Page 54 of Slow Burn

She resisted the urge to throw the damned thing in a heap on the floor, found a hanger and put it in the hall closet. When she returned, he was sitting at ease on the sofa, feet up, flipping channels on her TV. The sound was too loud.

“Cable,” he said approvingly. “Great. I like those pirate shows on—what’s it?—the Discovery channel. And those mysteries. Good mysteries. And that ‘American Justice’ show.”

He settled on ESPN, the roar of a hockey match. Robby sat on the edge of the magenta chair, waiting, ready to move if he came at her. Would he be that crude? Was she giving him too much credit for subtlety?

“Robby,” he sighed, and shook his head. “Here I am, a guest in your house, and you don’t offer me anything to drink? Where’d you grow up, a barn? Some wine, if you have some. Red. And some crackers, pretzels, something like that.”

She went to the kitchen and opened a bottle, poured two bubble-fragile glasses full. The hockey game continued to rage in the living room. She paused to stare at the wall phone next to the counter. Jim’s number was on speed dial, as if it would do any good, as if he’d ever cross Sol.

Sol took the glass with evident relish, sniffed the woody scent of the beaujolais, swirled the wine, and sipped. Robby put hers aside untasted.

“Young,” Sol said with a prissy twist of his thick lips. “A little nosy. Peppery.”

She had no idea what he was talking about, and suspected he didn’t, either. She waited until he’d drained the glass.

“Anything I can do for you, Sol?” she asked. He tilted his empty glass suggestively; she fetched the bottle and poured him a second. No shilly-shallying about tasting, this time. He guzzled it. She put the bottle on the coffee table in front of him. “Is something wrong?”

“Something’s got to be wrong for me to visit you? What if I just like your company, sweetheart?” His eyes looked like black glass, full of pupil. The suspicion came to her too late that he was on something, that she’d lost her chance to call Jim and might never get another. There was a phone in the hall bathroom; she might be able to plead indisposition … “Robby, Robby, I like you. Why do you have to double-cross me?”

“D-Double-cross?” The stammer betrayed more than she wanted him to know. She saw lazy killing pleasure in his eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m talking about the hooker,” he said, and leaned over confidentially. “You fucking her?”

She jerked as if he’d stabbed her. He sat slowly back upright, watching her face.

“Good,” he said. “I wouldn’t like to think you were that kind of pervert, know what I mean? So, she’s, what, blackmailing you? Giving you the soft-soap? What?”

She spread her hands, helpless. He smiled and nursed a mouthful of wine. A drop spilled on the lapel of his off-white suit like a bloody flower.

“Not that it matters,” he continued. “Couple of object lessons, we don’t have this problem anymore. The hooker, she got hers. Time for yours, Robby.”

She didn’t have time to move at all before his hand was under his jacket, before the gun was out. The muzzle was a huge black eye, staring. Her brain continued a helpless litany,stupid, this is stupid, how can he do this, it’s all a mistake—

Sol put the muzzle to her forehead, the circle a cold tattoo. She pressed herself back against the chair and just had time to cry out before she felt the pistol press harder against her head.

Click.

She opened her eyes and watched Sol holster the gun through a sudden blurring curtain of tears.

“No bullets,” he said. “Not this time. Next time we come up short,cara mia, you get one in the knee. If it happens twice, you get one in the brain. Got it?”

She nodded convulsively, unable to speak past the rage. He finished his glass of wine and stood up.

“Get my coat.”

She didn’t mean to obey, but then her hands were full of heavy wool, and he was taking it from her and shrugging it on.

On his way out, he kissed her hand.

She locked the door behind him, all the locks, all the alarms, picked up the wine bottle and glasses, and carried them to the kitchen.

“Robby?” Velvet, behind her, voice trembling. “Are you okay?”

Robby opened the bottom drawer and took out a hammer, and without any feeling at all, smashed the wine bottle and glasses into tiny glittering fragments.

“We have to kill him,” she said.

Chapter Twenty-one

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