The Mural

by Michael Mallory

  The woman stood up and stepped around the side of the bush, and Broarty’s mouth dropped. She was wearing a 1970s style halter top that just barely concealed her enormous breasts, whose nipples were popping through the yellow satiny cloth like olives, and matching low-riding hip-huggers that looked painted on. What in hell was she doing out here?

  The woman put one hand on her hip and cocked her head as she stared at his exposed penis. “Gonna pee me a river, big boy?” she asked, grinning.

  Broarty could not stop peeing, but Jesus, what a pee! Even before he was finished, he was getting hard.

  “Better ’n’ better,” the woman said, wetting her lips.

  My god, Broarty thought, she actually wants me. He could hardly breathe.

  The woman was breathing heavy, too. Reaching behind her neck, she pulled the string of a knot and her halter top fell down, revealing large, smooth, perfect breasts. Broarty thought he might faint. Then she unzipped her pants and shed them in one fluid move. She was not wearing underwear. The now naked woman sashayed towards Broarty and grabbed his joint. “Come with me, big boy,” he said, leading him to a sandy spot and laying him down. Hungrily, almost viciously, she tore off his pants and ripped his shirt open, sending the buttons flying in all directions. Then she jumped on top of him.

  This could not have been a dream. It did not feel like a dream. It felt like he was ramming his pole into a real woman whose body would make a strong man weep...and she wanted him, too! He could hear the cars continuing to soar past on the highway, but he didn’t care if anyone spotted him. There was nothing that was going to make him give this up. There were pebbles under his back that hurt as he thrust up and down, but he didn’t care about them either. He thought he was moaning, but it was hard to tell because of the animal noises that the woman was making. Lying across his chest while she still rode him, her monumental breasts damp and slippery with warm sweat, she panted in his ear: “C’mon big boy, c’mon, c’mon, more, more, more, more!”

  He was on the verge of coming, but he couldn’t quite get there yet. Not that he was complaining. The build-up was phenomenal. He closed his eyes and just let his sense of touch govern him. Oh god, it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming...here she blows!

  Marcus Broarty exploded in ecstasy. His head was filled with color, and sound went away. Then, all at once, it came back.

  “Freeze!” a voice shouted. “Don’t move a muscle!”

  Marcus Broarty heard it, but the command was redundant. He was drained, unable to move a muscle if he’d wanted to. He cracked open his eyes, and was surprised not to see the salacious-faced redhead smiling at him, but rather the barrel of a gun about a foot away, held by a state trooper. Then he heard was the whimpering of a little girl. He started to get up but was stopped by the sound of the gun cocking.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I said don’t move a muscle!” the officer ordered.

  “Don’t shoot, I’m not moving.” Something was in his right hand, a cloth of some kind that was wet, like a handkerchief during cold season. Slowly turning his head over, he saw that it was not a handkerchief but rather a pair of undies.

  “Oh my god,” he moaned. “Where is she? Where’s the woman?”

  “You call her a woman, do you?” the trooper asked. “She’s where you can’t reach her,” the trooper said. “Now slowly, very slowly, you sit up and work your way onto your knees. Drop the evidence and then put your hands in the air and keep them there.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Then I’ll speak clearly. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you—”

  “Oh, shit!” Broarty cried, having just realized that he was still buck naked. He started to jump up, but the trooper pushed the gun so close to him that it nearly touched his flesh. “Move very slowly,” the officer ordered.

  “Okay, okay,” Broarty said, rising with effort to his feet. “But believe me, if you’d just take one look at the woman, you’ll understand everything. Don’t look at her as a cop, just as a man, and everything will be clear.”

  “Drop those panties,” the trooper demanded, and Broarty did, but even after they’d hit the ground, his hand still felt wet. He looked at it and saw the remnants of his own ejaculation. The panties on the ground were sodden with his come. He’d had a real gusher.

  It was then that Marcus Broarty remembered something: the redhead he had banged the daylights out of had not been wearing panties. So whose were these?

  Broarty suddenly paled. “Oh my god,” he moaned as he looked up and saw the huddled figure of Robynn being comforted by a female state trooper. The girl was looking down at the ground as though she had done something wrong. “What’s happening?” Broarty uttered.

  The policeman did not respond directly, but instead collected his strewn clothing and threw them in a pile in front of Broarty. “Slowly, really slowly, pick those up and cover yourself,” he ordered.

  As Broarty was doing so, the female trooper walked over. “The girl doesn’t seem to be traumatized, just confused,” she said. “I got her pants on her, though I can’t find any underwear.”

  “Over there,” the male trooper said, pointing at the wet clump of cotton that Marcus Broarty had just dropped.

  “I’ll talk to her again.”

  Now Broarty had his shorts and pants on, and was working his way into his shirt, which only had two buttons left. He leveled his gaze at the trooper, who was still holding his gun on him. “Something’s not right here,” he said.

  “I’d kinda picked up on that already.”

  The female trooper came back and in a low voice said, “The girl swears the man never actually touched her, just pulled her pants and underwear off of her while she was urinating. Then she says he suddenly pulled off all his own clothes and started rubbing himself until he fell down and started rolling around on the ground and crying out. Clearly she has no idea what he was up to. She thought he had suddenly been taken ill, but her description doesn’t leave much doubt. He brought a child out here so he could masturbate in front of her.”

  “No!” Broarty shouted. “She had to piss! I swear! Find the redheaded woman! She’ll tell you what happened.”

  “There is no one else here, sir,” the trooper with the gun said, forcing out the word sir as though saying it under protest. “Just you and the girl, and when we got here, the girl was naked from the waist down and you were having a grand old time with her panties.”

  “That can’t be.”

  “You believe the girl about not being touched?” the male trooper asked the female one.

  “I think so,” she replied. “Though I don’t know what might have happened had we not come along and interrupted.”

  “You’ve got it wrong,” Broarty protested.

  “Keep those hands in the air,” the trooper barked. “Get his ID, Staley.”

  Trooper Staley looked back at Robynn, smiled and called, “I’ll be right back, honey,” then she drew her own gun and held it on the panting figure of Broarty while she stepped around behind him and fished his wallet out of his back pocket. She carried it back to the cruiser and radioed in the information, while Robynn stood in the door of the car and watched her.

  “Look, officer,” Broarty began, “there’s some kind of terrible mistake here. That girl is my...my niece, and her father works for me, and—”

  “Sir,” the trooper interrupted, “I’ve read you your rights once, but I feel duty bound to warn you again that your best course of action might be to clam up. Otherwise you stand to incriminate yourself.” Personally, Trooper Jerry Fitzhugh hoped the bastard incriminated himself straight into Chino, but he also knew that the biggest sleazebags tended to have the best lawyers, so he felt that he needed to make absolutely sure the prick understood that he was being Mirandized.

  “You know, I have the power to make it worth your while to just let me and the girl go,” Broarty told him.

  Trooper Fitzhugh
wanted to smile, but he merely looked back at him. Keep going, asshole, keep going, he thought.

  Trooper Staley returned less than a minute later. “Seems like we hit the jackpot, Jerry,” she said. “I radioed in his name and it bounced back immediately. You’re just going to love what this one’s been up to.” She pulled the handcuffs from her belt and walked behind Broarty. “Hands behind your back, sir,” she said. “Now.”

  Marcus Broarty lowered his hands, and dropped his head until his chin rested on his head. As he felt the cold steel of the cuffs bite into his left wrist, he smiled to himself. He knew he was protected. If this was the way his newfound God wanted to play it, then so be it. He must work in strange and mysterious ways. All he had to do was go along with what the God wanted and offer whatever help he could. And once he had been released, these asshole troopers would be sorry.

  Every asshole in his life would be sorry.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “Where did you say you went to church?” Missy LeFavre asked Dani Lindstrom. Missy, the wife of Dr. William T. LeFavre, the general manager of KSOG-FM, Bakersfield Christian Radio, was not officially on staff, though her word was accepted as rule around the station. She was a well-preserved fifty-two with shellacked Laura Petrie hair and a dress that reached all the way to the floor, while the top lifted and separated her impressive bust to a degree that could not be ignored, like the figurehead of a ship.

  “Since I travel around so much, I don’t have a home church,” Dani said. That much was true. But the part that followed about seeking out a different church in each community she visited was painting the lily. The truth was that she had not stepped inside a church since her wedding...and look how that had turned out. But she knew that the fastest way to be shown the door was to say: “Look, I’m just here to do a job, okay?” So the lilies enjoyed a second coat.

  “Well, we’d be more than happy to have you at the First Evangelical Baptist Church,” Missy said.

  “Thank you,” Dani replied, but in a tone of voice that implied that she was flattered by the offer. It was what you had to do sometimes.

  As the two women walked down the hallway of a surprisingly high tech station, they passed an open office in which a man was seated behind a glass desk, topped with both a stationery computer and a laptop. When he glanced up at Dani, a broad grin came over his flat face. “Is this our replacement DJ?” he asked, practically leaping over his desk to get to her.

  “This is Dani Lindstrom,” Missy said, stopping on the other side of the door so the man could catch up. “She’ll be filling in this weekend. Miss Lindstrom, this is Randy Mount, our programming director.”

  “How do you do, Miss Lindstrom,” Mount said, taking her hand and squeezing it tightly and wetly. “We’re so happy you’re here to help us spread the Word.”

  Dani forced a smile. This man was going to be trouble. She knew the look, all too well. She finally retrieved her hand from him and followed Missy LeFavre down to the studio itself, which was outfitted with the kind of computerized gadgetry that Dani rarely saw in regional stations. She only hoped she knew how to operate all of it. “This is quite a set-up,” she said.

  “Praise the Lord,” Missy said, and then, peculiarly, knocked on the wooden control panel. “Now, you did hear the part about breaking for news headlines every twenty minutes?”

  “I’ve got that. Do you use a news service or do you have your own news team?”

  “Our news comes straight from the world headquarters of the FEBC.”

  “FEBC?” Dani asked.

  Missy LeFavre looked at her like she was slow. “First Evangelical Baptist Church.”

  “Oh yes, of course.”

  The studio tutorial took another ten minutes, after which Dani did an air-check. Missy LeFavre seemed pleased with Dani’s voice and delivery, so pleased she actually smiled. Dani, meanwhile, was happy that she was able to navigate the complicated control board. As they were leaving the studio they encountered another young woman who was introduced as Laurie, the station intern.

  Laurie had a sweet, guileless demeanor, but also exuded the kind of poise and confidence and poise that could not be learned. Dani shook her hand and the girl smiled back revealing perfectly aligned, startlingly white teeth.

  Missy took Dani back to the office that she treated as her own, even though the name plaque on the desk bore her husband’s name. There Dani received her final instructions, including where to park in the station lot and how to clock in when she arrived back that evening for her actual gig. “And here’s the good part,” Missy said, pulling a pad of coupons out of her husband’s desk. “We have a reciprocity deal with a local restaurant here in town. We give them advertising time and they provide meals.” She handed two of the coupons to Dani, who saw that they were for Bailey’s Sandwich Shoppe. At each corner of the coupons were tiny Praise the Lord’s.

  “Thank you,” Dani said. “This is very nice.”

  Less than an hour later, Dani was sitting in Bailey’s Sandwich Shoppe, nibbling at a turkey and Swiss sandwich that was big enough to feed three people. She was going to have to take at least half of it with her. She had begun to wrap the remainder of the sandwich up when a voice behind her said: “Well, hi again.” Dani turned to see Laurie, the intern.

  “Oh, hi,” Dani said.

  “Mind if I sit with you?”

  Even though she had been planning on leaving, Dani said: “Please do.”

  “Thanks,” Laurie said, setting down a tray holding an enormous salad with a double scoop of tuna salad in the middle.

  “Missy was talking a little about you after you left,” Laurie said sweetly.

  “Oh?”

  “Oh, nothing bad, she just explained how you went from station to station and filled in for people. That must be exciting.”

  “It’s definitely interesting. You find yourself working with all sorts of people.” She sized the young woman up. Laurie—she didn’t even know her last name—had the kind of looks more applicable for television than radio.

  “Are all the stations you work for religious ones?” the young woman asked, drizzling ranch dressing over her lettuce.

  “No, I work for every kind of station. I just change the delivery slightly each time to fit the music and the demographics.”

  Laurie nodded while she chewed on a bite of tuna salad. When her mouth was clear again, she said: “So you’re not really a born-again Christian?”

  Dani sighed. “Laurie, can you keep a secret? I’m working a job. I will give the best performance I possibly can and serve the listeners to the best of my ability, because that’s what I’m paid for. But no, I’m not a member of the First Evangelical Baptist Church, or any other church. I hope you’re not offended.”

  The girl shook her head, still chewing. “Oh, hell no. I’m an atheist myself.”

  Dani laughed. “Then why are you here?”

  “Same reason as you, I guess. I’m studying broadcasting and I need some hands-on experience, and this station was one of the few who posted an opening for a paid intern. Most places want you to work free.”

  “I take it the LeFavres don’t know?”

  “Oh, shit no. I say all the right things, and I’ve had enough religion courses to bluff my way through if someone starts questioning me about dogma. I don’t bother them, and so far they haven’t bothered me. I do my job.” She paused to munch on a tomato slice. “I’ve done a fair amount of theatre in school too, so the way I look at it is, I can work at a religious station without really being religious the same way I could play Lady Macbeth without really being insane.”

  “Good philosophy,” Dani said. “By the way, what is your last name again?”

  “Mosgionne, spelled M-o-s-g-i-o-n-n-e. It’s kind of a problem for me because nobody can pronounce it on the first try. What I usually get is ‘moase-guy-on’ or ‘moss-guy-onnie,’ but hardly ever ‘moss-gee-ownie.’ I’m thinking of saying the hell with it and going by Laurie Moss.”

 
“Do you mind if I ask you about somebody at the station?”

  Laurie Mosgionne smiled. “You don’t even have to name him. I already know who you’re going to ask about. Randy Mount, right?”

  “Right. I kind of got some predatory vibes from him.”

  “Well, his name says it all. He’s randy all the time, and if you drop your guard for a second he’ll try to mount you.”

  Dani chuckled at that. “How do you deal with him?”

  “My method is to blush whenever he tries to use a pickup line on me.”

  “You can blush on cue?” Dani asked, and a second later Laurie Mosgionne affected the most horrified expression she had ever seen, so convincing that Dani actually looked behind her to see if something was happening over her shoulder. When she turned back the young woman’s face was a shade of bright crimson. “Oh, Mr. Mount, does your wife know you talk like that?” she declared, giggling nervously. Then in a flash, the blushing girl was gone and the savvy young woman was back. “It’s worked so far.”

  “You should be in Hollywood,” Dani said.

  “I’d like to be, but I don’t photograph that well.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “I wish I were. The camera loves some people, and it hates others. For whatever reason, I learned in school that I fall into the latter category. That’s why I’m in radio.”

  “Well, for what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re going to have much of a problem getting to the top in radio.”

  “I don’t think so either,” Laurie said, forking another mouthful of tuna, savoring it, and swallowing with exquisite timing.

  * * * * * * *

  When the phone on Rob Creeley’s desk in the tiny Glenowen police station rang, Creeley hesitated a second, thinking it might be his wife. Maria had been none too happy about his coming into work on Saturday, after he had promised her a shopping trip to Paso Robles. But there was too much stuff going on to walk away and hand it all over to Dorgan. Grabbing the phone, he said: “Glenowen PD, Creeley speaking. Yeah, Fitzhugh, what have you got? Oh, man, that’s great. Good work. The girl’s okay? Good. Great. And you’re holding the bastard? He claimed what?”