Have You Ever Been to Harperstown?
By Harding McFadden
The woman dropped down in the seat across the table from Slim and asked, “have you ever been to Harperstown?
Slim looked up from his crossword puzzle at the woman and squinted his eyes. She was attractive enough, and looked familiar in a sort of way. Dark eyes, dirty blonde hair. Her body was covered by a big duster, giving her a thick look, but the thinness of her neck said that she wasn’t gone to fat. He felt perplexed, and didn’t know what to do with it.
“Excuse me?” he asked. Behind and around her, he could see his guys stationed around the bar. Dozen stupid bruisers who’d do whatever he asked of them, as long as he kept them in cash and drugs and honeys. They all had eyes on the woman, not sure what to expect.
She looked him dead in the eyes, razor-sharp, not turning away or averting or even blinking. She was looking at him, into him, trying to find something.
She asked again, “Have you ever been to Harperstown?”
He sat down the pencil that’d been in his left hand and leaned back, gawking at her, uncertain why she made him so uncomfortable.
“Might’a done,” he answered. In fact he had done, lots of times, most recently just last year, when he and…
His body stiffened, not a lot but enough that the woman noticed, and grim lines formed around her mouth. He looked at her again, and thought he saw a resemblance there. To…
“Who are you?” he asked.
The guys around the bar came to attention, recognizing that something was wrong. Gus, an icebox with arms and legs and no brain, moved over to the door and threw the lock. The bar rarely had customers that weren’t on Slim’s payroll anyway, so keeping out the riffraff wouldn’t be an issue.
The woman held out her right hand. She held a thin rod in it, topped with a cartoony red button that she held depressed. From the base of the thing a wire emerged, disappearing up her sleeve.
“Know what this is?” she asked.
With a wave of his hand he told the bruisers to hold still. Things looked to be going sideways very quickly here, and if they grabbed her, and her thumb lifted off the red button, they’d all be making headlines by morning.
With her free hand, she opened her coat, showing him the explosives strapped to her chest and belly. Lots of boom there. Explained why she looked thick when he’d first looked at her.
She asked again, “Know what this is?”
He swallowed, hard. Nodded. “Yeah. Deadman switch.”
Still looking at him, not averting, not blinking, not smiling. “Right,” she said. There was no emotion in her voice. No joy or fear or humor. It was like she was only there in body, and that scared the hell out of him.
She let the open coat fall closed again, and brought her hands together on the tabletop, knuckles touching knuckles. There was no slackness to her. She was fit and firm and decided.
“Last time,” she said, wiggling the hand with the switch a bit for emphasis. “Have you ever been to Harperstown?”
He nodded, sweating, hot and cold at the same time. His stomach was twisted so tight that it hurt. His eyes felt dry. “Yeah,” he croaked.
“Last year?”
A slight nod. The awareness that he wasn’t looking at some woman, but was gawking into the face of his own personal death hit him like a tidal force. He was glad he was sitting. If he’d been standing, he’d have fallen by now.
“City center, by the slums and whorehouses?” she continued, steel in her voice.
Another nod.
She leaned back in her seat, held her right hand out a bit so that the bruisers could see what she brought to the party. They were sweating, too. The place wasn’t that big, and if she let go with the amount of stuff that she had on, they’d be jelly for the cops to scrape up. There was no running for it, only waiting, to see just how this played out.
“There was a girl there,” she said, kind of singsongy. “Not as young as she played up being, but not old either. Beautiful girl. Stupid, but kind. Name was Cathy, but called herself Vixen. Sound familiar?”
Nodding, more nodding, like a stupid bobblehead, while he tried to think of a way out, anything that’d save his life. He could see nothing. Just a quick death. His hands shook.
“She got killed last year,” the woman said. “Strangled by some John in an alley. The cops grabbed somebody, but let him go when his brother gave him an alibi. They didn’t look too much further. What’s another dead whore, right?”
Her cold glare cracked for a moment. She smiled at him, and the look, the pure righteous lunacy of it, scared him. He felt wet.
“Wasn’t me,” he mumbled, throat tight. “Ask Billy. Ask him. Th’ cops asked him. He’ll tell you. Ask… Ask Billy!”
“I did,” she said. “I asked him over and over and over. He was crying a lot by the time I got done asking him. Made him look like a punk in front of his boys. Musta made things easier for them.
The blood went out of him. “What did you do to Billy?”
He and his brother were twins, born minutes apart. They were as close as kin could be, and when they’d been up against it, they’d had each others’ backs. Last year, in Harperstown, they’d had each others’ backs then, too.
“Nothing,” she answered. “Didn’t have to do a thing. Stuff just kind of worked its way out. I’m no killer. Don’t have the stomach for it. Lucky for me little Billy surrounded himself with people that did.”
She leaned forward a bit, and whispered into his wide, terrified eyes. “‘Course, so do you. I’m sorry, but I don’t think you’ll like this next bit.”
Standing, she opened her coat again and turned in a slow circle, letting them all see what she wore beneath. They backed as far from her as they could, but not a single eye left her.
“Know what this guy did?” she asked the room. “Him and his brother? They killed my sister. And thought they got away with it.”
“Wasn’t me,” Slim stammered. “It was Billy. Swear to God, it was Billy.”
She looked at him again. “Funny. Just what he said, only about you. Don’t know which one of you’s lying, so you both just have to go.”
She extended her right arm. “I let go of this switch and we’re all blown to the moon.”
A room full of grown, tough men gasped, like children turning over a rock and seeing a snake. She played to her audience.
“No one’s leaving the room until this is over,” she explained. “But I don’t need to kill any of you. Understand?” She pointed a finger at Slim. “I just need him gone.”
The dawning of what she’d just said was slow, but it hit Slim before the others. He fell out of his chair and crab crawled away from not her, but his own men, until his back was against a wall. His breath came in such quick gasps that he looked like he’d pass out any minute. It might have been a blessing. Because all at once, the others understood what she was telling them, and made for him like he was nothing at all.
She stood by the door to the bar for a long while, not so much reveling at what the bruisers were doing to the screaming man, but enjoying it nevertheless. By the time he’d let loose with his last gurgling breath, she’d unlocked the door and moved out into the night. She’d done what she’d set out to do, had stayed around just long enough to make sure that he wouldn’t be a problem for anyone else, ever, ever.
She hoped that this would make her sister rest well, but knew that there was little hope of that. Her sister had never slept well, and that had been part of the problem. But at least this part of the problem had been taken care of.
Belatedly, but permanently.
for Naomi, Eleanor, & Iris
© 2026 Harding McFadden. All rights reserved.
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