Poisoned Pearls Read Online Free PDF Page A

class.
    Tonight, I believed her, though most of the correspondence
schools were a scam. Taking people’s money and giving them false hope.
    Still. She had to have some level of pre-cognition to get
caught in a loop that way. The next time I saw her, I was going to be sure to
ask about it. Maybe this had been the first time it had happened, though.
    I pulled a pack of cigarettes from below the counter and
passed a smoke to Angela.
    She nodded her thanks, then hurried away, her boots clicking
across the floor.
    Maybe getting out of my presence would shake Angela free.
She wasn’t going to be good for any kind of conversation until she could get
out of the loop.
    Then again, her clients didn’t pay her to talk.
    So the streets were clean, though that didn’t mean anything
to me. Since the new mayor had decided to “Revitalize the Downtown Area,”
garbage got picked up off the streets and out of the alleys every other day.
    I remembered Kyle’s body slumped in the alley behind the
shop, how the EMTs had taken it away and swept everything clean. Was that what
she’d meant? That though there was a body, maybe more, that they wouldn’t stay
around for long?
    And that people were good? I couldn’t contain my snort. That
sure as fuck wasn’t true. I’d learned that early, at my mom’s knee, when she’d
found me making out with another girl on my sweet sixteenth and given me the option
of turning straight or leaving.
    Fucking Republican Senator wannabe.
    I hadn’t seen her for years, except on the other side of a
TV screen, and I still hated her guts.
    And how the fuck was I supposed to be careful about what I
saw? Admittedly, that part fried my ass the most. I wasn’t about to stop
looking, or look away, if I saw something.
    Particularly something bad happening in my neighborhood.
    Sure, most of my friends were junkies and whores. But this
was still my patch of turf, and they were still my friends. I always had my
friends’ backs, whether they reciprocated or not.
    Nope. I wasn’t about to look away.

Chapter Two
    Of course, my night didn’t get any better. Not given my
luck. No, it had started sliding down that sweet slope of sheer fucked when the
cops had first shown up and demanded that I accompany them and identify the
body of my friend Kyle in the cold alley out behind the store.
    Then, after the cops, and my friend Angela’s warning, who
should show up at my store but Ms. Monroe, the post-cog who was working for the
cops on Kyle’s case?
    She seemed perfectly at home in Chinaman Joe’s Good Luck
Parlor, despite the fact that she was way overdressed for such a dive. Her mink
looked like it was more expensive than all the toys in the store combined. I
swear even the fluorescent lights overhead stopped hissing above her.
    The almost-tasteful display of condoms on the large table at
the front drew her attention first. Black velvet covered the table and the
display stands, with a sprinkling of white glitter in the center to suggest
snow, or at least that was what Chinaman Joe had claimed.
    Every condom on the table had been filled with air. Each
waved proudly on its stand like a party balloon. Instead of the standard
colors, we’d done a group of red and green ones, with some gold and purple
mixed in as well.
    After Ms. Monroe had circled the table, she wandered down
the first aisle.
    I called out to her, “Let me know if you need any help.” I
wasn’t about to go any closer to her than I needed to. I was already in enough
trouble as it was, wondering how soft her hair really was, what it would feel
like when I pulled it, if she’d moan or squeak when I pinched a nipple.
    Three times five is fifteen.
    Ms. Monroe poked her head out from the second aisle, holding
up “Black Billy”—the supposedly realistic dong of some porn star that was
almost as big as my fist and about as long as my forearm.
    And I don’t have small hands.
    The “real flesh tone” color was a corpse-like gray-brown,
and I bet there