Shot of Tequila

by J. A. Konrath

  This book takes place ten years before Jack’s debut in Whiskey Sour. She’s not the main character of this novel—Tequila is—but she’s featured in several scenes.

  While the tone, and the writing, is different from the Jack Daniels books, I think Jack’s fans can find some things to enjoy here. There is a lot less humor, and a lot more action—I was in a very hardboiled frame of mind when I wrote this—but it is still undoubtedly a Konrath book, albeit with a touch of noir.

  I hope you liked it. Feel free to drop me a line and to tell me what you think.

  Joe Konrath

  February, 2009

  Ben Treven could feel the Australians looking at him again, sizing him up for whether he’d make a good victim tonight. He brushed his blond hair out of his face and kept his gaze on nothing in particular, nodding his head slightly as though he was enjoying the pulsing house music. He knew the smart thing was to ignore them, but part of him couldn’t help hoping they’d take their wordless interview just a little further. It had been a hell of a day and he could feel that old, crazy urge to unload on someone. If these guys wanted to give him a reason, it was up to them.

  The three of them were in civilian clothes, but he’d heard the accents and seen the swagger and took them for sailors on shore leave. Manila’s P. Burgos Street, an eternally crumbling matrix of neon and girly bars and massage parlors, had ingested them as it had ingested generations of sailors and marines and sex tourists before them. It would appropriate their money, alleviate their lust, and expel them after like pale effluent into the dank Manila night.

  The burliest of the three missed his shot at the spotlit pool table, and as he stepped away to make room for his buddy, he squinted and waved a hand up and down in Ben’s line of sight, palm forward, as though wiping a window: The gesture read, Hello? Anybody there?

  Ben kept his expression blank. Oh yeah, pal, somebody’s here. And believe me, you don’t want to meet him.

  A petite Filipina waitress in heels and a microscopic skirt sauntered over to the pool table, balancing a tray of San Miguels one-handed. Ben hadn’t seen her earlier—she must have just started her shift. She took the Australians’ pesos, distributed their beers, and studiously failed to respond to their leering smiles. Then she turned and headed in Ben’s direction, the Australians’ eyes following her ass.

  “You need another drink, sweetie?” she asked Ben, smiling, her eyes dark, her teeth white against the smooth brown skin of her face.

  He was standing with his back to the bar and she would know he could have just ordered from the bartender. He didn’t know whether her interest was personal or professional. He wondered whether it would irritate the Australians.

  He shook his head and offered only a polite smile. “Thanks, I’m good.”

  She leaned a little closer. “Are your eyes… green?”

  “That’s what people tell me.”

  She smiled again. “It’s my favorite color. If you need anything, just tell me, okay?”

  “I will. Thanks.”

  She walked away. The Australians didn’t track her ass this time. They were looking at Ben.

  He told himself that as long as he didn’t do anything to provoke them, it wasn’t his fault. But he also recognized that he was ignoring them almost ostentatiously now, that a more effective way to avoid a problem would have been to raise his Bombay Sapphire and give them a cold smile: I’m aware of you, I’m not afraid of you, I’m being friendly so you can now look for trouble elsewhere without having to acknowledge you’ve backed down to the guy you were initially assessing.

  He took a swallow of the gin and set the glass down on the bar. Yeah, that would have been the better way. But that afternoon his ex-wife had told him she never wanted to see him again, that their daughter, Ami, believed the man now raising her was her real father, that he shouldn’t have tracked them down in the first place, and what could he have been thinking after they hadn’t heard from him in nearly three years? She hadn’t even seemed angry when he’d approached her in the rain in front of Ami’s suburban Manila school, just uncomfortable, as though he was no more than an old acquaintance she would have preferred not to run into. She’d countered his protests, ignored his entreaties, and dismissed him with obvious relief. And instead of doing the minimally dignified thing and just leaving, he had lurked around the corner, getting wetter and angrier, until he heard the school bell, and then he had watched pathetically from behind a tree as his ex-wife collected their small daughter, kissing her and taking her by the hand and leading her away before Ben even had time to get a good look at her face. And now he was on his third double Bombay Sapphire, and these chumps were giving him the stinkeye, and the bar was too noisy and the spotlights too glaring and Manila was too fucking polluted and humid and he was sick of it, he was sick of all of it, and someone was going to pay.

  The burly Australian waved again. Ben maintained his thousand-yard stare. The Australian cocked his head and said something to his buddies; over the music and the noise of conversation at the bar, Ben couldn’t hear what. The three of them started walking over. Ben noted they hadn’t put down their pool cues. His heart kicked a little harder and he felt his mouth wanting to twist into a smile.

  The Australians took their time, watching him, continuing to gauge him as they approached. None of the bar’s patrons, generally young, mostly western, universally stupid, seemed to notice. Ben remained motionless. The Australians weren’t sure what he was, and Ben knew they would bark before they got up the courage to bite. Amateurs.

  They stopped an arm’s distance in front of him, three abreast, the burly one in the middle, the pool cue in his left hand, his right arm draped across his buddy’s shoulder. He said, “Looking out of it there, mate. Too much to drink, eh?”

  Ben kept his gaze unfocused, noting the placement of their hips and hands, smiling now as though at some private joke. The burly one was clearly the leader. Drop him suddenly and violently and the other two would be useless for anything other than hauling his carcass home. There were so many ways to do it, too, it was almost sad to have to choose. The guy’s weight was on his right foot, exposing the instep to a stomp. His knees were open, too, and so were his balls. Or start with the throat, move to the head, then work your way down in whatever time you had before the guy collapsed.

  The guy leaned in, his eyes trained on Ben’s face. “You hear me, mate? I’m talking to you.”

  Still Ben didn’t look at them. “I know. It’s making it harder for me to ignore you.”

  The guy furrowed his brow. “You’re trying to ignore us, is that it?”

  In a different mood, Ben might have felt sorry for the guy. He might have just met the guy’s eyes and let him know with a look what was a second away from happening. Then maybe give them a face-saving way out, maybe tell them he was just here to chill, sorry if he’d done anything to offend them, fair enough?

  Yeah, in a different mood.

  The guy glanced left and right at his buddies as though sharing his amusement, but in fact seeking reassurance. “You believe this guy?” he said. Then he turned back to Ben. “Hey. Look at me when I talk to you.”

  Ben felt it coming. He wasn’t even trying to stop it anymore.

  The guy raised his right hand and went to jab his outstretched finger into Ben’s chest. “I said—”

  Ben shot his left hand out and wrapped the guy’s finger in his fist. He stepped in and bent the finger savagely back. There was a sound like snapping tinder. The guy shrieked and plummeted to his knees. The sounds of conversation and laughter ceased and Ben could sense people reorienting, trying to figure out what had caused that bloodcurdling sound. Ben bent what was left of the finger farther back and twisted it. The guy shrieked again, his face contorted in pain.

  The guy to the left choked up on his pool cue and started to bring it around and Ben instantly realized he’d been wrong about them turning tail. A klaxon went off in his mind and some deep-seated setting instantly ratcheted
from bar fight to combat. He snatched his glass off the bar and flung gin into the guy’s face. The guy recoiled and started to turn away. Ben grabbed a bar stool and swung it in a tight arc, going for center mass, getting his hips and full hundred and ninety behind it. The guy made the mistake of trying to duck, and the stool caught him in the head instead of the shoulder and blasted him sideways.

  Somebody shouted. People started scrambling away. The third guy was backpedaling, his left arm out, his right hand reaching for the back of his belt, obviously going for a weapon, trying to gain an additional half second to deploy it. Ben bellowed a war cry and lunged forward, swatting away the guy’s outstretched arm, grabbing and securing his right wrist, attacking his eyes with his free hand. The guy screamed and tried to shake free and something clattered to the floor. Ben shot a knee into his balls. The guy doubled over and Ben let him go. He saw the first guy coming to his feet.

  He stepped in, wrapped his fingers in the first guy’s hair, yanked him forward, and clubbed him in the back of the neck. The guy’s arms spasmed and Ben felt something crack under his fist.

  He spun to face the other two. They were twisting and groaning. The first guy was splayed on the floor, motionless.

  A thought flashed through his mind, sobering in its clarity: Did I kill him?

  He looked toward the exit. The patrons had scattered to the periphery and the center of the bar was clear, but ten feet away, between Ben and the door, four wiry Filipinos were pointing pistols at him. Off-duty cops? Another thought flashed through his mind:

  Shit, what are the chances?

  Two of them were starting to fan out to his flanks now, the two in the center moving forward, pistols still forward, one guy producing a pair of handcuffs from the back of his belt.

  Right now? Chances look about a hundred percent.

  Even if he’d been armed, and he wasn’t, dropping all four without getting shot in return would have required a hell of a lot of luck. He briefly considered raising his arms to show he was no threat and just walking past them to the exit. But their quick reaction to the disturbance, and the tactical way they were approaching him now, told Ben these guys were experienced, that they’d be happy to shoot him before suffering the humiliation of letting him just walk on by.

  Ben looked around and saw people holding up cell phones. They were taking his picture. Or video.

  He glanced at the Australians again. Two were still twisting. The other was still inert. The red haze was suddenly gone and a chill rippled through him. He raised his hands, palms forward, and thought, Oh, shit.

  Ulrich looked through the floor-to-ceiling windows and watched the K Street traffic twelve stories below, his feet perched on his mahogany desk, a wireless headset snug against his ear. “Thanks, Jim,” he said. “Really appreciated your time last week. And my client is just delighted the senator understands how counterproductive any additional regulation would be on top of what the industry is already burdened with. If you have any other questions, I know it would be their pleasure to arrange another golf outing. And of course you can count on their complete support. You bet. Thanks again.”

  He clicked off and thought, Done and done. Lobbying wasn’t so different from governing, really. He was making ten times his public-sector salary, which was nice, and his office furniture was a hell of a lot better than what he’d had in room 268 of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, too, but other than that? Well, his work was no longer stamped secret, true, but nor would it have done for the public to have too close a peek at the way lobbyists made laws. The main thing was, the priorities were the same, and so were the methods. It was all about who you knew, and how you could get who you knew what they wanted.

  His other phone buzzed—the secure line that went straight to his desk and not through his secretary. He put his feet down and picked up the corded handset. “Ulrich.”

  “It’s Clements. Are you alone?”

  Clements was still the number two guy at CIA, having been passed over for the number one slot by the new administration in favor of an outsider. He was a good contact—one of many Ulrich used to maintain his influence among the city’s elite.

  “Yeah, I’m alone. What is it?”

  “We have a problem.”

  Ulrich’s chest tightened and he immediately thought, the tapes.

  “Go on.”

  “You know how in the end we all assumed the tapes had been destroyed by a patriot?”

  God, he hated being right all the time. “Yes.”

  “The director got a call this morning telling him to go to a website. He did. The tapes are all online.”

  “What the—”

  “Wait. They’re not public. The website is encrypted. The caller wants a hundred million dollars in uncut diamonds, or he decrypts the files and uploads them to YouTube and every media outlet in the United States and abroad.”

  Ulrich felt clammy sweat spring out under his arms and along his back. He was momentarily at a loss. If this had happened when he had the full authority of the vice president’s office behind him, he would have instantly taken control, and taking control would have calmed him. As it was, he felt trapped, in sudden thrall to this dimwit to whom he ought to be issuing orders. He felt horribly, uncharacteristically helpless.

  Which raised a question. “Why are you calling me?” he said.

  There was a pause. “The director just contacted the Justice Department. They’re bringing in the FBI.”

  “The FBI… no. Impossible. No one could be that stupid.”

  “It’s not stupid. He’s new. No previous connection to the Agency. He’s covering his ass by following procedure.”

  The room was suddenly stifling and Ulrich felt like he was falling. So much time had gone by. He hadn’t even thought about the tapes in… he couldn’t remember. He really had come to believe they were gone—launch all the investigations you want, it doesn’t matter because the tapes no longer exist.

  He’d never been so wrong.

  “You used to work with Bilton, right?” he heard Clements say. “The president’s counterterrorism adviser?”

  “I know him. Why?”

  “Call him. He’s got the ear of the national security adviser. We’re going to stonewall the Bureau, and the Bureau will go to the national security adviser to mediate. When they do, we want a sympathetic ear. All we need to do is keep the Bureau on a leash for a few days while we go after whoever is behind this.”

  “This is what we did last time. We didn’t find anything, remember?”

  “That was last time. This time, something new—something major—is in play. This guy, or this organization, whoever it is, they’re calling us. Creating websites. Issuing instructions. At some point, they’ll have to tell us how to deliver the diamonds. All that adds up to a whole series of opportunities we didn’t have before. The director’s made me point man on this and I’ve already assembled a team—same kind of discreet team we used last time. So we can handle it quietly—but not if the Bureau gets involved and starts treating it as a criminal case.”

  Ulrich exhaled a deep breath. Clements was right, he had to admit. Embarrassing to have him point out something Ulrich had missed, but he was right.

  “Yeah, I can get in touch with Bilton. He’ll understand. What’s our window?”

  “The caller agreed to give us five days to put together the diamonds.”

  “What? You’ve only got five days to find this guy and air him out?”

  “It’s more complicated than just airing him out. He says he’s got the video rigged to an electronic dead-man switch. If he fails to disarm the switch at a preset interval, the video gets uploaded.”

  Hot bile surged into Ulrich’s throat. He pulled a bottle of Maalox Maximum Strength from a desk drawer, unscrewed the cap, and took a huge mouthful. He grimaced, his eyes watering, and swallowed.

  “Anything else?” he managed to ask.

  “Yeah. If this thing goes south, we’ll want to have our stories straigh
t.”

  “If this thing goes south,” Ulrich said, his mouth pasty with the taste of the Maalox, “it won’t matter what our stories are.”

  He realized when Clements didn’t respond that he’d been hoping he would. Nothing could have confirmed Ulrich’s point more emphatically than the silence on the other end of the phone.

  “I’ll get in touch with Bilton right away,” Ulrich said. “Let’s keep each other posted.”

  He hung up, put his glasses on the table, and sat for a moment with his face in his hands.

  There was nothing he could do. The Agency was in charge, Ulrich’s involvement was reduced to that of a messenger boy… They were done, they were all done. Ever since the tapes were first discovered missing, he’d been living on borrowed time. No, since before then, even. Since he’d first figured out what to do with the Caspers. That’s what had killed him. He just hadn’t realized it until now.

  It wasn’t fair. For so many years, he’d tried so hard to protect the nation, and he just… he just couldn’t anymore. And without him, who would?

  And then some deep part of himself cut through the thickening mists of despair. He wasn’t helpless. He didn’t need to defer to the idiots at the CIA who had caused this catastrophe in the first place. He didn’t have the power he’d once wielded, true, but he still had the contacts. In the end, the contacts might matter more. All he had to do was use them. Use them well.

  He put his glasses back on, took another swallow of Maalox, and picked up the secure phone.

  On his second day in the Manila city jail, Ben was still telling himself it could have been worse. But it wasn’t easy to figure out how.

  Out of habit, he’d been traveling sterile. His passport, his wallet, anything that could identify him—it was all inside the safe in his room at the Manila Mandarin Oriental. Even the magnetic room key was under a loose cobblestone on Paseo de Roxas, where he’d left it when he first set out that evening. The Philippines didn’t fingerprint visitors at immigration, at least not yet, so at the moment of his arrest, the only clue to his identity was the five thousand pesos and change in his jeans pocket. Which was no clue at all, thank God.