Shakespeare's Trollop Read Online Free PDF Page A

her.” Deedra had mentioned that to me the last time I’d cleaned the apartment, just this past Friday. She’d been running late for work, as she all too often did. “Last Friday, she told me that she was getting calls at two or three in the morning. Really nasty calls from a guy…somehow disguising his voice, talking about sexual torture.”
    I could see Deedra, sitting on the end of the very bed we stood by now, easing up her pantyhose and sliding her narrow feet into brown low-heeled pumps. Deedra’s head, crowned by its sexily tousled and newly red hair, had been bent to her task, but Deedra kept her head tucked quite a bit anyway to minimize her sharply receding chin, without a doubt her worst feature. She’d stood and scanned herself in the mirror, tugging at the top of the beige suit she thought appropriate for her job in the courthouse. A typical Deedra selection, the suit was just a bit too tight, a smidge too short, and a half-inch too low in the neckline.
    Deedra had leaned over to peer into the mirror to apply her lipstick. Her dresser, with its triple mirror, was literally covered with bottles and plastic cases of makeup. Deedra was a virtuoso with foundation, rouge, and eye shadow. She’d had a real gift for it, for using cosmetics to make her look her very best with every outfit she wore. She’d studied the human face and the alterations and illusions a skilled applicator could effect.
    I could still see how Deedra had looked as she’d half-turned to tell me what the caller had proposed to do to her; her lower lip a glossy peach and her upper lip bare, her clothes and hair and demeanor just a careful step away from floozy.
    â€œDid she say who she thought he was, the man calling her?”
    I shook my head. “Can you check her phone records?” I asked.
    â€œIt’ll take a while, but we’ll get ’em,” Marta said.
    Her deputy stuck his head into the room. “I’ve finished searching the bathroom,” Emanuel said, his eyes scanning us curiously. “What now?”
    â€œExtra bedroom,” the sheriff said. “And bag the sheets on the top of the washer.”
    His head vanished.
    â€œWhat about him?” I asked.
    â€œWhat?” she said, as if she was about to get angry.
    â€œDid he know Deedra?”
    Her face changed, then, and I knew she was involved with Clifton Emanuel to some degree.
    â€œI don’t know,” she said. “But I’ll find out.”
    Â 
    Janet Shook aimed a kick at my stomach, and I arched back to dodge it. My hand shot out and gripped her ankle, and then I had her.
    â€œStop!” called a commanding voice. “Okay, what are you going to do now, Janet?” our sensei continued. He was leaning against the mirrored wall, his arms folded across his chest.
    We had frozen in position, Janet balancing easily on one foot, my fingers still circling her ankle. The seated class, looking like a strange nursery school in their loose white gis , studied the problem.
    Janet looked grim. “Land on my butt, looks like,” she conceded, after a moment’s evaluation. I heard a couple of snorts of laughter.
    â€œLily, what would you do next, now that you’re in control of the situation?” Marshall’s faintly Asian face gave me no hint of the best answer.
    â€œI’d keep going up on the ankle,” I told him, “like so.” I lifted Janet’s right foot another inch, and the knee of her supporting left leg began to buckle.
    Marshall nodded briefly. He faced the other class members. Like the rest of us, Marshall was barefoot and wearing his gi . Its snowy whiteness, broken only by the black belt and the fist patch on his chest, emphasized the ivory of his skin. “How could Janet have avoided this situation?” he asked the motley group sitting against the mirrored wall. “Or having gotten into it, how can she get out?”
    Raphael Roundtree,