I’m a Private Investigator. I’ve even got a license to prove it. I don’t have a permit to carry a gun, but I don’t need one anyway. Divorce is my business, or, to put it more accurately, adultery. Wives come to me complaining that their husbands are lying, cheating pussy hounds and I do my best to catch them in the act.
When I started out I’d follow these men around, often for weeks. Some had regular girlfriends. These were the easy ones. I could pick up enough evidence within a few days to make sure the wife got a damn good settlement. Usually, proof like this would make the husband’s lawyer get worried and tell his client to make an agreement before going to court. This made everybody happy.
The wife would be independently wealthy. I would pick up a nice bonus. The husband would usually end up marrying the girl he’d been seeing on the side. When this happened I would always give my card to the girlfriend and tell her, ‘Once a cheater, always a cheater.’ More often than not the girl would throw me out angrily, but she always kept the card, and there’s been quite a few occasions when they’ve become clients themselves a few years down the line.
Trouble was, not all my clients had husbands this easy to catch out. A lot of men looking for a bit of strange don’t want to feed from the same trough every week. They’ve already got a wife at home, what do they need a regular girlfriend for? These guys want a different girl every week, or at least as often as they can get it. They go to singles bars or check out Lonely Hearts ads in the Classifieds or pick up whores from the street. There’s always some way to get laid if you’ve got the money.
Now, guys who went down this road had always been a pain in the ass for me. I could follow them for weeks, knowing that they were having one-night stands all over town. Getting proof of it that would be admissible in court was another matter. To tell the truth, I was getting mighty sick of it. I was getting paid by the day, sure, but the big bucks came in when I actually got hold of the evidence. Spending weeks on the same case was doing nothing good for my bank balance. Even my wife Jennifer was starting to complain about the bills and usually she’s sweet as a nut about that kind of thing.
Around this time I was following a guy that I knew was fucking whores at least twice a week, but I could never manage to get him caught on camera. I was getting really fed up with it, so the day I saw him enter a brothel, I actually followed him in, armed with my camera. I kicked down two or three bedroom doors until I found him with his pants down, a teenage whore kneeling before him, sucking his cock. I took the picture and turned to run the hell out of there only to smack bang into a 250-pound gorilla that must have been the girl’s pimp or minder or something.
The next thing I remember was lying in the street, my camera at my side, smashed to bits. Of course the philandering husband got the hell out of the whorehouse as soon as he saw me take the photo, leaving me with no evidence and with more than just my ego bruised. I spent the next week licking my wounds and trying to get the man’s wife to pay me for the time I had spent following him. The husband went straight home, broke down and confessed all, saying he was a sex addict. Now they’re reconciled, he’s in rehab and she won’t pay me a cent.
About a week later I was sitting down at home with my wife, trying to unwind with a large glass of Scotch. Jennifer kept making sad, puppy dog eyes at me as if I was brooding about nothing. She knew what was on my mind, but she’s never been one to let things bother her. That was my domain. I heard the telephone and just let it ring and ring. If it was a client I didn’t want to know. I had had enough. Eventually Jennifer walked over and picked it up.
“Oh hi, Leo,” she said gaily. “How’s tricks?”
Leo Dunski. That was all I needed. He’s a small time thief and general layabout, but he has a lot of connections. If you want something, to get high, to get laid, whatever, he’ll put you in touch with the right person. He was an old friend of mine and it was down to him that I met Jennifer, for which I’ll always be grateful. My wife’s sister had got herself into some trouble with her boyfriend and Leo introduced her to me. Nevertheless, I wasn’t in the mood to talk with him.
“Yeah, that’d be great,” continued Jennifer. “Tony’s just sitting here moping. Where are you?”
I waved my hand at her, signalling that I didn’t want to see him or speak to him.
“Yeah. I’ll drag him over there,” she said, grinning at me. “He’s acting like a grouchy old bear and needs a good kick up the ass.”
When she had put the phone down she laughed at the look of resignation on my face.
“Where we going?” I asked.
“The Kokomo.”
“Ah shit. Not that old dive. Why’d he want to meet us there?”
“Come on, it’s not that bad.”
“Oh well. You would say that.”
Before we were married Jenny had worked there as a waitress. It was a pretty sleazy joint, habituated by drug dealers, whores and pimps, but Jenny knew how to handle herself. She could fit in pretty much anywhere. One time she even entered the wet T-shirt contest that they held there once a week, and she won it by a country mile. A few of the regulars there still remembered her turn and often used to ask her for a repeat performance. She always said no, but I got the feeling that the attention kind of pleased her.
“I could always go on my own,” she said. “Maybe make a couple of bucks. Shake my thing.”
“The contest ain’t until tomorrow night.”
“Who said anything about the contest?”
“Very funny,” I said as I got up from the sofa and grabbed my coat.
“Hey, hey. Hold your horses. Give me a minute, okay?”
I stood around for five minutes waiting for Jenny to get changed. I expected her to take even longer, but she surprised me, not only because she was quick, but also the way she looked. She was wearing a short, low cut summer dress, with high-heeled sandals. The colour of the dress almost matched her long sandy hair. Her firm, high breasts threatened to spill out over the top and the hem only just covered her sexy ass. She looked incredible. My spirits soared instantly. My career might not be going so well, but at least I had a knockout wife.
“You like?” she asked, seeing my lustful gaze.
“Me like. Me want to stay home and fuck like bunnies.”
“Uh-uh, Mr Detective. Time for that when we get home.”
It was a ten-minute walk from our apartment to Kokomo’s. As soon as we walked in the door, Leo saw us from his seat at the bar and headed for an empty booth to wait for us.
“The hell happened to you?” he asked when he saw me limping over towards him. “You get hit by a truck or what?”
“Something like that,” I said, feeling my bruised temple.
“Hi Leo,” Jenny said. “It’s good to see you.”
“Hey, you’re looking foxy tonight,” he replied as he stood up to kiss her on the cheek. “You know, Old Jimmy’s here, over at the bar. I just told him you were coming.”
“Is he? Damn. I haven’t seen him in years. I’m just going to go over and say hello.”
Old Jimmy used to own the place. He was her first employer and she saw him as a kind of surrogate father.
“So,” Leo said when we were alone, as he reached out to feel the bumps on my head. “Somebody’s husband not appreciate your camerawork or what?”
I told him what happened and he laughed. He had some sense of humour.
“Sorry Tony, but, Jesus, it’s your own fault. Why’d you waste your time like that? What you need is a new employee.”
“Oh, like you, I suppose. Someone who can take care of guys built like a brick shithouse.”
“No man. That ain’t what I mean. What you need is a woman.”
“What? You think guys like that won’t harm a lady, is that it? Because if…”
“Hey. Just listen to me. All right? Look, you go round following these guys, waiting ‘til they pick up some whore or some easy lady in a bar or whatever, right? Then you follow them and sneak up to a window or break in and try to get a photo, right?”
“Yeah, where are you going with this?”
“Wouldn’t it be easier if you knew just where they’d be going to do the business beforehand, so you had it all set up. Have a hidden camera, that kind of thing.”
“Damn. You’re right. Why didn’t I think of that before?” my voice dripped with sarcasm. “So I should get some lady who’s a fucking clairvoyant to tell me the guy’s future, yeah? Where he’s going, who he’s gonna meet, where they’re gonna fuck each other’s brains out.”
“Yeah, that’s right. That’s just what I was gonna say, you know-it-all prick.”
“Leo…”
“Shit. You like this with Jenny? Always interrupting all the time? Listen to me. What you do is get a girl who’s willing to fuck the guy, any guy. Hell, she don’t even have to fuck him, she just has to get in bed with him so’s you can get the photo. You set the guy up, is all. Hire some tasty dish who’ll act as bait.”
I was stunned into silence for a few moments. This was actually a good idea. About the first good idea Leo had ever had in his life. Okay, maybe it was a little bit sleazy, but what the hell, I was in a sleazy profession. Anyway, the cops did this sort of thing all the time to queers, so there was no reason for me to get on my high horse about it.
“I don’t know,” I said eventually. “If I kept using the same girl, people might catch on down at the court house, the lawyers, the judges…”
“I thought you told me these sort of cases are usually settled out of court.”
“Yeah, they are, but the lawyers…”
“Well, you just need the girl to change her appearance each time. Different hair colour, hair style, tattoos, whatever.”
“Okay, so I’d need someone who was always available at any time. They’d have to be willing to go to bed with a strange man they’d just met…”
“But they wouldn’t have to fuck him.”
“But they’d have to act like a whore or a slut anyway. All that, and a master of disguise as well. Where’m I gonna find a girl like that?”
“Ah,” Leo intoned with a wise air. “Today’s your lucky day.”
“So you just happen to know someone like that?”
“Rachel!” Leo shouted towards the bar. “Over here, honey.”
I looked over to see a gorgeous redhead ease herself off her bar stool and head towards us. I wolf-whistled silently as her hips swayed and her breasts jiggled as she walked over. She was about twenty-five years old, 5’5” in high heels, 120 pounds. A slim girl with big tits, just like my wife. It was a definite winning combination.
“Is this the guy?” Rachel faced me as she sat down beside Leo.
“Yep. Tony Vasco, this is Rachel Diaz. Rachel, Tony.”
We shook hands.
“What’s going on Leo?” I asked.
