Devil's Food

by Anthony Bruno

  “Where is she? What did you do with her?”

  “I sent her off for a seaweed wrap. On me. But is she the one?”

  “Yes, I think she is.”

  “What’re we going to do, Martha?” He looked like he was going to wet his pants.

  She put her finger to her lips, then picked up a pen and scribbled on a scratch pad: “Don’t talk. Room may be bugged.” She handed the pad to Roger.

  He chewed on his fist, staring at the pad, shaking his head.

  “Don’t panic,” she mouthed silently, then wrote another message on the pad: “Go down to patio. I’ll meet you in 5 min.”

  He read it and nodded. “I’ll meet you,” he mouthed, pointing down at the floor.

  She nodded and waved him off, then waited until she heard him get on the elevator. This was bad, she thought. This bitch Loretta was screwing everything up. She had to be stopped.

  Martha Lee reached into her purse on the floor and pulled out her wallet. There was a scrap of paper with a phone number and a room number on it. She picked up the phone and dialed. It rang five times.

  “Yeah?”

  “Is this the Sunny Days Motor Court?”

  “Yup.”

  “Room 6, please.”

  “I’ll see if they’re in.”

  Martha Lee frowned. They? Joe’s not by himself?

  The phone rang three times before someone picked up.

  “What do you want?” It was a woman’s voice. Real nasty.

  “Is Joe there?”

  “And who wants to know?”

  The blood drained out of Martha Lee’s face as her gaze rose to her “fat” picture pinned to the bulletin board. It was Ricky.

  “Who is this?” Ricky demanded. “Say something.”

  Martha Lee hung up, her heart slamming in her chest. Torpedo Joe Pickett was here with Ricky Macrae. Ricky must be the one who’d hired Joe, not Tom Junior, because Ricky hated her guts. And if Martha Lee knew Ricky, she’d make sure Joe did the deed. Shit! Martha Lee knew she had to get out of there fast.

  But then she looked at the framed picture of her daughter. What about Becky? she fretted. What about the cocoa money? Banks were closed now. She couldn’t wire the money until tomorrow. If she was still alive tomorrow.

  Unless the IRS got her first. Thanks to Loretta. A shooting pain zinged through Martha Lee’s stomach. Her chest felt tight.

  Her heart was pounding out of control. She leaned over the side of her chair and pulled out her bottom drawer all the way, reaching past the bag of rubber bands and the box of staples, past the bag of Junior Mints, the Pepperidge Farm Chocolate Chunk Cookies, and the can of Planter’s Mixed Nuts, to the very back of the drawer. She burrowed her hand under a messy stack of loose plain envelopes and pulled out a chrome-finish .22 Browning automatic. It was just like the one she kept in her night table.

  She put the gun in her handbag, covering it with some used tissues. Her hands were shaking. The gun made her nervous, but if she had to, she’d use it on anyone who got in her way.

  She picked up her bag and stood up, a lump in her throat as she stared at the photo of Becky. Don’t worry, sweetheart, she thought. No one’s gonna stop me. No one.

  16

  “Joe! Joe!” Ricky was in the other room, yelling her head off.

  “What?” Torpedo Joe was sitting on the toilet, reading the “For Sale” ads in the Fort Myers paper, looking at the motorcycle listings.

  “Do you know who just called?” she yelled through the door.

  He rubbed his stubbly neck. Can’t even take a shit in peace with this woman, he thought.

  “Are you listening to me, goddammit?”

  “Yes, I’m listening.”

  “That was Martha Lee on the phone. She wanted to talk to you.” Ricky banged the door open and glared down at him from the doorway. She wasn’t wearing a thing. All he had on were his underpants, but they were down around his ankles.

  “How’d she know to call you here?” Ricky demanded. “And what the hell’s she want with you anyway? You said you didn’t see her when you went over to that Rancho Bono place.”

  Joe rubbed his neck again. He had told Ricky that, hadn’t he? Well, he couldn’t exactly tell her the truth, which was that Martha Lee had the sweetest little titties he’d ever seen, and that for such a little bitty person she sure knew what she was doing in bed. He couldn’t tell Ricky that, now could he? She certainly wasn’t going to be able to appreciate his circumstance. You had to have a man’s unique perspective to understand why he’d slept with Martha Lee instead of killed her the way he was supposed to.

  “You’re not answering me, Joe.”

  All Ricky needed was a rolling pin in her hand, Joe thought. That’s the way she’d been acting ever since they got down here. Why, why, why? She questioned everything he did and even wanted to know everything he was thinking. It was a bad frame of mind for a woman to be in.

  “Joe!”

  “Ricky,” he finally said with a sigh, “we just performed an act of beauty back there in that bed. My feelings for you were solid and positive until you started yakking at me. Why’re you trying to ruin that oh-so-beautiful mood?” He wished she’d close the door, so he could finish his business.

  “Don’t give me any of your bullshit, Joe. Why is that bitch calling here looking for you? What’re you up to?”

  Joe dropped the newspaper and showed her the innocence of his open palms. “Do you mind if I have a little privacy while I take care of my sanitary needs? I’ll be right out, and we can discuss it then.”

  Ricky sneered at him before she slammed the door shut. Joe stood up and pulled out an arm’s length of toilet paper. Shit, he thought as he wound the paper around his hand. Why’d Martha Lee have to call here? Women were nothing but complications. They liked to make things complicated. Men liked to keep things simple.

  He bent over and thought about that some more. This wasn’t a complicated situation, he told himself. But Ricky and Martha Lee wanted to make it complicated. Basically, he had just two things to do: kill this IRS person for Martha Lee, then kill Martha Lee. Only thing complicated about it was that he had to make sure he got paid from Martha Lee for the first killing before he turned around and killed her to get his second fee from Ricky. That was the only tricky part. Except for the fact that Martha Lee was awful sweet to him and Ricky was being a bitch on wheels. Martha Lee may be a liar and a cheat, but she sure was a honey pie. To his mind, eliminating such a superior specimen of femininity would be a damn shame.

  Of course on the other hand, there was biker honor at stake here. Ricky had hired him first, and she was representing her brother, Tom Junior, a true brother of the open road. Joe wasn’t taking care of Martha Lee for just Ricky; it was for a fellow biker.

  But Martha Lee was awful nice, the kind of woman he’d like to look up whenever he happened to be in the area—

  But see? This was how women made things complicated. Well, dammit, it wasn’t complicated. He was gonna stick to his plan. Two hits, two fees, simple as that. Get himself a decent hog, then head west. Simple.

  He threw the toilet paper in the john and flushed it.

  “What the hell you doing in there?” Ricky yelled through the door.

  “Put your stopwatch away, Ricky. I’m finished.” He washed his hands and dried them on a facecloth, the only unused towel they had left. “Now what’s the big deal?” he said, coming out of the bathroom.

  Ricky was lying on the unmade bed, still naked, pouting at the TV set. He was about to get in with her so they could talk when he suddenly noticed something on the sheets on her side. It was a goddamn pistol-grip shotgun. Holy shit, he thought.

  “Ricky,” he said, holding his position, wishing he weren’t in his skivvies, “what’s bothering you? Let’s talk about it.” First move she made, he was gonna dive for the shotgun.

  She didn’t budge, though. Just pouted at the TV with her arms crossed over those big jugs of hers. He didn’t dare take
his eyes off her, but he could hear what she was watching on TV. One of those true-life cop shows. People getting arrested, crying and whining, kids in their underwear balling their eyes out, people making each other miserable, and the cops just making it worse. He hated those shows.

  “I bought it for you,” she mumbled, not looking at him.

  “What?”

  “I bought the goddamn gun for you. I thought you’d like it.”

  He inched closer to the bed. “You bought it for me? Where?”

  “There was a guy out in the parking lot this morning selling stuff out of his trunk. You were still asleep.”

  He moved a little closer and got a better look at the weapon. It was a twelve-gauge pistol-grip Mossberg 500. Not new, but nice. He wondered if it was the six-shot model or the eight. He looked at pouting Ricky and suddenly felt like a real piece of shit. See? This was what women did. They made things complicated.

  He picked up the shotgun and got into bed, leaning against the headboard. He wanted to check out the shotgun, but he knew he’d better pay attention to Ricky first.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  She didn’t say, “You’re welcome.”

  On the TV set some dickhead highway patrolman was hassling a kid for speeding, browbeating the kid because he’d smelled pot in the car. He was wearing one of those dickhead Smoky the Bear hats.

  “I said thank you, Ricky,” Joe repeated. “I really mean it. I’m not used to getting presents, but this is one mighty fine weapon.”

  No response.

  He held the shotgun by the barrel and circled her big boo-bie with the butt of the pistol grip. “I might even use this on Martha Lee. If you want me to.”

  She huffed her shoulders and moved her tit away. It jiggled real nice.

  He reached for her tittie again, but she buried it under her crossed arm. “Look, Ricky,” he said. “I gave Martha Lee this phone number for a reason. How’m I gonna shoot her over there with all those people around? I was thinking I could lure her out here and do it out in the woods where no one’ll hear nothing.”

  “Bullshit,” she grumbled, still staring at the TV.

  “I swear to Christ, honey bun. That was my plan. Lure her out here, then do the deed—”

  “Don’t lie to me, Joe.” She unfolded her arms and finally showed what she was holding, pointing it in his face. “I’m not in the mood for your crap, Joe.” She had that itty-bitty two-shot derringer in her hand, the one she’d pulled on him up at her mama’s farm, two itty-bitty barrels right in front of his face.

  “Now, Ricky, why’re you pulling a gun on me? I thought we were like amigo and amiga in this thing here.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I thought you had left your little popper home. Don’t you think I can protect you?”

  She just glared at him.

  “So why’d you bring it? You’re hurting my feelings here.”

  “I brought it because of that parole-officer bitch who pulled her gun on me at my mama’s house, that’s why. I’m not gonna let that ever happen to me again. She just better hope I never run into her. From now on, anybody screws with me, they’re gonna be sorry. Including you, Joe.” She jammed the little thing into the braid under his lip.

  He backed away from it slowly, knowing he couldn’t get the shotgun up fast enough. Besides, he didn’t even know if the shotgun was loaded. “Baby doll,” he said, “the only screwing around I want to do is right here with you in this bed.” He tried to get to her tit again, hoping he could soothe the savage beast, but he could just barely reach her with the very end of his middle finger.

  She jammed the derringer back under his lip. “I’m not kidding, Joe.”

  “I don’t believe you are, honey bun,” he said, trying to talk normal with that little gun pressed up against his lip.

  Complicated, he thought, wishing he could get his hands around her neck, but not daring to try with that itty-bitty, mother-loving derringer still pinned to his face. That’s the way women always have to have it. Complicated.

  “You planning on staying like this all day?” he mumbled, frozen in place.

  Marvelli sat on the edge of the hospital bed, trying to hold onto Renée’s hand, but she kept pulling it away.

  “Will you cool it?” she scolded. “I’m not gonna die.”

  But Marvelli wasn’t so sure about that. She looked terrible. Her cheeks were sunken, and her skin was yellow-gray. Her voice was just a raspy whisper, and her eyes kept going in and out of focus. They cleared up and focused whenever he aggravated her, though, so he tried to keep it up just to keep her going, but he was having a hard time kidding around. He was worried sick that this might be the end of the line. He’d never seen her this bad.

  He took the plastic glass of water from the night table and held the straw to her mouth, but she turned away and made a face. “Will you stop?” she said. “You’re forgetting all your lines. You’re supposed to tell me not to die or else.”

  His throat was tight. “All right”—he took a sip of water—“don’t die or else.”

  “Or else what?”

  “Or else . . . I don’t know.” If he said another word, he knew he’d break down and start blubbering, and he didn’t want to do that, not in front of her.

  “Hey”—she took his hand—”you better buck up, pal. I can’t do everything, you know.”

  “Yeah . . . I know.”

  He stared at the IV bag hanging from a pole next to the bed, a long tube leading down into Renée’s skinny arm. He thought of it as an hourglass, time running out.

  The woman in the next bed started to cough, a deep, wet cough that went on for a full minute or more. Marvelli couldn’t see her because the curtain was drawn. “What’s her story?” he whispered to Renée.

  “Lung cancer,” Renée said, shaking her head gravely. “And she still smokes.”

  He could tell from Renée’s expression that she wasn’t giving her roommate long to live. That was the amazing thing about Renée—she could distance herself from other sick people. They were sick, but she wasn’t. She just wasn’t feeling particularly well, that’s all. Marvelli had never been able to figure out if this was extreme positive thinking or an elaborate system of denial.

  Suddenly he noticed the wallpaper. It was a pattern of tiny bouquets of red, blue, and yellow flowers, thousands of them, and suddenly it made him mad. The whole room with its comfortable chairs and its cheery curtains made him furious. He would’ve preferred a regular sterile hospital room where they treated the patients like broken clocks—fixed ’em up and got ’em out. But this homey decor was bullshit. It was for the terminal patients, the ones who would be checking out soon. The hospital was trying to make the last days a little nicer for the hopeless cases. Like the lady with lung cancer behind the curtain.

  “Stop,” Renée said.

  “Stop what?”

  “You’re driving yourself crazy. I can see it in your face. Just stop.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  She closed her eyes as if she were suddenly dizzy and waited until it passed. “I’m not going to die. It’s my goddamn body, my life. Okay?”

  He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Don’t get upset.”

  She turned away from his touch. “Don’t baby me. I know what’s going on. It’s not my time. I’ll know when it is, and I’ll let you know.”

  “But what if—?”

  “Trust me. I know. It’s my body. It lies and it cheats, but I know how it operates.” She squeezed his hand. “Trust me.”

  Can I really? he wondered, circling her knuckles with his thumb.

  His beeper suddenly went off in his pocket. He reached for it automatically, then stopped himself before he looked at it. He shouldn’t be worrying about work, not now, not here.

  “Go ahead, look at it,” Renée said, reading his mind. “Stop being so gooney.”

  He looked at the readout on his beeper and didn’t recognize the number at
all. What area code is 305? he wondered. Then he saw the last four digits—1111. Shit! It was Loretta. She was in trouble.

  “What?” Renée’s eyes were suddenly sharp and focused.

  “It’s Loretta,” he said. “Something’s wrong.”

  “Where? In Florida?”

  “Yeah.” He reached for the beige phone on the bed table. “I gotta call this 1RS guy down there and tell him to go check—”

  “No, you go.” Renée held onto his sleeve to keep him from putting the phone to his ear. “You go.”

  “But I gotta call this guy Temple and tell him—”

  “Call him, but then you have to go. How could you just leave your partner on the job in another state all by herself? Are you crazy?”

  “I came back to see you, Renée.”

  “I don’t care. You shouldn’t have.”

  “But I was worried about you.”

  “You’re always worried. What else is new? Call this IRS guy, then you get yourself back down there.”

  “But—”

  “I’m okay. I will not die. Trust me, will you? If this were really serious, I’d tell you. In two days I’ll be back home.”

  “But—”

  She looked him in the eye. “Do you trust me or don’t you?”

  Her eyes were sharp and intense. There was even a little color in her cheeks now.

  “Of course I trust you.”

  But what if you don’t know? he thought. Death doesn’t call ahead. It just shows up. Right?

  “Get your ass down there.”

  He thought about Loretta down there on the fat farm, wondering what the emergency could be. Then he remembered that Torpedo Joe was down there.

  Shit.

  He squeezed Renée’s hand and glanced down at the four ones on his beeper.

  “You promise you’re not gonna die?”

  Renée turned away and coughed into her pillow. “I promise. . . . Now don’t ask me again.”

  Marvelli looked into her sallow face, then looked at the phone. He didn’t know what to do.

  17

  Loretta was getting worried. Where the hell is Marvelli? she wanted to know as she followed Martha Lee through the indoor gym where dozens of guests were grunting and groaning, jiggling their arm fat to lift barbells and hand weights, risking their spinal disks to move stacks of iron bricks on Nautilus machines, heaving their haunches as they climbed Stairmasters, huffing and puffing and racing to nowhere on stationary bicycles. Just watching this sweaty circus of false hopes made her anxious. Come on, Marvelli, she thought. Stop fooling around.