First Class Killing

Chapter 36

JAMIE’S OFFICE WAS YET ANOTHER SPACIOUS room in the mansion, this one tucked toward the back of the house. It had warm cherry paneling, abundant overhead lighting, and wall outlets of all varieties. So far, there was only a desk in the middle of the hardwood floor. Temporary, he’d said, until he could find the one he really wanted. The framed picture of his family with Mickey Mouse down in Orlando was one I also had at home. The heavy clay paperweight that looked to be some kind of hedgehog was from Sean. It said so right on the bottom. “To Daddy from Sean.” Only then was really tiny because he’d run out of space.

I had checked it all out while my laptop made its scratchy way to the Internet. I was in now and checking the unread messages in my box. It was mostly spam. One had a blank space where the address should have been, which usually meant spam, but it also had a subject heading that could be from only one person.

all men are pigs

When I saw that a video file was attached, my mouth went dry. I clicked on the download icon, and my jaw started to quiver, but nothing else happened. My clicker finger, stiff and jerky with adrenaline, would not work right. I concentrated, tried again, and got it started.

It was a big file, so I had plenty of time to sit and wonder what Angel would send me and why. She had a reason for everything she did, and as the seconds ticked away and the file loaded, I found that I couldn’t stay in my seat. It was taking a long time, but there was no speeding it up. I watched the progress monitor as the file built. Ten percent. Twenty-five. It seemed to stick for a while around forty percent. When it got to ninety-eight percent loaded, I took my seat. When it was all finally there, I scanned for viruses, pulled up the media player, and waited again. I could barely stand all the waiting. But then I started to dread what was coming, and by the time the image hit the screen, I was almost afraid to watch.

Something bad was coming.

The picture was high-resolution and in color. There was no doubt about what was on the screen: a man and a woman, naked on a bed, having sex. The woman was on top doing all the work. I didn’t have to see her face to know it was Angel. Besides her bleach job and her wide, muscular shoulders, I could have recognized her from the way she devoured her partner.

Angel was a hooker. This was what she did, which meant she was showing me the man. But all I could see of him were his fingers splayed across her butt. His gold wedding band gleamed against the pale pillows of flesh, and a sick, shaky premonition wormed up through my gut and tried to find a place to break through.

The two of them ground out the familiar rhythm, complete with a guttural sound track of maximum sexual exertion. He tilted his knees slightly, the better to thrust. She leaned forward and braced her hands, palms down, on either side of him, and they started chugging, faster and faster, muscle on muscle, flesh slapping flesh-as they climbed toward the pinnacle of mutual carnal satisfaction. I couldn’t turn away for any reason, and I couldn’t bear to watch, because I knew it was coming, this thing that was bad.

They burst together upon the summit of completion with a throaty chorus of groans and cries that could spring only from the thing they were doing. They rolled across the pinnacle and down the other side, losing momentum slowly until they were finally still, the man clearly exhausted, Angel still draped across him like a tablecloth.

She was the first to move. Rolling back up to a sitting position, she dropped her head back. The way her hair swept across the bare skin of her back reminded me of the backless evening gown she had worn that first night when I had taken her picture in Pittsburgh, when she had turned in my direction, and I had seen in her face that look of a predator’s pure bloodlust.

On the screen, she reached one of her long arms down to the side of the bed and pulled a pillow from the floor to tuck under her partner’s head. She dismounted, turned full on toward the camera and, with her partner’s face revealed, smiled at me.

His favorite pie was custard. He liked green apples but not red. He was allergic to cats. The large bone in his right forearm was softly curved from the time he pitched off his skateboard and broke it.

These were some of the things I knew about my brother. I knew in the way we always know things about our families. Some of them are hardwired into our genes. Some are absorbed over the years of living under the same roof, folding each other’s underwear, and eating from the same ice cream carton. There were enough details to let me believe I knew him, when in fact what I knew about him, the things I remembered, made up an infinitesimal slice of whatever it was that made him who he was.

One of the things that fell squarely on the side of stuff I didn’t know about my brother was how he could be in bed with a prostitute.