Down & Dirty: A McCray Crime Collection

by McCray, Carolyn

  However, all he found was an old woman rocking in a ratty old overstuffed chair placed not three feet away from an old color television. And when Stavros used the word “old,” he meant rabbit-ears-on-top old.

  “Ahhh, no. Didn’t get here fast enough.” Keaton rushed over to what had to be the oldest extant VCR on the planet earth. It was the size of a side of beef, and when Keaton went to pop out the VHS tape with a worn As the World Turns label handwritten on it, it took what felt like an entire minute for it to eject.

  The moans grew in volume and intensity as the old woman rocked more violently.

  After starting another tape, this one of General Hospital, Keaton stepped back from the set. The image was grainy and jumped around. Not only did it look like it had been recorded sometime in the early 80s, it didn’t even look like Keaton had recorded it on the highest setting. Seriously, who even knew about EPs anymore, let along used them?

  Stavros hurried over to the old woman, but once the taped soap opera started, she slumped back into her chair. Her whole body sagged, her mouth going slack. On closer inspection, he realized why she hadn’t said anything. There was a plastic hole where her larynx used to be. Throat cancer. He glanced around the room and found the synthetic voice modulator. The uncle who had raised him had the same condition. After decades of smoking, he had ended up with a hole in his throat just like Keaton’s grandmother. He picked up the modulator. Since the doctors had removed her vocal cords, this electronic device produced a voice, of sorts.

  “You’ve got to keep this close to her so she can easily reach it,” Stavros chided Keaton. But when he put the device in her hand, it slipped from her fingers, landing on the floor.

  “Kind of why I keep it on the coffee table,” Keaton said, resetting his phone’s alarm.

  Stavros checked the modulator. “Maybe she isn’t using it because it was on battery sparing mode and couldn’t make any sound.”

  “Do you know the price of those lithium batteries?” Keaton retorted. “Besides, she is totally happy as long as her soaps are going.”

  Stavros seriously doubted that. But he was here for the X, not for senior protection services.

  “Okay, Grams,” Keaton shouted. “You’re set for another six hours.” He turned to Stavros. “Time to squeeze in a couple more Mickeys.”

  Even though Keaton headed to the door, Stavros lingered behind. Perhaps his grandmother wasn’t good at communicating, however that didn’t mean she couldn’t hear. He took her hand.

  “It was a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. James.” Did she squeeze his hand? It was hard to tell. “I’ll swing back by before I leave.”

  Was that another squeeze?

  Before he could test it, Keaton announced impatiently from the door, “Time is money.”

  How Stavros sometimes wished it wasn’t. He followed the micro-preneur out.

  * * *

  Josh squeezed his eyes as tightly closed as he could. When the attendant had said “painted,” she had meant it literally. The woman flung paint at them from two brushes. If there had been any doubt that the attendant had a sadistic streak, it was now gone. Josh swore she was aiming for up his nose.

  Of course, beside him, Seven was spinning around, shouting some kind of victory cry.

  “You know what,” Josh managed to say. “I think we’re done.”

  Allie spit out pink and green paint. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “Peace out!” Seven announced, and raced through the door which must have led to the dance floor.

  The attendant lingered, however, her hand out. Allie shook her head. “Really? A tip for that?”

  He kind of liked it when Allie went all Latina on someone. The attendant seemed to get the message. Dropping her hand, she went back to her desk. Which left just him and Allie. Even splattered in a rainbow of colors, she looked beautiful. Beads of paint balanced on her eyelashes as they swished up and down.

  She looked to his shoulder. “Wow, after all of that, she still managed to miss a spot.”

  “What?” Josh stammered, not understanding the segue. Allie pointed to a rare bit of white. “Oh, yeah.”

  The moment was gone. Or was it? Allie stepped closer, dipping her finger in a bit of paint dripping from his sleeve. “I think I can fix it, though,” she said, grinning.

  Josh didn’t move. No, he didn’t breathe as Allie traced her finger along his shirt, coursing over his collarbone and down his arm. If he didn’t know better he would have sworn her finger was electrified. Heat trailed after her touch.

  Then she was done. Josh had to stop himself from sighing in disappointment.

  “There.”

  He looked down to find she had drawn the outline of a charging bull. Their school mascot.

  “Thanks,” he said, making sure he enunciated properly. However, the effort left the word flat and, frankly, sounding not all that thankful. Not wanting to the moment to end, Josh pointed to a white patch on her hip. “She wasn’t very thorough.”

  Allie’s grin widened as Josh borrowed a bit of paint from his shirt and began drawing. He was no art major, but he was not going to screw this up. He had to focus, though. The skirt wasn’t all that long and her exposed thighs were…well, distracting.

  Finally he finished, which meant he had to take a step back. Allie looked down, cocking her head as if she didn’t realize what he’d drawn. So okay, maybe he had screwed it up. Then her hand flew to her neck. She pulled out her necklace from under her shirt. It was a dragonfly.

  “It’s just like my pendant.”

  Josh nodded, glad she’d gotten it. So close to her that he could smell her strawberry shampoo, he wasn’t quite sure he would have been able to explain it.

  “Thank you,” Allie said, sounding like she really meant it.

  They were so close. Only a few inches separated them. The moment felt so right. This was how it was supposed to feel just before your first kiss, right?

  Then Seven made possibly the worst-timed interruption in the history of interruptions.

  “You guys coming, or what?” he asked, just before he grabbed Josh by the elbow and dragged him along. “Are you ready to par-tay?”

  As Allie trotted to catch up, she laughed. “As ready as I’ll everl be.”

  Then they arrived at the actual entrance to the club. Seven continued on, but both Josh and Allie skidded to a halt.

  Before them was a riot of color and music, the two blending and bleeding together to create a mosaic of psychedelic insanity. Bodies churned and gyrated, some with their tee shirts on, most without.

  “Or maybe…” Allie added.

  “Not?” Josh finished. Yet neither moved.

  Black lights glowed from every angle, illuminating the neon paint covering everyone. Most of the clubbers had shredded their white clothing to the point that they might as well not have anything on. Josh was pretty sure that there were at least a couple of girls he had seen that had nothing on but paint. He wasn’t positive though because he had looked away as soon as he saw them, his face burning.

  No matter where he looked, there was something shining, blinking or glowing. Necklaces, bracelets, bizarre blinking mouth guard-looking things. The lights would reflect off the dancers’ faces, mixing with the black light and turning everyone into some fantasy version of themselves. Or some nightmare version. Who could tell.

  From time to time, enormous spurts of foam would pour from a hole in the ceiling, bathing the dancers. The foam level stayed right around knee level, except for right after a new deposit, when it would sometimes go up above the hips. Although, judging from the globs of foam on the wall, the level could go way higher than that.

  Inside the foam, things got nuts. Random people would make out with each other, seemingly without any discrimination as far as gender and number of participants went. Josh had never seen anything like it before in his life. He was pretty sure he never wanted to again. This might be what the Outer Darkness that they talked about in church looked like. Or maybe
Heaven.

  Josh was so confused.

  He glanced over at Allie. Her mouth was slightly opened. In wonder or horror he couldn’t tell. Then her lips turned up just the slightest bit.

  “This is horribly awesome,” she breathed out.

  He couldn’t have described it better himself.

  “So?” she asked, turning to him. “Should we maybe dance?”

  Before he could answer, a foursome of frat boys pushed their way past, knocking Allie into him. He caught her in his arms and their bodies pressed together. Talk about horribly awesome. It felt so incredibly good he feared his white pants wouldn’t do much to hide how good it felt.

  Luckily, his upbringing kicked in and those lessons pounded into him from dozens of church dances made him step back, making sure there was enough room between them for a copy of the Book of Mormon. Even as he did it, he wanted to smack his forehead. Seriously, he was such a dork. How had he ever thought Allie would go for someone like him?

  “You okay?” Josh asked as he let her go.

  “I’m great,” she answered. “So maybe tonight won’t be quite as bad as we thought?”

  After that last encounter? Nothing about the night could go wrong.

  * * *

  Keaton tried to hurry to unlock the room. After Granny, Stavros seemed a bit anxious. Ants in his pants. No, ants in his Armani pants.

  “Now this one features a live webcam of octopuses having sex,” he explained, trying to reignite the magic. “It’s huge in North Korea.” Stavros didn’t seem all that impressed, though. Keaton had to ratchet it up another notch, especially since he couldn’t find the key to this room to save his life. “Just imagine,” he said, with a sweeping motion of his free hand. “The banner ad reading, “Hot octopuses by Stavros.”

  The tall man sighed. “Octopi.”

  “What?” Keaton asked, then got it. He was quick like that. “A three way! A ménage of octopuses! Brilliant! I knew we thought alike!”

  The click of the lock finally sounded, but Stavros put his hand against the door. “The lab?”

  “But don’t you want to see—”

  “No,” Stavros said, putting his hand over Keaton’s and turning the key to lock the door again. “I definitely do not want to see what is in that room.”

  Keaton pulled his hand away from the door, signaling surrender.

  “The lab.” That wasn’t a question. That was an order.

  From the glare Keaton was getting, he knew that he couldn’t stall any longer. “Sure, okay.” Heading off to the right, Keaton couldn’t help but finish his pitch. “All I’m saying is that once you’ve got the North Korean market, Micronesia and Laos open right up.”

  “The lab.”

  If it was anything, Keaton knew when to shut up. So the rest of the long walk, all the way around the house and back again, was done in silence. Keaton checked his phone. He was supposed to get a text when the batch was ready. No such luck. Hopefully they would have enough cooked up to satisfy Mr. Panties-in-a-Bunch.

  They arrived at the bathroom door. No need to search for the key. He’d put Hello Kitty to work on that one. Sliding the key into the lock, Keaton glanced over his shoulder. The roundabout trek here hadn’t seemed to soften Stavros’s mood any.

  Hopefully a nice big pile of X would.

  Poking his head into the room, Keaton knew something was wrong. There was no buzz of activity. The lights were low. There was no lingering smell of cooking drugs.

  And then he saw it.

  Every single one of Keaton’s chemists was sprawled out dead on the floor.

  This was not the impression he wanted to make on Stavros. He pulled back out and tried to shut the door.

  “Wow. Gosh,” Keaton rambled on, “Looks like they are a little indisposed.”

  “Not for me,” Stavros said, pushing past Keaton with that darned perfect 20 BMI body of his.

  The drug dealer stopped cold in this tracks, though, once he took in the room. Keaton rushed to get in front of him. Drug dealers were used to bodies showing up, right? That shouldn’t stop the deal from going down. If anything, these men wouldn’t want their deaths to be in vain. They would want him to press on. Keaton didn’t see them arguing with that plan.

  “A minor setback,” Keaton said as he tried to brush the scene off.

  Stavros knelt down and felt the cook’s neck for a pulse. Guess there wasn’t one.

  “They’e dead.”

  Keaton gulped hard, frantically searching for a way to spin these lemons into a nice tangy lemon drop cocktail.

  “Bright side?” Keaton said. “I was thinking of downsizing anyway.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The music beat from the speakers, jarring Allie’s bone marrow. Bodies swayed all around. The crowd was a pulsating mass crisscrossed by undercurrents. She was pulled deeper and deeper onto the dance floor. Flashing laser lights nearly disoriented her.

  Where was Josh?

  Rising on her tiptoes, Allie tried to look over the dancers, but couldn’t find Josh or Seven. Although, to be honest, she didn’t expect to see Seven until he needed a ride home. Which she’d been happy about until now. Any friendly face would be appreciated as painted, glowing body parts bumped into her. It was like being in some high tech jungle ritual.

  The lyrics, if they could be called that, were all about pimps and hos, or pimps and hos doing what pimps and hos did. Everyone else around her seemed to really be getting into it, though. Maybe something was wrong with her.

  Someone ran into her back. Allie turned, hoping it was Josh. Instead she found three girls, not much older than she, but oh, so much more developed. Their bodies moved with abandon as they danced. They seemed unconcerned with their cleavage showing. Or their bellies. Or their legs. Actually, they didn’t seem very concerned with how much skin was covered, just as a general rule.

  Red, yellow and blue paint glowed, leaving streaks of light, creating a slow-motion effect. Allie didn’t want to be staring at the trio, but how could you not? Then one of the girls noticed Allie and stepped around her, forcing Allie into the center of the group. Allie was trapped in a triad of glowing Playboy Mansion-worthy beauties.

  The girls swirled around her, moving closer, then spinning and weaving away in an intricate pattern that Allie couldn’t follow for the life of her. She could feel her cheeks flush as she tried to get past them.

  “Excuse me,” she said, but none of them parted.

  One of the girls, just a bit shorter than Allie, and waifishly thin, turned to her. The girl’s eyes were huge, her mouth full and pouty without looking fake.

  “What’s wrong?” The girl asked. “You don’t like?”

  No, that wasn’t the problem. If anything, her body liked it maybe a bit too much. When Allie’s father had finally admitted his sexuality and left the family, Allie had never understood how someone could be attracted to one’s own sex.

  Until now.

  Dang, but these girls were hot. Who wouldn’t be attracted to them?

  “Come on,” the girl coaxed, leaning in as she danced.

  Was the girl going to kiss her? Right here? More importantly, would Allie let her?

  * * *

  Stavros pushed himself up from looking over the last of the corpses littering the room. Each of the chemists in Keaton’s “lab” appeared to have been tied down and force-fed ecstasy.

  Brutal.

  Clever.

  And more than a little problematic, as far as this entire operation went.

  “So…downsizing?”

  Stavros stabbed Keaton with a look that sent the smaller man into a frenzy of apologetic gestures. Keaton shuffled around the room, approaching but never actually touching any of the bodies.

  “Well, yeah. I mean, you want to stay lean, you cut out the simple carbs, am I right? And these guys? Total cotton candy. Fluff, man. Had to go. Was thinking of cutting them anyway. Totally.”

  Stavros placed his thumb and forefinger on either side of the bridg
e of his nose and pressed down, seeking to stop the dull ache behind his eyes. This guy was insane. Pulled back a hair? Possibly, but right now Stavros wasn’t all that sure.

  “You do realize that this “fluff” was the only reason I came out here? And that with them no longer among the living and breathing, I have no inclination to stay. How does that do for your bottom line?”

  “No, no, no, no, no…” Keaton danced from one foot to the other, his gaze darting around the room, wincing away from the dead bodies scattered around. “You totally misunderstand my master plan.” He held up a hand, as if willing Stavros to stay put. “I’ve always got a plan B. And C and D. Sometimes E. Occasionally F.”

  Before Keaton could make his way through the rest of the Latin alphabet and move on to Cyrillic, Stavros stepped in.

  “How could you possibly have a plan B here? Your chemists are all dead. I would say that should adversely affect your production schedule.”

  But Keaton was back on top of his game, apparently. Without even batting an eye, the little man gave a snicker, saw the look on Stavros’s face, and seemed to think better of the display of humor. He did, however, wave aside Stavros’s concern.

  “Dude. You think they’re the only chemists I had around in this fine establishment? It’s called the Hive for a reason. Always plenty of worker bees, no matter what the specialty.”

  “You have more cooks?”

  “I’ve got like three shifts’ worth of cooks. The next one’s due to start in about an hour and a half or so.”

  Stavros could feel the ache firing back up behind his eyes. “So I have to wait around here for an hour and a half?”

  The micro-preneur cleared his throat a little. “Well, there might be another option that’s a bit more… immediate. It’s one of the rooms…I have a couple of guys in there making explosives.”

  This just kept getting better and better. “You what?!”