In A Cold Sweat

“You see, he does know you, Mike,” Bobby said.

“I can not help but be touched,” Black said and hit DeFrancisco again. “Why’d you do it?”

He hit DeFrancisco again. He spit blood again and began to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Bobby asked.

“He knows he’s gonna die today,” Black said and held his gun to DeFrancisco’s head.

“It’s a good day to die,” Bobby said.

Black got in DeFrancisco’s face. “Why’d you do it; why’d you have my wife killed?”

“I was married once,” DeFrancisco said and laughed a little. “Married to a good woman. Sure she was a little high strung, but she was a good woman.” DeFrancisco thought back to that last conversation he had with his wife. Hold on a minute, Kenny. I know how to fix this. Then DeFrancisco heard a noise, followed by more banging on the door. Then he heard a single shot. The IRS agents found Jane’s body lying across their California king sized bed. “She took her own life one day; took her own life because I couldn’t be there for her. Since you want answers, you wanna know why I couldn’t be there for her?” DeFrancisco asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “It was ’cause of you. ’Cause I was in jail where you should have been. It shoulda been you rotting in that shit hole, not me. You!” DeFrancisco shouted. “My wife is dead because of this shit, so your wife had to die too.”

Black hit DeFrancisco again. “That’s it? That’s why you killed my wife?” Black hit him again. “I never even heard of you; how the fuck you blame me for you being in jail? You should be blamin’ your partner, Diego Estabon, for coming up with such a stupid idea.”

“Easy to blame a dead man,” Bobby joked.

Black looked at Bobby, but he didn’t seem to be amused. He turned back to DeFrancisco. “You know I’ve dreamed about this day. Dreamed about how I was gonna kill you. I was gonna torture you, you know; just beat you and torture you for a day maybe, before I killed you.” Black took a step back. He thought about his life with and without Cassandra. Black closed his eyes and could see her lying on the kitchen floor. Her face, beaten, bruised, and bloody. And what about Michelle? Forced to grow up without her mother. “But now I’m thinkin’ I should just kill you,” he said and raised his gun to DeFrancisco’s head.

“Fuck you!” DeFrancisco yelled.

“No. Fuck you,” Black said and fired two shots to his head. The impact of the shots were enough to knock DeFrancisco out of his chair. Bobby walked over and picked up two gas cans and handed one to Black. He poured gas over DeFrancisco’s body, and then they poured gas around the abandoned house. Once the gas cans were empty, Black and Bobby walked out of the house. Black turned around and removed a book of matches from his pocket. He lit the book on fire and threw it into the house.

It didn’t take long for the house to burst into flames; engulfing everything around it, including the car that they had stolen to kidnap the former agent. Black and Bobby stood off in the distance and watched until the car’s gas tank caught fire and exploded. “You ready?” Bobby asked.

“Yeah, let’s go,” Black said and got in Bobby’s car. “We got a fight to catch.”

Chapter Thirty

It was ten o'clock on Friday night and the crowd was gathering at Madison Square Garden for the Middle weight title fight between Champion Frank Sparrow and the number one contender, Irish Stevie Dudgeon.

Mike Black stretched out on the bed watching pre-fight coverage and waited for Mystique to get dressed. He had been dressed and ready to go for the last twenty minutes, but he didn’t mind watching Mystique wander around their suite. Watching her stand in front of the mirror meticulously applying her make-up, made Black think about Cassandra. It never took her long to get ready, even though it always looked like she’d spent hours on her appearance.

“I’ll be ready in a minute; I promise,” Mystique said and picked up the dress that was laid out on the bed next to Black. A Donna Karan wrap amp; tie black dress, made from imported Italian fabric with a plunging v-neck, and long sleeves that tied at the center front.

“I’m not rushin’ you.”

“It’s just that I wanna look nice for you.”

“You look delicious right now,” Black said and got off the bed.

“You know what I mean. This is kind of our first date and-you know-I just want to look nice for you that’s all.”

Black started to say something about the whole first date thing, but thought better of it.

Once Mystique had the dress on, she stood in front of him. “How do I look?”

“Like I should take it off of you, slowly,” Black said.

“I’m ready if you are, but you’ll miss your fight. You don’t know the meaning of a quickie.”

“Neither do you.”

“I know.” Mystique smiled. There was something she’d been wanting to ask him and this was as good a time as any. “You mind if I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead, ask me what you wanna know.”

Mystique took a deep breath. “I know you said you didn’t want me dancin’ at Cynt's no more. I was just wondering what that meant for us?”

“What do you mean?” Black answered a question with a question, even though he hated when people did it to him. He knew what she wanted to know, but wasn’t in any mood to talk about it.

“What I’m askin’ is, when you first asked me to stop dancin’ was it ’cause of what you got goin’ on, ‘cause you were scared something might happen to me,” Mystique took a step closer. “or was it because of us?”

Black looked at Mystique in that fitting black dress and that plunging neck line that showed off her abundant cleavage and thought about saying, Can’t we talk about this after the fight. This was a conversation that he didn’t feel like having. The same conversation he thought he was avoiding by not commenting on the whole first date thing.

Black paused for a minute and thought about how he was going to answer her. There is no nice way to say, It’s bad for my rep for you to be dancin’ there and I’m fuckin’ you. But was that all there was to it or was he really starting to feel something for her? He wasn’t sure.

Then she let him off the hook. “I’m not askin’ you for any kind of commitment or anything like that. I know you are nowhere near ready for anything like that.” Then she thought about it. “Are you?”

“No,” Black said quickly.

“And that’s cool, really, it is. I just wanna know where I stand?”

“You’re good,” Black said simply. “And not just because of my shit.”

Mystique threw her arms around him like he had just confessed his love for her.

“Can we go see the fight now?”

“Sure we can, baby,” Mystique said and took one last look at herself in the mirror. She grabbed her clutch bag and they were finally out the door.

After stopping in the dressing room to say hello to the champ, Black and Mystique made it to their seats just as the preliminary fight got started. It turned out to be a good fight. Being a real fan of the sweet science, Black loved every minute of it. While Mystique sat next him, happy to be there with him, but hoping that the night would be over soon so they could go.

Once the preliminary bouts were over, more people began filing into the arena. Black sat looking around for Freeze and Mylo. He had called Freeze earlier in the day to make sure that both he and Mylo were coming to the fight. Black felt bad not telling Freeze exactly what was going on; he hated that fact that after all these years and all they’d been through together, that he wasn’t sure that he could trust Freeze.

Mystique leaned in close to Black. “Why is that woman staring at you?”

“What woman?” Black asked and scanned the area with his eyes. They stopped on CeCe.

“Yeah, that one.”

“Excuse me a minute, Maria,” Black said and got up. “I’ll be right back,” he said and left Mystique sitting there with her eyes and mouth opened wide. She wasn’t quite sure whether she was more upset that he left her to