Whore D’Oeuvres

by Gary Clifton

Culled from the society of parasitic jackasses who live under bridges, DeRosie McGurk was a paroled murderer, a whore, and dumber than a day-old dog.  Whores usually develop instincts— when to run, when to negotiate. DeRosie was stuck behind the door in whore school when they did the part about common sense.

That evening, she’d wandered a block further east on Main. In the blazing humid swelter, she slouched against a light pole in six-inch spike heels, her yellow shorts exposing the lower half of her pudgy, soon to be too fat to fuck, ass.

The yellow cab wheeled to the curb. DeRosie was out to mental lunch. The cabdriver, James Jackson, was big, black, and just as tough as he looked. The back seat passenger, Justin Minelli, was slender, with shoulder-length blond hair and two days beard stubble.

Every whore, pimp, panhandler, grafter, thug, and the one-legged guy who shined shoes at Slick Willie’s Barbecue knew that damned yellow cab was a police vehicle and anybody riding in or on it was a cop. DeRosie was about to get screwed . . . or not, depending on interpretation.

She leaned down to make eye contact with Minelli who was waving a handful of Ben Franklins— that’s hundred-dollar bills in human-speak. “Hey, baby,” she purred. “Wanna party?”

“Uh, golly,” Minelli stammered like a tourist from Hooterville. “Whud you have in mind?”

“Gimme one of them hunnerts. I suck yo’ dick fer a half hour. Two and it’s a whole hour.”

Funny about the whore laws. No “crime” is committed until the vendor of said pussy makes a cash offer first. Cops name a price first— no case. DeRosie had just stepped on her legal tallywacker.

Minelli casually stepped out and flashed a badge. “You’re under arrest for solicitation of prostitution.”

“Oh, fuck me,” DeRosie wailed.

“Not tonight dear, he has a headache,” Jackson said as he stepped around the yellow cab.

And in the whore business, that should have been it. DeRosie’s pimp would bond her out in an hour and in two more she’d earn back the five hundred bail money. But, oh hell, no.  DeRosie had been watching those dumbass police shows on TV.

In six-inch heels, she broke east on the sidewalk, veered across Oak, fell on her face, tore the ass out of the yellow shorts, skinned a knee, and narrowly avoided being run over by an old F150 driven by Oscar Ramirez, down from Texarkana trolling for pussy while drunk as a blind orangutan. Ramirez skidded into a utility pole, broke his nose, and totaled the F150.

DeRosie was in time-out. Minelli slipped the cuffs on her and called for an ass-patching ambulance.

A uniformed beat cop parked his cruiser and strolled over, preceded a full yard by his beer belly. Jackson and Minelli knew him well. Which one disliked him the most would have been a hell of a contest.

His name tag read “Leander Griffin.” “Hail Far, Minelli,” he whined. He was fortyish with about a year’s hair left. “Another fuckin’ tentacle off the arm of organized crime? Ain’t Vice got nuthin’ better to do than make piss-assed whore busts on my beat without notifying me?” He waved a carload of gawkers to move on. “This dopey chick really name a price?”

Jackson peered over his gold-rimmed half-glasses.

“Leander, somethin’ you oughta fuckin’ know. When me and Minelli came on tonight, I asked him four, maybe five times, if he gave a shit about what ol’ lard-ass Leander Griffin thought about how we handled things tonight . . . if you get my drift. So when you’re finished assisting the driver of that fucked-up F150, kindly haul this beat-up bitch to jail and do your damnedest to keep your ass outta our bidness.”

DeRosie, her ass torn, lower than a worm’s testicles, sat bleeding on a curb watching the entire exchange. “Griffin?” she finally said. “If you gonna be haulin’ my ass to Sterrett, don’t be thinkin’ you gonna make me suck yo’ pencil dick again . . . lessen’ of course you got one o’ them hunnerts.”

Griffin’s expression, as he looked at Jackson and Minelli, was like he’d just swallowed a very large dog turd.

Gary Clifton, forty years a cop, has been shot at, stabbed, sued, lied to about, frequently misunderstood, and run over by a dope dealer called “Pisswilly” in a green Mustang, missing the right front fender. A Review Editor for Bewildering Stories Magazine, he has published upwards of 130 short fiction pieces in various venues and six published novels: Henry Paul Brannigan: Stories Worth Tellin' https://books2read.com/u/3n2Zo8; Echoes of Distant Shadows https://books2read.com/EchoesClifton; Never on Monday https://a.co/d/2THVqba; Nights on Fire https://a.co/d/dUDpm0T; Murdering Homer https://a.co/d/1wn6aOI; Dragon Marks Eight https://a.co/d/dpfPA3l

Now 85 and retired to a dusty North Texas Ranch, he doesn’t give much of a damn if school keeps or not. Clifton has a Masters in Psychology from Abilene Christian University.