Max Collins: Scratch Fever

“Stay put,” she said. Pointing the 9 mm at his head.

From the doorway down by the bar, the boyfriend came out and walked across the empty casino room, moving slowly between the various tables; a big, sandy-haired man with glasses, and a face that was the saddest thing Nolan ever saw.

Julie turned and smiled at him as he came up beside her; she handed him the toylike .22, keeping the silenced automatic for herself.

“Harold,” she said, “I don’t think I’m going to be leaving after all.”

“You’re going to kill him?”

“I’m going to take him up to the kitchen,” she said. “It’ll be easier to clean up afterwards.”

“What about the boy?”

“Jon? He’ll show up, probably. Eventually. I’m not worried about him. I’ll handle it when the time comes.” She looked toward Nolan with respect in her smile. “This is the guy to worry about. But not for much longer.”

Nolan said, “Isn’t it a little messy, a little dangerous, shooting me on your own property? In your restaurant? Why not take me out in the boonies somewhere?”

“You’d do anything to buy a little time, wouldn’t you, Nolan?” she said.

“You killed Ron, didn’t you?” Harold said to her.

“What?” Julie said, not following him.

Nolan picked up on it. “That’s right. I just came from there, that farmhouse. She wanted Ron to kill the kid, but Ron wouldn’t do it let him go instead. Then your princess here shot Ron in the head and faked it up like suicide.”

She looked at Nolan, just a little amazed.

“Get up,” she told him. “We’re going to the kitchen.”

Nolan rose. “She’s the plague, Harold. Haven’t you figured that out yet? Everything she touches turns to dead.”

She turned to Harold and smiled like a madonna. “You stay down here. I can take care of this myself.”

Harold said, “I love you, Julie.”

“I know you do, Harold.”

He shot her in the right eye.

It knocked her back, left her sprawled across the bottom few steps of the staircase, a tear of blood tracing her cheek under where her eye had been. She looked at Harold out of the remaining one, or seemed to, anyway.

Nolan let out some air. Cautiously, he reached down and picked up the 9 mm, which Julie dropped when she died.

“Thanks,” Nolan said.

“Don’t mention it” the big man said, and turned the toy .22 on himself and looked down the barrel and watched death come out.

CRACKING sounds, first one, then another, seconds later; gunshots, Jon was sure of it. Faint, but gunshots.

Despite his turned ankle, he ran, 38 in hand, Toni calling out behind him, telling him to be careful. He found the door to the kitchen open and almost ran into Nolan, coming through the service area beyond the kitchen.

“Nolan! Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

Nolan had a paper bag in one hand.

“What’s that?” Jon asked.

“A sack full of money.”

“No kidding? How much?”

“I don’t know. Want to sit down and count it?”

“Maybe we ought to get out of here.”

“Yeah.”

Going through the kitchen, Jon said, “What happened?”

Nolan told him quickly; he was finishing his story by the time they reached the Datsun in the lot. When they got in, Nolan taking the wheel, Toni climbing in back again, Jon started telling her the story and was finished by the time they were going over the old rumbling metal bridge into Burlington.

“Killed himself?” she said, not quite believing it.

“That’s right,” Jon said. “Poor bastard killed himself.”

“No, he didn’t,” Nolan said.

Jon looked at Nolan.

So did Toni.

“Beauty killed the beast,” Nolan said.

Nolan handed the guy in the toll booth the round-trip token and drove on.