"Electric is obviously insane!"
"Obviously."
"I don't see why my family should go on living in fear of a known dangerous felon! How could you let him get away?"
Victor Von Schwartz blustered but the man behind the desk stayed cool. He even lit a cigar and propped his feet up. He wasn't afraid of the blustering millionaire. To all appearances, he wasn't afraid of anything.
"He must've skipped town. He'll be back. Everything he knows is here and besides, Electric's got something to prove."
"What might that be?"
"Electric's been crying foul ever since the jury handed down its guilty verdict. He thinks he can get people to believe that he wasn't the one who—"
"Don't say it! We all know what he did. Po has never fully recovered. Fifteen years was too good for him! He should have gotten life, or the chair!"
"He might get it now. The bodies were pretty burnt up, but Doc Coleman found slugs in every one of 'em. Electric's a maniac. Orders are he be shot on sight."
Von Schwartz sighed with what little relief he could.
The hotel the gypsy and I checked into was a rundown flophouse just off the West Side Highway on a street with no name. We were registered as Mr. and Mrs. Something-or-other. She signed in and I went swiftly to the room, on the third floor rear. The place was as quiet as the mice let it be. The room was a closet with a sink full of brown water and cabinets overflowing with dead roaches and living spiders. The bed was a mattress, raised off the floor on a rusted metal spring frame. The window faced a wide alley where there were already prostitutes of dubious gender and origin wandering dizzily from end to end like flies trapped in a shoebox. The bathroom was in the hall, down and around a corner and I had to take one hellava dump. The old gypsy's food was mighty tasty and I had stuffed myself with her beef and cabbage, bread and spirits and now it was time to let it all out. I unzipped the flack jacket, and let my armpits air out. I needed a shower to wash the stench of being hunted off my back.
The redhead came into the room, standing with her back against the door because there was nowhere else in the room to go. I was standing in the middle of the floor, dirty with the two Rossi's grips in my fists ready to go. She looked at me bewildered, then her eyes settled on the twin killing machines.
"You are going to kill me," she said ominously.
I scoffed at her, "Nah. Yer my Angel, baby. When I get out of the can, I'll come and do ya right. You look like you could use it. Gotta boyfriend? No. See, I'm psychic too." I grinned as her face stayed stoic, firm in its utter seriousness. She was about as passionate as a doorstop. I took hold of the doorknob, using the door to shove her aside and left the room.
In the hall, I looked this way and that, until I was sure the halls were empty, walking to the bathroom and yanked the door open. A girl sat on the john with her panties around her slender ankles. She looked up in surprise, holding the roll of tp in her painted fingertips. Her mouth opened with a gasp, then she said: "Do you mind!"
"No, sweets, just make it quick," I replied and stood there while she did her business. She ignored me as best she could, the sounds of the turds plopping in the swirling water beneath her straining backside. I folded my arms, almost to conceal my guns if she hadn't noticed them already and watched her. She was long like the gypsy girl, but pale as bleach. Her toes were long and painted fiery red. Her arms were long, her torso a bent piece of straw, hair blond as the noonday sun on a clear day. Her lips were red and she bit them nervously, trying not to pay attention to me. She wore a black miniskirt that was now hiked above her thighs, long white thighs that looked delicious from where I was standing. Her top wasn't anything more than a gray tank top spattered with glitter.
I shifted my weight, leaning against the broken tile wall. She pursed her thin red lips, tore off a swath of tissue paper and reached behind her, wiping herself. She made this motion a couple of times and stood, holding the skirt up by the frayed hem and revealing a powdery cotton candy colored muff.
"Okay, you got what you wanted, perv!" She said and let the short sheer material fall, bent and lifted her stained panties from the floor, drawing them up around her legs. They disappeared beneath the skirt, thighs remaining white and exposed. She looked at me and smiled. "You stayin' here? In the hotel, I mean?”
"Yeh," I said, moving towards the toilet, which she hadn't flushed. I hocked a loogie into the fetid brown bowl and began to undo my belt. "Yer a hard act to follow, but I'll try," I said.
"It stinks," she commented, upturned pug nose wrinkling on her long face. "I shouldn't be eating meat, but I was hungry and it was all I could afford."
"That's a shame," I said and dropped my pants to my ankles, sitting on the bowl and letting out a loud horrendous fart. "You can run along now, sweets. There's nothin' t'see here."
"You talk like a cop," she said insouciantly and twisting her narrow tail around, she set herself on my lap, adjusting herself over one knee and then the other until she was straddling me. "I'm a dancer. I meet a lot of cops."
"I'll bet you do," I said as I pressed the barrel of the .357 to her right temple and she froze like stone. "I'll bet you do."
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