Chapter 2

Sandy handed me a tape cartridge. I put it in the deck and watched Mel, our little next door weasel getting it on with a voluptuous blonde in the middle of his living room. They talked for awhile, typical escort conversation, trying to loosen up the John. After a long and sensuous lap dance with him staying in his wheelchair, she sucked his cock. Leading her into his bedroom, he pulled himself onto his bed, not letting his fake paralyzed legs help. Then she straddled him, but he obviously wasn't hard enough, so she sucked his dick some more. Personally, I would have turned her around for some sixty-nine action. By and large, escorts have the cleanest pussies in the universe. But this guy barely even touched her breasts. When he did, he must have been too strong because she pushed him away.

"Gently," the escort said, but Mel decided to leave them alone.

"Hop on, baby," he said. What a smooth talker.

She obeyed and proceeded to ride him for a good ten minutes. Obviously tiring, she began moaning and telling him what a fine cock he had. She reached back and fondled his balls. Finally he let loose his cum.

"There," said Sandy, excited.

"What?" I asked.

She rewound the tape and played his climax in slow motion. Then I saw it. He lifted his ass using his legs when he climaxed.

"It's not enough," I said.

Sandy agreed. "But we could make him do that for enough time and height to prove he's faking."

The plan was hatched. We'd get Detective Nakamoto, Sandy's occasional lover to bring up his phone records (the two had chilled out a lot at this point in their history, Sandy sensing he was getting a little too fond of her) to find out what escort service he called. We'd plant an escort. Of course it had to be someone we could trust. I knew the perfect woman.

Georgina or George as everyone called her (except her Johns, who knew her as Mona) was one of the cutest women, and the sexiest woman I have ever known. She and Micah and I had been best friends growing up. We called ourselves the Trio. Both Micah and I towered over her, but we rarely noticed. She had such a huge personality. More often than not she instigated our most daring escapades. A mischievous black haired little pixie when we were kids, she stayed that way throughout her life. She was also a nymphomaniac.

To slate her inexhaustible lust, she had become an escort. She started in the business young, barely fifteen when she had her first customer. A junior in our high school from the richest family in the neighborhood, he was nervous as a rabbit around girls. He sported a pimply faced and a chubby body which didn't help. But the guy was horny as a rabbit too, even more than the usual 16 year old. The guy stared at the pretty girls in school relentlessly, and you could see his cock rising. I mean we're talking creepy here.

Both Micah and George lived on the other side of the tracks so to speak. In fact they lived next door to each other. George liked the way the other half lived. She loved hanging out in my big and luxurious house. She appreciated what money could bring, including the artwork and fine fabrics and furniture and cars and, well you get the idea. She wanted money and she wanted sex.

At first the idea troubled me. You see, she had been one of Charles Russell Boyle's sex toys. That pig, who unfortunately was a friend of my father's, liked to have sex with male and female children. He had riches enough to get away with it. I figured the pedophile had fucked her head up for life. But actually, except for the nymphomania, she came out of the horror pretty together.

Micah however didn't. He too, as beautiful a boy as George was cute and sexy, became ensnared in Charles' trap. He in fact lasted longer than any of the other boys, having a delayed puberty and being particularly attractive. When Charles had enough of him, Micah acted like a zombie. He walked through life without emotion or awareness. The kid was vacant. Every once in awhile he'd snap out of it with a worse result. He became a criminal, or, as they say more accurately in England, a villain. He would suddenly be inordinately charming, but it was a vicious sort of charm that would grow in viciousness until he became violent. He had been arrested for attempted murder when he cut a man's cheek with a box cutter, nearly slashing off a hunk of flesh. In one of his lucid moments, he told me he missed. He aimed for the eyes.

I blamed myself, and never really got over the guilt, for introducing them to Charles the monster. My dad's friend and in fact my friend, he never tried anything sexual with me. But if they hadn't known me, they may never have met their tormentor.

This seems like a long digression, but in fact it has more to do with the case at the center of the story than anything written before. The surveillance and the Rogers family have been my long way to get to George and Micah.

As I said a few paragraphs back, George's first client was the pimply faced rich kid. When George told me of her plan to fuck the kid for money, I tried to argue against it. The kid was ugly and creepy and probably smelled bad. It just didn't seem worth it.

"Nah," said my cute, pixie best friend, "he doesn't smell bad. I'm pretty sensitive about body odor, so I sniffed him just to be sure. I kind of like his smell. Kind of spermy, but in a good way. His odor actually turns me on."

"You're crazy," I said, shaking my head.

"Maybe, but what's fun about being sane all the time?"

I couldn't argue with her there. The crazy girl had led me on some unforgettable adventures.

In fact I couldn't argue with her at all. I looked into her eyes and saw the excitement. Not only was she determined to go through with her plans, they turned her on.

"Besides, he looks like he's got a nice big cock," she concluded, licking her lips.

She became the first girl many of the nerds at my school ever had. She kept it discrete, telling her young Johns that if they ever said a word about what she did, they'd never touch her again.

She also helped me get sex. We pretended to go steady which made the more competitive girls notice me. I had a couple girlfriends through our misinterpreted association. But as far as the two of us having sex, it hadn't happened. We both knew sex would end our friendship.

By seventeen she had graduated to adult clientele. Because of the underage issue and the statutory rape issue she never revealed her age and selected men carefully.

She had also augmented her body, having accumulated enough money to take a trip to LA and get the best boob job she could afford. She went from a b to a d cup. They made her even sexier. If she had been my girl, I would have complained. Not only am I not a fan of fake boobs, but I always felt a handful was enough. But, like I said, it made her sexier. And she told me it made her nipples more sensitive.

Because of her height, barely breaking 5 feet, she may not have been considered the best escort in town, but she excelled at making her clients happy. She charged high prices, but would negotiate down if she sensed the guy could only afford a certain amount. After all, she was in it for the sex too.

She also reserved the right to refuse service. If the guy smelled bad, she turned around and ran. And if the guy got abusive, she'd cut him off. She could have made a lot more money if she involved herself with the kinkiest rich guys, but she had her fill of that at way too young of an age. She did enjoy being the mistress for S/M, and performed the role exceptionally well if you believed her self-appraisal (which I did).

She tried working for an agency, but the whole pimp/protector bit, though understandable in her dangerous profession, turned her off. She needed independence. She studied martial arts including weapons training ever since getting out of Charles' clutches and could escape almost any situation.

On her eighteenth birthday, she decided on a symbolic gesture. Micah and I met her at our secret childhood hideout. The first time we contemplated entering the haunted house, a large white rundown clapboard house just off King, we were seven. Instead of heading home, we jumped on a bus and headed north. George as usual led the way. She wouldn't tell us where we headed until we stood in front of the building.

But she prepared the moment by telling us a story about a family brutally slaughtered by various means: shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, and hung. It was a mystery. At first no one knew for sure who did it. The father was abusive. The mother was alcoholic and cheating on her husband. One of the daughters was a junkie while the other was a goody two shoes. The son was difficult and possibly congenitally retarded. The father, a low level mafia type, or the junkie daughter looked to be a source of some kind of revenge. But the son was the only survivor. He was found naked hanging when the gunshots had alerted neighbors and the cops arrived before the young man choked to death. A couple weeks into the investigation, the boy's blood splattered clothes were discovered stashed under a base board. The kid ended up being diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic and was put away for life.

We arrived at the house, our seven year old minds scared to death by the story our little devil George had just finished. Calling our masculinity and our guts into question, she of course lured us in. We wandered through the house looking for telltale evidence of the past. The place was eerie. But maybe because we explored every nook and cranny and had gotten used to the presence of the violently murdered former occupants through flashes of cold air and shadows in our peripheral vision, we slowly discovered our courage.

We used the place as an occasional clubhouse. Except for a rectangle of foam rubber and a bamboo mat we smuggled in, the place remained as bare as we originally found it. When we got older, we would smoke pot and drink there, getting me wasted enough to start seeing the ghosts and getting scared. George loved when that happened. She'd fall on her face laughing at my chicken nature.

By 18, Micah was a mess. He had been released from the psycho ward a few months before. George spent time with him trying to get through. She made some progress. She told me she worked to get him in a good state of mind for the celebration. I arrived bearing champagne and pot. Micah had brought a deformed clay ashtray he had made at a day camp we had all attended early in our friendship. He had also brought a hammer.

We got stoned and mellow. We reminisced about our times together as kids. We shared our love for each other. We laughed. The experience gave me the kind of nostalgic feeling that made my eyes glisten.

"Okay enough!" said Micah abruptly. Both George and I stiffened. Micah placed the ugly ashtray in the center of the triangle we had formed with our bodies. "Enough of this childhood shit. We are children no more. The past is dead, as dead as this house." He raised the hammer over his head and smashed it down on the ashtray. The kiln hardened clay shattered, spraying pieces bouncing off of us. "All that's left is slivers, tiny jagged pieces, never as one again, only little moments, different sizes, different textures, broken, not whole, unwholesome, unholy."

After a few moments of Micah looking down, his head bent parallel to the floor; he raised his head and smiled. George and I laughed and applauded. His smile expanded. "Any more champagne?" he asked. I lifted the bottle and shook it. Empty. "Any more pot?"

"Sorry man, all out," I said.

He jumped up and grabbed the heavy champagne bottle by the neck. He waved it around his head. "Fucking junkie whore! Fucking child abuser!" he screamed at the top of his lungs. "Fucking goody-two-shoes! Fucking Tramp!" The bottle endangered my head. Being short became an advantage for George, but Micah started to steer it down towards her, sweeping even closer to my skull. "I'm going to kill you motherfuckers! I'm going to bash you right out of my brains!"

I could feel the wind created by the fast moving bottle. George had had enough. She tackled Micah, putting him face down with the hand holding the bottle driven painfully behind his back and up towards his shoulder. She pressed a point on his elbow. The bottle fell from his hands.

"Micah, Micah, baby," said George quietly. "Listen to me baby. I love you. Joe loves you. Say it Joe."

"I love you Micah. George loves you. You are our friend. Listen Micah. You're Micah, right? You're the best friend I ever had. You're good. You're sweet. You're real."

"Come back to us Micah," said George. "Come back. You're here. You're with us." She carefully released him and guided him onto his back. He began to bring his knees up to get into a fetal position. George wouldn't let him. "Don't go away from us. Be with us. Be with your friends Micah. Be with Joe."

"Hey Micah. Be with us. Be with George. We love you. We need you. Come back."

We went silent, seeing his body relax. His eyes opened.

"Hey guys," he said with a shy, Micah style smile.

"Hey Micah," I said. "Want to sit up?"

"I'm good," he said. "What was the name of that psycho kid anyway?"

"Jason or Michael," said George.

"Like in Halloween and Friday the Thirteenth," said Micah.

"You got it."

"You mean you made the whole thing up?" I asked.

"It could have happened," replied the pixie.

"Something bad happened here," I said.

"Yeah," said Micah.

"Yeah," said George.

Four years after that rather disturbing birthday celebration (This case actually occurred about three years after the last one I described. It was 1984, I was a seasoned PI, but hadn't had any especially interesting cases between the last one and this one. I was 22 years old and George was soon to be.) I invited George over to the Rogers house.

I worked in the spy room/bedroom when the doorbell rang. Bert answered the door being the designated PI watcher for the day. By the time George arrived in the room, I could see her sexy charm had worked its magic on Mr. Rogers. Like Diana had been with Sandy, Bert was with George. He couldn't take his eyes off her. What with her cute elfin face, her overstuffed, tight, perfectly tailored white blouse, her knee length black skirt which softly described her perfect ass, her short but lithe and slim legs and her magnanimous attitude, who could resist? George's smiled particularly infectiously that day. Was she taken by the sweet middle-aged man? Or should I say the sweet, horny, oversexed middle-aged man? I let them have a brief staring contest before clearing my throat.

"Bert, would you mind if George and I talked for a bit?" I asked. The guy couldn't speak. He nodded and left, closing the door behind him.

"Hi, babe," said George in her mellifluous, cigarette tainted voice, lower and sexier and more intelligent than one might guess would come out of such a little stone cold fox.

"Great to see you," I said. We hadn't seen each other for over a year. That year had definitely defined all her best features, the last vestiges of baby fat evaporating, leaving a woman not just cute and sexy, but beautiful.

"You too," she said, giving me a kiss on my cheek. "You should come over some evening. I've been studying. I make a mean vegetarian mousaka." She was a very careful eater and a vegan.

"You'll have to invite Micah," I said, and regretted it immediately. Her infectious smile vanished. "I take it Micah isn't doing well."

She shook her head, her soft black short bobbed hair flowing back and forth. "No. I don't know. I haven't heard from him in over a month."

"That's unusual?"

"We talk every other day," explained George. "I bring him food at least once a week. It's the reason I've been grooming my cooking skills. Lord knows cooking for one isn't very appealing. I love the way he appreciates my food. He even wrote me a funny poem parodying a clichéd food review. He's been writing a lot, and except for the truly scary, violent poems, they warm my heart with their brilliance. I told him I'd get him published making him squirm and claim unworthiness, but I could see in those deep dark beautiful hurt eyes that he likes the idea."

"I guess I haven't been much of a friend," I said. I hadn't seen Micah more than twice in the four years since the infamous birthday party. I knew he liked writing poetry and had written some pretty cool stuff even when barely a teenager, but had no idea about his continued dedication. He had become a friend once removed. I had gotten reports on his status from George over the years and presumed she let him know how I was doing.

I should mention one of the few times that Micah and I had hung out, because it is relevant to the events at the heart of this case (Not the Mel Jacobi surveillance case, but the one in which Micah is a featured player. I'll get there soon, don't worry.). About two years before, a late spring evening in 1982, Micah invited me to a festival of video shorts at the University of Hawaii. I brought along Deidre, who enjoyed artsy stuff, the more challenging and avant garde the better. It was a rare event in Hawaii when any avant garde art could be experienced, and the few encounters we had with such work proved to be stimulating. Deidre would not condescend to my lack of sophistication, but somehow opened me up. These rare epiphanies made me feel like I wasn't such a dumb guy, and gave me some sense of why the most beautiful woman and one of the most brilliant people I have ever known shared my life. Besides the sex, I mean.

Anyway, Deidre and I came to this small classroom, soon joined by George. Micah and Juan Magrille were there already. I knew Juan from my visits to Charlie's mansion. He had been Charlie's manservant for a couple years, and before that (like all Charlie's house workers) one of Charlie's young victims.