Black Cat Weekly #5

NOT DONE WITH THE NIGHT by Jay Brandon-1

NOT DONE WITH THE NIGHT

by Jay Brandon

The Barb Goffman Presents series showcases modern

masterpieces of mystery, crime, and suspense selected by

acclaimed mystery author and editor Barb Goffman.

Just outside the bar, Gerald glanced over his shoulder and saw the car pulling to a stop a block away. Two shapes inside. Then he walked inside and stood looking around. It was a Thursday night, almost the weekend, the place was fairly crowded. There weren’t many bars in this gentrifying but not entirely tamed part of Philadelphia where a woman would likely come by herself or with a friend. This was the prime one.

He scanned the room and saw her at a small table near the bar, an empty wineglass across from her. But from the way she looked around the room and didn’t take the opportunity of being alone to check her makeup, he didn’t think she was waiting for a date.

Gerald went to the bar. He was tall enough to catch the bartender’s eye over the heads there, gesture in a way the bartender luckily interpreted correctly. After a moment, Gerald turned away with his Heineken and change, started across the room, then looked down at the young woman at the table. “Hi!” he said, sounding surprised.

She looked up at him. Her eyes stayed on his face and showed no recognition. He sat in the chair across from her. “You still come here? I thought you didn’t like this place that much.”

“Excuse me?”

“I thought that last time you said you didn’t really like this place and almost never came here. Why do people say that, by the way? ‘Excuse me.’ Like you didn’t hear me, when what you really mean is ‘what the hell are you talking about?’”

Her posture relaxed a little as she smiled. He had that effect on some women, the right kind of women, putting them at ease. Maybe it was his thinness, his normally earnest expression. A girlfriend had once told him it was the fact that he was blond, which in a man seemed unthreatening.

This young woman said, “I’m too nice a person to say get the hell away from me. That’s what ‘excuse me?’ means.”

“Ah. Raised by a nice family. Went to a good school. Marcy, right?”

Her smile had become more knowing. It wasn’t an expression that suited her. She didn’t have that thin, knowing, big-city kind of face. She had good cheekbones, but honest cheeks—not sucked to skeletal—brown eyes, pretty lips. Hands that looked competent but a little unsure as she lifted her white wine, then didn’t drink it. “Are you trying to ease my name out of me? It’s Karen.”

“See? I had it right. Right number of syllables, same consonants. Sort of. Mine’s Gerald. Are you really saying we didn’t talk, three or four months ago, right here? We talked for like half an hour.”

“Really. Someone kept talking to you for thirty minutes?”

He smiled. Then frowned as the music changed. “Oh hell, I didn’t know this was that kind of place.”

“What?”

He gestured vaguely at the sound coming from hidden speakers. “The kind of place that plays Norah Jones.”

“You don’t like Norah Jones? Nobody doesn’t like Norah Jones. She’s the safe pick if you have somebody you don’t know well coming over. How can you not like her?”

“She’s so... breathy. Like she’s always holding back something. Come right out and say it, Norah.”

Karen laughed. Gerald tried to remember if he’d ever made a woman laugh so soon. He was finding this easy, and he never had before. Was it because now he didn’t care? Was that the secret of life, not caring? That was a sucky secret.

He said, “Let’s not talk about our jobs, okay? That’s what you were going to ask next: What do you do? Let’s talk about something we’re more interested in.”

“Do I seem like I’m trying to prolong the conversation? Okay, tell me about your best vacation ever.”

Yes, she was trying to keep this going. Karen was enjoying this, he could tell. She wasn’t the kind of woman a man would hit on in a crowded bar. At least not this early in the evening. She was pretty, but she didn’t look like a wild night of passion. She looked like a walk in the park. Lunch overlooking the ocean. A church wedding.

For a moment he almost got up and walked away, muttering that he’d made a mistake. Then he glanced at the door and saw he’d been right. Two men had come in, tall guys wearing jackets on this warm night to conceal what they were carrying. Their eyes shot around the room, then locked on him.

“Best vacation ever,” he said quietly, looking away. “The Bahamas.”

“Naturally.” She laughed at him but in a nice way.

“Wait. My third year of college instead of going back to school I used the money I’d worked for all summer and flew to the Bahamas by myself. Just needed a break, you know? I got the cheapest hotel room I could find, but I still ran through my money in three days. It was beautiful. I didn’t want to go back. The fourth day I went to three hotels, and the last one hired me as a bellboy. Worked in the kitchen some too. Real scut work. But people were on vacation, they tipped well, a few women were there in all-women groups... I got to know some real islanders. Stayed three months. Felt like an insider, and a few tourist ladies felt like they’d had a brief encounter with a local. It was wonderful.”

“So your best vacation ever you were working?”

He shrugged. “It was a vacation from my regular life. What about you?”

He shifted so the guys at the door didn’t have as good a look at him. They moved to a table near the door and didn’t look impatient to be served, craning their heads to see the woman he was with.

Karen shook her head. “It’s not a good question for me. I shouldn’t have started it. Mine was by the ocean too, but it was pretty lame. There was one time when I was a girl, though, when I was about twelve, my family had a cabin by a lake.”

He listened to her talk, watching her face. It went girlish, wistful, happy. He saw that her childhood had been happier than adulthood was turning out for her. Her hand was resting on the table, and he put his out too, but didn’t quite reach for her. Their fingers played on the tabletop, a foot apart, small questing animals sniffing the air.

Definitely a lunch-overlooking-the-sea kind of girl. Gerald needed to get away from her. “Listen, Karen, I’d love to stay and talk, but I’ve got a problem.” Her eyes narrowed, she sat back in her chair. “There are two guys over there across the room—don’t look, but they’d stand right out. They think I owe their boss money. All a misunderstanding, but—”

“You need some place to go, right?” Now Karen crossed her arms.

That had been his plan, yes, try to escort her home, lose the guys in the jackets there. But he’d changed his mind. He would find another way to deal with them.

“No. No. I’m just saying I can’t stay and talk any longer.”

Karen looked less sure of herself now. Sounding defensive, she said, “I didn’t come here alone, you know.”

He nodded. “That’s your friend over there talking to the bodybuilder at the end of the bar, right? I see her lipstick on the wineglass here.”

Gerald wanted to say, Hope I see you here again sometime, or something like that, but it was pointless to tease her. The guys over there were studiously not looking at them now, but not talking to each other either, barely sipping their drinks. They didn’t even glance at each other, not like two friends out together. He had to get away now.

“May I borrow your phone for a second?”

That surprised her. Still suspicious, she handed over an iPhone. He pressed some keys, and they both heard his phone ring in his pants pocket. “Now you’ve got my number.”

“And you’ve got mine,” she said with a little smile, as if she saw through his ruse but didn’t mind.

“Bye, Karen.”

As he stood up he put his hand next to hers, not quite touching. Then he walked quickly out, moving fast so the two guys in jackets would have to reveal themselves. Gerald didn’t look back. Outside, he ran across the street, into the parking garage on the other side. He stood for a minute looking back, but no one emerged from the bar. Maybe Jacket Guys had backups out here, but the night seemed empty. Gerald ran through the parking garage and out the other side, to where his car was parked on a side street. No one followed. They hadn’t been after him after all.

* * * *

He made sure he wasn’t followed by the time he parked miles away. When he did he sat in the car for several seconds, head down. Then he shook his head and got out. He hurried along the dark street. It would be okay as soon as he got inside the apartment.

It was. When he stepped inside Angela was pulling on a blouse. She turned, looked at him and smiled, and took her time pulling the blouse closed. Even then, she didn’t button it. She sat easily on the arm of a chair, long legs apart. Her black hair hung to her shoulders, framing a long, sensual face that seemed designed to emphasize her full mouth and red lips. At least, that’s where his eyes were drawn.

Gerald felt hollow as he looked at her, still not believing a woman like this had chosen him.

“Well?” Angela said, and even that one syllable sounded sly and knowing.

He had met here somewhere she never should have been: a grocery store. They had bumped carts, then bumped knees and other body parts about an hour later. Angela wasn’t supposed to be out in public. That was sort of the point of the witness relocation program. But life in captivity wasn’t for her. Angela had bolted before even getting to her destination city or identity. And Gerald had been so ensnared from the first moment he’d seen her that he had dropped his whole life to go with her. Truth to tell, there hadn’t been much to drop.

Philadelphia was the most dangerous place on earth for Angela. So that was where she went. She had to come back to get the money, and she figured no one would be looking for her in the riskiest place there was for her. She’d been wrong about that. She and Gerald had been spotted their second day, before she’d been able to get the money.

She waved him over and pulled him close, her arms around his waist, her open blouse hanging between them. She looked up and raised an eyebrow.

“I got rid of them,” he answered.

“How? You didn’t look like James Bond when I met you.”

“I let them follow me into a bar, where I started talking to a woman.”

“Who was she?”

“Just some girl in a bar. One who looked a little like you.”

Smoldering smile. “Really?”

“In dim light. If all you were working from was a description. Remember two days ago we thought maybe they snapped a photo of me while I was getting in the car and you were hanging back in the coffee shop?” He realized as he said it that Angela was better than he was, better at taking care of herself. “That’s what I was counting on, that these were guys that didn’t know you, they just knew what I looked like and had a description of you and were waiting for me to lead them to you.”

“And they went for her instead.”

He nodded. She stood up, no warning, her body sliding up his, grabbed the back of his neck and kissed him, long and deep, pressing against him her whole length. That quickly, his body remembered every touch of their days of lovemaking. Her kiss had the same effect as the first time, erasing his mind. But this time it came back faster than usual.

Oh, hell, he thought.

“Now I can go get the money. You wait here. I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

Double hell.

She took the car keys from him, headed for the door buttoning her blouse, then stopped. She looked back, and he could tell she was thinking about kissing him again. Maybe throw in something else for good measure. But Angela smiled complacently, sure of him, and blew him a kiss as she went out.