The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction

Swede lost. Beth wasn’t waiting – but Zo was. I walked over to the yellow jeepster she was driving and her voice reached out and caressed me.

“Hello, honey. Am I glad to see you.” Zo lifted her lips to be kissed. “I’ve been waiting out here since daybreak.”

Her lips were clinging. Her fingers dug into my back. After three years in a cell, it was like kissing a jet plane. I said:

“You shouldn’t kiss strange men like that. You won’t go to heaven.”

She wrinkled her nose at me. “Who wants to go to heaven? And since when are you a stranger?” She slid over on the seat. “Get in, honey. You drive.”

I said, “What? Without a driver’s license? You want me to break the law?”

She thought that was very funny. “Okay. I’ll drive.” When I still didn’t get into the jeepster, she fished in her purse for the Havana bank pass book that had been in her possession when the law had swooped down on me. “And don’t jump to false conclusions. No one let you down. The big shot couldn’t show up at your trial. It would have jeopardized the whole setup.” She handed me the pass book.

I had lied to Swede. I wasn’t broke. I was filthy. And I was still important to the gang. Every month I had spent in a cell, someone, Señor Peso presumably, had deposited one thousand dollars to my account. The last figure showed $36,124.00.

Zo asked, “Feel better?”

The Devil came up behind me and pushed. To hell with Beth. To hell with everything, I thought. To hell with trying to kill Señor Peso. In his way the guy had played square with me. Why should I try to goose into his grave an egg who laid so many golden pesos?

I got into the jeepster and Zo pulled out of the parking lot and headed south on Florida 16 into Starke. I asked her where we were headed. She said:

“Over to the West Coast. I’ve engaged a double cabin on a little cove just above Dead Man’s Bay. But we won’t be there long. One of the boys will put in with a converted Tarpon Springs sponge boat in the next few days and take us on to Havana and Shrimp Cay. That all right with you?”

Her head was bare. She was wearing a strapless sun dress that made her shoulders look like they were made of rich cream. Heat and palm trees, the slap of blue waves, and Zo. It sounded good to me.

“Yeah. Sure. That’s fine,” I told her.

She pulled to the side of the road and handed me an opened bottle of rum. Then, the same devil who was pushing me lighting twin candles in her eyes, she kissed me, hard. “Okay. Until then. You drink and dream, I’ll drive . . .”

It was afternoon when we reached the cabin. We’d stopped twice to eat. Once in Gainesville and once in Cross City. I’d also picked up another bottle of rum. After being away from it so long, it hit me almost as hard as Zo’s kisses.