She continued, “But the 91 freeway corridor is scheduled to be widened where your land is located with subsequent development.”
“No development is going through my land, and you can put that in your magazine.” The ache, the burning nausea in my gut descended lower. Could it be that spicy Latin food I had last night?
“Your land is in that part of the county where the freeway is pegged to be widened. The county will declare eminent domain, Mr. Kidd.”
“You’re mistaken. Have a good day—”
“I’ve been researching this, Mr. Kidd, tailing some people whom you may be interested in.”
“I’m not. I’m a busy man.” Like a ballistic missile honing in on its target, my index finger began plunging for that little button on the phone that disconnects the receiver from the nosey, outside world—
“These are people in high places—people you know, Mr. Kidd.”
“And how would you know that?” The missile continued plunging, but at a slower descent.
“I’ve been following paper trails, and I have names I’m sure you’ll want to know about. Off the record, Mr. Kidd, there’s a big scam going down regarding your land and I think you’re in a hell of a lot of trouble.”
I halted the missile, saving, for the moment, this aspiring journalist’s headline story. I was also quelling, I hoped, the emotional assault in my lower intestines. Call it a foreboding sense or an opening break, there was a tone of exploitable intel in this woman’s voice. “Send the names to my P.O. box here in Newport Beach,” I said.
“And what is your box number?”
“Just my name will do.” I dropped the missile, terminating the phone call.
I took a deep breath, then leaned back in my chair and stretched my arms and legs until both the morning stiffness and Ms Quinn’s phone intrusion had disappeared.
I thought of Carmella Falsetto and our recent phone conversation and how she still wasn’t convinced that I would land my muse. It’d been six days since we placed our stakes, and with twenty-four more days to go, I knew I was hovering at a critical point. I also knew that my Kewpie-doll lover was watching with ever-present spies, registering in on rumor and hearsay from rival pirates who were all salivating at the chance to prod me in the back along a short plank.
I opened a manila folder that sat on my desk, the same flimsy retainer I had stashed in a wall safe. A London news article regarding the death of a beautiful, British fashion model, Michelle Brigham, who had been married to an elderly British Billionaire, Malcolm Brigham, sat dry and brittle inside the stack.
Michelle was a mere twenty-eight years old, and the honorable Mr. Brigham was still hitting his stride at a ripe old age of seventy-two. Other than the obvious fact that he was a sugar daddy with loaded expense account and she was a stunning piece of eye candy for his trophy case, the two of them, I would easily guess, had absolutely nothing in common. The sex too, I would guess, wasn’t good for her; then again there’s always Viagra. But men like Malcolm Brigham know how to ride their horse, so the old boy, I’m sure, rode his gallantly, or he’d die trying, with a smile on his face, of course.
Anyhow, Michelle lived lavishly off sugar daddy’s sterling pounds and euros and frequented the worldwide club scene like a sassy, college girl on a never-ending spring break. Rio dance clubs and gafieras seemed to be her favorite playgrounds.
Bored of my own local herd of MILFs, and like any addict helplessly addicted to his vices, I needed to up my game. And so I went international. Michelle and I met that infamous evening in Rio. I was alone and prowling for a rich man’s trophy, marauding as a merchant marine with tattooed body, shaved head, bearded face, and stinky arm pits, and Michelle and her entourage of horny girlfriends had been cruising the club circuit that evening and scouting out the terrain for a piece of beefcake.
The first thing I noticed about Michelle wasn’t her stunning Victoria’s Secret—look-at-me-in-my-skimpy-swimsuit style and approach—but rather it was a fragrance she wore that evening—Giorgio Armani—to be exact, a peppery-sweet odeur of lust and danger that nailed dead on the fury dangling inside both my dungarees and my lacuna.
After an evening of dancing, drinks, blows of Cocaine, and tokes of hashish, we found ourselves, all six of us, in a high-rise hotel, twined together atop a king-sized bed and smeared in a sticky-as-hell sex wax that tasted like cherry cough syrup. After the smelly lubricant party had found a certain groove, my newfound lovers began whispering in my ear that Senhora Brigham enjoyed the noir diversion of erotic asphyxiation.
Truth be told, the over-the-top act did intrigue me. I had performed certain tricks before, depending on the woman’s taste, that would manhandle her in such a way that from any other point of view it would seem like rape. But clutching my hands around a woman’s throat, this was new to me. And so after each of us had a try at compressing Michelle’s carotid artery just enough to cause a loss of oxygen to her brain while she reached an orgasm, we too succumbed to our own mighty sighs.
But Michelle didn’t revive from this most dangerous game. I squeezed too hard. It had to have been me. I was the only one anatomically correct and strong enough to perform the unthinkable act. I couldn’t let go of her throat, even when I knew I was killing her.
Perhaps Doctor Murphy is right. Maybe my slasher dreams are nothing more than Michelle’s ghost coming back for revenge. Maybe I am nothing but a misogynist. After all, I did kill a woman, even enjoyed it. And those other four women who had kicked and screamed hysterically at the sight of Michelle’s dead body and then bolted as if they had never known her, well, I dare say, at that moment, anyway, I could’ve enjoyed killing them too quite easily. But why the predator instinct inside me? Why didn’t I let go of her throat?
After all the mayhem and after I had rinsed off that sticky, cheery goop from my body, I too bolted, utilizing every connection and payoff I could wheel and deal to get out of Brazil.
That memory, that fragrance, that musky, sweet, peppery, hardcore sensual Giorgio Armani perfume that Michelle wore combined with that feeling of killing her sickened me. And yet, since the incident, I’ve anticipated that same feeling with a perverse longing each time I lay a woman.
I closed the folder, stood, and exhaled a rotten sigh of disgust. I recalled my self-prescribed thirty-day countdown, or, more apropos, my meltdown, and how I didn’t care about anything except getting my terminal ass out of the country.
But before my self-inflicted endgame was to take wing, my off-the-cuff and somewhat orderly plan would have to be navigated slowly. I needed to keep this simple and enjoyable.
I exited my in-home office and crossed the hallway to my bedroom. A sleeping inhabitant occupied my bed, a Costa Rican named Mari Ella. She bought perfume wholesale from my distant lover Emily and retailed it in her own beauty boutiques that spotted across Latin America.
Mari Ella was a referral, part of Emily’s esoteric network of horny matriarchs to whom she leant out my services. Emily and I never planned this arrangement, yet it fell into place naturally, and as long as both sides of the tender got stroked, we didn’t mind.
I stood in the bedroom and watched her. All women have a guard about them, even while sleeping. And when that guard is let down I become intrigued at the unadorned vanity of gaping mouth, rivulets of saliva included, snorts and snores, and the sometimes juicy exposé of sleep talking that has at numerous times given me a stimulating analysis into many people’s lives.
But not this one. She lay uncovered, shameless in the morning light with marvelous, nude figure resting tranquilly. I sat on the bed, hoping to rouse her.
I then had a devil of a thought as I watched her sleeping, recalling how my hands had once wrenched around another supple windpipe. My basement door was open again; the snakes were escaping—so soon, shit! I have to lay off the booze; pink elephants and plundering pirates; visions of sweet oranges dancing in my head; that odeur—that fragrance.
I slammed the basement door and drew close t
o her, verifying a stale scent of vanilla eau de toilette, one of Emily’s older lines. My nose detected every waif of odor from my sleeping beauty, but nary a trace of Giorgio Armani. Thank God.
Mari Ella wrapped herself around a pillow, awoke, and then smiled. “Mmmm, I slept muy bien, Jack.” Her sleepy, Spanish accent lofted through the air like a slow rumba motion. She closed her eyes and extended her arms and legs into a long stretch, then offered more melodious cadences, “That salsa and that tango of yours...hmmm, magnifico, Jack.” Her teeth gleamed a lovely pearl white.
I leaned down and kissed her and said, “We tangoed all the way here.”
"Estoy impresionado, Señior, Kidd.”
“De nada.” Her sleepy, brown eyes, smooth, olive skin, and her long, dark hair that splashed a fan-like arrangement against my pillow, were a pleasant detour to my edgy morning. She said, “You danced very well last night in that shitty disco you took me to.” Her voice sounded even more musical when she cursed. “Where did you learn to dance?”
“I picked it up in school.”
She drew close, planting her lips on mine. My little Jack sprung to a ten-hut, but being well-trained in pillow-talk maneuvers, I pulled in the reins on my stallion, like a cavalier cowboy smelling a barren heart, one needing more than just a morning romp. I glanced at the clock next to my bed, expecting her eyes would follow.
“You are very much the professional, Jack Kidd.”
I responded with a smile of chagrin.
“My husband would kill me if he saw me here, and then, of course, he would kill you also.”
Little Jack fell off his horse. “I didn’t know you were married.”
“Of course I am married. I only took the ring off so not to pain my heart. But he cheats on me too. So at least he is better than my first husband and much richer, too.”
“Divorced?”
She shook her head slowly. “I had to kill him.”
The needle on my intrigue meter swung off the dial. “Kill him?”
“For my sister’s honor. He raped and beat her so badly that she went blind in one eye. I was only nineteen when I married him and stupid about the ways of men. He was just a chicken farmer and a bad one, too. My family was poor, so I had few choices.”
“How’d you do it, salmonellae?”
She frowned again, but this time her pearly whites reappeared. “You are such a childish man, Jack Kidd. No, with two things, a big dose of painkillers so that he could not move. After that I waited until he was lying still on the floor, and then I cut his throat.” She gestured with her finger an angle across her neck. “I wanted to see his eyes when he died,” she said. “I wanted him to feel what my sister felt when she had her eyes open and had her virginity and one eye taken away.”
I saw in Mari Ella’s face a sudden array of qualities: Madonna, boutique mogul, and now manslayer. “You don’t seem the killer type,” I said. A poignant memory appeared in one of the haunted rooms of my basement, reminding me of what a distraught woman is capable of.
“We are all killers, Jack. The same way we are all lovers.”
I thought about that: love, hate, Yin and Yang, all’s fair in love and war. I suppose it was nothing more than a blood sport.
She went on, “It was an arranged marriage, so I did not love him, and so truly no loss. My sister was only thirteen years old. You will never tell anyone, no?”
“Only that you’re a fine sister.”
She smiled. Her face resumed its regal loveliness. “May I ask you something, Jack?”
“Si.”
“May I come back next month and dance with you again?”
“Only if you buy a thousand crates of my best perfume.”
“You do not sell perfume, your distant lover does.” She held her tongue for a long moment; a thought engross her face, one that seemed unrelated to maimed siblings and dead chicken farmers. “How well do you know your distant lover Emily?” she asked.
“Too well, actually. We’ve been what I call happily estranged for about five years. Why?”
“Do you know that she is sick?”
“That depends on how you define sick.”
“The most severe kind.” Her face winced. She began twisting her hair with her fingers.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Emily loves you very much, Jack, so much that she hates you even more. I know this because when I travel to Europe I see her at meetings and at parties, and I hear how she talks about you as if you are a part of her life.” Mari Ella locked her eyes on me. “Promise me, Jack, that you will never tell her these things that I’m going to tell you.”
I nodded. “Promise.”
“I believe you. You are not the chauvinist bastard that she says you are. Since being here I have realized this. Emily simply loves and hates you all at once.”
God, if I could only understand the mind of a woman. “What are you getting at, Mari Ella?”
“She has been with a woman. The rumors have it that this woman is her lover and that they were very close.”
I sat at the edge of the bed and tittered out a sigh of amusement. “Okay, she’s gotten a little kinky. What’s the crime?”
“Esta es la vida. This is life, and we cannot judge this, but she is not a lesbian as one would think. She is simply wild with feelings, and she has been with this woman who is wild and different and could make anyone, man or woman, fall in love with her.”
“And what does this have to do with me?”
“This woman is here in your puerto. Last night when we were at the disco, I saw on the dance floor another woman. Her hair was muy negra, and her skin, blanca, like when one is without the sun. She was watching me, but mostly you.”
I stood, stepped across the room, and leaned against the bureau. “How do you know this woman with the black hair?”
“I recognized her from when I was in Europe. She is always with another, the blonde.”
“What’s this blonde look like?” My eyes sharpened, my mouth curled to a grin.
“She is very beautiful. In fact, both the blonde and the brunette are here in this puerto. I know this because they are always together.”
“And their names?” My eyebrows arched, my grin curled even more.
The brunette is called Lena, and the blonde is called Catherine.”
Silence engulfed the room. Scattered pieces of an intricate puzzle, and I was becoming a key piece, began snapping together. A tantalizing dread began turning inside my head and gut.
“These two mujers have a reputation that is muy malo, Jack. I think they are capable of vicious things.”
“Like?”
“Like murder.”
Bottled fragrances of one perfume-mogul/lover piqued the olfactory sensors inside my brain. Emily and Catherine? Rich woman hires psycho woman to take out complacent lover?
Mari Ella added, “Where I come they are called fatale de femmes.”
Where I come from they’re called backstabbing bitches. I began to get angry, and for reasons I couldn’t understand, well, actually I did. I said, “All women are femme fatales—and all women should know their fucking place.” I peered down at my wristwatch. “It’s about time for you to be leaving.” As if my remarks weren’t misogynistic enough, I cocked a menacing glare toward my houseguest, placing myself within the added category of asshole.
Mari Ella pulled herself slowly out of bed, covering her breasts with her arms. Her pretty eyes, obviously stunned by my slip to the dark side, drew a bead on me. “I killed my husband because of honor,” she said. “These mujers I warn you about kill for…who knows? Perhaps you are just a chauvinist bastard, Jack.” She heavy-stepped across the room and entered the bathroom.
Moments later after I had dressed for an engagement I had later that afternoon, I entered the kitchen and saw Mari Ella sitting in the breakfast nook. She was dressed, prepared to leave, and gazing out the window. Sunlight cast silvery ribbons against her dark hair. She turned and looked at me, and I fel
t the impression, a mistake needing an apology, an opening for a man with a heart. I drove her to the hotel. We hardly said a word.
11
From John Wayne Airport I drove south along Pacific Coast Highway to my afternoon engagement at a client’s house along the Gold Coast. The Gold Coast, as we Realtors liked to pitch it, was a ten-mile stretch of exclusive real estate in South Orange County nestled between surrounding foothills, rocky coastline, and natural beaches.
The client was Barry Green, a successful movie producer. His wealth and reputation were best known in Westside LA and Hollywood, yet he preferred the anonymity he found here in Orange County over the tourist-swarming oceanfront properties in Malibu. I had helped Barry with the purchase of his own home and other obscure lots of land along the OC shoreline.
Barry also had the largest estate here in the Gold Coast, embedded high on a bluff and discreetly offensive, just the way he liked it. He usually invited me to his big shindigs, which were about twice a year, and he knew, as I did, that I fit into his glitzy itinerary as only a minor player to a larger cast of characters.
And both Barry’s characters and his events were prime hunting grounds for the most dangerous kind of game: rich and famous wives in need of an impulsive swing into deviance. But today I had a screenplay idea I wanted to bounce off Barry’s big head, and so I really wasn’t primped for any risky business. And besides, the word on the street was that a certain blonde would be here today, one with a treasure trove of musing qualities.
I turned off PCH and onto a private road that led to the estate. As I climbed the long, narrow driveway, I considered my reckless remark to Mari Ella this morning. She didn’t deserve the kick in the stomach I gave her. Hell, she was only the messenger. And even though I didn’t direct my half-true insinuation toward her personally, she had every right to misinterpret it. An obscure but obvious connection was formulating between Catherine and Emily, and I was damn annoyed that my distant lover, my one-and-only out of many, was probably setting me up in some kind of fatal-attraction showdown.
The Irresistible Muse of Jack Kidd Page 8