Everything that made this man attractive over dinner has now dissolved into a pool of disgust at the base of her stomach.

But, she had to confess, it’s not like she didn’t deserve having some con run on her. It’s not like she didn’t have it coming. She is, by anyone’s standards, at any time in the history of the world, a thief. And a murderer. Even if it was self-defense.

It’s just that she feels so violated.

“What do you want me to do?” she asks, sitting back down on the couch, her tears turning to sniffles, her mind turning to business.

“I want you to do what you do best,” he says, his face brightening, flashing the smile that got her into this mess. He sits down next to her. “Be yourself. Your charming, beautiful self.”

She draws a cigarette from the pack on the table, her hands no longer shaking.

He lights her cigarette, rests his hand on her knee, continues.

“Let me tell you a short story,” he says, offering her a starched white handkerchief. “Then I’ll go. I promise.”

For some reason, his soft, elegant voice is beginning to calm her. She is beginning to believe that he means her no physical harm, at least not at this moment. She takes the handkerchief and dabs her mascara-streaked eyes. “A story?”

“Yes. It takes place a few years ago. I was barely a teenager. If I remember correctly, the Indians beat the Minnesota Twins that day . . .”

23

CLEVELAND, OHIO

SEVENTEEN YEARS EARLIER . . .

Tony B’s emporium carries a little bit of everything—soda, chips, candy, cigarettes, condoms—but mostly it carries lottery tickets and fifteen different brands of fortified wine. Seventy percent of Tony B’s daily receipts are from one or the other. Twenty percent are from cigarettes. The other ten percent are from the idiots either too dumb or too lazy to walk the extra five blocks to buy their milk and eggs from the Kroger’s on East 105th Street.

It is late September, a steamy Indian summer day. The heat shrieks off the pavement in waves, punishing the water-starved trees in front of Tony B’s. From the apartment above the store comes the sounds of the Cleveland Indians playing the Minnesota Twins.

Tony B’s is empty, save for its proprietor, who is sitting high behind the counter, reading his paper, trying to keep absolutely still, trying to let the ancient, asthmatic air conditioner above the front door do its job.

Suddenly, something is wrong. He can feel it.

It is the same premonition he used to get in ’Nam, seconds before the first sniper round would crack out of the hills and send everyone at the base camp scrambling. The store is small, well lighted, and unless someone decides to lie on the floor and roll under a display, Tony B, with the aid of his three convex mirrors, can see every square inch. He knows when people are in the store. The bell on the door tells him when they come in. The bell on the door tells him when they leave. So why does he have the feeling that—

There. A shadow to his left. Next to the chip stand.

There are two people standing there. A boy and a girl.

How had they gotten in? Tony B wonders, his heart racing a little. Why hadn’t he heard them? Had they come in the back?

They are young—the girl is in her late teens, the boy even younger, maybe sixteen—and they are staring at him. The girl is one hot-looking little bitch, that’s for sure. Trim, brunette, athletic. She isn’t dressed sloppy like a lot of the other girls who come in the store and tease him; the black girls with their baggy jeans unbuttoned and their tube tops wrapped tightly around their budding breasts. This one is white, slender, seductive, wearing a short denim skirt and flowered blouse, the kind of girl who always went for a man like Tony B. Sure he was into his fifties now, but he was a young fifties. Still had most of his hair, all of his front teeth. And he still had all the charm in the world when he needed it.

“We know each other?” he asks, bending the top of his Racing Form to make eye contact with the girl. He reaches over and drags a Newport from his pack, lights it. “We been introduced?”

“No,” the girl says. “You just look like someone we know.”

The girl’s voice is deep, like a woman’s. Her blouse is sheer and Tony B can just about make out the shape of her right breast. “Oh yeah?” he answers, trying to float a smile. “Harrison Ford, maybe?”

“No,” the boy says. “Like an uncle or something.”

The boy’s age is less determinable after he speaks. The kid is on the tall side, dark hair, dark eyes. He now seems younger than sixteen. Like a big thirteen-year-old with a man’s hands. His voice hadn’t fully broken yet. Smart-ass punk, for sure.

“Well, I ain’t your uncle,” Tony B says, realizing he isn’t going to make any time with the girl if this little shit is hanging around. “So now that we’ve established that piece of business, you buyin’ something?”

“We’re just looking,” the girl says. “We’re allowed to look, aren’t we?”

Cocky little cunt, Tony B thinks. Reminds him of the first ex, the one he did the stretch for. Looks a little like her, too. He’d gone up for an eight-to-ten ride on an attempted murder charge for beating the shit out of Lydia that day, but less than a year into his sentence they found a mistake somewhere and had to spring him. “Who said this is America, girly-girl? This ain’t America in here. This is Tony B’s. Capeesh? Now, either you buy something, or you take it on the arches. Those are the rules.”

She turns to the side and Tony B can see her nipples poking up against the inside of her blouse. Goddamn she’s a sexy little thing. Tony doesn’t know whether to yell or get hard. She grabs a pack of Gillette single-edge razor blades off the rack.

“We’ll take these,” she says, gliding over, placing them on the counter.

As she walks, Tony B is mesmerized by the shift of her breasts beneath her blouse. Up close he can see that her eyes are almost black.

He rings up the razor blades, an item he keeps stocked for the cokeheads. Cokeheads prefer the single-edge blades to cut up their lines. It used to be his ax of choice, back in the day. “That’s three-sixty-two, miss,” Tony says, not taking his eyes from hers. “Including tax.”

The girl reaches into her pocket, produces a five-dollar bill. As she hands it to him, Tony B would swear that she intentionally lets her hand linger on his for a moment. When he hands her the change, he repays the flirtation in kind.

“Need a bag?” he asks.

“No,” she replies.

“Now, you be careful with those razor blades, miss,” he adds, shutting the cash drawer, sounding far more paternal than he wants to. “Wouldn’t want you to cut that pretty skin of yours.”

The girl turns to face him fully. She smiles a smile that sends shock waves through Tony B. But the sensation cannot compare with what he feels as she unbuttons her blouse and reveals most of her left breast to him. There, right above her pink nipple, is a small tattoo of a flower. “I can take the pain,” she says. “Can you?”

“I . . .” is all that Tony B can muster as she buttons her blouse, turns on her sandals, and sashays to the door, where the boy awaits her. Somehow, Tony B manages to tear his eyes from the girl. He looks at the boy, and immediately wishes he hadn’t.

The boy is smiling at him.

And he suddenly looks a lot more like a man.

Tony B is drunk. It is two in the morning, and he is leaning against the wall outside his store, in the alley, a cigarette dangling from his lower lip, searching the same pants pocket for the tenth time, hoping that a full pack of matches might have spontaneously generated there since his last visit. Nothing.

Fuck it, he thinks. I’ll wait until I get inside.

He slowly continues up the alley, toward the back parking lot.