Frank Driver, Private Eye

My heart sank. Our honeypot trap hadn't worked, and Mrs. Walker was going to go to jail. Not only was I not going to get my bonus, but I probably wasn't going to get paid, either. Not even for the expenses. Did I mention no bonus?

Now I had to explain to him what we were doing, what the plan was. I needed to get him out of there before -

Murphy let out a wail as loud as a freight train, and threw himself into the air. Instinctively I tried to pivot out of the way, but my trousers were still open around my thighs. Tammi thought quickly and pushed against me as hard as she could, sending us both sprawling in opposite directions.

The large cop sailed between us, his bear hug failing to close upon me but still catching me with his huge arm. In my unbalanced state, I twisted and fell against the couch and bounced. I landed in a heap, the arm that I had been using to hold up my trousers now pinned underneath me.

Murph lumbered to his feet and whipped around to face me, then Tammi. His face was a mask of rage and pain. Bloodshot eyes swept back and forth between us. Finally, he squared up with Tammi.

"You bitch," he snarled, his voice barely a croaking whisper. His Irish brogue was stronger than usual, adding to the menace.

Then, suddenly, his face winced. It was as if the profanity harmed him as much as a physical punch. "How could you?" he cried. "I was going to help you. Take you away from all this." He gestured around the room.

But something about his words - where had I heard those words before?

I never said I was a smart man. You'd think that being a private detective would require a certain... awareness. Generally speaking, I don't have any excuse for my inability to put two-and-two together.

All I can say is that when I looked at Murphy, all I could see was my Army buddy. I was completely blinded, and didn't even know it.

"It's not like that, Murph," I said, getting to my feet and adjusting my belt. "We were just -"

"I saw what you were doing!" he yelled, head whipping to face me. "I saw you!"

He turned and took a step towards me. I held up my hands to hold him off and get him to listen, dropping trou once again. To the side, Tammi caught my eye. The look on her face was one of pure panic. Eyes wide. She was trying to tell me something with her look. What was it?

A dawning realization was sprouting from a seed to a full forest in the background of my mind, but still hadn't made it to my mental hammock.

"She was going to be safe," he continued, stalking forward in heavy steps. "But you had to do this. You had to keep her doing this. You did this!"

"Murphy," I pleaded. "What are you talk-"

He twisted his hand, revealing the worst possible object I could have imagined. My heart jumped into my throat.

It wasn't until that moment that I realized what Tammi had been trying to warn me about. I was no longer trying to calm down my friend. I looked from his hand to his face and back again, and I knew nothing made sense.

Murphy was holding the garrote.

Just like that, the post-orgasmic fog lifted like a magician pulling back the curtains. Pieces fell into place in sickening thuds. My eyes flicked from the piece of wire in his hand to his face and back again.

It was like two different scenes. A collage of two separate magazines combined into one disjoined image. One was a killer. The other was my Army buddy. Part of my mouse brain knew they were one and the same. Part of it knew that they couldn't be.

As distraught as I was, it was nothing compared to the look on Murph's face. He looked bewildered and confused. He just stared at me, as if he were trying to recognize me.

The small wooden dowel handle of the makeshift garrote was barely visible in his clenched fist. The piano wire dangled and seemed to breathe along with him, making it look alive and predatory. Hungry. It needed to feed.

His other hand opened and closed repeatedly. Having once held flowers in an expression of love, now it squeezed and released without a sense of purpose.

"Not you," he said, looking straight at me. It was an accusation that bore through me like a spear. "Not. You!"

Suddenly he raised that hand and pushed the heel of his palm against his temple, squeezing his eyes shut tight. He puffed out huge breaths. He was trying to remember where he was.

"I couldn't save them," he whispered. I almost didn't hear him, but the words boomed in my skull like a thunderclap.

Couldn't save them... couldn't save them... couldn't save them.

I'd seen that look before. Two years ago. I now knew where Murph was, and it wasn't with Tammi and me. It wasn't here and now.

At that moment, Murph was back in Cabanatuan as I found him during the raid. Over a hundred pounds lighter. A malnutritioned skeleton entree with a side of anorexia as garnish.

Chaos and hell. The entire POW camp was in pandemonium. My platoon raced through the camp to prevent the Japanese from slaughtering all the POWs.

Back in the apartment, Murph lifted his nose in the air and sniffed. Suddenly I could smell it too. A strong scent of cooking meat. A sickeningly acrid barbecue of human flesh. The Japanese had forced many POWs into a work tunnel, doused them in kerosene, and lit the match. Others were lined up to face the firing squad. No prisoners were to be rescued alive.

Screaming. Yelling. But mostly, the screaming.

Murph had been one of the lucky ones. One of the prisoners taken to be shot in the back of the head. Instead of turning around as he had been ordered, he had fought back. Despite a nasty pistol whip that gave him a severe concussion, he had clawed his way at the guard. Despite being weak and starved, he had managed to grab ahold of the guard's leather holster strap.

A scuffle. Murphy found himself behind the guard. The shoulder holster got caught, wrapped around the sadistic guard's neck. Whether by instinct or training, Murphy grasped the leather between his fists and pulled with all his emaciated weight. Knee into the back. Leverage.

The guard couldn't shake him off, and eventually lost too much oxygen and blacked out. Unsure that the guard wasn't just playing possum, Murph continued pulling on the holster strap until the guard's neck broke with a soft crack.

Murph stood up, and looked at the dead guard and his fallen comrades. Unsure of what to do with himself, he began to pace in a circle among the bodies. The remnants of the guard's leather holster strap dangled from his fingers.

That's how I had found him. I had raced around the corner to find Murph staggering among the corpses, a shirtless, walking cadaver with the heel of his palm pressed against his temple.

He had no idea that another Japanese guard was screaming at him. I had just enough time to see the guard raise his rifle bayonet and prepare to charge.

On reflex, I raised my rifle and shot the guard in the head. He dropped like a stone, his rifle falling harmlessly on top of the other man that Murph had killed. Murph never flinched. He had to be told, later, that he was within a split second of being shot.

He looked up at me and blinked. Through his mental fog, he recognized my uniform. He couldn't believe what he was looking at, and squeezed his eyes tightly shut before opening them again.

I took off my helmet and let him look at my face.

"Round eyes," he said in wonder. "Round eyes!"

He took a step towards me, but then looked around. Pain and anguish brought him back to his reality, and then his eyes went wide in horror.

"I couldn't save them," he said to me in a pleading voice. He gestured at the corpses of the murdered POWs, trying to get me to understand. The guilt was overwhelming, the pain was tearing him apart. He had accepted the blame for not being able to prevent their deaths, and was now trying to get me to understand.

"I couldn't save them," he repeated, his voice low and quavering.

"I know," I said, trying to reassure him while still trying to prevent us from getting killed by the Japs' scorched-earth policy. Chaos surrounded us, bullets were flying, fire and smoke filling our nostrils.

Even so, it was a phrase he couldn't stop himself from uttering like a mantra as we cleared out the camp and the POWs were rescued.

Now, in the apartment, Murph repeated the phrase over and over. Couldn't save them... couldn't save them.

I didn't know what to do. I was afraid that if I moved, Murphy's fragile emotional state would crack. I held my breath.

"I know," I said, hoping to get a calming response like when we were back in the POW camp together.

"Couldn't save them," he muttered. Suddenly he froze, and opened his eyes. My heartbeat quickened. His shoulders relaxed a bit, and I found a glitter of hope.

His eyes changed, more focused on the here and now. He turned his gaze to me. For a split second, I saw him recognize me as the man who took him from the camp. His eyes looked clear and, for the first time, calm.

That's when Tammi pounced.

"No!" I shouted, reaching out my hand in a vain attempt to stop her.

She shrieked and jumped on Murphy's back. Her legs wrapped around his waist, and her hands came around the front of his face and started clawing at his eyes.

It was the worst thing that Tammi could have done.

Tammi had no way of knowing that she had just thrust Murphy back into the jungle, back to the day where he had been captured. In its infinite wisdom, the Army had decided that medics would march in the back of the column. Unarmed.

Once the Japanese figured this out, they would wait in the trees until the column passed and then fall upon the poor medics and tear them to shreds. The logic was to first take out the men who could save the remainder of the platoon when injured. In effect, it became open season on Army medics.

Murphy had been a medic.

He roared in a rage, whirling his free arm straight up through Tammi's grip. Throwing his hips into a violent twist, Tammi couldn't hang on. Murphy's arm came back down around her waist, taking her in a one-armed bear hug.

With a bend of his knee and another thrust of his hips, he whipped Tammi around him like one of those fancy Lindy Hop moves she liked so much. He sent Tammi flying across the room as if she weighed no more than a ham sandwich. She hit the wall wrong, knocking the wind out of her. She crumpled to the ground, eyes wide as she tried to breathe.

Paying her no more attention, he took a step towards me. There was no more clarity or calm in his eyes. I was the enemy.

Suddenly aware that I still hadn't straightened up my trousers, I scrambled to get away. He kicked the coffee table and the solid wood slammed into my leg, keeping me off balance. He was stalking me. I needed to get away from his bayonet, I mean garrote.

Bayonet. My mind split in two. Part of me knew what was happening, but powerless to stop it. It knew it was my turn. Violence. Life-or-Death. Seconds away from extreme, possibly fatal pain. Maybe watching him triggered my own battle fatigue. Maybe it was there all along.

I knew that I was losing my grip and completely unable to reason my way through it. I wanted to scream at my impotence, even as my fight-or-flight adrenaline rush swept over me like a flash flood.

God, no, not me too.

Suddenly I wasn't in the apartment any more. I was in the Philippine jungle, crawling on all fours. The Japanese infantryman was coming for me, his bayonetted rifle jabbing the underbrush twice with each step. He swept from side to side, hoping to catch a part of me as I scrambled away from him.

The noise filled my ears. Gunfire. The cracking of the tree trunks as artillery fire shredded them into splinters. I was separated from the platoon. I was a goner. He was going to find me, and slice me open with that razor-sharp steel.

Smells of smoke and the telltale copper scent of too much blood staining the jungle floor. My mind raced. I needed to get to my service revolver. I reached for it, felt the comfortable grip in my palm. My finger slipped through the guard in its comfortable position. The Japanese soldier raised his rifle to strike. He shouted something that I couldn't understand.

The Japanese Gunsō - a Sergeant - embraced the kind of fanaticism every Allied soldier had come to expect. I was sub-human, an insect to be exterminated under his Imperial boot. Not worthy in the glorious Empire of his making.

There is a moment when you see a man's eyes who has every intent and desire to kill you. It's a moment of simplicity and clarity that is almost refreshing. No confusion. No ambiguity. No uncertainty.

There is also no time for conscious thought. You act, or do not act. If you have any survival instinct at all, that's when it kicks in. You don't get to decide. Something inside of you has to do it on your behalf. In that millisecond.

In an instant, the jungle dissipated. The apartment rushed into the foreground. I blinked, unsure about where I was or what had happened. I was so shocked by the sudden change in environment that I froze like a deer caught in headlights.

In place of the Gunsō stood Murphy. He stood still for a moment, staring at me. I thought perhaps he recognized me, finally. There was a sadness to his expression that tore at me, then a confusion, then a brief recognition.

Then he started to topple.

I rolled to the side and managed to avoid his lifeless body collapsing on top of me. Barely.

The next few moments were a blur. I had never heard the gunfire. I never felt the trigger squeeze. I wasn't sure what had happened, but Murphy had an additional hole in his head that hadn't been there before, and I was the one holding the pistol.

I sat up and touched my fingertips to my cheeks and found them wet. I didn't even realize I was crying. A crazy thought ran through my head. You wouldn't cry, would you, Frank?

Dammit.

Epilogue

She was good. She was very good. She knew how to ride me like a banshee. Her words, not mine.

Mrs. Walker had gone straight to work when she arrived. She never looked to see if I was alone in the office. In fact it probably wouldn't have made a difference one way or the other. Underneath that picture-perfect, classy dame exterior was an absolute beast. Her confidence obviously extended to her sexual appetite as well.

I felt myself slipping in and out of her velvety sheath, and I couldn't help but compare the feeling to Trixie's rear canal. If I were being strictly honest with myself, there actually was no comparison at all. The taboo had a lot to do with it, to be sure, but I almost wished I had experienced Mrs. Walker before Trixie. That way I wouldn't feel as guilty about being as spoiled as I was by Trixie's forbidden tunnel.

Even without the sexual comparison, though, I couldn't really focus my attention on her. To be fair to Mrs. Walker, she was probably the best normal lay of my life. Any other time, it would have been an experience to put down in history books. She knew that she was in a very unique class all by herself. A fantasy come to life.

In this case, it wouldn't have mattered if she had come down from heaven with a halo. My mind was distracted. This beautiful woman riding me, her jet black hair flowing down across her shoulders, yet I was somewhere else. I brushed some of it out of the way so that I could see her face. It was an absent-minded gesture, one that I did automatically. Routine.

I dropped my hand to her breast and took a nipple between my fingers. I squeezed. She gripped me even tighter and squealed. I couldn't tell whether or not she enjoyed it, or if it was just for show. Then she slammed her ass down on me and I knew for sure.

My mind was elsewhere. Still thinking about the moments of the previous day. This was my payment, my bonus. This is what I had been looking forward to, or so I had thought.

I couldn't tell whether or not she wanted me or whether she wanted to fulfill some sort of perverse fantasy.

Screw the working-class private dick. Yeah, the puns just write themselves.

Either way, I didn't care. My body responded even if my mind did not. I thought about how she looked, how she was above mere mortals. Her curves belonged in a pinup magazine or on the nose of a B-17. I watched her, almost as if I was outside of my own body. She took me in farther, deeper, with more power, more insistence,

"Give it to me," she said, her voice nearly breathless with urgency. "I need it."

I raised my hips off of my desk, pushing into her body with concerted thrusts. I glanced around my office. Now having a very strange sense of impropriety. It was a feeling that wasn't there when we started. I had swept off all the materials off my desk and we had gotten straight to business.

She had laid me down across the desk. Unzipped me, took me out, rolled her tongue around me for a little while. Got me nice and hard. Then she climbed onboard. Now she was begging for my release.

I didn't feel it.

My mind wandered. I thought about how Tammi had been bent over this very desk, not two days before. I remembered about how I had just sat there, nonchalantly pouring whiskey into glasses. Tammi, who got a thrill out of being caught. I imagined being caught by Tammi.

Turnabout's fair play, after all.

A twinge from between my legs and my mind was brought back to the present. As my nether regions started to respond to her administration. It was beyond my control. The pressure. The buildup. The rush.

The explosion.

When I filled her up, she screeched. A note of triumph. Her raven black hair thrown in an arc. A violent gesture. Her pretty face illuminated against the sole light in the office. Still looked like a goddess.

As she thrust her breasts in my face, I emptied myself into her. Once, twice, three times. I felt the junction between us growing wetter. I didn't know how much of it was me, or how much of it was her.

She stopped suddenly, breathing heavy. She placed her hands upon my chest and pushed, using my rib cage as leverage to disengage. She pulled free slowly, without looking at me.

She crawled off of me, wavered a little, and then off of the desk. She adjusted her panties, pulled up her pantyhose. Somehow she had managed to not get a run in them. Like I said - classy.

Not once did she look at me. This was payment for services rendered. I corrected myself: a bonus for services rendered.

Dammit.

She looked at me, giving me an opportunity to gaze at her magnificent bosom one last time, and then started fastening her bra. I had a momentary sadness as she put away those beautiful breasts with those gorgeous nipples, knowing that I would never see them ever again.

I regretted not being able to take advantage of the opportunity better, but hoped I could remember enough of it for later. Yeah, probably not.

"Where were you?" she asked, adjusting her dress. Then she clarified, "Just now."

I looked at her quizzically.

She smiled sardonically. "Well, you definitely weren't with me," she said, making her final adjustments. She didn't sound irritated, just curious. "It's the first time I've ever had a man finish without ever leaving the starting gate."

I swung my legs off the desk, then pulled up my briefs and trousers as I slid to the floor. "Rough couple of days," I said.

She nodded, and then pulled her purse closer. She opened it, and handed me an envelope. A very thick envelope.

"Mr. Driver," she said, clasping the purse closed and taking on a more formal demeanor. Thirty seconds ago she had been naked and on top of me. At the moment I found it difficult to remember any of the details. Now I really regretted not paying closer attention. "I have been most satisfied with your performance. You handled my... case... extraordinarily well."