“Because I’m gonna fuck you now.”
She sat up and slid out of her pants and panties and mounted him, his cock sliding into her easily, smoothly. She wrapped her fingers through the steel grill that divided the front seat from the rear to get some leverage and keep her ass from banging the steering wheel and began to thrust up and down on him.
Officer Bennett groaned. Fran stopped, grabbing his face roughly in her hands and squeezing his mouth.
“Don’t you dare come until I tell you to.”
He nodded.
“I’ll try.”
Fran started thrusting again, pushing down hard against him, feeling his belt buckle and mace canister against her inner thigh, her left knee scraping along the grip of his handgun. Occasionally the dispatch would come over the radio, calling out code numbers and directing officers to various addresses. Apparently someone’s Lexus had just been stolen in the Galleria’s parking structure.
She could feel an orgasm building inside her, the sensation expanding. She rode the tension until she came in a rush of serotonin to her brain, her muscles shuddering and contracting.
Officer Bill Bennett couldn’t control himself. He followed, coming in a few uncontrollable thrusts and unintelligible guttural rumbles.
Fran looked at him and shook her head.
“I told you not to come.”
“Sorry.”
She laughed.
“I was just trying to save you some embarrassment when you go back to the station.”
She got off him and pulled her pants on. Bennett looked down at his pants and realized what she meant. His crotch was drenched. It looked like he’d pissed himself.
…
Fran waved to Officer Bennett as she opened the security gate to her apartment complex. Like the others, he had to cop a feel as she was getting out of the car, but then, as he squished her boobs like he was giving her an examination, he asked her out on a date. Men just didn’t get it. Going on a date was the last thing Fran wanted to do. But sometimes guys thought that she had sex with them because she wanted to be their girlfriend or mistress or something. As if they had something special that other men didn’t. God gave you all the same equipment. People always say that women are the sappy ones, waiting for Mr. Right to come save them from their lives and make everything fireworks and roses, but men were just as deluded. Fran didn’t understand why you couldn’t just have sex without any strings attached. You know? Have some fun. Why did guys always have to ruin it by asking for dates?
Fran walked across the courtyard toward her apartment. The building had probably been really cool when it was built in the fifties but now it looked like an old folk’s home plopped on a quiet side street just south of Glendale. There was a biomorphic-shaped pool in the center of the U-shaped complex and a half dozen chaise longues were scattered around it, their cheap aluminum frames deformed from years of abuse. Despite the patina of algae and probable traces of urine in the water, Fran was happy to have the pool. It got hot in the summer and the air conditioning in her place just couldn’t keep up with the rising misery index of the valley in August.
Fran unlocked her door and entered her small, stuffy apartment. She walked past the two beanbag chairs and the one floor lamp that comprised her entire living room set. An oil painting of Jesus and his disciples standing by a windswept shore hung in the middle of the wall. Fran wasn’t religious but her born-again Christian mother had gotten it for her as a housewarming gift and Fran had left it hanging. Besides, you had to look close to tell that it was the Son of God standing there; from a distance it looked like a bunch of hippies getting ready to smoke a joint. Anyway, it was better than the bare wall.
Fran dumped the yellow backpack on her kitchen table, opened the fridge, and grabbed a cold beer.
She walked into her bedroom, the one room with some actual furniture, and got undressed. Putting the beer down on the dresser, she looked at her naked self in the mirror. Damn, she looked good. Strong and lean and hard. She reached under her bed and pulled out a metal box. It wasn’t anything special, no bigger than a briefcase.
Inside were two handguns—a Glock and a Colt .45 semiautomatic—that she’d acquired while in the army. Next to the guns was her special toy. She took it out and slid the box back under the bed.
Standing in front of the mirror she slipped her legs through the thong harness and pulled it up, tight, over her ass. The front of the harness made a small black triangle over her crotch. That’s what she liked about it. It looked like pubic hair and made the ten-inch jelly dildo sticking out from it look almost lifelike. The strap-on was her security blanket, her teddy bear, the thing that she took to bed that made her feel safe and cuddly. She realized that people might think it was strange or kinky, but it made her feel strong and protected. When she was in the army she’d slept with a gun under her pillow; in civilian life she had her dildo. Maybe if she was married she wouldn’t need it, she’d have her husband’s cock to cling to. But she wasn’t, so this would have to do.
In the mirror, Fran looked like a really buff and beautiful hermaphrodite with an erection. She admired herself, gave her cock a good squeeze, then slipped under the covers and turned on the TV.
There’s nothing like drinking beer in bed while you watch TV after a hard day’s work.
…
Damon had watched as the door to the squad car opened and the paramedic chick started to get out. He saw the officer inside reach an arm out and quickly grope her breasts before she stood up and closed the car door. He watched as she carried the yellow backpack toward an apartment building. She turned and waved and the squad car drove off.
“Let’s bum-rush her ass.”
Shamus shook his head.
“Let’s see where she goes.”
Damon took out his bandanna and wiped his face down. Tailing cop cars was not something he liked to do. In fact, if you asked him, the goal should be to keep as much distance between yourself and the police as possible.
Shamus slipped out of the car and trotted across the street. Damon watched as he went up to the security gate and peered through. He stood there for a moment—it seemed like an hour to Damon—then turned and jogged back to the SUV.
“She’s on the first floor, right side, second apartment from the end.”
Damon figured now would be a good time to argue against the plan, whatever the plan was.
“It’s just a couple pounds, man.”
Shamus turned and glared at Damon. More sweat erupted from Damon’s forehead.
“What’re you sayin’?”
“Like, we got hundreds of pounds of the shit. That’s all.”
Shamus looked at him and shook his head.
“It’s the principal.”
“She’s just doing her job.”
“She’s a paramedic.”
Damon didn’t know what to say to that. He had to admit that it wasn’t normal for public employees to take confiscated Schedule 1 narcotics home with them. Was it?
“So what do you want to do?”
“Go in there and get it.”
There was something about the way Shamus said it that didn’t sound right to Damon.
“Who?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“Yeah.”
More sweat. More mopping. Damon realized he needed another bandanna.
“Why me?”
“I thought you were Mr. B and E.”
It was true. Damon had spent a lot of his youth jimmying doors and climbing through windows, but he was bigger now. Slower, stockier, sweatier. The fact that he was wearing bright yellow didn’t help either.
“Well, yeah, I can get in there. But...”
Shamus looked at him.
“But what, motherfucker?”
Damon was smart enough to realize that it was time for him to do what Shamus told him.
“Okay, man. I’ll do my best.”
Damon climbed out of the SUV and walked, as casually as
he could, toward the apartment complex.
…
Fran had fallen asleep with the TV on. That wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was the intruder in her bedroom pressing a gun against her head.
“Don’t fuckin’ move. You scream and I’m gonna drop the hammer. Understand?”
Fran nodded.
“Where’s the shit?”
Fran realized that her arms were trembling. She told herself to take a deep breath. Stay calm. Relax and wait for the perp to make a mistake. She noticed he was a big guy, stocky, and in some kind of bright yellow costume. Was she being robbed by Big Bird?
“I have some money in my wallet.”
Damon dug the hard steel barrel of the pistol into her cheek.
“Don’t make me fuck up your pretty face. I don’t want your fuckin’ money. Where’s the shit you stole?”
This, she realized, was about the marijuana.
“On the kitchen table. It’s all there.”
She felt the perp relax. He let his full weight rest on the bed causing it to creak and list to one side.
“You like to get high?”
Fran shook her head.
“I was going to sell it.”
The perp nodded knowingly.
“You should try it. Chill you out.”
He pulled the covers down revealing her breasts. Fran watched as he stared at them. Then she saw him lick his lips.
“You got nice tits.”
He reached over and began touching her breasts.
“These are real.”
Fran remembered something from her rape prevention counseling. Keep them talking.
“You don’t want to do this. Just take the pot and go.”
Damon cocked the gun.
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
Fran swallowed.
“Okay.”
“’Cos I think you like it.”
Despite herself, she couldn’t keep her nipples from responding. They became erect. She could tell that the perp was getting excited. His breathing changed, growing fast and ragged.
“You should stop.”
She heard the perp chuckle.
“What did I tell you?”
“I shouldn’t tell you what to do.”
“That’s right. Now don’t fucking move.”
She watched as he stood up and yanked his track pants down, keeping the gun in his hand. He had an erection.
“I never fucked a fireman before.”
Fran didn’t say anything. She wasn’t about to beg this asshole for mercy.
He slipped under the covers next to her. Fran couldn’t help it, she recoiled, not so much at his touch, but at the drops of perspiration falling from his face and head as he moved himself into a position to mount her. She tensed as he crouched over her.
“Open your mouth.”
Fran did as he said, wincing a little as he took the barrel of his gun and pushed it into her mouth. He spread her legs with his knee and reached for her crotch. Then he froze.
“What the fuck?”
That was the moment she’d been waiting for. The second of hesitation when he discovered the strap-on she was wearing.
Fran grabbed the gun and deftly twisted it out of his hands while simultaneously doing a rapid sit-up and smashing her forehead into his face, breaking his nose. He flailed blindly, stunned by her actions. Fran twisted, rolling him over, and jammed the gun into his mouth. She felt the barrel knock out a couple of the perp’s teeth on its way in.
“Give me a reason motherfucker. Give me a reason to blow your head off.”
The perp stopped struggling. He moaned in pain. Blood was flowing freely from his crushed nose and bubbling up from his broken teeth and torn gums. He tried to say something. She thought he might be trying to apologize but Fran wasn’t interested in an apology. She was just getting started. She grabbed his balls and gave them a hard squeeze. The perp bucked. She jammed the gun harder into his mouth.
“You like to rape? You think that’s fun?”
The perp shook his head from side to side. Fran could hear him saying no, in a bloody gurgle.
“You ever been fucked by a fireman before?”
Fran let go of his balls and spit into her palm. She used the saliva to lubricate her strap-on. The perp’s eyes widened in disbelief as she spread his cheeks and thrust the dildo straight up his ass.
The perp squealed in pain, his eyes rolling up into his head. Fran found herself completely turned on. Maybe the missionary position isn’t so bad if you’re the one on top. She began to fuck him as hard as she could.
…
Shamus didn’t know what to think. He’d seen some kinky shit on pornos but he’d never seen anything like this. There, lit by the glow of the TV set, was the female paramedic on top of Damon, buttfucking him for all she was worth with a big strap-on dildo.
She was too busy jamming her cock into Damon to notice Shamus silently step behind her, raise his gun, and put two bullets into her back. She flopped down, dead before her head hit the pillow. But somehow, when her body landed on top of Damon it must’ve pulled the trigger on the gun stuck in his mouth, because it discharged, blowing the back of Damon’s head into the soft down pillows. Duck feathers, or whatever it is they stuff pillows with, floated in the air.
Shamus stood there for a second, blinking, before realizing that someone must’ve heard the shots and he wasn’t going to wait and see how long it took for the police to arrive. He went and retrieved the yellow backpack from the kitchen and started for the door. He stopped when he noticed the painting on the living room wall. It was some hippies, like Charles Manson or something, smoking a joint on the beach. Shamus liked it. It would look really good in his living room next to the LA river painting. He snatched it off the wall and left the apartment. He walked slowly, like any normal person, as he left the building.
28
WHEN MIRO WOKE UP, he found that his mother had draped a blanket over him and left a cold falafel salad on the coffee table. Rupert was long gone.
He must’ve drifted off. He did that a lot lately. He’d blink, his eyelids snapping shut for a nanosecond, and then wake up hours later. The doctors assured him it was normal, that being quasi-narcoleptic was part of the healing process.
Miro stood, wrapping himself in the blanket like a shroud, and went to the window. He saw the black expanse of ocean, heard the crash of the waves. He looked up at the sky and was amazed at how vivid it was. Without the light pollution and dense haze of carbon fuel emissions in Los Angeles, he could see millions of stars, planets, even galaxies, stretching off into an unknowable infinity. It was so vast it made Miro shiver. It was awesome.
…
Detective Cho was starting to think his wife was right, that maybe it was time to retire from the force. Getting woken up in the middle of the night was unpleasant enough, but trying to wrest his brain from the over-the-counter half-nelson of a double shot of Nyquil and a fistful of Advil to investigate a double homicide involving a murdered LAFD paramedic mixed up in some kind of kinky sex with a known drug dealer was really more than he could handle. The homicide detective covering the night shift was out with the flu. Cho wondered what he had to do to get out of it. He had a cold. Didn’t a rhinovirus count as a kind of flu? He made a mental note to send an e-mail to the police union about understaffing of detectives in the Northeast district.
The bizarre diorama he found in the bedroom—a dead female apparently sodomizing a dead drug dealer—was, cold medicine or not, hard to wrap his head around.
Cho ordered his men to seal the area. No press, no media. No nobody. The last thing he needed was a photo of this to leak out. You wouldn’t find the chief and the mayor flashing their laser-bleached smiles at that press conference.
Quijano entered the room carrying one of those stainless metal coffee mugs that are guaranteed not to spill in your car.
“What’ve we got?”
Cho shrugged.
“Clusterfuck.”<
br />
Quijano lifted the sheet and looked at the corpses. He put the sheet back down.
“Guess he was into pegging.”
Cho blinked.
“What?”
“It’s called pegging. You know? When you do what they were doing.”
“How do you know this?”
Quijano took a sip of his coffee.
“I know a lot of shit. You just never ask.”
Quijano turned and walked out of the room. Cho shrugged and followed.
In the living room, Cho noticed a young patrol officer leaning against the wall, his eyes tearing, his face green like he was about to vomit. Cho, who had somehow gotten accustomed to seeing human beings hacked, hewn, drowned, strangled, mangled, and otherwise turned into cuts of meat, went over to him.
“Officer Bennett, right? Are you okay?”
Bennett looked at Cho.
“I was just with her. I gave her a ride home.”
Detective Cho had heard enough stories in the precinct locker room to know that that meant the officer’s semen would probably be found on Fran’s body when the autopsy was performed. Cho heaved a sigh and pulled out his notebook. It was going to be a long night.
29
MIRO WAS FEELING better and it was not a moment too soon. Another day of lying on the couch watching daytime television or reading another artsy-fartsy beatnik book from his father’s library of legendary LSD-gobbling poets from the sixties was going to cause him to go postal. It was giving him too much time for reflection. He kept thinking about the Portuguese scientist, so he went to the local library and checked out the book about a god taking a walk for the breeze. He liked it, although he was surprised it was about political maneuvering between a magistrate and Emperor Marcus Aurelius during the end days of the Roman Empire as the people revolted and the Moors invaded. There was something funny about a scientist reading about people wearing togas. It made him like her even more.
Miro wondered why his parents never asked him anything about his life. They never asked him what he did or how he made money. Was it because they knew what he was doing? Or were they just too self-absorbed to care? As much as he hated to admit it, it was probably the later. He’d always felt as if he were some kind of afterthought. Years ago, when he was a freshman in college, his dad had turned to him and, apropos of nothing, said, “You’re a survivor, I never worry about you.” Which Miro took to mean, Good fucking luck, kid.
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