by Paul Kenyon
There wasn't time to think. She had to get into that room before the gun came up all the way.
She heaved herself up with the cable-hard muscles of her forearms and came through the glass with one bare shoulder. She felt the sharp pain and ignored it. She hit the floor, rolling, and caught Mitch under the knees. He went down with a thud. Both her hands were on his wrist. He was strong, but so was she. And she'd caught him by surprise. She rapped his knuckles sharply against the leg of the brass bed. The gun flew from his grasp. He reached for it, and she kicked it across the room.
"Wow!" a voice said. "I never seen nothing like it! What I wouldn't of given for a camera just then!"
She looked up. The pudgy man pointing a huge cannon of a Colt .45 automatic at her. He must have had it under the pillow. Her hand crept toward the Bernardelli VB under the ostrich feathers.
"Don't try it, girlie, just don't try it," the pudgy man said.
She could see his hand whitening on the grip safety. She froze.
"That's better," the pudgy man said. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. She'd been right; he was naked. He was round and hairless, with a volley-ball pot overhanging a finger-sized penis. He looked a little silly with the beret. But the gun wasn't silly. He held it steadily, with both hands, covering her.
Mitch said, "Now you've done it, Baroness."
Chapter 13
"What have I done?" Penelope said.
"You kept the son of a bitch from shooting me, that's what," said the pudgy man.
"I'm afraid he's right, sweetheart," Mitch said, getting to his feet. "Sully's boss is trying to blackmail me. I'm supposed to be the box-office star of a pornographic epic. I figured no Sully, no movie."
"Is that what that call was about?" Penelope said.
"Yeah," Mitch said. "I made a few mistakes when I was young and running wild. The Syndicate's figured it's owned me ever since. I've been fighting to hold them at arm's length my whole acting career."
Sully gestured with the gun. "Mister Head said you'd have the wrong attitude, Mitch sweetheart. That's why I sent a couple of boys to tail you, make sure you behaved till you got here." He looked at Penelope shrewdly. "By the way, doll, what happened to those two boys?"
Penelope ignored him. "Tell me, Mitch," she said, "when you disappeared at Baynard Warren's party who were you calling?"
"Just trying to round up a broad to finish up the night with, Baroness," he said. "You weren't available, and I didn't see anybody else at that orgy I cared to dip it into."
"Then who called the Org?"
Sully said, "Hey, hey, what are we getting into?"
Mitch said, "It must have been Ray Faye, the bastard. He's been tied up with them for years."
"But you called the Syn. Or made Warren call hem."
He looked startled. "How did you know? Yeah, I told Bay to call them. Somebody had to clean up the mess. I knew the Syn runs a good service department."
"You're a good boy, Mitch," Sully said. "We've just got to knock these ideas of independence out of your head."
"Screw you, Sully," Mitch said. "I'll die before I act in the crap you make."
The pudgy man's face grew dark with anger. He looked like a furious weasel. "We'll see about that, Mitch baby!"
Penelope had been edging imperceptibly away from Mitch. If she could just get into a position where the pudgy man's attention would be divided, she'd have a chance, sooner or later, to jump him across the miserable ten feet of floor space that separated them. All she needed was a tenth of a second.
But whatever the pudgy man was, he was no fool. "Get back there next to your boyfriend, baby," he said, holding the big gun very correctly and very stiffly. It was pointed squarely at her belly. "I want you where I can see you both together."
"Do what he says, Baroness," Mitch said. "Sully's a vicious little rat."
Sully was studying her with interest. His little penis sprang up and pointed at her like a finger. "Hey, I know you. You're Baroness Orsini, the model. I seen that bomb of a picture you was in last year. You was the only good thing in it."
The blonde girl called from the bed: "Sully, how long you gonna keep yammering away like that? Why don't you call Ottorino and have him get rid of her?"
"Shut up, I got an idea," Sully said. He leered at Penelope. "Sweetheart, how would you like to make history? The first real live baroness to star in a porno movie?"
Penelope stood on the cot and tugged at the bars. They were an inch thick and set into reinforced concrete. The concrete had been plastered over with adobe to make the cell look authentic, and that's what had fooled her for a moment.
"Forget it," Mitch said wearily from the other cot. He needed a shave. He looked haggard. "The Syn's kept a lot of escape artists in this jail, including safe crackers."
She took a last look out into the western street. There was a lot of activity out there. The trucks and the cars had been arriving all morning. They'd brought in workmen and technicians, extras and bit players. There was a hammering noise from the carpenters who were constructing camera ramps and scaffolding.
"He really intends to do it, doesn't he?" she said climbing down. "Make a wide-screen sex epic."
Penelope was still squeezed into the dance-hall costume, bulging over the top and splitting a seam at the hip. She was bigger than the girl she'd taken it from. She felt a good deal better now, after a night's sleep and a big western breakfast, her scrapes and cuts and scratches washed out and attended to with Mitch's help.
"Sex and sadism," Mitch corrected. "The extras don't know it, but when Sully throws the Christians to the lions, he's going to use real lions. I don't know about real Christians."
"How does he hope to get away with it?"
Mitch shrugged. "He's been doing it for years. His reels have been making the rounds of private collectors. I've got a few of them myself. This is just on a bigger scale."
"Like the one where the girl is shot with a fake dildo?"
He looked uncomfortable. "So you sneaked a look at my collection? I'm not proud of that one. I didn't know what was in it. I intended to get rid of it."
Penelope paced the cell. "What else does Sully intend to do?"
"Anything that occurs to his filthy little mind. Those extras don't know it, but a lot of them are going to die so that he can capture their agony on film. It'll be closed sets for those scenes. The extras playing gladiators will get hacked up by professional butchers. There'll be perverted torture scenes. He even wants to show virgins being raped to death by wild animals. His writer told him the Romans really did that in the Colosseum."
"Does the Syn want to take those kinds of risks?"
"The victims will be carefully chosen. No friends, no relatives. They won't be missed. No one will recognize them on screen."
"So no murder investigations?"
He nodded. "You know, even if Sully were caught, he'd claim that the death scenes were faked."
"You can't fake the kind of thing Sully wants to do."
Mitch shrugged again. "Anyhow the question's academic. Sully doesn't expect to get caught. Neither does the Syn. The reels will just show up for performance. The exhibitors can't be held accountable for the making of the picture."
"And the people will pay to see it," she said grimly.
"Sure they will. They go to bullfights. Cock fights. They flock to auto races, hoping to see a crash. If gladiatorial combat were legalized, you could fill Madison Square Garden or the Astrodome."
She sat down on the cot next to Mitch and ran her fingers through his hair. "Don't worry about it, darling. We'll get out of this."
There were footsteps in the outer jail. A door clanged. Sully came bustling into view, followed by a couple of hoods with shotguns.
"That's what I like to see," he said cheerfully. "My stars getting acquainted."
Mitch almost choked. "Stars like hell! You're crazy, Sully, you know that? What makes you think that either of us would willingly act in your slim
e?"
"Who said anything about willingly?" Sully said.
Penelope said, "What's that you're holding, Sully?"
"This?" He held up her bag. "The clean-up boys found it in a wrecked Bugazzi in the desert. Had to cut away half the frame with torches to get at it. Why, is it yours?"
"You know it is."
Sully tossed the bag into the top drawer of the sheriff's desk. "Had to cut our two boys out of the front seat of the Lincoln, too. What was left of them. Mister Head's sure going to be sore when he hears about it."
One of the hoods waved his shotgun. "He's going to be sore when he hears you didn't knock this broad off right away, Sully. She's trouble."
Sully chewed his stogie. "I got plans for her," he said. "Come on, Baroness. I got someone I want you to meet."
He took a ring of keys off a peg and opened the cell. One of the hoods motioned her out. Sully locked the door again, leaving Mitch inside.
"Just behave and you'll stay alive," Sully told her.
They walked down the wooden sidewalk toward the Roman ruins at the end of the western street. The shotguns didn't attract any attention. Neither did Penelope's dance-hall costume.
The make-believe streets were swarming with people. A man walked by in a bear costume, holding the head under his arm. Two Roman soldiers passed them, carrying lances and talking quietly. A man who looked like an electrician's assistant hurried by, a loop of cable over his shoulder. More vehicles pulled up every few minutes.
"Over this way," Sully said.
They walked through an arch into the Colosseum. The great arena had been restored inside, with tiers of wooden benches and an Imperial box draped with silk hangings. Electrical cables snaked across the sand floor.
A lion roared. She jerked her head toward the sound and saw what looked like a cattle truck parked near a wall. They were unloading animals into a chute that led to pens in the bowels of the arena. There was a movie crew there, taking footage of the lions as they ran down the enclosed ramp. The cameraman was a huge broad-backed fellow in a blue tee-shirt, crouched behind a bulky Ultra Panavision camera on a low tripod. He straightened up as they approached, and turned around. It was Joe Skytop.
"Hello, Joe," Sully said. "I think this is a friend of yours."
Skytop passed a bulging forearm across his sweaty forehead. His craggy face was impassive. "Well if it isn't the Baroness," he said. "You doing a little moonlighting too?"
Sully said, "She says she won't do porno."
Skytop leered. "I don't see why not. You should see some of the pictures I got of her in my private collection."
Sully clapped Skytop on the back. "That's my boy! How's it going, Joe baby?"
"Great, Sully. I got a lot of interesting footage of these lions in close-up. I don't know if you can use it."
"You let me worry about that. I'll figure out a way. You just keep up the good work."
The Baroness faced Skytop. "You've been making borne interesting friends, Joseph."
"The pay's good," he said coldly.
Sully led her away. Skytop went back to work, filming the lions. Penelope looked back before going out through the arch. Another cattle truck had driven in through the vehicle entrance and was heading across the sand toward Skytop and his crew. She could hear the bellowing of bulls. As she watched, an oversized horse trailer entered. Sticking up through the top was the long neck of a giraffe.
"Yeah, we're going to have a lot of animal acts," Sully said.
"Mitch was right. You are crazy."
Sully waddled on, his basketball paunch jiggling in front of him. He waved to a technician, then turned to her.
"Things are going fine. I expect to finish shooting in twelve days. Nobody leaves until then, including Skytop. He's working out fine. Good cameraman." Sully's shrewd little eyes bored into her. "Funny how the two of you just happened to turn up."
"Where are we going now?"
"Back to the clink. Until I figure out how I'm going to handle you."
* * *
Sully squirmed in his chair. The telephone was slippery with his sweat. "But Mister Head," he said, "I mean as long as I got her, why not use her?"
"Sully, you know better than that," came the heavy, measured voice. "The Baroness Penelope St. John-Orsini is a prominent person. We can't have her face showing up in the film."
"But she'd really be box office. You should see the dame. Fantastic ass! Tits like a pair of cantaloupes!"
There was a heavy silence at the other end. Too late, Sully remembered Mister Head's aversion to crude language.
Finally, Mister Head said: "You've displayed extremely poor judgment, Sully. The circumstances of her arrival are very… distressing. Two of our men are dead. She somehow managed to penetrate your security perimeter. You should have disposed of her at once. Now too many people have seen her."
"I'll get rid of her," Sully pleaded. "Honest. As soon as the film's in the can. We'll bury her body in the desert. Just let me get some footage first."
Mister Head's voice was firm. "The Committee has discussed it. We've made our decision. Please don't try my patience any further, Sully. The Baroness is to be disposed of now. Today. Before nightfall."
"I understand, Mister Head," Sully said miserably.
When he hung up, Iron Man and Snips crowded around him. "What did he say?" Iron Man said. He was dressed in gladiator's armor, with a corset of metal bands, and chain mail covering his sword arm.
"He says to get rid of the broad right away," Sully said.
"Too bad," Snips said. "We could have worked her into a lot of frames, with or without her cooperation."
Sully pounded his fist on the saloon table. "We're still gonna get some footage of her!"
Iron Man was aghast. "But Sully, if Mister Head said no, it's no. You can't buck the Syn."
"What the Syn doesn't know won't hurt it. We'll get the footage. They'll come around after they see how I've used it."
Iron Man said, "I don't think…"
"That's right, kiddo. You don't think. Leave the thinking to me." Sully clapped him on the back. Iron Man's armor jingled.
"But Sully…"
Sully looked up. "First we film her. Then we kill her."
* * *
The heavy door creaked open, and Penelope felt a shotgun prod her from behind. She stepped forward into a set by Cecil B. DeMille.
"You two get the royal suite," Sully snickered. "It's the least I can do for my stars."
Penelope scanned the vast interior with mild wonder. It must have been Ruby Bill's bedroom, the one he'd built for himself and his Italian wife. It was a tasteless millionaire's idea of Roman luxury.
There were low couches, set with gold and pearl and glittering stones, upholstered in silk damask. The honeymoon bed was an enormous circular platform on a base of chased bronze, supported by silver claw feet. There were huge mirrors everywhere, set in ivory or tortoise-shell frames.
"How would you describe it, Baroness?" Mitch said sardonically. "Period Whorehouse?"
She laughed. Erotic statuary crammed every corner and wall recess. The walls themselves were covered from floor to ceiling with murals: Dionysus and Pan, Psyche and Cupid, Eros and Aphrodite. They were doing what you'd expect. In one scene a leering satyr frolicked simultaneously with three nude maidens.
"Are you trying to get us in the mood, Sully?" Penelope said.
"You got a lot of lip," Sully said. "You listen to me. I'm going to start shooting first thing in the morning. You better have your minds made up by then."
He backed out through the bronze door, covered by two gangsters with shotguns. The door clanged shut. There was the sound of a bolt being thrown. Penelope and Mitch looked at one another.
"What can he do, Mitch?" Penelope said.
Mitch sat down on one of the couches. "He can do anything he wants. Sully's a good technician, I'll say that for him. He can drug us and strip us, then intercut close-ups of us with doubles grinding away. He could tie us do
wn and torture us. He wouldn't need any cooperation for that. He's got a brilliant film editor named Snips. He could turn the pain into passion — just by merging the exact number of frames of the right facial expressions. Torture and sex are pretty mixed up in Sully's mind anyway."
"But he can't make us speak lines. Or actually make real love."
"No, but you could be tied down and raped by my double. He'd have close-ups of my face for the intercuts."
Penelope walked over to a massive cedar cabinet. It was stuffed with wardrobe items, all in Roman style. She stripped off the tight dance-hall costume and put on a comfortable silk robe bordered with a design in purple.
"Well, we tan worry about it in the morning," she said. "Why don't you get out of those clothes? We can eat the supper that room service left for us and go to bed."
She gestured toward a marble table laden with food. The meal matched the room. It was a Lucullan display of fish and game birds and pastries and heaped fruit. There was lots of wine in big silver goblets.
Mitch found a purple-trimmed toga and wrapped himself in it. Penelope looked at him with delight. "You do look like a Roman emperor!" she exclaimed.
"I played Julian once in a picture," he said, pleased.
"All you need is a wreath."
He found one in the costume cabinet and put it on his head, a little askew. "How's this?" he laughed.
They dug into the food, reclining on the low couches in front of the table. Think it's drugged?" Penelope said.
"I don't give a damn, if it is," he said, tearing a drumstick with his teeth.
When they finished eating, they discovered the little pool. It was set into the mosaic floor. A counterbalanced mechanism lifted away a circular section of floor bearing an erotic scene in tiles. There were bath fixtures in the shape of golden dolphins.
"Let's have a splash," Penelope said, stripping off her robe. She lowered herself into the pool.
"What a way to wash up," Mitch said as he joined her.
She scrubbed his back for him with a strigil, and he did the same for her. He began soaping her body, working up a heavy lather. He paid special attention to her breasts. She began to pant as the strong hands moved smoothly over her flesh, riding on a cushion of foam. Her nipples stood up through the lather like cherry tomatoes.