“What happened to Gloria?” Jack asked, befuddled.
“She killed her.”
“What?”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds.”
“Not as bad? She killed her. What could beat that?”
“Maria was CIA. It’s a long story. She caught her sucking off her boss and she bashed her brains in. It’s complicated.”
“Do you hear yourself Sophia? What the hell have you fallen into?”
“There’s more.” She leaned over, her cleavage threatening to spill out of her black dress’s revealing neckline. “Someone is threatening Ada. They threw tomatoes at her when she was subbing at the opera, left a bag of shit on her bed, and left frying gorgonzola on her stove.”
Sophia leaned back, exhausted, tugging furiously on her left ear.
“I suggest you drop this crazy prostitution business, dump the gender confused lover, and get Ada professional police help. I could help her,” he said, gently extricating her busy fingers from her ear.
“Maria is investigating the woman my mother suspects. Ma thinks it’s some concentration camp thing going back over five decades. My mother, silent as usual about the past, won’t go into what might have transpired to make her suspicious. But when this woman showed up as a tenant in her building, she feared some type of retribution for who knows what. And Maria is also going to scare Rudy off.”
“Scare him off? How is she going to do that? Bash his brains in? If she offed the love of her life, what would she do to an enemy?”
Sophia flashed on Bernie, neck snapped, lying on her living room floor.
“We went over to Ma’s place today to bring her candles and incense. The place still reeked of gorgonzola. Maria is sure this woman my mother suspects, the woman from the camps, is innocent. She was following her while the gorgonzola was cooking. The woman was shopping, going to temple. She was nowhere near the apartment building. She couldn’t be in two places at once.”
“Sophia get out and get help. This Maria is unstable and unpredictable. A stone cold CIA killer, who’s obsessed with you. She’s resurrected her lost love, whom she happened to murder. You’re the psychologist. Do you think you’re safe? Do you imagine this will end well? Think of what you told me. Black roses. An obsession with you because you look like a lover she offed. Use your head. Stop thinking with your vagina.”
“I never thought of it that way. I am thinking with my vagina.”
“Let’s go,” he said, signaling for the check. “My treat.”
“Thank you, Jack.”
She put an arm around his shoulder and squeezed. Then pecked him on the cheek.
“I want you to help yourself. Let’s go to that cigar bar on Lincoln. Let’s try to hash this out Sophia while we get drunk. I need some relief.”
“Good idea. Oh yeah. The seizures are back. I’ve had two. At Maria’s place,” Sophia confided as they made their way to Lincoln Road, oblivious of the motley stream of pretty boys, suburban couples, and assorted debauchees looking for sex, drugs, and rock and roll. “She takes great care of me.”
Jack glanced at her skeptically.
“I need her address and phone number. At least I’ll have something when all hell breaks loose.”
“If it breaks loose,” Sophia corrected.
“Oh, there’s no if about it.”
They entered the cozy Cuban cigar bar, found a quiet table in a dark corner, and, amidst swirling smoke and salsa tunes, ordered two Johnny Walker Double Blacks.
“This place reminds me of Maria. She was born in Cuba and she smokes Cubans. The aromas in here make it so cozy.”
Jack looked at her askance, his eyes narrowing into cynical green slits, his head cocked sideways.
“Here, write Maria’s info on the back of my card before we forget. I don’t trust that man/woman one bit.”
Jack handed her a pen and she scribbled down Maria’s particulars.
“The business info too,” he insisted. “I’m beginning to think you’re in love with her,” Jack said, emptying half the contents of the whiskey glass with one determined swallow while he was pocketing Maria’s contact details.
“I’m beginning to think you’re right.”
Thirty Five
Maria, briskly striding down Lincoln, whistling Elvis’ Can’t Help Falling in Love, and puffing on a mammoth Cuban, her gun snugly tucked into her waistband, was thinking the last time she whistled was when things were cool with Gloria. In fact, she was whistling the same tune.
Turning right at Meridian, past Van Dyke’s, she reached Rudy’s derelict three story building in no time, donned some thin gray gloves, pulled open the creaking front door in desperate need of a paint job, and checked the mail boxes for Rudy Deere. There it was. R. Deere. Probably a disgraced member of the Deere tractor dynasty.
She bounded up the stairs two at a time to the third floor. The air smelled of cat pee, Romesco sauce, rum, and a hint of human urine tossed in.
“Rudy?” she yelled, knocking emphatically. After four Rudy’s and jiggling the door knob just in case it was unlocked, she was contemplating breaking in.
A door across the shabby hall opened, revealing a toweringly tall trannie in a body hugging, shiny blue dress with a plunging neckline, silver eye shadow applied with a heavy hand, and hair plastered down, ready for a girlie wig.
“He’s in there, Sweet Pea. He’s home. He might have hit the sauce or blow too hard. I have to rush off to work. I have a key. I can let you in if you’re real quick about it,” the man who would be woman said, eying Maria with curiosity.
“Great,” Maria said, grinning.
Waves of Obsession wafted over to assault Maria’s olfactory nerves as the trannie moved to open door with the key he had retrieved from his place.
“You might want to go a little easy on that cologne. You just about knocked me over,” Maria said.
“Everything’s over the top. The clothes, the makeup, the wig. You think I’m going to smell faintly of Laura Ashley?” he sneered, cracking the thick layer of cheap carmine lipstick slathered on his lips. “Do I look like a fragile flower to you?” he couldn’t resist adding.
“You have a point there,” Maria said. She crowded in behind him despite the Calvin Klein malodorous cloud.
“Not so fast,” the trannie said when Maria rushed into the shoddy, tiny living room.
“I’m not leaving you here. Just helping you out.”
“I get it.”
“Rudy,” Maria called out, wrinkling her nose as the distinctly foul smell of shit and the rusty mineral tang of blood assaulted them. They followed their noses through to the messy shoebox of a kitchen.
Rudy was leaning back in a spindly kitchen chair, one of two parked at the grimy, round plastic kitchen table, looking relaxed, with a small neat bullet hole squarely between his eyes. He was wearing a pristine mustard yellow suit with a white wife beater under the jacket.
That bullet hole didn’t account for the shit stench.
They crept closer. The trannie hit the floor on his knees and started vomiting. Two great big bloody gaping holes where there once were eyes met Maria’s gaze.
Maria jumped when she saw something white writhing in Rudy’s greasy locks. It was a mouse running around in his hair. She instinctively snatched it away from death, putting it in her jacket pocket. Despite the heat, she’d donned a light jacket. Now she was glad because she was shivering involuntarily.
The trannie had gotten up off the floor, wiping his scarlet painted lips with the back of his hand. Maria took his other hand and they backed out of the place, emitting a collective sigh of relief when they were out in the hall, which now smelled wonderful to them.
“Listen, hon. I’m with the CIA. This is part of a much larger case and I can’t get involved with the local cops. She flashed her long expired ID.”
“What’s in it for me?”
Maria stuffed a hundred dollar bill into his décolletage and raced back in, slamming the door behind her and turning the lock
.
Wait a minute was echoing in her ears when she started scrutinizing the scene.
The blood around Rudy’s eyes, like a crazed glass pattern, was separated into countless crimson cracks, lending him a macabre air. Long dripping red lines had run down his cheeks, as if his clown make up had gone mad.
Like a bloodhound, sniffing a faint overlay of some odd sort of unfamiliar scent lingering on the fetid air, Maria looked up. She took out her gun. She crept into the adjoining bedroom, spotted a closed door, and wrenched it open, revealing a cramped closet with a cowering young man crammed into it, whose pock-marked face made Maria certain it was Rudy’s emissary, who had been sent out to mess with Sophia at her office.
In one swift movement, Maria wrenched him upright. She peered into his oily face. She left the gun to dangle in her other hand.
“Did you kill him?”
“No. No,” he slobbered. “I came to get my money and a new assignment. The door was open a crack and he was dead. I almost fainted. Then I heard you and I hid.”
“How come the door was locked?” Maria was still grasping his collar and she shook it, jarring his head.
“I…I must’ve locked it without thinking before I ran into the bedroom.”
“So, you were getting paid for threatening Mommy, scumbag?” Maria tightened her grip on his collar once more.
His eyes widened. “How do you know? Are you psychic?”
“No, shithead. I’m a good friend of hers and I recognize the spotty skin of her assailant, which she described to me. And the odd smell of that weird cologne you’re wearing.”
“What…what are you…you going to do to me?” he stammered.
“What I’d like to do to you and what I’m going to do are two entirely different things. I’d like to slam your stupid head against that wall until your brains are oozing out like vanilla pudding. But, I can tell you didn’t do this and I don’t have time to sweat the small shit. So get the fuck out. But if I ever hear you even laid a pinky finger on my darling Mommy, I will find you and I will annihilate you.” She was screaming into his face, spittle flying.
As soon as she released her grip, Stanley, after fumbling painfully with the lock until he finally released it, wordlessly dashed out, his scurrying footfalls on the stairs, echoing back to her until they faded when he reached the front door.
Maria, locking up after the fig-scented scumbag, turned back to the macabre tableau, feeling the mouse momentarily squirming in her pocket before settling down. She didn’t want to stay here much longer.
She leaned over Rudy once more and gasped when she pushed aside the jacket with the barrel of her gun and discovered the bloody outline of a small swastika had soaked through the thin fabric of his white tee shirt, stenciling it there. She swiftly lifted up the shirt with her gun barrel to reveal a crudely carved swastika, embellishing his belly.
Thirty Six
“You won’t leave me ever will you Maxie?” Mathilde asked, wheedling while she was tickling his ear with her red feather. She was in red leggings, clinging to her scrawny legs and a purple oversized top, concealing imaginary flab, with a matching voluminous red bag Max was clutching for her. Purple flats adorned her feet. Creamy purple eye shadow, slathered onto her eyelids, replaced the traditional blue weighing them down.
When she took her bag from his lap and plopped it on the floor, replacing it with her tush, her lacquered hive of hair disallowed any stray strands to wander. Instead, her carapace of tresses complete with a red bow on one side scraped the side of his face.
Max winced, but remained silent. He practically purred when she resumed tickling him with the feather, roaming all over his face, wandering down his neck, and passing swiftly over his fly, suggesting further delights. Max remembered the first time she produced that feather. Those whispery strokes whipped up a firm hard on he hadn’t experienced in decades.
“How could I leave you bubbala? With all the surprises in your bag of tricks? You make me feel young again,” he said, a twinkle escaping the patina of desolation reflected in his eyes.
“What about Ada?”
“Ada? Don’t be narish! She was my wife. We’re through. A long time ago. My shlong was dead with her. You brought me back to life.”
He quickly shut down the movie in his mind. An admiring Ada grabbing hold of his rejuvenated cock with surprising gusto. Games they’d never played before. Life was full of surprises. Even for a survivor, who hadn’t slept since 1939. He wondered if all the salmon and blueberries he was consuming were really helping his pecker.
“I want to go to the circus and study the tightrope acts. I dream of those days when I flew in Paris. I want to see Cirque de Soleil. They do impossible things. Let’s go Max. I want to be inspired.”
She was absentmindedly stroking him while looking off into the distance, remembering her glory days as she was stoking Max’s desire.
Circus, shmircus. She’s not climbing anything higher than me, he thought.
Max rose up urgently, almost dumping Mathilde onto the terrazzo floor. He grabbed her, set her upright, and rushed her into the bedroom.
Afterwards, Mathilde murmured, “I wish I still smoked. I would love a Gauloise right now.”
Thirty Seven
Sophia was thinking about shutting down the business while she was vigorously whipping one of the Momma’s Boys. Every time the petite cudgel whistled down on his quivering butt, the consistency of marshmallow, Stanislaw bucked and screamed out, “more, Mommy”. He followed up with a silly tittering, threatening to lose control like someone being tickled.
Stanislaw’s luxuriant mop of hazel hair was soaked dark with his exuberant sweat. Ass poking up into the air, his hands and feet were bound with thick strips of leather, specially made for him. He loved leather. He travelled to Buenos Aires for leather.
Sophia was in leather from head to toe. She wore a red leather mask, a black leather bustier prettily decorated with a central row of shiny gold buttons, seamed black fishnets held up by a crimson leather garter belt, and, the piece de resistance, stiletto heeled red leather thigh high boots.
Sophia, lost in thought about dissolving the business, barely heard the bound Stanislaw screaming, “it’s time, it’s time. Hurry”.
His urgency broke through. She unbound him just in time for the ritual coming on her boots. Kneeling as he disgorged his prodigious load, he wrapped his arms around the boots, kissing the costly buttery material. Then they retired to the bed, boots and all, where she lifted her heavy breasts out of the bustier top, exposing her thick nipples so that he could act out suckling on her breasts, the motion soothing him to sleep.
Once Stanislaw was out, she lay back, tucking her breasts in because they were feeling the chill in the room. Relaxed, with her arms behind her head, she started thinking about the end of the business again. She would continue with her practice, even though she didn’t need the money for a while, because she loved it. It was her calling. She grew up groomed for caretaking. Always worried about her parents. Putting herself last.
She envisioned all the money. Some of it was in the big safe in the bedroom closet. Thick stacks of bills, separated into neat one thousand dollar bundles, piled high. When she ran out of room there, she cut out a square of carpet, covering the wide wooden planked floor she hadn’t liked. She carpeted the bedroom and closet when they bought the house fifteen years ago. Morton didn’t care what she did to the house. It was all hers and she delighted in remodeling, redecorating, and reinventing the place. He delighted in hunting pussy when he wasn’t painting in his pigsty studio. The studio was off-limits to home improvement. Enough about Morton. Her mind was wandering into unpleasant territory.
Back to the money she had to earn once he suddenly left her penurious. She returned to satisfying visions of the piles under the floorboards in a deep corner of the closet. She was running out of room. It was time to shut down. She thought of the Death Book safely buried in her old Stride Rite shoe box on a shelf high above the
safe. Her two secrets. Besides Maria, of course. Although, Ma and Ta knew about her and knew her. Now Jack knew about Maria and the whoring. Only the Death Book was one hundred percent secret.
What would happen to these satisfied Mamma’s Boys once she quit the bordello? Rudy could step in and pimp for them. Problem solved. She sighed and looked over at Stanislaw, sleeping like a baby.
“Stan honey,” she whispered in his pearly ear while shaking him gently, “let’s get up. The party is over.”
“Mommy?” Stanislaw blinked. “I thought I was sleeping in my crib at home.” He stretched contentedly.
Should she tell him? No. She needed to plan this out carefully. Maybe hand over the reins to Rudy and get him out of her hair that way. Maybe she was too hasty sending Maria over there. She was dying to confide in someone. Maybe she’d tell Maria. She knew more about her than anyone else. Even Jack. And she was so reliable. A shoulder she could lean on. She got on with her Ma and Ta, was ready to follow Magda, and confront Rudy. Compared to Kurt, she was a treasure. She stopped herself when her mind wandered to the Bernie incident and Gloria’s demise. Black roses? Well, nobody’s perfect.
“Come on Stan honey. Mommy’s got to get going.”
He reluctantly hauled his bloody ass out of the oversized bed.
Keeping this place immaculate isn’t easy, Sophia thought, watching Stanislaw leave bloody tracks on the sheets.
After hustling Stanislaw out, Stanislaw, who insisted on an extra next week and paid handsomely in advance, Sophia sprang into action.
Glancing at the wad of money in her hand, she tucked it into her brown Gucci purse, stripped, showered, and slipped on a red shift and brown flats, not bothering with underwear. She closeted the leather ensemble, vowing to clean it tomorrow. She didn’t want to be late for Amanda. Dinner would be on her. She had to start shedding more money. Tantra was expensive.
She closed up attentively, flashing on scummy Sidney under her office couch. She suppressed a slight nauseous feeling when she rushed out into the night, fairly dripping with humidity, which slowed her down.
Time's Harlot: The Perils of Attraction, Seduction, and Desire Page 14