Ladykiller

by Lawrence Light

  The large-pawed ticket collector made a swipe at Ace and missed. “Hey, asshole.You got to pay.”

  The ticket collector did a double take when Nita swerved around him and charged through the closing door into the auditorium.

  “Hey,” he called in vain. “Get back here.”Yet because it was too much aggravation, he gave up the chase and went back to his post, where a half-eaten meatball sandwich awaited him.

  Panting from the run and the adrenaline, Nita pulled off the sunglasses. She had to find Ace in here, and no one could identify her in the flickering darkness. Thanks to the shades, her eyes quickly adjusted. On the screen, a demonically leering farmer had pinned a naked woman to the barn floor and was pumping into her with his remarkable anatomy. Solitary male heads were scattered throughout the theater. No one was running down the aisles toward the exit signs.

  Thrusting her hand into her bag and gripping the good steel, Nita stalked down the center aisle.The men sat as still as mummies. Except for one who was busy pulling at his lap. The whole bunch of them should be exterminated.

  Nita was very deliberate in her search. Ace could be crouched among the seats, low to the sticky floor.

  Then Nita heard the slapping of feet behind her. Somehow, Ace was crashing through the door they had just come in. She doubled back after him. Ace squirted past the ticket collector, who sat on a stool clutching his dripping sandwich.

  When Nita reached the door to the street, the ticket collector was half out of his cage and managed to snag her left arm. She gasped at the pain in her shoulder socket.

  “Okay, lady,” the ticket collector fog horned. “None of your fucking games.You owe me seven-fifty.” He put down the sandwich. One of its meatballs had plopped out onto the filthy floor.

  Nita’s free right hand pulled out the .45 and stuck it in the man’s flaccid face. “Let go of me, you piece of scum,” she yelled. The ticket collector did as ordered. He held up his meaty hands in supplication. “Hey, no problemo. I’m cool.”

  Nita jammed the gun back into her bag and slapped the sunglasses in place. It was easy to find Ace in the bobbing, throbbing mass. He was the only one running. He almost had the length of a block on her.

  Nita pounded after her quarry, twisting through the thicket of hips that separated them.Then Ace made a mistake. He looked behind him for Nita and collided with a bag lady’s heavily laden shopping cart of rags, bundles, bottles, and cans. Ace and the cart toppled onto the sidewalk. Bottles smashed.

  Ace lay there, dazed.The old woman hovered over him, flapping her arms hen-like and nattering her outrage. Passing pedestrians gathered for a drama. A gang of teenage boys in turned-backward baseball caps emerged from a subway station and broke into laughter at the sight.

  Shaking the shock out of his head, Ace focused on Nita as she bore down on him. He struggled to his feet and sent bottles and cans flying.

  “Ace, you clumsy bastard,” the bag lady howled.

  “Fuck you, Stinky,” Ace yelled. He threaded through the knot of teenagers and catapulted himself down the subway stairs.

  Nita neatly skirted the bag lady’s debris on the sidewalk and pounded after him. She threaded through the teenagers and loped down the steps. Ace was limping —limping— ahead in a long, lonely tunnel.

  The boys, however, suddenly ran past Nita with their turbocharged youthful energy, turned around, and formed a line in front of her. She came to an abrupt stop.

  “Where you going, pretty momma?” the largest one said. He had a ring through his nose and a cocky grin.The boys circled around her. The large one stepped close, ogled her breasts and said, “What’s a fine-looking thing like you doing hiding herself behind them shades?”

  Nita pulled out her .45 and jammed it it into his waistband, pointing downward. “I’ll blow your balls off, you worthless parasite,” she told him, an inch from his instantly slack face.

  “Sh-sh-sh-sh-shit,” he stammered.

  In a squeak of sneaker rubber, the other boys took off for the street.

  “You’re no damn good and you deserve to die,” she said. “Oh, fuck,” he said. “Please, God, n-n-n-n-n-no.”

  Nita noted with pleasure that he had wet his pants. She withdrew the gun and aimed it at his right eye. “I ought to,” she said. But then she lowered the gun. “There will be time. Believe me.”

  She ran after Ace’s hobbling form.

  The boy sank to his knees and sobbed.

  The blood lust pounded its savage tattoo in Nita’s temples.

  To Ace, the pain was an anklet of fire. Every step with his left leg shot shafts of agony up to his hip and into his groin. He made little sobs of hurt and fear as he chugged up to the subway turnstiles. He had no token. So he hoisted himself up and slid his butt along the turnstile’s metal casing. On the other side, he came down hard on his left foot and howled in torment.

  He was on the subway platform, an empty wilderness of stained concrete and girders that offered no sanctuary, no hiding, no salvation. The trench for the subway tracks ran either way, damp and relentless as the River Styx, into tunnels of final darkness. He peered desperately down the tracks for some inspiration. No one was there to help him.

  “Turn around, Ace,” Nita said, slightly out of breath but thoroughly in control.

  He turned slowly, the boiling air whooshing in and out of his lungs, to confront the dark zero of the gun barrel’s opening. “Why?”

  “It’s for the best, Ace,” she said. “You’ll be better off.”

  “Bullshit,” he whined. “I don’t deserve to die.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  “Hold on a minute,” he pleaded. His entire body was shaking.

  She tensed her arms to fire.

  Tears slalomed down Ace’s cheeks, into his scraggly half-beard, and dripped onto the platform. “I love you, Nita,” he said. “How can you do this to me?”

  “It’s not hard,” she said. Her finger began pulling the trigger back.

  “Billy Ray Battle knows about you,” Ace blurted.

  Nita stopped. “Who?”

  “My friend Billy. I was sitting with him in the Foxy Lady when you came in.”

  “Is he the one Dillon arrested first?” Nita asked, lowering the gun slightly. Ace nodded, and she said, “And is he the one who shouted at me on the playground?”Ace nodded again. “What does he know about me?”

  “That you want to kill me.”

  “Well, he sounds like another candidate for removal,” she said, and she raised the gun again, prepared to fire.

  A train roared into the station in a metallic clatter and a gust of foul wind. Surprised, Nita momentarily froze. The subway doors parted and a walrus-moustached transit cop sauntered out onto the platform.

  “Help. Police. She’s gonna kill me,” Ace shouted.

  Nita quickly stashed the gun into her purse before the cop turned. She walked briskly toward the turnstiles.

  “She’s getting away,” Ace cried.

  “What’s your noise, scumbag?” the cop said to Ace.

  Ace stood wordlessly and watched Nita’s head kerchief recede into the dank distance. When the suspicious cop pushed him against the wall to frisk him, Ace smiled gratefully. He could have kissed him.

  THIRTEEN

  Dave met Don Cole for a late afternoon beer at McSorley’s. They sat far from the TV, where the Sunday football game drew the other patrons, bugs to the light. Dave had met Cole when the two were rookies in the 19th Precinct. Cole left the force to go to St. John’s Law School and then joined the Securities and Exchange Commission as an investigator.

  Dave came right to the point. “I need information about an investigation.”

  Cole inspected the foam on his beer. “Dave, I can’t tell you about any ongoing stuff. Maybe if Mancuso formally —”

  “Forget Mancuso. And forget formally. This is about a dead woman. Name of Kimberly Worth.”

  “One of the Ladykiller victims.”

  “Uh-huh.”r />
  “Of Corson & Worth.”

  “You got that right.”

  Cole downed some brew and pursed his lips in thought. “I guess she can’t sue us for defamation of character. But you haven’t heard a word from me.”

  “Fine.”

  “Kimberly Worth was a real classy girl.Went to Stanford Business School. Had a hot rep as a young broker at one of the best firms on the Street.Along came the 1987 stock market crash. She got caught doing all kinds of unethical shit to save her hide. Traded from her own account and ignored her customers. Whatever it took to come out ahead. Her license got revoked.”

  “So how did she end up heading an outfit that had her name on the door?”

  Cole lit a cigarette and sent dragon plumes of smoke shooting out his nostrils. “She got a temporary injunction. Sued everbody in sight. Since nobody legit would hire her, she went into business with this major sleaze, Corson. They started a bucket shop. And it’s still pretty profitable.”

  “Tell me how a bucket shop works, exactly,” Dave said.

  “Specializes in penny stocks,” Cole said. “That’s anything less than five bucks a share, usually. Their brokers work the phones, night and day, doing cold calls. They love a retiree with a little money to burn, but not a lot of market sophistication. They dangle riches in front of the poor slob. Tell him the stock will take off any day now. When it does move up — from the demand generated by the bucket shop, as often as not — they persuade the pigeon to sell and roll his gains into another hot number. Every time there’s a sale, the brokerage gets a commission. This goes on and on. The customer never can cash out and go home.”

  “Not good,” Dave said.

  “It gets worse. Lots of times, the broker will make sales without the client’s permission. More commissions roll in. That was the specialty of Corson & Worth. These sleazeballs convinced retirees to pledge their homes as collateral for loans to buy more stock. Unreal. We have documented cases where their shenanigans cleaned out several old people.They lost their houses, everything.At least two I know wound up homeless. One poor widow died of overexposure. She used to give bridge parties, for Christ’s sake.” He shook his head and took a drink. “Corson & Worth — they’re pigs. We’ll get them sooner or later. Corson won’t budge and throws up a smokescreen of legal crap to stop us.”

  “How about Kimberly Worth? Did she feel guilty? Maybe want to quit? Get help or something?”

  “Are you kidding? That bitch was cold. All she cared about was how much long green she was raking in. I mean, she had a nice place in the Hamptons, a swanky condo on the Upper East Side, the works.”

  “Any clue if she ever sought psychological counseling for anything?”

  “Nothing that I know of. Unless she was worried about her habit.”

  “Her habit? What habit?”

  Cole looked startled, then laughed. “Hey, I thought you cops knew everything. Kimberly Worth had a horse habit. Big time.”

  “No she didn’t. There was an autopsy. It would have come out. Besides, I examined the body myself and there were no track marks. Nothing.”

  Cole shook his head, grinning. “Are you living in the fifties? Track marks? She didn’t shoot it, she inhaled it. It was designer horse. Actually, it was probably some synthetic. Probably got it from Mexico or Belgium or something. Maybe it didn’t show up in the blood, but she was doing it and it could be she was worried about it. Other than that, I don’t think she had a care in the world.”

  “Until she faced that .45,” Dave said thoughtfully.

  “Until then.”

  Billy Ray Battle spent the early evening pacing back and forth on the other side of the street from Nita’s apartment building. A big man like him was conspicuous. If he simply stood there and waited for her, someone would notice. So he had to keep moving. But where the fuck was she? He spied a pay phone in a Korean grocery. He dialed directory assistance and asked for the number of the West Side Crisis Center.

  “The hotline?” the operator asked.

  “Hotline, coldline, whatever fucking line you got.”

  An electronic female voice, which was vaguely seductive,

  chirped out the number.

  “Just one damn minute,” Billy Ray said. “You got a pen?” he called

  to the Korean counterman. Snatching the pen from him, Billy Ray

  copied the number onto his palm when the voice repeated it. An older woman answered the hotline. “Crisis center, may I help

  you?” She sounded Jewish, whiny, motherly.

  “Looking for Nita.This here’s an old friend of hers.” “I’m sure you are, dear. Nita stopped by for a minute, but she’s

  off today. Is there anything I can help you with?”

  “She go home?” Billy Ray demanded.

  “I don’t know where she goes. If you have a problem —” “Don’t got no fucking problem.” Billy Ray slammed the receiver

  home and quickly returned to the street. Could he have missed her? He could taste her already.Then he saw her approaching, her legs

  in snug jeans, her ripe breasts in a nice pullover, the hair, the face. His

  fingers and crotch tingled.

  Nita needed time to plan. She studied the sidewalk as she headed home. Megan wanted to have dinner, but she couldn’t spare the time tonight.The younger woman’s eagerness to please was more than Nita could handle now. Life had become entirely too complicated. Planning was the answer.

  She was sorting out her keys at the front door to her building when she felt the looming presence behind her.

  “Open the door, darlin’,” came the man’s drawl from behind and above. “Got us some things to do.”

  She stifled the yelp that shot up from her heart. And she froze, gripping the keys.

  “Open the door, darlin’.”

  Nita’s hand slid toward her bag. But the man’s massive paw was there already, clamping it shut. He slid it off her shoulder.

  “Don’t want no trouble, do we? Trouble gets in the way of loving, every time.” His voice had the low, honey menace of a tiger’s purr.

  Her own voice came out surprisingly steady. “If you don’t leave me alone and drop my bag, I’ll yell for the police.”

  His broad fingers slid across her throat. “You try that, and you won’t make no more noise, ever again.” He squeezed gently.

  She took a tortured sip of air, and said nothing.

  “Now, let that key in, nice and easy,” he urged.

  Her key zigzagged toward the lock, slid in, and turned.The door opened with a disheartening snap.

  She felt his erection against her behind.

  “See how nice that key went in?” His lips were near her ear.

  She trudged up the stairs, his hand still around her throat. At her apartment door, she dropped the keys. She bent to retrieve them, and as she did, he bent over with her, his hand still at her throat, his bulge bumping against her ass. Nita opened the door and they entered the apartment, which was dark except for the fish tank, lit by an eerie inner glow.The door closed.

  His hand moved from her throat to the collar of her pullover. “Let’s take them clothes off.

  “You were with Ace at the playground, weren’t you?” she asked. The dead calm in her tone remained.

  “Maybe I was, little darlin’.” The large hand roughly fondled her breasts. “That was then.Tonight is now.”

  “Let me turn around and look at you,” Nita said, spicing the words with a flirtatious lilt. “You seem big and strong.”

  The hand went to one of her shoulders and turned her to face him. He stood there in dark immensity, the lusty grin catching the light from the fish tank.

  “You have an eye patch,” she said. “I like men with eye patches. They’re so — manly.”

  “You do?” His grin widened.

  “Yes. Like an old shirt ad.”

  The grin dropped a few watts. “What you say?”

  “I wish you weren’t carrying a purse.” She gestured
at her bag, which he had clamped in his other hand. “A man like you wouldn’t want that, would he?”

  He delved inside the bag. “Well, well, lookie here. Got ourselves that piece you was shooting at poor little Ace.You got the fire in you, girl. I like my women wild.” He threw the bag behind him, where it lay at the foot of the door, the gun inside and too far from her.

  “Why don’t we turn on the light, so we can see each other better?” she suggested.

  He flicked the wall switch.Totally visible, he appeared less terrifying. It was a good sign that he had obeyed her.

  “Strip off them clothes, darling,” he said.

  “I need a drink of water first,” Nita said.

  “You can drink all you want after,” he said.

  “Let me get my drink of water, Billy Ray,” she said. Her knowing his name jolted across his face. Before he could respond, she turned, and walked into the kitchen.

  He followed her. “You make it a short drink. Hear?”

  Good. Nita had won another psychological point. She picked up her coffee cup, where it sat upside-down in the dish drainer, right beside the toaster oven and the butcher block full of carving knives. She rinsed out the cup and filled it with water. She forced herself to down the entire thing.

  “I’m sorry about what Dillon did to your eye,” she said.

  A storm gathered about his mouth and remaining eye. “What you say, woman? You mocking me?”

  Careful. She had to work this just right. “No, no, no, Billy Ray. He’s a terrible man. I’m sure you would have demolished him if it were a fair fight. But cops don’t fight fair.”

  “You damn straight.” He pulled back his shoulders. “Now, take them fucking clothes off.”

  “Billy Ray, do you know what would be really exciting?”

  His lips puckered like a little boy’s. “What?”

  “Why don’t you take your clothes off first? Then you could take mine off.”

  “Well —”

  “Oh, please. For me, Billy Ray.”

  Somewhere inside the most brutal, woman-hating rapist lurked a desire to be bossed around in sex by a woman. The grin returned. “That turn you on, huh?”