Damaged Goods Read Online Free Page B

?”
    “Dozens,” Moodrow called over his shoulder. Having retreated to the sink, he began to scrape the remains of their dinner into the garbage pail. “Maybe hundreds. But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna be afraid every time I step out of my apartment. I can’t live that way.”
    “Why not, Stanley? I do. And so do several million other New Yorkers. What makes you special?”
    Moodrow stacked the plates in the sink, turned on the hot water, then calmly walked to the table where Betty was standing. He retrieved the leg of the lamb, strode back to the sink, wrapped the meat in aluminum foil, and dropped the platter into the sink.
    “Fear or no fear,” he finally said, “the reason I reacted the way I did this afternoon was because of something that happened at ten o’clock in the morning. That’s when Jean Ressler fired me.”
    Betty leaned back against the refrigerator. Her sharp black eyes bored into the bandages covering the shaved area of Moodrow’s head. “You’re telling me this came as a surprise? It’s been three weeks with no hint of progress. How long did you expect her to fork over two hundred a day plus expenses?”
    Moodrow shrugged. Four months ago, Jean Ressler’s husband, Paul, had emptied the bank accounts, redeemed the certificates of deposit, looted the mutual funds, then taken off for parts unknown. Though Jean Ressler had no wish to see her husband again, she did want a piece of the roughly three hundred thousand he’d snatched. Moodrow had put in the hours, talked to friends, relatives, coworkers, waiters, bartenders, barbers. The results had been less than negligible.
    “Getting fired was exactly what I expected,” Moodrow admitted. “The surprise came two hours later when she called to say the new firm she hired, Landis Security, managed to find her old man in thirty minutes.”
    Betty, instead of yielding to impulse and putting her arms around Moodrow’s waist (they wouldn’t reach around his chest), simply asked, “How?”
    “They did it with a computer.” Moodrow turned to face his lover.
    “According to Jean, they put his social security number into some program and a half hour later they had him. Seems he got tired of dragging a suitcase full of cash everywhere he went and opened a checking account at the Greater Bank of Birmingham. The bank ran his social security number through a credit agency and that’s where the computer found it. Along with his address and telephone number. Now, Jean wants a refund.”
    “Are you going to give it to her?” Betty stepped up to the sink, took a wet dish from his hand, and put it in the drain basket. Then she began to unbutton his shirt.
    “Never. Jean Ressler’s an accountant. She makes more money in a week than I do in a month.” He dried his hands on a towel, hung the towel on a hook, ran his fingers through his lover’s hair. “May I ask what you’re doing?”
    “I want to lick your nipples.” She pulled his shirt open, let her tongue wander through the mat of hair on his chest. “You can talk about this depressing crap later. After I finish using you and fall asleep.”
    Slowly, with extreme deliberation, she undressed him, following her progress with mouth and fingertips. After six years, she knew exactly what excited him. She also knew that Stanley Moodrow, when he was really hot, liked to draw the whole process out. To conserve his excitement like a miser hoarding a stack of shiny-bright Krugerrands.
    They made love for the next forty minutes, worked their way from room to room, left a trail of clothing to mark their passage. Betty was on the bed, Moodrow kneeling on the floor beside her, when he finally hooked his fingers beneath the elastic band on her panties and began to slide them down. He caressed her exposed flesh with his lips and the tip of his tongue, didn’t relent until she called for him, until she half dragged him onto the bed, until their bodies were locked.
    Then he lay still for a moment, supporting