"I've wanted to talk to you about those pictures," Miller said. "And about yourself, too, Gordon. In a way, since Eudora brought you in, it's her job. But I have a feeling that she has a sort of personal yen for you. Not that I blame her, mind you. You're young and good-looking and, I'm sure, you can give her just what she needs. Still, while you're having your fun, just remember a couple of things. First, you're in this with us to stay, and make no mistakes about it. Your job is to get recruits for us-"
"Don't get yourself excited over me," I told him. "I'm in this to make money and not to change my mind."
"Fine. But don't forget what I'm telling you, Gordon. You get out of line, just once, and I could have you nailed on those pictures. You'd get five years in the can."
Miller was a few inches shorter than I was, and I stared down at him. Putting it mildly, I hated his guts. He was a creep who helped spread filthy sex. But I had to tolerate him. At least, I had to tolerate him until I was ready to act.
"In that case," I said, "the girl would get it, too. What about her?"
His look was stony. "Who cares...?"
CHAPTER ONE
The four-forty commuter train was crowded, hot and dirty. But by the time we left Seneca Falls, the last stop before New Rockford, there were only four and myself left in the smoking car.
One of the girls, who looked like a fifty-dollar-a-week secretary, sat by herself near the middle of the car, fast asleep. Her legs were curled up beneath her on the cushion; her shoes lay on the floor.
I had been watching the girl who slept, simply because she offered a means of avoiding the frank, youthful stares of the three girls who were on the opposite side of the car, a couple of seats down from where I sat. In particular, I had become somewhat embarrassed by the frankly speculative glances of the blonde one who was knitting on a bright red pull-over sweater.
When I say that the girls had been staring at me, I don't mean to convey the impression they had been trying to pick me up or anything like that. They appeared to be rather young, possibly recent high school graduates, and I assumed that they were merely having a little innocent fun at my expense.
Almost any other time, I assure you, I would have been somewhat interested in the evident possibilities. I'm only twenty-six and, I hope, nothing less than one hundred percent male. However, at the moment, I was chiefly concerned about reaching New Rockford and quickly gathering material for an article on the Reverend Doctor Adam Call's sports car. The completion of the article would bring immediate cash from Car Skill; about a hundred and fifty dollars which I would be able to pass along to my creditors.
The train rocked, swinging around a sharp curve, and one of the girls squealed. Without thinking, I looked their way and found the soft eyes of the blonde upon my face. She smiled and I thought I saw a small dimple appear in the middle of her chin.
We started down the mountain, the train running smoothly, and I turned to look out of the window. Through the late September night I could see the irregular cluster of the fights of the town down below. Actually, it wasn't much of a town, only a hair over ten thousand. I had never been there before but the pattern of lights gave the impression of wide streets generously bordered by lawns.
Reaching the bottom of the long grade, the train began to decrease speed. I took the suitcase and portable typewriter down from the rack overhead and started carrying them forward. The eyes of the blonde followed my progress with impish curiosity and I gave her a slight wink as I went past.
I went out on the car platform. The lights in homes and factories slipped past and fell away into the night. The wind was cold, biting, and I suddenly wished that I'd worn my coat.
The train came to a halt with a sudden, shattering jerk. The girls behind me, in the smoker, shouted with delight and came plunging noisily forward.
I went down the steps and walked through the rolling steam clouds toward the station. Several taxi-drivers roamed the shadows beneath the American Railway Express sign, pleading for customers.
I took the first cab in the line and while I waited for the driver to put my bags in the trunk the three girls passed, still laughing. They now seemed to be unaware of me, their youthful interests apparently having been transferred to a more interesting subject. I wondered, vaguely, if I would ever see the blonde again.
Not being familiar with New Rockford, I asked the driver to take me to a good hotel, something near the middle of the town.
"Looking for fun?" he inquired as we pulled away from the curb. "If you have something like that on your mind-"
"No," I said. "I'm not looking for fun." The driver shrugged and we rode the rest of the way to the hotel in silence.
It was the start of the week-end, Friday, and since there weren't any salesmen in town the clerk told me I could have a room on the third floor, with adjoining bath, and to the rear where it would be quiet. I told him that would be fine; I registered, and then asked if I could park my bags under the desk while I made a phone call and had something to eat.
I found Dr. Call's phone number and address in my wallet and crossed over to one of the glass booths beneath the stairs.
"This is Bill Morgan," I told the girl who answered. "I spoke with Dr. Call last week-I phoned him from the city-about doing an article on his sports car."
The girl said she was sorry but she didn't know anything about it. However, she went on to say, the Reverend would return from church in about an hour and I could either call back or stop around and see him after that time. I thanked her for her trouble, said I would be out there about eight-thirty and hung up.
I entered the dining room, which was rather crowded, and ordered a steak. Reluctantly, because I expected to visit the minister, I decided against having a drink. Since there wasn't anything else to do while I waited for the steak, I got out my notebook and gave my creditors some serious attention.
I should like to point out, right here and now, that I am not, as a general rule, the sort of fellow who goes into debt way over his head and shoulders. I like to pay cash for the things I buy. It is a good habit for a free lance writer to develop, since magazine checks are, at the very best, irregular and often uncertain. The amount of money I owed was still in excess of a thousand dollars.
The next time the waitress came near my table I told her to bring me a double rye with just a touch of soda.
After the drink arrived I returned to the notebook, wondering how I would handle the bills. There were still large amounts owing the doctor, hospital and undertaker. In addition to these was an old account with a beauty parlor, another with a dress shop and, ironically enough, the skis which had caused Sandy's death had never been paid for.
The waitress brought the steak and I pushed the notebook aside. Someday, perhaps before tpo long, I would be able to forget about the figures in it. After all, I had done quite well. At the start, in June, the total owed had been over three thousand.
I ate the steak and the French fries and thought about it. I didn't feel foolish or stupid, the way some of my friends would have me believe I was. It was true that Sandy hadn't been my wife and, therefore, I wasn't legally responsible for her debts. I knew that. Rut, had she lived, we would have been married and I felt because of this a moral obligation to do what any husband would have done. Resides, I still believed that I had been at least partially responsible for Sandy's death. It had been my idea that we go up to New Hampshire for the Christmas holiday and it had been my idea that she learn to ski. A broken back, a smashed pelvis and, finally death, some six months later, had been the outcome of our trip.
The waitress brought my coffee and I lingered over it, smoking and thinking.
Sandy Culver had been very beautiful. Some critics had hailed her as the prettiest model in the city. Dark-haired, of medium height, she had possessed sparkling black eyes and a rich olive skin. She had been mentally alert, conversationally intelligent and-well, just wonderfully good. At least, she had been good for me, a knock-about free-lance writer who had worked a dozen different jobs from Iceland to Morocco. I'd settled down after I'd met Sandy, stopped my drinking and shifting around, and tried to make something of myself. The earnings from my writing had gone up to about eight thousand a year which, while not anything tremendous, was somewhat promising. We had made big plans for our life together....
I got up from the table, left the waitress fifty cents, and went over to the desk to pay my check. The elderly woman who made change seemed friendly so I asked her how I could reach Dr. Call's home on Startup Avenue. She told me it was three blocks down toward the river, on the right, and that I couldn't miss it because it was a colonial-style white house next to a red church.
It was getting much colder outside, but I decided to walk. The wind, blowing up from the river, pushed dry leaves along the street. Most of the stores were closed, their windows darkened. A half a dozen kids fooled around in front of the movie theatre, teasing the middle-aged gent at the ticket window. There was a soda fountain on the corner of Startup Avenue and when I passed it I could hear the juke box inside and smell the odors of hot chocolate and hot fudge.
I had no trouble finding the house, since it was next to the church, in the middle of the block, and there was a fight burning on the porch. I went up to the door and knocked.
The door opened in a few moments but the hall was very dark and I couldn't tell whether it was a man or a woman standing in there.
"Rill Morgan," I said. "I called just a few-"
"Oh, yes. Please come in."
It was the same soft voice which had spoken to me on the phone. I stepped into the hall.
"Please have a seat in the living room. Father will be here rather shortly."
I thanked her and entered a large room which was lighted by a single floor lamp. The room was square, with a high ceiling and huge bay-style windows. The furniture was old but there was plenty of it and it appeared comfortable.
"I'll call Daddy and tell him you're here."
I turned around, started to point out that I wasn't in any great hurry, but was unable to say anything.
The girl had come into the room, near the light, and she stood there smiling at me.
"I'm sorry," she said. "Is there anything wrong?"
"Oh, no. You remind me of someone I used to know. Very much."
My observation seemed to please her and she crossed to the phone with a smile upon her lips.
Sandy had told me once, just before her death, that she was twenty-five. I guessed this girl to be not more than twenty. Her dark hair, smooth olive skin and haunting black eyes were more than enough to bring back the tragic memory of a lovely girl lying crushed and helpless upon a New Hampshire ski slope.
"Daddy'll be over as soon as he can," she told me. "Please be seated."
I lowered my six-foot frame into one of the overstuffed chairs and watched her as she came across the room. The black dress, which had a rather high neckline, clung to her curves like a coat of plastic cloth. Her breasts were full and pointed and wide apart. While her little tummy was hardly anything at all, perhaps less than twenty inches around, her hips were fully developed and they matched the lush ripeness of her breasts.
She sat down on the couch, crossed her legs carefully and smiled at me again.
"You're a writer, Mr. Morgan?"
I told her that I tried to be but that there were times when I wasn't quite sure. She seemed friendly, easy to talk to, and I asked her if she cared for a cigarette.
"Oh, no. I'd catch it if he came in and caught me or if he thought I had been."
"Rugged."
"The life of a minister's daughter isn't for living," she told me. "It's for dying."
I went back to the chair and sat down. Her voice had lost some of its softness and I wondered if I detected a note of bitterness.
"Nothing's quite what it seems to be," I told her.
She agreed that it wasn't and she wanted to know if I'd had a good trip out from the city. It had been fair, I said, just fair.
"I'd love to work in the city," she confided. "There simply isn't anything around New Rockford for a young girl, not unless she becomes a nurse or works in one of the factories. But every time I talk to my father about leaving home he becomes furious. I sometimes wonder just what it will be like when I do leave."
"Perhaps you won't."
She smiled brightly. "Oh, but I will, Mr. Morgan. I have a friend of mine, Elsa Lang, who is working as a model. We graduated from high school together last June. Elsa's trying to get me a job in the office of the agency where she works. One of these lucky week-ends I'll be going to the city. I just know I will."
The girl-continued to talk about herself, explaining about her mother's death five years before and how she, Judith, had inherited the responsibility of running the house for her father. She was an only child and, I thought, a rather unhappy one.
"Judith means 'praised' in Hebrew," she said. "I wish I could find some praise around here and then maybe things wouldn't seem so bad."
Heavy footsteps sounded upon the porch.
"Thanks for listening to my tale of woe, Mr. Morgan," she said.
Dr. Adam Call was a short, heavy-set man who barely reached my shoulders.
"Sorry to be late," he explained, puffing. "Rut we showed a movie, one of a series in our sex education class, and there were many questions afterward." He smiled and sat down on the couch. "These youngsters, Mr. Morgan, ask many questions about sex."
"As many as they do about cars?" I wanted to know.
He nodded, still smiling.
"Yes, and even more." Then, his eyes quite serious, "You know that car we built was quite a project, Mr. Morgan. At first, many of our church members weren't in favor of it-there's been so much adverse publicity in the papers about hot-rodders and that sort of thing. But now that we have built the car-it's a beauty, I might say-the attitude of almost everybody in town has changed. Two other churches are starting similar projects-one is-calling it a mechanic's workshop-and even the police have told me-that they are now willing to cooperate with a local auto club which will be organized by the young men and young women in the city.
"Well, it's all a matter of education," I told him. "Much of the criticism about hot-rods and custom cars is purely a case of misunderstanding."
"I agree, Mr. Morgan. That is why I was so happy to receive your phone call. If the article will appear, as you say, in a national magazine, I think it will do much to improve relationships."
A few minutes later the girl went out and presently returned with a pot of tea and a plate of cookies. We sat around talking about hot-rods and drinking the tea.
Dr. Call, I could tell, was a nut on the juvenile delinquency angle. He brought it up time and again, stressing the importance of having some project under way that would keep the kids off the streets.
"Dad sometimes forgets there are girls in the church, too," his daughter said. Her smile, leveled at her father, was meant to hurt. "Girls just don't go for tying flies or boat-building or building cars. Those things are for boys, aren't they, Mr. Morgan?"
"Well-"
"Girls can take an interest in them, too," Dr. Call said firmly. "There isn't any reason why a girl can't be just as interested as a boy in the construction of a beautiful car.
They argued, briefly, about that and I sat there watching them. I began to get the very definite feeling that the Reverend was chiefly interested in boys because he understood boys. I also received the impression that his daughter, being completely feminine, would never enjoy a truly close association with her father.
I finally made arrangements to take photos of the car the next morning and to talk with some of the boys who had done much of the work.
"I'd rather take the photos first," I said. "Before there are too many people around."
The car, the Reverend said, was in one of the garages at the rear of the church.
"I have a meeting in the morning and I won't be available until after eleven," he said. "But I'll leave the key with Judith and she can let you in any time that's convenient for you."
I said good night to the girl and the Reverend walked with me to the front door.
"I'd like to have a long talk with you tomorrow," he said to me. "Not about the car, in particular, but about something else. I won't be at liberty to discuss it until after my meeting tomorrow morning, but I'm sure you will find it of more than passing interest to you."
I told him that I would be happy to spend some time with him, smiled pleasantly, said good night and left.
On the way back to the hotel, I stopped in at a little bar and had a couple of drinks.
CHAPTER TWO
I GOT out to Call's house about nine-thirty the next morning. Actually I hadn't intended to arrive there before noon but an air compressor working on one of the back streets had awakened me early and I hadn't been able to get back to sleep. Judith Call met me at the door.
She was dressed in blue slacks and a black sweater. Her face was freshly made up and a narrow red ribbon held her dark hair back from her ears. She looked very much like an innocent high school junior on her way to a picnic.
"I'll get the key," she said.
I waited out on the porch for her a few moments. The sun gleamed bright and warm and the sky was clear. She came out presently, wearing a gray coat thrown carelessly across her shoulders. She handed me a piece of cheesecloth.
"The car may be a little dusty," she said. "You may want to wipe it off before you take your pictures."
Dust wouldn't make very much difference, but I took the cloth anyway. The primary purpose of the photos was to catch the lines of the car and not the finish. My theme for the article would be strictly non-technical, simply an account of how a group of youthful churchgoers, under the direction of their minister, had restyled an old jalopy.
The car was In a shed at the rear of the church. The fight in there was incredibly bad, even with the doors open, and I was glad that I'd brought along a husky supply of flash bulbs.
I saw right away that it was a good car, well put together and rather practical for road use. "Slick," I said.
I walked around the car, jumping over paint buckets and tools, inspecting it carefully. The chassis was a forty-nine Ford but that, with the exception of the steering mechanism, was all of the Ford that remained. The front grille, which had been worked in between two Olds fenders, had been taken from a fifty-six Chevy. The whole car had been lowered and channeled and the doors on either side, operated by electric push buttons, appeared squat and long. At the rear the car resembled a fifty-seven Chrysler with high sweeping fins and recessed trunk. A full continental spare-wheel kit exaggerated both the length of the car and its extreme lowness.
"Slick," I repeated again. "If it runs."
"Oh, it runs all right," Judith Call assured me. "Wait until you see the engine."
She reached inside the car, pushed a button and an electric motor began to hum. Very slowly the entire front of the car, hood and fenders, began to elevate. The motor stopped only when the hood had reached a forty-five degree angle.
"Well," I said.
"They installed the hydraulic lift from an old tractor," Judith told me. "Getting it to work like this caused more trouble than anything else."
The Olds motor was full house, complete with high compression heads and dual four-barrel carbs. I guessed that underneath all that chrome was a high-speed cam and a balanced assembly.
"Well," I said again.
The car was even better than I had hoped and I decided, without asking, that much of the work had been done by professional help. Perhaps the boys and Dr.
Call had rendered moral support. Undoubtedly, they had accomplished many of the minor tasks, such as disassembly and rubbing the body down for final finish But only good mechanics, and experienced ones at that, could have fashioned such a terrific showpiece. Almost immediately I was sorry that I had sold the idea to Car Skill on a one-shot basis. Properly handled, the car was good for half a dozen articles. v
"You do any of this work?" I asked the girl.
"Only because I had to."
I wondered what she'd done but I didn't ask. She seemed disinterested, bored with the whole thing, and I didn't want her to dampen any of the enthusiasm which I felt. Enthusiasm is a free-lance writer's stock in trade. He has to have it while he's on an article or he won't be able to sell a line he writes.
Most article writers use a fancy camera with a lot of gadgets and gimmicks but I've never gone in for that. In the first place, a collection of lenses and levers always confuses me and, secondly, I've never had a hundred bucks to toss away on a camera. My favorite is a Brownie, using a filter for close-up shots. When a flash attachment was required, as it was with this car, I used a number eight bulb and a plastic jar cover over the flash to cut down the light. If you work close to each section, say about forty inches, you get usable pictures. Of course, the magazine has to work from the negatives but you get just as much money as though you had sent them fifty-dollar prints. And article writing is just like any other business; you spend as little as possible and make as much as you can.
I took about thirty pictures, some of the exterior and some of the interior, and a couple of the full car, one with the hood up and another with it down. By the time I finished the twelve o'clock whistle was rattling the windows along the block.
"You really think those pictures will be good enough to sell?"
"Oh, sure," I said.
A lot of people take one look at my little Rrownie and they lose confidence in me right away. But, of course, it isn't only the pictures that sell an article. You have to come up with some good copy, something fresh and alive. The church theme which surrounded this particular project was a natural.
"Your father should be along pretty soon," I observed.
Until that moment Judith Call had been standing around watching me, not saying much of anything. But the mere suggestion that her father might put in an appearance aroused her from her indifferent attitude.
She came over to me, smiled and held out her hand.
"Well, it's been nice meeting you, Mr. Morgan. Good luck."
Her hand was soft and warm. I said, "You running away?"
The smile left her face as she pulled her hand away. "How did you know?"
"It's just an expression of mine," I said. "Don't be offended."
She turned and walked quickly to the door. She swung about slowly and faced me. The sun washed through her dark hair.
"But you're so right. I am running away."
I didn't know exactly what to say, or if I should say anything. I'd felt the tension that existed between Judith Call and her father the night before and I remembered what she had told me about her girl friend in the city. Her decision, I suppose, was inevitable.
"I'd think it over," I said.
Her pretty face held the look of a child in pain. Great pain.
"I have thought it over. I've thought it over for a long, long time. I've thought about all the things I want to do, and can't do, and I'm sick of it. Did you ever get sick of anything, Mr. Morgan?"
"Quite often."
"But you don't know what it's like to take the place of a minister's wife-a minister who won't let you smoke or go out with boys or do any of the things that other girls do. You don't know what that's like."
I could see she was upset, distraught, her mind crowded with a thousand and one anxieties.
"I'm sure I don't," I said gently. "But I do know that all things can't be the way we want them. Some things have to be different."
Different, I thought. That's the way it had been with Sandy. Beautiful and different and terrible. But you couldn't generate hate or mistrust because of it. You had to try to understand and do the best you could.
"My life is a clock," Judith Call said. "A time clock. I get up in the morning and I fix breakfast. Orange juice. Every day there has to be orange juice. Not the canned juice but the kind you squeeze. And I mustn't waste any. We have to save because Daddy doesn't make very much and he won't accept a raise because he thinks the money should .be used for something else. The youth of our church, he keeps saying. And, all the time, he forgets that he has a daughter. When he had that fly-tying class last summer I had to help him with it. Mel A girl! What do I know about tying flies?"
I placed my camera on the seat of the car and walked toward her slowly.
"Look," I said. "Im just an outsider, Miss Call. It's none of my business. But maybe if you talked with your father things would be better. You might be able to show him how he can do more in his church, how he can help the young girls, too."
She had tried it, she said. But it hadn't done any good.
As far as her father was concerned the problems of the young man and the young woman were identical. They had to be kept off the streets, out of taverns, away from possible harm. And that was all.
"He's driven the young girls away from the church," she said. "Hardly any of them ever comes out for Youth Night. What is there for them? They don't want to tie flies. They don't want to build cars. There isn't a girl in New Rockford who wants to know about that stuff."
But there was one girl in New Rockford who knew, who had learned the hard way. Judith Call. She knew how to tie a Royal Coachman and she knew about the functions of a solenoid in an electric door kit. And she knew something else, knew it even better. She knew that her father had really wanted a son, that he treated her like a son, and that she wasn't a son at all.
"Elsa got me a job in the city," she said, lifting her head defiantly. "And I'm going to take it. I'm going to take it before I wither up and blow away."
There was nothing more I could say to her, no reason why I should try to stop her, so I just stood there in the garage doorway and watched her walk toward the house. When she reached the kitchen door she turned and waved once before going inside.
I went back to the car and made a few notes on its construction. The body seams had not been leaded in, but built up with plastic, and these were nice and smooth. Hours of rubbing, I thought. Hours and hours of rubbing. The interior was English leather and it had been gathered in tiny, regular folds. Expensive. Somebody, a lot of somebodys, had contributed plenty of money and time to the success of this effort.
I was still going over the car when a figure appeared in the doorway and cast a shadow on the floor.
"What do you think of it, Mr. Morgan?"
I dropped my notebook into my pocket and straightened up.-
"I've never seen anything quite like it," I said. "Believe me, Doctor, this is a masterpiece."
My comment pleased him and he smiled. I wondered, idly, if he would appear so happy when he found out about his daughter.
"Did you have lunch? If not, you might care to join me. We could talk."
I had to ask him a few questions about how the project had started, how long it had required and things like that. I told him, yes, I'd be happy to have lunch with him. I gathered up my equipment, waited for him while he locked the doors and then we walked to the house.
"I'm not much of a cook," he explained. "But I guess I can whip up bacon and eggs."
Lunch was a rather dull affair. We ate in the kitchen and the eggs he turned out were hard and greasy. I didn't enjoy the meal but while we were eating we talked about the car and I obtained most of the information I needed. The results seemed to be worth the effort. It would take me only three or four hours to knock out the article and when I returned to the city I'd be able to pick up a check almost the same day.
"I never drink coffee," Dr. Call said, placing an old-fashioned tea pot in the center of the table. "There's nothing like a spot of good tea to give a man a lift."
We drank the tea, which was pretty strong, and discussed the weather, the growth of New Rockford and a dozen other things that were unimportant. It occurred to me that the Reverend had something serious on his mind and that he was seeking an opportune moment in which to reveal it. x
"I don't know where your daughter disappeared to," I said finally. "I had hopes of getting a picture of her standing alongside the car."
"She's gone," he said. "That's why I had to cook the eggs."
"Oh."
"She left a note. She said she was going to the city. To stay. She said she had a job."
He stared at me, blinking, as though he were fighting back tears, but there was no real emotion in his voice.
"Well, I guess that was unexpected," I said.
"No. I've seen it coming for a long time. Judith is a fine girl but she's like most of the girls her age. She has no appreciation of values. Life is something to seek, to conquer, not a luxury to enjoy-but she doesn't realize that."
I lit a cigarette and waited.
"Believe me," Dr. Call said, "our youth of today is deteriorating, wasting its future and vigor in a cesspool of sin and corruption."
That shook me and I took a deep drag on my cigarette. Hell, I was only twenty-six, not old by any standards, and I didn't feel as though I were thoroughly disreputable. Of course, I drank some, lived a little, had enjoyed probably more than my share of women in one form or another, but I didn't feel as though I was a lost cause. It was, I was forced to admit, a tough verdict.
"Judith is no worse than other girls," Dr. Call said. "I have to admit that. All young girls today are weak, insecure."
I didn't say anything. He was over my head, a mile above it, and I didn't understand his angle at all.
"I'd like to talk to you, Mr. Morgan. Seriously."
His elbows were on the table and he leaned forward, looking straight into my eyes.
"All right."
"I'm sure you won't mind if I tell you that I called your magazine this morning, inquiring about you. I spoke with the editor, a Mr.-"
"Sam Terry!"
"Yes, Mr. Terry. He had high praise for you, Mr. Morgan. He said you were a fine young man, a competent writer and that you could be trusted with almost any assignment."
I grinned and waited. Sam and I were pretty good friends and once in a while when he came up with an issue of Car Skill that was running short I was able to help him out with a quick story. Sam would get quite a kick out of a minister calling to check on me. He might even insist that I buy him a drink for the free plug.
"I have worked for a long time in New Rockford for the betterment of youth," Dr. Call said. "I am not alone in this, of course, because every church group is interested. But our problem, from the start, has been to get the cooperation and the ideas of the young people themselves. Whenever we've asked them what they want to do, they've always told us they want to dance and have fun. Just what does that mean?"
"Pretty close to what it says, I guess."
He shook his head and poured another cup of tea.
"No. You're wrong, young man. It simply means that our youth of today is unable to plan a truly worthwhile future."
I hadn't thought much about it before, but there was something to what he said. Hardly anybody, it seemed, knew where they were going or what they were going to do after they got there.
"Take our young boys, for instance. Years ago, they spent their leisure time playing healthy games, or fishing, or doing something of that nature. But what do they do today? I'll tell you what they do. They gather in little groups on the street corners, or in stores, and talk about girls. Every magazine you pick up is filled with pictures of half-nude women, pictures cleverly titled to arouse only the basest instincts of the male. Isn't that true, Mr. Morgan?" s
"Some of them are pretty exciting," I admitted.
"Yes. And you, yourself. You just mentioned that you had hoped to be able to take a picture of that car with my daughter alongside it. Why? Well, I'll tell you why. Not because the girl had anything to do with the car, but because the presence of sex-at least some hint of it-has become a necessary tool with which to attract attention."
"It's a trend," I said. "You can't fight it."
"It is a trend," he agreed. "It is getting worse and worse as time goes on. The more female figures a young man sees, the more he wants to see. And the more he wants to see them, the more girls there will be who will accommodate him. It is a vicious circle, Mr. Morgan. It is a circle that can close" tighter and tighter until it finally strangles the morals of all of us."
This guy was really on a reform kick, I thought. No wonder his daughter had packed her satchel and run off to the city.
"I don't believe we can reshape the reading habits and the desires of millions of young people," he said. "No one could be foolish enough to believe that. But I have, through my own efforts, interested a substantial group of business people in financing an effort to unmask the more ruthless types of commercialized sex. The money is available, Mr. Morgan. It has been for some time. We have been merely waiting until we could find the right young man to work with us. I have hopes that you might be the man."
This was a surprise! I felt flattered.
"I've never done anything like that before," I said. "But if it pays money I don't see any reason why we can't talk about it."
His plan, it developed, was rather vague. In fact, he didn't have a plan. All the Reverend Doctor Call knew was that a few of the stores in town sold pictures of un-draped women. Some of the pictures were called "art studies" while others made no pretense of being anything except filthy pictures of men and women engaged in natural and unnatural acts. Many of the photos had been seized in the local schools but the police had been apathetic about it and nothing had come of the incidents.
"A month ago," he went on to say, "one of the hotels in the area held a smoker. Reports say that degrading movies were shown at the affair. Not only that, but later some of the girls who had taken part in "the movie offered their services to all those men who were interested. I believe, Mr. Morgan, that you will agree with me that such things are unnecessary in a civilized world."
I told him I did and I meant it. I'm the kind of guy who's been around and seen more than my share but I still like my sex straight.
"As a minister, I am unable to go into the matter further," Dr. Call told me. "As businessmen, those who are willing to finance the project are also restricted. What we need is someone who is clever enough to get to the bottom of such matters, who is unafraid, and who has the ability to put down on paper those things which he finds. We feel that if the truth were known then the process would reverse itself and destroy those responsible."
"What about the newspapers?"
"There was one that began a series of articles about immoral activities more than a year ago." He sighed and shrugged. "The Morning Star. But they dropped it after a couple of issues. I was never able to find out the reason."
"That's a paper in the city?"
"Yes. And, of course, all of these things come from the city. But they must be stopped, somehow, no matter where they originate. Those types of things are just as bad in the city as they are out here. Only we're determined to do something about it. If we can, Mr. Morgan."
I kicked the idea around in my mind, wondering how I could go about doing a thing like that, estimating the risks involved. I was almost ready to tell him that it was no-go, that I'd stick to writing about hot-rod cars, when he mentioned the financial arrangements.
"A hundred and fifty a week," I repeated thoughtfully.
"Plus expenses."
I thought about it a little bit.
"Not bad," I admitted.
"If you do it, there's just one request that I have." The Reverend's face looked very tired, tragically old. "It wouldn't take much of your time if you could look for my daughter. I-I'd like to know where she is...."
I closed my eyes for a moment and I saw Judith Call's dark hair and smooth olive skin and black, questioning eyes. And I saw someone else, too. I saw another girl, equally dark and beautiful, lying twisted upon a lonely ski slope.
"Sure," I said. "I'll send you her address." And I would.
CHAPTER THREE
TRYING to learn anything from the local newsdealers was like attempting to run through the Notre Dame line without any interference.
"You want to buy these pictures for yourself wholesale?" one man demanded. "Hell, I can't help you, mister. A guy just comes around, maybe once or twice every two months. Not always the same man. Just a guy. He asks what I want and I tell him. He gets them out of his car, brings them in and I pay him. That's all."
I wasted two days running around corners and then I decided to return to the city.
"I'll keep you posted," I told Doctor Call.
He gave me a check for three hundred and I put it in my wallet.
"You won't find anything here," he said. "It comes from outside. And-Mr. Morgan, let me know about my daughter, won't you?"
"Just as soon as I get something."
I went out onto the porch and stopped.
"She mentioned an Elsa Lang once. Would her parents live in town?"
He gave me an address on Grove Street, not far from where I was staying.
On the way back to the hotel I gave the situation some serious thought. How did you work your way into the guts of something like this? How did you find out the truth? And, after you had unearthed the truth, what did you do with it?
The time spent with the newsdealers, however, had not been altogether wasted. I had learned a few things.
Most of the magazines that featured draped and un-draped female figures were delivered by truck. The use of a truck, of course, prevented the publishers from being cited by the postal department. Some of the magazines, such as a few of those dealing with the nudist movement, carried unretouched photographs of both men and women. These magazines, I had been informed, were perfectly legal because they were aimed at a specific group of people. A mixed gathering of snickering boys and girls in one of the stores, a hole-in-the-wall billiard place on Ramson Avenue, had given me some serious doubts about the wisdom of this ruling.
Not so generously to be judged, in any case, were some of the one and two dollar books which I had managed to pick up in a couple of places in town. These books, consisting of about thirty pages of very poor offset work, featured some equally poor typesetting and a few rather clear photographs. The text of each book concerned itself with the swift pursuit of the opposite sex, the immediate capitulation of the victim, plus a graphic account of the ensuing gratification. Some of the books were from the man's point of view and some detailed the woman's feelings. All were written in the first person and most of the books dwelled heavily upon unusual practices.
The photographs, seldom related to the content of the story in any way, leaned heavily toward the unorthodox. The men in the photos usually wore fake moustaches and the eyebrows of the women were changed to make recognition impossible. Some of the books lacked a publisher's imprint while others purported to have been printed in Paris, France, They were, individually or as a group, shoddy literature.
Upon my return to the hotel I packed my suitcase and typewriter-I had destroyed the several books which I had purchased because they were of no possible value to me-and prepared to leave. However, before departing the room I looked up the phone number of the Lang residence on Grove Street and placed a call to it. I was 'greeted by a woman who said that her daughter was not at home and there was no telling when she would be there. It was quite evident that the woman cared very little about whether Elsa Lang ever showed up again or not.
When I reached the lobby I checked my bags at the desk, paid my bill, and went out into the street.
Grove Street, I soon discovered, was in a sorry neighborhood. The houses were ancient and uncared for and old newspapers and discarded tin cans littered the pavement. The Langs lived on the second floor of a house that smelled of fish and beer and poverty.
"I'd like to see Mrs. Lang," I told the woman who answered the door.
"I'm Mrs. Lang. What you want?"
She wasn't an old woman, perhaps in her late forties, but the ravages of the years had left their marks upon her. Her face was dirty and wrinkled and her body sagged beneath a faded wash dress.
"I was looking for your daughter, Elsa Lang."
I told her that I was an agent for one of the large model agencies in the city and that I had seen a picture of her daughter. I said that I didn't know where she worked but that somebody had given me her address and I thought that I might be able to locate her if I called at her home. I gave it quite a build-up, bearing down on the possibilities of a good future for the girl, and after a while I began to get results.
"Well," she said finally, "I'll give you her address. As long as you're not a bill collector. God, but I'm tired of having them bother me! I just got rid of one a couple of minutes ago." She stared at me silently for a moment, her eyes belligerent. "By God, if you're another one, mister, you can go to hell."
I assured her again that I wasn't.
"Well, all right, mister. I just hope she makes enough to pay her bills and get straightened out. Anybody thinks I'm going to do it for her is nuts."
The address Mrs. Lang gave me was in a part of the city with which I was not familiar. I told the woman thanks, dropped the slip of paper into my pocket and left.
I reached the city shortly after four and took a cab from the station up to the Central Building. Sam Terry had gone out early so I left the manuscript with his secretary and told her that the pictures would follow in a couple of days.
Back on the street, I wondered if Sam was at the little bar around the corner but I decided against conducting an investigation. On occasion, Sam can drink rather heavily and I didn't have the time to sit around and listen to him express his theories about why a magazine did or did not sell. I caught a cab, while I was still thinking about it, and told the driver to take me up to my apartment on Channing Boulevard, two blocks from Edison Park.
Channing Boulevard isn't the most exclusive section of the city but it isn't down in the slums, either. I guess you could call it a happy compromise between wealth and poverty. Most of the apartment buildings are redbrick and clean, with green lawns in the front during summer and playgrounds in the rear. There is elevator service, a television rental service and most of the buildings have a private dining room. The building in which I lived, the Cottonwood, also featured a barber shop on the first floor and a swimming pool in the basement.
The first thing I did after depositing my stuff in the apartment was to change into trunks and ride the elevator down to the basement.
At that time of the day, between five and six, many of the male residents descended to the pool. They were a pretty good crew, moderately successful doctors and lawyers and insurance men and people like that. I'd never gotten too friendly with any of them but I had a speaking acquaintance with several and I found their conversations both amusing and relaxing. This evening, however, I am afraid I proved a rather dull companion and, sensing it, I remained only long enough to enjoy a good swim. But even the cool lash of the water did very little to relieve the tension I felt building up within me, a tension which had first manifested itself when I assured Dr. Call that I would do everything I could to get at the truth behind the filth campaign as quickly as possible.
Back in my room I dressed hurriedly, retrieved my topcoat from the bedroom closet and took the elevator to the street level.
There was a magazine and book store on Fanning Street, just around the corner and the proprietor, a man whom I knew only casually, greeted me as I came in. He seemed mildly surprised at my choice of reading material.
The bill was four dollars and seventy cents and when I returned to the hotel I had a fine collection of magazines featuring gaudy covers and lurid titles.
Many of the pictures and advertisements were repeated in the various magazines and I noted that several were published by the same firm. All of the girls pictured were young, many of them quite pretty and I wondered how they must feel after reading some of the blurbs assigned to them:
"Long time, no see" hardly applies to curvaceous Dolly Dawn because anybody with eyes can see MOST ALL of red-headed Dolly.
"SHADOW DANCE. These lovely scenes were taken from the window shades of a lovely dancer's apartment. It was fun to catch Kathy in the act!"
Pages toward the front of each magazine featured an assortment of blondes, brunettes and red-heads in various stages of undress. In nearly every case the reader was furnished with the vital statistics of the girl: her age, size of her hips, tummy and bust; plus suggestive comments about her aspirations.
But it was not the girls, attractive as they were, that were of primary interest to me. The ads, toward the backs of the books, captured most of my attention. "Party Pix ... An Unusual Fun Package."
"How to Kiss-More than 50 love techniques fully revealed."
"New Photos of Kantly Kane, Titillating Strip-Tease Sensation."
"50 Daring, Exotic Poses For Only 2 Bucks."
"Men! Free Samples Of The REAL STUFF!"
"Censored Photos Of That 'Girl Next Door'."
"Unique Figure Studies To Please The Most Discriminating Collector." These, plus hundreds of other ads, cluttered the pages of each magazine. It seemed ironic that several of the magazines had donated space for public service ads instructing the-reader to "Help Fight Cancer."
I worked until after eight o'clock addressing envelopes, writing out check's and ordering a wide variety of-party pics, nudes for artists only, and four or five books with promising titles. Some of the firms were located in the east, an equal number in the west while several were in small towns scattered across the country. Just what I might accomplish by spending this money was highly doubtful, but it had occurred to me that I might learn more in the local outlets if I approached them as a seller rather than as a buyer. While I did not expect the photos which I would receive to meet the requirements of the smut trade, they might establish a basis for friend-ly conversations which could accidentally point the way to at least one of the sources of supply I was seeking.
I figured up the total amount of money which the checks represented and grinned. It was probably the only time in history when a church would be billed for more than ninety dollars for the express purpose of purchasing borderline sex material.
The dining room off the lobby was about to close but since I was a frequent visitor there the hostess obligingly seated me at one of the tables near the window.
I ordered steak and a rye-and-soda, and contemplated my next move.
I am not a prude and I hope you will understand that. As a matter-of-fact, I could not be a prude even if I cared to become one.
I was born in Philadelphia, on October 27, 1931. My childhood was neither happy nor unhappy. I was an average student, I suppose, and my father, who worked in a local glass factory, wanted me to become a lawyer. But his death, when I was fifteen, prevented this and when I was graduated from high school, two years later, I went to work to help support my mother and younger sister. Two years after that, while riding with friends near Monticello, New York, both my mother and sister were killed in a head-on collision which also claimed the lives of three other people. I remained in Philadelphia only a few months following their deaths.
Korea beckoned and I served there with the infantry, I believe with honor, until my discharge in 1952. Following this I worked for, a year with Atlas Constructors in Casablanca and, upon completion of my contract with them, I went on to Greenland for another year. Back in the States once again I entered the insurance business, sold a little life and accident and sickness coverage for a few months, and then took a job as shipping clerk with a hot-rod mail order firm. While working for the automotive concern I became acquainted with all of the parts used in souping up cars and, for want of having nothing better to do with my spare time, began writing about them. Strangely enough, my work began to sell and, a few months later, I quit the firm and devoted all of my time to writing about the special parts which people should use in their cars.
The women in my life, until meeting Sandy at a holiday party given by mutual friends, had been several and of little consequence. There had been a cute little thing in Germantown about whom I had been serious but an Air Force uniform had outranked me and she had married the lieutenant. During my army and overseas carreer there had been many adventures, most of them one-night affairs of the type where the girl seldom told me her name or asked me mine. Not until Sandy had there been anybody real, anyone really worthwhile. And, of course, Sandy was dead. Fate, and some of my foolish insistence that she learn to ski, had been responsible for that.
The steak that the waitress brought was fairly good but I didn't enjoy it. My glance kept straying to the pile of envelopes on the table and they served as a reminder of the job I had to do. It was not a pleasant job, in spite of the money Dr. Call and his associates were willing to pay. It was a job which would force me to look into the twisted lives of many people and, of course, that is never a happy task. Lucrative and perhaps exciting, yes; but, truthfully, nothing to feel very good about.
I left the apartment building and mailed the letters at a drop box on the corner. A cab lurked nearby. I motioned to the driver and the car slid smoothly forward.
Bolton Road was on the south side of the city, near the river. As we rolled down the parkway I could see the lights of the ships in the bay, the illuminated skyline of the suburbs beyond the opposite shore. A freighter pushed wearily upstream, heading for the big docks at Wind Hollow. When we reached the Yankee ferry slips, the cab swung down off the parkway, turned sharp right and rumbled along over rough brick pavement.
Twenty Bolton Road was a couple blocks away from the river front, near one of the small parks. The building featured walk-up service and I was pleased to note that Elsa Lang's apartment was on the first floor, right rear.
I pushed the button and waited. The wail of a phonograph sounded faintly in the distance and from behind one of the doors a woman giggled. I pushed the button again.
The door was opened almost immediately by the cute little blonde I had seen on the train.
"May I talk with you a moment, Miss Lang?"
This, I discovered, was the wrong approach since she merely frowned and began to close the door.
"It's about Miss Call. I'd like to speak with you a moment about her if I may."
Slowly, the door opened again. This time I got a better look at her. She wore a long powder-blue housecoat that swept down over her body to her ankles. Her hair, though neat, held several pin curls and I assumed that I had interrupted one of her feminine chores. While it was rather difficult to see her face in the dim light I noted that she wore hardly any lipstick.
"Oh," she said, stepping aside. "I thought you were a salesman."
I entered the apartment and waited for her to close the door.
"I'm a friend of her father," I said.
"Oh." She smiled and her smile was just as nice as it had been on the train. "But you do look like that man who was here last week. He had one of those talking Bibles and he played and played the thing until I almost went out of my mind."
I had, quite by accident, heard of the talking Bible and I had even written an article about it, slanting the material toward one of the Sunday newspaper supplements. But the piece had been rejected as being too commercial and I had let the matter drop. It had been, I thought, a gentle reminder that my most profitable field of writing was for the automotive markets.
"Won't you be seated, Mr.-"
"Morgan. Bill Morgan."
She smiled again, and I noticed that her teeth were very white.
"I'm Elsa," she said.
I sat down in one of the low chairs opposite the davenport. Silently I watched her as she went over to one of the end tables and picked up a cigarette. The housecoat, which was made of some soft, shiny material, clung to her thighs and legs as she walked. She had a rather small, compact shape.
"What did you want to know about Judith?"
She sat down on the davenport and the split in her housecoat traveled to a point midway between her knees and thighs, revealing a pink slip underneath.
"Well, I'm a writer," I said. "And a friend of her father. Dr. Call asked me if I would be kind enough to send him her address. I thought you might be able to help."
Elsa Lang sighed and blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling. Her breasts, whenever she took a deep breath, pushed out round and full against the housecoat.
"I don't have her address," she said, still smiling. "Therefore, it would be quite impossible for me to help you."
"I see. But I thought you were her friend."
"When I met Miss Call, Friday night, she spoke of the possibility of coming to the city to work. She mentioned your name to me at that time and it was only natural I would assume that you might know where she had gone. She said you were trying to get her a job."
"I did get her a job."
"Where?"
Some of the friendliness in the girl's face disappeared and she crushed out the cigarette in an ash tray.
"Look," she said. "I don't know why you came here and I don't know why you're so interested in Judith Call. But I'll tell you this. Judith was so sick of her life in New Rockford that she didn't know what to do. She asked me to find her a job. And I did. But where she went or who she's working for I couldn't say. All I know is that I phoned her on Friday night and made an appointment to meet her downtown near the theatre. She got there, about five minutes late, and I gave her the name and the address of a man who said he could use her. I haven't heard from her since that time and I haven't seen her. And that, Mr. Morgan, is all I know."
"Incredible," I said, staring at her.
"What is?"
"Not knowing where she is."
"Well, I'm not her keeper, am I? I just did the little thing a favor, making it possible for her to get out and get started on her own. What am I supposed to do, put a leash on her so she can follow me around?"
I frowned and lit a cigarette. My first impression on the train about the blonde had been wrong. She was no reflection of the young, schoolgirl type. Kind words or flattery wouldn't get me very far with Elsa Lang.
"Well, the hell with it," I said, reversing my tactics. "So I can't find her. So what?"
The blonde favored me with another smile.
"So her old man'll blow his cork, that's what. And it'll serve him right. He never did treat her the way he should have."
I don't know why I felt obligated to find Judith Call. Certainly it had no direct bearing upon the work I was doing for the church. And surely it wasn't because I felt that her father's attitude toward her had been just and fair or that she didn't have a legitimate right to seek out something better for herself. Perhaps it was simply a haunting regret that she should feel that part of her own personal world was against her when, in fact, it was merely a matter of misunderstanding. Or perhaps it was because she reminded me of a very beautiful girl who no longer lived. Rut, whatever it was, I was under a compulsion to find this girl. What might happen after that I didn't know. It didn't seem to matter very much. Finding Judith Call seemed to be the big thing I had to do.
"Judith told me that you're a model, Miss Lang."
"Stockings and bras."
"I guess you do quite well at it."
She shrugged and got to her feet.
"You can always do better." She looked around the apartment. "Money. A person can never have enough of it."
The apartment, by almost any standard, was comfortable and modern. It would have pleased most people. Rut I could tell that it wasn't satisfactory to Elsa Lang.
"You're a writer, Mr. Morgan?"
"Yes."
"I guess you do quite well at it," she said, in mimicry of my own remark.
"It has its ups and downs."
She took another cigarette from the end able and lit it.
"Now we know all about each other," she said. "Isn't it a comfortable feeling, Mr. Morgan?"
She was laughing at me and I knew it. Frankly, I don't like to have people laugh at me. We all have a niche in this little old world. Some of us are important Some of us aren't. But, sooner or later, we all revert to the status of being very unimportant. It hardly seems worth fighting about.
"You've forgotten me," I said. "I saw you on the train Friday night."
"No. I didn't forget you. I thought you were a student."
"And I thought you were a high school girl." She laughed, pleased with my observation, and much of the tension seemed to leave the room. "Would you care for a drink?"
"If you have rye and soda."
We had a couple of drinks together and talked a little. She was older than I had thought, almost twenty. She told me that she had been ill for two years as a youngster with rheumatic fever and, therefore, her graduation from high school had been delayed. I gathered from her conversation that she had a great dislike for New Rockford, her family and almost everybody in the town. She returned there for week-ends occasionally, possibly to gloat, and the thought of ever living there again was revolting. She was, I decided, an unhappy girl. Unhappy and brittle and hard.
"Well," I said finally, "I've made a thorough nuisance of myself and have drunk quite a lot of your whiskey. I'm wondering if I might be able to interest you in dinner."
Actually, I wasn't at all hungry but I thought if I could talk to her further, get to know her better, that I might be able to learn something about Judith Call's whereabouts. The mystery surrounding the girl had intrigued me.
"I have a ravenous appetite," she said, without the slightest hesitation. "You'll be sorry, Mr. Morgan."-I waited while she went into the bedroom and dressed.
She called out to me once, telling me to help myself to the rye, but I didn't bother with another drink. I had picked up a photo album from one of the end tables and I was looking at that. There were several pictures of Elsa in a bathing suit, a couple of good commercial shots of her legs which, incidentally, were mighty attractive, and two or three of her modeling a popular-priced bra. I happened to be looking at one of the photos of her in a peek-a-boo strapless bra when she came out.
"I never wear one myself," she said matter-of-factly. "Rut that doesn't mean to say that the day won't come when I'll need an assist."
From the appearance of her figure under the sheer black dress that time was a long way off. Her breasts were wide apart and slightly uptilted, their generous cones thrusting boldly outward. The dress was tight around her narrow belly but it flowed out in soft waves over her rounded hips. She had applied a very dark lipstick to her mouth, not too much, and she had added some color to her cheeks. Her hair, now that the curlers had been removed, fell down across her shoulders, framing her face in a blonde semi-circle of loveliness. She was, I was forced to admit, an extremely attractive and desirable woman.
"You ought to do well as a model," I observed. "You have all of the necessary equipment."
"Now, now, Mr. Morgan," she cautioned laughingly. "Don't let your emotions get the best of you."
We left the apartment and while we were on our way out to the street we decided it would be much simpler if she called me Bill and I called her Elsa. It's funny, but you always get around to that sooner or later.
There was a little place on Fourth Avenue, near the Mall, where I went frequently. It was an unpretentious restaurant specializing in Italian food, but it had a cozy atmosphere and one which I felt would meet all the requirements of the occasion. Elsa accepted my suggestion quickly and when we finally caught a cab I told the driver to take us over to Ruby's.
Dinner was good and although I had tussled with a steak only a few hours before I managed to consume most of the spaghetti. Elsa ordered a fillet, medium, and she said it was by far the best she had had in a long time. During dinner we consumed a bottle of Italian wine, both enjoying the deep, rich flavor age had given it.
"You're a funny guy," she said finally. "You walk into my apartment, ask a lot of questions about another girl and then take me to dinner. What's your angle, Bill?"
I grinned. "Who knows? I told you I'm a writer. Maybe that explains it."
"Maybe it does," she agreed. "And I'm a model. Perhaps that tells a little bit about me, too."
She was beginning to feel the effects of the wine and when she started talking about her work I didn't interrupt. She worked for one of the agencies in the mid-town section. Not a large agency, but one with several connections in the garment industry. Most of the work was in stockings, bras, girdles and things like that. Sometimes she got an assignment to work one of the showrooms, demonstrating the latest in feminine unmentionables to out-of-town buyers.
"A lot of the girls won't do it," she said. "Of course every firm has its rules but you can't keep the hands of some of those buyers off you. It isn't enough that they see a bra at a distance of six inches. They want to feel of it, too. And they want to hang on."
Once in a while, she said, she was asked to help entertain some of the buyers and, frequently, a buyer would insist upon additional favors before he would consent to placing an order.
"I don't know why I'm telling you all this, Bill." The wine had long since disappeared and we were drinking rye and soda. Her eyes were quite dull by this time and she gave every indication of having difficulty focusing them on my face. "But I kind of like you. I don't know why. But I do."
"And I think you're all right, too, Elsa."-I don't like to lie to people. I hadn't been brought up that way and I'd never accomplished very much whenever I'd tried it. But this situation with Elsa was different. I either went along with her in everything she did and said or I left her alone. There wasn't, as far as I could see, any other choice.
"We get a bonus if we help get an order," she said. She thought about that for a moment and her mouth twisted at the corners. "Well, it's a living. What more can anybody expect?"
Quite often, she said, she went to parties. Not that she always enjoyed them but it was one way, of meeting different people in the trade, part of the price that you had to pay if you wanted to stay in the rat race. The week before, on Wednesday, she had been to one and she had met a man looking for a new face, someone who might be able to pose for still shots. She couldn't remember his name or his address or anything about him but she'd taken his card and she'd given it to Judith Call.
"Hell," Elsa said tiredly. "I didn't know everybody was going to get excited about it. She wanted a job, any kind of a job, and I found her one. What's wrong with that?"
"Nothing, I guess."
"You acted like there was when you came barging in on me. You acted like I should know all about her. God, Bill, this is a big city. You make one left turn when you should go right arid you wind up a long way off."
In a way, she was expressing my feelings and worries. Judith was a small-town girl accustomed to small-town living. And she was bitter. It was a combination which, if she failed to be prudent, could get her into much trouble. One left turn....
"Does Judith have your telephone number?"
Elsa regarded me without interest for a moment. I noticed that she was breathing very heavily, her pointed breasts rising and falling beneath the dress. Her hands, as they reached out and touched mine, were warm and damp.
"You worry too damn much," she told me. "Of course, she has my number." Her hands circled my fingers, squeezing them. "Let's get out of here, Bill. God, I can't stay in the same place hour after hour!"
I paid the check and when we got outside I asked her where she wanted to go.
"My apartment," she said, clinging to my arm. "Can you think of a better place?"
She sat very close to me in the cab, her thigh against mine, the deep musk smell of her perfume all around us. It occurred to me, rather suddenly, that in many ways Elsa was like Judith Call. She was bitter, too, but it was a different kind of bitterness. She found relief in taking from the world what she wanted when she wanted it. At the moment, it seemed, she wanted me. Or, perhaps any man would have been acceptable. Any man who could give her the feeling of being wanted, of being needed.
"You can kiss me, Bill."
I kissed her, not because I wanted to kiss her but because, at the moment, it was the thing to do.
Her lips were warm and parted and soft. Somewhat surprised, I found myself enjoying the kiss, holding it long after she had ceased to respond.
"Bill," she whispered. "Let's wait. Not here in the cab."
"And not if you don't want to."
"But I do. You know I do."
It had been a long time since Sandy. I gripped Elsa's hand.
The cab stopped in front of the apartment and I paid the driver. As we went in through the darkened entrance she leaned against me, her one arm partially circling my waist. Upon reaching her door she emitted a tiny sigh, pulled my head down with both of her hands and kissed me eagerly on the mouth. Then she pressed the key into my hand and smiled.
"A writer needs experience," she said impudently. "Let's live it up a little bit."
Once we were inside the apartment there were no further preliminaries. She removed her coat, dropped it across the back of the nearest chair and motioned for me to follow her into the bedroom.
I knew, from the way she stood in the middle of the bedroom and casually lifted the dress over her head, that this was old stuff with her. I wondered, as I shrugged out of my coat, how much bonus she picked up each week entertaining buyers. I decided, a few minutes later, that it was undoubtedly a considerable amount. She was violently clever in bed.
Every curve of her soft and willing body, every generous tremor which passed through it, seemed dedicated to delivering complete and lasting pleasure. Every demanding kiss, every moan and practiced movement, was designed to incite an overwhelming desire.
It was almost morning before I left her apartment.
I still did not know what had happened to Judith Call.
But I now knew where a woman lived.
A woman who cried because no one man would ever be enough.
CHAPTER FOUR
During the following week I was tied up with a couple of rush-rush articles for Car Skill and I gave very little thought to either Judith Call or the project which I had undertaken for the Reverend Doctor Call. On Thursday, however, I delivered the completed articles to the Central Building and, not unexpectedly, Sam Terry insisted that I buy lunch. Sam frequently did this whenever he was forced to present me with a check. I guess it was sort of a game with him.
"That church thing wasn't bad at all," he admitted while we were lingering over our coffee. "Unusual. But you ought to get a different camera, Bill. Honestly. Those pics aren't up to standard."
Sam, who was in his forties and a family man, was one of those amateur photographers who thought that every shot had to be made with a two-hundred-dollar outfit. Once, after he'd given me a particularly hard time, I told him that I'd borrowed a Speed Graphic from a friend. He had been enthusiastic over the results. I hadn't bothered to explain that I had used the Brownie anyway.
"Sam," I said seriously, "just what do you know about dirty pictures?"
"That's easy. I know I like some of them."
"Why?"
He sipped his coffee and smiled at me. "Who knows? Why get yourself all worked up about it?"
I told him, briefly, about my agreement to work with Dr. Call on the expose. I also outlined what I had done so far, omitting, of course, the somewhat pleasant hours I had spent in Elsa Lang's apartment.
"Well, you've got to do something for a hundred and fifty a week," Sam observed dryly. "That's for sure."
"Agreed."
"Locating the minister's daughter won't account for much of it."
I had phoned Elsa almost every evening but she hadn't heard from Judith. Gracefully, I had declined another dinner date, saying that I was tied up with a lot of writing. I wondered if I'd try to think of an excuse the next time I spoke with her.
"The police might be a good bet," Sam suggested. "And the Morning Star-they ran some articles on the subject a while ago. Why don't you check with them?"
"I thought I would. I only wondered if you might know of someone connected with the operation."
"Me?" Sam laughed. "Hell, I just look at the pictures. I don't buy them and I don't know who sells them."
We spent another half an hour discussing future articles for Car Skill. When we parted at the corner of Fifth and Main I hailed a cab and asked the driver to take me down to City Hall.
It was almost three before I got in to see the chief of the vice squad, a middle-aged lieutenant by the name of Murray. He was Irish and red-headed and seemed inclined to brush me off.
"Sure, there are dirty pictures around the city," he admitted. "And prostitutes. A little bit of both pass through here everyday."
"But where do the pictures come from?"
He looked at me across the top of the wide desk, his blue eyes sober and quite obviously impatient.
"If we knew," he said, "there wouldn't be any." I received little information from the lieutenant. The only actual arrest based on the sale of indecent pictures had taken place during the previous April, near one of the schools. The peddler, a man in his early fifties, had been given a sixty-day suspended sentence and, as far as the lieutenant knew, had departed from the city shortly thereafter. As for the store owners who handled the photos, no arrests had been made. A few had been warned and a considerable number of the pictures had been seized and destroyed. But nothing else had been done. Nothing.
"We've got more important things to keep us busy," the lieutenant explained. "Take last night, for instance. There was a rape out in the East End section. A young nurse, she's coming home from work, and this guy jumps her not a block away from one of our sub-stations. That's the kind of thing we have to work on, Mr. Morgan. The pictures may be wrong and illegal, sure, but we have to take care of worst things first."
"It's a known fact that many rapes and crimes of passion are caused by this type of material," I said. "Psychologists tell us that if we can eliminate the idea we can, in many cases, avoid the crime."
The lieutenant, thoroughly unimpressed, swung around in his chair and flipped a button on the intercom.
"Send Swingle up here. He's supposed to run some flowers up to the commissioner's house."
"Thanks," I said, going to the door. "Thanks a hell of a lot for nothing, Lieutenant."
Apparently he failed to hear me and I went out into the hall, my guts churning. No wonder Dr. Call and his associates felt there was a need for a private investigation of the dirty-picture racket. At least one supposedly responsible police official appeared to be quite unconcerned about it.
On the other hand, the attitude which greeted me at the editorial offices of the Morning Star was vastly different. The editor was polite and, once aware of the purpose of my visit, he promptly introduced me to the reporter who had originally worked on the story.
The reporter's name was George Castle. He was a nervous young man in his early thirties and while I talked to him he alternately smoked and drank from a container of cold coffee.
"You're welcome to the job," he told me. "And I think you should know that you ought to be prepared to collect some lumps on your skull. In fact, if you don't have a will it might be a good idea to sit down and write one out. You'll find that some of these people are willing to play pretty rough, Mr. Morgan."
His account was most enlightening. His paper, encouraged by numerous complaints received from school teachers and parents, had entered into the series with the thought of revealing the whole gruesome story. After three installments the series had been dropped.
"As you know," Castle said, lighting another cigarette, "a newspaper must rely upon its distributor to maintain circulation. After the first chapter of our 'Vice for Sale' appeared we took a twenty percent boost in newsstand sales. However, on the third day our distributor told us that he would no longer continue to handle our paper if we were determined to see the series through to the bitter end. The distributor claimed that we were inviting libel action, since we had charged the police and other public officials with gross negligence, and the distributor felt he also could be held accountable. You know, of course, what happened. We stopped the series and everybody-that is, everybody who might have been involved-was happy about it."
"Perhaps the distributor had been threatened."
"I don't know, Mr. Morgan. All I know is that after breaking ground we were forced to-put away our shovels."
Castle asserted that he had assembled little concrete information about the operation. His, articles had been general in scope, outlining the obscene material available in various outlets, and suggesting quite pointedly that the police should talce some positive action. He had hoped, through the articles, to encourage someone in the know to step forward and present him with additional facts. This, he said, had not happened.
"There is no doubt," he told me, "but what some of the model agencies are involved. Pretty girls are needed for this sort of thing and that's about the only source of supply. Probably some of the movie hopefuls are used in the two-reelers. I don't know. But I know that many of the more lurid movies are imported from the port of Basra, on the Persian Gulf. Once the master film reaches this country there are hundreds of prints made of it. A five thousand dollar investment may, I understand, yield as much as two hundred thousand. It is a big business, Mr. Morgan. Very, very big."
I talked with Castle until long after five but I was unable to learn much of anything further. He continued to impress upon me that the stakes in this type of enterprise were tremendous and that the risk for the one who attempted to expose it only slightly less. I finally departed from the offices of the Morning Star feeling something like a condemned man who had just been sentenced to the chair for a crime he did not commit.
Upon returning to my apartment I found a considerable amount of mail awaiting me. Some of it, I am forced to admit, was rather interesting.
All of the replies were either from within the city or from nearby sections of the east coast, there not having been sufficient time for the west coast outlets to have responded. I noted that all had been sent to me first class mail which, of course, eliminated the possible chance of them being opened for postal inspection. I scanned the material carefully, especially the stuff which had been mailed in the city, but any clues as to the senders were, I might say, conspicuous by their absence. In nearly all instances the return addresses were either general delivery or post office box numbers. Only two boasted a definite street number and these I recognized as having originated from well-known mailing centers in the downtown region. Many of the envelopes, as well as contents, contained no return addresses whatsoever. These, as you might suspect, were from sources dealing in naked pictures of the female form. All of the photos had been retbuched and I am quite sure that none of them could have been termed definitely obscene in the legal sense of the word. One could assume them to be, as advertised, practical "art studies."
The gimmick offers which were enclosed with many of the returns were of the most interest to me. One firm promised to have a lovely model write to me, personally, and "in her own handwriting," if I would return the pink slip, indicating the type of correspondent desired. A dollar, it was pointed out, was all that was needed to start a chain of events which would "let us show you everything we've got!" A rather hastily printed brochure called my attention to the fact that Janie posed for intimate photos and films; Paulette was long-legged and balloon-curved in the right places; Helen was torrid, her body as lovely as a "flawless work of art"; and, of course, I mustn't overlook Cleo, "a honey-blonde with exotically slanted eyes who thought up all her own poses all by herself." A handwritten letter which was signed "Ella" and which had been reproduced by photo-offset promised that all girls in the "club" were "sexsational calendar girl pin-ups" and that I would be pleased with the pictures which they had made "in secret." This offer came from the Garden State Pen Pals Club and it gave me a choice of purchasing still shots at ten for three dollars or, if I wished, either 8mm or 16mm reels with or without sound. The proposal suggested that I might experience more enjoyment if I went the whole distance and acquired the movies complete with sound.
Another company, "Classic Arts," claimed it was only interested in selling me a viewer which would make my drawing lessons come easier and give them "the pulse of life." Of course, if I found myself in need of adequate subject material the company would be delighted to assist me in my work and I might, for a rather substantial sum, order one of the many "art study" sets of female anatomy which were available. The several samples enclosed for my information were of chic young girls with big busts, tiny waists and rounded hips.
I noted that one firm, which specialized in adult movies, presented a rather provocative sounding list of titles. There was, for instance, "The Buxom Golfer ... See what happens when this busty gal in a scant costume learns to play golf ... Wow!" Another likely appearing number was the "Shawl Boogie," which informed me that I shouldn't miss the "roaring action of this peek-a-boo shawl as Busty goes through this teaser and busts through the shawl." Still another, "A Day With Donnie Dilson," suggested that I might want to spend a full day with a model, "from the time luscious Donnie tumbles out of bed in the morning until she takes her tummy-flattening exercises late in the evening." This firm, however, had not gotten itself into a rut by offering only one type of entertainment. There were several books available, all of them illustrated, which revealed how kids were trapped into a sin syndicate, how a madam worked and thought and the "heart-breaking" story of a teenager who had become a "B" girl. The books were a bargain, it said, at only one dollar each. Another book, which cost five dollars, contained twenty-five uncensored letters describing the experience of being spanked. The blurb which served as a plug for the spanking book raised the age-old question about whether spanking was a matter of discipline or was it, in reality, a means of self-satisfaction.
The claims for the products of one firm proved to be of little interest to me since I had not, as far as I knew, "lost my vigor."
With the exception of the photos I placed all of the material in a brown manila envelope and stored it away in the closet on the top shelf. I then sat down and counted the number of photos which I had received. There were ninety-six. I separated these into piles of eight and obtained a dozen cellophane sandwich-bags from the kitchen. After I had placed the photos in the bags I closed the flaps with scotch tape and filed the entire collection in my coat pockets.
During the evening hours I called on several of the bookstores in the midtown area but, as I had imagined, many of the proprietors had long since departed for the day. Some of the better stores I failed to approach since I knew that their owners wouldn't be caught dead in the same block with one of my humble offerings. In one store, however, a small place off Darwin Circle, I managed to draw my first blood.
"They're lousy pictures," the grubby old man informed me. "But I'll take six packs at half a buck each. My own supplier must have got stuck in a door someplace."
I assured him I hoped to have something better the next time.
"Look," he said as he gave me three ones. "I don't know you and you don't know me. But I'll tell you one thing: you have to have the real stuff or you can't find a market. These pics are for kids. And kids don't have any money. I have to give my trade real spicy pictures or they aren't interested."
I explained that I was new in the business, that I was attempting to work up a route and I suggested, without evidencing too much interest, that I might be able to be of assistance to the person who had been servicing him.
"Well, I don't know," the old man said, doubtfully. "I think he works alone. And I don't see him very often. When I do, though, I'll mention it to him."
"Thanks a lot. I'll stop back in a week or so."
"Suit yourself."
I went out into the street. The mid-evening show crowd spilled out over the sidewalks. A million lights winked and blinked and a hundred different signs offered a hundred different products.
I felt depressed. This, I decided, was no way to get anywhere. I had to approach the problem from another direction. Or, at least, I had to try something else while I continued to work the stores.
I went into a quiet-looking restaurant and phoned Elsa at her apartment. No, she had not heard from Judith Call. She had my number and she'd let me know as soon as she did.
"Busy tonight?"
"Well-yes." Then, softly, "I'm sorry, Bill."
"How well do you know your boss?" I wanted to know, hiding my disappointment. "I mean, I was thinking about doing an article on a model agency-you know, how it's run, things like that-and I wondered if you might be able to pave the way for me with your people. It would be good publicity for them and about the cheapest advertising they ever had."
The wire hummed for a moment while she thought about it.
"Why, yes," she said at last. "I don't see why not."
"Fine. I'll call you tomorrow."
She said that would be all right, that I could phone her at the office, and we hung up.
I wondered, as I went outside, if anything would ever come of it. But I had to start somewhere; I had to do something. Perhaps this angle might furnish me with a lead. In any event, it might give me a clue as to where I could locate Judith Call. , Somehow, finding that girl had become very important.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Montana Model Agency was located in an old loft building on Fourth Street, close to the garment center and within easy walking distance of most of the important showrooms. Just why it was called the Montana agency, I'm not sure-certainly a more glamorous title could have been selected-but, perhaps, the fact that Andy Willis, the owner, hailed from Butte had something to do with it.
Andy Willis was a tall, rugged-looking man in his late forties and, when I first met him, seemed inclined to be brusque rather than friendly.
"Hell, nobody ever did an article on us before," he said. "I don't see why all the sudden interest. We aren't big."
I pointed out that, being a free-lance writer on the make for a dollar, I had developed the idea after meeting Elsa Lang. I went on to outline the possible good which could accrue to his agency as the result of any publicity I might be able to arrange. This seemed to satisfy him and although I cannot say that I had any particular liking for the man, it indicated to me that his operation, insofar as he knew, at least, was legitimate.
I had arrived at the agency shortly after ten on Monday morning and, after a considerable wait, had been ushered into Willis' office to the right of the main door. To be truthful about it, it wasn't much of an office, just a hastily constructed cubbyhole at one end of the loft. I had noted, while seated on the hard-back cane chair near the receptionist's desk, that a series of these tiny private rooms extended on both sides of a narrow hall nearly the full length of the loft. It was fully an hour following my entrance before Willis was able to give me his attention.
"You hit us at a bad time," he explained. "The spring styles are just coming up and we've got a pretty heavy schedule."
I assured him, for the third or fourth time, that I would not get in the way nor would I in any way interfere with the established routine of the agency.
"Pictures you won't have to bother with," he told me, rising from behind the small, cluttered desk. "We've got hundreds of snaps of our girls. You're welcome to any you want to use."
I thanked him but indicated that I was less concerned with photos than with the business side of the operation.
"We're slanting this toward the feminine reader," I said. "And, of course, most girls-that is, the young girls-want to know how they too might become models. What we hope to explain in this article is how a pretty young girl might go about becoming a model. You know, the things she should do-how she should plan-what she can reasonably expect in the way of success if she is lucky enough to make the grade."
Andy Willis smiled and lit a huge cigar.
"That's a big order," he told me. "Nobody really knows why one girl succeeds and another girl fails."
"Perhaps that should be my theme, then."
A tiny red-headed girl, appearing very chic in a purple dress and high-heeled purple shoes, came into the office, interrupting us. It was obvious that she was upset. She had worked the Lady From Paris show on Friday afternoon, she said, and she'd gotten into a fight with an aggressive buyer from Buffalo. The buyer, she said, was going to report her to the agency and she wanted Willis to hear her side of the story first.
"The lousy crumb," she stormed, ignoring my presence. "I don't sleep with anybody except myself."
Willis sighed and waved her complaint aside.
"Tell Mrs. Lord," he advised impatiently. "I have enough problems without getting mixed up in yours."
The redhead gave him a savage, helpless look and flounced out of the office.
"That's the trouble with the model business," he said unhappily. "You've got nothing but women and when you've got nothing but women you've got nothing but trouble."
We talked only a few moments longer. He asked me which magazine I worked for and I told him, for the second time, that I was a free-lance writer and that I sold to the highest bidder. He suggested that I might be able to get more information if I talked with Mrs. Lord, his personnel manager, rather than with him.
"She hires and assigns all of the girls," Andy Willis said. "As a matter-of-fact, this was her agency to start with and I only came into it a couple of years ago. She can give you most of the dope you'll need."
We left his office and I followed his broad shoulders down the narrow hall. He was tall, I noted, but I was a couple of inches taller.
"Each of these rooms is shared by a couple of girls," he said. "Nothing fancy, as you can see, but hardly any of our work is done here on the premises. An elaborate set-up isn't at all necessary."
Mrs. Lord-her first name was Gladys-proved to be a most absorbing bit of feminine pulchritude. She was, I guessed, in her mid-thirties but the way the soft wool suit clung to her body subtracted at least ten years from her age. Her hair was a rich golden hue, something like the color of ripened wheat, and it was gathered at the back of her neck in a large, tight bun. Her eyes were as blue as a mountain lake and her lips reminded you of crushed red cherries. She remained seated as we were introduced.
"I'll be with you in a moment, Mr. Morgan." Her glance shifted to Andy Willis and I thought that some of the warmth left them."Did you send Red to see me?"
He nodded. "She was bitching about something."
"I let her go."
"They liked her at Sally's place last week. Sally told me himself that she had nice color." His protest, if it were one, failed to register and he shrugged. "But who cares? There's more where she came from."
Gladys Lord waved me into a seat. I lit a cigarette and smoked thoughtfully while they discussed a showing at Tomorrows Fashions for Thursday afternoon. They argued, briefly, about a coat parade which had been held in August and for which the manufacturer still refused to remit payment. I was becoming bored with the whole thing when, quite abruptly, Willis was called to the phone and I found myself alone with Gladys Lord.
"Well," she announced with a smile, "I suppose I should be flattered to have a writer take an interest in me. But I'm not. Believe me, I'm not."
"I'm sorry you feel that way."
"It's a waste of time. Who cares about the Montana Model Agency?"
"Mr. Willis told me you had thirty girls working out of here. Somebody must care, Mrs. Lord."
She rose, still smiling, and dabbed at her mouth with a Kleenex.
"Perhaps you are right. Frankly I'll help you only because it won't take much effort. There isn't much for me to show you or much for you to know."
Cooperation, I decided as she led me to the rear of the loft, was not one of Gladys Lord's stronger points. She was in business for a buck and the rest of it could go to hell.
"We interview only twice a week," she explained as we entered a large room. "Our applicants are girls we sometimes locate ourselves, those who may be seeking to change from another agency, or simply young kids who think they have something."
Four girls, all of them exceptionally pretty, were seated on a wooden bench that extended along one wall, the full length of the room. On the opposite side four large windows, streaked with dirt and grime, permitted a minimum of light to filter through. To the right of the windows was a small stage, perhaps six by eight feet, and this was ringed by a battery of floodlights which, when Gladys Lord flipped them on, brought everything in the room into sudden sharp relief.
"Good morning, kids!" Her greeting was met with enthusiastic nods and hopeful smiles. "Are any of you experienced?"
Three of the girls, two blondes and a brunette, stood up. "In what?"
"Bras and underthings," said one.
"Coats and suits," said another.
"Dresses." The brunette's voice filled with pride. "I was with the Hemple Agency until Mr. Hemple died."
Gladys Lord told the three to be seated and then she addressed the fourth girl, a dark-haired, bosomy little thing in a tight gray dress.
"And you're not experienced?"
"No, but-"
"What makes you think you could become a model?"
"People say I have a nice figure." There was a challenge, a note of frantic optimism in the way she spoke. She stood up, slowly, her hands at her sides. "I think so, too."
Of course, I'm not in the model agency business and I don't know all of the fine points to look for in selecting a prospective model, but this girl had more than her share of several things which could excite a man's imagination.
"You know what we model here?"
"Yes. Dresses and things like that."
"Undergarments, too. Bras. Girdles. Panties. Do you think you would mind walking around in front of a lot of men and women dressed in only a bra and panties?"
There was the faintest glimmer of indecision in the girl's eyes before she answered.
"I wouldn't mind," she said. Then, adding hastily, "Not if they didn't touch me.".
I remembered some of the things Elsa had told me. A few of the buyers not only touched but they hung on. I felt sorry for this inexperienced young girl facing Gladys Lord. She had much to learn.
"Very well," Gladys said. "You can use the first room on the left. You'll find a bra and panties in there. Put them on and let's see how you stack up."
The girl, her eyes registering silent disapproval of my presence, walked slowly into the dressing room.
"We try all of them," she told me. "No matter who they are. You never know when you'll uncover a real doll."
The girl reappeared in a few moments, moving timidly into the room, her eyes on the floor.
"Get over there under the lights," Gladys ordered her.
She was even prettier in bra and panties than she had been in clothes. Her breasts, beneath the thin black lace of the brassiere, rose up proud and firm and when she threw her head back, her hair tumbled down over her shoulders. Her hips, both generous and obviously smooth and soft, melted gracefully into shapely thighs and legs.
"She's rather pretty," Gladys Lord admitted. "But she'd never make a bra model. The art is to focus attention on the product, not the wearer."
I wondered if she actually believed this or if she had said it merely for my benefit. I decided, after five minutes of watching her make the girl walk back and forth, bend forward, bend back, bend to the side-all of the instructions intended to demonstrate the physical possibilities of the girl's body-that she had tried to hand me a Trojan horse. I found little in my observations to indicate that she was interested in anything except the potential sex appeal of the girl. Her final decision, that she would start the girl at sixty per week, convinced me that I was correct in this. The girl had little, if any, poise or charm to go with her beauty; much training would be required before she could develop the assured air of a professional. I found myself considering the possibility that I had made a rather wise choice in deciding to delve into the affairs of the Montana Model Agency.
The other girls, with the exception of the one who had modeled dresses, were treated in a similar manner. Both blondes, it was apparent from their skills at revealing their bodies, possessed considerable experience at it. It was interesting to note that the starting salary for each was the same as it had been for the amateur. I never did have an opportunity to view the brunette; she rejected the whole affair as being too elementary and departed without saying a word.
"Now you can see how we work," Gladys Lord told me when we returned to her office. "At least, you know now that everybody has a chance."
I speculated, without voicing my doubts, as to the kind of a chance which the Montana Model Agency offered its youthful aspirants.
It was close to the lunch hour and Gladys Lord informed me that she always ate with Andy Willis, in his office, so that they could use the time to discuss business matters. I assumed that our interview was at an end and I turned to leave.
"If there is anything else I can help you with, Mr. Morgan, please feel free to call on me."
I nodded and thanked her for her time.
"I'll need a few photos," I said, "of some of your girls. And, naturally, I'll need releases so that I can use them."
"You can see Diana Sanderson about that. You'll find her in our file room. That's the third one down, on your right."
I thanked her again, assured her that I had most of the information I required and promised to send the agency a copy of the magazine as soon as the article was published. , Diana Sanderson was an extremely beautiful girl, not at all the kind of girl you would expect to find working as a file clerk in a model agency. True, she was somewhat on the plump side-not fat, you understand; just pleasingly ripe-and she had one of the most exquisite faces I had ever seen. It is difficult to adequately describe the rich, mellow qualities of her brown eyes; the spontaneous upward thrust of her moist red lips; or to honestly explain just why I felt her short brown hair, pulled back away from her ears, made her face look so small and pretty. It is enough, I assume, to relate that she startled me and that she, being a somewhat observant young woman, recognized my surprise. However, she merely smiled at my request for photos and turned to one of the metal files.
"We have thousands of pictures of pretty girls," she told me. "It hadn't ought to be difficult to locate something you can use."
While I leafed through several folios of photos she asked my name, what I did, and a dozen or so other questions which were, I felt, meant to be friendly. It occurred to me, as I completed my selections, that lunch with this girl, if it could be arranged, might be helpful. She accepted-gratefully, I thought-and a few minutes later we left the agency and descended to the street. "Let's go to Eddie's," she said.
I didn't know where Eddie's might be but I told her it was fine with me. It developed, however, that it was a small combination soda fountain and luncheonette around the corner on Third Avenue. We sat in a booth in the back. I followed her suggestion and ordered the tuna fish salad.
"You're so awfully pretty," I told her finally. "It seems hard to believe that you aren't a model."
She smiled and her glance lowered to a very full bosom that pushed out across the top of the table.
"I'm too-heavy."
"Rut you have a beautiful face. It would seem to me-"
"Let's talk about you, Mr. Morgan," she said, interrupting pleasantly. "That's why I accepted your invitation. So I could talk about you."
"Really." I tried some of the salad. It was very good. "I failed to realize, until you mentioned it, that I was so fascinating."
She had a nice laugh and I liked to hear it. It was a low musical laugh, but there was something sad about it, too.
"You say you're a writer. Is that true?"
"Yes. It's quite true."
"And you're writing a story about a model agency?"
"That's the general idea." I grinned. "Though, of course, I intended to question you, Miss Sanderson. That is why I asked you to lunch. Is there anything you could tell me that I don't already know?"
She inquired about what I had learned and I told her. It wasn't a great deal.
"You'll never get the true story about the Montana Agency," she said while we were having coffee. "No one ever will. I've been there two years and I don't know it. It wasn't the Montana Agency when I started, though. It wasn't until after Mr. Willis came into the business that it was called that."
"And what makes you think there is another story-other than the one I know?"
Her brown eyes regarded me with slow deliberation.
"Perhaps I can't trust you, Mr. Morgan."
"And perhaps I can't trust you," I said.
She lifted her cup very slowly, looking at me across the brim.
"I have to trust someone." It sounded more like a prayer than a statement of need. "You seem honest. I hope that you are."
Diana's story wasn't, I'm sure, at all unusual, except that it concerned her sister, Blanche, and that Blanche had, as far as could be determined,, disappeared from the realm of the living.
Blanche and her sister Diana, whose real name was Stella Jahlowski, had been born and raised in Pine Island, New York, in the heart of the onion-growing country. Both had been blessed with traditional Polish beauty and Blanche, shortly after her graduation from high school, had left home to go to the city and become a model. She had written only three letters, all of these to Diana, and in one, the second one, she had mentioned the name of Gladys Lord. That had been more than three years before and no one had heard from Blanche since that time.
"I thought I might find her if I got a job with Miss Lord," Diana confided bitterly. "But I've been with her going on two years now and I haven't found a trace, not a hint. Until a couple of months ago I worked as a secretary, typing letters and things like that, and when she put me in the filing room I thought I really had my chance. But I've been through every picture, every folder, and I haven't found a thing."
"Perhaps there is another Gladys Lord," I said.
"Yes. I thought of that, but-oh, I don't know, Mr. Morgan. It all seemed so hopeless until-well, I had this thought. Some of the girls who used to work for the agency-girls who were there when I first started but who aren't there any more-there isn't anything in any of the files about them, either. It's almost as though they hadn't-existed."
"That seems strange," I admitted.
"And it's why I think I'll some day locate my sister, Mr. Morgan." Her big eyes were intent on my face. "There are eight girls that I know of, not counting Blanche. I call them-and this may sound silly to you-but I call them the Legion of the Lost."
I felt a long, electrifying shudder pass up my spine. If there was any truth to what she told me and if the implications were as grave as I thought they might be, then she had chosen a quite descriptive name for the girls in question.
After lunch we walked together to the corner and stood there talking for a few moments. She asked me for my phone number and I wrote it down for her on a small piece of paper.
"I'll call you if I find out anything, Mr. Morgan. Honestly I will."
I told her to be careful, that her suspicions might be unfounded; and then I said goodbye. She waved to me as I got into a cab and then it began rolling uptown. I wondered, without any real reason for doing so, whether or not I'd ever see her again.
CHAPTER SIX
Although the letter I received from Dr. Call was somewhat critical-what, actually, had I accomplished so far?-there was a check for one hundred fifty dollars enclosed. I folded the check, placing it in my wallet, and severely chastised myself for not having sent along a bill for my expenses to date.
My reply to the good Reverend required more than two pages of single-line typing and consumed an hour of my time. I outlined, in detail, my actions to date and related, in the most optimistic terms possible, that I had every reason to believe I would be able to obtain the address of his daughter in the very near future. Upon completion of the letter, I attempted to fashion a bill for the amounts of money I had spent on the photos and books but, unable to present the matter satisfactorily in writing, I finally gave it up and mailed the letter from the corner, special delivery.
I had by this time accumulated a rather imposing selection of questionable photographs and books. In fact, my inventory had now increased to a point where I found it necessary to carry a briefcase. Many of the photos I had received from the western outlets were duplicates of those I had purchased in the east, lending further credibility to my suspicions that the supplies originated from one central source. The association which I had managed to establish with several book stores was friendly, if not profitable, and I had, I felt, successfully implanted the thought in the minds of most of the store owners that I was in need of more appealing supplies.
As soon as I had mailed the letter to the Reverend I hailed a cab and asked to be taken to Darwin Circle. I reflected, during the trip downtown, that it would be far more convenient for me if I could get my forty-nine Ford into operation. This, however, remained for the distant future since the convertible was in a custom shop in Cannonsville and had been, for more than six weeks, in the process of complete engine and body modifications. I had made arrangements with the proprietor, an extremely competent hot-rod enthusiast, to take photos of every phase of the work. By the time the job was finished I would not only have a beautifully distinctive car but also material for a series of articles which would more than compensate for the expenses incurred.
I left the cab at Darwin Circle and walked crosstown toward the tiny store where I had made my first sale. The briefcase, which was quite heavy, banged unpleasantly against my knee.
The store, fortunately, was deserted and I was able to get right down to business with my client.
"Hell," he said, following a casual inspection of my offerings. "You've got nothing here that I want. This stuff is old hat."
"Well, at least it's something to sell," I said defensively. "If your own man doesn't come around you haven't got anything, anyway."
As I have said before, he was a grubby little fellow. The hand he brought forth from beneath the wooden counter resembled the hand of an auto mechanic after installing a new transmission.
"This is what you need, pal," he said. He broke open the cellophane bag and placed several photos before me. "Believe me, you're just an amateur without them."
There were eight pictures and the packet's price, I noted, was three dollars. The photos were in color and the reproductions were of good quality. All of the shots were of the same girl, taken against an outdoor background.
"Great," I admitted. "Just great!" I pushed the pictures aside and dug into my briefcase again. "Now, here are a couple of books that might hit your fancy. The first one-this one-is pretty well illustrated. It deals with a guy who has a dream about a pretty girl and-"
But he wasn't even mildly impressed. He'd stocked the book some months ago, and his customers would not buy the same thing twice. The current rage, of which he showed me a copy, was sixty-four pages in length and incorporated more than twenty erotic photos. The contents of the book, I might add, made me want to go out to the sidewalk, lie down in some desolate spot and heave my guts into the gutter.
"Five bucks," he told me. "And they go like crazy."
I shrugged and closed my briefcase.
"Well, I've had it." I said. "I can't do business if I can't get a hook-up. I wish you'd mentioned me to your friend when he was here."
"I did."
I casually examined the books on the shelves above his head. Some of them were good titles. "And what did he say?"
"He said to call him the next time you came in. If you want me to, I'll give him a ring and see what he says."
I felt elation building up inside of me, though I tried not to show it. Perhaps, at last, I might be getting somewhere.
"Please do," I said.
He went to the rear of the store, behind a huge rack of books, and I waited impatiently near the door. In a few moments the old man returned.
"Do you know where Sibyl's Cafeteria is on Parsons Boulevard?"
I told him I didn't but that I could find it easily enough.
"Hell be sitting at one of the tables near the back of the place.-Just past the door that goes down to the Johns, he said. Look for a man sitting alone with a silver-colored box on the table in front of him. Just go over and sit down and tell him that Harry sent you. All right?"
"Sure," I said, opening the door. "Fine. And thanks-Harry."
Parsons Boulevard wasn't quite as exclusive as the name might imply. It was located near the waterfront, not far from the fruit and vegetable docks. The names on the huge trailer trucks which were parked in the shadows of darkened buildings indicated far-away home bases such as Memphis and Mobile and Sarasota. A few warehouse hands, mostly colored, roamed narrow streets that were lined with closely arranged piles of boxes, crates and bags of outgoing merchandise.
Sibyl's Cafeteria was located on the corner of Percy and Chain Streets and not, as I had been told, on the Boulevard itself.-
"Watch yourself around here," the cab driver told me as I got out. "It's a rough neighborhood."
I don't know why it was called a cafeteria, unless it was to comply with some minor provision of the alcoholic beverage law. As I entered, I noticed that the interior Was mostly all bar, a horseshoe type affair that, at the moment, accommodated a couple of dozen men. Four girls, quite young, worked behind the bar. Their uniforms, pink and white, were identical: cut low in front and tight-fitting.
I saw the man with the silver box right away.
"Harry sent me," I said as I pulled out a chair and sat down. "I guess you know Harry."
The man at the table was rather large and dark-complexioned. A long, irregular scar swept down the right side of his face and disappeared beneath his chin. He stared at me for several moments, his dark eyes steady and unblinking.
"Wanta buy a book?" he inquired casually? lifting the top away from the silver box. "Best damned book in the world."
I looked at the book and felt a sense of shock. It was a beautiful white Bible.
"You can't go very wrong with something like that," I acknowledged. "That's for sure."
One of the girls from the bar approached our table but my companion told her to go to hell, that we didn't want anything to drink and that she should leave us alone.
"A cheap hustler," he said. His glance, dark and hard, lingered momentarily upon her retreating hips. "The whole bunch. They'd fall on their backs for any one of those guys who'd buy them a glass of wine."
I placed my briefcase on the floor and lit a cigarette. I wondered, idly, if any of the girls behind the bar had posed for some of the pictures. I decided, almost as quickly, that if they had it had been some time ago. The way they acted, leaning across the bar, letting the men fool with them, was evidence that they had long since passed the point of selling merely views of their bodies.
"Harry tells me that you're starting out on your own. How come?"
I leaned forward, my elbows on the table.
"It looks like a good chance to make a dollar," I replied. "Easier than trying to write for a living."
"You a writer?"
"Of sorts. But I don't make much money at it. This kind of thing seems to be all the go now. I thought I might, later, be able to work into the books. You know, do some of my own."
It ain't easy." He looked at the bar, as one of the girls giggled, and then back at me. "You have to have a printer who'll work with you. And you have to get distribution. It ain't easy."
"That's why I wanted Harry to speak to you about me. I thought we might be able to work together."
He seemed to consider that with some seriousness.
"Maybe," he admitted. "But there's some risk in it. You know that, don't you?"
"Yes, I'm aware of that."
"Fancy talker, ain't you?"
"Not intentionally. I guess it comes from my writing."
"You'd have to work on forty percent. I couldn't afford to give you more."
"That would be all right. This way, with the stuff I'm peddling, I make hardly anything."
We discussed my suggestion at length but I was able to gain very little information from him. I would be working on my own, he said, and in the event of any trouble he was not to become implicated in any way. It occurred to me then that I still didn't know his name and when I inquired about it he simply shrugged it off and said that it didn't matter. He eventually suggested that I accompany him to an address on Mercer Drive where I would be able to view a wide variety of material he had available.
Unfortunately, I never had an opportunity to visit the place on Mercer Drive if, indeed, there actually was one. In fact, after we went out into the street we had barely walked more than a third of the way along the block before I felt a terrible pain, accompanied by a roaring, hurtling blackness that sent me plunging forward into a pile of banana crates.
"A do-gooder," a faint voice said from a distance. "A lousy damn do-gooder."
Something else struck me on the head, this time higher up, and the blackness became thicker as a feeling of helpless nausea and blind terror swept through me.
When I came to, I was in a car. The car was bumping along over uneven pavement, tires thudding underneath. I shook my head and tried to sit up.
"Well, he's going to live," somebody said.
It was a cop. There were two cops in the car. One in front, driving, and the other in back with me.
"Christ," I said. I put my hand to my head. There was a lump on top, the size of a small lemon. "How'd I get here?"
"We picked you up," the one beside me said.
"Thanks." I found the package of Winstons in my coat pocket but changed my mind about lighting one. "I guess I feel pretty good,"
"I told them. "I'll get out anywhere you want to stop."
The cop who was driving turned his head part way around and laughed.
"You hear him, Oscar? He wants me to stop so we should let him out. How funny can a guy get, anyway?"
Nothing that I told them about myself, who I was or what I had been trying to do, impressed them in the least.
"Save it for the magistrate," advised the cop who was driving.
But I didn't have any better luck with the magistrate who was sitting in night court. The briefcase was mine, wasn't it? The pictures belonged to me, didn't they? Well, then, what could I expect?
"I ought to throw you in the can for sixty days," the magistrate told me. He glanced at one of the cops, the big fellow who had sat beside me on the way uptown. "He was trying to push his trash on some kids, wasn't he?"
"A fellow called up and said so. Somebody must've laid him out before we got there. He was all tangled up in a lot of bananas."
"Look," I protested. Several people stood around the chambers, gawking at me. They made me nervous. "I can tell you what happened. I had an appointment with this man downtown and-"
"What man?"
"I don't know his name." It sounded ridiculous. "All I know is-"
"Fifty bucks or sixty days," the magistrate informed me. "Take your pick."
I told him I would take the fifty dollars. There was no point in arguing the matter further. I had been neatly framed and I might as well accept it.
"I'll have to give you a check," I told him.
"Cash."
"I'll have to phone out for it."
"Go ahead. Use the one at the end of the hall."
I tried calling Sam Terry first but his wife said he had gone out to a meeting and she didn't know when to expect him. I thought of several other people I knew quite well-a doctor, a lawyer and an engineer who lived in my apartment building-but I rejected the idea of dragging them out at ten o'clock at night on such an errand. Finally, and in a moment of sheer desperation, I dialed Elsa Lang's number. Luckily she was at home and, while she did not have the money in the apartment, she could cash a check for fifty dollars and bring it down in a few minutes. She asked me what kind of trouble I'd gotten myself into but I told her that the matter was urgent and that I would explain when I saw her.
While I was waiting for Elsa, a plainclothes detective asked me a number of questions about myself, where I lived and things of that sort. He seemed reluctant to believe anything I told him and I, therefore, confined my replies to words of one syllable.
"I'd get out of town," he told me at last. "There's no place around here for you, Morgan."
Elsa arrived with the money a few minutes after he had completed his interrogation and it wasn't long before I was free to depart. My request, however, for the return of my briefcaseless the contents, of course-was promptly refused.
"How can they do a thing like that?" Elsa demanded, as we reached the sidewalk.
"I don't know. But they did."
We caught a cab and on the way over to her apartment she asked me why I had been arrested and all about it. I told her that I had been delivering some risque material for a disabled friend and that I had, during the trip, suffered an accident. My arrest, I explained, had been purely a matter of bad luck.
"Your friend ought to pay you for your trouble," she said.
"Maybe he will."
I don't know why I didn't confide in her. Perhaps it was because she had made arrangements for me to visit the model agency where she worked and I didn't want her to think that she had betrayed them in any way. I didn't believe there could have been any other reason. From the outset, she had appeared to be on the level with me.
"It's funny about Judith Call," I said, switching the subject. "You'd have thought she'd have called you by this time."
Elsa said that she would have thought so, too; but the girl hadn't and what could we do about that?
"Mr. Willis is giving a party Friday night," she said. "At the Oxford Hotel. I think I could arrange for you to go if you'd care to, Bill. The man who spoke to me about Judith might be there."
I told her I'd be happy if she could and, magnanimously, I felt like crushing her in my arms and kissing her bright red lips. She was, I told myself, in spite of all of her faults, a pretty good girl. I considered, as I told the cab driver to halt in front of a liquor store while I ran in and got a bottle, just what Sandy's attitude might be if she were alive and she knew I had been arrested for possessing indecent photos or that I was contemplating a few frolicsome moments with a girl who was willing to sell her body for money. There wasn't, I was forced to admit, much room for doubt about what she would have either said or thought.
My experience this time was considerably different from the first. To begin with, neither one of us had been drinking. And, secondly, we had, to a slight degree, come to know each other.
"It seems good to want a man just because he's a man," she confided, her lips moving against my mouth. "Unless you're a woman, you can't imagine the difference."
Her eyes completely unashamed.
"Am I pretty, Bill?"
For a reply, I seized her in my arms. Her warm body melted against mine, sending the fire of her flesh deep down into my belly. My mouth found her lips, crushing and bruising them. A long, shuddering moan escaped her....
Later, I fell asleep in her arms.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WE ARRIVED at the party shortly after eight o'clock. This was rather late, however, for the thing had been under way since before two and almost everybody was having a pretty gay ball of it by the time we got there.
Elsa, who knew most of the people, introduced me around. There were several prosperous-appearing manufacturers, a diamond-studded woman who controlled a popular brand lipstick, a few fashion designers and a radio disc jockey whose evening programs Sandy and I had been in the habit of listening to during her long illness. And, of course, there were girls. Lots of girls, all of them pretty, all of them alternately drinking and laughing as the situation might require.
"It just goes on and on until everybody passes out," Elsa told me.
The affair was in a five-room suite on the third floor of the Oxford Hotel. The Oxford, I might point out, is strictly upper bracket sleeping grounds and five rooms on any one of the floors would cost at least two hundred dollars a day. I asked Elsa if our host, Andy Willis, lived in the hotel.
"Oh, no," she assured me. "This is just a front."
Everything, I later decided, was a front. No one was being honest in either their conversations or their actions. The men discussed vague deals that "run way up into the thousands," while the girls criticized Dior for his negative approach to the bustline. It was all, to my way of thinking, quite boring. The buyers and manufacturers present were, in reality, only interested in the girls and what they could get from them. And the girls, aware of this, were playing it very coy, hoping, I assumed, that the eventual rewards for their favors would mount in proportion to their resistance.
Hardly anybody paid any attention to me. Andy Willis, who was quite drunk, shook my hand and, I thought, failed to recognize me. And Gladys Lord merely shrugged my presence aside, as though I were nothing more than a bellhop who had gotten off at the wrong floor. While, to be sure, this attitude was not at all flattering it had, from my point of view, certain advantages. No one seemed to care much about who I was or why I had put in an appearance. At least, I felt quite certain, I would not end this evening with a lump on my skull and an embarrassing trip to night court.
"Have you had a look at those Mother Nature bras, Harriet? God, but they're something! You pump air into the cups and away you go-straight up."
"Dior simply doesn't have it any more, darling. Everybody knows that."
"No, I certainly don't need to go on a diet, Mabel. It's this horrible dress. You wouldn't think they'd...."
"I'll tell you, Charley. Frankly, I'll say it. You put anything on a rack for seven ninety-eight and it'll go. What can they expect for a lousy...."
"You're kidding me, doll. Nobody ever hedges with old Morton Seeley. Why, when I fasten my eyes on something I like...." ' Bantering, idle, unnecessary words. Words that were completely empty.
"Hell," I said to Elsa, about nine-thirty. "What am I hanging around here for, anyway?"
Seyeral men had displayed more than a passing interest in Elsa's obvious charms and, while the probable result was annoying to me, I saw no reason for further jeopardizing her position with the agency. She, on the other hand, was quite insistent that I remain.
"I've just recently found out that I can live on seventy-five a week," she confided between cocktails. "Why should I keep on selling my soul for something that I can do without?"
It was a good question and one which had, off and on, bothered me. I wasn't, I was quite positive, in love with Elsa. After Sandy, I don't believe that love for Elsa's type would have been at all possible I enjoyed her company. And, I must admit, I also enjoyed the charms of her body which she gave to me so freely. Rut that was as far as it went. There wasn't anything more.
At a few minutes before ten he came in. Elsa and I were at the portable bar, having a drink with a buyer from St. Louis, when Elsa suddenly took me by one arm and pulled me aside.
"There he is, Bill. The one in the dark gray suit."
He was of medium height and he had a rather conspicuous red-cheeked, schoolboy-appearing face. I noticed that his hair was black and wavy and that his shoulders, although padded, seemed extremely narrow.
"When you get a chance," I said to Elsa, "ask him if he knows where you can locate Judith."
"All right, Bill." Her eyes were questioning. "But you could ask him yourself."
"No," I said. "Just see what he says."
I remained at the bar, drinking and talking with the buyer from St. Louis. I found him to be a tiresome individual and I was more than pleased when he switched his attention to a tall, leggy blonde in a yellow dress.
"He says he hasn't heard from her," Elsa said upon her return. Her eyes were worried. "Gee, Bill, what do you think could have happened to her?"
This information wasn't totally unexpected.
"I don't know. Ask him for another card."
"I did. But he said he wasn't interested any more."
"I see." I took a long drink of my highball. "Well, thanks."
I hung around with Elsa for a while, having a few more drinks and talking to some people. When I noticed that she had become involved in a long discussion with a maker of suits and coats I interrupted to say that I didn't feel well and that I was leaving. She appeared to be surprised and unhappy at this development but I assured her that it was nothing serious, just a minor weakness left over from my army career, and that I would be all right in the morning. When I left the suite I noted that the man in the gray suit was busily engaged in a conversation with an invited model from the Towne Agency. I lingered at the door for a moment, long enough to see him hand the smiling girl a small white card.
I hailed a cab as soon as I reached the street, but told the driver that I didn't want to go anywhere just then, that I was waiting for somebody to emerge from the hotel. I had him park at the curb.
"It's going to cost you," he said after half an hour. "Plenty."
I gave him ten dollars, as a token of good faith, and he became more friendly. We talked about baseball, football and the Thursday night wrestling matches which were televised from Capitol Arena in Washington. We were deep in a heated debate as to the respective merits of Verne Gagne and Argentina Rocco when the man I was waiting for came out into the street and climbed into a year-old Caddy convertible parked halfway down the block.
It was quite easy for my driver to follow him. The Caddy moved crosstown to the Parkway and then turned right, heading north. Four or five miles upriver we crossed the Twin Cities Bridge and about a mile past that we swung down off the three lanes of concrete and continued along a narrow macadam road that curled like a snake's track up into the hills.
"Nothing but rich people up in this Panther Ridge section," the driver told me. "You know many of them?"
"No."
"What are we following this guy for, then?"
"I just want to see where he goes."
A couple of miles further on, I found out. The Caddy, which had been traveling at a moderate rate of speed, stopped in front of a very large colonial type house. The driver got out and hurried up the walk toward the front door. I noticed, as we passed, that much of the adjoining yard was concealed by a high, split-pole fence.
"Looks like one of them forts you see in those old pictures," my driver said. "Creepy."
At the next driveway, which was fully half a mile distant, I told the cab driver to, turn around. The Caddy, I discovered upon our return, was still parked in front of the house.
"You want to go in, mister?" . I told him I didn't but that I would like to stop at the gasoline station located near the quickway. I hoped that we wouldn't find it closed. It wasn't.
At first the young kid in the greasy overalls seemed unhappy about my visit so near to closing time but the dollar I gave him and my explanation of being desirous of obtaining some nearby property apparently met with his approval.
As far as he knew, the estate with the high picket fence wasn't for sale. At least, no one had ever mentioned it to him and he had gone up there several times, during the past summer, to pick up the Chrysler Imperial for grease and wash jobs. The woman-he thought she lived alone, though he wasn't sure-was named Eudora Channing and he had found her to be exceedingly generous.
"She always gives me a five-dollar tip," he said pride-fully.
I thanked the boy for this information and returned to the cab. Now that I knew the name of the woman I began to speculate as to what possible good it would do me. That, I felt sure, was most difficult to determine at the moment.
When we arrived back in the city I had the cab driver drop me off at my address. It wasn't until after I had been in the apartment five or ten minutes that I noticed the envelope which had been slipped beneath my door during my absence.
It was, in brief, a warning. The note, which was typewritten, advised me to terminate whatever work I was engaged in at the earliest possible moment.
The note, of course, was unsigned. Thoughtfully, while I lit a cigarette, I considered the contents with greater concern. Obviously, the note had not been written by the man I had met in Sibyl's Cafeteria. And, just as obviously, it had been written by someone who was well acquainted with my recent difficulties with the police. The two occurrences, I felt sure, were inseparable. The man with whom I had spoken at the cafeteria had, without question, arranged for my slugging and had called the police. My fine, and the confiscation of my briefcase, had been intended as a further warning. Now, for some reason, I had received a third, and more definite, threat.
In a way, I guess you could say that I was scared. Yet, even greater than my fear, was the anger I felt rising up inside. I thought of Elsa Lang and how she was being pushed around like an apple cart at a county fair and I reflected, for a long time, on the possible fate of Judith Call. I thought, too, and somewhat selfishly, about myself. Hell, I had a good thing writing automotive articles. I hadn't had any trouble until I'd met the Reverend Doctor Call and accepted his unusual offer. There was nothing to prevent me from giving up the whole thing and returning to the quiet life. Nothing, that is, except whatever conscience I might possess.
An hour later, having made my choice, I was packed and on my way out of the apartment.
I wondered if I would ever be sorry.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS almost two weeks before I decided that I was ready to put my plan into action. During that period I had not been idle, though, having turned out four fairly good articles for Car Skill.
"Hey," Sam Terry exclaimed when I dropped the articles off at the Central Building. "What gives with the crew cut and the moustache?"
I told him that I was considering running down to Florida for a few weeks and that I was of the opinion the change made me look younger. More attractive to the ladies, I said. I felt it unnecessary to add that I had also acquired a pair of glasses.
"Well, hell," he said, shaking his head. "All writers are nuts. Believe me."
I asked him about some money that was overdue and he phoned downstairs and had it sent up from the accounting department.
"I need a favor," I told Sam. "And I think you can swing it for me, if you will."
"Just let me know what it is."
"This Florida trip is going to cost me a few bucks," I explained. "I thought if you would call one of the foreign car agencies in the city and put in a good word for me, I might be able to pick up a few extra dollars."
"So close to the holidays?" he wanted to know. "Hell, who's got money to spend for imported loads at this time of the year?"
I told him I had some friends, people with plenty of gelt in their checking accounts, and I said I felt pretty certain that I could swing a deal or two. Finally, he agreed to do what he could for me and on the third phone call he located a dealer in the West Sixties who had four Mercedes on hand and the bank on his neck.
"No salary," Sam informed me as I got ready to go. "Just straight commission."
I told him that was fine, thanked him for his efforts and left.
The owner of the car agency, a fat little man by the name of Hymie Rudolph, was quite enthusiastic about the prospects of unloading at least one of the glorified monsters on his showroom floor.
"Jesus Christ," he complained, "I never knew there were so many people in the whole damned world who didn't have ten grand to spend on a car."
I selected a red and black model as the one which I would like to use for demonstrations. He said that was okay, that the car had been out on the road before, and then he had the girl from his office complete a bond application.
"I know Sam Terry or I'd wait until this thing went through," he told me. "Just don't crack it up, is all."
Once the car was out on the street and a mechanic had installed the dealer plates I couldn't wait until I was off. I informed Hymie that I would be back in a day or so, or that I would call, and then I pushed the Mercedes toward the river-front section.
It was a good car, there was no doubt about that. Whether or not it was worth a shade under ten thousand was a matter of personal opinion but it had plenty of fire and gallop under the hood. I admitted, on my way downtown, that I would have style to spare when I visited Eudora Channing.
Eudora. The mere sound of the name fascinated me. It meant, I knew, "good gift." Most names, as you may realize, have some definite meaning. William, for instance, is supposed to indicate the strong "protector" type of individual. Just thinking about that made me grin. I didn't feel at all like a protector. I felt, in a sense, like a man who wanted to run away from something.
Although I had not as yet-met Eudora Channing I knew quite a bit about the woman. Fortunately, one of my old contacts from the insurance business had been glad to see me again and he had consented to work up a credit report on her. She was, the information had revealed, thirty-nine years old and she lived at Forty-four Westminister Drive in the Panther Ridge section. Apparently wealthy, she never bought anything on credit but made all of her purchases on a cash basis. Occasionally, she left the city for periods of two or three weeks but with the exception of these infrequent trips she had lived at the same address for more than six years. There was no evidence that she had ever been married or that she had any living relatives.
The only questionable mark against her character was an arrest in Atlantic City, on May 7, 1950, for indecent exposure during a night club singing act. She had been fined twenty-five dollars for this offense but there was no record of any further arrests or convictions. She had not, since moving to the city, acquired any life insurance and, as far as could be ascertained, she did not own any. She had been involved in two motor vehicle accidents, one in 1952 while driving a Sunbeam Talbot, another the following year in which a Jaguar XK120 had been demolished. Her bank accounts, the report had stated, were not known and there were no clues as to her banking affiliations.
Not much, I thought, as I parked the Mercedes in front of 22 Arlington Square. No, not much at all. Rut enough to get me started. More than enough to take me up to Panther Ridge and get me inside of her house.
Since that night I had left my apartment I had been living in a furnished room on a little street on the South Side. The change, I had assured myself, had been more practical than dramatic, since it had become evident that the people I sought might resort to drastic means to stop me. I had not, following my move, been in contact with either Elsa or, with the exception of Sam Terry, any of my former associates. I had phoned Reverend Call once, the week previously, and he had broken down and cried bitterly as he told me he had not heard from his daughter. I had left the telephone more firmly determined than ever that I would some day locate her.
The room wasn't much to look at; just a double bed, a couple of chairs and a dresser with one missing caster. Most of my typing had been accomplished with a great deal of effort by putting one of the dresser drawers, upside down, on top of the bed and using that for a desk. The man who occupied one of the adjacent rooms worked on the railroad and he coughed much of the time. On the other side, a young waitress kept running the hot water all hours of the night, causing the pipes to thump and bump, as she made a laborious task out of washing her unmentionables. It was, to put it mildly, an unsatisfactory arrangement but I consoled myself with the fact that it was much better then living in comfort and exposing myself to further attack.
I stripped out of my clothes and proceeded to dress with great care. For a suit I chose a dark charcoal number which set off my wide shoulders and went well with my dark brown hair. The bow tie, which was dark maroon, blended conservatively with the white shirt and gave me, I thought, a college grad appearance. My moustache, now that I noted it in the mirror, not only altered my looks considerably but added a welcome touch of distinction. This, of course, was somewhat lessened by my crew cut but once I put on my glasses, which were the horn -rimmed type that so many businessmen wear, the effect was more than gratifying. Satisfied, I picked up my overcoat from the bed and shrugged into it. Few people, unless they knew me well, would be able to recognize me. I could, for the time being, assume the identity of Bill Gordon, ex-photographer and foreign car salesman. It was the only way I knew how to approach the job which I felt that I had to do.
I reached Forty-four Westminister Drive a few minutes before five o'clock. Already the long shadows of an early November evening crept across the hills and plunged down into the valleys. Dark clouds which raced across the face of the setting sun held the promise of possible snow. The wind, blowing briskly out of the east, was blustery and cold. It was, in all respects, a typical winter night.
As I walked up to the huge front door I noticed that the high fence surrounded a considerable portion of the spacious yard. Past an open gate I could see an Olympic-sized swimming pool, now drained of water. Beyond the pool was a miniature jungle of jack pines and, beneath these, a cluster of small, one-room cottages. It was quite an impressive lay-out.
The woman who opened the door didn't look to be thirty-nine. She didn't look to be twenty-nine. Rather, she resembled a well cared for movie starlet who had climbed out of bed following a ten hour rest.
"Yes?"
Her voice was throaty, deep, as luxurious as the jet black hair that tumbled down across her shoulders.
"Miss Channing, I'm Rill Gordon."
The name, of course, meant absolutely nothing to her. I had a feeling that she wasn't looking at me at all but, rather, at the Mercedes which was parked at the curb.
"I'd like to talk to you, Miss Channing. May I step in?"
The one thing you learn, if you've ever sold anything, is that the easiest way to get into a house is to come right out and ask. Few people will refuse you, unless you give them the impression that you're either a thug or a bill collector. But Eudora Channing was different. She didn't move an inch.
"What is it about?" she inquired, still looking at the car. "What is it you want?"
"I'm told you like nice things. And the Mercedes out there is very nice, don't you think? I had hopes that I might be able to interest you in a truly sensational offer."
"
Her glance moved away from the car and crept up to my face. "Who told you?"
I gave her my best smile and took one step forward.
"Actually, no one told me, Miss Channing. But beautiful women always like nice things. That much I know."
The compliment pleased her and she smiled. She had white, perfectly developed teeth and her mouth was generous and just the right shade of red. As she stepped aside, opening the door wide, her white sweater and skin-tight blue slacks developed some interesting characteristics.
"You're quite a flatterer," she said. "And, while I'm sure that I'm not in the market for a new car, it won't do any harm to talk about it."
"Thank you, Miss Channing."
The interior of the house was even more pretentious than the exterior had led me to expect. The bright red carpet in the long, wide hall was rich and thick and the living room into which she led me was, in one word, massive. All of the furniture was ultra-modern and plentiful and a bright fire burned cheerfully in the huge fieldstone fireplace at one end. Expensive native chestnut lined the four walls and long red drapes hung at each window. The two table lamps which glowed at either end of the davenport nearest the fireplace gave the room a homey, intimate atmosphere.
"Please be seated, Mr. Gordon."
I thanked her, removed my overcoat and sat down on the davenport. The warmth of the fire washed across my face.
"Now, tell me about the car," she invited, standing with her back to the flames. "It is very attractive, I must admit. Just what make is it?"
I told her it was a Mercedes, the best of the imported models, and that my boss, Hymie, was over the barrel with it and had to do something in a hurry.
"I think eight thousand would swing the deal," I added. "That is if you were interested."
"Rut I'm not overly fond of foreign cars, Mr. Gordon. I almost killed myself with one."
"People used to get killed in Model T Fords."
She liked that and she laughed. Maybe she wasn't enthusiastic about sports cars but I could tell, from the way she looked at me, that she wasn't finding sports car salesmen exactly repulsive.
I told her some more about the car, how half of the roof lifted up when you opened the door, and the way it responded to the slightest pressure on the gas pedal.
"Rut you'd have to drive it to know," I said. "You have to get the feel of all that power under you. Could you take time for a little drive now? It wouldn't take more than fifteen minutes."
She was waiting for someone, she said, and, anyway, she really didn't feel that she was in a buying mood. I stressed, once again, the fact that Hymie would give her a good offer and it seemed to make some impression on her. I began to relax, feeling that I was making some real progress, and when she offered me a drink I accepted. I wasn't out to sell cars, anyway. I had to sell myself. And if she bought the car that would come pretty close to finishing it.
"I'm a terrible salesman," I confided, part way through my drink. I smiled, answering the question in her eyes. "Here I am with a good prospect and I can't get the sale off the ground. I guess I should have stayed in business for myself."
"And what was that, Mr. Gordon?"
I dug a cigarette from my pocket and held the match for a long time. This had to be solid, had to go over smoothly, or everything I had done so far would be for naught. There just wasn't any compromise with the facts. Either the young fellow in the Caddy had called upon her as a friend or he had come on business. I was, of course, gambling that it had been for the latter purpose.
"I had a little model agency," I said, watching her very closely. "In Allentown, Pennsylvania. Have you ever been there?"
"No, I've never been to Allentown." Her deep blue eyes widened slightly and focused upon my face. "You say you had a model agency. That must have been quite fascinating, Mr. Gordon."
"And that's about all you can say for it. We didn't make very much money. There didn't seem to be any great demand for our services."
"How long ago was that?"
"You mean, when I gave it up?" I grinned and adjusted my glasses. "Oh, three weeks. I guess that's why I'm not so good at selling cars-too new at it. But it was the only thing that I could pick up while I'm looking around. The girls-I had five of them-still hope that I'll be able to get going here in the city."
I had hit it dead center and I knew it. I could see it in the way she threw her head back, her eyes half closed, the twin points of her breasts rising and falling rhythmically.
"These girls," she said. "Were they from-Allentown?"
"Two of them. The others were from near by, from the coal mining sections."
I had used the name Allentown because I knew a little bit about the place, in case somebody got curious and asked me. I had worked at a hot-rod show there one spring, out in Dorney Park, and I'd been in the city for more than a week. Besides, I was hoping that my mention of the coal mining region would have the same mental effect on Eudora Channing as it had on most people. I don't know why it is, but when you speak of the Pennsylvania coal mining sections almost everybody makes a joke about the whorehouses in Scranton, or they infer that any girl within fifty miles of a coal mine spends ninety percent of her time flat on her back. Hardly any of this, you can be sure, is at all true. It's like saying that every chorus girl has to lay the dance director before she can get a spot in the line. I guess people say and think these kinds of things because it gives them some sort of private, cheap excitement.
"Were your girls pretty, Mr. Gordon?"
"Yes. Very."
"And what kind of modeling did they do?"
"Anything. Anything at all."
"Would you care for another drink?"
I told her I would, observing her as she moved over to the tiny bar. She had a compact, fluent body and when she returned, leaning forward to hand me the glass, I arrived at the conclusion that she did not wear a brassiere beneath the sweater.
"Would they pose for nudes, Mr. Gordon? You know, art studies?"
I shrugged and pretended to deliberate the matter. "One of them did that type of work," I said. "She didn't seem to mind. I don't know about the others, though. You know how it is with that sort of work, Miss Channing. If a girl is overly modest she can't be of much assistance to the artist."
"Yes," she said, thoughtfully. "You're quite right."
"It's funny," I remarked casually. "But I came in here to sell you a car and now we're talking about models. Do you, by any chance, know of anyone who might be interested in my other venture?"
"It's quite possible, Mr. Gordon."
"I'd like to see the girls get ahead. And that's a fact. It's pretty tough for them to make a dent into the business by themselves."
Eudora Channing agreed that this was so and she said she would be happy to discuss my problem with one of her friends. I inquired about when she would be able to do this, since my girls were getting impatient, and she assured me that she would go into the matter that very evening.
"You could stop around tomorrow," she said. "I could tell you more about it then."
I asked her the name of her friend, if she thought it was better that I looked into it myself, but she was quite evasive.
"There may be nothing to it," she said. "I'll have to let you know."
I had pushed my luck about as far as it would go for one day and I decided to leave. She walked with me to the door and, to make the whole thing seem more natural, I put in another plug for the Mercedes.
"Perhaps when you come back tomorrow we can take a ride in it," she said. She swung the door back and forth, kid style, and smiled prettily. "But I'm not making you any promises, Mr. Gordon."
I told her that was okay, that I'd be happier if she could do something for at least one of my girls. She said that she would do her level best and she held out her hand. I grasped it briefly and found it warm and soft. She stood in the open door, watching me, until I reached the car. I turned and lifted my hand. She waved once and closed the door.
I did not immediately return to the city. Instead, I drove up the road a short distance, turned around and came back, running with the lights out. About three hundred feet above the Channing house I pulled off the road and parked the car deep in the shadows of an overhanging maple tree.
During the next hour several cars came up the road but none stopped at the white colonial house on the hill. Suffering from cold and boredom I was ready to abandon the project when, about seven-thirty, a car slid over to the curb and extinguished its lights.
The driver reappeared about forty-five minutes later and, after two attempts, managed to turn around in the shaled driveway. I started the Mercedes and followed the car down off the mountain. It was not, I discovered when we reached the intersection, the Caddy convertible.
We made two stops upon reaching the city, one at a fashionable brownstone on Tenth Street and the last at an exclusive apartment building not far from Pershing Hill. I assumed that this was where the driver lived since he exercised great care in locking the car, a late model Packard, before hurrying up the steps.
I waited five minutes and then entered the apartment building. A tired-looking woman pulled her dust mop out of the way as I came in.
"Aw, I missed him," I said to no one in particular. "Wouldn't you know it?"
"Missed who?" the woman wanted to know.
"That man who just walked in. He damned near hit me with his car, down at the corner."
"Who? Mr. Miller?" The woman shook her head.
"It's your own business, mister, but I wouldn't bother him about it. Not if you're not hurt, I wouldn't. He's a detective in the police department."
I didn't have to feign surprise at this revelation. It was genuine.
"You've got a point there," I admitted. "I guess I'll forget about it."
As I drove to the brownstone on Tenth Street I tried to evaluate the full meaning of a detective assigned to the city police department paying a call upon Eudora Channing. It could not, I felt sure, have any relation to official business since the Channing woman lived outside the jurisdiction of the city. And, I felt equally certain, it could have no possible connection with me; or, at least, no association with Bill Morgan, hot-rod article writer and dabbler in affairs which did not directly concern him. But, in spite of all of these assurances which I was able to give myself, I was disturbed. I had expected, if anyone came to the Channing house, the man in the Caddy convertible. I had, instead, drawn a detective. It was not, as far as I was concerned, a healthy compromise.
Lights burned brightly in several of the windows in the brownstone on Tenth Street. I thought, once, of simply ringing the bell and asking for Detective Miller but quickly discarded this as being both too risky and amateurish. I settled, eventually, for a quiet drink in a tiny bar at the end of the block.
There were only four people in the place, all of these seated at a booth in the rear, and the bartender, an elderly man with a limp, seemed to be talkative and friend-ly.(
"Hell of a place for a stranger," he said, agreeing with my previous observation about the city. "Nothing to do and a million and one possible holes where you could do it.
I told him, while he poured the second rye and soda, that I had spent some time in the city during the war, on a ten-day pass,-and that I had known a fellow who had lived in the neighborhood.
"It was a pretty casual thing," I explained. "Hell, I don't even remember his name. He was a writer, or something. Tall, lean-looking. It seems to me that he lived in that big brownstone, the one with the old geranium pots in front."
The bartender smiled and accepted my offer of a drink. He said that he had ulcers and only took ginger ale but that he appreciated the gesture, anyway.
"Won't find many men in there these days," he informed me. "Not for long. They just come and go. Know what I mean?"
"I don't think I do."
"Everybody says it's a-a-oh, you know...." The old man finished the ginger ale, rinsed out his glass and placed it carefully beneath the bar. "But I don't know anything about it, not for sure. A few of the girls come in here once in a while. Not often and not enough to get to know them. They change around a lot."
I pushed my glass across the bar and ordered another drink. I began to feel better. I was, I felt, heading in the right direction at last.
"You wonder how they must feel," I said, trying to draw him out. "Doing things like that."
"Most likely you won't believe me when I tell you this, but some of them enjoy it. They even make jokes about it, comparing the men, and sometimes I hear them talking about it when they're in here. There's one girl, a pretty redhead, and I heard her saying ... well, it's disgusting."
"I think if I had a daughter like that I'd kill her," I said. "I really do."
"No, you wouldn't, either," the bartender insisted.
"These girls-most of them, I mean-are driven into it, or they fall into it because everything is all tangled up in their homes, get me? Why, just last week-I think it was Tuesday night-there was three of the girls in here, sitting right where you're sitting at the bar, and one of them said her old man was a minister. Can you imagine a minister's daughter becoming a-a--" He choked on his own indignation.
I closed my eyes. Excitement was pounding at me.
"Was she-pretty?"
"Well, yes, pretty. Not beautiful. Just pretty. And dark-haired, cut short. Just a kid. I hadn't seen her before."
A few minutes later I told the old man goodnight and left the bar. It was cold outside and tiny flakes of snow filled the shadows of the night. I walked slowly up the block, past the brownstone with the lights in the windows, and wearily got into the car.
There was nothing I could do for Judith Call-not at the moment anyway. She'd made a terrible mistake coming to the city and she would have to pay for her lack of judgment by selling her flesh to all those who might be willing to buy it. I was only one man and, it was evident, it would be useless for me to turn to the police for help. I had started out to do the job alone and I would have to continue to work that way. Judith's future, as well as the futures of countless other girls, could very well depend, on how swiftly I could accomplish a task which, at the moment, seemed almost impossible.
I couldn't resist wondering, as I drove away from the curb and past the lighted brownstone, if any of the girls would really care.
CHAPTER NINE
IT was apparent, from the moment that she got into the car, that Eudora Channing wasn't at all interested in the Mercedes.
"You drive," she said. "It's too slippery for me." The snow of the night before had caked the country roads with a fine covering of ice. While the sand trucks hdd been active, especially on the hills, it was necessary to proceed with some degree of caution.
"My, but it's low," she exclaimed. "And it sits something like a Jag, with your legs straight out in front."
The silken legs beside me were long and smooth and nicely formed. I hadn't been able to see anything of them the previous night, due to the slacks, but that afternoon she wore a bright green dress under her fur coat and this gave me a good opportunity to observe. What I saw was worth looking at more than once, especially after the coat separated in the middle and she left it that way.
"I can't give you much of a demonstration," I told her. "If I let this thing out we'll both wind up in the hospital."
I had driven out into the country, perhaps five miles, and the roads were even more hazardous there. I had to keep the car under forty and, even at that, we went into a couple of minor skids on one of the curves.
"It's all right," she stated, yawning. "I'm not going to buy the car, anyway, Mr. Gordon."
I almost told her that it wasn't important, that it didn't matter much one way or the other, when I remembered that I was supposed to be a car salesman and, this being the case, I should act like one. So, when I got to the next driveway, I pulled the Mercedes off the road, came to a jolting stop, and then backed out into the macadam again.
"Hell," I said. "You could have told me that before I ran up any more miles on Hymie's car. He's going to be sore at me for this."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Gordon."
"Well, okay."
We rode another mile or so in silence. Once, I offered her a cigarette and she took it without saying a word. While I held the lighter for her I got a chance to look her over quite carefully. The coat was open, all the way to the top, and I could see her breasts rising up underneath the dress, high and full and proud. She had used just the right amount of scent powder on her face and her choice of lipstick shade, an off-color pink, went very well with her lustrous black hair. She was, in all respects, a mighty attractive woman.
"Aw, look," I said, after another quarter of a mile. "I'm sorry, Miss Channing. I shouldn't get myself upset or say things like that to you. If you don't want the car, you don't want it."
"You could call me Eudora."
"Well, then, Eudora."
"That's better, Bill."
Neither one of us had mentioned the subject of my girls back in Allentown but a couple of things, especially the way she'd glanced at me once or twice, sort of parting her lips in a contented smile, had given me the impression that she had been giving the matter some consideration. Of course, I could have come right out and asked her about it myself but, from the way I looked at it, I had given her the bait and if she didn't take it and run with it, it wouldn't bring any results. I had to make her want something from me before I could consider that I had made any real progress.
"You're from Allentown, Bill?"
It was the only weak link in my story. No one in Allentown knew me. If either she, or her detective friend, decided to look into that there would be no point of me continuing with my deception.
"I was only there a few weeks," I said. "Just long enough to get in and out of business."
"But it isn't your home?"
"No. I haven't any real home. My folks are dead."
"No girl friend, either?"
I turned and smiled at her as I cut off the main highway and swung onto Westminister Drive.
"I did have. But she's dead. She got killed in a skiing accident."
I guess Eudora Channing didn't think I felt badly about it because she didn't say she was sorry or anything like that. She merely yawned again, stretching out on the seat beside me this time. Her breasts seemed to swell beneath the dress, trying to fight their way out into the open.
"What about the girls you had in your agency? Were they from good families?"
I parked the car in front of the house, at the curb, and then I gave her the hook. I didn't want to do it, because the people out there in Allentown had been pretty nice to me, but I had no other choice.
"You show me a good girl from a family of coal pickers," I said, "and I'll show you a diamond in every snowball you can roll in your front yard."
"Really?"
"What's the use of lying about it?" I spread my hands wide and brought them together with a thjud. "I didn't close up because I wasn't doing any business. I got out of there simply because the girls were doing too much of the wrong business in the wrong places. If you know what I mean."
"I think I do, Bill."
I could smell her perfume all around me, sticking in my nostrils like fragrant glue. We were very close in the small car and I could hear her breath going in and out like a tiny, delicate bellows. I sensed that I had hit the angle right, on the proper plane, but I knew that I had to make all of it sound credible. I let out a long sigh and plunged into it, hoping that I could nail it down before the moment escaped me.
"I have to tell you this," I said, "because of what you suggested last night. After I left, I got to thinking what a lousy shame it was that I could go ahead and let you put in a good word for me with some of your friends. I'm sure, no matter who they are, that they wouldn't have any interest in either me or the girls I used to have in my agency."
Warm fingers reached over and touched my hand on the steering wheel. I tried to act perplexed as I looked deep into her eyes. She smiled and gave my hand a tiny squeeze.
"You can tell me, Bill," she suggested quietly. "If you want to."
My story was good and I managed to work a ring of truth into it. I called upon the things which I had learned while going with Sandy to make the background sound authentic. I spoke of the young girls who aspired to become models, of the heartaches they experienced as they went from place to place and found that nobody wanted to listen to them. Then I talked about men and of what some of them expected from a pretty girl and of how a lot of girls became so desperate that they couldn't say no. And I pointed out how easy it was, for both men and women, to sink into the lower echelons of vice, without even knowing it or ever planning that it should happen.
"So that's the way it went," I concluded. "I got jobs for the girls but some of those who hired them wanted more than a pretty figure or a smiling face. Eventually, the girls gave in and we began to make money like crazy. Before I knew what was going on I was into it over my head. Allentown was too small a place for that sort of thing. I had to get out and get out fast."
The early dusk of a new evening tumbled down out of the sky. A few flakes of snow floated against the windshield and, moments later, turned into tiny goblets of water.
"What about the girls?"
"For all I know, they're still in Allentown."
"Could you get them to come to the city?" This, of course, presented a problem but it was something that I would have to work out as I went along.
"I suppose so. I don't know. At least one. Maybe two. Maybe more. I don't know." I lifted her hand from the steering wheel and placed it in her lap. I hung onto it for a moment, feeling the warmth of her body seep through the dress, and I smiled. "But it's just the way I told you, Eudora. If any of them got near some of your friends you'd never hear the last of it. Why-"
"Bill," she said suddenly, pushing the door open. "Come on into the house. It's getting too cold out here."
We went in and the first thing she did, after we'd hung up our coats, was to fix two high, very strong drinks. She asked me to throw a couple of logs on the dying fire and, as soon as I had done this, we sat down on the davenport. The wood in the fireplace snapped and crackled and the shooting flames filled the room with a rose colored glow. She looked exceptionally pretty sitting there beside me, her head back against the cushion and the smooth stockings on her legs reflecting the light from the fire.
"Bill," she said. "Be honest with me. What is it you really want? To make some real money or to fool around with those stupid cars?"
"I told you it was an angle that I just picked up. There isn't any money in it and I know that. But it's better than nothing and it'll have to do until something else comes along."
She swung around on the davenport, facing me, and she smiled. Her knees, as she curled her legs beneath her, appeared round and smooth.
"Something else has come along," she told me. "If you're interested."
"Tell me more."
Her eyes were frank, intense.
"I like you, Bill."
"The feeling is quite mutual," I-asserted sociably. "In fact, if you want to know the truth, the moment you opened the door yesterday I sort of forgot about selling that car." .
"Did you, Bill? Really?"
"I lost interest in the car," I said. I favored her with a long, suggestive glance and grinned. "Even those foreign jobs aren't as attractive as a pretty girl," I added. "Anybody will tell you that."
"But how did you happen to come here, Bill?"
"It was an accident. I was riding around in that car and I just stopped in at the gas stations and asked if they knew anybody who had a yen for sports cars. Somebody mentioned that you used to drive a Sunbeam and a Jag, so I decided to run up and talk to you. That's how it came about. Funny, isn't it?"
We finished our drinks and she asked if I cared for more.
"You make them this time," she told me, laughingly.
When I returned from the bar I noticed that she had moved over to the center of the davenport and when I sat down I was right next to her.
"Like my house, Bill?" She wanted to know.
"It's beautiful. And expensive."
"I make a lot of money."
"You must."
"Some of it could be yours, Bill." Her eyes, intense in the wavering light from the fire, regarded me with candid doubt. "If I could trust you. That's the big question. I have to be able to trust you. And I don't know how I can be sure."
Her attitude was not totally unexpected. It was too much to believe that I could walk into her home, give her a pitch about the car and my hazy past, and have her invite me into the fold. If she was involved in the sex syndicate in any way-and everything I had learned indicated that she was-she would be much too smart for that.
"Well, the hell with it," I said, acting hurt and placing my glass on the floor. I stood up, pushing her hand away. "I haven't got any quarrel with you and I don't see any reason to hang around and let you insult me. We've had a couple of friendly talks, a few drinks, so why don't we let it go at that?"
I started for the hall, hoping that she wouldn't let me get into my coat and walk out of the door.
"Bill!"
I stopped beneath the archway, slowly swinging around. "What?"
"Don't be mad at me, Bill." She had risen from the davenport and now she came toward me. The smooth material of the dress caressed every curve of her body. "You don't understand. You don't know what this is all about."
"I know you don't trust me." I went out into the hall. "I don't need a bigger hint."
"I was only questioning you, Bill. I had a right to do that."
"Well, okay." I jerked my coat from the hanger and put it on. "So you questioned me. So what? So let's forget it, why don't we?"
I started for the door. I wasn't kidding myself. Her concern, if any, wouldn't be for Rill Morgan or Rill Gordon. It would be for those girls I had mentioned and the possibilities which they represented. If I had put the thing across she wouldn't let me go even if she had to knock me down. Rut if I had failed to impress or convince her I didn't have a chance.
"Please, Bill." She wasn't going to let me go. "Let me tell you a few things."
I stood with my hand on the door knob, waiting.
"You can make an awful lot of money, if you'll only be reasonable. But not selling cars. You'll never make a dime that way. I can show you how, Bill. Honestly I can."
"I'm listening." I took my hand away from the door and smiled. I had pushed the gimmick to the limit; now I had to slow it down. "I'm the last guy in the world to argue with success."
I began to take off my coat but she told me not to do that. She said she was expecting somebody in a few minutes and she didn't want us to meet until after everything was arranged.
"You must do exactly as I tell you to do, Bill. You have to do that before I can go into the details further. There just isn't any other way." She grabbed the lapels of my coat and pulled my head down, brushing my mouth with her lips. "I wish there was, Bill. Believe me. But there isn t.
The taste of her lips tarried on my mouth and I could smell her breath, fresh and clean. I wondered, absently, about the kind of a woman Eudora Channing really was. Some day, perhaps, I would find out.
"Just tell me," I said. "And I'll do it."
Her eyes, gazing up at me, seemed to be worried and considerate. This time, when she brought my head down, she. held it there. Her lips moved against my mouth.
"I don't want you to hate me, Bill."
"Nothing could make me hate you."
"But you have to do it if you're going to work with us. There are certain rules and everybody has to live up to them."
I kissed her, holding the embrace until her arms crept up around my neck. 'TTl do it," I said.
"You'll never be sorry, Bill." She trembled and clung to me. "I promise you, you'll never be sorry."
She gave me the address of the brownstone on Tenth Street and she told me to be there at five-thirty that afternoon.
"You'll be met by an elderly man who wears glasses, something like the ones you're wearing. Don't ask him his name and don't tell him yours. Just do everything he tells you to do. And-Bill-when it's all through, when you're all finished, you come back here."
"No matter what time it is?"
She sealed my lips with a fierce kiss.
"No matter what time it is," she told me, kissing me again. "I'll be waiting for you, Bill."
When I went outside, into the cold air, I felt myself tremble. But it wasn't due to the cold. It was caused by something inside, something deep and angry, that revolted against whatever it was that I would be forced to do. I didn't stop shaking until I reached the Twin Cities Bridge.
The first thing I did, upon reaching the city, was to return the car to Hymie. He was plainly unhappy about my absence of luck but he sympathized with me about having wasted so much of my time.
"Maybe you should try a Ford agency," he suggested.
"They go pretty good."
I told him that I'd think about it, that I might be back, and departed.
I had slightly more than three hundred dollars in my wallet-I had returned the fifty to Elsa by mail, though I hadn't called her since that time-so I took the subway to Seventy-fourth Street and left a hundred with the undertaker. Every time I went there the little marble-faced man behind the desk beamed brightly as he recovered the bill from a creaking, wooden file.
"Only two hundred and fifty left, Mr. Morgan," he announced, writing out a receipt. "You're doing fine."
"Don't be so optimistic," I cautioned him. "You might have a job for me pretty soon and I doubt if there will be a dollar in it."
After I left the undertaker, I caught a cab and told the driver to take me to Thirty-third and Wyandot. I reflected, as we rode downtown, that I really ought to do something about my GI insurance. I had, more than a year before, named Sandy as my beneficiary but now, since she was dead, there wasn't anyone. And there still wasn't anyone, except an aunt, and I didn't know where she lived. It gave me a hell of a funny sensation to realize that there wasn't a single person who gave much of a damn whether I lived or died. And I could die long before the mortality tables claimed I should. I was living, as they say, dangerously.
I got off at the corner of Thirty-third and walked down to the Empire Building. I found Jack Helms in his office, smoking a long black cigar and staring moodily out of the window.
"You back in the insurance business, Morgan?" He'd asked me the same thing when I'd dropped in to see him about running an inspection report on Eudora Channing. "How'd you ever happen to quit the racket, anyway? You were doing all right, weren't you?"
I told him, yes, I'd sold a few policies here and there but that I hadn't liked the collecting part. I said I was doing a little writing and that I had a hot lead from one of the blabber magazines. I needed, I explained, a careful report on a fellow by the name of Frank Miller-I'd gotten his first name from the telephone book-who lived at Pershing Square. I didn't tell Helms that Miller was a cop.
"And get me a report on his family, too," I continued, laying a twenty on the desk. "His daughter, his wife-anybody close."
Jack lifted the twenty to his big nose and smelled of it. He smiled and put the bill in his pocket.
"Can do. Anything else?"
"Yes." This time I gave him a ten. "There are three others."
"Whyn't you just have me investigate the whole damned city?"
He wrote down the names I gave him. Andy Willis and Gladys Lord, both of the Montana Model Agency. And Diana Sanderson, who was employed by the agency.
"You can travel light on the girl," I informed him. "She isn't too important." I halted at the door. "Oh, say, and another one. An Elsa Lang. She also works at the agency. Give her a quick look-see, will you?"
"It'll take a week," he said.
"Make it three days."
"I'll try."
It was still early in the afternoon so I took the subway down to the George Street terminal and walked the six blocks crosstown to my room on the South Side. Slush covered the streets and the sidewalks. The air that blew in from the bay was heavy with chill. It was a dismal day and I failed to appreciate the colorful holiday lights which burned in many home and store windows.
When I reached my room I set the alarm for five o'clock and stretched out on the iron frame bed. I felt, in every sense of the word, most miserable.
I had no way of knowing, of course, what would be required of me when I went to the brownstone on Tenth Street. But I suspected that it would be something so degrading that even a writer's fluid imagination would be unable to visualize it. Something so degenerate in character that I would be bound to Eudora Channing for a long time to come.
To be frank with you, I felt like quitting. I twisted and turned on the bed and I thought how easy it would be to walk out of that door and return to the almost normal life which I had been leading. It was, without exaggerating, a great temptation. But I couldn't do it. I would never be able to turn my back upon the job which I had promised to do. Not only would it be unfair to Reverend Call and the business people who were supporting the venture, but it would be unfair to his daughter, Judith, and all of the other Judiths throughout the city. And it would be an injustice to me, Bill Morgan, as an individual. I might lose some of my self-respect by doing the things that would be required of me but, surely, I would lose all of it if I lacked the courage to do what had to be done.
A man, in my opinion, who loses all self-respect ceases to live. I did not want that to happen to me.
CHAPTER TEN
I WALKED up the front steps of the brownstone on Tenth Street and pushed the buzzer to the right of the door. A set of chimes, far back in the house ran up and down the scales and echoed away into the silence. In spite of the cold I could feel sweat gathering on my forehead. I puffed nervously on my cigarette, flinging it down into the snow only when the door opened.
"Come in." A gray-haired woman, who was in her late fifties, stared at me without feeling. "Follow me, please."
I went in and the door closed automatically. As I pursued the woman down a thick-carpeted, dimly lit hall, I heard the lock on the door engage itself. The sound had all the effects on me of a pistol shot. I felt the sweat sliding down my ribs, spreading out and turning cold as it reached my belt line.
"In here," she said.
I entered a small waiting room equipped with a tiny desk and two maple chairs. A yellow light glowed from the desk lamp. There was no one else in the room.
"Have a seat," the woman said. "Hell be here in a few moments."
She went out, closing the door behind her. From somewhere within the house I could hear music playing. I didn't know the correct name of the tune but it was a long-hair version of Tonight We Love. I sat back in one of the chairs and lit another cigarette. I didn't look at my hands. I didn't want to see them shaking.
It was hot in the room and I stood up to remove my overcoat. Just as I was placing the coat on the top of the desk a narrow door to the right opened soundlessly and a man wearing heavy-rimmed glasses came in.
"That's right. Make yourself comfortable," he said.
"Thanks."
The newcomer was elderly, slightly bald, red-faced, and very fat. I marveled that he had been able to negotiate his huge hulk through the limited space of the doorway.
"I guess you know why you're here?"
"I was told to see you."
"But you don't know what we're going to do?"
"No. I haven't the slightest idea."
He sat down on the chair behind the desk. Opening the middle drawer he rummaged through a collection of boxes and bottles for a moment. Finally, he located one which seemed to please him.
"Take this," he said, sliding a small yellow capsule across the top of the desk. "I'll get you some water if you want."
The sweat was running down my legs now, soaking me.
"What is it?"
He laughed, amused at my concern, and stood up. "Don't worry," he said. "It isn't poison. We aren't quite that crude."
I picked up the capsule, holding it in the palm of my hand. My throat was tight, burning.
"I just wanted to know," I said. "It isn't every day that somebody hands you one of these things."
He shrugged his massive shoulders and left the room, going out into the hall. Presently he returned carrying a glass of water.
"Take the capsule," he instructed somewhat impatiently. "There isn't anything in it that will harm you; I assure you of that. It's similar to the type that doctors use before going ahead with an operation. A little codeine and a couple of other things, I guess. It simply makes you more willing, shall we say, to accept some of the things you may see."
I held the glass of water in one hand, the capsule in the other. I had forgotten about the cigarette in my mouth and I closed my eyes against the curling smoke. I could still turn back. I could still stop. I didn't have to go on with it. Nobody could force me to do what I didn't want to do. I opened my eyes, staring through the smoke at the fat man. Perhaps, I concluded, I was entirely wrong. It would be most difficult to change my mind at this point.
"Sure," I said, grinning weakly. I removed the cigarette from my mouth and popped the capsule inside. "Thanks for the pill, doc," I said, drinking all of the water.
He told me that he wasn't a doctor, just a photographer, but that he used the medicine all the time and there had never been any bad effects from it.
"Sit down," he suggested, wiping his face with a large lavender handkerchief. "And I wouldn't smoke any more, if I were you. Not for a while, anyway."
It was easy not to smoke. It was equally easy to sit there and'listen to him, though I'm not at all sure what he talked about. In fact, everything was incredibly easy to take-my being there in this room with the fat man; Eudora Channing and her lavish home on Panther Hill; the man who had met me in the cafeteria and who had had me slugged afterward. Nothing was worth worrying about any more. There was no such thing as love or hate or deceit or violence. It was all the same. Everything was the same. The world was a big happy place with millions of .contented people in it.
"How are you feeling?" The voice, I knew, spoke to me from within the room but it sounded far away, different, without significance. "Slightly high?"
"Great. Just great!"
Had I said that? I couldn't remember having done so. I shook my head, trying to clear it. A pleasant, unconcerned feeling swept through me.
"Jesus Christ, that's some pill," I told him.
He nodded understandingly and opened the narrow door. I guess he told me to come along but, whether he did or not, I found myself doing so, anyway.
We went through another hall, a smaller one, and I checked myself as we went along. I wasn't, I discovered, staggering. My steps were light but certain and, while the floor was covered with gray tile, I had the sensation of walking on carpet four inches thick.
"Pretty good, isn't it?"
"Wonderful."
We were in a bedroom. The walls were jet black, blacker than the night itself, and the blonde double bed, dresser and chairs stood out in sharp, startling contrast.
"Take off your clothes," the fat man told me.
I gazed uncertainly at the rose-colored bed lamp and then back at the small eyes behind the huge glasses.
"Well, hell," I said.
I crossed to the bed and sat down. I was tired. I wanted to he down and sleep the hands off the nearest clock.
"I said, take off your clothes! You think I got all night to fool around here?"
I leaned forward, my elbows on my knees, holding my head in my hands. Somewhere in this huge brownstone house, in one of its many rooms, a pretty young girl by the name of Judith Call cringed in shock and fear. I shook my head. But, perhaps, she wasn't afraid. Perhaps she didn't care. I shook my head again. Maybe she wasn't even in this house.
"You'll have to help me," the fat man was saying.
He wasn't speaking to me, of that I was sure, so I took my hands away from my face and looked around the room. A girl stood near the foot of the bed, smiling down at me.
"A new one," she said.
The fat man didn't answer her but, again, told me to remove my clothes. Without giving the matter a great deal of consideration I took off my coat and began to unbutton my shirt.
"Give him a hand," the fat man said.
The girl, a henna-rinse blonde, was neither pretty nor not pretty. She was wearing a white wrapper. A nurse I figured. I protested a few times-rather feebly, I'm afraid-but in a few moments I was completely disrobed except for my shoes and socks.
"To hell with them," the fat man said as she untied one of my shoes. "Get yourself ready."
This, it developed, was no real problem.
"Just give me a chance to fix my face," she said.
She walked toward the dresser and I noticed that she lacked nearly all of the usually amplified attributes of the female body. Her legs were long enough, but unshapely, her hips were those of a hungry young boy. Her only truly feminine appeal was confined to her ponderous bosom. She bent over the dresser, staring into the mirror.
With a groan of revulsion I fell back on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. I heard the girl talking to the man but I paid no attention to what was said. My guts were twisting, turning, heaving, and I wanted to hurl myself through the door and become lost in the night. But I could make no worthwhile effort to do so. The capsule had made the moment tolerable, if not acceptable, and I lay there waiting, feeling disgusted with myself, but unable to do anything about it.
There is no need to relate all that this girl did to me that night, even if I could remember. She had altered the appearance of her face with liberal amounts of eyebrow pencil which gave her the look of a vicious young vampire sprung from the roots of hell.
"Don't be afraid," she whispered. "I won't hurt you."
A long agonized sob ripped up out of my throat and I closed my eyes tightly against the blinding light from the exploding flash bulbs.
"Just a couple more," the fat man said. "You know what I mean."
I cursed savagely as she pressed her ugly body to my face, almost smothering me. I brought up my right fist, summoning all of the power that I could find, and slammed it into her. A flash bulb went off, and she was lying upon the floor, moaning and cursing.
"That's all," the fat man said wearily. "Let him sleep it off."
They left the room, turning off the light and closing the door behind them. I tried to sit up, to get to my feet, but an inexorable lassitude possessed my body, freezing every nerve, every muscle, turning my belly into a hollow void of defeat. I fell back on the bed, grateful for the darkness and for being left alone. From somewhere within the house I again heard music playing. It sounded like one of the Beethoven concertos, wonderfully peaceful and soothing. I believe I was crying when I fell asleep.
I awoke, later, and the music was still playing but this time it was something modern with a fast, rhythmic beat. I got up from the bed, found the fight and snapped it on. I dressed hurriedly.
Much of what had taken place in the room was only a misty, unreal recollection but I remembered enough of it to cause me to feel ill as, straightening my tie, I glanced at myself in the mirror. My face was white. I turned away from the mirror, searching for a cigarette, my hand trembling. I was in the grip of a wild, mounting fury. And I couldn't afford the extravagance of blowing apart now. I couldn't rip the brownstone down with my bare hands and strangle everybody in it. I had gone fishing, deliberately, and I would nave to fish according to the rules of the stream.
I recovered my overcoat from the waiting room and departed, unnoticed, from the brownstone on Tenth Street. It was not an easy thing for me to do. It is never easy for a man to turn his back upon something he knows he must some day destroy.
I walked, slowly, toward the river. It had stopped snowing and the stars overhead were bright and clean in the sky. A neon-lit clock in a tailor shop informed me that it was just a few minutes past ten o'clock. In the front window of a furniture store two young girls moved about, barefooted, decorating a Christmas tree. They smiled at me and I smiled in return. But I think, as I walked along the docks that night, that I hated my own guts. It was a feeling I had not experienced since that hot July afternoon when I had turned, unable to see because of the tears, and walked unsteadily from the brink of Sandy's grave.
Sandy. I thought of her now. If she were alive, would she be able to understand what I was doing? Would she believe, as I believed, that the only way to crack this ring was to follow the path which I had elected to pursue? Or would she regard me, as I knew she had so many times, as being an uncouth young man, a little too fond of direct, violent action.
I suppose that is why I had loved Sandy so much-she had been soft and gentle and she had believed, fully, in the good and the peaceful ways of living. It had been her simple mildness, I understood now, which had dominated me from the very start, changing me from an unsure, impetuous, temper-ridden man into one who tried to carefully and honestly consider the people and the world around him.
At the corner of Washington and Eighth I stepped from the curb and hailed a cab. The driver, when I gave him the address on Panther Ridge, smiled and observed, rather pleased, that it was a fine night for business.
I thought again of Sandy as we crossed the Twin Cities Bridge and headed toward the mountains. I thought of her nice ways and how she had been so sweet and tender and how none of it had a place in this thing that I was doing. My job now was not one of understanding the motives of other people or of attempting to sway them with pretty words. The task which confronted me dealt with the debauchery of human life, of human minds and bodies, which only swift and calculated violence would ever settle. I wondered, as we pulled up and stopped before the white colonial house on Westminister Drive, if I could possibly hope to meet the high standards for brains and courage which would be required of me.
"Good night," the driver said happily, fingering my tip.
I walked through the loose snow to the house. She was waiting for me at the door.
"Come in, Bill," she said, her eyes bright.
She wore a gray satin dressing gown that hugged every curve of her voluptuous figure and, as I passed her, I could smell her perfume, obviously expensive and tremendously exciting.
"Well, I did what you wanted me to do," I said. I threw my hat on a chair. "It was hell. Believe me, I don't know why you asked me to go there."
"Poor Bill." She helped me off with my coat. I thought I detected a note of amusement in her voice. "They tell me you got a little ornery."
"Who wouldn't?"-I demanded. It wasn't necessary for me to pretend anger. "You didn't have to do something like that just to-"
"No," she admitted, leading me into the living room. "I didn't have to, Bill. But the others would have insisted. I told you there wasn't any other way."
I walked over to the fireplace and turned, my back to the flames. I noticed that one of the davenports had been converted into a bed. The sheets looked crisp and clean.
"Well, I can see the point," I said. "As long as those pictures of me with that girl are around I'm not likely to get any ideas."
She fixed a couple of drinks and brought one over to me.
"It's our only insurance," she .said. "There are similar pictures of all of us. It is the only way we have of guaranteeing mutual trust."
I looked at her across my glass and grinned.
"And here I thought your friends were a lot of class," I said. "How silly can you get?"
This seemed to worry her and her eyes became deep and anxious.
"You're not mad at me, Bill?"
"Oh, hell, no."
"Some of them are nice people. You'll see."
I finished the drink and began to relax. I had passed the first test and I could look forward to meeting the others who worked with her. After that, I assumed, I would be making real progress.
She asked me if I wanted another drink and I said, sure, go ahead and fill it up.
"I'll bet you're wondering what the bed is made up for."
I gave her an evil grin.
"There may be other ideas on the subject," I stated, "but for me a bed is good for only one thing."
She never brought me that drink. Instead, she came over and crawled into my arms, pushing her body in close as I fastened my mouth over her lips.
"Bill," she whispered, "I'm one hell of a woman."
"I can tell you better later," I said.
I turned out the lights so that only the flames from the fireplace illuminated the room.
"I deal in sex morning, noon and night," she confided, stretching out on the bed. I could see her face, dimly, and she smiled up at me. "But I like to pick my own men and in my own way."
I sat down beside her. I lit two cigarettes, gave her one, and we smoked for quite a while, not saying anything.
"Bill, I believe in sex."
"Tell me somebody who doesn't."
"I mean real sex. Beautiful. Like this, the way we are."
She turned, coming into my arms. Her body was warm and soft and throbbing.
"Those other things are for animals, Bill. Human animals. Aren't they, Bill?"
Her lips moved against my mouth, teasingly at first, then driving in harder.
"I want you, Bill Gordon," she said huskily.
She was no good, a tramp, but she was there in my arms and there wasn't very much I could do about it. It was all part of the game I was playing. And, in a way, I suppose she was right about one thing.
Eudora Channing was one hell of a woman.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MY first assignment for the syndicate, which had been presented to me following a night in bed with Eudora Channing, was to furnish a relaxed young lady for the forthcoming week-end rumpus. Or, if I could, two young ladies. The lady or ladies, were to be provided through my Allentown connections and, she had cautioned me, were to be the type who enjoyed parties. Wild parties. I had committed myself to bringing at least one girl. Just where she was coming from I didn't have the vaguest idea. I had already wasted one day and night running around the city and I had been pitched out of two questionable establishments for attempting to make off with some of their personnel.
On Thursday, as I rode a cab uptown to see Jack Helms in his office in the Empire building, I felt about as low as a thermometer dead center in the Arctic Circle. I had built up a good front, I'd put myself across with Eudora Channing-but now that I had to deliver I couldn't seem to come up with an angle.
I had to find a girl! Somebody. Somewhere. Somehow.
"This isn't an outside party," Eudora Channing had told me. "I mean, it's just for us in the business who like to have a little private fun."
She hadn't told me very much about the operation but enough so that I had a fairly good idea how it worked. A girl, if she weren't a professional when she got caught in the toils of the ring, became one in very short order. Some of the girls worked in apartments scattered throughout the city while a few with more expensive merchandise delivered their wares on a call-girl basis. Not all of the girls specialized in assorted blackmail and shake-down rackets but many who were fortunate enough to contact wealthy or influential customers had no compunctions about driving the knife in to the hilt. In addition to this steady and lucrative revenue from commercialized vice, many of the girls were used in the filming of movies and still shots. A steady stream of new feminine faces was required for this phase of the business.
Eudora, who had explained much of this while she lay in my arms, had not mentioned specific names, though she had assured me that I would meet most of the members of the syndicate when I attended the party.
"You can't be part of a business like this and not have some of it rub off on you," she had explained. "You see so much of the things that seem uncommon to most people that they become commonplace with you. It's just the way it is, Bill, and you can't do anything about it-She had told me that about forty people usually attended the parties which were generally held in the basement of her home.
"We don't have any near neighbors," she had told me."
"And sometimes we get a girl who screams."
The rich prize, I had learned during my conversation with her, was the appearance and the eventual conquest of a young girl without much experience. While she had not told me this in so many words, she had indicated it strongly.
"In a way," she had confided, "it's a little bit like taking dope. At the start, a small amount is enough but as time goes on you have to have more and more."
I had asked her, pointedly, if that's the way it was with her.
"I'm fortunate," she'd said, kissing me on the mouth.
"All I need is a normal man to give me satisfaction. A man like you, Bill."
Upon my return to my room the next day I had discarded my clothes and scrubbed thoroughly in the shower. I had washed my body until it had turned red, trying to rub off the filth and let it slip quietly down the drain. But I had given up finally, knowing that the dirt was deep inside, rather than on the surface.
Sex for the sake of money and sex for the sake of sex; one even more horrible than the other. I wondered, without trying to guess the answer, what Sandy would think of me if she knew what I was facing.
* * *
I found Jack Helms in his office, smoking one of his huge cigars. He looked away from the window, nodding, as I came in.
"Got any more deals for me, Morgan?"
I told him I hadn't and I wanted to know what he had uncovered.
"You could have told me about that Miller," he complained. "He's a cop. And I seldom bother around with the law."
"Don't annoy me with your troubles," I said, impatiently. "Just tell me what you know."
"Here," he said, handing me some papers. "Read about it." He sighed heavily and stared out of the window again. "It's going to make a very interesting article, if you use those characters. I think you wasted your money."
He was wrong. I hadn't. But, of course, Jack didn't know what I was looking for.
Miller was married, the father of a girl who was nineteen, and he had been on the city police force for four and one-half years.
"HelL" I said. "You don't get promoted that fast in grade school. Four and a half years and he's been a detective most of that time. How does a man rise so fast?"
"Read on."
Miller, the account stated, had been born in Wilmington, Delaware, and he was forty-seven years old. He had served with the Wilmington police department until April 12, 1941, when he had been drafted into the Army. He had not seen service outside the continental United States. In October, 1945, he had been honorably discharged and in November of that year he had joined the Baltimore, Maryland, police department as a patrolman. Two years later, because of his work in breaking up a white slave ring, he had been promoted to the morals squad with the rank of detective. His work, the history continued, had been outstanding in every respect until, without apparent reason, he resigned to accept another position here in the city. I noted, with interest, that his starting salary had been four hundred dollars per year less than he had been receiving in Baltimore.
Helms had uncovered very little about Miller's wife and daughter. The wife, whose name was Dorothy, had been born in the District of Columbia and, as far as anybody knew, led an uneventful life. The daughter, Lucy, had been graduated from public high school, was now employed as a secretary by Federson and Federson, an advertising agency, and for several weeks during the previous year had attended a well-known modeling school in the city.
"I don't know what you're looking for," Helms said. "But the cop's finances are clean. The only things maybe unusual are the place where he lives and that big car he drives. That don't mean that he's off, though. A lot of people, including cops, live it up over their heads."
There wasn't much on Gladys Lord, either. She had been born in Biloxi, Mississippi, thirty-nine years before.
Once, at the age of eighteen, she had appeared in police court, charged with committing an act of prostitution in a hotel in Evansville, Illinois. She had been released when her companion failed to appear. Nothing further was known about her until she had appeared in the city, five years previously, and had set herself up in the model agency business. Her credit rating vouched for the fact that she had been successful-no one had any outstanding bills against her. Her association with Andy Willis who, by the way, was from Billings, Montana, had been a routine thing. Helms had been unable to unearth anything about Willis.
Diana Sanderson seemed to be just about what she had claimed, an innocent country kid lost in a great big city. She lived in a walk-up apartment on Jackson Street, which she shared with another girl, and she paid her bills promptly. I remember, with a sense of regret, that I had forgotten to give Helms Diana's actual last name.
Elsa Lang's life appeared to be typical of that of an ambitious young girl on her way up. Her list of creditors was a yard wide and it extended all the way from the city to New Rockford where, the information stated, she had been in and out of trouble ever since the age of fourteen. Nothing serious, and there hadn't been any convictions, but it was obvious she had been a problem child. Remembering her mother and the neighborhood where she had been brought up, I was able to forgive her at least a fair share of her misadventures.
Helms removed the cigar from his mouth.
I asked him if I owed anything further and he said, no, everything was fine and he wished all of his clients paid as well for his work. I departed, hoping that those who hired his talents were luckier than I had been.
Back on the street I stood near the corner and watched the late afternoon shoppers and workers claw and shove their way toward the bus stops. The wind from the bay was raw and cold and a lot of the men had their coat collars turned up. The women, however, seemed unaware of the frigid weather as they moved along the street, their stockinged legs sleek and exciting, and even their heavy coats seemed unable to hide the jounce of breasts or buttocks. I found myself staring at each one individually, meditating about whether this one would or this one wouldn't go to that party with me if I just had the guts to offer enough money. In disgust with myself I quit the corner and walked down to a parked cab.
"You slip me a five and you don't wanta go no place?" the driver inquired incredulously. "What kind of a pitch is this, anyway?"
I told him again, as I handed him the key, what I wanted him to do.
"I have to meet a friend here for dinner," I explained. "And I have to have my mail. Just go down to the address I gave you, get my mail out of the box and come back. There's another five in it for you after you do it."
He was suspicious, but after I had showed him my driver's license, registration card and social security ticket he seemed to be convinced.
"Bring the mail to that restaurant down there," I told him, pointing to a sea-food house a few doors away. "I'll be in there at one of the tables."
"Well, I guess it's all right," he said, and started the motor.
As soon as the driver had gone I went into a cigar store, purchased an envelope and a stamp and addressed the envelope to myself. I put the driver's license, registration and social security card inside, sealed it, and dropped it into a mailbox.
When I got to the restaurant I ordered clams on the half shell and a double rye with soda. But I was worried. I should have gotten rid of that stuff in my wallet long before; if anyone at the brownstone, or Eudora Channing, had gone through my personal papers I might just as well call it quits right then and there.
I had finished two drinks and I was on a third when the driver returned.
"Have a drink," I said.
He sat down and when the waiter came over he ordered" a bourbon with water. Hastily, I read my mail.
There was a check from Car Skill for two hundred dollars and a note from Sam Terry saying that he hoped the letter would be forwarded to me in Florida. Another letter, this one from Dr. Call, contained a check for a hundred and fifty dollars and a warning that no further funds would be forthcoming unless I was able to show some definite signs of progress. As usual, the Reverend inquired about his daughter, begged me to do something, and I felt pretty certain that he had choked on helpless tears as he'd written the final lines.
"You want something to eat?" I asked the (Jriver.
"I'll have another drink."
We talked a little about the weather and he said it was terrible, the way prices were, and with Christmas coming on. He lived in the outskirts, in a new housing development, and he said it was rough with three kids who wanted everything under the sun.
"I should run up against more guys like you," he said as I slid the five across the table toward him. "Believe me.
His name was Joe Nelson and I guessed him to be in his early forties. He was a pleasant little guy, in the first stages of baldness, and he drove his own cab. He seemed the type a man could trust and depend upon.
"You're going to think I'm nuts," I told him as he rose to go. "But I've got quite a night ahead of me and you can make yourself some good money if you're interested."
He sat down again.
"Nothing illegal?"
"No. It's legitimate. Strange, maybe, but legitimate."
It was rather difficult to break through the barrier with Nelson. I mean, you take a family man, a fellow who regards his wife and kids seriously, and it isn't easy to come right out and ask if he knows any girls who might like to talk a little business. At least, that's the way he struck me and I went into it slowly, telling him I was a writer-this impressed him because he took a couple of the hot-rod magazines-and that I was in the market for some off-beat material.
"You know," I said, "the city after dark, or something of that sort. Lights. Music. The way people play."
He smiled at me across his drink. It was his fourth one.
"And girls?"
"Friendly girls," I advised him.
He thought that one over for a long time. In fact, it was only after I had ordered his sixth bourbon and we had discussed the advantages of dual carburetion over the highly touted new four-barrels that he returned to the subject again.
"You wouldn't use the girl's name?"
"Oh, hell, no. That would come under the law covering the invasion of privacy."
"All you want is the background material-right? How a girl gets into something like that and that kind of thing?"
"Yes. One girl's story. I can dress it up wherever it needs it."
The liquor had had its effect and he became quite confidential. The cab business, he confided, had been slow and occasionally it was necessary to supplement his income from other sources.
"You do a lot of things because of your kids," he informed me. "Things you wouldn't otherwise dp."
The girl, he said, lived alone in a hotel and she accepted just enough customers so that she could earn a hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars a week. She was young, only twenty-three, and. she was very pretty.
"A blonde," he described the girl. "Gorgeous. To look at her you'd wonder why she ever did things like that. A nice kid. Sometimes I meet a guy, a louse, and I wouldn't think of steering him to her."
"She works alone?"
He assured me that she did, stating that the only ones she shared her income with was himself and one of the bellhops at the hotel. Sometimes, if she had more than one in a night, she used the back of his cab.
"We drive out to the country, or up to the park," he said. "And then I take a walk. That part's all right when the weather's warm but it's hell, now during the winter. You can't imagine how cold you can get."
We had another drink and I asked him if I would be able to see the girl that night. He said he didn't know, that he'd have to call her. When he returned from the phone he said it was all right, that he had told her about me and that I could go up in about an hour.
Forty-five minutes later we left the restaurant and went outside. I was surprised to find that it was snowing, that the streets and the sidewalks were a blanket of clean, virgin white.
We rode uptown and Nelson got back on the topic of dual carbs again. He did most of the talking.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE hotel was a small,, unimportant structure in the North End. A scraggly looking Christmas wreath hung on the front door. The lights in the lobby glowed dim and unfriendly.
"You wait for me," I told the cab driver. "We've got a great big night cut out for us." A few moments later I was climbing the stairs. The girl, who lived in a second floor double-room suite, was very pretty.
"Nelson called," she said as I entered. This, as far as she was concerned, seemed to explain everything. "Would you care for a drink first?"
"No, thanks." The sitting room was small, intimate. There was only one light, this from a bridge lamp at one end of a short davenport. I sat down in a cheap overstuffed chair and squirmed around until I felt comfortable. "I don't know if Mr. Nelson told you why I wanted to see you, miss, but I'm a magazine writer and I'm hunting material for a story."
Apparently Nelson had neglected to tell her about this, because her light gray eyes, as they focused on my face, became slightly hard. She tossed her head once, fluffing out the curls in her long blonde hair, and walked slowly across the room. The tight blue wrapper hugged her body and I noticed that she boasted a surprising amount of interesting merchandise.
"My life story isn't for sale," she informed me crossly. "Nelson knows better than to send somebody up here for something like that."
"Well, we can talk for a-moment, can't we?"
She paused at the window, turning slowly. "I'm listening, mister."
I wondered, unhappily, if Nelson had given me a wrong lead on this girl. He had indicated that she was the sweet, demure type. At the moment she seemed cold and hard, an experienced professional who had no time to waste. But in many respects she was the sort of girl I had been seeking. The job I had in mind would not be likely to appeal to a girl relatively new in the business.
"Then here it is," I said, pushing aside any fancy preliminaries I might have had in mind. "I'm looking for material that I can use in a real hot article on night life in the city. You can help me get it. I'll pay you well, more than you usually make, if you're willing to cooperate. If you're not interested, there's no sense wasting your time or my own. It comes down to this, lady. Either you want to make some money or you don't. Which is it?"
She smiled for the first time since I'd come into the room.
"You know the answer to that, mister." She found a cigarette and lit it.
I told her, briefly, about what she would have to do. There was a party, I said, scheduled for Saturday night. It was to be a mixed party, both men and women, and she wouldn't be the only girl in the place who sold herself for money.
"I just want you to go to the party," I continued. "I expect to be there, too. I want you to tell anybody who asks you that you're from Allentown, Pennsylvania, and that I had you come down to the city for the fun. In fact, I'll probably introduce you around as being 'one of my girls.' Do you understand that?"
She sat down on the davenport and stretched her legs. They were nice legs, well formed and milk white.
"I get it," she said. "This is a behind-the-scenes story and you've got yourself an in. Is that right?"
"Something of the sort."
She regarded me carefully, her face mildly amused. "And how much is it worth?"
"Three hundred dollars."
"That means two-forty. Nelson brought you and he gets twenty percent."
"I'll take care of Nelson myself. It's three hundred to you, clear, if you do the job right."
"And if I don't?"
"Let's not discuss that." I waited and then gave it to her straight. "If you cross me up, or make a mistake, both of us may find ourselves in trouble."
I didn't want her to believe that the night would be easy or that I wasn't serious about what I wanted her to do. In her business she was accustomed to risks.
"All right," she said. "Supposing I do it; how do I get paid?"
I told her I'd have Nelson pick her up in the cab early Saturday evening and that while we had dinner I'd go over the final details with her. I said I would give her a hundred and fifty dollars in advance and that I would leave the rest of the money with Nelson.
"Hell bring you home from the party," I stated. "And you'll get the balance of it then."
"Sounds fair enough."
We discussed only minor details after that. I suggested that she dress conservatively so that she would not appear to be a member of the world's oldest profession, and that she should be ready by six. I left, just as her phone began to ring, and she thanked me for coming.
I didn't feel too badly about what might happen to this girl. She existed by selling thrills and I doubted if she would be asked to do anything that she hadn't done before. And I felt that I could trust her. This was important. I had to trust her, trust somebody, or I wouldn't be able to continue the farce.
Nelson, when I found him in the diner, seemed surprised that I had returned so soon and that I still had another place I wanted to visit. "Sibyl's," I said.
"You make out okay?" he wanted to know as we started crosstown.
"Fine. We'll pick her up at six, Saturday night."
Sibyl's Cafeteria, at the corner of Percy and Chain Streets, was deserted at this time of the night. Most of the men were busy in the warehouses, unloading tons of fruit from the southern markets. Two of the girls lounged behind the bar and the other two sat at a scarred table, drinking coffee. I approached the one who had come over to our table the first night I'd been in there.
"Rye," I said. It occurred to me that Nelson must think I was nuts, hanging around in this neighborhood. "With a little soda."
She brought the drink and I noticed a roach scurry for cover when she made change on the cash register. I left the four ones and the silver lying carelessly on the bar and the girl smiled at me. I asked her if she'd like something herself and the next time she poured a drink for me she made it a lot stronger.
"Slow," I observed.
"It always is, just before Christmas. I don't know why. Nobody around here buys anybody anything."
"I was looking for someone," I said. "Maybe you know him." I described the man who had sat with me at the table. "He sells pictures," I told her. "And I just picked up a load in Alabama I thought he could use."
"Jeeze," the girl said, staring at me. "You sure don't look the type."
"Does anybody?"
We had another drink together and she admitted that she knew the man. But she knew only his first name, not his last. Peter. "Peter, hey?"
"A friend of mine sells some of the books and pictures for him, around to the warehouses. I don't see any sense to them. What do men find in that kind of stuff, do you know?"
"Here's a five," I said. I was spending money faster than a sailor on his first day in port. "Call up your friend and see if you can find out where I might get hold of Pete."
I could have been a cop and the girl wouldn't have cared. A five dollar bill would have purchased her loyalty any hour of the day'or night.
"Sure," she said, taking the money. "Give me a couple of minutes, will you?"
I sat at the bar and waited for her while she went to the phone. The two girls at the table giggled and stared at me. One of them got up, starting my way, when the girl returned from the phone booth.
"I had to do a little talking," she said. "But here's all you need."
She had written the information on a napkin, with a lipstick. Peter Garroty, 34 Cole Avenue, Apartment 4-B. The telephone number was CE 4-4896.
"Thanks," I said. "I'll give him a call."
The phone rang only twice before it was answered.
"Yeah?" a heavy voice wanted to know.
"Minnie," I said. "Let me talk to Minnie." Then, "Is this Ollie?"
"Minnie! Ollie!" The voice became sharp with anger. "Christ, you've got the wrong number."
It wasn't necessary to say I was sorry. He had hung up. I smiled and left the booth.
"Hey, mister," the girl shouted from behind the bar. "You forgot your change."
"Have a couple on me."
Nelson sat huddled in the cab and he seemed glad to see me.
"Gosh, it's cold," he complained. The engine turned over slowly in thick oil and finally started. "Where next?"
I told him to take me to Cole Avenue, which was over on the South Side, and that I wouldn't need him any more after that. On the way over I got his name, address and telephone number and I made arrangements to meet him on Saturday night, at six o'clock, in front of the hotel uptown. I gave him an extra ten for all his trouble and he began to whistle a Christmas carol.
"I'll get that bike for Jerry tomorrow," he said happily. "By golly, he'll be surprised all right!"
I got off at the corner of Cole Avenue and Branford Street, waited until the cab had moved out of sight and then walked along the avenue, checking the house numbers. I had gotten off at the wrong end of the street and it took me at least fifteen minutes before I reached number 34. My face and hands were numb with the cold and after I went up the steps and entered the tiny vestibule I leaned against the small, hissing radiator trying to get warm.
As I climbed the narrow flight of stairs a few moments later I had a tired, empty feeling in my stomach. I was about to do something utterly necessary, but cruel. The feeling was still there as I turned down the dim hall, discovered the door of apartment 4-B, and knocked heavily.
The door opened and a man stood there looking out at me. It was the same man I had met in the cafeteria. I could tell, by the way he frowned, that recognition failed him.
"Who're you looking for?"
I hit him solidly on the point of the chin before he could move. I hit him with my right, hooking it, and I threw every bit of my one hundred and ninety pounds behind the blow. He stumbled backwards into the room and I followed him quickly, closing the door behind me.
I didn't have to strike him again because he was down on the floor, in a helpless heap, but I gave him two more just tp be sure. Both were judo chops, one across the side of his neck slightly below his left ear, and the other midway between the shoulder and elbow of his right arm. The slam on the neck would keep him out for quite a while but the one on his arm did the most damage. I heard his arm snap, sounding like a breaking stick in dry leaves, and his body jerked convulsively two or three times. Presently, he lay still and I bent to examine him. He was breathing normally and, except for the smashed arm, there would be no serious effects.
I locked the door, noted that the shade on the lone window had already been lowered, and began a careful inspection of his room. I turned the mattress over, looked under the bed and went through the dresser drawers. It wasn't until I reached the closet and took down two hat boxes from the top shelf that I found what I was looking for.
There were a dozen or more two-reel movie films and while I didn't have a projector it was easy to tell, by holding the negatives up to the light, that all of them were lewd. Cursing under my breath, I unwound several of the films and dropped them in a tangled pile on top of the man on the floor.
The series of pictures and books contained in the other hat box was equally disgusting. Some were of white men and white women while others featured colored men and white women. Still cursing, I dropped the stuff beside the unmoving Peter Garroty and hurried from the room.
Four blocks away, at an all-night drugstore, I called the office of the head of the vice squad in City Hall and told the officer who answered that I wished to pass along a tip about a smut merchant who had run into physical difficulties at apartment 4-B on 34 Cole Avenue. I must have sounded quite convincing-or had the address rung a bell?-because this sworn defender of public law and order grudgingly consented to investigate the report. Even though I refused to give my name.
I hung up, bought a package of cigarettes and went out into the street again. In the distance I heard the wail of a siren, drawing closer. The black car, its red lights flashing, passed me at the corner of Jefferson and, one block further on, turned right into Cole Avenue.
I wondered, as I walked toward the subway, just what I had accomplished. I hoped it was quite a lot.
In the first place, it would be interesting to find out if the incident made any of the morning papers. If it didn't, I could rest assured that the police had buried the matter under official silence. And, I felt, I could be reasonably certain that, in one way or another, Peter Garroty would be removed from circulation, at least temporarily. Even though he might continue to merit the confidence of the syndicate, the arm would keep him in a hospital for several days. It would cause (him to be confined until after Saturday night, anyway.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE next morning, Friday, I called Elsa Lang at the Montana agency. She seemed pleased to hear from me and she berated me, playfully, for not having been in touch with her sooner. I alibied my neglect, saying that I had been busy, and introduced the possibility that we might spend Saturday night on the town. Her quick acceptance was positive evidence that she had no other plans and I told her I would pick her up about nine. She said she would be looking for me.
Of course, I hadn't the faintest idea of keeping my date with Elsa; I had only wanted to be sure that she wouldn't be one of the girls at the party. I assumed, quite logically, that she would be boiling mad when I failed to put in an appearance.
None of the morning papers, as I had anticipated, carried any mention of Peter Anderson or of the discovery the police must have made when they visited his apartment. A phone call to Anderson's number brought forth no response. Another call, this one to Eudora Channing, lasted fully five minutes. She was sorry I couldn't come out, just for a little while, but she understood my haste when I explained that I had to drive out to Allentown and pick up the girl.
"Well, one is better than none," she said. Then, quite softly, "But don't forget what I told you about the other kind, Bill. Everybody would be real pleased if you could bring something like that."
I knew what she meant. A young, innocent girl. A lamb for the slaughter.
"I'll get you one," I promised wildly. "You'll see."
"When?"
"Be patient."
I was phoning from a bar on the corner and as soon as I said goodbye to Eudora Channing I again annoyed the bartender for silver. This time I called Dr. Call in New Rockford and it cost me fifty-five cents.
"I'll leave here on the four-fourteen this afternoon," I told him. "Try to get some of your friends together so we can hold a little meeting tonight. I have several important things to discuss with you."
"What about Judith?"
"I know where she is," I said. "But I can't tell you. Not yet. You'll have to be patient and you'll have to trust me."
He pointed out that he had been patient and that they had expressed their trust in me by advancing a considerable sum of money. I told him I knew that, but the job had turned out to be bigger than I thought, and that he had to either go along with it my way or not at all. He assured me that he would, although he didn't sound firmly convinced, and he said he would see what he could do about getting some of the business people together.
I left the bar and went down the street to a little restaurant to have a late breakfast. The girl who occupied the room next to mine was at the counter, having toast and orange juice, and she smiled at me.
A half hour later, following scrambled eggs which were much too dry and coffee that was far too bitter and cold, I again called the Montana agency. This time I asked to speak to Diana Sanderson.
"Can anybody hear you?" I wanted to know after she came on. "I mean, can anyone listen in J:o what I have to say."
"No. I can see the switchboard from where I am."
"Good. But can you talk?"
There was a short silence. In the background I could hear a typewriter clicking, the low mumble of a woman's voice.
"No. Not very well."
"All right, then. When do you go to lunch?"-"Eleven-thirty."
"Well, copy down this number. Call me from outside the building. I want to talk to you about your sister."
"You mean, you-"
"I must talk to you, Miss Sanderson. It's urgent!"
I gave her the number of the phone in the restaurant after she agreed to call back as quickly as she could.
At eleven-forty, while I was seated at the counter drinking my third cup of coffee, the phone rang. It was for me.
"Look," I said, "I don't know where your sister is and I'm not sure that I can find her. But I have a good idea of what was done to her and I've got a good chance to put the people behind bars who did it. I think you'd be willing to help me in that, wouldn't you?"
I could tell from the way she talked that she was bitterly disappointed at my vagueness but she declared that she would do anything she could.
"Now, it won't get you in any trouble," I said. "All you have to do is get in touch with Mr. Willis and Miss Lord about seven tomorrow night and get them to come down to the office. I don't care what excuse you give as long as it's something that will keep them there for a couple of hours. Frankly, I don't care what you do as long as it's done. I'm to meet some people and I don't want them there when I do. If they recognized me, the whole thing would fall apart right then. And we might never learn what happened to your sister. Believe me."
She sounded nervous and excited but she said she would think of something.
Diana's reassurance that she would take care of the matter gave me confidence. I wished her luck. She was just a kid but what she did, or did not do, could affect both our lives.
When I arrived at the advertising agency later I was told that both of the Federsons were out to lunch and that they wouldn't return for at least an hour. The girl who so informed me was dark-haired, fairly tall and had the lush young lines of a hopeful model. She sat behind a modernistic desk that was open in front and which offered a rather good view of her trim legs.
"I'll wait," I said.
I sat down in a low chair.
"Are you a regular client, Mr-"
"Gordon," I told her. I smiled and kept my stare at her face. She had warm, anxious eyes. "No. I'm not. As a matter-of-fact, I wanted to talk to one of the Federsons about taking on my account." I retained the smile but offered the slightest shrug of doubt. "Of course, they may not be interested in me. It isn't every day that an ex-cop goes into the model agency business."
She had been looking absently at the wall, just listening to me, but now her glance moved to a point just below my chin. Her lips parted and I noticed that her teeth were gleaming white and straight. Her smile was warmly personal and it was meant to impress me. , "My father is a policeman," she said. "A detective."
"Well, now, what do you know about that!"
She rose from behind the desk and crossed to one of the windows, pretending to straighten a Venetian blind which required no adjustment whatsoever. As she lifted her arms above her head, fooling with one of the cords, I could distinguish the dark outline of her solidly packed bra beneath the white blouse. Her hips beneath the tight skirt were ample, in the final stages of ripeness, and I noted again that her legs were extremely attractive.
"Does Federson specialize in that sort of thing?" I inquired.
"You mean, model agencies?" She returned to the desk, slowly, giving me plenty of time to evaluate her more obvious assets. "No, actually, they don't. It's mostly cigarettes and things like that. You know, for television and radio. We have very few accounts, Mr. Gordon. And most of them-well, they are quite large."
She had said pretty much what I wanted to hear and I got up. I tried to appear confused and unhappy by this news.
"I guess this is what happens when you use the yellow pages of the telephone book, Miss-"
"Miller. Lucy Miller."
"Anyway, thank you, Miss Miller," I said. I turned at the door, hesitating. "Perhaps I would be wasting both my time and that of the Federsons. Do you, though, happen to know of an agency that could help me?"
"There's one in the General Building, further downtown. Glamour, Incorporated." She smiled, reflectively, and gave me another good look at her white teeth. "You may think this is a joke, Mr. Gordon, but I have thought of registering with them. You see, I have a few private dreams of my own."
"You're very pretty," I assured Lucy Miller. "But sometimes, no matter how much talent you have, you need an assist. I would think your father, being a detective, could have helped you."
A look of dismay came into her eyes.
"He wouldn't," she said. "He thinks it's-vulgar."
I shrugged and found a cigarette in my coat pocket.
"There's nothing less vulgar than beauty, Miss Miller. And"-I continued slowly, conveying the impression that I was weighing each word-"you are exceptionally pretty. It's quite possible-if you wish-that I might be able to fit you into my program."
I felt not unlike a vulture feeding upon a corpse. I could not meet the look of burning hope in her soft blue eyes. Small wonder, I thought, that so many young girls got into trouble. Success became so important to them that they were ready to take any risk, pay any price.
"I can't promise anything," I said. "But I'll try."
"Oh, thank you, Mr. Gordon!"
"If anything should develop, shall I call you here or at your home?"
"Not at home, please." She considered the question carefully, moistening her lips with the tip of a bright red tongue. "Call me here, during the noon hour, when the Federsons are out to lunch. I-I could arrange to meet you somewhere else later."
I opened the door and gave her a parting smile.
"I'll do what I can," I said. "You may hear from me next week."
As I stepped out into the hall, closing the door behind me, her husky words of thanks echoed in my ears. I suppose I should have felt elated but I didn't. I had learned, rather easily, all facts I had been seeking. Lucy Miller still wanted to be a model in spite of her father's objections. She could, I felt, become a valuable pawn in this deadly game of human flesh. And yet the knowledge that this was so did not give me any buoyant sense of accomplishment. Lucy Miller was attractive, she seemed to be sincere and, unfortunately, her attitude suggested that she was as gullible as any starry-eyed youngster in high school. The thought that she might unknowingly become bait in a deadly trap that could spring two ways was not something to make me happy.
It was still early in the afternoon and since I had some time to spare before catching the four-fourteen train to New Rockford, I paid a call upon Glamour, Incorporated, located in the General Building on the South Side.
"You should have brought along some pictures of your sister," the girl at the receptionist desk informed me. "You can appreciate how difficult it would be to do anything unless we know what our client looks like."
I explained for the second time, that I had just arrived in the city and that my sister, who planned to follow me in a week or so, had asked me to inquire around for her. I said that she was very talented-both physically and otherwise-but that she was totally inexperienced. I asked, finally, if there was any possible way for a newcomer to get started in the modeling profession.
"We have one agency specializing in unknowns," the girl told me. "But your sister would have to come in herself and register with us. Obviously, we don't give that information out gratis. If we did, the girls would by-pass us and we would lose our fees."
"Well, I'll have to do that," I started away from the desk, then turned quickly, as though a last minute thought had occurred to me. "What do you know about the Montana Model Agency? Is it reliable? Or aren't you permitted to express an opinion?"
She said, no, she couldn't do anything like that but I knew, by the look in her eyes, that this was the agency that dealt in unknowns:
The train trip to New Rockford was uneventful. The snow, I discovered upon my arrival, was deep and wet and I took a cab from the station to Dr. Call's house. The front room, I noticed as I went up the steps, was well lighted. Several people lounged around inside, waiting.
"Mr. Morgan," the Reverend exclaimed, opening the door. He frowned as I removed my hat and entered.-
"It is Mr. Morgan, isn't it? I must say that you have changed."
"In several ways," I informed him. "You have no idea."
He helped me off with my coat and hung it on a rack at the foot of the stairs. As I started into the living room he took hold of one of my arms, restraining me.
"Tell me, Mr. Morgan, have you seen Judith?"
I found it impossible to meet his level, anxious stare. I speculated again, as I had many times previously, on how he would react when he learned the truth about his daughter. To the best of my knowledge, she had become an unwilling love machine and her body now belonged to those who controlled the flesh syndicate. I decided, with a feeling of bitterness, that he might prove incapable of accepting much of the blame which rightfully belonged to him.
"No," I said. "I have not seen her. But I do know where she is. Or, to be more specific, I knew where she was."
"Is she all right?"
"She's alive. I'm sorry, but that's all I can say."
I took his hand away from my arm and entered the large, old-fashioned living room. The hum of voices ceased as I came in. I don't know why, but I was surprised to find two elderly women in the group.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Dr. Call said. "Mr. Morgan."
He introduced me to the ladies first. One was a widow of a former banker and, I gathered, quite wealthy. The other woman represented a civic organization interested in the youth of the community.
The men, I regret to relate, failed to impress me. There were five of them, all middle-aged, and all inclined to be somewhat pompous. As I shook hands with them I tried to remember that it was from these people that the money to fight the syndicate would come, that it would only be with their help that I could hope to be successful. I forced myself to tolerate them.
"Our authorities should be brought to task for this," one man said. "We put them in office, and what do we get?"
"Most people sow their own seeds," I told him. "And they harvest their own crops."
I don't know where I'd heard that line before, but it got their attention and that was what I wanted.
I explained that the operational roots of the sex syndicate-several of them winced when I used the term-went deep, very deep, into the guts of almost every enterprise that was even remotely associated with pretty girls. Of course, I knew so little about the actual set-up that I was only able to give them a sketchy review of what had been going on. And, naturally, I had to honor the presence of the women. I couldn't describe, in detail, some of the things I had witnessed.
"The reason I wanted to see you tonight," I explained, "is twofold. First, I will need some money-perhaps as much as a thousand dollars. And I will need it immediately. In addition to this, I will require the name of at least one powerful person in the city to whom I may be able to turn for help."
"What other amounts of money may be required?" the banker's widow wanted to know.
"None."
"How can we be sure?"
"If I am not lucky in the next couple of weeks," I said firmly, "I'll not need any more money. Because," I continued, letting the words sink in, "I have a pretty good idea that if I fail, I'll be dead."
This shook them out of whatever complacency they may have had and in less than five minutes I had a thousand dollars, all in cash, in my wallet.
"Now, for the second part," I told them. "When this thing gets ready to break I will need to be able to turn to someone who can bring enough pressure to bear upon the police to throw the whole thing out into the open. I have to have someone with a lot of influence on my side. Do any of you know of such a person?"
Surprisingly enough, they did not. Oh, to be sure, they knew many who were wealthy, and they could reel off the names of important folks in the business world, but such people could be of little assistance to me. They were still trying to arrive at a suggestion when I announced that I had to catch my train and that I'd have to handle that part of it by myself.
"Mr. Morgan." Dr. Call held my coat; I still couldn't look him in the eyes. "What about my daughter? Where is she?"
He had to know some time and there was no point in hiding it longer.
"She's in a house of ill fame," I said, bluntly. Then, more gently, as I saw his chin tremble. "Not of her own free choice, though. She fell into the net, the same way a lot of girls have fallen into it. She's not to be blamed but to be helped."
In that moment he looked much older. I felt sorry for him.
"I'll do what I can," I promised, opening the door. "You can be very sure, Dr. Call, that I'll do my level best."
A hand touched my shoulder.
"God go with you," he said. "And protect you."
I walked through the gloom of the winter's night toward the railroad station. I suppose I should have felt like a. hero, a man destined to do a great good, but I didn't. For the first time in my life I was truly and honestly frightened. The things I had told them about the syndicate, and what might happen to me, were not mere figments of my imagination.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I MET the girl at six and I had Nelson drive us over to a small restaurant on the East Shore where we had a quiet dinner. While we were eating, Nelson drove out to his home and dropped off the week-end groceries.
"I don't want to mislead you," I told her over cocktails. "This is a very special party and I'm not sure just what's going to develop. If you have any ideas about backing down, do it now. Don't wait until we get there and then make a sucker out of me."
Late that morning I had spoken with Eudora on the phone and she had asked me to bring the girl out about eight. Most of the guests, she'd said, were not scheduled to arrive until about ten.
"The money's still the same?" The eyes that regarded me across the top of the table were cold, speculating. "And you'll take care of Nelson?"
I laid a hundred-dollar bill and five tens in front of her.
"I'll give Nelson his," I said. "And he'll have the other hundred and fifty for you, just as I said."
She had dressed sensibly for the occasion. Her dress was red, rather low cut in front, and it went very well with her blonde hair. It flowed down over her body with such closeness that it gave the impression she had been dipped in a pool of blood.
.. As she carefully placed the money in a huge red pocketbook I outlined what I wanted her to do.
"As I told you," I said, "this is to be an inside story on the city at night. I've gotten myself an in with these people and I've led them to believe that the girl I'm bringing may be vulnerable to male attack."
Her lips curled in a slight sneer.
"In other words, if some guy wants me to give in, I do so. Is that right?"
"Well-yes."
She lifted her drink.
"Just as long as I know," she said. "For three hundred bucks in one night I'd let any man play house."
"You may be asked to do something else," I said as calmly as I could. "I don't know."
She finished her drink without pausing.
"You mean, unusual stuff?"
I nodded, afraid, as she stood up, that I might have frightened her.
"Let's get on with it," she said. She buttoned her coat, smiling at me as she did so. "Man or woman, it doesn't make a great deal of difference."
On the way out to the country in the cab she told me that her name was Mary Sharpe, that she was twenty-four, had been born in Branchville, New Jersey, and that she had been a call girl since the age of nineteen.
"It isn't too bad," she confided. "Sometimes it's even a little fun."
I reminded her that she was to tell people that she came from Allentown, that she had worked for me as a model for a while and that she was new in the city.
"I hope I don't run into anybody I know," she said. "I've been in and out of a lot of beds."
I wished that I'd told her to dye her hair but it was too late for that now so I forgot about it. I told her my name, Bill Gordon, and I had her repeat it several times until I was sure that she would remember it.
"If the article comes out well," I said, "there might be a bonus in it for you."
She slid across the seat, pressing her body in close to me.
"You're nice," she said. "Do you want Nelson to pull off the road for a couple of minutes?"
I told her, no, it was okay, she didn't have to do that for me, and we rode the rest of the distance in silence.
Eudora met us at the door and she smiled at me when she saw the girl.
"Oh, darling," she said. "Come in." Her frank glance moved to Mary's face, approvingly. "Is this the young lady you were telling me about, Bill?"
I made the introductions and Eudora had me put our coats on one of the couches in the living room. Several other coats were already there.
"We're having some fun downstairs," she explained "Come along."
She had not shown me the basement before but I was not surprised to find that it was quite massive and elaborate. The main room was about thirty by forty and there was a huge, blazing fireplace at one end of this. Four or five men and two women stood in front of the fire, laughing and drinking and talking.
"Why don't you wait over there?" she said to Mary. "Make yourself at home. I want to show Mr. Gordon something."
Mary said it would be all right, if she could help herself to the drinks, and I followed Eudora Channing across the big room and into a narrow hall.
"I like your little friend," she said. "Rut she isn't the-uh-the young one you mentioned, is she?"
"Hardly."
She stopped at a birch door and swung around to face me.
"We could have fun with a young innocent one," she said, pulling my head down and kissing me on the mouth. "You have no idea."
I was quite sure that I hadn't.
"I could have her next week," I said. "For Friday. If that would be-"
"Oh, could you?"
I kissed her, because it was the thing to do, but the taste of her lips sickened me. "If Friday's all right."
"Any time is fine for something like that." She clung to me a moment, kissing me several times before she pulled away. "Take my hand," she directed. "It's dark in here and I don't want you to fall."
She grasped my hand as she opened the door and I got a fleeting glance of half a dozen faces, about an equal number of them men and women. Then the door closed behind us.
"This is something new with us," she whispered as we sat down on a narrow bench. "And it's so exciting!"
"Quiet!" somebody said from the front of the room. "Or you'll ruin the tape."
The odor of cigar and cigarette smoke hung thick between the four walls. I could hear the sound of heavy breathing near me and once a woman sighed. Now and then somebody puffed on a cigar or a cigarette and the glow swelled like a huge red danger signal in the night.
"For the benefit of those who just arrived, I'll review what we are doing," a male voice at the front of the room said. "As you know, psychiatrists have used a drug known as sodium amytal to hypnotize many of their patients. Police have also used it for the purpose of obtaining confessions. At the moment, we have a young girl under the influence of this drug-she is lying here peacefully upon a small settee-and we are recording on a tape those things she is telling us about her life. Other copies of this tape can be made and, I am sure I do not have to tell you, we can profit greatly by selling them."
I felt cold sweat break out upon my forehead. Eudora Channing gripped my hand firmly.
"This girl is a minister's daughter," the voice said. "She had told us, just prior to the time the door opened, that she had first fallen in love at the age of seventeen. We will now continue with the questioning. Please, everybody, remain quiet."
My guts churned as I heard the tape recorder whirr into action. In a blind, insane fury I wanted to rip down the walls of the room with my bare hands, to strangle everybody in there until they would never be able to talk or breathe again. But all I could do was wait and listen.
"Your name is Judith Call?"
"Yes." Her tone was flat and expressionless. "My father is a minister."
"Tell us again about your first love."
"It was during the summer. We had a boy who used to take care of the lawn. I was in the garage one afternoon when he came in. I was wearing shorts and a halter. He kissed me. I...."
Somebody in the room snickered and I closed my eyes tightly, trying to beat down the revulsion that rose up in my chest. I resolved in that moment, with even greater determination than before, to destroy this cancer even if it meant that I might lose my life in so doing.
I will not bore nor offend the reader by reporting the remainder of Judith's recital. But as we left the room a few minutes after its end I had a feeling of loathing such as I had never experienced before.
"You'll find a ready market for the tapes," I forced myself to assure Eudora.
Her eyes, looking up into my face, were luminous.
"What a combination they'll be with some of our movies," she said.
"Yeah."
There were a number of people in the other room and she introduced me around. I noted, with satisfaction, that Mary seemed to be holding her own with a husky gray-haired man at a table in one of the darkened corners.
"Harry Miller," she said, smiling. "Harry is one of the top guns in the vice squad. Harry, meet Bill Gordon. Bill is going to be one of our new chasers."
I soon learned that a chaser was only a fancy word for a procurer. I became aware of this as they discussed Peter Anderson. Miller said that he was in St. Johns Hospital, suffering from a broken arm, and that he had been picked up under embarrassing circumstances. I gathered, from the way that Miller spoke, that Anderson would not live long after his discharge from the hospital.
"We have to be very careful," he told me and I did not fail to catch the warning in his voice. "The stakes here are very big and one little slip can ruin everything."
I met others, some of greater and a few of lesser importance. There were manufacturers, a radio announcer, a television personality, a couple of artists and-this rather shocked me-a state senator. In addition to these, there were both men and women high up in the top echelons of the city's ranking society. There was, I decided, enough influence in this one room to swing the next gubernatorial election. I was even more firmly convinced of this when Eudora introduced me to a representative from the district attorney's office.
"I told you this whole thing was tremendous," she said. "Now do you believe me, Bill?"
"I've believed you right along."
"There's a great deal of money to be made. And our protection is the best. It couldn't be better."
She was called to the phone once and when she returned her face was worried.
"Some people I wanted you to meet couldn't get here," she said. "They have a model agency downtown and it caught on fire tonight. Can you imagine a thing like that happening?"
I thought, briefly, about Diana. The poor little kid had really gone out and done it.
"Probably an overheated furnace," I said. "Those things happen this time of the year."
"No. It was deliberate. And they arrested the girl."
"Why would anybody do a thing like that?"
"I don't know. They said she called them to come down to the office and they did. When they found nothing wrong and got ready to go, she just threw a match to the place. She must be nuts, I told them."
Or wildly desperate. What had the little fool gone and done? But I couldn't help admiring her for it. She was with me, it would seem, every inch of the way.
A long table had been set up near the fireplace and the many plates on it were stacked high with sandwiches and canapes. Everybody crowded around the table, eating heartily and drinking and joking. I talked with Mary for a moment and she said, with alcoholic demureness, that I might be ashamed of her for what she had consented to do.
"You were right about one thing," she told me. Her voice was thick and slurred. "These are people with their hair down."
I noticed the peculiar dilation of her eyes and I wondered if she had come up against some of those little yellow capsules that swept inhibitions aside. I supposed that she had and, although I regretted such a thing had happened, I congratulated myself on the fact that they had not given her one of the truth pills. For that matter, just the thought of what had taken place with Judith, and what those pills could accomplish, sent stark terror racing up and down my spine. If somebody got the idea of feeding one of them to me and then asked me questions about my past-well, it wouldn't be good, that's for sure.
Presently the tables were pushed aside and several of the men began arranging the chairs in a sort of semicircle about the big room. Eudora left me for a few moments, saying that she wanted to make certain all of the arrangements for the entertainment had been completed. I moved about casually, counting the people present and hoping that I would be able to remember most of the faces I saw. There were eighteen men and fifteen women. The men were of all ages but most of the women were in their twenties. I heard fragments of conversation, and gathered that most of the talk, surprisingly, concerned itself with business. One secretarial-type blonde was arguing with Miller.
"I don't care if you can make a million dollars," he was saying to her. "If you send some of your girls up to a convention here in the city, or even up into the country, that's one thing. But if you take on a deal out of the state, across the state line, then we're apt to run into some real trouble. All you need is for somebody to put up a holler and you'll have the FBI down on you so quick that you'll wish you'd never been born."
The girl made a nasty remark, lifted her shoulders haughtily and stalked away.-
"Bitch," Miller said, his glance following the smooth, practiced movements of the girl's hips. Then he shrugged and smiled at me. "They're all the same," he said. "Once they know you've fixed it for them so they can't get run out of town they want to put up a sign in the village square. Know what I mean.-what is it?-Gordon?"
I told him the name was Gordon, all right, Bill Gordon, and that I knew what he meant
"Saw your pictures," he said. "With the girl. Morrie's quite an operator, isn't he?"
I assumed he was speaking about the fat man who had arranged things for me on Tenth Street, so I assured him that Morrie knew what he was doing, there could be no doubt about that.
"I've wanted to talk to you about those pictures," Miller said. "And about yourself, too, Gordon. In a way, since Eudora brought you in, it's her job. But I have a feeling that she has a sort of personal yen for you. Not that I blame her, mind you. You're young and good-looking and, I'm sure, you can give her just what she needs. Still, while you're having your fun, just remember a couple of things. First, you're in this with us to stay, Gordon, and make no mistakes about it. Your job is to get recruits for us and any time that you can't, or you feel you don't want to, those pictures of you will go into circulation all across the country. You wouldn't like that too much, would you?"
"Don't get yourself excited over me," I told him. "I'm in this to make money and not to change my mind."
"Fine. But don't forget what I'm telling you, Gordon. You get out of line, just once, and I could even have you nailed on those pictures. You'd get five years in the can."
Miller was a few inches shorter than I was, about up to my chin, and I stared down at him for a long moment. Putting it mildly, I hated his guts. He was a creep who hid behind a shield and helped spread filthy sex. But I had to tolerate him. At least, I had to tolerate him until I was ready to act.
"In that case," I said, "the girl would get it, too. What about her?"
His look was stony. "Who cares? Besides, we could always get her to say that you had forced her. Your striking her-and Morrie got a good shot of that-would add strength to claims that you had mishandled her."
Neat, I thought, stepping aside as some of the men came along, moving chairs. So neat and clever that there wasn't any possible way out. All the girl had to do was shed a few tears in court, point to me as being the man who had ruined her, and I could exchange my name for a number.
"Well, don't worry about it," I said to Miller. "I went into this with my eyes wide open and my wallet empty. Even Sears, Roebuck doesn't give a better guarantee."
"For your sake, Gordon, I hope not." A girl came over to him, clutched his arm but he flung her aside. "The other thing you should know is that you won't always be Eudora Channing's favorite. She devours men the way other women eat candy. Remember that, Gordon."
I was glad to get away from Miller. I don't mind admitting that I had feared him from the start, that my talk with him had not lessened that feeling. To be truthful about it, I harbored the suspicion that he had, at one time, been very close to Eudora Channing and that he now deeply resented his lack of success in that department. It was impossible to guess to what lengths he might go in an attempt to reclaim that which he believed belonged to him. Perhaps, on the other hand, I had overestimated his interest in the girl and he had only sought to be kind to me, preparing me for an event which he knew, from past experience, was bound to occur.
I crossed to the fireplace, hoping to refill my glass, but was stopped by Eudora.
"Here," she said, placing a pill in my hand. "Take this."
I noticed, then, that she had been giving the tiny pink pills to everyone. A brunette who stood beside me gave me a nudge with her elbow and popped a pill into her mouth.
"Take it," she insisted. "It'll make you live up a storm." Everybody seemed interested in getting one of the pills. Even Miller came over for his and made a wry face as he swallowed it.
"Let's live," he said to no one in particular. He grabbed a tall pretty looking girl and kissed her fully on the mouth. "Let's live it up, honey, or die in the act."
When I was sure no one was watching I dropped the pill into my coat pocket. As soon as I had an audience again I lifted one hand to my mouth and pretended to take the thing.
"They just relax you," Eudora said. She pulled my head down and wet my mouth with her lips. "Come with me," she whispered. "Let's get a good seat."
A good seat, I soon discovered, was almost any place in the room. Some of the guests sat upon chairs while others lounged on cushions upon the floor. As the lights dimmed, a girl giggled.
"Look," Eudora whispered. "Here they come."
Mary and a young man appeared from one of the small rooms at the rear....
I cannot go into what followed. I was about to flee in disgust when, fortunately, I heard a voice, a voice filled with evil excitement.
"Here, Bill." Heavy hands gripped my shoulders, turning me around. "Allow me."
It was Miller. His face, covered with huge beads of sweat, was twisted almost beyond recognition.
"I think I want some of that," he said.
Even if I had been inclined to resist, which I wasn't, he seemed determined to have his way. A contemptuous smile played at the corner of his mouth as I pushed Eudora Channing away from me and got to my feet.
"That's a good sport," Miller said. "Give a pal a break."
Gratefully I turned my back on him, and on Eudora, and walked toward the door.
I discovered Mary Sharpe in the room where I had heard the recording made. I noticed, too, that Judith Call lay sleeping peacefully upon the settee. She was fully clothed.
"Get dressed," I told Mary. "And let's blow out of here."
She nodded, shaking her head as though she were trying to clear it.
"Christ," she said miserably. "Christl"
She was naked, except for the shoes on her feet, and I knew it would do no good to look for her underthings. I got her coat from a hanger and helped her put it on.
"Can you walk?"
Her hair was all mussed up and there was a long scratch across the one cheek. She stared at me stupidly.
"Can you walk?" I repeated. I slapped her hard across the face. The pupils of her blue eyes widened for an instant and then receded again into tiny pinpoints. "Answer me!"
"Walk," she said dumbly. "Have to walk. Have to get away-"
I told her I would help her, that she could hang onto my arm, and then I-went over to the settee. I bent down and picked up Judith Call. She opened her eyes once, smiled faintly and closed them again. I looked about for a coat, found none and then walked to the door.
"Come on," I told Mary Sharpe. As she stared at me, unmoving, I cursed her. "Hurry!" I said.
We got through the room, keeping in the shadows, without being detected but when we got to the stairs we ran into trouble. Mary's footsteps were unsteady and, in the end, I had to carry both girls up to the first floor. Before we went outside I wrapped my overcoat around Judith.
When we reached the cab, Nelson got out and opened the door.
"Golly!" he breathed, looking at Mary. "What happened to you?"
I pushed Mary into the cab and, with Nelson's help, put Judith in beside her.
"Look," I told Nelson. "We had a little hassle in there and these two girls got roughed up a bit. I think they may have been slipped some dope."
His eyes widened and he whistled.
"Golly, if I'd known that-"
"There's no danger," I assured him, closing the door. "I think both of them will sleep for quite a while." I reached in my pocket and brought out a fifty. "Just cruise around for about an hour and stop back for me then. I should be ready by that time. If I'm not, or you don't see me, don't wait."
He started to protest, to inquire about what he should do if I didn't put in an appearance, but I told him to stop borrowing trouble and walked toward the house.
There was, however, little need for my concern. I found everybody still in the midst of revels of one sort or another, and I had not been missed. Even Eudora, when I told her I had to go, seemed uninterested. She just told me to call the first of the week and that she would make some arrangements for the other girl. I told her I'd do that, forced myself to kiss her once, lightly, and said good night.
Five minutes later I was in Nelson's cab, riding toward the city. Both girls were still in back, sound asleep. As we neared the Twin Cities Bridge, Nelson remarked that it had been a hell of a night. I agreed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I HAD a rough time of it all day Sunday with Judith Call. Once, during the morning, she tried to throw herself through the window and I had to bat her hard, driving her against the wall, to keep her from winding up in the street. Later in the. afternoon she tried it again and this time I slapped her face until it was beet-red. Finally, she fell exhausted upon the bed. She lay there sobbing.
"You have to believe me, Judith," I said as patiently as I could. I sat down on the bed. "You've got to realize that I'm trying to help you."
We stayed there like that, two people in a small room and yet very far apart, until long after dark. Her miserable seff-recriminations episode had began, of course, about nine that morning when she'd suddenly come awake. Her mind, even late in the day, was still clogged from the effects of the dope and, I suppose, the tortures of her previous experiences.
"Judith," I pleaded again, "Please be reasonable! I want to help you. Your father wants to help you. Everybody wants to help. But you have to stop this crying long enough so we can talk. The tears won't solve anything. Believe me, they won't. My God, do you know what time it is? Almost ten o'clock! And neither one of us has had a thing to eat all day. Aren't you hungry? Maybe if you ate something you'd feel better."
I kept talking to her this way, reasoning with her, trying to make her trust me and feel unafraid. Finally, when I mentioned her father again, she suddenly sat up. Her glance was defiant and bitter.
"A lot he cares!"
"But he does, Judith. He cares a great deal. He's your father and he wants to help you."
A smile twisted her lips and she didn't look at all like the pretty young girl I had first seen in New Rockford.
"It's too late now," she said. Her eyes became angry as she stared at me. "Who are you? Another one?"
She hadn't recognized me. I was not surprised.
"I brought you here," I said. "But I'm not one of them."
"I slept in your bed?"
"That's right, you did."
"And you had your-fun?"
I could have struck her for saying that. "I sat in that chair over there, watching you. I didn't know what you might try to do when you woke up. And it was a good thing that I did. Twice, I had to stop you from jumping out of the window."
"You did?" She shook her head in disbelief. "I don't remember doing anything like that. I think you're lying."
"I'm not lying," I told her. "You were at a party-do you remember that?"
She sat up straighter on the bed, frowning.
"I remember going somewhere. It was a big house."
"Yes. Were you drunk when you went there?"
"We always drink, every day." Then, as an afterthought, "How else can you live this way?"
"You were given some dope. Sodium amytal. Undoubtedly it was given to you in the form of a pill. Can you recall taking anything like that?"
She got up from the bed, wavering. Her hair, I noticed for the first time, was a terrible mess. She looked at least twenty years older.
"Who are you?" she demanded. She glanced around the room, as though she were seeing it for the first time. "And what are you doing with me here?"
"I'm a friend," I repeated gently, moving between the girl and the window. "And I'm trying to help. If you'll let me." She stood perfectly still by the bed, trembling, and I walked toward her slowly, speaking as I did so. "Don't you recognize me, Judith? Don't you recall having seen me before?"
Her eyes lifted to my face, lingering for an instant. And then, with an agonized sigh, she covered her face with her hands.
"Oh, God," she whispered, "I don't remember you."
"I met you in New Rockford."
"You-did?"
"When I came up to get material for an article on that sports car. Don't you remember? Look at me, Judith! I've changed myself a little-a moustache, short hair, the glasses-but I'm the man who was there in the garage, taking pictures, the day you went off."
Her hands came away from her face and I stood there very close to her, looking down into her eyes.
"Don't you remember me, Judith?"
Recognition came to her slowly, like the morning sun bursting through a cloud bank. And, not unlike the blazing fire of the sun coming up over a new horizon, it was sort of wonderful to see.
"Oh, Mr. Morgan!" she sobbed, pressing in against me. "Mr. Morgan!"
She clung to me for a long while, sobbing. But this time her tears were not those of fear or regret. They were the tears of hope.
"I've been an awful fool," she said at last.
"All of us are, at one time or another."
"I want to be able to trust you, Mr. Morgan."
I stroked her damp hair, forcing her head back so that I could see her face.
"You can trust me," I told her seriously. "I risked my life to bring you here."
She turned her head away and pushed free of my arms.
She sat down on the bed again. She looked every bit like an innocent young schoolgirl who has just been berated by her favorite teacher.
"I didn't come to the city for this," she reminded me sadly. "I came here because I thought I could get a job and because I wanted to be somebody." Her hands went down over her body, touching it hesitantly as though it were now something dirty. Her eyes glistened again, filling with tears, but her voice was tragically steady. "Look at me now, Mr. Morgan. I'm a prostitute. The daughter of a minister-and in less than a month I've become nothing but a cheap-"
"You mustn't say that."
"But it's true."
"It's true only if you believe it."
We talked for a long while, until almost midnight, before I suggested that we go out and have something to eat.
"But I look so terrible," she protested. "And I haven't any coat."
I told her not to worry about the coat, that I'd pick up another one for her in the morning. "Tell you what, I'll go down and get something," I said, opening the door. "I won't be gone long."
Truthfully, I didn't want to leave her alone in the room but there wasn't much I could do about it. And, anyway, she seemed to have calmed down considerably. She seemed thankful for what I had tried to do for her. As I walked to the restaurant in the next block, I thought again of some of the things she had told me. She hadn't blamed Elsa Lang for any of her troubles. Elsa had told her that she didn't know Anderson very well but Judith had taken a chance on the lead because she'd been so sick of things at home in New Rockford. I had asked her if she had any recollection of her night at the house, but all she could tell me was that she felt she had been talking to someone and that she had said many horrible things that she would not normally say. Her memory, I realized, was fogged with liquor, dope and terror. I might have insisted that she bare her indiscretions to me, but I did not. I am not morbidly curious.
There was a newsstand on the corner near the restaurant and I picked up a copy of the Sentinel and two packs of Winstons. While I waited for the girl behind the counter to fix up two roast beef sandwiches and coffee to take out, I scanned hastily through the pages of the paper. Just as the waitress finished packing the food, I found the item I had been seeking.
GIRL CONFESSES TO STARTING MODEL AGENCY FIRE
The account was brief and to the point It related that Miss Diana Sanderson, an employee of the Montana Model Agency, had been arrested for putting the torch to her employer's premises. The damage, it stated, had been considerable and Miss Sanderson, before her removal to the City Hospital for examination by a psychiatrist, had said her only reason for starting the fire had been to get even with the management for not having put her on as a model. "Who wants to be a file clerk all her life?" Miss Sanderson had inquired.
I paid the waitress and carried the carton into the street. The more I thought about Diana Sanderson the more I felt myself gaining respect for the girl. Perhaps her attention-getting method had been somewhat more drastic than I might have suggested but it had, without a doubt, created the desired effect. The only trouble now was that she might get sent to jail for what she had done. Or, facing jail, she might blurt out the truth and this could very easily reach Miller's alert ears. I knew without deciding upon the method to be used, that I would have to do something to help her.
Then I got a shock. My room, I discovered upon my return, was empty.
The girl was gone.
Not only that, but the top drawer of the dresser was open and a careful examination of it failed to reveal the twenty dollars I had left there for my room rent.
I sat down on the bed, cursing. Either Judith Call was basically a good girl and she was merely trying to run away from herself and everyone who knew her, or she wasn't any good at all and she was on her way back to the syndicate. Remembering her, I tried to believe that the former was true. But I could not be sure. And even though she might betray me to them, I had to keep on with my plans until the ring was smashed. Or until I was killed.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
IT was nearly noon before I awoke Monday. When I saw what time it was, I jumped out of bed, swearing, and stumbled down the hall to the bathroom. A few minutes later I was dressed.
Outside, I found the weather clear and cold. The wind whipped around the corners of the building, slamming me in the face, and I decided that Judith Call had gotten more than slightly chilly when she'd gone out the night before without a coat. But, then, she'd had my twenty dollars and this would have supplied her with more than enough with which to catch a cab, or rent a room, or, for that matter, to have returned to her home in New Rockford. On the other hand, it was quite possible that she had gone back to the brownstone on Tenth Avenue, in which case I would be forced to move very quickly and carefully.
While I waited for my eggs in the restaurant I phoned Dr. Call. But, from the way he spoke, I knew that she had not arrived at home. I assured him, before I hung up, that I was doing everything in my power to break the ring which held his daughter. I did not, of course, mention that I had seen her, since I felt that this would only confuse the issue and could be of little solace to him. He pleaded with me for prompt action, saying that he would turn to the police if he continued to lose confidence in me.
"Don't do anything until the end of the week," I cautioned him. "You'll have some definite news from me by that time."
"I hope so, Mr. Morgan."
As soon as I had finished my breakfast, I took a long, unsteady breath and dialed the number at Eudora Channing's house. If anything had gone wrong, if they had been suspicious of Mary or if Judith's disappearance had been at all unusual, it seemed to me that she wouldn't hesitate to tell me about it. There was no reason why she shouldn't. If she felt I was out of line in any respect she could threaten me with the photos that had been taken at the brownstone.
"Oh, Bill, darling!" she breathed when she found out who it was. "I've been waiting for your ring."
"Sorry, but I just got up."
Her laugh was low, intimate.
"Big night Saturday night?"
"You ought to know," I said cheerfully. "I couldn't keep up with you."
"Bill, listen." Her voice was business-like now, short and clipped. "Miller liked you, I think. And so did the others. But this is a producing business, Bill. We have to have-you know-stock. You get ten percent of what your girls do, no matter what. But we have to have a fresh supply. They become old hat to the customers and, not only that, they disappear. We lost one the other night, the girl who made the tape."
For the first time since the party I began to feel secure. Apparently the incidents had been accepted as a matter of course. Nobody cared. Only human lives were involved. And what did that mean when there were so many others who could be used for the same purpose?
"I'm going out of town for a few days," I told her. "To get the girl I spoke about. But I don't want her on my hands after I return to the city. How would Friday night be, at your place?"
"Say, at eight?"
"Yes, eight would be good."
There was a long silence during which I visualized the look of anticipation in Eudora Channing's eyes as she contemplated the fun they would be able to have with a real live innocent. It was almost enough to make me puke.
"A thing like that is worth a fortune," she breathed. "Really, Bill, it is."
"I know," I agreed. "Why else would I spend all week running her down?"
She told me it made her unhappy to think that I would be gone for so long. I don't know whether she was lying or not. But I had made up my mind that I wouldn't touch her again even if it meant my life. I was glad when she finally blew a noisy kiss into my ear and I was able to hang up.
Another dime connected me with the offices of Federson and Federson. Lucy Miller said she was delighted that I had phoned her. She consented, readily, to my suggestion that we meet at a nearby bar and discuss her future. She told me that she would get there shortly after five but that she would wait for me if I was late.
City Hospital is in the north end of the city and by the time I reached there, riding the subway, it was almost two o'clock. After several unsuccessful attempts, I eventually learned the floor upon which Diana Sanderson was being held and, somewhat later, I was ushered into the office of the consulting psychiatrist.
"Dr. Frank," he said, rising from behind his desk and extending his hand. "May I assist you?"
I told him who I was but, naturally, it meant absolutely nothing to him. I said that I was interested in Diana Sanderson and that I wished to talk to him about her.
Dr. Frank was an extremely restless individual, very tall and thin, and when he spoke it seemed to be with a great deal of effort. He asked me if I was a friend and I told him I was. After he had confirmed this through a series of intercom communications, he became more friendly and talkative.
"I talked with the girl this morning," he said. "She seems perfectly normal, nothing out of the ordinary." He smiled, obviously considering what he had just told me. "Oh, I grant you that normal people seldom run around setting fire to their places of employment, but-well, as I say, I think she is all right. I believe she was compelled to do what she did for some desperate reason but, so far, she has been unwilling to tell us about it. Perhaps she will. I don't know. I'll have to talk with her again."
I asked him if it were possible for me to see her for a few moments but he said this would be a violation of the rules since she was confined for having committed a crime.
"Would you give her a message for me?"
"I might. It depends on what it is."
"Just tell her Bill Morgan said for her not to worry. Tell her everything's going to be all right."
"It sounds a little ridiculous in view of what she has done," Dr. Frank observed. "But I see no harm in it."
I thanked him and left the hospital.
Although I am not the kind of a man who is inclined to drink to excess I felt in need of several quick ones as soon as I entered the dimly lit bar and sat down to wait for Lucy Miller. Head shrinkers, such as the doctor I had met at City Hospital, will tell you that people drink for a variety of reasons. I can't tell you just why I drank so much that afternoon any more than I can explain why the stuff didn't make me drunk. I just know that I needed it and that the bartender seemed surprised that I didn't fall off the bar stool.
"Oh, Mr. Gordon! How are you?"
Lucy Miller sat down beside me.
"Hi," I said. "Drink?"
"Just a teeny one. Mother phoned the office a few minutes ago. We're having company for dinner and I have to run."
I ordered a martini, dry, for the girl and told the bartender to make it a single on the rye.
It was easy to set up a Friday-night appointment. Her face was all flushed, her eyes sparkling, and I guess if I'd told her to go out and model bras in the middle of the street she'd have made a try at it. I explained that I was embarking upon a new concept in modeling, that of having my girls show expensive dresses and coats in the privacy of the customer's home rather than in a showroom. Her first job, I told her, would be at a private estate a short distance from the city and I said that I would drive her out there.
"It sounds fascinating, Mr. Gordon." She finished her drink. "And thank you so very much!"
I suggested stopping at her home to pick her up but she said that was no good. She didn't want her mother or father to know about this new work until she got ready to tell them.
"I'll meet you here," she said. "I'll tell them I'm staying down to shop with a friend. They won't think anything about it because I often do that." She slid off the stool and smiled up at me. Warm fingers touched my hand and moved away. "But they'll be surprised when they find out, won't they?"
"Yes," I agreed, watching her go. "They sure will."
I pushed my glass across the bar and waved for another drink. Her old man would be furious. Where, I wondered, would the whole thing end?
I sat there for a long time, drinking and wrestling with my conscience. I could "go to the police, appeal to the top brass in the department but, if I did that, what did I have to offer? Those in the syndicate could go underground at a moment's notice and, even if they didn't, how did I know that Miller's influence didn't go all the way to the top? Forgetting about the local police, there was always the FRI but, according to the law, they could not investigate unless federal statutes had been violated. I felt, without a doubt, that such violations existed but I could not prove it
"Where you putting it all?" the bartender wanted to know, refilling my glass.
"In my gut," I told him.
He left me alone after that and I went back to drinking. Sure, I could try the authorities but I could see little future in it. If I went to them and told them the truth they might even lock me up for procuring which, in a sense, was what I had accomplished when I had hired Mary Sharpe. The glaring truth about what I had done hit me suddenly. Hell, if I kept this up, I'd end up as rotten as the rest of them.
I left the bar and walked aimlessly through the darkness, trying to think, attempting to rationalize my situation. Reluctantly, I acknowledged that I had gone down the sewer a number of. feet since my first visit to New Rockford.
It was still early in the evening and I had no urge to return to the dark and dreary room which I occupied on the South Side. I guess you could say that I was ill, not from what I had been drinking, but sick of all the things I had seen and felt. And sick with fear. I'm not denying it.
I drank a lot more that night. I kept thinking of Sandy, remembering how wonderful it had been with us, but whenever she seemed close, so close that I could almost touch her, I found the face of the minister's daughter there instead. And I saw other faces, too-the twisted, anguished faces of those who lived in the twilight world. Some of these were the faces of clean young girls, fresh out of our schools and our colleges, their eyes dulled by an inner misery as they realized, much too late, that the best part of their lives had been ruined. But some of the faces smiled-the faces of the Millers and the Eudora Channings and all the others like them. They smiled because there was nothing else left for them to do. Tears or regrets were human luxuries which they could no longer afford. "Hey, bud! You sick?"
The bartender's face was an indistinguishable globule of white before my eyes. "Yeah. I guess."
"So long, bud."
I told him something, I'm not sure just what, and staggered out into the street. A cab slid alongside the curb and I got into it, falling across the back seat. The driver cursed, said something about hating to pick up drunks, and asked where I lived. After what seemed to be a long time I remembered the address on Arlington Square. The cab began to roll down the street.
I'm not at all sure just how I got up to my room. Perhaps I paid the driver to help me but, if I did, I don't remember having done so. All I know is that I leaned against the door, trying to unlock it, when the thing opened up suddenly and I fell inside.
"My God," Elsa Lang whispered, bending over me as I lay there on the floor. "Where have you been?"
I managed to sit up without assistance and grinned, I suppose, somewhat foolishly.
"Celebrating," I said. "It's the turn of the century."
The cold air and the cab ride had helped sober me some and the fall to the floor jarred me awake. I could smell her perfume and see the way she had her blonde hair pushed back in sort of a bun. She wore a pair of black slacks, rather tight, and her red sweater looked as though it might be two sizes too small.
I rolled over and got hold of the edge of the bed. I think I got up on it by myself but it may be that she assisted me. I don't know.
"I want to help you," Elsa said. "You have to get a good night's sleep and then we have to figure out what to do with Judith. She's at my place."
"She's at your place," I repeated drunkenly. I sighed. "Well, that's fine."
I pawed at my head, throwing my hat aside.
"Not bad," she observed, kissing me lightly on the cheek. "But I believe I liked the old Bill a whole lot better. What made you change your face?"
I didn't know why she was there in the room with me, or what her motives were, but I was much too tired to defend myself. I lay there in an alcoholic stupor while she stripped the clothes from my body. It wasn't until after she'd turned out the light that some of the fog in my mind began to lift.
"I've missed you, Bill," she said.
Soft, wet lips touched my mouth and I wondered how she could be enthusiastic about kissing a man who had been drinking so much.
"I'll help you, Bill," she promised. "In any way I can. Don't fight me. I want it this way, Bill."
She stayed with me all that night.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
LUCY MILLER, when I met her at the bar on Friday night, was in a state of extreme excitement and she gratefully accepted my offer of a drink before we started out on our "assignment."
"I'm so thrilled!" she confided, smiling at me across the narrow booth. "I haven't been able to think of another thing the whole week long."
"I hope you don't get in any trouble with your mother and father over it."
She shook her head and the shine of her dark hair reflected the soft lights.
"I told them I was going shopping with a friend," she said. "And, after, to a show. They won't expect me until midnight and, even then, I don't think father will be home. He had to go somewhere on business."
Out to Eudora Channing's, I thought. That's where he'd be, at the huge colonial house on Westminister Drive. Waiting, as were the rest of them, for the appearance of the sacrificial virgin.
"I don't mean to be rude," I said to the girl. "But I do think you should give your face a once-over before we leave. While you're doing that, I'll order another drink." I smiled, meeting the look of understanding in her eyes. "Don't worry, I know how it is on your first job. Every girl is nervous."
"You're very kind, Mr. Gordon."
She wore a tan skirt, white blouse and short brown jacket. My glance followed her as she went back to the ladies' room. She had a nice young body, supple and alive, and she carried it well. I felt sorry for her.
The waiter brought us two more drinks and, while Lucy was busy repairing her face, I dumped the contents of one of the little yellow capsules into her martini. The listless attitude the powder would install in the girl would not, of course, solve everything but it would make it easier to handle her and, I hoped, it would help to eliminate some of the memories of what I must make her do.
I sat there, waiting for the return of the girl and thinking about the events of the week. Actually, it had been mostly a matter of sitting around and brooding over the situation. Elsa, following that night in my room, had returned to her apartment and Judith Call. The minister's daughter was still with her and Elsa had begged off from the model agency, saying that she was ill. From what I had been able to learn, the agency was in a bad way as a result of the fire and Elsa's employers had been more than willing to save the expenses of her services for one week.
Diana Sanderson was, as far as I knew, still at City Hospital and I had read nothing further about the incident in the newspapers. I had phoned Eudora Channing twice during the week, once on the previous morning when I had informed her that I was back in town, and again, just prior to meeting Lucy Miller, to arrange to pick up one of the capsules at the brownstone on Tenth Street. I had outlined my plans in detail, stating that I would give my girl the deadening treatment before our arrival and that I would make all of the arrangements to present her to the party.
"This is my first try at something like this," I had told her, "and I want it to go over with a bang."
She'd gotten a kick out of that, me talking that way, and she'd assured me that I could handle it any way I wanted to. She said that everybody would be there, almost fifty people, and that they were all looking forward to the affair.
On the way uptown I'd had Nelson stop at the offices of the Morning Star while I went in and talked to George Castle, the reporter who had worked on the sex stories earlier in the year. I explained a little bit of what I had done, told him that I had written the facts out in detail and that I had mailed them to him in care of the paper.
"Just in case something happens to me. It'll give you a lot of angles to work on. You'll get the letter in the morning."
He received my suggestion that he arrange to stop out at Eudora Channing's home later that night with only lukewarm interest. I had left his office, feeling that he regarded me as another crank and that nothing would come of it. This had been a disappointment. I was going into this alone, without any help, and I had felt that I could trust Castle. It had been necessary for me to confide in someone and I had selected him as being the best bet. But I was fairly certain that I had not succeeded in convincing him. I was still alone, with the exception of Nelson who had been furious about the treatment given Mary. But he seemed to be loyal to me, as well as greedy for money, and I was of the opinion that I could rely upon him. However, I reasoned, he was just a cab driver and could hardly be of much help.
Lucy Miller returned from the ladies' room, her face radiant and eyes sparkling.
"There," she said, sliding into the booth. "Am I pretty enough now?"
Her face was beautiful, the kind of strangely eager face that you see among children. I couldn't look at her as she lifted her glass and tasted the drink.
"We'd better hurry," I said.
She smiled and finished her martini.
"I hope I don't let you down," she said.
I choked against the burning sensation in my chest as I guided her to the door. In a few short hours she would be hurled into the slimy filth of the syndicate and the terrible realization that her father was a part of it would be with her for the rest of her life. But I had been unable to think of another way. There just wasn't any. Lucy Miller was the only card I could play.
"Good evening."
I nodded at Nelson as he opened the cab door. He was waiting for me, in accordance with my instructions.
I gave him the address on Westminister Drive. We sat back as the cab picked up speed and I watched dozens of gaily lighted store windows flash past.
I wondered if it were the martinis or the dope going to work on her so quickly and after we had traveled a couple of more blocks I put my arm around her. She didn't protest but just sighed a little and snuggled in close. I let my hand go inside of her coat, and she made no move to stop me. Shuddering, I took my hand away and let it rest on her shoulder. From this point on the future of this trusting girl at my side was in my hands. It was, I realized with a sense of shock, a tremendous responsibility.
When the cab reached the parkway it turned left instead of right. As I bent forward to speak to Nelson about it, a second figure appeared beside him and a gun pointed straight at my head.
"Sorry, Mr. Morgan, but your plans have been changed. Just rest easy, please."
"Elsa!"
"Surprised?"
I sat back, saying nothing. My hands felt sweaty and cold as I looked at the girl beside me. Her eyes were closed and there was a smile on her lips.
"We'll have a nice party," she said. "Judith and you and the kid here. Won't it be fun?"
I wet my lips with my tongue and managed a grin.
"Is there any other kind of fun?" I wanted to know.
She turned her head, briefly, and smiled at Nelson.
"He's real smart now," she said. Then, looking back at me, "You should have been smarter before, my darling Bill. Didn't you know that every call girl in this town-and every cab driver who works with them-are all tied up in one great big bundle?"
Nelson swung the cab left again and I knew that we were going over to the brownstone on Tenth Street.
"I do now," I admitted, with feeling. The snout of the gun threatened me again as I hunched my shoulders. "Look," I said. "You can do what you want with me, but leave the girl out of it. Dump her off on one of these corners and let her go."
Her hollow laugh echoed through the car.
"Who are you kidding, anyway? Nelson and I split a grand if we get the two of you over there."
"I'll give you that much to let her go."
"Forget it," Nelson told me. "It isn't that kind of a game."
"You were a sucker all the way through," Elsa Lang scoffed. "You fell for everything and you took all kinds of chances. What makes guys like you so stupid?"
I remembered Dr. Call, back in New Rockford, and I remembered the Sunday I had spent with Judith in my room.
"You'd never understand," I answered truthfully. The girl stirred beneath my arm and I felt myself tremble. "You had me fooled," I said. "I'll go along with that."
"You fooled yourself," she advised me. "When you came to my place, looking for Judith, I thought we had another heavyweight lover on our hands. That's why I gave you a lot of good sex free-for-nothing. After you phoned your way into the agency' to do that story and you didn't come back, nobody wanted to believe me.
But when you showed up at Eudora's with that car and she had the license number checked she found out that the car selling gimmick was another trick. After that we put two and two together-adding your crew cut, glasses and moustache-and we got a very simple answer. We had a snoop. Mary Sharpe played her part very well, don't you think?"
"To say nothing of Nelson," I said. "He and his kids!"
Elsa Lang threw back her head and laughed. Had I been quicker, I think I could have gotten the gun away from her, but'by the time I got ready to move she was staring at me again.
The cab came to a stop in front of the brownstone and Elsa told me to get out. It took me a few moments to waken the girl but after I succeeded she followed me in a docile, sleepy sort of way. We went up the steps, Nelson directly behind me with Elsa Lang, the gun concealed beneath her coat, bringing up the rear.
"Oh, there you are!" Eudora Channing exclaimed, coming along the hall. Her smile mocked me. "Isn't this rather quaint?"
I nodded absently, considering the possibility of trying to take the gun from Elsa. But it was no use. She was too far away, near the foot of the stairs, and the girl clung to my arm, holding me fast.
"Well," Eudora said, inspecting Lucy. "Aren't we the pretty one, though?" She snapped her fingers twice in front of the girl's face and was greeted with a smile. "I see you used the capsule, Bill. Oddly enough, I thought you might not."
Only once, when Eudora tried to pull the girl away from me, did Lucy make any effort to resist.
"Oh, please, Mr. Gordon! I feel so-sleepy."
Helplessly, I watched as the Channing woman and Nelson took the girl down the hall and disappeared into a room.
"We'll wait here," Elsa advised me. She now held the gun in plain sight.
"You're going to regret this," I told her. "Believe me, you are."
"Like hell I am."
"What about Judith?"
"She's upstairs, too."
"And what's going to happen to her?"
She laughed.
"You ought to be asking the same question about yourself, Bill. Because you haven't got anybody and no one will miss you. Do you know what I'm saying?"
I didn't bother answering her. I was a man and the only thing they could hold over me were those pictures. But it wouldn't be enough and I felt sure they realized it. My death would be their only safety.
Eudora and Nelson came down the hall, the girl wavering between them. They had torn off her sweater. Upon her face was a mixed look of terror and resignation. I noticed, without paying much attention to it, that she possessed a delightfully proportioned body.
"Up the stairs," Nelson told me.
I moved ahead of them, lifting my feet slowly, trying to think about how I was going to handle this. Once the moment arrived, I would have only one chance, perhaps not even a good one, but one which I would be forced to take. I had gotten the girl into this and it was up to me to get her out of it. If they were going to kill me, anyway, it would be better if it happened in the brownstone rather than on a lonely country lane. Not that it would make a great deal of difference to me, one way or the other, but if I had to die I might as well try to make it count for something.
I turned right at the top of the stairs, as directed, and entered a huge room. Even as I paused momentarily, surveying the faces of the men and women in there, I found myself incapable of experiencing the feeling of fear. My fright, it would seem, had died the moment I realized Lucy Miller was in grave danger.
"Hurry it along," Eudora told me impatiently. "We haven't got all night."
I pushed my way further into the room. They were all there, every one of them. They had formed a large semi-circle. A bald-headed man fussed nervously with a large movie camera. Four huge floodlights, not yet turned on, hung overhead.
I kept my voice low, unemotional, and my face blank as I spoke to Eudora Channing.
"Mind if I talk to Miller?" I wanted to know. My glance moved to Elsa Lang; the gun in her hand looked bigger than ever. "My bodyguard can trail along, if you wish."
The high priestess of sex smiled cruelly. "He's waiting to see you," she said. "The rest is up to him."
I hurried across the room. Elsa's high heels clattered on the floor behind me. I had to get to Miller before they brought in the girl.
"It would seem as though I took your warning too lightly," I told him as I came up. "I think I'll know better the next time."
I stood so that he had to turn his back to the doorway to face me. No one, I noticed, seemed greatly concerned over the fact that Elsa kept me covered with the gun.
"There won't be any next time," Miller said. His face was gray and impassive, his eyes narrow and deadly. "We don't go for slobs sticking their noses into our business, punk."
"That's too bad," I said. "By tomorrow, the Morning Star will be in receipt of a complete history of what you people have been doing. It'll make interesting reading, don't you think?"
The expression on his face or in his eyes never changed.
"You can't worry me," he said, his voice flat. "We had the same trouble before, when one of their reporters got ideas. But they couldn't distribute their papers-we've got a tie-up there, too, you know. How can a newspaper make any money if it can't get distribution?"
"You're pretty smart," I said wearily. "You've thought of everything."
"And more."
The lights had been turned on, flooding the room in a glaring white, virginal brilliance.
"Please, everybody," Eudora Channing pleaded. "Please be quiet. This is to be a sound movie and we don't want it ruined."
Miller gave me a look of utter contempt and began to swing away.
"You're a lousy, rotten, filthy cop," I told him.
He hit me across the face with his open hand, once, twice, both times very hard.
"Scum," I said, feeling the nose of the gun come alive against my back. "Pig. Scum."
His eyes narrowed, his face became livid with anger, and he struck me again, several times. I took everything he had, keeping my hands at my sides, my lips frozen in a sneer. After a few blows my face became numb and all I could feel was the salty taste of blood as it clogged in my throat.
"You no-good bastard," he kept saying. "I'll kill you!"
I forced my puffy lips open and laughed at him.
"You haven't got the guts," I said.
He hit me again and again and the gun dug deeper into my back. A red, distorted haze cut off my vision and I blinked my eyes, trying to watch the room. Slowly, as though walking in her sleep, the wonderful, voluptuous girl came into the room. As the onlookers gasped in pleasure, Nelson pushed her toward the center. She stumbled and fell. With a great effort she rolled over and sat up. The burning lights from above washed across the delicate pink of her skin.
"You ought to be proud of yourself," I said to Miller. I spoke with effort because the blood filled my mouth and nostrils. "Proud," I repeated as every muscle in my body gathered itself, got ready. "Look at her. Look at her! Watch your own daughter being fed to the machine!"
His hand halted in mid-air, his eyes uncertain. And then, with a snarl, he whirled and stared into the brightness of the lights. Lucy Miller held her head high but the expression on her face was one of scorn.
"Stop it!" Miller screamed and hurled himself across the room. "Stop it!"
" I moved quickly, spinning around, grabbing for the girl behind me. My groping hands found her gun arm and she let out a shriek as I brought the arm down over one of my knees, paralyzing it. The gun spun out of her hand and skidded across the floor. I hit her once in the face, hating her, and she fell down, moaning.
I don't know who I hit next, or how many after that, but I kept boring in, driving my fists and my feet at anybody in my way. Some of the numbness had left my face and I could feel the blood gurgling out of my mouth and sliding down over my chin.
"Don't! Oh, God, don't!"
I struck him full in the face, a man I didn't know, and I drove him out of my sight.
I guess, during those frantic moments, I wasn't a human being at all but an animal, a vengeful animal. My fists were swollen from countless blows and my hands ached from the force of judo chops. All around me were wailing women and cursing men and the floor, as I stormed-my way toward the door, became slippery with blood from all of us.
Miller was at the door, trying to get his daughter outside. He was sobbing and pushing against her and he never offered to put up a defense as I hit him time and time again. The blood spurted from his nose and mouth. One more blow, and he fell.
I found Eudora Channing in the hall, waiting for me, a long kitchen knife clutched in her hand.
"I'll kill you," she promised.
But she wasn't quite so lucky. I sidestepped abruptly as I went in and the knife only caught me in the thigh, ripping it from hip to knee. I gasped as the searing pain shot through me, but I had captured her wrist. I forced her arm back, twisting her wrist in the same motion, and she let out a terrified scream as the bone snapped. The knife fell soundlessly to the carpet.
I had her on the floor, my hands locked around her throat, when somebody started kicking me in the head. I tried to escape, dragging her with me, but I couldn't get away from the pain that kept hammering against my skull.
"Let go, you crazy fool! Let go!"
I told whoever it was to go to hell and tried to overcome the growing weakness that had crept into my hands. She was getting away from me and I couldn't let her do that. I had to destroy her.
"Let go!"
Blood filled my mouth, choking me. The words of the speaker became fainter and fainter and my head seemed to be absorbing pain in the way a sponge sops up water. In a final, desperate attempt I let out a long, tortured yell and groped for her.
Quickly and peacefully, blackness possessed me.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MILLIONS of people have read accounts of the smashing of the sex syndicate in countless newspapers, but it is generally agreed that the stories in the Mornng Star were the most authentic. I do not, in any sense, begrudge George Castle whatever national fame he may have achieved. It is true that his success has been due, in large part, to the material I sent him through the mail; but it is also true that I might not be alive today had he not gotten the letter from the post office that same night and, convinced of its authenticity, enlisted the aid of the police commissioner in staging the raid.
"We almost marked it off as a farce," Castle told me. "We couldn't find anybody at the Westminister Drive address. The Tenth Street address, which you had mentioned, was an afterthought. It's a good thing we had it."
I have been in the hospital almost two months and, during this time, the police have been more than kind to me. Perhaps they regret having fractured my skull that night but, to be truthful, I think it was a stroke of good fortune. Had they not arrived when they did I am sure I would have killed Eudora Channing. Her death at my hands would have been just one more thing on my conscience. And, as you can imagine, I have enough to feel badly about without adding to my problems.
The trials are scheduled for the immediate future and no one has any doubts about how they will develop. Miller has made a thirty-thousand word statement, hoping to gain the mercy of the court, but even if he should go free, which he won't, he'll have to return to Maryland to stand trial for the murder of Eudora Channing's first husband. She has denied all, of course, preferring to take her chances with a jury. But she will find testimony directed at her other than that supplied by Miller. At least a half a dozen call girls are willing to appear against her. One of these is Judith Call. Judith's father, during one of his frequent visits to the hospital, has confided to me that he feels he can bear the shame of notoriety if justice is served. He has said, also, that he is changing his methods of dealing with the problems of youth.
"The girls need someone who can direct them wisely," he has told me. "If both Judith and I can grow above this terrible thing that has happened, and if she can be accepted in New Rockford for the fine girl she is, I believe she can fill the bill."
It is not my job to quarrel with Dr. Call or to point out how small-minded some people can be, but I feel more than certain that both the girl and her father have a tough assignment ahead of them. Yet, as I say, it is none of my business. The Reverend hired me to do a job and now that it is done, and I have been paid a fifteen hundred dollar bonus, I fail to see that I am entitled to express any opinion about the matter.
The only annoyance I have suffered since being confined to the hospital-aside from the usual discomforts of a patient with a fractured skull, forty-two stitches in one leg, and assorted cuts, bruises and cracked ribs-has been directed at me by Sam Terry from his office in the Central Building. I am, it would seem, delinquent three articles for Car Skill. I have tried to get the fellow who is customizing my Ford to send along some pictures but, so far, he has not been very cooperative. I've tried to make Sam understand this and I trust that I have. A free-lance writer, you know, can't afford to lose .a market and the sensational promises of big money from several other magazines may be only a passing thing. Once the trials are over and the sentences are passed I believe that most people will forget about the sex syndicate. They will forget about it, that is, until a new one comes along, destroying other lives, imposing upon a thoughtless society its legacy of sin and filth.
Perhaps you do not believe this is so. Perhaps you like to think that a ring such as the one with which I became involved cannot grow as a cancer grows in the breast of an unsuspecting patient. If you believe this, you are wrong.
The psychologists who were assigned to examine those arrested by the police arrived at varying conclusions. Only upon one point were they in agreement. They said that the human mind, once exposed to' good or bad, can either accept or resist within certain limits. The limits of acceptance or rejection are not the same in all people, nor are they the same in both sexes. It is, they pointed out, somewhat similar to the fine line that is drawn between sanity and insanity. The person who over-feeds upon sex is not unlike the person who cannot leave the dinner table following a reasonably balanced meal. His normal mental processes are disturbed-often destroyed-by a constant, yearning hunger that never knows complete satisfaction.
I have thought about these things a great deal and I believe that I know what the doctors meant. Many people who sell lurid sex for a living are no different from the rest of us-at first. But, slowly or rapidly, their moral senses blunt; they brutalize themselves and others.
Murder and suicide have already followed in the wake of the arrests. The same day of their release on bail, Andy Willis shot and killed Gladys Lord. Moments later he placed the snout of the gun in his mouth and took his own life. The double deaths made newspaper headlines since the twin tragedy took place near a crowded street corner in the downtown section. Not so spectacular was the overdose of sleeping pills taken by Elsa Lang or her death, hours later in City Hospital, while a stomach pump struggled to save her.
There have been many other repercussions, too. Several divorces have been filed by prominent men and women, directed at spouses who were trapped in the raid, among these an official of a newspaper distributing company, a radio disc jockey, a member of the district attorney's staff and a few well-known business people.
The state legislature, which immediately unleashed a full scale investigation into the scandal, has closed four model agencies and two placement bureaus specializing in models, and has called before the committee several sales managers of large corporations, charging them with having used attractive call girls to solicit orders from out-of-town buyers. The state attorney's office, riding herd over the city district attorney, has uncovered evidence of white-slave traffic across state lines and the FBI has been brought in. Of particular interest to Federal authorities is the disappearance of more than thirty young girls, among them Diana Sanderson's sister. While identification of the remains of the bodies discovered buried in the back yard on Westminister Drive is almost impossible, the police have predicted that they will, after exhaustive laboratory tests, be able to put a name on most of them.
Diana Sanderson was, of course, released from custody-with a severe warning I am told-and I suppose she has returned to her home in Pine Island. Some day, after I am released from the hospital, I may visit her. On the other hand, I may not. The past dies quicker if it is neglected.
Everybody is nice to me here in the hospital but I am not happy. I want to get out, to slip away for a while before the trials start. I am to be a witness for the state and I have been informed that I will be questioned severely by the defense. There is nothing I can tell but the truth but when I am forced to relate my own participation I know I will not find it easy. Looking back, I wonder how I could have done some of the things required of me. However, my course got results. I am told the police have confiscated more than two tons of pornographic material, which is scheduled to be destroyed as soon as the trials are concluded.
I am also told that I shall be discharged from the hospital in two weeks. The doctors inform me that my skull fracture has healed nicely but they have warned me that I may walk with a limp for quite a while. In anticipation of my release, I have written to the mechanic working on my car, insisting that the job be finished as quickly as possible.
I no longer think much about the injured girl on the ski slope or the minister's daughter who so closely resembled her. Frankly, I have been kept rather busy during my stay in the hospital and I have had very little time for memories. At the start, the police and newspapermen bombarded me with questions and requests for statements, but as soon as all of this stopped I had a typewriter sent in and I began writing this book.
Lucy Miller, who did the typing, agrees with me that the story I have put down on paper is one which should be told over and over again. And she ought to know. Her own father may have to pay with his life for his weakness and folly. I hope, however, that it doesn't come to that. I would not wish to see her suffer further. After all, she is now my wife and I love her very much.
