{ASS} New: "Double Cross" by DG [9/9] (Erotic detective story)
diony...@hotmail.com
story soon.
DG
"Double Cross"
A Frank Stern Mystery
(c) 1999 by DG (diony...@hotmail.com)
Chapter Nine
------------
I left my apartment at a little after eight pm and found myself
nervously scanning the streets for police cars as I drove. The idea
that Barry Rank was after me definitely had me spooked. It's no fun
being on the wrong side of a cop, let me tell you - especially a cop
as nasty as Rank.
I left George Cahn's distasteful amateur productions with Tina,
and then drove up into the hills, arriving at Claire's house at a
little after nine. As before, it was silent and still under the
bright wash of the outside floodlights. I parked on the street and
watched my mirrors for a while, in case I had been followed. There
was no traffic at all.
Claire took a long time to answer her front door. When it
finally opened, she was wearing only a blue silk robe, and her hair
was damp at the ends.
"Hi Frank. Sorry to keep you waiting - I was in the tub, soaking
the kinks out. Today's script called for me to get pushed to the
ground and spit on, and it took us five takes. "
Her big green eyes settled on the tapes I was carrying as she
shut the door behind us. "God, I really thought I'd never see those
again."
"Do you want to take some time to verify them?" I noticed a
large gap in the front of her robe, and then I saw her noticing me
noticing.
Smiling, she took the tapes and looked at them closely. "At
least you had the decency to rewind," she joked. "No, I don't need to
watch them, I recognize the labels."
She moved toward the living room, talking to me over shoulder.
"I want you to do two things for me, Frank. First, open that
champagne. Then I want to hear all about how you found the tapes."
A bottle of Dom Perignon was sitting in an ice bucket on the
coffee table, along with two glasses. I pulled it out and started
peeling away the foil, feeling like Cary Grant.
"A beautiful movie star and French champagne...I should have worn
a tux."
She chuckled. "I'm just a TV star right now. But thanks to you
I've got a fighting chance to be a movie star."
I pulled the cork, and champagne gushed out of the bottle and
onto the table. I guided the flow at the glasses, almost dropping the
bottle in the process.
"Sorry - I'm a little out of practice."
"That reminds me," she said dryly. "I also owe you a personal
reward, don't I?"
"Um...I wouldn't want you to do anything that made you
uncomfortable just out of obligation, Claire."
I handed her a glass, and we drank. I'm not a real connoisseur
of fine wine, but it certainly hit the spot.
We sat down next to each other on the couch, and I told her how I
found the tapes. Claire was a good listener, laughing when I said
something funny, nodding in all the right places. I told it pretty
much straight, just leaving out my impromptu masturbation session at
the end.
"Somebody could have searched forever and not found the tapes,"
she said admiringly. "The police never found it, and they ripped the
place apart."
"It was just luck that I happened to look closely at the picture
in the bathroom," I said modestly.
Smiling at me, Claire loosened the sash of her robe and let it fall
open.
"I guess these must look familiar," she said, letting the robe
slide down off her shoulders.
I reached over and gently cupped the soft, warm weight of her
left breast. Some sort of comment was no doubt called for, but I was
speechless. Claire leaned back and dribbled champagne over her
breasts. I licked it off, tentatively at first and then eagerly as
she purred with pleasure. Her nipples hardened under my tongue,
growing into fleshy points as I sucked on them like baby. Her skin was
sweet with the scent of bath oil.
After several minutes of this she pushed me away gently and sat
up. "Let's see if I can still give a nice messy porn star blow job."
"You talked me into it," I said, loosening my pants. I pried my
rigid cock out of my tangled boxer shorts and Claire kneeled on the
carpet between my legs and inhaled it with a throaty groan of
pleasure, sucking it to the back of her throat. She pumped up and
down a few times, and I almost shot my wad right then, but fortunately
she slowed down and began teasing me with gentle nibbles and wet
smacking sounds. Let me tell you, might look sort of cheesy when you
watch it in the movies, but when it's happening to you in real life
its a different story.
She pulled my shirt out of the back of my pants, and I felt her
fingernails scrape across the bare skin of my back. She took her
mouth away from my cock and looked up at me, her gaze suddenly narrow
and calculating. All the misgivings and suspicions that I had
conveniently been repressing suddenly flooded back. In that single
instant I knew I was fucked, and that there was no time.
Pain exploded into my lower back, and my body jerked violently as
every muscle suddenly contracted. A flashbulb went off inside my
head, and then darkness.
When I woke up, I was staring up at the ceiling, and my whole
body felt like it was on fire. I couldn't move. I couldn't even
figure out how to try to move. I was sure I was dying, or maybe I was
already dead.
Claire was standing over me, her robe belted back in place.
"Can you hear me? Blink once if you can hear me."
To my surprise, my eyelids went down, and then up again.
"The pain will go away in a couple minutes. In about half an
hour, you'll be able to get up." She took a little device out of her
pocket and showed it to me. It looked like an electric razor with two
short antenna on the front.
"I tasered you," she informed me. "Fifty thousand volts."
I stared at her blankly.
"I'm sorry, Stern. I can't afford any loose ends. Maybe you saw
the whole tape, and maybe you didn't."
I thought about this for a few seconds. What the fuck difference
did it make whether I watched the tapes all the way through or not?
"If you had watched the final scene in 'Double Cross'," she
continued, "you would have seen the evil twin sister, played by me,
having sex with the good twin sister.
Claire let me think about that one for a few seconds. Filming an
entire sex scene with a body double would have been logistically
difficult and time consuming, two things porn movie producers avoid
like the plague. Unless, of course, you didn't need a body double.
Light started to dawn.
Claire said "So if you had watched the scene, you would have
realized that I must have a real-life twin sister."
I closed my eyes. It all made sense now. Claire Ingleford
really did kill George Cahn, while I was taking pictures of her twin
sister on Sparkle Beach, unwittingly helping her with her alibi. I
opened my eyes again, tried to form a question, and couldn't. But
Claire seemed to understand.
"Twelve years ago, my twin sister Christine and I ran away from
home. We grew up in Iowa, so its not like we needed much excuse. We
came out to LA, to make it big. I loved the fast-paced life out here,
the parties, the sex, all of it, but Christine hated it. She
developed a serious drug problem, then she kicked the habit, went back
to Iowa, worked her way through college as a waitress. She's a lawyer
now, has a nice husband, a good life.
"That was the only porno scene she ever did, the one with me.
She was drugged out of her mind when we filmed it, you can tell when
you see it."
She laughed mirthlessly.
"The only scene she ever did, but it was a hell of a scene. Sex
with your sister. It sounds disgusting, doesn't it? But at the time
it seemed like no big deal. Christine and I had both slept with women
before."
She was silent for a few seconds.
"Anyway, a few months ago my ex-husband started blackmailing me by
threatening to show that scene to the world. He was in big financial
trouble, and he kept asking for more and more money. I've got a big
movie coming out, my career is about to take off, so his position was
just getting stronger. He was bleeding me dry, and at the same time I
felt like he might release the tape just out of spite, or that someone
would find it at his house during one of his parties. Poor Christine,
she would have been caught in the crossfire. Can you imagine what
they would think of all this in Iowa?"
"Mmph," I said. Or something like that. I could make sounds and
move my lips a bit, which was an improvement.
Claire nodded as if I had asked a probing question.
"You're wondering why I wanted to buy those pictures back.
Christine and I had hatched what we thought was a perfect plan. She
would pretend to be me in public while I went to San Diego and forced
Cahn give me the tape. But when she showed up here at my house, there
was a problem..."
Her voice trailed off. She was staring across the room at
something out of my range of vision, her eyes wide.
"She put the tattoo on the wrong ass cheek," said Tina Callahan.
She walked over to where I could see her. She was dressed in tight,
dark clothes, and she looked athletic and dangerous despite her small
size. The gun in her hand helped, of course.
Tina said "Your twin sister Christine used the centerfold picture
from your Playboy spread as a guide for the rose tattoo, didn't she?
She had no idea that the negative had been reversed. When you
discovered the mistake it was too late, and you figured she could just
keep the tattoo covered up. But a wave knocked her bikini bottom up
into her ass crack, and Frankie here caught the tattoo on film. Bad
luck for you."
"Right," said Claire, after a pause. "So who the fuck are you?"
She tried to sound tough, but couldn't quite pull it off.
"Detective Tina Callahan, LAPD. Off duty at the moment. I'm
Frank's partner. Right Frank?"
I opened my mouth and managed to croak out "Nice timing,
partner."
"Glad I could help. Sorry I let her taser you, though. I
thought I was doing you a favor by not interrupting the blow job."
I made a noncommittal sound.
"So what do you think we should do, Frank? I could call it in,
get a bunch of cops out here right away. Be a nice bust for me. On
the other hand, maybe we could shake down Claire for some cold hard
cash and let her off with a warning. I don't think she'll be doing
any more killing, now that we've got the goods on her. Blink once if
you want to-"
"I can talk," I mumbled irritably. I was getting sick of staring
up at the two of them from the floor, but I still couldn't move my
limbs. "Why don't you shoot her, and then we'll take all her money.
Make it look like a burglary."
"Not a bad idea," said Tina.
"Oh God," said Claire, turning pale. "Please. Don't... Take all
the money, I've got a lot here...I can get you more."
"How much have you got lying around the house?" asked Tina
curiously.
Claire licked her lips. "Fifty thousand in a briefcase, for
Stern. And another thirty in the safe. It's all blackmail money I
was supposed to pay George."
Tina looked down at me. "Fifty grand? You told me it was ten."
"So sue me. It's not like she was going to let me leave with
it."
"Well, that's a point. Can you live with forty, partner? If she
can really give us eighty big ones right now, I think we'd be stupid
to pass it up. She won't be tempted to talk about it, that's for
sure. Of course, that's easy for me to say, since I'm not the one she
was about to kill."
Claire said "I wasn't going to..."
Tina eyed Claire coldly, cutting her off with a look. "Oh,
really? Didn't I hear you say something about Frank being a loose
end you couldn't afford?"
Claire didn't say anything.
Tina looked at me and said "What she was probably going to do was
wait until you had recovered enough to move a little, and then she'd
help you into your van, drive it to a nice steep cliff, and send it
over with you in the driver's seat. The autopsy wouldn't find
anything to suggest you were incapacitated at the time of the
accident."
"Bitch," I said.
Tina walked over to Claire and stood facing her eye to eye. "On
your knees."
Claire dropped to her knees, all pretense of toughness gone.
"Please...For God's sake...don't...."
Tina put the barrel of her service revolver in Claire's mouth and
pulled back the hammer with her thumb. Claire made a little whimpering
sound in her throat.
Tina winked down at me and said "Just say the word, Stern, and I'll
spray her brains all over the carpet."
There was a soft spattering sound, which puzzled me until I saw
the puddle forming between Claire's knees. The sharp smell of urine
hit my nostrils, and I felt sick to my stomach.
"Let's get her money and get out of here," I said.
Tina nodded, and said "Yeah. Let's do that." She looked a
little ashamed. She took the gun out of Claire's mouth and said "OK,
get up, I'm not going to shoot you. Let's see what you've got in your
safe."
Ten minutes later, while Tina was busy looting Claire's safe, I
took stock of my situation. I wasn't in pain anymore, and I could
move my arms and my head, but I couldn't sit up or feel my legs. On
the bright side, I had something interesting to look at. Claire
Ingleford was sitting next to me in a chair, handcuffed, completely
naked, and tied firmly in place with the sash from her robe.
"The ironic thing," I said to her from the floor, "is that I
really didn't see the end of 'Double Cross.' In fact, it's quite
possible that no man has ever seen the end of a porn movie."
"I shouldn't have tasered you. I'm sorry." Her voice was dull
and flat, and her eyes were glassy with shock.
"If you had only finished the blow job first, I could forgive
you."
That met with nothing but silence.
Tina came back into the living room carrying a small suitcase.
"Up and at 'em, partner. Time to make our getaway."
I made a brief attempt to get up. From the look on Tina's face,
it must have been a pretty pathetic sight.
"OK, Plan B then. I'll pull your van up close and Claire and I
will carry you into the back. Right, Claire?"
Claire rolled her eyes up at Tina and moaned " Please don't kill
me." I must say, she wasn't nearly the same life of the party she had
been an hour ago.
So that's how I left the house: with one arm around each of their
shoulders, my feet dragging limply along behind me. Not exactly a
march of triumph. They pushed me into the back of my van like a
rolled-up carpet, and that was that.
Tina had some final words with Claire, and then we were off. She
drove carefully on the winding road that led back down out of the hills,
but I still kept sliding from one side of the van to the other.
"This really sucks," I said, after my head bounced off my
toolbox.
"Hang in there, Stern. You're handling all this adversity very
well."
"You saved my life."
"Yep. And I made forty thousand bucks doing it. It's been quite
a night."
"That it has. How did you figure it out, anyway?"
"Well, it didn't take long to figure out that Rank's daughters
weren't on those tapes. With that theory blown, and in all honesty it
was pretty far-fetched, I started wondering what else might have
happened. I kept coming back to Claire - she had a big motive. Plus,
its just the sort of thing her character on "LA West" would do, you
know?"
"Now there's a real brainstorm."
"Well, maybe being such a bitch on TV for all these years has
warped her sense of judgement. Anyway, I got out the pictures you
took on the beach and her recent Playboy spread and looked at them
side by side, to see if it might have been someone who just looks like
her. It was her, but yet it wasn't. Her nose for one thing - on the
beach it was covered with sunblock, but it definitely seemed bigger than
in Playboy. It was weird, let me tell you - I kept going back and
forth on it. I started looking for little stuff, like moles and
freckles, and then I suddenly noticed that the tattoo was jumping from
cheek to cheek. I figured out the centerfold had been reversed, and
that was it."
"Wild. So you came out to rescue me."
"It didn't necessarily mean you were in danger. But I had a bad
feeling."
Tina parked the van somewhere dark and switched off the engine.
I craned my head trying to see where we were.
"Stevenson Park," she said. "I think we better lay low for a
while until you can walk. Might look suspicious, me dragging you into
my townhouse by your ankles." She got out of the driver's seat and
sat down next to me on the floor of the van.
"I'm definitely recovering," I said. "I can feel everything
now."
"Everything?" She put her hand on my crotch. "Can you feel
that?"
I laughed. "You really are a horny gal, aren't you?"
"What can I say - danger makes me wet. Not to mention that I
spent half an hour watching you and Claire depositing saliva all over
each other."
"God, how humiliating. She opened her robe, and my IQ dropped by
fifty points."
"Well, I'm sorry I spied on you," she said, continuing to rub me.
From the growing bulge in my pants it appeared that my nervous system
was still operational.
I took a deep breath. "Tina..."
"Mmm?"
"It's actually kind of ironic that you were watching me. Because
I spied on you too."
She stopped rubbing. "What do you mean?"
"I followed you this afternoon, and saw you with the other women
on the deck."
Her jaw dropped. "How..."
"I was coming over to see you, and you were just pulling out of
your driveway. After that it just sort of happened. I'm really,
really sorry. Honestly."
She was quiet for a little while. I couldn't read her expression
in the dim light, and it occurred to me that thanking her for saving
my life might well have been premature.
"Well, I guess I knew you were a voyeur," she said finally.
"Talk about humiliating."
"I'll give you the tape," I said.
"Oh Jesus...you filmed it?"
"Look, I said I was sorry."
"Yeah, so you did. OK, I forgive you."
"Really?" I was so grateful that I actually felt tears forming
in my eyes. In my own defense, it had been a traumatic few hours.
She said "So now you know I'm bisexual."
"No big deal. I won't tell anyone. As long as you don't spill
the beans about me getting zapped and almost killed by a TV actress."
She chuckled. "It's a deal. You know, when you were sucking on
her tits, I was pretty jealous."
I laughed. "They were delicious."
"It's going to kill you not to be able to tell anyone
you got a blow job from Claire Ingleford."
"I guess. But celebrity appeal aside, you do it a lot better."
She leaned over and kissed me. "Thanks. Now I really forgive
you."
I raised my right arm and managed to squeeze her ass.
Smiling, she unzipped and lowered my pants, shimmied out of her
jeans and her underwear, and straddled me. We fumbled awkwardly in
the darkness until we finally connected, and I slid slowly into her
warm slippery depths until she was sitting astride my hips.
"Ohhhh, that's nice," she said. "Girls are fun, but I'd always
miss this."
We made love slowly, with Tina doing most of the work. It was
sort of a surreal experience, the way I was feeling, but it was fun.
I wasn't sure I would be able to come, but I did, and so did Tina.
After it was over, I realized that I could sit up. I opened the
back of the van and carefully slid my feet to the ground and stood up,
breathing the cool night air and enjoying the feeling of being
vertical. Moving on wobbly spaghetti legs, I made my way around to
the passenger door and clambered clumsily inside, almost sliding back
out onto my ass at one point.
Watching with amusement, Tina said "Thank God for designated
drivers, eh?"
"Very funny. Let's go home and count our money."
Tina revved the engine and pulled out of the park onto the
highway. "Your place or mine?"
"My place is a mess, and there's no food."
"Oh God...single men. You know, Cassandra's place was spotless,
and she made me a terrific ham and mushroom omelet when we were done."
"Cassandra is the woman from this afternoon, I take it?"
Tina gave me a sideways look of surprise, and then threw back her
head and yelped with laughter. "That's right, I didn't tell you, did
I?"
"Tell me what?"
"Some detective. That was Cassandra Rank, Barry's oldest
daughter. I told you we got along well at dinner."
I thought about it for a few seconds and felt a chuckle bubbling
up inside my chest. "You seduced his daughter - that's beautiful. It
couldn't have happened to a nicer guy."
"There wasn't much seducing that had to be done," said Tina. "She
was
flirting with me all through dinner. And Barry's not going to find out
about it, either."
"Not from me, he won't. I'm not about to piss off my new partner."
She reached over and gave my thigh a squeeze. "Stern, I think this
is going to be the start of a beautiful and profitable friendship."
The End
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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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