Suckers

by J. A.

  I couldn’t believe it! Roger, who I’d met for the very first time that same day, was placing himself between me and a madman with a butcher knife!

  I was in awe.

  This was somebody I could imagine sharing a friendship with until the end of my years.

  I mean, what a brilliant freakin’ end to the whole joke!

  Dennis let out a well-acted scream of primal rage and ran toward us. He shoved Roger out of the way, knocking him into the refrigerator so hard that—

  —that it couldn’t have been faked.

  He swung the knife at me.

  Holy shit!

  I moved out of the way and the blade sliced across my chest. It hurt about as much as I would’ve expected a butcher knife cutting my chest to hurt. My feet slipped out from under me and I landed on my butt. As Dennis raised the knife, I wished that I’d never seen any amusement value in clumsy baby dropping.

  I kicked Dennis in the shin, hard.

  He shouted something obscene, loud.

  And then Roger tackled him. As the two of them engaged in a fierce struggle, I kicked Dennis in the opposite shin. He cried out, lost his balance, dropped the knife, struck his head on the counter, and fell to the floor, unconscious.

  Roger took a moment to catch his breath. "Are you okay?" he asked.

  "Eeep," I said, gaping at the butcher knife that now protruded from my leg.

  Roger crouched down next to me. "Is it deep?"

  "Eeep."

  Roger yanked the knife out. It had only gone in about half an inch, but it still really hurt.

  "We need to make a pact," Roger told me. He pressed his finger to the wound on my leg. "A blood pact, that no matter what, we will never, ever, ever tell anybody in the entire world that we wet our pants."

  "Agreed," I said, shaking his bloody hand.

  And that’s basically it. We called the cops, got in a gargantuan amount of trouble, and began a friendship that has continued for twenty years.

  Yeah, I know, I’m breaking our pact by telling you about the whole pants-wetting thing now, but technically we made our blood pact using only my blood, so it doesn’t count.

  - The End -

  P.S.: For Ms. Peckin’s make-up assignment, we did a skit based on Ernest Hemingway daring Mark Twain to eat dog food. We got a D+. We were happy to get it.

  SUCKERS

  A Harry McGlade/Andrew Mayhem Thriller by JA Konrath & Jeff Strand

  Note to fans of Andrew Mayhem: The following tale takes place between the events of Graverobbers Wanted (No Experience Necessary) and Single White Psychopath Seeks Same. But long enough after Graverobbers that Andrew has had time to heal. I mean, let's face it, he was way too messed up at the end of that book to jump right into another adventure, and we don't want the Continuity Police throwing a hissy fit.

  Note to readers unfamiliar with Andrew Mayhem: Don't worry, you didn't miss anything that you need to know.

  Note to fans of Harry McGlade: Binge drinking is cool.

  Chapter 1

  Andrew

  It all started with mushrooms.

  Of course, lots of bad things start with mushrooms, but these were the non-hallucinogenic variety. My wife Helen despises mushrooms. I mean, she loathes them with every ounce of her being, and while she’s admittedly a rather petite woman, she's able to cram a lot of loathing into those ounces.

  I myself am no big fan of mushrooms or other fungi products, although in college we had a lot of fun with fungus when my best friend Roger got Athlete's Foot. We called him "Itchy Roger" over and over and over and over again. I have to admit that it seems a lot less funny now than it was at the time, almost a bit pathetic in fact, but trust me, it was hysterical and kept us entertained for hours on end. The next semester, we entertained ourselves by playing darts with slices of pizza.

  Anyway, I was thirty-three and long out of college (well, not that long, but that's another story) and I'd spent the evening out drinking with Roger. Of course, we were drinking coffee, and only one cup each because that stuff was expensive as hell. I'd been given two tasks to complete before I returned home:

  a) Purchase a jar of spaghetti sauce.

  b) Ensure that the jar of spaghetti sauce did not include mushrooms.

  When I got to the grocery store, I selected a jar of sauce. It had fancy calligraphy on it and a drawing of a smiling man in a chef's hat. The part of my brain that should have been saying

  "Hey, dumb-ass, don't forget about the no-mushrooms rule!" instead said "Gee, I wonder if this place has any sour gummi bears?" I bought the sauce and the gummi bears and left the store.

  As it turns out, the drawing was not a smiling man in a chef's hat. It was a giant mushroom.

  Damn those poofy chef's hats.

  Now, I don't want you to think that my wife is the kind of person who would throw a screaming temper tantrum over me purchasing the wrong variety of spaghetti sauce. Instead, she's the kind of person who would bottle up rage over my lack of a job, my questionable babysitting habits, the incident where I accidentally didn't shut the freezer door securely and ruined hundreds of dollars' worth of frozen meat, and a few dozen other infractions, and let it all come exploding out of her petite frame in the form of extremely strong disapproval over my choice of spaghetti sauce.

  I shouted back at her (though an onlooker might have mistaken it for shameful cowering and groveling) and headed out to do a sauce exchange. As I walked into the driveway, I realized that I'd left my car keys on the kitchen table. Having just been lectured for my lack of responsibility, I didn't think it was a good idea to walk back into the house and sheepishly say "Uh, forgot my keys." The store was only ten blocks away. I'd walk.

  To keep the walking time to a minimum, I cut through several backyards. I didn't notice the man breaking into an unfamiliar house until I practically bumped into him. I'm not very observant.

  He had wavy brown hair and a two-day beard that looked like dirt on his cheeks in the semi-darkness. Clenched in his teeth was a penlight, aimed down at the doorjamb where he wiggled a pry bar. Upon hearing me he dropped the tool and dug into his trenchcoat, removing a handgun the size of a loaf of handgun-shaped French bread.

  "Beeb, brubbubber!" he said.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  He removed the penlight from his mouth. "Freeze, bloodsucker!"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  I'd been called a lot of things in my life, many of them only a few minutes ago, but

  "bloodsucker" was a new one.

  The man pointed the gun at me and glanced down at the jar in my hand. "What's that? A jar of Type O positive?"

  "It's Momma Helga's Spaghetti Sauce."

  "Why does it have a penis on the label?"

  "That's a mushroom."

  "It looks like a penis."

  "No, it looks like a chef's hat. But it's a mushroom."

  "Drop the penis sauce and get down on your knees. Then open your mouth."

  I didn't want to do that for an infinite number of reasons. "I'd rather not."

  The man smacked me in the head with the gun, hard enough to make me see mushroom-shaped stars (which was odd). I got down on my knees as instructed.

  "Open wide," the man said, pressing the barrel against my lips.

  I opened my mouth.

  "Wider."

  I opened my mouth wider.

  He tilted his head and peered inside, flashing the pen light along my gum line. Then he nodded, apparently satisfied with what he saw. "You can close it now. No fangs. You're cool."

  He lowered the gun.

  I should have made the comment, "Yeah, I lost my baby fangs when I was eight," but I never think of clever stuff like that until a few minutes after the moment has passed. Instead I said, "What the hell are you talking about? And why did you hit me in the head?"

  "Pires."

  "Pires?"

  " Vam pires."

  Oh, goody. A whacko.

  "Vampires don't exist," I helpfully pointed out.r />
  The man sneered at me. "They exist, sauce-boy." He tapped the door he’d been prying at with his penlight. "And they’re in this house."

  Chapter 2

  Harry

  They call me Harry McGlade. Probably because that’s my name. I’m a private eye.

  My office is in Chicago, and five days ago a desperate woman named Phoebe Mertz retained me to find her daughter, Tanya. Little Tanya was sixteen, into the Goth scene big-time. You know the type: dresses in all black, collects piercings, wears way too much mascara, scowls all the time. Most parents dream their child will go to medical school. Very few dream their child will get a tattoo on their forehead that says, "Life’s a toilet."

  According to Mom, Tanya had never run away before.

  "I know she looks different," Phoebe had said, showing me a picture of a frowning brunette with five nose rings, three eyebrow rings, and too many earrings to count.

  "I hope she stays out of lightning storms."

  "She’s really a good girl. Straight A’s. Doesn’t do drugs or have a boyfriend."

  "She hangs around with other Goths?"

  "Yes. All of her friends are into that."

  I figured that Tanya was probably in an alley somewhere, stoned out of her mind, while a bike gang ran a train on her.

  I shared these thoughts with Phoebe, but it didn’t seem to ease her worries.

  "I want you to find her and bring her home, Mr. McGlade."

  "I get five hundred a day."

  "That’s a lot of money."

  "I’m expensive, but I’m worth it. You’re not just paying for the job. You’re paying for peace of mind. Once the check clears, I’ll find her. Even if she turns up dead and dismembered in an alley."

  She burst into tears, obviously relieved I was on the job.

  I spent the rest of Day 1 working on the case, subconsciously while I slept.

  Day 2 involved me interviewing one of Tanya’s school friends, a guy named Steve who’d recently bisected his own tongue down the middle in an effort to look more like a lizard. Steve wasn’t talking—his mouth was too swollen. But he had some killer skunk bud and we lit one up.

  Day 3 wasn’t very productive. I spent most of it at the ballgame, watching the Red Sox kick the hell out of the Cubs. I kept an eye out for Tanya, but she didn’t show up.

  Day 4 I spent drinking, and can’t remember much.

  On Day 5 I caught a break. A phone call to a guy I know who works for a credit card company informed me that Tanya’s Mastercard was getting a workout down south. Phoebe provided me with plane fare, and I followed the paper trail to a leather bar in the suburbs of Chamber, Florida. Flashing around Phoebe’s picture was met with the usual blank stares, until President Grant helped one punk regain his memory.

  "Oh yeah, she was here yesterday. Hanging out with some Pires."

  Further interrogation revealed that the Pires were a gang of Goths who only came out at night and liked to wear fake fangs and drink each other’s blood. I could relate; there wasn’t much good on TV anymore, and kids can get bored in the 'burbs.

  After spreading around a lot of Phoebe’s cash, I managed to track down the Pires’ main hangout, owned by a guy who called himself Vlad. Word on the street, Vlad was thirty-something, balding and overweight, and wore contact lenses that made his eyes look bloodshot.

  Just the kind of daddy-figure teenage girls found irresistible.

  I was in the middle of breaking into Casa de Vlad when sauce-boy wandered over, witnessing my felony-in-progress.

  "Look." He tried to smile, but it looked funny with my gun on his cheek. "This is really none of my business, and I really have to get home while the pasta is still al dente or I’ll be sleeping on the sofa for a week. And our sofa has these big, pointy springs that stick out of the cushions that feel like fish hooks."

  "You think I’m an idiot?"

  "Actually—"

  I gave him another love tap with the butt of my Magnum.

  "Here’s the deal, sofa-man. I have to get into this house and grab someone. This someone may not want to go with me, and she may have some friends who don’t want to see her go. So this is going to be complicated enough without having to worry about the police showing up in three minutes because your pansy sofa-ass went whining to them."

  "I won’t call the police. The police and I don’t have a very good relationship. I kind of annoy them. I—"

  I tapped him on the head again. "I wasn’t finished."

  "Can you please stop—"

  Tap. "You’re still talking."

  He looked at me and opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it.

  I hit him anyway.

  "But I didn’t—"

  "You just did." Tap.

  I may have tapped him too hard, because he went from his knees onto his ass.

  "The thing is, Saucey, much as I’m just dying inside to trust you, it’s probably better if I don’t. Do you have ten feet of clothesline on you?"

  He didn’t say anything, which I took to be a no.

  "Neither do I. So my only alternative is to knock you out. Now stand up so I can hit you on the head again."

  He didn’t move.

  "Would you prefer me shooting you?"

  Slowly, molasses slowly, he got to his knees. I might have felt sorry for the guy, but the sympathy gene skipped a generation.

  I reared back and cracked him a good one on the noggin, which made a sound like a belt being snapped. He teetered over and ate the lawn.

  I watched him for a full minute. No movement. But he may have been faking unconsciousness to discourage me from smacking him again. Some people are savvy like that.

  "You awake?" I asked.

  No answer.

  "Look, I have to know for sure, so right now I’m going to stomp as hard as I can on your gonads. I’m sure you understand."

  I raised a foot and watched him shift slightly.

  " Aspirin..." he groaned. " Plentiful aspirin..."

  I sighed. Hitting him again might kill him. Plus, my arm was getting tired.

  "Get your ass up. We're switching to Plan B."

  The guy took his time getting to his feet, wobbling a little in the process.

  "Okay, Saucy. Use the pry bar to break into the house."

  "Me?"

  "You see anyone else out here?"

  He blinked. Then he blinked again. "Why don't you do the manual labor on your own felony?"

  "I’ve got to hold the gun."

  "No problem. You can let me hold the gun."

  I faked another strike at his head, and when he flinched I stomped on his foot, heel first.

  "Put down the goddamn sauce and grab the crowbar. You’re pissing me off."

  He obeyed.

  "Make sure it’s in the jamb really good, then put some weight on it."

  The door moaned in protest, then popped open. I shined the penlight inside, but it wasn’t 124

  strong enough to breach the dark room. I held my breath and listened. No sound came from within.

  While I was preoccupied, Sauce-boy took the opportunity to swing the crowbar at me.

  Luckily, my catlike reflexes switched on and I ducked before he took my head off. I shoved the gun in his face and he froze.

  "Sorry. Crowbar slipped."

  "Drop it."

  He complied.

  "Into the house. Stay quiet or the last sound you’ll hear is your brain exiting through your eye sockets. It’s sort of a bang/slurp sound. Trust me, you wouldn’t like it."

  "This probably isn't new information, but you're kind of a prick."

  "You caught me on a bad day. Now move it. Nice and slow."

  I marched him three steps into the dark house, unable to see a damn thing. There wasn’t a single light on, and all the curtains were drawn. I smelled incense, and something under it.

  Something funky.

  My partner took another step, made an uumph! sound, and pitched forward.

  I flashe
d on the penlight to see what he tripped over, and saw it was a naked dead guy with his throat ripped out.

  While sauce-boy flailed around like a fish, I played the penlight around the floor, noticing something distinctly odd. The throat wound was so deep the neck vertebrae were exposed.

  But there was surprisingly little blood.

  Chapter 3

  Andrew

  The man smirked as I scrambled to my feet. Though I make it a point to give all of my fellow human beings the benefit of the doubt, I had pretty much decided that he was a complete asshole.

  "What's the matter?" he asked. "Never seen a dead body before?"

  Actually, I had. Several of them. Gross ones. But he didn't need to know that, so I shook my head.

  The man aimed his penlight back at the corpse's neck. "Looks like the work of Pires." He smirked. "Sucks to be him."

  My "complete asshole" assessment remained unchanged. "Oh, that was clever."

  "Well, somebody had to make the first 'sucks' joke, and you don't look smart enough to have thought of it yourself. The next time you see a vampire-ravaged body with a hollowed-out throat you can use it. But I want royalties."

  I extricated myself from the corpse and wiped off my hands on my pants. The body belonged to a young guy with Kurt Cobain greasy blond hair. A pentagram had been carved into his bare chest.

  "Are you sure your Pires did this?"

  He crouched down next to the corpse, keeping the gun on me. "Looks like it. There's not much blood left."

  "Maybe it was oversized mosquitoes. Or maybe Red Cross representatives gone wild."

  He glanced at me, not looking happy. "Remember that I got the gun, sofa-boy. I'm the one who gets to make the snide comments."

  I sighed and took a quick peek at the still-open doorway. Maybe if I got him talking I'd have a chance to run for it.

  "Is that who you were supposed to kidnap?" I asked.

  "It’s not a kidnapping; it’s a rescue."