THE HOT AS HELL HOTEL! PART 2
My body was clean but my clothes were dirty. Barefooted I walked into the shabby room; guns holstered in leather to my naked ribs. I had showered in the stall built into the hallway bathroom, and tossed my sweaty torn T-shirt onto the single bunk.
"Barry, you don't know her."
"What?"
"Who is she?"
"Who?"
"That woman. Who is she?"
"Why don't you use those psychic powers of yours to mind your own business," I growled, but she didn't put a cork in it.
"You have put us both in great danger. Men will come, her protectors."
I suppose she expected, hell, knew, that I would slap her stupid face and that's exactly what I did, and knocked her to the floor when I did it.
She glared at me, hissing: "You are very foolish, Barry Electric."
"Tell me about it."
She crawled to her feet, as stone-faced as ever, rubbing her sore cheek, which reddened where it began to swell.
"What will you do when they come?"
"You just don't get it, do you? Shut your goddamned mouth!" I screamed and slapped her again. Her supple body flew and slammed into the opposite wall, the long red hair spreading out like luxurious dark flames. She looked at me with the look of a killer in her eyes. I knew what she was thinking; if she could get to her .38 she'd fill me full of smoke and lead, but I was standing between her and the purse on the bed.
"Barry—," she tried pleading, but the act was transparent. There wasn't a tear in her eye, just the swollen cheek making her look like she had a bad case of mumps.
"Get the hell out of here," I snapped, grabbing her purse and throwing it at her. She caught it in long nimble fingers that quickly curled over the cheap brass clasp.
She had the black-checkered grip in her fist when I snatched her by the hair and wrung her skinny neck for her. I shoved the hand and gun back into the purse and dragged her to the door flinging it open and tossed her into the hall.
"Barry!"
Her voice choked in her throat when she heard the footsteps coming up the stairs. She ran up one flight and waited. I didn't give a damn about any 'protectors', like I didn't have bigger fish to fry than some smalltime alley pimps. The scrawny blonde was with them, squealing like they were hurting her. Inside the room, I stepped to one side. There wasn't any room to maneuver, as I knew from bouncing the Gypsy's thin lithe body from wall to wall. I waited without breathing, waited for the inevitable.
The room's fragile door came crashing in at the end of a solid blow of a rubber sole. The gunman lunged inside, .22 in his fist. He looked like a kid and I shot him. Shot him and kept shooting, moved forward and shoved him by the face backwards. He stumbled, mumbling, bleeding and the other punks stood suddenly terrified out of their wits. They had expected just another flophouse rummy that their girl had the habit of offering her sordid favors to, not a 250-lb. man of solid muscle with two guns bigger then their heads put together. I used the first punk as a shield as his body tried to wilt, holding him up by the scrawny neck. I reached over him and shot the second punk in the face. The back of his head hit the wall like a red paint filled balloon. The third punk dropped his small piece and bolted.
He made to the stairs and was about to go up when, to his surprise and horror the beautiful Gypsy came from above out of the shadows, the Bulldog aimed at his belly.
The guy froze like a statue, then looked me over as I was standing with my naked foot on the second punk's dum-dum shattered face, the first guy lying by the wayside like a heap of bloody rags. The punk looked back up the stairs as the darkly complexioned Gypsy descended slowly, gun unwavering at the end of a slender crooked arm. Her long tattered coat open, her housedress hung on her emaciated frame like the shroud of the Grim Reaper, dark tasseled hair black in the dingy light.
"You are a very foolish man!" she scolded him viciously.
"She says that to all the boys," I mocked and reaching back without looking took the blonde by the stringy hair and jerked her forward. "Friendsa'yers?" I asked through a snarl.
"Oh, god, oh, god, I, ach, ach, I—" she babbled. "Please, don't kill me! Please—" she begged.
"It ain't my call, Sweets. Your boys made this play. Now it's up to the lady over there whether you live or die."
"Barry, we cannot stay in this hotel," bright eyes intoned.
"Yeh, room service stinks. Whatdaya suggest?"
"We must leave this place and find another."
"Okay by me. A place with a laundry room preferably." I used my chin to point at the girl squirming in my clenched fist. "What about Sweets here?"
"Throw her to the floor and I shall crush her like a bug."
"NO!" the blonde shrieked.
"You heard the lady."
I flung the prostie down with all my might, hoping she'd be knocked out when her head slammed the floor, but it bounced and she came up, eyes flooded with big tears. Her lips parted trembling as she tried weakly to lift herself on quivering track marked arms. I planted the sole my callused foot in the small of her back and flattened her hard to the floor. She gurgled and spit, at first too scared to curse, and too confused to keep sobbing in earnest. I let my foot up and she flipped the hair away from her fear filled pain-reddened face, glaring at me from two black eyes and a busted lip. "You bastard! We could have had something together—"
"What have you got to offer? A dirty hole on each end and not much in between."
I looked to my girl, her hard brown lips pressed into a tight crease, her gun pointing at the blonde's head. "End it," I said. "I hate to see an animal suffer."
The blast from the thirty-eight rocked the paper-thin walls. The blonde's head splattered like a stomped packet of ketchup. The blood mixed in the hair like chunky tomato sauce on angel hair pasta and the whole skinny body went limp and collapsed face down with the fingers stretched out as if reaching for something they'd never get to. The long white legs sprawled behind her and a small fart wheezed out of her raised narrow backside. She stank instantly.
The remaining punk trembling backed into a corner, his face white as a cloud on a clear day, his eyes wide with unmitigated panic. "You two are nuts! You din't havta kill her! Ya din't havta!"
"Shut up, small change," I said in a low murmur and put a bullet in his sunken belly. He sank to the floor and sat there. "Let's go, bright eyes. This place has got to much social life."
I went into the room, dropped one pistol in its leather pocket and grabbed my filthy flack jacket from the bed. Throwing it on, I came back holding the other gun in my hand. The beautiful Gypsy girl was standing there unfazed holding the Bulldog, and for a long hot second we faced each other that way in the hallway of the hellish hostel. One of us could have pulled the trigger and ended it right there.
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