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The man needed to call his wife. This had happened before. He’d said it was with a secretary, a woman. He’d promised his wife it wouldn’t happen again. He started to dial, then realized he’d need the clerk for an outside line. The clerk must have been off getting the candy.
The man had a good job, great wife, great kids, nice house. He was a newly initiated Rotarian. Yet here he was, after a night with some street tough, doing those things, waking up on a Sunday morning in a place like this.
He got up again to look for the oranges. No luck. He saw his pants but not his yellow shirt. He couldn’t find his porkpie hat. He didn’t know the name of the dive where he’d left his car. He’d have to take a cab home, shirtless, then have his wife drive him around seedy neighborhoods, looking for it. It’d be easier to just buy a new car.
He picked up the gun.
The Colt felt even heavier than it looked. He ran his finger along the barrel. He opened his mouth. He rested the end of the gun on his tongue and held it there.
He heard the squeal of tires outside. It was a big car, he could tell from the sound of the slamming door. It must be Troy. Coming back for him. Then a second car door slammed.
Two men.
They’d come all the way from Chicago. They weren’t coming for him, though the naked man didn’t know that. They’d been following him for hours, which he also didn’t know. The naked man pulled the Colt out of his mouth, stood, and trained it on the door. “See you in Hell,” he whispered. He’d heard someone say it in a movie. He wasn’t a tough guy, but with his fingers curled around the pearly butt of that six-shooter he sure as hell felt like it.
In Hollywood, Florida, under the carport of the coral-colored house where she’d lived since her father, So
Her mother, the controlling shrew, was driving them both. Driving! To New York! Thank God Francesca would get dropped off first. She honked again.
“That’s very a
“As if you’re really reading that book.”
Kathy answered in what was either French or fake French.
Francesca hadn’t taken a language and pla
“Sei una fregna per sicuro,” Kathy answered.
“Nice mouth.”
Kathy shrugged.
“You can swear in Italian,” Francesca said, “but you can’t read Italian.”
“I can’t read at all unless you shut up.”
Their mother was next door at their grandparents’ house, and had been there for ages, laying down last-minute care-and-feeding instructions for Francesca’s brothers, Frank, fifteen, and Chip, ten. Chip’s real name was Santino Jr., and, until he had come home from baseball practice one day this summer and a
Francesca honked again. What was taking so long in there? No
Hal Mitchell’s Castle in the Sand Hotel and Casino never closed. Neither, these days, did Joh
His head pounded, and not from the depth of the water. He didn’t drink as much as people thought, at least not anymore. The secret? Go from table to table, joint to joint, leaving half-finished drinks everywhere, which no one notices, while at the same time accepting every new one that comes his way, which everyone notices. Any poor mook who tried to match him drink for drink got folded into the back of a cab and sent home, courtesy of Joh