Dangerous Women

by George R. R. Martin

  She leaned up against him. “Do your parents still live here?”

  “Dad left when I was about six,” he said. “Mom died about ten years ago. Cancer.” He shrugged to show her how much it didn’t affect him anymore. He wanted to tell her that he’d scattered his mother’s ashes in the river or on the levee or somewhere that would have been meaningful in some way, but the truth was that he’d never even picked them up from the funeral home. He didn’t care what happened to the ashes—not because he hadn’t loved his mother, but because he felt it was just one more stupid, sentimental detail that people wanted to believe was important.

  He looked out toward the bones of a ship that had been stripped nearly clean by the welders. That’s what it’s like, he thought. No one cared where that metal would end up. That ship would never be rebuilt.

  “Do you remember where you were when it happened?” she asked him, and for an instant he thought she was talking about his mother’s death.

  “You mean the Switch?” he asked, to be certain. She nodded. “Sure,” he said, thinking quickly. The truth was he didn’t remember exactly. Probably working. Maybe at home. It wasn’t until about a week later that it started to sink in to everyone that nothing was ever going to be the same, but even then he didn’t remember being upset or worked up over it. The fickle bitch of a river had run off, it wasn’t ever coming back, and that’s all there was to it. “I was on a domestic violence call,” he decided to say. “I’d just put handcuffs on a guy for slapping his wife when my partner told me the spillway had collapsed and the river was changing course.”

  She looked at him as if expecting him to say more. He wondered if maybe he should make some more crap up, add some details and tell her that the guy worked on a ship and had come home to find out that his wife had been screwing another guy. Maybe tell her that he’d slapped his wife in front of their six-year-old son, and that as soon as he was bailed out, he hopped on another ship and never returned.

  No, Danny decided. Best to leave it as it was. One thing he’d learned from the perps he arrested was that most of them tripped themselves up by making their lies too complicated. Keep it simple and short. Less to keep straight that way. “So, where were you?” he asked her.

  Delia blinked, pursed her lips. “I was at the emergency room with a neighbor of mine. She … fell and broke her wrist. I was playing with her daughter in the waiting room when it came on the TV.”

  She turned back to the water, rubbing her arms against the light breeze. “I wonder what they’ll name it?”

  He slipped an arm around her, pulled her close, smiled as she nestled against him. “Seems wrong not to call it the Mississippi.”

  She shook her head. “But she’s gone. Left us behind. Atchafalaya has her now.”

  “You think the city needs to get over it and move on?” he asked her with an indulgent smile.

  A grin touched her mouth. “It’s never going to get her back. New Orleans needs to stop being the mopey boyfriend. It needs to take a shower and start dating again. It can be better than it was before.”

  He chuckled and gave her a squeeze, but his thoughts were on men like Peter and their plans for the city. It wasn’t going to be cleaned up. It wouldn’t get better, at least not for the people who weren’t running the show. The only thing the city had left was tourism, and they had no intention of making the city “family friendly” or any of that shit.

  The city council would eventually cave in to pressure. New Orleans would sell itself out, fill up with casinos and even more bars and prostitutes. It made him sad, which surprised him. That kind of place would suit him and his temperament.

  “New Orleans will become the whore,” he said, more to himself than to her.

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” she murmured, then sighed and leaned her head against him. Danny wondered if she knew that there was nothing she could do about it, nothing that could stop the city’s slide into total debauchery and corruption. There were too many players lined up against her. His gut twisted with the knowledge that, not only was he was one of them, he wasn’t sure that he was capable of doing anything else.

  A week later, he met her as usual, but her kiss of greeting seemed distracted and her smile forced. He asked her if something was wrong, but she only shook her head. “It’s nothing,” she insisted. “Just a guy asking for stuff I don’t do.” Before he could puff up in righteous defense of his woman, she put her hand on his chest and gave him the smile that always touched the place deep inside him that told him that, to this woman even if no one else, he was special and strong.

  “It’s all right,” she assured him, though a shimmer of doubt touched the corners of her mouth.

  The doubt stayed, darkening her eyes and hunching her shoulders. At times he thought she was on the verge of tears. It took several more days for him to coax it out of her, patiently weathering the denials, the false smiles, and the protestations that everything was fine. He wasn’t the most honest cop on the beat, but he still knew how to ferret out the truth.

  “It’s this one guy,” she finally confessed while they lay tangled in the sheets of his bed and she rested her head on his chest. A shudder passed through her. “He’s rich and powerful, which is why the owners don’t toss him out.” She lifted her head, met his eyes. “It’s not that he’s mean or a jerk. But he wants me.” She swallowed, then managed a chuckle. “Doesn’t that sound ridiculously egotistical?”

  He smiled, stroked her hair back from her face. “Not to me. I can perfectly understand wanting you.”

  Delia dropped her head back to his chest, nestled closer to him. “He wants me to be his girlfriend. I told him I wasn’t interested.” She sighed. “I’m sure it’ll all blow over, but right now he’s awfully insistent. And, he’s … ugh.”

  “Skeevy?”

  “No, not that. He’s clean-cut, decent looking. But it’s … it’s the way he sees other people. As things to be used. He’s not nice.”

  He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her close, kissed the top of her head while tension curdled his gut. “Who is this guy?” he asked, even though he had a feeling he already knew. “I’ll take care of it.”

  She lifted her head again, a frown puckering her forehead. “I don’t want you hurting anyone for me.”

  “I won’t,” he lied. He knew damn well how to cover his tracks. As long as it wasn’t Peter. Please don’t let it be Peter. “Give me his name. I’ll make sure that he knows you’re off-limits. Nice and friendly.”

  Peter opened the door of his condo at the knock, an amused smile curving his mouth at the sight of Danny on the doorstep. “What a nice surprise. Come on in.”

  Danny gave the man a short nod, entered. “Need to talk to you.”

  “I’m always here for a friend,” Peter said, closing the door. “By the way, I never did get to thank you for taking care of that business with the bookstore owner.” He moved to the kitchen, pulled down two mugs from the cabinet. “I don’t know what you said to him, but he took the eviction with nary a whimper.” He poured coffee for himself, then slid a look toward Danny. “So nice when people do as they’re told. Makes everyone’s life so much more pleasant. Coffee?”

  Danny jerked his head in a nod. Peter knew why he was there, Danny realized. He’d been expecting him. He took the mug from the man, forced himself to sip at the bitter liquid.

  “I’ve done a lot of stuff for you,” he began, then stopped. None of that made a difference in this situation. He had a speech ready, a chest-pounding “get away from my woman” rant, but one look at Peter’s eyes told him that it was the wrong tack, that it would be pointless. He swallowed to try to clear the bitter taste from his mouth, took a deep breath. “Look, there’s this girl I really like. Delia. She, uh, says that you’ve asked her out, and I wanted to talk to you, man-to-man, ask you to leave her be.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he hated himself. This wasn’t man-to-man. This was the dog groveling to his master.

  Pet
er frowned over his mug. “Delia? Is that the stripper chick you’ve been mooning over?”

  “We’ve been seeing each other,” Danny said, jaw tight.

  The other man cocked an eyebrow at him. “Is that so? She sure has been friendly with me at the club.” The he chuckled, shook his head. “But that’s her job, isn’t it? I have to say, she’s quite good. I could almost believe she really is glad to see me each night.”

  “Yeah,” Danny managed. “She’s good. We’re good … together. I’m asking you to, uh, please back off.” He didn’t know that Peter had been going to the club so often. How many times had he been in a private room with Delia while Danny waited like an eager puppy in the bar across the street?

  “For you, of course,” Peter said with a magnanimous nod. “I wish you both the best.” Took a sip of coffee, walked over to the window to gaze out at the muddy swath that was more bayou than river now. “Of course, for your sake, I hope she doesn’t get a better offer.” He glanced back at Danny. “Or rather, if she does get a better offer, that she doesn’t take it.”

  “Right,” Danny said. “Appreciate you understanding.”

  Peter set the mug down on the table by the window. “By the way, the final vote on the poker room is day after tomorrow. I need you to lean on Councilman Nagle. Catch him doing something.” His smile widened. “Maybe your Delia can help you out with that.” Then he shrugged. “Or not. Best to keep business and pleasure separate, right?”

  “Right,” Danny repeated. It was a challenge, a power play. Peter wanted to know how much he could trust him. Wanted to know how far Danny would go to keep the influence that had protected him for so long.

  Yet Danny knew that it didn’t matter. It was already too late. Danny had tried to bare his teeth. From now on, Peter would be watching his back, waiting for the moment when he could throw Danny to the wolves and keep his own hands clean.

  Danny simply had to find a way to do the same to Peter first.

  He jerked his head in a nod. “Got it. I’ll take care of it.”

  Peter’s smile widened. “You’re a good friend. Give my best to Delia.”

  The next week was quiet and calm. Danny readied himself for the next time Peter called on him, ready to record the exchange or whatever else he could do, but his phone remained silent. Delia spent every night at his apartment, only returning to her own place to change clothes and water her plants. She told him that Peter had stopped coming to the club and wanted to know what Danny had done. He merely smiled and said, “Better that you don’t know.” He couldn’t tell her that he’d done nothing except grovel, that the only reason Peter left her alone was because it suited Peter to do so.

  And, as Danny had feared, it didn’t last.

  “He came to my apartment!” she told him after he opened his door to see her standing on his front step. Her lower lip trembled and her eyes were red from weeping. He quickly pulled her inside, took her to the couch, and held her while she poured it all out to him.

  Peter had given her an ultimatum—go with him or he’d not only have her evicted but he’d make sure she never found work in this city again.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she told him, looking more defeated and beaten down than he’d ever imagined she could be. “I can’t … I won’t leave New Orleans. It’s too special to me.” Delia’s eyes lifted to his. “People like him are destroying this city. I hate it. I hate them all!” Her voice broke on the last word.

  Sweat pricked Danny’s palms. He could kill Peter. There were a hundred different ways he could do it and stage it like an accident or suicide. Or maybe Danny could go to the feds, tell them everything he knew about Peter’s dealings.

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said, kissing her. He stood up, but she caught at his hand.

  “I don’t want you getting into trouble,” she said, eyes wide and frightened.

  “It’ll be fine. I promise.” He gently pulled free of her grasp. “You can count on me.”

  Danny walked along Chartres Street to Dumaine, headed to Jackson Square and watched pigeons swarm around a bum with a bag of stale bread. A handful of street artists gamely displayed their wares, casting desperate smiles to the sparse trickle of tourists wandering by, and ignoring him, since he was obviously a local and not worth wasting the energy of false friendliness on.

  He would kill Peter Bennett, he told himself. That was the only way out. Going to the feds wasn’t an option. Anything Danny told them would sink him just as thoroughly as it would Peter, and he didn’t have any evidence other than his own testimony.

  Late afternoon turned to dusk as he sat on a bench in the park and considered his options, planned out his steps. When full dark came, he headed down Decatur, stopped in a sleazy T-shirt shop full of tourist crap, and bought a cap. After that, he cut over to the Riverwalk, entered Peter’s building, and took the elevator to his floor, keeping the cap pulled low over his face to avoid being caught by any cameras.

  Peter answered the door, eyebrow lifting in mild surprise at Danny’s presence. His gaze flicked to the cap and then back to Danny’s face. “You okay? You look upset.”

  “Yeah,” he replied. “A bit. Can I come in?”

  “Absolutely.” Peter stepped aside, closed the door behind him. Danny swept his gaze around the condo. No one else here. No one else on this floor, for that matter. No one had seen him come in. He had it all planned. Collapsible baton in his pocket to take Peter down, then make it look like an accidental fall in the shower. Doubtful it would be found out as murder even if there was a proper investigation.

  Peter leaned up against the counter, watched Danny impassively. Maybe he knew why the cop was here. Probably did, in fact. He had to have known it would come to this.

  “I almost forgot,” Peter said abruptly, pushing off the counter and moving to his desk. “Forgot to give you that, ah, loan money you asked for.”

  Sweat prickled Danny’s back and his hand eased toward his gun. This was perfect. Peter was going to pull a gun from that drawer and then Danny could shoot him in self-defense.

  But it was a thick envelope that Peter retrieved from the drawer. Danny dropped his hand before Peter could see, heart thudding unevenly. The man was paying him for busting Councilman Nagle with a prostitute earlier in the week. Nagle had agreed to vote Peter’s way rather than face a humiliating arrest, and the poker room had been approved, no doubt the first of many.

  Peter held out the envelope to him. “I think you’ll be happy with this. I know I am. Good work with that, by the way.”

  He didn’t move for several seconds, then finally stepped forward and took the envelope. Opened it to see that it held at least ten grand.

  Danny closed the envelope and tucked it into the pocket in his jacket. “Appreciate this,” he said, voice sounding odd and rough in his ears. He didn’t have to kill Peter. He had other options. He could take Delia away from here. He’d convince her to leave. They could start over somewhere else. Away from this fucked-up city. Away from Peter.

  “Come by next week,” Peter said. “We’ll talk.” He paused. “You should bring Delia by sometime. Unless you two broke up already?” He lifted a bottle of water, drank without ever taking his eyes from Danny.

  “No,” Danny replied, feeling the weight of the question, responding to the statements.

  The man grinned. “That’s real cute. How long you think that’ll last?”

  He wasn’t talking about Delia, Danny knew. Peter was toying with him, wanting to know how long this little flare of defiance would go on before Danny settled down and behaved again.

  Like the dog at the café, who’d slunk off instead of attacking. That dog was probably dead now, Danny thought, or at the very least still hungry, slinking through the city, willing to brave a few kicks to get a scrap or two.

  No more slinking. No more scraps.

  “Forever,” he replied. With a practiced move, he pulled the baton from his pocket and snapped it open. Baring his teeth as he stepped tow
ard Peter. Reveling in the shock and fear on the man’s face as the dog finally turned on his master.

  He called her in the elevator, asked her to meet him at the Canal Street Ferry. He figured he’d beat her there, but when he arrived at the dock, he saw her leaning on the rail down at the end, looking out over the wallowing river and the blinking lights of cars crossing the bridge.

  A tension he hadn’t even been aware of leached away. A part of him hadn’t been sure she’d come, afraid that she’d cut her losses and leave him behind. Yet now he realized that she’d known where he’d gone, had been waiting nearby for him.

  She turned at the sound of his hurrying footsteps, watched him as he approached.

  “Danny …?” she said, reaching up to touch his face. “What’s going on?”

  He caught her hand in his, kissed it. “I love you, baby. I’ll keep you safe forever, I swear it.”

  Her breath caught. “Oh God. What did you do?”

  “It’s cool,” he said. “I swear. I … I’m good.”

  She bit her lip, then closed her eyes, wrapped her arms around him. “Yes, you are.”

  He lowered his head and breathed in the scent of her, feeling all the shit and the muck of his life slipping away. “Let’s go,” he said. “Let’s leave this place forever and start over somewhere else.” He didn’t want to stay, but he also knew he couldn’t leave her behind. She’d end up as beaten and broken as those other girls … yet, even as he thought it, he knew that it was an excuse, knew that he wasn’t strong enough to leave without her. But maybe if they both left, started over … maybe he could get unbroken.

  She pulled back, shock and disappointment flashing across her features. “You want me to leave? I can’t!”

  “It’s just a city, baby,” he said, holding her face in his hands. “Nothing but a bunch of buildings and streets and crap and assholes.”

  “No. It’s so much more than that.” She tried to shake her head. “There’s a soul to this place, rich and wonderful. We survived Katrina and we’ll survive this. We … I … have to stay. Why can’t you see it?” She reached up, pulled his hands from her face, but continued to hold them. “Oh, Danny,” she breathed. “Peter’s gone now. You don’t have to be who you were anymore.”