She walked past a craps table where a cluster of people whooped and hollered. “Come on, baby, sing the sweet music to me. You can do it, just one more time, baby.” A middle-aged man, his shirt half-untucked and his eyes on fire, blew a puff of breath at the dice and then chucked the pair down to the other end of the table. It was as if a vacuum had sucked all the noise away, and then she heard a cascade of gasps.
The dice had finally stopped rolling. It took an extra second for the pea-brains to process the number of black dots, and then a thunderous roar.
“Bull’s-eye!” the desperate man screamed, hoisting two fists in triumph, or possibly relief. “Johnny lives to fight and win another day, baby.”
Rolling her eyes, she knew Johnny was on a high. He was an absolute rock star, or so he thought. She could recall being in that position a couple of moments in her life. A shallow, meaningless existence.
While she used to seethe at the events that had led her down this path, she knew it was all meant to be. All part of the plan for Margaret Turov. Her experiences defined her destiny, and for that, she was thankful. A calling to make the world a better place. Revenge was nothing more than a side benefit. But it couldn’t go unnoticed. The feeling of ecstasy she’d felt when slashing and slicing had supplanted every other positive human experience she could recall—even during her special assignments when she was known as MT.
Just as she turned away from the raucous craps table, she heard Frank Sham’s unmistakable howling laughter. Her body responded in a strange way. Revolted, her stomach turned upside down. But she also broke out in goose bumps in anticipation of what lay ahead.
Pulling up to the blackjack table, Margaret spotted Frank’s comb-over right away. And his polyester blue leisure suit. Without a free chair to sit in, she stood behind a row of onlookers, fingering the curved edges of what had grown to be her most beloved tool. A weapon with immense precision. A weapon that brought fear to the eyes of her victims. Without fail, the moment the shining blade caught their eyes, she could practically see their hearts explode right in front of her. And then she would go to work, almost like a master chef or, better yet, a sculptor who depicts a scene befitting of that victim’s most egregious sins.
Another quick image of Mike’s expression shot through her frontal lobe just before she sliced off his manhood—the ultimate feeling of power and control. She shuddered for a brief second, then caught her breath in her throat and maintained her composure. She admitted that Mike’s death was deeply personal. He’d destroyed her innocence and her belief that most men, at their core, were good people. Frank, on the other hand, was more of a blight on society. The way he manipulated and lied to every customer who walked into the doors of his used car dealership.
She could still recall the day she thumbed a ride from an inner city homeless shelter out to Frank’s dealership. Back from her tour only a few months, the economy was in the pisser, and soon she’d found herself asking for handouts, which quickly led to a permanent stay in the shelter. A month later, she finally landed a job, but since it was a pizza delivery position, it required that she have a car.
It was autumn, and the orange leaves swirled into mini twisters, dancing off car hoods and across the parking lot. One spiraling gust of wind engulfed Frank, whose threadlike hair lifted, revealing a skull with a litany of blue veins splintering across his white head. She remembered him licking his hand—a scaly tongue that didn’t seem human—and then wetting down his hair until the slime had glued his hair to his scalp.
Then he tried to shake her hand. She avoided that first overture. But not his last.
Looking around at the prices written in shoe polish on the front windshields in the lot, Margaret ran her fingers through her thick, short mane and let out an exasperated, defeated breath. No way in hell she could afford a car, even a dented Ford that had over two hundred thousand miles on it.
After hearing her sob story, he held up a hairy finger and declared, “No one leaves Frank Sham’s Auto Group without the deal of a lifetime.”
“But I just don’t have the cash,” she said.
His lips parted, showing off a set of gums that were coated black and swollen. She almost hurled in his face.
“Everyone has a deal,” he said.
“But your lowest priced car is a thousand dollars. I only have five hundred on me, and I can’t pay a penny more than that.”
“Follow me. We can fix everything at Frank Sham.”
“Fix” turned out to be the most accurate word he’d used all day.
First he “fixed” the price—once she reluctantly agreed to certain sexual favors carried out in the dealership’s disgusting bathroom stall. Then, ready to grab the keys and get the hell out of the seedy dealership, she was forced to quickly sign a bunch of papers. Later, she learned that she had agreed to pay enough interest over the next six months that would have bought the car three times over.
That night at the shelter, she realized what she’d done to herself. With no self-worth to speak of and her faith in humanity destroyed, she let a tear drop from her eye. A tear of shame. The last tear she had ever shed.
Since that day, she’d often asked herself why she’d let him use her. She’d killed people before—mostly in a war setting—but when she’d returned to the states, she was determined to rise above those feelings of inadequacy, to not lash out at others out of sheer frustration at herself and her own life.
Frank Sham, the frickin’ maggot, changed everything.
“Look out, sweetie, a girl’s gotta go, if you know what I’m saying.” A voluptuous blonde used her tits like a battering ram, clearing the way for her to move through the swarm of folks surrounding the table. She smacked Margaret’s bare arm and shimmied through until she’d cleared the area.
Margaret fought off the urge to remove her knife, puncture those water balloons in about two point five seconds, and then slide into the empty chair without anyone noticing.
“What do you know, a redhead replaces the blonde,” Frank said. “That reminds me of a great joke.”
“Let us have it, Frank,” the dealer said with little enthusiasm.
“A redhead tells her friend, a blonde, ‘I slept with a Brazilian last night.’ And the blonde says back to her, ‘OMG, you slut. How many is a Brazilian?’”
How witty. She forced herself to laugh her ass off. Frank howled like a coyote, which just elicited another round of laughter from everyone at or near the table.
The dealer looked at Margaret and asked, “Is the pretty redhead playing this next hand?”
“No, thanks. I don’t want to embarrass myself. This guy here looks like a real winner. I’ll learn from him.” She squeezed Frank’s scrawny arm.
He turned and gave her a wry smile, as if he had already won her over and it was only a matter of time before he would impart his will on her.
That would only make their final confrontation that much more satisfying, she told herself.
They played two hands, and Frank won both. After each victory, he shot her a wink and she sidled up a little bit closer.
“You’re my good luck charm.”
“Yeah, you think?” she said sheepishly.
“I always say it’s better to be lucky than good. You’ll have to stick around. Got any plans?”
“Now I do.” She flipped her red locks around her shoulder and curled her arm inside his.
In her first breath, she picked up a musty odor. It had to have been the suit, which was probably thirty or forty years old. Then she caught a waft of his hairspray. Glancing out of the corner of her eye, she was almost certain she spotted black magic marker on part of his scalp. There were more holes in his fake, raven-black hair than a fish net.
“Deal the cards. I’m feeling lucky today!” Frank declared.
Midway through the next hand, the blonde plowed her way through the crowd until her boobs sat two inches from Margaret’s chin.
“Redhead bitch better step down.” The blonde wagged her f
inger, arm, and neck in one gyrating, obnoxious motion.
Just as Margaret was about to grab her bony finger and snap it in two, Frank barked, “Ah, get out of here, Blondie. Your time has come and gone. Shoo!”
He chuckled, but she wasn’t finished. She was just getting revved up.
Sticking her face and boobs over the table, she poked a fake fingernail into the felt surface. “Frank Sham, you promised me that if I stood by your side and held your arm, you would spend money on me. Money will rain on you all night long. That’s what you said.”
“Did I hear someone talking?” He mockingly put his hand to his ear, and the crowd laughed as if on cue. “I didn’t think so, because we all know that blondes can’t put two words together.” He smacked the table. “Get the hell out of here. I got me a real woman now.”
A money chip flew right across Margaret’s vision, popping Frank in the nose.
“You two-timing piece of shit,” she yelled, bouncing away from the table.
Frank lifted off the chair, thinking about going after her. But Margaret knew that would spoil her plans—the only reason she’d set foot in Atlantic City.
“Frank, Frank, why chase after her when you know you have a sure thing right here next to you?”
He stopped and looked her in the eye, hesitating for a second. Had he recognized her from so many years ago?
The dealer got everyone back on track. “Who wants to play some blackjack?”
“I’m not playing, but I’ll put up an extra hundred bucks for anyone here who can beat my Frankie.”
She tossed the two bills on the table, and she could see Frank’s back arch a bit. She was about to snag the ugliest fish in the whole pond. And the dirtiest.
Three hands later, he gave her an awkward high five. She began to playfully pull him away from the table, but he just couldn’t let go of the blonde from earlier.
Turning back to the crowd of misfits, he crowed, “Hey, what does a blonde and a beer bottle have in common?”
“What?” two people said in response.
“They’re both empty from the neck up.”
Frank’s howl nearly pierced her eardrum, and she brought a hand to her ear.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Red. You want to go some place quieter?”
She nestled up against his chest, releasing a sultry breath into his ear. “Quieter, sure. But I can’t wait that much longer. A girl has needs too, you know.”
She took him by the hand and led him through the growing crowd of gamblers and their good luck charms. She could hear him chuckling every other step.
“Where you taking me, Red?”
“To a galaxy far, far away,” she said.
“Ha! You want me to be Han Solo and you can be Princess Leia?”
“Sure. Whatever you want, Frank. It’s about you, isn’t it? All about you.”
She looked back and saw him ogling other females as they blew by them. His attention span matched that of a three-year-old—one that was still breastfeeding.
They weaved around a cacophony of slot machines, then through a series of left and right turns until they found themselves up against a dead end.
“Looks like you took the wrong turn. I figured you’d have this place mapped out, given your line of work,” he said with both arms planted at his waist.
“What kind of profession do you think I’m in?”
“The kind that pays pretty good. And wouldn’t you know it, I just happen to have a big wad of cash.” He grinned, and she nearly gagged.
Craning her neck, she looked off in the distance. A few people were gathered near a slot machine about a hundred feet away, but she and Frank were all alone in the recessed hallway. She grabbed his wrist and yanked him through a green door etched with “Janitor” in gold letters.
“What the hell we doing in here? It smells like shit in here,” he said, rustling his arm from her grip.
The room was no more than ten by ten, three walls lined with shelves of supplies, cleaning fluid, and various sizes of buckets. Trash cans sat in each corner, flanked by a cluster of brooms and wet mops.
He eyed the sink that was filled halfway with dirty water and said, “I thought you wanted to have sex, make a little cash. This place isn’t fit to be a urinal.” His face scrunched into a ball of disgust.
“But I thought you enjoyed getting down and dirty in nasty places like bathrooms?”
“Huh?” He turned, and his eyes went straight to the long, red locks that had been tossed to the floor.
Then his vision gravitated to the instrument she was tossing back and forth in her hands.
“Who are you?” He studied her face. “Am I supposed to know you?”
Pulling in air to keep pace with her pounding heart, she rocked from side to side, her mass low, balanced, her mind on high alert, prepared for any potential reprisal from her enemy—just as she’d been trained. The weight of the knife, the way it felt in her hand, infused her body with an additional shot of adrenaline—though it wasn’t needed. She could snuff the life out of Frank Sham with as much effort as it took to slice a cantaloupe in two. Come to think of it, the texture of the ripe fruit reminded her of what it was like to carve out chunks of human flesh and organs.
With that thought and in anticipation of what was about to happen, Margaret quivered again.
“You’re afraid of me.” Setting his stance, he stood taller, his chin a bit higher. “You might hold the weapon and think you have the balls to kill me, but you really don’t. You’re just a pathetic loser who’s going to drop the knife and walk away.”
She heard the words and watched his confidence surge again. The art of manipulation by Frank Sham, the scammer.
She didn’t reply. Air pumped through her lips at an increasing cadence as her mind sizzled, generating new, creative ways on how to punctuate her final interaction with Frank.
“Are you even human?” He pointed a shaky finger at her, his eyes nothing more than slits. “You let that war eat you up, didn’t you? And now, you’re no good to anyone. Is that all you want to get out of life?”
More breaths plunged out of her body, her vision fixated on him. How to kill him with the most pain possible.
Frank lunged to his right, grabbing the handle of a bucket and tossed it at Margaret’s face. She simply punched it away with her fist. Then she swiped her blade across his wrist, shooting blood into his eyes.
“Fuck! What do you want, bitch? You’re in charge, so just tell me,” he said in gasps while trying to cover his wound with his hand.
“Have you ever been in this position, Frank, where you’re not in charge? Where you aren’t fucking someone over, someone who has nothing?”
Sweating like a pig in a slaughterhouse, he shook his head. This closet would be Frank’s slaughterhouse. “I…I don’t know what to say.”
“That’s a first.”
On her first surge into Frank’s chest, she could hear the familiar words of a tune from years ago—the first cut is the deepest. Her mind played that same line through Rod Stewart’s gravelly voice over and over again as she did what she’d come to Atlantic City to do.
To make Frank Sham eat his own words, and then some.
14
My phone buzzed for the umpteenth time in the last thirty minutes. Or in sixth-grade basketball terms, just over two minutes of game time when filled with a turnover or foul every five seconds.
With my eyes still on the court, I slid my hand across my lap to find my purse, a practical number from Michael Kors. It had quickly grown into my grab-ass bag—anything and everything that needed to be carried for any venture with the family away from the house. Fortunately, it came with a long strap, so I was able to hoist the heavy weight over my shoulder and trudge forward like any good pack mule, or mom.
Just as the tips of my fingers found the mouth of the purse, a hand touched mine.
“Dr. Alex, I thought you were going to wait until Luke’s game was over.”
Turning to Ezzy on the
bench seat next to me with my lips split to show my teeth, I had no response.
“You told yourself and your family that you’d stay away from your phone until the game was over.” Ezzy pointed at the game clock. “We still have four minutes left in the game. You don’t want to break your word.”
She was right, and I couldn’t openly admit that I was about to break my promise. “I just wanted to make sure that I didn’t forget Luke’s retainer, so he could put it on after the game.”
Ezzy nodded slowly, her wise eyes telling me I’d just created the story from vapor.
I cast a gaze across the court to Luke’s new coach and a funny thought came to mind. “Actually, Ezzy, it’s my vibrator. It’s got more staying power than any man I’ve been with.”
Ezzy dropped her head into her hands and released a couple of snorts. With her skin a shade redder, she regained her composure, but the smile on her face remained.
A bump on my left side. “Mother, did you just say what I thought you said?”
Erin had just slid in next to me; her friend, Shawna, squeezed in on the end.
My whole body tensed up, including my air passage. “Don’t know what you’re talking about, Erin. Ezzy and I are just talking about the game.”
“What? I heard you say the word—”
“Baconator, Erin.” I patted her leg like she was seven instead of a freshman in high school. “We decided to take Luke to get the new Baconator at Sam’s Burger Shop after the game, if he scores a point.”
“Seriously? He hasn’t played a minute all season.”
Biting into my lip, I glared across the court toward Luke, who sat at the end of the bench. His team, the Bulls, were a good team and had a 5-2 record to show for it. If they won tonight’s game against the Hoopsters, they would secure a playoff berth. Even though he didn’t like “riding the pine” as he would say, he had stuck with it, listening to his coach, working on his skills. Like any parent, I thought my kid deserved playing time, and not just the time when the team is winning or losing by thirty.
The Alex Troutt Thrillers: Books 1-3 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set) Page 38
