I watched as she walked away, noticing how nice her curves looked with her dressed in jeans and a tee shirt. Although she probably weighed no more than ninety pounds, I realized her build was more athletic and slender than skinny. Usually I liked a woman with more meat on her bones, but she was still stunning enough to stop your heart, especially with the way she smiled. It was almost a shame watching her slip on a bulky cotton jacket, but it didn’t do much to hide how beautiful she was.
When she reached the door, she stopped to look back at me and give me a few more seconds of that shit-eating grin of hers. I almost called out to ask her her name, but I knew next time I saw her she would make sure to give it to me.
I felt an uneasiness after she left, and sat back and finished my muffin and coffee without really tasting much of either. When I was in prison I made sure to avoid other people and lived a mostly solitary existence. It wasn’t safe otherwise, and the fight to stay alive and survive my stretch so I could someday walk out of prison gave me enough to focus on to make it easy. Now that I was out I found myself needing some sort of human interaction, and was looking forward to when I’d see this dark-haired beauty again, even if she was nothing but a con artist. And that was really what she was. Her plan was to befriend me, even hold out the promise of sex – not that there was any real chance of that happening – and eventually wear me down so I would agree to writing a book with her. I’d been around more than enough con men to know how this was going to work, but what she didn’t understand was as much as she was trying to play a game on me, there actually was a connection between us. Not enough so that we’d ever end up romantically involved, but there was something there. Right now she was on too much of a high in working her game to get the book deal, but at some point she’d see it also.
My cell phone rang then. I stared at it, frowning, seeing that the caller ID was once again unavailable. I wasn’t in the mood for a vague threat from some wannabe tough guy, so I turned off the phone instead of answering it. I was still stopping by the cell-phone store each day, but so far my salesman hadn’t shown up again, and I was beginning to think he wasn’t going to, that for some reason he must’ve quit his job.
I put the call out of my mind, and instead thought more about the woman who had just left me, and found myself anxiously looking forward to when I’d see her again. I knew it would be soon – she wouldn’t let too much time go by, not with her just starting her game.
It turned out I was right. That Saturday I went to the same coffee shop and she was already camped out there with a dog-eared paperback in one hand and a large cup of coffee in the other. I’d done the same plenty of times when I was waiting for a target.
She glanced up shortly after I’d walked into the shop, and as she saw me her eyes grew exaggeratedly large. With a wicked grin, she accused me of stalking her. I shook my head, but that grin of hers was infectious enough to crack a smile from me, which doesn’t happen often. She waited until after I bought a coffee and slice of lemon pound cake and had been sitting alone for a few minutes before getting up from her table and asking if she could join me.
“It looks like you could use the company,” she said, her grin even more wicked.
“Yes, sure, I’d like that.”
I felt a pang of guilt knowing that I wasn’t going to be agreeing to write a book with her. I should’ve told her point blank there wasn’t any chance of it happening and let her drop her game, but I couldn’t. Like the other day, she was strikingly beautiful, but also unkempt. Her hair was the same tangled hornet’s nest and her clothes were badly worn and tattered. She probably bought them from a similar thrift store to the one I had shopped at earlier, except in her case she had worn them to near threads. She was clearly in the midst of a bad stretch, and had latched on to this book idea as a way to pull herself out. As beautiful as she was she could’ve made a nice income as a stripper, and an even nicer one as a high-class hooker, but I guess no matter how hard up she was for money she wasn’t about to resort to either of those, and that just made me like her all the more.
She took the seat across from me and showed me the paperback she had been reading, The Godfather by Mario Puzo. “I bought it for twenty-five cents at a garage sale,” she told me. Either she was doing research or she was trying to send me some sort of subtle message that I wasn’t getting.
“What do you do for work?” I asked.
“Wow, a bit abrupt, aren’t we?” she said, her voice light, amused. “But to answer your question, a little bit of this and that, but right now I’m in between jobs.” Her eyes lowered as she took a sip of her coffee. When she looked up and met my eyes again, her smile had turned wistful. “I’d heard about you in the news before, but really didn’t pay much attention. After we met the other day, I went to the library and dug up some of the stories about you. I was so sorry to read that your wife died while you were in prison. That must’ve been hard.”
I nodded, didn’t say anything.
“Those people you killed, let me guess, they weren’t quite as innocent and pure as the driven snow as the papers made them out to be?”
“No, they weren’t,” I said with only a slight hesitation. The two men I had killed with Behrle turned out to be friends of his, and they both turned out to be even worse scumbags than he ever was. I had looked into it after the hit, and they were involved in a string of home invasions, one of which left a teenage girl paralyzed. I had no remorse for those two.
“Fucking newspapers,” she said. “They can make the worst scum out to be a fucking saint.” A hardness momentarily tightened her smile, and I had this sense about her then that she had blood on her hands also. Maybe an abusive partner, maybe some incestuous relative. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had done a stretch in prison too, but I didn’t ask her about any of that.
She was still absorbed in her thoughts, and had absently pulled a pack of Newports from her jacket pocket. She tapped a cigarette out, slid it in her mouth, and was about to light up before she remembered where she was.
“Think they’d throw me in jail if I lit up in here?” she asked, the cig now out of her mouth and held lightly between her index and middle fingers.
“No doubt,” I said.
Her gaze wandered past me, and she stuck out her tongue at a coffee shop employee who had been glaring openly at her. Smiling to herself, she put the cig behind her ear.
“I need this badly right now,” she told me, referring to the cig. She gestured with her eyes that I was welcome to join her outside while she lit up, but I stayed in my seat. She opened her eyes wider in mock surprise over the fact that I wasn’t jumping at the chance to join her, and before she turned to leave, told me she was sure we’d bump into each other again. I was sure of that also.
I was a little surprised she hadn’t given me her name yet. I would’ve thought that would’ve happened after our second “chance” meeting. It turned out she didn’t disappoint me. She was halfway to the door when she turned on her heels and walked back to my table, offering me her hand.
“By the way, my name’s Sophie Duval,” she said.
“Leonard March,” I said.
“As if you’re telling me something I don’t already know,” she said with a wink. I watched the way her slender hips moved as she headed back to the front door. Christ, she was gorgeous. At least thirty years younger than me and absolutely gorgeous. When she reached the door, she stopped to snap off a quick army-type salute in my direction, then left. I wondered briefly when I’d be bumping into her again. I knew it wouldn’t be long.