Damaged Goods Read Online Free PDF Page A

his bulk with his knees and elbows, content to feel the impossible hot-wet sensation of her flesh surrounding his. He lay there until she began to move under him, drawing him deeper and deeper. He wanted her to reach out for her own orgasm, to snatch the prize like a thief reaching into a jewelry display case.
    Betty, who’d been through this before, let her fingers trail over his ribs, her tongue trail over his throat; she waited until he began to tire, then reached beneath her right thigh, took his testicles in her hand, and squeezed hard enough to flip him onto his back.
    The games were over, the foreplay done; they’d been with each other long enough to know it. Sweat dripped from Betty’s breasts onto Moodrow’s chest as she began to move faster, as Moodrow, eager now, rose up to meet her plunging hips. Eventually, their breathing joined as tightly as their bodies, they found a space without separation, when thought itself had drawn down to a small knot of sensation, and they exploded together.
    For the next several minutes, neither spoke; they simply lay beside each other, hands clasped, and allowed the sweat coating their bodies to evaporate while they waited for the practical realities to force them into action. Betty moved first. She turned onto her side, ran the backs of her fingers over Moodrow’s cheek, then headed off to the bathroom.
    When Moodrow heard the water running in the shower, he leaned back and tried to relax. He was grateful for what they’d just done, happy that he’d been able to give her what the occasion demanded. Each of them knew this separation could last for weeks, even months. The cousins, Betty and Marilyn, had been very close as children, had actually lived together for a brief time. It didn’t take a computer genius to conclude that Betty wouldn’t return as long as Marilyn needed her.
    Meanwhile, the intense, throbbing pain in the back of his skull kept reminding him that no matter how good the night, he’d had a very bad day. And the worst of it was that he could easily have done what Landis Security eventually did. There were several computer companies in New York that specialized in providing information to private detectives; he’d known about them, even had a rough idea of their capabilities. But he’d stuck to the paths he’d always walked, burnt that shoe leather, just like he’d been taught by the NYPD sergeant who’d broken him in. Forty years ago.
    Maybe, he thought, I should stop taking cases from people who have money. People who disappear and then open bank accounts.
    Bank accounts had never been a factor when the job had him chasing down Lower East Side mutts. The mutts didn’t use credit cards, either. At least, not their own credit cards. Street criminals left trails of blood, not paper. You ran them down by grabbing their friends, relatives, and coconspirators. By getting information any way you could. By pleading, by trading, or by outright extortion.
    Moodrow sat up, let his feet drop over the side of the bed, tried to ignore a sudden burst of pain. Computers are just machines, he told himself, and if I don’t intend to retire, I have to get with the program. It probably won’t be that hard, won’t be like that VCR, which I still can’t program. Or the clock on the microwave, which I still can’t set.
    But the problem, he knew, was more basic than his failure to adjust to household technology. He simple couldn’t imagine his six-foot-six-inch frame sitting behind a desk in some adult-education course. Couldn’t imagine himself, at age sixty, raising his hand to answer a question.
    “Teacher, teacher, teacher.”
    He shoved himself erect, put on a light robe, and headed for the bathroom. The water in the shower had stopped running. Betty would be combing out her hair, dusting herself with powder, squeezing a line of toothpaste onto a worn, red brush. He stopped for a moment, his hand on the doorknob, and let himself think about how much he was