13

I went to a lawyer’s office in downtown Boston, which while easy to find, was not easy to park at because it was smack dab in the middle of the high-rent district and every lot had restrictions. After finding a spot a few blocks away, I walked towards the high-rise building with a blank check in my hand, though it may as well have been a suitcase full of unmarked cash. Hank had referred the legal eagle of questionable business practices to me because as he put it, he was a guy who knew a lot of people and could make things happen, which of course meant he excelled in bribery or to put it gently, he was a power broker.

I entered the plush office and was greeted by a beautiful, young, blond receptionist that looked like a high-end Hollywood hooker. She quickly ushered me into the lawyer’s personal office where the attorney in question introduced himself as Joe Masterson. He was a short, thin man and had a face that resembled my pet squirrel Rocky. Skipping any sort of small talk and getting right to business, Mr. Masterson immediately informed me that Jamal was looking at a mandatory ten-year sentence for the possession and distribution of twenty-five grams of crack cocaine, which he sold to an undercover detective, making it a pretty clear-cut case for the prosecution.

“I was told ten years was a possibility, but I didn’t believe it,” I told him. “He’s looking at serving a decade for possession of a candy bar worth of crack? I mean, there’re people out there touching kids and getting off with a slap on the wrist.”

“They’ll put you away for much less than that,” Mr. Masterson said as he typed away on his computer, obviously multi-tasking.

 

185

 

“It’s the law. I just have to work within the parameters they give me.”

I had dealt with enough lawyers in my life to know that they always give you the worst-case scenario, and in doing so, try to generate as much fear as possible so that they can extract the maximum fee from your cold, dead hands. It was a tactic shared by the entire industry and I knew it was mostly just smoke that they blew up clients’ asses, but in this particular case, with Jamal selling directly to an undercover detective, I knew it was a serious offense that a judge wouldn’t just make disappear, at least, not unless the price was right.

“Thanks for the gloom and doom spiel, Mr. Masterson, but give it to me straight. Is there anything I can do or am I just wasting my money by trying?”

The cocky lawyer opened a manila folder on his desk and proceeded to read off Jamal’s rap sheet, which included numerous assault and battery charges, one of which resulted in an eight-month jail sentence of which Jamal served four. There was also a previous drug charge listed, which was continued without a finding.

“Jamal’s small fish in the grand scheme of things, and as long as he hasn’t made any direct enemies within the police force or local judicial system, there’s a good chance a call to the top could get him off,” he told me. “I’m politically connected in more ways than one, but for me to make that call, it’s going to require a considerable retainer for my services.”

“How much?” I asked, surprised that he didn’t call it a campaign contribution.
“It will take twenty thousand for me to try and nip this in the bud. Fortunately for us, he hasn’t been formally charged, which means I can deal with the matter outside of the courts.”
I grabbed a pen off of the lawyer’s desk and filled out the required amount on the blank check I had brought along. I was fairly confident that he had already made some calls to see if Jamal’s release was even possible, and for a guy like Joe Masterson, this was a baby tooth for him to pull and would probably not require anything more than a conversation or two to make the charge disappear.
I handed the check to the shark in the suit. He looked it over briefly, and then extended his hand to me. We shook vigorously.
“Great,” he said. “I’ll start on this right away.”
I left the lawyer’s office, hoofed it to my car and then drove to work, where there were little to no interruptions or complaints for the majority of the day—that is until I got a phone call from Bill Franconi from City Papers.
“How can I help you Mr. Franconi?” I asked him.
“I take it you’ve been following what’s going on with Moakley?”
“Indeed. We are on high alert over here.”
“Well I just got wind that he withdrew all of his free offers to the advertisers.”
“That’s great news. Looks like there is some justice in this world after all.”
“Maybe so, but there are a few things about it all that I don’t understand. Do you know why someone would go out of there way to vandalize all of Moakley’s billboards in the city?”
“I don’t know the answer to that, but I did happen to see the artist’s handy work,” I said innocently. “I guess you’d have to ask Moakley. I can only guess that the man’s made quite a few enemies with his cutthroat tactics. I hear he stole the business from a relative on top of everything else, so you know, when you do those types of things, they can come back to haunt you in the future.”
Franconi, confused into a pin-drop silence, obviously suspected me of some involvement, but thankfully the last missile I fired landed, causing the bloodhound to lose his scent. In reality, he had no idea as to the extent of what really happened to make Moakley renege on his advertising offer, and if I played my cards right, it would stay that way.
“It was nice talking to you, Mr. Franconi, but I got the Mayor in my office and I can’t keep him waiting. I promise I’ll call you if I hear anything on this Moakley matter.”
“I would appreciate that and I’d be happy to do the same if I catch wind of anything,” he told me.
“Great. Talk to you soon.”
To my surprise, it remained relatively quiet in the office for the remainder of the day and I was able to tie up enough loose ends so that when I officially retired, there wouldn’t be a lot of holes that needed to be filled. I was due to have dinner with Rooster’s wife’s friend Jill that evening and dreaded the thought of Jennifer finding out I was going on a date with another woman. I headed home after clocking out from work and dressed in my best hobo attire, wrinkly pants and an equally-as-wrinkled shirt. I also decided that it was the perfect occasion to don my Herpes belt.
I gave myself plenty of time to make it to Jill’s apartment for seven-thirty, knowing that traffic to Chelsea was going to be a bitch. I arrived in her neck of the woods right on schedule and located my CVS landmark without any problems. I had to drive past her building three times before I found a parking spot within reasonable walking distance to her door and I moaned and groaned to myself about not wanting to be on the date prior to ever stepping foot out of my car. I was going into the night with a sour taste in my mouth, convincing myself that I wasn’t allowed to have fun no matter what the circumstances turned out to be.
I made my way up the tiny steps to her door and knocked three times, half hoping that someone would ask me for a password that I was unaware of, only to be sent away into the darkness of the night. Unfortunately, Jill answered in record time and I was immediately struck by her bright orange shirt that resembled the color of a highlighter Harry used to correct editorials. The shirt was unbuttoned deep into Jill’s chest, revealing round, jiggly cleavage. She was about five feet seven, a slender red head in her early thirties with unusually large calves that flexed below the hemline of her short, sequined skirt. We said our hellos and she invited me inside.
The first room you walked into upon entering her apartment was a sparsely decorated parlor that resembled an office reception area. The only place to sit was a single-cushioned loveseat and a plain wooden chair. There was a miniature coffee table filled with various gossip rags and a Poland Spring water fountain complete with a paper cup dispenser in the corner. She ushered me over to a fish tank filled with neon rocks and plastic plants and pointed to a ceramic skull resting on the floor of the aquarium that had bubbles pouring from its eyes, nose and mouth.
“Sometimes I sit for hours and stare at it,” she told me.
I searched the tank like a skilled detective, looking for any signs of life.
“Where are the fish?” I asked her.
“Oh, there aren’t any. I had a few but they all died. They’re REALLY hard to care for and honestly, they dirty up the prettiness of the tank, so now I just leave it fish-free.”
A fish tank without fish set off a warning bell immediately in my brain. It was apparent to me that while Jill could obviously think outside of the box, she was also an idiot. In my experience, this was a dangerous combination and could only spell trouble.
“Do you like animals?” she asked me.
“Sure, especially the ones that aren’t overly domesticated. I’m a big Animal Planet watcher.”
“Oh really? I’m not big on cable television unless it’s the E channel.”
“You should check it out some time. It’s pretty good. I saw this one show where they had a dog on that was trilingual. He could answer to commands in Russian, Lithuanian, and Latvian, but didn’t know a single command in English.”
“Oh real-ee,” she said again, only this time in a few octaves higher.
“Do you speak any foreign languages?” I asked her, hoping to jump ship on the “oh really” train.
“I took some French in high school, so I can understand it, but can’t carry on a full conversation or anything like that. What about you?”
“Not really, but I have a lot of international friends. They bring a lot to the table.”
“Oh REAL-EE,” she said once again, a few more octaves higher than our previous go-round.
Shoot me now I pleaded to the gods above, but instead of a sympathetic escape from the heavens, I received a tour of Jill’s picture shelf, where I saw framed photographs of her father, mother, and an older sister who wasn’t nearly as attractive as her younger sibling. Her father appeared to be serious and extremely conservative while her mother came off playful and young at heart. I wondered if her parents knew that when they posed for the photos that they’d at one time be displayed for countless males to view just prior to hosing their daughter. My guess was that conservative daddy might not like the thought of that very much.
After a brief tour of the apartment, we exited the same way I entered and Jill locked the door behind us, the sound of a heavy steel deadbolt echoing in my ears. We walked the short distance to my car and it was apparent right away that Jill and the Spider were an instant match. I opened the door for her like a gentleman and watched as her muscular legs lifted themselves inside. I made my way around the car and hopped into the driver’s seat, inserting the key into the ignition and revving the car’s engine.
“I love being this close to the ground,” she purred as she tossed her red locks back and glanced up through the car’s clear roof. “Isn’t it amazing how so many people go through life without ever looking up? We’re told to look both ways before crossing, but nobody ever tells us to look up. Why do you think that is?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s because a car isn’t going to hit you from above when you cross a street.”
“Maybe,” she said. “There are so many stars out tonight, huh? I just love the way they wink at me like I’m a movie star or something.”
I couldn’t help but think of Jennifer as I drove to the restaurant, wanting more than ever to turn around and go home. Whereas Jennifer had a deep and intuitive understanding of the celestial bodies, Jill was a simpleton that saw the twinkling stars as another hungry hornball looking to get into her panties.
“What do you do for work?” I asked her.
“I’m in the cosmetics business.”
“What exactly do you do in the industry?”
“Well, I’m proud to say that I was just promoted to senior spritzer. It took me two long years, but I finally did it!”
“Spritzer?”
“Oh, I’m the girl that sprays the perfume on women when they enter the department store, and now with the promotion, I’m the first one the customers see and pass by. It’s a lot of responsibility with the heavy traffic we get, but I’m a nose-to-the-grindstone kind of girl as my daddy always says, so I’m managing.”
“Do you like it?”
“I enjoy making women feel good about themselves, but it’s not like my dream job or anything like that. I actually hope to one day open up my own store. I already have a name for it. Want to hear it?”
“Sure,” I said, trying hard to sound like I actually gave a damn. “Purrfume.”
I was silent.
“Get it?” she asked me. “You know—like a cat. Purrfume.” “Oh, right. Like a cat. That’s very clever.”
“Yeah, my daddy loves the name and says it’s a sure-fire hit.” “I bet.”
“I really admire you and Rooster for building your own company. It must be amazing to create something like that and then watch it grow.”
“Well, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” I told her as I turned the car left and headed down a busy street. “It’s a lot of responsibility and it can be pretty exhausting at times.”
“But, it must be worth it, right? I mean, look at how successful you and Rooster are.”
“You’ve got to ask yourself what’s more important though. Success or happiness?”
“Aren’t you happy?”
I pulled into Lebone’s parking lot and dodged Jill’s question with a silent shrug.
“I just don’t see how anybody can be happy without money,” she continued, her voice creeping higher and higher to the point where I feared my windows were going to shatter. “It’s expensive to live.”
“There are plenty of poor people where I live and they all seem to get by on happiness.”
“Well, I want to be rich. It’s like, I like money and I should have what I like, right? I hope you don’t mind me talking about this. My daddy always tells me that I’m going to scare guys away with the way I talk about money.”
“No, you’re okay,” I assured her as I pulled into the widest parking spot I could find for fear of being dinged by morons who open their doors without looking first.
“I just love the way this car drives,” she confessed, rubbing the inside of her thighs as if the vibrating engine was turning her on.
“Have you ever been to this restaurant?”
“No. It’s way too expensive for a senior spritzer’s salary. I’m so excited that you decided to take me here though. I’ve been thinking about it all day long.”
We entered the small, but ostentatious restaurant and waited for the maître d’ to finish seating a senior couple that held hands like a pair of teenaged love birds. Lebone was famous for its London broil and infamous for its price tags. Jill didn’t hide her excitement about being in the high-end establishment and immediately signed the guest book, using two lines to write her name in large, cursive letters. I glanced into the dining room and watched two waiters dressed in tuxedos working a dozen spacious tables, all but one filled with googly-eyed lovers. I wished it was Jennifer I was having dinner with, but I had to settle for a table in the back with Jill. At least I had the London broil to look forward to.
Jill studied the one-page menu that featured a section on appetizers and entrées and gasped loud enough for the entire restaurant to hear when she saw the cost of each dinner selection.
“Thirty-five dollars for chicken parm!” she declared “No wonder why I’ve never been here before. I bet the food is absolutely scrumptious though, huh? Do you always eat this gourmet?”
“Not at all really,” I confessed. “I eat mostly canned foods—a lot of corn, baked beans and Progresso soups. I’ve always told my friends that if they find me dead in my apartment one day, the first thing they should do is have the coroner check me for botulism.
Jill looked at me incredulously for a moment before breaking out in a high-pitched laugh that gave all of the dogs within a twentyblock radius a splitting headache.
“Rooster told me that you had a real dry sense of humor. It’s very British. I like it.”
I placed my menu face down in front of me, signaling to the waiter that I was ready to order. Jill continued to study hers, undecided and seemingly confused by the many big words printed on the laminated sheet.
“So what looks good?” I asked her.
“Well, maybe you can help me. I can’t decide between the salmon and the swordfish. What are you going to get?
“I was leaning towards the London broil. It’s sort of the dish they’re the most famous for.”
“I love meat but I don’t like having it on my plate unless it’s in a bun. To me, just looking down at the piece of hunking flesh, it’s—well—it’s barbaric.
“Well, then why don’t I skip the London broil and get the swordfish, and then you can order the salmon, and then we’ll just share? I don’t want to gross you out by eating a hunking piece of flesh anyway, and this way you’ll get to try both.”
“That’s a great idea,” she smiled. “And so romantic.”
I thought about Jennifer again. What was I doing here, partaking in this first date charade with a woman I obviously had no interest in? Everything felt dirty about what I was doing and I knew that if Jennifer was aware of my actions, it would cost me any chance of being with her now or in the future. She was an honest girl and I was being dishonest, both to her and myself. I should have walked away, but didn’t. Instead I convinced myself that it was best to stick it out and just have fun in the moment. Nobody needed to get hurt because in the end I didn’t plan on doing anything wrong. It was what it was—dinner with a friend.
Jill placed her menu on the table and a waiter appeared in record time.
“Can I interest either of you in a drink?” he asked.
I ordered a bottle of white wine and then proceeded to inform the waiter what we’d be eating that evening. He told us they were both excellent choices and that the chef was quite fond of cooking them. He disappeared into the kitchen and quickly returned with the bottle of wine and a basket of freshly baked focaccia bread. He popped the cork on the bottle and let the wine breathe, pouring a tiny amount of the liquid into my glass and allowing me to sample it. I took a sip.
“It’s good,” I told him.
“Excellent, sir,” he said, pouring both Jill and myself a hearty glass of the wine. “Your meal is being prepared as we speak. Please do let me know if there is anything else I can help you with in the meantime.”
The waiter left our table and I took a long swig from my glass. Jill investigated her surroundings, taking in the décor and overall feel of the restaurant.
“This place reminds me of a place I went to in New York once,” she said.
“It does have that downtown feel to it I suppose.”
“I was on a date with a multi, MULTI-millionaire,” she shared with an orgasmic tone in her voice.
Jill reached for a piece of bread at the same time as I did and our hands collided like a human traffic accident. She giggled, grabbing a slice of the focaccia and dug in without much hesitation.
“You can always tell how good a restaurant is by the bread they serve, and this is some amazing bread,” she said.
“Oh real-ee,” I returned, mimicking her trademark tag line.
“Yup. If it’s tasty and hot, that’s usually a good sign.”
“Oh real-ee,” I repeated, now having caught a serious case of the “oh really” flu.
Jill raised her glass of wine and I prematurely toasted it before she could say a single word. She took a large gulp of the glass’s contents and hiccupped loudly after swallowing it down. She tried to play it off, hoping that nobody heard, but even the senior couple three tables over caught a bit of it. They must have had their hearing aids turned up to eleven.
“I just love life,” Jill declared, a smile painted on her face from ear to ear. “I had an experience recently which made me appreciate being alive and I’m never going to take any of this for granted ever again.”
“What happened to you?” I asked curiously.
“Well, it’s kind of personal. Not that I’m embarrassed to share it with you, I just don’t want to scare you off. My daddy always said that there are certain subjects that don’t make good table talk, and I’m afraid this falls into one of those categories.”
“You’re not going to scare me off,” I told her. “I mean, if you’re uncomfortable talking about it, that’s fine, but if you need to get it off of your chest, I’m a fine listener!”
Jill giggled and then took another bite of her bread, chewing and swallowing it down in record time.
“I had a bump on my cervix,” she confessed looking down at her plate, unable to make eye contact. “The doctor said it could have been cancerous and they did a biopsy. It was like, literally, the longest two days of my life as I waited for the test results to come back.”
I couldn’t believe it. I was getting a recent history of Jill’s crotch by candlelight.
“I bet,” I said. “That must have been a heavy forty-eight hours.”
“You have no idea. If it wasn’t for my daddy, I would have lost it entirely, but he helped to keep me grounded and take my mind off of it.”
I sipped from my wine. The daddy talk was really teetering on creepy by that point.
“Anyway, the results eventually did come back and thank my lucky stars they were negative.”
“Wow. I can see why you have a new outlook on life.”
“It’s short, you know. We really just have to enjoy ourselves while we’re here ’cause there’s no telling when we won’t be.”
Underneath the table, hidden from the rest of the restaurant by a burgundy tablecloth, I felt Jill’s leg rub up against mine. I leaned into it, trying to decipher if I had mistaken the table’s post for one of her muscular gams, but I was right the first time and my leaning action only invited more rubbing on her part.
The waiter returned with our food, forcing the foot action underneath the table to take recess. Jill and I exchanged an equal portion of fish and my first bite came from a mound of steamed zucchini piled neatly to the side of my plate. I was never a huge fan of seafood and was upset with myself for not ordering the London broil. I would have been more inclined to let it go and enjoy my meal had the women sitting next to us not been eating the savory flank steak.
Jill took a bite of the swordfish and sunk into her chair, wriggling in enjoyment. She moved with an animalistic sexuality in everything she did. If food made her lower region quiver, I wondered what my tongue would do.
“Oh, this is just absolutely unbelievable,” she groaned.
“It’s a nice presentation too,” I said in a template, reflex response.
“I feel like I know you,” she told me, moving her fiery hair out of her eyes, once again turning a simple movement into a seductive act.
“What do you mean?” I asked as I placed a bit of each underwater creature on my fork and took a dual bite.
“I don’t know. It’s just like… there’s a connection here that I can’t explain.”
“Maybe it’s because we’re eating each other’s food,” I said jokingly, taking another bite of my zucchini. “Tit for tat can cause all that.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t even shared any of my tit with you… yet,” she joked, cupping both of her voluptuous breasts.
The booby grab caused me to choke on my zucchini. I coughed and Jill giggled, knowing that she was to blame for my inability to eat like a normal human being. She upped the ante even further, slipping off her high heel and pressing the sole of her foot into my thigh, slowly moving it north towards Penis Town.
Thankfully the waiter once again saved me, positioning himself at the halfway point between both Jill and I.
“And how is your meal this evening?” he asked.
“It’s wonderful,” Jill responded. “I like to think of my salmon having been caught by an Eskimo beneath the Alaskan sky. That’s how good it is.”
“A lovely sentiment, miss. I’ll be sure to inform the chef of your kind words.”
The waiter turned to me.
“And you, sir?” he asked.
“I like to think of mine as a three-legged duck who returned to the sea and transformed himself into a retarded swordfish, only to be caught in a giant net, gutted and sent to Lebone to have his fatty flesh appear as part of the daily specials.”
The waiter stared at me wide-eyed, confused by my response. “Very good, sir. If you need anything else, please let me know.”
“We’ll have another bottle of wine, please.”
“Right away sir.”
The waiter retreated and Jill reached over, placing her hand on top of mine.
“That was so beautiful,” she told me. “Do you believe in reincarnation?”
“I like to think so,” I said. “I studied a bit of Hinduism in my college days and that’s a big portion of the belief system. The problem is, if things keep going the way they’re going in our world, everything’s going to wind up extinct and there won’t be anything left for us to be born into.”
“I hope that’s not true. It’s a sad future for us all if that’s the case.”
“I’m sure we’ll all be fine. If I get a chance to come back as anything I want, I’m just going to come up with my own animal to return as. It’ll be a hipporhinocerphant.”
“A what?”
“A hipporhinocerphant. It’ll be a cross between a hippopotamus, a rhinoceros and an elephant. I just hope that the hipporhinocerphant isn’t a delicacy in the future, because I don’t want to wind up on someone’s plate like this swordfish and salmon.”
After we finished the meal and wine I paid the bill using my credit card and we stumbled out of the restaurant, both slightly tipsy from finishing off both bottles of wine. Against my better sober judgment, I got behind the wheel and revved the engine, eager to get Jill home as quickly as possible. She was looking more and more appealing as the night wore on, and the alcohol had given me temporary memory loss because I no longer thought of Jennifer.
Upon arriving back in Chelsea I found a parking spot directly in front of Jill’s building and left the car running, half expecting not to get the invite inside. With her pupils dilated from the alcohol intake, she leaned over towards me, exposing the bulk of her breasts, which popped from her orange shirt like two corks from a pair of champagne bottles. My eyes dislodged from their sockets like a cartoon character as I stared down at her pressed together cleavage and she asked me if I wanted to come into her apartment for a nightcap. I agreed, hoping that the nightcap would turn into me seeing her breasts in their fully naked and natural state.
We no sooner closed the door after entering her apartment when we began a long, slobbery kiss, Jill’s doggy bag still hanging from her hand, crinkling as we went at each other with our tongues. I grabbed the plastic bag and tossed it to the floor, pressing Jill up against the wall and infiltrating her skirt with my wandering hands, continuing to creep them further and further upwards until I discovered she wasn’t wearing any panties. With her ass now exposed and resting up against the white wall, I pawed at her flesh as I worked my mouth downward to her neck, skidding over her collarbone and leaving a trail of saliva like a traveling snail. Like a madman possessed, I ripped at her shirt, tearing the buttons from the fabric and removing her purple bra with my teeth. With her large, welcoming breasts now exposed, I sucked on her tits for what seemed like an eternity, and worked them over in my mouth until they reminded me of chewing gum that had lost its flavor.
Jill pushed me backwards and then threw me down on the loveseat, tearing the shirt from my body and clawing at my chest with her manicured nails. She bit at my nipples as she unbuttoned my pants and we sank deep into the cushion of the miniature couch.
“Do you want me?” she asked.
“Of course I do,” I replied. “Can’t you feel how much I want you?”
Jill moaned as she dry humped against my hard shaft, which was still hiding in the confines of my pants. She reached underneath the loveseat and pulled out a Payless shoebox as I removed the remainder of my clothing. Inside the box was a pleasure arsenal of condoms, creams, jellies, spray cans and even a mini toxic waste container. I reached into the box and pulled out a glow-in-the-dark rubber. I slipped it on and then threw myself on top Jill, spreading her legs and sliding myself inside of her.
I was thrusting firmly from the start, but Jill hardly moved at all, forcing me to reach beneath her and push her ass upwards in an attempt at get