Hooked

In the middle of that unbelievable sexual chemistry, it hit him what the woman had done for a living. That she never gave it away— no birthday gifts, no Christmas presents. Maybe he was just another john.
    Business is over for the night. Or is it? Her hurt reaction to those three words proved he wasn’t another john, not a pay fuck.
    He slapped his head. He wasn’t lying when he said she turned him on like no other woman. He wanted her so much it hurt.
    Could he be putting Tawny in harm’s way? Was Benny Cooper nothing more than a high-class pimp, or was he a blackmailer, or worse, a murderer? The reality struck Linc that maybe he lacked objectivity where this assignment was concerned, and if he were being honest, he should remove himself as the go-between. He should, but he wouldn’t.

Chapter Nine
    The Fat Man Speaks

    R ick Martell hunkered into his office desk chair with all the energy of a dead battery. He couldn’t think of anything other than his night at Upper Eighties. He wasn’t a violent man. Never hit his wife or kids, even when they deserved a good whipping. He was a freaking accountant, for chrissakes, not a murderer. What had come over him?
    It was that little bitch Sissy back in his life again. Always watching while Mommy played with his pecker. Then, when she told Sissy to play with it, Mommy spanked him with a belt for being a bad boy. Can’t let a little girl touch your wang, she’d said. But he was only doing what Mommy told him. Sissy laughed. She laughed at everything, and Mommy never spanked her.
    He’d lost it big time last night. Black memories resurged, and it was like he was underwater, struggling to reach the surface. He couldn’t control the nightmare he’d spent years in therapy trying to understand. He was nine years old again, and confusion cluttered his brain. Sissy was laughing, calling him fat names. Then Mommy was undressing him while Sissy gave him a lick of her sucker. The difference between real life and memory whirlpooled into one big blur. He wanted to spank this Sissy like he’d spanked the real one that day long ago. So he spanked her.
    Then he crushed her like a bug. Splat! The same way he had crushed his little sister. When he realized what he’d done, he felt for a pulse, but there was none. Baby Cindi wasn’t breathing, and Melody, sweet Melody with the beautiful tits, was out cold. He ran. What else was he supposed to do?
    Why hadn’t the cops come to arrest him? Surely the owner of the club called them. Melody would tell, and his life would come tumbling down again like it had after the first time. What he’d done would be all over the news. His wife would leave him. His kids would have to endure their classmates’ taunts that branded their father a kinky role-playing pervert and child murderer. He’d go to jail, and they’d be scarred for life.
    Uncle Mario would probably put out a contract on him for fear he’d expose the mob boss and the family in exchange for witness protection. Martell would be a dead man either way. Hard to hide a four-hundred-fifty-pound man with a price on his head, except maybe in a sumo wrestling commune in Japan.
    He had one thing in his favor: the man who ran Upper Eighties wouldn’t want the notoriety of a murder. The place was a tightly-held secret, with business conducted through a secure site on the Web or, in his case, through a trusted associate. Even if the cops knew about it, which he figured they did, they didn’t much care about people getting off when they had more egregious crimes to deal with. Martell never thought paying for a fuck and a little theater constituted a crime. A doorman let him in, a beautiful woman took him to a room, and another beautiful woman did anything he wanted.
    Deep in his musings, he thought his cell phone’s ring sounded almost otherworldly, and it took a moment to comprehend where the noise was coming from. Caller ID said Private Number. His boss’s line was private too. Could he have found out already? He punched on his phone.
    “You were a bad boy last night,” the electronic voice said. “A woman is dead and another woman knows who did it.”
    Martell sucked in a breath and held it. Shit, fuck, damn. “What do you want?” he asked, knowing full well the caller’s intentions.
    “Hush money. One hundred thousand and the murder goes away. By the way, there’s film.”
    Cautious, Martell had checked the room the first time he went to Upper Eighties. He didn’t see