Fonti motioned for his men to let Slake go. Slake shrugged his shoulders, still doing a slow burn.
“Look,” Fonti said, “I admire loyalty like that in employees. Marty messed up big, couldn’t deal with it, and he’s gone now. We all respected him, and we mourn his passing. You call me in a few days, you can work for me from now on.”
Fonti shook Slake’s hand, palming his business card to him. Slake dropped most of the anger and let himself appear deflated. He took a long time reading Fonti’s card, then put it into his pocket.
“Thanks,” Slake said.
Fonti nodded and walked off.
Slake was a good actor, but it took every ounce of effort not to break into a huge, self-effacing grin.
He’d gotten away with it.
All that was left now was Tequila.
And Slake knew exactly how to prepare for him.
Flying on painkillers. Tequila took a cab from the hospital to a gas station a mile away from Marty’s house. He used the pay phone to call the Maniac’s home number. Tequila had a plan. He’d tell Marty he was sick of running, and set up a meeting to give Marty the money back.
Of course, Tequila wasn’t going to give the money back. He was going to buy a rifle and shoot Marty and his goons from three hundred yards away. There was a forest preserve in Elk Grove that he’d driven past which would be perfect for the set-up. He’d plan it for sometime tonight, so he had a chance to scout out the area and buy a rifle with a night scope.
But Marty didn’t answer his phone, some unknown man did. When Tequila asked for Marty, the man demanded to know who was calling.
“Guido Fucking Lambini, you schmuck,” said Tequila. Lambini was a well-known mafia figure from Detroit.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Lambini. I hate to be the one to tell you, but Marty’s dead.”
“Dead? Fucking how?”
“I don’t know if you were aware of Marty’s recent money trouble, but he took a big hit for a large sum, and he cracked.”
“How did he fucking die?” Tequila demanded.
“He killed himself, Mr. Lambini. Shot himself in the head.”
“I don’t fucking believe it.” Guido Lambini said fucking a lot.
“None of us do. It’s a shock to us all. We’ll be sure to let you know when the services are being held.”
Tequila hung-up. Were they lying to him? Was the Maniac really dead? He didn’t buy it. Marty wasn’t the type to off himself.
But why would they lie? Did they know he wasn’t Lambini?
Tequila dropped another thirty-five cents into the phone and dialed Spill.
“It’s Slake,” Tequila told the answering bartender. “Put Marty on.”
“I thought you heard, Slake. Marty’s dead. Blew his own brains out. We might not even open tonight.”
Tequila replaced the receiver and walked into the gas station to get out of the cold. It was possible Marty had faked his own death, because he knew Tequila was coming for him.
But that was almost as implausible as Marty killing himself. The Maniac feared no man. He didn’t run away. He didn’t give up. And he certainly wasn’t the type to blow his own brains out.
“You buyin’ something?” the guy at the register asked.
Tequila bought two candy bars and ate one, thinking.
Perhaps Marty was dead after all, but not by suicide. Maybe someone killed him. Someone high up in the family. Someone who was mad that Marty lost all that money. Someone who didn’t want to be known, thus the suicide story.
But isn’t the point of mob revenge to be obvious, to make sure a message is sent?
Tequila decided it didn’t matter. Who knew why the Outfit did certain things? If Marty was dead, he was dead.
So what was next?
With Marty out of the picture for the moment, the only two left on Tequila’s hit list were Slake and Terco. Daniels had said Terco was in police custody, and Tequila didn’t want to mess with that. Jack was right, let the bastard rot in prison.
But Slake…
The man who raped Sally. The man who started it all.
Hector Slake had a date with a body bag, and Tequila was going to chaperon.
He left the gas station and wandered the cold city streets until he found a tended parking lot.
The same trick worked just as well as it had yesterday.
After getting the keys to a black Corvette from the frightened parking lot attendant, Tequila set a course for the suburb of Palatine for the second time in two days.
He wouldn’t be going back a third. This trip out, Slake was going to die.
And die bloody.
When Jack Daniels arrived at Marty Martelli’s house via Checker Cab, she hadn’t expected to see that many people.
It was a beehive of activity, cars parked helter-skelter all over the lawn with a line of them waiting to get in. Something big was happening. Either there was a major meeting taking place, or someone important died.
The latter proved to be correct.
Jack passed up the house in favor of a phone at a nearby Dunkin Donuts. She called up the 7th Precinct and asked for either Detective Pierce or Rowan, the cops working on the Martelli case. She got connected to Pierce.
“We just got the word confirmed, Detective. Martelli is dead.”
Jack’s legs began to give out. She was too late. Tequila had murdered another man.
“How?” she asked.
“Seems like the guy ate his gun.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Maniac.”
“Who gives a shit? Ding, dong, the witch is dead. Case closed. Rowan and I are going out and getting butt-drunk. Wanna come?”
Jack was moved by the gesture. Maybe they considered her one of the boys after all.
“Not tonight, raincheck me. Thanks, Pierce.”
“No prob.”
Daniels hung-up, puzzled. She was sure Tequila would go for Marty. But with Marty dead, where would Tequila go next?
Slake. He’d go for the guy who started it all.
Jack picked up the phone. She needed to get some cars over to Slake’s place to stop Tequila. It was doubtful the mob had a hold over any law enforcement officers in Palatine.
After dialing 9 and 1 Daniels put the phone back down. If Tequila saw squad cars, he wouldn’t make a move. If he didn’t make a move, Jack wouldn’t be able to find him. No Tequila, no way to nail the dirty cops.
Jack considered the risk. If she used Slake as bait, and Slake died, it was no big loss to humanity. Slake was a scumbag.
But killing Slake would be Murder One. Jack would have no choice. Everything else Tequila had done could be called self-defense. This was premeditated. She’d have to arrest him, and he’d do time.
Daniels had to stop him.
She went back to the Checker Cab, which was waiting for her in the parking lot.
“You know where Palatine is?” Jack asked the cabbie.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Move it. And don’t worry about any traffic tickets.”
“Yes, ma’am. Are you sure you don’t want to grab any donuts while we’re here, officer?”
Jack stared at the man.
“No problem, officer. I don’t like donuts myself. Buckle up.”
Daniels snapped on her seatbelt as the taxi squealed tires, pulling out into the street.
She hoped she was figuring Tequila correctly.
She hoped she wasn’t making a mistake in not calling the cops.
Most of all, she hoped no more people were going to die.
On that last count, she was dead wrong.
Slake had the guns in a footlocker under his bed. He had several other anti-personnel goodies as well, including grenades, two claymore mines, and a Russian made RPO-A single shot rocket infantry flame thrower which was capable of bringing down a wall. The footlocker also contained a pair of NVG-500 Starlight goggles, which allowed for a person to see in the dark, and a Kevlar bullet proof vest with side panels and a chest trauma
plate. If Palatine was ever invaded by a hostile country, Slake would be able to hold them off for a while.
But a hostile country wasn’t invading.
Tequila was.
Slake strapped on the vest and removed a Thompson sub-machine gun from his cache, complete with the fifty round pancake magazine. A Tommy gun, made famous by Chicago gangsters. That’s the reason Slake had bought it in the first place, because he liked to look at himself holding it in front of a mirror, pretending to be Dillinger. Of course, being able to fire two-hundred rounds a minute was a reason as well.
He also took his tazer stun gun, his night vision goggles, and, what the hell, a grenade. Thusly equipped, he headed for the kitchen and opened the fuse box, hitting the circuit-breaker and turning out all the electricity in the house
Then the spider hid under the kitchen table and waited for the fly to come.
The trick was not to kill him. He had to shoot to wound, lest Tequila die without revealing the location of the money. It was a sticky proposition, because Tequila wasn’t treating him with the same consideration.
His best chance was to clip him in the knees, and hopefully the little shit would faint from the pain. Slake had shot people in knees before, and they usually weren’t conscious for more than a minute or two.
If he didn’t faint, Slake could always sneak up on him in the dark and taze his ass. Then it was into the basement, for the pain game.
He’d just gotten a new book through a mail order company called Interrogation Techniques of the South Vietnamese. Slake was anxious to try out a few things on Tequila once he had him. It was possible, according to the book, to extract any and all information from the most stubborn prisoner by simply using a hammer and a well placed pair of pliers. Slake smiled in the darkness. He’d get the money all right, and he might just keep Tequila around for a week or two, for shits and grins. There were a lot of things in that book he wanted to try, more than he could use in the few hours it would take for Tequila to give up the cash.
He shivered, partly in delight and partly because it was becoming cold in his house. Slake had shut off the heat along with everything else. He thought about playing with the breaker, seeing which switch was attached to the thermostat, but decided to stay put.
And so he waited, his mind wandering over the events of the last few days. He’d planned to rob Marty for almost six months before the event, but never in his wildest fancy did he think things would turn out this way. Tequila getting away, and stealing the money. Leman and Matisse dead. Killing Terco, and then killing Marty himself.
Slake had often fantasized about murdering his boss, but his fantasies always took place in his basement, with Marty strapped to the chair and pleading for his life. Slake had enjoyed killing that insufferable asshole, but not as much as if he could have dragged it out a little.
Well, there would be plenty of people to quench Slake’s need to hurt. In Mexico. And these would be beautiful, innocent children, not disgusting, ugly old men.
A tinkling of glass. Coming from down the hall.
Slake turned to look, his Starlight goggles illuminating the darkness with a greenish haze.
He waited, Thompson pointed at knee level, ready to cut down anything that showed itself in the hallway.
But nothing came.
More glass breaking. This time in the dining room. Slake swung the gun around in the opposite direction, wondering what the hell Tequila was doing.
Minutes passed, with nothing happening. Slake was beginning to hate this idea. Instead of feeling like a spider in a web, he was feeling like a rat in a trap. And because he could see everything so clearly, he had the absurd notion that Tequila could see as well. Slake felt exposed, out in plain sight, without room to move quickly if he needed to.
A window broke in the garage, and Slake started to sweat despite the temperature. Where the hell was Tequila? Why didn’t he show himself? What kind of game was he playing?
Silence again. The sweat crawled down Slake’s back like a prickly grasshopper. Slake looked left, then right, then left again, chewing his lower lip, hands beginning to shake.
Time slowly ticked away, falling into the past like feathers being dropped from a cliff. Every second lasted a dozen heartbeats, every minute a hundred breaths.
Then the window above the kitchen sink shattered, showering the linoleum floor with glass.
Slake couldn’t help himself. The anticipation had been too much. He fired twice in the direction of the breaking glass, cursing himself as he did. What if he’d killed Tequila? What if Tequila was lying out on the backyard lawn, bleeding to death?
He held his breath, listening, caught between going to check and staying put.
There was a groan.
Slake wasn’t sure he’d heard it, wasn’t sure it was simply his imagination, or some sound caused by the wind.
Another groan. Soft, but definitely a groan.
Slake’s fear had been realized. He’d shot the little bastard and there was a good chance he was dying.
He had to go check.
Moving cautiously, Slake got out from under the kitchen table and crawled over to the door leading into the garage. Carefully, so carefully, he opened the door in a crouching position, gun aimed at knee level.
The garage was empty.
He went in low, seeing that the door leading into the backyard had its upper pane broken. Slake was tempted to peer through it outside, but that would simply frame his head as an easy target. He gripped the knob tight and took a breath.
Then he swung it open and ran out fast…
…tripping over Tequila and falling flat onto his face.
Tequila was on him in a heartbeat, knee in the small of his back, gun to Slake’s exposed neck.
“Hi there, asshole,” Tequila whispered.
“Fuck you, Tequila,” Slake mumbled into the frozen ground.
“No Slake, that’s where you’re wrong. Fuck you.”
Tequila hit him in the temple with the butt of his gun, knocking Slake out. Then he dragged him back into the house by his feet.
Slake would die, but not by a gunshot to the head. That wasn’t fitting for the man who raped his sister.
The punishment had to fit the crime.
Tequila got to work.
Tequila found the circuit breaker in the kitchen, and after switching the power back on he went to Slake’s bedroom and took some rope out of one of his drawers.
When Slake was suitably trussed up in the living room, expertly bound to a kitchen chair, Tequila poured lighter fluid in the man’s lap and lit a match. Like most sadists, Slake was terrified of pain, and no pain matched the pain of being burned.
“You’re going to speak into the mike and answer my questions,” Tequila said, pointing to the microphone on Slake’s computer. “Or I’m going to light your little dick up like a candle. Got it?”
Slake nodded, staring at the flickering match with eyes as big as golf balls.
Tequila selected the Record option on Slake’s Voice Generator Program, and the computer took down everything the two men said. When Tequila was finished, he hit Pause and gave Slake a piece of paper to read. Unpausing, he asked, “So where is the money you stole?”
“In a safe deposit box,” Slake read. “Only I can get it out. You have to keep me alive, if you want the money.”
“I don’t want the money,” Tequila answered. “It’s Outfit money. I’m going to let them take care of you. I’m sure they’ll be more persuasive than I am.”
Tequila paused the recording again. Slake’s entire confession was on the floppy disk, including his admission to killing Marty. There was only one thing left to do, and with some simple direction from Slake, Tequila figured it out without difficulty.
Tequila played what he’d just synthesized, adding it on to the tail end of what he’d recorded.
“You bastard Tequila!” Slake’s computerized voice came from the speaker. It sounded exactly like his real voice. “I’ll kill yo
u! I swear I’ll… uhhh… uhhhggg.”
Synthesized Slake began to pant and gurgle, and then he let out one last, droning breath and was silent.
Tequila ended the recording and then played it back, to make sure everything was saved.
Not only was it saved, but it was seamless. The real Slake and the digitized Slake sounded exactly the same.
“No one even knew you had a heart condition,” Tequila said. “But here we are, listening to you have a fatal heart attack. It’s a shame, because now you’ll never be able to tell us where the money is hidden. How could I have known?”
“You lousy shit.”
Tequila took the Demerol syringe from his pocket. He drew back the plunger, sucking in air.
“I hear an embolism is one of the worst ways to die, Slake. Painful as hell. I’m going to inject ten cubic centimeters of air into your vein. That will cause your blood to foam. Your heart isn’t equipped for pumping foam—it can only pump fluid. So the air in your veins will cause your heart to skip, and then eventually fail.”
Tequila got close to Slake, pressing his face next to the man who had ripped his life apart.
“I want you to do my one favor, Slake. I want you to scream while it’s happening. I want you to scream as loud as my sister screamed when you were raping her. Do that for me.”
Tequila hadn’t needed to ask. As he brought the syringe to Slake’s arm, the man began to wail like a fog horn.
“Hold it, Tequila!”
Tequila spun around, a .45 appearing in his hand.
Standing there in the hallway, her .38 Detective Special pointed unwaveringly at Tequila’s chest, was Jack Daniels.
“Drop the gun. The syringe too.”
Tequila did neither.
“Sorry, Jack. No can do.”
Slake looked over at Jack, his eyes pleading for help.
“He’s scum, Tequila. Not worth going to jail for. Let’s put him away, in a cell with some hardcore bodybuilding lifer who will do to him what he did to Sally.”
Tequila shook his head.
“He set me up, raped my sister, and caused her death. Plus he’s killed others. China. My doorman and his wife. He has to die, Jack.”
Shot of Tequila Page 23