‘Watch out, Sandra. The Mafia has a long arm.’
She gave me her evil little grin.
‘And I have long legs. Bye.’ She shot the car away and went fast from the waterfront.
In the distance, I could hear police sirens. I paused long enough to see the four bodyguards snatch up Minsky’s body and throw it into the trunk of the Cadillac, then I ran to my car where Bill was sitting at the wheel. As I scrambled in, he took off, cut down a dark alley that brought us to the highway. He reduced speed and drove towards my home.
He said nothing.
Angie, Hank and now Minsky had been taken care of, I thought. There was nothing more I could do to level the score, but I knew for years I would think of Suzy, once so full of life and zest and fun, now so terribly dead. Nothing I had done would bring her back. Nobody would ever take her place.
It wasn’t until we had walked into my living room and shut and locked the front door that Bill said, ‘Quite a woman! That scene was highly professional. Let’s go to bed.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The job’s finished. Thanks, Bill.’
He looked at his watch.
‘It’s after five,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a damn good sleep, and a damn good brunch, then we’ll see the colonel and get our jobs back.’
‘OK,’ I said.
He regarded me for a long moment, then he said, ‘Dirk, you have to forget it. No one should live in the past. It’s the future that matters. Tomorrow is a new day. Come on, let’s go to bed.’
In the big double bed, with the dawn light coming through the curtains, I thought back.
Revenge?
Hank gone, Angie locked away, Minsky gone.
I put out my hand and caressed the pillow by my side where so often Suzy’s lovely head had rested.
I didn’t sleep. I lay there watching the sun slowly rise, flooding the room with golden light.
Bill was right. I could not live in the past. I thought of what he had said, ‘Tomorrow is a new day.’
With that thought in my mind, with my hand still on the empty pillow by my side, I did eventually fall asleep.