Women of the Mean Streets

by J. M. Redmann

  *

  The band playing at the Tropical Isle a half block off Bourbon was entertaining enough to keep them in there after leaving the restaurant. Cain had switched to water after the first drink, ignoring the teasing from the guys for being such a lightweight. In reality she could most probably outdrink them, but she never thought it was a talent to brag about, and she rarely lost control in such an open location.

  Nicolette finally touched her again when the string of lively beach type songs gave way to “Red Red Wine.” “Dance with me,” Nicolette said, her accent more pronounced with the amount of alcohol she’d consumed.

  “How about one dance, then I take you home?”

  The makeshift dance floor was really an empty space between the high-topped tables and bar stools, but Nicolette didn’t seem to mind as Cain stood and put her hands on Nicolette’s hips. It was an invitation for Nicolette to get close enough to her that it appeared they were sharing her coat.

  “If you want to take me home because you can’t resist me one minute longer then we’ll leave, but don’t offer because you think I’m drunk.”

  “You’re not?” Cain asked, leaning back to get a better look at Nicolette’s glassy eyes.

  “I told you what our family business is,” Nicolette said, pouting. “It’s not as potent as Jameson, but liquor is a family tradition for us, too.”

  “You make us both sound like such lushes.” Cain kept her voice steady even though Nicolette had untucked her shirt in the back this time and was doing her best to get her hands into her pants.

  “Saying what is true isn’t an insult.” Nicolette smiled up at her. “So if you’re only playing with me, don’t be afraid to say it. I’m interested but not desperate.”

  When Nicolette turned and left, the front of Cain’s body felt cold, stunning her in place. She hadn’t expected her teasing to push Nicolette into bolting, and she took off when she lost sight of her.

  The crowd walking slowly down Bourbon was thicker than usual with all the family members in town for the various graduations taking place, but Cain was able to get a clear view in both directions. Nicolette was quick, but if she’d come this way she’d still be in sight, especially if she was trying to get around the sightseers.

  “Cain,” Merrick said when she turned and headed the opposite way.

  “It’s okay,” she said, heading quickly down the street toward Jackson Square. “I’ve got an apology to give.”

  Lou and Merrick were right behind her, their footsteps easier to hear as the crowds of people thinned. It was the quiet of the area that allowed her to hear the beginning of a scream that quickly died away as if the person had been either hit or gagged. The sound stopped her and she put her hand up for Lou and Merrick to stay behind her.

  Nicolette’s rashness had landed her against a brick wall in an alley with more trash cans than working lights next to the doors that lined its length. It was obvious she’d been the one who’d screamed, and the knife the man was holding against her throat was as effective as a gag. Since Nicolette wasn’t carrying anything and had left without her coat, Cain figured the scumbag was after something other than robbery. If that was true then she’d given him his wish, only her version of something else would leave a lasting impression.

  “Get out of here if you don’t want to get hurt.”

  Cain’s first impression of the man when he grabbed Nicolette by the throat, pinning her in place so he could face her, was how big he was. He topped her six feet by a good four or five inches, but despite the knife he now pointed at her, she kept walking toward him. With only about five feet between them, she quickly noticed his expensive clothes and slicked-back hair, which made her think he was a man who enjoyed the image he found in any mirror.

  “This is between me and her,” the guy said, his words coming out slightly slurred.

  “That’s my date you’re mistreating, so I’m going to disagree with you on everything you’ve said so far. This is actually between me and you, and if you don’t get your hands off her it’s you who’s asking to get hurt.”

  “You work as a comedian around here?” He moved Nicolette so she was pressed against the front of his body. “If not you should, since you’re such a riot.”

  “Let her go and I’ll show you what a good time I can be.” She spread her arms out and smiled.

  Nicolette stood on her toes when he tightened his grip on her throat to lift her. Even in the low lighting Cain could see Nicolette’s look of disgust when he licked from her chin to her ear before laughing at what Cain assumed was Nicolette’s squirming. Nicolette stopped moving when his blade followed the same wet path in reverse, slicing into her skin from the middle of her cheek to her chin.

  Cain was amazed Nicolette only whimpered, and she moved closer, not lowering her arms to keep all his attention on her. “You telling me a big guy like you can’t get a date without that pretty knife?” she asked, ignoring for now the blood that dripped from Nicolette’s face to the front of her black minidress, leaving what resembled dark maroon pearls above her breasts.

  “Maybe I’m doing the Lord’s work and teaching this whore His word.”

  “I can see you’re a regular messiah,” she said, locking eyes with Nicolette for a moment.

  “Then get lost and leave us alone.”

  “You’re here to preach, but I’m here for other reasons, so no can do, Reverend.” She lowered her arms slowly, not wanting to startle the idiot into hurting Nicolette again.

  “Let me guess, sinning is your specialty and you need to hear the message as well? Then stick around, because there’s enough here for both of you.”

  “It’s true I come from a long line of sinners, but it’s not my specialty.”

  He moved his hand away from Nicolette so he could point the knife at Cain again. When he did, he also relaxed his hold around Nicolette’s neck so that she was able to flatten her feet to the ground. It was enough of an opening for Cain to make her move.

  She moved quickly to grab the hand he was holding the knife in, surprising him into widening his eyes and letting Nicolette go. Since she held his weapon hand with both of hers, he was able to land two hard punches to the side of her head. The idiot had made her ears ring but she wasn’t about to let go and give him an opportunity to bury his blade anywhere in her. He was pulling hard to break her grip as he lifted his fist again, so Cain turned to press her back into him, using the strength in her legs to drive him and off balance.

  When they fell together she heard Lou and Merrick run forward, but they didn’t intervene. Any advantage he’d had because of his size had momentarily disappeared when his head hit the pavement with enough force to make his fingers relax so his knife fell next to them. The guy tried to recover and push her off to pick it up, but Cain reached it first.

  “Stop trying to act like you can scare me. You don’t have the guts,” the guy said, laughing.

  Cain was sure the hotshot carried the blade to intimidate women like Nicolette, but pointing something lethal at someone meant you’d reached the point where you were prepared to use it—at least in her world. His scream was louder than Nicolette’s and his movements became frantic when she buried his knife in his hip to the hilt.

  Before he could pull it out she twisted it, making him scream again. This seemed to drain the fight out of him, so she pulled the knife out and threw it toward Lou’s feet. The guy stayed on his back, his eyes on the switchblade now open in her hand.

  “You never did ask what my specialty is, Reverend,” she said, placing the tip of her blade in the cleft in his chin. “Well?”

  He tried to draw his head back, but only widened the cut on his face when she didn’t let up. “What is it?”

  “Crucifixion when the situation calls for it.” She smiled as she said it and moved quickly away from him when she spotted his fist in her peripheral vision.

  “You’re lucky, but dead,” he said as he came to a sitting position, wincing in obvious pain as he pressed his
hand to his hip. The threat was laughable since he moved at a geriatric pace getting to his knees.

  “What was it you said about comedians, Reverend?” The kick she delivered to the underside of his jaw sent him sideways into a pile of garbage bags. “The next time you think about taking something from a woman who isn’t offering, I want you to think about the right side of your face,” she told him as she brought him back to a sitting position, pulling him up by his hair.

  “What do you mean?”

  Like he had with Nicolette, Cain rested her knife right under his ear. “If I find out you ever try this again, I’ll give you a matching scar on the left side.” She drew her hand down, retracing what he’d done with his tongue.

  He fell forward when she let his head go, holding his face as if he’d forgotten about the pain in his hip. In that position it was easy for Cain to take his wallet out of his back pocket. She laughed when she saw the family photo of this idiot with his wife and four children standing around him as he smiled and held a Bible against his chest. His hair was parted down the middle without the gel he’d slicked it back with that night, making him appear quite different.

  “You really are a reverend, aren’t you?” she asked, staring at the card in his walled that identified him as Reverend Jerome P. Smith of the Holy Briar of Christ Church, located in some northern town she’d never heard of.

  “Please, I need help.” His face was still down but Cain could tell he was crying.

  “If you’re talking about psychiatric help, I won’t argue with you, but there’s one thing before we get all those cuts taken care of.”

  “You’re letting him go?” Nicolette asked in a way that made Cain think no wasn’t the answer she was expecting.

  “Not yet.” Cain pushed Jerome over, and he didn’t move when Lou pressed his gun to his forehead. “Merrick, find Jerome’s phone for me, please.”

  “What for?” Jerome sounded more panicked than when she’d cut him.

  “To see how bright you are.” It was an older model, but Cain didn’t have a problem scrolling through the list of contacts. “Home.” She held it so he could see the screen. “Not smart at all for a womanizer like you, Jerome.”

  “You leave my family out of this.”

  “Or?” Cain asked, cocking her head slightly, interested in his answer.

  “I’ll pay you…whatever you want.” Jerome seemed to tack on the incentive when she didn’t jump at his first offer.

  “This won’t cost you much.” A little boy answered the phone and screamed for his mother when she asked for Mrs. Smith, and the woman who came on didn’t say much as Cain explained the situation.

  “Do you think this girl will press charges, too?”

  It wasn’t often Cain was surprised, but the woman’s question threw her. “It depends,” she said, staring at Jerome. “This time the police didn’t find him, I did.” She ended the call and dropped Jerome’s phone into her pocket along with his wallet. “You’ve done this before?” she asked Jerome, but he didn’t answer.

  “Cain,” Nicolette said, moving to stand next to her. “If you don’t mind, I’d like my father to handle this.”

  “That depends, too.” Cain tilted Nicolette’s head up to see the cut. It was deep enough to require stitches.

  “On what?” Nicolette tried to smile when Cain gently pressed Lou’s handkerchief to her face.

  “On how your father handles things like this, and if my name will be mentioned, if the police will be involved. Not that I’m afraid of an investigation, but if that’s what he’s going to do, I’d rather tell the story than have someone do it for me.”

  “Police are the last people Papa will call.”

  Cain’s French wasn’t good enough to keep up with Nicolette’s short but emotional call, but she offered Nicolette as much comfort as she could since she hadn’t moved away from her. Nicolette’s father, Michel Blanc, wasn’t interested in any witnesses. Cain left Lou and Merrick behind until he arrived to collect Jerome. No police also meant no emergency room visit, so Cain took Nicolette to the Casey family doctor. He was waiting at his office with a plastic surgeon who used fifty-six small neat stitches to close Nicolette’s wound.

  Cain held Nicolette’s hand until the doctor was finished, then took her back to the hotel in the Quarter where her family was staying. They’d made the short trip in silence and she’d put her arm around Nicolette when she’d leaned against her and pressed her lips to her forehead. There was no way to guess what Nicolette was thinking, but her thoughts centered on the possibility of her first impressions. If Nicolette was working undercover, she deserved a raise for what she’d gone through, because there was no way Jerome was part of the plan.

  Michel was waiting in the lobby and immediately put his arms around Nicolette, looking at Cain as he held his daughter and spoke quietly to her in French. With his arm still around Nicolette, he asked Cain to join them upstairs, not commenting when Lou followed them into the elevator.

  “My daughter’s hurt, but the wound she’s left with will heal,” he said after Nicolette closed one of the suite doors to change out of the scrubs she’d left the doctor’s office in. “The cut will heal much quicker and easier than what could’ve happened if you hadn’t found her. That pain could’ve broken her.”

  “I’m sorry she was hurt at all, Mr. Blanc.”

  “You’ve nothing to apologize for,” Michel said, putting his hands on her shoulders and kissing both her cheeks. “You protected what’s most precious to me aside from my wife, and allowed me to give her an ending that’ll keep Nicolette’s nightmares away. For that, I owe you everything.”

  What he’d said gave her a clue as to what had happened to Jerome, but she only nodded before wishing him good-bye. The night had been bizarre enough and she was getting too tired to think clearly, so it was time to go.

  Downstairs she was relieved to see her father waiting for her with her brother Billy, and instead of heading for the car, Dalton led them to the same bar where Cain had started her night. They were all quiet until the waiter set three whiskeys down in front of them.

  “What lessons did you learn tonight, Derby?” Dalton asked in almost a whisper.

  “It’ll always be hard to know who to trust outside my family,” she said as she twirled her glass on the bar. If the night was truly a trap, she’d failed in her father’s eyes, but she didn’t have it in her to leave Nicolette with that animal.

  “True,” Dalton said, putting his hand on the back of her neck as if to comfort her. “That’s important to remember, but what you did made me proud of who you’ve become. A pretty face might’ve made you wary, but you didn’t go backing away from getting rid of what makes children and lasses afraid of the dark. The world will try and paint you as the devil himself because of your name, but that doesn’t mean you don’t know the difference between right and wrong. Tonight you were on the side of the righteous.”

  “How would you paint me, Da?”

  “I’m more known for weaving tales than drawing pictures, but I look at you and see a bit of your mother and a bit of meself. What that adds up to is someone who cares enough not to walk away from a fight when it needs fighting. That you got from your mum. The courage to stand up to an asshole bigger than you is something your mum would call foolish, but it does mean you’re no different than any Casey who’s come before you.”

  “We’re a foolish bunch, then?”

  “No,” Nicolette said from behind them. She’d changed into a pair of jeans and a dark coat that made the white bandage on her face stand out. “Whatever you taught her about justice was something she took to heart, Mr. Casey,” she said before she kissed Dalton’s cheek. She moved to Cain and kissed her to show her appreciation. It was so passionate even with her wound to make Cain think of their earlier conversation about romance, and when their lips parted Dalton and Billy were gone. After caressing Cain’s bottom lip with her finger, Nicolette stepped back and held her hand out to her. “Would you take
a walk with me, then take me home?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “The darkness isn’t something to fear because of you, so I’m positive.”

  Nicolette and her family left for home the day after graduation, but the story of what Cain had done spread to the other crime families. The lesson for them was Cain might’ve been someone they considered a devil in training, but in a dark alley facing a lunatic wanting to slice her into pieces, she’d earned their respect when she didn’t hesitate in taking him on.

  The others who took notice and realized what they faced were the FBI agents who’d matched wits with Dalton for so long. They’d rushed to the scene where the rumors said Cain had faced off with Nicolette’s attacker, but there were no clues either of them had been in the now spotless alley. Jerome’s wife reported him missing, but if the reverend had somehow been dispatched to a face-to-face performance review with his boss, only God knew—because the devil wasn’t talking.

  The Darkest Night of the Year

  Victoria A. Brownworth

  for I.D., memento mori

  The duct tape is wound tight, like a bandage, mummifying the head from the hairline to just below the jaw. The body lies flat within the recesses of the dark, loamy pit, the delineation of arms, legs, torso all indistinct in the pre-dawn half-light. Clothing flows into the dirt—the sweater, trousers, scarf trailing like leaf matter or another set of veiny roots in the hole dug methodically, carefully, as if by a gardener.

  In this light, little can be deciphered, little is distinct about the woman lying, now suffocated, in the neatly dug flower bed mimicking others at the edge of the small park. Closer examination later will reveal a ring—a gold band with a finely cut sapphire embedded in the center—on the left hand as well as a gold wristwatch, circa 1950, left wrist, a small Miraculous Medal, also gold, inscribed in Latin, hanging from a fine gold chain around the neck beneath the sweater, and a pair of simple round gold posts in each ear. The clothes will be found to be tailored; well-worn, but of good quality wool, with fine weaving. Dark crusts run circularly, where the now-dried blood had soaked all along the cuffs of the trousers and under the right arm of the sweater.