Chapter 9

I knew I should be working on running down the leads in Raymond’s unfortunate demise despite my Uncle’s reluctance to stir things up.

It was like we had stepped on an ant-hill with all the Internal Affairs sleazebags poking their noses into the everyday happenings of operational policing.

I had to admit it was well within the realm of probability that Raymond’s death was linked to the investigation work he was doing for me on the Donnie Anderson case. Of course that narrowed down the list of suspects to only the people he had already contacted because my Uncle and I had kept it pretty much to ourselves because of the possibility there might be “dirty” cops involved.

Then again, I had my own suspicions of Raymond’s level of dirtiness and it might turn out that he was the victim of his own buddies shutting his mouth permanently because he knew too much to be allowed to talk to some wise-guy in the Internal Affairs unit.

Fortunately, my “Red” had a few days off from her job at the nursing home and I had promised her a trip up to Niagara Falls for sightseeing and not for any marital reasons. She had hinted we could turn it into an unofficial honeymoon but I managed to change the subject quickly because there is a big difference between being a bachelor at large and running home at night to the wife and kids changing the whole fabric of one’s existence.

At least it was good to get a break from the pressures of finding the bad guys and closing cases that demanded full attention.

The newspaper was filled with rank speculation about a high-up connected guy that was under lock and key in the tombs. He was a Brooklyn wise-guy and a “made” man, so it hard for me to wrap my head around his arrest in the first place because the shit was about stuff that had happened at least three prosecutors ago and was centered around extortion and arson cases that the insurance companies had written off a couple of decades ago.

Nothing about the criminal justice system surprised me any longer and I had a gut feeling that the guy was a problem to the mob for other reasons like maybe being a “rat” for the District Attorney and it was a stupid attempt to get him off the street and safe in a cell.

That really made me laugh to myself because I knew no prison was “safe” for many different reasons related to both the guards and the inmates that were all looking to earn a buck and with problems of their own worse than being incarcerated.

I took the car down to the impound pier to have it checked out for the travel up to the Canadian border. The older Italian guy had been around for years and he assured me it was ready to roll.

He had even replaced my worn rear tires with a couple of top-notch retreads and stuck a spare in the trunk with the equipment for changing a tire from a totaled out Chevy that some fool had slammed into the West Side Highway’s steel girders at a high rate of speed.

We were already past Albany, when I noticed in the rear-view mirror that the black sedan with the spotlight on the side was continuing to shadow us at a respectable distance.

Red was resting her eyes in the passenger seat and I didn’t see any reason to alert her to our unwelcome company. I was beginning to think it wasn’t such a good idea to go on a vacation with the unfinished business back in the city. We could take a break from it but it would still be waiting for us upon our return and to ignore it would be akin to courting disaster. I suspected it would be a disaster of a magnitude that would mean the very difference of life and death at the end of the road.

I figured that the guys tailing us were professionals from the way they were tailing us with the utmost caution. That was good news because it meant they would be unlikely to make any mistake or miscalculation by making a rash move that would result in further exposure of their motives or give us a clue as to their true agenda.

We made the mistake of dining in the motel restaurant because we were quite tired from the long drive and it was so convenient.

Actually, the food was quite good but we got caught up with a pair of honeymooners all starry-eyed and assuming we were identical to them in every regard.

Red was not amused by my reluctance to correct our new acquaintances on their assumption that we were also honeymooners and she kicked me under the table to impress on me her displeasure with my silence.

Much later that evening, all four of us were feeling no pain with both of the girls giggling and whispering behind our backs about how big us men were in the below the belt category. I knew I was in trouble as soon as Red shed her dress and started walking around the motel unit in her undies and daring the much shyer Jennifer to match her lack of modesty.

When I saw Jennifer’s better half with the appropriate moniker of Randy get hard just watching my Red bend over to lose her high heels, I was at first a bit pissed off but then I saw Jennifer peeling off her clothes and she got my full attention because her panties were the sheer see-thru type that revealed her black bush in all of its glory. I doubted the girl was more than nineteen years old because her nipples were absolutely pointed up at the fan in the middle of the room like sun-flowers seeking the light of day.

It was one of those rooms that had both a double sized bed and a sofa in a separate sitting room with a comfortable mattress inside.

The booze slowed me down a bit and I merely watched Randy lead my Red to the sofa and plant her backside in the middle of his lap rubbing the hardness between his legs all over her nicely curved cheeks like he was tasting a sample of feminine softness that was both new and ripe for plucking.

She looked at me and saw my eyes were glued to Jennifer’s pretty snatch still covered by her flimsy panties and her nipples that were free as little birds and begging to be rolled between my fingers and licked by my greedy tongue.