It sounded easy, but wait till I tell you.

Me and Jake O’Leary had just finished up a short-time bid for a bad-check beef at Warm Springs, a min-security bucket in Carson City, and through some scams we’d scraped together close to three thousand bucks, but we needed seven thou to buy into a major credit-card grift. We brainstormed and cogitated, trying to think of a way to top up our funds, and then Jake mentioned Benny Loomis, an inmate at Warm Springs who had recounted to us a scheme to snatch the wife of a minor despot in a little hick town down in southwest Nevada. The place was far off the radar of the state Highway Patrol, Benny said, and the county sheriff was “a lazy low-life Republican who don't give two good damns about nothin’, least of all humankind.”

“The trick is to not be greedy,” Jake told me. “Keep the ransom low so the old miser can pay it out of petty cash rather than go to the trouble of getting the law involved.”

His logic sounded questionable. “I don’t know, Jake,” I said. “It’s a big leap from running cons to kidnapping. If things go south we’ll be looking at hard time, and not in a cushy joint like Warm Springs.”

“You got a better idea, Cap?” Jake said.

I didn’t.

So we bought an old junk-bucket Taurus, stole us a license plate, and set off south to scope out the deal.

The place, it turned out, was the hottest hellhole this side of Death Valley and was called, of course, Heaven. The mark owned a small ranch on the outskirts of town where it appeared he cultivated cactus and tumbleweed. There was no hired help or security that we could see. According to Benny, the old skinflint had gotten rich by making sure that every pharmacy in his little chain had a bank of slot machines which the infirm could play while buying toilet tissue and waiting on their scrips.

In town, me and Jake put on dark shades and ball caps and split up. We didn’t want to act all nosy and arouse suspicion, so the plan was to just linger around a few hotspots, check out the local citizenry, and see if the subject of the drug-store tycoon came up. Sure enough, at a diner around lunchtime, a couple of biddies at the table next to mine started clucking about Barnum Periwinkle and his spouse.

“I hear he found her in that cathouse up in Mineral County,” one of the old blue-hairs said. “She was committing unspeakable acts of depravity. For money!”

She spoke the word like it was the vilest thing on the planet, even worse than the despicable acts themselves.

“Slut!” the second biddy muttered under her breath.

The first grandma nodded her head. “I guess love truly is blind.”

Her friend snorted out a laugh. “Love? The only thing that old whoremonger loves is money. And he’s got lots of that.”

Benny’s tip looked solid. And the good residents of Heaven didn’t seem enamored of Barnum Periwinkle and his bride.

Benny had told us about an abandoned prospector’s cabin out in the desert, in the middle of nowhere. An artesian well supplied plenty of water, and the place was wired to work off a gas generator.

Me and Jake set ourselves up there, outfitting it with a generator, a window air-conditioner, three fold-down cots, a couple of chairs, coolers and ice, a hotplate, and a week’s worth of supplies. We also bought a thirty-pack of beer, a fifth of Canadian Club, duct tape and rope, a couple of fans, two prepaid cellphones, and two full-face Halloween masks, one of Barack Obama and the other Hillary Clinton.

For the next two days we watched the Periwinkle residence through binoculars. The old man was away on business, we’d heard, due back late the following evening. Both days around two Mrs. Periwinkle hopped in her white sports coupe and drove into town. She was a wisp of a thing, no more than five-two or -three, with slender gams and pale, creamy skin. Wearing short colorful sundresses and a big-brimmed white hat, she went into a couple of shops and bought a few things, stopped at the diner for an iced lemonade, and then returned home. All in all she was never gone more than two hours.

On the third day of our stakeout we followed her back from town, and when she pulled in her laneway and got out of her car, we wheeled in behind her. After losing a coin flip, Jake was wearing the Hillary mask and I the Obama. Stunned to see two high-ranking Democrats on her property, Mrs. Periwinkle dropped her shopping bag and purse and let out a shriek. Jake ran up and wrapped her in a bear hug and hustled her to the rear of the Taurus, her kicking and swearing along the way. As I opened the trunk, she stomped the spike of her white high-heeled shoe down hard on Jake’s instep.

“Sweet Jesus Molly Malone!” he howled, doing a Russian one-step. He almost lost her, but recovered quickly and flopped her into the trunk. I slammed the lid shut.

Jake took off his mask and limped toward the passenger door. “She’s a feisty little ball of hate,” he said, his florid Irish face in a grimace. “That’s gonna cost the old man an extra five gees.”

I changed the amount in the ransom note from $10,000 to $15,000 and duct-taped it and a burner phone to the front door of the house. We hightailed it back to the cabin, got Mrs. Periwinkle’s high heels off her feet, and dragged her inside. With the air-conditioner on it was a little cooler but still sub-tropical. In addition to the main area and lavatory, there was one little room that we’d boarded up and furnished with a cot and a fan.

“If you can behave yourself,” I told Mrs. Periwinkle, “you can stay in there and we won’t tie you up.”

She looked inside the room and, probably not thrilled about being hog-bound in a sweltering hotbox, decided to acquiesce. We couldn’t shut the door because, with the only air-conditioner cooling the main room, she would have suffocated in the heat. It soon became apparent that buying just one window unit had been a serious error because it meant that me and Jake had to keep our masks on, which spiked our body temperatures to dangerous high levels.

We grabbed a cold beer each and Jake filled an old bucket with ice to put his foot in. There was a deep gouge in the instep and it had puffed up like a blowfish. We sat on a couple of straight-backed chairs where we could keep an eye on our guest, raised our masks up over our mouths, and sipped on our beers.

Mrs. Periwinkle took off her hat and shook out her hair, and a storm of red fire licked at her face. She sat down on the cot in her short peach sundress and looked at us.

“What now?” she said.

“We wait for your old man to call,” Jake told her.

“How much are you asking?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“If you ask for too much he won’t pay it.”

“Let us worry about that.”

“Can I have one of those beers?”

Jake tilted his head back and looked at me from under his mask. It seemed like the humane thing to do. I grabbed a cold can out of the cooler and took it to her.

“Thanks,” she said, batting long lashes over emerald-green eyes.

I hoped she couldn’t see me gulp behind the mask.

Around seven o’clock Barnum Periwinkle called. Jake put the phone on speaker.

“Who is this?” Periwinkle asked, all bossy, like he was in charge.

“Somebody who ain’t stupid enough to tell you,” Jake said.

“You have my wife?”

“Now you’re getting it.”

“Fifteen thousand dollars is an awful lot of money.”

“It’s chicken scratch and you know it.”

There was a short pause, and then: “I don’t think you realize what you’re getting into.”

“We’re big boys, Pops,” Jake said. “We’ll figure it out.”

“It’ll take me a few days to put it together.”

“We want it tomorrow night by seven.”

“How about ten thousand?”

Jake’s face turned red as a stoplight. “This ain’t a negotiating session, you old pecker-wad! Get the money or we’ll start sending bits of your wife to you, one piece at a time!”

“Okay, okay. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Once you got the dough, call us back and I’ll tell you what happens next.”

Jake killed the call.

“Fifteen thousand?” Mrs. Periwinkle said from the other room. “You two really are losers, aren’t you?”

“Stuff it, lady,” Jake said.

“Did either of you Einsteins think to pick up my purse and shopping bag?”

Jake’s face was still glowing like a lit-up jack o’lantern. “First off, lady, we ain’t no Nazis, we’re American patriots. If we’re gonna be civilized about this, we can’t be calling each other names. Second, why would I give you your purse? So you can pull a little pistol out of a hidden compartment?”

Mrs. Periwinkle gave Jake a withering look. “I guess you must be Pinky, because you sure as hell aren’t the Brain. My makeup’s in my purse. And there was money in it.”

Jake looked like a school kid berated by a bullying teacher for being the class dunce. He stammered for a bit, then said, “You don’t need no makeup. This is a kidnapping, not a beauty contest.”

Mrs. Periwinkle glared at him. “If we’re going to be civilized about this, I need my makeup.”

Jake looked at me from under his mask. I shrugged. “The purse’ll be gone by now,” I said. “I wouldn’t go back there anyhow. I’ll probably have to get more gas tomorrow, the way that generator’s sucking it up. I can pick some up then.”

That seemed to pacify her for a minute. Then:

“Is there running water in this dump?”

“I can turn on the pump,” Jake said. “There’s a sink and a tub in there.” He pointed to the lavatory.

“Is it all right if I take a bath?”

“The water’ll be cold, but knock yourself out.” Jake took his foot out of the bucket and gimped over to flick the wall switch for the pump. Mrs. Periwinkle went into the bathroom and started to close the door.

“Leave it open,” Jake said.

She smiled at him. “Whatever floats your boat.”

She started the tub water and, with her back to us, let her sundress drop to her ankles. Under it she had on a pink bra and panties. She undid the back bra clasp and skinned those panties down her legs, and my phallus began to rise like a long-dead golem returning to life. As she stepped into the tub, I looked at Jake and he at me.

“Remember our deal,” I said.

“I know, I know,” he said, the edge in his voice telling me he sorely wanted to renege.

We had agreed that this would be a straight snatch job, that as bad as we both needed some feminine company after a celibate stretch in jail, we would remain professional and not give in to our baser male instincts. If we ever had to return to the slammer it would be best not to have on our resumes the title “rape hound.” After cops, prison guards, and short eyes, that was the next worse thing to be in the joint, and might cost you a shiv in the gut.

So we sat there stoically, listening to Mrs. Periwinkle splash and hum a sweet little tune. When she finished we pulled our masks down so we’d have an unobstructed view. But Mrs. Periwinkle dried herself off standing in the tub, then wrapped the towel around her and stepped out. With a smirk at us she picked up her clothes, said goodnight, and went in the bedroom. She crawled under the sheet quickly, robbing us of any further titillation.

“We may as well hit the sack too,” Jake said. “It’ll be a long day tomorrow.” He got up and turned off the light.

I took off my mask and clothes and lay down on my cot. In the slam you learn to take care of your business quietly, and though I heard not a sound from Jake, I figured he was doing the same as me.

***

I was awakened the next morning by the voice of Mrs. Barnum Periwinkle.

“You two aren’t as ugly as I thought you’d be,” she said. She was in her peach sundress, sitting on one of the straight-backed chairs.

“Jesus!” Jake exclaimed, and reached down to the floor for his mask.

“Forget it, she’s already seen us,” I said.

I was pissed. Not at her, at us for committing another bonehead. We should have slept in shifts.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “We won’t be back this way again anyhow.”

Me and Jake pulled on our pants all shy-like under the sheets, and then Jake asked Mrs. Periwinkle if she knew how to cook.

“Do I look like I’d know how to cook?” she said.

Jake fried some bacon in a skillet on the hotplate, then scrambled some eggs in the fat. The three of us sat there in the main room with our plates on our laps, staring at each other.

“So what’s on the agenda for today?” Mrs. Periwinkle asked.

“We sit tight and wait for your old man to call,” Jake said.

“Bo-ring.”

“We ain’t here for your amusement, lady.”

“You can make me a list of what you need,” I said, and gave her a pad and pen.

“I need a change of underwear too,” she said.

“Mark down the sizes.”

She finished the list and handed it to me. The cosmetics were all brand names which I was sure weren’t cheap. That only added to our troubles since we were down to our last three hundred dollars.

“I’m not going to buy this in Heaven,” I told Jake. “Somebody there might recognize that these are the kinds of makeup she uses.”

He knew that meant I’d have to make the two-hour jaunt to the nearest half-decent-sized burg north of here.

“Do you have a deck of cards?” Mrs. Periwinkle asked Jake.

He limped over to his duffel bug and rummaged through it. He gave Mrs. Periwinkle the cards and she set up an empty box between the two straight-backed chairs and said, “Gin? A dollar a point?”

“You ain’t got no money,” Jake said.

She dipped her fingers into her cleavage and pulled out a small roll of bills, smiling. “A girl’s gotta be prepared.”

I looked at Jake sternly to impress upon him the paucity of our funds. He noticed, and said to her, “How about a penny a point?”

She laughed. “A penny a point? This is Nevada, not Butthole, Iowa.”

I found it a little disconcerting that she had managed to pinpoint Jake’s state of origin. She had probably run across customers from all fifty states in her previous employment, I figured.

Jake turned all red and said, “All right, a dollar a point.”

I couldn’t override him and rob him of his dignity.

“I’ll be back in a while,” I said.

***

The drive was hot, with the Taurus’s air-conditioner sputtering towards death. I got what I needed and drove back, every so often looking over to the passenger seat and the French-green bra and panties I’d bought, and sighing.

At the cabin, I got out of the car and heard Jake bellowing inside. “Sweet Jesus Millie Maguire!”

Then Mrs. Periwinkle’s voice, just as loud: “I am Red Sonja, warrior princess! Feel the sting of my blade!”

I rushed inside and froze. Jake lay supine on his cot, his hands and feet tied to the metal frame, bouncing up and down like a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound sack of Mexican jumping beans. Mrs. Periwinkle was sitting on his belly in her underwear, riding him like a MarineLand orca. Her right hand held a white plastic knife to his throat while her left tugged on his phallus, which looked ready to explode.

“Get off of him! Now!” I yelled.

She rolled off and crouched on the floor beside the cot, looking like a pet who’d been caught doing something naughty.

“Get that thing off my cock!” Jake said.

For the first time I saw the wide elastic band wrapped tight around the base of his phallus. Fighting against my masculine sensibilities, I tried to roll it off, but because of the massive engorgement it seemed cemented on. I took my flick knife from my pocket and snapped it open.

“Jesus, no!” Jake yelled, his eyes bulging like a frog’s.

I slid the knife tip between the band and his phallus and in a quick motion sliced it off. In an instant Mrs. Periwinkle grabbed his shaft and started jerking it again. A geyser of semen rocketed out, shooting up onto his face and into his gasping mouth, the remnants lathering his chest and his protruding belly. As Jake coughed and spluttered to clear his throat, I grabbed Mrs. Periwinkle and carried her to the bedroom. I threw her inside and slammed the door. Then I went over and started untying Jake.

“Jesus, Jake!” I said. “What about our deal?”

“I didn’t rape her,” he said.

“What happened?”

“We were playing gin and knocking back a few, and she was trouncing me. She’s a sharp, Cap. Who’d’a thunk? Anyway, I was getting a little tipsy, and she was looking real good, flirting with me and everything. And then she bet me that she could give me the most memorable handjob I’d ever had. I said, ‘Hardly likely,’ and she said, “Put your money where your mouth is.’”

“How did she get you tied down?”

“She started muttering something about fifty grades of shay. I was half in the bag, and she convinced me it’d be more intense this way.”

“It’s not fifty grades of shay, Jake, it’s Fifty Shades of Grey! Haven’t you ever heard about that?”

Jake looked sheepish. “Nope, you got me there, Cap. Anyway, next thing I know she’s got that elastic band cinched around my pecker and a knife to my throat, ranting about warriors and princesses and tugging my meat like she wanted to rip it off my body. I had to come so bad I could taste it.”

You did taste it, you stupid Mick, I thought.

“Well, at least she didn’t win the bet,” I said.

Jake looked embarrassed. “I hate to admit it, Cap, but…”

“Jesus, Jake. How much did you bet her?”

“Five hundred.”

“Five hundred! Shit! After buying all that stuff for her I only got about a hundred and fifty left.”

“That’s not all,” Jake said.

“What do you mean?”

“I also owe her three hundred on the gin.”

“For fuck sake, Jake! How could you spend money we don’t even have?”

“I figured we were hitting the old man up for that extra five gees, I could pay it out of that.”

I was too mad for more words.

“You know, Cap, even though that was the best handjob I ever had, she really had me afraid before you came back. I don’t think I can do this.”

“You can’t back out now, Jake. We’re halfway through the deal.”

“Sorry, Cap.”

“I’ll keep an eye on her so she can’t get to you.”

“You can’t watch her all the time. No, I think I gotta bow out of this one. Can you pay her what I owe her out of the ransom?”

“I’m not going to pay her anything, Jake! She’s our fucking captive, for Chrissake!”

“She made me sign promissory notes.”

“What? Who cares? She doesn’t even know your name.”

I followed Jake’s eyes over to the cardboard-box playing table. His wallet lay open on it, among a pyramid of beer cans and a half-empty bottle of booze, his driver’s license exposed.

“Shit, Jake!”

“I know, Cap. I’m sorry. I’ll just pack up my duffel and hit the road.”

“You won’t get a ride way out here. And you’ll die of sunstroke before you can make the highway. I’ll take you over there.”

“What about her?” He nodded at the closed bedroom door.

“She’s not going anywhere in this heat.”

I told Mrs. Periwinkle what was happening and gave Jake a lift. At the interstate he closed the passenger door and bent down to look in the open window. “Sorry again, Cap,” he said, and shrugged. “It’s only money.”

***

When the old man called, he gave me some lame-ass excuse as to why it was going to take him another day to put the green together. By then I was morbid and defeated, and begrudgingly agreed.

“How’s everything going?” he asked with what sounded like mirth in his voice.

“Just get the money,” I said, and ended the call.

Mrs. Periwinkle stood in the bedroom doorway in her pink bra and panties, holding the new French-green set up to her. “Would you like to see me in these?” she asked.

I tried, unsuccessfully, to force saliva into my parched throat. I nodded.

She went into the bathroom and started a tub. “You look all hot and sweaty,” she said. “Why don’t you come in here and join me?”

I watched her take off her bra and panties. The tips of her breasts were pale pink, and a narrow strip of short red hair pointed down to her womanly charms. I stood up and started undressing, walking toward her.

I sat in the tub first and she got in and snuggled to my side. The water was cool and refreshing. She teased my nipple with her fingers and sucked on it, and the next thing I knew we were kissing. She was a fancy kisser, all licks and nibbles and tongue-swirls, and soon my phallus was splitting the water like a periscope, stiff as a maypole.

“Would you like a handjob?” she asked.

“How much?” I said.

“Three hundred?”

I remembered the tariff she’d charged Jake. “Cheap,” I said.

She knew her way around a maypole, and before long I was panting and heaving my hips.

“Do you want me to suck it?” she asked.

“How much?”

“Five hundred more.”

“What the hell, it’s only money.”

She was an expert fellatrix, all head bobs and fist twists, and all the while gazing up into my eyes.

“You can come in my mouth,” she said, pumping my stick.

“Is that extra?”

“Another five hundred.”

“Go for it.”

“Swallow for another five?”

“Yes, yes,” I groaned, ready to blow just from her hand.

She throated me to the root, and I started flopping around like a carp on a dock.

“Fuck!” I cried, and blasted out a Vesuvius-sized load. She sucked me like a vampire, draining the life from my body until I felt like I couldn’t stand.

When she was finally done, I pulled her up and kissed her, tears in my eyes. “Thank you,” I said.

***

Old Man Periwinkle stretched me out for another two days. I didn’t mind one bit.

When he finally called to say he had the money, I gave him the drop spot and told him his wife would call him to come get her.

Me and Mrs. Periwinkle drove out into the desert, and I picked up the satchel full of cash and counted it.

“Is it all there?” she asked.

I nodded.

About a quarter mile from her ranch I stopped the Taurus at the side of the road. The sun had almost set in broad bands of orange and blue behind the Sierra Nevadas and the day had cooled appreciably. I handed her the satchel. She flipped through the pieces of paper in her hand and passed me a wad. “Here’s fifteen thousand,” she said.

“How much do I still owe you?”

She added up the remaining promissory notes. “Three thousand, give or take.”

“I’ll try to get it to you as quick as I can.”

I lingered there for a few moments, all heart-pinched and glassy-eyed. “Well,” I said, “I guess this is goodbye, Mrs. Periwinkle.”

She smiled. “Please, let’s not stand on formality. Call me Angel.”

I left my dirty Angel in a little place called Heaven, knowing I’d never again have something that good.