Shot of Tequila Read online

  All of Tequila warning bells rang at once. He sensed quick movement coming behind him and swung around, connecting a right cross into the face of a charging Terco. Terco’s head snapped back as if on hinges, and he fell to his knees.

  Then Matisse came at him, leaping over Terco. Tequila pivoted left and snap-kicked him in the ribs. The larger man grunted, reflexively dropping his cocked fist to his chest to stop the hurt. Tequila spun around fast and used the momentum to smack the back of his left hand into Matisse’s nose. It burst like a rotten tomato, and Matisse howled as if part canine.

  “Freeze!”

  Tequila heard the gun cock and back-flipped onto Marty’s desk. While still in the air he hit the release button on his shoulder rig and jammed both hands into his holsters, coming out with two .45s as he landed on his feet. One was pointed at Marty and the other aimed at Leman, who was now standing behind the beaten Terco and Matisse and aiming a shotgun at Tequila’s noggin.

  “Don’t kill him!” Marty cried.

  “You lousy, piece of shit thief,” Leman spat.

  Tequila kept his sights rock steady, fighting against the adrenaline surging through his veins.

  “This is a big misunderstanding, whatever it is.” He kept his voice even, tried to control his breathing. “Drop the gun, Leman, or I’ll shoot your finger off so you can’t pull the trigger. You know I can.”

  Leman swallowed, tensing up. They’d gone shooting together once, at a gun club in the suburbs. Using his .45, Tequila had put three full clips, twenty-one rounds, into a controlled space the size of a quarter from forty yards away. Then he put twenty-one more rounds through the same hole with his left hand.

  “No, Tequila, I think you’ll be the one dropping the guns.”

  It was Slake, coming from behind him. Tequila glanced backwards and saw the evil son of a bitch peeking out of the closet, a 9mm trained on the small of his back.

  Tequila weighed his options. He’d obviously been accused, and already convicted, of doing something he hadn’t done. The obvious guess was that someone had taken Marty’s Super Bowl stash, and everyone thought it was him. He could either try to convince them otherwise, or try to kill everyone here.

  He figured the odds for each choice were about the same, and neither of them very good.

  “Drop the gun, Tequila,” Slake cooed.

  Marty shook with rage. “Drop it, you shit!”

  Matisse and Terco slowly gained their footing, making the situation worse. If Tequila jumped to the side and shot Leman while in motion, he might have enough time to draw a bead on Slake before Slake popped a cap in his head. He’d have to drop Slake with one shot, because Terco and Matisse would then draw on him, and Marty sure as hell had some heat on his person as well.

  The deciding factor was Slake. If it had been any of the others in the closet, Tequila would have gone for self-preservation and shot his way out of there. But he knew Slake. Slake had hated Tequila since they’d first met. Part of it was jealousy. Slake had never been in Marty’s favor, while Tequila always seemed to be. But mostly, it was because deep down inside, Slake was a rotten human being. Tequila sensed that Slake would dearly love to put a few bullets into him, and his eagerness to do so meant Tequila wouldn’t have the advantage his quickness normally gave him.

  “I’ll lose the guns,” Tequila said, calm as a sunset, “if someone tells me what’s going on.”

  “You stole my money!” Marty screamed, his red balloon of a face threatening to pop.

  “I didn’t steal any money. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “If you’re innocent,” Slake said, in a voice barely above a whisper, “then you don’t have anything to worry about.”

  Tequila stared hard at Slake. He saw little sparks of what looked like flame in the thin man’s eyes. He also noticed that Slake was slowly, every so slowly, pulling the trigger on his nine millimeter.

  “Fine,” Tequila said, turning to Marty. “But I’m being straight with you. I didn’t steal any money. I’ve worked for you for five years Marty, and I haven’t wronged you once. Whatever reason you think I did, it’s incorrect. I’m innocent here, Marty. And I’m putting away my guns to show good faith.”

  Tequila could feel the heat from Marty’s stare, all of the anger still boiling on the surface of his face.

  “One more thing, Marty. Slake’s about to shoot me. If he kills me, you won’t know what I know.”

  Marty turned his angry gaze to the closet.

  “Slake, you asshole, if you shoot him so help me I’ll gut you with a fork and string tennis rackets with you.”

  Tequila saw the tension go out of Slake’s hand, the trigger returning back to its normal position. Moving slowly, testing the waters, Tequila lowered the gun aimed at Marty and holstered it. Then he gave Leman his full attention.

  “I’m sure Marty would gut you as well, Leman, if you decide to take it upon yourself to end my life.”

  “Drop it,” Marty ordered the ex-cop.

  Leman made a sour face, and then stuck the pistol in his pants. Tequila reciprocated by holstering his other .45. He hopped off the desk, his eyes locked onto Marty’s.

  “Now tell me what you think I did.”

  “I can do better than that. I can show you. Matisse!”

  Matisse was pinching his bloody nose, an action that had consumed his full concentration for the last few minutes. He seemed to snap awake when his name was called.

  “Yeah, Marty?”

  “Go find me another TV. Hurry up.”

  Matisse nodded and lumbered off.

  “Okay, Tequila. I’m going to give you the benefit of several hundred doubts. Earlier today, two men drilled a hole in the steel door of my counting room and gassed Matisse, Leman, and my two number crunchers. We’ve got it all on tape. One of those men was short and muscular, and had a butterfly tattoo on his right hand. It was an inside job. All of my men have been accounted for during the time of the robbery. And Leman, right before he went out, heard one of the burglars call your name. What does all of that add up to?”

  “It sounds like someone set me up.”

  “So where were you during the robbery?”

  “I was tracking down Billy Chico, as you told me. I found him robbing a liquor store on Devon, and he drew on me. You’ll read about it in the morning papers.”

  “What do you mean, as I told you? I didn’t send you after Chico. It was your day off.”

  “You called me around six.”

  “Are you saying that I don’t fucking know when I call you and when I don’t?”

  Tequila tensed another notch. He replayed the phone call again in his brain. It was Marty’s voice, telling him to go collect the two grand marker from Chico. He’d even given Tequila Chico’s description and his new address, the apartment Tequila had trailed him from. But if it wasn’t Marty who called him…

  “If it wasn’t you, it was someone claiming to be you.”

  “And you don’t know my voice from some other schmuck pretending to be me?”

  “It sounded like your voice.”

  Marty stared at him. Matisse entered the office lugging a twenty inch Zenith, which he’d gotten from the utility room where the video security cameras were wired up. He and Slake placed it in the nook where the previous TV used to reside before Marty had assassinated it. Slake hooked up the VCR while Matisse fiddled with the cord, trying to figure out which way the prongs fit into the electrical outlet. Slake finished first.

  Without a word, Marty the Maniac hit the PLAY button on his remote control, and Tequila watched the robbery unfold. First the men approaching with the tank. Then the drilling. Then the hose. Then the opening of the door by punching in the correct access code. And finally, the exiting the vault with four suitcases full of cash. Matisse paused the frame on the clear still of the butterfly tattoo.

  Tequila’s mind swam. He realized that he’d chosen incorrectly. This tape damned him, damned him beyond a doubt, and he should have
shot his way out when he had the chance.

  “So tell me, my friend,” Marty’s voice edged with hostility, “that that isn’t you.”

  “That’s not me. I was at the liquor store. And after that, I was at a bar called the Blues Note. I’m being framed. The burglars wanted that tattoo to be seen, to blame me. If I robbed you I wouldn’t have taken off the gloves.”

  “You made a mistake. You took them off in the vault to load the money, then forgot about them.”

  “I don’t make mistakes, Marty.”

  “Oh, but you did, Tequila,” Marty said, rising out of his chair. “You made the biggest mistake of all. You robbed ME!”

  Tequila had cleared leather on both guns when Slake hit him with the tazer. He dropped the .45s in a spasm and fell backward as his entire body held rigid by the electric shock. The pain was magnificent, every nerve firing at once, every muscle contracting into knots.

  His last conscious image was Slake’s face, smeared with a grin so vicious he had appeared to be salivating, and then a fist to the side of the head.

  Tequila was out when Terco punched him, but Slake tazed him again just to make sure.

  “Take him into the vault,” Marty ordered. “Tie him up.”

  Terco and Matisse dragged Tequila off.

  “Let me interrogate him, Marty,” Slake smiled. “I’ll get him to sing like Domingo.”

  Marty furrowed his brow. He didn’t like the fact that Tequila had been so insistent on his innocence. Sure, all guilty men were liars. But Tequila either lied better than most, or else he was telling the truth. And if he was telling the truth, Marty was going to kill an irreplaceable employee. What he needed was more proof before he started the interrogation. Once the torture began, it didn’t matter if Tequila were guilty or not. Marty would have to waste him. If he didn’t, Tequila surely would return the favor.

  “I’ll do the interrogation. You go check his apartment, see if you can find the money.”

  “How about his car?”

  “Yeah. Car too. And Terco, go check Tequila’s alibi. The liquor store thing and that bar he mentioned, the Blues Note.”

  They scurried off and another troubling thought occurred to Marty. If Tequila didn’t steal the money, who did? It had to be someone close to him. Someone who knew the routine, who had access to the vault.

  One of the other collectors? Or maybe one of the accountants?

  Marty thought of something he was always preaching to his employees. “Paranoia grows like weeds.”

  It was certainly growing in Marty. He tried to shrug it off, but it clung like a tight sweater.

  “You want me to get your toolbox, Marty?” Leman asked. He’d been standing in the office, waiting for Marty to give him direction.

  “Yeah. My toolbox.”

  Leman nodded and left.

  Marty sat back in his chair, staring blankly at the paused image of a butterfly tattoo on his new television. That was Tequila. It had to be. He’d robbed Marty, and then hoped that his good record and his proclaiming innocence would be enough to avoid suspicion. And if the dumb son of a bitch hadn’t taken his gloves off, maybe he would have gotten away with it.

  “Dumb shit,” Marty told the TV screen.

  The Maniac clenched his fingers. By the end of the night he’d have his money back. Along with Tequila’s accomplice. He didn’t doubt it at all.

  Slake appeared in the doorway, holding up a black sweater and a ski mask.

  “These were in Tequila’s trunk.”

  Marty grimaced at the stupidity of it all. Too stupid, maybe? It had crossed Marty’s mind that Tequila might have been framed. With enough planning, anyone could have done it.

  He didn’t credit his entourage with enough brains to stuff a Cornish hen, but there was always the slim chance one of them recruited outside help.

  But Marty knew from experience that the simplest answer, the obvious one, was usually the truth. He’d wait for Terco to report back on the liquor store and the Blues Note, and then he’d get the truth from the little shit himself.

  In his day, Marty had been one of the most feared men in Chicago. He still was, but not in the same way as back then. Now days, people feared Marty’s power. Back in the sixties, they feared his rage.

  There were seven unsolved murder cases in Chicago police files from those days. All had been linked by cause of death. Each of the victims had been systematically beaten to death. Almost every bone in their bodies had been broken, crushed, shattered, or fractured. Autopsy reports showed the use of hammers, pliers, wrenches, and even a vice. The work of a maniac, thought police. And they suspected a certain maniac up-and-comer named Marty Martelli.

  Marty had been questioned for five of the murders, but had never been arrested. His friends had been too powerful, and he hadn’t left any evidence behind. The Maniac was as careful as he was thorough. Not only had he escaped prosecution, but every one of those men had given up the information Marty had been trying to drag out of them.

  Tequila would talk, all right. He’d talk until his lips fell off.

  Or until Marty pulled them off.

  “Go to his apartment, look for the money,” Marty ordered Slake. “Bring Matisse with you. And I’ll give you both a double bonus if you can find the other guy in the video.”

  Slake nodded and tossed the sweater and ski mask onto Marty’s desk.

  Marty’s fingers twitched. He was itching to get his hands on Tequila, to use his toolbox on the little bastard.

  Itching.

  Tequila awoke bound to a chair, the side of his head throbbing where Terco had hit him. He instantly registered several things at once: He was locked in the vault room, he’d been tied with clothesline, tightly and expertly, with his hands behind his back, his guns were missing but his holster rig was still on, and he could feel his keys in his front pocket.

  A bad situation, but not a hopeless one. On his key ring was a Swiss Army knife.

  Tequila began to flex and relax his chest muscles, shrugging and shaking his shoulders at intervals. The line that was wrapped around his body, securing his torso to the chair, slowly and inexorably undulated down his chest, until it rested, still tied, around his stomach. This gave Tequila enough room to bend forward.

  Flexibility is just as important as strength in gymnastics, and Tequila was more flexible than most. His diminutive size working to his advantage, Tequila was able to touch his chin to his lap. With a combination of neck and hip motions, he gradually nudged his keys out of the pocket of his loose-fitting chinos. They jingled to the floor with more noise than he cared to make.

  He straightened his back out to normal and stretched, trying to work out the soreness in his neck. Then he adjusted his position with his toes, took a deep breath, and rocked the chair onto its side. He hit the ground hard, and his head rang from the impact, making the vault appear to blur and spin. After getting his bearings, Tequila felt around with his hands tied behind him, seeking out the keys. He’d predicted his fall correctly, and the keys were in his grasp within a few seconds of searching.

  Sweating now, Tequila pictured the Swiss Army Knife in his mind and opened the longest blade from memory. Then, working his fingers like tiny pistons, he sawed back and forth at the rope binding his wrists.

  The task required his total concentration. His fingers were strong, but the repetitive, restricted movement caused his hand to cramp up. Every so often his crippled fingers would spasm, and he’d dig the knife into his wrists. Sweat, and later blood, made the knife slippery, hard to hold. Tequila chanted his mantra silently in his head, as he did when working out, and willed the movement of the blade through the pain.

  He had to cut through three knots, nicking himself dozens of times in the process, before the rope gave. Hands free, he made easy work of the rest of his restraints, and then looked around the vault. The door was the only entry point, and as expected it had been locked. Maybe with a battering ram and a few hours he’d be able to get it open. But he had neither. S
o he carried the chair over to the covered-up vent in the corner of the room.

  The vent was about three feet wide and two feet high, and covering the grating was a sheet of metal, held in place with four screws. He worked out the screws using the Phillips head on his Swiss Army Knife, wondering why those idiots Leman and Matisse hadn’t noticed that the damn vent was blocked off the whole time they’d been in there.

  The final screw dropped to the floor and he removed the sheet metal. The grating was behind it, and four more screws removed that as well. Not stopping to think about it, Tequila hauled himself up to the vent and wriggled himself into the tight shaft.

  Two things struck him as he wormed his way into the darkness. The first was the incredible heat. Marty had it cranked up to boiling, and he couldn’t keep his hands in one place too long before they began to burn. But even more oppressive than the heat was the dust. It got in Tequila’s eyes and mouth, and breathing was only possible after pulling his shirt up over his nose and mouth to filter out the airborne grit.

  Tequila moved as quickly as he could in an almost completely horizontal position, dragging himself forward by his hands and elbows and adding a little propulsion with his toes. A tight, hot, filthy, uncomfortable, claustrophobic journey, but infinitely better than waiting for what the Maniac had in store for him.

  Each sound he made was magnified, and banging a knee sounded like taking an aluminum bat to a tin garbage can. When he stopped to rest, the radiant heat of the metal seeped into his knees, palms, and elbows, threatening first degree burns.

  Twice he had to smother his face into his shoulder to prevent coughing fits. Another time he couldn’t stifle a sneeze quick enough and he heard it echo throughout the labyrinth of ducts, seemingly forever.

  After four minutes of sweaty, painful crawling, his tunnel ended abruptly, meeting with a vertical shaft. Tequila squinted down into the darkness of the duct and was hit with a wave of heat that made his eyes dry and sticky. The furnace was down there.

  So he went up.

  He pulled his body into the larger vertical vent and held himself suspended by pressing his hands against the hot metal of the sides, very much like an iron cross on the rings. Spreading his legs, he turned sideways and placed his feet against the sides as well, thankful he had decided to wear gym shoes with rubber soles instead of his cowboy boots. Alternating his hand and foot holds, he made his way up the duct, mountain-climber style.