The Guest Book - 19

Stabbing Clark in the heart was the simplest, most obvious solution, so Romeo picked up the guy's empty coffee cup, slipped a knife up his sleeve while he refilled it –– halfway, no sense wasting a full cup of coffee –– then held it out to him like the gracious host that he was. When Clark reached out and took the cup, Romeo leaned in and drove the knife into the sweet spot, without so much as a, "Sorry, pal." Romeo expected the gasp of shock, the tumbling coffee cup and the gush of blood, even the low gurgling scream that gave out with the guy's last breath, he expected all that and then he expected silence and a mess to clean up. He didn't expect the telephone on the front desk to cut in with its shrieking ring, jarring the tiny bones in his ears and echoing obscenely in the predawn darkness. He didn't expect Clark to stand up, towering above him and clutching at the knife plunged in to the hilt exactly where a knife would need to go if you wanted to skewer a guy's heart, and he didn't expect him to get that disappointed look on his face as he said, "I know you had to do it, but couldn't you have just listened to me first?" He didn't expect Clark to keep coming at him as he backed out of the kitchen into the lobby, the big, black telephone getting louder and louder behind him, but not loud enough to drown out the sound of Clark insisting, "It was all that little dame's fault, 'cause she wasn't just a dirty little tramp, there was something evil hiding inside her eyes, and I saw it, I tell you, I saw it..."