Screwed

I choose a Ball Buster, complete with floating pickled onion testicle.

Seems appropriate.

EPILOGUE

IT’S A WEEK SINCE THE RONELLE TRIED TO ARREST SOFIA AND my life has gone back to quasi-normal, in that I am nominally seeing my alleged girlfriend for what approximates cozy evenings watching foreign fiction on TV.

I have arrived at the decision that even if Sofia did shoot Carmine, he probably deserved it and I am in no position to judge after all the shenanigans I been neck-deep in for the past while.

Our relationship has shifted because now I realize that it’s me who needs Sofia and not the other way around.

As Simon said: Perhaps you like the fact that she doesn’t know the real you, as your low self-esteem issues would have you believe that the real you isn’t worthy of affection.

Or as Zeb put it: Sometimes the pit bull don’t wanna screw the poodle. He just wants to make sure nobody else does.

Both valid points, I think.

So, I’m kinda calming down a little. Enjoying the club doing so well, trying to sit with Sofia as much as possible but keeping alert for Mike, ’cause you know that potato-eating gangster won’t stay outta my picture forever. That video of his mom will be eating away at him like a ball of acid in his stomach. Not stomach acid obviously, a stronger kind.

Ronnie has called me a couple of times to make sure I’m behaving myself. I think her current attitude toward me is one of bemusement. It’s like she knows I’m going down eventually and every day I spend above ground and outta the joint makes her smile and shake her head.

So I strapped my muzzle back on, good and tight. My hands feel empty without a gun in them but tough shit, hands, you’re gonna have to get by without Sharpie for a while.

But there are a coupla things.

Two loose ends I can’t live with.

So I ask Jason if he can locate someone for me, and it turns out one of our new regulars more or less invented internet search engines. I can’t say which regular because he’s currently involved in over a hundred lawsuits, but it takes this guy about fifteen minutes on his new prototype phone to run down my cyber friend Citizen Pain. The guy who paid a hundred grand to see me tortured to death.

Turns out Citizen Pain is from Connecticut and I was all set to take a bus over there and maybe bring a black dildo with me to administer some poetic justice.

I think it was Benny Hill who said: Revenge is a dish best served cold, but mine was gonna be laid out piping hot, and I could relive it coolly later on.

It was a best-of-both-worlds kinda plan.

I might be wrong about that quote, sounds a bit vicious for Benny Hill. But you never know, a lot of funny men have a dark side.

Anyways, like I say I was all set to take a drive to Citizen Pain’s place of employment and expose him for the asshole he is, until Jason’s guy texts me the rest of the particulars. Turns out Citizen Pain is not a crooked senator or a sex pest with a record as I had imagined in my mental scenarios. Turns out Citizen Pain is a lady in her fifties, and she is the director of the Connecticut office of a major third-world charity. This woman does the TV campaign for Christ’s sake; you know the one where the camera catches her weeping? You’ve seen that one, right?

So, if I go barging in there this whole charity’s going down the toilet and I can’t have that on my conscience. The last thing I need is nightmares featuring Sudanese kids pointing the fingers of blame in my direction. So I turn the evidence over to Ronelle and she agrees to handle it quietly, which is tough for her so I appreciate it.

The second loose end is Evelyn.

I am having a hard time believing that she would just dump me like that. We were real close once upon a time.

Tight.

She taught me about boobs.

My mom and her stood together against the grim might of Paddy Costello.

Could booze have changed her that much?

The straight answer to this is yes. Booze can mess people up. The first thing an addict looses is motor functions and the second to go is morals. I have seen guys renting their kids to strangers for the price of a carton of wine. So Evelyn could have flipped on me for a never-ending supply of penthouse-quality brandy, but she’s had a few days now to acclimatize and perhaps regret selling her nephew out like that.

There is also the possibility that Edit blackmailed her with the threat of my death: sign-the-forms-or-Dan-gets-it kinda thing, she’s certainly devious enough. It’s not much of an incentive, I know, but maybe Ev loves me even more than I thought.

I gotta know. She looks like my mom for Christ’s sake and there are not so many good people in my life that I can afford to summarily write one off.

So for the past few days, I’ve been calling the Costello penthouse and hanging up if Edit answered.

I know. Pretty childish plan but I didn’t know what else to do.

Yesterday I got lucky, and a maid or cleaner picked up who hadn’t been briefed about me.

“Miss Evelyn?” she said. “I give her the phone but she pretty hammered, so make allowances okay?”

I reckon that lady was new. If she gets fired from Edit’s, I’d hire her for Green & Yellow in a heartbeat. She tells it like it is.

I don’t get long on the phone with Evelyn—almost as soon as she slurs hello down the line, I hear Edit’s strident voice in the background.

“Who is it, Evelyn dear? Who is it that is calling on you?”

Who is it that is calling on you? Far too many words in that sentence.

I have maybe ten seconds so I make them count.

“Remember the ice-cream sundae, Ev? I’ll be there Monday at noon. And every Monday until you show up.”

I barely get that much out before the line goes dead.

It’s been a long time since we had those sundaes. I hope Ev’s alcohol-addled brain can locate the memory.

In any case, I’m gonna make the trip over and be waiting, every Monday at noon. Evelyn should be able to drag herself out of bed by then.

ICal Gerber’s Tigon Hotel is down on the waterfront in Atlantic City, and is not what you’d call a classy joint. Okay it’s got a pool but I bet they don’t clean the filters too often and there are slot machines in the lobby and vending machines in the hallways. Nevertheless the location on the boardwalk makes it one of the city’s big earners and the Gerber family are like Atlantic City’s version of the Hiltons. Cal Junior, the son and heir, is regularly saying stupid smug shit to gossip mags and Aeriel, the teenage daughter, is shunning the limelight and studying hotel management in University, but she has talked about her secret tattoo, which has caused no end of speculation in US Weekly.

But back before the hotel got celebrified it was called simply the Royale and its ice-cream parlor had a reputation for making the best sundaes on the strip. And when Mom and I stayed there on our one trip to attempt to negotiate a peace with old Paddy Costello, Ev took me for a sundae every day. It was my favorite part of the trip and I’ve had a weakness for sundaes ever since.

Another reason I picked the Tigon for a rendezvous is that Jason and I once bounced the place during fight week couple of years back when the hotel was paying double overtime for doormen. It is amazing how many rich white kids think they can take a professional ’cause they’ve watched a fight from the front row. One kid actually caught me with a soft right hook and broke a couple of his fingers. J laughed his ass off.

So I know all about the hotel layout right down to the tables in the lobby Starbucks where the ice cream parlor used to be.

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams, as Bob Hope once said. The Tigon management hadn’t so much tread on my dreams as stomped them to death with hobnail boots.