The cool man got out of the back of the black Lincoln and turned back to offer his hand to his wife. She took his hand and slid her right leg across the seat and out the door until the improbably long heel of her shoe crunched down into the remnants of ice from one of the last cold nights of the year. He smiled as she came up out the car with just the vague outline of a memory of a circus performer on stilts. She squeezed his hand - hard. "One comment about about a trapeze artist or a lion tamer and you will sleep alone tonight," she threatened.
"Dum da dum da da DUM dum da da," me mumbled musically under his breath followed by an all together too loud for the time of night, "Yowwwch," as he shook his fingers free of her squeezing hand.
They laughed together and he tried to kiss her as the night doorman opened the warmth of their building before them. He finally managed to land the kiss she had worked so hard to pretend she did not want, but it took him until the elevator was almost to their floor. The doors opened and they walked to their apartment door arm in arm with his fingers now tangled in the straps of the shoes with the too high heels as she walked barefoot with her head on his shoulder.
They found themselves in their bedroom and peeling out of their clothes. Not in the rushed way of that first time. Not in the hungry way of that time in the cabin in the Poconos. But in that languid way - that casual way that had become comfortable and familiar. She turned in her nakedness and the light from the lamp showed the goose flesh across the top of her left shoulder as it was just a bit too cold for her. She slid his old Lone Star Beer t-shirt over her head and as she reached up to pull her hair free of its collar, the shirt teased up a view of the curve of her bottom where her legs made peace with the rest of her body.
That view, that glimpse had been enough. The night, the dinner, the play, the flirting in the car, the stolen kiss in the elevator - they had all hinted. But they were not a couple new to being in love. The hints now, were just that, hints. They could be ignored or overlooked or even missed. But not this time.
She turned to look at him and his face spelled it all out in vulgarity and passion. She forgot what she was going to say and simply inhaled, deeply. He was across the room - deliberately - smoothly - gracefully and one arm was around her waist and the other hand gripping her hair before that inhaled breath had ever cleared her lips.
Later.
The t-shirt was on the floor near the closet door and she was sleeping in the middle of the bed with a slight snore rustling the air. He sat in a chair across from the bed still naked with an empty rock glass in his hand. He was smiling. He would periodically realize he was smiling and make himself stop. And then later, realize again, he was smiling.
He wanted more Scotch. He opened a drawer in the dresser next to the chair and pulled out a pair of sleep pants. He pulled them on, not bothering to tie them and picked up his empty glass from the arm of the chair and walked back down the hall to the den. He walked straight to the bar where the bottle of Scotch sat. The bottle was open with its cork laying on its side by the bottle. He sat his glass down, poured two fingers, replaced the cork in the bottle and then returned the bottle to its peers on the shelf behind the bar.
He sipped his Scotch and savored the other man's patience. He never left a bottle of Scotch uncorked.
He walked around the bar and looked out the windows of his apartment with star light not revealing a thing. He leaned back and propped his elbows against the bar. He let the silence stretch out and again felt an appreciation for how the man was attempting to sow fear. He was quite honestly impressed.
He stood up straight. Sipped his Scotch and sighed. "You've met my mother," he said in a conversational tone.
"Let me guess," he continued. "She told you there was no money or maybe, just that I had no way of tracking it down. She told you that besides the love of my father, the two of you had another thing in common - my hatred. She told you that I meant to ruin you and eventually her too. But that I am a particularly twisted bit of evil and that I could not do you the damage I felt you deserved until you trusted me. Until you counted on me. Until you loved me."
"She told you some version of the story of Clay Diamond and how she pays for his care to this day. She makes me out to be a monster. but not someone you should be afraid of. You should feel insulted. The idea that I could play you the way I have played a hundred other suckers over the years - insulting. A fatal bit of disrespect."
"Here's something for you though. Our father has been dead for years and people still call her the 'Judge's wife.' She still runs a multi-million dollar outfit from Houston - Houston of all places! She keeps the Mexicans and the Russians and the Italians and the Colombians and the Chechins - the bat crap crazy Chechins! - in line."
"And the whole damn time she lives in a little house just outside Crosby! No gated community or armed guards patrolling around. Just a little house in the middle of small town nowhere - and the absolute certainty of EVERYONE involved that there is not a single solitary angle that she has not seen. Not a single action you can take that she is not prepared to blow up right in the face of the person you love most!"
He wiped his mouth. Took a sip of his drink. Realized he was breathing deeply. How loud had he gotten? He paused to listen. He calmed himself as he could only hear the sound of his heart thumping in his ears. In seconds, he was the cool man again.
It got deathly quiet. He could just make out the sound of the not quite snoring coming from the bedroom. He brought the glass to his nose. The vanilla was just coming to ascendancy.
"She does not take an action she does not need to take. If she can get a Russian to take out a Mexican so the Chechins think twice about her bit of the drug trade..."
He sipped his drink again. He shook his head. "She sent you here to kill me. You might not have even known that you were going to kill me when you got here, but she sent you here to kill me. Or she might have hoped I was better at the violence than she ever trained me to be. Maybe she thought I would kill you. I get that part. And that is what made me walk in here seeing that bottle on the bar. I know that its just possible that she wants me to kill you and I will not give her that satisfaction. But then again," and he laughed at this,"she could have been counting on that little bit of defiance on my part to be just the opening you needed to do the job."
The other man, the unseen man, the man with the gun laughed at this.
The cool man's eyes widened at the sound but soon joined in the joke. He could not tell where the laughter was coming from anyway. And he saw the humor. The man with the gun really did NOT need his help if he meant to kill him.
"How did you know I met with your mother?"
The cool man sipped his Scotch. He did not smile. He would not let himself smile. He was giddy with life - with victory. But he would not smile. He was actually going to live through this night.
"My mother is the only other person I know who truly appreciates how under rated that particular brand of Scotch really is. She loves the way the vanilla comes out so late in the experience."
The man with the gun nodded his head from the darkness knowing the gesture was for him alone. With that, he smiled. It was a lonely smile. A resigned smile. The road ahead was going to be so much harder than he had ever thought it would be.
And then he shot the cool man in the head.
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