Dirk brushed off the remnants of Morty Hemple’s cock and held aloft the object for everyone to see.
“It’s a key,” Mausie commented. “But what sort?”
“Could be for anything,” Shandy said. She loved the way Dirk fingered the loop around the end of the key. Attached to it was a label with something written on one side. “What does that label say?” she asked, leaning in closer to catch a deeper whiff of that husky post-coital mansmell that Dirk still exuded from every delicious hunkpore.
“It’s some numbers. 131-16-0237.”
“Whatever do you think they refer to?” Shandy asked.
Dirk looked at Mausie. “Can you tell us?” he asked. “This is, after all, your very impressive cock collection.”
But all Mausie could do was shrug, and smooth out her Liza-With-A-Z hairdo. “Fucked if I know,” she replied. She bent over and scooped up the wooden stand upon which Morty’s impressive cock once stood at admirable attention. "Oh that Morty," she sighed nostalgically, "he did have a big one."
“So,” Dirt reasoned, “this key has been sitting inside Morty’s cock since 1978. That’s nearly 30 years ago. Good god, these numbers could mean anything. And whatever lock it fits probably doesn’t even exist now.”
Shandy snapped her fingers which brought everybody’s attention back to her, which was really why she did it. “I think I know who could tell us! Mausie, who made all these…um…figurines for you?”
Mausie gave a haughty sniff. “You won’t believe me if I told you.”
“Mausie, this could be important.”
“Oh all right,” she conceded, “It’s Will van Pill.”
“The famous sculptor?” Shandy blurted out, for she was not without some culture in her life. It wasn’t all about tits and sequins, you know.
“Who’s that?” Carmene and Iva asked in unison.
Shandy rolled her eyes. “Will van Pill is only Australia’s greatest living sculpture. He’s world famous for his outrageously pornographic sculptures. Ever heard of ‘Fortunate Fornicating Foursome’? What about 'Humping Horny Harry’s Stump'?” But all Shandy got back from Carmene and Iva were blank looks. “He’s been banned by nearly every government in the world. All you need to know is that it don’t get much more famous in the world of sculpturing that Will van Pill.”
“Oh yes, he’s a famous sculptor now," Mausie said, “but when I met him, he was just a poor, struggling Arts student down at Brunswick Tech.” She turned back to her cock-laden mantle and picked out the one that sat at the far end. It was another enviably endowed “figurine” with the name “Pill” stenciled at the bottom. “He presented it to me as a sort of going away gift before he went to London and made it into the big time.” She turned it over and looked at the base. The year of 1962 was written across the bottom in thick black texta. “Gosh,” she sighed, “was that really 1962…?” She turned it right side up again and admired its girth. So were all the girls in the room. “By the late 1960s his fame had become all too much for him so he returned to Melbourne by which time I’d taken a new lover and well, you know, I rather fancied the idea of a memento.”
“So if we go to Will van Pill surely he’ll remember putting a key inside one of your cocks?” Carmene asked hopefully.
“After nearly 30 years?” Mausie asked. “Darls, I wouldn’t hold your breath. Do you know how much pot that man has smoked? To say nothing of how much coke he’s snorted and how much heroin he’s shot? These days I doubt that he would even remember me! If you only knew the number of—”
“Wait a minute,” Dirk cut in. “You put the surname of each of your lovers on the base of each plaster cast?”
Mausie nodded. “There’s been so many that I needed a way to remember who belonged to which co—”
“So if this one on the floor is Morty, who...” he said, pointing to another of the sculptures on the mantle just as large as the one scattered into pieces on Mausie’s Maui Tropicale print semi-shagpile, “...is that?”
They all turned to look at what Dirk was pointing to. It was another plaster o’ phallus also marked HEMPLE. After a moment’s silence, they turned to find a deep crimson blush spreading across Mausie’s face. “Oh…oh, that…?” she stammered. “It’s…ah…hmmmm, yes.” She tapped her index finger against her chin, and then grabbed the cock labeled HEMPLE and looked at the bottom of the base. “Oh my!" she exclaimed, staring at the pornocock in her hand. "This is Morty!" She showed the bottom of the base: it read '1978'.
"It's that's Morty," Shandy cried out and then pointed to the mess on the floor, "who's cock got smashed?"
"Well you see, it’s like this," Mausie replied, "Morty isn’t the only Hemple I’ve…uh… entertained.”
“Morty had a brother?” Iva said.
Shandy backhanded Iva across the shoulder pad. “No, you big nitwit. Morty had a son.”
“Saul?? You bedded both Morty AND Saul???”
“Now, don’t get all your bra straps in a bundle. Morty knew all about it. In fact it was his suggestion. Saul’s trial wasn’t going well and it looked like he was about to get put away. So Morty was faced with the prospect that his only son was just about to go into jail having never had sex with anyone yet.”
"Really?” Shandy asked, picturing Saul’s lean, taut frame and how the tight tee-shirt he’d worn the other night at Sassy Palms had shown all the essentials off to perfection. He certainly gave Franklyn a run for his money, and that’s saying something. “Saul was a virgin?”
“Before going into prison, he was. But you know what prison can be like, and Morty, bless his fatherly little heart, didn’t want his son’s first sexual experience to be up the poop-shooter with some brute named Bongo. So the day before the verdict was announced, Morty dropped Saul off here and I…well, you know. And before he left, I made him model for me.”
“Didn’t he ask why?”
“Of course he did, and I told him. He seemed quite amused and flattered by the whole thing. As well he should. As you saw, Morty packed a wallop, but Saul had at least a good inch on his dear old Dad. That’s when he said that he would be virtually driving past Will van Pill’s studio and would be happy to drop it off. ”
“So,” Dirk mused, “it was Saul who dropped off the mold at Will’s place?”
“What are you thinking, my darling?” Shandy asked. She tried to act casual as she gripped Dirk's baseball-sized bicep and drunk in his heady beefcake bouquet.
“Saul was looking at jail time, right? What if Saul had something to hide? What if he had something he needed to keep safe while he was in the slammer? What if this key is to something like a safe deposit box? Nobody could get inside it unless they had this key. What better place to hide it than in one of Mausie’s momentos.”
“But this is all just theory,” Shandy said. “We don’t know Saul’s got anything to do with this key. Saul’s just got out of jail, he can’t afford to be caught up in some scandal if he’s not even involved. I still say we go to Will van Pill and ask him. Surely he’d remember hiding a key inside a plaster cock, even if he has swallowed enough drugs to knock out half of Woodstock. So Mausie, tell us, where is Will van Pill’s studio?” But everyone found a hesitant frown on Mausie’s round, sweet face.
Dirk laid a gentle hand on Mausie’s shoulder. “What is it, Mausie? Is there something else we need to know?”
“I wasn’t going to mention this because I didn’t think it was relevant. But I think it might be connected. The last time I saw Will was about a year ago and he told me he’d taken up with a new lover.”
“Did he say who it was?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Who, Mausie?” Shandy and Dirk and Iva and Carmene chorused together. “WHO???”
“It’s that psychic: Clare Voyant.”
