Lord!” sighed Elena as she shut the door behind her mother. “Don’t pay her any attention, Marat. She wants what’s best for us.”
“I can only imagine what would happen if she starts wanting what’s worst for us…”
Two hours later, by the light of the bedside lamp, Elena was sitting on the edge of her bed, applying nourishing lotion to her dry skin, bronzed from the two-week tan. Marat rolled up to her from behind and reached his hand under her nightgown.
“Argh! Watch your ice claws!” Elena tensed and slapped at the pushy man’s hand. “What happened with the pimp? Why couldn’t you locate him?”
Marat was used to the fact that Lena always talked about her work and was happy to talk business even in bed.
“Boris Manuylov wasn’t at the modeling agency, but we found out a lot about him.”
“Anything interesting?”
“He’s thirty-four. He used to play guitar in a popular rock band when he was twenty. Supposedly, he was really good. The band toured around the country and acted like real rockers – you know, drinking, groupies, orgies. Then one day, in one of the towns they were playing in, a crook burst into Manuylov’s room – Manuylov was in there with his girl. The crook did the wise thing. He didn’t kill anyone and didn’t even beat the boy up. Instead, he stuck Manuylov’s left hand between the door and the jamb and rocked the door back several times across his fingers.”
“That’s horrible!”
“As a result, they had to amputate his middle finger – the other ones are just mangled. That’s how Manuylov got the name Birdless. He’ll never play guitar again. It’s worth noting that all of this happened because of the girl.”
“Got it. Since that time he didn’t hold women in much esteem, so he became a pimp.”
“That’s it.”
Elena finished massaging the lotion into her legs and feet. Her hands moved up to her lower back.
“Want me to help?” Marat offered.
The woman lay down on her stomach. Marat happily rolled her nightgown up to her shoulders. His eyes sparkled.
“Why just look at you!”
“Don’t get distracted. Why didn’t you catch up with Manuylov at his apartment?”
“It was empty, but he won’t get very far. I know his type. He’s hiding out somewhere this very moment, drinking no doubt. He may try to go back home in the morning. We put a mark on the door and warned the beat cop. As soon as old Birdless turns up, the local cops will detain him. Then we’ll put the squeeze on him and get him to talk.”
“A mark? What kind of mark?”
“A thief’s mark. A piece of transparent plastic from a bottle. We wedged it into the door crack. Burglars use this trick to case apartments – to make sure the owners are out of town. We just adapted it for our own ends. If the mark falls out, then Manuylov came back. The beat cop will check it in the morning and call a patrol car.”
“Learning from the burglars.”
“They learn from us, we learn from them. Symbiosis.”
“That same beat cop knows very well that Boris Manuylov is a pimp. Why didn’t he arrest him earlier?”
“Female instinct is incorrigible.”
“What instinct?”
“To have men take care of them.”
“It’s the male instinct that’s incorrigible – hey there, the deal was you rub my back, not my butt. I already did that part, thank you very much.”
“You’re tanned all over, except here. And your skin is all soft…”
“What are your fingers doing? Oh you animal!”
Elena tried to slap him away, but Marat grabbed her arm and flipped the woman onto her back. Elena encountered a pair of clouded eyes which left no doubts about his intentions.
“Who’s a slave to his instincts now? You male anima – ”
She did not get a chance to finish her thought. Marat sealed her mouth with a long kiss. His fingers wandered along the most intimate parts of her body, encountering no resistance. Responding to his attention, the woman relaxed and at some point herself guided her lover between her legs.
With growing passion, Elena replied to the man’s thrusts. Her arousal grew. Suddenly she recalled the birth control pills that had fallen out of Katya Grebenkina’s purse. It was time for her to think about some birth control as well. It was so difficult to control Marat when he was unbridled like this. Or was it better to have some faith in God’s plan? What would her mother say if—
“Oh Marat,” the woman’s lips whispered, as a series of shuddering thrusts culminated in a deep burst of delight.
12
Dirty white letters and the silhouette of a cat with a raised tail glowed in the red storefront. Alex Bayukin checked the tattered note in his hand: Wild Kitties, a strip club. He was at the right place.
Following his severe concussion in combat, Alex did not put much stock in his memory. He had gotten the strip club’s address – where the pimp might be – from the floozies at the modeling agency. Initially, the proud little bitches had refused to tell him anything. But their silence lasted exactly up until the moment that the bimbos realized who was more of a threat to them – the runaway pimp or the unwanted guest with the crazed look in his eyes.
While they were at it, the long-legged fillies also provided a nice description of Birdless Boris and even threw in an image of his insolent mug on one of their cell phones. It wouldn’t be hard to spot a goon like him: Birdless, who was of average height and a little older than thirty, sported a shoulder-length rocker’s mane and wore a guitar-shaped pendant around his neck. For clothes, he seemed to prefer dress-shirts with unbuttoned collars, vests, and leather jackets adorned with multiple zippers. The greatest distinguishing mark, however, was the absent middle finger on his left hand.
A 240 lbs. mountain of a bouncer towered before the entrance to the strip club. Alex could barely keep himself from kicking the man in the apex of his wide stance. For his part, the bouncer looked askance at the Alex’s dirty shoes and standard-issue pilot’s jacket that Alex’s friend, a helicopter pilot, had give him.
“I’m fresh out of the army, brother. It’s my first day in the capital,” explained ex-Captain Bayukin.
The bouncer smirked and told Alex to buy a ticket for a thousand rubles. Then, he scanned Alex with a handheld metal detector. When the metal detector squealed, the bouncer’s eyebrow rose inquisitively.
“If it ain’t these,” grinned Alex, demonstrating his keys and phone, “maybe I’m just too eager to get in.” He made sure to hold his hands at the level of his waist to screen the Yarygin Pistol tucked in his belt.
The
