Killing The Rat (An Organized Crime Thriller) by Dani Amore

and the faint aroma of marijuana. Jack’s eyes roved the shelves as he walked, picking out his favorite authors: Julian Barnes, Binnie Kirshenbaum and fellow Michigander, Steve Hamilton.
    He walked through the fiction aisle, past history until he got to the biography section. There, he turned and walked to the middle of the aisle, where he found Betty perusing a thick tome on Eisenhower.
    “I like Ike,” Jack said.
    “All you military types stick together.”
    Jack took Betty in: she was wearing a chic Armani business suit with a camel-hair overcoat. Black leather shoe boots. A sleek Coach briefcase was slung over her shoulder. Tasteful diamond earrings. The very picture of a successful businesswoman.
    A dramatic difference from the scared sixteen year-old he’d found in the apartment of a man who’d dared to steal from Vincenzo Romano. Jack, of course, killed him, and then helped the young girl who the man had been holding hostage both physically and psychologically.
    Betty slid the Eisenhower bio back on the shelf. “What’s the game plan, Jack?”
    Jack’s eyes roamed the biographies. It had been awhile since he’d read a good biography. The last one was, what? Lee Iacocca? He couldn’t remember.
    He turned and faced Betty.
    “Have you ever done improv?”

21.
     
    “Come in, come in.”
    Loreli watched as the man’s eyes ran up and down her body.
    “What’s your name?” he asked, shutting the door behind her.
    “Loreli,” she said. “Did Rhonda tell you how this works?”
    The man said to her. “Look, I’ve done this a few times before. I know how it works.” He reached into the inside pocket of his suit coat and pulled out a slim black wallet. From it, he counted out fifteen one hundred dollar bills.
    Loreli took the money and put it in her purse. “Okay,” she said.
    There was an art form to detaching. Sometimes Loreli used different images to accomplish the task. In the past, she pictured a big switch in her brain. It was an on/off switch. Usually, when the john was either undressing himself or undressing her, that was when she mentally reached up and turned the switch to off. In those cases, she didn’t imagine a happy place. She didn’t whisk herself away on the wings of her imagination. She just turned it off. Her mind, her being, her body, became the spiritual equivalent of beige. If there was an EKG machine hooked up, the needles would be flatlined. The graph would go from the normal spikes into just one long impulse-less being.
    Loreli did that now. The big Italian was on top of her. She closed her mind, then opened her body.
    It didn’t take very long.
    Loreli was so far away that she almost didn’t notice when he finished. She had turned everything off, except for that small part of her that automatically made the right noises and the right body movements. But that was it. They were on auto-pilot and she almost forgot to shift gears to the next part of it. The Italian flopped onto the bed next to her and looked into her face.
    “That was great,” she said. She was gambling, too much flattery and some get suspicious. But her instinct told her that he wasn’t the type. She was working for a tip.
    The Italian stood up, crossed the room, and when he came out, he had on a bathrobe and was carrying the small ice bucket.
    “When I come back, I want you to blow me, okay?”
    “Okay,” Loreli said. “But that will be extra.”
    “No problem, babe,” he answered. “Today’s your lucky day.”
    He left for a minute or two. He came back in, put the ice bucket in the bathroom, and returned, sans the bathrobe. His member was stiff, hanging out in front of him like a divining rid.
    Loreli looked at it. Had he toweled himself off? It didn’t look right.
    He stood before her. She moved to the edge of the bed, sat in front of him.
    She reached out and stroked him.
    Loreli looked up at the big Italian’s face.
    He looked the same. Same hair. Same big lips. Same dumb eyes. No, the eyes