The Tilsons Got Killed

I was now on my back naked with my very erect cock sticking straight up trying to touch the ceiling of my room.

Keeping her finger inside me, Fern moved her thumb over the top of my balls, clutching them in her hand and giving them a gentle massage.

Still straddling my legs I saw a smile glance across her face admiring my manhood.

"Oh, you have been kissed down upon by a thousand of the gods, and with that, her finger popped out of my ass, a quick wipe with a cloth from nowhere, more magical oils, and Fern started on my shoulders again including my chest.

I'm no bear, but I do have enough chest hair to be considered manly with a clear stomach leading to a happy trail from my belly button down to my crotch that I shaved bare.

With all of the stomach crunches I do every day I would have groomed my stomach for vanity and six-pack sake, but nature -- of should I say the gods -- saw to it that all of my hard gym work was not for naught.

My pecs and arms were the next targets under her spell taking her thumbs and pressing them down into the meat of the long muscles and rolfing them upwards against the grain to my grunts of pain.

"For every pain must come pleasure," and both hands landed at the base of my cock on either side and stoked it upward in the same manner but without the pain. Only pleasure. Oh my, yes pleasure.

Fern was now sitting on top of my balls with my hard cock nestled in her vulva and tufts of black pubic hair as she was rolling on my shaft, sensually massaging my chest and rippling stomach.

She was making long, sensuous passes down my abdomen stopping right at the base of my cock.

And then she began to massage it.

This was not a hand job. Her expert fingers were finding places upon my shaft that I never knew were connected to the head of my cock.

Her soft fingers explored up and down. Sometimes gentle, sometimes firm, sometimes hard settling into the area immediately below the head in between the crown and my circumcision scar moving in an area about 1/4" of an inch and making the head of my cock throbbing, needing to explode.

I moaned, "If you keep doing that, I am going to have to fuck you!"

"That is my sincerest desire, Mr. Brown."

I flipped her over and said, "My turn to do the massaging," and shoved my cock inside her to moans and sighs putting a thumb on her fat clit.

"Oh yes. Have your way with me."

And we did. Hard, rough, and long. Her wetness was loud and noisy. Fern came once, I kept going. She came again. I kept going still. She came again screaming something in Mandarin. I kept driving heading to my well-earned orgasm until she flipped me back over.

"Mr. Brown, you are a splendid lover, and because of that, I'm going to give you a special massage."

She lifted herself off of my throbbing cock sitting on my thighs. More of that magical oil was poured on me, she grabbed my hardon, and moved her body back over me until the head of my cock was between her cheeks and her ass was resting upon it.

She smiled at me as she started to ease her way down. Her rosebud spreading easily and then gripping my shaft in a vice-like grip as she eased down in one smooth movement until I was balls deep in her ass.

I could feel the heat. Her 98.6-degree oven roasting my needy erection.

She started to move. I had never experienced an ass fuck like this before. The control of her ass and sphincter was incredible. She would tighten as she slid down, loosen as she slid up, and alternate that with fluttering and flickering between the two.

My cock was going crazy.

She lifted her way to the head of my cock and clamping down on the coronal ridge moved her ass back and forth a 1/4" at a time knowing exactly when it entered her and when it left. Until my head was so engorged it hurt like it hadn't since I was 18 and riding home from a date with blue balls.

She took me in balls deep again and started to grind against me.

"I want you to cum."

And she started again, this time anal cowgirl. I watched as her face glowed in ecstasy and that tuff of black hair moved up and down on my cock with her oiled breasts swirling around the dragon on her chest until she plunged herself down onto me and came hard for the fourth time screaming as I finally shot deep inside her rope after rope after rope up her ass, deep into her bowels feeling the vice of her ass pulse on me as I came.

She sat back, her hands reaching behind her onto the bed as she rubbed her crotch into me. The glow of orgasm spreading across her beautiful face, and I was reeling in mine.

We laid there for a moment enjoying it. and then she said, "I have had many lovers all over this planet, but you are one of the best."

"Thank you. I feel the same way."

She bowed, "Many thanks," and bowed again. This time in a more serious, deeper way.

"And that is why I'm so sorry I have to kill you now."

And the assassin's knife plunged towards me as I threw her off of the bed just in time, suffering a slash on my shoulder. I jumped to the floor, grabbing the Glock from under the pillow.

"Why?"

"They told me to."

"Who?

"The powerful men I work for. They will kill me."

"Tell me who they are. I can help you."

"I have family. They will kill them too."

"I really can help you. Please let me. You know that if you come at me again, I will kill you."

She did.

And I did, hitting her smack dab in the dragon's eye in between her breasts.

Chapter 12

It took a while for the Monterey cops to sort it all out including a call to Ragan down at LAPD HQ.

They didn't seem too impressed by my shiny badge.

It was after 4 am, when they finally cleared out. I was exhausted. I looked at the mess and the blood and decided to deal with the hotel and the consequences later and ask for another room when my phone rang.

It was Mary Carlson.

"Counselor, are you up late, or working early?"

"Ragan just called me. Everything alright?"

"Well, not for Ms. Hong."

"Asshole, I mean you."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good, because you need to get back here as soon as they'll let you. Higgs is dead."

Chapter 13

A couple of stitches set my shoulder right, joining the parade of scars. I made it back down in record time. I'll admit, exhausted.

Higgs had been killed in his bedroom. An explosive device had blown off the front door and he took one in the back of his head in his bathrobe. It looked like he was running. The cops found him sprawling out in a pool of blood and urine with his private parts on full display, a state that he ignominiously had to endure for hours during the investigation.

It's rarely mentioned, but when people die, they urinate. Sometimes they also defecate, but that usually involves a long, violent death like choking or hanging. Gladly, that didn't happen here.

Since there is no brain to control the bladder, it voids upon death. An overlooked fact in the news, movies, and television shows, but it's a fact of life. So Richard Higgs, the COO of Tilson Construction had to lay there in death in pools of his own blood and urine as the LAPD homicide team did its thing.

By the time I returned, the autopsy was completed. I met Ragan at the morgue by Higgs's remains.

He said, "One armor piercing shot in the head."

"The same as the Tilsons."

Ragan nodded.

"Same gun?"

"We have to get the final tests, but yeah."

I looked at him. "Thoughts?"

"Looks like they are cleaning up loose ends," said Ragan.

"That'd be my guess. Any pictures from the security cameras?"

" Yeah, looks like the same guy."

"He's a pro," I said.

Ragan nodded. "I think our Army Ranger found a new career as an international killer. My guess, based in Europe now. There's more work over there coming out of the former Soviet states. Meet his fee and he takes the job. He's a cold-hearted machine."

"Sure enough is."

"You know, we might never catch him."

"I know," I said. "But we can catch the guy who hired him and that might be enough for me."

"Well, I don't know where you are going with this," Ragan continued. "But M67 grenades, armor piercing bullets, helicopters, I could go on, in my book, this looks like serious drug money, ex-military, and the NoHo-16. Tell me about Monterey and the shooting."

I did. Filling him in with everything I had learned up to that point, except for certain private items about Courtney. I kept to my promise, full disclosure, except when it came to her safety.

"Ok, I understand the connection between the Tilson's and Higgs, but why Hong? Where does she fit in?"

"I think she was the Asian conduit for the big boys and it is all about the materials. And I think Tilson was starting to get in the way. My hunch is they are smuggling drugs in them. And, as crazy as this sounds, I think it's the I-beams."

"The I-beams?!"

"Yeah, think about it. How much smack could you hide in them and how would anyone at customs notice the weight difference. Hell, the customs process is totally different for this kind of stuff anyway."

I watched Ragan think and nod.

I continued, "I don't know how it is possible, but suppose you could forge an I-beam with a hollow inside and fill it with heroin? You could bring in billions of dollars undetected. And that would take cunning, connections, knowledge of the industry and Southeast Asia, and along with these attacks that speaks ex-military."

"NoHo-16," he said.

"Yes. NoHo-16. Probably started in the Indochinese Peninsula. Nam, Cambodia, probably Thailand and Laos thrown in for good measure."

"If that is the case, we are undermanned and completely fucked!"

"Ragan my friend, you are. But what if we kept this on the QT. Before you try to bring in the Calvary. Can I have a few days to see where I can go on this?"

"And what does that mean, cowboy?"

"Four, five days."

"Is Ryker with you on this?"

I nodded yes.

"Others?"

I nodded yes again.

He nodded too. "Downtown, I now have six stiffs on my hands. Seven if you count your Chinese babe, a whiteboard upstairs that is filling up, and the brass are squeezing my nuts. The shit is rolling down on me starting at the mayor's office. Turns out Tilson was a major donor. You can have two days and that is a stretch."

"I'll need all that you have on this," I said.

"Come upstairs."

He gave it to me.

I started at Higgs' place. A condo in one of the Wilshire Boulevard Westwood towers. The penthouse. As you would expect.

Ragan had cleared me to enter the scene. The blast was wartime huge, but the scene was insignificant. A rich man's house in a high-rise where he died in his bathrobe.

I went back to my office to think things over. Ryker joined me. I was sitting at my desk writing on a yellow pad. once again jotting things down trying to connect the dots. I'm old school and think better when I use a pen and paper and actually write.

The office wasn't much. On Hollywood Boulevard by Gower, on the second floor mostly for my personal nostalgia. Makes me feel like Marlowe. The best part is it had a window that looked directly into the ladies dressing room in the Pantages Theater next door.

Sometimes they would wave, sometimes put down the blinds, and sometimes they didn't seem to care.

Today, they didn't seem to care.

Ryker was looking out the window. "Nice costumes today."

"I'm glad you approve. Let's send a letter to the Times with your review."

He shook his head, with maybe an "asshole" under his breath, and sat there watching me.

"What are you doing?"

"Thinking."

"Figured."

"Got anything?"

"When I know, you'll know."

"Expected that."

I kept noodling.

My door opened and Fireplug and his three friends entered to visit again without knocking. This time his gun was drawn.

I looked up at him and said, "Hey! A true delight to see you again, but I don't have time to have a playdate right now."

He laughed derisively.

"My boss still says you need to lay off the Tilson case."

I looked at him and said, "Did you guys give this any thought. I mean, do you have a playbook of any kind? Because you suck at this."

"We don't suck, and I'm warning you again to get out of this Tilson business. My boss said to make this as clear as day to you."

I watched Ryker reach down to the sawed-off double-barreled shotgun nestled in the corner between the wall and the file cabinet to his right and silently bring it up cradling it in his arms. He cocked both barrels.

"Ten gauge," Ryker said. "Damn, like fish in a barrel."

He leaned back with the shotgun in the crook of his arm smiling. Meanwhile, while they had been understandably watching Ryker, I had pulled out my .44 Magnum silently out of the drawer which Clint had made sure everyone knew was "The most powerful handgun in the world."

Fireplug glanced over at Ryker. "This doesn't concern you."

He turned back to me, "Listen buster, you'll leave this case alone from here on out, or we'll make you pay the price. Nothing would make me happier. I don't like you, gumshoe."

"Gosh darn it, under ordinary circumstances worrying about what you like and don't like would occupy my every waking hour, but sadly, I don't have the time right now. And quitting the Tilson case, I wish we could, but it ain't gonna happen. Looks like fate stuck its foot out and tripped you, good buddy."

"I'm giving you one last warning."

"Like John Wayne in a cowboy movie? Ryker, ever heard that one before?"

And Fireplug went to shoot, as the others reached for their guns, but Ryker blew him away into the far wall with a double shotgun blast.

I raised the Magnum and l looked at the other three. "You guys want any of this?"

I guess not since they split in a hurry.

"How am I going to explain this shit?" I said to Ryker as I dialed Ragan.

Chapter 14

Ragan and his partner, Detective Johnny Walker were standing in my office with the coroner and the rest of the shooting team. I was always delighted that his partner was named after a scotch! Finally, I could rib someone else about his name.

Ragan looked at Ryker. "You know you can't just go round killing people whenever the notion strikes you."

"Seemed worth killing to me."

Ragan didn't answer.

"Dan," I said, "The mooks came in here to gun us down."

"And why exactly do you think that's happening to you so much lately?"

"Guessing my sparkling personality."

Walker looked back to Ryker. "Did you have to use both barrels of the shotgun? Shit man, we're gonna have to pick him up with a sieve."

"Shouldn't have come at me."

What could you say to that? The shooting was cleared and after four hours of questions downtown, I was finally able to get on with what was left of my day.

I was late for dinner with Mary at Musso and Frank's. She knew and had a martini waiting for me when I arrived. I chugged it and asked for another.

"I like that you drink like a man."

"That's not the only thing I do like a man," I said as I rubbed my knee against her leg.

"Yes, I know. Down big boy."

Vintage Hollywood doesn't come any better than Musso and Frank's. Opened in 1919 on Hollywood Boulevard, it still serves many of the same classic dishes it did over a 100 years ago. A world-class steak house with an international flavor.

Dark wood-paneled walls, deeply tufted red leather booths, and legendary martinis, Musso and Frank's has been the home for everybody from William Saroyan, William Faulkner, Dorothy Parker, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Golden Age of Hollywood stars loved it too including Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Bogie, Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, and Brando. The modern stars from Johnny Depp and Taylor Swift do too.

It has been featured as a location in 100s of movies and TV shows and their martinis were legendary.

I sipped on my second one.

"So, bring me up to speed."

I did, including the last two shoots.

"So, you and Ragan are convinced it's the NoHo-16."

"Let's say strongly believe."

"But it's them. I'm counting on you to help me bring them to justice. They killed Courtney's family."

Exasperated I said, "Mary I know. This case is hard on all of us. We're going to get them. They've committed murders. The Tilsons were not their first, and probably not their last. These are bad guys. Really bad guys. Listen, it's not like the guys who killed the Tilsons are taking a bus ride with me where they can't get off at a different stop. They're stuck with me now and they've got to ride all the way to the end of the line, and it's a one-way trip and the last stop is life in prison or the cemetery. Sorry, if it means you won't see them in court, but Courtney needs revenge, and I intend to give it to her."

"I didn't hear that."

"I claim attorney client privilege."

"Granted."

"So, what's next?" she asked.

"I'm thinking we're going to go into the hornet's nest."

Chapter 15

Before any of that, it was time to escort Courtney Tilson to her first day back at the office. Ryker and I along with six Red Level guys brought her through the door in an armed shield to protect her.

Everybody there was supremely happy to see her, and all said the appropriate words. We rode the elevator up to the 55^th floor and before I allowed her to enter her office, we cleared it. After we did, Courtney walked in as the CEO and COO of Tilson Construction and sat down at her desk.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

With a set jaw she said, "Yes. I have a job to do."

"Good. Now listen to me carefully." I pointed to the six red level team members, "Two of these guys will be in the lobby. The rest will be outside your door and strategically positioned in the hallway. You will NOT leave this office without them escorting you. And I don't care if it's to the can. Got it?!"

She saluted me, "Yes, sir!"

"Are you being sarcastic with me?"

"No, I hear you, and I have a private bathroom in my office."

"Good."

And Ryker and I left.

Ragan had told me the NoHo-16 hangout was a house in North Hollywood in the outer reaches.

We drove up to a once nice ranch-style house, the kind of two bedrooms, one and a half baths places that were built in the late '40s for the returning GIs. This one now had a lot of deferred maintenance.

What was once a hideous Pepto Bismol pink was now a faded, peeling mess with half a roof, a rusty cyclone fence around it, and a half a dozen guys hanging on the porch and in the yard throwing the ball.

We walked up. "Wow, guys! For all of the money you're making, don't you think you could fix up this shithole?"

"What's it to you, asshole?" said a guy with prison teardrops tattooed down his left eye, raising his shirt to show me he was strapped.

"Golly, gee whiz! That's gosh darn impressive. I turned to Ryker, "You ever seen one of those before?"

"Nope. Can't say that I have."

I said to him, "That's a surprise," and said to Teardrop. "Can you fucking imagine? I've got one of those too!" And I opened my coat to show him my Glock.

He looked at me with his best "hard guy" stare. "You Five-O? I've never seen you before."

I flashed my badge. "Nope, private dick."

He laughed, "Go fuck yourself, Marrano."

"I'd rather fuck you. You take it up the culo, right? A couple of good prison fucks being a bitch."

I watched him seethe and twitch towards his gun, a Ruger 9mm.

"Since you're the bitch who takes it up the ass, I'm here to see the boss."

"Who the fuck do you think you are?"

"Oh, thanks for asking. We are the good guys. And we are going to question you and then take you down to the cops to bust you for murder with some drug dealing thrown in on the side."

"The fuck you are!" Teardrop said as a ton of guns showed up in the yard.

I looked at all of the weapons aimed at us hearing the John Fogerty lyric, "Sometimes I think, life is like a rodeo. The trick is to ride, and make it to the bell."