Shot of Tequila (17 page)

He didn’t bother with clothes or keepsakes. All he took was cash, the twelve grand he had in the floor safe in his bedroom closet. He stuffed it into a gym bag and headed for the front door.

“Sorry, China,” he said as he passed her body in the kitchen. He hadn’t been particularly fond of the care-giver, but then he wasn’t really fond of anyone. She’d been good to Sally, and it was wrong that she had to die like that.

As he passed through the kitchen his eyes caught the refrigerator. The picture Sally had given to him only hours before hung there sadly. He stared at his sister’s drawing of himself, with the three arms and the stringy hair.

At first he thought he was throwing up, but the sensation was different. This release wasn’t coming from his mouth.

It was coming from his eyes.

The man who hadn’t shed a tear since grammar school was now finding it hard to catch his breath through the sobbing. He cried for Sally. He cried for everything she’d gone through in her poor, tragic life. He cried for the pain she felt at the hands of Slake and Matisse. He cried desperately for his big sister, who had needed him, who had loved him, who had held his tiny hands above his head when he was a baby, trying to teach him how to walk.

And after the tears for Sally had gone, he continued to sob. For himself this time. Because he’d never get to hear her voice again. Or see her smile. Or ride the coal car with her at the museum. Or listen to the sweet, sweet music of her laughter.

Fighting the twisting of his guts, Tequila reached out for the drawing and stuffed it into the bag with the money. Then he left the kitchen, left China, left Sally, left this entire section of his life behind forever.

He stepped through the front door and jumped back as fifteen cops in SRT gear came marching down the hall.

Tequila slammed the door behind him, locking it. He couldn’t allow himself to get arrested. How could he avenge Sally’s death behind bars?

But what else could he do? He didn’t even have a gun in the house. Was he supposed to fend off that many armed policemen with some steak knives and the iron vase?

“I have an M-16 in here!” Tequila yelled. “With twenty mags of ammo! Plus enough C-4 to take out the whole building! Don’t make me do it!”

Without waiting for their answer, Tequila ran into his bedroom. If he couldn’t fight back, he had to run. And there was only one way to get out of a thirtieth floor apartment when the door wasn’t an option.

He dug under his bed, pulling out the nylon package. Something he’d bought on a whim, months ago, because he’d always wanted to try it someday.

Well, someday was finally here.

Not even thinking if it worked or not, Tequila strapped the package to his back, buckling it around his shoulders and his legs.

Then he went to the large picture window in the living room, facing the Chicago skyline. The view was awesome, which was one of the reasons rent here was astronomical. He had a clear view of the John Hancock building, along with the dozens of sky scrapers that surrounded it. Further east, Lake Michigan loomed huge and impressive, from this height looking calm even in the fiercest winds.

“Tequila Abernathy! This is Detective Daniels of the Chicago Police Department! We have a warrant for your arrest! Don’t be stupid, Tequila! You can’t get away!”

“I’ve got three people in here!” Tequila yelled. “They’re dead if you touch that door!”

Tequila picked up the twenty-inch television resting on the entertainment stand. After a quick sprint he threw it with all his might at the picture window. It was safety glass, and the TV bounced off and onto the floor. But a spider web of shattered fragments covered the entire surface of the pane, obscuring Tequila’s eighteen hundred dollar a month view.

He hefted the fallen TV and again charged the picture window, hurling the fifty pound projectile with as much force as he could.

This time the television knocked the entire picture window out of its moorings, and both disappeared over the edge of the building, letting in an immediate blast of whistling, frigid wind.

Tequila looked out the new opening, thirty floors down, and felt his stomach lurch. The cars below were the size of bugs, even their color indistinguishable. Skydiving was one thing. You were so high up in an airplane that there wasn’t any perspective, no frame of reference to show the mind how high you really were. Here, Tequila knew exactly how high he was, because he could see the ground, see the building, and see his television drop with such agonizing slowness that he wanted to puke.

He checked the buckles on his parachute one last time.

Behind him, the door burst inward.

“Freeze! Police!”

Tequila jumped.

His first reaction was shock that he actually did it, but that thought was wiped from his mind instantly as the ground rushed at him. Fast. It was coming so damn fast. Tequila squinted, tears streaking past his cheeks as the wind ripped at his eyelids.

He’d dropped ten stories in the time it took to take a breath.

His hand found the ripcord on his chest and yanked it, and he felt his entire body jerk to a stop as his parachute opened above him like a giant yellow flower.

Son of a bitch. It does feel like driving over a hill really fast.

Then the wind got him.

Normally, wind is a one way event. It blows relatively steadily, and air currents follow a singular direction. This did not hold true in a city with skyscrapers, like Chicago. Here, the wind gets chopped up by the buildings blocking its path. It swirls around them, goes off in different directions, forms complex, spinning, uneven patterns that are impossible to predict, let alone glide through.

Tequila’s first trick was unique in the world of skydiving. A three-hundred-and-sixty-degree loop. The wind hit him from behind and then swirled upward, swinging Tequila forward like a pendulum. When he was upside down gravity took over and he began to fall onto his own collapsing parachute.

He tucked his knees in and spun to the side, as if performing a dismount from the high bar, trying to drop past his chute. If he landed on it he’d get wrapped up in the silk, plummet, and fall to his death. A question invaded his head, wondering if he would bounce if he hit the ground from this height.

His shoulder caught the underside of the parachute but he twisted away and plummeted past. Dragging his lines behind him, the parachute pulled into its upright position and again blossomed open.

But two of the lines had somehow tangled, and Tequila spun wildly, twisting them up even further. A sudden, powerful gust of air came from below, catching the chute and lifting it and Tequila upward. Tequila jerked his body sideways, righting the chute, but he then began to rock back and forth. On the third swing, he smacked hard into the side of his own apartment building, scaring the living hell out of a couple who had been watching
The Golden Girls
in their living room.

Stunned from the blow, Tequila could barely make out the ground beneath him, still ridiculously far away. He held onto the cords hanging at his sides, knowing their purpose was to somehow steer this thing, but he had no idea how they worked.

The wind kicked up again, this time from the west. Tequila rocketed away from the building and out over Lake Shore Drive, the traffic moving below him with dizzying speed.

He glanced ahead and saw he was headed out onto Lake Michigan. Landing in Lake Michigan, even only a hundred yards from shore, would kill him. He’d be hypothermic after only three minutes in the water. He couldn’t go that way.

Tequila pulled on the left hand cord. Surprisingly, he turned left. He held the cord until he was facing the city again, once more heading towards his apartment building.

The wind didn’t like him coming back though, and again gave him a taste. But this time, the hit came from above. His downward speed doubled, his parachute temporarily deflating. Under his feet, traffic was whizzing by at sixty miles an hour.

How ironic to jump out of a thirty story building only to get hit by a car.

He tugged hard on his left line, and the parachute swung him around like a sling. He continued to spiral, cutting over the highway, over the sidewalk, and onto the misleading safety of Oak Street beach.

It was like jumping into an empty swimming pool. He hit the ground on an angle, sort of skidding across it on his left side. He rolled with the fall, skinning the hell out of himself on the frozen sand. It felt, literally, like sliding naked over sandpaper. When Tequila finally stopped a good deal of his clothing had been scraped off, taking some skin with it.

But, son of a bitch, he was alive.

Then the wind gusted again, filling his parachute, tugging him backwards. Into highway traffic.

Tequila felt a momentary panic, so startled by the sudden movement he didn’t know what was happening. The wind blew steadily, and his feet began to lift off of the ground. His parachute was only twenty yards away from the near lane, and if a car snagged it Tequila would get dragged.

He unbuckled his legs, feeling the harness drop away from his lower back. Then he reached up for the releases on his shoulders, but in his distress couldn’t find them.

A bus, moving at seventy-two miles an hour, was coming up on the parachute.

Tequila’s hand frantically searched for the buckle, tried to release it, couldn’t.

The bus rocketed closer, the driver oblivious to the parachute in his peripheral vision.

Tequila’s fingers dug into the buckles and unsnapped them, and he fell five feet to the sidewalk as his parachute was jerked away from him by the 2345 to Irving Park.

He landed, for the umpteenth time this evening, on his ass. His first thought was the bag of money, which was still wrapped around his waist.

His second thought was to vomit, which he did, voiding onto the concrete. Sirens, a lot of them, shrilled nearer, cutting through the freezing night.

Tequila got to his feet, half-limping, half-stumbling. He needed a place to hide.

And he had one in mind.

“I
’ll eat my badge if he has people in there,” Benedict said after hearing the threat through the closed door.

“He’s bluffing,” Jack agreed. But why? To stave off the inevitable? At first, when Tequila had yelled about an M16 and C-4 explosive, all of Jack’s men cleared away. But now, it seemed as if the man behind the door was just trying to buy a little time.

Time for what?
Daniels thought.
He couldn’t get away. Was he trying to fool us into believing he had hostages so he could make a ransom demand?

“Schultz, Jackson.” Daniels motioned to the two men with the portable battering ram. It was a thick three foot tube of concrete with handles. Cops called it the Universal Key. With one or two swings it could open a meat locker.

Jack motioned for the men to ready the ram. Tequila was doing something in there, and Jack didn’t want to give him the time to finish whatever it was.

“On three.” Daniels held up one finger, then two…

On three they swung the ram, smack dead against the doorknob. The door burst inward, Schultz and Johnson hitting the floor, Jack and two others covering the doorway, guns pointed.

A short man with a backpack was standing by the window in the living room. No, not a window. A big hole in the side of the building.

“Freeze! Police!” she yelled.

The man jumped.

Everyone was quiet for a moment. Then Herb Benedict said, “Holy shit.”

Jack checked around her and then entered the apartment in a crouch, her .38 on full cock and gripped in both hands. Her men streamed in behind her, some going left and some going right, all fully armored and ready for war.

Daniels only had eyes for one thing. The hole in the wall. The wind was rushing in with a savage strength, and Jack approached the edge with equal amounts of fascination and awe. Almost fearing to, she peeked over the edge, making out the descending yellow parachute as it floated out over the highway.

Vertigo began to kick in and Jack took a step back, bumping into Benedict and scaring the hell out of herself.

“So much for him not getting away,” Jack said.

“That guy’s got more guts than a slaughterhouse.”

Officer Williams came over to report.

“We’re clear, Detective. Three dead. One in the kitchen, one in the hall, one by the sofa here.”

“Call the CST again. I’m sure they aren’t asleep yet anyway. Then I want every available man down in the street, looking for this joker. Call the coast guard as well. He might be headed out to sea.”

The three watched the diminishing parachute sail out over Lake Michigan. It was so absurd, so ridiculous, that Jack, without knowing it, cracked a tiny grin.

“Ever see anything like that before, Detective?” Williams asked.

“This is the third one this week,” Daniels replied. “Where have you been hiding?”

Williams noted the sarcasm and hurried off. Jack radioed down to the surveillance team and gave them Tequila’s whereabouts as he faded from her sight. She wouldn’t be joining them. She had a crime scene here to work on. Daniels often said that she didn’t catch criminals, she just gathered the evidence to convict them. And surrounding her was evidence aplenty.