"Ooh, you rough bastard!" she exclaimed, throwing her arm out around his neck. "Don't you ever cut your damned fingernails?"
"You like fingers without nails?" he laughed.
Melody could hardly breathe. She stared, clutching the cold can of beer, her back aching with tenseness. Neither Jerry or Duke ceased their bickering about how to do it.
Now Mike fumbled his trunks down and, at the same time, Nora rolled so he could force her bikini down over the twin rounds of her buttocks. There was a moment of fantastic display, and Melody wanted to cover her face in shame. In a second, there were two nude and splendid bodies on the striped towel, and a moment later, Nora cradled Mike's lean hips between her thighs and the mating of two lewd and urging bodies was so beautiful Melody wanted to cry.
Then she felt sick, not from the obscenity, but because the impact of what she watched was like a bath of passion. She glanced at Jerry, then at Duke, but they were seemingly blind to the pair of bodies.
The angle was devastating. Melody quivered from head to toe, and she seemed to feel every movement of Mike's body and she seemed to sense each involuntary lift of Nora's hips. The sun made bright highlights on the writhing arms and legs and the shadows were deep, but not too deep to show Melody each bit of working flesh.
Then came sound, murmurs between the lovers that seemed to mean something. Melody watched Mike's back slow in its rippling, then speed, and Nora's heels dug into the towel with significant intent.
CHAPTER ONE
THE JOB WAS GOING GREAT. From his position on the roof of the beach house, Del Clark aimed his camera through the slightly open skylight and began to film. First Robert Forbes because the fat old man clad only in an undershirt, was the star. He sat on the edge of the bed, his hairy belly hanging obscenely over his hairier groin, his face drawn into a nearly apoplectic glee, his stubby fingers fondling what he probably thought was a manifestation of great sexual promise.
Forbes was full of misconceptions, Del thought. It had only taken an hour and two drinks to convince the very rich and completely stupid old man that for a hundred dollars, he could spend a couple of hours with a thirteen year old girl. And from the lewd leer on the old man's face, he was convinced that Melody was just barely thirteen.
Which wasn't so. When Jane Smith was twelve, nice old ladies patted her on the head because she looked about six. When she was sixteen, nasty old men patted her on the behind because she looked about ten. At twenty, she could still get into theaters for half the regular price so she had changed her name to Melody and began to think. She was small, slim and curved only slightly more than a boy and there was nothing about her that looked like a grown woman.
Del turned the camera on her as she went through the carefully practised disrobing. First she kicked out of her flats, then with properly fumbling fingers, undid the waist of her pleated skirt. She didn't look at Forbes. She pulled her blouse over her bobbed head and shook the short black hair back into order. Then she turned sideways and rolled her nylon panties down.
It looked for real, Del had to admit. Melody wore no lipstick and no eye make-up. Her tiny breasts weren't even half apples, and the little pink tips didn't bob on the small pads of creamy flesh.
Forbes said something to Melody and she turned, displaying to his wide eyes the small narrow belly with the beginning dimple tucking neatly out of sight. Then Melody smiled and came to the sweating old man, tippy-toeing childishly into his groping hands. He grabbed her and hauled her hard against his bulbous belly and his hands went mad. They worked over and around and under Melody while his heavy lips squashed obscenely on her breasts. She just relaxed as if she were unsure of what he was going to do and did not know what she was supposed to do.
Del rolled the film, sweat beading his own upper lip. She was a devil, he thought. It was almost as if she went into some kind of a schizophrenic trance and became, for these occasions, exactly what she was supposed to be, a virginal thirteen year old girl with no understanding of what men wanted with her body. And despite the money riding on her excellent performance, Del felt sick with some emotion he had not yet found a name for.
Now Forbes rolled Melody over on the bed and she suffered a new digitary attack coupled with noisy wet kisses that crawled down her body with deliberate intent. She allowed her little hips to be hugged and raised to the greedy lips, then she threw her arms out and her head back and went into all the convulsions of ecstasy.
Del panned the two entangled bodies from Melody's distorted face to the bottom of Forbes' feet. At that moment, Melody's eyes opened and she raised her head. Del pulled the camera back and nodded. Then he rolled to one hip and stood up, strangely exhausted.
Silently, he moved across the tar and gravel roof to the parapet. He could hear the heavy voice of the excited Forbes, protesting. Then he heard Melody's high pitched scolding. After that, a roar of fury from Forbes followed by Melody's bell-clear and very derisive laughter. Still Del waited until he heard the slam of the bedroom door. Then he dropped over the edge of the stucco wall and slipped through the shrubbery. Melody would probably beat him to the Cad, parked a half-block away. She was marvelous at get-aways.
The job had gone off great, and when Mrs. Robert Forbes told it all to a judge, with illustrations, the fat old lecher would know that all is not as tender as it feels at first. Which sentiment salved some of the deep inner pain Del felt but could not explain.
"You let him go kind of far," Del observed.
"So for what his old lady is going to take him for, he had something coming, didn't he?" Melody challenged his complaint.
"We're .only supposed to frame the victim, not teach him how to mangle the merchandise. He got quite a mouthful!"
"The merchandise belongs to me, remember, Del? And what's wrong with a girl getting a few little fringe benefits? Anyway, the old idiot was pretty strong and the merchandise isn't noted for muscle."
Del clamped his lips and continued to fiddle with his camera and the hot roll of film. She was just at the edge of his vision, and her pleated skirt and simple schoolgirl blouse seemed to mock him as much as it had fooled Forbes. She wore flats, silly little black nothings that made her straight legs seem even more childish. He had the urge to take her over his knee and spank her, but this was only a minor urge. He had another, one that haunted him night and day and could not be construed as disciplinary. Only Melody had never allowed him to do much more than curl his strong arm around her diminutive waist, perhaps kiss her lightly at the end of a job, or when there was money to be divided.
Forbes was number seven. He like six others, had been allowed the exquisite privilege of fondling and at least partially caressing the emotionally elusive Melody, and Del had never been able to get further than a nearly brotherly kiss.
"This is a dirty business and the merchandise is far too lovely for the-likes of Forbes," Del grumbled.
"Was I convincing baby?" Melody asked, curling her little body into a kitten ball in one of his leather chairs.
"As far as I watched."
"I quit when I saw you jerk the camera out of the skylight."
"Mel, I wish you'd-"
"I know. What is a sweet girl like me doing in the collusion racket. When will we get paid for this job, baby?"
"You need money?"
"Nope. I just have a heat on for my bank account. Any more work lined up?"
"Not that will require your very adequate services," Del replied. "I've some precision work to do on a property infringement. Take a day or two. Thought maybe I'd spend the weekend at Arrowhead. Want to come along?"
He watched her smoke. She did it with passion, which was an emotion she seemed to use only with inanimate objects. In the year he had known her, not once had she ever shown any part of her feelings. She loved her G.T.O. convertible, she adored her little two room apartment in Beverly Hills, she enthused about money and the things it would get for her but she treated Del as if she were only thirteen and thought all six foot men with wavy black hair and nearly leonine features were meant to be brothers, not lovers.
"And spend two days fighting you off, baby? No soap. Find yourself a big breasted blonde with a taste for Scotch and enjoy yourself. I'd be a terrible dud and you know it."
Del tossed the yellow box containing the hot film. It was a nervous tossing, and when he saw that it was revealing his inner tension, he clamped his big hand around the cardboard container.
"Okay," he said, as if that were exactly what he would do. "Well, I'd better soup this film. I'll call shrewd Thomas when I see what we have."
For a moment, he thought he saw a tiny blush come over Melody's creamy skin. The thought of him reviewing the results of their neatly set up sex episodes had bothered her from the beginning, but when he had casually mentioned the fact that he could get a friend to do the film processing, she had insisted that he do it himself. But she had never asked to see any of the film. Fortunately, the attorney for whom Del did these clandestine jobs had always managed to force a divorce settlement without revealing to the courts the extent of Melody's artistry.
And Del had steadfastly refused to reveal Melody's identity to Thomas Perry, thereby convincing the sharp lawyer that Delbert Clark was one hell of a baby-raper by proxy, if not actually sampling the delicate wares he photographed.
It was a nasty situation, delicately balanced between the legal and the illegal, and this bothered Del a lot less than the consistent indifference Melody showed for his obvious desires.
"Del, you're sure none of the films have ever gotten out of your hands?" Melody asked, getting to her feet.
Del grinned and thumbed toward the hallway leading to his darkroom and workshop. "They are all on file. Care to look for yourself? I can thread the reels and let you put on your own private show. I'll even make you some popcorn if it will make it seem more like Grauman's Chinese."
Melody slipped into her lightweight blazer, making her look all the more like a refugee from the Hollywood High School.
"I'll take your word for it, baby. But I keep worrying about a burglar or something. Can't you destroy those that have already done the job?"
"Perry says no. Not until the final decrees have been granted. People change their minds, you know. But as the finals are signed, I'll burn the film. Okay?"
"Okay. Well, give me a call when there's a job to do."
He nodded as she turned to the door. He watched her move, and suddenly he no longer saw the blazer and the pleated skirt. He saw the slim tawny skin, bare, bobbing and undulating with the smooth sensuality of well disguised maturity. He saw her as she had been, walking across the floor to Forbes, her flat tummy and piquant breasts obscenely young but only a little bit less convincing than the virginal vee of her lower abdomen.
And it dawned on Del that she might just be a virgin, even though some weird quirk of her mentality permitted her to act like a seasoned prostitute, at least up to the moment when he had filmed enough to make a cheating husband sick of some very base emotions.
Del didn't really know, and he was male animal enough to hope Melody's apparent willingness to lend her splendid body to sordid conivery was merely an act, instigated by the one hundred dollars a minute Perry paid for the film.
It was a business, dirty or not, and Del reserved some excuses for Melody that he had never used for himself. He was a professional photographer, a free-lance lensman with more guts than a Christmas goose and fewer scruples than a traveling preacher. He was in the business because it was his life's work. Melody Smith was a girl, untrained, not very well educated, academically at any rate, and possessed of a peculiar introversion that kept her from just being another shop girl in the busy beehive of Los Angeles.
In analysis, which Del went through nearly every day, she had one quality other than her odd youthfulness, which kept Del's hopes at an even keel. Unlike himself, she seemed never to be disturbed by what she did. It was almost as if she stiffened her sensibilities in a deepfreeze before she kept one of the sexy appointments, and this emotional void lasted until, like now, she was away from Del, the cameras, and the whole world of naked lust.
On his way to the darkroom, Del vowed, for the tenth time, to somehow penetrate this shroud that separated Melody's private emotions from the nearly cold, heartless and almost brutal attitude she showed about her 'work'. They were friendly, agreeable and even comradely, all of which were emotions Del could have done without.
He wasn't sure he was in love with her and he wasn't entirely certain that his feelings for Melody were not exactly the same as those liver-lipped old men who fell for her apparent childishness.
Once in a while, with two or three stiff bourbons under his belt, Del had actually thought of force. Not rape, but a blundering grasping insistence that might be just what Melody would go for. He had known other girls who went for the pushy bit. But always he hedged as if his good sense knew something his unhappy spine did not.
In any case, Melody Smith was enough to drive a Saint to insanity, and in twenty-eight years not one person, male or female had ever called Del Clark a Saint.
The motorcycle cop at Hollywood Boulevard and La Brea waved at Melody and she waved back. They had had a wild time of it the first day he had spotted what he thought was a twelve year old girl barreling down the Boulevard. He had gone from frowns to amazement, and then blushed prettily when she had shown him her driver's license and the dog-eared birth certificate to back up the unbelievable age boldly printed on the license.
Past the cop, her smile faded to the placid mask of thought. Fate had trapped her neatly, and Melody was beginning to resent her life. At first, it had been fun but by the time she was seventeen her juvenile appearance caused a number of problems. She had tried spike heels, falsies and glamorous wigs, but there was some indefinable character to her littleness that shone through the best efforts she could make. And worst of all, her mind was thoroughly adult.
Even the young men of her own age seemed strangely affected by her appearance, and the nicest ones, sophisticated and eager and well started on their various careers were even more standoffish. It was almost as if they didn't believe her when she told them how old she was, and even those who did believe, and there had been a few, seemed unable to treat her as a mature woman.
The only men she did not have that kind of trouble with were the fat ones, slightly balding and likely to lick their lips every time they looked at her. like the superintendent of her apartment, standing now at the entrance to the garages, his beady eyes drawn into narrow slits, his mouth twisted in a leer of speculation. Melody nodded and pushed her convertible back into the stall marked 'Smith'.
Even her last name sounded fishy. More than once, she had nearly gone into hysterics trying to check into a hotel on vacation. There was first the desk clerk's upraised eyebrow at her appearance, then came the audible lip smacking when she signed the register. They were always sure that the pretty little girl was a runaway, inspired by Hollywood, perhaps smarter than she looked and maybe worth a try when the sun went down. No one could be legitimately named Melody Smith, and the one time she had tried Jane Smith, the results were even more distressing.
Then had come Del. She had seen him first at a party, wrapped convincingly around a lush-breasted blonde. Any of the other men at the party would have seemed juvenile in such a clinch, but somehow, Del had looked more like a conquering warrior home from the wars, enjoying the fruits of victory. For the first time in Melody's life, a very personal jealousy flamed up and caused a seldom inspired itch to occur throughout her tiny body.
Meeting him later when he had wearied of the blonde, Melody had tried desperately to convince the handsome free-lance photographer that she was as mature as the blonde, even though she didn't look it. But despite the fact that Del had spent the rest of the evening with her, he had never once made the kind of a pass at her she had wanted. Mostly, they had discussed his work and it had sounded very exciting.
When he called her three weeks later and asked to take her to lunch so they could discuss an assignment of his, Melody had no idea the kind of trap she was entering.
Standing now in the middle of her lonely apartment, she admitted to herself that she had been too eager to please Del. The first job had been easy and she hadn't had to do anything any more scandalous than parade around the beach and make childish overtures to a ready-handed Dutchman from Milwaukee while Del filmed the episode.
The second job had been a little more personal, but still she hadn't balked, thinking that Del might break down and recognize her for what she wanted to be his girl. Then the third assignment had popped up and it took on some serious undertones of lewdness, and that suddenly, Melody had known that by cheapening herself before a camera, she had built a high thick wall between the kind of love she felt for Del and the kind of love he was beginning to feel for her.
More than once she had been tempted to give in to any kind of love Del wanted to give her. But something inside her said no, and now they had arrived at a peculiar, very painful stalemate. Status Quo, the lawyers called it. With Thomas Perry's money as the catalyst.
The big problem was that Melody was very tired of being a virgin. Particularly when she knew that every time she chilled Del in hope that he would offer her something more than a weekend at Arrowhead he did exactly as she told him to do, he took it to a big breasted blonde.
CHAPTER TWO
THE PROJECTOR CLICKED TO A STOP and Del turned on the lights.
"Man, man, man," Thomas Perry moaned. "That kid is the greatest. If old Forbes doesn't cough up his butt and all its fixtures we'll spread him clear across the state. Tell you what, Del. I'll give you a thousand dollars for that little broad's address!"
"No sale, sucker," Del replied pleasantly. "I'll wait until Mrs. Perry wants a divorce. Then you can have the address."
"Augh, such a puritan. You getting any of that stuff, Del?"
"Four minutes, four hundred dollars," Del said, ignoring the attorney's remarks. "And five bills for my trouble. Make it an even thousand. Forbes got pretty toothy with my model."
"Forbes should be so lucky!"
It was an easy transaction and when Perry had left the apartment, Del rerolled the film to a smaller reel and put it away in the tiny space he had formed by removing a section of baseboard in the hall. Seven small reels. Seven small bits of Melody that Del felt belonged to him. Thomas was not the only one who had ever seen the brief but graphic reels, but the lawyer was the only person who knew who had taken the movies and Del was the only person who knew who the piquantly childish model really was. And he would never tell.
Now he went through the second phase of his precautions. He left his apartment and drove to his bank. There, he deposited the thousand dollar check Perry had given him and obtained five, one hundred dollar bills. Paying Melody in cash had several advantages. Cash left no trail. It also allowed Melody to play the national game of cheat-the-income-tax-man. And it would give Del a chance to take the brunt of any police action instead of hanging Melody up for the conspiracy to blackmail.
Perry had never been quite clear as to the legal ramifications of their photographic operation, but Del was sure that a court of law would call it blackmail, of a sort. One day, they would run into a stubborn old lecher and there could be trouble. Del was determined that when that time arrived, Melody would not be in the middle. He tried to convince himself that she suffered enough humiliation in the acting, even though he had thought she showed some tiny bit of elation a time or two. None the less, he didn't want her to go to jail for Perry or himself.
As usual, thoughts of Melody put a morose taste in his mouth. He mailed the five hundred dollars to her and went to the nearest bar. It was a sour smelling little joint, resplendent with badly done murals of fantastically breasted nymphs and hairy bottomed sytrs, and it boasted a grumpy bartender and a table-hopper who pouted when Del sat at the bar instead of at one of the scarred tables.
Two bourbons did no good at all. By then it was four-thirty and he began to think of fluff. The pattern was always the same after a job with Melody. First he argued with her cold hearted image. Then he berated himself for entangling her in his filthy business. Then he got mad at Perry and sentimental about his misfortunes. A drink or two turned sentiment to half-anger, and right after that the down-end of his backbone began to tingle. So Del left the bar and stood in front of the dingy place, debating probabilities at five in the afternoon. It was a bad hour for successful wenching.
The goodies were beginning to sharp up for an evening of wine and dine and whatever would come later. The bums were eating cheese and crackers after soaking up beer or cheap wine all day. Del had no mind for hustling. He needed either a quick job, sans sentiment and meaningless chatter, or he needed the kind of loving he had avoided all his adult life; domesticity was a word that sent chills up and down Dels back.
Half disgusted with himself, he went back to his apartment and he was part way through a tough drink when his doorbell buzzed.
It was Thomas Perry, wearing rather a sheepish look on his plump face, and with him was a handsomely dressed woman of about thirty-something.
"Tried to call and you were out," Perry said apologetically. "Del, I'd like you to meet Mrs. Forbes. Mrs. Forbes, Del Clark."
"How do you do, Mr. Clark," the woman said, and her face changed from calm to brilliant, making her look at least five years younger and almost pretty. There were some tired lines around her eyes, but the rest of her lines appraised by Del in one quick down and up glance, were very good. In a matronly sort of way.
"Come in," he said. "The hallway is for brush salesmen."
They stepped in but Perry stopped the door as Del started to close it. "Del, I have to go. I promised Mrs. Forbes I'd bring her here so she could talk to you-about certain matters. I'm sure you two will get along famously. I do have to run, Mrs. Forbes."
"I'm sure you do, Thomas," she agreed warmly, and with an almost imperious gesture, turned and walked directly into Del's living room.
Perry shrugged when Del turned a questioning eye. Then the lawyer scuttled out of the apartment and Del shut the door. On lock. He stood for a moment surveying Mrs. Forbes while she surveyed his rather pretentious apartment. She had thrown an easy arch to her back and this made the long undulating line from the small full collar down her spine over interestingly plump buttocks and under to smooth, well formed thighs rather an exciting journey. Her ankles were trim and her feet were small, accented by high heels and expensive leather.
She was a dish, he decided, and deserved a better shake than the fat husband he had photographed, grabbing for a girl he thought was young enough to be his granddaughter.
Now Mrs. Forbes turned her good profile and half smiled.
"You'd better be the man I think you are," she said evenly. "I paid that guy five hundred dollars for bringing me here."
"He's a good lawyer," Del felt disposed to say.
"Sure he is. May I sit down?"
"Of course. May I get you a drink?"
"Think it will help? Okay, Del Clark. A drink then."
He passed her outstretched legs as he went to the built-in bar. They were damned good, and her knees had none of the knobbiness that generally went with the fullness of the thirties.
"Name it," he said over his shoulder.
"Whatever you think is good for the blood," she laughed. "My doctor says I'm slightly anemic."
"That'll be the day," Del muttered. He poured two big bourbons over ice, then turned to hand one to the smiling woman. "I'm no blood specialist, but this is very good for the nerves. Salud!"
"Salud, Del," she almost purred. After a bold sip, she looked up at him and smiled. "Aren't you curious about why I paid Perry to bring me here?"
"Sure, but I'm also sure I'm going to find out very soon."
"You're a confident young man. And pretty too," she added. "I want to see the pictures Perry says you took of my husband and a teenage girl. It is that simple, Del. Okay?"
"Okay no. I'm a lens popper, not a side show operator. The only one who has a right to see those pictures is your husband-if he gets stubborn about a settlement."
Mrs. Forbes laughed like mellow bells. She reached up and removed the cloche hat, shook her head to loosen the raven waves, then unfastened the single button of her bolero. This allowed the short jacket to open and partially expose the magnificent way her blouse fitted over her full, rolling breasts.
"But Del. I didn't say I had a right to see them. I just said I wanted to see them. And I didn't say I'd pay to see them, so you don't have to be professionally insulted. Or don't you get the picture?"
"How about another drink?" Del asked, a slow smile breaking over his face.
"Bring the bottle," she agreed. "And call me Paula."
He brought the bottle, poured her glass nearly full, then sat down beside her on the sofa and set the bottle on the floor to his right. He could smell her now, the warm heady scent of woman under the stronger odor of fine perfume. Experimentally, he leaned back so his shoulder pressed to hers and she did not shrink.
"You could get into trouble looking at sex movies with me," he warned her. "I'm really a case of advanced juvenile delinquency."
"I'm worried sick," she said and the words came like a wind song through her very white teeth. She started to lean then and her head tipped up and Del just faded toward the upturned lips.
He thought it was going to be a trial kiss, maybe just a symbol of their understanding, but at the moment his lips reached hers, her mouth opened wide and covered his in a hot greedy claiming. Her tongue pushed violently between his teeth and the agile tip explored his mouth with fluttering haste. The force of her kiss caused his neck to stiffen and then she drew back, letting her tongue drag into her mouth with deliberate lethargy. All the merriment was gone from her face and she wore a look of intense longing. She had not moved her hands nor her crossed ankles. Only her face was alive, and perhaps the slowly rising and falling melons under the beige blouse.
"You can't see the film," he said, as if regretting the words.
"Please, Del!"
He shook his head. "There's more involved than me, or you, or your husband," he told her. "But I've a couple of reels a friend of mine took at a peyote bash--. "
She moved away, her eyes suddenly hard and angry. "Is that the kind of a woman you think I am?" she demanded.
"Yes."
After a second, she relaxed and the pink tongue came out to wet her full red lips. "Goddammit," she muttered. "You're right!"
Del pointed to the hallway leading to his work rooms. "I'll bring the bottle, just in case you aren't as tough-or as ready as you think you are," he said with a wry grin.
Paula got up and started for the hall entry. There, she hesitated long enough to slip out of the bolero. At that distance, the beige of her closely tailored blouse blended perfectly with the creamy skin of her throat and arms and the shape of her solidly fleshed shoulders and classically formed breasts was startling. When she went on, the hit of her bottom was a challenge and Del was no coward. He picked up the bottle and followed Paula's provocative wobble.
She was standing in the middle of his work room when he closed the door and leaned against it.
"For a three year lease, my landlord let me convert the bath and the dressing room into a darkroom. I use this room to do my finishing work in and fiddle with what little artistic sense I have left. It is also the projecting room," he added, pointing to the projector facing the six by six foot beaded screen.
"Now I'm scared," Paula admitted. Her eyes went around, flicking the excellent solon prints on the walls, the cluttered desk and the work table. She also stared at the two leather chairs which faced the white screen. "Do you put on shows often?"
"Very often," he laughed. "I make about three industrial films a year for the advertising departments of various firms. In moments of soft headedness, I also do color movies of weddings and equally nauseating affairs."
"Then sex pictures aren't your main business?"
"Did Perry say they were?" he countered.
"Perry was cagey," she admitted. "I just thought sex was your business."
"Sex is every man's business," he chuckled. "Would you care to give me one more of those splashy kisses before I thread the film?"
She came to him slowly, and her arms went up to fold softly at the nape of his neck. This pressed her breasts firmly to his broad chest and she fitted her hips to his with an insinuating under-curl of her torso. As their lips met and the darting tongue sent fire into his mouth, she did some small delightfully lewd flutter with her hips and Del closed his arms around her. The kiss steamed and the flutter became a definite, demanding hunch and he dropped his palms to curl them around the solid shape of her buttocks. A gasp came through her kiss as he lifted her to scrub the flatness of her abdomen to the strength her permissiveness inspired.
"Do you think I'm terrible?" she breathed.
"Thinking time was over in the living room," he replied. "Sit there. It will only take me a minute to set up."
"Those chairs aren't very cozy," she complained.
"So push them aside. The carpet cost sixteen dollars a yard over thick foam rubber."
She giggled and while he found the big reel among two dozen on a rack, she kicked out of her pumps and pushed the two chairs well apart. Busy at the projector, he could only hear the rustle of cloth but when he turned, she was stretched out on the floor, and she had removed her skirt. On one hip, she looked directly up at him, and as he started the projector, her free hand went to his leg. For a second, she felt of the thick calf, then as he snapped out the lights, her hand went up his leg and became a little cluster of greedy, searching fingers. He let her play and she knew how.
"There's a hundred feet of Yellowstone Park," he said as the screen came alive with brilliant color. "To discourage snoopers."
"Del," came her soft plea.
He slipped his belt buckle and her fingers dragged his trousers down. Yellowstone went swiftly by, and Del sagged down beside Paula. She rolled over and spoon-fitted herself to his body, and a moment later, Yellowstone faded and the peyote party came on with breathtaking suddenness.
Paula gasped and rolled to her stomach. Del rolled after her but not before he had jerked her nylon panties down over the quivering rounds of her buttocks. Her flesh was hot to his, deeply secretive and throbbing and while her eyes absorbed the nearly vicious actions on the screen, her body accommodated him with furious twisting, then they settled into perfectly mated passion and watched the orgy go by. There was no sound except the whir of the projector and the rush of Paula's breath, and finally a mew and cry as the tension went out of her body, replaced by the ecstasy of brutally marvelous lust.
When she returned from the bathroom, Del lay on his back, arms outstretched on the rug. The automatic switch on the projector had cut off when the peyote film clicked out of the shutter. The only light came from the door where Paula stood, her nude body outlined in a symphony of exciting curves. Her hair was down around her shoulders and she was, Del thought, everything Melody was not.
She left the door open for the light and curled down beside him, her warm thigh against his. Leaning over, she let her heavy breasts kiss the expanse of his still heaving chest.
"Peyote," she murmured. "Does it make everybody do those things, Del?"
"No. It just lets everybody do as they please, and see things they want to see. It's a kick drug for that crowd, but a lot of sane people use it to exploit their artistic and intellectual talent. It gets the job done, no matter how you define job."
"And how, baby!" she laughed and fell across him, her lips nibbling at his chin. "Do you think I'm terrible for what I let you do? I mean, I must have been out of my mind!"
"Why do you care what I think, Paula?"
"Maybe-I just care," she said.
"Well, I don't think anything. I warned you that I was an advanced case of juvenile delinquency, didn't I. Forget it."
"Not in a million years," she murmured. Her kiss became positive then, and Del relaxed, feeling the hot moist caresses moving over his chest, to the block of muscles at the vee of his ribs, then wandering in tantalizing patterns over his belly. He put one hand down to her back and lazily massaged the straining muscles as she twisted and became more intensely intimate.
The shock of her eager lips was exquisite, then he closed his eyes and let sensation ripple through his weary body in rhythm to her warm assault. He heard the whimpers escaping her avid lips and he could feel the tiny inner convulsions of ilhcit ecstasy through the warmth of her back. Time seemed to stand still, and there was only demand and release and sometimes, a furious illogical lashing from the firm and curling fire of her tongue. Her passion built faster than his and she became a squirming, greedy animal over him until the very frenzy of her desire dragged response from Del in bursting flame and liquid purple.
When he finally came up through the boiling sea of afterglow, he thought she was crying against his muscular belly.
"Easy, baby," he murmured. "It's not that serious."
"Oh Del! Yes it is!" she cried. "Oh Del, I'll have so much money when I get my divorce from Robert. Just millions!"
Some animal wariness stiffened the hair at the nape of his neck. His fingers quit teasing the neat nook where her buttocks parted at the base of her spine. From his mental rack of defensive swords, gathered over several years of experience with sentimental women, he chose a sharp one, calculated to wound deeply if not to kill.
"Which you will be happy to trade for a three times a week roll on a thick rug," he said without kindness. "And the privilege of playing mama cat to a dirty kitten when the fire dies down."
Paula sat up with a jerk. She scrambled to her feet and stood naked and straight and trembling with fury. He met her eyes and after a moment, her magnificent body slouched.
"I had that coming, didn't I?" she decided. "Okay Del. Where did we put that bottle?"
He chuckled and reached out a hand to pat her bare toes.
"We killed it between the second and third run of the film," he said. "There's a new one in the left hand cupboard over the kitchen sink."
"Then can we run the film again."
"Right up to the frayed and bloody edges of oblivion!"
CHAPTER THREE
THE PROPERTY INFRINGEMENT JOB WAS easy and that was nothing but lucky. Del had never had a sex hangover like the one he wore for two days after Paula Forbes finally finished with him. He quivered holding up his heavier camera and he dozed in the darkroom, and every time he raised his head suddenly his spine creaked in protest.
But no matter what the eight hours of unbridled sex might have done for Paula, it had left Del exactly where he had been at the beginning. As soon as certain sorenesses wore off, he began to fret about Melody Smith, and by Friday night, half packed for the two days at Arrowhead, he sat down on the bed and said, "To hell with it."
So he went to a mediocre movie instead of going to Arrowhead.
He went to bed about eleven and lay awake trying to make his unsubtle mind formulate a plan whereby he could land Melody like a flipping fish. After three hours of rolling and tossing, he checked off his ambitious plans only to discover that he'd already tried each plan about seven times. In disgust, he got up and drank a half quart of milk and finally fell asleep, feeling very sorry for himself.
The telephone awakened him and it was Thomas Perry.
"Got to see you right away, Del. Can you get hold of your little girl this afternoon? I've a hot job and it has to come off tomorrow. I'll explain when I get to your place. How about the girl?"
"I can reach her," Del grumbled. Then with ill humor, "This is Saturday. No school, remember?"
"What school does she go to?" Perry asked. "Saint Helen's Convent, you greasy old fink."
"I'll be at your apartment in fifteen minutes."
Which gave Del time to shower and shave and get a cup of black coffee under the sash of his robe. Perry came in like a hurricane with jet propulsion. Across the kitchen table from Del, he leaned forward and explained the new job.
"This is not for me, actually," he said. "An associate bar member in Denver called me this morning. He has a divorce action on the fire, but the wife's case is water weak. Her husband is a very upstanding joker, apparently, but she wants to nail him. Confidentially, the wife is half lesbian and she wants her old man's money so she can play footsy with a couple of her proteges."
"This is a cold turkey frame, isn't it, Perry?" Del asked.
Perry shrugged. "I didn't say that. I just said that the wife's case is weak. My friend in Denver knows I sometimes go out on a limb to obtain evidence, so he asked me to do what I could. So I will obtain some evidence for him and we will split a handsome fee. What's wrong with that?"
"I wish you'd take up smoking so I could send you some cigarettes when you land in San Quentin," Del grumbled. "What's the deal?"
"The man's name is John Galvin. About thirty-five. Sometime this afternoon he is going to check in at the Golden Sun Motel, out on Washington Boulevard. He'll be-"
"What the hell is a Denver businessman doing in a motel in the heart of colored town?" Del demanded.
"Because Monday morning, he has an appointment with a tooling firm that used to be in a white neighborhood but is now surrounded by colored settlements, that's what. Who cares? What I was saying was that he'll be on the loose tonight and tomorrow. I don't know a damned thing about his habits, or his tastes in women. It is going to be up to your little split-tail to contact him and work him up to the point where he will invite her into bungalow number seven so you can burn him with your hot camera."
Del shook his head. "You have a low opinion of the human race, Perry. Not one man in ten would hustle a little girl for a one night stand, even if he thought he could get away with it. Unless he was a psycho, or a baby-loving lawyer with a muscular moustache."
"I've been insulted by experts," Perry observed. "And I happen to make my living dealing in thirty-five year old men who have gone out on a limb for a lot less stuff than your girl shows! Now, for a thousand dollars, are we in business?"
"For two thousand dollars we are in business if I get one thousand in advance. This is a catch as can deal, Perry. And dangerous, not knowing anything about your Mr. Galvin. On top of that, I can spend time and money setting up on bungalow seven and my girl can spend time and some embarrassment hustling the mark and we may all wind up With our ass in our hand and no pictures. And we can get right up to the finale and have Galvin call the law or run screaming to the nearest P.T.A. I guarantee absolutely nothing for the first thousand, too, except a good old college try."
Perry chuckled. "You try like I know you can and we are in like old dead Flynn. Think maybe you might need some help?"
"You'd like to go along and aim the camera, wouldn't you?"
Perry sighed. "You going to try tonight or tomorrow night?"
"I'll have to drive down and check the setup for camera facility. Have to shoot with infra-red film, so I have to be able to use a shotgun light with an infra-red filter. What else do you know about Mr. Galvin?"
"Not much. No description. Your girl will have to spot out on bungalow seven to be sure she knows what the occupant looks like. But he'll look like money, that's for sure."
There wasn't much more to be said that interested Del. His mind was already busy with the problem Perry had presented. Melody would take some handling too. She had never worked the solicitation angle and Del was sure she would balk at the neighborhood as well as the plan itself. If there was a convincer, it was the one thousand dollar check Perry left.
It was a pretty piece of paper and it had the power to make Melody Smith turn herself into a near-prostitute. With his help. For a minute, Del was tempted to call Perry and tell him the deal, and all future deals involving
Melody, were off. Then he realized that money was important to Melody and he had no real right to feel sorry for her as long as she did not feel sorry for herself. In the end, he called her and told her of the deal.
"I'm going out now to scout the ground," he said. "If it looks too tough for you, I'll tell Perry to drop dead."
"Keep your big nose out of my affairs, Del. I'll be the one to say when it gets too rough. You just find a place to spot your sneaky-peeky and don't get shaky when the going gets hot. What time will you get back?"
"Before five," Del guessed. "I'll have a complete sketch of the neighborhood and bungalow seven. I'll show you how I'm going to set up and we can make the rest of the plans then. Be here?"
"Leave your key under the hall palm, baby," Melody's cool tones informed him. "I'll be ready."
Del drove by the Golden Sun once, did a U-turn and went back' to the office. The place was clean and well kept and the grizzled old man who ran the motel was probably getting rich playing host to the hot-sheet trade. There were several big black-and-tan nite spots in the area, and the sundown crowd would be boisterous. Renting bungalow eight was easy. Left alone, Del went to the crawl hole in the ceiling of the closet, hiked himself up with the help of a chair and found himself in a dusty, beam-crossed attic. By crawling on his hands and knees, he came to the similar crawl hole over number seven. He raised the square trap door and peered down into the empty rooms.
Then he lowered himself into number seven and surveyed the room containing the double bed. With all the aplomb of an angel, he poked a hole through the plasterboard where the wall and the ceiling junctured, made sure he had not hit a ceiling rafter, then wiped up the plaster fragments with some toilet paper wetted in Mr. John Galvin's sink. With a grunt and a wiggle, Del skinned back up into the attic, made his way to the place where the hole angled down into the room, calculated camera size and direction, then went back down into number eight.
He was sitting on the bed regaining his breath when he heard the car drive up in front of number seven. Del got to his window in time to see a well tailored leg and a neat shoe leave the taxi. There was some talk with the cab driver, then the motel door slammed. Del stood listening to Mr. Galvin, thumping about the next bungalow. He heard a cough, then silence, then the flush of a toilet. After that, a tuneless whistle and some more lighter thumps.
Del was tempted to go next door and ask for a match. But he knew it didn't really make much difference what Galvin looked like. There was a job to do and Melody would manage with her usual, very unchildish talent.
And quite suddenly, Del realized he had goofed. The hole in the plaster would accommodate his eight millimeter pencil lens but he had forgotten to make a provision for the shotgun infra-red light. He looked up at the ceiling of his room, knowing that number seven was a reverse plan duplicate of this room. There was only one way, and it would require a lot of luck to prove it. There was no light in the little hall leading to the bathroom. The closet, opening off that hall would be dark. If by some chance, Galvin left the closet door open, then with Melody occupying the sensibility of the Denver man, Del might be able to dangle head down through the crawl hole and shoot directly into the bedroom. If Galvin closed the closet door, then there was no way except to drop down into the closet and open the door wide enough to shoot into the bedroom.
He'd simply have to impress upon Melody that the situation was ticklish. She might be able to open the closet door if it were closed, but more probably, she might not. It was going to be worth every cent of the two thousand he had weasled out of Thomas Perry, that was sure.
He got back to his apartment about four-thirty and his usually stern nerves were on edge. Tiny flashes of insight told him to call it all off. There were too many hazards, too many ifs. And when Melody arrived at precisely five, the guts ran out of Del as if his belly had been punctured. She entered wearing a rather long light-weight coat and when she took it off, the rest of her was maddening.
"Oh no!" he exclaimed.
"Want to buy me a lollipop, mister?" she teased him.
She wore skin-tight pink stretch pants and a striped beach jersey. And absolutely nothing else, if Del's knowledge of feminine nooks and crannies could be trusted. She had put on her lipstick with a lazy hand, and there was too much of it for the twelve to fourteen set. She wore a choker of too-big dime store beads and a bracelet to match. She had even done up her eyes inexpertly and this gave her something of a clown look.
All in all, she looked exactly like a starting teenager who had borrowed her mother's makeup, her older sister's fake jewelry, and some ideas out of Sapho. She stood and turned slightly, using a model's stance just awkwardly enough to heighten the effect of a child trying to be very grown up.
"Murder," Del gulped. "A tougher looking little tart never walked the streets of East Los Angeles! Mel, you don't dare appear on Washington Boulevard looking like that!"
"So I'll use an alley. What's the set up, baby? And pour me a drink before you spread the maps, General."
Del fumbled for the bar, but he still stared at Melody. And he was very sure Galvin, or the Governor or any miscellaneous Deacon would give this evil little minx more than one look. Despite the fact that he knew Melody to be twenty-two, he felt the spell of perverse desire, the headiness of a full grown man who sees female youth, raw, pulsating and above all, available. So convincing was her get-up that Del almost forgot who she was and what there was ahead to be done.
She curled up in her favorite chair and this was even worse because it made nearly a shining thing of her taut bottom. Del gave her the drink, then spread the sketch he had made of the Golden Sun Motel on the cocktail table.
"It's just a row of ordinary motel cottages. Each one has a carport, but one and two, three and four and so on are back to back. Seven and eight are too. I rented eight this afternoon. Galvin checked into number seven about three thirty."
"What does he look like, Del?" Melody asked in her adult voice.
"Couldn't see him without letting him get a good look at me. But I doubt if he's as much of an ogre as Forbes. Anyway, with luck we can make it."
Carefully then, he sketched out the plan he had made, and he explained the lack of a hole in the ceiling through which to aim his infrared light. When he told her about his secondary plan to shoot from the hall closet, even if he had to actually drop down into Galvin's premises, Melody protested.
"That's too far out, Delbert, baby," she said. "One scuffed foot, one coathanger knocked off the rod and you're in the soup. Our boy comes charging and we are in the pokey, but good."
Del shrugged. "Our boy comes charging and I knock him colder than a witch's thigh, we pack up and walk quietly out of the Golden
Sun. Maybe that would be the easiest way of getting you off the hook, anyway. You do have to get out of there, you know."
"It is dangerous," Melody insisted.
"I'm less worried about that than I am about how you plan to brace our chum from Denver. Any ideas?"
Melody shrugged. "Wait until I see a light in his room, then knock on his door. You'd better be in position because the action will probably start as of instantly!"
Del shivered with some inexplicable chill. "Melody, I'm not keen for this bit. Honey, what happens if Galvin turns out to be some kind of a kook? He could grab you and tear you half to pieces before I could get to him. Remember, it is a questionable motel in the heart of a colored town. Screams and banging around won't even wake up the old geezer who runs the joint. And Galvin is no fat old slob. He's in his prime and maybe he turns out to be a husky joker who was boxing champ at Notre Dame. I swing and he takes me out like an ulcerated tooth. Where are you, baby?"
Melody looked him straight in the eye, and for a moment, he thought he saw some softening of her gaze. Then she grinned, a lop-sided grin aided by the inexpertly applied lipstick.
"Well, baby. Sooner or later, I'm going to get it anyway, aren't I? And from the fee on this job, I'd say few girls ever got a better price for it! Anyway, it is my butt, so what's it to you?"
Del's mouth opened to say something but he seemed to forget the words. He tried to see some flaw in her brittle exterior but she had dropped her eyelids and was toying with the empty whiskey glass.
"All right," he said gruffly. "I guess we'd better get started. I'd say the best thing to do is to drive down to the motel together. You can sneak into my room until it gets dark. Then when I'm up in the attic and in position, you can go next door and put on your act. It's a goddamned cinch you can't walk the streets of colored town in that get up!"
"You're so thoughtful," Melody laughed. "Maybe I'd have a better chance on the streets than I would in your room for an hour or two. And if our Mr Galvin happens to not come in until midnight, you'd be happy to keep me entertained, I'm sure."
"What the hell have you got against me, Mel? I bathe on a regular schedule."
She stood up and slipped on the long coat. Her eyes flicked his, then she turned her head away.
"I like it the way it is, Del. What I do with you for money is one thing. We're in business together and we both understand what we have to do. Let's keep it that way. Okay?"
"If you say so," Del replied.
"I say so."
Del picked up his camera case and slung it over his shoulder. Then he put one hand to the door knob and one to Melody's unbelievable slim arm.
"Is there somebody else, Mel? I mean, is there some guy I don't know about?"
She turned her face up to his and smiled weakly.
"Yes, Del. There's a man I'm very fond of and you don't even know he exists. Someday, if things work out right, I'll introduce you to him. Right now, let's get on with the job."
Del nodded. But going down to his car, he could not help wondering what kind of a son-of-a-bitch could be in love with Melody Smith and still permit her to play jailbait for sex-mad old men.
CHAPTER FOUR
WITH HER HAND RAISED TO KNOCK on the door of number seven, Melody hesitated. Three and a half hours in a motel room with Del Clark had been almost more than she could stand. They hadn't talked for fear of revealing her presence. It would have been better if they had talked. She would have even welcomed one of Del's handy, kissy attempts to be amorous. The resistance would have given her some feeling of stability. But to lie there on the bed, thinking while she stared at the morose Del had been almost too much.
The arrival of Galvin and the silent but hurried effort to get Del up into the attic had momentarily calmed Melody, but now she trembled with the crazy new feeling that had come over her in the past few hours. It was new because it didn't have anything to do with Del nor Galvin nor any man with a name or a face.
All he had to have was lust. Melody's body felt like a hollow thing, charged with millions of tiny growing flames only one kind of attention could put out. For the first time in her life, the need for a man was completely separated from the need for love, and Melody almost liked the feeling.
She rapped on the door twice and in two breaths, the door opened, flooding her garishly garbed body in bright light. She couldn't see the details of John Galvin's face, but she could see how broad and powerful was his bare chest. He had removed his shirt and stood now, peering at her.
"Yes?" he ventured.
"Hi, daddy," Melody said in her cultivated teenage voice. "Looking for a party, honey?"
She didn't wait for his amazement to wear off. She slithered in and past him, letting her hand trail across his trouser front as she minced into the room. Now she could see him and he was a very handsome man. The shock of her boldness gradually relaxed on his face. Melody sauntered over to the dresser, opened her cheap little handbag and took out a hp-stick. She made a cute angle with her hips as she leaned closer to re-red her lips.
"Close the door, honey," she said over her shoulder. "The cops on the Boulevard will hang you up for entertaining a fourteen year old girl."
"How would you like to get the hell out of here?" Galvin snapped. "And quick!"
Melody turned then, and arched back over the edge of the dresser. She knew exactly what the arch did to the unreasonably flinty tips of her small breasts and she knew also how the stretch-pants hugged up in significant folds between her slim straight legs. And if the wet showed, she was suddenly past caring. It was all Del's fault and anyway, John Galvin was a lot different looking man than the fat Forbes or any of the others.
"Don't you like me, honey?" she asked, running her left hand down from breast to thigh. "Maybe you prefer some of the high-yellows that work this street. They're a little baggy but they do have tricks that help. What's your name, baby?"
"Look. I don't know who you are and I don't want to know!" Galvin exclaimed. "Just beat it, kid. And I mean now!"
Melody giggled. It was a shy, half childish giggle that ended with a belly flip, not quite professional but very suggestive.
"What's five bucks," she said. "And who can ever know?"
He came forward then and his hands reached for her arms. Not affectionately. Melody giggled again and slipped under his outstretched hands. She pirouetted across the room and flung herself onto the bed. When he reached her, his face grim with determination, she threw her legs up and caught him around the waist. What she did with her hips probably made Del swallow his tongue, she thought. It made Galvin gasp and his hands on her shoulders were suddenly less than furious.
"Are you trying to get me into trouble, young lady?" he asked.
"Nope. I'm trying to make five bucks so I can buy a new pair of shoes. Call me Fifi."
He had made no effort to free himself from the clamp of her lithe legs and Melody knew the job was on ice. If Del could manage to shoot it without falling on his hard head.
"How old are you, Fifi?" Galvin asked, his eyes taking on a new, if familiar light.
"Twenty-one," Melody replied truthfully.
"You said fourteen before," he reminded her.
"I live fast," she said with another giggle. "But you don't have to worry. I don't do any business with the men in this neighborhood. I'm no coal burner. What's your name, honey?"
"Honey will do," he decided. Then he reached out and raised the striped jersey shirt until he could look at the twin mounds of her breasts, tipped in darkening pink and throbbing with very unprofessional excitement. Melody let go with her thighs and sat up and her arms went around the thick bare shoulders. Galvin licked his suddenly dry lips and twisted his hips. That movement, she knew, removed certain restrictions well tailored trousers and close fitting shorts imposed upon unscheduled male reactions. She could feel his breath on her forehead, and she waited.
"Five bucks?" he breathed.
"Minimum. Depends on how far you want to go."
"What do I get for five?"
"A quick change of oil and no fooling around," Melody replied. "How about ten?"
"That's lousy," she said. "Ten just gets you warmed up in a couple of directions. Make it twenty and we'll tour the world."
"Okay," he almost whispered.
He suddenly seemed awkward and unsure of himself. Melody had seen that peculiar embarrassment before. It was a characteristic of men who had never before ventured to lay a hand on a girl-child. With a full grown woman, their hesitation would have lasted one second. Galvin was obviously fired up to the boiler-bursting point, but he was unable to make the first move.
Something unreal came over Melody. She put her hand to the broad chest and the feel of the tawny hair overlaying the firm flesh made sparks in her brain. She could smell his shaving lotion and he was terribly white skinned, unlike the California boys who soaked up sun like a blotter. And he was mature, not old, not unduly pretty but thoroughly masculine and all of a sudden she liked him. Now his hands were on her back, slowly moving up and down the slimness, testing each mild contour as if he were unable to believe his good luck. Melody, half hypnotized by her own eagerness, leaned against him and dropped her right hand into his lap.
It was the first really aggressive sex act she had ever committed and the bold shape in her grasp caused her to quiver with blind desire.
She just leaned and explored and John Galvin's hands went up under her jersey and they pressed together for a minute or so. Until Melody remembered that Del Clark must be getting angry because she was giving him no camera angle at all. Let him sweat, she thought, because she fully intended to give him some camera angles he had not filmed before.
The two-by-four rim of the crawl hole was cutting his guts out and Del drew back up into the attic. They weren't doing much worth filming anyway. But he had a funny feeling about the way Melody had leaned against Galvin's bare chest, thereby nearly hiding herself from the camera. Del rubbed his belly and listened. Then he heard the bed protest, and a moment later he heard Melody's voice.
"I'll be back soon as I go," she said.
"Okay, Fifi."
Del tensed. That wasn't right. Melody never wasted time, or went through false antics. He stared down at the closet, lighted from the bedroom. He heard the clip-clop of Melody's schoolgirl flats. Then the closet door was closed with a-strong bang, and Del was instantly in darkness. For a moment, he could not believe it. Melody had deliberately closed off his shooting angle on her way to the bathroom. Was she trying to tell him something? He waited.
Finally he heard the toilet flush and a moment later, the clip-clop again. There was a small flurry of voices, muffled by the closet door, but toned to make Del frown in worry and frustration. He didn't have much on film as yet. Melody's entry, the little horseplay when Galvin had gone after her and a few inches of film on the spiritless huddle. But nothing that would make Perry's Denver buddy very happy in a court showdown.
Del waited. Then he could wait no more. He moved slowly, like a professional acrobat, and with a great exertion of strength, lowered himself through the crawl hole. He evaded the clothes pole, slowly extended his arms and when his toes touched the floor, he let go of the hole rim and settled silently to his feet. He allowed himself a moment of breathing then turned to the closed door. With a burglar's care, he turned the knob and eased the door outward a half inch. Through the crack, he was staring directly at the bed and what he saw turned his blood to vinegar and his muscles to stone.
Galvin's big and very nude body was stretched out on the bed. Melody was half-sitting beside his hip, her back to his head. She was curled over his flat belly and her head was dipping slowly, as if the spell of her manipulations was like that of a cobra, poised high and threatening. More devastating was the way Galvin's hand was curled under Melody's bare bottom, and there was a rhythm of movement that seemed to travel from the man's caressive hand up through Melody's body to the purse of her too-red lips.
Del filmed because cameras were his second soul. He sweated and filmed and trembled with excitement, then as his senses returned, he quit filming and stared, rage taking over his pounding brain. It was real, and as the realization of Melody's intention came to him, he wanted to cry out and curse.
He could almost feel the sweet kiss and the deft press of her tiny fingers. More, his own right hand curled and twitched as each movement of Galvin's fingers seemed mechanically keyed to his. He wanted to dash into the room and crush the obscenity out of being, but another segment of his brain was fiery hot with fascination. He watched Melody's body tense, raise a little, quicken in its subtle movements and he saw Galvin's body respond. Then suddenly Galvin seized Melody and turned her over him, and his hands were too strong for Melody's half protesting squirms. They kissed, and then some soft murmurings came frustratingly to Del.
Melody's body seemed hardly more than a wisp in Galvin's arms. Then Del saw how she was beginning to wriggle over the big man and the dam burst in Del's brain. With three hundred dollars worth of speciahzed equipment clutched weapon-like in his right fist, he hurled open the door and almost dove for the nearly enmeshed couple on the bed.
He struck at an angle to miss Melody's Dutch bobbed head. The camera and the attached light caught Galvin just above the right ear and the crunch was sickening.
"Del!" Melody screamed. "My God!"
"You lousy little bitch!" he roared. "Get off of him!"
He jerked her, flinging her with all his strength. Her wail of pain and fright went across the room and chopped off as she collapsed on the floor. Del stood staring down at the unconscious Galvin, and he controlled the urge to hit him with the half-smashed camera once more. Then with abrupt exhaustion, Del sank sideways to a chair and stared across the carpet at Melody. She was leaning against the wall, her eyes closed, her hands pressed to her face.
"What happened?" Del asked hollowly. "What happened to you?"
For a moment she did not move. Then she crawled sideways and clawed for the little ball of pink that was her stretch pants, and the limp striped rag that was her shirt. Without looking at Del, she got up and ran to the bathroom.
Del stared at his broken camera, then he looked at Galvin. He was bleeding down on the pillow, but the steady rise and fall of the massive chest told Del there was still life in the Denver man. Then because he was a male animal, possessed of male vanity, he stared at the nakedness that had very nearly impaled the tiny, delectable body of Melody Smith. Mathematically, it seemed impossible, but she had been one split second from making it a reality.
Then she came out of the bathroom and their eyes met.
"I'm sorry, Del," she said evenly. "I'm sure it looked worse than it was. Did you get it all, baby?"
"I got all anybody would need in a divorce action, yes."
"Did you kill him?" she asked, threading her slim feet into her flats.
"No. But I goddam well had it in my mind!"
"Why,, Del?"
"Because he was oh, to hell with it!"
"Because he was about to get something you've been after for a long, long time. Isn't that it?"
"Mel! Take it easy. Christ, I'm all shook up!"
"Isn't that it?" she pressed her question. "Well, baby, did it ever occur to you that there is exactly the right time and the right man, and the right approach for every woman?"
"You went for him?" he asked, standing up in tense waiting.
Melody found her little handbag and went to the door. She deliberately avoided looking at the limp body on the bed.
"We'd better get out of here, Del. Maybe we can stop at a telephone somewhere and send a doctor here."
"I asked you a goddamned question!" Del snapped. "Did you really go for him?"
"Could be," she replied. "How did it look from the cheap seats, baby?"
"Let's go," he growled.
They were away from the Golden Sun Motel in five minutes. A mile or so up La Brea, Del stopped at a service station and called the
Washington General Hospital. When he got back into the car, Melody was sitting in a forlorn ball, as far away from him as she could manage.
. Del looked at her with mixed anger, bewilderment and longing.
"You know what I should have done when you closed that damned door?" he asked.
"What?"
"I should have crawled back to number eight and gone to bed!"
She looked around at him, her little girl face very blank.
"Oh? Well, I'll probably go to my lousy stinking double damned grave wishing you had, Mr. Delbert Clark! There's darned few girls can tour the world for twenty bucks!"
CHAPTER FIVE
HE REMINDED DEL OF A GREAT BROWN BEAR, aroused from hibernation enough to open one eye and peer at his tormentor, with the decision yet unmade as to what to do. Close the eye and go back to sleep or strike out with a great devastating paw. Detective Sergeant Sam Moore did neither. He slouched in massive relaxation, surveyed the apartment lazily and nodded.
"Nice place you have here, Clark. Must do pretty well in the picture taking business."
"I pay the rent."
Moore nodded. "Brains," he remarked. "Always admire a man who can do things with his brain."
"You said you wanted to talk to me," Del reminded him.
"I'm talking. Best thing I do. Now some people think a police detective spends all his time thinking and analyzing clues. Not so. Talking pays off much better. Mind if I tell you a story?"
"Be my guest."
"Thanks. Now a couple of days ago a man came to Los Angeles from out of town. He was an average fellow, some money, nice clothes and a good reputation. He checked into a motel all by himself and was apparently minding his own business. At ten-thirty that night, he woke up in a hospital, his head stove in and not a very clear idea of just what happened to him. Just to clear up the record, a couple of boys from Central Division, me included, went down to this motel and did some checking. With what we found out, and with what this man began to remember with a mite of prodding, we came up with kind of a mystery. And of course, all cops love mysteries."
Del thought that might be reasonable, but he offered no comment. It was obvious this officer had neither a warrant nor an order for his arrest. Now was no time to hit the panic button.
"It seemed to us that this man picked up a girl," the detective went on. "You know, visiting firemen in a big city, a long way from home and wifey. They made a quick deal and went to it. The girl was a goer, too, from what the hospital reported about lipstick stains on our friend's anatomy. Now about the time the party was going good, says the man, out of nowhere comes a big guy swinging bricks and old iron bars and half a piano. Lights out. End of story. Almost."
"I suppose there's a point to this story, officer?" Del asked with more calm and courtesy than he felt.
"Oh yes. Quite a bit more, I'd say. First thing, the girl left several bare footprints on the motel room floor and we figure she was about twelve years old. Very nasty implication. She wasn't a colored girl because the lipstick she left on our friend was kind of brash red for colored girls. Second, it wasn't half a piano that cold cocked our friend. It was a Bolex, eight millimeter movie camera. We found two thirds of a broken plastic lens cap on the floor and our police snoopers figured that one out quick. Then we found where the muscle man had entered the room. By going right back up through the hole in the ceiling of the closet and following the scuffmarks in the attic dust we came down in room number eight, which I might add for your benefit, is right next door. The man who runs the motel said that he had rented that room to a nice looking young man of about thirty who was big enough to go bear hunting with a switch, and that he had carried some kind of an equipment case. And though the motel manager says he didn't see a girl go into the room with the man, the second time he entered, we did find some Kleenex in room number eight with the same color lipstick on it that our head achy friend wore where no lipstick should be."
Del tensed. He could feel the noose tightening, and it took all of his nerve to match the detective's calm.
"So you are calling on all the photographers in Los Angeles hoping to find a busted camera, with a missing lenscap?"
The detective raised one eyebrow. "Did I say the camera was busted? Well, no matter. It probably was. No. I don't have to call on all the photographers. I only have to call on those who have a Bolex eight millimeter camera guarantee registered with the manufacturer. Teletype is a marvelous instrument, Mr. Clark. Then we thinned that list down by some educated guesses. Our police photographers think that whoever was shooting through a neat hole in the ceiling, or from wherever, had to be enough of a pro to produce a light source. Maybe infra-red. A Bolex eight millimeter is a common camera for amateurs but it's kind of uncommon for a professional photographer, they told me. That narrowed the list down to three professionals who own such a camera. One is in San Francisco on a special job another is too small a man to fit the description of the man in number eight. I was just wondering. You any idea where you spent Saturday night, say between about nine and maybe ten-thirty?"
"Are you accusing me of being your mysterious cameraman?"
"Who me? I haven't accused anyone of anything, Mr. Clark."
Del relaxed. "To tell you the truth, I couldn't be too sure where I was at exactly that time. But I am certain where I was not!"
Detective Sam Moore straightened up in the chair and leaned forward, the lethargy gone from his face and body. Tiny flashes of hot fire came from his mottled hazel eyes. He was the big brown bear rampant and ready to charge.
"Then maybe you can name the man who put your automobile license plate number on the registration card at the Golden Sun Motel!"
"and don't he because we can check your handwriting at headquarters," Del finished it for the officer.
Moore grinned. "You'd better believe it, Clark!"
Del was all right then. Moore had had him dead to rights from the very beginning. The game of cat and mouse had other ramifications, and for some reason, Del was sure he was not going to jail, at least for the time being.
"We understand each other, Clark?" Moore asked softly.
"Up to a point. You aren't going to arrest me?"
Again the slow grin came over Moore's face. He almost chuckled then he became serious again.
"Answer me one question. The girl. Was she twelve years old like our friend Galvin said she looked?"
Del crossed the mythical region supposed to contain a heart. "No. She's twenty-one or two and a professional model. Past that, you have to do your own guessing, officer."
Moore stared hard at him, then nodded. "I believe you. And my beheving you saved your behind, Clark. You see, I'm not investigating a hit on the head. I'm from Juvenile Division, and for the past eight months I've been on special assignment. Smack in the middle of our smog-ridden city there is an organization that is in the business of providing call girls at a fabulous fee for the kind of mother-loving bastards that like their sex at the pre-teen level. The guy you clonked, never mind why, woke up scared and hurt and a little rummy. The minute he mentioned the girl, the cop on routine called me. By the time I got there, Galvin had a change of heart. He not only wouldn't talk but he said he'd never be able to recognize either the girl nor the man who hit him. No complaint, no case. No case, no pick up by the Denver papers, and no trouble with Mrs. Galvin. If it makes you feel better, only a confession from you which I don't want to hear, can reopen the case. I got other fish to fry."
"Care for a drink, officer?"
"Yes. Call me Sam because while we may never be friends, we may wind up as partners. Double bourbon on the rocks."
"Partners?"
"The girl," Moore muttered. "The girl is the key to it all!"
"You just struck out, Sam."
Moore took the healthy drink then leaned forward and pointed a thick stubby finger straight between Del's eyes.
"You listen. Last week we picked up an eleven year old girl who had been lying face down in Griffith Park for two days. She was wearing high heels, black mesh stockings and professionally applied make-up. She had been whipped, cut, sodomized and chewed half to death. She died with a hunk of piano wire twisted around her throat. Four months before, her drunken mother reported her as a runaway. Which was true because we interviewed the bus driver who saw her with a little suitcase and a handful of nickels and dimes, running away.
"In eight months, I've seen four other little girls between eleven and maybe fourteen who had died as strangely. All of them had several things in common. They were well fed, expensively clothed and sexually molested to an extent that would make your hair curl. Only two of the girls had been reported as missing. This is a big, nasty city and sometimes poverty stricken parents don't get too curious about a missing mouth at the dinner table.
"If we take it out of the hysteria column, this is what the police know. Somewhere in this area some people are running a flesh market that can only be contacted through very special sources. We have had rumors, blind alley stoolie reports and a whole series of near misses. A few days before four of us were put into this special detail, a man was picked up in the railroad yards. He was beaten to within an inch of his life, but he was alive. And nutty. He raved for three days but when we edited the garbled tapes we obtained from the police psychiatrist, we had rather a complete story, if not a very helpful one. I'll have another booze, Clark."
Del brought the bottle. For some reason, he felt tremendously excited by Moore's story. Part of it was the picture Moore painted, more of it was in the intensity of the detective's voice. And Del thought he was about ten steps ahead of Moore's words.
"Thanks," Moore grunted when his glass was refilled. "Now the straight-jacket case was a man with more money than good sense. In a nutshell, he had paid a lot of money to somebody to get his hands on a very young girl. He mentioned some names, and he talked for hours to mysterious girls, and as far as we could tell, relived about three or four days of sex like nobody talks about. Incidentally, it is really something to hear a half crazy man blubbering' baby talk to some girl he wants to stop crying. Well, it was a mess, Clark. The report is a half foot thick. Skin under his fingernails, analyzed as that of a female under fifteen. Teeth marks all over his hairy butt and two dentists swear they had to be made by adolescent dental arches. Anyway, there was enough evidence from the tapes and from previous sources to warrant a special investigation. The man died without giving us any real clue to where he had been. We surmised that he had gotten out of line with the organization and they had tried to kill him, or at least, beat him insensible and left him for the switch engines to finish. You interested?"
"Yes. And no," Del replied. "Bring it up to date."
"Your girl," Moore said. "She's twenty-one you say. But Galvin thought she was about twelve or fourteen. You set him up for some kind of blackmail scheme, then belted him. Right?"
"Not really," Del hedged. "I set him up and was running film on him when he got out of line. I mean, the girl is not a hooker."
"Level with me, boy. I can make you big trouble if you don't."
"Okay. We were obtaining divorce evidence. I just didn't like the way things were getting out of hand so I broke up the party. You see, the girl does look like she is about twelve. This should be enough for the judge. Just filming them together would have been all any lawyer would have needed. It would be enough to prove that a man like Galvin would go for an under-age child. It was never intended that anything happen."
Moore squinted his eyes. "You must have gotten on the scene a bit late, Clark. Remember the lipstick?"
Del clamped his jaw and tried not to flinch. "So what do you want from me, Sam?"
"I want to see that girl. I want to talk to her. My problem is so damned big I don't care about what kind of a tramp she is, or what kind of a rat you are. I don't care about Galvin's cracked noggin and I hope his wife takes him for every cent he's got. But I am interested in your girl, Clark. Very. Have you got the film you ran before your blood pressure popped?"
Del shook his head. "The camera back came open when I hit Galvin. The film got light shocked."
"You are a damned liar," Moore said. "A Bolex eight uses a film cartridge. Take your choice. Show me the film or show me the girl. No. No choice. Show me the girl, Clark, or we'll all take a ride down to headquarters and see what the chief thinks about a blackmailing set up."
"Who is blackmailing whom?" Del growled. "Well, I guess I'm hooked, Sam. But you've got to give me time to contact her and explain first. And I warn you, if she says no, then bring your handcuffs because our so-called partnership is kaput!"
Moore finished his drink and stood up. He was a big man, and the seriousness of his face made him seem a bit paternal, nearly grand-fatherly. But there was a quiet smoothness to his walk as he went toward the door and Del thought he might be a very rough man in a free-for-all.
"This is big, Clark. Big and dirty and a lot of nice little kids are getting hurt. I guess you know what I have in mind for your girl if she's smart enough to handle it?"
"She's smart enough," Del assured him. "You want to plant her someplace so the organization you spoke of will pick her up. Do they play rough?"
"Apparently not until a girl becomes a problem or a liability. It looked to us like the dead girls had been so badly torn up by customers that the organization thought it easiest to knock the kids off. Boy, you got to have guts for a job like mine!"
He opened the door then and Del winced. Melody was standing there, her little forefinger stabbing for the door buzzer. She was dressed in a smooth navy blue shift that hung straight from her small square shoulders. Her legs were clad in black mesh stockings and she wore very high heels. And as he stared into her startled face, he saw that her hp and eye make-up looked like Max Factor had done it.
A soft blubbering sigh ran out of Sam Moore's mouth as he stared at the diminutive figure. Then he said, "Oh boy," and went back into the living room.
"Well, can I come in or is it a stag party?" Melody asked.
"Don't be too smart with him," Del said, dragging her in. "He's a cop and he's wise. But he also seems like a pretty good guy."
"Galvin die, Del?"
He shook his head and led her into the living room.
"Well, you wanted to meet her, Sam. This is Melody Smith. Mel, meet Detective Sam Moore, Juvenile Division. He's looking for lost little girls. Want a drink?"
Melody nodded and Moore nodded and Del took it as a reply to his offer. He let them stare at each other while he poured the drinks. Melody sat down in a too big chair and placed her too big handbag on the floor beside her little feet. Moore just stared, then his face began to stiffen and his eyes became grim.
"Clark says you are really twenty-one."
"Twenty-two. He's lousy at figures," Melody said.
Moore raised his glass and waited until they followed suite.
"Here's to crime," he said with a wry grin. "Young lady, I don't suppose it is anything new to you to be told that you are the answer to an old man's prayer, but that is exactly what you are!"
"So buy me a lollipop, mister," Melody said in her littlest girl voice.
Moore laughed and Melody laughed and Del wished he'd stayed in the Army. He had the deep inner conviction that the world was about to come to a squishy, alum flavored end.
CHAPTER SIX
BY FOUR O'CLOCK OF THE FIRST DAY weariness had worn a little of Melody's excitement to a blunt nub. It seemed to her she had strolled a half million miles and the battered little suitcase containing a childishly typical assortment of clothes and personal effects kept banging her leg. The sun was warm and she stopped in a soda fountain for her fourth Coke. She would have preferred a gin fizz, but this might break up the show.
A little boy had pinched her, a larger boy had tried to goose her, and several men had cast sly glances at her slender figure, but no one had made a pass at her Melody would have considered anything but luke warm. Detective Moore hadn't been able to tell her exactly what to expect. He had laid out her plan of decoy, because the police department thought certain districts could produce more results than might be expected from others. She was to stay out of the busy areas, but stick to the through streets, just as if she were a runaway making her way from one district to another.
And it had been agreed that she was to get entirely off the streets after dark, there being other kinds of sex fiends she might not be equipped to handle. Besides, no one was trailing her officially. The object was not to seize the contact man or make a scene. The object of Moore's pet plan was to let Melody actually enter into the mysterious organization so that the entire racket could be smashed in one fell swoop.
She had seen Del three times. Sulky, nervous and driving just slow enough to be a traffic hazard. His part of the deal was to follow her at a discreet distance and photograph each and every person who approached Melody, no matter how innocent they might seem. So, she thought, Del had two pictures of fresh kids, one of a nice old lady who had asked the way to Western Avenue, and perhaps one of the sleek Mexican youth who had said "Hi, keed," and made a suggestive gesture with a stiff middle finger.
The more tired she became, the less Melody thought of Moore's plan. In a city of several million, the chances of one pseudo-girl being picked up by a white slave ring was mathematically improbable. But the big soft-spoken detective had merely smiled at her doubts and asked if she had a better idea. Then he explained that chance was always on the police department's side, and she had been so intrigued by the role she was to play that she had agreed to follow his plan.
It was almost six when she decided to call it a day. Her feet hurt and her nose felt sunburned. She stood on the corner of Western and Third, scanning the mad go-home traffic for sign of Del. At that moment, the signal went red and the three lanes of traffic came to a screeching halt. Idly, Melody looked into the long blue car just in front of her and the handsomely dressed woman driving the Continental looked at her. She was about thirty, Melody thought and very pretty, the obvious object of someone's affections who used money and fine clothes as a symbol of that affection.
Suddenly, the woman leaned across the seat and flipped the heavy door open.
"Can I give you a ride, my dear?" she called. "Hurry!"
Melody hurried. She tossed her little suitcase in and slid to a tiny seat beside the woman. At that moment, the signal went green and the woman let the powerful car lurch forward which automatically closed the door. Her laughter was deep and throaty.
"Made it!" she said. "I can take you as far as Hollywood Boulevard, my dear. Will that help?"
"Yes ma'am. Thank you so much."
"Where are you going with that suitcase, dear? Maybe I could take you all the way if it isn't too far out of my way."
"I'm going I'm going to San Francisco!" Melody blurted, as if it had taken her a moment to decide.
"San Francisco? Oh for heaven's sake! What on earth are you going there for? And all alone!"
"I have to get a job," Melody said in a low voice.
There was another red light and the woman looked hard at her passenger. Melody tried to look very forlorn and very determined.
"You're running away from home, aren't you, my dear?"
Melody didn't answer. She clamped her little chin and pretended to be determined. The woman put out a neatly gloved right hand and patted Melody's thigh.
"You look so tired," she said softly. "Now why don't you come home with me and we'll have something nice to eat and talk a little and you can get a good night's sleep and start off fresh in the morning. Isn't that a pretty good idea? Oh, darn the traffic!"
Melody still didn't say anything, but the tingles of expectancy made her blood pound. She had hit the jackpot in one try and now the excitement was almost more than she could bear.
At Hollywood Boulevard, the woman turned right and crossed the Freeway overpass. After a few blocks, she turned right again, and before Melody could catch her breath, turned into the driveway of a rather large and beautifully kept house. The landscaping was lush and it seemed to Melody they had suddenly dropped into another world, devoid of cars and hurrying people and cold ugly buildings.
"Now, my dear," the woman said as she turned off the ignition. "Suppose we get acquainted. My name is Helen Powers. What's yours?"
"Lolita," Melody replied. "Lolita Lampert."
Helen Powers narrowed her eyes a trifle, then smiled. "Isn't that a pretty name," she said warmly. "Well, let's go inside and see about getting you cleaned up and fed. Lolita, eh? That's nice."
There were at least a dozen magnificently furnished rooms in the big house and though everything looked exceptionally well kept, there was no sign of a cook or a maid or another occupant. Melody, still carrying her suitcase, followed the exquisite Helen Powers to a stairway that led to the upper rooms.
"There's plenty of room and you can have your own room tonight, Lolita. Right next to mine. Here, isn't this nice?"
It was, and Melody, filled with the romance of Moore's vivid account of the sex club probabilities, was disappointed that the decor was so sterile. She had expected oil paintings of sex orgies, or some lewd statuary, and perhaps some velvet curtains.
"Now the first thing is to get you a bath," Helen Powers said. "The bathroom is attached. I'll get the water running and you get out of those poor dusty clothes. You can put your suitcase right on that stand."
"Thank you, Mrs. Powers."
"You may call me Helen, Lolita. My husband is deceased. I live here alone, except for a cook and maid who go home at five."
She was smiling now, and as she peeled the white gloves from her long slender fingers, she moved toward the adjoining bathroom. Melody heard the water go into the tub with a great rush and she decided a bath would be the next best thing to a martini. With practiced fumbling, she began to remove her blouse, and then dropped her pleated skirt, leaving her slim figure clad in a cheap eyelet slip and a pair of three for a dollar panties. She kicked out of her hot flats and let her toes wriggle on the deep carpet.
"There's towels and everything, Lolita," Helen said as she re-entered the bedroom. "You get right into that tub and soak while I go down and see what we are going to have for dinner tonight."
Left alone, Melody shrugged and promptly climbed, into the bath. The hot water closed over her small weary legs, and she pushed down until only the pink tips of her breasts showed above the bubbly surface of the water. By holding her head above the water, she could almost float, her feet clearing the end of the tub by several inches. Lying so, her smooth body relaxing in the delightful heat, Melody tried not to let her imagination run away with her good sense.
If this was the sex trap that had lured a number of little girls to their degradation and eventual death, then it was a well upholstered hell. And the soft-spoken Helen was a very bad example of a movie vice queen. Melody sat up and soaped herself with the large bar of scented pink delight. On the other hand, Moore had said the organization seemed to be a clever one, and the fact that no positive ripple had been made showed that the evil sex merchants played in calm water.
In the meantime, Melody thought, she could play it cool and enjoy the fun. She almost giggled as she thought of Del Clark, fussing and fuming out in the street, or wherever he was. In the heavy traffic, he might not have seen her enter the Lincoln at all. It would serve him right to spend the night worrying about what had happened to her, and if Helen Powers and her big house were disappointments to Melody, thought of Del's misery was a big compensation.
She was almost dried off when Helen suddenly appeared. She entered the bathroom carrying a robe and stopped to smile in appreciation at sight of Melody's nakedness.
"My, aren't you a pretty little darling," she said. "I know this robe will be too big for you, but it will be more comfortable than putting on your clothes. And we are going to have broiled chicken for dinner. Won't that be nice, Lolita?"
And it was. Melody, encased in the role of runaway teenager, told her story of bickering drunken parents, and Helen sympathized. She made up school stories, applied modest grades to her scholastic work and generally spun a tale of a bright, vivacious young girl whose family life had become intolerable. And Helen alternated quiet understanding with calm, very logical suggestions, and all through the evening, not one sexy word or suggestive phrase was used.
They watched television until ten, then Helen decided it was time for tired little girls to go to bed. A glass of cold milk and some chocolate cookies were forthcoming, and before Melody could realize how inocuous the evening had been, she was in bed, and the saga of Lolita had come off without anything more adventuresome than a good night pat on the head.
It was excruciatingly wonderful. The bed seemed very huge but the long thick arms reaching for her were able to touch her and now she could feel the fingers, caressing her face and her breasts, which seemed extraordinarily large, and all the sweet sensitive places. She recognized those hands, and presently there were only a few, and out of the mist surrounding the ecstasy came faces. There was Forbes and Moore and now Galvin and they crowded closer and she could see their naked bodies, tense, lovely and striving for her. She tried to reach them and other hands held her back and she knew they belonged to Del. Melody struggled and cried out but no sound came. She twisted and fought and mysteriously, Del became almost a stranger and he was huger and more naked than the rest. She felt herself whirling, then steadied and Del seemed to smother her, then she felt the hot sweet intrusion and suddenly the dream burst like a volcano.
There was no light except the glow coming through the bedroom window. Caught squarely between the wonderful dream and the reality of thrilling sensation, Melody could only gasp. And though she fought the desire, she could not help the way her hips urged up into Helen Powers' kiss, and she knew exactly what was happening to her.
Helen was nude, a smooth many curved shape of glowing white skin. She had thrown the bed covers aside and if her caresses had begun gently, forming the dream while control was yet possible, she had abandoned all stealth. Now Melody raised to her elbows, but she had no desire to shake her hips free of Helen's taut arms, nor did she strike out at the softly bobbing head with the fire kiss. As the sensation became pure passion and the depth of the kiss seemed endless, Melody fell back on the pillow, writhing in ecstasy and moaning with uncontrollable emotion. She felt Helen respond to the signs of consciousness. Her body drew up, seemed to double until with lewd striving, she knee-walked herself around so that her heavy body loomed over Melody's. The odor of passion filled Melody's nose and she clutched the roundness of Helen's hips.
Then Helen threw one leg over Melody's face and they clamped together in furious caress. It was a dark world, filled only with the sensation of feel and warmth of flesh. Helen's back curled, her hips hunched, like a great flesh and blood bee trying to sting the life into the small dark head. And with equal fury, Melody fought to take and give the lovely sensation before the enveloping purple cloud smothered her forever.
And of course, sanity came to Melody seconds after the explosion had become a series of sweet, body shaking tremors. As the ethereal beauty of the midnight episode faded, she became conscious of the weight and shape of Helen's body. She felt the woman tense and relax, as if the effort to move was more than she could spend. Then Helen rolled away and only one trailing hand remained on Melody's belly.
"Honey? Oh, Lolita, you liked it you liked my love!" Helen husked. "Oh baby, you're so sweet, so wonderful!"
Melody fought for control, and she tried to think of what a twelve year old girl would say a minute after a mad go-around with a skilled lesbian. A nice little girl would have probably screamed her lungs out, but Melody was not playing nice little girls.
"What did you do to me?" she whimpered with convincing surprise.
"Oh, my sweet, sweet baby!"
Helen scrambled around and gathered Melody into her arms. Her breasts seemed very huge, but incredibly soft and her lips rained kisses over Melody's face and throat.
Which, Melody had to admit, was not a bad way to go. She allowed herself to be drawn into a close embrace, and she didn't mind the way Helen's left hand smoothed down her back and around her hip, and when the hand became insistent, Melody let her legs drift apart. Then she realized what she was permitting and she snapped stiff and scrambled free of Helen's arms.
"You you don't touch me that way!" she said, reverting to her little girl role. "I think you're nasty!"
"Oh my dear, my dear little darling!" Helen wailed. "I only wanted to show you how much I loved you! I didn't mean to hurt you, or to frighten you. It is just that you're so beautiful and I'm so alone. I just wanted to love you so you would love me. And you did like my kisses, didn't you? Say you did, my sweet little darling!"
Melody snatched at the white shape on the floor and it was the robe. She fought the oversized garment and finally managed to get it around her. Then she reached for the light switch beside the door and the room was suddenly flooded with brash illumination.
Helen was stretched out on the bed, her right hand extended in quivering supplication. Her soft brown hair was down around her creamy shoulders and her face seemed drawn with some deep inner pain Melody did not understand. Her breasts hung thick and heavy, more obloid than round and the nipples were massively black and stiff. It was a picture of passion rejected and for a moment, Melody was tempted to go to the anguished woman and kiss her parted mouth into a smile. Then she remembered Moore, and Del and who she really was.
"You let me alone," she said in a small trembling voice. "I'm going to get out of this house, right now!"
It would come then or not at all. Melody braced herself for the charge but Helen showed no change of expression or any sign of alarm. She did not come grabbing off the bed to secure the person of a prospective call child. She dropped her face on her arm and cried.
Melody felt sorry for the woman, and she nearly felt sorry for herself. There had been those brief sweet minutes when both of them had forgotten the frustrations and problems of being a woman alone. The picture was clear; a widow, rich, pretty, but obsessed with a loneliness only another woman could understand. Lewd, perhaps, and dangerously careless to have entrusted her secret to a little girl, but desperate for illicit love rather than no love at all.
And there was no use saying she had all the capabilities for normal, healthy love and was only perverse in her manner of love-making. Melody too had all the capabilities for love and here she was at twenty-two, playing sex with men who knew only one kind of love, and fighting the tiger of Del Clark, who seemed to not really care about any kind of love at all.
Quietly, she retrieved her clothes and slipped into them. Helen didn't move until Melody picked up the little suitcase. Then she raised her head.
"I'm sorry, Lolita," she said softly. "You're a dear girl. I hoped well, I was wrong, I guess. You won't ever tell on me, will you dear?"
"No. But you hadn't ought to do things like that, you know."
"Forgive me, my dear. Won't you stay the rest of the night? You shouldn't be on the street at this hour." Please stay! I promise I won't touch you again. I truly promise!"
Melody hesitated just enough to convince the woman she was undergoing a big decision.
"No. I'll be all right. Good bye, Mrs. Powers."
As she made her way downstairs, she could hear the sobs from her erstwhile lover. They hurt Melody's ears and she was glad when she reached the soft balmy night outside the front door.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BURGLARS, DEL SUPPOSED, WEREN'T NOTORIOUS for sweating, but he was as wet as a frog. He stood back in the shadows while Melody went down the stairs, and his instinct to follow her was only half as strong as his instinct to stay where he was. When he heard the front door slam, he took another look around the door casing and the hot looking tomato was still lying face down on the bed. She was crying softly and that made her soft white bottom jiggle and both ends of Del's spine had the same idea. It was, he thought, a grand night for dreaming only this was no dream.
He had hung around outside until the lights all went out, then he skulked, worrying about Melody, from one window to another. The deep shrubbery had given him confidence, so when he found an open window with a loose screen, he had just played burglar. He had felt his way around the house, his mind conjuring up pictures of Melody in chains, under the influence of a mighty dose of drugs, or tied to a chair in the cellar. Or lashed spread-eagled to a bed while some greasy pimp initiated her into the art of serious love-making.
Then his unreasonable imaginings had been interrupted by a small series of sounds upstairs. After a hurried if clumsy trip up the stairs, he came to the door opening into the slightly lighted room where the distinctly sexy moans were coming from. Years in the darkroom had given his eyes a better sense of delineation than most people enjoyed, so Del had stood there, watching the wild broad make kiss hash out of Melody until his knees were so weak he was held erect only by his bulging trousers.
So now he had the picture, and he was feeling that never-failing mad inspired by his concern over Melody. He had not wound up being a hero at all. He had wound up being a silly Sir Galahad while Melody, as usual, had handled the situation with perfect aplomb. Plus the fact that she had gotten herself neatly fixed up while he stood out in the hall with a problem that threatened the seams of a forty dollar pair of slacks.
He peeked again, and the woman Melody had called 'Mrs. Powers' had turned over. She was lying with one arm over her eyes and the other over her soft smooth belly and from the way her fingers were curled lazily between the milk white rounds of her thighs, she was not quite through, despite Melody's departure. Most of Del's sense turned to warm jello and he stepped into the doorway and leaned against the casing with more nonchalance than he felt.
"Hi," he said gently. "Don't you think you're a little old for that kind of high school gymnastics?"
Her shriek was short and shrill. She snapped erect and grabbed for the covers and her eyes were as huge as saucers as she stared at him.
Then she began to blubber, and this lasted until he grinned.
"Who who are you? Get out of here at once or I'll scream!"
"You already screamed," he reminded her. "I'm known as Carlos the Cat, second story man. I was checking your sugar bowl downstairs when I heard the commotion up here. Sorry the little chick walked out from under you but I don't really think Mother Five Fingers is the answer. Tried a grown man lately?"
"You're a beast," she said with no conviction. "Leave my house at once. There's nothing here for you to steal. Nothing!"
"Stealing is the thing furthest from my mind, honey."
"What do you want then?" she quavered.
Del just grinned. He was aware that he had gone completely out of his mind, but she hadn't screamed and screamed and the more he looked at her, the better she checked out. She was holding the sheet just high enough to allow the heavy fall of her breasts to show as a promise. Her eyes were very big and very blue and they were wandering up and down his slouched body with more than casual interest.
"No." she said. "You're a thief and a burglar and a horrible man. No!"
"You're a lesbian who picks up little girls and attacks them when they are sleeping," Del said.
"Oh!" Then her eyes narrowed. "How did you know I picked her up, Carlos the Cat."
"I just guessed," Del back-pedaled. "I was in the hall for about twenty minutes and heard you talk to her."
"This is ridiculous," she decided. "I'm going to call the police!"
"Okay. I tell them what I saw and they pick up the little girl and you get twenty years. I get only five. I don't carry a gun. Why don't we have a drink and talk it over?"
"A d-drink?"
"Liquor. You've a whole cabinet full downstairs."
She was staring at his trouser front now and Del waited. After a moment, she looked up and met his eyes. The insanity of the situation struck them both at the same time and they began to laugh. After that, there was no problem.
"Okay, burglar. Go get a bottle and a couple of glasses. I'll brush my hair and we'll get acquainted."
"At-a-girl," Del agreed and went downstairs. But as he passed the telephone on the hall stand, he took the receiver off to open the connection. He listened for a few seconds but there was no sound of frantic dialing. After that, he went to the liquor cabinet, his lips pursed in a silent, merry whistle shape.
At the top of the stairs Del noticed she had changed rooms. There was nothing guest-roomy about the big bedroom he entered. It was warmly furnished and the bed was king-sized. His hostess had donned a thin blue negligee and pom-pommed slippers. She was brushing her hair as she had promised and Del liked the way her slightly heavy flesh shook under the filmy robe.
He walked over and placed the two glasses on the dresser then poured each one half full of bourbon. Standing beside her, he was a full head taller than she, and she was studying him in the mirror. He handed her a glass and they smiled at each other's reflections in the big mirror.
"No strings?" she asked holding up the whiskey.
"Gone with the dawn," he agreed.
She half turned then and put her head on his chest. He sipped the drink, then set the glass on the dresser and began to ease the robe down over her shoulders. The moment his fingers touched her bare flesh, she put one hand to his belt and undid the buckle. Then the zipper, and there was no hurry, no frenzy in the way she dropped his trousers and shorts from under his jacket. She handled him like a veteran whore, or a widow who had almost forgotten how a man was made. Occasionally, she looked into the mirror, as if marveling at her own actions.
Del could not remember ever being more excited, not by her deft manipulations, but by the bizarre moment, and her unrestrained eagerness. He had the ungallant feeling that he was doing her a monstrous favor. Without disturbing her intriguing movements, he slipped off his jacket.
Suddenly she let go of him and took her drink. She turned and went to the bed, sitting down with neatly crossed thighs, her eyes watching him remove his shirt.
"I keep waiting to wake up," she said.
Del laughed and took his drink with him. When he was standing at her knees, he shook his lean hips slightly. "You're awake, baby."
"My name is Helen," she said. She uncrossed her thighs and Del stepped a little closer and then she went to pieces. Del barely rescued the drink in her right hand as she threw her arms around his hips and climbed his body in a series of clutching hugs. Her mouth left a trail of hot moist kisses until she reached his lips. Now her thighs hugged his waist and he put both drinks on the night stand and closed his arms around her back. For a brief hot moment, their bodies searched for each other, then a shuddering gasp of ecstasy escaped Helen's lips. Del just let himself fall forward and the shock of her back on the bed dragged a gasp of desire from him.
She howled and wailed like a cat in anguish and despite her feminine fraility, managed to roll them both back and forth on the bed, all the while beating Del with the fury of her passion. Her fingers clawed at his back Her teeth nipped at his shoulders. Pain and amazement slowed Del, but gradually, the hot wet greediness of her writhing hips dragged him back into pure passion and he became blissfully blind to everything but the top of the purple hill, growing closer and closer. He tumbled over the crest almost before he realized he was there.
Even then, while he suffered the excruciating pain of unbelievable pleasure, Helen fought his growing lethargy with unreasonable twists and demanding thrusts. Suddenly she unlocked her entwined ankles and rolled them over. Flat on his back and temporarily exhausted, Del let her wage her own gasping moaning war. Her hands clutched his shoulders, her forehead rested on his chest. Only her bowed back and spraddled hips moved in undulating fury, as if she would force him to respond. And as sensibility returned to Del, he realized that her frenzy was frustration. Then he felt her hesitate, and against his chest, her lips fluttered in beginning sobs.
"Oh God, oh God," she husked. "I can't, I can't! Oh help me, honey, or I'll die. Help me, help me!"
He willed himself to respond. He fought the sweet debilitation, the demand for rest, the satiation of his first desire. He put his hands to her waist and broke the rhythmic pounding of her body, rearranging the roll and twist to tease the strength back into his body. She seemed unaware of what he was doing, but gradually, his hands and his revived strength took command again, and he began to control their deep embrace. Slowly her fury abated and she began to lay heavy on his body. He summoned every memory of his life and played her sensitive body as if it were a fine musical instrument.
And out of nothing came a new vibrancy, a fresh rhythm, and the gasps from her lips became ecstatic. Her fingers ceased to claw. She no longer beat down on his rising body. She snuggled, and after a moment, he felt the deep secret forms of wet and softness begin to claim and pet his striving strength.
When the frenzy came again it was different and Helen responded to his every movement. He sensed when she was ready for the long sweet uphill climb and he dulled his own desires to be sure she was always one lovely step ahead of him.
Then she tumbled over the purple precipice without warning, and her shudders of ecstasy became deep, pulsating waves of gasping. Del heaved and rolled them and let his lust burst out in a seemingly endless series of lunging, until he could only stiffen and groan and hold her up to him in total victory.
Two steps inside her apartment door, Melody's reserve gave up and she flung herself weeping and shuddering on the familiar sofa. A dozen emotions buffeted her senses, leaving her with a horrible feeling of emptiness she could not understand. Above all she wanted Del, not the brusque, wise-cracking Del who always seemed to treat her as an oddity, but a soft, reassuring Del who would hold her close and soothe her wounded spirit with tender words and very huge, enveloping hands. A Del who would save her from herself.
To love was not enough, and she had known this since the moment when she had closed the closet door in the Golden Sun Motel and let herself go to John Galvin, a perfect stranger.
It was almost as if her mind, haunted by a year of vicarious sex and precarious emotions, had snapped closed, leaving only her body to direct the things she did.
Whatever she had thought her abandonment to sex with John Galvin would accomplish had not turned out as she had hoped. There had been the first moments of intimate desire, then the second, more intense exhiliaration of being a woman with a lusty man. There had been that other moment, filled with fear and happiness and victory when Del had burst out of the closet in jealous rage.
But then' had come days during which his only reactions to her near blossoming had been sulky and gruff. He hadn't even seen that she needed to be loved like a woman, and he had shown more tenderness for his broken camera than he had for her broken heart.
And now there had been Helen Powers, a poor frustrated woman who had screamed her love and pleaded for understanding, but to another woman, not a man. And Melody tried hard not to admit that for a moment, she had been more than willing to be that other woman. It had been obscene, dirty, nearly perverse, yet the beauty of the moment had not escaped her.
A month ago, even five days ago, Melody would have felt unclean and degraded. As she huddled on the sofa, barely holding back the tears, she remembered the delightfully exciting minutes with Helen Powers and she could not help but wonder if the whole fault was not hers alone.
Melody got up, a serious, frightening thought in her brain. She went into the bedroom and hastily stripped off her little girl clothes. She wasn't a little girl. She was as full grown as she would ever be, though she might someday develop some rounder curves where now only beginning pads of tender flesh appeared.
She cupped her tiny breasts, trying to bring them out to some satisfactory roundness. Only the nipples responded, and she nicked them experimentally. They tingled: they had tingled since the moment she had awakened with Helen's kiss burning her flesh. Melody curled over, pressing her palm to her already flat abdomen. The neat elongated dimple was no more just a part of her. It was alive, responsive, and sweet to certain lips. She shuddered as the prejudice of past years faded into nothing.
She stared at herself in the mirror and wondered if life could be wonderful with a woman like Helen Powers. Two women, loving and being loved without a single care for men, nor the difficult world they ruled. Then Melody turned away and poured herself a drink from the half-empty bourbon bottle on the little stand. She stared at the bottle, and the glass and the four paper napkins.
How long ago had she moved the bourbon from the kitchen cupboard to her bedroom? Last week, or the week before?
She gulped the raw whiskey and fought the urge to refill the glass. She stood with closed eyes, fighting hysteria and the only image in her mind was of Del Clark.
The more she longed for him, the further away he seemed to get. What inverted emotion was it that always kept her aloof from Del's animal moments? She had eluded his hands and his kisses because she had felt they weren't enough, yet she had gone to John Galvin like a greedy Nympho. She had not the courage to speak softly to Del, yet she had mouthed enticing words and hinted bold promises to a half dozen men while Del photographed her brazenness.
And tonight. She had not only submitted to Helen Powers, she had responded with a strange hunger and a leaping passion.
Gradually, Melody began to see herself and the strange role she was living. Of course Del wanted to go to bed with her. This had been obvious from the very first. And to combat this natural male instinct, to fight off this age old form of flattery, she had assumed a cold, disinterested air that had held Del away but left her own heart in a state of panic.
And by rejecting the man she loved because he had not told her he loved her, she had stripped herself of reason. There had been nothing reasonable about her feelings for John Galvin and nothing even remotely sane about her response to Helen Powers.
She had been willing to give her body to strangers but not to Del. After that thought, Melody wondered if she were not in fact, a very little girl who dreamed of white knights and prancing chargers. Then she remembered that tomorrow was only a few hours away, so she had one more big hooker of bourbon and crawled into her lonely bed. Weariness and the liquor put her to sleep before her frustration managed to bring the tears again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MELODY FLIPPED HER ASHES INTO THE big ceramic tray and looked casually at Del.
"Well, she was a pure nothing so when she let me out at Hollywood and Western, I decided my feet had had it. I went home."
"Sure," Del grunted. "And I spent half the night looking for you. Dammit, Mel, you could have at least stuck around until I'd spotted you!"
"Now now," Detective Sam Moore purred. "Bound to be a mix-up or two at the beginning. Cops get loused up after twenty years of keeping tabs. I think we ought to work in the Valley today. Out along Ventura Boulevard. We got a tip from a stoolie yesterday evening. At Laurel Canyon and Ventura, this rat saw a big Cadillac sedan with a man and two young girls in the back seat. He said they didn't look like sisters and one of the girls was smoking which she would hardly be doing if she'd been riding with a relative or a family friend. The car turned up a block or two from Laurel and he wasn't sober enough to remember the license plate. Your feet up to it, Melody?"
She nodded. Del looked terrible, she thought. Anyway, she had been lucky he hadn't been able to follow Helen Powers' big car too closely. It served him right, she thought, for not staying close enough to help her if she got into trouble. Then a warning bell went ding-ding in her head. Why hadn't he called her apartment after an hour or two of fruitless search? Or had he? She searched his face for signs of duplicity but he was his usual indifferent self, with dark circles under his brown eyes.
They left his apartment about eleven, because Moore felt that would be about the hour his elusive sex merchants would be up and about. Moore drove off in an unmarked police car and Melody rode with Del.
"You tell this mysterious boyfriend of yours what you're doing? Or is he the kind that wouldn't care?" Del asked as they spun over the Freeway to Ventura Boulevard.
"He's the kind that wouldn't care," Melody replied. "If it is any of your business."
"What the hell are you sore at me about?"
"I'm not sore, Del. It's just that this job has me kind of jittery. I know, we didn't have any choice and the whole mess was as much my fault as it was yours. But I can't help being nervous. You'd be surprised at the things I can think of, after the stories Moore told us!"
"I liked our old racket better," Del admitted. "Incidentally, Thomas says the films scared your boy Galvin into a big divorce settlement. We get the other thousand in a few days."
"He was not my boy!" Melody fumed.
"No? Seemed to me, from the cheap seats, he was pretty well taken over. Well, I suppose it was none of my business, at that."
"That's right, it wasn't!"
"Okay, okay," he growled.
When they reached Ventura, Melody got out of the car, her anger still showing. "See if you can keep me in sight today," she snapped. "I may need some help in case I drop into a manhole!"
Del's grin surprised her. "I'd say off hand, falling into a manhole would be the least of your worries, Mel. Good luck."
She stood on the corner, trying to make something out of his words. Then she decided it was pure coincidence that she had fed him such a perfect straight line. Nevertheless, she blushed slightly at the accuracy of his thick wit. Then she assumed her pavement weary stride and became a little girl in blue jeans and a white blouse, toting her worldly possessions down Ventura Boulevard. She was very much aware that Ventura was approximately thirty miles long.
The red convertible with the good looking blonde man at the wheel passed Melody twice. Del tightened his grip on the wheel and pulled to the curb, keeping his eyes on the rearview mirror. Then he saw the convertible again. The driver had apparently turned right, gone a block or two back on a parallel street, then cruised out on the Boulevard behind Melody. Now the red car slowed, causing a slight frog in the traffic. It crept along until Melody started across an intersection, then the car moved forward and paced Melody's slight body. Del saw the driver say something. Melody stopped, holding her suitcase with both hands, a slight, weary arch to her back.
Then the young man flipped open the convertible door and Del lifted his movie camera with the four power telephoto lens. He ran out nearly a half minute of film while Melody Smith played coy but finally got into the car.
Del was only two cars behind the convertible at the next signal. He scribbled the license number on his visor pad and poured ocular daggers into the blonde man who was now laughing and talking to Melody. Who was laughing and talking back. She was, Del thought, either a pint-size bitch or a very stupid woman who was a hell of an actress. Both descriptions hurt his feelings.
After the carhop took their order for hamburgers and Cokes, the handsome youth turned in the leather seat and half frowned.
"What the heck are you going to San Francisco for, baby? If you want a job, this is the right town for you."
Melody blinked. "But what if my folks find me? Boy, I've had it with them! Anyway, I've always heard San Francisco was a groovy town. I can let my hair grow out and I'll look a lot older."
"How old are you, baby?" he asked then. "Sixteen," Melody ventured. "Sure. Come again, baby. Bet you aren't a day over twelve."
"Don't I look older?" Melody asked. "Honest, don't I?"
He squinted his eyes at her, then shook his head. "Well, in a regular dress, with some make up, and your hair kind of uppish, I'd say you could pass for sixteen. Course, sixteen year old girls have to know something. I, mean, about sex and all. Get me?"
"I know," Melody said in a most unconvincing voice. "I'm in the I mean, was in the high seventh. I know about boys and all."
"Bet you're still a virgin," he scoffed with some warmth.
"That's none of your business!"
He shrugged. "See? Right off, you give yourself away."
Melody would have liked very much to hit him with the Coke bottle and stuff the hamburger in his mouth when he gasped. He was typical of something, she thought. Over-long hair, a bright sweater and very tight pants. He sat with his legs akimbo and the bulges he seemed so proud of made Melody's mouth dry. She took a swallow of Coke and waited. He ate with great gulps and looked around the Drive-in, as if he were searching for somebody.
"Frisco is a drag," he finally said. "Why don't you stick around town? Maybe I could help you get a job. I got a friend who is a big guy in pictures. He knows everybody. In the meantime, you could stay with my sister. She's great. Real hep. She can show you how to fix up and we can tell my friend you're sixteen. She can wise you up about what to say if some man gets fresh too. You know. Help you get started right."
"Wouldn't she mind?" Melody asked. "I don't want to be a drag."
He leaned over and patted her jeans clad thigh. "Good looking kid like you can't ever be a drag. We'll go talk to sis. Name's Nora. Nora Gray. JThat's my name. Jerry Gray. What's yours?"
"Jane Smith," Melody replied truthfully.
He chuckled. "Great! You're learning, kid. Jane Smith it is. WeU, let's get out of here and go see sis."
Melody watched him pay the carhop and he tipped her generously. As he backed the car out of the stall, Melody casually looked around the semi-circle of cars. At the far end was a familiar car. She controlled the urge to wave at Del, then Jerry Gray hot-rodded the convertible out into the street.
He drove back a few blocks, almost to where he had picked her up, then turned right and headed up into the exclusive residential area amid the hills. He poured the gas to the convertible, rolling it around the turns with evident relish for his work. Higher and higher they went, past dozens of lovely homes. Then without warning, he turned into a private driveway that was so tree shrouded it was almost like a forest. Two hundred yards from the street, he stopped in a broad paved area before a three car garage. The house to the left was low, wide, and looked to Melody as if it should belong to a movie queen.
"Oh my," she said as Jerry stopped the motor. "It's an awfully big house, isn't it?"
"Yeah. Real pad. Belongs to sis and me. Dad left it to us. Come on. She'll probably be out back by the pool. Here, give me that boodle kit."
"B-boodle kit?"
"The suitcase, baby. You're going to stay here awhile, remember? Hey, you fit those pants pretty good."
Nora Gray fitted her bikini pretty good too, Melody thought. She was a platinum blonde, by bottle, because Melody could detect some darker hair where the bikini left off. She was pretty, and vivacious and when Jerry explained the situation to her, she put one arm around Melody and led her into the house.
"I was going to San Francisco," Melody said.
"All that way? My god. You could get eaten up by dragons. Anyway, this house is big enough for fifty little things like you. I'll put you in the room next to mine, honey. And then we'll see about some clothes. What have you in the suitcase, sweetie?"
While Melody stared around the beautiful bedroom with proper girlish awe, Nora plowed through the little suitcase, said, "Hell!" and hurled it all into an empty wardrobe.
"Look, Janie. That junk is cat fur. In the morning I'll go into town and buy you some nicer things. In the meantime, skin out of those damned jeans. I'll go look for some of the stuff I used to wear when I was your size.
There's a whole wardrobe full of it someplace. Oh, wait."
She went out, was gone barely a minute, then returned. She tossed two very skimpy garments to the big bed.
"It's one of my bikinis. We'll pin it up snug. Everybody's out by the pool and we can worry about clothes after the sun goes down. Can you swim?"
"Sure. But I bet the halter won't fit," Melody said with a knowing giggle. "You're sure pretty."
"Thanks, Janie. Let's get with it, huh?"
It was all very casual and gay. They pinned the bikini at the sides and made some extra knots in the halter. Then Nora, laughing in friendly merriment, led Melody out to the pool area. It was magnificent, to say the least, and Melody felt a tinge of jealousy. She still couldn't make up her mind what the set up was, but when she saw the two good looking young men and Jerry, lolling beside the irregularly shaped pool, she almost decided she had hit another blind alley. She was introduced to the two strange young men, and after she had made polite, very juvenile acknowledgments of the introductions, the boy called Mike promptly pushed her into the clear warm pool. A moment later, all of them dove in and Melody hoped Del was properly sweating, parked on the curvy road in the late afternoon sun.
She guessed Nora to be about twenty-four or five. Mike and the boy named Duke seemed of similar age, but Jerry could have been younger.
It was hard to tell. They were all so sun-tanned and healthy and so completely boisterous their ages could have been from eighteen to thirty. Finally they all climbed out of the pool and availed themselves of towels from a huge stack by the wrought iron table on the tiled apron. It hit then, like a bomb.
Nora untied the knot holding her bikini and stripped it off.
Her full breasts jumped out in conical, jiggling audacity, tipped by huge raspberries in the center of dollar-sized aureoles. She toweled them vigorously, and not one of the boys, including her brother seemed to notice the sensual display.
"Go ahead, honey," Nora said, seeing the amazement Melody could not keep from her face. "These bums have seen that stuff since they were old enough to stand up. And I'm damned sure yours aren't going to shake them up any!"
"B-but it isn't very nice, is it?"
Nora shook herself with wild abandonment. "It Sure is! Bras were invented by old maids. Boys, she's bashful!"
"So let her to hell alone," Jerry laughed, flopping into a chrome and plastic lounge. "Is there any more beer in the refrig?"
"Go see, Mike," Nora commanded the darker of the two boys.
Melody sat down on a grassy place, trying to gauge the situation. Jerry and Duke became involved in a conversation about the Rams' chances for a football pennant the next season, and Nora stretched out on a big striped towel, her breasts pointing straight up at the blue sky. Presently, Mike came back with his muscular arms loaded with beer cans and he dumped the load on the grass beside the other two youths. Then he pivoted and stretched out beside Nora.
Melody heard the tops pop out of the beer cans, but she was unable to turn her eyes from the pair stretched out together. Mike had put his brown hand on Nora's flat belly, and he was working his fingers in the pliant flesh as if speculating the tenderness of a beef roast. Duke suddenly handed Melody an opened beer and she took it without removing her eyes from the gradually creeping hand on Nora's abdomen. Nora hadn't moved, but the fingers had. They were now almost out of sight in the narrow triangle of striped cloth around Nora's hips.
"Ooh, you rough bastard!" she exclaimed, throwing her arm out around his neck. "Don't you ever cut your damned fingernails!"
"You like fingers without nails?" he laughed.
Melody could hardly breathe. She stared, clutching the cold can of beer, her back aching with tenseness. Neither Jerry nor Duke ceased their bickering about halfbacks and field goals.
Now Mike fumbled his trunks down and at the same time, Nora rolled so he could force her bikini down over the twin rounds of her buttocks. There was a moment of fantastic display, and Melody wanted to cover her face in shame.
In a second, there were two nude and splendid bodies on the striped towel, and a moment later, Nora cradled Mike's lean hips between her thighs and the mating of two lewd and urging bodies was so beautiful Melody wanted to cry.
Then she felt sick, not from the obscenity but because the impact of what she watched was like a bath of passion. She glanced at Jerry, then at Duke, but they were seemingly blind to the pair of bodies.
The angle was devastating. Melody quivered from head to toe, and she seemed to feel every movement of Mike's strong body and she seemed to sense each involuntary lift of Nora's hips. The sun made bright highlights on the writhing arms and legs and the shadows were deep, but not too deep to show Melody each bit of working flesh.
Then came sound, murmurs between the lovers that seemed to mean something. Melody watched Mike's back slow in its rippling, then speed, and Nora's heels dug into the towel with significant intent.
Then it was over and there was laughter between them. She saw Nora's hands petting Mike's relaxed back, and he was kissing her face. After a minute of intimate whispers, Nora slapped Mike's hip.
"No, fool!"
Then she screamed, a low, half-laughing wail and Mike rolled them both over and over until they fell off the tile into the pool. The splash reached Jerry who yelped. Then he turned and grinned at Melody.
"They're nuts," he said pleasantly. "But you keep your eyes on them, Janie. They'll teach you how to be sixteen in no time!"
"I-I'm all right," Melody murmured. It was a foolish thing to remark and she realized she said it more to herself than to Jerry.
Then as she watched the two splendid bodies playing intimately and affectionately in the pool, she decided she had been given a treatment of some sort. She was still trembling from the excitement of her voyeuristic adventure, but she clung to the remaining fringes of her intelligence and tried not to panic.
Anyway, Del might be somewhere in the shrubbery, his busy bee camera going like mad, and she didn't want to turn into a blubbering mess at this stage of the weird game.
CHAPTER NINE
THEY TREATED HER EXACTLY AS IF SHE WERE an adult. Melody had to admit that were she really only thirteen, she would have been thrilled to near hysteria by the strange group and the expansive house. Nora found some pretty things for Melody to wear and laughed with the others when she remembered being only eleven when her mother had purchased the frilly dresses.
The hi-fi was wired into every room in the house. There was a library, a game room and four large bedrooms, each with its own nearly Romanesque bath. The boys lolled around in the game room, drinking beer and talking about cars or football or just tapping feet to the Oscar Petersen records. Nora, clad now in a thin straight shift, went to the kitchen to fix something for dinner. Melody, still following the juvenile pattern, went along to help.
"So you were running away from home, huh?" Nora asked. "Well, I felt like doing the same thing when I was your age. Would have too, but my folks got killed in a plane crash. So Jerry and I had a governess until we reached twenty-one. That wasn't so bad. She was a cute old dame and let us pretty much alone. Anyway, there was plenty of money for Jerry and me. Money helps, baby."
"My folks are kind of poor," Melody said. "I was never in such a nice house as this one. And everybody is so much fun."
Nora paused on her way to the big double refrigerator.
"That bit between Mike and me shake you up, Janie? I mean, we live it up around here and I didn't think about you until I saw your big eyes. It really didn't mean anything."
Melody gulped, and it was not put on. "In front of everybody," she said warily. "Well, it did kind of make me feel funny."
"You ever let a boy get any, Janie?"
"N-no. But almost a couple of times."
Nora laughed. She busied herself at the sink, washing lettuce for salad and after a minute, she turned.
"I was only eleven when I got it," she confided. "That darned brother of mine and two older boys caught me in the garage. Not this house. We lived in Pomona. It doesn't hurt, you know. In fact, I spent the rest of the Summer chasing the little devils who started it all! So don't get shook up if one of the boys fiddles around a little. There has to be a first time for everything, and if you're going to pretend you're older than you are, you'd better wise up as quick as you can. Okay?"
Melody nodded. But she was scared. Up to that moment, it had not been very clear in her mind as to what she could expect. She had listened to Detective Moore and drawn a little set of pictures which she now realized were a bit romantic. This bold approach was not one of the pictures. Maybe this was the recruiting depot for the traffic in young girls and maybe it was not. Melody wondered what could happen to her before she found out. And suppose this indoctrination went on for several days before any positive sign of the organization appeared?
Her experience with Helen Powers had left Melody with some skepticism. Perhaps Nora and her brother and her two lusty friends were just what they seemed to be wild kids with more money than good sense, and no sense at all about morality or propriety. Working with Del had taught Melody some rules about interfering with other people's lives. While she didn't want to get caught in bed between Nora's muscle-bound friends, she still did not want to call for Moore and break up a situation which was none of her affair.
And she didn't want to call for help before the situation had been proven, one way or another. There was too much at stake.
She helped Nora serve the cold chicken and salad in the game room. The boys were gathered around the television, watching a wild western. There was more beer and some loud hp smacking and they pitched the salt and pepper shakers back and forth as if they were baseballs. Melody sat in a low chair, her small TV table loaded with excellent food, her eyes and ears alert for every word and gesture.
After the western, there was a big argument about the authenticity of costumes, guns and scenes. Then there was some talk about going to the race track on Saturday. Melody almost relaxed. Then Mike and Duke got up and said they were going into Hollywood.
For some reason, Melody quivered. The thought of being alone in the house with Nora and her seemingly harmless brother sent a chill up her back. They were too calm, too self-possessed. Nora slouched in a long broad sofa, filing her nails. Her smooth legs were bare and exposed half-way to her lush hips. Jerry lay back in a contour chair, his eyes half closed. It was nerve wracking, and Melody expected either or both of them to leap up suddenly in some kind of a sex frenzy. To Melody, they both looked like lazy sensuous beasts, gathering their hormones for a leap at her diminutive body.
Finally Jerry raised his head and looked at Nora.
"You going to get Janie some clothes tomorrow?" he asked.
"Sure am," Nora replied. "Get her hair fixed too."
"Janie, do you think your folks are going to look very hard to find you? Call the police, maybe?" Jerry suggested.
Melody shook her head with too much conviction. "They'll probably just be glad I'm gone. They don't care much about me."
"That's too bad," Nora said casually. "Well, I suppose you're tired, honey. Want to hit the sack?"
"I I guess so."
"Good night, then," Jerry remarked and went back to resting.
Nora wiggled friendly, well filed fingers. "Night, Janie."
"Good night, and thanks. Thanks a lot for everything," Melody murmured. Then she walked sedately to the room Nora had said would be hers. Before entering, she hesitated, and the sudden murmur of conversation from the front room made her imagination soar.
There was a lock on the bedroom door which Melody carefully set. Then she opened the drapes. If Del were out there somewhere, he would be sure to investigate the blast of light coming through the broad window. Why? She was playing the juvenile to trap a vicious ring of flesh-peddlers who specialized in young girls. So far, she had proof that Nora liked to make violent love in front of an audience and that she had more than sisterly interest in her handsome brother, but there was still no proof that this house was the recruiting depot for the traffic in baby-flesh.
Then she realized that neither Detective Moore nor Del knew she was a virgin, nor that she was not the bold, uninhibited sex-bomb she pretended to be. Almost instantly, she had a new understanding of Del Clark. Why she should expect him to be sweet and gentle when he thought she was a rough, unparticular nym-pho was a ridiculous contradiction of logic.
It was pretty plain that neither Del nor Moore cared very much about what might happen to her on this decoy assignment. They wanted her to get in, take whatever came along until she found out the facts, then blow the lid off. If she got a bit frayed around the edges, they expected her to heal in the due course of time. Flushed with anger and humiliation, Melody looked at the window. Okay. But she was not going to let Del Clark have a free show.
She drew the drapes, turned out the light, stripped to her pink trembling skin and climbed into bed.
And, she thought, if she had to get it, she darned well intended to enjoy it.
Since dark, Del had roamed the grounds around the big house as if they were his own. His camera was useless because he hadn't come equipped for night shooting. After the hot half hour of filming the wild and wooly episode by the pool, he had not nicked a shutter. But the memory was still with him. He had never seen a colder, more deliberate bit of sex in his life, and even the peyote bash hadn't produced a more graphic bit of pornographic footage. And there had sat Melody, cool as a cucumber, watching the stud work the gorgeous blonde over with both force and technique. And she had probably enjoyed the view, too.
None the less, he had felt better when the two young punks left the house, although Del didn't short-change the blonde kid who had picked Melody up in the first place. He had done a lot more watching than he had appeared to do, and the set of working tools showing under the kid's swim trunks made Del twinge with inadequacy.
Now Del lay against the stucco wall, twisting his body so he could see the two lusty young characters in the big living room.
The blonde was a killer, he mused. Her breasts were big and bold and stuck straight out and she had a perfect set of hips. The kid was sitting up now, and they were talking. Then he got up from the contour chair, leaned down to kiss the blonde with a wide open mouth and a casual hand to her smooth round throat, then went to the telephone. The blonde stopped her fingernail paring and listened. Del couldn't hear a thing.
He walked around the house and looked in the window where Melody was. She was standing in the middle of the room, her arms hugged around herself as if she were cold. Or mad. It was mad, because all of a sudden she stamped her little foot, came directly toward the window and a moment later, dragged the drapes closed. In another second, the light went out. Del frowned, then went back to peek into the living room. But Melody had not returned to the dubious company of her host and hostess.
The youth had joined the hot blonde on the sofa. She was curled in his left arm and they were talking. They were also very cozy. Her dress was now almost to her hips and the way her right leg kind of folded over the man's thigh was caressive. He had dropped her shoulder strap down and one of the bullet shaped breasts was nestled comfortably in his unsubtle fingers. They kissed between sentences, as if neither could wait until the important matter they seemed to be discussing was settled.
Del felt the crawling tension again. Despite the excitement of playing snooper-detective, despite the danger and despite his inner concern for Melody, he could not fight the impact of watching the building episode in the luxurious living room. As a man who made his living dealing in pictorial values, his voyeuristic responses were dramatically acute. And from the way the lush blonde was working, her little pool-side adventure had left her with heat to spare.
But he was wrong. They seemed to finish their conversation, and the kiss Del thought would start the real fireworks ended it all. The blonde got up and half pulled her man to his feet. She was grinning broadly, and she made a derisive pass at what she had done to the front of his trousers. Then arm and arm, they headed for the back of the house, turning out the light as they passed into the hall.
So Del drifted toward the back yard, waiting for a light to tell him where the passionate pair had gone. Finally the light went on again in Melody's room; Del's blood cooled instantly, and he moved for the front door.
This afternoon, the blonde and a big tanned stud had put on a roaring hot show for Melody, with two lusty youths standing by in case Melody's reactions were all wrong, or all right. Now, the same blonde and steamed up stud were in Melody's room, and no matter how Del rationalized the impossible, it seemed to him that the second chapter to their strange, nefarious game was about to occur.
He tried the front door and it was unlocked, bearing out his opinion that it was all one big, careless game with Melody's little bottom at stake. On silent feet, he slipped into the house, then he risked a tiny sound as he set the lock. In case the other two boys came back from where they had gone.
Melody raised to her elbows, blinking furiously to accustom her eyes to the light. Jerry was standing just inside the door in only a pair of jockey shorts. He was smiling broadly. At his shoulder, stood Nora, and she was wearing only a filmy sleeper jacket that covered nothing and barely changed the pink to near red at the tips of her jutting breasts.
"Told you she wouldn't sleep in a strange bed right away," Jerry said over his shoulder. "Lonesome, Janie, your first night away from home?"
"I-I'm all right," Melody managed to say. Her eyes were glued to the monsterous distortion of Jerry's shorts. She knew instinctively that this was it. "I can go to sleep, all right."
"Well, a little company won't hurt, will it?" Nora asked, moving around her brother. She came to the bed and without a bit of hesitation, raised the covers and slid in beside Melody. The sudden contact with warm soft flesh, the odor of good perfume and the bold intimacy of the moment stunned Melody. Then Nora snuggled closer, and put her arm under Melody's head. "Turn the darned lights out, fool," she said to Jerry. "You want to scare her to death?"
Five seconds after the lights went out, Nora snuggled hard enough to push Melody to the edge of the bed. And in another second, she could hear Jerry's breath, and the bed bounced as his weight settled in beside Nora.
"Now, isn't this cozier, honey?" Nora said, and her giggle of friendliness had an ominous sound. "You weren't very sleepy anyway, were you? I know I couldn't sleep if I had a head full of plans for tomorrow, like you must have. Well, just plan ahead because we are going to take care of you, honey. Okay?"
"Okay," Melody replied.
She was stunned, as much by the rapidity of the moment as by the warm, undeniably exciting embrace Nora provided. She could feel the solid shape of Nora's right breast against her own pulsating flesh. Nora's circling arm and hand toyed lazily with the nipple of Melody's breast, and there was a subtle squirm to Nora's body, pressed close to effect a convincing intimacy. But Melody was most conscious of Jerry, stretched out on the other side of Nora.
"This isn't very nice, is it?" Melody ventured. "I mean, with your own brother right here in bed?"
Nora laughed merrily. "You little goose! There's so much you don't understand. About being grown up, I mean. We just want to be friendly and maybe make you feel more at home. Isn't that right, Jerry?"
He turned over on one hip and Melody felt his big hand, patting her naked belly in a harmless friendly reassurance.
"Sure. Soon as you settle down and relax, we'll take off to our own rooms. Hey, that's a mighty cute little tummy you've got!"
Melody fought to hang on to her nerves. Maybe Del was outside and maybe he had decided to leave. She sensed the strength in Nora's circling arm, and Jerry had not removed his hand from her abdomen. Then Nora turned half over Melody, snuggled and let her left hand drift to where Jerry's had been.
"Feeling more at home, dear? she half whispered.
"I guess so," Melody replied.
Then Nora shuddered and her left hand flailed back in protest. "Cut it out, Jerry!" she husked. Her leg kicked, then rested, this time directly over Melody's. The feeling of being pinned down was just a little less panicky than the sudden moist warmth of Nora, pressing her spraddled hips over Melody as if to evade whatever Jerry was trying to do. Then she felt a great extra weight and Jerry had shifted over his sister.
"Damn it, Jerry, don't do that!" Nora exclaimed, then she hunched and giggled and clung to Melody in sudden excitement.
Melody braced her heels and gathered strength for the upheaval and escape she knew she had to make. She had no idea what she could do, but she had to get out from under the mass of hot squirming flesh. She could hear Jerry's breath and she could feel the impact of his weight as Nora's body became less rigid, less defending.
Melody twisted, kicked down with her heels and tried to slide out of Nora's embrace. At that moment, Nora seemed to crawl up and her strong legs pushed Melody's out. Her feet hooked around Melody's ankles and as she scooted forward, Jerry did some furious thing, and Melody screamed.
She felt the hot wet thrust of a mighty terror and the harder she fought, the tighter became Nora's arms. She heard the tense sound of urging breath and her little body writhed to escape the threatening intrusion.
"Easy, honey, easy!" Nora husked. "It's okay. It isn't going to hurt so lie still. Easy, Janie. Just relax, honey and it will feel so wonderful you can hardly stand it. Be careful, Jerry!"
Melody screamed, and in one mighty effort, managed to half crawl free.
"Del! My God, Del!" she screamed, and then again. "Del!"
The lights came on like a bolt of heavenly lightning. Melody gasped, Nora flipped like a tossed cat and Jerry cursed.
Then Del Clark started peeling the bodies off of Melody and his hands were crushing, tearing things. Melody tried to help by rolling away, and she took the covers with her. As she hit the floor, the dragging covers turned her and she hit her head on the very hard edge of the night stand. The black closed in with delightful coolness and she folded up into safety at last.
CHAPTER TEN
THE KID WAS TOUGH SO DEL HIT HIM twice more. One good chop to the neck to rattle his vertebrae, and another on the other side to cure the sudden ugly angle of his head and shoulders. The hot blonde was easier. As she came forward, knees and elbows flailing, Del hooked a left into her pretty belly.
"Forgive me, Lord," he muttered as she doubled over and went to the floor.
He could barely see Melody. She was curled up in a heap of blankets on the floor and she had evidently fainted. Del stood looking at the cold cold blonde. Her bare bottom was turned up on one hip and it was magnificent. One foot twitched, and even in her oblivion, her lungs fought for air and the shudders did marvelous things to her movie-star breasts.
The blonde youth was not cold, but he was cooling, and Del knew what he had interrupted. The platinum-haired babe had been holding Melody and her lusty friend had been about to get what he thought was a medium ripe cherry. Del grabbed him by an ankle and stuffed him into the adjoining bathroom. Then he went back and picked up the blonde. Stomach convulsions were drawing her into a ball, and when he carried her to the bathroom, he deposited her lovely body in the tub against the certainty that she would be sick all over where ever she was when she awakened.
Then he went in and lifted Melody to the bed. It was then he saw the bluing knot on her temple with the tiny spot of blood where the night stand corner had caught her.
For an impossible minute, Del stood looking down at the slim, nearly curveless body lying in sweet bare revelation. He had seen her naked several times before. He had even seen her in mock action, playing the lewd juvenile for the benefit of greasy old men. And he had seen her with Galvin, who had been neither old, nor greasy. Now Del stared at her and fought the grinding desire in his loins, even as he recalled the memory of the terror stricken cry she had sent out for him. Had she known he was there, or had she just hoped her fear and anguish would not go unheeded? Why had she fought so hard?
The game had been completely outlined by Moore. She had entered into this with the same cool aplomb she had always shown when it came to playing the baby prostitute. She had never flinched, no matter how dirty the deal turned up. Her term for this marvelously delicious body was 'merchandise', and he had been reasonably sure that had he not burst in on her passionate embrace with Galvin, she would have gone the whole route. While he could concede that there might have been some big unpleasantness here in the dark, Del could not imagine it to be much worse than a combination of Galvin and Helen Powers. Yet she had screamed his name, and in so doing, blown their chance to ferret out the elusive organization Moore had been so eager to unearth. It was hard for Del to understand, but a slow burning sense of satisfaction came over him when he thought about a situation too tough for even the hard-cased little brunette to stomach.
Then he realized that something had happened in his own brain at the sound of Melody's frantic cry. She hadn't blown the deal. He had blown the deal by barging in. She couldn't have known he was in the hallway. All he would have had to have done was to sit tight. By now, whatever was happening would have been over and Melody might have been well on the way to discovering the next step in this sexy waltz. Which thought reminded Del that there were things to be done.
He leaned down and kissed Melody's slack lips. Then he covered her limp body and went to find a telephone.
He was fumbling with the numerous slips in his wallet, trying to find the special number Moore had given him when the cool, small roundness identifiable only with the muzzle of a revolver pressed into the back of his neck.
"Watch it, buster," came a vibrant feminine voice. "One move and you get it. I may anyway. Any son-of-a-bitch who would hit a woman in the ovaries doesn't deserve a neck. Just sit."
Del sat. Then out of the edge of his vision he saw the two smooth bare ankles, so he waited and as she moved around, he saw the beautiful bare legs, and the delightfully familiar hips, only now they had a big towel wrapped around them which extended up and also slightly spoiled the out-push of the conical, rose-tipped breasts.
She held the thirty-eight like a veteran Marine. Her face was calm, .and her hair, tangled from manhandling, hung in near white mist around her perfectly contoured shoulders. Her blue eyes flashed green specks and her mouth was very hard.
"Now you tell me, without moving, just who the hell you are?"
"I'm Del Clark," he said quietly.
"And what are you doing in my house, Del Clark?"
He thought a minute, then decided to chance it. "You going to buzz the fuzz?" he asked.
"Hell no. I may just plug you in the guts and when that over-sexed gorilla you belted out comes to, I'll have him bury you in the garden. You some kind of a pants-prowler, buster?"
"I'm no burglar!" Del exclaimed with mock indignance.
"So you are what, buster? Start talking."
Del ducked his chin and tried to look like a sheep stealer.
"Come on, pretty boy. Speak up I" She reached out and prodded his forehead with the gun, thereby raising his head.
"Well, I guess I ought to be ashamed of myself. Really, I didn't mean any harm and-"
"Cut the weepies, chum. Talk."
"I guess you'd call me a peeping Tom," Del murmured.
"A what?"
Del nodded. "Well, I just like to, that's all! I don't hurt anybody. I get so lonesome. So I go out at night and look at all the good times other people are having. That's all."
"Not quite. How'd you get into the house?"
"The front door was unlocked. I heard the little girl cry out. She was so so sweet. Sol-"
"Start at the beginning, idiot."
It was easy. Del simply told the amazed gun-wielding blonde the story of having hung around her house most of the evening, peeking in her windows. He omitted several pertinent facts, but in the main, it sounded like what he hoped it would.
"So when I heard her scream, I thought something terrible was happening to her. I slipped in the front door and got there just as she screamed again. I guess I lost my head. I turned on the light and saw that big guy ramming heck out of her, with you holding her head and shoulders down, I guess I went a little nuts."
The blonde turned her head. "Jerry? Hey, Jerry, you okay?"
There was no answer, and Del wasn't sure there ever would be. Whoever Jerry might be, he was very liable not to wake up at all. The blonde frowned, but her gun did not waiver.
"What did you hit him with, Peepy?"
"I'm pretty good at Judo," Del admitted.
"Did you belt Janie too? The girl, I mean."
"I think she hit her head falling off the bed."
"Crap!" She studied him for a moment, then moved back and sat down on a chair, her free hand rubbing her stomach. She paid no attention to the fact that the wrap around towel skipped up and allowed Del a very full and delicious view between her knees. When she discovered he was staring, she spread her knees quite a bit further.
"Take a good look, Peepy. It is probably your last."
"Are you going to shoot me, lady?"
She sighed. And she dragged her knees back together. "I guess not, for a few minutes, anyway. With Jerry chilled and the little broad cooled out, I may need some help. My guts are not made of rubber, you know. Or have you any idea what a girl's guts are like on the inside?"
"I'm sorry," Del murmured, some new hope surging in his brain. "No. I don't know much about girls. Is he your husband?"
"Who, Jerry?" She laughed. "No, Peepy. He's just a guy. He and I work together. What do you do for a living?"
"I'm a professional photographer."
"So? And you have to get your kicks peeping into bedroom windows? What are you, a pansy maybe?"
Del saw the slightly unnatural light come into her eyes. On certain occasions, full of beer and good spirits, he had sat around with some Hollywood friends and listened to seasoned faggots laugh about the antics some women go through trying to make men out of homosexuals. Skating on already too thin ice, he ducked his head in the mannerism which he supposed denoted shame.
"No. But I do get awfully nervous when I kiss a girl."
She started to chuckle. Then she laughed throatily.
"Get up," she commanded, struggling to her feet. "Come on, Peepy. Move!"
He stood up. For a moment, her eyes scanned his height and breadth, then she shook her head. Holding the gun very steady, she advanced until it pressed into his stomach. Then she reached down and did a scooping, testing thing with her left hand. Her eyes widened.
"Well, well," she purred. "Like that, Peepy?"
Del nodded.
"The bedroom," she said. "Let's see how the unquick and the half-dead are making out."
Melody wanted to open her eyes but she couldn't. She hurt everywhere, and it all seemed to spread like a gasoline fire from the flaming place on her head. Then she heard Nora's voice.
"You never saw the little broad before, Peepy?"
"Never," came Del's reply. "Do you have to hold that gun on me all the time?"
"Yes, I damned well do! Now, go check that clod in the crapper. And don't make any goofy moves, Peepy, because I'm a dead shot at this range."
Melody heard Del's feet moving. She tried to think, and all she could remember was Del's face and his huge rescuing hands. Now, Nora was calling him Peepy and she evidently had a gun. It made no sense, but Melody couldn't quite make sense of anything because her brain seemed about to explode. Then she heard Del again.
"He's pretty bad. Heart's barely beating. I must have dislocated his neck. I'm sorry."
"For a peeping Tom, you're damned handy with your Judo. Well, if he doesn't come to, I'll let you bury him in the garden instead of having him bury you, Peepy. Turn out the lights. The kid will probably sleep it off by morning."
"Yes, ma'am," Del's agreement came.
Melody tried to put that in order. It seemed all right. She knew that tone of voice, and Del was playing games with Nora. Anyway, he was close by and this was very comforting when her head hurt so badly. Good old Del. He had not deserted her at all. Melody repeated that to herself, but the flame in her head came back so she let the blackness close in again. Nothing bad could happen to her as long as Del was around.
"I wonder if a glass of milk would settle my belly?" Nora remarked as she prodded Del out into the hallway.
"I'm sorry I hit you so hard."
"You're the sorriest character I've seen since morning," she murmured. "The kitchen is down there. Go, Peepy."
"Wouldn't you call me Del, please?"
"Not until you qualify for a man's name, Peepy. Sit there at the table while I get me some cool in my stomach."
Del sat down. She walked across to the refrigerator and it was something to see. She opened the big pink door and bent over to get the half-gallon carton. Then she straightened up, nudged the refrigerator door closed and started for the cupboard.
At that moment, with the gun in one hand and the carton of milk in the other, the tuck in the towel gave up, and the big wooly cloth unwound from her magnificent body and fell to the floor.
Del couldn't resist the urge to chuckle. She started to bend, then realized she had no hand to use for the towel. She straightened up quickly, focusing the gun muzzle on Del's smile.
"So I haven't always been a Harlow blonde," she said. "So be slightly decent and quit grinning like an ape, Peepy."
"I could turn my back while you put the towel back on."
"Why bother now? Get me a glass out of that cupboard." She kicked the towel into a pile across the kitchen. Del went to the cupboard but he got two glasses. He brought them to the kitchen table and set them side by side. A moment later, the gun muzzle pressed into his back and she was standing very close to him. So close that he could smell the delightful fragrance of her bare flesh and he could hear the tense breath coming through her Patrician nose. She set the carton on the table.
"Pour, Peepy."
He did as she commanded. "What were you going to do with the cute little girl?" he asked.
"Now what did it look like Jerry was going to do to her?"
"Isn't she awfully young? I mean, I read a book that said twelve year old girls are awfully small."
"She's thirteen. If she's old enough she's big enough. And it will stretch a mile before it will tear an inch, Peepy. Or haven't you ever played with one?"
"Once. But I get nervous, like I said before," he remarked with less down-beat to his voice. "The milk is good, Miss."
"Nora," she said casually. "Once, huh? Get into it, Peepy?"
He nodded. "But she started to cry and I had to quit."
"Holy Christ," she muttered.
"What?"
"Drink up. It's helping my guts, maybe it will quiet your silly nerves. Do you think I'm pretty?"
"Gosh yes," he enthused.
"What would you do if I put down this gun, Peepy?"
"Get out of here, I guess."
"Why?"
"Well, I guess I've made enough of a mess of things."
She laughed and set her empty glass on the table. Then she put the gun on the table beside it and turned hard against him.
"Want to go now, Peepy?"
He pushed to let her feel the part of him that said "No!". .
"Wow." She backed a step and went to work on his belt and zipper. Del put his palms to her rib cage and held her. Her head bowed as she inspected his bared groin. He leaned forward and kissed the top of her blonde hair. Without letting go of him, she turned slightly and did a little jumping hunch. Her bottom went smack on the Formica table top and she kicked her tapered legs out until the cords stood out sensually at her inner thigh.
"Go, Peepy, and if I start to cry, you just keep right on because I'll only be crying for more!"
She hauled him to her and he just kept going until his own straining thighs were jam tight to hers. And he wasn't nervous at all.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT WAS AT LEAST ONE IN THE MORNING BEFORE Nora gave up, but it was sudden when it happened. She just fell out of Del's arms and a moment later, she was snoring gently. She didn't even hesitate when he released his half-hearted embrace. Satisfied that she was all through, Del slipped out of her bed and for a moment, fought off the dizziness his own exhaustion created.
The kitchen table had proved too hard and cold and Del's legs had turned to rubber, so they had moved to her bedroom. Now, he groped around for his trousers and shirt, fighting for steadiness and control of his fingers. Then because it was easier to crawl than to climb to his feet, he moved silently out into the hall. There, with the help of the wall, he struggled to his feet. The house was dark, except for a night light in the distant living room. He inched along the wall until he came to the door of the bedroom where Melody had been left. Inside, he closed the door and fumbled for the light switch. She was lying almost as he had last seen her, except that her head had turned and her right arm was flung out in restlessness.
He went to the bathroom, turned on the light and took a good look at the still unconscious Jerry. He hadn't moved head nor arms. He was breathing, but barely. Del wetted a small hand towel, then went back to Melody.
She came awake instantly, started to scream, then relaxed under his broad palm. He patted her cheek, then applied the cold towel. "It's okay, honey," he whispered. "How do you feel?"
"Oh Del," she whimpered. "What on earth happened?"
"Quiet, honey. We're not out of the woods yet. How's your little old skull?"
"Terrible. I awakened several times, but I was just too hurt and too tired to move. Where is everybody those terrible people!"
Hurriedly, Del began to tell her what had happened, with certain wise omissions. He told her about his assumed role as a peeping Tom, and how Nora had been amused enough to half forgive him for his intrusion. He also told her about Jerry, still knocked out in the bathroom.
"I waited until I was sure Nora was asleep, then I sneaked back here to you. I have a hunch if we play it cool we can still find out what Moore wants to know. When you hollered last night I almost tossed it all into the garbage, but evidently, neither Nora nor Jerry heard what you said. Anyway, Nora is such a died in the hide nympho she might go for any man who stood six feet and had a backbone. She doesn't care a damn that I belted her friend cold."
"He's her brother, Del. Oh, what a head!"
"Baloney. They just work together," he said. "Now listen, Mel. No matter what, pretend you never saw me before, in the morning. And even if your head feels better, pretend it hurts like hell and that you get sick every time you sit up. They aren't going to throw you out, but they won't pull any more sex stuff with you as long as you're sick. Play it by ear. I'll honey up to Nora some, and maybe we can get in solid enough to find out something before they get wise to us. Are you game?"
Melody closed her eyes and Del waited. Finally she put one trembling hand to his shoulder.
"Okay, if you say so. My God, Del, these people will do anything! Nora must be the leader. The rest do whatever she says. I didn't know what to expect after that terrible affair by the pool. I was so embarrassed!"
"Looked wild from the cheap seats," he chuckled. "Cheer up, Mel. We're into something. If we can hang on a little longer, I think we can get the evidence Moore needs. Jerry isn't going to bother you any more, at least for a day or so. I damned near broke his rotten neck."
Melody pinched his shoulder. "I'm so glad you didn't go off and leave me," she husked. "I was terrified when Nora held me down! She's a terrible bitch!"
"I know," he agreed. "But I'm going to play up to her, Mel. If I can keep her interested in me, she won't toss me out. If I can't, well, I'll go directly to Moore and we'll come get you. Okay?"
"How will you play up to her, Del?"
He grinned. "Didn't you tell me to go find a big breasted blonde and have a ball? Well, Nora's the biggest breasted, blondest female I've seen for several days!"
Again, her eyes closed and a tiny shudder shook her slight body. Her fingers were very sharp in his shoulder muscles.
"Please don't Del," she pleaded.
"Don't what?"
"Don't play up to her too close!"
"Sh-h," he hissed. "Now. Know what you have to do?"
She nodded. "Play sick and not let them know I hate them!"
"Great. And don't louse me up by getting jealous when I lay some hand on Nora."
"Jealous? Why you big conceited ape!" Then she hushed her sudden anger. "I don't care what you do to her and I hope she gives you a bug!"
"Sure," he said. Then he leaned down and kissed her forehead, and for a moment, her hand held him close.
"I'm sorry, Del," she whispered.
"Sorry? What for?"
"John Galvin," she murmured, then pushed him away.
It seemed to Del that he had hardly snuggled down to Nora's warmth and softness before he slept. And it seemed that even less time elapsed before the bedroom light went on and his nerves snapped him to a sitting position. It was the blonde youth named Jerry, and he leaned against the wall, staring at the pair on the bed. Awakened by the light and Del's sudden move, Nora was struggling to one elbow, blinking and frowning.
"What the hell's going on?" Jerry muttered. "Ow, my neck!"
"Well, what do you think is going on, stupid?" Nora replied. "Turn out that goddamned light and go to bed. We can talk in the morning. If I think something is worth talking about!"
"What the hell is he doing here?" Jerry demanded, stumbling forward. He was still nude and he walked with a side-wheeling step as if his spine were out of joint.
"He's sleeping with me, champ," Nora said, straightening up to put her arm around Del's broad back. "And I like the hell out of it! Now, go to bed and shut up!"
"I'll kill the bastard," Jerry announced and lunged forward.
"Oh hell," Nora growled.
Del caught Jerry with a bare foot squarely in the belly. He rolled out of bed and flipped the youth, resisting the urge to finish the job on his neck. He put one big knee in the small of the tanned back and put a strain on Jerry's neck with a handful of nearly straw white hair.
"You fight lousy," Del said. "Do like she says when I let you up or I'll shut your water off."
"All right, all right," Nora spoke up in disgust. "This is not the sports arena! Let him up, Peepy. He'll be a good boy."
Del let go and sat down on the bed. Jerry rolled over, flopping with ridiculous nakedness. He rubbed his neck, glowered at Nora, then at Del. After that, he climbed to his feet and went to the door.
"And leave the kid alone," Nora added to her instructions. "She's had a nasty belt on the head. We'll take care of her later."
Jerry seemed dazed. He went out of the room, turned to the right, then decided that was the wrong direction. He came back and started all over again and Nora chuckled at his addled wits.
"Boy, is he groggy," she said. "Oh hell, and I was sleeping so damned good. Come here, Peepy, and tuck me in again."
"He could cause trouble," Del remarked.
"Not him," Nora said. "He louses up on me and his imagine salary goes down the tube. And maybe he gets his balls caught in the railroad tracks! Anyway, he's too crude. I told him last night he ought to let the kid go another day or so. No. He had hot pants for her behind and couldn't wait. So the mess."
"You lost me," Del admitted.
She looked at him warmly. She let her eyes wander from his tousled hair to his number ten feet. Than she gave his middle another fond look. "You're a funny guy, Peepy. One minute you're as tough as a fried eagle, then you're as soft as a bowl of mush. And after I got you going, you gave me more loving, better and hotter than I've had it for many a cold night. You like me, Peepy?"
"You were going to call me Del when I qualified," he reminded her. To keep his advantage, he squirmed around and cradled her splendid body in his left arm. She settled back on the bed and let him hold her while she relaxed.
"Okay, Del," she said. "Do you like me?"
"I sure do," he said, returning slightly to Peepy's half adult enthusiasm.
"Say, you damned bet I like you, baby," she ordered.
"You damned bet I like you, baby!"
She was silent for a moment, toying with his muscles and looking softly up at him.
"You make any money as a photographer, Del?"
"A living. Sometimes I do pretty well. Sometimes, not so."
"Want a good job, baby?" she asked. Then she turned to him and became very intimate with her clever fingers. "With some fringe benefits, maybe, and a chance for some fun?"
"Ouch," he said in obedience to her little pinches. "A job?"
"A job. Oh hell. We're all through sleeping for awhile. Go into the living room and bring back a bottle. Then we'll talk."
He got out of bed, and as he went into the hallway, he thought there had been a tiny movement in the shadows. Thinking it had been Jerry, he moved swiftly down the hall. There was no one. Satisfied, he went to get the bottle, his mind on the growing intrigue. As badly as he needed sleep, he felt the little tingle of excitement coming back. What had nearly turned into a grand fiasco was shaping up in a most encouraging fashion, and he had no objections at all to spending an hour or so talking to the greedy fingered Nora.
"You in or out, Del."
"About what."
"The job."
"In, I guess. If I knew what the job was."
"You have to be in before I tell you."
"Okay. I'm in."
"Then listen and don't interrupt. I work for a guy who makes thousands peddling teen-age girls to rich men. Instead of the kids giving it away to other kids in back alleys and drive-in theaters, they sell it to my bosses customers for real gold. like that kid in the other bedroom. She was running away from home and Jerry spotted her. Okay. For a day or two she was going to do fine, but as soon as her pennies ran out, she'd hitchhike with a half yard of leg showing and her little breasts pushed out. She'd trade her rear for a cheap bus ride, driven by some traveling salesman or a farmer with hay in his teeth. There's other kinds too. Little babes hanging around playgrounds, half-starving kids whose parents spend the grocery money for beer and cheap wine. In fact, there are so many little tarts around for the ride, no matter who provides it, that my boss is very choosey.
"Anyway, there's sometimes a little problem with the cherries. Not much, but some. That's where I come in. The organization sends them to me when the talent scouts pick 'em up. Jerry poses as my brother. We always have two or three young guys hanging around that are just careless and sexy enough to get the kids interested. We expose them to some real rough stuff, without laying a hand on them. You know, power of suggestion. Then when we think they are ripe, one of the boys starts to pour it on. Before the kid knows it, she is in the sack with him, and the battle is won. That's the way it would have worked with the kid, Janie, but Jerry has to get in a hurry. He thought she'd taken quite a shine to him, so he didn't figure she'd belly ache like she did."
Del frowned. "How come you were in there too?"
Nora laughed and teased him with her fingers again. "Fringe benefits, don't you remember? I'm a kook about sex, baby. I like it every way it comes, and I thought it would be fun to be in on the act. Anyway, she-likes me and I thought she might take it easier if she thought I was part of the show. Anyway, she'll be okay after I talk her up a little tomorrow or next day. But I'll have to get Jerry out of the house. That's where you come in."
"Me?"
"Nora hasn't the right equipment, baby," she purred. "When it's time to hang her on the hook, who is going to furnish the hook?"
Del resisted the urge to choke her. He allowed his momentary anger to be interpreted as stupor, then he snuggled interestedly.
"What about the police?" he asked.
"What police? The law in this town is too busy writing traffic tickets and bouncing the coons around in Watts. Anyway, the boss has some real fine connections. Pays them off in table pussy."
"Where do you keep ah of these little girls, for heavens sake?" Del asked with the right amount of amazed interest.
"Keep them? We don't keep them anywhere! They stay in several places. We have four or five smart women who play mama. They live in the right places and dress the right way. Each mama has one or two daughters, and the whole deal looks on the up and up. When one of the kids has a date, we send a driver to pick her up and deliver her. Then he brings her home, with the gold in her hot little hand. Mama cleans her up and they all play house until the next date. And the kids love it, baby. They really do. We treat them right."
"I can't believe it," Del said, half truthfully. "You mean prominent business men actually want to sleep with little girls?"
"Oh boy," Nora murmured. "How green is my corn! Sure, baby. And you'd be surprised how many requests we're getting for little boys, too. Only the boss is kind of hide-bound and doesn't go for the sod busters."
"Sod busters?"
"Forget it, baby," Nora cooed. "Would you like to hang around here with me and take care of the cherries?"
"H-how often do they I mean, just how often?"
Nora laughed. "Once or twice a month, maybe. Sometimes not that often. Depends on how we need them, and how they turn up."
"Do they run away, sometimes, so you need new ones?"
Nora sobered, then shrugged. "No. But when you run cattle on an open range, some get away, for a lot of reasons. Anyway, that's none of your business nor mine. We are just the prep school. like the idea, baby?"
"It is sure a different kind of a job than I ever thought of!"
"That's why the boss is rich," Nora observed.
"Won't he have to talk to me before he hires me?"
"Why? I run this operation, he runs the other end. I say you are in and you are in, baby. Oh, just one thing, baby."
"What's that?"
"Sometimes the boss comes here. When he's here, you keep those big paws off me, understand?"
"Is he in love with you, or something?"
Nora laughed, shaking her breasts beautifully, and after the burst of laughter, she started a train of kisses at his chin and let them go down in hot wet affection until her enthusiasm made Del tighten his belly and hang on. Then she went back up and planted the last kiss on his dry lips.
"Love?" she echoed. "All he loves is his pocketbook, but he does get a little possessive sometimes. See, he's my husband, baby, and we have to show the bastard a little respect when he's in his own house, don't we?"
"I'm sure glad you told me," Del said with a heavy sigh.
"I play square with my employees, baby. Hey, let's go to sleep. Tomorrow is another day."
"Gee, I'm so excited I don't know whether I can sleep or not."
"I'll fix it, baby," Nora purred, and started her down-running kisses again. Del put his arms up and gripped the bedstead, but after awhile, he had to let go because his strength was needed elsewhere.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE SOUND OF LOUD ANGRY VOICES awakened Melody. She came instantly alert, and after a moment, she identified the distant argument as between Nora and Jerry, whom Del had said were not brother and sister. After a few minutes, she heard a door slam, and then the roar of the red convertible's exhaust. This didn't surprise Melody at all because she had been crushed in the hall all during the sexy and very impressive sales pitch Nora Gray had given Del. And she had stayed for the finale, too, which memory of now brought back the fury she had generated alone and trembling in the hallway.
The irony of it wasn't even funny. Del had been hired to hang around and play the despoiler. He was being paid to take her virginity when the time was ripe and Melody knew that the time had been ripe about ten times in the past year had he been anything but a conceited, egotistic boor.
She wanted to cry. The morning sun streaming through a crack in the drapes cheered her not at all. Today would be another terrible day, and following yesterday, which had been the most harrowing in her life, she wasn't sure she could stand it. And how she was going to face Del she had no idea. She had promised to maintain her role as the goggle-eyed teen-ager, but she hadn't counted upon having to watch the man she loved make love to a woman who was admittedly the 'kook who liked it any way it comes'
She tried to forget remembering the peculiar gurgle and gasp Del had emitted when the naked slobbering Nora had administered her special brand of sleeping pill.
And about the time she put her mind to what might be ahead, the bedroom door opened and Nora came in. She was bright and smiling. Her hair was twisted up inf a loose, platinum swirl and she wore a simple house dress that became a lewd thing on her firm, unfettered body. She went to the window and opened the drapes wide.
"There! And how do you feel this morning, Janie? That was a nasty knock on the head, believe me! And all for nothing!"
"Stay away from me," Melody said, pulling herself under the covers as a frightened teenager should. "Let me alone!"
"Oh, for gosh sakes!" Nora scoffed. "Nothing was going to happen to you, honey. Jerry just got excited and playful. Then when Del heard you scream, he came bouncing in and you fell out of bed and hit your head. How does it feel this morning?"
Melody knew this was her cue to relax, and she tried a little smile. "Okay. There's a bump, but it doesn't hurt much. Gee, I was so scared. Who is Del, Nora?"
"Del? He's a fellow who comes here a lot. Friend of Jerry's. He's a real nice guy, baby. He thought he was saving your life or something. Feel like coming to the table for breakfast?"
"I-I don't know. Is Jerry around?"
"No, honey. He went to San Francisco. There's just me and Del and you. And you are not afraid of Del, I'm sure. Why don't you shower and brush up and come to breakfast?"
"I'll try, I guess. Are we going to buy some clothes for me, today?" Melody asked, trying to maintain her childishness.
"We sure are, honey. Hurry now."
When Nora went out, Melody slipped out of bed. She wore her panties which she had retrieved to venture into the hallway, hours ago. Now she looked back at the bed, as if to envision the brutal, nearly catastrophic scene of the previous night. And once again, the peculiar tingling came alive in her stomach. She could see Jerry's body, naked, rampant and exciting for all of its threat. And she could remember the feel of Nora's lush body, pressed close, pulsating, urging, struggling to transfer its abandonment to Melody's. It had been horrible, but strangely exciting, as if for a bare moment, her entire being had dropped into a whirlpool of sensation and lust.
And the same feeling had come over her in the hallway, listening to the wet subtle sounds and the heavy breaths and the sudden whimper of bedsprings as passionate bodies shifted in convulsive response. She had closed her eyes and transposed her body into Nora's and she had rushed back to her bed, filled with disgust and revulsion for Del, even while her heart cried her own desire for him.
In the shower, caressing her slim body with soapy hands, the feeling remained. Then she had a sudden, nearly hysterical thought. Del had said, play the game. Moore was depending upon them for some conclusive evidence, with names and places and above all, the identity of the mysterious 'boss', who was Nora's sometimes husband. Del had agreed to play the part Nora had suggested, and for a minute, Melody was inspired with a daring scheme. She had the solution to her own problem right in the palms of her slender hands. If Del wanted her to play a game, then she would play one. Only with a little luck, it would be a game he wouldn't recognize until it was too late.
She was demure, polite and childish at breakfast, but inwardly she relished the slight embarrassment Del displayed, and when Nora kidded her about Del having 'saved her life', she forced a blush and rubbed her ankle to his under the table.
The telephone rang at ten-thirty. Nora answered it and Del did his best to make some sense out of her scattered responses to the party on the other end of the line. But he could not tell whether it was a man or a woman, and he gained nothing from listening. Finally, Nora hung up, after saying she'd call back later.
"Listen, Del, baby. Janie and I are going shopping. We'll be gone an hour or two, at least. Have to get her hair fixed and buy a ton of things. You stay here, baby. There's some dirty books to look at on the top shelf there, and the hi-fi and all. Take a swim, if you want to. But stick around. A friend of mine and her daughter are coming over after a bit. You'll love them both. Her name is Betty Kulp and her daughter is Mary. Okay?"
"Okay. But I ought to go to my shop and put a sign on the door, or something," Del said.
Nora's face turned hard. "Tomorrow, maybe," she said coldly.
"Okay. Bye, Janie," he said, smiling warmly.
"Bye. Gee, isn't this fun?" Melody cooed.
On the way by, she gave Del's cheek a very childish peck. Nora waited at the front door, and when Del looked at her, she winked broadly. "So long, cookie," she said. "Take care of things."
"Sure."
But he knew better than to try anything. When Nora's Cadillac roared off down the winding street, he looked longingly at the telephone. But her brief account of the organization's size and thoroughness made him doubt the wisdom of trying to call out. At best, his own car parked down the street two blocks might offer a chance to make a quick call from a Ventura Boulevard booth, but there was the promised visit by a 'mama' and her 'daughter'.
And he was very sure Nora was not as stupid as her actions indicated. She had sent Jerry away, but not to San Francisco. She had probably sent him to the husband-boss, and no matter Jerry's disappointment and anger, he would tell the boss exactly what Nora had told him to tell. And the boss would probably take precautions.
So Del did as Nora had instructed him to do. He looked through five books of dirty drawings and photographs, recognized one or two of the models, and put them back without much interest. Then he made a casual tour of the house, opening drawers, checking closets and snooping without knowing what he searched for. After that, he took several feet of aluminum foil from the kitchen and walked out into the yard. With as much casualness as he could master, he wrapped his camera and replaced it in the brush where he had put it the night before.
After that, he went into the room obviously used by Jerry and found a pair of swimming trunks. He had just snugged them up on his lean hips when a car pulled up in the driveway.
The gun Nora had used the previous night was in the top drawer of her dresser. Del got it and after a moment of hesitation, placed it under a newspaper on the under-shelf of the cocktail table. A moment later, the front door opened and his teeth snapped in surprise.
Through the door came a girl, not a whit larger nor more adult than Melody looked. She was slim, exquisitely dressed in a pink sheath, and her slender legs were poised on a pair of gold pumps, with pink bows. Her hair was dark red and somehow, matched the pink. Or accented it, he thought, hanging in a French bob around her oval face. She had not a sign of breasts, and very little hip shape.
Behind her came a big woman, equally well dressed in brown. She was probably forty, he surmised, and well stacked where it counted. She looked maternal, until he squinted his eyes to block out the age lines around her mouth, and to melt her high-piled gray hair into silver.
"Hi," the little girl said. "You going swimming?"
"I was," Del replied. "You're Mary, aren't you? And you're Betty Kulp. I'm Del Clark. Nora said you were coming."
"Yeah," the woman said, out of character. "She said you'd be here. Got a drink in the house?"
The little girl turned, throwing her body into a model's arch.
"Now don't get sauced this time of day," she said. "Come on and take a swim with handsome and me."
"I hate water," the woman said to Del. "Makes my hide wrinkle. And mind your own business, doll. If I want to get sauced at noon, that's exactly what the hell I will do. Smart ass."
"Oh man," Mary muttered. "And I left home because my old lady beered it up from dawn to fall out time. Okay, get sauced. Come on, let's go for a swim, Del."
"Got a suit?" he asked as she headed for the sliding doors into the patio.
"To hell with a suit," she said over her shoulder.
Betty Kulp laughed. "You better keep yours on, big boy. She'll have you hump-backed in thirty minutes if you don't."
Dazed, Del followed the diminutive figure in pink, which got no larger but changed its shade of pink as she stood on the edge of the pool and skinned out of the sheath. She was wearing a pair of black nylon panties and when she hooked these down with her thumb, she didn't bother to worry about his being directly behind her. There was a flash of twin buttocks, a quick sight of over-sized breast tips on no pad at all, then the splash swallowed her up in a gulp.
Del stood, watched her swim around, sputtering and laughing, and when she beckoned him in, he was so hypnotized he merely fell forward into the water. She almost drowned him. As his head came up she pushed it under again, and there was nothing to do but wrestle with her for survival.
Finally she tired, and he was already exhausted. She coasted up to him and crawled into his arms.
"Lift me out, Del," she said.
"You got in, get out," he told her. The way she saddled him, floating close enough to warm the thin layer of water between them, was disturbing in a way he did not relish.
"You're keen, bean," she laughed. "Lift me out!"
He did, and for a moment, his hands on her small wet body were tempted to an adventure or two, but she scrambled out and away from his undecided fingers. She knew that the towels were in the little brick shed built over the filtering system. When he climbed out, she was scrubbing her soft skin vigorously. When he asked her for a towel, she threw him her wet one, and ran, snatching her clothes as she went back into the house. The towel smelled ever so slightly of perfume and this didn't help his equilibrium at all.
"Thirteen, nearly fourteen," Betty Kulp said, showing a slight thickness of tongue after a half hour with the raw bourbon. "She's been working about eight months and I bet the little fink has a grand stashed away somewhere. She can get more dumb men to give out with money than any hustler I ever saw. She acts like a baby one minute and takes them for their poke the next. Wild. I'd love her like she was my own, if I hadn't lost my furniture when I was twenty and couldn't have one if I slept with the Navy. Oh man, this is a wild racket!"
Del raised an eyebrow and tried to act blase about it all. He could hear Mary whistling a rock and roll tune in one of the bedrooms. He was afraid to go to Nora's room and change out of his wet trunks. To get caught by the bouncy little Mary was not one of his immediate ambitions. Betty Kulp talked on, mostly about her 'daughter', but occasionally about herself and yesterdays. Between drinks.
Finally, Mary appeared, her hair wet and making the French twist look lopsided. She looked almost young, except that the high heeled pumps gave her a certain adult look of anemia.
She looked at her 'mama' and threw her hands out in despair.
"I'm hungry," she announced. "Any bread in the house?"
"Try the kitchen," Del said.
"Cool," she said to his obvious railery. "There's hope for you, mac. Some of the clowns Nora plays with give me an ache." She patted her slight behind to indicate where. "Hey, Betts, you look stoned. How we going to get home?"
She didn't wait for an answer, but went off toward the kitchen. Del decided it was a good time to change, so he excused himself and hurried down the hallway. In the bedroom, he closed the door, and for a minute, stood thinking about the bizarre set up.
It was time to call Moore and he knew it. With the round up of Nora, Betty and the fresh kid, enough information could be scared out of one of them to break up the elusive organization. But for some reason, Del could not quite agree with his good sense. He was fascinated by the bold lewdness of them all, and he couldn't believe that another day or so, or whatever time it would take to properly wind up the assignment, would make any difference to anybody. Except Melody, and he was already chosen to start her 'career'.
He rolled down his wet trunks and went to the bathroom for a towel. He was standing at the door, rubbing his belly half subconsciously when the bedroom door opened and Mary peeked in. She was carrying a sandwich and a glass of milk and when she saw him make the protective gesture with the towel, she blinked and came right in, closing the door behind her.
"Beat it," Del growled.
"Please," she said, and her voice had lost some of its freshness. "Please let me stay, Del. I have to talk to you."
"Toss me my pants, then," he said.
She put the milk on the night stand and threw him his trousers. She even half turned her head away so he could put them on, but he stepped behind the door to do the job. When he came into the bedroom again, she looked like she was about to cry.
"Hey, what's wrong, Mary?" he asked, moving closer.
Suddenly she was crying and she leaped for him. Her arms went around his waist and her face pushed hard against his bare chest. The tremble of bursting sobs and the wetness under her cheek was genuine.
"Easy," he murmured, almost as embarrassed as he had been at poolside. Then he put both hands under her taut arms and lifted her to a stance on the bed. She looked straight into his eyes and cried.
"I want to go home!" she blurted through the sobs.
"Okay, okay," he agreed. "Now tell me about it."
"Joyce," she said, dragging at talking breath. "They killed Joyce and they'll kill me, and all of us!"
"No they won't, baby," he said positively.
"Yes they will! Oh Del, I want to go home. Anywhere!"
Gradually, he managed to quiet her near hysterics. He sat her down and curled his arm around her and she acted exactly like a thirteen, going on fourteen year old girl with a terrible fright.
"It was a party," she said. "The trick tore her all to pieces so they killed her with a wire! I cried and cried. They told me to wise up or they'd give it to me, too. They never let me alone. Betty is on my back from morning to night! I'm scared, Del, so scared! You don't know what kind of people they are!"
Del felt a slight twinge of caution. "How do you know I don't know about them?" he asked.
"Well, Chino called Betty. Said to come over and give you a try 'cause you were new and they weren't sure about you yet. I didn't want to but Betty said she'd bust my back if I didn't smart up. So I had to come. But when you didn't do anything out there in the pool I knew you weren't like Jerry or Mike or some of the rest. So I ribbed Betty into boozing it up so's I could talk to you. Oh Del, say you're not like the rest! Say you'll help me, please!"
"Who is Chino?"
"N-Nora's old man. Say you'll help me, Del!"
Del pulled her up into his arms and she snuggled her head into the hollow of his neck and shoulder.
"I'll help you," he said in the same voice he had used when he had promised to turn off Jerry's water. "Just play dumb for now."
She straightened up and kissed his cheek. "I will, Del," she promised. "I sure as hell will!"
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BETTY KULP WAS A DRUNKEN MASS OF blubbering flesh. Del, filled with the story Mary had poured forth, hesitated between calling for Sam Moore and holding on a bit longer. Holding on seemed wiser, at least until Melody and Nora returned. If for some reason things went wrong, Nora was capable of strangling Melody with her bare hands. Murder was part of this group's stock in trade.
The problem was the mysterious man named Chino. There wasn't time to sit around and wait for him to pay one of his odd visits to the house, yet if the trap were sprung by blue coated policemen and screaming sirens, Chino could easily get away. The organization might be smashed, but the chief culprit could wind up in Acapulco, counting his money and soaking up the sunshine. This, Del did not want. His fury mounted every time he looked at Mary, subdued now, with kind of a childish apprehension on her pretty little face.
And somewhere in Los Angeles, there were perhaps another dozen little girls, equally afraid and similarly cowed.
So Del waited and about two in the afternoon, Nora and Melody returned from their shopping binge. Melody was sleek and polished, but not enough to eradicate the feeling that she was a little girl in adult doll's clothes. Nora took one look at Betty Kulp and cursed.
"Oh, for God's sake," she muttered. "Well, we've got to get her out of here, Del. Go out to the car and get the rest of the things while I make a phone call. Janie, this is Mary. You kids go out by the pool and cut up some touches while we get this mess ironed out."
"Come on, Janie," Mary said, suddenly full of her usual bounce. "Gee, you're cute. The troops will really go for you!"
But Del caught the swift glance Mary sent him, and he was sure that she would impart some startling information to Melody. He was not sure Melody would talk, but he couldn't imagine what difference it really made, unless Mary were a clever little stool pigeon, not quite through with the 'testing' she had been sent to do.
In any case, Nora was going to call somebody to help with the drunken Betty Kulp. He went out to the Cad and filled his arms with beribboned boxes and exotically labeled paper sacks. When he got back into the living room, Nora had finished her telephoning and was standing in a disgusted slouch, staring at the knocked out Betty.
"I should have warned you, Del. This tramp will drink anything and all of it if she gets a chance. Otherwise, she's a pretty hep gal. How'd you and Mary make out?"
"She kind of startled me," Del admitted, piling the packages on a table. "Cute as a bug, though."
"Get any of it, Del?"
He raised both eyebrows. "Was I supposed to?" he asked, trying to look surprised.
Nora shrugged. "We live it up around here. If you had wanted it, she'd have sailed. If you had anything left after last night."
Del put his arm around her shoulders and nuzzled her neck.
"It's like peanuts," he confessed. "The more you get the more you want. I missed you while you were gone."
She let him maul her a little then backed away. "Save it, baby. Don't get me all fuzzed up. My old man is coming over. He is bringing Duke and Mike and they'll take care of tanko, here. He really wants to take a look at Janie, though. Got some big deal coming off Saturday with some V.I.P.s from Chicago, and if we can get Janie shaped up, he may want to use her."
"And he might want to take a look at me, too?"
"Could be, cookie. Good men are hard to get and I told him you'd make a good man with a little shaping up."
"Like?"
"Like following orders and not asking questions. Jesus, I'm hungry. Have any lunch?"
"Didn't think about it."
"Come on out in the kitchen. I'll fix us all something to eat."
She started for the kitchen, then sidestepped to the buffet. She opened the liquor cabinet and shook her head.
"Del, better call Stan's Liquor Shop and have them send up a half case of Early Times.
Betty knocked off the last bottle. And my old man gets whiffle if there's no booze. The number is on the telephone pad."
She turned and sauntered off toward the kitchen and Del decided it was now or never. As she disappeared, he took the little slip out of his pocket and instead of dialing the liquor shop, he put in a call to Detective Sam Moore.
Lunch was nearly over when the sound of a big car pulling into the driveway silenced the strangely friendly chatter between Melody and Mary. A look of childish doubt and pain came over the latter's face, and Nora stood up, her eyes hard on the two girls.
"Mind your damned tongue, now," she said to Mary. Then to Del, she said, "It's my old man. His name is George Chinott. They call him Chino, but don't you until he warms a little. Get it?"
"Sure," Del agreed. He got up and followed her into the front room. A moment later, the door opened and a tall dignified man in his early forties entered. He was slightly gray over the temples and he walked with a firm stride. He was handsome in a sharp way and his clothes were dark and of excellent cut. The problem was Jerry, just behind Chinott's shoulder, and behind him, the two young studs Del had seen from the shrubbery, the day before.
"Hi, daddy," Nora said, slipping under the tall man's arm. "This is Del. Del Clark. Del, this is George Chinott."
Del nodded and stuck out his hand but Chinott ignored it. He moved over to where he could see the slumped body of Betty Kulp. In sudden anger, he reached down and slapped her across the mouth with the back of his right hand.
"That fool," he said in a slow, cultured voice. "Get her out of here, boys. Take her to her own place and put her to bed. Bring the car back here within an hour, understand?"
"Right, Chino," Mike said. "Get her big flat feet, Mike."
"What about Mary?" Nora asked. "She's in the kitchen."
Chinott seemed to think about that for a moment. "No. Keep her here. There'll be no one to watch her until that cow sleeps off her booze. Jerry, go out and sit by the pool. I want to talk to Del."
Jerry turned, and it was plain to see his neck was very stiff. He glowered at Del, then sauntered to the sliding doors and went out. Chinott went to the liquor cabinet, opened it, fiddled with the bottles then cursed.
"Betty knocked it all off, Chino," Nora apologized. "I ordered some more but it hasn't come yet. Try the Scotch."
"I detest Scotch," Chinott announced, coming back to the center of the room. Now he stood staring sharply at Del, his face devoid of expression. Finally be made a gesture with one manicured forefinger and Del moved to sit down where Chinott had pointed. He would have preferred the sofa where the thirty-eight nestled under the center cushion, but he had no choice. It was Chinott who sat down almost on top of the gun. Nora leaned against the fireplace mantle.
"You stink to me, Clark," Chinott said. "Peeping Toms are vermin. Photographers aren't much better. You tell me, mister, why I shouldn't have my boys rough you up and dump you in the Pacific?"
"Because your boys haven't got that kind of muscle and I stayed because I was asked to stay," Del said evenly. "Okay?"
"You tell him anything?" Chinott asked of Nora.
"A little, George," she admitted. "I think he's the man for Jerry's job. He's better looking and not so damned brash."
Chinott smiled and it was almost a snarl.
"You do, do you? You're going to give this character a job for two hundred a week and he is going to take it, tossing over his picture taking racket which his competition insists nets him an easy thirty thousand a year! Now really, Nora, do you have to keep all your brains between your legs?"
Del tensed. He could take Chinott with one long lunge and good right hand. The gun was close. Jerry was walking aimlessly around the pool, glancing into the living room every few seconds. If Chinott suspected him, then they came prepared for trouble. He tried to see if Chinott was carrying a gun, but the mohair suit was too well cut to reveal a bulge.
"T-thirty grand?" Nora echoed, her eyes suddenly narrowed.
Chinott settled back, and his right arm dangled over the arm of the sofa. "Well, Clark, the game is up. I don't know what the game was, but I guarantee that it is all over!"
Del saw the movement of the dangling hand. He came out of his chair without straightening up and his sweeping right palm, edge put, caused Chinott to throw his left arm up to ward off the chopping blow to the neck. But Del didn't aim for the neck. He swung low and his palm caught Chinott just below the heart. Then he was on the partially stunned man, his knees pumping into the lean midsection, his two clenched hands beating once down on the momentarily bowed head.
In one breath, Del whirled to meet the oncoming Jerry. The youth carried a heavy automatic in his right hand. He started to aim it, then thought better because Chinott was directly in the line of fire. Del leaped but he never knew where he landed. From behind the clap of thunder was like a noisy bath of black and he fell forward on his face.
Melody's cry was drowned in the smash of heavy glass. She stood in the hallway, suddenly more frightened than she had been for a long time. She watched Nora walk forward and kick Del's limp body. She still had the neck of the heavy Italian glass vase in her right hand. Now she went back and put the glass fragment back on the mantle where it had once matched the exotic glass piece on the other end of the marble shelf.
"Let's beat it!" Mary's trembling voice said at Melody's back. "They'll kill us all, Janie!"
"So we'll find a fuzz and blow the whistle. Come on!"
But Melody remained quiet. Nora was working over the man called Chino, and Jerry was hauling Del to a slump against the wall. He tapped Del's slack jaw with the big black gun, then straightened up, tucking the weapon into the waistband of his slacks.
"He okay?" he asked Nora.
"Yea. Just winded. George, baby! You all right?"
Chinott shook his head and rubbed his belly. Then he leaned back and drew in several big breaths. After that, he struck Nora's hand away from his face and staggered to his feet. He walked over and put a hard shoe toe to Del's chest, then he seemed to calm.
"Too bad," he said. "I wonder what the bastard's game was?"
"Game?" Nora repeated.
"Yes, dammit, game!" Chinott roared. "You didn't believe his peeping Tom routine, did you? Well, it was a real phony, believe me. I checked with a couple of boys in the photography racket. They say this guy is a roaring stud and a sneaky shutter-fiend from way back. He was prowling around this house for some damned good reason of his own. And he was mighty handy when the girl screamed, Jerry says."
"Fuzz, maybe?" Nora asked, frightening Melody with the low knife-sharp fury in her words.
Chinott shook his head. "I don't think so. His reputation is just shady enough to make it improbable. Maybe blackmail."
"Blackmail?" Nora echoed. "But how did he pick on us?"
Chinott shook his head in uncertainty. "Who knows? But one thing is for sure the little broad is in on it! Jerry told me that he distinctly remembers the girl calling this guy's name when he was putting it to her. Where is the little bitch?"
Melody stepped back too late. Nora came across the room like a bleached eagle, and her hands were like talons when she seized her prey. Melody twisted and kicked and tried to bite, but Nora hustled her across to face Chinott with very little effort.
"Well, my dear," the man purred. "Suppose you sit down and tell Uncle Chino the whole sordid story, eh? Sit down, God damn it!"
His slap was stunning. Melody cried out, then ducked her head against another blow but Chinott didn't strike again. As Nora flung her, Chinott put his foot to Melody's hip and shoved her hard into the sofa. "Now you tell me what this is all about or I'll have Jerry crush your head with the other vase," Chinott promised.
So Melody began to cry, partially because it was the best defense weapon she could think of and partially because she needed time to think. They still thought she was a teen-age girl. Chinott had suggested blackmail, and the whole thing seemed to fit into some familiar pattern. Then Melody knew what to do. So she cried hard, and finally sniffed herself into facing the furious Chinott.
"He he didn't say anything 'bout all this trouble!"
"I'm sure he didn't," Chinott snarled. "What did he say?"
Melody sniffed some more. "All I had to do was let somebody pick me up. Del was following with his camera. Then when they got fresh, he was going to take pictures of what the man tried to do to me. He said we'd make a lot of money and I could buy some real nice clothes. T-that's all! Then when Jerry brought me up here, he hung around, I guess. We didn't mean to bother anybody. Oh, I want to go home! My folks will kill me for staying out all night and all!"
"Oh for Christ's sake," Chinott muttered. "Jerry, see if you can bring that ape to!"
Melody felt real pain then as Jerry went to work on Del. The pistol snap of his palms as he slapped consciousness back into Del's half-shattered brains was brutal. And gradually, Del began to respond. When his eyes opened and his reflexes brought protective hands up, Jerry put the muzzle of the automatic precisely between Del's eyes and this quieted him.
Suddenly Chinott began to chuckle. He walked over and knelt, placing a curled forefinger under Del's chin.
"Hello again, smart boy," he said. "Got in a little over your stupid head, didn't you? Now you listen to me, fink. The girl spilled her little guts about your cheap blackmail racket. And I have a hunch Nora told you a little too much about my business. So we are going to make a deal, you and I. You're going to keep your trap shut about my gimmick and I'm going to clam up about yours. Only I've a little plan to make the insurance boys jealous. I'm going to make damned sure you don't holler cop on us, Clark. Nora, give him a slug of Scotch to sharpen his wits and his backbone!"
Chinott stood up. "Jerry, didn't you have a little old eight millimeter camera stuck around somewhere?"
"Sure, Chino. It's in the dresser in my old room. Loaded with color film, too."
"Get it, Jerry. We are about to produce a motion picture. It will have drama, plot, and some very explicit details! And then we will put it in a safe place. If this rat ever opens his mouth, our epic will somehow fall into the hands of the law. They will be very interested in how one Del Clark, kidnapper, tears the clothes off of his little victim, rapes her from nose to nubbin and chews the high places off flush with the hollows, then leaves her to suffer the agonies of ravishment while he goes off in search of other prey. like my script, Clark? I think it is marvelous."
Melody screamed and leaped to her feet. She was half way to the front door when it opened and she ran headlong into the arms of Mike and Duke. They hauled her kicking and screaming and swearing with very unjuvenile proficiency, back into the room.
Chinott now held Jerry's gun on Del, and there was great laughter and enthusiasm among them as Chinott outlined his plan to Melody's captors. They decided to stage the lewd show on the back lawn with unidentifiable shrubbery as a back drop.
"No," Chinott decided. "Some one might hear her scream. And I do feel she is going to scream. Isn't she, Clark? You'll see to it that she screams, won't you?"
"You'd better shoot me," Del said with a calm Melody knew was genuine. "Because I don't propose to do a damned thing to her, and you can stick that gun where you can't put your elbow!"
"Oh, you think highly of our little starlet, eh? Okay, have it your way. But the alternative is not going to do her any good, wise-guy. She's scared useless to us now, so just before I blow your stupid brains out, I'll let you watch what the boys can do for her in a free for all. Gang-bang, they call it at Hollywood High!
Melody looked at Del and her eyes kissed him for the good try. Suddenly Del sat up, ignoring the gun.
"Okay," he said. "You win."
"I always do," Chinott informed them all. "Nora, strip out one of the bedrooms so none of the furniture can be spotted. And Janie dear, try to enjoy it after you get through screaming because you've been a very naughty little bitch and you may never get another chance."
Melody just stared at the man and hoped Del had a plan. Then she started to cry again because it seemed to amuse Chinott to see other people suffer.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
JERRY OPENED THE DRAPES ON BOTH WINDOWS, flooding the bed with light from either side. Nora held Melody, who was heroically managing to maintain her role of frightened childishness. Del looked around at the others, standing out of Jerry's camera range, their faces drawn into a leer of eagerness. Chinott held the gun, dead center on Del's belly. Jerry checked his cheap little camera and nodded.
"You get the picture, Clark?" Chinott asked with emphasis.
"Yeah," Del muttered. "But it won't be easy. My head hurts and I feel about as much like rape as I feel like flying to the moon. How the hell am I supposed to raise a heat under these circumstances?"
Chinott chuckled. "I have to admit it would bother me, too. You guys, check it out in the hall for a few minutes. Nora, bring the kid over here to me."
Nora hustled Melody over and Chinott grabbed her wrist, twisting it up behind her back. Then he nodded.
"Hold the film, Jerry. Nora's going to bring this boy's pot to a boil so we can get some action going. Get on him, Nora."
Nora laughed and began to unbutton her silk blouse. Del watched her expose her huge scarlet tipped breasts, and his mind was ticking off seconds, cursing the police department, his own stupidity and life in general. He looked at Melody, but she was staring at the gradual and devastating strip act Nora was putting on. When Nora unsnapped her skirt and began to peel the garment down over her full flared hips. Melody gave a swift lurch and wrenched free of Chinott.
Her cry of protest made Del turn, and then she hit him, clutching and hugging and pushing.
"No!" she cried. "Stay away from him you filthy bitch! I'll take care of him myself! Oh Del, I don't care! Let them take their dirty pictures. Let them. But it has to be only me and only you!"
Suddenly, Del didn't care either. His arms closed around her trembling body and his lips pressed hard and longingly to her hair. It took him several seconds to face the reality of her slim body in his arms and his ears could hardly believe the soft sweet endearments that escaped her lips in pathetic pleading. The whole precarious mess faded from his mind and he was conscious only of the soft clinging wonder of Melody, surrendered in his arms. Then he remembered and when he looked at Chinott, he saw only a gaping, voyeuristic man who had despoiled every woman he had ever known but who had sent Melody into his arms with words of love.
"Can you go through with it, honey?" Del whispered.
"Yes, yes," Melody murmured. "I have to, Del. I want to! Do everything to me, everything! Just as if we were alone and a million miles from them all. I love you, Del, and I have to have you now, because I'm sure they're going to km me when you're through!"
And suddenly he knew it too. His lips went to hers, a long sweet moment, then he released their moist wet pressure.
"I love you too, and I guess I always have," he said, then he threw her and leaped at George Chinott. He would have died then except that a sudden crashing noise from the front of the house had turned Chinott's head.
Almost instantly the entire house was full of policemen, led by Detective Sam Moore who had become a raging, slashing brown bear with righteously inspired claws.
"I think," Melody said, her arms around his neck and her lips just a breath from Del's, "that we were about like this."
Del checked his hands on her slim back, and his fingers wandered down to cup the tiny rounds of her taut bottom. "Right," he said. "Because I was just about to see if these darlings were real."
"They are," she breathed. "Oh they are!"
"Indeedy. And what did you have in mind to replace the very capable Nora's best effort at man-baiting?"
She giggled and hunched herself against him. "I can tell you don't really need any help, but I'd like to try, baby!"
She dropped her arms and he let her slide down so her feet were firm on his bedroom carpet. Her fingers went to his belt, and then his zipper and suddenly the game was over.
"Oh Del, you'll never know how much-and how long I've loved you! I've dreamed about this moment for a hundred years, I guess!"
"At least a hundred," he murmured, turning so they could tumble to the bed together. "I never knew just how I felt until I came into that room and saw what Jerry and Nora were trying to do. I guess I really tried to kill him, baby."
"He didn't hurt me," she breathed against his chest. "No one ever has."
"Honest, Mel?"
"Why don't you prove it to yourself."
"You're so tiny."
"It won't hurt, honey. Don't be so bashful."
"It will too hurt. I'm liable to go out of my mind and bust you wide open!"
"Dare you, baby. Anyway, Mary told me how to get from under if it hurts. Oh Del!"
"I'm sorry, baby."
"Silly. You'd think I was about fourteen."
"Sure you're not?"
"It said twenty-two on the marriage license, didn't it."
"Okay?"
"Talk-talk-talk! Save it for later!"
"Okay. I love you, Melody Clark!"
She only nodded and the ripple went from the top of her pillowed head to the tips of her kicking toes and her growing up process seemed well worth waiting for.
