Free Desperate Acts by Don Gutteridge

Duggan’s lap
onto the wooden floor.
    “I thought you was broke,” Nestor said, more
puzzled than annoyed.
    “That I was, cousin. Indeed I was. But I
opened a letter I got from the lawyers in Montreal this afternoon
and found these crisp banknotes tucked inside.”
    “Yer legacy ?”
    Duggan reached down, picked the stray bill up
with two fingers, and proffered it to Nestor. “Just another
installment, they say. A tidbit, really. But it means I can pay you
back and give you this week’s rent.”
    “I ain’t never seen a lawyer’s letter,”
Nestor said, taking the money.
    Duggan improved upon his grin. “Oh, I tossed
it in the stove a while ago. No need to keep it, eh?”
    “I guess not.”
    “Not like it was a personal letter or
anything. Just a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo.”
    “No.” Nestor pulled up a rickety chair and
settled down opposite his cousin, his gaze fixed on the whiskey-jug
beside the candle on the table. “You go out tonight?”
    The grin froze on Duggan’s face and slowly
reconstituted itself as a grimace. “I went to The Sailor’s Arms for
a drink.”
    Something in his cousin’s face alarmed
Nestor. “Ya didn’t cause any trouble there, did ya?”
    “The only trouble was that ape, Budge. We had
a bit of run-in – and he got the worst of it.” But the bruise on
Duggan’s cheek suggested his “victory” had not been a clear-cut
triumph.
    “Jesus, Bert, you’re gonna queer it fer me
down there.”
    “Don’t sweat, Nestor. The bastard may’ve
heard my name from one of the tars in the place, but he don’t know
who I am or anything about the two of us . I made damn sure
of that.”
    “Well, I hope so. This is the first payin’
job I’ve had in this town. It ain’t much, but it let’s us live in
style, don’t it?”
    Duggan guffawed, but the shadows thrown up by
the candle exaggerated the sharp edges of his features, and for a
moment he resembled a gargoyle chortling at some grotesque joke.
“Nestor, if this is style, I’d hate to see a hovel!”
    Nestor looked stricken. “Then why’d you agree
to move in here with me?” He grabbed the jug and tipped it up to
his lips. It was, incredibly, almost full.
    “No need to get your balls twisted,” Duggan
said. “I threw in with ya because you’re kin, my mother’s sister’s
boy. And I knew we weren’t gonna be here for very long.”
    “Whaddya mean?” Nestor let his fear show. He
didn’t take well to change as it invariably meant a change for the
worse.
    “We’re gonna be rich, Nestor. Rich as
Croesus. It was all in that letter. And very, very soon.”
    “In the letter you burned?”
    Duggan gave Nestor a searching glance, and
said, “There was only the money and the good news in it – no
details, yet. But they’ll come. And when they do, you and me are
goin’ to open up a public house of our own and put that
son-of-a-bitch Budge out of business!”
    His brain already fuzzy with drink, Nestor
tried to take this startling news in. “But it’s Missus Budge that
owns the place,” he said. “An’ she’s a nice lady. Tough, she is,
but nice all the same.”
    “I’m not interested in the lady. But I got
that husband of hers by the short hairs.” The fierce, gloating joy
in Duggan’s huge, black eyes gave Nestor a further fright.
    “You ain’t plannin’ on doin’ nothin’
stupid?”
    “Only stupid people do stupid things. And I’m
not stupid. No, sir. You should’ve seen me there tonight. Remember,
last week, when you told me you thought Tobias Budge might be
cuddling that barmaid of his?”
    Nestor paled. He had only a hazy recollection
of that conversation, fuelled as it was by a jug of whiskey not
unlike the one he was now fingering. But he recalled enough to be –
suddenly – very, very anxious. “Fer God’s sake, Bert, you won’t go
tellin’ the missus! I only seen him give the girl a pat on the
behind.”
    “He’s been pattin’ her in places other’n her
ass,” Duggan