pressed the button to magnetize the holsters. Hopefully, the building was old enough that the duct work was steel instead of aluminum. He touched the holsters to the side of the vent and they stuck there.

  Wasting no time, Tequila chinned himself up on his holsters, the powerful ceramic magnets holding his weight. Then he touched his feet against the walls and found that they gripped well, due to the sticky rubber that was melting on their bottoms. He hit the button on his rig again and touched it to the side of the vent up over his head before re-magnetizing them. Then he pulled himself up, and once more braced his body with his feet.

  Slowly, inexorably, he got up high enough to where he could touch the vents with his bare hands without searing them. Then he wrapped the rig around his shoulders and doubled his efforts, muscles aching.

  Tequila just passed the duct that led into the vault room when the bullets began to fly.

  Slake and Matisse rolled up to Tequila’s apartment building in a 1979 Monte Carlo. It was a muscle car, dark silver with side engine vents that looked like gills. The vehicle resembled a shark, which was the reason Slake bought it. With his salary he could have had any car. But this one suited his personality.

  They parked across the street and Slake reviewed their options. This was a security building, which meant that both entrances were monitored, and no one would be admitted without a resident’s permission. The lobby was watched by a doorman. The garage was watched by an attendant.

  Or at least, it should have been. In this case, the attendant was napping.

  They walked up to the garage doors, and Slake gave Matisse a nod. Crouching by the door, Matisse took a firm grip on the handle at the bottom, straightened his back, and flexed his legs as if ready to attempt a deadlift.

  The world record deadlift was almost nine hundred pounds, executed by a man weighing two hundred and seventy-five. Matisse weighed two-eighty, all of it muscle, most of it steroid-induced. The garage door weighed only eighty pounds, and the mechanical arm that opened and closed the door added four hundred pounds of pressure to the total.

  Matisse vs. The Garage Door.

  The Garage Door lost.

  Slake was inside the garage, his knife in his hand, before the attendant had even opened an eye. He was already though the door to the security room when the attendant finally stirred, realizing something was wrong. The knife at his throat was the first clue.

  “Caught you napping,” cooed Slake, his stiletto tickling the man’s Adam’s apple..

  “Take the keys.” The attendant quavered, pointing to the rack of car keys hanging on numbered hooks behind him. Several tenants preferred valet parking to the do-it-yourself option, and the attendant, assuming the intruders were car thieves, had no hesitation in trading them all for his hide. “You want a Cadillac? Benz? Corvette? How about a Ferrari? Take all you want.”

  “How about a white Chevy Caprice Classic that looks like a cop car?”

  “I don’t have his keys.” The attendant shrank. “He parks himself.”

  “What’s his room number?”

  “I don’t know. I swear.”

  Slake looked at the Rolex on his wrist.

  “You have exactly fifteen seconds to find out.”

  The attendant paled. He wasn’t even fully awake yet. One minute he’d been having a dream about rubbing suntan lotion on Carmen Electra’s butt, and now he was being threatened with death by some knife-wielding psycho who wanted information he didn’t have. If only he hadn’t been asleep, then he could have called the police before this wacko got in. He blamed Dr. Stubin, his chemistry professor. Mitch had been up the entire previous night studying for that asshole’s midterm. This was all Stubin’s fault.

  Matisse came into the security office, having jerked the garage door back down after entering. Mitch flinched at the sight of the new man, whose appearance made his situation even worse.

  Damn you, Dr. Stubin.

  “Ten seconds,” Slake said, eyes on his watch.

  The attendant scooped up the phone in front of him and dialed the extension for the phone in the lobby.

  Please, God, don’t let Frank be in the john.

  “This is Frank.”

  Thank you, Jesus. “Frank? Mitch. Who’s that short guy, crew cut, drives the Caprice?”

  “Five seconds.” Slake tapped at Mitch’s chin with the knife edge.

  “Tequila Abernathy. Lives in 3014. Why?”

  “Thirty-fourteen? Thanks Frank!”

  The attendant smiled at Slake, his face a cross between hope and relief.

  “Tell him his lights are on,” Slake told him.

  “His lights are on, Frank. I’ll call him.”

  “Lights are on? He went out earlier tonight, hasn’t come back yet.”

  “I guess he walked somewhere.”

  “That’s strange.”

  “Tell him you have to go,” ordered Slake.

  “Gotta go, Frank. Have to piss.”

  The attendant hung-up and grinned weakly.

  “What’s the name of the day doorman?” Slake asked.

  “Steve.” Mitch was eager to please at this point.

  “And are there any vacancies?”

  “Uh, yeah. Some guy just moved out of, uh, twelve-ten. No. Twelve-twelve. That’s open.”

  “Thank you.”

  The man’s eyes got wide. “Did I do good?”

  “Yes, Mitch. You did good.”

  Then Slake rammed his knife into Mitch’s neck. He clamped his free hand across the attendant’s mouth to block off the scream, and gave the knife a vicious twist.

  The scream came out of the hole in Mitch’s throat instead of his lips, but with the vocal chords severed and the blood running freely the bubbly sound he made was scarcely louder than a fart in the bathtub.

  The killer
withdrew his blade and set Mitch’s head down on the desk, leaving him to die without ever knowing if he had passed his Chemistry mid-term or not. He hadn’t. That asshole Dr. Stubin.

  “Jesus, Slake, did you have to kill him?”

  Slake wiped his knife blade off in the dead man’s hair and grinned. “No, I didn’t.”

  A shiver crept up Matisse’s back and caused his shoulders to shake. Slake folded his knife and tucked it away, and wiped away his fingerprints on the door with his sleeve.

  They went through the garage over to the lobby entrance. Walking in smoothly, appearing as if they belonged, Slake and Matisse headed straight for the elevator.

  “Gentlemen?”

  Frank the doorman raised an eyebrow at them. If they’d gotten through the garage, they were obviously tenants or friends of tenants. But Frank made it a point to recognize everyone—a necessary trait for someone who depended on tips to earn a living—and these two he didn’t recognize.

  “You must be Frank.” Slake smiled widely. The smile didn’t quite work on his harsh face. “The name’s Collins, just moved into twelve-twelve. I hope you’ll be as helpful as Steve was this morning. I chose this apartment for its privacy, and he seems like a man ready to protect mine.”

  Slake shook hands with Frank, offering him a palmed bill. Frank took it without glancing at the denomination.

  “Privacy is something that should be protected, Mr. Collins.” Frank grinned, snuck a look at the bill—a twenty—and grinned wider. “I’ll certainly do my best.”

  Slake nodded, and Frank pressed the button to call their elevator. He eyed the pair peripherally. Big tippers aside, there was something about them that wasn’t quite right. The big one looked nervous, and the thin one looked, well, sinister. And it was quite odd that neither the Building Association, nor Steve, had told him about any new tenants.

  Frank wondered if maybe they were misrepresenting themselves. Not tenants at all, but burglars or criminals of some sort. He’d lose his job if he let anyone like that into the building. He wondered what to do about it. Call Mitch, ask him? No, Mitch said he was taking a leak. Besides, Frank’s duty was to the tenants, and if these two were tenants, offending them would be inexcusable.

  They all waited for the elevator with mounting tension. Matisse began to sweat, hoping Slake wouldn’t kill anyone else. He hated working with Slake. Slake reminded him of that Nazi commander in that movie Schindler’s List, the guy who shot prisoners from his balcony when he was bored.

  “You know,” Frank began. Matisse closed his eyes, knowing what was coming. “Steve didn’t even mention to me that you moved in.”

  “Really?” Slake appeared uninterested.

  “Yeah. Kind of an odd thing for my brother to do, don’t you think?”

  Matisse swallowed loud enough to create an echo.

  “Brother?” Slake grinned. “Forgive me for asking, but is one of you adopted? Because the Steve I met this morning was white.”

  “I meant figuratively,” Frank said quickly. “He’s my brother because we got the same job. You know what I mean.”

  “Yes,” Slake said. “I’m familiar with spade talk.”

  The elevator arrived with a ding. Matisse opened his eyes and took a breath.

  “Be seeing you, Frank.”

  Frank nodded curtly, and Matisse and Slake entered the lift.

  “Dumb nigger,” Slake swore as the doors closed. “Testing to see if I’d met Steve this morning.”

  Slake jabbed the button for twelve.

  “How’d you know he was white?” Matisse asked.

  “I dropped Tequila off here once during the day, saw the guy. Total luck. I think when we’re done, I’m going to waste that bastard. Curiosity kills the coon.”

  The elevator stopped at twelve.

  “I thought he’s on thirty.”

  “He is,” spat Slake. “From here we walk.”

  They found the staircase and began their ascent.

  In room 3014, China and Sally slept in innocence, unaware that death was on its way up.

  It was the silence that woke Jack Daniels up. She raised her head from her desk and stared over at the dot matrix printer next to the computer. It had finally stopped.

  Daniels checked her watch. Creeping up on three in the morning.

  “Faster than I thought.” The sleep made her voice sound clogged. She suddenly remembered a brief snatch of the dream she’d been having before she awoke. Jack was a child, second or third grade, the only girl in class. All the boys were teasing her, flicking spitballs, pulling her hair. She went crying to her husband, who was the only adult in the room, and he smashed a spitball the size of a toaster oven into her face.

  Didn’t need to be Dr. Freud to figure that one out.

  “Let’s see what we’ve got.” Jack pushed the dream and its images out of her mind. She swiveled over to the continuous print-out of paper that the printer had spit up all over the office floor. Lots of names in there. Lots of rap sheets. Lots of possibilities. Hopefully, in one of the lists, there was a short man with a butterfly tattoo on his hand.

  Trying to be optimistic, she decided to look at the last search first. The one that listed all white males under five-seven with tattoos.

  It was a list of eighty-six names, the shortest of the three. Jack scanned through it, looking for butterflies.

  On name forty-six, she found one.

  “Tequila Abernathy. Age 32. Height 5’6”. Blond hair, blue eyes. Arrested May 1990 for assault. Charges dropped. Case number 8867584. Tattoo of a Monarch butterfly on the back of his right hand.”

  Could this be the guy? Jack went to the computer terminal and pulled up the case number. As expected, she came up empty. Dropped cases weren’t normally entered into the computer. The only way Jack could find out why the charges were dropped would be to manually pick up the hard copy down in the archives of the 12th Precinct, where Tequila had been arrested.

  Either that, or she could call the arresting officer. Jack jotted down the officer’s name and badge number. Then she picked up the phone and called the Desk Sergeant.

  “Peters.”

  “Daniels. Has Binkowski left yet?”

  “About two hours ago, Detective.”

  “He finish the composite with the sketch artist?”

  “Yeah. Got a copy right here.”

  “Send one up.”

  She hung up the phone and pulled Tequila’s file on the computer, including prints and mug shots. The precinct had two laser printers down in Records, and Jack sent the file to be printed down there.

  “Tequila,” Jack mused. “Who would name their kid Tequila?”

  A uniform came in with the sketch and Jack scrutinized it. Binkowski’s drawing looked tougher, and meaner, than the man in the mug shots. But there were a lot of similarities. A hell of a lot.

  Jack looked at the clock again. Ten after three. It was late, but not too late to get a murderer off the streets. She doubted she could get a warrant with what they had, but if Binkowski IDed the mug shots, she could bring this Tequila in and hang the bastard.

  Jack found Binkowski’s home number on the incident report and punched the right numbers.

  “Hello?” came the sleepy voice.

  “Mr. Binkowski? Detective Daniels. I’d like to come over and have you look at some mug shots.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Time to put this lunatic behind bars. I’ll be over in half an hour.”

  Daniels hung up. Her fatigue was magically erased. Going over to the computer, she printed up four more random mug shots to show Binkowski along with Tequila’s. Then she exited the office and went down to records, to pick up the color laser copies.

  Maybe this bad feeling she had about this case was wrong. Maybe Tequila was their man, and they could bring him in before he killed again. As it happened in all types of work, sometimes cops just got lucky.

  Unfortunately, this wasn’t going to be one of those times.

&nbs
p; Terco had gone to the Blues Note first. He asked both the fat bartender and the old bag of bones on piano—a black man so old he probably farted dust—if a short muscular guy with a tattoo had been in there that night.

  Both had said no.

  Terco pushed a little. Giving the old man a slap. Throwing a bar stool. Breaking some glasses and scaring the hell out of the only two customers in the place.

  They still denied seeing Tequila that night.

  That was good enough for Terco. He used their phone to call a cop friend of his, someone out of the 12th on Marty’s payroll. The cop had heard about the liquor store murder, and gave Terco the owner’s address after looking it up.

  Terco was there in twenty minutes.

  It was a small house off of Addison. He parked in the alley in back and walked through the yard to the front door, the cold forcing him to blink so his eyelids didn’t freeze. He knocked twice, and was pleasantly surprised when the door opened without him having to lie his way in.

  “You Binkowski?” he asked, pushing inside and grabbing the old man by the loose skin hanging from his chicken neck. The dude was wearing a nightcap, for chrissakes, with a fluffy dingle ball on the end of it. He reminded Terco of the guy in that Night Before Christmas poem.

  The old man’s eyes bugged out and he nodded as well as he could with his neck being pinched.

  “Tell me what the man looked like,” Terco growled. “The one who robbed you tonight.”

  Binkowski’s mind whirled. Was this a friend of the short man? Did he know that Binkowski had talked to the police?

  “He… he was black.” Binkowski blurted. “With a green jacket. Tall. Real tall.”

  “You telling the truth?” Terco snarled. “You sure it wasn’t a short guy with a tattoo on his hand?”