The Mammoth Book of the Best New Erotica Read online

  I closed my eyes and remembered the two brunette whores we came across just outside Rome, the day before I was wounded, Monte Cassino, 1944. The girls were about twenty, a little on the plump side with pale white skin. They fucked the entire platoon and got up to wave goodbye to us early the next morning, when we moved out.

  My doorbell rang. I stood slowly and walked down the stairs to the door. Through the transom above the louvered front door, I saw the top of a yellow cab. I peeked out the door and Brigid was there, her hair dripping in the rain. I opened the door and she turned and waved to the cabby who drove off up Barracks.

  Brigid stepped past me and stood dripping in the foyer. Wearing the same clothes she had for the photo session, she shivered and cupped her hands against her chest, her head bent forward. I closed the door. I put my hand under her chin and lifted her face and she blinked those cobalt eyes at me. They were red now with a blue semicircle bruise under her left eye.

  “Pipi hit me,” she said, her lower lip quivering. “Can I come up?”

  I took her right hand and brought her up and straight into my bathroom. I grabbed the box of kitchen matches from the medicine cabinet and lit the gas wall heater. Standing, I turned as Brigid dropped her bra.

  “Don’t leave,” she said, bending over to run a bath. “You’ve seen it all.”

  I put the lid down on the commode and sat and watched her take her clothes off. She smiled weakly at me, her lips still shaking as she climbed into the tub. The water continued running as she sank back.

  “How about some coffee?”

  “You have any Scotch?”

  I stood and looked down at her. Her eyes were closed and the water moved dreamily over her naked body and she looked so damn sexy. I poured us each a double Johnnie Walker Red and went back in.

  A silent hour and two drinks later, as well as two hard-ons, she stood up in the tub and asked me to pass her a towel. In the bright light of the bathroom, her skin looked white-pink. She dried herself and wrapped a fresh towel around her chest just above her breasts, and took my hand and led me out to the sofa where we sat.

  She poured us both another Scotch, left hers on the coffee table next to the bottle and turned her back to me to lie across my lap as I sat straight up. I had to adjust my dick again and she knew and smiled at me.

  “I’ll take care of that,” she said softly and closed her eyes.

  With no make-up, with her hair still damp and getting frizzy, with the mouse under her eye – she was still gorgeous. Some women are like that, plain-knockdown-gorgeous.

  After a while she told me that Pipi, that’s her husband, couldn’t get it up when she came in and told him about what she’d done. She even dug out the previous pictures and went down on him, but he was as limp as a Republican’s brain.

  Then he hit her, punched her actually, and kicked her out, shoved her into the rain.

  “At least he called a cab for me.” She opened her cobalt blues and blinked up at me. “Guess you figured he’s the one with erotophobia. Pipi’s the one afraid of erotic experiences.”

  No shit.

  She sat up, reached over and grabbed her drink and downed it with one gulp. I got up a second and moved to the balcony doors. I didn’t hear the rain any more, so I cracked them. It was still drizzling so I left them open and went back to the sofa. I felt the coolness immediately. It was nice.

  She settled her head back in my lap and closed her eyes again. The towel had risen and I could see a hint of her bush now. I reached over and picked up my drink and finished it, then put the glass back on the coffee table. A while later, she sighed and turned her face towards me and I could see by her even breathing she was asleep. The towel opened when she turned and I looked at her body again.

  I wanted to fuck her so badly. I climbed out from under her head, stood and stretched. I reached down and scooped Brigid into my arms. I took her into my bedroom and laid her on the bed. She sighed again and I leaned over and kissed her lips gently. I grabbed the second pillow and went back out to the sofa and poured myself another stiff one. I was feeling kinda woozy by then anyway so I lay back on the sofa and tried some deep breathing with my eyes closed.

  There was a movie I saw where a private eye turned Veronica Lake down because it ain’t good business to sleep with clients. Fuck that shit. Brigid wouldn’t have to ask me again. I pulled off my socks and gulped down the rest of my drink and lay back on the pillow and closed my eyes. I tried deep breathing and letting my mind float. And just as I was drifting I realized it wasn’t Veronica Lake. It was Ann Sheridan. Or was it Barbara Stanwyck in a blonde wig?

  The banging of the French doors woke me. I sat up too quickly and felt dizzy and had to lean back on the sofa. It was pitch outside and nearly as dark inside. Lightning flashed and the rainy wind raised the drapes like floating ghosts. A roll of thunder made the old building shiver.

  The wind felt cool on my face. I started to rise and saw her standing next to the sofa. I sank back as lightning flashed again, illuminating her naked body in white light. I felt her move up to me and felt her arms on my shoulders as she climbed on me. She said something, but the thunder drowned it.

  I felt the weight of her body on my lap as she ripped at my shirt. I tried to help, but she tore it and we both pulled it off. She grabbed my belt and slapped my hand when I tried to help. Rising, she shoved my pants and underwear down and then sank back on me. I felt her bush up against my dick, her mouth searching my face for my lips. Our tongues worked against each other as I raised my hands for those breasts.

  She moved her hips up and down slowly as we kissed. I felt the wetness between her legs. She rose high and reached down to guide my dick into her. She sank on it and shivered and then fucked me like I’ve never been fucked before.

  And she talked nasty. “Oh, fuck me. Come on. Fuck me. Oh, God I love your dick. I love it. Fuck me. Yes. Yes. Oh, God.”

  I like it when women call me God, even if it’s just for a little while.

  She bounced on me. “More,” she said. “More!”

  Hell, there was no more. She had it all.

  She screamed and I came in her in long spurts and she cried out and held on to my neck. Then she collapsed on me and it took a while for our breathing to return to normal.

  I looked over her shoulder as lightning flashed again and saw the wet floor next to the open balcony doors. The wind whipped up again and felt so damn good on our hot bodies. The thunder rolled once more and sounded further away. When I could gather enough strength, I kicked off my pants and shorts. I lifted her and carried her back into the bedroom. I climbed on her and fucked her nice and long the way second fucks should be, deep and time-consuming.

  She wrapped her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck and kissed me and kissed me. She was one great, loving kisser. She made noises, sexy noises, but didn’t talk nasty. She just fucked me back in long hip-grinding pumps.

  After I came I stayed in her until her gyrating hips slipped my dick out. I rolled on my back and pulled her to me and she snuggled her face in the crook of my neck, her hot body pressed against me.

  Every once in a while I felt the breeze come in and try to cool us.

  She was still pressed against me when the daylight woke me. I slipped out of bed, relieved myself and pulled on a fresh pair of boxers before brushing my teeth. She lay on her stomach, the sheet wrapped around her right leg, her long hair covering her face.

  I went to the kitchen and started up a pot of coffee and chicory, bacon and eggs. She came in just as I was putting the bacon next to the eggs on the two plates on my small white Formica table. Naked, she walked up and planted a wet one on my lips. She leaned back and brushed her hair out of her face and said, “I used your toothbrush.”

  “Sit down.” I went back and put the bacon pan in the sink and poured us two cups of strong coffee.

  “You don’t have a barrette, do you?” She moved around the table and sat.

  “Huh?”

  “Lef
t over from a previous fuck?”

  “Yeah. Right.” I put her coffee in front of her and sat across the table and ate my bacon and eggs and watched her breasts as she lifted her fork to eat. OK, I looked at her face too and stared into those turquoise eyes that glittered back at me as she ate. But mostly I looked at her tits. Round and perfectly symmetrical, they were so fuckin’ pretty. I can’t explain it. Tits have a power over men. Women will never understand. We have no fuckin’ idea ourselves.

  The eggs and bacon weren’t bad. The coffee was nice and strong. After, we took a bath together. Soaping each other and rinsing off, we stayed in the tub until the water cooled and that felt even better than the warm water.

  “Will you take me home? I don’t want to go alone.”

  Brigid stood in the bathroom, her belly against the sink as she applied make-up to her face. In her bra and panties, she had her butt out. I told her I’d bring her home.

  “I want to pick up some things. Will you take me to my mother’s after?”

  “Sure.”

  I finished my coffee, put the cup on the nightstand and then dressed myself. She came out and ran her hand across my shoulders as she passed behind me to pick up her skirt.

  I finished tying my sky-blue tie, the one with the palm tree on it, and ran my fingers down the crease of my pleated blue suit pants.

  “Nice shoes,” she said when I slipped on my two-tone black and white wing tips. Women always noticed shoes.

  I finished in time to watch Brigid finish. I liked watching women dress, nearly as much as watching them undress. I grabbed my suit coat on the way out.

  “You’re not bringing a gun?”

  “You gonna get naked in front of any strange men on the way home?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t need to shoot anybody, do I?”

  Pipi’s black Packard was in the driveway. I parked behind it and followed Brigid in. I waited in the marble-floored foyer and watched Brigid’s hips as she moved up the large spiral staircase. Figured I was about to meet old Pipi, the fuckin’ wife-beater himself. I hate men that hit women. Hate ’em.

  Just as I peeked in at the Audubon prints on the walls of the study, Brigid screamed upstairs. I took the stairs three at a time and followed the screams up to a large bedroom with giant flamingo lamps, blond furniture and a huge round bed with the body of a man on it. The man’s head lay in a pool of blood. Brigid had her back pressed up against a large chifforobe in the right corner of the room, next to the drapes. She covered her face with her hands and screamed again.

  The man lay on his side. I leaned over to look at his face. I recognized Pipi de Loup from the society page, even with the unmistakable dull look of death on his waxen face and his eyes blackened from the concussion of the bullet. The back of his head was a mass of dyed black hair and brain tissue. Brigid turned around and started crying.

  I looked at the mirror above the long dresser, looked into my own eyes and felt my stomach bottom out. I saw the word “sap” written across my face.

  I moved over and grabbed Brigid’s hand and led her out of the bedroom and down the stairs and out to my car. I opened the passenger door and told her to sit. Then I went next door and called the police.

  Brigid was still crying when I got back to the DeSoto. I leaned against the rear fender and waited. Two patrolmen arrived first. I knew neither. I pointed at the house. The taller went in, the other took out his notebook and asked my name.

  A half-hour and fifty questions later, Lieutenant Frenchy Capdeville pulled his black prowl car behind my car. He stepped out and shook his head at me, took off his brown suit coat and tossed it back in the prowl car.

  Short and wiry, with curly black hair and a pencil-thin moustache, Capdeville looked like Zorro – with a flat Cajun nose. He waltzed past me and stood next to the open door of my car and looked at Brigid’s crossed legs. He pulled the ever-present cigarette from his mouth, flicked ashes on the driveway and told me, “You stay put.”

  He reached his hand in and asked Brigid to step into the house with him. He left a rookie patrolman with an Irish name to guard me while other detectives arrived, one with a camera case. I looked up at the magnolia tree and tried counting the white blossoms, but lost count after twenty. At least the big tree, along with the two even larger oaks, kept the sun off me as I waited. I looked around at the neighbours who came out periodically to sneak a peek at the sideshow.

  A detective arrived and waved at me on the way in. He was in my class at the academy. He was the only white boy I ever knew named Spade.

  Willie Spade came out of the house an hour later and offered me a cigarette.

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “I forgot.” He shrugged and lit up with his Zippo. About an inch smaller than me with short carrot-red hair and too many freckles to count, Spade had deep-set brown eyes.

  “I need to search your car. OK?”

  He meant do I have your consent. I told him sure, go ahead, but didn’t expect him to pat me down first. No offense he said. No problem I said.

  While he was digging in my back seat he said we needed to go to the office for my statement.

  “I’d like to drive,” I said. “I’d rather not leave my car here.”

  Spade turned and wiped sweat from his brow. “You can drive us both.”

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t touch a fuckin’ thing in the house. She opened the door and I didn’t touch the railing on the way up the stairs. The only thing I touched was her arm, when I dragged her out.”

  Spade narrowed his deep-set eyes. “You touched more of her than her arm.”

  I nodded and leaned back in the hardwood folding chair in the small interview room. I looked out the lone window at the old wooden buildings across South White Street from the Detective Bureau Office on the second floor of the concrete Criminal Courts Building at Tulane and Broad. A grey pigeon landed on the window ledge and blinked at me.

  “We found the murder weapon on the floor next to the bed.”

  “Yeah?”

  “A Colt .38. The misses says it’s Pipi’s gun. He kept it in the nightstand next to the bed. The drawer was open.”

  “I didn’t notice.” I picked up the cup of coffee on the small table and took a sip. Cold.

  “The doors and windows were all locked,” Spade said, watching me carefully for a reaction.

  “What time did the doctor say he died?”

  “Between 2 and 4 a.m. Give or take an hour.”

  I nodded.

  Spade leaned back in his chair and put his arms behind his head and I saw perspiration marks on his yellow shirt. His brown tie was loosened. “So you’re her alibi and she’s yours,” he said.

  I nodded again and felt that hollow kick in my stomach.

  There was a knock on the door and a hand reached in and waved Spade out. A couple minutes later Spade returned with a fresh cup of java, along with my wing tips. He dropped my shoes on the floor and put the coffee in front of me. He pulled my keys out and put them on the table before sitting himself.

  “Find anything?” I said as I leaned down and pulled my shoes on.

  “Nope.” Spade didn’t sound disappointed. He sounded a little relieved. He put his elbows up on the table and told me how they knew the killer came in the kitchen door. It rained last night. The killer came in through the back with muddy shoes, wiped them on the kitchen mat and still tracked mud all the way up to the bedroom, then tracked mud right back out.

  “That’s why we had to search your pad and office,” he explained the obvious. They had to check out all my shoes, and everything else in my fuckin’ life.

  “Let himself in with a key?” I asked when I sat up.

  “Or,” Spade shrugged, “the door was unlocked and the killer flipped the latch on his way out, locking it. We have some prints, but smudges mostly.”

  I nodded.

  Spade let out a tired sigh and said, “You know the score. Whoever finds the body is automatically the first su
spect.”

  “Until you prove they didn’t do it. I know.”

  I didn’t say – especially when it’s the wife and the man who’s fuckin’ the wife.

  “I’ll be right back,” Spade said and left me with my fresh coffee and my view of South White Street.

  A while later, just as I was thinking how an interview room would be better for the police without a window, the door opened and Frenchy Capdeville walked in with Spade. Capdeville took the chair. Spade leaned against the wall.

  Capdeville smiled at me and asked if I knew anything about the pictures they found in Mr de Loup’s darkroom. I told them everything. Fuck, they knew it anyway.

  I ended with a question. “Did your men sniff my sheets?”

  Capdeville smiled again. “Who found the photographer?”

  I waited.

  “You come up with a nigger photographer for her, or did she?”

  “She told me Pipi found him.”

  Capdeville blew smoke in my face and gave me a speech, the usual one. I could leave for now, but they weren’t finished with me yet. They’d be back with more questions, he said, flicking ashes on the dirty floor. He made a point to tell me they weren’t finished with Mrs de Loup by a long shot. Her lawyer was on his way and they expected an extended interview.

  “One more thing,” Capdeville said, looking me in the eyes. “You have any idea who did it?”

  “Nope,” I lied, looking back at him with no expression in my eyes.

  They let me go.

  I drove around until dark, checking to see if I was followed so many times, I got a neck ache. I meandered through the narrow streets of the Quarter, through the twisting streets of the Faubourg Marigny and over to Treme where I parked the DeSoto on Dumaine Street.