Ed Gorman: Showdown

I turned around. I had no shame. "So can I spend the night?"

But that only irritated her again. "Why don't you just tell everybody in the apartment house that we sleep together?"

I cupped my hands. "Donna Harris and a guy named Dwyer are sleeping together."

"You asshole."

"So can I come up?"

"You asshole."

I took that to mean I could come up.

It wasn't the sort of lovemaking you read about in Judith Krantz novels. I mean, in terms of the old amore, we've certainly had better nights. I wanted to and she didn't want to, then she wanted to and I didn't want to, then neither of us wanted to, and then both of us wanted to, so we did—but by that time it was doomed to be less than wonderful. Holding each other afterward was actually better than the sex, holding each other and listening to the rain on the roof and watching the shadows of trees play in the streetlight and toss silhouettes across her bedroom walls like magic lanterns.

"I'm sorry it wasn't better for you," she said after a long time. It was the first time all night she had sounded glad to see me.

"Hey, I'm sorry it wasn't better for you. At least I had an orgasm."

"Well, I had an orgasm, too."

"You did? Really?"

"Well, something like an orgasm anyway."

Which meant that she hadn't had an orgasm at all but was being sweet and her being sweet there in the darkness really cranked me up again and when I got cranked up she got cranked up and this time it was really kick-ass good, the way it can be only when you're loving somebody you truly love.

"Boy," she said afterward. "Boy."

"I take it it was better that time."

"You just want a compliment," she said and then promptly fell asleep without giving me one.

Iwas on the bottom of an ocean, chained to a rock the size of a house. I was being called urgently to the surface but I couldn't escape, hard as I tried.

I woke up realizing that the phone was ringing. It was on my side of her bed. She had her arms flung wide and was snoring. She was the only woman I'd ever known who could snore cute. I got the phone.

There was a long pause on the other end, a heavy-breather pause. I wondered if it might be a twist-o, or her ex-husband, the very wonderful (just ask him) Chad. But it wasn't.

He was very drunk and he had to say it twice before I could understand what the hell he was saying. " 's big trull. 's big big trull."

Big big trouble.

I remembered my police training. When you talk to somebody drunk or desperate, stay calm.

"Where are you?"

" 's one piece 'a trull I won't get outta."

"Stephen, where are you?"

Another long pause. I heard a match being struck. In the receiver it sounded like a bomb going off. "Where are you?" I repeated.

The cigarette had apparently helped a bit. At least I could understand him on the first sentence now. "I'm at his apartment."

"Whose apartment?"

"Reeves's."

"Reeves's? Stephen, what the hell are you doing there?"

By now Donna was awake, whispering, "Is he all right?" She had a daughterly affection for Wade. At moments such as these it would translate into terror.

"Came over to 'pologize," he said.

"So what happened?"

There was a long sigh and then a silence and then a sigh again. "Fucker's dead."

"Dead?"

Another sigh. When he spoke again, he sounded miserable and lost. He sounded on the verge of tears. "I don't know what happened over here, Dwyer. Please come over right away. Please."

With that, he hung up the phone.

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OTHER CROSSROAD PRESS PRODUCTS BY ED GORMAN

Novels:

Nightmare Child

Serpent's Kiss

Shadow Games

The End of It All

Voodoo Moon

The Thomas Dwyer Series:

Murder in the Wings

The Autumn Dead

A Cry of Shadows

Novellas:

Cast in Dark Waters (with Tom Piccirilli)

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