“That’s right, I forgot all about that. No more Martin.”
She sat back in her seat holding her coffee cup before speaking again.
“Asshole.”
Yep, sounds about right…
“So let me ask you a question then, nurse, seeing how we’re celebrating and all. How did a catch like you ever get wrapped up with a bag of shit like that guy?”
“He wasn’t always a bag of shit.”
“That’s a little hard for me to believe. Guys that are willing to push a woman around are generally always a bag of shit.”
She thought about that while taking a spoonful of eggs. I let her stew on it while cutting into a stack of pancakes.
“I suppose so, I don’t know. I met him six years ago in a bar.”
“Ah, that explains it.”
I reached for the syrup and she caught my hand. I pissed her off. I was starting to like her more and more.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Let me at the syrup and I’ll tell you.”
Strong for a little thing. She let go and I grabbed the Vermont maple and started pouring.
“Jackie, look, nobody meets the love of their life in a bar. It’s common knowledge. Have you ever heard a great marriage story that starts with the couple meeting in a bar?”
“Just what in the hell does a vegan hitman know about great marriage stories?”
“More than your asshole ex-husband, apparently.”
“Just because you like the Carpenters doesn’t make you a romance expert, Micky. What about you, are you in a relationship?”
Big Hair came back to the table and I was silently thanking her for saving my ass. I took a forkful of syrup covered pancake in my mouth while she topped off our coffee cups and then she was gone in a puff of cheap perfume. I glanced up with one eye and could see Jackie still waiting for an answer.
“Let’s just say I’m between relationships at the moment.”
“Uh huh, just as I thought.”
She was working on a piece of bacon and I was looking for anything that would get me off the current topic of conversation. I looked up at her and noticed a tiny spot of blood on her left shoulder.
“Are you hurt?”
She put the bacon down and looked down at her shirt.
“I think I got hit with some tile or something in my kitchen. It will be OK, it’s just a scratch.”
“Christ, you’re a nurse. Shouldn’t that at least be cleaned out or something?”
She laughed and resumed working on her eggs.
“You’re changing the subject, Micky.”
“It’s been kind of a while since I’ve been steady with a girl, Jackie. It’s not exactly easy in my line of business. It’s one of the reasons I’m trying to buy my way out. I want to get as far away from here as possible.”
“Where are you going to go?”
It was a good question, and I stuck a piece of pancake squarely with my fork before answering.
“I’m not sure yet. Dominican Republic, maybe.”
She wrinkled her nose at that before taking a sip of coffee.
“What’s wrong with the DR? Nice beaches, property on the cheap.”
“Eh, I don’t know, Micky. It’s got some bad areas. Of course, Martin and I went there for our one year wedding anniversary so I’m probably a little jaded. What about Hawaii? You’ve already got the shirt to start you with.”
“It’s fucking expensive there, isn’t it? Besides, you told me you honeymooned there. How is Hawaii any better than the Dominican Republic?”
“Eh, I don’t know. The honeymoon was still fun. By the one year anniversary I guess I already knew the marriage was going to shit.”
“Can I get you two anything else?”
Thank you to Big Hair for interrupting Jackie’s travel logic…
“Check.”
She had the check on the table before I even asked for it and was heading towards the back.
“Well, we can discuss my choice of travel destinations on our way out of here. We need to lay low for a while. Last chance to get out of here. You can drop me off now and go to the police. You just need to know you have a scar-faced lunatic who is going to keep looking for you. At least until I find him first.”
She grabbed the last piece of bacon on the plate in front of her.
“I trust you, Micky. If you’re telling me one more day until you talk to your friend that can make this all go away, I trust you.”
Chapter 14
Jackie
“Listen Jackie, I know this place is probably going to be a little fancier than what you’re used to, so just try to keep a lid on your enthusiasm.”
I put on my turn signal and followed his directions into the parking lot. I thought that the sign probably said ‘Bass River Inn’ in its better days, but some local comedian spray painted over the ‘B’ and the light in one of the ‘N’s was burned out. It was classy, no doubt.
“The back, park around back.”
I went around the length of the building and parked in an open spot in the back. Open parking lot, trash dumpsters, and a view of the back of a warehouse. It was lovely. We got out of the car and I locked the doors and we started walking towards the front.
“Have you ever been here…”
I turned to look at him and realized he was no longer by my side. He was walking towards a homeless person who was milling around the trash. I watched as he gave the man a fifty dollar bill and spoke to him for a minute before slapping him on the back and turning around to catch up with me.
“What was that about, Micky?”
“Homeless people, the city is loaded with homeless people. Somebody’s got to do something for them.”
“Seriously?”
“Just because I kill people for a living doesn’t mean that I’m a total asshole, you know. I know a guy that works muscle for the Lucasa family who does stuff for Habitat for Humanity in his free time.”
“You guys are a lot different than what they show in the movies.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
We walked towards the front of the building and Micky held the door for me as we walked into the lobby. At least it was kind of a lobby. It had three chairs, a cigarette machine, and a waist high counter with a man standing behind it. The guy behind the counter looked slightly more put together than the homeless guy that Micky had helped outside. Micky walked up to the desk.
“I’m a friend of Jimmy Giovani.”
The man nodded and reached under the counter for a key.
“Here you go, pal, the honeymoon suite. All the way down the hall, last door on the right.”
Micky took the key without exchanging any money and the two of us were off down the hall.
“Honeymoon suite, Micky?”
“I’m pretty sure that means it’s the nicest room in the motel. I’m still not sure I’d expect much.”
We got to the end of the hall and Micky opened the door. It wasn’t the Bellagio, but it wasn’t a rat’s nest either. It was clean and even had a vase of flowers on the dresser in front of the bed.
“Wow, look at those.”
“Yeah, I have a feeling that is a gift from my friend Jimmy. He has a sense of humor.”
“You didn’t give the guy at the desk any money?”
“I’m pretty sure the Giovani family probably owns most of this motel. Their business interests are, one might say, diverse.”
He locked the door behind me and sat down on the bed.
One bed, queen sized. One small room.
“I know what you’re thinking, Jackie. I’ll sleep in the chair. I don’t want this to be weird. At least any weirder than it is already.”
“What’s your deal, Micky?”
He sat back on the bed and kicked off his boots. The pattern of the Hawaiian shirt he was wearing against the flowered bed spread screamed high fashion.
“What deal? I told you, you can sleep in the
bed. I’ll sleep in the chair. It’s only for one night and then I’ll see the guy I need to talk to tomorrow.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
I pulled the chair out from the tiny desk in the room and sat down so that I could look directly at him. Looking directly at him was nice since it gave me the undivided attention of his blue eyes. The eyes left me briefly and darted to my shoulder before looking up again.
“You need to clean that wound, Jackie. You’re a nurse, you ought to know better, it’s going to get infected…”
“You’re trying to change the subject, Micky. How did you get mixed up with these people? You’re obviously a smart guy, and it doesn’t seem like you’re the ‘life of crime’ type. Something doesn’t add up.”
He sighed and stood up and walked to the end of the bed. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he was only a couple of feet from me. When he spoke again his voice was low, like he was concerned the world was outside trying to hear the two of us.
“Things aren’t always what they appear, Jackie, and shit isn’t always like it is in the movies. Not all bad guys are Italians sitting in the back of some butcher shop in Jersey eating spaghetti. Sometimes guys get involved who aren’t even part of the family. Sometimes you can get involved just by being roommates with the wrong guy your freshman year of college.”
His eyes dropped to my shoulder again. I could feel the dull sting from the wound there but I wanted him to go on. His eyes met mine again and I pleaded with him to continue without saying a word.
“Jimmy Giovani. I was roommates with Jimmy Giovani our freshman year at Penn State. It was just dumb luck. I hadn’t requested a roommate at all and Jimmy was supposed to be setup with someone else, but the college stuck us together and we became friends. Like, really good friends. We developed a close friendship that went beyond freshman year at college. It happens with a lot of people. How many people do you know that are still friends with their college roommates? It just so happened that in my case the roommate was the son of the biggest mobster in the city.”
He stood up and I started to stop him.
“I’m not going anywhere, Jackie. I just want to get a wash cloth from the bathroom for that shoulder.”
I watched him disappear into the little motel bathroom and heard the water running a second later. A minute later, he was back in front of me on the edge of the bed.
“Of course, that was just my freshman year. Nothing happens right away with these people. I just happened to meet the old man a few times over that first year. They would come up and visit, I would road trip with Jimmy to visit them at home—I’ve even been out to their vacation house—that kind of thing. It was real innocent starting out, and I never, ever thought there was anything weird going on with his family. As God is my witness, I never thought he was crooked, and Jimmy never said a word. It’s just the way things are with those people, you don’t talk about it and people don’t know.”
He was close enough that I could smell him. He stopped talking for a moment and reached out to touch the blood spot on my shoulder. I winced out of reflex and he pointed at my shirt.
“You should unbutton at least two so I can get at that wound.”
And I didn’t think twice because I wanted the rest of the story. My hands started unbuttoning.
“Anyway, Big Poppa really took a shine to me. That’s what they call him, Big Poppa Giovani. When I was at Penn State I was on the boxing team. When I was a freshman I was good. By the time I was a junior I was beating the hell out of people. All I did was lift weights and box, and the old man loved it. Looking back, it should have been the first thing that tipped me off that something wasn’t right about him, and sometimes I think there is a part of me that did know. But my dad was gone when I was little so the fact that this guy went nuts for it just made it kind of cool.”
I got the second button undone and he was right, it was enough to pull back and expose my wound. It was a small cut, hardly worth worrying about, but there was no way in a bazillion years I was stopping him as he started dabbing at it.
“You should have seen this guy at boxing matches. I mean he would jump up and down and shout all kinds of inappropriate shit. ‘Beat the fuck out of him,’ things like that. Jimmy was never a tough guy. I think his old man just kind of saw something in me he wished his own son would have had. I don’t know, that sounds corny, I guess.”
He kept working at the wound and I watched as the dried blood accumulated on the washcloth. Maybe he was right, maybe it needed to be cleaned.
“So how do you go from boxing team at Penn State to hitman?”
“Here’s the thing, it never happens like that. Shit always happens slowly with these guys and before you know it you’re in too far.”
He stopped with the washcloth and looked up at me again.
“He and Jimmy always talked about me working for him. I was taking accounting at Penn State. They used to talk about me working for them for real, and I think in the beginning that was probably what they envisioned. Maybe.”
He paused a second and I briefly thought about buttoning back up and then kicked that idea to the curb.
“So one night I’m out with Jimmy and we’re at some place drinking and I’m feeling pretty good. He was feeding drinks to me, they were always generous like that. Anyway, he gets on the phone with his old man and gets in this big dramatic conversation and then he gives me the phone. Big Poppa was going nuts because some guy had done something to Jimmy’s sister. He was losing his shit because someone disrespected the family and her honor, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, he asks me to go pay this guy a visit and work him over a little. What am I going to say to him? I loved this guy like he was my father and I have a big buzz on and he’s telling me about this awful shit with his daughter, so of course I let Jimmy drive me over to see the guy.”
He paused again and looked away and I could see the memory happening right before his eyes.
“I’m not proud of it, Jackie, not by a long shot. It’s one thing hitting a guy in the ring when you’re wearing gloves. Barefisting a guy after you’ve been drinking is a whole other story. And by that point I was practically a professional based on all the training I was doing. I ended up killing the guy inside the first two minutes and didn’t even realize it until Jimmy pulled me off him.
“To this day, I have no idea if the story about Jimmy’s sister is even true. This guy probably owed them money or some silly shit. But they had me after that, they had me right where they wanted me. ‘We’ll protect you,’ ‘we’ll make sure the cops never find out,’ ‘we just need you to do something else for us,’ and it just snowballed from there.”
“Jesus, that’s a shitty story, Micky.”
He started laughing. Somewhere in that story, he found something to laugh at.
“What’s so funny?”
“That’s not even my real name. My real name is Jonathon Schwartz. You believe that? Jonathon Schwartz, accounting major from some pissant town you never heard of in Pennsylvania. After killing that guy, they said they needed to protect me and Micky Steele was born.”
“Jonathon Schwartz?”
“Fucked up, right? And the old man loved having me around. It was slow at first. Push a gangster around here, break a thumb there. But he loved having someone who could kill with his bare hands. He loved having a guy he could just stick on a plane and not have to worry about TSA or guns or shit like that. The only thing that was ever good about it was the money. I tried to just keep telling myself to take the money and I would eventually get out. And I think I still can, if I can just get past the asshole who is hell bent on killing me first.”
He pitched the dirty washcloth into the waste paper basket before leaning in towards me.
“The one thing I always told him which he always stuck to was I only wanted to kill guys that had it coming. He never sent me out after anyone that didn’t already have blood on their hands. I swear to God as far as I knew every guy I took out had it coming to them. The
re are some shitty fucking people in this world, Jackie. The only thing that got me through what I was doing was the thought that I was ridding the world of some of the scum that was lining the toilet bowl, you know? I just knew I wanted to get out before my number came up.”
He wasn’t looking at me as he said it. He was looking at the floor of the Bass River honeymoon suite with sorrow in his eyes. Strong hands and a damaged soul in a Hawaiian shirt. And I leaned forward and pounced on him.
Chapter 15
Micky
Soft, warm lips—the lips of an angel. Only this angel’s lips also had a warm tongue which was now exploring the inside of my mouth. Not what I was expecting in response to what was a shitty story, but there was no way in a million years I was stopping her. My needle had been moving north from the moment I laid my hands on her, and feeling the heat of her body wasn’t helping. But then she broke the kiss.
“Micky, why did you think it would work?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Back at my house. The whole bit with taking my shirt off?”
Why do women ask questions they already knew the answer to?
“You’ve been married for a while. Doesn’t that mean you understand men?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Look Jackie, if there’s one thing that stops a guy in his tracks, it’s a beautiful woman. It doesn’t matter if it’s a wise guy or a fucking priest on his way to Sunday mass. Anyone with a Y chromosome that is a straight shooter is going to stop to look at a beautiful woman. A beautiful topless woman is a guaranteed show stopper.”
She was giving me that look that told me she didn’t get a lot of compliments, and I knew I was giving her a look back that told her I didn’t understand why.
“To be honest with you, Jackie, I got caught looking too. If Freddy was a half second faster, thinks might have turned out differently.”
She started to smile and her hands started to drift. Two buttons undone already and dainty nurse’s fingers lingering on the third. The needle was moving north again—hard, and I started to kiss her again because the smile on her face was too much to resist.
Dirty Hitman Page 6
