THE SAGA OF BLANCHE, PART II: THE DEAL A day had passed since my interview with Miles O'Smiles, the highly-respected entertainment tycoon who had parlayed a few dirty movies, and a little girl named Ruth Anne, into a multi-million dollar porn empire, and who now had an "in" with every elected official from San Diego to Sacramento....and beyond. And although I'm a pretty tough character, I must admit that the poor bastard had really touched me with his honest, emotional account of the rise of Coyreen, the Porno Queen, a.k.a. the recently deceased Mrs. Miles O'Smiles, who had once been a scared little runaway from Ramp, Oklahoma. O'Smiles had taken her under his greasy wing and made her a star, and a wife, and a mother; but I was convinced he'd had nothing to do with turning her into the muddy, naked little corpse who had recently been planted in the Cupid's Blossoms section of Forest Lawn Cemetery. I was back in the so-called "offices" of Grimbros Investigations, Inc., on the corner of Figueroa and Broadway, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together, when my train of thought was derailed by the sudden jangling of the telephone. I sighed, as usual; another creditor, or maybe one of the boys in blue calling with a lukewarm tip? I flicked my cigarette butt expertly across the room, where it landed in the empty steel wastebasket, and picked up the receiver. "Grimbros," I grunted. "Whatcha got." But it wasn't a bill collector or a friendly cop; it was Sammy Darras, my favorite Greek-American bookie. We went back a long way. "Grimbros!" he squealed happily, making my inner ear throb like Keith Moon's snare-drum. "Long time no hear from, my very fine friend! Say, you ain't been layin' your action on somebody else, have you?" "No, Sammy," I sighed into the mouthpiece. "I just haven't seen anything exciting in the Racing Form lately. Anyway, things are tight right now. You know how it goes." "Do I!" the bookie exclaimed. "Do I ever! I thought that might be the problem. Business kinda slow, huh?" Without waiting for a reply, he continued, "Well, Grimbros, my friend, I got no work for you, but I just might have a little suggestion about your financial well-being. Now, I'm no stockbroker, and I sure as shit haven't gotten into day trading, but...." I interrupted impatiently. "Great, Sammy. I'm glad you're not out pimpin' for Amway, like some of the bookies 'round here. Just tell me, have you got a tip for me?" "A tip!" he howled. "The man wants a tip! No, my friend, I got no tip. What I got, if you're man enough to try it, is a fuckin' sure thing!" "No, Sammy," I protested wearily, "Not another sure thing. It took me a month to pay off on that last 'sure thing' you sent my way: what was that nag's name, anyway? Seacookie or something?" "Well, yes," the bookie replied in a slightly hurt tone of voice. "But Seacookie was no nag. That little filly was descended from none other than the great Seabiscuit himself. Not my fault what happened!" I lit a Lucky and blew a perfect smoke ring toward my low, grimy ceiling. "Yeah, yeah," I muttered, "but you might have told me she was gonna foal at any minute! Poor nag, just droppin' over in the middle of the backstretch like that....." "That was not my fault," said Sammy huffily. "Anyway, that was then. I've got a sure thing, I mean a sure thing, running at 5:30 this afternoon at Santa Anita. All the smart boys are puttin' money on this stud like he was the reincarnation of Man 'o' War. Now, do you want a piece, or not?" I thought for a minute. Sammy was as crooked as a dog's hind leg, but he'd always been honest with me, even when he made that little error with Seacookie. With the prospect of more 'expense money' coming soon from Miles O'Smiles, I took the bait. "Okay, dammit, put me down for this...sure thing....put me down for five bills, and spread it out however you want. Fair enough?" "Whoooo!" exclaimed the Greek. "Big fuckin' spender! Say, Grimbros, you got something cookin'?" "Never mind that," I replied. "If I make the bet, you know I'm good for it. By the way, Sammy, what's this stud's name, anyway?" He didn't hesitate even a moment. "Magic Apple," he replied, "out of Prince Charming by Crazy Kiss. You'll be hearing all about him pretty soon, I promise!" "Magic Apple, right," I repeated, jotting it on my desk blotter. "Well, I'll be listening. Thanks, Sam." I put the blower in its cradle and decided to get to work. "Magic Apple," I muttered, shaking my head. Fucking yuppies and their cute little names..... ****************************************************************************** * Like I was telling you last time, Coyreen's reign as the undisputed Porno Queen of the whole wide world had begun to weaken a little when she turned 18. Her great appeal had always been the fact that she'd been in the business since she was 13, and everybody knew it, and it made her more than just another face on a videotape. For reasons which can only be guessed at, the anti-porn crowd had unexpectedly turned a blind eye to her sudden stardom: some of my well-placed sources told me that the morality crowd simply refused to believe that she was so young. As for the prosecutors and police, well, Coyreen's greatest notoriety came during the Rodney King and O. J. Simpson business, and our fine Los Angeles prosecutors, who were not exactly covering themselves with glory, were not eager to take on another high-profile case. So Coyreen and her producers and distributors were as free to do their thing as a flock of seagulls, or maybe chicken-hawks. But after her 18th birthday, when audiences realized that she was no longer forbidden fruit, her career began a long, leisurely dive. Miles O'Smiles, who genuinely loved her, tried to keep her spirits up, and even tried to bolster her self-confidence by having his staff write a program for her computer, called "mirror.exe," which was designed to do nothing but flatter her. And flatter her it did: every time she turned the computer on, a WAV of the Watts Mass Choir would sing, "Who's the finest queen we've seen?/We all think it's Queen Coyreen!" This invariably made her smile, until that dismal morning when she turned the machine on and nothing happened. Shocked and a little bit scared, the poor little twit had lost her temper, rebooted the machine, and, stamping one pink little foot on the bedroom floor, had screamed, "What the fuck's the matter with you? Where are my singers? Damn you to Hell, who's the finest Queen you've seen?" At that moment, the machine started humming, and a shimmering silver-blue background replaced the black void of the DOS mode; and written on the screen, in red letters, were the words that would haunt her for the rest of her brief life: mirror.exe/search finestqueen Please Wait And then, after another howl of outrage from the 18-year-old has-been, something absolutely unthinkable happened. Instead of the slideshow composed of shots from her favorite films, a new face shimmered into view: the face of a woman the same age as Coyreen, but utterly different from her. Where Coyreen was freckled and pug-nosed and blonde, the ultimate California beach baby, this was a face straight from a cameo: long, thick, jet-black hair, a perfectly white complexion (but not pale; more like the fresh whiteness of a snowdrift on a sunny winter morning), violet eyes, classic features, and a smile that was both completely natural and unbelievably enticing. Whereas Coyreen had always been the little nymphet next door, this was a young woman who you'd expect to see on the cover of "Cosmopolitan." And her lips, moist and slightly parted, were as red as blood, even without gloss or lipstick. She was not attractive because she was sexy; she was sexy because she was so damned beautiful. And, although she was obviously no older than 18 or 19, she exuded a unique combination of innocence and sophistication. But who the fuck was she? And why was she on Coyreen's computer screen? As the picture finished downloading, before Coyreen could even scream a protest, the throbbing pipe organ that accompanied the Watts Mass Choir began to blare, and a hundred voices quickly joined in with the answer to Coyreen's foolish, vain question: "In the hood or on the ranch, We just want to look at Blanche!" Coyreen screamed a scream of real horror. "Who the Hell is Blanche?" she cried at the computer screen. "Where is Blanche?" Instantly, the screen switched to another picture of the woman: stark naked, hands on her hips, her beautiful head thrown back, she looked like she was laughing....and she had the most flawless body Coyreen had ever seen. Then the Choir sang again: "She's the up-and-coming Queen She's the finest one we've seen! And, if you want to know the truth, Blanche is under your own roof!" Then the screen slowly dimmed, and the voices were still, and the image of the beautiful young ... Queen? ... was gone. Coyreen did what she did on all such occasions: she screamed. "Miles," she shrieked, "get your ass in here right now! You've got some fucking explaining to do!" Poor Miles. His technical staff had worked so hard to make mirror.exe a program that would help the boss' wife. But they hadn't programmed it to lie. ********************************************************* Well, the way Miles later explained it to me, it had been quite an ugly scene. Naturally, he had come running when he heard Coyreen's furious summons, jumping up from his hand-carved ebony desk and hustling down the long hall to the master bedroom to see what his darling, troubled wife was so upset about this time. As soon as he burst through the large double doors, he was confronted with the sight of Coyreen, stark naked as usual, standing next to the table where her computer sat, having kicked the little chair halfway across the room; she was trembling with anger, and pointing accusingly at the monitor screen, which still displayed the bright, unexpected image of the woman with the long black hair and the ruby lips. "Who the fuck is that?" screamed Coyreen. "What's she doing on my computer? That silly mirror.exe gadget said that SHE'S the finest queen all of a sudden, and that she's here under OUR roof! What in the ever-loving fuck are you trying to pull here, Miles, you bastard?" Miles, of course, was completely baffled. Mirror.exe had gone crazy and mentioned another woman to Coyreen? Impossible! It was just a microchip! It could only display what it had been programmed to display! And now, here was the unmistakable image of.... "Coyreen, baby, calm down, for Heaven's sake," Miles said soothingly, although his words came out at a sort of strangled sound. "I don't know how that picture got into that program. Just a glitch, I'm sure. Everybody knows you're the Queen of Porn, and the Queen of my heart!" A little romance, Miles thought, couldn't hurt. He thought wrong. "Don't sweet-talk me, you cocksucker," Coyreen shrieked, stamping her foot and clenching her hands into fists. "I don't give a shit about your heart" - - - Miles winced at this, for he knew it was probably true - - - "It looks to me like you've found a new Queen for your balls! Who is she? Where is she?" Miles was pale by now. None of this made any sense. "Coyreen, honey, you know who that is. It's just Blanche, little Blanche. She's been around here for a year. She wanted to be a star, but since I already had the greatest star in history in my precious Coyreen, I just gave her a job on the secretarial side. She's been doing clerical work since then." "'Little Blanche?'" screamed the Queen of Porn. "'What is she, another of your child prodigies? You been hanging around the bus station again? She doesn't look so fucking 'little' to me! And why is there a nude picture of this so-called 'secretary' on my computer?" "I've never seen that picture before, Coyreen," Miles answered truthfully. "Maybe she brought it with her when she came. I told you she wanted to be in movies, maybe she had a portfolio. But I never saw it. Maybe she's been banging one of the tech boys. I'll call them together, and heads will roll, I promise you!" "To Hell with the tech boys," she shouted. "I don't care who's been banging her, including you! I don't even care if you've been banging one of the tech boys! But I want her out of here, Miles. Fire her ass. Get her out of my sight forever, or I'll make your life a living Hell!" You won't have far to go, Miles thought, but what he said was, "Okay, baby, anything for you, anything for my Coyreen. I'll have to give her two weeks' notice though, or the Labor Department will come snooping around, and that, we don't need." He didn't want to fire the girl at all; she was the best worker in the company. But he was stalling for time. "Get rid of her, Miles," Coyreen said, her voice suddenly low and very, very cold. "Get rid of her, or I swear to you that I will. And while you're at it, fire those fucking holy-rollers, that Watts Mass Choir! They're the ones who were singing about her a minute ago!" "But, Coyreen," Miles pleaded, "that's just impossible. We recorded their little song months ago, when we were first putting mirror.exe together! It's just a WAV file, it can't suddenly change...." "Fire them all!" Coyreen screamed. "I don't ever want to hear about this cunt again!" "Yes, dear," Miles sighed, and left the room. ****************************************************************** Of course Miles didn't know about what happened next. After some snooping around, however, I was able to get it from the horse's mouth - - - or, rather, the mouth of Vitaly Arkhoff, the 300-pound powerlifter who Miles had hired away from the Russian Olympic Team to be Coyreen's personal bodyguard and masseur. It took me awhile to track him down, but once I did, Arkhoff was more than willing to talk: the words spilled out of him in vast torrents of emotional, fractured English. It seems that Vitaly was a very frightened man. It seems that, after her angry confrontation with Miles, Coyreen had dropped a few 'ludes and settled down to do some hard thinking. Two weeks notice? Ridiculous. Whoever this "Blanche" bitch was, she had obviously turned a few heads at the O'Smiles estate, and Coyreen wanted her out the door immediately. She might have to put up with newer, fresher faces in the porn biz, but she damn sure didn't have to put up with 'em in her own home! After a few minutes of trying to relax, and let the 'ludes do their work, she walked across the room to her mammoth clothes closet, jerked a Japanese silk robe off its hanger, and slipped into it. After firmly tying the belt around her tiny, often-carressed waist, she reached for the intercom unit on the wall and pressed the button. Within seconds, Vitaly Arkhoff's alert, eager voice was heard. "Yass, Meestress Coyreen?" "Vitaly," she answered, "get your ass up here to the master bedroom. I've got a little job for you." "Yes, Meestress! Right away!" And, sure enough, Coyreen had barely seated herself on the edge of the bed when there was a knock at the door, and the huge bodyguard appeared. "Oh, that was quick, Vitaly, very good," Coyreen said sweetly. Then, patting the mattress next to where she was sitting, she said, "Come over here and sit down with me, my dear friend." Vitaly's face froze somewhat; Mistress did not usually deal with servants so informally. But he forced a nod, and thumped across the room to the bed, where he very primly sat down, hands folded in his lap. "Er, does Meestress desire a massatch?" Coyreen laughed. "Oh, Vitaly, not today. You're the best masseur on earth" - - - the man blushed deeply and dropped his gaze to the floor - - - "but that's not exactly why I called you. If I ask you a very special favor, you'll let it be our little secret, won't you?" "Why, yass, Meestress," he started to answer, but was shocked into silence when Coyreen turned toward him, flipped open his jacket, and began to unbuckle his trousers. "Vhy, Meestress!" he gasped, "Vhat on airth are you doink? Thees ees mos' irregular, thees is not kulturny!" Stunned into immobility, he giant hands grabbed the edge of the mattress firmly, as if to keep his balance. Coyreen was on her knees now, pushing the servant's thighs apart, unzipping his trousers, and starting to tug them down. "Oh, you're right, Vasily, it's not at all appropriate, not what you call 'kulturny!'" With a sudden jerk, she pulled the pants and boxers to his knees, freeing his already-stiffening prick, which was perfectly proportional to the rest of his body: in other words, one big mother cock. Coyreen began lowering her face to it, shrugging her shoulders so the silk robe would fall and reveal her still-teenaged breasts. "Oh, Vasily, I love it when you talk Russian! Talk to me! Say any - - -" but instead of finishing her request, she took his cock in her hot, drooling mouth, and as she circled the head with her tongue, she took his massive balls in her hands and began to stroke and squeeze. Vasily did indeed speak, and it was in Russian, but it came out as a low, rumbling groan of pleasure. Coyreen parted her lips slightly, and allowed his cock to pop out of her mouth. She immediately wrapped both of her tiny hands around the 9-inch shaft, and began to move them up and down slowly, gently, almost imperceptibly. She rubbed the head of his cock against her soft, freckled cheek and crooned, "Oh, Vasily, you're such a good friend. And you're such a big man! You'll do whatever little Coyreen asks, won't you?" Before he could reply, the tip of her tongue was darting in and out of the gaping hole at the tip of his penis. "Ahhh!" he gasped, "Y-yes, Meestress, you know Vasily leeves to do your beeding!" Coyreen moved her head down and nibbled at his balls, then sighed, "Oh, but Vasily, this is such a big favor! I shouldn't even ask....." And now her tongue and slipped beneath his balls, and was moving wetly toward his asshole. "Oh! Oh, yesss, Meestress, I do eenythink for you, eenythink at all! Vasily will invade Afghanistan for you eef you ask!" Coyreen giggled and slipped her index finger deep into the Russian's asshole. "Oh, Vasily, my hero, I believe you will! Tell, me my hero - - - " her finger was probing, searching for his prostate - - - "do you know the girl who works downstairs named Blanche?" "Y-yes, meestress, I know," stammered the confused but ecstatic servant. "Mees Blanche, she writes zee letters for Meester O'Zmiles...." The finger found the prostate and began to press. With her free hand, Coyreen began to stroke and pump Vasily's cock, until she could see the balls tightening in the sack, and could feel the shuddering that preceded orgasm. "Ohhh, God, Meestress - - - to quote from zee bourgeois religion-myth - - - zat isss so goooood!" In an instant, Coyreen had removed both her hands from the Russian's body, and stood up. She pulled loose the belt from her robe and let it fall to the floor. Thrusting her hips forward, rocking on the balls of her feet, she reached down and spread her pussy wide. Vasily, his cock twitching and straining in the throes of a frustrated orgasm, stared at the sight that had enraptured millions of porn fans around the world. "Vasily," she breathed, "if Mr. O'Smiles didn't find out about it, would you like to fuck me with that big Russian war-horse of yours?" The servant was immediately scrambling to his feet, to take this goddess, this queen in his arms. "Oh, meestress! Vasily would die for that!" Coyreen stepped back a few feet. "You're no good to me dead," she purred, "but first you have to do me a little favor, like you promised. Then you can fuck me all night long. Agreed?" "Wh-why, of course, Meestress! Speak, and Vasily veel obey! Oh, Meestress, how beautiful you are! Oh, Vasily is aching for you!" "You'll get over it," Coyreen snapped, all business now. "Okay, lover, here's the deal. Go find that girl, Blanche, and tell her that Mr. O'Smiles wants her to meet him out at the studio. Tell her you've been ordered to drive her there. But instead of the studio, take her out in the country somewhere, maybe out near Mojave, and kill the little bitch. Kill her, Vasily. Then cut out her heart and bring it to me." She slipped three fingers into her pussy and began to grind. "And I'll be waiting for you, Vasily. And I'll make you the happiest man on earth." Vasily was surprised, but not horrified. Coyrene had chosen her assassin well: Arkhoff had seen plenty of killing in his time, back when the Soviet empire was going down the crapper. But at the moment, his brain seemed to be pickled in backed-up semen, and all he could think of was his reward. He gulped, and stammered, and finally asked, "Vhen you want Vasily to do this, Meestress?" Coyreen stopped playing with herself, put her hands on her hips, and stared directly into the servant's eyes. "Why, now, Vasily," she purred; and then, tired of the game, she snarled, "NOW!!! Go snuff the little twat!" And Vasily fastened his trousers and thumped hurriedly out the door.