John Rickards writes thrillers and crime fiction, as well as dabbling in short stories. Read samples or catch the latest news here, get in touch, or see what's going on at his personal blog.

Jesus had finished rubbing his cock between the Chinese prostitute’s oiled tits, had done with having her fondle his nutsack and asshole with her tongue while she fingered herself, and was fucking her like a jackhammer, all eroticism cast aside, when the call came. He barely broke rhythm as he fished his cell phone out of his discarded pants pocket and hit ‘call’.

“JC?” It was the lieutenant. “I need you to drop what you’re doing.”

The hooker, whose anglicized name was apparently ‘Lucy’, began to scream like a fox in heat and slap the bed with her hands, bucking against him in a frenzy. Jesus couldn’t tell if she was really coming or only pretending, but he didn’t care; he couldn’t hear the phone.

“Baby, shut the hell up,” he said, slowing his stroke. “I’m talking here.”

“What the name of sweet living fuck are you doing?” the lieutenant asked. “Actually, forget I said anything. I don’t want to know.”

“Sure.” Lucy was still writhing, but had clamped her mouth shut.

“Get over to Belmond Mansion in Russian Hill. Talk to an old man called Carmichael. He asked for you in particular to work a case. Something serious must’ve happened there.”

“I don’t know him.”

“I know he could buy himself a fair-sized country if he wanted to, and the chief said not to fuck this up. And to be discrete. I guess they must be golfing buddies or something. Otherwise I’m as much in the dark as you.”

“I’ll get on it.”

He hung up and tossed the phone aside. Grunting now, he slammed harder and harder into Lucy for another minute, sending her practically epileptic with faked orgasmic delight. Then he whipped his cock out of her and proceeded to masturbate furiously over her chest until he climaxed, spraying glistening, holy sperm across her breasts.

She lay there, panting, as he hauled on his clothes and tossed a couple of hundreds on the sweat-sodden sheets. “Hey,” she said. “You don’t give me much of a tip? I always do extra for you.”

He shrugged and reached for the door. “Tip?” He nodded at the sticky fluids clinging to her skin. “Sell your story to Dan Brown. He’ll make you famous.”

Jesus didn’t hang around to hear her response.

Russian Hill was so rich a city financier wouldn’t have been able to afford the ground rent on one of the birds’ nests in the trees lining its streets. Old houses, old money, old people. It was the most lifeless district in the city if you didn’t count the sprawling Rhine Valley Cemetary. Even if you did, it would still have been a photo finish. People only seemed to move there after spending their first eighty years making, or inheriting, a fuckton of cash elsewhere, like they needed somewhere quiet to retire to after spending a lifetime raping the rest of the world for all it was worth.

Belmond Mansion was a typical ten-bathroom mausoleum. By the time Jesus had climbed out of his car, a portly butler had opened one of the massive main doors and was holding it. Inside, the place was massive, cold and heavy on the marble. It had alcoves like most homes have family photos or light switches. Jesus felt the urge to flick his cigarette into one of them just to dirty the place up a little, but someone this rich would probably have specially-trained cigarette monkeys or cleaning robots or Father-knows-what and it’d be a futile gesture. He cursed to himself.

“Mr Carmichael is in his suite on the first floor,” the butler said, leading him towards the stairs.

“Big place, this.”

“Yes. Sir.”

“Have you worked here long?”

The butler paused and glanced back at Jesus. A look passed across his face, a kind of numb pain Jesus had usually only seen on war veterans and chat show hosts. Too long, it said. Every night I pray for death. “Nine years,” the butler said.

Carmichael’s suite of rooms was part luxury apartment, part intensive care unit. It was furnished like the private rooms of a gentlemen’s club that someone had decided to decorate with a few million dollars’ worth of cutting edge medical monitoring equipment. Jesus couldn’t tell exactly what all the screens and numbers and lights were supposed to be checking, but he didn’t really care. This was Russian Hill, where the very rich came to die very, very slowly, wallowing in the disgust of the rest of the city.

There was a humming noise and Carmichael himself glided out of a bedroom in a wheelchair that looked like it had been designed by Jaguar. He was ancient, skin not so much lined as paragraphed, with about four surviving hairs, a thriving collection of liver spots and eyes like black holes.

“Jesus Christ,” the old man said. He had a voice like warm, sticky shit.

“Mr Carmichael.”

“So good of the Chief to send you. He and I have known each other for quite some time. We share a common love for watching men dressed in rubber Santa Claus outfits being brutally sodomised with garden vegetables. It’s quite a small social circle.”

Jesus made a mental note to perform the Miracle of the Scrubbed Brain later on and ground his cigarette out on the no-doubt highly valuable rug. “Let’s not pretend we’re going to be buddies, Mr Carmichael,” he said. “I’m pretty fucking sure I’m going to hate you. Why am I here?”

“I thought you told people to love everyone.”

“I said ‘love thy neighbour’. You’re not my neighbour.”

“On a policeman’s salary, I’m not surprised.”

“Why am I here?”

“Last night I had something stolen from me. The thieves killed two of my guards and somehow managed to penetrate my private vault, taking a particular item from my collection. It is vital that they be apprehended.”

Jesus shrugged and lit another smoke. “I’m more homicide than robbery, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“It is imperative that my property be returned to me. Partly because it has considerable sentimental value to me, and partly–“

“First,” Jesus cut in, “what did they take? And I don’t see why you wanted me, a homicide detective, to go fetch some stolen property of yours. What’s so damned important?”

“My penis. I want you to recover my penis.”

 
 
 
 
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Expect to see a much shorter ‘Part 1A’ appearing tomorrow - I had two killer chapter ends and couldn’t bear to drop either of them. Also I’m lazy and don’t want to spend all weekend writing about sacred cocks.

For those who’re new to HJ, you can find the earlier story’s three parts in this list of posts.

Enjoy.