Read Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee for Free Online Page A

them, and always dropped
them off where they wanted, and he even paid a little more
than the going street price for services, which was low anyway. Street whores were his jones.
    She rubbed her upper arms, itching for the pipe. "Look,
you gave me a hundred for an hour, and that's good money
but-" She pointed to the clock in the dash. "you've
got fifteen minutes left so if you want any action on that
c-note, we better get started."
    He put the glasses down a moment to light a cigarette. "I
told you, this one's not a trick, I just want you to talk." He
looked back to the house. "About there."
    "I've seen you cruising all the time but you've never
picked me up. Then the other chicks tell me you're a great
john-"
    He almost laughed. "Thanks"
    "Now you got me and you don't want nothing."
    "I just want to know about the house, and the girl in the
picture."
    "I told you pretty much everything... " Her attention seemed to slip. "How did you even know I'd been to the
house in the first place?"

    Clements spewed smoke, ghost-like, out the window.
With no breeze at all, it seemed to hover as it spread--2 disembodied face looking back. "One of the other girls told
me.
    "Which one?"
    Clements sighed. "Teardrop, Snowdrop, Candy-something like that."
    "Well, I told ya, I saw the girl, Debbie, one time."
    "This girl?" Clements made her clarify and showed her
the picture again. "You're sure?"
    Her eyes dragged back. Now she had her hands on her
knees, rocking them back and forth. "Yeah."
    "What was she doing? Was she doing sexual stuff?"
    "Nope. It was weird. So many people walkin' around in
there naked, or barely wearing anything, but then I saw her
come down the hall, wearing business-chick stuff."
    "Was she affiliated with the Hildreth's porn business?"
    "I don't know."
    "You see her do drugs?"
    "No. Not the one time I saw her. One of guys was taking me and the other girls-"
    "The other hookers?"
    "Yeah, he was taking us to our room. He called it the
something-or-other parlor; it had a name, a lot of them
rooms did, and it was upstairs on the third floor. Then the
girl--Debbie---stops us and asked if we needed anything.
Seemed kind'a nice. She brought us some bottled water, and
that was it. That was the one and only time I saw her."
    "How many times were you in the house total?"
    "Six, seven."
    "How'd you hear about the place, the gig?"

    "Brandy."
    One of the three, Clements realized. One of the three who got
their throats cut. He snorted a laugh. "You're a lucky girl."
    "I know I was supposed to be there that night but I was
in county detent. A plainclothes U.S. Marshal busted me on
34th Street. Can ya believe it? And I'd have been there, too,
in a heartbeat. Something even told me in my gut-had a
bad feeling, you know? Told me if I worked 34th Street, I'd
get busted. And look what happens. I spend the night in jail,
and my three friends get killed." She glanced anxiously back
out the window, not at the house, at the night. "Maybe
there really is a God"
    Clements dragged his cigarette. "Yeah. Maybe there is."
When he looked back in the binoculars, he kept talking.
"What were you saying earlier, about another door, a special
entrance?"
    "It's way over on the side, it was between two windows,
and didn't really even look like a door. That's where they'd
park the limo, and it was a different road to the house, not
this main drive out here."
    Hmm, he thought. "I didn't know that. I'll need you to
show me that access when we leave."
    "Yeah, sure, when we leave in-" She looked at the dash
clock again. "-in five minutes. But that side door? It
wasn't just the hookers they'd bring in that way, it was
everyone."
    "I wonder why."
    "I don't know Maybe they were worried about someone
watching the house."
    "Why would someone watch the house?"
    She stopped wagging her knees enough to laugh. "Man,
what are you doing?"
    "Oh, yeah," he muttered behind the binoculars. He had to think a minute to get his mind back