Relief stole the very last drops of energy I had left. My body slumped back down on the table while my brain concentrated on not puking. It worked, but just barely.
“I’m ready,” Ulka said.
“I’ll wait outside,” Malloy replied.
I wanted to ask him to stay with me, but I felt suddenly shy and embarrassed and then it was too late, because he was gone, leaving me alone with Ulka, She Wolf of the SS.
I’ve never gotten along all that well with pro Dommes. The ones I’ve made videos with always seemed to look down on me and my girls because we do things on camera that they feel are beneath them. The way I see it, we’re all in the same business. Providing visual stimulation. Does it really make a difference if that stimulation is the most exotic, esoteric fetish or just good old fashioned baby-making? Bottom line: Everyone is doing the same thing while they watch it.
“I’m afraid I don’t have any sort of anesthesia,” Ulka said, slipping her mannish hands into latex gloves. “That would be sort of counterproductive in my line of work.”
“Great,” I said, looking away toward the wall.
“I do have some of these,” she said, pressing several chalky white pills into my palm. “You’ll need them.”
I didn’t even ask what they were. I just dry swallowed them all before she could even bring a paper cup of water to my lips.
I waited impatiently for the pills to work while she started to examine the mess below my right armpit. Her hands were much more gentle than I would have expected.
“It looks like the bullet went right between your arm and your torso,” she said. “Maybe bounced off a rib and then angled through the triceps. Either you are very lucky or the person who shot you is very stupid.”
“A little of both, I think,” I replied.
“You will need a few stitches,” she said.
“Stitches?” I felt suddenly lightheaded. “Can you do that?”
“Of course,” she said, selecting a sterilized paper packet the size of an index card from a box in the cabinet. “Sutures are my specialty, though to tell the truth, my clients rarely actually need them.”
I wouldn’t say that she was nice, but she had a wry, deadpan sense of humor and her hands were steady as stone. Of course it hurt like hell, but she didn’t make me feel like a slut. She treated me almost like a real patient. I’ve had legit doctors treat me worse. I wound up liking her far more than I had planned to.
“How do you know Malloy?” I asked between bouts of silent, jaw grinding pain. “He’s not a client, is he?”
I couldn’t see Malloy crawling around on the floor begging to lick a woman’s boots, but you never knew these days. Ulka smirked and shook her head as she snipped the thread from the last stitch.
“Nothing like that,” she said. “He provides security for me when I book night sessions with new clients. I removed a bullet from his right thigh two years ago. That was amazing. Well, for me anyway.” She placed a bandage over her handiwork. “One more thing.”
Before I could protest or even register what was happening, she was pressing her large thumbs against the mess of my nose, giving the whole thing a decisive shove to the left. The pain was indescribable.
“You’re done,” she said, slapping a piece of tape over the bridge of my nose.
Truer words were never spoken. There was no need to stick a fork in me. The pills had kicked in with a vengeance while I wasn’t paying attention and now that the bright foreground pain of the stitches and whatever the fuck she’d done to my nose was over, I could feel everything shutting down. I was most definitely, unequivocally done. I vaguely remember Malloy returning to carry me somewhere and cold leather against my bruised skin and then merciful nothing.
I didn’t exactly wake up. It was more like I fought my way up through a twilight sea of gauzy pain and confusion for what felt like centuries until I finally focused on Malloy’s profile and the glowing tip of his cigarette.
“You’re awake,” he said. Not a question, just a statement.
“If you want to call it that,” I replied. My throat hurt. Come to think of it, everything hurt.
I looked around and saw that I was in a small lounge that could have been the chic waiting room for a celebrity plastic surgeon. Malloy pushed an oversized white mug of coffee across the table till it was close enough for me to reach.
“You wanna go first,” he asked. “Or should I?”
I looked down at the coffee and then back at Malloy. He must have been up all night but didn’t look it. He looked the same as ever, unchanging as a stone idol, except he had on a different cheap suit jacket, dark gray instead of dark green. I’d probably bled on him at some point the night before.
I picked up the coffee with my left hand. It smelled wonderful, but my stomach wasn’t too sure about the prospect. I took a sip anyway. I needed it.
I was mildly surprised by the fact that the coffee was exactly the way I like it. Black with one Sweet’N Low. Funny, since I didn’t recall ever telling Malloy how I take my coffee.
“You go first,” I finally managed to say. My throat hurt worse than the day I shot
“Uniform patrol found Sam Hammer’s body in your abandoned car over by the Van Nuys airport,” Malloy said, stubbing his cigarette in a smooth stone ashtray. “One in the knee and two to the back of the head. Tortured and then executed. Stone cold. They’re considering the possibility of a male accomplice but it sounds as if they like you for the shooter.”
I didn’t do a spit take with the coffee, but I came close. The idea that Sam was dead was bad enough but the fact that the cops thought I’d done it was even more unreal.
“Why me?” I asked, forcing the words through numb lips. “Why would they...”
“You own a Sig P232?”
I felt a sick, spiraling feeling of hopelessness and despair gathering under my solar plexus. Now I knew why a big butch bastard like that fucking rhino would use such a girly gun. Because it
“Fuck,” I said softly.
I remembered that bland-faced motherfucker telling me he had my house and office searched, looking for his goddamn money. Whoever did the search—maybe that weasely Eastern Bloc guy—must have stolen my gun from my nightstand drawer and brought it to the house in Bel Air. I was starting to grasp just how meticulously and thoroughly I had been fucked.
“They found your Sig in a dumpster around the corner from the abandoned vehicle,” Malloy said. “A coupla young hard-ons from the Valley division questioned me just before you called. Thought maybe I might be the male accomplice.” He shook his head. “I’m ironclad. I was out propping up an old buddy in the department, a detective sergeant going through a nasty divorce.”
“I...” I tried to swallow, but my throat felt squeezed down to nothing. “I didn’t kill Sam, I swear. You don’t believe this bullshit, do you? If I was going to kill Sam, you think I’d be stupid enough to shoot him with my own legally registered gun and then just leave his body sitting in my fucking car?”
Malloy looked at me with his narrow alligator eyes, wordlessly sizing me up. An endless minute passed. He pulled another cigarette from a crumpled pack, then offered the pack to me. I shook my head. He shrugged and put the pack away, then stuck the cigarette between his lips.
“No,” he finally said, shaking his head as he lit up with a battered Zippo. “I don’t buy it. Smells like setup city, but it’s not just that.” He snapped the lighter shut. “I could maybe buy you getting all pissed off and blowing some guy away in the heat of the moment. But the truth is, you just don’t strike me as the type who’d torture a good friend and then finish him with a cold-blooded, professional execution. No offense, but I just don’t think you’ve got it in you for that kind of action. You want to tell me what really happened?”
