From the Case-Files of Kate Python:
The Mobster's Vendetta
Part 1
Cigarette smoke drifted across my desk, gathering in a gray haze like the dark clouds hanging over the city outside. A lot of people came to New Angeles looking to make their fortune, but most of them ended up like me: stuck in a one-room office in a run-down tenement building on the wrong side of the tracks, with barely enough money to pay the rent each month. This can be a cruel city to live in; little wonder most of its residents eventually turn to crime. I haven’t reached that point yet, but the goings-on of the city’s criminal element are still my concern. The name’s Kate Python, and like it says on the door, I’m a private eye.
Problem is, I had less to show for it than ever these days. That evening found me at my desk with a bottle of whiskey, poring over notes for a few minor cases that were barely paying the bills. Small-time stuff, but a girl’s gotta work. Outside my window, the rain continued to fall with a dreary, soulless insistence. The craggy peaks of the cityscape were barely visible through the downpour, barely lit by the faint glimmers of garish neon lights from speakeasies and distant megacorp buildings. With that as a backdrop, I thought I was about due for some good news when I heard footsteps coming down the hallway outside towards my office. Since I couldn’t afford to hire a pretty secretary to screen my appointments, that was the main way I found out when I had a client coming.
It turns out I didn’t have long to wait. A moment later, my visitor was at the door and had kicked it open with one motion. She was a leggy dame, all right, and well-dressed to boot. But I wasn’t paying much attention to that at the moment. Just then, I was more focused on the fact that she was carrying a tommy-gun, and it was pointed right at me. I had barely a second to dive beneath my desk before she braced herself, and the lead started flying.
“Eat lead, detective!” cried her voice jubilantly over the blazing roar of her heater.
I knew the desk wouldn’t protect me for long, though. Above me, the air was filled with a hail of bullets, with bullet-riddled papers flying through the air like leaves in a storm. The deafening noise of gunfire drowned out all thought except the primal instinct to survive. I started grasping around for anything I could use as a weapon. My piece was in the desk drawer, but there was no way I could get to it without opening myself up to fire. I could feel the desk behind me absorbing the gunfire, but it wasn’t going to protect me for long. I needed an out, and fast.
It was then my eye fell on the only thing that could be used as a weapon, and I don’t mind telling you I felt a pang of regret inside. My bottle of whiskey was right on the floor beside me, still more than half-full. I sighed over the gunfire as I gripped the handle. This was the good stuff, too. Damn.
But it was time to bring the broad to me. I screamed as loud as I could, and threw myself on the floor to replicate the sound of a bullet-riddled body hitting the floor. I held my breath, and sure enough, a second later the gunfire stopped. I silently got back up into the crouching position behind my desk and waited for her to come around to inspect her handiwork. Boy, was she going to get a surprise when she came into view.
And a moment later, she rounded the desk and I got my first good look at my hitwoman. She was quite a looker, all right, and a real hellcat to boot. She wore a pair of black pumps with six-inch stiletto heels, supporting a million-zed pair of legs encased in an expensive pair of black nylons. She wore a navy pinstripe suit, with a short pencil skirt that hugged her curves and showed off those gorgeous gams of hers nicely. She wore a fedora on her head, but you could her long, coal-black hair was perfectly brushed underneath. She was wearing meticulously applied mascara and cherry lipstick. Gripping her piece, I could see her carefully-manicured nails painted a matching cherry red. All in all, I’d have felt like whistling if she wasn’t trying to kill me.
But I didn’t have time to be sentimental. I launched myself into a wild leap like a coiled spring, knowing that I’d only get one chance at this, or else I’d be fish food come sunrise. But lucky for me, I caught her by surprise. She was expecting to see a dead body, but what she got was a glass bottle smashed right across the face, shattering into a million shards and knocking her unconscious in an instant. Her tommy-gun hit the floor with a thud, and a moment later, so did she. And standing over her, Kate Python lived to see another day.
But now that the heat of the moment had passed, I had another concern: who was this broad, and why was she trying to ice me? Now granted, I’ve got enemies. Lots of them, and more than a few who could afford to have me plugged. But now was a strange time: I wasn’t on any hot leads, snooping in any places that could ruffle any feathers. I always have my nose to the ground, but it generally takes more than attentiveness to get someone to shell out the zed for a hit on you. Clearly I was making somebody nervous, and if I was going to survive the next attempt on my life, I had to find out who.
* * * * *
And so it was that, as my hitwoman’s eyes began to open slowly once again, she found herself bound from head to toe: duct taped to my office chair, reclining back with her feet on top of my desk, taped together at the ankles. She struggled reflexively for several seconds, her muscles instinctively trying to free themselves, before she truly became aware of her surroundings. I saw her eyes open as the world came into focus for her: her eyes going from me, to her own bound body, to her tommy-gun lying on the ground, back to me. If looks could kill.
“Welcome back,” I said with a long look telling her that I was in charge here. “Now I think you were just about to tell me what the hell you were doing trying to kill me, weren’t you?”
“Go to hell, ya ditzy broad!” she spat, glaring at me. “You got no idea what kind of hot water you’re in! No idea!”
I don’t know about you, but I’m not about to take no guff from a dame tied to a chair with her feet up on my desk. I wanted answers, and I knew of one sure-fire way to get my stoolie to sing. I reached up and plucked off those expensive pumps of hers, and dropped them over on top of my file cabinet. Not my style, personally, but she wasn’t getting them back.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the hitwoman hissed, struggling at her ropes as she glared daggers at me.
Left on the desk were her wriggling, nylon-encased feet, the smooth black fabric shimmering with the light from the bulb overhead. This broad was playing it dumb, but she knew the score all right: I could see her feet reflexively trying to cover each other up on the desktop. She realized it soon enough and stopped, but she’d already showed her cards: I was looking at a pair of seriously ticklish feet.
“Oh, just testing a theory,” I said, playing it nonchalant. “Why, you wouldn’t be getting worried about anything, would you?”
“You—you’re making a huge mistake!” she blurted out. I could see her starting to sweat now: those tall, gorgeous feet of hers curled forwards fearfully, showing me the tops of her painted toes and long expanses of wrinkled soles beneath the smooth fabric of her stockings. I moved in front of them, and then she really started to sweat. I made a show of looking at my long nails, glancing at her over the sharp filed points as she squirmed in fear. They can be some of the most effective tools of my trade, as I was about to show her. I watched her for a while, letting her feet do their anticipatory dance of panic as her pulse quickened by the second. It was the terror of cornered prey.
Then, I reached down and traced a single fingernail up her smooth, nyloned sole.
For a split second, she tried to control herself. She closed her eyes tightly and sealed her lips, trying to hold back the high-pitched shrieks as her feet convulsed in silence. But it was a losing game. Before I was halfway across her sole, giggles began to erupt, and soon my office was filled with wild, howling laughter. Her entire body jerked into the air, causing her fedora to fly off her head and releasing a head full of lustrous black hair that shook as she laughed. This was the sort of ticklishness you didn’t run across every day.
“NOT THAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAT!!!” she howled. I might have to drag this one out.
I knew instantly that my guess had been right: these weren’t just any nylons she was wearing. This upstage broad was loaded enough to afford daGigglia stockings. They were a new line of stockings made from a new synthetic polymer that was supposed to be softer than silk and so strong that they would never run. They exploded onto the fashion scene a few months ago, and since then, every would-be starlet and socialite had been seen wearing them.
The only problem was, they had a side effect that most women found out about too late. When worn on a pair of ticklish feet, they intensified ticklishness enormously. Women who were normally only mildly ticklish would scream for mercy if their feet were touched in a pair of daGigglias. And from the looks of her painted red toenails and pampered feet visible underneath her nylons, her feet were already plenty tender to start with. She’d have been well advised to never even think about wearing a pair of these. But with these stockings at the height of fashion, the social-climbing set didn’t have a choice. They wore them anyway and prayed that they never found themselves in the situation my hitwoman was in now. Now that she was, of course, it was time to get down to business.
“Now ya see, dollface, when someone comes trying to kill me I usually like to know why,” I said, sliding all my fingernails down her nyloned soles. “So why don’t we start talking about that first?”
“AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! I CAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHANNN’T!!!” she screamed, her toes dancing wildly inside the confines of the stretchy material.
“So what I hear is that you’re working for someone,” I translated. “Good start, babe. Now the next step is to tell me everything you know about your employer.”
“PLEEEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEASE!!! NOOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOO!!!” she pleaded. Tears ran down her cheeks, ruining her carefully-applied mascara as she writhed in her chair.
“Well, you don’t have to talk, you know,” I said helpfully, scribbling my fingernails over the smooth, frictionless surfaces. “You can stay here and laugh for as long as you like.”
And she was laughing so hard I could have sworn the walls of my office were shaking. The noise seemed louder than even the hail of bullets that had preceded it minutes ago. My sharp, carefully-filed fingernails were making short work of those ticklish feet, moving in faster and wilder patterns that had her begging for mercy. Those nylons had turned her already sensitive soles into one enormous soft spot, leaving her without a hope of resistance.
But you could see she was trying to fight the sensations with her last reserves of strength. When my fingernails crossed over a (relatively) less ticklish spot on her soles, she clenched her fists and tried to hold back the laughter, as though she might regain her self-possession. Of course, the moment I tickled a soft spot again the façade was broken: her muscles turned to jelly and the hysterical laughter flowed even louder than before. The secret to a successful interrogation is to let them wear themselves out fighting, and this ticklish broad was doing more than enough of that.
“Ready to talk yet?” I asked, raking my fingernails slowly from her toes down to her heels. “Me, I could just tickle these feet all day.”
“NOOHOOHOOHOOHOO!!! SHE’LL KILL ME!!! AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!” she howled with her head thrown back.
“If I were you, babydoll, I’d take my chances with her over being tickled to death,” I remarked. I was focusing my attack more effectively on those stocking-encased soles now that I had learned her absolute worst spots. Inside the nylons her toes were scrunching and splaying like wild, as my sharp fingernails scribbled and scratched her long, high arches. Ordinary nylons would have been stretched to the breaking point, but these stockings were anything but normal.
But everything, eventually, reaches a breaking point, including a woman. My ticklish assassin had fought long and hard, but every pair of tootsies is a lock that can be picked with enough skill and patience. I’m normally not much for subtlety: I’ve found a well-timed punch in the jaw can solve a surprising amount of problems. But when it comes to extracting information, a pair of ticklish feet requires a different approach. A gentle touch, just the right amount of pressure placed on a soft spot, and the result can be devastating. And finally, you can feel the moment when the last tumbler falls away and the lock swings open. I was ready. I pressed my long nails into her two most excruciatingly ticklish spots just below her instep. Her entire body convulsed, and I could see her cross that point where nothing mattered except saving herself from the torture. Her mouth flew open and she cried out,
“I’LL TALK!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! I’LL TAAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAALLLLLLKKK!!!”
“Good choice, babe,” I said, not letting up with my tickling for a moment. “Now the fate of these tender tootsies depends on your telling me everything I want to know, so you’d better not hold back.” I kept focusing my nails on those soft arches of hers. I wanted her on the precipice of insanity until she spilled everything: those feet twisting and writhing until she could think of nothing but her own ticklishness.
“IT’S…IT’S…JACKIE !!! AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!!”
There was only one person she could be talking about: Jackie Lacroix: robber baroness, venture capitalist, and bookkeeper for the New Angeles Mafia. She ran most of the numbers rackets and illegal gambling in this sector of the city, all correlated from her central base of operations downtown in the Nightingale Club. If dirty money was changing hands, you can bet she knew about it, and was probably involved in it somehow herself. It was thanks to her, and others like her, that the New Angeles Mafia raked in more cold cash than some of the megacorps around here.
The problem was, I knew a thing or two about Jackie, and she was a white-collar criminal. Ordering a hit on someone wasn’t her style, not for a paper-pusher like her. If the hit had come through her, it had to come from a higher-up. And odds were that only one person could have had that kind of clout over her. The person that came to mind was none other than the infamous Donna Gambina, head of the New Angeles Mafia and one of the single most powerful women in the city. All of a sudden, my day had become very complicated.
And my only lead wasn’t going to take me any further. The wild, cackling laughter that my nails coerced from her ticklish soles told me this woman was at the breaking point. In the grips of tickle madness, she would have volunteered any information she had if she thought it might save her tootsies from the torture I was inflicting on them. But nothing: only screams and howls for mercy. She knew nothing else: apparently Jackie was smart enough not to trust a ticklish hit-lady with any sensitive information.
“NOW LET ME GOOOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOOOO!!!!” begged the hit-lady through her laughter. It wasn’t a demand; it was a desperate plea.
“Sorry doll, that wasn’t part of the deal,” I countered. “This evening was looking like it was going to be uncomplicated until you came along. Now thanks to you, I’ll be working unpaid overtime tonight. Not to mention you cost me a bottle of perfectly good whiskey. So now it’s time you learn what happens to girls who cross Kate Python.”
And out from my desk I took a handy little device that had never failed to inspire terror, and it certainly wasn’t failing now. It consisted of a pair of ankle cuffs, and connected to the rim of each were five long, slender vibrators: each one with hinges like the joints of a human finger. And each one, conveniently, was just long enough to curl around from a human ankle to reach the sole of the foot. To the casual observer it might look like a strange, arachnid-like device of unknown purpose. But to a bound girl with bare, defenseless feet, she divined its purpose immediately.
“You—you can’t!” she cried in terror.
“You wanna bet?” I asked. “I call this little device Citizen’s Arrest, and I use it specially on punks like you to keep you busy when I can’t personally give you what you’ve got coming. But make no mistake: this will tickle you until you pass out. So all you can do I sit back and get ready to have a private little laugh.”
“I—I’ll get you for this, detective!” she cried, torn between rage and panic.
“You can try,” I said, snapping the cuffs around her ankles. “But after a few hours of crazed laughter, you’d be amazed how you start thinking about a career change. But don’t take my word for it.”
And with that, I flipped the switch, and the tiny motors whirred to life. My captive had only a moment to shoot me one last hate-filled look before the touch of the vibrators hit her defenseless soles, and that furious glare was instantly wiped clean, replaced with the familiar look of the hopelessly ticklish. Once again, wild desperate laughter flooded my office with even greater violence than the hail of bullets she had unleashed only minutes ago.
And that’s how I left my office: a minor triumph behind me but a much larger, more ominous threat looming ahead of me like the dark shadows of the tall, craggy buildings waiting to meet me outside. I shut the door behind me, the wild laughter still ringing in my ears as I walked down the hallway to the elevator. After a swift kick to the inoperable elevator doors and seventeen flights of stairs later, I was out on the street, the rain beating down in a futile effort to cleanse the filthy streets of the city. The garish neon hell of New Angeles spread out before me, riddled with dark alleys like rat holes in the walls of a decaying building. I was cold, sober, and the most powerful woman in New Angeles wanted me dead. Looks like it was going to be one of those nights.
* * * * *
I walked into the lobby of the Nightingale Club and shook the rain from my hat while my trench coat dripped a puddle on the floor. The bouncer eyed me suspiciously, figuring that anyone who couldn’t afford a better coat than mine probably wasn’t on the guest list. I took the opportunity to light up, staring back at her from the corner of my eye through a cloud of smoke. She clearly wasn’t happy to see me, but then people rarely are.
The Nightingale was one of the swankier night spots in New Angeles, favored by the fashionable elite who used it as an opportunity to be seen in public with the right crowd. It was also owned by the Mob, and used for illegal gambling and running numbers. Past the ballroom area in the back rooms, millions of zed changed hands every night in high-stakes card games and betting. So it wasn’t the sort of place a private dick could just waltz into without an invitation.
The bouncer herself was a new girl, different from the one I’d seen last time I was here. She had the physique for it all right: nearly a head taller than me and probably not even a booster, my instincts told me. She wore a dark suit and a pair of conservative flats that looked ideal for kicking some mug’s teeth in if it came to it. Of course, I’ve been known to get into a few fights myself, and I never back down from one. I took a last drag from my cigarette, flicked it down to the floor and walked up to her.
“Listen up, sweetheart,” I said with my teeth clenched, “I’ve got someone very important inside who’s expecting me.” It wasn’t a lie, either: the news would be around that I hadn’t gotten rubbed out just yet. “So kindly step aside before someone gets hurt.”
“You’re not on the guest list,” said the bouncer, staring right back at me with her arms crossed.
“I haven’t told you my name yet,” I said.
“Name?” she asked, glaring at me like I was something the cat dragged in.
“None of your damn business.”
“Not on the list,” she said, not breaking eye contact.
Well, all I could say is that I’d dealt with a lot worse than her before. I finished off my cigarette and crushed it out on the floor, returning her stare for a moment. Then, I darted my hand to the inside pocket of my trench coat as fast as I could. She saw me, and instantly her reflexes took over. She made a grab for her pocket as well, and whipped out her piece and pointed it at me, ready to plug me full of holes if I drew on her. I looked coolly at her gun for a moment, and then I slowly withdrew the object that I’d made a grab for. It was my lighter, and I used it to light up a new smoke as she watched me.
Of course, she thought she’d come out on top: that she’d called my bluff and taught me a lesson. She grinned at me with a set of feral-looking teeth and lowered her gun. That was the moment I was waiting for.
In an instant I had dropped my cigarette and lighter, and was flying towards her pistol arm. I slammed my palm directly into her wrist, crushing it against the wall at the exact moment when her muscles had begun to loosen from a false sense of security. She screamed in pain, and there was a loud crunch as her fingers immediately went limp. Her piece fell from her nerveless fingers, and before it hit the ground I had grabbed it and turned it on her. Suddenly she was looking at the business end of her own heater.
“Don’t do anything you’ll regret, sweetheart,” I said, “and I promise if you try to go for that knife in your sleeve, you’ll regret it real fast.”
She glared at me but kept still. They weren’t paying her enough for heroics.
“Good choice,” I said. “Now, I think you should take the rest of the evening off.”
I watched her slink off into the darkness outside, keeping the piece trained on her the entire time. Once she was gone I turned back to the door. Through there was the ballroom, and there were a lot more dangerous customers in there than out here. They were the worst kinds of crooks: the ones with enough money to themselves distanced from the dirtier details of their professions. In there, they were sipping cocktails while their underlings were out on the streets, tearing the city apart a little bit at a time. Of course, being self-employed, it wasn’t my job to clean up the whole city: just the parts of it I was paid for. But just thinking about it got me in a fighting mood. I clenched a fist and shoved the door open, and walked into the ballroom.
Inside, it was everything dirty money could buy. The room was so enormous you had to strain your eyes to see the other end, with high cavernous ceilings bedecked with glittering crystal chandeliers. Along the walls there were portraits of stodgy society-types who were probably famous club members. In the center of the room was an ice sculpture of a woman, surrounded by bottles of champagne that I’d be willing to bet each cost more than a month of my salary. All around the floor were tables packed with men and women in their finest, watching a soft jazz band perform on the stage.
Over at one of the central tables sipping a martini was Sandra Westfield, the most famous shoe designer in New Angeles. Holding a martini glass between her thumb and forefinger, she sipped at it periodically as she watched the show. Underneath the table, her legs were crossed, and I could see she was wearing a pair of her own stratospherically expensive dress sandals. She dangled one lazily from her right foot, holding the strap between her long, porcelain toes as it swung back and forth lackadaisically. Those long, muscular toes held on with a strength most people only possessed in their fingers, letting the sandal slip down as far as possible to expose a pink, pampered sole to the entire room. It was easy to be distracted by the sight of her vulnerability and miss her weapons: her long, cruel fingernails that were known to bring ticklish women to tears. A rumor around the corporate scene said that when the head of her sales team lost a contract, she would personally tie them up and tickle their helpless feet for hours as warning to never let her down again. So far, no one in that capacity has ever lost two contracts.
Next to her I noticed a table of Asian women, dressed in silk kimonos and geisha dresses. I didn’t recognize any of them, but I could smell corporate types a mile away, and these broads had all the signs. The studied indifference as they carefully watched their backs every second; the glasses of sake raised to red luscious lips that occasionally opened to exchange business jargon and then pursed into the smile of a remorseless killer. Their eyes flitted around the room, long eyelashes batting flirtatiously as they sized up everyone as potential competition.
It was just me in a den of serpents, and the only saving grace was that none of them cared enough to spare me a second glance. But as I headed over to the bar, I saw a sight for sore eyes: a face I actually recognized and wanted to see. Standing behind the bar looking smart in her server’s uniform was Marianne: an old friend of mine from various clubs and joints throughout the city where she’d held positions. Apparently she was moving up in the world. I flashed her a smile that she returned, and I walked over to the bar to order myself a drink.
Marianne was a foxy young blonde with a page-boy haircut and wide hazel eyes that looked as though she was hanging on your every word when she stared at you. I’d gotten to know her at a few less-reputable joints before she landed the job here, although none of them near as fancy as the Nightingale. She was all dolled up in fire engine red lipstick and a form-fitting white blouse and black vest; I had to admit she was easier on the eyes than ever.
“Why, detective,” she said with a grin, “I wouldn’t have expected to see you in this establishment. Now who on earth let you in here?”
“I let myself in,” I said, grinning back. Marianne was familiar enough with my methods to know the score. “Incidentally, you might look into getting a better bouncer for this joint.”
“I’ll pass it on up,” she said with a smile. “So what brings you here? Come to bet on the ponies?”
Betting on the ponies was slang for a numbers racket the mob ran around here. Every week they used hacked police data to determine which of the gangs in New Angeles had won the most turf battles and claimed the most territory. It was a real money-maker for them, especially since they could always throw a little help behind whichever gang they wanted to win that week. But the high-rollers couldn’t get enough of it. You’d be surprised at the society types that went in for those kinds of shady dealings.
“Ain’t got the scratch for that kinda game, sister,” I said, digging my hands into my pockets.
“Well, if you ever get it, the Yakuza-backed gangs are fast becoming the favorites. They’ve made a push to expand their operations in this part of town recently.”
“I noticed.” I looked around at the Asian girls in their silk kimonos, scattered across several tables on the ballroom floor. “I’m surprised the Donna lets them in here, personally.”
“This is a legitimate business, remember?” Marianne grinned. “Besides, the Nightingale is just an investment to her. What’s really got her up in arms is their push to buy out the big-name fashion designers.”
“Il bet,” I said. If Donna Gambina was known for anything aside from her ruthlessness in crime, it was her love of fashion. She was “La Mafiosa Fashionista”, the most enthusiastic follower of cutting-edge fashion trends in New Angeles high society. The dresses she wore to parties made the society pages nearly every time, and countless socialites followed the trends she set. In fact, they said the craze with daGigglia stockings began with her, when she hired Francesca daGigglia as one of her designers and commissioned the line herself.
But the Donna also used her vast wealth to make sure that she controlled the fashion industry in New Angeles: every designer who was anybody was on the Donna’s payroll, and she guarded them jealously. Anyone trying to buy away her precious fashion designers would soon be wearing a pair of cement overshoes. The fact that the Yakuza was even willing to try must have had her furious.
“She must be fighting back hard,” I mused.
“More than that,” said Marianne. “Everyone says the Donna has been on the offensive to a degree that’s unusual even for her. Usually she waits for her enemies to come to her, but word on the street is that she’s making a big show of strength this time. Wonder why?”
I shrugged. “None of my business, babe. I’m here looking for someone else. You seen Jackie around tonight? I’ve got words for her.”
“Words, huh?” asked Marianne with an impish grin. “Yeah, she’s in, taking care of business in the back as usual. You’re not planning on doing anything stupid, are you?”
I gave a dark chuckle. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Point taken,” said Marianne. She gave a wave towards the back rooms. “She’s back there right now finishing some paperwork alone. In fact, if you wanted to catch her off-guard, this is probably the time. Hardly anyone back there, since she doesn’t like roving eyes around when she breaks out the finances. If you wanted to sneak back there, it would probably be pretty easy.”
“Thanks a million, doll,” I said with an appreciative smile. “Tell you what, if this thing actually pans out to have some cash behind it, I might even be back to throw a tip your way, gorgeous.”
Marianne just raised an eyebrow. “With you, I’m not holding my breath.”
* * * * *
And it was pretty easy, I was thinking to myself several minutes later with a blackjack in one hand and the unconscious body of Jackie Lacroix in the other. After taking her to a private place where I knew we wouldn’t be disturbed, I bound her up an waited for her to come to so we could get down to business. And pleasure.
“Glad to meet you,” I said as her eyes slowly opened to bring her back from the haze of unconsciousness. “By the way, your security is atrocious.”
When Jackie came to, I could see she recognized her surroundings, and she wasn’t pleased by them one bit. I had taken her to a place where she and I could get nice and personal: one of the back rooms where Jackie conducted the parts of her business which relied on the gentle art of “persuasion”. And apparently, Jackie’s business partners found tickle torture to be highly persuasive. All around the room there were devices designed to exploit ticklish flesh for her own ends: stomach featherers, underarm drillers, and every conceivable method of immobilizing a pair of feet before they were tickled silly. A gal in one of these devices was nothing but helpless tickleflesh. And Jackie, sitting in an immobilizing chair with her hands behind her head and her feet bound in ankle cuffs, was about to find out how the other half lives.
I had placed a piece of duct tape across her mouth, but that didn’t stop her from expressing all the hatred she could muster through her eyes alone. Well, she knew who I was and I had her attention. Time to get down to business.
“I know you hired that hitwoman,” I growled, at her “And I wanna know why. But I’m not going to waste time asking a mug like you, when you’d just lie to my face. So here’s the score, sweetheart. Instead of asking you any questions, I’m going to sit back and let this machine of yours do a number on those ticklish tootsies. I’m going to watch them dance. And then, when I decide you’ve had enough foot-tickling, then our conversation can begin.”
And to illustrate my point, I flipped the switch to activate the machinery.
Even with a strip of duct tape over her mouth, you could hear the shriek piercing it like a bullet in the first instant the machine did its work on her tender tootsies. Mechanical hands came to life and touched her stockinged soles right beneath the balls of her feet. She broke into hysterical, muffled laughter as those merciless robotic hands immediately began to do the job they were programmed to do. They stroked her unbearably ticklish soles with long, ceramic-alloy nails designed to tickle even worse than fingernails. The hands buzzed as the internal vibrators set beneath the latex skin caused every touch to transmit ticklish shockwaves to the target feet, setting them ablaze with torturous sensation. The finger joints moved deftly, instantly realigning themselves with every reflexive motion of the feet so that they were always focusing on precisely the most ticklish spots. It was the very best of modern technology, working for the single goal of annihilating a ticklish pair of feet.
And ticklish was definitely the word for Jackie’s soft feet. In her nylons, they were even more vulnerable. The hands realized this in seconds, and switched to long, sweeping strokes that took advantage of the smooth material. Jackie howled into her gag, a look of utter desperation on her face as she realized the machine would show her no mercy. Up and down those carefully engineered nails scribbled over the expanses of her smooth soles, causing her entire body to thrash wildly, attempting to escape. But the ankle cuffs held those pampered peds in place to receive their punishment. Without even the release of full laughter available to her, only the streams of tears from her eyes expressed the internal torment she was experiencing. I might have almost felt sorry for her, if she weren’t such a bastard.
And in the meantime, I stood by and watched as Jackie endured what was probably some of the most intense tickle torture of her life. I had my finger calmly on the switch, ready with a simple motion to pull her from the brink of insanity. She saw it, too: the pleading look in her eyes begged me to flip the switch and end the tickling. But I stood by for several minutes, watching those hands ravage her feet with mechanical precision. Every second was an eternity to her, and I knew it. All I had to do was play it cool.
But as satisfying as it might have been to watch, I couldn’t let myself forget that I was here on business. After about five minutes, I flipped the switch, and the mechanical hands slowly stopped their careful manipulation of Jackie’s feet, pulling away until they fell limp and lifeless. I don’t know if I can ever remember seeing a woman quite so grateful. I walked over the Jackie and peeled back the duct tape holding her mouth shut. Immediately she began gasping for breath, filling her lungs with the air emptied from gales of furious laughter. I gave her a moment to compose herself before I began speaking.
“Now that was just a taste of what your machine can do,” I said. “I think you realize by now that a pair of ticklish feet like yours have no chance to resist it. So here’s the score: you play straight with me, and you’ll be fine. But the minute you cross me, I’ll have you right back in the auto-tickler begging for mercy as those hands work over your helpless feet. You understand?”
If she could have reached out and torn my head off that moment, I swear she would have. Inside her, conflicting emotions of rage and fear were crashing against each other like waves in a storm. Her loathing for me drove her to almost spit in my face: her hands were clenched into fists that wanted nothing more than to take a swing at me, and she radiated hatred like the harsh light from the bare lightbulb overhead. But another part of her was looking at those mechanical hands: now lifeless, with the flip of a switch they would rise up again and scribble all over her ticklish feet, deaf to her pleas for mercy.
“What do you want?” she asked from between clenched teeth.
“You put a hit out on me, and you ask me what I want?” I asked. “Let’s start with who ordered it, and why.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she spat out.
“Is that so?” I asked with a raised eyebrow. “Well in that case, maybe some tickle torture will jog your memory.”
“No! No please! Anything but—“ But the tape was already back over her mouth, and in another second I reached over to flip the switch. The machine gave a gentle hum, and slowly the mechanical hands came to life once more. Jackie could only stare at them in sheer terror as they descended upon her soft, nylon-covered soles, sensing the heat that emanated from them. I could see her strained body glistening with cold sweat as she watched the hands close in. And finally, the room exploded once again in helpless, hysterical shrieks as the diabolical hands resumed their work: tickling Jackie’s hopelessly sensitive feet to within an inch of her life.
“I think this might do wonders for your memory,” I said while the mechanical hands slid over the silken surfaces of her stockings, already reducing her to tears. “In fact, I think I’ll leave the two of you alone for a while, so you can think long and hard about whether having your feet tickled is worth holding out on me.” I knew she couldn’t understand me, but my meaning was clear enough when she saw me turn and go for the door. The last desperate look in her eyes as she realized she was going to be left alone in the auto-tickler told me that it was only a matter of time.
I shut the door behind me, and I have to admit Jackie did a good job on the soundproofing. I couldn’t even tell there was a woman inside screaming through her gag as her ticklish feet were under assault. I had a few minutes to kill: if I came back to early, she might still have some fighting spirit left, but if I waited too long, she might pass out. The auto-tickler was more than capable of tickling a girl into unconsciousness if she had tootsies like Jackie. So I did what any good gumshoe would do: I headed down the hallway to Jackie’s office, to see if there wasn’t any interesting reading material she’d left lying around.
The place was what I expected from a glorified paper-pusher like Jackie: a windowless and mostly undecorated room dominated by a huge desk covered in paperwork. As an added bonus, the place was unlocked: apparently Jackie’s reputation was enough to keep the staff out of here. Lucky for me, I didn’t scare so easy.
I walked inside, and wouldn’t you know if there wasn’t a box if premium-quality cigars on the desk. I could tell just from a whiff that this wasn’t the usual synth-tobacco, but the real stuff. Not something I could afford on my salary, let me tell you, but Jackie clearly pulled in a few more figures than I did. Well, no sense in letting it go to waste. I took one off the top and lit it up, plus a few I dropped into my trench coat pocket for later. I inhaled deeply, and blew a few smoke rings into the air as I began to sift through Jackie’s papers. Mostly dull stuff: finances and tax loopholes, bribes to megacorps disguised as charitable contributions, exactly what I’d expect from a sleazy customer like her. But apparently that’s how you afford the good stuff.
Judging from the paperwork on top of the desk, it looks like Marianne had been straight with me: the Donna was preparing for a financial war with the Yakuza in New Angeles. She had been commissioning the hostile takeovers of Yakuza-owned businesses, and from the looks of it, that had been Jackie’s number one priority. Something had the Donna eager to assert her dominance over the city, all right, and if things kept spiraling out of control this financial war might turn into the shooting kind.
But that still didn’t explain where I fit into all this. In fact, things made less sense than ever. In the middle of her biggest push for control of the city, why would the Donna divert resources to having someone like me plugged? I was beginning to think that my little canary had led me on a wild goose chase by dropping a name that I couldn’t ignore.
And just then, I saw it: a huge lump sum transferred to a bank account yesterday for a single “independent contractor”. And with phrases like “immediate erasure”, it didn’t take much to read between the lines. This was my hit.
Apparently the money for it was laundered through one of the Donna’s legitimate businesses: it came from the accounts of Violetta’s luxury spa, magnet for the city’s rich and overprivileged. I’d exhausted everything I could learn here, but if anyone else knew why this hit had been put out on me, it could be the people who paid for it. Time to get myself dolled up for a trip uptown.
The Mobster's Vendetta
Part 1
Cigarette smoke drifted across my desk, gathering in a gray haze like the dark clouds hanging over the city outside. A lot of people came to New Angeles looking to make their fortune, but most of them ended up like me: stuck in a one-room office in a run-down tenement building on the wrong side of the tracks, with barely enough money to pay the rent each month. This can be a cruel city to live in; little wonder most of its residents eventually turn to crime. I haven’t reached that point yet, but the goings-on of the city’s criminal element are still my concern. The name’s Kate Python, and like it says on the door, I’m a private eye.
Problem is, I had less to show for it than ever these days. That evening found me at my desk with a bottle of whiskey, poring over notes for a few minor cases that were barely paying the bills. Small-time stuff, but a girl’s gotta work. Outside my window, the rain continued to fall with a dreary, soulless insistence. The craggy peaks of the cityscape were barely visible through the downpour, barely lit by the faint glimmers of garish neon lights from speakeasies and distant megacorp buildings. With that as a backdrop, I thought I was about due for some good news when I heard footsteps coming down the hallway outside towards my office. Since I couldn’t afford to hire a pretty secretary to screen my appointments, that was the main way I found out when I had a client coming.
It turns out I didn’t have long to wait. A moment later, my visitor was at the door and had kicked it open with one motion. She was a leggy dame, all right, and well-dressed to boot. But I wasn’t paying much attention to that at the moment. Just then, I was more focused on the fact that she was carrying a tommy-gun, and it was pointed right at me. I had barely a second to dive beneath my desk before she braced herself, and the lead started flying.
“Eat lead, detective!” cried her voice jubilantly over the blazing roar of her heater.
I knew the desk wouldn’t protect me for long, though. Above me, the air was filled with a hail of bullets, with bullet-riddled papers flying through the air like leaves in a storm. The deafening noise of gunfire drowned out all thought except the primal instinct to survive. I started grasping around for anything I could use as a weapon. My piece was in the desk drawer, but there was no way I could get to it without opening myself up to fire. I could feel the desk behind me absorbing the gunfire, but it wasn’t going to protect me for long. I needed an out, and fast.
It was then my eye fell on the only thing that could be used as a weapon, and I don’t mind telling you I felt a pang of regret inside. My bottle of whiskey was right on the floor beside me, still more than half-full. I sighed over the gunfire as I gripped the handle. This was the good stuff, too. Damn.
But it was time to bring the broad to me. I screamed as loud as I could, and threw myself on the floor to replicate the sound of a bullet-riddled body hitting the floor. I held my breath, and sure enough, a second later the gunfire stopped. I silently got back up into the crouching position behind my desk and waited for her to come around to inspect her handiwork. Boy, was she going to get a surprise when she came into view.
And a moment later, she rounded the desk and I got my first good look at my hitwoman. She was quite a looker, all right, and a real hellcat to boot. She wore a pair of black pumps with six-inch stiletto heels, supporting a million-zed pair of legs encased in an expensive pair of black nylons. She wore a navy pinstripe suit, with a short pencil skirt that hugged her curves and showed off those gorgeous gams of hers nicely. She wore a fedora on her head, but you could her long, coal-black hair was perfectly brushed underneath. She was wearing meticulously applied mascara and cherry lipstick. Gripping her piece, I could see her carefully-manicured nails painted a matching cherry red. All in all, I’d have felt like whistling if she wasn’t trying to kill me.
But I didn’t have time to be sentimental. I launched myself into a wild leap like a coiled spring, knowing that I’d only get one chance at this, or else I’d be fish food come sunrise. But lucky for me, I caught her by surprise. She was expecting to see a dead body, but what she got was a glass bottle smashed right across the face, shattering into a million shards and knocking her unconscious in an instant. Her tommy-gun hit the floor with a thud, and a moment later, so did she. And standing over her, Kate Python lived to see another day.
But now that the heat of the moment had passed, I had another concern: who was this broad, and why was she trying to ice me? Now granted, I’ve got enemies. Lots of them, and more than a few who could afford to have me plugged. But now was a strange time: I wasn’t on any hot leads, snooping in any places that could ruffle any feathers. I always have my nose to the ground, but it generally takes more than attentiveness to get someone to shell out the zed for a hit on you. Clearly I was making somebody nervous, and if I was going to survive the next attempt on my life, I had to find out who.
* * * * *
And so it was that, as my hitwoman’s eyes began to open slowly once again, she found herself bound from head to toe: duct taped to my office chair, reclining back with her feet on top of my desk, taped together at the ankles. She struggled reflexively for several seconds, her muscles instinctively trying to free themselves, before she truly became aware of her surroundings. I saw her eyes open as the world came into focus for her: her eyes going from me, to her own bound body, to her tommy-gun lying on the ground, back to me. If looks could kill.
“Welcome back,” I said with a long look telling her that I was in charge here. “Now I think you were just about to tell me what the hell you were doing trying to kill me, weren’t you?”
“Go to hell, ya ditzy broad!” she spat, glaring at me. “You got no idea what kind of hot water you’re in! No idea!”
I don’t know about you, but I’m not about to take no guff from a dame tied to a chair with her feet up on my desk. I wanted answers, and I knew of one sure-fire way to get my stoolie to sing. I reached up and plucked off those expensive pumps of hers, and dropped them over on top of my file cabinet. Not my style, personally, but she wasn’t getting them back.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the hitwoman hissed, struggling at her ropes as she glared daggers at me.
Left on the desk were her wriggling, nylon-encased feet, the smooth black fabric shimmering with the light from the bulb overhead. This broad was playing it dumb, but she knew the score all right: I could see her feet reflexively trying to cover each other up on the desktop. She realized it soon enough and stopped, but she’d already showed her cards: I was looking at a pair of seriously ticklish feet.
“Oh, just testing a theory,” I said, playing it nonchalant. “Why, you wouldn’t be getting worried about anything, would you?”
“You—you’re making a huge mistake!” she blurted out. I could see her starting to sweat now: those tall, gorgeous feet of hers curled forwards fearfully, showing me the tops of her painted toes and long expanses of wrinkled soles beneath the smooth fabric of her stockings. I moved in front of them, and then she really started to sweat. I made a show of looking at my long nails, glancing at her over the sharp filed points as she squirmed in fear. They can be some of the most effective tools of my trade, as I was about to show her. I watched her for a while, letting her feet do their anticipatory dance of panic as her pulse quickened by the second. It was the terror of cornered prey.
Then, I reached down and traced a single fingernail up her smooth, nyloned sole.
For a split second, she tried to control herself. She closed her eyes tightly and sealed her lips, trying to hold back the high-pitched shrieks as her feet convulsed in silence. But it was a losing game. Before I was halfway across her sole, giggles began to erupt, and soon my office was filled with wild, howling laughter. Her entire body jerked into the air, causing her fedora to fly off her head and releasing a head full of lustrous black hair that shook as she laughed. This was the sort of ticklishness you didn’t run across every day.
“NOT THAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAT!!!” she howled. I might have to drag this one out.
I knew instantly that my guess had been right: these weren’t just any nylons she was wearing. This upstage broad was loaded enough to afford daGigglia stockings. They were a new line of stockings made from a new synthetic polymer that was supposed to be softer than silk and so strong that they would never run. They exploded onto the fashion scene a few months ago, and since then, every would-be starlet and socialite had been seen wearing them.
The only problem was, they had a side effect that most women found out about too late. When worn on a pair of ticklish feet, they intensified ticklishness enormously. Women who were normally only mildly ticklish would scream for mercy if their feet were touched in a pair of daGigglias. And from the looks of her painted red toenails and pampered feet visible underneath her nylons, her feet were already plenty tender to start with. She’d have been well advised to never even think about wearing a pair of these. But with these stockings at the height of fashion, the social-climbing set didn’t have a choice. They wore them anyway and prayed that they never found themselves in the situation my hitwoman was in now. Now that she was, of course, it was time to get down to business.
“Now ya see, dollface, when someone comes trying to kill me I usually like to know why,” I said, sliding all my fingernails down her nyloned soles. “So why don’t we start talking about that first?”
“AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! I CAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHANNN’T!!!” she screamed, her toes dancing wildly inside the confines of the stretchy material.
“So what I hear is that you’re working for someone,” I translated. “Good start, babe. Now the next step is to tell me everything you know about your employer.”
“PLEEEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEASE!!! NOOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOO!!!” she pleaded. Tears ran down her cheeks, ruining her carefully-applied mascara as she writhed in her chair.
“Well, you don’t have to talk, you know,” I said helpfully, scribbling my fingernails over the smooth, frictionless surfaces. “You can stay here and laugh for as long as you like.”
And she was laughing so hard I could have sworn the walls of my office were shaking. The noise seemed louder than even the hail of bullets that had preceded it minutes ago. My sharp, carefully-filed fingernails were making short work of those ticklish feet, moving in faster and wilder patterns that had her begging for mercy. Those nylons had turned her already sensitive soles into one enormous soft spot, leaving her without a hope of resistance.
But you could see she was trying to fight the sensations with her last reserves of strength. When my fingernails crossed over a (relatively) less ticklish spot on her soles, she clenched her fists and tried to hold back the laughter, as though she might regain her self-possession. Of course, the moment I tickled a soft spot again the façade was broken: her muscles turned to jelly and the hysterical laughter flowed even louder than before. The secret to a successful interrogation is to let them wear themselves out fighting, and this ticklish broad was doing more than enough of that.
“Ready to talk yet?” I asked, raking my fingernails slowly from her toes down to her heels. “Me, I could just tickle these feet all day.”
“NOOHOOHOOHOOHOO!!! SHE’LL KILL ME!!! AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!” she howled with her head thrown back.
“If I were you, babydoll, I’d take my chances with her over being tickled to death,” I remarked. I was focusing my attack more effectively on those stocking-encased soles now that I had learned her absolute worst spots. Inside the nylons her toes were scrunching and splaying like wild, as my sharp fingernails scribbled and scratched her long, high arches. Ordinary nylons would have been stretched to the breaking point, but these stockings were anything but normal.
But everything, eventually, reaches a breaking point, including a woman. My ticklish assassin had fought long and hard, but every pair of tootsies is a lock that can be picked with enough skill and patience. I’m normally not much for subtlety: I’ve found a well-timed punch in the jaw can solve a surprising amount of problems. But when it comes to extracting information, a pair of ticklish feet requires a different approach. A gentle touch, just the right amount of pressure placed on a soft spot, and the result can be devastating. And finally, you can feel the moment when the last tumbler falls away and the lock swings open. I was ready. I pressed my long nails into her two most excruciatingly ticklish spots just below her instep. Her entire body convulsed, and I could see her cross that point where nothing mattered except saving herself from the torture. Her mouth flew open and she cried out,
“I’LL TALK!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! I’LL TAAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAALLLLLLKKK!!!”
“Good choice, babe,” I said, not letting up with my tickling for a moment. “Now the fate of these tender tootsies depends on your telling me everything I want to know, so you’d better not hold back.” I kept focusing my nails on those soft arches of hers. I wanted her on the precipice of insanity until she spilled everything: those feet twisting and writhing until she could think of nothing but her own ticklishness.
“IT’S…IT’S…JACKIE !!! AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!!”
There was only one person she could be talking about: Jackie Lacroix: robber baroness, venture capitalist, and bookkeeper for the New Angeles Mafia. She ran most of the numbers rackets and illegal gambling in this sector of the city, all correlated from her central base of operations downtown in the Nightingale Club. If dirty money was changing hands, you can bet she knew about it, and was probably involved in it somehow herself. It was thanks to her, and others like her, that the New Angeles Mafia raked in more cold cash than some of the megacorps around here.
The problem was, I knew a thing or two about Jackie, and she was a white-collar criminal. Ordering a hit on someone wasn’t her style, not for a paper-pusher like her. If the hit had come through her, it had to come from a higher-up. And odds were that only one person could have had that kind of clout over her. The person that came to mind was none other than the infamous Donna Gambina, head of the New Angeles Mafia and one of the single most powerful women in the city. All of a sudden, my day had become very complicated.
And my only lead wasn’t going to take me any further. The wild, cackling laughter that my nails coerced from her ticklish soles told me this woman was at the breaking point. In the grips of tickle madness, she would have volunteered any information she had if she thought it might save her tootsies from the torture I was inflicting on them. But nothing: only screams and howls for mercy. She knew nothing else: apparently Jackie was smart enough not to trust a ticklish hit-lady with any sensitive information.
“NOW LET ME GOOOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOOOO!!!!” begged the hit-lady through her laughter. It wasn’t a demand; it was a desperate plea.
“Sorry doll, that wasn’t part of the deal,” I countered. “This evening was looking like it was going to be uncomplicated until you came along. Now thanks to you, I’ll be working unpaid overtime tonight. Not to mention you cost me a bottle of perfectly good whiskey. So now it’s time you learn what happens to girls who cross Kate Python.”
And out from my desk I took a handy little device that had never failed to inspire terror, and it certainly wasn’t failing now. It consisted of a pair of ankle cuffs, and connected to the rim of each were five long, slender vibrators: each one with hinges like the joints of a human finger. And each one, conveniently, was just long enough to curl around from a human ankle to reach the sole of the foot. To the casual observer it might look like a strange, arachnid-like device of unknown purpose. But to a bound girl with bare, defenseless feet, she divined its purpose immediately.
“You—you can’t!” she cried in terror.
“You wanna bet?” I asked. “I call this little device Citizen’s Arrest, and I use it specially on punks like you to keep you busy when I can’t personally give you what you’ve got coming. But make no mistake: this will tickle you until you pass out. So all you can do I sit back and get ready to have a private little laugh.”
“I—I’ll get you for this, detective!” she cried, torn between rage and panic.
“You can try,” I said, snapping the cuffs around her ankles. “But after a few hours of crazed laughter, you’d be amazed how you start thinking about a career change. But don’t take my word for it.”
And with that, I flipped the switch, and the tiny motors whirred to life. My captive had only a moment to shoot me one last hate-filled look before the touch of the vibrators hit her defenseless soles, and that furious glare was instantly wiped clean, replaced with the familiar look of the hopelessly ticklish. Once again, wild desperate laughter flooded my office with even greater violence than the hail of bullets she had unleashed only minutes ago.
And that’s how I left my office: a minor triumph behind me but a much larger, more ominous threat looming ahead of me like the dark shadows of the tall, craggy buildings waiting to meet me outside. I shut the door behind me, the wild laughter still ringing in my ears as I walked down the hallway to the elevator. After a swift kick to the inoperable elevator doors and seventeen flights of stairs later, I was out on the street, the rain beating down in a futile effort to cleanse the filthy streets of the city. The garish neon hell of New Angeles spread out before me, riddled with dark alleys like rat holes in the walls of a decaying building. I was cold, sober, and the most powerful woman in New Angeles wanted me dead. Looks like it was going to be one of those nights.
* * * * *
I walked into the lobby of the Nightingale Club and shook the rain from my hat while my trench coat dripped a puddle on the floor. The bouncer eyed me suspiciously, figuring that anyone who couldn’t afford a better coat than mine probably wasn’t on the guest list. I took the opportunity to light up, staring back at her from the corner of my eye through a cloud of smoke. She clearly wasn’t happy to see me, but then people rarely are.
The Nightingale was one of the swankier night spots in New Angeles, favored by the fashionable elite who used it as an opportunity to be seen in public with the right crowd. It was also owned by the Mob, and used for illegal gambling and running numbers. Past the ballroom area in the back rooms, millions of zed changed hands every night in high-stakes card games and betting. So it wasn’t the sort of place a private dick could just waltz into without an invitation.
The bouncer herself was a new girl, different from the one I’d seen last time I was here. She had the physique for it all right: nearly a head taller than me and probably not even a booster, my instincts told me. She wore a dark suit and a pair of conservative flats that looked ideal for kicking some mug’s teeth in if it came to it. Of course, I’ve been known to get into a few fights myself, and I never back down from one. I took a last drag from my cigarette, flicked it down to the floor and walked up to her.
“Listen up, sweetheart,” I said with my teeth clenched, “I’ve got someone very important inside who’s expecting me.” It wasn’t a lie, either: the news would be around that I hadn’t gotten rubbed out just yet. “So kindly step aside before someone gets hurt.”
“You’re not on the guest list,” said the bouncer, staring right back at me with her arms crossed.
“I haven’t told you my name yet,” I said.
“Name?” she asked, glaring at me like I was something the cat dragged in.
“None of your damn business.”
“Not on the list,” she said, not breaking eye contact.
Well, all I could say is that I’d dealt with a lot worse than her before. I finished off my cigarette and crushed it out on the floor, returning her stare for a moment. Then, I darted my hand to the inside pocket of my trench coat as fast as I could. She saw me, and instantly her reflexes took over. She made a grab for her pocket as well, and whipped out her piece and pointed it at me, ready to plug me full of holes if I drew on her. I looked coolly at her gun for a moment, and then I slowly withdrew the object that I’d made a grab for. It was my lighter, and I used it to light up a new smoke as she watched me.
Of course, she thought she’d come out on top: that she’d called my bluff and taught me a lesson. She grinned at me with a set of feral-looking teeth and lowered her gun. That was the moment I was waiting for.
In an instant I had dropped my cigarette and lighter, and was flying towards her pistol arm. I slammed my palm directly into her wrist, crushing it against the wall at the exact moment when her muscles had begun to loosen from a false sense of security. She screamed in pain, and there was a loud crunch as her fingers immediately went limp. Her piece fell from her nerveless fingers, and before it hit the ground I had grabbed it and turned it on her. Suddenly she was looking at the business end of her own heater.
“Don’t do anything you’ll regret, sweetheart,” I said, “and I promise if you try to go for that knife in your sleeve, you’ll regret it real fast.”
She glared at me but kept still. They weren’t paying her enough for heroics.
“Good choice,” I said. “Now, I think you should take the rest of the evening off.”
I watched her slink off into the darkness outside, keeping the piece trained on her the entire time. Once she was gone I turned back to the door. Through there was the ballroom, and there were a lot more dangerous customers in there than out here. They were the worst kinds of crooks: the ones with enough money to themselves distanced from the dirtier details of their professions. In there, they were sipping cocktails while their underlings were out on the streets, tearing the city apart a little bit at a time. Of course, being self-employed, it wasn’t my job to clean up the whole city: just the parts of it I was paid for. But just thinking about it got me in a fighting mood. I clenched a fist and shoved the door open, and walked into the ballroom.
Inside, it was everything dirty money could buy. The room was so enormous you had to strain your eyes to see the other end, with high cavernous ceilings bedecked with glittering crystal chandeliers. Along the walls there were portraits of stodgy society-types who were probably famous club members. In the center of the room was an ice sculpture of a woman, surrounded by bottles of champagne that I’d be willing to bet each cost more than a month of my salary. All around the floor were tables packed with men and women in their finest, watching a soft jazz band perform on the stage.
Over at one of the central tables sipping a martini was Sandra Westfield, the most famous shoe designer in New Angeles. Holding a martini glass between her thumb and forefinger, she sipped at it periodically as she watched the show. Underneath the table, her legs were crossed, and I could see she was wearing a pair of her own stratospherically expensive dress sandals. She dangled one lazily from her right foot, holding the strap between her long, porcelain toes as it swung back and forth lackadaisically. Those long, muscular toes held on with a strength most people only possessed in their fingers, letting the sandal slip down as far as possible to expose a pink, pampered sole to the entire room. It was easy to be distracted by the sight of her vulnerability and miss her weapons: her long, cruel fingernails that were known to bring ticklish women to tears. A rumor around the corporate scene said that when the head of her sales team lost a contract, she would personally tie them up and tickle their helpless feet for hours as warning to never let her down again. So far, no one in that capacity has ever lost two contracts.
Next to her I noticed a table of Asian women, dressed in silk kimonos and geisha dresses. I didn’t recognize any of them, but I could smell corporate types a mile away, and these broads had all the signs. The studied indifference as they carefully watched their backs every second; the glasses of sake raised to red luscious lips that occasionally opened to exchange business jargon and then pursed into the smile of a remorseless killer. Their eyes flitted around the room, long eyelashes batting flirtatiously as they sized up everyone as potential competition.
It was just me in a den of serpents, and the only saving grace was that none of them cared enough to spare me a second glance. But as I headed over to the bar, I saw a sight for sore eyes: a face I actually recognized and wanted to see. Standing behind the bar looking smart in her server’s uniform was Marianne: an old friend of mine from various clubs and joints throughout the city where she’d held positions. Apparently she was moving up in the world. I flashed her a smile that she returned, and I walked over to the bar to order myself a drink.
Marianne was a foxy young blonde with a page-boy haircut and wide hazel eyes that looked as though she was hanging on your every word when she stared at you. I’d gotten to know her at a few less-reputable joints before she landed the job here, although none of them near as fancy as the Nightingale. She was all dolled up in fire engine red lipstick and a form-fitting white blouse and black vest; I had to admit she was easier on the eyes than ever.
“Why, detective,” she said with a grin, “I wouldn’t have expected to see you in this establishment. Now who on earth let you in here?”
“I let myself in,” I said, grinning back. Marianne was familiar enough with my methods to know the score. “Incidentally, you might look into getting a better bouncer for this joint.”
“I’ll pass it on up,” she said with a smile. “So what brings you here? Come to bet on the ponies?”
Betting on the ponies was slang for a numbers racket the mob ran around here. Every week they used hacked police data to determine which of the gangs in New Angeles had won the most turf battles and claimed the most territory. It was a real money-maker for them, especially since they could always throw a little help behind whichever gang they wanted to win that week. But the high-rollers couldn’t get enough of it. You’d be surprised at the society types that went in for those kinds of shady dealings.
“Ain’t got the scratch for that kinda game, sister,” I said, digging my hands into my pockets.
“Well, if you ever get it, the Yakuza-backed gangs are fast becoming the favorites. They’ve made a push to expand their operations in this part of town recently.”
“I noticed.” I looked around at the Asian girls in their silk kimonos, scattered across several tables on the ballroom floor. “I’m surprised the Donna lets them in here, personally.”
“This is a legitimate business, remember?” Marianne grinned. “Besides, the Nightingale is just an investment to her. What’s really got her up in arms is their push to buy out the big-name fashion designers.”
“Il bet,” I said. If Donna Gambina was known for anything aside from her ruthlessness in crime, it was her love of fashion. She was “La Mafiosa Fashionista”, the most enthusiastic follower of cutting-edge fashion trends in New Angeles high society. The dresses she wore to parties made the society pages nearly every time, and countless socialites followed the trends she set. In fact, they said the craze with daGigglia stockings began with her, when she hired Francesca daGigglia as one of her designers and commissioned the line herself.
But the Donna also used her vast wealth to make sure that she controlled the fashion industry in New Angeles: every designer who was anybody was on the Donna’s payroll, and she guarded them jealously. Anyone trying to buy away her precious fashion designers would soon be wearing a pair of cement overshoes. The fact that the Yakuza was even willing to try must have had her furious.
“She must be fighting back hard,” I mused.
“More than that,” said Marianne. “Everyone says the Donna has been on the offensive to a degree that’s unusual even for her. Usually she waits for her enemies to come to her, but word on the street is that she’s making a big show of strength this time. Wonder why?”
I shrugged. “None of my business, babe. I’m here looking for someone else. You seen Jackie around tonight? I’ve got words for her.”
“Words, huh?” asked Marianne with an impish grin. “Yeah, she’s in, taking care of business in the back as usual. You’re not planning on doing anything stupid, are you?”
I gave a dark chuckle. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Point taken,” said Marianne. She gave a wave towards the back rooms. “She’s back there right now finishing some paperwork alone. In fact, if you wanted to catch her off-guard, this is probably the time. Hardly anyone back there, since she doesn’t like roving eyes around when she breaks out the finances. If you wanted to sneak back there, it would probably be pretty easy.”
“Thanks a million, doll,” I said with an appreciative smile. “Tell you what, if this thing actually pans out to have some cash behind it, I might even be back to throw a tip your way, gorgeous.”
Marianne just raised an eyebrow. “With you, I’m not holding my breath.”
* * * * *
And it was pretty easy, I was thinking to myself several minutes later with a blackjack in one hand and the unconscious body of Jackie Lacroix in the other. After taking her to a private place where I knew we wouldn’t be disturbed, I bound her up an waited for her to come to so we could get down to business. And pleasure.
“Glad to meet you,” I said as her eyes slowly opened to bring her back from the haze of unconsciousness. “By the way, your security is atrocious.”
When Jackie came to, I could see she recognized her surroundings, and she wasn’t pleased by them one bit. I had taken her to a place where she and I could get nice and personal: one of the back rooms where Jackie conducted the parts of her business which relied on the gentle art of “persuasion”. And apparently, Jackie’s business partners found tickle torture to be highly persuasive. All around the room there were devices designed to exploit ticklish flesh for her own ends: stomach featherers, underarm drillers, and every conceivable method of immobilizing a pair of feet before they were tickled silly. A gal in one of these devices was nothing but helpless tickleflesh. And Jackie, sitting in an immobilizing chair with her hands behind her head and her feet bound in ankle cuffs, was about to find out how the other half lives.
I had placed a piece of duct tape across her mouth, but that didn’t stop her from expressing all the hatred she could muster through her eyes alone. Well, she knew who I was and I had her attention. Time to get down to business.
“I know you hired that hitwoman,” I growled, at her “And I wanna know why. But I’m not going to waste time asking a mug like you, when you’d just lie to my face. So here’s the score, sweetheart. Instead of asking you any questions, I’m going to sit back and let this machine of yours do a number on those ticklish tootsies. I’m going to watch them dance. And then, when I decide you’ve had enough foot-tickling, then our conversation can begin.”
And to illustrate my point, I flipped the switch to activate the machinery.
Even with a strip of duct tape over her mouth, you could hear the shriek piercing it like a bullet in the first instant the machine did its work on her tender tootsies. Mechanical hands came to life and touched her stockinged soles right beneath the balls of her feet. She broke into hysterical, muffled laughter as those merciless robotic hands immediately began to do the job they were programmed to do. They stroked her unbearably ticklish soles with long, ceramic-alloy nails designed to tickle even worse than fingernails. The hands buzzed as the internal vibrators set beneath the latex skin caused every touch to transmit ticklish shockwaves to the target feet, setting them ablaze with torturous sensation. The finger joints moved deftly, instantly realigning themselves with every reflexive motion of the feet so that they were always focusing on precisely the most ticklish spots. It was the very best of modern technology, working for the single goal of annihilating a ticklish pair of feet.
And ticklish was definitely the word for Jackie’s soft feet. In her nylons, they were even more vulnerable. The hands realized this in seconds, and switched to long, sweeping strokes that took advantage of the smooth material. Jackie howled into her gag, a look of utter desperation on her face as she realized the machine would show her no mercy. Up and down those carefully engineered nails scribbled over the expanses of her smooth soles, causing her entire body to thrash wildly, attempting to escape. But the ankle cuffs held those pampered peds in place to receive their punishment. Without even the release of full laughter available to her, only the streams of tears from her eyes expressed the internal torment she was experiencing. I might have almost felt sorry for her, if she weren’t such a bastard.
And in the meantime, I stood by and watched as Jackie endured what was probably some of the most intense tickle torture of her life. I had my finger calmly on the switch, ready with a simple motion to pull her from the brink of insanity. She saw it, too: the pleading look in her eyes begged me to flip the switch and end the tickling. But I stood by for several minutes, watching those hands ravage her feet with mechanical precision. Every second was an eternity to her, and I knew it. All I had to do was play it cool.
But as satisfying as it might have been to watch, I couldn’t let myself forget that I was here on business. After about five minutes, I flipped the switch, and the mechanical hands slowly stopped their careful manipulation of Jackie’s feet, pulling away until they fell limp and lifeless. I don’t know if I can ever remember seeing a woman quite so grateful. I walked over the Jackie and peeled back the duct tape holding her mouth shut. Immediately she began gasping for breath, filling her lungs with the air emptied from gales of furious laughter. I gave her a moment to compose herself before I began speaking.
“Now that was just a taste of what your machine can do,” I said. “I think you realize by now that a pair of ticklish feet like yours have no chance to resist it. So here’s the score: you play straight with me, and you’ll be fine. But the minute you cross me, I’ll have you right back in the auto-tickler begging for mercy as those hands work over your helpless feet. You understand?”
If she could have reached out and torn my head off that moment, I swear she would have. Inside her, conflicting emotions of rage and fear were crashing against each other like waves in a storm. Her loathing for me drove her to almost spit in my face: her hands were clenched into fists that wanted nothing more than to take a swing at me, and she radiated hatred like the harsh light from the bare lightbulb overhead. But another part of her was looking at those mechanical hands: now lifeless, with the flip of a switch they would rise up again and scribble all over her ticklish feet, deaf to her pleas for mercy.
“What do you want?” she asked from between clenched teeth.
“You put a hit out on me, and you ask me what I want?” I asked. “Let’s start with who ordered it, and why.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she spat out.
“Is that so?” I asked with a raised eyebrow. “Well in that case, maybe some tickle torture will jog your memory.”
“No! No please! Anything but—“ But the tape was already back over her mouth, and in another second I reached over to flip the switch. The machine gave a gentle hum, and slowly the mechanical hands came to life once more. Jackie could only stare at them in sheer terror as they descended upon her soft, nylon-covered soles, sensing the heat that emanated from them. I could see her strained body glistening with cold sweat as she watched the hands close in. And finally, the room exploded once again in helpless, hysterical shrieks as the diabolical hands resumed their work: tickling Jackie’s hopelessly sensitive feet to within an inch of her life.
“I think this might do wonders for your memory,” I said while the mechanical hands slid over the silken surfaces of her stockings, already reducing her to tears. “In fact, I think I’ll leave the two of you alone for a while, so you can think long and hard about whether having your feet tickled is worth holding out on me.” I knew she couldn’t understand me, but my meaning was clear enough when she saw me turn and go for the door. The last desperate look in her eyes as she realized she was going to be left alone in the auto-tickler told me that it was only a matter of time.
I shut the door behind me, and I have to admit Jackie did a good job on the soundproofing. I couldn’t even tell there was a woman inside screaming through her gag as her ticklish feet were under assault. I had a few minutes to kill: if I came back to early, she might still have some fighting spirit left, but if I waited too long, she might pass out. The auto-tickler was more than capable of tickling a girl into unconsciousness if she had tootsies like Jackie. So I did what any good gumshoe would do: I headed down the hallway to Jackie’s office, to see if there wasn’t any interesting reading material she’d left lying around.
The place was what I expected from a glorified paper-pusher like Jackie: a windowless and mostly undecorated room dominated by a huge desk covered in paperwork. As an added bonus, the place was unlocked: apparently Jackie’s reputation was enough to keep the staff out of here. Lucky for me, I didn’t scare so easy.
I walked inside, and wouldn’t you know if there wasn’t a box if premium-quality cigars on the desk. I could tell just from a whiff that this wasn’t the usual synth-tobacco, but the real stuff. Not something I could afford on my salary, let me tell you, but Jackie clearly pulled in a few more figures than I did. Well, no sense in letting it go to waste. I took one off the top and lit it up, plus a few I dropped into my trench coat pocket for later. I inhaled deeply, and blew a few smoke rings into the air as I began to sift through Jackie’s papers. Mostly dull stuff: finances and tax loopholes, bribes to megacorps disguised as charitable contributions, exactly what I’d expect from a sleazy customer like her. But apparently that’s how you afford the good stuff.
Judging from the paperwork on top of the desk, it looks like Marianne had been straight with me: the Donna was preparing for a financial war with the Yakuza in New Angeles. She had been commissioning the hostile takeovers of Yakuza-owned businesses, and from the looks of it, that had been Jackie’s number one priority. Something had the Donna eager to assert her dominance over the city, all right, and if things kept spiraling out of control this financial war might turn into the shooting kind.
But that still didn’t explain where I fit into all this. In fact, things made less sense than ever. In the middle of her biggest push for control of the city, why would the Donna divert resources to having someone like me plugged? I was beginning to think that my little canary had led me on a wild goose chase by dropping a name that I couldn’t ignore.
And just then, I saw it: a huge lump sum transferred to a bank account yesterday for a single “independent contractor”. And with phrases like “immediate erasure”, it didn’t take much to read between the lines. This was my hit.
Apparently the money for it was laundered through one of the Donna’s legitimate businesses: it came from the accounts of Violetta’s luxury spa, magnet for the city’s rich and overprivileged. I’d exhausted everything I could learn here, but if anyone else knew why this hit had been put out on me, it could be the people who paid for it. Time to get myself dolled up for a trip uptown.
