A Rat’s Tale

by Ozmanga

I had ‘cased the joint’, as we criminals are supposed to say, and it had been unoccupied. It was unfortunate that, in the very short time between my reconnaissance and the ‘heist’, the fifth Mrs Frolichmann had decided to move in.

The house sat in an acre of walled garden, on a private road, out of sight and earshot of the highway. Justin, the interior designer who had been commissioned to redecorate the 1930s mansion for Frolichmann’s latest bride, had informed me that the young lady had consigned most of her predecessor’s art collection to a box-room, to await collection. The art works were, for one of the ‘big F’s’ former floosies, remarkably tasteful. They included two charcoal and white pastel sketches by M. Edgar Degas, twenty centimeters square, stamped and signed, properly framed by a professional conservator. When last on the open market in the mid nineteen eighties, the drawings had fetched about a quarter of a million dollars each. They would be worth considerably more today, even on the restricted market I catered for.

I planned to steal the Degas drawings and substitute two copies, which I had made and framed just like the originals. With luck the duplicates would go undetected for some time.

Toby, a young would-be artist who had once been a Golden Gloves contender was my accomplice. Alas, a blow to the head had put paid to any sporting future Toby may have had and he now earned a modest living as a caretaker of a group of disused warehouses in the old dock area known as Docklands. He had converted the offices at the seaward end of one of the least ramshackle buildings into an atelier. The situation was quiet, the views over the Docklands picturesque, and the rent negligible. The only problem, to my mind, was the rats. They swarmed throughout the warehouse complex. They were big, brown and as bold as bombardiers. Toby kept them in check by the periodic setting of poison baits and traps, but he was fighting a losing battle. I’m told that rats and humans are the only mammals to rate fornication above feeding in their list of good things to do. Toby’s rats bore out this theory. Their population seemed to grow exponentially - just like ours.

 Toby and I had met at my second one-man exhibition. He liked what he called my “nineteenth century references” and asked me to help him with advice regarding his drawing and painting. He was an excellent pupil and a good copyist. He was delighted when we sold one of his little water colors as a, “Turner (?) Study for Harlech Castle - unsigned, undated” for $1000. It would have been a perfectly legal transaction, had we not known that Toby had finished it only a week prior to the sale.  

Toby’s van, our transport on the unlawful occasion of the Frohlichmann Manor robbery, was garaged alongside his studio.

Dressed in black track suits and wearing dark colored balaclavas, Toby and I looked like a couple of ninjas bent on assassination as we moved from midnight shadow to shadow across the lawn of Frolichmann Manor. The security system was antiquated. I disabled it in under thirty seconds. Toby was impressed. Once inside the house I climbed the staircase to the top landing while Toby fossicked, starting on the ground floor, for marketable knick-knacks. These he stowed in a large sports bag brought for this purpose.

The box room was unlocked but was chock-a-block full of pictures and furnishings and it was only after a search lasting several minutes that I located the Degas drawings. They had been stuffed in a chest of drawers. I quickly substituted my copies and had turned to leave when to my intense surprise the landing light snapped on and the doorway was blocked by a slim blonde woman holding a large caliber automatic in a two handed grip.

She was wearing a thin negligee over an equally insubstantial baby-doll night dress. The light behind her revealed a very shapely silhouette and picked out the gleam of light blonde hair and the blued steel of the automatic.

“Ah!” I said, “You must be the fifth Mrs Frolichmann, or perhaps in her employ? Good evening!”

“Shut the fuck up!” she snarled. “Put those pictures down, then put your hands on your head. Move very slowly. I’m within my rights to blow your fucking head off, and don’t think I won’t, Mister!”

I thought it inadvisable to expound on the doctrine of reasonable force as it applied to unarmed housebreakers and meekly did as she ordered. We stood for a minute or two. It was clear she was uncertain about what to do next. Before she decided on any radical solution, like squeezing the trigger and claiming I’d jumped her, I helped by suggesting she had better call the police and asking her whether she knew that there was a telephone in the hall. 

“Why are you being so goddamned helpful?” she snarled, a second before Toby, who still moved like the boxer he had once been, very quickly and quietly, leant over and plucked the cannon from her slender fingers.

“What now, Boss?” he grinned, as I grabbed her arms.

“Don’t scream or I’ll gag you!” I said to the struggling woman.

She started to yell abuse, so I gagged her with the only material that came readily to hand. I thought Toby looked shocked as I ripped off the frilly panties of her baby doll nightie and tried to jam the material into her mouth. He was always fumble-tongued and shy when the girls were about. I thought he may be a bit of a puritan, or perhaps gay.

 “Don’t worry,” I told him, “I’m not about to rape her. Just get the belt off her gown. I’ll tie her hands behind her.” The big fellah just stood there staring at the wriggling blonde bundle I was trying to control, so I did it myself.

“Out of the way!” I said, “Let’s get her to a bedroom and tuck her in for the night while we make our getaway.”

Toby still didn’t move. The three of us were stuck in the doorway. Toby was facing the blonde who I was trying to push along.

“She’s ...beautiful!” he sighed and I realized Toby wasn’t being shy or embarrassed. He was merely consumed by lust.

Now the overhead landing light was on her fully I could appreciate Toby’s reaction. The fourth Mrs Frolichmann - for it was indeed she - was a real collector’s item. She was a top-of-the-line Barbie-With-Boobs, from her perfectly groomed ash blonde hair to her pink, buffed and lacquered, toenails. Unlike Barbie she had full breasts and a tight little pudenda, , which parted slightly to show a hint of her labia minor, below a neatly trimmed golden thatch.

“She’s got skin like ...  like porcelain! So clear! And yet so pink!” Toby burbled.

Toby reached between her legs to stroke the pinkness. I stepped back dragging her with me.

“No!” I said, with as much authority as I could “Leave her be! We are in enough trouble as it is. Let’s not add sexual assault to aggravated burglary!”

Toby paused and grinned and blushed. “Okay,” he said and stepped back to allow me and my squirming burden through the box-room door and onto the landing.

“Get the paintings,” I said. “We’ll get this termagant into her bedroom and ..."

After that point I remember very little. The blonde was wearing stiletto heeled mules ... steel stilettos. She first kicked backwards and crushed my testicles with a savage upward blow, then drove the metal spike down my left shin, gouging out a broad bone-deep channel of skin and flesh from knee to ankle, before driving her heel through the top of my left foot. The metal heel broke bone and sinew before punching a hole in the sole of my shoe. The shock and pain put me out like a light.

I came to briefly on a carpet by a bed on which Toby was struggling with the woman. I think I said “I need a doctor!” but can’t be sure as Toby’s reply was “She nailed you pal, so now I’m gonna nail her! Just listen to the bitch scream!” This was an unlikely response from the gentle Toby I thought I knew and I was still trying to work out what he was talking about when I passed out again.

In the van I recovered my senses for a moment. I was on my back, my left leg was throbbing, the injured foot and groin were twin knots of pain. I was sweating. I looked across the floor of the van to see, about twenty inches away, a pair of lavender blue eyes glaring hatred from a mess of blonde hair, white frilly lace and duct-tape. I started to ask, “What the hell is she doing ...” when the van hit a pothole in the highway and waves of pain again swamped my consciousness.

The Doc - he’s a disbarred vet really, but asks no questions and accepts payment in small oils “in the manner of Stubbs” - confined me to bed for a week after seeing to my injuries.
It took two before I was able to hobble about with the aid of a walking stick. A few of my friends dropped in, to keep me company and Effie, one of the girls who poses for the monthly life class I hold, decided I needed a live-in cook-housekeeper. Of Toby, the Degas and the Steel Heeled Barbie, I heard nothing.

I phoned Justin, who was busy redecorating the Frolichmann Manor, and asked casually how things were going. Justin is one of those earnest souls who, if asked politely, “How are you?” will give you their full medical history since puberty. 

After an hour and ten minutes listening I discovered that Saratoga Frohlichmann (the name of Frau Frohlichmann IV) had apparently called in to the Manor on her way to a health and beauty retreat from which she was due to return in a week or two, but had not had the common courtesy to let Julian know she was in town! 

The box room had been emptied and Justin had almost wept to see the two delightful little Degas sketches consigned, along with a parcel of other quite respectable pieces, to storage in some, no doubt perfectly secure and climate-controlled, dungeon!

All carpets had been lifted and all wall paper steamed off. The tradesmen were already working on the painted surfaces. The interior would be fully cleaned and prepared to give Justin a pristine canvas for his latest creation, destined to be featured in Home Beautiful spring issue!

Next I tried Toby. His studio phone had been disconnected. His caretaker’s office answering machine asked me to leave a message and assured me that he would reply shortly. I did. He didn’t.

I drive an automatic, so reaching the warehouse complex was no problem despite my wounds. Getting in was, but once I was able to lean against the gates and use both hands, the padlocks were little trouble.

His van was parked where it usually was, beside the warehouse. Both the large door and the smaller one set in it were locked. I broke in through the smaller door and started to limp across the fifty meters or so to Toby’s studio. Half way there, my erratic progress disturbed a pack of eight or so big brown rattus-rattus squabbling over something bloody, wrapped in cloth, on the concrete. I waved my walking stick and they moved, sulkily it seemed, to the protection of the shadows along the warehouse wall. When I reached the studio door they scampered back, chittering, to resume their dispute over the vile looking mess they had been dining on..

Toby’s studio was a tip. Normally he kept the place spotless but now it was filthy. There were unwashed dishes in the sink and on the small dining table. Two garbage bags spilled their contents onto the kitchen-area floor. Dirty underwear decorated the couch and easy chair. The living areas were squalid but it was the work area which shocked me most.

Toby had always been a meticulous and careful worker who knew the value of his tools and cared for them. The work area now looked as though a kamikaze kindergarten had enjoyed an open day.  Brushes, some with dried paint in the bristles, were scattered about. Tubes of paint, pallette knives - one of which was razor sharp - pencils, chalks, pens were heaped in no sort of order on every work surface. A couple of books were propped open with boxes of pastels and an bottle of linseed oil. Only a double-bed mattress in the center of the work space was uncluttered. This was covered by a blue chenille bed cover. It was heavily stained. Paint, semen, and red wine but not blood, I noted with some relief. A prepared canvas sat on Toby’s big easel. Some faint charcoal marks suggested that Toby had made a start on the work. I was trying to decipher these when I found his sketch book. They could have been studies for a Saint Joan, naked and surrounded by a ring of fire, or perhaps a terrified Andromeda still chained to her rock, unaware that Perseus was on his way. The door to Toby’s bunk room opened and my young accomplice shuffled out. He was naked, but for a towel wrapped around his waist. He was unshaven and  bleary-eyed. 

“Boss,” he said evincing mild surprise, “it’s real good to see you! How’s the ...er... injuries?”

“I’ll recover!” I said shortly. 

“Er ... good!” said Toby. “The vet said you’d be out of harness for a week or two with the foot. He wasn’t too sure about the other.”

“Still a bit sore and twice their usual size,” I reassured him. “But I believe nothing vital has been affected. I’m disappointed in you, Toby. You could have enquired about my health at any time during the last fortnight. Perhaps at the same time you could have delivered the paintings and whatever else we hoped to sell. You do still have them, I hope?”

“Yes. No problem. Er...”

“Where are they?”

“In the van, Boss.” Toby looked a bit sheepish.

“A bit of a risk, Toby,” I said, understating the case.

“Yeah. Look,  I meant to ...”

“But ...?”

“Sara ... the woman ...”

“What about her?” I asked remembering the unpleasant heap of offal I had skirted on my way in. “What have you done with her?”

“She’s in there,” said Toby indicating his sleeping quarters. 

I limped through the debris on the floor and looked into Toby’s bedroom. At the foot of his single metal-framed bed was a large cage, made out of the wire mesh that Toby used to fashion rat-traps. Inside the cage, naked, on a mattress, lay the blonde I had last seen two weeks before. She had changed. Her hair was lank and uncombed. Her nails were chipped and filthy. Her skin had a grey pallor and was streaked with dirt and dried seminal fluid. Her breasts were bruised and marked. Her lips were swollen. The biggest change was in her eyes. The whites showed all around her violet pupils. She stared wildly at me, then at Toby. When she spoke, her voice no longer confident but pleading.

“You wanna fuck me again, honey? We only just finished, but if you wanna ...?”

“Not yet, Sara,” said Toby. “Hey! You recognize this distinguished looking gentleman?”

She didn’t, of course.

Sara looked distressed. “Oh! Honey ... I ... I don’t know. Do I? You tell me, Toby!”

“The last time you met him, Sara, you kicked him in the balls! You really hurt him, Sara.”

Sara started to cry. Silent tears tracked through the dirt on her face.

“I’m sorry!” she said. “I don’t remember I’m sure I didn’t mean to hurt you! Honest!” She sounded like a little girl.

“He should punish you!” said Toby.

“Nooo...” Sara wailed.

“Perhaps you can make it up to him. Kiss it better. Eh?”

Sara nodded eagerly.

“Come on then!” said Toby.

Sara wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She opened one end of the cage, looked around the bedroom and stepped out. She quickly closed the cage behind her. She patted the bed. “Please,” she said, “sit.”

I glared at Toby.

“This is quite unnecessary. I don’t ...”

Sara started to wail again.

“Do it, please,” begged Toby. “She’s very good!”

The situation was so bizarre that I didn’t protest further but did as I was told. Sara knelt and unzipped my fly and gently eased my swollen gonads clear of my boxer shorts. “Be careful,” I said as she took my penis in her mouth. The caution was not required. Sara gave the best head I had yet experienced in over thirty years of dissolute living.

When I had climaxed I thanked her. She looked pleased and said, “You won’t punish me, then?” I assured her that I would not and she scuttled back into the cage as Toby and I left the sleeping quarters.

I was furious with Toby. I let him know I liked my women to be willing partners not sniveling slaves. I demanded that he tell me exactly what drugs he had used to reduce the fifth Mrs Frohlichmann to such a state and asked what he proposed to do with the woman -  the bride of one of the richest and most powerful men in the country.

No drugs, Toby explained, just rotten luck and a set of circumstances he hadn’t foreseen.

Immediately after Saratoga had downed me with her steel heeled mule, Toby said, he had knocked her out with a blow to her solar plexus. He carried her to the bedroom where he had tied her to the bed before he tried to treat my injuries. He said he was angry and upset at what she had done to “his old friend and mentor” so he decided to “teach the rich bitch a lesson”. In short he fucked her as soon as she came to. She did not respond with gentle sighs and kisses. Her stubborn resistance made him angrier and hornier. So he fucked her again. Her frigid response was a challenge to him. She managed to get a hand free and went for his eyes with her pink buffed nails. He K.O.ed her again, loaded us both, and the loot, in the van, and drove away. I was taken to the Doc. Toby and his living doll went on to the warehouse where he was sure that he could persuade the woman to return some of the animal passion - he called it “love” - he felt for her.

For the next two days she resisted Toby’s persistent, if clumsy, attempts to woo her. The harder Toby tried, he said, the more stubborn Saratoga became.

“She’d just go all floppy, like a rag doll or one of those plastic blow-up sex dolls, but only half-inflated, you know?” Said Toby. I didn’t know and wondered again about Toby’s previous sexual experiences.

“She cursed and swore all the time. She kept on calling me a ‘dockside rat’, among other things. So that evening, I stripped her bare, dragged her into the warehouse through there,” Toby indicated the studio door, “and tied her to one of the upright girders that support the roof. I was so pissed off with her I wanted to beat her into submission but I doubt it would have worked.”

“Probably not,” I said.

“I put a ring of candles around her feet and lit them,” Toby said, “And explained that the little points of light she could see in the shadows were in fact the flames reflected in the eyes of some real dockside rats. I told her when the flames died down it would take the creatures only a few minutes to realize that she was vulnerable. They’d probably start with her toes, I said, but by morning there wouldn’t be much of Saratoga Frohlichmann left at all!”

I was horrified. “You left her in the warehouse, naked, bound and helpless, with those ... those monstrous creatures, at night?”

“I was watching, of course!” he protested, reacting to my tone of acute disapproval. “Not that she knew. I even did some sketches. Now, where did I put them ...?”

“Don’t bother I’ve seen them. How long did you leave the wretched woman in that terrible state?”

“I don’t know. She started to howl almost straight away. She promised to do everything I asked. She begged and pleaded, wept and yelled. It was quite a performance. I guess she meant it in the end! When I did cut her down, just before the candles went out she was entirely mine! Body and soul! My very own beautiful blonde sex-slave!”

Toby sounded sick.

“But ...?”

“Yeah! 'But' ... she’d changed! No more the rich bitch. Just Toby’s prize whore. She’d fuck and suck like a porno queen on those videos, you know?” I nodded. “But she was too eager, too keen to please and always looking around to see if the rats had got in! I couldn’t leave her alone for more than a few minutes before she’d have a fit of hysterics. I built her that cage so I could try and get some work done.” 

“So, no more thoughts of ‘love’?” I said.

Toby shook his head slowly and then turned to me. Tears were rolling down his cheeks. I didn’t like the look in his eyes. “Christ, Boss, what can I do?”

I was not sympathetic. However, if I was to save anything out of this disaster - particularly my own skin - I needed Toby to snap out of his mood of self-pity. Nor did I want him to do anything rash like chopping up his erstwhile lady-love and feeding her to the rats.

“Right!” I said briskly. First things first. Both of you take a bath. Cleanliness is close to Godliness and we’re going to need all the spiritual help we can get if we are to survive the wrath of  Sara’s  husband. I’m going to get her some clothes and make one or two inquiries. In the meantime, Toby, dig out your passport and any easily redeemable goods to facilitate a new life elsewhere.”

“What do you mean? We’re going abroad?”

“I certainly am, Toby. I suggest you do the same. But first take a bath...”

As I limped out of Toby’s studio I heard Sara’s voice raised in a breathless whine, “You gonna fuck me again, Sugar, in the bath?”

I picked up the loot from Toby’s van and hurried home to make arrangements. 

I was in luck. The Doc knew of one or two discreet establishments which specialized in catering for the disturbed wealthy. One of which was run by a friend of his, a hypnotherapist, whose joy was a select collection of works by the French Impressionists. For two original Degas drawings he would be happy to take the fourth Mrs Frolichmann into his care and treat her for whatever ailed her, drugs, alcohol, irrational fears - you name it, for the Degas, he’d treat it, no questions asked. I reckoned that would give me about a week’s start before Frolichmann’s goons came looking for me and Toby, wherever he was going to be.

Next I raided Effie’s wardrobe for underwear, shoes, a skirt and silk blouse for Saratoga. She and Effie were about the same size, I guessed. I packed a little suitcase with a change of underwear and some toiletries. Pleased with my progress made, I headed back to the warehouse and Toby’s studio. 

As I  hobbled through the door I stumbled over the bloody corpse of my late apprentice. His throat had been cut from ear to ear and a major artery had been severed. The studio was now elaborately decorated with splashes of bright red. So was Saratoga.

I got her into the bath, which had not been emptied, and sponged her clean. She seemed calmer than she had been earlier in the day. She made no sexual advances towards me. The wild wide-eyed stare I had noted that morning had gone. If anything she seemed too composed, given the blood splashed room and the grinning corpse I had discovered on my return. It was easy to dry her and she needed no encouragement to dress in Effie’s plain outfit.

“What happened to Toby?” I asked quietly as she buttoned up her blouse.

“He said he didn’t love me any more. He said he was going to send me away."

"That was a good thing, surely?" I queried gently.

"He didn't mean it. I could tell. I know what he was really going to do!"

"What was that, my dear?"

"He was going to give me to ... Them."

"Them?"

"The ... rats!" The look of panic was coming back animating her pale face and causing her violet blue eyes to widen again."

"So I got that thing," she indicated the pallette knife, "and killed him.”

“I can’t blame you, Mrs Frohlichmann,” I said, carefully - so as to preserve the finger prints - slipping the bloodstained palette knife into a plastic sandwich bag which I tucked into my jacket pocket, “but what you’ve done is murder.”

“Are you going to call the police?”

She didn't seem concerned.

“Perhaps later,” I replied, “What Toby did was wrong. Perhaps he deserved to die. You haven’t been yourself these past two weeks. I’ve arranged for you to have treatment for the trauma you have endured. When you’ve recovered and had a chance to think about things, we can decide whether to contact the police. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

“You’re not mad at me?”

“No. Can you help me walk to the car. My leg ...”

The girl-guide instinct must have been strong in Saratoga, for she helped me shuffle across that rat infested warehouse floor with barely a shudder. 

There was no need to involve the law. Saratoga had forgotten to shut the door to Toby’s atelier and his body, when discovered, had been reduced to a mess of gnawed bones. The “accident” was reported briefly in the local press. "Rats Kill Drunk" was how Toby's demise was the headline on page eight.

Saratoga left the clinic in time for the opening of her refurbished mansion. I saw her picture, with a smug looking Justin, in “House and Garden”. I spoke to her by public from my temporary accommodation in Peru. Her memory of the time spent with Toby was mercifully vague, but she remembered the pallette knife. She was interested to hear I still had it, and was sure her husband would never learn of her adventure with the young artist or his mentor.

The ship wasn't sinking. I could safely return.




