Chapter 8
Suddenly Kay realized she was lost. She glanced around for a moment, breathing raggedly. She walked to the middle of the deserted street, then she turned slowly until she could barely make out the light atop the church steeple. Taking bearings from the light, she walked another block and found herself back on the main street.
Another gaggle of drunks came staggering down the street. One started to say something to her, but another larger man whacked him vigorously across the face, mumbling something about dirty old men. Fifteen minutes later Kay was back in Mr. Veely's empty apartment.
The fire had died down, but the automatic furnace had taken over. Kay surveyed the empty rooms, then decided she might as well liven the place up with a fire. She was tossing more wood on the coals when the knock came.
Automatically Kay glanced at the clock. It was one minute to one. At least he was prompt.
On her way to the door she took off her coat and tossed it behind the couch. Then she took a deep breath, crossed herself, commended her soul to heaven, then opened the door.
The man who stepped in was like a thousand nondescript men she had seen in her lifetime. They came and went on fishing boats, unloaded their catch and bought fuel and groceries and disappeared into the great unknown Outside.
He was about five-ten, Kay guessed. At least his chin was on a level with her eyes when he stood straight. He wore a plaid flannel shirt. Over his long reddish-brown hair he wore an outdoorsman's cap with turned up ear flaps. He was neatly shaven except for the Lincoln-style beard without mustache that lined his jaws from ear to ear. Under one arm he carried a large manila envelope like the one he had slipped under Kay's door. His other hand was loaded down with a cased camera and a gadget bag hung from a strap over his shoulder.
"Yep," he said. "You're the one."
"Who are you?" Kay asked.
"I might ask the same question." He grinned.
Kay bit her lip. "What do you want?"
"Depends." Eying the liquor cabinet he added, "Right now I could do with a bourbon and some branch water."
"What's that?" Kay asked.
The stranger gave her an odd look. "Bourbon or branch water?" he asked.
"Both."
"Looks like I got me a live one," the stranger murmured. He got up to check the door that Kay had locked and chained after him. Satisfied, he prowled restlessly about the apartment, checking windows and closets until he was satisfied they were alone. "Bourbon is whiskey," he explained. "Branch water is that funny stuff that comes out of faucets whenever they ain't froze."
"Oh. Do you want ice?"
The stranger shook his head. He put down his camera and gadget bag, then sat on the couch. "Now," he said as she handed him the whiskey, "What've you got to trade?"
"I don't know," Kay stammered. "Wh-what do you want?"
"Money."
"But I haven't got any money!"
"You can afford this apartment...."
"No, I can't," Kay said. "My father died last week, and his lawyer let me stay here till I could get a plane back Outside."
"I suppose you were mourning in those pictures."
Kay did her best but it wasn't good enough. Remembering how old Sam had died trying to protect her from just the kind of thing in those pictures was just too much. Emotion built to the bursting point and tears began streaming down her face.
"Whenever you're through with that we can get down to business," the stranger said dryly.
Kay had not known such cruelty could exist in God's perfectly ordered world. She made an effort and stopped crying. "I haven't any money," she repeated. "Why do you want to ruin my life? I've never done anything to you."
"I don't want to ruin your life," the stranger said. "I'm in business. I did a job tonight, and now I'm not going to get paid for it. Therefore, I've got to try some other way to turn a buck. I have two interesting pictures. Do you want the negatives, or do I sell them to a girlie magazine?"
"I want them," Kay said. "I'd do just about anything to get them back. But I have...." She fumbled in her purse. "I have twenty-three dollars and twelve cents. Is that enough?"
The photographer laughed. He reached into the envelope he carried and took out two more prints like the ones Kay had already seen. "I'd like to get the blonde too," he said, "But there isn't much chance of getting her to cooperate."
"If you want evidence, so Mrs. Veely can divorce Mr. Veely...."
"Forget it. I'll nail him sooner or later. That baldheaded little bastard's balled every widow and orphan within five hundred miles. I'll get him sooner or later."
"Then what do you want of me?" Kay wailed.
"I want a decent set of pictures: something I can sell."
Kay gulped. "Aren't you going to sell the ones you took?"
The photographer laughed. "They may be valuable to you," he said. "But nobody would look at them twice for publication."
Kay didn't know whether to be relieved or angry. "Why?" she asked.
"Nothing's happening. Two girls sixty-nining it and the good one's got her back turned, and you can't see anything but hands and feet and the scared face on the other."
That, Kay thought, was quite enough, considering the other part of her that was so gapingly visible. She took a deep breath. "What do I do to get them back?" she asked.
"Pose for a better set of pix and I'll give you these negatives with no strings attached."
"What do I gain by that?" Kay asked. "Why should I do the same thing all over?"
"Because this time you'll be wearing a blonde wig and so much makeup even your mother wouldn't know you."
"You mean my face wouldn't show?"
"Who looks at faces?" The photographer laughed.
"What do I have to do?"
"Take off your clothes and act beautiful."
"But I've never...."
The photographer started picking up his things. "You're talking to the guy who's seen you bare-assed," he said. "Either do the job, or I salvage what I can with the prints I've got."
"Wait!" Kay said. "How long will it take?"
"Two or three hours. Stop wasting time and I could have you back here before daylight."
Kay thought a moment. If only she had been able to go to confession. She weighed two or three hours nude posing against a lifetime of degradation and made her decision. "I'll go," she said.
All the way downstairs to the photographer's beat-up old car she said Acts of Contrition. All the way across Anchorage she said Hail Marys.
Finally he parked the car and led her up the outside stairway to the second floor of a run-down building. It was dismal, but the blackmailer's apartment had one large room with heavy drapes. There was an oil heater blazing in one corner. The photographer-detective shed his heavy lumberjack's jacket and sighed. He began setting up cameras and lights.
"Hurry up!" he insisted. "The quicker you undress, the sooner it's over."
Slowly, Kay began removing her coat.
The man fussed with lights, arranging them in a half circle around a spot in the middle of the bare floor. He went into the other room and returned with a couple of quilts and a bedspread which he spread on the floor. "Looks cruddy," he admitted, "But you'd be surprised how this stuff photographs." Humming, he peeled off his flannel shirt and continued fiddling with a movie camera on a massive tripod. "Aren't you undressed yet?" he demanded.
"How about the wigs and all that stuff?" Kay demanded.
"Over there behind the screen." Kay walked behind the screen and found a light-rimmed makeup table. She piled her dark waist-length hair atop her head and tried to get a curly blonde wig atop the whole mess. Finally her dark-bfown, almost Indian straight hair was all hidden. She began fiddling with the makeup.
Stripped naked, with his king-sized honker hanging at ease, the detectivephotographer stepped behind the screen to see what was keeping her. "Not that way," he growled. "You look like an ass-calloused veteran in a five-dollar crib."
"What'm I supposed to look like?" Kay asked. "Innocence," the photographer explained. "You're supposed to look like a nun that just stepped out to pick up the milk and she found herself surrounded by twelve greasy motorcyclists with chains. Hell, anybody can get pix of naked women. It's innocence that's hard to come by. With the right makeup you could look like a virgin-like some little cunt that didn't know her ass from a hole in the ground."
"I am a virgin," Kay said quietly. "Hah!" He jerked the curly blonde wig off her head. "Too bad we can't use your real hair," he grunted. "Makes you look younger. How old are you anyhow?"
"I'm a sixteen-year-old virgin," Kay repeated. "There ain't no such thing!"
"Will you give me back those pictures, if I prove it?"
Instead of answering, he grabbed her feet and dumped her out of the chair. It happened so fast that Kay didn't have time to struggle. Flat on her back, she felt him spreading her legs, looking down at the most secret part of her. "Well I'll be goddamn!" he marveled.
Glancing at the naked photographer, Kay's terror was dampened by a vague sense of humiliated disappointment as she saw his masculinity still hanging relaxed. He was examining her innermost secrets with no more involvement than if she were another salmon some fisherman was plucking from the net. Suddenly she had a premonition of what it would be like. She would become another faceless piece of meat. Faceless men would rent her, use her, then forget her. Why, she wondered, did the priests and sisters have to keep harping about a hell after death? Weren't there enough living hells to suit them?
He dropped her legs and offered her a hand. Sitting naked, he drew her nude body toward him. As Kay's face approached his crotch and his still-relaxed rod, she wondered if she was finally going to be forced to do what Tommy Taskoosh hadn't been able to make her do.
But the detective-photographer didn't draw her face into his crotch. Instead, he selected a wig of long straight red hair and began carefully settling it over Kay's dark-brown tresses. Finally he was satisfied.
"What about down below? Won't they know it's a fake?" Kay asked.
"Of course. Who cares? How many people in the world recognize you by the color of your snatch?"
Kay wished she had kept her mouth shut.
The photographer began smearing bright orange makeup on her face. "Looks weird, but it comes out right with color film," he explained.
Kay wondered if he was going to smear the grease paint over her body, but he stopped at her neck, carefully blending the orange makeup into her skin's natural tone. "Put 'em off the track," he explained. "The orange makeup'll film so white, the rest of you will look Indian or mulatto."
Noticing Kay's grimace, he continued, "I'm no more interested in getting arrested for making a sixteen-year-old than you are."
"Then what would you take your clothes off for?" Kay asked bitterly.
"We're making movies," he explained. Picking up a black domino mask, he continued, "I'm your co-star."
Kay looked at the mask. When he put it on the black cloth covered his head, except for his eyes. "Why can't I have one of them?" she asked.
"These films are for men. If I covered up your face, I'd be cheating. Nobody gives a damn about my handsome profile. Nobody gives a shit about me: I'm just some handy piece of furniture to show off what you can do. I'm faceless, so every stiff-pricked weirdo in the world can identify with me when I'm pouring it to you."
"But you were just going to take pictures!" Kay protested.
"That's right. Pictures of me fucking you. Then we'll work out a few other things to fill up the reel."
Kay scrambled to her feet. She grabbed her coat and bolted for the door. But the door was bolted too. While she was fumbling with the latch a sudden blaze of lights startled her. She half-turned and saw that the photographer was shooting her ineffectual attempts at escape with a hand-held camera.
"That's good!" he called. "Now I wave the key at you and the other camera catches it. Plenty of time to patch it together later. That's right! Show a little more despair now that you know you're cornered. See if you can cry a little."
Kay gave a wail of inconsolable despair.
"Wonderful!" the photographer said. "Goddamn, if only you could see yourself in the view finder!"
He put down the hand-held camera and approached Kay, his arms outspread like a wrestler. She noticed that he kept slightly to one side, so the fixed camera would miss nothing of her attempts to escape. She was naked and the camera was grinding away, recording every instant of her entrapment for posterity. She tried to cover her pubic patch with her hands, then she changed her mind and hid her face.
"Beautiful!" the cameraman said. "Best goddamn reluctant virgin act I've seen since I raped my first Eskimo girl!" Still keeping carefully out of camera range, he said, "Now, just when it looks like I've got you cornered, you duck past me and run toward the camera. Make sure you don't cover your tits or your snatch when you're rushing the camera."
Ducking past his grabbing hands, Kay wondered if he thought she was acting. Did he really believe she wasn't frightened out of her wits trying to escape him? How long would he continue to film this cat and mouse game before it was time for the finale?
"Oh, horseshit!" he yelled and suddenly stopped cold.
Kay stared, open-mouthed.
"Lights," he growled, pointing at a floodlight that had just flared and burned out. "Keep your shirt on," he said, rummaging for a spare.
Kay wished she had a shirt to keep on. She really couldn't believe what was happening to her. Ten days ago she had been saying her prayers in a convent. Now, still a virgin, she was making a pornographic movie. How long, she wondered, would she remain a virgin? Glancing covertly at his machinery, she saw that its rigidity was wilting rapidly as he changed the lightbulb. She realized with a sense of indignity that the sight of her taut young body was not as devastating as she had thought. She had the sudden feeling that if this man wasn't hoping to make money from it, he wouldn't look twice at her. She wondered how big his thing would swell if he were filming this scene with Miss Purlett.
The light was fixed. Kay saw him looking at her, his eyes darting rapidly from her firm, perky little breasts down to her wispy black pubic hair. Watching his manhood slowly bulge, Kay realized he was deliberately working at it, thinking all kinds of evil thoughts so he could get it up.
Finally the man in the domino mask was ready. He stepped in front of the camera. "Now, you run past me and try the door again. Stoop over and act like you're fiddling with the lock or something." He began moving toward her. Kay wondered. His rigid rod was rubbing her, tracing slick little snail tracks up and down her taut firm belly before she finally bolted for the door. She had found a bobby pin in the wig. She stooped over the keyhole.
"Turn a little to one side so they can see your tits," he called. "Now, concentrate on picking the lock and pretend you don't see me."
He didn't have to tell her. Kay was doing her desperate best to get the lock open.
From the corner of her eye she saw him approach slowly, his swollen thing preceding him. Frantically, she rammed the bobby pin into the lock.
Suddenly she felt his large muscular hands grasp her hips. Still stooped over the keyhole, she felt his hot throbbing thing pushing at the crack that divided her firm little bottom into the two shapely halves Miss Purlett had kissed such a short while ago. His hands were gripping harder, pulling her back. She could feel the growing pressure of his rod, ramming at the crack between her buttocks. "Jesus and Mary help me!" she prayed.