Plainclothes Naked by Jerry Stahl Read Free Book Online

about the subject.”
    McCardle dried his palms on his pant legs. “That’s because I care! I don’t think a real woman should have to make herself small. Women, some women, were meant to be big. I believe . . .” Here he stopped, grinning shyly, eyes lowered to the unpolished floor. “I believe women like you are the kind of women that God would want if ... if God messed around with women.”
    Carmella paused, then hip-bumped the door open. “So you’re one of those, eh?” She pulled the door shut behind them, careful not to slam, and brought her face very close to his. “Well listen, maricón, I don’t see you pointing no gun, so don’t think Carmella is going along with this ’cause she’s scared you know jiujitsu. The only reason I have not splattered you off the wall already is ’cause your boyfriend is out there with my car. I can’t afford to have some loco freak who beats his mother in public do something to my car.”
    McCardle, crestfallen, sulked by the file cabinet while Carmella opened a middle drawer and walked her fingers over the tops of the file folders. “Aha,” she sang, plucking out a hazy Xerox of Tina’s driver’s license. “You’re lucky I remembered her last name. Podolsky. What kind of a name is that for such a pretty girl? I was her, I’d change it.”
    Carmella whomped the drawer shut with her buttocks and handed over the paper. Then, with no warning, she grabbed McCardle’s face. She jerked it right and left under the light, checking his profile. McCardle continued to pout, but her violent interest, the way she squeezed his cheeks, really hurting him, gave him all kinds of hope.
    “Do I know you?” she asked suddenly. “I feel like I know you.”
    McCardle guessed what was coming next. He gazed moistly up at her, resting against a metal desk with a Dilbert cartoon taped to the computer monitor. (He didn’t get people who went to work. Why didn’t they just steal something expensive and quit?) From this point on, things could go a couple of ways. But if they went the way he
    wanted, he wondered how much time he’d have alone with Carmella before Tony got antsy and came barging in.
    “Oh my God,” squealed Carmella, when the synapse she’d been waiting for fired off. “ America’s Most Wanted ! You killed that chavalla with a shovel.”
    “It wasn’t my fault.” McCardle protested. “He tried to brain me with a fire extinguisher.”
    But Carmella wasn’t listening. “There’s a reward, right?”
    Unconsciously, she fingered the wad between her breasts. She imagined how thick it would feel with a hundred thousand friends folded around it.
    “You’re mine now,” she said, which McCardle took as his cue.
    The little strong man looked from side to side, then lowered his voice theatrically. “Listen, baby, you want to make some money, I can get you something worth a lot more than my black ass.”
    McCardle slid toward her on the desk, until his bulging thighs grazed her swollen stretch pants. She reached for the phone and he stopped her. His tiny hand clamped hers like a turtle on its mother’s back.
    Carmella considered an elbow to the neck but held off. “How much more and what I gotta do to get it?”
    “That all depends,” said McCardle, easing his phone hand free, pirouetting his fingertips off one of Carmella’s haunches. It was all he could do not to try and climb her right there. “I’m gonna be conser vative and say a million. But, like I say, that’s being conservative.”
    Carmella did some figuring. She sucked on her ring finger and gazed out the window, where her car sat at the far corner of the park ing lot. An agitated Zank could be seen pacing in front of it, popping his fist in his hand. If she didn’t call America’s Most Wanted just this minute, McCardle would not be worth any less tomorrow. The reward wouldn’t go away unless someone else dialed 1-800-NOCRIME, or he disappeared.
    Carmella made up her mind. She whipped sideways and