by Russ Anderson

 

I lit another cigarette and leaned back into the chair, sighing a little. It was important to take a minute to yourself at times like this. So you didn't do anything stupid. So I closed my eyes and held my breath and let the smoke and nicotine and tar and all the other nasty shit in your average Marlboro Red caress my lungs.

Then I leaned forward again and, through a haze of exhaled smoke, considered the lumpy knot of bruised flesh at my feet.

Lucy had been a beauty queen once, a real knockout of a dame: long straight blond hair, big knockers, and legs that I swear went straight up to her chin. The kind of eyes that could reel a man in like a fishhook in his jaw. Like a goddamn movie star, she was.

The problem was, God had gone to so much trouble to make her gorgeous, that he'd cut a few corners when building her brains. That had to be the case, or she never would have turned that gorgeous back of hers on The Boss when he needed her. Never would have walked out on him. Sure as hell wouldn't have gone to the police with everything she knew about The Boss and his business.

And she knew plenty. Even the big man got a little loose-lipped between the sheets, it seemed -- but either way, mine was not to question why, etcetera, etcetera....

Lucy's hair was matted with her own blood. She had given up crying a while back. Now she just moaned every now and then. That was bad, 'cause I needed a confession. The Boss had been explicit about that: Be a good boy, Frankie, and do what you want to her, but I wanna hear her admit she betrayed me before you ice her.

I stubbed out the cigarette, half-finished, on the side of the chair, and pulled the mini tape recorder out of my jacket pocket. I leaned closer to her, making sure the mike was pretty close to her head, and said,

"Lucy?"

She moaned and shifted a little.

"Lucy, listen to me for a minute, you dumb broad. I'm gonna ask you a question and you answer yes or no. Got it?"

She moaned again. Both her eyes were swollen shut, so I just had to assume she was awake and understood.

"Good girl. Answer me and it's all over, okay?"

She moaned a third time, but it was starting to sound more like words now and that was good enough for me.

"Did you go to the cops with info on The Boss? Did you rat him out?"

I waited. A full minute I waited, but she just laid there, face pointed at the ceiling, not seeing anything through her swollen eyelids. I watched the second hand on the old alarm clock on the dresser go all the way around the clock face, but the dame didn't say anything, just lay there with that gorgeous chest moving in time with her breathing. I kicked her in the side and she moaned, but I could tell she was almost beyond feeling anything. That kind of interrogation wouldn't be any good for much longer.

"C'mon Lucy. Don't make me hurt you anymore. Yes or no?"

She hitched a breath and shuddered...and at first I thought it was a death rattle, that I'd pushed her too far and the dame was just gonna up and croak on me.

But she wasn't dying, not yet. She was laughing. It was weak and hurt, but it was a laugh, alright. I couldn't believe she still had it in her, but that didn't surprise me nearly as much as the next moment, when she raised a shaky hand into the air and gave me the finger.

I don't remember thinking. I don't even remember moving. I just remember hearing the gunshot and looking down and seeing my own gun in my own hand and, through the smoke rising out of the barrel, Lucy lying exactly as she had before, only with a bullet hole in her forehead and the rising and falling of that perfect chest stopped permanently.

Slowly, like I was underwater, I slipped the gun back under my jacket and clicked the recorder off. That went back in the jacket too.

How the hell was I gonna explain this to The Boss?