“I...” I tried to swallow, but my throat felt squeezed down to nothing. “I didn’t kill Sam, I swear. You don’t believe this bullshit, do you? If I was going to kill Sam, you think I’d be stupid enough to shoot him with my own legally registered gun and then just leave his body sitting in my fucking car?”
Malloy looked at me with his narrow alligator eyes, wordlessly sizing me up. An endless minute passed. He pulled another cigarette from a crumpled pack, then offered the pack to me. I shook my head. He shrugged and put the pack away, then stuck the cigarette between his lips.
“No,” he finally said, shaking his head as he lit up with a battered Zippo. “I don’t buy it. Smells like setup city, but it’s not just that.” He snapped the lighter shut. “I could maybe buy you getting all pissed off and blowing some guy away in the heat of the moment. But the truth is, you just don’t strike me as the type who’d torture a good friend and then finish him with a cold-blooded, professional execution. No offense, but I just don’t think you’ve got it in you for that kind of action. You want to tell me what really happened?”
Malloy was completely still and silent as I filled him in. His cigarette burned unsmoked between two thick fingers. It was disconcerting. You don’t realize how much you depend on a listener to spur your story on with little nods and noises and various cues to continue like “Really?” or “No shit.” However, I did get the feeling that I was being listened to more intently than ever before. Like I was feeding information into a machine for processing. I told him everything, starting from the blonde with the briefcase and ending with him showing up to scrape my ass off the sidewalk.
When I was done, I sipped more coffee, just to have something to do with my shaking hands. He took a deep drag off the cigarette and then flicked the long ash into the stone ashtray.
“You want my help,” he said. Again a statement, not a question.
“Yeah,” I replied. “I want you to help me find the fuckers who did this to me. I can pay you.”
He shook his head.
“Your bank accounts’ll be frozen by now.”
“I have money,” I said. “Cash. In my line of business, it never hurts to have a safety net.”
He arched a silver brow and then killed the cigarette.
“Keep it,” he replied. “You’re gonna need it.”
“Does that mean you won’t help me?” I asked.
He shrugged. There was a long moment of awkward silence. I’d done all the begging I was going to do the night before, so I just kept my mouth shut and waited for his answer.
“I’ll do what I can,” he said eventually.
I wanted to hug him, but my ribs hurt and he didn’t seem like the hugging type.
“Thanks,” I said instead.
“Right,” he said. “I guess I’d better get on the road.” He looked at his ugly watch. “If I leave now, I should be able to make Vegas by noon.”
I frowned and it hurt the bruised skin above my eyes.
“What do you mean I?” I asked. “It’s we. You can’t leave me here. Wherever you’re going, I’m going with you.”
“No,” he said with a terse shake of his head. “You’re gonna stay here where it’s safe.”
“I’m not some helpless princess, you know,” I said. “I can take care of myself.”
He looked up at me and the ghost of a smirk haunted one corner of his thin lips.
“I can see that,” he replied.
“Fuck you!” I spat, but my mad face wouldn’t stay on. I snorted through my swollen nose. “You should see the other guy.”
His tiny smirk swelled into an expression that could almost be mistaken for a smile.
“All right, boss,” he said. “I guess we better get you something to wear.”
The room Malloy ushered me into had a gold sign on the door.
“Sissy Boudoir,” I read out loud. “I think I did a girl/girl scene with her back in ’94.”
Again, that little twitch of a smile, quick as an insect wing at the corner of Malloy’s mouth, as he chivalrously held the door open for me.
The “Sissy Boudoir” was dimly lit and tricked out with pink satin and red velvet. No angles. Everything was soft and rounded in a way that made it feel sort of like being inside a huge plush vagina. To the left was a walk-in closet filled with extra-large feminine attire. Boat-sized pumps with ten-inch heels. Trampy stripper dresses and frilly French maid costumes that would have fit Malloy. Full-figured bras, enormous lace panties and boxes of queen-sized pantyhose. I was about to make some kind of snide comment when I caught a glimpse of my own reflection in the full-length mirror.
I wasn’t ready for that, but I don’t know how you could be. When my eyes first snagged on the pale figure in the hospital gown, I was startled because I thought it was someone else. When I realized it was me, I felt dizzy, stricken with a kind of horrified disbelief.
“Jesus,” I whispered, pressing a palm to the cool surface of the mirror.
My face was a lurid Halloween mask, haphazardly painted in every shade of bruise. My proud Italian nose was massively swollen and lumpy under a stripe of clean white tape. Both my eyes were black, the right more than the left, making me look like an asymmetrical purple panda. My lower lip was twice the size of the upper and had a thick, crusty split down the middle. My forehead was studded with contusions, giving me a heavy, Neanderthal brow. There was blood crusted in my hair.
My arms and legs were also covered with bruises and scrapes and I could see the bristly blue stitches protruding like bug legs from my right side just under the armpit. But my gaze kept returning to that face that couldn’t possibly be my face. I suddenly understood why Savannah had shot herself after she’d bashed up her face in that car accident. Not sixteen hours ago, I had been staring into a mirror and fretting about crow’s feet and less than perfectly perky breasts. I had to laugh or I’d start screaming.
“Sure, it’s ugly today,” Malloy said, pulling a dress off its hanger and handing it to me. “But it’ll be better in a week and back to normal in two. You might want to get some work on that nose when this is all over.”
I couldn’t even imagine what “all over” really meant. What my life would be like when and if this was all over. Or what it was going to take to make it that way.
Instead of dwelling on the uncertain future, I forced myself to concentrate on the little tasks in front of me right now. Tasks like shedding the hospital gown and slipping into the dress while Malloy graciously looked away, as if the whole world hadn’t already seen me naked a million times. The dress was the smallest of the lot but still fit me like a laundry bag. It was black and probably would have looked much sluttier if it actually fit. There were no bras in anything close to my size and the dress’ deep sweetheart neckline hung droopy and unflattering on my bruised chest. Malloy had to help me zip the thing and when I looked back in the mirror I suddenly felt like crying. I wanted desperately to go home, take a shower in my safe green bathroom, and change into my own comfortable clothes. I wanted a bra that looked nice. My favorite boots. I wanted to open my neatly organized, sweet-smelling underwear drawer and pick out a nice clean cotton thong. The thought of my little house and all my books and clothes and personal things barricaded behind yellow tape and rifled by smirking cops fed my helpless anger and heated my tears to near boiling as I fought to hold them back. I turned away from the mirror and that horrible ugly face and started randomly flinging shoes around, searching for anything that was less than three sizes too big.
“I can’t,” I said. “These are all fucking huge.” I picked up a pair of cherry-red patent leather pumps. “Eleven!” I shouted, tossing them aside. “Thirteen!” I read off the print on a pair of clear plastic platforms. “Fuck!”