Fires—that’ll teach her to smoke in bed. Fresh-dug cellars before they cement the floor. Shallow graves where only coyotes sniff her out. Played-out quarries. Smelters. Oil refineries. Distilleries. An overgrown mine shaft in Pennsylvania once, where, judging by the stink, someone else had the same idea. “But this is true, my dear—for crisp, clean, ease of disposal, nothing beats a river.”
His night vision was superb, and he walked sure-footedly toward an abandoned coal wharf where riverboats took on fuel before the railroads put them out of business. Suddenly he stopped, cocked his ear, and listened hard.
“Do you hear that?”
Voices singing:
“Put your arms around me, honey, hold me tight.
Huddle up and cuddle up with all your might.
Oh, babe . . .”
The Cutthroat spotted them in the starlight, stumbling toward him on the train tracks. A pair of drunks harmonizing, or so they thought, Collins and Harlan’s hit Victor recording from Madame Sherry. Strapping men, he saw as they drew closer, work-hardened day laborers, young, quick, and barely slowed by the booze. Even though they were having trouble remembering the words:
“When they look at me, my heart begins to float,
Then it starts a-rockin’ like a motorboat.
Oooh-ooh, I never knew any gal like you.”
They finally noticed him ten feet in front of them, lurched to a halt, and looked him over.
“Whatcha got there, mister?”
“The young lady had a bit much to drink,” said the Cutthroat.
They snickered.
The bigger one said, “So now you’re gonna have a bit much of her.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, you’re carrying her down the tracks into the dark so you can have her before she comes to.” He turned to his friend. “You know somethin’, Vern? Seeing as how there’s two of us and only one a him, we’re going first.”
He turned back to the Cutthroat. “You can have seconds.”
“Thirds,” said Vern.
The Cutthroat opened his arms. The girl fell hard, audibly cracking her head on one of the rails. The cape he had wrapped around her flew open.
“What did you do that for?” the bigger drunk howled. “You want to kill her?”
“Ain’t gonna be no fun dead . . .” said Vern. His voice trailed off as he moved closer.
“Jimbo, you see what I see?”
“Oh, man, she fell on her head, busted her neck.”
“Look again, you idiot. She was already dead.”
Jimbo leaned over the body. He fumbled a match from his clothing and raked it across his belt buckle. The Cutthroat closed one eye and slitted the other. Sulfur flamed, half blinding them both.
“I’ll be damned. He cut her head almost off.”
“And look what he did to her—”
The Cutthroat’s cane hung from a strap looped around his wrist. When the match went out, he drew his sword from the cane and whipped the bloody blade to the bigger man’s throat. “Do exactly what I tell you, Jimbo.”