David Handler - The Snow White Christmas Cookie

Des pressed her hand against its tailpipe. It felt warm.

The wooden staircase up to Tommy the Pinhead’s apartment was on the outside of the garage. It was icy-slick and creaky as hell, but the music was plenty loud and the hand railing held them steady as they inched their way up. When they reached the landing they drew their SIGs and exchanged eye contact in the light from Tommy’s front window. Yolie’s gaze was steady and fearless.

Quietly, Des tried the doorknob. No good. Locked.

Yolie, who outweighed her by a solid thirty pounds of muscle, nudged her to one side. Then she took a deep breath and kicked the whole freaking door in. They went in low, guns drawn as “Welcome to the Jungle” greeted them on Tommy’s stereo.

He and the girl were naked in the bed, Gigi on top, riding him. Tommy’s eyes bulged as he saw them burst through the door. He tossed Gigi aside like a small child and started to reach for the Glock on his nightstand.

“Go for it,” Yolie urged him as they stood at the foot of the bed with their SIGs pointed right at him. “You’ll be doing the whole world a favor.”

He froze, then lay back against the pillows with his hands up, his eyes narrow, hostile slits.

Des turned off the music, her nostrils twitching. It stank in the one-room apartment, a musky smell that was equal parts marijuana smoke, soiled bedsheets and soiled people. A half-eaten pepperoni pizza sat in an open box on the dinette table in what passed for a kitchen. There was a microwave and a minifridge. A work sink filled with dirty dishes. No stove. And not much furniture other than the bed and a beat-up old dresser. Des had seen nicer fleabag motel rooms. Hell, she’d just been in one. It wasn’t particularly warm in there. In fact, it was downright cold. Tommy had nothing more than a kerosene space heater.

He and Gigi continued to lie there naked. Tommy appeared to spend a lot of his free time in a tanning salon. He also waxed his huge, rippling chest-the better to show off his tasteful swastika and Iron Cross tats. Gigi was so pallid and gaunt it was painful to look at her. Her arms and legs were barely more than sticks. Her skin was blotchy and covered with bruises. She wore a nipple ring in her right nipple. Beneath her belly button she had a tattoo of a cupcake with a glistening cherry on top.

Her eyes were huge and she was shaking. “I’m f-freezing. You mind if I cover myself up?”

“Please do,” Yolie said to her with obvious distaste.

Gigi pulled the top sheet and blanket over them, shivering.

“What do you bitches want?” Tommy demanded, folding his body builder arms in front of his chest.

“Where is he?” Des asked.

“Where’s who ?”

“Mitch Berger.”

“Don’t know who you’re talking about. This must be some kind of mistake. Me and Gigi haven’t been out all day, except to get a pizza.”

Yolie aimed her SIG directly in between his eyes. “Try again, Pinhead.”

He bristled at her. “I don’t like that name.”

“And I don’t like being jerked around, Pinhead .”

“Like I just said, we been here all day. Smoked us a little weed, made love. I don’t know what you want from me.”

“Then let me put it in a language you can understand,” Yolie said. “If you tell us right goddamned now what went down at the Yankee Doodle then I promise we won’t shoot both of you dead.”

He let out a laugh. “You can’t lay a finger on us. That there’s Resident Trooper Mitry. She has to play by the rules. I don’t know who you are.…”

“I’m your worst nightmare. An angry black bitch with a loaded gun. You have three seconds to tell us what went down or I start shooting.”

“I got nothing to tell you. Me and Gigi have been here all-”

Yolie fired at the wall right next to his head-once, twice, three times.

Gigi screamed. Tommy just lay there, glowering.

“Next one goes in your shoulder,” Yolie promised him. “Where is he?”

“ Tell her, Tommy.”

“Shut up!”

“Tommy, I swear I–I’m gonna piss myself if you don’t.”

“And I said shut up,” he snarled, his jaw muscles clenching. “Just forget it, lady. I’m not getting in any trouble.”

“Fool, you are in trouble.”

“I think he means in trouble with Slick Rick,” Des said. “Slick Rick’s connected. If Tommy crosses him he’ll wind up in a pork sausage factory somewhere in Providence. The girl, too.”

Gigi let out a gasp of horror.

Tommy the Pinhead said nothing. Just continued to glower. It was what he did best.

Yolie shook her head at him. “You are failing to grasp the reality of your present situation. Your problem is with us. Neither of you will make it out of this apartment alive if you do not give up everything right goddamned now .”

Gigi started to sob, her heavy eye makeup running down her cheeks in black gobs. “Tommy, please …”

Yolie aimed her weapon at Tommy’s left shoulder. “Talk.”

“Lady, I got nothing for you.”

She fired a shot into the wall that Des swore was less than a half-inch from his skin. “ Talk. ”

“I just told you. I got nothing.”

“Okay, I’m all done playing games with this fool,” huffed Yolie, who never left home without her Smith amp; Wesson SWAT spring-assist folding knife, size large. There are times when a combat knife can be vastly more persuasive than a SIG. This was one of those times. Yolie squeezed the knife’s thumb release and its razor-sharp four-inch blade sprang open with a click. Then she flung the bedcovers from Tommy and exposed his family jewels. “Hold his legs, girl,” she commanded Des. “I’m going to cut our boy Tommy down to size.”

Tommy wasn’t without nerve. He lay there sneering with contempt while Des grabbed his legs. And kept on sneering-right up until the moment when Yolie had that scary blade less than six inches from where he and his progeny lived. That was when he began to squirm, his eyes bulging. “ Wait, lady!” he roared. “Are you crazy?”

“There’s an honest difference of opinion about that,” Yolie answered soberly. “But the state shrink cleared me for active duty. Let’s do this, girl.”

“I said wait !” he protested. “W-What do you want to know about?”

“Casey Zander,” Des said. “How things went down at the Rustic.”

“South in a hurry,” he said, his eyes never leaving that knife. “Casey was acting all spooked, okay? Said the law was getting hip to things now that his mom’s boyfriend was dead.”

“Hip to what things?”

“That he was stealing meds out of the mail to pay off Slick Rick.”

“ Who was stealing them-Casey or his mom’s boyfriend?”

“Don’t ask me. I don’t know how blubber boy’s been doing it. Don’t know, don’t care. I just know he was into Slick Rick for big bucks and he’s been paying him off with meds, iPods, anything else he can lay his hands on. He’s been making good, too, until today out in the parking lot of the Rustic he starts whining like a little bitch about how the postal inspectors are grilling him and he’s getting real nervous. I went back inside and told my employer.…”

“Slick Rick, you mean?”

Tommy nodded. “He told me we’ll be toast if the feds start leaning on blubber boy. Casey would give us up in a heartbeat to save his own sorry ass. Slick Rick said to take care of it. I’d just sent Gigi to the Yankee Doodle with Casey to settle him down. Figured I’d follow them there. Except when I got outside there’s some dude crouched by the woodpile watching them drive away. Same dude who was just inside the Rustic asking Steve a bunch of questions. I figured he had to be the one.” He swallowed hard. “Put that thing away, will ya?”