Racked (A Lt. Jack Daniels / Nicholas Colt mystery)

by Jude Hardin

  About RACKED

  A private investigator, a police lieutenant, and a man wearing a Bugs Bunny mask walk into a bar…

  Unfortunately, it’s no joke when Bugsy rigs the barrel of a twelve-gauge pump to the back of the bartender’s neck.

  Together for the first time in this explosive, lightning-paced tale of greed, betrayal, and blood-soaked terror (not really, but it’s a fast-paced and funny mystery-thriller), Florida PI Nicholas Colt (Crosscut, Key Death) and Chicago cop Jacqueline Daniels (Whiskey Sour, Shaken) team up to stop the robber before another shotgun shell gets RACKED.

  RACKED

  A Lt. Jack Daniels/Nicolas Colt Mystery

  JUDE HARDIN

  J.A. KONRATH

  CONTENTS

  Begin reading RACKED

  About the Authors

  Also by Jude Hardin

  Ebooks by J.A. Konrath

  Copyright

  “I’ve always wanted to end a book with: And then the zombies came.”

  —Jack Kilborn

  THE PRIVATE EYE

  2:04 P.M.

  There was blood on the floor.

  And the walls.

  And the ceiling.

  I’d seen my share of fights at Kelly’s, but whatever happened last night must have been extreme. As I walked in, I stepped on a spot of it and almost lost my footing. I managed not to fall, and then made a beeline for the bar. I sat on a stool, reached behind the bartender’s garnish bin and grabbed one of those skinny little red straws to chew on. It helped keep my mind off cigarettes.

  It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and the place was dead. I was starting to think maybe all the employees were too when a twenty-something redhead stepped around the corner and asked me what I was having.

  “You’re new here,” I said.

  “Just started last week.”

  “Did they tell you drinks are free from two to four every Friday?”

  I winked at her. She winked back.

  She wore tight black shorts and a Kelly’s t-shirt cut to expose the shiny gold thing in her belly button. Her nametag said Molly.

  I handed her a business card. She looked at it, and then she tucked it into the back pocket of her shorts. She had really nice back pockets.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Colt.”

  “You can call me Nicholas,” I said. “I’m a regular.”

  “Well, maybe you need more fiber in your diet.”

  A regular. Irregular. I got it. The joke wasn’t very funny, but I got it.

  I laughed politely. “Maybe,” I said. “Let me get an Old Fitz on the rocks. Hold the Metamucil.”

  She slapped a cocktail napkin on the bar, built the drink and set it in front of me.

  “Anything else?” she said.

  “No thanks. You by yourself this afternoon?”

  “Rey’s in the kitchen. Let me know if you want something to eat.”

  Rey Aquino had been peeling potatoes and cooking some incredible shepherd’s pie at Kelly’s for years. Good man. He’d bought me a shot of tequila more than once. He’d started taking some college classes recently, and was planning on getting a business degree. Said he wanted to have his own restaurant someday. Said it was his dream.

  I took a sip of my drink.

  “What’s with all the blood splatters?” I said. “Rowdy crowd last night?”

  Molly smiled. “Think about what day it is.”

  I thought about it. Nothing was ringing a bell.

  I shrugged. “I give up. What day is it?”

  She pointed to the chalkboard easel at the end of the bar. It said HAPPY HALLOWEEN.

  “Big costume party tonight,” she said. “I’ve been squirting fake blood everywhere all morning. I used a super soaker squirt gun. I hope Anil isn’t mad, because I got it all over the place. Now I need to hang some spider webs and other decorations. Isn’t it great? Halloween is my favorite holiday.”

  “Great.”

  So great it had completely slipped my mind.

  “Right now I’m trying to figure out a drink to put on special,” she said. “Any ideas?”

  “Old Fitz on the rocks,” I said.

  “You’re funny,” she said, her tone teetering between dubious and insincere. “No, I think it should be something tall and fruity. A rum drink, maybe. One of the distributers left us a box of those silly little paper umbrellas, and tonight might be a good night to unload a bunch of them.”

  “Good luck with that. Is the table upstairs open?”

  Most of the pool tables at Kelly’s are coin-op, the variety you can find at any dive in any part of the country. Beer stains, cigarette burns, spongy rails, warped cues. Those tables don’t interest me, but there’s a nine-foot Brunswick in a room on the second floor that Minnesota Fats once played on. It’s a professional table, clean as a virgin’s bathwater.

  “We don’t open the upstairs until six,” Molly said.

  “I know, but Anil usually—”

  “Anyway, there’s already someone up there.”

  “So much for not opening until six,” I said.

  Molly walked over to the chalkboard and started writing the name of the drink special she’d decided on. “Well, this lady came in and ordered lunch a while ago, just passing through and all, and after she ate, she asked about the ‘famous table’ upstairs. She looked really disappointed when I told her the room was closed, so—”

  “She’s alone?”

  “Yeah. She’s from Chicago. And get this—her name is Jack Daniels.”

  THE COP

  2:12 P.M.

  I’d flown into Jacksonville International the day before Halloween, desperate for a little R&R and some quality time with my mother. It had been a helluva plane ride, one of those near-death flights complete with nationwide news coverage afterward, and I needed some time to wind down. Hopefully somewhere without any guns.

  Mom lived near Orlando, so it would have made more sense to land there, but I never did care for that airport. Energetic pasty white smiles flying in, bedraggled sunburned frowns flying out. Kind of depressing.

  Plus, I’d seen Kelly’s Pool Hall on a cable television show called Grills, Game Rooms, and Greasy Spoons, and I wanted to try the cheeseburger and the antique billiards table—the one that Willie Mosconi had supposedly beaten Minnesota Fats on back in the day. According to the show, the table had started its life in Illinois, so this massive hunk of wood and slate and leather and I had a connection. We were kindred spirits.

  Kelly’s was in a little town called Hallows Cove, which was sort of on the way to Mom’s from Jacksonville. I figured I’d do lunch, play a little pool, and then head on over.

  I lined up some balls, started shooting them into one of the side pockets. Different angles, different English. I was practicing, and doing pretty well considering my frazzled nerves.

  I called a bank in my head, sunk it, and the cue rolled more or less to where I wanted it to be for the next shot. Not perfect, but enough. I guessed my game was at about eighty percent.

  “Nice stroke.”

  A guy with a drink in one hand and a leather satchel in the other darkened the doorway to the billiards room.

  “I bet you say that to all the girls,” I said.

  “Only when it’s true. Mind if I come in?”

  He was slim but solid. Long hair and a beard, both the color of sand. I figured him to be about my age, mid-forties or maybe a little younger. He was handsome, if you go for the Brad Pitt type.

  I looked at my watch. “I have the room for another forty-five minutes. Then it’s all yours.”

  “I didn’t
mean to disturb your practice session or anything,” he said. “Just thought you might like to play a game or two.”

  I pointed to his case. “Is that real alligator skin?”

  “It was a gift. Just because I have a nice stick, it doesn’t mean—”

  “It always means something,” I said, trying to avoid the obvious double entendre this time.

  He walked over to the round bistro table against the wall and opened the case. My purse was there on one of the stools, and I didn’t like him being so close to the .38 caliber revolver that was tucked inside it. The airline didn’t allow me to do a concealed carry, but a gun in a checked bag was fine. After my flight, I didn’t want to go anywhere unarmed ever again.

  “It’s a Balabushka,” he said, referring to the cue stick. “A replica, but a good replica. Ever try one?”

  “Sure, I have a dozen just like it at home.”

  “On a cop’s salary? I doubt it.”

  He screwed the two pieces together.

  “How did you know?” I said.

  “The bartender downstairs told me your name and where you’re from. I watch CNN like everyone else, Lieutenant Daniels.”

  “You can call me Jacqueline. Or Jack.”

  “Saw that airplane stuff this morning. Must have been scary.”

  “I’ve lived through worse. And what’s your name?”

  He grabbed a block of chalk and started massaging the tip of his cue with it.

  “Nicholas Colt,” he said. “I’m a private investigator.”

  “Ah. Well, I won’t hold that against you.”

  I’d meant the comment as a joke, but he didn’t seem amused.

  “We’re not all like McGlade,” he said.

  Harry McGlade had once worked for the Chicago Police Department. He’d been my partner for a while. He was private now, and mostly a thorn in my side. Rude, crude, unkempt, misogynistic, thought he was funny. He was an ass, and he had an annoying habit of helping me even when I didn’t ask for help.

  “You get McGlade’s name from CNN, too?” I said.

  “No. That TV show about him. The one where you’re the overweight cop who wets the bed.”

  “So that’s your game. Charming me into playing pool with you. Don’t bother chalking up. You can load your replica stick right back into its replica case.”

  “Apologies. Didn’t know it was such a sore spot with you. Obviously you’re not overweight, and I’d be willing to bet that you don’t suffer from enuresis. You’re an attractive woman, Jack. After we shoot a game of pool, maybe we could ride over to my place on the lake. You like to fish? I’ll let you bait my hook.”

  I rolled my eyes. It was the first time anyone had ever hit on me with the unlikely combinations of angling and bed wetting.

  “Sure,” I said. “Could I make you breakfast in the morning, too?”

  “We could play a game of nine ball for who makes breakfast.”

  “Or you could go somewhere else and play with yourself.”

  He laughed. It was an easy laugh, deep and genuine.

  “How about we start over?” he said. “All I’m interested in is a game. Really. No bets. No come-ons.”

  “Listen, Colt, I don’t have a lot of time, and I’d really rather just—”

  A loud noise from downstairs cut me off in mid-sentence.

  I wasn’t one hundred percent sure, but it sounded an awful lot like a shotgun blast.

  THE BAD GUY

  2:19 P.M.

  The best time to knock off a restaurant is between two and three in the afternoon. The lunch crowd is gone by then, and the dinner crowd hasn’t started trickling in yet. With a little luck, you can be in and out in less than five minutes, and nobody gets hurt.

  I’d walked into Kelly’s with a heavy canvas sack, a sawed-off twelve gauge pump, and a cheap plastic Bugs Bunny mask I’d found at a discount store. The mask was made for a kid, so it didn’t really fit my face. I had to cut the eyeholes bigger with a pocketknife.

  When the cute little redhead behind the bar saw me, she put her hands in the air and told me to take anything I wanted.

  I told her to open the register and stack all the money on the bar. She complied, and I stuffed the bills into my bag. It looked like several hundred dollars. Not a bad score for the afternoon, but I was greedy by nature. My mother always said I should have been an attorney.

  “Where’s the safe?” I said.

  “In the manager’s office.”

  Her upper lip quivered when she spoke. She was about to cry. It was the appropriate reaction, the one I expected. What I didn’t expect was the wild-eyed dude in an apron who came running around the corner with a butcher knife in his hand.

  I dropped the moneybag and swiveled toward him, and the gun just kind of went off. Now he was on the floor, writhing, the bottom part of his jeans shredded and soaked with blood.

  Red fell to her knees, buried her face in her hands.

  “Please don’t kill me,” she said.

  There were some other businesses nearby, and I was afraid someone might have heard the gunshot. I needed to get out of there before the cops showed up.

  Then again, it would only take a couple of minutes to empty the safe.

  “Take me to the office,” I said.

  “He needs a doctor.”

  “He’ll be all right.”

  She got up and started shuffling toward the back of the bar, sobbing as she went.

  THE COP

  2:20 P.M.

  Colt walked over to the window, glanced down toward the street.

  “Could have been a car backfiring,” he said.

  “Could have been,” I said, going for my purse. “If the car was parked downstairs in the bar.”

  “Maybe it was the tennis equipment factory down the road. They’re always making a racket.”

  I looked at him with my best you didn’t just say that expression.

  “Are you sure your name’s not Benedict?” I said.

  “Who?”

  “My partner. He likes bad puns.”

  “He tell you the one about the grape that got stepped on?”

  “The one who didn’t scream, just let out a little wine?” I reached into my purse and pulled out my .38. “Are you carrying?”

  “Left it in the car. Normally pool isn’t a dangerous game.”

  Great.

  “Let’s just hope it really was something harmless. You have a cell phone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Call nine-one-one if I’m not back in two minutes.”

  “I’m going with you,” he said.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Try to stop me.”

  Damn it. Another stubborn alpha male determined to take care of me. I didn’t need him tagging along, but I’d wasted enough time arguing.

  “I can’t stop you,” I said. “Just stay back a few feet and try not to get your head blown off.”

  “Maybe I should carry the gun.”

  “Maybe you should wake up, because you’re dreaming, pal.”

  I wrapped both hands around the checkered wood grips and headed for the staircase.

  THE BAD GUY

  2:22 P.M.

  The manager’s office was the size of a large closet. There was a computer desk and a phone and a corkboard with a bunch of miscellaneous crap tacked to it. Notes and receipts and reminders and whatnot. The safe was on the floor beside the desk.

  “Open it,” I said.

  “You’re after the ring, aren’t you?”

  “What ring?”

  “What ring my ass. Why else would you have picked today of all days to rob a bar?”

  Now I was intrigued. Apparently there was something very valuable in that safe, which of course made me more determined than ever to get into it.

  “Open it,” I said again.

  “I don’t know the combination.”

  “What?”

>   “I’ve only been here a week. I’m still on probation.”

  “Who else is here?”

  “Rey. The guy you shot. He’s just a cook.”

  What kind of restaurant manager leaves a beautiful young bartender alone in a joint without giving her the combination to the safe? That’s a sure way to get a beautiful young bartender killed.

  Nothing annoys me more than an incompetent manager. Nothing. I planned on filing a complaint.

  But first I had to make absolutely sure the beautiful young bartender wasn’t lying. I pointed the gun in her face.

  “What if you need to break a big bill, or make change?” I said.

  “Rey! He knows the combination.”

  “Let’s go ask him.”

  We went into the kitchen. Rey didn’t seem happy to see me again. It might have been because I’d shot him in the legs.

  “Safe combo,” I said. “I didn’t kill you before, because I don’t want a murder rap. But if you lie to me, the next shot will take your head clean off.”

  I got the clean off line from Dirty Harry. Great movie. Except where the cop killed the bad guy at the end. Bummer, that.

  Rey gave me three numbers. I thanked him and ushered the bartender back into the office.

  “Open it.”

  She did.

  “I’m going to have to tie you up,” I said. “Got any duct tape in here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She slumped to the floor beside the safe and hugged her knees. Hands trembling, eyes full of tears and trepidation.

  I noticed her nametag.

  “Relax,” I said. “Only an asshole would kill someone named Molly.”

  She didn’t smile, didn’t even look up at me. She was stressing out big time. Can’t say that I blamed her. I was big and scary, and I was carrying a weapon that could cut her in half.

  I needed to empty the safe and get out of there, but first I needed to secure my hostage. I started yanking open desk drawers and ferreting around for something to bind Molly’s wrists and ankles with. The Bugs Bunny mask was making my face sweat like crazy.