The girl jumped from the desk and jammed a finger into my face. “You sick bitch, what the hell do you—”
“Easy,” I said. “He’s not worth fighting over.” I opened my arms, the gin zipping up and down my veins, looking at Jackal as I said it. “You want him? He’s all yours.”
She glared at me, still finishing her buttons, and I raised my eyebrows and let my arms drop. “I didn’t think so,” I said after a moment. I jerked my head to the door, eyes on the girl again. “I imagine you’re a bit sticky. There’s a bathroom down the hall.”
Jackal made a show of watching her ass as she walked past, but she turned and glared at him from the door. “You sick shit,” she said, and then she walked out, slamming his door behind her. The twinge of a conscience I thought I’d gotten rid of rose into my throat, but I pushed it down. Jackal had brought her into this, not me. And maybe next time, she’d be smarter. Maybe this memory would save her from the next pretty asshole who looked twice at her over a beer.
“Next time you’re pissed at me,” I said, “take it out on me.”
Jackal snorted, his perfectly shaped lips curling up into a sneer. “Please,” he said. “You think you’re any better, what you do with those girls?”
“That’s different.”
Jackal didn’t say anything, just stared at me, arms crossed. The wiry black hairs of his forearms fluttered with the fan overhead.
“They know what they’re getting into,” I said, not sure why it mattered to me. To Jackal, what we did was only a paycheck. I bent down and grabbed the abandoned scarf from Jackal’s floor, twirling it around my own neck.
In the distance, I heard the slam of the front door, the chimes hitting glass sharp enough to crack. She wouldn’t be back. But then, Jackal didn’t need her to be. Expendable, I thought, all of us, even the ones who were his type. I perched on the farthest corner of the desk. What was it in me that wanted to wipe up all the traces of that girl from his desk with my own back? If my mother could only see me now, I thought.
“I show them what real power tastes like,” I went on. “I’m not sure who you were trying to humiliate just now, but you’re the one who looked like an ass.”
Jackal stepped forward, his pants brushing against my knees on the desk. He dropped those arms on either side of me, caging me in, and leaned forward. “Whatever bullshit you need to tell yourself to sleep at night, babe,” Jackal said into my ear, sending traitorous shivers down my spine. “We’re the same, you and me.”
“You’ll end up in some lonely place someday,” I whispered. “Without me. And I’ll be laughing.”
“Liar,” Jackal whispered, and leaned forward, kissing me hard.
Even in a city that worshipped beauty, no one was as handsome as Robert Jackal. More than handsome, he was beautiful, though not feminine. And he could be charming when he wanted—he must’ve sweet-talked that girl straight from the bar to flinging her panties on his desk in under an hour—but charm was cheap in this city. I never had to pretend to be any better than I was with him. The first man I’d ever loved, I kept waiting for him to find out the slimy, ratty parts of me. With Jackal, there was no waiting. He already knew.
I’d never mistaken it for love between us. Maybe it was something much worse. But it had been enough to solder us together all these years.
Or at least until he hadn’t showed at the St. Leo.
I pushed him away, wiped my mouth, my head spinning. “You feel better now we’re back to square? Ready to tell me why you fucked me at the St. Leo?” I distracted myself from his arms by looking around his office. My eyes were drawn down to his desk, stacks of file folders in neat piles, the edges so meticulously aligned that it looked like one thick brick of peach. Old notes from Lou, the word albatross peeking out from behind a folder—funny, I hadn’t been so sure Jackal could read.
“I forgot,” Jackal said. The handsome liar. I hadn’t been able to talk about anything else for weeks—even, occasionally, in bed—and he’d forgotten? Not possible. “Sorry. What are you gonna do.”
“You forgot,” I repeated. On the ground, the wreckage of the file folders that had been pushed off his desk in the affair, which must’ve been the crash I’d heard. Glaring out from the edge of one, a black-and-white photograph of a man I’d never met before. Young, attractive—high cheekbones, rounded chin, the haircut of a cop, looking away from the camera. Nothing salacious.
I might not have met him, but I recognized him: a hero-kid cop who had a nasty habit of asking for favors from the women—junkies, working girls—he cleared off the streets. Lou had run his case last year. He wasn’t the first, or the only, uniform in the city who partook in that particular indulgence, but he was easy pickings. After the Lady was through with him, he’d resigned, worked in insurance now. Lou had shared the photographs one bourbon-soaked night, the two of us laughing over the kid with an unloaded gun between the thighs of a girl I’d trained. Still wearing his badge, the dumb fuck.
“You forgot,” I said again. “I don’t believe you.”
“Sorry, babe,” Jackal said, shifting between me and the photograph so I couldn’t see it anymore. “I owe you one. I fucked up.”
Now I was sure he was lying. If he really had forgotten, if it had been an honest mistake, he would’ve picked a fight with me, tried to make me feel bad about what he thought wasn’t his fault. So I missed the show, big fuckin’ whoop. I’ll be there next time. But an apologetic Jackal? I’d never seen it. He was trying to keep me from asking questions. Like if he’d been on a heater and decided the tables were more important than our case. Than me.
Or questions about what he was doing with evidence from an old case that should be with the Lady for safekeeping, like all the other photographs he took.
“What do I have to do to keep you from forgetting the time and place on Thursday?” I grinned at him, sticking my tongue behind my left uppermost molar. It did not feel sexy, but he seemed to like it. Thongs, practiced smiles, anal beads—what was it with some men and the allure of uncomfortable things?
Jackal reeled me into him. “Let me make it up to you.”
We told the marks we destroyed the negatives and the SIM cards after they’d paid up, which of course wasn’t true. But it was true that we’d never used the photographs against someone who’d paid—they were insurance, that’s all. Lou gathered them at the end of every case and passed them to the Lady, one of our many rituals. If Jackal had copies, that meant he was running something on the side, had a buyer or was looking for one. Probably trying to pick up cash for a poker debt. The Lady wouldn’t like that.