Killer Year

by Lee Child

  It was his own fucking fault, he reminded himself. It wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot. Not even if she thought it was, and he had a plan. Probably a stupid one, but he had a plan.

  “Cam?” one of the officers called him over to another young man, bawling his eyes out.

  “Please arrest me,” he said. “And take me where she can’t get to me.” He shuddered uncontrollably, barely able to bring himself to look in Bobbie Faye’s direction.

  “She’s not that bad.”

  Avery gaped at him. “Did you see where she put that fish hook?”

  Cam flinched, glancing back at the man writhing, the paramedics having a rough time getting him to lie still on the gurney. “Well, if it’s any consolation, I don’t think she’s real concerned about you right now.”

  “I don’t want to take any chances.”

  Three hours and ten minutes ago …

  “You did what?” Van yelled, smacking Kip across the face with the gun.

  “What in the hell is wrong with you?”

  The entire storeful of customers inhaled and froze there as Kip pulled out the Sig he’d gotten out of the display case; no one noticed Bobbie Faye had slipped back in.

  “Don’t fuckin’ mock me, man, you just don’t know how bad it is.” Kip practically vibrated in place with fury.

  Romy hid as much as she could behind the twins.

  “We said we were getting our big break,” Van seethed. “Big score. Lots of money. I was gonna start out somewhere new. We didn’t come here for no stupid fucking love potion that some ditzy stupid voodoo priestess sells for ten bucks.”

  “It’s not stupid,” Kip said, “and it’s real expensive. I couldn’t afford it.”

  “So you what? You set us up, man? You get us to break in here when you know the voodoo woman ain’t even gonna be in here? Did you even think about the fact that she was taking the money to the bank this morning? Huh? I should fucking kill you right here!”

  “She’s powerful, and I didn’t want her to do something weird to me, like turn me into some sort of warty frog or something. She can do that shit. But I looked back there and none of her stuff is labeled. I don’t know which one is the love potion.”

  “You’re out of your fucking mind,” Van said, tapping the .357 against Kip’s chest for emphasis.

  “I just want Romy back,” Kip yelled, tears flowing down his scrawny, dirty face, and Romy hid even more behind the twins. “She broke up with me and she belongs to me. She’s mine, and I’m gonna keep her.”

  “Love isn’t something you can buy, you fucking idiot,” Van shouted. He waved the pistol and everyone flinched, ducking. “You think some lame potion is gonna make her love you? Are you sick? You think it’s gonna make her love you enough to stand in front of this gun for you? Huh? C’mere,” he shouted at Romy, and several of the customers stood in front of her, and Bobbie Faye in front of them.

  “See,” he said to Kip, “total fucking strangers standing in front of a gun for somebody they don’t even know, and they don’t love her. And she don’t love you enough to come out from behind there and stand in front of this for you,” he said, tapping the end of the gun barrel. “You gonna get shot for her stupid ass? You gonna get killed for that shit?”

  “Yeah,” Kip said, with a little too much bravado. “I’d take one for her.”

  Van kicked over a tall rack, smashing it, and the sinkers and fishing tackle and artificial baits scattered. “That ain’t nothin’, man. Hell, that ain’t even hard.” Spittle formed in the corners of his mouth and he paced, his movements jerking with each syllable as if the muscles were determined to independently express the pain. “People out there, they’ll use you for the stuff they can get, like flowers or jewelry or stupid curtains with big pink teapots on ’em that don’t go with any of your shit, and then one day, there ain’t nothing else big you got, you can’t do nothing big enough and then, bam, they’re gone and you got to stare at them fuckin’ curtains. Goddamned fucking teapots!” He raked an entire shelf of kitchen supplies onto the floor, his face red, tears staining his cheeks. Every customer shrank as far away as they could without moving, without attracting his attention.

  “That real kind of love,” he ranted, kicking the utensils out of his way, “that going home every day to the same person, wantin’ them to come home to you for the rest of your fucking life? You can’t buy that, man, not with your stupid fucking love potion. It ain’t about the big things, it’s about what somebody does, day in and day out, whether or not they stick. And she ain’t gonna stick, man, not even with some fucking potion.

  “I needed that money,” he shouted, wanting to aim at Romy and having to settle for aiming at Bobbie Faye. “I needed to start over, to get away from them fucking teapots!”

  Bobbie Faye stared at Van, so into his rant that his face had turned red, his hair flapping with each word as he rocked his body hard, and it amazed her how even crazy people could have a moment of brilliant clarity. Why was it always the psychos who understood love best? The universe had a real perverse sense of humor sometimes.

  The sudden, concussive whoomsh of the Mustang exploding outside rattled the windows, set off car alarms all across the neighborhood and Bobbie Faye knew that it would take exactly two minutes, forty-three seconds for the fire department to arrive (because, unfortunately, she had in-depth experience at this), and it would take longer than that for Van and Kip and Avery to wrap their minds around the fact that their getaway car just left.

  Five minutes ago …

  Trevor checked her over, making sure she wasn’t hiding any wounds, and then he rechecked her.

  “Quit,” she said. “I’m fine.” She was tired, but okay. “Let’s go home.” She opened her eyes to see him grinning, dead sexy, and she felt the humming in her skin again. “What?”

  “You answered me, finally.”

  “I’ve been answering you, you idiot.”

  “I didn’t think you realized you were.”

  “So much for you being the brilliant FBI man, huh?” He didn’t need to know she’d finally figured out that she’d been answering him every time she thought of him as home.

  “Am I going to have to make sure you’re taken hostage every time I want you to make a major decision?” he asked as he stood and helped her up.

  “Don’t push your luck, Butch,” she said, grinning for the first time that day. “I still know where the spare fish hooks are.”

  One Serving of Bad Luck

  by Sean Chercover

  Once every decade a novel comes down the pike, heralded by stunning reviews, blurbs to kill for and you go,

  “Hype.”

  Not with Big City, Bad Blood.

  It’s even better than the lineup of top mystery writers claims it to be

  If ever there was a shoo-in for the Shamus Award, here it is

  Sean not only is one hell of a writer, he used to be a PI, so you’re truly getting the real deal

  But was it a one-off, a kid gets lucky, writes the one amazing debut and sayonara?

  Here is a short story, featuring Ray Dudgeon from the novel, and damn, it’s almost better.

  The short story is notoriously difficult to pull off, and to capture all the wondrous sides of the character that made the novel sing is a daunting task

  Sean does it effortlessly … . … . . damn him

  Ray is trying to get justice—and more important, serious money—for a woman left paralysed from a botched car repair job

  His dogged pursuit of the shady characters involved brings him to the very bottom rungs of the American dream

  What makes Ray so compelling is his humanity and compassion; he hints at the traumatic events from Big City but never dwells on them, a masterstroke of plotting

  And his way of ingratiating himself with pool hall hustlers, trailer park losers, people whose dream is beyond dead, is as moving as it is compelling

  The final scenes, when Ray is attempting to pull off a massive bluff, is edg
e-of-the-seat stuff, you can smell the sweat that is dribbling down Ray’s cheeks as he squares off against the goons of big business

  It’s Ray’s own humanity that makes this story sparkle

  Cheap whiskey, air conditioners that have to be rationed in a trailer park, and Ray’s own heartfelt response to this, make the story so much more than just a mystery

  As a companion piece to Big City or even an introduction to the flawed but wondrous Ray Dudgeon, it works on every level

  And you know what, I think we’ve seen nothing yet, this is a series that is going to become one of the essential annals in PI fiction

  One thing is for sure, if you read this short story, you’ll run to the nearest bookstore to get hold of the novel and it might be the very best mystery you’ll read this year

  Sean Chercover is not only the real deal, he’s a hell of a nice guy, too

  That can’t be fair, can it?

  The least he could do is be arrogant

  But no, not one iota in his whole body

  He is that rarity, a writer’s writer that the public loves

  Does it get any better?

  I was supposed to be Sean’s mentor; I’m just delighted to be his friend

  —Ken Bruen, Galway, February 2007

  The phone on my desk rang, and I stared at it. Thinking, Don’t be so surprised; it’s a phone, it’s supposed to ring.

  Only my phone hadn’t been ringing a lot, lately. Not since I’d taken that bodyguard job that turned into something bigger and some people ended up dead and others went to prison. They say that there’s no such thing as bad publicity but they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. The case generated a lot of press and I’d gotten the reputation of being stupid enough to go up against Chris Amodeo and the Chicago Outfit. And my clients melted into the ether.

  Surviving a showdown against the Outfit had earned me a lot of undeserved street cred, but it didn’t pay the rent. I’d been staying afloat with modest gigs like process serving, background checks, and divorces. Divorce work is bad for the soul, but when the phone is quiet you take what comes your way.

  I picked up the receiver and said, “Ray Dudgeon.”

  “Say, Ray, how you been?”

  “Good. Fine. You?”

  “You know, I can’t complain. But I’d be even better if you’d do a job for me.”

  I wasn’t going to say anything about Rik losing my number for half a year. How could I blame the guy? Anyway, he was the first of my A-list clients to return and I appreciated it.

  Rik’s client was a librarian in Springfield. A woman in her midforties, single, no children. Her name was Sarah Shipman. At the end of a long vacation in Chicago, she took her car to a Juno Auto Center for an oil change and tire rotation. An hour later, she picked up the car and pointed it south on I 55. Forty miles out of the city, her right front wheel fell off and the car swerved into a bridge abutment at sixty-eight miles per hour. Something bad happened in Sarah Shipman’s spinal cord and she was paralyzed from the waist down.

  Obviously Juno’s advertising slogan, “Done in an hour—and done right!” was only half true. The company offered $600,000 to make her go away.

  “Hell, her bills are already near that,” Rik said. “On top of medical, she had to have her bungalow retrofitted for a paraplegic, there’s physio and occupational therapy to teach her how to live the rest of her life in that goddamned chair. And as she ages, she’s going to have even more medical needs—”

  “I get it, Rik. Six hundred thousand isn’t enough.”

  “Six hundred thousand is a bad joke,” Rik said. “We’re asking for ten million. Which, I might add, is extremely reasonable.”

  Rik was an ambulance chaser, but I dig through people’s garbage for a living, so he didn’t have to justify himself to me. “Extremely reasonable,” I said. “I wouldn’t give up the use of my legs for ten million. And it’s not a lot of money to avoid some nasty publicity.”

  “You’d think. But my client’s history is somewhat less than pristine. You know, a few speeding tickets and a couple of smashups over the years. So they’re challenging the accident report. Truth is, her insurance benefits have maxed out and the kindhearted bastards at Juno figure she’ll fold under pressure and settle on the cheap.”

  Rik needed to apply pressure the other way. He needed to interview George Garcia, the mechanic who’d worked on Sarah Shipman’s car. But Garcia had quit his job and his phone was disconnected. So my task was to find him and take a witness statement.

  “We don’t have the luxury of time,” Rik concluded, “and you’re the best I ever met at coaxing a witness statement, Ray.” I figured the compliment was his way of apologizing for having ignored me so long. Or maybe he meant it. At the risk of sounding immodest, I am pretty good at coaxing a witness statement.

  George Garcia’s last known address was a trailer park in Bensenville. Situated directly under the flight path of O’Hare, it was not a quiet place to live, but everybody’s got to live somewhere. Some of the trailers had little Astroturf front lawns, complete with pink plastic flamingos and folding chairs. But the late-July sun was oppressive and the chairs were empty and I didn’t see a soul as I wandered around the lot. In the relative quiet between the deafening roar of planes taking off and landing, I could hear air conditioners humming. Some residents were home. These were not people who could afford to leave the AC running while they’re out.

  I found Garcia’s double-wide and knocked on the door. Nobody answered. His air conditioner was silent. The lock was easy so I let myself in. The air inside was hot and close. Old air.

  I flicked the light switch next to the door and searched the place. No towels or soap or shampoo in the bathroom, medicine cabinet bare. No clothes in the closet, drawers empty. Sweat trickled between my shoulder blades and I decided to step outside and then I heard someone pull back the hammer of a revolver behind me.

  “I’m in my rights to shoot you where you stand. Where You Stand!” The voice was angry, or scared, or maybe a little crazy.

  I raised my hands beside my head. “Please don’t point that at me with the hammer cocked,” I said evenly. I kept my hands up and turned to face him.

  He was about five foot eight, in his late fifties. His face was full of ragged old scars. One scar began at his hairline and ran down over his left eye and continued on the cheekbone, all the way down to the jaw. The skin below the eye was stretched down and a lot of pink socket showed. Another scar ran sideways from his flattened nose to his right ear, which was missing the lobe. He wore a T-shirt that had once been white, stained blue jean cutoffs, and green flip-flops. Blue tattoo art covered his arms like sleeves. The gun was a stainless Colt .357 and it was pointed at my chest and his finger was on the trigger. His hand shook. With the hammer cocked, there was a distinct possibility that he might shoot me by accident.

  “Please point it to one side,” I said. “You can always point it back at me if you feel the need. I’d hate for you to make a terrible mistake.” Another river of sweat ran down my back.

  “You don’t give me orders!” But he pointed the gun to one side. “I’m the property manager here. Who the hell are you?”

  “My name is Ray Dudgeon. I’m a private detective. A lawyer hired me to find George Garcia.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You still got no right to be in here.” A stream of tears erupted from his mangled left eye and ran down his cheek and tumbled onto the linoleum. He didn’t seem to notice. Using only my index finger and thumb, I fished my badge from my breast pocket and held it open for him to see. Then I smirked like we were old buddies.

  “Listen, why don’t we go to your trailer and have a drink and I’ll tell you all about it. If you don’t like my story, then you can call the cops. There’s a pint of bourbon in my car.”

  He eyed the badge for a while and then uncocked the hammer with his left thumb and lowered the gun. “Got ice in my trailer.”
/>   “Name’s Phil,” he said as we entered his mobile home. A thermometer by the door read 105.

  “Say, you get the ice and I’ll crank the old AC here—”

  “Don’t touch that!” he barked. “Your hooch buys some talk. It don’t buy air-conditioning.”

  I fished a twenty out of my pocket and dropped it on the coffee table. “Twenty bucks.”

  “Deal,” he said, and opened the freezer door. I cranked the AC to high.

  “You’re no pushover, Phil. I respect that. Gotta be careful, look out for yourself.”

  “Fuckin’ A,” said Phil. He ran his fingers through his greasy hair, wiped his hand on his back pocket, and grabbed a fistful of ice cubes. He dropped the ice in two grubby mugs and deposited the mugs on the coffee table. I poured bourbon over the greasy ice and we sat and drank. Phil outpaced my drinking three-to-one. And he made it clear that I wasn’t going to hear what he had to say about George Garcia until I’d first heard the life story of Phil the property manager.

  Phil had left home at fifteen and drifted from Florida to Chicago. He became a hardcore biker—a member of the Outlaws. He was a pretty bad dude once upon a time and he offered plenty of details to make sure I believed him. But his biker days ended twelve years ago when he lost a high-speed argument with an eighteen-wheeler. Which explained the face.

  Brain damage was also evident. As he spoke, his left hand occasionally flopped around on his lap like a sunfish on the deck of a boat. He didn’t seem to notice. He also didn’t notice when, every minute or so, he let out a loud vocal tic that sounded like, “HEEP!” I tried not to notice, either.