Krissy Read online

  “And what’s her name again?”

  “Calls herself Krissy,” Tito replied. “I never asked her for her last name. ‘Long as we had a business relationship it didn’t matter. Now it does, so I dug up some stuff on her.”

  “So what changed between you?” Detective Spooner put the photos in a pile and looked at Tito.

  “Told you, she’s an ice-cold bitch,” Tito said. “Last few times she came in here, she was packin’ an attitude. Told me I’d shorted her on somethin’, and I better make it good.”

  “Or?”

  “Dunno,” Tito shrugged. “But I don’t need no little blonde puta comin’ in here tellin’ me what to do. I offered to take her on more’n once, put ‘er on my payroll. She keeps turnin’ me down, like I’m not good enough for her. We done some business in the past, but it ain’t like she’s the only talent out there. She’s replaceable. It’s time for a change.” He gestured with one hand. “So, I figure, why not do you a little favor and toss the bitch your way? I know you got ways of makin’ her just disappear quietly.”

  “Maybe,” Spooner grunted. “She got anybody who’ll miss her?”

  “No, man,” Tito answered confidently. “I had her checked out ‘fore I decided to call you. She lives by herself, no family. She keeps pretty much to herself, so no real friends. And I know why she’s got no boyfriend. She likes girls. Picks ‘em up at homeless shelters when she’s feelin’ itchy. They never stay long. She must do somethin’ that drives ‘em away sooner or later.”

  “What does she do to pay the bills?”

  “Ah,” Tito chuckled nastily. “She does modelin’ work from time to time. It’s all legit, and she won’t do any nudity. She works conventions sometimes. You know, wearin’ a costume and workin’ the floor. That’s enough to pay the rent, I guess, and she don’t own a car. But I know she’s makin’ nice money besides that.”

  “What?” Spooner looked interested. “She a pro?” That piqued his interest as a vice cop.

  Tito laughed. “No, man,” he shook his head. “Not really. I told you, she likes girls. It ain’t like she swings both ways, neither, ‘cause I kinda get the vibe that way down deep she hates men. But she knows how to get ‘em droolin’ over her. I know you guys get complaints pretty regular from out-of-towners, guys who let their dicks do their thinkin’ and wind up drugged and rolled by some woman.”

  “Yeah,” Spooner nodded cautiously. “We always get complaints like that. So what?”

  “So I think this little bitch is doin’ a lot of that kinda work. Pretty sure she goes after the richer guys too, married ones who don’t file a complaint ‘cause they can’t afford the attention.”

  “And how do you know that?” Spooner leaned forward. Tito was a good contact, and so far he’d been very profitable to deal with, but it never hurt to have a little extra leverage. But Tito acted unconcerned.

  “I got my sources,” he shrugged. “Just like you got yours.”

  Detective Spooner leaned back in the booth and looked at the pictures spread out on the table in front of him. She was a pretty little thing, no doubt about that. He guessed she was somewhere in her early twenties, which was pushing the upper edge of the age limit for female merchandise, but it wasn’t pushing it too hard. But while Tito had waxed eloquent…at least by his standards…about her body, he’d have to get a look at her himself to decide if she was worth it.

  “What’s in it for you?” Spooner asked at last.

  “Hey, man,” Tito shrugged and spread his hands. “Just doin’ my civic duty.”

  “I heard that before,” Spooner grunted.

  “Man, what the fuck do you care what’s in it for me?” Tito snapped. “I don’t give a shit what’s in it for you, do I? We’re just two friends doin’ each other a favor here.”

  “We ain’t friends, Tito,” Spooner grunted.

  “Okay,” Tito grinned nastily. “What are we, then? No, never mind. You interested or not?”

  “You’re sure she’s been rolling rich guys from out of town?”

  “My sources say she is,” Tito shrugged. “You want to make sure, you check the bitch out yourself. Got her name ‘n’ address on the back of one of them pictures.”

  “All right,” Spooner nodded. He gathered up the photos. “We’ll check her out. If she is what you say she is, we’ll take care of it.” He levered his bulk up out of the booth and lumbered away.

  It was almost a relief to him to get out of the close, warm, liquor-scented air of Tito’s place and back into the street. It was dark now, and the air had a faint chill to it that reminded him of winter. He inhaled deeply once before turning and trundling towards the parking lot where his partner was waiting in her minivan. Somehow, cops on TV shows always found a parking space right in front of the place they wanted to go. It was different in real life, and even though there had been a few spaces closer to the bar than the parking lot, Palmieri had a thing about parking her shiny new car on the street, especially in this neighborhood. She also had a thing about meeting Tito in person. She’d hated him on sight, and he had reciprocated, though there was no apparent reason for their instant mutual dislike.

  Spooner reached the corner and waited patiently for the light. He didn’t like going into Tito’s joint himself, but it wasn’t because of Tito. Truth be told, he kind of liked the guy, affectacious little mustache and all. What he didn’t like was sitting there and inhaling all those alcoholic odors. He’d been on the wagon for almost two years now, and it was a powerful temptation whenever he went in the place. Tito understood this, and never offered him anything but club soda, though he politely refused to meet anywhere else.

  The light changed, and he crossed the street. Only a few blocks more to go.

  Palmieri must have seen him coming, because just before he got to the passenger door he heard the lock click open. He opened the door and clambered in, sitting down heavily on the bucket seat. It would have been more comfortable if it had been just a little bit wider, but that was his fault, not the car’s. After finally successfully giving up on booze, he’d started eating more than was good for him and really packed on the weight. He’d managed to lose some of it over the past few months, but he still had a ways to go. If he didn’t lose another thirty pounds he’d fail the next physical and get reassigned to desk duty. He hated desk duty. There was no chance at all to make a little extra money if you were chained to a desk.

  “What did he want?” Palmieri asked as he pulled the door shut. She had a first name, Jessica, but he never called her that and she never called him by his first name, Paul. They were partners, and had been for six months, but they were nothing more than that, and using first names just wasn’t done. At first he’d been apprehensive about her, until he’d discovered that this tall, striking, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman was just as corrupt at heart as he was, and all business all the time.

  “He wants us to do a little dirty work for him,” Spooner replied. He passed over the pictures. “Having a little trouble with a business associate. He’d like for us to make her go away.”

  Palmieri quickly flipped through the photos. “Pretty woman,” she commented. “What makes him think we can make her go away?”

  “I guess he hears things,” Spooner shrugged.

  “Right,” Palmieri passed the pictures back. “And what the fuck makes him think we’ll take out his trash for him?”

  “It won’t be taking out his trash,” Spooner replied. “He seems to think he’s doing us a favor. According to him, this woman’s the one who’s been rolling rich drunks all over town.”

  “Yeah. And you bought that?”

  “It’s worth checking out, at least. She doesn’t seem to have anybody who’d really miss her, and she looks pretty enough. We oughta get a nice wad of cash for her.”

  “Maybe,” Palmieri relented. “It’s been a while, and Kingston’s been bugging us to get him some new merchandise. We’ll check this bitch out. I’d be interested in seeing what the rest of her looks lik
e. The descriptions we’ve gotten from those rich drunks are all over the place as to height, hair color and eye color, but they all agree that she had really nice tits.”

  “And legs,” Spooner added.

  “Yeah, that’s right, you’re a leg man, aren’t you, Spooner?”

  “I got nothing against nice tits,” he shrugged.

  “Well, we’ll find out. You got a name and address?”

  “Her full name’s Kristina Lynn Saunders, but she goes by ‘Krissy’. She does some modeling, and works conventions too. Tito gave us her address. She lives in the old Hilltop district.”

  “Lots of cheap apartments there,” Palmieri mused. “What kind of modeling does she do?”

  “Tito didn’t say, except that she wouldn’t do nudity.”

  “Huh. Local advertising, maybe?”

  “You’ve seen her pictures. Recognize that face from anywhere?”

  “No,” Palmieri admitted. “But who the hell really remembers faces from ads?” She started the minivan. “Well, let’s get back to work. Those whores and pimps aren’t going to arrest themselves.”

  They cruised on down to the riverfront. It had decayed almost beyond redemption over the years. Sometime ago, parts of it had started to come back as wealthy young urban professionals began buying up refurbished lofts as cool new places to live, but that recovery had been spotty from the start, and sputtered out as the local economy soured and much of the money dried up. Now you could find upscale lofts, cheap bars, abandoned buildings and empty lots all practically on the same block. There was lots of traffic, even at this hour, people cruising for sex or drugs. It all went on down here because nobody complained. The yuppies stayed barricaded in their lofts at night, calling only if they heard more gunfire than usual, or if a stray round shattered one of their double-glazed windows. The bar owners had some kind of arrangement with the local criminals, and their businesses were safe enough as long as they went to the local bosses with any problems instead of to the cops. Every election, politicians made a big thing about how they were going to clean up the riverfront, loud promises that were quietly forgotten right after all the votes were counted. As Spooner saw it, none of this shit would be going on if there weren’t people willing to pay for it, never mind what the politicians said. As a vice cop, he figured it was his job to keep it all manageable. That was a helluva lot easier than trying to eradicate it, and a lot more profitable. Palmieri felt the same way, but she didn’t like some of the perks as much as he did. Oh, he passed on freebies from the hookers. There were just too many nasty bugs floating around, and getting serviced by one of these street whores was too much like playing Russian Roulette with five bullets in the revolver instead of one. Besides, most of them were pretty unappealing to begin with, all strung out on one drug or another.

  There were male hookers down here too. They kept to their own area of a couple of square blocks, which helped customers who might otherwise get confused by some of the crossdressers. Every so often someone did anyway, and then sometimes the cops would get called in on a nasty assault and battery. It was never any of the regular customers who got caught up in that. It was always some green out-of-towner who made the mistake and couldn’t handle the surprise. Then it was all reports and official business that usually ended with the out-of-towner paying off the pimp for the damages in order to keep the mess out of the courts and the papers.

  He supposed it was all kind of sad, in a way, but if somebody decided to turn themselves into a disposable item, what did it really matter to him? And that was where some of the fleshly perks came in. Some pretty, uptown piece of ass who’d just gotten herself hooked on something would be cruising the riverfront, desperate to score but out of ready cash. He liked to catch them at just the right moment, when they’d lost most of their money and all of their self-respect, but still had their looks to trade on. Then he’d step in and do a little business of his own, fronting the bitches some cash in exchange for a nice blowjob in a secluded place, either a dark corner of an abandoned building or the back of his car. He liked blowjobs a lot, especially when he got them from some pretty uptown bitch who would’ve treated him like scum before she started on that long slide down into the gutter. That moment when a bitch on her knees first took his cock in her mouth was satisfying beyond words, even more satisfying than finally coming in her mouth and seeing the expression on her face if it wasn’t too dark. He always told them to swallow it all if they expected to get paid. A few did, but most of them couldn’t quite manage it, and then things could get very messy. If they did as he told them, he handed over the money he’d promised, usually with a five-dollar tip. If they just couldn’t, he still paid them anyway, but threw the money on the ground and didn’t tip at all. He always watched to see if they picked up the money, and they always did, even when they were still having the dry heaves.

  If the bitch was pretty enough, he’d make her strip down before servicing him. How far he got depended on the circumstances and how desperate the bitch was. They usually got down to their underwear. Some of them got down to just their panties. He had fond memories of one, a long-legged bitch in her thirties with long dark hair and plump round tits who whimpered and complained about it the whole time she was taking her clothes off, but stripped stark naked for him all the same down in the basement of an old, long-abandoned factory. Enough light still filtered in down a stairwell for him to get a good look at her. It was a little chilly down there, and he could see her nipples get all puffy. She’d complained about that, too, until he flashed his badge and told her that if she didn’t shut the fuck up and do what he told her he’d haul her in for prostitution. After that, she even let him handcuff her before he made her get down on her knees in the grime and the dust and dirt. It was really, really nice when they got that scared and desperate. She’d even managed to swallow it all before she puked her guts up. He’d tipped her ten dollars, and never saw her again, even though he made a couple of tries to find her. Maybe after their date she’d decided to try kicking the habit. He didn’t know, and since he hadn’t even bothered to get her name he had no way of finding out.

  “What the fuck are you smiling about?” Palmieri interrupted his reminiscences.

  “Huh? Oh, sorry. Just remembered an old girlfriend,” Spooner answered. He sat up straighter in his seat, grateful that he’d lost enough weight that his clothes now fit him pretty loosely and his partner couldn’t see how aroused he’d become.

  “Well, get back on the job,” Palmieri snapped. “Here’s our first stop.” She braked to a stop in front of a run-down adult video store that took ‘sleazy’ to a new depth. “Go on in, ask how things are going and pick up our cut. And get a move on! I don’t like sitting out here too long. Jerks come by and start propositioning me.”

  Spooner looked at his partner. Even without the tall-heeled boots she usually wore she was almost as tall as he was; and the jeans she always wore always looked just a little less snug than body paint. She had great legs and a great ass, and her face wasn’t too bad either. It always put him in mind of an Italian actress. He couldn’t remember her name. He couldn’t remember the title of the film he’d seen her in either, but he remembered that face as vividly as if he’d seen it yesterday, instead of ten or fifteen years ago. It was no wonder johns tried to hit on her

  “Yeah,” he grinned at her. “But you love it when you flash your badge at them and see them freak out, don’t’cha?”

  Palmieri tried to keep a poker face, but she couldn’t. After a moment she was grinning back at him.

  “Yeah, I do,” she nodded, chuckling. “I do like it. A lot. Now get your fat ass in there. I want to finish our route as soon as we can today.”

  “Why the hurry?”

  “I want to check out that blonde, Krissy. I’ve been thinking. I’d kinda like to help out our friend Tito.”

  Chapter Three

  It was the last night of the convention, with everything wrapping up, and Krissy was in a foul mood. She didn’t m
ind dressing up like some middle-aged man’s fantasy whore. That was just part of the job of being a floor model, and all of the other women working the convention had had to dress up in the same way: Sleeveless white shirts, worn unbuttoned with the tails knotted tightly together just below their tits, uncomfortable push-up bras underneath, and tight black hotpants, the whole ensemble topped by identical wigs that looked like they’d been made from Christmas tree tinsel. They’d also had to wear knee-high black boots with stiletto heels, but the convention organizers didn’t supply those. Each woman had to provide her own. She had a pair tucked away in the back of a closet. They looked great on her, but after a while, they put a hell of a strain on her legs. Normally she’d take every chance to rest her legs by perching prettily on whatever convention display she could find, but this had been a boat show and there was damned little available to sit on, or even lean against. Every time she tried to take a bit of the load off, Jackie Strasser, that overbearing uber-bitch who supervised the floor models, would show up and make her walk the floor again. To be fair, she did the exact same thing to all of the other floor models, but Krissy was sure that she did it because she herself was on the plain side, on the skinny side, and on the wrong side of forty. She must have been jealous of all the hot young babes under her supervision to treat them the way she did.

  The convention was finally over; the lights all turned off in the big hall, and most of the attendees and models gone. Krissy herself lingered behind, even though she had plans for the evening. There were other, more immediate plans that she had to attend to. She’d already changed into her street clothes, and on her way out she tossed her uniform into the laundry bin, along with all the other model’s costumes, then tossed her tinsel wig onto the shelf above it along with all of the other silly tinsel wigs. Her boots were tucked away in the shoulder bag she carried. She knew that some of her coworkers had arranged trysts with wealthy men from the convention and were hurrying to meet them – now that the convention was over it wasn’t exactly illegal. It wasn’t exactly hooking, either, but Krissy regarded those women with contempt, picturing them letting flabby older men paw them and fuck them in exchange for money and lovely parting gifts. It was disgusting.