THE INVESTIGATOR (The Gafanelli Mob #2)

1. Playing with Fire

Playing with Fire

TWO MONTHS LATER

JACKSON REED

If my life were a playbook, doing what I was doing at that very moment would have been “Don’t #1.”

I leaned back, trying to shift positions. The leather cushion of my car’s interior seat sighed as I readjusted my head, and I realized, as I shifted for comfort, that of all the places to receive head, I could have done a whole lot better… But I could have done a hell of a lot worse.

Still, that wasn’t my problem. My problem was that I wasn’t good at waiting.

Two months ago, I could have started screwing in the Hyatt, f****d as I flew past the Hudson River on a helicopter, and ended the night on a yacht with my c**k in a mouth… or two.

The world had been my playground. That’s how it had always been. But it had changed. And I don’t know when or where the change began.

Maybe it had spun off its axis halfway from my London office to New York. Or maybe it had taken a wrong turn past Priscilla, the bubbly Brit with the fake t**s, or maybe the world had abandoned me, lost some steam around the time of Cordelia, the flight attendant without a stitch of hair anywhere. Or maybe the change was purely mental.

Business had dried up since the last time I saw my best friend, Bishop. My career had gone flaccid, along with other things, and as my business stalled, so had my goddamned s*x life. My playbook—the one I used to run my life, to set up my next moves and maneuvers—didn’t seem to be working anymore, and I was treading on unchartered territory. I wouldn’t exactly call myself a proper ref or pro when it came to this life s**t, but it was official. I was calling it.

My c**k was broken.

And it was never more evident as it was in the front seat of my Audi, as I was getting head from my ex-client, Rebecca Hutchinson—a certified blow-job artist if I’d ever seen one. She was trying her best… and despite her licking and sucking, despite the slurping and tugging and teeth grazing and whatever twisty tornado maneuver she was pulling with her tongue, I couldn’t get off.

My d**k, along with Rebecca’s tongue… was definitely on a downward spiral.

I groaned, leaning further back, and she mistook my frustration for unfettered pleasure. Rebecca licked my tip and rolled her tongue around it, smiling up at me with a grin that was meant to seduce.

She pushed a platinum lock of hair behind her ear. “You’re stronger than I thought. No man has been able to resist that trick.”

I wondered how many men she was talking about, but I didn’t ask. Frankly? I didn’t give a literal f**k… But I did give a f**k that I couldn’t literally “give a f**k” and for that reason, I wanted to beat my head against the steering wheel.

This was supposed to be my way of passing the time while I waited for the phone call—the phone call that would inevitably turn things all around again… or send them shooting back to Hell.

My secretary, Mable, told me to look at the silver lining. I told her “Screw the silver lining and its goddamned playbook.” I had the “s*x, Money and Career” playbook and if that didn’t see me through tonight, then nothing would. I was already doing one bang-up job of ruining at least one of its major tenets as I sat there with my d**k out. I grit my teeth, trying to concentrate on an o****m that wouldn’t come. I took a deep breath, looked at Rebecca and bluffed.

“Have to come better than that…” I said. No pun intended.

And with that, her head dipped, her mouth gripped, and the woman stretched over my passenger seat returned to swallowing my c**k, taking my length deeper, massaging the underside of me with her tongue.

And I felt nothing.

I was on auto-pilot, going through the motions, barely able to keep it up until I did the one thing I warned myself not to do… for eight weeks. I thought of her… and was instantly steel.

I threw my head back and moaned. A real moan. A shudder worked its way below my waist, and it was the first pure sensation I’d felt all night. I gripped the back of Becky the Blower’s head.

In my mind, her pink lips turned red. I closed my eyes and the fake tan on her glossy skin became paler—peachy. The bubblegum scent of her sickly sweet perfume thickened into a bouquet of lavender, and before I knew it, the shiny strands between my fingers were no longer blonde… but red. Crimson-colored wisps of hair slid through my fingers as her lips slid along the length of my hardness, and I was closer to finding the c****x I was looking for. I thought of a name that wasn’t Rebecca’s and did my damnedest to hold it in.

And that’s when my phone rang. I reached for my pocket, pulling out my phone. My c**k was still between Rebecca’s lips when I answered the call. I had no time for niceties. With anyone. I gripped my cell.

“Yeah? Alright. Alright, perfect. See you in a bit.”

With ease, my guest for the night detached quickly from my d**k. She pulled away, and the fantasy I’d been having of another woman faded when I looked into her face. Disappointed, my ex-client straightened, adjusting her low-hanging top before layering another coat of lipstick along her glossy lips. She gave me a look and pouted.

“You’re not sticking around?” she cooed.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “No, love, and if you saw where I was going, you wouldn’t want to stick around either. This is business. Not pleasure.”

She ran a finger between my legs. “Can’t it be both?”

“In my world?” I looked over, zipping my c**k back in. “Never. But that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the business of your pleasure.” I touched her chin. “You sure do one hell of a job.”

I got Rebecca out of my car as quickly as I could, and within twenty minutes (and roughly the same amount of blocks), I was replacing her with someone else. On the corner of frustration and Carnegie Hill, my new passenger and I set up camp on the less busy side of the street. I threw my Audi’s gear in park. My impatience, solidified and strengthened over the hours of waiting, hit me harder than my d**k managed to become that night, and the anticipation pulsed beneath my breast like a steady heartbeat, fanning a blush beneath my collar that was like a living flame.

This is what I was waiting all night for…

She was here. Every nerve-ending in my body said so.

A sleek, black town car on the other side of the road slowly pulled up to the restaurant. With dimmed windows, large and opaque, I couldn’t see the person in the back seat. But I knew someone was there. I could feel it.

Glancing past the vehicle, I could see the face of every patron inside the elegant eatery. They ignored the car. The people on the streets ignored the car.

Of course they all did. This was Manhattan.

What was another expensive car on another expensive street? Nothing abnormal. Nothing out of the ordinary. The night was beautiful. The car was even more beautiful. In fact, the scene in front of the restaurant was so conventional that it was scary. Wealth was customary on this side of town—commonplace.

Everything about this Upper East Side street was business as usual. Everything… except the woman that had just stepped out onto it.

The driver slipped out of the car. With a few quick steps, he was at the back door, opening it. He glanced inside with a smile, and she exited. She sauntered out, and I couldn’t help myself as I sat there and stared.

Some women had walks that were made for watching. Mrs. Langley was definitely one of them. Brunette, sporting a red-lipstick lined pout, the woman who had just placed a high heel out onto the greyed sidewalk had a switch in her hips that was fit for a model. I assumed she had been one.

Tall, thin, t**s that sat nearly to her chin, she was all style and sophistication in a navy-colored backless number. She was “the woman of the hour,” the reason I’d skipped dinner with Rebecca.

And she was my assignment.

A recipe for disaster… or success, depending on how you looked at it. I was looking at her. And all I saw were dollar signs. Now I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. And there he was. Right on time. The second part of my assignment.

The husband.

He pulled up in a Mercedes Benz just as shiny and black as the wife’s town car. The way men of his age, caliber and wealth were apt to do. And so I watched him. I honed in on him as he, the exalted doctor, kissed the beautiful brunette on her powdered cheek. He was just as sophisticated as she was in his finely pinstriped suit, and when she took his arm to head inside, they seemed the perfect couple.

They would be the perfect couple… if they were the ones actually married to one another.

As I already knew by the time I arrived there that night, Mrs. Doctor Harrison was at home with the kids. And the doctor? Well, he was the dutiful husband. The problem was… he was being the dutiful husband to someone else’s wife. The two of them walked inside the open-windowed restaurant, and I grabbed the black bag that I had stuffed into the center console of my car. I slowly shook the contents out into my lap.

“We do it now?” Jeff asked from the passenger seat.

“No. Not right now.”

“But it’s the perfect…”

“No. Not right now,” I barked.

My associate sighed. “Look, Jax, I’ve been working for you now about what… two years?”

“Two months.”

“Whatever. The point is… when are you going to give me the secrets, huh? When are you going to let me in on exactly how you do what it is that you do?”

“I’m letting you in right now, Jeff. This is a training exercise. Training. You’re lucky I’ve taken you on a real assignment. If this were two years ago, I’d have you doing a computer simulation. Now, you’re the trainee. So, shut the f**k up and get trained, Rookie, alright?”

“Sure. Fine. Shut the f**k up. Got it.”

“Good.”

Jeff sat back, his long brown hair shifting above his collar. I counted to ten before he started speaking again.

“I mean, think about it,” he started back up again. “We’ve got all we need. They’re right there. We could just finish the job.”

“We don’t finish jobs at this agency, Jeff. We finesse them. We wait until the marks are settled, for the right moment to strike and until then, we watch. We have the patience of the f*****g Dalai Lama and when the time is right, we strike. We wait for perfection before we go in for the kill.”

“Wow.” He raised an eyebrow. “How many more clichés do you think you could fit into that little speech?”

I didn’t blink. “Eleven more. That’s what the Bureau once dictated.”

I glanced out of my car window, glaring into the restaurant as the handsome couple was seated. They managed to snag a coveted window table, and I thanked the Gods of poverty and desperation that they did.

God, I needed that open kill shot. But with Jeff on my neck, breathing hard as he started to huff beside me, my patience was getting thinner and thinner.

This couple was going to be my “bread and butter,” and so I reined it in. I could feel something dark harden in me as I stared unwaveringly through the shiny restaurant glass.

I felt another huff. “How long are we going to sit here and watch Doctor Wandering d**k?”

“As long as it takes.”

“Uh huh. And when Doctor Ding-a-Ling comes out?”

“We’ll follow him.”

“Right. Welp...” He shifted in his seat. “If it’s any consolation, once we’re done with him, you might actually have a shot with the doctor’s wife. That woman was built by God to be the star of all of my wet dreams, but you seem to be the only man she really wants.”

“What she wants is her husband,” I pointed out slowly. “What she’ll settle for…is me. Well, f*****g me, at least, and there is a difference.”

“Yeah, the difference is that you get the best of both worlds. All the hot get-back-at-my-husband banging with that Anna Nicole Smith look-a-like… and none of the strings or kids attached. You lucky bastard.”

I watched Doctor Harrison feed the woman sitting across from him. The sophisticated Mrs. Langley. Despite his infidelity, he seemed so happy. I knew by tomorrow that it would all be over. Not that any romance could really last. Mrs. Harrison would soon attest to that.

And hell, she was beautiful. Scratch that. Mrs. Harrison was as much of a knockout as the mistress. Mid-thirties. Beautiful blonde hair with eyes the color of a September forest. It wasn’t that I couldn’t have the… What the hell did Jeff call it? The “Hot-get-back-at-my-husband banging” with Mrs. Harrison. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. I’d just convinced myself that she was missing something.

In fact… for the last eight weeks, I’d convinced myself that they all were missing something.

When I took this case, I was ready to hear Veronica Harrison’s testimony. I was ready to hear about her c**k-meandering husband and how we’d pin his favorite appendage to the wall. What I wasn’t ready for were the first words that came out of her pouty, lipstick-stained, full mouth when she first stepped into my office on that hot afternoon.

“You like to be on top?”

Well, hello. Good afternoon. How are you, Mrs. Harrison?

The internal prep work I’d been performing in my head came to a close, and at that time, I opened my mouth, but none of the things I had rehearsed would come out. She was a right-to-the chase type of chick, and, f**k, this woman had learned how to ruffle feathers. She had ruffled mine already, and that wasn’t exactly easy. I’d seen and done it all. The only thing I wasn’t doing was her… and Jeff was reminding me of it every chance he got. Reminding myself of tonight’s little libido problem, I folded my hands across my steering wheel, contemplating things I probably shouldn’t…

All the women that’d floated in and out of my agency. All the women that flirted with me, flashing the “f**k-me” eyes when I caught them looking. They were missing something, alright… but whatever the f**k it was, I’d be damned if I admitted it to myself. I focused harder on the restaurant window.

“So what’s Doctor Dildo doing now?” Jeff piped up.

“f*****g Mrs. Langley against the window.” Jeff looked quickly over my shoulder. “Whaddya think, schoolboy? It’s a restaurant.”

He shrugged. “You never know. If he was, we could bust him right here. Right now.”

“I’m not busting anything right now.”

My phone buzzed, an incoming e-mail pinging my iPhone app. I checked it, turning it face down when it wasn’t what I expected. Spam. As usual. Not anything like the other interesting e-mails I’d been receiving nowadays. Or rather… the interesting e-mails I’d been ignoring… I tried my best to push those out of my mind and concentrate on the mission at hand. Jeff raised his eyebrows.

“Mrs. Harrison, huh?” he guessed prematurely. “You should take a page out of the doctor’s book. He’s definitely going to be doing some ‘busting’ later on tonight.” He nudged me. “As should you, while he’s away.”

I looked over, hardening my stare at Jeff as he squirmed enthusiastically. “You were neglected as a child, weren’t you?”

He opened his mouth to answer, and as soon as he did, his eyes widened over my shoulder. He pointed wordlessly out my window, and when I turned to look, my eyes widened just the same.

A third person, dark-haired and serious, was joining them at the table. Like the other guests, he was well-groomed. He was sharp.

He was Mr. Langley, our beautiful mistress’s corporate attorney husband. My heart started beating hard and if I listened close enough, I could probably even hear Jeff’s. I was shocked when he didn’t press his face against my window to look into the restaurant. Me? I didn’t move a muscle.

I grabbed one of the items I’d dumped in my lap and took a deep breath. I rolled up my shirtsleeves. I unbuttoned my collar. I remained calm while everything inside of me was going wild.

Hell yes. I showed no reaction besides blinking. It was my lucky f*****g night. And no sooner had I had the thought did my lucky trio start signaling for the check. I sat up straighter and gripped the gearshift so hard my fingers started to prickle. They walked out, all “buddied up,” practically hand-in-f*****g-hand, and my narrowed eyes followed. The jokes from Jeff had stopped. All time had stopped. And the clench in my jaw had started to pulse.

Here we f*****g go.

I put my car in drive. The second they hit the restaurant door, I took my foot off the brake. I motioned across the seat to Jeff.

“Want a crash course, kid?” I growled. “Buckle your seat belt. Your on-the-job training just got expedited.”

After a quick valet ticket exchange, the doctor’s Benz pulled off with Mrs. Langley riding shotgun and the Mister hopping in the back. I didn’t wait. As soon as I heard the click of the belt to my right, I took off, peeling away from the sidewalk as the blackened Benz blended into a busy New York City street.

A blur of taxicab yellow and taillight red danced in my periphery as I sped through the avenues, one hand on the wheel, the other on the throttle. The humidity from the Hudson reached into the recesses of my midnight black Audi, choking the air, dampening it with a death-grip. Closing my windows, I closed in on the doctor, hovering just a few vehicles back from his own as I lay in wait. Idling at every stoplight. Nearing around every corner.

The air conditioning now humming, my frayed nerves thrumming, I followed the progression of the three darkened heads in Doctor Harrison’s vehicle. Until one of them disappeared. And I nearly lost my s**t. I knew what was happening before Jeff could even speak.

“What the…?” he asked quietly. “Where’d she go?”

I didn’t answer. It didn’t matter. All that mattered… was that I take the shot. I pulled in beside their car. I reached into my lap and closed my finger around the black hardened plastic. I lifted it, and as soon as I did, the silver haired ophthalmologist threw back his head… and the head of the “disappeared” Mrs. Langley suddenly emerged.

From between his legs.

Her brown, lush curls were rhythmically moving up and down in front of the steering wheel of the Benz as Doctor Double-Dip’s eyes practically flitted.

Here it was. My chance. I motioned towards Jeff without hesitation.

“Take the wheel,” I commanded.

“What?”

“Just take it!” I rumbled.

He reached over the middle partition, closing his left fist around the edge of my black steering wheel. My Audi jerked briefly, righting itself before it could arouse any suspicion. Not that the car to our left would have noticed.

The doctor driver was getting blown into oblivion as his blower’s husband sat calmly in the back. Watching, it seemed. We all were.

I steadied the black object in my hands, taking aim. Everything around me faded but my target. I was the practiced maestro, hushing the humming orchestra with his hands. Quieting my body. Silencing the world. It was a trait I’d practiced for a long f*****g time. I let go of an even breath and prepared to shoot.

And just then, the blaring of a horn sliced through my psyche, obliterating my self-imagined solitude into tattered pieces while a chorus of “Oh s**t!” and sounds of crushed metal quickly followed.

The last thing I saw before my Audi came to rest was the taillights of a banana-colored taxi as we came crashing into its bumper. My window, now open for the shot, had sucked the object from my hands, sending it smashing into the street. My high-priced black camera was annihilated upon impact.

And the black Benz continued to roll, carrying its cargo of blowing passengers and spectators as my own flattened tires proceeded to do the same. Deflated—literally, I stared seethingly at Jeff and the scene before me, ignoring the passionate cries of the now bumper-less cabbie.

I felt rear-ended—screwed up the ass, instead of him. Doctor Drive-and-f**k was gone… and a hundred thousand dollars of commission I couldn’t afford to lose out on just went flying down the densely packed boulevard.

I exited the car slowly, disbelieving, my black shoes crunching underneath as I walked across a trail of glass and pieces of tonight’s failure. Jeff knew he f****d up; he was so embarrassed he could barely look at me. And in the midst of all the madness, amongst the chaos and the cocksucking, as I watched the doctor drive away, I felt the silent caress of eyes at my back. Felt that familiar prickle that comes from being watched.

Maybe I was losing it. It had been a long night. And much like the orally sexed physician… I was totally and utterly f****d.