“You want him tits-up maggot food. What’d he do? Fuck yer wife while you were at some sin-posium fucking your secretary in the ass?” Will laughed. His 9 didn’t.
“He is in possession of an article of mine and I want it back.”
“Can’t blame a hound for not returnin’ good pussy. Can ya, Fuckhead? She give good head?”
“I’m not married.” Professor Albert Bergin sat rail straight. No smile.
“With that face and that gut I’m not surprised. They got this thing called walking nowdays. Ya might try it. Maybe you’ll meet some fat bitch who wants a mercy fuck?”
“Could we skip the… bullshit?”
“Ah. Now yer talkin’. Get yer thing and get it back to you and kill the fuck—Just like that… That’s hard cash. You prepared to soak me in it?”
“I have money.”
“I can see that, but are you willing to part with it? Your jones itch that much?”
“If need be.”
“It need be.”
“How much?”
“Details, then you get the bill. If you can pay, I play. If you can’t. You’ve wasted my expensive time and you pay in other ways. Or you can lay a grand on me right this fuckin’ minute and blow. Pick a door, fuckhead.”
“I will pay 25,000 dollars.”
“You’ll pay what I tell you… If I do it. And I get half upfront. Now, get on with it.”
“Professor Daniel Washington…”
Will skipped his regular info gathering. Spreading around cash would be a waste with these bookworm types. He’d follow the guy for a day or two and sit outside his house and see what he did at night. Besides, once Professor Washington showed up on a slab and the cops started digging, Will’s name would pop up as a person of interest if he inquired about Washington’s name or the address. Better to keep this as far under the radar as he could.
All the prim and proper Miskatonic U crowd had their paper reps and little else, he figured. An old boys and ignored pussies clique, who at the end of the day wanted what everyone else wanted, they just took a deep breath and stayed hush-hush about it.
“Sinful Suzie” Jaymes, 5’ 6”, 109 lbs., Green/Blonde, 38D [so her doctor said after cashing her check for 10 grand]-25-36, she was a favorite of lawyers, investment suits, and bookworms. Will hit the The Treasure Chest looking for Suzie. They’d been on and off half a dozen times in the past few years and the straights really lost it for her. She came on like a librarian turned feral and if you had the cash she had the ass, many of her clients said it could start a revolution, or she had any other part your kink required.
Lap dances in your home. Blow jobs in your car. Bubble baths or spankings in hotel rooms, you pick it she pretty much did it, just so as you paid up before the ride.
Will bought her a drink and asked if either Washington or Bergin were on her dick list. Washington was a no go to both the name and the photo, but Bergin was known. Some of the girls said he was heavy handed. A real Mr. Wham-BAM!. He’d spread around some big money to cover the scars he’d left on a couple of girls.
“He’s been in here sniffing around, but never looked at me. Never looked at any of the girls with big tits. Likes ’em skinny and young I hear. Your mark is a hardcore power-tripper. No fuckin’, only head. You peel, dance around a little, and give. He gets. You’ve met the type.”
Will had. Fuckin’ pussy scumbags. They’d bounce a woman around—fists or whatever else was handy when they popped, but didn’t have the balls to even talk hard to other men. Fit his assessment of Bergin.
He left her a C-note and told her he’d call her.
He hit the street. Time to circle the target’s nest and see how to play this out.
Will got all the formal paperwork on the S. French Hill St. property of Daniel Washington from the bureaucracy first then cased the house. Two floors, open access from the back and sides, and a botanical garden’s worth of trees and deep, tall scrubs all around. Almost the perfect place for a quick and quiet in and out.
1 P.M. Sunny. A model afternoon on a model street. He walked up the steps and rang the doorbell. He had his line ready should need arise. Waited. Played it casual. Looked in windows—bookcases and bookcases and bookcases. Suppressed a laugh examining the lock.
It’s a wonder these idiots have indoor plumbing.
Assholes, so deep into their books and lectures and papers they didn’t know how to lock up and lock down properly. Not that it really mattered, no one wanted to rob these academic types, their houses were full of books and books and books—like anyone was going to pay good money for Professor Hilary Shitfart’s Memoirs of Some Dead Old Fuck From East Boring as Hell or Sir Ralph Fuckface’s A Case Study of the Glories of 28 Quiet Sundays in Solitude, and art crap you couldn’t pawn easily, not in New England. No expensive TVs, no DVD players, no iPods, bullshit laptops, and next to no jewelry. And tryin’ to dump big heavy antiques in this part of the state was a sure fire 3 to 5, the way the Staties were all over the market. Fuck robbin’ ’em, they spent their whole lives in their minds.
Tomorrow night. If he was home. If he was alone…
Will rang the bell. Daniel Washington answered. Will’s gun backed the older man up.
“Sit yer fuckin’ ass in that chair and don’t say a word. When I ask you a question, you answer, then shut the fuck up. Got it?”
“Yes.” Thin, weak, frightened as his eyes. “Good. If you move or talk you die.”
Washington nodded.
Will looked around the room… He froze. There was a photograph of his mother on the mantle and one on the desk. Expensive frames. Dusted though most of the other things in the room were not.
“Where did you get the pictures?”
“I had them taken nearly thirty years ago.”
“Why?”
“I was going to ask Seton to marry me.”
His mother’s name on the lips of this stranger. The gun was moving right to left. Finger and trigger hungry to talk.
“Keep talking.”
“Do you know her?”
“I ask the fucking questions, Asshole.”
“I was a student at M. U. Seton worked in the diner on Boundary near St. Mary’s. We were in love.”
“What happened?”
“Why are you so interested? Did you—”
“I said, I ask the questions.”
“There was a terrible—She died.”
“I know that.”
Daniel Washington looked at the man. He had her eyes. Her coloring. Could this somehow be her child?
How could he be?
“If you want to live you’ll tell me everything you can about you and her. Start right fucking now.”
“We were young and in love. I was a poor student working my way through my second year at M. U. We dated for almost a year. One night on her way home from work she was savagely attacked near Hangman’s Hill. Beaten, raped, and horribly scarred by her attacker. I went to the hospital several times to see her, but she wouldn’t see me. A nurse told me her face was horrible to look at.”
Will remembered her face, and the black veil she hid it under. He’d been four, maybe five. Remembered coming out of his bedroom in the small flat and seeing her crying before the mirror. He’d screamed. She closed the bathroom door.