Ed Lacy - Blonde Bait

She threw herself at me, giving me a strong hug. I held her tightly, not sure I believed all this. Sleeping with Rose had always been great—for me. But even if this was some kind of sales talk it didn't matter: I was happy to have Rose on any terms. I'd have been glad merely to have her picture on the wall. It was that way with me.

She whispered, “Oh, Mickey, Mickey, I do love you! I'll love you always and only you. Darling, I—I want to do something for you. Take all the money, hold it for us. It's yours, every dollar!”

“I like the set-up the way it is,” I said cautiously. She'd never offered me the dough before.

“Don't you get it, Mickey, I want to do something... important for you. Anything you want. Do you want a child? I'll make a baby for you.”

“No, I don't want a kid.” I kissed her cheek.

“You must let me do something for you! Let me be as good to you as you've been to me.”

“Okay, Rose, there is... one thing.” My fingers played with her ear.

“Honey!” She went over my face with hot little kisses.

“Rose, tell me what you're running from.”

It was a sickening thing—to feel her body turning stiff and cold, the way she recoiled from me as if I'd become a snake—and I was sorry I'd popped the question. From the other end of the bed she asked harshly, “Goddamn you, why did you have to spoil it?”

“I'm not spoiling anything. You're the one who wants to make our dream world a real one. Look, Rose, I'm willing to let things be as before but if you want to make it real... it has to be down the line. You have to trust me all the way. I have to know what you did.”

“What I did? You miserable bastard, what makes you think I did anything? I didn't do a damn thing!”

She started to jump out of bed. I yanked her back. For a moment we wrestled but that was my racket and she didn't have a chance. Pinning her to the bed, one leg across her belly, I told her, “It's not mere curiosity on my part to know the full score—it will help me protect you. You're a stand-out chick. Everyone in these islands will remember you. For all I know, we ought to clear out of the islands. In Port-au-Prince I ran upon an old buddy. That can happen again. I have to know how much to tell him, or whether I should have ducked him. There's also...”

“What did you tell him?” She was breathing hard into my face, fear back in her voice.

“A pack of lies. You don't have to worry about Hal, he...”

“How the hell do you know what I have to worry about!”

“That's it, exactly. I want to know—for your own good.”

“Damn it, why did you have to tell him anything?”

“Because I couldn't duck him and he saw me on the Sea Princess. Boats like ours don't come in crackerjack boxes—I slipped him a crook of bull about being a yacht captain for some rich cluck. Don't you see, if I'm going to lie—and I don't mind doing it, or anything else for us—I at least have to know what I'm lying around. There's this other thing: I like it okay here on Ansel's island. You do too—at times. But if I knew the score... well, there might be other places for us. Maybe, well... might even live it up in a big city for a few weeks or...”

“No!”

“Why must you alone decide this for us? If the cops get you they'll throw the book at me, too!”

“I haven't done anything wrong.”

“Then why the big fear, being on the run? Rose, wanting you as I do, I wouldn't do anything to... to spoil what we have. But I have to know.” Kissing her, I rolled to the center of the bed.

She stood up and walked around the room. Then she stood at the side of the bed, a calendar girl staring down at me with hard eyes. She was shaking a little.

There was a long silence. Closing my eyes I said in a matter-of-fact voice, “I bought everything on the list. Soon as I rest we'll unload the boat. The new records you wanted, the newspapers and magazines. I spent $419.67. The change is in my wallet. I even have some ice cream for you...”

She reached down and slapped my face. I caught her hand. She said, “Stop talking like you're a hired hand.”

I pulled her down on top of me. “Isn't that all you trust me to do?”

The tears came again and she was all over me, soft and warm and big, kissing and hugging me, moaning my name. “Mickey, it terrifies me to even talk about it.”

“Honey, there's only you and me here—no dream-busters. We talk and see what it adds up to. I have to know—if you want it the way you said.”

For a few seconds she seemed limp, almost lifeless. I felt her take a deep breath and then she sat up as she said, “Okay, I guess I knew I'd have to tell you some time. As you said, I have to trust you all the way. Get me a cigarette, please, and I'll tell you... all of it.”

V

“I was down on my luck in Philly. Way down and a couple hundred bucks in debt. Finally I landed a strip in a two-bit night club. Some club. It was really a crummy bar with a few tables and a junkie piano player who'd been lost in orbit before they invented satellites. It was the kind of dump where I had to use the owner's office for my dressing room. At the end of the first week he paid me off with a rubber check so we worked out a deal where I would strip only on weekends and work as a barmaid the rest of the time—with a cash pay-off every night. Along with the tips I was doing kind of fair, averaging about a hundred a week. I planned on holding down the bar for a few months, until I got straight with my debts. It was a break for the owner; business picked up. Most of the customers had seen me strip and told their friends. Somehow they got a bang having me serve them drinks. You know how it was, the joint full of whispered snickers and X-ray eyes all the time.

“Well, the owner had me wearing a low-cut dress, one of those bare shoulder deals that made the lads jump when I bent over to put their drinks down. Only the bar was in line with the door and about ten days later I caught a cold, soon I was in bed with a fever. Then I heard the owner had lost his cabaret license because entertainers aren't supposed to work in the joint, too. So I was back to being out of work again, only this time I was sick enough to die and stuck in a flea-bag hotel. Josef came up to see me, the only person who gave a damn. He took care of me, sent up a doc, and...”

“Who's Joseph?”

“Josef, not Joseph. Josef Fedor. He was a guy about forty-five or fifty who...”

“Was?”

Rose gave me an annoyed look. “Yes— was. He was a stocky, kind of squat man, a quiet fellow with a large head and weird bushy grey hair that stood straight up. One of his eyes looked odd—later I learned it had been shot out and he was wearing a glass one. He was a foreigner who spoke with a thick accent and hung around the bar every night, sipping wine, watching the other regulars as though it was all a show. He chain-smoked cigarettes in a little gold holder. He wore a European suit and overcoat, with belts in the back, and heavy shoes. Never did more than nod at me, or slip me a buck tip at the end of the night, that's why I was surprised when he came to see me. But then, he was full of surprises. One night he sat at the piano and played like he was on the concert stage. When one of the bar-lushes yelled for jazz, he played a real hot piano, too. Yet no matter how often he was coaxed he'd never play again—at the bar.

“He was a mixture of charm, manners, and toughness. Like one night in the bar a clown made cracks about foreigners getting all the jobs here. You know how any sort of stuff can build up in a gin mill. It started as a joke but the clown began getting nasty and then Josef knocked him flat with a terrible punch. Okay, most guys would have left it at that. But Josef gets this funny look in his good eye. He picked a beer bottle off the bar, broke it, and damn near stabbed the unconscious guy in the guts. The bouncer got to Josef first. The bouncer was an ex-pug, bigger than you, and at least a foot taller than Josef. He clipped Josef on the chin and Josef used Judo or something, threw him clear across the room. Then he stood in the center of the joint, muttering something nobody could understand—the broken bottle still in his right hand as if challenging the whole crowd. A cop came in with his gun out. Cool as ice, Josef walked over and shoved the broken bottle over the barrel of the cop's pistol. Then he stood there, waiting, this crazy smile on his big face. When the cop yelled for him to get his hands up, Josef took his time, even gave the cop a mock bow, and let the policeman frisk him. He was packing a gun on his hip, too, a very small automatic. More cops came and they took him away, but within the hour Josef was back at his usual place at the bar, drinking his wine as if nothing had happened. He was one tough little son of a...”