"Hey, baby," came Violet's voice.
The apartment was dark, but he knew his way.
She lay in her bed, smoking, as usual. "You bring me anything?"
He pulled a bottle from the bag. "Drambuie, you like it."
"Sweet, I like sweet. Good for late at night."
Since her teen years, Violet had always had a terrible time sleeping. Now she reached her enormous arm over to her side table and found two glasses. Poured an inch in each.
"Here."
Victor took it in one shot. Then he pulled off his shoes, took his gun from his sock, slipped it into his shoe, took off his pants, folded them. He didn't know why he did this, came to see her. Well, yes, he did. The ugliness excited him.
"Come here," she said.
He stood next to the bed and she hung her head back off the side of the mattress. He moved over her.
"You take a shower in the last week?" she asked.
"The Drambuie will kill the germs."
"You're probably right."
She took him. She was quite good and sucked him hard quickly. She began to finger herself beneath the covers. She moaned a bit. After a minute she pulled him out of her mouth. "All right." He walked around to the other side of the bed. She rolled over and presented her enormous ass upward. This was the ugly part, the part he liked. He slipped in from behind. She had never had kids, so even though she was a size eighteen or twenty-two or whatever the huge size was, she was tight as a glove inside. And Violet was fucked ten or fifteen times a month, so she was really in shape down there. He gave it to her hard for a minute or so, sensed boredom in himself, and made a point of watching the traffic on the boulevard out the window.
"Come on, Vic," she instructed. "Don't lose interest."
He pounded her and it felt good. The hot jolt running toward the tip. She squeezed herself at just the right time and he heard a noise come out of his throat and as he shot it occurred to him that he'd enjoyed killing Richie more. You might be a sick fuck, Victor thought. Well, look where you are, you must be.
"All right now," said Violet, her voice amused. "Finally, a little emotionality. You and me. I think we got a chance at Oprah."
He sat back.
"Nice to see you enjoy yourself," she purred.
"Maybe I actually did, yeah."
"Oh, you did."
"Okay, I did. You liked it, too."
"I'm a woman of capacious appetites."
"What's capacious?"
"Big."
"Right. Big."
"That's enough." She poured herself a glass. "You're lucky. Your real girlfriends wouldn't put up with this shit."
"My real girlfriends go out in the Brooklyn sunlight and interact with civilized society."
He wiped himself with the sheet. Violet rolled over.
"Something's bothering you."
"Nah."
"Hey, Victor. It's me, right?"
"Sure is."
"I'm just saying, is all. You seem like something's bothering you."
"You think you know me?"
She laughed and poured another glass. "I'm just saying, a woman can tell some things."
All right, his shrug said, I'll give it to you. He pulled on his pants and went into the bathroom.
"Plus I never complain about your girlfriends."
"How could you?" he called behind him.
"I could. But I don't."
He smiled. This was just play. "I got a guy messing with me, Violet. I don't know who he is."
He sensed her settling in for the conversation, pleased he'd opened up to her. "How messing?"
"Just came by the lot, asking questions." He flipped open the cabinet in her bathroom, reached his hand in the back and opened Violet's bottle of chloral hydrate, the same powerful sleeping pills that killed Anna Nicole Smith. Dissolved in both water and alcohol. He'd used five on Richie, explained to Sharon how to mix them in.
"Questions about what?" came Violet's voice.
"Just things." He poured out ten pills, wrapped them in a piece of toilet paper, and slipped them into his pocket.
"You doing some stuff these days now, Vic?"
He came back to the bed. "I'm always doing something."
She lit a cigarette. "What's he look like?"
"Regular guy. Built."
"Cop?"
"Doesn't have the swagger."
"Not confident?"
"No, no, very confident. But lone-wolf confident. Like that."
Violet was quiet. "I heard about those Mexican girls who got killed out by the beach."
He started pulling on his shirt. "Oh, yeah? I did, too."
She smoked her cigarette, wouldn't look at him. How did she know? he thought. How could she know? "Vic, they got killed with a load of sewage." She looked at him meaningfully. "Whoever heard of that?"
"Pretty tough to track sewage. Stuff degrades quickly."
"But the truck."
"Trucks can disappear. Guys in Queens buy them for scrap, crush them an hour later."
"But you said there's a guy-"
"Not a cop, like I said. Somebody's fucking with me."
"I can ask people," she said.
He found his shoes. "Don't ask. Just listen." He checked his watch. "Gotta go."
She looked at him. This was the moment when he used to give her a little kiss on the cheek, a momentary gentleness that recalled their shared childhood, her brain-damaged brother, the dead baby, the life together that never happened.