At last, I felt myself relaxing, smoothing out to the mellow tones of the Five Satins harmonizing. ‘… In the still… of the night…’

I gazed at it for a long time, indulging myself with the exquisite torture of self-denial.

Stroking my fingertips gently up and down the full length of its nine inches, I teased myself with simple anticipation, the sheer deliciousness of postponed promise. From its base up to its wet shiny opening, it beckoned with its seductive, allure. I gently stroked the sides and… I gave in to a primal desire. I surrendered.

I clasped my right hand around its familiar hard roundness and feeling its comfortable contours against my palm I lowered my head and pulled it toward me. My tongue extended, eagerly darting out in advance of my lips to explore the wet tip before I close my mouth around the…

“Hey, Dixie, someone here asking about you!”

Well, shit in a bucket!

It was ninety-four degrees outside and by the time it bounced off the sidewalks it felt like a hundred and twenty. I had been promising myself that ice-cold bottle of Heineken ever since I set foot in my office earlier that morning.

I forced myself to place the bottle back on the bar and turned my head toward the voice.

Tony the bartender nodded at me, and then flicked his head sideways toward the man standing in front of him. I nodded an acknowledgment to Tony and he looked back at the man and then jerked his head towards me. That counted as a formal introduction from Tony.

I was sitting in the bar of Tony’s Place, which is a quiet neighborhood watering hole located at the top of Flatbush Avenue, just around the corner from where my office is located above the bakery. This is my mental haven, my therapeutic unwind place to go when I am tired, feeling shitty and sick of the sight of the peeling wallpaper on my office walls.

One of the main attractions in Tony’s is a genuine Wurlitzer jukebox that does not require money to play and more importantly, it does not have any music on it that was recorded after 1970. A little Motown and Doo-wop softly playing in the background please the regular patrons of Tony’s Place just fine.

I work in a solitary business and have few friends, so I tend to drink alone. That seems to signify instant availability to most alfa males, and so I have to deal with the occasional skirt-sniffer and obnoxious asshole. Somewhere during my patronage, Tony appointed himself as my guardian and runs interference whenever I am drinking in his place.

Tony is a man of few words. He does not need them. He looks the spitting image of Luca Brasi from the movie, The Godfather.

I seldom have problems.

~ ~ ~

The gentleman who approached me looked to be in his late fifties, about five nine, overweight, well fed and dressed in a grey lightweight suit that still looked too hot for Brooklyn in September.

He looked vaguely familiar.

He pulled a large white handkerchief from his pants pocket, dabbed at the perspiration popping out all over his fat face and stuck out his right hand.

“Miss Deveraux?”

"Guilty as charged,” I replied and shook his hand. It felt like a soft wet rag.

“I didn’t want to be seen going up to your office.”

Hey now. Was that an insult as to my charming headquarters above the German Bakery?

I swallowed a nasty-assed retort and politely inquired. “You can’t walk up to my office but going into a bar is okay?”

He gave me a condescending smile. “My dear, most of my constituents are to be found in a bar at one time or another.”

Well, I was not his, or anybody else’s, ‘dear’, but I let it pass in the spirit of good social manners and customer relations. It isn’t considered good form to get in the face of potential clients the moment they introduce themselves.

Then I placed him. Not to know him, but know of him. I had seen his face on the idiot box. He was some kind of county politician and a bit of a comer if his head doesn’t get too big for his toupee. Rumors of a possible run at being Mayor, well one of these days he might find out that it is only eighteen inches between a pat on the back and a kick in the ass.

Well, Sir, what brings you into this den of depravity on a hot summer afternoon? Did the air conditioning in the County Offices break down?”

He dabbed his sweating face. “Could we at least move to a booth?” he whispered.

Okay. So much for my attempt at light repartee. The gentleman desired a private consultation. I gathered my beer from off the bar and ushered him across to a booth on the back wall. I took a quick pull on the Heineken and then asked the obvious question.

“Well, sir. How can I be of service?”

“It’s my sister’s daughter… my niece… she’s been kidnapped.”

~ ~ ~

Perhaps I need to back up a little.

My professional handle is Dixie Devereux and I am a Private Investigator, a Private Eye. I am what they colorfully used to call, a Private Dick, but that hardly fits my gender and Private Pussy does not look so good on a business card.

The name Dixie came from a Styrofoam cup and Devereux was from a box of French chocolates. Let’s face it; Deveraux sounds a hell of a lot classier than Tittsfield.

Family history has it that when my grandparents, Johan and Helga, arrived from the Old Country, they stepped ashore onto the Forty-Seventh Street Pier, Manhattan. There, apparently overcome with emotion at their safe arrival into the New World, my grandfather turned to my grandmother and formally announced, “Ve iz in America, now ve sprechen der Englisch,” and at the first opportunity, he legally anglicized his German surname.

Well, whoop de do for me.

Because of that, I was christened Angelina Tittsfield, instead of Angelina Tittenfelder.

Ain’t that a kick in the head!

Yep, you got it, or more to the point, I got it. Boy, did I get it.

My dad called me Angel from the day I was born. It sounds sweet doesn’t it, that is until you hit your school years. I made my way through high school years being called Angel Tits. I was called Angel Tits long before I even had any… and I wasn’t much of an angel either.

Somewhere during my teens, I picked up a reputation as being a bit of a hard-bitten bitch. Gee… I wonder why?

My high school grades were good, but not good enough for a paid scholarship. My dad drove a bus for New York Transit Authority working steadily to keep his family, myself, my mom a sister and brother with a roof over our heads and food in our bellies. Dad had enough on his plate without trying to scratch up the coins needed to send me to university.

The Girl Scouts may not have wanted me, but I knew who would.

The ‘Crossroads of the World’ is the place where Broadway and Forty-Second Street collide in the middle of Manhattan. That particular intersection is more popularly known as, Times Square. Albeit surrounded by the bright lights, the glitz and glamor of the theater district, fancy eateries and tourist rip-off shops, there also happens to be an Armed Forces Recruiting Station located smack dab in the middle of it. Having no desire to work as a sales clerk at Macy’s, I decided to kick-start myself into a new life with at least the reasonable expectation of being issued clothing and three squares a day. I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.

Yeah, don’t laugh; they take women in the Corps.

I always had a thing for law enforcement although I wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was because I grew up expecting to be on the other side of it. I wanted to go for the F.B.I. but they wouldn’t touch anyone without at least a four-year degree. They were only after squeaky-clean candidates with pre-law or J.D’s from Ivy League New England colleges. The ‘paahk the caahr in the Haavahd Yaahd’ crowd. You’ve seen them, those who are educated to the point of imbecility and without the street smarts, that God gave pigeons.

What a fucking joke, J. Edgar must be revolving in his dress.

Oh, and I don’t wish to malign pigeons. New York City pigeons are pretty damn smart.

Growing up on the streets of Brooklyn knocked some of the corners off me, but also taught me to handle all manner of shit. The Drill Instructors at Paris Island Recruit Training Depot dished out their own brand of marine-green excretion, but for some reason, I thrived on it. I could run five miles with full gear, shoot expert with an M-16 and Colt 45 Automatic, crawl through mud, pig entrails and barbed wire, then scrape the muck off my face, laugh and still snap my skirt on the parade deck.

I graduated from boot camp at Paris Island, South Carolina, and followed that with infantry training at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. I was then assigned to Military Police Training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri where I graduated first in my class, was given a meritorious promotion and strongly encouraged to take an advanced course in Criminal Investigations.

I worked damn hard in the Military Police. I served overseas for part of the time and with a few special under-cover assignments thrown in. I may have grown up with a street attitude, but it took the Marine Corp to stand me up tall and put all the echoes of Angel Tits behind me. They at least addressed me as Sergeant fuckin' Tittsfield!

The Corps wanted me to stay, but I missed the city of cities.

So here I am. Dixie Deveraux, Duly Licensed Private Investigator, Brooklyn, New York City.

I stand five feet ten without heels, slim body, short blonde hair, blue eyes and don’t require yuppie spandex jogging outfits to keep me in in good shape. For accessories, I wear a wristwatch, a gold Claddagh necklace, a set of steel handcuffs and carry a Smith and Wesson Ladysmith. That little baby is a thirty-eight caliber, snub-nose, hammerless revolver.

No, I don’t carry it in my purse under the lipstick, Kleenex, cell phone, tampons, bunches of keys and stray coins; it lives all by itself in a small black leather clip-on holster that fits inside the waistband of a skirt or pants. It is always next to me where I can feel it and reach it in a hurry.

Now Quackser Fortune may have had a cousin in the Bronx, but I lucked out one better. I had an Uncle Jorge who owned a German bakery in Brooklyn Heights. That’s the snobby area of Brooklyn, with its expensive three-story townhouses and killer views of Manhattan from the Promenade. So apart from the fact that Uncle Jorge made cheese blintzes to die for; he also had a loft above the bakery that had remained unused for anything but mouse droppings since the Civil War.

hat loft, dear friends, became the office for Deveraux Private Investigations.

Well hell, you didn’t expect me to hang out a shingle saying, Tittsfield, Private Dick, did you?

With that piece of personal trivia out of the way, I’ll go back to where I had been telling you about the sweat-drenched politico sitting opposite me in a booth in the back of Tony’s Bar.

~ ~ ~

"It’s my sister’s daughter… my niece… she’s been kidnapped.”

I took another pull on my beer. “What makes you think she has been kidnaped?”

He took an envelope from his jacket pocket, opened it, and pushed three photographs across the table towards me.

Now I am a street-savvy gal and am seldom shaken up, but the photographs showed a young woman apparently gagged and chained to a chair. She was wearing a parochial high school uniform with the skirt high up on her thighs, her legs wide open with her ankles chained and bent backward under the sides of the chair.

I sucked in a deep breath. The gravity of the images was not exactly what I had been prepared for. I had been expecting a more run of the mill ho-hum case dealing with the more normal miscreants, you know, cheating husbands, cheating wives, rent dodgers, and lost kitty-cats. From the look of the three photographs in front of me, this was certainly more indicative of some heavier caliber shit.

I decided to pass.

“Look, sir,” I told him. “A couple more blocks down the street at 301 Gold Street, you will find a three-story brownstone building containing men and women of the 84th Precinct, New York City Police Department. They are sworn to protect and serve.”

“No, no,” he stammered. “I can’t use the police.”

Seems like a perfectly sound suggestion to me, so why the fuck not, I’m thinking.

“With all due respect, sir, this appears to be a case of criminal abduction with possibly more serious overtones.”

“You must understand, Miss Deveraux. A man in my position, well, I can’t risk a scandal.”

Oh, I got it. His niece had been abducted for unknown reasons by unidentified creeps but he couldn’t afford a scandal. Wow, this guy was beginning to make catshit smell pretty.

He went on, “Look, Miss Deveraux. I specifically came to you because, well, you are a woman and you would understand. If those pictures ever became public, they alone could haunt my niece and ruin her life for years to come.”

He had a point. I don’t give much of a damn for politician’s reputations because if they had any morals or scruples at all, they wouldn’t be politicians. However, when it came to this girl, his niece, and the irresponsibility of some of the dirtbag tabloid reporters I have the displeasure of knowing… well, he had a point.

I’m no pushover. I had handled some tough customers while serving in the Armed Forces. I worked some counter-terrorism and weapon smuggling cases, I busted folks in drug dens in Korea and broke up knife-fights in Japanese titty bars, but… but with a young girl’s life possibly being on the line…

I made my pitch again.

“Look, sir. Time is of the essence and the NYPD have far greater resources. I would strongly suggest you go and have a word with the detectives at the Eighty-fourth.”

He begged he pleaded, and his dress shirt and tie were shrinking from the amount of sweat he was leaking.

“Please Miss Deveraux, please can you find and rescue my niece.”

For my sins, and because it is rumored that I possess a minuscule soft spot somewhere within me, I listened as he told me the tale. At least, as much of the tale that he appeared to know, or was willing to share.

His story was short and simple. It was summer break from school and his niece, JoAnne was on a little trip upstate. He had not heard from her for a while and then he received the three photographs in the mail.

Then he called by my office, only to have my Uncle Jorge in the bakery point him towards Tony’s Place.

The details seemed sparse and incomplete. I could grant him some slack taking into account his distress, but even so, his story seemed ridiculously short of facts. No ransom demands, no political angles, no constituent enemies or threatening phone calls. There was nothing to go on and no possible reasons presented as to why anyone would abduct and harm his niece.

Then it was random. Now where in the hell do you begin with that?

This case sat hard on my soul. Dammit, he should have gone directly to the NYPD with it. I spent the remainder of that evening and most of the following day checking into the usual sources, especially the police blotters in various precincts regarding suspicious activities. The average population of New York City was about 8.5 million so most of what I found was useless, endless and confusing. It was of no use at all when you had no solid logical starting point.

The Councilman had left the envelope containing the photographs with me, and as disturbing as they were, I scanned them into my computer and began exploring the images inch by inch.

His niece JoAnne appeared to be confined to a bedroom. Nothing remarkable about the room. Plain walls, no pictures, a double bed against one wall of the room and a plain chest of drawers on the other. The chair was centered in the middle of the room. No distinctive carpet, the room was just a plain room. The pictures were taken during daytime with light coming in from an outside window, but not in view. The room could not have looked plainer, a bed on one wall, a dresser against the opposite wall, and a girl chained to a chair in the middle.

Hell, I couldn’t make much out of it, but I looked. I looked until my eyes started to glaze over.

There was a bed, a chair, and a dressing table.

A dressing table...

A dressing table with a large mirror on top...

A mirror that held a partial reflection of the unseen window and showing a portion of what was outside of the house. Part of a bush, a tree branch, a small area of grass lawn and...

Two red dots.

I ratcheted up the magnification by a few hundred pixels. Two red dots. Two round pieces of something resembling glass or plastic attached to what appeared to be metal, with possibly a… chrome strip.

Well, bless my musically retro brain cells. I must have tapped into the hot wax vibes so beautifully preserved and treasured on Tony’s Wurlitzer. My subconscious was channeling some primal imagery from a past era.

Hot damn! I knew what I was seeing. I knew what the two red dots were. It was unmistakable!

I was looking at a tail fin on a 1959 rocket-back Cadillac Coupe De Ville.

I grabbed the envelope containing the photographs sent to the Councilman. The top right corner held a smudged and barely legible postmark. It was a magnifying glass moment.

I looked at a smudged postmark and the tip of a fin

I could identify a postmark saying Passaic, New Jersey and the tail light on a 1959 Caddy.

Following that, it did not take me very long to research. I ran computer inquiries for car clubs and classic car sales anywhere near Passaic, New Jersey and quickly discovered an owner of a 1959 Cadillac Coupe De Ville, with an address in the town of Saddlebrook. I knew Saddlebrook to be a small town in Bergan County, New Jersey, three miles northeast of Passaic, and twelve miles north of Newark. I could probably drive there in about forty minutes.

~ ~ ~

My vehicle isn’t what you might call, practical for northern climes. It’s a 1966 Pontiac GTO ragtop and I love the hell out of it. After throwing some tools of the trade into the back seat, I took the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge across into New Jersey and from there it wasn’t long before I reached Saddlebrook Township.

While driving, I had some time to think. I had no idea of what I might be confronting. It could be some kind of an organized gang working some extortion gig, a bunch of local hicks just getting their jollies or a lone nutcase. All that I was certain of was that JoAnne was being held a hostage by someone. However, there might well be other victims involved. I needed to scope out the ground and depending upon the opposition, go in slick and smart with the proviso that if things looked too heavy, I would have no choice but to back off and enlist the help of the local police department.

It was dark when I located the address and I took a slow cruise around the block to get an overall feel of the neighborhood. It was a typical suburban, seventies style single-story housing tract and very quiet. After circling for a while, I parked my car approximately one hundred yards away from the target house, and in the dark spot between the streetlights. I killed all the interior lights in my vehicle, popped open the car door and exited.

I did a last minute equipment check. The thirty-eight was snug in the small of my back, and at the last moment, I decided to pack some additional firepower. A Ruger Judge revolver, capable of chambering both 45 caliber bullets and 410 shotgun shells. I loaded the chambers alternately with one 45, and then one 410, one 45, and then one 410. Basic survival, if you can’t take them out clean with a bullet, blast the living shit out of the place with shotgun pellets.

I strapped the holster carrying the Judge around my right ankle underneath my loose-legged jeans and made my way quietly along the side fencing towards the house. The house appeared quiet and I saw no ‘Beware of the doggy’ signs.

I avoided the front path and driveway, keeping my distance from the building and performing a wide circle around the yard. There were no other vehicles on the property, aside from the grim satisfaction I felt at seeing the ass end of a fifty-nine Caddy sticking out of the carport. There was no front porch light and only one lighted window showing in the back. I crouched underneath it with my nose firmly pressed against the frame and carefully peered through the bottom corner of the window.

It was an unnerving sight.

I had no difficulty recognizing JoAnne or the bedroom. It was the same room as was shown in the three photographs, the only difference being, there was no chair in the center of the room.

JoAnne appeared to be dressed as a schoolgirl in a pleated red tartan skirt, a white button-down shirt opened all the way to display her bare breasts and her mouth was stuffed with a gag. She lay flat on her back on a bed with her hands handcuffed together above her head and secured to the iron headboard behind her. Her legs were spread and her skirt was bunched up around her waist.

The rest of her was obscured by the naked legs, shoulders and back of the guy bouncing up and down on top of her. The only thing he had on covering his skin was a black leather facemask and the hair on his ass.

I moved away from the window and towards the rear door of the house. I was fumbling in the dark for my lockpicks when I got lucky. The back door of the house was unsecured. I crouched quietly there for a minute to assess the possible opposition. I did not see or hear anything that would indicate the presence of any other person in or around the house.

Quietly entering the house through a kitchen area, I turned in the direction of the bedroom light, and the sound of squeaking bedsprings. The bedroom door was ajar.

I would be entering the bedroom from behind the man laboring away atop JoAnne. It was crucial that he not see me. I could not risk him using her as a shield. I had to get closer.

With my thirty-eight in my right hand, I quietly eased the door open enough for me to slide through and then silently crossed the room until I stood at the foot of the bed.

That was when JoAnne looked up over the man’s shoulder and saw me approaching. Her eyes grew wide and she looked terrified. Before she could give away my presence, I pressed the end of the barrel of my thirty-eight hard against the back of the man’s head.

I seriously considered sticking it up his bare ass but who wants to soil a good revolver.

He froze in mid-thrust.

“Place both of your hands behind your back. If you do not comply, I will kill you. Now DO IT!”

The guy’s full weight landed on JoAnne as his hands quickly came back onto the small of his back. I unclipped my handcuffs from my belt and secured both rings tight around his wrists.

“OK, FUCKHEAD. Do I have your attention? You will roll onto your side and lay flat on your back. If you do not comply, I will kill you. Now, DO IT!”

He rolled off JoAnne and onto his back. I was expecting him to start kicking so I kept the barrel of my revolver hard up under his chin against his throat. He looked terrified and lay perfectly still.

With him immobilized, I turned my attention toward JoAnne. She was breathing hard and understandably frightened. Her eyes were wild and she was choking on the gag, frantically trying to spit it out.

I quickly reassured her. “You are okay… you are ok,” I told her. “He can’t harm you anymore.”

She was struggling and choking on the gag. I reached over and pulled the gag away from her mouth. The gag turned out to be a pair of pink bikini style panties.

“You’re okay, JoAnne. It's over. I am taking you home and private medical care will be…”

She immediately screamed.

“WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU, AND WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”

I was a little surprised at her reaction, but the psychological stress of prolonged captivity can have strange effects on people.

I quickly explained. “I am a private detective hired by your guardian uncle. I am arresting this sick fuck for kidnap and rape. Now, where are the keys to your handcuffs and ankle bracelets?”

She took a deep breath and in a strangely quiet voice, she replied. “There are no keys. They simply open when you push the little button on the side.”

"They don’t lock?”

“No they don’t lock, you FUCKIN' MORON, they are toys. You get it, THEY ARE TOYS!”

My eyes were beginning to cross. “Toys?”

“That’s MY BOYFRIEND you almost shot!”

~ ~ ~

I had been in a few strange situations over the years, but this case had just entered the list of best ten fuckups.

Holstering the thirty-eight, I unhooked JoAnne from her shackles. They were made of plastic.

I used the key to my handcuffs and released the man on the floor. My cuffs were made of tempered steel.

The man was crying and shivering with raw fear. His teeth were chattering and he spontaneously urinated down his legs and into the carpet. His bulging terrified eyes never left me. His urinating himself was no surprise. Believe me, when a loaded piece is pressed against your head, urinating on yourself is the milder form of what usually happens.

Miss JoAnne was made of sterner stuff. She was simply pissed off.

She took a very measured breath. “Have you got a badge or identification card or something that tells me who the fuck you are?”

I pulled out my I.D. and held it up for her to read. Private Investigator License as duly issued to the business concern known as, Dixie Deveraux Private Investigator, in and for the State of New York by the Division of Licensing Services. Andrew W. Cuomo, Governor.

She sniffed, lifted herself off the bed and discarded the schoolgirl clothing. She scrambled around finding a baggy pair of Levis and a torn Mets baseball tee shirt and put them on. She kicked the guy on the floor and told him to take the stupid mask off his head and find himself some clothing. After they dressed and were more in control of themselves, we moved from the bedroom into the kitchen.

The man was still badly shaken, but he managed to take down a bottle of Southern Comfort whiskey and three cups from the kitchen cabinet and set them out on the table. The neck of the whiskey bottle rattled against the lip of each cup as his shaking hands poured each of us a stiff drink. Some quiet minutes passed as the whiskey slid down our throats and into some very nervous stomachs. When the raw nerves in the room subsided a little, I asked JoAnne to kindly tell me just what in the hell I had walked into.

She showed me a handful of photographs. At first glance, they seemed innocuous enough. They were pictures of JoAnne mostly wearing her school uniform, some wearing dresses and others of her using the swimming pool.

The longer I looked, the more uneasy I felt.

I finally said, “Talk to me, JoAnne.”

So she did.

She choked down a couple of hefty swigs of whiskey and told me of how when she was sixteen, her mother had died and her mother was the Councilor’s sister. JoAnne had grown up with a single parent, never having known her father and so her unmarried uncle petitioned for guardianship and had taken her into his home.

“Was he good to you?” I asked.

JoAnne shrugged. “I guess it depends what you mean by good. I never wanted for anything materially. He fed me and gave me shelter. I was only sixteen and I damn sure didn’t want to live in some orphanage. He was never directly unkind but he was always kinky and possessive.”

She pointed to the photographs scattered on the table.

“Do you like these?’ she asked. “That old sick fuck took those.”

It was then I realized why I felt so uneasy. What she was showing me was a handful of photographs taken of her and in almost every instance; her legs were in such a position as to show under her clothing.

I chewed on the corner of my bottom lip for a while and then asked; “Kindly old uncle had a hobby?”

“Yeah, you might say,” she answered. “I knew he took pictures all the time. I mean, a lot of them were normal. You know, regular cutsie smiley teenage pics, most of me and sometimes of me with my school friends… and then there were the other pics that he liked to take.”

I was starting to get a bad taste in my mouth. I took another mouthful of neat Southern Comfort and swilled it around my teeth like a mouthwash before swallowing.

“I see… and what exactly were the ‘other’ pics that he liked to take?”

“They were pretty much like the ones in your hand.”

“Pictures of you… ah…”

“Showing… yes.”

No wonder the Councilman was avoiding the police. If this little situation hit the media, he will only ever have a dog for a friend. In that case, my client, the political comer, was a goner.

“You never knew he was taking those kinds of photos of you?”

JoAnne snorted. “Oh hell yes, of course, I knew. I was sixteen years old and any girl of that age knows about dirty old men peeking you. I mean it was a howl watching him maneuvering around trying to get a shot of my legs when my skirts were up a bit.”

“So you went along with all of that?”

“Sure, it was the funniest damn thi…

"He knew that you knew?” I interrupted.

“Yes, but in a weird way. We never really talked about it. We kinda drifted into a game. He pretended he wasn’t doing what he was doing and I pretended not to know what he was doing.”

She was becoming exasperated. “I mean, shit, it wasn’t anybody else’s damn business. It was just a game.”

“So you weren’t exactly an innocent victim. You teased him.”

“Well, he liked it. He had a thing for school skirts, panties, and little white ankle socks. So what the hell, I played ‘spread a little, show a little’. I let him see some panty and he played snappity-snap with his camera. You know, big fuckin' deal.

“So you posed for him?”

"Well, that’s what made it such a howl. He played at acting so sneaky and I played little Miss Innocent schoolgirl. He only ever got the shots I wanted to give him. You know like I would sometimes stand at the top of the stairs when he was below, or sit with my knees spread while doing my schoolwork at the table, or me reading a mag on the sofa. That one was so easy to get him going. Just bring my knees up to support the magazine and then part my legs a little. What a total howl watching him killing himself trying to get a peek.”

She sniffed. “He was still a dirty old perve.”

Wow, what a little charmer she was.

JoAnne left the table and returned a minute later carrying a large binder.

“Don’t believe me? I found this one day while I was vacuuming under his bed. Here, look for yourself!”

She shoved a large photo album into my hands. I opened the cover and saw that the entire album contained hundreds of photographs, all of JoAnne. The weirdest thing of all was that JoAnne really didn’t seem that upset by any of it.

JoAnne stood over my shoulder as I flipped through some of the pages.

“Isn’t it a real scream?” she said while pointing excitedly at the pages. “See how they are all categorized and indexed. See here, it has titles and page tabs saying what I was wearing and what I was doing. Look at this section. JoAnne’s pink summer dress, JoAnne’s plaid school skirt, JoAnne’s white one-piece swimsuit, JoAnne’s blue bikini, JoAnne’s white panties, JoAnne’s light blue panties… on and on. Isn’t it a hoot?”

I flipped through the album. Oh, Miss JoAnne was good. I had no idea of what she intended doing with her life but she could have a natural career as a stripper or Hollywood bimbo. Actually, between her and her uncle, they demonstrated a great talent for producing natural appearing upskirts.

Her cell phone rang; she grabbed it and carefully looked at the caller ID before answering.

“Yessss,” she answered in a voice that sounded girlish.

“Oh Daddy Shnookums, I was just thinking about you.”

Daddy Shnookums? … Daddy fucking Shnookums? You must be joking.

JoAnne waved her hand to shush me.

“Yes Daddy, I’m in bed and I’m wearing my little pink nightie, hee, hee, hee…”

JoAnne turned her phone in my direction so that I could read the number of the caller and the name, “Daddy Snookums’ as the I.D.

Oh-kay. The light was beginning to dawn.

She brought the phone back to her mouth and winked at me. “Yes Daddy,” she simpered, “My parents are asleep now,” she continued in her little-girl voice. “No Daddy, I’m not wearing any undies. You want me to… you really, really want me to… touch myself in my secret place…?”

Well, kiss my ever-loving ass. JoAnne was running a phone sex gig.

While JoAnne sat there swigging neat whiskey in her baggy jeans and scruffy Mets tee shirt while enthralling Daddy Shnookums, I left the table and found the bathroom. I badly needed to wash my face and somehow end my portion of this silly farce. When I returned to the kitchen JoAnne was still on her phone to Shnookums but she hooked a finger at me, walked me over to an oak credenza and opened the doors at the top.

JoAnne never missed a beat. “Yes, Daddeeee… it feels sooooo... good…”

Stuck on the inside of both credenza doors were small index cards marked with a name, number, and charges per fifteen-minute session. ‘Father O’Neal’, ‘Diddling Dad’, Longdong Silver, Slut-Mom, Mr. Longcock, Slim Dickins, Sister Kate, and many others, including of course, at fifty dollars a segment, Daddy Shnookums.

Christ on a bike; she had more clients than I did, and hers probably paid their bills on time!

JoAnne rolled her eyes and droned on. “Yessss Daddeeee just for meee… do it just for meeeee…”

While JoAnne performed her vocal exercises, Zorro and I helped ourselves to more whiskey. I briefly wondered if I should look for ice but then decided that I needed all the percentage alcohol per volume that I could swill down me. As it burned its way across my gums, I was mollified by the knowledge that it was also a good preventative against tooth plaque.

A few minutes of oohs and aahs with Shnookums and JoAnne shut her phone off. “You are really fucking up my schedule tonight.”

After apologizing for interrupting her business commitments, I needed to know what was the score was between her and my client, the Councilman. There was one question that I needed to ask and feared the answer.

“JoAnne… did he… abuse you, touch you… have sex with you?”

“Nah, he never so much as touched me. He just looked… all the time looked!”

She began laughing. “He was peek-freak, just looked and took pervy pics.”

JoAnne’s cell phone chimed.

A quick look at the caller ID and she answered harshly, “Yes I am wearing my black leather skirt, matching black bra and panties and six-inch high heels, now what about you, you disgusting little worm. You had better be balls naked and on your fuckin knees if you call me.”

Oh my god, she had a right perverts assembly line going.

Zorro looked across the table at me, shrugged and said by way of explanation, “It’s just gone midnight. All their spouses are asleep and so they want to play.”

JoAnne continued to lambast some poor devil with enough physically creative suggestions and crude obscenities to make a platoon of Marines blush.

She suddenly cut off the conversation and slammed her phone down. “That was Limp Dick.” She seemed nonplussed. “Hey business is business, ya know.”

Ah… sure… oh-kay, now where were we?”

My photo al… er… his photo album.”

Her uncle had assembled quite the photograph album and JoAnne certainly didn’t exaggerate. Her uncle’s album was organized and meticulous to a fault.

See just one or two of her photographs, and it looked accidental. Taken as a whole, it became obvious that the upskirt photography extended way beyond the occasional lucky shot. In almost all of the pictures, JoAnne was wearing her high school uniform, a pretty dress or short skirt. Some pictures were taken at events at her school, but most were taken around the house. She was playing, doing her homework or sitting around on the patio.

There was also another whole section in the album marked ‘swimsuits’ and they were photographs taken of JoAnne in and around the swimming pool. Many were close-ups of her in various bathing suits, and all with one thing in common. The same as her skirt pictures, they were taken when her legs were open and displaying the sharply defined cleft of her vagina through the crotch of her underwear or swimsuits.

The back section of the album was indexed, ‘Close-ups’.

JoAnne may have kept a little cloth material over her girly-parts, but it left little to the imagination. The outline of her vagina was a standout performer.

I flipped through the album. JoAnne certainly was the little actress.

She saw my expression. “Look, I wasn’t stupid. I knew it was a balancing act, had to keep him sweet until I hit eighteen. I also knew I didn’t want him to have all of those pics of me. I just knew one day he was going to want something more than peeking my skirts. I knew it was getting dangerous and that I had to get going."

She continued, “I had some money stashed, enough anyway to get across to Jersey. So the day after I graduated High School I packed a bag, grabbed his pervy photo collection and left his house. I wanted out. I moved to Saddlebrook and began attending classes. I never went back to his place.”

“And the phone sex bit?”

“Yeah, so I moved out here and got a job in a grocery store. So the grocery store didn’t pay so good, but I knew how to playact.”

“And your uncle acts as if you are a teenager still in school who was suddenly kidnapped a few days ago.”

“Well who said he was normal? At least I know when I’m playacting. He’s got a mega hang-up, you know. He wants me to stay a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl and live with him until whenever.”

With that echoing off the walls, everyone sat quietly until we were disturbed by the chimes from JoAnne’s cell phone.

She quickly looked at the caller ID and answered in a sultry Marilyn Monroe voice, “Yes my darling, of course I am wearing my red bra and panties…”

At about the time when JoAnne was speaking in detailed breathlessness about the manner in which her humongous breasts were exceeding the capacity of her bra cups and how she was licking the cherry red lipstick on her eager pouting lips… Zorro and I took our whiskey cups wandered off into the living room where we talked classic cars, especially fifty-nine Caddies and sixty-six GTO’s.

I wondered what I should do about my client’s property. The damn photo album. Was it his, or JoAnne’s? It sure as shit could ruin both of their lives.

When JoAnne returned from diddle-me, oh please, please diddle-me land, she called out, “Okay guys, you can come back in now.”

I followed Zorro and trooped back into the kitchen. I really had to finalize this nonsense.

“So it seems that you haven’t been kidnapped?”

"Hell, no. Me and my boyfriend rent this place.”

“You mean Zorro sitting there. Truly… is your… boyfriend?”

Yes, that guy sitting across the table still trying to restore the circulation in his hands from your fucking handcuffs is MY BOYFRIEND.”

“So… all of this… chains and gags bit… is a joke, a sexual game?”

“YES!” she snapped.

She was no school kid now. She was all hard-assed young cow.

“I don’t understand, JoAnne. What’s it all for? Why the charade?”

“He liked taking pictures of me, so I sent him some new pictures of me. Did he like his damn pictures?”

“If you mean the ones showing you chained in the chair, I couldn’t honestly say, but those were the three photos that persuaded me to take on this investigation. The case of a kidnapped schoolgirl. However, you aren’t kidnapped, and you are not exactly a schoolgirl and you never were in any kind of danger.”

“No I’m not, and no I wasn’t,” She sniffed, wiping her nose on her hand. “Well fuck the old perve.”

“Well in this instance, it was fuck the Investigator. ME!”

She dropped her defiant look for a moment. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. I didn’t know he was going to hire someone to find me. Christ Almighty, it was just three photos of me in a chair. It was just a joke.”

“Does he know it was just a joke?”

Yes… no… hell, I don’t know. He’s been so pervy over the years, who in the hell knows what he thinks. He wants me back and he wants his picture book back.”

I was still trying to make some sense of the mess.

JoAnne finally made some serious eye contact with me. “Miss Deveraux… Dixie… I think he wanted you to grab me and take me back to his home. You know, not a lot of talk, just pick me up and dump me back on his doorstep. He just doesn’t get it. I will never go back.”

“Okay… so you sent him some faked up photos of you chained to a chair. So what’s with this performance this evening that I so rudely interrupted?”

JoAnne’s stone face reappeared. “I was making a video. I was going to send it to my uncle.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “A video of you being tied to a bed and having sex?”

“Yes. I wanted to get back at the sick bastard. He liked seeing up my skirts so much, well fine, I showed him up my skirts. Now I wanted him to see me in the way I knew he wanted me, but could never have me. I wanted to spread my legs wide open and let him watch another man fucking me.”

“You know that is pretty sick.”

“Yeah. A sick joke for a sick mother-fucker,” she replied defiantly. “That crazy old fuck wanted me to live in his house and wear my old high school uniforms like I was still sixteen. He wanted me to act all girly and swish around the house so that he could get off seeing me. For Christ's sake, I am not in high school anymore and I am trying to take day classes at the local college.”

“But you were out of his control, so why didn’t you let it go?”

“I wanted… to hurt him.”

“Yes,” I answered. “And someone could very easily be dead tonight. This man, Zorro, this… masked asshole of yours came within a second of having his brains scattered all over you, the walls and the ceiling.”

Zorro the boyfriend turned green and ran to the bathroom.

I slapped my empty cup down on the table. “All this crap tonight because of some STUPID FUCKING CHILDISH GAME!” I sighed. “Why didn’t you just let it go?”

JoAnne didn’t flinch and didn’t respond.

“And this horseshit, the sex phone business, is what you want for your life?”

JoAnne gave me a direct look and a shrug. “It will pay my way to a Master’s Degree."

Thinking of the camera set up on the tripod in the bedroom, I said, ”Perhaps you two ought to be making porno movies.”

JoAnne smiled. “Yuh think so?”

It wasn’t a very pretty smile.

She saw the disgusted expression on my face. “Yeah I know you think I am some nasty little bitch but before you judge me too harshly, I have something that you ought to hear. It is a message that old fuck left on my cell phone not long after I bailed out.

From a pocket in the back of the photograph album, she removed a cell phone.

She brought up the audio message and pressed the button.

The voice was broken, part pleading and part quietly threatening. On the surface friendly and yet, the undercurrent of something more sinister.

I could imagine his sweaty face as I sat and listened.

~ ~ ~

Hello, my dearest. I just wanted to say that I miss you terribly. The house seems very empty and I am very lonely without you. I want you to come home.

Listen to me, JoAnne. You don’t have to move away and I don’t want you to grow up. I want you to be my special girl for always and forever. You never have to grow up dear JoAnne because I will always take care of you and protect you. You will never need for anything.

You took things from the house… took things of mine that you shouldn’t have but everything will be all right if you bring them back. Those things you took… well, those things are our special secret and I thought you would stay at home after high school and never leave me.

I will never hurt you, JoAnne. It’s just games JoAnne, no need to be frightened of me. Just games we will play. I have dreams about us, dearest JoAnne. Dreams in which we play together when you are wearing your lovely little school things.

I want to love you Dearest JoAnne. I want to love you with all of my heart and my body. I want us to love physically. I want to… fuck you. Isn’t that the word you young people use? I like the idea of you being tied down while I fuck you, JoAnne. Yes, I dream about us fucking.

Does that arouse you, my dearest JoAnne?

I have been very patient, JoAnne. I've waited for you for such a long time

I want to be aroused for you all of the time.

I want you to use your beautiful mouth, and have you kiss me, kiss me… there.

and if you want, I’ll give you babies.

Yes, JoAnne, I want to give you babies…

The message ended.

~ ~ ~

Conclusion

Okay. Yes, Little Miss JoAnna drove her uncle batshit crazy spreading her legs, showing her underwear and silently promising… who knows what.

Yes, our friendly local Councilman had indulged himself in schoolgirl upskirt heaven and had unwisely written to his niece proclaiming his fetishes and undying lust.

So begin to figure out the right and wrong between those two!

So what happened with JoAnne, you may ask?

Well, she promised not to send her uncle any more photographs of herself, concentrate on her college, and leave the past in the past. She is still in the phone sex game.

And the Councilman?

I told him what he already knew, but was too damn crazy to accept. I told him that JoAnne was happily attending university and doing just fine. In addition, I advised him that if JoAnne ever contacted me regarding any interference by him in her life, I would advise her to take the whole matter straight to the NYPD.

I don’t see his sweaty face on television quite so much anymore and I don’t think he will be running for City Mayor any time soon.

Oh yes. He did ask me to get his photograph album back. The one filled with carefully indexed upskirt pictures of his niece that only he could have taken.

He won’t get it back.

He also wanted me to locate a certain letter he sent to his niece JoAnne detailing certain prurient interests and declaring his desire to give her babies.

He won’t get that back either.

And the bill I sent him for my services…

He didn’t like that either – but he paid in full.

And Me?

As near as I could figure, no actual crime had been committed. So I left it for both of them to sort out.

~ ~ ~

So I’m taking a deep pull on my bottle of Heineken and allowing my mind to drift to the mellow vocal stylings of Smokey Robinson. You wanna know something, it doesn’t get any better than quietly sipping on a cold one and listening to lyrics that you can actually understand. You just close your eyes and…

“Hey, Dixie. You open for business?”

I look down the bar to where Tony stands polishing shot glasses.

A young couple is standing in front of him. They look lost, nervous and out of place.

And my office rent is due…

“Yeah, Tony. Send them on back.”

~ ~ ~