Wolf's Trap (The Nick Lupo Series Book 1)

by W. D. Gagliani

  He giggled and snorted at the memory then sucked another long pull from the bottle.

  Yup, the day was looking up. If he drank at just the right pace, the cooler’s stock would last at least until Kenny and Buck found their way back with reinforcements. And maybe some entertainment. Right now, they were both scraping by on some stupid job that barely kept their asses covered in denim and their palates coated in beer, but soon they’d be able to afford better.

  Much better, actually, because Wilbur had a plan he wanted to share with the boys, after the first few bottles had been emptied. He’d been working on this plan for almost a year, using his jack-of-all-tradesman’s connections to nail down some particulars that he could hold in his head. Or that they could hold in theirs—hell, if he was a dense know-nothing, what did that make his friends? He chuckled. Let them think of him any way they wanted.

  He hit bottom and immediately felt the need for another.

  A cool wind suddenly picked up dead leaves in the yard and whipped them into tiny tornadoes, then rustled through the trees at the edge of his property. It made a high-pitched, mournful sound, and it set his teeth on edge. Like a voice he didn’t want to hear or a thought he didn’t want to think. It was like something had come to visit, come to stay, and it made goose bumps rise on his bare skin.

  He shook his head. Fuckin’ weirdo shit was more like Shelly’s thinking than his. He could still hear the wind’s voice as it swirled between the tall pines, and he saw the upper branches swaying in unison above.

  Shelly’s sobbing from the window just behind the ratty old armchair seemed louder somehow after the wind had died down.

  Eat me, he thought as he maneuvered his foot into the cooler. Then he thought, Yeah. As his hand grasped the neck of his next cold one, he felt the need building up again in his loins. He let the cooler slam shut, then gathered his legs below him. Moments later, he was entering the dark house, his hand caressing the bottle.

  Yessir, Wilbur Klug had a plan. But first he was not done celebrating yet.

  Not by a long shot.

  Chapter Twelve

  Martin

  His usual refuge, the coffee shop, was one of those chain diners that attempt to capture true diner status without going the extra mile. Chrome and Formica, yes, but no real jukebox. Greasy breakfasts and specials, but all done exactly alike, thanks to corporate schooling. Uncomfortable booths encouraged quick dining and even quicker exits. Most foods came prepped from the freezer. Tired waitresses dished up stale donuts and rolls from fly-speckled serving plates. Strung-out customers regularly clashed with the drunks, and the semi-homeless nursed endless cups of black coffee, their gnarled hands wrapped around chipped mugs.

  Martin eyed his late-night company warily. This was no place for a writer. He grinned. Here the charade had brought him better-than-average service, as both aging and barely pubescent waitresses hoped to influence, or at least witness, his creative process. Martin’s little act had a kind of sitcom flair, and he was pleased with it. Even if there was no need for it, it had become comforting in its routine.

  Martin sipped his scalding coffee and eyed the congealing remains of his hamburger. This wasn’t true food, not enough to sustain him mentally and physically on his quest, but it would have to do.

  Martin turned and surveyed the scene in the wall mirror, which ran the length of the room. The tired, the drunk, the strung out. Working class. Underclass. No class. It was pathetic. He was clearly above such a place, if only because of his education. If only because of his intelligence. His presence here was a fluke, an accident of nature, a strange cosmic coincidence. There was no one here he could relate to, nor anyone he would have wanted to.

  Martin smiled, remembering why he was here. What he was slowly maneuvering into place. The enormity of his knowledge both ate at him and amused him.

  His hands were steady. The day’s events had not changed him, not that he’d expected it. He’d had his share of practice, even if it had been a while since he’d used a firearm.

  There was a dark shape at the door of the diner. He was not surprised to see the woman come in out of the thin drizzle that had begun shortly after his arrival.

  She was almost attractive enough to be legitimate, a woman waiting for her boyfriend or fiancé. Dark blonde. Black leather skirt. White blouse under a thin brown leather jacket. Was that a fashion faux pas, wearing two different shades of leather? Martin could only wonder as she slid into the booth next in line to his, in the seat facing him. He was granted special privileges because of his notebooks and large tips, he knew, but she seemed undaunted by the ubiquitous signs that announced: Two or more customers per booth. She made a gesture at the elder waitress and was brought coffee with hardly a look to spare.

  So, now Martin was interested. A hooker, certainly. Awaiting a customer? Taking a break? Going on strike? He let his eyes roam over her features boldly.

  This was, after all, his style. And one must live up to one’s style.

  The hair seemed natural—no bottles for her. Nose, long and straight. Nose job maybe, he thought. Eyes set wide, clear and intelligent. Cold, maybe. Calculating. In fact, they had already picked him out across the ten feet that separated their two booths, and were even then boldly measuring him while he measured her. Nice cheekbones. High. Simple earrings, though three adorned one ear while only one hung from the other. Chin jutted just a little, witchlike, but not enough to cause a problem. Lips, well, her lips were wide and full—and of course were the feature at which he most wanted to stare. So he did, and he was sure she smiled slightly as she dug into her tiny purse and wrestled out a compact and a pager. She pretended to check her makeup while eyeing him over the little mirror, and Martin smiled at her attempt to seem nonchalant. Just a break, then, after all. She took a silver canister from the purse and held it up in front of her face, staring at it as she slowly twisted it and raised the lipstick from its recessed compartment. She held it there for a few moments, bobbing it in front of her lips, the corners of which were slightly curled in obvious enjoyment.

  Martin squirmed in his seat. He felt the mug almost slip from his fingers and brought it down to the table carefully, never taking his eyes off her and her tantalizing ballet.

  Fully aware of his gaze, she slowly let the lush red tip of the lipstick rest against her lower lip before dragging it left, then right, from side to side. She took the lipstick from her lower lip, let it hover momentarily, then repeated the process on her upper lip, taking an impossibly long time and staring right at him. She pursed her mouth, checking her image in the mirror but positioning the compact so he could see, then slowly inserted the tip of the lipstick between her red lips, withdrawing it ever so slowly. She smiled and put the lipstick down.

  Martin felt the pen bend in his hand. A sheen of sweat cooled his forehead, and a vague sense—no, more than a sense—of hatred flowed like liquid mercury through his veins.

  Does it ever end?

  His mind screamed incoherently as his hand dropped the pen and the images came unbidden, faster than he could have imagined, faster almost than he could begin to assimilate. Not that he wanted to assimilate, but his head swelled with the balloon of knowledge, of dread, of hate, of love, and then he was nine again, and his father was rummaging in the purse and Martin was young, but he knew that what was coming was going to be very bad.

  Martin’s eyes closed momentarily and he was no longer here, but there.

  If you love me, his daddy was saying, if you love me…

  Thing was, Martin did love his daddy. A whimper escaped his lips. He had always loved his daddy a lot.

  If you love me more than mommy…

  His daddy had begged him to keep their love a secret, because mommy and Carrie would get jealous if they knew, and even though Martin was bursting with the joy of how much his daddy loved him, he kept quiet. He noticed that mommy had recently developed a habit of staring at daddy while he faced a different direction, engaged in some daddy-like behavior. M
ommy wasn’t smiling as much these days as she had just a year before, and Martin could see that daddy was right. She was jealous of the time the two of them spent together, the same time she was spending with Carrie these days. Carrie, who was four years older and always moping around the house. Carrie, who never talked and who gazed at everyone through hooded eyes. Martin had noticed these things, and thought they helped explain why daddy loved him all the more now.

  The first time daddy showed Martin how much he loved him was a day mommy had taken Carrie to some appointment, to see someone who was supposed to help Carrie stop moping. So it was just Martin and his daddy in the big old house, and daddy said, “Let’s play a game.” Martin nodded quickly, before daddy could change his mind. Daddy smiled. “For this game, we have to play in our underwear.” Martin had never heard of a game like that, but he was more than happy to learn a new one. By the time mommy and his stupid sister came home, Martin had learned the game real well, but he remembered not to say anything. It was strange, what daddy had called a game was something he had heard some kids talking about, and they talked about it as if it were something only adults could do. Martin decided he would keep playing as long as his daddy wanted to, but he would pay attention to what his friends said, too.

  At this point in the memory, Martin shuddered. He watched the blonde woman across from him as she powdered her cheeks lightly, patting them with the round applicator from her compact. The silver lipstick canister stood on the chipped Formica table in front of her, and he was sure she could see him staring at her and at the canister. Beads of sweat collected at the sides of his forehead and trickled slowly down his cheeks, causing a cool itch that he ignored.

  Martin had played the underwear game with his daddy for almost a year, until Daddy didn’t seem to enjoy it anymore. Martin was still enjoying it, he thought, because he was spending time with his daddy that no one knew about, and he felt special (especially since Mommy and Daddy didn’t seem to ever play their games anymore). But Daddy was getting bored. Until the day he first rummaged through Mommy’s purse while she was off somewhere with Carrie, finding the silver lipstick canister and a tiny bag of other jars and things that Mommy wore to make herself pretty. Daddy’s eyes lit up…

  Martin felt a shiver at the clarity of the memory.

  …as he removed the items from the purse one by one, standing them up on the kitchen table. Daddy twisted the top off the canister and watched the colored tip emerge from hiding, then he looked at Martin. “I just found a new way to play our game,” he said, one hand holding the lipstick. “Do you want to see?” But Martin backed up a step. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt suddenly uneasy about the game and what Daddy wanted him to do. It was as if some kind of line had been crossed, and now things were different. Martin liked playing the game with Daddy because it was Martin’s time and no one else’s—because he liked sharing the secret. Because Daddy wanted him and nobody else. But suddenly, with the things from Mommy’s purse between them, Martin could see that Daddy really wanted Mommy, and if she wasn’t there, then Martin would do just fine, but he had to be like Mommy. And something in his spirit rebelled at the notion. Before he knew what he was doing, he had run out of the kitchen screaming and crying and howling so loudly that Daddy was after him with lightning in his eyes and an upraised hand, and then Daddy caught him and the hand came down once, twice, and Martin cried, but there was nothing he could do except play the game Daddy’s way.

  In the kitchen again, Daddy held his head with one meaty hand and carefully filled in Martin’s lips with the other, the silvery canister flashing in the light over the sink. The tip was purple and smelled sweet, and it made his lips sticky—he could tell that Daddy was putting on more than Mommy ever would, but that didn’t seem to bother Daddy. His breath came in short, quick gusts, as if he’d been running, and Martin could smell the stuff his parents called Scotch. When Daddy was done, they sat in the kitchen and played a new version of the game— messy, like finger painting.

  And from that moment on Martin decided he hated Daddy, though a part of him still enjoyed the game they played—first with Mommy’s things from her purse, and then with things that Daddy brought home and hid in his tool chest. Things he hid even from Mommy.

  Now Martin wiped at the drying sweat trails on his face, drank from his cold mug, and pretended to write in his notebook. He turned to wave at Linda, but she was already crossing toward him with a coffeepot in one hand.

  “Top that off for you?”

  He nodded. “Thanks.” Out of the corner of his eye he watched the blonde react to Linda, who seemed to be thrusting her breasts at him. Now, was that really the case, Martin wondered, or was he just filling in the spaces where there was nothing? He stared at Linda’s pierced nostril for a second, at her pink lips, at her smile—the smile reserved for the restaurant’s very own writer. He nodded again, saw Linda hover as if about to ask him something, or as if waiting for him to say something—that was it, waiting for him to make some sort of move—then he took his mug in one hand and crossed over and stood next to the blonde.

  “Mind if I sit?” he asked. She merely shrugged, and Martin slid in across from her, his hands wrapped around the now-hot coffee mug. He was vaguely aware of Linda’s shape in the background, staring at him disapprovingly. He shrugged his own shoulders. Such was life, after all, with winners and losers. “Cold night, what with this rain,” he said.

  “Yeah,” said the blonde. She watched him drink some coffee, then sipped at her own mug.

  Martin stared at the red half-circle she left on the rim of the mug. He smiled. “Got anything doing tonight?” He was taking a chance, he knew. This was a new experience for him, but he was curious to see if he had read the woman’s movements correctly. He wanted to expand his arsenal of knowledge, he told himself as he waited for her response.

  She smiled crookedly. “Nah, I’m pretty well free for the rest of the night. So to speak.”

  Martin felt his lips curl up into another smile. He narrowed his eyes slightly, watched her lips from the slits his eyelids made. “Care for some company?”

  Her fingers thumped the table. A nonchalant gesture. “I could be persuaded.”

  “Can we get out of this rain pretty fast?”

  “I’m just around the corner,” she said. She scooped her pager and other things back into her purse. Martin watched the lipstick container disappear. “Care for—a nightcap?”

  He nodded. She was already shrugging into her thin leather coat and dropping a dollar on the table. Martin reached into his pocket, drew out some crumpled bills and selected a five, dropped it onto his own table with the check, then picked up his notebook and followed the blonde to the door.

  Linda’s eyes bored into his back, and he could feel her displeasure.

  Winners and losers, he thought as he held the door for the woman and followed her out into the cold drizzle.

  Her apartment really was just around the corner, and they walked in silence until reaching her front door. A sort of pseudo-brownstone, he decided, recently redone to play up its antique wrought-iron railings. She let him into one of the ground floor flats, six steps up, and took his coat.

  “I, uh, didn’t expect company.” She gestured toward some clutter on the table, clothes strewn on the tiny sofa.

  “It’s okay,” Martin said. He was looking at her face, noting how her own lighting made her lines softer—her chin wasn’t as pronounced, for instance, as it had been under the fluorescents—and how her hair seemed even more golden. He stared at the dark gash of her lips, feeling himself respond to the musk she now exuded. He fumbled with his wallet, then she laughed and reached for his belt. She took his trousers down and gently placed her lips around the head of his penis, which was outlined under his briefs. He held her head as she licked him through the thin cotton, her lips leaving wide red streaks on the fabric as she worked on him, her eyes fastened on his the whole time. He squirmed as the warmth and cold engorged his penis further and he th
ought he would burst from the cloth. She started to reach into his waistband, but his hand stopped her.

  “What’s wrong?” She stared up at him, surprised at his interruption.

  Martin remembered to breathe. “More lipstick,” he whispered, hoarse. “You need more lipstick.”

  She held his stare just a few moments longer, then shrugged once—a twitch. Hell, her gesture seemed to say, I can do that.

  Her purse was within reach, on the floor. She dragged it closer and found the silver canister. As Martin watched, enraptured, she continued kneeling before him and repeated her slow replenishment of the dark red lipstick, first her fleshy lower lip and then her upper lip, her eyes still boring into his.

  “Like this?”

  He nodded. “More.”

  She smiled. She went over each lip again, and the gash of her mouth seemed almost black in the near-dark. Martin could tell that she was an expert because she didn’t stray from the outside edges of her lips at all. But the cosmetic itself was now a thick layer on both lips, and Martin could feel the tip of his penis moistening the fabric of his briefs.

  She learned fast. Her lips went around his glans again, smearing on the white cotton, and her tongue snuck into attack mode. A minute later, she paused and applied more lipstick before taking more of him between her lips.

  Martin couldn’t hold on, and he felt himself shooting into the fabric and through it, into her mouth, where her tongue lapped at the filtered thick liquid. Martin’s hands pressed on her ears and held her in place as she cleaned him without once coming into contact with his bare skin. She looked up and smiled, her teeth shining amid the smeared skin around her lips.