AHMM, January-February 2006 by Dell Magazine Authors

Author:Dell Magazine Authors [Authors, Dell Magazine]
Language: rus
Format: epub
Publisher: Dell Magazines
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

One for the Road by Gigi Vernon

Marilyn drained her gin, then carefully set the glass down on the bar, which seemed to bob like a rum-running boat on a choppy crossing of the Detroit River.

"Bottoms up,” the swell-looking gangster on the bar stool next to her said with a wink.

With difficulty, her numb, clumsy fingers screwed a cigarette into her holder and, without turning away from his soothing smile of admiration, she groped behind her for the lighter in her purse. Her fingers pawed at thin air. She turned to look. No purse on the counter. Or on the empty seat next to her, or in the darkness on the floor of the speakeasy.

The cigarette and its holder flopped out of her mouth and rolled away. She turned back to the gangster extending a lit match to her and socked him in the arm. “Very funny. Give it back,” she said, her tongue and lips thick on the words.

"Give what?” he said with a cocky grin, then blew out the match flame suggestively.

"My purse, numskull.” She slid off the barstool.

Ray would kill her if she'd lost the protection payoff to the cops. He'd send one of his suits to rub her out and she'd be dead by tomorrow. Maybe he'd somehow already discovered the loss and had already sent someone. A vision of her bullet-riddled corpse floating in the river came to her.

She belted the creep again, then groped him, trying to search him, keeping her feet under her with difficulty.

Grinning, his hands held up as if he were under arrest, he said, “Hey, if you want to get fresh with me just say so."

"Give it back,” her voice rose into a screech. She whacked him, trying to push him off the bar stool.

At the commotion, the jazz band faltered into silence, as did the frenetic tapping of Charleston-jiggling couples.

"Ray doesn't like his molls messed with!” she heard herself accuse the startled spectators. She wondered if everyone already knew she was no longer Ray's. She glared, or at least tried to glare, attempting to focus through a murk before her eyes, almost as if she were already at the bottom of the muddy river. She swayed in the hush, waiting for someone to confess.

No one stepped forward. Instead, the crowd parted for the head bouncer, Ralph, a middle-aged man, beefy, with bushy eyebrows and mustache and a missing front tooth. He frowned, annoyance crinkling his broken nose. “Marilyn, Marilyn,” he crooned in a low voice. “Pipe down. What is it with you? You gotta make a spectacle of yourself everywhere you go?” He snapped his fingers at the band.

A bass player tentatively plucked a string and the rest of the band answered. They revived the interrupted tune and the dancers caught the rhythm. Conversations and drinks were picked up again.

With a hand to her elbow, Ralph helped her onto a bar stool. “You gotta problem? Tell Ralph all about it,” he crooned.

"My problem, Ralph,” she said sarcastically, “is that you let two-bit grifters in this joint.

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