GOON

"Hands on the wall, now!" the officer demanded, the heel of his left hand burying the side of my face into the scathing red bricks of the alleyway. I slung my left elbow through the air about where I'd expected his ribcage to be. No go.

I was sixteen at the time but my baby face could have convinced you I hadn't sprouted a single hair below my eyelashes yet. By the time they got me into booking you couldn't even tell I had eyelashes. The glare on the finger printing screen cast the reflection of a monster where normally my irritatingly cherubic features would peer back. Made sense. I wasn't a cherub anymore. I was a monster. Bloody and swollen, cracked teeth with intermittent empty spaces. That's the way I should have looked. I smiled at my reflection, flattered to be such a creature, and an ogre grinned back.

-----

"You couldn'a paid four-hundred on the bond, Ma!" I screamed in the late night air after being released three months later, as I kicked at the locked back door to my mother's house. I banged and shouted over and over, spiting the neighboring houses that squeezed the privacy from my childhood home.

"Coulda!" she shrieked from her upstairs window. Her bedside lamplight was the only glimmer in the house. From its uninterrupted cast, I could tell she hadn't even gotten out of bed to respond. "I'm done wasting money on shitty investments, Carl. Get out of here before I send you back there!"

"Jesus Christ A’mighty, Ma!" I gave up my knocking, but shouted even louder. A chipped brown Hush Puppy pump careened from my shoulder. "The Hell!"

"Don't you do dat! Don't you take da Lowd's name in vain, y’understand me?" That got her off her ass. Nothing but a shadow stabbing from her window, a finger prodding toward me with every syllable she cast upon me, but I could feel her angry face--you'd know the one if you'd seen it--tearing me to shreds.

"Yeah, yeah. The Lord. Good ol' Lord. Be sure to thank Him next time you talk, Ma! We got so much to thank him for!"

"You get out of my yard!"

"You ain't got a yard, Ma!"

"I'm callin' the cops!"

"Call the fuckin' cops, I don't care."

"Why don't the both yous shut up before I call the cops, huh?" blasted some wannabe tough guy from one of the darkened windows staring down at me from the confines of their secret troubles.

"Why don't you come down here and I'll give ya’ reason, ya bitch?" I shouted toward the man, and anyone else. But I was already moving down the street, faster than my pride would admit.

-----

"The hell happened to ya' voice, Gary?" I asked, with an asinine smirk, lighting a cigarette in a living room where such was clearly not allowed.

My older brother Gary was every bit the diamond everyone had made him out to be, opening the door to his convict little brother at three o' clock that morning. He went to the window overlooking a convocation of garbage surrounding the cans where it should have been. He opened and jerked his head toward it, pulling me from my seat with his inherent authority. "Do that out the window, at least, you little good-for-nothing," he said without a tinge of disrespect.

"Out the window at least," I mimicked in the most highfalutin, proper tone I could muster.

"See, you too could learn to talk right if you tried," he teased with a smile I probably didn't deserve. "Why are you here anyway? Ma kick you out?"

"Na, didn't have to. She just wouldn't let me back in." I hocked a loogie into the street, loudly gathering it in my throat with a crescendo blast that echoed nastily.

"Mmhm," he said returning with a glass of water I hadn't requested, extending it toward me and insisting with a nod that I take it. I did. "Second chances aren't guaranteed, Carl. You shouldn't have expected to get a--what, fourth, fifth chance?"

"Yeah, yeah. I know. The first guy to ever fuck up, right?"

"You're a kid, Carl. You've got time to change." I turned to protest, but the sincerity and compassion in his eyes took me by such surprise, I went dumb. He cared. I could see it in his eyes, he actually cared. Holy shit, how long had it been since I'd seen that look? "You need to change."

-----

When the governor had instituted the "Supers" the scouts had gone after only the tip of the top. Trained officers with athletic background, such as Gary, were the ideal fit for the new outfit. For them, landing a college linebacker with a 3.8 GPA and a degree in criminal justice was like finding the Holy Grail.

Gary never had my sense of individuality, I think he would admit that, so finding himself in a position to become a valued, guided part of a greater whole was every bit as valuable a find for him as it was for the government. So he thought, at least. Guy like that would've been just fine any way he sliced it. The truth is, the only reason they started that program was because the governor was scared to death by the influx of costumed vigilantes running around thinking they were in a damned comic book. Worried people were going to cause more harm than good.

"I wanna see ya costume!" I garbled around a bite of cereal one morning that next summer. "What's it like? Ya wear the nut-huggers?" He glared at me from above his laptop, and tilted the screen even lower. He must've been working on some official business.

"You dooooo don'tcha?" I chuckled.

"Now as two words, please," he said with the patient irritation of a veteran grammar tutor.

"Don't you?" I reiterated with exaggerated enunciation and a hint of a British accent.

"Lovely," he glanced up with a pinched smile momentarily, then back down, "we'll make a lady out of you yet, Eliza." I had to work to not laugh at that, though I wanted to badly. Ever since I'd moved in, those moments when I could see him as a brother, not as some painfully righteous arm of the law, were so few. Even so, I wasn't going to laugh at a diss. He checked his watch, grunted, and closed up shop, crossing to the door in a flash. "

Time fo' ya--for your real life?" I taunted him once more for good measure.

"Mmhm. And you?" he asked, trying to resist the accusatory tone which belonged--and surfaced--in his voice.

"Gonna rob a bank or somethin' prob'ly."

He swung around and blasted me with his eyes. For a moment I feared my joking had gone too far, especially since I wasn't really joking entirely.

"Go-ing to rob a bank or some-thing pro-bab-ly," he said striking each consonant, especially the end "g"s, and stretching each vowel, for illustrative purposes only.

-----

"Villains" loved the fact that they got an official title too. The city was booming with them just as soon as the Department of Super Tactical Operatives formed. For every fresh crop of do-gooders itching to live out a little boy's fantasy, there were three times as many lifetime criminals with much broader delusions of grandeur and the lack of scruples necessary to stretch for that brass ring as long as they needed to, no matter how many convictions and masked crusaders tried to stop them.

"Last crime you committed was almost a year ago," the brute made the computer screen between him and me look the size of a saltine. He was the kind of guy you expected to have out in the mess, doing the work, not sitting here auditioning Goons.

"Yeah, but I took out a cop," I lied. He ticked his eyes up at me, reminding me not to bullshit a bullshitter.

"Not what it says here." He twisted his lips, flared his nostrils, grunted, and tilted to the side as if maybe... Then, he shook his head, lips tightened against his top gum line. "You just ain't right for this outfit, ok kid. Come back once you've done some shit, arright? Actually done some shit."

-----

I felt the baton whip the back of my knee cap and crashed to the ground, crumbling like the plasma screens I'd been carrying under each arm. I was almost as thrilled as I was in pain. Almost.

Finally, I thought, I'd have something to show on my résumé; some relevant, recent material for my résumé. I knew who to call for bail, Marty Hadlock. Couple of Goons I'd met told me that was the way to go: get locked up, call Marty, and he'd let you work off the bond, with interest of course.

"They give you your papers?" Marty asked, a stony face that moved slowly and monumentally as tectonic plates.

"Yes, they are all here." From his grimace, I saw that my brother's dialect coaching had already gotten the better of me and my thug-speak was deteriorating despite my efforts. He checked my file, breathed deeply through his nose as if he was already having serious doubts, then exhaled with his eyebrows bowing to inevitability.

"Well, two felonies, six total arrests since age thirteen... Hmmm... If they say you gotta be registered, you gotta be registered. Congratulations kiddo, you're almost a Goon. You know where the Office of Judicial Status Certification is?" he rambled off with unexpected clarity.

"Yes, I've been there." With my brother once, a few months earlier. Marty glared at me suspiciously, eyes that looked like they were capable of kicking my ass without the aid of the rest of his massive body. "I tried to cheat on my Goon Cert the first time," I explained with the best save I could conjure on short notice.

He laughed and slid the papers back to me. "Awesome. That's freakin' awesome!"

-----

Gang, Outlaw, and Offender National Registry. GOON. They didn't include the R. Not because they couldn't afford to make the stamp one character longer or because the R wasn't an important part of the equation, but because they wanted to make good and damn well positive that you knew who you were to them.

Through the window to the next room I spotted Captain Righteous and Lady Lightning--no shit, that's how they were legally referred to--waiting in line, smiling, laughing, with their florescent spandex uniforms glistening beneath the steady glowing bulbs.

The dim light above my line, not forty yards from the beloved masked defenders, flickered wildly in the grimy casing, as if weeping over its dead counterpart, the dust of which hinted a not-so-recent demise.

“Next!”

Captain Righteous had been gone for about an hour when I reached the head of my line, and some kid with blond hair--a sidekick I’m sure--was grinning his way to the front of theirs. The hag behind the counter on my end of the glass checked my paperwork, stamped my page without looking at my face, and shouted, “Next!”

GOON, the large red imprint reminded me, as if I could ever forget. But it's what I wanted. Right?

-----

I folded the paper into a tiny triangle and headed down the hall. The brightness shining through the windowed doors from the street felt daunting and cold. It wasn't for me. Not anymore, I knew.

"Well, I'll be damned!" I turned to find a grinning titan in an orange Lycra onesie and a yellow cowl that covered everything above his upper lip. This, I recognized after the initial shock, was Crime Crusher--I don't make these up, ok--from the news. He was the cream of the cream, the man for the job, let me tell you. If a big Villain had come down, he'd been “Crushed.” End of subject.

"Well, brother man, aren't you full of surprises!" Crusher said crushing me with a bear hug.

Holy...

"Gary?" I felt my face scrunching around my eyes in disbelief, as if the bridge of my nose had been sucking on a lemon. I still have no idea what he was saying as he, essentially, carried me into the next office, nor do I know how my hand wound its way to my mouth, pressing the triangle of judgment in for safe keeping, as I managed to submit a few mumbled "Mmhm"s of confirmation to whatever he was talking about.

There was a line in the room. I mean, there was a line, but Captain Crusher didn't know the meaning of lines. The girls at this desk were beautiful. Go weak at the knees, crash your car just to get a better look, fall to genuflect and propose as you pass them on the street kind of beautiful. Nevertheless, they crowded around to fawn over Captain Crusher, submission of facial features not necessary for a stud like him.

The garble of his voice finally cleared as he repeated to my awe-stricken ears for the third time, "Where's your paper?"

"Huh?" I felt my heart kick into a fury as if it was trying to pump up the evidence of my evil. "I don-- I don-- I do not have them," I said, my words and voice coming out like a Muppet, odd-sounding and teacher-approved.

"Who needs 'em, right, ladies?" he grinned a pair of alpine ranges. They laughed as if he was the lovechild of Eddie Murphy and Robin Williams, and passed a page across to me, never tearing their eyes from him. I scribbled away, unsure of what else I might do. In a flurry of movements, the page was slid across, spun around, hammered with a stamp, and pushed back to me. No questions, no credentials, no need. For a Super like him, he could've brought in Al Capone and walked away with a Super Cert. I looked down.

"DSTO APPROVED" with the governor's signature below. I turned around--I don't know, to run, maybe?--and caught sight of my reflection in the pristine white floor below, clean enough you could wash with it.

That guy looking up to me didn't look like a two-time loser from the ghetto. He didn't look like a monster in the making. He looked like Carl. Gary's little brother, Donna and Eddie's little boy. The kid who won the science fair in fourth grade.

Who knew that all along he'd only been one stamp away?

The Terribly Gifted Terry Gordan Chapter 1: Stuck

Thin rows of sunlight outlined the inner walls of the warehouse through aging fractures, one of its least substantial structural flaws. The rickety door screamed from the pain of being forced open against its rusty disuse, shoved into the ceiling, stilled gears scraping against the defunct track.

Were a living person, with the good sense to know what they were seeing, watching from within as the door went up, that living person may well have ceased to be such instantly. True, people aren’t frequently startled to death, but it happens. And, in such a circumstance it would’ve been the more favorable of two options. If a person sees Rex Proper walking into the room flanked by three men in suits, it is most likely that person never sees another pleasant thing for the rest of their (short, horrible) life.

Terry Gordan was lucky enough to be watching from behind the quartet, the scene playing out faintly beyond the red screen of the bandanna around his eyes. The door yelped as its parts lodged irreparably from the brute force of one of Rex’s nameless hulks. As the four men stepped into the darkness of the building, the shadows swallowed the dim picture and left Terry to imagine the scene, his heart beating slow and hard like the stroke of a sledgehammer, his knees kneading nervously at the dirt, wrists wringing sorely against the cuffs.

There was a merciless silence following the eerie echo of the door’s last stand, as the dirt where a floor once had been muffled the men’s steps. Terry felt like he was drowning, the sound of his breath resounding like the wind and the waves, and pressing harder against him than either natural force was capable.

A rumbling groan akin to a low-speed blender hummed from within. And Terry’s shoulder muscles tightened until they cramped, and then some. They'd found her. The sound swelled until it broke, shooting furious roar after furious roar from wall to wall. Birds evacuated the storm, the sound of their shrieks and their furious launch from the tin roof underscored Rex’s raging screams aptly; the horn and percussion sections of his animalistic melody.

“Don’t fucking touch anything!” Rex hollered, his voice raspy over the sound of him punching one of his subordinates, a jab for every word.

“You want to just leave it here?” The question was simple, impulsive, and rational. And for the man who spoke it, the last.

“It?” Rex hissed. A gunshot. “It, motherfucker?” Two more gunshots. Rex coughed up another chain of beastly roars. Violent and braying enough to freeze the veins, his outbursts simultaneously bled a portion of pain that almost forgave such a hateful tirade.

“Hey, Rexy, come on, she’s…” A gunshot; and another employee was relieved of his duty.

“No, please, Rex, no.” Three more shots.

Terry hadn’t been so naïve as to expect a positive outcome, but he’d been honest, led them to the place, done everything he could to save his life. Somewhere deep down, he’d wondered if there was a chance he could survive another day. But this man had just killed his own, just to blow off some steam. The future was less clear than Terry was accustomed. Far less clear, and that was a terror unrivaled in his experience.

Terry’s feet shuffled in place like the running start of a Merry-Melodies character. Finally he found traction and began straining himself upright, shaky knees combating his effort. Rocking back on his heels he wobbled, wrestling to press his toes to the ground. As he very nearly accomplished the move, Rex entered Terry’s grainy, amber sight, open barrel leading the way in b-line for his skull. Terry’s senses overcame him and he fell to the ground like a burlap sack.

Rex stood with his feet on either side of Terry’s ribcage. He stooped forward with the pistol and tugged the bandanna up with the pistol, the barrel scratching the flesh between Terry’s nose and left eye. Terry’s tears readied for the flood, but they were damned by the onslaught of every emotion conceivable, as if the man’s soul was going for one last spin, courtesy of a life of memories taken for granted. Each in full feature, these moments played out in the stage of his mind, time nonexistent.

The final fleeting flashes of those he loved most, and the dam began to groan, tears surfacing around the edges. Then, as his grimaced brow awaited the swift burn to take him away, the heat and smell of the barrel seemed to fade. One eyelid surrendered fear in favor of curiosity, sliding open just as a drop splashed onto his hairline. The other eye opened and within the brightness of the summer sky, the shadow of a broken man quivered slightly above him, drops beginning to storm from his eyes as his trembling intensified.

Rex held the pistol undecidedly, almost as if forgotten. Finally, it fell to his side and hung by his pocket. Rex stepped over Terry and stumbled back to the warehouse, toward his fallen love. He stopped at the door and collapsed, the killer of killers fading into a sobbing contradiction.

Terry worked his forearms into position and propped himself, slightly, on his elbows. He watched Rex for several seconds, perhaps a minute or more. He battled conflicting sentiments, sympathy and fear. He had to do something, to react, and unfortunately those were the only two stimuli he could summon. Terry was no tough guy, but damned if he’d go out in fear.

Terry waited until Rex had finished weeping and crawled onto his knees, staring into the darkness of the warehouse. Then he said, softly, “I can help you find the person who did this.”

Rex turned his head gradually to his left, and then stopped, refusing his interest in the claim. His shoulders took three passes up and down as his chest heaved, his own inner turmoil bubbling. He sprung to his feet, stripped the water from his face, and stalked toward Terry, his pistol again in the lead.

“How?” He stabbed the pistol forward.

“Same way I found your... this place, man. Same way I find anyone.” Terry had to fight to stifle his enthusiasm, darkly tinted as it might have been; he’d bought some time, but this wasn’t over. Not by a far cry. He didn’t have to be psychic to see that. Unfortunately, he was a psychic. And a fairly inadequate one at that.

For Dolls and Demons pt 2 - Join the Club

Part One

First time I went to The Leather Lizard, it was around two p.m. on a Sunday. Strange time to go to a strip club, I’ve been told, though I’ve often wondered, when is the “normal” time?

There were countless visits afterward, but I always go back to that first time. After I got hooked on Candy, I began working more and more to be sure that my place in the club would always be secure. Money might not make the world go round, but you sure won’t get far in a titty bar without it.

It wasn’t just the naked women I liked about it. It was like an X-rated Cheers; like a support group where no one had to admit they had a problem.

As a programmer, my schedule is fairly spastic, yet every time I came in the cast of characters was the same. Maybe the dancers changed, it’s hard to keep track of such things.

But, there was Lana, my waitress. If you don’t know, the waitresses at these establishments are one of two breeds; they’re so damn cute you’d trade a footfull of toes to watch her dance, or they’re the type who, with one look, you understand why they didn’t see necessary to have bouncers up front. Let me put it this way: I’d screw Lana before I’d screw her over, and I’d probably be just as afraid.

Petey B tossed bottles behind the bar. The kind of barkeep who never worried much with measuring out his shots, so that a two-fifty well could kick the ass right off any of the name brand mixes. He had three runners, two of them cute Asians. I took them for twins at first, but I’m a bit racist I guess because they’re not related, one’s Korean and one Vietnamese, and there’s a five year age difference. And, I can’t ever remember who’s who. It’s really dark in those places, in my defense. The other runner was a scrawny, squirrel-bearded metal head—my instincts said meth head too, but who knows—who looked like he must’ve gotten the job with a fake ID.

The main man with the dang plan—as he reminded the audience at least once per shift--was resident music magician DJ Operata tha Hot Potata. A white man should just not be able to have dreads so full and vast as his brown locks were, but judging from his marijuana tattoos and jewelry, I assume he’d given it a heartfelt, dedicated effort I could never appreciate.

Lana brought me my fourth rum and cola, round about six that afternoon when the first wave of A-teamers was beginning to take the stage. Petey B must have run out of cola on the second because I had a blazing fire stoking my chest, puffs of courage pouring out like the smoke rings I was trying to fashion.

A few dancers had stopped by, taking a seat on my left knee and asking for a cigarette or a light, sometimes both. One after the other, almost without fail, they would cup my hand in theirs and shove through my resistance with fire-lit eyes, sucking instead of dragging on the cig. What the technique lacked in originality it recouped with its effectiveness. It was a good thing I’d just gotten paid, because each set of flames melted another lap dance from my wallet.

Wednesday was a long-legged Nubian number with the kind of tone-but-ample backside that oh so very few of my honkey brethren have learned to appreciate. For the early evening dancers, she was quite a jewel. She had deep, heavy eyes that blinked purposefully, and only every few decades of awkward chit chat. Even when I’m paying them to pretend they like me, I’m still nervous with women.

I believe I was explaining how the role of Green Lantern is dissimilar to, say, Superman or Spiderman when Wednesday mercifully interrupted, “Do you play pool?”

I thought about lying but realized she might call me out on it, perhaps inviting me for a round of billiards and brew back at her place where she roomed with several of the other dancers. Don’t stop believing, ok.

I compromised, “Well, I’ve played but I’m not very good.”

She smiled sensually, her cheeks glowing through the dark. As her cheekbones seemed to rise into her temples, she surrendered a laugh. She released my non-smoking hand, which I don’t know when she had grabbed, and put both of hers to her mouth trying to catch the runaway giggle.

“What?” I sighed, presumptively embarrassed.

“Pool. It’s…” she bit the inside of her lip, “a code of sorts.”

I tried to convey my facial expression as “Oh I see,” but she did see. She smiled sweetly and took my hand, and walked me to a back corner with a low, deep armchair. A techno remix of a couple of Southern rock hits, I know them but I don’t know them, came on and she went about her routine.

With each pass of her mouth near my ear she would demystify a bit more until, even my simple mind, surmised that for four-hundred-bucks, she would take me in the back and… Well, something really cool was going to happen. I never precisely figured out the specifics.

When we returned to the table, I excused myself to the restroom, where I counted my cash. I could get a private throw and about four more drinks, just enough to help me cope with what I had resorted to. But when I returned to the table, a quarter-smoked cigarette with a pinch of bright pink on its white butt sent up a smoke-signal, floating away like the Ghost of Call Girls Past.

I sunk back into my drink, which was now mostly melted ice, and scoured the room for Lana. When I spotted her, she was coming down the steps of a section so exclusive I hadn’t realized it was there. To my tax bracket, it may as well not have existed at all. After a few passes of the strobe, I could just make out Wednesday’s bare back as she replaced her top.

Lana came to me, a crowded tray from the VIP section giving her an off-balance approach. “Wednesday was called away, Sugar. Fella over there said he’s got your next drink. And dance.” She gave me a look that was a little embarrassing, as if to say, I know you’ll like that.

“Well, I’m waiting on Wednesday anyway, so unless he wants to share…”

“He picked out someone else for you. You’ll like her.” She started away from my table but stopped after a few waddling steps. “Ya want the dance or doncha?”

Of course I did, so I followed her, stopping briefly at the bar to cash in my free drink. “A Godfather.” Even Petey B didn’t know that one; amaretto in Scotch. “Dewars,” I corrected as he went for the well.

She led me into a room which had, much like the VIP section, been invisible since I’d arrived. I sat on a plush couch, afraid to look at the seats too closely under the black light. After a few minutes of bass shaking my greater head back into prominence, I decided to slam my drink and leave.

“Ok, gents we gottanother hot mother—What! Shut yo mouth!” prattled DJ Operata, “Why doncha whip it out and give it up! Easy guys, I mean the dollaaaaaaassss. Hey! And it’s getting’ a bit cuh-ra-ra-ra-razy up in hee-uh! Des-ti-neeeeee, got a switch in the rotation, move that moneymaka’ to the main stage, while Mrs. C-c-c-candy, gets dandy with one lucky guy! You too fellas, got the dolla they’ll make ya holla…”

Then Candy came into my life and everything else sort of disappeared. Right then and there.

###

Candy was out for at least twenty minutes and I was worried. I’m not around much trauma, but that can’t be how long you’re supposed to be out, right? She finally stirred, her body contracting then swimming headfirst across the couch, stretching like a cobra from a pot, with an obnoxious yawn. It was cute on her.

She looked about; at me, her stuff. “What the…” Her eyes froze in saucer shape. Then her irises ticked about the room, the rest of her remaining perfectly still. “You need to go.” She emphasized the word strongly enough I almost did.

“We’re ok. One look at my little buddy,” I raised my hand, the roly-poly exploring it, “and they turned tail and ran.”

“They don’t run, they regroup.” She popped from the couch like a magnet pressed against its own and crashed into me, her hands pelting me with gentle—though I think she was going for tough—shoves toward the door.

I pirouetted behind her, afraid that I might not have the upper body strength to resist her if I tried. “Candy, I don’t mean to be a dick, but I just saved your life and you’re really being…” I couldn’t say anything mean to those pretty green eyes, “Rude.”

Those green eyes weren’t nearly as pretty when she snapped back her lashes and fried me with them, hissing, “Fuller is an idiot,” she struck the d and t sounds like they’d done something wrong. “He kidnapped me because he knew Benny was looking for me.”

God, it was only a day ago, I realized.

“Benny’s lookin’ for the redhead, Petey,” said the scrawny bar runner, apparently convinced that the blaring club tune would keep his secret. “He says he’ll give fifty-g to anyone who brings her in. Seventy if she’s alive.”

My heart split into dozens and the pieces scattered to play bumper cars from my ribs to my ears. I felt like the throbbing from my blood must have been making my skin bubble. I guess not, as they kept talking.

Petey B pressed out a sarcastic laugh, and I swear he checked me out in his peripheral. “Someone snatches up Candy, they ain’t bringin’ her in alive. That’s fact.”

“Are you listening!” she demanded the rhetorical question, somehow, rather than feigning any sort of inquiry.

“No,” I hollered defensively. I’d missed the word I wanted to say, but hey at least I was in the ballpark. Usually I would’ve tried to get away, so I counted it as a small victory in and of itself. Baby steps.

“I am,” thundered what I guessed was the voice of Satan’s meaner big brother, the sound flooding the house so that it seemed to be coming from everywhere.

Then I fainted. Only seemed fair.

Bounty and Beauty

“You’re so dramatic” she said.

He cast a look quickly and then back down, careful not to smile. She chuckled and he hardened his face to counter.

From the front seat of the black Coupe he had a very nice vantage point of her cleavage via discreet glimpse at the rearview mirror. She was handcuffed from behind, police style. Her red three-button polo was agape from the collar to the bottom button. She boastfully yet subtly arched her back to improve the show, both because it worked well and just for funsies.

It was a kick for her, playing him like this. One of the few she had left that could really get her blood pumping. He tracked her down; she escaped. Time and again. If the jails couldn’t hold her, he shouldn’t have had a chance. In her younger days--though she was the first to tell you forty is where you start--she wouldn’t have slowed down enough for him to catch her. But, she was getting older, no matter how vibrant and lethal she still was. Oh, she could’ve outrun him. She outran everyone else.

That should have sent up a red flag for him, but it didn’t. Ah, the male ego. How plentiful are thy tricks. He was one-hundred-thirty for one-hundred-thirty and keeping honest record; if he let her get away, he just wouldn’t have felt right calling himself the best bounty hunter in history.

Tired, crisp green eyes strung from crows’ feet hung above his dark stubble-filled face. He wore a dark grey suit over a white shirt, (loosened) black-and-white striped necktie, and oxblood wingtips with a white band crossing the top beneath the laces. He looked as if he might well have stepped out of one of the film noir classics he’d raised himself on.

In the interest of fairness, Grady wasn’t exactly getting younger, and he ought to have been chasing after more realistic goals. While his machismo helped him bury it, deep down he knew he shouldn’t have been able to catch her this point in his life.

It would have helped if she didn't do things like saying “I was wondering where you were,” as he found her standing beside the apples at the outdoor Farmers Market. There she was: a lifer, a well-known fugitive, armed and dangerous, FBI’s Most Wanted, and she was talking apples with a farmer in front of God and everyone. No one any the wiser as she just walked around anonymously. And, she was eating free apples no less. Guess it’s nice to have a body like that.

Now, to say Lenor was smashing would be unduly flattering to smashing people everywhere. She was a lady top to bottom, through and through. Even her crimes were classy. When your rap sheet includes robbing a museum with armed guards for an 18^th Century masterpiece, well… You don’t exactly belong in the pen with the hard-nosed missies who bashed in their baby daddy’s head with a rock. Not just because she exceeded them so thoroughly in grace, either. Any one of them try the same on her, that rock’s coming right back at them and it won’t be nicely. And what’s more, if it came to that and she had to do some bashing somehow she would’ve done it with class. She was in a class all by herself; the last of a certain type, but a whole new breed.

The British tabloids had dubbed her Dame Desperado after the footage of her shaking hands with heads of state at a White House event--she walked out with over three million dollars in jewelry that night. She liked that title a lot. So did he, it added significance to the bust. Bringing in “Lenor on the Lam”--as the city boys had once called her--would never satiate his thirst for fulfilling his delusions of grandeur. Bringing down “the Dame?” Oh baby.

“So,” she said with a flirty shake of the head that wiggled her big round sunglasses low enough that she could peer over the top. She leaned forward and caught his sight in the mirror, her brown eyes getting through his defenses like machetes. “You’ve got me. Now what are you going to do with me?” She curled the right side of her mouth. Age had made its mark on her once-flawless skin, but she made it work in spite.

“You’re going to jail, Lenor.”

“Where else?” she said, increasing the smile to reveal her top teeth, which she clamped gently onto her lower lip.

He snorted defiantly. Not again. He looked back at her. She reclined so that her eyes were again hidden behind the shades and her breasts were back to work. She released her lower lip and ran the tip of her tongue back and forth along a small portion of her top lip, making it look like she didn’t even know what she was doing. Yes. Again.

He looked at her in the mirror. “You tell me,” he sighed. His blinker was already on, as he maneuvered for the next exit toward Mexico.

“Thank you, dahling,” she said in her most majestic English accent, with a bow of her head.