Pretenses (5 page)

“I GOT YOU NOW, BITCH!”

With lightning speed, I lifted my foot vertically and kicked him in the face, knocking him out cold. I turned around and looked down at the battered prisoner. Then I turned to the two-way mirror, and said, “Make sure you guys charge him with assaulting a federal agent.”

C
LAYTON
P
OCKETS
checked himself and Coco into the Washington Suites hotel in Alexandria. As soon as they entered the room, Coco kicked Clayton in the head with a spinning roundhouse kick, knocking him out. Before he fell, she caught him and lifted him onto her shoulders. She carried him to the bed and removed all of his clothing. Then she tied his hands and feet.

“Clayton. Clayton.” She tapped his cheek. “Wake up, sugar.”

Slowly, he regained consciousness. When he realized he was tied up, he struggled to free himself.

“What the hell are you doing?” he screamed.

“This is how I like it, sugar,” Coco said, cracking her gum. “Never been tied up before, huh?”

“No,” he said, calming down. “Why did you have to hit me?”

“Violence makes me horny, sugar,” she told him, staying in character. There was no reason to tell him anything before he pleasured her.

“I'm not a prude. All you had to do was ask.”

“You might have said no.” She smiled and cracked her gum a few more times. “Then I would have wasted my time. And I hate wasting my time. Don't you, Clayton? Like lots of talking when we could be doing it.”

Clayton smiled. “Hey, didn't you say something about acupuncture?”

“Yeah. You ready, sugar?”

“Will it hurt?”

“Only if I want it to,” she said jokingly, still cracking her gum, “and I don't want it to.”

She grabbed a black leather pouch from the nightstand and emptied the contents on his chest. Six vials tumbled out, each containing a long thin needle made of pure gold.

“What are you going to do with those?” he asked nervously. “And why so many?”

“There's only six, sugar.”

“Why six?”

“Because six is the number of man. What is a man without his manhood or his ability to reproduce? He ceases to exist. But these six needles, strategically placed, can make a man more virile than he was in his youth.”

“But…”

Coco put her fingers over his lips. “Shhhh, no more questions. Try to relax. You're gonna love this.” She rubbed her hands on his chest, searching for the right nerve. When she found it, she inserted the first needle. Then she put in four more.

“I don't feel anything.”

“You won't until I put this last one in right…here,” she said, inserting the final needle.

Suddenly, he felt a powerful erection emerge. “You feel something now?”

“Yeah. What did you do?”

“I increased the blood flow down there by a factor of ten. Can you feel how powerful the throbbing is?”

“Yes.”

“And it will stay like that until I remove the needle.” She smiled, pulling off her tennis shorts and panties. “You ready, sugar? This is going to be wild.”

T
HE
F
OUR
S
EASONS
lobby was empty when Kelly and I arrived. The clerk, probably a Georgetown student, was reading a biology book. I flashed my credentials and said, “I'm Special Agent Perry—FBI. This is Agent McPherson. I'm wondering if we could see the phone records for this number.”

He looked at the number I gave him. “This number doesn't belong to a specific room. The hotel has lots of numbers like that to accommodate the guests.”

“Well, can you print out a list of all the outgoing calls from your guests?”

“Sure, but what's this all about?”

At times like this, when we don't have a warrant, we could play hardball and still not get what we want. Or we could be nice and solicit his help as a patriot. I prefer the latter. The trick is not to lay it on too thick. One time I used the name of a popular president in an attempt to finesse a citizen and found out that he didn't like the guy. I've learned to keep it simple.

“All I can tell you is that this could be very important to a murder investigation.”

“Okay, no problem,” he said, eager to help. “It'll take a while though.” He hit a few buttons on his computer terminal and the printer started. Half an hour later, it stopped. “These are all the calls that went out yesterday.”

Kelly and I looked at each other, thinking this was going to take forever. But it was all we had to go on. We sat in Kelly's Stingray trying to decide
what would be the best way to tackle this in the least amount of time. I gave her half of the printout, and we started looking for a room from which someone had called the Taylor house. I noticed that the telephone logs were in numerical order by room. They were also logged in time increments. All we had to do was cross-reference the times we'd written down from the caller ID and cell phone.

“I think I got him,” I told Kelly after about a half-hour of fruitless searching. “Winston Keyes, room 961. He made four calls to the Taylors.”

We went back into the building and asked the clerk if Winston Keyes was still registered.

“No, I checked Mr. Keyes out late Wednesday night.”

“Damn!” I said. “Was he alone?”

“Yes.”

“Did he have any visitors?”

“That I don't know.”

“How did he pay for the room? Did he use a credit card?” I asked, hoping he had so we could track him when he used it again.

“Paid in cash.”

“We're going to need to see your security tapes,” Kelly said.

C
OMPLETELY SATISFIED
after two hours of nonstop, intense, mind-blowing sex, Coco, still impaled, finally got up. Clayton, lying in the sweat-soaked sheets, had lost track of how many orgasms he'd had, but he wasn't ready to stop.

“What's the matter?” he panted.

“I'm whipped, sugar.”

“Just one more,” he pleaded, like a crack addict in need of a hit.

“There is one more thing you can help me with, Clayton,” Coco said, suddenly serious and no longer speaking with a New York accent. “I need the name of the person who gave you the information on my client.”

“What?” He frowned. “What the hell is this? We had a deal!”

“You know, Clayton, acupuncture can cause great pleasure or great pain. It's up to you.”

“If I tell you, will you let me go?”

“Sorry, Clayton, no can do. But I promise I'll do it quickly. You won't feel a thing.”

Clayton could tell by the look in her eyes that she intended to kill him. He deduced that if the sex she provided was that sensitive and nonstop, the pain she could make him feel would equal the pleasure in intensity.

“Well, if I tell you, will you climb back on me? At least let me go blissfully.”

Coco laughed and adopted her New York accent again. “You know, sex would never have been the same after this anyway. The name first.
Otherwise, I'll have to ride you all night. And I just don't have that kinda time, sugar.”

“What's to prevent you from killing me as soon as I give you the name?”

“Nothing, sugar. Think about it. I could have tortured the information outta you, couldn'tve I? Instead, I gave you the fuck of your life. I think every man oughta experience this kind of sex at least once in his life.”

Although she was smiling, her eyes were cold. Clayton gave her the name of the communications tech and his address. Then Coco climbed on top of him as promised. She waited until he was at the pinnacle of pleasure, then grabbed a hunk of his hair and jerked to the right, snapping his neck. She wiped the room clean, took the sheets and tossed them in a maid's hamper as she left the room and entered an open elevator.

T
HE VIDEO TECH
put the security tape from the lobby of the Four Seasons into the FBI's sophisticated computer. We had to bring the desk clerk with us to identify Winston Keyes, promising him a special tour of FBI Headquarters. The Four Seasons' manager wasn't happy about it, but we needed the clerk.

As far as we knew, the clerk was the only person who could lead us to the killer. I was hoping this wasn't a waste of precious time. It seemed promising, but you never know about leads. I'd wasted lots of time following leads that led to dead ends before. Every law enforcement officer has. But I had a hunch we were on the right track.

The tape was time-date indexed. All we had to do was speed the tape up to the time when Winston Keyes had checked in. The tech froze the picture when the Four Seasons desk clerk identified Keyes, who was looking directly into the camera. The tech hit a couple of buttons, and voila, we had a picture of the man we hoped was our suspect. Keyes was a black man, wearing a chauffeur's uniform. I wondered if Judge Taylor was having an affair with him.

The tech inserted the tape of the floor Keyes was registered for and fast-forwarded. We got lucky again. An expensively dressed white woman was seen entering his suite. She obviously didn't want to be seen. She kept her head lowered, and she was wearing a wide-brimmed sunbonnet.

Either Keyes was having relations with her or he was her driver. Maybe
both. I've seen that sort of thing many times. Certainly, someone with more than a chauffeur's pay had to be paying the bill. The Four Seasons was a very expensive hotel. The suite he was staying in was a $5,500-a-night penthouse.

Again we fast-forwarded the tape. At 8:30, Judge Taylor went to the chauffeur's room. According to the time on the tape, the woman who had arrived earlier had been in there with Keyes for six hours. Now Taylor was there, too. Was there some kind of freaky sex going on? I wondered.

Then, unexpectedly, the clerk said, “This may be nothing, but I got a complaint from a guest in the next room about two women arguing. When I called the room, Mr. Keyes apologized and that was the end of it.”

Kelly and I looked at each other. We knew we were onto something. What it was, I didn't know yet. We fast-forwarded the tape again and saw Judge Taylor standing in the doorway. It appeared as if she and the other woman were having words. There was a lot of finger pointing from both women.

“Phoenix, what if this is just a guy who got caught screwing around with two wealthy women?” Kelly asked.

“I was wondering about that myself. I'm thinking, this is either the mother lode or this has been a serious waste of time.”

The clerk said, “Can I get that tour now, Agent Perry?”

“Sure.”

The tech volunteered to show him around. I think she found him attractive. I picked up the telephone logs from Keyes' room, wondering if he had made any other calls in addition to the four to the Taylors. According to the logs, he had made one more call that night. I picked up the nearest phone and punched in the number. A woman's voice informed me that I had reached the Capitol Hill Hyatt Regency. I hung up.

“Hmmmm,” I muttered.

“What?” Kelly asked.

“He called the Hyatt Regency right after the Judge left. It may be nothing, but let's check it out anyway. I'm going to take my own car, then go on home. I'm tired.”

C
OCO
N
IMBURU
went to the address that Clayton Pockets had given her. NSA communications tech Gordon Scott lived in a small one-bedroom apartment in Arlington. Using an electronic lock pick, she was able to enter the apartment as if she had the keys. She searched the well-kept premises, thinking this guy must be a real egghead. It was almost 7 p.m. He should be getting home soon, she thought.

Coco sat at the desk in the living room, turned on his Compaq computer, and looked through his files to see if he was a true nerd who brought his work home with him. There was nothing encrypted, nothing suspicious. He probably gave everything to Director Pockets, she deduced. With nothing else to do but wait, she played a few games of solitaire on the Compaq. After losing several games in a row, she was ready to assassinate the computer. She heard keys jangle, then enter the lock on the front door.

She reached for her silenced Makarov as she went toward the door. Gordon Scott walked in, oblivious to her presence. She hit him in the back of the head with the butt of the gun, and he crumpled to the floor. When he woke, he was nude and tied hand and foot to the bedpost with a gag in his mouth. Coco had gotten a chair from the kitchen table and an apple from the refrigerator. When he heard her take a bite, Gordon whipped his head toward her with terror in his eyes. His breathing became heavy, and his chest moved up and down rapidly. He was trying to say something, but the gag muffled his words.

“I know, I know.” Coco laughed. “You work hard all day and come home to a bitch like me. Worse than a wife, huh?”

She took a few more bites of the apple, looking into his eyes the entire time. “Ummm, this is so good. You really must tell me where you purchased these.”

Gordon frowned, confused as to what she wanted. It certainly couldn't be fruit that could be bought at any grocery store. He searched his mind, trying to figure out what he had done to deserve this. Coco finished the apple, eating the core and seeds as well. Then she wiped her mouth and hands on a paper towel and put it in her pocket.

“I'm an honest woman,” Coco began, “so I'm going to tell you the truth. You're going to die today.”

Gordon's eyes looked as if they were about to bulge out of his head. He struggled to free himself and appeared to be even more frightened than before.

“You wanna know what you did, right?” Coco asked, completely calm. “You wanna know why, right?”

He nodded as tears crept down his cheeks.

“Somehow, Clayton Pockets found out you were using your position as an NSA communications tech to gather information on people, didn't he?”