Sometimes Rich Men Die

"I don't care what you think. It isn't a crime to prefer rich men," Rachel sat back comfortably in her chair. She isn't your average femme fatale Inspector Francis thought.

"It is a crime to kill them," Detective Lopinski said. The inspector was content to let John carry the ball for a while. She was pretty sure the interrogation wasn't going anywhere.

"You can't really think I killed Martin," Rachel said. "I'm sure the doctor told you that he died of natural causes."

"How natural it was is exactly what we want you to tell us," Francis added and then got up and poured herself a cup of coffee. She was sure she'd regret that decision. Stuff always tasted like sawdust and castor oil. The inspector nearly spat it out when she discovered it actually tasted like coffee.

"Isn't that great," Lopinski said. "It's that new desk seargeant, the gorgeous one. Insists on making it himself. Obviously a man of many talents."

"We were fucking, he died. What more can I tell you?" Rachel said. It seemed there wasn't going to be much chance of using any of her Basic Instinct tricks. Just her luck, a gay detective and a straight female inspector. Maybe this wasn't going to be such a cake walk.

"Lets start with why you were screwing a man in his eighties with a bad heart," Lopinski asked. He hated Rachel. She had what he wanted most money and men. So far he and Francis had interviewed six well hung young men who thought they were Rachel's piece on the side.

"Wow. A question with metaphysical implications. Simple answer, because he wanted to and for the record, his cardiologist had cleared him," Rachel responded.

"Not for the venus fly trap," Lopinski threw back at her.

"Actually John, that's the venus butterfly," Inspector Francis corrected gently.

"There is no such thing," Rachel said. "It's an urban myth." Maybe that's what I should call it, Rachel thought to herself. Venus Butterfly. Rolling it around on her tongue she decided she still liked vaginal suffocation better.

"But you would describe yourself as an expert on sex wouldn't you?" John asked.

Expert, professional, talented amateur, what's the difference Rachel thought.

"I meet men and I fuck them until they die," Rachel said.

"You murder them," John said.

"Not murder detective, I give them what they most want, a glorious send off."

"Sexual euthanasia," Inspector Francis said.

"Exactly," Rachel said. She realized then her opponent wasn't to be under estimated. Nobody had ever got there so quickly on so little evidence.

"Donald Martin was what, husband number nine?" Detective Lopinski asked.

"Yes, but only seven ended up dead," Rachel pointed out in her own defence.

"The once you left alive would be Jack Tonquin, he was husband number one. Twenty eight when you married, poorer than dirt. You divorced him. Then there was husband five, can't figure him out, Monty Backman, doctor, worked at a walk-in clinic, forty years old. He divorced you. Sited mental and emotional cruelty. Which means only the seven who were rich and old died while you were having sex with them," John said.

"So lets go back to the beginning, to husband number one," Inspector Francis said, finishing her coffee and sitting up alertly. "Tells us all about him."

It was pouring rain, the mud was drowning. Rachel sat on a stool behind the diner counter and wished herself far from the coast. Las Vegas, dry, hot, and with casinos. Noise, people. Not another shift in food service hell. What kept Rachel there, annealed to her stool, week after week, month after month, was that she was a realist. If she got motivated, moved to Nevada she'd just end up working in some broken down diner, in a ghost town in the desert, watching her skin dry up and split apart. She knew the wet air took ten years off her.

Jack happened right then, at Rachel's first awakening to the flaws of her own character when she could see the future so clearly. He was soaked, guy didn't have a raincoat, had to be a stranger to these parts. She took his order. Liver and onions. She thought even at the time there had to be something wrong with the guy, ordering an old man's dish. He looked right through her, never even made eye contact.

Rachel knew what people saw when they looked at her. She'd worked it out one day when she was making bread, fresh bread was her hallmark, what kept people coming back day after day. Rachel never made the same loaf twice. Most people had no idea there were so many kinds of bread and rolls.

This one day she was making Sasquatch bread, figured that would tickle people's fancy. It wasn't much more than Black Russian Rye with a few nuts in it and some tufts pulled from the soft dough and baked in place. She took it out of the oven and put it on a rack on the counter. That's me, a female sasquatch. It came to her like that. Tall, chunky, ugly, with way too much hair, and I smell. The realisation hadn't helped her self-esteem much.

Wasn't more than a week later that Jack Tonquin walked into the diner and changed her life. With some food in him he started taking in his surroundings and Rachel.

"Listen, I'll be straight with you. My name's Jack Tonquin and I'm on the run. The police want me for fraud, postal service for mail fraud, and my ex-business partners for...so they can tear my fingernails off one by one. Let me hide out here and I'll teach you everything I know about sex." Rachel got up off her stool then, walked over to where he was sitting, keeping the counter between them. Up close she peered at him through her glasses and thought, he's kind of cute.

"Do you know a lot about sex?" She asked.

"Sex is what got me in this jam. I wrote a little book. How to get women into bed and keep them there. Started selling them through Playboy, some of the cheaper men's mags."

"Now, I'd guess if you could deliver the goods you wouldn't be wanted for fraud," Rachel pointed out.

"Gee, you're quick. Wrong but quick. It was the side effects got me in trouble," Jack said and paused to try to comb the water out of his hair.

"Side effects, what sort of side effects?" Rachel asked.

"Men would buy the book. Most were absolutely delighted. I did offer a money back guarantee, nobody ever tried to collect. Some, a few, a few too many, keeled over dead. Their families thought I should have warned them. Sex can kill, especially that much sex."

"Okay, what was the secret? How did these men get so much sex that it killed them?"

"In a nutshell," Jack said. "Act like a prick, be a complete asshole. Assume you're irresistible. Women will lie down in front of you and pile up like cord wood in Maine."

"So that's what I have to look forward to if I take you in, being treated badly?"

"The other half of the book, it was advice on how to make women orgasmic, whether they want to be or not."

"There are women who don't want to be orgasmic?" Rachel asked, incredulous.

"You'd be amazed, darling, amazed. But here, let me prove I'm not bragging, what time, you decide."

Jack wasn't bragging and he never did turn into a complete bastard. Looking in from the outside you'd have called it true love. True love fueled by impossible sex. The first thing Jack ever taught Rachel was to move her hips, in circles. up and down, in and out, in rhythms, five fast, eight slow, six and nine, one and four. They did it to music so that she could get the idea. Bob Marley and the Whalers, the Temptations, Duke Ellington, and gradually she learned what worked for her and what didn't.

It took much longer to get so she gave as good as she got. When she did Jack started to bore Rachel. That's when they got married. Rachel came to the conclusion that there are better reasons.

Rachel couldn't explain it to herself. She just knew she had a horrible contrary streak, started to want sex with some guy who didn't have a clue what went where. So she had affairs. The more useless and nerdy the guy the better. Jack sort of weighed her down. There were men who just wouldn't sleep with a married woman, some of the worst men, the ones who turned her on the most.

Jack had to go. By then he'd out hid his pursuers and saw no reason to put up much of a fight when Rachel brought up getting a divorce. Last Rachel heard he had re-invented himself as some sort of Tantric guru and was teaching sex to couples at an educational retreat on an island in the inside passage.

One day Old Ginty walked into the diner. Wobbled would be more like it. His left hip needed replacing and they'd just put a new titanium knee on the right. He owned the only remaining cannery on the coast, came in the diner once or twice a year.

"I hear from folks that you're a great fuck," he said to Rachel, ignoring the other customers.

"Sure," Rachel said flipping a burger on the grill and readying a bun. "If I'm so good in bed why am I slinging hash in this mould bucket?"

"I was cogitating on that very issue," Old Ginty said. "Figure maybe you've never been made the right sort of offer."

"Which would be?" Rachel asked.

"I want you to fuck me to death," he said loudly. Somebody dropped a plate. "If you can do it you get half my money. If I die of anything but sex you don't get a penny."

It took them a while to work out the details, contracts and such and it took Rachel three years to kill him. She got better with practice. But Ginty presented a particular challenge. He couldn't get it up or keep it up, making it hard for Rachel to do her job. Rachel could suck like a tick and lick like a cat but it did no good. She finally had to become an expert on drugs, she'd have preferred Ginty to have surgery, get a little artificial help, but after the knee and the hip he decided he wasn't having no more parts replaced, particularly not that one.

One day she stumbled on cryojet, the dirty little secret of the adult film industry. They deny it of course, but some of the biggest studs can't get it up. These days they use Viagra, which isn't as good as what it replaced, one needle full of cryojet and you were good to go. Even if you were Ginty and nothing worked. He didn't much like the needle but he sure liked the effect.

Rachel thought she could kill him that first time, get on with her life. But Ginty wasn't buying. He focused, did his business and pulle dout. Rachel had to figure out how to prevent him coming. She learned to recognize the warning signs, Kegels were the secret, squeeze the little prick, shut it down. Then she'd slow the rhythm, wait for him to relax and then back to work. Ginty's heart proved to be in superb condition, turned out the old goat had known that at the time he made his offer to Rachel.

Rachel hated having been manipulated into marriage. But a deal is a deal and she did her best. Ginty, unlike Jack was a total bastard. He had a big place up in the hills, surrounded by forest, wet, soggy forest. But he couldn't hang on to help, which left Rachel spending most of her days cleaning, repairing, gardening, and cooking. Despite all of which she hadn't become murderous until she found out that about an hour before he walked into the diner to make her an offer she should have refused he'd been told he had liver cancer.

Ginty got around to telling her that when he came back from the doctor one last time. The cancer had spread. He thought it was hilarious, his last great practical joke, with Rachel as his victim. She sweet talked him, made his favorite super, broke out the single malt Scotch. He had to give her one last chance, Rachel argued. For old time's sake. This time she'd do it, she'd fuck him to death. But they had to tape it, so that his limp dick sons couldn't challenge Ginty's will in court.

Rachel set up the video equipment. Ginty climbed up on the king sized bed. Why he has to think half way to the sky is beyond me, Rachel thought, and realized it had always annoyed her, that tall bed. Rachel took off her clothes and did a few preliminary stretches.

"Don't we need the needle baby?" Ginty asked as Rachel climbed up beside him.

"Not tonight dear," Rachel said. "You like oral sex don't you?" Rachel asked. She went to work on him.

"You know I do babe," Ginty managed to work in between the grunts and moans.

"You like it better than all the other fucking we do, don't you?" Rachel paused long enough to ask.

"Bring it on baby, it's the best," he said. Confident it was all on tape, Rachel moved in for the kill, she slid quickly up his belly with her mouth, on to his chest, sucking a nipple. Then she lunged forward and planted her vagina on his mouth. There was enough of her to cover his mouth and nose. He didn't last long after that.

When she was sure Ginty was dead, Rachel got up, dressed, shut off the video camera, and called the ambulance. She enver met another man who needed killing so badly or took so long to kill.

"You admit you murdered your second husband?" John Lopinski asked. Even being gay the entire story gave him the shivers.

"I admit no such thing Detective. I just gave him what he wanted."

"Did you get your money?" Inspector Francis asked.

"His sons never even contested it. I sent a copy of the tape to them and the local district attorney. Nobody said boo. Turned out the joke was on me, the old bastard had divided the estate up amongst his sons years before he met me. He was broke, accept for the house. I got sixty thousand dollars. For three years of my life, Inspector, three years of trying to fuck an old man to death.

"After that I got smart. But if you want to talk about the rest of my husbands I think we'll need a lawyer."