Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman (27 page)

Chapter Forty-Three

“G
AS!
I
SMELL
gas!” I panted, struggling to keep the barrel of the gun pointing away from my head. Now I knew what Armani’s predicted explosion was. It wasn’t a gunshot, it was a gas explosion!

“I smell it too!” God shouted.

“Teeth the guy!” Doomsday urged.

And I finally understood what she meant. I bit Gary’s wrist as hard as I could. It was a disturbing sensation to sink my teeth into this soft skin, feeling his malleable tendons shifting beneath the onslaught.

Howling, he released his hold on the gun. Grabbing it, I crawled a few paces away from the two grappling men, just in time to see Gary ram his elbow backward into Patrick’s head, causing his skull to bounce off the tile floor. The hollow thud it made caused me to cry out.

Patrick went limp.

“Don’t move,” I warned Gary.

Ignoring me, he got to his feet, his chest puffed with his perceived victory.

Unlike with Cifelli, I had no hesitation about ending this man’s life. I squeezed the trigger.

And nothing happened.

Not a damn thing.

I squeezed it again. Still nothing. The damn thing had jammed.

Realizing I was helpless, Gary made his move.

He was almost on top of me when 70 pounds of growling Doberman got between us.

“Run!” Doomsday told me.

I scrambled away. God was beckoning for me to join him behind the butcher block island.

I heard Gary scream, “You stupid mutt!”

Then there was a sickening thunk and the dog let out a pained whine that lanced my heart.

I looked back to see Doomsday cowering on the floor, Gary looming over her.

“Bad dog!” He screamed, looking like more of a rabid animal than she. He kicked her again. Her pained yelp bounced off the kitchen walls.

I had to do something. Desperately I scanned the kitchen for a weapon.

Gary reached into the pantry and pulled out a big long gun. I’m not expert, but I was pretty sure it was a shotgun. The man kept a shotgun in his kitchen cabinet.

“Meet the guy,” Doomsday whimpered, her big brown eyes pleading with me. “Meet the guy.”

I turned to God for a translation, but all he could do was shrug.

Gary kicked her a third time.

“Meet the guy,” she begged in an agonized moan.

As her owner aimed the weapon at the poor dog’s head, God made his move.

“Leave her alone, you coward!” He roared . . . vocalized . . . chirped as he charged straight at the naked man’s toes.

“Meet the guy.”

And suddenly I understood what she meant, what Armani’s premonition had meant, and how it was a matter of life or death. Damn those pesky homonyms!

With God providing a distraction (Gary was trying to stomp him to death) I grabbed the hunk of flesh on the butcher block. The leg of lamb, with the bone still in, weighed a good eight pounds.

Swinging it like a baseball bat, I connected with Gary’s shoulder. Stumbling, he tried to bring the shotgun up at me.

Doomsday “teethed the guy” clamping onto his ankle and dragging him down to the ground. The shotgun went off.

Gary tried to fire the remaining round at me. I swung the meat at his arm. The shot went wide, but there was a deafening boom.

For a third time I swung as hard as I could at his ugly face and was rewarded with the sickening sound of his neck snapping.

He fell to the floor, his head flopped at an unnatural angle to his body. His eyes were open, but as empty as a doll’s.

“Dead is dead,” I muttered.

“Fire! Fire!” God shouted, pointing at the opposite side of the room.

I turned. Sure enough the kitchen was going up in flames. From the location of the fire, I guessed that Gary’s last wild shot had hit the heavy can on the counter, and that must have been filled with something flammable.

“Oh crap.”

“That’s an understatement.” God muttered.

Kneeling beside Doomsday, I stroked her soft head.

“Are you okay?”

She licked my hand.

“Can you get up, Sweetheart?”

“Take now home you?”

“She wants to know if we’ll take her home.”

I nodded.

She got to her feet.

I swallowed the painful lump that rose in my throat. If I’d been able to cry, I’m sure I would have shed a tear or two when I saw that she was going to make it.

“You have to get out of here,” I told her as the little lizard scrambled up her leg and perched himself between her ears. “Go with God.”

Turning away from them, I ran over to where Patrick lay. “Patrick? Patrick, we have to get out of here.”

His eyes fluttered open, the blue-green as empty as a tranquil sea.

The kitchen was getting hotter. The flames crackled.

“We’ve got to get out of here.”

His eyes drifted back closed. He wasn’t going to get out of here under his power. It was going to be up to me.

I crouched down, slid my hands under his arms, and pulled.

Can I just say that I now understand the meaning of the phrase
dead weight
? I could barely slide him across the kitchen tiles. He weighed a ton. The fire was getting closer, the ceiling above was starting to crumble.

It was hard to breathe.

“Help me let.”

I was startled to find that the animals hadn’t left the kitchen. They were standing beside me.

“She wants you to let her help you,” God told me. “I think that’s a good plan. Otherwise we’re all going to roast.”

“How?”

“Pull him I.”

“She says she’ll pull him. She’ll take one arm you take the other. C’mon hurry up. Give her one of his arms.”

“Try not to hurt him,” I said, giving one of Patrick’s arms to the Doberman.

She grabbed onto his sweatshirt sleeve and started tugging as she walked backward. I pulled on his other arm. Together we dragged him out of the kitchen.

“This way to the door,” God directed, leading the way.

A noise that sounded like popping corn on steroids reached our ears.

“Bullets!” God and I said simultaneously.

“Who knows what else he has in there.” God sounded panicked. “The place could go up any second. Hurry! Hurry!”

I happened to agree with him that we were on the verge of being blown to smithereens, so I redoubled my efforts. The dog and I dragged poor Patrick through the rooms of the house, bouncing him over doorsills, getting him caught up on corners, and smashing him into furniture along the way.

I wasn’t sure if we were saving or killing him.

Finally we reached the door and hauled him outside.

“Go get the car!” God ordered.

“He’s too close to the house.”

“Move myself I can.” Doomsday assured me.

“Someone’s going to call the fire department and then the police will be here,” God reminded me.

He was right.

I took off running.

“Come back!” God yelled.

I stopped in my tracks. “You just told me to go!”

“You forgot the keys, you ninny!”

He was right. I jogged back.

“This pocket! This pocket!” God jumped up and down on Patrick’s right hip.

I pulled out the keys and stumbled away again.

It felt like an eternity had passed as I ran to the car and drove it to Gary’s place.

By the time I got back to the house, black smoke was filling the air. As she’d promised, Doomsday had somehow managed to get the redheaded man to the curb.

I had no idea how to get him into the car.

“Patrick, wake up!” I begged, slapping his face like they do on TV all the time. It didn’t work.

“Hit no!” Doomsday nudged me out of the way and began slathering him with big, wet doggie kisses.

They did the trick.

Patrick stirred.

“Wake up, Patrick. Come on, I need you to open your eyes.”

He blinked, struggling to focus.

“Help me get you into the car.”

“Wha— Wha—”

I thought I heard the wail of sirens in the distance.

“We have to get out of here now.” I half-lifted, half-dragged him into the backseat of the car. Doomsday hopped into the front.

“Not the driver’s seat!” I told her.

Obediently she moved over to the passenger’s side. “Wind.”

“She wants you to open the window,” God supplied from the backseat, where he’d curled up on Patrick’s chest.

I opened the window for the dog. She stuck her head out. I drove away.

“Mags?”

“Yes, Patrick?”

“Did you bring your lizard to a hit?”

“Yes, Patrick.”

“Oh.”

Behind us, Gary the Gun’s house blew up.

Chapter Forty-Four

P
ATRICK INSISTED HE
didn’t need to see a doctor. I told him he’d been knocked unconscious twice. God helpfully mentioned he might have brain damage. I told him to shut up.

Patrick thought I was telling him to shut up. I couldn’t exactly tell him I was talking to the vocalizing lizard, so the topic of conversation got dropped.

We went our separate ways at the mall. Patrick drove off to return the mysterious sedan. I left the Doberman and the gecko in my car—yes, all the windows were cracked, and no, it wasn’t too hot for them—and went to complete my alibi. If anyone asked, I’d say I spent the day at the mall. I had my lip gloss receipt to prove when I’d gotten there, and now I went in to buy live crickets for you-know-who.

The same creepy clerk helped me, but this time he eyed me as though I had crawled out from under one of the rocks in the critters’ cages. In addition to the crickets, I realized Doomsday needed some stuff, so I added a bag of dog food and a box of biscuits to my order. Then, since she struck me as a girly-girl kind of girl, I got her a pink studded collar and a pink-nylon leash. I also couldn’t resist getting her one of those squeaky toys that looks like a squirrel’s tale.

It wasn’t until I’d gotten back in my car and caught my reflection in my rearview mirror that I understood why the clerk had regarded me so strangely. Half my face was covered with dried mint jelly.

I drove home, fed the animals, took a shower, and left them to argue about what to watch on TV, but not before I heard another phone message from my father. In this one he asked me to come to visit him as soon as possible.

On my ride over to the hospital, I listened to reports about a local home that had blown up. Fire officials were blaming the tragic explosion on a gas leak.

It was sort of a letdown to find that Tony/Anthony Delveccio wasn’t at the hospital. Then again, what self-respecting mobster . . . alleged mobster, would spend his nights sucking down chocolate pudding in a hospital cafeteria?

I’d waited this long to get paid. It wouldn’t kill me to wait a little longer.

I hoped.

Aunt Susan was asleep in the visitor’s chair beside Katie’s bed.

I tiptoed into the room, bent over, and whispered in my niece’s ear, “Everything’s going to be okay, Baby Girl.”

Aunt Susan stirred. Not wanting to startle her, I didn’t move. She woke slowly, stretched, and then realized I was there. “Oh, hello. I didn’t know you were coming by today.”

“I come by every day.”

She nodded. “Of course. Have you made a decision about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Your mother’s birthday. Will you be going to visit her?”

I hesitated.

“I knew it!” She didn’t bother to hide her disappointment.

“What time are you going?”

“Noon. We’re bringing her a birthday lunch, just like we do every year. Which you’d know if you ever joined us.”

I hadn’t joined them for years. I told everyone I hated the place, but the truth was it scared the shit out of me. The fragmented minds and incoherent ramblings of the residents frightened me, not because I thought I was in physical danger, but because I knew, I
knew
how someone could go from normal to nuts in the blink of an eye. I didn’t feel love for my mother when I saw her there. I didn’t even feel pity. All I felt was a sense of foreboding that I was next.

“Theresa always brought the cake.” Aunt Susan looked at me expectantly.

“Well I’m not saint-fucking-Theresa.”

“Margaret! Language!” She looked over at Katie as though I was rotting the child’s soul with my word choice.

“I’m sorry.” I wasn’t certain whether I was apologizing to the kid or the adult. “It’s just been a day.”

“We all have our days, Margaret.”

Not like the one I’ve had
, I thought. “Can I ask you something, Aunt Susan?”

She nodded.

“Why’d you make me work that paper route? Theresa never had to do one.”

“And you think that’s because I liked her more than I liked you?”

The thought had occurred to me.

She shook her head sadly. “I bet that it never occurred to you that you were always the most responsible of the four and that maybe, just maybe, I thought you deserved some recognition for that over-developed sense of responsibility you had.”

“No, gotta say I never considered that way of thinking about it.”

“You were a great paper girl. You delivered them dry and on time, every single day. You received all sorts of commendations and you received darn good tip money.”

“I did?”

“You don’t remember that?”

I shook my head.

“You’ve always had a selective memory. Remembering all the bad stuff. Sometimes I think you don’t recall a moment of happiness.”

She might be right.

“Do you have dinner plans?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Loretta and Templeton are out on a date night. Alice and that nice young man of hers . . .”

“Lamont.”

“They’re going roller skating. And Leslie . . .”

I could fill in that blank.

“She’s gone to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting.”

You could have knocked me over with a feather.

Aunt Susan nodded. “I’m trying not to get too excited, but yes, apparently she’s recognizing she has a problem.”

“Wow.” It was all I could think to say.

“I guess we have you to thank for it.”

“Me?”

“You hurt her feelings when you asked for her key to your place.”

“That wasn’t my intention. I just wanted—”

She raised a hand to silence me. “I know what you wanted. You were embarrassed that your boyfriend saw her like that.”

“I . . . no . . . actually Paul was cool with it. His mom’s a drunk.”

“Lovely.”

“I just meant he’s had experience with . . . difficult family members.”

“Whatever. Apparently, according to the new lingo she’s spouting, you asking for your key back was her “bottom.” That’s when she realized she needed help.”

“Wow.”

“Wow indeed.”

“So can I buy you dinner? This place serves a mean chocolate pudding.”

“I know,” she confided. “I’d like to have dinner with you, Margaret.”

“Great, because I’d really like to know why you signed me up for softball.”

“What’s with all the questions about your childhood activities?”

“I’m making a list of my skill sets.”