Thing is, there was a robbery over there at the Lucky…this isn’t that money, you have to believe me, you have to trust me…”
Of course, it was that money.
“All right…I believe you, Jack. Are you saying this money is…mine?”
“Yours. Here’s the conditions. You run that over to River Bluff and put it in a safe deposit box-don’t open an account. A safe deposit box. Then you go back to dancing at the Lucky and keep your head down during the management change and maybe any kind of investigation…”
“Police?”
“Maybe. I doubt it, but maybe. Anyway, don’t throw any of that money around. Just do your job, shake your titties and booty and make some men happy. Live your little life, then in a month or two, if it’s quiet, you quit, take your kid somewhere and put him in school and go to beauty college and get your life in gear.”
“Jack…oh, Jack.”
And she kissed me. There was sex in it, sure, and gratitude-you can get a hell of a kiss out of girl, when you give her a paper bag full of fifteen grand-but mostly it was sweet. Loving. A hint of maybe what my life could have been like if it hadn’t gone to hell a long time before I came to Haydee’s.
“I got to run,” I said, and gave her a peck of a kiss.
I moved carefully through the little train yard, and the kid kept his eyes on the tube- Sesame Street again-and I was halfway to the Firebird when she called out to me.
“ Jack!”
She was framed there in the door, t-shirt, white panties, all the pale creamy flesh a man could ever want, and blue eyes that hid no secrets except the new one.
“You’re an angel, Jack. When they made you, they broke the mold!”
Didn’t they just?
