Dead On My Feet - A Thriller (Phineas Troutt Mysteries Book 1)

by J. A. Konrath

  “Dogs. Snakes. Someone stuffs your goose buddy with C4 and roofing nails…”

  “Is that a thing?”

  “My point is, if the mob wants you dead, there isn’t much you can do to stop it. The wisest thing for everyone involved would be for Pasha to take their offer and sell the clinic.”

  “She won’t.”

  McGlade nodded. “Okay, then. I guess we get to see how good we are.”

  “Watch Pasha. I’ll be back soon.”

  “Roger that, kemosabe. You want a Kevlar diaper?”

  “You have an extra?”

  “No. But I can peel this one off and lend it to you.”

  “Tempting. But I’ll pass.”

  “Your loss. Also, there’s the matter of my payment.”

  “I’m good for it.”

  “As a man of your word, yes. As a man who might not live until the end of the day, I’d prefer it upfront.”

  He had a point. I reached for the cash Pasha had given me, and McGlade held up his prosthetic palm to stop me.

  “I’d like it in cocaine,” Harry said.

  I paused, trying to gauge his sincerity. I had zero doubt that McGlade partied like a rock star, which meant he probably had a dealer on twenty-four hour retainer.

  Which meant he didn’t want drugs. He wanted my drugs.

  “How much?” I asked.

  “All of it.”

  “And if I told you to fuck off?”

  “This isn’t an intervention. Phin.”

  “So what is it?”

  “I’m not going to work with someone caught powdering his nose when shit goes down. You may not live until New Year’s, but I’ve got reservations at The Pump Room that I don’t want to miss.”

  The fact that I considered rebuffing him was evidence that my drug addiction was spiraling out of control. And the fact that I was already figuring out how to get more coke if I gave what I had to McGlade proved it beyond any doubt.

  “It’s in my glove compartment.”

  He nodded, and followed me to the Bronco, watching eagle-eyed as I took out the baggie of powder and handed it over. His palm remained out.

  “Also, I need to pay for the help that’s coming tonight. A few K should do it.”

  Apparently my plan to buy more coke was transparent. Wild thoughts peppered my mind, the first one a satisfying image of kicking Harry’s teeth out, the second of me in the Ritz snorting coke off the bathroom sink, the third of Pasha, her mouth tilted up to kiss me.

  I wasn’t a good person. But she was. And if nobody fought for the good people, what the hell was the point?

  I fished into my pocket and handed over the wad of cash. “This help you found better be good.”

  “They don’t come better.” He winked. “You need a few bucks for food and gas?”

  “I haven’t felt shame in a long time, McGlade. But I may just kick your ass on principle.”

  “I’m not a fighter. I’m a lover. And I don’t feel shame, either, but this isn’t on me. We get through this, we can shoot smack into each other’s nut sacks. But let’s get through this first.”

  I blew out a stiff breath. “Gimme twenty for lunch, Dad.”

  “Here’s thirty,” he said. “But I better see those dishes done when you get home from school.”

  We exchanged an awkward look, I had another, less extreme fantasy of knocking his incisors down his throat, and then I got into the truck.

  “What the hell is wrong with that goose?” McGlade said.

  I followed his gaze and saw my Xanax buddy lying on its back, kicking its little legs in the air like it was pedaling a small, goose-sized bicycle.

  “A word to the wise, McGlade. Birds and drugs don’t mix.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  (Author’s note: Harry does not remember it, as evidenced in LAST CALL.)

  I started up the truck without any problems, and headed toward the home of Dr. Karl Griffith. It was time to find out more about what Jimmy Mulrooni wanted, and why.

  When I still had hair, it was light brown or dark blond depending on the light, thick, and wavy to the point of curls.

  Wherever I went, women would compliment my hair. They told me how wonderful it would be if they had hair like that, rather than have to go to the hairdresser to get it styled all the time.

  I’d always hated my hair, because it never did what I wanted it to. The moral of the story, kids, is that everyone wants the thing that they don’t have, and takes for granted the thing that they do.

  When I eyed my bald head in my rearview, I doubted I’d ever see that full, brown/blond, wavy set of curls again. Funny how you could miss something you never liked.

  It took me forty minutes to get to Chinatown, and I watched out for speed bumps. When I arrived at the Michigan motel, I parked and banged on the bulletproof glass window until Kenny Jen Bang Ko waddled out.

  “Any messages?”

  “Men come. Want me to call them when I see you. Friends of black guy you beat up.”

  “Did they want to thank me for teaching their buddy a lesson and steering him to the path of law and order?”

  Kenny shook his head. “They want to kill you.”

  “They offer you money to call?”

  He nodded. “Hundred dollar.”

  Which meant they offered him no more than fifty. “Then I owe your two hundred. You haven’t seen me.”

  “Haven’t seen who?”

  I liked the guy. So I felt kind of shitty storing the two grenades under my floorboards in my room. I also ditched the Hydro I’d taken from that guy I beat up, and the morphine IV I’d swiped from the hospital. Then I filled a backpack with tools and clothing, and headed back to the burbs.

  Holmes Way, the street where Dr. Karl Griffith had a home, was a fifty minute drive from Chicago, in Flutesburg, and not too far from Pasha’s apartment. It was your average suburban subdivision, with three different styles of two story houses, made to look dissimilar by different color siding and roofing. They were arranged neatly in streets and cul-de-sacs, each with just enough front lawn to make mower ownership mandatory.

  After finding Dr. Griffith’s house, I circled the block four times before I encountered the patrol car that cruised the area. It held a single male driver, and the seat next to him had a flip-up head attached to the headrest.

  This was so it looked like there were two cops in the car.

  It works at a distance. Close up, you begin to wonder why the cop riding shotgun is so damn flat.

  I left Holmes Way and parked in the lot of a nearby supermarket, putting my Hardballer and holster back under my seat. I gave Dr. Griffith’s number a call from Bill’s cell. Four rings, and then an answering machine claiming the doctor wasn’t in. For all I knew, he might be at work, or just unwilling to answer the phone. I hoped for that latter flake of optimism, because I wanted the doctor to be in so he and I could chat.

  I got a leather tool belt and hardhat from the back pack, a greasy flannel shirt, and then filled the belt with various tools, including a shove knife, a roll of duct tape, a Maglite with four D batteries, a folding utility knife, a sixteen inch Halligan bar, and a Weber multi-tool pliers.

  I parked in a legal zone on the street near the subdivision, then dressed up like the construction worker from the Village People. Over the flannel I stretched on a neon yellow vest that had PUBLIC WORKS written on the back. It was written in black Sharpie, and not very well done, which I think added to the urban camouflage value. It couldn’t be a disguise, because it was so shitty.

  As I walked to Griffith’s, the patrol car passed me and didn’t even slow down, proving that the best way to hide in plain sight was to look pathetic. Approaching the doctor’s house, I noted the curtains were drawn, the lawn needed cutting, and the mailbox, hanging next to the door, was overstuffed with envelopes and ads.

  When I got to the front door I knocked hard, then rang the bell.

  No one answered.

  I sniffed the ai
r, didn’t catch any off odors. Then I knocked again, harder. It was a solid door, with a deadbolt. It would take me less than a minute of prying with the Halligan bar to get inside, but that wasn’t the wisest move in a cul-de-sac in broad daylight.

  So I walked around the side of the house like it was my job—which, technically, it was—and came to the back door leading into the garage. Like the entrance, this door was heavy core-steel. But no deadbolt. And best part, it was outward swinging.

  I removed my shove knife, which was a seven inch tool the width of a credit card. The handle was thin rubber, the business end looked like a curved L. A quick inspection of the lock showed the keeper—the metal part that moved in and out when you turned the knob—had a tamper pin on it. That was supposed to prevent the door from being opened if some ne’er-do-well, like me, tried to stick something thin in there to loid the lock.

  But when a door swung outward, tamper pins were stupid easy to bypass. I pressed one hand against the door, pushing it inward, then stuck in the shove knife, wedging it tight against the keeper, and did a little wiggling and a little pulling.

  The five dollar tool opened it in just a few seconds.

  I cracked open the door and waited. Most dogs tended to bark at intruders, but some were trained to stay quiet and lunge right for the throat. There wasn’t any poop in the yard, but I waited a few seconds to see if Cujo tried to attack. When no wet, snarling nose appeared, I eased inside the garage and locked the door behind me.

  I took a moment, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. A new model Cadillac XLR—red and shiny as a whore’s lip gloss—was parked there, so new it still had dealer plates. I sniffed the air, didn’t detect anything funky, and found the door leading into the house.

  Again I took my time, bracing for Dobermans. None appeared. I went in, entering the kitchen. Lights were on, blinds were shut. No off odors, no human sounds.

  Whenever I returned to the Michigan Motel after an extended partying jaunt, my room had a vacant feel to it. This house had the same vibe. There was no one home, and they hadn’t been home in a while.

  From my memory of Dr. Griffith, he was around my age, didn’t get to the gym often enough, single, lived with his mother, and was intensely private. He found me through a bar I used to bounce at, where he’d been roughed up by two thugs. The bartender gave him my number. During our first meeting, his mannerisms and demeanor had me pegging him as somewhere on the spectrum, maybe Asperger Syndrome. Hyper intelligent, high functioning, painfully awkward.

  My work for him had been minimal, considering what I was paid. I roughed up the two men who roughed him up, they didn’t talk, and then my services were no longer required. I’d assumed the extortionists had been scared off, or Griffith had taken their offer.

  Now, standing in the empty house, I tried to puzzle out where they might be.

  The no foul play hypothesis was that Griffith and his mother were on vacation, and had forgotten to put their mail on hold. Car was still in the garage because they took a cab to the airport. They might come back at any moment, suitcases packed with souvenirs, sunburned noses just beginning to peel.

  I checked in the cabinet under the sink, found a pair of rubber dishwashing gloves, and snapped them on. Then I began to snoop around. The fridge had a slight funk to it; something inside had expired. I helped myself to a bottle of water, then began rifling through cabinets and drawers, not finding anything interesting until I came across a bottle of Patron Platinum tequila in a crystal bottle. I set it next to the sink, then went into the living room.

  The only thing out of the ordinary was a framed sketch hanging over the fireplace. I had no eye for art, but I’d taken many a girl to the Art Institute of Chicago on dates. It was cheap, made me seem classy, and was a stress-free way to learn more about her. I’d learned a lot of things about a lot of girls, and a few things about surrealism, impressionism, dada, art nouveau, etc. The sketch hanging on the wall was of a woman with a crooked nose and uneven eyes, obviously influenced by Picasso. What intrigued me was how slapdash the sketch was; it couldn’t have taken more than a few minutes to draw. But the frame was elegant, and it was the centerpiece of the room.

  The eye of the beholder, I guess.

  There was nothing in the dining room, other than a thin layer of dust on the table. After a quick check of the bathroom, I went upstairs. In the closest bedroom, the bed was unmade. A woman’s purse sat on the nightstand. I rifled through it. Wallet was inside, which held ID and twenty-six dollars. I kept the cash.

  In the closet, on a shelf, was a suitcase.

  The master bedroom closet contained another suitcase. There was a desk in the corner, papers piled on top, and I did a quick scan of them. I found:

  A bill for a bank safe deposit box.

  Paperwork for the Cadillac. He’d paid cash.

  An instruction manual for a video poker machine.

  A Social Security check for Griffith’s mother. She earned $1100 a month in benefits.

  An envelope from Flutesburg’s mayor, His Honor Dennis LaBeck. A quick read proved it to be a letter of recommendation, praising Griffith’s work in the community.

  A certificate of authenticity for the ugly sketch hanging in the living room. It was an original Pablo Picasso sketch, and Griffith had paid close to a hundred grand for it.

  A business purchase agreement. Griffith had sold his Flutesburg clinic to an entity called Slobeco Marketing LTD.

  Also on the desk was a computer monitor. I switched it on, then looked around for the computer itself, but it was missing.

  I checked the master bathroom. No clues, but Griffith’s mother had a prescription bottle of tramadol, almost completely full. I pocketed that, a bottle of aspirin, a bottle of antacid, and a well-stocked first aid kit.

  I headed back into the bedroom and took the cases off of two pillows. In one of the empty pillowcases I put in the pill bottles, all the papers on the desk, and the medical kit.

  Having gleaned all I could from my search, I headed downstairs and took another look at the Picasso. Now that I knew its worth, it wasn’t nearly as ugly as I first thought.

  I plucked it off the wall, shoved it into the second pillow case, and went back to the garage. But I paused in the kitchen while picking up the Patron, noticing something I’d missed before. On the counter, in a candy dish filled with spare change and pens, was a key on a ring. Attached to it was a yellow paper tag that had XLR written on it.

  After half a second of hesitation, I picked up the key. Then I left Dr. Griffith’s house with my bag of stuff, my authentic Picasso, and my new Cadillac.

  I’ve never owned a new car. I’ve never even shopped for a new car. My financial situation from birth had fluctuated between white trash poverty and lower middle class.

  So even though I’d heard about the legendary appeal of new car smell, I hadn’t actually experienced it.

  I’ve been missing out. New cars smelled amazing.

  They also drove amazing. The car was so comfortable, I felt like General Motors had taken a cast of my body and built a vehicle around it. And it was loaded. All leather. Power everything. State of the art GPS. A speaker system that made my Bronco’s stereo sound like an AM clock radio from 1983.

  My first instinct was to take the Caddy straight to Manny’s place, trade the painting for a shitload of drugs, dump the car at a chop shop, and then party until I was comatose or dead.

  Earl agreed with me. We celebrated by taking four tramadol, which was an opiate I’d never had the pleasure of spending time with, downing them with a slug of Patron Platinum, which was a tequila so smooth that I immediately ranked it as the best thing I’d ever put in my mouth.

  I tooled around the burbs, getting a feel for the car. Played with the GPS, figuring out how to punch in coordinates using the touch screen. Let the radio automatically roam stations until I found an oldies song I liked. Drank more tequila.

  A cop pulled up alongside me at a red light. I winked at him. He went
his way, I went mine.

  The tramadol is nice.

  “Yeah it is.”

  The opiate haze was settling over me like a soft, tingly blanket. Not as wavy as a oxycodone buzz. I wondered if Manny sold tramadol.

  Of course he did. Dude had everything.

  Like the sex worker, the drug dealer should not only be able to sell his wares without archaic, puritanical laws getting in the way, but should also be a revered professional in the community. Rules to protect people from themselves, and prohibit what they do with their own bodies, are bullshit. People are going to do what they want to do. Making it illegal doesn’t stop it, or even make it harder to get. All it does is populate the prisons with non-violent offenders, and stigmatize the poor bastards whose only crime is wanting a brief reprieve from reality.

  I fully understand addiction, being an addict myself. But don’t let the medical community con you into believing addiction is a disease. It’s a choice, pure and simple. Cancer is not a choice.

  Being unwilling to stop using isn’t the same thing as being unable to stop. If your addiction kills you, you made bad choices. Probably a good thing you got out of the gene pool before adding more addicted losers to the world population.

  That’s why I wore condoms. Not because I feared a sexually transmitted disease. But because I was doing humanity a favor by not procreating.

  You should cool it on the tramadol.

  I realized I’d taken two more without even thinking about it. “Since when did you become my conscience?” I asked Earl.

  Where’s the Bronco?

  “Who cares?”

  You’re unarmed.

  I took a big gulp of Patron. “Unarmed, high, on my way to getting drunk. I’m a real pillar of the community.”

  I fiddled with the GPS until it set a course for Chicago. He’d give me a good deal for the Picasso. As for unloading the stolen Caddy, I knew two guys in Bronzeville who would give me a quarter of Blue Book value.

  What about Pasha?

  “McGlade can handle it.”

  I thought you lik her.

  “I like how she makes me feel.”

  And how does Pasha make you feel?

  I thought about it, then said, “Normal.”