falsehood. I know it cuts you up inside because nobody can go that callous and unaffected through life."
"If thinking so makes you feel any better, so be it," I said.
"Do you deny it?"
I parroted Mr. Ogg's party line. "It's always just business, nothing personal. That's how I choose to view it."
"Tonight our business will be hunting down Gwen's killer."
"Exactly. Do we first try poking around in her townhouse?" I asked.
Esquire gave me an encouraging nod. "That's the logical starting point."
Chapter 10
B ack in my young turk days, Mr. Ogg used to farm me out like a minor leaguer playing the key shortstop position at different ballparks. I never got road-weary, and the frequent change of scenery seemed to agree with me. The outfit toasted me as one of the rising stars, and I basked in their adulation. Competitive and brash by nature, I ranged miles ahead of my nearest rival, McCoy, the boastful enforcer who was based in the Baltimore outfit. I wanted to kill him and let him rest in pieces.
I perfected a slick system. I breezed into the burg, scoped the layout, went bang-bang , and returned to Old Yvor City . I worked under a slate of aliases—Clarence Atkinson, Dice Snell, and Dimitri Zetts—so I never got to enjoy any perks from the frequent flyer miles I piled up. With so much of my time logged up in the clouds, I burned in my lust for the cannonball-assed stewardesses who I learned no longer went by that outmoded job title.
"The PC term is 'flight attendant,’ Dice."
I nodded. Whatever. For me, PC stood for pork chops or something as silly. "So flight attendant it is then."
"Don't go blowing this off. It's important to me and our profession."
"I know it is, baby. Sorry to be so flip. More vino?"
Lounging naked and desirable as a dewy orchid left on the zinc bed, Bunnie Ziplow smiled at me. "I'm a gold chalice. Fill me up, Dice Snell. Again. Please."
"Oh baby, that's all I've got on my mind."
I decanted from the screw-top wine liter into the cut-glass tumbler she lifted for a refill. Her centerfold-hot ass wrapped by her smart robin-egg blue flight attendant's uniform was what had melted out my eyes while at the air terminal. I'd been sprawled in a chair, the paperback dropped in my lap when they strode into my field of vision. She was gabbing with a fiftyish white dude in the navy blue livery. I tabbed him as the airline pilot and keyed on two key facts: she was just getting in, and I wasn't due to jet off until the morning. Therefore I resolved then and there to get my wick dipped.
Our hook up was made at the air terminal bar while the pilot wandered off to phone the wife and two-and-a-half kids with a dog or cat in a snug suburb back East. Snooze, you lose, Captain . The flight attendant was no older than forty. Two gins apiece later, she and I fled in her 5-speed, 1300 cc hoopty that burned motor oil—a black, greasy plume spewing from the dual tailpipes. Flight attendants didn't pull down hefty paychecks.
The ramshackle motel, a twelve-minute shot from the air terminal, she'd used before went by some dippy moniker like the Dew Drop Inn. We fell to it like wrestling gators. Later on that night I had my free-fall-through-the-bottomless-abyss dream and bolted upright in the strange bed. As my runaway heartbeats settled, I realized I was alone. Bunnie had slipped off while I slept, the breath of her floral fragrance lingering on the pillowcases. I checked for my wallet, and she headed my shit list for filching it and my latest fee.
The rain was pouring down. Mercy did it ever. It thrashed the motel's tin cymbal of a roof. Blue lightning bolts splintered the inky Midwest sky, and the banshee gusts roared by me. Trembling from the maelstrom, I was a can of sore nerves. The pelting rain drove me to lever shut the casement windows.
I groaned. How did a guy endure such a night? Again I groaned, but louder. What the hell ailed me? My life amounted to humping bitch thieves in ratholes like here. This one
"If thinking so makes you feel any better, so be it," I said.
"Do you deny it?"
I parroted Mr. Ogg's party line. "It's always just business, nothing personal. That's how I choose to view it."
"Tonight our business will be hunting down Gwen's killer."
"Exactly. Do we first try poking around in her townhouse?" I asked.
Esquire gave me an encouraging nod. "That's the logical starting point."
Chapter 10
B ack in my young turk days, Mr. Ogg used to farm me out like a minor leaguer playing the key shortstop position at different ballparks. I never got road-weary, and the frequent change of scenery seemed to agree with me. The outfit toasted me as one of the rising stars, and I basked in their adulation. Competitive and brash by nature, I ranged miles ahead of my nearest rival, McCoy, the boastful enforcer who was based in the Baltimore outfit. I wanted to kill him and let him rest in pieces.
I perfected a slick system. I breezed into the burg, scoped the layout, went bang-bang , and returned to Old Yvor City . I worked under a slate of aliases—Clarence Atkinson, Dice Snell, and Dimitri Zetts—so I never got to enjoy any perks from the frequent flyer miles I piled up. With so much of my time logged up in the clouds, I burned in my lust for the cannonball-assed stewardesses who I learned no longer went by that outmoded job title.
"The PC term is 'flight attendant,’ Dice."
I nodded. Whatever. For me, PC stood for pork chops or something as silly. "So flight attendant it is then."
"Don't go blowing this off. It's important to me and our profession."
"I know it is, baby. Sorry to be so flip. More vino?"
Lounging naked and desirable as a dewy orchid left on the zinc bed, Bunnie Ziplow smiled at me. "I'm a gold chalice. Fill me up, Dice Snell. Again. Please."
"Oh baby, that's all I've got on my mind."
I decanted from the screw-top wine liter into the cut-glass tumbler she lifted for a refill. Her centerfold-hot ass wrapped by her smart robin-egg blue flight attendant's uniform was what had melted out my eyes while at the air terminal. I'd been sprawled in a chair, the paperback dropped in my lap when they strode into my field of vision. She was gabbing with a fiftyish white dude in the navy blue livery. I tabbed him as the airline pilot and keyed on two key facts: she was just getting in, and I wasn't due to jet off until the morning. Therefore I resolved then and there to get my wick dipped.
Our hook up was made at the air terminal bar while the pilot wandered off to phone the wife and two-and-a-half kids with a dog or cat in a snug suburb back East. Snooze, you lose, Captain . The flight attendant was no older than forty. Two gins apiece later, she and I fled in her 5-speed, 1300 cc hoopty that burned motor oil—a black, greasy plume spewing from the dual tailpipes. Flight attendants didn't pull down hefty paychecks.
The ramshackle motel, a twelve-minute shot from the air terminal, she'd used before went by some dippy moniker like the Dew Drop Inn. We fell to it like wrestling gators. Later on that night I had my free-fall-through-the-bottomless-abyss dream and bolted upright in the strange bed. As my runaway heartbeats settled, I realized I was alone. Bunnie had slipped off while I slept, the breath of her floral fragrance lingering on the pillowcases. I checked for my wallet, and she headed my shit list for filching it and my latest fee.
The rain was pouring down. Mercy did it ever. It thrashed the motel's tin cymbal of a roof. Blue lightning bolts splintered the inky Midwest sky, and the banshee gusts roared by me. Trembling from the maelstrom, I was a can of sore nerves. The pelting rain drove me to lever shut the casement windows.
I groaned. How did a guy endure such a night? Again I groaned, but louder. What the hell ailed me? My life amounted to humping bitch thieves in ratholes like here. This one
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