Last Call - A Thriller (Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels Mysteries Book 10) (8 page)

“Can she handle herself?”

“I don’t know yet. It seems like she can.”

More silence. I didn’t have to read Herb’s mind to know he was worried about me.

“Is there anyone else you can call, Jack?”

What he really meant was: is there anyone else who owes me enough to risk their life for me?

I thought it over, and came up with four people. I knew where to find two of them, but one, a cop I’d worked with named Tom Mankowski, was currently in physical therapy and pretty much immobile. The third, McGlade could contact. The fourth I hadn’t seen in years, but maybe he was still around. I knew someone at the DMV and could possibly get an address, but Herb was right there on the phone.

“Can you do a quick CPD search for me?” I asked Herb. “Last name Abernathy.”

“Abernathy.
That sounds familiar
. Wait, you mean that short muscle head, used to strong arm for Marty the Maniac? What was his name?”

“Tequila,” I said. Back when Herb and I were still transitioning into plainclothes, we’d had a run in with the diminutive mob enforcer, who had once worked for a notorious mob bookie named Marty Martowski.

“That guy’s a sociopath.”

“He’s also one of the toughest people to ever live.” Even tougher, perhaps, than my missing husband.

I heard fingers on a keyboard, and Herb gave me an address and phone number. “Kept clean. Only thing on his record the past ten years is a speeding ticket. Maybe he’s mellowed out.”

I hoped not. I didn’t need mellow. “Thanks, Herb.”

Herb’s voice dropped an octave. “Keep me in the loop, okay? Call, text. If I need to send in the cavalry, I need to know where to send it.”

I told him I’d call him tomorrow, and then tried Tequila’s number. I got an answering machine with only a beep to signal it was working. I left a brief message saying I needed his help, and then I called Val Ryker, a friend and co-worker from my early CPD days.

Straight to voicemail. Didn’t anyone pick up the phone anymore? I asked her to get in touch, then returned to the living room and found Mr. Friskers in Katie’s lap, purring as she stroked him.

McGlade had backed away to the other side of the couch. “It’s eerie, Jack. She must know some kind of sorcery. She’s also able to resist my sexual advances.”

“That proves it,” I said, “she’s a witch.”

“Not that I need it,” Harry said to Katie, “but do you have any spells that would make a guy a few inches bigger? Like, five or six inches?”

Katie didn’t respond. As she pet the cat, her eyes seemed to take on a far-away look.

“Harry, we need to contact some old friends. Do you have any way to get in touch with Chandler and Fleming?”

The women I’d just mentioned didn’t officially exist, and those weren’t they’re real names. They previously worked for a secret government organization, and were experts at staying off the grid. But they owed me, and they’d be powerful allies…
if
we were able to locate them.

“Sure. I’ll just give them a ring,” Harry said.

“They gave you their phone numbers?”

“Don’t be dense, Jack. They’re covert op spies. They don’t give out their numbers. What about Herb? Did he confirm?”

“He’s… got something going on.”

Harry’s nose wrinkled. “Fat boy bailed on you? Seriously? I thought you guys were attached at the hip. You have some sort of falling out? Because I was chummypants with El Chubbo for a while, but he’s got some serious personality problems.”

I didn’t want to discuss it. “Chandler and Fleming, McGlade. Any ideas?”

“I can reach Hammett. Though—I’m being candidpants here—my juevos are still bruised from the last time I saw her.”

“Don’t contact Hammett.” That woman was crazier than the people we were looking for.

“Your call.” Harry took out his phone and spoke as he pressed his touch screen keyboard.

“Super-secret agent spy post,” he said, typing out loud. “Fleming, we haven’t bugged you since the White House. Jack Daniels and I need help. Also Chandler. Call ASAP. Harry McGlade.”

“How can you text her if you don’t have her number?”

“I didn’t text. I blogged.”

“You just blogged?” I said, incredulous.

“Faster than taking out an ad in the personals. Fleming’s a hacker. She monitors the net, no doubt has spiders looking for key terms. When she finds the names
Fleming, Chandler, Jack Daniels, Harry McGlade
, and the words
bugged
and
White House
all in one post, she’ll call me.”

I cast a gaze at Katie, who was still entranced by the cat. “What if someone else is looking for those same terms, Harry?” I asked.

“You mean the NSA? Hell, who cares? Those paranoid bastards already set up a video camera over my bed.” Katie glanced over at him. “It was the NSA,” Harry told her, “I swear.”

I was more concerned about other, unnamed government organizations. Ones the NSA didn’t know about. Organizations that could make me, and everyone I know, disappear without a trace.

I was having this obviously delusional paranoid fantasy when my cell phone rang.

UNKNOWN NUMBER
.

I picked up, and with a hint of trepidation said, “This is Jack.”

“The place we ate at, with the carrot cake,” said a female voice I recognized. “Tomorrow at 2
P.M.
Bring the idiot. Make sure you aren’t followed.”

Then she hung up.

Harry read my face. “Told you so.”

“We have to go to Washington,” I said, putting away my cell.

“We?”

“She told me to bring the idiot.”

“Woo-hoo!” Harry said, doing a fist pump. “I’m in. She’s obviously been pining for me. Which one was it? Moodypants? Wheels? Both? They owe me a three-way.”

I frowned. Because they were identical twins, the sisters sounded the same. I guessed the caller was Wheels—Fleming—because she was the one there when Harry ordered carrot cake at that
diner in DC
. But she could have told that to Chandler.

“Book a flight,” I told Harry.

“How about the cat whisperer over here?”

Katie and I exchanged a glance.

“I’m just going to follow you,” she told me.

I sighed. “Book it for three.”

T
he cardboard Amazon box clutched in his scarred hands, K pushed open the door to the playroom at the far end of the hotel.

The smell was… strong.

Death had many scents. Some good. Some not so good.

The aroma of blood excited Lucy, stirring something in her similar to hunger or sexual arousal.

Bile was more of an acquired taste, akin to enjoying a fine whiskey. The first few times, it was pungent. But then it began to develop nuances and different notes, and the complexity became appreciated.

Lucy appreciated urine more as a side-effect than as an odor. Making someone piss themselves in fear and pain was fun, but the smell wasn’t something she salivated over.

Rot and shit were just plain awful. That’s why there were two main rules when torturing someone to death. First, cauterize wounds to prevent necrosis. Second, don’t perforate the bowels.

The playroom smelled mainly of blood. And body odor—a fragrance that had no place in a torture chamber, or anywhere else.

There was also the gag-inducing smell of excrement.

Lucy held what was left of her nose, and she and K approached the man on the rack. She couldn’t remember what the young man had done—he was a snitch or a rival cartel member or a witness. Or maybe Emilio—the drug lord who owned the compound—was simply as offended by the man’s BO as Lucy was. If being pungent was a crime, this guy deserved at least a dozen death sentences.

And now, to add to his unpleasant stench, he’d crapped himself.

It was a bad one, too. Eyes-watering, taste-it-in-the-back-of-your-mouth bad. Lucy had no idea how women could have babies. Wiping asses every day for two straight years seemed worse than any torture she could dream up.

K seemed equally irritated. He handed Lucy the box, removed his folding knife from his pocket, and held it against the man’s throat.

“I was going to give you a chance to go free,” he said. “But little boys who mess their pants don’t deserve freedom. This is what they deserve.”

Apparently little boys who messed their pants deserve a Columbian necktie.

Bo-ring.

Lucy quickly left the playroom, finding a cheap dinette chair in the kitchen area, and sat there with the box in her lap as K went to fetch a clean-up crew and another victim. She yawned. What started off as a potential rekindling of the killing spirit had once again devolved into something rote. Rather than celebrate a fellow human being’s suffering, Lucy felt like they were just going through the motions.

It was sad, really.

Some men came and took out the body in a plastic bag. Then a smiling Mestizo woman who had more wrinkles than a Shar-Pei padded into the playroom with a mop and bucket. Lucy wondered what she could be so happy about, cleaning up blood and poo for a living, and then began to envy the cleaning woman for her baseless happiness. The envy became so strong that when the cleaning woman came out of the playroom with the smile still on her face, Lucy unholstered the Springfield XD she carried on her belt and shot her twice in the chest.

“Why did you do that?” K asked, hobbling up behind her.

“She was pissing me off.”

“How?”

“She looked happy.”

They both stared at the woman, who’d collapsed on the floor but somehow managed to not spill her dirty bucket.

“She was good,” K said. “A miracle worker with clothing stains.”

Lucy frowned. “Aw, shit. She was the one who did the laundry?”

“Yeah.”

“She used just the right amount of starch when she ironed.”

“Yeah.”

Lucy was angry at herself. Then she noticed the woman’s chest was moving. “Hey. She’s still alive.”

“I’ll get the men.” K trudged off again.

The men came, put the woman on a blanket, and picked her up. Lucy almost told her sorry, but wasn’t sure how to say it in Spanish. Besides, apologizing wasn’t one of her strengths. Somehow, she always came off sounding sarcastic. Instead, Lucy sort of gave the cleaning woman the universal
oops
shrug as she went past.

The woman was trembling, and seemed to be trying really hard not to cry.

Awkward.

A few minutes later another group of men came (or maybe it was the same group of men, Lucy wasn’t really good with faces), lugging along a man in iron shackles. The prisoner was in his twenties, one eye swollen shut from a recent beating. K and the guards exchanged some rapid-fire español.

“His name is Juan,” K told Lucy. “He was caught selling Tussin to school children.”

“So kids aren’t allowed to get high in Mexico?” Lucy asked.

“They drink too much and OD. Bad for business.”

“It was only two kids who died,” Juan said, his English pretty good. “Mexico has plenty more.”

“You broke the rules,” K told him. “Emilio doesn’t allow sales to kids.”

Juan spat on K’s feet. “Hijo de puta. You kill kids in your crazy arena games. I saw you make two ten-year olds fight to the death with machetes.”

“True,” K said. “But they weren’t taking drugs.”

Juan’s look remained defiant. “I lost three thousand pesos on that match. I was only trying to make my money back.”

K unsheathed his Spyderco Harpy knife.

“Another Columbian necktie?” Lucy groaned. “Really?”

K glanced at her. “No. I have something else in mind for this one.”

The menacing way K said it gave Lucy goose bumps on her scar-free patches of skin.

“Emilio wants you in the games,” K told Juan. “My protégé here wants to cut you into little bits and make you eat yourself.”

“Protégé?” Lucy repeated. “K, that’s sweet.”

“But it is your lucky day, Juan. I’m going to give you a chance to walk out of here. But you have to do something for me. Interested?”

“What do I have to do?” Juan asked.

K motioned for Lucy to hold up the Amazon box. When she did, he sliced open the cardboard with his Harpy. Slowly and seductively, as if undressing a lover. Then he reached inside and gingerly took out—

An electric hot plate.

“What are you going to do to him?” Lucy asked. “Cook him a can of beans?”

“That’s racist,” Juan said. “I’m Mexican, so it has to be beans?”

“I wasn’t talking about refried beans,” Lucy said. “I meant like American pork and beans.”

“The kind with brown sugar?” Juan nodded. “I like those.”

“I’m vegan,” Lucy said, “except for occasionally drinking blood. But when I was a kid my mom made pork and beans all the time. There was never more than a few tiny pieces of pork in it.”

“I know, right? How can they call it pork and beans when it doesn’t have hardly any pork?”

“Stop talking about pork and beans,” K ordered. “This idea is from a story in an old issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. March 2005. It’s called
The Agreement
.”

“What is it about, K?” Lucy asked, though she was still thinking about pork and beans, and wondered if they sold cans of it anywhere in Baja. Lucy was still vegan, but she figured it would be simple enough to avoid the pork when there were only three bites per can.