by Betsy Poole
I knew there was a missing link somewhere. There had to be something right under my nose which I was unable to spot. If Anthony had actually died because of the poison in the whiskey, why didn’t Ila remember giving it to him?
There was something a lot more shady and fishy and I wanted badly to know it. You would think that all those years working as a PI would make me sharper and give me an edge when it came to investigating any case, but the more I worked on this case, the more confounded I got.
I was living with two people under the same roof and though they were like strangers, I knew them. It had been some time since I had run with both Ila and Rick. Even though a part of me had forgotten what Rick used to be like and the queer circumstances wherein I had found him, Ila was still deep rooted in my memory.
I could easily recall the way I had woken up to the sight of her voluptuous breasts right in my face and how it had taken me one moment to fall for her. The fact that I had later realized that she was in love with Rick had hurt me.
Ila was visibly scared and I knew she needed me. She couldn't hire a detective or a lawyer on her own and so she needed someone to save her. Saving Ila had become my mission. There was a part of me that wanted to tell her to screw herself and I could go back and live with Victoria and have my way.
But, was this really the deal? I mean, Victoria was surely hot and she had the fire in the bed, but then she could never match Ila. Ila was one of those perfect faces that could make everyone feel the need to be with her.
I needed to get down to the root of the matter and I knew we had to start from somewhere. I had to look at the whole case from a neutral point of view, but it baffled me. Somehow, I knew that I couldn’t simply trust Ila. The thing about Ila is that she was naive. She was still the same foolish girl I had met a few months ago and despite the time she spent working with Vecchhio junior, rarely anything had changed.
But, damn she had a body and a great one too. Every time I looked at her, I wanted to run my hands over her breasts and to strip her and have my way with her. Deep down, I knew that I did care for her as well.
“Do you think you can save me from this mess, Larry?” she asked and no matter what she said, I simply wanted to kiss her.
“I am trying my best here. But, it all looks so shady. I mean, all evidence point out to you. Are you sure Ila you didn’t poison Anthony?
“Of course, I do! Why would I lie to you? Is it so hard to trust me Larry McGee?” she asked definitely furious even though I see no reason as to why she should be so furious because I was the one doing her a favor by helping her out.
I wanted to tell her that she was a drug addict and a sex addict and she slept with a dopey guy and her boss wasn’t much of a great guy either. So, I really didn’t have a lot of reason to trust Ila, but I knew there was no point telling her this.
“Oh babe, I trust you, but you know being a private investigator makes you question every damn thing. I am the kind of guy who doesn’t trust my own dick,” I said and chuckled, hoping my great sense of humor would make everything a little better, but, as soon as I finished my statement, I saw both Rick and Ila had no expressions whatever and I realized that maybe, my joke sense wasn’t as great as I thought to be.
When I realized the gravity of the situation, I knew that I wanted to help Ila. Despite all that she had been through and my reckless way of living and casual love affairs, Ila was one woman who was really glued to my mind and I wanted to save her.
I knew that if she was caught in Vecchio’s murder, it would jeopardize her whole life and such a young life shouldn’t die such a sorry death.
I closed the gap between the two of us and looked in her honey brown eyes and wanted to kiss her right there. I knew that she was seeing Rick, but Rick was always with a lot of other women too and they were all in a sort of open relationship which was twisted but heck who cared.
I kissed her briefly and when her luscious red lips met mine, I could taste her and it brought my senses to life. I had been with a lot of women, but the taste of her kiss was still fresh in my mind and I immediately wanted to do so much more with her.
“Damn looks like Larry here still has a thing for you, Ila baby,” Rick said from behind. He didn’t mind me kissing Ila at all perhaps because he didn’t really love her. Ila was nothing more than a body he used to satiate his senses when he was on a high, but I knew there was so much more to Ila than this.
I knew I was not a saint and I loved sex. I mean, the thrill of sex after the green ruins were amazing and even though I preferred not falling a prey to the drug, I could remember the way I had craved for sex when I had it in Arizona.
So, I couldn’t completely blame Rick either for craving for Ila’s body. If Ila was always so willing to throw her body on Rick, any fool would be foolish not to fuck her. But, we had a lot more important things in mind.
I couldn’t let myself go astray when I had to solve the whole case. I have been in the line of private investigation for long and there are a lot of people I helped and even a lot of lives I damaged because I needed money and yes, I was selfish, but hey everyone has needs.
Ila sat down in one corner of the room and she had a brooding look on her face. I knew she was sad and when you are not at fault but you still are a prime suspect for one of the hyped murders in the city, you couldn’t help but be scared.
“Ila, don’t worry. I am here to fix this. I am going to head to the Vecchio mansion and I will see what I can get. Sitting like this with such an expression is not going to sort out the issues. Cheer up and try and engage yourself in some kind of an activity so that I can go and look for some clues.
But, darling, when I come back, I want to sit down with you and you are going to tell me everything that happened with all details.”
As I moved out of the room, I knew that the moment I would leave, there was a likelihood that Rick and Ila would bang each other, but Ila had seemed to grown a little mature if not much. I wasn’t yet sure what feelings she had and if she was still in love with Rick.
Having spent some time away from Ila, Rick and even Vecchio, I didn’t quite know what to make of any of them yet. We had a lot of time and I knew I could figure everything out after all I always did! The Vecchio mansion was the place where I would get all my leads.
I had worked with Anthony long enough to know what a badass he really was. It would not have been easy to kill him and I was sure that whoever had killed Anthony must have done it quite tactfully. That man could smell a dead rat and find it and have the throats slit, he was so shrewd. Then, who could possibly be behind the murder?
It was rather sad that such a mean gangster died because of poisoning in his whiskey. I mean it was such a non-grateful way to die, isn’t it? It was surely not something that Anthony must have fancied for himself. Over the years, Anthony had spread his business even far and wide and his access to Rick and consequently the green ruins made him a lot popular and one of the top names in the drug circuit.
I remember how once I had got a call from Anthony when I was still working for Victoria. He had asked if I wanted to be back on the same circuit. He would give me a huge lot of money, but I knew Anthony could never make a great bargain. If he was offering me huge money, he surely had some high stake work to be done.
When the call had come, I was banging Victoria and had one of her breasts inside my mouth. I loved the part of my job and I chose to skip his offer, hoping to bump into him soon and meet just for old time’s sake. Little did I know at that time that it would end up being my last conversation with Anthony Vecchio as he would be no more!
I had served a lot of time at his mansion and I knew very well where he lived, who the gauds were the secret passages and more. Even though I wasn’t a direct suspect and I was nowhere in the scene, I had no fascination whatsoever to run into the police.
I didn’t particularly have a very clear track record either. While I was still a private investigator at one point of time and a guard in my last job, the
years in between – I had done my fair share of crime. When one of your longest jobs is to serve a gangster because you owed him a shit lot of money, the police is the last thing you wish to run into.
So, I decided that the smarter and the better solution would be to head to the surveillance room. Anthony was always surrounded by a lot of cameras because the guy didn’t even trust his own mother, how would he ever trust someone else.
If someone who had killed him as an intruder, he would not know about all the cameras. Could Ila possibly be the one who killed Anthony? I mean, I didn’t really know how Anthony had treated her or if she was happy being her puppet.
From what I heard and I found out, Anthony often used Ila as his little sex toy. He used to have his way with her and Ila, being Ila never really objected as long as she could be satisfied in bed. Maybe, this is what Anthony really wanted but could Ila have acted the whole plan?
I knew that asking Ila wouldn’t lead me anywhere because she would pretend to be butt-hurt. The more time the three of us spent together, the more I started detesting Rick because, to be honest, Rick was a dick. Over the months, Rick was the one who had changed a lot.
Maybe, he was so used to getting attention at his own place where he was the only one to make the sacrament or the green ruins that he couldn’t possibly adjust to the new environment. While Anthony did give Rick a lot of money for making the green ruin, but then again, did Rick get the same respect or the sex?
I knew that Rick wasn’t averse to sharing Ila, but the monster dick he had needed more than one woman to satiate him and I wondered what he did. There were just so many loopholes in the whole story and I has no one who could help me figure it out.
Was I getting bad at private investigation or this was one case that was testing each of my skill was something I really wasn’t sure of.
***
I stood outside the Vecchio mansion and I could vividly remember the time spent there. I had complete recollection of all the things I had indulged in. There was a part of me that was sad for Anthony’s untimely death. The guy was a gangster, but he wasn’t as terrible as he could have been. Yes, he ran after money and power and fame, but then most humans did.
I wanted to know the whole thing that had led to his death. As it was a huge case, the police were looking into too many details, but I knew that police would be confused at the kind of details they would get.
As long as Anthony was here, he knew how to roll his ball without getting it dirty. This meant that he could easily keep his dirty work and illegal stuff hidden. On the surface, he was like any other rich bloke out there who had too much money and just spent his time sitting on his ass. But, it was only his inside guys who knew the slick bastard Vecchio Jr. really was.
Having worked for him for so long, I knew the kind of work he dealt in, the trades he participated in and the reasons and sources of his endless income. I knew that even the police had an idea of the life of the gangster, but even in their wildest of thoughts, they could never know the extent of crime Anthony Vecchio Jr. had already committed.
So, it was natural that the police would be distracted as they would try to find who murdered him. This meant that I had to do my work because if someone could get into Vecchio house and poison him, the same murderer could be dangerous enough to frame Ila and once she was caught, it would all go downhill from there.
I knew I needed to head to the surveillance room as the camera footage would at least help me be sure if Anthony had consumed any whiskey of sorts. The lab reports by the police had found a large amount of poison in the whiskey. And it was rumored to be the reason of death. But, this is the difference between police and a private investigator.
When police found a clue, they were happy to have found something which led to an assumption. But, we private investigators are never happy – not even with clues. We need clues to ensure that the clue is legit because what if the whiskey was not even intended for Anthony? Didn’t the whole thing turn out to be an accident rather than murder? And if it was not intended for Anthony, why was the whiskey poisoned at all? Was there someone else who was in danger? My mind was one mess of too many questions and I had to go to the surveillance room before I could jump to any more conclusions.
Of course, I couldn’t just barge in tee house via the front gate and head to the surveillance room. There were too many policemen who would immediately jump on me. If they came to know that I had worked with Anthony for a long time, I would soon become someone they would love to harass too. Who knew the police would frame me as a suspect too as I hadn’t actually paid him any money. Anthony had simply exonerated my debt because of my sacrifice made at Arizona and my impeccable bravery in getting him his golden fish – Rick. Of course, Ila was the bonus which he thoroughly enjoyed and fucked big time too!
Though I never had to sneak in Anthony’s house before, but I knew all the secret passages here. Call it a part of my job or whatever, but I loved looking for these snarky little bit of details. I knew that on the left wing of the mansion, there was a wall that looked like an ordinary wall but it wasn’t. The wall was actually a door that led to the mansion.
Anthony often used it for his secret trades and he even had meetings wherein his illicit members of the trade were brought in and out from the passage. I was quite sure that none of the policemen here would be aware of the gate as it was close to the garden which was quite boring.
So, as I headed to the left wing and stood outside the wall, I smiled at myself. “You are such a pro at your work, Larry McGee,” I told myself and smirked.
Just like I had thought, there were no guards there. It has been a week since the death of Anthony and the case was beginning to appear like one of those gangster mysteries which would never be solved.
Of course, it was still a prolific case, but some of the fizz had dried out as the details that the police got their hands on were not accessible to the general public. There were so many records they had retrieved, but they had to keep everything a secret so that they could track down the other gangsters who were all a part of the scam.
I slowly moved the wall aside and the door gave way. I knew the password for entering inside the mansion and I was pleased to find that Anthony never bothered to change the password. Once I was inside the mansion, everything felt the same.
I had worked here for so long and it all felt familiar. I could feel myself going back to the old ways. Sure, I had all the luxuries when I was here, but I was nothing but a puppet at the hands of Vecchio Jr. which was something I hadn’t liked.
Now that he wasn’t alive anymore, it felt a little weird to be inside the home of the same guy I had worked for. I knew the way to the surveillance room and I wanted to be there so I could get hold of some footage.
I knew that Anthony had two surveillance rooms. The one which was accessible to the police and was known to all had cameras at a few very specific locations.
The other surveillance room was inside this secret passage and it had special footage of a lot of places inside his mansion. Like I told, Anthony was the guy who didn’t trust his own mother and so it was natural for him to have cameras spying at all the different rooms in his mansion.
I thought of slipping inside the room and getting hold of the spy cameras because I knew they would give me some details - the details that would surely help me out. As I tried to sneak into the room, I bumped into someone and I prayed to God it wouldn’t be another of those policemen who would handcuff me and ask me a million questions.
I was done with all those interrogation and calls. I quickly started thinking of the umpteen excuses and stories I could cook to get myself out of the mess until I heard a shrill voice which I knew I had heard before.
As I looked at who the person was I saw that it was Miss Sheila, the guard of the secret surveillance room. Of course, I knew her, she was a sexy brunette and was really hot and we often had a great time rolling on the bed often.
“Ah thank god, it’s you, Sheila! I was s
o shit scared, I thought I had bumped into that police. Trust me, that’s the last thing I wanted.”
“Nice seeing you Larry after so long. Once you were out of the mansion, you never came back. Vecchio spoke of you often. I think he kind of missed you as well.”
“I know. Now, all we can do is sit and ponder and think of all those what-ifs and maybe but there is nothing more left to do.”
Yeah, you bet. But, what brings you here? Why were you sneaking on this side of the mansion? If it was the police instead of me, you were definitely going to be in a soup.”
“I know Sheila! I am so happy that I bumped into you. I actually needed to look at the surveillance footage. Ila is the one who has been framed for the murder, but I know that girl. She can’t kill herself, leave apart killing someone. Yeah, she is a little sex addict. But killing anything –it is not something she can do. So, I am here to find out details and you know being a PI, it runs in my blood.
So, I was wondering if you could let me see the footage?”
Sheila looked at me with her sexy eyes and I could see her cleavage popping from her red blouse. Sheila was one of those women who could make men crave for her. She didn’t have an extra inch of fat on the body and her flawless curves and the perfect stance made her the person to watch out for.
When I was working at Vecchio, I had slept with Sheila on a lot of occasions and we had great sex.
“What do you need, Sheila?” I asked in my most seductive voice because I knew Sheila had a weakness for sex.
“Damn you, player! Sex will do. Let us have some smoking hot time. I have been without a guy for too long. It’s been a really dry time. Spice up the good times and I will let you see the footage. Sounds like a good deal, dude?” she asked and I, being Larry, of course, jumped on the offer.
“Same place?” I asked and for a moment, Sheila looked at me and I thought she was going to fuck me right there, but she took my hand and then we both went to the back door and to her secret cabin. Anthony might be a sleazy gangster, but he knew how to take care of all the men and staff working there.