I was already pulling up the roster on the computer; there was a Darren Snowden added in the spring. That explained the detective’s interest, and suggested this was an off-the-books probe, but why the intensity?
“Yes,” Angel admitted blandly, “we do award the Home Run pin to some of our best customers.”
“My son is 16 years old!” he erupted.
Snowden and the office computer had a critically important five-year difference of opinion regarding Darren’s age. If, as seemed likely, the elder Snowden had a heart attack next door, I couldn’t decide if I would be happy or sad.
Angel managed a nicely calibrated expression of pained surprise and sympathy. “I assure you, Detective Snowden, we do not knowingly admit minors to this establishment and we are extremely vigilant about checking identification. I am profoundly sorry this situation has arisen, but you cannot reasonably hold us accountable for it.”
He waved her off, “oh I know, of course he has fake identification! But you are the peddlers of smut that actively encourage this moral decay! Peddling sex — no, women — like they were pieces of meat. A Home Run pin — to my son!”
The cop was literally pounding on the edge of her desk. I knew what was coming, but what remained to be seen was how Angel would respond.
“Best customers!” he shouted. “You know how you get a Home Run pin?” It was obviously a rhetorical question, and Snowden raced on as soon as he drew a ragged breath. “You tit-fuck one of your ‘performers’ — and then she blows you, and then you fuck her, and then you’re not done, oh no, you sodomize her. Then you give him a fucking pin so he can boast to his friends and corrupt them too!”
Technically, the guy had to ejaculate all four times. Originally, the only restriction was that they had to occur on the same visit, but some high rollers weren’t beyond forking out to engage a girl all night; now, Danny had a one-hour limit on it. Pin holders had their names engraved on the wall of fame and received preferential booking and discounts on their future visits. There was no doubt Snowden had the basics down; it was one of Danny’s wildly idiotic brainstorms that had proven to be wildly successful. If you ignored fallout like this.
“You must be very proud of your son,” Angel told him.
The detective was literally shocked silent, and I might have thought he’d suffered that promised heart attack if it weren’t for the continued sparkle of his consciousness.
“What?” he choked out, apparently unable to believe his ears. I couldn’t blame him.
“It sounds like your son is a real man,” Angel purred. “Think about it. Imagine trapping your cock between a woman’s breasts, and spraying your essence on her body.” She leaned forward intently, bracing her forearms on the desk.
I didn’t for a second think the way her upper arms compressed her breasts, exposing more of them and emphasizing her cleavage, was accidental. Nodding with appreciation, I focused on Snowden and pushed. Lust. Envy. It was surprising how little resistance I found.
“Teasing her with his scent,” she continued, “until she just has to taste him.” Perfect lips formed an open “O” as she paused to reflect a moment.
Snowden stirred but said nothing.
“If he’s still hard, why, what woman wouldn’t want a tool like that inside her?” Angel jerked minutely, and both of us realized her hands were no longer resting on the desk.
“Slut!” Snowden screamed, standing. His erection was obvious, at least on the secondary camera; I had a feeling we wouldn’t need it after another minute or two. Two long strides took him around the desk. “Fucking slut! Is this what you want? Is it?”
He slapped her and Angel went over backwards. I wouldn’t have put it past her to have taken a pratfall; the blow hadn’t really looked that hard. The detective’s eyes bulged as he took in the view I had on the overhead camera; somehow Angel’s jacket had come unbuttoned and fallen open, exposing a bustier and her heaving tits. With one of her long legs still propped on the fallen chair, the front of her skirt had ridden up to her waist, providing a classic beaver shot of her creaming gash framed between the tops of her stockings.
Best of all, none of it showed on the main video, which didn’t extend down to the floor. All I could see was the one calf and a foot atop the overturned chair, and a man who, after a moment of stunned inaction, began frantically unfastening his trousers.
Pay dirt. We wouldn’t have to worry about Detective Snowden again.
I took a deep breath, and stood up to go back downstairs; Angel could take care of herself now. On reflection, I double-checked to make sure the time of day was visible in the corner of the monitor. If I knew my Angel, Snowden was going to join his son in the Home Run club tonight or die trying.
January 1962
“Maybe Lloyd guessed somehow,” hypothesized Susan. The comment came out of left field, interrupting Alexandra’s stilted description of her wedding planning progress. The only other news we had to share was that Dr. Reynolds had talked to Dr. Fredrekksen, with the result that Susan was officially part of our research team now.
I gazed appreciatively at the brunette. The thought was ridiculous, but she’d changed her hair over the break. Susan was no Alexandra, but she was attractive — especially once she’d come out of her shell — and I’d thought more than once letting her hair down would look better — a good guess on my part. I was sure Alexandra spent hours each morning perfecting that professional look before she set foot outside.
“Guessed how they’d answer the survey? Don’t be ridiculous, Susan!” exclaimed the blonde, echoing my thought. “We took people in the order they came in, randomly. And even if that weren’t true, how could he possibly know what they’d think?” She smiled, which was like a laugh for Alexandra. “That perm didn’t get to your brain, did it?”
Susan huffed. “Well, we didn’t think of anything better last year! Besides, it would be easy enough to test, right?”
“No,” Alexandra and I replied in unison. It was scary, sometimes, how similar we could be; if she would just take the chip off her shoulder and thaw out a little bit… “I don’t have any way to guess what people are thinking,” I objected after Alexandra gave me a wave.
“Oh, poo!” Susan dismissed our concerns. “Where’s your sense of adventure? Would you rather be building up calluses with your slide rules? Just try it!” She laughed. “I volunteer to be your test subject.”
“Oh, no you don’t!” cautioned Alexandra, but it looked like she was trying not to laugh. “We’ve all been over this data so many times that I bet all of us could recite answers in our sleep.” Standing, she added, “if you want to do this, I’m going to find a subject — this is my research, after all.”
“Okay,” Susan assented, “but I’ll do the survey, and you’ll watch both me and Lloyd to make sure we aren’t cheating or influencing anything.”
Susan and I spent a few minutes clearing the table and pulling out one of the survey photo decks before Alexandra returned with a student in tow. “Do any of you know each other?” she asked.
All of us, and the student, shook our heads. He sat at the table across from Susan, and I took a seat at Alexandra’s desk where I could see his face and the pictures, but not what he was writing. Alexandra hovered like a parochial school nun, ready to dispense corporal punishment to unruly students.
“Okay,” Susan smiled, and launched into the standard introduction. “This is just an opinion survey — there are no right or wrong answers; what we are interested in is what you, personally, think. I’m going to show you a series of pictures, in pairs. All you need to do is look at each pair, and note which image you prefer.”
I studied the student, Robert, while Susan ran through the introductory demographic questions, and tried to get a feel for him. He just looked like some random undergrad who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time and couldn’t say “no” to a beautiful girl. Susan’s suggestion was ridiculous, but I wasn’t going to open myself up for any grief from Alexandra by giving it less than my best effort.
As Alexandra had alluded, I already had the photo decks memorized, so I was free to devote all of my attention to Robert, concentrating on his face, and looking down to note a choice just after he made his. President Kennedy or Reverend King? Ocean waves or a hillside meadow? A kitten or a puppy? A blonde or a brunette? A swath of tartan, or one with polka dots? Alexandra knelt beside me at one point, apparently to make sure I couldn’t see which column he was marking, but remained silent the entire time.
“Darn!” Susan interjected unexpectedly when she reached the end. “Somebody left the deck out of order; number 1 got rotated to the end by mistake. What do we do now?”
“Well, we’re not doing this again,” I voted. Maybe my eyes needed checking, because after 30 minutes of this I had a splitting headache.
“Just make a note on the forms, Susan,” Alexandra decided, “and we can correct the data when we analyze it. Thank you very much for your time, Robert.” After he left, she gave Susan and me a new set of blanks and we quickly copied the two spoiled sheets, moving each answer down one space and pulling the last up to the top so they would correspond to our existing data.
The three of us gathered around the table and stared at the results. I admit I was thinking mostly about where I could get some aspirin.
“Sugar,” a disappointed Susan said, “it’s not even worth running the numbers. I don’t think even half of them matched — are you sure weren’t trying to lose, Lloyd?”
“Unbelievable,” Alexandra breathed in a very different tone of voice. She found a column of data and laid it beside Robert’s survey; even at a cursory glance it was clear they were very similar to each other. “What are the odds?”
I looked more closely and saw the new data was the aggregate data from “my” demographic group. The alignment was as inexplicable as my predictive performance was expected; Alexandra had pulled this guy out of the hallway, but she might just as well have pulled the data from the folder on her desk! “I need a drink,” I moaned, wishing hard for the day to be over.
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