"I'm very tight," she continued desperately. "All the fellows say I'm the tightest piece of tail they ever had-and my mouth-I know how to use that, too."
She tried to think of some other tricks she had heard about, or read in books that might tempt this nut.
But he only hummed and shook his head.
CHAPTER ONE
Two real wild looking chicks, one a blond the other a red head, sharing a pad in Las Vegas. Both of them were models and both of them were beautiful.
They were both also hip at handling men.
They knew how to string along the likelier prospects, the men who could do them good, without promising too much, and they were aces at fending off the overly-romantic, the empty-pocketed, the seekers after free feels and quick lays.
And they handled both types adroitly and painlessly so that no one got hurt, least of all the two girls themselves.
They were, in short, typical of the more successful career girl-about-the country who ate, dressed and lived well. Knowing their way around, they could cope with most situations without disturbing themselves or anyone else.
When one of them met a guy who could help her in her career and he wasn't repulsive, she shacked up with him and enjoyed the session for what it was, no more and no less.
Yes, Rene Clark and Dale Anders did very well for themselves.
They lived in a two bedroom apartment. It was right in the heart of Las Vegas. The building had a heated pool and an underground garage. They paid a rent of two hundred and fifty dollars per month and considered it cheap for the conveniences and comforts that went with the apartment.
The apartment was on the sixth floor of the building and had a terrace the length of the apartment. They had a view of the pool from their living room picture window while maintaining privacy.
There was peace at the Coronado Apartments, for this was the hour of quiet, the calm between the day and night. Poolside was deserted, lights were turned on in some of the apartments, and there was a hushed pall, a silent shroud about the movements behind the drawn blinds as the residents of the Coronado made their preparations for the evening.
Rene Clark, covered by a terry-cloth robe, came out of the bathroom rubbing her wet short blonde curls with a towel, smiling brightly after her shower, alive and sparkling with all the fervor of her nineteen years.
She was a girl who was glad to be a girl.
"There!" she exclaimed. "That's much better! I feel new all over!"
"You look like the same old gal to me," smiled her roommate. "As cute and lively as ever."
Rene plopped on a chair, her legs stretched out, the robe parted to reveal the sparkle of the tawny legs. "Why, thank you, Dale. I hope Oscar thinks the same way about me."
Dale Anders stretched out on the sofa with a copy of Bazaar, smiled. "Stop worrying about it, Rene. You're a living doll and even better looking than you were a year ago when you last saw your piece of man flesh. He'll fall for you all over again."
"Do you really think so?"
Rene rose, stretched, and padded into her bedroom for her hair dryer. "I know Oscar from back home, you know. We were kids together."
She made this statement as if it were for the first time but Dale had heard it a hundred times and she closed her eyes, waiting for the rest of it. And it came as Rene turned on the dryer and sprayed her hair with the rush of heat.
"I've had a thing for him all my life. He's awfully cute."
Rene turned her head to catch the flow of air from the dryer, blissfully unaware that she described almost every man as 'cute'. "I think he digs me too, but I'm a little worried."
"What about, your looks?" Dale looked over the buxom body of her roommate as the robe, forgotten now, parted and showed her big boobs, the flat stomach, the round thighs, the slim legs. She sighed and went on, "You're still the best figure model in town-next to me, of course."
Rene pouted, a thin line between her brows. "That's what I'm worried about-the figure business we're in. I don't know if Oscar will approve of me doing figure modeling.
"What's wrong with figure modeling?" Dale demanded.
"Why, nothing! But Oscar's kinda square, like. He comes from one of the best families in Easton. That's my home town, you know."
"Yes, Rene, I know," sighed Dale.
"Oh, dear! What'll I do?"
"Just don't tell him, that's all."
"What?" Rene looked at Dale as if such a thought would never have occurred to her.
"Don't tell him, dear, if you're afraid it'll hurt him."
"Well, I don't want to hurt him. Why, I wouldn't hurt Oscar for anything in the world. I've known him all my life; since we were kids."
"I know. You've told me. Look, you said he's in town for only a couple of days, so why bother telling him exactly what you're doing? Tell him you're a high fashion model. He won't know the difference. He'll be here and gone and no one'll be hurt. Meanwhile, you'll both have a ball."
"Oh, I will!" Rene was herself again, bubbling, her eyes sparkling. "Thanks, Dale. That's a wonderful idea."
This was the Rene Las Vegas knew-a naive, wide-eyed, scintillating child with the body of a lush woman. The contrast between her mind and her body was her chief appeal both as a model and as a person.
The hipsters of the city laughed at her ways but it was water off a duck's back for Rene. Ridicule never seemed to touch her and she could face it and go on in her own way, reacting brightly, mouthing trite expressions, blinking her large blue eyes and making loot to send home to her folks in Easton to save for her.
People like Dale who took the trouble to know Rene and accept her as she was, enjoyed the girl's personality as an honest one. Rene enjoyed life and didn't get into too much of a dither over it. She had a mind only for business under that curly-topped blondeness. She knew how to pose and strike the right attitude for the camera, how to project facial expressions as the photographers wanted, how to arch her body so that it was alluring and provocative, how to dress and groom herself, and how to show men that they were interesting and fascinating.
She also had the capacity of projecting a sort of innocent, child-like sexuality to the camera. This ability came from within; it was not planned or calculated. It was direct and simple.
And most men were disappointed on meeting her to discover that she did not live up to the promise of her pictures.
Her vocabulary was astonishing. It consisted in the main of cliches and trite phrases she had picked up and thought cute. Catch-phrases long out of style stayed with her. She had short cuts in speech, set expressions she used for all occasions from being interviewed for a job to discouraging hot pants romeos in parked cars.
Such was Rene Clark's charm, however, that even the frustrated males felt no resentment. They were instead left wondering, shaking their heads, over what had hit them; dazed, knowing only that they had been held off most neatly and disarmingly.
"Toodle-oo," she would chirp as her escort dropped her off at the apartment after dinner and theater. "It's been loads of fun-just loads. We must do it again sometime." She would hold her cheek forward to be kissed and then would be out of the car and gone while the man was still leaning over with pursed lips.
"Au revoir" was another of her pet farewell phrases, along with "Ta-ta-ah,"
"Chee-reeo," and "Bye-eee now." She used to say "dig you later," until a man had come by her apartment after she had said it to him. He insisted that it had been an invitation for him to visit her later that night. It took the night manager, a threat to get the cops, and a good deal of explanation, none accepted, to get rid of him.
But that had been only a slight flaw in Rene's handling of males and she never repeated the error.
Dale watched Rene in delight and admiration as the blonde dressed for the evening. Nothing, thank goodness, would ever hurt Rene Clark. She just was not vulnerable to the sort of painful attacks that people used to cut one another-vituperation, sarcasm, snide remarks, gossip, and all the other instruments of calumny that were life and blood to the inside set.
Rene was indeed a blithe spirit.
"Why," Dale said to herself, "can't I be as innocent as Rene? Nothing ever gets to herand everything gets to me! I feel every dig, every dirty look, real or imagined." She sighed. "Bless little Rene Clark. She'll never get hurt, the lucky thing!"
"Now how do I look?" asked Rene, whirling around to display her gown.
Dale had to hide her smile. As usual, Rene was overdressed. A frilly, flowered dress billowed about her. It was loud and bright, making Rene look like a teen ager trying to imitate a glamor girl.
Rene's jewelry was garish and there was too much of it. She was loaded down with heavy rings, bracelets, necklaces and earrings and an ornate brooch pinned to her bosom. Her musky perfume permeated the room. Her make-up was heavy with layers of color.
Still, even with all this gilding of the lily, the strange thing about Rene was that she could get away with it. She was the only girl she knew, Dale had to admit, who could overdress like this and still look attractive and becoming. Not, perhaps, to a too-discerning male, but how many of those were there in Las Vegas?
"You look terrific," Dale said truthfully. "Oscar will flip."
In their first days together as roommates, Dale had tried to improve Rene's manner of dressing. But it had been no use. None of it got through to Rene. She listened carefully, nodded, and then tried to do as Dale suggested. But no matter how she tried to do things differently, it still came out the same strictly pure and unadulterated Rene Clark.
And now, suddenly, Dale remembered with unwelcome clarity another episode dating from their early days together. Something she had made a conscious effort to forget, usually with some degree of success, but something which sometimes rose like a nightmare in her mind, torturing her. Had it been a dream or not? Could it have been real? She didn't know, and probably never would-not unless Rene brought it up of her own accord. This, in view of the months that had passed since the event, seemed un-likely.
Dale knew that she herself was definitely not a lesbian, and she would have bet her last dime that Rene would scream in horror at the thought.
Nevertheless, the thing had happened, either in a dream or in reality.
Dale had come home one night reeling from an unusually large amount of scotch and soda. She had successfully fenced off the passes of an over-amorous date who had been quite determined and who had handled her pretty roughly. She had collapsed across her bed, crying with disgust and the pain of bruises which he had inflicted on her breasts in his effort to capture them from behind the protecting brassiere.
When the crying spell ended and she felt herself drifting toward sleep, she forced herself up and undressed. Then she went in to take a shower, trying to keep as quiet as possible so as not to wake Rene, who had made no sound so far since Dale had come in. After the shower she collapsed against the sheets and, with her last fully-conscious movement, pulled the covers up around her shoulders. She hadn't even taken the time and trouble to put on her pajamas, and the coolness of the bed was delicious against her bruised flesh....
Just how, when, and why the thing started she still didn't know, but she had suddenly been conscious of an incredibly comforting warmth of arms and body cradling her, and the voice of an angel whispering sweet words into her ear.
"There, there, my little darling, let mama help. You just rest now, and mama will take care of everything."
At the same time she had felt her head drawn gently and firmly down to the softness of a bare bosom, while the hand cradling the back of her head stroked her hair lovingly. She was a child again, and she automatically turned her face toward the softness, nuzzling and sniffling, feeling another wonderfully gentle hand stroking down her back, patting her gently on the buttocks. And all the while the soft voice crooned into her ear, comforting her.
She remembered, too, that her mouth, seemingly of its own accord, closed hungrily over the fragrant boob on which it rested, while her arms tightened around the body of her comforter. And she remembered how the timbre of the soothing voice gradually changed, along with the words, and how she felt the formerly easing hand now move to cover her own boobs, squeezing caressingly. She remembered how the hands had gently moved her head from the wonderful softness on which it lay and eased it down onto the pillow, while the whispering lips were silenced as they closed over her nipples, stilling completely the burning fire of the bruises inflicted by the would-be seducer earlier. The seducer! This wasn't mother then. Mother hadn't been around for a long time before Dale met the guy. Vaguely, she had thought of a name: Rene! But-but, surely this couldn't be Rene?
She remembered how she had reached out to push the head from her knockers opening her mouth to question the mystery woman. Her effort had been weak and unavailing as the mouth tightened on her flesh and a hand came up to push hers down along her side. Then the mouth left her breast and came up to cover her own lips before they could utter a word. The kiss was tender, soft, and undemanding at first, turning slowly into one of beseeching passion. Her own response had been sudden and overwhelming, all questions disappearing from her thoughts, and she had surrendered herself entirely to the magic of the moment and the blood rushed through her body.
Pain, misery, everything was gone. There was nothing left in the world but the gentle, caressing hands and the wandering lips, the surrender of her whole being to a wonderful flicking tongue.
And then the dream ended, as quickly and mysteriously as it had started.
When she awoke the next morning she lay quietly, at first only vaguely aware of the memory of that dream. Then it came slowly back to her, in bits and pieces-the woman, mother or Rene? Dream or fact?
During breakfast she had watched Rene carefully, trying to find any change in attitude. Nothing. She wanted to talk about it, but couldn't bring herself to the necessary point. And, of course, after they had parted for the day, she realized she never would be able to mention it. And Rene never had shown any signs of being different from what she had been previously....
Now Rene's remark brought her up suddenly out of the haze of recollection....
"It's almost time," Rene said excitedly. "Oscar should be here any minute."
Dale picked herself up from the couch. "I'll go to my room."
"Oh, don't go. I want you to meet Oscar. You'll like him."
"I'm sure I will, dear, but I'm not dressed to meet anyone."
Dale walked toward her bedroom but stopped short when Rene screamed. "Eight o'clock?"
Rene was staring at her wrist watch with confused eyes.
"I almost forgot!" she exclaimed.
"Forgot what? What's the matter
"Oh, good grief! Can you feature that!" Rene slumped into a chair, the picture of confusion. "I clean forgot about my other appointment! Oh, good heavens!"
"What other appointment?" Dale came back to face Rene. "Honey, do you mean to tell me that you made two dates for tonight?"
"Oh, no! Only one-with Oscar. The other wasn't a date, it was business-to do some modeling."
"Well, why don't you call up and cancel it?"
"Because I didn't remember about it till just now and it's too late. The man'll be here at nine o'clock to pick me up."
"To pick you up? You mean you were going someplace with him to pose?"
"That's right. He wanted to shoot me in a night scene or something, I don't know." Rene was disturbed, and knowing her Dale knew that it irked her to have fouled up a business appointment. This, plus the confusion of a date with Oscar, sent Rene into a tizzy of excitement
"Well," Dale said soothingly. "Stop worrying about it. You just go off with Oscar and when the fellow comes, I'll make the necessary apologies and arrange to have him call you for another appointment. How's that?"
Rene rose and embraced her friend. "It's wonderful! I think you're terrific. How do you come up with ideas like that?"
"Well, it takes a good deal of thinking," Dale laughed. " It's not easy."
"It is for you. Please stay to meet Oscar."
Dale released herself from Rene's arms and moved to the bedroom door again. "No. This is your date. I'll just go in and read the evening away. Have a ball, Rene."
Their apartment is located in the hub of the city. The area is brightly lighted at all night hours with signs glaring from stores and nightclubs, signs just being turned on now with the coming of evening.
A man was sitting in a car parked at the curb near the Pizza Palace. He was an ordinary looking man and he was in an ordinary car, a nine-year-old Olds that had known better times. He sat casually and relaxed as if waiting for time to pass and not in too much of a hurry for it to go by.
Once in a while he looked at his watch and then he would look at the entrance to The Coronado just across the street. He watched the people going in and out, well-dressed people as compared to his shabbiness. He wore a shabby suit with shabby pants, an open shirt and black shoes that were down at the heels.
Autumns in Las Vegas were a great deal different from the Autumns he had known in the midwest. There it had been cold and blasty with ferocious winds, wet with sleet, ugly and miserable. This, now, was like summer; even in the evenings. A man could relax and think and imagine, and there would be no cold weather to interfere with the inner most secret thoughts anyone could have.
And he was a man with secret thoughts; beautiful but secret. They had to be kept secret, too, because most people didn't think they were beautiful. Most people had no imagination, no secret black passions, no unusual ideas. They merely went along their way doing the same old things day after day, with no deep, sudden excitements, no great thrills reaching into the depths of your being, tearing everything out so you felt such bliss as only the ancient gods must have known.
He smiled at his thoughts and then looked at his watch again. Another half-hour and he could make his call. He had been sitting in his car since six o'clock, just relishing the waiting, anticipating what was to come, preparing his mind for it.
He didn't mind the waiting, either. It made it that much more pleasurable. After all, he had waited all his life for this moment; what did another hour or so matter?
And then he saw a man and a girl come out of the door of the Coronado. They got in a shiny new car and drove off while the man stared after them, unbelievingly.
"She didn't wait," he said to himself as the car drove off. "She had an appointment with me and she didn't wait!"
He parted his lips in an ugly snarl, made uglier still by the wide spaces between his stained teeth.
CHAPTER TWO
The sun was an oval furnace in the sky over the desert The sparse scrubbery on the sands, dry in the bleakness of the vast wasteland, was shrouded with the color of death; gray with the haze of heat shimmering without end.
There was only one sign of life in all that unlimited inferno of sand and sky and heat. A beat-up pickup truck made its way along the furrowed road, steam hissing from its overworked radiator, the wheels wobbling down the ruts and leaving a cloud of sand in its wake.
Two men were inside the cab of the truck. The driver, Barny Jonas, a shaggy-haired, weather-beaten old timer, was worried as he narrowed his eyes against the glare of sun and sand.
"Hope we can make it to the next gas station. This damned heat's usin' up water like nuthin' ever seen."
"I sort of like it," said the man beside him.
"Like it?" Barny exclaimed in disbelief. He cocked an eyebrow at the other. "This is desert, mister, and this is hot In other words, it ain't nothin' but hell."
His companion's eyes darted about the flat landscape, drinking it all in eagerly.
"It's so empty," he said softly.
"That's it, buster-empty."
"It's like another planet, an empty world. There's nobody in it but us."
Barny Jonas shook his head. "Guess it takes all kinds. This is the first time you been in the desert?"
"The first time." The man barely moved his lips as he talked. It was as if he were in a pleasant sensual dream.
"No wonder. I been back and forth over this sand trap for more'n half my life. And I never got to like it. But I guess it takes all kinds, eh?"
"I'm from a large city," said the other. "And no matter where you go there, you're never alone. Mobs all the time. They see everything you do." He bit his chapped lips. "You get the feeling that someone's looking at you all the time. This is so different, it's unbelievable. Nobody's watching."
Barny Jonas grunted. There was no accounting for city people. They got dreamy and goggle-eyed, like this slicker beside him; some carrying cameras all the time, shooting everything they saw like it was something freakish.
His boy wasn't at all like that, thank goodness. Ike took pictures of people-that was his work-and they paid for it. Ike knew how to get nice shadowy effects, the kind folks liked. He'd hide their bad features and bring out their best. This made them feel good and they'd order a lot of photos and recommend him to their friends.
Of course, Barny would rather have Ike's help on the ranch but the boy had other ideas of what he wanted to do with his life and now his life was in Las Vegas.
Barny Jonas glowed inwardly with the thought of seeing his boy again after over a month. Ike had left a case of camera supplies with his father when he had gone to the ranch for a vacation. Now he needed the stuff and Barny was taking it to him all the way from down state.
He had picked up the hitchhiker just a little ways from the ranch, glad for the chance to have company on the long drive across the desert. Of course, he had studied the fellow carefully before he decided to pick him up.
The hitchhiker was short and thin with a head that seemed too big for his body. His cheekbones were high and wide, so much so that they seemed to make his small, narrow chin come to a point. The eyebrows thick and black, were a straight line over black eyes that were almost perfectly round, though small and set close together. His nose was of one piece with the fore part of his face, like that of an animal, and with a short upper lip dividing it from a poutish mouth, with the chin below it receding almost into his osterich-like neck.
The strange face, Barny reflected with some shame for thinking this, looked like that of a rat. And he knew he should not have had such an impression because the poor fellow looked so lost and helpless and frail standing beside the road and he had been so grateful and polite when Barny had taken him into the truck.
The two men had not exchanged names and this was to Barny's liking. It meant that the stranger was shy and minded his own business. Barny remained quiet and so did the hitchhiker, respecting the old man's silence.
The first time he spoke was when Barny made the comment about the heat affecting the water in the car. Barny, of course, had noticed the man staring at the scrubby desert waste and had seen his avid interest in an area that did nothing but bore Barny. He couldn't imagine what could excite the fellow so about so much sand and more sand.
"Yep," Barny repeated to himself, summing it all up, "it sure takes all kinds."
This city fellow was a loner, he figured, who wanted just to mind his own business and appreciated it when others minded theirs. That was what accounted for his saying that people always watched him in the big city. No wonder, then, that he enjoyed the loneliness of the desert.
"Damn!" Barny barked as the radiator sizzled and steamed more fiercely. "Guess I've gotta use up my reserve water."
"Reserve water?" asked his passenger, his eyes still on the wasteland.
"Yep." Barny brought the pickup to a stop. "Don't like to do it. I wanted to hold onto it as long as I could. The next station is over fifteen miles from here. Well!" He swung open the door on his side. "Might as well get to it."
"Can I help?" The stranger stepped out of the car.
"Why, thanks. You can get up in back if you want to and hand me down the can of water. It's under the canvas. My back ain't what it used to be."
The men and the pick-up were the only foreign objects in the many miles of desert. They had not seen another vehicle in over an hour. There had been a few jack rabbits long-hopping across the road, plenty of scurrying lizards, and once in a while, a buzzard gliding high in the brilliant sky as it searched the sand below.
Other than that, there was only the two of them, strangers to each other, together now in this desolation.
The hitchhiker lifted himself over the tailgate and into the body of the pick-up. There he stopped and stared down at the bundle covered by the tarpaulin. He was transfixed, unmoving, his hands clenched at his sides, the knuckles white with the pressure he exerted as he bunched his fists.
"Go ahead," Barny Jonas said, standing at the rear of the truck. "Just unloop that rope. The water can's right under it."
The rope....
The man stared at the thick twine that held the canvas tight His eyes rounded wildly and the pupils glowed like black marbles. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead, dampening the hair that was combed forward in bangs. His mouth was open as he fought to breathe, showing the spaces between his teeth.
"What's the matter?" Barny grinned. "Heat finally get to you?"
The stranger tried to swallow but couldn't.
There was a great dry lump in his throat. His gaze still spellbound by the sight of the rope, he reached for it. His hands were damp and trembling as he forced himself to touch the fibre.
"Nice and easy does it," Barny remarked. "No sense in rushing anything in this kind of weather."
No; no sense in rushing this. You've heard of this moment all your life. So enjoy it to the fullest. Such an opportunity may never come again in your lifetime. So savor it; drink in every possible instant of it.
Take your time....
When his hands finally touched the rope, he was shaking from head to toe. But he forced himself to grasp it and cleared it of the canvas. Then, still holding the rope, he yanked aside the covering with his free hand.
He saw a five-gallon water can, a spare tire, a set of tire chains, a large suitcase, a pail and a shovel.
"That's my son's photo outfit in that suitcase," said Barny with a touch of pride. "Can develop his own pictures and all."
The stranger leaned forward and picked up the shovel. His eyes were glazed now and his breathing was a harsh rasp. He seemed to move as if propelled by a hypnotic spell. Taking the shovel in his right hand, he left the fingers of the left rub the rough texture of the rope he was still holding.
Barny Jonas was a few feet away from the hitchhiker, standing at the tailgate of the truck and mopping his soaking brow with his forearm.
"Just take your time," said the old man. "No sence movin' fast in this heat. You can toss the shovel to one side. Use it when I'm stuck in this damned sand. It can get worse'n a snowdrift."
And then Barny Jonas stopped talking, stopped smiling, and he almost stopped breathing.
The stranger had swung around toward him, his face a mask of frozen horror. It was a wild face, the muscles taut with tension, the eyes wild, the mouth agape and drooling spittle.
The next instant the shovel swung in an arc, fast and hard, and struck the paralyzed old man squarely on the side of his face. He screamed and fell back, his face a mass of bleeding, lacerated flesh. The stranger was out of the truck in a bound. The rope was still in his hand and trailed him like a long, grey snake.
Stumbling, shocked with pain, Barny Jonas saw the shovel swing at him again. The blow landed full in the face, mashing it into pulp. He fell to the ground heavily and lay still.
The stranger straddled the body, his legs set wide apart to brace himself against the weakness and dizziness that overcame him. He looked up and down the road and ran his tongue over his dry lips when he still saw nothing but emptiness.
"Nobody sees you," he mumbled hoarsely. "You're all alone out here. It's another planet."
He threw the shovel back into the pick-up and looked at the rope still in his hand. Slowly, tenderly, humming softly to himself, he pulled the rest of the rope out of the truck and coiled it into loops. He took it around to the cab and laid it carefully on the seat.
Then he went back to Barny Jonas and bent over the old man.
"I hope he's not dead," he breathed. "I don't want him to die yet. There's nothing in it that way."
He pressed his ear against the old man's chest "Please don't be dead yet. This is the first time for me and it'd be a shame not to be able to really enjoy it. Don't die."
But he was so excited and breathing so heavily that he could not detect any breathing from the old man. He forced himself to calm down, taking long, deep breaths. Then he listened again and now he was sure he could hear a faint heartbeat. The sound of it was faint, but he could hear it all right.
"Oh, that's good! That's good! It would have been a shame, all of this wasted!"
He worked quickly now. He gathered the frail old body in his arms and laid it gently in the back of the truck. Then he covered it with the canvas.
There was blood on the sand and he took care of that by kicking the sand around until the stains were gone. In a few seconds the road looked as it always did.
He pulled out the water can and took care of the radiator. It hissed violently and he was afraid that he had poured the water in too soon, that the block would crack because of the shock of cold against extreme heat. But it worked out all right; the water was only lukewarm, and the engine kicked over without any trouble.
He drove along the road until he found a turnoff, one of the many that led to nowhere. The road marking was rough and vague but the pick-up made it without trouble. He kept going for about a mile to a spot where the tumbleweed and cactus was fairly heavy.
"This is good!" he whispered. "This is very good!"
He pulled the pick-up to some stunted Joshua trees and got out to look around. The road couldn't be seen from this spot, and he was sure that the pick-up was lost from view of the road, too. The vehicle was an old hap, its black paint dull, its chrome rusted. There was no chance that the sun could cast glints of light from it, and that helped keep it from being seen, too.
Now the excitement charged up the thumping of his heart again. He got out the coil of rope. Grasping it in his hands, he felt tingles of peas-ure in his stomach and groin. The excitement grew when o he lifted the old man out of the pick-up and onto the ground and tied up the body. He tied the wrists together at the back and then bent the legs back and tied the ankles to the knotted wrists.
He watched avidly as the rope cut into the flesh, sweat pouring out of every part of him, drool falling from his lips as he hummed softly, tunelessly.
And then, when it was all done, he sat back on the ground, his back against the rear wheel of the pick-up, and looked at the old man.
"Now die," he said softly. "Die while I watch you...."
Slowly, his frame began to twitch. He kept his eyes fixed on the trussed up Barny Jonas as the twitching increased and he was caught in a spasm. He embraced himself, wanting to feel the shaking that was overcoming him.
The violence increased; his legs twitched and kicked, his torso heaved, and his head vibrated as though it were caught in a charge of violent power.
"Die!" he cried. "Are you dying, old man! Die! And enjoy dying as I'm watching you ... as I enjoy watching you!"
The words poured out of his lips endlessly, ending in a meaningless babble as he was whirled into a fever of sensation. His eyes still riveted on the bound body of the old man, he felt a sudden explosion seize him, sky-rocketing his mind and flesh into a limbo of anguish and pleasure until he was beyond all sensation and felt nothing at all.
It was then, that, satiated at last, he collapsed, all energy and feeling gone, and slept.
Barny Jonas' eyes stared blankly and un-blinkingly into the great sky where a vulture soared and circled and waited.
CHAPTER THREE
It had been easy. When he came out of the trance, he opened his eyes, squinting them against the glare of the sun. He felt refreshed and strong although his body was coated with sweat. But the power, welled in his body, making him feel as young as he had ever felt.
The old man, of course, was dead, and of no use to him any longer. The body seemed so small and frail with all the life and personality gone from it. Even the rope served no purpose any more. It was just as dead as the old man.
There was a dark movement overhead and when he looked up he saw a group of large birds circling straight above him. The old man had pointed one out to him as they traveled. Vultures, he had said they were. The man had never seen vultures before, not even in the big city zoo.
"They eat dead things," he whispered to himself. "Even people."
That wouldn't be any good for him. It would attract attention from drivers on the road, from rangers, even. He took the shovel out of the truck and hurried to dig a hole so that he could bury the body of the old man.
It didn't take long; the ground was sandy and soft and he encountered no rocks. He was about to drag the body into the hole when he remembered something and searched the pockets of the old man for his wallet. He found it and shoved it into his pants pocket and then got back to work.
The vultures were still floating around when he drove back to the road, but he didn't Worry about them any more. He had dug a deep hole and covered it well.
As he drove along he examined the contents of the wallet. He found a driver's license made out to Barny Jonas, age 65, and two hundred dollars in bills. He smiled to himself, thinking about the good luck that had struck him.
Yes, this was the first time he had tried anything like this, but he had dreamed about it all his life, almost. He had thought about it happening, someone, tied, helplessly, before him, and unable to free himself while he watched.
Many times, in thinking about it, he had known the same terrible but wonderful excitement that gripped his body, stirring his very guts, sending flesh and mind into the ecstatic release that he could find in no other way.
He knew men who went out with girls, drinking and dancing, and then taking them to rooms where they could be alone. And he had wondered why they did it, what pleasure they could find in it. He had never wanted to be with or near a girl. He preferred only the images his mind conjured-the tied or chained people that he watched.
It was then that he felt power and excitement and glory, and only then. It didn't matter whether he imagined men or women, just so long as their hands and legs were tied and they could not get away.
There had been the time, too, when he had gone with some fellows who worked in the garage with him to a house where there were girls for pay. He had gone along because the guys had kidded him about the fact that he never had been laid.
"What are you, a fairy?" one of the fellows had asked.
"The hell I am," he had replied.
"Then come with us. It'll only cost you five bucks and it'll be worth it The broads are great."
So he had gone and he had vomited. He couldn't understand what the other fellows saw in feeling the crude whores, and then going into different rooms with them. He held back but one of the girls, a small, very thin blond, took his hand and said, "Come on, buddy. We're on a tight schedule here."
When he saw her naked he wanted to turn and run. She was ugly with her flopping boobs and skinny shanks. If he could have tied her up, taken that arrogance out of her, shown her who was boss, maybe it would have been different. Maybe he would have known excitement and joy.
But he didn't dare suggest such an idea to the woman. And when she started to fumble at his fly he said, "Wait, miss. Don't do it, please?"
And she had said the same thing they said at the garage, "What are you, a fairy?"
"It's not that. I ... I don't feel very good."
"Well, I'll make you feel better, kid. Leave it to me. I know all kinds of tricks."
"No!" he exclaimed, pushing her hands a-way. "You don't understand...."
"I understand, all right," the girl smirked. "You are a virgin. What held you up, buddy? You must be over thirty."
"It's not that, either. I'm sick, really, I ... I've got a dose...."
"What?" the girl drew her hands back in horror.
"That's right," he said. "Look, I'll pay you the money...."
He shoved the five dollars into the woman's hands. She put it in a drawer of the dresser and then slipped into her robe.
"Of all things," she said. "Why did you come here if you got a dose, anyway?"
"The guys. They were panning me...."
The woman smiled thinly. "And you wanted to be one of the guys, eh? Sure, I know how it is. You were ashamed to tell 'em what you had."
"That's right. Look, you won't tell them, will you?"
The woman shrugged her thin shoulders. "Why should I tell 'em? You can tell 'em anything you like, sonny. Tell 'em you screwed me five times and I begged for more. I don't give a crap."
"Thanks. Can I just sit down and smoke a cigarette?"
"Half a cigarette. I told you I'm on a tight schedule."
"Oh, sure. Half a cigarette. Thanks."
He lit a cigarette and sat on a chair away from the bed and as he smoked, he watched the woman sitting on the bed and his mind began to work up images there in the shadowed room, dank with the smell of the woman and of many bodies.
He saw her tied hand and foot, her mouth gagged, her body thrown back on the bed helplessly. He licked his suddenly dry lips and blinked his eyes, trying to destroy the image. He didn't want to think of such things now. All he wanted was to get out.
"It's time," the woman broke into his thoughts.
"Oh! Yes!" He rose to his feet.
"You better see a doctor, buddy."
"What? What for?"
"That dose you got. It's not good to go walking around with it. Besides it spoils your fun, doesn't it?"
"Oh. Yes," he said. "I'll see a doctor. Thank you."
When he left he didn't see any of the others around so he took a bus and went home. He had a small room near the garage, just a bed and a dresser, a small table and two chairs. And he had a cardboard box under the bed. He dragged the box out, picked out a handful of magazines from it, and sat down to read them.
The publications were worn and falling apart. He handled them carefully, lovingly, turning the pages slowly, letting his eyes feast on them.
There were pictures of men and women in bondage. Most of the subjects were fully dressed, some were stripped to their underthings. He was glad that they weren't naked; being naked was unpleasant, like the woman he had just left. This was decent and clean, the way people were in real life.
But why didn't he see things like this in real life? Where were these people who let themselves get tied up and photographed so their pictures would be printed in magazines? He never ran into anything like this in the city. And even if he had, he would surely get into some kind of trouble because people were always watching you and talking about you, and then the cops would hear about you and put you in the can, although surely there wasn't anything sinful in doing things that gave so much pleasure.
Even though other people had to be hurt....
Now, with the smell of the whore still clinging to his nostrils, he shuddered, once again with the great need to get away and get to someplace where people were beautiful, where they understood that pain and passion were the same.
Maybe ... maybe the same place where these pictures were taken. He flipped one of the copies to the table of contents page. There he read: "Published by Rye Magazines, Las Vegas, Nevada." No street address, but he could understand that. There was only a post office box so that the publishers wouldn't be bothered by cranks and such. People just wouldn't mind their own business.
He opened another magazine. That, too, was published in Las Vegas. And so was another; and another. He closed his eyes and rested his head back. Las Vegas, Nevada. That was truly the land of promise. People were free there, they could dress and talk as they wanted and no one bothered them.
And so, thinking this way, he made his decision to leave the midwest and go to Las Vegas. He was sure that he could find people like himself, good people, honest people, folk who knew the true, clean way of life, people who didn't go running to cat houses to get satisfaction, but who sought it through feeling powerful as they watched someone helpless before them, bound, gagged, unable to help themselves while the master watched and did whatever he wanted to them.
And maybe he would find the panacea there in Las Vegas. There he could find the supreme pleasure of all pleasures. Tying someone up and then watching him die....
Hitchhiking across the country had been rough. He ran into dreary stretches and unkind drivers who passed by him; he suffered hunger and thirst and he slept out in the open on many nights.
He regretted starting the whole thing and would have gone back home except that, having come as far as he had, he just could not turn back. Tired, hungry, dirty, discouraged, he lost sight of his mission, his purpose in traveling to Nevada. There would be no thrills for him, he decided. It was all in his mind and existed nowhere else.
It didn't even come back to him when he sneaked the magazines out of his pack and looked at the pictures that had driven him to this. At one point he thought of tearing them up and throwing them away. But they were old pals to him, the only ones he had ever known, and so he kept them.
It was when he was driving across the desert with the old man in the pick-up that he felt his senses tingle once more. The sight of the empty, vast desert was what did it. Anything could happen here and no one would know, he thought to himself. The thrill shook him, bringing his body even more heat than the sun.
And then, when he saw the rope and felt it in his hands, it had all come to him in a rush. The rope ... the instrument that bound people and made them helpless ... the shovel, so simple a weapon to use ... the old man, so perfect a subject.
He put them all together and became a murderer.
And for the first time in his life, he knew the supreme thrill, the pinnacle of sensation. It was much better than any picture, much more alive than any imaginings. It was perfect.
And it had been so easy.
From now on, he decided, it would be just as easy. The desert was big and lonely, and it was close to Las Vegas, too. He had the camera equipment that he had taken from the pick-up before he abandoned the heap just outside the city. He would get books and study as to how to take pictures and develop them because now he had all the things he needed. And the pictures he would take, of course, would be the kind he had seen in the magazines. All he had to do was find out how to get people to pose for him, and that would be easy to do in Las Vegas.
Before he left the pick-up he made sure he cleaned all the fingerprints from it so that it would never be traced to him. Then he had taken his own pack and the suitcase with the camera and other equipment and resumed his hitchhiking into the heart of the city.
He took a small room, just like the one he had back home. This one was in downtown Las Vegas, in an old and rundown building. But he didn't mind. He was used to things old and run down, and it was also cheap. He didn't need anything fancy for his way of life.
He had a job in a garage in a week. A month later he bought an old Olds because he knew he would need a car for the things he had to do.
Meanwhile, he discovered the main stem and its book stores where magazines and books of the kind he liked were sold. There were also rooms in back where peep-show movies were shown, movies of girls taking off their clothes and striking poses showing off their flat bosoms and thin buttocks.
He loathed the women he saw on the tiny screens as he poured nickels and dimes into the machines so he could see more.
"They all look like that terrible trollop back home," he "told himself. "The only thing to do with broads like that is make them suffer-tie them up and watch them die...."
That was how he decided that from now on his victims would be women. Sure, it had worked out all right with the old man in the desert, but women would be better. After all, the old man had been harmless, and women were terrible.
They deserved to die. That was the only way they could be any good, the only way they could serve any purpose. To die....
He came out of the darkened room behind a book store, blinking his eyes against the glare of lights. The walls of the store were lined with magazines and books with covers that pictured bound and tortured women. He paused to study them, trying to make a choice as to which to buy.
"Can I help you, sir?" asked a voice at his elbow.
It was the night manager of the bookshop, a small, wiry, sleek-haired man. He had a pile of magazines in his hands to place on the shelves.
"Maybe you can," replied the browser. "I do photographs like these. That's my specialty."
"Well, there's a good market for them. I buy quite a few myself if I'm given an exclusive."
"What do you mean-an exclusive?"
The manager arranged the magazines on the shelves. There were only the two men in the store at the moment. He lit a cigarette and said. "There's a lot of stores like mine on this street. I've got a lot of competition, know what I mean?"
"I understand that."
"If a fellow sells me pictures and then sells them to the other stores, well, where do I stand? I don't stand to make any profit at all, do I?"
"I guess not."
"But if a fellow sells only to me, then I make and he makes. I pay pretty good if the shots are good, and I buy all you can bring me. But I mean they gotta be good."
"Oh, mine are fine," the man said.
"Let's see some of 'em."
"I don't have any with me. I just got into town and I left my other work back home. I'm just starting up here."
The manager shrugged as he went back to his counter. "Come see me when you got something to show me," he said.
"I will. Thanks very much." The man started to leave the store when a thought came to him. He turned back. " I need to find some models first. Can you help me locate some?"
The manager studied him with low-lidded eyes. He saw the weakness of the mouth, the glare of the eyes, and then he looked quickly at the man's clothing. This, he decided, was no cop. This was a man who enjoyed taking the kind of pictures they were talking about.
The manager was a good judge of people.
"Yeah," he said. "Maybe I can help you at that." But you gotta give me your word that you'll bring your pictures only to me and not to the other stores on the street. What do you say?"
"That's fine with me. Why should I want to take them anyplace else if you'll buy them from me?"
"That's the idea. Just a minute."
The manager opened a drawer behind the counter and took out a card which he handed to the visitor.
"This is a model agency in town," he said. "They've got a crew of broads there who'll pose for you."
The man studied the card. "Are they expensive?"
"They're cheap. Two bucks an hour, that's all. Listen, don't get the wrong idea. These broads don't pose for anything dirty, know what I mean?"
The man's eyes were black and shining as they looked up from the card. "I think so," he said.
"This is on the up and up, see? It's a legitimate agency and they don't do anything wrong. They'll go for the girls being tied up and gagged, but that's as far as they'll go. Know what I mean?"
"Oh sure. That's all I want, anyway. Just shots of the girls tied so I can sell them to you."
The manager nodded. "Just so we get it straight. I don't want to see the agency in dutch and I don't want to get in dutch myself."
"Sure, we got it straight!" The man pocketed the card.
When he walked out into the garish light of the street, his lips were dry and his body was trembling. He got into his Olds and drove it out of the parking lot, his mind alive with visions of girls bound and gagged ... helpless girls, their eyes staring mutely at him, begging for-mercy, and he, the lord and master, refusing it.
Now he smiled and he sucked air in between the spaces of his teeth. He had to pull the car over to the curb and wait until the pleasurable spasms subsided.
CHAPTER FOUR
Time had passed by this part of the city, as it eventually does all the parts of a city of artificiality. It is a weird, unclean melange of rundown stores, and shops, decrepit houses, shabby hotels and model studios.
"BEAUTIFUL GIRL MODELS"-"STARLET STUDIOS"-"GLAMOR GIRL PHOTO STUDIOS"-"FIGURE MODELS"-These are the signs that hit the eye from storefronts and lofts along the main street.
And it was here that the business card directed the weird man with ambition and ideas as he got out of his car looking around him in joy and wonder.
"Didn't know there was anything like this," he told himself, his brain in a delicious whirl as he saw the various signs that heralded the beauties hidden behind the curtained windows. "This is the answer to my dreams."
The card directed him to a walk-up studio where a man was sitting behind a desk cleaning his fingernails. He was small and sleek and his hair was greasy. A girl lounged on a cheap couch, her heavily-mascaraed eyes drooping sleepily as she read a paperback.
The man at the desk looked up. "Yeah?" he grated.
The visitor swallowed and said, "I was told that you are agents for models."
"That's our business. They pose in back and we supply equipment and film. Ten bucks an hour for the posing and it's extra for props and costumes."
"No. I mean I need a model to pose for me. I'm shooting pictures for a bookstore on Main Street."
The man's eyes crinkled. The girl turned a page fast, her attention all on the printed words. The visitor shifted from one foot to another as he stood in the middle of the floor and began to feel the small tingle of apprehension in his breast.
"What bookstore?" the man asked after a long pause.
The visitor held out the card. " I don't know the name of the place. But the man gave me this."
The card was studied and then handed back without a word. The man opened a drawer and took out a large album. He spread it open on the desk and then invited the visitor with his eyes to come closer.
"Pick out what you want," he said, "and then I'll let you know if they're available."
The girls were posed on strong light. Their eyes stared, their mouths gaped in frozen, cold smiles. And they were of all sizes and shapes to fit all needs. Each picture had a number next to it, a code to the girl's identity.
The visitor's eyes passed quickly over each photo, the man looking at him and waiting for a nod. But the visitor shook his head and the man turned another page, sighing softly.
And then the visitor's eyes fell upon one face and he slammed the page down with his palm.
"That one!" he exclaimed.
The girl on the couch looked up from her book for an instant and then went back to reading. The man peered at the photo and the number.
"She's available," he said. "Want me to get her over here?"
"No. I have my own ideas on how to pose her."
"I see. You got places to take her?"
"That's right." The visitor's eyes were frozen to the baby face and the blonde curls of the girl in the photo.
"You got your own studio, is that what you mean?"
"No. I want to take outdoor shots."
"I see." The man started to turn the page but the visitor stopped him, holding the page down hard.
"I don't want to see any more," he said. "This is the one."
The man shrugged. "Okay by me. If that's it, that's it. She's a good kid, too. Game, know what I mean?"
The rat eyes pierced those of the visitor. "Anything within reason. But nothing rough. That was all explained to you?"
"Huh?"
"The guy at the bookstore."
The visitor nodded, still staring at the photo. "Yes, he explained it to me. He knows what kind of pictures I'm taking."
"Are you going to sell him the shots? Is that the idea?"
"He'll buy all lean take."
"Then Rene is the dish for you, all right. She's pretty good at that kind of stuff."
The visitor didn't have to be told that. He had been acquainted with the blonde's face for a long time-through the magazines he had collected. Her face and figure were as familiar to him as if she had been a friend. The minute he had seen her picture he knew that she was the one he wanted.
He licked his dry lips as the man wrote a name and address and phone number on his business card.
"She's busy for two days but she'll be free for a day after that," the man said.
The visitor took the card. "That's fine." He read the name. "Rene Clark."
"Yeah. I'll call her and make the appointment with her so she'll know it's okay. What time do you want to make it?"
"Nine o'clock in the evening. Wednesday."
The man nodded. "You pay her fee," he said dryly. I know who sent you so the rate's two bucks an hour. But you gotta use her at least five hours. And you pay her in advance. You gotta buy her food too while she's working for you."
The visitor clutched the card in his hand and left, murmuring a thank you. The girl looked up from her book.
"Got us another kooky one, huh?" she asked lightly.
"Don't laugh, honey," said the man. "That's the kind that keeps the wolf from the door."
The girl shrugged rounded shoulders and pouted. "He's still a kook," she said, and returned to her book, escaping her own world once again to plunge into the adventures of a tough private eye.
The man got into his car. I've got two whole days to get everything ready. And then it will be done, as I've always wanted to do it-to a woman this time; not a man.
Whenever he had a spare moment, he worked on his car, getting it into condition. He checked the tires and made sure that they were solid and good rubber. He tuned up the motor, adjusted the carburetor, checked the spark plugs and the battery.
The Olds was an old car but he, with his expert knowledge, knew that it was in good shape and he kept it that way. He could drive it to Hell and back again, it was that good.
During his lunch hour he went to a sporting goods store and bought two desert water bags. He also picked up some strong rope and a length of chain, a shovel, a pail, and a gallon thermos. He found a picnic basket that contained dishes, knives, forks, spoons and cups, and he bought that too. He bought an army blanket and a flashlight.
While he worked at his job, he also worked on his car, getting the motor as perfect as he could. He stored the things he had bought in the trunk along with the suitcase that held his photographic equipment.
On the night of the appointment he went early to the address given him at the model agency and parked his car across the street from it. And when he saw the girl in the photo-the girl he wanted-come out and leave with another man, he couldn't believe what he saw.
Now he really hated her. She was just like that terrible prostitute back home, witless, cruel, and he would teach her a lesson.
It was too bad that old Barny had to die; he had been harmless, unlike these miserable women. But then, it had been good practice and it had taught him a valuable lesson. Now he knew how to do it and get away with it.
The rest of the world wouldn't understand what he had to do. Everyone else was like this girl, carefree and unfeeling, without consideration for those who had deeper and more significant emotions. So he had to do it and keep it quiet, even though he longed to tell the world what he was going to do so that he would be acclaimed and appreciated.
But that, of course, was impossible. The only thing to do was do it and get it over with in secret.
The only thing to do was to teach that rotten whore a lesson.
Except that she wouldn't live long enough to appreciate it. Driving along, he thought about this and parted his lips in a grin. He stopped for a light and a motorist next to him glanced at him and looked away shuddering.
"I want to make a complaint," he said into the phone.
"Who is this?" asked the harsh voice at the other end of the phone.
"I was in your place the other day and you arranged for me to get a model, remember? For some pictures I was going to take?"
"Oh, yeah. What do you mean about a complaint?"
"Well, that model you sent me to see-Rene Clark-she didn't keep her appointment with me."
"That's too bad. Something unexpected must have come up. Well, do you want me to get you someone else?"
"No. Just arrange another appointment, that's all. She's the one I want."
"Just a minute and I'll check her dates."
The man at the agency covered the phone mouthpiece with his hand. The girl still sprawled on the couch, this time with a copy of Pleasure Cruise. "What's with that Clark dame?" he asked. "She broke a date. That's not like her."
The girl looked up. "I dunno. She'll pose for anything for a buck. Musta got sick or somethin'. I can't figure it."
The man made a face and then thumbed through his appointment book. He spoke into the phone. "Miss Clark's available tomorrow night. I'll guarantee she'll be there, sir."
"Do that," said the voice at the other end and there was a click and a hum as he hung up.
"Say, Joe," said the girl, "how do these gals make it as the girl of the month for this magazine?"
"They gotta live clean," said the manager as he dialed Rene Clark's number.
"Oh," said the girl sadly and resignedly as she resumed reading.
Rene, the agent discovered, wasn't home but her roommate said that she would give her the message about the new appointment as soon as she came in.
"Make sure she keeps it this time," the manager said. "I don't want you gals lousing my rep. for reliability. This is a good guy and we want to keep him happy."
"She's out with an old beau from her home town," Dale told him. "It's one of those things, Joe. You know Rene; she'd never break an appointment unless she couldn't help it"
"Yeah. I was wondering. Well, he's coming by tomorrow at the same time. So make sure she's there."
"Don't worry about it. She'll make it this time."
Joe hung up, his lips twisted in a scowl.
"It's ten o'clock," he said. "Get the peepin' Toms outta the joint, Daisy."
The girl on the couch dropped her magazine and stretched with the grace of a cat. Her heavy knockers pushed against the tight blouse and one leg bent upward in a graceful arch. "Cripes!" she purred. "These pictures get me very homey."
"They're not supposed to get to you honey," Joe yawned. "They're only supposed to get guys hot. Unless you're a lez."
Daisy strode to Joe and stood before him, up close so that her tits were just inches off his face.
"You know better than that, Joe." She stroked his cheek. " Unless you've forgotten. Have you forgotten, Joe?"
He busied himself putting away the appointment book.
"I ain't forgotten nothing," he said. "You're the best screw in Nevada."
"How do you know?" she pouted. "It's been a long time."
"Aw, we been busy, you know that. This joint keeps me hopping."
"You didn't used to be too busy, Joe." She settled herself on his lap, her softness melting into him, warm, heavily perfumed. "Maybe later, Joe? After the others go? Like we used to? Joe?"
Joe pushed her off his lap, his face flushed, his mouth working. "Now cut it out, Daisy!" he hissed. "You want to get me in dutch or what? We get caught jazzin', I lose my license. Now clear the kooks out."
Daisy looked down at him, her body twitching, her eyes glaring. "If didn't know you dug me, Joe, I'd think you was screwing somebody else. There ain't nobody else, is there, Joe?"
"You know better'n that. Now let's close up."
Daisy looked at Joe for a long moment, her luscious lips drawn into a pout, a small line marring the smoothness of the space between her eyebrows. Joe took out his keys and locked the desk drawer. He stacked the papers on his desk. He did a lot of things but he didn't look at the girl standing beside him.
She turned quickly and her high heels beat a rapid tap-tap as she moved into the small room in back and pulled the door open.
A group of men faced a nude girl on a platform. Her eyes were closed and she sprawled back, her back arched as she sat on a tall stool. Her hands were poised on the stool so that her body was braced, completely revealed to the silent men.
Their eyes were fixed on that body. Some were wide open, some glazed, some half-closed. There was a heavy, harsh breathing from some of the men; others were breathless. Cameras were on the floor, unused and forgotten. A heavy mask of bodies in a close place, a smell of hot bodies, hung in the still air.
"All right, boys," spoke Daisy. "Time's up. It's ten o'clock. Closing time."
The model slid off her stool and moved quickly through a small curtained opening, vanishing, leaving the men dazed and abashed. They bestirred themselves, picked up their cameras, and left, passing Daisy with their eyes downcast, each man with his own secret feeling of memories and frustrations.
"Check the cameras in at the desk," she announced brightly and in a business-like way. "And come again, gentlemen."
The men had dawdled in slowly, hesitantly, one by one; now they rushed out, hurrying into the night like bad boys scattering into limbo, vanishing into whatever lives and loves they knew or did not know, until the next time when they would summon the courage to return to the shrouded studio.
Joe and Daisy sat quietly until the model came out of her dressing room, looking plain and thin in her street clothes. The girl's eyes were tired and they had crow's feet at the corners.
"Joe," she said hesitantly, "can I ask you something?"
"No loot," Joe responded abruptly. "No more advances for you, Tessie."
"I've got to have it, Joe," the girl pleaded. Her accent was eastern, as provincial as if she had never heard any other. "The rent's due and I've gotta have it."
"What you mean is that your old man's lushing it up and you gotta have loot for him. Forget it, Tessie. Throw the lug out so you can do yourself some good with the dough you make."
"Just three bucks, Joe, that's all."
"Oh, for gosh sake!" exclaimed Daisy. "Give it to her. You take it outta her pay anyway!"
"That ain't the idea, Daisy. She'll be busted come pay day."
"So she'll be busted then. But she'll be happy tonight. Her old man can't boff her unless he's tanked up."
The model didn't flicker an eyelash at this but looked steadily at Joe, pleading with her eyes.
Joe snorted and took out three dollar bills. The model grabbed it and ran, leaving behind her the sound of her grateful gasp.
Daisy locked the door and turned to Joe. "That's how broads are, fellah," she said, unbuttoning her blouse. "When they dig a man, they'll do anything for him."
"Hey!" Joe blanched as he saw what she was doing. "Stop that, Daisy!" he cried.
The blouse was off and now Daisy unzipped her skirt.
"Why should I?" she smiled. " Tessie's gonna get laid, why can't I? Or do you want me to buy you a bottle of hooch, too?"
"Stop it, I said, damn it!"
Daisy left the skirt at half-mast as she looked at Joe. The expression on his face told her that he meant what he said.
"It's been two weeks, Joe," she said slowly. "What's going on?"
"Nothing's going on. I'm not in the mood, that's all. Now come on; let's lock up and get out of this dump."
Daisy refastened the skirt and reached for the blouse.
"You've got another piece of tail," she said quietly. "I know you Joe. You can't go this long without it"
"That's not so," Joe slipped into his jacket and unlocked the door. "I told you-I'm tired and worried about business."
They were silent until they got into his car in the parking lot. As Joe started up the motor, Daisy said, "You said you loved me, remember, Joe?"
"Yes, Daisy, I do love you," Joe sighed.
"And I believe you. Now you tell me that you can't make it with me because of the way you feel. I believe that too."
"Thank you, honey." Joe swung the car into the street. "Just give me a little time. I'll come around all right and things'll be like they always were."
"I'll give you a little time, Joe." Daisy struck a match to her cigarette. "But if you're lying to me-"
"I'm not lying." Joe stared straight ahead at the traffic.
"-But if you are," the girl went on, "you know what'll happen, don't you, Joe?"
He looked at her quickly, his eyes wide and apprehensive.
Daisy laughed. "Oh, don't worry, baby, I won't kill you."
Joe sighed and stepped on the gas to make the next light.
And the girl said softly, "I'll do more than that baby ... I'll cut your dingus off and incinerate it."
CHAPTER FIVE
"Come on, Rene baby! Lay down!"
Rene stared at Oscar in shock, disbelief and horror. She clutched the ripped dress at the shoulders but one billowy boob rose from the torn silk, its red nozzle flushed with the fever in the heart and soul of Rene Clark.
"Oscar!" she cried. "What's the matter with you?"
They were in Oscar's hotel room after an evening of night clubs and dining. Rene had enjoyed herself thoroughly with her childhood crush. They had talked over old times and old friends and he had told her about his work that took him all over the country.
Neither one, they told each other, had changed a bit in all the years. Never had Rene known such a good time, certainly not with the local wolves she had dated. There was nothing as good, as sincere, as warm and as honest as someone from home, she told Oscar as she squeezed his hand during dinner.
"Every guy in town must be after you, Rene," he had whispered to her while they were dancing. He didn't hold her too close, either. He was just a nice guy from home.
Rene thrilled to his soft touch and she began to have dreams of giving up modeling and going back home to Easton and marrying Oscar. But the dreams were shattered rudely and abruptly when he invited her to his room.
She had accepted the invitation without concern, something she would never have done with any other man. But then, the instant they were alone, Oscar had locked the door and attacked her, his hands pawing, grasping, his breath deep and heavy, his body pressed hard against hers.
For a moment she thought he was joking and she laughed, pushing him gently away. But it was no joke to Oscar. He grasped the shoulder of her dress and pulled, crying out his demand in a choking whisper. "C'mon baby-put out!"
When Rene protested, he shoved her back onto the bed.
"Don't give me that crap! I know what you are! Why do you think I called you for a date? Now give me some of that stuff you've been peddling around town!"
He bruised her mouth with his teeth as his hands lifted her dress. She twisted, trying to get away from him, feeling his hot hands over all parts of her at once, his legs jamming between hers, forcing himself upon her.
"Please, Oscar!" she gasped weakly. "You've got me all wrong! I'm not like that at all! Oh, let me go, please!"
His lips were on the rise of her boob, his hard chin digging in. "Don't hand me that! Maybe you've got the folks back home fooled, but not me! I know all about you!"
"Wait! Please wait a moment! Let's talk for just a little while, Oscar!"
"Then will you screw?" he mumbled against her flesh. "Will you if we talk a little?"
"Yes!" she consented.
Oscar fell away from her, panting, his chest heaving, his eyes glazed, his mouth open. "All right. Go ahead-talk. But make it fast. I want to get into you, Rene."
Rene drew away, shivering, her teeth chattering, as she pulled the torn dresstop about her shoulders. She needed a moment to think, to get her mind working and get this awful nightmare out of her mind and over with. Because that was all it was-a nightmare. This couldn't be Oscar acting like a hard-up guy attacking a girl like any homey wiseacre. This was Oscar, the boy from back home, the kid she went to school with, the boy who knew her folks, the fellow she was having wedding dreams about. This couldn't be happening to him and to her.
But it was happening. Looking at this stranger lying on the bed, waiting for her, his fingers clutching his legs twitching, the signs of desire obvious on him, she could not recognize him as Oscar. He was a barbarian, as all men were barbarians.
She had to play it smart, however. She had always known how to handle the hot bang guys and she had managed to keep away from those she didn't want. And now she knew she didn't want Oscar; not unless she understood that what he had tried was a mistake and that he was sorry.
"We had a lot to drink tonight," she whispered. "You ... you're not used to it, are you Oscar?"
"The hell with that!" Oscar barked. "Is that all you want to talk about?"
His fingers, alive and writhing like snakes, reached for her but she drew further back. "No, wait This is what I want to ask you, Oscar-why do you think I'd give in to you like this? What gave you the idea I was easy?"
He laughed but there was no humor in it. It was dirty and low. "You're kidding, baby! Why are you trying to kid me?"
"I'm not trying anything of the kind. I want to know."
"You put out for any man who wants it...."
"No!" Rene cried in protest. "That's not true! I'm not a-I'm not a-"
"Say it! A gal like you shouldn't be too touchy about a word like that! Say it! Whore!"
She covered her face in shock and anguish, wishing she could blot out the sight of him, shut out the sound of the word he had hurled at her through gnashed teeth.
"That's all you are, isn't it?" he raved on. "That's why you left home and came out here to this dung heap, isn't it? Too many people know you back home! Well, that's right, baby! A lot of people know you for what you are! Now I want to eat some of that hot flesh of yours! Why not Rene? Why not me?"
Her face was tear-streaked, the mascara running down her cheeks. She looked like a doll left too long out in the rain.
"I don't know what you're talking about!" she wept. "All I know is that I was so happy to see you!"
"Tired of the old regular stuff?" he sneered.
"No! That's not it at all! Oscar!" She rose weakly to her feet, her heart seeming to echo only faintly in her breast. "Oscar, I thought I loved you! I was hoping you'd ask me to marry you...."
"You want to hear a bigger laugh than that?" Oscar sprawled on his stomach, leering up at her. "I once thought I did want to marry you! But that was a long time ago, baby!"
"Oh, Oscar! Did you?" Rene saw a whole world falling down about her ears, castles crumbling, stars fading.
"That's right! Now wasn't that a joke? Why don't you laugh, baby? It's the funniest joke since the invention of the atom bomb!"
"Don't be so cruel, Oscar!"
"I'm not being cruel! You're the one who's cruel! Why, you're vicious Rene Clark! You're evil! You're foul!"
Oscar jumped to his feet. Frightened, she backed off, but he moved just past her and to the bureau. He threw open a drawer, took out a pile of clippings and threw them at her feet. "There you are, baby doll!" he snarled. "You want to know how I know what you are? There's the evidence-in pictures, too!"
Rene reeled as she stared down at the pictures through the blur of her tears. And there she saw them-cut out of magazines, pictures of her in semi-nude and nude shots, posed archly, seductively, inviting the viewer to come into her arms and share her bed, her mouth open sensuously, her eyes drooped, telling all men with her mouth and her eyes and with every part of her body that she was available and ready and eager....
"Great, aren't they?" raved Oscar. "Is that why you left home, Rene? Is that why you came here? Is that how you earn your bread?"
"Oscar, please," begged Rene. "Those are just poses, that's all! There's no harm in it! I'm not a lowly whore!"
"Your father's a preacher. What would he think if he saw these pictures?"
Rene turned away but Oscar seized her chin and twisted her head around to face him. His face was red with fury, his eyes blazed.
"Answer me, whore!" he mocked her. "What would your father think?"
"The same as you do, I guess! But, Oscar, he's an old-fashioned man...."
"So am I!" And a stinging slap jarred her, bringing up stars out of the depths of her numbed brain. Rene reeled and staggered, the room whirling about her. Oscar's face appearing in waves before her, bloated with hatred, rage and disgust.
"Now get the hell out of here!" he roared. "I wouldn't lay you if you came crawling to me and begging me for it! You're nothing but a slut, baby!"
His curses followed her as she staggered out into the hall, wrapped her light coat about herself to hide the torn dress. It was a fiendish nightmare, she thought to herself, plunging down the stairs to avoid taking the elevator. This didn't happen to me. Things like this just don't happen. Oscar's a good boy ... and I'm a good girl.
He didn't call me the dirty names he did and he didn't hit me.
But then as she stepped out into the night to look for a cab, she remembered. Oscar, all the while he cursed her and accused her and slapped her ... had been crying, the tears streaking down his face without control, just as he had cried when he had been hurt as a small boy, and couldn't understand how he could be hurt....
Oscar stood staring at the door that he had slammed after Rene. It was the closed door to all the dreams and ideas of happiness he had ever known, and it was closed forever. A lifetime of hopes was locked beyond that door, locked to him for all time, sealed with disillusionment and despair.
He brought his hands to his face and was startled to find he had been crying. He hadn't cried since he was a child, and then only for good reason. Well, damn it all to hell and gone, he had good reason now.
He picked up the phone. "This is Oscar Valley," he said. "I'm checking out right now. Prepare my bill, please."
"But you have a reservation till tomorrow, sir."
"Cancel it. And see if you can get me a plane to New York out of here tonight. If not, get me a berth on a train."
He hung up, his body shaking. Looking at the bed, he saw the rumpled sheets, the cast-aside pillows where he had wrestled with Rene.
"The damned tramp!" he said aloud to himself. "Making me have all those ideas about her and then turning out to be nothing but a two bit whore! He shook his head. "It's hard to believe; very hard!"
Then his eyes fell upon the cut-out photos on the floor. Cursing, he tore them into small pieces and flushed them down the toilet Then in a fury, he started to pack. He tried to concentrate on what he was doing and not on Rene. There was something in all this that disturbed him and he didn't know what it was. Discovering that she was nothing but a girl who exposed her body for pay was bad enough. But there was something else, something that gnawed at him, turned his stomach and made him even sicker. And it make him sicker still not to know what it was.
"The hell with it," he dismissed it.
The phone rang. It was the desk to tell him that there was a cancellation on the New York jet and he had just time to make it.
"Send up a boy for my bags and have a taxi ready," he said. "I want to get out of this town as fast as possible."
The desk clerk snickered. "I don't blame you, sir. I wish I could go back home myself. But we're not all that lucky."
"No. We're not all that lucky."
Being driven to the airport, he stared at the neon signs of the gambling joints, trying to lose himself in the wonder of the vast fortunes that were determined by a roll of the dice.
And then he saw Rene's face, her eyes incredulous as she stared at him in shock, her tears real, her body racked with sobs as he hit her again and again, reliving the horror of that hotel room.
And then he knew what had been bothering him.
It came to him with a shock that vibrated his entire body.
"If ... if she is a slut," he whispered harshly to himself, "if she is everything I called her ... then why did she turn me down when I wanted to stick it to her...?"
But there was no answer in the bleakness of the interior of the cab, none in the empty, sad and bitter heart and soul of Oscar Valley.
"Driver," he said suddenly. "Turn around. I'm going back."
"Forget something sir?" asked the driver.
"I certainly did. I forgot my destiny ... almost."
He had to find the answer the only place he could find it....
* * *
Dale, lounging, watching television, turned as she heard the key in the door and sat up with a start when she saw Rene. The blonde was haggard. Her hair was a mess, her makeup a ruin, her dress torn and she was crying.
"Rene!" Dale cried, moving quickly to her. "My gosh, baby, what happened?"
Rene choked on her sobs. "He's a dog, Dale! He's like all the other dogs we know!"
Dale led her roommate to a chair and sat her down. "Did he hurt you baby? Did he rape you, or what?"
Rene shook her head, the tears spraying on her boobs. "He tried to and he hit me. But that wasn't the worst of it. It's what he said. Oh, Dale, it was awful!"
She cried out the story of the things that had taken place, the charges Oscar had made-based on the pictures of her that he had seen-the claim that he had been in love with her and wanted to marry her until he had found out, as he said, about her, his demand that she give him what she had given other men. . and the story all out, Rene broke down, her body shaking with taut nerves suddenly exploding.
Dale mixed a stiff double scotch and held it to Rene's lips, forcing the fluid down her throat. Rene choked but she got it down and after a while there were no more tears in her, no more bitterness, only emptiness.
"I was wrong about you, dear," Dale said softly. "I thought that nothing could ever hurt you. I thought your spirit was so strong, you were above being hurt."
"Gosh, I'm only human," said Rene, slipping into the way of speech that people found amusing.
"You certainly are, honey. Now let's get that ruined dress off you and get you into a hot tub."
As Dale undressed her and prepared her for the bath, Rene said, "It could have been so wonderful Dale, I know I love him and he said he was in love with me. And now it's all spoiled."
"Listen, baby, it's not spoiled. Oscar, no matter how much you loved him, is not the right guy for you. He doesn't really dig you. If he did, he'd know that modeling isn't being a whore."
"But that's the type of man he is." Rene was standing now in the nude and Dale took her hand to lead her to the bathroom.
"He's the type of man that accuses first and doesn't even bother to ask questions later," said Dale. "No, Rene. I think you ought to thank heaven for what happened tonight. Now you know the kind of man he is, and he's not your kind."
It was when Rene was in the tub, relaxed in the warmth and the perfume of the bath oil that Dale remembered about the call from the agency and told her about it
"Thanks, Dale. I'll make sure I keep tomorrow night's date with that photographer. The only important thing is work, after all."
Dale smiled to herself. This was the Rene she knew, mouthing inantities, perking herself up, forgetting the evil parts of life.
"What was he like?" Rene asked. "Who?"
"The photographer."
"I don't know. I didn't meet him."
Rene stepped out of the shower, the water gleaming on her tanned skin, dripping from the points of her breasts. "Then how did he know I wasn't here to meet him, since he called the agency and said I didn't keep my appointment?"
She didn't see Dale's brow wrinkle in wonder and worry. Whatever it was, whatever the reason for the photographer acting as he did, this was not the time to discuss such things with Rene. The girl needed her rest after such a harrowing experience.
"Oh, I don't know," she said lightly. "Maybe he couldn't keep the date himself and tried to pass the duck off on you."
Rene reached for the robe and wrapped it snugly about herself, shivering in contentment, the vicious scene in Oscar's room already gone from her mind.
"Men are sure nutty, aren't they?" she said.
The phone rang just as they were getting into bed. Dale answered it, listened for a moment and then held the phone toward Rene, whispering. "It's Oscar. He wants to talk to you."
"I don't want to hear anything. He wants to tell me more nasty things. I don't want to hear them."
Into the phone, Dale said. "I'm sorry," and hung up.
Oscar stared at the phone in his hand, hung up, and then started to dial again. Halfway through, he changed his mind and hung up for good.
When he checked into the small hotel near Rene's apartment, he asked the desk clerk to awaken him at seven in the morning, early enough, he told himself, to catch Rene before she left for the day so that he could beg her forgiveness, and, like a man, listen to her story before he tried to judge her.
CHAPTER SIX
The sun streaming through the bedroom window awakened Rene. She watched lazily, smiling and glad to be alive, until a small sharp pain in her cheek reminded her of what Oscar had done and said the night before.
She frowned, disturbed and hurt, unhappy that things had turned out so badly and so wrongly. It hurt her that she had lost all hope of marrying the one man she really cared for, but it was worse to know that he thought such awful things about her.
"Oh, dear!" she sighed aloud.
"Rene? Are you up?" Dale called from the kitchen.
"I'm up," Rene answered cheerily. She made it a point to always try to start her day pleasantly and uplifting her voice the first thing in the morning helped.
"Coffee's on," announced Dale. "And I'll have ham and eggs and toast in a minute."
"And I'll be out in a minute."
Dale had decided not to say a word about last night. Knowing Rene, it was best to pretend it had never happened and just let life resume its normal course. Rene would coast right along with it, she would go to work, carry on as usual, and things would be as they always were again.
"What's on the agenda today?" Dale asked Rene as they were having breakfast.
"I'm posing for Tony Gale in his studio all day."
"Good guy, that Tony. He's getting his stuff into a lot of magazines these days." Dale bit into a piece of toast. "I have to see a man about a movie."
"Huh?" Rene's eyes were wide. "A movie? Gosh, Dale! Are you going to be in a movie?"
Dale laughed. "Relax, dear. Paramount isn't about to make a star out of me. It's just a cheap quickie, one of those phony nudist things. It's about two days work, that's all. I get to stand around in my bare flesh in the desert."
"My goodness! A movie! Do they want any more girls?"
"Well, the call was a hurry-up thing, so I didn't get a chance to find out. If I do, I'll call you at Tony's studio."
"Oh, that'll be just wonderful! I've always wanted to be in a movie! Thanks, Dale!"
Dale smiled to herself. Rene was herself again and all was right with the world. All pain was gone from the large blue eyes and they were aglow now with nothing but the thought of being in a motion picture, no matter how cheap the film was. It was wonderful, Dale told herself again, to be Rene Clark. Life was simply and wonderfully a bowl of cherries.
But suddenly Rene's face clouded. "It's ten o'clock," she said. "Don't they start making movies early in the morning or something like that?"
"I'm just being interviewed and auditioned today at two. They start shooting next Monday. So relax, sweetie."
The girls finished breakfast and dressed, chatting happily away about their work. They were young, they were busy, and they were alive. Rene's feelings toward Oscar were deep and sincere, but such was the nature of her spirit and she knew that by dwelling on her disappointment in him, she would be unhappy, and senselessly so.
So she dismissed him from her mind, if not from her heart.
Rene was leaving the apartment first while Dale was at the phone talking to a friend when Dale reminded her of the nine o'clock date she had that evening. "Now don't break this one," she cautioned. "It makes it bad for the agency as well as for you."
"I won't forget. I'll be back long before nine. Have a good day, Dale. And don't forget to let me know about the movie. I hope it works out all right for both of us."
And Rene was off in a breeze of bright perfume, blonde hair and a dazzling smile, oblivious to the pain in the world, ready for the day, and rushing toward it with all the fervor of a child rushing toward a playground.
And she rushed right into Oscar's arms. He was waiting for her-had been waiting since early morning-and she, hurrying to catch a bus, didn't see him until he embraced her and drew her up short.
"Ohmygosh!" Rene cried. "What are you doing here?"
She was happy to see him, glad at the familiarity of him, and the viciousness of the night before was veiled over, covered and hidden by the brightness of the day and the strength of Oscar's smile.
"I want to tell you how sorry I am," Oscar said, his voice throbbing with excitement. "You were right; I did drink too much last night and I was completely cockeyed about a lot of things."
"I'm not a whore, Oscar!" Rene cried, tears and laughter welling out of her. "Honest I'm not!" N
"Let's go someplace and you can tell me all about it."
"Oh, I can't. I have an appointment to do some posing."
"Can I come with you? And then we can be together all day because I'm not about to let you go again."
"Of course, Tony won't mind. He's a regular guy. Besides...." Rene smiled archly, "once you see how we work, you'll see it's all business and you won't think so badly about us."
They got into his car, smiling, laughing, talking, bubbling over with the excitement of honesty and discovery, while passers-by looked, shook their heads and mumbled about "this crazy modern generation."
Dale called Rene at the studio later that afternoon and told her that it was all set for the producer to interview her the following day for the movie job. Rene didn't tell her friend about Oscar, however, she wanted to save that to tell her in person. It was too wonderful a bit of news to tell over the phone.
Because Oscar had proposed to her at lunch break, asked her to wait for him until he finished his tour. Then he would be back and they would be married and live in New York. He would be able to supervise East Coast operations for his company from there and Rene, if she wanted, could continue her work.
And Rene wept and laughed and cried out, "Yes, Oscar! Yes! Oh, Yes!"
The other customers in the restaurant had been, to say the least, startled when she cried out and knocked aside a plate of fried chicken and a cup of coffee to reach Oscar so she could hug and kiss him across the table.
And of course she forgot all about the appointment with the photographer that evening because she and Oscar were on cloud nine that carried them through the rest of the afternoon and long, long into the evening.
But the man didn't forget.
He was parked before the Coronado Apartments very early that evening. The trunk of his Olds carried all the equipment he needed. He also had packed a full picnic meal, but enough only for one.
As he waited for the hour, he dreamed. His eyes glazed over, his mouth worked itself into a half-smile, his cheeks sagged, as he lost himself in a transport of fantasy.
He broke off once in a while, shaking himself, blinking his eyes to restore himself to the present, and looked about at the street and its people. He knew that he wasn't to allow himself to get too carried away, not to reach too great a pitch of excitement.
That would come later.
And thinking of later, he would go off into the dream again. He never allowed himself to get so lost, however, that he didn't keep track of the time. He was in no hurry, either. The longer he waited, the better it would be, the more prolonged the ... how had he read it. .?
It came back to him-a line of printed matter in some book he had read once a long time ago. And he could see it now as clearly as though it were printed indelibly in his mind: "Unendurable ecstasy indefinitely prolonged."
He closed his eyes and dreamed.
At exactly one minute to nine he got out of the car and crossed the street to the Coronado. Calmly, making sure he didn't hurry matters, he examined the names on the row of bells in the lobby.
He found what he was looking for: "Rene Clark-Dale Anders-" and rang the bell. The answering buzzer opened the inner door for him and he went up in the elevator.
Dale was at the open door waiting for him. She was dressed in a pair of tight black slacks that stressed the flow of her legs and the tightness of her bottom. Her full bosom was only covered in a token manner by a white and skin-tight sweater.
His eyes were veiled as he looked at her.
"Good evening," Dale smiled. "Are you the photographer Rene is to work for tonight?" He nodded and she went on, "Well, she should be home any minute. Won't you come in and wait?"
The man bowed his head in thanks and passed into the apartment. "She missed our appointment last night," he said in a low tone, looking around at the furnishings.
"I know," Dale replied, gesturing the man toward a chair. "It was something that couldn't be helped. An old friend of hers came into town and he was here for only the one night." She smiled. "My name is Dale Anders. I'm Rene's roommate. I model too."
"I've never seen your pictures," the man said slowly. "I saw a lot of Miss Clark's, though. Don't you do the same kind of posing?"
His eyes were roaming up and down her figure as she sat opposite him. She didn't worry, however. They were not the eyes of lust and hunger. Instead, they were appraising her professionally, from a photographer's point of view.
"We do a lot of the same type," she said, "but not all."
His eyes were heavy-lidded. "I sell my shots to the stores downtown on Main Street."
"Oh." Dale spoke flatly. "I see. Well, I haven't done too much of that kind of work. Rene, has, though. "You'll like her, I'm sure. I can't understand what's keeping her."
"You have done that kind of posing, however?"
"Very little, I'm afraid. I'm not the type, it seems."
"You look as if you'd do fine."
The girl smiled. This man was a strange one. He didn't seem to be a talkative type and yet here he was giving as well as taking. He was weird looking, but she was used to odd-looking types in this business. Men who spent too many years of their lives at the operating end of the camera seemed to develop off-beat faces and personalities.
He didn't look too prosperous, either, but that was also part of the course. These guys just didn't care how they dressed; they put all their money into photographic equipment.
He smiled as he paid her the compliment and she felt an inner chill as she saw his teeth, widely spaced, stained and yellow.
Afraid that she showed her reaction on her face, she covered by saying, "Thank you, but they say I don't look-well, defenseless e-nough for that kind of work. You want the more glittery doll type, don't you? Like Rene?"
The man shrugged, his eyes fixed at a point just above her brows. "Sometimes. The customers like a change over once in a while." He looked at his watch and bit his upper lip. "I can't wait too long, I'm afraid."
"Oh!" Dale glanced at the door as if expecting to see Rene walk in. "She should be here any minute. She told me that she wasn't going to miss this appointment."
"It's rather poor business," the man muttered, studying his watch and glowering. "This makes two in a row she's dumped. The agency assured me she was most reliable...."
"Oh, she is, Mister-" Dale waited a second but the man did not offer his name. "The agency knows that. She's the most reliable of all the girls. Please wait a little longer."
"Well...."
The man rose and paced to the window. Outside the moon shone brightly, casting shadows along the other buildings, making the night seem like a blue day. The desert was like this, too, he was sure-bright and blue all over, so clear that you could see anything and everything just as clear! A woman's eyes, for instance, her eyes widening in horror as the rope cut into her bound flesh.
Every detail would show on a night like this. Everything.
"Miss Anders?" he asked, his back still to Dale.
"Yes?" she replied expectantly.
"Could you take her place tonight?"
There was a silence as neither moved or spoke. Dale was thinking that this man would report Rene to the agent and that would be bad for Rene. She knew that her friend depended on these strange pictures she posed for-shots of herself bound and gagged in strange positions. Neither girl could understand the attraction these photos held for some men, but they were popular and sold well all over the country.
And Rene needed the work. She needed money more than Dale did, money for her parents and for her future. No, she couldn't afford to lose out with this agency.
"Of course," she replied after a moment. "If it's all right with you."
The man turned and faced her, his expression as cold as ice. "Of course it's all right with me. Why shouldn't it be?"
"I didn't think I was the type."
"You'll do fine. I'll use your friend another time."
"Well, that's just great, then." Dale reached for her bag. "Do I need any special costume?"
"A bra and panties."
"I'm wearing those. Where are we going?"
"The desert. I want to take some night shots there."
"I'll leave a note for Rene telling her I've gone with you." Dale scribbled a note on a pad on an end table. She smiled at the man over her shoulder. "Rene is a worrier. I have to let her know where I am every minute. She does the same thing for me. Girls have to watch themselves in this town."
He didn't seem interested. He tightened his lips as he waited for her. Done with the note, she smiled brightly. "I'm ready now. Let's go."
The man pointed to her mouth. "Is that the only lipstick you have?"
"No. I've got all colors. Is this wrong?"
"I think I'd like a brighter shade for you. Do you have it?""
"Sure. Excuse me a moment."
When she went into the bedroom the man slid over to the end table like a snake. He ripped the note from the pad and crumpled it into his pocket. When Dale came out he was waiting at the door.
She held up a lipstick tube of bright red. "Is this all right?"
He barely glanced at it. "Fine. Let's go, Miss Anders."
The only thing on Dale's mind as she got into his old car was, "What a nice guy. Nobody calls anybody by last name in this town. It's nice to meet someone who does."
And then her eyes clouded as they drove along, remembering that she didn't know his name, first or last. But then she relaxed. Las Vegas was a goofy town anyway, filled with kooky people.
So why should she worry about one more? It was only another job.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Loyalty can be carried too far and Dale was a very loyal friend.
Worried about Rene's standing with the agency, and wanting to help her friend, she went along willingly with the man in the old car.
Usually cautious and careful about such things, she was being driven by a stranger to a remote part of the desert at night. But she was more concerned about Rene's job than about her own safety. So she gave no thought to anything but trying to do a good job for a man whose name she didn't even know.
Glancing sideways at him as they drove along, she noted him as a harmless type, completely engrossed in the work ahead. He kept silent, he never looked at her, his attention all on the traffic, and she relaxed, determined to enjoy the drive and put in a good evening's work.
The silence, however, got to her after a while. She cleared her throat and said, "I don't think I've seen you before, have I? I know most of the photographers in this city."
"You don't know me," he replied, his eyes still fixed ahead. "I just got into town a couple of weeks ago."
If he was shy, she had given him enough of an opening to talk about himself, his home town, and his work. But he didn't pick up the conversation. So Dale tried again. She didn't like to keep quiet too long. Besides, this man excited her curiosity with his reticence and her woman's natural way of wanting to know things piqued her.
"Are you from the east?" she asked.
He nodded. "Mid-west."
Well, that was better. If he wasn't willing to volunteer conversation, he at least answered questions. Dale went on. It was becoming a game to pass the time of the drive.
"I've never been that far east," she said. "Fact is, I'm strictly west coast all the way. Rene, though, she's from Pennsylvania. You ever been there?"
"No."
"How did you do in the midwest with your work? All right?"
"Some. It'll be better here, though."
A street lamp lighted up his face as they drove past and she thought she caught the hint of a smile on his lips. But if it had been there, it was gone with the darkness.
"I guess there's a pretty good market for your kind of stuff." He only grunted at this. She went on: "Me, I can't see what men get out of seeing pictures like that-people tied up and helpless. Why, they're not even dirty pictures."
"No." the man said softly. "They're not dirty pictures."
"I know a couple of other fellows who shot the same stuff. They said they couldn't understand it, either. But, what the hell, they said-so long as there was a market, they took the shots. I guess that's how people like you and me have to look at it, hah? Just a job of work for money."
"Miss Anders," he said abruptly.
"Yes, sir," she replied.
"I've changed my mind about the location where I'm going to shoot the pictures."
"I don't understand." Dale sat up straight as he swung off the main street. She looked around. "Where are we going?"
"Don't worry about that. I've got a good place. Picked it out a while ago."
"But it's late," she said, beginning to feel alarm. "By the time we get to where I can pose outdoors, it'll be 'way past midnight."
He didn't answer her but kept his eyes straight into the glare of the headlights. His lips tightened and he began to hum softly. Dale looked at him, her eyes widening as she saw the small beads of sweat form on his face, the drops lighted up by the passing headlights.
Suddenly the man looked very evil to her, very cold and mean, and ... purposeful. It seemed that he had a goal to reach that night, a mission to perform, and it was a thing of loathsomeness.
Dale shivered. "I'm sorry. I won't be able to go with you. Please take me back."
There was no answer from the driver. He didn't even look at her, appearing to be lost in a delicious dream of his own as he kept humming tunelessly, softly, almost purringly.
"Did you hear me?" Dale was surprised at the alarm in her voice. "I want to go back."
He shook his head, not in reply, but in trying to shake himself out of the soft trance he was in so he could hear her. "What did you say?" he whispered. "I don't think it's a good idea at all. I want to go back. Please."
"Can you drive, Miss Anders?"
"Of course I can drive. What is the...."
"Get behind the wheel, please. Then we can go back."
But when they changed places the man said, very softly, "Miss Anders, keep right on going straight ahead. Drive as I tell you, as fast and as slowly as I tell you, and take the roads I tell you to take."
Dale's fingers tightened on the wheel. Her breathing was hard and heavy. But she decided she wasn't going to lose her head. This man, no matter how mad he was, could be handled.
"What do you want?" she asked. "Sex?"
"Just keep driving, please."
"If you want sex, I'll give it to you without any trouble. We could stop someplace, at a motel, and you could do anything. There's no need for you to force me."
"Please don't try to pass the light ahead."
"You don't have to go to all this trouble. All you have to do is ask. I'm not against the idea of a good lay myself."
But he didn't respond except to give her directions. She began to ease up after a while. He didn't threaten her or act particularly dangerous, except for the fact that they were heading someplace other than his original plans, and he wouldn't go back when she asked him to.
Just a kook, she decided, and probably harmless as well as worthless. If I don't anger him or upset him and go along with him, I don't think there'll be any trouble.
If the guy had weird ways of getting his kicks, she'd go along with it. Anything was better than getting killed; Dale didn't hold the price of her body higher than her life....
She knew, after a while, that they were on their way into the deep desert. The man had kept silent, merely directing her as to turns and speeds. He was in no hurry and was careful about speed laws.
"We'll need some fuel," he said finally. "Stop at the next service station. Will I have any trouble from you?"
"No. Everything will be all right."
"That's good. Because I have a rod in my pocket. I don't like using it."
"You won't have to. There'll be no trouble."
Dale relaxed as much as she could. Yes, the man was dangerous but she figured she could, by playing along with his whims, whatever they were, survive. That was all that was important to her at this stage. She had rolled in the hay with a few men who repelled her, and this would be only one more.
Trying to show him that she would go along with him, she sang snatches of songs, talked lightly, even though he didn't reply, and generally acted like a girl on a date.
Besides, she had an ace in the hole in case the man did get dangerous. The note she had left for Rene. It had explained that she had taken Rene's place to model with the photographer the agency sent over.
If the man got violent, she would tell him about the note and he would know that he could be traced. No matter what he had in mind, he was so timid looking, so quiet, that the knowledge of the note and his being discovered would surely scare him off.
When they stopped at the service station and she said that she wanted to use the girl's room, he let her go without a qualm. This assured her that he wouldn't be trouble, so long as she played along with him. She didn't see the gun so didn't know whether he had one or was lying. Nevertheless, she would take no chances.
And she felt she didn't have to.
Dale was sterile so she didn't worry about getting knocked up. It would simply be another unpleasant jazz in the sand, perhaps, with the man crying and sobbing, as that type so often did.
And then it would be over. He would take her home, quieter even than now, ashamed, maybe subdued and unable to look at her, and she would take a good hot bath and a shower, douse herself with perfume, and after a day or so it would be forgotten.
Dale was only glad that this wasn't happening to Rene. The baby would have gotten frightened and hysterical and the man would have been forced to hurt her. Kill her, maybe. There was no telling what this type would do if he were scared and forced to use violence.
Yes, all in all, it was good that things had turned out the way they did. Dale, older, wiser, harder, more adaptable, could cope with the situation. Rene could not.
Look at how she had reacted to Oscar. The poor kid had come home disheveled, torn, crying, completely broken up.
How would she have reacted to this strange little man forcing her to drive to the desert late at night?
It was too awful to think about. Instead, Dale concentrated on keeping the man feeling calm and on trying to find something attractive in him so that she would enjoy the jabbing that was to come at least a little bit.
The desert night was bright and blue, the moon high and glowing, with a million stars dotting the skies. They passed fewer and fewer cars and after a while, they saw none at all. Dale remembered to look at the clock on the dashboard for the first time. It was just past midnight.
The man cleared his throat. "There's a turn off on the left just a little further up. Take it."
"Oh," Dale mused to herself. "An open-air session, is it? Last time I had one of those was on a beach. This time, no beach, but a hell of a lot of sand."
She found herself tingling with anticipation. After all, it had been a while since she'd wrapped her legs around a man. This fellow might be a brand new experience and something worthwhile. Whatever it was, it would be better than dying.
The turn off led into the emptiness of the desert away from the main road. The ruts were soft in the sand and the car seemed to melt into them as it made its slow way. They kept going without a word until, after fifteen minutes, the road vanished, lost in the endless and emptiness.
"What do I do now?" Dale asked.
"Stop here. Shut off the lights. Give me the keys."
She did as he said. They got out of the car.
"Take off your clothes, "he whispered. "Everything except your bra and panties."
"Here it comes," Dale thought. "There'll be nothing to it. I'll just close my eyes and pretend it's Rock Hudson or ... somebody I've always wanted."
She slipped off her slacks and sweater, watching him as he took things out of the trunk of the car. There was a blanket and he spread it out on the ground. Then the picnic basket which he placed next to the blanket.
He took out his camera and set it up on a tripod. She saw it was a good one, a Linhoff. At least the man seemed to know his business.
And then he took out a length of rope and a chain.
"Get on your belly," he told her.
Dale obeyed. He straddled her and tied her wrists at her back, humming a tuneless melody, hummed it softly and dreamily. She closed her eyes and let him do as he wanted. This was not the worst situation in the world. She had had more trouble with hot pants wolves while dancing with them in night clubs.
She winced, however, as he pulled the knot tightly. Then he tied her ankles together the same way, the humming going on and on. Maybe she thought, he is on the level and does want to take pictures of me like this and nothing else. Maybe he has a strobe outfit to shoot in the dark.
She thought like this while he finished tying her. Her ankles were pulled back and tied to her wrists. Suddenly he grabbed her shoulder and pushed her onto her side. She could see him now, kneeling beside her. He wasn't looking at her face, but at the ropes he had tied. His eyes, black and round, ran over her thighs, her taut muscles, her stomach as it stretched against the strain.
And he continued humming, softer than ever, almost like a love ballad. If she closed her eyes, she thought, she could go to sleep ... if it weren't for the pain in her taut body....
Looking around, she could see for miles in the bright desert night. And it seemed as if she and the man were the only two people in the world. There was a sort of evil beauty to it, too, a sense of suspended animation from the everyday, the ordinary.
It was too bad that she had to share it with such a jerk ... this man who was now tying a length of chain around her body.
The metal cut into her flesh as he wrapped it around her boobs, her torso and her thighs. The man did it with some ceremony, making sure that it was placed in such a way that it would not slip and humming along as if in a religious ferver.
He was done at last. She was bound with a rope and chain so securely that she could barely move. Now he stepped back and studied her, his eyes noting her expression carefully.
"Are you uncomfortable?" he asked. "Tell me the truth. I want to know the truth."
"Yes, I'm uncomfortable," Dale replied, trying not to sound strained.
"That's good. As the hours pass, you're going to be still more so. In fact, it will be agony for you. Then, in the daytime....
"You're going to leave me like this all night?" she gasped.
"... In the daytime," he went on as though she hadn't said a word and talking more to himself, it will blister and burn you. You won't be able to move a muscle. The torture will be unbearable for you. And it will get worse and worse."
Her heart suddenly began to pump in her breast and the ropes seemed more constricting and unbearable. Looking at him, she saw that his face, which had appeared meek and harmless, had taken on the aspect of insanity, even though his expression was still the same.
The change seemed to come from within him, coloring him, tensing the muscles of his features, giving him an evilness that was something Dale had never imagined could exist.
She reached into the reservoir of her feminine intuition to try to offset the nightmare that faced her. "Untie me and let's screw," she said. Her breath seemed choked up within her but she went on. "I can wiggle for you like you never dreamed of. I can make you very happy."
"I'm happy now," he said softly. "You couldn't make me any happier. No one could. This is the only way."
"Let me try!" she persisted, feeling the rope and chain more now.
"I'm very tight," she continued desperately. "All the fellows say I'm the tightest piece of tail they ever had ... and my mouth ... I know how to use that, too."
She tried to think of some other tricks that she had heard about or read in illicit books that might tempt this nut.
But he only hummed and shook his head.
"I have food and water," he said. "I can stay here a long time while you suffer."
Dale faced the truth. "I'll die!" she exclaimed.
He settled himself, sitting with his back to a wheel of the car, facing her, his eyes fixed on her.
"You'll die."
"But why? Why do you want this to happen to me?"
"It's a long, involved reason and you're a woman so you'll never understand it. You have to die, mat's all."
"Then why not kill me and get it over with?"
"No. I have to watch you die."
"You ... you ... have ... to watch me die?"
Dale couldn't even believe her own words as they came out of her throat.
"Yes. And tomorrow, when the sun comes up and you're really suffering, I'll take pictures of you. Then, when I'm through with you, I'm going back for your little blonde friend. Now please, no more talk. I'm tired of talk. I want to watch."
And the desert night was still except for Dale's choked sobbing and the tuneless humming of the little man. He didn't have to get his jollies looking at pictures anymore ... He had the real thing now.
CHAPTER EIGHT
At about the time that the man made Dale change seats with him in the Olds, Rene was melting in Oscar's arms. They were parked in his car in the deserted area at the edge of the desert.
It had been a wonderful evening for both Oscar and Rene. Oscar had apologized for his actions and thoughts of the night before. "I must have been out of my mind with jealousy, darling," he had said at dinner. "I've been thinking of you for years and then when I came across your pictures in those dirty magazines ... well ... I didn't know what to think."
"You shouldn't be reading such nasty stuff," Rene had pouted, seeming to blame him for the bad business between them simply because he had looked through the publications.
"Well, that's all gone now. I acted like a spoiled brat. All I know is that I can't imagine living without you."
"That's how I feel about you too, Oscar."
Rene's eyes melted as she looked into Oscar's and he wanted to take her in his arms right there in front of the other diners and press his lips to those heavy lids.
Rene lowered her eyes. "Don't look at me like that, Oscar."
"I was about to tell you the same thing."
She felt suddenly weak. Her heart beat quickly, her hands trembled. "Please," she whispered. "I can't talk any more. Not here."
They finished eating in silence, still communicating, however, with their eyes, with the touch of their furtive hands, and with their silence.
Then, with the moon streaking down upon them, they drove out to the edge of the desert. They parked facing the distant mountains and he took her in his arms. It was gentle this time, and mutual, each as much a part of the love engulfing them as the other.
Their lips met and crushed, their bodies strained toward each other and they knew the sudden, rushing glory of intimacy, of the knowledge of things discovered in each other. Her body bent to him, her breasts crushed willingly against his chest, their arms arched with the fervor of their embrace and they both wanted to cry out in the glory that was theirs.
But all they could do was gasp, their hearts fighting their breaths as their lips parted and they clung to each other.
"This is the way it should have been at the very beginning." Oscar whispered into the softness of Rene's throat. "I was a jerk to waste even one night."
"Let's let sleeping dogs sleep," answered Rene, and such was the nature and strength of Oscar's love for her that he thought of it as an original and apt expression.
"We start from right now, from today."
"Oh, Oscar. This is just like a scene from a movie, isn't it, with the desert and the moon and all?"
"I never understood love scenes before. Now I do!"
"Me, too! Oh, my darling...."
Her voice was a bare whisper as he took her in his arms and the fire roared in their veins. Lifted by their passion, carried along by a will stronger than the force of life itself, they found themselves out of the car and on the sand.
Rene fell back, her neck taut, her eyes glazed, her mouth gasping and hungry for his lips. Her breasts rose to meet his grasping hands, her hips thrashed under him, beyond control and with a power and force of their own.
Whispering her name over and over, Oscar raised her blouse, found the naked and burning flesh heated to a fire to match his own. Her legs were now bared to the light of the moon as he crushed against her.
Suddenly, she gasped. Her eyes opened wide to the wonder, her breath caught in her throat. But only for a moment and then he was in her, and they were caught in the whirling vortex, the stampede of senses, the charging, relentless joy that knew no end, only the explosive demand, the sensation beyond sensation, life fruition of all purpose, all-powerful.
And there, on the desert they were one with the sand and the moon and the skies, and there was nothing else in the world.
A thousand thrills later, Rene sighed and said softly, "You see, darling? You didn't have to be tough with me. All you had to do was be nice, because I love you."
Oscar leaned on his elbow and looked down on her. Even in the moonlight her face was flushed, her eyes sparkling as she lay in complete repose, a thousand secrets hidden in her expression.
"I was a jerk, of course," he said. "But I'll never be one again as far as you're concerned. (Josh, Rene, I'm sorry I have to go away."
"So am I, now that we really found each other."
"I'll arrange everything with the main office and then come back here to stay with you."
"Thanks for letting me keep on working, Oscar. It's important to me ... at least for a while."
"I understand, darling ... I...."
"Ohmygosh!" she sat bolt upright, her open blouse falling away from her knockers.
"What's the matter?" Oscar sat up with her, startled.
Rene started to button up. "I forgot again!" she exclaimed. "Oh, gee whiz! What'll the agency say? This is the second time I've goofed!"
He helped her to her feet and they both swayed, still drunk with the fatigue of love. He tried clumsily to help her adjust her clothing, brushed the sand from the back of her skirt and blouse.
"I had a job tonight with a photographer and I forgot all about it!" Rene got into the car. "But that's only the half of it. I forgot yesterday too. And all on account of you, darling! You see what you make me do? I'd forget my head if it wasn't stuck to my shoulders!"
As they drove away from the desert, Oscar made a mental note to work on Rene and rid her of trite expressions. Still, he thought, as she nestled close and warm to his shoulder, she was sweet and the cliches could be forgiven.
Rene was still yaking about the missed job. "My agent doesn't like me to goof like this and this is the first time it's happened; no, the second, counting last night."
Oscar felt detached from the subject of modeling but tried to show some interest. "What sort of posing would you do for this man, honey?"
Rene glanced at him apprehensively. "Well, I don't know until I see him. Probably some kind of pin up. But no nudies, Oscar. I won't do nudies, honestly."
"Don't worry about that," he smiled.
Rene relaxed. "They do ask for some wild poses, sometimes, though."
"Like what, for instance?"
"Well, a lot of them take pictures of girls being dressed by other girls, you know? What I mean is one girl has a bra and panties on, and also a girdle, of all things. And another girl is fastening the girdle."
"Oh," Oscar said. "Fashion stuff, then?"
Rene shook her head and her curls bounced. "No, not fashion poses at all. They don't ask us to wear fancy clothes or anything like that. Just what I told you. I don't understand it at all."
Oscar put one arm around her shoulders and drew her close. "Let's stop talking shop, shall we, baby? You and I really found each other tonight."
Rene giggled. "We really did, didn't we, Oscar? Who'd ever think when we were kids back in Easton...?" She let the sentence hang and brushed her lips against his cheek.
"We've grown up, Rene...."
And the subject was happily changed as they warmed to each other's love and drove back into town and Rene's apartment, filled with joy toward all the world and knowing there could be nothing bad in it after what had happened to them.
"I have to leave on the first flight I can get tomorrow," Oscar told Rene at her door. "And so I won't be able to see you before I go. But I'll clear things up back east and be back to you as soon as I can."
"Rush, darling." Rene clung to him hungrily, promisingly. "And please take care of yourself so that you can come back to me safe and sound."
"I will. And don't forget to take care of yourself. After all, you're a girl, and...." Oscar broke off and laughed. "What am I talking about? You've been taking care of yourself all the while you've been alone here in Las Vegas."
"That's right. I can handle myself just fine. So don't worry about me."
"I won't."
One last open mouth kiss and it was the end of the evening for Oscar and Rene. She swung into her apartment on winged feet, alive and buoyant, calling Dale's name so that her friend could share her happiness.
But the apartment was empty. Rene frowned and checked the time. It was past midnight, an unusual time for Dale to be out unless she had a date, and she rarely made one during the week when she was working.
Rene kicked off her shoes. "The notepad," she said to herself. "Dale always leaves a note telling me where she is."
But the note pad was blank.
Rene stared at the empty page quizzically, unable to understand its blankness. She blinked her eyes, hoping that the action would bring some answer to why Dale had left no note before leaving.
"Dale?" she called, still refusing to accept the fact that her friend wasn't home. But there was no answer and there was no solution to the empty apartment and the blank note pad.
"Oh, come on!" Rene snapped herself out of it. "Dale's a big girl and knows how to get around without my worrying about it like this...."
She pulled a bottle of milk out of the refrigerator and poured out a glass. She sprawled out on the sofa, her head on the arm rest.
"I'll just stay here and wait for her," she told herself as she sipped the milk. "She ought to be home any minute and I want to tell her about me and Oscar...."
And, with the thought of Oscar and what had happened between them on the desert, she smiled. "On second thought, I won't tell her everything! But on third thought, why not? After all, everybody screws when they're in love, don't they?" She frowned, poutingly. "And sometimes when they're not in love, too. So what's the big secret? After all, I'm no hypocrite!"
And so musing, lost in the warmth of her body as she relived and dreamed over that wonderful, hectic moment on the sands, she fell asleep, her red lips parted in a smile and relived the thrilling experience with Oscar in a wildly thrilling dream.
CHAPTER NINE
Cars rarely appeared on the distant road in this stretch of the desert. When one did come into view he covered her mouth with his hand so that her screams couldn't be heard.
He could have gagged her, but he wanted to hear her cry and whimper and moan when there was no danger of others hearing.
He had slept during the night and he assumed she had, too. But by morning she looked haggard nevertheless. She lay on her right side with the sun cooking her flesh, her muscles strained and taut in the solidity of the position of her limbs.
Her lips were swollen. So was her tongue. He could tell that because it was hard now to distinguish her words. They were thick and garbled.
By early afternoon she no longer looked the same at all. It was funny how even the shape of her body had changed. She had been a pretty girl when he had picked her up the night before and here it was only the next day-and look at her!
He wanted to vomit in disgust. So this is what these women were, once they got out of their cozy shelters and faced a little suffering ... thin, peaked, their bones showing, the flesh falling away ... ugly ... ugly ... ugly.
They all deserved to die, every last woman on earth. And eventually they would all be dead, anyway, even though new ones were born everyday. And why? Simply because there were men who found these creatures desirable and screwed them. That was why more women were born, women to turn ugly and horrible like this one before his eyes now....
The man shook his head. He couldn't understand it; he just couldn't understand it.
He watched her carefully every minute. He even watched her when he was eating the food he had brought with him and drank the water. She looked especially vile then as she babbled something through that parched mouth, and looked hungrily at him like some mangy, bitchy cur.
Tied up like that, she didn't even look human any more. She seemed stunted, dwarfed, like some thing without limbs, only a torso. The muscles and nerves seemed more strained than ever with the flesh shrinking away from them. He could count the bones if he wanted to, especially her ribs.
And the sun. It was scorching, blistering everything in sight. When it became too hot for him he got into the car, leaving the doors and windows open to catch any slight breeze, and watched her from there, humming softly and endlessly, a lullaby to the desert, peaceful and quiet.
And unseeing.
That was the best part of it. He could relax and enjoy this and no one saw him do it, no one barged in asking what the hell was going on, spoiling the beauty and serenity of the occasion with rough, crude words and a mean, displeased voice.
No one else saw, as he did, what the sun was doing to the girl's flesh and hair. The hair was like dried straw, hanging limp and lifeless and bleached in the sun. And her flesh was cooking, and blistering, the reddish, sickly skin peeling and curling so fast he could see it happening.
It made his own flesh crawl to think of how she had tried to beg off by offering him her body, thinking that all he wanted was that ugly, sickening thing between her legs. Even though she might be a whore, he was no whore-monger. But that type would never learn simple things like that. They thought that all they had to do was show men their boobs, invite them to foul themselves by screwing them, and then women could get anything they wanted out of men.
Oh, it worked all right. Many men made fools of themselves over whores. He saw it happening all the time. But not to him. He was above all that.
"Ohhh!" the girl moaned.
He had been staring at her and thinking his thoughts as he sat in the car. Now he rose, stretched his legs and walked to her. She was even more disgusting up close, every detail of her raw flesh exposed to him.
Her eyes were bleak and hollow as they gaped at him; her mouth sagged open, her cheeks were drawn. She ran her puffed tongue weakly over her swollen, parched lips and made a sound. He hummed loudly to drown out whatever she was trying to say. He could not have his thoughts interrupted by anything, least of all by her words.
The ropes, he saw, were still as fast as ever, tighter, even. The sun seemed to have bleached the rope too, and made the knots even more firm. Bending close, he saw the twine cut into the raw flesh. It didn't seem real to him. It was more like a statue or a still photo, without life or meaning. And without feeling.
It was too hot out under the sun so he went back to the car. The short walk and the exposure had dried his throat and he drank from the canteen of water he kept close to him. But he kept his round eyes on the girl as he drank, saw her stare at him, then roll up her eyes until he could see nothing but white.
Was she dead? He got out of the car again and examined her. The heart was still beating, even though faintly. She was too healthy to die so quickly. Another day, maybe, and then even her youth and strength couldn't help her.
He regretted having hit the old man with the shovel, but there was nothing else he could have done. He much preferred it this way, letting the person die all by herself, slowly, as he watched the bound body, watching life leave it, seep out of it like the grains of sand from the top of an hour glass.
How many other people were so lucky as to watch such a phenomenon? Only he, shunted by life at home, laughed at by the men he knew, scorned by the women, was now so powerful, so mighty, that he could bring something like this about, and watch life-man's most precious possession, fade away.
And then, when it was all gone-he felt himself trembling in anticipation-he would know the strange ecstasy that engulfed him, that thundering, smashing, lightening-like sensation that was surely better than anything known by any other human being, surely better than whatever it was other men sought when they visited those foul whores and paid them money so they could share the foulness. This was beauty; this was purity. And only he would know it.
The day passed slowly, leisurely. The few cars that sped along the far road kept right on going, not seeming to pay any notice to his car parked in the sun. He had another snack toward evening, humming between bites and watching the girl.
She seemed to be shrinking before his eyes, shriveling into almost nothing. It was a strange phenomenon and he made sure he missed none of it. She barely opened her eyes any more now and she didn't even try to talk, although toneless guttural sounds escaped her throat once in a while. He no longer thought of her as a human being, not even as a living creature. She was an object, a thing to study in transformation from a normal person to a strange microbe.
He considered himself most fortunate in being in such a position that he was able to study the perverse miracle.
The coming of night did not lessen the visibility as the moon was still bright, casting sharp shadows on the white sands. He removed his shoes and socks and stretched himself out on the baqk seat of the car. He slept for an hour, rose and examined Dale. She was still breathing in gasps and her heart beat weakly.
"She'll live till morning, at least," he decided, and went back to sleep, assured that he would not miss the supreme climax, the very instant of death when he would have his climax.
He was awakened by a long, low moan; it was morning. Up in a trembling hurry, he rushed to the girl. Her eyes were open but glazed and she was trying to talk. He leaned close to her, kneeling in the sand.
Her puffed lips moved soundlessly, the breath cut off by the swollen tongue, but she kept trying. Wincing, he put his palm to her heart. There was only the faintest of flutters.
Now a word came out of her mouth as she struggled to release it. "Note," she gasped weakly. Then in a rushing flow she finished, "Left a note ... about you...."
Her eyes were fixed on him now. And for all her weakness and helplessness, he saw in them a flash of triumph, a last damnation of him.
He had to make sure he heard properly, and he had to make sure she knew and understood that he was aware of what she had said.
"Are you telling me that you left a note for the other girl?" he asked. "You told her that you were going with me in her place? And you're telling me that I'll be discovered?"
The whisper that came from her was in assent.
The man smiled and reached into his pocket. He took out the note and held it before her eyes.
The eyes stared for an instant and then went totally blank. There was no further sound from her. The man felt her chest. There was no heartbeat. With his own heart beating harder, he pressed his ear to her breast. There was only the sound of his own harsh breathing.
He shot up. "She's dead!" he cried. "She's dead!"
Flames, red and violent, seared his mind. He shook with a spasm that gripped his entire body. He flung himself away from the corpse, falling into the hot sands, writhing and moaning as he sought to become one with the earth, digging into it as his mind escaped into a limbo of cataclysmic turmoil until there was nothing but escape, escape from reality, from sensation, into nothingness.
The vultures were circling in the sky when he awoke. He was weak but calm and refreshed. He looked at the girl's body. He felt nothing. He rose to his feet, waiting to catch his breath and steady himself, and then, moving faster now, he took the shovel out of the trunk and dug a grave.
The sand and earth were soft so it was easy for him to dig a deep enough hole. A car roared by on the highway as he stood in the pit but it didn't slow up so he kept right on digging. He wanted to hum but decided to save all his strength for the task before him.
When it was done, he dragged the body to the hole and let it drop in. He was surprised at how light it had become, not exhausting him at all. He was barely aware of it except for the burned skin that rubbed off on his hands.
But he was careful. He waited a few moments before filling in the grave. And when that was done, he rested again before leveling off the earth so as to remove all signs of a grave.
He examined the ground where she had lain. It was as it had been except for the marks made by her dragging body. He ran his feet across the marks and they were eradicated enough so that nothing showed.
Sweat was running down his face now and he rubbed it off with his shirtsleeves. The work had parched his throat. He drank a good deep draught of the water from the thermos bottle. It was only moderately cold but he knew it was good for him that way.
He looked around, checking everything. He gathered the picnic things, put them away neatly in the basket, opened the trunk of the car and put the basket and the shovel away.
"Is there anything else to do?" he asked himself. "Have I forgotten anything?"
He stood beside the car for a while, looking about and thinking, reviewing everything, studying everything around him.
"There's something," he said. "Something I've left out, something I've missed."
It disturbed him that he had this feeling. He knew he wouldn't leave unless he remembered what it was he had overlooked. He was taking no chances on fouling up now. His idea had gone too well for it to turn sour at this point, now that he had done what he had wanted.
Impatient with himself, he shoved his hands deep into his pockets ... and his right hand closed on a crumpled piece of paper. A thin smile formed on his lips and he started humming.
He took out the note that Dale had written and lit it with a match. When it was burnt to his fingers, he dropped it and watched it turn into ashes.
Then he ground it into the sand with his heel, got into his car and drove off, the toneless, tuneless humming sounding high above the steady hum of the motor.
The vultures soared off into the vast sky.
CHAPTER TEN
"Now take it easy, lady," the policeman said soothingly. "Just tell us the story from the beginning. And try not to blubber."
Rene took a deep breath to control her sobbing. She wanted to tell it properly so that the officer would understand. He seemed rather cold and disinterested, as though he ran into this sort of thing every day.
Well, maybe he did. But it wasn't an everyday occurrence to her.
"My roommate's been missing for three days," she said.
"And her name is Dale Anders and she lives with you at the Coronado Apartments?"
"That's right. Oh, you've got to find her, officer!"
Lt. Dave Jones took notes, filling in a sheet on his desk.
"Well, Miss Clark, how do you know she hasn't gone off camping with some friends for a few days?"
"Well, I told you, Dale's not like that. She wouldn't go off and leave without leaving a note."
Jones tapped with his pencil. "You two girls are models aren't you?"
"I told you that."
"What kind of models? I mean, who are some of the guys you work for?"
"Why, what difference does that make?"
"If you want us to find your friend, you'll have to give us all the information you can."
"If you must know, Dale and I do figure modeling. Is there anything wrong with that?" Rene asked defiantly.
Jones shrugged and glanced at his partner, young, handsome Rocky Raven. "Nothing wrong about it at all. But just who do you work for? Give us some names?"
"Look!" Rene jumped to her feet, her eyes flaring with fire. "I know what you fellows think about models! You think we're all tramps."
"Now just a minute," Jones tried to cut in, but Rene screamed on.
"Well, I'm a respectable model, see? And I come to you because I'm a citizen and my roommate-she's a citizen too-is missing. And what do you do? You want to know the names of the fellows we work for so you can hound them and get them into trouble! Well, I'm not going to turn squeeler for you!"
"Miss," Rocky Raven cut in quietly. "That isn't the idea at all."
Rene whirled on him. "Don't tell me! Just because a girl is pretty and cute like Dale and me, you've got it all figured out that we have to be whores...."
"My kid sister's pretty and cute, too," said Rocky, grinning.
"Well, why don't you ask her these insulting questions?"
"You want us to find your friend, don't you?"
Rene's eyebrows furrowed. "Who?"
"Your roommate."
"Oh! Dale! Sure I want you to find her but all you're doing is giving me the third degree...."
Jones' mouth twisted wryly. "The third degree?"
"You want me to turn stoolie!"
Jones stretched back in his chair and yawned. "Look, Miss Clark. You and your little friend pose around town for some cheap, low-sex types of photographers. Sure you do pinups, and that's on the up-and-up, but we happen to know that you pose for some other things, too. Bondage and fetish stuff, is what they call it...."
"What's that got to do with Dale's vanishing?"
"We don't know if she's vanished. But the point is that you work, both of you, for some pretty kooky characters and she could have got mixed up with some of them. Maybe she's in some kind of trouble, maybe not; we don't know. But a girl could get in trouble, working for the weirdo's.
"I never did!" Rene said defiantly.
"You're very lucky. Do you want me to show you some photos of the girls who were victims of the very type of reader you cater to with the rope poses?"
Rocky came forward. "They're not very pretty, Miss Clark. They're downright revolting in fact."
Rene's eyes flashed but her voice was no longer as brazen. "You're trying to frighten me."
"Sure we are," said Jones. "We're trying to scare you into letting us help you and your friend."
"I don't know what you're talking about-bondage stuff. I never did any of that kind of posing."
"Miss Clark," sighed Rocky wearily, "we have a complete file on you as well as every other model in town."
There was a pause and a silence. Rene's eyes widened, then narrowed in apprehension, calculating what she had just heard.
Of course they knew all about what she and Dale did in the way of posing. But she also knew the characters and reputations of the photographers and agencies she worked for. And some of them were dangerous men. They didn't think a thing about cutting up your face so that you wouldn't be cute and pretty any more.
And who was going to help you then? The cops? Sure, maybe they'd find the man who did it to you, but what good was it? You couldn't even show yourself to your friends any more, much less work.
And as for your sex life-
Rene was suddenly sorry she had come. She stood up, smoothing the sleek skirt along her thighs, her hands trembling, her face twitching where she felt the imaginary razor slash across it.
"I ... I must be all wrong about this," she stammered. "I guess you're right. Maybe Dale is camping with some friends. Oh, yes! I just remembered. She said she was going down to Reno for a few days. How could I have forgotten?"
Jones' eyes were at half mast. "Yes. How could you?"
"Well!" Rene chirped brightly, "I have to be toddling along. Toodle-oo and thanks for everything!"
And her high heels tapped merrily as she swung out of the detectives' office.
Jones looked at Rocky. "What do you think?"
"Same as you. We scared her off."
Jones nodded, rose and reached for his hat. "We've got pictures on this Anders dame. Want to check her out?"
"Sure thing. That girl's scared. I'd hate to see her get even more scared."
"What do you mean, Rocky?"
The man strode toward the door. "If-just if, mind you, Dale Anders is in a jam because of the bondage boys she's mixed up with, so is little Miss Rene Clark."
The two detectives stopped to get a picture of Dale from their files and then got into their car.
"Where to, Dave?" asked Rocky.
"Let's pay a call on some of the studios on Main. And let's see what we can turn up besides a nest of vermin."
"Enough is enough!" Daisy hissed to herself. "What am I, a leper or something? Joe's gotta screw today or I'm gonna find out what's cooking and where he's getting it!"
She was alone in the agency late in the afternoon. Joe had left her in charge while he traveled downtown on business. The blinds were drawn and the door was locked. There was a half-filled bottle of scotch on Joe's desk and Daisy took a deep belt right out of the bottle.
"There!" She checked her watch. "Now I got enough in me to do what I gotta do, and it's almost time. Joe'll be back soon. So here goes. Daisy, do your stuff, sugar!"
She pulled her sweater up and off over her head. Her full, rounded knockers burst forth, red-tipped and cream-colored. They bounced as she looked down at them with bloodshot eyes.
"Yes, Ma'am, Daisy," she whispered. "You still got the best looking knockers in town. And you used to be the best model in town, too, till that two-timing pimp made you quit 'cause he said he was in love with you."
She fumbled with the zipper of her skirt and in another moment she was down to her panties,, clinging tightly to her hips, silken and smooth as the skin itself.
"I'm beautiful!" she exclaimed. "Daisy is beautiful! I only wish I were a man so I could screw me, Daisy, myself!"
The panties slipped down her thighs and legs and now she was standing naked, her hands running feverishly and excitedly over her, flesh and she closed her eyes in passion.
"He can't turn me down! How could he! No man could! Not even if he's getting laid someplace else! When Joe comes in and sees me like this...."
She heard rapid footsteps on the stairs. Quickly, she rushed to the couch and stretched out, wantonly, her arms and head hanging from the side.
"Hurry, Joe!" she whispered. "Hurry and jazz me!"
The door knob twisted uselessly. She had locked the door. Then she heard Joe curse as he fumbled for his key, inserted it, and opened the door.
"Daisy!" he growled angrily. "What the hell's the idea of putting this Closed sign on the door downstairs?"
Then he stopped and saw her. He held a small sign in his hand and his eyes were blazing even in the darkness of the room.
"What the hell's with you?" he croaked, staring at her naked body on the couch.
"Boff me, lover," Daisy said dreamily. "Come over and slip it between my legs."
"You damn nut!" he roared, locking the door.
"I love you. I need you!"
Her eyes sparkling, her mouth wide open, Daisy rose and threw her arms around Joe, running her hands up and down his body as she pressed herself against him.
"Please!" she moaned. "It's been so long. .!"
"I ... I can't!" he stammered. "Don't you understand, Daisy?"
Her mouth was on his, her teeth bit into his lips. "I don't care if you're jazzin' somebody else! Just give it to me once in a while! Give it to me now!"
"Oh, hell!" Joe pushed her away as she fought to hold on to him. Her flesh was heated and soft with the ardor of her passion. He could feel it seething under his fingers. "Not now, Daisy! I just can't!"
"You bastard!"
Daisy glared at him, standing back, feet wide apart as her swollen knockers rose and fell. "What is this-the full brush off treatment?" she spat. " I was pretty good when you needed me, but I'm no good for you now, is that it? What are you trying to do, lover-make an ass out of me? I stand here naked, hot for you, my legs spread a mile wide and you turn me down! What's the matter, have you gone queer?"
Joe bit his lower lip. "You know that's not so, baby!"
"Then why don't you lay me?"
"I ... I can't tell you...."
"You can't tell me!" she sneered mockingly. "You! The guy with the fastest tongue in town-at a loss for words! You're not even man enough to tell me you're through with me! I'd respect that more than this, you rat."
Quickly, she pulled her clothes on, her eyes blazing at him.
"Well, I wouldn't screw you now even if you begged me on your hands and knees," she went on. "Not only that, Joe my'boy, I'll find a way to make you sorry you ever met me!"
"Honey, please!" he pleaded. "Try to understand! Trust me!"
"Trust you?" Daisy yanked her dress into place. "How would you feel if you wanted me to jazz you and I treated you the way you treated me? Would you trust me?"
Joe hung his head. "I'm sorry."
"You'll be sorrier still!" she snapped.
He turned his head toward the door. "Please, Daisy. Be quiet. Someone's coming up the steps."
"One of the broads. Is that who you're getting it from these days? I'll give her a piece of my mind!"
Daisy flew past him, unlocked the door and swung it open. Two men were standing there, looking at her with hard eyes.
"We're closed!" she barked. "We're closed!" she barked. "We've got no models to pose for you jerks today! Try the place down the street! They've got blondes and redheads and even a Chinese girl or two...."
And then she stopped. These men didn't look like customers. They didn't have that bleak yet eager look in their eyes. There was no mysterious, never-satisfied hunger in their faces. The younger of the two looked past her into the office.
"We're police, Miss," he said softly. "You in charge here?"
Daisy's eyes narrowed. She stepped aside. "Some fuzz to see you Joe," she said.
Rocky Raven and Dave Jones entered the office. She went out to the hallway and closed the door, her heart beating wildly with anger and frustration. "Whatever trouble he's in," she told herself, "let him go it alone! I'm through helping that bastard!"
She started to go down the steps, went halfway down and halted. The love and longing she had felt for Joe was dead now, as gone as yesterday's news. All that was left now was hatred ... and the need for revenge.
She turned and, walking with the soft tread of a cat, went back up the stairs. She stopped at the door and leaned forward, listening, her fists clenched white.
"Are you sure that Dale Anders isn't on your list of models?" one of the officers was saying?
"I'm positive," Joe's voice replied. "I never even heard of her."
"Do you keep a list of your girls?"
"Sure. Want to look at it? Here it is."
Daisy knew that Joe was telling the truth. She also knew that his list was a straight one. He was too careful to do anything that would put his business in danger. There was a silence as the officers looked through the list.
Then Joe said, "Can I ask what's wrong?"
"We'll ask the questions," said a curt voice. "Who's this girl? Does she work for you?"
Daisy knew he was indicating one of the names on Joe's list. "Rene Clark?" said Joe. "Sometimes; not often."
"Sir," said the voice of the other detective, now grating and hard, "do you ever send any of your men clients to visit these girls?"
"What do you mean?" stammered Joe. "I don't know what you mean."
"Come off it. You know damned well what I mean. You don't run any art school, buddy. I'll repeat my question just one more time and that's all. Did you send a photographer to visit Rene Clark any time in the last few days?"
"Why, no! Honest! Why would I do a thing like that?"
"For loot. The same reason everyone else in this racket does things."
"But I didn't send anyone at all. Honest. Why?"
"We're looking for a man; a certain man."
"Who are you looking for?"
"That's what we want you to tell us. Who did you send to see Rene Clark?"
"Nobody, I told you."
"All right. If you change your mind and remember, call us at the station. My name's Raven and this is Lt. Jones. Ask for either one of us."
"And if you don't call us in a day," said the other detective, "we'll come back to talk to you some more. Meanwhile, think it over and think hard if you know what's good for you."
Daisy drew away from the door gritting her teeth. Then she moved quickly down the steps, mumbling to herself, "The dirty little rat's lying to the fuzz! He did send someone to see the Clark dish! He sent that weasel-faced little guy with the hungry eyes and the space in his teeth!"
She was waiting downstairs when the detectives came out in the street, waiting in the doorway so that she wouldn't be seen by Joe if he was looking out the window.
"You looking for somebody?" she asked them softly.
The two men glanced at each other. "How do you know, miss?" asked Jones.
"I've been listening. Any law against me listening?"
Dave Jones shrugged. "What's on your mind?"
"You're looking for a guy," Daisy whispered. "A guy who was sent to see that Clark broad. That's right, isn't it?"
"Right so far," replied Rocky.
"He was here a few days ago and Joe sent him out to see her."
"Name?" Jones asked, his eyes level.
"Didn't give any. They never do. Joe gets his cut from' the dames after they get together with the guys."
"What good does this do us, then?"
"I'll tell you what he looks like, though. You can't miss the guy if you look for him."
"Give."
"A little guy. A rat face. Big head and pointed chin. Funny looking nose, too, like a mole, you know?"
"I'm getting the picture. Anything else? Color of hair?"
"Black. Like his eyebrows. Thick, straight eyebrows, too. Black eyes; funny, sleepy-like." Daisy shivered. "He gave me the willys."
"What's your name so we can contact you?"
Daisy gave them her full name, her address and her phone number. Then she added, "One thing more, officers. His teeth."
"His teeth?" Dave Jones repeated.
"Yeah. He's got a part between his front teeth."
"That's a pretty good description miss." The two men started to move on. Then Dave Jones stopped. "Do you work for the fellow up there?" he asked Daisy.
She shrugged her soft shoulders. "I used to be with him."
"Why are you telling us this?"
Daisy's eyes traveled up and down Dave Jones' tall frame, lingeringly so that he found himself squirming. She smiled archly. "You ever hear of a woman's fury?"
"That which hell hath none like?" asked Dave.
She took a deep breath, causing her breasts to rise and push out against the fabric of her dress.
"Imagine somebody scorning me?" she asked.
"Couldn't possible," murmured Dave.
"You're nice," she said. "You've got my phone number. Call me sometime, even if it isn't on official business."
And she walked quickly down the street, her hips bouncing with each step, her backside in rhythm with the unsung song in her frustrated soul and body.
The two men stood looking after her. Then Rocky sighed and said, "You remember everything she gave us, Dave?"
Dave's voice was heavy. "Yeah, everything."
"Remember something else, friend."
"What?"
"Remember you're a married man." And the two detectives grinned at each other as they got into their car to look for a small, rat-faced man with a space in his teeth.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Daisy focused her eyes on the entrance to the Coronado Apartments. It wasn't easy to do because she was drunk. And angry. And frustrated. A half-dozen manhattans had not been able to cover the turbulence of her flesh, the starved flesh that palpitated for the touch of the man she had betrayed to the police.
Men at the bars where she had done her drinking had tried to pick her up but she had wanted none of them. They had either looked too much like Joe or not enough like him. So she had ordered drink after drink, seeking oblivion and forgetfulness. She had found neither.
Her need for the touch of another body upon hers was greater than ever. But there was still another need she had to fulfill ... she had to sink the knife of betrayal deeper into Joe, sink it so deep that there would be no relief for him, no way of getting it out.
And now, drunk and weaving, she somehow came to the conclusion that she had to see Rene Clark, talk to her, make her see how Joe had treated her, make him evil in the eyes of the light-hearted model, so that she too would hate him as Daisy hated him.
Besides, that dumb broad always took life so easily. It was time she was shook up a bit, and Daisy was the babe that could do it.
Clutching a bottle of scotch to her breast, she weaved up the steps and rang Rene's bell. The girl appeared at the door, surprised to see Daisy. She wore a skintight pair of capris and a sweater that clung to her bosom like a second skin.
"Daisy?" she exclaimed. "Why, what are you doing here?"
Daisy's eyes roamed quickly and appreciatively over Rene's swollen boobs, the curve of her stomach, the line of her thighs. She felt her own body tingle at the sight of a figure that was, she told herself, as lovely as her own ... and as desirable.
"I'm visiting," she said, trying to control her twisting tongue. "You're lonely and I'm lonely, so I thought I'd come and keep you company for a little bit."
Rene stepped aside to let her visitor in. "Why, that's very nice of you, Daisy, thinking of me that way. It's real neighborly, just like back home. Please come in."
Daisy threw herself on the sofa, her legs sprawled straight out, the skirt hiked carelessly above her knees, revealirg the smooth flow of flesh.
"Break out the crockery, baby. I hear you're missing a roommate. Let's drink and talk this over."
"Oh, I don't drink, really. Just one or two to be sociable. . Drinking makes me giddy."
Daisy's eyes narrowed. Rene was standing just before her, her waist at eye level to Daisy.
"Is that so?" she said. "Giddy, eh? And frisky, too?"
Rene giggled. "That's right. I have to be very careful when I date a man. If I drink too much, well, I get careless. I tend to let myself go and get myself plugged."
Gad, thought Daisy. This is an innocent dame!
"Well, you've got nothing to worry about, baby. There are no men around. So let's have at it, shall we?"
As Rene got the glasses, Daisy watched the trim, undulating figure through bleary eyes. And her mouth watered. Daisy had spent ten years in Las Vegas, and she had undergone every experience possible in those years.
And the only purpose in her young life was to satisfy the hunger of her body-in any way she could. She had been through a great many experiences, tasted every possible thrill, known every variation, always searching for the one that would satisfy her.
To Daisy, a body was a body, man or woman. She was no dike, she told herself, but what was more beautiful than the thought of two broads head to toe in the embrace of senseless, wild passion, two pairs of knockers crushed together, two heaving bodies, two red, feminine mouths searching each other out with flicking tongues....
She took a deep breath, trying to control the trembling that was overwhelming her, the desire that was creeping savagely into her crotch. The tips of her breasts hurt deliciously and there was a quivering along her thighs that she wanted to touch and bring to flame.
Rene's hips twitched as she set the glasses on the coffee table between Daisy and herself. Daisy opened the scotch bottle with trembling fingers and poured two strong shots. She patted the place next to herself on the couch.
"Sit here, baby, and let's drink and talk about loneliness and love and the pursuit of male dingles."
Rene laughed lightly. "You talk awful cute, Daisy. Are we going to drink this straight?"
"Might as well," Daisy lifted her glass. "It's the only thing we'll do straight tonight-I hope."
It was over and past Rene's head. She tilted her head and drank. It was strong stuff but it warmed her and she took another gulp. There was still some left in the glass when she lowered it and looked at Daisy:
Daisy's glass was empty. "Come on, baby," she said. "Drink up. You've got to keep pace with your company. It's not polite not to, you know."
Rene drank dutifully and Daisy instantly refilled both glasses. "Might as well be drunk as the way we are." She rested her hand on Rene's thigh. "And like I said," she went on, "there are no men around, so what have you got to worry about?"
The fingers pressed on the softness of the thigh. Rene looked down at Daisy's hand and giggled. "It does feel good," she said.
"What feels good, baby?" Daisy's hand moved slowly up on the thigh. "This? Or the drink?"
"The drink, silly! Why should your hand feel good?"
"Drink up and I'll answer that."
The second drinks vanished faster than the first. As Daisy poured more scotch, she said, "Didn't it feel good when Dale did it to you?"
Rene was still shuddering from the effects of drinking too fast. Things were getting blurred to her and Daisy's hand felt hot and restless on her thigh.
"Dale?" she said lazily. "Dale never did that."
"She didn't. Why, you two are shacking up together. Didn't you beautiful girls sleep together?"
"Why no. We each have our own bedroom."
Daisy looked at Rene, not believing that a girl in Las Vegas could be that naive. And it thrilled her strangely to realize that Rene was still a virgin as far as women were concerned. Her own senses were tingling more than ever from the need that Joe had been unable to satisfy, and now the very idea of her being alone with this lovely, dumb creature excited her more than ever.
If she could only get some relief, she would be able to sleep tonight and forget about Joe for a little while. But first she had to get to Rene and make her want it too.
She poured another drink for both glasses. " There was a strange little guy looking for you to pose for him," she said. "You had a date with him, remember?"
"Oh! Yes! And I didn't keep it. I'm sorry Daisy."
"Dale must have kept it in your place. That's why she isn't back. She hasn't been home for a few days has she?"
Rene stared at Daisy, her eyes blinking. "I don't understand."
"Drink up and I'll explain it."
The drinks were gone the next instant. Rene slumping now, not caring what Daisy's hands were doing to her.
"I've seen that type of man before, baby," Daisy went on. "Mean, vicious. They like to torture girls. Who knows? Maybe he's killed Dale already...."
"Oh, no!" Rene sat up, her senses reeling.
"And he'll be back after you, too."
Daisy saw the effect this was having on the girl. What she was saying was only wild imaginings, of course, but it was working. Rene shuddered and drew close to her, the full boobs shoved hard against Daisy's arm.
"I'm scared!" Rene sobbed. "You mean he'll try to kill me?"
Daisy took her in her arms. The lush body, heavy with the perfume of excitement, melted weakly against her. "Don't worry about it, baby," Daisy murmured. "I'm here. Nobody's going to hurt you while I'm here. You need another shot."
Two drinks later, Rene was weak and groggy, her head weaving, her eyes half-closed as Daisy mauled her boobs and wet her throat with open-mouthed kisses.
"What ... what are you doing?" Rene whispered.
But Daisy was past playing a game now. She was hot with desire and was tearing at Rene's sweater. Rene was too weak and senseless to care as the sweater slipped off and the bra was torn from her heavy breasts.
She fell back on the couch and Daisy fell atop her, her lips fastened to the soft rise of flesh, her body grinding savagely and relentlessly. But Daisy had to pause for a moment. Their clothing was in the way.
As she raised herself, she saw that Rene was out cold. Her head was thrown back, her knockers forced upward, her hips and thighs softly relaxed on the couch.
"Oh, well," Daisy whispered to herself, "it might as well be this way. It'll be something new for me and she'll never know what happened."
And as she lowered her naked body upon that of the supine girl, she said, "But I'll know, all right! I'll know!"
And the next few moments she discovered a new thrill a new sensation as she made wild love to a body that was sheer beauty but without response.
And then, when she felt all sensation gather into a knot within her and explode with a force that was like that of no other she had ever known, she cried out, "Glory! Glory! It's better than doing it to myself."
All that Rene remembered when she woke up the next morning was that she had gotten drunk with Daisy and that she had a terrible, sick hangover.
She was nude on the couch, her clothing strewn on the floor, and she was alone with an empty scotch bottle and a sour taste in her mouth.
"Oh!" she moaned as she sat up, every bone and muscle aching. "I'll never drink again. I must have made a fool of myself. What could Daisy have thought of me?"
Shaking her head in shame, she went into the shower and sprayed herself with the hottest water she could take. The soap lathered thickly and she covered herself with it from neck to toe. Her fingers worked it into her flesh, the softness pliable under her fingers, and when she rinsed her body clean, she felt awake and alive once again, and happy.
A hearty breakfast and she would be as good as ever, she told herself, charged with the strength and recovery of her youth.
The phone rang just as she finished dressing.
"This is Lt. Jones," spoke the voice. "Do you know a photographer, rather small and dark and with a space between his front teeth?"
"No," she replied wonderingly.
"Well, we're looking for him. We have an idea that he may know something about what happened to Miss Anders."
Rene almost dropped the phone. "Oh!" she gasped.
"What's the matter? Do you know the man?"
It came back to her now with a rush that made her dizzy. Daisy had said something about a man who liked to torture girls and kill them ... and that he would be back for her....
"Miss Clark!" Jones' voice was urgent. "What is it?"
"He took her away ... and now he's coming back to kill me!"
"What? What are you talking about?"
But Rene was paying no attention to him any longer. His voice was only a thin blur on the phone as she dropped it to the carpet and stood there, dazed, staring wildly about in fear.
"I've got to get out of here before he comes back!" she cried.
She took only her purse and charged out of the apartment, afraid to look over her shoulder, afraid to look at anything as she moved out into the street and hailed a passing cab.
So she missed seeing the old car parked at the curb. She didn't see the little man start up his car and move expertly after the taxi.
She didn't see the mouth part in a vague smile, showing the teeth, the front teeth with the large space between them.
The cab took her to the Bank in town where she drew out all of her money-two thousand dollars. Then she found a small hotel in a side street and registered as Freda Adams, locked herself in her room and sat shivering with dread.
"If Dale's dead," she told herself, "it was supposed to be me that's dead. I'm on borrowed time!"
It was too quiet, too lonely in the small room. There was too much time to think and to be frightened. She switched on the radio and a loud rock and roll record screamed out, the sound crashing against the walls and ringing raucously in her ears. She dialed another station and now there was soft music, sweet and soothing as a lullaby.
She threw herself on the bed and tried to relax, letting the music drift into her ears, trying to forget, trying to think that it was all her imagination. Dale was still alive; there was nothing wrong with her, she was off someplace just having a good time. And no one was looking for her, Rene, to kill her.
Her natural good spirits were beginning to take over when the news was broadcast. And she heard Dale's name, voiced in the formal tones of the newscaster.
She sat up, the words dinning in her head as if in an echo chamber, curdled with horror....
"Police report the finding of the body of a local model missing for a week. Identified as Dale Anders, it was found by two ore hunters when they were digging for ore samples and uncovered a recent grave....
Rene's lips went dry, her tongue caught in her throat. And still the voice, crisp and detached, went on: "the beautiful model was discovered bound hand and foot and it is believed that she died of exposure. Police are seeking an unidentified photographer believed to have kidnapped the girl and subjected her to this strange method of torture and death...."
Her entire body trembling, Rene jumped up and switched off the set, as if by doing so she could make the horrible news go away.
"It was supposed to be me!" she wailed. "Oh, poor Dale! She went in my place and she was murdered. I've got to hide! I mustn't let him find me!"
She thought of Oscar. "He'd know what to do if he were here. He'd take care of me. He'd stop that terrible man."
But he wouldn't know where to find her if he came back and she was still hiding like this. There was only one thing to do. She had to get home to her folks in Easton. Oscar would look for her there and she would be safe from the man with the separated teeth.
She was about to reach for the phone to call the airport when it suddenly came to life, ringing shrilly and startling her. The ring continued as she stared at the black instrument, wondering who could be calling her.
No one knew she was here, and she was registered under another name. She tried to compose herself. "It's only the desk to tell me something or other about hotel service," she told herself. "I mustn't let everything get to me.
She lifted the phone, drawing a deep breath. "Miss Clark," said the man's voice, soft, low.
"Yes?" she answered automatically. Then she realized that whoever it was knew her name and she started trembling all over again. "Who ... who is this?" she quaked.
"An admirer," said the voice. "Along-time admirer."
"This isn't Miss Clark," she said faulteringly. "You have the wrong party."
"I don't think so. I saw you come into this hotel, Miss Clark ... Rene. I'm down in the lobby now. I'd like to talk to you."
"This isn't Rene, I tell you! Please go away and leave me alone!"
"All I want to do is talk to you about a job. I'm a photographer and I've got all my equipment out in the car, waiting for you. We could go right out in the desert and...."
"No!" Rene cried and slammed down the phone.
She stared at it for a long moment as if it were a thing of horror, ready to reach up and strike her down. But it was now a silent, dead object.
She went to the window, tripping on the carpet in her haste, and peered through the blinds down into the street.
There was an old car parked at the curb. She saw a small man walk to it, stop and look up at her window, his lips parted in a grimace against the blaze of the sun.
Even at that distance she could see the separation between his front teeth.
She drew back quickly from the window. "Oh, my!" she gasped. "Oh, my!"
She thought of calling the police-what was his name?-Lt. Jones! But that would mean more trouble. The man would find out that she had reported him and then he would be really angry at her.
"I've just got to wait," she whispered to herself. "He can't stay outside forever. He's got to go away, to eat and to sleep. And as soon as he does, I'll get out of here and catch a plane home...."
She sat on the bed, her hands clenched between her knees to try to keep them from trembling. She sat for a long time until the darkness began to shroud the room. She did not turn on the lights, either, but waited until it was pitch black.
Then, moving slowly, she padded to the window.
The man was still there, leaning against his car, looking up at her window while he chewed a sandwich.
CHAPTER TWELVE
He had all the time in the world. It was too bad that they had found the girl's body; that meant he just had to be more careful, that was all. They didn't know his name; all they had was a rather vague description-something about his teeth and his size. That was all.
And there were a lot of men around town who looked like him. So he had nothing to worry about, really.
All he had to do was wait.
She had to come out sometime.
When it was past midnight and the lights went out in her window, he waited a little while more and then drove back to his room to get some sleep.
"I'll set the alarm for very early," he told himself. "Then I'll be back with more food and wait some more. I guess I scared her a little, the stupid woman. I'll just make her think I'm gone and when she comes out-and she's got to come out tomorrow-I'll just act nice to her and that way she won't get scared and I'll take her away with me."
It was simple in his mind. It had always been simple. It was that way because it was him against the stupid world, and he wasn't stupid, he told himself.
He knew all the answers.
And, smiling to himself and humming softly, he drove off.
Rene, standing in the dark of the room, looked out the window and saw him leave. She trembled violently, frightened to her very core.
"It's a trick," she told herself. "He's just gone around the corner to throw me off. Oh, my! What'll I do now?"
She threw herself on the bed fully clothed, afraid to sleep but too tired to keep awake, her mind filled with nightmares of the little man as he tortured her to death.
Then, as she fumbled in the half-world of semi-consciousness, she heard a tapping at her door. It was only a dream, she told herself. If she kept her eyes closed it would go away and she would be alone again.
"Go away," she moaned. "Go away and leave me alone...."
"Open up, Miss Clark. It's the police."
The police? No! It wasn't the police! It was that awful little man up to his scheming tricks again, trying to get to her, trying to get his hands on her, wanting to torture and kill her!
She sat straight up in bed, staring wide-eyed in the blackness. The pounding got louder, more insistent. She stumbled to her feet and groped her way to the phone. She had to call the desk, get some help fast before he broke down the door and....
The door opened, letting in the flood of light from the hallway. She opened her mouth to scream but then she saw not one man, but three.
"Take it easy, Miss Clark," spoke the youngest of the three, the handsome detective. "Remember us?"
It was Rocky Raven and Dave Jones. The other man she recognized as the desk clerk. She could do nothing but stare. Then her knees got weak very suddenly, dizziness seized her, and she saw the floor coming up to meet her in a rush.
Rocky caught her before she fell. He carried her to the bed and put her down gently.
"It's her, isn't it?" asked the clerk excitedly.
"It's her," responded Rocky, looking down at the girl.
"I thought I recognized her from the description on television," the clerk rushed on. "That's the model the killer was trying to get, isn't she?"
Dave nodded, watching Rocky rubbing the girl's wrists, seeing her eyes flicker open.
"Thanks for calling us," he said. "You've probably saved her life, the poor kid. Now leave us alone with her, please. We want to talk to her."
The detectives, alone now with Rene, waited for her to recover. After a long moment, she said, "I ... I thought you were ... him."
Rocky nodded. "We gathered that. Now why did you run off like that? Don't you know that our job is to protect you?"
"I was scared. Dale ... the radio said she was dead."
"I'm sorry. Her body was found just a little ' while ago. It could have been you, Miss Clark, and we want to keep it from happening to you."
Dave leaned close to Rene. We're not sure that the man we're looking for is the murderer, Miss Clark. We'd like to ask your help to make sure."
"My help?" Rene sat up. "What could I do to help?"
The two men had to concentrate to keep their minds on their work. Rene's skirt was hiked up above her knees, showing a milk-white expanse of thigh curving into the soft hips. The lace fringe of her panties peeked out enticingly.
Rocky bit his lip and looked away.
"I'm a cop on a job," he told himself. "I can't let this cute trick get to me, no matter how tempting she is. I'll lose my shield."
Aloud he said, "Here's how you can help us. That man's bound to try to get in touch with you again...."
"He has."
"What?" Both men chorused the word in amazement, coming to instant life. Rocky even forgot the tingling she had aroused in him.
"He called me here and asked me to go with him."
"Now take it easy." Dave swallowed hard. "Tell us all about it. How did he know you were here?"
"I don't know. But he called me from the lobby."
"When?"
"Right after I came here. This afternoon."
"What happened? What did he say? Did he give his name?"
"No. He just said he was a photographer. I got scared because he called me by my right name and I had registered under another. I told him he had the wrong girl and I hung up."
"Did he call again?" Dave asked. "No. But...." And her eyes widened in horrible memory.
"But what, Miss Clark?" Dave urged.
"He was waiting outside, leaning on a car, until after I put my light out at midnight."
"What kind of car?"
"Olds, I think. Black and dirty looking.
An old car."
Dave flashed a look at Rocky and the younger man picked up the phone and called the station. While he was giving the information on the Olds to the sergeant, Dave resumed his questioning.
"Did you get a look at him?" he asked.
Rene shuddered. "Yes. A little man. Kind of dark and rat-faced, with a pointed chin. And I saw he had a space between his front teeth."
"That's the one, all right. Did you get a look at his license number?"
Rene shook her head. "I didn't think to look at it"
Rocky was back saying, "Miss Clark, we want you to help us catch this man, and there's only one way we can do it. The next time he calls, you're to say that you'll go with him."
"What?"
Rene jumped to her feet, her mouth working speechlessly in fright.
"Now take it easy, Miss Clark," Dave said. "We'll have someone watching you every minute. You'll be perfectly safe."
"I'll be safe if I can get home to Easton," Rene cried.
"Maybe you will and maybe you won't" Rocky said. "He might follow you there. It seems he's got a hot desire for you." His eyes flickered over her lovely shape, resting on her full bosom and on the swell of her thighs.
Rene caught his look and felt the warmth creep into her body in spite of the fear that was also in her. The detective was young and handsome, and Oscar's lovemaking had only stirred the fires of her passion, a passion she had thought had been safely banked.
But now, with Rocky looking at her with eyes that seemed to be undressing her, with his words about the killer having a hot desire for her and his expression saying that the killer couldn't be blamed, she felt the stirring in her loins and in the nuts of her breasts.
She shuddered, her chin trembling, trying to remember that she was in love with Oscar, trying to fight the attraction she felt for the young detective who was now talking again.
"Besides," he said, "even if you get away from him, would you want to see him do the same terrible thing he did to your roommate to some other girl-to lots of other girls?"
"Of course not!" Rene exclaimed, finding her voice at last.
She looked straight at Rocky now and for that instant they seemed to be alone in the room-in the world. Dave wasn't even there.
And in that look she said to him, "Yes! Yes!"
Rocky understood and looked away, walking to the window.
"My goodness!" he exclaimed to himself. "That girl's got me lit up! No wonder the killer wants her! She's dynamite! I ... I've got to concentrate on my job ... not on the most gorgeous hunk of female I've ever seen!"
Dave said, "We'll get a policewoman over here to stay with you. And we'll have men outside waiting for him to show up."
"A policewoman?" Rene said, looking at the floor. "I wouldn't feel safe with a woman officer."
"They're very efficient, I assure you," Dave said. "They can handle anything that conies up."
Rene shook her head. "No. If I'm going to do this, I want a man around."
"All right," Dave agreed. " If that's the way you want it."
"That's the only way I'll do it," Rene said. She pointed to Rocky who was still at the window. "I want him."
Dave blinked his eyes and smiled to himself. The girl had a thing for his partner, all right. Well, if that was the only way she would play along with the police, they would have to agree with her conditions.
"You hear that, Rocky?" he said.
Rocky nodded, afraid to turn around and face them. "I'll park myself in the next room," he said. "And I'll have the desk connect the phones so I can hear anything that comes in to her."
"I'll make the necessary arrangements with the manager." Dave turned to Rene. "Now you mustn't be afraid. When that man calls you again, just say you'll go along with him. The point is that we don't have enough on him to convict him of murder. We have to nail him in the act, so to speak. Do you understand?"
Rene nodded. She was thinking more of the other detective now than she was of the killer and was ready to agree to anything. And, strangely enough, she felt safe now, too."
"Go with him," Dave continued. "We'll be following you all the way, no matter where he takes you. But don't give us away. We'll move in when it's necessary. And you won't get hurt, I promise you."
He moved to the door. "Rocky, I'd like to talk to you for a minute," he said, and stepped outside with Rocky following.
Alone with the young detective in the hallway Dave said, "You lucky stiff. That gal's ready to put out to you for nothing what the killer's ready to kill to get."
"Lay off," Rocky mumbled. "It's not that at all. The poor kid's just scared and wants a man cop. You heard her."
"Yeah. But she didn't want me, did she? Maybe I've got that married look about me. Just watch yourself, kid, and don't forget to keep one thing in mind."
"What's that?"
"When you want to grab anything that girl's got to offer, do it when you're off duty. Don't mix business with pleasure, especially cop business. In other words, keep your pants on."
He grinned, waved and walked off. Rocky opened the door and went back into Rene's room. The girl was sitting on the bed, her skirt carelessly exposing that delectable area of flesh again, her pointed, high boobs rising and falling with her breathing.
She looked at him, her eyes glazed and heavy! "Thank you for staying with me," she breathed. "I feel safe with you."
"I'll tell you something right out, Miss Clark," he said. "I don't feel safe with you."
She smiled and arched her back. The breasts thrust forward and she looked down at them and then moved her eyes slowly to his.
"You're safe," she smiled. "I wouldn't hurt you-much."
And she crossed her legs.
Rocky Raven was young, very young. He was so young, in fact, that the temptation was almost too strong for his rigid training and uncompromising code of conduct. He gulped, stared at the floor, almost twittered in his embarrassment and excitement.
"Miss Clark," he finally managed, "I shall have to ask you to remember that I am a police officer, acting in line of duty. Please, now, let's keep everything impersonal. We must both be wide-awake, so to speak, and keep our wits about us." His voice grew firmer as the thought really took hold on him. "One of the surest ways to endanger you-and me as well-is to let things get out of hand.
Rene smiled, then nodded solemnly. "Yes, sir, Mr. Policeman, you are absolutely correct. We must keep our heads, or something might happen to both of us. We mustn't risk anything...."
And with that, she stood up and walked slinkily toward him, her arms outstretched as if to embrace him.
Rocky gulped again, wondering how to stop her, short of belting her one. Apparently his little advisory speech hadn't meant a thing to her. He stepped back, reaching up to brush her arms away....
And the phone rang.
Rene stopped short, grimaced, pouted, and dropped her arms with a shrug. "Do I answer it, or shall I let you handle the thing?"
Rocky thought fast, then told her: "Answer it as usual, but I'll have my ear right next to the receiver. Hold it so that I can hear too."
Rene moved to the phone and gingerly picked it up.
"Hello...."
"Ah, Miss Clark, this is the manager speaking. I wanted to let you know I've made arrangements for your-er-friend to have the room next to yours. I'll have the key up there within two minutes."
"Uh-yes, yes, thank you very much. We'll expect it."
She hung up and turned to face Rocky, who had already moved away from her. He asked, "Was that really the manager's voice?"
"Yes, unfortunately for me," she smiled back.
"Well, when the knock comes on the door you let me answer it. You stand well clear and back into a corner on the hinge side of the door. Managers can be forced to say and do things they might not ordinarily do. It's probably all right, but I don't want to take any chances."
Rene seemed suddenly to have forgotten her efforts of seduction, and her face showed her realization of the little things that she had to be careful of, such as the innocent answering of a door.
"Okay, Rocky," she breathed. "Whatever you say, I'll do."
And when the knock did come, Rocky opened the door with his left hand, holding his .32 trained, through the door itself, onto whomever was outside.
A short, thin man looked up at him, holding a key in his hand. "Ah-you must be the partner of the gentleman who spoke to me downstairs a few minutes ago, yes?"
"Yes, if you're referring to a police officer. Is this the key to the room next door?" Rocky, behind the cover of the door panel, slipped his pistol back into its holster, having scanned the hall both ways over the top of the little man's head.
"Yes, sir, it is," the man replied," and it's a pleasure to do anything we can for the police department anything at all."
"Well, thank you very much, sir and I hope that we don't have any trouble in your place. I don't, in fact, think we will. I'm only here to make sure that nothing happens, either toward the house or its tenants." He wasn't sure just how much Dave might have told the man, and he. had no desire to give out unnecessary information.
However, Dave must have told the man encouraging things, because he just turned away, wishing Rocky a goodnight, and disappeared down the hall.
Rocky closed the door and turned to Rene, jiggling the key in his hand. "I'll be right next door and awake. If the phone rings I'll be on it before you will, so don't worry about answering. Just act normal and try to keep your voice regular and even. And if anyone should pay you a personal visit, I'll be listening for door noises and window noises. I'll be in here before anybody could get from the door to your bed." He grinned a little. "Makes me sound pretty fast, doesn't it?" Then he sobered again. "Miss Clark, I am fast, so don't worry about anything. Goodnight."
And he was gone before she had a chance to move or speak.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
As usual he was fully prepared. Everything he needed to fulfill his twisted passions were in the car when he pulled up in front of the hotel the next morning.
There were no cars in the streets, and if one came alone, he could spot him in the quiet of the suburban-like area.
Looking up at her window, he saw that the blinds were still drawn. That meant that she was still asleep, the lazy whore, good for nothing but snoozing and exciting men as stupid as she was. Well, he would soon use her for a good purpose at last, and at the same time put an end to her useless life.
Because that was his mission in life-to make useless things do something worthwhile, and then destroy them so that they would not be a blight on civilization any longer.
He parked the car and went to the lobby to call her room. It took her a long time to answer it and for a while he thought that she had gone out.
But then she answered at last with a sleepy, "Hello."
"Miss Clark," he said, and he heard her gasp, "This is the photographer again. Have you changed your mind about going with me? You might as well because I'll keep after you until you do."
"Where ... where are you calling from?" she asked.
"Never mind that. Answer my question."
"Yes," she said. "I'll go with you."
"Good. Just go out and walk east, I'll drive along and pick you up."
"But why don't you come and get me?" she asked.
"I can't find a parking space at your hotel. Do as I say, please, and you'll be all right. I pay a good rate, Miss Clark; a lot over the usual. I'll be looking for you."
He hung up and moved out swiftly, getting into his car and going off just as he saw a tall, young man come rushing out of the hotel.
"Just as I thought," he smirked. "There was a cop up there with her. Trying to trap me, were they. Well, just for that, I'll go harder on her than I planned. And no cop's going to get me, either."
He gunned the car to test it and it roared like a jet, picking up speed at an amazing rate. One of the things he had done to the old Car was hop up the engine to race-car specifications, making it faster than any of the police cars used in Nevada.
The car, like it's owner, was deceptive, and far more dangerous than it looked....
Rocky was at the phone, ringing headquarters, and while he waited for the call to be put through, he said to Rene, "Now just do as he asked you to. Walk along the street until he picks you up and don't worry about a thing. Our men will be watching you every minute."
"But why can't you pick him up now?" she asked. "You know his car and what he looks like."
"My partner told you sugar. We have to catch him in the act. We don't have enough on him now to convict him."
He turned to the phone, and speaking quietly, gave the information regarding the killer and his activities. "We've got him right where we want him," he continued. "Are the plain-clothesmen planted?" He listened for a moment, nodding, then hung up.
He took Rene by the shoulders. "It's all set, Miss-uh-Rene. Patrol cars are on every corner, starting three blocks east of here. The second he picks you up, they'll be right behind you and following. Just go along and don't worry about a thing. He'll head for the desert and we'll form a parade."
"Will you be there, too?" she asked.
"Of course. The cars will be in touch with each other via police radio., I'll know where you are and I'll be right after you."
They looked hard at each other, and then she was gone, unafraid, sure that she was safe, so long as Rocky told her she was, and anxious to help trap the fiend.
He was waiting for her a block east. Two blocks short of the first patrol car. He opened the door as Rene came up and she, thinking that she was secure and protected, stepped in, smiling at the mild-faced man with the gap between his front teeth.
He backed into a driveway, turned on the street, and sped past the hotel headed downtown just as Rocky came out to get into his car. The policeman saw the speeding Olds, gaped at it in amazement, knowing that the fiend had tricked the police and U-turned to chase after it, frantically calling the station at the same time to inform them of the switch in the murderer's tactics.
"Just sit nice and easy," the man said quietly to Rene, suddenly swinging the car into a side street.
"I won't give you any trouble," she said, smiling and still unaware of what he was up to. "I like to pose for people like you."
"That's good, because I like to use girls like you for my work." And he smiled to himself as he gunned the car through side streets toward the desert, away from town, away from the police trap he had sensed had been set for him.
Rene sat quietly and at peace, knowing that Rocky would be as good as his word and would protect her. The man drove carefully now that he was away from the area of the hotel, making sure he passed no lights and exceeded no speed limits. He went north beyond the remote areas, and still he kept going.
Miles north of any habitation, he turned right and east along a deserted road and went to the edge of the desert Rene saw no cars following, but it didn't worry her. The police would keep hidden, she knew, and then strike at the right moment. All she had to do was play along with this weird little man, this mild person who certainly didn't look like a fiend to her.
Suddenly, he turned right again and into a sandy road between some dunes. When he brought the car to a halt, they were alone and out of sight of the road.
"Here is where you pose for me," he said. "Get out, please, and take off all your clothes except your bra and panties."
He looked at her as she stripped. This would be the best he thought to himself. This girl was his dream, the one he had always thought about in his secret desires. And now, her creamy flesh exposed to his avid eyes, she was more beautiful than ever.
He looked forward to seeing that tempting flesh decay before his eyes, watch it fall apart as it steamed in the sun while she was bound from head to toe.
When she was ready, he tied her as he had done Dale. He made sure she was helpless, a bound, helpless thing, twisted into a shrunken shape, her boobs jutting out, her stomach pulled in, her thighs yanked back and her heels were joined to her wrists.
When it was all done to his satisfaction, he squatted on his haunches before her and said. "You think that the police are protecting you, don't you, Miss Clark?" He smiled as he saw her eyes widen in surprise and horror. "Well they're not. I've managed to trick them and now they don't know where you and I are. So you are going to be all alone with me and I'm going to do with you exactly as I did your roommate. You, Miss Clark, are going to die ... slowly ... and I'm going to watch you die and take photos of you."
Rene gasped, her throat tight with fear. She had worked with many cameramen who took these kinds of pictures, but they had all been gentlemen about it Sure they had made passes, but they had been normal joes, not like this character who was smiling at her, the gap between his teeth wet with spit. And now she had let herself be trapped in spite of all the police could do....
And then, bound and chained, helpless physically, she started to think, to try to remember what she knew about men like this, the men who bought pictures of girls tied as she was tied. She now remembered what one photographer had told her:
"They try to get kicks out of pictures of tied girls," he had said. "Well, for a while, they do. But then it wears off, and they have to try something else. They never really find satisfaction, the poor devils. They have to go on more bizarre routines."
They have to try something else....
"Tell me," she said, trying to be calm, "when you did it to Dale, were you happy?"
His eyes narrowed. "Yes. For a while. Then it wore off. That's why I had to come for you."
"But when you do it to me, it'll wear off, too, won't it? Then you'll have to look for another girl and take another chance on the cops catching you."
His eyes grew sad. "That's the way it has to be. I know I'll be caught one day, but there's nothing else you can do when you're like I am. You see, I hate women and I have to destroy them all, one by one."
She swallowed. The next thing she had to say would mean life or death to her. "Do you ... do you get all excited and thrill watching a girl die when she's tied?"
He nodded eagerly. "How do you know? How do you know?"
"Because I knew a man like you. However, he's free and happy today ... because he tried another way ... a way that made him more excited than ... than this way, even."
He fell on his knees before her. "Tell me!" he pleaded.
"He let me tie him up," she said softly. "He had never tried it before. He always tied up others. And then when it happened to him, he found it was even better."
His eyes widened as he thought this over. "Are you sure?"
"No more danger," she said. "No more cops trying to get you. And if it works, I'll do it to you all the time, every time you need it. Just you and me-no one else will ever know."
"And it works?" he asked eagerly. "You saw it work?"
"I saw it work. The other man said it was heaven, better than anything he had ever known. Better than watching others die."
His eyes filled with tears. "You do understand, don't you? You do know what I want! No one else ever knew! They all think I'm strange and a fiend."
"I know. But if you're tied, you'll be helpless and weak; you'll know what it means to be bound, just as you want others to feel. Then you'll really know how your victims suffer ... and all without any danger to you."
"All right!" he cried happily, tears streaming down his cheeks. "Tie me! Tie me!"
His fingers worked feverishly as he loosened her ropes. When she was free, he threw himself before her, tearing off his clothing.
"I want to know it all!" he sobbed. "I want to know the agony of the sun cooking my flesh! Tie me tightly!"
She worked, binding his hands and wrists just as he had done to her while he gave her instructions to make sure she did everything just right.
Finally she stood before his bound body, her hands on her hips, looking down at his helplessness, naked in the blistering sun streaking into the canyon. Her bosom heaved with excitement, perspiration ran down her stomach, her eyes drank in the weakness of this monster who had killed her best friend.
He looked up at her statuesque form with worshipful eyes. "You're right!" he gasped. "This is wonderful! And now as I look at you, I see a woman for what she really can be-beautiful, powerful, dominating!"
There's one thing more," she growled. "You're a loathsome scum! You tortured my best friend and killed her and you want to do the same thing to me and to other girls! Now I'm going to really let you suffer!"
And as he stared at her, unable to move, she slipped his leather belt out of his trousers. Grasping one end of the belt, she raised it high. "You think you fooled the police," she spat, "but I fooled you! Now ... suffer!"
Down came the belt, whispering through the air, slashing downward at his helpless nakedness ... again and again.
He screamed with pain as the belt cut into his flesh. Her arm went up and down relentlessly, lashing away at him, striking every part of his body, leaving welts that, after a while, began to bleed.
Suddenly, he stopped crying out. His eyes rolled backward and his head lolled, dropping lifelessly. And still she did not stop, all the hatred and, fear in her soul expressed now through the slashing of the belt upon the man who had killed her roommate and wanted to kill her.
It was only when panting, her breasts rising and falling rapidly, her stomach contracted in the effort to breathe, that she stopped at last and the belt fell from her weakened hands.
She was shaking in a spasm and fought to control it.
"Oh, no! No!" she gasped to herself. "This is awful! I was actually beginning to ... enjoy what I was doing to him! I've got to stop it!"
Hate, she discovered, was very close to love, and now she was really beginning to understand the strange, perverted passion of the man who lay before her, a helpless hulk.
But she pulled herself together, forcing her mind and her body away from the thoughts and passion that had come so close to overpowering her. She dressed quickly, found the car keys in the man's pocket, started the car and drove out of the canyon road.
Her hatred for the man was gone. She felt only pity.
But there was a sensation between her legs that started to run through her body as she started to beat him with his belt That sensation was still in her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Rene stretched lazily, her lush young body drinking in the rays of the poolside sun. She wore only the flimsiest of bikinis and her breasts strained to burst their confinement as she lifted her arms to the skies.
Rocky's eyes sparkled as he looked at her and wished he had brought along his bathing suit for this poolside conference. A few more minutes of this, he reflected, and he would forget everything, including his sense of propriety. He was ready to strip right now, swim suit or no, and yank off that excuse for a suit that she wore....
Later, perhaps. Right now, though he was off-duty, he had come to see her out of curiosity, and, he admitted to himself, out of sheer desire to see her again.
"There are a few things I don't understand, Rene," he said. "In the first place, how did you get the killer to change places with you? That is, how did you convince him that he should be tied and not you?"
She shrugged her rounded, soft shoulders.
"I don't know," she said, wide-eyed. "I just talked him into it."
"So you said, but the police psychiatrist says that he is a dangerous sadistic homocidal maniac, and was intent on only one thing-to torture you to death. And still...."
Her eyes twinkled. "You mean I'm confusing a psychiatrist? Little old me?"
"Look, Rene. He had you trapped, tied and bound, just as he had your roommate. And still you worked something on him that changed the entire picture. How did you do it?"
Rene leaned lazily back on the deck chair, stretching her round thighs. She watched him as his eyes traveled the length of her frame, saw his lips run dry so that he had to wet them with his tongue.
"Why don't you come right out and say what you think, Rocky? Why don't you say that you're wondering how a dumb chick like me knows enough to outsmart a lunatic?"
"I didn't say that, Rene." '
"No, but that's what you're thinking, isn't it?"
He lowered his eyes, admitting the truth of her conclusion.
Rene smiled. "You're a pretty good cop, Rocky, but you're not very smart. You judge things by what you see on the surface. For instance, what do you see in me?"
Rocky looked at her. Her eyes danced as she arched her body, bringing out every salient point, every inch of flesh for his eyes to feast upon.
"Go ahead, Rocky. Say it. What do you see?"
"I see a very beautiful and desirable girl. I see a tempting pair of boobs, a slim waist, beautifully curved hips and thighs, long, strong legs, a gorgeous face with a full, red mouth, and...."
He stopped, overcome by the. desire that was creeping into his loins, afraid to go further.
"And that's all you see isn't it?" she smiled. "A girl you want to stick yourself into."
"Yes!" he admitted. "And that's plenty to see."
"Thank you, Rocky. But that's only the surface. I'm not exactly what I seem, Rocky. In the first place, I have two university degrees...." Rocky gaped. "You?"
She nodded. "Surprised? I rarely tell people that. It seems to stand in the way of my work as a model." She laughed. "And strangely enough, the way I look stands in the way of a chance to use what I know. When I tried teaching all the boys-and some of the girls-in my class tried to make me."
"I don't blame them."
"Thank you again. Now shall I tell you what I majored in? It was in abnormal psychology. I learned all about people like that poor man that you now have in the loony bin."
"Abnormal psychology...."he echoed wonderingly.
"So I knew what inducement to offer him to make him change places with me. Any other questions, Officer?" she smiled.
Rocky was still gaping.
He rose to his feet, suddenly humble and feeling very inferior to this lush broad who lay back smiling up at him, her eyes sparkling in the sunlight.
"I ... er-that's all, Miss Clark. I think I'll go now."
She reached up toward him, ran her hand along the inside of his thigh.
"Miss Clark?" she cooed. "Why, since you got here today, you've been calling me just plain old Rene."
His stomach tightened. "I overstepped my bounds," he said. "I shouldn't have. Now that it's all over and the nut is confined safely, I'll be on my way, Miss Clark."
She rose, standing close to him in her near nakedness, and her perfume engulfed him.
"If you're through talking to me," she whispered, "I want to talk to you. Please come into my apartment. What I have to say to you has to be said in privacy ... extreme privacy."
She took his hand and led him toward her apartment. He followed in a daze, wondering about this girl who seemed to be nothing but a package of lush femininity and was instead also a brain that could handle a dangerous lunatic. And still the sight of her curves ahead of him, her bouncing buttocks, her smooth back-all this was enough to make his senses reel.
So he followed her like an obedient dog, prepared to slaver over her, be her lap dog-anything she asked. He was also beginning to understand how the killer obeyed her commands.
Inside the apartment, Rene clicked the door shut and turned to face him. She gestured to a chair and Rocky sat while Rene stood before him, her feet planted wide apart, her knockers out-thrust. He swallowed, his eyes ravishing her unashamedly.
She smiled, seeing the hunger in his eyes.
"Rocky," she began, "I am very grateful to you. When I was frightened and needed consoling, you gave that to me, considering that you were on duty and had to be impersonal you did what you could. I know that your feelings were far from impersonal, and you know what mine were, so...."
"Well, wait a minute. I-"
"I know. Now here is what I have to say, darling. I'm not in love with you, no matter how my body feels toward you. I am engaged to a boy from my home town and I am going to marry him as soon as he comes back for me." Rocky's face fell.
"But that doesn't change the way I feel toward you now," Rene went on. "Look at me, darling!"
Rocky, bleak, miserable, raised his eyes ... and was charged up instantly with fire.
Standing before him, Rene had reached back to the strap of her bikini. Untying it, she let the wisp of cloth fall from her lush bosom, revealing it in all its primitive glory, swollen and red-tipped.
Rocky felt the trembling of passion within him. Blind with passion, he reached out for her. But she drew back laughing.
"Wait," she whispered. "I want to torture you ... deliriously."
Now her fingers slipped into the bikini pants and she lowered them, letting them slide slowly down from her hips and her thighs. When they reached her feet, she kicked them away and stood there, nude, tanned from head to toe, a pagan goddess weaving her body slowly from side to side.
"Just this one time," Rene breathed softly. "Just this one time with you ... with anyone other than the man who is going to be my husband ... and whom I'll never betray after this."
"I don't care why or how," Rocky gasped. "Just so long as it happens."
"It will happen ... as soon as you take off your clothes."
He was working at his clothing in an instant, tearing them off as she watched him, the hunger growing now in her eyes as his body revealed itself to her.
Now they faced each other, two young savages, alone, far from the duties that awaited both of them in the world outside.
"Give it to me!" she cried suddenly.
He took her, tenderly at first as he lowered her to the floor, then, with his wick stiff with fire roughly, plunging himself into her with all the pent-up desire she had aroused in him.
Rene cried out with joy and discovery. She welcomed his every move, met it with her own in abandon, losing herself with him as he lost himself with her.
She plucked her body about but he was with her every instant and she was unable to throw him. She drew back but he came still further after her as the fire raged and the thunder roared in their ears.
"Screw me!" she cried.
And suddenly he was no longer a mere mortal but a god and she was a nymph caught and trapped in the woods. Then she gave herself to him completely, grasping him, her nails digging into his back, making him cry out with her as the storm broke, ebbed, soared, flew high and up and around in a hurricane, a whirlpool, an explosion that engulfed them in unison, breaking all barriers, flooding all senses....
When he left her, she was asleep, naked on the floor, her mouth in a peaceful smile. He paused at the door a moment and looked back at her.
She was, even in sleep, the high tier of desire. He felt envy for the man she was to marry and pity for himself because this was the last time he would see her.
"Be happy, Rene," he whispered softly. "And thank you."
He opened the door, slipped into the outside world again, a world without the flesh and spirit of Rene Clark. He felt lonely and lost as he went out into the busy traffic of Las Vegas.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A week later, a flushed, angry Oscar confronted Rene in her apartment. She stared at him, not believing what she heard.
"Of course I read all about it!" he exploded. "It was in the papers for goodness sake!"
"I helped catch a dangerous fiend, Oscar," she said softly. She wondered if this was the same man who had loved her so beautifully only a few short weeks ago. His face was twisted in rage and non-understanding.
"Sure! But how did you catch him? You let yourself be used as sex bait for a fiend and a lunatic!"
"It was the only way it could be done."
"It was the job of the police to catch him-not yours! I ... I'm ashamed of you, Rene! It was bad enough when you did the sort of work you did...."
"I thought we had that all worked out, Oscar. I thought you understood."
"Sure! But what you did-serving as bait-letting that man take you into the desert-undressing naked before him-letting you tie him up-then you doing what you did! Ugh! It was disgusting!"
"Would you rather have seen me dead?"
"Yes!" Oscar cried out, his face red. "I'd rather see you dead than ... than...." He faltered, searching for words.
"Let me help you express yourself, Oscar," Rene said quietly. "You'd be ashamed to have me as your wife, wouldn't you?"
"What will my friends say? My business associates? They all read about you! It was in all the newspapers!"
"Oscar," Rene rose to her feet and drew a deep breath. "I did something the other day that I thought I was ashamed of. I did it because I wanted to and enjoyed doing it. But after it was over, I wondered why I did it ... if I was in love with you."
Oscar stared at her. "What are you talking about?"
"I laid for another man ... even though I thought I was in love with you." She smiled as Oscar stared at her in shock, and then she went on: "If I had been truly in love with you, I wouldn't have done it, would I? But now I'm glad I did, Oscar, because I've just discovered that I was never in love with you ... just as you never were with me, either."
"You're a whore!" Oscar screamed.
"I'm only a woman, Oscar, and a human being. Now why don't you just leave and go back to your friends and business associates? They're the only ones you really care about, anyway!"
Oscar stormed to the door in a fury. There he stopped and looked back at Rene. She was smiling.
"Thank you, Oscar," she said. "Thank you for showing me the real you. I almost made a terrible mistake."
Speechless, furious, he charged out and away from Rene.
She turned to her dresser and fixed her hair, singing aloud at the joy that was in her heart, and hurrying and hoping that she wasn't too late.
It wasn't too late.
Rocky came out of the police station after his tour of duty. He was depressed and detached, uninterested in anything going on around him.
And then he heard his name called.
He stood stock still, unable to believe his ears. And then he saw her and couldn't believe his eyes. She was a big as life, however, and running down the street toward him, her arms out-flung, her mouth laughing as she called his name over and over.
He gathered her into his arms, unaware of anything else but the nearness and warmth of her as she melted in his embrace. Her lips were on his, hot and moving, blending into his lips.
"Rocky!" she cried. "Oh, darling, I'm glad I found you!"
"But what happened?" he asked wonderingly. "You said you were in love with another man...."
"Rocky, do you think I'm a whore?"
"Yes! And I love it."
"But do you think I was dirty in posing for pictures as I did ... and for using myself as bait for the killer?"
"Of course not. You're a big girl and you know what you're doing. What's this all about anyway?"
"Would you marry a girl like me?"
"Would I! Like a shot!"
"Then darling," Rene pressed herself against him hard, not caring who saw or what anyone would think, "you're the man I want to marry! Will you marry me?"
"You mean I can screw every day-every night-every hour-over and over again-the way we jazzed together the other day?"
"As much as you want, my darling."
He took her hand and led her to his car.
When they were inside, he said holding her close: "I'll marry you on one condition, baby!"
"Name it."
"That from now on you expose that delicious body only to me and pose only for me."
"But, darling! I didn't know you were a camera bug!"
His lips were fractions of an inch from hers, his hand was on her boob, palming its fire.
"I am," he said, "from this minute on...."
A moment later a uniformed cop looked into the car, his face red because of what he saw, and said, "Hey, there! Don't you know it's against the law to do that right out in public...? Oh! Excuse me, Detective Raven! I ... er ... didn't recognize you in ... er ... that position!"
"Let's get out of here, baby," said Rocky. "This place is just lousy with fuzz."
