The second to last window. I stopped, checked the camera, and then looked into the glass. The shades were drawn, but there was enough of a break between the flimsy curtains to see the faintest stirrings of what was going on inside. It appeared that I had been correct. It had taken less than five minutes for them to get naked.

I could have gone without seeing the man’s bare ass as I looked in, though. I saw one of the woman’s hands reach around and cup a buttock. I grimaced, chewing my gum harder.

I’m not getting paid enough for this, I thought.

I checked the breezeway again, and when I saw that I was still alone, held the camera up to the window and waited for a shot. Once the couple got into a rhythm, I was actually able to get a few shots. What I was really trying to get was the woman’s face. I saw it a few times as their bodies shifted, particularly when she was on all fours on the edge of the bed. The cop in me also clocked a line of coke on the chipped table in the corner. The deadbeat in me didn’t give a crap.

I checked my shots on the camera and saw that, while I managed to get the woman’s breasts perfectly in two shots, her face was either blemished by the window’s glare or partially covered by an elbow, her own hair, or the sheets that her head had been pushed into.

Sighing, I pocketed the camera. Really, I had been sure it would come to this. I wasn’t surprised, just…defeated.

Resigned, I walked over to the door and steadied myself for a moment. As I stood there, I could hear the woman moaning in ecstasy on the other side. She was either really enjoying it or was going above and beyond to make the man think she was really enjoying it.

A healthy dose of deception.

I took a breath, then lifted my leg. With a hard and practiced kick that I had used many times in my career in New York, I attacked the door. It flew open easily enough, the chain flying halfway across the room and the frame cracking almost all the way down. I absently wondered if the hourly rate would pay for the damage to the frame.

The man and the woman both yelled at the commotion. Comically, though, it had not startled them enough to disengage themselves from one another. I grinned sarcastically at them and then took out my camera.

Before the woman had a chance to try to hide her nakedness or the man could say a single word to me, I brought the camera up.

“Say seedy motel room,” I said.

It took two clicks for them to understand what was going on. The woman pushed the man off of her and came to the edge of the bed. All of her modesty was forgotten as she looked at me with pleading eyes that were still half-dazed with the cocktail of hormones and drugs running through her body.

“No,” she said. “Please.”

I checked the pictures and saw that I had more than enough now.

“Thanks,” I said. “As you were,” I added as I left I placed the “please make up room” card on the door handle.

I then turned my back and headed towards the parking lot. I heard the man yelling after me. I doubted he would pursue. He looked overweight and not exactly the confrontational type, more a soft middle manager with an easy office job. Besides, he was naked. Not many folks were eager to come running across a rain-slicked parking lot with no clothes on.

I got back to my car and had cranked the engine to life by the time to the woman had come to the door, wrapped in a sheet. She was screaming for me to stop, but I paid her little attention. She was pretty — about 150 lbs, long blonde hair, and breasts too perfect to be real. I wondered what had driven her to this, and beyond that, I pitied the man she was with and more so the man I would be meeting in about an hour.

As I pulled out of the lot, I looked back and saw her staring at me, crying in the rain. The man stood behind her like some idiot sentinel.

Hearts were going to be broken over this, but that wasn’t my problem. I was already thinking about how I would spend the money that was coming to me. I’d have it within two hours and in three, I’d be at The King’s Head down the street.

I looked back in my rearview, but the hotel parking lot was out of sight. All that remained was the dreary East London suburb… and pain. I needed a drink, but one man needed these photographs more.

TWO

Anthony Taylor was broken.

Forty minutes later, I was sitting in my cramped little office space that doubled as my apartment looking across the cluttered desk at the man I had just destroyed. He was quiet, sitting in my guest chair and looking up at the ceiling as if he were waiting for it to mercifully collapse on top of him. I followed his gaze, but for a different reason. There were water stains along the ceiling and a few places where fissures ran like stray hairs along half of the ceiling. The office was a dump (as reflected in the cheap rent), but it contained all the equipment I needed for my work.

When Anthony started to cry, I wasn’t surprised. I was sure he would. Even though he was a well-to-do stockbroker with a sharp suit and more money in his savings account than I would ever see in my entire life, he was still a man. He was also the man who had married the woman in the photographs.

The pictures on the camera that I had just showed him was proof of this. I had taken on other cases like this one, getting the proof that a spouse was cheating. In almost every case, there was anger first and then the sadness. It was like the two emotions towed one another, the anger speeding forward to the surface with the sadness lurking in its wake.

Anthony had skipped the rage. He had known it was coming, but when he saw the pictures of his wife bent over naked in front of another man, a moan of pleasure on her face and a smile on her gasping mouth, the depression and sadness had come right away like rising waves from his stomach.

I watched him crying, close to hysterics, and knew that I should interject somehow. It would have been the kind thing to do. But I was hardly one to offer advice on emotional stability. Hell, I had no idea where to even start. So I just watched him and waited for him to get his shit together. After all, this was a business. There was no room or reason for me to get overly sympathetic with my clients.

It took a while, but Anthony finally came around. He wiped his eyes and then pushed the camera back over to me.

“Sorry,” Anthony said. “That was embarrassing.”

“I’ve seen worse,” I said. It was a lie. Anthony Taylor had fallen to pieces right in front of me, and I didn’t think it was a moment I’d forget anytime soon.

“So who’s the guy?” Anthony asked.

I shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“Could you find out? If I paid you more money, could you find out?”

I rubbed my jaw, feeling stubble. The question on the tip of my tongue was How much more? But I swallowed it down and shook my head. “No. I mean, I probably could, but I don’t think it’s the best idea.”

“Name your price,” Anthony said, sitting forward and trying his best to look all business like, but the puffy red eyes and glistening snot under his nose betrayed the attempt.

“I can’t help you,” I said. “Sorry.”

Anthony then stood up and looked like he wanted to take a swing at me. For the briefest of moments, I wanted him to. I probably deserved it. Punishment for my sins. I was looking for an excuse to knock someone’s lights out — and the hell of it was that I wasn’t even sure why, exactly. I’d been feeling that way for a few weeks now.

“Why not?” Anthony said.

“What good will it do if I find out who he is?” I fired back. “What are you going to do? Rough him up? Use it as ammo against your wife? Trust me. I’ve been doing this for too long. It won’t do any good. You might feel better for a few days, but eventually, you’ll regret it.”