Shot of Tequila

by J. A. Konrath

  That was as big a bone as Terco would get.

  The big man plodded off and Marty wrapped a paper towel around his knuckle. He watched the blood leak through, and wondered when he’d get the chance to make Tequila bleed.

  Marty picked up the phone and dialed the familiar number.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s Marty. Put Fonti back on.”

  While he waited, Marty played with the wound on his knuckle, opening and closing it like a tiny mouth. When he opened it, the mouth dripped red.

  “I thought we’d discussed everything we needed to,” Fonti’s low voice boomed, obviously irritated.

  “I want Royce.”

  “You can’t have him.”

  “It’s worth a lot to me, Fonti. Above and beyond my tab.”

  “How much above and beyond?”

  “Fifty grand. Yours. No splitting with the dons, no sharing with the soldiers. I’ll take care of them, but the fifty is all for you, if I can use Royce.”

  There was a silence on the line. Fonti was rich, but not millionaire rich. Fifty grand was still a nice chunk of change.

  “What if you don’t recover the goods, Marty?”

  “I’ll make good, Fonti. I keep my promises.”

  “Fine. I’ll send Royce. He’ll expect to be compensated for his time as well.”

  “I know. Just get him here as fast as you can.”

  “He’ll be there by noon.”

  Marty hung up. The tension that he’d been feeling since the robbery eased slightly for the first time all night. He rolled his shoulders and rubbed the back of his neck.

  Royce would deal with Tequila.

  He had to, because Marty didn’t have enough money to pay all of his debts otherwise. And he’d just promised fifty grand to the biggest loan shark in the mid-west.

  If Royce didn’t catch Tequila, Marty knew who Royce’s next assignment would be.

  Marty shuddered at the thought, remembering the grin on Royce’s face coming down those stairs, the three bloody lengths of flesh dangling from his hand.

  But he was on Marty’s side for now.

  For now.

  Amazing the difference eight hours made.

  Jack had put it together piece by piece, making the puzzle bigger as reports and information trickled in. Soon, all the bits conspired to make a pretty good picture of what the hell was going on.

  Ballistics had shown that Billy Chico had been killed by bullets from two .45s, as Binkowski had said. Chico’s ex-wife was interviewed, and besides being an abusive asshole, Chico was also a chronic gambler. She expressed great joy at Chico’s demise, having taken a hundred thousand dollar life insurance policy on him when they’d still been married. Normally, that might have been a motive for murder, if the self-defense angle hadn’t fit so well.

  Binkowski and his wife had been killed by a .38. There were two blood types found on the rock salt that Mrs. Binkowski had shot from the twelve gauge. One was type 0, matching her husband’s. The other was type B.

  Matisse Tomaglio had type A blood. He also had a list of priors going back to his teens, mostly assault and battery, with a couple rapes mixed in to break up the monotony. His death was caused by a broken neck, due to a heavy blow from behind. The wounds on his body, including the broken ribs and jaw, were indicative that he’d been in a fight. The wound on his bicep was a human bite, but not a very large human. Either a woman or a small man had made the bite. Another bite had been found, dressed, on his hand. The teeth marks didn’t match the wound on his shoulder, but did match Sally Abernathy.

  China Johnston had died from loss of blood due to eighteen stab wounds and a partial skinning. The murder weapon was not recovered. It had been confirmed through her bank account and by the doorman Frank Michaels that she worked for Tequila taking care of his mentally challenged sister, Sally.

  Sally Abernathy had been raped, and the semen was typed as 0. She’d been killed by a powerful blow to the neck, breaking her spine. Drain cleaner had been poured down her throat after death, probably in an effort to eliminate the blood she’d gotten in her teeth while biting Matisse. The apartment also showed evidence of being wiped down completely, and even vacuumed. Several bills were found in the kitchen drawer for Flynnbrook House, a very elite and expensive school for the mentally disabled. A call there confirmed Sally had been enrolled for over four years.

  A gun was recovered from the floor in the kitchen. It was a .38, but not the murder weapon of the Binkowskis. The gun fit nicely into the leather holster on Matisse Tomaglio’s shoulder.

  Under the sink a large locked metal box was discovered. It contained gun cleaning equipment and extra barrels that would match a .45 semi-automatic, like the guns that killed Billy Chico. Two boxes of .45 ammo were also discovered. No parts or bullets for any other type of gun were in the apartment.

  Also found, in a hallway closet in a box, was a collection of gymnastic trophies, along with three Olympic medals, two bronze and one silver. All won by Tequila Abernathy.

  The parking attendant, a college student named Mitch Comsteen, was found dead in the garage, killed with a sharp instrument similar to the one that had ended China Johnston’s life. Again, a search for the murder weapon failed to turn it up.

  Frank the doorman spilled all, providing a fair description of Matisse Tomaglio and his thin companion, the man who claimed to be Mr. Collins. There was no record of a Mr. Collins moving into apartment 1212, or anywhere else in the building. The fake Mr. Collins had probably gotten enough information about the apartment complex from the late Mitch Comsteen to fool Frank into believing he lived there.

  After getting in touch with the officer who arrested Tequila for assault in 1990, Jack found out why the charges had been dropped. Tequila had assaulted a patron while playing bouncer over at a dance club called Spill on Lincoln. The man had tried to get in with a gun, and Tequila disarmed him and then broke nearly every bone in the man’s face. The man was hospitalized, and his wife told the cops what Tequila had done, neglecting to mention the gun part of it. Tequila had been picked up, and he refused to talk.

  “The hardest son of a bitch I’ve ever seen,” the arresting officer had told Jack. “I could have taken a blowtorch to his face, the sucker still wouldn’t have made a peep.”

  It turned out Tequila didn’t have to say a word in his own defense. He had barely been booked when the charges were mysteriously dropped.

  Not so mysterious when one knew that Spill was owned by big-time Chicago bookie and racketeer Marty the Maniac Martelli. The same Marty Martelli who also had Matisse Tomaglio in his employ. And the same Marty Martelli who recently had a fire over at Spill last night. It had been a busy night for Marty and his gang.

  Jack Daniels pieced it all together like so. Tequila, a past-his-prime Olympic gymnast, needs money to care for his mentally disabled sister. So he goes to work for Marty Martelli as a bouncer at his club. He proves himself over the years, and becomes a collector. Last night he trails Billy Chico to Binkowski’s liquor store, to collect a marker. He finds Chico robbing the store in order to pay it. Chico draws on him, and Tequila kills him. He takes the two grand Chico owed on his marker, and lets Binkowski live, and keep a hunk of it, ensuring Binkowski would cover for him.

  Then, somehow, Tequila had a falling out with his boss. Maybe he’d been holding out money on Martelli. Maybe he’d been nailing Marty’s woman. Maybe he just got sick of working for the Outfit. Whatever the reason, Martelli goes after him. He sends Matisse and the thin man over to Tequila’s apartment to wait for him. The thin man kills the parking lot attendant and China, rapes Sally, and then takes the murder weapon with him. Matisse may have also raped Sally, but hadn’t ejaculated. The bite marks and the blow to the neck indicate he was the one that killed her. If it had been the thin man, he would have used the knife. He seemed to like that knife.

  In the meantime, Marty sends someone to track down Tequila, and that guy gets a line on Binkowski. Maybe Tequila used Binkowski as
an alibi to where he’d been that evening. Someone, maybe Matisse or the thin man, goes to question Binkowski, and kills him and his wife when the wife pulls a shotgun.

  Tequila comes home, fights with and kills Matisse, biting him in the process. He then parachutes out the window before the cops arrive. Before he left, he emptied his floor safe. Probably of money, possibly Marty’s money.

  Daniels was pretty sure that’s the way it went. The only thing she still wasn’t sure about was the Binkowskis. She didn’t know Tequila’s blood type yet, so she couldn’t be absolutely sure he hadn’t been the one to kill them. But Jack didn’t think he did. Tequila had somehow incurred the wrath of Marty the Maniac, and he was too busy running for his life to tie up loose ends.

  So where does the investigation lead next?

  First, find Tequila Abernathy and bring him in. Not only to get the whole story, but to protect him. Marty Martelli was so connected that it was rumored he owned police chiefs. Tequila wouldn’t be able to hide for long.

  Second, get a list of Martelli’s employees, and try to nail the thin man and the guy with type B blood who killed the Binkowskis. It was doubtful that Marty would be helpful in this investigation, so Daniels was bringing in two men from the Organized Crime Unit who’d been putting a case together against Marty for the last three years. She was meeting with them this afternoon.

  And finally, grab one, any one, of Marty’s goons and find out what the hell happened at Spill last night. What did the fire have to do with it? Had Tequila been there? What had Tequila done? And most of all, had Marty ordered the deaths of the Binkowskis, Sally, China, and Mitch Comsteen the ill-fated parking lot attendant?

  Daniels had known about the Maniac ever since she was little. Her mother had been a patrolwoman when those seven bodies were found, all mutilated and attributed to Marty Martelli. If they nailed him ordering executions, they had his ass.

  Benedict walked into Jack’s office, carrying a cardboard pizza box.

  “Thought you might like a slice,” he told his partner.

  Jack smiled a thanks and reached into the box, finding exactly that. A single, lonely, greasy slice of pizza the size of a playing card.

  “Hungry, weren’t we?” Jack said.

  “Saw the doc this morning, got some ulcer medicine. For the first time in ten years it doesn’t hurt to eat.”

  “Careful. You might start gaining weight.”

  “Hurry up and take it, I want to lick the cardboard.”

  Jack took the slice and became irritated; it was delicious and there wasn’t any more.

  “Where do you think he’ll go?” Herb asked. “Leave the state, or the whole country?”

  “That’s the thing. You saw what he did to Matisse. Broke most of his ribs. His face and jaw. Bit a chunk out of his arm. And then snapped his neck, just like Matisse had killed his sister.”

  “So he was angry.”

  “Real angry. I don’t think he’s going to run at all. Maybe he was going to at first, but since his sister died, I think his agenda has changed.”

  “You mean don’t worry about checking the airports and the bus stations?”

  “Exactly. I think he’s going to stick around, and try to kill Martelli and whoever else was involved in Sally’s death.”

  Benedict thought this over.

  “One guy can’t take on a big gun like Martelli by himself.”

  “You saw what he did to Matisse. Would you want to be Martelli right now?”

  “Hell no. I still can’t believe that parachute stunt. We should have put SRT on the roof with bungee cords.”

  Jack nodded. Seeing that yellow parachute sail out over a frozen Lake Michigan was something that would stick with her a long time. She knew she wouldn’t have had the guts to do that. But then, she wasn’t an accomplished skydiver either. Tequila must have been a pro. Maybe they had classes over at the YMCA. They’d done an employment check on Tequila, and before working for Marty he’d taught classes at the Y.

  “Where’d you get the pizza, Herb?”

  “Marino’s down the street.”

  “Want to go in halfsies on another one?”

  “Hell yes. Make it a large.”

  Jack picked up the phone.

  “If he’s not leaving town,” Herb said, “he’s got to be hiding somewhere. So the question is, where can a guy hide from the cops and the mob? Hotels are out. Not only the good ones, but the transient ones as well. People see things, people talk. He wouldn’t go to any friends, because the mob would know his friends. We tried to find some family, but there aren’t any other Abernathys in the area. So where is he?”

  Jack wondered where she would go. Hell, she didn’t need a place. She slept often enough at work.

  Work.

  Jack put the phone down after it only rang once.

  “The YMCA. He used to work there, before Martelli.”

  “He’s got to know we know that. Would he go back?”

  Jack mulled it over, knowing Tequila probably wouldn’t risk it, unless he was desperate.

  “Maybe. Or maybe he’d do something else. What’s a place that doesn’t ask questions, is open to anyone 24 hours a day, and is so anonymous that few people even know it exists?”

  “I don’t know. Are you gonna order that pizza?”

  “I’ll give you another hint. They open up twice as many in the winter time.”

  A light came on behind Benedict’s eyes.

  “A homeless shelter. We’ve got a record-breaking freeze in the city. The shelters are all jammed with the homeless. All he’d need was a ratty coat and he could hide there all winter.”

  “Call the mayor’s office, get a list of all the shelters in the area. I’ll organize some search teams.”

  “How about the pizza?”

  Jack picked up the phone again.

  “We’ll order it to go,” she said.

  Tequila awoke smelling urine. He’d slept poorly. Twice, winos had attempted to steal his shoes, and once someone even tried to take his bag filled with money, which he’d been using as a pillow.

  He’d dissuaded such action forcefully, each time breaking the would-be thief’s nose. He would have broken their fingers to teach them to stop stealing, but they were homeless, and this was winter, and taking away their hands would be unnecessarily cruel. He was, after all, on their turf to begin with.

  The shelter was located on Wabash, ten blocks from where he’d landed on Oak Street beach. To say it was crammed was an understatement. Normally the large main room, which had once been an art gallery back in the twenties, held ninety cots. It now was privy to twice that number, and as many as three people slept to a cot. The heat was being cranked, and a sweaty, cheap wine-vomit-piss stench seemed to float in the air like a tropical fog. The huddled, ragged bodies sprawled all over everything reminded Tequila of a rat’s nest.

  He’d checked in early this morning, figuring neither the police nor the mob would search for him here. Homeless shelters, like the homeless themselves, were invisible unless you made an effort to notice them. The supervising Salvation Army worker, exhausted and uncaring, had barely looked at Tequila when he’d entered. Shelters were usually run tighter, but with the recent life-threatening cold spell they’d been letting in anyone at all. Tequila simply gave a false name, said he’d been kicked out of his apartment, and the man provided him with a worn grey cotton blanket that smelled of disinfectant and told him not to start any trouble.

  Tequila sat up in his cot and stretched his muscles. He hurt. His twisted ankle seemed to bulge and ache with every heartbeat. The shoulder he’d dislocated was stiff and swollen. The skin on his palms was raw, and he had scrapes on both knees, both elbows, and his left hip. His muscles felt like boards, and he didn’t feel rested in the least, even though he’d been there for almost seven hours.

  He stretched, wincing at the kaleidoscope of pain that bloomed throughout his body. Then he began with his neck and methodically stretched every muscle group and flexe
d every joint. He worked his way down his back to his stomach and pelvis, and then did his shoulders, arms, elbows, wrists, hands, and fingers. Then he worked the stiffness from his hips, knees, legs, feet, and toes. By the time he had finished the warm-up his aches were bearable, and he’d gathered an audience of eight or nine street people, their faces curious rather than hostile.

  “Were you some kinda athlete?” a filthy, bearded man in a stained overcoat asked.

  Tequila ignored him. He didn’t want to be remembered here, in case someone came around asking questions. Especially since he’d probably be back again. Until his job was finished, this was a good place to lay low. Maybe, if getting Marty took longer than he’d anticipated, he could answer an ad in the paper and rent an apartment for a month or two. But in the meantime he was going to bounce around Chicago’s homeless shelters, and the fewer people who noticed him the better.

  Tequila walked through the circle of street people, his bag in hand, his agenda posted up in his mind as if someone had tacked a list to the inside of his skull. First, find a bathroom and a shower. While this had been an alright place to spend the night, lice notwithstanding, he’d seen the washrooms on his arrival and they left a lot to be desired in the way of sanitary conditions.

  He buttoned up his starter jacket and left the shelter.

  His original idea was to hit the YMCA where he once worked, but it could be under surveillance by one or both of the factions he was trying to avoid. There was only one other place he knew where he could get a shower, and he’d risk being seen there. But he didn’t have much in the way of choices.

  It was eight blocks away, and the tears in his clothes made his walk even colder than it should have been. It was a dry cold, one that cracked skin and chapped ears and split lips. Pulling out his ID, he welcomed the heated lobby and hoped the attendant didn’t look too closely at the dirt and blood caked all over his person.

  She was flirting with some muscular program director and ran his membership card through the scanner without even glancing his way.

  Tequila took the escalator up to the second floor of the fitness club and went to the men’s locker room. His first order of business was to use the bathroom. Afterwards, he traded his card for a clean towel and a padlock, and then found an open locker and began to strip.