The stifling heat had finally broken, and from the bar’s window, I could see a storm was descending on New York City. I winced, shook the water from my hat, dropped it on the table, and slipped into the snug. I looked at my bloodied hands. I knew I shouldn't have done it, not that way, but knowing something doesn't always help. Anyway, the old couple had to die. Period. 

I looked around, it was the usual, sad, 3 a.m. Friday fraternity. I could have a stake through my heart and no one would notice.

“Hey, Joe!” I shouted, “Daniels with a twist of lemon.”  I reserved bourbon for the bad jobs. When the glass of rye arrived, I dripped its contents on my left hand then yanked a four-inch barbed spine from the flesh of my palm.

"Fuckitty, fuck, fuck,” I muttered, throwing the spine on the fire where it crackled and spat. I pressed my hand down on a beer towel to stem the blood.

"Hey, TT, you better pay for that!"

“I am good for it Joe.“

“I thought you were into ghosts and paranormal shit?” said Joe, looking at my swollen hands. “That looks pretty nasty. You been fishing?”

“Yeah, sort of. Give me another whiskey.” 

I grimaced, took the glass from Joe, and downed it. The eel juice spread across the back of my throat and fizzed. I saw Joe looking at me. Was this the right time to mention my work as a Private Spectral Detective?  How my job lead to real-world humans, and the mutilated old couple, folded and stuffed into the boot of my Jag that I had to get rid of before sunrise? Probably not.

“Mr. Tarakan?” I looked up.  Only Cops and the IRS called me by my surname. “Mr. Tarakan, I was told I might find you here, especially at this time.” If angels were leggy ash blondes who wore leather and spoke with plumy English accents, I was in heaven. I wrapped the beer towel around my hand and offered her the seat next to me. 

She sauntered over, flashing a dark stocking welt through the high slit in her skirt. Large soulful, wet eyes looked me over.  I lived by two golden rules: first, never get involved with a client, and second, rules are there to be broken.  She definitely came under the latter.

“You look as though you need some help,” she said, squeezing into the snug next to me, and taking my hand. “Let me dress this for you.” She took the bar towel and gently tied it around my hand. “Keep pressure on the wound until it stops bleeding.” I obeyed without question.

Her ample chest heaved as she took a deep breath. “We need to talk…” Her eyelids fluttered, and a pained expression flashed across her alabaster skin. “It’s, it’s my husband.”  It always was.  “He’s come back to haunt me.”  She paused and drew a black lace handkerchief from her pocket.  “I need you to stop him…Give him peace.”  Her baby blues flooded, and I dived headlong in.  Dabbing gently, and careful not to disturb the rich, black mascara, she fluttered her long eyelashes at me.  My blood rushed south.

“Care for a drink?” I asked.  They always liked to drink and tell.

“Thanks.  Bacardi and Coke, large.”  I smiled. She was class - a walking billboard for 50s retro haute couture - sophisticated, and from the money side of town.  I gave Joe the order. Two drunk barflies started glaring at the angel next to me, so we moved to a corner of the bar. She slid gracefully from the snug and I stole another look at paradise. 

She spoke about her husband, but I wasn’t listening.  Clients were usually tediously boring religious nuts, or middle-aged losers living beyond their means. This client, however, was a mid-twenties bombshell with high cheekbones, and legs that finished somewhere north of Jersey.  She paused for a second, and I took control.

“Two hundred a day, plus expenses.”  She didn’t flinch.  “Cash, upfront.” A smile broke across her face.

“Mr. Tarakan, you come highly recommended.”  She oozed insincerity. “Let’s speak again in a week.”   Draining her glass she produced an envelope from within her coat. 

“Five thousand dollars cash, as a down payment, and this is my husband’s resume, and the last five sightings of him.” There was nothing paranormal about this, but I was still opening the envelope before she’d got up. Liberating her leather coat, she spun on a stiletto, and glided from the bar. French heels with thin black seams on flesh coloured nylons - Paranormal or not, I was hooked.

The sun was crawling across the sky when I got to my apartment. The storm had abated, and everything was covered in a fine mist.  I poured a tonic and sat down with the envelope. I needed to think. I felt for reassurance and found it in my pocket. I smiled as I took out the silver snuffbox - a gift from an appreciative client - its contents helped me focus. I popped the lid. One hundred grams of these tiny creatures contained seven milligrams of iron. Compared to beefsteak these were dynamite.

To the reassuring crack of a husk, I settled down with my Pastel Babies, and opened the envelope. Inside was a wad of black and white photographs of an old man somewhere between ninety and death. A further handful of photographs showed him with a fat man in a garden.  Hidden among the pictures were a postcard of a strange painting, and four film rental stubs.  I looked again at the photographs – I had a nagging feeling I knew the fat man. Tiredness overcame me, and I slept, dreaming of my angel.

The next morning I followed up on the fat man - he looked like a gumshoe from the Eastside found plugged with lead in his apartment some weeks ago. I called Lieutenant Stalker, my ex-partner. We exchanged pleasantries and I popped the question. “I need information about the gumshoe from the Eastside.” Stalker went quiet.

“Which one?”

“How many have you got?”

“How many do you want?”

“The fat one.”

“Ate too much.”

“Natural death then?”

“Nope. “ It was like pulling teeth. Stalker was clamming, and I knew why.

“Feds interested?”

“Yep.

“O’ Malley’s, at three.”

“No problem.” 

The Feds only got interested for a reason. My hunch was the fat man had found something, and my angel’s husband was important.

The heat was rising as I walked into O’Malley’s on fifty-third. Stalker had his back to the exit sitting crouched at table thirty-three. A man of annoying ritual, he had sat at table thirty-three for the five years I had partnered him. I sat opposite and he nodded, nervously checking out the three mid-afternoon diners. The waitress threw menus on the table and waited, chewing her gum like a cow ruminates cud.

“Black coffee, eggs easy over, hash browns and two blueberry waffles?” I looked at Stalker, waiting on his reply.

“You remembered!” Each day for five years he had eaten O’Malley’s artery choking shit. It wasn’t rocket science to assume, looking at the overweight lard, that nothing had changed.

“Why the nervousness?” I looked at the sweaty, fidgeting mess opposite me.

“The Feds are all over the fat man case.”

“Why you so bothered?” His scanning of the room was beginning to irritate.

“He was working on a case for a New York Congressman. The Congressman disappeared, and we may have... Well, killed him.”

I felt for reassurance. I popped the lid and sat back. “So, New York’s finest killed a Congressman!” Stalker saw me smirk, and frowned.

“He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time.” He looked up, his mouth awash with shit, “It’s complicated.” I raised an eyebrow. 

“Know anything about his wife?” I enquired.

“Why you ask?” Stalker went defensive. I pushed a reassuring clip of George Washington’s across the table.

“Can’t find her. They divorced months ago, she lives elsewhere.” My angel never mentioned a divorce. 

“There’s more if you get me her details.” I looked at Stalker, who nodded, forcing another mouthful down with a swig of coffee. And what do they say comes from the mouths of babes and fools?

On the way to the office my cell rang, the blonde’s silky voice washed over me. “Mr. Tarakan, we should meet. Metropolitan Museum at three?” 

I looked at the pile of final demands on my desk, “No problem.”

I arrived at the museum early. The unusually wet summer weather had gone, leaving New York City hot, the kind of stifling heat that wraps itself around your throat and slowly chokes you.

I sat some distance from the entrance with a broadsheet and waited. At three precisely, the doors opened and in strolled my Vargas Girl, wearing the shortest of flared skirts, and moving with the fluidity of unfurling silk. Deep within my chest, the slow rhythmic tapping of her high spiky heels reverberated, rippling to my crotch. I stood up admiring the gentle, tapering curve of her thighs. She turned and undulated toward me. 

“Mr. Tarakan, good to see you,” oozing insincerity again, she offered a leather glove. As I took it, her musky perfume flooded over me - I was putty in her hands.

“Shall we walk?” I nodded. She eased off her gloves and paused. Standing close, she unbuttoned her jacket. She looked into my eyes, “I do so like the Met. It was my husband’s favourite too.” The raw silk slid provocatively from her shoulders, revealing a translucent chemise. “It is so damned hot!” She sighed as her upper body rippled, and inches from my face, her fleshy breasts undulated in agreement. Like the plastic dog that sits on the back shelf of a car, I bounced along with them.

“This is my favourite gallery.” Feigning interest, I pulled my eyes from her chest and looked around. Seventeenth-century tit and ass covered the walls. I was about to make a witty comment when she moved to the far wall, and stood with her back to me looking at a painting. I walked slowly, admiring the voluptuous hourglass. The last time we met my angel wore leather. Today, it was raw silk, light pink, and creamy. Similar French heels, but now the pencil lines were dark gray on white.

“My husband was impotent Mr. Tarakan, for all the tea in China, he could not raise a smile.” I casually moved the paper downward – I was starting to grin. She caught my eyes on her cleavage and gave a knowing cough.

“Mr. Tarakan, what about my husband?” 

“The man in the photographs with your husband, he died a week ago. Murdered.” She was un-phased by my comment.

“My husband was a voyeur, Mr. Tarakan, this may help.” She produced from her Gucci clutch bag a DVD. 

“He liked his DVD’s. You have another week Mr. Tarakan.” I watched her leave. It didn’t need a scientist and a brace of dogs to explain the effect she had on me. She was ringing my bell big time.

The DVD looked promising.  I kicked off my loafers, unhooked my Glock, laid it on the table, and turned on the DVD.  The same man in the photographs was walking in an ornamental garden.  He moved behind a hedge and the camera followed.  In the distance, a woman walked toward the camera.  It was the ash blonde.  Then the screen jumped and we were back to the old man in the garden.  I reversed the DVD and slowed it where it jumped. There was something odd about the segue - I called my Geek.

Every P.I. in the twenty-first century employed a techno Geek.  Mine wasn’t a spotty college whiz kid you threw a few bucks at to perform miracles. No, mine was a fort-five-year-old Russian called Dmitri Premagenev, or ‘Prema’ for short. A bald, bear of a man—a bit-part actor, a gypsy troubadour. Part insane, part genius. He had worked at a Space Facility in Kazakhstan, then for the KGB hacking into US industrial companies, before being retired to a gulag for ‘behavior incompatible with a Soviet Citizen.’

He had learned his English in Russia, watching smuggled John Wayne movies. Capitalism had taken its toll; he spoke like John Wayne, with a heavy Russian accent, and modeled his life on the ‘Duke’. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he fled to America. Prema was his usual obtund self. I agreed to leave the package with him. He wanted time to work on it, and I needed sleep.

Two days later, my cell rang. It was 4 am, and Prima was on the line. 

“Why so early?” I growled, clinging to the sandman. 

“The ‘Duke’ was no lover of convention, so why should I be?” He retorted. Prema always dragged his hero in to answer for him. We agreed to meet at my office.

“Tobias Tarakan, S.P.D.”  The lettering on my office door was peeling back, dog-eared, and looking tired. The door was open, annoyingly.  It was not the first time Prema had let himself in.

“Doors are locked for a purpose.”  It was hard to scold an excited Russian bear.

“So, I break-in?” He whistled loudly, occasionally flying into incomprehensible song, and Dukism’s as he called them—snippets of wisdom allegedly spoken by his hero. 

“Here, six photographs!” he trumpeted, spreading them on the table. His eyes twinkled,  “I work better with thirty grams.” I poured, he drank.

“These were placed at each segue.” The video-captured pictures were grainy, but there was no mistaking the ash blonde, in a variety of positions, with a different cock or dildo between her legs—none belonged, or were attached to the old man. 

“There is only one frame for each picture, surprised you saw it.”  I looked at the bald, arrogant Russian and smiled. Soak them in vodka and they think they can run the world.

“What about the stubs?” 

Prema pulled a notepad. “Four different films: Kiss The Girls And Make Them Cry; The Mexican; K-Pax; and Shakespeare In Love.  There is something else on the DVD, but I need specialized equipment.”

I looked at Prema, “Cost?”

“A thousand bucks.” He sucked at his teeth and drained his glass. 

“Seven hundred?” I countered.

“Done!” He took my hand in his large paws and squeezed.  Done I was—another victory for nouveau Russian capitalism.

As Prema left, I sat back and looked at the pictures. I was taunted by the same question; why does a beautiful woman, who clearly enjoyed enacting the complete works of the Karma Sutra, give me a DVD categorizing her infidelity, ask me to find her husband, and pay me good money to do so?

Prema wasn’t answering his cell.

I checked my messages.  The blonde’s voice flew from the machine, “I am in room seven at the Grande, there has been a development.  Can you come for me?” 

On my way to the hotel, my cell rang. It was Prema. “Where have you been?” I asked angrily.

“We must talk.”  He was drunk.

“Not now, I’ll call.”

“But…” I cut him off. The hotel was just around the corner so I jumped in my car.

I tapped on the hotel door. A bolt was drawn and the door opened on the chain.  It was my angel, her eyes ablaze.  

“Oh God, I am so glad you came!” The door opened and I stepped in.  She was different, very different. Her hair was now jet-black and cut into a severe bob. She was edgy. I was about to engage in small talk, when the lights went out, and I folded.

Slowly, consciousness returned, and with it the throbbing reminder I had been coshed.  My angel’s face came slowly into focus.  I tried moving, but my hands were cuffed behind a chair, and my ankles strapped to the legs. But for my boxers, I was naked.  Suddenly I was fighting for breath, she was collapsing my nose. I gulped air, and she dropped four pills into my mouth washing them down with bourbon.

“What the fu...” I spluttered, gasping for breath.

This time my angel’s voice was measured and calm.  “Nature’s little helpers, Mr. Tarakan.”  She bent over and whispered, “angel dust.” It figured.

My head was clearing. She was stretched cat-like along the bed, semi-naked in sheer nylons, a corset, and slip.  My angel had grown horns and a tail.

“Those years of pro-bowl gave you a good physique.”  With a riding crop, she deftly opened my shorts and lifted my limp penis.  “It will do very nicely.”  She slowly sat up, languidly stretching her long balletic legs before stepping delicately into her stilettos. 

“Have you heard of Otto Dix, Mr. Tarakan?”  She stood for a moment, her hands glided lasciviously across her nylons, meticulously checking her straining garters. 

“I am talking to you?”  Her eyes blazed again.  I tried the friendly approach. “Call me Toby.” 

She sighed, “Don’t bother with the pleasantries, Mr. Tarakan. You and your camarilla are scum.”  She turned; her tight butt undulated and wiggled as she flowed on pencil-thin stilettos toward the drinks tray.

“You are lustful, Mr. Tarakan.”  She was inside my mind.  She pointed with the riding crop.  “From the moment I walked into that dingy bar, you have lusted for me.”  Mea culpa I thought, guilty as charged.

“You are my finale, the last one… The seventh.”  

“The P.D. in the whiskey vat?” I inquired. 

She giggled.  “Oh yes!  The alcoholic… that was easy.”

“The fat man, you fed him to death?” She simply nodded.

“Why kill?”  I was confused.

“Oh, my poor Mr. Tarakan, it is all very simple.  Insatiable wife with rich, aging, impotent Congressman husband, meets virile chauffeur, gardener, pool boy, and the occasional maid.” She stopped, and slowly licked her rich, red lips, “You understand.” I did, and my crotch was catching up fast.

“Why me?” 

She laughed, “Pure chance, Mr. Tarakan.  I chose seven P.D.’s from the phone book. You happened to be the fuckable one.” 

“But why P.I.’s?” 

She returned with a tumbler of whiskey and ice and sat on the end of the bed, slowly crossing her legs with a long, drawn-out rustle of nylon.  I was stiffening quickly.

“My dear, ex-husband, bless his cotton socks, was very rich, but could not satisfy me. I needed men,”  Pausing momentarily, she ran her tongue along her glossy upper lip and winked, “and women.”  Rigidity had set in.

“In the beginning it was easy.  I simply fucked the staff.  They feared to kiss and tell for losing their jobs, but then I got careless.  I fucked my husband’s Campaign Manager.  Within a year of being married, I was cut from his will and left with a derisory pay-off.  I lost millions, all because a P.I. discovered my infidelity.”  She leaned across and looked me in the eyes, the riding crop pressed hard under my chin.

“So you see, Mr. Tarakan, you and your slime owe me big time.”  She was clearly psychotic, but she had a point.  If I had got that close and lost millions, I’d be pissed.

She released my chin and sat back. “I got the idea of revenge from Otto Dix.”  

I thought hard, trying to place the name. “The painting?”

“Very good, Mr. Tarakan! And why that painting?”  

I had thought little of it – It was ugly. Hitler, riding on the back of a skeleton, and a pig in a wig.  Not my taste.  I mused, trying to be positive, “you liked it enormously?”

“No, Mr. Tarakan.”  Exasperated, she stood and looked down on me, as an overpowering teacher does to an annoying pupil.

“You are not the sharpest pebble on the beach are you Mr. Tarakan? The painting is called ‘The Seven Deadly Sins.’”  As she spoke, she released her silk and lace slip, letting it slide gracefully to the floor before stepping aside. “It is allegorical. For me, it represents the seven sins your profession feeds upon.”

Despite her deathly intentions, I had to admire her. Her body moved among the pages of top-shelf men’s magazines, and her style and demeanour walked straight from the pages of Vogue. She moved and stood above me, legs parted, shimmering black stockings pulled taut high on her upper thigh, hands-on-hips, trussed inside a black and gold brocade corset. Her sex was shaven, smooth as alabaster, the gentle curve of her pubis broken only by two pouting folds of glistening pink. She was my dream girl, a beautiful angel with an attitude, a woman to die for. Unfortunately, she had chosen me.

“For your last taste of a woman, I thought you would prefer if I dressed for the occasion. Black is such a sexy, funereal colour, don’t you agree, Mr. Tarakan?”  As she spoke her fingers moved down across her sex, teasing the pouting folds of flesh with her long red fingernails. Unable to move, I sat rigid with appreciation. She dropped to her knees, and coolly cut away my boxers before cupping my balls in her small hands. 

“I don’t think you will fail me, but best to be safe.”  She pulled a cock ring from her corset top, and roughly fed my cock and balls through the hoop. I winced. With the chair lodged on its back legs under the windowsill at an angle of fort-five degrees, she had unfettered access to my cock and balls.

“Enjoy, Mr. Tarakan… You won’t be here much longer.”  She fell on my cock, hungrily licking and slurping. I groaned, jumping each time her tongue stud ground against my helmet. She drew back giving me a salacious grin. 

“This will cool you down, Mr. Tarakan.”  She put two ice cubes into her mouth and sank back on my cock. 

“Fuck!” I yelled as the mixture of hot and cold hit me. 

She sucked and teased my cock for a good five minutes before sensing my excitement, and withdrew. “Mmm… That will do nicely, Mr. Tarakan.”

My angel stood up, and in one fluid movement gripped the base of my swollen cock in one hand and sat down, impaling herself.  

“Oh, Christ!” I groaned as the sucking warmth enveloped me.  Instinctively I thrust upward. This made her squeal with surprise, and brought the riding crop hard across my face.  Blood trickled into my mouth. 

“No, Mr. Tarakan, this is my moment of history.”  She wasn’t moving, but her cunt was dancing a farandole along my cock. 

“How?” I groaned.  She looked at me—damn those eyes! 

“I practice every day with a very good, long, friend. Now, Mr. Tarakan…” Each syllable emphasized with a suffocating squeeze of her cunt muscles.  She mewled softly, gripping my shoulders and glissading up and down my cock, rasping her pubic bone hard against mine.  The suckling grip of her vagina was sending me wild. I thought of cold vacations, old ladies, hospitals, anything to get my mind off the angel bouncing atop my cock, but it was hopeless.

With the angel dust controlling my head, I closed my eyes. Fuelled by the drug, my imagination started working overtime. The hotel room was gone. I pictured us both in pouring rain behind the bar in an alley. I held her pinned and impaled against a wall, her nylon sheathed legs locked tightly behind my back. My hands roamed freely over her luscious flesh and I was goring her repeatedly, each thrust met with the raucous scream of an alley cat in heat.  I may have been daydreaming, but I was in control, and enjoying fucking my angel senseless. 

“Mr. Tarakan, look at me.”  A hard slap across the face brought me back to the hotel room, and straight into those blue, hypnotic eyes. 

“Oh, Mr. Tarakan, you think you can fuck me do you?”  She shuddered as she rose and fell, her quickening pace left us both gasping for breath.  “Mr. Tara…”  Her eyes closed, and she fell on my shoulder.  “Oh, God! I am… coming!” She grabbed my neck, pounding harder against my thighs, the sharp metal of her suspenders cutting tramlines into my legs.  As each spasm wracked her body, she clung to me.

She writhed and twisted, then she flew back her head, as orgasm after orgasm tore through her, and she ululated like a stuck pig, wringing spurt after spurt of cum from me. Fuck hospitals, I thought, as her clenching sheath took me over the precipice, and I gave in, spurting everything I had, high into her womb.

“Now, Mr. Tarakan!” she shrieked, “your moment of infamy!” I saw the stiletto dagger above her head. I closed my eyes, and waited. Instead of pain, I heard the sound of breaking glass.  I opened my eyes to see my angel sliding off me, to the floor. 

“Guess you need yourself a new lap dancer, partner.” The ‘Duke’s voice filtered through the blizzard inside my head. I looked up toward the doorway. Prima stood with the neck of a vodka bottle in his hand, my angel splayed out on the floor.  

“How did you find me?” I spluttered, covered in vodka.

“I found something on the DVD so I called you. You put the phone down on me, so I called your apartment phone—she had left a message with directions on your answering machine.” Like a hunter admiring his prize, Prema deftly rolled the unconscious angel onto her back. 

“But I changed the code on the machine!” 

Prema growled scornfully, “I am Premagenev, the great Russian hacker!”

 I looked at Prema and smiled. “We really do need to talk.” 

She had played me for the putz I was.  Knowing my peccadilloes, she used them to proffer herself, knowing I would bite. Dam I bit hard.

If it were not for the deranged, dysfunctional Russian, I would have been another Private Dick headlining the paper.

“Hey, Joe!  Bourbon, with a twist of lemon. Make this one a double!”