Shot of Tequila (9 page)

Tequila reached the lobby and took the door to the parking garage. Frank the doorman gave him a friendly nod as he walked past. He disengaged the car alarm with the device on his key ring, which also opened the doors. The yellow metal smiley face keychain he’d gotten from Sally seemed to wink at him as he started the car. Her birthday was coming up in a few weeks. He’d have to think of something nice to get her.

Once again he had to honk at the watchman, who didn’t open the garage door because he’d been sleeping. Tequila decided he wouldn’t let it slide this time. He’d complain to the association and get the man fired. What if there were some kind of emergency, especially with Sally?

He drove out into the night, opening his windows and letting the frigid atmosphere slap at him.
Spill
was only ten blocks away, and he parked in the alley around back. He buried the gun barrels in the bottom of a nearby Dumpster, making sure the prints were wiped off first, and placed some boxes over them.

The club was located on the first and second floor of a ten story office building, which Marty owned. When Marty had toyed with the idea of opening a dance bar, he’d been able to get this entire building for less than what it would have cost to build a club from scratch. The remaining floors he rented out to a few legitimate businesses, and kept the rest for himself.

Tequila went around to the front of the building, where a line of people waited to get in, freezing in their miniskirts and dago tees. Looking good was more important than keeping warm at a trendy club like
Spill
. Tequila walked past the line and nodded at the doorman, who was scrutinizing a young blonde girl’s ID with a penlight. It should have been Terco or Slake at the door, as Leman and Matisse were on money guard duty tonight, but instead it was O’Neal, one of the bartenders. Terco and Slake had probably been pulled away to deal with whatever the emergency was.

O’Neal gave Tequila a mean face for cutting in line until he noticed who it was, and then the mean became a curt nod and he let the smaller man pass.

The interior of
Spill
was similar to other clubs of its type. Dark, except for the flashing lights on the dance floors, cramped to capacity with people, smoky, and louder than hell. Tequila pushed his way through the crowd of twenty-something partiers and to the back bar by the DJ booth. He used his access key to open the door marked
PRIVATE
. The door locked automatically behind him, and Tequila walked down a short hall and then up a staircase to Marty’s office, mercifully soundproofed from the rest of the club.

Marty the Maniac was in his office alone, something Tequila hadn’t expected. He appeared to be hunched over some kind of contract, and he motioned for Tequila to come in without looking up at him. Tequila, without knowing exactly why, felt slightly on edge. He entered the office but didn’t sit, waiting for Marty to say something. As he always did, Tequila took in his surroundings and noticed two unusual things. The first was that Marty’s television, usually on a stand by the wall, was missing. The second was that whatever Marty had in front of him, he wasn’t reading it. Only pretending to.

Marty appeared to reach the end of his reading, and then pushed it aside on his desk and sat back in his chair, meeting Tequila’s stare. He looked extremely calm. Too calm for Marty. Tequila’s apprehension kicked up a notch.

“Where’s the money?”

Tequila assumed he meant the collection from Billy Chico. Maybe that’s what Marty was upset over. The fact that Tequila had killed Chico, and that it might lead back to him somehow.

“I’ve got it on me,” Tequila said.

Marty smiled, but the smile was as dead as his eyes.

“Funny, Tequila. Very funny. Aren’t you wondering how I knew it was you?”

Tequila didn’t understand the question. He waited for more.

“You forgot about the videotape. I’ve got the whole thing on tape. Got a great shot of your tattoo.”

Tequila replayed the words in his head, trying to make sense out of them. He was missing something here.

“What are you talking about?” he finally asked.

“What am I talking about?” Marty chuckled. “I’ll tell you what I’m talking about. I want my Super Bowl money, you stupid little shit!”

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.