by Darren Franz

He’s testing me, Rick thought. And I just failed that one.

He was suddenly terrified of Kyle Tracey. The man’s hands were as large as Kraut helmets. He could easily see those hands snapping him in half like a toothpick...

...Or shoving a showgirl out of a window.

Rick was fully expecting to see a knife in Tracey’s hand when it pulled free from the folds of the tent-sized coat, but what came out was what Tracey had said: a deck of Lucky Strikes.
He lit up and smoked like a man without a care in the world. After tugging on the creases in his slacks, Tracey pulled up a chair and took a seat. His considerable heft spilled over both sides, making the chair look like something out of a kindergarten classroom.

Rick shifted his weight from one foot to the other. His stomach picked up a flutter he didn’t much care for.

Through a thin veil of smoke, Tracey said, “Tell me something, Granite. You ever kill a man before?”

Rick didn’t answer.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. You ain’t got that look.”

“Why don’t you just shut up?” Rick said, his eyes darting nervously from Tracey to Lucky and back again.

Tracey sneered. He ground the cigarette out on the sole of his shoe. “Nope. No moxie at all. Not a jellyfish like you.”

“I dunno, Kyle,” Lucky stammered, chiming in. “I gut-shot him, but he’s still breathin’.”

Tracey’s unwavering gaze did not falter from Rick’s face.

“I doubt it. What you did was clip him a good one, and he bled like a stuck pig.”

Now Tracey turned to face O’Banion, daring him to say otherwise.

Lucky kept quiet.

“That skirt who took a swan dive...you loved her, didn’t you?” Tracey asked Rick.

The question threw Rick off guard, just as Tracey had intended. Rick found he was unable to keep himself from nodding.

“Sure,” Tracey replied with a faint trace of a smile. “You’re just as sappy as one of those old poems.”

Rick flushed. His skin felt caustic.

PurrrrPurrrrPurrrr...

“That’s enough,” Rick said. Motioning Lucky with the .45, he added, “Get over there next to your wiseass buddy.”

Lucky slowly got up off the bed, and stood next to Tracey.

“How does it feel, loverboy?” Tracey said. His Irish brogue was so thick, the words seemed to lay heavily on the air after tumbling from his mouth. “How does it feel to know that love really can’t conquer all, huh?”

Rick turned and fired blindly at Tracey.

The round went wide, blowing the lamp on the night table to pieces.

Darkness crashed down around them.

Lucky came at him first. A clumsy bum’s rush. Rick pivoted on his heel and fired twice. The reports were deafening in the closed confines of the little room.

The first muzzle flash illuminated Lucky O’Banion’s desperate charge. During the second, Rick clearly saw the round tear half of Lucky’s head off.

There was a gurgling grunt, followed by a wet spattering sound.

Lucky O’Banion went down hard.

Whirling, trying to see everywhere at once but blinded by the flashes, Rick crouched low...

A small sound. Barely audible in the wake of the pistol’s reports: “snik...”

Tracey’s switchblade.

The air was rancid with the stench of cordite and gunpowder. Rick began to shake in a dreamy sort of delayed reaction. Every muscle was coiled tight like a spring.