'Very funny. Robert Ryan's in it, isn't he? And Robert Webber, he died just recently, he was such a good actor.'
'I know Robert Ryan's dead.'
'Robert Ryan died years ago. They're both gone, both Roberts. You've seen this movie, haven't you? Of course you have, everybody has.'
'Time and time again.'
'So why do you have to see it now? Business?'
I wondered myself. Will had made sure I was a detective before handing it to me. 'Possibly,' I said.
'Some business. I wish I got paid to watch old movies.'
'Do you? I wish I got paid to screw.'
'Nice, very nice. Be careful what you pray for. You're really gonna watch this or is that a gun in your pocket?'
'Huh?'
'Mae West. Forget it. Can I watch with you, or will that impede your concentration?'
'You're welcome to watch,' I said, 'but I'm not sure what we're going to be watching.'
'The Dirty Dozen, n'est-ce pas? Isn't that what it says on the label?' She slapped herself on the forehead, Peter Falk's Columbo pretending to be struck by the obvious. 'Counterfeit labels,' she said. 'You're doing more trademark-infringement work, right?'
I had been working per diem for a large investigations agency, hassling street vendors for selling Batman knock-offs, T-shirts and visors and such. Decent pay, but it was mean work, rousting new arrivals from Dakar and Karachi who didn't have a clue what they were doing wrong, and I hadn't had the heart for it. 'I don't think that's exactly it,' I said.
'Copyright, I mean. Somebody knocked off the packaging and stuck it on a bootleg tape. Am I right?'
'I don't think so,' I said, 'but you can keep right on guessing. The only thing is I'll have to watch the tape to know if you're right or wrong.'
'Oh,' she said. 'Well, what the hell. Let's watch it.'
IT started off looking like just what the label promised. The opening credits rolled and Lee Marvin went from cell to cell. We were introduced to the twelve American soldiers who would make up the dirty dozen, killers and rapists and all-around fuck-ups under death sentences for their crimes.
'To my untrained eye,' Elaine said, 'this looks remarkably like the movie I remember.'
It went on looking like it for ten minutes or so, and I was beginning to wonder if Will might have problems beyond mere alcoholism and chemical dependency. Then the screen went abruptly blank right in the middle of a scene and the soundtrack cut out. The screen stayed blank for perhaps ten seconds, and then it showed a slender young man with a boyishly open, midwestern sort of face. He was cleanshaven, and his light brown hair was parted at the side and neatly combed. He was naked except for a canary-yellow towel around his middle.
His wrists and ankles were shackled to an X-shaped metal frame that stood at a 60-degree angle to the floor. In addition to the metal shackles at his wrists and ankles, leather cuffs had been fitted around each leg just above the knee and each arm just above the elbow, and there was a matching leather belt around his waist, part of it obscured by the yellow towel. All of these devices looked to be holding him quite securely in place.
He did not appear to be particularly uncomfortable, and he had a tentative smile on his face. He said, 'Is that thing running? Hey, am I supposed to say anything or what?'
A male voice off-camera told him to shut up. The young man's mouth was open and he closed it. I could see now that he was no more than a boy, not so much cleanshaven as beardless. He was tall, but he didn't look to be more than sixteen or so. There was no hair on his chest, although he did have a pale tuft in each armpit.
The camera stayed on the boy, and a woman moved into the frame. She was about as tall as the boy but looked taller because she was standing erect, not spreadeagled and tied to a crossframe. She wore a mask, the sort of device the Lone Ranger wore, but hers looked to be of black leather. That made it a match for the rest of her outfit, skintight black leather pants open at the crotch and black gloves that covered her clear to the elbows. She wore black shoes with three-inch spike heels and silver trim at the toes, and that was all she wore. She was naked above the waist, and the nipples of her small breasts were erect. They were also scarlet, the same shade as her full mouth, and I suspected she'd daubed them with lipstick.
'There's that simple unspoiled look you go for,' Elaine said. 'This is shaping up to be dirtier than The Dirty Dozen.'
'You don't have to watch.'
'What did I tell you before? I can stand it if you can. I used to have a client who liked to watch bondage films. They always struck me as pretty silly. Would you ever want me to tie you up?'
'No.'
'Or to tie me up?'
'No.'
'Maybe we're missing something. Fifty million perverts can't be wrong. Ah, here we go.'
The woman unfastened the boy's towel and tossed it aside. Her gloved hand caressed him, and he became aroused at once.
'Ah, youth,' Elaine said.
The camera moved in for a close-up of her hand gripping him, manipulating him. Then it pulled back and she released him and tugged at each finger of the glove in turn, finally removing it.
'Gypsy Rose Lee,' Elaine said.
The nails of the ungloved hand were painted with a polish that matched the lipstick on her mouth and nipples. She held the long glove in her bare hand and struck the boy across the chest with it.
'Hey,' he said.
'Shut up,' she said. She sounded angry. She swung the glove again and hit him across the mouth. His eyes widened. She hit him on the chest, then struck his face again.
He said, 'Hey, watch it, huh? I mean, that really hurt.'
'I bet it did,' Elaine said. 'Look, she marked his face. I think she's getting carried away with the role.'
The man off-camera told the boy to be quiet. 'He told you to shut up,' the woman said. She leaned across the boy's body, rubbing herself against him. She kissed his mouth, touched the fingertips of her bare hand to the mark her glove had left on his cheek. She moved lower and trailed kisses across his chest, her lipstick marking him where she kissed him.
'Hot stuff,' Elaine said. She had been sitting on a chair, but now she came over and sat beside me on the couch and put her hand on my thigh. 'Guy told you you had to watch this tonight, huh?'
'That's right.'
'He tell you to have your girlfriend around while you watched it? Hmmm?'
Her hand moved on my leg. I covered it with my hand, stopped its movement.
'What's the matter?' she said. 'I'm not allowed to touch?'
Before I could answer, the woman on the screen took the boy's penis in her gloved hand. Then, with her other hand, she swung the glove and struck him hard across the scrotum.
He said, 'Owww! Jesus, cut that out, will you? That hurt! Let me down, let me off this thing, I don't want to do this anymore-'
He was going on in that vein when the woman, her face a mask of cold fury, stepped forward and drove her knee into his unprotected groin.
He screamed. The same off-camera male voice said, 'Tape his mouth, for Christ's sake. I don't want to listen to that shit. Here, get out of the way, I'll take care of it myself.'
I had assumed the male voice belonged to the cameraman, but there was no break in the filming while the voice's owner stepped into the picture. He looked to be wearing a skin diver's wet suit, but when I said as much to Elaine she corrected me.
'It's rubber wear,' she said. 'Black rubber. They have it custom-made.'
'Who does?'
