Jack in a Box Read online

  JACK IN A BOX

  By

  Pringle McCloy

  Smashwords Edition

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Book Two - Chapter One

  Book Two - Chapter Two

  Book Two - Chapter Three

  Book Two - Chapter Four

  Book Two - Chapter Five

  Book Two - Chapter Six

  Book Two - Chapter Seven

  Book Two - Chapter Eight

  Book Two - Chapter Nine

  Book Two - Chapter Ten

  Book Two - Chapter Eleven

  Book Two - Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  JILLIAN’S WEDDING DAY BEGAN QUIETLY, so quietly I had too much time to think. ‘Why not me? I’m as good looking as Richard, possibly better. And like Richard I’m at the top of my game although mine is somewhat legal and his clearly is not. That’s why she likes him, I figure. She likes the fact that he’s a bigger criminal than her dad, Jack, who is like a dad to me too. You see, I was left to the courts by my parents before Jack stepped in. And Jack stepped hard in his size twelve shoes. John Wayne in stature and presence he seemed awesome to me, and all I ever wanted to be was just like Jack. Jack was my hero, my mentor, my muse.

  So, maybe I had the right to be bitter. I mean, a Triad boss was marrying the woman I loved and I was to be a good sport? Hello! Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser, guaranteed. I’m about the poorest loser on the planet next to Jack who tends to sulk when he’s beaten. And when he’s not. Me too. Since the engagement announcement I’d been drunker than a skunk, meaner than a wolverine, and had yet to sleep beside a non-for-profit woman. Or any woman, for that matter. Apparently, I’d acquired a werewolf quality, black-faced and shaggy, with haunting sky-blue eyes. Blame it on love, I told the mirror. It was all love’s fault.’

  But freshly showered and shaved I was about to attend a Smith and Wesson wedding and guess what? I was packing a wire. While I promised Jack to leave all weapons in the trunk of my car I lied through my molars since I only planned to leave most. Served him right, since he’d talked down to me earlier in the day while tutoring me on wedding banquet etiquette.

  “The guests aren’t rocket scientists,” he told me during breakfast in the kitchen of his British Properties home. We were seated on a banquette near a bank of windows overlooking the city below. “Small talk. Flatter the women, especially the ugly ones, and keep the whiskey flowing for the boys. Don’t insult them with champagne. They don’t like you so don’t give them an excuse to shoot you.”

  Nice. Well… Statistically a person could cross Jack and live, but not well on crutches and possibly missing an ear. And since I respected statistics I thanked him for thinking so little of me before leaving in a huff.

  So, several shots of Crown Royal later I was standing at the church doors dragging on a cigarette and watching the parade of collector cars arrive. Jack’s gang was cruising in led by Sharp-dressed Tony, Sammy, and the lot. Wedged into tuxedos Richard’s Triad goons came prancing up the steps looking tough. Right. I could take them. I was taller than Shorty Poo, thinner than Fat Freddie Fong, and only a tad scared of King Kong Chin, the Butcher. Yeah, I could take them down, no problem. While they had a penchant for knives I liked guns. Bang! Oh, and any second now little Jackie Chan would come racing into the church hollering, “Bomb!”

  After a frisking by Jack’s bodyguard, who winked as he found the shooter, I moved among some highly colorful guests: snobby West Van socialites, a couple of disbarred lawyers, several crooked cops, and a handful of feathery hookers Jack had sneaked past his sister’s haughty nose. Oh. Oh. The rustling and bustling of French chiffon signaled the arrival of the bride and her maids and the church went still. I whipped out a silver cigarette case to check my reflection. Yup. Charlie Hampton, PI. Slick dark hair and eyes the color of a swimming pool on the sunniest summer day. God, how could such a gorgeous bastard hurt so much inside?

  Jillian clutched my arm. “Admiring yourself again, Hampton? You never get enough of that pretty puss, do you?”

  She was so damn beautiful! Even through the misty veil I could see her remarkable face, her round hazel eyes, her straight determined nose. She was actually going to go through with it. She was going to swish right down that aisle and, in front of the entire congregation, declare her lack of love for me.

  “I love you,” I whispered in her ear.

  “I love me too.” She lifted her veil and kissed me smack on the mouth before moving along and gripping her father’s arm.

  “Don’t start, Jack! You’ve been wailing and convulsing all day as though your only child were being ushered to the gallows. We only have to get through this once, you know.”

  The big guy in the Armani tux looked skeptical. “Right. I’ll remind you of that six months from now when we’re standing on this very same plank preparing to make fools of ourselves again.”

  The Joneses started down the aisle then, Jillian exuding magnificence and Jack balking like a skittish Brahma bull. His sandy curls were drenched in terror while his mustache lay wet with the dew of the dreaded unknown. Poor bugger. He trudged like a rusty robot.

  “Just a few more steps,” she urged.

  About ten feet short of the altar Jack dug in. “He only wants one thing, Jilly!”

  Giggles rippled through the church.

  Jillian forged ahead, her father in tow. “That’s how you get grandchildren, Jack!”

  Laughter erupted. Bitter person that I was I even laughed. Mathematically, I figured I still had a chance given that very few people in the twenty-first century actually stayed married. She may even fall for me one day down the road, right after her lobotomy.

  At last the pair arrived at the altar where Reverend Roxanne hit Jack with the shocking words. “Who gives this woman to this blessed union?”

  When Jack hesitated the bets were on as the low rumble rolling through the church had nothing to do with prayer. “Seven to one,” Billy the Bookie hollered.

  “Who gives this woman to this blessed union?” the Reverend repeated patiently.

  Jack went wobbly. He reeled from heel to toe and back again, back again from heel to toe. He looked like a metronome. Tick tock. Tick tock. I grew dizzy just watching him sway. Then suddenly, like a huge sack of potatoes, he crashed to the floor. And with all the kafuffle at the altar no one heard the thud of a gun to my head or noticed my lifeless body being carried from the church.

  THE PREVIOUS YEAR

  Chapter One

  JACK’S HOUSE IN BRITISH PROPERTIES perched on the mountainside four stories deep. Sprawling behind lush hedges the concrete fo
rtress hosted thick black doors, electronic surveillance, and a garage for myriad cars. Inside, a sea of hardwood flowed down the stairways like a log run on the Fraser while crystal chandeliers lit the halls. To get to Jack’s domain I typically followed the trail of artifacts - from lewd to lewder statue - to the very end of the hall. The library was where Jack hid from the Jones women and he also hid on me, except when he wanted something. Then he tore the town apart to find me.

  About Jack’s statues… Most were benign in nature but I had a problem with David in the foyer alcove. David didn’t like me. Not that he’d verbalized such, it was just his swaying back and forth and threatening to fall over and crush me whenever I showed up at 33 Terrace Place.

  “It’s penis envy,” I told him upon arriving at Jack’s house on a rainy Sunday afternoon last April. “You’ve been shriveling, buddy, likely due to the statue cleaners and their habit of rubbing you the wrong way.”

  Nothing. Just swaying.

  Jack’s bodyguard came to the door. “Talking to David again, Charlie? Hope you know he isn’t real.” Shoeshine Fatso was a large handsome dude, a Jackie Gleason type with thick dark hair, glossy brown eyes, and a big gun. I respected Shoeshine. I had to. Jack threatened me with him all the time. “Got any weapons?” he boomed.

  “Just the usual, Shoeshine.”

  “Good. We may need your firepower later on.” He winked at me. “When things get hairy.”

  Behind Shoeshine’s back Renaissance David was flexing his muscle. And not the good kind.

  I could smell money. Old money and new money. Money coming out of the woodwork and floorboards, freshly laundered and still with bubbles on the Queen’s stern face. It was trip money, money soon to travel to Switzerland or the Caymans or the British Virgin Islands and back again, or just to stay put in a lazy old-fashioned way. Hidden money, the most exciting kind. While I speak figuratively my nose twitched to the transactions that typically took place over late-night whiskey in the library down the hall. Money over whiskey. How sweet was that? I was home, if only for my routine Sunday visit.

  “So, Leonard is really gone, then?” I asked Shoeshine. Leonard had plans to become Jack’s son-in-law before he disappeared.

  “Gone. Vanished into thin air. Jack’s so happy he’s throwing a party. Not that he needs an excuse.”

  “I’ll bet he’s happy. And I’ll bet he knows just where Leonard went. And I’ll bet that you do too.”

  Shoeshine shuffled his feet. He knew. Jack had done away with poor old Leonard and the only missing info was the where and the when. Not for me to condemn. I mean, Leonard wasn’t easy to like. Next to Leonard my arrogance looked like humility in disguise, some people said. Well, maybe those people were thugs but the majority of these thugs thought that Leonard wasn’t pretty enough to be such an asshole. And I did too. He was this long-nosed, pony-tailed professor who smelled of pipe tobacco on good days and you don’t want to know about the bad. He had skinny legs and bony ankles and didn’t wear socks. In summer his hairy white toes poked through his sandals, a very ugly sight.

  I almost whacked him once myself, the moron. We were at Jack’s house for a party and he pulled me aside. “Charlie,” he said. “This may sound silly but I think you’re jealous of me. You don’t suppose your underlying feelings may be that I’m about to replace you as Jack’s son, do you?”

  I thought about it. Since Leonard was Jack’s age the idea of Jack fathering him seemed hilarious to me. “No, Leonard. I don’t feel you’ll replace me as Jack’s son. I guess I just don’t like you.” With that I shuffled off to pour myself a double.

  But back to the celebration of Leonard’s demise. I was leaning against a tall white pillar feeling happy by whiskey when Jack’s older sister came breezing by, tossing me a furrowed look, like I’d been part of the great conspiracy. Jack’s sister was hot for fifty-three. You know those women obsessed with the gym and staying young? Well, Julia wasn’t one of them. No, she got her exercise running between boardrooms closing deals. A woman of intrepid intellect, Julia was built like a willow tree, tall and sweeping, with long shapely legs, keen hazel eyes, and sleek dark hair that went twisting into a knot. It was the kind of knot made to be shaken loose on a pillow by a very brave man, since Julia Mattingly was deadly in more ways than one.

  Jack was standing at the windows studying the landscape below when I finally tracked him down in a living room filled with gangsters, white leather sofas, animal print chairs, and Moroccan treasures. Leafy palm trees too.

  “Rhododendrons are my favorite.” He nudged me so hard he almost knocked me over. “Followed by azaleas, I think.” The dinosaur on his pullover eyed me up like lunch.

  Together we studied Vancouver at our feet.

  “I didn’t know you liked flowers, Jack”

  “It’ll be our secret, Hamster.”

  Well, only Jack dared to call me a rodent. It was an endearment, of sorts. Hampton to Hamster was Jack’s way of telling me how special I was and that basically he was my owner. I nodded.

  “I love it up here. It’s my favorite place in the world. Here in my castle with my private ocean view below I’m truly infallible. Infallible until the law catches up with me, that is. Or Jillian. Either way I’m a dead man.”

  “I heard. Via the grapevine.”

  He looked angelic with his sandy curls framing his face like garland, and although he’d hurt the person he loved most he had this knack of making you feel sorry for him, especially when he’d been bad.

  “Can I help?” I asked out of respect.

  “I’ll think about it.” He did. He was sucking me in like a carp. “I need to have some people watched. Are you any good at that?” His eyes were round and green and exact, like he’d been counting money but was a few grand short.

  “Sometimes I watch people. When I’m not breaking kneecaps.” I was trying to be cool but was excited way beyond cool. Big deals happened around Jack, some of them even legal, and people died. Hopefully I wouldn’t be one of them.

  “This is a big one, Hamster. Really big. These people can be dangerous. More dangerous than you know.”

  “Ok, Jack. What have you done?”

  He pawed his mustache, which I took as a sign of guilt. “Are you my father now?” he barked.

  “Someone has to be since you refuse to look after yourself. What have you done?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Exactly what kind of trouble are you in, Jack?”

  He giggled. “I like the way you say Jack. It’s like an order.”

  “It is an order. I need to know what you’ve been up to.”

  “Uh… Nothing. Yet.”

  “But?”

  “But I may be. Down the road. I might have to get into a business I’ve always tried to avoid.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Shush!” he whispered. “Do you want to get us killed? It’s something like drugs. Only not quite so bad.”

  Oh, great. He was going after the Triad. Holy crap!

  A wiser man may have bolted, or at least rewritten his will, but not a guy governed by testosterone. From my third-story perch I could see Jillian in the atrium below and I stumbled over teenagers on the stairway just to get there.

  “Charlie!” Leaping to her feet the girl straightened her skirt.

  “Tina!” I tried not to sound like an aging adult. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Tina was not your average girl next door unless you lived beside the Munsters. But she did live next door and took Gothic to a new level of black: long black fingernails, black paint smeared across her little mouth, black tattoos on her cheeks, and long silky black hair cloaking all of the above like a stage curtain threatening to open to a bad play. She was wearing a black fishnet top above a short black shirt and black leggings.

  I shook my finger at her. “This is a glass house, Tina. You may want to take the making-out to a dark room.”

  Tina flew like a raven up the stairs.

  So now I was in the atrium loo
king for a bony woman in a flowing dress that draped her bones like a tent. “Jillian,” I called, knowing that she was not a woman to be found.

  Nothing.

  “I’ve brought champagne.”

  Silence.

  “I’m drinking the champagne in my glass. Yummy. And now I’m starting on yours.”

  Giggles. She knew I’d be drinking whisky with nothing for her.

  “Hark! Do I hear the angel sing?”

  “Go away, Hampton. I hate you.”

  “Thank god. I was afraid you might have changed.”

  “No, I do. Now. Now, I really do hate you. Before I was just pretending.”

  Didn’t I tell you that I have a way with women? She was crazy about me. But long ago Jack decided that it wasn’t going to happen and Jack got his way almost all the time.

  “Go away.”

  The words tumbled from her mouth over a thick tongue. I was therefore not surprised to find her teetering on a limb about eight feet off the ground, plastered. What a woman to adore! A guy could get tangled up in her wild blond curls if he wasn’t careful. He could get his heart ripped out by an eyelash, even, if he let down his guard. But looks aside, it was about her mind. She had one. And opinions. Jillian had more opinions than the Pope. And she swore like a pirate’s parrot.

  She waved the vodka bottle in her right hand while her left arm clung to the tree. “You bastard!” she said with some vehemence. “You likely put him on the plane. Or… was it under a train? Does that rhyme or what?” She saluted me with the half-empty bottle. “Plane. Train. Doesn’t matter. He’s gone. My Leonard is gone. Maybe to the rain in Spain.” She laughed her mouth off before starting to sob. “Tell me you didn’t hurt him. Tell me, Hampton. Tell me that you let him go.”

  “I didn’t…” I started but she cut me off.

  “I knew it was you! Jack doesn’t have the balls. But you do. Because you have to prove yourself to him over and over again. You’re such a puppet.”

  “I didn’t …”

  “You sound like a defective toy. I didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t.”