Excerpt from PART 3: How to Save a Life
Chapter 4 – Hotel Room
Chapter 4 – Hotel Room
The early morning
sunlight slipped through the narrow gap between the closed curtains to slightly
brighten the dimly lit, fancy hotel room. The winter winds howled outside but
the sun’s warm beams shined down onto the virgin-white linens that were
perfectly spread on the king-sized bed that no one had slept in yet. At the
foot of the bed sat a chair, and in that chair, with her hands tied behind her
back with a plastic zip-tie, sat a very sexy woman in a skimpy red dress. Her
hair was a mess, her mascara had run like black tears and there was a gruesome,
purple and black bruise on her cheek. Her bottom lip was split and she could
still taste blood in her mouth. Her head hung down as she stared at her own
exposed creamy thighs while she tried to recover from the dizziness that still
had her woozy and disoriented.
On the opposite side of
the hotel room, there was a well-polished oak desk on top of which sat a gun with
a silencer attached to it. Seated in a chair at that desk was a contract killer
who was doing his best to get completely wasted with the bottle of Jack Daniels
firmly in his grip. Every few gulps, he looked up from the bottle to stare at
the woman in the skimpy red dress. He couldn’t completely see her face through her
wild tangle of hair but he could see her shapely curves. He was ashamed that
his cold heart felt a twinge of pain because, in a few moments, he would have
to end her life, not because he wanted to but because he had been paid to. Like
he had told her at the poker table just a few hours before, Tragedy after
tragedy.
“So, what are we doing
in this nice hotel room?” Alicia asked Mr. Crowe.
She had been
unconscious when he brought her into the room, propped her up in the chair and
zip-tied her hands behind her back. She assumed that he must have passed her
off as drunk to get past the desk clerk without arousing suspicion or, he might
have simply bribed whoever was stationed at the front desk. Money planted in
the right pockets and palms usually stopped people from asking questions. The
right amount of coin also came in handy when it came to concealing evil deeds
which spoke volumes about the corruptible nature of most human beings.
“I see that you’re
finally awake,” Mr. Crowe answered grimly. “I was hoping that you wouldn’t be
for what happens next but, don’t worry…it’ll all be over soon,” he told her.
“So, you really are
going to kill me?” Alicia asked.
“That’s what Enoch and
the fat man paid me to do. I tried to convince them not to. Enoch almost
changed his mind but Sammie Slim would hear none of it. He already murdered your
waitress friend himself. I’ve never seen someone enjoy hurting another human
being the way he enjoyed what he did to her. I guess he wasn’t going to be
satisfied until he got his hands bloody. He really is an unpleasant cunt,”
Crowe told her.
“Did she suffer for
long?” Alicia asked, her lip quivering after hearing of her accomplice’s demise
at the hands of a very cruel man.
“Yes, she did. I saved
you from what he did to her because I’m a professional, not a butcher. With me,
at least you’ll die quick…and clean,” he answered.
“I heard part of your
discussion before Slim knocked me out. Are you going to fuck me before you kill
me like that fat pig said you should? Is that why we’re in this expensive hotel
room and not in some filthy back alley somewhere?” Alicia asked.
“No,” Mr. Crowe
answered before he took another swig of the dark liquor. “A thing as pretty as
you deserves to die in a pretty place…even if you are monster just like the
rest of us.”
“You could have shot me
in the back of the head in a field of flowers. That would’ve been a pretty
place too but here we are…in this hotel room instead. I’m guessing that you
need time and privacy to do whatever those two fuckers paid you to do. I suppose
you’re going to beat me, torture me and then kill me like they told you to. Am
I right?” she asked, afraid in her heart but sounded just as brave as she had
at the poker table the night before. “You know, I didn’t peg you for the type
of man that would prefer to beat me than fuck me. You don’t seem like the sadistic
type that gets off on that sort of thing,” she said.
“I’m not,” he answered,
turning his eyes away from her.
“But, they’ll want
proof that I suffered before I died,” she pointed out.
“That’s why I’m going
to shoot you in the head first. After you’re dead, I’ll do what I need to do to
give those fuckers their proof,” he explained plainly as if you were describing
some ordinary, routine task like taking out the trash or washing dishes.
“Is that why you’re
getting lit before you kill me, so you can be numb to the fucked up shit you’re
about to do?” she asked.
“No,” he answered.
“So, you’re just a
hard-core alcoholic then?” Alicia asked.
“Yeah, and my aim is
much better when I’m drunk. The liquor helps me focus,” Mr. Crowe answered
coldly.
Alicia kept quiet for a
while as her life slowly flashed in front of her, as if she were watching an
old black and white movie. She saw everything creep by in slow-motion, from her
earliest childhood memories right up until the present as Mr. Crowe continued
to gulp down his liquor. There was so much more than Alicia wished that she had
been able to do but never got a chance to. She almost broke down and bawled
like a baby as she realized that she was almost at her end. She imagined that
she could feel the Reaper’s bony fingers around her throat as her heartbeat
involuntarily quickened. Her hands were numb from the way to zip-ties had cut
off the circulation of blood to her wrists. The same wave of panic that must
have washed over all trapped animals came crashing down on her and almost
drowned her in despair. She felt helpless. Then, the same stubbornness that had
risen up inside her when she was staring down the barrel of Enoch’s gun at the
poker table rose up in her again. She might not have stood a chance of fighting
her way out of her current predicament with force but, she wasn’t about to go
out whimpering and begging like a coward. She refused to simply accept that
this was how she died…not after all that she had been through and survived
before. In her mind, she adjusted the crown on her head and spit in the eye of
death. Not yet, she thought, over and over again. She wasn’t ready to
give up her life without fighting her type of fight. She chose
her words carefully before she spoke again.
“We’ve met before you
know,” Alicia told the intoxicated Mr. Crowe.
“Yeah, we did…last
night and the back room of Enoch’s club,” he chuckled like a lush who just told
a joke that only he thought was funny.
“No, I meant before
last night. We met once before,” she told him.
“I doubt it,” he
answered, looking directly into her pretty brown eyes, made even more gorgeous
because of her long eyelashes. Even the mascara that had run down her cheeks
couldn’t diminish her beauty. “No, I would’ve remembered if I ever met you
before. You’re not the sort of woman I’d lay eyes on and then forget,” he
answered, unable to hide how awestruck he was by her looks.
“Maybe that would’ve
been true if you hadn’t been completely wasted that night when I served you
about fifteen shots of strong liquor,” Alicia told him.
“Really? And in which
seedy nightclub was this?” Mr. Crowe asked, his curiosity suddenly stirred.
“It was the Platinum
Lady Gentlemen’s Club…you know the one near the water…downtown Brooklyn,” she
told him.
As soon as Alicia said
the name of the club, Crowe immediately remembered the only night he was ever
there. As much as he enjoyed titty bars and strip clubs, he hadn’t gone there
for pleasure. That night, he had been there for work and he never forgot a job,
no matter how hard he tried by attempting to chase away his memories with
liquor.
“I remember that
night,” he answered, his voice barely a whisper.
“So do I. I’ll never
forget it,” said Alicia. “It was really crowded that night but I remember
you...how you looked when you walked in. You were really handsome, well-dressed
and well-built, even if you weren’t very friendly. You were clean-shaven
then…you didn’t have this beard that you have now. There was something quietly
powerful about you that I couldn’t help but notice. Everyone who came near you
got a sense that you weren’t to be interfered with. You came and sat down at my
bar and I started serving you drinks. What I remember most, even more than your
eyes, was the glass castle you built in front of you with all of the shot
glasses you had emptied. You put a paper umbrella at the top of it like a flag
and you smiled, so proud of what you’d built. It was the first time I had seen
you smile all night. Whatever it was that made you so happy about that glass
castle didn’t last very long though because I remember how serious you got all
of a sudden. It was like somebody died. You gave me a big tip, more than what
your entire tab was for all the drinks you had. I tried to give you a smile and
thank you but you were distracted, looking at a picture you had taken from the
front pocket of your dress shirt.”
“I was there for a man.
I had been paid and given the name of a man I had to kill…a man who was Enoch’s
rival,” Mr. Crowe confessed as vivid images of violence and bloodshed entered
his head, crystal-clear in spite of the alcohol-induced haze he had been in on
that night.
“So, it really was
Enoch who sent you. I mean, the streets were whispering the same thing but no
one had any real proof…and nobody really dared to make a big issue of it
because everybody knows that’s how people disappear in this filthy city,”
Alicia said, her voice low as if she still didn’t want anyone to hear her speak
of such things, as if her life wasn’t already forfeit.
Mr. Crowe remained
silent as his mind continued to replay the events of the night that Alicia
spoke of.
The loud music, the
booming rhythm of the base that pounded in his chest and even the lyrics to the
song that was playing when he reached into the crotch of the slacks where he
had stashed his gun, right next to his privates. Most bouncers were reluctant
to grab another man’s dick so that was how he had managed to smuggle it inside
the club even though he had been searched at the door. He remembered how all of
the shots of liquor had made his penis just as hard as the cold steel that was
stashed right beside his warm flesh. He didn’t understand how he could’ve
forgotten Alicia’s face but he remembered turning from her bar after he tipped
her to scan the club for the man whose life he had come to claim. It didn’t take
long for Mr. Crowe to spot his target, Mr. Jean Etienne, on the second level of
the club, above the dance floor in the most exclusive VIP section.
Crowe remembered how
wobbly his legs were as he waded and pushed his way through the bouncing,
gyrating bodies of drunken patrons on the dance floor. The heat, flashing laser
lights and the liquor had his head spinning by the time he got to the bottom of
the stairs that led up to the VIP section where his target sat enjoying his
night with wild women of all shades, white lines of cocaine and bottle after
bottle of expensive alcohol. There were people partying on the stairs, all with
high hopes of getting invited behind the guarded red velvet ropes that
surrounded Etienne’s private gathering of friends. On shaky legs, Mr. Crowe
remembered how he marched past them as he ascended to where two very large
security guards dressed in tailor-made black suits were posted.
At the top of the
metal staircase, one of the burly security guards reached out and put his hand
on Mr. Crowe’s chest to stop him from going any further. That’s what triggered
the imaginary switch inside him that made him such a savage. It always did at
just the right time, in exactly the right moments and that’s what made him so
good at what he had been contracted to do. With one fluid, forceful, upward
motion, he punched the bouncers elbow which forced the man’s arm to snap like a
chicken wing at the joint. He saw the man’s mouth open wide and wondered how
the tough guy’s wail might have sounded if he could have heard it over the loud
music. Before the second guard could come to his partner’s aid, Mr. Crowe
callously flipped the bouncer with the broken arm over the railing and down
into the sea of unsuspecting bodies below. Before the bouncer landed on the
partygoers below like an anvil, Crowe broke the kneecap of the second security
guard with a single, vicious, malicious, perfectly placed punch before the man
had a chance to wrap his clumsy, beefy, hands around Crowe’s throat. Then he
shoved that guard down the stairs and caused what could only be described as a
human rockslide, like boulders sliding down the side of a mountain. After that,
Crowe only had two more bodyguards to deal with before he could conclude his
business with Mr. Jean Etienne.
When the guards who
were standing close to Etienne noticed the commotion, they reached into their
suit jackets for concealed weapons. Unfortunately for them, Crowe had already
retrieved his from his boxer shorts and had it aimed at them. People began to
scream and scatter in a wild panic once they saw the raised guns. Crowe could
have easily cleared out the people who inadvertently blocked his line of fire with
a few well-placed bullets but he was a professional, not a mad dog that gunned
down random strangers. He stumbled a bit as he pushed a woman aside which
probably saved his life and hers as a bullet whizzed by, courtesy of one of the
armed guards. It barely missed his head. That didn’t save the young man behind
Crowe who got hit in the back with that same bullet while trying to escape the
chaos. Initially, Crowe had only intended to kill Etienne as he had been paid
to do but when the bodyguards continued to recklessly let hot slugs sing
through the crowd as they tried to stop him, Crowe changed his mind. The first
bullet HE fired that night didn’t miss. He shot the first bouncer in the mouth
and blew off his lower jaw. With a look of disbelief in his bright blue eyes
that were about to go dead forever, the first bouncer fell backwards, stiff as
a tree that had fallen from a lumberjack’s axe. The second bouncer turned his
head, either to tell Etienne to run or to witness his comrade fall. Crowe’s
second, well-placed bullet entered the second bouncer’s head through one ear,
ripped through his brain and exited out of his other ear. He was also dead
before he hit the ground. Only Etienne himself was left, trembling in fear on
the VIP section’s red leather couch with a gun in his hand that he would never
get a chance to shoot. Crowe put two bullets in each of Jean Etienne’s eyes
before he had a chance to pull the trigger.
“Speak no evil, hear
no evil, see no evil,” Crowe remembered mumbling after his work was done.
He was about to turn
to leave so that he could quickly escape in the midst of the chaos that had
ensued when, from the corner of his eye, he saw that one of the half-naked
women who had been partying in the VIP section had reached for the gun that was
still clenched firmly in the grip of Jean Etienne’s dead fingers. Crowe turned
to look directly into her face, cocaine residue still on the tip of her nose.
Their eyes locked and he shook his head to warn her not to try him. She
foolishly tried him anyway. As she raised the gun and started to point it at
him, Crowe shot her. Above the ruckus all around them, no one could hear her
scream as she stared at the bloody, gruesome hole the size of a marble in her
hand. A bullet through the middle of her
forehead would have put her out of her misery but he chose to spare her life.
He’d had his fill of killing for that night. The job he had been paid to do was
done and it was time for him to clock out.
“That night was insane.
I’ve never seen anything like what you did that night…not even in the movies,”
Alicia told Mr. Crowe.
“I’m good at what I
do,” he answered coldly.
In his tone, Alicia
thought she sensed a bit of self-loathing, as if he wasn’t exactly proud of
what he did for a living. Most people might not have picked up on that but she
did, because she always had a gift for reading men, understanding them and figuring
out exactly what they needed. That gift was the reason why she had been able to
trick, manipulate and take advantage of them for most of her life. With great
cunning mixed with seduction, she knew how to enslave their minds, bewitch them
with her lips and trap them between her thighs.
“But…you don’t seem
like you’re glad to be good at what you do. You don’t seem proud of it,” she
said.
“That’s because I’m
not…but we are what we are…and we can only be what we were made to be,” Mr.
Crowe answered and in his dark, brown eyes, Alicia saw a deep sadness. They
stared at each other for a moment before Crowe turned his attention to the gun
with the silencer attached that he had set down on the dark brown wooden desk
where he sat. “Are you ready?” he asked as he prepared to pull the trigger.
“Yes,” Alicia answered
as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then, something unexpected
stirred inside her and she realized that she wasn’t ready to die just yet.
“No…wait,” she pleaded.
“Listen. I’m sorry that
you got yourself into this mess but now that you have, there’s nothing you can
say or do to stop this from happening. You need to accept that these are your
last moments, on your last day. Make peace with that…quickly…so this can be
over,” he suggested as nonchalantly as a schoolteacher trying to convince a
student that they deserved an F on a quiz.
“Well, if I can’t
convince you not to kill me, can I ask you for one favor before you do?” Alicia
asked.
“What would you have me
do?” Crowe asked, anxious to get things over and done with as soon as possible.
“Can you come over here
and take off my shoes? They’re killing my feet,” she requested while purposely
stretching out her long, shapely legs for him to see. The short red dress she
wore barely covered her thighs and it didn’t escape her notice that her flesh
had caught his eye.
“Are you serious?”
Crowe asked. “What does that matter now?”
“If I’m going to die, I
wouldn’t mind being comfortable,” she answered. “We only wear these torture
devices on our feet to impress you men, kind of like the way you guys buy fancy
cars to impress us. Seems like I haven’t impressed you at all because you’re
still going to shoot me so I might as well get out of these damn heels that
have been crushing my toes all night,” Alicia complained.
“Fine,” he grumbled as
he stood up and prepared to oblige her.
Mr. Crowe was no fool
so he crossed over to her side of the room cautiously with his gun in hand,
fully prepared to pull the trigger if she tried anything slick. Alicia may have
been as pretty as a flower in bloom but he was also aware that she had more
than just thorns. She was nothing less than a Venus fly trap that would eat him
alive given the chance if he wasn’t careful.
“Oh my goodness…thank
you,” Alicia sighed with relief when he unstrapped and removed the first shoe.
“That is so much better,” she moaned once her left foot was free.
Alicia’s
perfectly-pedicured feet were impressive and sexy but it was something else
that caught Crowe’s attention as he slowly removed her right shoe. He was a man
with warm blood coursing through his veins and as such, his eyes naturally
followed the path that went up her smooth legs until his gaze landed on the
magical place between her thighs. The way her plump vagina lips pressed against
her panties was impossible to ignore and immediately, against his own better
judgment, both of Mr. Crowe’s heads became filled withAs lustful thoughts. Then,
as if she could read his mind, Alicia spread her thighs a little wider to give
him a much better view.
For a split second,
Crowe became frozen in that surreal moment where she seemed to be teasing him
and appealing to his baser instincts. He forgot that he was a contract killer
and lost sight of the fact that her hands were tied behind her back as she
awaited execution at his hands. Suddenly, he was only a lustful man with carnal
desires and that played right into Alicia’s plans.
“Can I ask you to do
one more thing for me?” Alicia asked as she gently raised her leg and gently
ran her pretty toes against the coarse hairs of his beard.
“No!” he answered
sharply and seemed to snap out of the trance he had been in. He stood up and
pointed his gun at her face.
“But you haven’t even
heard what I was going to ask you,” she said as seductively as she could while
trying to hide the panic she felt pounding in her chest.
“I don’t care what you
were going to ask me,” he told her and began to gently ease back the trigger of
the gun.
“But I was going to ask
you to go down on me,” Alicia blurted out a split second before a bullet would
have put a hole in the middle of her forehead if Crowe had pulled the trigger.
“What did you just
say?” he asked in disbelief.
“You heard what I
said,” Alicia answered, relieved that he had at least taken his finger off of
the trigger momentarily.
“You couldn’t have just
said what I thought you just said,” he told her while shaking his head.
“I saw you looking. I
read your eyes and I know what you were thinking. You liked what you saw and I
know you want to taste me. Don’t lie and pretend that you don’t want to see me
without my panties,” she told him and slowly wet her lips with her tongue.
“Are you insane?” Mr.
Crowe asked in shock, trying to pretend that he didn’t feel his nature rise in
his slacks when he heard what she was asking. Under normal circumstances, his
face would have been between her legs already. She was the most beautiful woman
he had ever been alone in a room with.
“No, I’m not crazy. I’m
afraid to die. I don’t want to die but if there’s no way I’m going to leave
this room alive, I’d like to cum one more time in this life, really hard before
I go. Now, do you think you’re man enough to take care of that for me?” she
asked while closing her thighs and then crossing her legs as if she had to pee.
“I can see that you’re thinking about it…and I’m already wet…so what are you
waiting for?” Alicia asked.
Copyright
© 2016 Keith Kareem Williams
All
rights reserved.
*** I hope you enjoyed this excerpt and are eager to read what happens NEXT! The title of the following chapter is......
"5
–
Soul Food & Dangerous Desert"
And...as promised, here's the link to order
your autographed copy of "Death in the City"
