Going Fishing - Crime Fiction Short Story

_{Photo by Sofia Sforza on Unsplash}

After only two months, Helen decided to become an exotic dancer, well it was better than sweeping these hostel floors for three bucks an hour. I’ve got these big tits and ass like a balloon so why not use them. I sure as hell can’t get anyone to notice me for my poetry, singing or dancing, so yeah, why not. This is how her rise to stardom began, swinging round the pole of the local titty-bar in Playa del Carmen.

The men were like fish to her, when she looked out into the crowd it was like she was fishing! The sweaty jeans mustachioed working men were like the minnows nibbling around her feet, gringos with their garish shirts and flip-flop sandals, uncaring of how they appeared, far from home and judgement. The gringos were like angelfish, medium-sized, colourful but ineffectual. Sure they had cash but they were tight as a dog's arse. Even the Mexican men were more generous sometimes. Every now and then you would get a party of businessmen in from Cancun and that was the feeding frenzy. All the girls were like sharks, winding their way towards them, the first three or four to get there would take a big juicy bite from that cash carcass.

.....•• ••.....

I decided the only solution was to seduce him. This suited South American gent with his sea blue suit and brown eyes. Yeah, he was pretty good looking and that was part of it but I was smelling the money or sensing it like a shark does, it was like an electrical charge which I couldn’t resist. It gets like this in these clubs, sometimes you become romantically interested in someone and the line between if it’s for the cash or the thrill of the seduction just blurs into one strange booze filled vision. Champaign was ordered and I was sitting right up close to him, he pulled out a little pepper mill filled with Cocaine and we were soon both chatting away like jabbering parrots, nonsense flying out of us as we poured our pains away to each other, to be swallowed up by the neon light.

I learnt that he was the owner of a recording studio in LA, he was the only son of an immigrant family and his mother still lived down here in Mexico, in a town just on the outskirts of Cancun. Yadda, yadda, yadda. He had a genuinely self-effacing way about him which I kinda liked, maybe it was just an affectation but I didn’t care. I didn’t really care about him, did I?

.....•• ••.....

The way she made tea was an exercise in perfection. She spent ten minutes at the counter, swirling the tea bag around the cups; crushing then steeping the bags and all with that ass that could sink a thousand ships just wiggling right in front of me. Maybe it was because she was British but that girl could really make a cup of tea. Shit, I can’t remember her name, I wonder if it’ll come up? No matter anyway, what’s the point in worrying, it’s not like this girl even cares about me, not really.

“Hey, why don’t you come back to bed hunny”, I said to her staring wolfishly at those legs.

She turned her head and stared, “the tea is not ready yet! Patience will be rewarded”.
She winked at me and turned back to the cups and her mission of perfection.

“It’s only tea, come on”…. I pleaded but she just shook her head and continued to stir.

The sea breeze ruffled the curtains as I stared at the palms and the distant green glow of Cozumel on the horizon. I turned back around and almost jumped out of the bed, “teas ready”, that British accent, where was it from, Manchester or somewhere like that she had said, slurred coquettishly as I stared down the single barrel of a Beretta Cheetah.

“Get up, and get your wallet!”

The end.