Rum Runner - A Thriller (Jacqueline Jack Daniels Mysteries Book 9) Read online

  About RUM RUNNER

  Twenty years ago, a young cop named Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels arrested one of the most sadistic killers she’d ever encountered. She has since retired from the Chicago Police Department in order to raise her toddler daughter.

  But old grudges never die. They fester until the right opportunity comes along.

  While on vacation in the Wisconsin north woods, Jack learns—too late—that her old adversary is out of prison. He has revenge on his mind. And he’s bringing an army with him…

  Outnumbered, outgunned, and cut off from the outside world, Jack Daniels is about to learn the meaning of last stand.

  This is the 9th Jack Daniels novel, after STIRRED. More than 1 million Jack Daniels novels have been sold worldwide.

  RUM RUNNER by J.A. Konrath

  That which does not kill you, keeps trying…

  RUM RUNNER

  A Jack Daniels Thriller

  J.A. KONRATH

  CONTENTS

  Rum Runner

  Author’s Note

  Begin reading RUM RUNNER

  A Note from Joe

  About J.A. Konrath

  Joe Konrath’s Complete Bibliography

  Sign up for the J.A. Konrath newsletter

  Other Recommended Titles

  Copyright

  Rum Runner

  1 ounce light rum

  1 ounce dark rum

  1 ounce blackberry brandy

  ¾ ounce banana liqueur

  3 ounce orange juice

  1 ounce pineapple juice

  ½ ounce grenadine syrup

  ½ ounce 151 proof rum

  Shake first seven ingredients with ice. Pour into hurricane glass. Float 151 on top. Garnish with lime and cherry.

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  This book takes place during the same timeframe as my horrific suspense novel WEBCAM, written under my pen name Jack Kilborn. It also happens concurrently with the thriller short story WATCHED TOO LONG, co-written with my frequent collaborator Ann Voss Peterson. Some characters, and situations, appear in all three stories, and they overlap and crossover with one another.

  You do not have to read all three books to find out what happens. Each of these can be read and enjoyed as a standalone. There are no spoilers.

  That said, it was an exciting challenge to write three stories that interweave, and I hope readers will enjoy this experiment. If you like Rum Runner, please give WEBCAM and WATCHED TOO LONG a try. This trilogy was a whole lot of fun to write.

  As always, thanks for reading.

  Joe Konrath

  TWENTY YEARS AGO

  JACK

  You look… uh… great,” Detective Herb Benedict told me.

  My Bonjour jeans sported a missing pocket, a tear in the knee, and so much dirt and grime the blue looked like gray. The T-shirt I had on read Frankie Says Relax, but it was almost impossible to see under all of the stains. One sleeve hung on by a few threads. The other was missing. On my feet were a pair of Keds that cost me a whole quarter at the Salvation Army. They were so beaten up I felt I’d been overcharged.

  “This shirt smells awful,” I said.

  “Got it from the assistant medical examiner.” Herb shrugged. “Original owner didn’t need it anymore.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was kidding, and I didn’t really want to know. In my partner’s hand was a wine cork that he’d blackened with the car lighter. He kept dabbing at it with his index finger and applying the soot to my face, humming something off tune but vaguely familiar. For some crazy reason I thought of that PBS painting show, with that artist who dotted his canvas with happy little bushes and trees.

  “What’s that song you’re humming?” I asked, mostly to take my mind off things.

  “Truckin. Grateful Dead. Jerry Garcia died yesterday.”

  I considered the implications. “I wonder if he’s grateful.”

  The joke fell flat. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, but my mouth was too dry to swallow.

  Herb leaned back, appraising his work. “We need to do something with your hair.”

  “Why?”

  “It looks too nice.”

  “Thanks. It’s called The Rachel. Do you watch Friends?”

  “It’s too stylish. Crack addicts don’t care about style.”

  I touched my hair, fluffing out the layers. “This one does.”

  “I’m serious, Jack. Druggies don’t buy hairspray. They don’t buy clothes. They don’t buy food. They buy crack, and nothing but crack. You go into that drug den and try to make a buy with that hair, T-Nail is going to spot you as a narc.”

  I chewed my lower lip, tasted burned cork. This morning it had taken me twenty minutes to get my hair to look like this. But Herb was right. Terrence Wycleaf Johnson, known on the street as T-Nail, was a very bad man and the prime suspect in over two dozen torture-murders. My disguise had to ring true if I had any chance of getting close to him.

  “Fine.” I tossed my head from side to side and ran my fingers through the deliberately uneven part, messing it up.

  “It still looks too nice.”

  I frowned. “You got any hairspray or gel?”

  “I don’t even have a comb. Look at me and tell me I’m a man overly concerned by his appearance.”

  He weighed about sixty more pounds than he should have, and his recent eating habits proved he had not yet hit his stride. His tie told colorful tales of greasy cheeseburgers, ketchup soaked French fries, and chili cheese dogs. His mustache was thick, curly, and a bit shorter on the left side.

  Herb Benedict was a good cop, but he wouldn’t be on the cover of GQ anytime soon. I might have told him that, but he was my senior partner and deserved some respect.

  He was also the guy covering my ass.

  I located the donut bag on the floor of the car. There were extra creamers in the bag, leftover from when we bought coffee that morning. I poured three into my cupped hand and rubbed it onto half my head. Then I checked my work in Herb’s rearview mirror.

  Yuck. Bye-bye Jennifer Aniston, fashion plate. Hello Jack Daniels, crackhead.

  “One more thing, Mrs. Daniels.”

  Herb pointed to my left hand. I stared down at my ring. A flashy diamond and gold jacket combination. Every time I looked at it I had mixed feelings. I felt love for Alan, even though my husband wasn’t the easiest person in the world to please. It sometimes amazed me that I’d ever gotten married. I spent way too much time at work, and at home I wasn’t easy to live with. But there was the proof, a large garish stone flanked by so many smaller stones it looked like I had a crystal chandelier on my hand.

  I tugged at the rings, surprised how easily they came off, and handed them to Herb. He tucked them into his breast pocket.

  “I’ll take care of them.”

  His tone was nonchalant, but I took it to mean he’d return them to me if I came back, or make sure Alan got them if I didn’t.

  “Thanks.”

  Herb opened up a battered plastic case and handed me the earbud radio. It was the size of a hearing aid. Tiny—but amazingly—wireless. What a difference from even a few years ago, when transmitters weighed a ton and couldn’t be concealed in anything smaller than a handbag.

  While Herb messed with the levels on the receiver, I put my left foot on his dashboard and tied the stained laces on my sneakers. Then I pulled up my pants leg and checked my piece, a Seecamp .32ACP tucked into a Velcro ankle holster. Six rounds, plus one in the spout. It didn’t reassure me. Crack houses were like fortresses, guarded by gangbangers carrying Mac-10 submachine
guns and sporting the latest in Kevlar body armor. They’d laugh at my little pea shooter.

  “Testing, testing one two three. You hear me, Jack?”

  “Perfectly. Sounds like you’re right next to me.”

  My voice came up through the radio receiver, small and tinny.

  “Funny, Rachel. How are Ross and Joey?”

  “So you do watch Friends.”

  “Everyone watches Friends. The earpiece working?”

  “Yeah.”

  I checked the mirror to make sure my hair covered the earbud, then smeared more charcoal under my eyes, giving me a haunted look. I hadn’t been undercover in years, and it terrified me. That last time hadn’t ended well. I wasn’t hoping for a repeat.

  Herb placed his hand on my shoulder.

  “No heroics, hotshot. You’re just there to make the buy, see if T-Nail is home. The Special Response Team will take him down.”

  I nodded, but it didn’t reassure me. Herb was parked six blocks from the crack house, just beyond the wide perimeter of street kids acting as cop spotters. The SRT was two miles away. If I got into trouble, I’d be long dead before backup arrived.

  I clenched my jaw, tried to will my hands to stop shaking. Herb must have noticed, because he put a brotherly hand on my shoulder.

  “It’ll be fine. A quick in and out. Like buying fruit at your local grocer.”

  Except my grocer didn’t carry guns that could fire a thousand rounds a minute. But this was the reason I accepted the promotion to Homicide Detective. Doing traffic stops and arresting drunken suburbanites in sports bars was all part of serving and protecting, but I became a cop to catch bad guys. Real bad guys.

  T-Nail was as bad as they came. In the past six months, bodies had been turning up all over Chicago with multiple broken bones and holes in their arms and legs. The M.E. theorized they’d been nailed to something, probably a wall or a floor, then beaten to death. Majority of the vics were Vice Lords and Latin Kings; gangs who belonged to the People Nation. T-Nail was a higher up in the Eternal Black C-Notes—a set from the rival Folk Nation—and the word was he’d been extending his turf. This was something the CPD Gang Unit corroborated.

  Plus, the guy’s street name was T-Nail. Couldn’t get much more obvious than that.

  The problem was there were no witnesses, no informants, no insiders to pin the murders on T-Nail.

  At least, not until last night. A wit came forward—the brother of a boy T-Nail killed—willing to testify against him for that and two other murders. But before T-Nail could be arrested, we needed to confirm where he was. People and Folk kept tabs on members of the Chicago Police Department the same way we kept tabs on them, so a new face was needed. Currently, there were no women in the Gang Unit, so I was asked by my captain to go into the housing project and see if T-Nail was inside. If so, I’d signal the response team, and they’d come get him.

  Simple enough.

  Still, I felt sick to my stomach, and my palms were sweating so bad my fingers were beginning to prune.

  “I don’t like undercover work,” I glanced sideways at Herb. “Scary shit.” I felt weak and girlish saying so.

  “It comes with wearing the badge. The day you’re no longer afraid is the day you’ll die.”

  I let the words sink in. “Thanks.” What a breath of fresh air Herb was compared to my last pain-in-the-ass partner, an idiot named Harry that I’d sworn I’d never talk to again.

  “Good luck, Jack.”

  I nodded and got out of the car, taking in my surroundings.

  Chicago was hot, upper eighties, the late morning sun beating down like it was pissed off. We were parked next to a burned-out storefront on 37th and State Street, the boarded-up windows tagged with gang symbols. The sidewalk was dirty and looked like someone had taken a jackhammer to it. In front of Herb’s car was an old Ford up on cinderblocks, stripped down to the chassis. Behind us was a pothole big enough to break a truck’s rear axle.

  Urban renewal hadn’t reached the neighborhood of Bronzeville.

  I tried to get into character, which wasn’t the easiest thing to do. I was a white married female cop with a middle class North Side upbringing. I didn’t know poverty. I didn’t know about being addicted. The only drugs I’d ever done were prescription pain relievers after assorted injuries, and a few bong hits in college when I said “yes” despite Nancy Reagan’s pleas to the contrary. I had no idea what it was like to be poor, hopeless, or strung out, and my acting skills were limited to faking orgasms in my late teens.

  Still, I had to be convincing. I slumped my shoulders. I dragged my feet. I put an expression on my face somewhere between “life sucks” and “don’t mess with me” and began to trudge east, toward the crack house.

  After two blocks I saw the first spotter. Black kid, hundred dollar Air Jordan gym shoes, wearing a drip bag on his head to protect his Bulls jersey from his hair activator. He couldn’t have been more than twelve. It was a school day, but I don’t think he cared.

  He eyed me as I approached. Strange cracker chick, dressed like she’s homeless, moving slow but with purpose. An undercover cop?

  No, I’m just a crackhead. Don’t go paging your boss.

  “How you doing, Jack?”

  Herb, in my ear.

  “Why doesn’t the city build new sidewalks here?” I said, navigating a section of broken concrete as rocky as any moon crater.

  The spotter kid looked at me when I spoke. I put my right palm on my left biceps, gave him the universal salute. He returned a one finger greeting of his own. I shuffled past him, and he winced at my odor. The kid glanced away, his expression blank. Apparently I passed twelve-year-old muster. Score one for Herb’s Make-Up Magic.

  “Welfare,” Herb said. “Tax payers get street repair. Public aid gets bupkis. You at the Homes yet?”

  Herb was referring to the Robert Taylor Homes, a housing project stretching from 39th to 54th Street. Twenty-eight high-rise buildings, sixteen floors each, home to over twenty-thousand people, ninety-five percent of them unemployed. The structures were drab and tall and ugly, looking more like prisons than decent places to raise a family. Fencing stretched over the outside porches to prevent people from jumping. Or being thrown off. No lawns, just patches of dirt and weeds and garbage. Broken glass everywhere, dotted with an occasional hypodermic needle.

  I grimaced. This was the slum. The ghetto. The place where hope goes to die.

  My destination was the worst part of the neighborhood, known colloquially as the Hole. As I approached T-Nail’s building, a crumbling monstrosity with nearly every window broken, I felt my heart rate kick up.

  “I’m here,” I said, turning onto State Street. “Looks like Beirut.”

  “Beirut doesn’t have as many guns. Keep alert.”

  As if I was going to curl up in an alley and take a nap.

  I headed toward the entrance. Three black guys hung out by the front door, passing a basketball back and forth. Despite the heat, they each wore Starter jackets. A ghetto blaster pumped out rap music, angry lyrics about hating the police.

  “Three guards in front,” I said.

  They stared at me, no longer dribbling the ball. One of them reached a hand into his jacket. My feet got heavier and time seemed to slow down.

  “You lost, ho?”

  Young guy, not even out of his teens, ball cap cocked to the right.

  “Jamal sent me,” I said. I hoped the password was still good.

  He squinted at me, then grabbed his groin. “Got cha-ching, or you wanna suck for the rock?”

  His buddies laughed, and they all exchanged complicated handshakes. I tried to walk past, and the young guy grabbed my arm.

  “Axed you a question, bitch.”

  I had an overwhelming urge to twist away, go for my piece. But I wasn’t going to let fear control my actions. A crackhead wouldn’t be scared. She’d have dealt with this shit a hundred times before. She’d be bored with it, maybe even annoyed, and anxious to get he
r fix.

  “I got money.”

  He didn’t move.

  “You gonna let me spend it, or I gotta go someplace else?”

  We stared at each other. His eyes were much older than he was.

  “Six-fifteen.” He released my arm.

  I shouldered past, heart beating wildly. Then I swallowed, sucked in some hot city air, and headed into the crack house to find a homicidal maniac hiding among a group of soulless killers.

  The front door was off its hinges, and I walked into the lobby past two African American children playing jacks on the floor with stones. The building was dark inside, the overhead lights broken, and it smelled like urine and body odor. The scuffed floor was sticky under my gym shoes. I pressed the elevator button.

  “Don’t work,” one of the kids said.

  “Never did,” said the other.

  I looked around for a staircase, found one, and began the trek upward. It was hot, smelly, dark, the bannister long gone, graffiti on the walls and steps. A rat ran past my feet, and I let out an involuntary shriek, grateful no one was in the stairwell to witness it.

  Crackhead, Jack. You’re a crackhead. You’re used to squalor.

  Though I wondered how anyone could ever get used to living like this.

  Oh. Right. That’s why they smoke the crack.

  My cardio was good, so when I got to the sixth floor I wasn’t winded. But a drug addict would be, so as I walked down the hall I panted and staggered a bit, holding the walls, ignoring the two gangbangers guarding the door to 615.

  One was wearing a purple and gold knitted winter cap with an L.A. Lakers logo, and a matching hoodie over a green shirt. His right sneaker was untied. His partner was bare-chested with a dozen or so thin gold chains around his neck. His jeans were so baggy I didn’t know how they stayed up. He had bandanas around his right ankle; purple, green, and yellow.

  “What we got here?” asked the bare-chested one. He had a grill over his teeth—gold falsies with a diamond chip.