by Darrell King
He cussed under his breath as he hung up the line, tossing the cell phone onto the bed adjacent to the bathroom’s entrance, and stepping under the steaming water cascading down from the overhead spigot. He stayed locked in deep thought as he slid the Irish Spring bar across his trim body, working up a sudsy lather in the process.
Rosaria had tried to set him up for failure and had almost succeeded. And now she was a ghost. With her street smarts and a little bit of cash, there would be no telling where she could be at this point. As expected, she walked with enough vials of Biomax-O to last for at least two years, and he hadn’t received a dime from her in over a month, even though he knew she had been turning tricks. And the audacity of Wilhelm Von Strecker to have approached him as though he wanted to bring it had earned him a death sentence as well. All over a bitch. It amazed him how pussy caused cats to act out of character. Too bad they both had to get their wigs pushed back to prove a point.
He turned the shower off and stepped out of the tub after pulling the bamboo print shower curtain aside. Dwelling on Rosaria made him think back on a few of the other women whom he’d infected with the deadly virus. Susan Norris came to mind as he dried himself. A sexy middle school math teacher with a bubble butt and impressive oral skills had fallen for him during one of his brief trips out of the country. He’d met her in Barbados and spent over a month with her on a cruise ship before flying back stateside with her to Chicago. She had died quickly—within a two-month period after their whirlwind romance. He finally remembered looking down on her in her hospital bed. She must have dropped at least 85 pounds before the AIDS-related lymphoma put her out of her misery.
She had been a wonderful fuck for him at least, he thought to himself. There had been at least five others who had crossed his mind on this day. They had all met the same terrible fate as had the cute teacher after sleeping with him.
Then there were those whom he had spared, for one reason or another, such as Lydia Maddox, a 35-year old dentist whom he had preyed upon financially in return for ran occasional booty call. He was very careful with this one and never went up in her without a quality condom strapped on, which was rare for him. He usually broke her off orally and that was enough to satisfy most times. She was too important for him to take out at least for another month or so, which would be just enough time to drain her bank account. Then he’d give her the dick raw next time around, skeeting off his death-dealing cum into her.
He dialed her up as he dressed, speaking to her in a rich, deep tone that he knew had once brought shudders to her.
“How are you, beautiful? You miss me?”
“I’m doin’ fine,” the female voice replied, “and yes I do miss you, baby. When am I going to see you again. I’m hot and bothered if you know what I mean.”
“Ha ha!” Valentino laughed. “Yeah, I know exactly what that means, ma...I’m comin’ over there in a little bit to beat that thing fa ya, aiight?”
“Boy, you so crazy! Well, c’mon now, I’ve been waitin’ too long for that good dick.”
“I’m gonna give it to ya too, just like you like it—rough and rugged! Now, don’t forget to hook a nigga up wit that ?, aiight? ‘Cause I gotta pay some bills and I’m a bit short so I’m gon’ need fa you to do that fa me, aiight?”
“I got you, baby,” the woman purred. “You just bring your phine ass on over here.”
He whispered a seductive goodbye before placing it down upon a mahogany nightstand. Turning toward the bed he picked up his car keys, wallet and phone and made his way down the winding staircase.
***
Wilhelm Von Strecker sat slack jawed at the end of a dimly lit Cobblestone District bar downing one whiskey sour after another. However, even in his besotted condition, he still could not shake the thoughts of vengeance for what Valentino and his thugs had done to him on that fateful night. He felt both betrayed and sickened by Meredith’s sudden desire for the gangster pimp and swallowed down an entire glass of the booze in anger, disgusted by the image of the two of them together. This was an undesirable, one of the lower races, as well as human lab rat who carried the lethal HIV10X virus within his blood stream, yet still Meredith seemed to throw all caution to the wind, as well as the commitment of the Sentinels of the Illuminati for the sake of jungle fever. He grimaced with revulsion after dwelling on the matter for a few seconds.
Finishing off his sixth whiskey sour, he glanced up at the clock over the bar and realized that he’d spent the better part of three and a half hours drinking alone. It was now 12:47 a.m. and he was truly trashed. There was no way that he’d risk an accident driving home, so he decided to crash at a nearby motel for the night. Not long after, bar soon began filling up with college kids and yuppies seeking cheap booze and a good party spot. Listening to a beer-guzzling throng singing along to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” an inebriated Wilhelm slunk through the crowd and out the door past a growing line of lively twenty-somethings, waiting impatiently to gain entrance. He walked hastily, if not a bit unsteadily, and paid a local parking garage attendant to babysit his vehicle while he slept off the alcohol.
After paying the attendant, Wilhelm made his way back out onto the familiar cobblestone streets of the upscale neighborhood. Once he’d selected a room for the night, he quickly showered and logged onto his laptop just before turning in. Though he was quite drunk, he always checked his email messages just before bed, and tonight was no different. However, he was unprepared for the photos he saw upon opening his email account—photo after gruesome photo of the dying and dead victims of the HIV10X-fueled AIDS terror. However, few if any of the emaciated corpses portrayed in the ghoulish pictures were of African Americans, nor were the victims from the targeted areas in which the Illuminati had mapped out for population control. Instead, each and every one was a rich person—those from Lariat’s upper crust areas. An uneasy feeling immediately crept over Doctor Von Strecker, bringing a nasty queasiness to his stomach as he clicked the mouse. Overcome with nausea, he rushed toward the bathroom, vomiting up a night’s worth of drinks into the toilet.
He awakened an hour later collapsed beside the commode and forced himself up from the cold, file-covered floor, washing his face and mouth clean. He brushed his teeth and showered before dressing to leave. By the time he checked out of the room, his cell phone was ringing upon his side with a steady stream of calls.
As he waited for the clerk to return his credit card to him, he finally took the phone into his hand and scrolled through his incoming call log and saw it was fellow Coventry Labs coworker Reuben Mintz. He’d sent a text message stating that everyone at Coventry Laboratories believed that somehow Patient Zero, Lucien Valentino, had gone rogue, infecting not only other blacks, but white citizens as well with the AIDS virus—and that it was believed that Meredith was his accomplice in these murderous endeavors.
***
Valentino sat behind the wheel of a fresh looking Cadillac XLR, silently gazing at Rosaria through a pair of dark sunglasses. It was a humid July day, typical of a mid-summer afternoon in southern California. He’d followed Rosaria all the way to L.A. after a cocaine client had contacted him with her whereabouts a week earlier. She was wearing a bright green floral print sundress, which hugged and complimented her wickedly delectable curves perfectly. Her glossy, raven black hair flowed down her back and out from a matching green sunhat. Her smooth skin was a gorgeous golden bronze.
Since he’d last seen her, Los Angeles had been very good to her. He almost fell a little bit in love with her a second time, sitting there watching her. In actuality, he still adored the lovely, young Hispanic hottie, however it was simply in the rules of the game that she be taught a lesson. Switching was a sacrilege within the ‘hood and those found guilty of it were hated, shunned and many times come up missing. Rosaria would be no different.
Valentino lit up a cigarette as he lounged lazily in the plush leather bucket seat of the Caddy. He thumbed through his phone’s digital menu looking for a numb
er belonging to a group of stick-up kids, crackheads, ex-cons and gangbangers who’d jump at the chance to peel Wilhelm Von Strecker’s wig back for a nice piece of change. As he pondered the matter further, he realized that Meredith herself could be used for the job.
Quickly, Valentino caught the attention of a Chicano street peddler who worked traffic hawking bouquets of fresh-cut roses in between the vehicles whenever they stopped at the light. He purchased a dozen long-stemmed roses and went back to spying on his former prostitute. She’d been shopping for over an hour along one of east L.A.’s busiest streets buying a combination of clothes, CDs, shoes and other items from the numerous street vendors haggling with customers over their prices.
The sexy Latin diva turned to cross the busy street bearing the spoils of a successful shopping spree in one hand and a ring of car keys in the other. Coming across the street, Rosaria pointed the keys toward a red Toyota Prius, deactivating its alarm and unlocking it.
Valentino waited anxiously until she pulled out of the parking lot and into traffic. For fifteen minutes, he trailed her by no more than two cars to the rear of the freeway toward Watts. Once she pulled into the parking lot of her modest new apartment in the ‘hood, Valentino slid his Cadillac into the empty space to the left of her car. He emerged from his vehicle at the same time as she got out of hers.
Rosaria’s eyes went wild with shock at the sight of her erstwhile pimp and a sharp shriek left her open mouth while the shopping bags fell from her trembling fingers to the ground below. Fear’s icy fingers crept up and down her spine as she stood face-to-face with the devious Lucien Valentino.
“Calm yo’ nerves, Rosy,” he said, displaying the flowers. “I brought you roses—see? Aren’t they lovely? Just like you, sweetheart.”
“What the hell are you doing here, Lucien? What do you want from me?”
Valentino gently placed the bouquet in her hands and draped his arm around her shoulder, drawing close to the shaken young woman. Rosaria was in a complete state of disbelief as Valentino kissed upon her slender neck and fondled her ample behind as they leaned against her Toyota. She wanted to reach down into her purse and slice his face with the switchblade she kept for protection, but the inherent fear that a prostitute holds for her pimp caused her to think better of that idea. She knew the man who stood beside her better than most others. She’d seen firsthand what he was capable of doing when angered. She thought about the time he’d beaten a john to death with a crowbar for spitting on his car. She’d cried out for him to stop, but her pleas had fallen on deaf ears as Valentino continued to beat the poor bastard. By the time the bodyguards wrestled their boss off the sex customer, he was already dead, his face reduced to a bloody mess.
Rosaria’s voice trembled with trepidation as the pimp’s hand settled gently around her throat.
A tear fell down her beautiful face and she swallowed hard as she attempted to speak, “Papi...it...it wasn’t me—it was that man, that white man...he had a gun and he forced me—“
“Baby, don’t worry ‘bout that cracka. I got that covered already. He’s a dead man walkin’ and don’t even know it,” Valentino said.
“Papi, please believe me when I tell you that I had nothing to do with him coming over to the house, with all that drama.”
She fidgeted with nervous energy and mumbled, stuttering, becoming more anxious by the minute. Valentino seemed pleased by the girl’s discomfort and stammering speech.
“Damn right, you nervous as a muthafucka, ain’t you?” he said. “I tell ya what, how ‘bout we step into yo’ little whip here an’ I’ll let you treat ya nose with a little bit o’ this good coke I brought fa ya?”
Rosaria’s eyes went wide as she zeroed in on the $100 mini Ziploc bag of powder dangling from Valentino’s fingers before her.
“Aiight, aiight,” he continued, “calm down, go ahead. Ladies first.”
Rosaria wasted little time unlocking the door and entering the vehicle. Instinctively she went into her handbag, taking out a small vanity case that flipped out into a vanity mirror. She watched as her ex-boyfriend shook out a hefty clump of cocaine onto the armrest sitting between them. Rosaria carefully lifted the vanity onto her lap, where she took a razor blade from Valentino and began rapidly chopping and spacing the coke before separating two thin lines of powder from the rest of the pile. She rolled up a crisp five dollar bill from her handbag and used it to greedily snort up the two lines of powder.
With her pretty brown eyes glazed over in a cocaine-induced daze, Rosaria prepared yet another line upon the mirror to snort, and then another after that, and another still. The little mound of cocaine slowly dwindled down to nothing, save for a small bit of white residue scattered on top of the glass.
“Don’t worry, I brought along an ounce o’ ‘girl’ just for you,” Valentino said while running his diamond ring-covered fingers through her silky, rich, ebony mane. “You betrayed me, Rosy, but it’s all good...I forgive you.”
Rosaria shot him a mean look before lowering her head down to snort the last bit of coke from the small bag lying on top of the dashboard. She took a bit of the powder on her index finger and smeared it across her gums, savoring the stringently bitter taste.
“You ran away not once, but twice, then you fucked around and snitched on me to that Nazi muthafucka...that’s not a very nice thing to do to ya man, now is it?”
“Fuck you, Lucien! I told you that the man had heat, didn’t I?! He put a goddamn gun to my head after he kidnapped me off the street! What was I s’posed to do?”
Rosaria was shaking from both anger and the cocaine. She ducked her head down toward the mirror, sniffing the remaining line of cocaine deeply up her nostril.
“You can have this ounce I got here, but to get it you gonna have ta break me off,” Valentino said casually. “I’m in need of some head, so getcha lips ready to polish this knob.”
“Sure, Papi...you know I love sucking that big dick of yours.”
“Cool,” he said, “well, what the fuck is you waiting for—Cinco de Mayo? Get on yo muthafuckin’ job, trick.”
Valentino leaned back comfortably against the cool, velvety fabric of the seat while Rosario worked to remove the pimp’s massive, curved cock from out of his trousers with careful consideration of the sheer size of the man’s member. Her full lips felt heavenly wrapped around the bulbous mushroom-like head of his dick. He felt himself throb with carnal bliss as his Latin lover orally worshipped his rigid, saliva-covered erection with skillful attention.
Grasping her dark, flowing hair in his clenched fist, he forced her down as he pumped himself vigorously into her warm, wet mouth until he felt that familiar feeling down deep in his nutsack, which came surging upward in a stream of the toe-curling satisfaction. Rosaria gulped a huge quantity of Valentino’s heavy ejaculate.
Licking the remaining cum from her luscious lips, the prostitute smiled devilishly as she placed her ex-pimp’s now flaccid meat back into his boxers before zipping up his designer slacks, knowing she’d earned the once of cocaine in grand whorish fashion.
Grinning like a Cheshire cat, Rosaria gladly took the hefty bag of powder from Valentino, stuffing it down into her oversized handbag as they exited the car and she stepped out into the cool air of the relatively silent parking lot. She threw her arms around him affectionately, while planting a long, sensual kiss on his lips. She then drew back a step or two, sheepishly hanging her head.
“Papi, I owe a lot to you for everything you’ve done for me so far, but...”
“Ssshh...ain’t no need for all that, baby,” Valentino said. “I know that you’re happy to be back here in East L.A. Shit, this here’s ya home, ain’t it? Aiight, then, hasta la vista, baby! I’ll be seein’ ya around from time to time.”
Valentino smacked Rosaria playfully on her ass before walking over toward his parked Cadillac. He had scarcely gotten into his ride before the young Latina disappeared from view into her apartment building where she no doubt immediately set th
e scene for a long night of boozing, coke snorting and Hell Date reruns on BET with her girlfriends. Valentino drove away from the parking lot knowing that he’d no longer see the gorgeous Rosaria alive again.
The cocaine in which she’d been inhaling had been purposely mixed with the deadly mescaline containing the ultra-poisonous alkaloid cystine, purchased from an old Mexican herbal doctor. Valentino had the lethal beans ground into a fine powder to be added to the coke.
Late on the evening of July 23, 2002, the dead bodies of 23-year old Rosaria Gonzalez and two other unidentified Hispanic females would be discovered by the L.A.P.D at Gonzalez’s East Los Angeles apartment unit.
At first the deaths were attributed to drug overdoes, but later that week the city’s medical examiner concluded that the three women succumbed to an acute case of cystine poisoning. An investigation was launched in the case, but like so many inner-city murders, the search came up fruitless and was eventually placed on the back burner.
By that time Lucien Valentino was back in Lariat handling business as usual. He had said his goodbyes to Rosaria and he now thought of her very little, going so far as to forbid any of the other hookers to mention her name in his presence.
***
Wilhelm Von Strecker had few, if any confidants to turn to and as a result he found himself frequenting local taverns and pubs, drinking himself into an alcoholic stupor most evenings. It was the only way he could cope. His drinking problems grew worse as the summer came to a close, affecting both his job and his marriage adversely. At times, his drunken ramblings exposed the truths he knew about Meredith and Patient Zero, as well as his love for the attention-starved biologist. Eventually, these remarks forced his wife to file for a motion of legal separation on the grounds of adultery on September 17.
