Hard-Boiled Immortal (The Immortal Chronicles) by Gene Doucette Page A

me to worry that I shouldn’t even be there.  I was waiting on a succubus who could shoot me, turn me in to the government as a spy, or screw me in a more literal sense, and the third option was the only one worth sticking around for.  Could have been she just staged my death in order to help me get out of town, but so long as she had the US government behind her there was no way to be sure.  I’d heard enough stories about agitators disappearing and whatnot to be concerned that the country’s interests and mine didn’t coincide. 
    It had to be four in the morning by the time Lucy let herself in.
    “You alone?” She asked.  There was a light from the hallway, so I couldn’t see her face, but the figure and the voice and the gun in her hand was all I needed.
    “Just me,” I said.   “Thanks for aiming a gun at me again, I was beginning to forget what that felt like.”
    “ Just being careful.”  She kicked the door closed behind her and tossed a sack onto the bed.  It made a jingle when it hit, which the bed didn’t do when I’d sat on it earlier so I figured it was from the bag.
    “What’s that?”
    “That’s the money from the cash drawer.  Place like that, I figured it’d have a safe but I couldn’t find one.”
    “Nobody’s crazy enough to steal from Jimmy,” I said.
    “Looks like you were.”
    I picked up the sack while Lucy put her gun away and took off the coat.  I was disappointed to see she’d taken the time to put on some more clothing sometime over the course of the night because now she had on a skirt and a blouse.  She looked like someone straight out of the secretary pool, if they had one of those in heaven.
    To my unspoken observation she said, “Changed into ‘ em before the place was stormed by the feds. I got methods I’d as soon keep to myself, you understand.”
    “I do.”  It wasn’t a lot of cash in the bag.  “What’s this for?”
    “That ought to be enough to get you outta town.  You gotta be in the wind, Rocky.  You get that, right?”
    “Explain it to me.”
    “Your story wasn’t gonna fly with my people.  They look far enough into you they’re gonna have the same questions I had. You had to die.”
    She put one leg up on the bed and slid a hand up her thigh to unclip the garter holding her stocking in place.  Then she began to slide the stocking down.
    “ I knew the first time I saw you, you were gonna get me killed.  How’d it happen?” I asked.
    “Your pal Vinnie and his buddy confessed to it.  Sorry I had to fire the gun at your head like that, I’ve found this kind of persuasion works better if there’s a show that goes with it.” 
    She slid out of the shoe to get the stocking all the way off, then started on her second leg.   I was having a little trouble keeping track of what she was saying on account of what she was doing. 
    “ Once they were convinced I’d killed you, it wasn’t all that hard to talk them into thinking they’d done it themselves.  Now, they’ll swear up and down they did it earlier , at the bar, brought your body to the lake and tossed it in, then went back to the bar looking for me.  Oh and it turns out you were into some nasty stuff.  It looks like Rocky isn’t even your name.”
    “Those two guys with the big guns might have a thing or two to say about that story,” I said.  I was staying in the chair for the moment, happy to watch her take her clothes off for me.
    “Yeah, funny thing tho.  They were out front when the feds got to the scene, and I guess they both got a little trigger-happy.  They were told to stand down, but whoops, they only spoke Polish.  So they’re dead now, looks like.”
    “You sent them outside on purpose. ” 
    She h ad taken care of the other stocking and now was slipping off her skirt as casually as if she was standing in her own bedroom alone, except I had to think nobody ever looked this good undressing without an audience.
    “Could be.  It’s really hard to