Frank Driver, Private Eye

Chapter 1

Rain. Always with the rain. Rain never helped my mood.

I turned my collar up against the pinpricks of water that the wind spat onto my neck. It fell back down again, defiant. Time to get a new raincoat.

The cold came quickly this year. Here it was, not even October, and the cold had flown into the city like some toxic gas they used back in the first War.

Dammit. I needed to get outta my head. That first war – so much fun they decided to have a second. I spent way too much time thinking about that. It’d been a lifetime ago. Before my lifetime. The second one was my time.

It’d been two years already since they dropped the bomb on the Japs, letting us all go home.

My rainy, pathetic city. Home.

I turned the corner and was nearly blinded by the reflections off nearly every surface. Lights everywhere pierced the night like needle points. The wind couldn’t get me here, though. Too many buildings blocking the way. Good.

“Shoe shine, mister?”

I looked down and saw a little colored boy, maybe ten. Possibly younger. He held onto a shine box older than he was. He was shivering, the cold eating through his torn fingerless gloves, like termites through rotting wood.

It was raining, but he was out trying to make his nickel. “Had much luck tonight?” I asked. He shook his head, and looked up at the sky. No customers on a rainy night.

We both looked at my shoes. They were in need of repair, not a shine. The boy would have worked his butt off to give me the best shine he could, even as the rain poured down on both of us.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“M-marcus,” he answered. Then he set his jaw. He was upset that his stutter from the cold made him sound nervous instead.

I nodded, solemnly. “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do for his family, right Marcus?”

He relaxed a little. He was a man too. Just over four feet, maybe, but definitely a man. He was out shilling for work, probably to help his mama. Maybe a brother or sister or two.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said, fishing into my pocket. “What if I pay you now, and you can shine my shoes when your hard work won’t get washed away.”

I flipped him two bits. He caught it, eyes wide. “Thanks, mister!” He stuffed the money into his pocket. The coin apparently found a hole in that one, and clanged to the ground. He picked it up and dropped it into his other pocket.

Another year or two and he would have looked at me suspiciously. For now, though, he was grateful and I knew he would fulfill his end of the bargain.

He looked up at me. “Long shift tonight?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “Dunno.”

I nodded. “Yeah,” I agreed. “Me too. Dunno.”

I dropped my chin, and he dropped his in return. There wasn’t anything more to say. I moved on, leaving my new blue-collar buddy behind.

The office wasn’t far ahead from where Marcus had set up shop. Maybe half a block. In the rain, it felt like it was at least three blocks, but I got there. The door opened with a quick jerk, and the doorman tipped his cap.

“Good evening, Mr. Driver!” he said, cheerful as ever.

Christ.

“Evening, Bobby,” I muttered.

“Um, Billy,” he corrected me.

Crap. “Oh, yeah. Right, sorry. Must have the wrong name on the brain,” I tried to cover my tracks.

“No problem, Mr. Driver,” Bo-, I mean, Billy said. I never could get that kid’s name straight in my head. I didn’t think he bought it. He was polite, I’d give him that.

“Big case today?” he asked.

“Not today,” I said, walking into the foyer of the building. Cheating wives and husbands don’t really make for big cases. Just more proof that people are horrible all over. Maybe the A-bomb shouldn’t have just been reserved for other countries.

“Gosh,” he said. “You must get a lot of them, huh? Maybe some car chases, some mafia shootouts?”

I looked at him. Maybe eighteen, nineteen. Glasses. Too young to serve. Good for him. Let him dream big, but act small. He’ll live longer that way. “Only if I’m really unlucky,” I said.

“Oh, okay,” Billy said, uncertain. “Well, uh, see ya later, Mr. Driver.”

I nodded in reply. I wasn’t in the mood for small talk.

The day had been long. It was over, almost. I wanted a date with my Old Grandad and a mostly clean glass in my bottom desk drawer.

I passed his dais into the large square space. The old building opened up to me like the legs of an old woman. Rickety, begrudgingly, uninviting. Old bones of iron girders from the turn of the century that must have been attractive, once. This old girl, though, she was past her prime.

The broken elevator just mocked me. Its open cage sat idle as always. No one trusted it, so no one used it. Only guests who didn’t know any better.

Three flights of stairs. Days like today I just wanted to let that damn rickety thing haul my ass up to my office and spare me the climb in soggy shoes.

Most of the offices forming the perimeter of the space were empty on all sides. It was a quiet Friday night, everyone gone for the weekend. Good for them. Whatever businesses that hadn’t abandoned the old girl were now all closed. Well, almost all of them.

I made the last step onto my floor. I knew there was something wrong the instant my foot planted. My office light shone through the frosted door. Movement caused a shadow to pass across the glass.

I pulled my .38 from my shoulder holster, and cocked the hammer. I reached for the door knob. Locked.

Okay, so that’s how you want to play it?

I fished out my keys and looked down to see which one I needed. A good half gallon of water from the brim of my hat fell straight onto my hands.

Dammit.

I slipped the key into the lock. Turned it. The deadbolt slid out of place. I grabbed the knob one more time, took a breath, and burst into the room.

“God dammit, Frank!”

Tammi Malone, my protege and junior PI partner, stood bent over the edge of the desk – my desk – with her skirt bunched up around her waist. The young sailor docking his submarine in her port looked like a deer caught in headlights.

I sighed. This, again.

“You’re on my desk,” I said, holstering my piece. I stepped in and closed the door.

“No shit, Frank,” she said. “Do you mind? We’re kind of in the middle of something here.”

“Um, should I go?” her friend asked.

She reached around and grabbed his tie. “Don’t you dare,” she said. “Don’t mind him. Just keep going.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, looking from her to me and back again. Gotta give the kid credit. Some big guy comes busting in on his fun time and his lettuce doesn’t wilt. Impressive. “I mean, I could -”

She pulled harder on his tie, bringing him off balance. “If you stop,” she said, “I’ll take Frank’s piece and shoot you myself.”

“Don’t mind me,” I said, hanging up my coat. “I just run the place.”

The kid started pounding her again, but never took his eyes off me. “Don’t look at me, kid,” I said, taking off my hat and coat. “I’m nowhere near the dish she is.”

Tammi pushed back against him, trying to get him to pay more attention to her. He took ahold of her hips and picked up the pace.

I looked down at my shoes. They really did need a repair. No point in getting Marcus to shine them. You’d never know the difference.

I kicked off the shoes and sloshed in my stocking feet behind the desk and sat down. Tammi’s body was sliding back and forth as her friend rogered her for all he was worth.

Tammi opened her eyes and looked at me. I ignored her. The whiskey was in the bottom drawer, but my matches were under her hands.

“Really?” she asked as I sat there.

“Move,” I said, and lifted her hand so that I could get my matches. I lit up a smoke.

The kid was grunting now. He was getting close.

“Do you mind?” Tammi asked in between his thrusts. “Just five minutes, Frank. I just need five minutes.”

I indicated her friend with my cigarette. “I give him two.”

The kid groaned, proving my point. I reached into the drawer and pulled out the bottle and three glasses. I lined them up on my desk, and poured two fingers in each.

Ah, screw it. I poured myself a double.

“Frank,” she warned, but she was losing her breath. The kid was doing a pretty good job of taking care of her. “Frank… Frank!” she yelled.

I didn’t think she meant to say my name.

Gotta say, the kid had this locomotive quality to him. The slap, slap, slapping was almost hypnotic. I reached for some mail and ripped open the envelope.

Tammi made some sort of noise – I’m not sure if it was my name or not, but it definitely started with an “F” – and that’s when the kid launched himself toward the finish line.

I opened one letter as they sped up.

Dear Mr. Driver. Our records indicate that the check you deposited on September 2 has been stopped for payment. As a result, your balance has been deducted by that amount…

Dammit.

That damn broad wanted her husband so much she was willing to put up with his philandering. So be it. But I still got the photos. I did the work. Now I had to go chase her for paying what she agreed, otherwise it would be $100 down the drain. Ten days worth of work.

“I’m close!” Tammi’s friend announced to the world.

“Yes!” she cried in response. “Do it!”

He had been keeping his eyes closed the entire time, but now he opened them. He looked straight at me.

I toasted him and took a drag.

The poor kid closed his eyes again and tried to figure out where he was and what he was supposed to be doing. He winced and his face screwed up in a mask of frustration.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” he said, wiping his brow. “I can’t.”

He pulled out of Tammi, who whipped her head back over her shoulder. “What? No! Don’t do that,” she protested, but he had already cast off his lines.

I couldn’t help it. I looked at his baby maker as it bobbed and weaved better than Rocky Graziano. It was long and thin, longer and thinner than anything I ever saw in the Army showers, that’s for sure. The kid had a swizzle stick for a dick. A swizzle dick.

I chuckled into my whiskey. Best joke I’d heard all week.

“I can’t, I… I gotta go,” he said. He bunched up his undress whites and pulled them to his waist, trying to get his prick to fit inside.

I indicated the glass waiting for him. “No, I -” he said, and then grabbed his flat hat and pea coat and raced out the door. I shrugged and downed his share.

Tammi collapsed onto the desk. Frustrated she pulled her nylons up and her skirt down. Now that rationing was over, nylons were back. I had missed them. That beautiful seam that went all the way up to a woman’s –

I handed her a drink.

“Christ, Frank,” she said, taking it from me. She downed it in one gulp and held it out for a refill. I obliged.

“Where’d ya find the anchor cranker?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Where’d ya think?” She lit up a smoke. “The Brine. It’s got the best jits in town. Plus it’s Friday.”

I nodded. The Salty Brine wasn’t the real name for the watering hole by the docks, but so many Navy men hung out there no one really remembered its real name any more. Friday was the first night of their weekend pass. I didn’t dance, but Tammi loved to Lindy.

“You owe me,” she huffed.

“Like hell I do,” I said. “You’re gonna get a reputation.”

She grunted. “Why do you think I pick up the boys on leave? Nobody knows me and nobody cares.”

“The locals’ll know you.”

“Like I said,” she said, taking a drink. “Nobody cares.”

“I don’t understand you new breed,” I said. “When I was your age, girls who do what you do had a name.”

I wasn’t actually all that much older than her. Maybe five or six years. Maybe the war made me even older than I was. Maybe she was trying to be older than she was.

“They still do,” she frowned. “But when you were my age, you didn’t get your job ripped away from you by every Joe coming back from the war.”

Fair enough. I raised my glass to her. She wanted to argue, but once I agreed with her there was no point.

“Christ, Frank,” she repeated, staring at the wall. “Can’t a girl have a little fun every once in a while?”

“I don’t judge.”

“I wasn’t talking about you.”

“Not everyone has my understanding personality and charming disposition.”

She looked at me. A wistful look fell across her face. “That’s true,” she sighed. There was something else she wanted to say, but she washed it down with the rest of her whiskey. She looked at the bottom of her glass, her pretty pageboy features lost in thought.

“You know,” she said, her voice soft and buttery smooth. “You’ve got an opportunity here.”

Uh, oh.

She looked at me, and a strange look came over her face. A smile that came dangerously close to a sneer. She shifted towards me, and crossed one leg over the other, her foot rubbing her calf. Nylons.

“I’m still hot to trot, Frank,” she growled. “Wanna dip your wick?”

Her blouse was buttoned low, but her puppies remained caged. The sultry act was all wrong for her. She was cute, not seductive. She hated being cute.

“Am I interrupting something?” a voice purred from the door.

Tammi jumped, her hands flew to her blouse. So much for the seductress bit. I felt equal parts entertained and embarrassed on her behalf.

Now the dame in the doorway, that’s a completely different story. She leaned against the door frame, her trench coat bundled up and protecting her against the wet cold. Long black tresses framed a waspish face. Ruby red lips curled up on one end, amused.

“No, I-” Tammi stuttered, her bravado dissolved like sugar in boiling water. “I was just, just…”

“Just heading home,” I finished for her.

Tammi nodded, all traces of her previous attitude gone. She stood up and pounded her cigarette into the ash tray, then grabbed her coat off the rack. Poor kid. She just wanted to make her mark, but underneath it all she was just trying to break out of her mold. One could relate.

“Excuse me,” Tammi muttered as she slipped by our visitor.

“Mind if I come in, Mr. Driver?” my guest asked.

I stood up and pointed a hand at the now vacant seat. “Please,” I said. “Get comfortable.”

Her face, once amused, fell. “I’m afraid ‘comfortable’ is something I may never be again.”

She took off the coat and hung it on the rack that Tammi had just cleared off. She moved as fluid as a Turkish snake, and my flute was already charmed. When she turned to me, my inner Tex Avery had to be beaten back with a crowbar.

The brunette showed exactly how far Tammi had to go. Her hip shifted with each step, and I could hear the tympani beat with each bounce. It takes a very special figure to be able to wear a pencil skirt with curves like that, and her figures definitely added up.

“I don’t often get movie stars in my office,” I said, offering her a drink. She took it.

“The face of Janet Blair and the chest of Jane Russell, as my husband says… used to say,” she said, bored. She’d heard it all. So much for compliments.

She raised the rotgut to her lips, but changed her mind once she smelled it. She placed it back on my desk untouched.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. It was as semi-automatic as the 1911 hidden under my desk.

“I’m not.”

She looked at me pointedly, but I wasn’t sure I got the message. “What can I do for you then, Mrs…?” I asked.

“Walker,” she said. “Natalie Walker.”

“Mrs. Walker,” I repeated.

She fished out a cigarette and waited. I grabbed the matches and went over to her side of the desk. I pulled out a fresh one for myself, lit the match, and then offered her the flame first.

Always the gentleman.

She leaned back, and moved one of her dark curls away from her face and tucked it under her beret. Deep green eyes peered back at me. “I want you to find my husband’s killer,” she said.

“That’s a job for the police,” I said, reaching back for my glass.

She shook her pretty head. “The cops think I did it,” she said, taking a drag.

“Did you?”

“No.”

“So get a lawyer,” I said.

“I have a lawyer,” she said. “He’ll help me with the legal trouble, but I need you to find the man who did this.”

I studied her. “Why do the cops think you did it?”

She cocked her head at me. “My husband was a very rich man,” she said. “And now I’m a very rich woman.”

I nodded. A tale as old as time. “So if I succeed, you’ll be cleared.”

She cocked her head at me and took a long drag. “I’m a little disappointed, Mr. Driver,” she drawled. “I was under the impression you wouldn’t need everything spelled out for you.”

“I’ve never been a good speller.”

“Fine,” she said, taking one final drag and reaching around me to stamp out her butt. “Yes. You find my husband’s killer, and the cops get off my back. And you get paid.”

“You don’t seem broken up about your husband’s murder,” I observed.

She shrugged. “We all have our ways of coping.”

“So tell me what you know,” I said. “I need a place to start.”

“My husband and I had a very special relationship,” she said, fishing in her purse for another cigarette. “Neither one of us could satisfy the other. So he went looking elsewhere.”

I had a hard time imagining this broad not satisfying anyone with a pulse faster than a corpse.

I lit her cig. She looked up at me after she drew in the first taste of the nicotine. “So did I.”

I didn’t react. In my business, you never react when your client tries to shock you. Well, potential client. It complicates things.

She pursed her ruby red lips into a perfect “O” and blew out a smoke ring. I absolutely did not pound my leg against my desk and holler at the moon. That would have been unprofessional.

“Does that shock you, Mr. Driver?” she asked.

“Like the electric company,” I said sarcastically. But politely. Politely sarcastically. Or something.

“Good,” she said, standing up. She reached around me and put out her fresh fag. She took a step towards me and ran her hand on my chest, and I could smell her perfume mixed in with the cigarette smoke. “So will you take the case?”

“Fee’s ten dollars a day,” I said, keeping calm. “Plus expenses.”

She came closer. “I’ll pay you thirty dollars a day,” she said, her voice husky, “plus expenses, plus a bonus before and after.”

That got a reaction out of me. “Thirty dollars?” I asked. “What’s your angle?”

“I need you to find his killer by Monday morning,” she said. “That’s when they come and lock me up.”

She caressed my face. “Can you imagine what would happen to me if they took me to jail?” she asked.

I could, but I didn’t want to tell her that. “And what kind of bonus?” I asked.

Her hand fell down my chest and started tugging at my belt. “I said that my husband and I looked elsewhere,” she smirked. “But I do more than look.”

The war can leave a man broken, but thank god some things still worked. My little Army buddy stood at attention and saluted her, ramrod stiff and ready for action. Her fingernails stroked my rucksack as her mouth descended.

I had enough time to marvel at how her fingernail polish and her lipstick matched, before my mind got erased with her tongue. I think the next words in my thoughts were spelled with four g‘s and a silent q. What do I know? I’m a lousy speller.

I felt her lips sink down until they rested against her fingers, keeping me in place. Her nails stroked underneath and caressed me in time. It was a smooth descent, like an elevator of warmth and wetness.

I’d never been blown by a classy dame before. It was unlike every other I’d ever had. Granted, I hadn’t had all that many, of course. “Nice” girls didn’t do that sort of thing. Well, they didn’t do that sort of thing with me.

There must have been some sort of school for rich broads. Who knew what went on in those boarding schools of theirs? Whatever it was, she knew her way around a man better than I knew myself. Trust me. I knew myself pretty well.

Her mouth enveloped me and all I could feel was warmth. Everywhere. She suckled and licked and caressed. She had me all mixed up. When I thought she was just hanging at the edge of the tip, I opened my eyes and saw she had me all the way in.

Then she did… things… with her throat. Warm, comforting things. Things that made you forget the grind. Forget the rain. Forget that you were sitting on the edge of a third-hand desk on the third floor of a third-rate dilapidated office building. Things that made you realize there was still joy to be had in this world.

Right then, I didn’t care about anything other than what she was doing. I felt her coaxing and relaxing. Pulling and releasing. My body realized what she was doing before my brain did, and I felt a familiar rush beginning to build.

“Mrs. Walker,” I moaned. I was trying to warn her, but it came out as moaning approval.

However she interpreted it, she didn’t stop. I felt like I was caught in an ocean tide, ebbing and flowing. Back and forth. Up and down. In and out.

All at once, a tipping sensation turned my loins upside down, and a whoosh surged through my pelvis. I opened my mouth to speak, but no sounds would come out. No air. No breath. I couldn’t talk at all. I wanted to watch what she was doing, but for some reason all I could see was the ceiling.

She gripped me with both hands, holding me in place. Little encouragements with her fingers and palms. I filled her mouth, probably more surprised than she was.

I looked down at the top of her head. Her beret hadn’t moved, her hair was still perfectly coiffed. My hands were gripping the sides of my desk as if my life depended upon it.

Realization dawned on me that it was coming to an end. I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to stay in her mouth forever. That feeling of complete orgasm, where everything else disappears except for that one moment of ecstasy. It was about to go away.

Mrs. Walker let me down gently, thank god. She didn’t just rip her mouth off me and spit into the trash bin at the side of the desk. She cradled me until I was spent, and then slowly released me back into the open air.

Carefully, she tucked me back into my boxers, and then zipped me up. I watched, fascinated, as she buckled my belt. Before I knew it, I was back in place.

She sat back on the chair. She reached into her purse and pulled out her lipstick and a compact.

“Please remember,” she said, applying the rich red color to her lips. Oh boy, those lips. “I only have until Monday morning.”

Monday morning. She would either be going to jail or I’d be getting my second bonus.

I really, really wanted that bonus.

Chapter 2

As much as I wanted to enjoy a nice nap after Mrs. Walker’s visit, I couldn’t afford to rest. I only had two days to find her husband’s killer before she had a date with the slammer.

After she left, her perfume lingered in my office like a stowaway. The wolf in me wanted to grab her on her way out, pull those swaying hips back against me and start panting in her ear.

I picked up the phone. “Keystone-451,” I told the operator. A few clicks and whirrs later, the gruff voice picked up.

“Murphy,” he said.

“Murph, Frank Driver.”

A sigh. “How’s it goin’, Frank?” The Irish lilt was all but gone, but get that legendary temper up and that brogue would be heavier than an Abrams. He’d be impossible to understand.

“Same old, same old,” I replied.

“That bad?”

“It’s the life,” I said. “Can you meet?”

A pause. “It’s eight o’clock, Frank. Can’t it wait until Monday?”

“No, my client will be arrested then.”

Another pause. “Walker?”

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Knowing what was going on at the precinct was the exact reason I called Murph in the first place.

“So can you meet?” I repeated, not giving any clues.

“Okay. The usual. I’ll get my shoes.”

I hung up the phone, checked my piece and reholstered. I stood up and adjusted myself. She hadn’t quite put me back where I was when she was finished. Who was I to complain? It was a nice, warm feeling, and the last nice, warm feeling I’d have all night. Likely longer.

My hat and trench were still soaked. Putting them back on instantly made me miserable. Sigh. Post orgasmic bliss is fleeting. Easy come, easy go.

I strode past Billy, or Bobby, no, Billy, and endured the gushing over the beautiful dame with the ruby red lipstick that he had seen leave my office. Muttered something about client privilege, but knew the kid was thinking. He had a strong imagination. Might be a writer someday.

On the street, the shoeshine boy was long gone. Smart. No point in catching cold and losing work later. Made me wonder just what I was doing.

Thinking with your private dick, I said to myself. Guilty as charged.

The diner wasn’t far, so I didn’t have much time to inventory what I knew. Three dead guys. All killed the same way. Razor thin slice across the throat. One murder is a curiosity. Two is a trend. Three deserves a name and the papers get the right to choose it.

The Slicer-Dicer Murders.

It conjured images of mutilated bodies in pieces, but if you read past the headline it wasn’t anything so dramatic. Just three dead guys with their throats cut.

Well, two guys and Mr. Walker.

Murphy was sitting to his back against the wall in the corner booth, as usual. He saw me, and then went back to spiking his coffee.

“What can I get ya, hon?” the rotund waitress asked from behind the counter.

“Coffee, black. Thank you,” I said.

She grabbed the pot and a mug and brought it to the table. “Anything else I can get ya, sweetie?” she asked.

The oil rig sludge slopped into the cup. “No, thank you.”

“Suit yourself, hon,” she said, and turned on her heels.

Murph offered me his flask. I waved him off, and then tasted the muck. I waved the flask back over. He handed it to me without comment.

“So she came to you, too,” Murph said, taking a sip from his mug and wincing.

I raised an eyebrow. “‘Too’?”

“I hear she’s been all over town looking for someone to take her case.”

Well, that’s a lot of cigarettes. I guess I was the only sucker that caved.

“Why hasn’t anyone taken the job?”

“Because she’s dead to rights, Frank.”

I realized that I hadn’t bothered to ask for her side of the story. Neat trick. She waved my wand, and magically the brain disappeared.

“Who else did she try?”

“Cutlip and Beauregard,” he said. “They said she tried to get them to take the case by offering them a… wait. Frank, you didn’t!”

I made a show of appreciating the spiked sludge and said nothing.

“On second thought,” he shook his head, “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to have to testify against you.”

Dammit.

“What can you tell me, Murph?”

“What do you know so far?” he asked.

“Only what’s in the papers.”

“Yeah, well, the papers don’t know shit from Shinola,” he grumbled. “Always making my life difficult.”

He braced himself. “It ain’t just three lads, Frank. There’s also two slags. Prostitutes.”

“Three lads and two slags?” I repeated. The rhyme just rolled off the tongue. “Connection?”

He looked at me like I had seven heads. “For feck’s sake! Do I look like a rookie to you?” he snarled. “Of course there’s a connection.”

“So you think Mrs. Walker killed five people, Murph?” I challenged. “I’ve seen her. Not likely.”

“I didn’t say I thought that, Frank, just that she was caught dead to rights,” he said.

“Okay, fine. Go on.”

He looked around the empty diner and lowered his voice. A habit born from living in a nation paranoid from the war. Loose Lips Sink Ships.

“Neighbors heard a scuffle, and shouting,” he said. “Beat patrol was passing by, and got called up. Broke down the door. Mrs. Walker was standing over the Mister with a knife and blood on her hands.

“She claims that she was just coming home when she heard the same noises and ran into the house and found him there. She tried to stop the bleeding with her hands, but then she realized that there was someone in the house. Said she ran to get a knife to protect herself and then went back to her husband. When the beat cop got there, the Mister was dead and she was standing there.”

I shook my head. That was bad.

“They took ‘er in, but let her walk without even stepping foot in a cell. ‘Er own recognizance’,” he said.

“You think she did it?” I asked.

He shrugged. “The MO is the same for the Slicer-Dicer, but she was the one with the knife, so…” he let the thought drop.

“Tell me more about the Slicer-Dicer killings.”

“We’re trying not to give the papers too much,” he said. “So don’t spread it around, k?”

I nodded. We had an agreement. Still, he had to say what he had to say. “Shoot,” I prompted.

“Far as the precinct can tell, there’s no real pattern. Three lads, two birds. All with their throats slit.” He pronounced “throats” as troats.

He paused as the waitress came over to refill our motor oil. She hovered. Murph glared at her until she waddled away.

“Anyway,” he continued when he thought she was out of earshot. “One guy was a mechanic. Another was a doctor. Then there was Walker. No apparent connection between them directly. No poker buddies, didn’t live anywhere near each other.”

“And the hookers?”

He shrugged. “Tough to say. They don’t really talk to cops.”

I nodded. “Tell me more about them.”

“Small. Blonde.”

“Which one?”

“Both.”

Hmmm. An idea was forming. One that I didn’t like at all.

“You think he has a type?” I asked.

“Hard to say,” he shrugged again. “No one wants to see a third to find out if it’s coincidence or a pattern.”

“Any photos?” I asked, hopefully.

His face set in a grim pose. He glanced over at the waitress who was busy wiping the same spot on the counter closest to us. “Hey toots,” Murphy called to him. “How ’bout a piece of pie?”

“We’re out of pie,” she pouted.

“Go make some,” he gruffed.

She finally got the hint, and went into the back.

Murph reached beside him and pulled out a large envelope. As he passed it to me, he opened his mouth but I cut him off.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I said. “I never saw anything, and you never showed me anything.”

He closed his mouth and nodded. As I said, we had an understanding.

I pulled out the case files and the photos. George Hurrell it wasn’t, but I could see what I needed to see.

The first file was the mechanic, complete with greasy overalls. He had been found in his own shop, and it looked like he hadn’t put up much of a fight. Nothing seemed too disturbed, nothing on the floor.

The doctor was fat. The slice had cut under his double chin, making him look like he had a second smile. He was in his office, medical equipment scattered around. This one looked like he hadn’t gone down easy. Stethoscope and tools lay on the floor. He had fought, and lost.

Last, there was Walker. Photos showed a well-groomed man, handsome, about thirty-five years old. Playboy. He lay on his side, blood disturbed by the prints of high heels. Fine parquet flooring seemed like an ironic tableau for his final pose.

Look at me being all fancy and poetic.

The girls looked like they could have been sisters. Blonde hair came down to their shoulders, thin, too much makeup. One still had her eyes open, caught in surprise.

“Dammit,” I said out loud.

“You know ‘er?” Murph asked.

“Sort of. Had a case of a cheating husband. She was the cheatee.”

Murph nodded. “That’s useful.”

“I know her haunting grounds,” I said. “It’s over in the Basement District.”

Murph eyed the payphone booth. “I’ll call it in. That’s close to my patch, anyway.”

“Look,” I said. “Wait until tomorrow.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“It’ll give me a chance to close my case,” I said. “Besides, if I wasn’t here, you wouldn’t have known until then anyway.”

He stared at me for a long moment. “Okay, Frank,” he said. “But this puts me on the line.”

“You’ve been on the line before,” I said. I instantly regretted it.

His eyes went past me for a moment. I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking about being stuck in that Japanese POW camp in January, two years ago. The guards had started pulling POWs out of the holes they had been kept in and lined them up to execute them. Murphy had survived the Bataan Death March only to be brought to the Japanese firing squad at Cabanatuan.

During the raid, I was the one who shot the guard who was going to shoot Murphy. Since then, I had never used that moment to my advantage, but now I think he thought I was trying to lean on him. When I said what I said, I had been thinking completely in the moment. I had forgotten the broader historical context between us.

Dammit.

His eyes returned back to mine, colder. Harder. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “That was the wrong thing to say.”

He softened at that. Good. No hard feelings. I hoped.

“Fine,” he said, finally. “I won’t call it in until morning.”

“Thanks, Murph,” I said. I wanted to apologize again, but didn’t. Once was enough. Good talk.

I dropped the dimes on the table and left. The Basement District was fifteen blocks away. Not a pleasant walk in the best of times, but damn dangerous at night and practically suicidal in the rain the closer you got. Mrs. Walker was paying expenses tonight, though, so I waited under the awning while I hailed a cab.

Friday night. You’d think cabs would be everywhere. They were, but they were all taken. Twenty minutes later, I finally found a cab that was in service.

“You sure, buddy?” the cabbie asked in astonishment where I told him we were going. “Your funeral.”

Fifteen minutes later I paid the man and stepped out onto what used to be a sidewalk. “Hey handsome,” came a shout. Time to go to work.

Chapter 3

I stepped over to the shivering girl with a red wig and a mole on her cheek. Only the most hard up girls would be out on the street on a night like this. She stepped up to me and put her finger on my chest, trying to be sexy.

The broad reeked. It took everything I had not to turn and retch into the gutter. Not that you’d notice anyway.

“Five dollars will get you the best night of your life, sugar,” she tried to purr. Instead it came out as more of a gravely choke. It was impossible to tell her age. She could be in her twenties, she could be in her fifties. I was betting more the latter, but it was likely more the former. Girls around the Basement District didn’t walk the street long enough to make it into their fifties.

“Can’t tonight, sugar,” I said, making my intentions clear. “Need to find someone.”

Her expression changed like a light switch. “No?” she challenged. “Then screw you. You ain’t got nuttin’ on me, cop.” She spat the word more violently than her last john’s load.

“I’m not a cop,” I said, suddenly concerned that she might scare away witnesses if they were within earshot. “I’m a private eye. I need to know what happened to Pixie.”

She snorted. It came out sounding like a Jeep horn. “Fat chance, Mr. P.I.”

I fished into my pocket. “I got five dollars just for information,” I said. “And you won’t even have to get your knees wet.”

I waved it in front of her nose. She snorted again, but looked around before snatching the bill. I knew the drill. She was looking for her pimp. If he caught her sneaking cash, he’d beat that mole right off her face.

“I don’t know much,” she said. “But you might want to talk to her roommate, Trixie.”

“Pixie and Trixie?” I knew she was putting me on.

“Hey, it was their shtick,” she shrugged. “Their apartment is right over there. Two doors down, three flights up. 3C.”

“You don’t know much about them, but you know where they live?” My detector was on the rise.

“Look, you got the information you paid for. Now get lost before you cost me more business,” she snapped.

She wasn’t lying. She was the only girl out on a night like tonight, which for her was good for business. Less competition. Plus her pimp was probably not far away and getting angry that she hadn’t closed the deal.

I nodded at her, and made my way to the walk-up she indicated.

Christ. Pixie and Trixie. Just what I needed.

Chapter 4

The front door was ajar. My warning radar started its sweep. My gut started talking to me, and I drew my .38. The warped wooden stairs barked as I climbed, my shoes leaving small Atlantic Ocean-sized puddles. My socks were still soaked. A radio was playing a Glenn Miller tune somewhere upstairs.

I got to the first floor, when I heard the scream. The Chattanooga Choo Choo came to a halt as the radio clicked off and deadbolts clicked on. I began taking steps two at a time, trying to keep good trigger discipline as I raced upwards. Army training dies hard, and I was up the extra flights in no time.

Apartment 3C was right in front of me, a sliver of light flickered rapidly through the keyhole. Tucking my shoulder, I barreled into the door and sent it off a hinge. The pain was intense, and caused me to wince and drop my aim.

I stumbled over something and sprawled out in a faceplant in the hall. My gun hand opened and the revolver clattered out of reach.

Dammit.

It was then that I looked up and saw Trixie. The streetlight lit up her face in an otherwise pitch-dark room. Her name suited her. She was a small girl, maybe 105, buck-ten pounds soaking wet. Her hair was short, blonde, and she had a cute upturned nose. Upturned to the ceiling.

She was two feet off the ground.

Her assailant stood behind her, feet planted shoulder-width apart, a garrote wrapped around her neck and lifting her straight up in the air. He held her in front of the light, keeping him in total darkness.

“Hey!” I shouted. That’s me. Mr. Eloquence.

I needn’t have bothered. My catastrophic entrance definitely got his attention. He glanced in my direction, and then redoubled his efforts to kill Trixie.

I clamored to my feed and lunged at him. He was a good fifteen feet away, though, and my soaked shoes couldn’t find purchase on the floor. My foot went in an entirely different direction than I wanted.

Still, I managed to move forward. Trixie was turning red, asphyxiation and stress bringing her face to an unnatural color. She was clawing at the wire at her throat, her eyes bugged and frightened. Rivulets of blood appeared under the wire. She was out of time.

I managed to get one leg to move forward, and I had to decide. Gun or man. I chose man.

My good, stable leg propelled me at him, but I was off-balance with no traction. The murderer twisted and hurled Trixie at me as easily as throwing a baseball. The girl may have been small, but she hit me harder than a freight train. We both went down like two sacks of potatoes.

Trixie’s body was dead weight and fell on me at the wrong angle. I collapsed onto the floor, my good leg buckling underneath me, bent, and with absolutely no leverage whatsoever.

The hulking mass of the Slicer-Dicer lurched from the shadows at us. With one arm pinned to the floor under my own weight, and the other locked underneath Trixie, I knew I was about to get curb stomped.

Then Trixie inhaled a long, ragged and painful breath. And screamed.

The noise pierced the air in the apartment as loud as a train horn. Slicer-Dicer turned and held his hands to his ears. I wasn’t so lucky. I was right next to her. I turned away out of sheer reflex.

Slicer-Dicer ran past us and out the door. Desperate, I tried to twist to catch him as he entered the hallway light. My body was too twisted on the floor, and Trixie’s weight kept me from being able to right myself. He got away.

Dammit.

In the struggle, I managed to straighten my leg enough to get the leverage I needed to sit up. Before I could get prepared, though, Trixie threw her arm around me. She sobbed, holding her throat with her free hand.

“Thank god you’re here, Mister,” she cried after a few minutes. “I was a goner!”

I held her, rage filling my meter. Sure, she didn’t have the most reputable of professions, but to do this took cowardice. She cried in my arms and her tears blended in with the evening’s rain on my coat.

The events played over and over in my head. What could I have done differently? I could have stepped to the side. I could have not barged in without knowing what was behind the door. I could have –

Suddenly Trixie sat bolt upright and looked at me with suspicion. “Why are you here?” she asked. “Who are you?”

“The name’s Driver,” I said, calmly. I was angry, sure, but not at her. “I’m a private investigator.”

Her eyes went wide. “You’re a cop?” she asked, disbelieving.

I shook my head. “No, I’m a P.I.,” I said. I reached into my pocket for my license. “I’m not a cop.”

She shrank back as my hand moved, and I slowed down, wincing. That hit to the door hurt more than I thought. Gingerly, I pulled out my wallet and flipped it open to show her my license.

She scanned the ID and then looked at my face, squinting in the low light. She relaxed. Then she remembered that she had just been dangling from a piano wire two feet off the ground, and grabbed her throat again.

She was talking and moving, at least, so he hadn’t severed her jugular or anything vital. From the look of her, though, she had been mere seconds from meeting St. Peter.

I adjusted her in order to make a move to stand up. “You got one hell of a set of pipes, lady,” I said, getting to my feet. “Especially after what he did to you.”

She sat on the floor, hand still clutching her throat. I reached down and helped her to her feet, and then brought her into the kitchenette and sat her down. I found the light and flipped it on.

“Let me see,” I said, and gingerly pulled her hand away from her neck. The wound was bad, but not horrible. I was right. Another second or two and she’d need stitches that would make Frankenstein envious. As it was, she’d still probably have a pretty bad scar, though.

“Is it bad?” she asked me.

“We need to get you to a hospital,” I said, dodging the question. “But first, do you have a first aid kit? Gauze? Boric acid?”

“In the medicine cabinet,” she said, and I followed her eyes as she pointed me towards the bathroom.

The bathroom was far smaller than two people had any right to share. Every horizontal surface was covered with some kind of toiletry. Perfume. Razor. Lipstick. Creams. Lotions. My coat swept around and knocked a few things off the side of the tub. I cursed to myself, and opened the medicine cabinet and got what I needed.

I went to work, arranging items on the kitchen table. I pulled the only other chair in front of Trixie and took her hands away from her throat and tried not to wince.

“Does it hurt to talk?”

She shook her head. “No, it just hurts.”

I nodded. “Do you know who that was?”

“Yeah,” she said, tears beginning to reform in her eyes. “He was a john.”

“A regular?” I asked as I applied the ointment. She winced. “Sorry,” I said.

She shook her head in forgiveness. “No, only once, I think.”

I was confused. “You ‘think’?”

“Only once for me,” she clarified. “I don’t know about Pixie.”

“He was a john for her, too?”

She sighed and looked at me like I was dumb. She was probably right.

“He was a john for us. I don’t know if she had him without me.”

Oh. Oh.

“Did you get his name?”

She shook her head slightly. The movement made her wince. Even if she had heard a name, it wouldn’t have been a real one.

“Why do you think he came after you?”

I lifted her chin to get better light on her throat. Tears streaked from the corner of her eyes, and once more I had visions of plugging the bastard. I’d be replaying tonight for months.

She was cute. Small. The kind of gal that guys felt a natural protection for. The kind that made you wonder just what could have happened to put her in a life like this. She should have been some farmer’s girl, laughing and playing chase through the corn rows on her Daddy’s harvest. Instead she was here. With me. Bleeding through a slice in her neck.

“I’m pretty sure he killed Pixie,” she said. “Maybe he’d think I would’ve fingered him to the cops.”

The kid was bright, too. That’s probably exactly what happened.

A thought occurred to me. “Did you and Pixie, uh, work together… often?”

I leaned back and double-checked my handiwork. She wore a gauze bandage like a choker collar. She touched it with her fingertips gingerly.

“Yeah, it was kind of our thing,” she said. “Well, going to be. We only really did it a couple of times. We were going to look out for each other, ya know? No pimps, watch each other’s backs. Plus, we could get more for the two of us than either of us alone.”

Literally, I thought.

“So we did that guy, and one other,” she said. Then her eyes doubled up on the waterworks. The tough girl act was hard to keep up.

“Then he came back and killed Pixie,” she said. She choked up. “I told her she needed to be careful.”

She put her face in her hands. “Ow,” she said, as the sobs caused her throat to hurt.

“Why did she need to be careful?” I asked.

“After we finished, he took a real strong liking to her, ya know?” she said, remembering. “I mean, sometimes we get a guy who claims he’s fallen in love. But this guy, well, I think he really believed it.”

“He fell in love with Pixie?”

“He said he did. We didn’t believe him, of course, but he kept coming ’round. Told her that he was going to marry her, that kind of thing.”

“Pixie didn’t believe him?”

Once again that look. The look of Get serious, will ya?

“Do you have any idea how many guys have told us lines like that?” she asked, rhetorically. I didn’t.

“Well, a lot,” she said in response to my silence. “But this guy, he was persistent. He really scared off a lot of customers.”

“You said that you two had another customer?”

“Yeah, a couple days ago. Rich guy.”

Walker. Must have been.

“He takes us to this fancy hotel,” she said. “Gets a room. Pays us each a hundred dollars. A hundred dollars!”

I was shocked. That would have paid their rent for four months. Each.

Her face told the story. The money was a windfall for her and Pixie, and the memory was a good one. Then her eyes began to get glassy and her expression fell.

“Then that other guy killed Pixie,” she said, her eyes cast downward.

“How can you be sure?”

She looked at me. “This rich guy, he paid for the whole night. When we came out of the hotel the next morning, that guy – the first one – was waiting outside.”

Despite myself, I was alarmed. “What happened?”

“He came up to us and got into it,” she said. “He told her that she broke his heart, how could she, she was the love of his life, all that jazz. The other guy – the rich one – tried to get into his face but he told him that he would kill ‘im if he didn’t butt out.”

The pronoun game was getting confusing, but I understood. Walker had tried to stand up to the murderer, but only wound up getting killed for his efforts. Slicer-Dicer must have followed Walker home, waited until the opportunity was right, then killed him on his perfect parquet floor. Mrs. Walker came home at exactly the wrong time, even before the murderer escaped.

She saw her husband on the floor and went over him. Touched him to see if he was still alive. Heard a noise. Ran to the kitchen to grab a knife. By that point, Slicer-Dicer had made his getaway, but the police were right around the corner. Neighbor called it in. Cops respond quicker in rich neighborhoods.

“Then what happened?”

She shrugged. Winced again. “Then Pixie was dead.”

“When?”

“Later that night,” she said. The tears flowed like little rivers across her pretty cheeks. She cast a glance at the broken door. “He killed her in an alley.”

Something struck me as odd. “Tell me,” I said, helping her to her unsteady feet. “Why did you go back out there tonight? And with him?”

She held onto my arm for support as we left the apartment for the hospital. “That rich guy,” Trixie said. “His money definitely helped. But it didn’t mean I could retire.” Her voice made it clear that my question was stupid. Perhaps it was.

Chapter 5

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Oh, come on, Frank! I can do it,” Tammi said. I swear, she almost stomped her foot.

I shook my head. “No.”

“Look, it’s foolproof.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “There’s nothing foolproof in this business, Tammi.”

We were in my office, the same place where we both had gotten some nookie not twelve hours before. I filled her in on the details and her overactive imagination had immediately taken her down Fantasy Lane with no stopping at Reality Station. Visions of grandeur blinded Tammi to the stark reality of life.

She pouted. “You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do. That’s why the answer is and will always be ‘no.'”

“So, you got a better idea, smart guy?” she challenged. She had gone from petulant begging girl to obnoxious vindictive smartass in less than a heartbeat.

“Yes, as a matter of fact I do.”

“So let’s hear it.”

Truth was, I didn’t. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to go along with her plan.

“I think we should stake out Pixie and Trixie’s corner,” I said, finally.

“And then what?”

“And then we nab the guy when he comes for Trixie again,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I was. I didn’t want to give her too much, in case she ran with it and did something stupid.

“Get real,” she said, trying to reason with me. “Trixie isn’t going to be bait for this guy. Especially after what he did to her. But as you said, this guy has a type.”

I had told her about the other victims. I knew what she was going to say. I didn’t like it.

“I’m obviously his type.”

Dammit.

“Trixie can give me a signal or something to let me know if the guy is the right one,” she continued. “Then I can do what I need to do.”

“He’s a murderer, Tammi,” I said quietly.

She shrugged. “One for the bucket list,” she said.

I frowned. “Tammi…”

“Lemme finish,” she said patiently. “He takes me into a hotel close by, then he takes me in the hotel, then he falls in love with me.”

I narrowed my eyes, but she was unperturbed. “Then, afterwards, you take me to the hotel. If his MO is solid, he should come after both of us.”

“Why do you want to sleep with a murderer?” I asked, incredulous.

Her eyes glinted. “He’s a sure thing,” she joked.

I knew I wasn’t going to get a straight answer from her. Instead, I asked, “What if he doesn’t fall in love with you?”

She put her hand on her hip and pouted. “Now who couldn’t fall in love with little ol’ me?” She hooked a fingernail into her mouth. She had a point.

“Besides,” she said, playing it straight. “You said that you think this guy falls hard and falls fast, right?”

I nodded.

“And if we don’t sleep together,” she continued, “that’s not likely to happen, right?”

I was afraid that every time she asked me a question I had to say “yes” to would get her closer to me saying “yes” to everything.

“And we don’t have a lot of time, right?”

Again, I nodded my head, slower this time.

“And you don’t have any other ideas, right?”

My jaw set. I could see by the look in her eyes that if I didn’t agree, this crazy broad was going to try to snag the Slicer-Dicer on her own.

I said nothing for a long time, and Tammi made exaggerated prompting motions with her hands.

Finally, I said, “I don’t like this one bit.”

“Is that a yes?” she asked, hopefully.

I sighed.

She squealed and clapped her hands together, and then bum rushed me for a hug and a kiss. “We’ll get the guy, Frank,” she said. “You won’t regret this, you’ll see.”

That’s usually what they say, just before you regret everything.

Chapter 6

According to Trixie, our man had a schedule. He always seemed to appear between 5 and 6 o’clock, which seemed to correlate with the coroner’s estimated time of death for the prostitute victims.

That meant we had some time to prepare. For my part, I went home and got some sleep. My dreams were unpleasant, trying to fight some Japs in trench coats and Fedoras while slipping on ice in the Philippine jungle. I wondered where that came from.

Not surprisingly, I woke up feeling more tired than when I fell asleep. I needed to get on my game. This guy had already beaten me once like an egg.

The rain fell on the early afternoon day, a wet blanket that covered everything and protected nothing. I needed to pick up a few things at the office before heading over to Trixie’s side of town.

Marcus was there again. I nodded to him, and he nodded back. He looked like he’d been there all day, but hadn’t even broke out his shine box. No business today. It may be time for him to find a new line of work.

Billy – or was it Bobby? – wasn’t manning the door today. New kid opened it for me with a blank expression. I nodded at him in anticipation of a greeting that never came. No personality with this one.

“Hey there,” I said. “Call me a cab?”

“Ok, you’re a cab.”

I stood corrected. Funny guy. I looked at him just as funny.

He shook his head, still deadpan. He sighed. “Tough crowd. Sure thing, Mr. Driver.”

I had no idea who he was, but evidently he knew me. “Thank you,” I said. Or maybe I just nodded. I headed up to my office and made a mental note to get the doormen’s names right.

My office was exactly the same as I had left it the night before. As always, the smell of the wood varnish assailed my nostrils, along with something else. My mind flickered back to Mrs. Walker playing my mouth organ, but then thought about Tammy and her boy toy. I frowned.

The girl needed a man. Trouble is, she could probably get any one that she wanted, just not the one that she needed. She was too cute for her own good. A battle-axe trapped in a waif’s body.

I hated her plan. Not only because it put her in unacceptable risk –

Well, if it’s so unacceptable, why did you accept it, Frank? Dammit.

– but because it probably was the best plan we had in the time that we had. Ah, screw it, it was the only plan we had.

My job was to find out who killed Walker, not capture or arrest him. That changed when I caught him in the act of attacking Trixie. He would probably try it again, and I couldn’t let that happen.

The thought filled me with rage. A powerful man. Tiny girls. They had no chance. My inner knight rattled his sword and shield in impotence. I needed to get calm. Stay calm. Calm never got you killed.

I should probably call Murphy and let him know what happened. I just didn’t have anything to report. I had a suspect, but I didn’t have a name. Hell, I didn’t have much of a description. Besides, Mrs. Walker didn’t hire me to provide leads for the cops. She didn’t have that kind of time.

I went to my filing cabinet and pulled out my “trusty” Kodak Ektra. Well, about as trusty as an Arab trader. Still, if I could get the damn shutter to work right this time, I might be able to get the shots I needed.

Prepping the camera always took longer than I wanted. I opened the bottom of the camera and reloaded the film. You never knew if the film loaded properly, so I carefully wound to the first frame and took a couple of practice shots. I found myself holding my breath as the shutter clicked. Good.

I looked at the clock. I needed to time it right. Too soon, and I’d be suspicious. Too late, and I wouldn’t have enough time to set up.

I checked my .38 and dropped a few extra loose change in my pocket. An extra six should be fine. I wasn’t looking to get into a prolonged gunfight. If things went south, I needed to grab Tammi and get the hell out of there. The bullets were just to use as distraction and cover if needed.

I thought about Tammi. How in the hell did she convince me to do this?

Dammit.

I stuffed the revolver into my ankle holster and slung the camera bag over my shoulder. The cab should be here by now. Time to go.

Sure enough, the cabbie was sitting at the corner. The unnamed doorman was standing in the rain waiting to open the door for me. I hesitated in the shelter of the doorway, and looked to my right. There was Marcus, huddling in the corner of the alleyway. An idea struck me.

“Marcus!” I called. He looked up, suspicious. “You want a job?”

His eyes brightened. I jerked my head, indicating that he should come over. He grabbed his shine box and raced over to me.

“How fast can you run?” I asked.

“Faster than you,” he said, sizing me up.

I grinned. “You’re hired,” I said.

He looked down at his box. “What do I do with this?” he asked.

“Bring it,” I said. “We’re gonna need it.”

I moved to the cab with Marcus in tow. The doorman opened the cab door for us to get in.

“Hold it, buddy!” the cabbie shouted. Marcus froze, but I got in the car anyway.

“What?” I asked, getting myself comfortable.

The cabbie looked from me to Marcus, and then back. He shook his head. “Can’t you read da sign?”

He pointed up at the hand-written sign on the back of the passenger seat. “NO JEWS, NO IRISS, NO COLURDS.”

Well, at least he spelled Jews right.

City cabbies didn’t actually care who was in the back of their cars. They just wanted their customers to think that they cared.

“What if my friend Abraham joined us?” I asked, fishing out a fiver from my pocket. The cabby flicked his eyes from Honest Abe to Marcus and back to the loot.

He searched around looking for witnesses, and then reached for the bill and snatched it out of my hand. I waved Marcus into the car and out of the rain.

Marcus put the shine box on the floor and had just set back in the seat when the cabbie took off. I gave him the directions, then looked at Marcus. The boy watched the cabbie for a few moments, but the motion of the street caught his eye soon enough.

“First time in a cab?” I asked.

He looked at me and nodded. “First time in a car!” he said. His excitement was getting to him.

I should have been thinking about the case, but I couldn’t help but get wrapped up in seeing Marcus experience the world in motion.

“You ever been on a bus?”

Marcus looked at me and screwed up his face. “Of course!” he said, his voice contemptuous. “But the bus smells.”

“You got dat right,” the cabbie piped up from the front.

I looked up in surprise. I wasn’t expecting contributions from him.

“What?” he asked, defensive. “I take care of my cab.”

He lapsed into silence after that, and Marcus put his hands on the cab door frame and peered out through the streaked window. I was left to my thoughts about Tammi and what she was going to do.

Chapter 7

The cabbie dropped us off about a block away from Trixie’s corner. Somehow, the rain seemed to be falling harder in her neck of the woods. It hadn’t been all that bright in the downpour to begin with, but now the streets were caught in a timeless grey-blue dusk. The kind of light that lasts for hours until – poof – it just goes out all of a sudden.

I took Marcus’ shine box from him and hefted it.

“Good grief, Marcus!” I exclaimed. “This weighs a ton!”

Marcus shrugged. “It was my Daddy’s,” he said, as if that explained everything. In a way, it did. I nodded. We started walking towards the corner.

After a few steps, Marcus asked, “So what’s the job, Mister?”

I realized that I had never given him my name. “Driver,” I said, and reached over with my off hand to shake his.

“Mister… Driver?” he amended his question.

“Can you keep a secret, Marcus?” I asked.

He nodded. I believed him. He didn’t look like he was much of a talker.

“That’s good, because we’re gonna be doing something very secret,” I said, conspiratorially.

He eyed me with suspicion. “My momma’s gonna tan my hide if I do something bad,” he warned.

I chuckled. “No, no,” I said. “You and I are the good guys. We’re going to stop a bad guy from doing something bad.”

His eyes lit up like saucers. “You mean it?” he asked.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my PI license. He took a step to the side, frightened. “You’re… a cop?” He looked around, frantic.

This again. The cops in this town had a bad reputation.

“No, no. I’m a private investigator,” I said. He looked at me again more relaxed, but not sure if he could trust me. “People hire me to go find bad guys that the cops can’t find.”

“So you’re not a cop?” he asked again.

“I’m not a cop.”

He thought about it for a moment. “Okay, then.” He slipped into an even stride next to me.

I explained to him what I wanted him to do, and made sure that he could do everything exactly as I needed. I didn’t want him getting any ideas of being a hero or trying to catch the bad guys like in the matinees. I made him repeat everything back to me, just to be sure.

We arrived at where I needed to be, and I stopped. “Here,” I said, taking off my hat and holding it out to him. “Let’s switch.”

He looked at my fedora with wide-eyed amazement. He took off his tattered flat cap and handed it to me. He put on the hat, and brushed the brim with his fingers. It sat too large on his head, but he wore it like a crown.

“Looks good on you,” I said. “I’m going to want it back, but for now you can take care of it for me.”

He beamed.

“Okay,” I said, putting the shine box out in front and tucking my coat beneath me so that I wouldn’t have to sit on the soaked ground. “Are you ready?”

He nodded. “Good,” I said. “Go.”

He took off and disappeared. I lifted the camera pouch over my head and brought it under the flaps of my coat to the best of my ability. I tried to protect the lens and the camera from the rain, but had to practically shove it under my armpit to do it. Still, I couldn’t be caught fumbling when I needed it.

I looked up and saw Tammi on the corner. She hadn’t been there a moment ago. I was so shocked that I nearly dropped my camera from underneath my coat.

She looked ridiculous. Blood red lipstick. Thick mascara. More rouge on her cheekbones than in a paint store. Her hair was held back by a bright red barrette that clashed with the two other shades on her face. Her makeup made Raggedy Anne’s look subtle.

She held a beach-ball colored umbrella over her head, and had found a leopard print stole to wrap around her shoulders. Underneath she wore a simple frock with polka dots and black and white saddle shoes. She was a collision of visuals.

The most significant of all, though, was that her dress was just a couple inches too high to be proper. The hem sat just above her knees, showing off two of the most shapely calfs I’d ever seen on a woman. They moved like scissors as she paced her corner, occasionally crossing them to lean against the leeward side of the building.

Tammi had gams. Who knew?

I looked at my watch. It was 4:45. This was the grunt work of investigations – the waiting.

“All glamorous dames and blowjobs,” I muttered to myself under my breath. I had found minor shelter in an alley across the street where I could see Tammi, but was still getting soaked.

The street was sparse for a Saturday afternoon. Normally there would be a bustle as women brought home the groceries to prepare for dinner, kids would be out in the street playing stickball. Even in the rain. Slushball was even more fun. But not in the Basement District

Here, the occasional pedestrian rushed by. Head down and collar up to protect against the rain and the cold. More than one woman looked up in time to see Tammi working her corner, and crossed to the other side of the street in disgust. Tammi smacked her gum and waved at them, grinning like a fool.

I shook my head. Smartass.

A door burst open and a woman with a disheveled red wig staggered down the stairs, completely incendiary with anger.

Moleface.

She was obviously drunk. Even so, she managed to cross the street to where Tammi stood without falling and killing herself. She put a crooked finger in Tammi’s face. I expected a catfight.

Instead, Tammi just smacked her gum and smiled back at Moleface. This, of course, just made her more irate. Even though her voice was in a register that only dogs could hear, the message was clear: this is my corner!

Tammi suddenly lunged at Moleface in a feint, raising her fist. Moleface lurched backwards, her drunken limbs not cooperating all at once. She twisted her leg as she tried to avoid the punch that didn’t come, and fell straight into a puddle. Tammi laughed.

Embarrassed and humiliated, Moleface picked herself up. Water streamed down her legs as she stormed back across the crosswalk. With a vulgar gesture at Tammi, she disappeared back into her walkup.

Movement across the street caught my attention. A man approached Tammi from the opposite direction. His shoulder’s were hunched, hands in pockets. He looked every bit the loser I expected, except he was too thin. His hat covered his face, but I hadn’t seen Trixie’s attacker clearly either. I wasn’t sure.

From his hiding place Marcus caught my eye, and I nodded. He took off like Jesse Owens. Man, the kid was fast. He raced around the corner, and bumped into the john as he was trying to hand Tammi something. Marcus spun, never losing his balance, made an apology to the man and kept running.

Tammi laughed, and reached for the john and kept him from falling. He jerked away and said something to Tammi. She shook her head, laughing harder. The man stuffed his hand back into his pockets and rushed off into the direction he came from.

I relaxed, not realizing that I had instinctively become tense. The moment was over. I allowed myself to breathe normally.

Marcus came up to me from behind. He must have circled around the block and doubled back through another entrance into the alleyway. The kid was lightning.

“Mr. Driver,” he whispered to me. He wasn’t even breathing hard. “I did what you said.”

I nodded. “Good work, Marcus,” I said. “Man, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone run as fast as you.”

He broke out into a smile that lit up the street. The pride from the compliment struck home. “What did you see?” I asked.

He crouched down conspiratorially. “He was a preacher-man,” Marcus said. “He was trying to give the girl a piece of paper to go to church.”

I felt the corner of my lip rise. Tammi may have been playing a part today, but she wouldn’t have gone to church on any other Sunday either.

“Good job, Marcus,” I said, and patted him on the shoulder. “You’d make a great private eye.”

He beamed. “You want me to get back in position?”

I nodded, and then immediately clamped down on his shoulder. Hard. He froze. “Wait!” I hissed.

The hairs on the back of my neck rose. I could feel it. A vibe. Someone was coming.

Instinctively, I pulled Marcus behind me. He crouched and knew to stay quiet. I was liking this kid more and more.

I heard the footsteps first. I needed to play my part, stick to my role. I was the out-of-luck shoe-shine man, waiting for the rain to break so that I could make some money from the people who desperately needed to get the splatter and mud off their shoes.

Under Marcus’ too-small flat cap, I could only see the man from the thighs down. Trixie’s assailant had been in dark shadow, so I couldn’t see his face or any other recognizable features. But he had been big – just over six feet – and built like a half-track. When he moved, he moved with purpose and weight.

The guy walking past was solid. I saw his shoes. His shoes told a story all their own. They were black, the leather soles had been repaired more than once. The man didn’t have money to spend on new shoes, but he relied on them.

I glanced up, but the man had already passed by and all I could see was the back of his coat and hat. He crossed the street without looking to see if any cars were coming.

I frowned.

He projected more than just an anticipation of his destination. He walked as if the rain didn’t matter. He walked with purpose. I’d seen that kind of walk before. It was a walk of someone who was always on his guard.

I swallowed. It was a cop.

Dammit. I remembered that I had asked Murph to hold off on calling in the leads until today. They probably took their time getting prepared to come to the Basement District and follow up. Murph had kept his promise to wait, and now here we were.

Tammi and I were going to get busted for running a stakeout, and the whole plan was going to get shot to hell. We’d probably have to go down to the precinct and get it all sorted. Maybe I could get Murphy to step in and we might get her out before she had to spend any jail time.

As he approached Tammi, I expected the man to place her under arrest. My body tensed and I prepared to run over and try to prevent that from happening. I felt Marcus peek around from behind me.

Tammi saw him coming, and glanced up at one of the windows on the third floor of a nearby tenant house. I saw Trixie turn pale white, and nod. Without giving any indication she saw Trixie, Tammi put on the charm.

I felt a rock get stuck in my throat. This wasn’t just a cop. We had found our mark.

The mark was a cop. The cop was the mark. Oh crap.

Tammi smiled at the man and twirled her umbrella in a flirtatious fashion. Can you be flirtatious with an umbrella? Well, Tammi did it somehow.

“Oh man,” Marcus whispered. “She’s busted.” Marcus knew the guy was a cop, too.

I started to rise, when Tammi threw her head back and laughed. I sank back down on my haunches.

Tammi slipped her arm in the crook of the cop, and they started walking away.

Dammit. We should have chosen a place where they could go that I could see his face. As it was, I couldn’t see anything at all about the man.

“Should I go again?” Marcus asked, ready to take off after them.

A thought suddenly hit me like a brick through a window. After what I had just witnessed, a vague notion was beginning to form in my cobwebbed brain. If I was right…

I was suddenly flooded with a sense of dread and fear. I remembered how the Slicer-Dicer had tossed Trixie at me with no more effort than a baseball. I couldn’t believe I had put Marcus in such a dangerous situation. Tammi was bad enough, but there was no way I could risk anything happening to him.

What an idiot I’d been. “No,” I said. “Change of plans.”

Marcus looked at me, the excitement palpable in his eyes.

“I don’t know if that’s our guy or not,” I lied, not sharing what my gut was telling me. “But I really need you to do something else.”

I told him what I wanted him to do. As comprehension dawned, his excited expression started to fade. Soon, he was crestfallen.

“Well, being a private detective ain’t like being in the movies,” I said. “In real life, it’s not glamorous work.”

“I can’t go to the movies,” Marcus said, frowning. “Mama says we can’t afford the money.”

I nodded, understanding. “Well, good thing I’m paying you,” I said, forcing a small grin to lighten his mood.

It didn’t work. He looked down at the ground and shrugged.

“Look,” I said, talking to him at eye level. “What I’m asking you to do is very important.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said, not believing me.

“Marcus, look at me,” I said. He looked up. “I’m serious. This is probably the most important thing in this entire case. If I’m right, you are going to be the one who solves it.”

His eyes brightened at that. “Really?” he asked, excitement creeping in.

“Absolutely,” I said. I meant it, too.

I looked up at Trixie’s window. She was looking straight at me, and beckoning me furiously with her hands to go to her.

“Right now, I have to go talk to a witness,” I said. I swapped my hat for his, and started to pull the camera strap over my head. I handed it to him, and he took it.

“Do you know how to use one of these?” I asked. He nodded.

“Good,” I said. “Because for a private investigator, taking pictures is one of his greatest weapons.”

A realization dawned on me. A picture! Dammit! I had completely forgotten to take the picture! I cursed at myself under my breath. Chalk another mark up on the idiot board.

Well, maybe Marcus could be more on the ball than I was.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Driver,” Marcus said. This boy was made for greater things than shoe shines, I could feel it.

I nodded, and made my way across the street to talk to Trixie.

Chapter 8

Trixie was waiting for me at the top of the stairs.

“A friend let me stay with her for now,” she said, indicating the apartment. She turned and walked into it, and I followed.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“Working.” She thought for a moment, and then decided to add, “She’s a secretary for some big-time lawyer.”

It didn’t look much different than Pixie and Trixie’s apartment.

Off my look, she scoffed. “Yeah. Lawyer pulls in fifty dollars an hour, and all she can afford is this dump in the Basement District. She’s been working long hours and said I could stay here until I leave.”

“Leave?” I asked. “Where are you going?”

“I’m outta here,” Trixie said, indicating her bags. Me, being Mr. Observant, hadn’t noticed them at first.

“Won’t the police want you to testify?” I asked.

She snorted. “Yeah, right, like the police would do anything for me. Why should I do anything for them? I just wanna be as far away from here – and him – as possible.”

She had a point.

Truth be told, that wasn’t my problem. I walked over to the window that overlooked the street corner. I wondered about how Tammi was getting on. Across the street was the shabby hotel for Tammi’s plan, but I couldn’t see into the room as the blinds were drawn.

Trixie came up beside me. “I think she’ll be okay,” she said, then turned and walked back into the room.

“What makes you so sure?”

“He was very gentle, very tender,” she said. “I know he tried to kill me later, but that’s not the kind of guy he was at first. He was actually really sweet.”

I turned to her, and my jaw dropped. She had taken off her clothes, standing in nothing but black garters and high heels. Around her neck, though, were the bandages from the hospital. She looked like a sexy blonde version of Elsa Lanchester, except with a short haircut to her shoulders.

I swallowed.

“I’m not used to paying men,” she said. “Usually they pay me. But the way I see it, I owe you my life. And for me, my life is my body.”

She raised delicate fingers to the bandages. “I can’t do everything, Mr. Driver,” she said, her voice getting lower and warmer. Her message was clear. “But aside from that, you can have anything you want.”

Her eyes flashed. “Anything.”

Trixie’s physique fit her name. She was thin with small breasts, and a light blonde bush invited my eyes to the space between her legs. She shifted her weight, and then began to turn in place.

I was treated to the most perfect heart-shaped butt I had ever seen. She looked back over her shoulder and winced a little as the stress on her neck was more than she expected. She slapped her own ass.

“Are you an ass-man, Mr. Driver?” she asked.

“I didn’t realize I was until this very moment,” I admitted. Normally I was a leg-man, but she had me persuaded.

“Well,” she purred. “You can’t do anything with your clothes on.”

I glanced out the window, but there was no change in the scenery.

“You can’t do anything about that, either,” she scolded.

I sighed. She was right. Besides, the view was much better inside the apartment. I turned back to Trixie and started undressing.

“Oooh,” Trixie cooed, sizing me up. “Looks like I’m not the only one hiding something worth looking at.”

A hooker’s compliments are worth less than a three dollar bill. Still, it was nice to hear.

I approached her, and she turned around and presented that phenomenal rear to me. It was my first time with a prostitute, but I supposed the etiquette was not to bother with foreplay.

She bent over the kitchenette table, and lust became my autopilot. My hands reached for her on their own and I grabbed her hips. She wiggled a bit, settling into my grip.

Hard as iron, I aimed myself at her vertical slit. She was already as wet as the constant rain, only much warmer. There was heat radiating from her body that guided me onward. As I touched her for the first time, we both stiffened in excitement.

I pressed forward.

She barely opened for me. I was unprepared for the extra work necessary to penetrate her. She bore down and pushed back on me, though, which helped. The head slipped inside, and then we both relaxed at the same time.

I stood still for a moment, savoring the sensation of her tightness. Now it didn’t feel like either one of us were trying at all. Each breath seemed to let me sink into her body further and further.

I hit her cervix about halfway in. She jumped reflexively, and I started to withdraw. I’m no sadist.

Trixie, on the other hand, was no porcelain doll. She reached back and grabbed my hand with one of her own, and then used it as leverage to pull back against me. I felt things in her body move out of the way, and then I was fully inside her.

I looked down at the view, and nearly burst. Her shapely bottom was pressed against my hips, creating a visual that I had only fantasized about in my most sinful state of mind. Her tiny figure, thin and delicate in appearance, suddenly looked curvy and hourglass as she pressed into me.

Still, there was something not quite right. Inside her body, I could feel a sharpness to her pelvis. She was all smooth lines on the outside, but jagged angles on the inside. Her tiny body had more sharp bits than a drawer full of butcher’s knives. If I moved too quickly I wondered if I’d lose skin.

I withdrew as I normally did, but as I re-entered her I was once again stopped halfway by her cervix. She flinched again. At that instant this was no longer enjoyable. I started to pull out again, and allowed myself to be free with an audible pop! sound.

I looked down at the girl bent over before me. She wiggled a little, expecting me to stick it back in, not knowing that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Disappointment flooded over me in waves. I wanted to be inside her. She looked incredible. She wanted me to take her as well.

I tried again. I entered her, and this time the experience was worse. She had shifted her weight and suddenly her pelvis ground down as I entered her. I felt an uncomfortable bend in my direction and winced in pain – actual, physical pain. This time, I didn’t even get as far as her cervix before I pulled out again.

Looking down, I inspected my flesh. I completely expected that I would have found a gaping wound, scrapes, or tearing – for all the pain I had felt.

It was mind-boggling. How could a girl with a body this incredibly sexy be so unpleasant to screw? It didn’t seem fair at all.

“Try the other hole,” she said, matter-of-factly.

I looked at her. “What?” I asked, dumbfounded. “You want me to put it where?”

She turned as far as she could and smiled. “You heard me,” she said, and wiggled again. “Try the other one.”

When I didn’t move, she reached behind and grabbed my softening prick. I kept my hands on her hips, shocked into paralysis. Like watching a train derailment, I couldn’t take my eyes off the disaster that was about to happen. I had never thought about being… there.

She backed up against me, reducing the gap between us. Then I was touching… it. There.

I stared as the tip disappeared in a place too small for it to fit, then gawked as her body just… opened up. I watched in partial fascination, and partial amazement (and maybe a little disgust, if I’m being honest) as her body swallowed me. Her tight muscle seemed to go on forever. Every slight movement forward made me convinced that she was going to squeeze me into oblivion.

Nothing I’d experienced prepared me for the different sensation. Normally a woman’s opening was tight at the very beginning, but then immediately changed. It opened up. Accommodated me. It moved around a little, let me work myself in and out immediately.

This, though, this was new. Very new. She pushed back against me and I began to wonder if I had suddenly put myself through a gun barrel. There were muscles here, but a very different set of muscles. Muscles that took me in a completely new direction.

Suddenly, I felt a little give inside her body. The head had long been consumed inside of her, but now it felt like it was spearing into some kind of breakthrough. Then, like some rockslide on a slippery slope, I slid into her to nearly my full length. I came to rest with only an inch to go.

Trixie sighed. “Theeeeere we go.”

The sensation overwhelmed me. I had never felt anything like this before. It took me several moments to realize that I had been standing, frozen, with my mouth open like a neanderthal idiot.

The feeling was exquisite. There’s no other word that I could think about. Her bottom gripped me smoothly, evenly across every square inch. I had no idea that this abominable act would be so incredibly gratifying.

It felt like there was a sheath wrapped tightly around the shaft, with almost nothing holding onto the head. The compression was so tight and so consistent that I began to wonder if the head would be able to be pulled out. My reptile brain found that it liked the idea of being stuck in this position forever.

For as uncomfortable as it had been before, now I was in heaven. I was afraid that if I moved I would burst.

“Yes,” she hissed. “Goddamn. Yes.”

She pushed back until her cheeks rested on my hips. I felt my short and curlies rest against her original wetness. Another new sensation. Nothing could override the all-encompassing experience of being inside her ass, though.

Never in my life had I ever felt such physical pleasure. Never had I felt so damn good.

My body started moving on its own. I was completely disconnected from any voluntary physical movement. I only had about an inch of play, because the head would constantly be blocked from exiting any further by her incredibly powerful sphincter.

She peered over her shoulder. “Better?” she asked.

I couldn’t speak. I nodded, dumbly. She grinned. “Me too,” she said. “Much better.”

Even so, she coaxed me to move more, to become more assertive. I had no choice – I was simply along for the ride as my body and hers worked out their own rhythms.

“Is this… your first… time?” She asked, gasping out words in between thrusts.

“Nnn-hnn,” I grunted.

“Thought so, sweetie,” she said. She said it like it was a prime accomplishment for her to figure it out. “You just go ahead and enjoy my sweet ass. I know I am.”

The profanity coming from her seemed entirely fitting, and yet at the same time out of place. To my amazement, she was enjoying herself.

So she had known that her body was different. Normal sex wasn’t enjoyable for her, either. I couldn’t help but think that she might just be in the wrong profession.

It was the last conscious thought that I had. Something took over inside of me. I was moving, but barely able to keep coherent awareness of what was going on around me. The sensations flowing from her chamber through my rod was frying my brain. Every nerve ending felt like it was humming as if I was standing next to an electrical transformer.

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t blink. All I could do was ride an ever-growing escalation of pleasure. It grew and grew along with a ringing in my ears.

Somehow she had relaxed more, or I had gotten used to the ultra-sensitive head moving into and out of that tight muscle. Each thrust, each withdrawal, seemed to be natural and automatic. I found that I wanted more with each movement. When I pushed myself into her body she responded in kind, ratcheting up my excitement even more.

It peaked, and I froze. It caught me completely by surprise.

My vision slowly started to return from a pure white, something that I hadn’t even noticed until I was finally able to see again. I was breathing heavy, sweat pouring down me. Her hips were kept against mine as I held onto her for stability.

I knew I had my climax. Aside from the heavy breathing, I felt calmer, satisfied. Pleasured. It was as if every ounce of tension had been pulled out of my body through one teeny tiny opening and released it into her beautiful behind. My body and my mind were completely detached. I just didn’t remember it happening.

My faculties slowly refocused like a camera lens. Once again I looked down at our junction, still amazed that I was actually inside her ass. What’s more, I wasn’t disgusted any longer, no, not at all. Now that I understood what heaven lay beyond that back door, all I wanted was to do it over and over. And I was still deep inside her.

My body, though, wasn’t having any of it. My orgasm had been so all-encompassing, so complete, that I apparently had overextended my energy levels. Miraculously, I was still rock hard. It didn’t want to leave her body. Maybe it was the tightness around me that kept me so rigid. Either way, she was still impaled upon me.

I started to pull out. Trixie took a hint and pulled away from me faster than my body could compensate. The experience had been the most intense of my life, but now so was the sensitivity.

The head rejected the idea of being pulled back through her muscular cavity. The hypersensitive signals assaulting my pelvis and my brain at the same time. I felt it all the way up from my spine to my ears as she released me. I doubled over, unprepared for this betrayal of my senses.

At that point, my legs failed. I collapsed on the floor and waited for my breathing to catch up. She straightened up, and then moved over to me and crouched down.

“Did you like that?” she asked rhetorically. “I normally charge $100 for that.”

A hundred. Ten days work for me. Probably only ten minutes of work for her. I had been wrong, she wasn’t in the wrong business, I was.

The mental and physical break had been something I needed, but thoughts of what Tammi was doing with a potential murderer crashed back into my hazy brain. Trixie studied me for a moment.

“I told you,” she said, reading my mind. “He’s not going to hurt her.”

I focused upon her. “Believe me, right now he’s got more to fear from her than the other way around,” she commented. “I’ve seen her attitude.”

She looked thoughtful. She knew the plan. “Be careful tomorrow, though.”

Chapter 9

The next day, Tammi and I played our parts better than any Hollywood couple. She stood on the corner next to Moleface, preening for potential customers.

Even made up to look like a ridiculous Chinese doll, Tammi made Moleface look like a rat. It’s no wonder the woman was such a cow. Even looking like a circus clown, Tammi still looked far more appealing than her competition. Pixie and Trixie must have taken all the jobs. Anyone standing next to her would have had a better chance of getting business. Hell, I looked better than her.

I stood in the shadows and watched, hoping to get my timing right. Too soon and we wouldn’t be able to entice our mark. Too late and he would come and try to pick up Tammi again. I couldn’t let that happen. That is, if my hunch was correct. If not, I had a backup plan, but hoped that I wouldn’t have to use it.

The late Sunday afternoon crowd was sparse and unpredictable. No men coming home from work, no regular evening cadence to count on. The rain was certainly not helping my case. My – our – main hope was that our man worked his regular shift on the weekends. If I was right, and he was a cop, we still had a chance.

In a perfect world, I’d be able to see him coming and then jump in line in front of him, act like I didn’t see him, and get to Tammi first. That would probably have been a lot more likely if I actually knew who I was looking for.

Dammit.

Marcus wasn’t with me today. I had sent him on another mission. At first he was disappointed, but when I told him what I wanted him to do, his eyes lit up like firecrackers. I had a hunch, and if it panned out then I needed to be in two places at the same time, and Marcus could be my second “me.” And he’d be safe.

A couple of guys approached Tammi and gave her the once over. I felt my heart jump a little thinking that I might have waited too long, but relaxed as she rejected their overtures. Moleface tried to swoop in and grab the leftovers like some sort of rabid vulture, but the men simply turned and walked away as if she didn’t exist.

I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

As the time marched onward I felt more and more antsy. I looked at my watch. It was now fifteen minutes later than yesterday’s encounter. When I felt I couldn’t wait any longer, I made my move and hoped that I wasn’t jumping the gun.

I approached the two women, trying to act nervous and less confident. For perhaps the only time in my life, I actually knew what the outcome would be as I tried to pick up a woman.

Too bad it had to be like this.

“I, uh,” I forced a stammer as I approached Tammi.

She put one hand on her hip and smiled as she snapped her gum. “What is it, sweetie?” she asked in a manner you’d expect one to address a small child. “You lost, honey?”

“No, I, uh,” I said, suddenly unsure of what to say. I wanted to simply say, ‘Let’s go,’ but I need to play my part for Moleface’s benefit and for anyone else who may be watching.

Speaking of the cow, I glanced over to Moleface to see her seething at Tammi. Even though we had spoken just two nights ago, she didn’t recognize me at all. As if to answer my unthought question, she wavered a little on her heels. Drunk again.

Mercifully, Tammi put me out of my misery. “Do you want some company, sweetie?” she asked.

I nodded, and she slipped her arm inside mine. “Well, then,” she said pulling me in the direction of our rented room. “How about a nice game of Parcheesi?”

I shot her a look. Smartass.

We walked down the street.

“You know she’s staring at us, right?” I said.

“Yup. Trying to burn holes into our backs with her eyes.”

I nodded. “Kind of tickles.”

Tammi threw her head back and laughed. It was genuine laughter, but she added in a bit of extra gusto for Moleface’s benefit, I’m sure.

Once inside the apartment, I stood at the window looking out over the street. From the angle, it was difficult to see the corner, but I could see Moleface pacing in and out of view.

The pattern was predictable. Stop pacing. Approach someone. Rejection. Pace again. Moleface played against the law of averages. Usually lost.

A few minutes later, she stormed off the corner. Alone.

“Nice performance,” Tammi said, breaking the silence.

“Hmm?”

“Out there, when you ‘picked’ me up. Nice performance. You could be the next Cary Grant.”

I grunted. Fat chance.

Several minutes passed by. Thirty or so. Stakeouts suck. I stayed focused on the street below, but there was very little movement. Tammi was growing restless. She wasn’t used to the tedium of stakeouts. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be, either.

“He wasn’t bad, you know,” Tammi said behind me, breaking our silence.

“Cary Grant?”

“No, our ‘guy'” she clarified.

I didn’t want to hear it, and said so.

“He cried.”

I turned to look at her. “He what?”

She shrugged. “He cried, afterwards.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Yeah,” she said, bored. “He said he was sorry. ‘Real men don’t cry,’ he said.”

I frowned. I wasn’t sure how to process this information. I didn’t want to think of the Slicer-Dicer as vulnerable. It didn’t make a difference, but I didn’t want to do it.

She sidled up to me and looked out the window as well. “You wouldn’t cry, would you Frank?” she asked softly. She placed her hand on the small of my back and began to trace her fingers of her other hand across my chest.

“No.”

I felt her hand rise to the back of my neck. “I didn’t think so.”

She said nothing for a moment. “You know, Frank,” she said, quietly, “we are supposed to make him jealous.”

Her other hand dropped to my hip and slid forward.

“Tammi…” Dammit, I was trying to concentrate.

Her finger found their mark and my throat tightened, squeezing off any more words. My body responded, and her fingers arced to meet my rising arousal.

“Oh, Frank!” she whispered approvingly. I felt her hand on my neck pull me downward and in her direction. I resisted weakly, but then I felt her supple lips against mine. In an instant, Tammi’s aggression took over. She hurried, before I realized what was happening and stopped her.

I felt my belt buckle loosen, and then my zipper pulled down. Then I was free. In her hand.

“Tammi,” I croaked, breaking her kiss.

“Don’t,” she warned. “Just… don’t.”

At that, she bent at the waist and took me in her mouth. It wasn’t the kind of thing that nice girls did. But Tammi wasn’t exactly a nice girl. At least she didn’t want to be.

She held me upright with one hand, the other wrapping around my waist to keep me steady. Or locked in. I wasn’t sure.

She held me in her hands so that she could get her mouth around me. Her tongue worked wonders as it danced across me like a ballerina twirling and leaping on stage. Before I could stop myself, I placed a hand on the top of her head, encouraging her.

Two nights ago I had a movie starlet lookalike wrap her ruby red lips around me in my office. Every guy’s wet dream. A blowjob from a pinup. I thought it was the pinnacle of my sexual fantasies.

Now, though, Tammi’s enthusiasm and insistence kicked Mrs. Walker’s performance to a distance second place. Maybe it was the awkward position – I’d never had someone take me in her mouth from beside me in a standing position before – or maybe she was just that good. All I knew is that I was harder than Chinese arithmetic and straining to drive myself further into her mouth.

Tammi took my approval to heart, and on her next downstroke I found myself completely consumed in her throat. Not many girls could do that. I felt Tammi’s weight shift, adjusting her position. She wrapped an arm around my waist for leverage.

Then she went to town.

I felt the push-pull of her mouth and hands working in concert. My mind screamed at me that this wasn’t professional. I was on the clock. We had a job to do.

Heh. “Job.”

Dammit.

Try as I might, I couldn’t find the willpower to get her to stop. Each time she came up for air it felt like she was yanking me closer to orgasm. I wanted to stop her. Wanted to focus.

I wanted to explode.

Without releasing me, she got down on her knees. That in and of itself was impressive. From her new position, I could watch all the action. In. Out. In. Out.

A voice screamed inside my head to just let go. Give her the reward so we could get back to the stakeout. Sirens were going off, warning me of the danger we were in. If we were caught with my pants down around my ankles – literally – we could both get killed. We were, after all, dealing with a murderer. These were life-and-death stakes.

That’s when it struck me. The clarity was almost a shock as I realized with a start what was happening. How could I have missed it all along?

Tammi got off on the danger of it all. The girl was excited by risk.

Suddenly the escapade in my office made complete sense. She had chosen that location for her tryst with the sailor hoping that I would come back and catch her in the act. How many times had she done that before? How many times had she taken a lover there, hoping that I – or maybe a client – would walk in?

“So thick,” she said to herself, so low I could barely hear.

Her voice snapped something in the back of my primate brain. She was completely absorbed in what she was doing. I had thought that she may have had a crush, but now I realized it wasn’t me she wanted. Well, not all of me.

None of that mattered now. The risk was real. The danger was real. It was driving her onward with more intensity and fury. She was on a mission. I was that mission.

She had me gripped fiercely in both hands. She was wildly moving her head back and forth. I could feel her hot breath on my slick skin. Every once in a while she would lick instead of suck, like cleaning butter off a corn on the cob.

I had to stop this. I needed to extricate myself from her mouth. I tried to grip the first thing I came into contact with – her hair – and she moaned in encouragement. Mistaking my frantic grabs as enthusiasm, she redoubled her efforts.

I failed to prevent what happened next. She had control over my midsection entirely. I felt my thighs begin to vibrate uncontrollably. A familiar ringing started in my ears, a low whine that rapidly started to become a high pitched squeal.

My mouth opened and closed like a fish.

“Oh god,” I managed to croak.

She deep throated me.

I exploded. My hips jerked forwards, and the only thing that prevented me from choking her was her firm grip with both hands. Once the first jets hit her tongue, she seemed to kick it up another few notches. Her face was all over me, rubbing her cheek against my rod as it continued to launch sticky white liquid. Then I was back inside her warm mouth feeling her tongue dance the Foxtrot.

She sat back and looked up at me. A smirk played upon her lips, an expression I couldn’t completely read. I had added to her makeup with my own mix, smearing what was there into a profane mess.

I suddenly felt stupid. I was standing there in front of her, exposed. She had me in her hands still, stroking and playing with slow, mesmerizing movements.

She smiled up at me, a broad grin flashing her white teeth. Just as I was about to say something, she grabbed the waistband of my boxers and tried to tuck me back in.

A noise startled us. We both turned and saw a figure standing in the front door, a bouquet of flowers coming to a rest at his feet. The elastic of my waistband snapped against my stomach, a comical punchline to our situation.

My first thought was that my fears of being unprepared were coming true. We were going to die because I had no room to maneuver. Then I saw the figure’s face, and the fear was replaced with relief. And confusion.

“You?” He asked. “You!?”

“Murph?” I asked, dumbfounded. “What are you doing here? You’re going to ruin-”

Tammi’s face snapped up to look at me from her kneeling position. Her eyes were wide with fear. I looked at her, confused. In my post orgasmic-brain, pieces of the puzzle were not fitting together.

My sense of time was askew. I turned my head to look back at Murphy, to tell him that he was going to scare away the Slicer-Dicer. I was on a stakeout, and if he was here, then the perp wouldn’t fall for the bait.