Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror

may have shot a few sessions — high heels and black lingerie, pin-up stuff. No bondage.'

'Why not?'

'Word was that Kristi Lane was a little too wild for Klaw, who was really pretty straightlaced.' Steinman wheezed at his joke. 'People said that Kristi could get a little too rough on the submissive model when she had the dominant role. I know some of the girls wouldn't work with her unless they played the mistress.'

'Where did she get all her work, then?'

'Mostly from the private photo clubs. And from the mail-order agencies who'd change their drop-box number every few months. You know, the ones with the ads in the back of the girlie mags for comics and photos — 'the kind men like.' They could get away with murder, and poor Irving got busted and never showed so much as a bare tit in his photo sets.'

While Steinman sucked down his fresh beer, Chelsea opened her attachd case and withdrew several manila envelopes. She handed them to Steinman. 'What can you tell me about these?'

Each envelope contained half a dozen black-and-white four-by-fives. Steinman shuffled the photo sets. 'That's Kristi Lane, all right.'

The first set showed the model in various pin-up poses. The white bikini would have been too daring for its day, and Kristi Lane's statuesque figure seemed about to burst its straps. Her hair was done in her characteristic short blond pageboy, her face held her familiar pout (Bardot's was a careful copy), and her wide blue eyes were those of a fallen angel.

In the next set Kristi was shown dressed as a French maid. Her short costume exposed ruffled panties and lots of cleavage, as she bent over to go about her dusting.

'I shot this one,' Steinman said, licking his lips. 'About 1954. She said she was twenty. Anyway, they ran it in Beauty Parade, I think.'

Kristi was tied to a chair in the next set. She was wearing high heels, black stockings and garter belt, black satin panties and bra. A black scarf was knotted around her mouth, and her eyes begged for mercy. She was similarly clad in the next set, but this time she was lying hog-tied upon a rug. In the next, she was tied spread- eagled across a bed.

'All shot the same afternoon,' Steinman judged. 'Do a few costume changes, give the girl a chance to stretch between poses, and you could come up with maybe a hundred or so good stills.'

The next series had Kristi wearing thigh-high patent leather boots and a matching black corset. Her maid, attired in heels, hose, and the inevitable skimpy uniform, was having trouble lacing up Kristi's boots. Over the subsequent poses, the maid was gagged and bound facedown across a table by Kristi, who then applied a hairbrush to the girl's lace-clad bottom.

'Could have been done for Klaw,' said Steinman, 'but none of these were. The numbers at the bottom aren't his numbering system. There were a lot of guys doing these back then. Most, you never heard of. It wasn't my thing, you gotta understand, but a buck was a buck, then same as now.'

Chelsea pulled out another folder. 'What about these?'

Steinman flipped through a selection of stills, color and black-and-white, four-by-fives and eight-by-tens. In most of them, Kristi Lane was completely nude, and she was obviously a natural blonde.

'Private stock. You couldn't do that over the counter back then. Even the nudist magazines had to use an airbrush.'

'Here's some more.'

Kristi Lane was wearing jackboots, a Nazi armband, an SS hat, and nothing else. The other girl was suspended by her wrists above the floor and wore only a ball gag. Kristi wielded her whip with joyous zeal, the victim's contorted face hinted at the screams stifled by the rubber ball, and the blood that oozed from the welts across her twisting body looked all too real.

'No. I never did any of this sort of stuff.' Steinman seemed affronted as he handed her back the folder.

'Who did?'

'Lot of guys. Lot of it amateur. Like I say, it wasn't sold openly. Hey, I'm surprised a girl like you'd even want to know about this kind of stuff, Miss… uh…' He'd forgotten her name since her phone call yesterday.

'Ms. Gayle. Chelsea Gayle.'

'Miss Gayle. I thought all modern girls were feminists. Burning their bras and dressing up like men. I guess you're not one of them.' His stare was suddenly professional, and somewhere in his beer-soaked brain he was once again focusing his 4x5 Speed Graphic camera.

Chelsea tasted her rum and flat cola and tried not to look flustered. After all, she was wearing her wide- shouldered power suit with a silk blouse primly gathered at the neck by a loose bow, and there was no nonsense about her taupe panty hose or low-heeled pumps. Beneath the New Woman exterior, she was confident that her body could as easily slither into a Cosmopolitan party dress. Her face took good close-ups, her blond hair was stylishly tousled, and she wore glasses more for fashion than necessity. Let the old fart stare.

'It's for an article on yesterday's pin-up queens,' she said, repeating the lie she had told him over the phone. 'Sort of a nostalgic look back as we enter the nineties: The women men dreamed of, and where are they now?'

'Well, I can't help you there on Kristi Lane.' Steinman waved to the barmaid. 'I don't know of anyone who can.'

'When did you last work with her?'

'Hard to say. She was all over the place for those few years, then she moved out of my league. I'd guess the last time I shot her would have been about 1958. I know it was a cover for one of those Playboy imitations, but I forget the title. Didn't see much of her after that.'

'When did you last see her?'

'Probably about 1960. Seem to recall that's about when she dropped out of sight. A guy told me once he'd run into her at a hippie party in the Village late in the sixties, but he was too strung out to know what he was seeing.'

'Any ideas?'

'Nothing you haven't heard already. Some said she got religion and entered a convent somewhere. There was some talk that she got pregnant; maybe she married some Joe from Chillico and settled down. There was one story that she was climbing in bed with JFK, and the CIA snuffed her like they did Marilyn Monroe.'

'But what do you think happened to her?'

Steinman chugged his beer. 'I think maybe she got a little too wild.'

'Too wild?'

'You know what I mean. Maybe got in too deep. Had to drop out of sight. Or somebody made sure she did.'

Chelsea frowned and dug into her case. 'This one is pretty wild.'

It was a magazine, and on the front it said, Her Satanic Majesty Requests, and below that, For Sale to Adults Only. The nude woman on the cover was wearing a sort of harness about her hips with a red pointed tail in back and a monstrous red dildo in front. Her face was Kristi Lane's, blond pageboy and all.

Steinman flipped to the centerfold. A writhing victim was tied to a sacrificial altar. Kristi Lane was astride her spread-eagled body, vigorously screwing her with the dildo.

Steinman slapped the magazine shut, shoved it back to Chelsea. 'Not my bag, baby. I never shot any porno.'

Chelsea replaced the magazine. 'Was that Kristi Lane?'

'Maybe. It sure looked like her.'

'But the magazine has a 1988 copyright. Kristi Lane would have looked a lot older — she'd be in her fifties.'

'You can't tell about that sort of smut. Maybe it was bootleg stuff shot years before. You don't worry about copyrights here.'

'The publisher is given as Nightseed X-Press, but their post office box now belongs to some New Age outfit. They weren't helpful.'

'The old fly-by-night. Been gone for years.'