Jesus please us, Malone thought. “Now, Adeline, let’s have no more talk like that. Why don’t’cha go on home now, git yerself a nip and try ta get some rest—”
“And where was you! Where was you’n the rest’a yer overpaid, lazy cops when this psycho was stealin’ my poor Fluffy? Tell me that!”
“Just you get on home now, Adeline…”
The elderly nuisance pulled away from Malone, then stomped toward the grim stick bearing the head of her pet. Still blubbering, she pulled the head off the stick—
“Aw, now, Adeline!” Malone moaned. “That there’s kind’a what we call evidence! Ya cain’t just up’n take it!”
“Stop me! Gonna give my Fluffy’s head a proper burial, and if’n you don’t like it, then kiss my ass!”
Boover returned as the woman stormed off. “Forget about the head, Chief. Ain’t like we can take prints off it.”
“Shee-it,” Malone muttered.
“You got any idea how we might go about catchin’ this guy?”
Malone tweaked his handlebar mustache. “I been thinkin’ ’bout it. You know how the feds do it, don’t’cha? They have thereself a sting operation.”
“A sting, huh? How are we gonna do that?”
“It ain’t gonna be easy but, see, I figure if we play our cards smart, we can catch this dog-killin’ piece’a shit, and once we do that, we might be able to catch Vinchetti himself…”
(II)
God, I love him so much, Veronica mused of Mike as she stood behind the camera counter. She believed in Providence—not the city or the basketball team—and she knew that it was God who’d placed Mike Anthon in her life’s path. Her heart pattered thinking about him—Mike, not God—and she also knew that her insistence to remain a virgin proved her faith beyond doubt. God KNOWS, He KNOWS, she thought. The certain venal sins—namely fellatio—that she committed with Mike were purely pragmatic in this new and restless age; and with those she skirted the far more grievous sin of intercourse out of wedlock. God, she knew, would forgive the fellatio, for He knew the true foundation of her resolve: to live and love in accordance with God’s Word.
Christmas muzak issued lightly through the store. “Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus…” Garlands of blinking lights extended overhead, while the front windows displayed cardboard holly and giant XMAS SALE signs. She looked down at the row of Casio and Nikon CoolPix digital cameras, only to spy her own superimposed reflection in the glass counter top. Even in this abstract image of herself, as the Christmas lights above blinked down, she could see her aura of faith. Please, God. Give me the strength to steer Mike off his path of error. Let my love be true enough to CHANGE him.
Mike had promised to take her out tonight—for pizza—and the prospect made her brim with joy. Every so often, she glanced over at him, trying hard to seem nonchalant but it wasn’t easy. He stood over there now in the cellphone department talking with his crony Archie, and every so often his gorgeous, dark eyes would flick over to her, then flick back down. He’s checking me out but doesn’t want me to know, she realized, blushing. Mike was vain, and she knew that sin of vanity came from his GQ good looks—he couldn’t help it. And men so possessed of such sheer handsomeness often played hard to get. No big deal, Veronica thought. Patience was her virtue.
Aside from her sin of fellatio, she knew she was guilty of a little vanity herself but this, too, God would forgive because it served as a means to a Godly end. You have to keep them interested, she knew all too well, otherwise you lose them in this amoral quagmire we call modern society… She’d just have to keep the faith because, in essence, that’s what God would want her to do. Her nipples tingled beneath the loud, bright-blue employee shirt. The sheer polyester accommodated her ploy quite well…
She’d deliberately taken to foregoing her bra (I may not have a runway model’s face but I KNOW I’ve got great breasts…) and would several times daily tweak her nipples to make them protrude. Men liked that. She wanted Mike inundated by a positive erotic image of her. Oh, she knew he’d been with plenty of women and was constantly accosted by plenty more every day. But those silly girls don’t love him, and he knows that.
Ultimately, Veronica was very aware that she was using lust to lure Mike closer into her life, and lust was a sin. But her rationale seemed too honest to be incorrect. It has to be okay to use lust as my bait simply because God knows my eventual intentions are to live sinlessly, in a marriage with Mike. It made sense to her, at least. She got bristly thinking about him, and bristlier still when musing upon such a time when they were husband and wife. Her uncle’s trust fund, she knew, was more bait for the expectation but, again, eventually true love would find its way to his heart.
Then money wouldn’t matter. Only our LOVE would matter, and upon completion of the thought, a tear of joy slipped from her eye.
Nonchalant, nonchalant, she commanded herself as she came out from around the camera counter. No customers were present so Veronica used this opportunity to momentarily excuse herself. Mike looked up, then Veronica waved daintily with her fingers and mouthed Little girl’s room, and scurried away.
Bing Crosby crooned more Christmas rhymes as she hurried to the back, to the employee’s bathroom, because that one had a lock. What would Mike say if he caught me back here! came the alarmed consideration, and then she giggled. Knowing him, it’d probably get him aroused. She wasted no time once she locked the bathroom door. All right, so I’m a little insecure, she admitted. She pulled down her work pants along with the wildcat-red Victoria’s Secret lace panties (Mike preferred quality underthings) and up over her 36C bosom came the blue work shirt. She appraised herself, as she often did, and was quite content with the appraisal. The alabaster-white skin glowed in its own healthy lambency, her abdomen sleek and flat, her full and equally lambent bosom dark-nippled and erect, her almost-bare pubis fecund in its form, vital in its feminine youth, and accentuated by the meticulous half-inch-wide strip of downy, ash-brown hair.
My body’s almost as good as the girls in the Victoria’s Secret catalogue! she realized, and she thanked God for so bestowing her.
Next she looked just as honestly as her face. Fine, a little nerdy in the face, but how can I complain? The hair atop her head hung shinily to the middle of her back and shared the exact same interesting hue as her spare pubic hair. The zit on her nose wasn’t very big and would surely be gone in a day or so. And tonight? Mike would be so distracted by her body, he wouldn’t even notice.
She felt tickly even before she reached into her purse for the Doc Johnson’s Mini Pocket Wand; she mustn’t take too long—Mike would wonder what she was doing. She turned the wand on low, then stiffened and hissed when she touched its manic end to her right nipple, following the circumference of her areola. Delicious, intense waves seemed to spill over her chest from the inside out. The tender papilla swelled at once, and felt nerve-charged and somehow connected to her awareness. Round and round, the tip went, then to the other breast, then back. In only a minute, the warm spheres of her breasts seemed to beat, the nipples gorging till they stuck out in a manner that was anything but inconspicuous.