A New Investigation

I gave Ed a carefully sanitized report the following morning. We never saw "Renate" and "Pierre" again.

Liz and I were called back a third time a week later. We went because we still didn't have anything, but I was very close to giving this up as fruitless.

We again stripped off in the main work room. This time, the studio was set up with Victorian looking furniture. We got costumes. I got long trousers, a jacket with what was intended to look like a ruffled shirt front sewn between the lapels, and a top hat. Liz got an old style bustier. As Chico explained the scene, I would walk into the room, see Liz in the bustier, rip it off of her, and take her on the dirty sofa. We again declined Chico's whiskey, but he was putting down quite a lot himself.

We got through the scene ok, but Chico stopped it before either of us came. Almost manically, Chico explained the next scene. A beam had been suspended from the ceiling of the studio. Liz, now nude, had her hands tied over her head with a rope looped over the beam. Chico went to a corner of the studio and came back with an object which he handed to me. It was a multi-strapped whip, what used to be called a cat o'nine-tails. With a truly vicious look, Chico said, "You whip that bitch with this."

Chico left the studio, meaning that we were supposed to start the scene. There was no way that I was whipping Liz. I made a few half-hearted swings, careful to miss her entirely.

Chico stormed out of the control room. "You asshole pussy!" He grabbed the whip out of my hand and reared back to flog it on Liz's perfect ass. That was enough. I charged and tackled Chico. I drove him into the crappy sofa, which flipped over with us. Chico was rolling to get face-to-face with me. I initially thought that he was trying to get in position to land a good punch. However, as I kept trying to flip him onto his face, I felt something very hard under his belt. The asshole had a gun shoved in his pants. That's a good way to shoot your own balls off, but it was also a good way to shoot me if he got to it.

Our wrestling had moved us closer and closer to a wall. Chico was in better shape and stronger than I had expected. He got onto his back. I was down his body, with my head slightly below his chin. Chico was clawing for his gun.

I got a second jolt of adrenaline. I drove my right hand hard into the underside of Chico's jaw. His head snapped back and hit the wall very hard. I lucked out. Chico's head must have hit the wall exactly on a wall stud, because he was knocked unconscious. I quickly dug his gun out and verified that it was loaded. I took the safety off and, with one eye on Chico, picked Liz up and carried her to the end of the beam, where the rope tying both of her hands fell off of the beam.

While Liz untied her hands, I looked around for something to secure Chico. Fortunately, there were handcuffs in the room, consistent with the BDSM theme of the scene. They seemed real enough. I rolled Chico over and cuffed his hands behind his back. To be safe, I cuffed his ankles too. Then, I ran the rope that had been used to tie Liz between the two sets of cuffs. I hoped that would keep him restrained when he came to.

Still nude, I charged into the control room with Chico's automatic. Jazz was nowhere to be seen. Liz and I went out into the main workroom. Before we got dressed, we conducted a quick search. I found a large number of unlabelled DVDs like those found in Immokalee. Liz found two cabinets full of pills that looked like the Kleptopam. Fortunately, for purposes of probable cause, we also found several bags of what looked and tasted exactly like cocaine. That was enough. We put our clothes on and got the hell out of there.

I drove several blocks before I pulled over and pulled my regular cell phone from under the seat. I dialed a number which I knew well.

When Ed answered, I didn't identify myself. He knew my voice. I just said, "This is your reliable informant. Mangrove Coast Productions' offices right now has enough coke in it for distribution for sale. There's probable Kleptopam in quantity. The proprietor is wearing his own handcuffs in his porno-film studio." Ed didn't say a word before he broke the connection.

I had to catch myself several times and slow the car down. I was still on an adrenaline high.

Finally, Liz said, "Thank you for not whipping me."

"And scar that perfect ass? I'm not crazy."

Liz replied, "I wouldn't want to be whipped, but being tied up like that nude could be pretty sexy in different circumstances." There are a hundred reasons why I love this woman.

Ed did get a search warrant and raided Mangrove Coast the next morning. Chico was still there, still under the influence of his own drugs, and happy to tell Ed everything. The suspected coke was, indeed, coke. The pills were Kleptopam. That was enough to arrest Chico on Federal drug charges.

Ed brought back the seized DVDs. While Ed fended off flack for running an operation in Tampa without involving that office, I reviewed the DVDs. There was a tacit understanding between Ed and me that anything with Liz and me on it would be lost. What really got my attention, though, was a long series of videos featuring Jenny Mott.

What I took to be the sequence started with Jenny fucking a thin guy about her own age, rather like Liz and I started out for Chico. I suspected that the guy was Peter Smalley. That progressed to Jenny and multiple guys. She seemed more enthusiastic and into it, in a manic way, in the videos showing her being fucked by one guy while she sucked another guy, and a third jacked-off into her face. My suspected Peter Smalley wasn't in those videos. Then came the bondage and flogging videos. Those were sad, in part, because Jenny had a beautiful body that was being permanently deformed.

The conclusion had also been recorded. During one scene in which Jenny had been tied up and was being fucked in the ass, Chico suddenly showed up in the frame. He was completely out of control and completely naked. He shoved the male actor out of the way and entered Jenny himself. Jenny was so drugged up that it looked like she was enjoying it. However, things got very ugly very fast.

I inferred that Chico was having trouble keeping it up. Apparently, he decided that was Jenny's fault. With her arms and legs still tied, Chico lifted her up, spun her around, and began smashing his large fists into her face, hard. He mixed in a few body blows as well. I couldn't tell from the video whether Jenny even realized what was happening. Finally, she coughed up something that looked like blood and went limp. Chico dropped her on the floor and yelled, "Jazz, get her out of here." The video stopped there.

We shared that last video with the District Attorney for Pinellas County. In addition to Federal drug charges, Chico, whose real name was Ralph, found himself indicted by Florida for murder. I actually testified at his trial. Fortunately, only Ed and Liz knew the full extent of my involvement. My testimony was quick and limited to establishing chain of custody for the video showing Chico inflicting fatal injuries on Jenny Mott. Chico/Ralph was convicted and ended up with consecutive state and federal sentences of 250 years. The silent Jazz and Peter Smalley disappeared completely.

The Saturday after Liz and I had made our escape from Mangrove Coast Productions, we were at home, still shaking off what had been a fairly scary experience. Our phone rang about 1:00 p.m. Liz answered it. After listening a moment, she said into the phone, "Thank you. Let me ask Harry." Turning away from the phone to me, Liz said, "It's Lisa Cooper. She and Grant would like to know if we would like to go to their place and skinny dip."

"Sure," I answered.

Into the phone, Liz said, "We'll be right over."

Liz went upstairs and wrapped herself in the pareo she had bought during Operation Tarpon. I pulled on a pair of running shorts, sandals, and grabbed a couple of six packs of good imported beer.

When we rang the Coopers' doorbell, I heard a male voice yell, "Just come around back." Liz and I walked around the side of the house and into the backyard. Lisa and Grant were standing on the pool deck with their arms around each other. They were both completely nude.

"We thought that it was time that we gave it a try," Lisa explained.

Liz pulled off her pareo and I dropped my shorts. We had a very pleasant nude afternoon with Lisa and Grant by their pool. I fear that we hurt Grant's feelings though. At one point in the afternoon, he went into the house and came back out with a video camera. "How about just a little video?" he said. "We'll only show it to ourselves and you guys."

Lisa seemed enthusiastic. However, Liz said "Absolutely not! I've seen way too many cameras recently." Thankfully, Lisa and Grant had no idea what Liz meant.