Harlan arched his back as the hefty woman bounced on top of him.
“Come on, bitch. You can go harder than that.”
The woman stopped and draped herself over his chest, her ample breasts arriving noticeably sooner than the rest of her. “You’re gonna split me in two, honey. Give me a minute to rest.”
Harlan grabbed the back of her neck and rolled them both over so that he wound up on top of her. She called out in mild protest, but she’d been in the business long enough to know better than to fight back.
“If that’s all you got, you picked the wrong profession.” He worked it hard, ignoring her high-pitched yelps. Several minutes later, with a final thrust, he rolled off. The room was quiet except for her occasional gasps and whimpers.
After a minute the woman said, “Mister, you got a lot of anger built up in you, don’t ya? I hope we aren’t gonna have no trouble, okay?”
Remembering the last prostitute who talked too much, Harlan worked hard to control himself. Two killings in one night in this little town would not go unnoticed.
The first had gone smooth enough. The coffee guy, Harlan heard folks call him Louis, was incapacitated by the rat poison and drain cleaner Harlan had slipped in his coffee earlier in the day. He could offer only cursory resistance. Harlan had gotten in and out without notice. The other actors—who didn’t know they were moving at Harlan’s direction—had played their parts beautifully. Harlan had watched the goings-on from a safe distance. Two hours after discovering the body, detectives went to the Sawyers’ home. Harlan had wondered if they would wait until morning but found it much more entertaining to know that the Sawyers’ neighbors had to have been woken in the middle of the night. He’d nearly danced in the street as he watched officers pull the screaming woman into a Newberg police car.
“You got it wrong, little lady,” Harlan tried to sound hospitable. “I ain’t got an angry bone in my body. Just a little pent-up energy is all. Rest yourself. Go on and take a break for a minute.”
Harlan stepped to the window and lit up. He drew the smoke deep into his lungs and let it settle there as he thought back over the past few hours. Quick flight was best, but he’d needed to get high and get laid. Getting high hadn’t been hard, but this beefy middle-aged hooker was a far cry from his last, although less irritating.
Harlan looked at the sizable prostitute, who was lying prone on the bed, still struggling to catch her breath. Pent-up energy, sure enough. He’d come out of the joint with plenty of that. A hooker, a joint, or a bottle of booze could be arranged through a crooked guard or other member of prison staff for a price, but Harlan prided himself on the restraint he had demonstrated through his years of captivity. If a fellow inmate arranged for the trick or bag of weed, Harlan would sure enough participate, but he stood firm in his conviction that he did not make deals with the law.
Throughout his life, Harlan’s closest associates had exclusively been crooks of one sort or another. His father had been nothing more than a career moonshiner, an outlaw to the core. Their home was open to cat burglars, car thieves, and country drug dealers. Harlan shared home brew and swapped stories with a few hundred such men, and his loyalty to that lifestyle ran marrow deep.
By the time Harlan reached his seventeenth birthday, he was running a marijuana operation that supplied most of the college campuses in Wisconsin, making life a little easier for his aging father. That was what had caught the attention of the likes of Lipinski, Norgaard, and others. They just couldn’t stand the idea of a kid like Harlan being that successful.
The woman spoke. She seemed afraid to look at him directly—she glanced at him from the corner of her eyes and then stared at the yellowed popcorn ceiling as she said, “If we’re finished, I’d like to be on my way. My husband is gonna be waiting up.”
Harlan wasn’t through, and the day’s success left him feeling generous. “How about we take it up to a hundred bucks’ worth and I’ll just lay back this time. You can go nice and easy on me for another round, all right?”
Her face lit up at this turn of events. Harlan wondered idly if anyone had ever offered her that kind of payment before and guessed not.
“A hundred bucks? Shit, for that kind of money, my old man can wait all night. Come on over here and let me show you how much a lady loves that sort of appreciation.”
He returned to the bed. With closed eyes and an open mind, Harlan let the woman work a miracle. For a hefty gal she had a gentle sway, and before long she lulled him to sleep.
He didn’t stir until the sun found a crack in the thick motel curtain. The woman was gone and when he quickly grabbed his wallet he found a hundred dollars missing. The rest of his diminishing funds remained. Harlan smiled, his heart stirred by the wonder of an honest whore.