Hard-core Murder

by Paul Kenyon

  Farnsworth said, "Mavis, tell Richard to set up a 16mm projector and screen in the small conference room. I'll run it myself. And I don't want to be disturbed for an hour. That means I want you to hold all messages. I'll collect them when I come out."

  "Yes, Mr. Farnsworth." Mavis showed no curiosity about the can of film in Farnsworth's hand. Sample reels found their way to International Models, Inc., all the time.

  After Farnsworth had locked the door of the conference room behind them, Penelope waited until he'd swept the walls, ceiling and floor for bugs. There never were any; nobody, not even the CIA, which was diligently trying to uncover the identity of the NSA agent called Coin, had any reason to suspect that International Models, Inc., was anything but what it seemed to be. But Farnsworth was a careful man.

  "All clear," he said.

  "What's it all about, John?"

  "Watch." He threaded the projector and turned out the lights. Penelope settled back to watch the screen.

  It was one of the nasty ones, with whips and boots and chains. But the production quality was startlingly good. It didn't have the grainy look that so many of them did. When it blurred out of focus, it was because the camera was striving for a definite effect. And there was a story line of sorts.

  "What am I looking for, John?" Penelope said. "You didn't come all the way from Washington to show me a dirty movie."

  "Keep watching."

  It seemed to be a variation on the Milquetoast fantasy. The central character was a mild little man in the grip of Kafkaesque forces. He was bullied at his job, henpecked by his wife, persecuted by tradesmen. He retreated into Walter Mitty daydreams of a police state. Only this was a masochistic Walter Mitty who enjoyed the abuse and the torture.

  "Well, whoever made it seems to know his Marquis de Sade," Penelope said. "And his Krafft-Ebing."

  It was funny and inventive in a way. The Milquetoast's wife, in one dream sequence, turned out to be a police security monitor who had been eavesdropping on him. She produced a huge microphone from her vagina, the wires trailing inside, and held it up to his penis. There was a nicely framed shot of the two cylindrical objects standing side by side. There were quick subliminal cuts of news footage showing Washington landmarks and faces of government officials.

  "There's a little political paranoia mixed in, John," Penelope said doubtfully. "Is that what it's about? Somebody in Washington taking this nonsense seriously?"

  "We'll be getting to it soon."

  The projector ground on. The Milquetoast was taken to the police state's torture cellars. A trio of naked girls subjected him to a series of ingenious sexual abuses. In one sequence a chubby blonde, wearing only a policeman's hat and a holstered gun, strapped on a gigantic dildo and raped the chained Milquetoast through the anus.

  "Unpleasant people," Penelope remarked, lighting a cigarette.

  Now the worm turned. In a long dissolve obviously copied from an old Wolf Man movie, the Milquetoast turned into a muscle man wearing leopard trunks and a leopard band tied around his long yellow hair. He whipped the girls and raped them each in turn. Then, the trunks discarded, and sporting a spectacular erection, he went looking for revenge. The flashes of news clips became more frequent. The unknown film editor skillfully matched the hero's progress to footage of recognizable places and people. His bare feet walking up a staircase was intercut with tourists' feet mounting the Senate steps. There were reaction shots to give the impression that faces were turning to stare at the naked man. There was the muscle man's fist flashing out, and a matched intercut of a famous senator's face, and then a cut to an extra with the same build as the senator falling to the floor.

  "Here's where it gets interesting," Farnsworth said.

  There was more news footage of a high cabinet official, his wife at his side. She was one of the less retiring wives, whose picture was forever being seen in the society pages of the newspapers, on TV, in gossip magazines. She had the reputation of being a lively personality, who still bore traces of the young beauty she once had been.

  "That was a still shot from a magazine," Penelope said with a professional squint. "No more than ten or twelve frames, panned to give the illusion of movie footage. I suppose they wanted to match her face to the dissolve of the woman he's screwing."

  "Watch," Farnsworth said.

  The actor was getting his revenge on The System now. He subjected the cabinet official's wife to a series of explicit sexual humiliations. The setting seemed to be a shabby hotel room somewhere. She lolled, naked, on a sagging bed while he abused her, mugging for the camera.

  Penelope gasped. "That's no fake! That woman isn't a stand-in! It's her! It's really her!"

  She looked more closely. The cabinet wife appeared to be dazed: drugged or drunk. The muscle man put her through her paces, arranging her limbs in different positions and moving her about as if she were a stuffed doll. She showed minimal awareness of what was going on. Now he was lying on his back, his outsized phallus standing up like a newel post. He lifted her bodily, under the armpits, and set her down on his stick. It went in all the way. Her lips parted in an automatic sexual response. The camera dwelt on close-ups of the linked groins, the bouncing breasts, and zeroed in on her face in time to catch her in orgasm.

  "She's stoned out of her mind, of course," Penelope said.

  "The point is, how did they get her in that hotel room in the first place?"

  There was more. The film editor intercut footage of the woman's eminent husband. He was at a White House ceremony, talking to the President himself. Now the editor went back to the muscle man. The actor was strapping on the colossal dildo that had been used to rape the Milquetoast. She winced as he inserted it. There was a matched dissolve to another vagina. A muffled shot was heard on the sound track. Some additional footage of the close-up that showed the face of the cabinet official's wife in ecstasy was spliced in. Then a shocking close-up of a jagged, bloody wound appearing in the small of a woman's back. The muscle man withdrew the dildo. Smoke curled up from the end of it. There was a close-up of a round hole and the glint of metal inside the flesh-colored plastic. A woman's body sprawled, out of focus, in the background.

  Penelope stubbed out her cigarette. "That was no fake either. There was some kind of zip gun arrangement in that thing. Probably .45 caliber from the look of the exit wound. The girl who played the stand-in died."

  "I suppose they wouldn't dare murder somebody well known," Farnsworth said. "But the poor pathetic nobodies who act in this filth are fair game."

  He turned off the projector and switched on the room lights. He began rewinding the film.

  "What do you want me to do, John?" Penelope said.

  He looked up. "You may have noticed that this is an answer print. It isn't color corrected. There's a strong chance that no release prints have been made yet, or if they have, that they haven't been distributed."

  "You want me to track the negative down and destroy it?"

  "That's part of it."

  "Where did you get the print?"

  He grimaced. "Unfortunately, you'll have no leads. It fell into the NSA's hands by accident. Well, almost by accident. The man who was showing it at a private party is dead. The agent who infiltrated the party was… a little impulsive. The dead man was one of those freelance film editors who infest the New York scene. He could have borrowed it from anybody at one of those underground film labs. Or a legitimate film lab, for that matter — some of these porno films are processed clandestinely after hours by employees who stay behind to use the equipment."

  "You said that destroying the negative was part of my job. What's the other part?"

  Farnsworth didn't answer right away. He fixed her with a remote gaze. At last he said: "The President doesn't know about this particular reel of film. Neither does the CIA."

  "Who does?"

  "A few top people at NSA. And the President's national security advisor. They haven't told the President. They don't dare."

  She gestur
ed toward the can of film. "Something like that can't be kept under wraps."

  "The cabinet official in question will resign within the next few weeks. He'll have a plausible personal reason to give the President."

  "The boys are playing rough, aren't they?"

  "Quite rough. They've authorized Coin to take appropriate measures under Code Omega."

  It was her turn to be silent. She sat very still for a moment.

  "Quite a few people are likely to be killed before this is over. Some of them important. We'll be stirring up the Mob for one thing. There may be a blood bath. John, am I really authorized to take what they so blandly call 'appropriate measures'?"

  "There's a general directive from the highest authority. The President knows that there are people in sensitive defense jobs who are mixed up in this porno mess, or who have friends or relatives who are. There's a potential security problem. And he knows, from his current round of negotiations with the Russians, that they're aware of things they shouldn't be aware of. That suggests blackmail. The porno ring is probably peddling whatever secrets they can turn up — sort of a profit bonus for them. The President is concerned that his bargaining position with the Russians may be weakened."

  "So NSA has a 'general directive' to smash the porno ring? But the President doesn't want to know the details?"

  "Correct."

  She studied her fingernails. "That means that my head is on the chopping block, John. And so is yours."

  "Also correct. If the waves you make get too high, they'll come down with the wrath of God on us. They'll push it until Coin's cover is blown. And Key's. They'll disown us. And probably put us on public trial."

  "What if we turn the job down?"

  "That's up to you."

  She gave him a cool, level stare. "All right, John. I'll kill the bastard who made that film. And I'll wipe out the evidence. And I'll take on the Mob." She gave a harsh laugh. "And I won't make waves."

  * * *

  "Cut, cut!" Sully yelled.

  He leaned forward in the canvas director's chair. It was red, with the words "MR. FLICK" stenciled in gold across the back. Sully was dressed to match, in a wine red sports jacket and gold riding breeches. His boots were shiny new, and looked uncomfortable. The beret had been replaced by a very British-looking tropical sun helmet.

  The cowboy coming through the swinging saloon doors paused, hands resting just above his twin holsters. It was Iron Man, his long hair tucked up under a ten-gallon hat. The hat had a leopardskin band that clashed with the buckskin shirt and the faded blue jeans he wore.

  "What's the matter, Sully?" Max, the cameraman, said. "That shot looked fine to me."

  Sully put down his megaphone. "Hal got into the edge of the frame. You could see the shotgun mike and part of his hand. We'll shoot it over."

  Max scratched his bald head. "What the hell does it matter, Sully? This is just a cheapie. We should be shooting one-to-one, or close to it. You act like you're making High Noon. Our film costs are already way over."

  Sully's sallow face went dark with fury. "This is a Sully Flick film! I ain't letting something like that get by me! We'll shoot it over."

  "Okay, okay, Sully," Max said. "You're the boss. But it's The Syn's money. They ain't gonna like it."

  "The Syn has bigger things on its mind than a lousy little cost overrun on a quickie like this. This is peanuts." He stroked his sparse goatee. "I been talking to them about a production with a million-dollar budget."

  Max raised his eyebrows. "Oh?"

  "That's right. The first million-dollar porno epic. I'm waiting for a call from Mister Head himself."

  Max looked impressed. "Wild, Sully! But we better get this scene in the can. We still got those outside shots to do, and the light's going."

  Sully nodded. He scuttled around the set, giving instructions to the six players in western costume. His female lead, Socket Toomey, was dressed as a dance hall girl, her chubby round breasts spilling over the top of her bodice. There were two more dance hall girls, a man with a handlebar mustache playing the bartender, Iron Man, and a gunslinger dressed in black.

  Nobody was likely to disturb them. The tumbledown ghost town, in a bleak and barren tract of desert stretching between California and Nevada, had been bought by the criminal syndicate that called itself The Syn. Armed guards in dune buggies patrolled the area, keeping away wanderers.

  The last owner of the ghost town had been an eccentric millionaire named Ruby Bill Jackson. He'd refurbished some of the dilapidated old western buildings in the 1920s and thrown a series of frontier-style parties that were still talked about. Then he'd married an Italian countess and brought her to live in the desert. She complained that she missed Rome. To please her, Ruby Bill had built a second ghost town next to the old. This one contained replicas, constructed to scale, of some of the famous Roman landmarks — the Colosseum, the Forum, the Baths of Caracalla, the Pantheon, the Arch of Constantine. It had cost him thirty million dollars. But it hadn't done him any good. His" countess ran off with a filling station attendant from Jackass Springs. Ruby Bill died, a lonely eccentric, in the 1930s. The Roman architecture still stood as his monument, looming surrealistically over the weathered saloon and livery stable and hotel and general store of the original ghost town.

  Sully, with The Syn's blessing, had made good use of the frontier settings. Now he had plans for the Roman ruins.

  He stroked his little goatee while the sextet of players waited for his orders. "Okay, Socket, in this scene you're Miss Pussy, the saloon owner. Iron Man, you saunter in and slap the bar. You say, 'Gimme a shot of redeye.' Socket, you come around and say, 'How about a shot of roundeye instead, stranger?' You drop your bloomers and bend over and hug your knees. Bucky here says, 'You'll have to draw against me first, stranger.' Then you both go to it, hot and heavy."

  He returned to the canvas director's chair and picked up his megaphone. "Camera! Action!" he yelled. The Arriflex clicked away. Hal, the sound man, thrust his shotgun mike at the actors, careful to stay just outside of camera range. The scene ended in a Laocoon tangle of naked limbs, with the bartender and the other two dance hall girls joining the original three players.

  Sully wiped the sweat off his forehead and said, "Okay, now everybody outside for the scene with the horse."

  He started to get up, when a phone rang. The bartender reached under the bar and answered it. "Yeah?" he said. His jaw dropped. "Yes sir, he's right here," he said in a respectful tone. He held out the phone to Sully. "It's for you, Sully. It's Mister Head."

  Sully scrambled to his feet, knocking over his chair. He grabbed the phone from the bartender's hand.

  "Mister Head? This is Sully. What's the good word?"

  The voice at the other end was heavy, slow, elaborately courteous. "Good afternoon, Sully. How are you progressing on your new production?"

  "Fine, Mister Head, just fine. We'll have it wrapped up tomorrow."

  "I'm glad to hear it, Sully. You will watch costs, won't you? Your last few films ran over budget."

  A drop of sweat trickled off Sully's forehead and splashed on the bar. "Yes sir, Mister Head. I'll keep it under control."

  "Fine, Sully. I know you will. I don't want to have to explain to the other members of the Finance Committee that we were mistaken in you."

  Sully mopped his brow. "They don't have nothing to worry about, Mister Head."

  "It's not their worry, Sully. It's your worry. Now… on to pleasanter things."

  Sully's voice grew eager. "You mean the million bucks?"

  If a voice can frown, Mister Head's did. "I've discussed your proposal with the New Investment Subcommittee. I'm happy to say that they've given their provisional approval to an expenditure of one million five."

  Sully caught his breath. "Hey, that's great, Mister Head, just great!"

  "I said provisional approval, Sully."

  "Yeah?" Sully said warily.

  "Sully, I have every confidence in you as a film maker. The B
oard agrees with me that the time is ripe for a hard-core film with a big budget. We have the theaters to show it in, coast to coast. We have the audience. We even have the critics. They call it 'porno chic.' It's becoming respectable. We envision a world premiere, with klieg lights and extensive press coverage. But we need the movie." He paused. "Sully, you led us to believe that you were capable of making such a film."

  "I am, Mister Head, believe me, I am!"

  "But your proposal was rather vague. You gave us no specifics. You'll have to give me something more concrete. If you can convince me, the Subcommittee has authorized me to translate their provisional approval into actual approval."

  Sully thought furiously. He looked through the dusty window of the saloon, and the outline of Ruby Bill's imitation Colosseum caught his eye. He snapped his fingers.

  "Yeah… well… listen, I got a great property, one of the greatest!"

  "I'm waiting, Sully," the voice said politely.

  "It's an old Roman classic. Like Homer, you know. It's called The Golden Ass. How do you like that for a title? It's perfect! And we use these old Roman sets here, get the idea? Cut down on production costs."

  "Hmmm… go on, Sully. What's it about?"

  Sully struggled for inspiration. The Golden Ass was supposed to be duty, he knew that much. Richard Tombs, the writer, had once shown him an old leather-bound copy that left long passages untranslated from the Latin.

  "Well, see, it's about this Roman prostitute in the old days. They call her the Golden Ass, because she's such an expensive screw. Real high class. We can shorten her name to Goldie. Well, the emperor gets the hots for her. Nero, you know. We can have all these scenes in the royal palace. Thousands of slave girls. Acrobats. Real Roman orgies. But underneath it all, she's still in love with an old boyfriend. He's a soldier. He's away fighting the Punic Wars. In the end he turns out to be Julius Caesar. We'll show him making the 'Friends, Romans, countrymen' speech in the final fade while they're having another orgy all around him… Anyway, Nero tries to take her mind off Julius. He puts on all these shows in the Colosseum. Gladiators. Animal acts. I know a guy with a trained giraffe. We can show him raping a slave girl, the giraffe, I mean. Lions. Nero throws the Christians to the lions, because Goldie won't put out for him. I know a trainer with six lions… I can get them cheap. Anyway, Goldie is watching the lions, and they lead out the prisoners. Believe it or not, one of them is Julius. Just when the lion's about to tear him to pieces, he takes a thorn out of its paw. They're old buddies from the Punic Peninsula. The crowd goes wild. Nero has to pardon him. Julius and Goldie escape from Rome. Nero goes crazy and sets fire to the city while he plays his violin. Sort of like The Phantom of the Opera. Julius and Goldie fight their way through the flames, like Gable and Leigh in Gone With the Wind. I'll make the burning of Atlanta look like a Campfire Girl picnic. It'll be sensational!"