Dahl dropped his suitcase with a thump. He bent over it, snapped the catches, grabbed up a powerful-looking light, and clamped it onto his camera. The bright beam of the light shot out, enveloping the undulating tick-tock movement of the woman's haunches while the camera whirred. At the sudden glare of light, the woman looked back at us in surprise.
The man strode toward Dahl and seized him by the arm. "What the hell you think you're doin', Jack?" he growled belligerently. He was two inches shorter than Dahl, but broader. He had an inch-and-a-quarter cigar butt between his teeth and a two-day growth of beard.
Dahl shook off the hand and turned to me, ignoring the man. "The assistant district attorney is at the exit," he said to me.
"Assistant district attor-" The heavyset man paused. "What you talkin' about, mister?"
Dahl turned back to him. "Just tell the truth and everything will be all right." He removed the light from his camera and restored it to the suitcase.
The belligerence had departed from the stocky man's attitude. "Truth?" he said uneasily. "Truth about what?"
"You can call your lawyer later," Dahl said, bending over his suitcase again to snap its catches.
The man spun on his heel and hurried after the woman. He took her by the arm and hustled her along while she protested. They veered from the parking lot exit toward which the woman had been headed and went toward another some distance away. "Works every time," Dahl said to me with a broad grin as we got into my VW. "Sometimes I think everyone in the world has secrets, sexual and otherwise, that he doesn't want to talk to assistant district attorneys about."
"You'll pull that on a bishop someday and wind up in court for invasion of privacy," I said.
"Not a chance. A bishop would have run. You wouldn't believe their sex habits."
"You're an authority on the sex habits of bishops?"
"I'm an authority on sex habits, period," Dahl said calmly. "You got anything to drink at the motel?"
"No."
"Stop somewhere and I'll pick up a bottle of Scotch."
"This is Sunday, remember? In Philadelphia."
"Oh, yeah. Stop at a hotel, then, an' I'll scrounge a jug from a bellboy."
Twenty-five minutes later we arrived at the Carousel, the fifth of Scotch firmly in Dahl's hand. -He splashed two liberal drinks into water tumblers and handed me one. Then he opened his suitcase on the bed-I could see only a spare shirt in it in addition to all his movie equipment- and removed a projector. "Got somethin' to show you, cousin." He sounded pleased with himself. He fitted a small reel of film into the maze of sprockets and gears on the projector, then aimed the lens at the expanse of white wall at the end of the room.
The last thing I wanted to do was view home movies. "We should be going over-"
"Only take a minute," Dahl said smoothly. He flicked a switch, and a blurred image appeared on the wall. Dahl adjusted the focus, and a brilliantly clear color shot showed a girl in a bikini sitting beside a swimming pool. The camera lingered on her until she glanced up and reached self-consciously for a towel to place between herself and the camera.
It was only when the scene cut suddenly to two women unlocking a motel room door that I remembered the movies Dahl had taken at the Marriott during the occasion of our first meeting. Before I could say anything, the scene changed again. Clearly in focus were a group of women in what appeared to be an institutionalized setting I didn't recognize. Backs to the camera, two of the women were in the process of lifting their dresses and slips up around their shoulders, and I realized with a sense of shock that these were the movies that Dahl had taken inside the Washington bank.
Three women were facing the camera, obviously arguing, but in seconds they turned and emulated the first pair, who now had a girdle in one case and panties in the other down to the backs of their knees. Up went more dresses and slips as the first bare-bottomed duo dropped to the floor and stretched out. Another variety of underwear dropped and two more bare behinds popped into view, and then as the camera drew back slightly, three more.
All five plumped out attractively as their owners doubled up awkwardly and joined the first pair on the floor. The camera swept back and forth lingeringly over what appeared to be a field of nude buttocks of all shapes and sizes, the entire homogeneous fleshy expanse broken only by the intrusion of two garter belts and one angry-looking red pimple.
"You'll notice that although there's two good-lookin' young heads in the crowd the best-lookin' ass belongs to that woman on the left, who must be forty-five if she's a nickel," Dahl said. "You'd be surprised how often it turns out that way."
I had been so intent upon the image upon the wall that Dahl's voice irritated me. It was an intrusion upon my concentration. In another instant the picture flickered slightly and then the wall went dark. I forced myself back in my chair, in which I had been crouched forward tensely.
"First time I've seen it myself," Dahl said cheerfully, backing up the reel of film. "Just got it back from the processor. I'm gettin' better at those inside shots. Anyone can shoot an orgy in a woodland glade, cousin, but it takes practice to get those interiors. Let's look at it again."
I sat and watched the reappearance of the bare behinds upon the wall while I tried to analyze the effect the first viewing had had upon me. By nature I'm not the easiest individual to "turn on" sexually. Most men have some one sexual totem pole which invariably accomplishes erection. It had never been that way with me. All my life I was never sure what was going to bring it about. Sometimes at embarrassing moments nothing brought it about.
That was why it had been so great for me with Hazel Andrews. After an initial fiasco, the big woman and I had hit it off in bed together in a manner I'd never experienced before. Over the years I'd become so hesitant making an effort with women for fear of something going wrong that Hazel had been an exhilarating experience.
Dahl was watching me as he disassembled the projector and put it back into his suitcase. "Kind've got you, cousin?" he said shrewdly. "Don't get shook. It gets to most."
I had forgotten my Scotch until Dahl picked up his glass and took a swallow. "These nudie movies," I said after emulating him. "Do they really have such an appeal to-"
"That's not a nudie," he broke in. "What you just saw, I mean. It's never a nudie till you see the broads' snatches. In the trade we call these 'sunsets.' Don't ask me where the name came from. All you show is a few boobs and butts. They're as far as you can go in tight-censorship areas. Then there's the nudies, which I don't bother with — after all, when you've seen a couple dozen bare asses you've seen 'em all-an' finally the ones I make, the exploitation movies."
"Exploitation?"
"Yeah. A movie that tells a story but with a couple of zippy sex scenes in it that can be exploited in the ads. A nudie is just an ol' swimmin' hole background or some-thin' like that, and with a couple of recent Supreme Court decisions the market is openin' up. But hell, anyone can make a nudie." His tone was scornful. "A good exploitation movie is art, though. An' Dick Dahl makes the best."
"Then why do you need to keep on…" I hesitated.
There was nothing shy about the movie maker. "Why do I need to keep takin' banks to get up a fresh bankroll, you mean?" His grin was wry. "Because I get carried away. I've lost money on my films because I couldn't get my best sex scenes past the censors in the big-money markets."
"Then why not tone them down?"
He turned serious. "Listen, cousin, when you make a movie you make it right, don't you?"