Thrills

by K. T. Tomb

  “And what’s your idea of a good time?” asked Agent Hernandez.

  It was way too early for me to think clearly, especially matching wits with an FBI agent who clearly had an agenda. I sat on the corner of the overstuffed reading chair and crossed my arms over my chest.

  “What’s this about?” I asked. I looked at the girl when I asked this question. I liked looking at the girl. And from what I could tell, she liked looking at me, too. Then again, that could have been my wildly overactive imagination. Still, she stared at me steadily as Agent Hernandez answered my question.

  “We have two dead women,” he said, “they were friends. Nothing to connect their deaths to each other except for one thing: both had your name and number in their cell phones.”

  I wasn’t sure I had heard him correctly and asked him to repeat what he had just said. He did. The words were exactly as I had heard them the first time: two dead girls.

  “And they’re linked to me?” I asked.

  Hernandez was watching me. I watched him, too. I didn’t like the way he was looking at me; in particular, I didn’t like his accusatory look.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “And you think I had something to do with it?” I asked.

  “I said no such thing,” said Hernandez. “Is that a question we should be asking you?”

  I felt a bit flustered. It was almost noon and I had been dozing on and off when the doorbell rang. I got up most days at noon. And if a girl was staying over, there was a good chance we might not ever leave the bedroom, except to refuel. I usually wake up and have a morning coffee. Or, more accurately, an afternoon coffee. As it was, I had had nothing, and I felt vulnerable.

  “I’m going to make some coffee,” I said. “Can this wait a few minutes?”

  Hernandez grinned easily. His nose was still red from where his cool cop shades had set. “They’re already dead, Mr. Ryans. Take your time.”

  I didn’t like Hernandez. I didn’t like the way his nose was red and pinched-looking. I didn’t like the way he surveyed my home as if he could somehow piece together my life story from the artifacts within. I didn’t like how close he stood to Agent Hunter, as if he thought I might suddenly attack her, as if she somehow needed protection from me.

  I made my coffee and was soon back in the living room, and invited the agents to sit around my coffee table. They both did. Agent Hernandez made a big show of opening his coat and revealing his pistol in his shoulder holster. Agent Hunter sat neatly, almost demurely, at the far end of the big sofa.

  Is she that tame in bed? I wonder if she prefers to be dominated, or to do the dominating. A woman with the full force of the federal law behind her? I wouldn’t mind if she cuffed me, or if I did the cuffing, I thought to myself.

  For whatever possible reason there could have been, at that precise moment she reminded me of a burlesque girl, one that would dress up as the dirty, sexy cop. I’d seen a great musical on TV with something like that in it recently.

  What was the name of that damn movie? I thought absentmindedly. I was so far away in my wonderment that I don’t even know if either agent said anything to me at the time. That gorgeous blond singer with the amazing tits starred in it… I think Cher too. Ummm…. oh, yeah, that’s it!

  There probably isn’t one man who saw that movie who wasn’t secretly wishing that Christina Aguilera would pull them over one dark night to take down their particulars and maybe take a bribe of a hot romp on the hood of her squad car.

  In the movie’s hotly anticipated scenes, the sultry singer donned fire engine red lipstick, a leather bustier and a cop cap as she sang and danced sexy numbers alongside Cher, who didn’t look too bad herself. The golden-haired goddess played a small-town girl called Ali Rose, who moved to Los Angeles where she found work in a saucy burlesque show.

  I was in my chair-and-a-half. My coffee was already half gone, always the pessimist, and I was finally thinking straight.

  “So who are the women?” I asked.

  Agent Hernandez told me. As he did so, both agents studied me closely, looking for a reaction. They got one. Shock and surprise.

  “You know them, then?” asked Hernandez.

  “Yes. Well, one of them. The other one, I’m not sure about. But I had a missed call from an unknown number not too long ago.”

  “What was your relationship with the one?”

  I sipped my coffee. “Purely sexual.”

  “What does that mean?” he asked.

  But I wasn’t looking at him. I was looking at Agent Hunter. Her eyes had dilated visibly with my last words, and she bit the corner of her lip, rolling it into her mouth and sucking on it ever so slightly. It was a completely physical reaction that I wonder if she was even aware of.

  Strange. FBI. I would have thought that the idea of… an entire lack of commitment on my part, or hers, would have been repulsive. Very interesting, I thought to myself.

  “It means exactly what I said.”

  “You had no other relation other than sex,” Hernandez asked.

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “How did you meet these women?” Hunter followed up.

  “They contacted me,” I said.

  “Contacted how?” I should not have been surprised by this question. Every move of her body indicated that this question came from a much more personal place. The professional context clearly gave her the right to ask it, but it did not matter to me. The emotion was writ on her face.

  “An email.”

  “They contacted you for sex?”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “Are you a… what... what do they call guys like you?” Hernandez asked, disgust playing across his thick, Neanderthal-like features.

  “A gigolo,” I said, “and, no, I’d never call myself a gigolo.”

  “But you just said they contacted you for sex…?” Hunter trailed off.

  “A gigolo gets paid to have sex with women,” I replied, finding her eyes, and holding her gaze.

  “And you don’t get paid,” asked Hernandez.

  I saw the bait and switch tactic coming from a mile away. That was my livelihood, my very enjoyable and lucrative livelihood, and the agents were trying to get me to expose it.

  “Now, Agent Hernandez,” I said, “You and I both know that that is highly illegal.”

  I paused to take in his expression and grinned.

  “Why did these women contact you for sex?” asked the FBI agent.

  I sipped my coffee and studied Agent Hunter. She was sure interesting to look at. And getting more interesting the longer I studied her. I liked her pouty lower lip. I liked the fact that she wore little to no makeup. She was real, tough as nails... yet soft, too. She had long, graceful lines. As a person who, when not spending my time buried in a woman, enjoyed the outdoors, something about her reminded me of a goose or a duck in flight. Long, clean lines. From her legs, through her hips, into her neck.

  “They contacted me because they needed me,” I said.

  “Needed you for what?” Hernandez asked.

  “Sex,” I said, looking straight at Agent Hunter again. I could tell that something was getting her going. She had the flush—the slight reddening of her face at her cheeks, along the sides of her neck that I could see, and across her chest.

  “Both women were married, though…” Hernandez said almost stupidly.

  “Married women need sex, too,” I said, and laughed.

  I hoped Agent Hunter would laugh, too, but she looked away suddenly. I saw that she was wearing a wedding ring.

  “This is hardly funny, Mr. Ryans.”

  “Of course it isn’t. I understand that these women are dead. And I understand that their husbands must be upset. I apologize if it seems like I’m making light of the situation. I simply meant that… after a while… after children, after years of marriage… intimacy… slows down..”

  “There’re two dead women here, and both have been, ah, serviced by you recently.”

&nbs
p; I said nothing. My coffee was almost done. I was saddened to think the women were dead. It had not been only recently by my count, months actually, that both women, within two or three weeks of each other, had lain in my bed, naked and moaning and wet. Well, the one for sure. The second one was probably the person I had a missed call from. But every woman I met usually ended up naked and moaning in my bed. I smiled to myself knowingly.

  “So this is news to you that these women are dead?” asked Hernandez.

  “Yes.”

  “So you did not stay in contact with them?” Hunter asked.

  “I never stay in contact with them,” I said. “Any further contact has to be initiated by them through the same means as the first contact.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that after I sleep with them, we’re done until they have the need for me again.”

  Hernandez turned to Hunter. “Are you following this?”

  “Yeah Hernandez, I am following this.” And she turned to me and said, “this is what I’ve got so far. Feel free to correct me if you need to.” Ah, I thought to myself, she must really enjoy being dominated then. “Married women find you. Presumably, there is something wrong with their marriages, so they need some kind of escape. You give them that. Then, when they’re finished with you, you never see each other again. Unless they contact you again. In which case, it’s basically back to step two and repeat. Does that sound right to you, sir?”

  “You’ve pretty much got it right,” I replied. There were comments I could have made about finishing, especially with me, but I left them to lie.

  Hunter said, “The one thing I’m missing is this; explain how they find you, and explain what you provide them.”

  I drank the last of my coffee and set the empty mug on my glass coffee table. When I spoke, I spoke only to her.

  “You see, that’s just it. How they find me, I do not know, nor do I ask. I assume it’s on a word-of-mouth basis. The extent of my relationship with these women consists of a few emails to set up a weekend together and to let them know my ground rules. Once that is done, they tell me where they have always wanted to go, and I buy tickets and we fly out and meet with each other for the weekend or week or however long their husband will be gone, and after that I don’t hear from them until they email me again. The service I provide them is simple; I give them the best sex they’ve ever had. I give them an escape. I give them a world that they can only imagine, that they’ve longed for ever since they said, ‘I do,’ because they know that they can’t have what I offer. They don’t get what I offer at home, and they understand they can’t get it anywhere else. Simply put, I’m the best at what I do. There is the sex component, sure, which is always phenomenal. I don’t fail to deliver on that part of it. Where I am… apart from the rest of the people who do what I do is in the experience I give them.”

  Chapter Two

  The safety gear went snugly over his head and ears. So did the safety goggles.

  He smiled to himself as he lifted his favorite sidearm ready to fire the first shot. He remembered being in a similar booth in a faraway city a few years before when he’d fired a Desert Eagle .50 for the first time. The damn gun had carried such a kick… it had nearly hit him in the face on the first shot. He’d recovered quickly though and fired off every bullet in the magazine.

  Now he stood there ready to fire his regular gun. It was freshly cleaned and in need of a test. Safety off. Draw, steady, aim, fire. Safety the weapon. Replace the gun in the holster. Repeat eight times until the magazine was emptied. Whrrr rrr rrr. Bring the target up to check it then reload the pistol. Check magazine, cock the M9. Safety on. Holster it again. Safety off. Draw, steady, aim, fire. Safety the weapon. Replace the gun in the holster. Repeat eight times until the magazine was emptied. Holster weapon. Check target.

  He was pissed off by the third round and slammed the Berretta down on the prep counter in the small shooting booth.

  The gun was fine. It was firing perfectly, but his aim was off by a damn mile and his hands wouldn’t stop shaking. He’d been on mark for only perhaps two bullets out of nine. On second thought, it was possible that he should have given himself the time to sight the target a little better, but on his worst day that would still have earned him a hit on at least seven of his nine. For years, he had relied on the speed of his cognitive functions to align the gun with the target in the distance and fire on it in one fluid movement. But now it was becoming obvious that he was losing his touch. The degenerative nature of the chronic carpal tunnel syndrome that ravaged both his wrists was frustrating, to say the least. If he could correct that, his aim would have been good enough to rival any military sniper. There was no fucking way he was going to let any kind of doctor cut into his hands… or any other part of his body, for that matter.

  The thought came to his mind unbidden.

  That was part of a past that he didn’t particularly cherish. A lot of people still thought that PTSD was a figment of the imagination of cowardly, weak-minded men who didn’t want to reenlist for more tours of war. But he knew the real dark truth of it. Indeed, he was reminded of it every night when he tried to sleep. Usually, the images would prevent him from doing so and he would hear the explosions and the screams around his ears until he fell from the bed crumpled into a corner screaming and crying himself into exhaustion before passing out. At other times, he would drift off—usually with a pharmaceutical or alcoholic aid—only to be violently awoken by his frighteningly realistic nightmares of the war zones he’d been in.

  He shook his head to free his thoughts of the symptoms of his mental and physical illnesses and looked down at the gun on the counter. He sighed, picked up his prized Beretta M9 pistol and stepped back from the target range. He tenderly, even with a now violently shaking right hand, put the safety on and holstered the weapon one last time. His ‘old reliable.’ He’d never let go of it even when he lay dead in his coffin. That gun had sent many a person to theirs… man and woman alike.

  On that note, he would not be letting go of his newest project, that was for sure. He had a reputation to uphold, if not the lifestyle to go with it. With his hands quickly failing, it was imperative that he executed as many contracts over the next twelve months as possible. He’d done a very New York thing by setting an actual retirement date for himself. He snickered at the thought, considering his line of work wasn’t exactly the kind of job that offered a 401K. He hadn’t touched a penny of his veteran’s pension payments since the day they’d started rolling in. He also didn’t take any form of employment outside of his twenty hour a week job as a greeter at the local big box store so he would still qualify as disabled. Earnings from his contracts were paid in cash and went straight into a safe deposit box at the bank.

  Leaving the weapon firing area, he paused to drop a couple quarters into the vending machine and grab a Coke. He popped the tab and took a long drink before lighting his last cigarette. He leaned against the wall and looked over the head of the blonde receptionist with the huge tits, out at his Jeep sitting in the parking lot. He took a deep draw and exhaled the smoke in a long line. As usual, Joanna tutted at him and pointed to the no smoking sign that hung above his head without even looking at it. He enjoyed their little game, although they had perhaps spoken only twenty words to each other in the two years she had been working at the place. He knew her name was Joanna but that was mostly due to Larry, the owner, trying his best to get her into his office for every little thing. That and her name tag.

  He pushed the door open and stepped outside, then crossed the parking lot to put a booted foot on the thirty-five-inch tire of his Jeep.

  Damn, he loved that vehicle. He’d bought it new when he’d been discharged from the

  Army. He’d sunk every penny of his wartime pay into it and bought it cash up front. He still remembered the flabbergasted, and then disapproving, look on the salesman’s face when he’d said the words ‘cash price.’ For that sole reason, he’d got up and found t
he only female sales representative in the dealership and sat down at her desk instead. She’d been over the moon when he had decided to invest in having a brush guard installed and the suspension lifted.

  If this contract was going to be as easy as the client had insinuated, he’d be a whole lot closer to his ‘retirement’ goals at the end of the month than he’d expected to be. Seventy-five thousand dollars closer, to be exact.

  He looked around and then took a cursory glance at his watch. It was three o’clock on the dot; she wasn’t late yet for their 3:15 meeting. He smiled crookedly again thinking of how intimidating it should be for his female client to meet a potential hired gun outside a shooting range.

  He looked up at the sky. It was clear with not a cloud in sight which was characteristic of his neck of the woods all year round. It was the real reason he’d chosen the parking lot as the meeting place; easy access to a vending machine which was always stocked with cold beverages of every kind and comfortable benches beneath tall wide trees which were scattered in the general landscape of the Nevada city. The sweltering desert heat poured down on his head from the sun high above him. Through the Jeep’s open window, he grabbed his cowboy hat and ducked under the branches to recline in one of those very benches he was thinking of. Tardiness was not one of his customs, although it appeared apparent to him after years in military duty the philosophy was woefully undersubscribed to by the general populace. Just like his services, it appeared.

  Fortunately for his limited patience, it wasn’t long before a sleek sedan pulled up to the parking lot entrance and glided into the spot beside his Jeep. The midday light reflected off the shiny surface, the glint bouncing momentarily off his expensive designer aviator sunglasses. You never skimped on sun protection in the desert, never. He squinted at the sedan, fixing the customary expression of disengagement on his face to hide the fact that all his senses were on high alert. That was the real customary reaction in this situation.

  The door of the Mercedes SLK opened and the voluptuous driver stepped out carefully, placing one black high heeled Louboutin pump on the ground at a time before raising her perfectly rounded behind from the car seat.