She said nothing. A waitress strolled over, filled Angela's coffee from a container in one hand, and my iced tea from a pitcher in the other. Then we were alone again, us and our freshened liquids.

"What makes you think," Angela said very quietly, looking at her wedding-ring-free hands, folded neatly near the coffee cup, steam rising from it like ghosts, "that I I took out the contract?" took out the contract?"

"No other candidate makes sense. You are still the wife, separated or not, and that puts you in a position to inherit everything. You are by birth a Giardelli, and female or not, would be in a good position to, first, utilize your connections to set up a hit, and second, take over the Paddlewheel with Chicago's blessing. With your show biz background and expertise, all those years in Vegas, who better to run the Paddlewheel and its expanded operation? Especially when riverboat gambling comes in, and everything gets more respectable...Also, as a wife, you'd be more likely to have an accident staged than a simple drive-by hit. h.e.l.l, maybe there was double indemnity! Didn't work for Barbara Stanwyck, but that's just an old Hollywood movie, where crime doesn't pay. Anyway, I don't see Jerry G as the kind of guy who'd go to the trouble of disguising a killing as an automobile accident."

Her lips trembled a little. Her voice, too: "What if...what if I told you I love my husband. That I still still love my husband." love my husband."

"Wouldn't surprise me. Your motivation may be greed, or it may be love or anyway the kind of love that curdles into hate when your guy gives you table sc.r.a.ps-say, like your little ongoing piano bar gig-at the same time he's taking various baby Madonnas upstairs to his Playboy Playboy pad, for a banquet. These kinds of things are complicated. Emotions." pad, for a banquet. These kinds of things are complicated. Emotions."

The wide-set green eyes were as unblinking as her husband's. "Why did you...take care of Jerry G, if you knew he wasn't responsible for the contract on Richard?" of Jerry G, if you knew he wasn't responsible for the contract on Richard?"

I shrugged. "Hey, I made it clear to d.i.c.kie that I had my doubts about Jerry G. I let him know that my services included trying to determine who took the contract out, and so on. But d.i.c.kie was convinced it was Jerry G. He wanted Jerry G gone, and I admit I developed a certain grudge against the guy myself, so I took the job. Did the job. End of story."

The eyes remained wide but the flesh around them was tightening. "End of..."

"I haven't told d.i.c.kie about you, or anyway my theory about you."

Now she frowned. The eyes finally narrowed, and fear was in them. "What are you after after? What do you want want from me?" from me?"

I lifted the CD. "This'll do. This is plenty."

"...You're not telling Richard?"

"No. I did the job he hired me to do, and I'm out of here."

"How do you know I won't...won't go to my 'Chicago connections' and somehow make this happen someother way?" way?"

"I don't. Do what you want. f.u.c.k him. Kill him. f.u.c.k him, then kill him. He's your your husband. But I don't want a contract from either one of you. I've had my fill of Haydee's Port." husband. But I don't want a contract from either one of you. I've had my fill of Haydee's Port."

She had a clubbed baby seal expression, and just couldn't find any words. Hard to sing torch songs over breakfast.

"I'll enjoy this," I said, gesturing with the CD, "I really will...I'll get the check."

I left her there to contemplate her future, and d.i.c.kie bird's, and went to my room and showered and shaved and changed my clothes and got my things and got the h.e.l.l out.

I did make one stop on my way-that little mobile home with the rusting Mustang out front. I had a paper bag in my left hand, held in a choke hold, like a trick-or-treater protecting his candy h.o.a.rd.

I went up the handful of wooden steps and knocked. Nothing. It took prolonged and increasingly insistent knocking to get a response, and I finally got the little kid. He opened the door fearlessly and glared up at me.

"Mommy's sleeping," he said, and started to shut the door.

I pushed in, shut the thing behind me and looked down at the tow-headed boy in the Star Wars Star Wars pajamas. "Listen, kid-I don't care if your mom pajamas. "Listen, kid-I don't care if your mom is is home. Don't go just opening the door 'cause somebody's knocking. You don't know who it might be." home. Don't go just opening the door 'cause somebody's knocking. You don't know who it might be."

From the bedroom came her voice: "Jack?"

"Go watch TV, kid," I said.

He gave me a dirty look but followed instructions, and I tiptoed around the wooden train set to where she was receding into the bedroom. She was in a t-shirt and cotton panties, had no makeup on and her natural blonde hair was ponytailed back and she looked f.u.c.king great.

"I didn't think I'd see you again," she said, her voice indicating she was glad she'd been wrong.

"Listen, Candace. I'm on my way out of town. When you left the Lucky, was there any fuss going down?"

"No."

"What time did you walk home?"

"Around quarter to six."

So she'd been gone when I dropped by to see Jerry G.

"Well, you need to know something," I said. "There's going to be a change of management. Some bad s.h.i.t went down not long ago, but you don't know anything about it."

"I don't?"

"No." I handed her the paper bag.

"What's this?"

"Fifteen grand."

"What!"

"Yours."

She held it in a choke hold just like I had. "Are you kidding kidding...Why...?"

"Because you saved my life. That's just some crumbs that got spilled, and maybe they'll do you some good. Thing is, there was a robbery over there at the Lucky...this isn't that that money, you have to believe me, you have to money, you have to believe me, you have to trust trust me..." me..."

Of course, it was that money.

"All right...I believe you, Jack. Are you saying this money is...mine?"

"Yours. Here's the conditions. You run that over to River Bluff and put it in a safe deposit box-don't open an account. A safe deposit box. Then you go back to dancing at the Lucky and keep your head down during the management change and maybe any kind of investigation..."

"Police?"

"Maybe. I doubt it, but maybe. Anyway, don't throw any of that money around. Just do your job, shake your t.i.tties and booty and make some men happy. Live your little life, then in a month or two, if it's quiet, you quit, take your kid somewhere and put him in school and go to beauty college and get your life in gear."

"Jack...oh, Jack."

And she kissed me. There was s.e.x in it, sure, and grat.i.tude-you can get a h.e.l.l of a kiss out of girl, when you give her a paper bag full of fifteen grand-but mostly it was sweet. Loving. A hint of maybe what my life could have been like if it hadn't gone to h.e.l.l a long time before I came to Haydee's.

"I got to run," I said, and gave her a peck of a kiss.

I moved carefully through the little train yard, and the kid kept his eyes on the tube-Sesame Street again-and I was halfway to the Firebird when she called out to me. again-and I was halfway to the Firebird when she called out to me.

"Jack!"

She was framed there in the door, t-shirt, white panties, all the pale creamy flesh a man could ever want, and blue eyes that hid no secrets except the new one.

"You're an angel angel, Jack. When they made you, they broke the mold!"

Didn't they just?

Praise Acclaim for the Work of Max Allan Collins!

"Crime fiction aficionados are in for a treat...a neo-pulp noir cla.s.sic."

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