With the other he brought out some banknotes and thumbed a few bills on the bar in front of Ketcheson. “Here’s a few bucks for a guy down on his luck, Lester. But that’s all she wrote. Don’t come looking for more.”
Ketcheson grabbed the bills and gave a halfways grin that made it clear he had thrown in the towel. “Win some, lose some,” he said, as Gunboat made to come out from behind the bar.
“No, Gunboat, I’ll see Lester out,” said the boss. “Miss Doyle has earned another perfect martini and, while you’re at it, tear up her bar tab.”
Miss Doyle was the only one watching as the two men left. Stevie was rhyming off a ten count that reminded Gunboat of when Dempsey knocked him out, the numbers coming through layers of wool. The gang at the radio picked it up, chanting till he couldn’t hear the lad, and when the count finished, they went nutty, carrying on like gangbusters because one man licked another, and money from the side bets started changing hands.
“Gunboat, would you please look at that marker I gave you.” He looked up at Miss Doyle, surprised, although people did the damnedest things at pay-off time. He poked his big fingers into his shirt pocket and fished out the paper.
“Read it to me,” she said.
He could smell her perfume on it, like no flower he had ever smelled, but soft and fresh and suiting her. He wanted to hold it up to his nose, but instead he unfolded it and looked at the words she had written. Then, he couldn’t help himself, he shrugged.
She reached over, took the note, and read. “One hundred dollars on Jack Dempsey to beat Luis Firpo, and another fifty dollars here and now if you can read this note.”
Gunboat stood there dumb. A good word for him, dumb. He could not read a lick, but somehow she had read his secrets, maybe on his big dumb face.
“When I handed you that newspaper tonight, Reggie went for it like a stick of dynamite,” she said. “He was trying to sidetrack me and that stuck in my craw, so I slipped this dirty little trick in.” She tossed the marker down on the bar.
“That’s why you killed Harry Pilgrim. Because you can’t read. When Ketcheson handed you those markers, you weren’t going to let him know you had a glass jaw in the written word department. So you pretended to look it over, shrugged your old shrug, then climbed in the ring and Dempsey licked you fair and square.”
Gunboat looked at his fists, like boulders, which had failed him the one time he had needed them.
“Pilgrim sent you for champagne, and you found out what he was celebrating. The dive you didn’t take,” Miss Doyle said. “Then you knew he’d done what no one could do in the ring. He made you a bum.”
“It was just one punch,” Gunboat said. But it was like a cannon going off, a perfect right uppercut driving the base of Pilgrim’s jaw into his brain. If he’d had that punch with Dempsey, they’d be listening to him on the radio now.
“You found Reggie and came clean, but before he could get rid of the body, those lovebirds stumbled over it. Reggie was running out of time, so he used the shotgun to disguise the weapon only one man around here had.”
They both looked down at his big clenched fist, and she reached out and took it in her two hands.
“I didn’t like it,” Gunboat said. If it weren’t for the boss, he’d still be fighting for hooch in some two-bit joint. Or dead.
“But Reggie insisted,” she said. “He’s one of a kind, isn’t he? Carrying on, a ray of sunshine, knowing everyone thinks he’s a murdering skunk while he’s the truest of pals. It’s the kind of thing that makes me think I ought to marry him.”
“Marriage is a fine institution,” said Gunboat, although he wasn’t too sure.
Neither, it seemed, was she. “Can you picture me living in an institution? And come to think of it, I’d get myself banned from this fine institution if Reggie knew what I’ve been spinning to you. So why don’t we keep mum? I don’t want to gamble with my supply of martinis, and say, how’s that one coming along?”
Gunboat was reaching for the honest-to-God Beefeater, not the bathtub rotgut they used for the saps, when Stevie Pounder bounded up. “The champ is some man! Helps Firpo to his feet after the big knockout. What a class act!”
Speaking of class acts, Gunboat thought, and looked at the marker face down on the bar. “You just made two hundred shekels, Miss Doyle.”
“I knew the champ would come through. Anyone who knocks out Gunboat Merkley is the world’s toughest hombre. But forget the bet.” She picked up the marker and began tearing it into strips. “I’ve lost my taste for grudge matches. In fact, I’ve gone off gambling altogether.”
Too bad, Gunboat thought. He was sure his money would be safe if he bet on her really liking the boss.
THERESE GREENWOOD lives and writes in Kingston, Ontario. She was a finalist for the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis 1999 Award for best short story and winner of the Bloody Words 2000 short story contest.
IT’S A DIRTY JOG, BUT SOMEONE HAS TO DO IT
I have to keep up this facade.
I have to run each day.
I have to look real womanly.
It’s like I’m in a play.
I have to wear an itchy wig.
I have to wear spandex.
I have to wave at all the men
Leaning from their decks.
I have to shave my hairy legs.
I have to wax my face.
I wish that I had taken off,
Instead, I took her place.
I have to run five miles a day
And make the neighbours see
This sweaty, gritty, jogging jock’s
A she and not a he.
I have to keep up this facade
Because I took her life.
And no one will suspect me while
I’m running for my wife.
JOY HEWITT MANN
SIGN OF THE TIMES
MARY JANE MAFFINI
She’s going to kill me. It’s just a matter of time until she gets it right. All I can do is putter about my garden and check over my shoulders for the next sneak attack.
Don’t think I’m imagining it. The woman is capable of anything.
Consider her flawless organization of “Citizens
