anything. If it makes men happy to see me dance, to feel my boobies in their face or put their hands on my bottom, that’s okay by me…long as they pay the freight. I have a kid to provide for. I don’t trick, and I don’t let anybody touch me in my private place.”
“Nobody ever?”
“Now you are flirting.”
“Maybe a little.”
She sighed, looked at her hands, which were folded in her lap. Her nails were painted hot pink. “Look, I know the Lucky is a rough place. It’s like…everybody has to put their time in, in some hellhole in this life. It’s an awful, corrupt place, and Jerry G is like the little Godfather of the place.”
“Running downtown Haydee’s Port isn’t that big a deal in the scheme of things, is it?”
“Oh, it’s more than just the Lucky Devil-like, Jerry G runs all kinds of narcotics up and down the river. They have boats that look like, you know, summer outing kind of stuff. But you’d be shocked at how much of that… evil stuff moves through this tiny little town, and all across the country.”
“Were you raised a churchgoer, by any chance, Candace?”
“I went to a Baptist church when I was at home. I haven’t been in years. I don’t like church, really. But I believe in Jesus. Do unto others and all that stuff.”
“You must, hauling my ass out of that alley…You got any more of that Percodan?”
“I’ll get you another dose. But be careful-you don’t want to get hooked.”
I took the Percodan and went back to sleep for a while. When I woke up, the clock on the nightstand said one, and sunlight was still edging in around the dark curtains, so I didn’t figure I’d slept another day away or anything.
What was interesting was the presence of Candace next to me, under the sheets. Shouldn’t have surprised me, since this was her bed, after all, and she worked nights, and had to catch some rest some time.
She was sound asleep, even snoring a little, and wearing another t-shirt and sheer panties. She was nestled against me, with her head on my chest, my arm around her, her slender arm draped across my side.
I was just staring at her, wondering what my life would have been like if a sweet kid like this had married me back in the Nam days, and not a cheating little cunt.
I was also thinking about my close call-without her sweet nature and Baptist upbringing, I might have been dead right now, dumped in a ditch or maybe in the drink.
Seemed to me I had about come to the end of this way of life. I was lucky I hadn’t already been killed, trying to play the Broker’s database like a loose slot machine. I was dealing with murderers and their deserving clients, trying to play both ends against the middle, only I was always the guy in the middle, wasn’t I?
If I could make that substantial financial killing in Haydee’s Port, I might be able to invest in Wilma’s Welcome Inn and start living the kind of life actual human beings experienced. Maybe I could even find a nice kid like Candace, who had now turned her back to me. I risked turning onto my side, and didn’t die of a hemorrhage, so I spooned with her. She snuggled her bottom against my groin and a mighty oak grew.
She began giggling, in her sleep maybe, and a hand reached around, and found my dick and stroked it like a puppy, while I purred like a kitten. She turned over and whispered, “Sam’s napping, so…” And she gave me the finger-to-the-lips shush sign.
Then her right hand slipped in the front of my jockey shorts and withdrew the only part of me that was throbbing in a good way, and her little mouth with the full lips suckled on the tip, then began to slide up and down, her tongue working miracles that had surely not been revealed to her at the Baptist Church.
She had me to the brink, when she stopped and asked, “You want to come this way? Or do you feel good enough to…?”
Keeping faith with her Baptist roots, I got on her Missionary style, but only after she had slipped out of the panties and pulled off the t-shirt. Her pert breasts stayed that way, on her back, and when I slipped inside her, she was so tight, she might have been holding me in her fist.
It lasted a surprisingly long time, and I felt every ache and pain from the other night but somehow it only added to the sensation. She looked up at me with that face free of makeup, looking only twelve but fucking like twenty, her expression begging mercy, understanding and forgiveness. What she got turned her chest and neck and cheeks scarlet and made her nipples point skyward and her eyes the same direction with her mouth making a little O to go with the big one.
Me, I came so hard my soul might have been escaping me, if it hadn’t fled long before.
We did that darn near silently, not waking Sam from his nappy-poo, and she took a shower and I took a shower and we both sat, fully dressed now, at a little table off her kitchen nook, feeling vaguely embarrassed, yet knowing we’d made a memory that neither of us would ever lose, at least till she died of natural causes and somebody put a bullet in my head.
Then I asked her about Gigi Giovanni and his doctor appointments. Would she happen to know when his next one was?
“Funny you should ask,” she said. “It’s always the third Friday of the month.”
“What’s today, the second Friday?”
“No, silly. The third.”
Chapter Nine
The River Bluff Neurology Clinic was in Rivercrest Medical Park, a beautifully landscaped collection of recently erected one-story red-brick buildings with interconnecting drives and several shared parking lots-a sort of shopping mall for the sick.
This was West River Bluff, where I’d wound up following a dark-green late model Lincoln Town Car from the Lucky Devil parking lot. Enough vehicles had been there for me not to call attention to myself and, anyway, there was no reason to think any of Jerry G’s people would recognize my wheels. I sat parked between a pick-up truck and a Dodge Daytona and watched for almost an hour, thinking I’d probably missed my moment.
The only thing that had given me hope was that Lincoln Town Car, parked near the casino portion of the Lucky Devil. Hanging around near the Lincoln was a big guy with a butch haircut and a black suit with a tie-less white shirt, smoking one cigarette after another, occasionally leaning against the driver door, now and then checking his watch.
Finally Jerry G, in a yellow sport shirt and rust-color slacks, came out a casino exit, helping an older gent toward the car. Jerry G was smiling and talking, one arm around his charge, the other guiding him along. The old boy was short and squat but not really fat, not anymore; his head was squarish and his snow-white hair neatly barbered but indifferently combed. He wore a double-breasted wide-lapel gray pinstripe suit that had been in style a couple of times in the twentieth century, just not at the moment.
Was Jerry G going to accompany his pop to the doctor’s appointment? That was who this was-Giorgio “Gigi” Giovanni, and I wasn’t guessing, because I had done enough work for that family to have seen all the main players at one time or another, if from a distance.
No-Jerry G was depositing his pop in back of the Town Car, and the butch-hair boy was tossing a smoke to the gravel and coming around to get behind the wheel. They pulled out, Jerry G lingering to watch them go, then he headed back in. The Lincoln had exited the lot-access was strictly in back of the Lucky Devil, on a gravel strip along a row of trees-but catching up was no problem. Besides, I wanted to make sure I always had at least one car between us, and when I fell in behind them on the toll bridge, I had a two-car cushion.
Wearing sunglasses-not a disguise, this was a sunny day-I had followed them through the rolling city to its west outskirts and the medical complex. The Lincoln took a handicapped space, and I pulled around to park as far away as possible, at least for the moment. I watched while the burly chauffeur helped the old man out of the back seat, and walked him up a gently slanting walk to the double doors of the modern clinic.
When they were inside, I moved the car closer-I didn’t take a handicapped space, because I may be a killer but I’m not a prick, and anyway I didn’t have one of those hanging plastic cards that fend off fines. I wanted to be close in case I needed a quick getaway.
This might seem amusing, particularly since several other elderly patients were being helped into the clinic by
