The Lady And The Tiger 2

Jason stared at her. He was a handsome boy—his mom had always told him so—but he knew girls like this didn’t make offers like that to anyone except for maybe Elvis, and he wasn’t Elvis.

So what the hell was she doing? Trying to roll him? Jason knew he didn’t have anything worth taking and he sure didn’t look like he did either. The army jacket, the well-worn jeans, the running shoes that looked like they’d been through marathons.

He knew women could want it this bad. He just also knew that women didn’t get to look like this without also getting to enjoy the chase. Making men wine them, dine them, dress up nice and wash behind their ears. It made no sense. And things that didn’t make sense tended to make bad sense, later on.

“Is this a porn thing?” he asked, the lightbulb above his head shining so bright that the light sped out his mouth. “I go to an RV, I sign a release, I fuck you, and it goes straight to Pornhub?”

“Yes! I mean, no. I don’t have an RV. Does it matter? Look at me! I’m not a girl guys say no to.”

She was right about that. A girl this pretty couldn’t ask him to fuck her this many times without giving him a hard-on. But Jason knew there was a catch. Part of him wanted to say fuck it and fuck her—did he have such a great life he couldn’t afford to blow it up however she was going to?

Another part of him reminded him of Scarpetta. He’d just decided that trading his life for the capo’s wasn’t worthy of him. So getting bled out in an alleyway by a skirt definitely wasn’t worthy.

But how many Hollywood-looking nymphomaniacs was he going to meet in his life, if that’s what she was?

He snatched his can back and argued with the beer about it.

“The boss wants a word with you, Harleen.”

Jason glanced to the side while he drank. The two enforcers looked like the bodyguards in his fantasy come to life, only more shabbily dressed. Fat, ugly, and with stupid enough looks to make anyone believe in phrenology. They wore leather jackets big enough to make cows an endangered species; one over a football jersey, the other on top of a print shirt that seemed to be advertising the concept of pineapples.

Like a bad actress, Harleen went right out of her seductress character and into a reformed sinner bit. “I’ve got the money, okay, I’m getting the money—”

One of the enforcers—Jason dubbed him Bert, because he was too drunk to be creative—turned to Jason. “You giving her the money?”

“Why? Is she worth it?” Jason volleyed back.

The other one—Ernie, of course—laughed. “Nah. She ain’t worth it. You don’t get no return on your investment with her. Not any kind.”

“It’s a time-sensitive matter,” Harleen pressed. “I can get the money, but I don’t have time to explain, and I don’t have time to go with you and jaw with your boss—I’ll call him on the way, how’s that? We were about to leave, right?”

She shot Jason a look of such naked desperation that it made him feel like he was giving someone CPR and they were able to plead with him to keep going when the machine kept going beeeeep.

“Yeah. Sure.” Jason started to get up. He at least owed her for giving him the experience of having a woman throw herself at him.

Ernie shoved him back into his seat. “You’re not going anywhere. She is, but you ain’t.” And he pulled his jacket back to show the Saturday Night Special lodged in his already straining belt. “Get the picture, compare?”

Harleen leaned across the table and whispered to him so fervently that Jason wouldn’t have believed anyone couldn’t hear it—except maybe for Bert and Ernie. Thick skulls.

“Look,” she said. “I have a roommate, a very open-minded roommate. Bigger tits than mine…”

Bert forced Harleen back to her side of the booth. “Enough. Get your ass up, baldracca. Let the man fucking drink.”

“He’s a cop!” Harleen tried. Her eyes flittered from Bert to Ernie. “You don’t wanna mess with a cop, do ya?”

Bert and Ernie both looked at Jason. He was getting a headache. He wasn’t sober enough to bluff these two and he didn’t feel awake enough to try. “I’m not a cop,” Jason slurred. “But I play one on TV.”

That went over well. They both laughed. Then Ernie pushed Jason over so he slumped to the end of the booth.

“Come on, princess,” Bert said. “You’ve kept the boss waiting long enough.”

With a paw on her upper arm, he dragged her out of the booth. Ernie put his hand on her upper shoulder and together, they frog-marched her towards the exit just subtly enough not to be noticed from a distance. Proving there was such a thing as animal cunning.

Jason straightened up. He waited until he heard the chime on the door do its thing, then he got out of the booth and aimed himself at the swinging door like a missile.

As he left, he tossed a twenty onto the bar. Half a chance that he wouldn’t need it anymore and he’d hate the karma of an unpaid bar tab following him into the next life.

***

There was that moment when it first snowed, really snowed, and all the grit and grime of the city couldn’t compete with nature’s beauty. It was all blanketed in white: the potholes, the graffiti, the trash, and you couldn’t even care that the roads were gone, because scrubbing away every footstep and every cigarette butt and every old newspaper left a spectacle of possibility that was dazzling.

That moment was long past. All the snowfall did now was add to a gray slurry of wasted potential and dashed expectations.

It was the first of December, when Christmas seemed like a cruel joke still, a dad gone out for cigarettes. A storm was blowing in, but for now, the sky was clear and the air was taut, frigid. Jason had been wearing his jacket, needing it over the cheap heating of the bar, and the air still managed to sting him. He should’ve gotten his overcoat. He should’ve done a lot of things.

He stepped outside the broken backdoor and into the alleyway. Yellow light from the streetlamps knotted through the narrow mouth of the alley. Above, a yellow moon held court over clouds that looked fresh from a smoker’s lungs. The stars were coming down on them, becoming flakes of snow that darkened and disappeared on the wet ground. Whatever white they had left ground out underfoot.

Bert and Ernie were dragging Harleen along. Bert had his arms around her midsection, Ernie was trying to collect her legs.

Jason wished he had a mint. The smell of the dumpster mixed with his own rioting stomach acid made him double down on his nausea. Having briefly seen the men’s room in the bar, he guessed this pavement saw more use.

He burped. It cleared him of some of the havoc the beer was doing as it partied with his bloodstream, but it drew Bert and Ernie’s notice. Ernie let go Harleen’s feet to face him. The man looked jaundiced in the city light; at least inside, he’d been mostly shadowed.

“This isn’t any of your business, Mac.” And he pulled his jacket aside to show the .38 again, like Jason hadn’t seen it already.

Jason didn’t blame him for thinking he’d forgotten about it. Ernie probably would’ve forgotten it himself.

“That’s not fair,” Jason slurred. “I don’t have one of those. Do I?” He drew aside his jacket and glanced around his waistband.

“He’s wasted,” Bert said. “Forget him. Cops won’t believe him even if he remembers shit.”

“Actually, he has the Guiness World Record for best memory!” Harleen piped up. “He can recite pi to four hundred places! Ask him!”

“Is it a pumpkin pie?” Jason asked. “I like pumpkin pie…”

“Fuck this guy, he ain't shit, and I'm not doing him for free,” Ernie snarled.

“We should at least give him a lump,” Bert argued.

Ernie shrugged appreciatively, like he’d just listened to Lincoln score a point on Douglas.

“Wait a minute,” Jason cried, holding up his hands, “wait, wait, wait…” And he froze with his hands in the air, actually compelling a pause from the two mafiosos as they awaited his response. “I do have one.”

He jerked his right hand. A derringer slid out on the rail up his sleeve, slapping his palm and firing just as soon as it was gripped.

The first slug hit Bert in the eye, obliterating the bone of his eye socket. Chips of jagged calcium slashed into his brain and made his thoughts skip around like a record needle wandering over a scratched disc.

The second shot wasn't as accurate. It cut across Ernie's cheek before ripping away his earlobe. The ragged slivers of cartilage left behind jingled in the wind, leaking red.

“Cuntfucker!” Ernie cursed, one hand covering his bloody ear, the other diving for his gun. His cursing became angry gibberish.

Jason was already a moving target, moving toward him. The derringer retreated up his sleeve and he produced a knife for his other hand. As soon as it appeared, he disappeared it into Ernie's belly.

Ernie let out a ghastly exhale that broke off into a gurgle when Jason ripped the blade sideways, letting out the contents of his abdominal cavity to shower on his shoes.

Bert, still not realizing his death, saw it through the eye that wasn't crying blood. He wailed. Jason whipped the knife out of Ernie and sent it pirouetting through space.

It landed in Bert's throat.

He ended his life choking on it.

Jason and Harleen were abruptly the only two people in existence.

“Holy shit,” Harleen gasped. Holy shit, holy shit… that was gross!”

Jason flicked as much blood off his knife as he could before retracting the blade. “We should go.”

“Oh, you don't wanna stab ‘em a few more times?” Harleen asked, too numb to be properly sarcastic, so it sounded like a genuine question. “Maybe use a flamethrower on ‘em?”

“I don't have a flamethrower. C'mon, cops will be here soon. Or eventually.”

Before leaving, he stooped to take the dead men's wallets.

“You making it look like a robbery?” Harleen asked.

“No, I'm behind on rent.” Jason straightened up.

Harleen’s breath shot out in front of her like steam escaping an overpressured boiler. “You're not going to take their guns?”

“Didn't do them much good.”

“Screw that! I want a gun.”

“You need a drink,” Jason said. And going back through the bar, he snapped his fingers at the bartender. “Something from the top shelf. Harleen, get that. Put it on this.” He slipped Ernie’s credit card from his wallet and tossed it to her, then went to get his coat from the back of his chair. “Leave it here. We’ll be back for it soon enough.”

He took it anyone who cared would think he and Harleen were going to knock a piece off. It took less time to let them think that than it would to close out her tab.

Harleen took the bottle the bartender handed her, traded it for the plastic. He also handed her a coat he’d been keeping behind the bar.

Pieces were adding up for Jason. Not as fast as they should, considering he liked to think he had his head on straighter than the World’s Greatest Detective, but fast enough.

He’d seen intelligence in Harleen’s eyes. Even if she was a nymphomaniac, she was too smart to traipse around dressed like that in this weather. A woman with her looks could find a man on Tinder or something; she’d know all the tricks.

So what had she been doing in a dive bar, throwing herself at men, when someone or someones were after her? Because she’d wanted someone to protect her. And now he had.

She still looked nervy, though. Even after putting on her coat, Harleen was shaking. He didn’t think it was the blood. Harleen had a certain amount of toughness, some street smarts. She’d known enough to come here, where the clientele was indistinguishable from the undercard of a UFC event. So people were still after her.

Stalkers didn’t run in packs. Ex-husbands didn’t have buddies they could call up to terrorize their wives with them. Bert and Ernie had been Mafioso all the way, enforcers come to collect a debt. Harleen didn’t seem like the type to run up a tab betting on the Dolphins… but she did seem like the type who, when they fucked up, fucked up big. 

It wasn’t that Jason wanted to get involved. But all this struck him as prelude to a proxy war. Scarpetta would send button-man after button-man after Harleen, bleeding his own army dry, not realizing who Jason was or what he was doing until it was too late.

Jason could play the hero. He’d been good at that, once. And while he did, he’d use Harleen like a Judas Goat. Until there was nothing left between him and Scarpetta but the sights on his gun.

As they left the bar, dusty flecks of snow were beginning to come down. They tingled on Jason’s face, powdered his stubble. Above, the moon was now half-hidden behind clouds that spread like pools of blood.

The storm was here.