chapter five

She sidled up to him with a careless walk that suggested that she wasn’t in the mood for torture, but she was going to anyways, he knew. What else had she to do that afternoon?
The torture room was strictly standard issue. Four cool grey concrete walls. No one would be able to tunnel outta this one. A venetian blinded slatted window to let in just enough sunlight when desired but mainly kept tightly closed. If your perps didn't know what time of the day it was, that was a pretty good psychological ploy. Fave loved psych outs.
She walked around the room, her heels clicking on the concrete floors. And looked over her shoulder at him. He stared at the poster of the kitten holding onto the branch by its front paws. "Hang In There..." was the inscription. That was one of hers.
She stopped in front of him and licked her lips savouring that moment that comes just before the expected unexpected happens. That was her favourite part about torture. They never knew what was coming next, but they knew it was coming. Favourite Delight could see it in his eyes and in his uncomfortable squirming.
Oh why must they tie these knots so tightly? Its so hard to torture people if they are already uncomfortable to begin with. She bent down close to the bridge of his neck and collarbone. His breathing became deeper. She breathed lightly on the nape of his neck. Couldn't help it. His eyes widened slightly and then she did it. Fave extended her tongue and licked the skin. He squirmed and then opened his eyes a bit and looked back at her. He hadn’t recoiled as much as she thought that he would and that pleased her and also gave Fave a small thrill of challenge.
Hmmm... and that usually skeezed most guys out who weren’t expecting this warm mixture of revulsion and eroticism mixed together in one. Well, maybe he was different. Fave knew that she would have to mix this one just a bit.

chapter four

Mr. Black sat behind his neat mahogany desk within his antechamber and brooded. The work of an evil genius is never done, he mused. Over his head a plaque hung on the stark off white wall. “The work of an evil genius is never done.” read the inscription in gothic type. Now where is that flower man, he thought aloud? Where would I be if I were a flower man? Where would I be if I were the flower man with the secret of immortality and eternal love? Hmmmm.... Well screw love, where I be if I were the flower man with the secret of immortality? Where would I be? A-ha! he said aloud at last, loudly enough to startle his henchmen through the steel doorway that was shut to his antechambers. They eyed one another nervously and adjusted the zippers on the front of their pale green jumpsuits.
“Hell of a day, Larry,” one said to the other. Yep, chimed in Larry.

chapter three

The streets of Pago Pago were not especially clean but then again neither was the sand. Thompsen walked the sandy streets and thought, well this is better than the glittering white sand of Perth, yeah, right. At least it is far more interesting. In a grimy sort of way, yes, but does off hand clutter make for more interest? The desk of a genius is a messy desk.
He fingered the cool blued steel of the Thompsen sub machine gun that was ill hidden under his bulky trench coat. He thought that the Thompsen was a euphemism... for what? He couldn’t resist carrying it, practical or not as he was named after it. His old man had seen action in the south pacific and from his stories single-handedly liberated some lonely south pacific island from the japs with his Thompsen. But that was years ago and he bore its name still- Thompsen Marcus Aurelius Smith. Oh well. It was an interesting name, but for the Smith part. His old man had been a fan of ancient Roman history too as he had had to explain to countless guests at cocktail parties. Guess that it was his old man's overreactionary attempt to hide the blandness of Smith. At least his dad was nicknamed Smitty, but he guessed that his old man hadn’t enjoyed its joie de vivre enough. Guessing... enough guessing. Where in the hell is that flower guy gone?

chapter two

"Eliminated."
"Eliminated?" Orville asked? When they used that verb, it was usually serious, much more so than take out, negate, bring down (that was reserved for serial killers and mad dog schizos...), terminate with extreme prejudice and the simple flat out no- frills, "kill." Eliminate was usually something like make him talk with cheese grater and make it look like a cooking accident.
"Yes, eliminate... after, of course you bring the rose home."
"Well, yes, of course..." and that made OLN think of the roses that he had promised Sarah, at least in his own head, he had. Sara was the secretary and when he thought of a secretary, he thought of a typewriter churning out words and when he thought of that, he thought of his pen and pencil collection and that usually made him finger a pen or pencil or two from the depths of his pockets and that made him think of Sara all over again.
His head was swimming. Roses and now the doctor who sat there with his mustache twitching from under his nose and the cracker crumbs that were on the doctors tie. Awfully dreadful habit of eating lunch in a tie, ONL thought.
At least it was a frivolous tie that the doctor wore. A hula girl tie that shimmied its grass skirt when he walked. With a hula girl tie, you never knew what was on it or what drove a particular man to wear one.
"Whatchoo thinkin' bout, ole boy?" The doctor was now whooping it up in a grand fashion. He was as happy as the proverbial pig.
Orville shrugged and looked down at the delicate package in his palm. The tissue paper had come unwrapped slightly and the moist black dirt leaked out a bit. It revolted him slightly.
"You thinkin' bout using it for your own good, is that it, boy?"
To Orville Newton Leone, the idea of using a state secret had never crossed his mind and he was going to tell this mad good ole boy just that.
"Because, iffin' you do..." the doctor's grasp on manners was all but slipping away to the floor to reveal his good ole boy interior from john deere ball cap to shitkickers. "then you gotta nuther thing comin' you do."

chapter one

Orville Newton Leone had been a spy for as long as he could remember. Far too many James Bond films when he was a boy sitting in front of the tv. Sean Connery, Roger Moore, they were the idols that he sought to emulate. They were the men that knew how to do everything and knew everything, he thought, absorbed while Bond dispatched yet another evil genius, their right hand men and henchmen all. He was told more than once that he was sitting too close to the tv and his eyes would be ruined. But Bond had persevered through far more than this and didn't wear glasses or even contacts.
Nowadays he wore glasses and whether it came from being hunched in front of the tv for far too many ABC Sunday Night Movies or not, he didn’t know, but then again, it didn’t matter. He was a spy. And he was hunting for a rose today. No, not the name of Rose nor Pete Rose, but the flower.
He wore a wide bottomed greyish, baggy coat that splayed open at the bottom concealing a great many pockets that concealed all manners of things, pruning shears, a magnifying glass and innumerable pens and pencils for Orville Newton Leone loved to collect pens and pencils. He had no. 2s, graphite pencils, old bics, both black and blue with their long cap stalk that was used to prop them upright in a shirt pocket bent outwards and partially chewed upon (Orville had a weakness...), thick ebony pencils with their dark grey covers and thick stub of a core, pentels and fountain pens (that he rarely used...). He had even a china marker poking out of a pocket.
He had a rose bulb concealed within the palm of his hand, tickling the flesh.
Had he indeed discovered a cure from the ages straight from the men of myth and maybe, just maybe this was a pathway to... immortality? Nah, couldn’t be. His eyebrows did that thing again that amused Orville so much he could scarecly deceive himself or the doctor that he wasn’t at all amused by it and consequently he didn’t. The doctor seemed to think so, but then again, the doctor was a faith healer from the wilds of Alabama.
The good ole doc drawled out the words... "This is it, Orville, ole boy. The faith and the cure all for the sin of man. The secret, bigger than that ole chalice that Arthur and his boys looked for. That cup weren't nothin' compared with the likes of this."
That was two days ago.
Orville Newton Leone didn’t like what was happening. At this very moment he was being chased through the night time noir streets of Vienna feeling very much like Orsen Welles in the Third Man. But unlike ole Orsen, Orville wasn’t a closet Nazi, but merely a spy who had a very rare rose bulb in his pocket. He had tried to protect the slightly moist and pungeantly fragranced bulb that smelled faintly of mold and decay like a baby cradled in a small brown paper sack when he lowered it carefull into the pocket of his oversized overcoat. The man from who the bulb originated gasped slightly and Orville watched him bite his lips with abandon when he dropped it into his pocket and now Orville knew just how far removed Fritz was from the world of men and maybe all horticulturists were... and now he felt like Orsen Welles, but the man pursuing him was no Joseph Cotten.