"What's going on?" April asked.

"Nothing," he said, but he didn't look happy. He inserted his key, opened his door, marched into his apartment, then stopped short, his eyes rolling up in his head.

"Jesus." He whistled softly. "Jesus, what the hell are you trying to do to me?"

Lying on Mike's sofa wearing the nightie Mike had bought April only three weeks ago was a girl with an absolutely stunning body. Nightie, color peach. Legs, long and brown. Hair, long and curly, dyed blond. Lips, big and red. Eyes, brown and surprised by the reaction she was getting from Mike. She was wearing no panties. April's first thought was: Where are my matching panties with the white lace?

"Oh my God, it's April!" the girl cried, jumping up. She wasn't a bit alarmed. "Oh my God, I've heard so much about you. Mike thinks the world of you." She crossed the living room to give April a hug. She was barefoot, tall. Looked about fifteen.

Mike intercepted her. "What are you doing here, Carla?" He took her by the arm. Speechless, April watched him.

"You promised me money for that dress, and then you left without giving it to me." Mike quick-stepped her toward the bedroom. "Put on some clothes and get out of here."

She turned her head to look at April. "Wow, April is so pretty. Just like you said, Mike."

"I never promised you money for a dress." Mike kept talking as he shoved her into the bedroom.

"How can I go to that party with my boyfriend with nothing to wear?" she complained.

"Carla, out!" Mike said.

"You said I could stay as long as I wanted," she wailed.

"I never said that."

"You did, you said-whatever I need, you'd see to it."

"You're going home now."

"I told you I can't. My parents would kill me," she squealed.

"Carla, you told me if I let you stay one night, you'd be out of here by ten."

"But, Mike, I have nothing to wear. I need some clothes. Come on, Mike, be a pal. Don't be mad. I made you guys dinner, didn't I?"

The voices faded when Mike closed the bedroom door. Then, Carla's voice, sulky but resigned. "Okay, okay, I'll go if you give me a hundred dollars… Oh, come on, Mike, you know I wouldn't have told my dad. He'd kill you."

Those were the last words April heard. She was out the front door, and taking the stairs because she didn't want to wait in the hall for the elevator. She took the stairs at a fast clip, her cell phone out. If she'd been another kind of girl, she might have stayed to hear his explanation and chew him out. But she wasn't in the mood. He'd let the girl spend the night. He hadn't told her. He'd stolen her case. Her back hurt like hell. She'd deal with all this tomorrow.

Her heart was an angry drumbeat in her chest. Her hands were sweaty and shaking. She realized she was mad enough to have shot them both. In one evening she could have given up her career and had a baby, or killed for love. She'd never wanted to be at risk for passion like that. She punched in the number of the nearest precinct, where an old school friend was Desk Sergeant. Only in this was she lucky today. Laura was on duty and answered herself.

"Laura, it's April Woo. Listen, could you send a unit for me? I'm on a case at the Garden Towers, know where that is? Yeah, that's right. My car won't start____________________

No, no, I don't need a tow truck. Just a lift." She gave the address and hung up. Great, now she was lying. But lying for love was a step up from killing for it.

By the time she got downstairs, a blue-and-white was pulling up in front of the building. Sometimes it paid to be a cop. She dove into the unit and gave her home address to the driver. Whatever Mike was doing to get Carla out of his place, he didn't do it in time.

She fumed all the way home to Astoria. More luck, bad this time, was Skinny Dragon Mother waiting at the door as she got out of the car.

"Spanish call tlee time. Something long?" she cried out into the street. Clearly, she hoped so.

Twenty-six

After the dog search and their encounter with the cops, David and Brandy were still a little high. David wanted Brandy to come to his place, so they took a taxi to the East Side apartment where his parents never were and the maid they called his nanny had already gone. The place was like a museum after closing, dead and deathly quiet. Not even the phone ever rang there. David took Brandy into his room.

"Want to see something to get you in the mood?" he asked.

"The mood for what?" Brandy bounced on his bed, knowing what this did to him.

"You promised, Bran, don't let me down again, okay?" he said angrily. He opened his laptop and turned it on.

She laughed. "Fine, let's see a movie." She knew he could show movies on the computer.

"This is better than a movie." He clicked a few buttons and brought a picture up on the screen that blew her away.

"Wow." She studied it with her thumb in her mouth. At first, like with her dad last night, she couldn't figure out what the two people were doing. Then she got it. "Holy shit!"

He clicked to the next one, then the next, and the next, running them quickly to show off his collection.

"Wait a minute, will you? Wow." She didn't know which interested her more, the spread legs and pussies of the old women, the young girls licking each other's teeny breasts, or the mature women with tits as impressive as hers in a threesome with a man whose cock was bigger than anything she'd ever thought existed in real life. She clicked her tongue pierce against her teeth and slapped at David's grabby hands when he swiveled around in his chair to get to her.

"Jesus. Is that thing real?" She hung over his shoulder, mesmerized. The picture showed a kid, maybe sixteen, seventeen, with his cock sticking straight up. It looked like a mushroom on a thick stem, huge, much bigger than David's. The boy's chest and belly and thing took up nearly the whole space except for the little girl with blond hair, about five, on the lower right of the screen looking at it with her mouth open and her little tongue showing. The title was "Little Sister 1."

David laughed. "Of course it's real. Want to see more?" "Little sister 2" showed the blond girl lying on her back with her finger stuck in her little hairless pussy and a different boy with a different-shaped penis hovering over her.

This made Brandy uneasy. "Do they do it?"

"Nah. In this series she just does blow jobs." David clicked and the picture disappeared, then clicked on a file called "Mom and Pop." In that one, a woman who looked a lot like Brandy's mother was on her hands and knees in a black bra with the nipples cut out. She had big tits. A guy as gorgeous as Brad Pitt with another huge cock was fucking her from behind. This one was a video, and Brandy could see the thing going in and out. She'd never seen anything like it. She wondered if he was doing it in her ass and noticed that the man was not wearing a condom. This made her uneasy, too.

David was all turned on by the pictures and her breathing on his neck. He swiveled the chair around and pulled her over so that she was standing between his legs. It annoyed her at first, but then he reached under her angora sweater, squeezed her breasts, and started breathing so hard she thought he'd have a stroke. She giggled and rubbed against him, undecided how far she'd go. He wasn't a very good kisser, but his cock was up there, and she almost felt like it. Almost.

"Oh, Bran," he moaned, pulling her over to his bed, a queen. A nice big bed with a bedspread that Brandy recognized as a Ralph Lauren. She liked the fifty-three-inch TV, too, but was not interested in it at the moment.

The laptop was on the desk. The same scene played over and over on the computer. David got on top of her, but Brandy kept her head turned away from his sucking kisses. She focused on the screen, where the cock kept going in and out. She liked watching it. David moved on top of her, trying to figure out what to do next, and she felt his cock trying to bulldoze through his clothes. His weight was crushing her.