High Cotton

by Michael Bracken

About the Author: Although he is the author of several books, including the private eye novel All White Girls, two-time Derringer Award-winning writer Michael Bracken is better known as the author of more than 1,100 short stories. His crime fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Crime Square, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Espionage Magazine, 50 Shades of Grey Fedora, Flesh & Blood: Guilty as Sin, The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 4, and Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine.

Excerpt

The blonde stepped out of Tony’s bedroom wearing nothing but her wedding rings and the white cotton dress shirt he had worn the previous day. She had the long sleeves rolled halfway up her arms, but had not buttoned the front.

“I’ve forgotten your name,” she said as she crossed the living room to the bar-height counter that separated it from the kitchenette where Tony stood wearing only the black silk boxers in which he had slept.

“Tony,” he said. “Tony Calvino.”

He knew Missy Richardson’s name. He had known it long before he ever saw her sitting alone at the bar, and her wedding ring had not prevented him from sending her a drink. That she had come home with him two hours later was a surprise, though—a rather pleasant surprise.

“Pour me one of those, Tony.” She pointed to the bottle of Jack Daniel’s Black Label on the counter.

He splashed three fingers into a clean water glass he retrieved from the drainboard and then pushed the glass to her.

Missy knocked the whiskey back in one long swallow and returned the empty glass to the counter. “Hit me again.”

Tony poured another three fingers of Jack into the glass. This time Missy carried it to the couch, where she sat, leaned back, and crossed her legs. She said, “You knew who I was before you bought me that first drink, didn’t you?”

Tony admitted as much as he moved to join her, the last of the Jack in a water glass he clutched in one thick fist.

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