Eric-Derek was a hit man for the organization who started double-dipping. He had one client who wanted certain people dead, and a new client, a doctor, who wanted live bodies. Getting two paydays for one body seemed like a good deal, as long as the very nasty people he worked for never found out about it. See the Note at the beginning of the story.

NOTE, or perhaps a WARNING. This characters and the plot were originally conceived to create an amusing, or at least light, tale, centered, predictably, around some transformations. But neither the characters nor the plot would cooperate. The former revealed themselves to be a group of very unpleasant people, not at all amusing, and the latter kept veering away from the TG characters almost to the point where they disappeared. What is left, I think, is an entertaining story, but don't expect a big TG element. Or any laughs.

 

The Body In The Rugx

by

RJMcD

 

Henry Pincus looked in his rear view mirror and saw flashing red lights rapidly approaching. He was a professional and he didn't panic but he did check the speedometer. Three miles an hour over the limit.

He glanced at the mirror again. Definitely a cop car, not an ambulance, and on a Tuesday at 3 am there wasn't all that much traffic, even in Philadelphia on I-95, so they could very easily be after him. He had the urge to get out of there but he'd passed the Broad St. exit and the JFK, or the Spectacor or the Wachovia Complex or whatever the hell they called it this week ("How you doin'?"). The road was already three or four stories in the air and there was nowhere to run.

He turned and took a quick look at the rolled up rug in the back of his van. No body parts were peeking out. If it was a simple traffic stop he'd be okay. But what was he doing wrong to be stopped? The white van was dirty, but it wasn't old and he'd checked to make sure all the lights worked. He was a pro, after all.

The patrol car was getting very close when it suddenly changed lanes, passing Henry Pincus and the white van and the body in the rug.

"Good," said Henry, and proceeded onto the Walt Whitman Bridge, fourteen stories over the Delaware River and into New Jersey.

Pincus was double-dipping: a contract for a hit on a minor mob guy named Stevie Balukowski and delivery of the same Stevie Balukowski, alive, to Dr. Moss. It was their third transaction and Henry was beginning to feel very comfortable with the guy.

Dr. Moss knew him as Johnny Belson, which was no more his real name than was Henry Pincus and he figured Moss knew that because he didn't strike Henry (or Johnny) as a dummy. Not being a dummy was crucial.

If the people that contracted for the killing of Stevie Balukowski found out that Henry hadn't caused Stevie to stop breathing and hadn't dumped Stevie's body in a Jersey swamp it wouldn't be a good thing. Dr. Moss, not being a dummy, would know that if those people found out that he had delivered a still breathing Stevie Balukowski – in fact, if a breathing Stevie Balukowski showed up anywhere on earth – they would hurt Henry (Johnny) and Henry (Johnny) would tell them about Dr. Moss. That's why it was important that Dr. Moss wasn't a dummy.

Henry (whose real name was Eric-Derek Smith-Smythe, but we won't go there; it's a far less interesting aside than it appears to be) had recently made a decision, and that decision was simply to change occupations. He wasn't sure to what occupation he would change, but he was only thirty-one and assumed, not quite correctly, that he had all of the world's occupations open to him.

Double-dipping wasn't really his style because it was risky, but once he had decided that he didn't want to kill people for a living any longer he began thinking about how rapidly he could accumulate a bankroll bigger than the one nestled in his safety deposit box in a bank in Secaucus, New Jersey. Much bigger.

Henry's destination was a rural town about halfway between Philadelphia and Atlantic City. That's where Dr. Moss lived and Dr. Moss was who he thought about as he drove through the night.

Normally Henry received his contracts through a drop or from Stosh Lutski, the one guy in the organization that had seen his face. This time he'd had to meet the man buying the contract because the object was an identical twin. Dr. Moss was the buyer. He had to point out the correct twin, who was his partner in a construction company. Henry had de-partner him, and a month later Dr. Moss had sent word that he wanted to see Henry again. The word had been passed to Henry by Stosh Lutski, who frowned a lot when he told him about the call.

"I don't know, Johnny," Stosh said (he only knew Henry as Johnny, just like Dr. Moss did).

"What?" Henry asked.

"A month and he wants somebody else hit? This guy's a civilian. It ain't normal," Stosh said.

"Maybe something went wrong I should know about," Henry said.

"Maybe something went wrong you shouldn't know about," Stosh said. "That's all I'm saying."

So Henry had scared the crap out of Dr. Moss.

First, he watched him for two days. Dr. Moss was easy to lose in a crowd of two. He was medium height, medium weight, middle-aged, with brown hair and brown eyes and no outstanding features. He even dressed in neutral colors.

Moss went to his construction company Monday morning, then his clinic Monday afternoon. He was home alone in a spacious country house in the evening. Tuesday it was the opposite: clinic in the morning, construction company in the afternoon. Then home alone.

At 2 am Henry had slipped the lock on the kitchen window, let himself in, and gone up to the dark master bedroom where he scared the crap out of Dr. Moss.

Moss reacted to the hand on his shoulder by shrugging in his sleep. The hand – Henry's hand – had insisted and Moss groggily came awake. When he realized someone was in his bedroom he jumped up, flattening himself against the headboard, and put his hands out in a defensive gesture.

Henry turned on a light by the bed and said hello.

"Jesus, you scared the crap out of me," Moss said.

"You wanted to see me . . . again?" Henry said.

"Damn, Johnny," Moss said, complaining and stalling as he tried to get completely awake. "Damn."

Henry waited.

"Turn on the light – by the door," Moss said.

Henry moved, but kept an eye on Moss. When he flipped on the light he saw Moss rubbing his face.

"Who do you want done?" Henry said.

"Who? Who?" Moss said, sounding like he was imitating an owl.

"The other twin?"

"Sean?" Moss said, looking startled. "Sean's a sweetheart. Salt of the earth. Why would I ever . . . "

Henry waited.

"Jeez, Johnny," Moss said. "Let's go downstairs and have a cup of coffee. Then we can talk."

Henry went with him, walking behind him down the stairs and through the house to the kitchen. Moss turned on the coffeemaker and got out cups, spoons, cream and sugar. When he finally sat down he was his normal self.

"I thought you would call, or come by during the evening," Moss said. "That's why I've been alone at night."

Henry nodded.

"I had an idea," Moss said. "I think you may like it, if it fits with what you do, and I think it does."

That was the evening Henry Pincus decided to double-dip. Dr. Moss, it turned out, was in the market for bodies – alive, not dead. But bodies that would never turn up again. Disposable people, but only with certain characteristics. He wanted males, healthy, slim, on the short side, and under thirty. "Under twenty-five would be better still."

Henry was uncertain. "That's pretty particular," he said. "Most of people who make serious enemies are serious people. Guys with money, power, and they're in their forties at the least. Mostly fifties, sixties, even seventies and eighties."

"Why kill somebody in their eighties?" Dr. Moss asked, curious. "Why not wait them out?"

"Guys who take contracts aren't the kind of guys that wait things out," Henry said.

"No, no, I suppose not," Dr. Moss said. "Well, those are my requirements. For each one you bring me I'll pay you the same as I paid you for Denny." Denny was the twin. "I only need three, maybe four; a couple months apart."

"They can never show up anywhere, not alive anyway," Henry said. "It wouldn't be good for me."

"Oh, I understand that completely," Dr. Moss said. "I can absolutely guarantee that. It wouldn't be good for me, either."

"Because I'd kill you," Henry said.

"Johnny!" Moss exclaimed, sitting back in his chair. "Johnny, you didn't have to say that. I know. I understand. It would never happen." He put his elbows back on the kitchen table. "I thought we were friends. Not close friends, but I thought we sort of struck a common chord. We hit it off. Was I wrong?"

Henry was reluctant to admit it but Moss was right. They had hit it off. "Naw," he said. "You weren't wrong."

"Good. Now. Can do?"

Henry thought about it. "One every couple months? It doesn't clock out that way. I never know until a couple weeks before. It's not like I pick and choose. I get assignments. Contracts."

"Sure, sure, I understand," Dr. Moss said. "But sometimes you get somebody that fits my requirements?"

"Sometimes," Henry agreed.

"Think of me," Moss said. "That's all I can ask."

They went over the details. Though Henry was enough of a pro to ask Moss what he would do with the live bodies he wasn't really sure he wanted to know and ended up with the question still inside his brain. Truth be told, the doctor stuff put him off a little. He imagined – no, he didn't even get as far as imagining; medical things were too Dr. Frankenstein. He didn't even like getting shots. Killing someone was okay, but a needle? No thank you.

Much to Henry's amazement the arrangement had worked out pretty good. He had delivered two live though unconscious bodies to Dr. Moss, ten weeks apart, and here he was, a little over three months after the last delivery, pulling into the doctor's driveway with Stevie Balukowski in a rug.

Moss was waiting for him and parted the living room curtains to let Henry see him. Then he went through the house to the garage and flipped the switch that opened one of the garage doors. When Henry had driven in and the door was shut behind him he got out of the van.

Moss was grinning. "This is working out so good," he said. "Let's see what we've got."

They pulled the rug from the sliding side door of the van, with Moss doing most of the work. Henry wasn't large enough to add any muscle to the process and it was, after all, Moss's package.

The rug was unrolled and Moss looked at the catch. "Not bad," he said. "Good, in fact."

This was the part that Henry disliked. Dr. Moss was enthralled with his new body, moving the head around to look carefully at the facial features, throwing the rug back to get a look at the body, anxious to start doing . . . well, whatever he did with them. Henry flicked that question from his mind. And he waited. Moss would want him to help carry Balukowski into the house before the thought of money even entered his head. Henry grabbed the feet.

And that was the way it worked. They had Balukowski stretched out on the carpet in the den and had checked the ropes around his wrists and ankles, and the doctor had looked at the body a little more carefully.

"I wonder what a young guy like this could have done to make somebody so mad," the doctor said.

Henry shrugged. He wasn't about to tell Moss that Stosh had said that Balukowski had double-crossed a boss in some way and that the boss was "stupendously mad", in Stosh's phrase. He had instructions to hurt Balukowski before he killed him, but Henry wasn't into that. Besides, he wasn't going to kill him, just wrap him in a rug for shipment. Not that he would have told Stosh that. The secret of survival was giving up as little as you could.

Moss finally turned to Henry and said, "Well, I expect you want your fee." He went to his desk and came back with a small paper bag. There was no hesitation in handing it to Henry.

"I think we need to slow down a little," Moss said.

"Oh?" Henry said. He had gotten to like seeing his stash growing at a rapid rate and wasn't happy with what the doctor was saying. It was like new car fever: once he got the idea of changing occupations in his head it was all he thought about.

"Yes," Moss said. "In fact, we need to slow down quite a bit. I was a little too excited about the idea at first. I may have overreached. Now with three I . . . well, three is quite a lot. Very time consuming."

"You don't want any more?" Henry asked.

"Oh, I do," Moss said. "Just not for a while."

"How long a while?"

"Well, ten months maybe? A year? Something of that order. I'll call you."

Henry, always the pro, didn't let anything show. "Okay," he said.

"I hope it doesn't disrupt any plans you might have had," Moss said.

Henry titled his head in feigned misunderstanding.

"For the money, I mean," Moss said. "I've given you a lot of money so far and people can get used to that."

"Paid me," Henry corrected.

"Paid. Of course," Moss said. "On delivery." He smiled, trying to erase the faux pas.

Henry smiled back. "No problem," he said. "I'll wait for your call."

 

 

Chapter Two

It was Stosh Lutski who called. They set up a meet at Latkes, Lattes & Lap Dances out toward Bryn Mawr. Stosh always liked to meet in a place both outside the city and where he could eat.

"'Lo, Henry," Stosh said. He had arrived first and found a table.

"Hello, Stosh. How's it goin'."

"Pretty good. We got one for you."

Henry tilted his head. "Straight to business?"

Stosh shifted his bulky frame on the chair. "Sorry, Henry. How you doin'?"

It wasn't right, and Henry got up and moved to the chair on the right, which was to Stosh's left. Now his back was to the wall. He leaned toward the man and said, "I got an ear infection. I'm not hearing so good and I don't want to make you talk too loud, considering the subject matter."

While he was talking he was casing the over-dressed restaurant/bar. Everything was a little too fancy, a little too gaudy, but he didn't care about that. He was looking at the people, staff and customers, and any doors where someone could suddenly appear. The people looked okay, but something was off.

"I had an ear infection once," Stosh said. "You gotta be careful with them, Henry. They can kill ya."

Henry looked Stosh in the eyes and Stosh looked straight back at him.

What the hell? Stosh was saying that Henry was marked. But why?

"I think there's a mistake, Stosh," Henry said. "An ear infection can't be fatal."

"No mistake, Henry," Stosh said.

The waiter came then and they fell silent. Stosh had ordered for both of them and they watched the food being put on their table. Henry was looking, but he was trying to figure it out. He was a professional killer, not the victim. Why would the organization want to hit him?

When the waiter left Stosh said, "You don't want to see a doctor for that ear infection. They see so many sick people that they get sick all the time themselves. Ear infections, too."

Dr. Moss was gong to be hit, too. Somehow they'd found out about Henry's double-dipping. Just when things were going so good his life had suddenly turned to crap.

Henry made eye contact with Stosh for the second time. He nodded, almost imperceptibly. Stosh held the eye contact for a moment more, then looked down at the plates and, in a hearty voice, said, "It looks good."

"Yeah, it does," Henry said, picking up a fork. "Thanks."

When they left the restaurant they walked to the parking lot and Stosh gave him the envelope with information on the next job, but they both knew that there was no job, only a set-up that would leave Henry dead.

Stosh could find himself on somebody's hit list if they knew what he'd done. Some day he'd thank Stosh in a big way for the warning. If he lived long enough.

He didn't feel any obligation to warn Moss; they were business associates, not buddies. Besides, Moss might already be dead. So what should he do? As he saw it he could either run, just as far and as fast as he could, or he could try and clear himself with the organization. He had other identities set up, a house in the country under still another name, but he really hated the idea of hiding for the rest of his life. It would be nerve-wracking. He couldn't see himself doing it. And wasn't there a chance they would eventually find him? Of course there was.

That meant he had to figure out what went wrong and then figure out how to make it right. If it could be made right. If Moss was still alive he might be able find out how the organization discovered his double-dipping. Or not. Moss may be more in the dark than he was. Whatever, it was time to scare the crap out of the doctor again.

 

 

Chapter Three

The doctor's bed was empty. He wasn't dead. Henry had seen him come home, had seen lights appear in various windows, and then disappear until the house was dark. The darkness had happened at 10 pm, but Henry had waited until 1 am before entering.

Dark house, empty bed. One and one didn't equal two. Henry began prowling. Upstairs there were two other bedrooms, both with neatly made beds, an office, two bathrooms, and a storage room that should have been another bedroom, all unoccupied The den, a recreation/TV room, kitchen, dining room, laundry room, two bathrooms, a utility room and the huge living room downstairs were also empty. The pitch of the roof meant the house had a low ceiling in the attic so Henry found the door to the stairs that went into the basement. When he opened the door he saw light below. He took out his gun.

He knelt down on the first step. The problem with sneaking up on someone in the basement is that your lower body comes into view way before you can see what you're walking into, which is why he assumed such an awkward position, his ass and knees higher than his hands and head. He lowered his head even more until one eye was looking through the opening between the sub-floor and the third step.

Dr. Moss's full basement was finished and the walls that created rooms were concrete block, not just the standard 2 x 4s and wallboard. Moss was in an area that had been furnished as a living room, and he was having sex with an attractive, large-breasted blonde.

Henry found it embarrassing to hear the man's groans, but if he moved right away his entrance would be more effective. He stood up, then noisily and quickly tromped down the stairs, holding his gun in front of him.

"What!" Moss yelped. The girl on her knees turned around and looked at Henry. She was startled and frightened but not as upset as the doctor.

"God, Johnny! Will you stop scaring the crap out of me!" Moss hurriedly reached for his pants and pulled them on. "And put that away!"

Henry held the gun on the couple as Moss escorted the girl to one of the doors on the far side of the living room.

Moss locked the girl in, turned to Henry and gave him a disgusted look, and then went to put his shirt on.

"You sure have a way of making an entrance," Moss bitched.

"There's a contract out on you," Henry said.

Moss froze, a button just about to enter a buttonhole. "Don't, Johnny," he begged. "We're friends. I'll do whatever you want. I'll leave town; I'll leave the state. Nobody will . . ."

"Shut up," Henry said, waving the gun at the man.

"I . . ." the doctor said, and then abruptly shut his mouth.

Henry put the gun back into his waistband. "I don't have the contract," he said.

It took a moment for Moss to put it together. "You're warning me?"

"Yeah," Henry said. "And I want to find out how they found out about our deal."

"They couldn't!" Moss protested. "The girls never leave! I swear! And no one comes here! And even if they did they couldn't come downstairs without me knowing it."

Henry was confused by what seemed to him to be extraneous information, but he knew how to focus. "They had to find out from you. I don't have any friends, no family. I don't talk to anybody, doctor."

"How about somebody at your bank?" Moss asked. "You don't keep the money in a mattress do you?"

Henry was about to dismiss that, but he thought better of it. Strange things like that happened.

"Or maybe one of your associates saw you turn off here and got curious," Moss said, warming to the idea. "Or saw you turn onto the main road. Or wondered why there was no blood at your last three . . . uh . . . "

"Contracts," Henry said. He was starting to buy it. There was no reason on earth that the doctor would say anything, not with him knowing Henry would kill him if he did. Still . . .

"Or maybe somebody who gave you a contract purposely followed you to make sure the job was done right."

"The organization wouldn't do that," Henry said quickly.

"Somebody like me who contacted them," Moss said.

"They wouldn't know me. But maybe . . ." Henry said. Life did talk some odd turns. If coincidences didn't happen the word wouldn't exist.

"So what do we do now?" Moss asked.

"That's the question," Henry said. "I can't have you . . . girls?" It was just starting to connect.

"Forget them!" Moss said. "What do we do?"

"How many girls are here, doctor?"

"Johnny, don't change the subject," Moss said, but he knew it was too late.

"How many?"

Moss shifted his weight. "Three," he said.

Henry knew, but he hadn't accepted it. It was like opening your front door and seeing a twenty-foot marshmallow instead of your front yard. It was there, but it didn't fit and your mind couldn't get around it at first. "Three," repeated.

As it sunk in he also realized that the whole thing had suddenly become a lot more complicated. "How far did you go?"

"What do you mean?" the doctor said, defensively.

"Operations and stuff?"

"Little things. Two nose jobs. I had to scrape one very prominent Adam's apple. And implants, of course."

Henry nodded and said, more to himself than the doctor, "Breast implants."

"I like big knockers," Moss said, smiling, his confidence starting to return.

"The one that was . . . the girl you were with . . ."

"Number two: 'Little Pauly' Lumirello, according to the TV. That's right, isn't it?"

Henry didn't say anything.

"I call her Brenda. She came out very nice. Annie, Brenda and Cheryl. The next one would have been Dee Dee. Alphabetical." He smiled, almost shyly.

"How do you get them to . . ." He cut himself short; that didn't matter. What mattered was that this damn thing was turning into a crowd scene. "You're going to have to leave them here."

"Leave them? You mean kill them?'

Henry didn't say anything.

"That's not necessary," Moss said.

"Why not?"

"They'll do whatever I say. We don't have to worry about them," Moss said.

"You lock them up," Henry said, nodding toward the three doors to his left.

"Convenience," Moss said. "We can take them with us."

"We?"

That pulled the doctor up short. "We're not leaving together? Then why did you come here?"

"I don't know what's going on," Henry said. "I can't go to the organization for an explanation. I figured you'd already be dead but I had to give it a try."

Moss nodded, thinking. "I've got to get out of here quickly," he said. "I have a place up in . . ." He trailed off.

"They'll find it," Henry said.

"No they won't. Doctors get paid in cash more often than you would think – people who don't believe in insurance or don't have it for one reason or another. More of the latter now. Anyway, I have a place that I paid for in cash under another name."

"They'll find it," Henry repeated.

"No they won't. Believe me, they won't."

Henry didn't care; didn't care if Moss took the three girls with him. The harm, somehow, had been done. Henry turned around and walked toward the stairs.

"You're going? Just like that, Jimmy?"

"I warned you they were coming," Henry said. "That's all I can do."

He started up the stairs and was shot by Ed Kutko. The bullet missed his ribs but passed through Henry's heart and came out his back. He flew backward so fast he almost caught up with it. Kutko fired twice more as Henry's already dead body flipped down the steps and rolled to a stop on the concrete floor.

 

 

Chapter Four

Fat Bill Jancik poured himself a beer and carried it over to his favorite chair. He sat down, knowing it would take Cheryl another fifteen or twenty minutes because she'd just called out, "Just a minute more, Hon'," from the bedroom.

Cheryl was something else. He'd housed three previous mistresses in this apartment, but none like her. He was glad that wimpy doctor liked big bosoms because he was something of a bosom man himself.

Fat Bill sipped at his beer and was content. And why not? He was number two in the organization and the Boss was a great guy, a guy who looked after his people in the right way. And a brilliant guy. Just look at how he'd taken care of things.

When Ed Kutko had hit that Henry Pincus guy and found the doc' and the three babes he wasn't sure what to do with them. One or two bodies would cause a fuss; five bodies would cause a manhunt, so he packed them all in the dirty white van and taped them up. He used his hot cell phone to call Ollie Stutmann to come pick up his car, which was parked a block away from the doc's, and had then driven his terrified passengers into the city.

He called someone else who had then called the Boss and the Boss had called him back from a pay phone. The Boss had learned about Pincus depositing large amounts of cash in his safety deposit box and had him followed and had learned about Dr. Moss. He figured that the doc' was doing some kind of weird experiments on live people and he didn't like it. He didn't care about the experiments; he didn't like Henry not killing the targets when he'd been paid to do so. Henry, and the doctor, had to go.

But when Ed Kutko called and told him about the three girls it got confusing. By the time Kutko had driven halfway across New Jersey and into the city the Boss had figured it out. Not that it made sense in the common, every day scheme of things. Not that it was believable.

Kutko was instructed to take the van to an organization warehouse, they had braced the doc' (though to tell the truth he would very likely have spilled his guts even if they hadn't hit him) and heard the story. The Boss, who had already doped it out, wandered away from the others to do some thinking. Kutko and the muscle had stood around in the dirty warehouse, looking at each other, shrugging and waiting.

When the Boss came back he had someone use a different stolen cell phone to call Bill Jancik and two other organization guys. And it had all worked out. Ed Kutko and the muscle were all sworn to secrecy – and this was something that none of them took lightly. Ollie Stutmann, who had left the area of the doctor's house only forty minutes before and was driving Ed Kutko's car back to the city behind Frank Tulnieski who had driven him out to the doc's, was told to go back and go to a hiding place in the basement and bring back the three DVDs he would find there.

Bill Jancik was the one who had put the contract out on Stevie Balukowski. Stevie had been skimming and Bill Jancik hated it when someone tried to steal from him, just hated it. Making them dead was a good lesson for others, but it never satisfied Jancik. It was over too quick.

"Just a second more, Honey," Cheryl called from the bedroom.

Jancik put his feet up on the ottoman and sipped his beer.

Each of the three girls had been given to the man that ordered their hit. Jancik never thought of Cheryl as Stevie, didn't want to think about that part of it, not directly, and he never watched the DVD. But every night he was making Stevie pay for double-crossing him, and that was much better than making him dead. It lasted a whole lot longer.

"I'm ready, baby," Cheryl called.

Fat Bill smiled and put down his beer.

  

  

  

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