McMurray double-clutched his Dodge coupe through the narrow curves of the Hollywood Hills. When his hand wasn't on the stick, it was keeping his .38 from sliding off the leather seat. The dead lawyer in Malibu Canyon confirmed what he had started to believe a week ago; what he had probably believed since the Widow Stanwyck first stepped into his office. She was a killer, and not just because of the way she filled out a dress.

He slowly drove past her place on Jupiter Drive. It was Mr. Stanwyck’s house until a month ago when he had dropped dead in one of his oil fields on Huntington Beach. McMurray faced his car downhill and sat there, watching. He couldn't be sure the young wife was doing this on her own.

The house was one of these new, sprawling modern houses that hung off the edge of the canyon as if earthquakes only happened in RKO pictures. The lights of L.A. twinkled in the distance. It was a helluva view. The house must have cost a pretty penny. Lots of pretty pennies.

The widow wasn't shy. She hadn't bothered to pull the shades on any of the numerous windows and every light in the joint was on. McMurray felt his cock swell as he anticipated seeing the young beauty walk across the face of one of those windows in nothing but lingerie. No such luck.

After two cigarettes, there was no sign of her. But, there was no sign of an accomplice, either. McMurray stuck the .38 into his suit pocket and stepped out of the car. The air had the clean smell of the desert hills. He half thought he should linger there and enjoy it. There would be nothing clean in what was about to happen.

He rang the bell and the ostentatious tones of Big Ben chimed from inside the house. The wait was long, so he added a rap to one of the caned-glass door windows. Again, he waited. At last, the door opened a crack and one of Dorothy Stanwyck’s violet eyes peered through the slit of light.

“Mr. McMurray!” The widow pulled open the door. “I’m glad it’s you! Come in.”

McMurray stepped into the foyer, his hand cupping the handle of his snub nose.

“I was in the bath. I didn’t expect any callers at this hour. I was a bit frightened,” Dorothy said, though Marlowe was certain this kid hadn’t ever been scared of anything other than poverty her whole life. He glanced around the big, open living room, checking for some lug with a baseball bat. There was none. His eyes went back to Dorothy and they stayed there.

She was in a loosely tied black silk robe. Her hair was wrapped in a plush, white Turkish towel. Maybe she’d come from the bath, maybe she hadn’t, but the way things moved under the thin silk, McMurray knew she was naked. There was no getting around her beauty. She was twenty-six years old — nearly thirty years younger than her now-dead husband. She was tall, with the legs of a dancer, and a head of blonde hair that would make Lana Turner jealous.

No one was ever fooled by their arrangement. The minor oil magnate got a great piece of ass, and the girl fresh from the Bakersfield beauty pageant got nice things. Nothing surprising there; the town basically ran on sex for money. What was surprising was that Mrs. Stanwyck was not just another bimbo. She had graduated with honors from nursing school back in Bakersfield, and somehow she knew more about art and culture than her oil-stained old man ever would. Yeah, she turned out to be the classy half of the couple.

Dorothy padded across the hardwood floor in black kitten-heeled slippers that matched her robe. She opened a polished brass box and pulled out a cigarette. She nodded to McMurray.

“Don’t mind if I do. I smoked my last one on the drive over here,” McMurray said, grabbing a Lucky Strike from the box.

Dorothy sat at one end of a huge, powder-blue Davenport sofa. The robe crept well up the thigh of her crossed leg. McMurray struggled to keep his eyes on hers. Her cleavage didn’t help him any with the effort.

“Yes, the drive over here. Why are you here, Mr. McMurray ?” Dorothy asked as she exhaled a long plume of blue smoke. “What couldn’t wait until morning? Or, why not call me? It’s a long way from downtown.”

“That’s just it. I wasn’t calling from downtown,” McMurray explained. “You see, I was all the way over in Malibu. Seems our friend the insurance investigator drove off the canyon road.”

He tried to read Dorothy’s face. Was there any surprise? Did she appear nervous? His detective's attention to her every facial muscle was disrupted when she uncrossed and recrossed her legs. The image of those gorgeous gams wrapped around his back — or his head — flickered across his mind in Technicolor.

“How terrible for his family,” she said coolly. “Will that mean the insurance company will close the investigation?”

“You mean, keep it closed?” McMurray asked. Did she really not know?

“According to the paperwork in the car, your favorite investigator filed to close your case a couple of days ago.”

“I think I need a drink. How about you, Mr. McMurray?”

He turned to keep his eyes on her. He didn’t want her behind him, and he really liked looking at her. She strode across the large open room to a bar cabinet. She bent at the waist and pulled off her towel. She glanced back toward him as she did so. She wanted his audience. She batted at her blonde mane, and then as she stood she flicked the still-damp tresses over her head. Again she glanced to see if McMurray was taking in her show. He very much was. Her robe had loosened. Her breasts jiggled freely under what little silk remained to cover them. Her spectacular upper thighs were now as exposed as those of any showgirl on the Sunset Strip.

“Can I make you a drink, Mr. McMurray?” Dorothy asked in a voice so dripping with innuendo that she might well have said, “Do you want me to suck your cock?”

Until that moment, McMurray hadn’t been certain how he was going to play this. He valued his integrity — that’s why he had left the LAPD. But he also valued pussy, and it was quite possible he was staring at the finest trim he had come across in his thirty-plus years of dogging it.

“Please. Bourbon if you have it, Mrs. Stanwyck,” he replied.

“Oh, why don’t you just call me, Dorothy,” she said. Though, her tone said, “Why don’t you just cum in my mouth.”

“Fine. And by all means you can call me Phillip,” McMurray answered, catching a peek of aereola as she bent to hand him his drink.

Dorothy sauntered toward the French doors that opened to the veranda that spanned the width of the house. She didn’t ask McMurray to follow. He just did. “Be a dear and grab a couple more cigarettes,” Dorothy said without bothering to look back.

They stood in silence at the railing, sipping and smoking, staring at far away L.A. McMurray sensed that the widow knew that he was on to her. She was far from stupid.

“You and your late husband keep a place in Malibu, don’t you, Dorothy?”

The widow took a long drag. “Yes. We have a little cottage in the colony there.”

“Yeah, I thought so. I’ve actually been in Malibu quite a bit in the last week or so. For some reason, our clean-cut investigator kept going to Malibu. He would have a drink or two at the Mermaid restaurant at the Pier, looking damned impatient the whole time. He’d then take a call at the bar and tear out of there looking like a horny teenager,” McMurray detailed between sips of his bourbon.

“So he was goofing off? Soaking Aetna for some days at the beach on the company tab? Maybe a bit of screwing around? I’m sure he’s hardly the first,” the widow deflected. Her come hither tone had receded and been replaced with a hint of anxiety.

“Oh, I’m sure you’re right missus— er, Dorothy. It’s just that this guy…well …it’s a little surprising. According to my pal back east who did the research for me, the man was a war vet. Came back from France a little messed up, like a lot of us. He got to drinking, also like a lot of us,” McMurray said with a wink and a toasting gesture. “But, he picked himself up. Settled down in Connecticut. Got a job at Aetna in the mail room and worked his way up fast. Joined a church. Found a wife. Dropped the booze. Had a couple of kids. He is — or was — a church deacon. He marched to keep Prohibition, for chrissakes.”

Dorothy leaned over the railing and arched her back, appearing to McMurray like she was looking for a spanking.

“Seems to me,” McMurray continued, “It would take quite a bird to get a dog like that off the straight and narrow path.”

“Oh?” The Widow feigned ignorance.

“Yeah, a very, very pretty bird, with a tidy nest in a yellow cottage on Cliffside Drive,” said with as much menace as he could muster. “Your cottage is yellow, isn’t it … Mrs. Stanwyck? And it is on Cliffside, correct?”

“Are men really that easy to manipulate?” The Widow asked, again avoiding McMurray’s line of questioning. She turned to face him. The night air had caused her nipples to stiffen in the most alluring way. The silk sash securing the robe had lost all but the last bit of friction holding the bow intact. “Are you that easy to manipulate?” Her cum-swallowing tone had returned.

“I’m quite sure that any man would fall in the face of a certain kind of woman,” McMurray responded, aware that he was talking about himself as much as anyone. He decided to get more direct with his questions.

“So, how did things go? You offed the husband somehow. Maybe had someone else do it for you. Bag over the head. Whatever. Looked like natural causes. Just another heart attack. You hired me when the insurance inspector came to town, but that wasn’t enough, was it? Our favorite inspector found something. A clue at the old man’s office, maybe. Or, signs of forgery in the paperwork? He asked too many questions, got too close, so you seduced him. Wrecked his life. Did you kill him, too? Drive him off the road? You were in Malibu today, weren't you?”

Whether Dorothy pulled on the sash, or if it just volunteered, McMurray didn’t know, but at that moment the black silk parted in slow motion, as if the guy in the theatre booth was turning the projector at half speed.

Everything about her body was somehow better than McMurray had imagined, and he had imagined a lot. A pair of the most succulent breasts he had ever seen beckoned his touch. Her firm dancer’s torso sported a tiny navel that craved to be kissed. A sparse thatch of strawberry blonde hair between her sinewy thighs begged to be nuzzled.

“I won’t ever be poor, again,” Dorothy said as she shrugged the robe the rest of the way off. “I will do anything to keep what I have,” she continued as she stepped to embrace McMurray.

His bourbon glass landed with a thud on the sandy hill far below as he took Dorothy in his arms. Her lips were as plump and juicy as her breasts. Her tongue explored his mouth with firm intensity. He ran his hands down her back until he reached the globes of her ass.

“Mmm. Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?” Dorothy joked, giving his lower lip a not-so-joking bite.

She thinks she’s got me, McMurray thought. Just like her older husband and that weak bastard from Connecticut. He flared. Not me. Not me, bitch.

He bit her lip right back while simultaneously pinching and twisting one of her defiant nipples. Dorothy gasped, but she didn’t flinch. She’s not going down easy, this one. McMurray spun her around and bent her against the railing.

SPANK! SPANK!

McMurray gave her round, firm globes what they deserved. He pulled her head back by her blonde locks.

“You like toying with men, don’t you?!” He growled into her ear before biting the lobe hard enough to draw blood. “Well, you haven’t had a man like me, little girl.”

McMurray smiled to himself as a small whimper escaped Dorothy’s throat. He nudged her legs apart and ran his hand down the crack of her ass until he found her slit. She was wet! The betraying slut was wet! He worked a thumb into her moist, soft, core while his forefinger worked the cleft of her lips. Her whimpers turned to moans.

“Do it. Do it! Fuck me, good. Fuck me like I really need it, Phillip!” Dorothy groaned.

McMurray dragged the now-compliant slut back into the living room and pushed her onto the grand-sized sofa.

His suit coat hit the floor like a rock as the pocket holding the .38 made contact with the thin oriental rug. He kicked off his shoes and pants and stepped closer to Dorothy, clearly proud of the thick staff that arched toward her. Dorothy looked through her lashes and cracked a hint of a smile before grasping the warm, hard rod.

“Show me, Dot. Show me how much you don’t want to be poor,” McMurray growled.

Dorothy swirled her tongue over his head and then along the sensitive flange of his glans. His knees buckled. This is not her first time, McMurray chuckled to himself. She then took him fully into her mouth. One inch, two inches, three, four, more, went in. She pulled off with a gasp, then plunged back on him, taking him well into her throat. He cupped the back of her head and thrust in and out, slowly but deeply, prompting a gag on every other stroke. Saliva streamed from her mouth, over his balls, and onto her glorious tits. Her eyes watered, but she kept them locked onto his.

As satisfying as this was, McMurray was not going to settle for just her mouth. Dorothy gasped for air as McMurray withdrew his dripping cock. He positioned her toward the back of the couch and pushed her forward until her face and breasts were pressed against the panoramic window. He entered her vagina roughly, though she was so wet that he did not feel unwelcome. He drove deep, and fast, as he had wanted to do the first time she had walked into his office.

Dorothy moaned in apparent appreciation. He almost resented how much she seemed to be enjoying it. What he meant as punishment she was taking as a reward. Sweat formed on McMurray’s chest as he gave the treacherous whore the pounding of his life.

“Yes! Yes! Please, yes!” she shouted, fogging the glass with her screams.

McMurray hooked his arm around Dorothy until her neck rested in the crook of his elbow.

“Fuck, yes,” she managed to squeak out through her compressed windpipe. She reached back and grabbed McMurray’s necktie, pulling hard. They hammered into one another, the tunnel vision and redline heartbeat caused by their mutual asphyxiation somehow drove them to greater heights — and depths — of passion. Dorothy’s orgasm was like nothing McCarthy had ever felt. It was like being in a velvet vice and it put him over the edge. He shot his load deep into her murderous cunt and fell upon the sofa, spent. To McMurray’s surprise, Dorothy curled up with him. I’ve got her, he thought. She’s never had a man like me.

In time, they slowly untangled. McMurray recovered his clothes while the widow walked toward the liquor cabinet in all her naked glory.

“This is how we are going to play this, Mrs. Stanwyck,” McMurray started as he sorted his boxers. “I’ll handle L.A.’s finest when it comes to the insurance guy. They don't know what I know and they are lazy and easily bribed. We’ll let the dust settle — a month or two. After that, I’ll come for my cut. And, to give you the screwing you’ve been missing.”

“That sounds lovely,” Dorothy said as she sipped her gin. “Especially the screwing part.”

McMurray smiled smugly as he looked for a shoe under the couch.

“Bad news!” Dorothy announced. “I’m out of bourbon. Mr. Stanwyck was very fond of this exorbitantly expensive Scotch that smells like someone lit their gym socks on fire. Want some of that?”

“Absolutely, I think I should get used to the finer things,” McMurray said, tying a shoelace. He put on his jacket and felt the weight of his revolver. It humored him that he had ever been reluctant to enter the Stanwyck house.

He accepted the Scotch from his new, naked lover. His cool was briefly interrupted by the full-on peat bog in liquid form, but he suppressed a snort as best he could. He forced the sludge down as he fondled Dorothy’s breast. He gave her nipple a last pinch and kissed her goodbye. “Don’t call me. I'll call you if there’s trouble. Otherwise, see you in a month or so, kitten,” he said. He left with a feeling of conquest.

McMurray got about halfway back to Los Angeles on Mulholland Highway before the pain in his head and his gut was so bad he had to pull over. Ten minutes later, the pain hit his chest so sharply that he could barely breathe. It was then that he remembered the Widow Stanwyck had trained as a nurse. He figured it was likely a cocktail of aconite, calcium chloride, and benzedrine, hidden in that horrid Scotch. He’d run into it when he was on the force a long time ago. It would look like just another heart attack. There would be no loved ones to make inquiries about him. McMurray had no loved ones. Maybe that’s why she picked me. Dorothy would never be suspected. As...