Queens Noir by Robert Knightly Read Free Book Online Page B

date-rape drugs about fifteen minutes to kick in. She excused
herself and tottered into the luxurious salon that was bigger
than some Manhattan apartments. She spent about ten minutes in the bathroom, then staggered out, tripping over the
step at the threshold to the deck.
    "You okay?" he asked.
    She grabbed her head and lurched across the deck. He
looped his right arm around her waist.

    "Easy," he said.
    "Feel funny."
    "Maybe you should come inside and lie down."
    "Tryin' to 'memba ... something I gotta tell ya ..."
    He led her inside, slammed the salon door closed, and
shoved Nikki onto her back on his couch. He pulled off his
shirt in a single flourish. "Now the fucking fun starts, mama."
    Nikki lay motionless on the couch, hands in her jacket
pockets. "Whajoo give me?"
    "Ketamine," he said, unbuckling his pants. "Horse tranquilizer. When it wears off you'll remember nothing. But tonight you're mine, for any fucking thing I please." He stripped
to his boxer shorts, turned his back to hang up his pants. Then
he kneeled before Nikki and slid his two index fingers under
the waistband of her Spandex pants. "Now, let's see what you
have here for the ass master."
    Nikki pulled her right hand out of her jacket pocket and
rammed a .25 caliber Colt automatic to his left temple. "What
I have here is the end of your miserable life, motherfucker,"
she said.
    Sheridan froze, still kneeling in front of Nikki. "Please ...
It's a joke."
    "Real side splitter," she said. "Let's see if you remember
the same old joke you pulled on a girl named Eileen Lavin."
    His face collapsed into a spasm of tics, coming apart in
pieces like a mosaic held together by a lifetime of lies. "Who?"
    "Maybe a little champagne will improve your memory."
    Nikki stood up, pointing the gun, grabbed the bottle of
champagne, and poured.
    "Drink," she commanded. He looked at the bubbling
flute, his eyes skittery. He licked his dry lips. "Drink the
fucking champagne, Dr. Sheridan."

    "No, please-"
    She shoved the pistol into his left ear again and yanked
back the metal slide. "Then I will blow your sick fucking brains
across your boat and leave you for the gulls."
    He drank the entire glassful.
    She poured another. "Drink, motherfucker."
    He downed it.
    She said, "Eileen Lavin was going to be a nun."
    "Her? She was a nut. Everyone called her Sister Psycho."
    "You took her on your father's boat. Out here where you
take all the young girls, because this is the spot where your
parents died all right. But they didn't drown. No, this is the
spot where your father discovered your mother screwing his
best friend on his boat. The place where he killed them, in a
jealous rage. And then shot himself. When you were seventeen. I found all this with a few keyboard strokes. Jilted Hubby
Kills Wife, Lover, Self. Nice. And so what was it, doc? When
you wanted to get even with Mom, you took poor Eileen Lavin
out here to the same spot? On the same boat? Here, under the
Throgs Neck Bridge, you drugged and raped her. Over and
over and over again. All night."
    "No girl gets on a boat with a man unless she wants to go
with the flow."
    "Like your mother? Your father found out she was going
with the flow on his boat while he was busting his ass at work
to pay for it. He heard talk, slipped out here in a dingy, snuck
aboard, and made her pay. And you're still making her pay,
aren't you, you sick fuck? Every time you take another young
girl out on your boat, you're getting even with Mom. Am I
right? But you got careless with Eileen Lavin. You didn't use
protection. Or maybe the rubber broke because she was a virgin. Something went wrong. And you knocked her up. But it was 1982. Before DNA testing was refined. She couldn't
prove it was you."

    "You're as nuts as Sister Psycho," he said, yawning.
    "She was a fucking virgin! You took her out here, you
drugged her, you raped her, you knocked her up. She had to
give the baby up for adoption. Then she tried