No laughter now at all. Her face was blank. “And he lunged for me, and I pulled the trigger, and just like that he was dead. He fell over, blood spreading on his chest.” She heaved a big sigh. “One minute he was walking and talking, and the next he was just meat, like something I’d brought home from the zoo to stuff and mount.”

“I’m sorry, Marcie. It’s my fault. I put you in a bad position.”

“You sure as hell did.” She tried to make a joke out of it, and the smile returned to her lips for a split second, but it couldn’t hang on, and her face was blank again.

This was why guys like me and Bob Tate and even Rollo Kramer always lost wives and girlfriends. We were walking danger zones, and everyone around us suffered. Then I had a bad thought and I told Marcie I had to use the kitchen phone.

I dialed Ma, and Danny picked up after three rings. “Yo.”

“Danny, it’s Charlie.”

“Jesus, Charlie, where the hell you been? Some guy named Lou Morgan’s been ringing the phone off the hook for you.”

“Later,” I said. “Right now I want to know what’s going on over there.”

“Over here? Nothing. Amber and I are watching television, and Ma-”

“What’s Amber doing there?”

“You said to stick around the house and keep an eye on Ma,” Danny reminded me. “Since I couldn’t go to Amber’s place, she came here.”

“Listen to me. I want you to tell Ma to pack a suitcase. No, make that two suitcases.”

“Huh? What for? Charlie, what’s going on?”

“We’re playing it safe. That’s all. Put Ma on the phone.”

I heard Danny yell at Ma to come in the living room. I waited. She picked up after a few seconds.

“Charlie?”

“Ma, pack up whatever you think is important and get to the airport. I want you to stay with Aunt Irene, okay?” Aunt Irene was Ma’s younger sister.

“Is there trouble, Charlie?” Ma sounded suddenly sharp. She walked around all day doing her old lady act, but when the heat was on she knew better than to argue. Ma wasn’t stupid.

“There might be, Ma. I’m sorry. Better if you’re in Michigan with Irene.”

“I understand. You make it right while I’m gone.”

“Sure, Ma. Put Danny back on will you?”

“Charlie?”

“Yes?”

“You’re my son.”

“I know, Ma.”

“Be careful.”

“I will.”

She put Danny back on the phone.

“What do I do?” he asked.

“I want you out of there in thirty minutes. Call me here right before you leave so I’ll know you’re away.” I told him Marcie’s number. “You got that?”

“Right. Thirty minutes. I’m on it.”

“Good. I got to go.” I started to hang up.

“Charlie, wait.”

“What?”

“What about this Morgan guy? He keeps calling for you.”

Shit. I’d forgotten all about Lou. Marcie kept a pen and a basket of scrap paper near the phone. I picked out a piece and grabbed the pen. “Did he leave a number?”

“Sure.”

“Give.”

Danny told me the number, and I wrote. I didn’t recognize it.

“Thanks, Danny. Call ahead and book a flight into Detroit while Ma’s packing.”

“Check. Call you in thirty.”

We hung up, and I felt a little better. Marcie had almost been killed because of her association with me. I didn’t want any of Beggar’s goons showing up to Ma’s house because they thought I might have hidden the ledgers there. But if they did, I wanted Ma long gone. I didn’t tell Danny or Ma, but I sort of had the idea Ma would run out the clock in Michigan. Orlando was all done with the Swift family.

Marcie must have had similar notions, because she came out of her bedroom with a suitcase in each hand, pantyhose streaming from the bags where she hadn’t zipped them up all the way.

I scrunched my face at her. “What the hell’s this?”

“What does it look like? I’m getting out of here.”

“What? Where?”

“Someplace where my getting killed doesn’t happen,” she said. She threw the suitcases down hard, went into the bedroom, and came back again with a garment bag. “I still have the five thousand from Rollo. I’ll call after I find someplace, arrange for a real estate agent to dump the house on someone.”

“Marcie.”

“Maybe I’ll go to New Mexico. I’ve always wanted to try the desert.”

“Marcie.”

“I could try stuffing prairie dogs. Oh, buffalo! I could do a lot with a buffalo.”

“Marcie!” She stopped, looked at me. I spread my hands, my face a raw question mark. “What about me?” And as soon as the question left my mouth, I felt like some little kid left out in the cold, standing there the first day of kindergarten as my mom pulled away in the car.

“You? What about you?” Marcie threw her garment bag down on the other bags, kicked the whole pile of luggage with a savage grunt. “You. All those guys working for Beggar are you. Rollo, he was you too. I married him. Where’d that get me? And it was you that tried to kill me today. It was you I shot dead. That’s what about you!”

“Okay, okay.” I was nodding my head up and down fast while she was talking, trying to show real hard I understood what she meant. “I don’t blame you. But I’m going to fix it. I’m going to wipe the whole slate clean, and we can go anyplace you want and start over.”

“Bullshit.”

“No. Really.” I moved forward quick, grabbed up both of her hands between mine, searched her eyes with my own. “We haven’t known each other long, but I want to be with you. I’m going to do some things, set them right, but when that’s finished I’m starting all over. I won’t have anything. I want to have you.”

She sighed, heavy and tired. “You’re such a corny dumbass.”

“It’s all true.”

“What’s this stuff you need to set right?”

“Stan.” And as soon as I said it, I knew I’d go all the way. It wasn’t a loose end I could live with.

“He’s probably dead, you know.” Marcie wasn’t trying to be insensitive, just frank.

“I know. But I have to know what happened. And I have to do what I can about it. He was like a dad. What if it was your dad?”

She nodded, chewed her lip thinking about it, looked down at her shoes. “I understand.” Then she looked back up at me, hard, that toughness coming back into her eyes. “But I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit around this house and wait for some wise guy to come and put a bullet in my head.”

“No.” I took out my rapidly dwindling roll of cash, peeled off a wad of fifties, and handed her the bills. “Get a hotel, a good one.”

“Where?”

“Near the airport. We might be leaving in a hurry.”

“Okay.” She made the money disappear into her blouse, and we stepped toward each other. We hugged long and with the relief of decisions made. She knew where she stood now, and I knew what I had to do.

She broke the embrace and said, “Come on. You’ve got to help me before you go.”

I followed her into the garage, and she picked up the dead guy by the ankles. “Get the other end, will you?”

I gripped him under the shoulders and lifted. “This is how we met, isn’t it?” I grinned.

She batted her eyes at me. “You’re so fucking romantic.”

“What are we going to do with this bastard?”

“Get him over to my worktable,” she said. “I’ll cut up some trash bags to put around him. We’ll wrap the whole thing in duct tape. You can do anything with duct tape.”

It was then I knew I was in love with her.