Kinktober 29 - Noir

Kinktober prompt:
Noir

Contains: Breast Expansion

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Kinktober 29 - Noir

I stared into the grey blur outside my office window as I tapped tobacco into a clean paper. For once, it wasn’t raining in the city, but the fog had rolled in instead. The stuff was thick enough to cut the tension at a charity ball when a councilman’s wife meets his mistress. I rolled my cigarette and lit a match on the brick windowsill. Taking my glass from the desk, I sipped whiskey to wash down the smoke. It was half a drink at best—the end of the bottle. I needed to remember to have Miss Cunningham pick up a fresh one.

The case had started with a call to the home of a previous client, Miss Alexandra Key. A few years back, I’d helped her out with a classic blackmail case, and she needed my help again. Miss Key was beautiful. Beautiful in the way a wolf is beautiful. The kind of beautiful that will bite your hand as soon as look at you. I’d never seen a wolf, of course, but even I’ve read Jack London. Alexandra was tall with blonde curls that waved like the harbor at high tide. Blue eyes that could pierce a man through his soul, changing from mirth to rage in a heartbeat. Sharp cheeks with a perpetual rosy glow and lips she kept painted red as freshly spilled blood. She had legs that reached all the way to the floor and a bosom the size of two overfed Pomeranians.

Miss Key hired me to find a priceless family heirloom. A tufted titmouse carved from mahogany and crusted with gems. Alexandra showed me a photograph of herself holding the bird, and I couldn’t help but notice that the Miss Key I saw in the photo was considerably less well-endowed than the one standing in my office. She’d inherited the statue from a great-aunt who passed away and believed it was stolen by an old lover, Patrick Murphey.

On my way out of the house, I was waylaid by another young beauty. A few years Alexandra’s junior, perhaps twenty or twenty-one, Annika Key had all her sister’s attributes but downgraded slightly. Not quite as tall, not quite as buxom, but a bit softer in the face. Annika’s eyes were darker than Alexandra’s and, though filled with mischief, were quicker to anger than her sister’s.

“You should just forget about this case, Mister Slade.”

“And why’s that?”

“My sister is always losing things. I’m sure that dumb old bird fell behind a setee or some such. It’ll turn up in a week or so, no doubt. She’s wasting your time, not to mention our money.”

“I think I’ll decide for myself.”

Annika Key stepped closer to me until her generous chest, clad in nothing but a silk dressing gown, was so close to touching my overcoat that I couldn’t have slipped a cigarette paper between us.

“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to convince you?” She asked, looking up at me through thick lashes.

I stepped back, regretfully. “A generous offer, Miss Key, but I’m afraid I’ll have to decline.”

The Irish mob wasn’t nearly as powerful as some of the other families, but they were mean enough to make up for it. I don’t suffer from an abundance of self-preservation, but I wasn’t keen on picking a fight with an entire mob family. I followed his routine for a few days, paying off some street urchins to watch for him, then managed to “bump” into Paddy on his way from the restaurant to the pub. He let me know in no uncertain terms that he wanted nothing to do with his ex and that his brothers and cousins weren’t thieves. He added that even if they were, they’d never be daft enough to steal something so easily traced back to them.

I had to admit Paddy’s story held water, so I went to Miss Key’s house to break the news to her. Alexandra ranted and raved at me, pulling a derringer from the front of her dress and insisting that I wouldn’t get paid until I found her bird. I told her that was fine by me and beat a hasty retreat before my skin acquired any extra holes.

She yelled after me, “I’ll call the police, you beastly man!”

“That’s what you should have done in the first place!” I replied, slamming the door behind me.

And so there I was, alone in my office, sipping the last of my scotch and wondering how I would afford rent this month. Then I heard the rattling of my outer door as someone knocked. The lights in the receiving room were out, so I waited for the knocker to leave. No one worth seeing would show up at my office after midnight.

“Mister Slade?” A female voice called. “Mister Slade, I know you’re in there!”

I recognized the voice belonging to Miss Annika Key. I picked up my Colt from the desk and checked the cylinder, then walked from my office to the front door, keeping the gun hidden as I turned the brass knob. Annika was alone and unarmed, so I uncocked the Colt and dropped it in my jacket pocket.

“You have to help me, Mister Slade!”

Annika stepped into the office, and her overcoat fell open. I could see right away something was off. On our first meeting, I noted that Annika’s breasts were somewhat smaller than her sister’s. A fact I attributed to age, though both women were adults. Now, however, Annika appeared every bit as voluptuous as her sister, if not more so. She wore a simple red frock that clung to her feminine endowments like a sausage casing.

“Slow down, Miss Key. What’s going on?”

“It’s that damn bird, Mister Slade. Alex called the police, and they gave her the brush-off. Now she’s in a right state and even claims I stole it!”

I started rolling a fresh cigarette. “Probably because you did steal it.”

Annika’s sapphire eyes became blazing embers. “What“”

“You stole the titmouse,” I said. “Do you have it on you, or did you stash it somewhere?”

Miss Key seemed to deflate, then straightened her back to face me again. The motion pushed the sides of her coat open further, and I winced as if the top of that frock might split open.

“How did you figure it out?” She asked.

“Let’s just say you have
” I gestured at her cleavage with my cigarette, “An abundance of evidence.”