Hard-core Murder

by Paul Kenyon

  He took her through a series of vast impersonal rooms, filled with big bright modern canvases and pedestals bearing pieces of pre-Columbian sculpture. There was an indoor pool, with a gym adjoining it. There was a library, lined with walls of fake books. He opened another door. Inside was another door, with iron bars, and beyond it, an electric chair.

  "I died in that chair," he said. "In Death Row Diary. Remember the scene? The decorator thought it would be a good gag to buy the chair from the prop department and fix up the room that way. I watch TV in it."

  Penelope rattled the bars. "You make it hard for your friends to get away, don't you?"

  He laughed. "Let me show you the projection room."

  He took her up a broad flight of stone stairs to a carpeted concourse overlooking the living room below. They went through a Moorish arch faced with bright Mexican ceramic tiles. There was a heavy oak door with a green light burning above it.

  The door thudded shut behind them. Lights flickered automatically on. They were in a small movie theater with about thirty seats sloping down to a wall-to-wall screen. He took her hand, the one not holding the martini, and led her up to a pair of thronelike leather chairs perched side by side in front of the projection wall.

  "The royal box," he said. "Wanna watch a reel of something?"

  "What have you got?"

  "All the oldies and goodies. City Lights, The Maltese Falcon, Scarface, Sunset Boulevard, The Public Enemy…"

  "I'd like to see one of yours."

  He grinned. "Then I don't have to get up to change reels." He slid back a plate on his armrest and flipped a switch. The lights dimmed and a projector behind them began to whir.

  "How about some griffa?" he said.

  "I don't mind," she said.

  He slid back another plate on the armrest and took out a plastic sandwich bag containing grass, Zig Zag papers and matches. He rolled a thick joint and lit up. He sucked a deep lungful and passed the joint to Penelope.

  The screen in front of them was filled with gangster images of the Thirties. There was Mitch's face, as big as a bedsheet, inhaling smoke from a cigarette and blowing it into the face of a man who was chained to a concrete block. There was a splash, and victim and block disappeared into the East River. There was Mitch in a pinstriped suit and white fedora, a Tommy gun in his hands, defiantly spraying lead at his enemies.

  Her chair seemed to move, and Penelope thought at first that it was the pot and the gin, but then the flickering screen began to slide away from her vision. The entire projector wall swiveled on a central pivot, taking the platform and the two chairs with it.

  The square of light with the flickering movie became distorted and elongated as it moved along a side wall and came to rest on another wall-to-wall screen in what had been the room behind the narrow projection booth.

  It was a bedroom, with a great big iron bed and heavy furniture out of the Thirties. The walls were done in pinstriped flannel. The pictures were old movie posters. The most startling item of decoration was a life-sized statue of Mitch himself, dressed in a pinstriped suit and brandishing the Tommy gun from the movie.

  "I don't want you to think I'm an egomaniac," Mitch said. "It was the decorator's idea. He was a nice old fag. I let him have his fun."

  "Is this an invitation, darling?" she said. "Where are the mirrors?"

  He laughed immoderately, the pot getting to his head. "I don't do it with mirrors. The movies are better."

  Penelope got up and walked over to the iron bed, still holding the martini and the joint. "The chicks love it, I bet," she said in a subtle imitation of his voice. "What do you show them? Stag films?"

  "Only on request, sweetheart. It works better when it's me up there on that screen, ten times larger than life. Maybe the psychologists could explain it."

  In spite of herself, Penelope found herself becoming interested. Sex and fantasy go together. It wasn't every day you made love to a screen idol while the familiar movie image molded with the fleshly reality. Mitch's girls would know more about that than the psychologists.

  She looked past the iron bed toward the screen. Mitch was there, a sensuous smile on his face, moving in for a close-up kiss. She felt his lips on hers. His hard male body was against her, flattening her breasts. She could feel the blunted shape of his sex pressing into her belly. She tossed her martini glass away from her. Broken glass tinkled against the wall.

  They staggered together to the iron bed. The sheets were silk, the mattress soft as down. She kicked off her velvet slippers and helped him off with his heavy buckled boots. He had her on her back, nibbling at her lips and ears. Behind him she saw his magnified image, mouthing love words.

  She pushed him away from her and unbuttoned his shirt. His chest was hairy, the pectorals bulging bands of hard muscle. His fingers were at the buttons of her black silk evening pajamas. He pulled the top off her and began working on her bra. His fingers were too thick and impatient. He grabbed it in front, between her breasts, and pulled. She could feel the hooks in back ripping apart, and then her breasts were free. He put a thick meaty hand on one of them -and held it while he kissed her again.

  She pushed him away again and unzipped his fly. She reached inside and found the hard shape of his sex, straining against the cotton of his jockey shorts. She tried to maneuver it through the front opening, but it was too big and too rigid. Sobbing with impatience, she pulled his trousers down around his hips, then tugged the jockey shorts down to join them. His cock sprang into view, a dark angry-veined post with a blunt tip. She closed a hand around it. It throbbed in her grasp like a fire hose pulsing with hot oil.

  Mitch groaned at her touch. She let go while he kicked off his trousers and shorts. He grabbed the evening pajamas around the ankles and pulled them off her so violently that she was lifted off the mattress and tossed upward. His hand cupped her between the legs and came away wet.

  "You ready that fast?" he said in surprise.

  He lowered himself on top of her and pushed himself into her up to the hilt. A moment later he grunted in surprise when a pair of strong hands grasped his hips and lifted him bodily upward. His cock slid out of the lubricated channel as easily as it had gone in. Penelope twisted her body deftly and got out from under him.

  "This isn't a short subject, lover," she said.

  She pushed him over on his back and straddled him, facing the foot of the iron bed so they both could watch the screen through the bars. He was seeing the movie through the arch of her thighs; she viewed a screen that was bisected by the vertical shape of his mast. She leaned forward for a taste. It was salty with her own juices. Her tongue pushed at his prepuce, peeling it away from the rubbery knob of his glans.

  Up there on the screen, Mitch was loading the clip of a Tommy gun, his fingers deftly pushing the shells one at a time into the can-shaped clip. Penelope felt something hot and slick dart into her vagina. It was Mitch's tongue. It fluttered along the rim of her vulva and found her bursting clitoris. It lapped the projecting bud around, sending a wave of intolerable pleasure through her.

  Mitch was doing something new to her now. His fingertips were hooked lightly into the engorged lips of her fevered cleft, spreading it apart, running up and down like an accordion player, while his tongue continued its sweet work. She heard her voice as if it were someone else's, making little mindless cries of gratification.

  Trembling, she fastened her lips around the purple chestnut in front of her. He began to thrust in a blind reflex. She grasped the thick shaft firmly to limit his thrusts while she explored the texture of the chestnut with her tongue.

  Up on the screen, the celluloid Mitch raised the Tommy gun toward her. At the same time she felt the club in her hand give a twitch. She pulled the swollen head out of her mouth with an audible pop and applied a tourniquet squeeze to the base of the spongiosum. The twitching stopped, with the temporary paralysis of the vas deferens all the way back to the ejaculatory duct. Mitch groaned, a man suspended between heaven and th
e long fall into oblivion.

  Penelope was suspended too. She clamped down hard on her own approaching bliss. She inched forward toward the foot of the bed, her knees on either side of him. His hands were on her hips. She reached forward to grip his feet for support. She could feel his bony knees digging into the softness of her breasts. She had to let go of one of his feet for a moment to bend his stiff pipe forward and maneuver it into position. She pressed herself firmly backward. The long shaft slid like an oiled piston into her sheath. Holding onto his feet for leverage, she moved her entire body back and forth. He helped her, working her in and out with his grip on her hips. She could feel the exquisite rubbing sensation the entire length of her body: the knees on her breasts, the hairy thighs on her belly, the wiry bush at his groin scrubbing her labia at each stroke. It merged with the smooth, slick cylinder sliding back and forth in the dark caverns of her body. She wept with the unbearable joy of it.

  Through blurred eyes, she saw a tiny figure on the wall. The camera had moved back for a long shot of Mitch, standing with his Tommy gun on the broad steps of some public building. The camera began to dolly in for a close-up. The little man with the machine gun grew bigger and bigger.

  She pushed in and out, faster and faster, panting with effort. Mitch's hard body beneath her rocked and heaved in a frenzy. She was awash with erotic sensations. She increased the rhythm, her behind lifting up and down like a bouncing ball. A searing floodtide was piling up behind the dam inside her.

  Somewhere behind her, Mitch was sobbing with approaching orgasm. Ahead of her she could see his contorted face on the screen, the lips pulled back in an animal snarl. His image expanded, filling the screen.

  She couldn't hold it back any longer. The hot tide burst, flooding all her nerve endings. There was a delicious shivering release that wracked her with convulsions. It was all mixed up with the giant figure on the screen, his face wild, lifting his Tommy gun up toward her and spraying her with fire. Between her legs she could feel the hot outpouring of Mitch's semen, spilling endlessly through her slippery recesses. He gave a great hoarse cry, and that set her off again in a violent, exquisite shudder. The wall was filled with his face, twelve feet high.

  She sat up again, still impaled on his long spike. Keeping it inside her, she rotated her body to face him. His cheeks were dark and flushed. He looked sly and pleased.

  "I never, but never, got fucked that good before," he said.

  "You're not through yet, darling," the Baroness said.

  She reached between her legs for the dark root growing there and circled it with her thumb and forefinger, compressing the dorsal vein to keep Mitch from becoming detumescent. His eyes flew open in surprise. She wiggled his organ like an egg whisk, stirring it around inside her. There was a titillating flutter of tiny popping climaxes, each one making her squirm with delight. Behind her, on the screen, there was the rattle of machine gun fire. When she was through with him, she pulled his sticky shank out of her. The unstoppered semen spilled out of her and dribbled on his thighs.

  She rolled over and lay beside him, propping her head on the pillow. On the wall screen, Mitch was dying. His body twitched and jerked as the FBI bullets slammed into him. He took a long graceful tumble down the steps and lay there, covered with ketchup.

  "Academy Award," she said.

  "Thanks." Mitch said.

  The lights went on. There was another Mitch standing beside the bed in a pinstriped suit, pointing a Tommy gun at her. It was the wax dummy.

  "This bedroom's a little crowded, isn't it?" Penelope said.

  "Make you nervous, babe?" he said. He reached for a switch in the bed frame. The wax statue swiveled on its pedestal and faced the screen. There was a rattle of gunfire. A line of dark holes erupted in the movie screen.

  Mitch looked at her to see if she was impressed. She kept her face blank. "What would have happened if the gun had gone off a few minutes ago?" she said.

  "What do you think, sweetheart?" he said. "We'd have died for real."

  * * *

  They took the blindfold off him somewhere in the desert. Skytop groaned and felt the lump on his head. It was tender to the touch. He had a splitting headache.

  "Okay, Indian, get out," one of the hoods said.

  The black limousine had stopped in the middle of a moon-drenched waste, with nothing as far as the eye could see except the dunes and the stars and the narrow road stretching forever ahead of them.

  This wasn't a destination. It was nowhere. He'd gambled that they'd take him to see someone, the head man, and lost. There was nothing here.

  Except his grave.

  Skytop yawned and stretched hugely, to get them used to large movements. But they were professionals. They knew what he was trying to do. Outside the car they moved well away from him. He could run, maybe. But there was nothing to hide behind.

  But the shots didn't come. The hoods waited, staring impassively at the lifeless landscape.

  A speck appeared on the horizon. Then another speck. Then another. They grew. The distant roar of engines carried over the flats.

  Skytop squinted. The specks resolved themselves into three dune buggies with striped awnings. They roared toward him, growing bigger.

  In what seemed an impossibly short time, they pulled up in front of the limousine, spraying sand. Each was driven by a swarthy man in a dark uncomfortable-looking suit, sitting as stiffly behind the wheel as a department store dummy. Skytop wondered idly how they'd managed to keep their hats on.

  "Get in," one of his captors ordered.

  Skytop climbed into the lead dune buggy, beside the driver. This was better. There wasn't any problem about killing one man with his hands on a steering wheel and taking the wheel away from him.

  Except that two of his captors had climbed into the passenger seats of the other buggies, and now had shotguns across their laps. There was no percentage in arguing with a shotgun.

  The limousine made a broken U-turn and headed back the way they'd come. The three dune buggies lurched across the desert in a V formation, with Skytop at the point. The two shotguns could tear him into confetti without hitting one another.

  An hour later, Skytop got the surprise of his life. Ahead of him, ancient Rome rose out of the dunes.

  He could see the Colosseum, the round tiers of arches ghostly in the moonlight. There was the Arch of Septimus Severus; he'd taken many fashion shots under it. And the Forum. And the three tall columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux, supporting their broken section of pediment.

  He blinked his eyes. There was more. Surrounding the noble ruins was a collection of leaning wooden shacks: a western ghost town. His eagle eyes picked out some of the larger signs in the brilliant moonlight — a saloon, a livery stable, a bank.

  The dune buggies roared into the dusty street. There were floodlights and the spidery shape of a camera boom. Somebody was making a movie.

  A naked man with a hard-on walked toward them out of the pool of light. "That him?" he said.

  "He's the pigeon," his driver said.

  The naked man turned and yelled, "Hey, Sully!" He was a spectacularly muscled athlete, as massive around the chest and shoulders as Skytop himself. He had shoulder-length yellow hair, tied with a leopard band.

  A pear-shaped man wearing a hounds-tooth jacket and riding breeches came puffing over. His round doughy face was shiny with sweat. He had little piggy eyes and a scraggly goatee. He sported a beret.

  "You Skytop?" he said.

  "Yeah, me Skytop."

  His driver prodded him in the ribs, hard. "Don't get funny, injun."

  The pear-shaped man said, "You ever operate the 65mm Ultra Panavision camera?"

  "I've worked with it," Skytop said.

  "Come with me."

  Skytop climbed down from the dune buggy. He followed the pear-shaped man toward the pool of light. Two hoods walked behind him, shotguns held in the crooks of their elbows.

  They walked over to the foot of the Colosseum
. A camera boom stretched overhead like a skeletal dinosaur's neck. The pear-shaped man put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. The boom came down. Riding behind the camera was a middle-aged man with a sloppy belly, wearing a checkered shirt.

  "Cyril here is Max's assistant cameraman and film loader," the pear-shaped man said. "He knows his stops and all that all right, and he can frame a scene the way he's told. But he don't have that extra initiative a real camera artist has to have."

  "Jeez, Sully!" Cyril said.

  "What's wrong with Max?" Skytop said.

  "Max has two broken hands," the pear-shaped man said.

  "Oh, yeah, I remember now," Skytop said.

  One of the hoods poked him with a shotgun. "I told you not to get smart."

  "I know your work, Skytop," the pear-shaped man said. "What's the matter, isn't that fancy broad you work for paying you enough?"

  "I can always use a little extra cigarette money," Skytop said.

  "You know, I ought to be sore at you," the pear-shaped man said. "You put me in one hell of a bind. I've already started shooting background footage on this flick. I lost one leading man, and I'm waiting for the new guy to show up. In the meantime, I can't afford to get too far behind schedule. The boys who are financing me play rough."

  "So I've gathered," Skytop said, feeling the shotgun in his back.

  "What I mean is this," the pear-shaped man said, "You got me into a jam, you get me out of it. You don't leave this place till everything's in the can. Do a good job and you get paid. But if it turns out you're not good enough…" He shrugged.

  "I get the picture," Skytop said.

  "I hope you do, Skytop. I really hope you do. Because those boys behind you are dying to fill you full of little lead balls."

  "What's the setup?" Skytop said.

  The pear-shaped man's face grew animated. "Iron Man here is the champion gladiator of Rome, see? He just won the main event. The crowd went wild. We'll cut in the crowd scene later, when the extras get here. The emperor wants to give him a reward. He sends the empress down to the arena to screw him there and then, right in front of the crowd. My writer said these old Romans did things like that all the time. I want an overhead crane shot. Iron Man and the empress like someone was watching them from the top balcony. Dig?"