All I wanted was something to eat...

Two hours after I killed Molly Mancini, it started to rain, and I knew I was in for a bitch of a day.

I hate driving in the rain, even in a top of the line, air- conditioned Mercedes with anti-lock breaks. A few years back, I'd been driving a rented Buick in a storm and the wheels had shot out of control. That sucker slipped right across the freeway, hit the divider at 50 miles an hour, and totaled the car, the passenger side crumpling inwards like an aluminum can. I got a busted right foot and a case of whiplash an S & M freak would have loved. So that's why I hate driving in the rain. It's also the reason I limp, and that ankle of mine complains like an old man in wet weather.

But it was raining and it wasn't gonna let up. The forecast on The Weather Channel that morning said something about a trough of low pressure which had moved across Texas and Louisiana for the past twenty-four hours, gathering moisture from the Gulf of Mexico before sliding up Florida and into Georgia. That's where I was now, about an hour south of Atlanta, heading down I-75 with Ms. Mancini stashed in the trunk, heading right into the heart of the storm. Under other circumstances, I would've pulled into a HoJo's and waited it out, but I had a deadline to meet and $40,000 in unmarked bills waiting for me in West Palm Beach. Forty thousand reasons to drive but it didn't make me happy.

I knew it was gonna be one of those days when she started to beg. I hate it when they beg. There's nothing worse than watching someone plead for their life. Have a little dignity. Hell, we all gotta go sometime, and when I walk through the door I'm the answer to the Big Question.

Old man Praeger had warned me, though, said the bitch would offer me money, offer me her body, anything, just so's I'd let her go.

"I'm sure you've experienced that before, no?" he said, sipping a snifter of Hennesy as we sat in expensive brown leather chairs in his office overlooking the ocean. "I'm sure many of your victims --"

"Patients," I corrected him, taking a sip of Diet Coke.

He raised a quizzical eyebrow. "Interesting choice of words. Shall I call you `Doctor'?"

"Raschke is fine."

"Well, Mr. Raschke, I'm certain many of your `patients' are only too happy to debase themselves in front of you, pleading for their lives. She will, you know. She'll offer you money. Not that she has any. And you'll say no."

"I won't say anything." His idle chatter was starting to get under my skin.

Never been big on conversation, especially small talk. "Then she'll offer you her body. And a very tempting body it is."

He paused, puffing on his Cuban corona, his eyes misting over as his mind skipped out for an instant to visit a romantic memory.

"That's why I want her back, Mr. Raschke," he said suddenly, his tone changing to that of a man chewing ground glass. "I can't live without her, I'm afraid. But unfortunately, she won't live with me anymore. Not even all this," he made a grand sweeping gesture with his left hand, trying to draw my attention to the antiques cluttering the office, "could keep her. Most women would die to live in such wealth, but dear sweet, stupid Molly thinks she's in love. With a French computer salesman no less. Rather insulting, don't you think?"

I said nothing. I didn't care if he was a love-struck millionaire who couldn't keep the woman of his dreams happy, didn't give a rat's ass that Molly Mancini had run off with a salesman. Still, looking at the fat, ugly man in front of me, I didn't blame her. Praeger must weight at least three hundred pounds, and the expensive, hand-tailored silk suit couldn't hide the fact he looked like a pig stuffed in a sack.

Praeger had made his millions off of junk bonds during the Milken- orchestrated feeding frenzy of the early 80's. Today he sold high-priced real estate up and down the East Coast. He also had a nice side line in narcotics, illegal gambling, and stolen sports cars. Which was how he was dealing with me, Jacob Raschke, former mercenary, private detective, and now gun-for-hire. He, however, just dipped his toes in the sea of crime; I swam the depths, ceaselessly moving like a shark, waiting for the next bite.

"But if I can't have her, no one else can. And if I can't have her alive, then dead will do fine."

"Just tell me where, when, and how," I replied. His cologne was making me want to puke. The guy must've taken a bath in a tub of Brut.

He handed me an 8x10 photo of Ms. Mancini and a large black envelope containing details and $20,000 in cash -- my down payment. It took five minutes to go over the particulars.

"Make her suffer, Mr. Raschke. But not too much. Shoot her in each knee, then the chest. But don't damage her head. Such a beautiful head. Those lips..."

He looked out at the calm sea lapping at the shore beneath us, unconsciously dropped his right hand to his crotch. It was obvious what was on his mind. I switched my attention to a hangnail and waited.

"Be here at 5 PM, Friday," he said after he'd made me repeat his demands like a parrot or a retard. "And don't be late. I have plans for the weekend."

I get to meet all sorts in this business. Parents grieving over their dead kids, ready to pay me a nice cut to snuff out the drunk driver who creamed little Markie. Neglected wives who want their marital problems solved with a bullet. Dime-store wiseguys who don't have the cojones to do their own dirty work. And the crazies. A lot of loons, that's for sure. The real whackos I avoid like the plague. Too unpredictable, and you can't guarantee they'll pay up. But Elias Praeger was different. Behind the glint of insanity lay something more. Something evil. I didn't care what he wanted to do with the Mancini woman's head -- probably do a Dahmer and keep it in the ice box, taking it out when he got lonely -- but I knew one thing: I didn't want to spend another minute around this guy. All the cologne in the world couldn't hide the corrupt stench oozing from his pores.

I pocketed my brief and left.

That'd been on Monday, and that's how come I was driving in heavy rain on a Friday with a corpse in the trunk of my car, traveling a tad under the speed limit as I made my way down I-75 towards Florida.

Despite the car's ability to handle the weather, I wasn't happy. My ankle was aching and the rain made me anxious. I slipped a tape in the deck. Maybe some music would take my mind off things. For some reason a deepening sense of dread was starting to stick to me like a wet suit. I figured it was the rain getting me down, crash flashbacks making me antsy. Not even the pair of 9mm Berettas nestling in their twin shoulder holsters could make me feel secure. With hindsight, I know now it was my sixth sense trying to alert me to danger up ahead, that same sense which had kept me alive in the jungles back in 'Nam.

Lou Reed's melancholy voice slid mellifluously from the speakers. Magic and Loss. Some Chopin would've been a better choice, but it was all I had.

Reed once said things are never good, they just go from bad to weird. It's a philosophy I subscribe to. But nothing could've prepared me for what was coming.

I crossed the state line at 10:30 AM.

I was making good time but not even the thought of meeting my deadline and walking away $40,000 richer could lighten my mood. The Reed tape had been a bad choice, and I'd switched it off in favor of an FM station. A thirty minute block of Iron Butterfly, Steppenwolf, The Doors, and now Grand Funk Railroad singing "We're An American Band" was marginally better.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized Praeger gave me the creeps. Like I said, usually I don't care what happens after my work's done, but in this case I couldn't get the image of him massaging his crotch out of my mind. Whatever he had planned for Ms. Mancini's body, it wouldn't be nice. Obscene images randomly jump-cut across my imagination, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't keep them away, the loud rock music failing to drown out the Mancini woman's voice echoing in my ears.

She hadn't been surprised when I appeared in her bedroom at 4 AM.

I had.

After three days of staking out the small Buckhead house she shared with the Frenchman, I knew her routine by rote. Home at six after a full day working the perfume counter at Macy's. Dinner at 7. TV until 11:30. Lights out at midnight. Up at 7 AM. Her boyfriend had left for a business trip in Colorado on Wednesday as planned. Praeger had arranged that one, and the plan was for me to snuff her in the early hours Friday. Loverboy wasn't due back until Sunday, and by that time I'd be lying on a St. Thomas beach. What Praeger'd be doing was his business. At that point in the proceedings I didn't care, my focus was on the job at hand.

Confident she was asleep, I'd picked the lock on the back door and entered the house silent as a shadow. But as soon as I entered her bedroom she turned on the table lamp, momentarily blinding me.

"I knew you'd come," she said softly. "It was inevitable he'd send someone. He did send you, didn't he?"

Her tone was a mix of fatalism and nervous tension. If she'd suspected Praeger'd hunt her down, the thought must have been praying on her mind since the day she skipped out. She seemed anxious to get it over with, and the deep shadows under her dull brown eyes said she hadn't slept a full night in weeks. And here I was, the answer to the Big Question. Only it was wrong, all wrong. It wasn't supposed to be this way.

I hadn't planned on her seeing my face. Not that it really mattered. Who was she gonna tell? The Dead don't talk, at least not where I'm from.

"I won't go back to him. You'll have to kill me."

I said nothing.

It wasn't the fact she'd seen me that was bothering me. It was her voice. A soft, gentle voice like a child's. That and just how beautiful she was. The photo Praeger had given me didn't do her justice.

Molly Mancini was a small woman, no taller than 5'2". Delicate, with a dancer's body -- which was true, she'd been a stripper for over ten years, before she forsook the runway in favor of the more lucrative and less strenuous job of becoming a high class call girl for a small, select clientele, and ultimately, Praeger's mistress. Her long black hair and olive skin were entrancing. The petite nose and finely shaped sensuous lips spoke of refinement, the pert breasts peaking at me from beneath the lace nightgown promising unspoken pleasures.

I knew then why he wanted her so bad. She was the kind of woman who drove men to disaster, like the singing of the Lorelei lures sailors to their deaths on wave-lashed rocks at sea.

"Whatever he's paying you, I'll double it."

She didn't like my silence as I stood in the doorway, the chloroformed handkerchief clasped in my left hand.

After watching her for three days, I'd decided to knock her unconscious, tie her up and take her to a deserted area outside the city. There I was going to shoot her in the chest, make it clean, painless, then shoot out her kneecaps so old Praeger'd be happy I'd done the job just the way he wanted. What he didn't know wouldn't hurt him, and I sure as hell wasn't going to make her suffer like he wanted. I may kill for a living but I'm no sadist.

"You want me? Take me. Do whatever you want to me, but don't take me back to him. He...he did things to me. Unspeakable things." She paused in emphasis. "I won't go."

I sighed.

Molly Mancini looked me in the eyes. My expression was as blank as Mount Rushmore.

She threw the sheets to one side, revealing slender legs and a trimmed tuft of pubic hair. One hand went to her breasts, the other between her tanned thighs as she spread them.

"You want me? Of course you do. Men always want me, they can't resist. What do you like?" she asked almost breathlessly with the practiced ease of a phone sex operator.

"You want to cum in my mouth? Do you want me to suck you? You'd like that, wouldn't you? To stick your cock in my mouth and have me milk you dry."

She started rubbing her nipples, moving the fingers on her left hand into her pubic cleft.

"Or maybe you'd like to fuck me in the ass, pump your seed inside me. Fuck me till I bleed. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

If the talk was meant to turn me on, it wasn't working. But she was getting off on what she was saying, her fingers disappearing into the pink mouth between her legs, her breathing deepening with every movement.

"That's it, baby, come to momma. Let me make it better. Let me love you like you've never been loved before."

Obscene suggestions spilled from her mouth like pus from a boil as she rubbed herself towards orgasm.

Whatever Praeger had done to this broken woman must have been truly disgusting because the things she was suggesting we do to each other would have made my old Marine sergeant blush.

"Let me --" she groaned as she started to climax.

"Oh shut up," I muttered and shot her straight between the breasts.

The silenced Beretta made a soft plop as it bucked in my hand.

Molly Mancini's eyes glazed as she fell back on the bed, twitched twice then lay still.

A clean kill, right through the heart, but not as neat as I wanted. The bullet had exited her back and the white sheets were awash with blood.

I took a deep breath and tried to think what to do next.

(Continued in Part 2)

Copyright © 1995/2004 by Philip Nutman