Deadly Phine

by Darrell King

  “Welcome to my humble abode. Or, should I say, this right here is my crib, you dig?”

  Meredith chuckled lightly at her host’s humor while admitting the man’s good taste in interior decoration. She’d expected to find a tacky-looking, loud-colored, cheap motel-like brothel, but instead she was standing in the middle of a plush, sweet smelling oasis of Zen-inspired serenity.

  “You been workin’ kinda hard here lately, on top o’ all that research type shit you do for livin’ so I want you to unwind, calm yo’ nerves, baby girl, ‘cause guess what? You ‘bout to get the massage of yo’ life.”

  She was led toward a mid-sized back room illuminated entirely by candlelight, previous lit by the now absent prostitutes. A leather massage table was a welcome sight to the slightly intoxicated biologist who, without being asked, began shedding her outer garments, en route to the table before her. She climbed onto it and stretched herself out, face down on the cool, comfortable leather. Valentino licked his lips lustfully as he gazed upon the surprisingly curvaceous physique possessed by Meredith.

  Placing a touch of hot almond oil to the tender skin of her luscious ass cheeks, he worked his way slowly down her shapely legs, kneading them as he worked the oil onto her lower body before moving his hands back up across her buttocks. He moved onto her back, soon leaving her glistening within the warm glow of the flickering candles.

  “My God, Lucien, you are good,” Meredith murmured. “Really good. I want you inside me. I want to feel every inch of you . . . I don’t care about your condition because I’ve already injected myself with Biomax-O. I knew that it was just a matter of time before I would give myself to you. Who am I kidding? I’m a lonely lady, Mr. Valentino, and I’m in need of a man . . . so what I need is for you to do what you do best. Take that schlong of yours out of those Bermuda shorts and fuck my brains out!”

  Valentino slowly unbuckled his shorts, allowing them, along with his boxers, to drop down around his ankles.

  “You ain’t said nuttin’ but a word, sweetheart,” he said, stepping out from the crumpled clothing on the floor. Meredith’s eyes went wide with astonishment at the very sight of the pimp’s sizeable penis, remarkable in both its length and girth; the slightly curved, heavily veined member hung thick and menacing between his muscular thighs like an ebony python poised for attack.

  Hopping off the massage table and onto the soft carpet below, Meredith received the black stud into her awaiting arms, wincing from painful bliss as she felt every inch of his huge dick filling the walls of her hot pussy. Her breathing came in hyperventilating spurts as Valentino thrusted himself into her with raw, unfettered passion. Orgasms unlike any she’d ever experienced caused her entire body to tremble with satisfaction.

  During the course of their vigorous lovemaking, Valentino prompted Meredith to switch positions. She obeyed eagerly, adopting the classic doggy-style pose while reaching back and spreading her plump cheeks with both hands, fully exposing the moist pink opening of her yawning vagina. He mounted her, sweaty and still aroused, smacking the length of his thick man meat against her pale booty before easing the bulbous head into her slit.

  Meredith squeezed, moaned and panted with zeal while Valentino aggressively rode her like a horse until he skeeted off a load of tainted semen deep within her vaginal walls.

  Both of them spent from their lusty afternoon tryst, they fell fast asleep in each other’s arms while the scented candles slowly burned down to a mass of waxy nothingness.

  May 19, 2002

  1661 Falcon Crest Way

  3:56 p.m.

  Meredith, upon hearing the incessant buzz beyond the living room with mild irritation, paused the DVD featuring “Billy Blank’s Beginner’s Tae-Bo” and made her way toward the front door. She peeked through the peephole to discover that it was none other than Wilhelm who stood upon her front porch. She greeted him with a weak handshake as she opened the door.

  She looked fit and really hot in her workout leotard, Wilhelm thought as he stood gawking at her in the doorway. She noticed the gleam in his intense blue eyes and immediately knew that something negative would be forthcoming.

  “Good afternoon, Doctor. How might I assist you today?” she asked with a hint of sarcasm, which instantly caused him to tighten his jaw.

  “You haven’t set foot in the lab for the past week and we haven’t gotten so much as a phone call from you as to your condition, adverse or otherwise, or your whereabouts. Have you completely lost your mind, Meredith? Tell me!”

  She smirked briefly, and then took his hand, leading him into the threshold of her home while closing the door behind them.

  “Tell you what?” she asked. “Why don’t you have a seat and let me get you something to drink. What would you like? Let’s see . . . I’ve got Gatorade, lemonade, diet Coke, an unopened bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and . . . two bottles of Heineken. Or, if you’re in the mood for something a little stiffer, I can fix you up a kickass martini.”

  He angrily shook his head as he stood in front of the fluffy green couch.

  “I’ve been covering for you all this time and I’m going to level with you, Meredith. I just can’t do it anymore. Suspicions are rising throughout Coventry Labs about you and I’m telling you, it’s not good.”

  Meredith paced the floor, back and forth with her head hung down and her hands behind her back in contemplation. Finally, after a few seconds, she stopped in front of Wilhelm and faced him with a look of cool indifference.

  “Is that why you came over here? To try and scare me, Wilhelm? Dude, I don’t freakin’ care about any one of those douchebags at Coventry or even the higher-ups in the Illuninati for that matter, okay?” She yelled angrily, her face now glowing red.

  He shifted uncomfortably while the hot brunette stood before him.

  “You’re acting irrational, as always. I really do think you need to consider psychiatric help,” he said.

  “Really? Well then maybe I’ll just go to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and bring along a neat little briefcase filled with research papers, payment records and HIV10X cultures. Now wouldn’t that gain the attention of a whole lot of people? Then what will everyone do Wilhelm? Huh? Tell me...what would they—or you!—do in a situation like that?”

  “That would be blackmail, Meredith,” Wilhelm replied, “pretty damned evil, even for a cunt like you.”

  “Fuck you, asshole,” she snarled, slapping his face angrily.

  “You’re making a huge mistake, Meredith. You’re playing around with people and circumstances that are far beyond anything in your realm of reasoning. You’d be wise to return to work tomorrow morning, bright and early. And I’ll come up with an excuse for your prolonged absence from the lab,” he said, rubbing the left side of his reddening face. “I’m leaving now, but I must emphasize again—tomorrow at 9 a.m. sharp I expect to see you at your work station and ready for research.”

  She watched as her coworker walked through the door and descended the steps toward his white Jaguar. She slammed the door shut, leaning back against it while closing her eyes in contemplation of the enormity of her recent choices.

  ***

  La Perla, San Juan, Puerto Rico

  June 16, 2002

  12:22 p.m.

  Pulsating reggaeton music filled the surrounding streets with energetic melodies. Ghetto youth danced about freely while onlookers leaned out of windows and sat along low-lying rooftops to catch a glimpse of the local reggaeton star. Daddy Yank, as he was known, rode within a tricked-out apple green Cadillac convertible, waving to the boisterously loud crowd while tossing long-stemmed roses toward the attractive young mamis screaming for him along the cobblestone curb.

  While the reggaeton and salsa blared festively and powerfully from the street of Calle Norzaga Way, “Don” Lucien Valentino met with two of his former Puerto Rican bodyguards, who’d now gone on to become powerful drug traffickers in their own right. A small group of bandana-wearing hoodlums stood with arms crossed a shor
t distance away, just beside the tall, cracked tombstones of the Santa Maria Magdalena de Pazzi Cemetery. Inside, they gathered.

  Although they were now in business for themselves, neither they nor the rest of La Perla’s dope boys were eating as well as they had during the Don’s reign upon the island. Recently the Puerto Rican police as well as the National Guard had arrested many of the town’s true ballers, therefore drying up over 78 percent of the illegal drug traffic flowing through the crime-ridden barrio. The young men reached out to their former boss as he did not let them down, immediately taking a private plane to the island nation in an attempt to offer whatever help he could. Meeting in the cemetery was the most logical thing to do at this point, due to the vigilant police presence on the streets, carefully monitoring the raucous reggaeton concert.

  As he discussed business strategies with the Puerto Rican hustlers, Lucien noticed one of the youths acting strangely. Without hesitation, he called out in Spanish for the young man’s homeboys to bring him over. The boy tried to run, but was tackled by three other boys, who roughed him up on the way over to their stern-faced elders.

  Just as Valentino suspected, the boy was equipped with a wire. He looked at each of his cohorts, who nodded in silent agreement while the traitorous teen was stripped of the surveillance device and held tight by his captors. The boy’s eyes grew wide as he saw the wicked blade of the knife emerge in the Don’s grip.

  In a swift blur, Valentino’s right hand swung past the dope boy’s throat, opening up a fatal gash across his Adam’s apple. The boy cried out in pain for an earsplitting two seconds before gurgling on his own blood and crashing backward onto the muddied soil below. Three muffled shots from the man closest to Valentino put the dying youth out of his misery.

  Smoke, thin and wispy, wafted from the end of the silencer held by Valentino’s burly ex-bodyguard, who spat on the boy’s twitching corpse for good measure.

  Maybe this was the reason for their cop troubles, the men thought. Two of the other youths were then instructed to dump the teen’s body into one of the many 19th-century tombs dotting the ages-old graveyard. Immediately afterwards, the remaining four teens were searched thoroughly by the ex-bodyguards while Valentino held them at gunpoint. Though shocked and angered by the sudden lack of trust and rough treatment from their superiors, the dope boys wisely remained humble and silent after their release.

  With the drama now over, the seven criminals sloshed through the mud and tombstones toward the rear of a massive crypt, where they exchanged dope for money. Valentino accepts his friends’ measly four Gs for well over $25,000 worth of crack cocaine in an effot to stimulate the La Perla drug trade. Both of the beefy Puerto Ricans embraced Valentino gratefully, promising to put the addictive rocks to good use on the streets of the barrio.

  “Mucho gracias, mi amigo!” they said simultaneously.

  Valentino also handed over to them a black medical bag with two dozen vials of Biomax-O #2, for many of the residents of the barrio had contracted HIV5X from his days of running a brothel in La Perla.

  Valentino stuffed the money down into a small duffle bag hanging from his shoulder. Together the group of seven made their way out of the aged cemetery and began the long trek back to the barrio.

  When they arrived, the festivities were still going strong with a rousing salsa dance-off between neighborhood teenagers, much to the delight of the rapidly growing crowd along the busy street. From the rear of an old monastery emerged three policemen, who made a beeline for the iced-out group of thugs. The lawmen drew service revolvers as they approached, forcing the criminals back toward the monastery at gunpoint.

  There, the seven men were all thrown into the back of a van and whisked away from the barrio. The men endured an uncomfortable, bumpy ride in the rear of the rattling van, all the while listening to the policemen up front discuss the murderous details of what was in store for them.

  Valentino heard them talk about how, ever since the scientists left, more and more people had somehow contracted HIV. And it wasn’t just any HIV, but some new version of the virus that seemed to kill folks in only a few weeks. Many Puerto Rican cities had reported cases of the deadly strain, particularly Old San Juan and its barrios, such as Ballajà, Mercado, San Cristo and Marina. Hit as hard as they’d been by the alarming rash of AIDS deaths, Puerto Rican authorities essentially quarantined Old San Juan and San Juan alike, in a desperate attempt to contain the virus’ rapid spread. All the while, they had also been arresting and even murdering at times those who were thought to be the culprits in spreading it along to the island’s impoverished masses. Many men patronized Valentino’s brothel, which sat hidden from public view behind a lush tropical forest. And now those very same johns were either dead or dying with no more than a few weeks left in them, though still infecting others.

  A panic had overtaken the community at large, creating both fear and hatred for those living with the disease. It had been really ugly on Puerto Rico, and the timing couldn’t have been worse for Valentino to have come back. Even the citizens had recently adopted a violent stance against AIDS victims living among them. Over thirteen reports of various types of hate crimes ranging from simple assault to attempted murder began circulating weekly since early May.

  Valentino knew that once the vehicle stopped and they were forced out by the cops there would be no guarantee that bribe money would spare them their lives. Thinking quickly, he spied the National Guard uniform of the officer sitting on the passenger’s side of the vehicle. A member of the National Guard, a military outfit that had several key personnel secretly working along with the Sentinels of the Illuminati, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Army virologists in developing the Inner City Virus program. This would prove to be invaluable to him.

  The vehicle came to a sudden stop, and after a brief moment of tense silence, the back doors were abruptly snatched open. Everyone was, as they’d expected, searched thoroughly by several uniformed officers, who then relieved the men of their money, crack cocaine, Biomax-O and handguns before leading them at gunpoint to the outside of the van. The wire worn by the now dead teenage boy had revealed everything to the captors, even the fact that they were all HIV positive. They were handcuffed and then blindfolded before being shot once in the back of the head one by one. Valentino steeled himself as well as he could while the younger drug traffickers were reduced to whimpering crybabies as one earsplitting shot after another reduced their numbers.

  The air smelled of acrid gun smoke and blood. There was only one chance he had to save himself. The police, who numbered about ten or eleven, all after each handcuffed man succumbed to a fatal head shot. The breeze from the ocean was cool and crisp, an ironic contrast to the otherwise dark events unfolding atop the small hill overlooking Old San Juan. When Valentino stood as the sole survivor of the group, he immediately began, in Spanish, informing the National Guardsman giving the execution orders about his affiliation with the Inner City Virus Operation and the Illuninati. The executioner to his rear ridiculed him and prepared to put a bullet in his brain, but the ringleader immediately commanded him to stand down while slowly approaching the Don himself.

  The officer, a heavily bearded Fidel Castro-look alike, handed Valentino his cell phone and demanded that he prove his statements with a call to the mainland. Understanding his somewhat shaky status with the majority of scientists back home at Coventry Laboratories, he took the Nextel from the guardsman’s heave hand and dialed Doctor Nader’s cell phone number. He heard the phone ringing on and on before her voicemail picked up. Snatching the cell phone away from the pimp, the angered guardsman was clearly just seconds away from giving his gunman the okay to blast Lucien Valentino into oblivion.

  Just at that moment, the phone rang and the guardsman answered to an American woman on the other end. The Puerto Rican, now more puzzled, angrily asked the caller in English about her association with Valentino and the Illuminati. She refused to answer until she his reassured by Valentino himself t
hat she must.

  After a brief conversation with Meredith, the National Guardsman was satisfied that Don Valentino was indeed telling the truth. He was uncuffed and allowed to freshen up, then given a small meal prior to being transported back down to the airport in Old San Juan. The authorities, however, did not return the cache of cash and drugs, and had they realized the value of the Biomax-O, they would have surely kept that as well.

  Upon boarding the private jet awaiting him at the small Puerto Rican runway, Valentino was bombarded by a kaleidoscope of emotions. Comfort in the fact that he’d escaped death, coupled with the bitter anguish of losing his dear friends at the hands of a corrupt militia nearly brought tears to the eyes of the normally emotionless drug lord. Looking down at the lush greenery of the island’s countryside, Valentino came to the conclusion that he had probably visited his beloved Puerto Rico for the very last time.

  Chapter 18

  It was now June 27th and Valentino still had not returned from his Puerto Rico trip. However, he usually spent a few extra days out doing God-knows-what with God-knows-who after such long business trips. Rosaria didn’t care; in fact, she relished in the peace and solitude brought about by Valentino’s absence. The head bodyguard was used to her hanging out at the local coffee shop and because she stayed true to the strict curfew he’d placed on her the prior week, he allowed her a little more time away from the beach house brothel, ultimately allowing her time to plot a getaway, far from Valentino’s clutches forever. However, she’d always need Biomax-O to survive, and she felt like she knew enough about the Sentinels of the Illuminati to acquire the drug directly from them.

  She had saved up $18,000 since Valentino had brought her back during the winter of 2001. Her income had derived from freelance sex with guys as well as a few gals she’d met at Starbucks and the surrounding shops she frequented during her free time away from the house, in addition to the marijuana she sold in bulk in partnership with fellow prostitutes who cultivated cannabis plants in the basement of their suburban home.