ONE NEVER KNOWS

Mona Costatroppo looked out the window of her room in the Drake Hotel in Chicago. Lake Michigan, she thought, staring at it, was as big as an ocean.

“What’s the name again, this beach here?” she asked Federal Agents Sandy Sandusky and Morton Martin, both of whom were seated on the couch under a hideous oil painting of a tropical sunset.

“Oak Street,” Sandusky said. “That’s Oak Street beach.”

“About a billion bodies on it,” said Mona, “look like flies on dogshit.”

She turned away from the window.

“So, you’ll guarantee if I tell you all I know about Santos’s organization you’ll set me up someplace with a new identity?”

“Federal Witness Protection Program,” said Martin. “Even Europe, you want to go there.”

Mona nodded. “Okay, you bums get outta here now, let me think this over.”

The agents rose together and Sandusky said, “We’ll be here tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, Ms. Costatroppo.”

“Never figured anybody’d be callin’ me Miz, ’less slavery got legal again. You be here what time you want. But now, get out.”

The agents left and Mona poured a healthy dose of Bombay Sapphire into a glass and drank it fast. She poured some more into the glass, emptying the fifth she’d bought that morning, and was about to swallow it when there was a knock at the door.

“Who’s there?” she asked.

“Valet. I have your laundry.”

Mona walked over, the glass in her left hand, and turned the door-knob with her right.

“Put it on the bed,” she said, walking toward the window, not bothering to see who it was coming through the door.

As Mona lifted the glass to her lips and opened her mouth, she heard a loud pop. She dropped the glass and started to turn around, but before she could there was another loud pop, which she did not hear. Mona sat down suddenly on the floor, her head banging hard against the window that overlooked Oak Street beach and Lake Michigan, but she didn’t feel a thing.