Harry Bosch and Annie Walker in L. A.

Suddenly gunshots sound from the main room of the suite. Kaplan drops her head and jumps out of the bath. A figure somersaults into the room and fires a gun at Kaplan. The first shot misses, but the second hits him in the shoulder and he goes down. Annie finally gets a chance to see who it is and it's Eyal Lavin, a Mossad agent who has figured in a number of Annie's close scrapes with the CIA.

"What the hell are you doing here!" Annie cries.

"When I told Joan about Kaplan and his dealings with North Korea, I knew you'd be involved and I knew about Kaplan's propensity for having piss parties. I didn't have time to check the Jewish laws, but I'm pretty sure they aren't kosher, and I'd have to rescue you from sin and degradation. Again. Looks like I got here too late, though."

"Where the fuck is Bosch," she says, still in the bath. "I was relying on him."

"I'm right here," he says walking into the bathroom.

"Now you show up," she says.

"Yeah, well I wonder who shot these three assholes laying out here; oh yeah, I guess it was me. Room 227 was a great pickup, by the way. It's where the suitcases were."

"You don't mean those three women, do you? I rather liked them."

"No, not them."

Annie, who of course is still totally naked, lays back in the pissy water, stretches her arms out, and says, "Either of you boys want to join me (oh, I guess not you, Eyal) for a little fun? This is so fucking sexy!"

*****

Later that night Bosch, Annie, Joan, Jerry, and Maddie return to Bosch's house. The three women go into Maddie's bedroom while Bosch and Jerry head for the living room. Annie is still flying from the piss play earlier and wants to keep that feeling soaring with Maddie and Joan. They remove their clothes and get on Maddie's bed; Annie's excitement makes her a bit aggressive and she is all over the other two, kissing them and touching them all over. It isn't long before Joan and Maddie are as full of desire and sexual need as she, and they can't get enough of each other, give enough of themselves back. They take turns licking each other's pussy, fondling each other's tits, just soaking each other in, in every way possible. And then Annie says, "You know I still have that receiver that I swallowed inside of me."

"Well, we can't allow that," says Joan. "You've got to give that back! That's government property!" And they fall over themselves in laughter. But a tremendous sexual excitement is also building uncontrollably.

"Fuck yeah," yells Maddie, "you've got to shit it out. Come on, Annie." And she pulls her toward her as she lays down on her back and says, "Get your ass over here, I want you to do it on me. Do it on my tits." All three howl in laughter, hardly believing their brazenness and shocking behavior, but all aware of a feeling inside of them like they're on a wild rollercoaster ride. Annie allows herself to be dragged onto Maddie's torso, her ass over her tits, facing backwards. "Let me lick you a little bit first," continues Maddie and pulls Annie's ass down onto her face, her tongue pushing hard at her rosebud. Her entire being is soaring on a level she's never experienced before.

After a minute or two of Maddie's tonguing, Annie pulls her ass off her face and back over Maddie's tits. A soft dark brown turd begins to crackle out of her rectum and onto Maddie, about six inches long, and then another one emerges. "Oh fuck," moans Maddie, "it's so filthy and nasty, I love it," and she begins to spread it over her tits. "Help me, Joan," she says. "Touch it and help me spread it." Joan reaches her hands in and begins moving it over Maddie's torso and down to her pussy, and then puts her hands to her own tits and covers them as with a rich body cream. She almost collapses from the delicious pleasure of it, heightened of course by the foulness and vileness of the act. Annie joins in, jokes that she doesn't know where all that shit came from. It's then that Annie sees the button lying near Maddie's left nipple.

"Here it is," she says, and before she has time to think what she's doing, she scoops it up with her tongue along with a good smear of poop. She shows it off to the others on her tongue, and Joan puts her mouth to Annie's and takes the button from her with her tongue. Just like that there is no more silly laughing and shocked horror, but serious, soul devouring lovemaking, mouths mashing, blackened hands caressing everywhere, total sexual abandonment.

Meanwhile in the living room, Bosch and Jerry are staring out the window. Bosch gets up from his chair to get them a couple of beers from the fridge. He hands Jerry a beer and then makes a move for the stereo.

"If you put another Art Pepper Galaxy record on," Jerry warns, "I swear I'm going to grab it a chuck it out the window down the canyon."

"Come on, Jerry," Bosch says. "He's not that bad. In fact he's really good. That tune "Diane," there's nothing more beautiful than that."

"Yeah, but you keep playing the wrong damn version. Fuck the Galaxy, it's the Contemporary version you want."

Whether the two men ever decide to go check on the women and learn what they're up to, and then actually join in, I refuse to even go there.

And high up in the sky, flying God only knows where, is Eyal Lavin. If he only knew what Annie was up to now, he'd probably throw himself right out of the airplane!