The dawn of a new day burned the remaining blackness of the night to a simpering gray, the color of diluted squid ink. At his side, Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s soft snoring gave the appearance of a deep slumber. Spade was quiet leaving the bedroom and shutting the bedroom door. He examined the sleeping girl’s clothes, took a flat brass key, and went out.
He went to the Coronet, letting himself into the girl’s apartment. Inside, he switched on all the lights. He searched the place from wall to wall, checking every drawer, cupboard, cubbyhole, box, bag, trunk—locked and unlocked both. He passed his tough hands along the wallpaper and felt for wires, hidden microphones, peepholes. Having found none, he checked his pocket watch. It read a quarter till seven.
“Finally, a little peace and quiet,” he remarked to the empty room, and slipped the watch back into his pocket, where it nestled against his already growing cock.
Spade strode carefully from room to room, making as little sound as might be. He parted the Venetian blinds with his left index finger and worked open his trouser buttons with his right. His yellow eyes rolled across the scenery of San Francisco and settled on a middle-aged woman hanging laundry in an alley off Sutter Street.
“Not the bird I’m looking for, but she’ll do,” he muttered.
Spade twisted the Venetians open, his fingers mildewed with sweat. He brought his hands together in front of his mouth and spread his thin lips, blowing hotly and rubbing his palms together. The rasping of his calloused hands filled the room and his palms warmed like a pair of Chinatown biscuits. He slipped the fingers of his right hand into his trousers in search of his Butcher’s Prize.
He coaxed the tender muscle from its tweed birdcage and rested his thumb across the thatched bridge of his Naughty Little Man. His fingers relaxed around the lower third. The woman hanging the wash in the alley bent to retrieve another handful of rags from her basket, revealing her copious baby-feeders. The tendons in Spade’s fingers contracted and his cock became turgid and red with blood pumped in from his feet and ears.
Spade cleared his throat. His cock was ugly, he knew, but it could handle itself in a fight. It had a long protruding vein running the length of it on the right side, and the skin was mottled, pink and brown. On the underside was a small reddish mark, which Spade had obtained from masturbating too much during a family trip to Oswego Lake when he was fourteen. It was his only souvenir.
Spade rubbed and a bead of milky precum started to collect at the tip of his cock. The woman in the alley hung the last of her whites and went inside.
“Damn!” said Spade. “Just as I was getting a usable erection!”
He turned his head and surveyed the rest of the hotel room. His eyes presently struck a look of curiosity, and then one of devilish cunning, like a man who had just found a place to masturbate.
Spade rolled a cigarette and placed it between his lips. He lit it and checked his watch again. Seven-oh-four. He crossed the threshold into the bathroom. His cock was softer; it was at three-quarters mast. If it were a flagpole, people would assume an important dignitary had been killed.
Spade kicked off his shoes and socks and jostled his cock like he was interrogating it. His eyes were placid, but the set of his jaw indicated frustration. He shoved off his jacket and suspenders and trousers and then his long underpants, his sock garters and underdrawers and his shirt and undershirt. His hat he left on. He turned and gave the pile of clothes a savage kick and they scooted back into the adjacent room like the Invisible Man falling down the stairs.
Spade pulled at his rubbery wad and spat on it—a viscous spit, stained tan from his unfiltered cigarettes. He rubbed the tan goo into his cock and sat on the edge of the claw-foot bathtub. Spade shivered from the coolness of the marble and shut his eyes tight, forming a V in his rapidly balding brow.
“Come on, Mack!” Spade searched his mind for a fantasy, a vision, a glimpse of leg or a bit of lipstick on a glass—y’know, erotic imagery—but found only his recently shot partner, Archer.
Archer approached him, shirtless. “So I heard you been screwin’ around with my wife, Spade,” Archer said. “How’d you like a little screwin’ of your own!”
Spade grunted unhappily and waited for another fantasy to take the place of this one, but when none did, he allowed it to continue.
Archer removed his trousers and revealed his thick manhood, which bent like a napping swan. It was beautiful, unlike Spade’s. The skin was smooth and tanned like a new wallet, and his hair was flaxen like an angel’s pubes. “I’m going to put this in you, Spade,” Archer said.
Spade’s eyebrows lifted, as if awaiting one or more women to appear in his mind, but his yellow eyes remained closed. The imaginary Archer gripped Spade’s haunches and eased his whole canary into Spade’s deep, dark coal mine.
Spade shuddered and bent himself over the bathtub, stroking his beige shillelagh in long, bold arcs. He coated the thick fingers of his left hand with another dose of tobacco-laden mucus and moved them with fumbling haste to his puckering rectum. He rubbed in the greasy funk with slow, manly circles.
The chubby middle finger groped farther in, as the second digit became obscured, and then the third. Spade began to work his ring finger in, too, and at that moment, he was happy he’d never married.
“How do you like that, Spade! I’ve got my whole cock in your asshole!” Archer taunted plainly. Spade made it work—he needed this—and continued to whale on his own Moby Dick and, losing his balance, slid forward into the tub until just his legs stuck out. His scalp pressed hard into the icy marble. “Spade, I’m going to come! I’m going to baste your little turkey!” Archer said.
Spade opened his feverish yellow eyes and looked up to find the salmon eyehole of his phallus. It looked back at him like a blind oracle and released. Spade’s chest and neck were buttered, as were his eyes. His mouth was treated to a steaming spoonful of salty dick grits.
He showered and when he had finished dressing, he made and drank a cup of coffee. Then he unlocked the kitchen window, scarred the edge of its lock a little with his pocketknife, opened the window—over a fire escape—got his hat and overcoat from the settee in the living room, and left the apartment through the front door, as he had come.
After that whole mess with Sam Spade, that dame, and that cop Polhaus, Wilmer Cook made a deal with the feds that would keep him out of prison in exchange for testifying against Kasper Gutman’s boss. He was a little confused why they hadn’t moved him out of San Francisco and why he still had his own name if he was in witness protection but he was sure they had their reasons.
And he’d landed this sweet job working security at Club Rule 34 in the old Belvedere Hotel.
And he never had been that bright.
Wilmer had traded his two comically large pistols for a full-color, sound-optional, closed-circuit monitoring system and a personal preference for self-denial. He squinted his hazel eyes at the monitor bank in front of him and adjusted his member, enclosed in a CB-10,000 male chastity device. He’d been at work for a few hours already; it was both difficult to concentrate and impossible not to concentrate on his job: watching all these fucking freaks.
Or watching all these freaks fucking. Whichever.
The Keystone Kops were in room 5, haphazardly daisy-chaining their way through the evening. Their uniforms were in various stages of disarray and each pelvic thrust set off a Newton’s cradle of anal drilling around the circle that looked like it should result in pratfalls but somehow rarely did.
In room 2, a brunet, hirsute man was strapped facedown to a table, legs spread. Four others wearing gray latex suits with large heads and big black eyes milled around him. The gangliest one worked the brunet man’s scrotum and cock with his incredibly long fingers while one of the smaller two manipulated the man’s nipples and played with his hair. The broadest one expertly traced the man’s body with a violet wand while the smallest—was that one wearing glasses?—worked a vaguely falcon-shaped toy into his rectum. They all worked in concert until the hirsute man tensed and shouted, “I WANT TO BELIEVE!!” and came all over the gangly one’s hands.
After he ejaculated, the four creatures pulled their masks off dramatically, revealing an unkempt, brunet man; a redheaded woman with a stylish scarf; a blond man wearing a neckerchief; and a brunette, bespectacled woman.
“Jinkies, it’s hot in these suits!” the brunette, bespectacled woman said.
“I, like, heard that,” the unkempt gangly man said.
“Thanks, guys. I never would’ve gotten off if it weren’t for you probing aliens,” said the man strapped to the table.
“Anytime,” said the redhead, fingering her scarf and batting her eyelashes furiously at him.
The blond man straightened his neckerchief, looked at his alien mask, and said, “Quite a turnabout, isn’t it, guys? Us in the masks?”
“Oh, Fred,” said Velma, Daphne, Shaggy, and Mulder in unison.
In room 15, two regulars—Shaft and Miss Marple—were going at it. At the moment, Shaft was thrusting his massive cock between the soft, papery folds of Marple’s aged titties, which wrapped entirely around it in almost a double helix. Even without the sound on, Shaft’s contented, “Ya daaaaaamn right,” reverberated up to the control booth.
In room 10, Kinsey Millhone, V. I. Warshawski, Kay Scarpetta, Cassie Maddox, Temperance Brennan, Thursday Next, and all four members of the Women’s Murder Club were stacked like Lincoln Logs in a slurping, moaning circle of oral pleasure.
Wilmer’s cock twitched again in the unforgiving sheath. He balled his tiny fists and turned his attention next door for relief. In room 9, the saddest circle jerk ever was in progress.
Room 9 featured the who’s who of dark and tortured souls. They were all white middle-aged men, grizzled, unpleasant, not attractive but sort of attractive. Standing in a wide, ragged circle were Harry Bosch, Lord Darcy, Hercule Poirot, Aloysius Pendergast, Jack Reacher, Thomas Magnum, Lucas Corso, Harry Dresden, Albert Campion, Nero Wolfe, Auguste Dupin, Jacques Clouseau, Dale Cooper, Will Graham, Philip Marlowe, and Clancy Wiggum. They worked their respective cocks fervently until each shot their hot man juice onto a short, squat black falcon secured in the center of their masturbatory circus on its suction-cupped base.
Wilmer felt calmer.
In room 18, former child prodigy Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes sat on the floor fully clothed and snorting platonic lines off of a mirrored table with falcon-shaped legs.
Wilmer unzipped his fly and checked on his plastic-encased man-meat. A fine misting of dick and ball sweat fogged the inside of the cage but the WilmHammer was otherwise passive.
In room 14, Kojak held his lollipop aloft with one hand and firmly ensconced his just-as-bald little head in the other while he motorboated Jessica Fletcher, who was gyrating atop Easy Rawlins, reverse cowgirl style.
In room 6, Jessica Rabbit rode Lincoln Rhyme while he circled the room in his candy-apple-red Storm Arrow power chair. He alternated between taking her entire tiny foot into his mouth and enthusiastically tonguing between and around each dainty toe. Amelia Sachs, in a full Tyvek body suit, documented the scene extensively with her camera.
Turning his attention to room 1, Wilmer saw all three doors burst open. A redhead, a blonde, and a brunette—all wearing sensible shoes and conservative black suits—burst in and announced themselves at each other, waving their badges and shouting:
“Dana Scully, FBI!”
“Olivia Dunham, FBI!”
“Clarice Starling, FBI!”
Wilmer could feel the WilmHammer straining against the plastic casing like a kid up against a candy store window.
“What’s that?” Dunham asked, gesturing at a mass of fluff in the brunette’s arms.
Clarice shifted it from one arm to the other. “Well, you see, I used to live on a farm that slaughtered lamb and sheep and…”
Scully sighed. “Just put it on, why don’t you… Or is one of us supposed to wear it?”
Clarice donned the sheep costume and climbed onto the circular plastic-encased bed in the center of the room, legs aloft. Dunham rolled up her sleeve and drenched her hand in lube from the black, falcon-shaped lube dispenser. She inserted first two, then three, then four, then tented all her fingers and thumb together, carefully working them in past her knuckles.
The lamb was indeed screaming. “Yes. Yes! YES!”
“Interesting,” Scully said with a cocked eyebrow.
A man with dark, jagged hair wearing a raincoat blustered in on roller skates.
“What the…?” said Dunham, still wrist-deep in Starling.
“Sorry I’m late, Agents! Go Go Gadget Pleasure Devices!” the wobbly, wheeled man shouted. A tongue chainsaw, a two-pronged dildo, and a Hitachi Magic Wand extended from beneath his coat. Dunham (one-handed) and Scully (two-handed) tore off their sensible suits, Velcro-stripper-style. Scully joined Starling on the bed on all fours, her ginger-haired cunt toward the fucking-machine man, and started using her hands and mouth on both the sheep and the sheep fister.
Inspector Gadget rolled over to the writhing, moaning mass of federal agency. He angled the duodildos up between Dunham’s legs, started up the tongue-saw on Scully, and seemed to be looking for somewhere on the sheep to use the Hitachi.
Wilmer turned away quickly.
He could feel the WilmHammer plotting its inevitable escape like a big-screen villain in a poorly-thought-out transparent cage. He quickly muted the sound and minimized room 1. He stared longingly at the clock and squirmed damply in his seat.
At four minutes past quitting time, Wilmer’s relief shambled in. He was an older white guy in an overcoat and trousers, with an unruly mass of gray hair. He had a cigarette hanging from his lower lip.
Wilmer gathered his things and prepared to head out into the foggy San Francisco night. Before he made it to the door, his replacement stopped him.
“Wilmer, uh… just one more thing…”
Wilmer turned back to see the man standing before him, his coat open and without a stitch on from neck to shin. His collar wasn’t attached to a shirt. His “trousers” were held up by an intricate system of garters. A string with a small key on it was looped over his surprisingly majestic cock.
“Thanks, Columbo,” Wilmer said as he retrieved his CB-10,000 key. “See you tomorrow?”
But Columbo had already turned to the monitors and was softly, almost absently, masturbating as he keyed between the occupied rooms.