Floaters - A Jack Daniels/Alex Chapa Mystery Read online

  Collection proceedings didn’t involve friendly chit-chat over coffee. They involved hurt. Lots of hurt. And Chico was far too fine to have anything broken, scarred, burned, or severed.

  So Billy Chico took his last sixty bucks, bought a piece from a runner with gang ties, and went out to rob Teddy’s Liquors on 23rd and Cal.

  It was cold, cold enough to freeze the juice that your brain floats in. Chico wore his trademark black leather jacket with the fringes hanging from the sleeves and he looked fly, even though it kept him warm for shit. The liquor store he picked was three blocks from his apartment; one with late-night hours and a constant flow of business. Not a corner store that just sold beer by the bottle, but a classy joint that had all that expensive wine and gift packs and overpriced whiskey in ceramic jugs shaped like Corvettes. Fancy shit like that. Chico figured on one of the busiest liquor days of the year—Super Bowl Sunday—the place would have at least two k in green. He might even come out a couple bucks ahead on the deal.

  Billy Chico stopped at the front door, his skinny ass cheeks knocking together like two frozen oranges, an icy hand wrapped around the butt of the .32 in his jacket pocket. He hesitated. Having grown up on the streets, fear was something common to Chico, so fear wasn’t what gave him pause. But staring at his reflection in the heavy glass door made him realize he’d forgotten to bring something to cover his face. The asshole in the store could identify him. Murder never occurred to Chico, because that was for psychos. He was too good-looking to do hard time. Prison scared him, almost more than that crazy bookie did.

  Almost.

  He considered turning back when he remembered the mesh hair net covering his wavy mane. With a nervous giggle he stretched it down over his face, staring out through fishnet.

  In and out. Should be quick. He took a deep breath of cold city air and pushed the door open, rushing in with his weapon pointed.

  “Gimme all the money! Now!”

  The proprietor was an old white dude, skinny and small with tiny little Santa Claus glasses. He held up his hands and looked appropriately terrified.

  “Move your ass, old man!”

  Chico thrust the revolver into the prune’s face, letting him see death through the half-inch hole in the barrel.

  The old man stood stock-still, not moving an inch.

  “What the hell is your problem, Grandpa? You deaf? I said get the goddamn money pronto or I’ll shoot off your head!”

  The old man remained where he was.

  Chico stole a nervous glance at the door to see if any customers were coming in, then got closer to the old man, cocking his gun to show he wasn’t playing around.

  “I can’t open the safe,” the old man said.

  “What?”

  The old man pointed to the large sign sticking to the counter. Chico backed away and read the oversized words silently, even though his lips moved.

  THE SAFE HAS A TIME LOCK AND CANNOT BE OPENED.

  “What the fuck is a time lock?”

  “Magnetic lock. Can only be opened in the morning at eight a.m.” The old man swallowed. “You’re welcome to wait around, if you want.”

  “Then gimme the cash register money!”

  He pointed to another sign.

  THE CASH REGISTER CONTAINS LESS THAN $50.

  The .32 in Chico’s hand felt heavy and foreign. His heart was beating in his throat. Even if he took the fifty, the gun cost him sixty, so he came out behind in the deal. What the hell should he do now? Leave and rob someone else? Or beat this old bastard senseless to see if he was lying?

  The answer came to him in the shape of a champagne bottle. All Chico had to do was conk him on the head a few times with a magnum of Totts, then we’d see what was up with this time lock bullshit. Chico used his free hand to grab the handy bottle neck, holding the champagne like a club.

  “You want to play rough, old man? I’ll give you a punt-shaped head!”

  A sound; the electronic bell attached to the front door, beeping when a customer left or came in. Billy Chico and the old man looked to see a short guy in a Blackhawks jacket enter.

  “Get on the floor, corto!”

  The short man gave Chico an even stare and stopped where he stood.

  “On the goddamn floor or I’ll blow your little head off!”

  The man remained standing where he was. Weren’t people afraid of guns anymore?

  “Marty sent me to collect your debt, Billy,” The short man had the low, steady voice of a talk radio jock.

  “What the hell you think I’m trying to do here?” The sweat on Chico’s body was a living thing, running over him in itchy waves.

  The short man stood calmly, hands in his pockets.

  “I’ll wait. But you’d better hurry. You’ve been in here for a minute and forty-three seconds, and the owner there tripped his silent alarm right after you pulled your gun.”

  Chico began to shake like a withdrawing junkie.

  “Give me the damn money, old man!”

  “I can’t. It’s a time lock.”

  Chico threw the champagne at the old man, but it was lefty and he threw like a girl. The old man caught the bottle.

  The short guy turned his ear to the front door, keeping both eyes on Chico. “Sirens coming this way.”

  “Shut up!”

  Chico unconsciously pushed the hairnet up off his face and rubbed his forehead to think. No thoughts came, other than maybe gambling wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

  “Better move your ass, Billy.”

  “I said shut up!”

  The short man waited.

  The old man behind the counter stared, probably memorizing Billy Chico’s face.

  Then Billy Chico made the biggest mistake of many big mistakes throughout his miserable little life. He began to swing his gun from the shop owner over to the short guy.

  “Billy… don’t.”

  Billy Chico hesitated. It was obvious he was leaving here empty handed. But he definitely wasn’t going to leave with some broken fingers, or a busted arm or leg. He continued to bring the gun around, ready to shoot his way out of here if he had to.

  “Drop it, Billy!”

  The tone was so sudden, so commanding, that Billy Chico had to react. His brain offered three instantaneous choices: Drop the gun, wet his pants, or fire. Billy’s finger began to pull the trigger.

  He never got a chance to. In a blur the short guy whipped out two semi-automatic .45s from the pockets of his Starter jacket and fired sixteen shots into Billy Chico. His left hand put a controlled burst of eight into Billy’s chest, and his right hand punched eight more into Billy’s head and neck.

  Billy Chico ended instantly. His heart never had a chance to stop beating, because it was carved out of his chest. His brain never had a chance to realize he was dead, because it got scrambled the same instant his heart was chewed away.

  Chico’s body jerked in electrical spasms and tangled itself in a cardboard display featuring several bikini-clad women holding beers. His body landed an instant before his gun clattered to the floor where he’d been previously standing.

  The shop owner, who’d seen a few things in his day, wasn’t sure whether to cheer or scream. The skinny man with the gun was scary, but it was a familiar kind of scary. In the almost three decades he’d been in business, he’d been robbed forty-six times, half of those within the last seven years as the neighborhood continued to decline. Junkies, gang members, ex-cons, and all shades of desperate men had walked into Teddy’s Liquors looking to make a quick buck. The skinny guy wasn’t an exception. He was part of a trend.

  But this short guy with the two guns, this was something different. Something even scarier. When he killed the skinny man, his face had no expression. It didn’t even look like he blinked. How can you shoot someone a dozen times and not even blink?

  The old man forced a smile—something damn near impossible with his peripheral vision clogged red with spilled blood—and managed to sputter out, “Thanks, buddy.
”

  The short man shook his head.

  “I still have to collect his debt.”

  “But the safe is on a—”

  The short guy placed the hot barrel of the .45 in front of his lips like a giant finger and said, “Shhh.”

  He pocketed the guns, and in three steps leapt the counter without touching it, jumping much higher than the old man thought possible. Within seconds he located the safe, in a cabinet under the cash register.

  The sirens grew louder. The short guy stared at the safe for a long second.

  “This isn’t a time lock safe. This thing is older than I am.”

  The old man was too afraid to shrug, but he managed to sputter, “New safe costs a few thousand dollars. Sign was only $10.99.”

  “How about you give me the combination?”

  The old man tried to swallow but he was all out of spit.

  “The owner hasn’t told it to me.”

  “Then how about give me your wallet?”

  “My wallet?”

  “Does that have a time lock too?”

  The old man dug his wallet out with trembling hands and offered it up. The short guy avoided the money inside, instead removing the Driver’s License.

  “This is Teddy’s Liquors, right?”

  The old man nodded.

  “Your name is Theodore. Is it worth having your fingers broken, Teddy, for a few thousand dollars that are insured anyway?”

  The old man shook his head, knelt down, and opened the safe. He held up a money tray, head bowed, like an offering to the gods.

  The sirens were much closer, screaming up the street.

  The short guy quickly and efficiently counted two thousand dollars; the amount of Chico’s debt. It went into his Starter jacket. The rest of the money from the tray went into an empty Jim Beam box that was lying behind the counter. He put another box inside the box with the money, so it looked like two stacked empty boxes.

  “Hide this in back and then claim it all on your insurance. Busy night like tonight, they’ll owe you at least five or six grand. Just don’t let the police find it.”

  The old man nodded, getting it. He went from being terrified to strangely elated. The insurance company—those premium-hiking bloodsuckers—always demanded receipts and double-checked inventory to make sure his claims weren’t inflated. This would be the very first time he was robbed and actually came out ahead of the game.

  “Thanks,” the old man said, realizing as soon as he did how strange it was.

  “Remember to describe me correctly to the police. A very tall black man in a green jacket. I’d hate to have to come back here and find out you got my description wrong. Got it?”

  The old man stared into the blue eyes of the short white guy. His stare wandered down to the man’s hand, the back of which was covered with an extremely ornate tattoo of a Monarch butterfly, so realistic it appeared ready to take flight.

  “No tattoos, either.”

  “Got it,” the old man croaked.

  “Take care, Teddy,” the short guy said, and he slipped out the door into the night.

  J.A. Konrath’s Works Available on Kindle

  Whiskey Sour

  Bloody Mary

  Rusty Nail

  Dirty Martini

  Fuzzy Navel

  Cherry Bomb

  Afraid

  Origin

  The List

  Disturb

  65 Proof (Short Story Omnibus)

  Jack Daniels Stories (Collected Stories)

  Crime Stories (Collected Stories)

  Horror Stories (Collected Stories)

  Truck Stop

  Suckers by JA Konrath and Jeff Strand

  SERIAL UNCUT by Blake Crouch and Jack Kilborn

  Floaters by JA Konrath and Henry Perez

  Dumb Jokes & Vulgar Poems

  Endurance

  Trapped

  Shaken

  Draculas by JA Konrath, Blake Crouch, Jeff Strand, and F. Paul Wilson

  Banana Hammock

  Visit www.JAKonrath.com

  Henry Perez’s Works Available on Kindle

  Killing Red

  Mourn the Living

  Visit www.henryperezbooks.com

  Compilation copyright © 2009 by Joe Konrath and Henry Perez

  Interview copyright © 2009 by Joe Konrath and Henry Perez

  All stories copyright © 2009 by Joe Konrath and Henry Perez

  Floaters © Joe Konrath and Henry Perez, 2009, originally appeared in Missing, Echelon Press

  Familiar Places © Henry Perez, 2007, originally appeared in Tales from the Red Lion, Twilight Tales, Inc.

  Last Request © Joe Konrath, 2009

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the authors’ imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Joe Konrath and Henry Perez.

  Cover © C.P. Haas, 2009