Read Online Lillian and Dash by Sam Toperoff - Free Book Online

Hammett when they first met during her days with Kober at Paramount. The familiarity of the bar both calmed her and made her more angry. For some reason the matter of leaving or staying with him never came to mind; all she wanted to do was batter him.
    The day was warm, the bar very dark. For her it was like entering a movie at midday. She stood by the door and let her eyes adjust. The clock above the cash register said 1:20. She noticed as she approached from behind that he’d had his hair cut very recently. He was newly shaved too. There was talc on his collar. Sure signs that his toot was recently over. It must have been an incredible drunk.
    Once when she was a teenager back in New Orleans, Max took her to the fights on a barge in the harbor. She wore a newsboy cap, a leather jacket, knickers, and she passed too easily for a boy. The fight she saw and still remembered, a coal-black man against a Creole, ended so suddenly she never saw the punch that put the black man down and out. Not many others saw the punch either; men in the crowd booed and shouted “Fix!” Later her father explained to heras he counted his winnings that the knockout blow was no phantom but a short, perfectly placed solar plexus punch.
    “Solar plexus, Daddy?”
    Boxing historians, of which Max was one, knew the provenance of this particular blow. The huge American heavyweight champion “Gentleman Jim” Corbett lost his title to the slight Brit Bob Fitzsimmons back at the turn of the century when he was hit in the small, particularly vulnerable area—the solar plexus—just below the chest cavity and above the stomach. When perfectly placed, the blow didn’t have to be powerful to arrest an opponent’s ability to breathe and render him absolutely helpless. Exactly the outcome that would satisfy her this afternoon with Hammett.
    That was her ideal retribution. The image of Hammett on his knees, gasping for air, unable to speak, pleased her greatly. The two were, after all, already well beyond words. First a fist, then an openhanded smack, a clawed hand, a kick, and why not a scream—no, a shout—while pummeling him, that at least would tame the rage pulsing through her now.
    Lilly had no idea he saw her coming up behind him in the mirror—there are some things a detective never forgets to do. She noticed when she got closer he had only a coffee cup before him on the bar. The drying out had indeed begun, probably it had started just this morning with the haircut and the shave.
    She stood directly behind him and now saw him looking at her in the mirror. They said nothing. Did nothing.
    “You know, if I had a piece of piano wire, I’d garrote you.”
    “No, you wouldn’t.” She’d forgotten how calm his voice could be in very emotional moments. “You’d only
try to
garrote me. I wouldn’t let you garrote me.”
    “So tell me why.”
    “Because I want to breathe a while longer on this earth.”
    “No. Why won’t you keep your dick in your fucking pants?”
    Hammett took a breath and looked with sadness at the bartender. “My business.”
    “Stand up and turn around.”
    Hammett smiled. “Sounds like you’ve got a gun.”
    “No. I want to hit you.”
    “Fair enough.”
    Hammett slid his stool back a bit and rose. The bartender moved away. Hammett turned around slowly and faced Lillian. He was tall and straight and clean. He was not smiling but nodding, seeming to acknowledge her right to some form of retribution, just not garroting.
    His jacket was open. She had bought him this tie with a small floral design. His solar plexus, as best she could determine, lay behind the widest point on the gray silk. Hammett’s scarred, tubercular lungs lay behind that too. The punch, she knew, had to be sudden, had to be sharp, thrown with all the force she could muster and with all her anger channeled into it.
    Lillian exploded at Hammett’s chest.
    He caught her fist in midair, mere inches from his tie. His pale eyes narrowed: “Not here,