Theresa

[Theresa is an excerpt from an untitled novel-in-progress.]
by Terry L. Forney

Theresa slid from her red Mercedes like a snake from its skin. She smoothed her long skin-tight black skirt with well-manicured hands and tidied her sleek blonde mane. Appearances are everything, she thought, and tonight it was more important than ever that she look her most enchanting, for she had a senator to lure into her web.

No one would ever guess from looking at her that she was one of the FBI's most valuable undercover operatives, and that was what she counted on. No one expected a leggy blonde bombshell to be anything other than what she looked like. Many a pigeon had fallen under her blue-eyed gaze and into her well-woven traps.

Tonight she would snap the trap shut on Senator Rod Billings' "pay-for-vote" scheme. It had been working well for him, but then he had no idea that his pal Tom Jenkins had turned state's evidence. In fact, Tom had been putting on such an act that anyone would believe he was the injured party. Almost everyone in Washington believed that the senator had set Tom up for a fall, so good was Tom's story.

Tom was the first victim to fall under Theresa's spell. When she joined the lobbying firm of Bender, Fine and Kissler, Tom was the first one to befriend her. Theresa never had any problem being befriended, especially by men.

They had gone out for dinner one evening soon after her arrival. He had asked her out under the guise of friendly mentor to the new girl in town, but she knew he had another agenda.  They always did. That was okay by her. While he focused on getting a better look at her breasts straining the thin fabric of her linen blouse, she would be asking him questions. While he drank the hard stuff she would stick to watered-down wine. She knew it would only be a matter of time and several well-planned slips of cleavage, and he would be hers.

Tom proved to be as easy as they come. In no time at all he was giving her tips on how to become successful in the high-pressure world of White House lobbyists. "No one," he claimed, "no one ever made it big unless they were willing to pay." She feigned ignorance. "Pay for what?" Tom looked at her condescendingly as he leaned in closer to whisper in her ear and perhaps to catch a better look at her artfully displayed décolletage. "Votes," he hissed, "we pay for votes."

Theresa widened her eyes in a practiced look of incredulity. "Pay?" she repeated. "Isn't that illegal?" "Of course it is," he retorted, "but if you want to get anywhere you have to grease the wheels."

He went on to explain in detail their latest project. The firm was charged with lobbying certain senators to put the brakes on legislation that would more tightly regulate Internet sales and taxes. Bender, Fine and Kissler had been paid over 13 million dollars to pull in the votes needed to quash the ruling. They had only four weeks left to nail down the votes. The only way to do it was to find the weak links on the Senate committee and pay them whatever it took to gain the majority.

There was big money tied up in the Internet, a lot was at risk, and the consortium that had banded together to stop the legislation was willing to do whatever it took. "Yeah it was crooked," he admitted, "but necessary."

Theresa adjusted her blouse a tiny bit with a well-timed shift in her seat, making sure even more of her delicious bosom peeked out. Tom could not hide his interest and as she questioned him more on the subject, he spilled answers and names almost faster than she could ask.

She was most interested in Senator Rod Billings. He had a reputation as a hard-line, right-wing Republican. He was the type of politician who loudly shouts of the benefits of motherhood, apple pie and a Bible in every house. How on earth had they gotten to him?

Theresa rolled her neck as if to indicate pain, and stretched her shoulders back trying to touch the blades together. She moaned and winced convincingly a few times, and Tom became even more mesmerized by the undulating of her breasts. He could not take his eyes off them. Thank God for Wonderbra, she thought to herself as she stretched again. Time to go in for the kill.

"Tom," she said slowly, "Senator Rod Billings is one of your 'votes' isn't he?" Tom barely glanced up as he nodded vigorously, "Yes, he is our biggest 'client.'  We have him dead to rights." She pressed for more. "Tell me, how is it that you have him so committed to your cause?"

She thought for a minute he would clam up on her, but she brought her arms together just enough to push her breasts to the heaving point, and he burst forth with the information she sought.

"Almost ten years ago there was a hint of scandal attached to the good senator during his governorship of Idaho. It seems that he dated a woman who later claimed to have had an abortion on his behalf." Tom accidentally brushed her left breast with his hand as he gesticulated in punctuation to his story. Shuddering with delight, he went on. "We thought the story about the abortion was a cover for something a bit more sinister, so we did some digging on the woman he was involved with. Toni Morran was her name, a real knockout, tall, statuesque, and of course blonde. The senator had a weak spot for blondes. Then the abortion story broke. The right-winger went wild and he almost lost his bid for re-election. He won and it all died down. We felt the abortion story was a plant by the governor's own crowd. A bit of investigation and hard legwork proved us right."

By now Theresa was tiring of the chase and wanted to get the poop so she could go home and put up her feet, not to mention take off this ridiculous bra. "Tom," she said, "what was the real story?"

Tom tipped his rocks glass up to suck the last drop of Dewars from the remaining cubes. He signaled the waiter for another, took a deep breath and said, "You will never believe this one." "Try me," she gasped as he grabbed her thigh under the long red tablecloth.

This had better be good, she muttered to herself as she discreetly and slowly moved her leg from his reach.

Tom took a deep breath and went on. "After an intense investigation we discovered that long before Toni spelled her name with an 'i' she had spelled it with a 'y.'  She was a he. The senator's campaign could never have withstood the humiliation and derision that would have come with that revelation, so they planted a phony story to throw the press off the trail once they got interested enough in her to look into her background. We are not sure how they got poor Toni to cooperate, but she kept quiet. She kept quiet, that is, until she disappeared."

Finally, what Theresa was looking for: a link to the disappearance of one Tony Corello of Mountain View, Idaho. Tony was a big-time player in the West Coast mob scene. He'd inexplicably dropped out of sight one foggy California night, and the FBI was certain he was shark bait by now. He'd been involved in a murder-for-hire that went wrong and had implicated his 'family.' They were out for blood, but Tony had disappeared.

There were rumors underground among those in-the-know that he had fled to Vegas, but nothing positive. Theresa began her investigation there. Vegas was a hotbed of the twisted and perverted lifestyles of the crazed and insane. She really had to let all her ideas of propriety fly out the window in order to work there. Following a tip she got a job as a costumer in the Casino Royale. There she hooked up with a showgirl by the name of Bitsy Spyder who claimed to have taught a man answering Tony's description everything she knew about being a woman. Bitsy, formerly known as Bob, knew all too well how to become a woman.

Bitsy told her that, once transformed, "Toni" had worked for a week or two in a big revue doing backup work for the regulars. Then, with not even a fare-thee-well, he had disappeared. The only clue Bitsy had to his destination was a scrap of paper unwittingly knocked from the telephone table in the room they had shared. On it were written the words "House of Fashion, Mountain View, Idaho" and a phone number. Bitsy admitted to having called the number, discovering that a woman answering Toni's description had taken a job there selling haute couture to the rich women of Idaho. She also admitted to being a bit miffed that all her tutoring in the wonders of duct tape had gone unappreciated.

Theresa had lost the trail until now. She figured that somehow Toni had met the senator and a love connection had been made. Whether or not the senator knew that Toni was a man and what subsequently had happened to him were open for debate. She knew that somehow she had to get to the senator and make him talk. Tony was needed in California in the worst way.

Continued—»