Saint Oswald Jay Bonansinga (uplifting books for women txt) 📖

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” she says, smelling Feds all over the place. She can spot a Fed a mile away—the West Point swagger, the chip on their shoulder. This guy is African American, handsome, wears a pin-striped suit and is holding up a laminate ID tag in a little leatherette lanyard. Cute. Rigby’s stomach goes cold, a twinge of pain in her hip. “What can I do for you boys?”

The black Fed in the pinstripes rises out of his chair, and the two other suits—a couple of mopes from Internal Affairs—join him like pallbearers at a funeral.

Mr. Pin-Stripe shows his ID with a flourish. “Special Agent Fortis, ma’am—FBI—and these gentlemen are from BIA, the O-C task force.”

“I know who they are.” Rigby stands there, stiff-backed and frumpy in her cloth coat.

“Ma’am, I’m afraid you’re under arrest for obstruction of justice and misuse of official capacity for—”

“Who was it?”

“Ma’am?”

“Who was it sang?”

The Fed stares at her like a brick wall. “Lieutenant Rigby, we’re going to need you to surrender your firearm and your shield.”

Rigby sighs. “Just do me a favor and don’t perp-walk me past the gang at the front desk—they hate my guts and they’ll eat this up like it’s Thanksgiving dinner.”

25.

The next day, the clouds roll in, turning the air cold and clammy. The sky over the western suburbs droops low and dark like tarnished steel wool over the scarred prairies of industrial parks and waste treatment facilities. It is a perfect day to be indoors, a perfect day for a secret tryst among two desperate worker-bees in the glass-and-steel hive of innocuous office buildings.

At around 3 p.m., Worker-Bee Number One—a petite, wan young woman named Cathy O’Dell—is ensconced in her cubicle on the fourth floor of Global Research Associates, busily feeding spreadsheets into a laser printer, when a faint little knock on the corner of her cubbyhole catches her attention.

She looks up.

“Hello, little school girl,” says Kevin Trout—Worker-Bee Number Two—gazing down at her with a lascivious gleam in his eyes. He’s a compact little man in shirtsleeves with a thick, bushy mustache from another era. It is the mustache of high school football coaches and 1970s porn actors. Kevin Trout works in the firm’s audio/visual department. “I understand it’s your birthday today?”

Cathy O’Dell grins into her lap. “No, I’m sorry, you must have me confused with someone else.”

“Really.” The man with the mustache gives her an exaggerated pout, sticking out his lower lip. “There must be some mistake—according to our records, someone ordered a pony today for a birthday party?”

“Kevin, please.” Cathy O’Dell does not blush. She rarely blushes. “I’m kinda swamped here.”

“Did I mention there’s cheesecake in the break room?”

She gives him a coquettish look. “Cheesecake?”

“Snickers bar, I think it is.”

“You are evil,” she says, locking eyes with him, exchanging unspoken information to which most of the other employees of Global Research Associates are not privy.

“Just trying to be helpful,” he says with a suggestive wink, ambling away from the cubicle with a rakish little Gene Kelly swagger.

Her eyes linger on him all the way down the corridor to the lunchroom door.

Arthur “the Candy Man” Morrison spends all afternoon in his cluttered upstairs apartment over the Sudz-and-Dudz Laundromat, rehearsing his script. He rehearses in front of the mirror, despite the fact that he will be delivering his lines over the phone. He nurses a Remy Martin while he practices, his silk robe open in front, his mahogany gut hanging over the cinched waist of his pajama bottoms. He knows he must get this right or he will be eating the muzzle of a 12-gauge.

“Hey, Big Chief, how they hangin’?” he asks the mirror, trying to keep the dread out of his voice.

He takes another gulp of cognac. The spirits burn on the way down, warming his innards and giving him courage.

“Hey, Chief, been thinking about ya,” he says, subtly changing his tone, trying out another tack. But none of it sounds quite right. The Indian is no fool, he can spot bullshit a mile away, even over the phone.

This is not going to be easy.

The pimp takes another swig and glances again at the script, which is clutched in his right hand. Wrinkled and damp from flop-sweat, the single page of ruled notebook paper is chock-a-block with words written in the don’s shaky, jagged old man’s hand. But the Candy Man needs to translate them—he can’t just recite the mumbo jumbo of a senile old wop. The Mafia-speak has to be translated into “street.”

He stares at the mirror: What the fuck is street-talk for ‘badda-boom’?

Cathy and Kevin are sequestered inside the lunchroom, the door locked, their bodies pressed up against the microwave. He puts his tongue in her mouth and she cups her hand over his crotch. She can feel his anaconda stirring inside his Sansabelts, and it makes her shiver, makes her nipples harden behind the armor of her work-bra. “I think it’s time for some cake and ice cream,” she pants after coming up for air.

Kevin Trout is practically hyperventilating. “You’re talking about—?”

She squeezes his manhood, nodding. “I can tell Gorski I have to run an errand.”

Trout swallows. “The no-tell motel?”

She nods. “Back to the scene of the crime.”

Trout tries to ignore his erection. “You don’t think we’re making too much of a habit of that place?”

She bites his earlobe and whispers in a breathy, sultry hiss, “I’ll do the thing you want me to do.”

Trout grins practically from ear to ear. “Let me turn off my computer, grab my gym bag.”

They both head back to their respective desks, brushing themselves off, trying to maintain as much decorum and discretion as possible, while still being in a state of desperate arousal. Trout turns off the lights in the A/V lab, putting out a sign that says ‘Back in Fifteen,’ while Cathy grabs her purse and then marches down to the corner office. She knocks on the doorjamb, then pushes it open.

“Roger, I’ve gotta bop over