Lust, Money & Murder (5 page)

When she pulled into the driveway at the house, she was only partially aware of what she was doing. She felt like she was in a dream, a nightmare, and that she was viewing herself from above.

She watched herself unlock the front door. She watched herself walk through the small living room and go down the steps into the basement. She watched herself open the bottom drawer of her father’s beat-up metal desk and pull out the .38 revolver.

Under her father’s orders, she had never touched the gun before, but it didn’t look very complicated to operate. She found the button that released the cylinders. Her fingers spun them around slowly—there were bullets in all six of the chambers.

She put the gun in her purse, ascended the stairs, and went back out to the truck.

It was all Ronald Eskew’s fault.

The sleazy bastard was going to pay.

As Elaine drove downtown, she visualized the scene.
You killed my father
, she would say, ramming the gun into his chest. No, under his neck. Into his Adam’s apple. She would make him beg for his own life, get down on his knees and blubber like a baby. She would make him regret the day he was born. She would make him tell her where the counterfeit money had come from. When she was satisfied that she had completely broken him, she would call the police and hold him there until they arrived.

* * *

It was just getting dark when she pulled up to the main entrance of the office building where the Rising Star Modeling Agency was located.

She parked and got out, not bothering to lock the door.

When she stepped into the lobby, the security guard stood up and said, “You’re not allowed to park there, miss...”

She was already heading towards the elevator.

“Hey, wait! You can’t just—”

She stepped onto the elevator and pressed 3.

“Hold it!” the guard said, but before he could get there, the doors closed.

When the lift reached the third floor, she stepped off the elevator, her heartbeat thumping in her ears, yet sounding far, far away. She reached the agency’s front door and twisted the handle.

It was locked. Then she noticed that the office lights weren’t on.

Elaine frowned—it wasn’t even six o’clock yet. Where the hell were they all?

The stairway doors burst open and the security guard trotted towards her. “What do you think you’re d—?”

He stopped, glanced at the door, then back at Elaine. “They’re gone.”

“What do you mean?” Elaine said.

“Gone. Packed up their tent and moved away.”

Elaine peered through the window into the darkened offices. All the desks were still there, the file cabinets, chairs...but there was trash scattered around on the floor.

“They didn’t leave a forwarding address, nothing,” the guard said. “Skipped out on the last sixth months of their lease.” He looked at her sympathetically. “Did they owe you money, too?”

Elaine was dumbfounded. They had left, they had all left! Ronald Eskew must have known that her father had been arrested.

She turned and walked back down the corridor in a daze.

CHAPTER 1.4

Elaine was able to stay on at the Bromley Academy.

Ms. Prentice arranged for a full scholarship, which included room and board on campus. All the students grieved over the death of her father, and showed nothing but kindness towards Elaine.

She buried herself in her studies, hiding herself from her pain. She could not escape the deep-seated hatred that welled inside her for Ronald Eskew, or whatever the man’s real name was. It grew inside her like a cancer.

One day, in the 11th grade, she and her best friend, Kaitlin, were in the guidance counselor’s office, filling out their careers forms. Elaine noticed a magazine with an article titled
Careers in the Secret Service
. She read the part about the Anti-Counterfeiting Division.

She decided then and there that she was going to become a Secret Service agent, and that she was going to track down Ronald Eskew and punish him for what he had done.

The article said that to qualify for the Secret Service, you needed a college degree and that competition was fierce. It also said that if you were fluent in a foreign language and/or had some special education relevant to currency production, such as in intaglio printing, your chances of becoming an agent were much higher.

Intaglio printing
, Elaine thought. She had no idea what that was, but she had always liked art and graphic design.

She didn’t mention her plans to Kaitlin, or to anyone else. It was her secret.

In her senior year, Elaine applied to all the top colleges in the Northeastern U.S. that had strong graphic design departments and mentioned intaglio printing in their course catalogs. Ms. Prentice and her teachers wrote her glowing letters of recommendation.

Elaine was thrilled to be accepted at the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design and Architecture, with a full scholarship.

Kaitlin was accepted at Northwestern University in Chicago, also with a full scholarship. She planned to study economics.

When they both graduated from Bromley, they had a teary goodbye, and they promised to stay in touch.

CHAPTER 1.5

When Elaine arrived on the RISD campus, she felt strange. It was like suddenly being set free. Life back at Bromley had been fairly strict, even senior year, with her comings and goings from her living quarters tightly controlled. And fairly isolated, the school located out in the countryside 30 minutes from Pittsburgh.

Now, she found herself in a coed dormitory with very little in the way of supervision, and living in the middle of an urban area, in Providence, Rhode Island.

The strangest thing was attending classes with boys. Elaine hadn’t been to school with boys since the second grade, and she felt shy and awkward around them. She became tongue-tied whenever they talked to her.

She tried to ignore the problem by throwing herself into her studies, which wasn’t difficult—college was so exciting and different compared to high school, especially at a design school. She loved her studio courses—Drawing, 2-D and 3D—and did very well in them.

But her insecurity with the opposite sex persisted, and she finally decided that she needed to do something about it. She thought that being a virgin was the main problem. If she had sex with a boy, then she would feel more comfortable around them.

Her assigned roommate, Ashley Page, was one of her more experienced classmates. She was the complete opposite of Elaine—a short, curvaceous, curly-haired artist from Brooklyn.

“We’ve got to get you laid, girl,” Ashley said frankly, when Elaine felt comfortable enough to talk openly with her. “What kind of guys do you like?”

“I don’t know,” Elaine said. “Strong, but kind.” Like her father.

“Strong, but kind,” Ashley said. “Hm. That eliminates about ninety-eight percent of the male population. What about looks? Tall, beefy, slim? Blonde, dark? Blue eyes—”

“I don’t know, Ashley. Does it matter? I just need somebody to get the job done.”

Ashley laughed. “Boy, you are jaded.”

Elaine had long given up on the idea that the process of losing her virginity would be a romantic event. It was simply a barrier she wanted to break—both literally and figuratively. She thought it would not only make her feel more comfortable with boys, but would make her feel like she was a complete, fully functioning female.

Ashley told Elaine that her best bet was to go to the athletic center at Brown University, which was available to RISD students. “Who knows, you might get lucky and end up marrying a rich Ivy League type.”

“Yeah, sure. They’ll be very impressed when they find out I’m from a ghetto in Pittsburgh.”

“Better than Brooklyn,” Ashley said.

“You haven’t been there.”

* * *

Elaine took Ashley’s advice and signed up for a Tae Kwon Do class at the Brown athletic center. There, she met several young men, though only one of them was a Brown student. The others were from RISD.

Elaine’s first three sexual encounters were like the fairy tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The first one was too hot, the second one was too cold, and the third was just right...or at least, she thought so at first.

Too Hot was the one from Brown, a sophomore philosophy major. He had a shuddering orgasm the instant the tip of his rubber-clad manhood touched her vagina.

“Isn’t—isn’t it supposed to last longer than that?” Elaine said.

His face flushed, he quickly pulled his pants back on. “Who do you think I am, Superman?” He told her to get out of his room.

Too Cold simply couldn’t get his machinery working. He was a rather shy graphics design major she met while she was working out on a stationary bicycle. Elaine had to make the first move, asking him how to work the machine. They went back to his dorm room and started making out on his bed. He quickly got an erection, but by the time he had fumbled with a condom and clumsily tried to put himself inside her, he was soft as dough. They tried again, three times. He finally became so humiliated he made up an excuse about being stressed about an upcoming test and asked her to leave.

Just Right gave Elaine her first satisfying sexual experience, but he was an oddball from the start. A good five inches shorter than Elaine, he was on the RISD hockey team, The Nads. He had a thick, muscular physique and a hairy chest, which Elaine found exciting. They met in the Tae Kwon Do class and made plans to meet at a bar.

She found him sitting in a booth, waiting for her, watching a basketball game on the big screen TV. As soon as she sat down, she noticed a prominent tenting in his jeans that, to her amazement, persisted the entire time they talked. He spoke of nothing but hockey and how he hoped to become a professional, that RISD was just a “backup plan” in case he couldn’t make it.

“Let’s get out of here,” he finally said, and took hold of her hand as they left the bar. She expected him to take her to his dorm room, but instead, he led her across the street and directly into another bar. They had another drink, and talked, continued to watch the game on TV, talked, and then he took her to another bar. And another. And another.

She kept stealing glances at his crotch, and felt like saying,
Don’t you get it? You don’t have to impress me and chat me up all night. I’m a sure thing
. But she didn’t want to scare him off.

She finally figured out what was going on about the time they went to the third bar. He always hung back when they entered, letting her walk ahead of him, by herself, to sit at the bar alone a few minutes. He always had an excuse—he had to use the restroom, needed to buy a pack of cigarettes from the machine—whatever. Then he would join her, stepping up to her and saying “Hey, beautiful,” as if she was a total stranger to him. He wanted everyone in the bar to see him approach the pretty blonde who had just come in, who all the other guys were eying, and then— effortlessly—pick her up. It was a competitive, alpha male type thing.

Weird but understandable, Elaine supposed. He was too sexy to abandon on that basis...and that lump was too promising, especially after the Brown philosophy major.

Finally she could stand it no longer. “Want to go back to my room?” she whispered, holding onto his thick arm.

“We’ll go to mine.”

When they arrived, he locked the door and immediately turned on the TV. Another stupid basketball game was on. “You want a beer?” he said.

“No,” she said dreamily. She turned down the volume on the TV set. “I just want to be with you.” The truth was, she just wanted to get this over with.

They sat down on the bed and he kissed her, giving lots of tongue. When he pulled down his pants, his erection popped out and eagerly bounced up and down. It was short and thick, just like he was. But she wasn’t complaining—at least it was hard. Hopefully it wouldn’t explode at the slightest contact with any part of the female anatomy.

He expertly laid her down on the bed and plunged himself inside her, breaking her hymen with the first powerful thrust—at last. Within a moment or two, he brought her to her first externally-generated orgasm. He made love with a machine-like rhythm, his manhood maintaining a constant turgidity. He just kept going and going and going. She kept her eyes closed the entire time, and after a while she thought he seemed distracted, as if his mind were elsewhere.

He suddenly began thrusting harder. “Go, Rodriguez, go!” he yelled.

For a second, she thought Rodriguez was his pet name for his own penis. Then she opened her eyes and saw only the bottom of his chin.

He was still watching the basketball game on TV.

“Shoot!” he bellowed. “What are you waiting for, dumbass?”

“I...can we...” Elaine tried to wriggle out from under him.

“What’s the matter?” he said, looking down at her.

“I’ve had enough.” She rolled off the bed.

He looked at her a moment, then gave a shrug and bobbed his way into the bathroom. Elaine took advantage of the opportunity to quickly get dressed. When she reached under his bed for her shoe, she glimpsed a little blue pill on the floor.