Avon Calling! Season One

by Hayley Camille

  Donny.

  Betty opened her eyes. Bullets ricocheted off the crates all around her. She got to her feet, unflinching.

  Tonight, empathy would find no home inside her mind.

  It was filled with revenge.

  With an almighty yell, Betty launched herself away from the shelter of crates and over the refuse of boxes and equipment that separated her from the thick-necked gunsel guarding her knives. Her polka-dot dress streamed out behind her as she landed with a thump on the packing table where the orphans had been forced to work. She slid along it, twisting and turning, smashing paper packets of bennies and fet onto the floor where they split open in a confetti of white powder and pills. Around her, all hell broke loose, as Donny’s men shot up the room in a trail of shattered furniture and raining glass that followed her across the table.

  Bang!

  The single bullet left in Betty’s pistol found it’s home between the eyes of the guard and he fell backward as she leapt off the table. Nine. His index finger, already poised on the trigger, spasmed as he fell backward, sending a shower of bullets into the roof as an endless stream of metal shells sprayed from the barrel and rained back down on his face. The bullets shattered industrial hanging lights and supporting columns, rebounding off metal chair legs. Two men fell as they ducked for cover. Betty swept underneath the rain of fire as she landed in a crouch and wrenched the Tommy from the dead man’s arms, replacing his trigger finger with her own.

  She finished off the fallen two and a third as he threw himself behind a table.

  Ten. Eleven. Twelve.

  The Tommy stuttered. Empty. Betty leaned over the packing table and brought it smashing down onto its side with her free hand, sheltering her and the dead guard from fire. She released the magazine from the gun. It clattered to the floor. Betty bent the metal barrel over her knee, snapping the timber fore grip into a nest of splinters. She threw it aside.

  Betty swung her leg high and kicked the crate holding her knives from atop another with a sweeping foot, letting it smash down onto the dead guard. The lid swung open on its hinges, spilling her precious knives across his body. As she slid them into her garter, a surge of icy familiarity bit her bones. The music from the wooden tube radio caught her veins again from over the din and Betty grinned.

  “Now we can play fair,” she yelled.

  With an almighty surge of adrenaline, Betty rushed toward the upturned table that was shielding her from gunfire. It slid across the floor as she pushed it from behind, toward the barrage of attackers coming at her. Three were caught behind the tabletop as it swept them backward. With a quick change of direction, Betty sandwiched the stumbling men against a wall of crates on the other side of the open space. Whipping her cimeter from her garter, Betty spun in a wide arc with her arm outstretched, slicing their throats as one, as they stood pinned in a Harlem sunset. Fifteen. She spun around and ran for cover as five more closed in. Betty dodged bullets, kicking and fighting like a demon as Donny’s hitmen swarmed in.

  Smash. A side table crashed to the ground underneath her, as Betty dived onto it, her hands around the neck of a hep cat swimming in a white zoot suit. His red-rimmed eyes and excoriated skin gave him away as one of Donny’s pushers, no doubt paid in the bindles he sold. Betty searched inside his mind as her hands held him down. Lorne Wright. One of Frank’s button men at The Capitol, selling crack in the alleyways of the jazz club district, before Betty put him on ice. This one deliberately overdosed trouble-makers with toxic cutting agents on Frankie’s watch, instead of selling them clean fet. A killer then, like all the rest.

  “Sorry, sugar. Got to be quicker on your feet to Lindy Hop with me.” Betty forced him further into the rubble as he gasped for breath. With a sharp move, his fist split her lip and dislodged her hands, as he tried to roll over.

  “I saw what ya’ did at Frankie’s,” he hissed, “all them bodies you left for the meat wagon, ya’ crazy broad!”

  “You should have taken the hint then, dear,” Betty admonished, as she punched him again. “Now look at the mess you’re in.” She brought her knee up into his groin and the man groaned and curled away. Betty threw him off, fighting the next as Lorne staggered to his feet and made a run for it.

  “No more dancing for you!” she yelled, ripping the meat cleaver from her garter and flinging it over her shoulder after him. Sixteen.

  The heavy-set man she was wrestling a gun from seemed to ignite with renewed energy at the sight of Lorne’s fate. He caught Betty’s arms as she pitched his gun out of reach and they broke away from the rest, falling over furniture in a fierce battle of strength. Glass shattered, and crates smashed. He was relentless. The man beat her soundly as they tried to best each other, his sheer momentum almost a match for her super speed and strength. Heaving with labored breath, Betty finally sent him crashing across the basement floor in an explosion of broken wood. She knew it was a temporary fix. He wasn’t yet dead. She raced back toward the main group, searching for Donny. If she could just get her hands on him, hiding wherever he was now behind his armor of henchman, it could all be over sooner. Without Donny’s allegiance, these filth-mongers would scatter back to the holes they crawled out of.

  Betty fell as her legs were kicked out from underneath her. Furiously, she sprang back up to her feet. In retaliation, Cutthroat Charlie dropped with a paring blade between his ribs. Seventeen.

  The smell of urine caught her as another cocked his pistol behind Betty’s head. She spun and ducked before his finger pulled the trigger. The barrel clicked, empty. With comically wide eyes, Wallis Morrish let his gun clatter to the floor at Betty’s feet. He turned to take flight. Too slow.

  Wrenching him backwards, Betty pulled Wallis in close, a human shield against the bullets of a lanky greaser with a loose tie and a penchant for souvenirs. Dropping the deserter to the floor, she punched the greaser’s jaw and heard it crack over the staccato of bullets and shouts.

  Swing. Rip. Spin. Betty moved in time to the drum of her own heart as the radio dipped beneath the suffocation of yells and gunfire.

  Nineteen. Salvatore Hill, the icepick punisher.

  Two men grabbed her arms and pulled them behind her back.

  Slam!

  The butt of a semi-automatic found her gut and Betty curled inward, dangling from her arms, her head swimming.

  “No bullets left, Leo?” she choked out, trying to find her grip. Betty wrenched her arms forward with as much strength as she could find, dragging the two men around her in a strange dance that smashed their skulls together in front. They fell backwards to the concrete and mess.

  Betty dropped to the ground under the line of incoming fire. A fileting blade from her garter found a warm home in one man’s throat as she scrambled back to her feet. Rufino the Rat, a filthy creeper that made the rodents he kept house with at the flophouse with look well-bred. Twenty.

  Knee. Elbow. A shatter of teeth across the floor.

  Betty’s breathing was strained. Every part of her body ached and her skin was a lacework of bruises and blood. Her hair had pulled out of it’s neat curls and her black-netted hat was long lost to the fight. Through the staccato of bullets and yells, she could hear George still banging on the inside of his wooden prison.

  “I’ll just be a minute, darling,” she shouted, not quite loud enough to reach him as she hurled a crate at Rufino’s comrade before he could regain his footing. Giovanni Greco, a dock walloper gone rotten under Donny’s influence, not above settling bar-brawls with a bullet. He disappeared beneath the crate with a crunch. Twenty-one. Betty fell forward onto her knees, then scrambled back up.

  She ran at Leo, collecting him as she came and ramming him into a wall of crates. They collapsed, crashing across the floor, releasing a fresh supply of ammunition to Donny’s remaining men, who scooped them up around her and took cover to begin anew. Once more, Betty dove out of sight.

  Her muscles screamed in protest. It was getting harder to keep them at bay.

  Th
e fist of a Chinese mafia underling caught her jaw and Betty fell back, reeling and disoriented. She stumbled, trying to find her footing. Her black lace-up oxfords were now blood-red, the heel catching in uneven debris on the floor. A crowbar, used for prying the lids off crates, had fallen amidst a jumble of smashed supplies. Betty leapt over a mound of spilled ammunition to reach the end of it. Stomp. The crowbar flicked up into her hand in heavy obedience. Betty turned back. Yun Fen Chu. A nasty little scarecrow who’d worked clean-up crew for Jimmy Chan. Betty ran him through, impaling him against the wall. Twenty-two.

  Ten men remained, including Felix and Donny. Only ten.

  She was exhausted. Her gifts had never been pushed so hard. Betty reached for her garter and found only two small paring knives left. She ducked behind some rubble.

  There was a shout.

  The remaining men fell back.

  And suddenly it was quiet.

  No gunshots. No screams.

  No shuffling.

  Nothing.

  The wooden tube radio near the stairs could be heard once more. A sentimental croon rose over the hollow strings of a jazz standard, sweet and melancholy like a soft hand soothing her pain.

  “Love is the sweetest thing,

  Blue birds sing, since you wear my ring,

  Never forget the memories we hold so dear,

  They’ll keep us safe now year by year.”

  The words shattered her heart. Betty shook her head and tried to block the music out. She flexed her muscles, feeling a sharp pain ripple down her side and up the base of her neck. A cut on her leg was weeping blood. Every inch of her felt tender. She blocked out the pain as well.

  Focus.

  Then she felt it.

  A typhoon of anticipation began building in the room around her.

  Betty closed her eyes, reaching out in her mind for a voice she knew too well. But she needn’t have bothered. The voice came loud and clear without her help, from somewhere beyond the pile of bodies.

  Donny.

  “How much do you love your husband, Mrs. Betty Jones?” he called.

  The cock of a pistol echoed off the basement walls.

  Cold dread crept down her spine. Betty stepped out from behind the rubble. At the far end of the basement, where the double doors leading outside were chained shut behind him, Donald Pinzolo stood with a gun to George’s head. George whimpered, wide-eyed, as two of Donny’s goons held him up under the arms from behind. In her efforts to keep Donny’s soldiers at bay, she’d left George too long unprotected in his makeshift cage. He was safe no more.

  “Get over here,” Donny yelled.

  Betty walked forward, in full view of the ten men left standing with her husband. Her fingers were twitching against her dress where the knives were hidden underneath.

  Nine.

  Felix was missing.

  A hard blow caught the back of her head and Betty fell to the floor, reeling. Felix kicked her again, leaving her prostrate on the ground. Betty allowed herself to take it, knowing there was only one bullet between George and his life. She hated Felix. But Felix wasn’t about to kill George. Donny was. Betty knew she’d have to get closer for any chance at saving him. And she was willing to die. But not without fighting to her last breath to keep him safe.

  Felix reached down and grabbed her hair, pulling Betty roughly to her feet. Betty felt her face burn beneath the blood stains as Donny’s remaining men laughed. George was standing stock-still, his face gray. He looked as though he was barely breathing. Felix put his own gun to Betty’s head. She and Felix stood, opposite Donny and his men, about fifteen feet apart.

  “So, who’s first?” Donny jeered.

  “I won’t let you hurt him,” Betty said, as calmly as she could. She grimaced as Felix’s pistol pushed harder.

  “Sorry sweetheart, but you’re in no position to stop me,” Donny said. Again, his sycophants guffawed. “Your good husband gets a bullet to the head, all because you couldn’t keep your mitts off my boys and my business. You should have learned your place, Susie, like everyone else. It’s all a game, see, and you weren’t invited to play. There can only be one winner in this room. And nobody beats Donald Pinzolo at his own game.”

  “Let him go,” Betty warned, her voice dangerously low. “The game is over, Donny.”

  “What? And let him waltz out that door, as if you didn’t try to tear down my empire? Like you didn’t murder my boys? Ruin my business? Sacrifice all my years of hard work? You know me, Susie, I could never let him go.” Donny smiled, a cold and ruthless promise. “No more playing happy families for you.”

  Jacob pulled up outside the white picket fence of Betty and George Jones’ house. It was the last place he wanted to be. He had tried calling first, but the phone seemed perpetually engaged, so instead, he’d driven over. Now, he was sitting in his car under the street lamp, unwilling to go inside.

  It was almost dinnertime. His car radio crackled as an advertisement ended, “everybody needs the real zip and zing pep that delicious Sunbeam bread gives you!” and Al Bowlly’s somber voice began to croon through the speakers.

  “Love is the sweetest thing,

  Blue birds sing, since you wear my ring -”

  Jacob switched the radio off, annoyed. If he had any more sentimentality in his life, he might just go insane. The last few months had been a mess. The last few days, a catastrophe.

  In truth, he hadn’t even wanted to take Adina to the Gala Ball, knowing the potential danger Susie’s stunt on Pinzolo could incur. But when he’d stupidly mentioned his ‘invitation’ to Adina while trying to justify his inability to see her, yet again, of course, she’d insisted on coming along. Then, due to his own foolish behavior, she’d stormed out, convinced of his romantic involvement with Susie. Now, Adina wouldn’t return his calls.

  He didn’t blame her. Truth be told, no matter how hard he had tried, his heart furiously clung to the childhood sweetheart he thought he’d lost for so many years. As a boy, he’d idolized her. As a young man, pined for her. Most recently, he realized just how much he had missed her all those years he’d believed her dead. But Susie, or Betty, rather, had changed in time gone by, and so had he.

  Jacob loved Adina too and he knew it, clear as a sunlit sky. She’d awoken a spark within him that had so long been dormant that he couldn’t help but be thankful for it. She was lively and bright, and undeniably beautiful. She kept him on his toes and had made him finally relinquish the sheath of excuses he had wrapped himself in for so long. Jacob had felt free with her, at least for the short time before things had become so complicated.

  Now new life and old love warred within him relentlessly and to Jacob it seemed he was the most indecisive, or perhaps, cursed, man on the earth to have been captured by two such formidable and stubborn women in one lifetime.

  They’ll be the death of me, he thought grimly, shaking off his bad mood with a touch of dark humor.

  Reluctantly, Jacob got out of the car, determined to speak to Betty about the two most pressing issues on his mind. The first, was an unpleasant but not-altogether-unexpected confrontation he had had with Malcolm Parker that morning at the station. It seemed he’d been more thorough with his undercover detail than Jacob had hoped. A more pressing issue though, was the dossier he’d found in the Governor’s Room after Adina had fled the ball. Betty was being watched by someone far more important, and potentially dangerous, than an over-enthusiastic police officer.

  As he let himself into the front gate, Jacob noticed that George’s black Chevy was missing from the driveway. At least that makes my visit a little less awkward, he sighed to himself. Jacob walked up the porch steps in darkness to knock on the front door.

  It was wide open.

  “Good evening?” he called out, rapping on the open door and removing his hat. “Betty, are you home? It's me, Jake – uh, Sergeant Lawrence,” he added, for the benefit of the children, who might have been listening.

  There was no answer. He called ou
t again. Still no response.

  Why on earth would they have gone out but left the front door wide open? Anyone could walk straight in.

  Jacob took a tentative step inside. The lights were out, as if no one had been home since the sun had gone down.

  An uneasy feeling prickled the back of his neck, and he unclipped his police issue Colt from its holster inside his jacket.

  “Betty?” he called out. “George?” He stepped through the sitting room carefully, and made his way to the kitchen, where the only light from the house seemed to shine. “Nancy?”

  The kitchen was in disarray. An upturned chair was by the bench, and the remains of what he assumed were the ingredients of a half-battered cake were spilt across the kitchen bench. The oven was glowing brightly and buzzing, radiating heat throughout the room. It was empty, as if someone had begun to bake, then left in a hurry and forgotten to turn it off. Jacob stepped over spilt flour on the floor and clicked off the oven dial.

  “Betty? Nancy?” he called, but the house remained silent.

  He turned back to the bench.

  With a steady hand and a racing heart, Jacob picked up a small jewel-lidded jar that sat on the bench by the batter. It was filled with white powder. He unscrewed the lid and gently sniffed inside. No scent. Pure heroin.

  He knew it, this jar. It was identical to those delivered to his office after every heist for the past six months. Most recently accompanied by a small white card, signed “Avon Calling!” in cursive script. Betty’s calling card.

  Her coded message for him to figure out. A clue to the truth that she alone, was taking vengeance on the murders and atrocities committed by Donald Pinzolo’s crew.

  And here it was. Heroin.

  Sitting in plain sight, in a dark house that had been abandoned at a moment’s notice.

  It could only be a warning.

  She’s in trouble. They all are.

  Betty was vigilant, above everything else. Her home was her fortress. She would never have left the oven on, or the door cast open to the street. Unless, she had not fled herself, but been forcefully taken.