“Are you listening?” Frenchy Carver smacked me on the side of the head, trying with only moderate success to get my attention away from the blonde, who had just smiled at me and made me the happiest man alive. Simple minds, simple pleasures.
I grabbed his wrist “Watch it, Frenchy. Don’t get between me and the next ex-Mrs Brewster.”
Josie’s Gin Joint was packed six deep with wanna-bes, gamblers, and mobbed-up pool fans getting pickled in anticipation of tomorrow’s big win at the tournament.
“Don’t let your dick be your guide tonight, buddy. You got an amateur hour to win tomorrow morning.” He pulled his wrist free and lit my Cuban with his Zippo.
“Just enjoying a little eye candy,” I said, without taking my eyes off the blonde.
“Well, pay attention, Brewski, because me and Johnny Bourbon and Joey Donato got twenty yards apiece riding on you.” He turned to Johnny Bourbon, who happened to walk by at that moment. “Hey, John, what’s the name of the guy Brewski’s up against tomorrow?”
“Blackie Snyder,” said Johnny Bourbon as he walked by. He leaned down to pat me on the back. “The name of the black queen Brewster here’s gonna wipe the table with is Blackie Snyder.”
“He’s a spade?”
“Course he’s a spade. With a name like Blackie?”
“And how do you know he’s a faggot?”
“He’s from Frisco, ain’t he?” said Johnny. “Jesus, Mike, don’t you read the fuckin’ papers?”
I shrugged.
“Look, don’t fuckin’ make a joke out of it,” said Frenchy. “Why do you think I got you over at the Sands? Teddy SouthSide’s got a lot of prestige riding on this spade, and so does Big Johnny Frisco. Those West Coast motherfuckers might try something.”
“That must be why you got me loaded down like a one-man band, smartass.” Frenchy had given me two guns – a compact Glock nine, which I’d duct-taped under my dashboard, and a little Colt .380 in my cue case.
“You’ll fuckin’ thank me if anyone tries anything. But I don’t trust your shooting, Brewski – I saw you at the range.”
“I shoot pool, not guns.”
“That’s why I got Sam and Dave following you.”
“That’s fuckin’ crazy. It ain’t necessary.”
“Sixty Gs, motherfucker. That’s how much we got on you.”
“Tell those two Peeping Toms not to get too close.”
“I’ll tell ’em,” said Frenchy. “You’re gonna lay the blonde, ain’t you, you fuckin’ pussyhound?”
“If it’s the last goddamn thing I do.”
I was watching the blonde again. She had uncrossed and recrossed her legs, giving me a quick view of the full length of those gorgeous gams.
“You won’t try to lose Sam and Dave?”
“I won’t try to lose them.” I was already looking at the blonde, who had leaned forward against the bar just enough to stretch what little there was of her dress tight across her back.
“You promise,” growled Frenchy. “You’ll let ’em tail you so nothing goes down. Be serious here, Brewski.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I promise.” I polished off my Scotch. Frenchy knew I played better when I’d had about two hours’ sleep the night before and recently acquired carnal knowledge of some sweet young thing.
I saw the blonde lean close to Josie, the bartender, and then slide down off the bar stool. She started coming my way.
“I see you’re about to receive a visitor,” said Frenchy, and he and Johnny vanished into the crowd.
The blonde was even more of a looker up close and personal.
“Hello,” she said – sexy, but with just a hint of timidity. “You’re that pool player guy, aren’t you?”
I chuckled. “I’ve been called lots of things, most of which I can’t repeat in the presence of a lady. But ‘that pool player guy’, I’m happy to say, isn’t one of them. Mike Brewster at your service.”
“So it is you! I’m a huge fan,” she gushed. “You’re all over the news. Everyone knows about you – you’re a heck of a pool player.”
“Something else I’ve never been called,” I said. “Have a seat,” I offered her.
“Oh, I couldn’t – I mean, could I? I saw you talking to your friends . . . I hope I didn’t chase them away.”
“Of course not,” I said. “Have a seat. And you are . . .?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.
“Oh, God,” she said. “I’m so rude! Sorry. My name’s Ginny Mott. I’m from Florida, but I’m up here on vacation. I didn’t think I’d ever get to meet you in person! But now that I have, I’m hoping I can talk to you a little.” She sounded really nervous.
I nodded, smiled.
She blurted: “I’m a pool player, you see. I’m in town to see the tournament tomorrow – I just love watching really good pool players!” The girl was positively perky with enthusiasm. “I was wondering if you’d give me any pointers. I’ve been practising since I was a little girl, and . . . well, I hate to say it, but I’m awfully good.”
“Your modesty is becoming,” I ribbed her, and she blushed. “What do you want to know?”
“Well . . . I just . . . I was wondering how I know if I’m good enough to go pro.” Now she was leaning close to me, and I could smell her perfume – something expensive.
“You must be mistaken. I’ve never gone pro,” I said.
Ginny blushed again – this time, just a little. “Oh, I know that, well, I mean, everyone knows why that is.”
“And why is that?”
“Oh, you make more money this way . . . you know, under the table money. Everyone knows you’re mobbed up — ”
She froze, blushed deeper, looked at the floor.
“I’m saying too much,” she said. “I don’t mean to be rude, Mr Brewster — ”
“Call me Mike,” I said, leaning back and puffing my cigar. “No offence taken. Where do you practise?” I asked her.
“My daddy runs a diner. It has a table – in the back room.”
I chuckled. “It’s no use telling you, of course, that pool is not an appropriate game for a lady to be playing.”
Ginny got a wicked look on her face, and smiled.
“Tell you what,” I said. “How would you feel about a little mini-tournament, between, say, you and me?”
“Oh, my God, are you serious!” She was laughing. “I could never – I mean, I would lose, for sure, right?”
I shrugged.
“Oh, Mr Brewster, I would love that! Me, playing against Mike Brewster! Would you really want to do it?”
“Oh, yes,” I said, eyeing her upper thighs. “Only one thing. I have a minimum wager on every game.”
“Minimum wager?” Ginny looked suspicious.
“It’s modest. Five bills.” When she looked blankly at me, I said, “Five hundred dollars.”
“But . . . I barely scraped up enough money to fly up here!”
I chuckled. “Well, since you’re a beginner, I would be willing to make alternative arrangements.”
“Really? You’d do that?”
“No need for you to risk your money on a game of pool. I think we could find something a little less . . . painful for you to part with. In the event that you lose I think you’ve got something that’s worth five hundred dollars.”
I took out the five Franklins I’d won from Dakota Joe earlier that night and held them up as Ginny watched, transfixed.
“I’ll gladly place my money against your . . . assets.”
Ginny just looked at me, horrified, her eyes wide, her mouth open in an expression of shock and disgust. “You can’t mean . . .” she began, then lost her voice. After a minute, she managed to croak out: “You mean if I lose to you, I have to . . .”
“If that pretty face of yours isn’t worth five hundred dollars, darling, I don’t know who is.”
I saw the shiver go through her body, as she looked at the ground, pretending to be nervous and embarrassed. But she was enjoying herself, no matter how good a show of false virtue she was putting on.
I figured this was anything but a wager. Rather, it was a way to cut through the bullshit – a way for Ginny to get into bed with me without having to play the does-she-or-doesn’t-she game I saw in our immediate future.
Ginny looked back down at the ground for a long time as if collecting her thoughts.
“You mean if I lose, then I have to go to bed with you,” she said nervously, without looking up.
“That’s right,” I said.
“H . . . h . . . how many times?”
“Just once,” I said.
“Would I have to . . . do anything . . . unusual?”
I laughed. “That one’s up to you.”
She looked down again, and it was ten seconds, twenty, perhaps thirty, before she looked up. With this dark, wicked grin on her face.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s play.”
I gave my money to Bad Check Sammy to hold, so of course I had to tell him what the wager was. And that sonofabitch has the loudest mouth there is. Soon everybody in the bar was crammed into the pool room, standing on tables, pushed against the walls four and five deep.
As Ginny bent over to take her breaking shot, that dress rolled up a little and a series of cheers and howls went up from the crowd. Ginny reddened, glanced back. Then she smiled, obviously loving the attention.
She held her position there for a painful length of time, and with every second the tension increased, till it felt like the crowd was going to explode.
The break rang out like a gunshot. Balls rolled everywhere.
Two balls rolled in – both solids. I almost swallowed my tongue.
I was sweating by the time Ginny took her third shot. She’d downed a third solid – the four – with her second, and she now had a passable shot at the seven, but it wasn’t ideal. She put one leg up on the side of the table – a move that wasn’t, strictly speaking, necessary, but which pleased the crowd and distracted her opponent more than anything she could have done with that cue. She was wearing red panties, and there wasn’t much to them.
She missed her third shot.
My first shot was the ten, an easy shot into the corner pocket. Then the twelve, into the side, and the eleven and thirteen into the same corner. I had practically cleared the stripes when I let my mind wander to the shape of Ginny’s ass in that dress.
The shot I missed was an impossible bank, but it still killed me to miss it. I might have sunk it another time.
“God,” squealed Ginny, seeming genuinely impressed. “You’re so good! I’ve never seen you play in person! You’re so much better than I expected!”
“I ain’t the only one,” I said with ice in my voice, eyeing her suspiciously.
She giggled. “You really think I’m that good?”
I backed down. “I’m just bullshitting the competition,” I said. “’Scuse my French.”
In reality, she was better than I thought she’d be – in fact, she was damn good. It made me more than a little nervous. I had lost about one game a year for the last ten years, and I didn’t want this year’s game to be lost to a college coed in fuck-me pumps.
Ginny had nothing but a crappy shot from one corner of the table to the opposite, having to bank at the far end to miss the eight. She took a painfully long time setting up that shot. She seemed to be doing all the calculations in her head, furrowing her brow and gnawing on her lower lip.
Then she bent over again, slowly, spreading her legs and hunkering down low. The dress rode up high above the lace tops of her seamed black silk stockings, exposing the lovely framework of her creamy thighs, and my head swam as I looked at those gorgeous buns in the tight dress in her next-to-nothing red lace underwear.
She made the shot. And the next one. And the next one – each shot giving Ginny a new opportunity to flaunt those assets of hers. To me, and to the crowd.
She finally missed a shot. I let out a long sigh. I was on the brink of a fucking disaster here. Ginny had exactly two solids left on the table and I had three stripes. She could wipe the floor with me if I didn’t sink the next shot.
I sighed and lined up an easy fifteen-in-the-corner-pocket. Ginny slyly positioned herself exactly across the table from me, and half-sat on a stool so she could put one leg up, showing me what I’d be getting if I beat her, no doubt in the hopes that the distraction would make me fuck up. This girl was more of an evil bitch than she appeared. There might be some hope for her yet.
I missed.
I was fucked. Ginny had two more balls to sink and then the eight ball was all hers.
Maybe she was better than me. Then again, maybe I wanted Ginny to win.
OK, listen to me for a minute here. I had pulled the “wager-against-your-assets” scam with a dozen girls who happened to be dumb or horny enough to fall for it, and it had never failed. And I never felt guilty about it.
Women don’t enter into that kind of wager unless they’re prepared to put out already and want to do it in the first place. So it just cuts through the bullshit, the “did you have any pets growing up?” crap that nobody, woman or man, wants to waste time with when there’s a good fuck waiting to be had.
But it doesn’t matter how good a pool player a girl is, I’d never met a girl who could make any serious headway in a game of pool against Mikey Brewster. Not until now.
This shot Ginny had at the six was a real bitch – almost impossible. Nobody could have made that shot, except possibly me, and possibly Clint Boston, and probably Killarney Sean, the craziest, drunkest Irishman I had ever met and one mother of a pool player. Sean was doing time upstate for bootlegging cigarettes. That Irishman could drink a bottle of whiskey and still sink shots that would have made Minnesota Fats drop to his knees and weep. He’s the only sonofabitch who ever took me three for three. And I didn’t even think Sean could have sunk that shot.
But Ginny did.
“I made it! I made it!” she shrieked, her ample breasts bouncing as she jumped up and down in celebration She bounced over to me and hugged me, her nipples hard against my skin through my silk shirt. “Guess you’ll have to find another way to keep yourself occupied tonight,” she whispered, and danced out of my grasp.
The mood around the table was mixed. A lot of guys had money on me for tomorrow, and they were beginning to lose their confidence, maybe think about changing their bets. But they’d seen me wipe that pool table with so many asses, even theirs, that it brought them savage pleasure to watch Ginny beating me. They lavished affection on her and a few guys even shoved twenties into her cleavage, earning them playful slaps. That bitch loved the limelight. She giggled and bounced away to take a drink from the blended margarita her friend Lucy was holding for her.
Josie makes the world’s worst margaritas, so that was some small comfort to me.
Ginny lined up the last solid on the table. If she made this one, it was all about the goddamn eight ball.
Look, I already told you, she wouldn’t have signed up if she wasn’t prepared to do it anyway. It’s not like it was gonna be torture for her if she lost, goddamn it. Plenty of girls . . . oh, fuck it. I was gonna lose this match to a fuckin’ girl, and be forever humiliated among wiseguys and hangers-on. In ten fucking years, it was going to be, “Hey, Mikey, you interested in playing some pool? ’Cause I saw some girls from the Catholic school walking by . . .”
Ginny looked more gorgeous setting up that shot than she’d looked yet – maybe because I knew I wasn’t gonna have her. I thought about taking my dick out and wagging it at her the way she’d wagged those thighs and ass at me – but that seemed like it would be undignified, at best.
Instead, I prayed.
God, I thought, just let her fuck up once, God. Just let me take one shot, and I’ll do the rest. Just one shot, Lord, I’ll never swindle a twenty-year-old girl out of her virtue again, I promise. I fucking promise, I will be good and go to church and I won’t screw on Sundays from now on. I swear it.
Bending over, one leg up on the table, tight body poised in that tight dress, Ginny looked up at me, smiled, and winked.
I flipped her off, and she laughed, like I was the biggest fuckin’ asshole in the world and she was only moderately embarrassed to have to humiliate me like this in front of my friends.
I fuckin’ mean it, God. I fuckin’ mean it.
She missed.
I leaned down low and lined up a bank shot.
Ginny was on her third or fourth margarita; I was still drinking Scotch, nice and slow, sipping it. Easy. Easy does it. Ginny sat in Lucy’s lap, the two of them almost crushing Ugly Dave, who had a pained expression on his face but was looking like he was in heaven nonetheless. Ginny’s legs were parted, practically flashing me as I tried to focus on the shot.
You’re never going to get to see that for real, I thought. You’re never going to fuck this dame if you don’t start playing some pool.
Then everything fell into place. I sank the nine and the fourteen, just like that – easy as pie. Then I banked the fifteen in the side, a very difficult shot, without disturbing the eight ball that was just begging to be nudged. Ginny stared like she’d just witnessed a miracle. Then her face fell, and she frowned. She wasn’t giggling any more. And she was gulping, not sipping, her margarita.
Now it was just me and the eight ball, and Ginny’s fine, sweet ass wrapped around my cock. Bent over the table, I looked up at Ginny, who was staring at me, looking incredibly worried – like a sick feeling of horror had come over her. Like she was about to puke, knowing I was going to dust her and take her home and fuck her like she’d never been fucked before.
“Aw, come on.” I smirked, and winked at her. “I’m not that bad, am I?”
The eight ball went in nice and easy, and I had the gall to laugh. I guess I’m a sore winner.
We took my Impala. I unlocked the passenger’s door for her and Ginny slid into the passenger’s seat, her dress hugging her the way I was gonna be before much longer. I climbed into the driver’s seat.
Ginny looked up and smiled at me, wistfully.
“I really thought I had you,” she said. “I thought I was going to win.”
“You and me both,” I said, just a little more coldly than I intended. I started the car but didn’t put it in gear. Instead, I stuck my hand under the dash, nice and easy. Brought it back out again.
Ginny gasped when she saw the gun.
“Who put you up to it?” I asked, my voice cold as ice. Ginny looked at me from under those long eyelashes, looking afraid. She pursed her lips, looked at the gun, then at me.
“I don’t know his name,” she told me. “He promised me a thousand dollars if I would beat you at pool. He said there was a match tomorrow and if you lost to a girl tonight, you’d lose tomorrow. Something about confidence.”
I laughed. “Who’s ‘he’?”
“I already told you,” said Ginny, too quickly, “he didn’t tell me his name!”
“Describe him,” I said.
She shrugged. “Real short, kind of fat. Dark hair. Ruddy skin.”
“You know his name,” I told her
She nodded.
“All right. He said his name was Theo.”
“Teddy SouthSide,” I breathed. “He goes by Theo when he thinks he’s being sly.”
She shrugged. “Could be. I don’t know.”
“That sonofabitch,” I mused. “Where’d he find you?”
“I’m the college champion at Gainesville. One of his scouts saw me.”
“So you tried to play out of your league,” I told her, a little cruelly. “And you blew it. You bet your body against his grand and my half a grand. You end up with nothing. And I get you.”
She shrugged. “But I’m not a cheater,” she said. “I don’t play dirty pool. You beat me fair and square.”
Then she was against me, her mouth on mine, her tongue working its way into my mouth, her firm breasts against my body. My arms went around her, the Glock in one hand and one of Ginny’s firm breasts in the other. The Glock rested easily on the back of her neck, its weight a comfort as she held me. Her hands were all over me, and I could feel myself reacting to her, feel my cock getting hard. I could smell her sweet, musky perfume and I thought to myself for the first time in about five minutes how much I was going to enjoy this . . .
I pulled away from her, put the car in gear, and floored it.
I finally lost Sam and Dave near the interchange. It just wouldn’t be the same with a couple of wiseguys looking up my butt through the window as I screwed Ginny.
I took her to the Rest-Tite off of 95, got a room right on the parking lot. Took her in there and closed the door. Left the light off but the curtains open a crack, so the moonlight streamed in and lit up that body of hers as she stood there looking at me, as if waiting for me to make the first move.
But then she turned, backed up to me, showed me her shoulders as an invitation.
I unzipped her red dress, and she shrugged it off – as it had been begging to come off all evening. It shimmered down her pale body and piled around her ankles. Her red panties were slight, just a string up the back – hiding nothing of that gorgeous, wide ass and smooth-slung hips framed by black garters. Her waist was tiny; I could practically let my fingers meet if I put one hand on each side of it. I did, and pulled her close against me, kissing the back of her neck, tasting the salt of her sweat, and listening to her moan as I kissed up to her ear.
My fingers slipped up her back and deftly unfastened the clasp of her bra; I brought my hands up to feel her large, heavy breasts, pinching the nipples as Ginny turned her body so she could kiss me. She kissed hard, too, with lots of teeth, the way I like it, her tongue battling mine for dominance, her pearly whites nipping at my flesh as if trying to draw blood. I looked into her brown eyes and watched them sparkle – lust, or mischief? Then I felt her hand on my cock, stroking through my pants, and I didn’t care. She unfastened my belt. I kindly slipped the Glock out of my waistband and put it in the pocket of my sharkskin jacket.
She turned, and I held her, and she pulled me roughly back onto the bed.
Ginny was worth every goddamn bead of sweat, every instant of terror, when I’d thought I was going to lose the game. Her body was soft, lush, full of smooth and beautiful flesh, and she gripped me like a Chinese finger puzzle. She rode me, I rode her, and she showed me what that smart mouth of hers could do. By the time we lay in bed together, I was exhausted, my eyes thick with the need for sleep. But I slept with one eye open.
Because even as I listened to her even breathing beside me, felt her naked body pressed against mine, something smelled wrong – and it wasn’t the tequila on her breath.
I listened to the sounds Ginny made in the bathroom. Then I heard some other sounds – cloth, zipper. I sat up, looked for her dress on the floor, didn’t see it.
She’d made it out of the bathroom and gotten the door open before I grabbed my jacket from the back of the chair and whipped out my Glock. Then I dove for her, willy flapping in the wind as I grabbed Blackie Snyder’s hair and yanked her back onto the bed, pistol at her head.
I screamed at the top of my lungs, “Drop ’em or I’ll kill her! I fucking swear I’ll do it!”
Ginny froze, I froze, the shadows in the doorway froze. I could see them clearly – two of them. Trench coats, low hats, Remingtons.
I looked down into her big brown eyes for a long instant.
Then, “Go ahead and do it, you son of a bitch,” she said, and ripped at my eye.
I didn’t mean to shoot. It just happened – as she scratched me, I pulled the trigger. Plaster exploded everywhere around me and everything went bright red as Ginny kneed me in the balls. The Glock came out of my grip, and as I grabbed it, some guy hit me hard in the face with the butt of a Remington.
I laughed my ass off, lying there on the floor with blood running out of my mouth into a sanguine puddle underneath me. I felt a boot on the back of my neck. Somebody hit the lights.
“Blackie Snyder,” I laughed. “Blackie fuckin’ Snyder!”
“I don’t usually bleach my hair,” said Ginny, lighting a cigarette. She sat down in the chair just in front of me, no underwear under her dress, legs slightly parted so I could see the pussy I’d just fucked – or had it fucked me? – still glistening with the remnants of our lust. “Truth be told, though, I got the nickname from losing pool games by sinking the eight ball so many times.”
“You’ve come a long way, baby,” I grunted as I felt the cold weight of a shotgun barrel on the back of my skull.
“Yeah, well, I was eight,” she said. “I’ve had ten years to practise. All you had to do was lose to me tonight, and you would have walked out of here with your bones intact. I would have beat you tomorrow; and Big Johnny Frisco and Teddy SouthSide would have been happy. But no, you had to show you’re the best fucking amateur pool player in the country. Well, not any more, mother-fucker.”
“Talk about dirty pool,” I said. “This shit’s filthy.”
“It’s a filthy world,” she said.
“Especially with you in it.”
“You know what really fuckin’ burns me, Brewster?”
“Knowing I would have skunked your ass tomorrow?”
Blackie Snyder laughed, shook her head. “You’re a good fuckin’ pool player. I’m sorry to have to do this.” Then she nodded to the two guys holding me down, and I felt someone grabbing my wrist, and I tried to fight against his grasp and felt a boot in my kidneys, so hard I saw stars.
And that’s when the one guy took my thumb and twisted.
I told myself I wouldn’t scream; then I heard a snap, and screamed anyway.
I looked up, through the bleak pain, and saw Blackie Snyder putting on her shoes. She bent low and grabbed my hair, pulled my face up so I could look at her pretty face, at the way her upper lip curled in contempt.
“Nah,” said Blackie, standing up. “Not even close. What steams me,” she said, her lips a quarter inch from mine, “is that you’re pretty goddamn cute, Brewster. I would have fucked your brains out even if you hadn’t won the game.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I fuckin’ appreciate that.”
Then even through the agony and the sound of my own scream as the guy grabbed my other thumb and twisted that one, I heard Blackie Snyder’s laughter.
The guys let me go. I looked up through bright stars of pain and saw one of them dump the bullets in my Glock into his pocket, then throw the gun down on the floor next to me. I lay there, hurting. They left the motel room door open.
Blackie paused in the doorway, looked down at me.
“It takes the soul of a killer to play dirty pool, Brewster. You should consider another line of work.”
Then she was gone, and I heard a car start outside, heard her high heels click-click-clicking across the asphalt. I crawled, groaning in pain, across the floor to the chair where I’d laid my cue case; I saw and felt and smelled the detritus of her sweat and perfume on her panties and bra, garter belt and stockings, littering the floor between me and the case. I screamed in pain as I flipped the latches, and I had to hold the Colt .380 with both hands as I limped out, naked and blood-caked, into the night. I heard the car door slam, heard the tyres squeal, saw the headlights come on. I stepped in front of them and raised the .380, laughing my ass off.
“How’s this for dirty pool, motherfuckers?” I laughed, and pulled the trigger.