Ed McBain - Puss in Boots

Michael’s Orchids

Orchidaceous

“There it is,” Matthew said.

Tick was driving.

Mose was complaining.

“We should’ve used the phone,” he said.

“Sure. A lot of luck we had already with the phone,” Tick said.

“Those last two guys didn’t think too kindly of us stopping by on Christmas Eve.”

“Fuck ’em,” Tick said. “What’s that address again?”

“Thirty-seven fifty-five.”

“Take a look at the next mailbox, tell me what it says.”

He slowed the car as they approached a mailbox on the right side of the road.

“Thirty-six forty-three,” Mose said.

“Almost there,” Tick said. “Let me do all the talking this time, okay?”

“You did all the talking last time,” Mose said.

“No, you were the one who said we were looking for a girl worked on a movie with us.”

“So? What was wrong with that?”

“They thought we were lying, is what was wrong.”

The sky behind them was turning red.

“Pretty sunset coming,” Tick said.

“I wish we were back in Tampa,” Mose said.

“Let’s find Connie first,” Tick said. “Or Margaret. Or whoever the hell she is.”

The car kept moving along Timucuan Point Road, heading east.

This scene now...

The nigger unzipping his fly.

Meg on her knees.

Looking up at him, angelic smile on her face.

Oooo, she says.

No sound on the film. He had to read their lips. Knew it by heart now, anyway.

Take it, he says.

All that? she says.

For starters, he says, and grins.

He sat in the darkness of the living room, shotgun on the floor beside the easy chair — anybody else came around looking for her, sniffing after her, they’d find the wrath of God. Wanted to pick up the shotgun right this minute, blow the nigger off the screen, blow him to hell and gone, Wherefore will ye plead with me...

Looks up at him.

Tastes like milk chocolate, she says.

Takes him in her mouth again.

Lifts her head.

And honey, she says.

In her mouth again.

Mmmm, she says.

Lifts her head.

Do you come white? she asks.

Smiles.

Takes it again.

Mmmm.

Moves her mouth off it. Looks at it. Admires it. Rolls her eyes again. Licks it. Closes her eyes. Says, Mmmmmm. Takes it in her mouth again, the mouth of the just bringeth forth wisdom, but the froward tongue shall be cut out. Her hand moving on it. Her lips moving on it.

Don’t let up, he says.

She murmurs something around it.

That’s it, Puss.

She moans around it.

Don’t stop, Puss.

Mmm, she says.

Now, he says.

He giveth snow like wool, he scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes.

Oh, baby, baby, he says, black hands in her red hair.

Mmm, she says.

Rolls her eyes again.

You like that, Puss?

Mmmmm.

“There it is,” Tick said.

“There it is, for sure,” Mose said.

They were crouched outside the window of the house, peering in under the bottom three inches of the drawn shade. They were looking at Jake Delaney milking himself on Connie’s lips.

A man sat watching the movie.

Big blond guy in overalls.

Eyes fixed on the screen.

Like he was in a trance.

On the screen...

Think you can make me hard again?

Well, why don’t we just try, honey?

They knew those words by heart.

Slow steamy smile.

Well, why don’t we just try, honey?

They’d shot this scene the next day, but it looked like it followed immediately after the cum shot, made Jake look like a superman who could get another erection in the wink of an eye. Connie teasing him with her tongue and her lips, rolling him over her cheeks and her closed eyes, taking him between her breasts, stroking him against the cleft of her ass, closing both hands on him, tugging him gently, yanking him hard, letting up, rolling those green eyes, smiling that slow steamy smile again, hand stroking him gently again, head bending swiftly to him, tongue darting, and then straddling him, spreading herself wide to him, camera in for the close shot, rolling off him, going at him with her mouth again, playing, teasing, camera on her tongue, tight close shot, teasing, playing, driving Jake wild till he turned into a human battering ram again, sixty seconds flat, and only a day late.

“What do we do?” Mose asked.

“Why, we ask the man for our movie,” Tick said.

He reached for the shotgun the moment the knock sounded at the door.

He snapped off the projector.

“Who’s there?” he said.

“Mr. Diehl?”

A man’s voice.

Ye all have transgressed against me.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Mr. Diehl, we’d like to talk to you about that movie.”

He raised the gun, turned it toward the door.

“Come in,” he said. “It’s open.”

They made the right turn at the orchidaceous sign, drove up the potholed road in Matthew’s Ghia, Matthew at the wheel, Warren sitting beside him, his knees crowding him in the small car. The sky to the west was purple now, darker here over the land surrounding the lake, a bluish black, night falling rapidly, silent night, holy night.

It was five hours before Christmas.

There was a house up ahead.

Dark.

Behind the house, two looming buildings with rounded tops.

“Must be the greenhouses there,” Warren said.

Matthew nodded.

Angled toward the greenhouses, over to one side, a cinder-block structure.

They could hear noises out on the lake.

Thrashing.

Up ahead, in the car’s headlights, a door opened in the cinder-block building.

A man appeared in the doorframe, his back to them.

He was dragging something.

“Hey now,” Warren said.

Matthew stopped the car.

The man in the door frame turned. Just his head. Arms still extended in front of him, bent over, holding something. Blond hair caught in the beams of the headlights. Warren was already getting out of the car. The man dropped whatever it was he was dragging. Matthew got out of the car on his side. The man reached inside the door. When he turned again, his whole body this time, a shotgun was in his hands.

“Down!” Warren shouted, and Matthew threw himself flat on the ground as a blast from the shotgun ripped yellow on the blue-black night. Warren was running toward the man. Warren had a pistol in his hand.

“Drop it!” Warren shouted, and the man fired again.

Warren took a quick step to the right, miraculously dodging the blast, twisted to face the man again, pistol in both hands now, a policeman’s crouch. “Freeze!” he shouted, but the man came at him, holding the shotgun by the barrel, swinging the stock as if it were a club, the stock flailing the air, striking nothing but the night.

Warren fired.

His first shot took the man in the shoulder.

The man kept coming.

Warren fired lower this time, taking the man in the right leg, knocking him off his feet.

The man twisted and groaned in the dirt.

Warren came over to him.

“Okay?” he said, breathing hard. “Enough?”

The man tried to get to his feet.

“Mister, you’re gonna be dead,” Warren said.

And the man fell forward onto his face.

“Bingo,” Warren said.

Matthew was walking toward the cinder-block building. Warren knelt beside the unconscious man, nodded, and then slipped the pistol back into his shoulder holster. Matthew was still walking toward the cinder-block building.

The Ghia’s headlights illuminated the open doorway.

Matthew looked down at what was just inside the door.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said, and turned away.

Warren ran to him.

“What—”

“Oh, Jesus,” Matthew said again.