Whiskey Sour

by J. A. Konrath

“Nice work, Harry. Now sit on it and spin.”

  “It was right on the ground, next to this manhole.”

  It took a few seconds to register, and then I hobbled over. McGlade used the hook to pry up the cover, dragging it off to the side. He flashed his key light down into the hole.

  “Stinky. Think he’s down there?”

  “Jack!” My earpiece buzzed. “We have a man and a woman, four doors down. Team is moving in!”

  “Roger that, Herb. McGlade and I…Harry!”

  Harry disappeared down the hole.

  “Dammit! Herb, we found a manhole in the yard, Harry just went down. I’ll contact you again in a minute.”

  I got on my knees and peered down into the sewer.

  “Harry! Get up here!”

  “Sorry, Jack,” he called up. “You did this to me. I have to catch the guy to clear my good name.”

  “Goddammit, McGlade, you don’t have a good name! Harry! Harry?”

  He yelped once, then didn’t answer.

  I reloaded, told Herb my intention, and then went down after him.

  Chapter 43

  THERE IS NO BOOM.

  Charles stops, hunching down in the sewer line, filthy water up to his ankles. He holds his breath and listens.

  No explosion. No screaming. Nothing.

  What’s going on?

  He wraps his hand in Diane’s hair and pulls her along. If the cops aren’t burning, they’ll be coming after him. He has to hurry.

  It’s dark as ink, foul, claustrophobic. The narrow pipe forces him to run in a crouch. His wife whimpers, dragging her feet, slowing him down. He jabs her with the knife to get her to move.

  “I told you to run!”

  After the fourth or fifth jab, she falls down. Continued poking doesn’t make her get back up.

  Damn her. Charles hates to end it here, in a sewer where he can’t even see her face. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. He wants to take his time, make it last, feast on a banquet of her agony.

  A clang, in the distance. Someone opening the manhole cover.

  Jack.

  Charles reaches down, slashes at his wife in the darkness. Such a disappointing ending. She deserves so much more.

  Then he scurries away from her. He moves by feel, counting his steps. Sight is minimal, but he’s walked the route several times. Before he became a media darling, Charles always kept his kills hidden. The sewer is the perfect hiding place for corpses — he can bring them here without witnesses, no one notices the smell, and the rats take care of any evidence. Throughout these pipes are the remains of a half-dozen people he’s killed.

  After twenty-four paces he stops, feeling for the grating. It’s two feet before him. Taped to it is a flashlight.

  He crouches in the concrete tube and flicks on the light, briefly. Finding the clasp, he opens the rusty gate and slips down four feet into the main line.

  Now he can walk upright rather than bent over. The sewer main is wide as an alley. Filthy water runs down the center in a putrid, brown stream. Charles doesn’t know how deep it is, and has no desire to find out. On either side of the flow is a ledge, a catwalk that can be treaded upon when the water level is low enough.

  His smartest escape route is to follow along the right wall, down to the end of the block, and then turn left and go eight blocks over. He’ll pop up in an alley, right across the street from the public garage where he keeps his second car, and far from the searching pigs overhead.

  But he isn’t ready yet. He still has to deal with Jack.

  The lieutenant can’t be allowed to live. She found him. She’ll find him again. Charles doesn’t want to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life, waiting for her to pounce.

  It will end here.

  The Gingerbread Man checks his bullets and switches off his light.

  Noises are coming from the sub main he’d exited moments before.

  He hunches down and giggles, ready for the fun to start.

  Chapter 44

  THE LADDER WAS MADE OF STEEL bars, rusty and slimy. Descending was a complicated ordeal where I had to hop down each step, since my bad leg refused to bend. When I finally reached the bottom, I stepped on something.

  “Jesus, Jackie!”

  I was on Harry’s leg. He shoved me off and flicked on his key light, pointing it in my face. McGlade was on his ass, in the middle of a large slick of gunk.

  No — not gunk.

  Blood.

  “My God, Harry —”

  “I slipped. It’s not my blood.”

  My stomach churned. The wife.

  I tried to radio Herb to say we were on the right trail, but the radio only gave me static. I played with it for a few seconds, but being underground probably put us out of signal range.

  Harry stood up and banged his head on the top of the tube we were in.

  “Christ! That’s gonna leave a lump.”

  The smell was nauseating, human waste and rotting animal matter. Several rats scurried past, disappearing into the darkness.

  I took the key light from Harry. The little beam barely penetrated the darkness, only allowing for a few feet of sight.

  “So which way, Lieutenant? This tube goes both ways.”

  I focused the light at our feet. The trickle of sludge was moving to our left. “This way.”

  “Lead on, Jackie. You’ve got the body armor.”

  I killed the light and we shuffled forward. The muck became ankle-deep after a few yards, and the smell was so foul, I could taste it in my mouth.

  I stopped twice to listen. The only sound I heard was my labored breathing, which was amplified in the fetid air and made me sound asthmatic. Walking in a crouch with a bad leg was slow going and painful. I felt down in the darkness and discovered that my pants were soaked with blood yet again. This damn wound would never heal.

  But that was the least of my problems.

  “I think we went the wrong way,” Harry whispered.

  “Shhh.”

  “I’m going back. Be a dear and let me borrow your vest.”

  “Kiss my ass.”

  “You want to get romantic now?”

  I strained my ears. There was noise ahead, like a water cascade. We were coming to the end of the tunnel.

  How far ahead of us could he be? Assuming he knew these sewers, Charles could be hundreds of yards away by now.

  Or he could be just around the corner, waiting in ambush.

  “Help…”

  A woman’s voice, weak and pleading, coming from ahead of us. Diane Kork was still alive.

  I moved faster, urgency prodding me on, overriding the pain. The radio was still all static. I also tried my cell phone, but couldn’t get a signal surrounded by all this concrete. We came to her twenty yards later, lying half-naked in the filth, covered with blood and muck.

  “Diane. Can you hear me?” I knelt down next to her, my wounded leg stretched out behind me. Her pulse was strong, steady. I eyed her wounds; several ugly slashes across the chest, and a deep cut in her collarbone that missed her throat by a fraction. Her eyelids fluttered, and she focused on me.

  “He heard you coming, and ran off.”

  “Diane, we’re going to get you out of here.”

  She shook her head. “You have to get him.”

  “We will. First we’re going to…”

  “No!” The power in her voice startled me. “Don’t let him get away. You have to go get him. Please.”

  I looked at Harry.

  “Give her your jacket.”

  He shrugged off the blazer, draping it over Diane.

  I tucked the sport coat under her arms and chin.

  “He won’t get away, Diane. I promise. We need to get you to the hospital. Can you stand?”

  She shook her head.

  “We’ll have to carry her, Harry.”

  “You can’t even walk. How are you supposed to carry someone?”

  “I’ll manage.”

  No one else dies
. Even if we had to drag her to safety an inch at a time.

  Harry complied, gently lifting Diane under her armpits. She groaned painfully. I positioned myself on the other side and lifted her knees, my legs trembling under her weight.

  It would be tough, but we’d get her out of here.

  “Jack!”

  The voice came from behind us, loud and unmistakable.

  Benedict.

  “Herb! We’re over here!”

  Thirty seconds later my partner came waddling down the tube, followed by a uniformed officer. His labored breathing and the coat of sweat on his face told me he wasn’t any more comfortable in the sewers than I was.

  “Kork is ahead of us,” I called out. “Get Diane out of here, alert the troops. We need to cover all manhole exits for ten square blocks.”

  “You’re going after him?”

  I nodded.

  “With him?” Benedict jerked a thumb at Harry.

  McGlade sneered back. “Good to see you too, Tubby.”

  “Harry’s going back with you. Place him under arrest for obstruction of —”

  “My ass,” McGlade said. Then he took off down the pipe.

  Nothing’s ever easy.

  “Gotta go, Herb.”

  “Be careful, Jack. Backup is coming.”

  We exchanged a tense look, and then I went after Harry. A few feet into the blackness, I stopped and listened. The falling water sound was louder, and I could hear the echo of footsteps.

  “Dammit, Harry! Wait up!”

  My voice sounded small, hollow, as it echoed down the tube.

  “I’m a few yards ahead of you.”

  When I finally caught up to him, I was sweating as much as Herb had been.

  “Welcome back, Jackie. You gonna read me my rights?”

  “When this is over, Harry, I swear —”

  I felt the bullet at the same time I heard it. It hit me in the stomach, knocking me backward. I sprawled in the filthy water, my head bouncing on cement.

  The feeling was unreal, like I’d been gut-punched by a speeding car. I sucked in the foul sewer air, my breath having left me. The pain was so bad, it made me forget my leg.

  The tube exploded in a muzzle flash, and thunder erupted in my ears. McGlade was returning fire. Enclosed in the concrete tube, the gun deafened us both.

  A long minute passed. McGlade knelt next to me and felt along my body. He pressed on my diaphragm and I yelped. Then he reached under my vest and felt the skin. I couldn’t sense if there was a wound or not.

  Harry released the pressure and a moment later the little flashlight was pointing in my face.

  “The vest stopped the bullet.” Or that’s what it sounded like. My ears were still ringing. “Can you move?”

  I tried to speak. “Yeah.”

  He offered his hand and helped me up. The darkness fractured into pinpoints of light, stars dancing in my vision. I blinked twice and swallowed.

  “Kevlar worked pretty good.” McGlade handed me the light and crouched behind me. “You go first.”

  I looked down at my gun hand and saw that I still held the .38. Then I moved, one foot in front of the other.

  The water sound increased. I sensed the tube ending, opening up into a much bigger area. The sewer main. I listened, peering into the dark.

  “You waiting for Christmas?” Harry nudged me. “Move it.”

  I flicked on the flashlight, looking for a foothold so I could climb out.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Three shots went into the wall next to me, chips of concrete biting into my face and neck. I jumped, landing on a ledge several feet below, falling partially into the sewage water. My gun skittered off out of sight.

  A bright flashlight beam trained on the tube where I’d been seconds ago. It made its way down the wall and hit me in the face. I squinted at the figure behind the light.

  The Gingerbread Man grinned, his gun pointing at my head.

  “Hello and good-bye, Jack. Looks like the best man won.”

  Then a shot rang out from the tube above us.

  Harry.

  The flashlight fell away from my face, and Charles Kork howled in pain. I felt around for my gun, instead finding the keys. I flicked on the key light and Harry dropped to the ledge next to me.

  Charles moaned. I put the light on him. He was bleeding from the shoulder, clutching the wound with his good hand. His gun was gone.

  I let out the breath I’d been holding.

  The Gingerbread Man offered a lopsided grin. He looked small, petty, like the sewer rats that scampered behind him.

  “Well, looks like you got me, Jack.”

  “Stand up, put your hands on your head.”

  “I can’t get up.”

  I took a step closer. My reserves were almost gone, and my entire body ached and smelled like sewage. But I could honestly say I never felt better.

  “Turn over on your stomach. Hands behind your back.”

  “How’d you find me?”

  “You’ll find out at the trial. Now turn over.”

  Charles Kork shook his head. “I’m not going back to prison.”

  And then he rolled off the ledge and into the river of muck.

  The current began to take him away at a surprisingly brisk pace. He floated chest-deep in the sewage, his good arm flopping ahead of him in an effort to paddle.

  “I’ll see you again, Jack!” he called out to me. “Soon!”

  Before I had a chance to consider my next move, there was a terrific boom! and Kork’s head exploded in a plume of red.

  I looked at McGlade. He holstered his .44 and shrugged.

  “He was trying to escape. Were you gonna jump in that shit and go after him?”

  The headless corpse of the Gingerbread Man floated off into the blackness on a river of filth. It bobbed in the gentle current once, twice, and then began to sink.

  Following him were a swimming legion of rats.

  Harry came over to me, eyes serious.

  “Hey, Jackie — you’re not pissed, are you?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I mean, he was a scumbag. Think of all the money I just saved the taxpayers. Do you know how expensive those high-profile trials are?”

  I found Charles’s gun. It was a .38. My .38. I took a plastic bag out of my jacket pocket and put the gun inside, lifting it by the barrel with two fingers.

  “Jack, you’re not really thinking of arresting me, are you?”

  “He died in the shoot-out, Harry. That’s what’s going into my report.”

  “You had me worried. I thought you were still pissed about me stealing your bust.”

  “You saved my life, Harry.”

  “Yeah. I guess I did. So we’re even now, right?”

  I made a fist and clipped him across the jaw. It was hard enough to stagger him back.

  I shook my hand, the knuckles aching wonderfully.

  “Now we’re even.”

  Harry wiped at his mouth and grinned.

  “It took you fifteen years to finally do that. Feel better?”

  I thought about it. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Then let’s get the hell out of this sewer. It offends my delicate sensibilities.”

  First we spent a few minutes finding my dropped gun. When it was safe in its holster, we took the nearest ladder up to the surface.

  A few moments after we emerged through the manhole, a swarm of cops came running toward us. Several cops went down into the sewer after the body. My radio was finally working again, and I contacted Herb.

  “The woman is okay,” he reported. “Did you get him?”

  The words felt so good coming out of my mouth. “We got him.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m perfect,” I said, taking a big gulp of cold city air. “Perfect.”

  “Can I talk to him?” Harry reached for my headset. I let him have it, walking away from the commotion, away from the flashing blue and red lights, into the urban
night.