Smugglers 1: Nikki by Gerald McCallum Page A

raised the gun up, but Nikki grabbed it. It went off two times before Glenn lost his grip because of blood, and it flew across the room.
    Full of blood, Nikki grabbed the ball-peen hammer from under the bar stool and took a swing at Glenn. He blocked it, but the blow broke his right wrist. Nikki hit Glenn on the other hand, breaking that one, too. Then she hit him in the head, and he went down.
    Nikki mounted him and hit him and hit him and hit him in the face and head with the hammer, crying and screaming and hitting him with the ball-peen hammer. She kept hitting him and screaming long after he was dead.
    She finally sat back, crying and bloody, with black eyes and a flattened nose. The place looked like a group of vandals had broken in. The table and chairs were either broken or tipped over. Glenn was bloody from the wounds in his chest, hands, one leg, and his face didn’t even look like a face anymore. It was just a pile of blood and meat.
    Nikki went to look at herself in a mirror. Oh, my God! She looked like hell; two black eyes, a broken nose and one missing tooth and black, blue and yellow from head to toe. She had cuts on her hands and arms plus blood all over her face and shirt.
    She picked up all the knives and hammers from under the furniture. Then she tipped over the knife block in the kitchen and picked up the claw hammer from beside her bed. She looked around the apartment; she was ready.
    She started to scream and cry and ran across the dock and got Dave the town cop up by pounding on his door and screaming his name.
    Dave opened the door, Glock in hand, and asked what was going on. Nikki told Dave that Glenn broke in and wanted her to move to the Bahamas with him. When Nikki said no, he tied her up and started to beat her. Dave looked around and then called the cops. The ambulance came and took Nikki to the hospital. The cops were at her apartment, taking pictures and such for seven or eight hours. When they left at 6:00 a.m., they took Glenn and both guns. At the same time, the radio came to life and said “Harbor Marina, Harbor Marina, this is the fifty foot Chris-Craft coming back, known as the Sea Cactus. Do you have a slip for me for three or four weeks?”
    Nikki spent one day in the hospital getting her nose straightened. Not only did she have two yellow and black eyes ,but she had stitches three or four places on her face and head that showed, dark glasses and all. She left the hospital in a cab, ignoring the cabbie’s curious stare.
    The cab pulled up and let her out. She walked to her apartment, and when she opened the door and stepped inside, she just stood there in wonderment at how messed up and broken up everything was. Glenn’s or her blood was on the ceiling, walls and thick in pools on the carpet and tile. She wasn’t up for this, so she went upstairs to what had been Glenn’s apartment and went to the unmade bed. She decided she would lay down for a couple of hours before she got involved with cleaning up downstairs.
    After a few hours of fitful sleep, she got up and went out on the dock. The first person she ran into was Mark who was working on repairs to a slip.
    “How do you feel?” he asked.
    “Really stiff, but better,” replied Nikki.
    “Must have been some fight. You look like shit. Take off your glasses so I can see your whole face,” Mark said. Nikki took off her glasses. “Jesus! Did he break your nose?”
    “My nose and other things. Mark, where are the day workers? I need help cleaning up my apartment.”
    “Never mind the day workers. I’ll do it. It’s best they don’t know how bad it was,” Mark said as he picked up his tools and went with Nikki to her houseboat. “Jesus Christ! Is there anything that isn’t broken or doesn’t have blood on it? Shit! Where do I start?”
    “I’ll go lay down and take care of this later,” Nikki said heading for the bedroom.
    Mark swept up the glass and cut the carpet up to haul everything to the dumpster. Then he