Read Online Whiskey Sour Noir (The Hard Stuff) by Mickey J. Corrigan - Free Book Online

 
    Chapter One
    I’d never tasted a whiskey sour before I met up with Cat Avery. If I was having me some whiskey, I wanted it neat. In a shot glass. With a beer chaser. That’s the kind of girl I am. You may call me trailer trash or low class or whatever. I don’t care. I know what I like and that’s what I care for. I have my own tastes, my own reasons for that such. But sometimes I choose wrong. It happens. Shit happens all over this world.
    I liked Cat Avery right off. Even though I knew he was a sexual offender, SO for short. You get arrested or convicted of any kind of sex offense, even playing with yourself too near to an open window or sharing raw dog photos on your smart phone, well, your name goes up on the register. Your meanest face mugs out of the daily line-up on our local public TV station, your home address zips out by email to every resident within five miles of what used to be your private life. The good people of Dusky Beach, Florida, take their predator protection rights seriously. You do the time for a S.O., everybody in town knows more than you do about it.
    But in west Dusky Beach, where I lived these last two years, and where I worked and played and had a cold one nearly every night with my fake diamond-studded, concave, white as an iceberg belly up to the bar, nobody much cared. So nobody held the damn so-so label, as we called it, against Cat Avery. Mainly because everybody has a past if they’re hanging around west Dusky Beach. I know I did. Still do.
    The first time I met Cat Avery, he’d just started at the Kettle of Fish. The sudden halt of the Gulf Stream flow was all over the news and everybody sat glued to the yakker box, watching the talking heads discuss the oncoming doom. When I walked in I was tired and cranky. Not in the mood for world disaster. Not in the mood for love, either. I’d dropped by the Kettle for relaxation, not excitement. I’d had enough of that at work.
    The Kettle is two doors down from the Drop In Center where I counsel survivors of intimate partner abuse. People around here call it the DIC. A lot of my clients—we call them clients, not victims, so as to be empowering—are drug addicts and drinkers. Being near to the Kettle isn’t such a good thing for the addicted, but real estate is expensive in a beach town like Dusky Beach. Bars on the buggy west side of town are moneymakers because the rent here is low. And because, after all, not everybody who likes a drink can afford to indulge in the snobby pubs over on the beach.
    So when I went into the Kettle after work that day, I wasn’t looking for trouble of any kind. I was just in need of something cold on tap. As per usual, I’d had a bitch of a day and all I was considering was my choice of chaser. I won’t get hauled in for drunk driving because I live right up Pearl Street and I can roll myself home nice and easy from the Kettle. Have done such that many a time. So there I was, already not liking things due to the blare of the two flat-screen TVs stuck on loud on the hyper-chatter news shows. Oh yes, we are headed for death and destruction, so let’s all sit and watch it come for us. I was in no mind for the end of the world.
    I almost turned right around and headed for the take-out coolers at the liquor mart down the way. But once I’d set my squinting eyes on Cat Avery, I stood my ground. In west Dusky Beach, you’re lucky if you see anyone with all their own teeth, never mind good-looking guys in their thirties. Well-built men with hair on their heads are a rare breed in my neighborhood. I’d become accustomed to sleeping down. Avery was on another ranking entirely. He was up so many rungs he was out of my league, and I knew it soon as I laid eyes on the man.
    That was my first row of thoughts, at least. I should’ve turned tail, saved my tattooed ass. But it was already too late. I was hooked line and sinker, and he was smiling at me. He’d seen me come in. The double-thick oak door eased shut