His Dirty Birdy

It was late. Early, actually. The call was for some shit heap down at the docks. A warehouse, Captain had said.

"Another party?" I asked, squinting at the alarm clock on my dresser.

"Looks that way," Jimmy replied. "Most of 'em scrambled as soon as our boys kicked the doors in. Go give the joint a once over, then get down to five-oh and work our perp over."

"Just one?"

"'Fraid so," he said over the line.

"Alright. I can get down there. Gimme 30."

"No rush; might as well find yourself a cup of coffee. Gonna be a long night."

*****

It just had to be pissing rain. It was always pissing rain.

"Danny," I grunted to the kid at the door.

"Sarge," he said, snapping to attention with a suspicious snort. The scrawny junior had obviously fallen asleep under the only bit of overhead cover he could find.

"Here," I said, handing him the rest of my coffee. "You look like you need this worse than I do."

He took it with sheepish thanks and jerked the heavy door open for me.

Our boys had already worked the place over pretty good, but there was no mistaking what had gone on here. Liquor bottles, the stench of reefer, and discarded clothes filled the repurposed warehouse. Dirty mattresses and all manner of furniture pulled out of dumpsters across the city completed the scene.

"Jack! Nice of you to drag your ass out of bed for us, ha!"

Pete was a prick, but he was hard as nails and handy in a tight spot. We'd landed at Omaha together, and I'd watched the brick shithouse do things with a Tommy gun that still kept me up at night. Saved my ass all across Europe, right to Berlin.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever."

"Ah, I'm just fuckin' with ya," he said, clapping me on the shoulder and chewing one of those god awful Cubans he loved so much.

"You gotta smoke that thing in here? Fucking stinks."

"Yeah, well, beats the fucking jizz stench. We had to open the roller doors when we got in - whole place stank of nut."

I looked around. This had been a big one. Bigger than most. Must have been a couple dozen freaks in here all at once. A beat cop walked by with a cardboard box in his arms.

"We actually getting anything out of here this time?"

"Oh, hell yeah. Check this out." Pete looked around to make sure nobody was watching before he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a black and white photograph. "Take a look at this."

"Fuck, Pete!"

"Shhh, keep it down!" He said.

The girl was sat square in frame, topless, smiling, heavy tits slathered in jizz already. She clutched a prick in each hand next to her head, wedding ring visible. She looked so happy.

"Jesus fucking Christ," I muttered.

"Right? Kinda cute."

She was, but that wasn't what I meant. Besides, I preferred brunettes.

"We got hundreds of snaps like this. Boxes of 'em. They trade shit like this, you know? Like trophies. They're like addicts, swear to God." He tucked the stolen photo back into his wallet.

"Cap said you grabbed a perp?"

"Oh yeah, we got one," he leered, pointing at a rusty bed frame across the floor. "She was tied to that; couldn't run with the rest of them. Had her gagged too, and something shoved up her..."

"I get it, I get it," I replied. "She downtown already?"

"Paddy wagon took her about 10 minutes before you showed up. Should be through booking shortly."

I sighed. "Alright. Get this shit cleaned out. I'll talk to our girl."

*****

I took my time getting back to the station, mulling things over as I drove.

Truthfully, the whole deal was getting to me. I'm a red-blooded man; I liked a fast girl every now and then. This shit stank though. This was different.

Pete figured they were Commies. Some kind of red scare thing, corrupting housewives and eroding the fabric of decent, civilized society. Cap only listened to him because the D.A. would cream his slacks if we actually were onto something like that. We all knew better though.

No, this was worse.

They just liked it.

"What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?" Jimmy had grilled me last week. "We can't prosecute that! The mayor wants this shut the fuck down before it gets out that there's a fucking pandemic of underground orgies and pornography in his city! It's unamerican! Find these fucking goons, bust them up, and bring 'em in!"

He was right, mostly. We couldn't be loud about this. Wasn't good for decent folks to find out about.

I got to the station at half past three. Birdy Willis, 23, was a typist at Morgan Stanley uptown. Local girl, one roommate. No priors. No reason to be here.

"Ms. Willis," I said. "I'm Detective Jack Doherty. You mind if I have a word with you?"

Being cuffed to a table in little more than a borrowed overcoat didn't seem to fluster her. Given how we'd found her, maybe I shouldn't have been surprised.

"Sure," she said nonchalantly. "I don't mind."

I settled into the chair across from her. Her calm was disarming, but I was a hulking, grizzled vet with more than 10 years on her. I had no reason to let her get me off kilter, even if she was uncommonly pretty. She nibbled her lips.

"Right," I said, flipping open a folder with her photo and rap sheet. She'd been cleaned up since the mug shot; gone were the greasy black tracts of eye makeup and smears of lipstick. I squinted at the photo, spotting something I'd missed.

"Did they write something on your forehead?"

She pursed her lips to hide a smirk and squirmed in her seat. "Maybe."

I arched an eyebrow. "They wrote 'maybe' across your forehead?"

"No," she replied flatly. "It said, um..."

"Now isn't the time to get shy on me, come on now."

"Whore," she said. "It said whore. Sir."

The 'sir' was a bit desperate. Sloppy even. An appeal to my ego. "You know soliciting is illegal, right?"

Her eyes widened and she sat bolt upright. "Oh, no, it's not like that! Please, you have to believe me, there's no money or, or..."

"Hey, come on, slow it down," I said, showing her my palms. "We're just talking here, yeah?"

She gulped. "I just...I'm not a whore."

"Sure," I replied. "It's just, like, pretend. Right? Just make-believe."

She perked a bit. "Yeah, just for fun. Nothing illegal."

I shrugged. "That remains to be seen."

"Am I being charged with anything?"

"What?"

"Well," she said, working up her nerve, "you've got me in cuffs, but nobody's given me a charge."

"We found you tied up in a warehouse, in the middle of the night, covered in spunk, with a chunk of rubber shoved up your ass!"

She mulled that over. "And?"

I glared at her. Little shit. "Sodomy's illegal."

"Lucky I'm not a man with another man's cock in my ass then," she replied with a smirk.

"Fine. Trespassing then."

She barked an impudent laugh. "Trespassing? Oh, please. Write me the ticket and let me go home. Besides, the door was open."

"Someone let you in?"

Another little smirk. "The door was open," she repeated.

We were wasting each others' time here. She knew it too. "Smelled a little loud in there. I'll do you up on the jazz cabbage if I have to."

She barked a laugh. "Jazz cabbage?! What are you, 50?" She shoved her hands into the pockets of her borrowed jacket and pulled it wide open. I balked at her outright nudity. "You wanna search me, officer? Huh? Go ahead, I've got nothing to hide!"

I swallowed hard. It was a nice body, and she only hid it once I'd had a good look. "That's enough!" I demanded. She closed the flaps of her coat with a wry grin.

"Awh, what's the matter? Something wrong?"

Her foot found mine as she stared me down, dragging it up my shin slowly. Now she was just toying with me.

"It's okay if you saw something you liked. I won't tell anybody."

The door slammed open just in time, moments before her toes would have licked over my tightening fly. Jimmy leaned in and jerked his head, beckoning me into the hall. I nodded and got up, catching a blown kiss from Birdy in the moment before I broke eye contact.

The Captain closed the door behind me and snatched her file from my hand, pitching it into a wastebasket nearby. "Cut her loose," he said brusquely.

Still reeling from the tension of my time with Ms. Willis, it took me a minute to catch up. "Jim, what? You kidding me? She's..."

He scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Judge Matthews' daughter," he spat. "Yeah, fake name. Cut her loose. Take her home."

"Jim!"

"I mean it! This comes from way up top. Now!"

*****

Someone found her an ill-fitting dress from lockup. She was chestier than the hooker it had belonged to by a long shot. I tried not to think about the shapely rack she hid.

"Such a gentleman to drive me home after our little date," she teased, walking across the dark lot behind 50th precinct.

"Yeah, yeah, just get in the car," I said, opening the back passenger side door.

"I don't get to ride up front?"

"'Fraid not," I said, keeping my eyes off her as she climbed in.

"Where to?" I asked a minute later, starting the Studebaker up. I adjusted the rear-view mirror so that I could keep my eye on her.

"My apartment's up in midtown."

I turned around in my seat, fixing her with an admittedly shitty grin. "Sorry, miss. Can't do that. Daddy's orders."

She stared at me with her mouth agape. "Shit," she whispered.

"Shit's right. Lots of shit."

She gulped. "65th then. Next to the Reginald building."

She was awful quiet after that. I almost felt bad for her. Alright, I *did* feel bad for her.

"You hungry?"

She snapped to, turning from the window she'd been staring out of blankly. "Sorry?"

"Food, coffee; you hungry? It's almost sun up."

"Oh," she said with a breathy sigh. "No, thank you. That's...I'm okay."

I didn't know what else to say, but the silence was killing me and we still had 20 or 30 blocks to go. "You're gonna be alright, you know?"

She shook her head with an ironic laugh. "Doubt it," she replied.

"Sure you will. Uh, probably."

She gave me a flat little smile, softening a little. "Maybe. My old man's a bit of a hard ass."

"Ah, yeah, I get it. Most dads are."

"Yours isn't a state judge too, is he?"

It was my turn to laugh. "No," I admitted. "He wasn't. Just a drunk."

"Well," she said, "at least we've got that in common."

I peeked at her in the rear view mirror; she'd returned to looking forlornly out the window. "Is that why you do it?"

"What?" She asked, fixing me with a disbelieving look.

"The...parties. Is it a 'get back at dad' thing?"

She snorted dismissively. "No," she said. "Nothing so bland."

I stopped at a light. The wipers squeaked across the windshield.

"What is it then?"

She shrugged, meeting my gaze in the mirror with a smirk. "I dunno. I just like it. It's fun."

"Right," I said. "That's really it, huh?"

"Pretty much."

"You don't wanna, I don't know, date? Like normal people?"

"Nah," she replied. "Not really. Most guys want a girl who'll go steady but," she paused to think, "I just like to fuck."

I balked, narrowly missing a fat raccoon waddling across the street in the early dawn's blooming light. "Sorry," I muttered as she jerked in her seat.

"It's fine," she laughed. "I forget that some people are pretty square."

"Eh?"

"Square. Normal. Average."

"I'm not average!" I protested. "I like...I like plenty."

I was getting used to the little chirps of laughter from her. "Sure," she chuckled. "I bet you're a riot. Your wife's a lucky gal, I'm sure."

She really was a little shit. "I'm not married."

She perked up dangerously. "Really?" She said, leaning forward to rest her elbows on the back of the front bench seat. "You don't say."

"Sit back," I ordered.

"And if I don't?"

"You want me to crash this thing?"

"No," she pouted. "I just wanted to sit up."

I relented. "Fine."

She wiggled her nose, thinking hard about something.

"Spit it out," I said.

"It's just..."

"We got like 8 more blocks, it's now or never."

"You should come out some time," she ventured.

This time I very nearly did send her through the windshield. "Hey, watch it!" She cried as I cranked the squad car over. She crashed backward into her seat as I slammed into park next to a barber's.

"Listen!" I said, turning with a finger up to make my point. "You can't say shit like that! You're in real shit, you know that? Deep fucking shit! You know how many guys we got out every night trying to bust these little fucking soirées? Dozens! You can't just go around having little fuck parties with your hipster shit head friends whenever...whenever..."

She looked up at me through those long, dark lashes, lips parted just so, big doe eyes fixed on mine. The hard stop and tumble had finally done her hand-me-down's buttons in; the dress sagged open, spilling her tits out entirely.

"Fuck," I breathed.

"What were you saying?" She asked in a low voice.

"I...I, uh..."

She picked at her collar, baring more of her pale skin. "Oops," she whispered. "I'm sorry, officer. I don't suppose you have another dress for me back here, do you?"

We backed out of that alley some 20 minutes later, me in just an undershirt beneath my jacket, and her with my lapse of professional judgement leaking out between her legs.

*****

One of our guys got a big break a week later.

"In a butcher's shop?" I asked, looking over the write up.

"Under the shop," Jimmy said, sliding me a cup of Joe that smelled suspiciously like that Canadian Rye he was always getting into. "It's like one of those old-school speakeasies. Real underground type thing."

"We're sure about this?"

"Pretty sure, which is why you're on point for this. You up for a night out?"

I parked a couple blocks away later that evening, opting to arrive on foot to blend in better. A beatnik on the corner, smoking under a bus stop nonchalantly, nodded at me as I passed. I committed his face to memory, figuring he must be the lookout. I must have passed the mark, because he didn't go running for the nearby phone booth.

"We're closed, go away!" Came a thin shout when I knocked at the shop's back door a minute later.

"I'm, uh, here to beat some meat," I said, repeating the passphrase that our cover guy had picked up. A heavy bolt slammed back and the door opened.

If I thought I knew what to expect, I couldn't have been less prepared at all. The dingy basement was a space remade; this had to be one of their regular haunts. Music played from a jukebox in one corner next to a rough-framed bar, warbling its staticky tunes into a room full of men and women in various states of undress. The mess of flesh and stink of Mary Jane crashed into me like a runaway train, and I reeled at the sight of more cock than I'd seen leaving the army. A few people turned to look at me, but most of the hundred or so patrons that I could see paid me no mind. I made my way to the bar.

"Whiskey," I said to the boyish girl behind the bar, wondering if her close-cropped hair was considered stylish now. Or her jeans.

"Sure, pal," she said. "Two bucks."

I traded my bills for the glass and took a sip. "I'm, uh, new. First time."

She nodded with a bemused smile. "I could tell," she said over the music. A rowdy crowd had gathered in the corner; between bodies, I saw glimpses of a girl on her knees in front of a black fella. "Someone invite you?"

The small crowd roared with glee at something I couldn't see, but I let my imagination fill in the blanks. Someone had finished. "Yeah, some girl I met downtown. Birdy?"

It was a risk, but she was my only 'in' with this crowd. "Ohhhh, yeah! Sure, I know Birdy. Poor girl," the barkeep said. A topless dame with gumdrop nipples slid in next to me and ordered a beer. I looked away until she left again.

"What's wrong with her?" I asked, feigning ignorance.

"Her folks cut her off. Got scooped up out at a west side get together. Her pops quit paying her rent and everything."

"Damn," I said, feeling genuine regret for her. The memory of what we'd done in the back of my squad car made my guts stir.

"Hey man," said a weedy looking kid in heavy glasses.

I turned to regard him, and the photo album clutched to his chest. "I'm busy," I said, annoyed at being interrupted.

"Oh, ha," he giggled nervously. His eyes darted around anxiously. "Sorry, was just wondering if you wanted to trade? I got some great stuff if you're into collecting. Some new prints of my ass collection. Some fuck shots too."

I glanced at the bartender, who promptly saved me. "It's his first night, Marty. Let him get his cock wet first, yeah?"

"Oh, yeah, sure," the dweeb replied. "Sure Jane. I got some stuff for you if you want too, real good stuff. New girls, I bet you haven't seen most of it before."

She smiled patiently, seemingly fond of the little jitterbug for reasons I couldn't understand. "I'll find you later, got it?"

"Sure, Jane, sure. Th-thanks."

I finished my drink and tapped for another, giving the woman a questioning look. She answered while she poured. "He's harmless. Just likes pictures mostly."

"You two share similar tastes?"

She corked the bottle with a smirk. "I like my girls a little hairier than he does, but yeah, close enough."

One of those. My parents said I had an aunt like her, but I didn't remember her much. Even as a kid, I'd never understood what was so bad about Aunt Marie and her roommate Gertie. They weren't hurting anyone.

I shot my drink and slid a fiver across the plywood bar top. "I'm gonna look around. Thanks for the chat."

I took my leave and started to prowl. Officially, this was supposed to be an in-and-out thing, but the lawlessness that I was assured I'd be smacked with was less than readily apparent. Sure, there were a few spliffs getting passed around, and I doubted this hidden basement bar had anything like a liquor license, but most of what I saw was just...people. Naked, in many cases, and fucking here or there on dingy bits of mismatched furniture, but mostly just regular people. No sign of Soviet agents or enemies of the state, just everyday men and women flipping through albums of dirty pictures on wobbly tables, sucking the odd cock in dark corners, and blowing off steam. It struck me, like Birdy had done, how carefree they all were.

"Hey, handsome," said a slim Italian guy with a slight moustache. He squeezed my arm in a friendly gesture. "Can I buy you a drink?"

"Oh, I - that's...thanks, I'm okay," I stammered.

"Oh, no worries!" He said with a warm smile, taking his hand away from my bicep. "I figured I'd shoot my shot."

There wasn't an ounce of fear in the man's eyes, I realized with a tinge of shame. Here, in this hidden den, he had no reason for worry. This was a good place for him; somewhere free of the need to hide what he surely carried with him everywhere else.

"Next time," I blurted, "maybe? On me."

The smaller man flashed a handsome smile as he made to leave politely. "Sure," he said, "I'd like that."

I was still trying to reason my way around the exchange when I felt a tug at my elbow.

"Fancy meeting you here, stranger."

I turned in disbelief, mildly distracted by the sight of a long, tan Spanish girl getting herself off on a rotting armchair while two guys stroked themselves in appreciation in front of her. Her body glistened with sweat. She'd been at it a while.

"Birdy!"

She beamed at me, shoving a beer into my hand. She was entirely naked, and the state of her hair suggested she'd already been busy tonight. "Officer," she replied. "Relax," she laughed as I pulled a face. "Nobody here gives a shit. I told them you're cool."

She waved at someone over my shoulder and I turned to spot the last person I ever expected to see. "Fuck!"

Pete's wife shot me a wink from a nearby booth, hand obviously busy under her table with some guy I'd never seen before.

"Take it easy," Birdy laughed. "Your friend's here too. I think he's hammering away on my roommate in the bathroom. They're always in here together. Really helped me out the other night too."