Last Call - A Thriller (Jacqueline Jack Daniels Mysteries Book 10)

by J. A. Konrath

  I’m so sorry, my beautiful ladies. I tried my best.

  Then Phineas Troutt stood up and marched into the arena to face a messy, terrible death.

  DONALDSON

  He didn’t go to a doctor. At this point, he didn’t think the injury could get any worse, or any better.

  Instead, he marched back inside the OXXO and spent four dollars on eye drops, duct tape, and plastic cling wrap. Back in the car, Donaldson tore off a rectangle of plastic, squirted it with Visine, and pressed it to his naked eyeball.

  It hurt. A lot.

  Donaldson took two more painkillers, then taped the plastic wrap to his face, making a kind of half-assed eyepatch goggle.

  As blood mixed with the Visine, his vision turned pink.

  He took two more Xanax, then passed out, thinking that when he awoke he should definitely go to a doctor.

  JACK

  Kansas City

  I’d barely managed to slip off to sleep when someone knocked on my door.

  I picked up my Colt, and approached the door from the side, then stood next to the jamb. I could have peered through the peephole, but I’d seen too many movies where the person got shot in the head doing that. So instead I opted for asking who it was.

  “I could still shoot you through the wall,” Tequila said. “A .45 can penetrate wood and plaster even easier than the aluminum door.”

  I opened it. Tequila was wearing a black tee shirt and pants, which was more than I had on. I was in one of Phin’s old Alice Cooper tees, over black boyshorts.

  “So how am I supposed to avoid being shot by a visitor?” I asked.

  “Don’t answer the door,” he said. “Ever.”

  I tried to gauge if he was being serious, and decided he probably was.

  “I was going to grab some breakfast. Interested?”

  “Are you sure you want to risk it? I’ve heard breakfast is the most dangerous meal of the day.”

  “You’ll be with me. I’ll keep you safe.”

  “Just got up. I’ll meet you down in five.”

  I’d already showered last night to get the pig smell off of me, so I put my hair in a ponytail, brushed my teeth, put on jeans, and checked out the continental breakfast.

  Tequila was at the egg bin, filling up a second plate with food. His first plate was piled high with over a dozen sausage patties.

  “Hungry?” I asked.

  “Protein,” he said.

  I grabbed a Greek yogurt and scooped in some granola, then poured a large black coffee and met him at a table. Tequila ate like he was working out; doing reps with a focused, pleasureless sense of purpose. I enjoyed my food, but the coffee was meh. I set it aside and went with earl grey tea, two bags to compensate for the lower caffeine content. When I returned to our table, Tequila was working his way through a bowl of raisin bran, no milk.

  “Carbohydrates,” he said.

  “It’s this pithy conversation that makes me glad we’re eating together.”

  “I’m not good at small talk. Or any talk.”

  “Conversation isn’t too hard. It’s just listening, responding, and offering your own thoughts.”

  He drank his entire glass of orange juice and wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand, and for a moment it looked like he was going to respond. But instead he got up and went for more sausage.

  “I spoke with Fleming this morning,” he said when he got back. Apparently they had a history. “I’ve got an idea to infiltrate Cardova’s compound.”

  He shared it with me.

  “Are you sure you want to do that?” I asked when he was finished. “That sounds ridiculously dangerous.”

  “If Phin is there, it might be the only way to get a message to him.”

  “I could do it.”

  Tequila stared at me like I was an auction item he was thinking about bidding on.

  “If this goes sour,” he said, “it’s probably best that Samantha still has one parent alive.”

  Ouch. But he made sense.

  “Do you like kids?” I asked. I’d met Tequila over twenty years ago, but only seen him sporadically during the intervening years. He’d never met my daughter. Or my husband.

  “I don’t know any,” he said.

  “Ever want to have children?”

  He shook his head. “I shouldn’t reproduce.”

  “Why not?”

  “Most people shouldn’t reproduce. Me included.”

  “Ever want to get married?”

  “No.”

  He was right. He was terrible at small talk.

  “Katie won’t be joining us for the rest of the trip,” I said, finishing my tea.

  “Good. She’s trouble.”

  “She’s going to try to follow us.”

  “I could stop her.”

  “She’s determined.”

  “Determination doesn’t count for much when you have two broken legs.”

  I leaned back, studying the man. “I can never tell when you’re kidding.”

  “Humor is an evolutionary trait, meant to put people at ease. Men use it with other men to bond, and with women to get them into bed.” He finished his last sausage. “I don’t bond. And I don’t need humor to sleep with a woman.”

  “So you weren’t joking. You’d break both of her legs.”

  He shrugged. “One leg would probably be enough.”

  I ate more yogurt. “I’ve never known someone like you before. And I can’t even say that I know you.”

  “You know me. What you see is what you get.”

  “You don’t love anyone.”

  “Just my dog. Rosalina. And that’s more of a fondness than love.”

  “You have no compunction about using violence.”

  “It’s a tool.”

  “Have you hurt innocent people?”

  “Never innocent. But I’ve hurt guilty people more than they might have deserved.”

  “Have you ever lost a fight?”

  “Everyone loses fights, Jack.”

  “When?”

  “There was this one time, I was fighting eight guys—”

  I laughed. Tequila didn’t react. He wasn’t kidding.

  “Okay, we’ll continue under the assumption that you’re a sociopath,” I said, “and you lack the ability to empathize. So why did you decide to come along on this trip? Because you like excitement?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Because you’re hoping for the chance to hurt some people?”

  “Is that what you think?” Tequila asked.

  “I don’t know what to think. That’s why I asked.”

  He nodded. “I’m not a sadist. I don’t enjoy hurting people. I’ll do it if I think the situation justifies it.”

  “Like breaking thumbs over a gambling debt.”

  “They should have paid their marker.”

  “Killing people.”

  “I’ve never done that.” Then he added, “For money.”

  “Taking on a serial killer running a gladiator ring funded by a drug cartel.”

  “I’m doing that because I like you.”

  “That’s the reason?”

  “I don’t like many people.”

  I shook my head. “There has to be more than that. People have friends, but they don’t risk their lives for them.”

  “You do,” Tequila said.

  I frowned. “Lately, it’s been my friends taking the risk.”

  “One of the reasons I like you, Jack, is because you represent something I admire.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re one of the good guys.”

  “You’re here helping me. So you’re one of the good guys, too.”

  “No, I’m not. I’ve never self-sacrificed. I’ve never put my life on the line for a greater cause. Or to save other people. You have.” Tequila leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head. “What does that feel like?”

  I thought before I answered. “Necessary,” I said.

&nb
sp; “I haven’t felt necessary for a long time.” Tequila’s face softened, making him appear much younger, and he looked away from me and off into space. “I think I’d like to try it again someday.”

  I took a last bite of yogurt and pushed the bowl away.

  “See?” I said. “We just had a conversation.”

  “I’d rather risk my life for someone else,” Tequila said.

  “It gets easier.”

  “What does? Conversation, or risking your life?”

  “Both.”

  He nodded, then pushed away from the table. “I’m going to get in a post breakfast workout. Join me?”

  “I’m going to talk to Katie. See if I can persuade her to go home without you having to break her legs.”

  “If you can’t, I’ll be in the gym. Just come get me and I’ll take care of her.”

  Once again, I couldn’t tell is he was kidding or not.

  DONALDSON

  Somewhere in Mexico

  A knock on the glass startled him, and he jerked his head up and saw a man at the driver’s side window. Younger guy with a cheesy teenstache.

  The clerk from the OXXO.

  Then the pain hit. As bad as anything Donaldson had ever experienced, like he was being stabbed in the brain with a red hot, salt-covered fork. He checked the rearview, and saw his makeshift eye patch had fallen off and his eyeball had dried up to the point where it was wrinkled like a large, pink raisin.

  Another knock. “You’ve got to move your car, man. This lot is for customers only.”

  Donaldson thought about arguing that he was, indeed, a customer. Then he thought about going to a doctor. Then he took more pills.

  Even if he could find a doctor—and Donaldson was beginning to doubt this backwards-ass country had any medical facilities at all—he didn’t know what they could possibly do for him. His eyelid was gone. His eyeball was desiccated. His ID was phony, and linked to a man he’d murdered. The only money he had left was a handful of change.

  “Don’t need no doctor,” Donaldson mumbled to himself.

  He had made it this far on his own, and he decided to see the situation through to the end.

  Ten minutes later, the pain had ebbed and he was back in the OXXO, spending his next to last dollar.

  For a corkscrew.

  PHIN

  The shackles came off, and a feverish Phineas Trout was left standing in the arena, staring at the crowd of lunatics placing bets on human lives, relatively certain they would be the last thing he ever saw.

  He shivered, partly from illness, partly from fear, and against his better judgment he glanced at the board posting his odds.

  Fifteen to one, against.

  Kiler was brought out, whooping like the maniac he was. When his chains were removed, he pointed at Phin and waggled his tongue, his free hand rubbing his crotch.

  “Last call for bets, last call for bets. Number 10, with eight wins, against Number 17, with three. Height, weight, and age advantage to number 10. The weapons for this match… axes.”

  The guard wearing Phin’s boots dropped a fire axe at Phin’s feet.

  Phin wasn’t much for reflection, but in that moment he found himself thinking about his life. He’d been born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, average in every way. Not a happy childhood, but nothing he couldn’t get over. Mediocre grades, enough athletic skills to get a partial soccer scholarship at a decent school. There had been buddies, and women, and co-workers in various careers, but nothing noteworthy or permanent. Nothing ever defined Phin, or challenged him.

  Until the cancer diagnosis. Then he said fuck it and dropped out of the rat race, living hand to mouth, getting paid however he could. That included a variety of illegal activities, in order to ameliorate the pain of dying with drugs and whores.

  That’s when he met Jack. He’d been preying on a street gang, robbing their pushers, and they’d gotten angry enough to run him down and try to murder him. But Phin had been on a coke bender, and hadn’t felt like getting killed, and managed to beat the shit out of a bunch of them before Jack rolled up and arrested him, probably saving his life.

  He was instantly smitten.

  Jack was all the things he wanted to be. She had purpose. Direction. Honor. Bravery. Life to her was something that challenged you, not something you tolerated.

  They didn’t date. She was a cop. He was a thug. Capulets and Montagues, Sharks and Jets, oil and water. But they did become friends, and when the opportunity arose to be more than that, Phin pursued it with everything he had.

  And, son of a bitch, it somehow worked out. Phin found love. He found purpose. He finally became the person he wanted to be.

  That was about to end, in a gladiator arena in some Mexican desert, facing a white supremacist psychopath in an axe fight to the death.

  Not the way he’d ever expected to go out.

  He bent down, almost falling over because of the pain in his gut, and managed to pick up the axe. Two feet long, about seven pounds, blade on one side of the head, a pick on the other. Caked with grime and sand and the blood of the dead.

  Then he stared at Kiler.

  That man was a monster. In both body and mind.

  Maybe, if Phin had been healthy, he could have put up at least a little bit of fight. Gone toe-to-toe for a minute or two.

  But in his current condition, Phin knew he wouldn’t be able to block a single swing.

  Kiler, an ugly grin on his ugly face, marched toward Phin with the axe.

  Phin looked at the crowd.

  Looked at the guards.

  Looked at Luther and Lucy on their balcony.

  Looked at his own shaking hands.

  And knew what he had to do.

  He dropped the axe and ran back toward the entrance, where the guard that had led him into the arena was standing. As the guard raised his machinegun, Phin dropped down to his knees and touched the ground at the man’s feet, assuming a position of prayer and subservience.

  “Por favor,” Phin begged. “Amigo, por favor.”

  The crowd began to laugh. The guard joined in.

  Kiler advanced, axe raised.

  Phin put all of his remaining strength into the move.

  First, he grabbed the guard by his boot heels.

  Next, he yanked as hard as he could, pulling the man’s feet out from under him.

  Finally, Phin’s hands twisted both of the heels on his Tony Lama boots, removing the body and the barrel of his concealed DoubleTap pistol.

  In a move he’d practiced a hundred times, Phin fit the parts together, two rounds of 9mm ammo already loaded in the double barrel, and twisting onto his shoulder, pointing the weapon at Kiler.

  The first shot hit the giant in the throat, the gun kicking hard in Phin’s hand. Kiler bent forward, clutching his bleeding neck, and Phin fired his last round, right into Kiler’s open mouth.

  Whatever the racist’s last thought was, Phin blew it out the back of his head.

  He immediately dropped the DoubleTap, raising his hands above his head as the guards swarmed around him and the beating began.

  Just as he was starting to black out, he saw Luther stand up…

  …extend his hand…

  …and turn his thumb down.

  LUCY

  Don’t kill him,” Lucy said, turning to K and touching his bony arm.

  “He cheated.”

  “Hanover isn’t who he says he is. Those were his boots that guard was wearing. What kind of man has a gun hidden in his boots? He could be a cop. CIA. Interpol. If you kill him, you could be compromising Emilio’s whole operation.”

  K stared at her.

  “Let me take him to the playroom,” Lucy said. “I can make him talk. After we know who he is, you can do what you want to with him.”

  “People lost money on this match.”

  “Call it a disqualification. All bets are off. We have to know who this guy is, K.”

  His eyes still on Lucy, K switched his hand gesture fro
m thumbs-down to thumbs-up.

  Lucy grinned her lopsided grin. “Can I bang the gong?”

  He nodded. She took his staff and rapped the fake skull against the brass, the sound ringing out across the arena.

  The guards ceased their assault on Hanover and stood at attention. K made a hand gesture, and they dragged the unconscious man out of the arena.

  “You’d better find out something,” K said.

  Lucy narrowed her eye. That was the second time in as many days that K had threatened her.

  She valued her freedom. But more than that, Lucy valued her life.

  And she wasn’t going to let some broken crackpot overlord in some petty desert fiefdom take away either.

  “I think you’ll be surprised at what I’m able to do,” Lucy told him.

  Unpleasantly surprised.

  DONALDSON

  Mistakes were made.

  Donaldson checked his reflection in the rearview mirror. His ruined eye still had the corkscrew in it, and it hung to cheek-level because Donaldson had forgotten to take the optic nerve into account. It stretched like pink chewing gum, keeping his eye attached to his brain.

  And it was strong. Yanking wasn’t getting him anywhere.

  Donaldson’s stomach lurched and he dry-heaved, having thrown up the last of the Gansitos moments after beginning the self-surgery.

  The worst part was; not only could he still feel the corkscrew twisted into his eyeball, he was also able to see through it a little bit, and stared at a blurred, foggy image of his lower lip.

  What he needed to do was pull as hard as he could, and hope he didn’t tear out his frontal lobe.

  Donaldson sucked in as deep a breath as he could…

  Gripped the corkscrew tight…

  And noticed the needle nose pliers on the passenger seat.

  The pliers had a wire cutter in the jaws.

  He blew out the breath he’d been holding. Cutting seemed like a much better way to sever the optic nerve than yanking.

  As it turned out, that assumption was incorrect. The cheap wire cutters were dull, and didn’t work well on tissue.