{ASS} New: "Double Cross" by DG [8/9] (MF,FF,detective)

[diony...@hotmail.com]

"Double Cross"

A Frank Stern Mystery

(c) 1999 by DG (diony...@hotmail.com)

Chapter Eight
-------------

I woke up at seven the next morning, which is unheard of for me,
and I was too excited to get back to sleep. I lay in bed, smiling at
the ceiling, luxuriating in my good fortune.
Fifty thousand dollars, tax free. That was almost five years
rent on my apartment. Seventeen years rent on my office. Twenty-five
hundred lap dances. You get the idea.
I got up and took a quick shower. When I was done, it was still
too early to call Tina Callahan on a Sunday morning. I made myself
some scrambled eggs, and as I was finishing them up, I remembered the
other tapes I had found in Cahn's hidey-hole.
Curious, I took the box out of my safe and brought it into the
living room. I selected one of the tapes with the cryptic handwritten
labels and popped it into the VCR.
The tape started immediately - a girl was sitting on a couch,
fidgeting nervously. It was obviously an amateur video, but pretty
good quality. The camera was steady, probably on a tripod, and the
lighting was decent. The girl didn't really look like someone you
would select for a porno film. She had a round, uninteresting face,
and a painfully thin body. She kept running her hand mechanically
through her stringy brown hair, as if she had recently read a book on
flirting. Her legs stuck out from her short skirt like pipe cleaners.
The most enticing way to describe her, from a porno point of view,
would be "barely legal."
A man standing behind the camera started asking her questions.
The interview format reminded me of a wildly popular series of adult
videos featuring young women having sex on camera, supposedly for the
first time, in a set that looked like a truck driver's living room.
After establishing that the girl was nineteen, liked sex, and
didn't have a boyfriend, the questions got a little more interesting.
Here's a sample:

Man: "Do you consider yourself kinky?"
Girl: "Um...yeah, I guess."
Man: "Have you ever been tied up?"
Girl: "Yeah, I went out with a guy that liked to tie me up."
Man: "And you liked it?"
Girl: (shrugs) "It was OK. Yeah."
Man: "What would he do to you while you were tied up?"
Girl: "You know...have sex with me. Spank me a little."
Man: "Great, great. So you understand what we're going to do
today?"
Girl: (Glances nervously to the side at something off camera.)
"Yeah."
Man: "Why don't you take off your clothes, and let me see your
body."

The girl stood up and mechanically removed her clothes. The male
voice behind the camera - I was thinking of him as George Cahn, but of
course I didn't know that - lied to her about what a great body she
had. Then the screen turned blue for a few seconds, and when the
picture came back the girl had been placed into a mediaeval-looking
wooden device which I believed was called a "stocks."
Her neck and wrists were held firmly in place by a single long
board which had three holes of the appropriate size, so that her head
and hands protruded on one side, and the rest of her body on the
other. The board was mounted on its side on top of a sawhorse, so
that the girl was bent over sharply at the waist. Her ankles were
held apart by a pair of cuffs attached to a metal bar about three feet
long. It was hard to imagine a more helpless and exposed position,
which, of course, was the point.
What happened next was not very pleasant to watch, although I
know there are people who would disagree. The man behind the camera
stepped out into view and spent the next hour or so whipping,
paddling, pinching, and sodomizing the girl. There was no cameraman.
Instead, the man would just move the camera and tripod to a different
location every once in a while. I still didn't know if it was George
Cahn, because he was wearing a leather hood that covered everything
but his eyes and mouth, but the body type seemed to match the man I
had seen in all the pictures.
Whether it was consensual or not was difficult to tell.
Sometimes the girl would scream for him to stop what he was doing and
let her out, and the man would talk to her in a low, reassuring voice
for a few minutes, and the girl would calm down. The guy would then
pick up where he left off, and a few minutes later she would be
screaming again. I found myself mesmerized, unable to look away or
fast-forward, and yet hating myself for watching. My best guess is
that Cahn had promised to pay the girl a generous bonus if she
successfully survived all the pain and indignity he wanted to inflict.
The man finally finished up by coming in the girl's ass, treating
the viewer to a lingering close-up shot of his semen oozing out of
her red, swollen anus. There was a jump, and then Cahn inflicted
the final indignity, pissing all over the girl's face and hair while
she screamed thrashed and swore at him.
The final scene on the tape was, in a sense, the most shocking.
Cahn, without the hood, and the girl were sitting in his outdoor hot
tub, drinking beer out bottles and chatting like old friends. At one
point the girl stood up, displaying the fresh red stripes across her
thighs and stomach, and they both laughed. I got up and turned off
the tape, feeling like I had been tricked somehow.
I looked at the rest of the tapes briefly - they were all of a
similar nature. Young girls, perhaps underage, submitting to a
variety of vicious and humiliating indignities.
I had a sudden desire to talk to Tina Callahan. I put the tapes
back in my safe and called her. The phone was busy, and I was
transferred to her voice mail. I left a brief message and hung up.
Just hearing her voice on the message caused some vivid flashbacks of
the previous night.
I called back a few minutes later, got another busy signal, and
hung up. On the spur of the moment, I decided to drive over to her
place - after all, I knew she was home. I locked up carefully and got
back in my van.
As I approached Tina's townhouse, she was backing her Honda out
of her driveway. What I should have done, is tapped the horn as I
came up behind her. Maybe I thought she would recognize my van in her
mirror and stop. But she just accelerated away down the street. I
kept going, and caught up with her at the next light, which was Linden
- a busy commercial highway. I could have honked then, I suppose, but
it would have been awkward communicating in the street. I was curious
about where she was going. I was interested in Tina Callahan, and so
I made the childish decision to follow her.
She turned right on Linden, and so did I. I figured she would be
going to the supermarket, or to the mall, and I would just see her
pull into the lot and keep going - no harm done. I had no intention
of shadowing her through a department store or arranging a cute little
coincidental meeting in front of the frozen peas.
But she went by a mall and a couple supermarkets, and a lot of
other places that a woman might visit on a Sunday afternoon, and then
we were in another residential neighborhood. The traffic thinned out,
and I let a little more distance open up between us. When she pulled
into the driveway of a yellow ranch with a neatly trimmed yard, I kept
going and then parked on the street a good block away.
This would have been a really excellent time to turn around and
go home, dignity more or less intact. Two things prevented it. The
first was the way Tina was dressed, which I observed as she walked up
to the front door. White overalls, the kind that are shorts on the
bottom. Under that, a very brief bra top. A lot of skin was showing
along the sides of the overalls. It wasn't as if she looked like a
hooker, but it seemed a little scanty for visiting Mom and Dad, or
shooting the breeze with a girlfriend. What clinched it for me was
what she did after the front door opened. Instead of going inside,
she went back to her car and got in. The garage door opened, and then
closed behind her as soon as she drove inside.
I've got a few different uniforms in the back of my van - you've
already heard about my pool-boy getup. For knocking on front doors to
see who's home, you can't beat the brown UPS outfit. For general
snooping around from the street, I might choose a versatile white
short-sleeved dress shirt and tie. Add a clipboard and horn-rimmed
glasses, and I'm taking a survey. Contort my face into a happy smile
and carry a pack of leaflets, and I'm a religious proselytizer.
To poke around in one residential area, which is what the current
situation called for, is tricky - it's always easier if you keep
moving. I decided to be a meter reader - light-blue shirt, dark blue
pants, heavy boots, a tool box, and a cap that said "SoCal Utility
Co."
I selected a house on the next street over that had a backyard
adjoining the yellow ranch Tina had gone into. I knocked on the front
door, and when no one answered I went around to the back and located
the meter. I picked the little padlock that secured the front panel
and opened it up. None of the little dials were moving, which
suggested that the occupants of the house were on vacation.
This is where it gets tricky, of course. As long as I was
looking inside the meter box, I was well-nigh invisible, but I wasn't
going to see anything that way. If I was staring into the next yard
through a pair of binoculars, I would arouse well-founded suspicion.
I looked over at the back of the yellow ranch. There was a large deck
in back, reached by sliding glass doors, and windows on either side,
probably kitchen and bedroom.
You have to get lucky in a situation like this. In the daytime,
it's almost impossible to see into a house unless the windows are
open. I was thinking about giving up, when the sliding glass door
opened and Tina came out onto the deck, followed by an attractive,
solidly-built brunette in her twenties. Both were wearing bikinis.
They settled into a pair of chaise lounges, each with a drink in her
hand. I kept my back to them, checking on them every few seconds out
of the corner of my eye.
I was assuming that it was just a couple friends chatting, but
something started telling me there was more to it than that. Maybe it
was how close they set the chairs together, or the way the dark-haired
woman kept touching Tina's arm.
Then Tina leaned over and gave her friend a lingering kiss on the
lips, and I really started getting suspicious, as the old joke goes.
Just to the left of the meter I was checking was a screened-in
porch. I had spotted it when I first came into the yard, but it was a
risk. Seeing the woman I had slept with last night kissing another
woman put me in a risk-taking mood. I sidled over to the porch door
with my toolbox and tried it. It opened, and I slipped inside. It
was dim and musty inside, and I knew I would be invisible from the
outside. I found a tear in one of the screens and peered through.
Tina had moved over to her friend's lounge chair, and they were
necking like a couple of teenagers at a drive-in. I was surprised
that they would carry on in the yard like that, until I noticed that
the one side of the deck was covered by a lattice, and the other side
was protected by a hedge that ran along the edge of the yard. I had
lucked into pretty much the only suitable spot for peeping.
If you could call it luck. I was getting turned on, of course;
any man enjoys seeing two women kissing and feeling each other up.
But in the back of my mind there was a sinking feeling. I had been
hoping for something to develop between Tina and me, and this didn't
really strike me as a positive development in the relationship.
I took my digital camcorder out of the toolbox and started
filming. I had wiped out my saving buying it last month, so I was
damn well going to get some use out of it.
Although Tina was shorter and more petite, she was clearly the
aggressor in the tryst. She had a hand worked into the brunette's
bikini top, and I could see the firm muscles in her arm flex as she
massaged the other woman's breast.
Then Tina moved her hand down to the dark-haired woman's lap, and
this generated some token resistance accompanied by a lot of giggling
and blushing on both sides. I couldn't imagine anyone with a pulse
rejecting Tina's advances, and so I wasn't surprised when the hand
returned and Tina started massaging the other woman's groin through
her bikini bottom.
I continued to film, taking advantage of the digital zoom as I
alternated between close-up shots of the groin massage and the look of
guilty pleasure on the face of its recipient. After a while, when the
brunette was sleepy-eyed and breathing heavily, Tina pushed the suit
bottom down a few inches and slid her slim hand down the front. At
the same time, she stretched out next to her on the chaise, snuggling
up close with her lips to her ear. The brunette spread her legs a bit
to give Tina better access.
I pulled back the zoom to take in the whole scene, liking the
way the two women were intertwined on the lounge. Tina's hand
remained busy under the suit bottom, and the other woman began to buck
and pant. Judging the moment nicely, Tina put her hand over her
friend's mouth just as she started to cry out. A few seconds she went
limp.
After a brief consultation, they made what I assumed was the
logical decision to move it to the bedroom. The brunette went back
into the house first, and as Tina followed her l saw her furtively put
her fingers in her mouth and lick them clean. It was a very sexy
moment, and it brought a familiar mix of emotions. It was sexy
primarily because of how private it was. Put another way, it was sexy
because of how humiliated Tina would be if she knew someone was
watching These are the voyeuristic thrills that I'm least proud of.
The sliding door closed, and the show was officially over.
Driving back to my apartment, I found myself irrationally angry
at Tina. Knowing the anger was irrational didn't really diminish it.
When I got home it was mid-afternoon, and I was hungry and tired.
I made myself a sloppy sandwich and ate it in front of the computer
while I deleted the spam from my email accounts. Then I went back to
bed.
The phone woke me up two hours later. I fumbled for it and
pulled the receiver under the covers where I was huddled against the
late afternoon sun like a vampire.
"Stern," I muttered.
"Hi Frank, it's Tina. I just got your message. Did I wake you
up or something?"
I had forgotten that I had left a message on her voice mail, and
I was flustered to suddenly be talking to her.
"I was napping, but I needed to wake up anyway."
"I was just curious how your little trip down to San Diego went."
"Oh, right. It went well - I found the tapes."
"You did! No way, that's great. Where was it?"
"Hidden in his bed. Took me forever to find it."
"You don't sound that happy about it. I'd think you'd be dancing
around your apartment. Aren't you going to get your money?"
"Oh sure, I think so - I'm going to Claire's place tonight to
make the exchange."
"Terrific. Hey, guess what I did last night while you were
breaking and entering."
"I give up."
"Having dinner at Barry Rank's house. Are you upset about
something, Stern?"
"No, I'm just groggy, that's all. You had dinner with Rank?
That sounds like pure torture."
"Well, he was actually moderately pleasant. Also, his daughter
was there, and we got along well. So it wasn't too bad."
Something started tickling the back of my brain. Two or three
random thoughts had collided, and instead of bouncing off each other
they had stuck together like wet snowballs. Tina was still talking,
telling me something about her dinner with Rank, but I wasn't paying
attention. More thoughts kept hitting the original clump and
sticking, and I felt my pulse quicken. I pulled the sheet off my head
and sat up.
"Hey," I said, interrupting her.
"What?"
"How old is Rank's daughter?"
"Jeez, you're in a strange mood. Rank has three daughters. I'm
going to guess between twenty and twenty-eight. The one at dinner was
the oldest one. Why?"
"One thing I didn't mention yet - I found a stash of amateur
tapes along with the ones I was looking for. I took them with me, and
looked at them this morning. Real kinky stuff, like bondage,
whipping, stuff like that. Cahn was in most of them. The girls all
seemed very young, and they didn't seem to be enjoying themselves, to
say the least. I've seen some nasty stuff before, and these tapes
really made me uncomfortable."
"Well, that is disturbing," said Tina. "But what's your point?
I mean, Cahn is dead."
"That is my point, actually. Listen carefully to the following
facts and see if they add up to anything. One: Rank is a friend of
Edward Burke. Two: Burke used to go to George Cahn's parties, and
might well have seen some of Cahn's privately-made porno tapes.
Three: against all common sense, Rank has been trying to make me a
suspect, which could be interpreted as a diversionary tactic. Four:
Rank has three daughters."
Tina was silent for several seconds. "Rank was out sick the day
Cahn got shot," she said finally. "Jesus Christ. You think Barry
Rank killed George Cahn?"
"Edward Burke presumably knows what Rank's daughters look like,"
I said. "He could have been watching a tape at Cahn's house, and
surprise, surprise, a familiar face pops up."
Tina picked it up. "So Burke tips off Barry Rank, and Rank
reacts like any father would - he's devastated and furious. But as a
cop he has the stomach and the experience to do something about it.
He calls in sick, drives down to San Diego...maybe he was just going
to scare Cahn or something, demand the tape, but Cahn ends up dead.
Then Rank makes a hurried search for the tape."
I felt the skin on my back trying to crawl up to my neck.
I said "If Rank finds out I discovered a stash of tapes in Cahn's
house, and that I saw a picture of Burke and Cahn together, he's going
to know that eventually I'll put it all together and realize what
happened."
"Not necessarily. Rank thinks you're an idiot."
"That's comforting, but I still think I'm in danger."
Tina was quiet for a few seconds. "Despite his faults, I'm
having a hard time imagining him as a murderer, but I guess its
possible," she said reluctantly. "Maybe I should look at those tapes,
see if I recognize one of Barry's daughters."
"Good idea. I can drop them off at your place in a few hours on
my way to see Claire."
"OK. Or you could bring them now and hang out here for a
while... sometimes watching bondage makes me hot."
I had a flashback of Tina with her hand in the other woman's
bathing suit, and felt a rush of confused guilt.
"I need to prepare some things before I go over there," I said
somewhat lamely.
"Oh, right. Well, I'll see you in a few hours then."
I hung up the phone and rested my head in my hands. Tina seemed
interested in me after all, but I had blown my chances by spying on
her. If I didn't confess what I had done it would always be on my
mind. If I did...better not to speculate. It was like bad joke.

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Comments are welcome.

DG
diony...@hotmail.com
DG's Story Page: http://baird.pair.com/dg.htm

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