Wanna Bet?

by Chula Stone

  “You should know this isn’t over. Chalk didn’t get caught. He all but gave himself up, showing himself where he knew he could be apprehended. He most likely called the anonymous tip in on himself.”

  “However it happened, he’s in jail. Why are you still worried?”

  “You were the one who pointed out to me that Chalk and Van Dyke were tied up together in this somehow. I don’t know what you know about the likes of Van Dyke, but he’s nobody to take lightly. Now that Chalk is inside with Tobin, Van Dyke will expect us to let down our guard. That’s what it has to look like.”

  “But it isn’t so, is it? We’re not letting down our guard.” Again, not a question.

  “No, little one. I’m never letting down my guard again. Not with you in my life. But we’re not going off high alert, even. We’re doubling the surveillance on all the subjects in the photos, especially you. Since Chalk went after you, and got jailed for what he did to your apartment, people might expect you to think you were safe now. People who feel safe are the softest targets.” He took her in his arms again, his voice whispery. “Very soft. Soft like candy. Sweet like candy. Irresistible like candy.”

  His kiss took her over. Her objections fell away with her clothes. He laid her fears to rest as he laid her on her bed. “We are married. I am your husband and you are my wife. Admit it. Say it.”

  “You are my husband. We are married,” she sighed.

  “And you? Whose are you? Say it!”

  “I’m yours,” she breathed. “I’m your wife.”

  It was then that they heard the loud banging on the door. “Fire department. Open up. We have to evacuate the building immediately!”

  Suddenly, she blinked and looked up at him. He rarely swore but the word he let slip just then wasn’t printable in any newspaper she knew. Other sounds were filtering into her mind that she realized had been in the background for some time. Sirens. A voice shouting through a bullhorn. Cars honking. Doors slamming.

  “I don’t understand. More fire? Chalk is in jail, so it can’t be him.” Confusion warred with shock-induced clarity. Her brain had too many facts to fit into too few slots.

  “That’s why it’s called organized crime, little one,” Jeep instructed her as they hastily dressed and joined the trickle of evacuees exiting the building. “He doesn’t have to do everything himself. He has lieutenants, just like Tobin has me to work for him on the outside while he’s inside. Here, come with me down the far stairs. Anybody watching won’t expect us to come out on the north side.”

  She followed him, not really acknowledging the fact that she was blindly trusting him to make the best decisions for her. Her trust never wavered. His hold on her hand never slipped. He rounded every corner first, then pushed her ahead of him so no one could sneak up on them from behind.

  Instead of joining the rest of the crowd milling on the sidewalk in their lounge clothes, Jeep slipped behind the building’s dumpster. The shadows he had always warned her to avoid now became their allies as he guided her into a nearby Chinese restaurant’s kitchen entrance. No one there seemed the least bit surprised when Jeep preceded her in, then dragged her into the hallway by the walk-in freezer, where he slid to the floor with his back to the wall.

  “I was afraid of this. Van Dyke probably has, what—three, maybe four guys watching the crowd out there. In all the confusion, he could have snatched you and I wouldn’t have known for hours when you went missing or which direction he had taken you.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “We don’t do anything. I go out to the crowd, find Pepper, send him in to get you out of here, and ID the guys trying to get you. If I can catch one or two of them, all the better.”

  “What about me? What do I do?”

  “You stay put,” he ordered. “And I mean that. Right here until Pepper gets you. Go with him. Heaven only knows where he’ll take you, but wherever it may be, it will be safe and, knowing him, completely unpredictable. You’ll be in good hands. Strange, but good.” Jeep kissed her quickly, then got up and left before she could answer.

  Good, bad or just plain strange, Pepper’s hands didn’t show up. She waited for thirty minutes before she got mad. Where could he be? Why hadn’t Jeep sent him? Or somebody? Anybody! She had no idea what was going on. She hadn’t heard a bomb or seen a fire truck. The sirens had been silenced some time ago. It was maddening.

  Just one look, she told herself. I’ll just go and see if Pepper needs any help. Perhaps he’s hurt. I just need to see.

  She stood up and walked quietly out into the main kitchen area. One of the cooks, one with rather a large carving knife, brandished it at her, chattering something that sounded like, “Wind song hat coo.”

  “I’m sorry? I don’t understand.”

  “Wind song hat high coo,” came the insistent reply. The carving knife was rather more informative and she watched it with understandable attention. It was swirling toward the hallway she had just left and slicing large X’s in the air in the direction of the door.

  She took another step toward the door, just to test the waters, but was not surprised when the knife got more energetic and her Chinese friend changed his tune as well. “Rat cake fee no,” was about all she could make out of his tirade, but she was getting the jist.

  “You want me to go back to the hallway and get away from the door?” She took a step towards the hallway and the volume, if not the speed diminished to more normal proportions.

  Just then a young woman about her own age slipped into the kitchen. Wearing a cute uniform of a red T-shirt, full cotton skirt and large hat, she was imitating his sing-song voice and drawing similar gestures from the now irate cook. The X’s were good for not just the door, but also the large pots simmering on the stoves and three chickens that had not quite made it through the plucking process yet, as far as Jenny could tell.

  Jenny thought the argument might have lasted longer if the cook had not picked up a large bamboo serving spatula and waved it angrily at the posterior of the young woman. Jenny didn’t need to speak Cantonese to get that message loud and clear. Her new friend apparently understood even better because she shut her mouth immediately and grabbed the chickens up, making for the hallway and gesturing for Jenny to come with her.

  Sitting down on the floor, the new girl said in heavily accented English, “You better sit with me. That Jeep, he no fool around. He tell my husband you stay. You stay.”

  “But Jeep hasn’t come back. It’s been so long. He was going to send Pepper and he’s not here, either. I just need to go look for them.”

  “That Pepper? Psh!” Here, the woman made a face that told Jenny she knew Pepper, all right. “He come when he come. You stay here or big trouble.” The woman shifted her backside uneasily on the floor as if she, too, knew the feel of an irate man’s hand on her rump and could use a nice silk pillow.

  Jenny sat, too. “Here. I’ll help you.” She reached for a chicken and starting pulling the little pin feathers off the chicken’s wings. Happy to relieve her boredom and anxiety, she bent her head over her task. The move probably saved her life.

  She heard the door from the street to the kitchen open and two strange voices yelling angrily. She could tell from the sounds and her recent experiences that the cook was doing his knife-waving act again. Her new friend quickly removed her hat and placed it on Jenny’s head, then bent her head further over her work and grunted as if to tell Jenny to do the same. A male head poked itself into the hallway, then strode over to the freezer, barely giving the two women on the floor a glance. He obviously had no interest in chicken pluckers.

  “Nobody here,” he called out.

  Next, Jenny heard the sounds of more doors opening and slamming before another voice threatened, “You see a blonde woman, name of Jenny, running around here by herself, looking like she’s hiding from someone, you better call this number. Or else.” There was the sound of a shot ricocheting off a large metal pot. Jenny could imagine the cook holding a business
card. As Jeep had told her earlier, these criminals were organized. She could just see it now. A business card reading, “Professional strong arm. Thuggery extra. Kidnapping a specialty. You call; we haul.”

  “Jenny, huh? I Wei Shung. Nice I meet you.”

  “Likewise,” Jenny breathed. Her hands were shaking so much, she could barely make any progress on her chicken but she continued to try. Every once in a while, the cook would come in and treat them to the pleasure of his dulcet tones admonishing them, as Wei Shung translated, to “Sit still and work. No out. No move. No talk. Just work or he…” Here, her English failed her, but her motions told the tale.

  “I think the word you are looking for is ‘spank,’” Jenny informed her on the third attempt.

  “Yeah, spank. We move, he spank.”

  Jenny thought that was pretty clear and had no desire to get any of them in any trouble with anybody, so she sat and she worked. The third chicken was looking nicely molty when she heard the street door open again. This time, it was Pepper’s voice and Jeep’s step that Jenny heard.

  She was up and in his arms in less time than it took her newly acquired hat to flutter to the cement floor. He hugged her tightly, not seeming to notice that she was shedding pin feathers all over his sweater. Pepper picked a feather out of her hair and handed it to her. “My lady,” he intoned, “Please forgive my tardiness. I was unavoidably delayed.”

  Jeep released his tight hold so she could turn to look at him for the first time. Pepper had a white bandage wrapped around his head and pinned with a butterfly clip. There was a large lump of gauze on his temple under the wrapping, which Jenny assumed indicated where some blunt object had made firm contact with his skull. Pity the poor blunt object, was Jenny’s opinion.

  Jeep released her reluctantly to face the cook, who had been chattering all the while. As Wei Shung approached, the cook addressed several adamant gestures and not a few vehement words to her, obviously to get her to translate. Wei Shung shyly spoke up. “My husband say he lot trouble,” indicating Jenny.

  “I was not!” Jenny hotly denied the charge, looking to Wei Shung for confirmation, but Wei Shung simply put her head down and plowed on.

  “Get stand up. No stay down. No stay in hall like you say. Try leave. Very bad.”

  “Did you try to leave?” Jeep asked.

  “Well, of course, after a half hour, I was getting worried. What happened? Was there really a bomb?”

  Jeep shushed her. “We’ll fill you in later. The less these folks know, the better off they’ll be.” Turning to the cook, he asked, “Anything else?”

  The cook may have been reciting the Gettysburg address, but Jenny thought it more likely he was making further accusations. She just hoped Wei Shung would suddenly get laryngitis because she wasn’t helping Jenny’s case in the least and obviously she would get herself in trouble if she refused to translate. Jenny couldn’t really blame Wei Shung for not wanting to get some of what Jenny felt sure she was about to receive.

  “Bad men come. Girls pluck chicken. Very slow pluck. No good work. Chicken look like Elvis, feathers stick up like Elvis hair.” The cook brandished the chicken and Jeep made a show of disapproval.

  As if they could understand each other, Jeep assured the still gesticulating cook. “I’ll take care of it. Thank you so much for keeping her out of trouble for me. Believe me, she will be dealt with.”

  They exited to the tune of Wei Shung translating Jeep’s words.

  “There was no bomb,” Jeep explained to Jenny as they walked quickly back to the apartment building. “They just called in the threat in order to get the authorities to clear the building. They figured in the confusion, they could snatch you.”

  “But because you knew this might happen, you were on the alert and I’m not snatched.” Jenny held more tightly to Jeep’s arm.

  “And we got two more from Chalk’s organization. I think they’ll talk. We’re down to his third string players and they don’t have much loyalty to him. Depending on the info they’re willing to trade, we could really be heading for the finish line this time.” Jeep sounded relieved.

  “But what charges could be brought against them? They didn’t really bomb the building,” Jenny wondered.

  “Calling in a false tip. That’s a felony,” Pepper chimed in. Pointing to his own head, he continued, “And assault with a deadly weapon. And attempted kidnapping. They had rope and injectables on them, too, so we convinced the cops the two thugs were trying to kidnap yours truly.”

  When Jenny gave them a skeptical look, Jeep conceded, “Nobody really believes that, but the evidence is there and it will make a good plea-bargaining chip. Kidnapping gets you federal time.”

  They arrived in the apartment and Jeep did his usual walk through, gun in hand. Though she never really got used to it, Jenny had grown to like knowing that Jeep was going first, taking the lead and the risk.

  “Still roving?” Pepper asked.

  “No, you go home and get some rest,” Jeep answered. “Salk can rove tonight.”

  The way he was scowling at Jenny had her wondering if it really were safe for Pepper to leave. She wasn’t worried about another bomb. She was worried about Jeep. And she was right.

  No sooner had Pepper slid the deadbolt home behind himself than Jeep set the security prop and turned to Jenny. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “Now, Jeep,” she began.

  “I don’t want to hear any ‘now, Jeep-ing’ from you.” He was seating himself on the sofa. Getting comfortable. Too comfortable. How long did he plan to take with this spanking?

  “But after what nearly happened tonight? You’re not really going to spank me, are you?”

  “Wanna bet?”

  “Jeep!”

  “Get over here, girlie. If I have to come get you, it will only get worse.”

  With growing consternation, Jenny reflected on how quickly he had taken to this idea of his being in charge and able to enforce it. And how quickly he had manipulated her into this marriage. And how happy she had been since she met Jeep. She walked over to him and laid herself over his lap.

  He spanked long and hard. Longer, in fact, than he had ever spanked her, though he avoided the mistakes of their first experience together. All the while, he lectured and chided her. Phrases like: “What were you thinking”; “especially while I’m working”; “can’t interfere with such risky stuff”; “You have to mind me”; and even, “If you ever…” were flowing out of him as if he had been spanking his wayward wife for years.

  He started with her clothing on, but quickly peeled back one piece after another, making sure to heat up her backside in between each layer. Skirt, slip and panties seemed to offer no protection at all until she was bare to the waist and really felt what it meant to have no protection at all. At last she lay limp and crying while he swatted her backside repeatedly.

  He finished up with the most heart-wrenching thought: “What if something happened to you? How could I live? How could I forgive myself or go on? Next time you’re tempted to do something dangerous or foolish, think about that and do what you’re told. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you,” she answered, once she realized that he expected an answer.

  “Now, tell me again, why did you get this spanking?”

  “Because I disobeyed, tried to interfere in your work, and tried to go into a dangerous situation.”

  “Good girl.” He let her up and held her then. He straightened her clothing with a very reluctant look on his face and Jenny had no trouble guessing that he would rather she stay the way she was. “If you weren’t so tired, I’d pick up where we left off.”

  Jenny could hear a hopeful note in his voice, but she had to disappoint him. “I’m exhausted, Jeep. Can we just cuddle for a while?” She turned into his arms and he picked her up to carry her gently to the bed. Her bed. Now their bed. Jenny noted Jeep’s almost satisfied smirk as he lay down beside her before she fell like a stone into sleep.

  Cha
pter Five

  “So, what do you want for your birthday?” Jenny asked Jeep. They had only been married two months, but she thought she knew what his answer would be.

  “Chase.”

  “I knew it!”

  “If you knew it, why did you ask?” His grin taunted her playfully, so she rose to the bait.

  Grabbing for his ear, she tried to twist out of his grasping arms, but as usual, he snagged her handily. “Okay. It is your birthday, so Chase it is. For how long?”

  “Half an hour.”

  “I’ll be exhausted! And sore! Wouldn’t you rather—”

  “We can do that, too.”

  “Or maybe we could—”

  “I fully intend to. But Chase comes first.” He rubbed his hands together with what looked to Jenny suspiciously like gleeful anticipation. Jenny blushed, but as they were married, she tried to overcome her modesty.

  The game was simple. He turned his back and counted to ten to give her a sporting chance. Then he chased her, which was amusing enough, but the real fun came when he caught her. Then came the penalties. One swat for each capture. And the tally was cumulative, so as the game progressed, the count could get high. This was why she had instituted a time limit, and had not objected too strenuously to his new twist on the game in recent days. He called it, “Strip Chase.”

  With each capture, he could ask for swats or a piece of her clothing. Sometimes, she could distract him early enough in the proceedings to ensure she could still sit comfortably the next day. Funny thing was, she didn’t mind being a little sore afterward. It certainly reminded her of the fun they’d had the night before, even if it did make work a bit of a trial.

  “What about dinner? Want me to cook?” Jenny offered.

  “I’m in the mood for Chinese,” Jeep replied. “How about we walk down to the Red Dragon for some take out?”

  “You just want to see Liu Chang and gloat.”

  “We spanking husbands need to stick together. And anyway, he needs to practice his English.”