Hot Fudge (A Loretta Kovacs thriller)

by Anthony Bruno

  Loretta put her hand on Vissa’s shoulder. This guy was still in her head in a major way. “Hey, look,” Loretta said, “scummy people do scummy things. What do you expect?”

  Vissa wouldn’t look at her.

  But Loretta was less concerned about Vissa still carrying the torch for Krupnick than she was about Marvelli. He was definitely addicted to Elmer Fudge Whirl, she was convinced. He’d have to go into ice-cream detox. What would the doctors give him for that? Methadone Fudgesicles?

  “So what do we do now?” Barry suddenly shouted. “Huh?” He was more jittery than ever, tottering between belligerence and self-pity.

  “You’re holding the damn gun,” Loretta pointed out. “You tell me what happens.” She was really fed up now.

  “Don’t yell at me,” Barry yelled. “You don’t understand. Nobody understands.”

  “Well, why don’t you tell us about it?” Vissa said soothingly. “We might understand.”

  Loretta muttered out of the side of her mouth. “What is this, the Oprah show?”

  “You want him to go Jerry Springer on us?” Vissa muttered back.

  Loretta frowned. She had to admit Vissa had a point.

  “I won’t go nuts on you if that’s what you’re worried about,” Barry said glumly. “Guys like me never go nuts. We’re not allowed.”

  “What’re you talking about?” Loretta said.

  “Guys like Krupnick, they go nuts and everybody thinks they’re really something. They’re dashing and romantic. Women love them. My women love him.”

  “You mean Dorie?” Loretta asked.

  “And Sunny,” Barry said. His lower lip trembled for a second, and Loretta’s heart melted.

  Poor guy, she thought. First his wife, then his dominatrix.

  “He’s taken over my whole life,” Barry complained. “He’s like Attila the Hun.”

  “Hang on, I’m confused,” Vissa said. “Are you saying Sunny was your girlfriend? I thought she was just—you know—the person who beat you up.”

  “Doms have personal lives, too,” Barry said defensively. Vissa was skeptical. “But you … you … ” She was waving at his body.

  “What?” Barry snapped. “I’m not her type? I’m the schlumpy one, the accountant, the vanilla-bean counter? Is that what you think?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Vissa said.

  “You don’t have to. I know what people think of me.”

  Loretta held up her hand in order to be heard. “So you’re saying Krupnick stole your wife and your girlfriend? What is he, Secretariat?”

  Vissa sighed longingly.

  Loretta rolled her eyes. “Oh, please.”

  “Don’t make fun,” Barry shouted. “It’s not funny.”

  “Nobody’s laughing,” Loretta shouted back. She reached out to him. “Why don’t you give me the gun before we have an accident?”

  “No!” He pulled it away abruptly. “I’m thinking about killing myself now.”

  “Don’t talk stupid,” Loretta said.

  Vissa scowled at her. “You don’t badger someone who’s suicidal.”

  Loretta scowled back. “You don’t coddle him, either.” She turned back to Barry. “Just put the gun away. It’ll make it easier for us to talk.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” he said. “I’m screwed. May as well kill myself and get it over with.”

  “Stop talking that way,” Loretta insisted. “Nothing is hopeless until you’re dead.”

  “Well, just stick around a minute.” He lifted the gun and stuck the barrel under his chin.

  Loretta reached out to him again. “Barry, don’t,” she said softly. “Please.”

  “You gonna tell me it’ll be all right? That everything can be fixed? My life can’t be fixed. I loved Dorie and I loved Sunny. We had a solid relationship, the three of us, until Krupnick stuck his big you-know-what into our business. Feelings are feelings. Mine are gone now, and you can’t bring them back. Just like you can’t make a ton of heroin disappear. You were right about that. The stuff is here in my factory. If I stick around, I’m screwed. I’ll go to jail for the rest of my life.” His bottom lip was trembling, and his eyes were squeezed shut as if he were praying. Or building up the nerve to pull the trigger.

  “Don’t do it,” Vissa said.

  “Wait!” Loretta said at the same time.

  “Be quiet,” he shouted in anguish. “This is my factory. Let me die in peace.”

  “Listen, listen, listen,” Loretta said frantically, “we can make you a deal.” She caught Vissa’s eye and raised her eyebrows, wordlessly pleading with her to just go along with this. “If you help us, Barry, we’ll help you.”

  “That’s right,” Vissa said. “We’ll talk to the police for you, explain that there are extenuating circumstances.”

  “For a ton of heroin?” Barry wailed. “What’re you going to tell them? That I kept it for medicinal purposes?”

  “I’m serious,” Loretta said. “A man’s life is at stake. His name is Frank Marvelli. If you give us information that will help us locate Krupnick before he can harm Marvelli, that will weigh heavily in your favor.”

  “She’s right,” Vissa added, nodding emphatically. “That’s the way it works. You help us, we help you.”

  “What’s to help? My life isn’t worth a pint of store-brand vanilla. I’ve got only one option left.” He squeezed his eyes shut again and pressed the barrel of the Luger into the flesh under his chin.

  “Wait!” Loretta yelped. “What about Dorie?”

  He opened one eye. “What about her?”

  “You still love her, don’t you? I mean, that’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

  “Sure, I love her. But she doesn’t love me.”

  “Not necessarily. Yes, she may be infatuated with Krupnick, but that doesn’t mean she’s stopped loving you.”

  “Gimme a break. You sound like a country-and-western song.”

  “No,” Loretta insisted. “That’s the way it is with women sometimes. We’re not like men. We’re not always shooting for a bull’s-eye the way guys do. We can have two different kinds of feelings for two different people.”

  “That’s right,” Vissa chimed in. “I mean, look at yourself. Were your feelings for Dorie and Sunny exactly the same?”

  “That’s different,” he mumbled.

  “Yeah, probably,” Vissa said, “but that’s only because you’re a man. To you, they were possessions, things to be acquired. But women don’t want to own, they want to—”

  “Lease,” he finished for her. “Yeah, yeah, I know all that. Men are from Mars. Blah-blah-blah.”

  “Well, it’s true,” Loretta said, talking over him. “Men are aliens. It’s a proven fact.”

  Except for Marvelli, she thought sadly. He doesn’t even leave the toilet seat up.

  Barry’s eyes were squeezed shut again, his finger poised on the trigger. Tears were streaming from the corners of his eyes. His voice was choked. “If I’m an alien, then I’m beaming myself up. So long, world. Take it easy.”

  “Stop!” Loretta shouted angrily. “This isn’t about you, dammit. It’s about Dorie. And Sunny.”

  He opened his eyes and frowned at her. “Are you saying this is all my fault?”

  “Well, it is,” Loretta said. “Well, not yet, but it will be if they end up going to prison.”

  He shook his head in confusion. “What’re you talking about?”

  “If Krupnick kills Marvelli, Dorie and Sunny will be charged as accessories. Think about it. Accessories to murder. And Dorie’s already got a record. She could face the death penalty.”

  Barry slowly lowered the gun. Loretta could tell from his expression that her words were sinking in.

  “If you love them,” she said, “help us find Krupnick before it’s too late.”

  He was gesturing helplessly. “If I knew where they were, I’d tell you. I swear.”

  “Think,” Vissa urged. “Does Krupnick have another house, an apa
rtment, a good friend, another girlfriend maybe?”

  Barry shook his head, his face contorted in frustration. “We didn’t pal around at all. I don’t know who he hangs out with. Except for Dorie and Sunny.”

  “How about them?” Loretta asked. “Do they have any friends, anybody they’d run to if they were in trouble, anyone they might contact?”

  “Well, Sunny has a lover.”

  Loretta’s eyes shot open. “Another one?”

  “Her lesbian lover,” he said with disdain. “Agnes. I used to think she was my competition until I found out about Arnie.”

  “What’s Agnes’s last name?” Vissa said. “Do you know?”

  “Where does this Agnes work?” Loretta said. “Where does she live?”

  Barry wrinkled his nose and scratched his head with the barrel of the Luger. “Hmmm … I’ll have to give that some thought.”

  21

  “Pull over! Right here, dammit!” Krupnick was pointing through the windshield at the 7-Eleven convenience store on the side of the road.

  “Easy, ace,” Sunny said out of the side of her mouth as she pulled into the parking lot. “You’re gonna have an aneurysm the way you’re going.”

  “Yeah,” Dorie agreed from the backseat. “You are.”

  “Where we going?” Marvelli said through the hatch.

  Krupnick turned around and glared at Marvelli’s masked face. He could see Marvelli’s eyes glimmering through eye holes. This guy was really annoying him. He looked like an S&M Señor Wencas, a wiseass head in a box. A stranger who meant trouble.

  “Shut the hatch,” Krupnick ordered.

  Dorie started to object again, but Krupnick overrode her before she could get a word in. “I said, shut the friggin’ hatch,” he shouted. “What part of that don’t you understand? Huh?”

  Dorie’s chin crumpled, and her brows were bunched. “Goodbye, Frank,” she said softly. “Sorry, but I have to.”

  “I understand,” Marvelli said, as she shut the hatch and pushed the armrest into the seat.

  Sunny had brought the car to a stop and left it running. Krupnick threw his door open and got out. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  “Aren’t you gonna ask us if we want anything?” Sunny purred.

  “No,” he said, slamming his door closed. He pointed back through the window at Dorie. “And don’t talk to him. You hear me?”

  Dorie just looked at him, giving him her sad puppy-dog eyes. That was the problem with her, he thought. She knew him too well. She knew how to get to him. Sunny, too. But in a different way.

  He stomped off into the store, pushing the door so hard it crashed into a wire rack of tabloid newspapers on the other side. One of the headlines caught his eye: ELVIS’S GHOST HAUNTS WHITE HOUSE.

  Thankyouverymuch, Krupnick thought, curling his lip. The thought of Elvis with the president made him smile despite his foul mood.

  A very petite Asian woman stood behind the cash register. She had fabulous long ebony hair, but she also had a pale, doughy face. Krupnick headed directly for the freezer case at the back of the store.

  He quickly scanned the glass case, looking for the Arnie and Barry’s pints. He found their section right away, zeroing in on his own face on one of the cartons.

  Arnie Ira, Ira Arnie, he thought. Screw ’em both. Call me Elvis from now on. The King. Thankyouverymuch.

  He sorted through the pints, looking for an Elmer Fudge Whirl. He found Macadamia Smash, Rococo Cocoa, and Impossible Orange Sherbet, but no Elmer Fudge Whirl.

  Damn! he thought. Why is this stuff so damn popular? Is everyone a freakin’ junkie these days?

  He kept digging through the pints, pawing like a bear in a garbage can, sweeping pints of Arnie and Barry onto the other brands so that he could dig deeper. His fingers were red and chapped, but he didn’t care. He needed some Fudge Whirl. Now!

  Finally, at the very bottom, he found one last pint of Fudge Whirl. It was slightly crushed and the clear cellophane window on the lid was ripped, but so what? It was Fudge Whirl, and he needed it so he could think.

  He stomped back to the cashier, grabbed a white plastic spoon from an open paper coffee cup next to the cash register, slapped a five-dollar bill on the counter, and left without waiting for his change. As soon as he was out the door, he pried off the lid and tossed it away like a Frisbee. He tried to stick the spoon in to get a bite, but the ice cream was rock hard from being at the bottom of the freezer for so long. He scraped a bit off the top and licked it off the spoon, but that wasn’t enough. He wanted more. Right now!

  Tiny ice crystals on the surface of the Fudge Whirl shimmered in the sun. He tried to plunge the spoon into the ice cream again, but it splintered. He cursed and threw the broken spoon on the ground as he thought about going back inside for another one. But all those goddamn spoons are cheap and flimsy, he thought, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to wait for the ice cream to melt. Instead he improvised and brought the pint to his mouth, licking off the top. He intended to eat it out of the carton as if it were an ice-cream cone. A big ice-cream cone.

  He went back to the car and sat on the fender as he bit into the frozen Fudge Whirl. His teeth ached from the cold, but that didn’t matter. He had an urgent need for some “secret ingredient.”

  The motor vibrated his butt. Sunny hadn’t shut it off. Eventually the heat from his hand started to melt the edges of the ice cream, so he could run his tongue around the rim and finally get a decent mouthful. Gradually a warm swell began to course through his veins. After a few minutes he felt as if he were radiating heat.

  Like the sun, he thought. Sun Records. Elvis’s first label. Radiating like the Sun. The Sun King. It’s good to be king.

  He smiled to himself as he looked through the windshield, shading his eyes against the glare. It was too bright to see their faces, but he could see the shapes of Dorie’s and Sunny’s heads and shoulders. Maybe he should be like Elvis, he thought. Go away and come back. Come back as somebody else.

  I’d still be the king, he thought. I’d be a better king.

  But to do that, he’d have to leave it all behind. He’d have to get rid of a few things, too. No loose ends. Marvelli in the trunk would have to go for sure, he thought. Sunny and Dorie should go, too, unfortunately. They knew too much about him. Dorie’s a dim bulb—she’ll blab to anyone who’s nice to her, he thought. And Sunny’s got a lot of yang in her yin. She’d try to screw him—blackmail, extortion, something like that. Maybe even assassination. She’d get into it, do it just because she’s never done it before. That’s the trouble with people like her, they’ll do anything. Sex is one thing, but then there’s the rest of life. You need limits. Dominatrices don’t have any. That’s why Sunny is dangerous.

  He licked the Fudge Whirl, feeling downright toasty, staring at the dark shapes of the two women through the glare of the windshield, thinking about what he had to do to them. Putting together a plan was making him feel good. It was giving him energy, giving him a good shot of positive chi. He had to reinvent himself—that was a definite. Shed this skin and grow another one. Same way he had the last time.

  The ice cream was getting soft. He squeezed the carton to make it rise to the top so he could get more. He studied the logo on the carton and thought about the money. He had accumulated a lot of money as Arnie Bloomfield. And he had the house in Haight-Ashbury. And the condo in Costa Rica. He had a lot of goodies as Arnie Bloomfield.

  But what’s money? he thought. Screw it. I can always make more. That’s no problem. There’s always something to steal.

  But what about the smack? That was major.

  He’d started out with a ton of it, and he’d hardly made a dent. He had enough “secret ingredient” to keep making Elmer Fudge Whirl for the next thirty years.

  He thought about it for a minute, then started shaking his head. “Bad reasoning,” he mumbled to himself, swiping ice cream from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. “Nothing is forever. Nobody’s l
ucky chi holds out of that long.”

  Sunny poked her head out the window. “You say something?”

  “I’m chanting,” he said.

  “Bull.”

  “Dharma bull.” He flashed a silly grin at her.

  “You’re so Grateful Dead,” she said with a sneer.

  “So? That’s good.”

  “It’s old,” she said.

  “Do you think I’m old?”

  “Definitely.”

  “So why do you hang around with me?”

  “You have money. You can afford me.”

  “Oh.” Krupnick nodded to himself. It was all coming clear to him. Sunny didn’t give a crap about him. The only one she cared about was that dishrag Agnes—and that stupid dog. Sunny only wanted him for his money. Somehow he always knew that, but now that she’d come right out and said it, he had to do something. Things had to change.

  “Hey, Dorie,” he called out.

  Dorie stuck her pretty head out the window.

  “Do you love me for my money, too?” he asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “You love Barry for his money?”

  She shrugged her shoulder and tilted her head forward, trying to figure out what answer he wanted to hear. “What I feel for Barry is different,” she said. “You know that.”

  “I’m not sure I do.”

  “I’m married to Barry.”

  “But you hang out with me.”

  “Right.” She brightened up as if he’d solved the puzzle for her. “So Barry’s your husband, and I’m, like, what? You’re bimbo?”

  “No,” she said with a deep frown.

  “Bimbu, bimbino, bimbop—what’s the male version of a bimbo?”

  “Himbo” Sunny said. “But in this case chump will do.” She was doing her dominatrix thing, trying to hurt him, but she didn’t realize that she was the one who was going to get hurt. Big time. Her ticket was about to expire.

  And remember, Sunny. No tickie, no shirty.

  He tipped the carton to his mouth and drank the last dribs of the ice cream. It was almost milk shake consistency. He felt better now, confident again. In fact, he felt great.

  “Okay,” he said, dropping the empty carton on the pavement, “let’s get his show on the road.” He got back into the car and slammed the door closed. “Drive!”