Day of the Tiger (A Carlos McCrary Mystery Thriller Book 5) Read online

  Day of the Tiger

  A Carlos McCrary Novel

  by Dallas Gorham

  Day of the Tiger is a work of fiction. Copyright 2016 by Seven Oaks Publishing LLC, all rights reserved. Excerpt from I’m No Hero Copyright 2014 by Seven Oaks Publishing LLC, all rights reserved. Excerpt from Six Murders Too Many Copyright 2014 by Seven Oaks Publishing LLC, all rights reserved. Excerpt from Double Fake, Double Murder Copyright 2014, 2015 by Seven Oaks Publishing LLC, all rights reserved. Excerpt from Quarterback Trap Copyright 2015 by Seven Oaks Publishing LLC, all rights reserved. Excerpt from Dangerous Friends Copyright 2015 by Seven Oaks Publishing LLC, all rights reserved. Excerpt from Don’t Blink Twice, copyright 2016 by Seven Oaks Publishing LLC, all rights reserved. This excerpt has been set for this edition and may not reflect the final content of the edition when released.

  Names, characters, places, and incidents in all of the above works are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental. No part of any of these stories may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  ISBN-10: 0-9973753-0-2

  ISBN-13:978-0-9973753-0-5

  16102403

  Cover art by Michael By Design www.MichaelByDesign.com.

  Day of the Tiger

  A Carlos McCrary Novel

  by Dallas Gorham

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Hello from Dallas Gorham

  Also by Dallas Gorham

  I’m No Hero

  Chapter 1

  Six Murders Too Many

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Double Fake, Double Murder

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Quarterback Trap

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Dangerous Friends

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  McCrary’s Justice

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  It is better to live for one day as a tiger than to live for a thousand years as a sheep.

  —Tibetan Proverb

  Chapter 1

  Alfred Rice cringed as the man in black raised the ball-peen hammer above his left hand. “No, for God’s sake, Monster! I paid you the interest. I’ll pay you the rest, I swear.” He struggled to free his arms. Panic rose in his throat like bile.

  “Crummy forty thousand dollars. That pays the interest to last month, you moocher. I told you I want the whole two hundred grand. I don’t trust you no more.” The man in black, Montgomery “Monster” Moffett, raised the hammer again. The industrial fluorescent lights high above the table cast multiple shadows across Rice’s arm. “You’re thirty days past due. This is the late fee.”

  “Monster, I need both hands to work,” Rice pleaded.

  “Hold him steady.” Moffett’s men jammed Rice’s forearm tight against the table. Moffett’s eyes blazed and his breath came quicker as he smashed the back of Rice’s hand with the hammer, shattering the fourth metacarpal bone. The blow crushed the veins and capillaries surrounding the bone. Skin ripped at the ragged edges of the ugly crater in Rice’s brown skin. Subcutaneous bleeding oozed into the crater, filled it, and spilled across the back of his hand like red lava spreading across a brown mountainside. Moffett licked his lips as he got a whiff of blood.

  Rice shrieked like a banshee. His vision blurred as pain dominated his senses and became the focus of his universe.

  “You don’t work, loser; you hang out in strip clubs when you could be making money to pay me back.” Moffett swung the hammer again.

  Rice’s scream echoed off the concrete block walls as his second metacarpal bone splintered. He stared wide-eyed at the second crater that the hammer gouged. Blood pooled, escaped, and mingled with the flow from the first wound. The red stream dripped off the back of Rice’s hand. A red slick began to spread across the table top. Sobbing, he pleaded with Monster. “I swear on my mother’s life I’ll pay you the rest, Monster. I’ll pay you, I swear.”

  “You should’ve thought of that before you tried to welsh on a debt.” Moffett swung the hammer again and pounded a third crater between the first two. “You owe me two hundred large. You’re past due. You got two weeks.”

  Rice’s vision turned to red. He slumped to one side.

  Moffett swirled the bloody pool with the hammer, smearing streaks across the Formica. He laid the gruesome hammer head on Rice’s wrist. He grabbed the frightened man’s ear and twisted it savagely. “You hear me, loser? You listening to me? Huh?”

  Rice mumbled through the bubbles that formed on his lips. He tried to nod, but it hurt his ear.

  Moffett tapped the victim’s wrist with the side of the hammer, leaving a red smear. “In two weeks’ time, I turn Teddy loose on you with his knife. He’ll carve you a reminder to pay your debts. Two weeks after that, I break both arms. Two weeks after that… Well, you did swear on your m
other’s life, didn’t you?”

  Rice tried to turn his face toward Moffett. “That’s not what I meant. You can’t—"

  Moffitt twisted Rice’s ear again. “You don’t tell me what I can’t do, loser. You understand me?” He waved at the other two men, who stepped away from Rice.

  Moffett released Rice’s ear and shoved his head away, knocking him off the metal chair.

  Rice peered up from the concrete floor. “You stay away from my mother. Just stay away. Do whatever you want with me. Maybe I deserve whatever I get, but not my mother.” His eyes narrowed. “Not my mother. You touch a hair on her head and I’ll kill you if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

  Moffett kicked him in the stomach. “Yeah, and I’m the Tooth Fairy.” He laughed when Rice vomited.

  Rice collapsed in a heap, sobbing as he cradled his ruined hand in the crook of his other arm.

  “Throw this bum out.”

  Chapter 2

  “I owe Al Rice a debt I can’t repay.” Tank Tyler paused to see if I was listening.

  I was looking east out the window of Tank’s sixty-first floor office in Port City’s newest skyscraper, admiring the view of Seeti Bay. The sea breeze had scrubbed the late afternoon air to a clean, crisp blue beyond the window wall. The knife edge of the horizon beyond Port City Beach appeared to be at arm’s-length. “Can you see all the way to Bimini?”

  “Not quite. Look, Chuck, I didn’t ask you here to admire the view. I have a friend who needs help.” He paused. “Earth to McCrary. Earth to McCrary. Come in, McCrary. Hey, you’re the McCrary of McCrary Investigations. I said I have a friend who needs your professional services. Did you even hear me?”

  I turned from the window. “Don’t get your panties in a wad; I heard you. You owe Al Rice a debt you can’t repay, yada, yada. I got it. Tank, you have more money than Tom Cruise. I would’ve said you have more than you can count, but you’re a Certified freakin’ Public Accountant with a computer for a brain. If you owe this Rice guy a debt, write him a check for crissakes.”

  He sighed. “Some debts can’t be paid with money. God knows I’ve tried.”

  “How so?” I sipped Tank’s expensive beer.

  He waved the question off. “That’s personal. It’s enough for you to know that Al is in big trouble. I hope you can help him, and I’ll pay you to try.” He lapsed into silence, tilted his glass for the last of the twelve-year-old, single-malt Scotch, then rattled the ice cubes.

  I turned the Pilsner glass in my hands while I gazed out the window again. One thing I’ll say for Tank: He stocks the best private bar in Port City. “You pay the freight and I’ll walk your dog.”

  He smirked. “Black people don’t own dogs.”

  “Tank, how many times I gotta tell ya? I’m the funny Mexican; you’re the studious African American CPA. Besides, you told me you owned a Border Collie when you were a kid.” I sipped my beer. “Sure, I’ll help your friend. What’s his problem?”

  “Al has so many problems I don’t know where to begin.” Tank shrugged. “To start, there’s Monty Moffett, otherwise known as ‘Monster.’"

  Despite me being a tough guy, that sent a frisson down my spine. “Al is involved with Monster Moffett?”

  “Yeah. Is that bad?”

  I nodded. “What do you know about Monster Moffett?”

  “Only what I read in the newspaper. Is he as bad as his nickname?”

  “Worse. Moffett is the biggest bookie and loan shark in Port City, both businesswise and physically. This guy is almost as big as you. Must be six-foot-five and outweighs you by fifty pounds. Of course, he’s mostly fat and you’re all muscle. But even so, he scares the hell out of most people.”

  “Does he scare you?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe he would if I had good sense, but I have more balls than brains.”

  “I would’ve said that you have balls instead of brains.”

  “You sure know how to hurt a guy. Especially a guy who is, uh, what’s that big word I learned? Intellectually challenged. You forget: I have copious brawn to go with my extraordinary balls.”

  “So you’ll help Al even with Monster Moffett in the picture?”

  “You forget: Under this business suit and tie I wear a red cape and a blue leotard with a big red S on it.”

  “I thought you only wore that when you went clubbing.”

  I grinned. “The bigger they are… Moffett is ruthless and sadistic, but his nasty temper makes up for it. I’d do the world a favor if I took him down a notch. I suppose Al owes him money?”

  “Yeah, and he hasn’t got a pot to piss in. A couple weeks ago Moffett sent two wise guys to haul Al to someplace in the warehouse district. Moffett took a ball-peen hammer to Al’s left hand. Poor guy was in surgery for three hours. Over a hundred stitches and God knows how many steel pins. He’ll never shuffle a deck of cards again, that’s for sure.” Tank set down his glass and cracked his knuckles. “Last week Al came to my office with a cast up to his forearm. He told me every agonizing detail.”

  “If you want me to help him,” I asked, “why’d you wait until last night to call me?”

  “Frankly, I didn’t know what to do. I’ve bailed him out more times than I can count. It never works. You know that old definition of insanity…”

  “Doing the same thing over and over, thinking this time you’ll get different results. Yeah, another old joke I tell better than you.”

  Tank smiled. “Sometimes when you don’t know what to do, the best thing to do is nothing.”

  “That sounds more like a bumper sticker than an excuse.”

  “In my defense, Moffett did give him two weeks. I knew Al had another week before Moffett came after him.”

  “So you procrastinated.”

  Tank stared at his empty glass. “I’m not proud of it.”

  “What changed?” I asked. “Why did you wait, then call last night in a hurry to see me?”

  Tank walked over to the bar. “You ready for another?”

  I raised my empty glass. “Last one, I have to drive.”

  Tank opened the bar refrigerator, slid out another Amstel, and handed it to me. “If I give Al money to pay this loan, Moffett will increase his credit line.” He poured a little Scotch and slid a few ice cubes down the side of the glass. “He’s done that before. Every time Al gambles or cooks up another hare-brained scheme, he gets deeper in debt to Moffett. When it comes to borrowing money from a loan shark like Moffett, Al’s like an alcoholic who can’t stop drinking.”

  I tilted the Pilsner glass and poured the Amstel gently down the slope so as not to bruise it. “How much does Al owe Moffett?”

  “Two hundred thousand dollars.”

  Two hundred thousand dollars was petty cash for Tank, but the way he said it called for a whistle, so I whistled. “What does Al do for a living?”

  Tank swirled his drink, rattled the ice. “Anything and nothing. He’s full of grandiose schemes. He does an occasional drug deal, he gambles, and he’s been arrested twice for shoplifting. He tried to flip houses during the last real estate crash. Lost a bundle, of course.”

  “Al doesn’t sound like the type of guy you’d pick for a friend. In fact, he sounds like the polar opposite of conservative, uptight CPA Thomas Tyler.” I poured the remainder of my beer. “How’d you become friends with a man like that?”

  “We played football together for the UAC Falcons for two years. Al attended Carver High School here in the City where his mother teaches English and his father was head football coach. Al was a sophomore, a year ahead of me. When I showed up fresh off the farm from Florence, Alabama, he took me under his wing. He drove me to his house for a home-cooked meal.” Tank stared out the window, lost in the past. “I was a fish out of water. Hell, I’d never seen a city larger than Huntsville, Alabama, except for recruiting trips when I was in high school. Al showed me how things work at a big university in a big city.”

  “What went wrong with Al?” I asked. “How did he end up s
uch a loser?”

  “It was sixteen years ago. Not relevant anymore.”

  “But he didn’t finish college, did he?”

  “Nope. Quit after he was kicked off the team in the spring semester of his junior year.”

  “Why’d he get kicked off?”

  “Not important now.”

  “Could be relevant. Sometimes things like that gnaw on you for years; they color everything you see in the world.”

  “Drop it, Chuck. It’s not important. Trust me on that.”

  Whenever someone tells me to trust them, it often means they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. I tried another tack. “So you two played together for two seasons.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened to him after he got kicked off the team?”

  “He dropped out.”

  “Why?”

  “Not important now.”

  I shrugged; I would come back to the subject later. “Using my unsurpassed analytical mind, I surmise that, for whatever reason, Al’s life went downhill while yours skyrocketed. Consensus All-American your junior year, Bronko Nagurski Award for best defensive lineman in the known universe your senior year, and the UAC Falcons won the National Championship that year.”

  I pointed to the Falcons team picture on the wall. “And where was Al while all this glory was heaped on you?”

  “I lost track of him for a few years.”

  “But not for long, I’ll bet. You were a first round NFL draft choice with a multi-million-dollar contract. It was all over the sports pages. Al had to know about it. Stop me if I get this wrong.”

  “So far, you’re ninety percent right.”

  “Hurray for me.” I lifted my glass and toasted myself. “So Al shows up out of the blue to congratulate his old, but newly-rich friend. You feel guilty about your success—you’re rich; he’s poor. You’re a big football star; he got kicked off the team. How’m I doing so far?”

  “A hundred percent.”

  “Then Al plays the guilt card. He asks you to bail him out of some mischief. You help him out and one thing leads to another. Eventually it becomes a habit for you both. You’re a rich man, so why not? I get that. That about right?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.” Tank stared into his glass.

  I threw up my hands. “So why am I here? Why’d you call me last night?”