Disclaimer: Hey! Arnold and the music of Jill Tracy do not, in part or whole, belong to me.
HA
It was quiet in the club during those early hours of the morning, just after the joint closed and the bums thrown out. Money changed hands a few times as the band packed away their instruments, the barman wiping down the counter. Curly had gone to deal with some business with another Boss, a fellow by the name of Iggy, leaving Helga in charge.
The woman of the hour was seated ceremoniously at one of the center tables, hands sorting the cash bills as her cigarette burned in the ashtray and the ice in her glass repositioned. A vision in red tonight, the silk she was wrapped in made her skin almost opalescent as the lights dimmed. The stillness was deafening, the soft wisp of the bills surrounding her like the smoke from that first night as she hummed a few bars of the night's headliner. The heavy sound of his boots on the wooden floor broke the atmosphere as Arnold made his way to her table.
She met his gaze with a smile, lifting her drink to her lips as the amber liquid sloshed in the glass.
"You were lovely last night." As stupid as he sounded, the words spilled from his mouth with no control. Her smile grew with an emotion he couldn't quite name as she turned back to the cash at hand.
"I never do things by halves." She had been rather distant with him recently. No, that wasn't the right word. Concise. Direct, like she was settling back into a routine that had been abandoned. He cleared his throat.
"Yes, well. Right, any word from the Boss?" she paused, but only for a second before she continued counting.
"He wants you to meet him at the factory. Help yourself to the cold cuts in the kitchen for lunch and then get over there." There was no break in her counting, just the hush of money against money against hands against table. Though taken aback by her tone, Arnold said nothing as he slipped his hat back on and moved to the back of the bar, towards the kitchen.
He didn't notice the faraway look in her eye as he left, as if she was watching a memory before them. Or divining the future.
"I want to believe in something; I'm still searching for the truth. I want to believe in something. I have finally found, the proof." As she sang, another set of heavy boots sauntered to her table. A large hand rested on her shoulder before caressing it for a moment or two. The only response her companion received was a laugh.
"You know what to do?" another squeeze on her shoulder, followed by a wheeze, "Then what are you doing here? Get to that factory and give 'em a hand." Her orders issued, the man wheezed again before letting his hand fall from her shoulder. As he began to walk away Helga spoke.
"Give him my love." A pause, "Both of them." A final wheeze and her harbinger was gone with the footfalls of heavy boots. She smirked again as she picked up her forgotten cigarette and took a drag. Humming a few more bars she continued counting the profits of the night before, awaiting with a feeling for tonight's show to star. A welling of excitement she hadn't felt since she first started at this little club. Back when she was still fresh-faced and young and naïve and Curly had another girl on his arm.
Her smirk grew just a bit wider.
"I have finally found, the proof."
HA
When the car pulled into the abandoned car park of the factory, Arnold felt almost immediately a sense of dread. Helga had been acting strangely, first brushing him aside then coming to him for comfort in the middle of the night. Telling him how scared she was for the pair of them, that she was afraid Curly had found about them and was going to do the same thing that he had done to Rhonda.
He remembered the look on her face when he asked who Rhonda was: a mix of pure fear, and something else. Something that tugged on the back of his mind but he couldn't place it.
Rhonda, she told him, was Curly's girl before Helga. A tall and elegant beauty with exotic black hair and smoky eyes. She wasn't much of a crooner but she had the longest legs that made her perfect for dancing. Curly was hopelessly smitten with her, finding no fault in anything she did; then one day she just up and disappeared.
The Boss had changed after that, so everyone was certain that he had something to do with it; and then when her body turned up in a car just past the docks . . . .
And now Helga was certain that the same thing that happened to poor Rhonda was going to happen to them. Well, he couldn't let that happen, not to him before he finished then case and absolutely not to her.
When Helga told him that Curly wanted to see him at the factory he saw his chance and going to take it. He was going to free Helga once and for all, and then maybe he and Helga could run the bar and business together.
"You're late." Curly's voice broke through the stillness and his thoughts. Startled, Arnold looked up to see his Boss step out of the doorway of one of the buildings, Brainy right behind him.
"Too bad, really. If you had been on time you may have just beat Brainy here to meet me." Sparing a quick glance down the blonde noticed that Curly had a .22 aimed straight at him.
"And if you had beat him, you certainly would have beat the information he had with him. Information about a certain blonde crooner and her lover." Reaching for his own gun in the back of his pants, he was cautioned off by Curly cocking his gun.
"It really is too bad, see. I liked you, certainly more than I liked Wheezy here. And if you had been on time it would have been your story I would have been convinced to believe – not his. Probably some story about being an undercover Dick or something, not that you were stepping out with my Girl. It really is too bad."
Then a gun went off.
Arnold felt a ripping, burning pain in his side as his knees crumbled. But as he fell he still had the presence of mind to reach into the back of his pants and pull his own weapon. Firing who knows how many shots, his vision blurred and then went dark as he met the pavement.
Curly, surprised not only that someone else shot his mark but that the man had fired and hit him, collapsed against the doorframe. Brainy stepped around him to go meet the finally figure that had slipped in unnoticed to the two downed men. Ignoring the larger man completely, they wandered first to Curly, who labored breath was slowing.
"Helga…." A kiss to his lips that left incriminating red lipstick silenced him. When she pulled away he was gone.
"Farewell my love." She whispered before moving to Arnold, who was slowly coming back into consciousness. He looked up in absolute surprise as she knelt beside him.
"Thank you for freeing me from him, Arnold." And then she stood, aimed her gun and fired once into his head. Handing Brainy her gun, she smiled serenely at the two dead men before her.
"Men. Come on Brainy, I'm on in an hour and I want to make my first night as the Boss a night no one will forget."
HA
The seductive sounds of the piano echoed around the bar as the blonde swayed in a sinful red dress. News of the Boss spread quickly, although everyone thought it was Iggy who did the deed. Even still, in the mourning atmosphere all eyes were on the crooner.
"Slave to good intention, mastermind the great. A victim of the culprit of finding out too late. So I linger in the hallway, one story down below. Longing for a 45 revolver and a 62 Bordeaux." A man dressed finely in a suit walked in and went straight to the table in the middle. She nodded to him and the man at his right as they ordered whiskey and lit up a cigar. "But you're the only one who can please me. You're the only one."
The men shared a small conversation as she caressed the torch.
"I hear the creaks in the floorboards, a firmament above. I can chart the course of your star, like a dirty hand in glove. And I'm lurking in the holes, creeping cross the corners. Cuddle up so soft and safe, close your eyes and calculate." the tune picked up as she swayed her hits a bit more exaggerated, finding and keeping the eyes of the two men at the table.
"One to nullify the pain, two to make it real again. Three, please, give me one to grow on. Four my recompense, five don't leave me in suspense. Six promise not to peak, my diabolical streak." The tune slowed down again as she took a drag of the cigarette sitting on the piano just for her. All were enthralled as her hips gave them naughty ideas.
"My diabolical streak." Of all the men who watched, it was only the two at the table who understood. The larger man because he helped her with her plan. The other, because he saw the same thing in her that was in himself.
"My diabolical streak."
HA