Rum Runner - A Thriller (Jacqueline Jack Daniels Mysteries Book 9)

by J. A. Konrath

  “That’s the dumbest thing ever.”

  Del thought, I bet you coulda used that in prison. But he kept it to himself. Instead he said, “Lots of apps are stupid. Like Meer Kat Simulator. Or Pandapult.”

  “Panda-what?”

  “You launch pandas into the air and they explode like fireworks,” said the guy on T-Nail’s left. “I’m on level 263.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you to wiggle that finger ya got up my ass? Wiggle, bitch, wiggle!”

  “I’m done with this shit.” T-Nail grabbed the screaming cop by the hair and pulled her close. As she thrashed, he brought his knife to her face, slicing her cheeks.

  Del was unsure what to do. Cop killing, even this far away from home turf, was bad business. He’d given instructions to his men that the local authorities were to be detained, not harmed. But this wasn’t the time to make a stand against T-Nail. That had to be done in private.

  “Yo, T-Nail, I got an idea.”

  T-Nail pointed the knife at Del. “You gettin’ weak on me, Del? Boys told me you didn’t want to kill these cracker cops.”

  “Ain’t got nothing against wastin’ pigs. But there’s a time and a place.”

  “And that time and place is now. You got all them scalps on your vest. Don’t see no cracker bitches on there. Why don’t you show us how it’s done, son?”

  Earlier, Del Ray had imagined putting a white woman’s scalp on his vest. But this wasn’t how he did this thing. And now the crew was staring at Del, waiting for him to make a move.

  “Please don’t do this,” the cop begged. Tears and blood mingled on her face.

  “Gimme the knife,” Del Ray said.

  T-Nail handed it to him. It was heavier than Del expected.

  “No no no no no…” the woman sobbed.

  “Hey, cop in the house!” Del Ray called out, keeping his eyes on the deputy. “You better do somethin’ fast. Or you gonna see me scalp a ho.”

  PHIN

  He knew what he had to do. Clenching his jaw, Phin hit the speaker button.

  “You’re the problem,” he said to Jack.

  “What?”

  “They’re here because of you. They’re killing that woman because of you.”

  Jack looked confused. “So you want to let them in?”

  “I don’t want to die because yet another psycho from your past wants revenge.”

  “What the hell are you saying?”

  Phin picked up his 1911, easing his middle finger onto the trigger.

  “I’m saying they don’t want me. They want you. And if you were dead, they’d go away.”

  Jack’s face blossomed with realization. “Phin… put the gun down. You’re scaring me.”

  “If my option is to die with you, or live alone, it’s no contest.”

  “Phin, don’t!”

  “Sorry, Jack.”

  He fired three times.

  T-NAIL

  When the shots came through the speakers, the deputy pulled free and went running off into the woods. T-Nail was fully focused on the camera, trying to figure out what just happened.

  “Did you just kill her?” he said to no one in particular.

  “Oh my god,” the dude said. “What-did-I-do-what-did-I-do-what-did-I-do? Oh, Jack. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry…”

  “He’s foolin’?” T-Nail asked. “Right?”

  Del Ray shrugged.

  “Go find the deputy,” T-Nail told his men. They took off. He turned to Del again. “If that asshole killed her…”

  Del Ray got in close, whispering. “If she’s dead, we need to cut out, G. That cop gets away, we gonna have 5-0 all up in our business.”

  T-Nail pushed him away. “How we know she’s dead?” he yelled at the speaker.

  No answer.

  T-Nail remembered a long ago Christmas. One of his mama’s johns wanted to be more than a paying customer, and he bought T-Nail his first—and only—bike to try to win her affection. But mama didn’t have no affection in her. A week after he gave it to T-Nail, he came and took it back. That was the last time T-Nail ever cried about anything.

  Having Jack taken away from him felt a lot like that bike.

  “Prove to me she’s dead,” he ordered Phineas.

  “How? You’re jamming my phone. I can’t send a picture.”

  T-Nail looked at Del Ray. Del shook his head and leaned in to whisper, “If he’s lying and we turn off the radio jammers, he could get a message out.”

  Again he shoved Del away. “Just open the goddamn door!”

  “Hold on a minute. I got an idea.”

  They waited. One of the soldiers came back, said they couldn’t find the Deputy.

  “You should have cut that bitch’s face off like I told you,” T-Nail snarled.

  Del Ray put his hand on his belt. “You’re the one who let her go,” he said, his voice low and steady.

  “You questioning my authority, punk?”

  “No, sir. But I ain’t the one. She pulled out of your grip, not mine.”

  T-Nail drew his nail gun, placing it against Del Ray’s head. The kid didn’t flinch.

  “That all you got to say?”

  “Naw. I got something else.” Del cleared his throat and began to recite. “And if I bleed and die today, never over my grave pray, I lived true and I lived free, I lived and died to serve the C.”

  The C were the C-Notes. It was the last line of the Creed; the oath every C-Note had to memorize. Was Del trying to play on T-Nail’s sense of brotherhood?

  If so, it was a waste of time. The gang didn’t mean shit to T-Nail. He was the alpha predator. The dominant lion of the pride. He didn’t care which click he ruled over. If it wasn’t the C-Notes, it could be two dozen other gangs.

  T-Nail wasn’t in this for brotherhood. The C-Notes weren’t his family. T-Nail didn’t have a family.

  And he wasn’t in it for the cash, or the drugs, or the hoes.

  He was a banger because the world sucked. But it was better to be the one giving the orders than the one taking them.

  Seemed like Del Ray felt the same, because he refused to back down, even with a nail gun to his head. The moment stretched as the two men stared bullets at each other.

  “Okay, I’ve got a picture. I’m going to try sliding it under the door.”

  T-Nail scowled, then holstered his weapon. A few seconds later, something small and white appeared under the steel door. T-Nail instructed the nearest soldier to grab it.

  It was a Polaroid snapshot. Blurry, and scratched-up from being pulled through the tight gap. But even with its imperfections, the pic showed Jacqueline Daniels. She was sprawled out on her back, head tilted to the side, one eye open. Blood covered her face and ran out of her gaping mouth, and gory brains were tangled in her hair and splattered across the floor behind her.

  “Looks pretty dead to me,” the soldier said.

  T-Nail crushed the picture in his hand and threw it to the ground. Then he steered the Gyro into the forest, trying to figure out his next move.

  JACK

  I stared down at the chunks of brains in my hand, and inappropriately thought of a bad pun.

  I guess this is what it means to hold a thought.

  Phin returned with several rolls of paper towels and helped me wipe the Chef Boyardee out of my hair.

  “I smell like a birthday party for three-year-olds,” I said.

  “Did they buy it?”

  “Dunno yet.” I tossed more noodles into the trash can. “It was a good idea. But next time we dump the canned goods on your head.”

  We weren’t safe yet. Even if they believed I was dead, T-Nail might still want to come after Phin. The gang didn’t seem to be leaving the property, and we were stuck there for as long as they camped out.

  Stuck there, worrying about Sam.

  At least the officer had gotten away.

  “Do I want to know why McGlade has a Polaroid camera?” I asked, trying to take my mind off of my daughter.
>
  “For the exact reason you’re thinking. Do you want to see a picture of him naked with a dwarf, a double amputee, and a four hundred pound Hispanic woman dressed like She-Hulk?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Phin chuckled. It was kind of forced, but it was nice to hear him laugh.

  “I suppose I could hunt through his stack of nude selfies and look for it,” Phin said. He was picking me clean of pasta like gorillas groom each other. “Who takes a picture of themselves jerking off? What’s the point? Does looking at himself turn him on?”

  “This is Harry McGlade we’re talking about. So of course it does. Are my teeth still red?” I did a horse impression, smiling with my lips jutting out.

  “Yeah.”

  I spat into a paper towel, my saliva still pink with ketchup. Then I pulled another bit of lasagna out of my hair.

  “I guess this is what it means to hold a thought,” I said, trying out the joke.

  Phin didn’t laugh.

  “Get it? Because this is supposed to be my brain.”

  Phin kept a straight face and said, “That’s using your noodle.”

  I didn’t laugh at his joke, either. “Maybe this situation just isn’t funny.”

  “How about: you seem to have dinner on your mind.”

  “Yeah, we should stop.”

  He reached out his good hand, and I took it.

  “Kissing me right now is probably not going to happen, huh?”

  “Now that’s quite a saucy thing to say.”

  “Enough with the bad puns. Just kiss me.”

  Phin moved in for the smooch, and then T-Nail came on the speaker.

  “You see this?”

  They looked at the monitor and saw it. And Jack realized, with complete certainty, that she and Phin were going to die.

  T-NAIL

  The dynamite finally came, brought in by a set from Minneapolis-Saint Paul. Four cases, fifty pounds per case. They’d been delayed by the forest fire, which they insisted was heading this way. T-Nail gave the crew props for making the trip, but he wasn’t sure what to do with the boom. Part of him wanted to blow up that son of a bitch Phineas for taking Jacqueline away from him. Another part wanted to chug a bottle of cognac and sleep for a week.

  T-Nail was tired. Blood loss was a big factor; between the broken leg and the bullet wound to the shoulder, he had to be down a few pints. Though T-Nail didn’t believe in spirituality, or the soul, or any of that new age religious bullshit, he knew his weariness went deeper than just his body. His brain, his identity, his sense of self, every little thing that made him who he was, felt like it had been through a rum runner. Beaten up. Bleeding. Nearly dead.

  Del Ray assumed T-Nail was last year’s model. Out of touch. Obsolete. That was incorrect. Technology may change. Business may change. But people don’t change. Human motivation had remained the same for tens of thousands of years.

  And one of man’s biggest motivators was revenge.

  There was a famous quote attributed to Confucius that history got wrong. Before embarking on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. The western world took that to mean those seeking vengeance were also killing themselves.

  Wrong. The real meaning behind that quote was that revenge was necessary to preserve your honor. It was something T-Nail learned in the pen. Honor was more important than life, so if you die during your of pursuit honor, so be it.

  T-Nail didn’t really agree with either interpretation. But he came up with one of his own that fit.

  Take everything you can, and destroy those who try to take from you.

  Jacqueline had taken from him. She’d taken two decades of his life. And T-Nail had missed out on his chance for payback.

  It made him feel like a tire with all the air let out.

  He wiped a hand across his face, and caught a whiff of some food, which made him realize how hungry he was. T-Nail sniffed again, then noticed the red smear on his fingers. He touched his tongue to it.

  Spaghetti sauce.

  The only things he’d touched lately were the cop, his knife, and that photograph of Jack.

  The realization hit him like the spray of a cold shower.

  That wasn’t blood. It was a trick.

  Jacqueline was alive.

  He bellowed for the Minneapolis crew and had them follow him back to the house.

  “You see this?” he told the camera.

  T-Nail told the gang to set it up next to the front door.

  “How much?” they asked.

  “All of it.”

  PHIN

  They ran into the cellar because it was the furthest room from the front door. But it didn’t matter. You can’t hide from high explosives.

  Phin looked at his wife and saw fear there. But he saw strength, too. More strength than he ever possessed. It was one of the things he loved most about Jack. She was a fighter. Not a thug, like him. But a seeker of truth. A defender of the weak. A champion in every sense of the word.

  “You’re the best person I ever met,” he said.

  Then he pointed his gun at her head. For real this time.

  Jack didn’t flinch. She met his stare. The moment stretched so long it felt like time had stopped.

  But time hadn’t actually stopped. The seconds still ticked away, each one bringing death closer.

  “This is really the end, isn’t it?” his wife said.

  “Yeah.”

  “They’re either going to get in, or we’re going to be blown up.”

  “Yeah.”

  Jack smiled, which was incongruous with the tears in her eyes. “So many things are going through my head right now. I… I know I’ve been terrible these past few years…”

  “A terrible year with you is better than ten great years without you.”

  “We’ve had our moments, haven’t we?”

  The gun was getting really, really heavy. “I wouldn’t take a second of it back. Not a second.”

  Jack sniffled, then wiped her face with her palm. “Before you…” she took a deep breath, “before you do what you have to, I want to say thanks. Thanks for sharing your life with me, Phineas Troutt. Thanks for Sam.” She laughed. “Thanks for the great sex we just had. And for all the sex. Thanks for every kiss. Thanks for every smile. Thanks for fighting for me. I’m a better person, because I knew you.”

  Phin started to choke up. “I don’t believe there’s anything… after. But I swear, Jack. If there is something, if there is someplace beyond this life, I’ll find you. If it takes a thousand years of searching, I’ll find you.”

  “I love you so much.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Phin couldn’t pull the trigger with his eyes open, so he shut them. Tight. This hurt. This hurt so bad. But there was no other choice. This way, they died on their terms. Not T-Nail’s.

  Do it.

  Just do it.

  Shoot her, confirm it, then eat the gun.

  Just…

  Do…

  “Wait!” Jack said.

  He looked at her, a question on his face.

  “Call me honey one last time,” Jack said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You used to call me honey. It was your pet name for me. I never noticed it, until you stopped.”

  “I stopped?”

  She nodded. Phin didn’t think it was possible to feel more devastated, but that did the trick.

  “Aw, Jack. Shit. I’m so sorry. I wasn’t even aware of it.”

  “It’s okay. But say it once more before you…”

  Phin turned away, staring at a shelf full of canned goods. “I can’t.”

  “You can’t call me honey?”

  His hand began to shake. “I can’t shoot you. I can’t do it.” Phin lowered the gun. “I don’t have the guts.”

  He adjusted his grip on the pistol and handed it to her, butt-first. “You have to do it.”

  She shrank away. “No…”

  “You’re the strong one. Ya-ab
urnee. Kill me, then yourself.”

  “Phin…”

  “Please, Jack. We’re dead either way.”

  “What about hope?”

  “There is no hope.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Jack said. “You’re probably right. We’re going to die. It’s going to be horrible. But when I look at you…” Her voice cracked. “It gives me hope.”

  Phin lowered the gun. “So… what do we do?”

  He watched Jack clench her fists. Her face went from sad to determined.

  “We fight. We fight until we can’t fight anymore. Then we keep fighting. If this son of a bitch wants to kill us, he’s going to have to work for it. And it’s gonna take a helluva lot more than a box of dynamite.”

  “The odds are terrible.”

  “You want to bet the odds?” Jack asked. “Or bet on us?”

  There wasn’t any time to think it over. And even if he had time, Phin already knew what his answer was. “Okay, we fight,” he said. “Being skinned alive may not be that bad.”

  “Might even be fun.”

  Phin reached for his wife. “I love you, h—”

  Then an explosion rocked the house and the roof collapsed on top of them.

  HERB

  When they were five miles outside of Spoonward city limits, Herb lost Zombie Sugar Jackers.

  He didn’t lose the game. He lost the Internet signal.

  “My phone reception is gone.” Herb held his cell up in the air and launched into the universal wave-it-around-to-find-a-bar routine.

  Tom was doing the same, which made Herb feel slightly less ridiculous.

  “No 4G in the boonies?” Tom asked.

  “Statie told me the fire took out some cell towers.”

  “Is it wrong to be irritated because a miraculous technology that sends data through the airwaves to wireless computers we can hold in our hands isn’t working due to a state of emergency?”