Hard Case Crime: Money Shot by Christa Faust Read Free Book Online Page A

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    “Thanks,” I said instead.
    “Right,” he said. “I guess I’d better get on the road.” He looked at his ugly watch. “If I leave now, I should be able to make Vegas by noon.”
    I frowned and it hurt the bruised skin above my eyes.
    “What do you mean I ?” I asked. “It’s we. You can’t leave me here. Wherever you’re going, I’m going with you.”
    “No,” he said with a terse shake of his head. “You’re gonna stay here where it’s safe.”
    “I’m not some helpless princess, you know,” I said. “I can take care of myself.”
    He looked up at me and the ghost of a smirk haunted one corner of his thin lips.
    “I can see that,” he replied.
    “Fuck you!” I spat, but my mad face wouldn’t stay on. I snorted through my swollen nose. “You should see the other guy.”
    His tiny smirk swelled into an expression that could almost be mistaken for a smile.
    “All right, boss,” he said. “I guess we better get you something to wear.”
    The room Malloy ushered me into had a gold sign on the door.
    “Sissy Boudoir,” I read out loud. “I think I did a girl/girl scene with her back in ’94.”
    Again, that little twitch of a smile, quick as an insect wing at the corner of Malloy’s mouth, as he chivalrously held the door open for me.
    The “Sissy Boudoir” was dimly lit and tricked out with pink satin and red velvet. No angles. Everything was soft and rounded in a way that made it feel sort of like being inside a huge plush vagina. To the left was a walk-in closet filled with extra-large feminine attire. Boat-sized pumps with ten-inch heels. Trampy stripper dresses and frilly French maid costumes that would have fit Malloy. Full-figured bras, enormous lace panties and boxes of queen-sized pantyhose. I was about to make some kind of snide comment when I caught a glimpse of my own reflection in the full-length mirror.
    I wasn’t ready for that, but I don’t know how you could be. When my eyes first snagged on the pale figure in the hospital gown, I was startled because I thought it was someone else. When I realized it was me, I felt dizzy, stricken with a kind of horrified disbelief.
    “Jesus,” I whispered, pressing a palm to the cool surface of the mirror.
    My face was a lurid Halloween mask, haphazardly painted in every shade of bruise. My proud Italian nose was massively swollen and lumpy under a stripe of clean white tape. Both my eyes were black, the right more than the left, making me look like an asymmetrical purple panda. My lower lip was twice the size of the upper and had a thick, crusty split down the middle. My forehead was studded with contusions, giving me a heavy, Neanderthal brow. There was blood crusted in my hair.
    My arms and legs were also covered with bruises and scrapes and I could see the bristly blue stitches protruding like bug legs from my right side just under the armpit. But my gaze kept returning to that face that couldn’t possibly be my face. I suddenly understood why Savannah had shot herself after she’d bashed up her face in that car accident. Not sixteen hours ago, I had been staring into a mirror and fretting about crow’s feet and less than perfectly perky breasts. I had to laugh or I’d start screaming.
    “Sure, it’s ugly today,” Malloy said, pulling a dress off its hanger and handing it to me. “But it’ll be better in a week and back to normal in two. You might want to get some work on that nose when this is all over.”
    I couldn’t even imagine what “all over” really meant. What my life would be like when and if this was all over. Or what it was going to take to make it that way.
    Instead of dwelling on the uncertain future, I forced myself to concentrate on the little tasks in front of me right now. Tasks like shedding the hospital gown and slipping into the dress while Malloy graciously looked away, as if the whole world hadn’t already seen me naked a million times. The dress was the smallest of the lot but still fit