Free The Witchfinder by Loren D. Estleman Page B

raging winters had beaten the sidings and pavement the same shade of gray.
    I rapped a third time. A series of locks and bolts snapped and squeaked on the other side of the door. I hoped the closed windows meant air conditioning inside.
    The man who came out to unhook the screen door was small and black and wiry, with a modest flat-top and round wire-rimmed glasses. The prescription was so weak the lenses sent back the light in flat white disks like window glass. He wore a tank top made of cargo netting, Desert Storm camouflage pants with lots of bulging pockets, and square-toed cowboy boots. I liked the look fine except for the moist sheen on his skin. That meant no air conditioning.
    “Where are the twins?” He looked past my shoulder. He had gray eyes that darted like silverfish.
    “I’m not the guy with the twins. We settled that over the telephone. Walker’s the name.”
    “The guy with the C-notes.”
    I took out my wallet and showed him the corners of the bills. Not a cigarette pack this time. I’d stopped at the bank on the way.
    “Those the new ones? Let me see.”
    I slid one out and stretched it between my hands.
    He squinted. “Ben’s off-center.”
    “That’s the idea.”
    “Sure they ain’t queer?”
    “I just spend them. I don’t ask them about their private life.”
    “Well, bring ’em in.”
    He held the screen door while I stepped inside, then searched the street one more time before he hooked it.
    “I sure hope that guy shows up with the twins. The Asian market is nuts for twins, the blonder the better.”
    “You said you were shooting a couple of kids in Red Wings jerseys.”
    “That was on the phone. For all I knew you was using a cellular. Don’t tip nothing over, okay? The equipment’s rented.”
    Someone had punched out a couple of walls and converted the ground floor into a studio. There were reflectors everywhere, a bank of lights on a stand, and a full-size video camera on a professional aluminum frame. There were stacks of three-quarter-inch videotape on the floors and on all the furniture except the bed. It wasn’t a bed, really; just a king-size mattress on the floor. A red plush spread had been flung over it, the better to show off the naked female flesh displayed there.
    Nudity is deceptive. What looked at first glance to be a pile of writhing bodies turned out to be just two girls in their late teens, one black, the other a pale redhead, lying half entangled on the spread. I could tell my presence was embarrassing them. The black girl yawned and scratched herself under one breast while the redhead applied fresh lipstick from a neon-colored tube.
    “Places, ladies,” Worth said.
    The lipstick went out of sight and the girls swung into a passionate embrace.
    “We can talk while I’m shooting.” Worth poked a CD into a tabletop player. “The music’s just for mood. Someone else’ll dub in the oohs and aahs later.”
    The music was Gilbert and Sullivan.
    “I didn’t know there was a lesbian pornography market,” I said.
    “There isn’t. And the people I work with prefer to call them ‘adult features.’” He had strapped on the camera and was doing a slow schottische around the bed. “Dykes don’t rent videos. Straight couples prefer soft-core. The rest of the market is lonely guys— lots of lonely guys—and they ain’t interested in looking at some other guy’s pimply butt. With two women they think they’re getting double their money’s worth.”
    “This your day job?”
    “Day and night. That’s how I keep up the payments on this here mansion. Smile, ladies. You’re supposed to be having a good time.”
    The black girl said, “I got a button sticking me in the ass.”
    “Use it. You’re an actress.”
    “Randy says you’re a wizard in the darkroom,” I said.
    “Best in the Midwest.” A mobile made up of metal cutouts of spaceships and sportscars hung from a wire above the mattress. With one hand he set it spinning, then panned up with