Floaters - A Jack Daniels/Alex Chapa Mystery Read online

  J.A. Konrath and Henry Perez

  Introduction to Floaters

  Floaters by J.A. Konrath and Henry Perez

  Postscript To Floaters

  Familiar Places by Henry Perez

  Last Request by J.A. Konrath

  A Conversation Between J.A. Konrath and Henry Perez

  Excerpt: Killing Red by Hentry Perez

  Excerpt: A Shot of Tequila by J.A. Konrath

  Also by the Authors

  J.A. Konrath

  My name is Joe Konrath, and I write a mystery/thriller series about Chicago cop Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels. Jack, and her supporting cast of characters, have appeared in six novels since my first, Whiskey Sour, came out in 2004.

  The goal of the Jack Daniels books is to mix serious suspense and thrills with genuine laughs. The books alternate between scary scenes and lighter, humorous moments, sort of cross between Thomas Harris and Janet Evanovich.

  Besides the novels, Jack has appeared in many short stories, all available for download on my website, www.JAKonrath.com, and on the Amazon Kindle.

  Which brings us to Floaters

  I first met Henry Perez shortly before my first book came out. Henry says that I snubbed him, refusing to give him one of my advanced reading copies because I claimed I had no more. Truth told, I had plenty more, I just didn’t like Henry very much.

  Naturally, we became good friends.

  Years later, Henry wrote a serial killer novel of his own, called Killing Red, which I was fortunate enough to read while it was still in the editing stage. It is, without a doubt, the best thriller debut I’d ever encountered.

  Henry later went on to land an agent and a two-book deal with a big publisher. He also claims to have a large stack of advanced reading copies of Killing Red.

  As of this writing, I haven’t been given one.

  The hero of Killing Red is a Cuban-American reporter named Alex Chapa, who works for a Chicago newspaper.

  Being a fan of his novel and his character, I begged Henry to collaborate on a story with me, believing it would be a lot of fun to have Chapa and Daniels in the same story.

  It was, even though Henry writes so slowly, moss grew on his north side while he was crafting his sections.

  I’m pleased Floaters is getting a second life in a digital format. It’s a good introduction to our characters, while also being a fun way to revisit them if you’ve already read our novels. Plus, it has pogs.

  A Jack Daniels/Alex Chapa Mystery

  J.A. Konrath and Henry Perez

  1 | CHAPA

  I was merging from Harlem Avenue into mid-afternoon traffic on the Kennedy when word came in that another floater had turned up in the Chicago River.

  “I phoned you first, Mr. Chapa.” Zach Bridges, an intern at the news desk, had taken the call. “Just like you always tell me to.”

  I steered with my knee for a moment, one hand on my cell and the other fiddling with the air conditioning. There was a snowflake symbol on the dial, meant to indicate frigid. It was lying to me, blowing tepid breaths in my face that did little to combat the sticky summer air. I settled for lowering the window enough to get a breeze but not so much that it disrupted my conversation.

  “That was good of you, Zach. Remind me to talk to Sully about getting you a regular news beat.”

  The kid got all excited but there was no reason for him to. It was an empty hope, he just hadn’t figured that out yet. The newspaper industry was dying, slowly, painfully. The Chicago Record, my employer for the past fifteen years, was just like all the other rags that had gone terminal before anyone realized what was happening.

  Reporters have always fought over stories with front page potential, but at least there was usually enough space to go around. These days, we often spend our time wrestling over every precious column inch.

  “Is Sully around?”

  “No, Mr. Chapa, he’s in another meeting with the accountants, all the editors are.”

  I thanked Zach for the tip, then called Matt Sullivan’s line and left him a voicemail. I took the next off-ramp, crossed over the expressway, and headed back toward the Loop. I’d be on the story before my editor had a chance to wonder whether someone else should be instead.

  My office is located in the western suburbs, but I was in the city that day following a lead from Nina Candrolini, a pint-sized woman in her late sixties who offered me a cup of green tea and a well-used chair to sit in while I drank it. I passed on the tea, and standing would’ve been the wise choice.

  “You’re my last hope, Mr. Chapa.”

  “Please call me Alex.”

  From the looks of it, Nina was wearing the same makeup she put on the day her husband went missing.

  “Emil would never disappear like this. Not without telling me. It’s been two days now, and I know something bad has happened.”

  Truth is I normally would’ve given her a gentle brush-off. People do sometimes get lost for a day or two. These stories pop up all the time.

  “You’ve tried the police?”

  “They came by, took my information. But they didn’t seem to be in a hurry to do anything. Said he hadn’t been gone long enough.”

  “I don’t want to cause you any more worry, but have you tried the hospitals? Maybe he got in some sort of accident.”

  She raised her voice, probably as much as her frail frame would allow. “I’ve called every hospital and clinic in Chicago asking for Emil or anyone unknown fitting his description. I’m not a fool, Mr. Chapa.”

  “Alex,” I said gently.

  She nodded, sniffled, then I lost her face to a yellowed, embroidered handkerchief that I would have bet was older than I was.

  “I’m sorry, Alex. Didn’t mean to snap at you. I haven’t been able to sleep, and I’m a wreck. But I’ve tried the hospitals, and everyone we know, and the police, and I don’t know what I’m going to do next.”

  The handkerchief returned to her face, but she continued.

  “This isn’t the sort of big story you like to be involved with, I know that. But even after forty years of marriage Emil still makes my heart jump. He’s all I have.”

  I leaned in to comfort her, but thought better of it when the chair crackled and squealed.

  “There are private detectives.”

  “I called one, but he wanted to be paid much more than I can afford. Our finances lately, because of the business—well, I just don’t have it, Mr. Chapa.”

  I felt for her, but didn’t see what I could do. Sadly, this wasn’t really news. Maybe if I spun it, took the human interest angle, something about how no one cares for the senior citizens in our society.

  “I can write a story, print his picture. Maybe someone will recognize him.”

  “That’s not enough. I need to go looking for him. Do you have a car?”

  “Yes, but Mrs. Candrolini—”

  “Please. I’d go myself, but Emil has our car. I don’t have anyone else to turn to.”

  I let myself entertain the notion, cruising around Chicago with an elderly woman. For a moment I pictured something resembling All the President’s Men meets Driving Miss Daisy, and I wanted no part of it. But lately it had been kind of slow in the suburbs, and I’d grown tired of writing about the wife beaters, gang bangers, and sexual predators that crowd the police blotter. This would certainly be something different.

  “Mrs. Candrolini, you need to stay here in case he calls or shows up.”

  “Does that mean you will you do it?”

  I’d already decided to write the story. What could it hurt if I checked out some of Emil’s haunts and talked to a few people?
It would be a way of getting background information.

  “I can try.”

  That brought a cautious smile to her face, the kind that reminds you why you became a reporter.

  The Candrolinis had been antique dealers for more than a quarter century. They made a decent living through the eighties and nineties, until the collectibles bubble burst near the end of the last decade.

  “At first we thought the internet would be a godsend for us dealers. But it didn’t work out that way.”

  She explained that quality items had become hard to find as amateurs flooded the business, and that’s why Emil drove to the city.

  “He goes once a month to check in with some people who buy stuff at garage sales and thrift stores. We used to do that too, but it’s hard to find the energy anymore.”

  “Do you sell these things online?”

  “No, too much competition. We stick to mostly flea markets, and collectibles shows.”

  “Can you tell me who he was planning to visit on this last trip?”

  “Sure. But I already tried to call them.”

  “I should double check.”

  She handed me a small piece of lavender paper with three names and addresses written on it in textbook perfect longhand, and a photo of her husband.

  “The first one is a man he’s dealt with for a while, the other two are new, I think,” she said, then waited for me to respond with a word of hope.

  I wasn’t going to lie to her.

  “I’ll call you as soon as I know anything,” I said, then walked to my car and drove away without looking back.

  As soon as I pulled onto the expressway I put a call in to the Chicago branch of the FBI and asked for Special Agent Joseph Andrews.

  “I’m telling you right up front, Al, I do not have the time to be doing you any favors right now.”

  “Busy, huh?”

  “Very.”

  “I understand, and you know I would never waste your time.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “I just need access to some IPASS records from two days ago,” I said as casually as I could, referring to Illinois’ automatic toll system which can make it easy to track a car’s movement, as long as the driver is registered for the program, which Emil Candrolini was.

  “Al, that’s a favor.”

  “Not really. The driver of the car in question has been missing for two days. His wife believes he was driving into the city from Batavia, which means he would’ve passed through at least two toll booths.”

  I heard him sigh, then silence. I’d been friends with Joe Andrews for more than twenty years, been best man at his wedding, a pallbearer at his father’s funeral, so I knew what was coming next.

  “Goddamnit, Al,” another sigh, “what’s the plate number?”

  Half an hour later, I was driving through the tunnel beneath the old Chicago post office when Andrews called me back and confirmed that the Candrolini’s ten-year-old Chevy Impala had indeed passed through two eastbound toll booths along I-88.

  “But that’s it, there’s no record of a return trip,” he added.

  I thanked him, promised to check in later that day, then drove to the first address on the list. It turned out to be a small curio shop on Clark, situated in a corner of an eighty-year-old building, just north of the river.

  It had once been a drugstore, complete with a lunch counter and regular customers. The business space next door looked like it had originally been part of a larger whole, and the two still shared a display window. Now one half was a coffee shop catering to twenty-somethings and poseurs, and the other was the store, crammed with a mish-mash of old junk, some of it valuable, most of it not.

  I walked past collections of movie memorabilia, baseball pennants, and a dozen stacks of men’s magazines, to the middle of the store. A tan, very muscular man in a St. Louis Cardinals cap and faded blue t-shirt was kneeling next to a box of old comics, flipping through them. The guy I needed to talk to was manning the counter.

  “Yeah, sure, I’m Sam Preston, who are you?”

  Preston was tall and narrow, and he might’ve been an athlete, but I got the sense he didn’t come from that kind of family. Long, thin black hair draped his pale face.

  “My name is Alex Chapa, I’m a reporter, and I’m looking for Emil Candrolini.”

  He reached out to shake my hand, revealing a roughly inked tattoo of a lightning bolt on the inside of his forearm. I filled him in on the details, and he confirmed that Emil had been there two days before.

  “Emil’s a hell of a guy, comes in every once in a while. He buys shit I’d never be able to sell. I give it to him below cost a lot of the time on account of I like the guy, and he’s a good customer.”

  “What kind of things does he buy?”

  “Junk. But then, it’s all junk, isn’t it? One person’s trash, another man’s treasure. Buy a box of cereal, keep it unopened for thirty years, someone will pay five hundred bucks for the toy inside. Crazy world, right?”

  He leaned back against a door behind the counter on the common wall between the two businesses. It was covered with Garbage Pail Kids stickers, most of which were faded and pealing.

  “Is that the kind of junk he normally buys from you?” I said, pointing to the awful stickers that I vaguely remembered from my youth.

  “No, not this shit, exactly, but sort of. Emil never liked the antiquey stuff. He’s into collectibles. You know, baseball cards, records, movie posters. Most of those things hold their value, but Emil sometimes buys up stuff no one seems to want any more. You know, like Pokemon cards. Some of those used to go for a few hundred bucks a piece. Now you’d be lucky to get ten bucks for a trunk full. Just couldn’t hold their value.”

  “Emil bought Pokemon cards?”

  Preston shook his head. I waited, unwilling to ask again. He stayed quiet, folding his arms, his lips pressed firmly together. I got the hint and fished out my wallet. All I had was a twenty and a five, and I didn’t think he’d make change. I handed him the larger bill.

  “Emil accumulated stuff like collections of National Geographic magazine, Michael Jackson memorabilia, and pogs,” he said, his face splitting into a wide grin. “He thought they would become valuable again someday.”

  “Pogs?”

  “He bought pogs. A whole shitload of them.”

  The guy who was hunched over the comic books looked up for a moment. A big pog collector, no doubt.

  “And what, exactly, is a pog?”

  Preston spent the longest three minutes of my life explaining everything I ever wanted to know about pogs, including the details of their quick rise in popularity, and their even quicker fall. He told me about the many variations, and the important difference between a regular pog and a slammer, even pulled a few out from behind the counter and spread them across the glass top.

  When he was finished, I took him down a different track, asking questions about Emil, fleshing out his personality. Old man, forgotten by society, trying to eek out a living by selling items from the past. It was heavy on the schmaltz, and wouldn’t get me a Pulitzer, but some readers love that sort of thing.

  I gave him my business card and as I turned to leave I saw a large doll in a glass case. Preston noted my interest and launched into his spiel.

  “It’s a limited edition American Girl piece. It’s in mint condition in its original, unopened box.”

  He made it sound expensive and more valuable than it probably was, but the doll reminded me of my daughter Nikki, and I knew she’d love it.

  “How much?”

  “It books at seventy-five, but since you’re a friend of Emil’s it’s yours for forty.”

  “Do you take credit cards?”

  He pulled out one of those old credit card gadgets, the kind that makes an imprint of the card on a carbon copy, and I handed him my Visa.

  After he’d bagged the doll, I thanked him and headed to the next place on the list, a warehouse and factory just west of Old Town. A name
had once been painted on the building’s brick façade, Jorgensen’s, maybe, but that was decades ago. The street that ran along the front of the building was narrow and empty, except for one truly eye-catching set of wheels.

  I parked next to a mint new Corvette, spent three seconds admiring the lines, then walked to a door that had one of those cheap tin entrance signs stuck in the middle. The old knob was scuffed, and badly dented, and it complained loudly when I gave it a quick twist. The room on the other side of the metal door was a cramped office that smelled of dried sweat and recycled grease. The paint on the walls may have been beige once, but years of cigarette smoke and stale air had left a mud brown patina.