Dublin Noir - Ken Bruen [67]
“You gonna have your way with me?” There didn’t seem to be a lot of fear in her voice. Maybe Barbara the blonde was sizing me up to be a replacement for Spence.
She got off the floor and I made her give me their stash. It was H and some marijuana. I had a plane to catch tomorrow afternoon and what was the chance I’d be able to parlay this stuff into the coke I needed before then? Fuck it, though. They had to offer decent recompense for inconveniencing me. I fooled with the idea of doing Barbara—big-legged women had serious effects on me. She was giving me that look. Of course, there was Maura waiting for me at the hotel and the chronic would cut some of my hype. Of course, pussy was pussy …
She started unbuttoning her shirt. I watched a thin trail of sweat dribble between her braless breasts. She smiled, showing overlapping teeth.
I uppercut her, dropping her like a sack of cement. “I can’t shake the feeling that you’d slip a blade between my ribs just for fun.”
I left her blinking at me, sitting on the floor. I stepped over the beaten Spence and left with my plastic bag of thrills.
Back at the hotel, the fight and fatigue had spent some of my craving. With a little weed, some blasts of the scotch I’d bought earlier, and hopefully mucho head from my visitor, that should keep me tight.
“Darling,” she said. She was laying down, a patch of light across her from the slightly open door to the bathroom.
“They didn’t have any crack.”
“Oh, don’t give out. Come over here and I’ll make it up to you.” She squirmed, that gorgeous ass waiting for me to do something to it.
“You better.” I already had my jacket off.
I was slipping out of my shoes when she came from beneath the covers. The gun she had on me was the business, as they say over here. Not at all like that pop gun of Spence’s
“That’s my lad.” She got out of bed, fully dressed. She grabbed the shit I’d brought back, me sitting there frowning on the end of the bed, watching her, the gun dead on me. “I’d hoped those eejits would get dumb, I think the term is, right, baby? Try to cheat me, would they?”
“And what would have happened if they’d jammed me up?”
She patted my face, doing a kissy thing with her lips. “I had no such worries. You’re too much of a stud to let them do that.”
She was at the door, looking back, halfway into the empty hallway. “I told you I’ve been following your career, Zelmont. I know all about your problems with drugs, how you got exiled over here. And like all of you pampered sportsmen, you can’t imagine a woman not swooning because you have sleek muscles and a lovely dick. Which you do have. You lived up to your reputation.”
“For being stupid.”
“No. I’d say you’re too much a slave of your appetites. That’s going to get you in real trouble someday, love, if you’re not careful. But for my purposes, you were certainly the man for the job.” She left, closing the door quietly behind her.
I curled up on top of the bed, the crack crawlies convulsing my body. I downed half the damn bottle of booze and sweated it out as fast as I took it in. Somewhere around 6:00 in the morning I got to sleep, and at 9:00 I woke up and couldn’t get my eyes shut anymore. I cleaned up and was ready when the bus came to get us for the airport.
Walking through the facility, I spotted a dude reading a Time magazine. There was an article about an expansion football team starting up in Los Angeles called the Barons. L.A. hadn’t had a pro team since the Raiders left. Now that was something. Maybe I had one more chance at the bright lights, just one more shot. Could be last night was a kind of warning.
Get it together, Zee, and there could be the roaring crowds and sweet honeys again, the smack-talkin’ interviews on ESPN and the million dollar endorsement deals pimping glorified grape juice. Yeah, shit yeah. I was going to show Maura and all of them, I was the man for the job. Fuuuck …
THE NEW PROSPERITY
BY PATRICK J. LAMBE
The first thing you have to get used to working in the IT field is all the bloody Pakis. They