Storiesonline.net
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                             Lawyer, Lawyer
                             by Marsh Alien

Copyright© 2006 by Marsh Alien


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Description: He's an award-winning novelist with a beautiful lawyer wife and two gorgeous children. So now that she's away on a business trip, why is he watching pornography in his den with his wife's best friend? His wife's naked best friend.  Oh, did I mention this was a Living Dolls sequel?

Codes: MF humor cons mag cheat
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Chapter 1


"Daddy, Daddy!"

Danny — Danielle to my mother and the people in the Registry of Births office, but Danny to everybody else — yelled as she leaped off the last step of the bus and tore across the lawn, home from another day of kindergarten. Molly Benton, also five, had jumped off at almost the same time, nearly knocking Danny to the ground as she ran around the front of the bus and across the road. Danny's older sister Elizabeth, meanwhile, followed the two more sedately, as befit a girl in the fourth grade. Kindergarteners! They were so childish. Anna Benton descended the steps with even more casual indifference, probably looking forward to next year, when she'd be on the junior high and high school bus with her three older siblings.

As I hustled the girls up the long driveway, I looked back over my shoulder and saw the bus pull away. Across the street, Melissa Benton was putting her girls into her idling pickup. I found myself wishing that I too had thought to bring a vehicle down to the end of our driveway. The leaves on the trees along the Brandywine River had just started falling in earnest in our part of Delaware, and this change in the weather was likely to be the last one before winter. The winters had actually gotten a little warmer since we moved here eight years ago, in 2013, but not so much that I ever really looked forward to them.

"So," I asked when my little women were all settled in the living room with their snacks. "What did you do today in school?"

Danny took a seat in my lap and launched into a stream-of-consciousness story about what had happened to Jane in the morning, and then what Bobby did to her a little later, and then how Mrs. Williams made Bobby apologize and put him in timeout, and then how she and Kate and Denise did their art class together, and on and on. I was exhausted by the time she was done and turned to Beth for relief.

"So Tuesday's okay, right?" she asked.

"Okay for what, sweetie?" I smiled.

"You said you'd come, daddy," she started to tear up. "You said you would."

"Of course I will, Beth," I said, slowly putting together the pieces. All of the kids in Beth's class had been asked to have one parent put in an appearance at some point during the semester for a "career day" kind of thing. This — reminding me on Friday that it was my turn on Tuesday — was Beth's idea of advance notice. On Monday, she'd probably tell me we needed to bring cookies. Well, on Monday her mother would be home, and she could bake the cookies.

"I'll be there," I smiled. "Nine o'clock on Tuesday morning."

"Why are you going to her school, Daddy?" Danny asked with a pout. "Why not my school?"

I looked over to see Beth rolling her eyes.

"I'll come to your school some time, too, sweetie," I told her. "Beth's class is having mommies and daddies come in to explain what they do for a living."

"What do you do, Daddy?" Danny asked.

"Daddy's a writer," I told her.

"What does Mommy do?" she asked.

We all looked up at the sound of the door opening.

"Aunt Julie!" Danny cried, squirming down off of my lap and running to greet the woman who was closing the door behind her. Setting down her computer case before she was bowled over, Julie bent down and hoisted little Danny in the air for a hug and a kiss. Julie was not really a relative, but she was Danny's godmother. And anyone who knows my family knows that that relationship is one we take very seriously. Particularly since Julie was the only person we knew who ever actually went to church. Beth collected her hug and kiss as well, by which time Danny had returned to my lap with an expectant look.

"So what does Mommy do?" Danny reminded me.

"Mommy's a lawyer, just like Aunt Julie," I smiled.

A look of horror spread over Danny's face as she shifted her gaze from me to Julie and back to me again.

"What's wrong, sweetie?" Julie asked her. Danny looked like she was about to cry.

"Mrs. Stockbridge said that Billy McGoldrick was a horrible little lawyer," she blurted out, "and she put him in timeout for the whole afternoon."

I just stared at my little girl, my mouth twitching.

"Aunt Julie, are you okay?" Beth asked. I looked over to see Julie lying on the floor, desperately trying to suck in air as tears started to run down her face. She waved us off.

"Aunt Julie will be fine," I said. I couldn't resist another quick look at the attractive brunette writhing on the floor in her fancy lawyer suit. Particularly since the fancy lawyer suit was showing an awful lot of her stunningly beautiful legs. No, no, back to my daughters.

"I think that Mrs. Stockbridge meant that Bobby was a liar, honey," I told Danny. "Not a lawyer. It's very unlikely that Bobby McGoldrick has been to lawyer school. Plus your mommy is a very good lawyer. So is your Aunt Julie."

"Not as good as your mommy is, honey," Julie said. "Your mommy is the best trial lawyer on the East Coast, Danny. I'm just a small-town lawyer trying to make a living..."

Her voice trailed off and Beth, whose empathy went way beyond any gene contributed by either her mother or her father, walked over and sat down next to her.

"Since Uncle Go-Go died," Beth finished Julie's sentence as she looked into Julie's eyes and reached for her hand. "We miss him, too, Aunt Julie."

"Thanks, dear," Julie hugged Beth to her. It had been almost a year and a half since her husband, Danny's godfather, had died at the obscenely young age of 30 after a two-year battle with cancer. Only in the past few months had Julie's eyes started to look free of the pain that she'd endured for the last four years.

"So are you a good writer, Daddy?" Danny demanded from my lap.

"Pretty good," I returned my attention to her. "I still have to ask Mommy to correct my grammar and proofread my books before I send them off to the publisher."

"You can do that with Spellcheck," my smartass ten-year-old said.

"Some of it," I said. "Mommy finds all of Daddy's typonyms, though.

"What's a typernym?" Danny demanded.

"Typonym" I corrected her. "It's when you type one word, but you mean another word. But they're both words, so Spellcheck doesn't tell you that the word you typed is the wrong one."

"Like what?" Liz was a skeptic about everything except the omniscient computer in her room.

"Like if you type b — o — a — r — d when you meant b — o — r — e — d," I said, keeping my smile to myself. It still wasn't the right time to tell them about the time that their mother had asked, while reviewing my first novel, if I had meant to imply that one of my characters was frigid.

"No," I'd answered, a little annoyed. "I meant to imply only that she was bored with sex. Why?"

"Because you spelled it b — o — a — r — d," she'd told me. "Board with sex."

She'd managed to read for another page before my laughter proved too much for her and she joined me on the bed in our small New Haven apartment. Nine months later, more or less to the day, Elizabeth entered the world. We still referred to her as our little board game, usually in private but occasionally in front of her. According to the current explanation, we meant that she was lots of fun, but sometimes she was tricky and hard to figure out.

"Your daddy's a wonderful writer," Julie was not about to let my self-deprecation go unchallenged. "Three Edgars and a genius award? 'For reinventing and reinvigorating the comic detective novel?'"

"I want to be a writer, too," Danny said fiercely. "Do you have to go to writer school?"

"Well, not writer school," I said. "But probably you'll have to do well in high school and college."

"And then," Julie teased me, "right before you take your CPA exam, you find you have this novel inside that's exploding to get out. And while your wife is in law school, you write it, and it becomes a bestseller. And then you write three more of them. All about Joe Average."

Her eyes twinkled as my eyebrows shot up into my forehead.

"You didn't think anybody'd gotten that yet, did you?" she chuckled.

"Actually, no," I said. The character of Joseph Anthony Verage had appeared in all of my books, and at least once in each book I took pains to have him sign his name as "Joe A. Verage." But before now nobody had remarked on my private little joke. It wasn't that I completely disliked detective fiction. My problem was with the novels about the psychiatrist or college professor or, God forbid, lawyer who solves mysteries on the side. Once? Sure. A whole series? Give me a break.

As Julie had pointed out, it was while I was studying for my CPA exam after college that I finally gave vent to this frustration and created Joseph Verage, by day a substitute English teacher, by night a substitute bartender. A man who, despite his best efforts to fill his free time by coaching youth soccer and having his friends arrange memorably disastrous blind dates, finds himself sucked into a murder mystery that he'd just as soon ignore, with clues swirling about him like a tornado. It was a lark, and I was stunned not only when it was published, but when my publisher claimed the public was clamoring for a sequel.

But that, I pointed out, would violate the whole point of the satire in the first place. You didn't see a sequel to "A Modest Proposal," did you? Satire, shmatire, they'd said; look at the sales. Finally they simply offered me an advance so large that I couldn't turn it down. So what had become a satire quickly became a series of farces, with the situations growing more and more outlandish, and the outcomes more and more unlikely. Outlandish and unlikely to the point that I was now working on the first book of a new four-book contract.

Even my wife, who read every single book and actually did correct my grammar before they were sent out, had never divined the significance of Mr. Verage's name. Or had never mentioned it to me if she did. It was entirely possible, I now realized, that she just didn't think it was that funny.

Still, Julie was the first that I knew of to "get it," and I happily admitted it.

She smiled triumphantly.

"When will Mommy be home?" Danny interrupted our little compliment festival to ask.

"Tomorrow morning," I told her. "Mommy had to fly to California."

"More zitions?" Danny asked.

"More depositions," I agreed as Julie giggled.

Both girls soon lost interest in the world of writing in favor of the world of television. I hated using the boob tube as a babysitter, but since I was alone tonight, I needed a little time to get dinner ready. I would read to both of them after dinner, or, if I could get Julie to stay that long, she could read to Danny while I kept Beth informed of the most recent doings, at least to her, of the wizard Harry Potter. We were still on the second book in the series, written way back in the 1990s. It would be a good while before we got to the most recent, Harry Potter and the Assisted Living Community of Forgenroth.

Julie sneaked in with me to help with dinner, and I asked her what was new in her life. She stepped back to make sure she couldn't be overheard.

"My porn king died yesterday," she said matter-of-factly.

"I'm sorry," I coughed. "Did I know you had a porn king?"
"My porn king client, of course," she smiled. "I brought you some to look at."

"Porn?" I smiled. "I don't need no stinkin' porn."

"That's probably true," she said. "If most guys had married a woman as beautiful and horny as your wife they wouldn't need no stinkin' porn, either. But I want you to take a look at it. I'm kind of at a dead end, and I need someone with a little imagination to give me some ideas about where it might have come from. So I thought I'd run it by you."

"Can you do that?" I asked. "I mean with the, uh, king being a, uh, client of yours and all?"

"Ethically?" she asked. "I guess I need to put you on retainer first."

"Can you do that?" I asked, talking to her back as she left the room.

"Sure," she came back. "Here, sign this. Now here's your dollar. You're a private investigator."

"So what is it?" I asked her.

You remember that picture that Owen Wilson won the Oscar for?"

"The one about ten years ago?" I asked. "About Albert Schweitzer?" 
"No," Julie shook her head, "the one after that, about the retarded kid."

I nodded.

"Well, you remember the woman who played his older girlfriend?"

"Yeah," I grinned. "I liked her. Anderson, Jill Anderson."

"Gillian Anderson," Julie corrected me. "It's her."

"She's a little old for porn now, isn't she?" I asked. "Besides, she must be doing pretty well. All those X-men movies."

"X-Files," Julie corrected me again. "Yeah. Two more and they'll be on X-Files X."

"That's right," I remembered. I'd given up after X-Files IV, when they investigated the baffling continued popularity of Paris Hilton, even after the release of the tape with her and the llama. "So why's she doing porn?"

"She's not, she says," Julie explained. "But my client was peddling parts of a video tape with a woman that looks just like her, although about twenty years younger, playing an FBI agent named Dana Scully, the same as her character on the X-Files. So she sued my guy for misappropriating her image."

"I'm confused," I confessed. "I thought you said it wasn't her."
"Exactly," Julie said. "That's how I got the trial court to dismiss it. If it wasn't her, I argued, it couldn't have been her image. But it just came back from appeal, where they said hey, it looks exactly like her, I mean down to a mole she has on her ass, and the character's name's just too similar. They said that a reasonable jury could find that my guy was trading on her image."

"Well?" I shrugged.

"Oh, I know," Julie laughed. "I never thought I'd win it at the trial court. So anyway, our only hope now — his company's only hope, I should say — is to convince this theoretical reasonable jury that he had no intention of benefiting from Ms. Anderson's persona."

"So what's my role?" I asked.

"I'm hoping you can come up with some idea of how he could have done this," she said. "Because he's not gonna be a big help anymore."

"Being dead and all," I said.

"I do know that it's not his video," she went on. "After the court's decision came out, I called him up to tell him, and he comes into see me and admits he bought it off the internet. Then he decided to sell little pieces of it to make some of his money back. And then he gets shot in the head. And I did hire an investigator, but all he could find was that my guy had paid ten thousand dollars to some company he couldn't trace any farther, and this video was downloaded on to his hard drive three weeks later.

"Uh-oh," she raised her voice, "here come the monsters."

"Is it dinner time, Daddy?" Danny yelled as she careened into the room. "'Cause our show is over. Is it done yet?"

"Almost, honey," I said. "Why don't you and Beth wash your hands and come back and I'll get it set out. Staying for dinner, I assume?"

"Sure," Julie said, "thought you'd never ask."

After dinner, after we'd gotten the kids to bed, she pulled her laptop out and was about to set it up on the dining room table.

"Tell you what," I said. "Let's do this in the study. That way if one of the girls gets up, she won't find us out here watching porn."

We put it on my desk and she first pulled up a photo of the real Gillian Anderson on her laptop.

"You know, they've been working on this kind of thing out in Hollywood for years," I suggested, as I finished hooking the computer up to the high-def holograph I'd just finished paying for. It was worth it, though; the 72-inch plasmascreen had simply taken up too much space on the wall. "Creating actors with computers, you know?

"Yeah, maybe," Julie said. "Now hush up and watch."

The video didn't have really high production values; it looked it had been shot from a camera on top of a guy's head in one long take. Although with the technology of the 2020s, even a cheapo camera gave you a damn good image. It really was almost like you were the guy when you were watching. So when you heard a knock on the door, you got up to answer it, and you found "FBI agent Dana Scully" on your doorstep in a black pantsuit and a big "FBI" badge pinned to her lapel. The woman was a dead ringer.

"You are Mr. Warren, Gerald Warren?" she asks, her voice suggesting that she is merely going through the motions.

"That's right," a voice says, presumably that of the man with the camera on his head, "you can call me Gerry. Come on in."

"My client actually was named Gerry Warren," Julie whispered to me as the woman on screen took a seat opposite "Gerry" and looked through her briefcase. "Dana" extracted a list of questions.

"And I swear that guy sounds just like him," Julie added.



"Mr. Warren, you are the owner of a web site that specializes in pornography?" Dana asks as she sits down on the couch that Gerry points to and demurely crosses her legs.

"For the sake of argument, let's say that's right, too."

"And some of the women posing on that site come from out of state."

"And the problem?" the guy says.

"Mr. Warren, we've had some complaints about the methods you use to coerce women into posing for your site."

"Complaints from the women?" his feigned hurt tone does nothing to hide his amusement.

"Well, no," Dana is uncomfortable, "from their husbands and boyfriends."

"So you've also talked to the women," he says.

"Yes, I have," she answers, unwilling to look him in the eye.

"And they have no complaints, do they?" he presses her.

"Frankly, Mr. Warren, their stories are a little, shall we say, unusual."

"Why?" he asks.

"They consistently attribute their willingness to pose to your, er, equipment."

"My cameras?" he asks with mock innocence.

"Your genital equipment," she finally raises her head from the paper to look directly at him.

"Aaah," the guy says, "and you don't believe them."

"No, Mr. Warren, we do not," she says firmly. "And we want to know just what you're doing to these women."

"Just this, Miss Scully," he stands up and pushes his sweatpants and shorts to the floor.



Julie and I watched as Dana's eyes locked onto the guy's groin and she squeezed her legs tightly together. Dana did. Well, Julie probably did, too. You could see when he pushed down his pants that he was a very well-endowed guy.

"Although I doubt that's my client," Julie pointed out.

I gave her a look, which she returned with raised eyebrows. Maybe Julie was healing. I returned my attention to the screen.



"Well, Dana?" the man asks.

"Ms. Scully," she corrects him hesitantly. "So you're saying that women see your, um, extraordinarily large penis and they —"

"My big cock, Dana."

"Your, um — uh."

"Say it, Dana. My big cock."

"Your big cock."

"What about my big cock?"

"I — um — I..."

"Are you getting wet looking at my big cock?"

She begins squirming on the couch.

"Well, Dana?"

"Yes."

"Aren't you getting hot, Dana?"

"Hot, yes."

Dana slowly peels off her jacket, and then the shirt underneath it.

"Nice bra, Dana. Leave it on. You could do without the slacks, though."

Dana stands and pushes her slacks to the floor to reveal a matching pair of black panties.

"Very nice. Come on in the bedroom."



"So what do you think?" Julie asked.

"I think it's very amateurish," I said. "Very crude."

"And?" Julie asked.

"And very, very hot," I admitted.

"I can tell," Julie was looking at the bulge in my pants.

She reached for it with a grin. And I let her. As far as I knew, the poor woman hadn't had sex for at least the last 18 months, since her husband had died, and probably for longer than that, while he was in and out of the hospital. If she needed my help in the healing process, I was more than happy to play doctor. Or maybe she was already healed. Either way.

"You keep watching," she whispered as she fished out my cock, a pale imitation of the one on the video. By now the action on screen had indeed moved into the bedroom, although Dana had returned to the living room to get her handcuffs out of her briefcase and handed them to Gerald on her return. He was getting his blowjob and I was getting mine. His partner had her hands cuffed to the bottom of his four-poster bed. My partner was just my wife's best friend.

With a few gentle squeezes of her fingers, Julie kept me from losing it down the back of her throat while she sucked me. Instead, when she heard the guy on screen tell "Dana" that that was enough, she stood up and began to undress.

Gerry slowly walks around the bed, the camera slowly traveling up and down Dana's body. Suddenly, he reaches down and tears her black lace panties away.

"You want this, slut?" he asks as he crawled onto the bed behind her. The camera catches a quick smack on her left buttock. Dana grunts... 

Julie finished undressing, and dropped to her hands and knees in front of me, so that I could still keep an eye on the video. I slid off the couch and knelt down behind her, taking a moment to admire her lovely ass. I reached down and around her, finding her already wet.

"Just fuck me," Julie whispered. No problem. I put the tip of my cock against her.



"Oh, God, yes," Dana moans after a little more spanking and grunting.

"Beg me, G-girl."

"Oh, God, please, please fuck me with your big fat dick, Gerry. Stick it up my wet little pussy and make me come. OOOOOOHHHHHHH!"

Dana bends her head forward, grunting in rhythm with each thrust. The camera shifts down to show that Gerry is teasing her with only half his cock. He finally begins shoving the rest inside of her, a little bit more on each stroke; she begins screaming, and her lovely body begins squirming on the bed in front of him.



"Are you gonna fuck me or not?" Julie wiggled her ass.

Oh, yeah. I pushed myself in a little further.

"Oh, God, Gerry, Jesus Christ!"

"Call me master, slut."

"Yes, master, fuck your hot little pussy slave, master. Ram me with that big cock. Oh, God, I'm... I'm cummmiiiinnnngggggg!"

"Fuck, Julie!" I yelped, giving her a swat on her bottom.

"Yes," she whined, grinding her ass into my crotch, "fuck Julie."

"No, I mean, fuck, Julie," I said, staring at the computer, "it's one of those god damn dolls."

"Oh, golly."



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Chapter 2


"All right," my wife Karen said as the three of us sat around the kitchen table. "Explain the whole thing to me from the beginning."

She had arrived home in mid-morning on Saturday, dead tired after taking the red-eye back from the coast, and I had dragged her into the kitchen, with maybe a little too much excitement, to tell her that I'd located another "living doll." I'd found two "living dolls" in my parents' attic when I was a high school junior, back in 2004. They were dolls that, I swear to God, I could turn into anybody I wanted, with a couple of odd provisos. Like, I couldn't turn them into a man. Which was not a problem; any body I'd be likely to want was going to be female. And I could choose any date for the woman, as long as it was after 1959. Which was fine, too; I didn't need to meet Marie Antoinette that badly. And then there was some stupid restriction about the time. I couldn't change the time. If I made my request at 10:53 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, I'd get the woman the way she looked at 10:53 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, on whatever date I'd chosen.

Obviously, none of these limitations had represented a serious drawback. I'd had a lot of fun with the dolls, and I'd put them to pretty good use, at least in my opinion. Not including my own, I was directly or indirectly responsible for five happy marriages, including the marriage of Julie, the high school cheerleader and Karen's best friend, to Gordon, the math geek and my best friend.

Once Karen had learned about the dolls, we'd also rid the school of some nasty assholes. And finally, I'd fucked my dick raw, at least until I met Karen. After that, I hadn't needed the dolls much, and since our wedding — the day after we graduated high school — they'd been gathering dust in my closet at my Mom and Dad's. Or at our Mom and Dad's I should say; Karen was my parents' goddaughter, and, after I'd used the dolls to sort out some messy problems in her life after her real parents had died, Karen had considered them her mom and dad as well.

Julie had also learned about the dolls in high school, and she had grudgingly admitted yesterday that yes, "Dana Scully" could be one of the dolls. Karen was a little more skeptical. I started to tell her about the porn tape, and then Julie interrupted to explain why she'd brought it over.

"Wait a minute," Karen held up her hand. She narrowed her eyes. "Are those my clothes?"

"Well, I didn't know whether I'd be staying the night," Julie reddened. "So I borrowed some things."

"Bet the bra's a little big, huh?" my wife smirked.

"Yeah," her best friend answered quickly, "but so are the panties."

"Cunt."

"Bitch," Julie smiled. "Actually, I still have on my own things underneath. I just borrowed your jeans and this shirt."

Karen smiled back at her.

"Now about the video?" she asked.

Julie started to explain again and Karen again interrupted her almost immediately.

"So your client was killed execution-style," she asked, "and you decided to involve my husband?"

"Hey," I protested, "back off."

Karen transferred the look from Julie to me.

"I knew perfectly well how her client was killed before I signed that paper," I lied. "If you want to get mad at somebody, you can get mad at me. I am an adult."

That was not usually an argument I had any success with. But perhaps because Julie was here, Karen bit her lip, and then finally turned to her best friend.

"He's right," she said. "I'm sorry, Jules."

"No, you're right," Julie said. "It was a stupid thing to do."

"She probably wanted to enlist the services of a genius," I said.

When Karen opened her mouth to retort, I pointed to the MacArthur Fellowship letter hanging on the wall. She sighed. I looked at Julie and winked. That was the only way I ever won arguments.

"So, genius, maybe you should just tell me what it is that makes you think it's one of those dolls?" Karen turned to me.

"Actually, it was really just the way she said 'master, '" I explained.

"That doesn't prove anything," Karen scoffed.

"I know," I agreed, "but then I started thinking. "Suppose I had a doll, and I wanted to make money. How would I do it? And here's your answer."

"Porn?" Karen asked.

"Ten thousand dollars a shot?" I said. "That's how much Julie's guy paid for it. You could do two a day easily. That's five million a year."

"Seriously?" Julie asked.

"Without working weekends," I added.

"But where are you going to find customers willing to pay that for, what, an hour-long video?"

"Well," I was enjoying the way the two women were listening to me like I actually knew what I was talking about, "look at the client base. Men. With significant income. The same guys who'll pay two or three grand extra for a plane that will get them somewhere an hour earlier. Ten grand is a drop in the bucket. Particularly if you can manage to get their voices on the video, like this one did, so they can pretend they're the guy with the big cock fucking whoever they want. I mean, if you had a living doll you could do anyone. You'd only need like 500 clients a year. And that's assuming they only want one video a year."

"And that assumption ignores the fact that they're men," Karen turned back to Julie before I could protest. "Well, it's certainly possible. I mean, if he had two, there could easily be more. So does that help you out any?"

Julie was just looking at the floor, turning redder by the second.

"Julie?" Karen asked. "Jules?"

"I made it up," Julie finally blurted out.

"Made what up?" Karen asked.

"The whole investigator thing," Julie said. "My client died of a heart attack and the case was dismissed."

"Honey, why?" Karen asked gently.

"So I could —" Julie was starting to tear up. "So I could, you know..."

"Fuck him?" Karen asked. "All of this was so you could fuck my husband?"

"Yes," Julie sobbed.

"You waited until I was gone and brought over pornography with a little mystery attached so you could get him to fuck you?" Karen continued.

Julie nodded miserably.

Karen sat back in her chair and laughed harder than I'd ever seen her. Finally, she realized that Julie and I were staring at her and wiped away the tears.

"So how was it?" she asked.

"We never did it!" Julie cried out.

Oddly enough, that was perfectly true.

"After I showed it to him," she sputtered, "he spent the night doing research on the internet and watching the tape, and freeze-framing it, and looking things up. I woke up this morning in your bed, wearing one of your nighties."

Both women were staring at me.

"It was one of the dolls!" I protested.

"So what?" Karen said. "You had a beautiful woman in your study, panting for sex, and all you can do is think about your dolls? And they're not even yours. What, do you wanna start a collection or something? Men.

"As for you, Jules," Karen dismissed me with a glance as hopelessly useless, "first of all, that's why I told you I was going away. You've been wasting that gorgeous bod for at least six months now, long after you needed to stop mourning for Gordon, even as wonderful as he was. It was well past time that you got yourself laid. Why didn't you just tell him?"

"I was embarrassed," Julie murmured. "And then he got so involved."

"Well, I can understand that," Karen said. "He is still a nerd at heart. But really, Jules, the porn, the mystery? Come on — second of all, he's a guy!"

"I beg your pardon?" I interjected.

"Julie, watch," she said. She turned to me. "Jason, would you please fuck Julie Pinsky?"

"Certainly," I said. I'd known yesterday that Karen would have approved of my taking Julie to bed.

"And third of all," she was talking to Julie again, "it's Jason! That sofa in his study converts into a bed. You don't even need the please!"

I wasn't sure I liked where this was going. 
"Jason, would you fuck Julie Pinsky?" she asked.
"Um, sure," I agreed.

"You don't even have to make it a request," Karen said. "Jason, fuck Julie Pinsky."

"Yes, dear," I said.

"In fact," Karen looked at her watch. "You talk entirely too much, Julie Pinsky. Honey, I'm leaving right now to take the kids to your brother's for a sleepover."

"Uh-huh," I said.

Karen caught my eye, and then nodded her head at Julie.

"Jason, put me down," Julie protested, beating on my back with little effort and even littler effect. I'd simply grunted and hoisted the surprised brunette onto my shoulder, and was now making my way toward the study.

"Daddy, what's wrong?"

I looked down to see my two little girls as we crossed paths in the dining room.

"Aunt Julie was very bad yesterday and she has to be punished," I told them. "Would you like to help?"

"What did she do, Daddy?" Danny demanded.

"She made Daddy do all sorts of unnecessary research," I said, "when all he had to do was some very simple probing."

"Jason Thompson, don't you dare — OW!"

While I'd been explaining the crime, I'd pulled out one of the dining room chairs with my foot. Devilish little Danny, a gleam in her eye, had climbed into it and delivered a healthy six-year old smack on her godmother's upturned ass.

"You do talk too much, Pinsky," I said, turning to the right to allow Beth a turn. She declined the chair and simply gave her Aunt Julie a sharp open palm on the upper thigh. As fast as Beth was growing up, I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd winked at me and told me to make sure the little slut was well and truly punished.

This time Julie kept her scream to herself, although I did feel another shiver make its way through Julie's body.

"Come on, girls, let's go!" their mother yelled from the kitchen.

By the time I heard the car pulling out of the garage, the sofa bed was open and Julie Pinsky's sopping wet panties were hanging off of the lamp on my desk. By the time Karen returned two hours later, the little slut had been well and truly punished, and I had recovered sufficiently to think about punishing her again.

Karen silently stripped off her clothes, and eased her way into bed with us, still unnoticed by our visitor. I'd spent the last ten minutes teasing Julie, running my hands over her beautiful body, brushing against a breast, a thigh, a hip. Julie had closed her eyes, enjoying the feel of my fingertips. Now I leaned down, circling one of her rapidly rising nipples with my tongue and then sucking it in between my lips.

"Oh, Jason," Julie whimpered. "That feels so nice. Oh, Jason, I can't take having you do both of them. Jason?"

"Pinsky, just shut up and enjoy yourself," Karen whispered after she released the other nipple. "Those little rug rats are going to be at Steve and Shelly's all weekend. Can he really do both of them? With boobs this small? I don't think he's ever even done that to mine."

Julie just reached out and brought Karen's head back down to her breast. That shut her up, too.

By Sunday evening, when Shelly brought Danny and Beth back, and stayed for dinner with her two kids, Julie had moved "just a few things" into our spare room. After all, I had to go out of town later in the week, and she could help Karen look after the girls while I was away.

In theory, anyway. Little hellions would be running naked down the streets of Wilmington by Thursday afternoon while their mother was bedding her best friend.

"If you ladies will excuse me," I said as dinner was winding up, "I have a public speaking engagement to prepare for this week."

"Public speaking?" Karen scoffed. "Who wants to listen to you?"

I made a little money doing some speaking tours, but Karen couldn't pass up a reason to give me a hard time. Just like she could never pass up a reason, I thought to myself, to give me a hard-on.

"Mrs. Snyder's fourth grade class," I said proudly. Beth beamed at me from across the table.

On Tuesday morning, I looked out over the sea of fresh, unspoiled, largely uninterested faces. Perhaps if I was a fireman, or a tugboat captain, or somebody who actually made something, like a baker, they would have been a little more enthusiastic. As it was, I basically had an audience of two: my daughter Elizabeth, and her teacher, Mrs. Snyder, who gushed over my work like I was only a year away from the first of what would undoubtedly be many Nobel Prizes for Literature.

But I was nothing if not a storyteller. A few of the kids knew what a detective was; a few more had heard of Encyclopedia Brown, another fictional character that I'd despised back when I was in school. After a while, they started to accept the messes that Joe Verage found himself in, and then some even got a little interested. By the time Mrs. Snyder asked me to read a selection of one of my books to them, they were all at least paying attention.

"It had been a long time since I'd ridden a bicycle, not since I was a young child, in fact. And I'm sure that the installation of airbags had been a 'big deal, ' involving competing considerations of child safety and civil liberties. But I had missed that debate. So that when I popped a wheelie to jump my bike over the curb that now stood between me and the ice cream truck I was pursuing, the truck whose driver I'd mistakenly paid with the counterfeit currency that I'd discovered, I was genuinely surprised to find myself knocked sideways off the bike and into the prize gardenias that my mother's neighbor, Mrs. August Chulmley, had been painstakingly cultivating for the last five years.

"'Mr. Verage, ' the voice came.

" I blinked opened my eyes. A formidable figure loomed over me, the product of —"

"I'm just going to skip a little here, kids," I said. I didn't think that the expression "years of surgery by the best ear, nose, throat, and boob men in the United States" was something they needed to hear. Mrs. Snyder, though, was convulsed with laughter over in the corner. Most of the kids were smiling as well, I was happy to see, even if they didn't get all of the jokes.

"Okay, here we are," I found my place.



"'Mr. Verage, ' the voice came again, colder than the ice cream I'd tried to hold onto when I stole the bike, ice cream that was now melting onto my pants. 'Mr. Verage, are you fully sober?'

"'Yes, ma'am, ' I said.

"'Mr. Verage, have your driving privileges been suspended? Again?'

"'No, ma'am, ' I answered.

"'But that is your bicycle, Mr. Verage?'

"'I, um, was riding it, yes, ' I confessed.

"'But it's not actually yours, Mr. Verage?'

"'No, ma'am, ' I said.

"'Mr. Verage, ' she sighed. 'I'm very fond of your parents. So I feel compelled to inform you that it will be no less than five minutes, and no more than seven, until the police appear in response to my phone call.'

"'Between five and seven, ma'am, ' I repeated.

"'Four and six now, Mr. Verage, ' she said.

"'Thank you, ma'am, ' I said. I jumped back over the fence that separated Mrs. Chulmley's gardenias from the sidewalk, and hoisted the now non-working bicycle onto my shoulders. I limped down the road into my parents' garage, where my father was buffing his car. He took a long look at me, paying particular attention to the ice cream that was just now finishing sliding down the leg of my pants on to the floor of his pristine garage.

"'Rags are under the work bench, ' he said, returning to work with a sigh."



I got a nice round of laughter and applause, and announced that I would be happy to answer any questions that they had.

"Mr. Verage, are all your books funny?"

"Actually," I said, "I'm Mr. Thompson. Beth Thompson's dad? The character in the book is Mister Verage. But the book is written in something called the first person, so it sounds, when I read it, like I'm Mr. Verage. But yes, I hope that they're all funny. I like making people laugh."

"Mr. Verage, what's your next book about?"

Okay, enough about me; Mr. Verage it was. I made a point of looking around the room, making sure that nobody was hiding under the desks. I swore the whole giggling class to secrecy. I made Mrs. Snyder double swear, to the delight of her students, and cross her heart. I looked around again.

"International spies," I whispered as loudly as I could.

International terrorists, actually, but spies sounded like more fun, particularly at this age. Terrorists sold better, of course.

"Do you know any spies, Mister Verage?"

"No," I said. "But tomorrow I'm flying down in a secret plane to Washington, D.C. — "

Actually, it was Amtrak.

"—where I'm going to meet with the President of the United States —"

Actually, my request for information on terrorists had been routed — by the President, who was a fan — to a much lower level government functionary.

"—and she's going to introduce me to people who know spies."

Actually, I had an appointment at the Federal Counterterrorism Command.

"Mr. Verage, do you know Britney Spears?"

I looked over at Mrs. Snyder.

"Tanya is a big fan," Mrs. Snyder explained. "She asks everybody that."

"O-kay," I nodded. "No, I've never met her, Tanya. Although I understand that she serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Maybe I'll meet her this time."

I rolled my eyes and sent Mrs. Snyder into paroxysms of laughter.

"I know," I said. "Californians."

It was Californians, after all, that had sent Britney Spears to the Senate three years ago, after Dianne Feinstein retired. The Democrat and the Republican vying for the open seat were both scandal-plagued nincompoops, and some of Ms. Spears' teenage fans — and what was she still doing with teenage fans, anyway, at the age of 37? — had started a write-in campaign.

At the same time as these teenagers began their "Write-In Britney Spears" campaign, a group of older cynics had started the "This Whole Thing is Bullshit!" campaign. Britney probably got a couple thousand write-in votes on her own. Early on Election Day, though, ballots started appearing with "B.S." scrawled across them. Oh my God! People might think that a substantial number of Californians were smart enough to realize that both major party candidates were idiots, and that if those were the choices, they'd just as soon do without a senator, thank you very much. The Democratic head of the state election board and her Republican deputy panicked, and instructed local officials to count those ballots as votes for B — Britney S — Spears. By the time they realized that a plurality of California voters had done the unthinkable, Britney Spears had been declared the next senator from California. Senator Britney Spears. The mind boggles.

"Mr. Verage," Mrs. Snyder finally stopped laughing long enough to raise her hand.

I raised my eyebrows in astonishment. I looked at my daughter and back at Mrs. Snyder. Come on, lady.

"I'm sorry," she laughed at her mistake. "Mr. Thompson. Don't these policeman and officials you write about look a little askance at your comedies? I mean, aren't you basically making fun of them?"

"Oh, no," I waved my hand. While she was asking the question, I was hoping that I would be able to explain the word 'askance' to the class, partly because they were only fourth graders and partly because I actually knew what the word meant. But the second part of Mrs. Snyder's question had raised a point of pride, one to which I had to respond immediately, because it challenged a tenet to which I'd adhered religiously.

"I've never made any of them a subject of comedy," I explained self-righteously. "All of the laughter in my book comes at the expense of my main character, Joseph and sometimes at the expense of his friends. No, these officials are all incredibly helpful."

All of them, that is, until two days later, when I met Colonel "Call me Colonel" Monroe. The general public is, as a rule, wholly unaware of the Federal Counterterrorism Command. As far as they know, the Sackler Gallery of Asian Art and the National Museum of African Art on the Washington mall are seven underground floors filled with exactly what they purport to be filled with, Asian and African Art. Only by boarding the elevator on the northeast corner and pressing the buttons 6, 3, and 3 in order (for "F," "C," and "C" — ooh, I know, it's like a puzzle) will the stunned visitor emerge on the eighth underground floor, the uppermost of three floors devoted to the Federal Counterterrorism Command. Apparently the Command can also be entered by a secret passage in the Smithsonian Metro stop, but nobody was interested in showing me that one.

To tell the truth, I was more than a little hesitant when I walked into the nerve center of the Federal Counterterrorism Command early Thursday afternoon. Authority always scares me. Particularly when it's buried under tons and tons of rock. And having Colonel Monroe emerge into the foyer wearing his clean, pressed Marine uniform with his shiny medals and ribbons didn't help, particularly after the hour that I'd just spent getting fingerprinted and X-rayed and retina-scanned.

Colonel Monroe hadn't even finished shaking my hand when he told me curtly that he had never read a work of fiction in his life, and that he was meeting me only because my request to learn about the FCC's work had been passed down to him from a superior he couldn't ignore. If I'd started with him, he seemed to imply, I would have been cut to pieces shortly after I got out of the elevator by the laser beams planted in the ceiling.

"Mr. Thompson," he said brusquely. "Your schedule calls for an hour-long tour of our facilities here at the FCC. After that, I will introduce you to Mr. Richardson, who is our FBI liaison. He is scheduled to give you a tour of the FBI facilities tomorrow morning. For the remainder of the afternoon, however, I've been instructed to give you a choice for a more specific area you might want to look at. We have readily available presentations on nuclear proliferation, biological warfare, and chemically induced memory interference, which would be handled by my section, or counterfeiting or pornography, which are in Mr. Richardson's bailiwick."

I'd done counterfeiting — I mean, I'd written about counterfeiting — but the prospect of spending any more time with Colonel Happy that I absolutely had to made me shudder. And, I rationalized, I was actually still under contract with Julie's law firm to do research on pornography. Even after Julie had broken down under Karen's cross-examination, I was still fascinated by the video. The, uh, technology underlying the video, of course. Julie admitted, when we were lying in bed together on Saturday night, that two parts of her story were true: she really didn't have any idea how they'd done the video, and her client had paid ten thousand dollars for it. That meant, as far as I was concerned, that there could still be another doll on the loose. I picked porno.

Colonel Happy looked a little disappointed. He was probably hoping I'd pick the memory thing, so he could show me his little fun house.

Eager to get rid of me after that, he rushed me past the rooms of technicians with their mega-computers that sifted through all of the telephone calls in the world, and the rooms that contained cubicle after cubicle of people poring over reports and analyses from counterterrorism experts around the world. Then he brought me triumphantly into the nerve center, where giant screens broadcast images from dozens of "disposable" unmanned space-planes that had replaced satellites as the country's most effective real-time imaging tool. With a smirk, the Colonel told me that in this room he could watch anyone in the world scratch his ass while he was still scratching it as long as he could tell his birds where to look.

The first smart-ass question that occurred to me — did he mean real birds, or was he still referring to the space-planes? — died on my lips. No such luck with the second, though.

"And is that a clue?" I asked.

"A clue?" he looked at me.

"To terrorism?" I said.

"Is what a clue, sir?" he said.

"The ass-scratching," I said. "'Cause, you know, I do that sometimes."

His look sent a shiver down my spine. Maybe he was using the radio implanted in his brain to request his superior's permission to kill me.

"Maybe it's time to meet your Mr. Richardson," I suggested.

It was. A phone call summoned Mister "Call me Drew" Richardson. I was a little nervous watching him approach as well. His brown hair was cropped close to his head and his carriage suggested an obvious military background. And even though he was probably only an inch taller than I was, he had muscles in his eyebrows that could have whipped any of the ones I had anywhere else.

"Mister Thompson," he broke into a smile and started vigorously pumping my hand. "It's a real thrill to meet you. I've read every one of your books. I love that whole Joe Average premise. I particularly loved that one blind date, in your second book, I think?"

"The one where he doesn't see the woman's seeing eye dog underneath her chair at the restaurant?" I nodded. Everybody liked that one.

"And then asks if she likes silent film?" he started laughing. "And then tells her he has tickets to a pantomime?"

I smiled weakly.

"Please," I said, "call me Jason."

"Call me Drew," he added. "Come on back to the office."

I found myself glad that I'd chosen pornography. This guy was okay. As he dug a first edition of my second book — the one with the blind girl blind date — out of his desk for me to sign, I glanced around the room. The first thing I saw was what he'd probably tried most to hide, a certificate that accompanied a Silver Star that he'd earned in 2010. He couldn't not put it up, but he'd put it in as inconspicuous a place as he could find. Still, he was no match for a writer like myself, a master of observation. And then his diplomas. Good diplomas, too: Georgetown, Harvard, Caltech. And then the pictures. A picture of him and the President of Colombia. A picture of him standing over the President's body with a pistol. A picture of him with our President. Then a picture of him fishing, thank God.

With a last glance at the Colombian pictures again, I returned to find Mr. Richardson ready to start my pornography lesson.

"How much do you know about pornography and terrorism?" he asked me.

"I'm okay on the pornography bit," I said. "The connection to terrorism is a little beyond me. Before we get started, though, can I ask you a question?"

"Certainly," he nodded.

"Is it possible," I asked, "to fake a video of, oh, I don't know, Britney Spears, so that you and I would be convinced that it was her?"

"It's possible," he agreed. "We have that technology. Hollywood has that technology. But it's not commercially feasible. It would cost over ten million dollars and tie up some pretty fancy computers for a long time. You could get the real Britney Spears for less. Or you could have, before she was elected to the Senate. And there are times when it will still look fake.

"Now let me start with a few things about money laundering," he said, and he was off.

He was an incredibly patient teacher, but I had trouble with regular laundering. Whites, colors; hot, cold, warm; bleach, no bleach. Money laundering was easily three or four times as difficult.

"I'm sorry?" I asked after he'd lost me yet again.

"Khartoum?" he said. "In Sudan?"

"Oh, sure," I agreed. "Muslims."

"Catholics, actually, sir," he said in a low voice.

"Catholic terrorist pornographers?" I asked. Nobody was going to believe that. What I wrote may have been fiction, but it had to be believable fiction.

"I swear to God, sir," he said.

"Catholic God?" I couldn't resist.

Mister Richardson started laughing, and after that we became fast friends. So good, in fact, that when the presentation was over, he asked me what was on my schedule for the rest of the night.

"Having dinner at the Bonanza?" I suggested. "Why? You going on a secret pornography stakeout or something? Can I come with?"

"No, sir," he chuckled. "A buddy and I got two courtside tickets to the Wizards game, and he had to, uh, go out of the country for a, um, a meeting."

My eyes went back to the pictures and back to Mr. Richardson.

"Yeah, one of those meetings," he said quietly. "So if you're not busy, I was thinking maybe you'd like to go."

"Sure," I said. "Let's do it. But you have to call me Jason, right? I'm not spending an evening drinking beer with somebody who calls me 'sir.'"

We had dinner together at my hotel and then he drove us — in a fifteen-year-old Volkswagen Golf; somebody wasn't making the big bucks — to the Gigantic Phone Monopoly Center in downtown Washington. I was delighted to find that the game was against the Sacramento Kings, the only NBA team in which I had even the slightest interest. And the seats were great, although mine was next to a thirteen-year-old urchin who screamed out his request for an autograph each time one of the Kings players went by. Finally, when the layup drills had ended, and my ear was starting to hurt, I turned to look at him.

"I'm so sorry," his mother apologized from the seat on his other side. "We just moved here from Sacramento, and he's such a big fan I promised him that I'd get him a seat where he could try to get another autograph. I can't believe how expensive these seats are. And we tried to find the bus when the players arrived, but..."

"So who have you got already?" I asked, looking down at the book he eagerly held in front of him. Other than the annoying whine, he wasn't actually that bad a kid.

"Jerome Gardner!" he said excitedly. I raised an eyebrow and looked at his mother.

"He's playing in Italy this year," she explained. "But he got in almost every game last year.

"Oh," I said. One of those guys with splinters in their asses.

By now the teams had started their shooting drills, and I looked out at the Kings' aging star, a one-time has-been whose career was resurrected when the NBA introduced the five-point shot. He was being fed by an assistant coach, and it was a beautiful sight to see him stroking them in from just inside half-court.

Pass — catch — release... two... three... four... swish.

Pass — catch — release... two... three... four... swish.

Pass — catch — release... two... three... four... swish.

Pass —

I opened my mouth to take advantage of a lull in the crowd noise.

"Joshua Gunn!" I screamed.

— catch — release... 

"Joshua Gunn, if you don't get your miserable butt over here and give this boy an autograph, I'm gonna speak with your mother over Thanksgiving."

... four... swish.

The next pass hit him in the head, but he looked my way with a grin and hustled over. Joshua "Gunner" Gunn, one of my best friends from high school along with Julie Pinsky's late husband Gordon, was quite possibly the nicest guy I knew. His was another one of the relationships I'd used the dolls to arrange, with a very nice, very attractive cheerleader named Sue Waggoner. The man owed me, to be blunt about it, and I pointed to the autograph book that the wide-eyed kid was tentatively proffering. Gunner asked the astonished little boy's name and wrote him a nice message and told him not to talk to strange men during basketball games. I told him to take the book back to the bench and get it filled up.

"How's Jules?" he asked as he headed off, book in hand.

"She's good," I said. I grinned. "She's real good."

"Asshole," he shot back.

The game began and Drew and I were having a great time. He bought me a beer; I bought him a dog. We talked about the Wizards; we talked about terrorists. We left out the pornography part, in deference to the kid. We kept on talking right up until, just before the end of the first half, a vision in gold lamé started to descend the steps from the upper luxury suites. I remember thinking, with a teeny, tiny portion of my mind, that I thought you accessed those suites from the back, like from a private elevator. But there was apparently also an entrance right into the arena seating, way up near the top. Probably in case Dan Snyder, who by this point owned every sports team in the Balto-washi-mond area, sees somebody he knows sitting in the nosebleed section and wants to invite him in for a Courvoisier.

The vast majority of my brain cells were not thinking about how to access the luxury suites; rather, they were marching in lockstep with my eyes, which were following a gold lamé jumpsuit that contained a set of breasts so perfectly sculpted that when they moved — and believe me, they moved — the reflected light, even under fluorescent lamps, illuminated that dingy arena like one sunburst after another. Drew was in the middle of a sentence about something when I stopped to watch, at first only to admire the way her long blonde hair flowed away from her head like an aura. Drew shut up after a few more seconds, and joined me in watching.

By then, she was probably a third of the way down the steps, and a full half of the crowd failed to respond to an electrifying dunk by the Wizards' shooting guard. Rows fell silent, one at a time, when she passed, and the referees eventually stopped the game to direct the attention of one of the mop guys to some non-existent spot of sweat on the floor. When he failed to move, one of the referees grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and shoved him out onto the court, without ever himself taking his eyes off of the woman who had now made it down to section 135.

She came down the steps to the courtside seats, smiling at the men — and women! — who leapt out of her way like the Red Sea had done for Moses. And then she was at the end of the court, walking along the out-of-bounds line, until, no more than ten feet away from us, she tossed a shiny metal object towards us. I caught it and, more by feel than sight, recognized it as a cellular phone.

"It's for you!" Sue Waggoner Gunn gave me a malicious smile as she crossed in front of us and continued out into the concession area, throwing Gunner a kiss as she went by the huddle he was standing in.

The whole crowd exhaled, and I stared at the phone. There was a reason that I never carried a cell phone; I hated them. I was a writer. I worked at home. When was the last time you heard about a literary emergency? Oh, I had one hard-wired in the car, for real emergencies involving the kids. Otherwise, though, I found them annoying. And I refused to be part of the 99.9998 percent of the American population that annoyed all of the people around them by screaming so loudly into the damn things that you'd think they were using tin cans with string between them. Did they ever bring good news? Was there even the remotest possibility that this was good news?

I flipped it open.

"Hello?" I said dumbly.

The voice on the other hand was deep and feminine, white hot and icy cold.

"Just where the fuck are you?"

"At a basketball game?" I guessed.

"And what the fuck are you doing there?"

"Um," I started.

"And who are you fucking sitting next to?"

I took a quick look at the boy, who'd had his autograph book returned to him by one of the Kings assistants and was smiling at me like I was the Second Coming. Nah, couldn't be him.

"Drew?" I decided she meant. "He's the — he's just a guy at the, uh, FCC. We just met this afternoon when I interviewed him. He had an extra ticket."

"And you've been sitting there buying him beer and hot dogs."

It was much more of a statement than a question. I reflexively looked around. I'd thought those space-planes with the ass-scratching resolution were fancy. Even those FCC guys couldn't do this.

"Actually," I said, "he bought the —"

"Put him on."

"You want to, uh, talk to him?" I asked. "To Drew?"

"Put that fucking asshole shithead on the phone."

Now it was my turn to sigh. I looked at the phone and looked at Drew, who stared back with detached interest.

"It's for you," I said.

"The phone?" he asked. "Who is it?"

"I think it's my wife."

"Hello?" he said. After that he had to hold the telephone a good distance away from his head, so that his hearing would be at least recoverable after a series of long and complicated operations. But that didn't prevent him, or me, or the first three rows of Wizards fans, or the Wizards radio guys, or the boy, whose mother quickly covered his ears, from hearing that Drew was a worthless fucking asshole shithead son of a bitch who should crawl back into whatever hole he came out of and then rot in hell.

And that that went double for somebody else, too.

The line went dead. Drew clicked the phone shut and handed it back to me.

"So I guess I won't be having Thanksgiving dinner at your house this year," he said with a dull laugh. "So, uh, your wife doesn't like basketball?"

I was staring straight ahead, at the still empty court, playing with the phone in my hands.

"You know," I said finally, still staring straight ahead, "I'm not so sure anymore that it was my wife. The more I heard of it, the more it didn't really sound like her voice. Except maybe that second voice, at the end. Not that that really helps, of course. 'Cause I don't know why Julie Pinsky wouldn't want me to go to a basketball game with you, either."

I heard a noise, and turned to look. The blood had drained out of Drew's face, and he'd slumped into his chair, from which he was slowly sliding down onto the floor.

And that's when my razor-sharp mind finally put the together all the clues, like the name on his diplomas.

Drew Richardson.

An-drew Richardson.

Andy Richardson.

Richie Rich.

In the immortal words of Julie Pinksy, oh golly.



-------

Chapter 3


I'm not proud of myself for throwing a punch. I mean, I am, really — the guy's a professional killer — but I'm sure I could have handled it another way.

Andy Richardson — or Richie Rich as we called him behind his back (just jealousy, really; he had his own convertible) — was one of the assholes that my dolls and I had taken care of in high school. Actually Karen had done most of the taking care. Whatever; they were still my dolls. Andy and Julie had started dating in the ninth grade. And if we hadn't pointed out to her what an asshole he was — slipping her roofies, inviting his pals Bobby and Fred in for little mini-orgies, not taking care of her needs (well, that was a big deal for Karen) — she probably would have just gone right on dating him.

And in answer to your question, no, I didn't hit him while he was on the floor. I just sat there, trying not to throw up as I watched the Wizards training staff attend to him and then take him away on a stretcher to their medical facility. I just sat there and watched. And then the phone in my hand started ringing.

"Hello?"

"Are you going to bring my phone back now?"

I looked up into the luxury suite to see Sue Gunn waving at me.

"Um, sure," I said. "Where's the elevator?"

"Oh, no," she said. "Bad boys have to use the stairs."

So I stood up, followed by the eyes of all 15,687 people in attendance that night.

"You guys enjoy the rest of the game," I said to the stunned woman and her son sitting beside me. I ascended the stairs, and if people had leaped out of Sue Gunn's way as if they would be singed by her ethereal radiance, they were even quicker to leap out of mine as if whatever I had might be contagious.

"Thanks a lot, Sue," I said, tossing her the phone as I entered the suite occupied by the Kings staff and a few other wives of the players.

"Sure," she smiled. "I can't believe you were here with that asshole."

"I didn't know it was him," I protested.

"How could you not know it was him?" Sue demanded. "He has the same shifty little eyes, the same arrogant expression."

"I'm not a detective, you know," I protested.

"Obviously," she said. "Where did you meet him, anyway? The Playboy Millionaires Club?"

"He's a public servant," I was dumbfounded. "He drives a crappy car that even my mom wouldn't get in. This whole thing is just nuts. How did you know it was him?"

"I didn't," she confessed. "I saw you down there, and I called Karen to give her shit about your not calling me for tickets. Jules answered the phone. So what, is she living with you guys now?"

"For a little while," I avoided her glance.

"You didn't!" Sue said gleefully. "Did you? With Julie?"

I looked up to see Sue with a big smile on her face. I knew what she was asking.

"We did, with Julie," I answered, including Karen in the answer.

"Yeah, that would have been even better," Sue smiled softly, lost momentarily in what was, for both of us, a wonderful memory. "Anyway, I asked her who the guy you were with was and she said, 'what guy, ' and I photo-phoned him to her and she went ballistic. I never realized how much she still hated him."

"I never did either," I admitted.

"Looking back, though," she said, "I guess I should have. You and Gordon and her dad are the only guys she's ever really trusted. She used to really love him, you know, when they first started dating in the ninth grade. She and I were both on JV cheerleaders then. And then he started in with the drugs, and his buddies. And until you and Karen came along, she didn't even realize how deep the shit really was. You know, she's even on guard around Joshua a little bit. And I guess I should have known why."

"Well, believe me," I said. "If I had any idea at all that the guy was Andy Richardson, I would have cut the interview off right then. I certainly wouldn't have come to the game with him. It's just he was so, so, so nice. Fucking asshole."

"Shithead," Sue added. Exactly.

I spent the whole night stewing about what a sap I'd been, and Andy was probably very surprised to be summoned from his desk the next morning to meet a visitor at the FCC entrance. He'd probably figured that our little interview was over.

"Jason," he said softly as he approached, dark circles under his eyes.

"You fucking asshole shithead," I muttered as I felt my fist connect with his left jawbone. Then I was cut to pieces by the laser beams from the ceiling. Actually, I was buried by a horde of security guards — well, two — who emerged from the secret compartments that ringed the foyer.

I awoke to find myself handcuffed to a chair in Andy's office. I could taste blood on the inside of my lip, and my arms were sore, but I didn't think anything was broken.

"Jason, I'm sorry," he said.

I just stared at him.

"Alright, here," he said. "This is a police complaint I've filed against you for hitting me, twice in the jaw and once in the stomach."

He threw a piece of paper on the desk in front of me. I furrowed my brow.

"There's no way that I got in more than one —" I began.

"Yeah, I know that," he said, "and you know that."

"Just like we both know that you didn't have to let me get that one in," I said.

He shrugged.

"Jason, I was an asshole in high school," he sighed. "We both know that, too. I spent my last year in military school, and then I joined the military. And when I got out, I did a lot of therapy. To try to understand why I did what I did in high school.

"And I'm sorry," he said. "I can't undo it. If I'd known that was Julie on the phone I would have dropped to my knees to beg her forgiveness.

"You're still friends with Julie, obviously," he said.

I nodded.

"So that's why your wife yelled at me, too," he was nodding.

"No," I finally found my voice again. "My wife yelled at you because she independently thinks you're a fucking asshole shithead. Like I do."

"I'm sorry?"

This one came out as a question.

"Who is your wife?"

"Why?" I asked. "Is Julie the only one you owe an apology?"

He looked down at something in front of him, probably my file.

"Karen... ?" he shrugged.

Then his eyes grew wide.

"That redhead?" he gasped. "Karen... ?"

"McCarthy," I said.

"Oh, God," he sat back. In truth, he looked like he might faint again.

Colonel Monroe chose that moment to look in.

"Drew, you allright?" he asked. "You want me to have this sumbitch taken downstairs for a while?"

"No," Andy gasped out. "I'm fine. I'll be fine."

"You sure?" the colonel repeated, looking at me like I was still a threat in spite of the handcuffs.

"Yeah, Bob," Andy said. "I'll fill you in later."

Bob closed the door behind him, and Andy sipped from a bottle of water on his desk.

"I'm sorry," he said finally, "I shouldn't keep you like that."

He pressed a button on a small device on his desk and the handcuffs fell to the ground. I rubbed my wrists, more for something to do than because they hurt.

"I owe your wife my life," he finally said. "If she hadn't humiliated me in front of my dad at that student council debate, I'd have ended up in prison with Bobby and Fred."

"Bobby Parker and Fred Mars are in prison?" I asked, forgetting for the moment who this asshole was. So that was why they hadn't been at the last reunion. I'd just figured that it was because it wasn't one of the biggies.

"Yeah," Andy said. "For fraud and distributing drugs."

Huh.

"Anyway, I'm not surprised your wife hates me, too," he said. "Those pictures were a horrible thing to do. I hope my dad told her that he destroyed all of them. And the ones of Julie."

"I don't know," I said grudgingly. "Probably he did. She's never brought it up."

"You know, I still never figured that whole thing out," he was shaking his head. "By the time that debate was over, she could have convinced me that I was a Capuchin monkey."

Well, I wasn't about to tell him. As far as I knew, Operation "Bury Richie Rich" was still a highly classified secret in the Thompson household. Conceived, planned, and executed by Karen Thompson nee McCarthy, as revenge for his treatment of Julie Pinsky, it had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. While I was supposed to be entertaining Julie, Karen had sent one of the dolls, posing as her, into Andy's house where it had been drugged and date-raped. Karen had embarrassed Andy by engineering Julie's prom date with Gordon, and Andy had retaliated by passing out pictures of Karen in flagrante delicto, so to speak. So Karen decided to get him booted out of his more or less permanent position as student council president. Because she'd taken care to be seen elsewhere at the same time the doll was at Andy's, Karen managed to use the election debate to convince the entire school, as well as Andy's father, and even Andy, apparently, that the pictures were disgusting fakes. And they were. Sort of. At least, the Karen in them had been a fake. And they'd worked; Andy hadn't come back to school the next fall.

"Well, I just wanted you to know that I'm making arrangements to have that complaint shown to Julie," he said. "And, uh, Karen. You'll still have to go get booked and arraigned this morning, but then you'll come back in December and we'll get the whole thing dismissed and cleaned off your record. "

I picked it up and stared at it.

"They'll probably let you back in the house for Thanksgiving," he chuckled softly.

"Yeah, thank goodness," I said, looking at the complaint. "Thanksgiving dinner is always exciting at my house."

I was back in the Julie and Karen's graces long before Thanksgiving. On the trip home, I read the complaint and found that Andy had described how it had taken ten men and women to hold me at bay while they got the handcuffs on my wildly, but accurately flailing arms, and how he had cowered in his office until I was hauled away to the police station. And when I got home, I found that he had sent federal agents to my wife's office and Julie's office to show them the complaint and ask them whether they had any knowledge of my intent to commit a premeditated assault on one Andrew Richardson at his workplace. Then they took Karen aside to ask whether she thought she was in any danger given my obvious violence and skill.

I didn't learn that latter part until after I walked in the door and found not one but two sets of arms thrown around me, and not one but two sets of soft lips kissing my cheeks.

"Where are the girls?" I asked when they finally turned me loose.

"How many girls do you need?"

That was my wife. Struck by the unusual huskiness of her voice, I turned to look at her. An iridescent green robe was falling back off of her shoulders, sliding down her arms and, I assume, pooling at her feet. Not that I ever looked that far down. She had on what I have since learned is called a shelf bra, but which at the time I remember thinking of as more of a display bra, since it didn't appear to be doing any actual bra-ing. What material was there was the same shimmery green as the robe. I was certain that it was a color that would perfectly complement her gorgeous red hair if I could ever get far enough away to put the whole scene in perspective.

"'Cause the little ones are at your brother's again," said the voice behind me. "And if you want me to leave you here with your wife and go get them you'll have to turn around and tell me so."

She applied just the slightest pressure on my shoulder and I, whore that I am, tore my eyes off of my wife and pivoted just in time to see a matching blue robe fall off of Julie's shoulders. Her shelf bra was the same color, and she threw her arms around me and drew her lips to my ear.

"Or maybe you want your wife to leave me here with you while she goes and gets them," she whispered.

"In your dreams, Pinsky," Karen pressed her breasts against my back and reached around from behind to undo my belt and pants. "Your problem, Thompson, is that entirely too many women think of you as the object of hero-worship."

Well, I thought to myself as I let the two women lead me to the study, it's fine with me if they leave off the hero part.

Karen smacked the back of my head.

That was odd; I was pretty sure I hadn't said that aloud.

Thanksgiving turned out to be not that exciting anyway. Just two tables chock full of Thompsons and Pinskys. The Thompson boys dutifully brought their families on the pilgrimage home to Mom and Dad's Hardwood home every Christmas. But with Steve and me living only a half an hour apart, it made a lot more sense to bring Mom and Dad here for other occasions. For her part, Julie wasn't quite ready to go back home yet, to the house that she and Gordon, her step-brother and then husband, had lived in during their senior years in high school. So we invited her dad and step-mom to Thanksgiving dinner as well.

My D.C. court appearance was scheduled for four days before Christmas, and my lawyer wife and her lawyer best friend were dumbfounded that I didn't tell them about it until breakfast that morning, when I announced I had to go catch a train.

"I could have called somebody!" Karen complained.

"Oh, pooh," I said. "The people you know charge six hundred bucks an hour. Howie'll take care of me."

"Who's Howie?" she asked.

"He's my lawyer," I smiled. "Howie Abrams."

"And how did you find this Howie Abrams?" Julie asked.

"Phone book," I said. "First name there. Actually, the first name is Walter Aaron, but he only does wills. Anyway,

I talked to Howie yesterday on the phone. Smart as a whip, Howie is."

I had talked to Howie yesterday, in fact, although he didn't have a copy of the file yet. Apparently, he usually didn't get them until the day of the first hearing. He perhaps wasn't quite the hot-shot lawyer I was representing him as, although he was probably very busy. With the holidays and all. Still, I wasn't worried. I assumed that Drew was going to keep his word. We had traded e-mails on a couple of occasions, and he had told me exactly how the day would go. I didn't tell Karen and Julie that part. I had told them some more about Drew, though, like what I'd seen in his office and his obvious contrition. Karen admitted that he could have changed a little, although Julie continued to maintain that he was an asshole shithead. Just not a fucking asshole shithead, I noted.

He wasn't outside the courtroom when I got there, but I introduced myself to Howie as we'd planned, and then excused myself to talk to a gentleman lurking outside with us, a gentleman who stuck out like a sore thumb in his very expensive suit.

"Hi," I held out my hand, "you must be Karen Thompson's friend."

"Hi," he smiled to cover his surprise as we shook hands. "Jim Krol. I was at Yale with Karen. I remember you from some of the parties. I thought you weren't supposed to know I was going to be here."

"I'm not," I grinned. "I just know Karen well enough by now. What are you supposed to do, leap up and take over if things started going badly? Do you know Howie, by the way?"

"No," he said.

I waved Howie over. He seemed awed by the guy, who apparently worked for one of the city's white-shoe criminal defense firms.

"So you're pleading not guilty," Howie said nonchalantly, trying to hide the fact that we'd never discussed the case before.

"I guess," I said.

"You guess?" Jim asked.

"Well I did hit him," I admitted.

"Your wife said you were provoked," Jim said.

"I had an appointment," I said. "And I kept it for the sole purpose of taking a swing at him."

Howie and Jim looked at each other.

"So you want to stand up there and admit that everything in this complaint is true?" Howie asked in disbelief, seeing his chance at a big career move going up in smoke. "You do understand that you could be sentenced to jail?"

"Well, not everything in there is true," I patted Howie on the arm. "They made some of the stuff up. Don't worry; I'm sure you'll do fine."

By the time they called my case, I still hadn't seen Drew arrive. Apparently I hadn't been looking hard enough.

"Mr. Murphy?" the judge turned to the prosecutor. "I understand you have a request?"

"Yes, sir," he was scratching his head. "The, uh, the gentleman who made the report has admitted to me that in retrospect Mr. Thompson's assault was an act of self-defense and has asked that the charges be dismissed."

"Counselor," the judge was flabbergasted. "I have in front of me a police complaint, which alleges that Mr. Thompson had an appointment at a federal agency, whose name has been blacked out, to see a man whose name is also illegible, and that the first thing Mr. Thompson did when he entered the building, in front of witnesses, was start swinging at that man."

"Yes, sir," the prosecutor shrugged. "That man and his co-workers are prepared to swear they were mistaken."

He turned toward the back of the courtroom. Drew was there, along with Colonel Monroe, and the two security guards. I waved.

"So do you think what we have here is a false police report?" the judge asked, his interest reviving somewhat.

The prosecutor turned around to look at Drew, and caught the expression on Colonel Monroe's face.

"No, your Honor," he said. "Under the circumstances, no."

"Very well," the judge sighed. "Case dismissed."

"Well done, Howie," I shook his hand. "Send me a bill, right?"

"Umm," he started.

I was already gone, waving good-bye to an equally stunned Jim Krol and catching up to my old friends outside of Superior Court.

"Mr. Thompson," Colonel Monroe said coldly.

"Colonel," I smiled. "Thanks for comin.'"

"I'll take care of the file," the Colonel said to Drew. He turned and walked back into the courthouse. Drew turned to me.

"Jason, we need to talk. Do you have time to come to the office?"

I figured I owed him at least a listen. I was back at the FCC with a cup of coffee and a very tasty cheese danish when he returned to the subject that we'd been discussing last time.

"Jason, do you remember asking me about Britney Spears?" he asked.

"Yeah, sure," I said.

"Can you tell me why you picked Ms. Spears?"

I laughed.

"I'd talked to my daughter's fourth grade class a couple days before and some girl asked me if I knew Britney Spears," I said. "Apparently, she asks everybody that. So hers was just the first name that popped into my head."

He looked concerned. Oh, shit.

"It was just hypothetical, of course," I added hastily.

"Have you seen any pornographic videos involving celebrities?" he asked.

"Er, maybe," I admitted.

"May I ask you who?" he leaned forward.

"Ummm," I paused. I could see this whole think leading inexorably back to Julie Pinsky.

"All right," Drew sat back. "Let me give you some information. As a sign of good faith, so to speak. Have you ever heard of Opus Dei?"

"Sure," I nodded. "Right wing nut jobs. I'm sorry, are you Catholic?"

He waved me off. Apparently he wasn't an overly sensitive Catholic.

"How about Opus Christe?" he asked.

"No, that's a new one," I said. "Who are they?"

"Left wing nut jobs," Drew said. "Implacable enemies of Opus Dei."

"You mean like the Sharks and the Jets?" I asked.

"Excuse me?" he said.

"You mean like the Crips and the Bloods?" I tried again. "Rival gangs, dukin' it out in the 'hoods around Saint Peter's Basilica with zip guns and knives?"

"Close," he chuckled. "A little more sophisticated than that, maybe. What do you know about the Catholic Church?"

"I have some friends who are Catholic," I said, although I didn't really want to go there either. My closest Catholic friends would be the Pinskys. "Just general knowledge. You know, Pope up here."

I put my hand at eye level and started lowering it.

"Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, Priests, monks, nuns, sinners."

I had my hand down near my ankle.

"Do you recall the election of the last pope?" he smiled.

"Sort of," I said. "I don't really follow elections much, even in this country. Other than the Britney one, of course. I remember he's got a cool name, John Paul George."

"Catholic tradition requires that a newly elected pope take the name of a previous pope or his own name," Drew explained. "The first John Paul altered that by taking the names of two previous popes. So when Cardinal George Potter of Omaha was elected, he altered it a little more by including his own name."

"Plus he must have been a huge Beatles fan," I said.

"You know, I honestly don't think it ever occurred to him," Drew said. "It wasn't until the jokes started about people kissing the John Paul George Ring-o that he finally caught on. And that just made him angry. No, this pope wants nothing to do with popular culture, no matter when it was popular. His election was the most hotly contested in recent memory, between the liberal and conservative factions of the church. It took seventy-five ballots, and was finally decided when two of the old liberal stalwarts among the College of Cardinals died while they were sealed in the Vatican."

"Of natural causes?" I asked.

"Let's hope," he said. "Anyway, his earlier predecessors, Pope John Paul the Second and Pope Benedict the Sixteenth, had been avid supporters of Opus Dei, the, uh, right wing nut jobs. Pope Armando, who served for ten years after Benedict died, leaned the other way. He had founded the Opus Christe movement a number of years before he was elected. The name is supposed to imply that by giving effect to the teachings of Christ, they represent the true Church. The Protestants went through this in the early 2000s, with something called the Red Letter Movement, because red lettering is used in some bibles to represent the words of Christ. Anyway, the current pope hates the Opus Christe movement with a passion, and has done everything he can to suppress it."

"Which is a lot, right?" I said. "I mean, he's the Pope. Papal infallibility and all that."

"Which is another bone of contention with the Opus Christe people," Drew said. "They believe that the current pope in particular has seriously abused the principle of Papal infallibility."

"Really?" I asked. "How can you think that if you're Catholic? I mean, if the Pope says that God told him he's infallible, what's your answer to that?"

"You understand that the Doctrine of Papal Infallibility is relatively recent?" he said.

"They weren't always infallible?" I asked. I was shocked.

"Well, yes and no," he said. "It was always implicit. But it wasn't until the First Vatican Council of 1870 that the Church formally recognized the Pope's ability to treat certain things, matters of dogma, religious teaching, as being infallible. It used to be used very rarely. But modern popes have been stretching the definition of what they can teach infallibly ever since the political schism in the church started to widen. So when Pope John Paul George purported to include Opus Dei in one of his supposedly infallible teachings, the liberals revolted. He cracked down on them, in particular on Opus Christe, and they went largely underground. The priests, anyway. There's still a functioning civilian bureaucracy. They've got an office building and a website and everything, somewhere up near you, I think. You live in Wilmington, right?"

"Close enough," I said.

"So anyway," he continued, "the priests believed themselves to be so oppressed that a number of them have turned to violence."

"So those are your Catholic terrorists?" I asked in disbelief. "Disgruntled priests?"

"There's nothing new about the use of terrorism in furtherance of religion," he explained. "Think of the Muslims, think of the Irish Republican Army. The Opus Christe militants claim, correctly, that they have not taken any human life, but that property of the Pope is not property they need to respect."

"So what do they do?" I joked. "Pray that buildings fall over?"

"The bombing of the Baltimore Basilica last year," he ticked off on his fingers. "The destruction of another shrine in Maryland three years ago. The attempt to ruin that painting in the Vatican last year."

"Wow," I said. "I had no idea."

"I don't think anyone outside the Church leadership does," he says. "They're trying to treat it as an intramural spat so that ordinary Catholics aren't forced to take sides."

"So where do you come in?" I asked.

"Well, we've been monitoring this for a year or so, because of the destruction of property and the obvious potential for harm. But the Church — the Vatican's ambassador, to be precise -- has asked us to keep our hands off. Until now. We can't ignore it any more."

I raised my eyebrows, and he pushed a paper across his desk at me.

"This is a confidentiality agreement," he said. "By signing it, you promise not to reveal anything that I tell you today. If you don't, you can leave here and tell everyone we had a nice little chat about Catholic theology. If you sign in, you can't tell them even that."

I am nothing if not curious. I signed.

"Over the past several years, we have intercepted satellite transmissions from a facility in Iowa," he said. "A Catholic monastery. We can't tell where they end up; with modern satellite technology, there's simply no way of knowing. There are usually four bursts of transmitted data a day, over the past four years. All of them, up until now, have been so well encrypted that even our computers couldn't crack them. Four days ago, though, somebody appears to have made a mistake. Take a look."

His hand paused over a console on his desk.

"Before I show it to you, I should explain that we've seen similar videos before, and traced them back to Khartoum. That's what I was telling you about last month, the Catholic terrorist pornographers. These videos are usually put on DVDs, smuggled into the United States, and mailed to the individuals who ordered them. From what we understand, you can use the internet to order a video, for ten thousand dollars, of any woman you want. If they do four a day that's forty thousand dollars a day. That's fourteen million dollars a year. The money gets smuggled back into this country. And that kind of money will buy a lot of explosives."

"And that's assuming they work weekends," I mused.

"True," he seemed a little puzzled by my remark. "What we didn't suspect is that the videos actually originate inside the United States. The Khartoum connection simply makes the whole thing almost impossible to trace. Anyway, what apparently happens is they shoot the video, they mail you a script, you read the script onto a tape, you send the tape back, and in return you get back a video of yourself and, for example, Senator Spears."

He pressed a button on his desk, and a hologram leaped onto the wall. It started out with a view of the backs of a bunch of guys in suits. The sounds were those of a press conference: "Senator Spears, what do you think about global warming?" "Senator Spears, why did you vote to remove the federal mandate for child safety seats?" After a few minutes, someone said, "Thank you for coming, gentleman, the Senator has an appointment in a few minutes."

The crowd of men filed out to the right, leaving only the Senator in the front of the room, arranging papers on a lectern. She was perfectly dressed; Senator Britney Spears was nothing if not fashion-conscious. She still dressed like an absolute whore for her concerts, the proceeds of which she was careful to assign to charities, notably the Britney Spears Foundation, but when she returned to her job as a Senator, she knew how to play the part. It was a well-tailored black business suit, with the skirt ending demurely just above her knees. The only hint of something out of place was the fishnet stockings visible underneath her skirt.

Can I help you, Mr. —?" Britney looks up, surprised to see that there is someone left in the room.

"Taylor, George Taylor," comes a voice from off-screen.

I found myself nodding. This video was just like the other one. The point of view was supposed to be that of the man who'd ordered the video, this Mr. Taylor. Drew pressed another button, pausing the video.

"George Taylor," Drew explained, "is an American businessman. Everything in this tape about him contributing to the Senator's PAC is true. We went to question Mr. Taylor, but he was apparently alerted to us and is now in Canada, which does not consider ordering pornography an extraditable offense."

He sighed like he thought it probably should be and pressed another button.



"I've been a very generous contributor to your political action committee, Senator," Mr. Taylor says.

"Well, thank you, Mr. Taylor," Britney flashes him a brilliant smile.

"Do you know why I contributed to your PAC, Senator?" he continues.

Britney obviously does not.

"Because you agree with my positions on the issues?" she guesses.

The man chuckles.

"Do you have positions on the issues, Senator?" he says.

"I have lots of positions," she informs him with a toss of her still-long blonde hair.

"I contributed," Mr. Taylor says, "in order to obtain access."

"To the political process?" the Senator appears dumbfounded.

"To you, Britney," Mr. Taylor says. "A generous contributor like myself is entitled to call you Britney, aren't I? You can call me George, of course."

"Um, like, sure," Britney says. "So you want access to me, George? Like, are you a constituency of mine?"

"Sure, Britney, let's say I'm a constituency," George chuckles again. "Now, how about showing me some of your favorite positions."

"Like what?" Britney asks.

"Like you kneeling on that chair over there, with your jacket and shirt on the floor beside you," George's voice takes on a hard edge. "Like now, Britney."

The Senator obediently strips down to a black mesh bra and kneels on the chair looking over her shoulder.

"Very nice, Britney," George says. "I'll bet another favorite position is sitting in the chair without your skirt, with your legs spread wide apart.

Britney obeys eagerly, revealing one of her most popular concert outfits, a pair of black shorts-style panties attached with garters to her fishnet stockings.

"That's a very attractive outfit, Britney," George says as the blonde blushes. "Do you always wear that to your press conferences?

"Yes," she says softly.

"Press conferences make you hot, don't they?" he says. "All those men standing there staring at you. Just like a concert, isn't it?"

"Yes," she starts squirming in the chair.

"You always find a nice discreet boy after your concerts to party with, don't you, Britney?"

"Sometimes," she smiles slyly. Her nipples are poking through her bra.

"Only sometimes?" George asks.

"Sometimes it's a girl," Britney's smile grows even larger.

"Well, today it's me, Britney," George says. "I feel the need to make an even larger contribution to you now. I'll bet those panties tear really easily, don't they? Right up the middle."

Britney reaches down for her panties.



Drew hit another button on his desk and the screen went blank.

"The rest is just pure pornography," he said.

"And you don't think I ought to watch it, to compare with the other one I saw?" I asked. "I mean that I maybe saw."

He cocked his head at me.

"Gillian Anderson," I admitted.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "Seen that one. Parts of it, anyway. Everyone in the bureau knows about that one. As for watching the rest, you're married to a beautiful redhead, and living with a beautiful brunette. Fuck you."

He had a big smile on his face when he said it, though. And he was right. I didn't really need to see the Senator go at it with one of her "constituencies."

"Why don't you just raid them?" I asked.

"Judge turned down our warrant request," he said. "No probable cause. The evidence is just too flimsy. Plus it's a monastery. And he's probably right."

"So why show it to me?" I asked.

"I have a meeting with the Senator this afternoon," he said with a grin that suggested he'd rather be having a root canal. "And I have to show it to her. And I have to explain what I'm doing about it."

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I've already ordered round-the-clock surveillance of the monastery in Iowa. I'm tracking Mr. Taylor's financial records, and those of the other men who I know received videos, although I suspect that will be a dead end. I'm looking at the computers of all these men to try to track their electronic transactions. Another probable dead end. And I'm talking to you."

"So you want to tell her that you've enlisted the services of a guy who writes mystery novels?" I asked. "You think that will help?"

"Telling her that?" he smiled. "No. Believe me, that won't come up. But I do want to be able to tell her honestly that I'm doing everything I can think of to find these guys, Jason. And although I won't tell her, that includes you."

"Why me?" I asked.

"Nothing more than a hunch," he said. "I've only been this confused one other time in my life. That was a fake photograph. This is a fake video. Both times you've been around."

"You can't possibly think I'm making pornographic videos to fund Catholic terrorists," I protested.

"I don't," he held up a hand. "But I think you might be able to help me figure out how they're doing this. You've become a character in one of your books, Mr. Thompson. You're now Joe Average."

"Fuck," I said, running my hands through my now thinning hair. "I need to think about this. First, I need your permission to break this confidentiality agreement. To talk this over with, uh, someone a lot smarter than I am."

He gave me a long look

"I'll trust you to use your best judgment," he finally said.

"And I'll need a copy of the video."

He tossed me a DVD case from a drawer in his desk.

"Asshole," I laughed. "Oh, and I'll need a note to my wife to explain why I'm so late."

"Fuck you, Jason Thompson," he laughed. "A note from me is the last thing that would help you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go meet a senator."

"One more thing," I said. "How much of this tape is real?"

"Real?"

"Well, does the Senator have a boy or girl visit her after each concert?" I asked.

"Oh, sure, I'll just ask her that when we're done with the interview," Drew's voice dripped with sarcasm.

"It would help to know whether these guys have access to information that the general public doesn't have," I explained. "I'll give you a call after the holidays."

"Don't wait too long," he pleaded. "My ass is on the line on this one."

I didn't even get to wait that long.

When I returned home, I found the family in the full frenzy of packing for a week-long Christmas trip to Hardwood, Pennsylvania.

"It might be shorter if I just drive back for things we forget," I suggested as I stood there completely unnoticed while I watched Karen pack two full suitcases. Down the hall, Julie was helping Beth and Danny get ready.

"Or you can just stay here and feed the fish and water the plants," Karen said sweetly, without even glancing at me, "and you can just mail us the things we forgot."

"Stay here with Julie?" I teased her. Julie was planning on moving back to her place while we were gone, but she'd be visiting from time to time for the fish and the plants.

"No, Julie would come with me," she looked up at me and grinned.

"Oh, all right, I guess I'll pack, too," I said. "After all, they are my parents. They might miss me if I'm not there."

"Or they might not," her eyes twinkled. "They're very fond of Julie."

"Shut up," I said. "I assume you know all about the court appearance. Jim Krol was the guy who was always dealing, right?"
"Yeah," she laughed. "He became an Assistant U.S. Attorney after law school and then joined a nice D.C. firm. Yeah, we talked. That was all pre-planned, right?"

"Maybe," I admitted.

"He saw you getting in a car with Andy afterwards," she added casually. "Wanna tell me about it?"

"I do," I said. "But it'll take a while. We'll have time in Hardwood."

She gave me a nod and returned to packing.

Two days before Christmas, with Mom and Dad having taken Danny and Beth to see Santa at the local mall, I sat down with my wife and a bottle of wine in the newly refinished basement rec room in my parent's house. Karen patiently listened to the whole story.

"So you're going to tell Andy it's the dolls?" she said.

"I have to," I answered her. "I don't see what else it can be. But I was hoping to be able to show him one of the dolls, to make it a little more believable. I looked for my dolls in the closet, and they're not there."

"Maybe Mom just put 'em away," she suggested.

"They're not in the box in the attic that they came from either," I said. "I guess I'll have to ask her."

"I'll do it," Karen volunteered. "I can just see you trying to tell her why you're looking for him. You're such a terrible liar, honey."

She gave me a condescending look, as if that were somehow a bad thing.

"In the meantime, though..." she continued.

I raised my eyebrow.

"I think we should look at that tape," she grinned.

"The one with Senator Spears?" I asked. "I'm shocked."

"Shocked, shocked to find gambling going on here," she agreed. "I do think we need to christen the rec room, though. They won't be back for hours."

She was kissing my ear, and running her hand underneath the sweatshirt I was wearing.

"So why do we need the video?" I groaned.

"We don't need it," she whispered, "but I want to do what Julie did. Don't you think it'll be fun to pretend you're making out with a Senator, baby? I'll go put on my Senator suit."

She was rubbing the growing bulge in my jeans.

"I'll go set it up," I gasped, "and show you what she's wearing."

Fifty-five minutes later, the Senator suit lying on the floor in a jumbled heap, a nearly naked Karen was standing, if you can call it that, with her legs as far apart as she could get them without actually dropping into a split. That cute little pose left her hot little pussy at just the right level for me while I was kneeling behind her. She was balanced on her hands, complaining yet again that there was no way a 40-year-old senator could get into this position. But I looked up at the tape, and there she was.

"Oh, God, Britney, you're such a tight little bitch," George says as he looks down to see his cock sawing in and out of the nearly naked Senator.

"Fuck, George," Britney gasps. "Fuck my hot little — oh, God."

"Isn't that fucker ever gonna cum?" Karen complained. George did have amazing powers of stamina, particularly if Britney was as tight as he claimed she was. I'd been doing my best to match him, stroke for stroke, but I'd had to back off a few times to prevent me from reaching "The End" before George did.

"You know what I want to do now, Britney?" George asks.

"No," Britney asks breathlessly, "what, George?"

"Yeah, what the hell else is there?" Karen asked. We'd started out with her bent over the chair and me fucking her from behind, then switched to me sitting on the chair with her riding me, then switched to her riding me while facing away from me, then switched to her on her hands and knees on the floor. And then this one, also George's idea, with him grabbing Britney's blonde hair to hold her in place and me doing the same with Karen's red tresses.

"Maybe it ends up in good old missionary," I grunted, yanking her back yet again to keep pace with George.

"I want to fuck your ass, Senator," George says, "just like you've been fucking all the voters."

"Oh, hell no," Karen cried. "No way, Jason."

She wasn't in much of a position to resist if I'd really wanted to, but it didn't come to that. Just the idea of it was enough to make me lose it. Holding her in place, I groaned and shot my load deep into her. That was enough for her, too. Although George hadn't really given a lot of consideration to Britney's climax, Karen had gotten so turned on by the whole thing that she started her own climax just after I did.

We remained in that position for the next few minutes, watching in disbelief as Britney eagerly accepted George's cock into her rectum. It wasn't a small cock but — fortunately for Britney — neither was it the same monster I'd seen on "Gerald Warren" on the Gillian Anderson video. Of course, if they were doing four shows a day, it was pretty damn unlikely that the same guy was performing in all of them. Meanwhile, watching George, I found myself getting hard again inside Karen, a new personal best for recovery.

"George" was done. I was just getting started again.

My offer to call Drew after the holidays turned out to be unacceptable and unnecessary. It was three o'clock on Christmas Eve when I was summoned to the phone.

"Jason?" asked the nasal voice. "This is Drew."

"You sound like shit," I said.

"Yeah, sorry," his voice returned to normal. "I was afraid Karen would answer."

"And recognize your voice after fourteen years?" I laughed. Of course, that was entirely possible. "What's up?"

"We need to talk," he said soberly. "I'm at the Denny's."

"Paul and Anne Denny's?" I asked. "On Ash Street?"

"No, the Denny's that used to be the Shoney's," he said. "On Locust."

"Oh yeah," I said. "Well, look, today's Christmas Eve, tomorrow's Christmas, there's all the traffic, what do you say we meet on Sunday, around ten?"

"What do you say you get your ass over here now?" his voice turned hard.

"And the good reason for me to do that is?" I asked.

"Julie Pinsky was taken into federal custody earlier today."

"Twenty minutes," I said.



-------

Chapter 4


"Taken into custody by whom?" I hissed as I slid into the booth.

"The FBI," he answered.

"Excuse me, but you're the fucking FBI," I said, perhaps unnecessarily.

"I am, but not an agent on this case anymore," he said.

I raised an eyebrow.

"Here, look at this video," he said. "We got it two days ago."

He flipped open his palmtop, 1024 gigabytes of memory that fit into a piece of electronics the size of a pack of playing cards. I'd owned two of them, and gave them up after the insurance company refused to pay for the second one, the one I'd dropped into the fishtank. A laptop was fine for me.

With the press of a few keys, Drew produced a holographic film of a girl jogging in a park.

"Cute," I said. "Nice legs."

"Recognize her?" he asked.

I squinted at the picture. A waitress put a cup of coffee on the table and I absent-mindedly took a sip as I squinted harder.

"No," I finally said. "How far away were you, a mile and a half?"

"More or less," he said. "This is a park adjacent to the monastery that I told you about. It's public property but they would have noticed us if we'd been any closer. We were a little less than two miles away, in a cherry picker, working on the electric lines. How about now?"

He slid a close-up picture in front of me, printed on real paper this time.

"A young girl?" I offered.

"Keep looking."

"Maybe sixteen, seventeen?" I tried again, obviously not making him happy.

"How 'bout this?"

He pressed some different keys on his palmtop, and we both heard a voice.

"May 30, 2005."

There was a pause and then a younger voice.

"Oh, fuck. That was incredible."

There was another click, and the series repeated itself. I heard it two more times.

"We aimed a directional microphone into the building in this video, and the only sounds it picks up are from a bathroom," Drew said. "Most of it is monks pissing and shitting. But we get this at 10:30 every night. At least for the last four nights, which is how long we've had it set up."

I waited for him to go on.

"Hi," Karen suddenly appeared at the side of the table, "sorry I'm late. Hi, Andy, shove over."

She kissed the stunned FBI agent on the cheek and forced him to slide farther over into the booth.

"Um, hello, uh, Mrs. Thompson," Drew stammered. "How, um, how are you?"

"Fine, thank you," Karen laughed. "I'm not going to bite you, Andy. You kept my husband out of jail. He says you've reformed. That's good enough for me."

She picked up the picture and gave them it a brief glance.

"Why do you have a picture of a young Julie Pinsky, Andrew?" she asked suspiciously. I snatched the picture out of her hand and stared at it. Darned if it wasn't.

I looked back up to see Drew staring at Karen. Then he pressed the keys on his palmtop again. The recording played again. Karen listened and then turned to me.

"Well, that's not Julie Pinsky," she flashed me a big grin.

"It is," Drew insisted. "I ran voice prints before I got pulled off the case. That is Julie Pinsky's voice."

"It's her voice, yes," Karen said. "But that was actually one of Jase's little dolls. Do you remember when she said that?"

"His dolls?" Drew asked.

"May 30, 2005?" I decided to guess the obvious.

"Asshole," she sighed. "Do you remember what we were doing on May 30, 2005?

"No," I said. "Why? Should I? Was she with us?"

"Operation Bury Richie Rich?" Karen smiled.

"What?" Drew finally broke out of his immobility.

"Damn it," I slammed my fist on the table. "So it is one of my dolls. God damn those fuckers."

"What do you mean, one of your dolls?" Drew asked again.

Over coffee the night before, with the kids replaying "The Grinch" over and over again, Karen had casually asked Mom what had happened to the two dolls that Karen used to keep in the closet in my room. She thought she might give them to Beth and Danny.

"Oh, I am so sorry, sweetie," Mom said. "I gave them away to that nice Mrs. Carter who lives down the street, for her daughter Martha. It was before Danielle was born. I guess I didn't even think of saving them for you."

"No problem," Karen said. "Don't give it another thought."

The next morning, Karen had casually left the house for a walk and dropped in on the Carters. Twenty-year-old Martha was happy to give up the blonde doll, particularly when Karen promised to write her a letter of recommendation for law school next year, but she'd given the brunette to her best friend Lana Tuttle, and they'd moved to Chicago four or five years back.

Drew turned to Karen.

"One of his dolls?" he'd obviously given up trying to get the answer from me.

Karen reached into her purse, and pulled out the blonde doll. Drew sat there in a sort of stunned stupor as Karen explained how the dolls worked and how she'd used them to her advantage, and his disadvantage, back in high school. He finally, grudgingly accepted it when I turned the blonde doll into another Karen Thompson, and told her not to lick my ear any more but just to sit there quietly.

"So what does that mean?" Drew asked. "That 'fuck, that was incredible.'"

"You remember asking me to the prom?" Karen asked.

Drew reddened.

"You remember the date?" she asked.

"No," he said.

"It was the Monday two weeks before the prom," Karen said. "Which was..."

Drew pressed some more keys on his palmtop and turned to us with a stunned look on his face.

"May 30, 2005," he whispered.

"We summoned Julie that night, to ask her why you'd done it," Karen said. "And she told us about the junior babe list, and your little fuck parties, and —"

"I get it," Andy said. "I get it."

"And then Jason made love to her," Karen smiled.

"Made love to Julie?" Andy asked.

"Made love to the doll," Karen smirked. "To learn how to make love to Julie, so we could steal her away from you. You probably recorded this about eleven each night, right? That's when Jason gave her that last orgasm."

"Ten-thirty," Drew mumbled.

"Really?" Karen said. "I didn't think he was ever that quick. She was a tight little bitch though, wasn't she?"

Despite the teasing, she was looking at me with incredible pride.

"So what does it mean?" I asked.

"It means that, number one, this doll can turn herself into someone different, without any master," Karen said. "Just with her own voice. I remember I used the brunette doll that night. You always liked the blonde. So number two, for whatever reason, this doll keeps turning herself back into what she was that night. And then going jogging in that same body."

Andy was silent for a while longer before he finally turned to Karen.

"So those pictures weren't fake?" he asked Karen.

"No, Andy," she shook her head.

"So I did drug you?" he swallowed hard. "And, uh, rape you?"

"You tried," she said. "It just wasn't me."

"You know," he said, "all these years my father has refused to speak to me because of what he thinks I did to you."

"Andy, I'm sorry," Karen put a hand on his arm. "But —"

"No, no," he chuckled quietly. "If he knew what I actually tried to do to you, he'd have had me thrown in jail. That's the kind of guy he is. You saved my life, Karen McCarthy Thompson."

"My pleasure," Karen rubbed his arm. "Looks like you did okay with it. Speaking of which, are you Drew or Andy? He keeps calling you Drew and I still think of you as Andy."

He looked at me, and then at her.

"I think I'd like to be Andy again," he said quietly.

"Andy it is," Karen gave him another kiss on the cheek. "Now what's this about the real Julie Pinsky?"

Andy swallowed hard.

"I was at the FBI building when this film came in," he explained. "In a room with about ten other people. I recognized the girl immediately, and I yelled out, 'That's Julie Pinsky.' So then when the recording comes in, I had someone call Julie with some lame survey, and I got a voice print, which I checked against this one. Next thing I know, I get a transfer to the Flagstaff, Arizona office."

"Because someone doesn't want you to know it's Julie?" Karen asked.

"At a minimum because someone doesn't want me doing any more investigating," Andy said.

"So I don't understand," I asked. "Why take Julie?"

"I protested the transfer, which would normally give me another two months in D.C. until it got heard," Andy said. He looked up at us. "Julie was taken to encourage me to drop my protest."

"But why Julie?" I asked.

There was a long silence until Karen spoke up.

"Because somebody there knows he still loves her," she said softly, looking at Andy.

He nodded, and after a while looked up at both of us again.

"When I was in Colombia," he explained, "probably 20, 21 years old, I was on a hill by myself, with my stomach basically falling out, waiting for one of those drug squads to come finish me off. I was as good as dead, so I recorded a letter to Julie, asking her to forgive me for what I'd done to her, and telling her that not taking better care of our relationship in high school was the stupidest thing I'd ever done in my life. I told her that I hoped she had a great life, because nobody deserved it more than she did."

"And then?" I prompted him.

"Then I got better," he shrugged. "My guys found me, one of 'em got me stabilized and they managed to fix me up. But the letter became part of my file, and there are people in the bureau, obviously, who know about it."

"And are working for your enemies," I nodded.

"So why are you here?" Karen asked him.

"Because I don't know who to trust in the bureau," he said. "And they don't know about you guys. And I was apparently right in thinking that you guys know a whole lot more about this than anyone else in the world."

"Okay," Karen said. She turned to look at me. "So what do we do?

"I can call the Bentons," I said, looking at my watch.

"The Bentons?" she asked with a quizzical expression. "What the hell for?"

"To feed the fish," I said. "Since Julie's not there. What were you talking about?"

"Freeing Julie, you ass." She reached across the table to punch me in the arm.

"Really," muttered the other Karen Thompson, the doll version, still sitting next to me in the booth. She punched me in the other arm.

"Hey," I complained. "You're gettin' kinda bossy for a living doll."

Those words, "living doll," were the magic incantation for changing a doll-turned-woman back into a doll again, and the blonde doll was now lying on the seat next to me.

"You really are such an ass," Karen repeated as I handed the doll back to her and she put her into her purse. "Oh, God, look at the time. Steve and Shelly will be at Mom and Dad's by now, and we've got Christmas Eve dinner. What are you doing for Christmas?"

Andy just blinked.

"I'm sorry," he said finally. "You're talking to me?"

"Yeah, unfortunately, I know where this ass is spending Christmas," Karen shot me a dirty look. "You're not driving back, are you?"

"No, I have a —" he started. "I have a room at the Holiday Inn."

"The Holiday Inn?" Karen looked shocked, like she hadn't even realized they were open on Christmas. "Come on."

She got up and began tugging on his hand.

"Where'm I going?" he asked.

"Yeah, where's he going?" I repeated.

"Jason Thompson, you are so thick it probably never even occurs to you to wonder why I married you," Karen said. "He's coming home with us."

"With, uh, Mom and Dad?" I asked. "The last time they saw Andy they wanted him strung up."

"Oh, I'll fix it," Karen said. "Come on."

"What about Julie?" he asked.

"Julie is going to have the most miserable Christmas Eve and Christmas of her life," Karen said. "But there's nothing we can do about it now. We have the kids to think about. Tomorrow is soon enough."

It was a bittersweet Christmas. Karen had no trouble convincing Mom and Dad that Andy was a changed man, and that since she had forgiven him so should they. And for the kids' sakes, we had a big present-opening on Christmas morning.

But there were three of us whose hearts weren't in it. Three of us, in fact, who were exhausted from having spent Christmas Eve trying to figure out what to do to help Julie.

It was Andy's idea to summon Julie from her captivity with the blonde doll, although she didn't know much. She'd answered a knock on her door, late at night, from a man with an FBI badge. He'd started asking her questions about pornography, which she'd refused to answer based on attorney-client privilege. Then at some point, she'd been drugged, and had woken up the next morning in a locked windowless room. She hadn't been interrogated any further, and had generally been treated fairly decently.

"So are the guys taking care of you FBI agents?" I asked after Andy indicated he was done with his questioning.

"Catholic priests," she shook her head.

"Living doll," I said, turning her back into a doll. I turned to glare at Andy.

"They turned her over to fucking Opus Christe?" I seethed.

"Yeah," his shoulders slumped. "That happens."

"What happens?"

"They used to call it extraordinary rendition," he explained, "back in the 2000's when only the CIA did it. Then it became regular old rendition, and then when some Bureau guys started doing it, it became 'private arrests.' It's still officially frowned on, but everyone looks the other way."

"So we go after the doll," I said.

"The doll?" Andy asked.

"You said she goes jogging in this park, right?" I asked. "Every afternoon?"

"Yeah, usually late," he said. "So what?"

"So if we snatch her, we can trade her for the real Julie," I concluded. "They don't want the real Julie, they want the doll. This doll is turning herself into four celebrities every day and doing porno films for Catholic terrorists. She's a fucking gold mine for them."

Andy just sat there and nodded.

"Well, I guess I'm leaving for Iowa in the morning," he said. "I kind of had a feeling I would be all along."

"We're leaving," I said.

"All three of us," Karen said.

"Why all three of us?" Andy asked.

"Do you really think that Julie is going to get in a car with you, Andy Richardson?" she asked. "Besides, they'll be watching for you."

"How about you guys?" he asked. "They may not know you're involved with this, but if they see you check into a motel in Iowa, they'll start getting suspicious. You may not realize this, but every single credit card transaction in the United States runs through the FBI computers before it goes to the credit card company."

"Who needs a motel?" Karen looked at me.

I grinned back at her.

We left for Iowa late at noon on Christmas day in our SUV, which Andy had spent the morning filling with his gear after Karen had vetoed Andy's car. The kids were more than happy to spend time with their grandparents, and Shelly told us she'd be happy to stay there with them, and with her two, as long as we wanted. We found a motel in Indiana to spend Christmas night, and Karen went in to get us a room with cash she'd pulled out of her ATM.

"Where to?" I asked as she got back in the car.

"Around back," she said. "Second floor. God, this is making me horny."

"Everything makes you horny," I said quietly. I didn't think Andy needed to know quite this much. "What are the room numbers?"

"239," she said.

"And Andy's?" I asked.

She turned to look at me with a grin I'd never seen before.

"You know, I remember Julie Pinsky and me treating you really nicely about a week ago," she smiled.

"Yeah?" I asked. "So?"

"So why should you have all the fun?" she asked.

By that time I'd parked the car. We both turned around to look at Andy Richardson in the back seat, his face once again drained of color.

Andy continued his protests all the way up the stairs, propelled by the awesome force of nature that was Karen Thompson in heat. Finally, when she peeled the sweatshirt she was wearing over her head, he finally stopped trying to get out of it.

"I'm not, um, very big," he said as he reluctantly started stripping off his own clothes.

"Perfect," Karen purred.

"For what?" he asked.

"I've been dreaming about getting it up the ass ever since I watched Senator Implants two nights ago," she gave Andy her sexiest smile. "But your little junior detective assistant here is too big for me. I'm hoping that you'll be just right. Now are you going to shut up and let me thank you for helping my best friend, or am I gonna have to hire a private dick?"

Dressed only in black panties now, Karen dropped to her knees and yanked Andy's briefs to the floor.

"Andy," she complained. "I think you've gotten bigger. I don't know if this is going to work now."

"But we're going to try it," I winked at Andy.

"Of course we're going to try it," Karen laughed just before Andy's dick disappeared into her mouth.

I had often enjoyed making love with two women, so I'm not sure why I thought that there would be any less love or affection if one of those women were replaced with a man. There were things that I wasn't going to do, of course, things that Karen, bless her, knew better than to ask me to do. And in truth, we didn't need to do anything but focus on Karen. With one man and two women, times will arise when, to be blunt, things don't arise. With two men and one Karen Thompson, somebody's thing was always rising.

Andy quickly learned what it had taken me years to master, how to keep Karen on the edge of ecstasy without letting her fall over the other side. While Karen sucked my cock, he used his fingers and tongue to keep her writhing beneath me on the bed. While I fucked her, he toyed with her breasts. And then while I lazily sat and recovered, watching love and ecstasy play across her face, it was Andy's turn. He'd warned Karen that he wouldn't last long, and with good reason. He reminded me of, well, me, the first time I'd had Karen.

"Jesus, Andy," Karen moaned. She'd climaxed at the same time, the result of all the preparatory work he and I had put in. "Merry Christmas to me. When was the last time you got laid?"

"Well, you know," he turned aside. "Couple of weeks."

"Couple of weeks, bullshit," Karen said. "I got so many little Richardsons in me right now they could hold a convention."

I looked over at Karen with alarm, and she just winked back at me.

"Come on, Andy, give," she said.

"I, um," he started. "Last time was probably this woman who —"

"Don't lie to me, Andy," Karen interrupted him.

So he apparently decided not to say anything.

"Jesus, Andy, I was the last girl you fucked, wasn't I?" she said quietly. "In doll form, anyway."

"You haven't gotten laid in fourteen years?" I stammered.

He looked over at me.

"If you'd treated women the way I had, wouldn't you stop if you could?" he asked.

"Well, sure," I was flabbergasted. "Maybe. I mean, the strength, the sheer willpower. On second thought, no, I don't think that — no, I'm sure I couldn't have done it."

"You didn't have Andy's motivation," Karen said. "Speaking of willpower, though, how much longer until you're ready to go again, Andy?"

"Ten minutes?" he guessed. "Why?"

"I'm gonna go take a shower and get myself nice and clean," Karen said. "When I come back, I wanna see you sittin' on this bed, Jason Thompson, with a nice, hard lap for me to sit in. And then, Andy Richardson, I'm gonna let you be the first guy up my ass."

Andy was ready before the bathroom door closed, but the shower delayed us another fifteen minutes.

Later that night, I asked my sated wife if she wasn't worried about the lack of protection.

"He hasn't done it in fourteen years," she murmured while Andy was in the bathroom. "What kind of diseases do you think he could have?"

"Not diseases," I said. "All those little Richardsons."

"I have the surefire defense for all those little Richardsons," she smiled at me.

"What's that?"

"A little Thompson already guarding at the gate," she touched my cheek. "I hope it's a boy this time. Now go to sleep, honey."

We arrived in Iowa City, Iowa in the middle of the afternoon the next day, after a stop in the Chicago area to confirm that, as Karen suspected, Lana Tuttle no longer had the doll she'd been given when she lived in Hardwood. She and her mother still lived in the same location, although Mr. Tuttle had been killed in a hunting accident several years ago by a single shot through the heart. Neither woman could recall seeing the doll after that.

"That would no doubt be a Catholic hunting accident," I said when we were back in the car, and Karen had begun her turn at the wheel.

"Oh, they were definitely Catholic," Karen said. "Did you notice all those religious paintings and crosses?"

Drew nodded. He was sitting in the passenger seat while I took my turn in back.

"Some of the earlier videos," he said, "were clearly a different guy than in the more recent ones I've seen. And also nowhere near as sophisticated. If I had to guess, I'd say that Dan Tuttle started out making these films on his own, then got a little too chummy with some of his Opus Christe buddies. They decided to take over, he put up a fight, and he lost."

It was a much quieter drive after that.

We had no sooner parked the car in the driveway of a house in the suburbs of Iowa City than the door burst open, and a tall, beautiful, dark-complexioned woman ran down the sidewalk and threw herself into my arms.

"Oh, God, it's good to see you again," she whispered, her heart pounding inside of her chest. "I can't believe you made me go this long without a Jason Thompson fix."
"It's good to see you again, too, Gail," I smiled, looking at a smiling Karen and a stunned Andy over her shoulder. "Where's the professor?"

"In the house," she said as I let her find her feet. "He knows not to interfere with this. Who's the broad? Thank God she brought another guy, huh?"

"Anderson," Karen was shaking her head, "you are so full of shit. Do you remember Andy Richardson?"

My hug came to a quick end.

"Andy Richardson?" Gail asked, staring at him.

"Have we met?" Andy asked hesitantly.

"Oh, come on, Andy," Karen laughed. "We're reliving all our old memories. How many other people were on stage during that debate?"

"Miss, um, Miss —" Andy stammered.

"Ms. Dodge," Gail corrected him. "Although now I go by Mrs. Anderson, Mr. Richardson. And I hope I don't have to hear any more of that language of yours, either."

"No, ma'am," Andy said.

Gail Dodge was the first woman I'd helped using the dolls, and the first woman I'd had sex with (although I had practiced with the dolls first, of course, so I had actually lost my virginity to the woman who'd ended up becoming my sister-in-law). Sixteen years ago, Gail had been a substitute English teacher about to take her life rather than suffer through Thanksgiving dinner with her abusive family. I'd invited her over to my fortuitously parentless house instead. I'd somehow maneuvered her into my bed, and she had thereafter made a remarkable recovery, culminating almost exactly a year later in her marriage to Chris Anderson. Karen had been her bridesmaid, and I'd given her away. She was still as gorgeous as ever, despite having to ride herd on her three little hell-raisers — Helen, Sue, and (the worst of the bunch) Jason.

"Professor!" I yelled out as we entered the house.

"Jason!" Chris yelled back. "Finally come to learn how to write?"

"Very funny," I said. Chris was the director of the renowned Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, and asked me the same question every time we saw each other. "You cracked that bestseller list yet, or you still writing that artsy stuff?"

"So why are you here?" Gail interrupted our byplay. "That was a very mysterious phone call."

"Yeah, well," I looked at Andy, "it's kind of like the less you know, the better you are."

"Tell me it's not about those dolls again," Gail sighed.

Andy whipped around to look at me.

"Does everybody know about these dolls?" he demanded.

"Heck, no," I said. "Me, Karen, Julie, Shelly, Steve, Julie's step-mom, Gail, Chris I guess?"

"Only for four or five years," Chris said. "One of her uncles tracked her down and tried to push his way in, and after I had him taken off to the hospital and then the police station, she told me the story."

"Seriously, though," I said, "you guys don't want to know. Let's just say we don't want anyone knowing where we are. We need rooms for a few days, and then we'll vanish just as quickly as we came.

"And then you'll send me a postcard explaining everything?" Gail looked from me to Karen.

"Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, I'm an FBI agent," Drew showed his badge to the skeptical couple. "I really do have to ask you to keep all of this very quiet."

The FBI badge gets a lot of respect in the Midwest — certainly more than it does around my household — and Gail and Chris showed us to our bedrooms. That evening we entertained Chris with the embarrassing high school adventures of one Andy Richardson.

"I'll admit I was surprised to see him here," Gail said when we were done. "Particularly with you, Karen."

"I've forgiven him," she said. "He kept my husband out of jail. I think it'll take Julie a little longer."

Operation "Kidnap Julie Pinsky to Free Julie Pinsky" turned out to be fairly simple, with one small hitch. We spent several days timing her runs, learning exactly when she'd be at the spot closest to the road. Andy finally spotted her guards, two men watching from the monastery and another who typically took a walk in the park at the same time.

When we finally had her routine down, Andy took a long, thin cylindrical device out of one of his bags.

"This is a directional antenna with a built-in megaphone and microphone," he explained. "You can use it to talk to one specific person, up to four hundred yards away, and to hear that person talking to you. You can use this with a headset, which I have, or a cell phone, which we can buy at Wal-Mart. Now this has to be done on the fly; we drive the car up, she jumps in, we take off. We can't wait there because I'm fairly sure that these guys have guns. If they see us there too long, looking like we're waiting for Julie, they may start shooting. At a minimum, they may be able to call her off. So we have two choices. The first is, we can talk to her tomorrow and tell her we'll pick her up the next day. The second is, we talk to her tomorrow and make the pickup at the same time."

"If we give her extra time, there's a good chance she'll freak," Karen said. "It has to be the same day."

"I agree," Andy said. "The problem is we can't use this antenna in a moving car. It has to be stationary, pointed at the person you want to talk with. First off, who is she most likely to listen to?"

"Me," Karen said firmly.

"Why you?" I asked.

"She's a sixteen year old girl," Karen smiled. "Andy's her jerk boyfriend, you're a geek she just had sex with — in her world — and I'm her mistress."

"It should be Karen," I told Andy.

The next day Karen and I were walking in the park, holding hands like young lovers. Karen's cell phone rang, and she started talking and sometimes arguing with whoever she was talking to. I directed her over to a park bench, and she continued her conversation with her head down and her hand in her other ear. Without my sweetie to occupy me, I started looking around, paying particular attention to the nubile young thing in jogging attire, albeit winter jogging attire, who had appeared at the other end of the park. With a quick glance at Karen to make sure she was still busy, I gave the pretty brunette a closer look, following her with my head and, more important, with the antenna that had been sewn into the right leg of my pants. I nudged Karen, and she pressed the cell phone as if she had another call coming in.

"Julie, I want you to keep jogging and not to look afraid," she said. "This is your mistress, Karen McCarthy. Do you understand? Say yes or no."

I could only guess at Julie's responses from Karen's end of the conversation.

"Do you remember me, Julie?

"Julie when you reach the road, you'll see a car approaching from the right. It will slow down and the back passenger's side window will open up. Do you understand?"

I could see Julie's body tighten up, but she didn't stop running.

"Julie, I want you to run toward that car and when it stops, I want you to jump through the back window. The car will drive away. The driver works for me, and I want you back, Julie. Do you understand?

"Good. I'm going to stop talking to you and you're going to do exactly what I told you, right, Julie?

"Good. You don't want your mistress to be angry with you, do you?"

Karen pressed another button and continued her fictional argument. As I watched, our SUV approached and slowed to a near stop. Julie jumped in the open window and behind me I heard a loud pop as the car's tires squealed and it sped off.

"Those fuckers took a shot at my — oooff!" I began.

Karen dug her elbow into my side as the guard who had been walking through the park and had taken a shot at my car saw us and came running over.

"Did you see that car?" he panted.

"Yeah, what was that about?" I said. "The car comes up, that cute girl jumps in the open window and zoom, off they go."

"She was kidnapped," the guard said, looking at me to see my reaction.

"Kidnapped!" I exclaimed. "Wow! Right in broad daylight. But you know, I got the license number."

"Give it to me," he grabbed my arm, and I did my best to look offended.

"Please, sir," he said anxiously, "please give me the number."

"It was an Illinois plate," I said reluctantly, staring at this incredibly rude man. "CEL-100."

"A black Lexus, right?" he said.

"Actually, I thought it was a dark green Ford," I suggested.

He ran off without thanking me, the ingrate, and Karen and I slowly strolled down the road to where we'd left the car we'd borrowed from Gail.

"So whose plate number was that?" she asked me with a grin.

"I have no idea," I said. "One hundred degrees Celsius is the temperature at which water boils."

A little over an hour later, we all found ourselves a motel outside of Hannibal, Missouri. Karen and I had dropped off Gail's car at a shopping center, and I'd phoned Gail to thank her and let her know where it was. Andy had picked us up in the Lexus and Karen had gotten in back with the doll while I rode up front with Andy.

This time Karen got us two hotel rooms.

"All right, honey," she said to the doll. "It's okay. We're here to help you."

The poor girl had been nearly catatonic for the entire trip. Apart from an occasional whimper, she resisted every attempt Karen made to get her to unroll from the fetal position that she'd assumed when she first jumped into the car.

"Just bring her upstairs," Karen said, glancing around to make sure that no one was looking. We sat her on our bed, and Karen knelt on the bed in front her, with Andy to her left and me to her right to prevent her from rolling up again.

"What's your name, honey?" she asked, gently brushing one of the doll's brunette bangs out of her eyes. "I know it's not Julie."

She slowly brought her head up, tears in her eyes.

"You're not going to hurt me?" she asked.

"No," Karen smiled. "Now what's your name?"

"Sandy," she said.

"Hi, Sandy," Karen said. "I'm Karen. Karen McCarthy Thompson. That's Andy Richardson. And that's —"

Sandy was staring at Andy, and then suddenly drew her hand back and slapped him hard across the face. Andy was so stunned, he lost his balance and fell backward off the bed.

"You're the bastard who drugged me," Sandy said. "And then you and your friends..."

He'd gotten back on the bed and she slapped him again.

"Sandy," Karen tried to calm her. "Andy used to be a very..."

Then Sandy slapped Karen.

"What the hell was that?" Karen yelped and fell back on the bed.

"You're the bitch who sent me in to be drugged and raped," Sandy spat. She lunged forward after Karen. I grabbed both her wrists from behind and tried to stop her from struggling.

"And who the fuck are you?" she said as she struggled in my hands.

"Jason," I panted, desperately trying to keep her under my control and receiving absolutely no help from my friends. "Jason Thompson."

She stopped struggling instantly.

"Doll-size. Life-size. Naked."

Before I could react she had shrunk herself out of my hands, regrown herself, magically lost her clothes, and turned to straddle my lap.

"Hello, Jason Thompson," she purred.

"Um, hi," I said.

I glanced over her shoulder, watching Karen put a finger to Andy's lips and pull Andy back into a chair on the other side of the room.

"Do you remember October 23, 2004?" Sandy asked, in as sultry a voice as the sixteen-year-old Julie Pinsky's body could manage.

Before my eyes the doll metamorphosed into Shelly Johnson, my future sister-in-law, sitting naked on my lap. I'd obviously used the brunette doll to summon her that day. As Karen had said, normally I used the blonde. But that first weekend, when I'd finally learned the dolls' secret, and taken advantage of my parents' unexpected weekend getaway, I had turned the blonde doll into seven different actresses, one after the other. Toward the end, I'd used the brunette doll to summon Shelly to clean the house. Although I did manage to cum one more time that day, when Shelly blew me. After all, I was only sixteen.

Sandy pushed herself back down the bed and eagerly reached for my pants.

"Uh, Shelly," I started. "I mean, Sandy, this isn't the best time to, uh —"

She looked up at me with such incredible pain in her eyes that, God help me, I looked over at Karen sitting in the chair and gave her my best puppy-dog eyes.

"Oh, go ahead," Karen laughed. "She probably hasn't had a good fucking in fourteen years either."

Sandy didn't wait for me to relay the message to her. She already had my belt off and my zipper down. Taking my dick in her hand, she lowered her mouth to it and lovingly began to lick the length of my cock.

I couldn't keep track of the rest of the changes. At one point, the actress Kirsten Dunst was sucking my cock. A few minutes later, Jennifer Aniston was doing the honors. They were all women I'd summoned before with that doll, and I couldn't help wishing I'd used the brunette doll a few more times when I was younger.

"It's too bad you didn't bring Carrie," Sandy said.

"Carrie?" Karen asked from behind her.

"My little blonde friend," Sandy said over her shoulder.

Karen and Andy traded looks, and Karen just shook her head. But she reached into her purse and pulled out the blonde doll.

"Sandy?" she said.

The brunette turned and Karen tossed her the doll.

"Knock yourself out, kid."

Sandy squealed with delight as she caught the blonde doll.

"Carrie, wake up," she whispered. "Life-size."

The doll metamorphosed into an attractive blonde that I'd never seen before. The two dolls looked at each other and squeaked together, "December 22, 2004!"

Sue Waggoner and Gail Dodge were suddenly squabbling over which one was going to get to mount me.

"Oh, for cryin' out loud," Karen shook her head. "Fuck it, Andy. I'm goin' to bed. You coming?"

"I, um, I guess," Andy said as he got up to follow Karen.

"Don't worry," she said, just before she pulled the door shut behind her. "You will be."

I got to sleep about ten-thirty four that night, after Sandy had turned Carrie back into a doll. Sandy was riding me as a young Gail Dodge, from the night of Gail's bachelorette party, when I'd used the doll to "take" Gail's virginity before her abusive uncles did. Suddenly, on the verge of yet another climax, she looked down at me and smiled.

"May 30, 2005."

A sixteen-year-old Julie Pinsky was swaying atop me.

"Oh, fuck. That was incredible."

She fell forward in a faint.



-------

Chapter 5


"Studly," I heard through my sex-deepened sleep.

"Go away," I muttered. I turned over and wrapped my arm around my naked wife's waist.

There was an insistent hand shaking my shoulder.

"Come on, Jase," some annoying bitch was saying. "Wake up."

I popped open an eye, staring at the redheaded beauty I was spooning in the motel bed. Slowly I looked back over my shoulder, only to see the same woman standing next to the bed.

"Come on," Karen said again. "Wake your girlfriend up and — wait a minute, that's me. Why would she turn herself into me? You told me that you never fucked me as a doll."

Uh-oh.

Sandy had woken up herself, and very helpfully turned over to sit up in the bed, letting Karen know that the version of her that Sandy had reproduced was in fact eighteen years old. And very perky.

"June 21, 2006," she chirped up.

"June 21?" Karen asked. "2006? Two days before our wedding? Jason Thompson, tell me that you didn't make me the stripper at your bachelor party. Because I will be extremely fucking disappointed in you if I find out that was true."

I was sitting up as well by now.

"I summoned you to practice," I said.

"Practice what?" she asked.

"Sex," I said, as if the answer were obvious.

"We'd been having sex for the previous year and a half," she correctly pointed out. "What did you fucking need to practice?"

"I, um," I began.

Sandy took over for me.

"He told me he found a new technique on the internet, and he wanted to try it out," she smiled.

"Oh my God!" Karen yelped. "That thing you did on our wedding night, where you put your hand on my —, and then you —"

I suddenly found myself surrounded with Karens, as my wife of fourteen years jumped into bed with her earlier self and began kissing me on the face.

"Sandy," she said as she suddenly sat up and began peeling off her clothes. "Go tell Mr. Richardson that Jase and I will be a little late getting to breakfast."

Her shirt hit the floor, followed quickly by her bra.

"Oh, and Sandy? He's really a nice guy now, okay? Don't slap him again, huh?

Her pants joined the pile of clothes.

"Oh, and Sandy? Don't go over there as me, huh? And put some clothes on, sweetie."

While Karen was peeling her panties off, I watched a naked 18-year-old redhead metamorphose into a clothed sixteen-year-old brunette as she walked toward the door. By the time she closed it behind her, my 32-year-old redhead had finished her own, much slower but much more satisfying metamorphosis.

Karen and I were sitting in the Shoney's across the street from the motel for a good fifteen minutes when a disheveled Andy shuffled in and a grinning Sandy bounced in beside him.

"You were right, he was pretty nice," Sandy winked at us as she sat down next to me in the booth, leaving the other seat across from her for Andy.

"Coffee," Andy said. "I need coffee. I can't believe I made love to Julie Pinsky."

"You made love to me," Sandy reached over to punch him in the shoulder.

Karen smiled at her.

"Honey, I hate to do this to you," she said softly, "but we need to know what happened to you after you left Jason's. How much do you remember?"

"Pretty much everything," Sandy said after a pause during which she toyed with her food. "I was with the Tuttles, and the father, Dan, found out that he could channel me. So I did a couple of performances each week for his friends, and then he set up a little pornography business and I did a couple of videos for him to sell over the internet. And then his friends sort of started taking over, the same guys I was with when you picked me up. And then — then I think he must have died."

"You don't know for sure?" Andy asked.

"Once I'm channeled," she told him, "—when I have another woman's body? — I have a compulsion to obey my master, the man or woman who changed me. At one point, I was — what was her name? Keira something — I was this Keira woman, waiting for Dan so we could finish a video. And all of a sudden the compulsion was gone. It was like lifted out of my head. But his friends came in and ordered me to finish the video. So I did, 'cause I didn't really know Dan was dead, and I figure that's what he would want. But then — then they tried to change me into someone else, and they couldn't do it. They weren't my masters, you see? That's when I knew that I didn't have a master anymore."

She looked down at her breakfast as it started getting colder.

"And then they started hurting me," she said quietly.

"Hurting you how?" Karen asked.

"It started with slapping," Sandy said slowly. "But when that didn't work they started using their fists, and then they got knives. They were convinced that I just didn't want to work for them, and they were going to make me."

She paused a little longer, before looking up at us with tears in her eyes.

"They cut off my nipple," she whispered.

"Oh my God," Karen's eyes were wide.

"And so I changed, right then," she said. "That's when I found out that I could do it myself. I changed into a woman I'd done before, that Angelina whatever her name is. But they wanted somebody different, um, Katie Couric, from like 1994. So they cut me again, and finally I got her.

"All they had to do after that was threaten," she continued, "and I would change. I started doing, like, four videos a day. And in the meantime, at night, I started to remember all the girls I'd channeled before, like Julie."

She smiled at me, and I tried my best to return it. She put a hand on my arm.

"Every night I'd channel Julie again, from that night you made love to me as her," she smiled at me.

"Anyway," she sighed, "they gradually allowed me a little more freedom, like the jogging. One of my other girls, back in the eighties, had been a jogger, and it gave me a way to get out of that hole for a while."

"Can you just turn yourself back into a doll?" Andy asked.

"Sure," Sandy said.

"So why not do that?" he asked.

"'Cause she'd lose all her memories," Karen smiled at her. "Some of them happy, some not. And she'd give them total control over her, instead of just the partial control they had."

Sandy smiled back at Karen.

"Well, hell, this isn't going to work," I said.

"What?" Andy asked.

"Well, the idea was we'd snatch her and then trade her for Julie," I said. I turned to Sandy. "Your friends have kidnapped the real Julie Pinsky so that Andy here will back off trying to find you.

"But we can't give her back to them now," I said. "They're a bunch of animals. And besides, Sandy is now our guest."

I looked over at Karen with a prim nod, and she burst out laughing.

"I once slapped Jason for not treating one of the dolls — I think it was Julie," she explained to Andy, "with respect. I told him that she was a guest in our house, doll or not."

"So what do we do?" Andy asked.

"We do have Carrie," I said. "How did Carrie know last night how to channel herself?"

"It's kind of a touch thing," Sandy said. "I can touch her and tell her things, just like she can do to me."

"Huh," I said. "Anyway, we can turn Carrie into Julie, and give them Carrie."

"But then they'll just treat Carrie like they treated me," Sandy said, "and since she'll have a master, she won't be able to turn herself into anybody else."

"Huh," I said.

"If Jason ordered her to change in accordance with their orders, would she do it?" Andy asked.

"Probably," Sandy said. "Yeah, I think so."

"Suppose she dies?" Karen interjected.

"Who dies?" I asked her.

"Hush, Jason," she said. "Suppose you're channeling, like, Britney Spears, and you're killed. Do you, the doll, die?"

"No," Sandy scoffed, as if it was the stupidest question in the world. "As long as my master is still alive, he can just change me back into a doll and go on channeling me."

"So there," Karen was exultant. "We trade Carrie, as Julie, for our Julie, little Carrie does her little porn thing for a couple of days or so, and then she commits suicide. We get her back, nobody's the wiser, we win."

"How do we get her back?" Andy asked.

"Yeah," I added with more sarcasm than was probably necessary, "I don't think the monks are going to put her out on the curb with the regular trash pickup."

Andy snapped his fingers.

"A subcutaneous GPS transmitter," he smiled.

"Yeah," Karen turned to me, "a subcutaneous GPS transmitter."

"What's that?" Sandy asked my question.

"It's a device I put under Carrie's skin, to let me track her," Andy explained. "We'll be able to find the body, and turn her back into a doll."

We tried to pick apart the idea for another hour, and then spent another hour after that turning it into a full-fledged plan.

Three days later, I was freezing my ass off on a godforsaken piece of Outer Dakota that looked like it would actually be improved by a nuclear accident. I could understand why they had been so eager to change their name from North Dakota, because they thought it implied they were too cold. But Outer Dakota? The only other Outer I knew was Outer Mongolia. How did that help? And as far as I was concerned, this particular part of Outer Dakota resembled nothing so much as Outer Mongolia anyway.

Andy had assured me that he had spent hours finding a site for the exchange that would guarantee our privacy and our security. Of course, he was sitting back there on a bluff in a car with Sandy, scanning the horizon with powerful FBI field glasses to ensure that we hadn't been double-crossed. Karen was in a rental car about a mile back. I was the one standing out here holding Carrie's hand.

Our exchange of "prisoners" had been arranged in a series of phone calls after Andy had visited the monastery late one night and tossed in a cell phone he'd purchased from a Missouri Wal-Mart. The next morning he called it and when someone answered it, he told them he'd like to speak to the person in charge of fundraising. He set the phone into a speaker cradle, and we waited.

"This is Brother Tomás," said a very sophisticated voice, rich with Latin American vowels and consonants.

"Brother Tomás, this is Mr. Richardson," Andy said.

"Mr. Richardson," his voice grew darker quickly. "I believe you have our property."

"And what would that be, Tomás?" Andy asked.

"Our changeling," the man hissed. "And I suggest that you bring her back here, before your friend Ms. Pinsky has some sort of accident."

"Tomás," Andy said, his own voice hardening, "if Ms. Pinsky is hurt even a little bit, not only will you never see your 'changeling' again, but I will personally hunt each and every one of you down, and do to you exactly what you've done to your 'changeling' over the past couple of years."

There was a long pause, and finally the voice asked, in a more reasonable tone, "And what is it you would like, Mr. Richardson?"
"That should be obvious, Tomás," Andy said. "Just as it is obvious to me what you want in return. Let me know how long it will take you to set it up."

He hung up quickly. The phone rang two hours later, and the meeting was on.

The buzzer on my watch indicated that it was one o'clock, and a tone from Andy on the cell phone I was carrying let me know that the coast was clear. Dressed as I was in a parka, wool hat, and scarf, I was probably lucky to hear the tones. But Andy had impressed on me that I shouldn't give them a chance to identify me, which was one of the reasons he'd set the meeting up for here. I looked over to see poor little Carrie shivering in the track suit that Sandy had been running in when we'd grabbed her five days earlier.

"You're not cold," I told her.

She stopped shivering and smiled at me.

"Thank you, master."

"Sure," I said. "Sorry it didn't occur to me before. Let's go."

Carrie and I began walking eastward. After a quarter of a mile, I could make out two figures walking towards us. Julie was one of them, and she obviously had no idea why she was there. The guy with her was dragging her along with an iron grip on her upper arm. I saw her eyes widen as she realized it was me. Finally, when we were about 20 feet apart, we stopped as if we were gunslingers from the Wild West.

I turned to Carrie.

"You remember your instructions," I said rather than asked.

"Yes, master," she nodded. "Four days."

"You have my changeling," the man called out, putting a sneer into that South American accent I'd heard over the phone a few days before.

I have a changeling, asshole, I thought. But she ain't gonna be yours.

I nodded.

He released his grip on Julie's arm and I nodded at Carrie to begin walking. Julie broke into a run, and jumped into my arms.

When Carrie reached the other guy, at a much more sedate pace, I turned and began walking Julie back toward Karen in the car.

"Oh, God, Jase," Julie started, "what the fuck is happening?"

"It's okay, baby," I put my arm around her. "Everything is going to be fine."

"Jase, I'm gonna be sick," she said.

I let her go, and she threw up into the snow. Finally, she got back up and tucked herself back under my arm.

Julie and I were both freezing when we finished walking the one and a quarter miles back to the rental car. We both climbed into the back seat where Karen had hot coffee waiting in a thermos. As Karen took off for the trip back to our hotel room in Minot, Julie downed hers in one gulp and I poured her another. She took a smaller sip, and we relaxed into the seats, enjoying the car's heating system more than anything.

Finally, after still another cup, Julie was ready to talk.

"Why do you keep looking in the rear view mirror, Karen?" she asked. "Oh, God, they're not following us, are they?"

She whipped around in the seat.

"Oh my God, they are," she started trembling. "They're following us!"
"Relax, honey," Karen said," that's our car. Those are the good guys."

In the meantime, though, Julie had grabbed up the binoculars that Karen had thrown on the back seat.

"I know him," she said, looking at the car. "Who is that? Fuck, that's Andy Richardson! Why is Andy Richardson driving your car?"

"It's a long story, Jules," I began.

"And who's that little slut, his girlfriend?" she asked caustically. "She looks about seventeen! God, what a perv!"

"She's sixteen," I chuckled. "And you have a lot in common."

"Yeah," Karen said, "you're gonna love her. She's a doll."

"Jason Thompson," Julie put the glasses down and looked at me. "Does this involve your fucking dolls?"

I nodded.

"All right," she sighed. "One more refill and then I'll be ready to listen."

She listened in silence to the whole story. The only emotion she displayed was when I explained why she had been kidnapped, and why the "bad guys" thought that her disappearance would have some influence on Andy Richardson. Even then she only raised her eyebrows. Finally, just before we reached the outskirts of Minot, I finished.

"Jules," Karen added from the front seat. "Andy came all the way to Hardwood to get us, and all the way out here to get you."

"He's still a shithead," Julie sniffed.

But not a fucking asshole shithead, I noticed.

We pulled into the motel parking lot, and Karen hustled Julie into our room before Andy and Sandy pulled up. While Julie was in the shower, I heard a tentative knock on our door. I saw Andy through the peephole, and opened it to let him in.

"No, no," he said, firmly declining to enter the room. "I wanted to tell you I'm going for a little drive."

"Where?" I asked.

"Just away from here. I turned on my GPS locator to make sure they were taking Carrie back to the monastery, and I got this feedback squeal."

"Which means what?" I asked.

"It's like those people on talk shows who try to call in when their radio's on too loud," he said. "In this case, I'm afraid it means that there's another transmitter too close."

I shook my head so that I didn't have to admit my ignorance out loud.

"I'll let you know when I come back," he gave me a grim smile.

He was back half an hour later, and called me from his room.

"I'll be right back," I told Julie and Karen. "Andy wants something."

"Tell the little shithead I said thanks," Julie said.

"I will," I grinned.

Andy gave me a half-smile when I told him, but we did indeed have a problem.

"The GPS locator tracks all the FBI transmitters in this country," he said. "The only drawback is there's no way to identify which one is which. I can see one on the highway between here and the monastery, which is Carrie. But I also know that there's one here in Minot, at the motel."

"Oh, God, Julie?" I asked.

"Probably," he nodded.

"So they know Carrie has one, too?" I asked.

He shook his head.

"I doubt they've looked at it yet," he said. "I don't think they care where Julie is, as long as their little changeling works. The problem is that these transmitters dissolve into the bloodstream after seven days, and Carrie's gonna kill herself after four. At that point, though, they're gonna start thinking we double-crossed 'em, and they'll start tracking Julie."

"So what do we do?" I asked.

"I think we all need to talk," he sighed.

"I'll tell the girls," I agreed.

A half-hour later, we were all assembled in Andy's room. It wasn't an entirely comfortable meeting. Andy was sitting on one of the beds, while Karen and I sat on the other. Julie had dragged a chair as far away from Andy as she could. Sandy, meanwhile, was sitting in a chair on the other side of the room, her arms crossed as she glared at Julie.

Andy explained the problem.

"So you mean there's something inside of me?" Julie exploded. "God damn you, Andy Richardson!"

"It only lasts seven days," he appealed for calm. "And then it dissolves. The problem is, you can't just take it out without some pretty severe surgery."

"So what's the plan?" I asked.

Andy took a deep breath.

"Julie needs to leave," he said. "If they start looking, they'll be able to find her if she's still around here, so need to make it harder for them. And if they do find her, we need to make sure she's protected."

"So I go with her," I said.

Karen patted me on the arm.

"You need to stay here," Andy said. "If it's at all possible to get to Carrie, and tell her she needs to keep doing this for a week, we have to do it. And you're the only one who can command her. If she's still jogging, you may be able to do it that way, but Sandy tells me that she doubts that Carrie will keep that up, and I don't think they're gonna let her outside anymore even if she wants to. So I'm gonna have to give you something that I'm very reluctant to give you. You haven't been trained in this, and you're taking an awful chance."

"A gun," I nodded sagely.

His eyebrows shot up.

"A gun?" he asked with a laugh. "Hell, no, you can have a gun. Here, have mine."

He opened his suitcase and tossed me a gun and several clips.

"Have you ever fired a gun before?" he asked.

"Not that didn't shoot water," I answered him.

"Well, we don't have time for a lesson," he said. "Right there is the safety. Make sure it's off, like this. Aim low. It's got a pretty good kickback. No, what I'm talking about is this."

He reached into his suitcase and brought out a jumble of a brown woolen fabric.

"A new blanket?" I prompted him.

"A monk's robe," Karen said.

"When I left home on my way to Hardwood, I figured that I eventually might have to break into the monastery to find out where Julie was," he said. "But if Carrie doesn't come out, you're gonna have to go in and get her."

"How do I do that?" I was incredulous. "Knock on the door and ask for her?"

"Monks have a tradition of hospitality," Julie finally spoke up. "If you knock on the door and explain you need a place to refresh yourself, they pretty much have to let you in."

"But I don't know anything about being a monk!" I protested.

"You just have to remember it's a very ascetic life," Andy said absent-mindedly as he dug through his suitcase for something else.

"Acidic?" I asked. This wasn't sounding good at all.

Andy stopped his burrowing and looked up, not at me but at Karen, as if she were the one who operated my controls.

"What?" I protested.

"Ascetic," Julie said quietly. "It means self-denying. That's why they wear woolen robes and eat very simple meals."

"Here," Andy had found what he was looking for and tossed it to me.

"'The Lonely Planet Guide to Monastic Vacations?'" I read the title. "Seriously? So how'd ours do?"

"Sorry," he said with a grin. "Only one star. Normally, I'd have FBI briefing papers for you, but we don't do a lot of monastery work. Now, if you want to infiltrate the mob, I've got all kinds of stuff about that."

"I don't want him infiltrating anything," Karen suddenly cut in. "There's no way he's qualified to play spy inside a monastery of terrorists that cut off girls' nipples."

"What's your alternative?" Andy asked her calmly.

She didn't have one. It was obvious she didn't like Andy's plan, but she couldn't think of any other way to keep the Opus Christe monks and their FBI friends from starting on Julie's trail.

"So who's going to be protecting me?" Julie finally asked, fixing her glare on Andy.

"I'm afraid you'll have to be with me," Andy nodded. "You and I and Sandy will try to lose ourselves somewhere that there are a lot of these devices, like Las Vegas.

"So you guys will be in Vegas while I'm stuck here in Iowa?" I joked. Nobody else laughed.

"We'd better go now," Andy said. "Just in case they do start checking when they get back to the monastery."

"Fuck this," Sandy stood up, mustering all the anger a sixteen year old could.

"What's wrong?" Karen asked.

"I'm not going anywhere with her," she pointed at Julie.

"Why not?" Karen asked.

"It's hard enough getting him to focus on fucking when she's not around," she spat with a glance at Andy. "If she's in the next room, he's never gonna stop thinking about her."

We all stared at Sandy, nobody harder than Julie.

"So what do you want to do?" Karen asked.

"I don't know," Sandy started to cry. "It's so much easier when you're just a doll. This real-life shit is really, really hard."

"Come on, honey," Karen stood up. "Let's go back to our room. Julie, come on and let me give you some clothes to take with."

I was left with Andy as he began to pack.

"You're really not looking forward to this, are you?" I asked. "A week with Julie Pinsky."

"I don't think it's gonna be a dream come true, no," he gave me a small smile.

Half an hour later, there was a knock on the door. It was Julie and Karen. Neither one of them was smiling.

"Ready?" Julie asked sullenly.

"Yeah," Andy answered.

"I'm going, too," Karen said.

"With them?" I was astonished. "You're going to Vegas and I have to go to Iowa by myself?"

"No, not with them," she said. "But I'm not gonna sit in a motel room while you play hero and try to break into a monastery with a gun. Sandy's decided she wants to be a doll again, so I'm taking her back to Hardwood and putting her back in the attic. The kids are already gonna be late for school. So I'll be at home, waiting for you to call."

She was starting to tear up, so I took her in my arms. She finally pushed me away.

"Please don't make it any harder on me," she said, her voice betraying as much weakness and concern as I'd ever heard. Twenty minutes later, after a final briefing from Andy, I was sitting all by myself on his motel bed.

Andy's plan was remarkably well thought out. I rented a new car, a Chevy — anything but a Ford, he'd said. Ford was owned by Volvo, and no self-respecting Catholic monk would be caught dead in a car built by Lutherans. I removed all of the stickers that identified it as a rental, and affixed license plates that Andy had brought with him. Again, he'd done his homework. All Catholic Church cars, he claimed, were registered in Virginia, because it offered the cheapest personalized license plates, and had a special "Friend of the Pope" plate that was only thirty dollars extra. My "Friend of the Pope" plate read "92702DF," 92702 being a zip code in Orange County, California, and Orange County having the same initials as Opus Christe. Almost as bright as the guys at the FCC, I thought to myself as I screwed it on. The "DF" actually meant nothing.

I arrived in Iowa City early that afternoon, and spent the waning hours of daylight, dressed once again in my parka, cruising up and down outside the park for signs that the young Julie Pinsky had resumed her jogging. No such luck that day, or the day after, either. It was time for Brother Jason to make his appearance.

I pulled up outside of the monastery in the middle of the following afternoon, the fourth day of the New Year, and nervously banged on the big wooden entrance door. I nearly fell over when it was answered by the same oily-looking putz who'd been out on the road with me in North Dakota. He was dressed in a woolen robe identical to the one that I was wearing, and, very fortunately, did not recognize me.

"Brother Peter," he extended his hand, "thank goodness you're here. We didn't expect you until next week."

Well, hell, I thought. Why bother with my cover story when they already have a good one available?

"I got away a little early," I shook his hand.

"Well, I'm very glad," he said in those same unctuous South American tones that I'd come to despise. "Brother Donald was injured in, uh, an equipment malfunction and the other brothers have been hard pressed to cover for him."

"Thank you, Brother Tomás," I said. "It's good to be able to be of service, of course."

He smiled at me as he closed the big wooden door behind me.

"You haven't been here before, have you?" he asked.

This was getting better and better.

"No, I haven't," I smiled.

"Good, let me show you around," he clapped an incredibly strong arm around my shoulder. "Then you can take the remainder of the day for rest and meditation, and begin your work tomorrow."

"Excellent," I agreed.

The tour lasted about half an hour. He showed me the kitchen, where two monks were toiling over large ovens that baked bread. He showed me the chapel. He showed me the gym. The gym? Whoa, missed that in the guide book. He showed me a door just down the main hall from the entrance. That door, he told me with a wink, I'd learn about tomorrow. And then he took me to a tailor's office, where I found myself being measured by a cheerful monk with graying hair. I didn't dare ask what I was being measured for. Brother Peter probably already knew that. Maybe my robe didn't fit quite right.

Finally, I was escorted to my room. And talk about boring! There was no television, no radio; hell, they hadn't even left a Gideon Bible in the dresser drawer. I took advantage of the time to hide the gun and cell phone that Andy had given me because I didn't entirely trust these monks not to search my stuff while I was out of the room. Fortunately, I'd anticipated the lack of creature comforts — which translated to a lack of hiding places -- and brought a small roll of duct tape. The gun and the phone were soon attached to the inside top of the toilet tank.

At about five (I'd left my watch and wedding ring in the car), a young monk, a Brother Bartholomew, came to fetch me for dinner. As I entered the dining room, another monk introduced himself as Brother Michael and asked me to sit with him. He directed me to one of three long wooden tables with bench seating. Brother Tomás entered a few minutes later and took a chair at the head of our table, and the two kitchen monks began to put steaming bowls of soup in front of each monk. When we had all been served, and had each been given two pieces of black bread, Brother Tomás deferred to yet another monk, who mumbled what was no doubt grace in Latin. When he was finished, I eagerly reached for my bread.

"Go easy on the soup," Brother Michael whispered.

"It's actually been a while since I've eaten, Brother," I said. That's mostly because I was too nervous about this whole monk thing to keep down any breakfast or lunch.

"No doubt," he said. "Trust me, God will provide."

As I watched the monks at the other tables gobble down their food, I tried to imitate my tablemates, who appeared to be toying with the idea of eating but weren't actually making significant inroads into their portions of soup.

Finally, the monks at the other tables finished, and they began drifting away in groups of twos or threes. When they were all gone, Brother Tomás nodded to our table and we all rose and followed him through a door at the end of the dining area. The room on the other side was richly appointed, with leather chairs, Renaissance paintings, and a beautifully carved mahogany dining table. Around the table were eleven seats, and at each place setting was a magnificent spread of silver, a crystal water goblet, two wine glasses, and a china plate topped with what looked like a twelve-ounce sirloin steak that had been seared to perfection.

Brother Tomás was waiting for me at the door.

"Welcome, Brother Peter," he laughed. "Here's your first script. You'll be on tomorrow, right after morning prayer, so you may want to take it a little easy on the wine tonight. Later, of course, you'll rotate into other spots during the day to make it a little easier. For now, though, come in! Enjoy!"

I glanced down at the sheaf of paper he'd given me as I walked to the seat they'd left open. The title page simply said, "Male: Senator Ralph Porter (Brother Peter). Female: Hillary Clinton (Changeling). MF, reluc, BD, wife, humil."

Well, fuck. I'd gone undercover as a frickin' Catholic porn star.



-------

Chapter 6


The dinner only lasted until eight o'clock, because God forbid we should miss evening prayer. But in those two hours, we ate our steak, drank some exquisite wine (a '76 Chambertin, I think), and smoked cigars. Then Tomás pulled his seat over next to mine, bringing with him a bottle of eighty-year-old scotch. He poured us both glasses.

"All right, boys, roll the tape," he yelled back over his shoulder.

"These are highlights of the day's performances," he told me sotto voce. "Our techs, Brothers Cary and Samuel, always splice together a highlight reel at the end of each day. Maybe five minutes of each show. This first one is Brother Dominic over there." He nodded at a tall monk sitting by himself with a big glass of wine. "He always like to overindulge a little when he has the late show the next day. He, as you'll see, specializes in requests that require, shall we say, unusually large equipment."

I watched as a man began berating someone — his wife? — for her poor housekeeping.

"Most of our orders involve celebrities," Tomás continued. "This one's a special request for a guy's wife."

We watched as Dominic, who was obviously "Gerald Warren" of the Gillian video, began forcing his cock down the protesting wife's throat, and then threw her on the bed for a doggstyle fucking.

"Now this is Brother Francis," he pointed at a monk sitting up front as a new clip began. "He doesn't really like the non-cons stuff."

"I'm sorry, the what?" I asked.

"Non-consensual," Tomás said, taking the cigar out of his mouth to take another sip of scotch. "The rapes, the bondage, the humiliation. Sometimes we can't avoid it. But when we can, Brother Francis has first call."

"I know her," I said as we watched his highlights. "Ann something."

"Ann Coulter," he said. "I have no idea what she's doing now, probably selling Mary Kay cosmetics or something. I think she might have been the one who tried to pull Katie Couric's blouse off to prove she had the word "Liberal" tattooed on her breast, but maybe that was someone else. Anyway, she was a popular conservative back in the '90s and the '00s. Most of our clients, of course, grew up then. So the majority of the requests we get are from celebrities from that era. Here, the guy just wanted a chance to seduce her. Nothing non-con about it. Of course, she'll have to tell him he's the greatest lover she ever had, of course."

Tomás had a good chuckle over that one.

"It's a very delicious irony, you know," he continued, "that most of our clients are incredibly conservative. That just goes with being rich enough to become our clients, I suppose. And that's why we charge ten thousand dollars a video. If they only knew where their money was going... Ah, now, this is Brother Nathan. You met him at dinner, I believe, yes?"

"Er, yes," I answered. He'd been sitting across the table from me.

Brother Nathan had apparently done the Britney Spears video. In this one, he was abusing NBC Evening News anchorwoman Natalie Morales, who had apparently angered a certain "Randy Reevis" by not giving enough attention to the 100th anniversary of the inauguration of Warren Harding last March. I guess I could see how you could get pissed off at that. Although maybe not enough to do that to her. Yeessh!

"Well, you probably need your rest," Tomás said to me after the videos had ended. "I know your director, Brother Michael, is eager to get back to work. And of course, our revenues have been off twenty-five percent for the last three weeks, ever since Brother Donald left us."

"Yes," I put down the glass I'd been sipping at and the cigar I'd been pretending to smoke. "You said he had an accident? With the equipment?"

Brother Tomás smiled.

"Don't worry," he said. "We've taken steps to ensure that it doesn't happen again."

"So is he still here?" I asked. "Or did he get transferred somewhere else?"

"Let's just say he's no longer with us," Tomás crushed his cigar in an ashtray.
Something about the way he said it sent a chill up the back of my spine. It had been about three weeks since somebody uploaded the unencrypted video that the FBI had intercepted. I wondered if that was the malfunction that had led to Brother Donald's accident.

"Any questions?" he asked. "Very well. I will see you tomorrow. Someone will meet you after our morning vigils to escort you to the studio. Sleep well, Brother Peter."

Senator Ralph Porter, a Republican who'd represented my own state of Delaware since 2013, apparently had not gotten along very well with President Hillary Clinton, who was just then beginning her second term in office. Apparently the tailor had been measuring me for costumes, and my first was a gorgeous navy blue suit with a red power tie and a white button down shirt. Changing into that suit was the first thing I did once I passed "the door," which apparently involved knowing some combination of numbers to unlock. Well, the second thing, really. The first thing I did was pass inspection. Brother Tomás was waiting for me when I emerged, although he assured me that he was only there to help me get through my first day. He introduced me one more time again to Brother Michael in the control booth and then asked me to strip so he could assure himself that I'd been properly represented. Fortunately, I seemed to be of a similar size to the real Brother Peter. I wouldn't want to have met Brother Donald's fate because my cock was too small. At least women only made fun of you for that.

Finally, after I was properly costumed, I came face to face with Carrie, albeit Carrie channeling Hillary. I could see her eyes light up as she recognized me, and I stepped forward to squeeze her cheeks painfully together.

"So this is the President, huh?" I asked, giving her a quick look up and down. "Pretty miserable excuse for a fuck, isn't she?"

I pushed her away, watching her eyes dim. She still knew that I was her master, but she was smart enough not to insist on it while we were here.

"This is obviously not President Clinton," Tomás said.

No fooling, I thought.

"This is Hillary Clinton from 1994," he continued, "when she was actually attractive, and had a much softer hairstyle. We looked at pictures of her a little later, when she was a senator, and she was just too old and frankly too heavy by then. Once she got to be president... anyway, this version, when she was first lady and her only stress was riding herd on her husband's cock, is much more fuckable, don't you think? But we've dressed her up in the kind of thing she tended to wear as President, so I think she'll be perfect for our friend the Senator."

He walked me down to a room that looked like it could easily have come straight out of the White House.

"This stage is Stage A," he explained. "As you see, it's set up for your performance. Stage B is next door, through there; while you're performing, Brothers Cary and Samuel will be setting up the next scene, for Brother Nathan. Well, if you don't have any questions, I'll leave you in the capable hands of Brother Michael. Oh, one other thing. I should have told you last night. Your wine contained a semen extender, whose purpose is to dilute your semen, simply to make more of it available for the video. It is absolutely harmless, and I think you'll enjoy seeing what happens when you finally start spraying. Just don't be surprised, or you'll ruin the take. Good luck, Peter."

"Thank you, Brother Tomás," I waved.

My hands-on education in pornography started out with Brother Michael fitting me with what he called a "pov camera," shorthand for P-O-V, or point of view, camera. It attached to my head, as I'd expected, and it was fairly uncomfortable. But I already knew that it did its job. Looking at the monitor off stage, I could see it monitoring what I was looking at.

"A few rules, Brother," he said as he made the final adjustments. "Try not to use your peripheral vision. The camera won't track that. If you want to look at something to your right or left, turn your head. Second, you probably noticed that the script doesn't spell out much of the sex, right?"

I had noticed that. The script I'd been given let me know that I would be Senator Porter, and that President Clinton would be trying to get my vote on some crucial piece of legislation. Crucial to her, at any rate; Senator Porter apparently couldn't care less whether there were detailed nutrition labels on bags of candy. Once we got past the initial dialogue, though, it was up to me and my director.

"Yeah, so I just do what I want?" I asked.

"In character," he said. "If you're going to do missionary, though, keep it really short. The pov camera doesn't get good perspective on that because you're too close. Our clients tend to like doggystyle and cowgirl — with the girl riding you while you're lying down — and blowjobs of course. The senator wants to see Hillary's face covered in spunk, so when you're ready for the money shot, back off and we'll set that up. Now put this earpiece in your ear, so you can hear me. If I see anything, I'll stop you or steer you in a different direction. Hillary's been given her own instructions, so mostly she'll just be playing off of you. Any questions?"

I shook my head.

"Nope," I said. "Sounds pretty clear to me."

Senator Porter is seated at an elegantly set table, looking at his watch as his coffee grows cold. There are various dishes on the table, containing food that is also growing cold. Finally, a door opens to his left and Hillary Clinton enters. She is dressed in a powder blue suit with a muted pink shirt and a single strand of pearls around her neck. The senator looks down, noting the skirt that ends several inches above her knees.

"Senator Porter," she extends her hand as he looks back up. "Thank you for joining me for breakfast. I hope I haven't kept you waiting too long."

"Madame President," Senator Porter slowly stands and grudgingly shakes hands. "It's nice to see you again."

"Please, have a seat," she gestures. "Senator, I think we both know why I asked you here: the nutrition labeling bill."

"Or the M&M bill," he says, "as we refer to it on my side of the aisle."

"Senator," she pours herself a cup of coffee and refills his, "nutrition information is so important to all Americans, but particularly to the youngest and most vulnerable among us."

"So that they can make an informed decision between Snickers and Baby Ruth bars based on their nutritional value," he smiles.

"Senator, I understand that your colleagues in the Republican caucus are united against this bill," she says, "and I can't for the life of me understand why. Perhaps it's because —"

"Perhaps it's because they're tired of Hillary Poppins telling them what to do every minute of their lives," the Senator interrupts her.

"Or perhaps it's because the multinational candy corporations have been paying them under the table for a number of years now," Hillary angrily retorts.

"Are you accusing me of accepting bribes?" Senator Porter sits back in his seat.

Hillary realizes she's gone too far.

"No, Senator," she holds a hand out. "I simply meant that —"

"If you were a man, I'd challenge you to a duel," he says, angrily throwing his napkin onto the table. "Since you're not, I'll simply take my leave and tell you that you can suck my cock, Madame President."

"Okay," Hillary says.

Senator Porter has already gotten halfway out of his chair and stops.

"Okay what?" he asks.

"Okay, if I suck your cock will you support my bill?" Hillary bluntly asks him.

He sits back down.

"I doubt you're good enough for that kind of deal, Hillary," the Senator says with equal bluntness. "If you were, I don't think Monica Lewinsky would have ever become a household name."

Hillary flushes a deep red and bows her head. When she lifts it again, she is a much more subdued woman.

"Senator, this bill is extremely important to me," she says.

"I can tell," the Senator laughs. "Tell you what, why don't you get under this table and get to work, and we'll see how the negotiation goes."

The Senator pushes himself back from the table a bit as Hillary slides out of her suit jacket and slides off her chair. He looks down under the table and sees her delicate hands unzip him and pull out his already hard cock. He continues to watch as his cock is lost beneath her blonde hair as she leans forward into his lap.

He watches her bobbing up and down for a minute or two.

"I'm surprised, Hillary," he says, "you actually are pretty good at this."

A sound of a door opening to the right surprises both of them, and Hillary squeaks, "Oh, shit!" and scoots back a little further under the table. The Senator scoots his chair forward as well, and grabs her hair to put her back to work. Only then does he look over at the source of the sound. The doorway is hidden in partial shadow, and a tall man sticks his head in.

"Mister President!" Senator Porter is clearly smiling. "You must be looking for your wife."

"That's right, Ralph," the First Husband's voice is quite distinctive. "She's not here, huh?"

"She said she had some Presidential duties that needed her immediate attention," Senator Porter says. "I'm sure you know how it is. Shall I tell her that you were looking for her?"

"Don't bother," he says, giving Senator Porter a barely visible wink. "I just wanted to make sure I knew where she was. I've got some duties of my own to tend to, if you know what I mean."

He closes the door, and Senator Porter looks back down at Hillary.

"Time for you to do some other duties, too, honey," he says. "Does that door lock?"

Hillary scoots backward and jumps to her feet. She'd apparently unzipped her skirt as she sucked, and used her hands to produce the wet stain that is visible on her surprisingly skimpy white panties as the skirt falls to the floor. She steps out of it and runs to the door, locking it and running back to stand in front of the senator.

The rest, as Andy Richardson once explained to me, was just pure pornography. At the end, after I'd pulled my cock out of Carrie's/Hillary's ass and sprayed her face — and boy, Brother Tomás wasn't kidding about that extender — I heard a whoop in my earpiece from the control room. I turned to look, and Brother Michael was standing there shaking his head. Finally he turned to look at me, and gave me a big grin and a thumbs up. A minute or two later he was in the control room shaking my hand.

"I've been doing this for a year and a half," he said, "and that's the first single take video I've ever seen. Look, it's only eight-fifteen. You can still make breakfast, Brother."

My accomplishment was toasted at dinner that evening as well — the second dinner, of course, with the Chicken Marsala and the Pinot Noir, not the one with the soup and the black bread. Then we watched the highlights: me with Hillary; Nathan with former Wimbledon champion Maria Sharapova; Francis doing an unusually nasty, but completely consensual scene with former Secretary of State Condi Rice; and Dominic with Gillian Anderson.

Brother Tomás had pulled up his chair next to mine again, and during the last video he leaned over confidentially.

"We had some asshole request a Gillian Anderson video a few years ago," he said, "and he cut it into pieces and started selling it on the internet. He met with an unfortunate heart attack a few months ago."

I turned to stare at him, but he simply kept going.

"Although," he chuckled, "it's made Ms. Anderson our most popular performer. Maybe we should do one of these ourselves, and make it available free of charge, to whet the appetite of the market a little. Who knows? We could even up the price after that. You interested in doing some ad work?"

He smiled at me and I smiled back.

"Sure," I grinned. Better that than "meeting with a heart attack." Just how does that work?

The next day I was paired with Lindsay Lohan, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. Bitch. I was careful not to do this one in a single take, and while Brother Michael was adjusting his audio levels in the control booth, I took advantage of the break to tell Carrie to disavow my previous instructions. Instead, I suggested, unless I told her different, she should plan on being here for at least another two weeks. This was the fourth day since we'd exchanged her for Julie, and I was afraid she'd suicide today unless I countermanded my earlier order. In fact, I had a different plan in mind now that I'd made it inside.

The following day, a Friday, I had a horrible experience. We had two consensual orders, and Nathan was given first choice. He took Jenna Bush, the very hot daughter of our former president George Bush II, from just before she joined the Mormon Church in 2010 and was lost doing missionary work in Kuala Lumpur. Actually, both of his daughters were hot; Barbara was the cute hot brunette and Jenna was the slutty hot blonde. Pre-Mormon, anyway. I think she stopped dyeing her hair after she — anyway, I got Katherine Harris, the former Congresswoman from Florida, circa 2005. She'd lost a disastrous race for the Senate in 2006, but apparently there were still people out there who revered her, or at least wanted to fuck her. Not me. It took two and a half hours to finish, and I still tremble thinking about it.

The day after that, a Saturday, I had an even worse experience.

On Thursday, when Brother Cary came to get me for the Lohan piece after lunch, I realized that I was on some sort of probation. I already knew where the fucking door was, but nobody was going to give me the combination just yet. Brother Cary, in fact, carefully hid his hand from me when he entered it, as if he were at an ATM machine. I knew, though, that if I was going to break Carrie out of there — my new plan — it was going to have to be over the weekend, before the real Brother Peter showed up at the beginning of the following week.

My lucky break came on Friday, when Brother Samuel was a little careless at the beginning, and I saw him hit a "3" and a "6" before he shifted his body to hide the keypad. No, I thought, they wouldn't be that stupid, would they? But apparently they were. On Friday night, after I figured everyone was asleep, I tiptoed down the corridor and entered 36-24-36, and the door swung open. Could we be any more juvenile? Still, it might not have occurred to any of the "real" monks.

I quickly located the room that Carrie had been given, more of a cell than a room, of course, although she did have a much nicer shower than I did. The bathroom, in fact, was the only room I'd seen with a window, albeit a very small one. She was in the shower when I pushed open the door to her room and began whispering her name. Unable to locate her at first, I finally heard the water running, and sat on the toilet while she finished.

She pushed back the shower curtain, and I saw Jenna's bush. I mean Jenna Bush. Eyes up, Jase. She saw me, her eyes widened, and she drew in breath for a scream. But she just as quickly recognized me, and with a shriek of delight jumped out of the shower and into my arms as I stood up.

"Master, the room is bugged," she whispered into my ear. "The shower will cover it."

I nodded. She hopped back in the tub, drew the curtain, and turned the shower back on. After a few seconds, her head appeared around the shower curtain.

"Are you coming or not?" she whispered with a sexy little smile.

Oh.

I stripped off my robe and underwear, and jumped in with her. It was a snug little shower, but we were old friends.

"That's better," she said in a more normal tone, pressing her breasts against me.

"Decided you like this body?" I asked her as the water cascaded over us.

"Uh-huh," she said. "Most of the times I get treated like a fucking piece of meat. But I like this one; she's a firecracker. I haven't cum like this since, well, since you were fucking that cheerleader slut."

"Hey," I protested, "that's my friend."

"So am I, master," she said, "and since she's not here..."

Further conversation was cut off by her kissing me on the lips and climbing up to impale herself on my erect cock. While we fucked, I explained to her my plan.

"I don't think they work on Sunday," I said. "Oh, God, you're tight. Anyway, Sunday. Lord's day. Day of rest. Oh, fuck, sweetie. But the front door's locked from sundown to sunrise. So I'll be here right after lunch, when we'll have the longest time without anybody missing us. Oh, God, where did you learn that? So just be prepared, okay? Sunday afternoon. Oh, fuck yessssss!"

She climbed off of me and let my "extended" semen pour out of her and run down her legs. Soaping herself again, she rinsed off one more time and reached behind her to shut off the shower.

"Damn, you're still the best, aren't you?" she said as she began to dry herself with a towel.

"Carrie," I shushed her. "The bugs."

"What bugs?" she asked.

"The place is bugged," I reminded her.

"Who told you that?" she giggled.

"You little minx," I said, making a grab for her ass. She nimbly skipped out of my way and headed into her bedroom. I somewhat less nimbly followed her, but I made it to the bed all the same. Later than night, probably around four in the morning, I unlocked the door again — the lock worked both ways — and snuck back into my room.

The following day we were scheduled to film my "ad" first, and then three other videos. The ad was the first time the brothers had specifically decided to target a right-wing audience, and I shot five-minute clips with Ann Coulter; Jenna; Jenna's sister Barbara, who was treated a bit more roughly, probably a result of her post-First Family membership in PETA and Greenpeace; Britney (who was actually more of a libertarian); Condi; and Jenna Jameson, who was married to the current Secretary of Defense. And then we threw in a little Barbara Eden, from I Dream of Jeannie, to make the fantasy part even that much more obvious. (That Jeannie part was my idea, so if you see it on the Internet, keep that in mind. I think it's the best part.) Brothers Cary and Samuel were practically drooling at the thought of splicing all of the video together into a 10-minute preview tape. Brother Tomás pronounced himself very satisfied with the work, and escorted me personally back to "the door." As he was about to close it behind me, we heard someone knocking at the front door just down the hall.

"Brother Peter," he asked, "will you please answer that? If you have any questions at all, I'm sure that Brother Terrence, who's manning the desk in the library today, will be happy to help you out."

He smiled and closed the door. I turned and headed for the front door. I opened it to find another monk awaiting admission.

"Hello," I extended my hand in courteous monkly fashion. "I'm Brother Peter."

"Hello," he laughed as he took my hand. "I'm Brother Peter as well. I'm a bit early, I'm afraid, but I believe Brother Tomás is expecting me."



-------

Chapter 7


"Yes, he certainly is expecting you, Brother Peter," I recovered quickly from the sense of impending doom that had engulfed me when I first heard the name. "Come on in. You must be tired, huh?"

"Not really," he said jovially. "It's only a two-hour drive from Minnesota."

"Of course," I agreed, hustling him in. "Still, you should probably visit your room first. You know, get settled, unpack your things?"

He had a gym bag with him, probably full of underwear and socks. Probably not a lot of unpacking was going to be needed. But he good-naturedly let me push him along to my room.

"Here you go," I said, ushering him inside.

"Are you sure?" he asked, eyeing the rumpled bedding as I shut the door behind us. "This looks like it's already occupied."

"Oh, no, we kicked him out this morning," I said as I stepped into the bathroom. "Housekeeping will be along shortly. But no sense waiting for them. Just let me fix the toilet here; Brother Tomás said it's been running at night. I'm gonna just take the lid off and — yeah, I think I see the problem here. All right, pal, take off the rope."

He was a little surprised to see me pointing a pistol at him. I was a little surprised to be doing it.

"My belt?" he asked.

"Whatever," I said. "Take it off. Come on; chop, chop."

He took off the belt-rope thing that cinched his robe around his waist and then, at my command, took off the robe as well, leaving him in his boxer shorts. I had him lay down on his stomach and carefully tied his hands behind his back, and then secured him to the bed.

"I don't know what you think you're doing, Brother Peter," he began self-righteously.

"Oh, shut the fuck up," I said. "I'm so goddamn tired of you monks. I guess I'm gonna have to gag you, though, aren't I?"

The walls in that place were paper-thin — I could hear my next-door neighbor, Brother James, moaning every night as he jerked off — so I tore off a strip of his robe and fashioned a crude gag.

"Have a nice stay here!" I wished him as I stuffed the gun and my cell phone in the pocket of my robe and hurried back to "the door." Slipping through, I turned around and changed the combination — a relatively simple task once I'd located the "Change Combination" key after my visit with Carrie. With gun back in hand, I slipped into the control room, where Brother Kevin was directing Brother Dominic in the next video. Stealing up behind him, I reached down and flipped off his microphone.

"What the — " Brother Kevin stopped when he saw the gun.

"Come on, up," I gestured him out of his seat and pushed him through the door onto the soundstage. Brother Dominic had just pulled out of his co-star, a tall woman with long, dark hair and a nice ass who was bent over a desk in a classroom setting. Brother Tomás was standing just offstage, enjoying the performance. I pushed Brother Kevin onto the stage.

"All right, assholes, freeze," I said.

They froze.

"Brother Peter," Tomás's eyes narrowed into small little slits.

"Actually, Brother Peter's tied up at the moment," I said. "And if you refer to me as your brother again, I'll shoot you for that alone."

"Master!" Carrie looked up from her desk and gave me a big smile.

"Go to the other stage," I told her, "and tell Cary and Samuel that if they're not here in 30 seconds, I'm gonna start shooting. Tell them Brother Tomás is first. If they do anything other than follow you, give a scream."

I pointed the gun at him to emphasize my order, and she hopped up and ran next door. Cary and Samuel were used to taking orders, even from naked brunettes, and followed her back into the room.

"Who are you supposed to be?" I asked Carrie as I took in her naked form.

"A teacher?" she said. "Ms. Dodge?"

Now it was my eyes that were narrowing.

"And who are you supposed to be?" I asked Dominic.

"Um, Stewart Simmons?" he offered tentatively. "Quarterback of the Hardwood High School football team?"

"Asshole," I muttered, letting loose a shot in his direction. He screamed and dropped to the ground. Huh. I guess the gun didn't kick back as much as Andy thought it would. Well, they could fix that kind of injury; besides, it was big enough that he wouldn't notice if they had to cut part of it out and splice the remaining bits together.

"The rest of you," I ordered. "Take off your robes."

They complied with remarkable speed, no doubt influenced by the sight of Brother Dominic writhing on the floor. Hell, if he was still writhing, I couldn't have hit him that bad.

"Carrie, change into somebody different," I told her. I couldn't work with Gail Dodge wandering around naked. Carrie picked Sue Waggoner. Big help.

"Get their robes and check the pockets," I ordered her. "Now I want you to go back into the other control room and find a pair of scissors and cut the phone line."

She was back three minutes later.

"All right boys," I said, "back to the door."

We marched back through the control room, where I had Carrie cut that phone line as well, and down the corridor to "the door." Even Dominic was able to make the trip; it was obviously just a flesh wound.

"You're letting them out?" Carrie asked in alarm as we reached the end of the corridor.

"Hell no," I said. "But in case I missed any cell phones, I want a little bit of a head start. Gentleman, against the left wall."

They obediently pressed themselves against the wall, and Carrie and I slid by them to get to the door. I whispered the new combination to her, and she entered it into the keypad.

"Living doll," I reached out for her as the door opened. I stepped out with my doll into a fortunately deserted hallway, and waved goodbye as the soundproof door closed and silenced the shouts from the monks. Brother James came walking down the hallway just then, and as I reached the front door, I told him he had a new neighbor and he needed to be a little quieter at night. I left him blushing there in the hallway as I slipped through the door and made a beeline for the parking lot. By that evening, I was in Ohio. By the next night, I was back in Hardwood.

My parents were a little mystified to see me, and I was more than a little mystified to see them, at least by themselves. The kids, they explained, had gone home with Shelly and Steve after a late-night call from Karen. Karen hadn't been here at all. Perhaps, they suggested, she was already back in Delaware. To be honest, I was a little shook up that my sweetie had apparently lied to me about where she was heading, to the extent that I forgot to take Carrie out of the pocket of my parka and leave her in the closet as I'd intended.

I returned home the next morning no wiser than I was when I'd left Hardwood. And much, much angrier. Karen obviously hadn't been here. And as soon as I got inside the door, I was met with the sight of dead fish and dying plants. Fucking Bentons. I'd left a message on their phone on Christmas Eve, asking one of their daughters — Barbie, Bobbie, Betsy, whichever was the oldest one in high school — to look after the house until I got home. I was really pissed off.

I stormed down my driveway and stormed up the Benton's. Our driveway was about a quarter-mile long, and theirs was easily a half-mile (they lived on the posh side of the street), so by the time I actually got to their house the storm had pretty much abated. I was a little out of breath as I knocked on the door.

"Jason," Bob looked surprised to see me there. He stuck his head out and looked from side to side.

I was surprised to see him there, for that matter. I'd been expecting to find his wife, Melissa. What was Bob doing home on a Monday?

"What exactly has your daughter been doing for the last three weeks?" I demanded.

"I'm sorry?" he asked.

"My fish?" I said. "My plants?"

"Okay," Bob held up a hand. "Can this wait, Jason? I'm a little busy right at the..."

His voice trailed off as my glare deepened. I pushed past him into the house, paying little attention to the man sitting in Bob's La-Z-Boy in the corner of the living room.

"Look," I rounded on Bob as he shut the door. "I spent the last week with a bunch of left-wing Catholic terrorist pornographers. And then I come home to find my fish all dead."

He was staring at me like I'd grown a third head.

"Opus Christe?" the man behind me said in a deep voice. I gave him a quick glance, noticing only that he looked familiar, and then turned back to Bob.

"What do you know about Opus Christe?" I asked him.

"I'm the President of Opus Christe," he said.

"The what?" I asked breathlessly.

"The President," he affirmed. "Didn't you know that's where I worked?"

"Ya know, I knew you were Catholic," I began. "Well, actually, I just knew you had a lot of kids. But I had no idea —"

By then, my anger had returned in spades. I held up my hand and began to tick off the list on my fingers.

"Well, allright, Mr. Opus Christe, I said, "then maybe you can explain the kidnapping, and the murder, and the pornography, and the terrorism."

My thumb was hanging there uselessly.

"Oh, yeah, and those steak dinners at the monastery," I finished in triumph. "That's gotta be some sort of sin."

"I assume you recognize the Pope, Jason," Bob gestured to the man behind me. I looked and finally took in the white embroidered robes and the red beanie.

"Pope," I acknowledged him with a wave. "How ya' doin'?"

"You need to kiss his ring," Bob whispered. Well, yes, that would explain why he was holding his hand out to me like that, like a dog who'd just been taught how to shake hands. "And address him as Your Holiness."

The ring, sure. I dropped to one knee and gave the John Paul George Ring-o a smooch, humming "Yesterday" while I did it. My Holiness? I didn't think so. The only holiness I recognized was my editor at Harper Brown Publishing, the one who made sure my check got cut. And even he wasn't above a good cursing if I was in the mood. Maybe we could just talk around the Holiness business.

"His Holiness visited me today in the utmost secret so that we could talk over our differences," Bob said. "I've sent my family away, which is why my daughter is unavailable to explain about your, uh, fish."

"That's okay," I smiled, making myself comfortable on the couch. "This is much more interesting."

"His Holiness was telling me of rumors similar to what you just told me, Jason," Bob explained. "I confess that I'm stunned by the whole thing. Can I get you something to drink?"

I looked over to see at the tall glass on the table beside the Pope. It looked like a Sprite with lime.

"Whatever the Pope's having," I smiled. Bob returned with a similar glass for me and asked me to start at the beginning. I took a healthy gulp — and started coughing.

"What the hell is this?" I gasped.

"Double gin and tonic," Bob said. "Just like His Holiness has. Wasn't that what you wanted?"

"I thought it was a Sprite," I said as I gradually recovered.

The Pope chuckled, and I gave him a dirty look. Finally, I began my story. They had a little trouble with the whole doll thing, so I finally asked them whether they wanted to hear the whole thing or not. I reminded the Pope that I'd always taken the Virgin Birth thing on faith, and I was allowed to continue. I'd gotten up to the good part — the monastery — when we all three looked up at the sound of tires squealing up Bob's driveway.

"You know," Bob said, "it's getting just a little too crowded here. I'm going to take his Holiness down to the den. Can you see if you can get rid of whoever that is, and meet me down there?"

"I'll try," I said. "But if it's those frickin' Jehovah's Witnesses, I could be here a while. Karen — my wife — is the only one I know who can get rid of them."

Both he and the Pope got a good laugh out of that one.

It wasn't Jehovah's Witnesses. I opened the door of the house and watched Julie Pinsky and Andy Richardson get out of the car in mid-argument.

"This is not his house," Julie protested. "His house is across the street."

"Mapquest said turn right, so I turned right," Andy answered her.

"But I've been there hundreds of times," Julie pointed out. "I think I'd know where he lives better than your stupid little palmtop."

"Well, if he doesn't live here, why is he standing there in the doorway?" Andy pointed up at me.

I waved. Julie stopped, seeing me for the first time.

"I don't care," she revved up again as they walked up the sidewalk to the front door. "You can't tell me that Mapquest knows where individual people are."

"It said to turn right," Andy said, as if the argument was over. "And there's Jason in the doorway."

"You two argue like you were married," I kidded them.

Both of them blushed.

"You aren't, are you?" I was stunned. Actually, I really wasn't. Andy had been in love with Julie his whole life, and Julie had obviously been in love with Andy at one point in hers. Sometimes love and hate are just flip sides of the same coin. Besides, once you go from a fucking asshole shithead to an asshole shithead to a plain old shithead, it's really only a matter of time before you start picking out china patterns.

"He only proposed yesterday," Julie murmured. "Can we come in?"

"Sure," I said. "You want a drink? No? Well then, let's join the Pope."

"The who?" Andy said over his shoulder they started down the stairs I'd led them to.

"Your Holiness!" Julie gushed as she reached the bottom step.

"Your Holiness," Andy echoed as Julie kissed the ring. Andy quickly followed, and they finally stood there, basking in His Holiness's holiness.

"So," I finally broke the silence, "would you like to hear the rest of the story, or shall I go out and round up a couple more sycophants?"

"Jason," came the horrified cry from three sets of Catholic lips.

The Pope just chuckled again. He was a real chuckler.

"Go ahead, Mr. Thompson," he smiled. "You had just finished your exchange of kidnap victims."

"Right," I said. "Oh, this is the kidnappee, Julie Pinsky, and her rescuer, Andy Richardson."

They beamed. I rolled my eyes. After another ten minutes, I was done. I turned back to Andy and Julie.

"So what happened to you two?" I asked.

"We went to Atlantic City," Andy explained. "It's a lot closer than Vegas and the FBI's got just as many transmitters in Jersey. And then on Sunday, um..."

"Um?" I prompted Julie.

"We went to mass," she mumbled.

"I'm sorry?" I said. "You what?"

"We went to Mass," Andy said with a little more authority.

"You went to Mass?" I exploded. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"Every communicant is obligated to attend Mass once a week," the Pope said.

"See, that's why you never hear the word 'pontificate' used in a complimentary way," I snapped at him. "Every communicant is not obligated to be stupid. They're being chased by a bunch of Catholic monks, and they walk into a Catholic church? That's like making a deposit at a bank you just robbed.

"Sort of," I assured Andy and Julie.

"I know it was stupid," Julie said. "And we think we may have been seen."
"But the transmitter should have stopped, right?" I asked.

"It should have," Andy agreed. "And we took a pretty circuitous route here. So I'm hoping that we're all fine."

"Daddy, Daddy!"

Little Molly Benton came rolling into the room and clamped her arms around her father's legs.

"Molly!" Bob was as surprised to see her as the rest of us. "You're supposed to be with Mommy."

"I hid," Molly proclaimed proudly. "I wanted to meet him."

She pointed her chubby little finger at the Pope.

"Okay," Bob sighed. "You go kiss his ring, and I'll call Mommy and tell her where you are."

He gave the three of us a grimace.

"That's what happens with six kids," he said.

We all watched Molly kiss the Pope's ring and then climb into his lap. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I could see Bob looking at his telephone.

"Problem?" I asked.

"The line's dead," he shrugged, hanging it up.

"Shit!" I yelped, tearing off upstairs with Andy close behind me.

"What's wrong?" Julie and Bob followed quickly. Sure enough, through the windows, I could see men out among the trees, wearing robes and carrying guns.

"Lock the doors, pull the shades," Andy ordered. "Get the Pope and your daughter up here."

"What's wrong?" Bob asked. He and Julie had been right behind us, although they'd taken the stairs at a more moderate one at a time.

"Opus Christe," I murmured. "I'll get the Pope."

I ran downstairs and persuaded His Holiness to come upstairs with me; the sliding doors in the walkout basement were just too inviting a target. By the time I was back, Andy and Julie had pulled down all the shades, and Bob and I pulled a desk in front of the door to the basement after we were all upstairs in case somebody tried to break in that way. When we returned to the living room, both Andy and the Pope were finishing up cell-phone conversations. I couldn't believe that anyone thought cutting the landlines would be of any use in severing communications these days. Monks.

"I've got an FCC strike team on the way," Andy said. "It'll take 'em thirty minutes to get here, though."

"Opus Dei will be here in twenty minutes," the Pope smirked.

"I'm not sure that that's entirely helpful, Your Holiness," Andy said. "That's just going to give us two groups of yahoos with guns."

"Oh, God, where's the bathroom?" Julie interrupted him.

"Through there," Bob pointed. "Are you all right?"

Apparently not. Her hand to her mouth, Julie ran into the bathroom, and we heard her lose her breakfast. Meanwhile, Andy was a step ahead of us.

"We need to stall," he said. "How can we keep them away for twenty minutes?"

"Hostages?" I offered.

"Excellent," he said. "Who wants to be a hostage?"

"Pick him," I pointed at the Pope.

"Jason," Andy sighed. "They hate the Pope."

"Him then," I pointed at Bob.

"Why him?" Andy asked.

"He's the President of Opus Christe," I explained triumphantly.

Andy raised an eyebrow.

"You think these guys know that?" he said.

"If I had a phone line, I could pull up the website," Bob said. He was a very cooperative hostage at this point, particularly with his daughter Molly in the house.

"I got it," Andy whipped out his ubiquitous palmtop. "Printer?"

"Study," Bob said. They both hustled out as Julie came back in, looking a little less green than she did when she'd left.

"You okay?" I asked.

She gave me a withering look, but then Andy bustled back into the room and handed me a paper, a copy of the website with Bob's name prominently displayed.

"What do you want me to do with this?" I asked.

"Go out and tell them who our hostage is," he said.

"You go," I said.

"They're looking for me," he said. "And Julie. And they hate the Pope. And if Bob goes we don't have a hostage."

They were all valid points. But still.

"I'm not so sure they're gonna be that fond of me, either," I pointed out. "I stole their doll."

"That's the Iowa bunch," he said. "This is the Jersey bunch. They work together but they don't really talk because of some doctrinal differences."

Bob had followed Andy back in.

"Our New Jersey affiliate," he started to explain, "believes that —"

"Sorry, Bob," I said, "but shut up. I was a monastic porno star all last week, and that's as much as I want to know about it all for a long, long time."

I emptied the pockets of my parka, which still contained everything I'd brought with me from the monastery, namely, the blonde doll and Andy's gun and cell phone. I turned to Bob.

"You got a white flag?" I asked.

"What, like a handkerchief on a stick?" he asked me.

"No," I sneered, "like a pair of boxer shorts on a broom."

He was back in a few minutes.

"You didn't have a handkerchief?" I asked.

"You said you wanted a pair of boxer shorts on a broom," he protested.

"Do absolutely none of you people understand sarcasm?" I asked, taking in the entire Catholic crowd. I sighed and, with the broom hoisted in front of me, opened the door to face the monks.

"Can I come out?" I yelled, waving the broom.

"Over here," one of the men yelled. I advanced under my ersatz truce flag, and soon found myself face to face with yet another Latin American monk. Very fortunately for me, a different Latin American monk.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"A neighbor," I said. "See, I live over there. You can see it through the woods a little, now that the leaves have fallen."

He wasn't interested in looking where I was pointing, so I soon dropped my hand.

"And what were you doing there, Mister Neighbor?" he asked.

"I came to complain to Bob — that's my neighbor — about my fish dying," I said. "His daughter was supposed to be taking care of them, see, when my wife and I were..."

He wasn't interested in that either, so I let it die.

"So anyway, this man and this woman drive up and burst into the house, and tie Bob up," I said breathlessly. "They have guns, too. Did I mention guns? And now they sent me out to tell you that he's their hostage."

"Why should I care about your neighbor?" Brother Latin's eyes narrowed.

I pulled out the paper.

"See, the guy told me that Bob's the president of something called Opus Christe," I said, "and that you guys were Opus Christe guys, too."

"Madre de Dios," he looked at the paper.

"Yeah," I said. "See, I'm a Methodist, although I really haven't been to church in an awfully long —"

"What are his demands?" he interrupted me.

"His demands?" I asked.

"For the hostage?" the monk explained curtly.

"Oh," I said, racking my brain for some demands. "Food. They want food."

"They have a whole kitchen in the house!" he pointed toward it.

"They want a pizza," I said. "Takeout. From Lombardy's, on Route 3. And the phone lines are dead."

"Yes," the monk said. "What else?"

"They wanted to start with the pizza," I said. "As a sign of good faith."

He motioned another monk over.

"Sausage and olives," I said.

"I'm sorry?" he asked.

"They want sausage and olives on the pizza," I said. "And half pepperoni. Anything you want me to tell them while we wait?"

His face turned cold.

"Tell them that once they have their pizza," he said, "they had better think seriously about letting their hostage go so that no innocent lives are injured. Tell them all we want is the return of our changeling."

So they knew about Carrie. I probably should have let Brother Tomás and his friends stew in the studio a little bit longer. Instead, nice guy that I am, I'd called up on Sunday evening and given them the new combination.

"Got it," I said. "Pizza, lives, changing."

"Changeling," he corrected me.

"Changeling," I pronounced it slowly. "Got it."

"Well?" Andy asked when I was back in the house.

"I ordered a pizza," I said.

"You what?" he grabbed me by the arm.

"A pizza," I said. "From Lombardy's."

I looked at Julie. She threw her arms around me neck.

"That'll easily take half an hour," she said to Andy when she let me go. "See, I told you he was smart."

She patted her stomach and gave me a contented smile.

"What?" I asked. "You can't be hungry. You just threw up."

"A little dense, though, huh?" Andy said.

Julie gave him a loving smile, her hand still resting on her stomach.

"Oh my God," I said, pointing at her stomach. "You're — you're —"

"Just like Karen," she said. "Same day, too."

I looked over at Andy as I sat down on the couch.

"Yeah, I know," he said. "Don't worry. He'll always be able to visit his dad."

Bob and His Holiness looked a little puzzled, but none of us wanted to present them with the opportunity for a lecture on non-marital sex. Instead, we settled in to wait for the pizza.

Less than fifteen minutes later, I heard my new favorite monk yell out, "Hey, neighbor!"
"Pizza here already?" I yelled through the open door.

He beckoned me out to him, and when I arrived, he pointed out the new group of armed men who were taking positions in the woods around them.

"Who are they, neighbor?" he asked.

"Ya got me there," I shook my head. "You want me to find out?"

He thought that over for a minute and nodded. I went back to the house, fetched my truce shorts, and sauntered down to the new perimeter.

"Opus Dei?" I asked the fellow who stepped forward.

He nodded.

"They have the Holy Father?" he looked grim.

"Yeah, well, sort of, I guess," I said. "So what are you doing here?"

We went through that again, and by the time we were done, the FCC guys started arriving. Their perimeter was about at the road, and with the blessing of Opus Dei, I went down to talk to them as well.

"Thompson," Colonel Monroe was clearly stunned to see me. "What the fuck is going on?"

"Okay," I said. "In the house you got Andy — sorry, Drew to you — and his fiancée Julie, and the Pope, and my neighbor Bob. The first bunch of guys here, closest to the house, are left-wing Catholic nut jobs. The next group of guys are right-wing Catholic nut jobs. And then there's you guys, federal government, uh,..."

I left "nut jobs" unspoken, but we both knew it was there.

"So what do we do?" he asked.

"I'm just the messenger," I said. "But I think Andy was assuming you'd, uh, take care of the left-wing guys. The right-wing guys were the Pope's idea."

"You did say the Pope, didn't you?" he asked.

"Uh, huh," I said. "Pope John Paul George. Oh, and, uh, he's here kind of incognito, okay, so no perp walks down at the station house."

"You're a funny man, Mister Thompson," the colonel said with the ghost of a grin.

"It's my bread and better, Colonel," I told him. "My bread and butter."

But even my comic skills couldn't keep a situation as explosive as this from turning into a tragedy. As soon as I reached the house again, the gunfire erupted, showering us with glass as we dropped to the floor. When it was over, Bob was lying unconscious, the result of a bullet that had toppled over a surprisingly heavy statue of the Madonna and Child that he'd had on the mantle over his fireplace. Andy was kneeling next to Julie, who had been grazed by a bullet but who had lost a copious amount of blood. And the distraught Pope was cradling the body of Molly Benton, whose red blood had permanently stained his lily white robes.



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Epilogue

There was nothing I could do for Julie; Andy had much more training than I did, and a small nod told me that he thought that her injuries weren't life-threatening. Instead, I grabbed the Pope and threw him into Bob's study, pausing only to grab the doll that Andy had put on Bob's bookshelves after I'd given it to him, and to snatch a blanket from a closet in Bob's hallway.

"Put her down, sir," I said grimly.

"But she's —" he sobbed.

"Put her down, you fucking asshole," I ordered him. "We've got about three minutes before they break in here. Put her down!"

I threw him the blanket.

"Wrap her up," I screamed at him. "Wrap her up!"

I knelt beside him with the doll.

"Molly Benton," I said. "1027 Brandywine Lane. January 9, 2010. Life-size."

"Hi, master," said the five-year-old girl who appeared between us just as the Pope finished folding the blanket over. She'd be missing a day out of her life, but I wasn't planning on telling her. I imagine the Pope wasn't going to be talking much about it either.

"Mister Thompson," I said with a smile. "You can call me Mister Thompson, sweetie. Never master."

"Okay, Mister Thompson," she said. "Where's my mommy and daddy?"

"Your mommy had to go away with your brother and sisters," I said, "and you hid out here so you could see the Pope when he came to visit your daddy. Your daddy's upstairs. He'll be okay."

She took a long look at the Pope and then ran up to find her dad. The Pope just stared at me, tears running down his face.

"It's a miracle," he said.

"Yeah, maybe so," I agreed.

"Those Opus Christe scum —" he grew angry.

"I don't think so," I said, adding a belated "sir." "They would have been firing out, toward the road. The feds are too good to fire off this many bullets this wildly. You'll find that the injuries in this house come from Opus Dei guns."

He stared at me, and I stared him down.

"Holiness," I excused myself.

I took Molly's body out and put it in the back seat of Bob's rental car as the FCC commandoes approached the house. Andy and I would bury it later, in a beautiful spot on my farm overlooking the Brandywine River.

Bob had begun to revive when Molly reached him, and he and a very shaken Pope spent the rest of the day hammering out an agreement on the future of the Catholic Church. After that, the Pope kind of wandered around the country for the next few weeks, dropping in on little country churches, baptizing children, blessing livestock.

Julie? Julie lost her baby boy shortly after she arrived at the hospital. After two weeks of recovery, during which the doctors continually assured her that she and Andy could have as many babies as they wanted, the three of us buried Andrew Jason Thompson at a Catholic cemetery just outside of Wilmington.

Karen? Karen showed up a few days after the shootout, blithely informing me that she just couldn't deal with the whole thing anymore. She collected the kids from Shelly's, and we tried to get on with our lives over the next three months. She visited Julie once in the hospital on her own, but would never go back with me. She refused to attend the funeral of my son. And she refused to attend Julie and Andy's wedding in early April. She was heavy now with our third girl, and she'd agreed to my petulant demand that we name her Julie, but our marriage was showing some strain.

After I returned from the wedding, I was sitting in my favorite easy chair, flipping aimlessly through a magazine. Danny and Beth were across the road, playing with the Bentons. I could hear her approach from behind. With only four months left before her due date, she wasn't quite as light on her feet as she usually was.

"Was it a nice wedding?" she asked.

I grunted, but she just stood there and waited me out.

"It was fine," I said finally. "Me and Andy and Julie. The Pope. No parents. No bridesmaids. They're moving to Arizona after the honeymoon, you know. You'll probably never see her again."

She moved off.

I read a little longer and the footsteps returned.

"So what did she wear?"
I slammed the magazine closed.

"Again with the wedding?" I demanded. "If you wanted to know so badly, why the hell didn't you go?"

"I don't think that would have been a really good idea," came the answer with a low chuckle, and I realized that it was no longer Karen who was speaking. I watched in stunned silence as a very pregnant Julie Pinsky waddled around my chair and fell backwards into the couch.

I just stared at her.

"I'm sorry, baby," she said. "We couldn't tell you. You just can't lie to people. Andy deserves the Julie Pinsky he has. Just like Sandy deserves the Andy Richardson she has."

"When?" I finally gasped. "How?"

"At the motel," she said. "In Outer Dakota. Sandy turned into me and left with Andy. Karen and I spent the next week in Washington, D.C., where we figured they had a lot more of those transmitters and we could get lost. Do you want to feel your son kicking? Little Jason Andrew Thompson?"

I did. But I was stuck.

"Come on," Karen said softly. This time I hadn't heard her come up beside me. "Let's go upstairs, Jules. They haven't yet made a man who could resist making love to two women that he's knocked up."

I guess I wasn't so much stuck as momentarily paralyzed. I got better.


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The End
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Posted:  2006-12-08
Last Modified: 2006-12-29 / 12:01:56 am
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