Shapeshifter Ch. 03

Aah yes, sweet memories. When he'd first told me his name I had known instantly that the shit had hit the fan. Everybody knew about DeLargo senior and his very multicolored business advances, but only the darker throng - like me - knew what a dangerous, despicable man Theodore DeLargo, CEO of Flatlands Inc., really was. I had my own history with Kel's old man, and it was connected right to the darkest hours of my own life. It had been his drugs I had been sucking in like a vacuum cleaner, and it had been one of his goons who had come to pay a visit and reassemble my girlfriend to death.

I doubted that Kel knew that side of his father, or that his father knew what his goons were doing to get debts settled with his customers. Old Theo probably never had seen his illegal drug labs in person, he was just the money pot for the cooks. That didn't stop me from blaming him for every misfortune I had ever encountered, of course. I dreamed of shooting him every night.

Kel's panicky voice ripped me out of my reverie. "So, how do you plan to do that? I mean, how do you plan to find out if they want to get you arrested?"

That was a particularly good question, and one I couldn't answer. But I was already cooking up some ideas on how to go from here. "You'll see soon enough," I answered with one of my hyena grins. Better keep him off-balance, he already looked way to comfortable in my life and on my couch.

I decided to get going right then and follow the flow. Getting up I stepped right next to him, trying to get him to back away with pure physical presence, but he didn't budge. He just tried to become invisible by shrinking, but it wasn't good enough for me. On the other hand, he was still clutching his coffee mug, and I didn't want to get brown sauce spilled all over my beloved couch, so that was the first thing needing to be fixed.

I grabbed the mug but he wouldn't let go. Clever little scrap, he had guessed already that I was careful with the state of cleanliness of my couch, and he didn't want to lose his leverage on my willingness for physical persuasion. I tried to be reasonable first. "Let go," I grumbled sternly, and he obeyed. I set the cup aside and then grabbed for his wrists, just as he tried to hide them under his crossed arms. He really was perceptive, but he also seemed to cope well with orders, so I just told him what I wanted. "Don't struggle," I barked, and brought his hands behind his back. I needed to make sure he wouldn't run while I was out investigating his case like a private eye, and to be sure he stayed where he was I had to hogtie him. This time though he didn't listen to my command and started struggling like an eel on the hook.

I lost my grip for a second and my fingers started to hurt from the awkward angle and supporting his full weight. He nearly slipped out of my hands, but I managed to catch him a nanosecond before his face could collide with the armrest. It was just a lucky catch to be honest, but at least he instantly stopped resisting and just let me do my thing.

Actually he grew so still and passive I wasn't even sure he hadn't hit his head, so I pulled him up to his knees as soon as I was done binding his arms. This caused another lovely spin-off, namely being able to touch his naked chest and stomach, and press my own body against his. Touching his skin felt like hugging a ray of sunlight, and for a short moment I wondered how he managed to hold such a high body temperature with so little clothing.

Then I felt his hands cupping my crotch. It was horribly distracting, but somehow I remembered that I had to say something. "I need to go out for a few hours, scrap. Since I can't -- and won't -- trust you, I'll have you tied up like a pretzel." As I said those words I did with my fingers on his hairless belly what I wanted him to do with his, stroking and kneading his skin. I wanted to find out how far his instinctual interpretation of my behavior went, because I still couldn't get over the fact that he gave the impression of reading my mind, and that he somehow enabled me to read his, so to speak.

His fingers fumbled with the buttons of my pants, even as he pleaded with me to stop and not do this. His actions said the exact opposite as his hands freed my cock and wrapped around it greedily. The steady, demanding pressure made me moan and writhe against him, and he proved to be quite talented even with bound hands. Every touch started right at the root of my cock, pulling upward to squeeze pre-come out of my cock head, only to cover his fingers with it and start all over.

My own lips caught his earlobe and I nibbled at it while I stole a glance down his front. I could see his own raging erection dent out his slutty pants and leave wet spots on the denim where his cock strained against the cloth. He obviously enjoyed this just as much as I did, and it gave me an idea.

"You like my cock, huh?" I asked, even though the answer didn't really matter to me. I just did it because I knew he wouldn't answer, being too preoccupied with working me to a blasting orgasm. This was about testing a theory - okay, and about me having said orgasm. I let one of my hands trail down to his crotch, cupping it as I silently counted to five, just to give him enough time to react.

He didn't. He just sped up his hands on my cock and nearly made me go blind with lust and euphoria.

Out of his sight I snarled silently in triumph, and grabbed his crotch hard. I was careful not to exaggerate the pressure though, just enough to give him the kind of pain I liked to inflict on my lovers. His reaction was beautiful and reassuring.

"Yes!" he gasped, and for a moment I wasn't sure if that was supposed to be his answer to my question or just an exclamation of happiness. "Yes what?" I whispered gleefully, because I felt that he somehow expected me not to be satisfied with that answer.

"I like your cock very much," he gasped, and made a strange sound as I started slowly rubbing his erection through the denim. It sounded similar to a purring cat, and it made me want to draw more of those lovely gasps out of him, so I opened his fly and caught his cock as it bounced out.

It was perfectly sized for me, a little under seven inches, silky and painfully hard, and it gave me all the reassurance I needed to know that he loved what I was doing to him. He was a little masochist, that one, which fit me perfectly. I didn't think of myself as a real sadist, but there were streaks of violence in all of my sexual fantasies, and I had always looked for someone who appreciated that.

His hands tortured my cock with a myriad of small, clever touches, and though I already reciprocated his efforts he still started to beg for more. I knew instantly he wanted me to fuck him right there on the couch, bound and forced into submission, and I had his trousers down before I could use my brain. I had things to do, important things at that, like saving my life - and his in the process. If we started to fuck now I would never leave the house, because his body held wonders to lose myself in. My self control had its limits, and as he was pushing them mercilessly I had to protect them, for both our sakes.

Instead of bending him over and ramming little Noom home where he belonged I breached his anus with a finger. I couldn't stay away completely, he was too luscious for that, but I could restrain myself to a certain extent.

Only when he started fucking himself on my fingers, sweating and groaning in utter abandon, did I get jealous of my own hand and started regretting my sense of responsibility. He moved his whole body at that time, riding my crooked fingers, stroking my cock with every movement, and he swore under his breath and between his groans, "Oh fuck! Oh fuck!".

I finally was able to see him totally undone. It hooked me instantly, I felt myself get addicted to him right there and then. It should have frightened me, or made me angry, but instead I just felt the warm tingle of an impending orgasm ripple through my lower abdomen. "Come for me," I whispered frantically, because it somehow seemed important to have him come before me, to prove my sexual prowess with holding back my own orgasm. He craned his neck and whimpered, and I couldn't resist.

When I bit his neck hard he bucked, shouted and came like a small geyser.

It was the hottest thing I'd ever seen.

He fell forward onto the soft, sticky couch cushions, blissfully tired, and I stroked myself into a fast, electrifying oblivion of my own, marking his back and ass with my cum. 'Mine,' my brain whispered happily, and I didn't even try to disagree.

But if I wanted to keep him as much as I desired him I had to get going now, and not waste another minute. I left him lying there, bound and exhausted, and got dressed.

I had to go see Viking Mike.

~~~* ~~~

Viking Mike was the closest thing to a friend I'd ever had, though I didn't call him friend. There was not a single person I trusted on this world, but on a scale ranging from blood lust to sympathy Viking Mike was on the upper part of my personal chart.

He lived in an old, small and beautiful detached house in Cat's Cradle Peninsula near Bracket River, just beyond the Southern Ghetto. Though his 1600 square feet of living space didn't trump my own home by much, his was definitely more classy. Dark wooden furniture, gleaming hardwood floors, curtains and carpets that actually had seen a shop from the inside at one point in their life, and of course there were weapons.

Not the kind of weapons I carried around, mind you. Axes, swords, crossbows, lances, daggers and knives hung from various contraptions, dangling over my head and from the walls like some kind of private museum. They weren't the main reason for his nickname though.

Mike let me in after the second knock, towering over me like a Scandinavian model on his day off. He was about 6'5'', built like a tank and as blond as me. Contrary to me he didn't have to bleach his hair though, and I envied him for that.

"Noom, good day to you. Business or pleasure?" he said, and turned around to walk into the kitchen.

"Business. The private sort." I closed the door behind me and followed him until we reached his living room, then made myself at home there. I heard him fiddle around with his French coffee machine, a giant hissing monster made of tubes and copper plates. There was no way he would get down to said business without having met his duties as a host, so I just swallowed my impatience and waited for him to join me.

A few minutes later he sat down on the other couch and set two Italian Cappuccinos down on the black coffee table. The cream was dotted with slowly melting caramel crumbles, and he'd even bought cinnamon cookies to put next to the cup for decoration.

Mike unpacked his cookie, dunked it into the cream and gave me a raised eyebrow. "So?" he said and took a bite.

I ignored my cookie and took a foamy sip, licking my upper lip as I played the words through in my head. "I've got an assignment from Franko, but I think he or whoever ordered him to find someone for it is ripping me off big time. I can't shake the feeling they're looking for a scapegoat, and I won't put up with that. I need more information, find out who gave the order in the first place, and maybe who that person is. Can you help me?"

Mike inhaled the rest of his cookie, looking thoughtful and focused as he listened. There was soft clinking as he stirred the rest of the cream and the caramel crumbles into his coffee, then he grumbled, "sounds like you want me to spy on your clients. Are you sure you want to do that? We're talking about your reputation here, you know."

It wasn't criticism on Mike's part, but I wouldn't have accepted those words from anyone else. I didn't like to explain myself under normal circumstances, but in this case he was right. "Yeah, I know. But I've got a really bad feeling about this job, and it has been itching at the back of my mind for two days. If I need to spy on my client to survive, I'll just have to swallow my pride for once. And if he's trying to rip me off and blame the kill on me he's not worth protecting anyway."

His coffee gone Mike shrugged. He didn't really care about my reputation, he knew me too well to give a damn about it. "Fine, I'll do it. You'll need to tell me everything about the assignment though. Can't find dirt without a shovel."

~~~* ~~~

"Hello, Franko? It's Mike Jorenson. I just found your latest assignment offer and wanted to ask if it's still active. Yeah, I know I'm late, but you know how things are. I'm a married man."

I sat back and watched Mike do his phone magic. There were dozens of paper stacks covering every square inch of the coffee table and the couches, some even sat on my lap because we had run out of space an hour earlier. Most of them were prints of information we had found on the Internet, but we'd started making notes and mind maps just a few minutes ago, and that stack also seemed to grow rapidly.

While Mike talked to Franko on the phone I studied the print of my scrap's vita. I had found it online at one of the student information points for Babylon Central University, even though I hadn't known rich people still did the whole education thing. I'd been really surprised to find Kel's picture there, and even more stunned to find out he was a business studies major.

I sifted through my stack of files lazily while Mike went on. "So if he doesn't get it done soon the job will be open again? What's the deadline?" There was a short silence as Mike listened, then he threw a glance at me that didn't predict good things to come. "48 hours? Wow that's a tight schedule. No, no, I'm alright with that. Just give me a holler if anything new comes up. Thanks Franko."

Putting the phone back into his pocket Mike sat down again and grabbed his beer can to take a big sip. "Well, that didn't go so well I'd say. Seems to be a Mafia job if you ask me, Franko mentioned something about scag debts that got too high. But your target is filthy rich, there's no reason not to pay for his fixes."

I nodded in agreement and put the student profile away. There were some more informations about Kel's family, most of them legally acquired, like financial status of his father, their businesses and corporations and tax payments, but the numbers irked me. I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was though.

"Something about this whole thing here bothers me, but I don't know what it is," I mumbled, and Mike scooted closer to grab the papers from me. He was pretty good with numbers and taxes, having to bother with that kind of stuff all the time, and I hoped he would make out what I had missed.

He studied the papers quietly for a few minutes, then made a thoughtful sound and started to leaf through the financial history of Flatlands Inc. "There's nothing wrong with those numbers, they're perfect. But the taxes are too high for the profit margin they put on their home page, so either mister DeLargo has some serious private property he doesn't want to talk about, or they're lying about their profits on their official website. I don't think they'd be coy about their success though, but finding out about private ownerships will be quite the work."

I frowned as I digested what I'd heard. So daddy dearest had personal articles of value stashed away somewhere, but paid for those with his company. It was quite odd to keep money somewhere where you had to pay taxes for it if there were chances to invest and not pay them, and after more than three hours of investigation I had a quite accurate picture of the deviousness of Kel's family. Theodore DeLargo would never put up with such weak points, never.

"Can you do it? I have a premonition that this information here will be quite valuable soon," I asked, and Mike just nodded. Of course he could do it, it would just be a matter of time.

"How much?" Mike asked. Nothing was ever for free in my world, and of course I would pay him for his work. It was his business after all, this information gathering.

"Five thousand flat premium, and a third of what ever I'll gain through the information you gather for me," I offered and held out my hand. Mike took it without qualms, shook on it and got up to start gathering the papers strewn around.

"I'll start today. Finding hidden money isn't as easy as TV makes it look like, but I've got my contacts at the IRS. As soon as I find out something I'll call you, but don't be coy if you stumble across something yourself. The more I know, the faster I'll be."

~~~* ~~~

After leaving Mike's I went for a walk in a neighborhood I'd hoped to never visit again: Irish Town, a conglomerate of small plazas and streets almost exclusively inhabited by Irish immigrants. The majority of those people had either fled when the IRA had been at the peak of their activity back in Ireland, or followed when the IRA had been disbanded a few years later. Now they represented a new form of criminal organization, leasing people to the mafia to work as drug dealers and pimps with no knowledge of the higher-ups whatsoever. This intriguing system was so effective that they had broadened the bandwidth of their illegal skills over the last months to black market trading, extortion and money laundry, while working as subcontractors for the Babylon Mafia.

I wasn't interested in their business model though. What I was interested in was the knowledge their dealers had about Kelaste and his habit.

There were lots of people wandering the streets, going about their business, and I got a few ugly glances because I was recognized as a stranger to the district. The folks from Irish Town didn't like intruders very much, and they showed it. They only ceased to care when night fell, because every proper person around here would rather drop dead than walk the streets at night. They knew what went on there in the dead of night, but they'd never rat out a fellow Irishman. The police had to blame themselves for that loyalty; when the Irish had started to trickle in they had not treated them well. Having been paid by the Babylon Mafia to keep competition down they had driven many young fellows out of the city, and their corruption wasn't forgotten easily.

I tugged down my washed out black hoodie to hide the hilt of my ever loyal Beretta at the small of my back, shoved my hands into the frayed pockets of my skin tight red pants and avoided crossing anyone's path as I strolled down the cobblestoned Grayson Avenue. Looking innocuous wasn't one of my talents, but at least I could manage to look disinterested. As I reached Foster Plaza, a venue that had morphed out of several intersections when city officials had demolished old public buildings, an old lady in black and dark blue smacked my arm with her purse, babbled something in Gaelic and spit on my boots before walking on. Yep, I definitely still hated this place.

Foster Plaza was the central meeting point for teenagers, dealers and hooligans on weekdays, whereas on weekends a big fish and vegetable market dominated the open space. If you visited this plaza at night you ran a pretty high risk of being robbed and stabbed, but at daylight it was strangely calm. Since even dealers and addicts had parents, and most of them probably lived in Irish Town too, they actually were well behaved as long as there was light on the sky.

"Yo, Noom! Fancy seeing ya' here," a voice said behind me and made me turn around. Crooked teeth were bared by a snarly grin, dominating an even uglier, unshaven face as the guy strolled closer. Thomas, or Tommy for short, had been my favorite dealer in a time long past, but I wouldn't have recognized him hadn't he called out my name. His clothes were dirty and crusty, his hair unkempt and somehow he had lost an eye since I'd last seen him.