Dead On My Feet - A Thriller (Phineas Troutt Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  His name is Phineas Troutt. He’s a problem solver.

  If a woman is being stalked by her ex-husband, Phin can convince him to stop. If a union is being squeezed, Phin can squeeze the squeezer. He’s not a mercenary. He’s not a bodyguard. He’s not a private dick. He’s a guy who takes cash for solving problems with violence.

  When a doctor at a suburban women’s health clinic is being harassed, she hires Phin to make it stop. But the situation proves to be larger, and more dangerous, than even he can handle on his own. So he calls in some friends to help out; a P.I. named Harry McGlade and a female cop named Jack Daniels…

  DEAD ON MY FEET by J.A. Konrath

  Set in 2007, Konrath turns up the noir and gives leading man status to his favorite tough guy. Phin has appeared in the bestselling novels WHISKEY SOUR, RUSTY NAIL, SHAKEN, RUM RUNNER, LAST CALL, and many others, but now he’s the main character. Filled with the same action, humor, and intrigue as the Jack Daniels series, but with a grittier, hardboiled edge, DEAD ON MY FEET is the first in a Phin Troutt trilogy, which also includes DYING BREATH and EVERYBODY DIES.

  CONTENTS

  Epigraph

  Begin reading DEAD ON MY FEET

  Afterword

  Joe Konrath‘s Complete Bibliography

  Other recommended titles

  Sign up for the J.A. Konrath newsletter

  Copyright

  I once held my existence dear

  With every breath a welcome chore

  But now my days are spent in fear

  Of when my days will be no more

  WAY, WAY BACK, IN THE PRIMITIVE, HARDBOILED DAYS OF CHICAGO, 2007…

  “I’m dying,” I said to her.

  She wasn’t wearing anything that shouted whore. Not like the sex workers rolling their tired hips on Chicago’s street corners, draped in stained Fredrick’s of Hollywood and platform heels, desperate to separate men from their money. But this lady didn’t plant herself on the bar seat next to me because she wanted a new friend. I had a tiny shred of self-awareness left, and the days of strange women hitting on me in bars ended around the same time I traded chemotherapy for cocaine.

  “That why you’re bald?” she asked.

  I nodded. My eyebrows had begun to grow in again, but my scalp was Yul Brenner shiny. I gave her a courtesy look-over, not in the mood to shop but not wanting to kill a possible opportunity for a later time. Pumps, tasteful top, mini skirt, no stockings. I put her at mid-thirties, maybe a few years younger than me. Chinese, obviously, and she’d gone overboard with the make-up and the spicy perfume. Couldn’t really make out her figure in the dimly lit lounge, but that didn’t really matter, did it?

  “My name is Sugar. What’s yours?”

  I tried to make eye-contact with the bartender, to let him know my glass had been empty for almost twenty seconds. I’d give him another thirty before I started getting pissy about it.

  “You got a name?” she asked again.

  “Phineas Troutt.”

  “So… do dying guys still like girls, Phineas Troutt?”

  “We do. But right now, we like drinking.”

  “So buy me a drink.”

  The bartender finally noticed me, and I got another tequila martini and whatever watered-down, overpriced crap the lady wanted.

  “Tequila martini. Sounds gross.”

  “It is.”

  “Why do you drink it?”

  “Because I need the booze but don’t deserve to enjoy it.”

  She put her hand on my inner thigh, rubbing me through my jeans. “Are you a bad boy, Phineas Troutt?”

  Lady, they don’t get much badder.

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Straight or BJ, sixty. Half and half, seventy-five.”

  “I charge fifty.”

  “You’d pay fifty?”

  “No. I charge fifty.”

  Sugar narrowed her eyes. “Fifty for what?”

  “Say you had an ex-boyfriend, one who was mad at you. I’d charge him fifty to break your nose.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she stopped groping me. “You an enforcer?” she asked.

  That was the en vogue term for leg breaker. But mob enforcers had bosses. I was my own boss. With my own job title.

  “I’m a problem solver,” I told her.

  That’s my preferred description of what I do for money. I’m not a mercenary. I’m not a bodyguard. I’m not a private dick. I’m a guy who takes cash for using violence to solve problems. Simple as that.

  “You beat people up?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You ever do more than beat them?”

  Careful, Phin. You’ve had too much to drink, and talking shop with a stranger in a shitty Chinese restaurant bar is careless.

  “You got a problem that needs solving, Sugar?”

  She lowered the waistband on her miniskirt, revealing an ugly burn.

  “My manager,” she said. “If he thinks I didn’t earn enough, he makes me his personal ashtray.”

  Nice. Humanity was such a beautiful thing. “And you want him gone.”

  She shook her head. “They’re all bad. Next one might be worse.”

  “You want him to stop hurting you.”

  “It goes with the profession.” Her eyes were empty. “But once, I’d like him to know what it feels like.”

  I liked her pragmatism. “You got cash?”

  “We could swap. Some of my work for some of yours.”

  I considered it. I’d blown through three grand in the last few days, hookers and expensive hotels and drugs, and probably didn’t have more than thirty bucks left on me.

  Be a nice change of pace to not have to pay for sex. I was drunk, but not so drunk that I couldn’t get it up.

  I gulped down half my martini. Awful. “The skinny guy in the cowboy hat with the Fu Manchu, been watching us for the last few minutes.”

  Sugar didn’t look. “Yeah. That’s him.”

  “That big guy by the door his back-up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Any others?”

  “Not here.”

  “They armed?”

  “No guns. Caught with guns, it’s jail time.”

  Chicago, murder capital of the country for the third year straight, was getting tough on violent crime.

  And it was about time. There were some really bad people walking the streets.

  I finished my drink, stood up, and walked over to the pimp, projecting drunken confidence.

  But I didn’t feel drunk. I felt like a switchblade, ready to snap open.

  “Sugar said to talk to you if I wanted to make some kind of… special arrangement.”

  He eyed me like something he’d stepped in that needed to be scraped off.

  “Sugar can do a lot of special things,” he said.

  “How much if I roughed her up a little?”

  “What you thinking?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing serious. Bloody nose. Black eye. Maybe a broken finger.”

  “Could be pricey. If she’s off the street, she’s not earning.”

  “Two hundred?” I asked, letting it build up inside me.

  “Two-fifty. But if she has to go to the hospital, you’re paying for that shit.”

  “How many fingers can I break for two-fifty?”

  He smiled, showing me a gold tooth. “What do whores need fingers for?”

  I reached into my pocket. The pimp thought I was going to take out cash. When I took out the brass knuckles, he barely had time to register any surprise before I broke his nose.

  He crumpled, and I gave him a b
lack eye. Then another.

  That’s when the big guy who’d been standing by the door came stomping over. I knew the type by the way he moved. Lots of gym time, found it simple to strong arm the freaks and johns who had no fighting skills.

  I really didn’t have any fighting skills, either. But I had nothing to lose. I’d bet on not giving a fuck against any martial art any day of the week.

  I swiveled my hips, whipping my leg around and catching bouncer-boy on the chin. He folded like a bad poker hand.

  The pimp was frantically trying to pull something out of his jeans. A knife, maybe. Or a cell phone to call 911. I crouched down next to him, pulling his hand away.

  “How many fingers did we agree on?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. So I broke all five.

  What did pimps need fingers for?

  I left him sobbing, tossed some money down on the bar for the drinks, and walked out, my whole body trembling with fear and adrenalin. Then I bent over and puked on the sidewalk.

  Not from the booze. I could handle my booze.

  It was the pain.

  Earl.

  I needed a bump. Hell, I needed a few lines. But that was the reason I was back in Chinatown. I’d spent most of my money on drugs and whores, and the rest I’d just wasted. So I had to slum it until I made more.

  In the meantime, I was happy about my quid pro quo arrangement with Sugar. Which, I was beginning to suspect, wasn’t her real name.

  She met me outside just as I was popping a few mints. Throwing up and I were old pals.

  “You fight good. What are you dying of?”

  “Cancer,” I said. “Pancreas.”

  “Well, you fight good.”

  She was wrong. What I did was beat people up good. If violence came down to an actual fight, with both parties having a chance at winning, I’d done it wrong.

  “You live close?” she asked.

  “Not too far. My truck is over there.”

  She followed me to the Bronco. I walked around before I got in, not doing a full inspection but doing a quick visual check. Wheels were good. Tape was untampered with. I unlocked her door, and started it up.

  Sugar screamed, practically blowing out my right eardrum. I followed her gaze, saw Fu Manchu had followed us into the parking lot.

  I’d been wrong, and so had Sugar. The pimp hadn’t been reaching for a knife. Instead, he was holding a small revolver in his left hand, pointing it in the general direction of my Bronco.

  Sloppy, Phin. You deserve to get shot for being so careless.

  But apparently he wasn’t a lefty, because he fired twice and couldn’t hit shit. I punched the gas, heading for him.

  Manchu’s eyes got wide, and he got two steps away. I swerved after him, and my tire met his foot.

  My tire won.

  “That was on me,” I said to her. “No extra charge.”

  Never did like pimps much. Sex workers provided a much needed service, and they were hampered by my country’s ridiculous puritanical streak and accompanying bullshit laws. So rather than be taxed and regulated and protected, like any decent society should do with their whores (hell, anyone providing that service should be revered as well as protected), they were preyed upon by assholes like that guy.

  I guess we’ll see how well he could pimp from a wheelchair.

  “And this is on me,” Sugar said, reaching for the top button of my jeans.

  I parked in some alley, we steamed up the windows, and at some point I passed out, that last martini finally doing its job.

  When I woke up it was past 3 A.M. and Sugar was gone. My bi-fold wallet, now empty, laid open on the passenger seat like a dead bird. Sugar couldn’t have gotten more than a few bucks, but still, it was disappointing.

  I started the car, pressing one hand to the ache in my side as I drove down Cermak.

  Cermak is also called 23rd Street. The Chinese have yet another name for it, since it runs through Chicago’s Chinatown. I’ve lived there for three months and I still can’t figure out what they call it. Chinatown is populated by equal numbers of Mandarin and Cantonese, and even though they read the same language, they speak different dialects so it’s impossible to get a uniform answer from them.

  It was warm for September. I rolled down the windows. The light breeze felt good. It smelled faintly of soy sauce, but everything in Chinatown smelled faintly of soy sauce. Streets were deserted, and even the most strung-out whores had called it a night. All the shops still had their outside lights on, eating energy, hànzì characters blinking neon pastels.

  The glare reminded me I had a headache. I turned down State Street, which was the dividing line between the Chinese and the blacks. There were slum apartments on the east side, and a fire-bombed Chinese Bakery on the west.

  Chi-town in Chi-town. So cut off from the rest of the city it might as well have been an island.

  Two blocks down State I hung a right on 25th, and then an immediate left into the lot of the Michigan Motel. I parked in the handicapped spot—dying had its perks—and then took out the roll of invisible tape I carry in my pocket. I put a strip across my door, the passenger door. If anyone other than me was in my car, the tape would break and I’d know. The tape I’d put on the hood and tailgate didn’t need to be replaced.

  In my line of work, can’t hurt to be paranoid.

  Then I went over to the outdoor Check-In window to pick up my mail. The booth had a slit at the bottom, allowing for the exchange of money and keys. It was too thin to get a gun through, and four large divots in the thick glass showed that it was bullet-proof.

  There was no one in the booth. A hanging sign told me to ring the buzzer for service, but I knew the buzzer didn’t work. I banged on the glass and yelled instead.

  Attached to the booth was the room where the owner lived. A reinforced door, bolted from the inside, separated the two. Just as I was starting to form a grudge, said owner made his appearance. Kenny Jen Bang Ko. A fat little man with a mole on his left cheek that had hair coming out of it. The hair on his head was still midnight black, even though he had to be pushing seventy. It probably had something to do with his never washing it. If you touched a flame to Kenny Jen Bang Ko’s head, it would burn for days like an oil lamp.

  Kenny had a cardboard container in his hand that carried the aroma of moo-shoo pork. A piece of pork stuck to the left side of his mouth confirmed it. His eyes crinkled at the edges when he saw it was me.

  “Gone for ten day this time,” he said.

  “Eleven,” I corrected.

  “Must have been some party.”

  Must have been. I only remembered bits and pieces. I recalled one of the hookers; an overweight red-head with a green mini skirt and legs that needed shaving. She stuck in my memory because she snorted almost half of my coke. I also had a vague recollection of ordering ten cans of whipped cream from room service, but no clue what I’d done with it.

  “Any messages?”

  He nodded, and disappeared through the oak door. I met Kenny not long after my diagnosis. I’d pulled up to his shitty establishment, looking for a cheap place to shit, shower, and sleep, and I found him getting shaken down by a local street gang.

  They had knives.

  I had an aluminum bat.

  It took three ambulances to cart them all away.

  Before the medics arrived, I relieved the wayward youths of eight hundred bucks and some meth, and Kenny gave me a free permanent room at his motel. The Chinese have a thing about gratitude. Then again, if you saw my room, you wouldn’t think it had taken much gratitude at all to part with it.

  Kenny came back with two envelopes. My name on them, no return address.

  One was handwritten in blue pen. The other was from Annie. I put Annie’s in my pocket, thanked Kenny, and opened the mystery letter while walking to my room.

  In my line of work I don’t have to go hunting around for clients very often. Mostly, the work finds me. If I solve one dumb bastard’s problem, he’ll tell t
en of his dumb bastard friends who also need problems solved. This letter was a perfect example of that.

  “Mr. Trout, (name spelled wrong). We urgently need your help. The same kind of help you gave to Karl Griffith a few months ago in Flutesburg. Please call.”

  Then a phone number. Eight-four-seven area code, meaning it was a suburb. I put the letter in my pocket and opened my door. (The invisible tape trick didn’t work on my motel room because the maids would break it.)

  As always, my bed was made. That was one of the amenities of living in such a high class motel. I looked for the mint on the pillow. There never was a mint, but I had hopes that life would surprise me.

  I stripped off the shirt that I had been wearing for the past eleven days and let it drop to the floor. It was still pretty clean, thanks to the shower I took in it one or two days ago. No more than three. Or maybe the shower was from the binge before this one. They all blend together after so many drugs.

  I sat on the bed to take off my pants, and my left side spasmed. Bad sign. I’d had a chordotomy. That’s a tricky operation where they sever the nerves from the cancerous area to the spinal cord. Palliative treatment. I have no feeling in my lower left side. Pain meant the cancer was spreading.

  But I’d known that. You’re in remission is a bigger lie than the check’s in the mail and I promise I’ll pull out.

  I peeled off my boxer shorts and walked into the bathroom.

  There was a white paper strip on my toilet proclaiming the bowl was sanitized. The strip was dirty. I pulled the strip off and put it in the garbage next to the sink, where the maid would fish it out and put it back on the john during her next visit. Probably my fault for never tipping her.

  Then I sat on the toilet, aware of the fact that my shit would be white. That’s what made me see the doctor in the first place. It had something to do with the bile ducts.

  I considered Dr. Karl Griffith. He was the head of an abortion clinic in Flutesburg, one of Chicago’s bigger burbs. Person or persons unknown had been trying to run him out of business. With a minor assist from Mr. Louisville Slugger, I worked over two guys who’d assaulted the good doctor. They didn’t talk, and I was pretty persuasive. Shortly afterward, Griffith told me he no longer needed me. I got three thousand for three days of work.