One of the Boys
Published by Kimberly Pauley
Copyright 2004, 2011 Kimberly Pauley
Smashwords Edition
Originally published in Hardboiled, Issue #32, 2004
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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One of the Boys
By Kimberly Pauley
I cringed as another nervous giggle worked its way up my throat and erupted to echo flatly against the shabby crushed velvet interior of the El Dorado. Some gangster I was.
“Jesus, Riley, shaddup.” Higgins leaned over and slapped the back of my head with one of his meaty hands. I’d been expecting it, but it still hurt like hell. “You’re worse than a damn girl.”
“Sorry,” I muttered, trying not to sound wounded. You didn’t show weakness in front of the boss’s right hand man if you could help it, not if you wanted to stick around for long. “I can’t help it. Here we are on a job, sitting in the rain under a flickering neon sign.” I waved towards the flashing Sunset Motel sign, visible only as colorful steaks of light through the rain-streaked windshield.
He just grunted and shifted his bulk in the hollowed out indentation in the seat. It was obvious he’d spent a lot of time in this car, in that very spot.
“It’s like something out of a Mickey Spillane novel. Get it?” I got no response at all this time, and it was just as well. Higgins had been doing this too long; it was all routine to him now. He had no idea what I was talking about, the edgy thrill I was getting just from being there. Besides, he’d probably never read a book in his life.
It had only been this afternoon that the Big Man had come down to my hole in the basement to tap me for the job, but if felt like forever ago. I was supposed to be keeping the books for his Chicago operation, but he’d caught me reading a book. He’d laughed his big laugh as I shoved it under the ledger. I hadn’t been expecting him, or anyone else for that matter.
“You can take it with you, bean counter,” he’d said. “I got a job for you and Higgins.”
Five years I’d been working for him and he’d never said more than two words to me. Sure, I’d been aching for a job and asking Jimmy to put in a good word for me, but I’d never really held much hope. I tried my best to look the part, but I was no Mike Hammer. Jimmy called me “pretty boy” and the rest of the gang didn’t call me much of anything if they noticed me at all.
I’d seen the look on Higgin’s face when the boss told him he had a job for the both of us. His expression hadn’t changed, not so you’d notice. But his eyes gave him away. Yeah, Higgins didn’t think much of me, that much was obvious. But all he’d said was “Sure, boss,” and led the way to the car.
We’d been sitting out here, under the Sunset Motel sign, for half the day and the rain hadn’t let up once. Higgins had been staring with single-minded determination at the squat gray apartment building across the street. I’d have bet even money he never even blinked. I was starting to get antsy. Didn’t seem like it took this long for anything to happen in the books I read. There was always something going on there, keeping you turning the pages, but we hadn’t even seen two people in the last hour. They were all probably too damn smart to come out in this rain.
And I didn’t even know why I was here.
I was wishing I had taken the book with me after all when something finally happened. A guy all bundled up in a raincoat ducks out of the building, jumps in a dull green Toyota and takes off at a good clip. Every car is a friggin’ Toyota nowadays. Nobody buys American anymore.
“Time to roll,” said Higgins, and pulled out smoothly to follow the Toyota. I started getting excited. This was more like it.
Between Higgin’s driving and the unrelenting rain, I could barely make out the car in front of us.
It slowly dawned on me that Higgins seemed to be making little, if any, effort to avoid detection. He was hanging maybe only one or two car lengths back, right on the tail of that Toyota.
“Aren’t you worried he’ll see you?” I asked him.
“Nah,” he said out of the corner of his mouth, not taking his eyes of his quarry for a minute. “Amateurs. He won’t notice and I don’t feel like losing him in this rain.”
I nodded like I’d known that was what he was going to say and tried to get comfortable, leaning into each hairpin turn. It was hard to tell who was the worse driver. I breathed a sigh of relief when the Toyota pulled over at one of those seedy motels. It was on par with Sunset Motel, though maybe even more rundown, if that was possible. He should’ve just stayed where he was, but I guess it was true what they said in the books about covering your tracks.
“Watch him,” Higgins grunted and drove past the car to park a couple of buildings down. I craned my neck around and watched as the shady figure darted out of the car and ran through the rain to the hotel.
“He went in that dive,” I jerked my thumb towards the hotel and turned around to see Higgins pulling on some black leather gloves. “Must have forgot mine,” I muttered.
I followed him around to the front desk. It was a miserable affair stacked high with a year’s worth of empty beer cans and back copies of dirty magazines. I couldn’t even guess why the boss was having us track someone who had to stay in a flophouse like this.
The slob at the desk didn’t even look up from his girlie magazine until Higgins lay a heavy black-gloved hand on the counter. I saw a flash of green and white as the guy swiped something from Higgin’s palm. He grunted and jerked a greasy thumb towards the staircase.
“Second floor. 213. On the right at the top of the stairs.” He turned his back to us and cranked the T.V. up as loud as it would go.
“How’d he know who we wanted?” I asked Higgins as we went up the stairs.
“Be quiet,” he growled out of the corner of his mouth and pointed for me to take a spot on the other side of the door to 213. I stood there and looked at him, wondering what I was supposed to do. I didn’t have a gun or even a knife. I fumbled around in my pocket, but all I found was a ballpoint pen and my keys. I gave it up and waited to see what would happen.
We stood and listened as unmistakable moans and creaking bedsprings started coming through the thin walls. I grinned at Higgins and winked. He gave me a slow grin back. Then he took a quick step back and barreled into the door with his shoulder like some kind of crazed linebacker. The door popped open with a bang and hung crookedly from one hinge.
I rushed in after him, trying to look like I knew what I was doing and then stopped cold a foot through the door. The dame was on top, and looked to be a wild one. All I could see was the creamy, white flesh of her back and piles and piles of auburn hair. Then the guy starts screaming bloody murder at us and sits up, grabbing handfuls of the dingy hotel sheets like he was going to throw them at us.
It hit us both at the same time that we knew each other. “Riley?” Kenny says, in a dead little voice. Then he takes a quick look at Higgins, rolls out from under the dame, and drops onto the floor on the far side of the bed. I’m turning to Higgins too, wondering why the hell the Big Man cares who my old high school buddy sleeps with. And then the girl turns around.
Everything stopped then, except for Ginger. Her big brown eyes were growing wider with every moment that passed. Her mouth drew up into a little round ‘O’ of surprise, like something out of a cartoon. Any other time I would have laughed. My beautiful Ginger, her lips puckered up like Betty Boop.
I saw Higgins hand me a gun, but I couldn’t feel it. It had the shine of newness on it, glowing like black gold in the dinginess of the hotel room. I watched as my fingers curled around the handle, like they knew what they were doing and where they were going.
In slow motion, my arm swung up and around, just like in the movies. The hand holding the gun was steady, just as steady as if Higgin’s hand was holding it instead of mine. I didn’t even flinch when it kicked after the first bullet, but compensated by aiming a little lower. Each shot was slow, so slow I swore I could see it arc across the room to settle deep into Ginger’s flesh.
When the clip was empty, Higgins carefully took the gun from my hand as I sank to the floor. “Let’s go,” he said, and pulled me up off the floor and out of the room. The last thing I saw was Ginger’s pouty, red lips, still in that crazy “O.”
It didn’t really hit me until we were half way back to the Big Man’s place. My God, what had I done? I held my shaking fingers up to my face, those same fingers that had been so steady minutes before. That’s when the sobs started, great huge ones, welling up from some deep place inside me.
“Let it out, man,” Higgins said. “I cried my first one, too. But finish up before we get back to the boss. You don’t want him to see that shit. You done good, so don’t ruin it now.”
I pulled it together then, at least on the outside. I didn’t need any kind words from a man like Higgins. I knew like I’d never known anything before, that I didn’t want to be a cold-blooded killer, that I couldn’t be. This wasn’t some book or movie. This was real and Ginger was gone.
I’d tell the Big Man himself once we got back. He’d have to find himself another goddamn bean counter.
Jesus, what was I going to tell Ginger’s mom? We’d been together since high school. Had she been screwing Kenny that long? My head was spinning and all I could see was Ginger, falling back against those dirty flophouse sheets.
Higgins took the long way back, I guess to give me some more time to calm down, but I didn’t need it. When we got there, he shoved me down into a cheap plastic chair outside the Big Man’s office.
“Wait here. I’ll report back to the boss first. He’ll wanna see you after that. Don’t go nowhere. I don’t wanna have to find your ass and drag it back.”
I didn’t even nod, just sat there slumped in the chair where Higgins had put me. I hadn’t moved an inch when he came back out a few minutes later. He motioned me into the room and shut the door after me. The Big Man was there behind a huge old oak desk with nothing on it but the gun I’d used to shoot Ginger. Higgins stood behind me, blocking the measly light that came in through the glass on the door. Jimmy and some of the other guys were shadows in the dark corners of the room.
“Higgins tells me you’re a dead shot, Riley,” the Big Man smiled.
I almost lost my nerve then. I’d been dreaming of a scene like this for years, but I shook it off as I thought of Ginger cold and dead in that hotel room.
“I only came back to quit.” I said firmly, my chin up to show him I meant business. “I ain’t cut out for this.”
The Big Man let out a huge belly laugh and Higgins joined him with a rough cackle that made me jump. Jimmy the Rat, back in the corner, let out a high-pitched squeal.
“You can’t quit now,” the Big Man said, dead serious, all the laughter gone from the room in an instant. He laid a gloved hand on the gun, it’s muzzle pointed straight at my gut. I braced myself for the bullet and God knows I deserved it, but he just patted the gun as gently as if it were a baby. “I’ve got myself some insurance here. You ever feel the need to leave again, you just remember that I’ve got some good old fashioned smoking gun evidence here for an unsolved murder that I’m sure the police would love to find.”
I stared at him in horror. Higgins had given me the gun all right, but he hadn’t handed me any gloves and I knew damn well now that he hadn’t wiped the prints after. I was about to argue when Kenny stepped up from the shadows in the back of the room. His face was grim and haggard and I swore there was some of Ginger’s blood on his shirt. He gave me one slow shake of the head like he used to when I was messing with the wrong guy back in school
“Yeah,” smiled the Big Man, “you’re one of my boys now, just like Kenny here.”
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Author’s Note: This short story was originally published in Hardboiled. I went through a Mickey Spillane phase when I was growing up and this story is a product of that (obviously). However, I’m now a YA novelist, so it goes to show you can never tell where you wind up. You can learn more about me and my writing on my website: www.kimberlypauley.com I hope you enjoyed the story.