The Snow White Christmas Cookie

pallid and gaunt it was painful to look at her. Her arms and legs were barely more than sticks. Her skin was blotchy and covered with bruises. She wore a nipple ring in her right nipple. Beneath her belly button she had a tattoo of a cupcake with a glistening cherry on top.

Her eyes were huge and she was shaking. “I’m f-freezing. You mind if I cover myself up?”

“Please do,” Yolie said to her with obvious distaste.

Gigi pulled the top sheet and blanket over them, shivering.

“What do you bitches want?” Tommy demanded, folding his body builder arms in front of his chest.

“Where is he?” Des asked.

“Where’s who?”

“Mitch Berger.”

“Don’t know who you’re talking about. This must be some kind of mistake. Me and Gigi haven’t been out all day, except to get a pizza.”

Yolie aimed her SIG directly in between his eyes. “Try again, Pinhead.”

He bristled at her. “I don’t like that name.”

“And I don’t like being jerked around, Pinhead.”

“Like I just said, we been here all day. Smoked us a little weed, made love. I don’t know what you want from me.”

“Then let me put it in a language you can understand,” Yolie said. “If you tell us right goddamned now what went down at the Yankee Doodle then I promise we won’t shoot both of you dead.”

He let out a laugh. “You can’t lay a finger on us. That there’s Resident Trooper Mitry. She has to play by the rules. I don’t know who you are.…”

“I’m your worst nightmare. An angry black bitch with a loaded gun. You have three seconds to tell us what went down or I start shooting.”

“I got nothing to tell you. Me and Gigi have been here all-”

Yolie fired at the wall right next to his head-once, twice, three times.

Gigi screamed. Tommy just lay there, glowering.

“Next one goes in your shoulder,” Yolie promised him. “Where is he?”

“Tell her, Tommy.”

“Shut up!”

“Tommy, I swear I–I’m gonna piss myself if you don’t.”

“And I said shut up,” he snarled, his jaw muscles clenching. “Just forget it, lady. I’m not getting in any trouble.”

“Fool, you are in trouble.”

“I think he means in trouble with Slick Rick,” Des said. “Slick Rick’s connected. If Tommy crosses him he’ll wind up in a pork sausage factory somewhere in Providence. The girl, too.”

Gigi let out a gasp of horror.

Tommy the Pinhead said nothing. Just continued to glower. It was what he did best.

Yolie shook her head at him. “You are failing to grasp the reality of your present situation. Your problem is with us. Neither of you will make it out of this apartment alive if you do not give up everything right goddamned now.”

Gigi started to sob, her heavy eye makeup running down her cheeks in black gobs. “Tommy, please…”

Yolie aimed her weapon at Tommy’s left shoulder. “Talk.”

“Lady, I got nothing for you.”

She fired a shot into the wall that Des swore was less than a half-inch from his skin. “Talk.”

“I just told you. I got nothing.”

“Okay, I’m all done playing games with this fool,” huffed Yolie, who never left home without her Smith amp; Wesson SWAT spring-assist folding knife, size large. There are times when a combat knife can be vastly more persuasive than a SIG. This was one of those times. Yolie squeezed the knife’s thumb release and its razor-sharp four-inch blade sprang open with a click. Then she flung the bedcovers from Tommy and exposed his family jewels. “Hold his legs, girl,” she commanded Des. “I’m going to cut our boy Tommy down to size.”

Tommy wasn’t without nerve. He lay there sneering with contempt while Des grabbed his legs. And kept on sneering-right up until the moment when Yolie had that scary blade less than six inches from where he and his progeny lived. That was when he began to squirm, his eyes bulging. “Wait, lady!” he roared. “Are you crazy?”

“There’s an honest difference of opinion about that,” Yolie answered soberly. “But the state shrink cleared me for active duty. Let’s do this, girl.”

“I said wait!” he protested. “W-What do you want to know about?”

“Casey Zander,” Des said. “How things went down at the Rustic.”

“South in a hurry,” he said, his eyes never leaving that knife. “Casey was acting all spooked, okay? Said the law was getting hip to things now that his mom’s boyfriend was dead.”

“Hip to what things?”

“That he was stealing meds out of the mail to pay off Slick Rick.”

“Who was stealing them-Casey or his mom’s boyfriend?”

“Don’t ask me. I don’t know how blubber boy’s been doing it. Don’t know, don’t care. I just know he was into Slick Rick for big bucks and he’s been paying him off with meds, iPods, anything else he can lay his hands on. He’s been making good, too, until today out in the parking lot of the Rustic he starts whining like a little bitch about how the postal inspectors are grilling him and he’s getting real nervous. I went back inside and told my employer. …”

“Slick Rick, you mean?”

Tommy nodded. “He told me we’ll be toast if the feds start leaning on blubber boy. Casey would give us up in a heartbeat to save his own sorry ass. Slick Rick said to take care of it. I’d just sent Gigi to the Yankee Doodle with Casey to settle him down. Figured I’d follow them there. Except when I got outside there’s some dude crouched by the woodpile watching them drive away. Same dude who was just inside the Rustic asking Steve a bunch of questions. I figured he had to be the one.” He swallowed hard. “Put that thing away, will ya?”

Yolie held the knife even closer. “The one? What one?”

“The undercover cop. Slick Rick heard there might be a state narc hanging around. Word gets out.”

Des felt her stomach tighten. “What did you do about him?”

“Whacked him over the head with a snow shovel and tossed him in my trunk.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I couldn’t just leave him lying there. People would notice him.”

“No, dumb ass,” Yolie growled. “Why’d you whack him over the head?”

“Because I didn’t want him following me to the Yankee Doodle. I had business to take care of there. I had no personal beef with the guy but he intruded into my thing. So I did what I had to do.”

Yolie raised her chin at him. “Of course you did.”

“Then I drove to the Yankee Doodle, except Gigi had locked the bungalow door.”

“I always do,” she whimpered. “I told you I was sorry.”

“Just shut the hell up, will you? I had to pound on the freaking door. Attract all kinds of attention to myself. That’s real smart, isn’t it?”

“Not here to listen to you two bicker,” Yolie growled, poking at the tender flesh of Tommy’s scrotum with the tip of her knife.

Tommy held up his hands, shuddering. “Okay, okay. Just take it easy, will ya? When I went in, Casey was sitting on the bed taking his boots off. Still had his clothes on which, believe me, was a good thing.”

“I hated doing him,” Gigi said. “He was totally fat and he had these acne scars all over his back that were disgusting.”

“Yeah, like you’d know from disgusting,” Yolie said.

Gigi frowned at her. “Did you just insult me?”