Free The Pulptress by Pro Se Press Page B

girl
could find a much nicer, safer career. The lovely lass known as the
Pulptress mused as she thumped the door for the third time in as
many minutes with the stock of her pump-action shotgun.
    There was a click from
behind the door and the small, rectangular peep shutter slipped
open to reveal a pair of beady eyes under heavy thick
eyebrows.
    “ Yeah, yeah, whataya want?”
the dimwitted gangster asked, looking down at the strangely garbed
female standing on the landing.
    “ I want to see your boss,
Pete Malone.”
    “ What for?”
    “ Well, that’s really between
me and him now, but then again, you really are in for a world of
shit.”
    “ Huh?”
    Cody tilted her cowboy hat
back, stepped closer to the peep slot and whispered, “Listen,
moron, there’s a dozen ninjas coming down on this place even as we
speak. Now I think that’s something your boss would like to know.
Don’t you?”
    The big guard kept staring
at her and she wondered just how stupid he really was? Then there
was a chunking noise and he was gone from site just before the big
door opened inwards.
    He was standing there with
one hand out. “Okay, Calamity Jane, hand over the shotgun and the
six-iron and I’ll take you to see the boss.”
    Cody could have blown a
hole through him easily enough and the temptation was great. Still,
those ninjas we’re not going to sit around waiting to make their
move
    , and if they killed Malone
before she got to him, then her plan would go down the drain in a
quick flush.
    She passed over the shotgun
and then the Colt six-shooter from its holster riding low on her
right hip. “Alright, you satisfied now?”
    “ Come on. Down the corridor
there and stay in front of me.”
    Cody complied with his
orders and started down the dimly illuminated aisle as the brutish
thug slammed the door shut again and slipped the steel bolt in
place.
    There were steel shelves to
either side filled with various crates containing all kinds of
manufacturing supplies. Cody had done her homework and knew the
business itself was a legitimate front used by Malone to clean the
money he earned from his more nefarious enterprises. Cape Noire was
still an open city as far as its underworld inhabitants were
concerned, ever since the Boss of Bosses, Topper Wyld had been
wasted by the white faced grim reaper known as Brother Bones.
Malone was one of the smaller sharks vying for a bigger piece of
the criminal pie.
    Cody recognized him from
the various newspaper mug shots, as he sat at the back of the
building, laid out with three desks, steel cabinets and other
assorted business paraphernalia, all bathed under three low hanging
florescent tubes. The area was dead center of the main floor and
Malone, seated in front of long table covered with bricks of
cocaine, was surrounded by half a dozen men all cut from the same
Neantherdal mold, each heavily armed and dangerous.
    Peter Tomlin Malone was an
average looking fellow with thinning gray hair, a neat mustache and
thick eye-glasses. Cody thought he looked more like an accountant
than a mobster and she noted the predominant eye-glasses were
similar to those worn by his brother Arnold; the reason for her
visit.
    Now Malone was adjusting
those glasses, as he looked up at her and the towering guard who
had escorted her to his inner sanctum.
    “ So, Otto, who the hell do
we have here?”
    “ Don’t know, boss. She said
she had to talk to you and that there were nin..nin...”
    “ The actual word is
ninja-jitsu,” Cody provided, wanting to move on with her purpose.
She could sense the shadow warriors were only minutes from
launching their assaults.
    “ Ninjas?” Malone sat back in
his stiff back chair, now studying the lithe young woman in the
western get-up and mask. “Lady, just who the hell are you and what
do you want here?”
    “ My name is Cody Randall.
I’m a bounty hunter.”
    “ Big deal, last I looked
there were no outstanding warrants with my name on
them.”
    “ I’m not here for