Coming to the end of a large boxlike machine on stout legs — a dryer, he could tell from its stamped label — he approached the office. He halted, shutting out all distractions, getting it together for his performance. It’s all about the in-between, man, a jazz guitarist reminded him at a recent studio gig.
He heard Hovis moaning between whaps. The tang of marijuana cut through the burger aroma.
“Goddamnit, yes, oh yes, doctor.”
Randolph stepped into the light to see Hovis leaning over his desk in a stripper/nurse costume, short skirt up over a thong, with high heels and a red wig lopsided on his bald head. McLaughlin, in her underwear beneath an open lab coat, was holding a dog hairbrush, the kind with short wire bristles. She’d been using it on the man’s tenderized rear end. There was a strap-on dildo and a plastic enema bottle filled with clear liquid occupying the paper-laden desk.
Hovis straightened up and stammered, “Who... What is this?” There was a good-sized alligator clamp dangling from his penis over the thong.
By then Randolph, trying not to giggle too much, had covered the distance between them and squirted liberal amounts of pepper spray into the man’s eyes.
“This is not safe,” the dog-food man blurted, hands grabbing at his face while he did a run-in-place dance of pain in his night nurse uniform.
McLaughlin slugged him over the head with a smoking bong, shattering it. Hovis ran and crashed into a tall filing cabinet, knocking it and himself over.
“Don’t either one of you fuckin move,” Randolph blared. He quickly tied a handkerchief around the downed man’s tearing eyes and McLaughlin made sounds like she was being manhandled. Randolph tied Hovis up with cord he’d brought along and fixed a ball gag around his mouth. The man writhed and whimpered on his side, then lay still.
“Where is it, bitch?” Randolph growled, giving it his best Steven Seagal guttural rasp.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She slapped her thigh for effect and grunted.
“We’ll see about that. Come here, let me show you what me and that dildo are gonna do to you.” He marched her out and returned after a suitable period to begin tearing up the office. He knew where Hovis kept the money, but had to sell the search.
He kicked over a surfboard leaning in a corner. Above that, in a compartment Hovis had installed, the cash was hidden in the ceiling. “Well, what do we have here?” He walked over to Hovis and kicked him, eliciting a stifled yell. “Clever cocksucker, aren’t you? Your girlfriend held out, but it’s a good thing for both of you I got eyes.” He slid a chair over, stood on it, and pushed up on the acoustic tile, revealing a large fishing tackle box. He pulled it down, assessed the contents, and exited the office.
Hovis wasn’t aware that McLaughlin knew where he kept the money. She’d spied on him once when she was working there. Though naturally he’d suspect her, she would aim his suspicions toward a fired employee. Or so she’d told Randolph.
On the darkened factory floor, he removed his disguise of a bushy Afro wig, false goatee, and a Halloween rubber nose. McLaughlin, in her bra and panties, stilettos off so as not to make noise, came over and gave him a passionate kiss. He rubbed his hand between her legs.
“Better get going. I’ll meet you back at my place, Avery.”
“I like it when you say my name,” he whispered back.
“I know.”
He punched her hard, twice, in the face, while she held onto him for balance. Like a boxer clearing her vision, she shook her head, and then she broke off one of her heels. She put the shoes on and wobbled into the office while Randolph turned back toward the way he had come in.
“Brice, Brice, are you all right?” she screamed, running into the office. McLaughlin’s face rearranged itself from feigned concern to icy resolve. “Briiice,” she drew out, hand beside her mouth but barely saying his name. “Briiiice, my demented shithead, can you get up?” She guffawed and removed a sharp letter opener from a pen caddy on the desk. She sauntered over, cut Brice Hovis’s legs loose, and removed the ball gag and handkerchief. His hands remained bound.
“Oh my God, are you all right, Steph?” His eyes were red and wet. He looked from her to the open ceiling and back.
Her fingers trilled the tip of the letter opener. “I’m fine, Brice. Real fuckin good.” She flicked the blade and nicked his thigh. Crimson ran behind the black mesh stocking material. “Hey,” he gasped, backing up, “this is no time for that. Untie me, would you?”
Swaying her body she stepped closer, waving the letter opener around like a drunk musketeer. “And what if I don’t, Brice? What if I go too far this time?” She took another nick out of him, this time from his chest.
Brice looked about, panicked, while backpeddling in his heels and skirt. “Quit fucking around, Stephanie.”
“I’m serious as a fever, Bricey. Come on, beg for your life.” She placed her hand on her mound. “It makes me wet.” She lunged forward and tackled Hovis, then straddled him.
Down on the floor, he squirmed and bucked but ceased when she put the tip to his throat, letting it sink in a centimeter.
“Why?” he pleaded. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I can, cunt.” She made another cut and Hovis’s eyes went wide.
“Yo, Steph — is that your real name?”
The woman looked up to see Randolph, his disguise back on, standing in the doorway. She chortled. “Yeah, so? What’re you gonna do about it, homeboy?”
“This,” he said calmly, shooting her in the mouth as she laughed at him.
The woman’s body tumbled off of Hovis, her heelless shoe landing across his leg. Randolph tied up the terrified, bleeding exec again and walked out of the office.
“There’s something like ninety thousand in here,” a woman’s voice said behind him. He turned to Emily Bravera, who was dressed in slacks and a striped shirt. She was hunched on one knee, having counted the contents of the tackle box. She relatched the lid.
“Not bad,” Randolph said. “Plus, Hovis can’t squawk to the law since he was hiding it from the IRS.”
“Well, he does have some explaining to do in that get-up of his and two bodies sprawled out.” Her arm in the crook of his, he holding the strong box, the two strolled out to the parking lot.
Laying dead under dim lighting on the uneven asphalt was the bartender, Alfonso Carlson. He’d been in wait for Randolph, to ambush and kill him. But Bravera, a one-time investigating officer with the Criminal Investigation Command of the U.S. Army, had done the bushwhacking. Inside was the bartender’s daughter, Stephanie Carlson. The Command’s motto was: Do what has to be done.
Before they departed, Bravera put her face close to Randolph’s, squeezing his cheeks in her blood-nailed fingers. Her tan was prominent against his burnished-copper skin. “You liked fucking her, didn’t you?”
“Only doing my job, cap’n.”
“Just remember, Thelonious, I know how to use a rifle with a scope.”
“I keep that information uppermost in my mind.”
“See that you do.” She kissed him deep and long.
At the Seaside Lounge, Avery Randolph began a mournful rendition of “On Green Dolphin Street.” At her table by the window, Emily Bravera sat and drank sparingly, appreciating his handling of the tune. The two had been working this area for more than a month now, pulling off several lucrative burglaries in Long Beach and south along the Orange County coast. Jewelry, a few spicy homemade DVDs, cash, and even gold bars horded against the next meltdown. For it wasn’t only old hippies like Brice Hovis who failed to report all their income.
The front they’d constructed involved Bravera posing as a general’s widow living in Rossmoor. Real estate being what it was these days, the realtor was happy to rent to the widow on a month-to-month basis. She was personable, knowledgable on a variety of subjects, worked out at the local gym, and managed to get herself invited to this or that soiree or club event — thus being able to scope out various domiciles.