The Seduction - Art Bourgeau (22 page)

As she lay dazed in the straw and litter of the
display, her skirt up over her thighs, her nightmare began.

Missy grabbed her hair and pulled her to her knees,
forcing her into a kneeling position, where Missy slipped the choker
chain with the medallion over her head. Taking hold of her hair
again, she slowly brought the gun up. Even in the darkness of the
store it seemed to gleam and shine, holding Cynthia's attention as
though it was a poisonous snake as it came closer and closer.

Gently Missy brought the muzzle to Cynthia's lips.
Cynthia pulled back, tried to turn her head away, her lips pressed
together. Missy tightened her hold on Cynthia's hair and brought her
face back close to the muzzle, taking care to be sure that Cynthia
could not raise her eyes.

Even in this providential darkness she was taking no
chances on Cynthia getting a long enough look to maybe see through
her disguise. That was a surprise to come later. Talking gently,
Missy said, "Don't be that way," her voice barely above a
whisper, as she increased the pressure of the muzzle against
Cynthia's lips, not enough to hurt or bruise them but enough to
provide a note of insistence.

Cynthia wouldn't keep still.

"Please, you don't want me to hurt you. Just
cooperate and I'll be out of here in a few minutes," Missy said.

It was a voice whose tone, as much as its words, told
Cynthia to be reasonable, not to force an escalation of the
situation, that this was nothing more than a simple robbery if she
didn't make it so.

She felt the pressure of the muzzle increase against
her lips, listened to that voice, opened her mouth.

Missy slid the gun barrel inside a couple of inches,
but not enough to make her gag.

"Now close your lips around it like it's your
lover," she said. Cynthia obeyed.

"Good, now we can talk without you getting
hysterical on me. I want you to put both hands behind you. Do you
understand?" Cynthia nodded slightly and did it. When the
handcuffs were in place Missy breathed easier. Now there was no
chance that Cynthia could resist anything she'd planned for her.
Cynthia, too, seemed to realize this . . . she made one last show of
resistance after the cuffs were on, but Missy simply held her head
with one hand and pressed the barrel deeper into her throat until she
either had to stop moving or gag.

In a scolding whisper Missy said, "Please, don't
move around like that again, not yet anyway. This gun has very sharp
sights. It could do a lot of damage to your mouth if you get too
carried away. I wouldn't want that, would you?"

Cynthia shook her head slightly.

"You're wondering why this is happening to you,
aren't you?"

With her free hand Missy flashed her badge in front
of Cynthia's eyes, keeping it there only long enough for her to get a
glimpse . . . but in the darkness she couldn't see what kind of a
badge it was.

"I'm going to tell you. I'm a private
investigator. I've been following you for the last couple of days.
You see, your ex-husband—you know, the real estate tycoon—hired
me to do that. And he hired me to do something else as well."
She paused for effect, then: "He hired me to kill you."

Cynthia started as if she'd been hit with a jolt of
electricity. Missy smiled.

"I know, you can't believe it. But it's true.
There's apparently some beautiful, rich bitch here in town—the
daughter of a doctor, I think he said—that he wants to marry, but
everywhere he goes you keep popping up and spoiling things."

Even with the gun in her mouth Cynthia tried to deny
it.

"I told him yesterday that I thought it was too
extreme a solution, that you seemed like a reasonable person. Maybe
if I talked to you we could work things out. Well, he wouldn't hear
of it. He wants you dead, and in the worst way." She stretched
the word "dead" for a full effect.

She felt Cynthia begin to tremble, kneeling there
before Missy in the darkened store. With her free hand, the one not
holding the gun, she began to stroke Cynthia's hair. The trembling
continued, and Missy felt cold chills at the thought of the wonderful
excitement Cynthia was feeling. She forced Cynthia's head over, all
the while still stroking her hair with her gloved hand, until her
cheek rested against Missy's trouser front and she felt the press and
hardness of the dildo inside the trousers like a real penis.

"May I tell you something else? Following you
like I have the last couple of days, I've become real fond of you.
You're a special person, and I don't think you should die. Do you
understand what I'm saying to you?"

Cynthia nodded as best she could from her awkward
position. "I don't know how it happened, but damned if I didn't
find myself thinking about you all the time. I just can't handle the
idea of killing you. But if I let you go, you've got to help me—"

Missy paused to let the faint ray of hope sink in.
She looked around the store to see where she could take her for their
moment of truth. In the rear was a kitchen used for cooking
demonstrations and classes that opened onto a small courtyard and
herb garden behind. Perfect.

"You've got to do two things," she went on.
"Neither should be too difficult. I want you to promise me that
if I let you go, you'll disappear for a few weeks. Go down to the
islands, go to Europe, Florida, California, anywhere—just go away
so everything has a chance to cool down. While you're gone I'll give
your husband his money back, and when he sees you're not causing him
any trouble I think I can convince him to forget about the whole
thing. Then everyone can live happily ever after. Will you do that?"

Cynthia tried to nod furiously.

"Now I'm going to take the gun out of your mouth
because I need to hear you say it, to tell me that you'll go away,
but first you must understand something else. I haven't hurt you yet,
except for the little bump on the noggin, but if you try to scream,
yell or do anything except be the proper lady you are, you'll be
hurting me. Our deal will be off, and I'll finish your husband's
contract and kill you."

Missy slowly, sensually removed the gunbarrel from
Cynthia's mouth. Cynthia obediently kept her lips around it, like it
was a rare treat, until the sight touched her lips and she had to
open her mouth wider.

"I'll do it," she said. "I'll go away,
I promise, tonight as soon as you let me go. Only please don't—"
she couldn't even say "kill me"—"don't hurt me."

"Remember, I said there were two things,"
Missy said in a stern, half-whisper. "The other thing is that
you must let me make love to you. Seeing you like I have the last
couple of days, it's all I've thought about. I know it's wrong but
this one time I've got to have you. After that we can never see each
other again. Will you do it?"

"Here?"

Missy took her arm and helped her to her feet. As she
guided her through the darkened store toward the kitchen she realized
she had never wanted anyone so badly in her life as she did Cynthia
at that moment. She hadn't been lying about that. It seemed that
Cynthia was feeling it too. Missy heard it in her voice as she
stopped inside the kitchen and said breathily, "Where?"

She led her to the kitchen table in the center, and
Cynthia, with her hands still cuffed behind her, obediently bent
forward from the waist and rested her cheek and upper body against
the tabletop.

"lt's so dark in here. Please turn on the light
over the stove. It's only a little light. No one outside can see it,
honest."

Missy smiled. Better and better. The lady really
wanted to
enjoy it.

The soft light brought everything into sharp relief
for Missy's cocaine-sharpened senses. Moving behind her, Missy raised
Cynthia's skirt and gently lowered her pantyhose and panties. She
really was very pretty, waiting like that, so open to Missy's desire.
It was easy to see why Felix could fall under her spell, because she
felt it, too.

As she unzipped her trousers and brought out the
dildo she looked around the room. Someone had left the window over
the sink cracked, and a slight breeze rustled the brown-and-white
cafe curtains decorated with old-fashioned coffee grinders and
weathervanes. Watching them stir gave her a sense of peace. The
tableau was sort of like a Norman Rockwell painting. What a nice
setting.
 
 

NOVEMBER

CHAPTER 20

PINE STREET was sleepy in the chilly morning air. Two
gays still in Halloween costume made their way home arm in arm, the
last celebrants from the last party. Near Thirteenth the swampers for
Dirty Franks and the Pine Street Beverage Room wrestled out to the
street huge garbage cans filled with empties and swabbed down their
places with pine-smelling mop water. In the ten hundred block a
couple of early-bird antique dealers cast a weather-eye about whether
to entrust their valuables to the sidewalk or to keep him inside for
the day. One chose to take them out; one chose not to. The one who
chose to soon had his sidewalk cluttered with a wooden Indian, a
rocker, two trunks, and a mirror decorated with deer antlers. The one
who chose not to watched all this activity and quietly wondered how
his competitor could make a living selling such junk. Near Twelfth
the ice cream place was making waffles and coffee for its breakfast
crowd, and across the street, in front of the Pine Street
Charcuterie, an old Buick 225, known in some circles as a
"deuce-and-a-quarter," pulled up and stopped.

At the wheel of the Buick was Claude Washington, a
black man some sixty years of age who made his living cleaning
offices and stores. He had been working since long before dawn, and
the Pine Street Charcuterie was his fifth job of the morning. His
back was bothering him some as he opened the trunk for his cleaning
supplies. Forty years of industrial cleaning could do that, but
Claude was not complaining. His had been a good life. He had lost one
son to a rocket attack in Vietnam, but he still had a loving wife and
two other sons, one a lawyer, the other a dentist. The sons were
always after him to retire, take it easy, let them support him, but
outside of a little high blood pressure Claude was in good health and
intended to stay that way by continuing to get up early and work
hard, as he had done all his life.

He carried the first load of cleaning supplies to the
door and put them down. Going back for another he too cast a
weather-eye and, without knowing, agreed with the second antique
dealer: rain was on the way. He only hoped it would hold off until
lunch when he was home with his wife, resting his back and watching
"All My Children".

With this load he slammed the trunk lid and fished in
his pocket for the keys to the store, but when he used them, to his
surprise, he found the door was unlocked. That had never happened
before, not here anyway, but he guessed that whoever had closed the
night before was a little too eager to get to a Halloween party and
had forgotten. Still, he would have to leave a note, just in case. He
didn't want there to be any possibility that Miss Cynthia would think
he had stolen something. He opened the door and set his brooms and
mops inside. Before he could go back for the bucket filled with rags
and cleaners he saw the debris on the floor from the smashed display
of crab pots and Old Bay Seasoning. That wasn't right. None of Miss
Cynthia's sales people would go off and leave a mess like that, and
the idea of a burglar came immediately to mind.

The idea held no fear for him. If it was a burglar he
would be long gone by now. More likely, some kid high on dope, but
still sixty years of living told him to be a bit
more cautious than usual.

He brought in the bucket, set it next to the brooms
and mops and proceeded to look around the room. Only the one display
seemed to have been disturbed. Everything else looked all right. lf
it was a burglary, at least it wasn't by a bunch of vandals. Moving
toward the center of the room, he was careful not to touch anything.
He had no illusions about the police fingerprinting the place over a
simple burglary; they would not do it, but that was their business.
His was not to get in the way. Deeper in the room, the only sign of
an intruder was still the smashed display. The stereo hadn't been
touched and everything else in the place was either food or cooking
utensils. Not even a dopehead would be stupid enough to try to sell a
set of pots and pans on the street.

All that was left was the counter and the cash
register. He walked behind the counter. Everything seemed normal
there, too. Like most stores, the Pine Street Charcuterie left the
drawer of the cash register partially open at night as an incentive
to keep a burglar from smashing a machine worth more than what was
inside it. Using a cleaning rag, he pulled the drawer out a little
more. The change inside, about twenty-five dollars from the look of
it, seemed intact, and he decided that he had been wrong about the
burglar and right in the first place about the careless employee and
the Halloween party.

Muttering to himself about the quality of help today,
he crossed the room and began his cleaning. He did not go into the
kitchen. First he cleaned up the broken display and put things into
order as best he could. The rest of it would have to be done by Miss
Cynthia and her troops because he didn't know how they would want it.
Then he wiped down all the shelves and counters as he did each day.
It was only when he neared the end of his sweeping that he rounded
the small partition separating the kitchen area from the store.