One Dead Witness

by Nick Oldham

  Despite himself, he responded ... until common sense prevailed. He eased her away.

  ‘Hey, what about hubby? If he strolls in here, I’m dead meat.’

  ‘Aw, fuck him,’ she said dismissively.

  Which was not a sentiment Kruger shared. Mario Bussola was a very feared and respected individual in Florida’s low-life, widely recognised to be the number one mobster in the state following the blood-soaked demise of Tony Corelli a couple of years before, who was then tops.

  Bussola, it was rumoured, had people put to death for far less contentious issues than French-kissing his wife.

  Joe Lilton rolled slowly over onto his back. He held his breath and listened. Next to him in bed lay his wife, Ruth. She was breathing heavily in a very deep sleep induced by several large glasses of wine and a couple of strong sleeping pills. ‘The worry’s over now,’ Joe had cajoled her earlier on their return from hospital. ‘Claire’s back home. You can relax, chill out. You deserve a good night’s rest. After all, you haven’t slept a wink for the last two what with worrying about Claire. Come on, off to bed now. Tomorrow we’ll get everything sorted out.’

  Once Ruth had supervised a hot bath for Claire, some supper and tucked her up for the night, she had been easy to manipulate by Joe. She had willingly supped the wine, almost a full bottle of Hock; easy to drink, cheap and extremely effective.

  Joe had had a few stiff brandies himself, whilst acting the concerned husband and father.

  When he’d suggested sleeping tablets and shown Ruth the box of Nitrazepam, there had been no resistance. She was already woozy as her jaded body had been an easy target for the alcohol.

  It didn’t take long for the combination to take effect. Less than fifteen minutes later, Joe steered. her to bed, helped her undress and eased her under the covers. After checking the hotel and briefly chatting to the night porter, Joe had also gone to bed in the family annexe at the rear of the ground floor.

  When he entered the bedroom, a bedside light was still on, but Ruth was fast asleep. Just to make certain, Joe had purposely crashed round the room, deliberately dropping things.

  Ruth did not even flinch.

  As he climbed in next to her, naked, Joe had smiled dangerously to himself. From past experience he knew she would be out of it for at least ten hours. Not even a bomb could have woken her. Joe had free reign.

  Just to be on the safe side, he prodded her. There was no reaction. Ruth was as good as dead.

  He lay by her side for a few more minutes, slightly concerned when she shifted, though all she did was flip over onto her back, mutter something incomprehensible, open her mouth and commence to snore gently.

  Joe even closed her mouth with the tip of his forefinger and then let her jaw drop open again. She stayed asleep. A feeling of elation zipped through him, coupled with a tight feeling in his throat.

  He reached down and grabbed his penis. It was already rock hard with expectation. He drew back the foreskin and squeezed his damp glans, drawing a stuttering breath.

  Carefully he peeled the duvet off himself, and sat up on the edge of the bed. The hardness of his curved erection pressed into his stomach. He stroked the length of it proudly and caressed his balls with his fingertips.

  He was feeling good. Alive. He stood up. It swayed in front of him. It was huge, throbbing urgently. She would love every painful inch of it.

  He glided out of the bedroom, his feet creeping along the deep carpet. Moments later he was at the far end of the hallway outside Claire’s bedroom. He pushed the door open.

  Claire’s teddy-bear nightlight glowed in the darkness, casting enough of a dim glow to allow Joe’s eyes to see into the room. Claire’s petite figure was curled up in a ball underneath the quilt. She moved when Joe opened the door, lifting her head to see.

  She had not been asleep, but had been ready, waiting fearfully for this moment.

  ‘Claire, you’re awake,’ Joe whispered, as if surprised. ‘I was checking to see if you were okay, darling.’

  ‘I am, so go away please.’ Her voice trembled.

  Joe stepped into the room, clicking the door closed behind him.

  Claire stiffened and drew the cover up to her chin. Joe took two steps across the room to the bed and settled down on the edge of it. Claire emitted a little whimper of fright.

  ‘Its okay, sweetheart,’ he reassured her. He reached over and stroked her hair. ‘It’s okay, don’t worry.’ The whimper metamorphosed into a despairing groan. ‘Now be quiet, honey. .. come on, don’t be afraid. . . you know you like it as much as I do. Give me your hand.’ She drew away from him, but he grabbed her with great strength. ‘That’s it, come on . . . touch me here - and don’t forget, it’s our little secret, so let’s make sure we don’t wake your mummy up.’

  This was the first time Kruger had been into one of the homes Felicity shared with Bussola. It was the one on Ocean Drive, South Beach, facing the Atlantic. The other two houses were too far away for Kruger to have been driven there in such a short space of time.

  Had he been less inclined towards wringing her neck, Kruger might have enjoyed the Grand Tour of the house that Felicity gave him. Impressed to see what crime could buy in terms of material possessions. As it was, the whole shooting match passed him by; even the less-than-subtle pause in one of the bedrooms when Felicity’s body language screamed out the word ‘screw’. When he didn’t respond to the invitation she gave him a look like he was a piece of shit and carried on with the tour.

  He dutifully followed, brooding intensely, aware that the two goons were lurking in the background shadows, ready to pounce should Felicity give the signal.

  Eventually they sat in a huge conservatory overlooking the outdoor pool (there was an indoor one, naturally). She poured him a very colourful drink which tasted like paraffin.

  ‘Why the hell have you dragged me out here?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘You’ve been avoiding me, Stevie.’

  ‘I haven’t. I’ve just not got round to returning your calls.’

  ‘Same as,’ she said childishly.

  ‘And anyway, what earthly reason would I have to call you, Liss? As far as I’m aware, our marital business has been finalised. You stung me for more than you deserved, I paid up, we’re even, you married Bussola.’

  ‘Aw, it’s not about money,’ she said with a flutter of her hand. ‘I got more money now than I ever had in my life. I’m rollin’ in the stuff.’

  ‘In that case,’ Kruger cut in, not one to miss a chance, ‘how ‘bout giving me back that quarter of a mill your shyster lawyer screwed outta me?’

  Felicity snorted dismissively. ‘Spent it. Every last godamned cent - as a gesture to our short, momentarily sweet, then very sour marriage.’

  ‘That figures,’ Kruger responded with a bitter tone, recalling a marriage that had been pretty much a shambles from day one.

  They had met at a point in time when both of them had been at a low ebb in their lives. Kruger was in a deep rough patch following the disappearance of his second wife with some creep of a Disney executive in Orlando. Kruger felt he had been struck by lightning because he had been truly, madly, passionately in love with the woman, worshipped the ground she glided over, even. For all that, she had dumped him with all the ceremony of taking the trash out, leaving a gaping hole in his heart.

  His response had been to throw himself into his work in a big way. Often he worked fourteen hours per day: never less than eleven. Then, because he had problems sleeping even after such exhausting hours, he found himself drifting through Miami nightlife; clubs, bars: strip-joints, often finding solace at four in the morning: clutching a half-empty bottle of bourbon.

  Since the age of fourteen, Felicity had been trying to make it big as a singer. She was always on the periphery of a big break and had been the backing singer for several big acts. She had released one single which sold a couple of thousand copies before sinking without trace.

  When she hit her thirties her agency dr
opped her like a hot fajita; it became apparent that despite her good looks and superb voice, she lacked that certain ‘something’ to set her apart from the crowd. And she had passed into that dangerous decade in life when women do not become stars.

  She gravitated south, following club and hotel work, hit the bottle, dabbled in dope, and managed to eke out a reasonable living as a hotel singer around. Miami and Fort Lauderdale. It was in a hotel in the latter town at three in the morning that she met Kruger, clinging precariously to a bar stool.

  After exchanging their tales of woe, the next logical step for two lonely people was obvious. That same night they booked into a suite, ripped each other’s clothes off, fell onto the bed and humped way past dawn. They emerged three days later, much the worse for wear.

  A whirlwind romance followed, with little thought for future compatibility. Marriage seemed the natural progression, though each soon discovered that a relationship based solely on mutually-attracted genitalia does not make for a lasting partnership.

  Living together as man and wife proved to be a horrendous experience for both.

  Felicity was naturally a slob. She kept late hours, slept all day.

  Kruger, on the other hand, was a well-ordered man who liked routine and tidiness. When he eventually got himself back on an even keel and out of the bottle, he realised that returning home to an apartment which looked like it had been burglarised and a wife who was still in bed - usually full of crumbs - was not what he wanted.

  The disputes between them were out of this world.

  Then one night Felicity was singing in a grotty hotel in Lemon City owned (although she did not know this at the time) by Mario Bussola. He happened to be in the audience and became smitten by her gravelly voice and curvaceous appearance. After her set, he summoned her to a private room and they almost immediately began an adulterous relationship; Bussola also gave her a fat contract to sing in his chain of six hotels.

  She fell in love with the overweight gangster.

  It was the end for her and Kruger. Though she was technically responsible for the downfall of the marriage, that didn’t mean she left the relationship without a fight for a huge percentage of Kruger’s stash.

  Kruger wasn’t sorry to see her go.

  Back in the present, Kruger glanced down at his gold Rolex. With a quick grin he thought maybe he was being too harsh. A few good things had come from the brief relationship: the London honeymoon, the Rolex, the sex - which had been tremendous - and he had recovered his self-esteem.

  He smiled at her and sighed. She did look good sitting there in her work-out gear, the spandex clinging tightly to the shapely outline of her body.

  ‘So, c’mon, what’s all this about? I didn’t return your calls and you have me kidnapped by two extras from Goodfellas. It’s a federal offence, honey.’

  She shrugged and took a sip of her multi-coloured cocktail through a wiggly straw which looked like a piece of spaghetti. ‘So go to the fibbies, ya big cry baby.’

  ‘Liss,’ Kruger said firmly, using the pet name he had always called her, ‘stop assin’ around and tell me what’s goin’ on.’

  ‘How’s business?’

  ‘Good to booming.’

  ‘I wanna hire you for some detective work.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I want somebody followed - to see what they’re gettin’ up to.’

  ‘Is that it?’ Kruger growled. ‘You drag me here for that? Why in hell didn’t ya tell the fucking telephonist? She woulda sent someone round.’

  ‘I don’t just want someone, Stevie . . . I want you.’

  His eyes narrowed, suspicion growing in him like a cancer. ‘I’ll send one of my best guys round in the morning. I don’t follow people any more.’

  She shook her head stubbornly. ‘No, honey. I want you.’

  Kruger leaned back in the cane chair. It creaked under his weight. There was the remnant of an ache in his back where he’d been punched.

  ‘Why?’

  She pouted. ‘It’s Mario.’ Her eyelids flickered, eyes moistened. ‘I think he’s being unfaithful.’

  Kruger staunched a belly laugh. At last - something to brighten up his day again. ‘Expand.’ He interlocked his fingers around a knee and bowed forwards like a counsellor whilst trying to keep a straight face.

  ‘Oh, it’s just - oh, I don’t know - something, y’know? The hours he keeps, the times he doesn’t come home, how we ever only seem to screw maybe once a month, if that. God, I feel so horny. I think he’s got someone else, Stevie,’ she concluded desperately.

  ‘Felicity,’ Kruger stated. ‘Your husband, as you well know, is one of the biggest and most feared gang bosses in the United States of America. The fact that he has time to come home at all is a blessing. He’s a busy guy. He’s got fingers to break, debts to collect, people to blackmail and intimidate ... and all those groupies hangin’ around. It must be very tempting for him. He’s only human - like you once were. And if you think he married you for any other reason than to have a good-looking woman on his arm, you’re kidding yourself.’

  ‘You’re a son of a bitch, Steve,’ she said tightly.

  ‘I tell the truth, that’s all. And to be completely honest with you, Liss, I hope he is seeing someone else. It’ll teach you a lesson.’

  ‘Our marriage was over long before I slept with Mario,’ she protested.

  Kruger looked at her pityingly for a few moments, tutted, slapped his thighs and said, ‘Gotta go, babe.’

  ‘I still want to hire you.’

  ‘Naw - it’s company policy not to get involved in anything which remotely stinks of the mob. Mario Bussola is very definitely mob. I don’t like to find my operatives with their brains blown out, so the answer’s no. Now, if you’d be kind enough to beckon your human Dobermans back here, I’d like my vehicle keys.’ He stood up.

  ‘Sit down, Steve,’ she ordered him, a hard edge to her voice, an uncompromising expression on her face. Something made him obey. ‘You will work for me - and you wanna know why? I’ll tell ya - because if you don’t I’ll put, you out of business like that.’ She snapped her fingers with a crack. ‘I can ruin you, Stevie babe, because I know things about you, don’t I? Things you would hate the Feds to know.’

  A trickle of sweat rolled down the valley between Danny’s breasts. Her whole body was on fire, every nerve-end tingling, overloading her with pleasure. She could feel her toes against the sheets, the skin on her inner thighs holding and moving over the skin on the outer thighs of the man underneath her. His fingers kneaded into her backside, his hands then caressed her breasts, fingering and rolling her dark, purple nipples, tugging them gently, so they became long and hard. But above all she could feel every inch of him deep inside her and the growing sensation radiating out from her clitoris as she ground hard against his pubic bone.

  She shuddered, threw back her head, arched her spine, rising and holding him there, the tip of his penis wedged at the entrance to her throbbing vagina. It was coming. They were coming. She could keep him positioned there and not move and know she would climax, but he was there too and she could feel he was hard and big and ready for his orgasm.

  She gazed down at him. They locked eyes.

  ‘I think you’ve hit the button,’ she moaned.

  She rammed herself down onto him at the same time as, he thrust upwards and they collided in an intense, writhing, wild orgasm which seemed to go on for ever.

  When it was eventually over and Danny had got her breath back, she rolled languidly off him and reached for her cigarettes on the bedside cabinet. She lit two simultaneously and handed one across. He took it gratefully from her fingers.

  Danny inhaled the strong smoke deeply, held it in, then blew it slowly out. Her heart slackened its pace as the magical sensation of just having had great sex ebbed away.

  ‘That was fantastic.’

  Danny sighed. She turned to look at him, brushing her hair away from her eyes. ‘I know, Jack ... but it’s goin
g to have to stop. This can’t go on. This is definitely the last time.’

  Words she had said many times before.

  The difference was - this time she meant them.

  Felicity’s mouth turned into a wicked smile of triumph. She sat back, took a long draw on her straw, and watched her ex-husband’s face turn deep red.

  She did not have to spell it out for him. He knew exactly what she meant. A shiver of fear rippled down his spine. He licked his dry lips.

  ‘Things you would hate the Feds to know.’

  The words echoed around in his head.

  In truth, what she’d said was an understatement. Not only would Kruger not like the Feds to know, he’d be darned upset if the CIA got to know, absolutely desolate should the State Department ever find out, or for that matter any godamned person walking the streets.

  What Felicity was referring to was the time when he left the cops and started out in business, and the first six months of trading were hell on earth. He struggled to make any sort of living, was on the verge of giving up and becoming a security guard in a shopping mall.

  Then, out of the blue, he was approached by two different people on the same day.

  One had goods to sell.

  The other wanted to buy.

  Knowing that no such circumstances could be purely coincidental, Kruger sussed he had been targeted because the parties obviously didn’t want to be seen doing business directly with each other. They needed the buffer or an agent and Kruger, down on his luck, seemed the perfect man.

  He had wrestled with his conscience, his mind in a turmoil.

  It was possible he was being set up by the authorities for some reason. But if he wasn’t, it was just the piece of luck he needed. One which would kick-start his business to the tune of two hundred grand in fees.

  With both eyes wide open, conscious that if the deal went belly-up he would become an inmate of Dade County Correctional Institute, not just a visitor, he took the chance.