Stuart Kaminsky - Vengeance

“How much?”

“She went cheap;” he said. “Eight thousand. Handford didn’t know what he could have gotten. I’ll take the eight thousand. I’ll be very nice. I won’t ask for any of the money I could have made on her.”

“You’re a man of principle,” I said.

“Sarcasm will get you killed,” he said.

“I thought I was already a dead man.”

“No. I like you. I’d offer you a job, but I don’t think you’d take it and I don’t think I could trust you. I get the eight thousand by tomorrow noon and you live and I leave the girl alone.”

“What have we got going here that tells me I should trust you?”

“Simple,” he said. “I’ve got no reason to lie. If I wanted you dead, I’d have my man waiting outside the door follow you to your little white car. He’d kill you quietly, pack you in the trunk-”

“I don’t think I’d fit. It’s a Metro.”

“Shove you on the floor in the back,” he said. “Drive you out of here smiling at Angela, and leave you somewhere quiet and peaceful.”

“How would he get back?”

“You always think like that?” Pirannes asked with a smile.

“Almost always. I can’t stop.”

“Another car would be following him, pick him up, bring my man somewhere else. Any more questions? I advise you not to get me mad.”

“Where do I deliver the eight thousand?”

“Main post office. Noon on the button. Woman in a white dress. Blonde. Young. Pretty. Cash in an envelope. If there’s anything traceable, marked, you die. You want to die for eight thousand dollars?”

“No,” I said.

“You have eight thousand dollars?”

“No, but I can get it.”

“I don’t need eight thousand dollars, you understand. But I have to have it.”

“The principle.”

“The principle. You walk out of here now. You never come back. You never look for me again. You forget you ever met me.”

“Met who?”

He smiled and put his right hand on the side of my neck and patted not too gently.

“Right question,” he said. “You’ve got three minutes to be back on Proctor Road.”

I left. I didn’t see anyone outside the doors of the clubhouse, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. I was on Proctor Road heading home in less than two minutes.

It was night. It wasn’t late. I drove to Flo’s. The lights were on. Her 1994 Jeep was probably in the garage.

She opened the door a few seconds after I rang. She had a drink in her hand.

“Lewis,” she said. “You here to check up on me?”

“No, Flo.”

“Smell this, taste it,” she said, holding the glass in front of my face.

I took the glass, smelled it, tasted it.

“Ginger ale,” I said.

“Seven-goddamn-Up,” she answered. “Come in.”

Flo was wearing a blue buttoned shirt and a denim skirt. A familiar voice was singing through the house.

He was singing something about the rose of San Antoine.

“Roy Rogers,” she said. “Underrated singer. Sons of the Pioneers backing him up. You’ve got news? You want a drink?”

“No drink, thanks.”

We sat in the kitchen. I had caught Flo in the middle of dinner. There was a plate on the table, knife and fork. Chicken, green beans.

“Mind if I eat while we talk?”

“No,” I said.

“Hungry?”

“No.”

She ate.

“Edna Stockbridge called me, said Adele had to stay put for a few days, said she had to clear the papers we worked on and get a judge to approve me. Said there wouldn’t be a problem. Hell, Lewis, I’m going to be a mother after all these years.”

“She won’t-”

“Be easy,” she finished for me. “Tell me something new.”

“Eight thousand dollars,” I said. “I need eight thousand dollars cash.”

She ate some chicken and said,

“When?”

“Tomorrow morning at the latest,” I said.

“Big bills, little bills, what?”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said.

“I’ll get it after I finish eating unless you’re in a hurry.”

“You want to know why I need it?”

“If you want to tell me,” she said.

“It’s about Adele,” I said. “We’re-you’re insuring her from her past.”

“Eight thousand isn’t much to insure that.”

She finished, threw her bones in the red kitchen garbage can, rinsed her plate, knife, fork and glass and put them in the dishwasher. Then she went to a drawer, opened it, took out a small screwdriver and motioned for me to follow her. We went across the living room to the opposite side of the house and down a hallway I’d never been in before. She led me into a little room with carpeting; two recliners and a television set. The lights were already on. Roy Rogers was loud and clear in here too. He was singing about a pony now.

Flo went to the television set mounted on a dark wood table with rollers. She rolled the television out of the way and opened a little built-in cabinet. There were books in the cabinet. She handed them to me and told me to put them down. I put them on one of the recliners. Then she reached back and edged the back wall of the cabinet out with the screwdriver.

We weren’t through. There was a black safe with a dial and white numbers.

“I use my birthday backwards,” she said, turning the dial as she said, “Thirty-four, twenty-nine, nine.”

The safe swung open. It was piled thick and tight with bills. She pulled out a stack on the left, counted off hundreds and handed them to me. She pocketed a pile of bills and put everything back the way it had been. When I handed her the last book and she had put it in place, Roy Rogers sang, “Yippie ti aye oh.”

“Thanks, Flo,” I said.

She waved off my thanks as she rolled the TV back into place.

“Need an envelope for that?”

“Yes.”

She went to a table between the recliners, opened a drawer, pulled out an envelope and handed it to me.

“My husband, Gus, and me used to practically live in this room,” she said. “Now I do. Watch TV, read, write letters, drink, listen to music. That was his chair. This is mine. I like this room. I like it being small.”

“I like it too,” I said.

I meant it.

“I’m going to wait till Adele’s here before I redecorate the guest room down the hall, turn it into hers. She can do what she wants with it long as she keeps it clean.”

“Don’t spoil her, Flo.”

“I’ll work her. Don’t worry.”

“And don’t let her know about the safe,” I said.

“Lewis, you’ve known me two, three years. Am I a fool?”

“Definitely not.”

“Then don’t act is if I might be one. I know what the girl’s been through. She’s not coming to me out of a finishing school. She’s a tough orphan. I’m a tough widow. Good combination.”

“Good combination,” I agreed.

“You bet your ass it is,” she said, guiding me down the corridor to the door, holding on to my arm, screwdriver peeking out of her pocket, smile on her face.

When I left, Roy Rogers was singing “Happy Trails.”

With eight thousand dollars in my pocket and a murder weapon under the seat, I headed home. The blue Buick was right behind me. Well, not right behind me but not far enough back that I couldn’t see him.

I hadn’t eaten with Tilly and I hadn’t eaten with Flo. Pirannes hadn’t offered me anything. The problem was that I wasn’t hungry. The DQ was doing burn-up business now. The parking lot was almost full. I retrieved the gun, dropped it in my pocket where it did not fit snugly and wouldn’t have even if it hadn’t been in a ziploc bag, and went to my office-home.

The window was fixed and the broken air conditioner gone. Ames. Always Ames. I locked the door, put the chair in front of it, pulled the plug on my phone and went to bed with the gun and the envelope full of hundreds under the bed. There wasn’t a decent place to hide anything here and I didn’t want to part with gun or money.