Vic was six hours into his investigation of the dead irish boxer when he visited Dead Dave. Dave got his name from the hundreds of death threats made against him over the years, mostly due to his profession. He was a full-time rat. Not the type that talked to get himself out of trouble, but the kind that stuck his nose into everyones business so he would have info to sell. If you were shady, Dave knew all about you.
"I need info on a boxer's woman. The dead irishman, Feeney." Vic said without wasting breath on pleasantries.
"Mona?" Dave said. "Did she step in shit, Vic? Nice lady, that one. Too good for Feeney."
"Just tell me everything you know about her. It's business, Dave." Vic was already going through the man's cupboards, making himself at home and looking for booze.
Dead Dave knew this gal for years. The way he was speaking, he might even have a thing for her. Apparently she was beautiful, from a good family with a schoolteacher mom that died when she was a kid, and a father who was a chemist with an industrial company nearby. She went to school, paid her taxes, and on Saturdays was usually beaten bloody by her bastard boxer boyfriend. Dave was too weak to stand up to him about it, and Feeney just joked that she saved him gym fees by letting him "work out" on her. Nice guy. Nice enough for this girl to want him dead, Vic thought. He scratched down her address and paid Dave half of what he was asking, since he was out of whiskey.
Vic punched the wooden door to the Feeney home with shaking hands. When Mona answered she was still in a bathrobe despite it being nearly six pm.
"Go away, whoever you are. I am grieving." She said, swinging the door closed and turning before realizing the unwanted guest had his foot in the door.
"You are gonna want to talk with me lady" Vic said, "I know you killed Jack, and I need to know the details." She gasped at the accusation, but didn't deny it as Vic stepped though the doorway and began rifling through her kitchen.
"I don't know who told you I hurt Jack, but they're damn liars!" Mona said through forced sobs. "I loved him. And he died in the ring, for God's sake!"
Vic found a half empty bottle of bourbon and a coffee mug, sat down at the kitchen table and poured to the brim. "Nobody told me anything, miss" Vic said without taking his eyes off the cup as it rose to his lips. "But if I had a daughter who was getting the shit kicked out of her on a regular basis, I would want to kill the man responsible. And if that man was as tough a sonovabitch as Jack was, I would probably shoot the bastard. Unless I had access to thousands of lethal poisons and had the education to use them, that is." He swallowed the contents of the mug in one gulp and placed it back on the table to be filled again. He had her full attention, and she reached for the bottle to fill his cup for him.
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