Shot of Tequila (27 page)

“I’m parked two more blocks down,” Tequila yelled at Jack.

She nodded. Tequila took off across the street with Jack in pursuit. Automatic weapon fire sounded off behind them, and ahead came another black sedan. The two cut across someone’s lawn and then onto another street, running like mad.

They made it to the Trans Am without being shot at again, but more screaming tires in the distance confirmed Marty’s men hadn’t given up their chase.

“I thought you drove a Caprice,” Jack said, getting in the passenger side.

“Stolen,” Tequila answered. “If it bugs you, you can walk.”

The black sedan rounded the corner and came straight at them, mirrored glass reflecting the aged trees it was rapidly passing.

“I’ll arrest you for it later,” Daniels said.

Tequila punched it in reverse, tires shrieking and laying down two long streaks of rubber. Jack popped in a speed loader and cranked open her window, leaning out and shooting at the oncoming sedan. The sedan swerved off the road, and Tequila yanked Jack into her seat and turned the wheel harshly. The Trans Am spun around and Tequila jammed it into drive when it reached 180 degrees. Then he hit the gas again and they were going forward.

“Nice,” Daniels said. “But can you parallel park?”

Tequila allowed himself a small grin, but it faded when he saw two more of Marty’s cars approaching from the left. He punched the accelerator and beat them to the intersection, but they swung into pursuit.

The rear window of the Trans Am shattered with a gunshot, spraying Tequila and Jack with cold glass. Daniels turned around and fired two rounds at the first sedan, hitting the windshield dead center. The car careened left and smacked hard into an eighty-year-old oak tree. The tree won, spitting the occupants through the front window and onto some rich guy’s lawn.

“We should buckle up,” Jack said.

Tequila looked in the rearview and then put his seatbelt on. Jack did the same. The other sedan dropped back as Tequila hammered down on the gas. But the street he was on made a sharp turn, and he was forced to slow for it. Another turn followed that, and then Tequila found himself out of the residential area and on busy Kedzie Avenue, heading into Chicago.

He slammed on the brakes as traffic ahead of him stopped at a red light. The sidewalk was too narrow to drive up on, and the oncoming lane was full.

Jack and Tequila turned to look through the missing rear window.

Three more sedans were coming fast.

“You’re a cop,” Tequila said. “Arrest them.”

“You want to take my badge and give it a try?”

The light remained red.

Tequila squealed tires and pulled the Trans Am into oncoming traffic.

Cars honked, swerved, and smacked into each other, blocking off the entire lane. There was no place left to go. After slamming on the breaks, they abandoned the vehicle and ran for it.

From Kedzie they cut down a side street and through an alley. The alley let out into another alley, underneath the el tracks. As they raced towards the open street ahead of them, three men with machine guns appeared to block their path.

Gunshots riddled the brick wall to the right, and Tequila and Jack dove behind a Dumpster. As they ducked down, holding their heads, round after round of automatic weapon fire clanged against their temporary cover, so rapid that the Dumpster sounded like it was being hailed on.

Then, as abruptly as it began, the gunfire stopped.

“I made out at least six,” Jack said, counting how many weapons were being fired at them.

“Seven.”

A look passed between them. They had no chance against odds like that.

Tequila took in his surroundings: The Dumpster, the alley wall behind him, the el tracks overhead.

“Window.” Tequila pointed to a wall ten yards in front of them, across the alley. The window had rusty security bars preventing entry, four bars in all.

“It’s barred.”

“What are you loading? Sounds heavy.”

“Hollow points.”

Tequila raised an eyebrow. Jack shrugged.

“For when I go hunting. You never know when you’ll run into a deer wearing a bullet proof vest.”

“Can you hit the bars?”

Jack squinted at the target. “You mean shoot them off?”

“Yes.”

Jack extended her gun arm towards the barred window, lining up the sights. She squeezed off a round, and it ate into the brick wall an inch above the bar. She fired again, this time below it, and the iron bar toppled out of its mortar and clattered to the sidewalk. She emptied the spent brass from her cylinder, popped in a speed loader, and repeated the process with two more bars.

“Marty wants me alive!” Tequila shouted, not pausing to be impressed by Jack’s shooting. “You assholes kill me, Marty will have your balls!”

Then he turned to Daniels and said, “That window is about four feet off the ground. You’ll have to dive through it. Can you make it?”

“I don’t have any Olympic medals, but I’ll manage.”

Tequila took one of his .45s and shot the window, shattering the glass.

“You go first. I’ll cover you. Then you cover me when it’s my turn.”

Jack nodded, reloading her .38.

“You have a back-up piece?” Tequila asked.

“No.”

Tequila reached around his belt and handed her Terco’s .38. Jack eyed it oddly.

“This yours?” she asked.

“It is now. You ready?”

Daniels stuffed the gun into her holster and nodded.

“I give up!” Tequila yelled.

He stood up behind the Dumpster and began firing both .45s while Jack took off towards the window.

Feeling bullets whiz past her legs, Daniels made the window in ten steps and dove face-first through the opening and into blackness.

She hit the inside hard, banging into something, and scraping her face on the rough wooden floor. Her .38 skittered across the ground into the darkness, and motes of light appeared before Jack’s eyes.

The booming sounds of gunfire brought her back. Rather than search for her revolver, she took the spare Tequila had given her and wobbled back to the window. Peeking through the lower corner, Jack stuck the gun out and fired wildly in the direction of the alley’s opening. She watched as Tequila sprinted towards her, both of his guns firing like mad.

Slugs tore up the ground at Tequila’s feet. The Mafioso had obviously heeded his warning and were shooting at his legs, trying to wound rather than kill. Tequila was almost home free when a bullet caught him high in the hip, spinning him around and to the ground.

Tequila looked up at the window, just five feet away.

“Drop your guns, Tequila!” said a voice he didn’t recognize, “Or I’ll shoot your knees off!”

To prove his point, the unknown man shot the tip off of Tequila’s left gym shoe. Tequila sighted where the shot had come from, around the alley corner forty yards away.

Tequila figured that was the guy who’d winged him. He looked at his thigh and saw the bloody tear in his jeans, meat showing through. A helluva tough shot on a target moving as fast as he was. Tequila knew that the man could easily put a few more in his legs without killing him. And Tequila didn’t have the proper angle to shoot the guy back. He was trying to figure out whether to try for the door or go down firing when five shots rang out from the window.

Tequila noted that the first shot bit a chunk out of the brick corner where the unknown man was hiding. Jack was firing at the sharpshooter, giving Tequila a chance to make it.

Tequila took the chance.

Gaining his feet, he took three quick steps and threw himself through the broken window, smacking right into Daniels, the both of them crashing to the floor.

It took a moment for Tequila to get his bearings in the darkness. Both guns were still in his hands. He quickly jammed in two more clips and took off his belt, winding it around his bleeding thigh in a tourniquet.

“Nice shooting,” he told Jack.

“Your gun. The sights are off, by the way.”

“I know.”

They squinted at their surroundings. The dust and the darkness made Tequila realize that wherever they were, it was abandoned.

“We’ve got to find a door,” Jack said. “They aren’t going to waste any time coming after us.”

“You smoke?”

“No. You want a cigarette now?”

“I want a lighter.”

A flame appeared before Jack’s face, illuminating it.

“Matches do? I picked up a pack at
Spill
yesterday. The only useful thing I got from that place.”

Using the light as a guide, Jack located her dropped .38, and then the two walked off into the darkness.

Outside, bits of brick embedded in his forehead from Jack’s shooting, a man named Royce quietly raged.

M
arty the Maniac Martelli had to restrain himself from clapping his hands together in glee. Tequila, and that idiot cop Daniels, were trapped. Trapped in an abandoned warehouse. All the exits were covered. There wasn’t any way out.

And the best part of it all was that they were in the 12th District.

Marty’s District.

He owned the captain here. Owned him like an appliance. A simple phone call had made it clear that absolutely no cops would be deployed to the warehouse, no matter how many shots were fired.

It was so damn perfect that Marty couldn’t control the grin on his flabby face. He hit the hang-up key on his cellular phone and stood up from his living room sofa, so excited he could no longer sit.

“What happens to the cop?” Leman asked his smiling boss. Leman wasn’t averse to wasting someone now and then. He’d done his share through the years. But murdering a Homicide Detective went above and beyond simple clean-up duties. That could bring down some serious heat, even if Marty did own the assistant super.

“She disappears,” Marty replied. “After I got her booted from the case, she took her vacation, for chrissake. This bitch isn’t even on city time. We do her, dispose of the body, and no one ever hears of the assbag again.”

“She’s still a cop, Marty.”

Marty lost his grin, looking hard at Leman.

“You think I haven’t wasted cops before, dumbshit? I was killing cops when you were in grade school picking your zits.”

“As long as it’s not me who does it.” Leman folded his arms in conviction.

Marty slapped him hard across the face, sending him reeling.

“Since when did you grow a spine? You do what I tell you, when I tell you. If I say go shoot your own mother, you’d better ask if I want a head shot or a gut shot. Understand?”

Leman stared at his boss, the shame from the slap hurting more than the actual physical act. Why didn’t he get any respect? Wasn’t he the one who spotted Tequila on the grounds in the first place? Wasn’t he the one who gathered the troops while Marty was off doing god knew what with that dickhead Royce? Wasn’t he the one who figured out Tequila’s companion was Detective Daniels, simply because he recognized Daniels’s car from yesterday at
Spill
?

To hell with this. To hell with all this crap.

“I quit,” Leman said.

Marty’s face became a darker shade of pissed.

“You what?”

“I quit. I’m sick of you treating me like garbage. You wouldn’t even have Tequila cornered if I didn’t see him on the monitor. This is bullshit, Marty. I’m not putting up with it anymore.”

Leman stood up off the chair, staring face to face with his former employer.

“Mail me my check.”

Then Leman made a mistake. A mistake of pride. Intending to show contempt for Marty, he turned his back on him to walk out of the room.

Marty pulled the .38 from his waistband, shaking with rage. He’d never been so insulted by an underling. Ever. He cocked the gun, and to Leman it was as loud as a trumpet blast. The ex-cop stopped in his tracks and turned slowly.

“No one quits me,” said Marty the Maniac.

Leman stared at his death down the barrel of the .38 and cursed his stupid pride.

“You don’t have to shoot me, Marty,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “All you have to do is acknowledge my accomplishments now and then. Why should I stay with someone who insults and degrades me all the time? Would you?”

The silence that ensued lasted forever to Leman. Finally, Marty dropped the angry face and his features eased.

“You’re right, Leman,” Marty said. “I should treat my employees a little better. I’ll do that from now on.”

Leman, sensing a reprieve, felt relief cascade over him in a shower.

“That’s all I mean by it, Marty. You know I love working for you. But I bust my ass. Just a pat on the back and an
atta boy
every now and then would mean a lot.”

“Fair enough. Atta boy, Leman.”

“Thanks.”

Marty fired twice, putting two bullets into the ex-cop’s chest. Leman’s expression wasn’t of pain or horror. It was one of complete and total surprise. He held the expression as he dropped to his knees, clutching his heart. If Marty had bothered to check, he would have found the same expression on the man after he’d fallen face first to the floor and died.

But Marty didn’t bother to check, and when two of Fonti’s men came bursting into the room after hearing gunshots, Marty directed them to dispose of the body.