At 11:57 p.m. of October 11, the old man died. At 12:17, in the study directly beneath the chamber of death, bull-necked, florid-faced J. J. O'Brien, his personal attorney, began the reading of the last will and testament.
The mood of the eleven assembled members of the family of Salvatore Raffielo Carini who listened to the reading was neither sorrowful or reverent. It was rather a mood of wary anticipation sauced with relief at the passing. There was even an undertone of ribaldry in the conditioned air.
One of the granddaughters, plump, platinum, bitter as green marsala, summed it up perfectly when she leaned toward the husband seated beside her and whispered, "Who'd have thought the old bastard would die in bed-alone?"
like everyone else present save J. J. O'Brien himself, she was utterly unaware of the time-bomb concealed in her grandfather's last testament.
At the exact moment death came for the "Archbishop of Crime" as Salvatore Carini was not infrequently labeled by the Boston newspaper, Phyllis West Barrett, too, was dying in bed. But Phyllis was not alone...
As Freddy Gardiner methodically took his limited pleasure of her body, Phyllis Barrett felt increasingly like a corpse pressed into service by some latter-day Krafft-Ebing necrophiliac. Nothing ... nothing ... nothing ... The evermore meaningless ritual went on, as always with Freddy right on top in the evermore dreary missionary position-old number one-his stiff little prick plunging in and out of her hole with the uninspired regularity of a metronome.
A limerick, sniggered over a dozen years earlier at boarding school, drifted into Phyllis's mind....
There was a young plumber named Lee, who was plumbing his girl by the sea. When she said, "Stop your plumbing. I hear someone coming." Said the plumber, still plumbing, "That's me!" But certainly, Phyllis West Barrett of 70 Oak Street, Kitteridge, Massachusetts, just eighteen miles as the crow flies from the Jamaica Plain villa in which Salvatore Carini was simultaneously rattling in death. Unlike the lucky plumber of the limerick, Phyllis was definitely not coming-nor had she enjoyed orgasm with Freddy in lo! many a dreary moon.
The factor in their romance-romance?-that most troubled Phyllis was that Freddy didn't give a damn whether she came or not. His concern was solely with getting his own rocks off. As a lover, Freddy was a plumber of the worst water. He was romantic as a codfish cake left over from the traditional New England Sunday morning breakfast-considerate as a cormorant erotic as an iron deer standing stiff and stupid before an ugly old house in West Acton-slow as Christmas, though it only seemed that he came but once a year.
When, at last, the tip of his penis spurted to flood her vagina with his thin semen, Phyllis disentangled herself from his embrace and trotted, nude, to the adjoining bathroom. She took the Pill, of course, but as always felt impelled to rinse her body of every trace of her partner. There was also need for her to be alone, to collect her Freddy-fragmented self, to reassemble some portion of her identity.
Staring at her mirrored reflection, she thought, How did I ever get into this mess? How am I going to get out of it?
The first question was a put-on and she knew it. She knew perfectly well how she had drifted into her three-year affair with Freddy-and why. They were both unassimilated objects a-float on the small puddle of upper-case Kitter-idge-she a young Vietnamese war widow, he was victim of emotional warp inflicted by an invalid mother whose family tree was not only studded with the great names of Puritan Massachusetts but, Phyllis suspected, included direct descent from tyrannosaurus rex.
Starved for passion at a woman's most passionate age, her reactions to his lovemaking during the early stages of their affair had been affectionate and uninhibited. At first, Freddy's responses had seemed to match hers, but little by little he had whittled them down to this once a week one-shot in a bedroom of one of the exquisitely restored guest suites above Gerry Mann's Iron Kettle, the one good (and expensive) restaurant Kitteridge could boast.
Each Thursday night I die, she thought, wondering what she was becoming-wondering what had become of the warm and loving young woman she once had been, of the warm and loving young woman she still outwardly was, wondering how much longer she could hope even to retain the outer husk of what had been Phyllis Garrett.
As for her getting out of it, that might prove difficult. She had been letting things drift too long, waiting hopefully for something to happen-something like the death of Freddy's mother or his having to leave Kitteridge on business (other men got sent all over the map, didn't they?) or for a new and obviously wonderful man to turn up and simply preempt her.
Otherwise, any move she might make involved a risk of damage to her amiably established niche in the centuries-old stratification of Kitteridge society. And, damn it! she loved the fine old town and her place in it and hoped desperately that Kitteridge loved her.
A final glance at the mirror ... Damn it, I'm only twenty-eight! Then the chilling remembrance of having uttered the same thought into the same mirror when she was only twenty-seven, and only twenty-six-yes, and only twenty-five.
Before that, there had been Pres and all the love and warmth and excitement and sweet sex that she could happily have endured, followed by the hideous empty cavity of early widowhood. Before that? Who cared?
How long had she and Pres been married? Phyllis knew the answer exactly-two years, seven months, three days, fourteen hours before his departure to serve in the undeclared war-then another ten months, twenty-nine days, six hours until he was declared dead in some desolate jungle of what was, in her childhood, still Indo-China.
Now she wondered if this too brief period receding ever more rapidly in time, this single long lovely weekend of flaming fun and foolishness whose memory continued to make jelly of her guts, was to be the only oasis of fulfillment in what was becoming the sexual desert of her adult life.
There had been sex before Pres. of course. Few girls as attractive as Phyllis West even wish to grow up in this era without making due sacrifice to Priapus. But while none of her pre-Pres loves had been unpleasant and at least two were meaningful, it was Pres who had opened the physiological floodgates. It was Pres who had turned her on.
It was Pres who had made a woman of her. It was Pres who, using his prick as a tuning fork, had made her responses wildly and erotically rhapsodic. It was Pres, also, whose unaccountable wish to fly in Vietnam, to die in Vietnam perhaps, had left her lorn and trapped in an emotional dead end long before the urges of her body could wither and fade-urges he himself had prompted with the magic of his lovemaking.
She felt close to tears of self-pity and said, "Oh, for Christ's sake..." and gave herself a mental kick in the pants and walked, naked and very nice, from the bathroom.
Freddy, already attired with anal-pattern precision, sat in the flowered chintz armchair too small for him and puffed on his pipe while Phyllis scrambled into her clothes.
Whenever they went to bed together, Freddy's garments were always neatly folded or hung up, while hers lay heedlessly tossed on floor and chairs and bureau. Glancing at him corner-wise as she pulled her blue wool dress down over the still-svelte opulence of her body, she felt an impulse to cry, "Darling, if you can't be an ideal lover, I'll lay odds you'd make an ideal housekeeper."
She resisted the impulse, having small desire to add injury to the weekly insult he offered her in bed, completed dressing in silence. Nor did Freddy speak until she reached for her handbag. Then, standing up, tight-assed, he said, "Ready, dear?"
At the foot of the narrow, uneven staircase, Gerry Mann hailed them and asked them to join him in a nightcap. The Iron Kettle owner-operator was a pale blonde Vermonter who had turned up in Kitteridge a dozen years before and had purchased the pre-Revolutionary Reuben Craig house and converted it into the excellent restaurant it was.
He was seated in an authentic Hitchcock chair at an authentic antique desk, apparently going over his accounts with an authentic ballpoint pen. He said, rubbing his pale blue eyes, "If I keep this up much longer, I'll go blind. Come on in and sit down, sweet sinners."
There was no refusing him for the simple reason that he knew too much about their affair and possessed the fer-de-lance tongue of so many homosexuals. Not that their affair was a mystery to the rest of Kitteridge, but it remained a tacit one. Some of the more naive local matrons insisted that Gerry Mann was merely a sweet, sensitive, young man, but Phyllis knew better. She had no brief for or against the breed, but she did not like the freely offered use of the bedroom upstairs for their weekly trysts. She'd have preferred the anonymity of any reasonably comfortable motel between Boston and Worcester.
But Freddy had brought her to Gerry's for their third Big Deal (the first two had been in Phyllis's own bedroom, and Freddy had feared the inevitable parked-car gossip that must ensue) and thereby set a precedent. He was not the sort of man to break a precedent short of its continuation costing him something-say five or ten dollars for motel room rental.
Over vodka Collinses, the men chattered while Phyllis sipped and considered them in silence. She felt detached, twilight-sad, as though she were a casual passerby who had happened to stop at the Iron Kettle and was listening without much interest to the conversation of two strangers at the next table.
Somberly, she weighed them-Gerry, the bright, effervescent surface that reflected but never revealed, a mirror-man with canary-quick eyes and too facile gestures, delivering local gossip with glee that fell just short of giggles.
The too pretty daughter of Hogan, the liquor store owner, had come home pregnant from college and refused to name the unlucky father-to-be ... rich, eccentric old Mrs. Holmes Abbott had been caught red-faced with a Meissenware satyr concealed in her ample bosom, a satyr not only glossily impotent but unpaid for when lifted from a shelf in Miss Colton's bookshop ... poor Zach Citron, whose World War Two battle fatigue had made him a sporadic exhibitionist, had displayed himself in the doorway of prudish Miss Thorpe, the high school English teacher, with his dong gift wrapped by a large pink satin bow...
" ... and they say it took her ten minutes to stop looking and call the police!" Gerry concluded.
Freddy said, "They'd better put him away again. Any man crazy enough to try that with Miss Thorpe has got to be really crazy. She's seventy-two years old. I know, because my mother...."
Phyllis tuned him out, wondering again as she watched his talking face how she had ever managed to delude herself into believing this stodgy, dull, young-old man attractive. At first, she had worried that he would not offer her marriage, now she was afraid that he would and might somehow pressure her into acceptance.
She thought, 'No, no, a thousand times no!" said the female centipede crossing her legs.
She heard Gerry saying, " ... over the twelve-thirty news just before you came downstairs. Old Sal kicked the bucket around midnight. You can bet there'll be all kinds of hell to pay."
Freddy said, "The more they kill each other off, the better it is for the rest of us."
"The trouble is," said Gerry, "they have a nasty way of spilling over when they shoot it out. This isn't Chicago in the Twenties. They're in everything now."
"Especially old Sal Carini," said Freddy.
"Who's he?" Phyllis asked.
Two pairs of eyes rested on her with astonishment, and the silence was as pregnant as Hogan's unlucky daughter. Finally, Freddy said, "Sal Carini has been running the Boston underworld since they got rid of the Gustin Gang."
"Who are the Gustin gang?" Phyllis felt bewildered and increasingly annoyed at being treated like a halfwit. As a native New Yorker, she had never concerned herself with such minor-league matters as the rackets and racketeers of Boston.
"Just be thankful you never knew them, darling," said Gerry, "or Sal Carini, the man who had them destroyed in various, highly unappetizing ways."
Ever since she had met him, five years ago, Phyllis had felt oddly uncomfortable in Gerry Mann's presence without knowing why. Now she knew. For an instant, the reflecting mirror slipped and something of what lay beneath glittered out at her from the pale blue, canary-quick eyes.
Why! she thought. He hates me ... he's always hated me!
Minutes later, driving home with Freddy, she felt chillier than the frost-laden October air. What had she done to earn the hatred of Gerry Mann of all people? The question plagued her until shortly before two o'clock, when sleep finally claimed her in the big double bed she had shared so happily with Pres and still slept in.
CHAPTER TWO
Phyllis awoke to a beautiful smiling morning feeling like a schoolgirl on the first day of vacation. She lay snug in her wide soft spool bed in the little jewel box of a house which had once been the gardener's cottage of the Barrett estate. Although the estate itself had, in accord with Pres's father's will, long been converted into a parochial school, the cottage had been willed to Pres and, through Pres's will, to Phyllis. Across the gentle slope of its fall-faded lawn, she could revel in the riotous October colors of the armies of elms and oaks and maples that all but blanketed the town from the air.
Her sense of well-being would endure through the weekend, to diminish steadily Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, with Thursday evening looming ever nearer and gloomier. Back to school again-oops! Back to bed again with Freddy the Freeloader!
This was ridiculous. She was a grown woman with independent means, a woman with no true obligations, either emotional or financial. Why didn't she simply take a trip, a trip long enough to suffice as a permanent break (and brake) in the dismal affair?
Phyllis knew why, even as she uttered the empty question. She had no desire to be a woman traveling alone, a rootless rudderless female sooner or later falling prey to one or more of the males who take such excursions merely with seduction in mind. Or worse, to become one of those pathetic aging females who huddle in groups in the saloons of cruise ships and resort hotels, playing endlessly at canasta, Mah-Jongg or contract bridge, huddling like flocks of fat sheep banded together against the predator who might offer them one final taste of life.
Another look out the window restored her flagging morale, and sight of the blue morocco traveling clock on the bedside table reminded her that she was due at the country club in exactly forty-eight minutes. Her golf date was with Beth Davis, not only her best and dearest friend in Kitteridge, but a lady invariably prompt who grew grumpy when kept waiting more than two minutes.
Phyllis showered and dressed hastily and went downstairs to breakfast before she was fully dry. Hilma, her maid-of-all-work from the Finnish colony in nearby Aylesworth, clucked disapproval as Phyllis wolfed sausage, bacon and an English muffin, gulping her coffee. A fine cook, Hilma did not like to see even her simplest offerings treated so cavalierly.
Reading correctly the expression on her pug-dog face, Phyllis put down her cup and said, "Why didn't you wake me sooner? You know I'm meeting Mrs. Davis at the club at ten o'clock."
"Last time you told me you'd throw the clock at me," said Hilma.
"I may do that anyway." They smiled at one another in mocking amiability based on complete understanding and acceptance of their loose-leafed relationship as mistress and servant.
"Damn!" Phyllis swore as she failed to find a cigarette within reach, Hilma fished a half full pack from the pocket of her apron, offered her one. As she lit it for her mistress, she said, "I think I'll change my brand. You smoke all my smokes."
"No comment." Phyllis took a deep puff, exhaled with a happy sigh, paused just outside the front door as the telephone rang behind her. A half minute later, Hilma appeared in the doorway, clutching the handset with the heel of a hand clamped firmly over the earpiece.
"Who is it?" Phyllis asked.
"A man-from Boston. I think he's a reporter."
"What does he want?"
"He says he wants to talk to you-that it's very important."
Phyllis could think of no reason why she could have become suddenly newsworthy-if, indeed, she was newsworthy. She said, "Tell him I just took off to play golf. Tell him I'll talk to him later. Tell him to go to hell!"
Then she was off in her chrome yellow Karmann-Ghia, making the driveway gravel spurt under her tires as she swung into Oak Street and headed for her game.
Thanks to an approach that put her ball two feet from the cup on the eighteenth green, she emerged one up. It was one of her rare wins over Beth Davis. Beth had, by her own admission, the form of "an astigmatic octopus with the hives" but she had the knack of staying in the fairway and the competitive instincts of a hungry hyena. Phyllis, who played a far stronger, more stylish game, beat her on an average of one time in five. Since their customary wager was lunch at some decent restaurant, Phyllis had picked up innumerable tabs during the past five years, hence was elated over her win. After paying off their caddies, the two women strolled into the ladies' locker room and repaired their sport-ravaged grooming.
As she reached for a face towel Beth growled, "You'd never have made it if your drive on the fifteenth hadn't skipped over the water hazard."
"Oh, come on!" said Phyllis. "I whupped yuh far an' squar. If there's one thing I hate, it's a sore loser."
"If there's one thing I hate, it's a sore winner," said Beth. "Okay, if you must have your pound of flesh, I'll take you to Gerry Mann's."
Phyllis opened her mouth to say she didn't want to go to the Iron Kettle, then closed it lest Beth, an astute interrogator, ask her why.
"What's the matter, Phyl-or shouldn't I ask?"
Phyllis thought, Damn! She said, "You shouldn't."
"You are a sore winner. Would you rather go to Howard Johnson's or the Greek's?"
"Heaven forbid!" Neither woman liked the prefabricated food at the local Johnson franchise-and the entrees served by the Athens Chophouse were invariably awash, if not submerged, in grease and totally unappetizing.
They drove to their destination separately, and Phyllis steeled herself en route against any double entendres Gerry might have ready about her trysts upstairs with Freddy Gardiner. After earlier rendezvous, she had felt no such trepidation, but the dropping of the mirror-mask and the flash of sheer hatred beneath unnerved her where Gerry Mann was concerned-plus the fact that last night was the first time he had intruded on Freddy and herself in any way.
There had been currents in the air, invisible tensions almost palpable, that she neither liked nor understood. She had felt oddly shut out of the conversation between her lover and his friend. Friend, she wondered as a tiny node of near-panic rode the underside of her diaphragm. Friend? She told herself that it was nonsense, that Gerry had been Pres's friend as well, that there had never been any suspicion of her late husband's total heterosexuality.
Many times, when they had been with Gerry, Phyllis had noted the slight alteration in Pres's tone, the tinge of mockery, the glint of hard-edged humor in his eyes. Only once, when they returned home had she questioned him about the Iron Kettle owner.
Pres had grinned the grin of a little boy caught at something mildly naughty, had said, "Come on, darling! Gerry's such a total fag."
Then he had rolled her on the big spool bed she now occupied alone and they had enjoyed one of their most memorable nights.
He had suggested they play homosexual there in the semi-darkness and, for the first and only time, had gone down on her. She had responded by going down on him and, before returning to normal lovemaking, he had essayed anal intercourse with her-but her virgin butt-hole had been too tight for his head and she had lifted her rump and felt grateful that he had let it slide into its customary orifice.
Afterward, she had said, "When nature rigged it so beautifully, why do so many people want it some other way?"
His reply had been an enigmatic, "Search me?" and, recovering swiftly from the bout just finished, he had rolled her over on her back and, mounting her, given her a thorough, position one fucking. Nor had they ever again sought this sort of variation in the brief course of their marriage. They had talked of doing it, but somehow, when their bodies merged and melted together, his penis had been where it belonged by rights-buried deep in her vagina.
No, she thought Pres was above suspicion that way. But Freddy...
Since Phyllis and Beth did not sit down until almost two o'clock, the old low-ceilinged, raftered dining room was nearly empty. Gerry himself was busy in the rear regions, preparing the menu for the dinner to come. Phyllis felt relieved under the circumstances that he was not on hand when they came in. They ordered the Number 3 luncheon (cream of celery soup, lamb chop mixed grill with watercress, Waldorf salad and choice of desserts...$3.50) and settled down to enjoy themselves with golf-sharpened appetites.
Despite an eighteen-year gap in their ages, Phyllis found Beth Harlow Davis a gas. Broad of beam, gray of hair, with a face like a pickled walnut, the older woman made no pretensions to even a vanished beauty. like Phyllis, she was a widow, although her single son was grown and long departed, and this had proved a strong bond between them, as had the fact that both enjoyed golf, bridge, and a few drinks late in the day.
Also, they both enjoyed good talk-or, rather, Beth enjoyed talking well while Phyllis enjoyed listening to her endless flow of insights into local history and gossip larded with shrewd comment on the larger world beyond Kitteridge.
like Gerry Mann, Beth Davis was a mine of personal information. But there all similarity ended. Where Gerry was sharp, sniggering, malicious, Beth was amused, amusing, tolerant. Her oft-expressed attitude toward this fondness for discussing her neighbors was, "I don't give a tinker's damn what people say about me behind my back, as long as they don't say it to my face. Therefore, I feel perfectly free to talk about other people behind their backs."
The difference between Beth and Gerry in the matter of gossip was, Phyllis reflected, parallel to the difference between a good journalist and a scandal monger. Furthermore, since Beth was Old Kitteridge, her sources were usually both wider and better informed.
Gerry had reported merely that Hogan's daughter had returned pregnant from college and refused to name the father of her child-to-be. Beth not only knew his name and lineage and the fact that he desperately wished to marry the girl, but that the senior Hogans were putting up an adamantine battle against it because the boy was not only an undergraduate militant but of Jewish descent as well.
Beth revealed also that Mrs. Holmes Abbott had lifted the Meissenware statuette satyr from Miss Colton's shelf because it filled a gap in a set of outrageously erotic porcelain figurines that were kept locked in a special room of her huge turreted mansion. The others, it seemed, had been purchased abroad and poor rich Mrs. Abbott did not dare buy such a statuette in Kitteridge lest her hobby be "misunderstood."
She informed Phyllis, also, that poor shell-shocked Zach Citron had been the one to howl for help after sex-starved Miss Thorpe had decided to take full advantage of the rare opportunity fate had placed on her doorstep.
Phyllis, laughing, said, "I suppose it all just goes to remind us again that you can't tell what people are by their usual behavior."
"If you're trying to say that you can't read a book by its cover, you're right on the button," said Beth. "I don't see why you're afraid of using cliches."
"I'm not. It's just that an English teacher I had at Finch used to tell us, 'If you can't say it differently, say it straight.' "
They lingered over their coffee and then Beth suggested, "Since you're coming over for cocktails, why not come now and kill what's left of the afternoon? Besides, I can use an extra pair of hands."
"Okay," said Phyllis. "I'll call Hilma."
"You do that while I visit the powder room," said Beth, rising and shaking down her green golf skirt.
Phyllis dialed her own number on the pay phone under the front stairs, hung up when she got a busy signal, thinking, That's odd-Hilma never uses the phone.
She fished out her dime and turned, nearly bumping into Gerry Mann. He had come up behind her silently, appeared close to the combustion point from some great inner excitement.
"Phyllis," he half whispered, "I've got to talk to you."
"So talk to me."
"Not here-not now. This is vitally important. Oh-and incidentally, congratulations."
Phyllis uttered a resounding, "Huh?"
"Could I drop by your house tonight after I close the restaurant?" he asked.
She hesitated, reflected that she had little to fear from Gerry Mann either physically or in reputation, said, "I guess it will be all right."
He looked at her hard and once again the screen fell from the mirror-face and blue, canary-quick eyes. This time they revealed no hatred but bafflement and something very close to fear. He said, "How can you take it so calmly?"
Again Phyllis could only reply with a, "Huh?"
Then Gerry's mask was in place again and Beth was advancing upon them. There were quick pleasantries and then the two women were off in their separate cars to Beth's fine old house set at the lawn-swept rear of the old Cadwal-lader estate, overlooking the placid surface of the Kitteridge River and the easy rise of Revolutionary Hill from the marshy meadows beyond.
CHAPTER THREE
There, Phyllis called Hilma again, again got a busy signal. She wondered if her paragon of a servant had knocked the handset from its cradle. She joined Beth in the pantry to help her prepare the canapes, managing not to step on any of the four cats of varied textures and hues and personalities who were determined to get at the array of goodies above them.
Beth shoved a number of lemons and oranges and an unpared pineapple her way and said, "Start slicing, honey. We're having old fashioneds." Then, looking up from her own work on the canapes, as Phyllis got busy on the fruit, "Why was Gerry in such an all-fired twitter just now-if you'll excuse my obnoxious curiosity?"
Phyllis sighed and said, "I only wish I knew.
He wasn't making any sense at all." A pause, then, "He actually tried to date me."
"He what? Oh, damn it to hell!" The latter as she dropped a tin of pate into the pantry sink and had to pause to reclaim it. Then, with a sidelong leer, "Talk about books and their covers-I never thought you were the type of girl who goes for pansies-though I must admit I've wondered why you took up with Freddy the Freeloader."
Phyllis put down the knife and the orange she was slicing. She said, "I'm not-at least I never used to be. But what about Freddy?"
"He and Gerry were a town scandal for years-till you came along and cut Gerry out."
"Oh...? " said Phyllis. So there it was. In a way, she was not entirely surprised. Beth's blunt statement merely confirmed the suspicion that had been riding her thoughts since last night's moment of truth, suspicion that had, perhaps, lain dormant far longer in her subconscious. For a brief moment, Beth's bald bluntness enraged her. Then elation took over as she realized that this very bluntness had freed her of her increasingly unsatisfactory lover, that she was well out of the every Thursday night cul-de-sac.
Beth said, "I wonder what he wanted.
" Who?"
"Gerry, of course. He's not a fool, you know, even if he acts like one much of the time."
"If you can hang on till tomorrow, I'll tell you," said Phyllis.
"You're not really going to see him?" Beth was incredulous.
"What have I got to lose? He sounded as if the fate of the world depends on it."
"Call me the moment he leaves," Beth begged. "I shan't sleep all night if you don't."
"I will, I will," said Phyllis. "And thanks."
"For what?"
"For what you just told me. I've been looking for an escape hatch from Freddy for years."
"You're welcome, I'm sure."
Both women turned their heads to look at one another. Then both of them burst into the laughter of malicious merriment.
Freddy was one of the first of Beth's guests to arrive-he had not earned his nickname of Freddy the Freeloader for nothing-and so were the others of Beth Davis's social circle. There was horse-faced Charlotte Emery (a "best friend" almost from birth), Colonel LaFarge and his Marilou (retired Army folk, non-Kitteridge but "nice"), Alma and Bob Coggswell (Alma first because she had the money, old-shoe and amusing), Sylvia Rockport (successful at still lifes and family portraits and representing the arts-the usual amiable group with all small feuds neatly buried for at least the half-dozen rounds of drinks beyond which a Beth Davis cocktail bash was never permitted to run.
But this evening they brought something else with them, something unusual, an invisible group aura of high excitement, of a group secret burning to burst out. Something they all wished to reveal but were forbidden to discuss without a cue from ... whom?
Phyllis gradually acquired an uncomfortable feeling that whatever it was that had them so stirred up, was involved with and revolved around herself. She sensed sudden silences as she approached more than one human cluster, a certain hesitancy in addressing her directly, felt the covert regard of each of them upon herself-as if they had not been seeing her regularly for years.
Freddy was pounding Beth's spinet piano as usual, with a coaster carefully under his drink. When he finished his rendition of Canadian Sunset, complete with clams and clinkers that made her shudder the length of her spine, Phyllis approached him, leaned over him and whispered, "What in hell's going on?"
He looked around and up at her, his face a round Huntley & Palmer biscuit-bland, blank, meaningless-said, "What do you mean? I just drove out from town."
He finished his piano-drink and she took it to the pantry for refilling. Beth was there, pouring bourbon and bitters. She said, without turning around lest she spill some of S.S. Pierce's best, "Darling Phyl, if you don't tell me what's happening, HI burst my bra."
"I just asked Freddy. He doesn't know."
A snort, then, "He wouldn't!"
"Beth..." Phyllis paused, seeking words. Then, "Does it seem to you I'm wrapped up in whatever it is or am I simply going paranoid?"
"I thought at first it was me, but it isn't. I'm afraid you're it, sweetie. What have you done, robbed a bank or a cradle?"
"Don't ask me," said Phyllis. At that moment the pantry telephone extension rang almost in her ear. She jumped, recalling the effort to reach her at home that morning as she was leaving her house. She said, "There was one thing, but I don't see..."
The pantry phone rang again and Beth leaned past Phyllis to answer it. She said hello, then listened a long moment, then said, "Yes, I've got it. I'll tell her." Then she hung up and looked long and hard at Phyllis.
"You son of a bitch," she said admiringly.
"Will you please tell me-"
"That was Hilma. She's been trying to reach you all day. Your phone's been ringing till she's out of her mind. She told me to tell you she's going home till it blows over. She can't take any more of it."
"Any more of what!" Phyllis felt bewildered. "If you don't tell me, I'm going out of my mind, too."
"How well did you know Sal Carini?"
"Sal who?" As she asked, Phyllis remembered the name from the Iron Kettle the night before, added, "I never heard of him until Freddy and Gerry told me he died last night."
"You're sure?" Beth's voice dripped doubt.
"Of course, I'm sure." Phyllis felt anger rise within her. "Why should I know a man like that, a mobster, a Mafia whatever-it-is-Godfather?"
"Because," said Beth, "apparently he left you a few million bucks after taxes. It's all over the place." A pause, then with narrowed lids, "Now why do you suppose a man like Sal Carini would do a thing like that?"
Phyllis stared at her friend, thinking it had to be some monstrous put-on. She said, "If this is a rib, I don't dig it."
"It's no rib," said Beth.
There it lay. It was for real. Memories of the last eighteen hours flashed through Phyllis's mind, a montage of quick impressions in living color. Freddy and Gerry discussing the death of a stranger named Sal Carini over vodka Collinses-Gerry's near frightening intensity in the Iron Kettle as he begged her to see him that evening-the busy signals when she tried to call Hilma....
It was for real-it had to be. The only trouble was that it didn't make sense. Why should a Boston racket czar of whom she had never heard until his death leave her a fortune?
She must have swayed because suddenly Beth had an arm around her waist and was pushing an old fashioned into her fist, saying, "Thy need is greater than mine."
Ordinarily Phyllis liked to let an old fashioned dilute itself before sipping it. Straight liquor made her choke. But this time, the near straight bourbon went down like lemonade. It hit the bottom of her stomach like liquid fire and spread welcome warmth through her suddenly corpse-cold veins.
She gave Beth a hug before pulling clear of her, said, "Thanks, dear-I needed that."
"Go on and clown," said Beth. "I'd clown too if Marco's millions fell into my lap-if I wasn't too busy crying for sheer joy." She reached for the half-empty fifth, tipped it up and drank directly from it, then wiped her lips with the back of her hand and said, "Never could stand the sight of anyone else's good luck."
"Now who's clowning?" said Phyllis. She leaned against the drain board behind her, rubber knead, and said, "Seriously, Beth, what do you think I ought to do?"
"The first thing we're going to do is get rid of those clowns in the living room. Then I'm going to call Lem Weldon. You're going to need a lawyer, honey, and he's the best Kitteridge has."
She turned to leave, then turned back, took Phyllis firmly by the elbow, said, "Come on, we might as well get it over with right now. You're going to have to face them sooner or later."
As they reached the door that led from the small dining room to the living room, they bumped into Freddy, coming after a refill. Beth pushed him back, saying, "Not now, Freddy." Then, to the others, who were looking at them with avid anticipation, "Phyl and I just got the news. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to drink up and go."
"But I have nothing to drink up," Freddy complained.
Beth nodded toward the pantry. "Help yourself," she told him. "Then go-but leave a bottle for us."
Phyllis had an odd feeling of being wrapped in cellophane. Somebody had turned on the television to pick up the six o'clock news, just in time to hear the commentator say, " ... most curious thing thus far about the Carini bequest is that no one has yet been able to establish the slightest connection between Mrs. Barrett and the late Godfather. She is a true woman of mystery in this very odd affair."
Beth shut it off and then they were going-even Freddy, albeit reluctantly. Beth brought Phyllis another drink and sat her down in the grandmother chair, then went to the hall to telephone. When she came back, she said, "Lem's on his way over."
Lem Weldon looked like the sort of man who smokes a pipe, Phyllis thought, instead of the filter tip 100's he consumed in steady succession while she tried to explain what had happened. She had expected her recital would be brief, but while his gentle probing was never insistent, by the time Lem Weldon called a halt to the interrogation, she felt skillfully flayed by a velvet glove.
He leaned back in his armchair, the sun-reddened picture of a rusticated gentleman of unmistakably mature years. He looked at the ceiling, tried without success to blow four smoke rings, sighed, said, "Never could get the hang of it."
"What do you think Phyl should do?" Beth asked.
Lem Weldon regarded the older woman with unexpectedly brilliant blue eyes. He picked up his highball, sipped it, put it down, said, "With your permission, Beth, I'd like to use your phone to make a toll call."
"Be my guest," she offered graciously.
"Only to Boston." The attorney rose and moved tweedily to the hall. He dialed, then talked to a man he called Jim and his voice made Phyllis think of a beautiful, meticulously groomed show horse being put through its paces in a ring under tight rein-melodious, distinct, pitched low, under perfect control.
Only snatches of his conversation were audible..."Yes, I'm with her now"..."No, not tonight-tomorrow will be perfectly all right"..."Very well, Jim, your office, eleven o'clock."
He returned, stood over her, and she caught a distant twinkle behind the bright blue of his eyes. He said, "Tomorrow morning, we go into town to see Jim O'Brien."
"Who'se he?" Once again Phyllis asked the question-once again she felt an idiot. The twinkle glowed brighter and the corners of Lem Weldon's mouth twitched. Out of Phyllis's range of vision, she heard Beth Davis snort with mirth.
Aggrieved, she said, "Well, dammit, I don't know!"
"No reason why you should." The attorney's voice was maple syrup. "Mr. O'Brien is one of Boston's eminent legal counselors. Proof lies in the fact that Sal Carini was never actually a ward of the state or Federal governments and that he died in bed-his own bed."
Beth said, "One of Boston's eminent shysters-isn't that what you mean, Lem?"
"That is not what I said." The blue eyes twinkled. "Now..." in an abrupt change of tone. "Beth, I want you to keep this young lady with you tonight."
"Of course. You barely beat me to it."
"Good." Then, to Phyllis, "I very much doubt you'd be left long undisturbed in your own house. I'll pick you up here at ten o'clock, and we'll drive into town and look into this will business."
Phyllis blurted, "This whole thing can't be real. If it is, it's insane."
The lawyer regarded her thoughtfully for a long moment. Then he said, "It may be even crazier than you think."
Shortly afterward, Lem Weldon left.
Beth said, "You two acted as if you didn't know each other."
"We don't."
"How odd! I thought everybody in Kitteridge knew Lem Weldon. He's one of the town's living monuments."
"I've seen him often enough," said Phyllis. "It just happens that we never met. I know he's a monument-but I never have found out exactly why."
Beth said, "I keep forgetting you weren't brought up here. You're so much one of us." She rose walked to a book case, came back with a thick volume bound in red. She added, "This should give you some idea."
The book was a four-year-old edition of Who's Who in America. Phyllis leafed through it, found Weldon, Lemoyne Pierre, jurist, general
General ... ?
The listing was impressive, from his schools (Middlesex, Princeton, Harvard Law) through his career credits (the Weldon in Weldon, Keyes and Barker, Boston law firm, U. S. Circuit Court Judge ret., Massachusetts Commissioner of Public Safety, ret.) and unexpected military rank (Major General USAFR) with degrees honors and clubs to match. Automatically, she noted that he was sixty-one years old and a widower, remarked on the fact as she returned the big book to its place on the shelves. "I don't see how he's managed to stay at large," she said.
Beth's eyes gleamed. "Don't think it's for lack of the girls trying. If I thought I had a chance, I'd go after him myself. But Lem's about as easy to pin down as a sea lion with shingles."
"Thanks for calling him," said Phyllis. "I feel I'm in good hands-and do I ever need to be!"
"The best," said Beth. "I don't know about you, but I'm beat. Let's get you fixed up for the night."
CHAPTER FOUR
Phyllis was quite certain she would be unable to sleep but yielded to her friend's seniority and trooped upstairs after her. She vetoed a nightgown, preferring to sleep raw, just as she preferred to swim naked whenever she had the chance. She found a sweet sensual satisfaction in the direct contact of smooth linen with her flesh, as she derived a separate but equal pleasure in the feel of her own body knifing through water unimpeded by even the briefest of bikinis.
She considered reading when she turned in but decided she had too much to think about in the near grotesque events of the past twenty-four hours. It had to be a mistake, of course, since she had never heard of Sal Carini, had never been aware of his existence until Gerry Mann mentioned him by name over the post-copulatory drink he had offered Freddy and herself at the Iron Kettle.
So how could the Mafia Godfather have heard of Phyllis West Barrett, girl widow? How and why should he have been aware of her existence? Why should anyone take such an absurd bequest seriously?
Yet everyone else seemed to be taking it seriously-the press, Beth and her friends, even Major General Commissioner Circuit Judge Lemoyne Pierreford Weldon, ret., A.B., LL.B., D.S.C., Silver Star, Medaille Militaire, Grand Cross of St. Stanislaus et cetera, et cetera, et cetera....
Just as she decided she would never fall asleep, she did, dropping into a deep slumber from which she was returned with horrid violence by something heavy falling on her stomach. By the time Phyllis got herself untangled, turned on the bedside lamp and discovered her belly bomber to be Orangeade, largest of Beth's four felines, it was close on midnight and further sleep was out of the question. She sat up, hugging her knees, smoking a cigarette and wondering what to do with the rest of the night.
She had an uncomfortable feeling that she had forgotten something, but could not remember what. It kept skittering away from the clutches of her memory like a playful puppy that refuses to let itself be caught.
She put out her cigarette, turned off the lamp and lay down to give sleep another chance. In an effort to recapture it, she reran the thought parade of recent events. The weird legacy a mistake-a total stranger like Sal Carini could not possibly know of Phyllis West Barrett's existence-she had never heard of him until the mention of his name at the Iron Kettle the night before by Gerry Mann.
Gerry! That was it! She had promised to meet her boyfriend's former boyfriend at her home after he closed up the restaurant. That would have been around eleven-thirty and it was already ten past twelve. She snapped on the lamp once more, her move causing the big orange cat to glare balefully at her from the foot of the bed.
Phyllis hated standing anyone up almost as much as she hated being stood up herself. With a disproportionate sense of guilt, she scrambled from bed and pulled on the blue flannel bathrobe Beth had lent her for the night, paddled barefoot down the stairs to the telephone. When the restaurant failed to answer, she uttered a short, sharp four-letter word.
If Gerry was not back in his own quarters, he was in all probability waiting outside of hers. There was nothing for Phyllis to do but get dressed and drive over. She simply could not leave anyone hung in such a predicament, not even a mock-male essentially useless to females.
She went back upstairs and got into her clothes, ran a comb through her heavy brown hair and got out of the house without waking Beth, whose gentle snores provided an obbligato to the hurried process. She eased the Karmann Ghia out of the driveway quietly and drove the mile and a half over the dimly lit elm-arcaded streets that separated her house from Beth's.
She passed or was passed by no moving vehicle and was preparing a casual turn into her own dark driveway when a big car, a Cadillac or Continental, came out a rocketing speed that came eyelash-close to crashing both cars. Barely avoiding the beehive of cemented rocks that flanked the entry, Phyllis stalled, weak under her diaphragm and the backs of her knees with shock reaction.
"Son of a bitch! she muttered when her breath returned. She had not even caught a glimpse of the driver, had had no time even to think of noting his license plates, much less of memorizing them. Trembling, she got the little car started and moved on into the driveway.
The familiar rear view of Gerry's Volkswagen mini truck loomed up in her headlights with its gilt iron kettle blazoned across the double doors. Phyllis felt relief that at least she had not come in vain. She tapped her horn gently as she braked to a halt to let him know she was there, to wake him up if he had fallen asleep waiting for her.
When she got out of the Karmann Ghia, she had to hold onto the door with both hands, so weak were her knees. But, slowly, their natural resiliency returned and she was able to stand without support. Walking around the minitruck to arouse her visitor, she wondered what on earth any third person could have been doing in this quiet nocturnal back water of a quiet nocturnal Massachusetts town. She puzzled over the possibilities as she approached the left door of the minitruck.
Gerry sat slumped over the wheel and failed to respond when she thumped on the door beside him. Glory! she thought. He must be drunk. She opened the door to shake him awake, but before she could touch him he fell slowly from the seat and all but knocked her flat in his progress to the graveled surface of the driveway. There he sprawled flat on his face in a position so awkward that it bordered on the absurd.
Phyllis whispered, "Oh, my God!"
Something was obviously wrong with Gerry Mann. She stepped back, looked down at him, wondered what she should do. Sight of the car keys she held in her hand brought inspiration. She unlocked the door of the house and went on inside, to call the operator and ask for help. She
The Kitteridge Police force, while small, was efficient. One of the two night patrol cars pulled into Phyllis's driveway within five minutes of her call. She stood in the doorway, numbly watching while the young officer studied the bloody corpse, using a flashlight to cut the shadows his headlights cast before coming to the house.
He said, "Mrs. Barrett?"
She nodded-she couldn't speak just then-and stood aside to let him pass. He went through the fine little house swiftly and thoroughly, then returned to the car and made a low-voiced call. Then he came back and said, "It will take a little while, ma'am. Captain Murphy was asleep."
He was terrifyingly polite, as were the rest of the policemen who crossed her threshold that night. Since the town lacked facilities for handling a homicide, the state constabulary was called in, which meant she had to tell her switched on the hall light and reached for the instrument, which rested on a small stand just inside the front door.
As she reached, she caught her reflection in the gilt-rimmed old mirror that hung against the side wall ... and froze. From neck to knees, her clothing was bright with blood ... meaningless story four times-although not until after she had been advised of her rights and Lem Weldon had arrived in response to her call.
As each new officer arrived and learned that Phyllis was the "mystery heiress" to a part of the Sal Carini estate, she could see curiosity light up his face. One of them tried to detour her interrogation to this area, but Lem Weldon-coolly blocked them, saying, "Mrs. Barrett is not prepared to discuss the matter at this time."
When at length it was over, he sent her upstairs with orders to bathe and change. Gerry's blood had caked and darkened on her flesh and clothing and she had to scrub briskly to remove the stains from her face, neck and hands. Only then was she able to accept the fact that Gerry Mann was dead, stabbed three times through the chest while talking to a person or persons unknown seated in the minitruck. Phyllis wondered if the Iron Kettle would retain its high quality, was instantly ashamed of herself for harboring such selfish thoughts at such a time.
Poor Gerry! She wondered how many people would actually mourn his loss, pondered the lonely road of the homosexual and shivered. There, but for the grace of God ... she thought, not for the first time.
When she got downstairs, carrying the blood-soaked garments in a plastic bag the police had given her for the purpose, Lem Weldon said, "There are reporters outside."
"Oh, no! she cried. "I can't talk to them now."
"I think you should." The deep, beautifully controlled bass voice bore authority she could not defy. He added, "I'll be right with you, of course."
Somehow, she got through it-although without Lem Weldon's quiet presence at her elbow, she could never have managed. A seemingly endless succession of photographs was taken during and after the interview. The attorney did not permit the newsmen to press her too hard, and the ordeal was over in twenty-two minutes, when she and Lem Weldon went back inside the house.
She asked the question that was troubling her. "Why would anyone want to kill Gerry?"
He said, "Somebody certainly did."
She said, "I suppose they think I did it."
He looked at her thoughtfully, then said, "Did you?"
"My God, no!"
"Then don't worry about that phase of it. We are faced by a more immediate problem-how to get you out of here without the press knowing it."
They managed it while the night was still dark. The attorney talked to the newsmen on the far side of the house while Phyllis slipped into the back of his car and crouched on the floor. Thus, ignominiously, she fled the shattered security of her home.
Weldon took a back road out of Kitteridge, stopped once they were clear to let Phyllis climb into the front seat, then headed for Route Two and drove directly into town-to an unexpectedly luxurious apartment on the third floor of a fine old red brick mansion on Mount Vernon Street, on the west slope of Beacon Hill.
Over a hot buttered rum, he said, "I hope you'll keep quiet about this place. From time to time I find being a Kitteridge landmark rather confining."
Phyllis was surprised to hear herself laugh and warmed to Weldon's responsive chuckle. It was somehow comforting to share with Lem Weldon a secret the attorney had managed to keep from the prying eyes and gossiping tongue of Kitteridge.
The mansion was venerable but the apartment was thoroughly modern in its facilities. Its three rooms (bedroom, kitchen, living room with a well-separated dining area) and bath were men's club comfortable, with teakwood tables and sofa and armchairs upholstered in red morocco with shining gilt nailheads. The lampshades were parchment, decorated with ancient maps, and the mantel was well populated with oddly curved pieces of scrimshaw.
Swinging the copper kitchenware deftly, the attorney made them a breakfast of sausage, thick bacon, and oven-toasted sourdough French rolls, accompanied by some of the finest coffee Phyllis had ever tasted. When the dishes and pans had been scoured and put away, he said, "I should by rights advise you to get some sleep before we see Jim O'Brien."
"I couldn't possibly, Lem."
"I thought not. Very well, let's talk. I have a strong presentiment that the more I know about you, the better for both of us, Phyllis, for better or worse, we're involved together in what promises to be a very sticky business."
Phyllis was only too glad to comply. Lem seemed to do nothing but listen, yet in time she realized that, with his occasional low-keyed comment and questions, he had steered the conversation into an area she failed to connect with the lurid rush of recent events in her life.
In an insidiously effective way, he prodded her about Pres, not merely letting her talk about him, but getting her to do so. Feeling confused, she stopped short and said, "I don't see what the history of my marriage has to do with what's happened just now."
"Sorry, Phyllis-but I might remind you that anything even remotely involved in your lamentably un-lurid past may prove important."
She was forced to accept this statement, even though she knew it to be an evasion, They talked-or rather she talked-until ten-forty, when Lem Weldon, after a quick look at the banjo clock on the south wall, rose abruptly to say, "Time to be on our way. We mustn't keep Jim waiting. He's a very busy man."
CHAPTER FIVE
Counselor James Joseph O'Brien's reading of the Sal Carini will proved brief, since, by agreement with Lem Weldon, he omitted the body of the testament, which did not deal with the bequest to Phyllis.
" ... and to Phyllis West Barrett, relict of my good and true friend, Samuel Prescott Barrett, I bequeath fifty-one shares of the common stock of Interocean Corporation, which are presently contained in a safety-deposit box in the vault of the Old Colony Surety Bank at 33V2 Boylston Street, Boston, to handle as she sees fit. . . "
That was all.
J. J. O'Brien's watery blue eyes and the brilliant blue eyes of Lem Weldon remained fixed on Phyllis as if waiting for her to faint or, at least, to kick off her shoes and dance a jig on the beefy counselor's huge pickled walnut desk.
Her first reaction was disappointment. Although she had professed disbelief in the existence of any bequest from Sal Carini as absurd, still, below the surface, sugarplum dreams had danced in her head ... dreams of unearned millions falling with magical clink of gold into the coffers of her mind.
Fifty-one shares of common stock in the Hotv'sthatagain Corporation...!
Somebody had to be having a big laugh at her expense. All this brouhaha and maybe a murder over fifty-one lousy shares of common stock in the Neverheardofit Corporation. Fifty-one lousy pieces of over-engraved and decorated paper!
Phyllis West Barrett, heiress and mystery woman, she thought sardonically. Some mystery woman-some mystery ... I
A rare, sudden anger overtook her. She said, "Okay now that the fun and games are over, I'm going to get rid of it, sell it if I can find a buyer, otherwise give it away."
Counselor O'Brien suddenly turned to dry ice. He sat absolutely rigid with shock-Phyllis was later to swear that she saw little curls of carbon dioxide vapor steam up from the top of his collar. She glanced at Lem, saw that his cigarette was in the slow motion process of falling from his lips to his lap.
"Look..." she said desperately, feeling as if she were swimming up a non-existent stream against a strong current. "I don't need whatever they'll bring. ... and I've already been greatly inconvenienced and embarrassed by the whole gruesome business. So why shouldn't I get rid of it? What possible use can a few crummy shares of stock be to me?"
J. J. O'Brien's lips parted and he said something that sounded like, "Ugh!"
Lem Weldon, having retrieved the live cigarette from his lap, fixed Phyllis with a twin-bayonet glare, then said coldly, "Did you never hear of the Interocean Corporation before?"
Then, when she shook her head, "I thought not. Well, for your information, those shares make you the majority stockholder in what may be the wealthiest privately owned holding company in Boston. In a very real sense, this bequest means you are the Interocean Corporation, and..."
His voice trailed off and he said to Counselor O'Brien, "May I?"
Donning horn-rims, Lem perused the will, frowning as he concentrated. Finally, he said, "And you drew this up only last month, Jim?"
"That's right, Lem." For a man of such bulk, J. J. O'Brien's voice was unexpectedly light and high-almost a falsetto. "The old bas-the deceased was ill, of course, but there was no question of his sanity."
"As Mrs. Barrett's attorney, it's hardly within my province to bring that up," said Lem. "On the contrary ... No, my interest stems from another area entirely. Tell me, are these his exact words?" He tapped the document with the back of a hand.
"I'll have the girl bring in the tape and play it for you." The counselor punched a desk button.
"Please!" said Phyllis. "Can somebody tell me if I'm a rich woman or not-and how rich if I am?"
The two men exchanged another glance. Then Counselor O'Brien folded his fat hands across his bulging waistcoat and said, "At a rough, conservative estimate, I'd say each share of Interocean is worth at a minimum-oh, a quarter of a million clams. And that's putting it very low on the totem pole."
Phyllis fainted. When she came to, she was being helped out of the office by J. J. O'Brien's chauffeur, who took her to a basement garage in a private elevator and whisked her back to Lem Weldon's Beacon Hill pied a terre. Lem, she was informed, had further technical matters to discuss with J. J. O'Brien as to execution of the will.
Lying back against the opulent broadloom upholstery of the long limousine, Phyllis pondered her pass out. She had not fainted since, once in her middle teens she had achieved a swoon at a Beatles movie by holding her breath until she felt her lungs were about to burst.
It was not that she was money, hungry, either-she had never had any real worries about money in her life. But, coming as it had on top of everything else, the announcement that she had inherited something like thirteen million dollars at a minimum put her down for the count.
Lem's last words to her had been, "Please don't leave the apartment until I get back. After all, I'm giving you the keys to my own little kingdom."
She inserted key in lock and turned it-to find the door still locked. Annoyed, she reversed the key and it opened. Lem, she decided, must have failed to lock it when they left. But that failed to mesh with her impression of the man. Lem Weldon was a man of such obvious iron self-discipline that he never made the simplest of moves without plotting every step well in advance.
Suddenly, as the lock clicked shut behind her, Phyllis felt something very close to panic ... for she was not alone in the apartment. From bathroom or bedroom-she could not be certain which-came the sound of movement.
It was not a loud sound. To her, it seemed like a slight complaint of some article of furniture, a mere murmur of motion-or rather of reaction to motion. She stood still, straining to hear its repetition so that she could pinpoint its source.
Again she heard it, a rustle of fabric rather than a true complaint such as a chair creaking under the weight of a burden imposed upon it. Unmistakably, it came from the bedroom beyond the wasp waist of the apartment that contained kitchen and bath diagonally opposite in the hallway connecting the two main portions of the pied a terre.
With horrifying vividness, Phyllis saw in her mind's eye the murdered body of Gerry Mann as it fell slowly out of the Volkswagen minitruck to splash her with blood during its downward passage to the graveled driveway. She recalled the unidentifiable driver of the big black car that had missed hers by inches in a desperate effort to get clear of the murder scene in time to avert discovery.
All she could think of was that this man, this murderer, had somehow managed to trail Lem Weldon and herself to his hideaway apartment, had broken in and was looking for something-or, worse, someone-on the premises ... that she was alone with a killer.
Why she didn't simply turn and flee before her entry was discovered, Phyllis was never afterward able to rationalize, save as a vagary of her panic. But she didn't-perhaps some ancestral streak of stubbornness proclaimed deep within her that she had taken all the pushing around she was going to take during the past thirty-six hours.
Instead, she looked around the room and darted to the fireplace and plucked the wrought-iron, brass-handled, gaffed poker from its rack at one end of the hearth. She hefted it, found its weight well balanced-though she felt faint disappointment that it was not the far heavier sand wedge from her golf bag back in Kitteridge.
She heard the odd sound from the bedroom again as she moved silently over the Axminster carpet that covered most of the living room and slid silently along the brief hall toward the half-open bedroom door. And there she stopped, paralyzed by what she saw.
Or, rather, what was reflected in the big mirror atop the fine old cherry bureau against the opposite side of the room. There was a man lying on his back atop the blue-and-white candlewick spread. He was stark naked on the bath towel laid out carefully beneath him. He was also masturbating...
Phyllis had never seen a man masturbate before. Pres was not given to such diversion, nor had he needed its supplementary sex during the hyperactive two-and-a-half years of their life together. She had supposed, prompted by occasional photographs and drawings of men engaged in this form of indulgence, that a man simply ran a hand up and down his phallus until ejaculation was attained.
But this stranger's technique was utterly different. He lay with his thighs slightly parted. His testicles had in some way been pushed upward into his groin, and he was pressing downward upon his phallus with the finger pads of both hands, running it up and down against the insides of his thighs, employing them as a substitute female genital.
As she watched, he lifted his left hand to his mouth, there licked its fingers with his tongue and then returned them to his phallus, anointing it with saliva to ease the repeated passage of its downthrusts between his thighs. He shifted his body, turning slightly away from her on his right side-and again the bed beneath him uttered the sort of sigh that had first caught her attention.
The utter unexpectedness of such a spectacle at such a time completely unnerved her. Nor did the contrast between her fears and the reality she saw in the mirror, abet her in any quick decision. She could only stand there, poker in hand, and watch as the stranger on the bed brought his act to its inevitable climax.
His pelvis made a series of thrusting motions and then his whole body went rigid and remained completely still while he had his orgasm. Since he now lay on his right side with his back toward her, she could see the pink tip of his phallus protruding from the rear of his well-muscled thighs, and the swift-dwindling little stream of white fluid that followed from it.
He lifted his hands then and reached behind him to towel himself off, shifting again as he did so. Phyllis, no longer held rapt by his genital action, lifted her gaze to the mirror-and discovered that a pair of light blue eyes was regarding her with lively interest in the glass.
Her panic returned-just because she had caught him masturbating in Lem Weldon's bed did not mean he was not the killer ... Abruptly, stifling a sound that was half-moan, half-cry of alarm, she turned and stumbled back through the short passage toward the living room and the front door. Not daring to look back, she wrenched it open in order to flee ... and found Lem Weldon standing there, his hand half lifted to grip the brass doorknob from the other side.
He caught her before she bumped into him, said, "Why, Phyllis, what's the matter?"
She babbled and stammered in her urgency, finally managing to convey the message that there was a strange man in the apartment. He seemed neither surprised nor perturbed, led her back inside, kicked the door shut behind them, removed the poker from her unnerved fingers, replaced it in its rack on the hearth with the matching tongs and shovel.
As he did so, he called out, "Is that you, Tim?"
A cheerful male voice called from the bedroom, "Who were you expecting? Martin Bohrman?"
Phyllis sank into an armchair, on the verge of collapse from the aftermath of terror. She thought, Oh, no-you don't faint twice in one morning, Phyllis West Barrett!
Aloud, she managed to croak, "Who is that?"
Lem Weldon permitted himself a faint, fond half smile. He said, "Tim Buckley. You've probably never heard of him."
Phyllis shook her head to show she hadn't.
"He happened to call me from Denver last night after our conference at Beth Davis's. I suggested he might be of help to us. Fortunately, he had just finished wrapping up a job there. He agreed to come on and meet us here."
"Who is he?" Phyllis asked. "How can he help? And why?"
"He just happens to have a certain interest in underworld affairs," Lem told her. "Unlike you, my dear, he has long been aware of Interocean and some of its implications."
"But I don't-" Phyllis began, beginning to feel pushed around again.
"We're going to need help." Lem Weldon said firmly. "I'm more than ever convinced of it from my talk with Jim O'Brien. Needless to say, I didn't tell him about Tim. After all, he's been on Sal Carini's payroll for years."
"But-" Phyllis tried again, again was cut off by the attorney.
"My dear," he said, "you must realize that your inheritance is as big a surprise for Old Sal's family as it is to you-and a much more unwelcome one. Surely, you know that the word family, in Carini's circles, has connotations beyond the domestic meaning of the word.
"Now, when they recover from their surprise, it seems quite unlikely that they will let you enjoy the fruits of Old Sal's labors without making at least some effort to get it back in their own clutches. That's one reason why you and I are going to need help."
"One reason?" she asked.
He nodded, seemed about to say something further, then hesitated, said, "It's altogether too problematical right now-but we've got to find out why those fifty-one shares were left to you. Until we do, we shan't come close to achieving any kind of resolution of your affairs."
Phyllis was tempted to say, "But I haven't had an affair since I married Pres-unless you count the weekly insult with Freddy the Freeloader." She decided it was not a time to be silly-although she felt silly, had felt silly ever since getting over her shock at finding the stranger-Tim Buckley, was it?-masturbating on Lem Weldon's candlewick spread.
The sudden seriousness of her situation was too big, too fast, for immediate comprehension. Better to take refuge in the ridiculous, with which her dilemma as well laced. Was she taking, or at least seeking, refuge from Gerry's murder, from her inheritance and the ugly implications Lem Weldon had just hinted at-or was she seeking to hide her reaction to the sight of a well-muscled male body engaged in a sexual act-even though its object, like its subject, was itself?
"Hello, Lem-and this, I suppose, is Phyllis Barrett?".
There he stood in the inner door, the man she had just seen masturbating on their host's bed. He was short and looked heavyset-although the body she had watched was without a trace of fat. Although his features bore a scrambled ugliness, with his light blue eyes like twin jewels in his well-tanned face, he was strikingly attractive. His teeth flashed, white, even, well tended, as Lem Weldon performed the introduction.
To Phyllis, the most remarkable thing about Tim Buckley was his poise. There was neither embarrassment nor a hint of hoped-for collusion between them at having caught him performing what most of American society still considers a shameful act. He was open, at ease, outwardly amiable. She decided then and there that she disliked him if only for his imperturbable self-assurance.
Introduction over, he sat down on the sofa, crossed his legs, said, "Lem, suppose you fill me in."
Lem Weldon did so. As she listened, it became evident to Phyllis that both men knew a great deal more than she had supposed about the late Sal Carini and his family and the underworld, especially the Boston underworld. There were gaps in the briefing that left her wanting to ask questions, gaps that seemed taken for granted both by the speaker and the listener, taken for granted because they obviously needed no spelling out.
When it was over, there was silence. Then Tim Buckley got up and walked to the mantel, resting an elbow on it as he looked from Lem Weldon to Phyllis and back again. He said, "I presume you have some plan of operations, Lem?"
The attorney nodded. He said, "I want you to stay with Phyllis while I do a bit of scouting around. I don't expect any immediate action, naturally-they're much too well disciplined to go off half cocked-but you never can be sure somebody might not get out of hand."
A pause, then "Obviously, you can't go back to Kitteridge with her. Your presence there would complicate things needlessly."
"I agree," said Tim Buckley. "So how do we work it?"
"You stay here with her. This apartment has everything you'll need for a number of days-not that I intend you to remain here that long. Just lie doggo until I call you or come back. It will only be a matter of hours."
It was not only incredible but impossible, Phyllis decided. Here was Lem Weldon, a man she had been told to trust implicitly, handing her over quite casually to a stranger she not only didn't know but to whom she had taken an instant dislike amounting to loathing. The fact that she had caught him in the act of masturbating, and that he knew she had witnessed it, made the situation all the more unbearable.
She heard herself say, "I can't do it. Lem, I want to go home."
The light, bright blue eyes of the attorney were cold as they turned to her. He said, a hint of icicles in his beautifully modulated voice, "Have you considered what your presence in Kitteridge would do at this time-especially with Tim on hand. You'd be besieged by everybody-not just Kitteridge folk but the press, the police, perhaps even."
He let it hang. Phyllis felt her face grow hot. She said, to her amazement, "Screw everybody-I want to go home. The Kitteridge police force is quite competent to protect me, I'm sure."
The look the two men exchanged was that of a pair of adults forced to deal with an ignorant and obstreperous brat. Again it was Lem Weldon who did the talking. He said, "My dear, our local constabulary is perfectly competent-to deal with such matters as lie within its frame of reference. Unfortunately, what we may have to deal with in your case lies entirely outside of that sphere."
Tim Buckley, his face as open as an angelic imp of Satan's, said, "Miss Barrett-Phyllis-please don't be afraid of me. It is not my intention to harm you in any way. Quite the reverse-I came here at Lem's request to protect you."
She knew she was blushing and hated herself. This stranger could have been reading both her thoughts and her feelings. At any rate, he had scored a bull's-eye. She barely heard what Lem Weldon said to back Tim Buckley up. All she knew was that she was going to have to go along with them, whether she liked or trusted Tim Buckley or not.
Before he departed, the attorney said, "I'll see that you have something to wear. What would you like to have me pack for you?"
She was tempted to silliness again as she almost suggested he send along her birth-control pills. Instead, she said, "Oh, the usual-toothbrush, comb and brush, some-well, if you don't feel up to it, get Hilma or Beth Davis. That old snoop has been trying to go through my things for years."
Lem Weldon smiled, then said, "I feel reasonably sure I can manage. And you can get anything else you need delivered here by telephone." He rummaged in a jacket pocket, went through some cards, placed one on the mantel, added, "Here's the number."
Then he was gone...
Phyllis did her best not to look at Tim Buckley, but it was no use when you were alone with a man in a vacuum. When at last she turned her eyes to his, it was to meet his blue regard. They stared at each other for a long moment. Then his lips twitched and his eyelids crinkled and all of a sudden they were both laughing like a couple of maniacs.
Finally, he gasped, "Mrs. Barrett, do you think you could put together a Scotch and soda?"
"I can but try." She rose, weakly, from the armchair, made her way to the kitchen.
When she returned with the drinks in hand, he was no longer in the living room. She frowned, heard sounds from the bedroom again-mercifully not the same sounds that she had heard before. She hesitated but could not long resist their mixed appeal.
This time, he was fully clothed, of course-nor was he on the bed. His suitcase offered a poor substitute for the well-muscled body. He was in the act of taking something out of the bag and turning away, but again the wall mirror revealed what he was doing. He was jamming a clip into the chamber of a large and ugly-looking automatic pistol.
This time, she retreated before his blue eyes had time to find her in the glass. Her hand was shaking as she put the highballs down on the brass-railed coffee table.
CHAPTER SIX
It was sight of the pistol that brought Phyllis down hard on the firm floor of reality. Until then, despite the nightmare actuality of poor Gerry Mann's body, she had been floating through a dream that had begun, retrospectively, with her first appraisal of Sal Carini's death in the Copper Kettle less than forty-eight hours before. Too many incredible events had happened too fast for either her intellect or her emotions to accept them.
Sight of Tim Buckley slapping the clip of that ugly automatic into its chamber made her realize sharply that the two men avowedly protecting her felt her to be in actual physical danger. The fact that she had never had real interest in or any real knowledge of the underworld with its gangs and gangsters gave the threat
Lem Weldon and Tim Buckley evidently sensed the added terror of a menacing unknown.
He came back into the living room moments later, looking amused, well bred, imperturbable. She still felt the layer of cool mockery behind the steadiness of his regard-but his first words were serious enough.
He said, "I thought I caught a glimpse of you in the bedroom mirror again just now. Did I?"
She hesitated, then nodded. "I-heard sounds."
"Then you must have seen me with the gun." And, when Phyllis nodded again, "I don't-didn't-wish to alarm you needlessly. But there is an element of danger involved in this business and it's just as well to be as prepared for it as possible."
"Danger?" she said. "To me?"
It was his turn to nod. "To you," he replied. "Mind you, Phyllis, it's only a possibility."
She said, "I suppose you mean there might be violence from some of Sal Carini's other heirs."
"Very possibly," he replied, "but unlikely-at least at present. In the first place, before they make a move, they'll want to know everything they can about you. This is probably what they're doing right now, and it should take a little time."
He paused to sip his drink, said, "When they do, they'll have to work out an avenue of approach. And when they've done that, they'll try to negotiate some sort of settlement. Mind you, their negotiations can be-well, rather rough, but it would hardly be to their interest to murder you."
"Then why...? " she said, puzzled.
"Why the gun?" he countered. A pause, then, when he had remarshaled his thoughts, "Have you forgotten the man or woman or whatever in the big dark car, the person who almost certainly murdered Gerry Mann in your driveway and damn near hit your car?"
"Oh..." Incredibly, she had put the ugly incident into the back of her mind in the rush of subsequent events that had brought her here, to Lem Weldon's Beacon Hill hideaway with this stranger who seemed to wear an aura of importance and competence. This man Lem Weldon obviously trusted, this man with a loaded gun who masturbated on his host's bed.
He put down his glass, nearly empty, and changed the subject, saying, "Phyllis, I don't wish to alarm you any more than I can help-but if-mind you, this is wholly hypothetical-if anything should happen to you, who would inherit your estate?"
It was another blank-spot bull's-eye. Before he flew to Vietnam, she and Pres had drawn up identical wills, each leaving everything to the other. When news of his fatal jungle crash had reached her, Phyllis had refused to accept it, hoping against hope that, somehow, eventually he would turn up safe and sound. By the time the word was final, and she had inherited the modest small estate and war widow's pension that were rightfully hers, she had still held out silent hope for his return.
She had never drawn up another will ... after all, there had been no reason to. Apart from Freddy the Freeloader, there had been no one close to her, at least not close enough to merit consideration after her death. And Freddy...
Phyllis said, "I suppose it would go to somebody in Pres's family ... if any of them are still alive. He had no brothers or sisters and his father and mother are dead. Some cousin or cousins, maybe. Why?"
"Just groping," said Tim Buckley, but his expression suggested his question had been asked for some far more explicit reason. "Still, it might be interesting to find out just who would inherit if it should happen."
"I hardly think it would be any member of Sal Carini's family." She uttered the words with a smile, hoping to lighten the conversation.
It didn't work. Tim Buckley said, "The first thing I'm going to ask Lem to do is to draw up a new will for you. You might be considering whom you would like to leave anything to in the meantime."
"Oh, dear!" she said. Then, noting that his glass, like hers, was empty. "How about another drink?"
That did the trick. By the time he returned with the fresh glasses, the topic was closed. He said, "I took a look in Lem's fridge and freezer just now. He's got a damned good-looking turkey breast. How about we have it for dinner?"
"I'm a perfectly lousy cook," she confessed. "Eggs and bacon are about my limit."
"Who said anything about you cooking it? I'll take care of it. I have it soaking in hot water in the sink to speed the thawing-out process. For some reason, you can cook frozen meat, but not frozen poultry."
She recalled the breakfast Lem Weldon had prepared that morning, said, "Lem's a marvelous cook, too."
"I'm not in his class," said Tim Buckley. "Lem could show Julia Child and the Galloping Gourmet a few tricks they never heard of."
"How come so many men are doing the cooking?" she mused.
"Self-defense against women's cooking and the ever ready frozen TV dinner," he replied. Then, switching subjects again, "Let's just take it easy and talk and get acquainted. Me, I'm thirty-six, was born and raised in Manhattan, graduated from Williams College and did a hitch as a Marine fighter pilot in early Vietnam."
"Oh!" Phyllis was startled. "Did you by any chance--? "
He shook his homely-attractive head, said, "No, I didn't run into your late husband. In fact, I never knew either of you existed until..."
It was his turn to let an expressed thought hang unfinished. Phyllis said, "Until when?"
"Until quite recently," He had, she decided, a most annoying way of closing subjects with the finality of a man slamming a door.
He said, looking at the expensive watch on his left wrist, "It's getting close to five o'clock. Let's see if we can pick up some news on TV."
Evidently, Phyllis decided, as he turned in the set to the NBT program, Tim Buckley had made himself as well acquainted to her as he intended to, at least at the moment. There was mention of her early in the program. From somewhere they had dug up a frightful snapshot of her, taken years before at a party, which was displayed on the screen. The announcer cited her again as a "mystery heiress to a great gang fortune," then went on to say that she was in seclusion under the aegis of Lem Weldon. There was almost as much said about Lem and his distinguished record as about the late Boston gang leader and the impact of his death upon the underworld of the city.
The murder of Gerry Mann got the big play, however, and there was open speculation as to what, if any, connections existed between the late Kitteridge restaurant owner and the local Mafia-if any.
"Good lord!" said Phyllis when he switched it off. "You don't suppose Gerry..."
"At this point, I'm supposing nothing," said Tim Buckley. "However, I must say such a connection seems damned unlikely. I only wish it turned out to be for real."
"Why?"
"Because it might give us a clue to whom we're dealing with, and why," he replied. "Oh, to hell with that. Tell me something about yourself. Judging from that picture they just showed, you must have been an ugly duckling as a girl who had to grow up into a swan."
"I was not!" she replied with a vehemence that surprised her. Everyone had always told her she was a most attractive young girl. It had been a thing taken for granted by her parents, teachers, and friends. So why, she wondered, should she get so hot about it.
Before she realized that Tim Buckley had punctured the hide of her ego with the question, she found herself talking to him far more freely than she had intended. Although she was aware of the fact, she could not stop herself once she got started. She told him a great deal about her childhood, her schooling, her brief attempt to launch a career as an actress, her meeting with Pres and her marriage.
Especially her marriage. For some reason, Tim-she no longer thought of him by his full name under the pressure of their enforced intimacy-was apparently interested in Pres. He kept leading her back to discussion of his personality, his behavior patterns under all sorts of conditions. He did it subtly, letting the conversation wander at times for as long as twenty minutes.
But somehow it always got back to Pres. Phyllis realized what he was doing although she had not the slightest understanding of why. But she could not help talking, talking, talking. Perhaps, she thought a trifle wildly, her loquacity was the result of her having kept such subjects under verbal lock and key for so long. Under the pressure of recent sudden events, plus Tim's astute drawing out, she felt helpless.
Meanwhile, they had another couple of drinks, though much more slowly, and from time to time he adjourned to the kitchen, where his preparation of their dinner took its course. From the aroma, it was going to be delicious and she felt hunger signals in the hollow of her stomach. Tim Buckley, whoever he was she decided, was quite a fellow...
He had roasted the five-pound half breast of turkey in soy sauce and wine and larded it with extra-thick bacon, garnishing it with whole mushrooms. With it went tiny baked Bermuda potatoes in their skins, light as puffballs and a lot more succulent, plush thick frozen asparagus in melted unsalted butter-also a fine bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon rustled from Lem Weldon's wine locker.
"You know-you're something else," she confessed when they were finished. "There's one thing that mystifies me."
"Which is...? " His eyes were wary.
"Surely a man like you has no trouble finding women. So why should you do what I saw you doing in the bedroom this afternoon?"
There-it was out, the question that had been furrowing the back of her mind like a disk harrow. She looked at him defiantly, more than half expecting him to explode in anger at her temerity. But he did nothing of the sort.
Instead, with a dry smile, he said, "I presume you're speaking of what I was doing the first time you saw me in the mirror, not the second." And, at her nod, "Phyllis, I'm not going to deny that I'm embarrassed, but I'm damned if I know why I should be. And I'm not going to regale you with the story of my thousands of conquests of your superior sex, or vice versa. I mean, who wants conquest when cooperation is the goal?"
"You're beating around the bush," said Phyllis, appalled at her own temerity.
"It's very simple. I'm a man who loves sex and women. I need both and, dammit, I usually manage to find both available. But I've been plane-hopping for the past eight days, living in hotels and motels where I'm not known, and besides there hasn't been time. I needed relief, and when I found myself alone here, I took it in the quickest and simplest way. I had not the slightest idea you were going to wander in unannounced. Does that satisfy you?"
"All but one thing..." Where, she wondered, was she finding the nerve to question him like this? "Why should it be so difficult for you to get women in a strange town when all you have to do is ask a hotel desk clerk or a bell captain?"
"Because I don't enjoy whores," he replied. "No, it's not a moral scruple but an ego trip. I've always figured that if no woman-likes me well enough to grant me her affection, I simply don't rate it. And I do without."
"But not for long, I'll bet," she replied.
"That," he told her, "is neither here nor there nor any of your business."
It was impasse time, broken by the ring of the telephone, which Tim Buckley answered. Lem Weldon was on the line. Tim chatted with him laconically, told him about the will, then handed Phyllis the phone, saying, "He wants to talk to you about something."
After an exchange of greetings, the attorney said, "I want you to tell me if you ever heard of a woman named Gina de Brett?"
"The answer is no, Lem," she replied. "Why? Should I have?"
"No special reason. I just wondered if you ever heard your husband mention her. But Phyllis..." his tone grew deeper, more serious..."I want you and Tim to stay buttoned down tight. I've already told him. I expect you to cooperate. I know it's a great deal to ask of you, but believe me it's imperative. I'll be by tomorrow morning with your stuff. I wanted to make it today, but it proved impossible. Do you realize your life is incredibly complicated, young woman?"
"I'm beginning to think so," said Phyllis.
That was that ... and all at once she felt unbearably sleepy. The fine food and drink, coming on top of two days and a night without sleep, had done her in. She told Tim she was going to take a hot bath and turn in. He said he'd get his suitcase out of the bedroom and bring it in here. He was going to sleep on the sofa.
When she came out of the bath, wearing one of Lem Weldon's much too big for her robes, she discovered the bed had been opened and a large masculine pajama top laid out on it. Phyllis was touched. She called her thanks and said good night to Tim, who replied with a simple, "Sweet dreams." She was asleep almost before she could close her eyes . ...
When she woke up, it was as a result of a highly curious dream, one that seemed to cut through her sleep-cushioned fatigue like a laser beam. It was a dream of a man who looked very much like a blend of Lem Weldon and Tim Buckley. The faces seemed to waver and vary, now more closely resembling one man, then resembling the other, then blurring into an amalgam of them both. This dual personality created out of her subconscious was lying on its back in a strange four-poster bed whose posts were composed of huge pistol barrels, whose rollers were shaped like immense sets of masculine testicles.
As she watched, the pajamas covering the Weldon-Buckley figure seemed to shred away as if eaten by acid-and when they had vanished, she was looking at Tim's body and no mistake about it. She could tell by the stiff, thick prick that rose upward from Its loins, large as the pistol-posts of the bed.
Its owner looked up at her as she hovered over him and said, "It hasn't had a nice juicy cunt in mine whole nights and it's starving to death."
Phyllis heard, or thought herself hear, her own voice saying, "But it doesn't look hungry."
"But it is," was Tim's reply. "Try it and see for yourself."
She did not hesitate but put it to the proof, setting herself atop his loins and sliding Tim's sex-starved phallus into a receptacle that proved unexpectedly ready and moist.
That was when she woke up-to find herself actually riding the cock of an astonished Tim Buckley on the living room sofa of Lem Wel-don's Beacon Hill hideout.
For a few confused seconds, Phyllis was neither asleep nor awake-and before she emerged from that half world, her body had taken charge and her powers of control were utterly lost. There was one moment, as she came fully aware of what was happening, when Phyllis might have reclaimed some shreds of her sense of propriety and put a stop to the wanton proceedings ... she managed to halt the rotations of her pelvis and remain perfectly still while she struggled with the rapidly rising voluptuous sensations that were rapidly taking over her body and brain.
But at that moment, Tim Buckley, who was apparently at least as caught off guard as she, came fully awake and took charge. His strong hands slid up her thighs under the too big pa-jama top that was her sole garment, caressed the curves of her buttocks with an intimate understanding that caused her to tremble all over.
Then, pulling them wide apart, he thrust upward, impaling her to the very heart of her shuddering body with a fine, full, thick, above all rigid, male organ, whose like she had not enjoyed since her last bout with Pres. Maintaining his grip on her bottom, he put it into a series of up and down motions with which she was forced to cooperate, adding slight circular corkscrew motions with which his body complied.
"Oh, my God ... I" she gasped as her control flew to the winds and the sweet madness she had not happily fallen prey to for so many years took full possession of her.
Where being fucked by Freddy the Freeloader was a sparse, pathetically thin experience, an experience that left her unfulfilled and unsatisfied from the first entrance of his medium-length, needle-thick prick to the wee spurt of diluted sperm into her passage that concluded it-being fucked by Tim Buckley was being fucked by a man not only well equipped for the task but one who loved the work passionately and who possessed the experience and lack of inhibitions to make the most of it.
It took him less than a single minute to send her spinning off into sweet outer space with his rigid pillar plunging in and out of her soft re-ceptiveness with a steady, irresistible driving beat that was varied at irregular intervals by something unexpected, whose surprise sufficed to maintain her at a seemingly permanent high plateau between the ever narrowing peaks of rapture that turned the whole world to gold.
Phyllis had virtually forgotten how wonderful being fucked could be and her thirst for renewal of this most delicious and fulfilling of human acts was such that she seemed unable to get enough of it. She felt the explosive eruption of his puree-thick semen inside her and put her bottom into even higher gear, desperately seeking to avoid the ensuing subsidence of virility that invariably followed Freddy's comings, as it had those of Pres.
But this-this literally dream lover become heavenly reality, merely laughed low in his throat, a laugh of delight that was close to an animal growl, and proceeded to continue plumbing her innermost depths with an unflagging probe until she realized that here was a man who could maintain his prowess through two orgasms without a break.
As if from afar off, she heard herself cry softly, "Thank heaven ... Oh, thank heaven!"
CHAPTER SEVEN
When at last their sudden and unexpected passion was spent, they separated, drenched with sweat and the effusions of their unexpected mating. Only then did Phyllis become really aware of what had happened and a sudden shaft of panic and embarrassment replaced the shaft of flesh that had so recently sent her to heaven and held her there.
Naked and panting from the exertion of her prolonged lovemaking, she pulled away from Tim Buckley and cowered in the far corner of the sofa, seeking to cover her nakedness with the blanket. All she could think of to say was an idiotic, "I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me. You must think I-"
He cut her off with a kiss, a gentle lip caress, soft and swift, then said, holding her chin cupped in his hand, "I think you're the loveliest creature that ever raped me."
"Don't make fun of me," she pleaded. "I must have walked in my sleep, and I haven't done that since I was thirteen. I thought it was a dream, and..."
She hesitated, unable to say anymore.
He said, "It was no dream, darling. And I'm not making fun of you. You are the loveliest creature that ever raped me."
His gentleness restored her shattered ego. She was able to look him in the eye and say, "I'd have to see the competition to know whether that's a compliment or not."
He smiled at her, said, "That's more like it," kissed her again, this time more firmly.
She responded and his hand slid over the ripe full curve of her left breast and a resurge of passion took place. All feelings of guilt and embarrassment vanished, inundated by the reawakening of senses she had felt, mere seconds before, were fully satiated. Her hands groped for his manhood, to see if he was undergoing the same feelings she was, found his phallus already half erect, felt its delicious stiffening within the cylinder of her fingers and palm.
"Jesus Christ!" she murmured, her lips still against his, "You, too?"
"Me, too," he whispered, then hoisted her upright and led her, his arms still about her, to the bedroom. During their passage, she continued to grip his manhood and, as soon as they reached the bed, she lay flat on her back and opened herself wide and manually inserted it into her waiting orifice of delight.
As it slid into her, she wondered briefly how she had been able to endure its absence for even the brief period of their respite. She suddenly gloried in being a woman once more, in being possessed by a man and possessing him. Eagerly, she thrust herself upward and thrust again and again to meet his stout charges and contain them to the fullest possible extent.
When at last they were done with this more comfortable and prolonged bout of passion, they lay side by side on their backs, fondling one another and resting. Now and again, she kissed Tim's bare, sweat-salty shoulder-at which he would lift himself and kiss her breasts, slowly one by one, then test with a fingertip the renewed rigidity of her nipples.
"Careful," she warned the third time this happened. "Unless you're ready for another."
It was insane, it was crazy mad, but it had happened and Phyllis was far too realistic not to desire to get the most out of it while she could. After her prolonged sexual starvation diet, she had fallen into a feast-or rather a feast had fallen into her-or was "fallen" exactly the word she wanted?
At any rate, she thought, she might as well let her body lead her with its new release from bondage. It was her body that had led her from this bed to the living room sofa where Tim Buckley lay asleep, her body that had demanded of him the fulfillment it had for so long been denied. Fuck Freddy! No, not that. . , not ever again. Fuck marvelous Tim Buckley.
Tim Buckley, Tim Buckley ... The name ran through her mind like a refrain-yet, mere hours before, she had never even known he existed. What manner of man had she flung herself at so brazenly. She lifted herself up on one elbow and studied him as he lay there beside her on his back, his eyes closed, resting.
He was not exactly handsome, his nose was too short, his chin too square, his body sturdy rather than gracefully long. Was he real or was he another figment of her sex-starved imagination. He was utterly unlike Pres, who had been long of limb, was board lean of belly, hawk-rakish of feature. He was unlike any man she had ever been drawn to. If he was a dream, what long-hidden depth of her subconscious had dredged him up?
She thought, I'm going crazy ... and was suddenly seized with urgent need to touch him, to discover if he had solid substance. Hesitantly, she laid slender fingers upon his solid abdomen, with its thin line of brown hair running from just above his navel to the thicket above his pubes.
He was real. His eyes opened and he turned his head to look at her and said softly, "I was just wondering if Phyllis Prescott were a figment of my imagination."
"Oh, darling!" she cried in a sudden access of excitement over the fact that he had been sharing her same feelings and thoughts. "I was wondering the same thing about you!"
Gratefully, she moved low over his body and bent and picked up his still limp phallus and took it into her mouth. This was something she had done only with Pres, and the remembrance of holding a man's cock within her mouth, of kissing it and licking it clean of sweat and sperm and her own fluid's traces, came flooding back and she felt as if an electric charge had passed through her.
She began to work on the sweet morsel and the shock was repeated as she felt it stir and then grow behind the barrier of her teeth. She pulled on it until she could no longer contain more than its upper half-no Deep Throat she-and then, with a little cry of renewed excitement, she had the first time and uttered a small sob of satisfaction and relief as again it slid into the depths of her body.
"You don't mind that I didn't finish?" she asked him anxiously, suddenly frantic with desire to please.
"Honey," he said, smiling up at her. "I'm happiest when it's exactly where it is."
This time, things got started more slowly. Phyllis felt a delicious languor rather than a pressing urge to achieve climax at the earliest possible moment. They took their own sweet time, after a while rolling over on their sides as they thrust slowly, gently, and with infinite easy variations at each other's pubes.
It couldn't last, of course, but it was happy time for both of them. And then his hands slid down the arch of her back and cupped her buttocks and his blue eyes looked into her gray ones and asked a silent question as he put gentle pressure on her bottom, thus pushing himself fractionally deeper into her. She responded by holding him closer until her breasts were mashed flat against the hard cage of his ribs. Their lips met and merged and their tongues danced an erotic dance of their own together and Phyllis stiffened as she began to crest a peak.
Then Tim slid his right arm under her left thigh, hooking it within the curve of his elbow and lifting it high, then thrusting upward as he pulled her down upon his phallus. No man, she thought before consciousness fled to a neutral corner, had ever penetrated her so deeply, and the peak that had caused her to stiffen briefly became a Matterhorn and than an Everest and she was plunging and straining against the restraint of his arm holding her thigh, at the same time praying that he wouldn't release it.
If their first two matings had been big with pleasure and fulfillment, this third one was a monster of ecstasy and rapturous delight-a marvelous monster whose very existence Phyllis had all but forgotten. Nor, as she realized in a fleeting moment of reality, had she ever crested quite so high with Pres.
She had thought Pres the perfect lover, but this stranger was better, more knowledgeable of a woman's needs, more willing to serve them and take his pleasure from theirs than Pres had ever been. In fact, she thought frantically as rationality vanished again, he was almost too much.
But she wanted more, and more, and more, more, more.
The mid-October dawn was groping its way over the gold-domed crest of Beacon Hill when at last they slept the sleep of exhaustion. Evidently, Tim was even more tired than Phyllis, for it was she who was finally roused from love-drugged slumber by the muted ringing of the telephone in the living room.
Her first impulse was to let it ring. But slowly, recollection of the causes of her being here in Lem Weldon's snug pied a terre penetrated the mists of drowsiness and, with a single resounding Anglo-Saxon four-letter word, she dragged herself out of the sex-tumbled bed and staggered drunkenly to answer the ringing, guided by the night light in the short hallway.
She picked up the handset and uttered a sleep-thick, "Hello-who is it?"
She heard a click as whoever was on the other end of the line hung up-and was left standing there in the semi-darkness, staring stupidly at the instrument in her hand. She uttered another hello, held it to her ear just in time to be greeted by the irksome drone of the dial tone.
"Bastard!" she said and reeled back to bed. As she slid under the covers, she noted that it was seventeen minutes past six by the phosphorescent dial of the small alarm clock on the bedside table.
She was awakened by the ringing of another bell, this one on the clock. It was sunlight then and the time was eight-thirty and a puffy-faced Tim was extending a muscular naked arm to shut it off. He yawned, looking stupid, worked the residue of slumber from his eyes, then looked at her and said, "Hello."
She said, "Hello," and he squinted at the clock in the sunlight that streamed through the half-opened window. She became aware of something only her subconscious had registered during the night-that her new lover, unlike Pres and most other men she had known, did not smell sharp when he sweated.
Then his arms were around her and he was kissing her and then he released her and said, "If you weren't still here, I wouldn't have believed it. But since you are, love..."
Without further preliminary, he pulled her down on the bed, mounted her and entered her with a rod that felt as hard as steel. At first, Phyllis was still too numbed with sleep to react to his thrusts, but the very violence of his attacks soon dissipated the mists of slumber and she began to react as she had the night before to his lovemaking.
There was nothing of dalliance in their matinal mating. He took her like an animal, employing rapid, hard-driving strokes which punctured her to the core and took their inevitable effect. By the time she felt his offering within her womb, she was giving as good as she got.
He pulled out of her rather abruptly, gave her a pat on the pussy and said, "Thanks, darling. Best setting-up exercise in the world."
"Why, you bastard!" she said, ready to burst into tears or hit him or both for his flippancy at such a moment. Then she saw his eyes crinkle and realized that he was laughing at her, and she laughed, too, and then they fell into each other's arms. It was a good half hour before they finally reached the shower.
They were barely dressed when the telephone rang and, because she was nearer, Phyllis answered. It was Lem Weldon. He was about to drive in from Kitteridge and would stop by with her things within three quarters of an hour. She thanked him, told him she was fine, then he asked to speak to Tim.
She went into the bedroom and completed doing her hair as best she could with only masculine equipment. She felt wonderfully free and loose and awake now, despite certain aches and abrasions that suggested she had not been using certain parts of her body as nature intended her to use them for too long a time. Let the old thing ache, she thought. Every pang, mild or sharp, was a joyous reminder of how well it had been earned.
When she got back, Tim was still on the phone. He looked up as she entered, said, "Hold on another moment, Lem." Then, to Phyllis, "Anything you want to tell Lem before he hangs up?"
She shook her head, then remembered the silent caller that had first roused her from slumber. She said, "Ask him what the idea was of calling us a little after six this morning?"
Tim stared at her as if she had gone crazy and she said, "Go on-ask him. Somebody certainly did."
Tim repeated the question, listened, said, "I thought not, but Phyllis says somebody did.
I'll ask her." He turned back toward her and said, "Who was it?"
"John Doe," she said. "He hung up the moment I answered."
Tim repeated this to Lem Weldon, then said, "I don't like it either. Sure it could have been a random joker or a wrong number dialer. But I still don't like it."
Another pause, then, "Okay, I'll do just that. See you later, Lem."
He hung up, scowling. Then he rubbed his square chin and said, "I don't like that phone call."
"So I gather-and so, I gather does Lem-or doesn't, whichever."
"I'm not trying to be funny," he said. He came over and gripped her upper arms and looked as if he wanted to look down on her-which was difficult since he was a good two inches taller than he. He said, "For God's sake, darling, you could well be in serious trouble. And I don't want anything happening to you now that we've found each other."
"I'm sorry." She felt touched and contrite at his concern. She said, "I'll try. But it still seems like a crazy dream. I mean, if anyone wro ,e it as fiction, who'd believe it?"
He said, still cross with her, "Haven't you learned yet that truth is not only stranger than fiction, it's usually lousy fiction? Honey, this is very, very much for real and there's a hell of a lot of money and power at stake and one man has been murdered right in front of your house."
"Poor Gerry was a Mann in name only," she replied. She couldn't help it, she enjoyed getting under his skin a little, since she had made it so easy for him to get under hers a lot.
"I swear," he said, low pitched, "I think I'm going to have to kill you."
"Not even you are man enough for that," she told him.
"I give up," he said, releasing her. Then, all but pleading with her, "Phyllis, I've got to go out for an hour or so. It's an errand Lem Weldon just laid on me. And I want you to do just one thing while I'm gone and until either Lem or I gets back here."
"What's that?" she asked.
"Nothing-we want you to stay here and keep buttoned. Make sure the door is locked after me when I go and then double bolt it. If anyone tries to get in, call the police. They'll get here before the door will give away. If you want to make any calls, go ahead, but don't tell where you are. It's not unlikely any of your friends would have the call traced, so go ahead. But stay buttoned up tight. Got that?"
"Got it." Phyllis felt she ought to click her heels and salute him, but didn't. He looked adorable when he was serious and half angry.
She said, "But what's so alarming about the early phone call?"
He sighed and shook his head at her stupidity. Then he said, in a primary schoolteacher's singsong, "Suppose-just suppose-somebody who doesn't want you around read a paper or listened to the newscast we heard last night. Suppose he read you were under protection of Lem Weldon and he found out you weren't in your usual haunts. Suppose he found out about this place and wanted to know if you were here ... What better way than to call up and see who answered?"
"How would this man-I suppose it is a man-know it was my voice?"
Tim shrugged. "Maybe he wouldn't recognize it. But maybe just hearing a woman answer would be enough."
"What if you'd answered, darling?"
"Dammit, I wish to hell I had. I don't usually sleep through phone calls, but last night...."
He let it hang. Phyllis said, "What difference would it have made?"
"A lot. If he heard my voice, he'd known you weren't alone here. Chances are he'd let you along-for now."
"This is all awfully damn iffy," said Phyllis.
"Sure it is-but I still don't like that call-or the fact you answered it."
"I've got an alibi. I'm innocent, I was framed." Then, seeing the honest hurt in his eyes, she relented and kissed him and said, "I'll be good, darling-honest I will. I won't stir out of the joint, I'll double bolt the door, I'll call the cops if anybody tries to break in."
"Okay," His smile was reluctant but it finally appeared. "That's good enough for me, darling. Sit tight. It won't be long before one of us is back."
He was gone. Phyllis dutifully double locked the door, then sat down on the sofa and lit a cigarette. She was bone tired clear through, she ached all over, and she hadn't felt as wonderful in years. Suddenly she sat up ramrod straight. Through the angle of the hall door, she caught a glimpse of the thoroughly sex-tumbled bedding. Lem Weldon was on his way in, and if he saw it like that, he'd know at once what had happened last night. And, for some reason-perhaps because both men were marvelous and too new in her life-she didn't want that.
By rights, she knew she ought to strip it and put the sheets in the laundry-but she had no idea what Lem Weldon's domestic arrangements were for this apartment. She decided to put the bed together, replace the spread and give the room a good airing to at least alleviate any suggestive after-aroma of sex.
It wasn't as bad as she expected, but she felt relieved when it lay smooth and reasonably fresh-looking beneath the candlewick spread. She looked in every cupboard she could find for a spray can of air purifier to make detection even less unlikely, but found none. She decided to open the window wide.
The phone rang, detouring her. It was Tim. He sounded relieved to hear her voice, said, "Honey, I'm going to be another forty minutes on this little chore. So tell Lem to hold on till I get back."
"Hold on to what?" she countered, unaccountably and joyously happy to hear his voice.
"Your left tit," he replied, and she gurgled with laughter. She was happy because she knew he had called up to make sure she was all right. So he cared, he cared ... and why in hell shouldn't he, another part of her spirit added, after the love she had given him last night?
She returned to the bedroom and opened the casement windows wider, leaning out to make sure the catch would hold. As she bent farther forward, something ugly and invisible whined over her scalp, missing her by mere inches before it thocked into the plaster on the far wall of the room at her back.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Phyllis was still lying flat on her belly on the floor, fighting the uncontrollable shudders that wracked her whole body when, finally, she heard sounds of somebody ringing the doorbell of the apartment. Her first impulse was to scramble to the telephone in the living room and call the police.
Carefully, on her hands and knees to avoid being seen again by the sniper, she moved clear of the window, not rising until she reached the hall, then racing for the phone. As she picked up the instrument, she heard the sounds of banging as well as ringing and saw, to her horror, that the bolted door had somehow been partly opened and was only held by the chain.
She remained paralyzed with terror until she heard Lem Weldon's deep voice cry, "Phyllis-are you all right? It's me-Lem!"
"Oh, thank God!" she gasped. It took her moments of awkward fumbling with shaking hands to clear the chain and then she was safe in the attorney's arms, crying like a baby.
"For God's sake!" he exclaimed, patting her back gently. "What's the matter?"
Still unable to talk, she led him to the bedroom and showed him the unexpectedly large hole in the wall, finally managed to gasp, "I was opening the window to air the room."
Lem Weldon moved swiftly, staying close against the wall until he reached the cord that controlled the draw curtains, then pulling them shut. Only then did he move freely to examine the nature of the damage. As he picked up bits of plaster and crumbled them between his thumb and forefinger, he whistled faintly, softly between his teeth.
"What was it?" she gasped. "Somebody tried to kill me, didn't they?"
"It looks like it," he said. "Damn! I didn't expect this so soon."
She was still speechless at this remark when the doorbell chimed again and Lem Weldon moved to answer it. Moments later, he was back with Tim Buckley in tow. The two of them examined the fragmented hole in the wall further, looking very serious, while Phyllis sat on the bed.
"What do you think, Tim?" the attorney asked. "Explosives?"
Tim nodded, said, "Glycerin from the looks of it-it would take a ballistics expert to be sure, of course."
They went on talking in low pitch and Phyllis felt an utterly unreasonable sense of pride that a man like Lem Weldon should ask her Tim for a judgment opinion. Then her little glow of pride became something else and she had to run to the bathroom and throw up.
When she emerged, shaken and weak, the attorney sat her down on the sofa and Tim brought her an Alka-Seltzer which she somehow managed to swallow and hold in her stomach. The attorney then produced a featherweight portable typewriter, which he set up on the coffee table and in which he inserted three sheets of heavy bond with carbon paper between the layers. The resulting package was so thick he got it onto the roller with difficulty.
To Phyllis's questioning gaze, Tim replied, "We're going to draw you up a new will right now."
"What good will that do?" she protested. "I mean, if I should..." She halted as the thought of her imminent violent death rose much too vividly before her. Then she said, "But it's insane. I mean, if the gang isn't going to kill me, you can't suspect any of Pres's relatives."
"Somebody fired that bullet at you," Lem said in his beautifully controlled deep accents.
"If that thing had hit your head, it would have been a guillotine-only a good deal messier."
"Okay, okay," she said. "Let's get it over with."
"Whom do you wish to name as beneficiaries?" the attorney asked after typing the preliminary formal paragraphs.
Phyllis could only sit there, completely at a loss. Whom could she name? The fact that both she and her late husband were virtual, if belated, orphans was borne in upon her as never before. She thought of her friends in Kitteridge-she was no longer close to anyone in New York. There was Hilma, of course. There was Beth Davis ... and Freddy. She tried to apportionate what she knew of what she had among these three and some others of whom she was fond-but the impact of recent events made it impossible for her to concentrate.
She looked up at the two men in despair-and found her answer right in front of her.
She said, "I'd like to divide my entire estate between the two of you. Is that possible?"
The men looked at each other. Phyllis said, "Look, I simply can't think about it now. And, if anything does happen to me, I know you'll handle things wisely. I have no family bequests to make. So why not? I want you to be my co-legatees and co-administrators. After all, I'm apparently trusting you with my life-why not with my estate if anything does happen to me?"
Lem Weldon said, "It seems to me we'd be grossly overpaid if our efforts to protect you should fail. But the choice is yours."
Phyllis said, "If whoever is after me finds out you'll inherit the Interocean whatever it is, it may, to use a corny phrase, give them pause. And that's the whole idea, isn't it?"
"Gotcha!" said Tim. "It's a little alarming to discover a perfectly good brain behind all that loveliness."
"Don't be so male chauvinist pig," said Lem Weldon, blinking at Phyllis. He got busy oh the typewriter, pulled the paper clear and separated the copies from the carbon, then offered the first sheet for Phyllis to read.
"Will that do?" he asked.
It did and she signed all three copies. Lem Weldon folded them and put them each in a separate envelope. Then he pointed to a familiar blue traveling bag and overnight case standing just inside the front door, said, "There are your things, Phyllis. I only hope I packed the right ones. Your maid helped me."
"Hilma? Oh, good!" Phyllis felt unreasonable relief that Beth Davis, friend that she was, had not been poking around in her intimate possessions. She said, "I'll unpack right away."
"Oh, no, you won't," said Tim.
"Why not?" Phyllis looked up at him in surprise, unable to understand him.
"Because we've got to get you the hell out of here, and right now. Or do you prefer to remain in this shooting gallery?"
"Frankly," said Lem Weldon, "I'm more concerned about further damage to the plaster."
"Oh, Lem!" said Tim. "Have you any ideas?"
"My immediate thought is the Walden Pines," said the attorney. "It's isolated, I know the management and can trust them, and it's practically across the Hawthorne Highway from the State Police substation."
"This is your bailiwick," said Tim. "It sounds okay. Incidentally, I suppose the constabulary wants to talk to her."
"That's part of the idea, since they're in charge of the investigation-for which I am thankful. They're a lot harder to reach than any of the municipal police forces. I'll inform them of our move when they wish to question Phyllis again. I'll make reservations now."
He reached for the phone but Tim said, "Let me call the garage first and have my rental car brought around. Since Phyl is all packed and it will take me about two minutes to stow my gear, we can get cracking."
"Hey!" said Phyllis, "Isn't the Walden Pines frightfully expensive?"
"You can afford it," said Lem Weldon quickly, causing Phyllis to blush. She was not yet accustomed to being an heiress to millions of dollars.
First Tim got on the phone, then Lem Weldon while Tim packed. The attorney was still on the phone when the garage man rang the door chimes to report Tim's car was waiting at the curb downstairs. He was still talking into it when they departed.
Amid the bright exploding-paint shop colors of Massachusetts in mid-October, it was difficult for Phyllis to feel herself in deadly danger. Indian summer had settled in with its usual debilitating effect. Instead of feeling bone-frightened and tired, she felt a delicious languor, a sort of sensual warmth that caused her to place a hand over Tim's crotch, which promptly came alive in most satisfying vigor beneath the fabric and zipper that covered it.
Tim said, "Cut it out, Phy-do you want me to crash us?"
"Keep your eyes on the road," she told him and there were no more complaints as they wheeled through light early-afternoon traffic in Tim's rented Pontiac. She teased his phallus until it threatened to burst through the front of his slacks, then unzipped him and rubbed the underside adroitly until the spurt of his semen drenched her little lace handkerchief.
He said, when she had restored him to order, "Where did you learn to do that, Phyl?"
"Pres taught me," she said. "He liked to have me do it to him in the course of a long drive."
Tim muttered something under his breath. It sounded like, "Well, that's the first good thing I've heard about the S.O.B." Before she could query him on it, he said, "Well, this is a pretty short drive, but thanks all the same, darling. I only hope we won't both be sorry later."
"We won't be," she replied with the superb confidence of a woman freshly involved in a most satisfying love affair. "There's plenty more where that came from."
He turned off Hawthorne Highway a couple of miles further on, passing through a pair of square fieldstone pillars onto a hard topped curving driveway lined with low hedge and high oaks, clad in their autumn mantles of pale red and yellow. The inn, when they reached it, was also of gray fieldstone, concentrically angled to embrace three sides of the driveway's loop. Its overhanging, low-pitched roof was of pastel slate shingles ranging from dark gray to purple, its windows wide and inviting.
Although the decor was simple, it was the simplicity of ultimate opulence and excellent taste. There was little suggestion of Thoreau austerity in the Walden Pines' scheme of discreetly shaded comfort. They were given adjoining rooms on the second story, rear, overlooking a terraced lawn and trimly landscaped shrubbery that led down to an artificially enlarged pond whose other banks were lined with the evergreens from which the resort took the Pines in its name.
Phyllis sat on the foot of her bed, smoking a cigarette, while Tim investigated every nook and cranny of both his room and hers. When he finished his check, he studied the view from the wide window with narrowed eyes before giving his attention to her.
"Well...?" she asked.
"About as good as could be expected," he replied, "as long as we keep the curtains drawn at night and don't open the windows."
"What do we do for fresh air?" she asked.
He said, "We don't," and moved to the thermostat, then turned on an all but silent air conditioner. He went into his room through the open door between the chambers, returned in his shirtsleeves, unstrapping his shoulder holster and putting it down on a long narrow maple table against the wall near the bed.
"Now," he said, "what did you have in mind, darling?"
He had read her correctly. She was urgently in need of him, her whole body demanding sexual release to ease the hideous strain brought by her attempted assassination.
She said, "Let's see if there is any left."
"Well," he replied, "there's only one really satisfactory way to find out."
He picked her up off the foot of the bed, held her close, low around the waist, so that their loins made close contact, looked at her, said, "Damn, but you're an attractive wench!"
" Wench!" she riposted. "Why not broad?"
There was no more talking for quite a while as his lips sealed hers and his tongue met hers more than halfway. Phyllis was already more than half aroused, and the contact was very like the pushing of a button that instantly turned her on. She gasped and shuddered, this time not with fear but in an uncontrollable access of sheer sensual excitement at the prospect of pleasure immediately ahead of her.
She pulled him down on the bed with her, worked him on top of her, fumbled for his fly zipper, opened it, pulled out his already erect phallus which showed no ill effects from the manual treatment she had so recently given it in the car.
Seizing it firmly, she bridged upward, her legs wide apart, and worked it past the flimsy barrier of her panties, then wriggled and wormed it into her until it was lodged in her tunnel as far as it would go-somewhat less deeply than in their earlier encounters, thanks to the fact they were still fully clad.
With her ignition already turned on, she was off to a racing start, thrusting and rolling and wriggling with all but frantic violence in her urgent desire to feel his sperm spurt within her once more. Thanks to the vehemence, both of her onslaughts and of his responses, he came quickly while she went rigid, holding him clasped close against her until his stream was spent.
"Hey!" he said when they disengaged, for there was no question of their continuing to another spending. "Couldn't you wait to take our clothes off?"
"Not a chance, darling," she replied, rolling upright and pulling her dress off over her head. "That one I needed right then."
He regarded her curiously, standing at the foot of the bed as he began to remove his own clothing, said, "You haven't been in prison or anything for the last five years or so?"
"No," she replied, uncoupling her bra and shaking her full breasts free, "but I might as well have been." Then, while they finished undressing, she found herself telling about her increasingly abortive affair with Freddy Gardiner and its inhibiting effect upon her psyche.
"It doesn't seem to have done any lasting damage," he said, standing first on one leg, then on the other, while he removed his socks. "How any man worth his salt could give you that sort of treatment beats me, hon."
"Well..." She hesitated, then decided she might as well tell the rest of it. "I guess
Freddy isn't worth his salt as a man. I only learned the other day from Beth Davis that it seems I stole him from Gerry Mann-you know, the poor guy who got killed in my driveway."
"O-ho!" Tim scratched his bare stomach and frowned down at her, then said, "Jesus, I wonder."
"So do I-about a lot of things. And there was something else Beth Davis-she's my best friend in Kitteridge and knows everything about everybody there-something else she hinted at I didn't pay much attention to at the time. It had something to do with Gerry and Pres, years ago, before Pres married me. Though how a man like Pres could go homosexual. . . "
She let it hang. He said, "Maybe..." It was his turn to leave an expressed thought incomplete. Then he looked down at her, sitting on the bed with her knees drawn close, added, "Fuck your late husband, fuck Freddy, fuck every man, present company excepted, who's ever had anything to do with you. Better yet, let 'em fuck each other."
Phyllis laughed at his vehemence, then reached for his hanging cock, gripped it, and said, "Poor little thing. Its growth is all stunted. Come here to mama."
She drew him close by his phallus and slipped it into her eager mouth once again. He stood close beside the bed while she employed lips and tongue artfully to bring him back to a full head of steam, letting his hands rest lightly on her shoulders as they moved back and forth, back and forth while she gave him a full rim job.
Finally, however, his grip tightened, and he pushed her soft lips clear of his cock. It was now standing beautifully out and upright and she lay back on the big, comfortable bed once more and let him mount her. As he slid into her saddle, she reached for his phallus with the flat of her close-pressed fingertips, pushing down on it as it came close to its goal, then releasing it so that it seemed to leap past the rim of her cervix into her already well flushed vaginal passage, there to embed itself until their pubic hairs met and mingled.
It was a trick Pres had taught her, claiming he had learned it from a Chinese whore in New York when he taught it to her. She felt a pang of faithlessness as she used the technique on Tim, her new man, then thought defiantly, Why not?-then forgot about it altogether as the mere fact of their union brought her to rich, creaming delight.
Although the memories of her first months with Pres remained vivid, Phyllis felt that she had never felt so alive, so joyous in her abandon of all restraint, so completely fulfilled as she felt just then. It was as if the rest of the world had been wiped out, as if the entire universe consisted only of herself, of the magnificent male body merged with her, and of the bed on which they were so ecstatically mingling.
She came again and again, for this time he was slow to reach orgasm as a result of his earlier ejaculations, and she blessed every moment of the prolongation of this, their most perfect and complete union yet. Every muscle, every cell, every nerve end in her pulsing, throbbing, thrusting body sang its own paean of delight. She felt herself happily drowning in her own effusions and, when at last he came deep in the very heart of her, she felt the world darken happily in a semblance of the sweetest possible deaths.
Her last thought as unconsciousness enwrapped her like a soft eiderdown quilt was that this was the big one, bigger than any she had enjoyed with Pres, so much bigger than what she had attained with her handful of other past lovers, including Freddy, as to make a hollow mockery of such pitiful scraps of passion, real or simulated, as they had struggled with relative feebleness to reach.
When she came out of it, Tim had rolled them onto their sides and was holding her gently close, his half-waned phallus still within the liquescence of her vagina, sweetly maintaining their contact and letting nature take its course, easing her down gently from the cresting climax that had brought her to a swoon.
She hugged him convulsively as the source of this newfound joy, and the movement caused him to slip out of her hole where, for the moment, he was no longer needed. She felt wonderful, freer than air, released of all tension and entirely one, even though temporarily separated from the strong, fully male being whose masterful ministrations had lifted her to this unbelievable rapture.
For the first time in her life, she felt full a woman, a woman loving and loved. She pulled his head between the twin fullnesses of her breasts, held it there while she caressed it, then released it to kiss him slowly, lingeringly, on his sweat-salty lips.
"That was beautiful," she half whispered. "Just beautiful."
"Let's say it was adequate," he replied, grave-faced, and for a moment she died until he gave her sopping wet pubic hair a playful tweak and she saw that his eyes were laughing at her lovingly.
"Adequate!" she exclaimed. "Tim Buckley, you know perfectly well it was-"
At that moment the telephone shrilled its summons and he reached across the soft naked curves of her body to pick it up from the bedside table and answer it.
CHAPTER NINE
Tim announced himself, then listened. It was evident to Phyllis that he was talking to Lem Weldon. After a bit, he said, "I wish to hell you could make it. They're sending Emilio, you say? Yes, I know of him. Sounds like the first team. Well, I'd rather deal with the top than the scum underneath ... Okay, Lem, you stay on it ... Sure, we'll sit tight. So long and good luck. I have a hunch we need it,"
He hung up, looked at the window thoughtfully for long moments before Phyllis claimed his attention by the simple device of giving his balls a gentle squeeze. In return, he squeezed her left nipple, then said, "We've got company coming-a representative of the Mafia, no less. He should be here in less than an hour. So let's get ourselves fixed up."
"No, not that way, darling!" This last as Phyllis tried to pin him to the mattress and mount him. "Damn it, Phyl, this is serious."
"And you think this isn't?" She made a grab for his prick, but he pushed her hands away and held her wrists.
"Of course-we're just great together. But they're sending an authentic Mafia don to make an offer. So let's save it till later. It'll keep."
'No it won't-not mine," she told him.
"Then we'll just have to make do with whatever is left-after we listen to the man."
"Why can't Lem handle it?" she asked.
"Because he's up to his eyeballs in another aspect of the problem," Tim replied. "Besides, they want a look at you for some reason. Lem says it's okay."
"Oh, well then." She pouted and again wondered what was happening to her to make her act at such wide variance in behavior from the Phyllis West Barrett she had known and been for so many years.
A thought that had been lodged elusively in the far corners of her mind suddenly came front and center. She said, "Darling, there's something more to this, isn't there? Something you haven't told me."
"That's right," he admitted.
"For God's sake, what is it?"
He shook his square-chinned head. Then he said, "It isn't time yet. If we're wrong-and the odds are that we are wrong, there's simply no point in getting you as confused as we are. If we're right, then you'll know soon enough."
His tone sobered her. She looked long into his eyes which met hers evenly, then told him, "I don't believe you. I don't believe you and Lem are confused at all. You know something-and it's not just a matter of negotiating with the Mafia over Sal Carini's insane will."
"Old Sal was not insane-far from it," he replied. "There had to be a reason-a damned good reason-for that will. And that's the crux of the whole problem, honey, take it or leave it."
"Since I'm so directly involved, I can hardly leave it," she said. "But what valid reason could there be for his leaving all those millions to me? He didn't know me-so how did he expect me to hold final power in a racketeering organization?"
"Think hard, honey," he told her. "Maybe it will come to you. In the meantime, let's get the hell into a shower." He hoisted her to her feet with him, turned her around, headed her toward her bathroom with a smart slap on the fanny. "Separate showers," he added. "You know perfectly well what will happen if we take it together."
She stuck out her tongue at him and he thumbed his nose at her from the door in retaliation.
Emilio Colucci, Mafia don, was a complete surprise to Phyllis. He was tall, at least an inch over six feet, beautifully dressed with a slight tinge of Mod fashion in both his quietly frilled shirt and butterfly tie and in the low-forehead sweep of his dark brown hair. Tim and Phyllis received him downstairs in a small secluded drawing room just off the bar, where they were assured both privacy and service, if they wished it, by Walden Pines manager, the courtly and portly Mr. Addams with two D's.
When the introductions were concluded and a drink courteously turned down by their visitor, he stated his purpose forthrightly.
"Despite General Weldon's assurance that Mrs. Barrett is as unacquainted with us as we are with her, we wish to meet her for ourselves. I have been delegated to fulfill that function." He paused, smiled to reveal perfect white teeth, added, "And I must admit I find the mission an entirely delightful one."
Tim threw a covert look of absolute loathing at the newcomer that made Phyllis's spirits soar. She dimpled at Emilico Colucci and said, "I must confess you're not at all what I expected."
"Oh," he replied offhandedly, "we come in all shapes and sizes. All I really wish to ask you was whether, in the course of your marriage to Prescott Barrett, you ever heard him mention our Godfather, Salvatore Carini."
Their visitor sighed, shook his handsome head in defeat, when Phyllis said, "Until I happened, quite by chance, to hear of his death the other night, I'm afraid I never even knew Sal Carini existed."
Colucci's dark eyes flashed with anger and frustration. He said, "But in that case, it's as if he picked your name, blindfolded, from a telephone book. It simply doesn't make sense. And I can assure you that Mr. Carini didn't achieve what he did and maintain his position so long by the exercise of none-sense."
Tim spoke for the first time since the conversation began. He said to Colucci, "I don't suppose you know or knew anything that could have led to the murder of Gerry Mann."
Colucci shook his head. "His death was as much a surprise to us as it was to you. One of my cousins, a girl, remembers having dinner once at his restaurant in Kitteridge. She says the food and service were excellent. And that's all."
"Poor Gerry!" said Phyllis, recalling all too visibly the contact with his body as it fell slowly from the minivan in her driveway.
"You knew him, of course?" Colucci asked.
She nodded. "But not intimately."
"I understand. We have checked him out," Colucci said dryly. "I also understand, from General Weldon, that it was he who told you of Mr. Carini's death."
"That's quite true," she admitted.
"I also understand that he seemed very excited about it."
Phyllis said, "Not at that time. He was very excited about it when he spoke to me in the restaurant the following afternoon and made the appointment to see me that evening."
"In what way was he excited?" Colucci asked.
"I don't know. He was-well, all uptight about it. He acted as if he had something terribly important to tell me. Of course, by then, he had heard of the inheritance, which was more than I had. I must have seemed like an absolute idiot at the time."
Colucci regarded her steadily in silence for a full half minute. Then he turned to Tim and said, "Mr. Buckley, what's your opinion?"
Tim said, "On the face of it, the whole business is insane. But we're both damn sure it isn't, of course."
"Have you any theory about it?"
Tim hesitated, then nodded and said, "There's only one trouble with my theory. On the face of it, it's impossible."
Colucci sighed again, said, "That's about what General Weldon told me. He wasn't ready to talk, either." He paused, then added, "I wish you'd let us in on it even if it does seem impossible. When every possible avenue is closed, the impossible offers the only answer. Besides, we might be of help."
"I'm sorry," Tim said, "but setting off a hue and cry at this stage of our investigation would do more harm than good. Don't worry, Colucci, if we find we need your help, you'll be the first to know."
The emissary rose to his feet, as did Tim, and said, "I suppose I'll have to be satisfied with that."
"It's all we can tell you," Tim replied. "Believe me, we want this problem resolved as rapidly as possible, if only for Mrs. Barrett's sake."
Colucci made a move to turn away, then hesitated and said, "I understand how General Weldon became involved, but I don't quite understand how you fit into the picture."
"Lem called me in from Denver," said Tim. "He seemed to think Mrs. Barrett needed more protection than he could give her."
"Commendable." The handsome emissary nodded. "But isn't it rather like cracking a walnut with a drill press?"
Tim said, "Goodbye, Mr. Colucci."
"Em-please." The marvelously white teeth flashed again. Then, to Phyllis, "And what do you think of your protector's theory?"
She said, "If I knew what it was, I'd tell you. Unfortunately or otherwise, they have yet to confide it to me."
He was gone. Phyllis said, "What a dream-boat!"
"Don't let his manners fool you," said Tim. "Emilio Colucci has more unsolved slayings to his credit than Jack the Ripper. Come on, Phyl, let's have a drink and then dinner. You haven't had any food all day and..." A pause and a half smile that was more sweetly suggestive than a leer " ... we've both had a lot of exercise."
Phyllis suddenly realized that she was ravenously hungry as Tim led her to the dining room of the inn. She loved the food, which was based on early American recipes, from cream of chicken soup through a baron of beef wheeled to the table in a special cart and carved right there, accompanied by a potato souffle and creamed spinach topped with 'Sconset cheese from Nantucket and put under the broiler, to a deep dish blackberry pie accompanied by a hard sauce heavily laced with Medford rum. By way of beverages, she was treated to a dry, light hard cider that tasted innocuous but packed a devastating wallop, followed by brandy with the after-dessert coffee.
The room itself, like the competent, unobtrusive service, was conducive to relaxation and comfort-oak paneled halfway up the walls, girded above with mural papers that showed scenes of the countryside of eighteenth century Massachusetts that created a real feeling of out-of-doors space. The lighting was soft and indirect, the chairs and banquest upholstered in warm yellow leather.
Whatever the cost, Phyllis decided as she cut into the tender scarlet of the beef, being at the Walden Pines was worth it. Poor Gerry Mann's Iron Kettle fare, excellent though it was, seemed pallid in comparison. Yet, despite her relaxed condition, unexplained factors in recent events-kept crowding into her mind from time to time.
There was something about the way Mr. Colucci had wheeled on her at the last moment and asked what her theory of the case was that reminded her of courtroom tactics and she said as much to Tim.
"Smart girl." He regarded her with approval over a fork well laden with spinach and cheese. "It's the Parthian shot technique-leave a point apparently as is, then fire a final arrow in an unexpected direction, hoping to catch somebody off guard."
"Where did he learn that if his record is as clean as you suggested?"
"Probably," said Tim, "in Harvard Law. Our friend went through the three-year course in two-and came out with near-top honors."
"Since when have Mafia mobsters been going to law school?" Phyllis asked.
"Since they made their big money during Prohibition and went more or less legitimate after Repeal, they've gone in for all sorts of items. Take Emilio, for example."
"That might not be too hard," she replied.
"Oh, shut your face." Tim regarded her thoughtfully. "He has been trained, from his early teens, to administrate Interocean. He also has a degree from the Wharton School of Business Administration at the University of Pennsylvania. It was one of Old Sal's pet projects, training the brightest kid in the family to do the job."
"Then why did he leave it to me?" she asked.
"That," said Tim, "is one of the many sixty-four thousand-dollar questions mucking up this affair. Sal's original will made sense. His final testament doesn't. But there's no doubt as to its authenticity." A pause, then, "If you're up a tree over it, think of Emilio's position."
She shrugged, said, "I'd rather not. But there's something else-what did he mean when he compared your being on this business to cracking a walnut with a drill press?"
"Oh..." For the first time since she had met him, Tim Buckley looked ill at ease. If it were possible, Phyllis would have considered him actually flustered.
"Come on-tell mommy," she insisted.
"There's nothing much to tell," he replied, fiddling with his potato souffle. "I've been a little lucky in some of my cases."
"You must have been more than just lucky," she said, looking him straight in the eye, "If Lem Weldon called you in from Denver and Emilio Colucci referred to you as he did, you must be pretty important."
His gaze, for once, actually fell away from hers. He said, "On the contrary, it's you who are important, darling. After all, I'm charged with protecting that beautiful face and body, both of which, I wish to add, I find infinitely precious."
He was ducking the issue, of course. But, if he didn't wish to talk about himself, she had no intention of pressing him. She would find it out anyway from Lem Weldon when she saw him again. Sudden pride in her new lover made her drop her own eyes to the delicious food on her plate.
They ate in silence until the headwaiter, clad in buff livery with gilt buttons, came up to them and said, "There's a call for you, sir. If you'd like to take it here..."
Phyllis saw that he was carrying a telephone which, at Tim's nod, he plugged into a jack low on the wall. Tim picked up the handset, said, "Buckley here ... Oh, it's you, Colonel."
He held his voice so low that, even though the room was quiet and she was seated beside him in the banquet, she could hardly hear what her lover said. Actually, he said very little until, just before he hung up, he said, "Oho, so that's how they worked it-through the other side. No wonder we've had such a rough time tracing him ... Sorry, but I'm on a job right here ... Yes, it's part of the pattern." There was a long wait, then he said, "Well, if it's absolutely necessary. But I have to get back here as soon as I've seen the film."
He hung up, looked at her with troubled eyes, told her, "Wouldn't you know something would foul up an assignment that is such a positive pleasure as this one? All I planned to do tonight was go upstairs and to bed with you, darling. Now they've bitched that up. I've got to go back into Boston to look at some film. I'll be back just as soon as I can."
"Can't I come with you?" she asked.
His headshake was firm. "Sorry, Phyl, believe it or not, this is very official business." He took her hand, added, "I want you to go upstairs and lock yourself in the room. Watch TV, read, go to sleep, anything-but stay there until I get back which will be as quickly as possible."
"You don't give me much choice, lover," She was still reeling emotionally under the impact of his description of her as a "job right here..." And so she was only "part of a pattern."
"Bear up, honey." He kissed her and somehow she kept her lips cool against his. She felt very much alone and very frightened as she watched him stride from a room that was no longer restful or pleasant. She knew her neuroemotional-physical fatigue was betraying her into silliness, but she couldn't help having to fight an all but overwhelming impulse to burst into tears.
Nor did saying the name Gloria Steinem ten times give her much help. At the moment, Phyllis felt like a very, very un-liberated woman...
Somehow she made it upstairs and to her room without coming apart at the seams. Once she got there, and had kicked off her shoes, she felt better. Tim was an important man-he had to be-and a girl who became involved with an important man had to play second fiddle to his larger affairs at times.
She remembered a sad song from a very old film-some girl, was it Virginia Bruce?-singing I'm in Love with the Honorable Mr. So-and-So ... She wondered again, just who and what Tim Buckley was, aside from being the most marvelous lover she had ever shared a bed with...
She took off her clothes, turned on the TV and settled in the room's armchair. Regarding her nakedness with some satisfaction, she thought, It may be a long wait, but I might as well be ready for him when he comes, when he comes, when he comes, when he comes...
She felt drowsy and exceedingly sensual. Tim, Tim, Tim, she thought as her hands strayed to the bush of her pubic hair and beyond, burrowing with busy fingers into her cleft splaying on either side of her button and rubbing it gently along both sides.
As a thrill went through her, causing her to shudder deliciously, Phyllis wondered if, now that she was turned on again, she would ever turn off. "I hope not-oh, I hope not," she whispered as she peaked again, visualizing Tim embracing her, driving into her with the irresistible skill and stamina of his all but inexhaustible cock. If he was not as long as Pres in this department, his thickness more than made up for it-and his extraordinary skill in its use.
Even more important was the fact that Tim was very much in and of her life, while Pres was long, long gone. Letting her hand lie idle upon her pubes, Phyllis considered other differences between her two most important men. Pres had been marvelous, of course, but underlying his sensuality, she could now understand, lay the urge to conquer, to subdue. It was as if his desire to give a woman pleasure stemmed only from the fact that it increased his own. In his violence, she had more than once felt an urge to rape or to simulate rape, which was much the same thing.
At the time, loving Pres, she had enjoyed being an object of conquest. But now, with Tim, she found herself not a victim, not even a victim in jest, but a full partner in the most delightful of concerns-not a going, but a coming concern, she told herself, smiling at the cornball play on words.
The TV annoyed her and she leaned forward and turned it off. It was interfering with her fantasies. She decided to go to bed and wait for Tim there, open and ready for him whenever he returned. She continued to masturbate, and sudden recollection of her first sight of her lover, engaged in the same mild diversion, caused her to giggle softly to herself.
Slowly, in her sweet frustration, Phyllis drifted off to sleep-to be roused by the soft insistence of the telephone on the table by her right ear. Hoping that it was Tim calling to tell her he was on his way back, she picked it up and uttered a sleepy hello.
There was no answer but the click of the other handset and the drone of the dial tone. Thinking of the similar call of the .night before, the call that had been a prelude to the near miss of the explosive bullet when she leaned out the window, Phyllis sat upright, shocked entirely awake, hugging her nudity tightly against the chill of a room grown suddenly cold.
CHAPTER TEN
Phyllis had never felt so alone in her life. Events had moved so rapidly in the roughly forty-eight hours since Gerry Mann's bloody body had toppled onto her out of his minivan in her driveway that she had not actually had time to feel the full weight of terror. The moves from place to place, the sense of mystery and high melodrama, the overwhelming physical-emotional impact of her big sex with Tim-all of these had so fully occupied her that she had not had time seriously to consider what was actually happening to her.
Now, roused by the silent call, the talons of panic clutched at her as she sat shivering on the bed. She knew, with a certainty born out of the twin wombs of experience and intuition, that something horrible was about to happen, something horrible for her. Her teeth began to chatter.
In an instant of rationality, she considered her plight and found it hard to believe. She, Phyllis West Prescott, utterly respectable young widow of Kitteridge, golf playing companion of down-to-earth Beth Davis and unhappy once-a-week mistress of Freddy the Freeloader, had inherited tainted millions from a completely illogical source, had been shot at, moved around like a chess pawn-above all had been fucked foolish by a young man of whose identity and existence she had not been aware of thirty-six hours earlier.
Now, she was facing ... what? Panic gripped her again, so tightly as to make her breathing difficult. Then rationality returned once more and she considered the fact that, if something dreadful were about to happen, she was certainly doing nothing to forestall or prepare for it. Sitting there naked in bed, waiting for the axe or whatever to fall.
By sheer force of will, she compelled her reluctant limbs to move. The first thing to do, of course, was to make sure she was locked in the room as tightly as possible. There was no way she could reach Tim or she would have called him first-but, as she moved toward the door, it occurred to her that she could call Lem Weldon in Kitteridge ... if he was home.
She tried ... and he did not answer.
She considered calling the desk downstairs and asking for protection. But something held her back-fear that she might be making exactly the wrong move, fear of sounding like a neurotic mess if she asked for protection against a danger she could hardly define.
Then she remembered a remark of Lem Wel-don's when he was recommending the Walden Pines to Tim as a reasonably safe sanctuaryhadn't he said it was virtually across the highway from a State Police sub-station? Since, according to the attorney, the constabulary wanted to question her further as a witness in Gerry Mann's murder, they ought to be glad to protect her.
But first, the door ... she turned on the bedside lamp and moved toward it to check the lock. Satisfied that it was fully bolted, she turned around to pick up the phone, and frozefor she was no longer alone in the suite.
It had never occurred to her to lock the connecting door between her room and Tim's-and now a young woman stood there, regarding her with an unpleasant half smile on her otherwise near beautiful face.
Her leanness of body, save for extravagant opulence of bosom, was evidenced by a black or navy blue leotard that clung to its every svelte curve. She was not tall-not as tall as Phyllis's five-seven by three or four inches-but any advantage this might give the frightened heiress was more than offset by the little black automatic she held in her right fist.
The face above it was framed by bright platinum hair whose fringes peeped out from the edges of a black scarf bound bathing-cap tight around it and bringing the planes of the face it framed into bold relief.
It was an arrestingly handsome face that missed beauty by an eyelash-or rather by the hawk-like sharpness of nose and chin and cheekbones. That her blondeness was unnatural was proven by the near black pupils of her enormous, long-lashed eyes, both cruelty and sensuality were revealed by the flare of her nostrils and the curve of her brightly carmined mouth.
There she stood, the unexpected intruder, studying the helpless Phyllis as if she were some sort of freak, with that sardonic half smile playing over her face as if she were savoring and relishing the moment.
"Hello, Phyllis," she said in a low slightly husky voice like the rest of her larded with sexiness, "I thought it was about time we met."
Beneath the mockery of her tone, behind the half smile that seemed painted on her strikingly attractive face, Phyllis had never felt such malevolence, such out-and-out unconcealed hatred. Yet, to the best of her knowledge she had never seen this woman before in her life.
Another remark of Lem Weldon's came flashing up from some corner of her recent memories-this one a question. The attorney had asked her if she had ever heard of a woman called-what was it?-ah, Gina de Brett.
On impulse born out of terror, she said, "Hello, Gina-what do you want?"
Momentarily, her use of the name cracked that armor of sardonic poise. The eyes narrowed, the black-bound bosom rose and fell-but the eye of the pistol-barrel remained unwaveringly on Phyllis's naked navel.
"I want you out of the way," she said. "I want you out of my life for keeps."
"I'm not aware of being in your life in any way," Phyllis replied. "If you want to talk about it, fine-I'll be glad to know what I'm supposed to have done. If not, why don't you get out of here before you get in trouble?"
"You're the one that's in trouble-not me," said the intruder. Then, after surveying Phyllis's nude body from head to heels, "I don't see what Pres saw in you."
Pres! That was a stunner. She knew Pres had had affairs with other women before they were married-he had talked freely if casually about his old flames if only at moments when such relationships were apropos. But she was quite certain he had never mentioned a Gina-especially a Gina de Brett.
Even if he had been this woman's lover, why, after all these years, should she be up in arms about it? Unless-a big unless-Gina de Brett was one of the late Sal Carini's nieces or cousins or whatever who considered herself to have been robbed by the Boston Godfather's leaving control of Interoceanic to Phyllis?
"I'm not here to talk," said Gina de Brett. MI came to get rid of you. And that's just what I'm going to do."
Phyllis saw the Whitening of the intruder's knuckles as she tightened her forefinger on the trigger of the little automatic. Time seemed to go into slow motion and, in the face of a fate she had no means to combat, fear left her and fatalism took its place. It occurred to her fleetingly that, if she had to die young, she had at least reclaimed her life, however briefly, with Tim.
And then the gun spurted fire and the shot rang out and the bullet went wild and buried itself in the ceiling-as Tim appeared in the doorway behind Gina and knocked her gun hand upward at the last possible second.
"Drop, Phyl!" he said, then, as the intruder twisted toward him, "oh, no you don't, baby!"
Who or whatever she might be, Gina de Brett was evidently no stranger to the martial arts. As Tim grabbed her right wrist, she fired another bullet into the ceiling, thus gaining a brief diversion of interest that enabled her to bring her left knee up, hard, into Tim's crotch, doubling him over in instant retching agony.
Phyllis, who had been looking on as if the drama were a theatrical spectacle, suddenly went into action. It was pure, primitive female going into battle for her man. There was a small lamp on the bureau, made of a converted old colonial pewter candlestick and she jerked it out so forcefully that she pulled the cord right out of its baseboard connection.
Leaping across the carpeted floor in two long bounds, she came upon the intruder from behind, just as she was bringing the automatic down to fire into Tim and laid the sharp base of the lamp with all her force against the right side of Gina de Brett's head. The sound of metal cutting through flesh and thudding against bone was horrible, and the intruder was knocked over sideways as if she'd been hit by a falling telephone pole and collapsed on the carpet with blood pouring out of a nasty cut running from ear to eye socket.
The pistol had dropped from her hand, and, ignoring her victim, Phyllis scooped it up and gave her attention to Tim, helping him half upright and guiding him to the bed, where he sat doubled over, still clutching his crotch.
"I'll-be-all-right-in-a-few-seconds," he gasped through clenched teeth.
The telephone rang. Phyllis answered. It was the desk, asking if things were all right. There had been two reports of the sounds of shooting.
Phyllis covered the mouthpiece, turned to Tim, said, "What should I do?"
His forehead was beaded with great drops of cold sweat, but he said, "Tell them to call in the State Police-and to send a doctor."
"Darling, you're hurt badly!" cried Phyllis.
"Not me-I've taken kicks in the nuts before," he replied in something approaching his normal voice. Then, with a nod toward Gina, "For her. I think you've killed her."
"Oh, no!" Phyllis felt the world suddenly swim. "All I did was..."
"Better put something on. Company's coming."
She barely managed to retrieve the quilted blue robe Hilma had packed for her from the closet before the doorbell chimed. By this time, Tim was on his feet, if a bit rockily, and answered it. There was brief quiet conversation, then two uniformed State constables and a physician with a black bag entered the room.
Tim led Phyllis into his room next door and said, "Try not too think about it. You did it to save my life."
"After you saved mine," she said shakily. "But I didn't mean to kill her. I just wanted
. . . " She let it tail off, wondering if she were going to be sick to her stomach again. All that wonderful food! she thought and then mentally thrashed herself for being so egoistic at such a time. She had killed a woman-not that she was concerned about Gina de Brett-after all, she had never laid eyes on the woman before, and Gina's declared intentions and actions had been close to lethal. It was the sudden eruption of her own latent violence that upset her most. She sat there alone and hating herself and shaking like a leaf.
There were comings and goings in the next room and then Tim and a weathered-looking man in plain clothes came in to question her. His name, he said, was Lieutenant O'Neil and Tim crowded close behind him.
It was Tim who asked, "How did it happen, Phyl?"
She told them as best she could. When she explained how the intruder had appeared in the connecting doorway, her lover slapped the inside of his right thigh sharply and said, "Damn it! I should have come upstairs before I left and made sure my hall door was bolted. Then she never could have got in without making some noise."
When she finished, Lieutenant O'Neil sighed and said, "You were both damn lucky. I only wish..."
"Me, too," said Tim. "We've been tearing the town apart trying to get to her."
"I know." The detective nodded. "We've had a few echoes, even out here."
"Did she kill Gerry Mann?" Phyllis demanded.
"What do you think?" the detective asked.
"I-well, it was awfully dark and it happened awfully fast, but my impression of the driver was of a man."
Tim and Lieutenant O'Neil exchanged another glance. Then the detective rose and said, "Well, there's not much more we can do here now. There's no question I can see about it's being self-defense-justifiable homicide, if you will. You'll probably want to change your rooms, Mrs. Barrett. I'd appreciate notification, just in case."
"I'll take care of that," said Tim.
"Thanks, Mr. Buckley." The lieutenant got to his feet and left by the hall door. There were still sounds from Phyllis's room. She said, "Is the-is she . . .I"
"The ambulance boys are taking her out now," Tim told her. "Do you want to change rooms?"
"I don't know. We've hardly used this one," said Phyllis. "I don't think I'm up to moving just now."
"They'll want to go over it. We'd better give them a break," said Tim. "Don't worry, darlin-I'll take care of everything."
He did it, quietly, quickly, efficiently, getting them ensconced in adjoining rooms in the other wing of the Walden Pines, still overlooking the pond. The management offered to send up a bottle of brandy, an offer that was promptly accepted. Neither one of them was prepared to sleep just then.
Nor was she ready for sex with Tim. The shock of killing another human being was taking its after-toll. She wondered, sitting there in her robe, sipping brandy while Tim undressed beyond the door of the adjoining room, if she was ever going to want sex again.
He came in after a few minutes, wearing a dark blue silk dressing gown decorated with bright miniature royal flushes. He carried his heavy automatic with him, put it down on the coffee table as he joined her on the sofa. She almost hated him just then for his coolness-it seemed to her to run very close to callousness.
He read her mood, as he had so often before in their brief, intense acquaintanceship, said, "Honey, don't let it get you. You didn't mean to kill her. In fact, I wish to hell you hadn't."
"Why not?" Phyllis asked.
"Because Gina de Brett was our best-perhaps our only-lead to the man we're seeking."
"Who was she-I mean, apart from being someone who hated me?"
"Did she say why?" he asked.
Phyllis nodded, said, "I forgot that part of it until now. It sounded so silly."
"Nothing's silly in a case like this. What was it?"
"She looked me over at gunpoint and said, 'I don't see what Pres ever saw in you.' Those were her exact words. I'm not likely to forget them. Believe it or not, I felt insulted."
"You were meant to."
"But what did they mean? Pres used to talk about his women now and then. He never mentioned her-or anyone remotely like her. Who was she, Tim? Was she one of Sal Carini's disappointed heirs?"
"In a very remote way you might call her that," said Tim. "She was a relative, but none of the legitimate sisters and cousins and aunts would acknowledge her, even if they knew of her. She was born on the wrong side of the blanket, and Italian women, Sicilians especially, are very jealous of their marriage vows. To the best of our knowledge, she was a granddaughter of Old Sal-the offspring of the offspring of an early affair that was not solemnized in any church. She was sort of an outlaw in an outlaw family."
"But why should she want to kill me? She wouldn't have been in line to inherit much, if any, from what you tell me."
Tim looked thoughtful and sipped his Courvoisier. Then he said, "She may have had her hooks into another member of the Carini clan-remind me to ask Emilico Colucci when I see him again. He might know-in any event, he'll be interested in the possibility."
She knew him well enough by this time to be aware that he was diverting her interest via evasive verbal tactics. So she said, "Tim--why should she have made that remark about Pres seeing something in me she couldn't see. I'm no flaming beauty, but I'm not that bad, and Pres did see enough in me to marry me. If ever. I heard a typical jealous woman's catty remark, that was it."
"Are you sure you heard her say Pres's name?"
"Are you implying I didn't?"
"You may have wanted her to hear his name subconsciously-at least enough so that if she said something that sounded like 'Pres' you would have thought she said it."
"Like what? Name six words that sound like Pres in the context of what she said."
"I could probably come up with sixty if I really went into it," he replied, "but I'm not going to do it. Not now at any rate."
Phyllis was so angry at this deliberate provocation that she felt all but overwhelming impulse to pull his hair out by the fistful. Then her eyes met his and saw the laughter dancing in them-and suddenly she was fighting her own impulse toward mirth.
She said, "Damn you, Tim Buckley! Can't you be serious? I just killed a woman."
"You had the right-anyway, you didn't mean to. You were defending my worthless hide. Remember?"
"Oh, darling!" She melted. All at once, her impulse to pull his hair was directed toward pulling another part of his anatomy.
He was sitting, half sprawled on the sofa, and his blue silk robe with the poker-hand pattern was parted ever so slightly below the cord that held it together around the waistline. Through the gap thus created, she could see a bit of his light brown pubic hair protruding and, just below that, a pink tube of flesh that was definitely not a part of his thighs.
"I mustn't even think about sex," she told herself silently. "I just killed a woman. I mustn't even think about fucking. It's not decent."
With a smile of sensual amusement, Tim followed her gaze and looked down at himself. Phyllis told herself she wanted to tear her gaze away from his phallus, but she was unable to obey the order. Instead, her regard became more intent as, under the continued awareness of what she was looking at, Tim's penis began to show visible changes in the course of taking place.
As it grew longer, more of it disappeared down where the robe again covered him below. And then, slowly beginning to rise, it burst through the gap in the blue dressing gown like a submerged submarine emerging from a dive. At last it stood defiantly upright, pink and thick and stiff and beautiful, inviting her to bury it deep inside a body whose underside had grown notably wet within the last ten seconds.
She made one more try, reaching forward to push it back out of sight, saying, "Tim, I mean it-it's not decent." She covered it over, pushing it flat against his legs, but her action merely increased its rigidity and when she removed her touch-she had to or she'd have been torpedoed and sunk then and there-it popped right back into view again, longer and thicker and stiffer than before.
Lazily, he reached for her and she was unable to pull herself away. He paused only long enough to throw off his own robe and then hers, and then he pulled her onto his lap and, sliding well down on the cushions, poked his pink prick right up into her more than ready hole without manual assistance.
Only when he had her thus impaled did he speak in response to her remarks. He said, after kissing her quick and hard and setting her juices to flowing ever more freely, "Phyl, you say it's not decent to fuck so soon after what happened. Well, life itself is not decent. In fact, from birth to death it's largely unmentionable, even today. But the answer to death, any death, is to live, and that's exactly what you and I are doing right now."
With that, he buried his face between her breasts and, gripping a buttock tightly in either hand, put her backfield into frantic motion that sent her quickly spinning off, utterly out of control.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
For the first time in her life, Phyllis felt frenzy in the full meaning of that ancient word. She fucked Tim like a woman possessed the furies, pumping him dry time after time and then ruthlessly applying her mouth to his phallus to restore it to a condition that would enable it once again to fulfill her seemingly insatiable demands.
It was as if, deep inside of her, having killed for the first time, Phyllis felt an irresistible compulsion to create a life in replacement of that she had destroyed. She was driven by forces she could neither understand nor control. Much of the rest of that frantic night she was not to remember in any detail. If everything did not go blank, it became thoroughly blurred in her memory ever afterward.
There were intervals of lucidity-not all of them attractive in retrospect. She recalled, for instance, at one point, when Tim had to go to the John, masturbating wildly until she could endure his absence no longer, then leaping from bed and mounting his lap in the bathroom and enjoying a resounding experience then and there.
She recalled more than once pressing her wet, wide-open vulva against his face while she sucked his phallus desperately in an effort to restore its rigidity . '. . the first time in her life that she had practiced the magic number sixty-nine. She liked him not only on the bed and in the John but also on the sofa, in an armchair, on the carpet and on the window seat. For the time being, she was literally sex-crazed.
Mercifully, Tim seemed to understand her condition. He was gentle when required, entirely considerate of her frantic need, yet quite capable of taking charge of the proceedings when his dominance was indicated. And he, too, proved virtually tireless, showing once again his remarkable sexual stamina.
There were even moments when the frenzy left her-brief intervals of rationality during which they were able to smoke and sip brandy and talk intimately together. Yet each of these valleys of relative relaxation ended in another surge of the hysterical passion that held her intermittently in its grip.
She recalled at one such moment when they were talking of their childhood and she admitted to having been made miserable by a cruel joke based on her first name. When she was eleven, a couple of her girl classmates, on her approach during recess, had used it. One said to the other, "Did you hear about Phyllis?" And the other said, "No, what happened to her?"
At this, the first tormentor replied, "Syphilis."
Their merriment had been doubled when Phyllis had expressed her ignorance of the word by demanding, "What's syphilis? I never heard of it."
There had been an embarrassed interlude at home that evening when she asked her old-fashioned mother about it-also a six months' period when repetition of the joke had made her so unhappy at school that she actually became ill.
"You think you had troubles," said Tim. "How about me?"
"I can't believe you ever had that kind of trouble," Phyllis replied. "I even grew to hate my own name and asked my parents to change it. But Tim-Timothy Buckley ... how could they joke about that?"
"The full handle is Timothy Buckley the Second," he replied, regarding her narrow-eyed as if defying her to make something of it.
"So what?" she replied. "So it's Timothy Buckley the Second. Am I supposed to swoon or something?"
He diddled her clit outrageously and said, "You know, darling, now I'm sure I love you." He shook his rather close-cut head, said, "Shorten it up a little. No, my name, not my cock!" , This as she bent her head and took that precious organ gently between her teeth. Straightening, she said, "I still don't get it-Tim Buckley the Two. I get it-Timbuctu!"
"Exactly."
"What's so awful about that?" she demanded. "It's not as bad as syphilis Phyllis."
"Unfortunately, there was a novelty song written before we were born that was still remembered in my youth by some very evil-minded people. It was called Two-Buck Tim from Timbuctu. I got that Two-Buck Tim bit until I swore I'd find the writers of the song and shoot them."
"And did you?"
"That's one promise I never kept. Happily, when I went away to school elsewhere, nobody brought it up. But the fights I used to have over it...."
She hugged his naked body to hers, said, "Well, you're no Two-Buck Tim to me, darling. Oh-oh! Do I detect a resurrection?"
"If you don't," he said, "you've lost your sense of touch."
She straddled his lap, lifted her rump with welcome manual assistance from her lover and planted his resurgent phallus once again in the sweet spot where it had spent so much time since its first entry two nights earlier. It proved to be one of their most memorable matings since, by leaning backward and looking down, both were able to watch the meshing of their genitals, the disappearance of phallus in vagina, its reappearance when wished, partial or complete, and all the action that accompanied their moves.
Being able to see what she was actually doing heightened Phyllis's reaction so greatly that, more than once, she was brought to a shuddering halt, unable to endure further movement. But her adroit companion knew how to handle such situations like the master he was. He never let her remain still for more than a second or two, when he initiated some sudden movement that sent her spinning right off the mountain of rapture into the whirlpool of ecstasy, employing her reaction to the unexpected with adroit perfection.
The night was well along when they slept the sleep of utter exhaustion-and again they were roused by the ring of the phone on the bedside table. Tim took the call. He had the faculty of coming instantly awake on such occasions, a gift that caused Phyllis to moan and pull the bedclothes over her head.
She had just dropped off again when she was aroused abruptly by her lover pulling the covers completely clear of her and over the foot of the bed, leaving her completely exposed. As she grumbled at such a rude arousal, he said, "We have exactly nine minutes. Let's put them to good use, darling."
He placed his fingers on her vulva as she lay helpless beneath his own ready body, found her still dry and anointed his phallus with saliva. Then, without further ado, he plunged it into her to the hilt. Inside, she was still dry, and his rude insertion hurt her momentarily, thus bringing her fully awake.
She cried out that he was hurting her, but he went ahead remorselessly, causing her condition to improve almost instantly. Within less than a minute, she was thrashing about on the bottom sheet like a beached dolphin and uttering totally different sorts of cries. Clutching him close so that her thrusting breasts were flattened by his chest, she dug in her heels and bent her knees and bridged her body upward to make their union the more complete.
There was no subtlety, Ho easing of tempo in the course of this matinal bout. Tim put the boots to her like a longshoreman in a waterfront brothel and she responded in kind. When their final flooding came, which it quickly did, he held her briefly in a hug, kissed her and then was over and out.
Her insides throbbed with emptiness as he disappeared into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She was forced to manipulate herself for relief and was still at it when he emerged a few minutes later.
As he ran an electric razor over his chin, he said to her reflection in the mirror, "Better get it together, Phyl. Lem will be here in less than half an hour. He's having breakfast with you."
"Where are you going?" she asked, dismayed.
"Out," was his laconic reply, and that was all she got out of him except for a quick buss, a pat on the fanny and an unforgivably casual, "See you later, hon."
How she managed to shower and dress and don makeup and fix her hair adequately before the attorney appeared, Phyllis never did know. She felt utterly exhausted, buoyed only by a feeling that something important had happened or was happening or about to happen. When Lem Weldon called her on the house telephone, she was ready.
He greeted her with his usual courtly kindness, and though, mere moments before, she had wanted to see no one but Tim, she was actually glad to hear the jurist's beautiful deep voice and warmed to the sympathy of his smile. He led her to the glassed-in terrace overlooking lawn and pond that served as the inn's breakfast room. There they ordered from a king-size menu and Phyllis, as usual, found herself ravenous.
As she ordered orange juice and calves' liver and Irish bacon and English muffins and coffee, she caught a glint of knowledgeable amusement in Lem Weldon's bright blue eyes. Briefly, she felt embarrassment lest he know the source of her appetite. Then she thought, What the hell! If he doesn't know, he's too stupid to be a good lawyer ... And this, she knew, was a far cry from the truth.
He talked little during the meal, eating his own more austere McCann's Irish with sugar and cream and supporting the heavy cereal with a glass of milk. When he finally talked, he talked about Tim.
"I presume you're in love with him," he said.
"Why-I mean, why do you presume that?" Phyllis felt her ears burn.
"All women fall in love with Tim when they're with him for any length of time, Phyllis. He's been catnip to the female of the species almost since his cradle days."
"Well," she conceded, "he is attractive. Don't you think so?"
"For better or for worse, I'm not a member of the female gentler," he replied. "To me, Tim resembles a king-size African midget in white-face." A smile that warmed the room, then, "Yes, he is attractive, and to men, too-don't get me wrong. He has to be to do what he does."
Phyllis laid down her fork, said, "Judge Weldon-"
"Lem-please."
"Very well, Lem please, just what does Tim Buckley do, apart from running around the world rescuing maidens and ex-maidens in distress from assorted horrible fates?"
"He does a great deal more than that." Lem was suddenly and wholly serious. "He's one of the last independent investigators we have."
"By independent, you mean...? "
"I mean he's unattached to any organization, governmental or private. He works with all of them at times-and his fees are astronomical."
"Why is he so valuable?" Phyllis was puzzled.
"Essentially because he's absolutely reliable, he's intelligent, his contacts are fabulous-and finally because he is an intuitive human being of rare talent in an all but wholly computerized and analytical world."
"I see." Phyllis picked up her fork and cut a piece of bacon in half. "So his arrival in my room last night when Gina de Brett had me cold was not mere coincidence."
"That, I fear, was a setup for which I was partly responsible. I rigged the call so that you would appear to be alone and vulnerable."
"You cut it awfully fine," said Phyllis. "That woman wanted to kill me."
"That was unintended-a breakdown in our communications. But Tim grew restless when the signal didn't come in time and took off by himself." A pause, then, "It's too bad you killed her."
"I feel that way myself. I'm not exactly in the habit of killing people, but she had the drop on Tim. Not that her appeal, to me, was exactly sympathetic."
"I understand, but that's not exactly what I meant. We took the risk because we wanted to question her."
"My impression is you'd have had a hard time getting the time of night out of that broad," said Phyllis.
"Perhaps." Lem shrugged, added, "But she was part of a criminal conspiracy, and she knew we could prove it. She also had a criminal record."
"Why did she want to kill me?" Phyllis asked.
"That's still an open question," he replied. "We thought your new will would protect you. But apparently it didn't as far as the fair Gina was concerned."
"Maybe nobody told her about it," said Phyllis. "After all, it's hardly page one headline news."
"In some quarters it is," said Lem.
Phyllis finished her food, then said, "Lem, would you mind telling me what in hell this is all about?"
"Very well." He took time out to light a cigarette. "I'll tell you what I can. I suppose you're quite aware of the chief big money source of the organized underworld ... apart from its so-called legitimate investments, its relative small-fry sources of income like loan sharking, extortion and gambling."
"If you mean dope, I'm aware of it," she told him. "There's been so much written about it and shown on TV."
He said, "Narcotics-you're right. The profits are unbelievable. The results to the victims you probably have some knowledge of. like other illicit trades-like Prohibition bootlegging, for example-it's apparently unstoppable as long as a demand for the product exists. And our friends who depend on its profits see to it that the demand is always there and on the upbeat."
"My phantom millions don't look quite so attractive." Phyllis wrinkled her nose.
"Don't worry, my dear-you'll come out of this a relatively rich woman."
"If I come out of it at all."
It was his turn to wince. He said, "We're being very, very careful in your behalf. Unfortunately, we have not been aware of all the other factors involved. Even now, we're not sure we have all the threads in hand."
"Just what is your connection, Lem-outside of being my attorney?"
"I'm not at liberty to tell you that," he replied "I can only say I became interested while in the service and have been helping where I could ever since I became semi-retired. I imagine you could make an educated guess."
She regarded him thoughtfully, then brought the subject back to Tim with, "And this is Tim's real career, too?"
Lem Weldon shook his graying head, said, "He's in and out of it. Tim's in and out of a great many things." He paused, then added, "I hope you haven't grown too fond of him."
"And what if I have grown-fond of him. Is there anything wrong in that since, as you say, all women do it?"
"I suppose not." There was real regret in his voice. "But I hardly want you to be needlessly hurt. By the very nature of his life, Tim cannot allow himself to become too closely attached to any one women. It is to his great advantage to love the whole sex, and fortunate that most women he meets seem to love him."
"Thanks for telling me now, counselor," Phyllis felt mounting cold fury. "Like most girls, I'm always glad to find out that I'm involved with a male harlot."
Lem looked shocked. "But that's simply not so," he protested. "Tim is one of the finest, best adjusted, most useful men we have..." He paused to look at his wristwatch, then said, "We have a meeting with Jim O'Brien in half an hour."
"Another one?" she asked.
"A second and, I hope, a final meeting," Lem spoke with quiet finality.
"Why must I be there?" she asked.
"Your presence is required, Phyllis-so is Emilio Colucci's. There are paper's, to sign."
"'You mean, don't you, that the deal is all set?"
He winced at her use of the word deal, then nodded. "All set except for a few final details-'Which we mean to thrash out this morning."
Phyllis felt contrite over her recent display of anger. Here, Lem Weldon and apparently Tim had been working overtime in her behalf, and she was feeling peevish because Tim could not give her all of his time. Still, considering what he had given her, she could not help feeling sad as well. Her relationship with Tim had been so sudden, so overwhelming in its demands and fulfillments, that she had not been able to think beyond each sweet moment as it occurred.
But, somehow, deep down inside, she supposed she had taken it for granted that some sort of permanent relationship must evolve out of it. After all, Tim was obviously a gentleman while she had never been a girl to abandon herself lightly, apart from a scattering of brief, experimental teenage affairs.
Dammit! she thought. I would have to fall for a real professional cocksman.
Yet, as she sat beside Lem Weldon while he drove them back toward the city of Boston, she knew that this was not the truth-not all of it at any rate. Tim had to be a lot more than a mere Lothario to hold the respect of a man like her companion and, yes, that of Emilio Colucci. But what a magnificent lover Tim was! Could he be that magnificent if he only went through the motions? Phyllis answered that with a private negative and decided she would do her best to be grateful for the short time she had been with him.
For the first time since the whole ghastly, eerie business began, she considered what she was going to do with her life when it was over. There were going to be pieces to put back together as well as pieces to be discarded. Freddy the Freeloader Gardiner, for one...
Turning toward Lem's well-blocked profile as he watched the traffic patterns ahead of them, she said, "Lem, this is a sort of not nice question, but just how rich do you really think I'm going to be?"
He said without looking at her, "When all the dust is settled, the taxes and other imposts paid and a few others and myself have taken our overlarge cuts, my estimate is that you will net between four and a half and five million dollars."
"And I won't have anything to do with the Whatchamacallit Corporation?"
"That's why you're being bought off for such a sum. Actually, I think we could have held out for more. Emilio and Jim O'Brien seemed actually pleased that we hadn't set our sights higher."
"That will do very nicely, thank you," said Phyllis, beginning to wonder what it was going to feel like to be rich-real feelthy reech.
They did not drive directly into downtown Boston but threaded the Jamaicaway with its well-kept suburban houses behind their well-kept suburban hedges, finally turned into a driveway close to the Brookline border. As they got out of the car, Lem said, "Jim thought it would be more discreet to hold our little meeting at his house. We'll be all alone there-his wife's in Ireland and he gave the servants the day off. Go right on in. Emilio should be along any minute. We're a little early."
Following Phyllis into the house, which was as well groomed as the landscape gardening in which it lay, Lem called out, "Jim, are you here?"
There was no answer. With Phyllis on his heels, he turned left, walked through a comfortable overstuffed living room to a book-lined study beyond and stopped, frozen, on the threshold, trying to block Phyllis's view inside ... But not in time to prevent her getting a hideously unforgettable vision of the beefy attorney seated at his desk, bathed in blood, with a head on his shoulders.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Phyllis sat in an armchair in the living room of Jim O'Brien's house. Lem had put her there gently but firmly when he saw her on the verge of collapse. The sight of the thick-set Boston attorney's almost headless body had hit her like a blow to the solar plexus. Not that she gave an emotional damn about J. J. O'Brien-after all, she barely knew the man. But coming on top of all the other gruesome experiences, beginning with her discovery of poor Gerry Mann's murder, virtually on her own doorstep, three nights before, along with the physiological upheaval Tim Buckley had brought into her life, it was more than she could endure.
She sat there, shivering though the day was warm, holding tightly to the arms of the chair lest she topple from it, in a sort of near coma.
Much of what occurred in the next half hour she could recall later only in flashes, so deeply was she insulated against reality in the womb of her own withdrawal.
She remembered Lem remarking to a high police official, "Maybe Jim was lucky at that. If he'd lived, he would have been in big trouble."
She recalled a near frantic Emilio Colucci, his handsome face ash pale with anger and fear, crying out to Lem and some others, "But this was none of our doing-none of it is our doing!"
A little later, she could recall Lem's standing over her and saying, "Phyllis, you've got to have rest and care. I'm taking you back to Kitteridge."
She made no protest, though the violence of the past four days had caused her home, her quiet, orderly life there, to fade into unreality, as if on the other side of a barrier of mist that cast it into near neutral colors. She remembered Lem guiding through the swarms of police and reporters and an outer fringe of the mere curious, to his car-while cameras seemed to pop up everywhere.
She remembered little of the ride home-until Lem delivered her to a waiting Beth Davis, who helped her upstairs to the very bed from which she had fled in guilt to keep her belated date with Gerry Mann-and once again Orangeade, the big coon cat that had broken her slumber, jumped up on the bed, purring and scolding as if she had wronged him by not staying there in the first place.
She remembered stroking his jaws and thinking that Orangeade was probably right-that if she had only obeyed Lem Weldon's first dictum to stay put, a great many unpleasant things might not have happened.
Then Dr. Willoughby's familiar face was looking down at her, and there were poking and prodding and a glass of something cloudy that quickly put her to sleep.
For the next thirty-six hours or so, Phyllis slept and rested. Beth had brought a tiny TV set into her guest bedroom and, occasionally, Phyllis watched and listened-but never for long. Every few minutes she would drift back into slumber. It was not until late in the afternoon of her second day at Beth's that she came fully awake, roused by the clamoring of a stomach that had absorbed only medicine and a few cups of beef broth.
When she swung her long legs over the side of the bed and sat up, Orangeade regarded her balefully for having disturbed a soft warm setup he had been enjoying almost constantly since her arrival. For a long moment, Phyllis had to clutch the edge of the mattress to keep from falling-but the dizziness soon passed while her hunger remained. She stood up without difficulty, got into a robe Beth had provided, and made her way downstairs.
The older woman was in the kitchen, basting a nearly cooked leg of lamb with a cigarette in the corner of her mouth when her guest appeared. She said, "It's about time you snapped out of it. Help me put the salad together and then I'll get you a drink."
"I'll keel over," said Phyllis.
"You wouldn't dare," her friend told her and Phyllis laughed for the first time since her unintentional killing of Gina de Brett. It felt so good to be here, with Beth snapping her out of it. Her long rest seemed to have put a barrier between the homely, happier present and the violence and fear she had undergone between the murders of Gerry Mann and Jim O'Brien.
Beth was right about the drink. As the good S.S. Pierce bourbon flowed through her, Phyllis felt renewed warmth and strength of body and soul. She and the older woman drank and smoked and watched TV and chatted of local trivialities until it was time for dinner. Not until they were lingering over cafe royales at Beth's fine old antique cherry wood dining room table with its big silver pheasants in the center, did Phyllis become aware of a new conundrum.
She knew her hostess's insatiable curiosity about any and everything, knew that she had to be bursting with questions about what had happened to her guest. But thus far, over a two-hour period since Phyllis came downstairs, she had not once even mentioned what had to be the biggest melodrama to hit sleepy old Kitteridge since the Revolution, when a British foraging party from Boston had been summarily routed by sturdy Minuteman.
It was out of drawing ... unless...
Putting down her coffee cup and reaching for a recently lighted cigarette, Phyllis looked Beth in the eye and said, "Come across, Beth."
Beth looked blank, then said, "Come across with what? Is this a holdup or something?"
"You know something. If you didn't, you'd be pumping me dry. What is it?"
"Suppose I deny it. There's nothing you could do about it, honeybunch."
Phyllis said, "if that's true, I'll never speak to you again as long as I live."
"Then you'd better raise your hand when you have to go to the bathroom."
Phyllis had to laugh. Beth's sometimes earthy humor was liberally salted with the absurd. Beth grinned and said, reaching across the table to pat Phyllis's wrist, "Yes, I know something-but I wasn't especially anxious for you to find it out and Lem told me not to bug you with questions."
"What is it?" Phyllis looked at her hostess eagerly. "Not that I'm not grateful."
"Of course you're not," said Beth. Then, after a pause, "I suppose you think I'm a garrulous old gossip-which of course I am. But I know how to keep my mouth shut when I have to. If I didn't, I'd have been run out of this town on a rail forty years ago."
"Let's move it to the living room," Phyllis suggested and Beth agreed.
There, when they were settled, the older woman said, "Not that I'm not green with envy..."
"Because I got taken suddenly rich?" Phyllis was surprised since she knew Beth was well off.
"No, Phyl, I may have tired blood but it still flows red. I'm jealous of your three-day bat with Tim Buckley."
"What do you know about Tim?" Phyl was not merely surprised but shocked.
"Only that he's the most fascinating American male to come along this side of Burt Reynolds. When Lem told me he'd called him in to play watchdog over you, I thought about him, and then I thought about poor Freddy-and then I got jealous."
"Is he famous or something?" said Phyllis. "I mean, I never even heard of him until..." She felt herself blush at what had all but tumbled out of her mouth.
"Honeybunch," said Beth. "You don't mind if
I call you honeybunch, do you."
"Oh, shut up."
"Very well."
"Stop teasing me, Beth. Is he famous?"
"In an undercover sort of way, he really is. He's been the little man who wasn't there in more dangerous intrigues and investigations than anyone outside of Henry Kissinger over the last ten years or so."
"How do you know about him when I don't?" Phyllis demanded.
"Nobody knows this in Kitteridge outside of Lem Weldon and he got me into it," said Beth. "So if you ever breathe a word of it I'll wring your neck personally. During the war-the last big one-I took a job directing the central switchboard for the entire First Corps Area, as they called New England then. I stumbled onto a few things here and there and the first thing I knew, I was working for the O.S.S. as well. Lem was attached to it and, some years later, when there was trouble and he was Public Safety Commissioner, he put me to work again. That's why I called him when we first learned about your inheritance. That's why I'm keeping you here with me now. Not that I'm not delighted to have you, Phyl, naturally. Now, I hope we're still friends."
"Of course." But the relationship was different, no longer for Phyllis quite the old-shoe m comfortable thing it had been for so many years. She said, "I wish somebody'd tell me just what I am involved in, outside of the fact that there's a big Mafia angle and there's narcotics smuggling involved and I seem to be a prime target for somebody and people around me keep getting killed."
"I wish to hell I could," said Beth and there was no doubting either her sympathy or her sincerity. "I know some of the background, of course. It involves the most massive narcotics smuggling ever engaged in by any nation-yes, national interests are involved, Lem tells me."
"National-how come?"
"Don't laugh when I tell you. This is deadly serious business," said the older woman. "Apparently it involves an attempt by certain of the Eastern bloc nations to turn on the population of the United States via hard drugs, imported on a mammoth scale and retailed at a price far below the going market rates.
"It is the undercutting that has lined up some elements of the Mafia on the side of Law and Order," she went on. "A weird setup if ever I heard of one."
"Necessity," said Phyllis, "is the mother of strange bedfellows. No wonder Emilio Colucci was almost hysterical about his people having nothing to do with Jim O'Brien's murder!"
"But if the Mafia's not in this one, why all the uproar over the Carini will? Why not just make the settlement with me and be quiet about it?"
"Because there is reason to believe Old Sal was involved."
"You mean, the Godfather sold out the family to feather his own nest?"
"It's possible," said Beth. "But there's one big element still missing in the jigsaw and that's the actual go-between that carried out the deal between Sal and the Asian bloc. Nobody has the slightest idea who it is. That's why it's still in the air."
"I wouldn't like to be that person right now," said Phyllis with a shudder. "I suppose Jim O'Brien knew who it was-and got his head blown off for it."
Beth nodded, said, "With the same kind of bullet that was aimed at your head, Phyl. Oh, to hell with it-the go-between is probably safe and snug in Asia right now." She sighed, added, "But they're keeping this house under guard till they're sure."
"Then why can't I go home if I wish to?" asked Phyllis. "Not that I'm not grateful for everything, but sooner or later I've got to get dressed and I'd like to have my own wardrobe to pick from. At present, it's somewhat limited."
"I know what you mean," said Beth. "You miss your own bathroom. Well, I suppose you could go home if you want to. But we'd better call Lem first."
"Yes, mother dear-ask daddy."
Beth called the attorney and talked to him, then held out the phone to Phyllis. Lem said, "I'm not at all sure it's a good idea but I can't think of any valid objection, my dear."
"But if the house is guarded..."
"It will be, the moment you get there," was the reply. "Very well, Phyllis, but we don't want anything to happen to you."
"Has anything new broken?"
"Everything is in stasis," Lem told her. "Now let me talk to Beth once more."
Beth drove her home through the dimly lighted streets of the old town and a dark sedan containing two men followed them closely. As they turned in to the familiar driveway, the car followed and another car, waiting at the turnaround beyond the front door, turned on its headlights as Beth braked gently to a stop.
She said, "If for no other reason, your getting out of my house will get the Federal fuzz off my back. I'll call you tomorrow-there's still a month of good golfing weather ahead of us."
"Do that." Phyllis gave her a hug. "Don't think I'm not grateful..."
"Hateful condition," said Beth. "Adios, love."
A strange man helped Phyllis put her bags inside the front door and said, "If you'd prefer an inside watch..."
"No thanks," Phyllis told him. "I feel well enough protected as it is."
"Don't worry, Mrs. Barrett," said his companion. "We won't let a mouse through without a pass."
"I'm sure you won't. Thank you, gentlemen."
To her pleased surprise, the house looked spotless. A note from Hilma, propped up on the table just inside the front door, informed her that she had cleaned the place thoroughly three days earlier and would return on Monday, still four days away, unless Phyllis wanted her and called. Bless Hilma.
It was good to be home and, for the moment, alone. So much had happened to her so rapidly that Phyllis had had no opportunity to take stock of herself. For better or worse, she was not the same locked in young war widow she was when word of the inheritance first reached her. In one way, Tim Buckley had seen to that. In others, well-it was time she decided what sort of person she was going to be when it was all over but the shouting, as it seemed to be.
She went to the kitchen, poured herself a long light highball, kicked off her shoes, settled comfortably on the familiar sofa surrounded by all the dear, familiar things that spelled home to her. Thanks to the medicated rest she had enjoyed at Beth's, she felt wide awake, alert, alive, ready for ... All right, let's face it, ready for Tim to fuck her again ... Damn! She wondered what he had turned her into, a nymphomaniac? Then she remembered that nymphos are not supposed to derive much satisfaction from indulgence of their insatiable cravings for sex, and if ever there had been a satisfied female it was herself, Phyllis West Barrett, when Tim was prodding her guts with his codpiece.
Unedifying thoughts. She wondered where Tim was right then, whom he was with, what he was doing with her-as if she didn't know. She wondered if she were in love with him or merely infatuated. Either way, living without him was not going to be easy. She wondered if his apparent legion of other loves was plagued with the same problem. Damn again! With the Pill and antibiotics, why couldn't she simply be promiscuous and have a ball without regrets, as apparently millions of other females at all social levels succeeded in doing?
Good question, good question, good question. ... the only trouble was, she didn't see how she could do it. For years she had survived after a fashion, even been content, after a fashion, on the mere memory of one man, Pres. Now Tim had come along and, in three nights, wiped Pres out. She wondered if those three nights were going to have to suffice her the rest of her life.
She finished her drink and went upstairs, carrying her bags with her. She went into her bedroom and got out of her clothes, laid out a robe and went naked into the bathroom. And there was Pres, sitting on the John.
Save for an increase in the little lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth, he looked identical with the Pres that had left her for flying in Vietnam. As he turned his head upward to look at her, she caught a few shafts of silver in the coarse dark hair of his head. Sardonic silent mirth still gleamed in the dark brown eyes.
He sat there, naked save for a pair of red, white and blue striped underdrawers, and there was a long-barreled black automatic lying across his thighs.
His smile matched the mockery in his eyes as he said, "You might as well come in and shut the door, darling. We may be in here quite a while."
Despite the shock of Pres's reappearance, Phyllis discovered her surprise was not as deep as it might have been-somewhere, deep in her subconscious, she might even have been expecting it. All the talk of an undiscovered go-between, all the evasions of her questions indicated that the investigators had certainly considered Pres as a possibility, that somehow their suspicions had seeped through to her inner self.
His death in a flaming plane had been authenticated beyond question. Yet here he was, alive, sitting in her upstairs bathroom. She noted then a number of things that had not impressed themselves upon her awareness when she entered and found him there. The bathroom was large, a converted small bedroom in the old house, and Pres had made himself as comfortable as possible. Books and magazines rested on the two-tiered utility table, as did her bedroom telephone with its long extension cord. There was a carton of cigarettes, more than half filled, a large ashtray from the kitchen, even the silent butler from the living room downstairs. His clothing, a dark suit such as he had always favored, plus shirt and tie, hung from a hook on the inside of the door.
Windowless and almost soundproof in the center of the second story, the room was an all but perfect hideout. Still, she marveled at his nerve in coming here and said so.
His one-sided smile widened slightly. He said, "The house was searched thoroughly after you left it. Your friend Lem Weldon saw to that. Nobody saw me come here-I know a way in from my childhood and, besides, the place was unguarded-at least it was until now. I presume you brought an escort with you."
Phyllis nodded. Then she said, "For Christ's sake, Pres, whatever made you think you could get away with it?"
There was a trace of pride in his voice as he replied, "But I have gotten away with it. They may have suspected I was alive, but they couldn't prove it. I took damn good care of that end."
"But you had to put in occasional appearances-you must have run a high risk of being recognized by someone who knew you."
He shrugged, said, "Not as high as you might suppose. In Boston, or anywhere else I might be spotted, I moved entirely by night."
"Didn't you use disguises?"
"What for? If anyone who knew me saw me, it was fleetingly. And once people accept the fact you're dead, they aren't anxious to have that fact reversed. It upsets them. They might remark having seen someone who looked remarkably like me, they might be reminded of me, but that's as far as it went.
"Of course there were risks." He answered her question before she could utter it. "But since you've known me, when have I been afraid of taking a long chance-if the reward was sufficiently large to warrant it."
He looked hard at her and the glint in his dark eyes made her suddenly aware of her nakedness, of her vulnerability. Then he said, "OIi-oh!" and lifted the handgun from his thighs and, with a slight shift of his position, his phallus, long and lean and veined with purple, suddenly popped into view.
He put down the gun on the floor beside the throne and reached for her. She felt helpless at the well-remembered toughness of his hard palms sliding over her thighs to cup her buttocks. As he drew her toward him, she felt helpless as a Barbi Doll.
If I were a real heroine, she thought vagrantly as she was drawn irresistibly into her husband's embrace, I'd do something about this.
But what? She didn't really have any choice.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
She expected his prick was going to hurt her as it rudely penetrated the delicate vaginal tissues, and went tense with involuntary anticipation of pain as she felt the well-remembered phallic head part her labia and push past the cervical gate. But, surprisingly, she grew moist at the very last second and he slid up and into her as easily as a sword through butter.
My God! Phyllis thought. I'm enjoying this!
She peaked within seconds as Pres's prods and up-thrusts penetrated her core, abetted as they were by the force of gravity, aided further by his hands pushing down on her thighs, despite vividness of sexual recall, she had forgotten how gifted a lover her husband was. Or, perhaps, he had gained in expertise during the years of his supposed death.
But she knew this was impossible. Pres, by his own admission, had been an erotic veteran by his middle teens and had, during the years of their marriage, proved his expert swordsmanship in a seemingly endless variety of ways. Which meant that she had improved, rather than he.
Again she wondered what was happening to her. She had never quite been able to believe the stories so often repeated of girls and women who found themselves actually enjoying the brutal process of being raped. But as she peaked again, Phyllis found herself clutching and kissing this all too solid phantom that had come so unexpectedly back into her life. She thrilled and thrilled again and thought, Come is the word, come is the word.
She was squirming and wriggling like a gaffed eel by the time she felt the spurt of Pres's sperm inside her womb and clutched him in a final paroxysm of pleasure. His dark eyes regarded her shrewdly as he disengaged her and he said, "Thanks, darling. You were always an eager piece of ass. Now you've added expertise."
Had he always been so cold-blooded about making love to her, Phyllis wondered, and then the enormity of her situation overwhelmed her. She was trapped in her own upstairs bathroom with a proven murderer, a major narcotics smuggler, above all, a man who had tried to decapitate her only two mornings before, as he had decapitated J. J. O'Brien with an explosive bullet.
She said, "All right, Pres, how are you going to get out of this? Just about every law enforcement agency in the country is after you."
He shrugged, seemingly undisturbed as he stood up to hold his prick under the washbasin faucet. He was holding the handgun again in his free right hand. He said, "The same way I got in here. This house was part of the Underground Railroad in pre-Civil War days, you know."
"I know," she said.
"What you don't know is that there's an underground passage leading from the basement to an opening right next to what is now the central parking lot."
"They'll find it. You know they will."
"They hadn't found it when I came in here the other night. What's more, since they don't know I'm here, they have no reason to look. Why should they?"
"Because I'm here now," said Phyllis. "They're bound to come looking for me. And the house is guarded now."
He said, wiping his cock on a face towel and letting it fall to the fuzzy mat on the floor, "If worst comes to worst, I can always use you as a hostage. Of course, you'll have to fly the country with me and there's no guarantee they'll let you return. But if you don't make an utter ass of yourself...."
He let it hang. Phyllis could read the complete lack of any human concern in his sardonic dark regard. Suddenly anger at this man who had so completely betrayed her rose to the surface and she said, "You tried to kill me the other morning. Why don't you simply kill me now and have done with it?"
He shook his head, gave her a mock loving squeeze of a breast, said, "Once that dammed Lem Weldon drew up a new will for you, so that I would no longer inherit, you became worth more to me alive. At least Lem and that fucking cowboy Buckley wouldn't have the shares."
"Why did you send Gina de Brett to the Walden Pines to murder me then?" she asked.
"Because I didn't. Gina did that on her own. She was insanely jealous of you. I'm afraid that was my doing. I used to compare her fucking with yours to give her an incentive to make it good. I'm not too sorry you killed her, darling. She was a dumb, jealous broad."
"Why did you bother with her then?"
"She was Old Sal's niece and he planted her on me. I thought it was better to go along. Besides, she was a good piece of ass in her dumb way and gave me all the head I wanted."
Phyllis gasped and jumped as the telephone rang, then looked inquiringly at Pres. He waved the gun barrel toward the instrument, said, "Answer it, girl. And be very careful for your own sake, above all."
It was Beth. She sounded worried. She said, "I just got a call from Lem. He says there's a car in the town parking lot that's been traced to Gina de Brett. The same car was seen parked outside J. J. O'Brien's home before he was killed. Are you all right, Phyl?"
"I'm fine, couldn't be better," Phyllis told her. She looked covertly at Pres, added, "Why wouldn't I be? This place is guarded like the crown jewels of England."
"I feel better. I was worried. If Pres has run to earth here, his own place might be where he'd go. Besides, unless memory fails me, there's a-"
"That's right, Beth," said Phyl. "I agree with everything you say. Now go to sleep and forget it."
She was tempted to add, "Would you like to talk to Pres? He's right here in the bathroom with me." But sight of the pistol barrel deterred her.
She put down the phone, turned to him, said, "Was I okay?"
"As far as I know," he replied, looking untroubled. "If you weren't, you know who's going to suffer for it."
She sat on the edge of the tub, hugging the twin fullness of her breasts, said, "You killed Gerry. Why?"
He looked at her as if she were incredibly stupid. "I had to kill him. He was the only citizen of this town who knew I was alive. He had the bad luck to see me on the street in Boston. I suppose you know he and I got our kicks together for a while. I wanted to make that fool Freddy Gardiner jealous. He knew Gerry was getting it somewhere, but not who he was getting them with. That, sweetie pie, was why he turned to you. I didn't give a damn then. You were 'way behind me. I had Gina in Boston and things a lot better than either of you in Asia when I was there."
"Why did you kill him then?"
"Because he was going to spill the whole thing to you. He figured it all out when he heard about Old Sal's will. Gerry wasn't dumb, whatever else he may have been. It was his bad luck you were late getting here. I'd been waiting to see you. I knew I was still sole legatee and I wanted to work something out."
"You were going to kill me to get that damned stock," she told him, trying not to feel sick at the casual callousness of this man she had once loved so deeply.
"Only if I had to," he replied. "But you see, once he came here, I had to kill Freddy. There was no other way."
"You are a bastard, aren't you! Multiple murderer, narcotics smuggler, even homosexual on occasion."
"Flattery will get you nowhere. We might as well ball as go on with this."
He grabbed her, adroitly slipped her into the tub, got in with her, pushed her onto her side, lifted her left thigh and slid his phallus into her hole ... just like that. Once again, she was unexpectedly ready for his entrance, once again, to her horror, she began to come almost from the instant their union was complete. Pres was treating her like a whore and her body, at any rate, was loving it.
She felt tears roll down her cheeks as she peaked again and again until, at last, his semen flowed deep inside her and the rapid retreat began.
He told her then how he and Old Sal had set up the operation as a private connection, apart from the Mafia. Pres said, "My narcotics connection goes back to college. Everybody thought the family was still rich, but right then we were poor as church mice. I financed myself peddling pot and amphetamines and coke. Since I never touched the stuff myself and picked my customers carefully, nobody ever caught on.
"Later on, during the Korean thing, I made connections in Asia. When I got back here, I went to Sal-I'd met him once or twice while I was still in school. I was ready and so was he. Everybody was getting rich until Lem Weldon got poking around in it for his outfit and picked up a couple of leads that could have hurt. That was when I came up with the scheme of officially dying. It worked out just great. I landed behind the Viet-cong lines, smooth as silk, and got a warm welcome."
"What became of your crew?"
The shrug again, then, "Unfortunately, there was no way to fake their deaths. Too bad in a way. They weren't bad guys-just unreliable."
"What about J. J. O'Brien?" she asked.
"He was the only one who knew. He was my link when Sal and I couldn't meet. After Sal's death, he was under pressure-heavy pressure-from Lem Weldon and that bastard Tim Buckley. He was afraid of going to jail. The poor fool thought everybody would bugger him there. An old coot like him with sagging belly and buttocks!"
"So he had to go?"
"So he had to go..." Once again the shrug she was growing to hate. "So I came here till things cool off." He fondled his phallus as if readying it for another sex bout. He said, "Well, you've asked a lot of questions and I've given you a lot of answers."
"I suppose you intend to kill me any minute or you wouldn't have talked so much," she told him.
"You're safe enough unless I find I don't need you for a hostage," he said.
"Just one more thing, Pres-how do you plan to get out of here?"
"If I can get out alone, I'll drive to a certain private airport where a jet will be waiting. I'll be safely back in Shanghai in a matter of hours."
"While I...? "
He shrugged.
"And if you don't go alone."
"You'll come with me, sweetie."
"For how long?"
"For just as long as my partners decide you're more valuable to them alive than dead. It could be a lifetime reprieve. There's no way of knowing."
He glanced at the wristwatch that was now his sole garment, said, prodding her with the muzzle of the pistol, "Come on-put some clothes on that fair white body."
He had her select a charcoal pants suit and black loafers. Then he got into his own clothing, including the red-white-and-blue shorts. Looking down at them, he said, "I thought these were rather a nice touch-patriotic."
All Phyllis could do was obey, hoping that Beth had read correctly her saying, "That's right, Beth. I agree with everything you say."
Thus far, the only edge she had on her ex was the fact that his pursuers had found his car-or rather Gina de Brett's-in the town parking lot ... and just how she was going to turn this to her advantage, or even to her survival under the circumstances, she had no idea.
In the meantime, she had to go along, quite aware that he would kill her out of hand if he felt the situation required it. Hadn't he already tried twice to put her out of the way?
"The thing that really gets me," he remarked before they headed for the stairs, "is that that monumental jerk Emilio Colucci will wind up with the Interocean shares. Sal wanted me to have that, which was why he willed them to you."
The shrug again, then, "Oh, well, you can't win them all-but I hate to see that much loot get into the hands of a dumb jerk who won't use it as it should. It was the dumb bastard's stupidity that made Sal turn to me."
He waved her toward the staircase and they went on clown, then down another flight to the basement. It was dark in there but Pres refused to turn on a light lest it cause the guards outside to grow suspicious and investigate before he was clear of the property.
Not until they were in the dank old passage itself did Pres produce a needle-beam flashlight from a pocket to illumine their way. The old tunnel, which stunk like an ancient tomb, was barely four feet high, forcing them both to stoop. It was longer than Phyllis had expected, seemingly without end, and it angled sharply to the right after they had progressed along it some fifty feet.
Thirty feet further, it ended abruptly. Pres, who had been following her, pushed past her and turned, whispering, "Don't do anything dumb, Phyl. I'd made Swiss cheese of you before you could reach the bend."
She crouched helpless as he slowly pushed upward and a ragged rectangle of night sky was exposed. There was a slight creak of wood being shifted and then he was back and reaching for her.
"Just in case," he said, "you go first. But I'll be right on your tail."
Phyllis felt a moment of paralyzing panic as she got her fingers on the edge of the opening. If anyone was out there, she felt certain, they would shoot without hesitation anything that moved. Then Pres jammed the muzzle of the automatic hard up into her butt crack and, with a despairing grunt, she scrambled upward and out, flattening against the ground and finding herself scratched by a tangle of gone-to-seed shrubbery in which she lay.
She heard Pres grunt slightly behind her as he emerged and then, for a moment, he was half upright, wheeling in a crouch with his gun at the ready in case an unwelcome committee was lying in wait for them.
At that moment, five shots rang out, even paced, and for the second time within a week a bleeding dead man's body collapsed on top of her. For the second time, Phyllis fell apart and uttered a scream of horror.
Then the body of her late husband was pulled clear of her own and Tim was holding her close in the curve of his left arm as a blaze of car lights came on to illumine the scene.
"I owed you that," he said, moving to block her view of the mangled mess that was Press Barrett's body.
She said, somewhat stupidly, "But there were no lights. How did you see?"
"Infra-red sighting tube," he said, lifting the ugly automatic rifle in his right hand. "Don't crack up, Phyl-it's all over. That bas-your former husband was the one we had to get. With Sal and him dead, and most of the others slated for pickup, the American end of this thing is kaput."
"Did you have to kill him?" she said.
He looked up at her in surprise-she was always forgetting that she was inches taller than he-and said, "Why-would you want him alive?"
It seemed almost as callous as Pres had been, but all she could do was shake her head weakly. Then Tim took her back to Beth's for the slim balance of the night.
There was a meeting that afternoon in Lem Weldon's fine old restored pre-Revolutionary farmhouse home. There were only four persons present-Lem, Tim, Phyllis and Emilio Colucci. The official transfer of the Interocean shares was made legal and in return for the key to the safe-deposit box where they were held, Lem accepted an envelope containing six million dollars in Phyllis's behalf.
"Okay." Tim had been growing more and more restless and the deal proceeded at a dignified pace. "I'm only here as a witness and I'm due in Washington this evening."
"Go ahead," Lem told him. "Emilio and I have a few technicalities to settle."
Suddenly, Phyllis realized that the man who had protected her, the man who had reawakened her as a woman, was about to walk out of her life. She knew better than to try to hold him, but she could not let him go like this.
Catching up with him in the front hall, she said, "Haven't you forgotten something, Tim?"
He looked puzzled, then grinned as he looked into her eyes and, once again, read her correctly.
Then he led her into the small bathroom off the front hall and fucked her with their clothes on, standing crowded against a wall. It was awkward, it was outrageous, it was quick, it was delicious. When she got back to the living room, she caught Lem Weldon's bright blue eyes following her, saw their slight crinkling at the corners which revealed he knew exactly what she and Tim had been doing.
So what, she thought. I'm not ashamed-I'm proud!
When at last the transfer was complete to the two attorneys' satisfaction, Lem broke out a bottle of truly ancient private-stock brandy that had been in a branch of his family for more than a hundred years. As the mellowing impact of the magically smooth old liquor had its inevitable relaxing effect, Phyllis felt Emilio's dark eyes increasingly taking her in.
Glancing at him, she noted again his good looks and fluid ease of body and thought, I wonder if it's me or the millions. It gave her pause but only briefly as she decided it would be fun to find out. So he was a Mafia don-so what? With her money, she no longer had to give a damn what anyone else thought.
If Pres could make her come as he had only last night, in circumstances of great hate and deep fear, then any man could make her come if she wanted to. Tim Buckley had taught her that and she was going to enjoy life with any man who pleased her. But she knew, deep down inside her, that she would drop anybody and anything whenever he whistled for her. But in the meantime....
When Emilio made a date to take her to dinner that Friday night, she said, "Why not? It might be fun."
