Dangerous Women. Part III. Джордж Р. Р. Мартин
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Danny replied, feeling the weight of the question, responding to the statements.
The man grinned. “That’s real cute. How long you think that’ll last?”
He wasn’t talking about Delia, Danny knew. Peter was toying with him, wanting to know how long this little flare of defiance would go on before Danny settled down and behaved again.
Like the dog at the café, who’d slunk off instead of attacking. That dog was probably dead now, Danny thought, or at the very least still hungry, slinking through the city, willing to brave a few kicks to get a scrap or two.
No more slinking. No more scraps.
“Forever,” he replied. With a practiced move, he pulled the baton from his pocket and snapped it open. Baring his teeth as he stepped toward Peter. Reveling in the shock and fear on the man’s face as the dog finally turned on his master.
He called her in the elevator, asked her to meet him at the Canal Street Ferry. He figured he’d beat her there, but when he arrived at the dock, he saw her leaning on the rail down at the end, looking out over the wallowing river and the blinking lights of cars crossing the bridge.
A tension he hadn’t even been aware of leached away. A part of him hadn’t been sure she’d come, afraid that she’d cut her losses and leave him behind. Yet now he realized that she’d known where he’d gone, had been waiting nearby for him.
She turned at the sound of his hurrying footsteps, watched him as he approached.
“Danny …?” she said, reaching up to touch his face. “What’s going on?”
He caught her hand in his, kissed it. “I love you, baby. I’ll keep you safe forever, I swear it.”
Her breath caught. “Oh God. What did you do?”
“It’s cool,” he said. “I swear. I … I’m good.”
She bit her lip, then closed her eyes, wrapped her arms around him. “Yes, you are.”
He lowered his head and breathed in the scent of her, feeling all the shit and the muck of his life slipping away. “Let’s go,” he said. “Let’s leave this place forever and start over somewhere else.” He didn’t want to stay, but he also knew he couldn’t leave her behind. She’d end up as beaten and broken as those other girls … yet, even as he thought it, he knew that it was an excuse, knew that he wasn’t strong enough to leave without her. But maybe if they both left, started over … maybe he could get unbroken.
She pulled back, shock and disappointment flashing across her features. “You want me to leave? I can’t!”
“It’s just a city, baby,” he said, holding her face in his hands. “Nothing but a bunch of buildings and streets and crap and assholes.”
“No. It’s so much more than that.” She tried to shake her head. “There’s a soul to this place, rich and wonderful. We survived Katrina and we’ll survive this. We … I … have to stay. Why can’t you see it?” She reached up, pulled his hands from her face, but continued to hold them. “Oh, Danny,” she breathed. “Peter’s gone now. You don’t have to be who you were anymore.”
She knew, he realized, as the last of his tension dissipated. She knew he’d killed Peter, understood the lengths he’d go to for her … and didn’t hate him for it. “No. I can be better,” he insisted. “I can be … if I’m with you.” He squeezed her hands. “But not here. It can’t work here. New Orleans died when the river left. There’s always gonna be guys like Peter here, looking to cash in on the wreckage. They’ll tear this city up and salvage every scrap they can from it, and they won’t give a shit who gets crushed in the process.”
He couldn’t see her expression in the gloom, but he heard a sigh of what sounded like resignation come from her. Maybe she was starting to see things his way? “I have money,” he told her. “We can go to Lafayette. Start over. We’ll be together.” His phone rang and he cursed, pulled it out to see it was Detective Farber. Ice knotted his stomach. Had Peter been found already?
“Think about it,” he mouthed to Delia before he stepped back and answered the phone.
“Get this,” Farber said without preamble. “Ernst’s gun matched the slugs found in Jack-D’s body.” Jack-D, a pimp even sleazier than Jimmy Ernst, who specialized in girls who didn’t just look very young but really were. He’d been found down on Basin Street the day before Ernst took a swim in the mud. “Betcha one of Jack-D’s boys capped Ernst as a get back,” the detective continued. “At any rate, we got enough to close both cases.”
“Yeah,” Danny said. “That’s good. Do it.” He hung up, looked out at the river and frowned. Didn’t make sense that a pussy like Jimmy would go after Jack-D. Didn’t make sense that anyone would give enough of a shit to take out Jimmy in revenge. A whisper of unease lifted the hairs on the back of his neck. Delia had known Peter was dead. Had she wanted Danny to kill him?
He began to turn back to Delia, felt two prongs of cold metal against his throat an instant before hot lightning flashed through his body. He dropped to the concrete of the dock as pain danced through his nerve endings and he fought for control of his muscles.
She stooped and slipped the Taser back into her purse, pulled him upright, and leaned him against the railing. She was strong—those dancer muscles served her well as she toppled him over the side to the waiting muck below.
He landed flat on his back. The impact knocked his breath from him, but the mud quickly gave way beneath his weight. She leaned over the railing, met his eyes as he sank.
Delia checked her watch, waited as the river slid along its banks with a contented, relieved sigh. In the distance, metal groaned as a ship heeled over with the change in the tide. Moonlight painted the river in a sheet of soft grey, an elegant lady settling into comfortable retirement.
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