John Malloy (7) the Blackmailed Beauty our

John Malloy--Private Dick (7)
+*The Blackmailed Beauty*+
           (John Gets an Ear full)

I was perched on a plaid wingback that smelled like old cat piss, and felt like it had a couple of  broken springs in the seat.

Across from me was Clara Withers, sittings with her left ankle, resting on her right knee.  Her bulky two hundred and fifty-plus frame  was sunk deeply into a broken-down grungy-looking davenport.

She kept tugging up the hem of her faded green flower sack, so I was occasionally treated to a glimpse of her oversized red skivvies, up past her pasty thunder-thighs.

 She'd been yakkng her big-mouth casaba off for twenty minutes about everything from her last day at the beach to the size of her husband's  schlong.

She stopped and looked at me like a dear caught in headlights, "Where did'g-ya say ya my Billy?"

Grateful for a chance to respond, I said, "I really didn't have a chance to say, ma'am. We're old high-schools buddies. I heard he was a policeman here from another old pal who knows Bill.*

"Well, shit an' Shineola!'  I'm sorry you missed him!" she howled, favoring me with a crooked-toothed grin. "And don't call ma'am, handsome. You make me feel absolutely  ancient!"
/
"You got it, Clara," I tried to smile. "Tell me , how did you and Bill meet?"

 I came here to get something I could use to stop Withers, and it seemed like a good segway point to load up on ammunition.

The sweaty broad wiped her big sniffer with the back of a hairy forearm, and reached for a crumpled pack of Lucky Strikes, sitting on a battered end-table to the left of the davenport. "That's  a interestin' story, if'n ya got the time,  good-lookin'," she grinned a yellow grin, and  lit-up a butt .

"I find you a fascinating dame,"  I lied like a preacher.

She took a swig from a half-empty bottle of Old Crow, then slammed it back on the table. She lit-up a short cancer stick, then blew twin streams of blue smoke out her flared nostrils. "I met Bill at three in the mornin' at the downtown Oakland bus station," she said.

I shook.my head and clicked my tongue in protest. "What on earth was an attractive woman like you doing at a dangerous location like that, in the middle of the night?"

I swear the broad turned tickled- pink and gave me a happy grin. Then she smiled, with a grotesque attempt at a look of innocence. "Oh, Mister Malloy!" she laughed, with a wheezy smoker's rattle. "Yer makin' me blush!"

I wave my arm in a sweeping motion. "Please go on, Clara! I'm all ears!'

"Well," she began," To tell ya the God's truth, good lookin', I was hookin' down there, 'cause I knew the bus from the army base was comin' in,  like early, every Saturday mornin'. Them  army boys always had the greenbacks, ya know." She took another pull of cheap whisky, and lit another fag.  "I was a lot thinner back in them days, don't-cha know?"

"Is then where you met our Bill?"  I feigned interest, feeling a little like a rat trapped in a corner.

She wrinkled-up her shiny honker, like the memory was making her sick. "He didn't look like much, but hey, a buck's a buck, if ya know what I mean. He knew right away I was a' whorin', on a count-a my leather outfit and high heels, an' all."

 She took a few seconds before she went on. "Well...we done the nasty in a cheap hotel room that night, but not before Bill had me whip him a little an' pee in his god-damned face! I'd just gotten stiffed by a john fer five bucks for a blow-job an hour earlier, so I was in the mood to give some grief to somebody!

 "So, did you marry Bill while he was still in the army?"

She got a disgusted look on her warted pan."Nah.... When I met that loser he'd just been booted with an Underible fer draggin' out his tiny johnson in front of the thirteen-year-old daughter of his company commander at an officer's academy graduation party, just sloshed to the gills on sterno!"

For the first time since this witch had opened her big  yap, I was interested. "If he was an unlisted joe, why was he at an officer's party, in the first place?"

"Like I done tole' ya, handsome," she huffed, "he was pie-eyed on sterno. That slob thought he was at a U.S.O. club!"

I tried my best not to crack wise to this creature. I managed to hold my tongue, somehow. "When did  you fall in love with eachother?" I asked, with a straight face

She stubbed out her cig and lit another. She took in a lungful, and let it out like two smokestacks. "Ya gotta be kiddin' me, handsome!  We diddled a couple 'a times after that, with me havin' ta pee on his ugly mug, every damned time, so's he could git it up!"

Thinking I had a weapon I could use on that sleazeball blackmailer, I could almost smell my brain's  tires burning rubber to get out of this dump, and far away from that screwball ex-prosty!

As I made my way toward the front door and freedom, I asked the dingbat one final question "So, that's when you two decided to get hitched to the marrying wagon?"

As I escaped to the covered porch, she looked sorry to have me leave before she had a chance to pee in my face, or worse.

"No," she said, shaking her joweles at me. "We had those two times in the sack after the first trick. Later on, he showed up on my doorstep an' demanded his money back, 'cause he said I gave him the clap!
I wouldn't do that, but I offered fer him to see my doctor with me, on my dime. After we got our shots, he popped the question!"

I looked at my Hudson like it was the gateway to Heaven, and asked, "So, it was love at third trick, eh?"

"Ya gotta be jokin', sweet-buns!" she hooted, loud enough to wake any napping neighbors. "He needed somebody ta whip him like a dog an' piss in his ugly puss, so's he can get a woodie on!  I was tired a hookin, an' at thirty-eight, the pickin's  was gettin' kinda lean.
Ya might say it was a marriage, made in Heaven!"

I stepped off the porch and started motivating toward my salvation on white walls. I waved at her as I climbed in my heap. "You might say that!," I called out. "But then again.... you might not!"

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