Shanghai in the 1930s, known as The Wicked Old City of the Orient's Babylon. Where villains ruled, and exhibitionists danced. A perfect place for a wounded heart like Slade Garrison, PI. Opium was the rage and the boozed flowed freely.

So how did a guy like me end up here? I was a Whiffenpoof (a male a cappella singer) at one time and graduated to misdemeanors before I became a cop. Eventually, I found myself in China after a doomed marriage. Then, after a string of really bad decisions, I found my career cut short as well.

I was furloughed from the police department. In reality, I was caught with my zipper down, banging the Chief's wife at his retirement party. It, and a broken nose, became my adieu. I turned in my shield and Smith & Wesson; I kept my backup gun, of course.

With a bandage across my nose and cotton stuck up my nostrils, along with two black eyes, I knew how opponents of Joe Louis felt after a couple rounds. I'm not a perfect world but I don't shit in the street like the crazies do. I'm just a little bit sarcastic and horny as hell.

Now I'm sleuthing, mostly for missing pets and runaway teenagers. It pays the bills, barely. Because my 1937 coupe is paid for, albeit in need of a new set of tires, I was living cheaply in a room off my office. It wasn't what one would call luxury. Up three flight of stairs and down a long-forgotten hallway of vacant offices, it wasn't what one would call, "Putting on the Ritz."

I’m an on-again, off-again agnostic, when not in detox. One might say that I am an alcoholic. One might say I am just a fuckin’ drunk. I see myself as somewhere between a Wild Turkey and Four Roses; stuck between jobs, reality, and pipe dreams. Knowing my own strengths and weaknesses of opium. At times drifting into the underworld of prostitution's seediness.

At the moment, I was on a retainer to find Sadie, a Schnauzer with an attitude, which was missing from my landlord's menagerie. The little fucker was an ankle biter and I had a pair of argyles with holes to prove it. Also, I think I inherited the mutt's fleas.

It was hot in the city and the oscillating fan was just stirring up ashes and dreams as I looked up from the crossword puzzle. There was a beginning of a shadow beneath the office door; the office atop a noodle factory in the steamy garment district adjacent to the bordellos. No one spoke English, including my secretary who had just given me her notice. Leaving with her steno pad and my old Remington typewriter.

Then a knock. I was thinking it could be my ex looking for her support payment. The door that bore on pebbled glass the following information:

SUITE 409
SLADE WATSON
PRIVATE DETECTIVE

“Come in, door is open!” I said in a gruff voice.

Hearing the slight squeak when the door opened, I remembered that I needed to get it oiled. I was still facing the window watching some kid trying to steal some old lady’s purse, I picked up my coffee cup filled with yesterday's blend of day-old tar and cheap whiskey.

Thinking that it was my ex-wife who came in I said, “I told you already that the cheque is in the mail!” almost angrily.

“Excuse me, Sir?” said an unknown female voice, sounding like silk.

Then I turned around, dumbfounded. Standing behind the chair was one of the most beautiful dames I had ever seen! She had jade green eyes and hair long and wavy, black as midnight. Her lips were red and full, perfect for kissing, and her skin so white and creamy, I just wanted to reach out and touch her.

Like good bourbon, dripping innuendos, she was dressed in something that made her feel good in her skin, with an obvious air of confidence. Her legs reached up to Peking. I could tell that her femininity lasted past midnight, when the mascara had smudged. She took ownership and didn't share.

My gaze held hers for a brief moment but felt like an eternity. I swear I could feel my hard on and hoped that it wasn’t showing. Quickly, I made the move to sit behind my desk and motioned her to sit in the available chair. Watching her sit down, it took everything I had to not stare at her as she crossed her legs. I swear I caught a flash of her lace garters holding her silk stockings underneath her black skirt, wondering what else she was baring. I caught myself moaning to myself at that thought and swallowed my gum. She could have passed for Hedy Lamarr except for her Eurasian eyes.

Shuffling papers on my already messy desk, I found what I was looking for; my trusty notepad. Before I spoke, I calmed myself down with the help of a big gulp of scotch.

“What can I do for you, Miss?” I asked, my voice a bit shaky from my much-too-obvious desire.

“I understand you are a private dick,” she said, causing me to choke a little on my scotch.

“Well, that’s one way to put it,” I chuckled. I kept thinking about how I’d like to get my dick into her privates.

“I need your help,” she said interrupting my private thoughts. “I have been the victim of blackmail for some time now. At first, it wasn’t so bad. The terms weren’t unbearable and the consequences of being found out would have been far worse. But now the situation has become far more dangerous and I fear that it’s spiraling out of control.”

“Back up just a bit doll,” I said, more than a little confused. “Who is blackmailing you and why?”

“When I moved to Shanghai, it was for a fresh start. I opened a quaint little tea shop near the marketplace with money saved up from a previous enterprise I ran in the alleyways of Suzhou. I wanted to distance myself from that life and make a living honorably,” she said almost wistfully.

“What was so dishonorable about your business in Suzhou?” I asked, curious to know about this dame’s lurid past.

“I was a prostitute,” she admitted, “a damn good one. My services were varied, but my specialty was oral sex. I could give a blow job that would make a man see God.”

“Really?” I inquired much too eagerly.

“Oh, yes,” she beamed, seeming to forget the intent of the conversation. But hey, who was I to stop this broad if she wanted to elaborate? “It’s a combination of how my tongue swirls around a man’s cock, how I fit the head in my throat, and how my hands fondle his balls while I slip a finger into his anus. I was able to charge more for a blow job than for letting a man fuck my ass, especially when I let them cum on my face.”

I nearly swallowed my tongue. My depraved imagination had me throwing her down on my desk and feeding her my cock, while I filled her cunt and her asshole with giant dildos. I was definitely taking this job, and if I was fortunate enough, I’d take her as well.

“But it didn’t take long for my past to catch up with me. An ominous looking man came into my tea shop and recognized me. My looks do not exactly help me blend in and my eyes gave me away,” she continued.

“He could tell I was embarrassed by his presence and was anxious for him to leave. He took advantage of my discomfort and continued to speak of the last time we had seen each other, when his cock had been buried deep in my ass. I asked him to keep his voice down, but he seemed to take great delight in making me uncomfortable. Finally, to avoid the disparaging stares from other customers, I asked him to follow me down to the area below the shop. I figured he wanted something and wouldn’t leave until I discovered what that something was. I thought he was looking for a freebie and decided there were worse things than giving him a quick fuck and sending him on his way,” she said bluntly. “But when he saw the large room, his eyes lit up like the lights at The Bund.”

She took a deep breath and sighed. “He told me that his original plan was to extort money for his silence about my lurid days as a fuck toy in a seedy back alley room. But this was better.”

“What was better?” I asked, my curiosity killing me.

“He decided that the large space was perfect for his new enterprise. We would be partners; I would supply the space and he would provide the customers. He would reap all the profits, and I would keep my new respectable reputation unsullied,” she explained.

“I’m guessing the enterprise is illegal?” I asked, knowing full well that this damsel in distress wouldn’t be here if this basement business wasn’t a vice cop’s wet dream.

“It started out just as an underground brothel for those who enjoy kink. He had rooms built with hooks on the walls and stocked them with many kinds of whips and phallic devices. He brought in young women and promised them a way to earn money to help their families. Men, and sometimes women too, pay large sums of money to indulge in the most deviant forms of sexual debauchery. Sometimes they would all gather in the large room for gang bangs or orgies. And, although the percent he gives to the whores is quite small, it’s more money than many of them have ever seen in their lives. They are willing participants. So, as I said, it seemed a reasonable arrangement at the beginning. There was a back entrance so none of my customers who came into the tea shop were aware of the decadence occurring below their feet,” she explained further.

“What kinds of decadent acts?” I asked. While the details were not important, I found my curiosity, and my lust, demanded to know.

“There are men who get aroused from the act of whipping a whore’s tits and pussy and ass,” she said without flinching. “Others like enjoy securing women to the pallets, I can’t call them beds as they are wooden, with ropes or cuffs while playing with their bodies. Some whores get clamps on their nipples and are spanked harshly as the customer takes them roughly from behind.”

My brain said that was plenty of information, but my cock said, “Go on.”

“There are the typical acts of regular fucking, oral sex, and anal sex of course. But also, some who enjoy using sound bars for a more intense play time,” she replied.

“Sound bars?” I asked. I knew what they were, she just surprised me with the casual way she spoke of them.

“Sound bars, for sounding, you know, slim, and not so slim, metal rods that one can insert inside a...”

I stopped her right there. Picturing a metal bar being inserted into my cock made me squeamish, although suddenly, the idea of inserting said object into this lovely former whore was causing my balls to ache.

“Let’s move on,” I said suddenly, afraid I would cum in my trousers and lose what could likely be the most interesting case of my life. “You said things got dangerous. How?”

“It became dangerous when some of the customers started using and dealing opium in my basement,” she stated, her jade eyes shimmering with the faintest hint of tears.

With that came the dreams that made my cock crow as I listened to her.

Shanghai was worlds apart from Boston. Opium was billed then as a panacea for all of mankind`s aches and pains. In a crumbling city whose streets have no names; puffing away in the alleys and grottos.

For all practical purposes, I was an opium-eater. It intoxicated me, at times with amorality, but it also relieved me of sins from my past.

All at once, my memory played back a time when I looked at the dens as my truffle joints, taking my revenge on Dante. Opium became my aphrodisiac in the backrooms of hallucinations. Opium is soft and dark; the smell and texture like undercooked brownies. It was plentiful in crumbling alleys with no names behind bamboo curtains. Its red-painted walls and bodega candles, as Count Basie played on the radio, mixed with the static of this electric atmosphere. Smoking and fucking all night, and feeling like crap the next day, was the norm.

I shook myself out of my reverie and looked at the lovely dame beside me, her eyes pleading with me to take her case. She was intoxicating; how could I refuse? Then, without remembering how I got there, suddenly I found myself in the basement of her respectable tea shop. But this level of the building was anything but respectable!

I looked around to see naked whores with chains around their necks and evidence of flogging on their bright red tits and asses. The distinct smell of the drug I craved was heavy in the air. I looked down at my hand and saw that it held the breast of the green-eyed goddess. We were both instantly enslaved by the sweet, intoxicating scent. There was nothing to do at this moment but to give in to our urgent depraved needs. If I was going to give in to temptation, I would go all the way off the deep end; and it would be worth it! I decided to fuck her now and then we could work out the details of her case afterward.

“Take me into one of the private rooms and convince me with your wiles,” I coaxed.

She looked at me demurely and said, “Alright, Mr. Watson, get ready to see God.”