Dying Breath

by J. A. Konrath

  He shrugged. “I’ve been so razor focused on this café thievery that I must has missed that.”

  “What’s going on with the Mauler case?”

  “We’ve got a deal on paper. Hellmann is in there with Lester and the lawyer.”

  “Let’s go see how they’re doing.”

  Conference Room C was technically the only conference room available in the building, because Room A was being used for records storage overflow and Room B had a water leak inside the walls and was being repaired. State’s Attorney Libby Hellmann was already seated with Lester, his defender Longquist hovering behind him like a falcon ready to dive for mice.

  “Glad you could make it.” Libby glanced at me. She was smart, tough, a good dresser, and occasionally likeable. I thought she made a good SA.

  Longquist said, “This is unacceptable. My client will only agree to talk to you regarding the facts of his alleged encounter with the rental truck if guaranteed complete immunity from prosecution on all charges.”

  Hellmann wasn’t having it. “If he was involved with the murder, we’ll prosecute. We can give him immunity for activities related to larceny, but he has to name names.”

  “I ain’t ratting no one out. You can suck it, lady.”

  “That’s the State’s Attorney, Lester,” I said. “Show some respect.”

  “You can suck it too, cop.”

  Were mothers forgetting to teach their little boys respect for women? Or did they grow into misogyny, like they grew chest hair?

  I sighed. “Where’d you steal the truck, Lester?”

  “It has not yet been proven that the alleged truck was stolen by my client,” opined Longquist.

  “He’s got to play ball, Longquist. We can let him skate on the grand theft if he talks, but only if he can convince us he isn’t a willing accessory to murder.” I looked hard at Lester. “Or the actual murderer.”

  “I didn’t kill nobody.”

  I believed him, Lester’s record didn’t have a single violent offense. He was a thief, not a killer. But it was simple cop psychology. Accuse them of something big, they’ll admit to something smaller. If something smaller sticks, they’ll try to share the blame.

  “Where’d you find the truck?” I rephrased the question.

  “Suck it.”

  I stood up, pushing my chair back, towering over him. “Tell me to suck it again, little man.”

  “Jack…” Herb gave me a cool it stare. Then he looked at Lester, “You gotta give us something. Or you’re going to do some very major time.”

  Lester looked at his attorney, who nodded approval.

  “It was parked behind some stores. On Higgins road in Bankfield.”

  Back to the burbs again.

  “Address?” Herb asked.

  “I don’t know. It was behind a strip mall, on Higgins. There was a video rental store, and a locksmith, and a… uh…. and one of those places that sells trees.”

  “A nursery?” Hellmann asked.

  Lester nodded. “Yeah. I think. I dunno what they’re called.”

  “And when did you find the truck?” I said, resuming lead.

  “January, sometime.”

  “Which store was it parked behind?”

  “The tree store.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “It was right next to a dumpster with a dead tree sticking out of it.”

  “Where’d you bring it?”

  “Straight to the shop.”

  “Where’s the shop.”

  He folded his arms over his chest and slunk back in his chair, like a little boy who wouldn’t eat his broccoli. “I ain’t ratting on my friends.”

  “You know how we got your name?” Herb said. “One of your so-called friends ratted you out. He thinks you’re a serial killer, Lester.”

  “Who does?”

  I sat down across from him, trying to look supportive. Which was tough for me, given the last few days, and his bullying attitude.

  “You’re the one who found the truck,” I said, managing to say found without rolling my eyes. “Did you dump it in Mount Cisco?”

  “Wasn’t me. Once I saw the body, I wouldn’t go near it.”

  “When was it taken to Mount Cisco?”

  “Next day. I wasn’t the one who took it. No way in hell I was gonna get in that truck again.”

  “Why did you wait until the next day?”

  “No one wanted to get stopped driving that thing.”

  “Who drove it there?”

  Lester didn’t say anything.

  “Lester, the driver who took it back; he could save you from a murder rap. I’ll be honest… I don’t think you killed anyone. But we’ve got you connected to this. The Mayor, and the Superintendent, want to hang this on somebody, and so far, you’re our only suspect. The way to get out of being charged with murder is to tell us what you know. And the way to prove that is to give up the shop where you took the truck, and give up your accomplices who can corroborate your story. Then you walk. Because I’ll guarantee you something right now; if you don’t talk, one of them will. And then you won’t walk away from this. You’ll go to jail.”

  “You think they’re your friends, Lester,” Herb said. “But they’ll say anything to make sure you do time, not them. Someone is gonna talk. Just a question of who talks first. That’s who gets the deal.”

  Lester would have been great to play poker with, because he had no game face at all. The guy looked ready to mess his pants.

  “I need a moment with my client,” Longquist said.

  The three of us left the room.

  “What do you think?” I asked Hellmann.

  She shrugged. “Remir wouldn’t give up the chop shop. I dunno if Lester will. Remir named Lester, and Lester admitted stealing the truck but hasn’t signed a confession. I need concrete evidence to drop the murder charges.”

  “Matching the swarf to the chop shop,” Herb said.

  Libby nodded. “For a start.”

  “What’s out next move?” Herb asked.

  “A place in Bankfield that sells trees,” I said.

  Which meant I got to drive back to the suburbs.

  Oh, joy.

  HARRY

  I ate lunch at the Burrito Explosion, which was an apt name. If you ever find yourself bound up in the intestinal area, pay it a visit. Trust me, you’ll need a seatbelt for your toilet.

  Afterward, I kept my appointment with my special contact. Being a private dick, I’ve encountered various individuals throughout my career who could be termed seedy. If I wanted, I knew who to call to get drugs, whores (male or female), stolen property, and even bootleg copies of current theatrical releases. I knew a fence or two, a dealer in hot cars, and a doctor you could go to if you got shot and didn’t want to go to a hospital, which by law had to report all gunshot wounds.

  I also knew a dealer in illegal firearms.

  By illegal, I mean unlicensed, unregistered, with filed off serial numbers and no history; on certain weapons he replaced the barrels so no ballistics test could ever match them to the previous crimes they were undoubtedly used for.

  Oddly enough, he operated out of a family-owned convenience store, one of those twenty- four hour ones that sold beef jerky and lottery tickets and Gatorade. That was my destination.

  It was a rundown, ugly little shop surrounded by burglar fencing, an ancient sign reading Groce hanging above it. I’m sure years ago it was Grocery, but the ry had faded. The abbreviated version seemed to suit the place more.

  I stepped inside, instantly hit by the smell of incense. My arms dealer was Pakistani, and not having known any other Pakistanis in my lifetime I had no idea if they all were incense addicts. But my contact certainly was. Seriously, it smelled like he was torturing sandalwood, trying to get it to confess. The scent was strong enough to follow you out and ride your clothing for the rest of the day.

  My dealer’s last name, to my endless amusement, was Fakir. He pronounced it fuh-kur. I’ve
often tried to think of a better last name to have, but always came up short. I once read an obit on a guy whose last name was Butternutz, but in my book Fakir took first place.

  His shop was empty, as usual. If the thick plumes of incense wasn’t enough to drive away customers, the prices were.

  “Harry! My Anglo American gun-toting private investigator friend.”

  He talked fast, without pausing. Hence no commas.

  “Howdy, Fakir,” I said, grinning. I always grinned when I said his name. We shook hands, his moist but strong. Fakir was a small, dark, boney man, with yellowed eyes and teeth so white and huge and obviously fake that his dentist must have been stoned when he made them.

  “So how is the business of searching for clues and spying on unfaithful husbands with your camera?” he asked.

  “Getting by,” I answered. “How’s the shop?”

  “It is becoming frankly impossible to sell convenience goods in a socio-economically depressed area.”

  I looked behind the counter at a large sign that read SODA - $5.

  “That’s because you’re charging five bucks for a can of Coke. I can buy a steak for that.”

  “But a good steak? I think not.”

  “How much are cigarettes?”

  “Fourteen dollars and fifty-three cents a pack.”

  “How do you expect to sell anything at that price?”

  “I came to this country because I was told that it was a land of opportunity where capitalistic entrepreneurs could flourish.”

  “You’re not an entrepreneur. You’re price gauging in an economically depressed area.”

  “I am exercising my constitutional right to sell merchandise at a price deemed appropriate.”

  “Who says five bucks for a pop is appropriate?”

  “I do.”

  I changed the subject, and grinned wide. “So… how is Missus Fakir?”

  “She is making lunch as we speak.”

  “And the little Fakirs?”

  “At school studying hard to one day become active in local government.”

  I couldn’t resist one more. “And how’s Mother Fakir?”

  Hee hee hee.

  “I’m afraid my poor mother is plagued by bunions. Walking causes her excruciating pain and my wife must carry her around on her back.”

  “Poor Mother Fakir,” I said.

  “So what can I get you Harry my friend? Perhaps a frosty carbonated beverage?”

  “Can’t afford your prices. How about some heat instead?”

  “Ah yes. Heat. An American slang term for firearms. Let me close up shop and we’ll go downstairs.”

  He walked around the counter, and with a practiced flourish turned the deadbolt on the door and flipped the sign in the window from OPEN to BE BACK IN 5.

  “Follow me my friend.”

  We went through a door marked PRIVATE, near the beer cooler where he was selling a five pack of Budweiser for twenty bucks.

  Yeah, a five pack.

  Through the door was a descending wooden staircase, claustrophobic and dimly lit, a classic in old Chicago architecture. This led to another door, flush with the last step of the staircase. He used a keypad to open this door, which was almost three inches thick and reinforced with steel. Then he flicked on a wall light switch and we went in.

  The basement contained a well-lit, well-maintained, sixty-foot firing range. The walls were thick concrete, and down deep enough to muffle any sound. At one end were sandbags, stacked ceiling high and several meters thick. In front of them were two bales of hay, on which a silhouette target was stapled.

  Fakir led me to the other end of the room and another door, this one iron with a big spoked wheel in the center, like a submarine hatch. Fakir had told me during my last visit that it was indeed a submarine door, which he’d found at a neighborhood garage sale. It must have weighed five hundred pounds. Why someone had it in their garage was beyond me.

  The wheel was locked with a device very similar to the one I used on my steering wheel. It clamped onto the wheel with a bar sticking out, and because the door was in a corner, it was impossible to turn because the bar hit the adjacent wall. Fakir’s model was a little heavier than mine, and it had a combination lock. He hunched his shoulder, obscuring my view as he opened it.

  I’d met Fakir through an ex-boxer named Fat Louie, though I suspected that wasn’t his given name. Fat Louie owned one of my favorite bars, a hole in the wall called Fat Louie’s. He’d turned me on to Fakir when I was looking for a throwaway piece a few years back. The first time I came, after telling Fakir that Fat Louie sent me, he did a thorough frisk, took my Magnum, and had his wife accompany us down to the basement while carrying a sawed-off shotgun. I got the throwaway piece, which I later threw away. Since then, Fakir has trusted me, and we never had to go through the frisking and shotgun ritual again. Though occasionally his wife would join us in the basement, armed with something.

  What was it about buying illegal firearms that provoked just a deep distrust?

  Fakir removed the lock and stood it next to the door. Then he spun the wheel a few times and pulled the hatch open.

  “What type of firearm do you desire my friend Harry?” he asked, turning toward me.

  “A revolver. Something that isn’t connected to a murdered nun or a celebrity assassination attempt.”

  “None of my weapons are connected to crimes. Please do not insult me in my place of business.”

  “Sorry, Fakir. I’m a smartass.”

  “That is true. Caliber?”

  “I’d like something in a Magnum.”

  “I have an Arminius .357. Let me find it.”

  He bent into the storage room and puttered around. Behind me the door swung open. I turned and saw Fakir’s wife. Fakir’s mother was riding her piggy back. I might have laughed, had the mother not been holding an Uzi.

  “Hello, Mrs. Fakir. Mother Fakir.”

  Mrs. Fakir was munching on something. A candy bar. I guess she needed to keep her energy up. Her mother-in-law said something to her in a rapid foreign tongue, and they moved in closer, the old woman’s beady black eyes not leaving me for a second.

  “Ah ha!” said Fakir. He turned around, producing an oily cloth, and unwrapped a beat-up revolver with a six inch barrel, a large crack in its handle grip.

  “An F.I.E. Arminius,” he chanted in his sing-song accent.

  “Looks like garbage.” The Arminius wasn’t a good-looking weapon new. This one looked like it was made during WWII, buried for fifty years, then thrown into a cement mixer to knock the dirt off.

  “Oh no my friend Harry. I do not sell garbage. Try it for yourself.”

  He handed me the gun, and I swung out the cylinder and gave it a turn. All moving parts seemed okay, and it was clean.

  “Any history?” I asked.

  “Used to belong to an old woman who only took it out once a year to polish.”

  “She did a poor job.”

  “Do you like it my friend Harry?”

  “How much?”

  “Five hundred.”

  I laughed. Mother Fakir threw some rapid fire Urdu in her son’s direction, and her son fired some back.

  “My mother said we could go as low as four-fifty.”

  “It’s worth two,” I said. “And that’s being generous.”

  More discussion. During it, Fakir’s wife said nary a word, preferring to stand there stoically. On shaky legs. Mother Fakir looked like a woman who ate Jenny Craig. Not the food, but the actual dietician. Then for dessert she ate Dan Aykroyd.

  “I’m going to dry fire it at the floor,” I said to the Fakirs. “No one shoot me.”

  I pulled the trigger. No one shot me. The action was smooth.

  “The action is rough,” I said.

  Harry McGlade; Master of the Haggle.

  “I can go down to four hundred,” said Fakir, “but if I go any lower my mother will disown me and I’ll be forced out into the street where I’d have to burn out my
own eyes and become a beggar in order to eat.”

  “Let me give it a try.”

  Fakir went back into the room and found a box of cartridges. He loaded the gun with one round—Fakir was a cautious guy—and then stepped away.

  With a gunslinger flick of the wrist I snicked the cylinder into place and extended my arm, staring down the sights at the target. I hadn’t gotten the hang of shooting left-handed, but you don’t need to be a sharpshooter to hit something five feet in front of you, which was how close I stood to the silhouette. I aimed two inches above the head and squeezed the trigger.

  The recoil was brutal, but my main carry was a .44 Magnum, which had recoil that would break your teeth if you didn’t grip the gun like it was going to recoil and break your teeth. So this was easier to handle, and my teeth remained in my mouth.

  “Bad news,” I told Fakir. “I was aiming for the body. This thing is way off.”

  It wasn’t way off. I hit pretty much what I had aimed for, two inches above the head. But if I faked lousy sights, I knew I could shave off more money.

  A shrewd proprietor would try the gun for himself, but I knew Fakir couldn’t hit an elephant, even if the elephant were dead and had the gun jammed up its ass. So after some incoherent chatter with his mom he gave me a sad frown.

  “My mother says she will go down to four, but I’m going to have to sleep outside tonight.”

  I pretended to consider it, and then shook my head.

  “Sorry, Fakir. I wouldn’t pay more than three.”

  He looked like he’d been slapped, and tears came to his eyes. His mother did most of the talking this time, with Fakir only occasionally emitting a monosyllabic grunt. Finally he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his face.

  “My mother says we can go as low as three-eighty but I must give up my suppers for a month.”

  “Three seventy-five,” I countered.

  More discussion. I had a feeling they were talking about what an asshole I was. Which was fair.

  “Three seventy-five but that is as low as I can go. Plus I must eat breakfast out of the dog bowl until I turn fifty.”

  “How old are you now?”

  “I’m thirty-six.”

  “I would have guessed you were in your twenties,” I lied. “Will you throw in the bullets?”