Chapter 7
"Isn't this cozy?" Carol asked, and then she answered her own question. "Cozy for queers."
She stood in the center of a large room on the ground floor of the old house. The decor was all very approximate-if you delved into erotica and unnatural sex. Just whose imagination had conceived it all was beyond me. But whoever did had had to delve deeply into the worst pornography, both ancient and modern, sexuality in all of its lewd forms.
The bed dominated the rooms.
Carol pressed several light switches and even the lights had a purpose. The bed itself was bathed in-a halo of soft, shadowless light, and around it, hot blues, greens and reds added to the exotic effect of the room.
Then I saw the camera, very unobtrusive, back in the shadows. On second glance, I saw that there were two cameras, both mouthed on the same dolly. One was a still camera and the other a 16mm movie job, with three different lenses in the turret
"This is the love nest," I said.
"The smut nest," Carol corrected.
She picked up an elongated wooden object lying on a small table, turned it over and over in her hand, puzzled.
"Know what it is?" I asked at last.
"No, I do not," she admitted.
I chuckled. "I'm not sure but I think it's an Indian marriage stick."
"A marriage stick? Whatever in the world is that?"
I was still grinning. She was holding it up for inspection.
"What does it look like?"
And suddenly she was blushing.
"You trapped me that time!" She was a bit embarrassed, but her curiosity was demanding. "I still don't see what it was used for," she said.
"Must I draw a picture? Okay. I'm not sure, but I think the Blackfeet used something like this in a virginity rite even as late as the Lewis and Clark era. Before a girl married her brave, she had to prove her own sexual purity. So the marriage stick was greased with bear grease."
She held up her hand. "I'm far ahead of you," Carol said, her eyes back on the stick. "Ugh!" she ejaculated, and shivered. And I knew what she was thinking about Even with bear grease it was a formidable threat-and the girl involved always was a virgin.
I was looking at the bed and the cameras. And I was thinking of the two girls who would be here shortly.
"I suggest we go back upstairs and have a talk with your Lesbian friend," I said to Carol.
She nodded and started up the stairs. I had never noticed before, but her sleek hips had a cadence of motion when she climbed the stairs that was quite maddening to one following close behind her.
The woman we knew as Julia Anderson was still on the bed. She moved a hand as we came in, moaned and rolled over on her side. Her breasts were still bare. The nipples still seemed swollen, as if she had maintained her tingle even in a comatose state.
"The lady should know a lot of things she could tell us," I suggested.
Carol grinned. "Do we get rough?"
"Only if we are forced to."
"I know a few tricks," Carol persisted. I believe she was still thinking of the woman's hands on her own body.
Carol went up to the bed and slapped the woman's cheeks, just hard enough to make them sting. She made a gutteral noise, deep in her throat and finally her eyes opened. She lay there for a moment, staring blankly. Finally the eyes focused and she pulled herself up in the bed.
"Who are you?" she asked looking at me. Then she saw Carol. "Oh, it figures," she said.
"We'll make a deal," Carol said. "You tell us a lot of things we would like to know and you might get out of this with very little trouble."
"And if I don't?" the woman asked.
"We'll throw the book at you!" I told her.
"You don't scare me one bit," she said. "I've done nothing wrong."
"That is a matter of opinion."
"Prove it"
I moved in closer. "We'll prove it never fear. By the time you get out of the clink, you'll be too old to have a single sex desire left"
"What are Jane and Alice?" Carol asked.
She shrugged. "Just names."
"Names of two girls who have turned Lesbian, through your coaching? They're coming here within the hour, to earn a fast buck on your pad downstairs."
She didn't answer.
"Don't you think you'd better get Ortega down here, so he can film the action?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
I looked at Carol. "Suppose we'd better give her the treatment," I suggested.
"Wait until I hunt up some strong linen thread," Carol said, her face deadpan. "I think I have some in my bag."
The woman still glared at us.
Carol left the room and came back presently. And she did have a length of black linen thread in her hand, the strong kind generally used in sewing back a loose button. She walked closer to the bed.
"Your name is Julia, isn't it?"
The woman's lips were tight. Perhaps she had an inkling of what the linen thread was for, perhaps she did not. But her face wasn't exactly passive any more.
"I had a girl friend who got the teratment," Carol said, and her eyes dropped to the woman's bare breasts and the erect nipples. "You think you've had pain? Sister, you don't know what pain is until we start winding the thread."
I walked closer to the bed, my eyes on her big breasts and suddenly she got the idea. I saw it in her face, the shock that registered in her eyes. She reared back.
"You can't do that! I'll call the police!"
"You won't call anyone," Carol said icily. "All you'll think about is getting that string off."
The woman cringed back still further. Instinctively her hands went to her breasts. She seemed suddenly aware of her near nudity and pulled the jacket tight
"No!" she said. "No, please."
"Then start talking," I said somberly.
She nodded. "I'm not the one you want" she persisted. "I'm just one of the many who must have this kind of love." Her voice rose, as her hysteria grew. "Don't you understand that? I've got to have it!" '
"I understand a lot of things," I reminded her. "You were one of the photographers at Miss Worms-by's school. You handed out cards to the sexy-looking girls that finally got you lewd pictures. This was how you roped them into Lesbianism while your goon partners photographed the action and sold it as smut And then there's this little thing called blackmail."
"Who forced you?"
Her lips quivered. She seemed torn between two fears. "Nita," she said at last. "Nita Morris."
"How many women or girls are in this Lesbian ring?"
She shrugged. "A dozen, fifteen."
"And how many men?"
"Just Ortega."
I stepped closer and grabbed up one of the linen threads from Carol's hand. "Are you lying to me?"
She shook her head. There was real fear in her eyes. "No, I'm not lying."
"These two girls who will be here presently-you go through with it, understand? Pay them for their act. But don't call Ortega. I'll be on the camera. And if you make one false move-"
"Okay," she said. She was trembling now as if she had a sudden chill.
"Just who are these two girls?" Carol persisted.
"A couple of cheap street tramps," she said. 'They'd do anything for a hundred bucks. They know the score."
"Is that the fee they're getting tonight?"
"A hundred dollars," she said.
Someone knocked on the rear door.
"Now remember" I cautioned her. "Play it right or you get the linen thread!"
I went down the stairs, leaving her with Carol and opened the rear door.
They were tramps all right. Perhaps two of the youngest tramps this side of Alcatraz. They looked about seventeen. The taller one was a brunette, with a wide sultry mouth, and old-young eyes. Her companion looked like a blonde who had gone redhead via the dye bath. They both had too much lipstick on their lips and they reeked of cheap perfume. If the jiggle meant anything, there were no bras under the slipover sweaters.
"Well, a new face!" the brunette one greeted me and clucked her lips. She wormed inside, an invitation in her eyes.
The other one stopped just inside the door, and pulled in a deep breath which pushed her breasts within inches of my body."
"You're nice! Real nice-with muscles. No beard, no beret"
"But a good, hard hand to spank your rump!" I mumbled under my breath.
I locked the door. They preceded me down the hall, buttocks tugging at their tight skirts.
The brunette pulled up at the far end of the hall, hand on a door. "We're taking a shower first We like to be clean and pure."
The redhead lingered. "I'm Alice," she said. "Are you going to be. operating the camera or in bed with us?"
"In bed with you? I thought this was a Lesbian tangle."
She shrugged. "Either way suits me, long as we get paid."
I'll be on the camera," I said, grinning.
She pushed up against me, until I felt the points of her nipples.
"Honey, we'll make it real good-for you!"
"See that you do," I said, "or you don't get paid."
The brunette came back from the bathroom tugging at her sweater, eyes questioning. "Where's Julia?"
"She's upstairs with a new girl."
She smiled. "Julia will sure enjoy initiating a luscious sexy babe like the new gal," she said.
"I can understand why," I said.
She -edged closer. "You know something? She's a nympho-a Lesbian nympho."
I grinned at her. "Aren't you?"
"Hell no, we take it any way!" she said with emphasis. "With Jane and me, it's a business. We take each other-or we take a man. But always they take pictures and we get paid. You got the hundred bucks, mister?"
"Julia does the paying."
"We need about ten packs of pictures too," Jane said.
This caught me off guard. Evidently they were selling their own smut pictures. I nodded. I'll tell Julia."
Alice lingered. "Why don't you call me, one of your rainy days, and we'll go out and do what comes naturally?"
I'll think about that. Where do I call?"
She gave me a phone number and I scribbled it down.
"If you come, bring a good looking stud for Jane."
I nodded.
"We'll go down to the beach and play rail fence."
Just looking at them, listening to their obscene suggestions, I felt myself getting angry. They were just kids. They needed their bottoms blistered and sent home-to what? Already they were hardboiled sex tramps and that told me that they had started at thirteen or fourteen at the least.
I tried to rationalize, looking at their brittle, still young faces. What had started it all? Who had been the first man or boy? What had been the first impulse that had started them on their sex binge? Some old guy, playing Lolita? Was it lack of a good home, parents, living on the wrong side of the tracks? There could be a dozen explanations.
Then I reassured myself: Why give it another thought? You can't help them! They're past the point of no return.
But it still tormented me. They were good looking kids. Surely there was some sedative to dilute that hardnes in their eyes, in their faces. Under their cheap clothing were strong bodies, still with the vitality of youth. The redhead dripped sex in her every move. Her brunette companion had a body equally luscious.
"We won't be long," Jane said and they vanished through a door.
. I walked down the hall to the love nest and started checking the two cameras. The movie job was loaded and ready to go, even as to lens setting and focus. The still camera had a roll film back and there were twelve exposures waiting. It, too, was pre-set to get the action on the bed.
Carol and the woman called Julia came into the room.
"Now listen!" I said severely. "I'm the new photographer on the movie camera. Carol will take the still job. The chicks will go through with their act as usual. You pay them."
She nodded. She was still frightened, if I read her face right.
I stole a second glance at her now. She wasn't in the category of the beautiful, but she had a fine figure and a very misleading face; it beamed character. But where the character was, I'd never guess.
Carol's face was grim. "Mike, they're just kids."
"In years only."
"Can't we help them-get them out of this mess before it's too late?"
"Maybe. But first we're getting the pictures" I turned to the Lesbian. "They want ten packets of smut."
She turned and walked across the room. I saw the safe, behind a screen. She worked at the combination a moment, finally swung open the door. She reached inside and counted out ten envelopes about 4x6 inches in size. She laid the stack on a table.
I opened one of the envelopes and dumped out the contents. It was smut all right-action smut the worst kind. The two girls caressing each other, in different poses-gutter stuff. Carol took one look and made a face.
Each of the packets contained a half dozen 4x5 prints.
"What's the tab?" I asked the woman.
"The girls pay $2.50 a packet. They double or triple their money in the resale."
"And who do they sell them to?"
"These two girls work the waterfront taverns."
At seventeen, they were working the booze joints. If I knew the law, they weren't even supposed to be inside a tavern.
The six 4 x 5 prints in the envelope cost the photographer little more than a penny each. Quite a nice profit item-in volume. They had the volume. The market was not only stateside, but world-wide.
A door opened and the two girls, came into the room. They were bare-cleaned, scrubbed, bare.
"All right, poppa, get the camera ready!" Jane said.
She didn't look like a wanton in the flash. Her body was willowy, solid, with the firm pinkness of youth. Her breasts were on the small side but there was ample protrusion-and two rosebuds strengthened by a lot of caressing.
Alice was even more provocative, with flaring hips and long firm legs. Her breasts were heavy, wide spaced, already in a mild state of muscular sag. She, too, had oversized nipples. They ran toward the bed and flopped down upon it.
The sex play started. I click the motor switch on the movie camera and listened to its low whine.
"Don't forget to click the shutter," I reminded Carol.
Her face was grim as she watched the two figures on the bed.
"Remind me to get some strong soap and take a bath, soon as I get home," she said.
I could imagine how she felt. We were looking at something unclean. Reaching hands, caressing each other quite intimately, sprawled bodies, eager lips kissing passionately.
It went on and one and the camera ground out the action frame by frame. These two girls had said that they were not Lesbians, but this was Lesbian love.
Like Carol, I suddenly felt the need of a bath. And then, suddenly Carol's fingers were digging into my flesh. She pointed to Julia Anderson.
The woman was getting a charge, watching the two girls on the bed. She stood there, eyes glued to the two girls as if hypnotized. Her eyes were glassy. She was breathing hard. I doubt if she even realized at the moment that we were in the same room with her.
"Mike, look!" Carol whispered.
The woman's hands were on her jacket now. She fumbled at the buttons, as if she couldn't get them unloosened fast enough. The jacket opened at last and she tore it off her shoulders and let it drop to the floor. Her hands pushed down on her abdomen and then she was bare. She stood there, breathing abnormally, hands rolling on her own body. Then she walked to the bed.
Perhaps the two girls expected it. At least they didn't seem too surprised. She sprawled on the bed and they reached for her.
"Mike, stop it!" Carol said. There was hysteria in her voice.
"We couldn't stop it if we wanted to," I said. "Keep taking pictures."
"I'm sick to my stomach!" Carol said. Her white face bore out the assertion.
The madness on the bed continued-a mass of intermingled hands and bodies lashing at each other with complete abandon.
The flim clicked through the magazine and I shut off the motor.
"Unload the camera," I said to Carol. "We need this film."
And suddenly the action on the bed quieted down. Perhaps they had reached the end and cessation was natural. Then I saw the woman whispering something to the girls and knew I had been wrong in this supposition.
Jane sat up. I noticed the nipples of her breasts-hard and swollen. She had gotten a terrific charge out of this, it wasn't mere acting for pay.
"You're a damn cop!" she said.
Alice slid her wanton hips off the covers showing us lots of loin and got to her feet.
"The dame is a cop too, Jane."
They both looked at the Anderson woman as if comparing notes. She was possibly thirty pounds heavier than either of them.
"There are three of us and only two of them!" Jane said and started across the room.
"Baby, you're asking for this!" Carol warned and she stepped forward to meet the attack.
Jane charged her. Carol sidestepped, reached, twisted and Jane slammed down to the floor.
Alice came forward, to avenge her bedmate.
"I'll take her!" Carol shouted. "You stop the big one."
She had a point. The Anderson woman was headed for me, arms flailing, fingers ready to scratch out my eyes.
I stepped back and stopped her in a very primitive but effective way. I let my open hand slice across the tips of her big breasts. The blow was hard enough to give her a real bellyache. She pulled up, as if she had slammed into a barbed wire fence and her hands instinctively grabbed her big breasts and she moaned deep in her throat. She backed up until she had the bed behind her. She sat down hard and her face turned pale.
Alice was trying the old fingernail treatment on Carol, gouging, kicking and screaming.
"You asked for it!" Carol said in disgust and her hand sliced across Alice's breasts. That one blow took the fight out of her. She stood there, trying to retch, suddenly very tired and sick.
I went over to the safe and got some assorted packets to add to the films and prints already in my pocket.
Julia Anderson was still sitting on the bed, nursing her sore breasts.
"If I were you," I said, acid in my voice, "I'd make tracks and never come back here. I wouldn't take another school picture. The evidence we have here will be turned over to Edward Morgan and that should be ample to forever bar you from the business."
She didn't say anything, just glared at me.
I reached forward and grabbed her. And suddenly the linen thread was tight-and I pulled it tighter.
She screamed. I stood there, like some ancient excutioner. I pulled tighter and her hands came up and the green was in her face again.
I eased up on the string. "That's just a sample of what it will be-if ever I see you again."
She backed away from me. If ever there was fear in a woman's face, it was in hers at the moment.
"Get your clothes on and get out of here!" I shouted.
I had all the evidence I needed now, photos, undeveloped films, tapes. I started for the back door.
Suddenly I smelled smoke and that seemed odd. I started opening doors, prying into rooms.
I found the cause, moments later in the bath room. Evidently one of the girls had thrown a match into a wastebasket there after lighting her cigarette. The wastebasket was very near some inflammable drapes; already it was burning quite merrily. I leaped forward, ready to stomp out the fire.
And then I jerked up!
I stood there, while the slot machine that is my subliminal mind clicked up three lemons. The negative decision was made. It might all be for the best, who knew? I wheeled, closed the door and walked off.
"My hack's down in that aspen grove," I said to Carol, and picked up her hand. It was cold and there was a tremble in her fingers.
We pulled in the fresh, clean air and suddenly it seemed like nectar pushing out the cobwebs of filth that we had breathed inside that old Victorian house.
We got into the car and I reached over and kissed Carol hard on the lips. She was listless for just an instant, then her response came.
"Ugh!" she said. "Even our love seems unreal after seeing all of that filth." Her smile was rather pathetic.
"Don't you believe it!" I said in mild reprimand. "Yours and mine is the real thing, and don't you ever doubt it."
I started the car, made a swing and headed slowly down the service road, away from the old house.
"Where do we go now?" Carol asked.
"The Spanish bungalow on Ramsway Drive. I only hope John Lilo got there in time-"
"If we get Ortega," Carol said, "that should wind it up."
I shook my head. "You're forgetting the kingpin aren't you?"
"The Morris woman?"
"Right."
We made a right turn into the main highway and suddenly Carol was tugging at my arm.
"Mike, for heaven's sake, look at that!"
I pulled up at the side of the road and swung about in the seat.
The sky, back on the mountain, was turning crimson. As we sat there and watched, we saw the flames licking higher and the crimson brightened into a huge halo of weaving light.