The dog spun fast and sprinted after Tequila, but Tequila was already tearing ass over to the bedroom, not having bothered to stick the landing for the required three seconds. He beat the dog to the door and slammed it as the animal leapt.
Tequila had been braced for the hit, but the weight and force of the animal bounced the heavy door off of Tequila’s chest and sent him sprawling backwards over Slake’s bed. The dog recovered from its encounter with the door and shook its patchwork body, lunging into the bedroom after its prey.
In the instant it took to the air, Tequila saw his own horrible, screaming, bleeding death, and he cried out in fear and anger.
The pit bull landed front paws first on Tequila’s chest, forcing the air from his lungs, interrupting his war cry. Tequila shot his hand out at the dog’s throat and tried to keep the snapping jaws away from his face. It was like wrestling with a bear. The dog shook angrily, its mouth jerking open and closed like a steel trap, spittle and gore showering hot and wet over Tequila’s face. The animal went for Tequila’s arm, and he adjusted his grip so one hand pushed away the jaw and the other clamped tight on the huge neck. The dog was stronger, and Tequila’s arms were slowly being forced back. Seeming to sense victory, the dog increased its efforts, razor sharp teeth inching ever closer to Tequila’s unprotected throat.
The leather collar around the dog’s neck jingled its tags, and Tequila saw the dog’s nameplate and failed to laugh at the irony that his adversary’s name was Happy.
Tequila curled his legs up to him and tried to kick Happy backward. The dog countered by shifting its weight, attacking Tequila from the side rather than from directly on top. When the man’s muscles began to spasm with effort, he changed tactics.
Tequila jammed his left hand into the dog’s mouth, deep into its throat, trying to cram his fist into the hinge of its jaws so they couldn’t bite down. Then he used his other hand to dig his thumb into Happy’s right eye.
The combination of the two caused Happy to choke and back off, shaking the offending hand free. But it didn’t pause to lick its wounds, and as Tequila got to his knees, Happy lunged again.
This time Tequila let Happy have his right arm. As the dog clamped down, he drove his index finger hard into Happy’s left eye, effectively blinding him. Then Tequila fell back onto his butt and got his feet in front of him, rolling with the dog and then kicking up with his legs. Happy flipped over him and onto its back.
The dog released Tequila’s arm and growled like some prehistoric monster, its jaws snapping audibly on empty air. Tequila rolled to his stomach and freed the switchblade from his pocket. He’d blinded the dog, but supposedly a blind dog was even more dangerous than one that could see. Tequila didn’t know if he believed this or not, because he couldn’t see how Happy could possibly be any more dangerous.
The dog, working by smell, pounced on Tequila. He jammed the switchblade up between Happy’s ribs and tried to jerk it sideways, but the ribs were too big and the blade became stuck. Releasing the knife, Tequila held tightly onto Happy’s right paw and wedged it hard under his armpit. Then he rolled.
Happy’s foot bent, and then snapped. It howled, which was an even more horrible sound than its growling, and its teeth found Tequila’s wounded shoulder and dug in deep.
This time Tequila howled. Still holding Happy’s broken paw, he twisted it viciously, using the leverage to force the dog backwards. Judo worked with dogs like it worked with people, and Happy released its bite and turned over onto its back.
Tequila brought a knee down hard onto Happy’s ribs, and then let go of the dog and jumped onto Slake’s bed.
Happy righted itself and sniffed the air for Tequila. It hobbled toward the bed on three legs, its whole body shaking with rage, the switchblade sticking grotesquely from its ribcage.
Tequila picked up the shackle nearest him and shook it at the dog, letting it hear the chains rattle. The dog jumped onto the bed and Tequila snapped the handcuff onto Happy’s wounded front paw, above the knee. Then he rolled away, off of the bed, and across half of the bedroom floor.
The dog howled, finding itself chained to the bed by its injured limb. It pulled and yelped and then began to dig and bite at the pillows. After mauling the pillows it tore into the sheets and the mattress, whining like the damned.
But the shackle held.
Tequila crawled out of the bedroom and headed for the bath. As he’d expected, Slake had a first aid kit in the medicine cabinet. Most men of their profession had one. Tequila dug into it and filled the sink with water.
First he washed away most of the blood on his wounds, and then searched for a bottle of hydrogen peroxide to disinfect them. Unfortunately, he only found rubbing alcohol. It stung so bad his eyes watered.
His foot turned out to have only minor injuries, but his arm and shoulder had ragged tears in them that required stitches. Luckily, Slake had a surgical needle and thread.
Tequila found a bottle of Demerol and a syringe—would have been nice to have found it before the rubbing alcohol ordeal—and injected himself wherever he hurt, which was almost everywhere. Then he did some quick stitch work and bandaged his wounds tight as he could. Slake had a pharmacy worth of drugs, and Tequila helped himself to some Vicodin, amphetamines, and amoxicillin. He took three of each, pocketing the bottles, along with the syringe and the Demerol. Tequila hoped that the dogs had all of their shots. From the way they were trained, he figured they must have. Slake would have spared no expense on these killers. You don’t spend two grand training a dog so it can die of heartworm or rabies.
Tequila left the bathroom and found his shoe in the hallway. He slipped it back on, wondering what to do next. He didn’t have any weapons left, and he certainly wasn’t in any shape now to take on Slake barehanded. He needed to rest.
Happy howled from the bedroom.
Tequila made his way through the house, intending to leave through the rear garage door. Entering the garage, he was hit with a wave of stink. Butcher shop stink. Dead person stink. He flipped on the light.
On a workbench in the corner of the garage was a meat grinder, industrial-sized. Put the meat in the top, turn the crank, and hamburger came out of the holes in the side. Next to it was a plastic garbage bag, something lumpy inside. Tequila went over for a closer look.
In the bag were a leg, two arms, and a severed head. The temperature in the garage was below zero, but the parts weren’t frozen solid. Tequila dumped them onto the workbench.
Whoever this individual was, Slake had dismembered him and was grinding him up into peopleburger. The residue on the meat grinder attested to this. Tequila guessed that Slake probably then fed the butchered corpse to his dogs in their oversized bowls. It was one of the more unique ways Tequila had ever heard of to dispose of a corpse.
He stared hard at the frosted-over face and didn’t recognize it. But on the right hand of the dismembered arm was a tattoo. A tattoo of a Monarch butterfly, almost identical to the one he had.
So this was how Tequila had been so neatly framed. Slake and this guy had been the ones who robbed Marty. But Slake must not have wanted to split the take, and this was how he dealt with his partner in crime.
Tequila realized his discovery hadn’t changed anything. He was still going to kill Marty, and the rest of them. If anything, Tequila was even more enraged at Slake for starting this whole damn mess. Not only had the bastard raped his sister, but he was also responsible for the opportunity to arise.
He looked around the garage, thinking.
“Where would I hide a million dollars?” Tequila said aloud. His words echoed through the freezing garage.
He went back into the house and began to tear it apart. Closets. Furniture. Cabinets. Drawers. Nothing.
Then he checked the basement, and finally the garage, coming up empty on all accounts. He had almost assumed that Slake had hid the money elsewhere when he realized the house had no porthole to the attic.
Slake’s ceilings were flat, but his roof was beveled. That implied space between the ceiling and the roof. Usually houses had an access porthole, with a folding ladder that could be pulled down to climb into this storage area. Tequila hadn’t seen such a porthole.
But in the kitchen he found a patch of ceiling that was whiter than the rest. He brought a chair over and stood on it. There was a new paint smell, and it was slightly tacky to the touch. Tequila squinted and made out a faint indentation in the shape of a three foot by three foot square. He pushed up in the middle of the square and it lifted up on hinges, the new paint in the cracks flaking away.
Slake had concealed his attic entrance, and then recently painted over the seam to hide that as well. Tequila pushed the trapdoor up until it fell inside the attic, and then pulled himself up after it.
Four suitcases were under a sheet, balanced on the rafters. Tequila didn’t even need to open them to know they were filled with money. He pushed them through the porthole and down into the kitchen.
Back on the ground floor, Tequila hauled the suitcases to the front door and unlocked it. He’d drive his car up and then throw them in the trunk. The money meant little to Tequila, but he welcomed the anguish it would cause Slake.
He was almost out the door when a thought occurred to him. Slake had obviously been the thief, but Tequila could have sworn it was Marty who sent him after Billy Chico. Could Slake somehow imitate Marty’s voice?
Driven by curiosity, Tequila went back into the living room. Nestled next to the entertainment stand was a computer. Tequila turned it on and watched as the latest version of Windows was booted up.
He scanned all of the items on the main menu desktop, and wasn’t too surprised to find a file marked
Voice Generator
. He clicked the file and it booted up.
Voice Generator
had several different options, among them were
Record, Synthesize, Pitch, Tone, Volume, Enunciation, Elocution, Emphasis, Dialects,
and several dozen saved files. Tequila clicked a file marked
Chico
and Marty’s voice came through the computer’s stereo speakers.
“Tequila, Marty. I’ve got a line on a two grand loser named Billy Chico. He’s at 3342 Randolph, apartment 405. Thin guy, thirties, long black hair. Take him tonight.”
That was the exact phone message Tequila had gotten yesterday on his day off. Somehow Slake had synthesized Marty’s voice, either by recording it first or by trial and error with this software.
He clicked another file called
Me
. This time Slake’s voice came through the speakers.
“Marty? It’s Slake. My mistake, I hit the wrong number on my speed dial.”
Tequila played it again, wondering what it meant. He was stumped, until he noticed the Timer option on the menu. He selected it and read through the instructions, and then he understood.
While he’d been robbing the vault, Slake had his computer call up Marty and play the
Me
recording. Slake had given himself an alibi while committing the crime. Marty couldn’t expect Slake to be in the vault and calling him with a wrong number at the same time.
Tequila selected the record feature and put his face to the microphone.
“It’s me, Slake. Don’t bother with replacing the dogs I just killed. You won’t live long enough to train them.”
He named the file
Hey Asshole
and then played the message back to see if it worked. It did.
Tequila left the computer on and headed for the door when he noticed something was wrong. It took him a moment to place what it was.
Happy. The dog hadn’t howled for a while. Maybe the beast was dead, but Tequila’s imagination suggested something else.
There was movement to his right, and Tequila twirled around and saw the dog limping towards him, its muzzle soaked with blood, its leg severed at the knee.
Happy had chewed off its own foot to escape the chain.
Tequila ran, but the dog was surprisingly nimble on three legs and began to gain on him, sniffing the air before it. Chancing a look behind him, Tequila saw Happy was almost at his heels and he made a quick left and ran two steps up a wall and then back-flipped over it, landing behind the dog.
Happy heard the sound and spun to snap at it, but Tequila was already midway through a reverse kick and he connected solidly with the dog’s head, knocking out three of its fangs. Then Tequila followed up with a punt to the switchblade, still jammed in Happy’s ribs, ramming the hilt in three more inches. The dog yelped, and Tequila made a fist and threw a haymaker punch to the side of Happy’s head, knocking the animal over.
Happy rolled to its feet, eager to bite the thing that was hurting it so. For the first time in years it was free to fight back, and it wasn’t giving up yet. Springing off its powerful hind legs, Happy lunged through the air and hit Tequila dead center, knocking him backward. The dog began a biting frenzy, desperate for some flesh to sink its teeth into. Tequila fended off the mouth with his fists, but after four punches they became ripped on the dog’s teeth, and the blood made Happy even crazier.
Tequila held the muzzle away with one hand and the other roamed Happy’s torso for the switchblade. He touched it once, but it was too slippery with blood to pull out.
The dog’s teeth found Tequila’s throat.
Tequila pushed as hard as he could, and then tried to roll, but the dog stayed on top of him. He could feel the needle sharp fangs closing on his neck, the rancid dog breath clogging his nostrils.
His hand touched the knife again and Tequila yanked it out, bringing it up driving it hard through Happy’s blind right eye.
The blade slid through the socket and into the brain, and Happy jumped off Tequila and began to gallop in circles, making a high keening sound like a baby crying. Tequila checked his throat and found only minor damage. He got to his feet slowly, staring at the crying dog, trying to think of a way to end its suffering. He didn’t want to get close to it again, because the dog was still dangerous as hell.