Mort Jackson didn’t think of himself as a bad man. Oh, he did some bad things for dough these days but didn’t lots of guys? The half-naked girl laying on the kitchen table, stirred.

    She moaned and he slapped her face to make sure she was still in La-La Land. She had taken the hot spoonful of rocket juice in her vein, like a jazz player. She said her name was Pinky. Sure it is, he thought. Well, Pinky was plump and liked the dope. He knew the man he called X, would be pleased. Mort just wished X would get here, so he could leave with his hundred bucks.

     X looked and sounded, like a circus freakshow. With a melted face and an incoherent lisp, Jackson figured the man must’ve been burned in some chemical fire. Because that was X’s business, chemicals. Anyway, X liked the doped up dames. He’d been supplying the heroin and Mort supplied the ladies. And, Mort got paid handsomely for them. He didn’t know what X did to them or where they ended up after. He didn’t care. This was his only racket now.

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     Out on a dark side of the street, I lit up a cigarette in the Buick. I’d seen Jackson take the floozy up to the second floor apartment but no one had come in or out since midnight.

    “Aah, here we go…” I whispered as a set of headlights appeared in my rearview.

    A black Packard sedan pulled up in front of the building and a gorilla in a tux got out to open the rear door. The man who got out was illuminated under the street light for only a couple of seconds. It was enough for me to nearly choke on my smoke!