The Case of the Loving Sisters

Burger: Yes, your honor, I'll try to do that. Now, Miss Patootie, did you like your sister, the defendant?

Miss Patootie: Like her? Of course! Whenever we visit one another we sleep in the same bed, don't we? That tongue of hers, the way it licks around my pussy lips and dances around my clit, licks my nipples, absolutely incredible. Sometimes we'd give each other a tongue bath, from head to toe, lick and suck every nook and cranny; she would suck my toes...

Burger: Yes, I'm sure we get the picture.

Judge: Mr. Mason, aren't you going to object here?

Mason: No, your honor. There's nothing in the California Penal...

Judge: Then I will. I want to hear more about those toes, Miss Patootie, and anything else you might wish to share with us.

Miss Patootie: Well, sure, your honor. As I was saying, she, Melody that is, would put each toe in her mouth, one at a time, and suck them, make them all wet and slippery, then lick between each toe, all the way down to the webbing, then put them all in her mouth together...

After about 20 minutes of Miss Patootie's detailed recitation, Burger and the Judge have their hands in their pockets, listening dreamily, quietly jerking off. Since nobody seems to be paying attention, Della and Melody begin fondling each other beneath their dresses and kissing.

Miss Patootie:... and then when she got done licking my asshole she'd move to the hollow of my back...

Suddenly Mason stands up. "Your honor, I'm not sure what's going on here, it all seems so foreign to me, not anything I'm aware of from my stellar upbringing and supreme academic accomplishments, and certainly nothing I can recall in the California Penal Codes (unless it's in Volume 13, which someone has stolen from me), but I see by the clock that it's almost noon. Perhaps this would be a good time to break for lunch." The sound of his voice has brought everybody back to reality again, and Miss Patootie stops talking. The court reporter, who has been getting down every word Miss Patootie has said, is in a sweat and looks exhausted, but is sorry to hear her come to an end. She only got as far as Melody sucking her armpits and licking her neck, so it wasn't a complete picture, but enough to make the transcript a bestseller if it ever got out.

Judge: Court adjourned until 2:00 o'clock.

Terry, Della, and Paul go to a small sandwich shop. "Finally," Paul says. "I'm starved."

"Sorry, Paul," Terry says, "no lunch for you. I want you to do me a favor. Take the next plane to New York and track down a Salvi Lumpkin; he lives in either Greenwich Village or the Upper West Side."

"Okay. Then what?"

"He owes me $100, make sure he gives it to you. If you leave now you should be back before the trial starts again." (Flying from L.A. to N.Y.C.; finding a person, address unknown; and flying back again in under two hours is nothing in Terry Mason's world, it happens all the time.)

After Paul leaves, Della says, "Good move there, Terry baby, getting rid of Paul that way. Now we can go back to the office, there's a couch there with our names on it, and I've got an itch that needs some major scratching."

"I'll see you back in court, Della," says Mason. "Got something important to do." And he leaves.

At 2:00 o'clock the trial resumes.

Burger: I call my next witness: Mac Kawalski.

The cab driver enters the witness stand.

Burger: Mr. Kawalski, have you ever met the defendant, Melody Patootie, before?

Kawalski: Sure, at Della Treat's apartment. All three of us met there one early evening and fucked each other like crazy. First Della wanted me to suck...

Burger: That's okay, Mr. Kawalski, we don't need to hear any more about that. Did she mention anything about her sister at that time?

Kawalski: I don't think so. All I heard was a lot of "Fuck me harder up my cunt, big boy" and "Oh yeah, eat my pussy out, suck it good," stuff like that.

Burger: I see. So based on what you heard her say, you wouldn't know her feelings for her sister, whether there were ill feelings, for example?

Mason: I object, your honor! The question is irrelevant and impertinent, stupid and childish, and several other things that would be distasteful for a person of my gentlemanly demeanor to even mention in this courtroom, and the prosecutor is badgering the witness, forcing him to perjure himself, defame his sterling character, and many other despicable things too sickening to mention.

Burger: Your honor, Mr. Mason has no fucking idea what he's talking about, as usual, if anyone would just take the time to notice. Every week he gets away with this horseshit malarkey, engaging in all kinds of nutty courtroom carnival tricks and shenanigans to provide cheap entertainment and garner higher ratings.

Judge: I sustain part of the objection and overrule the rest, but I'm not sure which. Proceed, Mr. Burger.

Burger: I'm through with this witness, your honor. All yours, Mr. Mason.

Mason: I have no questions for this witness, mainly because I already have the case all wrapped up and solved, ready to make my suspenseful and heart-pounding revelation of who committed this dastardly crime, as soon as the next commercial is over.

Right then Paul Snake walks into the courtroom and takes an empty seat at the back. Mason turns dramatically and points a finger at Snake. "It was you, Paul, who killed lover boy!"

"What?" Paul says, dumbfounded.

"You planted those fingerprints and those whatever-you-call-them, condoms, yuck! with Melody's, Miss Patootie's, I-can't-even-say-it fluids on them."

"It's a lie!" shouts Paul. "What about the hair and the panties?"

"You got the hair from one of your floozies and Paul, please empty what's in your right pocket."

"What?"

"You heard me," says Mason. "Empty your right pocket."

He reaches in and slowly pulls out a pair of thong panties, just like the ones marked Exhibit C on the evidence table.

"How the fuck did that get there?" says Paul.

Burger: See what I mean, your honor? Every damn week, one ridiculous antic after another.

Judge: That's enough, Mr. Burger. Everybody loves it, especially the sponsors.

"So, there are my purple thongs," says Melody. "I wondered what happened to them. You didn't have to steal them, you know, Mr. Snake, you could've just asked for them. I would've been more than happy to let you take them off me yourself."

Paul Snake is found guilty and sentenced to be executed in the California gas chamber, to be carried out the next day. Case closed. Credits roll.

But that night something extraordinary happens and Terry Mason receives a phone call from Ham Burger.

"Terry, love, we just arrested some stranger we never even knew about who confessed to killing lover boy because he had the hots for Miss Patootie who wouldn't run away with him, and he thought it was because she still had feelings for lover boy, so he killed him. Sheer act of passion. Of course, as usual, no one will ever know what really happened because the case is finished with, filmed and filed away, waiting for syndication, and you look like a goddam genius again."

"Sorry, Ham. That's how it goes. You lose some and then you lose again."

Epilogue

Terry, Della, Melody, and Melody's sister are all sitting in Terry Mason's office. "Terry, I'm still not sure how you got to the bottom of that horrendous, near-disastrous error you made regarding Paul," Della says.

Mason says, "Yeah, well, you know, everyone makes a tiny boo-boo now and then, even I. But it's easy to figure out, Della, especially for someone with a mind as sharp as mine. When you called Paul at his office at the beginning, you heard voices in the background, right?"

"Yes," Della admits.

"And what did those voices indicate to you, Della?"

"That someone was getting fucked up the ass and then being asked to get lost."

"I don't have a clue what you mean by the first part of what you just said, but obviously Melody, who was there, as she was being asked, rather rudely, I must say, to leave, accidentally dropped a pair of under garments she had in her handbag, kept there for emergency purposes in case she was in a motor accident or something and needed to go to the hospital and wanted to quickly change into something clean before being transferred there. Didn't your mother teach you anything, Della? Paul just picked them up and put them in his pocket."

"But what about the finger prints, the vaginal fluid?"

"Melody obviously saw what was later used as the murder weapon while visiting her sister and, curious to learn what it could possibly be, secretly carried it away, thus touching it, perhaps to a museum to have it identified, and then brought it back. It is such a strange object, I've never seen anything like it before. And I have no idea what vaginal fluid even means, so I just ignored it."

"That just leaves the hair on his fly."

"Ah. Easy. The wind. I checked with the weather bureau and it was windy that day, and as Paul walked among people who were losing their hair due to aging and/or cancer, the wind scooped up the strands and deposited them on his fly."

"If you say so," says Della. (Some fucking genius, she thinks.)

Melody's sister tells her that she's sorry she thought she was trying to frame her, that lover boy was threatening her with harm and even refusing to fuck her anymore, which was worse, if she didn't go along with his scheme.

"It was pretty hurtful after all the good times we've had together, but I get it," says Melody.

"How about if I make it up to you with a real hot, no-holds-barred fuck session for the ages?" declares her sister.

"Can I come, too?" asks Della.

"What about Terry?" Melody whispers to her.

"Fuck him," Della whispers back. "I'm just wasting my time with that dickhead loser."

"Wait a minute," Della suddenly says in her normal voice. "What about Paul?"

"All taken care of, Della," says Mason. "Free as a bird again and still trying to find my Volume 13 of the California Penal Codes. You know, I wonder if that Ham Burger took it, it's just like him to do something sneaky like that. What was it you were saying about a couch earlier? If you mean that one over there, I looked very carefully and couldn't find our names on it anywhere."

"Forget it, Terry sweetheart. Just forget it."