Suckers - Jack Kilborn [50]
I shouted back at her (though an onlooker might have mistaken it for shameful cowering and groveling) and headed out to do a sauce exchange. As I walked into the driveway, I realized that I’d left my car keys on the kitchen table. Having just been lectured for my lack of responsibility, I didn’t think it was a good idea to walk back into the house and sheepishly say “Uh, forgot my keys.” The store was only ten blocks away. I’d walk.
To keep the walking time to a minimum, I cut through several backyards. I didn’t notice the man breaking into an unfamiliar house until I practically bumped into him. I’m not very observant.
He had wavy brown hair and a two-day beard that looked like dirt on his cheeks in the semi-darkness. Clenched in his teeth was a penlight, aimed down at the doorjamb where he wiggled a pry bar. Upon hearing me he dropped the tool and dug into his trenchcoat, removing a handgun the size of a loaf of handgun-shaped French bread.
“Beeb, brubbubber!” he said.
“I beg your pardon?”
He removed the penlight from his mouth. “Freeze, bloodsucker!”
“I beg your pardon?”
I’d been called a lot of things in my life, many of them only a few minutes ago, but “bloodsucker” was a new one.
The man pointed the gun at me and glanced down at the jar in my hand. “What’s that? A jar of Type O positive?”
“It’s Momma Helga’s Spaghetti Sauce.”
“Why does it have a penis on the label?”
“That’s a mushroom.”
“It looks like a penis.”
“No, it looks like a chef’s hat. But it’s a mushroom.”
“Drop the penis sauce and get down on your knees. Then open your mouth.”
I didn’t want to do that for an infinite number of reasons. “I’d rather not.”
The man smacked me in the head with the gun, hard enough to make me see mushroom-shaped stars (which was odd). I got down on my knees as instructed.
“Open wide,” the man said, pressing the barrel against my lips.
I opened my mouth.
“Wider.”
I opened my mouth wider.
He tilted his head and peered inside, flashing the pen light along my gum line. Then he nodded, apparently satisfied with what he saw. “You can close it now. No fangs. You’re cool.” He lowered the gun.
I should have made the comment, “Yeah, I lost my baby fangs when I was eight,” but I never think of clever stuff like that until a few minutes after the moment has passed. Instead I said, “What the hell are you talking about? And why did you hit me in the head?”
“Pires.”
“Pires?”
“Vampires.”
Oh, goody. A whacko.
“Vampires don’t exist,” I helpfully pointed out.
The man sneered at me. “They exist, sauce-boy.” He tapped the door he’d been prying at with his penlight. “And they’re in this house.”
They call me Harry McGlade. Probably because that’s my name. I’m a private eye.
My office is in Chicago, and five days ago a desperate woman named Phoebe Mertz retained me to find her daughter, Tanya. Little Tanya was sixteen, into the Goth scene big-time. You know the type: dresses in all black, collects piercings, wears way too much mascara, scowls all the time. Most parents dream their child will go to medical school. Very few dream their child will get a tattoo on their forehead that says, “Life’s a toilet.”
According to Mom, Tanya had never run away before.
“I know she looks different,” Phoebe had said, showing me a picture of a frowning brunette with five nose rings, three eyebrow rings, and too many earrings to count.
“I hope she stays out of lightning storms.”
“She’s really a good girl. Straight A’s. Doesn’t do drugs or have a boyfriend.”
“She hangs around with other Goths?”
“Yes. All of her friends are into that.”
I figured that Tanya was probably in an alley somewhere, stoned out of her mind, while a bike gang ran a train on her.
I shared these thoughts with Phoebe, but it didn’t seem to ease her worries.
“I want you to find her and bring her home, Mr. McGlade.”
“I get five hundred a day.