Fatal Care by Leonard Goldberg

times a week, but she knew the relationship wasn’t going anywhere. Richie was a hood. He was also married, with three kids. But, Lord, how exciting he was! Everything about him was a thrill, even his job. He told her he was in the disposal business. She knew what that meant. And with his last name, she thought he was connected. But he wasn’t. Richie was a freelance hit man. She learned about that one night when he was taking a shower. He had left his .38 caliber Smith & Wesson in its holster on the bed. She picked up the weapon and was inspecting it when Richie came out of the bathroom.
    “Hey!” he shouted. “Put that down before you hurt yourself.”
    “Don’t worry,” Sara said, and expertly emptied the rounds from the revolver. She held the weapon up to the light and peered into the barrel. “You’d better clean this or you’re going to get your hand blown off.”
    “How do you know so much about guns?”
    “My father taught me.” Sara told him about the suburb she’d grown up in just outside Pittsburgh. It was a good neighborhood, but break-ins and robberies were happening there like everywhere else. Her father spent a lot of time traveling as a senior sales representative for a major steel manufacturer, and he thought it best to teach his wife and daughter about firearms so they could defend themselves.
    “But can you shoot?” Richie had asked.
    “There’s one way to find out.”
    They went to an all-night firing range where she hit so many bull’s-eyes she qualified as an expert marksman. She was so good the owner of the range offered her a job as an instructor at fifteen dollars per hour. She politely declined.
    Later that night they went to Westies, where Richie bragged to David about Sara’s incredible marksmanship. David listened while he made their drinks. He appeared to be uninterested, but Sara could sense he was storing information away. Lord! David and Richie and Westies in New York. It all seemed so long ago now, Sara reminisced.
    David broke into her thoughts. “Here you go, Sam, a vodka martini with a lemon twist.”
    “Thanks,” Sara said. He was the only person in the world who called her Sam. It was a nickname he made up from the initials of her full name, Sara Ann Moore. “Do you mind if I light up in here?”
    “Can’t. It’s against the law.” David grinned, but his green eyes stayed ice cold. He was a big, barrel-chested man with thinning red hair and a ruddy complexion. “You can take your drink out back and have your cigarette there. I’ll join you in a few minutes when Eddie gets back.”
    Sara studied his face briefly. Something about his voice bothered her. “Have we got trouble?” she asked in a low voice.
    “I’ll see you out back,” David said, and walked away.
    Sara took her drink and went out the back door of Club West. She stepped into the narrow alleyway and lit a cigarette, wondering what the trouble was. Her last two hits had gone really well. The schnook last night had half his head blown off. He was surely dead as hell. And so was the millionaire she tapped on the head and pushed over the side of his yacht. There was no way the old man was still alive, unless he could swim ten miles while unconscious. No. It wasn’t that. Maybe, she thought, the customers weren’t paying their bills. She shook her head at the idea. If you owed the Westies, you paid or you ended up with broken legs. And if you still didn’t pay, you ended up dead. She wondered if she had made a mistake, if someone had seen her. Deep down she had the feeling that was it. And in her line of work, a mistake was very bad for business. It could also get you killed.
    She remembered back to the night Richie Malfitano had bought it. He had a contract to ice Two-Ton Tony Giamarro. Two-Ton Tony was stealing from his family big time and was also trying to muscle in on another family’s bookmaking business. He was causing trouble and ignoring repeated warnings. He needed to be killed, but