Suckers - J.A. Konrath

I pried myself out of her grasp and picked up the phone, dialing the number from memory.
“Hi, partner. It’s me. Look, I’ve got a woman here who wants to kill her husband. I told her
I’m not interested, but I thought maybe you’d be able to set something up. Say, tomorrow,
around noon? You can meet her at the Hilton. Rent a room under the name Lipshultz. No,
schultz, with a ul. Okay, she’ll be there.”
I hung up. “Got it all set for you, sugar.”
She squeezed me tight and kissed my neck. “Thanks, Harry. Thank you so much. Is there
anything I can do to repay you?” Her breath was hot in my ear. “Anything at all?”
“You can start by folding those socks. And maybe some dusting. Yeah, dusting would be
good.”
She smiled wickedly and caressed my cheek. “I was thinking of something a little more
intimate.”
“I was thinking about dinner.”
“Dinner would be wonderful.”
“I’m sure it will be. Have the place dusted by the time I get back.”
* * *
Marietta Garbonzo called me the next night, around eight in the evening.
“You son of a bitch! You set me up! You didn’t call a hitman! You called a cop!”
“You can’t go around murdering people, sweetheart. It’s wrong on so many levels.”
“But what about all of the washing? The cleaning? The dusting? And what about after
dinner? What we did? How could you betray me after that?”
“You expect me to throw away all of my principles because we spent five minutes doing the
worm? It was fun, but not worth twenty to life.”
“You bastard. When I get out of here I’ll...”
I hung up and went back to the Sharper Image catalog I’d been thumbing through. I had my
eye on one of those massaging easy chairs. That would set me back two grand. Earlier that day, I
bought a sixty inch plasma TV. The money I took from William “Billy” Johansenn was being
put to good use.
I plopped down in front of the TV, found the wrestling channel, and settled in to watch two
hours of pay-per-view sports entertainment. The Iron Commie had Captain Frankenbeef in a
suplex when I felt the gun press against the back of my head.
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