Big Bertha was originally the name of the world's largest gun, a symbol of evil and destruction that could be wrought by depravity. And here the name is scarcely less frightening to those concerned, as it is manifest in the horrible person of the warped prison guard called Bertha. When justice is" not carried out, when the innocent are accused and punished wrongly, the shame of an authority like Bertha's becomes worsened. Sue did not belong in prison in the first place, and certainly did not deserve the jurisdiction of the Gestapo-clad madwoman who constantly tried, with the help of a demented warden, to set the penal system back to the sad condition of the Middle Ages. To quote L.T. Woodward, M.D., in his Sex Fiend: "There is a darker side to sex. This mighty force, when thwarted, when bottled up, when dammed by inhibitions, restraints or frustrations, can find an outlet in violence ... In a frighteningly large number of people, the sex impulse does not receive healthy gratification ... It becomes a compulsive force that can transform human beings into monsters."
CHAPTER ONE
If you drive up
Atlantic Avenue to Forty-eighth Street, you will see an older hotel. It is still one of the finer hotels in Virginia Beach. The multitude of low, sleek motels have not taken away from its old, tidewater splendor; its rates are still phenomenally high during the months of June, July and August. It is away from the marauding sailors, the honky-tonk end of the boardwalk, and the women are available only to the wealthy.
For Sue Sills," it all began on the twelfth floor of this older hotel, the Butler Arms, at roughly seven in the evening. She was surprised that Howard Hardin, her boss at the bank, could afford fifty dollars a day.
"We could've gone to one of the cheaper motels," she told him as she sat next to him on the edge of the preposterously large bed. It, too, smacked of antebellum tidewater days; in an area crawling with jets and modern seagoing vessels, it was sadly out of place. "This is awfully, awfully expensive."
"Don't let it worry that pretty head of yours," he laughed, putting his arm around her. It was a pale arm, but sinewy and smooth with youth; in a week, it would be a well-tanned arm from lazy days on the beach.
Howard Hardin was a young man on his way up; twenty-nine years old, good-looking, big .title with no salary to match (all part of a business where you spend and save money that belongs to others) and as Sue thought, he had one decided flaw: he was married.
But he had talked, and she'd listened, and besides, he was a swell boss. She had no intention of blowing a good thing, so here they were, on the first night of a two-week vacation, that Howard had arranged to come simultaneously for both of them.
"I just think it's a lot of money for a place to sleep," she protested, but more weakly now.
"We'll do more than sleep here," he said pointedly, and the pressure of his arm tightened around her.
Sue got the message.
What the hell, you don't spend two weeks in a hotel with a married man to look at the ocean while you sleep in different beds-especially when the room only has one bed in the first place. If there were ten beds, the notion would still be patently absurd.
She leaned back against his arm and smiled.
"Yes," she answered with a soft, lilting voice, "of course we will. It's so wonderful being alone, Howard."
For months, they had been burning for this moment, and now it was here. Months of sidelong glances, seemingly casual lunch dates that wound up with knees and hands desperately touching under the table. And always the annoying obstacle of Howard's wife. But the woman, through no intentional kindness, had gone to Switzerland for. the summer, partly to get away from Howard, partly to taste the first blessings of a sudden windfall her grandfather had left her in his will: money that she had made plain was untouchable so far as her husband was concerned.
Sue knew it was wrong to be here.
She also knew that right and wrong had nothing to do with personal desire, and this was the accumulation of long-repressed urgencies. At twenty-two years of age', "she had decided it was time to chuck a few of the more annoying mores aside and revert to some of the hedonistic glories.
"Yeah, sure is," he answered after along silence. "You know, it's funny how we're just sitting here talking when all these months we've been waiting, waiting-maybe we're nervous, do you think?"
She laughed shortly and prevented himfrom saying anything more by putting her lips against his; her arms went around his neck and pulled him close. The heat of his body came through his thin, cotton shirt, through her summery, sleeveless blouse, and stopped agonizingly at the brassiere she wore. Suddenly she longed to feel nakedness against her nakedness, the closeness of her billowing, burgeoning breasts against his chest. Desire thundered through her loins and spread throughout her body until she pictured herself lying naked on the wide, cool bed, air-conditioned breezes blowing against her while Howard undressed and lay beside her, ready A small, animal whimper rose in her lungs and swelled inside her as she pressed her lips harder against his. She felt his lips loosen and then their mouths both went slack with desire. Their tongues met and the tips circled one another with tantalizing fervor while their hands accelerated wildly up and down each other's backs.
Sue went limp. Her breath came out of her rosy, sensuous lips in great gulps; through smoky, impassioned eyes, she saw Howard staring dully at her breasts. They were terrific, she knew, with their defiant upward thrusts, their cloud-like texture and weight, their flawlessly white expanse contrasted starkly by dead-center red nipples that were now stiffening with excitement. But Howard could not see that, not yet. Not until his hands busied themselves with removing blouse and bra, could he delight in those twin wonders separated by a deep, shadowy, perfumed valley.
Howard did not wait.
He didn't wait at all; it was remarkable and exciting how fast his hands applied themselves to the task of unveiling. Sue felt them there, firm, sure of themselves, yet feverishly excited as they unbuttoned the wispy blouse and unsnapped her brassiere, and her breasts plunged out of their captive, cloth cups like children finally let out to play.
He whispered reverently-something about their largeness, their whiteness, the delicate, red, bud-like quality of the nipples as they swelled and filled with pounding blood to his touch. Her eyes met his, and through their narrow, slit-like attitude, she could see the reflection of her own eyes. Raw, delicious lust.
His sandy hair tickled her lips, her neck, and then his lips closed with hungry possession around one of those small fireballs. In plain English, Sue Sills lost her cool completely, and groaned with unashamed pleasure as his lips carried her passion to a fever pitch.
"Howard, ooh, Howard!" she moaned, "We've waited so long!"
"Yes, darling-yes," he answered, and was silent again except for the gusts of breath that spilled over her breasts as he kissed them; his hand moved to her knee, and slid slowly up her leg until it rested warmly against her bare, white thigh.
She heard a zipper.
It was her zipper.
A sudden coolness, as air-conditioning caressed her naked flesh and mingled with its moistness, and she and Howard lay side by side on the gigantic bed, she naked altogether, rubbing hotly and nymph-like against his clothed body. Beneath his slacks (Archer, $21.05 plus tax), she felt his throbbing, disturbingly large maleness. Another burst of excitement assailed her and her tiny hands began tugging impatiently at his belt.
His trembling response frightened her as it thrilled her. It happened even as her fingertips touched his hard, flat stomach and moved downward until they reached home.
The rest happened fast.
Clothes flew helter skelter around the room on both sides of the bed, and the next time they pressed their bodies together, there was nothing touching on either side but hot naked flesh.
Man's flesh.
Woman's flesh.
Both on fire to taste the delights of the other as their lips again touched, scalded, promised and tasted the joys of-what months of repression now made unbearably suspenseful.
Sue Sills would have been a bargain at any price. Her body was as nearly perfect as one will find in this age of artificiality and compensation. Maidenform had no market in Sue. Her breasts were splendidly wrought globes of firmness, towering white monuments of female beauty; even a basketball player with large, well-trained hands would have a difficult time palming those spheres!
All the way down, her skin was smooth. Smooth and white, with blonde, downy fuzz hardly visible except under the harshest lights, covering her arms. Her legs were long, slim and firm; even the thighs were devoid of loose, flabby flesh, although they were muscular and ample in dimension. No man would be ashamed to be caught between them.
Her buttocks were wide and heart-shaped, with the same benefit of separating crevice to give them dimension and form that no artist could possibly improve upon. In conjunction with those pervert's dreams was a pair of hips which swelled and fell with roller-like precision and naturalness. All in all, Sue Sills was a perfectly constructed woman, and when you added a child-like, unscathed face and living, vibrant warmth of youthful desire, you had the woman.
Howard Hardin was aware of it.
Sue was aware only that months of repression were finally to find blessed, necessary release, and as she ran her hot hands over his trembling body, she quaked as he quaked.
His hand nestled between her thighs.
I'm ready for him, she thought, and with a final whimper, she rolled onto her back and reached her arms outward, hungrily entreating him to possess her, to mesh with her and drive himself home into the very core of her passion-starved being.
Howard hardly needed enticing.
Even without the memory of his jaded, artificially perfect wife, Sue Sills would have been a treat for him.
He indulged with the indiscretion of a little boy.
But it took a man to indulge, and Howard was happily well-equipped. Sue felt like liquid fire on the inside, parched heat on the outside. She was a bundle of flame, and only his manliness could put it out.
She was aware of being lifted.
Her heart jumped in her throat, as the awareness became more acute as to detail-hands, his hands, were stuffing full-feathered pillows beneath her, hoisting her buttocks high off the mattress. Instinctively, she bent her smooth, rippled back and lifted her firm-packed white thighs over her.
Eardrums exploding, she waited.
His flesh touched her.
Then, the awareness was deliciously complete-he strained and groaned, pushed hard against her, quivering as she quivered, and an unmistakable sound reached her ears, penetrating through the ocean-like, explosive sound.
They were together!
Gorging, trapping, capturing one another's starved flesh, they were together in the most ultimate way! Sue's heart thrilled and her flesh cried out for completeness. She gripped him hungrily with her smooth, adroit thighs and pulled him yet closer against her so her breasts squashed and almost flattened, nipples burning against his chest as their bodies rose and fell and swayed like ocean breakers at high tide. It was an old movement, perhaps the oldest in history of mankind, yet a movement that never loses its exciting quality of newness-his hands left her shoulders and moved between the pillows and buttocks, grasped the latter until their warmth spread through the heart-shaped mounds of perfection.
A faster crashing, now.
Faster and faster until "Howard, darling, my God!" Words, yet more than words tumbling wetly out of her lips as she kissed him and drew him deeper into her tormented, pleasured, warm, moist flesh-and then nothing but explosions, explosions everywhere as they momentarily became one organism, their sensations and fever Blending, whirling, sailing off into some mysterious vortex.
Then two people again, a man and a woman, lying aide by side, sharing the proverbial cigarette, listening to one another's rapid, shallow breathing and the silent hum of conditioned air.
The Butler Arms.
Twelfth floor, high above the sand and the surf, so high, so protected from nature that neither is discernible or audible. An air-conditioned reality where two people have had sex; yet another manifestation of our Twentieth Century dilemma, when you think that sex mingles far more nicely with clean white sand and cool, saltwater lapping at your feet, your body. But enough of dreaming.
Sue's dream was to last two weeks. Fourteen nights and thirteen days of swimming, fishing, eating, drinking, sex, night walks along the not-so-quiet sand, and more sex.
Howard gave her a dream.
Then suddenly, without warning or comprehension, Howard gave her a nightmare. When she awakened, Howard Hardin no longer existed. He was gone.
There were two police officers, complete with badges and tired, disbelieving eyes-a ride downtown, then another ride back to Norfolk, where the crime had taken place, and .a booking in that police station.
The charge: embezzlement of funds; specifically, one million, nine hundred eighty dollars and seven cents: for our purposes, close to two million dollars. Suspect number one, Susan Sills, employee of the bank with two year's service.
The evidence: insurmountable. Checks with her signature, money missing in slow hunks from her windows, every one that she ever operated. Innuendoes and nuances that can build up and construct an airtight case: her previous requests for raises, all of which had been denied, her sudden purchase of new clothes and not least of all her complaints to her co-workers about how tight the bank was with raises.
A nightmare.
She spent the night in the precinct jail, and in the morning called a lawyer. In her panic and excitement, she went quickly through the phone book and called a number attached to the name Farley Brock.
He came to see her within the hour. When he came into the cell, Sue saw a tall man, a young man, but a man with no frivolity written into his features. He had humor-cop-humor, cynical, grudging, but hardly resigned. She laughed inside as she thought He's kind of handsome, then realized how grossly unimportant his physical characteristics were at that moment, under those circumstances.
Howard had been handsome, too.
"Miss Sills, I'm Farley Brock. Guard, I'd like to talk to my client."
The guard let Brock in, who sat down on the wooden bunk beside her and extended a pack of cigarettes. Gratefully, she took one.
"You've been charged with embezzlement of close to two million dollars. Your name is Susan Sills, age twenty-two, employee of plaintiff, and in a helluva lotta trouble. Now tell me the important details."
"I didn't do it!" she cried, puffing on he cigarette nervously, "I didn't do it, I tell you!"
"Look honey," Brock said with mock gentleness, "Dillinger didn't do it either, until he got caught. I'm not here for you to impress with your flawless morals; now just tell me what happened."
Sue exploded.
"How can you make jokes at a time like this?"
"I'm not making with the jokes, Sue. I'm trying to build a case so you don't go to prison for ten or fifteen years-do you consider that a joke?"
"No," she said, "I certainly don't."
"Okay. Now maybe we can get down to cases, if you'll pardon the bad pun. Where were you when the fuzz picked you up?"
"At the Butler Arms Hotel, in Virginia Beach."
"Expensive place," Brock said sagely, and flicked his eyes at her.
"I didn't pay for it," she said. "Oh, your husband-but how can that be when you're a miss?"
"I was there with a man-he was-married-my boss at the bank, who wanted me to spend some time with him-"
"Okay, okay," Brock snapped, lighting another cigarette. "I said forget the morals, I'm not interested. "You were with your boss? Who is he and where is he?"
"Howard Hardin. I don't know where you can find him."
"Hell," Brock spat. "Now, did you ever suspect embezzlement? Did you smell anything that wasn't quite kosher?"
"Never," Sue said. "How-Mr. Hardin just gave me checks to sign and I signed them and he took money out of the cage or the vault-or wherever."
"Human."
"I didn't do it, Mr. Brock. I'm not smart enough to steal a dime, let alone two million dollars. I didn't believe what was happening-until now."
"Okay, Sue, okay. Sorry I was tough on you; but that's how jurors think. I wanted you to be prepared. llnless I can dig up Hardin, or interest the DA in him as a suspect, we're in tough shape. Not guilty, then?'
"God yes!"
"Okay. I'll be back. Want anything to read? Here, take these cigarettes and I'll bring a carton when I come back."
"Thanks, Mr. Brock."
"Haven't done anything yet," he smiled, and sauntered out when the guard opened the cell. Then he was gone, and she was alone and miserable, wondering how in the hell she ever got into the situation.
The trial: unbelievable. Howard Hardin showed up as a witness for the-prosecution, said yes, he had a short, meaningless affair with the defendant, and yes, he was her superior, and yes, he did suspect something to be amiss with her conduct. But nothing like this, sir, nothing like this!
Mountains of evidence.
Signed checks, loose behavior, on and on, until Farley Brock, in a blind rage, was threatened with contempt of court by the judge.
The verdict: the State of Virginia (County of Norfolk) finds the defendant Susan Sills guilty of embezzlement. Bang! Addendum: If the defendant will kindly tell the plaintiff where the money is concealed, the chances for parole will he infinitely greater.
No?
Bang!
Ten years in the state penitentiary, woman's section in Stockbridge, Virginia.
All the way up there, riding in the train, handcuffed to a woman officer, Sue Sills could not believe she was going to prison for ten years. She could not, did not believe Howard Hardin had lied sc blatantly against her. She knew now, that he was guilty, that it was he who had done the embezzling and had covered his tracks by using her. And lo think I wanted an affair with him, she thought. It was unbelievable.
"I didn't do it," she told the woman officer.
"Sure honey, I know. Be quiet so's I can snooze, huh?"
The train rolled on.
Farther and farther away from the coast, into southwestern Virginia, where Sue stared out into the night and wondered how on earth she would bear ten years of prison life for a crime she did not commit? She wondered even more how or if Farley Brock would get her trial appealed as he had promised fervently to attempt with everything in his power.
His last words to her: "It all stinks, Sue, the whole damned thing, and I'm sensitive to bad smells-I'll appeal your trial if I have to bust everything and everybody in this state!" Let it be true, she thought wildly, let it be true.
CHAPTER TWO
A prison is many things to many people, depending on the perspective afforded by circumstances, If you're a warden, an administrator or a guard, it is a source of income; conversely, if you are a politician, it offers a platform for reform or more stringent treatment of society's misfits, depending on the attitudes of your constituents.
If you're an inmate, it's stir. The can. The hole.
Any way you look at it, it is sheer, unadulterated hell, because you are the subject that gets pushed and ordered and regulated like a verb or adjective phrase. One way or another, prison is not fun and games on the inside, and unless you've been there, this fact cannot begin to be appreciated.
Sue Sills debarked from a hot train on a hot day and with her escort, stared out across the flat fields where the dust and heat waves rose with relentless regularity, in ever-increasing pulsations. From the distance, they could see the guard towers; painted dull, flat black, they looked like grotesque, miniature sections of a castle.
"Your new home for the next ten years," her companion said.
"It won't be appreciated," Sue answered defiantly. Already, she felt unspeakably frustrated and inferior; the System was already beginning to pile up and close in on her.
"I figured you for a pretty nice kid," the lady cop said, "but I guess you're as snotty as the rest of 'em."
Sue remained silent, and when the bus came to pick them up, Sue saw that the driver was a punk kid wearing a straw cowboy hat and faded Levi's, with shirtsleeves rolled neatly above his elbows. He wore a shiny, pearl-handled Colt at his side, holster slung down over his hip, Wyatt Earp fashion-only the gun was a pawnshop special with a bad action instead of Earp's legendary Buntline Special. He looked at Sue with easy, almost indifferent lust, as though he were contemplating buying a horse. She looked at him venomously, and he guffawed, punctuating it with a burst of brown tobacco juice. It made an interesting pattern in the dry dust.
"Get in," the woman cop told her, and Sue marched in with her close behind, feeling the annoying tug of handcuffs that joined them.
Within a very few minutes, the towers no longer looked like toys, but became ominously huge pillars of doom. The kid drove like crazy over bumpy roads, stirring and swirling dry, choking dust everywhere. By the time they drove through the gate, Sue was parched from thirst.
"I wonder if I could have some water?" she asked the guard who took over her custody from the lady fuzz.
She must have said something funny because he laughed like hell until his fat sloppy gut shook like a quivering glob of protoplasmic mess.
"Why, sure, lady, and how would you like some mint on top? And more yuk-yuk-yukking, all the way down the corridor where he led her to a room. He left, and from that point on, she was surrounded by women. Over her head she saw a sign: State Prison, Women's Div.
"Could I have some water?" she asked the new guard. A woman, she decided, would be far more understanding and sympathetic.
"When I get good and goddamned ready, sister," the guard snapped, and told her to dump all her possessions on the table and strip the hell down to her bare bottom.
The rest happened fast.
Gray prison dress, delousing, hustled off to a cell after receiving a number and having it duly entered and inked onto her dress. Quick, quick, double-quick, Sue Sills lost the identity that had been hers for twenty-two years. Now she was a number to be counted and screamed at.
Ten years!
It was incomprehensible, she thought wildly-yet, today was Just the first day of her sentence. She still had nine years, eleven months and twenty nine days to go.
She had just missed lunch, but when she asked about water, someone pointed to the sink in the cell as she was hustled inside it. The door clanged shut, and she was alone. She knew she was to share the cell with someone else, but that someone was elsewhere-so for the time, she was by herself. Quickly, she turned on the tap in the sink and drank greedily from it. It was hot and muggy inside, and the water tasted like the inside of an unwashed test tube, or at best the bottom of an over-chlorinated swimming pool. But it quenched her thirst in spite of the cruddy after-taste.
There was nothing to do but sit.
Sit and think.
Think about that bastard Howard who'd had her busted to begin with, and the whole farcical trial, Farley Brock's impotent rage and vehement swearing to get her a new trial. But, she reflected, that was all past, not precisely dead leaves, but at best conjectural.
It was better not to think and brood, better to just decide to make the best of things. The most difficult thing was to get into the jailbird frame of mind. Vaguely, she knew this was the key to her survival while in prison.
She was jarred from her thoughts by a sudden din. Cursing, heavy footsteps, all coming closer to her; Sue tried to see around the bars without thinking, until she saw how impossible such a thing was. Then she saw prisoners, led by two guards. They talked just as nastily and heartlessly as the men-she knew already not to look for feminine compassion in these females. The guards cursed, the prisoners walked sullenly and silently, with their heads bowed like sheep. They were ail sweating profusely.
One guard seemed especially tough.
Sue turned away involuntarily when they stopped in front of her cell.
"So this is the new chicken." Now she was a chicken, was she? Reduced to the significance of a bird-"Healthy-lookin' bitch, isn't she, girls?"
Laughter. Some of it raucous and uninhibited, much of it polite and born of fear. Sue could hear both tones plainly.
"Wonder if them boobs're real?" the female guard cackled, pointing a huge finger at Sue's breasts. It was too much.
"I can't say you've won any beauty contests lately-unless the judges were blind," Sue said. Silence.
Incredulous, disbelieving silence.
The guard walked up to her cage, put her powerful hands against the bars.
"I haven't had a smart bitch-like you in a long time; you'll be kinda fun to break." She cackled again; it was a horrible, creepy laugh. It sounded evil, Sue thought.
"You ask the girls about me," the guard said. "I don't go around blowin' my own horn. You just ask 'em." Then, "All right, chicks, back to your cages before I start swingin'!" Sue's cage was opened by the other guard, and a beautifully built Negro woman was thrown inside. The door banged shut with a metallic sound, as did the others, in chain-reaction, growing fainter and fainter as the guards moved up the corridor, shoving them inside. Then there was a buzzing sound.
"Automatic lock," the colored woman told Sue. "Everything around here's automatic except Big Bert. Ain't nothin' automatic about that bastard." She spat vehemently.
"Big Bert?' Sue asked.
"Big Bert, baby; the one you just gave that line of crap to. You like to hear about Bertie before it's too late-if it ain't already?"
"Yes," Sue answered faintly.
"Well look, I'm Cindy. Cindy Martin, and I'm straight as a fifty-dollar bill, so if you're gay don't come sniffin' around me at night or I'll crack your goddamn skull."
Sue was shocked into momentary silence.
"I'm not a Lesbian, if that's what you mean," she said, "so there won't be any trouble there. I'm Sue." She smiled, at Cindy, trying to recapture something like friendliness. She simply was not used to hostile introductions, begun on a negative basis.
"We're both straight then," Cindy smiled. "This your first time in?"
"Yes?"
"What was the wrap?"
"Embezzlement."
"You brain-people're all alike. Hell-me, I'm in for plain ol' hustlin'-in the wrong part of town at too-high prices. They don't dig that scene down here nohow." She laughed. It was a resonant, musical laugh. Sue warmed to Cindy, admired off-handedly her finely chiseled body, the way the breasts uplifted pertly, nipples thrust against the thin cotton of the dress, the well-defined buttocks and strong thighs, all wrapped by dark, honey skin. Only the hands were rough and work-scarred, but even they had a semblence of former perfection. Cindy was a beautiful woman, but the physical beauty was all but destroyed by her cynicism and veneer of toughness.
She seemed to notice Sue's apprehension. Her voice softened, losing a bit of its cracked-ice quality.
"You're goin' to meet a lotta bad people here, honey. A lotta bad people! Now Big Bert. Gotta hip you on Big Bert so you stay in one piece."
"She seems awfully mean." As soon as she said it, Sue realized the hollow stupidity of mentioning the horribly obvious.
"Mean! Goddamn right she's mean. First of all, Bert ain't no she-she's a he, dig?"
"You mean-?"
"A big, bad dyke, sweet child, so butch there ain't no man in his right mind'd wanta mess with him. Bert's a dyke, and just loves nice tender meat like you an' me. And I'm the only one in this block ain't come across yet. All those others have. You'll see how Bert treats me alongside them tomorrow when we go out to work and all.
"She'll play for you too," Cindy remarked. "It's awfully tempting, so don't sit here and tell me you won't cop out."
"This is horrible," Sue cried out.
"Natural facts, honey. I've run into dykes" before, but nothin' like Bert, who can make you or break you-bitch usually winds up doin' a whole lotta breakin' before she makes. But she makes. She's gotta a special kick, too. You dig that outfit of hers?"
"llnusual," Sue answered, realizing now that she had been struck at Bert's close-cropped hair, her spit-polished, black boots and shiny, black holster. And in spite of the stifling heat of summer, she had been wearing a leather jacket, tight-fitting at the waist, broad in the shoulders, similar to a motorcycle jacket. Yet it was not precisely a motorcycle jacket. It reminded her of old war movies showing Nazi SS men, strutting around in their polished boots and torso flattering battle-jackets made of leather.
"Yeah, she's got a thing for leather; they got a special name for weirdos like her, but I can't re member it-anyway, she likes rough stuff. Likes her lovin' a real special way." She lowered her voice as she added, "she knows how to stomp an' kick without leavin' any marks. She's got some of these chicks where they actually beg for it."
"My God," Sue whispered, horrified.
"I been here two weeks. Just two weeks, baby, and it's the longest two weeks I ever spent in my whole life."
"How long have you got?" Sue asked.
"Be out in one, if I cool it. Pretty hard with Big Bert though, all the time ridin' your butt-say you know what she reminds me of?"
"What?"
"When I was hustlin' over in the ofay side of town, I used to get this John all the time; regular, dig, like twice a week. llsed to like me to cuss him up and down and hit him with a silly cotton belt-then he'd go down with me while I called him more names. Sonofabitch used'ta pay me twenty bucks for that freaky stuff. Well, Bert likes to do that kinda stuff to others."
"A frightening nightmare," Sue whispered to herself.
"Ain't no dream, sweetheart. It's real and it don't ever stop around here. You just keep your ears around tonight, and you'll hear things." Cindy smiled, lit a cigarette butt that she quickly extracted from beneath her mattress.
Sue began to sense the irony that surrounded her, the absurdity of justice. Taking advice and counsel from a convicted prostitute, who was in truth serving time because of prejudice rather than legal infraction, was absurd. And most absurd of all was the existence of a monster like Big Bert in an institution organized for reform. It was taking on the quality of a nightmare, more and more, only Cindy had already spelled the difference between dream-nightmares and nightmares of reality. She had never before conceived of such differences existing.
Cindy lay on her bunk, the bottom one, and called up to Sue, who lay quietly above her, thinking.
"Say, you get busted on account of a John?"
"A John?"
"Man. I keep forgettin' you're new."
"Yes," Sue said, "I sure did." In a few words, she told Cindy all that had happened.
"Yeah, it's a bitch, okay. First time I ever got in trouble was over a man-white man, son of a woman I worked for when I was young and didn't know nothin'. I was sixteen."
"What happened?" Sue asked, sensing Cindy wanted prompting so she could tell her story.
"You really want to hear it? People get tired of hearin' somebody else's blues all th' time."
"Yes, I really do," Sue assured her.
When Cindy Martin was sixteen years old, she could no longer afford to go to school, as her parents did not make enough money to support a family of six children. Cindy was the oldest, and therefore had to work. She went to work for a Mrs. Watson, a white woman who was widowed and left with an eighteen-year-old son, Jim.
Cindy had spent the last three years of her life combating the loss of her virginity, due to moral and practical considerations. She came from a family of Pentacostal Baptists, and had a decided aversion to pregnancy out of marriage, as she had seen its consequences all her life. Cindy came to work for the Watsons as a virgin, then.
She worked all day.
She worked hard, harder than ever before, because now there wasn't even the consideration extended by flesh and blood-to Mrs. Watson, Cindy was an automaton, devoid of dignity and feelings. After six months, Cindy felt whipped and worthless.
Jim came home for Christmas vacation from the llniversity of Virginia where he was a sophomore. When he saw Cindy, he canceled his plans to visit a friend in Raleigh, and decided to stick around.
One day when Cindy was scrubbing the kitchen floor, on her hands and knees, Jim saw her. What he saw was virtually enough to obliterate the necessity for hormones in treatment of inadequate males.
He saw thighs and buttocks.
Strong, lithe, curved limbs that beckoned through gingham. Her dress was tucked between her legs, and he could see her cleavage from buttocks all the way down to her knees. He saw swollen hips, a slender waist and a strong straight back.
When Cindy got up to rest her back, he saw her breasts jutting and swelling against the sparse dress. Her lips were sensuous and red, and against honey-colored skin and thick, wavy hair, she looked like what he had heard Cleopatra herself looked like.
"Hello," he said thickly, "I'm Jim, Mrs. Watson's son. You're Cindy, right?"
His gaze made her uncomfortably self-conscious. She knew he was looking through her thin, flimsy dress, evaluating and sketching her nakedness. She blushed, feeling hot with embarrassment, but it did not show.
"I'll bet you're a real popular gal," he said leeringly. "Bet you got the bucks all excited."
Cindy sensed the typical racial contempt beneath his implications, and turned away. She bent down again and resumed her scrubbing.
"You got about the prettiest looking legs I've ever seen," he said with that same peculiar thickness. "Are they as pretty as that without clothes?"
She was silent.
Tense, expectant., 'Damn you girl, you hear me talking?" he exploded. "I asked you a question!" Cindy swallowed, tried to choke her rage down, knowing that if she didn't make the stock response, she would lose her job and go home to her father's anger, "Yessir, I hear you," she said neutrally.
"I asked about your legs. They pretty?"
"Not especially," she said.
"Hell you're lyin'," he laughed, "I know they're pretty. I bet you're a hot one! Wooee!"
Mrs. Watson came into the kitchen, and for the first time Cindy felt grateful for her presence. Jim left, and her employer eyed the floor critically.
Three days later, Jim came into the living room where she was dusting. Mrs. Watson had gone to Newport News for the day to visit her sister, and Cindy knew she was alone in the house with the son.
"Whyn't you stop workin' for awhile?" he said. "The old lady's gone for the day."
"Because I've got to have a clean house when she gets back," Cindy said flatly. Her voice was neither impolite nor especially polite; just unassailably neutral.
"Aw hell, the place looks good. C'mon, have a beer with me."
"I don't drink no liquor," she said.
"Beer isn't liquor," he countered, "besides, it's good for you. Gives you energy." Cindy had wondered why Jim had the beginnings of a gut, and now she knew. He was too healthy.
"It makes me sick," she said.
"Well then sit with me while I have one," he said, and his voice took on the sharp tone of command.
She said nothing, but followed him to the kitchen, walking behind. He opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of beer. It opened with a hiss, and he sat down in a chair at the table, motioning her to pull one up.
"Old lady's a bitch, isn't she?" he said mildly. "Works your butt off, doesn't she?"
"She's a good person," Cindy said.
"You think so? Hell, maybe-" He broke off, and looked at her frankly; his eyes shifted and wavered only slightly, which for a man like Jim Watson, was utter frankness. "You really are beautiful," he said, "You know, I could fix it so you wouldn't have to work so hard. I could swing it so's my mother'd hire another gal to do the heavy work and you wouldn't have to do anything but cook and go to the store; easy stuff. How'd you like that, huh?"
"I'd-like it fine," she said, thinking-I was all wrong about him, he's really a nice boy-but I'm happy the way things are. I ain't complaining."
"I-know you aren't. I'd just like to make things easier."
"Thank you, sir."
"You're so polite," he laughed, and got up from the chair he'd been sitting in. He walked over, around the table, and stood behind her chair.
Cindy sat very still.
She tried not to flinch when his hands cupped her breasts and his face bent over, blowing hot breath down the back of her neck. His hands toyed with her nipples with an easy, massaging movement, and in spite of her resolve, a shiver of warm excitement grew in her. She knew her nipples were swelling under his touch, that his breath was making her shiver all over and making her feel deliciously funny and good as she'd never felt before. "Don't,"
"she whispered, "please don't."
He answered by squeezing her nipples harder and rubbing her breasts a bit more vigorously, kissing her neck with his warm, moist lips. His hand slid quickly, unobtrusively inside her dress and closed around a bare, firm breast. Her nipple was sharp and full against his warm palm, and her knees felt weak; her stomach churned with excitement.
She said nothing.
He worked her breasts easily, without hurry, both hands inside the dress now, cupping, hefting, teasing, rubbing-her breath came in short, hard pants, and a whimper was beginning to tear itself loose from the recesses of her body.
It tore loose.
A high-pitched woman's sound, crying out with passion as he stroked her authoritatively, his hand way down, kneading the firm, smooth skin of her belly, a finger diving into the navel, sending thrills down to her groin "LordI" she gasped.
"Just sit still," Jim whispered, "just sit there and let Jim show you heaven." His lips touched her ear; his tongue scorched the lobe, then flicked inside it. His hand had gone beneath the waistband of her pants, and his fingers twirled familiarly in the soft, fluffy nest that marked the entrance to her virginity, the virginity she had tried so desperately to keep. But now those fingers were weakening her, breaking down her resistance, entering her moist, hungry flesh and awakening it to sensations undreamed of, unheard of, making her eyes go smoky and slitted with hot, burning lust.
She sprawled awkwardly in the chair, spreading her sumptuous thighs. The hand became more insistent, stroked one smooth, strong pillar before returning to the source of hunger, and Cindy was not aware of her hips and pelvis gyrating sensuously, beckoningly. It was an unconscious, reflexive movement, born of instinct.
When he bent forward again, his lips searched hers.
She kissed him, and her mouth took on a life of its very own, moving animatedly against his mouth while their tongues searched and found one another-with a wave of savage desire, she nipped his lower lip, and his accelerated passion transferred itself to her, and they were suddenly on the floor, lying side by side, pressing close together, her moist thighs against his swollen maleness. Her dress was gathered around her waist, and now, when his hand pulled at her panties, she shrugged her hips eagerly so they would slide off more easily.
His essence against hers made her wild.
"Ooh!" she cried, "ooh!" A beast unleashed itself inside her, and she drove against him with the force of a piston; his hands closed tightly around her firm, swelling buttocks and hugged her close.
"Touch me," he panted, "here."
He placed her hand.
She had never touched a man before. It excited her. It frightened her into her old inhibitions as well-a member that huge would hurt her, It wasn't possible, when even his fingers had made her flinch.
She pushed at him.
"No," she protested, "you'll hurt me!"
"Only a little," he conceded, "but it won't last long, honest." Jim Watson no longer talked with the rationality of a human being, but rather babbled with the lust and tormented desire of an animal. He thrust himself toward her while she pushed him away.
"Goddamn!" he exploded, "come on!" She struggled less and less as his lips ejected her nipple from them, leaving it hot and swollen with feeling. Like wet marbles, her nipples again rolled between his lips, and took the gentle nips of his teeth. His hand made her weak again, feverish and trembling. She let him lift her from the floor. For a moment, their eyes met: hot, heavy-lidded. She looked at him while he lifted her and she put her arms around his neck. Her buttocks felt the cool, smooth surface of the kitchen table, and then he stood in front of her; his hands closed around her ankles and coaxed her legs around his waist. He smiled hysterically.
She saw him move closer to her while she sat with her long, strong legs around him in tight embrace. She felt him. There was a sudden wave of pain, nauseating pain rising In her throat, panicked, clutching and resisting-she made a futile attempt to pull away from his grip-then there was only pain that made the room a momentary blank.
She screamed.
A hot branding iron scalded her, pierced her tender flesh, and penetrated relentlessly through the opening until it burned and blazed Hell-like inside her.
She gasped.
The iron cooled, became pleasantly warm 'and searching, made her moist and receptive; she gorged on the new sensation with child-like hunger as his face bent close toners, a blurred image of lust that matched her own mounting, insurmountable lust.
She cried.
Pure, gem-like flames of pleasure burned inside her now,, not like hell or even a warm bathtub-just irreplaceable thrills.
She whimpered.
Her thighs tightened around him and drew him close, and together, their bodies worked toward mutual release, operated as a team, thrustina and retreating while their limbs made unmistakable sounds of pleasure, and their cries mingled striking chords and discords that heightened the sense of urgency inside both of them, and then everything just mushroomed and shattered, and the room became fragments of Nothing.
She gasped with disbelief, Disbelief at how pleasurable sin could be, and maybe having babies and being damned to hell was worth it. Certainly nothing was better-she put her arms around Jim and kissed him, sitting on the kitchen table naked, when the door opened, and even as she thought-Mrs. Walson walked in.
"And sonofabitch, did she have things to say!" Cindy cackled, shaking her head, as Sue listened. "After that, I got canned by the old lady, and I wasn't about to go flunkyin' again. So I stopped givin' it away, and here I am."
The two women talked for another hour or so, and then the lights went out.
"Now you'll be hearin' Big Bert," Cindy whispered. "Be cool and don't make no noise."
Sue tried to sleep, but Cindy's story, her words about Big Bert and the dangers of night made it impossible. The mattress was unyieldingly hard. She was imprisoned: over and over again, she told herself I'm a convict, a prisoner, but it didn't quite register in her whole being, She could reason, but she could not accept. She had been in jail for one day; one day out of ten years, and it had been endless. Tomorrow, she hoped, the day would go faster, and the day after a little faster still, until time itself became a meaningless, measureless blur, Farley Brock was not a law book lawyer, Oh, he knew his law, knew his cases and precedents and courtroom psychology. He knew all that better than most men his age, as well as some of the old pros, but in the final analysis, Farley Brock was a blood-and-guts man, of the Darrow and Liebowitz school. Law school had not quashed that In him, and even when he had seen his friends and colleagues, one by one, drift into the more lucrative fields of tax, corporation and anti-trust law, he had remained stubbornly to his childhood dream of defending the innocent.
Now, as he rubbed his burning eyes and leaned back in the old swivel chair, he thought he was perhaps a bit too old, a bit too tired for childish dreams. How could you exact justice in a circus? How could you appeal to money-greased minds and corrupt officials? How could you even pretend legal tranquility in a farce such as the Sills case?
You couldn't.
And even when you pored over all the old cases and reviewed the laws regarding valid evidence, it did no good. It did no good because the trial had been no good, the jury had turned in a verdict before the trial had begun. Somebody, probably Howard Hardin (who the hell else?) had been a real busy boy, spreading the embezzled money in nice thick coats over the right paws. No wonder they couldn't find the money. It was all spent. Farley Brock knew he was no detective, nor did he want to be. But he found himself thrown into a prepostrous situation where he had damned well better do some Sam Spade work if he wanted his client's trial appealed to a higher court. It was sickeningly obvious that she wasn't guilty. A state like New York or Connecticut would have laughed the case off the dockets. But this wasn't New York or Connecticut, and they hadn't done any laughing at all. They had instead convicted an innocent girl who'd made a woefully common mistake of shacking up for two" weeks with a married man who happened to be her boss. And happened to be a crud. But Hardin had to be played like a fish, at least for awhile.
CHAPTER THREE
Bertha Starr lived on the prison grounds. She had a private bungalow with all necessities, plus two hundred a month salary. For her, it was more than enough. It was everything, She had her well-ordered world, and she could shuck it like a half-opened oyster, Inside, there was virtually everything to betray her temperament and unusual tastes: magazine photos of beautiful, ridiculously feminine women in all sorts of demure, coy poses; one huge picture of a woman being brutally whipped by a loutishly indifferent man. The only emotion in it was that of unspeakable terror in the woman's eyes. In the far corner hung a braided bullwhip from a nail. It didn't take any psychiatrist or astute intellect to figure out Bertha's tastes. They didn't call her Big Bert for nothing, She was big. Five feet eleven inches is big for man or woman, and when that height is supplemented by bone and muscle and bitchiness, it is awesome.
Bert had never made it on the outside. He'd been a waitress in a dozen joints, a bouncer in a gay bar, a laundress-all limited jobs; limited in the sense that she could go so far, and no farther.
Being a guard was different, The thing she had going with Phineas Plane, the warden, was too damned good to believe. After two years, she still didn't quite believe her good fortune. She had a bevy of chicks, and she was the undisputed rooster! In a State prison, one would think that such things were impossible. Theoretically, they were, but life is not theoretical. And Bert had an understanding with Phineas, and between the two of them, they each got what they wanted.
They were both here for the same reason.
Different routes, different acts, but the same reason. Bert looked at her watch and saw that it was after ten. Lights had been out in the cells for over an hour. Regulations stated that off-duty guards had no right being in the blocks. But Bert was in no way connected with regulations. She sat up on her bed nd reached for her boots. They were high, shiny black ones, and her face drew down into a frown when she noticed a scuff mark. One of those damned chicks, she thought contemptuously. Carefully, she wiped the mark clean with a handkerchief and yanked the boots on. She stood up. Now she felt tall, much taller than before. As she completed her dressing, her sense of power heightened, and when she stepped out into the cricket-filled "night, she lit a cigarette and flipped the match behind her.
It was like having your own stable full of fillies, she thought. You had some nice, tame ones you could always count on, and the couple of wild ones who just didn't want to be ridden.
Cindy Martin was a wild one. So was the new bitch, Sue Sills, the pretty one who'd given her the lip. But I'll get them, she said to the night. I'll get 'em if I have to make 'em drop-I got lots of time, more time than they have, that's for sure. Her boots crunched the ground as she walked across the field toward ths gate, and she mulled over whom she would select for tonight's "dessert." Cindy and Sue were out for the time; they were special projects, and besides that, Sue had to be shook up a little. If she got a good earful tonight, maybe she'd crack sooner.
She would crack.
Sooner or later, they all did.
She had lots of time.
Hell, it had to be Hannah. Of all the broken-in gals, Hannah had something none of the others did. She had that scared look, that sumptuous body that begged to be beaten. Bert's heartbeat quickened as she walked through the gate, waving absently to the guard. When she got to her block, her footsteps rang echoingly down the corridor. She could hear snores and faint sounds of breathing as she walked past the cells. The corridor was dimly lit; at any point along the wall, she could hit a switch and throw everything into utter darkness.
She came to Hannah's cage, and stood in front of it, with her muscular arms on her narrow, but still womanish hips.
The pretty redhead shrunk in a corner, her eyes widened, doe-like.
"Ready to play, Hannah?" She laughed shortly, and turned the key in the lock. Sue watched, horrified.
She watched the door open, and Bert walk in. Then everything was plunged into total darkness. She could see nothing, and could barely hear, except for breathing, and occasional curses from Big Bert.
"Don't you wanta play, Hannah?' Sue heard Bert ask, "N-no, I don't! It ain't play in', what you do," the girl stammered. Sue's heart ached for her, "It's a goddamn game," Cindy whispered to her from below. "They come on pretty real."
"Well that's too bad, kiddo. Bert needs a workout." Bert hated the darkness; she couldn't see the terror she knew to be in Hannah's eyes, and she couldn't see, but could only feel, her leather-it ruined, limited the effect.
It was better than nothing, though. Much better.
"Ain't hall as much fun in the dark," Big Bert muttered audibly. "Take it off." She snapped it out as a terse command, and you could hear the rustling of clothes. Big Bert moved surely through the dark and laid her hands on two ripe breasts; they heaved, rose and fell with the heartbeat of life inside them. Pungent woman-odor emanated from Hannah's body, stirring Bert with an unchecked lust.
Nipples stirred with involuntary response against her palms, and she stroked them in return-stroked them slowly, deliberately, and Hannah lay in her bunk, gasping, hoping, panting under the slow, calculated caresses. She no longer thought in terms of man or woman: only in terms of sex, of fulfillment of some kind, any kind. Living behind bars away from men did not permit her to assume that she'd have anything like normalcy. So a hand stirred her nipples into torrid excitement. The hand knew what it was doing. It was enough.
More than enough!
"Ahh," she breathed, "ahh yes," and leaned back, fully relaxed under the cat-like, stroking hands on her naked, burning flesh, moving slowly over her hillock-like breasts, down her smooth belly and over her thighs, stirring her moistly into fiery passion.
Big Bert had never loved her like this before, she thought dreamily. Never had her lover been so tender, so humane, so seemingly conscious of her pleasures, Bertha felt her victim's languor. She did not think of Hannah or any of the others as lovers, only as victims who must do her bidding or suffer the consequences. And Bertha was good at consequences. If she could do nothing else, she could certainly do that. Hannah was relaxed, warm with passion stirred into life by Bertha's caresses; unsuspecting, unthinking. That was the time to get them.
"Now!" she uttered with a hoarse sound, and Hannah flinched violently in reaction to the sudden kick of Bert's boot in her ribs. It was steel-toed, steel heeled, and whacked sharply, cruelly into her flesh and bone. Desperately, she rolled toward the wall and clawed at it, as if her nails would tear down solid concrete and steel, knowing all the time I shoulda known that bitch'd pull something like this as the kicks rained down on her faster and faster.
She knew Bert was virtually inexhaustable.
She had to play the silly game if she wanted to stay alive, and Hannah definitely did want to stay alive, even with the life she had to live. Anything was better than dying-anything, she told herself stubbornly.
She heard Bert grunting evenly in the dark. It was a satisfied, amiable grunt, like that of a male bull dismounting from a cow. There was no trace of fatigue or strain in the sound. Hannah knew Bert could go on forever and ever, until she was a mass of broken bones and bloody skin.
So she had to play.
Play damned quickly.
"Master, have mercy!" she shrieked softly, "have mercy, please!"
" 'Bitch, you don't deserve it!" Bert grunted back and gave her another swift, less violent kick, and stopped altogether.
Hannah lay on her bed, panting.
Waiting for the next kick.
"You're so strong, I'm so weak," she whimpered, "be kind."
"Get off the bed," Bert told her. Hannah, out of experience, hopped quickly off, knowing what was coming next. "Bend over and put your hands around your ankles."
Even in the dark, she could not fool Big Bert, she thought dishearteningly.
For a moment, she pictured her buttocks from Bert's point of view, and that made them infinitely appealing-naked, exposed, thrust invitingly toward the whip. Later, perhaps, if she were lucky, she would have some salve to relieve the welts. They would be welts that would show for perhaps an hour, then disappear. Bert used a cloth whip soaked with water; it did not cut. Or scar.
It just inflicted merciless pain.
The first blow was light, teasing; it hit her and licked bare skin almost tauntingly, and then came with more snapping force and at greater speed. With an effort, Hannah held on to her ankles, knowing if she let go of them she would bolt in mad, useless panic around the small cell with Big Bert whipping her without letup. And she would laugh. The laughing hurt more deeply than the kicking and the whipping. Yet there was a morbid sense of security, even pleasantness, in Bert's presence. Bert would take over for her. No prisoner dared lay a hand on her or even raise a tone of voice to her. And she would get extra food, an extra blanket if she asked for it, anything that Bert could reasonably give to her.
So there was strength in that leather-clad giant of a woman. Wretched, painful strength, but strength, strength that gave Hannah security, however expensive.
Bert was leather.
Leather was strength.
Strength was painfully wrought pleasure and peace of mind. After several careful weeks of conditioning, Bert had brought Hannah to this totally unconscious way of thinking, if indeed it could be called thinking at all.
Now, after pain and fear, she awaited the next blow with a quietly anticipated pleasure-wasn't she crud, a convict, and well-deserving of punishment?
"You stinkin' con," Bert grunted in the darkness, and when the cotton belt hit her hip, Hannah moaned. Bert smiled, knowing what had taken place. They all make in the end, she thought with savage glee, and hit Hannah more and more until finally her wrist began to ache. When both wrists ached, she quit.
"I'd love to see you," Hannah whispered from her prone position on the floor. "I'd love to see your power, you goddess in leather!"
Bert swelled with passion.
"You know your place?"
"Yes. I must please you, I'll do anything to please you," Hannah whispered huskily. Bertheardher crawl forward, felt Hannah's arms embrace her boot-clad legs.
An expectant shiver went through her.
"You know what I want," she said, her own voice husky. Hannah knew. From repeated experiences, Hannah knew, and now Bert shivered again as she felt a tiny, strong, womanly hand loosen her Sam Browne belt and unzip her tight slacks They fell over the tops of her boots, "Yes, you know," Bert said tremulously, "you sure know, baby," and now warm, willing, hopeful hands grasped her bare buttocks and pulled her forward while she stood straddle-legged in the middle of the cell floor. She was powerful, ruler of the roost, resplendent and feared in her black, shining leather.
Hot with lust, as beaten, humiliated lips caressed her into hot, frenzied passion, she made her hips work deliriously back and forth against the searching, willing, pleasing red moist lips.
Hannah heard horrible names.
Names directed toward her; humiliating, vile names that rained down on her ears while her lips danced and played frenziedly over warm, hungry flesh. The humiliation was complete. She knew Big Bert was happy with her, and would care for her, protect her against tomorrow, the next day, and maybe even the day after.
Then she would pay again.
She would go on paying until she got out of prison, if she ever got out at all. But she would eat. She would have clothes. She would have special privileges. She would not be worked to death, harassed to tears as would that stupid jerk, Cindy. .No.
Hannah knew how to .play it. She played it the only way you could play it with a mean dyke like Big Bert.
Sue got up the next morning when the whistle blew, red-eyed and headachy from lack of sleep. Toward morning, she had dozed fitfully, only to awaken in a cold sweat. For even though she hadn't seen the spectacle between Big Bert and Hannah, their voices and the sounds they made hadn't left much to Illusion. All down the corridor on both sides, she heard the woman cursing Hannah. "Dyke!"
"Whipping-boy!"
"You got it wrong," another cackled, "Hannah's the sweet little girl, ain't you, baby?"
These voices came from the next block, the one Bert was not in charge of. The one she was in charge of remained silent.
She'd get to them all sooner or later.
All of them except for Cindy and Sue. Both women shared the silent, hostile determination not to give in to Big Bert, let her make their lives as miserable as she could. They would not submit to such torture and perverted appetites.
A few minutes after the whistle blew, Big Bert came down the corridor, her trusty opening cell doors for her. As soon as their doors opened, each prisoner stepped out and stood in line in front of the door, until little by little, they were lined up all the way down the corridor.
They were on their way to breakfast. They marched in total silence. Big Bert absolutely required silence. Anyone who talked would not forget about it for the rest of the day.
They ate in silence.
They walked back in silence.
After they were back in their cells, Cindy told Sue: "Now we, get a half hour to make our bunks and brush our teeth and stuff. Then we go to work."
"What do we do? I mean what kind of work?" Cindy asked.
"In the summer, we all plant corn. The men do all the heavy diggin' and stuff. We just plant. And Big Bert sits under a nice, shady tree with a nice cold jug of water and smiles while we sweat. It's a ball."
"Sounds like it."
"And baby, don't let that bastard catch you standing up to stretch your back. It's curtains, then-specially if it's you or me." Cindy smiled conspirationally, and Sue warmed under it. She became more determined than ever to hold out against Big Bert's sick lust. Even on her second day in prison, Sue realized that she would give up an irretrievable part of her humanity if she ever gave in to Bert.
"What do we do in cold weather?" she asked Cindy.
"Haven't lived through summer yet," she said, "I don't know. I only been here a couple of weeks myself."
It seemed incredible.
Sue thought that she was already hard-bitten, cynical-as though Cindy had spent all her life behind bars. How would Sue herself be at the end of two long weeks?
"Okay girls, get off your rosy little butts and let's go!" It was Big Bert. It seemed to Sue as if only minutes had passed since she'd last seen her. Bert was everywhere at once, and never left you alone long enough to regain your balance. It was going to be tough outside, the sun was well up in the sky, and the air was so muggy that Sue sweated between her fingers; the back of her palms were moist. Once, she had lain on a beach, and when the sun had become too hot, she had run into the cool, invitingly green-white ocean to cool herself.
Now, she was given a hoe, and told to use it. Idiotically, it had a handle too short to be used from an erect position. You had to bend about halfway over. Looking at it, Sue saw that it had been sawed off at the top. The saw-mark was fresh and white, still smelling of fresh-cut wood. It wasn't hard to figure.
Cindy had a short hoe, too, and all the others had long hoes. Without thinking, Sue turned toward the tree where Big Bert sat. Her long, powerful legs stretched in front of her, her boots shone even through the film of white dust, and her leather jacket was unbuttoned to reveal a white, sweat-stained blouse. How can she wear that thing In this heal, Sue wondered.
"Like your hoe, girlie? I picked it out special!" Bert laughed raucously, throwing her head back. "Better learn how to use it real fast." Sue turned away, and began digging in the row she had been assigned to by one of the trusties. It took something like ten minutes for her back to ache, and she reminded herself sternly of Cindy's advice: don't straighten up for nothin' if Big Bert's around.
Minutes seemed like hours. The pain in her back slowed her chopping-motions to all but a halt, until it became a choice between straightening and stretching for a moment or stopping work altogether. The latter notion was idiotic to even consider.
She straightened.
Relief flooded her muscles, and she realized that standing straight had never been so precious to her.
"All through for the day?" asked the voice behind her. Sarcastic. Nasty. Insinuating. "Think you're in a bank?"
Quickly, Sue bent down with the hoe again, and chopped at the ground furiously. Rage almost choked her, and she heard the others laughing appreciatively at Bert's clever wit. Only Cindy didn't laugh. She looked out of the corner of her eye and said "Damn it, I told you about that," and quickly turned away.
At ten o'clock, they called a water-break. Trusties stood near the lister-bag, handing out canteen cups to the lined-up prisoners. They were told to take half a cup and no more, partly for harassment, but mostly because of danger of cramps and heat prostration.
Sue's mouth felt like hot cotton, and she tasted the foulness of breath with a sharpness that comes only from thirst. Impatiently, she watched the line shrink until she stood closer and closer to the bag, and then she was standing in front of it.
The trusty handed her the cup, and she took a sip.
Suddenly, the cup flew from her hand and when she looked up she saw Big Bert leering at her.
"She don't need any water-been standin' up the whole time, haven't you sweet stuff?" Again the maddening, taunting cackle.
A sip and no more. She was thirstier than ever, would have been better off if she hadn't had any water at all.
"Back to work!" the trusties yelled, and-like sullen sheep, the prisoners all went back to the field.
Bert took a swig of ice water from a gallon thermos jug. Sue watched the cold, moist beads formed on the outside, and every gut in her body screamed for water.
Their eyes met, briefly.
"Hannah, would you like some nice, cold water?" Bert asked. Sue watched Hannah look around her for a minute-a long minute. Then, she sauntered over toward the shady tree and stood in front of Bert.
"Here," she said, and Hannah took the jug silently, and took a long, deliberate drink. Then, without looking at any of the others, she returned to work.
"And that's how you play it," Cindy said with a sneer, "See what it's all about?"
Sue was beginning to see.
"I'm dying of thirst," she croaked.
"Aw, hell, you'll have water at the end of the day. Maybe even for lunch. Just ask yourself, Sue, is it worth a drink of water? A lousy drink of water? Just ask yourself that over and over again, and you'll make it."
Is it worth it?
No, of course not, came the answer. Nothing' was, least of all a drink of H20. She told herself, as Cindy had told her to do, over and over and over again that it wasn't worth it.
She was still muttering it when they yelled time for lunch. Fortunately, she got a drink of water then. Bert watched her, then turned quickly away, and it no longer tasted like anything to Sue. Bert killed it.
CHAPTER FOUR
Farley Brock zipped up his briefcase and hurried down the stairs, without bothering to wait for the elevator. One of his "people" had Just called him to report that Howard Hardin had come back to town to pick up some things. He had to see Hardin, had to see him in any event.
Hardin had divorced his wife. She hadn't given him much opposition, once all the Juicy scandal came out. He had also lost his Job at the bank, and how he was going to live or get another well-paying Job was a matter of speculation. But Farley wasn't concerned with Hardin's personal problems. He was only concerned with his undeniable link to Sue Sills, and the whole, stinking frame-up.
He wove impatiently through downtown traffic, and got onto the expressway leading to upper Norfolk. Traffic whizzed and whined past him, cars full of happy, bland faces-sun-tanned faces that constituted traffic headed toward the beach. Funny, he thought; he'd just seen a nice kid go to jail for something she hadn't done, and in a way it had all started at the beach. Only she hadn't left that beach refreshed-no. The more he thought of Hardin, and the more he fought traffic, the angrier he became. Anger was Farley's ultimate weapon against himself. He bristled at being called an idealist or a dreamer or a knight in shining, legal armor-he'd seen too many fine lawyers windup at the bottom of a bottle or worse, deluded, disenchanted men who helplessly shook their fists at the unthinking machinery of justice. So he got angry.
"Bastards," he muttered, "whyn't you learn to drive?" Finally the exit came up and he dodged into the right lane, causing several dozen horns to honk in wild despair. He laughed. If you smack me from behind, it's your fault, creep, and with this in mind, he cut off another lane of traffic going up the ramp. When he got onto Jasmine Avenue, he drove more sedately, until he pulled in' front of Hardin's brownstone, the kind Norfolk people live in during the winter months, sitting in the old-style gloom waiting for summer and the house down at the beach. But Hardin didn't have that much dough, he knew. And his wife hadn't shared a dime of the first of her relatives' legacy, even before the divorce.
Sue had been in jail three months now.
Three months of suffering for her, three months of impotent rage for him, three months of poring over books and talking to judges and what the hell, he was getting nowhere. If Hardin didn't come across with something good, something real good like maybe even the truth (come off it, Brock!), he was going to break his head open. It wouldn't accomplish anything but much-needed release for his frustrations, but it would be better than nothing at all.
He rang the bell, and a Negro woman wearing a black satin dress and white apron answered, "I'd like to see Mr., Hardin, please." He stood there, watched a thousand tremors flicker through her eyes as she turned away, then looked at him again.
"He isn't in, sir," she said, The poor kid couldn't even tell a decent lie, he thought with momentary compassion: very momentary, "He's in, honey, and you'd just better lead me to him real fast, because he's in a lot of trouble. You hear?"
"Are you police?"
"Worse. He'll wish the cops'd gotten to him first if I don't see him," Farley threatened, "Come in," she said haltingly, and when he was inside, he saw her go into what looked like an old-fashioned drawing room, Mrs., Hardin returned with the maid, "I understand you want to see my ex-husband," she said, "I'm Lilian-Reardon," It was obvious that she'd almost said Hardin. A perfectly understandable Freudian slip, "Yes, I'm Farley Brock, Miss Sill's attorney,"
"The woman my husband had an affair with,"
"Yes." Her cold, incriminating tone wasn't a bit lost on Farley.
"My husband really isn't here, Mr., Brock, I won't allow him in this house, which is mine. He's staying at the Surf Lodge in Virginia Beach, Hardly the Butler Arms, is it?" She laughed with satisfaction, Farley hardly knew or cared; there were flea-trap motels and there were motels that made the Butler Arms look like a hot dog shack. What did he care? He had an innocent girl to consider.
"Thank you very much," he said, and began to walk toward the door. He didn't want Hardin to leave town before he got to him, "Howard'll be here for another day at least," Lilian Reardon told him. "Would you like a cup of coffee, Mr. Brock?"
"No thanks," he replied, "I want to talk to you-about Miss what's-her-name. The whore my husband had in the hotel with him,"
"Hardly the right description for Miss Sills," Farley bristled. ' 'Let's nor resort to comfortable little labels, and say that about a nice kid who went a little haywire over a charming man like your ex-husband, a kid who knew better, but then didn't know better after all? Surely you were that way once, Miss Reardon?"
Lilian Reardon smiled.
"Surely, And I still am, perhaps, even after what's happened. It's difficult to be objective in these circumstances, Mr. Brock, Of course I always knew what kind of man Howard was; weak, despicable, unprincipled,"
"And Miss Sills is innocent, I can tell you that for certain."
"Could I help you? Oh, not for altruistic reasons," she smiled bitterly, "but just because I'd love to see that son of a bitch rot behind bars,"
"Farley wasn't interested in motives, "Let's have that coffee, shall we?' He saw Miss Reardon smile and tell the maid to bring them coffee in the living room, where they now sat, Lil Reardon was not an ugly woman. Middle twenties, Farley guessed, red hair, probably real .possibly dyed by a twenty-five dollar pro-it wouldn't be so bad, finding out which was the case, Lilian was slim, almost boyish, but far from feminine. Perhaps that sounds a bit contradictory, but try to imagine a woman without an ounce of spare flesh; firm,, well-muscled limbs from swimming and horseback riding: pert, softball-sized breasts, not less firm-gently curved hips, long and sinuously stream-lined thighs, Lilian was woman at her most physically functional, sheared down to race-horse proportions, Her eyes twinkled in her bright, only slightly weary face, except when she talked of Howard or the divorce, Then those eyes stopped twinkling, and began to burn with slow, smoldering hate.
When the coffee came, Farley offered her a cigarette, which she took. After he lit them both, he leaned forward and put his large hands on his knees.
"You gave me a rundown on Howard's moral character a few minutes back," he said,' 'Do you think he'd go so far as to embezzle almost two million dollars?"
Lilian sighed, and puffed on her cigarette.
"Howard is not an overly bright man. Mr. Brock. Ambitious, rotten to the core, but weak. Very weak. And greedy as they come. If the whole thing is obvious, then I say he undoubtedly did it. If there're the least signs of cleverness anywhere, I say it's impossible,"
"It's obvious to me."
"Are you clever, Mr. Brock?' she asked with the old twinkle.
"Astoundingly. And so are those jurors and everyone else involved-but I'm wondering how Howard got to them so fast? There was hardly time."
"I couldn't say."
"Was money all-important to Howard?'
"No more than breathing is to most other people."
"Important."
"You're clever."
They both laughed. Then Lilian asked, "Do you think your client has a chance?'
"I don't know. If-she were guilty, or if I didn't know if she were guilty or Innocent, I'd say the hell with it and kick myself for getting a bum case. But that's not the case."
"Are you always so idealistic, Mr. Brock?' she smiled.
"I try not to be."
"You are refreshing. You know all my friends-the horsy set, I think they're called-don't give a damn for anyone or anything except what goes on in their private little world. I mean they don't know anyone outside the Club, the Florida crowd and so forth. They think that's the universe."
"And you?'
'I'm the same way. Only that's all going to change now; going to change drastically, now that I'm free,"
"That's good. It's a much bigger world than even the missile people tell you, Lilian."
"May I call you Farley?"
"I was-wondering if you'd ever get to it." Farley thought of Mrs. Hardin-now Miss Reardon in his arms while he covered her face and neck with kisses, slowly heated her up until she percolated and spilled her desire all over him with wet kisses and fluttery caresses, and he picked her up and carried her into that study, and closed the door-with her nibbling sharply at his ear until he lay her down on a couch and slowly undressed her while she stared back at him with wide, disbelieving eyes, and he cupped a breast in his hand for size, titillating the nipple into swollen firmness.
He had to leave. This was not the Farley Brock of Harvard Law School, the cold, legal reasoner. He'd just better get out now and go see Hardin at the beach.
"Well thanks for the coffee and the conversation, Lilian. I've got to be going."
"What's your hurry?'
"Have to go see that un mentionable. I really do."
"He'll be here until tomorrow night or even the next morning-tomorrow's another day."
"A day I might not be around to see," he smiled.
"I'm very, very lonely, Farley. I could use some company."
She looked coquettishly at him.
Farley didn't need a graph drawing to know what she was talking about.
"Some other time. I'm not cold-shouldering you, Lil, but I've got to-"
"See Howard, and he'll be here tomorrow, I promise. If he isn't, I'll give you plane fare to go chase him to New York. That's where he'll be going."
"I shouldn't, you know."
"Neither should the virgin have, but she did and enjoyed every minute," Lilian said tersely. "Now come on into the study and lets have a drink."
He followed her in.
Must be hung up on ESP, he thought.
"What'll it be, Counselor?'
"Bourbon and ice."
Farley watched her pour out the liquor and thought sadly that he should be seeing Hardin right this minute; that while he sat here sucking up prize booze, Sue Sills was breaking rock in Jail. One way or the other, you committed a crime. Some crimes went to the courtroom, others never left the confines of your guts.
"Thanks," he said, taking the drink from her.
"Farley-"
"Yeah?'
"I meant what I said back there in the living room."
"About what?' he asked. His heart seemed to stand still for a moment.
"Being lonely. And sometimes, Farley, it isn't cured by simple conversation."
"We all have our troubles," he answered and tossed off his drink. She took the glass quietly from him and poured out another. "But mine is easily cured-by the right man."
One more second and she'll be raping me, he thought. It was embarrassing to appear so stupid. He would either have to leave or do the obvious.
The obvious isn't always so bad.
Farley did the obvious.
"Am I the right man?' he asked, taking her in his arms. She stared calmly, wide-eyed at him for a moment.
"I'll tell you afterwards."
It was past talking, beyond the cute small-talk. He pulled her against him and crushed her lips on his, hearing her whimper savagely as she threw her arms around him.
Farley felt Lilian press her hips forward, jam her firm, warm belly into him and wriggle with something that far exceeded a college try.
She was no student.
With a girl like her, it would be damned difficult to be anything close to a teacher, but then he was never for student-teacher relationships, anyway. Equality all the way, with a touch of weight on his side.
He knew Instinctively that she wanted to be loved hard-hard and rough, that she could not afford the luxury of polite nothings and phony tenderness. Hot, animal love would cool her burning emotions, which was the thing she wanted most.
Farley pulled the hem of her dress upward, until the material bunched In his hand. He shoved it around her slim waist and put his hands against hot, sleek feeling panties.
"Don't wait," she gasped, and wriggled helpfully when he shoved a hand beneath the waistband and slid them down over deceptively full hips, hips that felt much more ample than they had appeared beneath that well-tailored dress. He touched her buttocks. They burned and squirmed In his grasp, and he kneaded the cheeks with joyful roughness, which Inflamed her even further.
"Rip it off-rip off my dress I" she whispered feverishly, and when he took the lapel in his hand and pulled, the buttons popped and flew wildly all over the study. He tore the dress off. He listened to its sound, the sound of rent material coming off bare, willing flesh. Even as he was unrolling the garters and stockings down her legs, Lilian was unsnapping her brassiere and shrugging it off her body.
She started to rip his suit apart.
"No," he said, alarmed, "I haven't got any clothes here, remember?"
Amazingly, she did.
She stopped, and smiled quietly while he undressed with unusual speed. When they next embraced, it was with naked, burning flesh against naked, burning flesh, breasts pressed firmly against a flat, muscular male chest, a smooth-as-silk woman's knee working. slowly up between a man's legs, inevitably moving toward his groin.
"I'm very lonely," she said again with a distant-sounding voice. Farley answered with a kiss. A long, burning kiss. A kiss that made her lips part moistly, made her jaw go limp with desire. Her tongue burned into his, filled his mouth, and when they sank toward the carpeted floor in one another's arms, it was with slow precision.
He brushed her nipples with his lips, and she quickly pulled him downward until his lips closed around one. It swelled like a rosebud watered with dew. He kissed the other one, while his hands stroked her all over, and then suddenly it all seemed like a waste of time.
He took her.
She rose up to meet him, and their meshing was frighteningly precise and quick. She squirmed beneath him, drew him down deeper and deeper until she had him trapped in the sweetest way, moving against him slowly. So slowly that every inch of him trembled, every nerve rose to the surface and pressed against the skin, until he finally could not stand her steady, slow, pulsating rhythm, and busted loose like a maniac against her, steady, slow, pulsating rhythm, and busted loose like a maniac against her, moving downward with blind fury while her nails raked his back with beast-screaming joy, their shrieks mingling, their bodies trembling epileptically together before the final shudder that stilled into nothingness.
"Still lonely?" he asked.
"Not nearly so much," she smiled. "God I needed that."
Farley glanced at the clock on the wall; surprisingly, it had taken only ten minutes of his precious time. He was a hopeless victim of time, he thought turning down something like Lilian whatever-you-wanted-to-call-her for the sake of a lousy ten minutes was gross. But now he had to find her cruddy ex-husband and talk to him.
"Will I see you again?" she asked. Her tone was no longer bantering; a quiet hunger dominated her eyes as they looked into his.
"I hope so. I'll be awfully busy, running back and forth. It sounds corny, but someone's depending on me."
"It must be a wonderful feeling," she sighed.
"I don't know," he told her.
Then he was roaring down the expressway at full throttle toward Virginia Beach and the Surf Lodge.
Lilian had been right about the place. It decidedly was not the Butler Arms, but it was not a flea-trap, either. It was just one of many motels strung along the beach highway, each looking substantially like the other, lost in anonymous ugliness, each one doing its modest bit in making a once-beautiful beach look like a neon nightmare. But Farley wasn't concerned with a Save-Our-Beaches movement at the moment. He parked in the lot and walked hurriedly into the office.
"Howard Hardin; tell me what room he's in, please?" he asked the clerk at the desk.
"237, sir."
"Thanks." Farley walked around the front, and up the flight of stairs to the second tier. It was a back room facing the ocean, which at the moment looked ominous and unwelcoming as hell. It was the middle of October, and only a few occasional walkers occupied the beach at all. A cold wind blew inward and reminded him of coming winter.
He knocked on the door.
"Yeah?' came a thick voice. Then more quietly, "I don't know who the hell it is, get your skirt down, quick."
"Hardin!"
"Whattaya want?' The voice was thick because it was soaked. The bastard was drunk and probably had a woman in there with him. He'd either fight or blab, and Farley was ready for either.
"I'd like to come in."
"Whosit?'
"Farley Brock."
"Get lost!"
"I just saw your wife."
"Get lost twice!"
"How'd you like a year or so in jail? I can arrange it nicely."
"Yeah, how?'
"False registration in a motel. We both know that isn't your wife, right? Virginia has some bad, old time laws left on her books, buddy. Believe me."
The door opened. Farley grinned and walked in, grinned again at the over stacked blonde (bottle-colored) who glared desolately back at him. Her skirt was hopelessly wrinkled and her mascara and lipstick smeared all over her slightly bloated face. She was a wiped-out beach whore who'd had too many sailors in too many motels like the Surf Lodge.
"We have to talk alone," Farley said pointedly.
"Go get a hamburger or something, huh?" Howard said, and handed her a five. The broad left with a defiant, burlesque swing of her spread-out buttocks. They too had seen better days.
"What's on your mind, counselor?"
"Sue Sills."
Howard's face looked faintly, ever so faintly abashed.
"How's she doing?"
"How'd you be doing if you were doing ten long ones for something you didn't do?" A rhetorical question, but Farley was certain it answered Hardin's more straightforward one.
"The jury found her guilty."
"The jury bad greasy hands-you can't think too clearly with greasy hands, especially when the grease's colored green."
Hardin took a drink straight from the bottle. It was cheap stuff. The broad was cheap. The motel was cheap and flimsy with a gay, phony driftwood exterior. Howard was cheap. The whole goddamned world was cheap-everything came cheap and went cheap-except for a woman's life. Well, even that was cheap. Only Farley's anger wasn't cheap.
Neither was Hardin's neck when his hands went around it.
"Hey what the hell you doing?" Howard croaked. Desperately, he clawed at Farley's hands, trying to work them loose.
"It's what I'm gonna do, pal, if you don't sing me a real pretty song. Like Where's the dough, why'd you frame an innocent girl, and all the rest?"
"You nuts?"
"C'mon, Howard! I'm in a real nasty mood! Don't push it."
Farley stood threateningly close to him.
Hardin turned away, his body stiff with tension. It doesn't take long for a small world to close in, and Hardin's was closing in fast.
"Gonna beat me up, counselor?' He laughed shortly, and Farley suddenly realized that Howard Hardin couldn't care less whether or not he was beaten into the proverbial pulp.
"You have the money, don't you?" he asked with a sinking feeling in his stomach.
"Sure-that's why I'm staying in a crummy joint like this one."
"Don't hand me that malarkey, Hardin. Anybody with brains'd do what you're doing."
"Well then, you just go be Perry Mason, Brock. Work for your dough. And please leave before I call a cop."
"Okay, Hardin. Okay. But let me give you a short, little sermon first; there's a nice young lady behind bars right now, and when she gets out of that institution for reform, she isn't going to be a nice young lady-she's going to be really, truly bitter, Hardin, and maybe you can sleep over it, but I can't. So have fur. in New York."
Brock slammed the door behind him. As he was walking down the steps, the broad practically bumped into him. She didn't move out of the way, but stood in front of him, hips swinging exaggeratedly against him.
"Save it for your schlock boy friend," he growled, and shoved past her. He climbed into his car and roared out of the lot, thinking you stupid sonofabitch Brock, what'd you think he'd do. Give you an embossed confession? It had been a stupid, hollow game. He'd blown his cool for sure, getting all emotional and shook up over a trifling issue like Sue Sills, Hell, girls were a dime a hundred thousand, and guys like Howard Hardin would never lose any sleep over them.
Whether they put them away or not.
He drove hurriedly back to hi!? office, to pick up the late afternoon mail and messages. He had a secretary, one he hardly ever saw and who virtually ran his office: an old, widowed lady, who'd been a legal secretary in her youth and early years of marriage to her late husband. She had a motherly attitude toward Farley that got a bit tedious once in a while, but one that he couldn't help basking in.
Maybe one of the appeals had come through. He had them going in three different courts, but until he could produce new evidence, it wasn't likely that the appeals, any of them, would be granted.
Likelihoods often become truths.
He looked at his secretary silently.
"Judge Harris says forget It until you've got some evidence to warrant a new trial," she told him sadly.
Brock nodded and stuck a cigarette into his mouth. He walked into his office and slammed the door. The secretary heard the creaking of his swivel chair as he leaned backward in it and locked his bands behind his neck with the cigarette collecting more and more ashes. Hardin had money. He had the money. He was going to New York, for a reason Brock knew not. Those were facts. How did you capitalize on those facts, make them go to work for you?
The answer came up fast.
You didn't. But you got someone who perhaps might, and who maybe might dig up some more sallent bits of info. Brick picked up his phone and dialed a quick number and waited for the ring.
Bertha awakened with a splitting headache. It was even worse than she had expected. When she got out of bed, her head throbbed and the room swam crazily; for a minute, she thought she was going to heave, and thought seriously of running to the John-but she couldn't have If she'd had to. Her legs were too weak. She sat on the edge of the bed and waited for the dizziness to pass. Slowly, painfully, it did, leaving her with the relative bliss of a headache and upset stomach.
She'd had too damned much booze last night, and she never should've gone into town to begin with.
After the usual ablutions, she dressed herself. When she slipped into her boots and stood up, she felt a little better. Not much. But enough to make sustained locomotion possible. She was going to lean harder on Cindy and Sue.
Martha sat huddled in her bunk, facing the wall. When people walked by, all they could see was her back. It was still, except for faint breathing movements. She didn't cry. In fact, she hardly thought, in the strict sense of that word. Her mind lay wide open and images trickled haphazardly through it, like ants crawling through a severed piece of ground. Thoughts of being bounced back and forth between the warden and Big Bert, like unthinking pawns. It was getting to be a bit much, she thought, when she thought at all. The humiliations increased, but somehow, Big Bert was more bearable than the warden. She at least made an easier life for her. The warden didn't give a damn one way or the other.
He just hurt her.
Big Bert came within approximation of caring for her. It was a distant approximation, one that people under normal circumstances would never detect. But Martha was not other people, and the circumstances hardly normal.
So she sat there.
No one spoke to her.
No one cared, least of all her. People walked by, mostly guards, and looked at her curiously for a moment without slowing down their footsteps. What'd it matter to them, or to anybody? Just another con. Another hardened criminal incapable of emotion and feeling and longings like other respectable people. Sure, why not? Then it was easy, you didn't have to get all upset with attachments and personal involvements.
"Martha looks drug out," Cindy remarked to Sue. "Yeah. She's been working pretty hard." She grinned cruelly. She knew as the others did about the "arrangement" between Big Bert and the warden.
"Overtime. But you know I feel sorry for her. Like what's gonna happen to her when she gets outta here? If she ever gets out. Hell, none of these girls were bad when they came here. Now they're all dykes or leather-happy-somethin' cukoo with all of 'em. Damn shame."
"What about you and me?" Sue reminded her. "Now. What about later? What about that time when we run out of breath?" Cindy sank into gloom, and Sue stopped talking to her. She hoisted herself to the upper bunk. So that's what was on Cindy's mind, she thought. Big Bert was making it extra hard, and she was afraid she'd crack. She no longer had any confidence. She couldn't trust herself. She was beginning to see little nooks and crannies and crevices in her will to hold out.
"Don't do it, Cindy."
"Do what?"
"Crack up. Don't go Big Bert's way-only nine months to go, Cindy, nine lousy months and then you're out forever."
"Out to what? Whorin' on the bad side of town, where everybody's on relief?"
"No, something else. Something legitimate."
"You gotta live, girl. They don't feed you out there like they do here."
"You'll find something. You've got to think one step at a time. Don't crack, Cindy!"
"Okay. I'm goin' to sleep."
"You promise?" Sue called down.
"As-much as I can," Cindy sobbed. "What's the use of writin' it in blood around here?" Sue was silent, and she heard Cindy toss around into a halfway comfortable position. Then it was quiet in their cell, except for their breathing. From other cells, came other faint, nebulous sounds. Sounds everywhere, when you kept your ears peeled-it was never completely, one-hundred-per-cent quiet. There was always the knowledge that you can never be alone, can never be wholly by yourself. Darkness outside.
Lights dimming inside, until finally the whole block was dark except for the dim overhead lights in the corridor. The breathing seemed louder to Sue as she lay on her bunk listening. Slowly, the sounds became fainter, and she drifted off into sleep.
She didn't know what time it was when she awakened. At first, she didn't know quite why she awakened at all, until she heard the cell door open and close. Instinctively, she leaned over the edge of her bunk and peered downward into the darkness.
Cindy was gone.
Gone where?
Sue sat on her bunk, and fished for the last cigarette in the pack. Finding it, she struck a match in the dark, and the whole depressing cubbyhole was illuminated by it. It flickered out, plunged all into darkness again.
She strained her ears to hear something, anything that might give her a clue as to where Cindy had gone, where she had been taken. Nothing. Nothing at all.
She remembered Cindy's words: As much as I can, what's the use of writin' it in blood around here. Yes. No. You couldn't promise a thing when It came to strength, to holding out against the corruption. Where was she? With Big Bert? With the warden? What was happening, and how would Cindy be when she returned? Big Bert had been riding herd on the poor kid all day, and anything could conceivably happen. Anything at all.
Sue shuddered.
Cindy was a strong-minded person, had been as full of rebellion and defiance as Sue. How long would it be before she crumbled? How long before Sue said, "Okay, I can't take it anymore, I'll do anything at all, just leave me be?"
How long?
Now she waited quietly in the dark, keeping an unacknowl-edged vigil for her friend, waiting for her to return. She would not sleep. She would wait for her friend, her only friend, Cindy Martin.
CHAPTER FIVE
Phineas opened his mail bright and early in the morning. The contents of same told him what kind of day he was in for. It told him what kind of mood to assume, what to expect in his future as well as immediate present. It was flipping a coin.
This morning it turned up tails, in the form of a short letter from Farley Brock, the lawyer. He knew Brock, had heard all about his nosy overzealousness from his friend Judge Harris and some of the other circuit judges in the state. Phineas knew all the lawyers and judges, either directly or indirectly. Knowing Brock indirectly was sufficient for Phineas to have an immense dislike for the young man. He was an outsider come to upset the big, beautiful apple-tart that had taken the in-group years to build, from the Governor down. Phineas was a small part of that apple-cart, and the wardenship of the State Penitentiary was a very small apple, but for Phineas it was food and sustenance and prestige otherwise obtainable to a man like him. He knew It.
Now, according to the letter, Brock would be down in a day or two to have a long visit with his client, one Susan Sills, and he knew Mr. Plane would cooperate in every possible way and afford Sills every break possible. That was the jist of the note.
Mentally, Phineas combed the prison with a fine-toothed comb. For a prison, the men's section was paradise. It was strictly model stuff. It was the women's prison that needed a bit of sweeping out. Bertha would have to be combed down into a more conventional-looking figure and some of the convicts themselves would have to be appeased today and tomorrow so their songs would be a bit milder if they were inclined to sing to Brock when he came striding arrogantly through those corridors.
He didn't think it.
Not honestly, anyway, for that would have been implicit admission of his own corruption-he just rationalized the whole thing in the time it takes to snap a finger.
Phineas picked up a phone.
"Send Bertha Starr to my office. Immediately." Click. A few minutes later, footsteps, a knock at his door. He shouted for her to come in and there stood Bertha in all her glory.
"Good morning, Bertha." Bert noticed his look of barely disguised disgust and thought Careful buster, or I'll bust your skull like an egg-a rotten egg. Only their arrangement and the fact that he was her boss prevented Big Bert from giving full vent to her attitude toward Plane.
"Morning, Warden." She stood there in her boots and leather jacket, looking tough.
"Sit down." She did, lit a cigarette and leaned back easily, with an air of total possession. When you looked at Bert, you saw no fear, no signs of uneasiness: just complete assurance, and to a man like Phineas Plane, who had anything but self-assurance that or any other morning (or afternoon, evening or night), it was annoyingly disconcerting. Bertha was a foul human being, he thought-foul, unutterably foul. Thinking this, he felt gentle waves of superiority sweeping over him.
"I received a letter this morning," he said. He handed it to her to read, which she did quickly. "Know who that man is?" When Bert shook her head, he told her, "A boy-scout lawyer from Norfolk, that's who. Sills' lawyer-the kind of guy who still reads the books and believes them."
"A Samaritan."
"Yes. Who'll sing in a damned minute if he sees one thing amiss here. I'm afraid of certain prisoners in your block."
"Martha and who else?' she asked.
"Hannah's okay, I know. But there's Sills herself and that friend of hers, what's-her-name, the colored woman."
"Cindy Martin. Don't worry about her," Bert smiled. "She'll be just fine, Warden, just fine."
"If you say so. But what about Martha and the Sills girl?'
"I'll have to straighten 'em out, especially Sills, since this eagle scout's comin' to see her."
Brilliant deduction, Bertha, Phineas thought facetiously. Positively brilliant.
"How do you plan to do it?'
"Scare the-living daylights out of 'em."
Phineas shook his head violently. Just what I was afraid of, he thought with alarm.
"No, that won't work. I want you to be especially lenient with them today and tomorrow-until Brock comes. I want you to soften them up so they'll sing with a little less nasty tone when he comes, you understand?'
"You think they'll talk?' Bert looked at him incredulously.
"A chance, don't you think?'
"Nope. Not a chance. Not with me runnin' things there." She puffed visibly.
"Well, I want you to soften toward them-stop riding herd on them and for God's sake, get into regulation uniform, starting as soon as you leave here."
Bert's face fell.
"I'll lose my authority, Warden. They'll all get outta line."
"Not in two days. They'll hardly forget the pastor the future," he said with a sinister smile. Bert mulled this bit of information in her mind. Hell, I guess. She was astonishingly quick to see the implications all this had for her personally.
"Okay. I'll clean things up real pretty," she smiled. "You'll never know it was jail."
"Just go by the books, Bertha, and then some, until after Brock gets out of here."
The chicks'd be nuts, she thought, when they saw so many sudden changes; not that she gave a damn ,for their feelings (didn't have any), but she did for any possible negative results from all these sudden changes. After she changed into the regulation uniform that all the women prison guards wore, she looked in the mirror.
Pretty sad.
Pretty damned sad.
She saw a big, ugly bird, shorn of feathers and magnificent plumage. There was nothing there to command attention, nothing to command fear and respect. She saw no authority in the mirror-just an ugly bitch. She turned away quickly, and cursed. God, why don't he ask me to go around naked?she thought. She felt honestly afraid to go and face her charges. What if they laughed at her? Ignored her orders?
I'll bust their goddamn skulls.
Vaguely at first, then more distinctly, she remembered what Plane had told her to do. With a sigh, she laced her shoes and walked outside, toward the prisoners.
One of the male guards in the tower saw her. "Hey Bertha, you goin' to a masquerade or somethin'?"
"Shut up!" she screamedback.No, no, Bert, don'tdon't blow it, don't let these creeps get under your skin, she told herself hurriedly.
She kept walking and wondered how in the name of hell she was going to be nice for a whole day, possibly two or three.
Cindy lay in her bunk, with her face toward the wall, and pretended to sleep. As long as she did, Sue would not talk to her, would not ask her questions. She knew she would have to face them eventually, and answer them-or just refuse, which would ultimately be worse than answering. She breathed deeply. It was a struggle to breathe the breath of sleep when your lungs screamed for easy, shallow breathing. But she had to be left alone, even by Sue. She couldn't talk now.
She had to collect herself.
She had to digest slowly the knowledge that she was no longer Cindy Martin, the holdout, but Cindy the cop-out. She had to accept her likeness to the others. Hannah. Martha. Those others. Those dykes, those leather-eaters-she was one of them.
Cindy didn't want to be, hadn't wanted to be; but yesterday, something had snapped inside her. The nerve-strand had been weakening, getting more and more frazzled every day, and something had simply snapped yesterday.
Now it was gone.
She tried to sleep, than merely to pretend sleep. Slowly, she dozed, but her mind was too full of images, last night's images, to relax or turn itself off. It raged and unreeled at full speed. The harassment from Big Bert all day, and toward the end of it, a slight, unmistakable exchange of glances that told them both it was all over. No one saw it. It was too brief, too fleeting-but they knew, and last night, Cindy had waited impatiently, fearfully in the cell, waiting for Big Bert to come.
Sue had been asleep when the guard had come and led Cindy away. There had been the blindfolding, the rushing and shoving of hands on her, and when the blindfold had been removed, she had been in a room. Not with barred windows and concrete walls-but a nice room: small, comfortable, cozy. Not Big Bert's cabin, not the warden's office or any of the offices-she didn't know where. Nor did she care. It didn't matter where she got defrocked of her normality.
"So you finally decided to play," Big Bert had cackled. It was a sound that ran through Cindy like a rusty butcher knife, tearing and grating painfully. "Tired, huh?"
She nodded mutely.
"Damn, if you knew how I been itchin' for you, girl. You'll have it lots better from now on-lots better. C'mere to Bert, let her love you up a little."
Cindy's body revolted at that last moment, even though her will said Go ahead, why not, it don't matter anymore. Her stomach churned, her head went fuzzy with nausea, and she had to swallow very hard as Bert's powerful arms came around her and crushed her in embrace.
Hands tremulously cupped her breasts through the thin, gray dress, hefted them, squeezed and teased the nipples into involuntary budding and stiffening.
It'd been so long. So damned long since she'd had any loving at all. She couldn't help those nipples swelling into hard, red tips as the fingers squeezed them through the dress-couldn't help her quickened breathing as she fell weakly against Bert, "You could have it so nice around here, kid," Bert whispered, then crushed her against her again and kissed her hard, forcing her tongue between Cindy's lips. "I can look out for you, you know. Hell, you could be my favorite."
While Bert talked, her hands unbuttoned Cindy's dress down the front. Bare, smooth golden-hued flesh tempted her. Then she unsnapped her brassiere and the breasts leaped free, tumbled out like rich, cascading cannonballs. She stroked them, put her lips to them, and Cindy felt weak with desire. She no longer fought her feelings-she had to be quenched one way or another.
By hook or crook.
"Do you like me, Cindy?" Bert asked. It was an absurd question for obvious reasons, and Cindy was unable to answer, also for obvious reasons. "You know I can take real good care of you; can't nothing happen to you with me lookin' out."
Cindy regarded the black boots. They suggested the obvious: Bert's obvious power. She was the leather jacket, unbuttoned at the front. That, too, suggested power. Power surrounded and encompassed by leather I For the first time, it no longer frightened the girl-it suggested security, the closest thing to peace she would ever achieve in prison.
She would have to suffer, of course.
Dues would have to be paid. But what did that matter, when weighed against day-to-day, hour-to-hour torture?
"Answer me, Cindy. You like me?" Bert asked, her voice rising. "You like me enough to let me punish you for your misbehavior?"
"Yes," Cindy heard herself whisper. Big Bert smiled, removed her jacket and laid it carefully on a chair. Then she rolled up the sleeves of her white shirt.
"You've been bad, haven't you?"
"Yes." Her lips trembled as she answered, and Big Bert nodded with a gesture of curt satisfaction. She picked up a whip.
It was a real whip, made of leather, with frayed edges that branched off into separate tendrils, octopus-like.
"On your knees, in front of me, Cindy." With gestures, she instructed Cindy onto her knees so that her face was above Bert's boots. "Lick my boots. Kiss them," she said, no longer in a gentle tone; her voice had risen and sharpened into command.
Cindy hesitated.
"Kiss them, goddamn you! C'mon, c'mon! Show your betters some respect!" She looked down on Cindy as the latter knelt slowly; her bared, heart-shaped buttocks stood out starkly, temptingly, her thighs spread enticingly, her head bent low to the ground. Her lips touched a boot.
Bertha trembled violently at the figure in submission beneath her, and as she raised the whip, something kept her hand and arm poised for a moment. But just for a moment. A very brief moment. Her arm muscles tightened as they gathered force and descended almost limply and the whip fell against the bare back.
Cindy flinched.
Surprisingly, it didn't hurt, not physically, but she had immediately associated pain with whipping. The whip fell again in the same way, again and again, only stinging mildly, but not hurting beyond endurance. Big Bert could mutilate her, she knew. The bastard could tear her apart without batting an eye-but she wasn't, she hadn't, and gratitude, being the relative thing it is, swept through Cindy at that moment.
She kissed the boot again.
Again.
Again and again, until Big Bert's whole body shook with passion, as she stood looking down on the prostrate figure.
"You lovely girl," she murmured, "you love my boots, don't you?"
"Yes," Cindy dried, "yes, yes, yes-yes!" She threw her arms around the high, stiff tops and embraced them as she lay full length on the ground.
Big Bert knelt downward and picked her up in her powerful arms. She sat her in a chair.
"Adore me. Look at me and my beautiful boots," she quaked. Cindy did. She looked on while Big Bert strutted assertingly around the room, assuming all sorts of gestures and postures of strength. She held her shoulders erect, and Cindy sat sprawled in the chair, naked, looking on. Finally, the powerful figure stopped strutting, stopped dead in her tracks, and turned and smiled at Cindy.
She walked just in front of the chair.
"Close your legs on this," she commanded, and put the toe of her boot between Cindy's silky thighs, prodding, pushing forward, until the naked girl leaned back and closed her legs tightly against the leather, her face contorted with quiet passion and self-hatred. Big Bert watched her stonily while her subject grasped the boot between her thighs and moved convulsively back and forth, her jaw going slack with desire, her head thrown back jubilantly. Faster and faster she moved until whimpers began to spill out of her wet red lips.
"Ooh!" she cried, with a whinnying sound, moving at lightning speed with the boot pressed against her passion, until suddenly, she was still.
She lay back limp.
"Like that?" Bert asked, moving her foot away. Cindy nodded dumbly, and let her head drop forward.
"Then do something for me." Cindy nodded without even looking at Big Bert. Hell, what did it matter now? What did anything matter?
She heard rustling sounds, and when she looked up, she saw Bert unbuttoning her breeches-wiggling the hips out of them, and letting them drop down over the top of the boots. She stood close to Cindy.
"You know what to do," she said with trembling voice.
Cindy knew.
She had never done it before. With all her sordid experience, she had never indulged in Lesbian lovemaking, and she had never committed an act approximating this.
Now she did.
With incredible ease, she moved forward and sat on the edge of the chair and threw her arms around the massive buttocks and hips in front of her, drew the body close, put her head, her lips forward, and closed her eyes tightly.
The body moved grotesquely against her.
It made sounds: whimpering, sighing, grunting sounds, and it trembled and convulsed and shook and stiffened-and finally stopped and retreated from her grasp, which relaxed with sudden resignation....
And now, Cindy pretended sleep. Soon, she would have to talk to Sue, would have to say I did it, I copped out and things're gonna be easier from now on.
And bitch, I'm gonna come on regular.
She would have to say all that, or just bow her head ashamedly in the presence of Sue. All that talk, she thought disgustedly, all her talk. It was so cheap. On the outside, talk was everything. Here, on the inside, you couldn't buy a paragraph for two cents. It just didn't mean a damn thing because you knew, everyone knew, that whatever you said was a sometime thing. It could change in a minute, a second, become a complete lie.
She wanted a cigarette.
At first, she told herself to forget it, but thoughts of tobacco streaming into her lungs plagued her, and finally she could stand the urge no longer. She got out of bed and reached for the pack that was inside her shoe.
"Cindy?"
She stood frozen, the pack of cigarettes in her hand. It was dark now-the sound of her own breathing seemed thunderous.
Finally: "Huh?"
"Where were you-last night? What happened?"
"You must've been dreamin'. Wanta smoke?"
"No. I saw you leave-I woke up at the last minute, like. Where'd you go, Cindy?"
"Nowhere."
"Let me have a cigarette, huh?"
"Sure. Here." In the dark, a match was struck, and in the orange glow, they could see one another's faces. In Cindy's was wide-eyed sorrow; Sue saw it, and her own eyes widened into pity and wonder.
The match went out.
"Thanks. Now, tell me what happened, Cindy. What did they do to you?" Cindy heard the concern in her friend's voice; it was not morbid curiosity, but genuine friendship talking.
"I guess I've gotta tell you," she sighed.' 'I copped out."
Sue was silent with total inability to speak for a second.
"You mean, Big Bert-?"
"That's right. I couldn't take it no more. Hell, everybody else around here has it halfway decent and she's been ridin' herd on me 'til I couldn't stand it anymore."
Sue said nothing.
"Damn it, I had to!" Cindy's voice rose hysterically, "You hear me, I had to! Don't sit there and judge me!"
"I'm not-"
"Oh yes you are! You think, 'Cindy's a liar, a cop-out, she told me to be strong.' Goddamnit, I know what you're thinkin'!"
"I can't help it," Sue sobbed. "Damn it, Cindy, you had nine months-nine months to sweat it out!"
"And you got ten years, girl! Ten years! How long you think you'll hold out, huh?" There was a note of hysterical triumph in her voice, but almost as soon as the words were out, she regretted them bitterly.
She didn't want Sue to weaken.
"If I ever get the chance," Sue said quietly, "I'm going to kill that dyke sonofabitch."
"You'll never get the chance, so forget it," Cindy said tersely. "Sue?"
"Huh?"
"You hate me a whole lot now? You hate me as much as I hate myself?"
"No, Cindy. I'll never hate you-I just feel very, very alone, now. You know?"
Cindy knew.
Guilt swept through her more violently than ever. Sue was alone because of her, because of her weakness. She knew what Sue meant, all right. Her one ally had defected to the other side, had gone over to the enemy. It was war, and in war you needed allies, especially when you were right smack in the middle pf enemy territory.
Cindy knew.
"I'm sorry, girl," she whispered weakly. "Really sorry."
Sue said nothing. She finished her cigarette and flipped it into the toilet bowl without moving from her bunk; it went out with a hiss, and made the girl think, That's how it is-hsssst, and it's over, like that. It was a sensation of helplessness, to think in terms of your life being no more controllable and predictable than the extinguishing of a used cigarette.
Now she was alone.
Totally, completely alone.
No Cindy to cling to, no other prisoners to talk to-just her against all of them. Suddenly she laughed. It started as a quiet laugh and rose into loud, simple laughter.
"Something funny?" Cindy asked gloomily.
"I just realized that I never knew what living was all about before I got busted-I mean with Howard and all. Kid stuff I I was going through life with my eyes closed. But not any more. Now I'm beginning to see what it's about."
"Yeah."
They sank into silence, and the night wore on. The day hadn't been bad. For the first time, Big Bert had chucked that SS rig, or whatever it was supposed to be, and had behaved half-decently towards them. Once, she had even smiled at Sue. But Sue knew how she was hated, and would be hated until she too fell into the sin-nest that Big Bert so carefully constructed, made tighter and tighter and more escape-proof as the days wore on., It had struck everyone by surprise. Big Bert had suddenly seemed no longer like Big Bert, but just an ugly dyke guard you'd better not mess with because she was a guard, a screw, a bull-but Big Bert had been strangely missing.
And what would it be like tomorrow? What had happened today? So many thoughts whirled in Sue's mind, that she went limp and headachy with them. They were too much to cope with, then. She felt worn, frazzled, and realized in a dim way that emotional shock was beginning to batter down her resistance.
And she wondered too, if Farley Brock had forgotten her. Was he really trying out there, in that other world, or had he just given up and left her to rot?
Hours later, she fell asleep.
Martha had been behaving strangely. She hadn't talked to anyone. She had all but stopped eating, and when she sat in her cell, her cellmate Hannah couldn't get a word out of her. She just sat there twisting her fingers, biting them sometimes. To have your behavior noticed by people in prison, it must be unusually bizarre-what is strange to us on the outside goes unnoticed behind bars, in that nether-world of emotions and desires, where women groan passionately by night and stare sullenly at one another by day, forgetting the hot, naked embraces that they shared hours ago.
Sex is a snap in prison.
Just forget about men and women, and think about women and women. It becomes easy, then necessary, then a foregone conclusion. But it didn't work quite that way for Martha, not completely. She kept seeing, feeling Phineas behind her, shoving, pushing, straining, spreading her bare buttocks with his hands while he spoke of power and punishment Whom could she talk to?
Where could she run?
No escape, no release, no outlet except to go back into that horrible arena again when Big Bert pushed her in that direction, for Phineas had told the dyke that Martha was far and away his favorite, although he simply had to try Cindy and the Sills girl. But Martha just sat there and felt doomed.
CHAPTER SIX
It didn't take long for Farley Brock to size up the warden; he was undoubtedly one of Harris' men. It was written all over his face. He gave a little, took a lot-part of the setup, It goes without saying, then, that Farley Brock, had no use for Phineas Plane. The feeling was mutual.
Plane had no use for outsiders, for defenders of law and order, the anti-Harrises. Frankly, he hadn't thought the species to exist in the state, but Brock obviously proved him wrong.
The man had to be stopped.
"Well Mr. Brock, I suppose you're down here about Sills," he said, sitting behind his desk. The flat expanse of his polished oak separated the two men, giving Plane a mantle of authority that Brock didn't give a damn about, one way or the other.
"That's right. How is she?"
"Fine, I'm sure-it's difficult for me to keep ac count of every prisoner here. But I haven't heard anything, one way or the other, about Sills."
"Naturally," Farley said, not bothering to hide the caustic note that crept into his voice. He had Plane sized up as a pompous little bastard, who, at the drop of a hat, would run for his life. A scared little worm trying to come on like a python.
"Any luck with your appeal?' Plane asked, Farley thought bitterly, You know the answer, you bastard, you 're one of the gang, aren't you?
"No. I can't afford justice, and my credit doesn't seem much good." Brock laughed shortly. "I'd like to see my client now, if I could."
"Certainly." He watched Plane pick up the receiver and speak a short message into it. He spoke to Brock briefly, "You're clean, aren't you? No guns or files or anything like that?"
Yuk-yuk.
Brock was silent.
" 'You can let Mr. Brock through," Plane said into the telephone, and hung up. The great god had given his Great message of importance, Brock thought, Man, what an overstuffed little bird!
"Thanks," he said, rising out of his chair. "Nice meeting you," That was. a lie, but you had to give a guy something, even if it were just hollow, empty formality. In a way, it had been nice meeting Phineas Plane.
Now he knew crud grew everywhere.
When he saw Sue, he was momentarily shocked. The changes that had taken place in her were simply amazing. In something like four months, she had become a different person altogether.
"Sue, how are you?' Brock asked, shaking her hand through the bars while Big Bert, in regulation uniform, unlocked the cell.
"Fine," he heard her reply without emphasis.
She looked older, more tired, and the confusion of naive youth had completely gone out of her eyes. Now she looked wise and her eyes glinted with the cold assurance that she was untouchable, unsurprisable, You can't crap me, buddy-boy.
He waited for the guard to disappear; he didn't like the bitch's looks, anyway-one look at her, and you knew she, it, was a Lesbian, probably a brutish, brainless sadistic type. He regarded the face devoid of make-up, of a smile, of compassion, of any womanly feature whatsoever. The eyes, he had noticed, were flat and one-dimensional, utterly without feeling. He waited for her to leave, and close the cell door behind her.
They were alone.
"Well," he said. "I brought you some stuff." He opened a cardboard carton containing a carton of cigarettes, some candy, a few paperbacks-trivia become vastly important behind bars.
"You're looking well," Sue said.
"You live here all alone?" Farley asked, seeing two bunks, both of them made.
"No. But Cindy's at work in the shop, where I'd be if it weren't for your visit."
"Oh. Look, Sue, I have to level with you. I haven't had any luck in getting an appeal-I've used every legal means at my disposal; unless I get some kind of evidence, new evidence, good evidence, we're wiped out."
"What else is there, if you can't get evidence?"
"Nothing," he said flatly. "Not one damned thing." He lit a cigarette and regarded her thoughtfully. "Is there anything, anything at all you can tell me? God, you've got to give me something to run with."
"You mean about Howard and all?" she asked, "I saw him the other day. He and his wife're divorced, and he's living real cool, Nobody can touch him yet. Did he ever say anything to you, let anything slip out?"
"Not actually." But then she brightened for a moment and looked steadily at Brock. "Once he said something about being able to do anything you wanted with enough money; about having power and people eating out of your hand and all."
"Anything more specific? Think, girl, think!" Brock urged, leaning closer to her.
"Something about knowing a judge-I forget his name-that if you knew him, you had it made. This judge-he talked about was a real big shot, and had something to do with the bank Howard and I worked for; something about being a big board member or something, with a lot of money invested and deposited. Howard said if you knew this guy, you could practically commit a murder and get away with it or get off easy. Then we-talked about other things," she said, blushing.
"You can't remember the guy's name? This judge he talked about?"
"No."
"The bank'll have a list of its board members. I'll check it out when I get back. Anything else, Sue?"
"Nothing," she said heavily. "Mr. Brock, I'm not going to make it." She looked at him for a moment, then dropped her eyes again, and Farley cursed inside himself. How in hell was it possible for a whole state, the whole unthinking, unblinking System to let a girl like this rot behind bars?
Stupid question, Farley.
He knew, of course. The frustration lay in not being able to do anything about it.
"What do you mean you're not gonna make it?" he snapped.
She looked at him with hard, pained eyes.
"That guard that let you in?'
"Yeah, what about her?'
"She runs things around here, and man, when she says jump, you jump! You see what she was wearing?' "Yeah, so?' he asked.
"That isn't what she usually wears. She walks around in big black boots and a leather jacket, and she takes the girls around here and-"
"Does she force them?'
"They don't have any choice. She can ride herd on you all day and all night if she wants to, and man, there isn't a damned thing you can do about it. You either break or she breaks you. Know what I mean?'
"You? What about you?'
"She hasn't gotten to me yet." Farley was silent.
He knew she wasn't lying, had no conceivable reason to do so. But he couldn't quite believe, couldn't really believe, that such things were possible in normal, democratic society. Concentration camps, yes but an American prison, a state prison, no. Maybe the months of prison had affected Sue, maybe she was getting a little stir-crazy....
"You ought to read more, Sue. I think you think too much." He meant it as kindly advice.
"You think I'm nuts, don't you?" she said bitterly. "You think I'm dreaming it all up. Maybe you'd like to talk to my cellmate?'
"I would. When'll she be back?"
"What time is it?"
Farley looked at his watch. "Four o'clock," he said.
"She'll be here in a half-hour," Sue said, "and you can ask her. For God's sake, why don't you believe me?" It was painful that not even her attorney believed her.
"I do, Sue. That is, I know you're not making up intentional lies-but-well damn it, I need proof. It's my training."
They were silent, lost in their own private thoughts. Farley thought of Howard Hardin's ex-wife Lil, and wondered if she knew any of the political big-shots? A woman like her could possibly have access-It was very possible. And if she did, would she help him? Sure, she'd said she wanted to see Howard behind bars, but suppose she had second thoughts on the subject, like not wanting to be disgraced by her exhusband's sullied reputation? It could be. Anything could be. Damn it, he thought, why was it that the legal side of the question was eighty thousand miles apart from the human side? If you knew the answer, you wouldn't have to work, he decided with a quiet laugh. Philosophers had been kicking that one around for. centuries, and it was highly un-likely that he was going to be the great discoverer.
Cindy returned.
"Cindy, this is my lawyer, Mr. Brock." Farley regarded the young Negro-woman, saw that her eyes too were distant, vacant, hard-but even more so than Sue's. Maybe she'd been here longer, or just fell a bit harder. Maybe she had more time to serve than did Sue, assuming he'd never get the case appealed. Maybe, maybe, maybe! Damn maybest
"Cindy, nice to know you," he said, shaking hands.
"Go on, just ask her," Sue prompted. Cindy looked bewildered as she looked first at Sue, then at Farley.
"Huh?' she said finally.
"Sue tells me that guard-the one who just let you in, has been giving you a pretty rough time. That she's made you do certain things immoral and illegal-"
"Huhhh?' Cindy exploded, feigning incredulous indignation. "What in hell are you talkin' about, girl? Puttin' the man on like that!"
"Cindy, I'm telling the truth!" Sue said, afraid to raise her voice above a semi-whisper while every fiber of her being wanted to scream with emotion and frustrated expression.
"Bert's no worse than anyone else. She's a screw, and we're cons. That's as far as it goes, Mr. Lawyer man." She turned away, lit a cigarette.
Farley looked at Sue.
Sue sat there on the edge of the bed, wordless, helpless, confused. What was happening? What had happened between her and Cindy? And why was Cindy intentionally lying to Mr. Brock and making her look like a liar, or worse, like she was out of her mind?
She didn't know.
Farley patted her shoulder and smiled wanly. "Look Sue, I'm not giving up-I'll be down next week with more stuff, and I hope some halfway decent news."
"Thanks," she said hollowly, and added to herself, for nothing.
"Sure. I'll see you then, huh? Keep slugging, girl. Nice seeing you, Cindy."
"Yeah, man. See you next time." Cindy flashed a pretty smile, one that showed her white, even teeth and pink mouth-but the eyes remained hard and frozen like two almond-shaped diamonds.
Sue watched him leave. His retreating, fading back seemed to take away her last ray of hope, and she flung herself down on her bunk without saying anything to her cellmate.
What was there to say?
Cindy had already said everything there was to say: I'm on Bert's side now.
"Look, Sue-" Cindy talked to the figure that lay facing the wall, "What am I supposed to do? Hell, I saved you from gettin' in trouble. S'pose Big Bert got an earful of what you were sayin'?"
"Maybe he could've done something, if you hadn't lied."
"Hah! You kiddin', girl? You really have gone stir! Can't nobody do nothin' around here, you know that. You either play their way or get flushed down the pot."
"Maybe-"
"Everything is maybe, girl, and you got to turn some of those maybes into yes's and no's. That's what I did. Stoolin' to some mouthpiece ain't gonna help things."
Cindy's tune was too changed, too discordant for Sue to grasp; she was a totally different person, and now she seemed directly hostile towards her.
"You down on me, Cindy?" she asked sadly.
"No girl, I'm not down on you; I'm tryin' to hip you to the facts so you can make it outta here. Now why don't you just play ball-?"
"No! Damn it, no!" Sue shouted, so loudly, so violently that Big Bert came storming in, looking floridly angry and shouting.
"What in holy hell's happenin' around here?"
Her sudden angry presence hushed Sue into silence. "Nothing," she muttered, her face still toward the wall.
Big Bert herself was silent for a moment. Her mind whirled madly through its instinctive channels. The mouthpiece was gone-the whole bit had been to snow him-now he wasn't around to snow So, "Nothin' my eye-balll What in hell were you screamin' about?"
"I said, nothing," Sue told her evenly, her body beginning to tremble. Only with a real effort did she prevent her voice from trembling as well.
"I'll damn well give you somethin' to scream about!" Big Bert promised, and walked away stiffly.
"Now you are wiped out, girl." Cindy shook her head sadly.
The following afternoon, Big Bert received a message from the warden. Damn Mm, she thought, he's not givin' the stock a rest.
He wanted a girl. A new girl, someone other than Martha or Hannah. It didn't take her long to decide whom she'd give the man to try out. If not Hannah and Martha or one of the others-and Sills wasn't anywhere near ready for that (she had nothing to lose yet), so who did that leave?
Her newest filly.
One who knew how to whinny, and had the strength to do it.
Her name was Cindy Martin.
The sonofabitch was getting too randy, she thought, wanting a girl every other day. What'd he do with his wife, anyway? Nothing? Big Bert burned momentarily under a betrayed sense of propriety-cutting into her supply like that, using it all up. It wasn't fair, wasn't fair at all.
The girls were too tired for her.
She called Cindy outside, and led her to the guard room, which was quiet except for two guards playing a hand of gin, and who were so engrossed in the game that they didn't even look up when they came in.
"The warden wants to see you," she told Cindy.
"What for?" Cindy asked. She thought, I could never come out and ask questions before-when she yelled, I jumped. No, it's a little different.
"He just wants to see you. Make him happy and you make me happy, see? Make me happy, and you'll be happy. That's how it works around here."
It sure was, Cindy thought.
It sure as hell was how things worked around here.
"When?" she asked. Big Bert broke into a rare smile and looked at her newest vessel of pleasure.
"Now. He'll give you some stuff if you ask him after. Cigarettes, a drink, some food. Just ask him, he'll give it to you."
"Is he-okay?"
"I couldn't care less what the warden does with his time," Bert said. "But they've all walked out of there in one piece, so I wouldn't worry." Then: "Come on, let's go see him."
Cindy walked across the long stretch of ground, with Big Bert behind her. In spite of her apprehensions, a fine tremor of excitement ran through Cindy. What was he like?
What would they do together?
She walked faster, stretching her legs out to their full length and feeling the young, animal vibrancy of youth. She felt fine. It was a brisk day, and she had been called on to do what only the young and beautiful could do. It gave her a sense of mission. She was on her way to see an Important Personage. Sure. Why not? Subconsciously, she realized that this was the way to think if she were going to cling to her equilibrium.
The office struck her. Any outsider would have been untouched, but to a mind and sense attuned to gray concrete walls, black, iron bars and sterile lights, it was too great a contrast not to be affected. She felt the great softness of carpet under her feet, blinked at the plum and deep red colors as she saw them in hazy succession.
Then she saw the warden. Involuntarily, she turned and saw that Big Bert had left. She was alone with this man. A man. A man. A man. God, how long had it been since she had seen a male, however unimpressive, as Phineas Plane certainly was? Seeing him now, being alone in a plush office with him, brought truth to the old saying that went around the prison, I'd do it with your granddaddy. Cindy didn't remember the time when she'd loathed men, for all the things they'd done to her, had made her do, for money.
"Your name is Cindy, is it?" Phineas asked. He saw a beautiful colored woman, chocolate-brown-gold, with flawless complexion and high-rising breasts that thrust youthfully against her thin dress. He saw tightly fleshed hips swelling against that same dress. He saw the bulge of firm thighs, the sumptuous curve and flow of her buttocks when he walked around to the other side of her. He saw a woman he had to have.
A woman he was going to have.
A woman he could have any way he wanted to!
"Yeah," she said. "That's right. Big Bert said you wanted to see me."
Phineas frowned. "A little respect," he said. "Remember who you are. For one thing, I'm Mr. Plane, or Warden, and your guard is Miss Starr, if you refer to her at all."
"Yessir."
"That's better, much better. Would you like something to drink, Cindy?" he asked with a softer tone.
"I can wait," she told him. He smiled and kept looking at her with unmistakable interest.
"You are lovely," he said. "Truly lovely. You know why you're here?"
"I got a good idea," she said coyly. She reacted naturally to the situation. What the hell, she thought, I'm still a woman "No, I think you're suffering under certain misapprehensions," he said sagely. "You're not here to pleasure me or anything immoral like that. I'm your warden and I have a responsibility toward you. Yes, a responsibility. I'm here to punish you, dear girl."
"Punish me?' she asked incredulously. She moved a step backward, and felt the edge of a chair behind her; she lowered herself into it.
"Of course. You are here for prostitution, I believe. An odious offense, indeed." He clucked his tongue. "A sin against morality."
Cindy shrugged.
She'd heard it called a lot of other things, but never that, not even by the judge, who had lightened her sentence later because of a certain "cooperative spirit" on her part. The old bastard'd almost croaked from exertion.
" 'So I have to chastise you-but punishment shouldn't be all pain. One should remember it, and take heart from it," Phineas went on sonorously, "and for that reason, you won't find it altogether harsh."
What in hell was he talking about, she wondered.
"Take your dress off, dear girl."
This was more like it. Now the man was making sense-so what was all that other crap about, punishment and all? What was punishing about lying on a couch and wiggling a little bit and making a man go to pieces while he grunted and strained on you and dumped his passion like you were a human pit?
No punishment.
Annoying, time-consuming, unless the man knew what he was about. The warden looked as if he weren't even in this world. Talked like it, too.
She took off her dress.
With an air of nonchalance, she unbuttoned it down the front and peeled out of it, tossing it carelessly on the chair she had been sitting in. She reached behind her broad, smooth back and unhooked the snaps of her brassiere. That too landed in the chair, and she heard Phineas's breath suck in sharply as her breasts plummeted free from their cup traps and felt the pleasant bite of fresh air. For a fleeting second, she caught a glimpse of her own nipples-they were deep crimson, a pleasure to admire. Two raspberry tips countersunk and raised in light-honey flesh-spheres that rose and remained suspended in an attitude of proud, young strength.
With a coquettish smile at Phineas, she squirmed her hips and pulled off her panties. Then she stood defiantly naked in front of him, and Phineas was sure, absolutely sure, that he had never seen a body so perfect, so beautiful.
And so free of punishment and suffering.
It was a sin, one of the paradoxes of life, that such evil and sin could reside in a body so physically lovely. It shouldn't be, he decided, it shouldn't be at all. It wasn't fair, it wasn't gust, that ugliness should be so deceptive.
It would not be.
He would change it, and show the world that sin was everywhere apparent, and enjoy doing it. She would suffer as his wife made him suffer "You're lovely," he said breathlessly, "too lovely for words. How can such evil exist in something so lovely?"
Evil?
There he went again, talkin' out of his skull. How in hell did he get to be warden, anyway? He was some kind of a kook. A weirdo.
"Do I look strong to you, Cindy?" he asked, almost offhandedly.
"Sure. Real strong."
"You don't really believe it, though, do you?' Hell no, you fool.
"Yessir. I know you're strong. You're over all of us, and-well, you've gotta be strong."
"Good. Then you know you're in proper hands." He slowly withdrew his belt from his trousers, and when Cindy saw that action, all became woefully apparent.
The sonofabitch was going to whip her.
A freak just like Big Bert. He was going to get for nothing what she'd charged for letting men to do her and they'd been satisfied with the idea of the thing rather than the thing itself, using a cloth cotton belt she'd given them; but this wasn't an idea, it was her fanny that was going to taste the sting of righteous leather!
Her own hide.
"Bend over, girl," Phineas snapped. She didn't obey immediately. She hesitated too long.
"Bend over, I say, and take your punishment!"
She saw the sudden, explosive wrath in his face, and became frightened. Such a transformation in a man like Phineas was astonishing to see. She sank forward, straining her legs without bending them, so her heart-shaped, golden buttocks loomed prettily before Phineas. He struck her.
The leather tip of the belt bit sharply into her tender, unmarked flesh and left a deep welt. Cindy closed her eyes and gnashed her teeth with the sudden pain of it. It seemed like forever before the next blow rained down on her other cheek. But it came nevertheless, with equal force, with equal pain. She bit her lip to stifle the scream. Through the singing in her ears, she heard the short, rapid panting of Phineas, who stood behind her wielding the instrument of torture for her and pleasure for him: an instrument of deadly double purpose. Her smooth, blank beauty turned into swimming red snakes of pain, and wiggled helplessly beneath the angry lashes.
"Scream!" he shouted, "show me your repentance."
She screamed. It was an old bit with Cindy, old except for the pain itself. Never had she been beaten with real leather, and never had she been marked and hurt, except by Big Bert-but that was different. This was beginning to scare her.
He whipped her thighs until the smooth, downy-fuzzed backs became red and burning like her buttocks, and then the belt, with a seeming life of its own, moved up her back and even across her neck.
Rude, rough hands grabbed her by the hair, yanking it by the roots, and as she screamed with humiliating agony, turned her over onto her sore backside. The wool of the carpet, so soft under her feet before, now became an instrument of total pain as it rubbed raw her sores engrained in her soft flesh by Phineas's devilish belt.
The tip of the belt nipped menacingly at her nipples, and she screamed with pain and fright, utter panicked fright that approximates the male's fear of emasculation in combat. Again and again, the tip nipped and snapped and cracked at her nipples, touching them lightly, painfully, before moving down to the cone-shaped spheres of tender skin and working them over.
He beat her belly.
Her thighs.
Her crotch. He beat her all over, except her face for some reason, he didn't touch that, not with the belt. The pain in that face was enough for Phineas, as he felt hotter and hotter with raw, animal lust, watching the beautiful young woman writhe and squirm naked and helpless against the carpet like a beautiful, tormented animal.
She didn't bleed.
He was much too clever for that. Her flesh was sore, raw, but it would heal-he knew how to hurt without maiming, how to torture without scarring. He was a past master at it, and now, as he stood looking down on his chastened child, he thought that indeed the punishment and pain was over.
He felt strangely excited, exhilarated.
And how good she must feel, knowing she had in part paid for her horrible sins against mankind! Yes, he had acted nobly and wisely. Now it was time for him to assert his generosity and indulgence, and show her a bit of the pleasure he had promised to her in the beginning.
"And now," he said sympathetically. "It is time for your reward."
She hurt all over.
Everywhere, her flesh was stung and mortified. What in the hell could he mean by reward, unless he meant a trip to the hospital for a few days where she could rest?
His meaning became very clear when she watched him, from her prone position on the rug, undress himself. She was unaware that she was being flattered-for Phineas seldom, if ever, completely undressed himself for a female prisoner. But with this one, this one of extraordinary beauty and evil, he meant to partake of unbridled pleasure!
She watched his excitement, his swollen, throbbing maleness as he lowered himself gently on top of her.
His lips moved down onto her breasts, swept wildly across them before settling around a nipple-then stiffened it with pleasure, in spite of her pain-racked body.
"A little something sweet for you," he whispered, and without further preliminary, was straining madly, bullishly against her, prying her thighs apart with his hands. There was surprising strength in those hands. They pried, they jerked, they succeeded, until she lay spread-eagled and sprawled, waiting.
He slammed in hard.
The pain was intense, and breath slowly ebbed out of her as she raised her hands automatically in resistance. He slapped her hard, and kept pumping wildly until he meshed, Cindy felt her thighs being raised and propped on trembling male shoulders as he slammed without mercy into her protesting, unexcited flesh; it turned hot with dry pain. Again and again he hit at her, slapping her face, raising her body with his shoulders, and when the end came for him, she saw the horrible expression in his face. His eyes bulged, strangely myopic, bug-like, and he whinnied and whined and snarled as his body twitched and jerked. Then he relaxed, and sank into weakness.
He rolled away, turning his face, his body from her.
"Get dressed," he said, Cindy wanted to cry. Never had she been used like this; just utterly, dispassionately used, like so much material. She felt worse than humiliated. She felt cheap, dirty. He had shown no emotion, no involvement, other than animal savagery and phony, heartless desire to punish. He was a beast. And how he had talked of her worthlessness-that crud, that bastard, talking about her.
But she would go back.
She would return whenever he called her, because Big Bert would get nasty if she didn't. Big Bert was behind it all. Without getting to Big Bert, you got nowhere, you did nothing but suffer from day to day and hour to hour and minute to minute. It was slow, insidious suffering, with no sudden moments of magnificent pain such as she had just now experienced.
Which, after all, was the worst?
Sure, she'd come back. And she'd go to Big Bert, and do anything, let her do anything she damn well wanted-she couldn't eat ideals and guts, could she? She couldn't sleep on promises. She couldn't live on courage. The only way to live was to make the system happy, and Big Bert and this insect of a crud in this office were the System, like it or not, "Good-bye, Cindy. I hope you learned something from today," Phineas said, with fatherly warmth.
"Yess! I sure did." She turned to Big Bert. "I sure did." Then she followed the guard painfully across the large yard toward her cell.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Any pipe-smoker will tell you that no matter how many pipes he has collected-no matter how carefully he has selected each pipe and smoked it, there is always one, possibly the very one he thought to be the best of the briars, that simply turns out to be the worst.
It is a disappointment.
It will not break in.
Sue Sills was decidedly the rarest of females in Big Bert's collection, and yet the only one in that collection who refused to be broken. Big Bert had not even had the opportunity to smoke that rarest of specimens-although smoke is hardly the word; but you get the idea.
To say that Big Bert was exasperated with her profound lack of success in this direction would be an understatement: she was beside herself, especially with the fresh taste of her victory over Cindy Martin. Cindy was resting contentedly in the bag with Hannah and Martha and the rest of them, while Sue still held out with dogged determination. It didn't matter how she worked the bitch, how she cursed her and rode constant herd on her shapely butt, The girl didn't want to play ball. It was an affront to Bert's authority; Sue seemed simply unimpressed by her roughness, the imposing figure she created so successfully in the eyes of the others with her boots, her outer shell of all authoritative leather. What else can I do? she wondered. Beat hell out of her for no reason? Of course not. There had to be at least token submission on Sue's part-for her to spit in Bert's face, or even worse, remain untouched, would be davastating.
Of course Big Bert didn't think in terms quite as articulate as these: but this was the sum and substance of her inflamed mind as she viewed her failure with the Sills chick.
She would simply have to clamp down.
Yet she had been warned by Phineas Plane about the Sills girl, with words to the effect that Farley Brock would be nosing around, coming by to see his client, and under law, there was no stopping him. And if she sang long enough and loud enough, Brock might take some stock in what otherwise would seem preposterous claims. It was a hairy question, but one that Big Bert could only partially appreciate.
She wanted that girl.
And somehow, she'd have her.
Period. .
The girl had been in for almost six months now, and still wasn't moving. Big Bert had heard (without being seen) conversations between Sue and Cindy, and knew the latter wasn't giving her any encouragement-quite the contrary. But still, the damned little female wouldn't budge.
These were the general thoughts in Big Bert's massive head as she began her day. It was now mid-December, and as she strode arrogantly across the familiar expanse of ground toward the gate and the prison itself, she decided, Today's the day when I make her jump. She didn't know how, but she knew she'd succeed.
She walked into the corridor, making sure her boot-heels rang loudly enough for them to know she was on her way She was fully conscious of the effect it would have, that it always had on her charges. It scared the crap out of them, created a tension that she kept tightened and finely tuned all day long.
It was part of Pain.
You couldn't see it, or touch it, but it could be felt-it weakened, it lowered the resistance and resolve of them all. All except for the Sills broad.
"Let the birds out," she told the other guards under her, as she walked directly to the cell that held Cindy and Sue. She stood and looked at the two women, smiling without humor.
"How you feel today, Cindy? Have enough rest yesterday?"
"Yessir," Cindy said right away, and Big Bert saw how astonished Sue looked on hearing sir. Evidently the bitch had forgotten that morning when she'd been stood on and puked her guts out before she finally said the same word herself. That was it. Pigheaded, stubborn, couldn't remember from one minute to the next.
It would be changed.
"Good. After breakfast, suppose you go to the library and pick up a few books for me, huh? You know what. I like-and take your time. I don't want you bringin' me any junk."
"Yessir."
The intent was obvious to Sue. She was being made to see how easy Cindy was going to have things from now on-how easy she herself could have it, if only she would fall into the bag with the others.
"You, Sills, do her work while she's gone. And yours!"
Sue glared at the big dyke, and said nothing. "You hear me, bitch?"
Sue nodded, her lips clamped tightly together. "Godammit, you better say somethin' or I'll give you somethin' to say!" Big Bert exploded.
"I heard you."
"Like to do another push-up for me, Sills?" Sue remembered immediately the experience; bile rose into her throat and her stomach felt queasy from memory alone. She wouldn't, couldn't go through that, not for anything, and damn it, she thought, you had to compromise on the little things to save yourself from getting hung with the big things "No, sir."
"Damn, tryin' to get you to open your mouth is like suckin' blood out of a rock, ain't it?"
They all stepped out of their cells and formed a line, as they did every morning, seven days a week. You did everything in lines, like in the army, only there was no feeling of comradeship-nothing of what you'd call esprit-d' corps. Just a body of sullen, disconnected people thrown together by an outside authority.
Sue plodded along behind Cindy, with her head down. She watched the slow, undulating movement of the buttocks, the sway of the hips and straining of thighs as they all moved with strange harmony. She wondered idly if she moved the same way. This morning, she wasn't hungry at all. Her stomach rebelled against the thought of cold, greasy food slopped into a dish like so much crud. Usually, she blocked these thoughts out and ate with detached indifference, as if someone else were eating the food. But this morning the thought of the slop sickened her profusely. She would have the coffee, the milk, and maybe a hunk of bread, she decided as she plodded in formation. That would be all.
When they got to the mess hall, they took their seats with the usual indifference. Someone went and brought back the odious food and put it on the table. Big Bert added to the pleasantness of the situation by standing like a black cloud over them as they ate.
Sue poured her coffee. Then her milk. She decided the hell with the bread, it was stale. Pouring some of the milk in the coffee, she began to drink it, taking short hesitant sips. At least it was freshly brewed; you could overlook the few grounds floating around in the cup, she thought.
"Not hungry today, Sills?" Big Bert's question was definitely not solicitous. She hovered over Sue threateningty; peering down at the cup and glass in front of her.
"No sir."
"Isn't our food good enough for you?" The other prisoners tittered. "It's not that-I just can't eat this morning," she answered.
"But it's not healthy to go without your breakfast; you've gotta lotta work to do today, and you gotta have food in your belly. I'd eat somethin' if I was you."
"Thanks, no." Sue took a sip of coffee, raising the chipped, white cup to her lips.
"I can't have you gettin' sick on me. Now eat somethin'."
Someone passed her a bowl of oatmeal. It sat in front of her, vapors rising into her nostrils, turning her stomach. Damn it, she just wasn't hungry, why was Big Bert making such a big deal over her appetite? Since when did the bastard give a damn for her welfare?
She took a spoonful. It was impossible. The cereal was vile; she put down the spoon and took another sip of coffee, feeling the eyes of Big Bert focused sharply on her.
"I'll ask the chef to fix you somethin' special," Big Bert sneered, walking away. Sue breathed a visible sigh of relief when the guard sauntered over to another table to harass the prisoners there, even though they weren't her own. But all the guards were scared of her, too.
Cindy got up from the table and walked out of the dining room with one of the trusties. Sue knew she would be spending the morning, possibly most of the day in the quiet sanctity of the library. Cindy had it made.
When Cindy disappeared through the door with her companion, Sue turned her eyes back to the coffee-then it was time to get up and form a line to march back to the cells for squaring-up.
She made up her bunk, brushed her teeth and doused her face in cold water. In almost six months, she had not yet gotten used to doing all these things after breakfast. After she had made her bunk and swept out the cell, and finally, cleaned the sink and small mirror, she stood waiting for the next line that would form to go to work.
"Make up your partner's bunk for her!" Bert snapped, as she came careening around to look inside the cell. Quickly, Sue made it, and the guard walked away after throwing her an unusually hostile glance.
It was going to be a bitch of a day, Sue thought. More so than usual. It didn't take a sleuth to figure that out. Silently, she braced herself for what she knew would be a tedious, endless day, made more so by the graces of Big Bert.
For a week, she had been on a stamping machine that hammered up and down with tremendous force on pre-cut pieces of metal. After the stamping, they were trimmed, then painted. The result was state license plates. The machine was always set up in advance so that the letters and numbers changed automatically as the stamper moved, like a rolling rubberstamp. The operator had to keep a careful eye on the number of rectangles stamped so the set-up girl could come by and reset the machine. It was not difficult, just tedious, and required absolute concentration.
There was a difficulty this morning.
Cindy had been the set-up girl. She was gone, cooling it in the library, while Sue now had to set the machine up before putting it into motion. She had done it once before, and it had taken her a long time. It was taking her an almost equally long time now, as she fiddled with the upside-down-and-backward numbers and .letters.. All the other machinery had gone into motion, and she alone remained still, intent on the setting up.
"Runnin' outta energy already?" Big Bert asked. Sue looked up slightly, saw the pair of glistening black boots near her. As her eyes continued up the figure, she saw the breeches, the leather jacket, and finally the tough, sneering face without make-up or humor. God, she's ugly.
"I'm setting up the stamper. Cindy was supposed to do it." This by way of attempted explanation.
"You been" fiddlin' with it for ten minutes, Goddamn it!" Bert snarled.
"Cindy takes longer," Sue pointed out. What she intended to say was you couldn't ever do it in just ten minutes-that it took at least thirty, sometimes longer.
"You fink," Big Bert said, "you rat-fink! Ain't you even got any loyalty for your cell-mate?"
"I wasn't-" Boy, she's really looking for it today, isn't she? Just anything I say, and man, oh, man!
"Stop givin' me your cheap lip!" Big Bert turned around and called, "Martha, get your femme butt over here, quick!" The femme butt got over there quick. Like, lightning-quick. "Set up this machine; Sills and me got an errand to do."
"C'mon," she told Sue, who walked woodenly behind the guard. They went through the entire plant and out the back door, to the shed where the oil drums were kept. Sue watched her unlock the barred wooden door, and step aside. "Go on in."
She stepped in.
Bert stepped in behind her, and locked the door with a decisive click.
"Take off your clothes."
"What-?' Incredulous. "Peel it off-quick."
Big Bert's menacing tone made Sue respond automatically. She stripped naked and stood in the chill of the dusty, petroleum-smelling room. With nervously roving eyes, she watched Big Bert pry the top off one of the fifty gallon drums, filled with heavy black machine oil "Hop in." She pointed to the drum, and Sue could hardly believe what she was being asked to do. llncontrollable spasms shook her body as she thought of her white, naked flesh sinking into the black, stinking liquid. She trembled more and more convulsively.
"C'mon, get in!" Bert ordered, moving menacingly closer.
"I can't!" Sue shouted, "I don't care what you do to me, I can't!"
Big Bert threw her head back and laughed.
"Ain't you got enough energy? I told you to eat this morning, but no, you had to turn your snotty little nose up at our good food-you ain't worth that good food, you know that? You're garbage, woman. You're crud. You're lucky to be alive and fed and have a roof over your head. Now, damn it, get inside that drum before I throw you in!"
"No!" Sue screamed; her voice had risen to hysterical notes.
Big Bert's body became a blur as she moved in fast: her arms had gorilla-like strength in them, lifting Sue's comparatively frail female figure up over her head as she kicked and squirmed like a helpless insect between the fingers of a maliciously grinning, all-powerful boy And dumped her into the drum of oil.
The liquid closed over her, turned her pretty, white skin black, stung her brutally-fumes enveloped around her head and made her nauseously dizzy. Liquid gook trickled into her crevices-between her legs, her buttocks. It was fire. Fire and brimstone and pure Hell as she squirmed helplessly in the confining roundness of the drum, screaming wide-eyed, disbelieving, as Bert sat on top of another drum and laughed hysterically.
Goddamn if you ain't a sight!" she shrieked. "Miss Special all black and dirty. Hell, now you look as cruddy as you are," she concluded with a sneer.
Sue thought of Cindy, and wondered if she had gone through anything like this. Maybe she had-maybe she'd done something even worse, but that was doubtful. Nothing could be worse than this-this pain, this filthy gook soaking into her pores, that laughing animal watching her as she struggled in the drum. It was Hell.
"Come on out, if you want," Big Bert said calmly as she sat on top of her perch. Sue lost no time climbing out of the mess, and when she stood naked and dripping on the floor, Big Bert fell back into shrieking, howling laughter. "Damn if you don't look like the gingerbread girl! Now lay down on th' ground. Quick, quick!" Big Bert shouted.
Sue was beyond fighting. Sobbing, she sank to the ground and lay on her stomach; gritty, stone-impregnated dirt from the bare ground dug mockingly into her tender, slippery flesh.
"Roll! Roll around in it!"
She did that as well. What was the use of fighting back any more? She thought sadly. What was the use of fighting at all? She could refuse, and something worse, much worse, could happen. If she refused one thing, something else would happen, something that would make her regret not having obeyed an earlier command. After all, it was what had happened today. She hadn't eaten breakfast, so there was this. Surely eating repulsive oatmeal was preferable to-this! Why couldn't she be like Cindy?
As she rolled, she saw the boots casually poised above her-they were so clean, those tubes of polished leather-far cleaner than her own, pain-racked besmirched body. Dirt bit into her, tortured her shamed flesh, and the tears rolled down her dirty face, "Now, you are crud! You're as cruddy as you're supposed to be," Big Bert shouted. "Get it? Ain't you a crud?"
Sue sobbed.
To think it, to feel it was one thing; but to say it? To admit a lie to her tormenter, who wasn't even human?
"AIN'T YOU?" Big Bert screamed. Sue saw her hop off the drum and move toward her supine body, the boots treading carefully through the dust and grit of the ground.
"Yes, yes!" she cried, and rolled away.
" 'Damn right," Bert agreed.' 'Now get cleaned up and go back to work. I don't wanta see an ounce of crud on you when you go into the shop. I'll count to sixty."
Sue listened to her count as she looked at her watch.
Desperately, she looked for water.
She didn't see any. There wasn't any, and for a moment she threatened to go berserk with utter panic, until she saw some rags lying in a distant corner. She ran to them and picked up a handful, rubbing them against her body.
"Thirty."
She rubbed grit into her flesh, and winced with pain. And the oil wasn't sliding off. It was like trying to remove oil-base paint with soap and water. What was she going to do? What, what?
"Thirty-five."
Kerosene.
She say it lying behind a drum, and quickly ran to it. It was going to hurt, and the thought of rubbing the stuff on her already-tormented flesh made her quiver. But she knew now that Big Bert could make things steadily, increasingly worse. It would be nothing more than a steady progression of depraved invention.
"Fifty."
She soaked a rag in kerosene and dabbed at herself-the pain was excrutiating, but the oil thinned, dissolved and slid off her skin, which was pink with abuse, grey with traces of oil that lingered in her pores.
"Fifty-eight."
Almost off. Just a little between the breasts, the legs-soon, soon, if she could just....
"Sixty. Lemme see you," Big Bert strode over and eyed the trembling, crying woman critically. "Not bad. I wouldn't wanta sleep with you, but hell, I don't have to." She laughed shortly, and told Sue to put her clothes on.
For the rest of the day, she moved painfully, and at lunch time saw Cindy, who appeared fresh, almost happy. For a brief moment, they exchanged glances. Cindy looked at her with undisguised pity, then turned away.
Why can't I be like Cindy?
She was only kidding herself, she thought dismally. Mr. Brock would never get anywhere with that appeal, and she'd rot for ten more years. And it was damned obvious that she wasn't going to last for any ten years at this rate.
Better maybe to just play the game. Staying alive and in one piece wasn't going to be accomplished by being the big brave heroine. Cindy would do the rest of her time standing on her head now. What'd she have, something like three months if you figured in good behavior? Big Bert would probably recommend her for good conduct, knowing that if she didn't, she'd just make trouble for herself. Once a con was on the outside, she divorced herself as much as possible , from the memories of the inside. Big Bert knew that. But that didn't help her, Sue realized. why not like Cindy?
It was true that Farley Brock had not gotten anywhere with digging out new evidence for Sue's appeal. But he felt as though he were on the brink of getting somewhere. He had given up altogether on Hardin, and instead had checked out the name of the judge on the Board of Directors at the bank where he and Sue Sills had worked.
He wasn't surprised when he saw that the name was spelled H-A-R-R-I-S. In fact, he would have been somewhat disappointed if the spelling were different. Of course it was Harris, he thought; who else? Harris. Ely Harris, who virtually ran the state. He'd been the one to get Gouly the governorship, Halbright the Lieutenant-governorship, and so on down the line. There wasn't a man in the state who didn't owe Harris something, somewhere along the line, both in and out of politics. This, of course, meant business; where would business be without politics? Road-building contracts, building-contracts, bank-financings-all tied somehow to political masterminding and palm-greasing, which inevitably included Harris. Harris took it from both ends. He knew who wanted to buy, who wanted to sell. The buyers bought through him, the sellers bought the information concerning who wanted to buy from him. Harris had his proverbial cake, and ate it more hoggishly than can be readily imagined.
Harris was not a savory character.
For years, he had been a shrewd, untouchable kingpin of corruption, and people (the woefully few honest ones) had resigned themselves to an indefinite reign of power. But Brock had linked Harris to the bank, a matter of public record. Now he had to find a closer connection between Harris and Hardin and somehow peel away layers of information until the stinking guts of Sue Sill's frameup was exposed. Until then, he couldn't conceivably appeal a new trial, which ironically had to be done through Harris, as well.
Farley Brock lit a cigarette, and moved restlessly in his chair. Outside, it had grown dark. Where did you hit a guy like Harris? How did you start?
There was one way of finding out.
He picked up a telephone.
"Hello," a feminine voice answered after a few rings.
"Lil," he said, "Farley Brock."
"Hello, Farley. Haven't heard from you in a long time-I'm disappointed," she said sulkily. It had been months since he'd seen her or talked to her.
"I've been like a rat running in a cage. Look, could I see you soon? On business?"
"How do you define business?" she asked coquettishly. "Like the last time?"
Subtle as a pile-driver, he thought. Still randy as a brood mare in the middle of spring! It occurred to him that if he had to pay for information that way, it wasn't the worst thing in the world, provided she had information to give. If not, she had other commodities to give.
"Come on, Lil, this is serious. When can I come see you?"
"Good old Lil-when Farley needs her, she's around."
"Damn it, Lil, you're bandying around with a per son's life."
"Come for dinner, Farley." As she made the suggestion, Brock looked at his watch, It was after five. He could clean up and be there by six if traffic weren't too atrocious.
"Expect me in an hour," he said, and hung the receiver on its cradle.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he had heard Phineas's name thrown around in conversation. Phineas Plane was hardly a name you could forget altogether. He couldn't quite remember where and when he had heard it, or in what connection. But he had heart it, long before he had gone to the prison to visit Sue Sills. And upon meeting the man for the first time, he had smelled rotten humanity. You could have a cold, and smell his kind of garbage.
He knew he was on the close track of something.
How important it was, or what the results would be, he had no idea, but within the last two months, Farley Brock had tossed the books out of sight and memory-only blind luck and intuition could net any results now.
Lilian Reardon (once upon a time Hardin, if you've forgotten) looked as good as before, when she met him in the library, the same room in which she and he had locked in embrace, and....
Forget it, Brock, he told himself.
Tight, tapered slacks molded the curves of her buttocks and hips as she rose to greet him. Her legs looked impeccably slender, yet lush and ample, tapering off into perfect calves-the cuffless slacks stopped a trifle above her ankles, and they too were trim and tailored. Lilian was sex with sophistication, capable of throwing the latter mantle off and plunging into thorough-going animality. You would be proud of her in public, say at a cocktail party, and damned glad to have her in bed, Farley thought. But she was bitter, too prone to dwell on the gross ironies of life.
"You're looking healthy, Farley," she smiled. Brock saw her even, white teeth, her sensuous, red lips curled back to reveal their stone-like perfection.
A hell of a fine-looking hunk of horseflesh, he thought.
"You aren't exactly repulsive yourself," he said with a short laugh. "Pour me a drink. I'm lots more complimentary after I'm unwound."
"There're better ways of unwinding." She smiled, flicking her body from side to side.
"Don't be so abrupt. It doesn't become you. Bourbon on the rocks."
"A woman in my position can't afford to think of coming on like Vassar, Farley."
"You can afford more than you think." He watched her pour the bourbon from an antique, probably priceless deccanter; she handed him the glass, and as he held it out, she dumped two ice cubes into the drink. Her hand touched his.
"Tell me what I can afford," she said.
"You can afford to save fun and games for later, and tell me the answers to a few damned important questions. I know you can afford that, Lil."
"If it's about Howard, I haven't heard from him since the last time-since he was staying at the crummy motel in Virginia Beach."
"No, I wasn't thinking of that. I went to visit my client a few weeks back-"
"Howard's mistress," she broke in. Still a trace, a wide trace of female bitterness there, he thought.
"Mistress!" he snorted. "A young chick who got swamped with your ex-husband's charm-a two-week roll in the hay that she thought was love or something. Stop this mistress gambit, and listen."
"I'm sorry. Go on." Lil sat next to him on the couch, and they faced one another in conversation.
"I saw her. She told me some pretty disturbing stuff about what was going on there. I thought she was stir; I've seen it before. I asked her cell-mate if it were true, and she said Sue was nuts.
" 'But I don't think Sue is nuts, Lil. And if she isn't, and I can't get this appeal into gear, God help her." He shuddered visibly, and swallowed some of his drink.
"So she mentioned a conversation she had with Howard last summer, about connections and politics and who you know and all that. It turned out that some judge was on the Board of Directors at the bank where Howard and she worked. I checked into it. It was the People's Friend, Harris."
"That's no big secret," she answered. "Everyone knew that."
" 'That isn't the point. The point is this; did Howard have any connection with Harris that you know of? That could be very important."
"Yes, but I thought everybody knew that, too."
"I didn't. What was the connection, Lil? Think, for Lord's sake, think hard!"
"Howard was a rising young star at the bank. It was Judge Harris who got him the job in the first place, and recommended him for the promotion. I thought you knew that."
"No." Brock took another sip of his drink. The glass rested in his hand, empty. When Lilian took it from him to refill it, he was hardly aware of it.
"Howard and Judge Harris were thick as pea soup," she said. "At first I was disturbed about it-back when I had faith in Howard. I didn't like the idea of him aligning himself with a crook like Harris, no matter how influential. But after awhile I figured what the hell, you play ball according to the rules, even if you don't like them a whole big bunch."
"Did they talk business?" Brock asked.
"That I wouldn't know-but they talked money-big money, like in the millions."
"Hmm. How about another drink?'
"Bring it to the table; dinner's ready." Farley followed her to the dining room, watching the undulating motion of her buttocks, the twin spheres surging against the tight-fitting slacks.
He couldn't imagine a better meal.
But the food was good, and he ate with more appreciation than was usual for him. Afterward, over dessert and coffee, they talked about Howard and Judge Harris again.
"Farley, I hope you get what you want," Lil said.
"What do you mean, 'what I want'?' he asked, looking fixedly at her.
"The appeal. The verdict thrown out. All that."
"It's not a matter of what I want," he told her, "it's a matter of what's right."
"Okay. I worded it wrong. I hope it works out for everybody concerned."
Farley smiled ruefully, thinking he was much too quick to bristle and take offense.
"I'm jumpy," he said simply. Lil smiled archly at him and linked her arm into his. As they walked toward the study, he felt her hip bump gently, insistently against his.
"Tension, Farley-no good for you. You need to unwind." Lil had a way of making a simple remedy sound like heaven.
"I know. But who the hell has time for golf and the beach and all that?"
"Every man should have time for this, Farley."
She kissed him.
Her lips brushed gently against his for a moment before the final, clinging possession. Her arms slipped around his neck, and she stood on tiptoe to meet him fully while his hands ran slowly up and down her back, feeling the arch as it swept deeply inward, then out again to the sharp flare of fleshed buttocks.
Quite a hunk of woman, he thought. She was right; everybody should take time for this sort of thing once in a while. With Lil, you didn't get tensed up with worry, because she didn't bog you down with obligations and binding relationships. You just went one time, and didn't bother coming back for round two until you were ready. It was his style, his preference.
Her perfumed breath blew hotly in his ear, reminding him that he should be doing precisely the same thing to her; women liked that sort of thing, he knew. He did it. He felt her quiver as his breath entered the shell-like delicacy that was her ear; when he nibbled the lobe gently, she quivered more, and moaned audibly.
"I remember how well you play," she whispered, "don't let me down."
Her voice was husky with desire, and she clung to him like honey now, her lips sticky-moist with warmed-over lipstick and passion-droplets of saliva. Farley ran his fingers through her hair, tickled the sensitized skin along her neck just below the line where the nape ended.
"I try not to disappoint," he answered, just as huskily. But what was the use of talking, of threatening, of promising? They were two adults, he thought.
Why not play like big people?
No conflict there. Lil obviously had the same thoughts on the subject, because they closed in on each other again, kissing deeply, passionately, their tongues meeting this time, their breathing coming shorter, shallower, more convulsively as their bodies warmed over like liquid fire, inside and out.
Her breast felt like a soft, inverted bowl. It fit right into his hand, fit there perfectly, its nipple straining to be known through its cloth barrier.
"Unbutton me," she whispered. Lil stepped back slightly to give him working room, and as his fingers peeled open her light sweater, it became shockingly apparent that she'd left out what most women would never leave out.
A bra.
Her breasts filled his eyes with their beauty, their voluptuous curvature and defiant, uplifted posture, the red nipples resting delicately bud-like in the center of white, hill-like mounds. He put his hand around one of the nude beauties, and the effect was altogether different. She shuddered more violently.
"I love it when you touch me like that," she groaned. ' 'Don't stop."
He looked into her eyes.
They were smoky and narrowed with passion as she looked beseechingly at him. Their eyes remained smilingly, passionately fixed on one another's as Farley squeezed her other breast, pressing his flattened palm against the burgeoning, hot-red nipple.
"Ooh!" she moaned, with a slow, gasping sound. He placed both hands on her, each cupping a magnificent breast, lifting them, hoisting their feathery weight.
"You are beautiful," he whispered.
"Don't talk, Farley. Don't waste your energy-I" She fell against him, her naked breasts pressing, flattening in his palms while her knee worked feverishly between his legs and her lips burned hotly, wetly into his. Her whole body became a flurry of purposeful, passionate movements.
The room was hot.
Uncomfortably so.
He felt as though he were choking. Lil backed off slightly while he loosened his tie. Then he reached for her again, to embrace her. With slack-jawed, hot-eyed countenance, she looked at him and said, "Why stop there, Farley? We'll just interrupt ourselves again I"
The woman had damned solid logic.
After all, why? It was a pertinent question, and one that needed no answering other than direct action. Looking at one another with that same smiling, challenging expression, they undressed, throwing their clothes toward a chair, never taking their eyes away from each other. When he saw her naked, he gasped with disbelief. Her breasts took on a new dimension in conjunction with the rest of her. Her arms were solid, slimly fit, as was the rest of her. Yet she was replete with curves-a female greyhound with indescribably nice touches of femininity. Her ribcage stood out prominently; her belly was slightly, pleasingly rounded inside a thin-nipped waist, and her hips and thighs swelled hourglass like-then she tapered inward once more, into slender calves and ankles.
He watched Lil raise her hands.
Something, a pin or two maybe, came loose in her hands, and her luxuriant mass of hair tumbled down, way down over her shoulders, spilling and trailing behind her. White-skinned and shiny-haired and smoky-eyed, she advanced toward him.
"You're awfully huge," she said, with her eyes fixed unmistakably. "A woman could faint with pleasure, just thinking about you-" She stood within inches of him. He smelled her; an indefinable admixture of perfume and raw, musky sex. Then she touched him.
Grasped him with two tiny, anxious hands, filling them with himself, "Farley!" She sank slowly to her knees and kissed him; Farley's reaction was inevitable. He jerked, feeling quite weak as he stood over her, swaying to the ecstatic tune her lips, tongue and hands played.
"Lil!" His hips surged into gentle, helpless motion against her, away from her, against her, as she moaned and filled her yearning mouth with him, "llmm," she hummed. Her hands moving to stroke" his legs and his buttocks, were hot and moist with perspiration as they pulled him unbearably to her. He strained, and felt the hot warmth of her mouth melting him, making the liquid passion become more bubbly, more boiling, and he knew that if she didn't stop instantly, that second, he would explode joyfully and leave her burning with the madfever-itch of unfulfilled passion.
So did Lil.
With uncanny timing, she released him; and stood. She pressed her naked breasts into him, caressing him with feathery fingers while he bent his head downward and nipped gently, evocatively at her nipples. He listened through ringing ears to her joyful, delirious whimpers as his teeth sank into the peripheral, red flesh-moved downward to the soft, yielding rotund of belly-downward to the dewy, starving thighs "You don't have to, darling-!" she whimpered, and even as she said it, she knew she wanted him to, wanted him to as he had wanted her to kiss him that way, and she had. Now he did. She felt dizzy and jelly-legged as her feet trembled, her legs trembled, her thighs and hips shook beneath the delicious impact of his warm, willing lips. He nuzzled her rapaciously, and she felt herself moistening with woman-heat for him.
For him alone.
Weakly, feverish-hot, she sank to her knees level with him and put her arms around his neck.
"Baby, I want you!" she cried. Tears were in his eyes. Tears of unashamed lust. "Now, baby-now, please!"
She didn't have to beg.
He too was on fire for completion, could stand it no more; as he pushed her over onto her back, he fell between her wet thighs briefly enough for her to clamp them possessively shut, with unmistakable intent: to tell him, right now, you're mine.
Lil whimpered joyously as he pushed her thighs apart and lifted them. She lay there, staring dreamily, hazily at the ceiling. For a moment, his face, his .eyes, his lips blocked that view of the ceiling. Then she saw nothing, for she closed her eyes as soon as the mounting crescendo of his joy-thrust entered her waiting, starved female flesh, and meshed with it. She was caught up now with his whirlwind passion, and together they entwined one another, trapping each other in a tangle of arms and thighs as he moved deeper and deeper inside her.
She breathed loudly, in huge, fish-like gasps as he lunged forward with wolf-like hunger and greed, moving slowly, deliberately, knowingly, stroking the walls of her with maddening precision.
"God!" she whispered incredulously. She clung to him, moved against him and heard her belly slapping softly into his while he pressed down on her, pinning her buttocks into the soft turf of carpeting.
Suddenly everything was speed; speed and crashing surf and lightning and tempestuous explosions as his teeth sank into her lower lip and her nails dug hotly into his back like spurs and her heels drummed hysterically into his buttocks.
"Farley!" she shrieked, and then suddenly, was limp. Her eyes melted, dilated, then slowly became normal as they gazed peacefully at him. Lil smiled. They smiled at one another. Slowly, they drifted into sanity, into here-and-now.
"Relaxed? Unwound?" she asked.
"You sound like a commercial," he laughed, ruffling her hair between his fingers.
"If I only could advertise," she smiled.
"Would you be that promiscuous?" he asked seriously. Her eyes lost their smile, their humor, as she looked at him with more directness than ever before.
"The TV'd be closed-circuit, darling, from my side of the bed to yours."
Farley was silent.
Damn it, he thought, this isn't what he'd wanted, and deep inside, he knew it wasn't what she'd wanted; not after the pains of a divorce from a no-good bastard like Hardin. She wasn't ready for another emotional burning, he wasn't ready for settling down. Yet, it was beyond their control-they each sensed they'd shared something more than a roll on the carpet. Much more. They'd given something to one another, something irreplacable. That was the feeling at the moment.
" 'I won't press it, Farley," she said, seeming to know his thoughts. "But don't be ashamed to ask, when you want to." She smiled wanly, and he returned the smile.
"It was good Lil. It was fine."
"Yes, it was. Now you go home and think about your mission. And if I can help-"
"I know," he said gently, and kissed her breast. It was a tender, gentle gesture; she closed her eyes tightly for a moment, then opened them. They glistened slightly-maybe from the smoke of their cigarettes of earlier.
Maybe.
But Farley Brock knew damned well that wasn't it as he drove home that evening. His mind whirled crazily with Sue Sills, Harris, Hardin, their connection-Phineas Plane, and damn it yes, Lil Hardin, now Reardon. How many people could a man concern himself with, allow to enter his life, before he crumbled?
CHAPTER EIGHT
For the last several days, Sue had been looking at Cindy with visibly different eyes. The condemnation was gone. Her acceptance of what Cindy had done by way of capitulation was growing stronger all the time. It was, of course, in direct relation to her own weakness. For the first time, she was willing to admit to herself that everyone, especially herself, had a breaking point. And Big Bert could find it.
Big Bert could find it in anyone. After the episode in the supply shack-the oil bath-Sue Sills was not about to come down particularly hard on anyone!
This morning, she and Martha were working together, and they had a rare chance to talk, even under the hyper-watchful eyes of Big Bert. Sue had never been too keen on Martha, but Sue felt sorry for the girl. For weeks, months, Martha had been sulking alone, never talking to anyone, and Sue had come far enough emotionally to appreciate the hellish pain of complete loneliness and self-hatred. She knew Martha was reeling under both maladies.
Toward mid-morning, Martha jammed something into Sue's hand, and whispered tight-lipped,' 'Hide it and don't open it until tomorrow morning. Hear?Not until tomorrow, not for nothin'! And don't let nobody know you got that note-hide it real good."
"What-?"
"Just do like I said," Martha pleaded, and Sue automatically thrust the wad of paper under the waistband of her pants, lifting her dress with lightning, almost imperceptible speed. The two women kept working, with the same expressionless faces as before. Only for a fleeting moment had they shared something, exchanged something, become totally human. Now they carried on like two automatons, working, moving, silent. They were painfully conscious of Big Bert, afraid that the big dyke bastard might've seen them-but evidently that wasn't the case, as that gem of a person hadn't yet come over to them. And Big Bert wasn't one to wait patiently until the right moment. Every time Sue looked up from her work, she caught Big Bert staring at her. It was much more than a merely uncomfortable sensation she derived from that knowledge: it was agonizing. When Big Bert looked at you, something was up, she thought with alarm, and that something could be absolutely anything, anything under the proverbial sun.
Big Bert smiled whenever Sue turned away. The little chick was scared out of her mind, and that was good, thought Bert, It meant she was in pain. The kind of pain that didn't necessarily show, the kind of pain she could scream about from now until hell froze over and not prove. It was pain that would slowly, certainly weaken the girl's resistance.
When that happened, she would just move in. Move in fast, hard, without mercy. Pounce like a big black bird of sin, and suck the last juices of strength out of the marrow. Big Bert knew something that Sue had yet to admit to herself: she (Sue) hadn't given in only because she hadn't been around as long as the others. It was that simple. If the girl thought she had more strength than the others, she was crazy, Big Bert decided. Hell, Cindy'd been the same way at first Big Bert would wait.
Sue thought of the wad of paper Martha had given her, and wanted more than anything to open it. It was a note, of course. But what did the note say, and why must she wait until tomorrow to open it? How would Martha know one way or the other if she opened it now, and read it? Even with the obvious answers to her self-questioning, Sue refrained from opening it. Martha had laid herself too wide open to Sue's mercy for Sue to betray her.
That night, she softened visibly toward Cindy, They had barely exchanged words since that night Cindy had returned from indulging Big Bert's passions.
"Want a cigarette?" Sue asked Cindy. Sue's voice sounded peculiar to her; she seldom heard it any more.
"Yeah." Cindy's voice was guardedly soft. "What's up?" she asked, sensing a change about to take place between them. Living with Sue had made complete alienation from her impossible-inside, her heart had been reaching out for a renewal of the friendship they had once shared, "I've been thinking," Sue began slowly, "Yeah, you'll do a lotta that around here," she said sardonically, "That day when Mr. Brock was here to see me-I hated you that day."
"Sure, you did."
"But I've been thinking lately, and hell, you're right, I'm the nut around here, torturing myself."
"You're the only straight chick left!" Cindy exploded. "Godammit, if I see you goin' down for Big Bert, I'll come down on you hard, sister, real hard!" There were tears in the girl's eyes.
"Why shouldn't I?" Sue pursued. "You spend all your time in the library, Martha gets the easiest jobs, and the others-hell, I'm the only one who gets the crap." She spoke petulantly, and if she had heard herself objectively, she would have been disgusted.
"Because you won't be with Big Bert for ten years. You won't even be in this pen for th' whole time-and Sue, s'pose Brock gets you that appeal an' you bust outtahere?"
"It won't happen, but suppose it does?"
"You cop out. You go on the outside. What've you got when you get there? Want me to tell you?" Before Sue could interject, Cindy continued, "I will, baby-you'll remember you were gay in prison, because you were too damn weak to hold out, and you'll remember how you let crud treat you like crud so she could feel like somethin' big an' important. Hell, you know what that bull-dyke'd be on the outside? Why you think she's in here? So's she can wear that tough leather drag of hers and whip people and torture them and get paid, get paid, lady, for gettin' her kicks."
She listened, breathless, shaking with inward sobs.
"Then why did you?"
"'Cause I'm weak. 'Cause I ain't got nothin' to lose-you know what I was on th' outside. What difference does it make? I've always made it with my butt,"
"So did I. With that man in Virginia Beach."
Cindy sneered.
"Hell, you thought you loved 'im. You didn't lay there tickin' off minutes like a cab meter, baby."
Sue snuffed out her cigarette and threw it in the sink. She'd flush it down the john tomorrow morning after breakfast. "Want another smoke?" she asked.
"No."
"Do you think I'll make it, Cindy?"
"Do you?"
"I don't know. After the other day, I don't think so."
"What happened?"
In a few evocative words, Sue told her. When she finished, she lay back in her bunk and stared at the ceiling, which was no more than two feet from her face.
"What would you've done if she'd beaten your bare bottom first, and then thrown you in that damned black stuff?"
"She wouldn't-"
" 'How you think I went and saw her that night when she called me?" Cindy asked. Again, her question was the answer, the affirmation to Sue's most horrible suspicions. She wondered why Big Bert strove so mightily for acquiescence when she was perfectly able to torture and whip without it. The answer was obvious as soon as Sue had given it any degree of thought: Big Bert liked other, more sensual things-things that only a frightened or willing woman would do to another.
Apparently, she hadn't been the first to get Big Bert's oil bath. Funny-she remembered that once, when she was in high school, she'd read about some famous beauty salon in Paris where women paid fifty dollars American money for special oil baths.
The next morning, Sue and Cindy both bolted upright in their bunks, awakened abruptly by Big Bert's shouting.
"What in hell has the stupid bitch gone and done?" they heard her yell, Other guards came rushing toward the cell across the corridor, and one of them muttered, "God-Good God!" crossing herself and turning away.
"Get her outta here, quick!" Big Bert yelled again. "Can't let th' cons see her. Get Hannah to th' hospital so's the doc can give her somethin'. Gawd!"
Hannah tottered out on the arm of two guards, sobbing hysterically.
"What in hell's goin' on?" Cindy asked, turning to Sue, "I don't know," Sue answered with a taut voice. "Something pretty weird to turn Big Bert on-like that, you better believe it."
The line to breakfast was almost a half-hour late, As they marched sullenly toward the dining room, with the same expressionless faces, the same downturned heads, the same apparent silence, the word came down, from prisoner to prisoner, until Sue and Cindy both knew quite well what had gone on: "Martha croaked herself, man."
Later, the report became more detailed-Martha had somehow got hold of a razor blade, A rusty, chipped razor blade not worth a damn to anyone. But it was worth a great deal to her.
She had slashed her wrists with it, Then she had let herself bleed very neatly to death over the sink, while she'd held her wrists in it, letting the blood rush out into the drain. When the guards and Hannah had found her in the morning, she'd been quite drained. The mortician wouldn't have half his normal work to do in preparing the corpse for burial; all he had to do was fill the empty veins with embalming fluid.
The suicide made good conversation, "She was hung up for weeks, you know? All quiet. Hell, she wasn't even talkin' to Hannah,"
"Yeah, it finally got to her,"
"Probably her way of gettin' back at Big Bert-put the bastard on good, y' know? Investigations and all."
And so it went, conjecture after conjecture, until Big Bert had to threaten physical violence to shut them up.
"She won't be doing any talkin', so the old bull doesn't have to sweat it," one of the cons said. All agreed with this, No one else was going to talk; and the one who had nothing more to lose could not talk. So what was the use of bitching? They were right back where they started. Big Bert still rode the legendary range, It wasn't until after supper, when the rush of events had subsided to a point where Sue could think half-coherently, that she remembered the note Martha had left her, with strict instructions not to read until "tomorrow," It went without saying that the note concerned her death, and that the poor chick had been planning the whole thing all along-that it was anything but an impulsive act, Lying on the top bunk, Sue hesitantly took the paper out of its hiding place and unrumpled it. She began to read.
She read it quickly, jammed it under the mattress again, and thought I've got lo get lids note to Mr. Brock. To her, it was useless, possibly harmful, Brock would be able to do something with it.
It was a short note, not particularly well expressed, but there was one thing in it that, provided it were true, would act as pretty strong evidence against Plane and Big Bert.
She had to get it to Brock!
But how?
It wasn't quite as simple as jamming it into an envelope and sending it off. It would never get past the censor. For that matter, it wouldn't get past Big Bert herself, There was only one thing to do: wait for Brock to come, and hope she'd have the opportunity to give it to him without being discovered. Now Sue felt as though she were holding a bomb and that it could explode in her face. She shuddered at the thought of Big Bert's discovering the note in Martha's handwriting. It would be destroyed, and out would go the proof, If she merely reiterated the contents of that note, it would be inadmissible evidence. Why did they make it so damned difficult for someone to get a new trial? Probably for the same reason she'd been sent up on a frame in the first place, she decided, Big Bert knew dead people didn't talk. She also knew that scared live people didn't talk. She was safe on both counts, she concluded-there was nothing to get upset about. Martha'd croaked herself, and in a couple of days nobody would even think about it, Hell, she'd made such a botch of it anyway, slashing herself with a blade like that-how'd she ever get hold of the thing in the first place? Bert made a mental note to tighten up on security. If she were called down for anything at all, it would be that. The brass would raise hell over "security", even when it meant one less con to feed. Hypocrites! pretending they gave a damn about "welfare" on a con's account! You treated them like the crud they were. You punished them, Punish them any way you could, make them straighten out your way, the only way.
Make them listen to authority.
Scare 'era.
That was the way! You didn't go reasoning with them, because crud doesn't think, You don't tell a garbage can why you're putting it out in the alley, do you? she asked herself. No. Of course you don't.
Martha was crud, garbage-the fact that she'd done herself in didn't make her any different; you could slobber over her all you wanted, but she was still crud.
Beautiful, desirable, delicious crud!
With something like nostalgia, Bert remembered the joys of Martha's body, the thrills of crashing the leather belt down on her bared buttocks and breasts. She'd been good, Martha. Yessirree, she knew how to make somebody happy, and she knew she was crud. She enjoyed her punishment after awhile. Thai's what I mean. Bert thought, you hare to show 'cm.
Cindy was starting to come around, Slowly, but beginning, She fell right into the lovey-dovey part better, more voluptuous than Martha had ever been. But she still balked at, still resented being lashed and chastised, But she'd come around. She knew she was a bad girl, and Bert knew she knew who her superior was! It'd just take a bit of time, was all, Sills was the tough nut, Damn it, when would that broad come around, anyhow? She got more and more stubborn instead of weaker-Hell, she's gotta quit, Bert thought contentedly. Got to. Nobody can go on the way I push 'cm, and I just got to think of more ways to ride herd on her pretty little butt, that's all.
It was the subject of pretty little butts that got Big Bert all shook up. There was so much you could do with a pretty little butt! You could torture it, lacerate the smooth bare flesh until it contorted and twisted and squirmed with unbearable pain!
Damn!
Her fantasies enraged her, She became completely fogged in and blinded by desire. To Big Bert, there was only one solution to the problem of desire: satisfaction of same. She went looking.
Brock was beginning to think of Lil Reardon as something more than a lonely, accommodating, willing woman; and he was beginning to think of himself as something more than a machine built for work, worry, work, worry. New vistas had opened before him since he'd met Lil. He was beginning to eat decent dinners, going out once In a while, and above all, was talking to someone who-yes, cared. Someone who gave a damn. Gave a damn about him. So we can conclude that Lil was rapidly evolving from a mere service-stop to a full-blown human being, in Farley's mind. Somehow, facing the prospect of his problems alone was too much. There was Sue Sills: not just her, but the things that put her there to begin with. She represented, was, the human element of the whole, stinking mess.
He could back down.
He could settle into the comfort of a no-strain existence with Lil and live happily ever after; he could even go into a more lucrative branch of law, like tax law, corporate law; something solid. All the young boys were doing that now, he thought. Most of his classmates had gone that route.
He could.
But then again, he couldn't. There was that corny, but Inescapable mirror to be gazed at; and he didn't like the idea of not liking what he would see.
Tomorrow morning, then, he would hop in his car and drive down to the prison and see Sue. Maybe, just maybe, something would come up-but in all events, he had to see the girl. He knew she had nobody else: no family, no friends, no relatives. Even the token gift of cigarettes and books would show her that somebody gave a good damn, and Farley knew now how important that was.
The next morning, he did hop in his car and he did drive down to the prison to see Sue. All the way down, he thought about the last visit-how hopeless everything had seemed in the girl's mind, how depressed she had been. How could a person get so screwed up because of a silly mistake that thousands of people make? A mistake that is nothing more than the idealism of youth shaking off its fetters? She was paying, paying through the figurative nose. An innocent girl, picked up coincidentally as fodder by Harris and Hardin and the Boys. That simple. That tough.
He didn't want to see Phineas Plane this morning (or any other), but he knew if he didn't, Plane would take it as an affront to his puffed-up authority, and would find a way to retaliate.
So he saw Plane.
"Mr. Brock," Plane uttered, not moving from his mountainous desk. How could such a little pipsqueak have such a huge sea of wood in front of him? Brock wondered.
"Mr. Plane."
"Come to see your client again?" he asked.
"Yes. You've had your hands full, I guess." Brock drew it out of the other man with seemingly off-hand indifference.
"That unfortunate suicide. Yes, yes indeed. Always a mess-poor girl."
"Yeah. Poor girl." You sonofabitch, Brock thought bitterly, you should spend one damned day behind bars instead of behind that stinking desk the State pays for. That Harris put you into.
"Any hope of an appeal for Sills?' Plane asked conversationally.
"Hard to say," Brock answered with equally conversational tone. "Hard to say. But you never know; you just keep plugging."
"That's what I've always said," Plane chortled.
"Well, nice visiting with you, Warden, but I have to see my client and get back to Norfolk this evening."
"We all have work to do," he answered. Brock was aware of the defensive tone; he thought You never have to work, Warden. You don't know the meaning of the word.
Phineas picked up the phone and asked for Big Bert frantically as soon as Brock slammed the office door behind him.
"For God's sake, get me Starr I" he yelled into the mouthpiece. After what seemed forever, Big Bert answered. "Bert-Brock, that nosy mouthpiece's on his-way to see Sills. Better duck out and get into something-regulation." Phineas never made the mistake of referring to Big Bert's clothes as abnormal or different or weird. Always referred to regulation; otherwise, she blew up indignantly.
"Sure," Big Bert replied gruffly. Sonofabitch, she thought, what's wrong with the clothes I wear? She hung up the phone and told one of the other guards to keep her eyes open while Bert ran out on a quick errand.
On her way out, she bumped into Brock, That is, they literally collided, he being so preoccupied that he didn't see her, she being in such a tremendous rush that she could avoid him when he suddenly appeared in her path.
"Excuse me," he said. She was silent, and didn't stick around long enough to acknowledge his apology, He watched her running out of the prison area, toward what he knew were the cottages where some of the guards without families lived.
My God, he thought. What in hell is that?
He knew what that was.
It struck like lightning.
That was Big Bert, the one Sue had talked about, the one who her cellmate, what's-her-name-Cindy had pooh-poohed. But you couldn't pooh-pooh a butch-looking animal who looked like a chapter out of infamous history. (How many times, as a child, had he watched a Hollywood war movie and felt a secret, grudging admiration for the splendor and the arrogance of the villainous, vainglorious SS-guards who had strutted proudly in their black uniforms? Black. Leather. Black leather. Yes. How many times had he secretly pretended and hoped that someday he too would wear a uniform that would excite that much fear and blind obedience?)
He saw her disappear, and then he resumed his steps toward the metal shop, where Sue would be working. When he got there, one of the guards stopped him at the door.
"Farley Brock. I'm to visit my client Sue Sills. Back in the cell," he said pointedly. He wasn't about to talk amidst the roar of machinery and the yelling of guards.
Then he and Sue and the guard were walking toward the cellblock, but he couldn't rid his mind of what he'd seen running frantically toward the cottages-that abberation of depraved humanity.
Sue was visibly agitated.
He gave her the carton of cigarettes, a few mysteries, some candy-but she put them all aside indifferently, and looked at him, then covertly at the guard nearby.
"Could you leave us alone for awhile?" Farley asked.
"If I Jock you inside the cell with the prisoner. Regulations."
"Fine."
The guard locked them in, and stepped out of sight. If they whispered, they would have privacy.
"Now; what's wrong?" he asked her. She looked like pure hell, he thought.sadly; much worse than last time he'd seen her.
She jammed something into his hand.
"Don't say anything about it," she whispered quickly, "just get it out of here and read it when nobody's around." Farley nodded, stuffing it in his pocket.
"Sue, I know this sounds empty-that it sounds like lip-service, coming from somebody who has it nice and easy; but I have an idea of what you're going through. I'm busting a gut to get you out of here. I want you to hang on."
That was a laugh, she thought. But inside, she knew he meant it, could see the signs of strain and fatigue in his eyes, his slightly down-turned mouth. He was handsome-young. Maybe if things had been different, they would have met in another way, and Hell, why think about it?
She'd never have sex again, least of all with a man. Ten stinking years. Thirty-four years old, an old hag; that part of her life was over. She'd never have a husband, a family, a house. None of that. It was more than ten years in jail. It was her whole life that was ruined.
"Sure." Her voice wasn't very convincing.
"I mean it," he said.
"Okay, I believe you. But I don't know how long I can hang on. I mean, you don't know what it is. Maybe you think you do, but you really don't." Her voice heightened, rose with intensity.
"All right," he said quietly, laying his hand on her shoulder. It trembled. He removed the hand quickly. "Okay."
When he left, he felt very depressed. The visit had been a bust-he'd never seen her so down-and-out, so totally devoid of anything like hope or faith or strength. Just beaten down. It wasn't until he stopped on the road for gas that he remembered the wad of paper she'd given him. He watched the gas-jockey wash his windshield, check under the hood and do all the things he wished he wouldn't do right now, because as he read the note, he became increasingly agitated, and felt that he had to move, not just stand there idle.
This was what he'd been waiting for!
This was half of that girl's ticket for a brand new, possibly fair trial.
CHAPTER NINE
Bert had to have her.
Yesterday, even two hours ago, Big Bert had thought I can wait for her, they all crumble sooner or later, but now she had to have that luscious hunk of flesh. All the more luscious because of her stubborn refusal to acquiesce. Big Bert burned for her now, and as she walked toward the cell where Sue lay in her bunk, she wondered what she'd do if the girl just refused as she always did.
She burned.
She itched.
She could already hear the sound of sharp-edged leather ripping neatly, savagely into tender, untortured buttocks and thighs-and the slobbering willingness of those contorted, red lips to please her own burning flesh! It was too much to hold out against: a picture, a blurred vision like that.
That lawyer'd seen her. He might get ideas and do some nosing around, but hell's bells, what could he prove? Nothing. He'd seen nothing, and whose word would carry more weight, hers or some lousy con's? No need to worry. No sweat, strictly no sweat.
"Sills!" she yelled when she stepped in front of the bars to Sue's and Cindy's cell.
"Yessir." Sue sat bolt upright in her bunk, almost bumping her head against the ceiling.
"I wanta see you. Alone."
Cindy gave her an eye-signal that Sue couldn't possibly understand. She didn't know whether it meant 'don't do it' or 'you better do it."
"C'mon." She unlocked the door. Sue hesitated, looking at Cindy wild-eyed. "C'mon, godamnit! Now!"
Sue remembered the black, stinking oil-and followed. Followed, then was followed, with Big Bert close behind her, and she wondered where they could possibly be going, until she found herself standing in front of the warden's office door.
"Come in," a voice said, when Big Bert knocked. They walked in, and Sue saw the warden sitting behind his big desk.
"Ah, Sills," he said, rubbing his hands together. "My colleague tells me you've been most uncooperative."
"I have not-" she began indignantly, but the warden cut her off with "Who am I to believe, Sills, you or my trusted guard? Besides, you're being impertinent!"
She clamped her mouth shut.
What was the use: They had you, no matter what. You were quiet, that was an admission of guilt; you opened your mouth, you were snotty and had to be punished with extra work or solitary or whatever. So why get shook up? Either way, you lost out. That's why you were a con; the difference between a con and them was the difference between losers and winners.
"What's the difficulty?" the warden asked, turning to Big Bert.
"Out of line. And telling visitors stinkin' lies, sir."
"Like what? Be specific?"
"Tellin' people she's gettin' mistreated."
Phineas made a clucking sound. "We wouldn't want her to lie, would we, Miss Starr?"
"No sir, we sure wouldn't." Big Bert grinned. It was closer to a real smile than Sue had ever seen from Bert, yet it was not a humorous or good-natured smile at all. It was an unmistakably evil smile.
"What should we do, do you think?"
"Make it the truth, sir. Then she won't have to lie."
Phineas appeared thoughtful.
'I see. Yes, there's something there, something very solid-but lets ask Sills. What do you think?" he asked, turning to look at Sue.
"I think you're crazy I" she cried. 'What is this, some kind of torture chamber? Hell, this is a state pen where they reform people, not make animals out of them!!!"
"You are an animal," the warden said softly, without apparent malice. "That's why you're here in the first place. It's our job to make you pay for your sins."
"What sins? I was framed."
"Yes, you all were, to hear it come from you; inveterate liars, all of you. Really, you have no idea how badly in need of punishment you are. Wouldn't you agree to that, Miss Starr?"
"Definitely." Big Bert knew this was the only way. She hated to throw meat to Phineas before she'd had a taste, but this was a special case. Sills just wouldn't crack, and now it was necessary that they both go to work on her. Then she would have to crack, and once cracked, the rest would be easy. It had happened only once before, a long time ago-years ago. Every now and then you just had a stubborn bitch that really had to be worked over hard, Big Bert thought miserably.
"Take your clothes off, Sills." The warden's voice was crisp, efficiently cold with command. Sue responded to it automatically, much faster than she would have with Big Bert's hysterical, enraged shrieking.
Phineas studied the body.
He walked around her, examining, as she stood naked. His manner became increasingly less detached; Sue heard his short, shallow breathing deepen with excitement. He wasn't deluding her; she wasn't quite so stupid as to overlook the essence of his attitude, which was of course purely sexual, twisted out of all proportion.
He was like Big Bert.
Delighting in the pain of others, reveling in his power. She knew it now, as he continued walking around her, moving closer and closer until his hand closed around her breast and hefted its feathery substance.
He tweaked the nipple., "How can such beasts have such beauty?" he mused. His other hand stroked her belly, moved over the contour of her hip and slid it down her firm white thigh and across, until his fingers closed possessively in the triangular patch-the gateway to man's pleasure.
"Hmmm." Sue wondered why he didn't take her immediately. There was a handy couch-he'd have his jollies, and she would be immensely relieved. Her sexual tensions, repressed for months, would be out of her, and she knew she'd feel like a new person. And, if he wanted an occasional roll in his office, it was all right with her, as long as he kept it straight and strong. It would certainly be preferable to Big Bert's perverted lust!
"Well, Bertha, I suppose we'll have to be especially severe with this woman. I can see the evil in her face," Phineas concluded.
Big Bert nodded, Sue saw her eyes gleam savagely, lust illuminating the pupils into fine, predatory points. Then, to her horror, Big Bert began undressing. She revealed her strong, powerful body-that of a grotesquely overdeveloped female with far more strength than the averagely equipped male. Her muscles rippled throughout her body, and to Sue's added horror, the figure before her put her boots back on.
She had removed them to get out of the breeches; now she was putting them on-the black, gleaming leather looked awesome contrasted against white, muscled flesh, Then she held a whip.
A real whip, a cat o' nine tails, extracted from Phineas's desk. She advanced toward Sue, who covered her breasts and had her legs crossed, stark fear in her eyes.
"Bend over, sweetie!" Big Bert ordered with obvious relish. "Unless you wanta make me get real rough." The last threat made Sue comply; better to get whipped right away than to enrage the dyke to the point of possible irreparable mutilation.
The whip didn't come right away. .
First, the toe of a boot smacked her between the spheres of her buttocks, and she fell over onto her stomach, with the wind knocked out of her. A couple of times, she was kicked by those black leather demons, and when that stopped, the whipping began, Phineas did the whipping.
He stood behind her and aimed the tendrils of the whip at her tender, raw flesh, while Big Bert stood naked in front of her, watching, Sue saw the boots, inches from her face.
Black.
Leather. Symbols of punishment and power and depravity. Over and over again she told herself. I'm not guilty, I've been framed and if I uas guilty, this wouldn't be right, I wouldn't deserve it.
But it wasn't so easy to be logical, Phineas's voice kept drumming into her consciousness: "You're all animals, beast, inveterate liars."
Sue felt more keenly than ever the stigma of being society's prisoner, These people were her tormentors, her superiors; there was nothing she could do to combat it; they were the System incarnate, She saw all this in the leather boots in front of her eyes, as in a reflection, Phineas whipped her buttocks, the backs of her thighs until her feet drummed hysterically against the rug with pain, and her buttocks squirmed contortedly, Then: "Lick my boots, you crummy bitch!" Big Bert's command entered Sue's mind as a half-blind man stumbles through fog-barely audible, but unmistakable. "C'mon, lick 'em!" Sue felt one of the leather monsters being jammed at her face, her lips. She tasted them.
She tasted, smelled the wax on them-tasted their thickness, their animal quality as Big Bert lifted a thigh condescendingly to make Sue's task easier. She tasted. She ate. She chewed, and Big Bert laughed tauntingly while Phineas looked on from behind.
Only an absolutely worthless being could do such a thing.
She was that absolutely worthless thing; no one with a shred of dignity would humiliate herself so, if she weren't deserving of such humiliation. I must be deserving, she thought with despair-then, I am deserving.
"Now kiss me the way I really wanta be kissed!" Big Bert panted. "Get on your knees!" There was no mistaking the request. Sue balked.
"I-can't!" she blurted. As soon as she protested her inability to do so, the whip came crashing down on her flesh, harder, much harder than before, She screamed, "I can't, I can't!" and each can't was emphasized rather precisely by a whip-stroke.
Remarkable what pain can do.
It can liberate, it can torture, it can goad, can make one rise to new heights of willingness. Sue was hardly aware of her arms encircling Big Bert's massive, muscled buttocks and hips, of her head moving closer and closer to the object of seething desire in her torturer, Only when Big Bert began to pant and moan like a whinnying bull astride a cow, did awareness close in on Sue. It was too late. She closed her eyes and moved her lips fervently on the moist, hungry flesh, and Big Bert writhed and squirmed with pleasure as her knees wrinkled and weakened with ecstasy. Her hands went to the top of Sue's head, and pushed her closely, more deeply into the caress of Lesbos.
Phineas was beside himself.
Big Bert stiffened; her eyes rolled cow-like, and she sank slowly to her knees, pushing Sue out of her way like a discarded heap of rubbish.
My turn, he thought gleefully, and as he had already stripped himself, he now rushed toward her crumpled body. "Up, girl, up!" he shouted, raising her to her knees, and then "Bend over," pushing her into the position he wanted, "Yes, that's right, that's right, now hold it," and then for him, infinite ecstasy as his swollen maleness penetrated and pierced the deep shadow between her swollen, marble-white buttocks, those two heart-shaped beauties-for her, unbearable agony.
"Eeeeyyyah!" she screamed, falling forward on her hands, Her long, silky hair hung forward over her face as she rocked on her hands and knees to the tempo of male lust that moved inside her, strained her flesh unnaturally.
"Ahh," Phineas sighed, unable to believe the pleasure of it all. Martha had been nothing compared to this find; nothing at all. His hands pinched and grasped at the feminine abundance of hip-flesh, and with the abandoned fury of a stallion, drove himself home, into her tortured depths, while she rocked dizzily, wildly with pain and violated dignity.
Big Bert watched.
She lit a cigarette and sat naked in a chair, with her booted ankles crossed; a languid, leisurely pose, watching the action before her. They had the girl crazy now-revenge was sweet, punishment and torture even sweeter, she decided, A whole stable-full of beauties back there, and now she had them all, Phineas had them all. Sill's tortured, insulted body symbolized victory for her. And Phineas standing behind her with his hands on her hips, ramming himself home with the force of a pile driver while she screamed and rocked helplessly (the rocking making it Heaven for him), made the victory complete.
She would never say no again, Big Bert knew from long experience that once a woman ceased to have any real worth in her own eyes, she would suffer any indignity hurled at her, thinking herself deserving of it. It was all part of the psychology.
After that, they expected it!
Sue knew she bled. Pain seared all the way through her, and she knew that when she got up, she would not be able to walk.
She bad never been thus victimized, until now.
Secretly, clandestinely, she was carried back to. her cell; they had hurriedly dressed her, and then Big Bert and another guard had carried her sack-like back to her cell. Her last conscious thought had been Martha was right about the marks, and sank into unconsciousness with the knowledge that the letter would be undeniable proof, if its allocations were examined by a court-appointed physician, Farley Brock sat impatiently in the waiting room, and looked at his watch for what was probably the fiftieth time. He hadn't been waiting for Ely Harris more than fifteen minutes, but it seemed much longer. Watched pots never boil, and Brock's vigil could be equated to watching for the pot to boil, with a fair amount of accuracy. He jammed his hand into his breast-pocket, and felt the shining, slick surface of the photostat copy of Martha's note.
The original was locked in his office safe. So we can say that Brock was boiling with eagerness, with anger-all the things that make people boil.
Finally, a pretty secretary came through the door
"The judge'll see you now, Mr. Brock." Brock sat up, stubbed out his cigarette, and walked toward the door without acknowledging her. She had to move out of his way.
Ely Harris, The People's Friend.
The shaft-artist of the century, who applied his art with such verve and skill as to make it virtually painless and unsuspected-like a doctor giving & skillful injection to a patient
"Mr. Brock." He rose He seemed perfectly composed, but Farley knew he made the judge uncomfortable. He'd discovered that during Sue's trial, when he'd made oblique references to bribery and framing.
"Hi, Harris," The judge looked a little indignant that Farley neglected to say 'your Honor' or even 'Judge', But he let it go by.
"Sit down, Mr. Brock. I hope your visit doesn't concern the Sills woman's appeal again Not unless you have some enlightening evidence "
Brock smiled sardonically
"Oh, it's enlightening, Harris-it's enlightening as hell, believe me."
Farley reached inside his breast pocket, and took out the photostat. He flipped it across the wide desk, in front of Harris, who picked it up, putting on his glasses and clearing his judicious throat, Meanwhile, Farley opened his attache case, and waited.
He watched the calm composure change into florid, blushing discomfort.
"This is absolutely outrageous!" Harris exploded.
"Yes it is," Farley agreed, "It's the most out rageous circumstance I've ever encountered-and Ely, old boy, I'd say offhand you're in a helluva lot of trouble, wouldn't you?"
"It's a lie-a demented prisoner who committed suicide!" He huffed indignantly and fired up a nice, green St. Helena cigar ($25,50 per box), setting up a thick screen of smoke between himself and Farley, "Maybe. But I've already gotten permission, over your head, of course, to conduct a physical examination of Bertha Starr and Phineas Plane."
Harris puffed harder.
"And," Farley continued laconically, crossing his legs-pausing to light a cigarette while Harris ruined purple, then slowly white with suspense, "I'd like you to hear something concerning your friend, your old friend, Phineas Plane. Ready, Ely?"
Ely was painfully silent. He no longer puffed at his cigar, but let it go dead between his lips.
"1953, discharged from the Army. Undesirable changed to 'medical'. Big stink about sodomizing a Korean girl. 1956, dismissed from a congregation in Montgomery (Alabama, Judge) for seducing a fifteen-year old girl during an outdoor-baptizing ceremony. 1959, caught and arrested by the Montgomery vice squad for committing an illegal act on his wife in the corridor of a night-club, a spot he thought deserted; wife claimed it was against her will, and pressed charges.
"Here's the corker, Ely-Phineas Plane was a name given to Paul Palmer in 1960. Paul Palmer was a classmate of Ely Harris's, both at UVA and later at Georgetown Law School. Harris an old friend of the family, as well as a friend of Gladys Palmer, nee Smith. What do you make of all this, Judge"?"
"Where-did you get all this?" Harris asked, the cigar dropping out of his mouth, Brock grinned.
"I paid a few people. It wasn't hard, since they were used to being paid off-way of life with them. Know what I mean?" He winked at Harris, and stuffed the dossier back into his case. "And now, that letter,. First of all, Miss Sills will testify-and once she testifies, all those other prisoners will, too, And don't think Sills won't, Judge, because she's got nothing to lose. Ten years in that stinkhole you call the State Penitentiary sort of changes human values."
He snatched the note from the desk, and read it aloud.
"Big Bert is a bull-dyke and she beats people and makes them do horrible things, and the warden does horrible things. If a woman refuses, things get too rough to take. They beat you into it, force you into it until you have to. Big Bert has a tattoo on her butt. It's a big heart with a knife running through it, and the warden has a funny red mark on his right leg, near his you-know-what. Cindy Martin, who has had to do the same thing I did, has a big scar on her stomach from being whipped. So I'm going to kill myself, I can't take it any more."
"Signed Martha," Farley concluded with caustic tone. "Just a stinking little con, Ely. A stinking little con who just hung you and that goddamn Nazi bitch and-uh, yeah, Phineas Plane. What a nice, righteous name that is!"
"Brock, I've got money, I can set you up, make you a big man in this state, a big man-" Harris began to babble.
"Can it. Stop making an ass out of yourself. What I wanted to tell you is we're having a trial, Harris. And in this trial, lots of things are going to come out. You and Hardin. The whole frame up of my client possibly where you and Hardin have that two million Sills is supposed to have, and very possibly, a lot of changes. This state might even go Twentieth Century after it's all over."
Harris said nothing.
He looked very old, very undistinguished. His face had melted and disintegrated into a lot of wrinkles and flabby-skinned death. His sparkling blue eyes no longer sparkled. Brock looked at him, and felt a wave of pity. It was more a twinge than a wave, As soon as the monstrous series of events welled up before his memory, the pity disappeared. Wordlessly, he snapped his case shut and got up.
On the way back to his office, he worried a great deal. Suppose Harris took Martha's way out and killed himself? What then? Farley's legal mind came back to him, and thought of the consequences more dispassionately. It would be exposed, the whole mess, no matter what happened. There was Plane, Starr, Sue. There was the dossier, the medical exam. There was Hardin. Now all he had to do was call the State Attorney and put it into gear.
He would go see Sue. It would give her encouragement-she would be able to hold out as long as she had to. Now she would know the end was in sight.
CHAPTER TEN
"Would" is a part of speech implying a condition, projected in future possibility or past probability; at any rate, it presupposes. Thus it was that while Farley Brock thought in terms of 'would', Sue was now thinking 'never'.
She'd never make it. She'd never go back again, now that she'd been somewhere where hardly anyone goes. Never, never, never. Then too, for her, it hardly approached the philosophic realm of thought-it was as simple as 'I'll never walk again, I'll never sit again'-Even with the memory fresh in her mind, the reality of it was inconceivable. It hadn't happened, couldn't have happened.
But it had.
Damn right it had!
She had held out for something like seven months, and then folded. Like a slow-motion dream sequence, she knew she'd fold last night, when Big Bert had come to her cell. She sensed the end of the battle, the be ginning of the defeat. It was too late. She could never go back.
Her thoughts were jarred by a distant voice somewhere in the background: the voice became louder and louder and she realized that Cindy had been yelling
"Sue! Hey! Sue!"
"Huh?' She snapped out of her daze. Cindy lay beneath her in the lower bunk, as always-"I'm sorry, I was sleeping."
"Sure," Cindy said. "Sure you were. How'd it go?'
"I don't want to talk about it," Sue said abruptly.
"Okay, okay. Keep it inside you. Be cool like Martha, baby. Be real polite and bury your head in the sand."
"It was-horrible!" she cried. It all poured out of her, and even as she talked, she was aware of the nightmarish, fantastic quality of the events. No one Out There would ever believe such things.
"Okay," Cindy said softly. She had risen from her bunk, and was now sitting on the edge of Sue's, patting her shoulder. "I know. I don't hate you for it."
She felt a pulsation of guilt. She remembered her judgement of Cindy when she had fallen. How could anyone judge anyone else? People were so filthy, such depraved animals. How could one beast judge another beast?
She spend the rest of the night crying, while Cindy stroked her back idly, knowing how very helpless she was to share that private Hell.
Brock had a splitting headache. His nerves were jumpy and he didn't know whether to swallow aspirin or bourbon. Knowing he couldn't take both simultaneously constituted a major decision. If he drank, his headache would undoubtedly become worse. If he took the aspirin, his nerves would go jet-propelled through his skin.
He took the drink.
He, too, had a sharp feeling of the unreal; talking to the big-wig himself, the kingmaker, people-breaker in the way he had. But he knew that he had broken that tin god into a rubble of scared, insecure fragments. He took another drink.
It was late, and his secretary had left, and when he picked up the receiver from the phone, he thought, This is stupid, the man's gone home. Everybody's gone home except me.
But the man hadn't gone home. Like Brock's, his secretary had gone, and he himself answered the phone.
"Bently."
"John. Farley Brock."
"Hi, Brock. What lion of justice you gonna throw my way this late?"
"A very savage one, friend," Farley said, ignoring the sarcasm. He knew his reputation: punk kid with ideals that'd be knocked out of him in ten years, if he waited that long before he went into tax law.
"Sills. Appeal."
"That, and more. It's much bigger now, John. I have got to talk to you. Like soon."
"Tomorrow morning?" Brock knew the man was busy. What State's Attorney wasn't?
"Too late."
"God, Farley, I do have a home life, you know. I haven't seen my wife and kids in six months!"
"Tonight, John. Later. About nine or so." Farley again felt in strange command, as he had earlier that day with Harris.
"Okay, okay, nine-but don't expect a smile and a kiss, boy."
"You won't be smiling when it's over-" Farley promised, "And I know damn well you won't be kissing babies, either. You'll be damn sorry people ever get away from babyhood." He hung up, and took another drink. His headache had subsided slightly, and his nerves had retreated under his skin where they belonged.
He dialed Lil's number.
"Lil, I'll be over in a little while. Have a big, fat drink waiting and a lot of womanly comfort."
"How about some food?" she asked, without questioning anything else. He remembered he hadn't eaten a thing all day. His headache returned at the mere suggestion, and his nerves began to overact again.
"A big, fat sandwich."
"A big, fat drink, a big fat sandwich; don't you like anything that isn't big and fat?' she asked with mock sorrow.
"I like little, slender women with invisible curves," he grinned into the mouthpiece. "Invisible until-"
"Okay, your phone might be bugged. Come over as soon as you can, beloved. I'll have it all ready."
The word beloved stuck long after the others. She had never called him that before, and now that he'd heard it, it had a nice ring to it. Hell, why not, Farley? he asked himself. You're a big boy, you're right for each other and-well, why not?
But he wouldn't pursue it. God only knew what would come out of this whole mess before It was over. Maybe after he was through dragging Howard through the mud, she would be too upset to give him the time of day. People changed drastically in crises, he knew from experience.
But now wasn't the time to think of such things. He locked up the office and went downstairs to the parking lot. His was the only car left; it was well after five. By the time he got to Lil's, it would be close to six. He could only stay until eight-thirty at the very latest, if he expected to keep his appointment with John Benchly-which he damned well would, because appointments with that man weren't so easy to get.
"Your drink," she said, handing him a glass filled with bourbon and ice before he even was all the way through the door.
"Hey, how about a kiss first?' he exclaimed.
"You didn't say anything about a kiss, and besides, you've been drinking," she said, her lips close to his. "Bad day?'
"Atrocious." He kissed her. She kissed back. His headache disappeared, and her nerves retreated into the deep heat she stirred in his body with her warm, sensuous lips.
"Sit down, Farley," she said, pointing to the living room chair. It was the first time they'd ever sat in the living room. It had the appearance of never being lived in. "Now, what happened? You sounded terrible over the phone."
Funny how she knew his moods, he thought. He'd taken special pains to be off-hand, even bantering He told her.
Everything.
"God Almighty," she whispered when he paused for another sip of bourbon. "I can't believe it all."
"I have ironclad proof for every single charge, Lil." He looked at her intently. "I'm sorry Howard's going to have to be dragged into this thing-a lot of people, little people, are going to get hurt. It's too bad."
"I'm not especially concerned about that," she said, "but that poor girl!"
"You didn't used to think that way," he reminded her.
"That was before I knew you," she said softly. "I believe in what you're doing, Farley; I also know what an utter joke my life's been."
He said nothing.
"Farley, once upon a time, I was very impressed with the finer things in life. The important things. Now I know what the important things are; what a selfish little bitch I was!"
"No baby. You came through beautifully." He didn't want to hear her insulting herself that way-it hurt him to hear it; his arm went around her shoulder, and he drew her close and kissed her on the neck, then the mouth. ' 'No. But I just wanted you to know what I'm up against, and what a mess it's going to be. I have to see John Benchly at nine tonight."
"Will you come back afterward?'
"It'll be late."
"If I'm asleep, just come in. I'll give you a key." She looked at him. He looked at her, and nodded. "Okay. Hey, I'm hungry! What do you say we make some sandwiches?"
"No need. Everything's made." She got up and walked to the kitchen, and he watched the rhythmic, undulating movement of her buttocks under the cashmere skirt, which stopped an inch or so above her knees to reveal the fine, white legs.
He knew all about the thighs.
They were fine, too.
Dinner was cold roast beef sandwiches and Danish beer. It was a good dinner.
By the time they finished, it was seven-thirty. Farley grew restless and fidgety, and began to pace the room. Lil sat in a chair and watched him. She had put a Brahms record on the phonograph, but its soothing quality had no apparent effect on him. After what seemed an interminable length of time, it was eight-thirty, and time for him to leave.
He stood near her. She rose out of the chair, and put her arms around him.
"Don't be too late, Farley." Then she kissed him, and left a long, lingering taste of honey and warmth on his lips.
"I'll try not to," he said.
She put a key in his hand.
"The front door, Farley. And you know where the bedroom is." The fact was that he did not; he had never been upstairs. But he knew that he would find it easily enough, so her merely nodded.
On his way to Benchly's house, he thought, It's nice to have something to come home to.
Big Bert went into town that night and had herself a ball. She drank a lot of beer, picked up a girl to go to bed with in the hotel, and woke up the next morning feeling perfectly clear-headed. It was going to be clear sailing from how on, she decided. Everybody was in line. No dissenters, no wiseacres pulling in opposite directions.
She and the warden'd taken real good care of Sills.
There'd be no sweat. Strictly no sweat.
The memory of that night filled her with a warm glow. How Phineas had carried on! Who'd ever think that forty-five year old man was capable of such powers of endurance! The way he'd rammed her, drove her right down to her knees, screaming all the way. Yes, between Cindy and Sue, she was going to have a good time from now on. A very good time, now that they knew who their master was. You just had to keep hammering away until you had them on their knees. Then you had them.
Gladys Plane moved over to the other side of the bed when her husband crawled in, getting as far as possible from that odious man. It had been years since they'd had sex, and if she had her way about it, it would be forever and then some before they so much as touched one another.
She couldn't forget that evening.
It had been so long ago, yet it seemed like yesterday, when at a nightclub in Montgomery, he had asked her to go to the corridor with him. It was always deserted during performances, lined with potted palms and the whole schmere. He was giddily drunk, and so was she-his suggestion that they make love behind a palm, like newlyweds full of adventure, had struck her as an exciting thing to do that evening.
With the excitement of a school girl going into the woods with a boy for her first time, she walked out of the room with him into the distant corridor. It was empty. The sounds of the band were faint, as if they were from another world.
"Phineas, this is so exciting!" she tittered.
"Yes, dear." His voice was thick with desire; strangely, grotesquely so.
They didn't go into any preliminaries. It was to be a heated, perfect quickie, as couples attuned to one another's needs are often capable of pulling off with impressive success.
"From behind, all right?" Phineas breathed.
"Yes," she whispered, "oh, from behind!" Her excitement was dizzying, overwhelming. She got to her hands and knees, arching her bared buttocks with her dress lifted around her slender waist. She waited for her powerful, strong man of a husband to love her in the elemental animal posture. He punished her instead.
His hands cruelly, savagely splayed her buttocks apart, and then he forced his way inside, making her nauseous with pain and sense of unnatural abuse.
"Phineas!" she shrieked, trying to pull away.
His hand went over her mouth.
"Quiet, goddamn you!" he shouted hoarsely, as he drove against her with unbelievable force until she sank to the ground and fainted.
Their voices had attracted attention, and the manager, thinking they were a drunken couple, called the police, who arrived immediately and caught them red-handed. Several of the patrons had seen them, as well. There was a huge mess.
Everything could have been fine for him in the end; he could have claimed drunken excitement-but she had pressed charges, and to this day, they only lived together. It was really something of a wonder that they slept together in the same bed, but secretly, each hoped that they could "get together again," even though it was hopeless. The gulf was too wide, too vast. They had drifted too far apart.
And lately, Phineas had been behaving strangely. He had stayed late at the office more often than not, and it was common knowledge that he was hardly the conscientious reformer. Being warden was strictly a political handout given away by Harris. Everyone not in the know thought it was a governor's appointment, but Harris pulled the strings and called the shots, And he'd given that job to Phineas through the governor because of a friendship that went a long way back, She knew something was brewing with Phineas. Even though he hardly spoke or accounted for his time, she knew he was up to something he wanted to keep secret. Whatever it was, she hoped it wasn't illegal-being married to a pervert was bad enough; if the world ever found out about it, she'd die of mortification.
The Benchly home looked modest, and if you were to compare it to Harris's or Plane's, it was. John Benchly made eighteen thousand a year as State's Attorney, and strangely, lived on eighteen thousand a year. His ambitions had never included money; as a boy, he had seen what corruption could do to a state and its people. As a man, he had begun his work to eliminate-that corruption. Like Brock, he was a crusader out of step with society's cynicism; unlike Brock, he was a good deal older, a good deal more calloused. Yet, the idealism remained under that thick veneer of hard-bitten temperament.
He had kept his eye on Brock for a long time, and for the most part, liked what he saw. During the Sills trial, he had winced a hundred times as Brock had woven his case into tight, air-tight threads-only to be overruled by the judge. It had been a farce, admittedly.
Brock rang the doorbell, glancing nervously at his watch. It was exactly nine o' clock; Benchly was a bug for punctuality. In exactly five seconds, the door opened, and Farley was shaking hands with John Benchly.
"Brock, good to see you, even if you are invading my privacy. Come on in."
Farley followed the older man into the den, and sat down in a chair Benchly waved at. Benchly selected a pipe from the rack and stuffed it with tobacco.
"Now," he said between puffs, "what'sup?"
"Read." Farley had already snapped open his attache case and dumped the dossier in front of Benchly, along with the note from Martha, Benchly read.
At first he puffed furiously on his pipe, but then he stopped puffing, and held the dead piece of wood between his teeth, grunting, clearing his throat, keeping Farley in suspenseful agony.
"My God, Farley! Where in hell'd you get all this?"
"It took work," Farley answered grimly. "Every word can be substantiated, and I've already gotten permission from Judge Hammond to use a medical exam for evidence--provided I get an appeal, which you know I will."
"It won't be an appeal, exactly," Benchly told him, rustling through the papers. "It'll be a brand new trial with brand-new defendants, I think your client's as good as free, Farley. Why didn't you tell me all this over the phone this afternoon?"
"You didn't ask."
The older man smiled, "Twenty years I've watched Harris and his crew run this state, without anybody being able to touch them. And now you bring them all right to their knees in one fell swoop."
"I just wanted to get my client off the hook, And like you say, she will be, after Hardin, Harris, Plane and that Starr babe are uncovered."
"There'll be others," Benchly said, "lots of others. It'll be like a bomb explosion."
"Are you happy?" Farley asked the older man.
"Happy? You're never happy to wade through filth and muck, Farley. I just feel-relieved-yes, relieved that it'll soon be over, and that the people of this state'll wake up. Maybe they'll be more careful from now on."
"You'll get indictments in the morning?"
"By noon, every damned one of them'll be served,"
"Then I can visit my client and tell her she's on her way?"
"That might be a good idea, Farley. Yes, if I were a young lady in prison for something I didn't do, I might like that kind of news."
The two men said good-night.
For the first time, two men who had merely respected one another from a distance now respected one another from close quarters, Farley, that severe judge of character, glowed under the beaming eyes of John Benchly, his unacknowledged mentor.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Driving toward Lil's, Farley put his hand in his pocket and felt the cold, single key, The front door, she had told him. Now he remembered her voice; its coquettishness, its earnestness, its hushed tone of longing and desire. It was not to be the hurried quenching of hot desire this time. It was to be a. night to remember. He drove faster. Much faster.
He parked the car in the long, semi-circular driveway and walked toward the front door of the house with the key in his hand, It was a few minutes past eleven, and when he looked upstairs, he saw all the lights out, In fact, the whole house was dark except for the porch light.
He jammed the key into the lock, and the door opened with complete ease. Closing it behind him, making sure it was locked, he felt his way for the banister, and found it. He listened to his feet squishing through the soft carpet, the smooth, polished-worn surface of the rail as he held on. His foot hit the top level, There were four doors, one of which was the John. Of the remaining three doors, two were closed, one was open. He walked into the open-doored room, and now that his eyes were almost adjusted to darkness, he saw the glint of white sheet on the bed, the outlines of a huddled, sleeping figure.
Lil had been right. She hadn't been hard to find! Now he went inside softly, and sat down in a chair near the bed, undressing quietly. First, his shoes, then his socks. His tie, his shirt, his trousers. His underwear. He crawled, into bed quietly, and adjusted the pillow under him, hearing the sound of Lil's quiet, contained breathing and the merciless beating of his own heart. Every vein in his body seemed to be filled with lava-hot blood as he let the realization of where he was sink in. He was in bed. In bed with a woman. No novelty there; he'd been in scores of beds with scores of women.
But not with women like Lil.
There was only one Lil.
She turned over slowly, and faced him. A soft smile made her face gentle, and she threw her arms around him. Quickly, fervidly, he embraced her and smelled the sleep and sex of her purring body. He could feel the thin, gauze-like material of her nightie and the heat of her body emanating through it. Her breasts were full and firm and feathery, and as they pressed against his bare chest, a choking desire welled up in him. Yet she seemed asleep.
He kissed her.
Her lips opened slowly, and pressed against his lips-they were held in union by moisture and sensuous clinging. Her arms wound more tightly around him and pulled him closer, while her soft, smooth knee worked up between his legs.
"I'm awake now, Farley," she murmured, clinging to him. "It's like a dream. Don't let me wake up from that."
"Not in a million years, kitten," he whispered, and stroked her breast-with a hand lie had slid beneath the gauzy, flimsy material of her short thigh-length nightie. The nipple swelled and filled between his fingers, and when their lips met again, hers had gone completely slack with panting, puffing passion; she breathed convulsively and worked her belly and hips feverishly against him.
Gently, he pushed her nightie up.
Not so gently, she yanked it off, and rushed back into his arms. Now her nipples seemed to burn holes into his flesh, and his lips strayed from her lips down to her neck, the soft flesh behind the nap of her hair, and around the ears. She breathed with increasing fervor as he kissed those sensitive spots and her body thrashed rhythmically against his.
Through the tangle of sheets and blankets, her hand moved down, separating fabric from flesh, until it found what it had blindly sought.
Him.
"Lil!" he whispered incredulously, "Lil!" She moaned hotly as her grasp tightened around him; his own hand sought her thighs with blind direction, and found them. Now they caressed one another, awakening passions, arousing flesh to fever-pitch.
He bit her neck, and she groaned.
He wound his lips around a nipple, and she cried with sheer pleasure, and as he worked his lips over it, she thrashed and twisted in his embrace, pounding her soft, yielding female belly against him with unbelievable fury. The nipple filled and expanded between his hot, moist lips, and when his fingers moved toward the other nipple, she grasped the hand and put it tightly to her breast, moaning and whimpering with helpless ecstasy. Filled with a sense of her pleasure, he worked the nipples slowly-with his lips, his tongue, his fingers and his teeth, nibbling softly at the hungry raspberry buds.
The tops of her breasts felt like the rounded curve of well-sculptured cups. Perfume and woman-sweet musk arose out of the shadowy crevice that delineated the perfect mounds.
He moved his head down.
Lil sobbed when she felt his tongue pierce her navel, and shoot soft, darting sensations into her groin. Her hands gripped his head tightly, her fingers played through his hair, and she pushed that head down, down, down, until she felt lips dance teasingly over her sensitized thighs, along the tender, quail-like insides where she moistened and readied for the final stroke of pleasure.
He kissed her everywhere.
He tasted the sweetness of hip flesh, belly flesh, thigh flesh. His hands stroked the smooth buttocks that wriggled hotly-and all the while, her hands and lips never stopped in their delirious devotion to his pleasure, his excitement.
Now she could feel the prickly sensation of his head between her sprawled thighs. Then she felt his lips, probing, forcing, her own flesh yielding, accepting.
"Farley, darling!" Her hands went down again to his head and held it tightly while her hips launched into wild, feverish rhythms. Her jaw hung loose and limp, and droplets of saliva flowed from her lips. Her eyes widened with incredulous pleasure as she trapped his shoulders with her thighs and kept him against her passion.
Then she had to have him.
It was a simple, elemental must.
Pulling him upward by force, she tried to roll under him, tried to position them for the final embrace.
His lips kissed her lips, and she tasted the salt of her own flesh. A thrill of recognition shot through her, added to the licking flames that already consumed her. He had shown her love. He had kissed her in a way that only a man filled with love can do. Suddenly she knew it was not quite time for them to mesh and fling one another into oneness.
She had to return that love, caress for caress, kiss for kiss.
Farley heard, then felt the rustle of bedding. He watched her body maneuver, watched her head and shoulders disappear beneath the sheets, and then his eyes went blank with darkness, darkness of the room, darkness of dizzy disbelief. Then he saw lights, many different lights of all shapes and colors and intensities.
Her hands consumed him.
Her lips set hot, liquid fires around him, as she all but swallowed him with fervent kisses. He lay back, feeling nothing under him. He felt suspended in limbo. He stroked her buttocks, worked his fingers between her thighsShe shifted slightly, with unmistakable demand. A roaring sound began in his ears as her thighs clamped shut around them, and the trembling of her body made his body tremble, and her whimpering was muted by the layers of sheet and blanket as passion exploded from both ends of the bed. A few moments of silence. Tender kissing.
Rapid breathing in the darkness. "Farley, darling?' "Hmm?"
Her hands stroked him, and he relaxed against the pillow, letting the warmth regenerate in him.
Lil felt his slow, gradual, but very real response. Excitement began to stir in him again.
She didn't want to sleep at all tonight.
"I still want you-want you very much, inside me! I want you there, darling, touching my core!"
"Yes! YesI" He rolled over and pinned her beneath him, and when her soaked thighs drew him down to her, he was instantly accommodated by her over-ready passion. She made a movement, quick, jerky. Her thighs lay directly under his, and closed tightly, possessively, keeping him irrevocably trapped inside her.
His hands traced the incredible curvature of her hips, his lips sought the pillow-softness of her breasts, and they worked slowly, silently together, occasionally whispering sweet, hot promises-when he used evecative words to describe their mutual pleasure, she whimpered and moved harder against him.
"Farley, Farley, Farley!" she panted, her voice rising to match the oncoming explosion inside her. She knew it was in him, too, and they clung to one another, no longer two people, but one being-and then they became swamped and tossed on the wave of their mutual, simultaneous release.
They never did sleep that night.
Big Bert used Cindy that night. While Farley and Lil made love in bed, plunging themselves in one another's love and sweet passion, Big Bert used, utilized Cindy's flesh, which was no more than a convenient, desirable pleasure-machine.
Bert whipped her naked flesh, tortured it and humiliated it until even her wild imagination ran dry. She made Cindy go to her knees and pay homage with her lips In an unsatiated fit of passion, she next used Sue Sills, who came numbly, indifferently into the room-turned-arena, and put her through her paces.
"Tell me about my boots," she demanded pantingly. Sue lay on the ground and looked with tender passion at the black leather boots that hugged the big dyke's feet and calves.
"They're beautiful. Powerful-only a wonderful, strong person could wear such magnificent leather!" Sue murmured. , She embraced them.
Big Bert whipped her back and buttocks while Sue's lips stopped kissing the boots, and moved up, up, up until the whip was dropped and Bert went into jelly-legged, thrusting movements against the enforced kiss.
It had been a wild night for Big Bert.
Now, morning found her a little tired, a little used, a little out of temper from lack of sleep. It was an unusually warm morning, and the sky was absolutely blue, not a cloud in it. Big Bert thought, It's going to be a nice day-I think we'll all take things easy. Cindy and Sue, having satiated her twisted, animal desires, had made Bert aware of her fatigue as well. She didn't have the energy to lose her temper; she would merely make it easy on everyone. It would be a truce. A holiday.
Sue and Cindy never talked to one another, now. Cindy had exactly one month left of her term to serve out, and then Sue would have a new cellmate. It didn't matter. She knew now you didn't have friends in prison.
She knew a lot of things she'd never known.
Now she felt numb and indifferent to it. It didn't matter one way or the other. If Big Bert wanted to slam her around, let her-she'd ride out ten years, a hundred years without ever feeling the bumps if she wanted to. And what the hell, maybe her next cell-mate wouldn't say no to a little lovin'-you couldn't stay dry for ten years! And lately, she had viewed the lovemaking between cellmates through different eyes. There was tenderness in their lives, sometimes even love. If you didn't have that, you had nothing. So maybe she'd be lucky when Cindy left.
Poor kid looks beat, Big Bert thought when she saw Sue. For the first time, something like compassion stirred in her. It was not compassion as we know it; it was really more of a feeling of looking out for one's interests. Of all the girls she owned, Sue was far and away the best-Sue made her (who knows why, exactly?) feel better, more satisfied than any of the others. Of all the girls, Sue was the one she now looked out for the most; something of a reversal. No more oil baths, no more riding herd on her-now it was she who went to the library, she who got the easy jobs. Big Bert knew she was going through a temporary state of shock, which would wear off and give way to a complete awareness of how she stood. Then she would hang on to it with stubborn determination, pleasing Big Bert in any way possible.
Sue (not "Sills") was in the bag.
She decided to be especially easy on the kid today, and let her rest. Rest completely.
"Sue-take it easy today, huh?" Big Bert spoke with a new, gender voice through the bars as she walked by. "Catch up on your sleep," she added with a lewd wink. Then she yelled at the others to "get the hell into line," and "let's go, we ain't got all damn day-" with the voice of Big Bert.
It was ten in the morning when Phineas Plane called Big Bert.
"I want to see Sills today," he said crisply. "Sorry, Warden. She's restin' up. She had a long night."
"That's immaterial, Bertha. I want to see her." His voice hardened with firm command.
"Well, you can't. She's too tired to see straight, and-she's still sore." This last was an allusion to Phineas's handiwork.
"Then we'd better not argue over the phone," he said angrily. "Turn things over to one of the other guards, and come to the office."
Big Bert replied by hanging up in his face.
She was indignant and huffy as she strode quickly toward the administration building and Phineas's office. It was a sweet arrangement and she didn't want to blow it, but hell, enough was enough. Those girls were under her, and he was nuts if he thought he could just pick up a telephone and dial for a quick roll on the rug. Especially Sue. Big Bert had been pondering all night how she could keep Sue away from Phineas.
She wanted that chick for herself.
Phineas was already standing when she entered. For once, there wasn't that ocean of desk to separate him from her.
"Bertha, what in hell are you trying to do?" he exploded angrily., "Look out for that girl," she returned just as angrily. "Goddamn it, man, she just can't go through it again!"
"Had a little fun last night, did you?" he sneered.
"Yeah. That's right. Now she's gotta rest up-besides, I don't know that I wanta farm her out to anybody else."
"Oh? I was under the impression that this was a mutual arrangement."
"She's private stock from now on," Bert said firmly.
"-'I could stop this arrangement, you know."
"And I could have you looking through bars from the other side."
They glared at one another with undisguised hostility.
"Bert-who else can I have? Now, I mean."
Bert felt a glimmer of excitement. She'd brought the little sonofabitch to his knees, and now he was compromising. But why should she give him anybody? Why not let him sweat a little while? Then he wouldn't be so snotty in the future.
"They're all busy," she said. "There's work to be done, remember? You're the one who made the schedule."
Phineas walked toward the door.
She watched him with something close to amusement as he locked the door.
"You wouldn't try to mess with me, would you, boy? 'Cause I'd break you right in half."
"We'll see, you ugly dyke!" he shouted angrily, and rushed her with the blind fury of a bull going after the flag. Big Bert stood her ground, waiting, muscles tensed.
When he hit, she slammed him in the gut so hard he crumpled like a deflated balloon.
"Sonofabitch, Phineas, you're nuts!" she laughed. In truth, he was. No man in his right senses goes up against a tough butch, especially a butch like Big Bert. It's a good way to get hurt.
"I gotta have somebody," he panted. He still lay on the ground, collecting his wind.
"So do I," she said with a sudden gleam in her eye. "So do I." Quicker than the eye could follow, she whipped the Sam Brown belt out of her breeches and advanced on Phineas, swinging the leather and buckle through the air with maddening speed. The corner of the brass buckle hit him in the face and ripped away a cheek. It hit him again and ripped away the other side, then smashed his nose.
"Bertha," he gurgled through bloody lips, "you're crazy! I didn't mean-"
"Shut up, you bastard," she spat, and tied his hands with the belt, his legs with his own belt, and stuffed his handkerchief in his bleeding mouth. "You look terrible, Warden."
Through eyes wide with terror, Phineas watched her pick up the telephone.
"Send me Sills, Martin, and a couple of others," she said, "quick, one-two-three." Then she hung up.
"You're going to have all the girls you want, big boy." She laughed, and began undressing.
They came in.
There were four of them, including Sue and Cindy. As soon as they saw the warden tied and bleeding, and Big Bert naked, they looked at one another.
"Don't panic, girls. I just decided it was time you all had a little fun and games, okay?' She nudged her head in Phineas's direction.
"Do anything you want with him. I'll watch. "
What they did to that man made even Big Bert a bit apprehensive.
They stripped him, untied him, lashed him with the two belts and generally scratched and clawed at him until he screamed for mercy. Finally, Big Bert screamed at them to stop. They might hurt him, she thought.
"C'mere, punk!" she commanded Phineas.
He came over fast, on hands and knees-he was too weak to make the trip in any other fashion.
"Do what I like the girls to do, Phineas," she commanded, and pointed to the triangular gateway between her bare thighs as she sat imperiously in an overstuffed chair.
The girls all watched.
They giggled, pointed, laughed, sneered.
"Funny, ain't he?' Hannah laughed. "Wish I could do to him what he did to me, but hell, it's impossible." The others laughed raucously.
Big Bert shoved him away.
A happy-calm grin spread Over her face. Shi grunted and sighed with satisfaction.
"You're weaker than a woman," she spat at Phineas. "Okay, let's go back to work, girls."
Sue felt good. Some of the tension, some of the humiliation had gone out of her: she looked at Big Bert through new and different eyes now. The big dyke had given her a chance to vent her spleen at one of Them. Hell, Big Bert wasn't such a bad egg after all, she thought. Not so bad at all.
Farley was told that the warden wasn't in, and was asked if there were anybody else he wanted to see instead.
"No. Just see that the warden gets this. It's very important, so if he doesn't come in, deliver it to him." It was nothing more than a note telling him he would be receiving a summons very soon. It was a generous stroke on Farley Brock's part-it wouldn't hit him all at once, but by slow, hard degrees instead.
He hardly recognized Sue when he saw her. She sat on her bunk laughing with Cindy; it was a cruel laugh. He had never heard such laughter from those innocent-looking lips. In fact, he had never heard her really laugh.
"Sue, I've got some great news!" he said, after the guard let him inside the cell. "This'll interest you too, Cindy. Your case has been busted wide open, Sue-the Warden, Howard Hardin, Bertha Starr-everybody's been charged with one thing or another, and your innocence will have to come out in the trial.
"And Cindy, you'll no doubt be released on time, with a little retroactive money, once they decide special hardship while in prison."
Sue laughed.
"Suppose I don't want to get out of here?"
"What?' Farley asked incredulously. "Don't-want to leave?'
"That's right. I've got it good around here, Brock, real good. I'll never have it so good on the outside. I don't want to know those hypocritical bastards out there. They stink."
"A lot of people stink, Sue," he said gently. "I meet them every day of my life. But you have to look for the good people. They are out there, you know. You just have to look hard for them."
"I'm too tired to look," she said sullenly. "Too tired. I got Big Bert to take care of me here."
"You won't have for long," Farley said. "She'll go down with the rest of them. Stick around, maybe you'll have her for a cell-mate," he told her facetiously.
Sue was silent.
"The man's right," Cindy said. "It might be too late already-after what you've been doing around here. You gotta get out there and try and straighten yourself out."
"Don't lecture me!" Sue shouted, "What've you been doing?" Farley asked.
Cindy told him.
"My God," he muttered. "Sue-you've got to get out of here. And now I know you will, I just hope to hell the trial doesn't take forever and a day."
When Farley left Sue Sills, he was utterly deflated. He had never felt depressed to the point where nothing looked hopeful. All that fighting, all that digging, that working, that hoping, praying-and now it was all reduced to an empty, hollow gesture. He felt robbed. Now all his triumphs were strictly in the name of the law. It was too late to save a sweet, innocent kid named Sue Sills. She didn't exist.
They had all killed her.
What did he have? Mentally, he calculated: Lil, first and most important. He had her. A reputation, second; and third, Benchly's full backing. Fourth, and the thing that practically obliterated the glory of the others, a feeling of utter futility. In the end, he concluded, guys like Harris and Plane got off easier than guys like himself. They had nothing to lose except money and comfort.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Three months later, Big Bert sat in a cell, alone. She had already mutilated two women and they got wise to the fact that she wasn't fit to live with. Sitting there in her gray dress, she stared blankly at the wall.
It was a soft wall.
Soft and padded.
There had been no question as to her insanity, when the issue had been explored at the trial. The psychiatrist had categorically insisted that she was an active (butch) Lesbian with unquestionably criminal, sadistic tendencies. All the testimony confirmed it. She was sent to an institution for the criminally insane.
But it would be unfair to leave Big Bert at this point, because she had undergone one remarkable change. She had been humbled, to a degree. It no longer struck her as amazing that attendants and guards beat her and whipped her and humiliated her. It no longer occurred to her that there was something sadly ironic about her being here; to be cured, and if not cured, then harbored from things that would make her even sicker. These things had been lost sight of. It boiled down to a simple reversal: if you were on the inside looking out, you were on the receiving end of violence. H you were on the outside looking in, you got to call your own shots.
She was on the inside.
No boots now, no comforting security of being encased in leather and power-just a beltless, gray dress and a white, dully padded cell.
She thought she heard footsteps.
I'm imagining it, she thought-I'm nuts, ain't I? No thin's real.
"Bertha!" a harsh crisp voice shouted through the small barred panel.
She looked up.
"I've come to give you your medicine? You ready?" She didn't answer.
"I said, ARE YOU READY?" the harsh voice rose.
"Yeah." A very small, barely audible voice. The door opened. It closed with a decisive, clicking sound. Bert looked up to see her attendant: a big bull-dyke dressed in leather, holding a whip at her side. She wore high, leather boots, polished to a gleam. For a moment, Bert trembled, and tears came into her eyes. It wouldn't be so bad-she was almost ready to face the reversal. But why was she wearing her boots? "Where did you get those boots?" Bert asked. The big attendant sighed wearily. "Gripes, honey, we've been through it a hundred times! I liked 'em, so I took 'em from you. Now get the dress up like a good girl so lean give you your medicine."
Bert obeyed.
She lifted up the hem of her dress and gathered it around her waist, then went down on her hands and knees, buttocks exposed.
"That tattoo gasses me!" her tormentor said with a cruel laugh. "What's the big black knife for?'
"I don't know. I forgot."
She took her whipping. It hurt, but in that pain, was a certain satisfaction. Even pleasure. She had been whittled down to size, and when that happened, you deserved anything you got. She knew she should be grateful to this tight-lipped, boot-clad creature who ran around the halls of an insane asylum, unmolested, Bert kissed the boots gratefully, and tasted the leather. It had an animal taste, reeked of shoe-polish, It reminded her of other, better days I'll never get well, she thought. I like it this way too much.
No one was shocked when Phineas was thrown into solitary confinement. He, too, was an inveterate corrupter of morals, even behind bars where morals were supposedly absent, He had quickly changed into a simpering, limp-wristed fairy. He had shaven his arms and legs, and being as small and slim as he was, was more sought after than any of his competitors.
Her competitors.
In her own limited way, Phineas shed all vestiges of masculinity and became blatantly queen-like. She was downright bitchy about it, and the other queens didn't like her at all. Phineas dished them all with no trouble.
At night, you could hear her with her lover-and guards would throw her into any cell she wanted to go into, provided her procurers paid them for their troubles. After all, it was against regulations, She was exciting.
She came on like Scarlett O'Hara.
She excited her lovers so much, that one night when one took her, in his frenzied release, he strangled her until she fell limp beneath him. As the poet said, she went out of this life with a whimper. She whimpered before she felt the glories of the bang.
Sue and Cindy were walking down Fifth Avenue, weighted down by shopping bags and dress boxes."
"God, isn't that awful about Plane and Big Bert and all?" Sue asked.
"Had to be that way," Cindy said shortly. "The others all got theirs, too."
"Yeah." There had been tremendous coverage in New York's tabloid papers. The entire scandal had been making national headlines, but Sue and Cindy had been following it in the New York papers. Now they walked toward the subway tunnel to catch the late afternoon express that would take them back to their midtown apartment.
"You got anything on for tonight?" Cindy asked.
"No. The John cancelled at the last minute. I'm going to take a nice, warm bath and spend the evening in bed-reading."
Cindy laughed.
It was a warm laugh, unlike the brittle one she had had in prison.
"That sounds like a good idea-you know, if we ever get money ahead, I mean really ahead, maybe we can give up the life."
"Maybe," Sue agreed, "It isn't that bad, though, really. All my tricks have been fairly straight, you know."
"Mine too."
"How much money've we got?"
"A little over a hundred grand." The women had a joint account.
"Another couple of years and we can live off the interest."
"And never work."
"I'm going to write a book when we retire," Sue said.
"On what?"
"You know. Hell, it'd be a crazy best-seller. People eat that stuff up."
"They oughta get a taste of it," Cindy said bitterly.
Their train came, and hurtled them uptown. They stopped at the mailbox downstairs and Cindy took out the mail.
"Letter from your lawyer friend," she said, handing an envelope to Sue.
Sue opened it rapidly. It began with hoping she was well, and that life on the outside looked much brighter than when he'd last seen her, and by the way, he was getting married next month and could she come to the wedding? And if she could find Cindy around, invite her too.
"What do you think?" she asked, letting Cindy read the letter.
"Not me. I can't ever go back."
"Me either. I'll send them a nice present, though. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for him. You know, back in the beginning when he defended me and all, I pictured myself making it with him. Funny, huh?"
"No. He was a nice guy, Brock was," Cindy said softly. "A helluva nice guy."
"A nice guy." Sue would never again remember the innocent days when she had worked at the bank, those days when her head and heart had been filled with dreams. The fresh air of springtime New York obliterated the smell of prison from her memory. The only thing she would never forget would be those days and nights with Big Bert-and Phineas. Being a hundred-dollar call-girl made her feel clean by comparison. A couple of years at the most, and she would retire.
Maybe write a book!
Farley and Lilian Brock awakened to the sound of the ocean. The breakers rolled in and smashed against the shoreline, yards from their cottage.
Farley stretched his body and kissed her.
"Umm," she murmured, and clung to him possessively. He smelled sleep and sex on her, and something warm stirred inside him. It was six-thirty in the morning, and the sun was just coming up.
"How about a flounder for breakfast?" he asked. "I'll get into my suit and go out there and brave the elements for you."
"Later, darling." Lil smiled coquettishly.
"But aren't you hungry?"
"Very," she answered with a pointed smile.
"Then why-?"
"We're all hungry for different things, dear. That's what makes horse-racing."
"Oh. Then you don't want flounder for breakfast?"
"No. I want you, darling, I want to devour you and taste every delicious morsel." She held him close, and her hand slid under the covers to touch him.
"And I want you," he said, all the jest gone out of his voice. His throat was very, very dry.
"Well?" Lil kissed him, and he stroked her pendant breasts until the nipples swelled to the occasion.
He took her.
She whimpered and thrashed pleasurably beneath him as he filled her with himself, and she rose to meet his thrusts with sweet-timed counterthrusts.
"Darling!"
"Yes, yes!" she answered, and quickened her movements-her voice crescendoed into wild cries and she clung to him with the intensity of one holding onto a piece of driftwood out at sea. His hands cupped the cheeks of her buttocks and lifted her high off the mattress. Lil's thighs hugged him desperately and drew him down, deep inside her yearning flesh.
It was sweet.
Early-bird sex, pre-breakfast. Try it sometime.
So it began on the beach, and it ended on the beach. The poets have said that there is a cycle in all our lives-we are born out of the womb, and we spend our lives trying to return to it-we watch the sun rise and fall, rise and fall. We watch the seasons come and go. So it goes, until we find a pattern and a meaning to it all.
Farley Brock became State's Attorney after Benchly threw in the towel to spend the rest of his life writing memoirs and fishing in the surf. I hate to say it; it's corny, overworked and overstated, perhaps, but still completely true.
