“Hello,” she said, being too friendly.
“Hi yourself.” The way I was positioned, I could drop her boyfriend with a kick and spin, and catch Barbara just right on the jaw. Between the two of them, she’d be the one to give me trouble. She didn’t move and neither did he. I unzipped my jacket to give my arms more freedom.
I walked toward her, one hand out and the other extending the bills. Maura had told me I should be able to get a hit for roughly forty-five American. She took the money and gave me the shit. I opened the bag, worried the powder was more yellow than white. I sampled a taste on my pinkie, my face scrunching up.
“This is heroin.”
“Yeah, what of it?”
“Did I say I wanted H?”
“Look, Sonny Jim, that’s the way it is, yeah? You come for your high, get mellow, and we’re done.” The dude was peddling backward, no doubt to fetch his persuader.
I was hurtin’ but I wasn’t gonna be bitched up, especially by some foreigners. Naw, that kind of shit don’t happen to me. “Give me back my scratch. We ain’t got a deal.” I tossed the bag on a chair.
“We’re not Dunnes, understand? All sales final.” The chick stood her ground, ready to throw down. She squinted at me.
“You’re that hard man, aren’t you? The one that was mouthing off on the telly last night about how you’d come to the land of Lucky Charms to show us how to play real football.”
Usually I got a twang in my dick when a broad recognized me. Not tonight. “My money, huh?”
“You say he’s famous?” the man asked, now positioned next to a low cabinet with a lamp on it. “On a team, is he?”
“Yeah,” she said, her tongue cavorting. “And he used to be something over in the States.”
“Still am, baby.” Now these mothafuckahs were clownin’ me.
“Right, he’s worth something to somebody,” the man said, as he whipped open the cabinet door and reached inside for his gat. But I’d already turned, stepped, and leaped. I plowed into him and we knocked the lamp over, breaking it apart, making the room shadowy. The chick was also in motion and she jumped on my back, rockin’ and sockin’.
“Spence, for fuck’s sake, get him down!” she hollered, as I bent my arm back and got it around her neck and threw her off me and into her boyfriend. Problem was, she wasn’t without reflexes and she’d grabbed hold of me and took me with her. It was like some kind of fucked-up Abbott and Costello movie with the three of us wrasslin’ and yankin’ on each other.
I got a grip on Spence’s upper arm to keep him from planting that piece, which wasn’t much of one, in my grill, while Broom Hilda rode me like Lafite Pincay and punched me good in the lower back and kidneys. I pushed back to the wall to put my weight on Barbara and still keep a grip on Spence. I managed to tag him with an uppercut, jarring his eyeballs in their sockets.
“Come on, be fair, we’ll share what we make on you,” the blonde said.
I couldn’t figure out whether to laugh or cry. Wasn’t no one in the NFL or Pop Warner, for that matter, ’bout to put together a buffalo nickel to ransom my sorry self. We tumbled to the floor all tangled up.
I was hitting Spence again, who was straddling me, but homegirl, who was underneath me, got her arm around my neck and hammer-locked the shit out of my Adam’s apple. I had to let go of the man and he crashed the muzzle of his gun down against my temple. But like I said, it wasn’t much of a gun, it was a derringer, like what Jim West used to pop out of his sleeve to make Dr. Loveless shit in reruns of the Wild Wild West TV show.
For a hot minute the black lights had me, but I couldn’t let ’em take me under.
“That’s it,” I heard her say, as if she were deep in the ground below me. “Put him under.”
Spence clubbed at my head again, but I got my shoulder up and that took most of the blow. I drove an elbow into her rib cage and that got her gasping and sputtering. I shook loose from Barbara and came up, arms wrapped around Spence, taking him over in a tackle. I was quick enough that by the time he tried to level his pea shooter, the back of his head made contact, loudly, with the thinly carpeted floor, dazing him.
Girlfriend got her arms around my legs and put her choppers into me like my thigh like it was prime rib. “Fuck!” I screamed, and used my fist as a club to work at the base of her neck. That got her jaw open and I straight right-crossed the broad, making blood spray.
Spence fired his derringer but I’d grabbed the hefty chick for a shield and he’d pulled his aim up, shooting the ceiling. We were back on the floor and I lashed out with my foot, catching Spence alongside his cheek. He bowled over and, shoving the woman away, I jumped on him and commenced to wail on the chump like he’d stolen from my baby’s mama. He lay still and I got up, putting the derringer in my jacket pocket. That toy wasn’t much of a threat, but I might need it.
“Come on,” I said to her, a jagged piece of the busted lamp steady in my hand, on her eyeball.
“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.”