Murders in Progress by Eldon Cene

Editor:  Okay.  Back to crime, murders, sex, violence and all that… set in a rural milieu.

Is This an Ivy League Mistress? (Vote Frequently; Vote Often.)

“I just love this recession!”

(Episode 24)

 Benny Green slid off of his mistress.  “I just love this recession!” He crowed.  Really high profit businesses were scrambling like rats to deal with their cash flow problems, and Benny was gobbling them up right and left like a hungry alley cat.  ‘And some really high rollers were tossing some really nice mistresses out on the streets, besides’, Benny thought, kicking the sheets gleefully.

Benny, himself, had just upgraded to a natural blonde, ten years younger than his former for near the same outlay… with better teeth and a lot less profanity.  He glanced to the left.   And she had just risen from bed and was in the kitchen now, steaming his latte and warming his brioche, which she was soon to bring out on a tray with a fresh squeezed glass of orange juice and a freshly printed edition of the mornings news.  And this had happened many times before over the past few months.  Still, he nearly had to pinch himself to believe his good fortune.  ‘How the very rich lived!’  Benny was just finding this out now, himself, from her, the natural blonde debutante from some rich eastern Ivy League school.

He didn’t know which.  And frankly, he couldn’t care.  Plus it probably all was a lie.  But, ‘dammit if I’m not living like one of the 1 percent’, Benny thought gleefully, exulting in his newly found prosperity and snapping open the front page of his newly printed morning paper as his mistress unfolded the legs of his bed tray over his ample midsection.

“Shit!” he exclaimed.  “Someone popped the Muffin Lady.”

His mistress quietly mopped up the spilled juice.  Benny almost stopped reading to get a little head, but then let the thought go.  ‘Business first.’

There it all was, just below the fold: a tale of a gruesome rape, complete with a decapitation – if the sources were to be believed.  And there, way down at the bottom, was a hint of Federal involvement.  Which Benny took to mean right away that he’d better call Delores.

“Delores,” he said over his cell.  “You may be getting some visitors soon from back East.  Make sure those files we discussed in the pasteboard box…”

“It’s too late, Benny.  They’re already here.”  Delores’ voice shrunk to a whisper.  “And I’ve been trying to hide that box as well as I can, but I don’t know…”

“So… that’s great!”  Benny exulted.  “That’s perfect.  That couldn’t be better!  Now you just sit back and let them find it.  Okay?”

“You sure about this?  That’s what you really want?”

“I’m sure about this.  That’s what I really want.”  Benny could hardly contain his glee.  “Okay?”

Delores acknowledged and he hung up.  “Well, now,’ he thought, ‘I think we know who the rat is.’

There was always one, which was why Benny was always prepared.  It baffled Benny how so many people felt that if things were going good, then they were always going to go good.  Baffled him, but also made him a lot of money.  “Lots of people didn’t anticipate a recession and so it just gave me a opportunity to be of help,” Benny snickered.  And “ lots of big wig criminals refuse to acknowledge the risk of getting caught,” he wagged his finger at his mistress.  “But sooner or later, getting caught is nearly a certainty.”  His mistress nodded, agreeing with his wisdom; seeing she had lived the fallout of it, firsthand, Benny figured.  The first mistress he’d ever had, had served him warmed up pizza and flat beer on the lid of a limp cardboard pizza carton, served in a sour bed, all the while finding fault with whatever scheme Benny had been cooking up at the time – until it had invariably descended into a screaming match/ food fight.  ‘Why am I screaming at my mistress?’ Benny had to ask himself at the height of it all.  ‘This is nuts!’  But at the same time, the thought of changing her out just hadn’t occurred to him, as all of the other mobsters he had complained to had related the same problems…

“Jeeze, we may get older, but we do get wiser.”  Benny smiled at his blonde bedmate.  She smiled back.  ‘Perfect teeth, and such a lovely smile’, Benny thought.   And for about two seconds, Benny Green was a satisfied man.   Because Benny has a satisfaction Attention Deficit Syndrome.

‘But with all this new business he anticipated coming in – maybe he could trade up again?  And what would that be?  Maybe a sixteen year old, fourteen, thirteen…?  That could be a little risky.  How young are they supposed to get?  Maybe someone who just looked fifteen!  I mean, really naïve.   That sounded about right,’ Benny considered.  ‘I never could get laid for all the rice in China at that age.  And maybe now he could make up for that.  But how would he find someone like that?’   Southeast Asia?  But he really wanted a blonde.  Maybe Columbia?’

Benny made another call to Deloris.  ‘Then again…’  He hung up.

‘Nope.  Better not call Deloris.’

Photo taken from Google Images by lascivious Editor.