showed no one in Erikson's office except him at his desk.
"Cut the stalling and unwrap the merchandise, baby," a man's voice said. Like the girl's, the voice was faint but clear.
I looked around the room. There was a door at the opposite end of the room from the hidden entrance. When I approached it, I saw the door was steel. It had a powerful spring-bolt lock. I eased the lock back, half-expecting to find the door locked on the other side. It wasn't. I inserted a hand and explored the other side of the door. It was paneled wood, concealing the steel, and it didn't have a keyhole. I opened the door wider.
Glaring light dazzled my eyes. I blinked and tried to focus. It was another moment before I could make out three women and two men in a room that looked like a photographer's studio. Cameras on tripods and high-intensity lights on standards with wires trailing from them were deployed seemingly at random. Along one wall was a backdrop depicting a beach scene. In front of the flat was a metal beach chair in a sandbox.
"When you said photos in the nude, you didn't say it was a gang job!" the girl's voice spoke up again. I could see her now. She was a frosted blonde with flippy curls and tight waves that made up a short, bouncy hairdo topped with short bangs.
"Look, Marcia," the younger-looking of the two men said. "We're paying you forty an hour and we thought we were buying a pro. Now either strip or bug off. The door is right over there."
The frosted blonde bit her lip. Her companions, a cynical-looking brunette and a chubby brownette, were already removing skirts and blouses. By the time the brunette peeled down a girdle and stood there rubbing at the red pressure marks on her slim flanks, the blonde was pulling her dress off over her head.
"That's better," the man said.
The brownette stripped to garter belt and stockings, the blonde to canary-yellow bikini panties. The second man, the photographer, held a light meter against each of the girls' bare bodies in turn. "That's a real nice piece of meat you've got there, Ginger," he said to the brownette as he removed the meter from the vicinity of her broad, nude buttocks. "Okay, Edna," he addressed the brunette, "get into the beach chair. I can't shoot your tail till those girdle marks fade out."
The brunette sauntered to the sandbox with an exaggerated hip flourish, tested the sand delicately with a toe, then sank down into the chair. Immediately she bridged with shoulders and heels, thrusting her stomach upward. "Goddammit, that's cold!" she cried out.
"Here's a blanket," the younger man said soothingly. He arranged it beneath her arched form and the brunette relaxed again. The man patted her bare belly. "That's the girl, Edna."
"Pants off, baby," the photographer said to the blonde. "We're all girls together here." He waited while the canary-yellow panties were removed. "A real blonde, hmm? When we do the black-and-whites, we'll have to touch up your bush with a little lampblack or there won't be enough contrast. That pale fleece of yours'll come through good in color, though. Now-"
"You're not going to put any dirty old lampblack on my-on me," the girl said indignantly. "I didn't come here to-"
"Oh, shut up, will you?" the younger man said wearily. "Get them posed, Ted. This is running into money."
"Stand behind the beach chair so your tits are aimed right at the camera over the top of Edna's head, Marcia," the photographer instructed the blonde. "Ginger, you squat down at the dividing line-no, make it at the foot of the chair with your butt aimed right at me and your-"
The sound of a warning buzzer jerked me to attention. I closed the door reluctantly and threw the bolt over quietly. When I turned around to look at the television monitors, a green light on the side of them had turned red. I went to the padded stool and sat
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