Love or Honor by Barthel Joan;

Author:Barthel, Joan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media

6

“Do we know a captain in the Bronx?” Solly asked Chris one night at the Kew.

As Chris stared at him, Solly rephrased the question. “Do you know a captain in the Bronx?”

“Hey, who …” Chris stammered. “Hey, no, I mean, why would I know a captain in the Bronx?” It wasn’t hard for him to sound astonished; the question had come out of the blue.

“Hey, Solly, why do you think I’d know a captain in the Bronx?” Chris asked again. Solly just shrugged and said nothing more. He never brought it up again, and he continued to treat Chris as he always did, in his soft-spoken, amiable, even affectionate way.

Chris worried endlessly about it. It was another example of a ball being tossed in the air, bouncing around, without knowing where or when or even if it would ever come down. Another reason to worry and wonder: What does he know? What has he found out about me since yesterday? He almost wished Solly had said something definite, accusing him of knowing a captain in the Bronx. At least that would have been something concrete to deal with, something he could pin down. Uncertainty was the worst. He was at the bar at the Kew when a woman who was sitting alone, drinking, smiled at him, then moved from her place to the barstool next to his. She was attractive—not a great beauty, but a nice-looking woman, in her late thirties. He thought she was just a lonely lady, looking for company—the Kew Motor Inn attracted an ordinary, middle-class clientele—until she spoke.

“I need a gun,” she said quietly.

“What do you need a gun for?” Chris asked, startled.

“I just need a gun to take care of things,” she said.

“Well, go on up to Harlem,” Chris advised. “You can buy a hundred guns.” She shook her head. “No, I can’t go up there.”

She said her name was Darlene, and she kept pressuring. It was obvious that she had targeted him, picked him out of the crowd at the Kew. Then she got up abruptly, without finishing her drink. “I’ll call you later,” she said.

Fifteen minutes later, the phone behind the bar rang. “It’s for you,” the barmaid said. She knew Chris well by now, and she gave him a sly wink as she handed him the phone.

Darlene told him her room number and urged him to come up. “Bring a bottle with you,” she murmured. She kept talking vaguely about “taking care of things.” As curious as he was, Chris had no intention of going up to her room—God knows what he’d be walking into—so he said he’d call her later from another phone. When he called back, he taped the conversation, in which she said not only that she needed a gun, but she wanted to give him the contract to kill her husband. Chris stalled and said he’d be in touch. He passed the report to Harry, but as far as he knew, nobody ever solved the riddle of Darlene. He never heard from her again, and she never reappeared at the Kew.

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