by L. A. Morse
“Your concern touches me.” I paused long enough to get him off guard. “Now give me the membership list.”
“What!” He jumped enough to nearly tip over the chair to which he was tied.
“I... I... told you. I don’t know who the members are.... I don’t have any list.”
“Then it’ll be tough for you to blackmail them if you don’t know who they are.”
He looked puzzled for a second. “Hey, I never thought of that. You’re right. Pretty stupid of me, I guess. Ha ha.”
“Never mind the list, give me the key for the padlock.”
“The key?” He was jumping again.
“The key.”
“I don’t know where the key is. I guess I lost it. I’ve been meaning to get a hacksaw and cut it. But there’s nothing in there anyway. Just some chemicals and paper, stuff like that.... Hey, where are you going?”
I had walked into the kitchen. I opened a couple of drawers until I found a large, heavy knife, and went back into the living room.
“What are you doing?” Faro squirmed in the chair.
“Unless you tell me where the key is, sucker, I’m going to start cutting pieces off that long prick of yours and make you eat them. We’ll keep it up until you tell me, or until you have nothing left.”
“Hey, man, that’s not a very funny joke.” His voice cracked and broke, and he was sweating profusely.
“Depends which side of the knife you’re on.”
His eyes were wide as I brought the knife toward his cock. When the blade just touched him he screamed.
“No! No! Stop! The key’s in the desk. Taped on the bottom of the middle drawer.”
I smiled at him and found the key. He was shaking and crying. Suppose he had really lost the key?
I opened the cabinet. There were folders containing photos similar to the ones I had already seen. The folders had no names on them, only numbers. The numbers went up to about 150, but there wasn’t a folder for each number. I looked at some of the pictures. There was one of a super-tough cowboy star dressed as a ballerina. He was being whipped by a small woman clad only in knee socks and a black mask. He seemed to be enjoying himself.
I flipped through the folders. At the back of the cabinet, under some papers, was a plain envelope. In it were two sheets of paper, each with three typed columns of names. The names were numbered up to just over 150. Some of the names had check marks that coincided with the presence of folders. Very orderly.
I looked over the list. I found Simon Acker’s name. That certainly didn’t surprise me. There was no check next to his name.
It almost didn’t register when I saw the name Adrian Sweet, but then I realized that was the guy who had been in charge of the proposed merger of Acker’s company. Now that was interesting. There was a check next to his name, and a folder to match. There were only a couple of pictures in it. In each there was a thin man in his late thirties with a young boy of about twelve. They were both naked. In one the man was spanking the boy with a large wooden paddle. In the other, the positions were reversed. The man looked keen and intent. The boy seemed mildly bored.
I took the folder, along with the membership list, and went back to the living room.
Faro was composed again, but looked very pale and drawn.
“Interesting stuff you’ve got there,” I said.
“What are you going to do with it?” he said weakly. “I’m a dead man.”
“Not if you act smart. I took one file. You can keep the rest for now. I also took the list, but since you didn’t have it, you won’t miss it. Now there’s one more thing you’ve got to do, and if you play it easy, nobody’ll find out about you—at least not from me.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to get into the club tonight. I want to see Lascar.”
“Are you crazy? I can’t do that. That’ll blow everything.”
“Not if you do it right. You’ll tell Lascar that you met me somewhere, and that I’ve got a business deal for him.”
“What kind of deal? It’ll have to be good.”
I thought for a minute and suggested something to him. He wasn’t happy, but he thought it would work. We worked out our story, and I told him when I’d be coming by the club.
I cut the neckties with the knife. He stood up, but immediately fell to the ground. He had cramped up from being tied so long.
I turned as I got to the front door. “Remember, Faro, you cooperate and you’ll come through this. If you try to fuck with me, I’ll pull the plug on you.”
He looked at me with a scared, mournful expression as he tried to work some life back into his knotted limbs.
Lying on the floor in a twisted heap he didn’t look like much.
He wasn’t.
ELEVEN
It was early evening by the time I got back to my apartment. A lot of the sun’s power had diminished, but the teat that had been soaking into the ground all day was now radiating back up in an effort to compensate. There was no wind at all to provide any cross ventilation through my apartment, and it was about as comfortable as a sauna bath.
I took a tall glass, put a few ice cubes in it, and filled it up with gin. I swirled the ice around a couple of times and drank off half of it. I don’t know if it cooled me off or just made me less sensitive to the heat, but I started to feel better. I put in another ice cube, refilled the glass, and took it into the bathroom. I stripped and got under the shower, letting it run hot and then gradually turning off the hot until it was running straight cold. Periodically I stuck my head out and took a pull on my drink. After about ten minutes of this I was feeling okay. The soreness where Cueball had hit me had completely gone, but it looked like the bruise would stay around for a few days.
I lay around for a while until it got dark, letting the events of the day flow around, waiting to see if any clear patterns emerged. I was starting to see some outlines, but there was nothing very firm. I had a feeling, though, that it wouldn’t be too much longer.
I got up to dress. I looked in my closet. I didn’t have anything sleazy enough for the part I was going to play, so I decided to dress for comfort: a pair of hopsacking trousers, a loose-fitting shirt and a lightweight sportcoat to cover the gun I would wear on my belt at the back. I looked in the mirror. I didn’t exactly look like a porn merchant, but it’d have to do.
I went out into the night, which had turned very muggy without getting any cooler, and headed back to town. On the way I decided I felt like barbecue, and when you feel like that, there’s only one place to go.
Mama’s Bar-B-Que is not located in a black neighborhood, but it’s good enough for a steady stream of blacks to cross town to eat there regularly. For a couple of blocks around the place, the streets were lined with pimpmobiles—those customized chrome and pastel hybrids with Cadillac fins in the rear and Rolls-Royce grills in the front that cost their owners over 50 K.
Inside, Mama’s was crowded as usual. The owners of the cars were there, each with an elaborate display of gold and diamond jewelry, each surrounded by his stable of ladies. The tables that weren’t occupied by pimps were full of the biggest numbers men or dope movers, each trying his hardest to look like the pimps. Most succeeded. I couldn’t have stood out more if I had come in wearing a white sheet and carrying a burning cross, but I had once helped Mama out of a jam, and she liked me, so my presence was usually tolerated.
The place wasn’t much to look at—a few rooms crowded with tables covered with red-checked tablecloths. Sawdust on the floor. Old ceiling fans that didn’t do much good. Beer advertisements that alternated with old travel posters for the Rhine Valley provided the only decorations. Not much of a place except for Mama.
Even with all the fancy ladies and their fancier men, Mama dominated the place like a cat in a cage of canaries. A shiny black woman, enormous, ageless, who dressed like a southern mammy, she was everywhere at once, her gravel voice shouting orders to the cooks, telling the busboys to move faster, tradin
g jokes with the customers. She helped out at the huge stove, ran the cash register, and moved with the grace of an Olympic gymnast.
Mama had run the restaurant for more than forty years, and she was an institution that was known in every ghetto in the country. Like all institutions, she inspired a lot of wild stories. Most concerned her immense wealth: everybody said she had a ton of money buried under her house, but she said she was just a poor cook. She laughed when she said it, and no one believed her.
The best story, though, went back a long way. One day Mama had found that her current old man was cheating on her. She didn’t like that since she’d given him all kinds of presents. There was only one thing to do. She hatcheted him, and for the next couple of days he was served for dinner. They said he was pretty good. Nearly every day since then, some fancy man would come in and ask Mama if she had any of that special long pig. Mama would just laugh and say, “Not unless you’re offerin’ your services, honey.”
I sat down at one of the few vacant tables. Mama knew what I wanted, and soon a large platter was put down in front of me. There were enough ribs on it to make up half a pig, along with homefries, greens, rice and beans, and a lot of cornbread. The sauce on the ribs was a combination of sweet and hot, and no one had ever figured out what was in it. The hot burned your throat, but right away the sweet soothed it like honey. Mama had turned down a lot of money for the recipe, and there was nothing else like it.
I washed the whole thing down with some cans of Tecate beer and felt pretty good. I lit up a cigarette and watched Emile, the black dwarf newsie, walk by with his odd rolling gait. Up front he had a newspaper stand, but he ran the biggest book in the city. His clothes were always torn and dirty, but he owned a lot of Beverly Hills real estate, and he came to Mama’s in a chauffeur-driven limo.
After one of Mama’s dinners, about all you want to do is curl up with a nice soft woman. I had one in mind, but I had other things to do. I paid and drove to the Black Knight Club.
The club was in a big house on one of those old quiet streets south of Hollywood Boulevard. There were no signs on the place. The windows were boarded up, and it looked dark and deserted.
I went up the walk and rang the bell. Nothing happened for a while, and then the peephole opened up and an eye looked at me for a long time. I wondered what would happen if I suddenly jammed my finger into the eye. Maybe next time.
The door opened about a foot and a beefy guy with a bulldog face blocked the way.
“Yeah?” he said.
“I’m here to see Lascar.”
“Mr. Lascar don’t see nobody.”
I was saved further stimulating dialogue when Faro came over, moving nervously like a gimpy stork. Bulldog reluctantly let me in, and I saw that he had a twin standing next to him. They were both wearing badly fitting dinner jackets that were too small for their large shoulders, causing them to hunch over awkwardly, a pair of penguin weight lifters.
Faro led me down a long hallway, not saying anything or even looking at me. On the way we passed a large room that was set up like a lounge with lots of couches and chairs facing an elevated stage. Even though the room was extremely dark, I could see most of the seats were occupied by men looking expectantly at the empty stage. A number of the men were being fondled by women who wore little or nothing.
At the end of the corridor we came to a door. Faro knocked and we went in. He introduced me to Lascar and quickly left.
Lascar was lean with unhealthy pale skin. He had a black patch over one eye and an ugly-looking scar ran up his cheek and disappeared under the patch. He was dressed in a black suit over a black turtleneck. He was smoking a long, thin Brazilian cigar. He was the perfect image of a tough, sophisticated sex club manager, but somehow he didn’t quite make it. It was a role he didn’t look comfortable with, and he knew it, which made him seem even more awkward. He tried to appear relaxed, but he made a nervous movement with his head, continually twisting it to the side and looking over his shoulder with his good eye.
We looked at each other for a while until he felt compelled to break the silence.
“I understand you’re selling something we may be interested in.” He had a surprisingly soft voice that almost had a stutter in it.
I told him I represented a group of South American gentlemen who sold some very special goods and services to selected clients around the world. From what I knew of the Black Knight, I said, I was certain they would be interested in purchasing the full range of products. Up to this point, Lascar was looking bored. I then said I was selling a series of snuff films. At those two words his attitude changed, and while he tried to look uninterested, I knew I had him.
In the sexual underground, snuff films have an almost mythical quality attached to them. Stories about them abound, but few people have actually seen them. Each new rumor of the existence of one sets off a frenzy of activity to locate it. Very simply, snuff films are like most stag films except they end with the torture, mutilation, and murder of the woman. The thing that gives them their high market value is the fact that they are real—the leading lady does not come back to make a sequel.
Lascar questioned me closely about the films I was selling, not believing at first that they were the real thing, but I described them in detail and soon convinced him.
“The broads are really offed?” he said, and I nodded. “How much you want for them?” He had difficulty remaining cool.
“Ten thousand apiece, and you have to take all five.”
He started coughing and choking.
“That’s way out of line,” he said after he recovered himself. “I can get stuff like that for a lot less anywhere.”
I stood up. “Bullshit. If you can get the genuine article anywhere else, be my guest. I thought this was the right kind of operation, but I guess I wasted my time.”
I moved to the door. His head was jerking and twisting around like a weather vane. He called me back.
“Wait a second. I might be interested, but I’ll have to think about it.”
“You mean you’ll have to ask the boss?” I said with a lot of contempt.
“I am the boss.” He failed to sound very convincing.
“Bullshit. If you were the boss the deal would be made already. With the kind of place you run here, you could get your bread back two or three times over, easy. These are quality goods.”
“Take it easy. That’s a lot of dough. I’m interested, but I’ve got to talk to a few people first.”
“Why don’t you just tell me who the man is, and I’ll deal with him direct. Otherwise no deal. I don’t like talking to jerks who have no authority.”
He was getting pretty upset. “I can’t tell you. The man likes to stay behind the scenes. If he wants to talk to you, he’ll talk to you.”
“You’re blowing it. I wonder what the man’ll say when he hears you fucked up?”
“Take it easy. We’ll work this out. It’ll take a couple of days is all. Besides, there ain’t no place else in town you can move films like you’ve got.”
“Maybe not,” I said. I looked at Lascar and decided it would be a good time to send out a feeler. “Meanwhile, maybe you can help me out. One of my clients is looking for a girl, a particular girl. She ripped him off or something, and he wants to see her again. If you could get a line on her, I’d be willing to sell the films cheaper. Your boss wouldn’t have to know, and you could have the difference.”
Lascar started to look more comfortable. This was more in his line, and he could always use a little extra. His kind never had enough. “You came to the right place. 1 can locate any broad. If she’s in the trade, I can get her. Who is it?”
I took the picture of Linda Perdue out of my wallet and handed it to him. “That’s her. She looks like somebody’s virgin daughter, but take it from me, she’s a lot of trouble. A whole lot of trouble.”
As soon as Lascar saw the picture, all the color drained from his face, he started coughing again, and his head twisted around a
lmost completely. I was obviously onto something, but I decided to let it rest for the time being. Lascar looked at me, and I could see that he was really frightened. I just stared back at him without any expression until he started to relax.
“Never seen her,” he said when he’d calmed down enough, “but I’ll ask around. Maybe I can come up with something. “
“Okay, do that. I’d appreciate it, and, like I said, it would be worth your while.”
Lascar couldn’t figure out what was going on, but, since I was moving to the door, he was breathing easier. I decided to rock him one more time.
“Say, I almost forgot,” I said. “My clients wanted a little technical assistance.”
“What about?”
“The kind of cameras you use in your private rooms. “
“Cameras?” The word barely came out, and he was twitching again.
“Yeah. The hidden cameras that you use for the blackmail pictures. My people haven’t been getting very good results with the setup they use, and they wondered what you had. They also wondered how you monitor the rooms. Do you use closed circuit video, or do you have something else?”
“Who the hell are you?” He was pretty scared.
“What’s the matter?” I said as ingenuously as I could. “Wasn’t I supposed to know about that? Oh, sorry. I just figured every place like this had a similar arrangement—good for maximizing profits, as the schoolboys from business admin, say. If you don’t want to share trade secrets, that’s okay.”
I was opening the door by this time.
“Wait a second,” he said. “How do I get in touch?”
“Don’t worry about that. Tell the man my name. I’ve got a feeling he’ll be contacting me. If not, I’ll get back to you.”
I shut the door behind me. Lascar had a funny expression on his face as I left. I was still operating in the dark, but I thought my performance might turn some lights on for me.
I looked into the lounge on my way out. The show was just beginning. An oily little bastard was announcing it was something called “The Spanish Inquisition.” From the murmured reaction of the audience, it was obviously a big favorite around here.