Suckers - J.A. Konrath

feedings it kind of tickles."
An IV? Now that I could use. I had a killer headache, and my arm hurt from landing hard on
Mayhem. I was sure Horace wouldn’t mind if I gave myself a little poke to take the edge off.
I headed toward him, but my feet got tangled up and I fell sideways, turned a small
cartwheel, and ended up on my back with my legs in the air.
There was a loud sound—part flatulence/part slurp—and then Horace produced an
exaggerated sigh that sort of petered out into silence.
"Horace? You still there?"
"He’s in a better place," I said, unwinding the intestines from my ankles.
"What did you do now, you idiot? How the hell did you ever get a private investigator's
license?"
"You need a license?"
"God, I hate you."
I smelled something poopy, and realized that something in the entrail pile was leaking.
"Your neighbor had a lot of guts."
"More than you’ll ever have."
"I mean he really had a lot of guts." I felt something small and wet, like a skinned lemon.
"What the hell is this? A spleen?"
"We need to get out of here. Jesus!"
"Call me Harry."
"I found a wall. And another corpse. Oh God, and another one. And another."
I finally kicked off the last of the offal, made it to Horace, and took a hit off his IV tube.
Tasted like morphine.
"I think there may be an exit this way. I feel a breeze."
"Mmmm. Morphine."
"Harry, you moron, are you listening to me?"
"Yeah, yeah, breeze, exit, I’ll be there in a minute."
"Are you eating something?"
"I’m nob eebing ebbyfib."
The morphine went down easy, just like Aunt Emma, and soon all of my various aches and
pains were replaced with a non-specific sense of well being. I tied a knot in the tube, pulled the
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