Marie opened the door and stepped back, as though expecting an attack. She didn’t know what she expected. Not from the moment she had found the Smirnoff bottle in the refrigerator and the radio receiver hidden in a jar of caviar. Or whatever it was. She only knew Henry had sent this girl to her. She only knew that Henry did not intend for her to live very much longer.
“Me name’s Maureen, I’m from him. You were expecting me?” The last words turned on a high note and it sounded like a question and maybe it wasn’t.
“I don’t know if I should be expecting you,” Marie Dreiser said. The little rat girl was dressed in a plain black jumpsuit that covered her thin frame in an unflattering way. She knew what she was, had always known she was nothing, just a thing, and she had chosen to wear the jumpsuit for this meeting because she wanted everyone in the world to know she was just nothing. So why was it worth Henry McGee’s trouble to use her and not discard her but actually kill her? It made her angry with Henry for the first time. She wasn’t worth killing and if her life was all she had, then Henry shouldn’t take the last thing left in the world.
They stood in the entryway, unmoving. The door was open.
“You’re lettin’ the chill in,” the Irish girl said.
Marie stared at her for a moment. The girl was taller and heavier than Marie but that didn’t bother her. Marie had survived all these years — what was it, nineteen or twenty or twenty-one years? — and she would survive longer. Henry McGee was a man and she had survived men. Even loved one man who was too weak to survive. Even been saved by one man who was as strong as she was. If Marie could survive in a world of men, she wouldn’t be afraid of any woman.
Marie brushed past the girl to close the door. Then she turned to Maureen.
“What do you do for Henry? Do you kill for him or do you fuck for him?”
A latent sense of guilt and Catholicism blushed Maureen’s face.
Marie smiled. “Or both? Do you do both for him? He’d like that. Just remember the day comes when you’re used up and then he’ll send you away by final means.”
“I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”
“Didn’t I use good English?” Marie was grinning at the Irish girl, putting her on the defensive, advancing a foot, standing very close to her. Her voice growled and grated, the sound of a sewer beast driven to a corner of the underground and unable to escape. “I know everything and I know you’ve come to kill me and I want to know if you’re doing it because he fucked you so good or because you’re being paid for it.”
“Jesus,” Maureen said. She took a step back. This was too close. She had only used the knife once before, and that time on a British soldier who had wandered off into the wrong part of Belfast. That time, that night in Belfast, he had fondled her and kissed her and when he closed his eyes to remember the girl he left behind, she had cut his throat and been greatly surprised by all the blood that came out all of a sudden. But at least he was a bloody soldier, not just a girl, someone she didn’t even know, someone she had to execute to fulfill her rite of passage. This was too close.
“Come on, love, don’t you want a cup of tea before we get down to it?”
The maniac was grinning at her and Maureen took another step back, wary and hesitant, feeling in her coat for the knife.
“Is it a gun or a knife? The Irish always use guns, don’t they? But I’m too close, aren’t I?”
The German girl took another step and now she pulled Maureen to her. Her strong hands were locked around Maureen’s arms and Maureen was surprised at the strength in the little body.
“What are ya doin’, girl?”
“Give me a kiss,” the rat girl said. “Just a little one before we have to do what we have to do. What Henry wants us to do.”
Maureen shook her head.
And the rat girl, grinning, pressed her lips upon Maureen’s face and bit her lips. The blood began to foam and run. Maureen cried out and struggled back and still the little girl held on, her arms like steel wires, cutting her circulation. She felt the knife handle in her pocket but there was no way to draw it out.
“Come on, liebchen, let’s dance down the corridor and maybe I’ll kiss you again. Did Henry want us to kiss each other? But no, Henry wouldn’t have thought of that. He just thought his little rat girl was going to wait for him and his new lover and meekly go to slaughter with the lambs.”
“You’re crazy, you are, lemme go now—”
And still Marie held her and pushed her down the hallway, bumping into the walls of the narrow passage. “I’m leading you, Maureen, do you like to dance? I know the music.” And she laughed a little shrieking laugh, her manic eyes glittering in the soft light of morning that edged the darkness.
Maureen twisted in her grip and tried to pull her arms away and, finally, burst the grip.
Marie shoved her the final few feet into the kitchen. The lights were all on. There was a cup of tea on the table and a Brown Betty pot. Maureen hit the edge of the table, felt the knife, drew it out. Suddenly, there was six inches of steel between the two women.
And Marie laughed.
The knife was held straight out and rock steady. Maureen narrowed her eyes and tasted the blood on her lips.
“You’re crazy,” she said.
“And you came to kill me. That doesn’t make me the only crazy one, does it? Why do you want to kill me? Is Henry going to make you rich? Are you doing it for the money, love? Don’t bother. Henry McGee takes and takes, he doesn’t ever give. It’s the thing I like about him, the reason I put up with him. He is so simple. Really simple. He thinks I didn’t understand but I always understood. Women do. Don’t you understand?”
“I understand you, you’re a crazy woman—”
“What of it? Are you afraid of me because I’m crazy? Or because that knife isn’t enough defense for you? Sit down and have a cup of tea; you’ve got time before you kill me.” And laughed again.
Maureen edged back, she didn’t know why; she had the knife but she had to retreat from this strange creature.
“When do you think Henry is going to have you killed?”
“No one’s gonna kill me.”
Marie was still smiling in a particularly mad way, moving toward the kitchen counter. She reached for an envelope and flung it on the table. “Take a look, love, take a good look at things as they really are.”
“I don’t want to look at nothin’,” she said.
“Look.”
Maureen kept her eyes on Marie and reached for the envelope with her left hand. She spilled out photographs on the table.
Photographs of Matthew delivering the parcel to the house in Mayfair.
She looked up. “Where did you get these?”
“I took ’em,” Marie said. “I’m his photographer. He wanted one set of prints but I made two. In fact, I went back to the house in the evening. Do you know what happened? Four people were killed in the house and one of the coppers said there wasn’t a mark on their bodies. I get along with coppers when I have to. Not a mark on the bodies. And then, this morning, I get this call from Henry saying he’s sending over his girlfriend. Only he didn’t call you his girlfriend but I knew what you were. Take a look, Irish girl, take a look at this.”
Maureen stared at the bottle of vodka.
“Not vodka. He got this stuff special in Italy when we were staying there. He must have picked it up in Naples. It’s not vodka. I can guess what it is after I saw the house in Mayfair and after the cop said all those people died without a mark. That’s Henry, don’t you get it, Maureen?”
“What are you saying?”