not only a jewel thief of wanted-poster proportions, she was also a Gods (bleeped) pickpocket!
I was utterly penniless again!
The fatal kiss of the Countess Krak!
Rage gave way to despair. I hung my head. The voice of Mamie Boomp still came through my cloud of utter despondency. She was making a list of "bare necessities": silk panty hose and bras, morning coats, cocktail dresses, evening gowns, suits, skirts and spare blouses with the most expensive Holland lace, shoes, boots and ermine house slippers, fifty assorted negligees, the jewels to go with it all and ending up with "various fur coats" including a full, evening, Blackgama mink hood and cape.
"This list," she concluded, "will last at least two months and carry you to spring. But at that time, of course, you'll need to reoutfit to hold on to your sailor.
Now let's get down to services, beginning with a new hairdo. I advise against the new style of shaving half the head and painting it all blue. You just don't have the time. Bonbucks Teller's beauty salon will advise it but I think that the new windblown style, gold aura, this one where they're using ruby dust, will go just fine with your complexion. Providing you wear enough blue-white diamonds to enhance the eyes. Now, as to fingernails, gold leaf seems to be catching on...."
As it continued, I began to pick up a sort of bitter hope. That emerald locket was worth, I thought, no more than fifty thousand dollars. My overtrained and presensitized ear was scenting that this "bare necessity" array was going to top that. At Bonbucks Teller, a Blackgama mink, the top, top of all minks, would probably, all by itself, be twice the value of that locket!
Hope rose. Regardless of my own loss, Heller was going to get roped into this far beyond any ready cash he had. He hadn't even been able to pay for all of Babe's tiara, now languishing forgotten at Tiffany's. This foreign nightclub tour "singer" and this vicious criminal, Countess Krak, were tailoring a disaster for him on which I could scarcely hope to improve. If IRS was wiping out Heller, this pair was going to go them one better and have him sleeping in the park and eating the leavings in garbage cans. Gods bless such stores as Bonbucks Teller! Gods bless fairies who designed and lured unwary and helpless males into shuddering bankruptcy. They were not just getting rid of competition: they were getting rid of men entirely! Via the bankruptcy court. And there was where Heller was being headed.
Chapter 6
They landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport in a screech of wheels and a roar that made troops bound for battle seem quiet by comparison and tame.
I still had a bastion on which one could normally count. The government men-immigration, customs and drugs-at JFK are the most nasty and unwelcoming brutes in the whole world. They resemble a bunch of corpses exhumed on a cold day. They make a foreigner's first introduction to America so hostile that a walk, naked, in absolute zero would seem warm by comparison.
I hoped they would find the locket, undeclared, and confiscate it and throw the Countess Krak into the mayhem of a Federal pen. She deserved it.
As the Countess walked in to the line of U. S. Citizens Being Readmitted on Probation, my hopes soared. They have the toughest, most silent man there that any mortuary could devise. He looks in a little book to see if you are an escaped criminal wanted for unpaid parking tickets and if he finds your name or number or if you come up on his computer screen, he makes a signal the entering person cannot see and Federal police do a vulture pounce from all sides.
The Countess and Mamie walked through, chattering about clothes, clothes, clothes and fashions, fashions, fashions.
Krak's idle eye even landed on the computer face once. It said, in answer to her passport number:
I. G. Barben drug runner
and the corpse made a tiny pencil symbol on the corner of a passport page and stamp, stamp, she was through!
At
I was utterly penniless again!
The fatal kiss of the Countess Krak!
Rage gave way to despair. I hung my head. The voice of Mamie Boomp still came through my cloud of utter despondency. She was making a list of "bare necessities": silk panty hose and bras, morning coats, cocktail dresses, evening gowns, suits, skirts and spare blouses with the most expensive Holland lace, shoes, boots and ermine house slippers, fifty assorted negligees, the jewels to go with it all and ending up with "various fur coats" including a full, evening, Blackgama mink hood and cape.
"This list," she concluded, "will last at least two months and carry you to spring. But at that time, of course, you'll need to reoutfit to hold on to your sailor.
Now let's get down to services, beginning with a new hairdo. I advise against the new style of shaving half the head and painting it all blue. You just don't have the time. Bonbucks Teller's beauty salon will advise it but I think that the new windblown style, gold aura, this one where they're using ruby dust, will go just fine with your complexion. Providing you wear enough blue-white diamonds to enhance the eyes. Now, as to fingernails, gold leaf seems to be catching on...."
As it continued, I began to pick up a sort of bitter hope. That emerald locket was worth, I thought, no more than fifty thousand dollars. My overtrained and presensitized ear was scenting that this "bare necessity" array was going to top that. At Bonbucks Teller, a Blackgama mink, the top, top of all minks, would probably, all by itself, be twice the value of that locket!
Hope rose. Regardless of my own loss, Heller was going to get roped into this far beyond any ready cash he had. He hadn't even been able to pay for all of Babe's tiara, now languishing forgotten at Tiffany's. This foreign nightclub tour "singer" and this vicious criminal, Countess Krak, were tailoring a disaster for him on which I could scarcely hope to improve. If IRS was wiping out Heller, this pair was going to go them one better and have him sleeping in the park and eating the leavings in garbage cans. Gods bless such stores as Bonbucks Teller! Gods bless fairies who designed and lured unwary and helpless males into shuddering bankruptcy. They were not just getting rid of competition: they were getting rid of men entirely! Via the bankruptcy court. And there was where Heller was being headed.
Chapter 6
They landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport in a screech of wheels and a roar that made troops bound for battle seem quiet by comparison and tame.
I still had a bastion on which one could normally count. The government men-immigration, customs and drugs-at JFK are the most nasty and unwelcoming brutes in the whole world. They resemble a bunch of corpses exhumed on a cold day. They make a foreigner's first introduction to America so hostile that a walk, naked, in absolute zero would seem warm by comparison.
I hoped they would find the locket, undeclared, and confiscate it and throw the Countess Krak into the mayhem of a Federal pen. She deserved it.
As the Countess walked in to the line of U. S. Citizens Being Readmitted on Probation, my hopes soared. They have the toughest, most silent man there that any mortuary could devise. He looks in a little book to see if you are an escaped criminal wanted for unpaid parking tickets and if he finds your name or number or if you come up on his computer screen, he makes a signal the entering person cannot see and Federal police do a vulture pounce from all sides.
The Countess and Mamie walked through, chattering about clothes, clothes, clothes and fashions, fashions, fashions.
Krak's idle eye even landed on the computer face once. It said, in answer to her passport number:
I. G. Barben drug runner
and the corpse made a tiny pencil symbol on the corner of a passport page and stamp, stamp, she was through!
At
Similar Books
Fates and Furies
Lauren Groff
The Valentino Affair
Colin Evans
Thorns
Kate Avery Ellison
The Sweetest Thing
Elizabeth Musser
Always Mine
Sophia Johnson
Pucked
Helena Hunting
What the Groom Wants
Jade Lee
Milosevic
Adam LeBor
Sweet Last Drop
Melody Johnson