The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 4

by Maxim Jakubowski

  She stared at me through eyelids nearly swollen shut.

  “Now!”

  Cassie Wilson pushed herself away from the wall and scooped her clothes off the bed, holding them against her naked chest as she hurried across the room.

  As soon as Cassie stepped through the open door I drove my knee into Jeremy’s groin. When he doubled over I introduced my knee to his face and smashed the butt of my revolver against the back of his head. He folded like a bad poker hand and I left him face down on the worn carpet.

  Outside the motel room I holstered my revolver, then steered Cassie toward my car, opened the passenger door and pushed her inside. I walked to the other side and climbed in beside her. Then I keyed the ignition, dropped the Chevy into gear, and pointed it toward the highway. As the front tyres bucked up onto the two-lane asphalt road from the gravel parking lot, I glanced at my passenger. She hadn’t spoken and she still held her clothes against her chest.

  “Your father hired me,” I explained. “He wants you home.”

  She didn’t respond.

  Half an hour later I stopped at a clean and well-lit convenience store/service station. I pulled the car around back next to the rest rooms. When Cassie made no effort to leave the car, I went into the men’s room, wet a handful of paper towels and returned.

  I dabbed them against Cassie’s face and she winced with pain. After wiping away most of the blood, I saw the damage her husband had done. I walked around the building and inside, returning a few minutes later with antiseptic and bandages. I did my best to patch up Cassie’s face, wondering how much her father would ultimately spend on reconstructive surgery.

  I finally convinced Cassie to release her death grip on the wad of clothes in her arms and I slipped her blouse onto her. I didn’t bother with her bra – I’d never been good getting one off a cooperative woman and doubted my ability to slip one onto an uncooperative woman – and I didn’t bother with her skirt. When I finished buttoning her blouse, I slipped one of my business cards into her pocket.

  Then I drove through the night, only the occasional pair of oncoming headlights and the two cars that raced past us reminding me we weren’t alone on the nearly deserted two-lane highway. Two hours into the trip Cassie asked, “Why’s he want me home?”

  I glanced at her in the darkness of the car. Cassie hadn’t moved since I’d dressed her.

  “He didn’t say.”

  She didn’t speak again.

  Dawn arrived in Waco only minutes ahead of us. I exited the interstate at Valley Mills and a few minutes later found my client’s home on Austin Avenue. I pulled into the circular drive and stopped before the wide brick steps. Before I could climb out of the car the front door opened and Richard Masterson greeted me. He wore blue silk pyjamas under his blue silk robe. Behind him stood Carvel Casey, a thick-chested bruiser in skintight jeans and a loose gray sweatshirt.

  By the time the two men had descended the steps I’d slid out of the Chevy. As they approached I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “She’s inside.”

  Masterson and Carvel helped Cassie from the car, up the steps and into the house. I followed, stopping in the foyer while they assisted Cassie up the sweeping curve of the staircase to the second floor. From behind and below I saw the holster at the small of Carvel’s back, the one usually hidden by his sweatshirt.

  I paced until Masterson returned.

  He pulled twelve C-notes from a gold money clip, counted the bills twice before placing them in the palm of my hand, then said, “Send me a bill for your expenses.”

  I didn’t count the money, didn’t even look down as I closed my hand around the crisp green bills and stuffed them into my pants pocket. I said, “Soon as I get to the office.”

  Elroy Johnson sat at my desk, awaiting my arrival. When I opened my office door and stepped inside, he asked, “Where you been all night?”

  “With a client.”

  “Fat little brunette?” he asked. “Face like a pomegranate?”

  “Why?”

  “Got somebody says they saw you walking out of a motel in Texarkana about six hours ago. Drove off with a brunette. Motel clerk says two people checked in. You wasn’t one of them. The brunette was.” He paused, pulled an unfiltered Camel from the pack in his shirt pocket and lit it with a silver Zippo. “So was the dead guy y’all left behind.”

  I’d hit Jeremy Wilson hard enough to knock him stone cold, but I hadn’t killed him. I didn’t react to Elroy’s narrative.

  “Single bullet, back of the head,” Elroy continued after a long drag from his cigarette. “Somebody messed him up good first.”

  “The police?”

  “My guy won’t remember you by the time they find him.” Elroy took another long drag from his cigarette, then tapped the ash off into a paper coffee cup from which he’d been drinking prior to my arrival. “The girl?”

  “She’s home.”

  “She say anything?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing important.”

  “That’s good,” Elroy said. He took one last drag from the cigarette, then dropped it into his cup. The cherry died with a quiet hiss when it hit the coffee dregs.

  Elroy stood, walked around my desk, and dropped the cup into the waste can next to the door. He gave me a two-finger salute then stepped into the hall, closing the door behind him.

  Texas is a big state, made smaller by men like Elroy Johnson. With loose connections to families in Kansas City, St Louis and New Orleans, they laundered money, brokered deals with the Mexican Mafia, and shared news of important events across the state. I’d known Elroy since childhood when I’d played high school football with his nephew, and our paths crossed more often than I ever cared to admit.

  I replaced Elroy in the chair behind my desk, feeling the still-warm leather against my backside. I booted up my Macintosh, prepared an expense report for Masterson, then prepared a deposit slip for most of the money he’d given me earlier that morning.

  With nothing scheduled for the rest of the day, I thumbed through a couple of science fiction magazines my kid had left behind the last time my ex had let him visit, then filed all the paperwork associated with a workmen’s comp fraud case I’d closed the previous week.

  By the time Millard Wayne Trout – “Millie” because his family still called his grandfather “Millard” – stuck his head in to my office and asked about lunch, I’d been dozing facedown on my desk for nearly an hour.

  “Not today,” I told him. “I have errands.”

  Millie nodded his shaved and tattooed head. “Suit yourself, Moe Ron. We’re getting wings.”

  He returned to his shop in the front of the building and I slapped myself awake. Then I grabbed the deposit and Masterson’s expense report and stepped out of my office. Only two other businesses remained in the building. An empty suite across from mine had once been occupied by a finance company too legitimate for the neighborhood and I walked down the hall between Millie’s Tattoos and Piercings and Big Mac’s Bail Bonds into the blinding midday sun.

  The rest of the week passed into history without another job landing on my desk. I felt every second tick away my bank balance, and I briefly considered looking for some kid’s missing poodle in hopes of earning the fifty-dollar reward.

  The following Monday, Cassie Wilson stepped into my office. Even though the swelling had subsided, and carefully applied makeup covered most of the bruising, she couldn’t hide the bandage across her flattened and reconstructed nose.

  I stood.

  “This you?” She handed me my card. Neatly thermo-graphed on the front were my name – Morris Ronald Boyette – and my contact information.

  “Yeah.”

  “Father says you brought me home.”

  “Regular chauffeur service.” I directed her into one of the two guest chairs, then settled into my seat.

  “I don’t remember much about that night.”

  “Wouldn’t expect you to.”

  “You shoot Jeremy?” she asked.


  “It matter much one way or the other?”

  She thought about her answer for a long time. Then she shook her head.

  “Then why’d you come?”

  She pulled an envelope thick with cash from her purse and dropped it on my desk. “Your expenses.”

  I let the envelope lie where she’d dropped it. “Your father could have mailed a check.”

  “I wanted to thank you,” she said. “For – for whatever you did that night.”

  I stood.

  She stood.

  I walked her from my office and down the hall to the street. A silver Mercedes idled at the curb, Carvel behind the wheel. He watched our reflections in the rearview mirror as I opened the rear passenger door and helped settle Cassie inside.

  “I ever need anything—?” She let the question hang.

  “Just call,” I said.

  I closed the car door and Carvel dropped the Mercedes into gear.

  Millie stepped outside and stood on the sidewalk next to me as the Mercedes pulled away. “Nice piece of work that one.”

  “Too rich for my blood.”

  “What’s with the nose?”

  “She had some work done,” I said.

  “Just the face?”

  “Far as I know.”

  Millie scratched the top of his head. He wore a wife-beater, exposing the tattoos covering his arms, hands and fingers. “Up for lunch?”

  I thought about the envelope of money still lying on my desk. “It’s on me.”

  When I returned with burgers, fries and sodas for both of us, Millie said, “Elroy’s in your office.”

  “How long?”

  “Ten minutes, tops.”

  I grabbed a fistful of fries and walked down the hall. I pushed my office door open and found Elroy sitting in my chair reading one of my kid’s science fiction magazines.

  “Get this,” he said without looking up. “The Hansel and Gretel witch? A time traveler. Where do these guys come up with this stuff?”

  I ate my fries and waited.

  Elroy closed the magazine. “Got a problem in Texarkana,” he said. “Good news, my guy, bottle of Thunderbird and he forgets his mother’s name. Bad news, he’s not the only one saw you there.”

  “Who else?”

  “Doctor. He’s at the motel boffing one of his nurses. He’s married, she’s married, still he does the Good Samaritan thing and steps forward.”

  “Identifies me how?”

  “Make, model, and color of car. Partial plate,” Elroy said. “Won’t be long before you’re questioned.”

  I knew the drill. Even though Elroy wasn’t my client this time, I’d worked for him many times before – even taking a bullet meant for his nephew. By collecting Cassie Wilson from Texarkana, I had stepped into Elroy’s shit and he wanted to ensure that I didn’t track it all across the police department’s carpet. I nodded.

  Elroy stood, then picked up the magazine he’d been reading. “Take this?”

  My son wouldn’t miss it. “Sure.”

  He stuffed the science fiction magazine in his jacket pocket and stepped past me. He turned at the door and looked back. “By the way,” he said, “they recovered the slug.”

  “Thirty-eight?” I asked.

  “Yep.”

  Jeremy Wilson’s family had his body transported home when the Texarkana coroner’s office finally released it. The mortician couldn’t reconstruct his face, so the family held a graveside memorial service in Crawford.

  Cassie Wilson attended her husband’s funeral, accompanied by her father and Carvel, and I met her upon her return home, arriving as they were ascending the front steps. I followed Cassie into and through the house, admiring the way her hips moved in her widow’s black dress.

  She settled onto a love seat in the garden room and motioned me into a seat opposite her. A moment later Carvel brought drinks, then backed out of the room and closed the pocket doors.

  “The police visited yesterday,” Cassie said.

  “And?”

  She tasted her wine, then continued. “They asked questions, wanted to know how I’d gotten home.”

  “What did you tell them?” I slowly spun my tumbler of Jack-rocks in my hand.

  “I told them I didn’t know.” She sipped at her wine. “I must have blacked out while Jeremy was beating me. Next thing I knew, I woke up in my own bed.”

  “They buy that?”

  A smile played across Cassie’s lips. “Had to,” she said. “It was the only thing I was selling.”

  Even though I had already seen Cassie naked, something about the way the black dress clung to her figure and the way she touched her hair and wet her lips with the tip of her tongue affected me in a way that her blatant nudity hadn’t. I felt my body respond and I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

  “And what are you selling now?” I asked. I placed my tumbler on the table, then stood.

  Cassie stood, too, and stepped close enough I could feel the heat radiating from her body. She placed one hand on my right biceps, feeling the muscles beneath my jacket. The hint of a smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “I never thanked you proper.”

  She stretched upward and planted her lips on mine. I felt her warm breath against my cheek, saw her eyes half close, and then I pushed her aside.

  I wiped her lipstick away with the back of my hand, then opened the pocket doors and left her standing in the garden room.

  Masterson stopped me in the foyer.

  “You married, Mr Boyette?” Masterson asked.

  “Once, long time ago.”

  “Kids?”

  “One,” I said. “A boy.”

  Masterson looked back toward the garden room, where Cassie now stood in the open doorway watching us. “Kids,” he said. “They’ll break your heart.”

  The next afternoon Lester Beeson had a job for me. He’d taken over Big Mac’s Bail Bonds twenty-seven years earlier when a disgruntled client emptied a shotgun in Macdonald Pearson’s face, and he called on me whenever one of his clients jumped bail.

  He tossed a Polaroid across the desk and I stared at the scarred face of a biker who’d spent time inside.

  “Assault and battery. Assault with a deadly weapon. Attempted murder. Discharging a weapon within city limits. Littering.”

  I looked a question at him.

  Lester shrugged. “He dropped the gun when he fled the scene.”

  Lester gave me Delbert “Deadwood” Woods’s last known address and the addresses of his known associates.

  “Like to have this one back,” Lester said. “His mama stands to lose her house, and she’s in the church choir with my mother. Won’t make Sunday dinner a pleasant thing if one of my mother’s friends comes up homeless.”

  I took the job and spent the afternoon on the phone, calling around until I found a mutual acquaintance who knew where to find Deadwood. Then I walked down the hall and offered Millie a few hours of evening work.

  Just before 8 p.m. we found Deadwood’s Fatboy parked on the front lawn of a mobile home in Bellmead. The single-wide belonged to an anemic blonde stripper who earned extra money servicing some of the town’s backsliding Baptists.

  Millie stationed himself outside the mobile home’s back door while I approached the front. I knocked but received no response. I tried the knob and found it locked. I stepped back, braced myself against the porch rail, and kicked.

  The door crashed against an end table, knocking a lamp to the carpet and sending a gray tabby screeching past me and into the night.

  From the back of the house, I heard a loud thud like a body falling to the floor and then a woman began crying. A door slammed open, heavy footsteps pounded halfway down the length of the mobile home, then another door crashed open and I heard the ringing sound of metal against flesh.

  “Hey, Moe Ron!” Millie shouted. “Come on back.”

  I followed the sound of Millie’s voice and found him standing over the half-naked body of Delbert Woods. Millie
had found a shovel leaning against the back fence and had swung it like a baseball bat when Deadwood crashed out the back door, catching the bail-jumping biker in the face with the flat of the shovel and dropping him to the ground.

  “He was carrying this.” Millie handed me a Glock nine-millimeter and I tucked it into my belt at the small of my back.

  We trussed up Deadwood, stuffed him into my car and drove him downtown. While Millie walked him into the police station and answered a few questions, I tossed Deadwood’s Glock into my glove box. When Millie finished, he rode with me to the tattoo parlor and slipped into his own car – a 1965 Mustang he’d rescued from a junkyard. I went to my office.

  “About time,” a woman’s voice said when I opened the door.

  I snapped on the light. Cassie Wilson sat behind my desk, a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the desk and a nearly full shot glass in her hand. Her sheer white blouse had been half unbuttoned and she wore no bra.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “Because I figured this is where you’d be,” she said. “Sooner or later.”

  Cassie stood and stepped toward me. It could have been the drink or it could have been on purpose, but she stumbled and fell against me, her heavy breasts pressing against my chest as I wrapped my arms around her to keep her from falling. I smelled her shampoo, her perfume, and the Jack.

  She tilted her head back. “I didn’t finish thanking you.”

  I tried to stand her upright. Before I could, Cassie wrapped her hands around the back of my neck and pulled my face down to hers. At first I resisted, but when she covered my lips with hers, I surrendered.

  She buried her tongue in my mouth and I sucked hard. As we kissed she peeled off my jacket, dropping it to the floor. I pushed Cassie away long enough to slip off my shoulder rig and hang it on the coat-rack behind the door.

  A few minutes later our clothes were strewn around my office and I had her bent over my knee.

  “I’ve been bad,” she said. “Very, very bad.”

  I spanked her naked ass again and again, so hard I left red palm prints on her pale white skin.

  I liked it and knew I shouldn’t. She liked it and didn’t know any different.