"You leave that to me, sweetheart."
The arrogance of those words ran through my head just before the bullet did. My body went cold and my brain went numb as the hot piece of lead dug itself into my frontal lobe. I stayed alive just long enough to feel the back of my head open up. The bastard had scratched tiny crosses on the tips of his shells, causing the bullet to expand on impact. My skull opened from the back, like a second mouth coughing blood and gray matter. I fell backwards, propelled by the force of the bullet and my own dying nerves. What was left of my head landed with a wet smack on the cement.
Then there was nothing.
***
"You’ve got this all backwards," I said as my arms strained against the nylon ropes that held me to the chair. "She’s the one you need to be angry at."
I got a hard smack across the head with a Louisville slugger for my troubles. I didn’t really expect much else; I had been taken out of the driver’s seat quite a while ago, but that wasn’t going to stop me from going without a fight. I rocked sideways in the chair, balancing precariously on two legs before Mickey steadied me with his big meaty fingers. He was built like a Sherman tank, and was twice as thick.
She stood in the shadows, stalking along the edge of the garage’s lights like a lioness watching her cub’s first kill. She didn’t smile and she didn’t frown, but her eyes conveyed all manner of sick pleasure. Even when she was silhouetted in shadow, her eyes still shined at me, dancing like wildfire at the control that she had over the scene before her. Mickey slugged me again and my neck snapped back, blacking out my vision for a moment. He was kind enough to wait until I came to before starting again. All through the beating, I tried to keep my eyes on her. She wore pearls and a red dress; her dinner reservations had been made an hour ago. Every time the gorilla hit me, she jumped just a little, her breathing getting a little harder like a kid on a carnival ride.
I was barely alive when she called his name and stopped him. My head rolled back on my shoulders and I let out a little gurgle as my throat fought through a river of blood looking for air. My eyes had all but swelled shut and the inside of my mouth was jagged thanks to the teeth that Mickey had broken. The light seemed to soften her as she walked toward me. Her features grew gentle and more familiar and I smelled the sunflower scent of her perfume again.
"I’m sorry sweetie," she whispered to me, her voice a serpent’s hiss. "It’s either you or me."
I glared at her through slitted eyes. "You’re a real bitch," I muttered, my voice nothing more than a gurgle.
She titled her head and seemed to consider my words for a moment. "Yes, I am," she said simply before rising again and walking back toward the shadows. She nodded once at Mickey, and the thick-fingered mook leveled a handcannon at me.
***
Pay attention now. Try to focus.
My mind was still swimming; my thoughts were all on her. I shook my head in an attempt to clear out the cobwebs and focus on the business at hand.
Shattered glass lay scattered on the concrete in front of the door, marking my sloppy entrance into the garage. When I was on my game, I could be invisible. No one ever saw me; I was a moonlight shadow, a whisper on the wind. I would get all the dirt and no one would even know that I was involved. I wasn’t on my game tonight; she had my head screwed on backwards. If I had been smart, I would have waited a day or two and gone in when the only thing on my mind was the job. But I was always a little too cocky for my own good. Even if I wasn’t going one hundred percent, I figured that I’d be better than most guys in my line of work.
Of course, most guys in my line of work end up either dead or in jail.
The garage was the Castle Frankenstein of cars. A banged up old rabbit sat on a lift, its hood open and its guts torn out. Rusted Chevys and burned out old sports cars formed a maze of mental antiquity, while shelves spilling over with spare parts and automotive tools promised that the dead cars would one day live again. The place smelled of cigarettes and old motor oil. In the corner I could hear the crackling static of an old FM radio chattering quiet white noise to itself.
I heard a crunch under the soles of my shoes. Stepping back and leaning down, I found a small scattering of broken glass. It wasn’t glass from a car, like something from a broken windshield or mirror; it was stained a yellowish-brown, like a broken beer bottle. There was more than that, though. Underneath the glass and spreading outward slowly was a small pool of blood. I touched a finger to it and winced. I hadn’t been thinking, or rather, I had been thinking about her rather than the job. The cops could trace the blood back to me now. I had to hope that whoever had been hurt hadn’t been killed.
Footsteps.
I looked up from the scene just as Monica stepped around the broken body of a yellow Dart. Her eyes shined white in the gray night air as she looked at me with a gaze of combined fright and pity. She wore a fine pearl necklace and a dress that I identified as red even through the black and white haze of the unlit night.
I hadn’t heard a door open...had she been waiting for me?
There was more red than just her dress. My eyes trailed down her slender arms to the dripping blood on her left hand. Suddenly the blood on my fingertips felt very familiar.
I opened my mouth to say something, but only cursed myself silently. I had focused too much on her; I hadn’t noticed the footsteps behind me.
The big lug had a broken, blood-soaked bottle in one hand and a tire iron in the other. He dropped what was left of the bottle to the ground, letting it shatter on the dirty concrete as I stood up. I made another stupid mistake; instead of running I took a shot at his jaw in an attempt to catch him by surprise. He was faster. His head was working right. He had already hurt her, so she was out of his mind. He wanted someone new now.
He caught me on the side of the face with the tire iron and I heard a crack following the wet sound of impact. I spun around on my way to the ground, landing in the broken glass on my face instead of on my back. That’s all it took before I blacked out. If I had been thinking straight, I would have put up more of a fight.
I saw Monica as my vision blurred. I wasn’t thinking straight. She had made sure of that.
***
She pushed me gently backwards on the bed and kissed me. Her perfume filled my senses, and I felt strangely drowsy. Her tongue inside my mouth and her arms draped around my body was all she needed to turn my brain off. What came next wasn’t as simple as mere instinct. It was desire in its purest form given life. I pulled her on top of me and we fumbled with our clothes. If I could have consumed her, I would have.
The clothes didn’t come completely off, and eventually we gave up on them. We tore at each other. Then, without a word, she pushed me down on my back and stood up, straightening her hair slightly as I watched. One long arm reached around behind her and unzipped her emerald green dress. She slid off her dress, folded it neatly, and placed it on the floor. Then, just as delicately, she removed the rest of her clothing. Underneath the imperviousness of her dress her body was thin and almost sickly looking. A number of thin scars crisscrossed her stomach and thighs. Some of them had healed and were nothing but pencil lines of raised skin; others were clearly fresher.
Completely naked, she climbed into bed and embraced me again. As we kissed once more, I decided that I would do what she had asked of me. I would do this deed not out of vengeance for what Mickey had done to her and not because of the money that she had given me. I would do it because I wanted her, pure and simple. Tonight would not be enough; I had to have more. I wanted her to be mine, and I was more than willing to kill to get what I wanted.
***
The sign on my door said "Private Investigator," but that’s not why people came to see me. They came for the other thing that I did, the part that always ended with a dead body and confused cops.
"I’m scared of him," she told me, her voice a frightened whisper. "The only time that he isn’t hurting me is when he’s hurting someone else."
"What’s the guy’s name?"
"Michael. Michael Morrow. Folks call him Mickey."
I nodded and took a long drag off of my cigarette, blowing the smoke through my nostrils before I spoke again. I knew the name. Mickey had an autobody shop downtown. From what I had heard of the guy, he had a body that could tear open an eighteen wheeler and the disposition of a pit bull. "Folks like Mickey tend not to have a lot going on upstairs. Even so, it’s not going to be an easy job. I need more than you’re offering."
She took two steps backwards, recoiling as though I had just hit her. "But...but I’ve given you all the money I have," she stammered, trying to seem as small and pathetic as possible. "Please, you have to help me."
I stabbed out my cigarette and shrugged. "Your money’s not enough," I said indifferently.
She opened her mouth to deliver another insincere plea, but then closed it as a light went on behind her eyes. She moved toward me slowly, her hips swaying as she walked and a sultry smile forming on her face. "I could give you something other than money," she said in a husky voice. "Would that be enough?"
The last curls of cigarette smoke drifted toward the ceiling and disappeared, leaving my senses to focus only on the scent of her perfume and the deep darkness of her eyes. I tried not to be intimidated by her sudden change in demeanor. My brain shouted at me to think with my head and not with my body like some sort of over-sexed teenager.
She kissed me softly on the lips, and I felt fire run down my spine.
"Can we make and arrangement?" she asked innocently.
I struggled inwardly and managed to keep an expressionless face. "The money comes first. I’ll take what you offered, and then we can work something else out later."
She smiled like a cat that was watching a mouse die beneath its claws. "You’ll have to act fast. If he finds out about you and me, he’ll kill you."
I took another intoxicating kiss from her, tasting the wild lightning that she seemed to keep in her mouth.
"You leave that to me, sweetheart."
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