When I walked into the security office, the girl behind the desk knew why I was there.
“We’re going to start charging you,” she said, smiling as she moved the phone to the edge of her desk.
“How do you want me to pay?” I asked her, kidding. She wasn’t pretty, but she was young enough to blush at the innocent bit of flirting.
I called Shukey, got her service and left her a message to call me at home that evening.
My next visit was to be off-track.
I dialed Lassiter’s home phone and when his wife answered said, “Hello, Lisa.”
“Hello, yourself, and who is this?” she asked, unsure about who it was, but friendly nevertheless.
“How soon we forget. I’ll bet I was just another ride into the city to you.”
“Henry, love, how are you?”
“I’m fine, just fine. I was wondering if you could do with a little visit today?”
“Well, surprise, surprise.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Well, I’m pretty good at reading men, Henry, and I never thought you would call.”
“You underestimate yourself, Lisa. May I come over?”
“Now?”
“The sooner, the better,” I told her.
“Anxious little devil, aren’t you? All right, lover, come ahead,” she said, obviously pleased with herself.
I wondered how pleased she’d be when she discovered the real reason for my visit.
“I’m on my way.”
Even though my visit wasn’t for romance Lisa Lassiter was a beautiful woman, so I got a hold of one of the security guys and asked him to loan me a bottle of cologne from his locker. I went into the men’s room, dusted off my clothes, which had suffered from the scuffle with Lassiter, combed my hair and made liberal use of the cologne.
Thus armed I went to see the lovely Lisa Lassiter.
I can’t explain it, I can only theorize as to why I did end up in bed with her when I had no intentions of going to bed with her. Maybe it was exciting because a short time before, I had knocked her husband on his butt. Maybe it was also because I was afraid I was starting to like Brandy Sommers a little too much. There could have been a lot of reasons, not the least of which was the way Lisa looked when she admitted me to Paul Lassiter’s home that afternoon.
“Hello, Henry,” she greeted.
She was gorgeous: tall, regal, her chestnut hair was gleaming, evidence that she had probably washed it during the time it had taken me to get there. In fact, it was quite obvious that she had showered, she smelled clean and fresh, but not from any perfume. I felt grimy just looking at her.
She was wearing a one-piece, hooded, terry cloth robe of deep burgundy.
“What happened to your head?” she asked with concern, stepping back to allow me to enter.
In the living room I turned and told her, “I fell. It’s nothing serious. Lisa, I want to tell you something. I’m not here for the reason you think — ”
“Really, Henry?” she asked. She moved very close to me. Through the fabric of the robe I could see her nipples, tensed. The next thing I knew, those nipples were pressed against my chest and her mouth was alive on mine, tongue probing. Her right hand was between my legs.
Suddenly she stepped back and pulled the robe up over her head, then dropping it. Beneath it she was naked. Her nipples were very large and brown, her pubic hair was the same color as the hair on her head. Smiling, she stepped close to me again and we kissed. Her hands went to work on my clothes and soon I was as naked as she was. Her mouth roamed all over my body as she fell to her knees. Then, suddenly, she stood and led me to the bedroom.
The sex was fantastic. She was energetic and inventive in bed and gave herself up fully to the sensations. She was in no way inhibited, and nothing was taboo. It was one of the most satisfying sessions of my life, and afterward I felt rotten, guilty for several reasons. Most of all for deceiving her.
“I didn’t come here for this, Lisa,” I told her afterward. We were still lying in her bed — her husband’s bed and she turned to me and started drawing ever widening circles on my belly.
“You said that, Henry. Did you enjoy it?”
I laughed. “Lady. That would be an understatement.”
“So, what does it matter why you came?”
“I came to ask you about Penny Hopkins. You know she was found shot to death?”
She stopped making circles and lay back on her pillow.
“Paul told me. That’s a terrible thing to have happen to anyone, Henry, but I still didn’t know the girl, and I certainly wasn’t jealous of her, and I didn’t have anything to do with killing her.” She turned to me again and put her hand on me, making a fist with little old me inside.
“This must have proven to you I’m not the jealous type.”
I tried to ignore the sensations she was causing.
“Last time you said you’d never met her, now you’re saying you didn’t know her. Which is it?”
She stopped what she was doing with her thumb and then let go of me completely. She sat up in bed, leaning over so that her breasts swayed.
“All right, so I met her once, a year ago.” She smiled and added, “She was stacked even then. She was very nice to me, as if I were her mother’s age or something. I didn’t like her then, Henry, I admit it.”
“And you haven’t had any contact with her since?”
She shook her head, and I watched the chestnut tresses bounce on the white skin of her back. “No, … not directly.”
“Now, what does that mean?”
“The phone, I spoke to her on the phone a couple of times. She called for Paul, but he put a quick stop to it. Other than that, no, no contact.”
I ran my finger down the center of her back and she shivered and said, “That’s the truth, Henry.”
I was going to believe her, but then I looked around and realized that she had me right where she wanted me. She was calling the tune and I was dancing her dance.
She was some lady, but she could also be some liar.
“I did lie about something, though,” she admitted. “Well, not a lie really. I insinuated that my husband was something of a stud.”
I laughed.
“He alluded to it, also. He said he let Penny hang around because she was adequate in bed.”
She looked over her shoulder at me and said, “If she was, she was a hundred percent better than him. You see, for the past two years my husband has been impotent.”
“What?”
“He doesn’t sleep with women, Henry. He beats them up.”