Читать книгу Klick's Shorts - Milam Smith - Страница 8

On the way out I picked up the latest Spenser novel by Robert B. Parker, Hush Money. I’d sampled the first few chapters, alternating between it and Testament. I could’ve taken it home earlier in the week. I’d picked up a couple of other jobs recently besides trolling for suspects at the bookstore, though, jobs that were more active than just surveillance.

Hush Money was bouncing back and forth between a couple of plots. Usually an indication the writer is just filling pages. Parker’s last Spenser novel - Spenser is a Boston P.I. that has become the character all other P.I. novels are judged by, mainly ‘cause of the writing, but also that Parker emulates Raymond Chandler’s style…and Spenser is one tough cookie, too - had used this technique. But the subplot was more about Spenser’s relationship with his longtime girlfriend Susan.

The subplot in Money was of particular interest to me. It smacked of a recent case in my own life. A man falsely accused of assaulting his wife had been set up and shot by crooked police officers (Klick and the Black Bitch). The real life villainess was much like KC in Money. An amoral woman with more than one kink in her head, sociopathic perhaps, certainly off-kilter by a board or two. Parker had written a paragraph that was the definition of Lucy Mcguilicuddy. I bought the book to finish it. But I also wanted to write down that paragraph that defined Lucy so well, although it made no judgment about evil. If there was one fault in Spenser’s world, it was that there seemed to be no acknowledgement of evil. Everything was psychological.

I beg to differ. I’d seen evil up close and breathing. A bent mind had nothing to do with heinous acts that had made me puke. It was only an excuse.

A young lass behind the counter took my gold VIP card and scanned it. I’d been flirting with her at every chance. She was freaky-deaky in appearance, something that is common in bookstores everywhere these days. College kids with painted hair, black nails (even on the male employees), long skirts that hid the legs that would certainly be ogled by the average hetero male but could not hide the taught cheeks at the top of those legs, tight blouses with no allowance for cleavage, which itself was hidden by oversized nylon vests that looked like night-robes.

But she had an easy, honest, open smile. I am a sucker for a woman with an easy smile, who doesn’t seem to have a mean bone in her body.

Speaking of, Red really didn’t have a smile. It was a practiced flip, like a light switch. An empty laugh.

But she reeked of sex.

Seeing us flirt, Red hooked her arm in mine, gave a look of ice at the clerk. Even though that glare wasn’t aimed at me, I felt a chill run down from spine to my heels.

The young lady looked down and didn’t even say so much as a thanks. “Next.”

* * *

It was a slight stroll to the Worthington Hotel, a block and a half. Inside, the foyer consumes two floors of empty space above and seems a football field long. Fancy smancy. I knew Chan had suite here so he’d be close to his office on long nights, but had never been over.

There were gloved doormen on duty, and a consignor lurking about. A restaurant on the second floor spans Houston Street. I made a note to dine there one night, maybe take Vicki.

In the elevator Red, Jerri, snuggled close to me, brushing my pecs with her breasts. I looked down just as she looked up. Our lips met.

I meant it to be a casual kiss, but Jerri jabbed her tongue through my lips. It was like a shark attack. I had to respond.

Jerri clung to me, insinuating her body onto me like a snake writhing around its prey. The aroma of sex flooded the elevator.

I had to respond. My body demanded it. She felt the hardness between us, and stopped her kiss long enough to grin, said, “Hel-lo!”, then pressed the assault.

When we reached the tenth floor the elevator jerked. I think it was the elevator. I felt a wet dream in my shorts. How embarrassing.

She tugged me with urgency from the elevator and down the hall. She poked her key-card into its slot, pushed through the door, dragging me along.

I slipped away. She turned. There was an honest flush of lust on her face, a hunger that demanded feeding.

“Restroom?” I asked.

She smiled. “There’s one on the other side of the bar,” she pointed. Then grinned. “Or in the bedroom….”

I moved towards the bar. Inside I took care of business.

When I came out she was gone. I took a glass down from the bar, fidgeted through the fridge, found bottled water, took it, pressed the glass into the ice dispenser and enjoyed the cold clanking of the falling ice. I poured water, gulped it down, filled the glass again, took the bottle with me to the couch. On a coffee table were several tapes.

One of them was Tin’s Cup. I felt my stomach tighten. She hadn’t said Tin Cup. All the movies on the table were porno, takeoffs of mainstream movie titles.

“Slip one in,” Jerri said behind me.

I turned and watched her head to the bar. She mixed a Scotch and tonic.

She had changed into something more comfortable for her, but for some reason made me very uncomfortable. It was a black satin nightie that fastened between her legs. She didn’t look plump in it, but fat.

Her boobs seemed to have lost three sizes. She was no longer bossomly. Her hand strayed to the wall, and the lights dimmed.

“Or we could just listen to music, if you’d rather? I don’t really need a movie…if you know what I mean?” She smiled as she came at me. I felt like a man in a lifeboat sinking in shark-infested waters.

The radio came on, an alternative-Rock station.

Jerri sat down beside me, kissing me as she set her drink down on the table. I tasted alcohol for the first time in more years than I could remember.

Her kiss was devouring. She unbuttoned my shirt, kissed a path down to my belt and without so much as a pause had me unbuckled and my pants down in as fluid a motion as an Arnold Palmer golf-swing.

She took me in her mouth. Like a virgin I inhaled sharply.

Jerri looked up at me, her eyes dancing in a mockery of mischievousness. “I like the taste of it after a man’s pottied.”

Then she got back to work. And it was like work, going at it with one goal in mind, taking me up and down, longer ups and shorter downs, then accomplishing her mission.

She kissed her way back up to my face.

“You don’t mind kissing me, now, do you?”

I kissed her.

“Some men won’t ever do that…you know…after,” Jerri said. “But most…when I ask them to leave…most of them will kiss me then.”

We kissed. Then she began to slid up my chest, my face between her breasts. I pulled down her nightie to expose them. I took a nipple in my mouth and froze.

The goddamned thing was the size of a man’s thumb. It was like having a worm come to life, squirming its way down your throat in the last swallow from a bottle of tequila.

I went back to work, chewing. She moved up more, unsnapped the nightie for me and pulled it above her waist. I kept one hand on a breast, kneading, jerked the night over her head with my other hand.

She pressed herself into me. Wet as a washrag and twice as nasty. I continuously worked a breast with one hand while I snaked the other around behind her, my fingers trolling, teasing, finding her, thrusting as my tongue did its part.

When she reached her climax she became an animal in its death throes, convulsing and yelping. I clung with my mouth to her, my hands working. She collapsed onto the couch.

But I kept at it. She tugged at my hair, trying to dismount my head.

But I kept at it. Her hands began to push my head down and her hips arched. This time she squealed like a worn-out dog. I trailed my lips up her body, her neck, her chin, her lips. When I thrust my soaked tongue into her mouth I thrust my other part into her down there, and she squealed again.

I kept at it. For a long while, like that, then pulling her ankles to her ears. She didn’t like that, the loss of control before she peaked, and would struggle until the fateful moment, relaxing only for a moment afterwards.

I turned her on her side, then later on her belly. Then our knees were on the floor, her body draped across the couch, me behind her.

“Harder, harder,” Jerri yelped, but it was never hard enough.

“Spank me, spank me.” And I did, lost in the moment, becoming some kind of animal, like her.

I reminded myself it was just my job. Yeah, right.

When I reached my own peak for the second time I almost drove her head through the damned couch.

We were drenched in sweat. This wicked laugh escaped her and I felt awash in filth. I felt the warm kiss of evil wrap around us.

My skin crawled.