Private Detective's Transsexual Down Payment

The rain had been working the palm fronds along Wilshire since dusk, and Winston sat with his hat on his knee in an art-deco apartment that smelled of gardenia and warm metal. He was thirty-two, a private detective who had learned which doors in Los Angeles stayed shut if you knocked wrong, and he had not expected the woman who let him into this one.

Simone was twenty-eight and carried herself like money that did not need to announce its name. A narrow black sheath, pearls, gloves already peeled to the wrist. She crossed the parquet as if it had been laid for her stride.

"I need those reels found," she said. Her calm cost more than most men's nerves. "Discreetly. No police. No studio security. They were never meant to sit on any inventory a decent man would sign."

Winston kept his face flat. "Stag reels go missing every week in this town. What makes yours worth a retainer I can't put on an invoice without blushing?"

"Because the people in them can crack a city if the wrong projectionist gets the cans." Her mouth tightened. "Well-known men. Well-known women. Wild orgies, the kind shot in rented houses with the drapes nailed shut. And the beauties they paid to be in the middle of it are transsexuals. Gorgeous. Expensive. Very particular about who sees them on nitrate. Several reels vanished from a private vault in the hills. I want them back before somebody starts selling tickets in a back room on Sunset."

He named his fee. She did not blink.

"You'll have the money," she said. "You'll have something else first. A down payment. Not cash. A night. All of it. With Sonia."

The hall door opened before he could decide whether the offer was a joke.

Sonia was twenty-four. That was the first fact his professional brain managed to file, because the rest of him had already gone stupid. Platinum hair swept into a glossy wave that took the lamplight the way a screen goddess took a key light. He could not have named the star she favored without getting himself sued, and yet the resemblance sat on her like a stolen spotlight: the bow of the mouth, the heavy-lidded eyes, the dangerous little tilt of the chin. She wore what the decade still called foundation garments as if they had been cut for her body alone. A white bullet bra, structured and gleaming, lifted her breasts into a classic shelf. A pale satin garter belt. Sheer panties. Seamed stockings drawn tight up long legs, the dark lines arrowing into sky-high patent stilettos that clicked once on the marble and then went quiet.

His detachment, the thing he rented out by the hour, developed a crack he could feel in his teeth.

"This is the arrangement," Simone said, already reaching for her coat. "Sonia agreed before I ever called you. She isn't a trick you get to refuse and still take my money later. If you want the job, you spend the night. If you don't want her, say so now and I'll find a detective with worse manners."

Sonia's voice was low, amused, unmistakably grown. "I want him to stay. I looked at his picture before I said yes. Don't make me look foolish, detective."

He looked at the seam of the stocking, at the place where the garter bit gently into her thigh, and realized his mouth was dry. "I'll stay."

Simone's gloved hand found the latch. "Find my films, Winston. And don't waste what I just paid you with."

The door clicked. The apartment got smaller. Rain ticked the tall windows. Somewhere below, a horn complained and died. Winston set his hat on a side table and did not trust his hands enough to light the cigarette he wanted.

Sonia moved to the bar cart as if the room had always belonged to her. Crystal, bourbon, two short glasses. She poured modestly, the way a woman pours when she intends to remember the night, and brought him his without letting their fingers quite touch.

"Simone talks about those reels like they're a scandal," she said, turning so the lamplight ran the length of one seamed leg. "They're just people who got hungry in a locked house. A leading man with his shirt open. A contract girl who liked being watched. And girls like me, on our knees or on our backs, taking what we asked to take." She sipped. Her lipstick left a clean crescent on the glass. "I was in two of them. That's why she trusts me to know what went missing. That's also why I know how a man looks when he pretends he isn't staring."

"I'm working."

"You're hard." She said it lightly, almost kindly, and let her eyes drop to the front of his trousers before climbing back to his face. "You can work tomorrow. Tonight you're the down payment, and I dressed for you."

She set the glass down and turned in a slow circle. The bullet bra creaked faintly with the motion. The sheer panties did little to hide the shape of her, already thickening, the outline pressing silk. The stilettos made her hips swing on a higher axis than nature had planned, and she knew it. One hand smoothed the garter strap. The other rested, brief and warm, against his chest, right over the thud she had put there.

"On the missing reel," she murmured, stepping in until gardenia and warm skin crowded out the rain, "there's a blonde on a satin bed in heels just like these. A man behind her. She tells him not to be gentle. She tells him she wore the stockings so he'd have something to hold." Her palm slid lower, over his belt, and settled on his thigh, squeezing once. "I agreed to this night because I wanted your hands on me. Say you want it too, or I'll walk you to the elevator and Simone can hire someone dull."

"I want it." His voice came out rougher than he liked. "All of it. You."

"Good." She smiled with that stolen-spotlight mouth. "Then stop being a detective."

He kissed her before the sentence finished cooling. She met him open, eager, bourbon-sweet and not remotely impaired, her tongue sliding against his with a little sound of satisfaction. His hands found the narrow waist above the garter belt, then the swell of her ass through sheer fabric, and she pressed into the grip as if she had been waiting all evening to be held there. She nipped his lower lip, laughed once against his mouth, and palmed him through his trousers until his knees threatened the art-deco manners of the room.

"Bedroom," she said. "The bed's already turned down. I did that before you arrived. I wanted you to see I meant yes."

The bedroom was all satin and low lamps, a wide bed the color of champagne, mirrors that caught fragments of stocking and heel. Sonia walked ahead of him and the click of the stilettos went straight to the base of his spine. At the foot of the bed she turned, sank to her knees on the rug without taking the shoes off, and looked up through darkened lashes while her fingers opened his belt.

"Fist my hair if you need to," she said. "Don't mess the set so badly I can't fix it. And don't you dare come in the first minute. I want this sloppy. I want you watching."

He nodded, already past speech, and she took him out with careful hands and a hungry mouth. The first slide of her lips was slow, glossy, obscene in the quiet room. She licked the head until it shone, then sank down and came up wet, strings of spit catching the lamplight between her mouth and his cock. She worked him with her tongue flat, then hollowed her cheeks and took him deeper, gagging once on purpose and moaning around it as if the sound pleased her as much as it ruined him. Winston's hand found the platinum wave. He fisted it, not cruel, firm enough that she whimpered and pushed forward into the hold, taking him to the root while her stilettos shifted on the rug and her bullet bra rose and fell with each breath.

"Christ," he said. "Sonia."

She pulled off with a wet sound, stroked him with a slick fist, and smiled up, chin shining. "That's the voice I wanted. Again."

She went back down and made it filthy. Long strokes. Sloppy, audible, her spit slicking his shaft and her fingers. She cupped his balls and rolled them while she sucked, eyes up, letting him see the famous-looking mouth stretched around him. He held her hair and rocked, shallow, and she took the rhythm and made it hers, humming when he thickened, easing off whenever he got too close, wicked and precise. His thighs shook. The professional part of him was gone, left in the living room with his hat.

When she finally let him go, her lipstick was ruined and her smile was not. "Bed," she said. "I want you in my ass. Panties stay on. Pull them aside. I wore them so you'd have to."

He helped her up. The heels made her tall enough that the kiss landed easy, tasting of him and of her. She turned, bent over the champagne satin, and looked back over one shoulder, stocking seams perfect, garters taut. Winston hooked two fingers in the sheer panties and drew them aside. She was already wet at the tip of her own cock, hanging heavy between her thighs, and her ass was offered, round and tight, the little ring of muscle clenching when the cool air hit it.

"Oil's on the nightstand," she said. "Use it. Then don't be shy. I want it deep. I want to feel every inch while these heels are still on."

He slicked himself, slicked her, worked two fingers in until she pushed back and swore softly into the satin. "Yes. Like that. Now your cock. Please."

He lined up and pressed. She opened around him with a long, broken moan, taking the head, then more, then the thick slide of him until his hips met the garter belt. Tight. Hot. She clenched and laughed breathlessly. "Move. Doggy. Don't you stop until I tell you."

He fucked her in deep, rhythmic strokes, hands on her waist, then on the garter straps, using them the way she had promised a man used them on a missing reel. The bed sighed. Her stilettos scrabbled and held. Each thrust drew a wet sound and a filthier encouragement: harder, deeper, don't you dare treat me like glass. Her cock swung beneath her, slapping her own stomach, leaking onto the satin. Winston watched the platinum hair come loose at the nape and felt himself getting close too fast. He slowed, ground in, and she cursed him for the mercy.

"On my back," she gasped. "I want you to see it. I want to come on myself while you watch. Flip me."

He pulled out, gentle only for the second it took, and she rolled onto the satin, breathless and grinning, lingerie wrecked in the most expensive way. The bullet bra had twisted. One stocking had a ladder starting at the thigh. The heels were still on. She hooked her stockinged legs over his shoulders herself, patent toes gleaming past his ears, and reached down to hold the panties aside.

"In," she said. "Look at me. Look at my cock. I want you to see what you do to me."

He sank back into her ass and the angle made them both groan. Missionary, her knees by his jaw, her body open, he could see everything: the bounce of her cock against the pale girdle of her stomach, the flushed head smearing wet across her skin, the way her breasts shifted in the stiff bra with every pound of his hips. He fucked her steadily, then harder when she grabbed his forearms and nodded, yes, yes, like that, don't stop. Her hand found herself and stroked in time, messy, eager, eyes locked on his.

"I'm close," she said. "Stay in. Watch me. I want to spurt while you're buried in me. Come with me. I want it."

"I'm there," he managed. "Sonia. Now."

She broke with a sharp cry, cock jumping in her fist, thick stripes of come striping her stomach and the lower edge of the bullet bra, pulse after pulse while her ass clenched around him in rhythmic shocks. The sight undid him. He drove deep and came, spilling inside her, hips stuttering, her name torn out of him while she kept stroking through the last weak spurts, painting herself and smiling like a woman who had gotten exactly the night she ordered.

They stayed locked until the shaking eased. He eased out. She let her legs slide from his shoulders, heels knocking softly against the mattress, and did not bother to fix a single strap.

Spent and glistening with sweat, Winston collapsed beside Sonia, who still wore the disheveled 1950s lingerie and the sky-high heels, come cooling on her stomach, one hand resting possessively on his chest as the rain kept its counsel against the glass. The missing reels were still out there in the dark of the hills. His fee was still unpaid in cash. None of that mattered in the warm wreck of the bed, not while her stocking seam pressed his calf and her breathing slowed against his shoulder. He had come here to be hired. He understood, with a clarity that scared him more than any locked vault, that the night had already collected something he had not put on the table.

He would find her films, and he would never get this night back out of his blood.