On the Nickel by John Shannon

Author:John Shannon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: M P Publishing Limited

TEN

Reality is a Hardship for the Prissy

It was only a ten-minute drive home from The Nickel so Gloria headed east on Fourth Street to see if Maeve had just fallen dead asleep at home and was ignoring her cell. It was a cinch Jack wasn’t going to answer anything. She stopped illegally on the long and narrow 1930s’ viaduct that spanned riverbed and rail yards, just after the weird triumphal arch rising weirdly out of its side rails. She stepped out of the car, stared downward for a moment at the chemical-tainted rainbow-slick on the water flowing south in the channel, maybe twenty feet wide, that ran off-center in the broader concrete river. A car pulled out to pass her, honked as if annoyed, and she turned and gave it the finger. Then she slowly tore up the photograph of the nun’s painting of Jack Liffey, doubled and tore again, letting pieces flutter away into the shadows far down below.

The nerve of that bitch. Trying to saddle her with a memento of her own love for Jack. Naïve only went so far, Miss Nun. It’s out of your control, woman. I may have had my doubts about the guy, but he belongs to me now, even if he is a basket case.

She stewed over it the rest of the way home, something about her own destructiveness in ripping the photo to shreds having disturbed her deep inside, until suddenly all her sour jealous rage blew away in an instant. She braked to a harsh stop on Greenwood, right in front of her geraniums. The front door stood wide open with the living room light pouring out unnaturally and every bug on earth heading for it. And his pickup was gone. She left her car running and sprinted for the door, yanking out her service pistol on instinct.

‘Maeve! Jack!’ She paused a second on the porch. ‘This is LAPD, Sergeant Ramirez! If you’re a burglar, you got two seconds to get on your face or you’re dead where you stand!’

She came in slowly, her eyes scanning the front room with care. Nothing. She knew she should call for backup, but this was different, and she rushed the kitchen with the pistol thrust ahead of her, some of her training evaporating in the face of this violation of her personal space and the alarm over her vulnerable loved ones.

She checked the pantry before moving on, starting to get a grip and shutting doors behind her now. She would hear anything come open. She found the old house landline phone with its receiver smashed – something Jack might do in frustration. Loco glanced up at her curiously from the back porch, but the screen door was hooked and no one had come in or out that way. The dog wasn’t alerting on anything, if he still had it in him, but he did look uneasy. In another few minutes of rampaging through the convoluted old two-story house, she’d satisfied herself that there were no home invaders in any closet, or under a bed, or behind the shower curtain.

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