Last Call - A Thriller (Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels Mysteries Book 10) (9 page)

“The story is about a gambler who loses at cards and is going to be killed because he can’t pay. But he’s given a choice. If he can keep his hand on a stove burner for ten full seconds, his debts will be absolved.”

K took the hot plate out with a dramatic flourish. It was one of those models with a round, spiral burner, and didn’t look menacing at all. He unwrapped the cord, had one of the guards plug it into an extension in the hall, and set the burner down on a rickety Formica table. K twisted the only knob on the appliance, and the coil began to glow orange.

“The best and the worst pain is what we do to ourselves.” K said, staring hard at Juan. “Do you want to go home?”

Juan nodded.

“Place your palm on the burner and hold it there. If you can last for ten seconds without pulling away, you’re free.”

Juan eyed the hot plate like it was a small dog known to bite.

“Put my hand on that?”

“Yeah.”

“And hold it there for ten seconds?”

“Yeah.”

“Here’s a better idea. You eat a bag of dicks.”

Lucy looked at K, then told the guards, “Hold him.”

They wrestled the cuffed man to his knees, and Lucy pressed the red-hot grill into Juan’s face, holding it there for longer than ten seconds.

Oddly enough, it smelled sort of like pork and beans.

K then cut off the man’s pants and said, “What was your idea? Eat a bag of dicks? How about you tell us what that’s like.”

Juan never did tell them what it was like, because he choked to death. Which was a shame, because Lucy was curious to see what other body parts they could have forced him to eat.

“So how did that Hitchcock story end?” she asked, as the guards hauled Juan’s body away.

“I don’t know. Last page was ripped out.”

“I bet it didn’t end with the guy eating his own junk.”

“Probably not.”

They went to the sink to wash up, sharing the canister of powdered soap. K squinted at his purple robe and frowned. “Blood stains.”

“Sorry about that, K. Maybe she’ll survive.”

“She really is a miracle worker with stains.”

“And ironing.” Lucy used a wooden brush to get the bits of tissue out from under her fingernails. “So if he actually lasted the full ten seconds, you really would have let him go?”

K made a croaking sound, like someone with emphysema trying to clear his throat. He made the sound again, and again, and Lucy suddenly realized he was laughing.

She joined in.

P
hin wasn’t built for surveillance. He was built for action.

Watching a target took a skill set antithetical to the one he had. Phin had been keeping an eye on Hugo Boss, and his spotters, for sixteen hours, and had prepared for the stake-out as best he could. He’d picked three spots where he could have them all in sight while remaining off their radar. Binoculars, with screens on the lenses so they wouldn’t reflect and give away his position. A case of water. Beef jerky and candy bars—things packed with calories that wouldn’t spoil. A thermos to urinate in. Caffeine pills. A notebook, to jot down the movements and guard changes of the snipers on the rooftops, the car makes and models and tags, the number of deals Hugo made.

For four hours, he’d park in a spot up the street. Then he’d get out of the car and sit in an alley, next to the world’s smelliest Dumpster; seriously, it smelled like someone vomited up a skunk with diarrhea and let it bake in the ninety degree heat for a week. But it was close enough to the action that he wouldn’t need the binoculars, his cover disguise a stained shirt and half a bottle of warm beer in a paper bag. After four hours in the alley it was back to the car and a new parking spot, in the opposite direction.

It was grueling, boring, mind-numbing work. This spying stuff wasn’t Phin’s thing, and as the minutes ticked slowly by he felt more and more wound up.

But he learned a lot about their operation. Hugo had a five hour shift, then was replaced by another guy—this one in Armani. Armani was replaced by a third dealer, this one in Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, the gaudy ensemble topped off with a straw pork pie hat with a flowery band that matched neither shorts nor shirt. Then back to Hugo.

They dealt some grass, occasional baggies of powder, and a lot of syrup. All three used the same parked car as their storage locker, and Phin had yet to see the supply replenished. He did some quick calculations and figured he’d watched over twenty thousand dollars’ worth of transactions in a sixteen hour period.

Now the sun was up, heating up the interior of the car. Neither Luther Kite, nor his scarred ward Lucy, had paid Hugo a visit. Were they getting their painkillers elsewhere, maybe via fake prescriptions? Was the painkiller trail a dead end, and they weren’t even using? Were they even still in town?

Phin considered his options. Grabbing one of the dealers and asking him if Luther was a client would be risky, and even if the dealer recognized Luther, that didn’t mean he knew where Luther was staying. Trying a different approach meant abandoning this one, and Phin could picture Luther driving up to score painkillers five minutes after Phin left.

He tried to think like Luther, but that wasn’t one of Phin’s strengths. He knew street thugs, pimps, gang bangers, junkies, hustlers, and whores. Jack was the one who knew psychopaths. Though Phin had encountered a few serial killers—old cases of Jack’s—he couldn’t put himself in their minds like she seemed to be able to.

Luther came to Mexico with Lucy. Why? To escape capture in the US? Because he had some sort of stake here? A hideaway? A supply of cash? Drugs?

Drugs were available everywhere. And Luther wasn’t exactly Public Enemy Number 1. He was no doubt on some law enforcement watch lists, and there were arrest warrants, but he was just one of hundreds, probably thousands, of wanted murderers. And there were plenty of places to hide in the US. Luther and Lucy had been doing so for years.

Why Mexico?

Phin recalled the video that brought him there. A man being dragged behind a car. That wasn’t the act of someone on the run, trying to avoid attention.

That was the act of a maniac. A psychopath. Someone insane, who got off on the pain of others.

Maybe Luther and Lucy weren’t in Mexico to hide from authorities.

Maybe they’d come to have fun.

Phin played with the idea. Baja had plenty of tourists who didn’t know the area. Plenty of poor locals no one cared about. Police that could be paid to look the other way.

It was like a Disneyland for serial killers. They could operate under the radar, having their pick of disposable victims, with impunity.

Maybe, instead of staking out dealers, Phin should go to the police. Find out if there had been any more people dragged to death. If they could be bribed to ignore crime, maybe they could also be bribed to reveal it.

That seemed like a better idea than watching Hugo Boss for another four hours.

Phin tucked away his notebook, and started the car.

He’d driven a block when the steering wheel began to pull right and he heard the distinctive
THWAP-THWAP-THWAP
of a flat tire.

Already twitchy from the caffeine, Phin went into instant paranoia mode, taking his FNS in hand and doing a three-sixty scan of the area as he pulled over to the side of the road. The street looked normal, no obvious threats.

He parked, shut off the car, and waited, continuing to look around. At the next corner were three men sharing a cigarette. Across the street was a parked car, empty. Phin glanced back at Hugo Boss, and he was in front of the club, business as usual.

It could have been regular old bad luck. Maybe he ran over a glass bottle, or a jagged chunk of asphalt—the streets weren’t in the best shape.

Phin tucked the gun into the back of his jeans, located the button to pop the trunk, and got out of the car. The cholos on the corner gave him a glance, then resumed their conversation. A car cruised past, slowing down, and Phin tensed until he figured out they were headed for Hugo to buy drugs.

Keeping alert, Phin walked to the front of the car and checked the tire. It was flat, the rubber beginning to tear from riding on the rim. He squinted down the street, but didn’t notice anything he might have run over.

He went to the trunk, lifting up the carpet-covered board that hid the spare, and that’s when they hit him.

It was a smart attack. Phin had the trunk open so he didn’t see them run up, and his hands were occupied with the tire the moment before he was tackled.

They were fast. But so was Phin.

He dropped the spare and pulled his gun just as one of the cholos plowed into him. Phin shot twice as he fell backward into the street, dead weight pinning him down, another Mexican coming at him from the right side. Phin fired four more times, center mass, and then two men sat up in the car parked across the street—they’d been hiding—and hurried over to join the fight.

Phin managed to push the dead guy off of him, emptied his magazine at the duo, sensed movement from behind, and then something hit him in the wrist, the FNS falling from his grasp and clattering to the street. Phin dove away from his attacker, tucked and rolled to his feet, and came up surrounded by four men.

The snipers hadn’t tried to take him down yet, but Phin suspected that was what had taken out his tire. None of the cholos he faced carried guns. That could only mean one thing; they meant to take Phin alive.

Well…
Phin thought, slipping the brass knuckles on to his left hand and then flicking open the butterfly knife with his right,
let them try.

Two guys rushed Phin at once. He slashed one across the chest, then did a tight spin-kick and caught the other in the jaw. Both stumbled away, and a pipe clipped Phin in the side of the head and sent him off balance and staggering into the middle of the street. He regained his footing, slipped a punch, then countered with a brass knuckle uppercut that broke bone and teeth.

Phin whirled to face the two Mexicans still on their feet, and saw six more running his way.

This was a coordinated attack. His odds weren’t good.

He dared a quick glance at the street, looking for his dropped gun, and then a heavy, muscular dude rushed at Phin’s knife, the man’s shirt balled up in his hand to deflect the blade. Phin raised the weapon, thrusting at the man’s face, missing, and the other guy stepped in and popped Phin in the ear, hard enough to rock him sideways.

Phin spun, letting centripetal force whip out his hand with the brass knuckles, catching his attacker on the temple, a stream of blood spurting out and following him like the string of a kite.

Muscles lunged at Phin again, and Phin ducked under the man’s hands, dropped a shoulder, and pushed forward, driving the guy backwards as he stabbed at his side. The cholo fell just as the reinforcements arrived.

Five down, six to go.

The fight-or-flight adrenaline surge still strong, Phin planted a boot in one man’s chest, and elbowed another in the chin.

Two guys rushed him, and Phin stepped away but someone he’d dropped earlier reached out and snagged his ankle.

Phin went down.

Three men jumped on top of him.

Phin felt a rib snap, tried to roll away, but two more bodies piled on. Another rib went, and Phin’s fight for survival became a fight to breathe as all of the weight on him squashed his diaphragm. Pinned immobile under the stack of bodies, the edges of Phin’s vision became fuzzy from the lack of oxygen. Then he felt a jab in the arm, and the blackness overtook him.

S
he limped up to the threshold and peered inside.

K called it the
throne room
.

The walls were stone. K had insisted on gray, like a medieval castle, but nothing in this country was gray. He’d settled for light brown adobe, topped by a sloppy coat of charcoal paint the cartel had splashed around with the finesse of men who sold drugs for a living.

There was a single window, squarish and barely big enough to stick your head through, overlooking the fighting arena two floors below. At night, the only light came courtesy of greasy oil lamps hanging from chains, yellow and sickly and not much brighter than candles. Electric light was impossible; when K converted the room he’d bricked over the electrical outlets and fixtures. Every time Lucy entered the room it took a few seconds for her eye to adjust to the darkness.