Michael Prescott - Mortal Faults

“Gonna do you good, woman,” Dylan whispered. “When I get done, you won’t never want no other man. They’re all pygmies compared to me.”

Pygmies, Abby thought, but mental giants.

She couldn’t allow this to go much further. There had been a few times in her career when she’d no choice but to do the nasty with a man she was investigating, but those cases had been rare, and none of those men, despite their assorted mental problems, had been anywhere near as disgusting as young Dylan, with his insect tattoo and his hoselike appendage.

Besides, the bastard had tried to kill her a few hours ago, and she was damned if she would help him get his rocks off now.

She let her hand slip a little lower, cupping his balls, caressing them to increase their sensitivity.

“That feels all right,” Dylan said.

“Yeah?” she whispered. “How does this feel?”

She made a fist, crushing his scrota. He blanched, breath whistling out of him in a gasp.

She released his crotch, and with both hands she grabbed him by the neck, digging her thumbs into the carotid sheaths. There was a nice medical term for this procedure-sanguineous strangulation, otherwise known as a blood choke. However you said it, it simply meant stopping the flow of blood to the brain.

Dylan’s face flushed. She wrapped her legs around him, pinning his arms to his sides so he couldn’t draw his weapon. Another second or two was all it would take.

His eyes rolled up in his head, and he nodded on her chest with a drawn-out grown as unconsciousness took him.

She disentangled herself from his slack limbs. “Sorry, Dylan,” she said. “Maybe next time.”

Dylan came back to himself slowly, with a pounding headache and a weak, hung-over feeling. His arms and legs were sore, and there was a dull ache in his neck. He opened his eyes and saw a white ceiling with cobwebs in the corners. It took him a moment to realize that he was in his own apartment, stretched on his back on the futon, and she was watching him.

Sandi from Mission Viejo.

She knelt before the futon, a gun in her hand. Instinctively he searched for his own weapon. Gone.

“What’s the matter, Dylan?” she asked. “Don’t you recognize your own gun when you see it?”

He focused on the pistol she was holding. His piece. The Glock 9mm he carried on the street.

“What the fuck is this?” he asked, his voice thick, his throat raw and scratchy. “You robbing me or something?”

“No, Dylan. I’m not robbing you.”

“What’d you do, knock me out?”

“Yes.”

“Shit.” He released a thin laugh. “Guess you really do like adventure, just like you said.”

“I’m not in this for adventure. There are things you need to tell me.”

“What kind of things?”

“About the Scorpions. About who arranged your assignment this afternoon. And where you stashed your gear afterward.”

His eyes narrowed. “You a cop?”

“No.”

“Some kind of P.I.?”

“Who I am isn’t important. I want you to start talking.”

“That’s not gonna happen.”

“Yes, it is. You’re going to answer every question I ask.”

“Or what? You’ll shoot me?”

“I’ll hurt you.”

He lifted his head, experiencing a brief wave of vertigo.

“Sandi from Mission Viejo, or whoever the fuck you are-you are in way out of your depth.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“Let me give you the best advice you’ll ever get. Walk away.”

“You’re the second person tonight to tell me that. I didn’t listen the first time. I’m not listening now.”

“You’re not listening, and I’m not talking. Sounds like a goddamned stalemate to me.”

“You’ll talk.”

“Just because you laid me out on this couch don’t mean you’ve made me your bitch. I know how to keep my mouth shut. Now why don’t you put that gun down and we’ll get back to that lovin’ feeling?”

“You’re an asshole,” she said, and she leaned forward and smacked him hard across the jaw with the butt of the gun. Pain startled him. He dropped back on the futon, clutching his mouth, which was suddenly full of warm fluid and splintered chips. Gagging, he rolled sideways and spit out the mess, staining the carpet with blood and broken teeth.

The pain was no big deal, but the teeth really bothered him. He had a nice smile, and now she’d fucked it up.

“Cunt,” he growled, the word coming out a little slurred.

She hit him again. This time she caught him on the nose, snapping his head sideways with a sharp crack and a spurt of blood and mucus.

“God damn it!” He held his nose while a shooting migraine worked its way deep into his forehead.

“Feeling talkative yet?”

He looked up at her. She wasn’t kneeling anymore. She had stood up and was leaning over him, the gun poised for another blow. He calculated the odds of lunging for it, snatching out of her hand. Even as he did, he saw her smile as if she had read his mind. The smile seemed to dare him to try it. He didn’t have the nerve.

“Who the fuck are you working for?” he said. His voice sounded funny in his ears, like it was echoing around inside his head.

“I don’t work for anybody. I’m a free agent.”

“Yeah, well, you ever need a job, you can get one. How’d you like to shake down guys who’re behind on their dues?” He started to laugh, he didn’t know why. It just seemed funny to him. “Hired muscle. All ninety-eight pounds of you.”

“I’m not in the mood for comedy, Dylan. I’m feeling very serious right now. I think you should start to feel the same.”

“It’s the old lady, right? The one in the valley. She must’ve hired you.”

“Nobody hired me. Tell me who arranged the hit. Who sent you to that address?”

“I think it was Santa Claus. He has this list, you know-who’s been naughty and nice. Guess the old lady was one of the naughty ones.”

She struck him again. The gun hooked him under the jaw and clacked his teeth together hard enough to rattle his head. Then she was bending in close with the muzzle of the gun pressed below the socket of his left eye.

“Who sent you?” she asked again.

Her face was inches from his. He stared into her brown eyes and saw something that scared him, something like craziness. All of a sudden he wasn’t so sure he would be getting out of this.

“You know I can’t talk about that,” he said, trying for the first time to sound reasonable. “They’ll kill me.”

“They’re not here right now. I am. Worry about me right now.”

“Lady, you got my attention. But you don’t know what they do to snitches.”

“I have a pretty good idea. Let me make it easier for you. Whoever hired you-does he work out of the repair shop?”

“How’d you even know about that?”

“Give me a name.”

Still he hesitated.

She pressed the gun deeper into his skin. “I’m going to find out eventually. When I do, they’ll assume you told me. So you’re up shit creek whether you say anything or not. If you talk, you get to live through tonight. If you don’t talk, then you die right now.”

Her eyes, blank and cold like the eyes of a shark, told him she wasn’t kidding.

“Shanker,” he whispered, feeling like Judas delivering his fatal kiss.

“He runs the shop?”

“Yeah it’s his outfit. Ron Shanker. He’s been a made man in the gang for-I don’t know, since before I was born.”

“How’d he get in touch with you?”

“Phone call.”

“This phone?” She gestured toward a phone on a table near the TV.

“No, he called my cell. Left a message.”

“And how did you call him back?”