Crab Town by Iii Carlton Mellick Page A

said to the Jack of Spades, as she watched him hammering shingles onto a rooftop.
    Jack continued hammering without even looking at her.
    “I actually fell in love with you, you know,” she said.
    When he didn’t respond, she grabbed his leg and pulled him off the ladder. He landed on his feet, right in front of her.
    “I fell in love with you, too,” he said.
    “And so you screwed me over…”
    “It had to be done at some point.” He walked away, toward his toolbox. “I couldn’t be in a serious relationship with anyone who profited from the misery of others.”
    She followed. “So that’s it? You tear down my business, tear out my heart, and now you’re just going to dump me?”
    “How can I dump you? We were never a couple?”
    “But you just said you were falling in love with me, too…”
    “That doesn’t mean I was your boyfriend.” He turned to her. “Now that you’ve gone clean and donated all of your wealth to atone for your crimes, I’m willing to forget the past and start over. That is, if you’d like.”
    Nine sneered at him. “After what you did to me? You can’t be serious.”
    “It’s the first time I’ve ever considered actually getting serious with you since we’ve met.”
    Nine opened her mouth to speak, but hesitated. Jack pulled a card out of his pocket and held it in front of her face. It was the nine of hearts.
    “I’d like you to join the House of Cards,” Jack said.
    Nine took the card.
    Jack said, “My collaborators might not agree with me, but I think you would be excellent for the organization. Your business might have been morally appalling, but you were still able to create a successful empire out of nothing… and in Crab Town, of all places. If you were to use your skills to help the people, rather than just to help yourself, I think you could do great things.”
    Nine paused for a moment. Then burst into laughter.
    “So you’re seriously saying that you want me, a selfish murdering pornographer who’s tried to have you killed on numerous occasions, to join the House of Cards?”
    He nodded. “And continue dating, for real this time. If you’re interested.”
    Nine could tell that he was actually serious.
    She took a deep breath and said, “You’re such an ass-hole.” He smiled at her and she found herself blushing. “…I can’t believe I’m saying this, but yeah. I’m in. I’ll be your fucking Nine of Hearts.”
    And from that point on, Nine was a new woman. She was poor and hungry, but she was happy, truly happy for the first time in her life. She was also utterly, madly, desperately in love.

    Tears flow down Nine’s eyes as she looks at Jack’s cold, peaceful face. She curses herself for not protecting him.
    When she rolls her vision around the room, she sees Miss Doomsday standing over her. Most of the hostages have fled the building, except for a few still cowering in the corners. One lady is pressing on a bullet wound on her thigh. She must have gotten hit in the crossfire.
    Sailboat is on the far side of the room, pointing his shotgun in the balloon man’s permanently smiling face.
    “You fucking shot him,” Sailboat yells.
    “It wasn’t me,” Johnny waves his rubber hands.
    “I saw you. You were aiming at me, but you hit Jack.”
    “I was aiming at the guard,” Johnny says. “If you didn’t block my shot he wouldn’t be dead now.”
    Sailboat pumped his shotgun. “You trying to blame this on me?”
    “Enough,” Doomsday says to them.
    “But he shot Jack,” Sailboat says.
    Doomsday puts her Tommy Gun on her shoulder as she cat-walks over to them. “I saw it happen. A guard shot Jack. There was a second one in plain-clothes that we didn’t know about.”
    Sailboat kicks his boot through the counter. He hears the bank manager gasp at the noise on the other side.
    “We need to get out of here,” Doomsday tells the others, as Sailboat goes around the counter to the bank manager.
    “Not until he tells me where the rest of