EXTRACT FOR
The Case of the Blackmailed Lesbian
(John Savage)
With the guard indisposed, I turned to the hallway and those voices. This house was big enough so that all the bedrooms were on the second floor. But there was a small bedroom and bath on the ground floor. I found out later that was usually for the live-in maid that rich people have. Well, if that young woman's voice I heard begging for something not to be done was the maid, then she wasn't happy with her job. Or maybe the boss wanted more than cleaning chores from her. I tiptoed to the hallway.
The door to the maid's quarters was open. And the two teenage boys in there were too interested in what they were doing to pay attention to anyone who might be sneaking up on them. They had a young woman tied down to the bed and were in the process of removing her clothes, rather roughly, I might add. One punk was holding her bra in his hand, having just jerked it off, and the other had a bottle of whiskey held to his lips in one hand and the other down in his pants. It wasn't hard to guess what he was holding in that hand. Neither was aware of me standing in the doorway.
The woman was Hispanic, pretty and with a nice figure. The only clothing still on her was a pair of black panties. They had tied her in the classic spread-eagle position, arms and legs spread widely and tied to the corners of the bed. As the first punk reached for her panties, she yelled at him, "No! Don't!" His hand detoured to slap her face. The blow was hard enough to jerk her head to the side.
"Shut up, bitch!" he told her.
She whimpered but did not speak as he hand went for the panties again.
That was when she saw me. The way she was facing, she couldn't miss seeing me over the end of the bed. Her eyes grew wide. I wasn't sure if it was with hope or fear that things were going to get worse. I didn't wait to figure that out.
Sled Speed can move fast when he wants to. Two quick steps and I was next to the girl-slapper. It seemed only fair to return the favor, so I wacked him alongside the head with Betsy. There was a nice crunching sound and I figured he was going to have more than a headache when he woke up. If he woke up.
The second punk was an idiot. He stood there, tilted bottle in one hand and his dong in the other, just looking at me. I pointed Betsy at him and told him to be quiet. It was almost comical the way he looked as if he were going to shit in his pants. Then his eyes flashed down to the nightstand. There was a .45 auto sitting there, probably a cousin to Betsy. I wasn't going to let him have a chance to go for it. As he dropped the bottle and awkwardly tried to pull his hand out of his jeans, I stepped around the corner of the bed and tapped him on the head. Betsy was going to have to get a good cleaning after that night's work. He went down for the count.
Amazingly enough, very little sound had been made during the altercation. At least, no one screamed out an alarm. Even the nearly naked woman tied to the bed was silent. But her eyes were wide with fear and I wasn't sure she would remain quiet. I put my finger to my lips in the universal gesture for quiet and told her, "Silencio por favor." Live all your life in a small town not far from the Mexican border and you pick up a lot of Spanish. I continued with, "Nosotros no haremos daño. Pero usted tiene que estar en silencio o voy a tener que amordazarte." Which simply meant, we won't hurt you but you have to be quiet or I'll gag you.
She nodded and the look of pure fear faded from her face. She looked over to where one wrist was tied to the headboard. "No. Later," I told her. She frowned but didn't argue.
Bernie was standing beside the bed, looking down at the girl with serious interest on his face. "She the maid or something?" he asked me.
"¿Eres la criada?" I asked. She immediately shook her head. "These bastards kidnapped me!" she hissed in perfectly good English. "They were going to rape me!" she added, needlessly.
"Well, we'll come back to untie you," I told her. "After we do a job we came to do."
She looked puzzled for a second then turned her face to the ceiling. "My sister!" she said urgently. "They took her upstairs. Please save her!"
Saving damsels in distress sounded like good work to me. Especially if said damsel was ever so grateful afterwards.
"I'll look for her," I promised. I turned to the door and was about to leave when I noticed that Bernie was still standing there, staring at the nudity so wonderfully available on the bed. I grabbed his arm and jerked him away.
We found the stairs and crept up them. There were several doorways leading off from the hallway up there, most with closed doors. I eased my way along, pausing to listen at each door. It was the third door that yielded results.
It wasn't voices, but it was also obvious that there were people inside that bedroom. I tried the handle and it turned. Ever so gently I eased the door open a bit. Just enough for me to see into the room.
It was, indeed, a bedroom with a very large bed along one wall and the usual furniture you find in such places. I expected to find the girl's sister tied down to the bed, and kinda hoped it would not be too late to prevent the ravishment of her probably virgin body. But that was not what I saw.
The bed was made and no one was on it. But at the foot of it, on a metal kitchen chair, was the missing sister. She was completely naked, that was obvious, and she was tied bent over the back of the chair. Her wrists had been bound behind her back, her ankles were tied to the back legs of the chair, and a rope around her neck was tied down to the seat, forcing her to bend over the back with her head almost touching the seat. Not a particularly comfortable position to be tied in, but the discomfort from a little bondage was not her main problem. It was the man standing behind her.
Like her, he was naked, but not bound. In fact, he was at that moment, enjoying a good screwing of the girl. And, from what I could see, he was not using the usual hole. Yes, kiddies, he was sodomizing her! Ramming his big prick into her asshole with vigor and considerable force. With each shove, the chair and girl tilted up on the front legs and she squealed.
She was crying, her fingers fluttered uselessly as her body was thus abused, and her long, black hair fell around her head so that none of her face was visible. Body didn't look too bad, I noted. But this wasn't the time for enjoying the scenery.
I stepped into the room, Betsy leveled, and pointed at the rapist. Bernie slipped in behind me.
"That's him," he hissed angrily. "Carlos!"
Carlos' head snapped up and he paused in mid-stroke. The surprise on his face held for a second then turned into a grin. With casualness, he completed the stroke and stood there, buried deeply in the girl's rear and grinning. Not the reaction I would expect.
Just as I was about to ask why the hell was he grinning, I heard a noise I don't like to hear off to my right. It was the slide of an automatic being pulled back and then let go. That meant that a round was now chambered and was ready to fire.
Having read of just such a situation many of the fictional private eyes had faced, I reacted as some of them did. I didn't try to turn to face whoever had the gun to my right. Before I could bring Betsy around, he would have time to let off a couple .45 rounds. Instead, I dove for the floor, twisting in midair as I did. I landed on my left side just as a huge boom went off. I swear I could feel the bullet rush past me. Betsy was already coming around as I fell. In that brief split-second, I had the image of another man rising from a chair in the corner. His automatic was coming down and the second round would not pass over my falling body like the first.
I fired. Didn't have time to really take aim just fired in his general direction. I figured that I might not hit him, but the muzzle flash and sound might distract him just the slightest ??" enough so his next shot would miss me.
His next shot did miss me. But mainly because he was no longer rising. He was slammed backwards against the wall. His gun went off but the bullet flew wide and ruined an expensive looking painting on the wall.
I put a second round into the man just to make sure that he didn't have any ideas of trying to shoot again.
He didn't. With two large .45 caliber holes in his chest, he wasn't going to be doing much of anything anymore.
Behind me, I heard another shot. As I scrambled to my feet, I saw Bernie grinning like an idiot. Carlos was no longer buried six inches into the senorita. He was slumped on the end of the bed, bleeding all over the silk covers.
Now, I'll admit that I didn't react as a hard-boiled PI. Actually, I started to shake and my legs felt weak. I had just come close to being killed. And I had just killed my first man. Damn, those PI's in the books always make it sound so easy. Shoot a couple of bad guys, down a shot of whiskey, then bed down the dame.
Hey, it ain't always that way. My ears were ringing from the sound of gunfire. I wanted to sit down 'cause I wasn't sure my legs would keep me up. The girl tied over the chair was screaming hysterically. But Mrs. Speed didn't raise no idiot.
I turned to Bernie, sucked in a gulp of air, and said, "We gotta get out of here." Well, seemed the most reasonable thing at the time.
Bernie looked down at his Glock and then up at Carlos. "I actually did it," he said in wonderment. "I did it."
"Sure you did. And those shots will bring the police around fast," I told him. "So let's get our asses out of here."
Finally getting it into his head that my advice was sound, Bernie headed for the door.
"Wait a minute!" I called out. "What about them?"
"Them?"
"The kidnapped girls."
"Oh... Them. Let the police take care of them."
"Look, Bernie, they saw our faces. You want them describing us to a police artist? Then having to explain down at the station how we were just cleaning up the bad guys?"
His gaze turned to the girl on the chair, the girl with her long hair covering her head. "She didn't see us!" he said.
I wasn't in the mood for an argument. "But the one downstairs got a good look. I think we should untie them and let them scram. Just like we are going to."
"Well..." was all Bernie said. But he didn't object when I began pulling at the knots holding her prisoner to the chair.
She was pretty shaky herself, but I managed to calm her down and help her down the stairs. It did note, however, that she was much prettier than her sister and had a better body, too.
Downstairs, I found Bernie just standing over the first girl, looking down at her body. His expression clearly said that he hadn't seen anything like that in a while and probably wanted to do more than just look. Pushing him out of the way, I untied her as rapidly as I could.
The two dumb dames wasted time hugging each other and sobbing tears of joy at having been saved. Actually, I later figured that we really had saved them. No telling what those baddies were planning to do to them after they satisfied their lusts.
The girls didn't want to go rushing out of the house with only one pair of panties between them. Probably wasn't a good idea, actually, so I let them get dressed as best they could. The first girl had her jeans and a shirt on the floor of the bedroom. I found some clothes in the closet for the second girl. Damn, but it seemed to take such a long time for two dames to get dressed!
I led them to my car and we were all just seated when a police car cruised by. I got us out of there just in time. I drove the girls to a street where they said they wanted to go, and dropped them off. They were still crying and holding each other when I drove off.
I never did learn their names.