Waiting (a Donovan Caine story) *Friday Writing Essentials, LFOM*

They say good things come to those who wait, and in this case that saying is right. Gail Savage was the latest in a long line of mistresses to ‘Uncle Johnny’ John Marchelli, the number 2 man in the Bollini crime family. I hated John, hated him from way back. The kind of childhood hatred that grows as you do. We grew up in the same neighborhood, he was always the bigger chubby bully to my small skinny target. Everyday he and some of the others took out their aggression and budding anti-social leanings on me. Stayed that way till I both got tired of it and started growing to match any of them in size. We were never friends but after, he learned I was the last person he should ever pick on again. We at least had a grudging disinterested respect in the other after that. We grew up. He joined the mob, turning his years of bullying into years of being the closed fist for Mitchell Bollini. I became, first a cop then a private eye. Our paths crossed more than once. Words would be exchanged. Knowledge of who did what on whose orders were known if always unsaid, and that was it. For years I waited for a chance to make sure John never hurt anyone again. I’d always hoped it would be due to me finally getting enough info to put him away for life, but I’d have settled for anything.

That’s where Gail Savage comes into the picture. She grew up a beautiful girl in an ugly world. Used that beauty to get out and get what she thought she deserved as penance for having lived the way she had before. John was wealthy and he loved the ladies. Gail was beautiful and loved wealthy men. Guess it was destiny that brought them together. John didn’t just like hitting smaller weaker guys, he loved smacking around women, seemed to take an almost childish glee in it, like pulling wings off of flies to watch them skitter around in pain and horror. He was known to smack Gail around. Common knowledge to anyone who saw her wearing dark glasses or enough makeup to cover whatever damage he had caused the week before. But in this case John was playing with fire. Gail wasn’t a shrinking violet like the other beautiful things John like to break. She was born into a rough world, clawed her way out and wasn’t about to let someone like Uncle Johnny push her back there. Some of my friends on the police force called me in to help them find out what happened after John was found, sorta, face down in a pool of his own blood. I say sorta because there wasn’t much left of his face, or his head for that matter. Someone, which was why I was asked to help find that someone, had payed John back for all the things he’d done.

Gail wasn’t the obvious choice, no one thought a beautiful girl like that could do something like this. I knew better. I knew the life she’d came from, wasn’t much different than the one I did. I knew that underneath the polish she had it in her. So I asked her. Point blank why she did it. She looked at me. Bruises still fading from some past beating, took a long pull from her cigarette, blew the smoke out, dropped the ashes in an ashtray that cost more than my car and said simply: “He deserved it.” She finished her cigarette walked over to the couch and sat down. she explained how he liked to smack her, liked to beat her to remind her that he was the man and she belonged to him until he got tired of her. He simply forgot that she wasn’t like the other girls, she wasn’t afraid of him and warned him that one day he’d remember that. That day came. She used his own pistol to remind him, walked up to him raised her arm and pulled the trigger. As the police took her away I asked her why she stayed with him? Why put up with what he did to her? Again her answer was simple, one I understood completely. She said she was, "Just waiting for the right time."