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Lust List ....(101k)    by Tony Calvano

Carr Harrison had a new racket, and it was almost foolproof. no trouble with the law, no competition-or was there? Was the Syndicate just waiting to see how high his profits might run? And what would they do then? "The amount of anxiety evoked by crime, and especially violent crime, is such that one is tempted to feel that its roots lie deep. We are, of course, bound to be impressed by striking examples of criminal behavior in our society, but why are such very strong feelings aroused in us? Why, for example, in the face of criminal violence, do we ourselves become so violent in return? It may be because a shadowy unacknowledged side of ourselves finds crimal behavior not uncongenial, that we are so upset when it breaks through in other people. Most psychologists nowadays look for its causes in mental factors which lie outside the individual's control, and no one did more to encourage this than Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud was a thorough-going believer in what he called 'psychic determinism'. Everything we do, he contended, has a discoverable cause in the shape of a personal conflict or anxiety. Crime too has its origin in our personal emotional lives!

CHAPTER ONE

The operation was getting off to a slow start in Crown Point. In fact the more booze I poured into the dizzy little redhead named Candy Stenson, the more certain I was I should have stood in bed.

There was nothing different about the routine; it was a simple matter of search and destroy, the same strategy I'd used successfully in New Dale, Kimberly and Townsend, the other cities I'd infiltrated during the past eighteen months.

Only something just didn't smell right. The night would turn out to be a fizzle.

At least in one department.

In the business department.

But monkey business?

I had but to look into Candy's mischievous, little eyes, watch that sharp, pink tongue salaciously circumnavigate her pouty, lush mouth, and I knew I wouldn't fizzle on that score.

I had but to look down the front of that daringly slashed black, sequined sweater, see the way those opulent, creamy white nose-cones swung out of their nylon cages every time Candy leaned forward (which was often) and I-

But I belabor the point.

Candy was going to be relatively easy.

Information? That was another story entirely.

Get the picture: A cold, windy night in early November, winter making its first icy feelers across the Illinois plains with premature enthusiasm. While inside a plush cocktail lounge called The Roundelay in snug, toasty warmth-

An eternal, timeless overture was taking place.

I let my knees lightly drift to Candy's, let them whisper and slide teasingly on the nyloned surface of her legs. Candy sent me that enigmatic smile all women must study from six on, let her eyes seemingly emit smoke. "Another drink, baby?" I said, for lack of anything more original.

She shoved her glass forward, let her big baby-blues flutter. That poking, exploratory tongue again. "I swear," she slurred, "if I didn't know any better I'd say you were trying to get me looped."

"Never happen," I smiled. "Just hate to have any date of mine die of dehydration."

"You twisted my arm." She gave me a playful nudge with her knee. "Another Scotch. Then I really have to go."

I motioned the bar man, brushed imaginary flies off both glasses. He came running. At $1.50 per, I'd run too. A sinking feeling pervaded. Happy times from Candy, maybe. But inside scoop? How can one man pick so wrong? Especially a man who's gone this route before?

What the hell. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I had to start somewhere.. Since that lazy-keeled Mike hadn't done his homework-If I struck out tonight there were other avenues to explore.

When I'd got to Crown Point two days ago, had haunted the business offices of Midwest Telephone, I'd made Candy my main target. Pretty, flighty, vivacious, she was all over the office most of the time. If any gal in that place was going to do any talking-she was the one.

The only trouble was that while Candy did plenty of talking, she simply didn't have anything to say. At any rate (even if the listening wasn't so good) she was fine to look at. Her rose-gold hair, soft, wavy, catching the most bewitching highlights, that peaches and cream complexion so typical of redheads, those cutely spaced freckles, those ripe, full lips were all something to write home about. Not to mention that small, but so judiciously stacked body. Her breasts, high and sassy, seemingly jammed into metal cones, gave that sweater a palm-gouging fullness and piquancy, triggered the most damnable erotic fantasies.

Lord! For a handful of those!

"Carr," she said now, crossing her lovely legs in haphazard fashion to give me a flash of white thigh, a shimmer of black, long-leg girdle, "why are you looking at me like that? So fierce. Like you want to eat me up."

I grinned. "Maybe I do, sugar."

She shivered. "Carr, the things you say! The way you look at me. You make me feel all funny inside."

"I was thinking how beautiful you look, Candy, and just how appropriate that name is. Your complexion's so smooth and white. Does it get even whiter as you go along?"

She sent me a saucy snip of a smile. Wouldn't you like to know?"

"Indeed I would."

"Well you're just going to have to keep on wondering. You are the naughtiest...."

I kept smiling at her in that hungry way I've found so effective with women, my smile, wintry and tight, I made no retort. There are times when a minute's silence is more effective than all the yammering in the world.

Telephone company employees are trained to be courteous, turn themselves inside out to help a customer. And when I'd pondered over those banks of telephone books for over an hour this afternoon, had repeatedly called on Miss Stenson for help, it was inevitable that a pitch was in the making.

"You've been so helpful, Miss Stenson," I said. "Maybe I can repay you some way. Would you meet me for a drink after work?"

She gave me that "I'm not that kind of gir!" bit for all of 33 seconds. I had a date by the time I walked out of there. Dinner, drinks, dancing. When the poor boob spotted my spanking new Cadillac she sold her own bill of goods.

And now, hoping that this was the beginning of a beautiful-probably permanent-friendship, the handwriting was on the wall.

I caught her regarding the both of us in the bar mirror often, I recognized that "Don't we make an attractive couple?" look in her eyes straight off.

Which wasn't so far from the truth. For though I'm nearing thirty, I'm not all that decrepit. Even if Candy was only 21 or 2 (a gentleman doesn't ask), we were no May-December combination by any stretch of the imagination.

Carr Harrison coming at you. Carr Harrison of the 29 well preserved, virile years. A tallish (five-ten) lean specimen with a whitish-blond mane of hair, an attractive slouch. Tanned, his flesh a little too tight on his face, giving him a modified Jack Palance cast. Long, slender, well-manicured hands. Wearing a smartly cut, Continental suit that had cost him $250, a pair of $80 shoes to go with it. A man who trained regularly at whatever athletic club was handy, was proud of his wind, of the fact that no ounce of fat lived on him anywhere.

And yet a man of strange resources, a dark background, a man who knew street-fighting from the ground up.

You'd never guess, from looking at that smart, urbane exterior (and I'm not saying it, the mirror is) that the lug staring back so coldly at you had once done a three-to-five at Stateville, would you?

And only three years back. Things change. People really come up in the world, don't they?

But I'm getting ahead of myself again.

We were more interested in Candy, weren't we?

Candy who was happily sucking at her booze, humming to herself, that mysterious, muzzy smile of hers becoming more provacative by the moment.

"Tell me something about yourself, honey," I broke into her smug reverie. "Just what do you do at the telephone office? Besides play Good Samaritan to perplexed businessmen?"

"Why are you so interested in my crummy job, Carr?" she said testily. "I stamp bills, I file, I answer the phone real pretty. Other than that...."

"Just interested, I guess," I smiled. "I've told you about myself, that I own my own business, I'm in Crown Point for a few weeks to decide on the awarding of a franchise."

"There you go, with all that technical talk again."

"Naturally," I finished smoothly. "I'd be curious about your abilities. Never can tell when I might place a bright ... beautiful female like you. Certainly you don't want to work for the phone company all your life."

Instantly she perked up. Instantly she picked her sparsely furnished mind, began to spin a glowing snow job concerning her non-existent capabilities, puffed her job all out of proportion.

And as she talked, I gleaned the helpful details, I tuned out the extraneous gabble, thought for the thousandth time how incredibly gullibe and credulous women are. I considered their monumental stupidity, I marveled at their duckling-follow-drake propensity to take all things at face value, never question any further.

Candy Stenson was a prime case in point...."Sometimes I take dictation for Mr. Graham ... he's the manager ... when his regular secretary's busy with something else...." she was rambling on.

And as I saw that she wasn't about to deliver what I wanted-at least not tonight-I turned if off. My knees executed a more slithering dance on hers, partially wedged hers open. "This place bores me, honey," I said. "What say we split, find some joint where we can dance?"

Which was window-dressing. I was looking for a counter-proposal from Candy. The little dimwit didn't disappoint me. "It is late, Carr. I am a working gal. after all. It's after eleven. I think it would be best if you took me home."

"So soon?" I shammed protest.

"It's been fun, Carr," she smiled, giving her body a sway, straightening her shoulders, making her boobs sharp enough to break balloons on. She giggled. "But all good things come to an end. I will be seeing you again, won't I? Maybe we can go dancing then. I love to dance."

You love something else too, sweetie. I can tell. By the way you flash that sexy body of yours around.

Suddenly that old, damnable ache was back. An intolerable yearning to hold a warm, vibrant, tossing human body. To twine and cleave myself to a woman, to kiss and touch her. Even if there was no involvement, no real affection.

It was a matter of conditioning. Any woman-so long as she wasn't an absolute dog-would do.

Tag, Candy. You're it.

"Okay, honey," I said. "If that's whatyouwant. I'm not going to insist. Always a gentleman. Anyway, on my first date."

She giggled as we picked up our coats, she didn't mind at all that I had my arm around her, that our hips were going bang-chugga-bang against each other as we walked. "I don't know about you," she said. "The things you say."

"The things I do." Another barb. Plant the idea. Lesson number one in female psychology. They'll do the rest.

Minutes later we were out in the cold, November night. Again Candy thought nothing of it as I cuddled her close when we crossed the parking lot. She shivered, huddled to me. Even through her heavy coat I felt the firm piquancy of one breast burning into my arm. Baby, I thought, I've got to have some of that.

All of that, in fact.

Then we were at my gleaming, gun-metal-blue Caddy, I was opening the door for her.

"I wouldn't think of dropping you off at the front door," I said upon reaching Candy's apartment. "I'll see you up. Like I said ... a gentleman to the core."

And not too many minutes later, utilizing the time in the elevator to good advantage, on the Plainview House's seventh floor-

"This has been fun," she offered her hand at her door.

I took it, pressured it gently, insinuatingly. "I don't suppose there's any chance of my coming in for a minute. A nightcap perhaps?"

"I am tired, Carr. Maybe some other time."

I made a woebegone face. "Please, baby-doll? One for the road? You wouldn't send a starving man off without something warm against the storm, would you?"

She made a cute moue. "You nut. I don't know what you've got ... All right. C'mon in. I think I've got some whiskey around someplace."

There was whiskey. Two whiskeys, in fact. By then I'd tamed the lights, I'd found some soft music on her radio. By then we were on her davenport, my arm lightly around her shoulders; I could feel the tension oozing out of her, woozy warmth radiating off her like an old wood stove.

This, my friend, I sighed contentedly, is the way the scene should go. Any minute now, buddy-

I rummaged about in my mind, sought to pick just the perfect approach for a greenhorn like Candy. For if she once started fighting, began to blubber and plead, the game was over. Called on account of rain.

I settled for Neanderthal Number Two. This little hot pants had been made to order for that one. Once her stoker was turned on there'd be no turning if off. I'd tangled with nymphs like Candy before. Beaucoup times.

"Carr...." she said in that sultry, whiney way as my arm tightened, drew her close, as I began drawing her lips to mine, " ... no ... you shouldn't."

Which were about the last words she said. For as my lips clamped on hers, as I held her in a harsh, rib-cracking embrace, as I ground my mouth relentlessly on hers, let my tongue slide like a rudder in the trough of her lips, the poor kid came quite unglued. She was stiff, unyielding at first, she tried to push me back with her one free hand (her drink still on the other).

But as the kiss went on and on, became gentle and cruel in turn, she gradually became limp, she forgot to fight at all any more. Her body was warm,, pliant, it was as if someone had removed her spine. She sucked breath greedily through her nose, she began to hum deep in her throat.

"Mmm, mmm, mm ... "

I'll mmm you, honey, I thought. Still I kept her in that strong, bruising embrace, I poured one, eternal, dizzing kiss at her. I ground my lips, my chest, I slid my one hand up and down her silky back, felt the way the shudders of desire began lashing her. Waves of heat beat up at me from her body, she all but pushed those hard, sharp boobs through me.

And then, for a readiness test: I let my one hand slither down her thighs, I found her knee, began sliding her skirt back and forth on it. A thing Candy minded not at all, a thing that made her squirm, pant all the harder. Now, as I let my fingers work between those knees, as I let them slide and probe even more boldly, I knew I was in. For instantly Candy was returning pressure, she was sliding her knees up and down on my hand in cicada shrilling, giving the old king all the signal he'd ever need.

She was like a limp rag, puffing and sighing, out of her head with lust, when I finally broke the kiss. "Oh darling," she gasped, "darling, darling ... What...?"

I was up then, leaning over her. I blocked the tiresome question with another kiss. While my arms, at the same time, were gathering her body, lifting her legs and shoulders, jamming her into one compact, delectable ball of female pulchritude. I was lifting her from the davenport, heading toward the door I'd pegged as bedroom from the moment I'd walked in. Candy squirmed against me, fluttered her legs in erotic impatience, she gurgled and panted, drove her spicy little lips to mine like some avenging angel.

"Yes ... oh yes," she rasped as I flicked back the covers with one hand, laid her on those pristine sheets, almost immediately began running her zippers, popping her snaps. "Undress me, do me. Do me to a crisp. Oh, dear God, where'd you ever learn to turn a woman on like this? Carr ... the way you make me feel inside. I ... I just can't help myself. Oh, darling. Oh..oooh! Touch me there again."

I'd have liked to linger over the disrobing, I'd have liked to have taken in Candy's sexy black undies, I'd have liked to play her like the electric-stringed harp she was. But I passed. There'd be other times. And once you've got a doll off balance-

For God's sake, don't give her breathing space. Crowd. Never stop crowding.

Minutes later we were both naked, we were in that fragrant, crisp bed, we were locked in a scalding, jittering knot. My lips were devouring hers, our tongues were fencing. My knee was between her thigh, she scissored her legs wantonly. My hands held her balloon-sized breasts, they lifted and rolled and bounced them, the fingers plucked and twirled those stone-hard nibs, the total combination of all-out, blast-furnace carnality turning dear Candy into a tempestuous, growling she-devil. A virtual hellcat.

"Darling," she groaned those moments I let her up for air, "oh, darling! I've never felt like this before. I want to go, never stop going. I feel all evil and wicked inside, I want to do things I've never done before. What power is this you have over...?"

"Forget the critique, sugar," I gloated. "Just lay back and enjoy yourself. If you're having fun, why talk it to death?" And as my hand cascaded over her quaking belly, as it invaded that so eagerly yielded treasure of her body, as I shifted my lips, consumed one of those turgid nipples with a painful yet delightful suddenness, she did just that.

A sibilant, eerie gasp broke from her, turned into a moan. Then, finally, into a prolonged, pinched whimper. "Carr, oh, Carr. The things you dol The way you make me feel."

Her legs clamped on my hand, her arm swept down to trap my head to that delicious sundae. "No, baby, no!" she grated. "Never. Play with me. Love me all you want. I'll never get enough of this. Play, play ... Like that. Yes, oh yes!" Her body arched, her hips swiveled. "God, I'm going crazy!"

I could accommodate the sex-dotty kid only a little while longer. For if I'm anything, I'm a man. And man does not live by breast alone. I needed something else. I needed Candy. The real Candy.

The only candy adults really enjoy.

And if I waited much longer-

I pulled away from her, broke her strangle hold, worked to arrange my body on top of hers. She was reluctant at first, she still wanted to play. But then as I had my way, as I steepled her knees, tucked them around my hips, as she felt that first so-personal intrusion-She gasped, drove her hands between us, struggled to find me. "No," she hissed as her hands formed an exotic, clinging tunnel, "not right away. Wait, let me...." Her voice broke with small, gasping awe. "Darling, you're so...." A convulsive shudder slammed her. "Oh, you are special."

I chuckled proudly, let her play. I felt bloated inside as her hands tightened and relaxed, as she assessed me in that most devastating of ways. The whimpers grew apace. But then she could wait no longer. Her hips adjusted, her knees crowded, her feet pummeled the back of my thighs. Her very fingers funneled and tucked. "Now, Carr," she intoned, "oh, now. I can't wait a second longer. In, oh come in...."

She didn't have to tell me a second time. Slowly, so slowly, exulting in Candy's each new sigh of delight, I took the trembling, yipping wanton. And when I was safely, totally docked-

"Wow...." she breathed sibilantly "I don't think I've ever had a man like you before." She thrust her hips. Her voice became an amoral snarl. "I've never had a maw before!"

"You've got one now, doll," I husked. I backed off, thrust down. Again. Still again. "There, how about that?"

"Oh, Carr, my darling Carr. My darling, man. Yes, like that. Do it! Do! Put that thing right through...."

It was a request I couldn't comply with. Not that I didn't try. But it's always surprising about women. I've never found one yet who couldn't summon up superhuman resources when an emergency loomed.

And this was definitely an emergency.

"Darling, darling, darling...." she chanted in idiotic singsong as I moved into high, as I bucked and plunged and cleaved. "It's never been like this, never...."

Now, as her glory zeroed in on her, plunged down like some defective rocket, made her go stiff with agony and ecstasy combined, she reached for me, dug her nails into the back of my head, she drew me down, clamped and bit and sucked at my lips. She drove her pagan tongue into my mouth, provided wanton counterpoint that nearly drove me Off of her secret self, the way she drummed her heels against my thighs to signal still a second release.

Her lips tortured, her teeth closed, nipped at my mouth. Long, shrill yips of delight blasted through that vacuum seal, her nails went ever crazier on my flesh.

All of a sudden it seemed to me like someone had trepanned the top of my skull, they'd lifted my scalp on well-oiled hinges. Now they were dropping redhot coals into that brazier of my body, one by one. Coals that sizzled and sputtered as they fell into the labyrinthian depths of my most personal self.

I groaned, I jerked, twisted and plunged. I attacked Candy as if I truly wanted to kill her. If ever a female was called upon to marshal hidden resources-But Candy sure's hell wasn't complaining. For she was out of things too, she was oblivious to pain, to my fury. She was adrift in an oblivion of fury all her own. Her muffled screams were extinguished against my shoulder.

I felt like the cork had blown out of the world. "God, dear God...." Candy was wailing when I once more regained my senses.

CHAPTER TWO

I had taken a fancy $200-a-month apartment on Crown Point's north side. Expecting it would take a month at least to get our operation working smoothly in the fast growing industrial city, I'd passed on the motel bit this time. In the long run the added privacy would pay off. Especially in cases like last night. Cases involving rubber-legged nymphos like Candy Stenson.

The name of the building was the Crown Point Arms, it was in an elite part of town, it afforded a good view of Lake Ellen, presented an impressive facade to prospective customers.

Again: Customers like Candy Stenson.

And my, but she does have a way of getting into the conversation, doesn't she?

It was at the Crown Point Arms, at approximately 11:30 that following morning, that an angry hammering began on my bedroom door. "C'mon, Sleeping Beauty," Mike Kilmer's raspy voice carried, "time to roll out. We got things to discuss. I'm clearing out in an hour."

I sat up, rubbed my eyes, gave my head a gingerly shake to see just what kind of a night it had been. And .when there were no rumblings, no loose ice-picks rattling around inside that squash, I smiled, knew it had been a relatively good one. With exceptions.

Exceptions like Candy Stenson. And talk about asbestos-pants females, females who simply won't say uncle! How many times before she'd finally got her fill? What hour of the morning did" I crawl home anyway?

There we go again.

"Get some coffee on, Mike," I growled. "Some toast maybe." I rolled out of bed, stretched, yawned. "I'll get my shower, get dressed, be out in a jiff."

"Who was your French maid last night?" Mike retorted, sticking his homely face in the door.

"You were," I laughed. "And you will be next year too. Coffee and toast, amigo? What's the sweat? You'd think I was asking for a Christmas turkey."

"Okay, but hurry up. What a way to run a business."

He was gone. I heard dishes rattling in the efficiency kitchen. I shucked off my pajamas, tried to remember the last part of my rendezvous with Candy, was angry that the finer points evaded me. Could it be? Had I slept through that last one? That one where Candy had taken total initiative, seen to everything by herself. Female dominant, I think it's called in sex-manuals. Or was I imagining things? things?

The hot water drummed down on me, revived me, filled me with a wonderful sense of well-being. And while the evening hadn't been satisfactory in every sense, there had been compensations.

You-can't win 'em all.

There's always tomorrow.

I was still mulling these meaningless platitudes when I emerged from the bedroom in slippers and $50 paisley bathrobe, confronted Mike across the kitchen table. The coffee was ready, the toast was dripping with butter, the jam jar stood at parade rest.

"Geez," I joshed Mike, "of all the things to wake up to ever think of making Halloween masks, Mike?"

"I suppose it is sort of a comedown," he said, taking the slam in stride. "Especially after staying up until four with some classy bimbo. Or weren't you up?" He winked salaciously.

"Was it that late? I lost track of the time."

"I'll bet you did. And the times, too. How was she?"

"Fine, fine. Oversexed as hell. I admire that quality in a woman."

"I mean...." Mike growled. "What'd you find out?"

Mike and I had been together ever since Stateville. Well, not ever since. He'd been out a year ahead of me, he'd managed to line up a few con jobs for us in between. But strictly penny-ante, shell game stuff. Nothing at all like the thing we had going for us now.

If a loner like me was ever meant to have a friend, I guess Mike was as close to it as I was going to get. I sincerely liked the guy. I liked talking to him, working with him, I enjoyed drinking with him. And now and then, trailing cooze with him too. Most of all, I trusted him. There is honor among thieves. You'd better believe it, mister.

Mike was 36, a wizened, old con, black-haired, slightly thick in the middle, stumpy in the legs, florid in the face. But spellbinders like him you don't run across every day. Sell ice boxes to the Eskimos? Hell, Mike could sell them the ice to go with them. The tales that man could spin about his wild and wicked past, the scrapes he'd been in. Those few years he'd been out of the slammer anyway.

And though he wasn't the prettiest man in the world, he did have a way with the women. In fact I'd learned a goodly portion of my repertoire from him, it was Mike who'd given me my crash course in female psychology.

He'd picked me up after Marlene had let me down with such a resounding bang. And I'd thought I'd known women?

Brother, how far off base can some guys get?

"You are in a fog, Carr," Mike repeated. "I asked you if the bimbo talked. What'd you find out?"

"Absolutely nothing. Except perhaps the fact that blondes aren't having all the fun. I'll stack that redhead up against the best blonde who ever strapped into a thirty-eight-D." I winced. "Talk about barracudas!" I harked back to a punch line. "Maa-aan! How can anybody stand two bucks worth of that?"

"Anytime you're ready to get down to business," Mike grumped. "Comical revues I'm not up to this early in the morning. Please, Carr?"

"She doesn't know anything," I said, turning serious. "I'll try again, however. I'll point-blank her to death if I have to. She's so dumb she'll never catch on. Somewhere in that empty head of hers there must be some clue."

"You mess this one up, Carr, you're kissing one helluva sweet operation goodbye. With that new aircraft plant opening up next month, we could gross three-thousand a week easy in this burg. Crown Point's growing."

"I know it's growing. Four-hundred people a month. What you want me to do? Go up to Mr. Graham himself ... that's the phone company manager, I learned that much ... ask him to turn over the lists to me?"

"Mr. Graham, huh?" Mike snorted. "Big dealt Hell, I could get that kind of info right out of the front of the phone book. Some operator you're turning out to be. Just because you were born with the looks...."

"So?" I riposted, stung by his cutdown. "What've you got done in the two days you been in town?"

"I've cased the place, that's what, sonny. I've discovered there's a crying need for our services here. I felt out a few merchants just to see how they'd go for it. One other thing...."

"Yeah?"

"I found us a contact. While you were out cruising the bars for quail, I was doing the real work. You look long enough you'll always find a sharp operator, somebody who knows the town inside and out, who's not adverse to turning a dishonest buck."

"So? Who's the guy?"

"Fella named Brad Novak. I told him to check in with you this afternoon. Around two. He's an ex-con too, knows his way around. Just the kind of runner we need. I think he'll even work out better than Barney in Kimberly. As far as that chiseling Tony in Towns end-he shoulda been a butcher. Heavy thumbs!"

"Two bells, you say? When you cutting out?"

"In ten minutes. If you'll ever get down to business."

"What's the squawk?"

"Nothing special. Worry-wart Jimbo in New Dale. He sees FBI boys behind every tree."

"FBI," I snorted. "They couldn't catch a hangnail in a bail of cotton."

"Don't sell 'em short, buddy. They'd be mighty interested in this phony export business of yours. The Internal Revenue boys'd be interested in all those taxes you aren't paying."

"Taxes?" I put on a grief-stricken fright wig. "How can I pay taxes? When every day I go farther into the red?"

"You look like it," Mike smiled. "If anybody in the world's coining it ... And to think I taught you everything I know."

"And I still don't know anything."

"Fresh, too. You punks nowadays."

"Okay, get with it. Business you said."

"Give me a call when you finally get around to promoting that bimbo. I'll cdme running. Novak and I'll line up all the customers you can stand. You hang around a week or so, see that everything's rolling smooth, thumb your patsy good, ram the fear of God to her. After that it's all gravy, we just sit back and let the loot roll in. Just like in those other towns. After that we move in on Delphi. That should be a real soft touch. We'll both be wearing mink-lined pajamas then."

"Don't you think we might be over-reaching?"

"So reach. When we start getting rumbles, then's time enough to pull in our horns." Mike Kilmer rose, brushed crumbs off his trousers. "I'll get my suitcase outta my room, be on my way then." He pounded me on the shoulder playfully. "Concentrate on the game, Carr."

He paused at the door, looked back. "Don't muff it, chum. This could be a biggie."

"I won't. I'll find that key if it kills me."

"Did you try a phone call?"

"I did. But they wouldn't tumble."

"Try again. Maybe you'll get a dumber broad this time."

"Can do. But if it's dumb broads you're looking for...."

Mike's face twisted into a simian leer. "Level with me, buddy. How was she?"

"She was just fine. I've got scars to prove it. The kind of scars nobody ever shows his doctor."

Mike shook his head admiringly, a tight, wistful smile on his face. "You young kids," he sighed. "Lord knows I'm in the wrong end of this business. If I had your looks. That and my brains ... Life's a damned gyp."

"Don't take any wooden phone numbers," I called after him. Then Mike was gone. I was alone with my jelly-bread, my cold coffee.

With my cold, cynical thoughts as well.

Names were the commodity Mike Kilmer and I (and our tight little operation) were selling. Names by the hundreds. Names of every newcomer into New Dale, Kimberly and Townsend. And hopefully-the names of newcomers to Crown Point. And all the Crown Points that would follow that infiltration. Sky was the limit.

Every week of the year new people moved into these cities-all in the 100,000-plus population class-swelled their size, boosted their economy. In New Dale it averaged 150 people a week. In Kimberly only 50. Crown Point was good for 100 a week. More, once the new aircraft plant got rolling. Multiply that over a year's time, and it makes a mighty long list.

A list of what? you ask. And who'd be interested in that list? you ask again. Interested enough to make it worth money. Big money?

Well, I'll tell you who'd be interested. The town butcher and baker and candlestick-maker, that's who. They'd give their right arm to have a neat, typed list of every newcomer into Crown Point. So would the dairy owners, the appliance hustlers, the dry cleaners, the furniture stores, the diaper-service people. Not to mention fuel companies, liquor stores, groceries, filling-station operators. For if they-could get to those customers before their competitors did, if they could just get their foot in the door-

They'd have solid customers for life.

But where do they go to get the lists of newcomers to Crown Point? Insurance men, milk jockeys, bread route salesmen watch the empty houses, pounce on new comers the minute they move in. But they can't watch every house, every apartment building, they're bound to miss 90% of all the new people who move into their city.

If there was just some handy all-inclusive collating point, some place they could turn to for a complete tally of every new person moving into Crown Point.

There was. The telephone company. For it's a known fact that in this day and age 98% of the nation's population have phones in their homes. Phones are as essential as electricity and water. But since some water bills are listed to property owners, since so many homes and apartments come with utilities furnished-Where's the one sure place to turn?

You're catching on, friend. The telephone company.

Only there's just one, minor hitch. For some damned perverse reason, the telephone company just isn't about to give, loan or sell those lists of new customers who daily order phones. They could make a mint if they would, but for the sake of some antique policy, they refuse to release those lists for any reason whatsoever.

A customer calls in, orders phone service. The name's taken, listed, the phone's installed. But until the new directory is published, that name is known only to the. "information" operators, to the business office. The names are stored in a safe place until it's time to turn them over to the printers, incorporate them in the new directory.

In the meantime, unless you personally know that newcomer's name and address-Eat your heart out, Charley. Sure, you say, a person can be traced through factory hiring lists, through the chamber of commerce, through tax rolls, by getting to the telephone installers themselves.

You just try it sometime, chum. You'll drive yourself crazy in skatey-eight shades of blue.

And why fight it? Especially when there is a place. If you can just crack it.

Which is not quite, but almost, as hard as cracking jolly, cozy Fort Knox.

Where I'd got the idea I'll never know. I imagine it was by-product of my vacation at Stateville. One of those dark, haunted nights as I fought off the perverts, the gimmick had appeared to me, I'd vowed to pursue it further. Once I got out of prison gray.

But in the tumult and excitement of being released the idea had got lost in the shuffle. Somebody'd already thought about it, they had it all sewed up. The telephone companies couldn't be cracked. It was altogether too risky, it called for a big organization to handle it. Bet sides there were the con games Mike had lined up for me. I was too busy making the fast-if small-buck. I forgot the scheme.

But it had festered, grown in my mind, a grant-no-rest sort of mitosis had started to take place. Until finally I'd taken Mike aside, described the plan to him, had almost prayed he'd scoff at it, split a gut laughing. But no, he'd gone into one of his trances, hadn't come out of it for the rest of the day. And from then on-

Townsend had been our first. And not content to take a thousand a week out of there, we'd gone after Kimberly.. Once we'd knocked that burg over, we realized we had a tiger by the tail. And when you're making $100,000 a year-What's the matter with $200,000? With $300,000?

We were working on it.

Perhaps a picture begins to take shape, Dad. Perhaps you can see why Mike and I were willing to take almost any risk to implement and expand our grand scheme?

Even deadly risks like that bedroom tigress, Candy Stenson. A dozen more Candy Stensons if need be.

It was about here that I stirred from my introspections, decided I should do more than think about being a millionaire by the time I was forty. I roused myself, stacked my dirty dishes, went into my bedroom to dress.

When I emerged I had my lingo down pat. As Mike had suggested, I'd make another pitch over the phone, go to the horse's mouth itself. There just might be another gal on the switchboard, a dolly more gullible, more rattle-brained than the stone-maiden I'd talked to my first day in Crown Point. And failing there-There was always Candy. Somehow or other, sooner or later, I'd find a way to get that name out of her. The name of the woman (or man) guarding and compiling those lists of new phone installations, seeing them to the Midwest Telephone Company safe. Maybe, I thought caustically, if I quit in mid-session with Candy, refused to swing-dat-hammer until she told me what I wanted to know-There was a thought. A torture worthy of any modern day Torquemada.

"Business office," the crisp, brusque female voice answered now, "may I help you?"

"Yes," I said, disguising my voice slightly just in case I was talking to the babe who'd cold-shouldered me that first day. "I'm looking for a party named Lawrence Keller who recently moved into Crown Point."

"You may call information for that, sir."

"I've already called them, but they have no Lawrence Keller listed. I'm sure he's in the city. He was to have been here on the first. It's very urgent that I get in touch with him. I'm wondering if you have any last minute listings you might check over."

"I'm sorry, sir, but any listings the information operator might have are current. We post them on an hourly basis."

"Well, could you check once more? This is extremely important, miss."

The girl lost her "voice-with-a-smile", became very testy indeed. "I-assure you, sir, it would do no good. Information is the only source I can refer you to."

"Well, could you put me in touch with the person in charge of listing all the new installations? At least give me her name so I can ask for her personally?"

The girl became very short. "I'm sorry, sir, but we're not allowed to give out that information. I really don't know what good it would do, even if I did divulge Miss...." She caught herself just in time. " ... Name," she finished lamely. Her voice became suspicious. "Perhaps, sir, you'd like to speak to our manager, Mr. Graham."

"No," I backtracked, knowing I'd already pressed too hard, "that won't be necessary. I just thought...." I paused. "I guess I'll just have to keep calling information. Thank you for your time."

"Not at all, sir," she said, immediately clicked off.

I banged down the phone, suppressed a curse. Slamming my fist into my palm, I began to pace the room. Candy dear, I raged. You're on the firing line again. You're gonna get it now. If you don't know, you're sure's hell gonna find out. Or else.

There was one consolation. The office girl's slip had informed me of one thing: I'd be working on a woman, once I did break through. That made my job immeasurably easier. Women, I snorted. Pushovers, all of them.

Then I heard my door buzzer sound. That'd be that Brad Novak jerk, I thought. Hurriedly, I went to open up.

CHAPTER THREE

It was as mike had said: the Crown Point potential was just too good to louse up on, if I muffed up on this one I was throwing bushels of gelt out the window. And for me to blast Candy point-blank was sheer suicide. Dumb she might be, but not that dumb. She was sure to start asking questions at the office. And once that kind of stuff started humming along the grapevine

-Forget it, chum.

So I bided my time, played up to Candy for all I was worth. I'd paid court to her twice since our initial love bout, had left her pad both times near dawn, more dead than alive.

Ever wonder why some of those telephone girls sound kind of sleepy when they come on the line?

Maybe you've reached Candy.

I managed to kill seven whole days in the bargain. And thought I was antsy for something to happen, I knew that haste would definitely make waste in this delicate situation. I slept late those days, drank too much, scouted the city. In desperation for something to do I even began making lists of the people we'd try peddling our lists to. Which is getting bad. lists of lists, yet.

I'd talked to Brad Novak twice since our first meeting, he seemed like a pretty square guy. He was making lists too, putting out feelers among selected businessmen in the community, champing at the bit just like I was. His cut would be $300 per week for starters, he was anxious to start earning his first paycheck.

Novak was a younger man, 24, handsome in a scruffy way, a small-timer from the word go. He'd never be more than an errand boy. Venal, shifty-eyed, always looking for the fast buck, he reminded me of the way I'd been when I'd first got out of stir. Before I'd got onto this gravy train.

He was a good kid, I guess. If Mike had okayed him, I didn't have any gripes. I just wasn't going to get any friendlier with him than I had to. I'd turned down his offers both times to "fix me up with abroad".

I had all the broad I could handle as it was.

Of course I didn't try any more dumb phone calls to Midwest Telephone. A couple times I thought about dumping Candy, promoting some other gal at the office, immediately dropped it. That would be about as easy as stealing an elephant from the zoo. I'd ride along with Candy for at least one more week. After that more drastic measures would be called for.

But for tonight, Candy at my pad for a change of scene, just soft music, soft lights, soft booze.

And-a very soft Candy.

Who thought that dancing to some dreamy Mancini, dressed in only her spiked heels, her undies, was just about the greatest kick ever. "Oooh," she giggled, the Manhattans getting to her with a vengeance, hanging on me heavily, "this is so naughty. You tickle, baby. But a nice tickle. Please, why don't you take your shorts off, let me see you? Let me feel you. Here," she reached for the clasps of her jammed-to-bursting, purple brassiere, "I'll undress too. We'll be skin to skin...."

I forestalled her. "Hold off a bit, baby," I kidded. "We hot the pot first. Please? I got a thing about dollies in their pretty silkies."

She gave me a wicked bunt with her tautly girdled belly, let her tongue drill into my ear. "Sure, baby," she slurred. "Anything you say. Candy wants to please you. Anything you want. If that's what you like, that's what Candy likes too." She hung even more heavily on me, worked her sharp-tipped brassiere across my chest, actually scratched me. "After all," she maundered, "that's what women are for, ain't they? To please their mannies?"

The kid was really sailing.

"Hold me, lover," she slurred, "hold me tight. Dance me. Candy just loves to dance." I worked my hand inside the back of her girdle, caressed that cleft of her buttocks. "Naughty hands," she giggled. "Nice, naughty hands."

When I tired of that, I pulled out, stroked and cradled those sateen-caged rondules on the outside. Which made Candy wriggle and suck in her breath all the more. "Devil," she said thickly, "devil, devil, devil...."

While all the time she kept bobbing and swiveling her belly against mine, actually going so far as to dip her hand inside my shorts, tuck me even closer to that undulating pooch of belly.

Again and again she froze as we danced, captured one of my legs between hers, slid her nyloned legs around mine. If there's a unique sensation you haven't experienced, I recommend that one. Then, when she purposely jammed her thighs to me, held on, savored the excitement she'd induced where excitement really counts-

Brother!

Now and then I caught sight of us in the full-length mirror gracing the foyer closet door. It was quite an eyeful, believe you me. Me in my red and white (distorted) shorts, bare-footed, bare-chested. And Candy in that exotic lingerie ensemble, the brassiere an engineering marvel, stiff, nylon baskets that held those twin torpedo heads up in proud, drilling conformation, the cantilevers opaque, purple material, the top gauzy, sheer, showing the first roundings of those dark, crinkled nipples.

Then that damnable, long-leg girdle, an equally exotic number that held her voluptuous hips, rear and tummy in check. A thing with a sateen, elongated diamond in the front, a panel that caught the light, glittered maddeningly. While in back, the glitter and twinkle of her buttocks, encased in that same glossy material.

Her stockings were midnight black, sheer, seamless, they crept up beneath that girdle, gave her legs wicked, witchy allure. Then there were those pumps-the heels and toes in rapier-point, purple satin also-held to her pretty feet with thin, black leather straps.

When spicier getups are modeled, send me an invite, won't you please?

But for the time being-Candy would do. She'd do very nicely indeed.

There had to be intermission. Otherwise I'd have torn off her clothes where she stood, pounced her right on the carpet. Every time I felt the pressure getting to be too much I let up on the dancing, took her to the davenport. Where we sipped cocktails, tried to keep talk general.

Only Candy wasn't much interested in talk. She had other, much more volatile things in mind. Impatient to i pump her about that damned telephone office, it was all I could do to keep her at bay. She lay contentedly in my arms, her coppery curls flowering against my shoulder, noisily sipping her drink, humming softly as my one hand sharpened each nipple through the stiff fabric of that brassiere. She squirmed, gave me elbow room, when my hand crept inside those specially padded cups.

"How are things going at the office?" I asked, leading into the subject as casually as possible. "Big rush on down there with all the new people moving in to work at the aircraft plant?"

"Office?" she grumbled, clamping her hand on mine, working it herself. "Not now, Carr...."

"Just curious, baby," I teased. "I wouldn't want you to think all I was interested in was your body, all I wanted from you was sex."

She sighed, removed my hand, inserted it in the other cup of her bra. "You don't hear me complaining, do you? I think sex is just fine."

I despaired of getting anywhere with this one-track-minded zany tonight. Anger filled me. Time was flying and I was getting absolutely nowhere. Even though it was fool-hardy, I pushed my point. "What about these people coming into town? They're going to need a thousand workers, I hear. Supposing the city wanted to throw a welcome celebration for them? How would they get in touch with them?"

Drunk as Candy was, she still regarded me as if I'd suddenly lost touch. "Why, I suppose they'd go to the factory, get the list from the wheels there."

I knew my attack was faulty, that there was no real logic to it. Still I stubbornly pressed on. If I had to grab this dope by the throat, rattle her teeth loose, get the info I needed. "I suppose most of them will get phones. There must be a list in your offices some place. Who would the city fathers talk to to get that list?"

"Mr. Graham would have that information."

"Suppose Mr. Graham was unavailable?" My heart thundered. Had I already gone too far? "Who else knows about that list? Who else could they call?"

Candy sent me an irritated, sidelong glance. Then, as if the' question was a stupid one, as if it was something everyone knew: "Why Tiffany, of course."

"Tiffany?" I practically shouted. "Tiffany who?"

"Tiffany Coyne. She works with me." Her eyes narrowed. "Hey, honey, what's this all about anyway?"

I pulled Candy into my arms, planted a hard, scorching kiss on her lips. I suddenly wanted to bellow with triumph. Tiffany Coyne! I repeated the name a hundred times. Instantly I wanted to ask a dozen other questions. Where does this Tiffany live? What does she look like? What shift does she work on? But I knew that would be a dead giveaway. That had to be leg work.

"Mmm," Candy came out of her erotic trance, regarded me smokily, "that's more like it. Enough of that office talk, darling. Let's get with things. Where do you keep your bed, Carr?"

"Not so fast, darling," I joshed her. "Another drink?"

"Yes...." she said reluctantly. "I suppose."

"Doll face?" I whispered as I brought the fresh drinks, "will you do something for me? Something I like very much?"

"Yes...." she said reluctantly. "I suppose."

She shivered, sank back, reminded me of a self satisfied cat. "What, lover?" she purred. "You name it."

"Would you stand up for me? Would you model those sexy undies of yours? You're so beautiful. A guy can't really get full advantage of you close up. I mean...."

"Silly," she giggled. "What a sweet thing to say." She stood up, swayed, nearly fell. She put her glass on the coffee table. "Of course I'll model my pretties for you. I bought 'em just for you, didn't I? If you wanna look at 'em, I guess you can." She sauntered to the middle of the room, smiled lewdly, proudly at me.

"Is this what you want, Carr? Is this the kind of show you mean?" She took another step backward. For long moments she stood there in those devastating purple garments, she spun and twisted and arched her body, stretching her breasts until it seemed they would explode. She pirouetted, seductively wriggled her glistening buttocks at me.

"You devil," I groaned. "You she-devil."

The light was evil, like wicked fingers caressing her body in jagged shards of shadow and brilliance. How long she continued the tease show I don't remember. I just remember sitting there transfixed, actually holding myself at the burgeoning pain within my loins.

But now Candy was lust-propelled herself, she was wild to fully display and expose herself. With slow, taunting motions, her mouth a pagan smear, she undid the brassiere, let it drift down her arms. Instantly the air tweaked those nipples, made them puckery and dark. Goose bumps fled across her torso, disappeared. "You like, baby?"

"I like," I choked. "I like."

The huge globes swayed and jittered as she leaned to unsnap her stockings, rolling up the leg of her girdle to do so.. Her breasts hung down like ripe, bursting fruit. Now she came to me, let me slide her gauzy hose down. I removed her shoes, began to rub her glassy, bare legs. But Candy pulled away. Playfully she tugged down her girdle, threw it at me. She stood, gyrated her belly at me, her skin luminous through the sheer purple nylon, taking on a mysterious glow. I couldn't take my eyes off the coppery delta that winked from behind that gauzy veil.

She began to revolve her hips, that rose-gold tuft went round and round, bobbing with provocative, maddening flow. An impish smile formed on her face. She slowly came toward me, infinitely pleased at the way I couldn't take my eyes off that rosy nest. She stood before me. Instantly my arms went around her, my lips slid on the sheen of her nyloned belly.

"Take off my panties, Carr," she whispered.

When I finished working them down her legs, she fell upon me, clawed at my shorts. Then we were both naked, both kissing and writhing. Our lust was a raw, swaggering giant, ruthless, indomitable.

Candy broke the kiss with a giggle, reached for her drink. "Refreshment time," she said. But as she sank back onto the couch she spilled some of her drink. "Oops. All over Candy's lollies. You got a napkin, honey?"

I laughed, pushed her back further on the davenport. "I can do better than that, sugar." And with that I was upon her, my tongue lapping up the stray drops of liquor, coming to rest at the hard crown of that stained globe. "Wowie, darling," she laughed, "that I dig." She poised her glass. "More, more." Again liquor ran down her breast.

Between what she drank herself and what she fed me' in that voluptuary way, we finished the Manhattan off in jig time. And then, blowtorch passion roaring, sending us beyond that point of no return, the need for celebration more compulsive than ever before, I was lifting her from the couch. And in a way she liked so well, I carried her to our very special moment of truth.

She immediately rolled onto her back, let her knees fall open, she held out her arms to me. "You sweet lover man," she rasped. "Come here. Where you belong."

I came over Candy, I poised on all fours, I let my head hang low, let my tongue flick at those taut berries of her breasts, I let Candy gasp and moan in delight as she sent her own hands inreconnaisance, conducted an amoral appraisal of things to come.

And as my lips became more frantic, as they fled from one crown to another, drove Candy to squirming fits, as my teeth became mildly sadistic, she called out in stertorous, panting puffs: "Oh, you angel, that feels so wonderful. Like hot sparks inside me." She groaned. "If only there was some way you could do them both at the same time."

"There is," I laughed, surprised. A petard like this and she doesn't know? "Haven't you ever tried? With bombs like these it should be a cinch."

I took her breasts, applied pressure from the sides, jammed them up tight, manipulated them so that the nipples were actually touching. "There. Like that. You hold them."

Her hands gathered them eagerly, rearranged them, she giggled in lascivious anticipation. "You devil...." Then, as my lips closed again, captured both nibs simultaneously, as my tongue sailed around the horn: "Oh! Exquisite, exquisite! Baby, you've corrupted me. I'll never get enough of this."

But she did. For shortly, as I honed those hard little nuts to painful point, as my lips tortured, made her gasp with intermixed pain and delight-

Her hands fell away, the double turrets escaped me. Instantly her hands were clenching and manipulating elsewhere, crowding, guiding in ruthless impatience.

"Careful, doll," I groaned. "That ain't detachable, you know."

"I'll detach you," she moaned. "Oh, now. Enough of all that other. Just you, wonderful you. Here, where you belong." And still her hands tugged, channeled. When I was laggard she lurched, grunted, brought up her legs, hooked her heels behind my buttocks. And like a jockey smelling the roses, she truly booted me home.

For long moments she held me immobile, her legs flexing and relaxing in primal, no-nonsense hug. While, with other, secret muscles, she hugged me in an even more demonic way. "Oooh, oooh," she whimpered. "That's wonderful, simply wonderful. I simply can't believe a man could be so ... When I'm away, I forget. I tell myself I must have imagined this, I must have been dreaming. Then I'm crazy to get back to you, find out for myself. It's true, it's always true." She tightened on me on every front. "No, stay! Don't move. Not yet. Let me enjoy you. Darling, darling...."

Her voice verged on tears. "God, I pity any woman who'll never have this. Who'll never have a man like you."

The kid almost got to me then. She made me vastly proud. She made me feel ten feet tall. I almost regretted the ditching that must now happen. Maybe I could still keep her on the side, squeeze her into my busy schedule. Or vice-versa. Any way you want it, Buster.

But I knew it couldn't be. This had to be kiss-off time in the valley. She'd only be a millstone around my neck, I had bigger fish to fry. Goodbye then. My brain spun as my need mounted. Good-bye with a vengeance, a good-bye this little mink would never forget. A criterion to measure other men by the rest of her life.

I moved, I broke that tranquil mood. She groaned as I filled her, she adjusted to accommodate me. "The mail must go through, baby," I chuckled.

"Yes," she gasped, immediately swinging into action herself. "Through, darling. All the way through."

Her legs clamped harder, scrambled for purchase, her ankles locked in the small of my back. She actually saw to things herself with hard, frantic flexings of her muscles. I was mere saw-horse in the back yard.

"All ready, darling!" she proclaimed proudly, "I can feel the ... It's here, it's here! No, don't move! Just let me, let me...." Her breath exploded. "Oh, God, God...."

Anytime you need your spine massaged, fella-

Now she went into a. temporary swoon, she let her legs go slack, sunk into inert bundle beneath me. "Wooh!" she moaned, "that was really something! I thought I was going to die. I felt like I was gonna fly every which-way."

Shortly she was revived, she began to grind and bunt her tummy to mine in unmistakable signal. Once more I went into high, I mentally cooled my own lust, was determined to make this intermediate segment of the love act last as long as possible. I wanted to bring Candy around as many times as I could. After all-reward. She had been a good kid, she had given unstintingly. And once she knew what it was I'd really wanted, she'd given that too, hadn't she?

I thought about stamp collecting and begonia growing.

I ran through the multiplication tables.

While all the time I never let up my relentless pounding and hammering for a second. I allowed Candy no rest periods this time. It was steady, ruthless, she was brought to peak after peak, one seemingly stumbling over its predecessor in its hurry to escape. Candy moaned and shrilled and writhed nonstop. She sobbed and gurgled, she actually pleaded for mercy. Until, finally, as her seventh crashed over her, as she emitted tired, garbled cries of ecstasy-

I paused, withdrew. She fought me feebly, tried to pull me back. "Carr, darling?" she squeaked. "What is it? You're not through, are you? I didn't fail you, did I?"

"No," I chuckled. "Just something I want to try. Something we've never tried before."

Then I was lifting her limp, sweaty legs, I was bulldozing forward on the bed, catching the underside of her knees with my shoulders. "Darling, what...?" she quailed.

"This'll be good, dolly. This'll be real special. Just relax, let old Carr have his way." Now I moved forward, the pressure of my shoulders toppling her backward, bringing her hips right off the bed. Still I plowed forward. Until her body was high in the air, until she rested just on her head and shoulders.

"I don't think I like this, honey," she muttered.

"How do you know until you try it?' Then I let my fingers fall, I saw to some fancy piloting of my own. I slowly leaned into Candy. And as I was contained, contained to extremes she'd never thought possible-"There," I chuckled. "Still afraid? Still don't like it?"

"Oh, darling, I do, I do. I've got all of you, I've got...." Her words died in a dazzled gasp as I began to move. There were only aboriginal, greedy whimperings, vainglorious sobs of delight.

I adjusted my position, braced my knees. A primal lust smashing me, I truly went to work. Like a medieval battering ram at the Saracen Gates, I plunged, bucked and tore. Until Candy shrilled still another ecstasy.

Good-bye, baby, I gritted to myself, this is usually good-bye. We'll both go down inflames. One for the record books. The pain became intolerable, drove me beyond conscience. I began to growl unprintable curses at her.

. Now someone Jammed a red-hot poker down my spine.

Depth charges were falling about me as I lurched and rolled and yawed in a subterranean, watery darkness. Ker-chunk, ker-chunk, they went, deafening me. Now the ear-drum rupturing echo. Boom, boo-oom, booo-ooom-I rocked even more crazily, I lost all touch.

I began sinking to the bottom of the universe.

And even as I settled, even as I heard still another set of female screams work their way through that eternity of watery night, the words returned to haunt me.

Good-bye, baby. You were great. Good-bye, Candy.

CHAPTER FOUR

I laid low all that next day, recuperating from my man-killing bout with Candy, ruminating, trying to figure an angle whereby I might meet and promote the mysterious Tiffany Coyne.

Muff this one, Daddy-o and you're dead. There'll be no second chances in Crown Point.

First off, when the fur began to settle, I thought to find out where dear Tiffany lived. If I could stake out her pad, figure her schedule, her habits, something might suggest itself. And since there was no Tiffany Coyne listed in the directory-"A Miss Tiffany Coyne," I said, as the information operator came on.

The girl riffled some pages, came back with a terse, "I'm sorry, sir, but Miss Coyne has an unlisted number. I am not at liberty to give that number."

"Well," I bluffed, "I'm a relative, I've been out of town for a few years. I'm passing through and I thought I might look her up. Perhaps you could just give me her address, I could call on her this evening."

"I'm sorry, sir, I can't give that information either."

"Well, look, could you ring her number for me, let me talk to her? That way you wouldn't be giving away any state secrets. Please, this is urgent."

"I'm sorry, sir, but telephone regulations specifically state that...."

It was about then that I hung up on the super-efficient zombie, turned the air in my apartment blue for the next few minutes. God save us from an automated society!

Alternatives, Super-Brain?

Another skull session.

And not more than a half hour later I finally settled on ploy number 32124.

I particularly chose a time when I knew Candy would be off the floor at Midwest Telephone. She took her coffee break at 9:40, she'd be in the lounge until 10:00. Early that following morning I called on one of Crown Point's fanciest florists, picked out a dozen, long-stemmed roses, directed they be delivered to a Miss Tiffany Coyne at the Midwest Telephone Company offices at exactly 9:45. This would give me adequate leeway, I thought.

I was outside the Midwest Telephone offices when the florist's truck drove up, I followed the delivery boy in, was busily riffling through phone books by the time he marched up to the desk, asked for Miss Tiffany Coyne.

The receptionist smiled that sly smile gals affect when they think they're getting in on something good, picked up the inter-office phone. I had to fight to keep my nose in the Atlanta phone directory, not give my interest away.

I'd sort of got a line on this Tiffany character from the matter of the unlisted phone number. She was going to be an old maid, a shriveled-up, scared-of-her-shadow prune. An imperious, hell-on-wheels type who thinks she's above the rest of uspeons, who thinks she can get away from the mobs, escape the awning and insurance and magazine solicitors who've taken over our phone lines of late.

But whatever I expected, this young, blonde vision in a pink-wool shift who emerged from an inner office, pranced across that tiled floor in fetching, black-patent pumps, certainly wasn't it. This dolly with the yummy, creamy complexion, the hazel eyes, the lovely, provocative lips. She was perhaps 24-25, in the prime of her beauty. And though the sack dress tried hard to conceal her multitudinous bumps and curves, it was failing miserably. For this Tiffany doll had bumps that just wouldn't quit trying.

And where I'd thought I'd have to snap multiple exposures on the nondescript, moth-balled old maid to imprint her image on my mind, this was definitely one take stuff. I couldn't forget a beauty like this in a dozen years I Dolls like this I could get interested in even if they didn't own the keys to the kingdom!

She approached the desk timorously, her chitty-bangs swaying and bobbing inside that dress in a most disconcerting fashion. She was flushed, puzzled, reminded me of nothing so much as a little girl on Christmas morning. "For me?" she asked, her voice soft and musical. "Who could be sending me flowers? And at the office at that?" She searched through the silk bow for a card.

"There's no card, Ma'am," the driver explained.

Are you sure there hasn't been a mistake?"

"No mistake, Ma'am. Here's the order in my route book. Miss Tiffany Coyne, Midwest Telephone."

"Strange," she said, opening the flowers, a few girls gathering. She took out the roses, melted at their beauty. "Oh, they're lovely, simply lovely."

"Tiffany's got a secret admirer," one of the girls teased. "C'mon, honey, let us in on it."

"I assure you," she murmured, her brows furrowed, "I'm as much in the dark about this as anybody is. I just don't understand. Well," she addressed the delivery man, "whoever sent them, they're still beautiful. Thank him for me."

She was still standing in the midst of a gaggle of girls, flushing at their teasing, admiring the roses, when I decided it was time to bug out.

I avoided the Midwest Telephone offices for the next 48 hours. I gave Tiffany time to let the excitement wear down, to forget the mystery of the unexpected flowers. I gave myself time to figure my next move.

And just what ruse would a smart, sophisticated chick like this Tiffany angel go for? How would I meet her?

Maybe I could ask Candy to introduce me. Be serious, you nut!

I was in a Nirvana-like trance for the next couple of hours. But when I emerged, after discarding at least a couple dozen plans as unacceptable, I had a very kooky strategem in mind. One I knew would come close as any to breaking down Tiffany's defenses, make her vulnerable to a big rush by a stranger.

Unless I'd pegged her wrong, Tiffany was a fun-loving type, sensitive, easily taken in by spontaneous, accidental circumstances. The way she'd admired the flowers, had taken their mystery in stride was indication of this. Here was a doll with a zest for life, a doll capable of adjusting to unexpected surprises, rolling with the punches.

Thus the camera bit.

There I was that Friday afternoon at 5:00, standing across the street from the Midwest Telephone Company. In a sort of little park Crown Point had built there, a half-block thing with trees, lawn, bushes, a few benches and a drinking fountain. The sort of a hangout the old folks occupy during warm summer and autumn afternoons. My Leica around my neck, lens uncovered, ready for shots, I waited for Tiffany Coyne to emerge from the building, head down the street. For home, for where ever she went when her working day was done.

For while stakeout was in my line, I was still playing it close to the vest, I wasn't about to spook her by following her. My heart hammered, I was grateful for the remaining light, for the few tatters of leaves still in the trees, yellow scraps against a deep blue sky. I prayed that Tiffany wouldn't come out with a girl friend as she had last night. My hands trembled, the now-or-never thought boomed in my head with broken-record stridency.

Now I saw the first batch of girls barging out that side door, some heading toward the. company parking lot, others scooting to catch a bus, others merely ambling along, that sappy Thank-God-It's Friday smile on their faces. Immediately I played shutter-bug, I aimed my camera up at trees, I took pictures of kids in the leaves, of forlorn empty benches. Protective coloration.

While all the time my eyes desperately darted, sought Tiffany. Then she was there, jauntily striding down the walk, a small, self-satisfied smile on her lips. She wore a silver-tan coat with a large fox collar. A black helmet was on her head; black, calf-high boots, the toes and heels daintily pointed and chic, graced her feet. Instantly I felt a melting sensation. How could just looking at a girl make a guy feel so good inside?

Then, as she Came across the street (alone, thank God!), mounted the curb, I looked directly at her, sent a studied, shy smile. "Hi," I said.

"Hi," she replied, caught flat-footed, her basic warmth asserting itself.

She was about to walk past me, when I called her back. "Please, Miss, could I have a word with you?"

She stopped, turned, a puckish suspicion in her eyes. "Yes? What is it??

"I ... ah ... I'm wondering. Would you mind if I took your picture?"

"What is this, some kind of gag?"

"No, it's no gag. I've been taking pictures of this little park, of the kids playing and all. The light is just perfect now." I laughed nervously. "I'm kind of a nut about fall pictures. I wonder, would you sit on that bench, let me take your picture?"

"My picture?" She laughed. "But why?"

"It's just that a bench like that ... with no one on it. I can't explain exactly. There's a mood there. If you'd just sit for a second....

"Now I've heard of everything," she grinned openly. Yet she was a good sport, she sat on the bench, disregarded the curious stares of passers-by. "Like this?"

I hunkered down, got her framed and focused, sincerely marveled at the picture she made. Those dark, dry leaves behind her, the splashes of bright yellow leaves intermixed with them, her blondeness starkly outlined by a propitious ray of sunlight. "Yes," I said. "That's right. Turn your head, give me a profile. No, no smile. Drop your chin, pretend you're sad about something."

"Nothing particular about you, is there?"

"Please," I urged, playing the intense fotog to the hilt. "There, hold it." I clicked, cranked the film in one move, snapped a second. "Look this way? Now, a little smile. Yes, like that. Very nice. One more?"

I moved around, took three more shots. "You're very kind," I said. "This is my lucky day: The light just right, a beautiful woman to pose for me." I paused, let the flattery sink in. "You are beautiful, your profile, your nose ... it's so perky and cute. An exquisite chin...."

"Whoa now, mister. This sounds like a pitch."

I looked up, forced a hurt expression into my eyes. "Please, Miss, I mean that, I'm sincere. No ulterior motives, you must believe that. Since when is it a crime for a man to tell a woman she's stunning, she's...."

My look got to her, she was instantly contrite. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way. But you meet so many crazy characters nowadays."

"Another profile, please? The light's going." I had her hooked. I've never met a woman yet who didn't like being told she was beautiful, and I poured it on. "You should be a model. There's just an outside chance I might sell one of these. Would you mind?"

Her expression was wry. "So surprise me. I'll believe it when I see it." She stood. "Enough? Satisfied?"

"Yes," I replied, executing an embarrassed bob. "I'm very grateful. Perhaps, if these turn out ... you'd like copies." I produced a pen. "If you'd give me your name, your address...."

That suspicious perplexity reappeared in her eyes. "NO, that's not necessary. There's gotta be a hitch here somewhere. I'll pass this time. You've had your fun, let's leave it at that, shall .we?"

And with that, sending me one last puzzled look, she was off, her heels clicking provocatively on the pavement.

I watched her go, strange sense of loss suddenly setting in. Okay, baby. If that's the way you want to play it. There's more than one way to skin a cat.

And aren't you the cutest kitten I've seen in a coon's age? I was quite zoological all of a sudden. And not a little bit biological in the bargain.

Saturday and Sunday passed like two years on Mars. I sat in that apartment thinking up my next move, I waited on those pictures to be processed. I drank, I-watched TV, Once I even opened a couple books, read a chapter in each, threw them aside. In between I thought about Tiffany, I reviewed every possible pickup overture I'd ever used in my strumpet-studded career. And got the heebie-jeebies in the process. For not only did the entire operation pivot on my Casonova skills, I actually wanted to know this chick, I was crazy to bed her down for her own sake.

Saturday night there was a call from Candy. She wanted encore. I took a rain check, pleaded a business engagement. Sunday then? Sorry, babe, I'll be out of town.

How permanent a rain check the little hot pants would learn only in good time.

I picked up the pictures first thing Monday morning. Surprisingly enough, even though I'd just gone through the motions, most of them turned out pretty good. But then, when you've got a subject as chock-full of charm and female pizazz as Tiffany, how can you miss? There was one there, the pic with her looking pensive, that was a real prize-winner; it tore the heart out of me.

How come, God? I thought. How come you create beautiful creatures like this? How come you don't give 'em some brains to go with all those female pretties? How come you put 'em on earth for the likes of us? To be brood mares, to be trampled and kicked around? To be used? To be cast aside once a man gets what he wants from them?

I caught myself, buried the screwjay thoughts beneath an avalanche of curses. What's with you, Socrates? I challenged. Since when? They're there. Use 'em. Christ, you've been around long enough to know What they're for. Don't knock a provident Nature.

I was waiting in that same park across from the phone company offices on Monday night, my lines down pat My heart just as pat. Like pit-a-pat. I had the duplicate prints in a plain envelope, my camera was once more slung around my neck. I watched that door like a hawk.

She saw me while she was still across the street, sent me a quick, uncertain smile. "Well," she said as reached me, "if it isn't my picture taking friend. Did you come back for seconds? Was I that much of a smash?"

"You didn't give me a chance to thank you the other night," I stepped onstage. "You walked off so fast. I ... I thought maybe you'd like to have some copies of the pictures I took. We took."

Again, a woman can't resist pictures of herself; no more than she can pass a mirror without taking a peek. "Sure," she said brightly. "Fine, let's see."

I sat on the bench, provided a lead. She sat beside me, took the enelope, began going through the shots. I watched her face intently, sweated out her reaction.

"Say," she exclaimed, sending me a warm smile, "these are good. I couldn't get studio shots better than this. This one of me with the Sad Sack look, that gets me."

"I thought that one was particularly evocative." I moved a little closer. "Since you wouldn't tell me your name or address-I had to thank you some way."

"Sorry about that. I was kind of a snip, wasn't I?" She offered her hand in gamin truce. "Tiffany Coyne."

"Tiffany. How pretty."

"My mom used to be nuts about Tiffany Thayer novels. I was a great disappointment to her. She expected a boy. Guess who got stuck. And your name?"

"Carr Harrison. So nice to meet you, Tiffany."

"Call me Tiff. All my friends do." She studied the pictures. "This one of me smiling is cute too."

"Couldn't help but be," I put in the gold needle.

"With the subject I had."

She turned, regarded me intently, a frank look of camaraderie in her eyes. "You really want me to keep these? Color prints come high. I'd really appreciate it. My mother'll love these."

"I can get you extras if you like."

"No, I wouldn't put you to that much trouble. You live in Crown Point? Maybe I could borrow the negatives."

"Yes. Born and bred." I handed her one of my fake cards. "I'm in insurance." I laughed shamefacedly. "Just in case you thought I was some kind of a nut or something. Taking pictures of total strangers on the street. I assure you ... the first time I've ever done that...."

She stared at me intently, her eyes probing mine. Then, out of the blue: "You don't happen to send roses to girls as a sideline too, do you? Without enclosing a card, I mean?"

I fought to keep from jumping where I sat. "Flowers?" I bluffed. "What are you talking about?"

She twisted her mouth in self exasperation. "Skip it, Carr. I must be thinking about two other guys."

I let the subject die. "This has been very nice, Tiffany," I said, rising. "Maybe I'll see you again sometime." I looked around asifstruckby inspiration. "May I give you a ride home? My car's right there."

Tiffany regarded my gleaming Caddy, did a double take. "That yours? Insurance must be very good this year."

Like I said before, I've yet to meet the woman who's not impressed by a Cadillac. Tiffany was no exception. "I've been a little lucky," I smiled self-effacingly. "How about a lift?"

"I suppose," .she shrugged. And as I held the door for her: "My mother always warned me about things like this." She made a monkey-face. "But here goes nothing."

As we drove, I capitalized on my opportunity. "Perhaps you'd like a drink before you go home? I know a quiet little bar down the street a ways. I always, find a martini's...."

"I'm not much of a drinker, I'm afraid." She laughed, wriggled. "But why not? One won't hurt. A gal can't be pressed into white slavery in a bar, can she?" we stopped at a place called Leonardo's. Very elegant, very expensive. And-very intimate.

It was 6:30 before we left. Our conversation was very friendly, very warm, a relationship of sorts was established. And-like Candy-Tiffany found the thought of keeping company with a bachelor who drove a Cadillac very nice indeed. Especially a so very gentlemanly bachelor, one charming to the n-th degree, a man with whom, she found, she had so much in common.

By the time I dropped Tiffany Coyne off at her apartment door, she'd consented to a date for Wednesday night. The Ice Capades were in town. We'd make a night of it.

On Wednesday night we had dinner, took in the ice show. We stopped at a restaurant for coffee and snacks afterward, I asked Tiffany if she minded if I had a Scotch and soda with my food.

On Saturday night we took in Hawaii at Crown Point's plushest movie theater. Afterward we stopped at Leonardo's again. Again the facade was embellished upon. Tiffany took sherry, I stuck with an imported beer. We danced one discreet dance, left shortly after 11:15. As I drove her home the conversation got slightly personal. We delved into each other's background, mine faked, Tiffany's for real-I discovered that her parents were still living, they were situated in Warden, 25 miles south, I learned that Tiffany was a devoted, dutiful daughter.

-Resisting the impulse to kiss her good night at her door, I came away with a smug, confident feeling of accomplishment. Parents yet? Better and better.

Another little souvenir of that night: I also came away with a gut-churning lust that wouldn't say die. If ever I'd wanted to kiss a doll, if ever I'd wanted to paw and maul her, reduce her to a panting, shuddering ball of flat-out female lust-

For the first time since I'd arrived in Crown Point, I used one of those numbers Brad Novak had forced on me. For the first time in over a year I was so bad off that I didn't have time to roll my own. Comedown of comedowns:

I had to pay for it.

So the days passed, club-footed, crippled, each seemingly lasting a year. With the only thing on my mind being Tiffany, the launching of the lists racket in Crown Point. And yet-wasn't there more than that to it?

If there was, I pointedly stayed away from an over-mulling of same.

Despite all Mike Kilmer's raging phone calls, his adjurations to get the show on the road, I managed to stand fast. I insisted on playing it ultra-cool; not once did I crowd Tiffany, no suggestive word ever slipped past my lips. This was going to be a score of scores; I'd do nothing at all to jeopardize it.

There were complications. One, Candy Stenson. I fretted about her and Tiffany getting their heads together at work, comparing notes. I cursed my iron clad rule not to monkey with aliases. Even though I'd discovered from past experiences that they caused more trouble than they precluded, I wished that, in this instance, I'd have made an exception.

But, getting to know Tiffany better, I found my fears groundless. She and Candy were only nodding acquaintances, Tiffany considered Candy a rattlebrain, she certainly wouldn't have shared any confidences with her nit-wit ilk. And full speed ahead!

Then there was that night I finally admitted to sending the roses. Saturday night again, we were once more at Leonardo's. It had come to be affectionately known between us as "our place". I'd managed to wrap Tiffany around two sherries, myself around two martinis, we were feeling very mellow indeed.

We danced to a smooth combo which played Red Roses For a Blue Lady. I suppose that's what set me off. We'd danced more of late, and where there was nothing in our words, no overt actions we could construe as romantic preludes, the dancing filled that gap in some subtle way. Tiffany was a dream to dance with. Light, graceful, following me with an instinctive sureness that constantly amazed me. I'm no ball-room slouch, but I'm not the world's greatest dancer either. And Tiffany in a clinging, black, chiffon cocktail dress, silver lame pumps, her stockings witcheries of midnight-black, she was a veritable vision, essence of allure.

And though our dancing was circumspect, though our bodies weren't tight, it was cheek-to-cheek, I was close enough to take in her musky, aphrodisiac perfume. We danced close enough so that I could feel her hard-bound breasts trace erotic calligraphs on my chest.

"You remember that first time, Tiff?" I murmured into her ear, fighting to keep my shivers, at bay. "When you asked me about some guy who sent you roses?"

She stiffened, pulled away, regarded me accusingly. "It was you, Carr I Darn you! You and your innocent act. But why? I don't understand...."

"I saw you in the office one day when I came in to pay my bill. I asked one of the girls who you were. But then I never saw you again. I sent the flowers to see if you were still at the telephone company." I extemporized glibly. "I was in the office the day you got them. Then I started waiting outside the building. I watched you. I tried to figure out a way I could get to talk to you."

She began to giggle. "And that camera gimmick? It was all a put-up job?"

"I was just dying to meet you, Tiff. You were the most beautiful woman I'd ever set eyes on." I put my lips in her hair. "I think you're more beautiful with every passing day."

She started, I heard her suck in her breath sharply. "Carr," she whispered, "that's beautiful. It makes me feel all sad inside, like I want to cry. That you went to all that trouble to find me." She pressed her cheek to mine more firmly. "That's the sweetest thing anyone's ever said to me, Carr. The sweetest thing anyone's ever done."

I felt my heart fill up. Involuntarily my arm tightened around her, her breasts really drilled me. If Tiffany was objecting, she made no sign of it. She melted into my arms, actually fitted her body-from shoulders to knees-tight to mine. It seemed she gently-bunted her tummy to mine. But it was a fleeting move,. I couldn't be sure it had really happened.

Not more than ten minutes later we left Leonardo's.

"Would you like to come in for a little?" she asked as we paused outside her door. "Coffee, another drink, or something? I think it'd be all right." Her eyes searched mine, an unsettling intensity in them.

And though I was dying to go into that apartment with her, climb all over her, I somehow managed control. "I'd best not, Tiffany," I said. "It's late. We're both tired." I smiled . "Some other time?"

I could swear I saw disappointment in her eyes. "Surely, Carr," she breathed. "You're the boss."

Our eyes locked for long moments. Tiffany's lashes fluttered, her lips trembled. And then, daring fate, powerless to do otherwise, my lips slowly drifted down to hers. Found them waiting, warm and soft, a muted sensuality in them as Tiffany briefly returned that pressure, swirled her mouth on mine.

We broke the kiss; my lips felt like they'd been seared. Tiffany stared up wide-eyed, a stricken look in her gaze. "Carr...." she breathed, her tone awe-choked.

"Good night, Tiffany," I said. "It's been wonderful. See you Tuesday."

Then I wheeled, all but bolted. Outside I drew quick gasps of breath. Another minute of that, I concluded, and I'd have blown the whole thing!

The girl's name was Adrienne; I'd picked her up in a rum-dum bar called The Rendezvous after leaving Tiffany. Three drinks later we'd been on the way to my pad. Where, now, both of us naked in my bed, Adrienne was conferring a very singular homage upon me.

"Some girls dig things this way," she hissed, her voice distant, muffled. "Especially when a man's so...." she snickered " ... gifted as you. I just happen to be one of those girls. Good, baby?"

"Good," I groaned, feeling like the top of my skull would lift any minute. "Very good, doll. Got to it."

Adrienne did. And if ever there was predatory, kink-ridden female-She knew twists I'd never experienced before. Tongue and lips weren't enough for her, she brought her teeth to exotic play also. Until she had me groaning and twisting on the bed, half in dread, half in 'delight.

I fell into some sort of a swoon. I blanked out "Adrienne's harsh, cheap, drink-besotted face. I thought about Tiffany. I thought about kissing her, about how sweet it had been, how excited I'd got. From just a kiss? I marveled. When what this pig's doing for me is-

I turned the thoughts off. Damn you, Carr! Not now, of all times! This's no time to think of Tiffany.

Adrienne was slithering upward on me. "There, sugar," she seethed. "Now we ball, huh? You're ready. 'Bout as ready as any man'll ever be ... as ready as I c'n make 'em."

She howled at my brutality at first. But before I was done she howled for an entirely different reason. And if ever I took things out on a woman-

CHAPTER FIVE

Tuesday came and went. Again a low flame thing wherein I kept a respectful distance from Tiffany, troweled on respectability and good intentions in a thick, gooey mortar. And though I plainly saw that Tiffany was ripe, that she'd deluded herself into a romance, that she wanted more than fleeting touches, circumspect kisses at her door, still I held off.

In between there were the small gifts, flowers, candy, perfume-the sort of things most goopy swains send their girl friends. Like Saroyan says: A Nice Old Fashioned Romance with Love Lyrics and Everything.

Tiffany became more impatient by the day.

As did dear Mike Kilmer. He was on the phone three times during that last week of my campaign, scolding, cajoling, ridiculing me. Exhorting me to get the dealie wrapped up. "Patience, dear jackass," I told him. "Don't get in a lather. I'll nail this kid in my own good time. The way you nag, you'd think you were the boss instead of the other way around."

Then there were the SOS's dear Candy kept sending me. Somebody, please! Sendafireman to apartment 720, The Plainview House. I almost felt sorry for the torchy little sexpot, I could imagine her tossing and turning in that lonely bed, whimpering with need for me, finally putting out the flames in that one, unfailing way left to frustrated cuties. But nevertheless-

I was always out to lunch.

On that following Saturday night, time closing in, I decided. Now or never. If I considered myself any kind of an operator at all-put your reputation the line. The kid was never going to be any more ready for pouncing. All day Saturday I was in a brown study, I sat staring into space, thinking out my every move and counter move. Like some Napoleon planning a historical battle. Until, by 8:00 that night, as I went to pick Tiffany up, my lines were letter-perfect.

The evening was open to suggestion anyway. We'd cruise the downtown area, see if a movie intrigued, scout the clubs, see which ones were swinging. One of those grab-bags. If I'd had any doubts about the extent of Tiffany's readiness for more volatile romantic pastimes, there was, as exhibit A, the inflaming little number she wore that night. A midnight-blue gown woven by diligent spiders, diaphonous and flouncy in the skirt, bosom revealing, one of those off-the shoulder things, a single, thin strap holding it up on one side.

The sheer hosiery, the blue sequined pumps that went with it, were stunning, instantly caused my lecher juices to flow. The doll was definitely loaded for bear.

Even as we pulled away from the curb, I said, "You know what dumb-bunny stunt I just pulled? I left my wallet on my dresser. Mind if we drive over, pick it up?"

She laughed, cuddled close to me on the seat. "I don't see that we have any alternative."

In the Crown Point Arms' parking lot, I exhibited even further propriety. "Normally I wouldn't suggest a thing like this, Tiff, but maybe you'd better come up with me. There's been some strong-arm stuff in the neighborhood lately, I'd hate to leave you in the car alone."

She started, paused. "I guess it would be all right," she said hesitantly. "I've always wanted to see your place."

Minutes later we were on the fourth floor, hovering outside my door, I took a deep breath, twisted the key, flung it open. No crowding at all; I just let Tiffany float in. "It's a lovely place," she sighed. "All comfy and nice. Neat too, Carr."

It was neat, all right. Every detail was just so. The FM radio had purposely been left on, even now wafted soft, dreamy Sinatra all over the landscape. The lamps were tuned to firefly intensity, the rosy embers of a fire still glowed in the fireplace. If ever there was a setting to make one settle for "staying in" instead of fighting the December bluster outside-

"It's wonderful," Tiffany said, wandering about the room, finally settling before the fireplace. "That fire feels marvelous."

"Can I take your coat, Tiffany?" I said. "We might as well have a little drink so long as we're here. There's no hurry, is there?"

Her expression was dubious. But then she smiled a reckless smile. "Okay. For a little bit. I guess I could use a drink."

I left her sitting before the fire, went to gather the cocktail things. Her face was slightly alarmed as I returned, began to arrange the bottles, the mixer, the glasses on the cocktail table. "What is all that, Carr?"

"A special treat, honey. Manhattans. I've never been able to get you to try one."

"I know. They're so strong."

"Not these. I'll make them with rum. It'll be the smoothest drink you ever had." Three-to-one then. A brisk stirring. A final chilling while I popped two cherries in each glass. Then I was pouring.

"It looks good," Tiffany said. And as she took her first sip: "Tastes good too. So smooth. Sweet."

I toasted her, my eyes skewering hers. "Here's to us, Tiff."

For long moments we stared into the fire, enjoyed the quiet, peaceful mood, let the liquor burn debilitating powder-train through our systems. Another week done-letdown was definitely in order.

I put more wood on the fire, stealthily killed the nearest lamp in the bargain. I was pleased to see Tiffany's drink half gone when I turned. That's it, baby, I exulted. It's just soda pop.

We talked desultorily, I let my hands 'accidentally' brush hers more and more often, I said nothing that would put Tiffany on guard. I rose again. "Another? Then we'll shove off." Baby, will we shove off!

She smiled undecidedly. "I don't know. This one's got me dizzy already."

I ignored her, mixed a fresh batch, and extra besides. Another lamp bit the dust as I returned to her. I put the glasses on the mantel, lifted her to her feet. "That's a gorgeous dress," I said. "Brings out the beast in a man." My arms went around her gently, I drew her close. Instantly her eyes fluttered, her body stiffened. "Dance, baby?"

I didn't give her a chance to refuse. We drifted into Everybody Loves Somebody without a moment's hesitation. And Tiffany, expecting the worst, relieved, lent herself to the dancing with a will. "I've never danced in a man's apartment before," she said, snuggling close, her fragrance, her warmth making me a little tipsy myself. "I feel kind of ... wicked. Like a loosewoman."

I didn't answer, I just nuzzled her hair, let my breath bake her ear a little. Shortly she let me draw her still closer. She stopped, kicked off her shoes. The dance went on; Tiffany seemed even smaller, even more dependent then. I wanted to charge her then and there, squeeze her until her ribs creaked, I wanted to kiss her, never stop kissing.

But I forestalled my prowling, snarling lust, I played the 'gentleman' bag to the dregs. Once more we sat before the fire, drinking, the flickering light doing marvelous things to Tiffany's flesh, making it velvety and smooth, the deep shadows modeling the conoids of her breasts, emphasizing the agitated cleft of her bosom. Her lips were liquid, tempting. For some reason she avoided my eyes.

It was obvious we'd be going nowhere tonight. Except-perhaps-all systems A-okay-to bed.

"You're beautiful, Tiffany," I said, my voice clogged with awed reverence. "The fire light makes you look like some sort of a goddess. A pagan goddess. I ... I want to worship you, almost."

She turned slowly, her face crumpled, registering an inner pain, a war of restrain. "Why, Carr, what a lovely thing to say." She stared at me, her eyes jittering, her mouth stricken. Even as I slowly moved my lips to hers.

Then we were in a crushing, famished embrace, my lips were welded to hers, they were grinding, rolling, sliding in gently, yet predatory, passion. Tiffany was passive at first, she merely permitted the kiss. But now, as it went on, her hands came up, her arms wound about my neck, her fingers reflexively played in my hair at the nape of my neck. Her arms tightened, became as greedy as mine.

The radio played In The Blue of Evening.

"Goodness," she breathed as we broke, "what's got into us, Carr? I ... I lost all control for a moment there."

"That's what's supposed to happen," I said gravely, still sliding my lips on her cheek, on that silky incline of throat and shoulder. She shivered, moaned softly. "When two people fall in love."

She started at that. "Do you mean that, Carr? Do you love me? Really love me?"

"I should think that would be obvious, darling. I haven't been able to think, to eat, anything, since I've known you. I worship the ground you walk on, I'm not worthy of such a beautiful, wonderful woman as you." I really emoted then. "Oh, Tiffany, I do love you!" My voice choked. Once more I pulled her lips to mine, I drove a searing, scorching, mind-obliterating kiss to her.

The way she answered the kiss, the way she was trembling all at once, the way her breath came in quick, hissing puffs, was dead giveaway. It was going to be all downhill from here on in.

Then we were off the floor, we were on the davenport, our drinks before us (Tiffany's miraculously refilled), we were knotted in hot, suffocating embrace, neither of us wanting to unlock our fevered lips for the merest moment.

"Dear, oh dear," Tiffany babbled those moments we did return to the world. "I don't know what's happening to me. It's wonderful and awful at the same time. I've never felt like this. I ... we shouldn't. We...."

Nevertheless she never gave me a moment's fight as I pulled her back, nearly laid her prone on the davenport, kissed her anew. "We shouldn't...."

But we did just the same.

How long we huddled on that davenport, in that gloom-ridden room, how many times we kissed, I'll never know. Tiffany wouldn't have any idea either, for within ten minutes she was out of it completely. She was my masterpiece. I played her like a bow of grass, I handled her like some delicate, fragile wraith, I said things to her that turned her head, made her dizzy with pride and joy and desire. I kissed her a hundred different ways, I got to nerve ends the poor kid never knew she had.

In between there was more liquor, more of the cozy, safe mood, more of the vainglorious endearments that turn any woman on. "Oh, I love you, Carr," she choked now. "I do. So much. I've wanted you to hold me, to kiss me like this for so long. I know I shouldn't say it, we've known each other such a short time. I don't want to love you, I don't want to love anyone. Not this fast. But I can't help it, I can't, I can't. Kiss me again, hold me. Tight! Don't ever let me go!"

"Baby, baby," I groaned. "My sweet, adorable baby."

The kissing again, the churning of lips and body, the tentative flickings of our tongues. Once I looked down, saw how her skirt was pulled up, saw the white of her legs above her stockings, saw the way her knees were scissoring together, read the symptoms instantly.

Then, my heart hammering like some drop forge, fighting to keep my hands from trembling, I knew we'd arrived at that so deadly, so crucial part of the evening.

My lips devouring and grinding, I slowly began working my hand up to her waist, inch by slow inch, until I cupped the underswell of her left breast. I let it rest there, waited for reaction. But when there was none, I applied more pressure, I gently lifted that soft yet firm globe, I rolled it slightly.-

Tiffany's mouth fought mine, she brought her hand up, pulled mine away. I didn't let her break the kiss, I kept drilling my lips to hers. Again my hand crept up. I captured the whole breast, my thumb was roiling the nipple before Tiffany pulled me away this time.

Still we kissed and writhed on that davenport, I felt Tiffany's silky knee rubbing against my leg. Again my hand crept up. She fought me again, but her efforts were much more feeble now, they were listless, mere token of resistance. Back and forth our hands went, the interval of permissiveness becoming longer and longer between each rebuff.

Honey, I gloated. Now you're getting the idea.

I was crazy with lust, I wanted to seize her then and there, force her to give in. But somehow I kept control. So I continued chipping away, working toward that moment when her own lust would blister her, when she'd be begging, when there would be no turning back.

Now she whimpered in her throat, her legs jittered, further signal of the fever pitch she was achieving. I thought it safe to get bolder. Slowly, tenderly, my hand swept across that bare expanse of her bosom where there was no dress. It moved with tortoise-like slowness, invaded that silky gown, searched out the naked flesh itself. I felt Tiffany freeze beneath my touch; my heart stopped. But then, wanting the liberty as much as I did, she made no move to stop me, she tolerated the intruding hand.

Then I was in the cup of that brassiere, my fingers were squeezing, wedging, closing on that rigid nipple, my hand was struggling to basket that entire luscious breast.

Abruptly Tiffany pulled away. "No, darling!" she gasped. "No more. That's enough! This is wrong, we mustn't act like this. This is for marriage..for our wedding night ... Please, please ... be strong, Carr. Be strong for both of us...."

I kissed her eyes, her ears, her lips, I buried my mouth in her velvety, fragrant throat. My voice husky, I cried, "It's all right, angel. If we love each other, if we want each other ... if we're going to commit ourselves once and for all ... why must we wait?"

"We have to," she thrashed, "we just have to. No more, Carr, no more. I have to go home now. I have to...."

My lips came down, buried resistance, pushed her back again. "You have to stay right here," I intoned in a dominating, harsh way, a way that let Tiffany take herself off the hook, gave her alibi. If she caved in now, she could blame me. I was too strong for her, I wouldn't let her think, I drove her out of her senses. "You have to let me love you. Love you the way a woman like you should be loved. Like the sweet goddess you are...."

She mewed piteously, let hers elf be pushed back, she eagerly welcomed my lips, began flicking her tongue in answer to mine. Once more my hand crept inside her gown, once more she fought to eject it. But more feebly this time. We began our see-saw game all over again. Until, at long last, she didn't fight any more. My fingers plucked at her nipple freely now. Her body shuddered convulsively, her breath came in great, harsh gaspings now. "Ooh, ooh, ooh...." she moaned.

She stiffened one last time, hissed, tried to hold my hands as I began working that shoulder strap down. But it was a dying gasp, there was no steam in it at all. She wanted this to happen just as bad as I did.

Then the gown fell away, the built-in brassiere with it. I sat on the davenport's edge staring down at that milky flesh, at those swiftly puckering nipples. I felt a rush of wonder as I saw the way the firelight played on thos symmetrical, perfect globes, as I saw goose bumps flit across that turbulent surface. In the gloom I could see the fine, blue veins, exotic brambles about each bud.

Tiffany's hands came up, covered each breast. Gently, masterfully, I removed them, feasted my eyes on those heaving crowns again. She trembled more savagely now, flung her head back and forth. "What's happening to me?" she wailed, "why can't I fight you? Why can't I make you stop?"

Then my head fell, I began to kiss those nipples, I let my tongue stab and swipe and swirl. Tiffany sucked in her breath loudly, groaned. I wanted to howl in that eternal male pride. That pride in his power to transform a woman into a snarling, hissing bundle of sexuality. A woman who only an hour ago was so haughty, so pristine, above lapses of the flesh. My lips compressed, formed greedy tunnel. Tiffany gasped, her legs began to thrash.

That froth of slip and skirt was suddenly irrestible to me. And positive that Tiffany was beyond the point of recall, I dropped one hand, slid it up her silken thighs. She stiffened reflexively, pinched her legs together. "Oh, darling, no...." she called. But did absolutely nothing by way of removing my hand from that humid vale. My fingers swept swiftly up and down her silky thighs.

Now they flirted at that crisp promontory of her belly, they tickled and spider-crawled, they carressed the sheer nylon of her panties there. If Tiffany was ever going to put up any last-ditch fight-but there was no fight. A vicious moan bubbling up from her, she capitulated entirely, she was transported to a limbo where only raw sensation-not rational-existed.

Her legs went limp, she actually adjusted to deliver herself to me. And as I continued to torment her on both fronts, she shuddered savagely, she began to sob. "Oh, darling, my precious darling. Yes, oh yes. That's fantastic, so fantastic. Take me, beloved. Now! Undress me, use me. Do what you have to with me." Her cries became pinched, maenadic. "Before I go out of my mind."

I made the rest of that prelude a prolonged, reverent ceremony. But not once, nevertheless, did I give her opportunity for second-thoughts. I flayed her sexuality mercilessly, kept conscience and reason at bay. The exquisite gown was carefully removed. For long moments I sat over Tiffany, gorging my eyes on her virginal beauty, assessing her as she lay full length on the davenport, in just the red panties, the dark hosiery, the bewitching pumps, the black band of her garter belt vaguely visible. I exulted in the way those lovely, shimmering legs twitched and clamped, the way her hips writhed.

Once more my lips returned to those twin domes, my tongue flailed those pert berries. Once more Tiffany fell apart before that onslaught.

I kissed her legs and ankles as I removed those shoes, I skittered my lips over those smooth slopes. Gravely, ritualistically I undid her stockings, floated them down her legs, let my lips follow with further flutterings and ticklings.

Then my lips swept over her heaving belly, along the hog-backs of her pelvis, down the valley of her thighs. She groaned and choked in her throat. "Darling, darling," she squealed, "that's exquisite, exquisite. I never thought love ... with a man ... would be like this. I love you, Carr. I love what you're doing to me, what you're going to do...." Her legs fluttered helplessly. "Dear God, dear God...."

Now the panties were peeled down her hips, were carefully worked down her legs. Again my lips followed the departing garment, they laid ground work for the most necessary obeisance of all. They made it impossible for Tiffany to refuse me at that most crucial of moments.

Still I continued to kiss her belly, to let my lips tease that golden gorse, make her yearn for something more-what, she had no idea. At least not yet. Tiffany jittered and rolled like some pagan, fever-riddled animal by then. Her cries were viscous, coarse, she was bereft of any last vestiges of human dignity.

There was only need now, grinding, relentless, hammering need. The rawest, most carnal of lust.

Now I picked up her naked, reflexively spasming body in my arms, carried her toward the bedroom.

I was naked then, we were both in bed, our lips locked, our arms clenching, our bodies squirming, our legs fighting for purchase. Again I adjusted, attended Tiffany's breasts again, I made her whimper with impatience. "Please, baby," she puffed, "no more. Don't torture me. Take me now. I can't wait. I have to know."

But there was one last segment to that love charade yet to be enacted. One damning, inarguable segment. Wherein this pitiful ingenue would be snared. "Carr!" she gasped as I began turning on the bed, as my lips once more carved a fiery trail across the silky bowl of her belly. "What ... what are you doing?"

"I'm loving you, angel," I murmured, calling upon deepest reserves. And yet there wasn't the revulsion I had really anticipated. I almost wanted to honor Tiffany in this way. "The way you deserve to be loved. The way a goddess should be loved."

My lips teased at that love tuft, my fingers speared between her thighs, sought to open that secret vault. "But isn't it wrong, darling? Isn't it perverted?"

"Nothing ... done ... in the name of love," I intoned, my fingers scrabbling, "is wrong. Please, darling! Please let me worship ... love you."

A ponderous, awed sigh broke from her, she wriggled, went limp. "All right, baby. If you say it's all right. If that's what you really want. I guess...." Her hips lurched, she gasped sibilantly as that first murderous contact was made. "Ooh, ooh! That's terrible, terrible. It's driving me wild. Carr, darling, must you?"

"I must," I muttered, and attacked her even more frenziedly. "I want to." Let's see you back down now, I thought vengefully, burrowing, forcing, fighting the velvety columns that tried to crush and suffocate me.

"No, darling," she shrilled at last, "no more. I can't stand that. I want you, the real thing. Now, Carr. Oh, dear God, I can't stand any more of that...."

Slowly I drifted up her body, kissing her belly, her diaphragm, her breasts. Now her throat, her ears, her lips. Tiffany was totally transformed, a dedicated wanton. She ground her lower body, she actually bit at my lips.

And when I came over her at long last, poised, waited before initiating her into this greatest of life's mysteries: "You'll hurt me, Carr? You must know by now. I've never had ... this ... a man before."

"Maybe I won't, angel. Some women...."

"It doesn't matter. I can stand it. No matter what I say, don't stop. I want you, no matter what. I want you, want you...." Her hand came up. "Are all men as ... I mean, are they like you?"

I didn't answer. "Now, Tiffany?"

"Now. I'm ready. I'll be brave." Her arms encircling my waist, her lips buried in the concavity of my shoulder, Tiffany fought with all her strength to swallow her anguished moans as I slowly, but determinedly drove myself at that sacred portal. But in. the end she failed.

"I hurt, Carr," she wailed, her arms like iron bars.

"I'm sorry, baby," I murmured. "I'm sorry."

"It's all right. It has to be. I can stand it. Don't stop. Be cruel if you have to. I want this so...." The words were drowned in a thick, choking groan.

Now the worst was over. She sighed blissfully, an exhalation half whimper, half glory. "Oh, Carr, I was brave, I didn't lose my nerve."

A strange wonderment filled me, a sense of awe, of lives intermingled. "Tiffany, my brave baby."

"No. Not any more. I'm no baby. I'm a woman now. I know, I know ... I'm so proud. I love you, Carr. Thank you ... thank you for this...."

The irony of her words slammed like a crowbar between the eyes. I felt crawly and cheap and ugly inside.

"Carr?"

"Yes?"

"Tell me. I mean ... what I have to do. I don't know. I want to be good for you."

"You're fine, baby, just fine."

"Go ahead, lover. Do what you have to. I'm all crazy inside, like a pack of lions had been turned loose there."

"Yes, Tiffany." Slowly, expertly I began to move, fighting shame, fighting to regain the braggart lust that had rode roughshod over me moments ago. I adjusted, achieved better angle, more painful tolerance. I began an ebb and flow in rhythmic cadence.

"Yes, oh yes," Tiffany gasped. "It's getting better, the pain is fading. Yes, darling. It's delicious, so delicious. I never dreamed anything could be like this...."

Now I moved faster, even more brutally, I thought to annihilate nagging guilt by losing myself in sheer mechanics. Gradually a wall of fire grew before me, I stubbornly drove myself toward it. I cringed at the heat of the flames, yet approached it with inexplicable eagerness.

I reached to touch that liquid fire, for some insane reason wanting to plunge my hands into it. I groaned, recoiled. As the fire was swiftly snuffed out. And I discovered that in its place was left a tangled ball of blood-tipped, razor-sharp thorns. Try as I might, I couldn't pull away, I couldn't shake them from my hands.

It was Tiffany's rapturous, deranged cries of release that finally redelivered me to reason once more.

Now, all passion spent, our souls scorched, black and barren, Tiffany lay in my arms, sobbing her heart out. "Dear God," she coughed. "What got into me? Why did I act like some sort of animal? This was for marriage, for my wedding night. I vowed I'd never let a man touch me until that night. How could I have done this, wallowed like some filthy strumpet. How could I have...."

The tears blotted out the rest, only her barking sobs carried now. She clung to me more desperately, rocked her head against my shoulder. "Tell me, Carr," she pleaded, "tell me you love me. That's all I have left...."

"I love you, darling," I forced myself to say. While inside I was consumed with self-loathing, with guilt. As I knew that this was only the first of countless betrayals Tiffany must face before I was through with her.

My rage grew, my gall choked me. As I remembered that even at that moment, from that closet across the room (the door still ajar), Brad Novak stood watching us. That he'd been silent witness ever since we'd entered the bedroom, his motions, the click of his camera drowned by the radio, by our passionate cries.

The expensive, intricate infra-red camera, equipped with infra-red flash attachment, its all-seeing, wide-aperture, wide-angle lens which had so faithfully recorded for posterity every segment of our heathenish love session.

I held Tiffany more fiercely, wished I could cry myself. I fought to bury conscience, I fought to rout thought of any sort.

Still she sobbed as if her very heart would break.

CHAPTER SIX

It was a turnabout of the most disconcerting, incredible sort. For me to be moping about my apartment for days on end following Tiffany's betrayal, for me to be crying in my beer, actually feeling guilt over what I'd done to that green kid.

And since when? I accused. An ex-con like you, a brass-plated cookie? A guy who's been shafted repeatedly, a guy who knows the score? I thought you were for number one. I thought you were never going to let anyone get under your skin again.

And how many kicks in the pants does a guy have to get before he learns one, simple, basic lesson?

How many Marlenes can one guy stand?

But it was no good. None of it. The arguments wouldn't sell, that armor-plated door simply wouldn't come down.

One thing certain: If I'd been on fire at that moment, I wouldn't have hired myself to throw water.

Which may be convoluted syntax, but it expresses perfectly my truest feelings concerning one snake-in-the-grass called Carr Harrison.

And if my guilt about what I'd done to Tiffany wasn't grief enough to carry around, there was an even more hacking consideration lurking in the wings. This the fact that the photographs were ready, that somehow, within the next twenty-four hours, I'd have to work up the courage to confront Tiff, face her down, show her just what sort of a 100-carat louse I was. Within the next 24 hours I'd have to lay the skids to-her, sell her down the river.

And what'n hell was the goddamned sweat? I was acting like some punk kid. Hadn't I done this dirty business a dozen times before, in one form or another? Hadn't I knifed more innocents like Tiffany than I cared to remember?

Wasn't that Golden Rule Number One in getting along in this dog-eat-dog world (civilization I won't use) of ours?

So why the crocodile tears?

Wasn't Tiffany just another lamb, another sucker? Someone to be used, to be exploited? Who'n hell did she think she was? Wasn't she vulture-bait just like all the rest of us? What made her any different?

And round and round the furry-winged thoughts flew. Faster and faster, their shrill jibes and taunts making me want to get inside my brain with a double-barreled shotgun.

Those photographs were darbs, all right. Especially those of me with my face hidden between Tiffany's legs, the ones showing her distorted, sometimes-blissful-sometimes-agonized experessions as I performed that subservient adoration. They made me sick; what would they do to Tiffany?

Equally sickening was the thought that Brad Novak had watched in the flesh, he'd seen things the camera hadn't caught. He'd heard things no man ought to hear another man doing.

I tried summoning up the old cynicism, the old indifference. After all, in a dirty business like this, a man can't have qualms. Dirty is as dirty does.

I prayed that Tiffany would listen to reason, that I wouldn't have to show her those photographs, that I wouldn't have to threaten to see that copies of them got sent to Warden. To that little grey home in the west. To Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Coyne, Tiffany's parents.

After all, it wasn't as if I wasn't going to offer her a generous cut for her part in our cozy little scheme.

Everybody can use a little spare cash.

The hours passed with maddening slowness, I couldn't find enough ways to kill the days. And if I'd marshalled arguments, conversational and seductive ploys before, they were like nothing compared to the skull work I did in preparation for our upcoming date tomorrow night. Our first confrontation since our personal Night of Trinity.

I was thinking more now, but enjoying it less.

In attempt to slay conscience it was inevitable that I'd dredge up memory of Marlene. For she was, more than any other single influence in my life, responsible for everything I'd become, good or bad. She was scapegoat, I could blame my viciousness on her, I could defend my betrayal of Tiffany by saying I was getting even with Marlene. Marlene and the ugly world-the wolves-she'd thrown me to.

I'd met Marlene shortly after I'd returned from Japan, where Uncle Sam's army had me staked out on occupation duty. I'd got a job in Chicago, I'd cut cold with my rummy parents, with the rummy city I'd been brought up in. But then the kid brother, Ronny died. At the tender age of twelve. Pneumonia, the coroner had said. But I knew better. Ron had died of neglect, of being kicked around once too often. Marlene had come to the woebegone funeral, had stopped to extend her sympathies.

Something in her gaze had ignited skyrockets inside me. I'd drawn her aside, finally seen her home. Nobody else was coming to see Ronny anyway.

I continued seeing Marlene. All through the rest of my twenty-first year. For the first time in my life, making it on a truck-driver's salary, I was happy, truly happy.

It was bound to happen. One night, in my secondhand car, our emotions getting the best of us, in the back seat, on a deserted road five miles out, I'd undressed Marlene, kissed, caressed and adored her. In the end we'd shared that soul-shattering moment of surrender and ecstasy.

Strangely enough it was a first for both of us. And clumsy though it was, the whole thing was transfiguring, that night we'd vowed our love.

It happened often after that. Sometimes in the car, sometimes in my rented room, sometimes on the grass in one of the parks. Shortly we became proficient lovers, we brought ourselves to soaring, gaspingly joyous fulfillments. And immediately we sought to make it happen again.

But gradually Marlene had changed. While she didn't actually avoid me, she was no longer quite as available. And though she professed her love, gave herself to me willingly enough, vowed to marry me one day, it was still somehow different.

The reason for the change wasn't secret for long. Professing extreme eagerness to finalize our wedding, Marlene broached a plan her brother had suggested. A plan centering upon a break-in at a fur wholesaler's on Gellar Street. A cinch job that brother Frank had cased, deemed foolproof. A fence was already waiting for the stuff, had promised $10,000. After our split with Frank wouldn't we have a lovely wedding?

Sure I was leery of the proposal. But crazy in love with Marlene as I was, convinced it would be an easy caper, I consented. A date was set. We'd use my car to haul off the furs.

Of course the plan was full of holes. We'd barely got inside the warehouse when bells began ringing everywhere. Marlene and Frank got away. I didn't.

Three-to-five, the judge smiled.

It was later, when I was on the verge of going psycho at "Stateville" that I'd learned that last bitter, crushing truth about my beloved Marlene. As a new con, a former friend of Frank's, revealed that Frank was no more brother to Marlene than I was. They were lovers, they'd been using me. They'd never intended to split with me. Marlene and Frank were to take the entire haul, cut out for parts unknown. Last he'd heard, Marlene and 'brother' Frank were somewhere in Dallas.

It was that vengeful, desperate hate that had kept me sane as I'd served the rest of my term. A vow to avenge Marlene's betrayal when I was freed-someday, no matter how long I had to wait-burned night and day with licking, murderous heat in my brain. The insane,, omnipresent hatred had been with me all those haunted days, it had changed me from a boy to a man.

It had taught me what life was all about.

Of course that vengeance-lust was gone now, I could barely remember what Marlene looked like any more. But the effects of her betrayal had irrevocably transformed me. I'd never look at the world in quite the same way again. One thing certain-

I'd never believe in such an insubstantial, ephermeral thing as love again.

Dredging up thoughts of Marlene seemed to help. Some of the old hard-headedness was back again, miso-gynic cynicism firmly replaced in the saddle. I could transfer to Tiffany now, the shafting she was going to get seemed emminently fitting.

And since Marlene had taught me so well-

I'd be doing that starry-eyed kid a favor. I'd be teaching her the score, the real score. I'd teach her to toughen up. Some day she might even thank me.

But for the time being-I wasn't holding my breath.

"I don't even know how to face you," Tiffany said, both of us in once more the sanctity of her apartment. "What you must think of me."

"I think nothing at all," I said. "After all, it takes two to tangle. I blame myself of course, it was all my fault, I took gross advantage of you." I pumped sincerity and remorse into my voice. "But I'm a man, I'm not made of stone, after all. You were so beautiful, so devastatingly desirable. Any man in his right mind would have...."

"Don't," she turned me off. "Let's not talk about it. It's over and done with. We'll try to forget it. Until later, when we're married." Her eyes went crazy. "That is, if you still want me. I wouldn't blame you if you deserted me now. Now that you've had what you want, now that I've revealed myself as a shameless hussy...."

I tried to take her into my arms, soften her up, but she pulled away. "No, don't touch me, don't start that again." Bitterness tinged her voice. "Don't use all your cute tricks on me. Lord, you played me like a three-dollar accordian. God, what a comedown...."

Her sanctimonious air wigged me. "We're all human beings," I argued, "we're all bound to make mistakes. Don't carry on so, darling. Nothing's changed, I still love you, I...."

"Don't talk about love to me, Carr. If that's your idea of love...."

"All right!" I snapped, "we'll drop the subject. I can see you're distraught, you're not seeing things in their true perspective. I just want you to know that...."

"Of course," she interrupted, "it's not the same with me as it was with you. A woman can only lose her virgini-her virtue once. It's different with a man. He can have countless experiences. And judging by the way you made such a fool out of me...."

"Please, Tiffany," I pleaded, "if you feel this way, let's not talk." I moved closer. "Here, let me hold you. We can grant each other that much comfort, can't we?"

"I told you before, Carr. No more of that." Her face twisted into a self loathing grimace. "I can't even trust myself that far."

And though I had carefully prepared my openers, figured just how I was going to twist the conversation around to telephone company business, broach my proposition to her, suddenly I was angry, I didn't much care whether I was discreet or not. If she was going t act so high and mighty, put her self on some sort of unattainable pedestal-"How are things going at work?" I blurted.

"And why should you care about that?" she shot.

"There doesn't seem to be much else we can discuss. Besides," a crazy recklessness invaded, "I've got my reasons."

"Oh, do you? And just what might they be?"

Honey, I thought bitterly, you're making things awfully damned easy for me, aren't you? You really want to get slapped down. Well, you've come to the right place. "I just might have a little business proposition for you."

"Business proposition? My, the tone of this romance certainly shifts swiftuly."

"Only because you're making it that way."

"And just what is this proposition?"

"It has to do with the lists you're in charge of. Those listings of new subscribers."

"Oh? And how do you know about that?"

"I have my ways. Besides, you mentioned it once in passing."

"So what if I did? What's this got to do with my job?"

"Quite a lot." Then, my rage cold, seething, wanting to strike out at her, I launched into my proposal, I matter-of-factly described my modus operandi, told her the details of my racket, described just how I proposed to use those lists, the profits that would accrue to both of us if we could do business.

When I was finally finished, Tiffany sat in stunned silence, aghast, for endless minutes. "So," she spat, "that was it all along. And to think I was so rashly taken in, I was so gullible. I actually believed you loved me. This is all you wanted from me all along, isn't it? Those lists. Our love...." she sniffed" ... was no love at all, was it? You got what you wanted from me the other night. Now you think you're in the driver's seat, that you can demand the rest of it from me."

"Please, Tiffany, that's not the way it is at all." The words tumbled out of their own volition. "That's the way it started out. But somewhere along the way it changed. I can't account for it, but it did. Sure I want the lists, but suddenly they don't seem all that important."

"You are a terrific snow artist, aren't you, Carr?" Her face hardened. "Well if you think I'm going to join forces with you, engage in illegal activities, you...."

"It's not really illegal, Tiffany. What's wrong with it? Just because the telephone company's so stiff-necked about their precious lists? The merchants need those lists, the people the merchants contact will benefit also. So what are we doing illegal? We're middlemen, we're supplying a badly needed commodity. I'm offering you two hundred a week for those lists. That's twice what the company's paying you. Is that so hard to take? Three hundred a...."

"I'm not interested, Carr," she bristled. "In you:, or in your rotten scheme. I'll thank you to clear out of here." She was on the verge of tears, I felt fleeting pity for her. "Out of my life. For good. Now, Carr...."

The unreasonable anger was back in full force then. Not this time, baby, I thought. Not you, not any woman kicks Carr Harrison around any more. I made a vow once, remember? Once was enough. "I'm asking you to cooperate of your own free will, Tiffany. I'm offering you a damned good price. But if you want to be stubborn, I've got ways to force your cooperation."

Her face fell. "Ways? What sort of ways?"

"Lord, baby," I hissed, "you think I'm some kind of amateur or something? You think I'm walking in blind, without any cover?"

"You're talking riddles."

"Riddles, is it?" The fury was full fledged now, it blotted out reason, it negated compassion. I reached inside my jacket, brought out the plain envelope containing the damning photographs I'd chosen. The shots where my own face was obscured and blurred. I handed it to her. "You asked for this, Tiffany," I growled. "You and your high-and-mighty ways. Here's riddles for you."

I watched as she opened the envelope, pulled out the dozen prints, as she suddenly jerked, as the blood left her face. "You like those, queenie? Those grab you? How'd you like a set sent to your parents for Christmas? Would that step up their pulse a little?"

When she'd leafed through the batch, she closed her eyes, fought nausea. She swayed where she stood, I thought she'd pass out. Then her face twisted into a snarl, she clutched the sheaf of photos, moved to tear them.

"Save your energy," I snapped. "I've got extras. I can plaster the city with them if I need to."

"You filth," she gritted when at least she could speak, "you degenerate filth." Her voice shattered beneath the weight of her fury. "I've heard of people crawling, of people stooping ... but I never thought anyone could fall quite this low. You animal, you rotten, slimy animal!" She began to shudder. "And to think I'd convinced myself I was in love with you, I wanted to marry you...."

"I didn't want to do this, Tiff, honest I didn't. But when you got on your high horse, when you wouldn't listen to reason...."

She began to curse. She began using words I'd never have believed she even knew. In near shock, she was no longer responsible. She began to say things that cut altogether too close to the bone. My mood vacillated crazily. I knew pity one moment, blind, unreasoning rage the next. And as the vituperative screed went on overlong, I lost my head also. I wanted to hurt this imperious bitch, I was crazy to humble her as she'd never been humbled before. If she thought these photographs were something-

"Enough!" I shouted. "You've had your say. Now you'll do as I say. I'm in charge now, don't you ever forget it!"

"And if I don't knuckle under," she taunted, "if I dare you...."

"That's your lookout, Tiffany. I'll send these to your parents in the next mail."

"You can't," she wailed, her face crumpling, "you wouldn't. It would kill Mom if she saw these. It...."

"That's your decision to make, Tiff, baby. You call the shots from here on in. The lists, that's all I'm asking."

She sank onto the davenport, buried her face in her hands. "God, God...." she groaned. "I've got no choice, have I? No choice at all. I've got to do as you say." She began to sob. "You degenerate animal...."

"Now you're getting smart, honey. We play ball, huh? You start gathering names for old Carr, right? I'll be getting in touch with you, we'll iron out the details later." I advanced on her, the rage twisting my guts like a wet mop. "But for now...."

She shrieked, jerked viciously as I twisted my 'fingers in her hair, flopped her head back. "Carr ... what?"

"We have a little fun, sugar," I rasped. "You were prime stuff the other night. I think I'd like a little more of that. You give a man a mean way to go." I began yanking her to her feet, lust unhinging me now. "Get out of those clothes. I want seconds, sweet chops."

"No!" she gritted, tried to spin away. "Never, you'll never have me again. Not without raping me, you won't. The lists, yes. But this ... you slimy pig!"

"You're kind of running that into the ground, ain't you, dolly? Why don't you make things easy for your-self? Quit running off at the mouth? Every time you open your yap it's gonna go that much rougher for you."

She backed away. "Don't you touch me, Carr. You lay another finger on me and I'll scream."

"Temper, Tiff, doll," I taunted. "The pictures, remember? Maybe you want them all over town. It's like you just said yourself. You've got to do as I say." I cornered her. "And I say get those clothes off. Before I rip 'em off."

She shook her head back and forth dazedly as if she couldn't believe what was happening. With one vicious swipe I reached out, dug my hand into her dress at the throat, gave a mighty tug. There was the sound of rending nylon, the splinter of ruptured zippers and fasteners. That and Tiffany's agonized moans as the material tore at her flesh. The dress came away, fell in tatters at her feet. Instantly my hand was at her slip, I yanked it the same way, literally ripped it off her back.

Tiffany stood in just a red, jam-packed brassiere, red panties, black garter-belt and hosiery. My lust was hypoed a hundredfold by the sexy underpinnings. "Baby," I snickered, "that's a pretty sexy getup for a gal who was suffering all sorts of remorse. For a gal who wasn't ever going to put out again. You were hurting after all, weren't you?" I chuckled, let my eyes sweep her. "Well you don't have to hurt any more."

I advanced anew. "You strip, Tiff? Or do I rip these rags off too?"

She cowered, tried to escape once more. But I was too fast for her. Again my hands flashed, dug like talons, hooked in her brassiere. I grunted, wrenched, practically spun Tiffany off her feet. The bra tore, let loose, her great, pneumatic breasts were waving in the breeze.

Without a moment's hesitation I clutched the waist band of the exotic panties, I twisted and jerked at them, split them in a dozen different directions at once. They hung in tatters about her thighs. I leaned, chuckingly worked them down her nyloned legs, immediately I dragged her toward the davenport. And as I flung her down, began to tear at my own clothes, she spat:

"You'll be sorry for this, Carr. I won't be any good, I swear I won't. You won't get a thing out of it."

"We'll see about that," I said coming to her, rolling her onto her back. "Old Carr's got ways." I decided to leave her stockings, her belt, her shoes on her, I thought the silkies would add extra fillup to the rape. Seconds later, I fell upon her, jammed her legs with my knee. I grabbed her knees, brought them high around my hips, half raised her off the cushions.

Then, with one brutal slam, I drove myself to her, exulted in her pained outcries. "Here," I gritted, "here's what you get for shooting off your mouth." Then I began to work like a runaway freight train, no gentleness, no technique, no real sensation to the attack at all.

Tiffany wasn't fooling about that lifeless bit. I might as well have raped a dead woman. She even cheated me of my sadistic delight by clamming up entirely, swallowing all further cries of pain. The curses yes. But anything else-There were moments when I almost came around, when I almost gave up in disgust. Only Tiffany's continuing curses and insults goaded me, they drove me to finish what I'd started.

Then, suddenly, that deliverance was at hand. I teetered on the edge of the world, I stared black oblivion in the face. Then I fell, spun and tumbled. It was my turn to curse now.

And the craziest thing of all: I could have sworn, as I throbbed and died atop her, that Tiffany began to gather me close. I could have sworn there was disappointment, a sense of deprival in her cries at that moment.

Her loathing swelled up again. In silent contempt she tolerated my inert weight on her.

I felt small and low. Smaller and lower than I'd ever felt before in my whole life.

CHAPTER SEVEN

IT WAS ONE OF THOSE HOLE-IN-THE-WALL, letter-drop offices. Located on the second floor of a seedy, red-brick building some two blocks west of Midwest Telephone. The kind of a schlocky layout no self respecting cockroach would find himself dead in.

There was a battered desk, a typewriter of fairly modern vintage. Two chairs. The door was done in frosted glass. No name on it, just a slap-dash 209 to designate it from all the other anonymous doors down the hall.

But most important of all there was a floodlight, very powerful, very bright. There was a Polaroid camera there, a batch of close-up lenses in the drawer with it. There was somebody who knew how to operate that camera, someone who never muffed a shot.

Namely me.

And today, at exactly 12:11 p.m., slouched in that chair, waiting, on tenterhooks-it would be Tiffany's third drop so far this week. A list was shaping up. With today's names we'd be close to 200. We could really begin doing business.

I heard hurried footsteps outside the door, saw a dark shadow-a blurred mask of pink, the head switching first this way, then that, checking to see if she was being observed. And like always where Tiffany was concerned I felt that tightening in my gut, that sour, brackish taste was in my mouth. I wished I didn't have to face her, I wished I could trust this end of the operation to somebody else.

But not yet. Later maybe, when everything was running like oiled glass. But during these first few weeks-

I am the captain of my soul.

She entered, her face harried, slightly pasty, the tension apparent. The door closed behind her, was locked, she sucked in a deep breath, the sound loud in that compact cubicle. Swiftly she regained her composure, fixed me with that comtemptuous look that had come to be trademark with her now.

"Trouble?" I said. "You're a little late, baby."

"That damned Jenner," she murmured. "She can't get herself out of that office in any time at all." She reached inside of her bag, drew out the neatly rolled typing paper, carefully removed the rubber band. "Here's the list. Only forty-five names today."

"Fine, fine. Forty-five and one-fifty makes almost two-hundred. That's very salable merchandise." Swiftly I flattened the sheets under the T-squares I'd bought for just that purpose, flipped the arm of the lamp over. The camera was ready and waiting.

There were three sheets. Name, address, phone number, occupation. Five minutes later the pictures were finished, treated, they lay in a glistening, curled row, the typing duplicated in crystal clarity.

Immediately Tiffany was re-rolling the lists, putting them back into her handbag. "You gotta run, Tiff?" I said, trying to make light of it. "Thought maybe we could grab a bite together."

Her stare would have burned holes through steel. "Why don't you get off it, Carr T she snapped. "You want lists, you're getting lists. Beyond that, I want absolutely nothing to do with you. You rotten...."

I held my hand up. "Uh-uh. Don't start on that again, Tiff. Remember what happened last time you downed me."

"Remember? How can I forget?"

"Well, try. I'm not such a bad guy when you get to know me. Think back. To before ... If you'd just once get off this holier-than-thou kick of yours. The world's a tough old cabbage, the sooner you realize that the better. You've got it by the tail, haven't you? There's nobody can touch you, nobody can pin a thing on you. So why not enjoy it?"

I paused, reached into my inside pocket for my wallet. "Which reminds me. Payday. I got two, nice, crisp, hundred-dollar bills for you, kid. You're doing a great job. Keep it up."

"I told you before, Carr," she shot, her eyes venomous, "I don't want that, money. It's tainted. You know where you can shove it."

"Temper, Tiffany." I shrugged. "Okay, have it your own way. But when you change your mind, let me know. I'll be saving it up for you. So long's you're doing the work you oughta get paid. Rules of the game."

She paused at the door, regarded me malevolently one last time. "No trouble, Tiff? At the office, I mean? Anybody acting suspicious?"

"Why should they? Nothing's changed, I'm not acting any differently than I ever was. The lists are always back in their place before anybody gets back from lunch."

"Good. Glad to hear it. Sure you won't change your mind, eat with me?"

Her eyes blazed, her mouth worked, she suppressed very obviously vitriolic words. Now she wheeled, flung herself out the door.

I stood in the silent room for a few minutes after Tiffany left, I mouthed a few silent curses, I fought to resurrect that old bravado and indifference I'd traded on so heavily these past few years. But it wasn't so easily come by. Just seeing Tiffany, taking in her beauty, the voluptuous, refined line of her body, remembering how things had been before I'd been forced to lower the boom-Right away my stomach began bubbling like some cauldron of tripe stew.

And, Christ, what a world we live in! How do people get so balled up inside? Especially hard-nosed specimens like yours truly? Guys who've supposedly come to grips with life, who supposedly know the score?

Forget it, Chester.

I thought to sit down at that desk, rattle off the 45 names on the typewriter there, drop them off on my way back to my pad. But the fact that Tiffany had just been here, her physical pressence strong, the delicate wisps of her perfume still lingering, soured me. A wave of poignance-hardly my strong suit-of regret, hit me. I wanted out as fast as my legs would carry me.

I turned off the light, locked the camera up. The photos went inside my jacket. I put on my overcoat, gave the grubby room a last looksee.

As I came out onto the street, saw the snow, the red-faced shoppers, the Christmas decorations festooning the streets, the Christmas items in every shop window, I was assailed by a particularly strong sense of loss.

I shook the sappy thoughts away. I sure as hell didn't feel like Christmas.By 2:00 I'd typed the names on fresh paper, was ready to roll again. I thought to mail them to Mike Kilmer in New Dale, have him run up a couple hundred copies on the duplicating machine we owned there, but decided against it. Time was of the essence. And since Brad Novak was champing at the bit, eager to have something to peddle-Instead I got on the phone, called Mike. "Break-in time, buddy," I said when he came on the line. "Can you come in for a few days? I've got a boy here who needs some training."

"You got the lists, huh, Carr?" he gloated. "Good boy. I thought that operation was gonna die on its feet. Tomorrow, huh? I'll drive in tonight. Okay?"

A late lunch on my mind, I headed out once more. I stopped at a place that rented out their copier on an hourly basis, gave their girl the brush, told them I'd run the lot myself. Thirty minutes later, a hundred copies run off,, my wallet $50 lighter, I was on my way once more.

I stopped in a fancy cafe, ordered a steak sandwich, washed it down with a couple martinis. But I might as well have eaten sawdust, I might as well have drunk ice-water. No matter how I tried, I couldn't get vision of Tiffany out of my mind, I couldn't shake that nagging, crawling feeling that invaded my gut.

Two martinis became a gang before that long after-noon was over. At the end there the bartender even had to help me out to my car. That was the first time that had happened to me in a long, long time.

I was in passable shape by the next morning. When, Mike on tap, Brad Novak in tow, we made our first rounds. And with an actual list in hand, a. list of 195 concrete, legitimate newcomers to Crown Point, we finally had something to sell.

Brad Novak had laid the ground for us. He'd softened up our prospective clients well; nailing down the sale itself was pretty much cut-and-dried. Some of them balked, asked too many cold-feet questions, but by the time Mike finished pouring on his pitch, they were all but ripping the pen out of his hand to sign. Nevertheless we both knew the wisdom of having an insider make the initial approach. Guys like Brad Novak knew just who to hit, who to leave alone, he knew how to avoid stepping on any toes.

As I said, most of it was open and shut. But there were some who were cautious, who wanted to talk the proposition to death before they signed. Guys like this Gus Correli, who ran the Acme Oil and Coal Company.

"And what am I getting for my twenty-five bucks a week?" he challenged. "That's pretty steep, isn't it?"

"Not really, Mr. Correli," Mike smiled. "You're getting almost two hundred names to start with. If you can't get at least ten, fifteen new customers out of a head start like that, you're no businessman. I don't think I have to tell you what ten new customers a month ... or a week if you really hump ... would mean to your business."

Correli did some quick, mental arithmetic. "Sure," he scoffed, "that sounds good. But Where's the guarantee?"

"There is no guarantee, Mr. Correli," Mike stuck in the needle. "But I'll tell you this. You decide not to buy, I'm taking this list over to Hudson Fuel and offer them the same deal."

"What's to keep you from peddling the list to them anyway?"

"Nothing, really." Mike smiled ingratiatingly. "But that's not the way we operate. We figure there are enough different businesses in Crown Point so that we don't have to duplicate. And once we get a happy, satisfied customer, he's gonna keep on buying, year in and year out. Trust, that's it, in a nutshell. We'll both make money if we abide by our agreement, we'll both lose money if we don't."

Correli began to warm to the proposition, already profits were accumulating in his brain. "Yeah, and where do you get these lists?"

"That's our little secret, Mr. Correli. We have a trained crew of scouts situated in your city. How they get these names is our business."

"Trained crew, huh?' Correli snorted. "Well, I've got a trained crew of my own. My drivers are all over this city every day. They know all the new people moving in."

"Do they?" Mike challenged. "If that's so, maybe you can tell me just how many of these new people you signed up this week? I've got two hundred names here. Did you sign up ten percent of these? Five percent?"

Correli fell silent, grew fidgety. "Well...."

"Well nothing, Mr. Correli. The truth is that your drivers are goofing off. The truth is they aren't trained to meet the public, they aren't salesmen. You're the salesman, they're just pump jockeys." He paused. "How does that grab you? Just how much business are you letting get away on you? Think about that, Mr. Correli. Is twenty-five bucks a week too much to pay for a service like ours?"

"And next week? How many names do I get then?"

"That depends on how many new people move into Crown Point in the meantime. I don't have to tell you about the new aircraft plant. There're over a thousand new jobs there. You want your share of that business? You'll get a new list every week."

"And how do I know these names are the real thing? For all I know half of them are duds...."

Mike held his temper in rein, forced a laugh. "You are a hard-nose, aren't you, Mr. Correli? I guarantee every name on that list, it's bona fide. And just to prove it's legit...." He pushed the list at the oil-company owner. "Pick any one of thse names at random, so you won't accuse me of having a plant somewhere."

Bemusedly Correli poked a stubby thumb into the middle of page two. "Here," he grumbled, "this is Ben Olmstead."

Mike studied the name. "Olmstead. He moved in Wednesday. You just might check your records, Mr. Correli, to see if one of your drivers brought in that name. In the meantime ... "' He picked up the phone, dialed rapidly.

"Mrs. Olmstead? Is Mr. Olmstead available? No? Well perhaps I can talk to you. I'm representing Acme .Oil and Coal, and I'm wondering if we could be of service to you. Are you using oil? You are? Fine. Have you contracted with any company to supply your oil needs as yet? You haven't? Well, may I take a few moments of your time to describe our program to you?"

And while Mike spun off his lingo a mile-a-minute, Correli sat in stupid amazement, listening to the sale practically make itself. Dollar signs spun like cartwheels in his eyes.

"That's fine, Mrs. Olmstead," Mike was finishing up. "That's correct. We'll allow a ten per cent discount on your first order as token of our appreciation for your business. A sort of welcome to Crown Point. Fine. Fine. That's perfectly all right. One of our men will call on you first thing next week. Thank you, Mrs. Olmstead. So nice talking to you."

He hung up, a canary-eating smile on his face. Even then he couldn't resist twisting the blade a little. "Mrs. Olmstead says she thinks your prompt call was very thoughtful," he said. "She says they were planning on calling some fuel company next week, but since we called her first ... Hope you don't mind the ten percent discount, Mr. Correli. Sort of a come-on...."

"Christ...." Correli gasped.

"I hope that this proves the value of our service, Mr. Correli. You can see how getting there, first is the very heart of the service."

I stood there smiling. As Correli took the pen from Mike, signed on the dotted line. A minute later he was busily writing a check. And with gimmicks like that one, who needs the hard sell? By 4:00 that afternoon we'd sold over fifty clients. At the end we'd split up, had even sold the service without Novak's intercession. And this, in the middle of the Christmas rush?

We called it a day then, decided to start out fresh on Monday morning. There were still 50-odd merchants to hit before we'd blanketed Crown Point. We split with Brad, promised to meet him at a club called The Stake-Out at 7:00, all of us figuring a victory celebration was in order. Brad was already talking about providing a trio of girls-"Real lookers," he boasted-to help add spice to the festivities.

When we got back to the apartment Mike wrapped himself around a couple double bourbons, took a shower, decided to catch a nap. I sat at my desk, played busy little bookkeeper, checked off names on our list, counted money. I chuckled inwardly at the tally. There was over $1300 in the kitty. Rapidly I projected, figured 50 times $25, came to a tidy sum of $1,250. Add $1300 to that-

It comes to a nice, round sum, ne 'est-ce pas?

We'd have it up to $3000 a week before January was out. Which was about average for cities the. size of Crown Point. Smaller than that we don't bother with. Figure $3000 times 52. Which comes to around $150,000 per year, give or take a few thousand. Multiply that by four, the number of cities we had in the fold as of this moment.

Small wonder Mike and I weren't worrying about old age insurance. Why we were grabbing and running now, getting while the getting was good. Before the roof caved in on us.

Small wonder we didn't care who we shafted, what means, fair or foul, we had to use to nail down a deal like the one just brought to port in Crown Point.

I gathered the money, threw it helter-skelter into a desk drawer. Then I caught myself, knew the most hacking of misgivings. So why the long face? Why this damnable sense of emptiness, of pointlessness?

I paraphrased a common folk idiom: If you're so damned rich, how come you're not happy?

How come you're not even close?

And though I didn't want to, I thought about Tiffany again. I recreated the hatred I'd read in her eyes just yesterday morning. I recreated the loss and self loathing I'd seen in her face. How much money to buy Tiffany? To roll back time, make things like they were before?

How much to buy a smile for Tiffany's face? A smile like those she'd once given me? A smile that would make me feel like a member of the human race again.

Suddenly I cursed, shoved away from the desk. I went to where Mike had left the bourbon bottle, I chugga-lugged a little too. I got a head start on our upcoming 'victory' celebration.

Now it was 11:00. The evening had seemingly passed in the twinkling of an eye. The party was over. At least for me it was. Once more I was back at my apartment, once more I was in my bed.

But not alone. For I'd brought company back with me. Company almost as polluted as I was. Female company. A doll named Vicki. Who had certainly lived up to advance billing. That Brad-and I thought I was an operator!

It was intermission time. Drunk" as I was, weary from the madhouse bout Vicki and I had concluded fifteen minutes ago, I still couldn't rout that rotten feeling in my heart, I couldn't chase the guilt, the sense of worthlesness. And to forget, to take things out on somebody, nail my troubles to somebody else's wall-

I nudged the dozing, sultry-eyed brunette with my knee. "Hey, Vicki, wake up. It's that time again."

She stirred, giggled muzzily. "Oh," she recalled where she was. "It's you, Carr. Sure lover. That's what I'm here for." Her hands went on quick recon-naisance in the dark. "Carr? You're not ready."

I laughed coarsely. "You know what you can do about that, don't you, honey?"

She stiffened. "Carr ... I don't pull stunts like that. You know better than to...."

"Don't put me on, baby. All dolls do that. C'mon."

"No, Carr. I mean it. I'm not that kind of pig."

"You're all that kind of pig." Suddenly my bitterness was a chest-out bully, I was suffused by a feeling of omnipotence. I was up, clicking on a nightstand lamp, I went into the next room, dug a hundred-dollar bill out of the drawer.

I returned to Vicki, waved it in front of her face. "This says you are that kind of a girl," I taunted. "You are that kind of pig."

Her face went blank momentarily, her eyes jittered. Then avarice flamed in them, overcame indecision. She swallowed what small pride she had, silently reached for the bill. "Okay, Carr. But only because I'm up against it. I don't usually...." She put the bill in one of her shoes. "Turn out the lights though, will you?"

"No. The lights stay on. I wanna watch. That's part of the deal. You backing down, piggy?"

She gulped, fought revulsion, didn't answer. Then she was up, arranging her body on the bed. Her head dropped, poised, froze as she worked up her courage. Now, her long hair tickling my thighs, falling about her face, she began.

But I wasn't content with this humiliation alone. I reached down, pulled her hair aside, removed that concealing shield. "Tryin' t' cheat Carr, huh?" I chuckled.

There was a soft, tired whimper. I felt that membranous pressure increase, I felt the sharp nick of her teeth. Now Vicki began to move in earnest, she set out to ear her hundred clams. Faster, more heathenishly, she bobbed.

I began to moan and thrash on the bed, her attempts to revive me almost immediately successful. And thinking she'd fulfilled her part of the bargain, she tried to move away, finish things regular.

But a red blur formed over my brain, a vengeance-lust came over me. I was getting even for Marlene, I was somehow getting back at Tiffany in the bargain. My hands wound in her hair, I refused to let her go. I actually began forcing her movements. She moaned, fought. But to no avail.

Now those red hot needles started. I forced her harder, the sadism growing apace with my lust. And then, all of a sudden-

"You rotten, filthy scum," she spat when I released her, when she could finally speak. "You didn't say you were going to...."

"Who's calling names?" I taunted. "You did it, I didn't. You sold out, baby. I just bought myself a...."

She fell back onto the bed. "Shut up. Let me alone. I feel sick. Let me sleep a little...."

"Sleep? You retread tramp! You aren't sleeping with me! Not in my bed. Not after what you just did." I put my foot in the small of her back, gave her a vicious boot, sent her tumbling out of bed. She landed on the floor with a thump, began sobbing her pain and outrage.

"Out, you slut!" I grated. "Get dressed and clear out. Before I start puking."

Whimpering and cursing latermittently, Vicki groped her way from the room; her clothes in a bundle in her arms.

She was about to depart when I emerged, rummaged for another bill. I found a twenty, threw it at her feet. "Here, piggy," I snarled. "Buy yourself a six-pack of Lysol."

It gave me an inordinate sensation of power to watch the way she crawled to retrieve the bill.

Minutes later, snarling curses, she was gone.

And the bottle in my hand again, I was bolting for the bedroom. In the darkness I went on drinking, prayed for that alcoholic oblivion. Anything to blot out thought.

It was past two when I finished the bottle.

Then and only then, did I fall into a numbed stupor, the mocking, rubber-faced phantoms at long last stilled.

CHAPTER EIGHT

It was early January now. By rights I should have pulled out of Crown Point weeks ago, gone back to New Dale where I belonged. Brad Novak was on top of his runner's job, there were few hitches he couldn't handle by himself. And, if necessary, I was always as near as his phone. I should have steered him to Tiffany, let him take complete charge. Maybe he'd be able to thaw her out; I sure's hell couldn't.

But for some unexplainable reason I couldn't make myself leave.

The thought of Brad getting anywhere near Tiffany, the thought of him getting friendly with her, went against my grain. I knew the craziest sort of anger-jealousy almost-when I envisioned him talking to her.

The stand-off still continued. But with small changes, certain variations in climate. There were no more vituperative exchanges during our Monday-Wednesday-Friday meets. It was all business. "Hello, here's the list, goodbye." That kind of stuff. So far as Tiff was concerned, I didn't exist, I was beneath her contempt.

It was a thing that galled me mightily, there were plenty of times when I was ready to haul off and slap her silly. Other times I thought to grab her, take her by force again, like I had that one disastrous night. Then and there, in that cheesy little office, on the floor if need be.

Somehow I managed to cool it, I managed to bide my time, hoped against hope that the spring thaw would come early this year.

Another change: This the fact that Tiffany-as any practical, single-minded woman would have done-had come around in the money department. She was taking with both hands now, our account was strictly cash on the line, I wasn't allowed to be one cent in arrears. I was surprised she didn't charge me interest on the money I'd held for her through December.

She was getting $100 a session now, making no qualms about taking the tainted loot. "If I'm going to be involved in a mess like this," she seethed the day she'd had a change of heart, "I might as well be getting some of the good of it, and not all of the bad."

Another compromising of her exalted standards occurred at Christmas. When I sent her a mink stole that had set me back $5,000 by way of apology and peace pipe. If I even vaguely suspected she'd send it back, I was in for a surprise. For she kept it, even went so far as to mention same to me. "I got the coat," she said tersely that first Monday after Christmas. "I've always wanted a mink. It looks very nice on me."

But a thank you? A simple, little "I forgive you?"

She was fresh out.

I owed the coat to her, her manner implied. I wouldn't have given her such an expensive gift if she wasn't worth much, much more to me-to the operation.

And in a way, she was right. I had to give the savvy female credit. She was toughing up, smarting up. And getting smarter with every passing day.

There were other minute breakthroughs besides. Some of those noon hours she dallied a little longer than usual, made small talk. And while most of it was impersonal, curiosity about how the 'business' was going, it was a start.

Mighty oaks from small acorns do grow.

Then there was that one noon hour, I, professing business we should discuss, when she dutifully joined me for a quickie lunch. There was no business, there was no other talk to speak of either. Her look was angry when we parted, she let me know she wasn't taken in by my feeble ruse. But we had eaten together. That was something.

Otherwise the days went by in slow, steady, interminable flow. I made the rounds with Brad sometimes, I checked on some new accounts he opened up. The operation was running smoothly, there were no squawks, no static whatsoever from John Law, from the cogs at Midwest Telephone. It was like absolutely nothing had happened insofar as the phone company was concerned.

Which it hadn't. Their status in my scheme hadn't been altered a jot.

And if we were pulling $12-15,000 a month out of Crown Point that rightfully could have been theirs-

It was no skin off my nose.

Otherwise I did a lot of sleeping, I drank more than was good for me. I even took to watching some of those idiotic daytime TV shows. I thought it a helluva note for a grown man, a young, vital man, a man worth roughly $300 grand a year to be frittering away his life in such lackluster pursuits. When he could be down in Miami Beach, or in Bermuda, Haiti, what have you-making out with all the beautiful chicks in the world, balling like tomorrow would never come.

And what in hell good was the money, anyhow? What damned good was the power that money bought? Again and again I cornered myself, asked: And just what is your problem, Clyde? What is your hangup?

It was like a fuse had blown, and someone had forgotten to call the electrician. I was becalmed, sinking in a sea of lethargy.

And nothing I tried to bestir myself seemed to help. I couldn't come to grips with my problem, I wouldn't face the one thing that was at the root of my whole stagnation.

If anything, I purposely set out to smokescreen the whole thing, I buried the truth with too much booze, too much frantic bed hopping.

For if the girls down in sunny Florida were waiting for me, pining away for me, the broads in Crown Point weren't. There was a different one almost every night, rarely did I ever grant any repeat business. Once the word that a "big spender" is making the night club rounds gets out, it's pretty hard to squelch. And if Vanda couldn't hold my interest, she had a girl friend who perhaps could. When I tired of Toni and her quaint oralisms, she introduced me to Francine. Who had once been in acrobatic dance, who was absolutely buggy over positions and variations that would make Mr. Kama Sutra spin in his grave.

So it went. Susan. Betty. Phyllis. Karen.

Until one verdant, agile, ingenious body melted into another, one lovely, lascivious face merged with the one before it, all the women dissolving to one.

But not once in my inexhaustible Odyssey, did I stumble across the one girl I was looking for. The one girl to erase Marlene's deadly influence, to minimize the evanescent spell Tiffany had cast over me.

Don Quixote and his windmills all over again.

Tiffany was more talkative than usual that day in our cubby-hole office as she delivered the day's batch of names, watched me photograph same with precise, quick skill. Most surprising of all, she let her talk become personal.

"What have you been doing to yourself, Carr?" she asked. "You look-like someone's pulled you through a knothole seven and a half times."

I smiled wryly at her. "You almost hit is squarely on the head," I replied. "There's a matter of terminology, but basically, that's it."

Her face turned accusing. "I happened to see one of them the other night. The silver-blonde job with the slatty hips."

I did a double-take. "Merrilyn, you mean? But where? Why didn't you...."

"The girls from the office were giving a bridal shower at the Pink Parrot that night. I was in the dining room, you didn't see me. It was for the best. You looked pretty grim. What's the point? If it's that much work...."

My heart leaped, I could hardly believe my ears. "It all depends. On who you're with. As I recall, we used to have some pretty good times when we went out."

"Used to, is right. Before somebody had to play Tarzan and shatter all my girlish illusions. Tarzan with a Dracula twist."

"I've tried to explain that, Tiffany. But you wouldn't listen. I didn't want to do what I...."

"Spare me, Carr. We've gone the route too many times before. There's no excusing that."

"All right," I snapped. "So your mind's closed. I thought maybe you'd matured a little by now, you'd come to see that the world isn't made of sugar and spice, that if you want to get ahead, cut your way through the tinsel...."

"Get ahead?" she sniffed. "What for? Doesn't look to me like your life is any hilarious ball. Not the way you were dancing that death-warmed-over specimen the...."

"Skip her, will you?"

"How was she in bed?"

"She was nothing ... nothing at all."

"Sounds like a big bowl of jollies. Carr, you have got lost in the woods."

"Have you got any suggestions? Maybe you'd be better for me?"

"Maybe I would."

For long moments an electric silence prevailed, I was almost afraid to breathe for fear of destroying the mood. Did Tiffany mean-?

"All right," I said finally, "you're on. How about tonight? We can go to Leonardo's again, dance, have a few drinks, some laughs." I cursed myself inwardly, fought to keep the yearning out of my voice. "I...."

"Is this another one of your orders? Or are you asking me?"

My voice shattered. "I'm asking, Tiffany. I'm asking you to forgive me, to try to understand...."

I couldn't believe my ears. Me crawling? Before a woman yet?

"The forgiveness we'll have to see about. I doubt it very much. But the date, okay." Her voice grew plaintive. "We used to have fun together, Carr, I was just beginning to live. Before you set me down with such a crash. A crash I won't forget as long as I live."

She was at the door then, about to leave. "Tiff," I pleaded. "What about tonight? You aren't backing down?"

"I'm not backing down," she forced. "Pick me up about nine, huh? I'll be ready."

How long I stood in that room, the silence seemingly thundering in my ears, my brain throbbing with disbelief, I'll never remember.

It was Leonardo's again. Tiffany was lovely, it was evident she'd taken great pains with herself. And I was suddenly all thumbs, clumsy, at a loss for things to say. One would have thought it was the first time I'd ever been out with a woman. "You look beautiful tonight, Tiff," I said over and over again.

She was stiff, unbending in my arms as we danced, our bodies not touching. "I've missed that," she said. "Having someone tell me I was beautiful."

"There weren't any other ... guys then?"

"No, Carr. I got asked, but I just couldn't make myself do it. I was dead inside for the longest time there. I thought I'd never want another man to touch me as long as I lived."

I didn't pursue the train of conversation further; I feared her next bitter statement. I was grateful for the fact that Tiffany was with me, I was content with that much. To press would be to court danger.

We didn't dance much, we didn't have too much to say. The evening was pretty much of a bust, it was as if we'd never been close, we'd never meant anything to each other. I couldn't help but notice that Tiffany drank more than usual, that she was on stronger stuff. Almost as if she was courting oblivion, drinking to muster courage. Her voice became slightly thick.

Then it was 11:30. I was sick at heart over the way things had turned out, I feared that this had been our chance at reconciliation, that somehow I'd permanently muffed it. My heart truly sank when Tiffany said, "I think we'd best go. I've got to work in the morning."

Her hand brushed mine as we got up, as I went for her stole. The stole she looked so stunning in. "I'm sorry, Carr," she said softly as I helped her into it. "I'd kind of hoped...." She didn't finish the remark.

We lingered outside Tiffany's door. And though I was wild to take her in my arms, kiss her goodnight, I realized that I was on probation, that if I was ever to win my way back into her good graces, I had to remain on best behavior.

Still there was something about Tiffany's manner, a restlessness in her eyes. And as I took her hand, prepared to leave, she spoke, the words flat, strangled, slightly caustic: "Is that it, Carr? A friendly handshake? Aren't you going to play caveman tonight? Aren't you going to charge in and force me to submit to you?" Her hand trembled viciously in mine. "No commands to undress? No rape?"

I was momentarily stunned. "Please, Tiffany, don't throw that up to me again. I've tried to explain, to tell you how deeply sorry, how ashamed I am. I went off my head, I didn't know what I was doing."

Her jittery state intensified. "I'm disappointed in you, Carr."

"What is this, Tiff?" I said, disbelief smashing me. "I'm trying to make amends, I'm trying to be the man you want. I...."

"Are you?" she interrupted. "I wonder...."

"What are you trying to say, Tiff? You act like you want me to attack you again, like you're asking."

Her eyes bored into mine, a stiff, ugly smile twisted her lips. "Maybe I am, Carr."

Her key clicked in the lock, the door swung open, she stood partially inside it, her coat open, her breasts heaving, her legs in taunting, spread stance. "Tiffany...." I gasped, floating toward her as if mesmerized.

Then we were inside that apartment, the door was closed, we were in each other's arms, our mouths smashed together, grinding, pressuring with a savagery we'd never known before.

And when we broke, when she still buried her head in my shoulder. "Tiffany, darling ... I don't under stand."

"It's simple really," she muttered into my coat. "After all, a person can't live through all this without being changed, without having certain philosophies altered. I ... I've grown up. If this is the way the world's made, so long's I'm involved anyway ... Why just the grief? Why not some of the fun that goes with it?"

"You know what you're saying, Tiffany?"

"I'm a big girl now, Carr," she intoned. "I've come to understand certain things. I'm twenty-five, a mature woman. A woman with the same needs most women have. Maybe even greater needs. And., .since ... you're the only man who's ever...."

Her voice broke, she shuddered convulsively. "Do I have to draw you pictures, Carr? Damn you, don't you see what's eating me? I want to be...." she used a very explicit, four-letter word, "I want you to take me to bed and take care of me. Since you're the one who started this in the first place." She squirmed, looked up at me with an insance, pleading light in her eyes. "No love, no affection, no dignity. Just straight sex! Sex for sex's sake alone!"

She pulled away, flung off the stole, made a lascivious show of running the zipper along the side of her gown.

"Now, damn you! Are you going to take care of it or not?"

With that she whirled, ran toward the bedroom.

"No!" she snarled as I came into that bedroom, found her already naked, as I tried to embrace her anew, kiss her lips, slide my famished mouth to her breasts. "I don't want that! I just want you. On top of me! I can't wait. I need that, I've wanted that for weeks now. I tried to fight it, but I couldn't. I'm weak, so weak...."

I recoiled, felt goose bumps splash my back, I felt my spine kink in amazement. Dear God! This, from Tiffany? From my white-plaster goddess? Instantly, I was up, tearing at my own clothes.

Moments later' I charged the bed, I gathered her in my arms. I was stunned as she squirmed, tossed, adjusted, forced me between her legs almost single handedly. I fought to kiss her lips anew. She tolerated it briefly, sent her tongue in pagan thrusts. While her hands swept between us, found me, clenched me with amoral impatience, fought to draw me to her.

"This!" she groaned, "I want this! Where it belongs!"

There was no resisting a declamation like that. I surrendered before her fierce clenchings, I let her have her own way. And wanted to swoon with joy and pride as Tiffany moaned gutterally, ecstatically before my penetration. I knew an appalling delight of my own at that glorious, reluctant yielding of her flesh, at that incredible, painful-yet-sweet constriction of her. That holy snugness.

"Ooh," she whimpered, "ooh, I'd almost forgotten. Good, you're so good! Yes, Carr. Now! Move, damn you!" She began using that word almost nonstop now, out of her head with raw lust. "Do me, do me, do me. I need this, I need to be...."

There was no love, no tenderness, no humanity or compassion in the way we attacked each other then. There was no dignity, no sensititivity. It was pure, flat-out lust. Human identity was gone, we were just two greedy machines. Great battering machines that meshed and released, meshed and released. The governor smashed, no control left whatsoever, we gorged ourselves on each other's flesh, we moved faster and faster.

There was no world, no reality. There was no Tiffany, no Carr. There were only gargantuan extensions of ourselves; in all the universe there was only this intolerable, mind-clawing sensation. And as Tiffany's first glory avalanched upon her, as her litany of lust grew apace, as her words became more vile-

I felt my own deliverance growing deep in that Sybaritic well of my sexuality, a long chain of powder charges commenced to explode, each report crescen-doing, making me lurch and groan the more wildly.

The words came from some secret niche in my mind, unbidden, spontaneous arid-

So crushingly fervent, so maddeningly sincere.

My heart, my soul was compacted, injected into each word. They seemed so puny, so insignificant, so incapable of carrying the meaning they must impart.

"Tiffany, my darling," I choked. "I love you. I've loved you from the start, I never knew it. Forgive me, dear God, forgive...."

But I didn't finish. For at that moment, the mountain gave way with a deafening rumble, it came tumbling down over me-over us-it innundated us, crushed us, it tore our breath from our lungs. Tiffany's screams twined with mine, rose, spiraled above us. They came shrilly, eerily, bearing message from the edge of the world.

That cauterizing heat and pain filled me, that ration-pulverizing pressure seemingly carbonized my very soul. From an infinity of darkness Tiffany's hawking, barking sobs carried to me.

"Dear God," she wailed. "Of all the impossible things. Of all the men ... all the good, honest, decent men ... I could have fallen in love with ... Why? Why did I have to fall in love with you, Carr?"

CHAPTER NINE

First thing the next morning there was a hurry-up, S.O.S. call from Mike Kilmer. And no, it wouldn't wait, this was tax business. Unless I wanted the internal revenue boys down on our necks with both feet-

I'd be gone over the weekend, my absence would necessitate letting Brad Novak make the list pickups, I called him, summoned him to the office for a briefing. Next I broke an unwritten rule, I called Tiffany at the telephone company office, told her of the sudden development.

"A guy named Brad Novak. Yeah. I'll be giving him the key. You meet him at the regular place, give him the ... package. Only Friday and Monday. I should be back by Tuesday at the latest."

"Do you have to go?" she wailed. "I thought ... after last night ... There's so much we have to talk about, I have so much to explain. The way I acted! God, I can't believe it myself. Can you ever begin to under-stand?'

"What's to understand? You were wonderful, the most woman there ever was. I'm still moving in a fog. I love you, Tiff; it was the most beautiful thing that's ever happened to me."

"Darling, I hope so. I...." She stopped short. "Oh, damn! Here comes the supervisor. I've got to go. Hurry back, Carr," she breathed fervently. "Take care."

Then I was listening to a snarling, dead line.

I met Novak at the office an hour later. Where I surrendered the key, put him through a half dozen trial runs with the camera. He caught on fast, I had no sweat on that score. And yet, as I pulled out of Crown Point shortly before noon, goosed my Caddy to eighty in seconds flat, I still couldn't help but sense a chill of apprehension.

It was the first time I'd left Crown Point since early November. I felt like a mother hen leaving her chicks for the first time.

There was plenty to keep my mind occupied in New Dale. I went into crash sessions with Al Starkey, the shyster CPA we kept on permanent retainer ($40,000 a year). Who was the real brains behind our operation so far as keeping Uncle Sam off our backs. He kept our dummy importing corporation solvent, made our books read good.

No matter how careful a guy is, there's always a point where he gets careless. And once you get the tax boys wondering how come you're wearing $250 suits, driving a new Cadillac every year when your books show a loss, you're in trouble. It was just that kind of trouble good old Al was supposed to keep us out of.

Thus the dummy corporation, with me president, Mike vice-president, an enterprise which netted us each $75,000 apiece. On paper, that is. The $75,000 I was willing to pay taxes on. Further than that I simply wouldn't go in supporting Uncle Sammy's war on poverty.

I imagine a half-million gross a year on our cute little racket sounds like a .fantastic amount to the casual reader. But it wasn't all gravy. Lots of gravy, granted. But all of it didn't land in our bowl. There were the runners in all those cities, guys like Brad Novak we paid $500 a week. There were the payoffs to our pickup girls. There was Al Starkey's salary, other legal fees that came up. There was some neglibible grease we spread around to certain law officers who sometimes got curious about our business. Who played an under-the-table game called "What's Your Line?"

No, it wasn't all gravy.

But it wasn't all gristle either.

We were doing very nicely, thank you.

There were some nights when I couldn't sleep that I lay staring into the darkness, pondering the whole crazy gimmick, wondering about this swift rise. When I mentally patted myself on the back for birthing such an operation. For having the guts to implement it, make it pay off this big. Fantastically, unbelievably big. I couldn't help musing, those times, what I might have become if I'd gone legit.

And instantly forgot it. I'd be nowhere, I raged. Not with that greedy-guts, Uncle Sam, shoving his fat paws into the till every chance he gets.

I had the world by the tail, I had the best possible of arrangements. I'd fight to the death to keep it that way.

Al Starkey and I had our heads together all day Friday and Saturday. On Sunday Mike and I went over accounts, made our own personal books jibe. Sunday afternoon Mike and I drove down to Delphi, a city of 130,000 in southern Illinois, 125 miles from New Dale. We walked the streets, took in all the pretty stores, evaluated the industrial potential, did all kinds of quick, mental arithmetic. We drove around to look at the telephone company offices.

A new textile mill was coming in, Mike had heard. Maybe Delpi was our next conquest. What did I think?

What I thought was that we were sitting pretty as it was. If we incorporated Delphi in our operation, we were in danger of over-extending ourselves. It would mean too many fingers in the pie, it would mean bringing in another boss-man, giving him a cut equal to our own. And did we want to surrender any of our control, let any of it get away on us? Maybe the syndicate could handle an operation like that, maybe they could make a nationwide net of our scheme.

Remember what happened to Napoleon in Russia, I reminded Mike. Then there was a guy named Adolph Hitler.

There was another reason I nixed the expansion, a reason I didn't like to admit even to myself. Another phantom that haunted me during those restless, solitary, wee hours.

If the truth were known I simply didn't want to have to promote another dimwit doll in the Delphi phone office. I didn't want to have to corrupt another female, sour her on life the way I had Tiffany.

Even more nagging: I simply didn't want to touch another woman, I didn't want to kiss her, play up to her. I didn't want to go through all the tedious motions of seducing her.

This had .been brought home in a devastating manner that Saturday night in New Dale. When, unbeknownst to me, Mike taking me out for a night on the town, he'd fixed me up with a juicy, brunette tart named Renee Delacorte. A doll so pretty, so vivacious, so teasingly stacked, that she'd make any man roll over on his back and play dead. Any man except me, that is.

For, no matter how much I drank, no matter how much little Renee flirted and hung all over me, I just couldn't get turned on; she simply didn't appeal. Nor did Sherry Dolann, Mike's date, none of the other beautiful, fabulously decked-out broads that crossed my path that night.

If Renee thought I'd thaw once we got back to her apartment, she was mightily disappointed. "Wouldn't you like to come in for a nightcap?" she invited, her naughty eyes rolling, her spicy, pink tongue fluttering at her lips, her tone indicating that 'nightcap' would last until dawn.

All she got was a hearty handshake, a mumbled "Thanks for a nice evening" for her pains. Even before she could turn on the pressure, I'd wheeled, was hot-footing it back down the stairs. Leaving her standing in outraged frustration. "Some friends that Mike has got," she called after me. "Youbeen weaned yet, sonny?"

A curse followed that. Then a slamming door. Bitterly I imagined what kind of susbstitue for a man dear Renee would have to use tonight. It's called self-gratification.

In my solitary bed I studied the darkness again, wondering how come? Why hadn't I pounced that hot-pants, given her the racking of her life? Not weaned, huh? I'd have made her limp for a month. I pondered the indifference. And at the end laid it all at Tiffany's door. All evening long I'd missed her, thought of her, she'd been the one I'd have loved to have spent the evening with.

A coarse expletive cut the darkness. You are going soft-headed in your old age. Love now? Weren't you just making chin music the other night with Tiffany? Wasn't that just another snow job?

And who was snowing who?

An infatuation, that's what it was, a sappy kid crush. Once I got to eating at Tiffany's table regular, I'd get over 'yech' ideas like love. What did I need with love anyway? Marlene flooded into my mind. There was love for you, chump, I railed. What did that get you?

Still I couldn't discount the very tangible thing that had happened between Renee and me just tonight. I couldn't dispel the revulsion that just touching her in passing had filled me with.

What is it, Clyde? I lashed myself. Have you finally flipped?

I remember that as I'd finally dropped off, I'd quit fighting things. I remember thinking how wonderful it would be to make Tiffany my mistress (marrying her never crossed my mind), install her in a fancy apartment, give her every luxury money could buy. I'd doll her up in mink coats, in classy Paris dresses, in imported shoes, in the sexiest lingerie money could buy. She'd bathe in perfume, she'd wear jewelry, she'd have nothing to do but devote herself full time to being my own private pleasure-doll.

And suddenly my life seemingly had some vague purpose. My money had value, there was a worthwhile place for it to go. If it protected Tiffany, if it bought her every pretty life had to offer-Somewhere about then I must have drifted off, I must have finally managed to ditch the goopy thoughts.By Monday morning I was wild to get back to Crown Point, I felt like I'd been away for months. I told Mike and Al to shove the rest of their reports. They'd just have to finish without me. And I didn't care if the whole business went to hell in a handbasket. I was clearing out, that's all there was to it.

Mike gave me a jaundiced, knowing grin as I stormed out of our offices.

There were ninety-five miles between New Dale and Crown Point, I was sure I could make it before noon. I had some crazy notion to relieve Brad Novak, be waiting for Tiff when she came with the lists, surprise the pants off her. But the traffic was impossible, the roads were slippery in spots, thus it was 12:30 before I drove up before the crackerbox office building on Union Street.

Still thinking that half a surprise was better than none, I stormed inside, took those stairs in stealthy, two-at-a-time haste. Only I was the one who got the surprise!

I saw the blurred motion behind that frosted glass, the merged, thrusting figures. I heard the female outcries, muffled, desperate. Instantly I knew the name of the game.

Fishing out my spare key, I quietly inserted it into the lock, turned it slowly. In all the commotion they never heard me. Then the door swung open.

Tiffany saw me first. Wrapped up in Brad's arms, he fighting to trap her face, kiss her, her eyes widened in wild relief. "Carr," she gasped, "thankGod. Oh help me, help...."

Instantly Brad released her, whirled. He brushed back his hair, touched a scratched place on his cheek. He shammed bravado. "Oh, hi, Carr," he weaseled. "Got back sooner than you expected, huh? Tiff and I were havin' a little fun. She's quite a tasty dish, she...."

He never finished the rest. For then the door was slammed behind me, my fist rammed forward like a ten pound sledge, caught him flush in the jaw.

He was caught flat-footed, went sailing against the wall. He slid down, landed in a dazed heap, shook his head groggily. Then I was on him again, pulling him to his feet, the rage inside me monolithic, insane, robbing me of all reason. I wanted to kill, kill-

This slime had dared to touch my woman!

I was pounding a fourth, fifth blow into his gaping face when Tiffany caught my arm, pulled me off.

I stood over Brad, my chest heaving, the blood-red haze gradually fading from before my eyes. "You ever lay a hand on Tiffany again," I husked," you ever so much as look at her, and I'll bring you up dead at reveille. Understand? I'll kill you! Like some rotten bug...."

"I'm sorry, Carr," he gasped, his eyes wide, terror-stricken, "I didn't mean nothing. I didn't know you had a thing for her. I just thought she was another...."

"Shut your mouth!" I bellowed. "Not another word! Out. Now. Before I start all over again."

Novak pulled out his handkerchief, stanched blood with it. Then, with one last glare-half terror, half hatred-he hurried from the room.

Instantly Tiffany was in my arms, sobbing softly. "Darling," she gasped, "thank God you came when you did. I couldn't have fought him any longer."

"Was this the first?" I rasped. "How about Friday?"

"This was the first time, Carr. He made some remarks Friday, but he didn't try anything. Only today...." She began to sob again.

I held her painfully tight, felt my heart swell to the bursting point. And then I knew. There was no more hedging, no more fencing in the mist. The crushing happiness, the sublime sense of completeness came down. And how does a miracle like this happen? Just from being with Tiff again, from holding and kissing her?

And why Tiffany? Why this woman? What did she have?

I flung all further questions and analyzings aside. The words broke from my throat in a choking, desperate rush: "I love you, Tiffany. I've missed you. I've gone crazy without you. God, it's good to be back. The days seemed a hundred years long without you. I love you, angel, I do, I do...."

Her sobs calmed, her words cleaved through: "I love you, Carr," she choked. "I wasn't the same when you were gone, I'm nothing without you...."

A greater forgiveness and benediction than that, no man on earth needs.

It was night. Once more we were at Tiffany's apartment, we were in her bedroom, we were in her bed.

Both of us naked, both clinging to the other, our breaths rapid, stertorous. "Darling," she breathed, "that was marvelous, so wonderful. You are a lover, you do me so beautifully. God, I feel marvelous, all complete and fulfilled inside. And even so, I want you again. Right away. How can such a thing be?"

"Call it a miracle of love." I kissed her damp, hot forehead, moved to her eyes, then her lips. My one hand cupped that wiry promontory of her belly, my other basketed one breast. My finger reflexively plucked at her nipple. "Darling, you were fantastic." I chuckled. "And only a beginner! Think of what you'll be when you really learn hard." Tiffany did some bold clenching of her own. "I'll beginner you," she laughed. She squirmed, stretched. "Oh, I feel so good. I'm still tingling. How long, baby? Before we can...?"

"In a little bit, sweet. You do drain a man's batteries."

"I hope I did. So you won't have any for any other woman. Was I good, Carr? Did I satisfy you?"

"You were wonderful, Tiff, simply wonderful. Any more and I'd have melted into a puddle of butter."

"Was I really? Or are you just saying that? Tell me. Tell me you love me again."

I laughed. "Yes, I was just saying that. And yes, I love you." I gathered her, kissed her lips hungrily, felt my chest fill up again. "Dear God, how I love you. I wish I could explain it, put it into words."

She kissed my nose playfully. "Try," she whispered.

"It's like I'm reborn, like I'm a new man. I've been floating on a cloud all day, I couldn't think of anything but you, the hours seemed endless. I'm an idiot. I grin all the time, I feel like I'm superior to everyone I meet, just because you love me. I want to stand on street corners, I want to climb church towers, I want to tell everyone I'm in love. For the first time in my life."

Tiffany's voice caught. "No more, Carr. You're breaking my heart. That's beautiful. The things you say. If I could tell you. It's the same with me. I feel brand new inside, like I've never really been alive before. It's the most glorious feeling. Will it last, Carr? Forever and ever?"

I nibbled her ear, made her writhe. "We'll make it last. I swear we will."

"Darling. Am I so awful? I want you again. I want you so bad I ache inside. Soon, Carr?"

"Soon, Tiff."

"You want me to help? I've got ways, I think. I read about a girl in a book once. A girl who...."

"No," I shushed her. "We'll let nature take care of things. Let's just lie like this, let's talk, enjoy each other, this very special peace we've found together. Tell me how much you love me, precious...."

She parodied a little girl's simperings. "I love you, Daddy. I love you as high as the sky. I love you as big as the moon." She shuddered, clung. "Oh, don't ask me that. I'll start to cry. I love you more than I can say. Considering that I love you when I know exactly what kind of man you are, what ugly business you're mixed up in. Better or for worse, okay. But this is ridiculous."

"Does it make that much difference?" I said gravely.

"It does, Carr. I get sick inside every time I think about it. But it doesn't change my feelings for you. I want you to be different, to be respectable. But if you won't change...."

"What'll you do?"

"I'll stick by you no matter what. I'll be your woman as long as you'll have me."

"Greater love hath no man. Darling, you make me feel so humble."

"Humbleness isn't enough. I want you to feel ashamed, I want you to change."

"And after I've changed? What do I do then? I don't know anything else. I'm too old 'to take up upholstering."

"You'll find something, dear. With all those bags of money you've got stashed away. You can buy into a legitimate business, start over."

My financial position was well known to Tiffany by now. And though she'd been impressed when the whole operation was explained to her-"Aren't you forgetting something, Tiff? That I want to marry you, make you Mrs. Harrison? And when I go legit all that pretty money goes out of the window? All those furs and jewels, all that lush security...."

"Who needs it? What good is any of it when I don't know what's going to happen to you from one minute to the next? When I'm worrying about you getting caught, being sent to jail. Even worse things."

"But, Tiff, that money. Do you realize how much it is? Tax free? You realize how I've schemed, put my life on the line to get where I am?"

"Money? Is that all that matters to you? Doesn't dignity, peace of mind, respectability mean anything to you?" She shuddered, her voice broke. "How did you get like this, baby? So that money means every-thing to you? What did they do to you to make you this way?"

Mild anger grew within me. I wanted to prick Tiff's pretty, rose-colored bubble, rock her Pollyana philosophies. "You want to know? You really want to know?"

"I do, Carr," she said in a hushed voice.

Then and there, our loving mood suspended for the moment, the cold brutality of the outer world invading our sanctuary, I began my ugly autobiography. I told her of my deprived youth, of the slap in the face I'd received from the world every time I'd sought the 'decent' life. The cold hatred was back. My voice turned hard and coarse. Especially when I got to Marlene, when I developed on what her love had cost me, embellished on the uplifting influence of my prison years, the heritage Marlene had left me.

"I'll never go back to that again," I said vehemently. "No matter what, I won't go back, give them a second chance to kick me around. I've tried it poor, I've tried it second class. You can have it. It's first class for me from here on in." I calmed somewhat. "And I'm telling you, I'm asking you. I love you, I want to marry you. Do you want to travel first class with me?"

Tiffany stifled a sob, clung to me. "I'll go with you, darling. First class or any class. No matter what. I guess that's what love's all about. Maybe someday you'll change, I'll be able to make you listen to reason. Maybe someday you'll see you're trying to avenge yourself on something that really isn't there, some-. thing that never really mattered in the first-place."

A massive shudder took her. "But until then...!" She sent her hand careening down my waist, over the ridge of my hip. Now, her touch instantly revitalizing me: " ... This will have to do. This love. Please, Carr, now. I'm afraid, I feel alone. Make me forget, drive away that fear." Her hand tightened, she drew me over her. "With this magnificent...."

She moaned in flawed ecstasy as her own fingers forestalled my penetration, as she actually honed me on that touchstone of her femininity. It was a stinging, incredible sensation, I was being touched to liquid fire, to a whetstone of velvety glass. Swiftly, her sighs mounted.

Then her hands fell away, she left me in that silky, hot foyer, left me to find my own way. And as I slowly sheathed myself in that vibrant, resistant scabbard, as I was totally enveloped: "Angel, that's exquisite, simply exquisite. I've waited, I've dreamed about this every night you were away. And now that you're here...."

Her body adjusted in smooth, wanton grace, her harsh cries grew. Her legs rose, dreamily settled behind mine. Now they tightened, drew me tight to her, she spurred me with her heels. Her hips began to writhe and jut.

The night's previous demands had done their work well. For even though Tiffany's bawdy squirmings thrilled and delighted me, made me want her desperately, I was understandably retarded in my responses.

Our love went on and on. If Tiffany was frustrated or disappointed in any way whatsoever, she made no indication of same. If anything she was in seventh heaven, she tolled her mounting orgasms proudly, like some miser counting his gold doubloons.

"Darling, darling," she gulped and shrilled as each new glory ripped her, "it's never be en like this before. It's never gone on and on. Like this. More, oh more! I think it's going to happen again. Oh! Now, oh now!"

Now it was. For at that moment I was taken by surprise. Suddenly I was lurching, thrashing with all my strength. The room exploded, became -rimmed with licking, crackling fire. A collar of intolerable sensation that grew smaller, seemingly closed about me, licked at my haunches with devilish sadism and persistence.

Then I was groaning, I was moving like a pile-driver gone berserk. I heard Tiffany proclaim another victory. Then still another.

The collar of fire was transformed into a series of blazing hoops before my mind's eye, Hoops through which I must dutifully jump.

I began. I barked with partial agony, partial ecstasy as I jumped through hoop after hoop. The flames seared and branded intolerably. I began to curse.

I was still jumping through those hoops long after the flames had died out, when they were reduced to only grey, frayed tatters.

CHAPTER TEN

The rest of that week passed uneventfully. On Tuesday afternoon, I summoned Brad Novak to my pad, we had a cozy chat. A no-nonsense seminar wherein I delivered a very concise and explicit list of do's and don't's. An ultimatum is what it was. . Which Novak, like the good, little errand boy he was, took without a whimper. Living in terror for the past twenty-four hours, fearful that his five C's a week, his cushy berth was about to go out the window, he was obsequiously contrite. He all but crawled.

And yet, as I dismissed him, told him to keep his mind on lists and collections instead of broads, there was something in his manner that didn't quite sit well. I'd best keep my eye on him for a while.

To this effect I killed time Friday afternoon by accompanying Brad on his rounds, watching him as he delivered the new lists, picked up weekly fees. As before, I kept in the background, let Brad introduce me as Vince Beyer when introductions were called for.

I had to admit, as we came off the turf that afternoon, stopped at a bar to lift a few, that the operation had never run so smoothly. Everything routine, on pinpoint schedule, all our clients more than satisfied with the service. Never had money been more easily earned.

Even so, I was edgy. There should be some static somewhere. I was wary when things went too smoothly.

Beware the calm before the storm.

The apprehensions were short-lived, however, For the minute I was away from the street, had time to myself, they faded. Vision of Tiffany, my expectation of seeing her that night took precedence.

Once again I opened the desk drawer, looked in at the package there, wished it wasn't so prettily wrapped so that I might look at the lavish $100 lingerie set inside. A fabulous ensemble-panties, brassiere, girdle and slip-in aqua silk, lace trimmed, saucily transparent in all the wrong (or right, depending on how you look at it) places. Then there was the $50-an-ounce perfume, the diamond bracelet I'd picked up for kickers.

It seemed that shopping for gifts worthy of Tiffany was all I'd done that week. And yet, none of it amounted to a thing, it seemed I'd only scratched the surface, that I couldn't do enough for this magnificent woman.

Somebody had it bad. And that wasn't good.

That wasn't good at all.

For, no matter how hard I fought to dispel that inbred doubt and fear, it was never very far beneath the surface of my subconscious. You're riding for a fall, Buster, I taunted myself ad museum; you're really asking for it this time. It was the story of my life; every time I was seemingly on top of the world, something had happened, I'd come up a cropper.

Why should it be any different now?

Could I help it if my every date with Tiffany seemed like my last one? If Hived in a nightmare of perpetual good-byes?

And that Saturday night, as Tiffany proudly modeled the exquisite lingerie for me, teased me like some gamin child as she got down to the panties and brassiere, was no different. I feasted my eyes on her, kissed and caressed her nonstop, couldn't get enough of her. Tomorrow she'd be gone, I'd never see her again. And why not live for the moment? Why live a life of perpetual regret for things I should have done, I should have said.

When life was here, now, this very moment. I should have kissed her more-Tiffany had put on the royal-blue, patent-leather pumps I'd bought her on Wednesday, she flaunted herself before me naughtily, delighted in the way my eyes were drawn to the golden delta those flimsy panties so ineffectively concealed. She came close to me, undulated her hips, hypnotized me with that golden pendant. "Touch' me, honey," she intoned. "It's all right. I'm yours, all yours. Anything you want."

She squirmed, sighed, pinched her legs on my hand as I "touched".

Then we were in that dark bedroom, the lovely gauzies flung helter-skelter, we were in hot, panting embrace, both of us deliriously impatient for what must come next. But still we dallied, still we tortured each other, both disciples of the love-is-better-for-the-waiting philosophy.

And when kisses, mere touches weren't enough: Tiff came over me, actually straddled my waist. Her arms supporting pillars on each side of my head, she indulged herself in a prelude that had become very dear to her during our last few outings. With taunting wrigglings and bobbings, she lowered those ripe, heavy breasts to my face, she flicked those hard berries across my nose, inches from my snapping, greedy lips.

Shortly she could tease no more. And feeding me alternate nipples with a skillful flip of elbow and shoulder, she moved into the final debililating stages of our love. Or so she thought.

For when I gathered both breasts with my hands, maneuvered them, popped both pink caps into my mouth simultaneously, she all but melted. "Oh, baby," she mewed, "that's fantastic. You devil, you've been holding out on me. Why didn't you show me this before?"

"Everything in good time, angel," I mumbled, never releasing her for a moment, "just think of what mysteries, what delights lay in store for you...."

"You tease, you rotten tease...."

The breaking point arrived shortly. She pulled me down upon her, attempted to crowd me to her with mere body English. "Wow," she gritted, "I just can't wait. Now, Carr."

"Not yet," I forestalled her, pulled away, harked back to my poignant dictum of moments before. To my credo of nowness. Tomorrow might be too late.

She stiffened, fought me with her hands when I slowly turned my body on the bed, tried to kiss her spasming belly. "No, Carr," she seethed," not that. There are ... bad memories attached to that. Please, darling!" f

"Perhaps it's time we erased those bad memories, put good ones in their place." I ignored her hands, pressed all the harder. My lips fluttered, my tongue stabbed at that perfumed indentation of her navel.

Her voice became even more firm. "No, Carr. I won't let you. That isn't nice, it's perverted."

I sat up, stared at her, my eyes dark and commanding. "I told you before, baby, it's not perverted. So long as it's done for love, as a show of reverence and worship...."

"Please, Carr, no...."

"Only that time it wasn't love, it was something quite different." My voice firmed, my hands gripping her wrists, became cruel. "If I could do this to you once for all the wrong reasons, I guess I can do it for the right ones. To show you how deeply I love you, how all of you is sacred to me."

She shuddered, a hundred different emotions registered on her face. But she fought me no more. Falling back into the pillows, she went limp, let me move her legs whichever way I wanted them. And when she was supine, helplessly, tremblingly waiting-

I began. Instantly she moaned, commenced to shiver and squirm beneath those searing kisses, those silky flickings. One moment she shut me out, the next she was boldly offering herself, virtually pleading for more.

Then, not too long after, I felt her hands, I felt her adjusting above me. "Tiffany," I gasped. "No. You don't have to...."

"I want to, darling," she hissed, her voice eerie, almost possessed. "If you can prove your love that way...." That first awesome contact was made. "I can too."

Then there was no time, no need for words. Both of us awed, preoccupied, both stunned by the unstinting excess our passion had driven us to-

There was love. Pure, uninhibited. Total expression, total self sacrifice.

Then, when neither of us could endure the sensations tearing at us any longer-There was another sort of love. That most basic and timeless of loves. "Yes!" she chanted as I came to her, possessed her as only a man can possess a woman, "oh, yes. That other was good, it was spice and fire. But this ... this is the best of all. The only way."

Once more our golden arrow of love was launched. It flowed and soared into celestial climes, was soon out of sight of mere mortals. And as our savage glory consumed us, wrenched and ground us-

We fell screaming into the sun.

Monday afternoon, shortly after two, I got a phone call from Brad Novak. And like Chicken Little once discovered, I found that all at once with jarring unexpectedness-my sky was falling in also!

"Something's fishy on the turf, Carr," he blurted. "I've been getting phone calls all day."

"What kind of phone calls?"

"My customers. They keep telling me somebody's been around asking all kinds cute questions. Questions about our service. Jesus, Carr, you don't think the cops are onto us, do you? I don't need none of that. I go into the pokey one more time I don't come out for ten years."

Instantly my blood ran cold, I felt like someone had dropped a bucket of bolts into the well of my gut. "Don't get your water all hot, Brad," I snarled. "Talk sense, will you? Now just what were these guys asking?"

"All kinds of crazy stuff. Like, did they want to buy a list of names of new people moving into town? Some of my customers didn't tumble, they said they already had a list."

"Damn!" I spat. "Some people must take stupid pills." My brain reeled, I thought to come up with an answer. "Get over here," I ordered. "I wanna talk to those guys myself. Ten minutes, hear?"

"Check, boss. Ten minutes."

Novak was waiting outside the Crown Point Arms when I came down, his face twitching nervously. "Take me to one of your real moxie customers," I commanded.

The man the girl brought out from the back room of Supreme Dry Cleaning, was in a tee shirt, short, swarthy, hairy, reeking of sweat. He reminded me of a sweaty hamster. The tiny eyes, the enormous schnozz. "Ernie," Novak introduced, "Ernie Russo. This is my boss, Ernie. Vince Beyer."

Russo wiped his hand on his apron, tentatively offered it. "Pleased to meet ya', Mr. Beyer. What can I do for you?"

"Tell him," Novak said. "Just what you told me About those guys who were nosing around."

Russo's eyes regarded me. A savvy character, an ex-con in the bargain, he knew the score. He knew our operation wasn't legit. But he wasn't complaining; he had only high regard for someone who could stumble on a soft touch like ours, make it go, make it pay off big.

"Two guys," he said, his words clipped. "One fatso, a sawed-off runt, around fifty. His sidekick was a gunsel, he looked like he had a hard-on for the whole world."

"Just what did they say?" I interrupted him.

"They asked was I interested in taking a service like the one Brad here sold me. What kind of service I said, playing dumb. So they told me just what they had in mind. It was the same kind of lingo Brad gave me the first time around. I still played like a dummy, I led 'em on."

"Did they ask about me?" I said. "About Brad?"

"I was getting to that," Russo said, relishing the attention, dragging the story out. "I told 'em to come around when they had the thing set up, I might be interested. Then they hung on a little longer, they asked if I'd ever been offered a deal like that before. I said no, it was all new to me. I didn't know anybody else who'd been offered a deal, did I? They'd heard someone was peddling something like that. Had I heard? Did I have any names?"

Russo smiled proudly. "Hell, I wasn't gonna spill the beans on Brad here. I stalled 'em, told 'em nothing.

They finally shoved off."

I dug out my wallet, slipped Russo a ten-spot. "Thanks for the information," I said, "You've been a big help."

He folded the bill, tucked it into his watch pocket. "Any time, Mr. Beyer," he said, his eyes curious.

I walked out of that place in dazed slowness, I felt (like my legs were anesthetized, like I was walking on stumps. The dread grew, turned my heart to lead. But how did they find out? If there was ever any rule Mike and I, all our runners, our pickup girls lived by, it was to keep the lip zipped. Number one procedure when closing an account was to let the client know that this was hush-hush, that if his competitors got onto the inside track he had, charges could be brought.

Nobody wants to kill the golden goose. I'd never met a client who blabbed yet.

I sat in my Cad for a long time, staring into space, Novak nervously Sitting beside me. The terror compounded upon itself. Who had advertised? How had the word got out?

"The cops?" Novak said finally. "What do you think, Carr?"

"No cops, Brad," I said in a cold, tired voice. "Cops don't operate like that?"

"Who, then?"

"The syndicate. Looks like we're being taken over, kid."

"Christ...." Novak gasped, his eyes bugging. I started the car. "I'll drop you off, Brad," I snapped.

Then I kicked that monster away from the curb.

How long I sat in Bingo's Lounge, put down Scotch after Scotch, I don't remember. It was after 6:00, the streets were dark, when I finally came out. To all intents and purposes as sober as when I'd gone in. Fear had seen to that.

A hundred plots and counter-plots had run through my brain in the interim, none of them making any sense. I thought to grab my bundle, grab Tiffany, clear out. Now. Tonight. While the getting was still good. But the banks were closed, it would have to wait for morning.

I thought to call Mike, tell him something was brewing. But what if this was a false alarm? What if I was jumping the gun? I decided to sleep on it, call him in the morning.

And beyond that-rage superceded fear. Nobody was going to take over this racket, nobody was going to ease me out. I'd invented it; I'd built it up, I'd taken all the risks. It was mine, all mine! I'd kill the guy who tried muscling in.

The rodomontade thoughts whirled through my brain even as I came out of the elevator, headed toward the door of my apartment, I nurtured myself on them, they gave me spurious comfort. I reached my door, inserted the key, flung it open, entered mumbling to myself, groped for the light switch. Even as I turned it on, I heard a snick and a creak behind me.

I froze where I stood.

"That's a good boy, Harrison," a smug, arrogant voice hissed through the air. "Just take it easy. Turn around. Slow. No funny moves. That way you don't get hurt."

I turned, let my eyes dart around the room. And there, his back to the windows, slouched in my favorite chair, his face shadowed, swarthy-a man who couldn't have been more than five-two in elevator shoes, his hair a gray frizzle-he sported a German goiter big as a tub, he reminded me of nothing so much as a wart-encrusted toad.

I must have moved. For Instantly there was a rustle, a dull click. And I took in the man flanking the toad. More specifically I took in the glint of light on the blue nose of the. 38 automatic he carried. He was a six-footer, slight, wiry. His hair was dark, his nose Romanesque, his underlip curled in surly disdain. My age, there was a cold, impersonality about him, he seemed incomplete somehow. As if someone had forgot the last ounce of humanity the recipe called for. He reminded me of a mindless zombie, a wind-up toy.

For long moments none of us said a word. Then the toad indicated a chair. "Sit down, Harrison."

I sat, stared stolidly at the man, suddenly cold sober. "How'd you get in here?"

"Tommy's got a way with locks. Ain't you, Tommy?"

Tommy nodded, said nothing, his expression blank.

"Allow me, Mr. Harrison," the fat man said. "Juliano Terranova at your service. From Chicago. Big Eddy sent me down to have a little talk with you. We been hearing things about you, son."

"How'd you find me?" I said. "Who finked?"

"We been checking all day, visiting some of your customers. Names do get out. Names like Brad Novak. Ring a bell? We looked him up, Tommy here worked him over a little bit. He sang like a happy little bird. And here we are."

"You didn't ... kill him?"

"No. But we put the fear of God into him. He'll stay put for a while. You ain't very smart, Harrison. If Novak wouldn't have talked, I'd have found you just the same. I heard lots of talk about a guy who drives a flashy blue Caddy. A guy who dresses like a king, never has anything to do. You show off too much, Harrison. That's bad policy. Unless you want to draw attention to yourself."

"Skip the lessons, Terranova," I forced up "bravado. "What do you want?'

"You know what I want, paisan, don't play games with me. Big Eddy heard you got a good thing going here. He wants in." He chuckled. "And when Big Eddy wants in...."

"Nobody says no," Tommy Stooge finished for him.

"And who'n hell's Big Eddy?"

"Ooh, you are an amateur, ain't you? How'd you get as far as you did, work this racket up as good as you did? Big Eddy wouldn't like knowing you never heard of him." He paused, took out a cigar, lit it. puffed leisurely at it. "Big Eddy just happens to be a cape mafioso, one of the syndicate wheels. He just happens to run everything around here worth running."

"How'd you hear about me? Who spilled it?"

"Those things get around, sonny. Wherever there's money to be made. I understand you're really coining it. Not big, like you'll do wih a little muscle behind you, but big enough for a small-timer."

"Thanks for nothing."

"Not at all, punk. We're moving in, whether you like it or not. How's five percent sound to you? Five per cent of a really big operation? We're gonna spread this out, go national. We can work something out, I'm sure."

"Five per cent? You're out of your mind. That's out and out thievery!"

"Five per cent or no per cent," Terranova sneered, "you pick it. We can use you. You're a pretty smooth operator, looks like. But we can make it without you, too. Maybe you'd like to be dead a while."

I fell silent, combined fear and outrage slamming me, rendering me momentarily incoherent. I stubbornly clung to what small pride I still had, I refused to cringe before these hoodlums. "And if I tell you to go to hell?"

"You ain't gonna be seeing much blue sky no more," Tommy growled.

"As I said, Harrison," Terranova added, "you pick it. We're giving you a sporting offer. You balk, that's it. We take over just the same. We absorb your runners, your bookmen, those gals you got lined up in those phone offices. We do it with or without you. I'd be easier with you. But if you want to play tough...."

Abruptly Terranova stood, buttoned his coat, indicated the interview was over. "You've got twenty-four hours, pal. We'll check back tomorrow at this same time. You join up, fine. You play mean, we play mean. I just have to pick up the phone and I've got torpedoes all over the place. Not that Tommy himself can't handle you, whoever you got backing you all by himself...."

He stopped at the door, turned back a last time. "Twenty-four hours, Harrison. Smart up. You won't do so bad with us." His smile was contemptuous. "And don't try skipping out on us. You won't get very far."

Then he and his bean-pole stooge were letting themselves out. Tommy stared back at me for a brief second, no expression whatsoever on his face.

I was alone in the room. The floor was spinning, the walls were seemingly yawing and splintering and falling in on me. For what seemed an eternity I sat in my chair, my face in my hands, my heart hammering at frightening speed. God, dear God-I groaned over and over, unable to make any sense out of the mish-mash of thoughts that careened and slid inside my brain.

Somehow I managed to get hold of myself, I came up with a rudimentary plan. There was a good chance they didn't know about New Dale, about Mike. The leak had come in Crown Point, that was as far as their scoop went, I'd muffed the deal by hanging around too long. If it hadn't been for Tiffany and her damnable hold on me-

Instantly, I froze, my blood turned to ice in my veins. Tiffany! Dear God, if they ever got onto her, if they ever moved in on her-

And for the first time in my life I experienced concern-real concern-about anyone but myself.

Whatever I did, whatever move I made, I had to include her. I couldn't leave her at the mercy of scum like Terranova.

I'd take my chances, I'd make a break for it. We'd go to New Dale, keep out of sight, clue Mike, see what developed. If I had Tiffany with me, they couldn't touch me. Rather than join up with them, I'd let them have the telephone racket, I'd let them muddle through as best they could.

Tiffany had to be warned, apprised of the situation, told to get ready. If I could sneak her out of Crown Point tonight, under cover of darkness, pick her up tomorrow, after I'd visited my banks-

I was up, dialing Tiffany's number. There was no answer. After ten rings, I hung up. Glancing at my watch, I saw it was 7:10, deduced she was out having dinner.

I had everything I needed packed by 8:00. I dialed Tiffany's number, cursed aloud when there was still no answer. Damn! If we'd have had a date tonight-And where in hell could she be?

I called at 9:00, at 10:00. Still no answer. Even if she was out on one of those hen parties she was so fond of-Again at 11:00. God, she should be back by now!

Sometime around midnight, as I called once more, still got no answer, a cold chill gathered about my heart. And unable to account for her whereabouts, figure any untoward emergency that would keep her out this late at night, I could fight the harrowing realization no longer.

Had Terranova and his goon got to Tiffany? Had they abducted her? Were they holding her as a hostage? Feeble rage grabbed me in vise-like grip, shook me like a rag doll, made my teeth rattle with terror. If they hurt Tiffany-

I called every half hour. Then every fifteen minutes.

At 3:30 a.m. I was still calling. I let the phone ring twenty times. There was still no answer.

Then I wanted to howl, to pound my head against the wall. Then I knew the deepest, most profound meaning of terror.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Sometime during that agonized night, hatred, fear and anguish falling before the onslaughts of physical exhaustion, I must have dozed off. Suddenly the sun in my eyes yanked me from tormented sleep, brought me up with a frightened start. I glanced at my watch, cursed. As I saw it was after nine.

Instantly the word Tiffany flashed across my brain, I groaned like some haunted animal, flung myself from the davenport, grabbed the phone.

Again her apartment number went unanswered after ten rings. Desperately I dialed Midwest's business offices, asked to speak to Tiffany Coyne.

I'm sorry, sir, but Miss Coyne is not at work this morning," the impersonal, brittle voice informed.

"You're sure? She's not elsewhere in the office?"

"Quite sure, sir. May I take a message? Perhaps if you'll leave your number...."

"Never mind that. Tell me this. Was Tiff ... Miss Coyne at work yesterday afternoon? Did she leave early or anything like that?"

"No, sir. Miss Coyne was here until five. I saw her myself. May I ask who's calling please?'

"Thanks, honey," I muttered, and hung up.

Then I sat immobile, a maddening tic beginning in my left eye, I fought the frustrated, helpless screams that banged against the dam of my throat.

And what would I do, where would I turn now? Who do you call when God is out? Those animals! If they'd hurt Tiffany, if they'd so much as mussed a hair on her head-

I cursed myself for not having found out where Terranova and the zombie were staying. If I knew where to get in touch with them. A starting place. I thought to call all the hotels and motels in Crown Point. But when I saw the endless list in the phone book, I gave it up.

I thought of calling Warden, asking for Harvey Coyne's number, giving her parents a buzz. Maybe conscience had caught up with her, she'd gone home. As quickly as I discarded the idea. Wouldn't she have called me, called the phone company at least, clued them?

I cursed, fell back into the davenport cushions again, I was immolated by some very bitter thoughts. Vultures! I raged. Every time you turn around. I was a vulture, they were vultures. The world was one gigantic vulture. In Tiff's eyes I was a vulture of the worst sort. Then there was Terranova, there was Big Eddy. Vultures on top of vultures! A certitude of vultures, an infinity of vultures. Scavengering, red-eyed, slathering-

I switched channels on that. Before I really worked myself into a state.

There was only one thing left to me. Then I was up, racing for the bathroom, tearing at my rumpled clothes as I went.

A half-hour later, a shower and shave behind me, a fresh change of clothes on my back, I was on the street. I checked my inside pocket for the five bank books, I made for my car. Then I was streaking across town, heading for Tiffany's apartment building. There was just an outside chance, an infinitesimal chance-She was sick, she was staying with a girl friend. She was shacking up with another man-Anything!

I got into the apartment building with a couple who lived there, I scooted up to the sixth like Gangbusters were after me. Standing outside of Tiffany's door, I leaned on the buzzer for sixty seconds straight.

Nothing. The helplessness crushed me. I wished that, like Tommy, I had a way with locks. On an off chance, I tried the knob. My heart kicked as I found the knob turning in my hand.

Swiftly I stepped inside, closed the door behind me, let my eyes sweep the room. As of that moment I knew it was useless to call Tiff's parents. A lamp was kicked over, an end table was on its side, a throw rug was rumpled. Most damning of all: Tiffany's purse lay on the floor beside the davenport. A woman never goes anywhere without her purse. Unless it's a dire emergency.

And this was emergency.

I stood galvanized in that spot for sixty seconds. And realized it was end of the trail. Until tonight, when Terranova got in touch with me, laid things-very ugly things-on the line.

For a moment I was washed by a wave of my former selfishness. I was like a psychotic rate in a maze, darting this way and that, trying to find excuses, trying to find an easy way out. I'd grab what money I could get my hands on, I'd get out by myself. Tiffany could look out for her own skin. And when Terranova found out she wasn't going to buy any groceries, he'd let her go. We'd get together again. Later, when the dust had settled, when it was safe for me to sneak back for her once more.

Self-loathing flayed me. I paused, took time to call myself every rotten name under the sun. Talk about creepy, chiseling bastards! You haven't grown up yet, have you?

I looked at Tiffany's pad one last time, felt a white hot stab of regret go through me.

How can the world change so fast? I groaned. Overnight?

Slowly, tiredly I let myself out of the apartment.

And because there was nothing else to do, because my brain absolutely refused to function for a while there, I exercised my only option, I made my weary rounds of the banks. By the time I returned to my pad, I was carrying over $200,000 in cash.

By then it was 11:30. And realizing I hadn't eaten in 24 hours, a little woozy from the lack, I ducked out for a lunch. I virtually had to force down the food. Gradually there was recuperation of sorts, my brain began to function once more. Certain gears began to mesh.

Back in my room I dialed Brad Novak's number, squinted angrily as his phone rang. And why hadn't the jerk called me before this? Why hadn't he tried giving me a warning? For all I knew the chicken had hightailed it for the woods the minute Terranova and company had left him.

Novak answered on the fifth ring. "Yeah?" he said, his voice slightly breathy.

"Brad. Carr here. I hear you had visitors yesterday."

"Carr," he said strangely, abstractedly. "It's you. I been trying to get you all morning. God, I'm sorry about that, about ratting. But they scared me silly, they gave me a working over. They would've killed me if I hadn't talked."

"Okay, okay," I snapped, "skip that for now. I want to see you, I want to talk to you. Get over here right away."

"Your place, Carr? You sure it's safe?"

"Until six o'clock tonight it is. Then there's going to be fireworks. I'll have a piece by then. Get the lead out, will you?"

He seemed hesitant somehow. "Okay, Carr. I'll be right over. If you're sure Terranova and that butcher of his ain't hanging around...."

Novak showed at 1:00. Edgy as hell, his eyes darting, furtive, his face plastered with bandages. I poured him a couple shots to calm him down. "Those guys played pretty rough, huh?" I studied a puffy eye, a ragged, crusted cut along one cheek.

"It was no picnic, Carr," he forced a grin. "God, I don't want no more of this. I want out, Carr. A mafia war I don't need. Can you give me some bills now? I wanna clear this burg. I figure I've got three-hundred coming at least."

"Skip that running jazz. We're staying put." I wondered at the conviction in my voice. "They aren't pushing us that easy."

"We are?" he said, amazed. "You know who you're bucking?"

"I know. I also know they need me worse than I need them. I've got proof of that."

"You have? What proof?"

I ignored the question. "What'd you tell 'em yesterday, Brad? Besides my name, where I was holed up?"

"I didn't wanna tell 'em, Carr," he whined again. "But they kept hammering at me. They made me tell 'em about the operation, about the take. But it was nothing new to them. They knew more about it than I did. They been casing us longer than we think."

"Did you tell them anything about Tiffany?" I spat, my eyes drilling his, searching for any flicker of a sellout.

"Tiffany?" he registered complete surprise. "Hell no, Carr. Why would I tell them that? They didn't ask anything like that. Why? Is something wrong with Tiffany?'

"She's gone. Not a trace of her. I think they've got her. They're planning to twist my arm with her."

"Damn!" Novak hissed. "Of all the rotten stunts...."

"I'm supposed to meet with them at six, sign up. But if I can get my hands on Tiffany before then ... Those rats didn't say where they were staying did they? Think! Any little slip at all?"

"No, Carr," Novak said after a moment's pause. "Nothing like that at all. Just business. That character he called Tommy ... I wouldn't want to get on his list."

"Get out on that street," I said, "start cruising. Haunt the bars, the hotel lobbies, see if you can spot them. If you do, follow them, try to find out where they're staying. That's probably where they've got Tiffany. Call me back at five. I'll be out myself, I'll check back then. If we can just get a half hour's jump on them...."

Novak rose, started toward the door, looking more like a scared rabbit than when he'd entered. I doubted that he'd be any good at all. Probably he'd hide some-place, curl up around a bottle of bourbon. "Please, Carr," he whined a last time. "A couple bills? Please? Just in case everything goes to hell?"

I peeled off two hundreds. I knew it was throwing money down a rat hole.

For a long time after Novak left, I remained in that chair, staring into space, my heart beating raggedly, tiredly. Finally I decided. Rising, I went to reapprise my escape kit, added the stacks of bills to the clothing and personal items I thought worth taking along. Then the suitcase was closed, ready. I put on my overcoat. Now I blocked my shoulders, started toward the door.

My first stop was a rum-dum pawnshop on Mercantile Street. Where I bought a .32 Beretta automatic with no questions asked, signed a phony name in the gun book. Picking up some ammo at a sporting-goods store, I was in business. No matter what happened now at least I'd have some sort of an equalizer when it came to bargaining.

I was cruising by 2:30.

But after hitting eight motels, asking after Terranova, describing him to desk clerks, receiving puzzled shrugs for answer, I knew I was skinning the wrong tree. I hit some bars then, I made a dozen spots in different parts of the city. I constantly kept a weather eye out, watched for double takes, evasive answers. But the barkeeps were on the up-and-up; they simply hadn't seen Terranova.

I watched for Novak's car, I expected maybe our paths would lap as I criss-crossed the city, I thought perhaps some bartender would say, "That's funny, there was just a guy in here asking the same thing...."

But I didn't see Novak's heap, no bartender obliged.

I guess it was that small desertion, recognition of the fact that Brad wasn't working with me, that triggered suspicion in my mind. And as I drove, I let my thoughts run wild, I embellished on the nagging conjecture. Finally, after narrowly missing a collision with a truck, I angrily pulled over to the curb, really tore that nettling uncertainty limb from limb.

Something-I couldn't put my finger on it-was screwy somewhere.

Suddenly my heart jammed up into my throat, I couldn't breathe for a minute. Those bandages of Brad's! Now that I thought about it, they looked faky as hell. Sure, he had a puffed eye, there was a cut or two. But how come no real bruises? The kind of bumps a no-nonsense drubbing would have left?

My brain spun more crazily. Of course, stupid!! flayed myself. It had to be a put-up job! Brad was my Judas, it was Brad who'd sold me down the river. The thoughts tumbled over themselves, the picture perfectly clear now. He had his reasons. Ambitious, power-hungry, a punk all his life, he'd seen a way to climb out. And when I'd given him his lumps over, Tiffany-that had set him off. And like some long-smoldering bomb-

Everything fell into place. And to think they'd almost snowed me! For instance, who knew about Tiffany? Who knew I was high on her? Not even Mike knew that, I'd never so much as mentioned her name to him. But Novak-he knew, he knew good. He knew that if there was any one way those hoods could keep me in line-It was through Tiffany.

Suddenly I was trembling like a malaria victim, I was choking on my hatred.

Gradually I regained control, I clung to the wheel with white knuckles. I figured my moves like a chess master.

No wonder I couldn't bring up trace of Terranova in any of the dives, in the motels. I'd give a hundred-to-one odds they were using Novak's pad as a hideout, that Tiffany was being held captive there at this very minute.

Still I waited, still I let the moves click into the right slot with a definitive clang. Now, the plan rock-solid-

I rammed the Cad into traffic.

I kept my distance from Novak's pad, a grubby place on Lancaster Street, located just above one of those mangy working-man's bars the South Side's crawling with. I'd been up there a couple times, and even though it was nice, inside, it was still rickey-tick, furnished with junk. Novak had said he planned to move many times. But he never quite got around to it. He was in his element, I guess. And leave well enough alone.

I looked down the street as I floated by, saw Brad's red Pontiac parked in front of his place. It was all the confirmation I needed. I took in the white Chrysler behind it at the same time. Two and two does make four.

Then I wheeled, headed back to the Crown Point Arms.

I was practically sitting on the phone when Brad called at 5:00. "Anything?" I asked.

"Not a thing, Carr," he said. "Nobody's seen hide or hair of 'em. I got in just now."

"Okay," I sighed dispiritedly. "We've done what we could. Thanks just the same."

"What're you gonna do?" he asked.

"What can I do? They've got me by the short hairs. I'll just have to wait, talk business. See you, Brad."

The second the receiver went down I bolted from my apartment. I could envision Novak giving Terranova the high sign. The turtle-dove was signed, sealed and delivered. I was making book on the fact that fat Julio was lulled, that he was starting for my pad right now.

It was just as I figured. The white Chrysler was gone as I approached Lancaster Street from the wrong side. It was all a matter of timing, now. I parked the Cadillac two blocks away, on a street Terranova wouldn't find in a hundred years, I hoofed it the rest of the way to Novak's pad. I was comforted mightily by the way the noise blared out of Carl's Tavern as I went by. Even with the doors closed.

I went up those rickety stairs stealthily, mounted them, started down that gloomy, smoke-reeking corridor. Now I pulled the Beretta out of my belt, removed the safety. I tried the knob, found it wouldn't budge. I gulped, held my breath. Then I knocked brusquely.

"Who's there?" Novak's voice carried.

"Tommy," I muttered. "We forgot something."

There was a rattle of chains, a metallic click. The door started to open. I kicked it will all my might, sent it back into Brad's face with a dull whack. I was in, covering him, kicking his heat out of the way even as he clutched at his face, fell forward. I raised the Beretta over my head, palmed it, brought it down on his skull with all my strength. My heart leaped exultantly as the steel crunched so satisfyingly, as Novak groaned again, went down in a heap. I wanted to bellow with joy, with brutish vindication.

Swiftly I scooped up Brad's gun, put it into my belt. I stared about, took in the messy room, the welter of bottles, glasses, ashtrays, stacked plates all over that chintzy, glass cocktail table. A pizza cardboard was on the floor. The heavy vibrations from the juke-box below carried through the floor, I actually made out the words of Downtown. Better and better, I gloated.

The door was closed, locked, chained. Instantly I went in search of Tiffany.

I found her in a back bedroom, naked, her legs and hands tied with her own stockings. At least I found what was left of her. For as her eyes blinked, as she fought to focus her vision, I surveyed the unkempt specimen, felt my stomach roll. Her hair was a snarled mess, her makeup was smeared, her flesh was smudged with dirt, there were dark bruises on her arm, on her breasts, her thighs. She looked like she'd been dragged behind a truck.

My heart exploded, rage cauterized me. I suppressed a groan, it was all I could do to keep from bellowing at the top of my lungs. If ever a man teetered on the brink of insanity, I did at that moment. "Tiffany?" I choked. "What have they done to you?"

At first she didn't recognize me. She reeked of whiskey, I could see they'd been making her drink. At least they'd granted her that small mercy before they abused her, used her like some mindless animal. "Is that you, Brad?" she said, her voice pathetic, something deranged in it. Her eyes were wild, glazed. "Not again," she pleaded. "Not already. You just finished, you...."

Instantly I knew just what sort of a party these slimy perverts had held here these past 24 hours.

I died inside to think that while I'd been so stupidly calling Tiffany's number, while I'd been wandering the streets, even while I'd been sleeping my drugged sleep-

These sadistic swine had been handling Tiffany, they'd been humiliating her, treating her like the basest of the base. They'd been forcing her to unspeakable vilifications. They'd been-

I couldn't force myself to think further.

I helped her up, tried to untie her wrists. "Please," she maundered, nothing registering, "not again, not...." Then a light seemingly clicked on in her eyes, she smiled a wan, crooked smile. "Oh, Carr, darling," she chirped, "it's you. Where have you been? I've been waiting for you. But you didn't come for so long."

At that moment someone drove an ice-pick clean through my heart.

Suddenly Tiffany lurched, she became momentarily lucid. "Carr, darling, what is it? Why did they bring me here? What did I do wrong? Oh, Carr, the things they did to me, the things they forced me to do. I'm dirty, dirty ... I'll never be clean again...." She began to sob wrackingly.

Gently I kissed her forehead, pushed her back onto the bed, I caressed her hair. "There, baby, " I soothed, "rest now, everything's going to be all right. I've got some things to take care of first. Then we'll go. We can go home."

She became calmer, her tears faded. I was amazed at the shudder that took her, the way she fell into a swoon, slept again. "Oh, honey...." she signed at the last.

Again the lament boomed in my brain: Tiffany, my love. What have they done to you?

I turned out the light, went back to the living room. Where I kept kicking Novak in the side to hurry his revival. "Where're all your pretty bandages, Brad?" I taunted, let him know that we were definitely through playing games. "You fink! You stinking, slime-bellied fink."

He started blubbering. "I didn't want to do none of it, Carr, honest I didn't. But they made me, they...."

Another kick in the face turned that off. "Did they make you sell me down the river? They didn't find you, did they? You went looking for them, didn't you? You blabbed your guts, you sold out. After all I did for you...."

"I didn't know what I was doing," he choked, "I...." I shut that off too, dragged him to his feet, balanced him against the wall. "Tell me all about it, Brad, buddy," I seethed. "Tell me what you and your friends did to Tiffany."

He recoiled, tried to escape. "No, Carr, please don't. You don't want to hear that, you don't want...."

I plowed a punch into his gut, watched him roll on the floor, listened to him whoop for breath. Then he was dragged up again, poised, a human punching bag. "Yes," I hissed, my tone psychotic, "I want to hear it. I want to know about all the cute little stunts you pulled on her, the things you made her do. So I'll know just how slow to make you die...." Moment by moment my brain yawed and rocked, like some off-kilter pendulum; I drifted closer to insanity.

I kept punching him, tapping him, tormenting him.

"Tell me, Brad," I seethed, "tell me. Don't leave out a thing."

And when he could stand the stinging blows no longer, he haltingly, stranglingly began. "I didn't want to, Carr," he weaselled. "I begged 'em to leave the kid be. But...."

"Tell me," I roared, slapping him now.

He began. Haltingly, sobbingly at first, the articulation of those depravities too much for even him to stomach. But then as he got into his recital, as my slaps became more sadistic, he spoke more freely, he began describing the nonstop torture they'd inflicted on Tiffany. He told how they force-fed her whiskey, he described how first Tommy, then Terranova had used her. He pointedly left his part in the narrative out.

It was bad, it was rotten. Far more rotten, more vile than I could have begun to imagine. Now I was truly psychotic. Tiffany, my poor innocent Tiffany-and I brought you to this. All in the name of love-

I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry.

But I did neither. Instead, I kept battering at Novak, I kept his head bouncing against the wall like a ping pong ball. "And you didn't do anything, did you, Brad? You never touched her, did you? You were a good little boy...." I hit him harder, felt my fists slide in that red, bubbling slime that used to be a face. "Tell me what you did!"

And when he began the reluctant account, told me step by step of the abominations he'd forced on Tiffany-I could take no more. I began slugging him with every last ounce of strength I possessed. "Was it good?" I choked. "Was she good? Was she worth this? And this? And this?"

When I finally stopped slamming my fists into his face, when I emerged from my vengeful trance, I found myself leaning against the wall, my hands leaving bloody trails on the paper, I found myself sobbing uncontrollably. Novak was on the floor, dead, his body in a grotesque tangle. I vaguely remembered him falling that last time, I remember the sickening crunch as he'd caught his forehead on the corner of a dresser.

Which was all right, I mused dazedly. I'd meant to kill him anyway.

Somehow the violence had purged me of my blood lust. And though I still trembled convulsively, gasped for breath, felt a chill to the depths of my being, I was once more in control. My head was clear, a deadly, single-minded purpose burned there.

It was all a matter of waiting now.

At 7:00 Terranova and Tommy returned. I heard them clattering up the steps. This over the omnipresent rumble and screech of the juke-box downstairs. I hefted the Beretta. I undid the chain, threw the latch as they knocked. Now I stepped back.

"The two-bit punk never showed up, he...." Terra-nova's words died as he saw me standing there. Instantly his hands rose, Tommy following his lead with desperate haste. You're yellow, Tommy, I remember thinking. Just like all you gunsels once you're on the wrong end of the piece.

"Don't try it, Tommy," I snarled as he twitched the slightest bit. "I'll kill you where you stand."

They entered slowly, their faces white, drawn with terror. I made them stand against the wall that fronted the corridor. The slugs wouldn't carry far that way. Terranova saw the fanatic light in my eyes, he knew what was coming next. "Listen to reason, Harrison," he pleaded. "We can talk this out, we can explain."

"Explain?" I snarled. "You'll never explain. Not in a million years. Novak tried. And look what happened to him." Their eyes flitted, Tommy actually got green around the gills. Even as I watched, Terranova began to tremble, a great black splotch began to stain the front of his trousers.

"I-hope-she-was-good," I chewed out the words. "I hope she was worth this." I spit in Terranova's face, I let the nose of the gun hover inches from his eyes. "She's the last woman either of you'll ever touch."

I squeezed the trigger, saw that tiny hole open in his forehead, saw the wall behind him suddenly flower and swim with blood. In the same movement I turned on Tommy, punched two bullets into his gut. Him I wanted to die slow.

He accommodated me very nicely.

I listened for a long time, I waited for commotion from downstairs. But there was none, we Gotta Get Out of This Place still blasted. I stood over Tommy until he stopped kicking. Then I went to get Tiffany dressed, to wash the blood off my clothes, off my hands.

Tiffany was still in dazed condition, she couldn't track straight when I brought her from the bedroom. "It's gonna be all right," I said over and over. "Once you get some rest, once we get away from here. You're gonna forget all of this...." I led her around Novak. "Close your eyes, don't look at this. It isn't pretty."

I was just reaching around Tiffany to open the door when all hell broke loose. "Darling," she shrieked, jerked in my grasp. I whirled, saw Tommy sinking back to the floor. Then I saw the knife, an eight-inch switchblade, in her back, sunk to the hilt. The knife that had been meant for me.

I turned Tiff, lowered her to the floor. "Carr, darling," she whimpered. "It hurts, it...."

Her breath came in a great, rattling rush, her head fell sideways. I've heard that sound enough times to know she was dead. An anguished, animalistic groan broke from me. "No, Tiff," I pleaded. "Dear God, no. Don't, don't leave me ... not now."

I held her for long moments, I kissed that face, those fouled lips one last time.

Then, a skull-splitting rage investing me, wanting to avenge, avenge-

The knife was ripped from Tiffany's back. How long I knelt over Tommy, driving that blade into his rotten heart, only God could tell. Then, an even more over-powering blood-lust taking me, wanting to leave a memento for Big Eddy, a taunt only he and his Mafia breed could understand-

I tore open Tommy's trousers, slashed like some drunken butcher. Then I turned on Terranova.

The Mafia takes care of its own, I gloated looking down on them. How's that, Julio? Don't say I never did anything for you. At least you don't go out with your mouth empty.

I was beyond reason, then. I looked at Tiffany, wondered what to do with her. And knew appalling panic to realize I could do nothing with her. I had to leave her here, with these sewer rats.

What was the use? I groaned. Everything was wrong, I couldn't make any of it right. What was the use?

I looked at her one last time. I stared, until the tears made her white, frightened face go away.

I stumbled toward the door.

I went down those stairs. And once on the street-I ran, I ran.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Guadalajara, Jalisco, in Mexico, is a pretty, little tourist trap. The people are friendly, the atmosphere is congenial, the prices are right. Another thing, there's quite an American colony, you won't feel altogether out of your element should you come this way.

I'd been holed up in Guadalajara for two years now. There were times when the U.S.A.-and Crown Point, Illinois, especially-seemed like some never-never land. Like they never did exist, never will exist.

But then there were other times when they were so scaldingly real they'd set me to clawing the walls. The only thing that helped those times was a fifth of whiskey, consumed at one sitting, preferably.

But tonight was one of the better times. Or at least so I'd thought upon arriving at Lori's place, upon being welcomed with such a frankly hungry and sensual kiss. Granted, Lori Mercer may have been somewhat over the hill (she's 42) but so far as female needs are concerned it was like she was just getting her second wind. She wasn't one bit shy about letting a man know of those primal needs, either.

And at that moment, in the sumptuous bedroom of her Spanish Colonial manse on Guadalajara's outskirts, both of us in state of semi-undress, she was giving a very forthright demonstration of just how forest fires get started.

"Darling," she groaned, her lips flitting across my naked shoulders, dropping to my chest, to the hard extrusions there, now fleeing elsewhere in maddening, tickling flow, "I've missed you. I've been looking forward to this all day. I think you've been avoiding me."

I arrested her head, brought her up, nestled her in the crook of my shoulder. "Not yet, Lori," I muttered.

"You tease," she laughed, "you dreadful tease. Later?"

"Later. If you still want."

"You know I will. Anything to thrill you, to keep you loving me."

I stirred restlessly. "Please, Lori? Not again."

She stiffened, became slightly distant. "All right, Carr. I always promise myself I won't start that. But you, pet. Nothing, no amount of reasoning, no excuses will ever change that."

"I'm sorry, dear. I've explained, you know what it is with me."

"You've explained, Carr. Don't rub it in. You're still carrying a great big torch. For a girl who's been dead over three years now. I'm getting a little tired...."

The anger was back, dark and unreasonable. I stiffened, pulled away from Lori. "I won't listen, Lori," I snapped coldly. "I won't stay and have her insul...."

Desperately Lori clung to me, burrowed her face to my throat, kissed in quick, fluttering pecks. "I'm sorry, Carr. I didn't mean ... Dear God, why? Why must it always be me who must crawl, who must beg? If I just didn't love you so, if I...."

"Please, Lori? Can't we just have this? Can't we just enjoy each other, take each other ... this way? Why do you persist in trying to make more of it? These wrangles of ours just can't go on and on...."

She huddled to me frightenedly, her voice like that of a tiny, chastened child. "I'm sorry, Carr, so sorry. I won't mention it again. Tell me, how was your day?"

"Same old thing. Fat and fiftyish couple, the wife wanting to see the cathedrals, the husband pulling me aside, arranging an after hours excursion to some of the hot spots. He's sneaking out at one, I'm meeting him then. I suppose I'll take him to Rosa's."

"Do you have to, darling?" she pouted. "I thought you'd stay the night. It's been ages since you've done that. I think that my happiest moments are when I wake up in the morning, find you sleeping beside me."

"Business. I have to make a buck. I'm paid to guide, you know."

"I shouldn't knock it. That's how we met. Damn you, Carr. Damn you and your pride. Why don't you let me take care of you? I've got more money than I'll ever use. When Dad died he left me enough to...."

"Lori," I warned.

"Oh, hell! I'm not talking about marriage. Just let me keep you. I get so jealous sometimes when I think of you with those bored housewives. They get down here, they go crazy. Please, Carr. How much do you think you'd need?"

"I'm not about to become a gigolo."

Lori got up from the bed, went to refill our glasses with Scotch. "Subject closed," she rebuked me as she went. I fell back onto the pillows, let my thoughts drift. And though I didn't want to remember-

I had never seen Mike Kilmer again. How the mess in Crown Point turned out, I never found out. What with the police and the Mafia both on my tail, there hadn't been much time for newspaper reading. And the farther I got away from Illinois, the scantier the stories on the triple murder had become. Within a week after my escape they'd faded altogether. That's where the surrealism sets in.

Whatever happened to Mike, whatever happened to our operation, I'll never know. And still a hunted man, the Mafia more unforgiving than the law, I'm not about to start asking pointed questions. For all I know the Mafia took over, Mike (always more pragmatic and practical than I) probably joined up, welcomed the in-corporation. For with the syndicate running interference, crushing anyone who might get in their way-I'm sure the racket's still in operation, in one form or another, in the Prarie State. And maybe in Badger Land as well. The Hoosiers, the Scandihoovians have probably fallen in line.

I'd like to forget those days, the desperate, haunted, constantly-on-the-run weeks that followed. I'd like to forget how-following Tiffany's advice, trying to buy into a legitimate business-I was bilked of my $200,000. I'd like to forget that there's still another $150,000 in several New Dale banks, besides. Money I'll never be able to get my hands on.

Only Tiffany won't let me forget. I have but to think her name and the bottom falls out of my world. Immediately I'm bogged down in a morass of guilt and remorse that drives me to near insanity at times. Those times when I have a week-long love affair with a bottle. With bottle after bottle after bottle.

For I can't forget the way I found her that night, I can't forgive myself for the circumstances that led up to her grisly, humiliating death. I can't forgive myself for the killing grief I undoubtedly brought upon her parents when the whole, sordid story broke. The only consolation is the fact that Tiffany didn't live to know of that shame and bereavement. She didn't know of the great, mocking riddle her passing introduced into their lives.

Small wonder there are times when I want to crawl under a rock, pre-empt the snakes of their lair.

But most galling, most damning of all, is the realization that if it hadn't been for my egocentric pride, for my insistence that her humiliation be avenged, she-that most holy of loves-would still be alive today. If I hadn't insisted on waiting out Terranova and his goon-boy, if I hadn't wallowed in my vengeance-

My fault-all of it-my fault.

If I live to be a thousand I'll never forget, I'll never expunge that guilt.

So I came to Guadalajara. I rested here in precarious flight, I licked my wounds, nursed a heart that would never mend, never stop bleeding. How I got into guiding I can't recall. But here I am. It's not much, but it keeps my mind occupied most of the time, it affords me the memory eradicator I need more and more often of late.

For the memories are still strong, they seemingly get stronger, more poignant with each passing day. And grown men do cry. They howl. They bang their heads on the wall to blot out those heart-ripping recollections.

Now I roused myself from my maudlin thoughts, I buried my face in the pillows, began to shudder.

Lori entered at that moment, she appraised the situation instantly, instinctively. She extinguished the lights quickly, came to me. Lifting my head, she fed me the burning, straight whiskey. "She's back, isn't she?"

"I'm sorry, Lori. I didn't mean...."

She held me close, kissed me. "It's all right, I understand. That's what I'm here for." A hard shudder rocked her. "Only, dear God, if just once, a man would have loved me like that...."

She cradled me, caressed my body for along, long time. Until the memory became less intense, lost its hold on me. Then her hands began to wander over my body, her quickening breathing told me that her lust was reborn.

Gently, expertly she caressed and kissed me, she fanned my flagging desire back to life. Until finally, as she sighed with pride at her prowess, as her desire made her jitter and writhe beside me, I knew I wanted her.

"At least we have this," Lori whispered as I came over her, let her impatient fingers take me, guide me to that yearning cove. "It's more than some people have. More even, than some people who think they love each other." Her voice snagged. "And I do love you, Carr. No matter what."

"Please, Lori," I protested. "Not now...."

Her bitterness became more pronounced. "No," she rasped. "Not now. Not ever...." Her body lurched up, trapped me practically of its own volition. She brought secret muscles to bear. "Yes, darling. This then. Yes, this!"

Her legs clamped, her hips began to grind and thrust.

This, I echoed silently.

I shook my head, kept Tiffany from invading once more. And though my soul wept to lock her out, still I didn't relent. Physical need would not let me.

This, this-I adjured. And this!

But never love.

Love-real love-would never come my way again.

THE END
Lust List ....(101k)    by Tony Calvano




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