Broadway Bounty

Chapter Nine

In a rooming house on Delancey Street, Oakley Ready sat naked on a bed counting his money. He still had about sixty-five hundred dollars left from the last bank he had robbed—just before Dover got onto his trail. He was out travel money and the money he’d been spreading behind him, trying to make sure Dover ended up dead.

He knew that the men he’d paid in Harrison City had failed to kill Dover because he’d read about the shooting in the St. Martin’s Hotel in the newspapers. The two men he’d hired to watch the train station were dead, too. Ready hadn’t known either town, or he’d have been able to hire better men.

He knew somebody in New York, though. He would get in touch with him today. It had taken him three days to find out where the guy was. Through this man he’d get some quality guns to go after Dover.

Once he had Dover taken care of, he’d be able to trade in this Delancey Street rooming house for a respectable hotel. He hadn’t seen much of New York since arriving, but he’d seen enough to know that it was his kind of town. There was plenty of money to be had, and plenty of places to spend it.

The girl on the other side of the bed rolled over and looked at Ready, then at the money. Her brown hair was tousled, and her lips slightly swollen.

“How much have you got left?” she asked.

“Enough,” he said, smiling at her.

He’d picked her up waiting tables in a restaurant. She wasn’t a beauty, but she was attractive and had a nice, solid body. He liked women with solid bodies.

The sheet fell away from her as she sat up, and he stared at her breasts. Then she reached for the money, and he grabbed her wrist and held it so tightly that bones started to grind together.

“Jesus—” she said, wincing in pain.

“We’ll get along fine, Marcy, as long as you remember one thing.”

“W-what?”

He let go of her wrist and said, “Don’t touch my money.”

“A-all r-right,” she said, rubbing her wrist.

He swept the money off the bed onto the floor, then got onto the bed with her.

“Here,” he said, taking her hand, “let me kiss it and make it better.”

Only it wasn’t her wrist that he started kissing.