No problem
, Marty thought. Plenty more where that came from.
The final round took place in the bedroom, Earlene so toasted on coke and white wine Marty figured there was no way he could miss. But with Earlene, you never could tell.
“You got protection?”
“What?”
“Rubbers. Protection.”
“Aw, come on, Earlene, I hate ’em. It’s like wearin’ a raincoat in the shower.”
Earlene snaked a hand under her pillow and came up with a cherry-flavored Trojan, ribbed for pleasure. She tossed it at him and it stuck to his chest. Marty peeled it off like it was a leech. “Put a hat on it, Small,” she said, “or tell your story walking.”
Marty grumbled but obeyed. And at last, Earlene was his.
He went at the task with real heart, the coke conspiring with the sensation-dulling rubber to turn him into a tireless stud. And when he finally came, the lights shivered on the miniature Christmas tree that stood on the bedside table.
“Jeez,” Earlene said as Marty rolled off her, breathing hard. “That was great.” She got up and went into the can, not bothering to shut the door. Marty could hear her tinkling in there.
“You off for a while now?” he said, testing the water. “Holidays and all?”
Earlene flushed the john, raising her voice to say, “I’m on at the club tomorrow night. And I got some appointments, next few days.” She was brushing her teeth now, the water in the sink running full blast.
Marty said, “What would it take for you to call in sick and cancel the appointments?”
Earlene appeared in the doorway, still nude and so cool about it, leaning against the jamb with that trimmed bush staring straight at him, a red toothbrush in her hand, toothpaste foam on her lips. She flashed him a smart-ass grin.
“More than you can afford, Small.”
“Try me.” He wished she’d call him by his first name.
“Five hundred a day, cash money.”
Marty did the math in his head. It took a minute. He said, “Four days, okay? Plus blow, plus Christmas every day for four days, plus a partridge in pair of BVDs.”
That got a laugh out of her.
Call me Marty
, Marty thought, willing it.
Smiling, shaking her head, Earlene said, “I don’t mind the easy money, Marty, if that’s how you wanna spend it.”
Marty grinned and flipped back the covers. “Look who’s awake already.”
Feeling playful, Earlene climbed aboard.
Later, while she slept, Marty lit a smoke and leaned against the headboard, feeling like the luckiest man alive. Had he any idea what was tucked inside the stolen wallet in his jeans, he might have realized just how close to the truth this was.
When his smoke was done he switched off the lamp and snuggled into Earlene’s back, one arm around her waist, breathing her scent. He fell asleep that way, dreaming about the days ahead.
* * *
Following a brisk assessment in the ER and a barrage of X-rays and Cat scans, Keith Whipple was rushed to the waiting OR. Apart from a nasty scalp laceration, which was sewn up in the ER, all of his serious injuries were orthopedic. Under normal circumstances his right femur alone would have been enough to finish him. The mid-shaft fracture was compound, the shattered ends protruding from the flesh like roots spaded from the earth, and Keith would have bled out in under an hour had it not been for the numbing cold. As the surgeons worked to repair his fractures—his left leg was broken, too, as were his pelvis and three of the fingers on his left hand—the anesthesiologist warmed him gradually, using a combination of heating blankets and warm intravenous fluids. Keith had also sustained a non-depressed skull fracture, but since the Cat scan indicated only a moderately severe concussion, it was elected to leave the fracture alone.
He spent five hours under anesthesia before his transfer to ICU, where he was placed on a mechanical ventilator and attached to a bank of sophisticated monitors.
* * *
Once her fractured wrist had been set and a short-arm cast applied, Kate was transferred to a private room and left to sleep off the sedation. Her sleep was restless and rife with dreams: grinding, slow motion replays of those few weightless moments in the limo before it slammed into the rock cut. Though Kate would not remember it, a nurse came in every hour to waken her and check her vital signs. During one of those visits a warm hand linked with hers and she opened her eyes. It was the policeman, the one who’d saved her life, and she smiled at him, saying, “It’s my angel….”
She had no further dreams after that and no clear awarenesses, until the morning light stung her eyes and the worst headache she’d ever experienced took hold of her consciousness and squeezed.
* * *
Three-forty AM, Detective Raybould put his feet up on the coffee table in his third floor apartment and lit a smoke. There was a late-night documentary on the tube, grainy black and white footage of Nazi Germany, and not for the first time he wondered what it must have been like to live and operate in those days. Too easy, he imagined, at least when the Krauts were on top. It would’ve been a kick for a while, that kind of unchecked power, but he could see himself loosing his edge in a system like that. Getting lazy.
Hitler appeared on the screen now, addressing a sea of cheering humanity, and Raybould shut the thing off. Unless he’d been the head Kraut himself, he never would have been able to tolerate all the goose stepping and ass kissing that went with the territory. Pretty much the way police work was headed these days when you thought about it. The past ten years. Fucking SIU, police watchdogs, trying to turn good cops, effective cops like himself into common criminals, and for what? For doing their jobs. It infuriated him every time he thought about it. Cap a crackhead coming at you with a hunting knife, a justifiable use of deadly force in the old days, an hour later you’re off the street and under the microscope, dirty until proven otherwise. Four clean shoots back in his Holdup days, they’re handing him commendations. Now, one doper punk, the knife in his
hand
, and they’re trying to put him away. Calling it manslaughter. The prosecutor calling him a gunslinger, a dinosaur, a fucking menace. It had occurred to him more than once since this pony show began to pay that loud mouth a visit, get him sucking on six inches of stainless Smith & Wesson steel and see how randy he feels.
The hell of it was, they might actually nail him this time. The hearings weren’t going well, the prosecutor goading him on the stand, making him angry in front of the jury. Bad form. He’d have to watch that.
Jesus, wouldn’t that be a cunt? Actually doing time?
“No way,” Raybould said into the silence.
He got up and poured himself a bourbon then settled back on the couch, lighting a fresh cigarette, the butts from the half-dozen others he’d already smoked ranked around the inside curve of the ashtray in his lap, a souvenir from a hotel in Vegas.
He sipped his drink and thought of Constantine “Connie” Corsino. Another thorn in his side. It fascinated him how these old wops operated, that whole mindset. All that shit about honor and respect, meanwhile they’re knocking each other off like flies. The way they figured they owned you once you entered their circle, expected you to subscribe to that same almost childlike code. Charming fuckers when they were courting you, though. It still amused him when he thought about it, how easy it had been. Just another line to cross.
The first kiss had come during the Coroner’s inquest on his last clean shoot working Holdup, eleven years ago now. A mob underboss he’d capped, the twitchy asshole taking a shot at him during a routine gaming house raid. Raybould had dropped him without hesitation, double-tapping him through the heart, finding out only later the man had been a heavyweight in one of the Hamilton families, looking to get a turf war going with the Corsino clan. Raybould had been sitting near the back of the courtroom that day, his part of it done, when a guy in a dark suit squeezed past him into the aisle, handing him a thick envelope as he passed. “From an associate of mine,” the guy said, “in gratitude,” and walked away.
Fifty grand’ worth of gratitude. Over a year’s salary in those days.
A month later on a cold night in February, Raybould off-duty coming out of a favorite steak house, a black Mercedes pulls up to the curb beside him and a goon in an oilskin coat pops out, holding the door open for him. Corsino sitting alone in there, saying, “Get inside, detective, and close the door. It’s cold outside.”
That easy.
The old man handing him a glass of vermouth as the Mercedes pulled away from the curb, saying, “You got what I gave you?”
Raybould saying, “Yeah, I got it,” his mind already made up.
“You keep it?”
“It was a gift, right?”
“Yeah. A gift.”
“So I kept it.”
Corsino smiling, showing his dentures. “You had enough time to think about it?”
“I thought about it.”
“And?”
“It’s do-able. Long as you don’t expect me to work for that kind of money.”
Corsino laughing then, touching Raybould’s face with a bony hand, saying to his driver, “I knew I was gonna like this guy.”
And it was done.
Nearly a year had gone by before he heard from the old man again, always through a messenger after that first brief meeting, the night he lost his cherry. And until the last couple of years the arrangement had been a good one, Corsino using him for targets he could get close to where others could not, simply by virtue of his badge. The money was good, the wire transfers prompt, the jobs spaced widely enough to deflect suspicion.
But recently the old man’s attitude had begun to deteriorate, Corsino treating him like an underling now, using tactless messengers to assign shitty jobs with even shittier pay days, refusing to meet or speak with him, making it known that as far as he was concerned he owned Raybould outright. No more charade. No more pretense of a gentlemen’s agreement.
Another fucker that needs a wake-up call
, Raybould thought, finishing his drink. Maybe it was time to clean house. Pay the old guinea a visit—the prosecutor, too, what the hell—then retire. He didn’t have the kind of money he’d hoped for, but he had the place in Switzerland, and surely in Europe he could find employment. Something specialized. Keep his hand in. It was a soothing thought…
He leaned back on the couch and took a drag off his smoke, his mood reflective. Using the remote, he turned the TV back on and half-watched the documentary, letting his considerable imagination roam free. When his cigarette was finished he tamped it out in the ashtray and lined it up with the others. He placed the ashtray on the coffee table, unholstered his sidearm and lay it in his lap, cocked and locked, where the ashtray had been.
Now his head drifted back, his eyelids heavy. He would sleep an hour, maybe two, dreamlessly but close to the surface, like a shark cruising for prey. Then he would return to the street.
––––––––
STEVE OPENED HIS eyes, surprised to find the hospital room steeped in morning light. He must’ve nodded off, because when he closed his eyes with the intention of only resting them a minute it had still been dark. It surprised him too that he’d fallen asleep, the tension he’d been feeling, the horrors of the road still fresh in his mind. Then this new madness, sitting in the dark with a sleeping stranger, trying to dream up some excuse for being here that wouldn’t give away the obvious. Professionalism? Forget about it. He’d checked that in the lobby along with his brain. For all he knew he could be kicked off the force for a boneheaded move like this. He should’ve listened to Mitch.
His hand was still linked with Kate’s and now he gently withdrew it, feeling adolescent in the light of day. He looked at Kate’s sleeping face and felt the same half-startled and wholly inappropriate pleasure he had the night before when he first laid eyes on her in the limo. It was crazy, his being here, about as far out of line as he cared to get…
But, Jesus, there was something…
He shook his head and said it out loud, “Crazy.” Crazy to read so much into a glance, a simple touch, especially given the circumstances. And yet…it was as if he’d known her, a gleam of recognition shared for just that instant in their eyes, but the details, the true shape of it lingering just beyond memory’s reach.
Crazy all right. The girl was a complete stranger and he’d do well to remember that.
He got to his feet and stretched, his back kinked from the hard contour chair he’d been slouched in. His boot heel bumped the chair leg, making a racket, and Kate stirred, shifting onto her side on the bed. Steve turned away, feeling like a voyeur. He left the room on tiptoes, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
There was a doctor at the nursing station down the hall, chatting with the nurses, and Steve approached him now, introducing himself, showing his badge.
* * *
Kate awoke a few minutes later with a blinding headache. She raised her right hand to her forehead and bonked herself with her cast. She blinked at it a moment, disoriented, until the events of the previous night came rushing back at her.
Dad…
She sat up by increments, wanting to get to her father but feeling a hundred years old, the effort doubling the throb in her skull. Once she was upright, the walls swapped places a few times and she had to lie back down. After a little trial and error she figured out how to raise the head of the bed with the control buttons.
Steve came in at that point and said hello. Kate stared at him a moment, then said, “You were here last night,” and Steve nodded. “So I wasn’t dreaming.”
He said, “How do you feel?” and Kate remembered how soothing his voice had sounded in the cold tomb of the limo, the strangely intimate feeling she’d gotten looking into his eyes in the chancy glow of his flashlight.
She said, “Sore. Flaky. I’ll be fine once I’m up and about.”
He sat in the chair he’d slept in, rumpled looking in faded blue jeans and a white crew-neck sweatshirt with the O.P.P. crest on the arm.
Kate said, “Did I thank you?”
“Sure you did. You thought I was an angel.”