Chapter 12
After trussing up the Furies good and tight, Slaney and I went out hunting for high priests.
"A turkey like that," I said as we headed down the hall to den Err's suite, "has got to have a file or something with all his blackmail material, names, dates, payments somewhere close at hand
"That sounds logical," Slaney said. "But it's probably locked up in a safe someplace."
"I've got talented fingers, Brother," I said, grinning.
He smiled and shook his head. "Everything old Drury said about you was true."
"You knew that old shamus?"
"I used to work for him. That's how I got your 'nickname. Man, he used to talk about you all the time. I never believed any of the stories then, but now...."
"He never had a picture of me or anything. How'd you match up the name with the mug?"
"Your last name, Brother Grue, and the legend of Bad Bascom's bone," he smirked.
"Good enough," I said. "That's some nice deduction."
Slaney pushed open the door to den Err's penthouse and went in low, in a shooting crouch. The main room was empty. We quickly checked the other rooms, the closets, bathroom, everything. We didn't want to be surprised by a gaggle of Moon worshippers. There was no one around. I opened the exit door leading from the bedroom an had a peek down the hallway. Nothing.
It was time to get cracking.
Working like beavers, we began to systematically check every possible unlocked place of concealment. We found zero. So, we moved on to looking for a hidden safe or strong box.
"Jackpot!" Slaney said, swinging back a large oil portrait of His Radiance and exposing a shiny black safe.
"Stand aside, son," I told him. "Watch that door...."
"Sure thing, Bascom," he said.
The safe wasn't a particularly good one and the mechanism was simple but tricky because of the shoddy workmanship. I cracked it in just under eight minutes.
"Well, would you look at that!" Slaney said, as I drew out a shoebox full of very incriminating photos and negatives.
"You could go into the porno business with what's in this box," I said. "Or the blackmail business...."
Slaney gave me a wry look. "Before we burn this shit, let's have ourselves a peek at the dirty laundry of San Francisco's high society. What do you say?"
"As long as we make it quick, and you keep one eye on that damn door," I said, dumping the contents of the box out on the desk.
Den Err had the goods on a lot of folks, all right. There were snapshots of every member of the cult, male and female, doing just about everything possible to do to and with the human body without croaking. I mean, there were pictures of gang bangs, of anal gang bangs, of oral gang bangs, of all girl gang bangs, of all guy gang bangs, of male and female gang bangs; there were pictures of cult members in bondage, cult members in deep humiliation, cult members dominating, humiliating, cult members being whipped and cult members whipping; there were lots of animal shots, too, Dobermans, shepherds, mastiffs, Danes furiously humping this debutante, that scion of a wealthy family, this heiress, that fast food franchise baroness ... all with a romantic haze of vaseline about the action.
"I don't believe this!" Slaney said, holding up a photo of a female cult member, tied head to foot with coarse rope, being assaulted in every orifice by a pack of assorted mongrels. The look on her face was one of pure ecstasy.
"It's the drug," I said, leafing through the pics. "Makes even the most stuck up rich bitch act like she's got the funky fever...."
"So I noticed."
One of the photos caught my eye. Not all of the subjects were well-to-do and suitable for blackmail.
"Do you know her?" Slaney asked.
"Yep...."
"Well, let's rip it up. The negative, too."
I pulled on my lower lip. "No, I think I want to save this one," I told him. "Here stick it in your pocket and I'll get it from you later." Being totally naked, I had no pockets of my own.
Slaney stuffed the photograph in his robe and swept the photos back in the box. "Did you find the one you were looking for? Your client?"
"Yes, it was there. And yours?"
"Un-huh, big as life. Shall we burn this mess?"
"Definitely. One at a time," I said, carrying the box over to the fireplace.
We'd only gotten through about a third of the blackmail photos when sounds from the bedroom alarmed us. Someone was in there.
"The other door," I whispered. "Someone came in from the hall. Keep burning. Do them all. I'll go have a look."
Slaney nodded and continued to ignite the squares of photographic paper.
I moved quickly to the closed door to the master bed room and very slowly turned the knob. It made a hollow click as the latch snapped back, but the noise was masked by the ruckus going on in the room beyond.
"Goddamit, you slut!" said a familiar baritone. "Spread those cheeks!"
I pushed the door open a crack.
"Hold 'em open! That's it," den Err said.
He was stark naked, kneeling on his huge round bed. Under him was a girl just into her teens. She was very slim waisted and had a perfect heart shaped ass, which den Err was bent on screwing. The big man was rubbing his already oiled cock into her deep crack, nudging it into her tight pink pore.
"Owww!" she said, wincing as he pushed his dickhead at her drum-tight hole. Her face was full of the satyrion flush, her small titties swung from her chest, and wisps of her long brown hair were damp with her tears.
"You haven't felt anything yet, slut!" His Radiance informed her. "I'm going to ream out your tight little butt until you scream for more...."
"Oh, no. Please ... I," she stammered.
"Wider! Hold 'em wider!"
The girl reached back and once again took hold of her ass-cheeks, spreading the perfect domes, giving him access to her virginal anus. Her pore was horribly stretched by her grip, drawn out into a thin, puckering slit.
Den Err's monstrous knob lunged at the wrinkly slit.
"Uhhhgnnnn!" he grunted, ramming at her sphincter.
"UHHHHH!" she squawked, dropping her cheek to the bed spread, eyes bugging from her head at the intense, burning pain. Her hands fell limply to the covers.
The head of den Err's cock had punctured her rectum. That greasy, drug-bloated pole stuck out of her dainty ass lewdly.
"So hot! So tight!" the bald man wheezed, stroking her thighs, her belly, her tits, reveling in the feel of her muscle ring convulsing about the neck of his choad.
Slaney put his hand on my arm and peered through the crack. His jaw dropped.
"Done?" I whispered.
He nodded, his eyes glued to the girl's distended anus and the huge cock that had it spitted.
His Radiance flipped his hairy hips again, driving a bit more of the thick probe into her bowels.
"UHHHHH!" she wailed into the chenille of the bedspread, chomping at it with her teeth, clutching it in her fists and twisting, twisting to shut out the pain.
"Teen slut gonna hump...." den Err mumbled, his eyes horribly bloodshot, his nostrils dilated. "...gonna ream...."
"Oooooh!! " she cried as he dragged his pud back from the seething depths. It was a different sort of cry. A high-pitched whistling sound, like the cry of a small bird. It was a cry of joy.
Slaney muttered something under his breath and there was the harsh metallic click of the hammer of his revolver being drawn back to firing position.
As he raised his hand to shoot, I stopped him pinning the gun and his wrist to the door jamb. I shook my head. Killing was too good for a degenerate baboon like den Err.
"Love it, huh?" the bearded Dutchman crooned, slogging his sock back into her bottom. The dainty pink ring smooched way up his greasy shaft and lay there flexing, convulsing, milking its tormentor.
"Uhhhhhhhh!" the girl whined, her mouth opening, her tongue lashing out, licking at the bedspread.
"Love it!" he repeated, jerking his pud from her and whipping it back, making her sphincter slide to the very base of his dick.
"OOOOH!" she gushed, lapping furiously at the soggy chenille, reaching up between her thighs, up to clutch at the heavy, sperm filled orbs of den Err's scrotum. Her tiny fingers manipulated the hairy balls, stroking them, squeezing them, trying to coax another monumental ass fuck from his deeply buried cock.
"If you want it," he wheezed, "you have to beg for it."
"Uhh?"
"Tell me how much you want my cock up your ass...."
"Ooooh," she murmured to the spread, wiggling her smooth buns in the air, making her anus pucker and suck at the root of his cock. "I want you to do it again."
"Do what again?" he said, grinning from ear to ear.
"Uhhh, ooooh, I want you to ... make it go in me...."
"What? Tell me what?"
"Your oooooh your big cock. I want it to go in my ass. Make it go in and out. Oooh, please, Please fuck my ass."
All the while her fingers tugged and toyed with the fat man's bloated testes. He knelt there and wallowed in the sensation of his cock being balls deep in a teenager's ass, of his balls being fondled by aforementioned teenager, and of her begging and pleading with him to continue sodomizing her.
"I want it ... please!" she sobbed, her fingers moving higher to encircle the besmirched shaft.
"You want to do it?" he groaned. "You want to make it go in and out?"
"Uhhhhh!"
Den Err leaned back and withdrew his whang halfway from her pore. Her tiny fist closed about the hairy base and then began to pull the whole thing towards her, to cram the slippery cock right up her ass.
"Uhhhhhhhh!! " she wailed, spitting herself clear to the ring her fingers made about the cockroot.
"Such a nasty little ssssslut!" Sigmund croaked, his eyes slitting with pleasure.
"Uhhhhh!! " she whimpered, making the probe slide in and out.
"Enough!" den Err snarled, slapping her hand away and beginning to screw her in earnest. He put his hands on her smooth buns and leaned into her, driving his cock into her ass, deep and hard.
"Uhh-uhh-uhh-uhh," she moaned, a curious sing-sing as she was brutally bounced on the bed under the thrusting of his angry member.
His ass was flipping at an incredible rate of speed, making his balls flop every which way, into his ass, his thighs, her thighs, her cunt.
"I'm going to shoot come up your ass, tart!" he gasped, his cock a diving red blur, disappearing into the tiny hole between the round cheeks.
It was then that the door to the hallway opened. It caught den Err and his bed partner completely by surprise. And Slaney and I were just as stunned as they were.
"You lie!! ! " Hildy Knutsen screeched, pushing the door open. She stood there, framed by the jamb, completely naked, her right hand behind her back, her left hand pointing an accusing finger at the high priest. The look on her face was pure madness. Her eyes were bulging, bloodshot, wild and her mouth was contorted by a manic grin, teeth clenched, lips curled back.
"Uh. ... uh" den Err muttered, his mouth opening and closing reflexively, a fish out of water.
The girl who lay under the high priest's sweaty potbelly, who was impaled on his rigid rod, just blinked her eyes, gawking at the nude teenager who confronted them.
"You know nothing of Truth!" Hildy cried. "You desecrate the Perfection!"
"Sister Hildy, please, if you will just wait outside...." the fat man began, making no move to remove his cock from the girl's ass. "I'll be only too glad to counsel you...."
"You counsel me!" she shrieked, falling into a fit of hysterical laughter. "You who have never truly seen the Clear Light, who have never bathed in the Reflection, you who violate the laws of Mother Moon?"
Slaney shot me a worried look. He didn't know that Hildy was my client's daughter. I was a hell of a lot more worried than he was.
"Sister! I command you to leave My Presence!" den Err cried.
She giggled. God, she giggled! The sound of that bubbling merriment erupting from her throat, escaping her tortured lips made the bile rise to my mouth.
"Very well," she said, taking her hand from behind her back.
A galvanic shock arced through my body. I kept thinking: Move it! Move it! But the door opened in slow motion. And my legs moved in slow motion. And Slaney could go no faster than I.
Behind her supple and naked back, Hildy drew den Err's own gun, the chrome plated Nambu.
The high priest of the Church of the Waning Moon's jaw sagged, his entire face went slack. He began to push at the buns under his hands, to try to escape the anus that held him tight.
Hildy raised the heavy gun in one hand, held it at arm's length, aimed it and squeezed the trigger ... all in one perfectly smooth and relaxed motion.
Slaney and I were half way across the room when it went off, not close enough to catch powder burns, but close enough to catch the spray from den Err's exploding skull.
The gun recoiled violently, and since Hildy'd never fired a gun before, she was unprepared. The chrome gun jerked up and out of her grip and went flying over her shoulder into the hall.
"Oh, Jesus! Jesus!" Slaney kept saying over and over.
I told him to go call the homicide squad while I helped the teenager out from under His Radiance. Hildy just slumped down in a corner and dropped off into the comparative bliss of catatonia.
She was still sitting there when Detective Ramon and his goons showed up.
I tried to explain things to him, rationally, but as usual, he wouldn't listen.
"Look, Badass," he said, smacking his fist into his palm, "what we got here is premeditated homicide. With two eyewitnesses. Your little kooky client there is going to get the gas chamber. And I'm going to nail you for an 'aiding and abetting' rap...."
"What?!"
"...I told you, Grue, fuck with him and I'm going to fuck with you."
"You really think he was quite a humanitarian, don't you?"
Ramon's eyes flashed. "They'll make a martyr out of him. like Dr. King...."
"Why you greasy little moron!" I ranted. "You don't know your ass from your mouth. I'll show you a goddam martyr!"
"If you get violent, I'll have to restrain you," he said hopefully.
"Gimme that picture, Slaney," I said. And give us some privacy. I think the Detective here will want to be alone to have a look at it."
"Stay where you are boys," he said.
I shoved the picture in his hand. He looked at it.
Believe me, as much as I hate that bastard Ramon, if there'd been any other way to handle the thing, I wouldn't have shown it to him. I wouldn't do that to a dog.
The hurt in his face hardened and he barked, "What are you waiting for? Get the hell out! Leave us alone."
When the door closed, he took out his lighter and set fire to the picture. The picture of his daughter, Marjorie, being raped by Sigmund den Err, the great humanitarian, being raped while bound hand and foot, being raped and loving it.
"I want to be alone for a minute, Bascom," he said.
"Sure, sure," I said, leaving him to his misery.
That was the first time the little weasel had ever called me by my right name.
When he came out of the room and faced his subordinates he scowled and said, "Let that girl go."
"But sir, the murder...." protested one uniformed officer.
"What murder, you dirt bag? Who said anything about a murder? This religious nut got too much of his own medicine and blew his own brains out."
"But, sir!"
Ramon looked at me. He didn't smile. He didn't have to.
"It was suicide," he said.