Helen Aiken ran through the snow, her chestnut hair streaming, the collar of her fur coat turned up around her face. With some immune part of her mind, she was shocked at herself, with the wildness of her wanton behavior. Clutching her fur close, she walked into the deserted highway diner and sat down on the end stool.
"What'll it be, ma'm?" the youthful counterman asked. He was tall and gangly and noticeably respectful.
"Whatever you want," she answered tonelessly.
He looked confused. "Pardon me, ma'm?"
She trembled and lowered her eyes. "Coffee."
He placed cream and sugar before her and poured black coffee from a steaming urn. "Would you like something with it?"
Helen steeled herself and let the coat fall open. The boy's eyes widened at the skimpily-covered fullness of her breasts. She watched the tip of his tongue slide unconsciously over the surface of his lips before she responded to his question. "Yes, I'd like something with it. I'd like you with it. Are you interested?"
The spoon fell from his hand and clattered on the counter as he gaped at her in stunned disbelief. "What did you say?" he mumbled dully. "I ain't sure I heard you right."
Helen leaned back so that her large breasts strained the thin material of her nightgown. "I asked you if you were interested in me. Why don't you turn off the lights and lock the door? It's late and there's a storm and nobody will bother us." She hesitated, seeing the lingering disbelief in his eyes. "You won't be sorry, I promise you. I'll make you very happy."
CHAPTER ONE
Charles Aiken watched the defendant from the bench, convinced that his attitude toward her was one of amusement and pity rather than disapproval and indignation. She was hardly more than a child for all her superficial sophistication, twenty-two, to be exact. And while it was obvious that she was far from innocent, there was a subtle and childish helplessness to her manner.
He gazed admiringly at her butter-colored hair that shone beneath the fluorescent lights of the courtroom. Shoulder-length, it was made even brighter by her deep tan. She was indeed a treat for the vulgar, he speculated, considering her profession. He could easily picture her marvelous body moving in time to rhythmic drums while bathed in a sensuous spotlight. Even as she testified in her unlettered words, her suntanned breasts threatened to pop out of the low bodice of her dress.
Charles Aiken wondered if the undulations were deliberate and then decided it didn't much matter. Until the girl's entree, his evening in night court had held the smell of sorrow and the color of misery. The cases presented had brought a succession of drunks, pickpockets, hoodlums and prostitutes, all no doubt in need of his humaneness but none appearing in any way deserving of it. But the girl with the butter-yellow hair and jiggling tan breasts had no smell of sorrow ... No, indeed.
Still pretending to be absorbed in the testimony, Charles Aiken allowed his mind to jump to his personal life. It had been two weeks since he'd enjoyed the comfort of his wife's body. Helen was becoming moodier by the day, it seemed. Perhaps some women lost interest in men as other demands on their time increased? Or perhaps she was just reaching that time of life? No, not yet. It was simply that as a judge's wife, Helen had a responsibility to the community. While he was glad that she was active on various committees, she seemed to be more concerned with her social life than with her personal one. And to a man of only forty-five, this could become quite a problem....
Charles Aiken blinked back to reality and tried to concentrate on what the policeman was saying to him. "Yes, go on, Officer Smith," he murmured briskly, leaning forward.
"Well, sir, when we entered, Miss Miller was seated on the bed and this man here was fixing himself a reefer." The officer paused for a moment. "A stick of marijuana, that is."
Aiken nodded slowly, allowing his eyes to slide to the dark-skinned youth flanked by the two arresting officers. "Then Miss Miller was not actually smoking one of the marijuana cigarettes?" he surmised, stealing a quick look at the girl's tiny waist and subtly veiled hips. "Is that correct, Officer Smith?"
The other officer responded. "No, your honor, but-"
"Simply answer my questions, Officer Argon," Aiken snapped, turning his attention to the bigger and burlier of the arresting policemen. Ben Argon was a familiar figure in night court, as might be expected of an officer with his outstanding record. Wide-shouldered, well muscled and intimidating in his craggy ugliness, the tough cop fell silently respectful with only a tiny suggestion of impatience.
Charles Aiken turned to look down at the blonde girl once more. Her beautiful blue eyes returned his stare and he had the curious feeling that she was being as tolerant and amused toward him as he was being toward her. He watched the pink tongue slide over her scarlet lips, moistening them, making her half-smile extremely sensuous. "Do you have anything to say, Miss Miller?"
"I want to talk to my lawyer," she answered defiantly, her shoulders tilting with a hint of arrogance. "I've got my rights just like anybody else."
"Was she allowed to make a phone call?"
Argon nodded wearily. "Yes, sir. We gave them each an opportunity to make a call."
"Is that true, Miss Miller?"
The beautifully shaped girl shrugged. "I called my girl friend. I had to tell her I'd be late getting home, didn't I?"
Charles Aiken sighed and clasped his hands. He was aware that there were other cases waiting to be heard and that night court was hardly the place for such friendliness and tolerance. At the same time he didn't want the girl to leave and the ugly drabness of lost souls to return. "Tell me. Miss Miller," he began in a modulated voice, "did you smoke the marijuana when it was offered to you by this young man? Did you know he had it in his possession?"
The golden lashes fluttered. "No, sir. I was seeing him on business, that's all. I don't know nothing about marijuana."
Aiken leaned back and saw the two officers exchange wry smiles of disbelief and cynicism. Beyond them, the usual three sleepy crime reporters from the news bureau were more interested in the racing form they shared than the case before the bench. Only the bailiff, Al Rudd, seemed to be appreciating the breath of fresh air that had stolen into the musty courtroom. He was openly gaping at Julie Miller as a matter-of-fact.
Aiken made a mental note to censure the bailiff for his impropriety and then turned his gaze on the young musician. Unquestionably an addict, he was apparently still floating on his private cloud. What a strange young man, Charles Aiken thought, wondering about the new breed of young people that so suddenly populated the world.
He straightened up and slammed his gavel. "Court will be in recess for one hour while I interrogate Miss Miller in my chambers." The few people in court stood as he rose from the bench and walked down the stairs to the door of his offices, the same offices his father had occupied when the population of White-bank had been two hundred and forty rather than thirty-eight thousand.
As he closed the door behind him, he wondered fleetingly if his father had ever been faced with such a situation and if so, how he'd have handled it.
He took off his robes, opened the top button of his shirt and turned back the convertible collar. He wished vaguely that he had shaved closer before leaving home that evening-his grooming for the nightly roll call of vags and pimps had grown a shade haphazard. But who could have guessed that this was the night when such a beautiful child would get arrested?
The door opened behind him and the bailiff, Al Rudd, admitted Julie Miller. Al's eyes looked wistfully over the girl before he shut the door.
"Sit down, Julie." Charles waved a hand in invitation.
She selected the chair in front of his desk and crossed her legs. The hem of her skirt rose high, showing smoothly tanned thighs. He pictured her days of leisure after nights of dancing-and whatever else she did-and wondered what had become of his own days of leisure.
Before he could speak, she leaned forward with elbows propped on the desk, the large breasts almost fully visible as the bodice fell slightly away. "Do I look like a junkie, Judge?" she asked, her lovely blue eyes gazing at him amusedly.
He said sharply, "Don't make a joke of this. Your friend's an addict-and very likely, a pusher. If I handled this the easy way, I'd send you to the prison farm just to teach you a lesson."
Her pretty face showed fear for the first time. She had been teasing him, he realized, merely out of natural impishness. But now she was no longer teasing. "But I'm innocent."
"That hasn't been decided as yet," he replied crisply. "In any case, oy the time you're finished with court costs and legal fees, to say nothing of the loss of income from employment, it wouldn't make much difference whether you were guilty or not. You'd be ruined. No night club would dare hire you with the suspicion of a narcotics charge in your past. It's not fair, I agree, but a prolonged legal battle can do more to destroy a person than a quick conviction."
She looked sullen as he paused. "What do you want me to say?" she asked.
He leaned back. "You're not in a wholesome atmosphere," he said. "In your work you meet the wrong people. You were just lucky to get me on the bench this time. Do you know what might have happened if you had gotten one of the others? Jameson, for instance, or Greenspun?"
"I don't know those men."
"I do. Either one of them would have held you over for questioning and the grand jury. I'd like to see you make something better of your life. Now, my wife is active with a group that rehabilitates young girls. You could meet her."
Julie Miller laughed aloud. "You're kidding."
He did not realize that he was staring at her breasts. He told her sternly, "You don't seem to understand. You're in serious trouble. You need a friend."
He stood up and walked around the desk, feeling confused and angry. He noticed that she was watching him intently and he was glad that he'd at least captured her attention. The heavy breasts were drawing his eyes like twin magnets, rising and falling with her every breath, almost like a woman in passion. "Are you listening to me?" he asked sharply.
She nodded fearfully. "You said I needed a friend."
"That's right," he murmured, nearer her, a nameless and turbulent emotion stirring within him. "A friend. A good friend. Someone to help you. Someone to guide you. Someone to ... to ... take care of you." He was standing over her and a voice within was shouting warnings but he was beyond paying any attention to it. The smell of her perfume was too heady and the trembling of her young breasts was too entrancing. "Someone like me," he heard himself muttering.
A slow and knowing smile tilted the red lips. "You?"
He swallowed, feeling weak and dizzy, and nodded. "I like you, Julie. I know that you're not a bad girl. All you need is-"
"Someone to take care of me, right?"
"Yes."
"Okay."
He blinked. "Pardon me?"
She laughed huskily and eased her luscious body up out of the chair. "I said, okay."
Suddenly her arms were around his neck and her warm and sweet-flavored breath was playing against his cheek and her full body was swaying against him. He groaned and kissed the butter-yellow hair and then the smoothness of her neck. He felt himself jolted out of the present, out of the difficult year he'd spent with a wife who had little time for him. His hands were moving over a pair of incredibly round buttocks and his mouth was tasting the slick fruit of her lips. He felt drunk and reckless and only vaguely conscious of the madness that was gripping him.
"What can I call you?" she giggled, moving with him to the leather couch set against the wall, her mouth tickling his ear.
"Charlie," he stammered. "Call me Charlie."
"Okay, Charlie."
He placed her on the couch and knelt at its side, plucking off her shoes and fumbling with her skirt. "We haven't much time," he offered, sweating profusely, trembling uncontrollably as the wondrous perfection of golden thighs became exposed to him. "Let me show you how much I like you. Let me show you how much I think of you."
She drew in her breath at his first kiss and then slid her fingers into his hair. "All right, Charlie, honey, show me. Go ahead and show me good." The fingers tightened, goading him on, and the gorgeous legs quivered. "Oh, yes, Charlie, baby ... show me ... show me...."
He heard her ecstatic moans and passionate exhortations and thrilled to the fact that she wanted him. After Helen's indifference, he was powerless against such a fervent manifestation of desire and pleasure. He labored joyously, immersed in a sweet earthy scent that clouded his brain like a lovely mist. Sensation after sensation came like rolling waves and he shuddered happily as he showered his love upon the groaning and writhing girl on the couch.
Every so often there would be an unwanted moment of clarity and he'd face the fact that he was being unfaithful to his wife for the first time in his life. Unfaithful to his oath of office, as well. In the matter of a few minutes, he had betrayed both trusts without ever having intended to do so. What was happening to him? Was it simply Helen's neglect?
No, that was too feeble an excuse. It was as if he'd been away from home too long. Home had changed. At some point, it had become unfamiliar to him. All of it. His wife, with her civic duties, was no longer the same person, the same woman. Everything had changed and had changed him along with it. Through exposure to the newness of it all, he had become one of the shiftless and reckless people he'd always pitied and despised.
It didn't seem possible. It didn't seem real.
And yet, sprawled beneath him across the couch, her flaring skirt hiked and bunched high around her thrashing body, a yellow-haired, twenty-two-year-old girl was speaking his name and begging him to continue and telling him all that he was making her feel. A young girl, not much older than his own daughter, Kathy. But on this night, not even Kathy seemed real.
The only real things at that breathless and insane moment were the sight of flailing tanned legs and the scent of youthful femininity and the sound of fierce passion. "Oh, sweetie, that's wild ... wild ... don't stop ... oh, baby, baby, baby, don't stop ... don't ever stop ... not yet ... not yet ... not ... yet!"
Judge Charles Aiken struggled to keep pace with the savage tempo of the girl's delirium while, at the same time, worried as to the thickness of the office door and walls. It wouldn't do to have the people in the outer courtroom hear so un-likely an interrogation. They might think he was giving her the third degree. Actually, in a way, there was a-
"Oh, Charlie!"
Al Rudd, the court bailiff, looked up at the corridor clock and then at the massive door of the judge's chambers. What in hell could he be talking about for so long anyhow? Probably giving her one of his right-teous sermons, Al decided, snorting derisively as he leaned back against the wall to pick his teeth. Old Judge Aiken is crammed full of sermons.
Well, he knew damned well what he'd be doing if he ever had that bit of fluff alone in those chambers. Al Rudd wouldn't be making with no sermons, that was for sure. No, sirree. First off, he'd let her know who was boss and what it would be like if he sent her up to jail. He'd pour it on thick and even make up a few things just to make sure she was really scared. And then....
Al Rudd shifted his position, looking quickly up and down the corridor to see if anyone was watching him. Reassured, he allowed his mind to return to the exciting fantasy that had him the judge in place of Charles Aiken.
He'd make her take off all her clothes to start with ... every single piece ... and then maybe, walk around for him so he could get a real good look ... and then, he'd put his hands on those big boobs of hers and squeeze until she was begging him to be nice to her ... and then, he'd push her down on that old leather couch and forget everything else but all that juicy, golden-skinned flesh that maybe never had the kind of pleasure he could give it.
Yes, sirree....
Al Rudd sure as hell wouldn't be wasting no time with no sermon. He'd leave the sermons to crusty characters like Charles Aiken. Funny how dumb smart people could be at times ... judges, in particular ... never stopping to figure what they got going for them and how to make the most of it. Well, Al Rudd would know ... that's for damned sure.
CHAPTER TWO
"The case against Julie Miller is dismissed." Charlie Aiken pounded his gavel mildly and waved his hand at the bailiff, Al Rudd. "Mister D'Angini will be held over pending investigation. Next case."
Ben Argon picked lint off the top of his cap and watched the retreating figure of Julie Miller. Her heels made a staccato statement against the marble floor.
He felt Smith's hand on his arm, heard his partner's angry voice. "What happened in there, Ben? Looks to me like the judge went crazy."
Ed Smith had a touch of old woman in him, Argon decided. "Aiken is a bit of a do-gooder. I guess he felt she needed another chance. Besides, it's an election year. Maybe he was campaigning. In any case, it's none of our business any more."
Smith closed the button over his shirt pocket. "He could have found seven different counts to hold her over. She's in deep and we both know it. D'Angini's just a punk but she knows others."
"Okay, stop it." Argon looked at his watch. "It's two-thirty. That recess must have taken an hour and a half. Let's hope nobody's stolen the parking meter on us."
Patrolman Smith nodded and they pushed through the county courthouse doors.
The night outside was edged with the chill of autumn. Only a week ago, the weather had been warm enough for beaches. Tonight the trees shuddered and mourned. The wind against their faces was only a harbinger of what was coming. Their patrol car would probably be stalled several times in snowdrifts before the year ended. But they would get moving again and stay on the move throughout the long winter.
In the car, Argon reached for the speaker and brought it to his lips. A green light blinked on the dashboard until his thumb pushed an upthrust button on the mike. "Patrolmen Argon and Smith," he announced. "Leaving the county courthouse. Open."
The voice replied after a rustle of static, "All clear, Argon and Smith. Fill in Whitebank Avenue. That is all."
Smith was obviously still speculating on the Julie Miller case. Argon had hoped that Whitebank Avenue would have diverted his annoyance but apparently it was taking time. They saw a drunk in the gutter at Second Street and fished him out. A speeder flashed by in a Cad but Ed decided to let him off the hook. Some heart had gone out of him, Argon knew, with Julie Miller's dismissal.
Smith insisted, "I still can't figure it. We get this call out of nowhere that tips us to D'Angini and the doll. We go there, he's got enough weed to start a pharmacy in China. The doll squeals like a stuck pig, so obviously she's not in on the tip-off-and did you notice that Aiken didn't even have her examined by the doc?"
"The examiner doesn't come in until nine in the morning." Argon fixed his eyes on the road ahead. He made a right turn around the bakery and came back on Whitebank.
Smith shook his head. "Could have held her easy. No bail necessary. We'd have had her in the doc's office when it opened."
"You would, you mean. I don't like to stay up later than I have to, except on orders."
"Sure, sure. But listen. The babe goes into the judge's chambers. So tell me, what do they talk about for an hour and a half? I don't think she's smart enough to hold a conversation for that long."
"Why is it so important?" Argon demanded. "Why can't you forget it?"
"I like my work to count," Smith stated. "I don't want to feel like a fool."
"They probably made a deal," Argon stated smoothly. "She probably agreed to give information." The words soothed Smith but not Argon himself. They sounded as though he had seen too many afternoon movies. A deal was what Perry Mason made with fictional D.A.'s, and had nothing to do with Whitebank or its problems. He thought for a while of some of those problems, as seen from a cruising patrol car. Things would get worse, he told himself gloomily. They were underequipped, understaffed, living in the past.
Smith tapped him on the shoulder. "Hey, dreamer. It's time. Let's pack up."
Argon nodded and made a turn in the direction of headquarters. Soon they drove under the glowing bulbs that were lit from sunset to sunrise, every night of the year. There was always someone on call there-at least, there was always supposed to be.
Later Argon headed for the outskirts of town. There was always something about the edge of White-bank that made him uneasy. Past a half-finished development, giant weeds took over, almost as tall as the handsome trees that had been bulldozed into the ground to make way for progress. But progress had run into some temporary delays.
Argon imagined loiterers in the weeds, all of them probably needing either aid or detention. He hated what had happened to this special area. As a kid, he had lived nearby.
He remembered high school football games, gang fights with the "new kids" whose families were moving in, the good girls he had danced with and the bad girls who did more than dance.
His eyes narrowed as a young woman came out of the shadows ahead and walked the deserted street. She had pretty blonde hair worn in a ponytail. She wore a prim green skirt, a short white wool coat and a red woolen kerchief. She looked no more than eighteen, but at that distance, she could have been older.
Argon, surprised that he still could be shocked, wondered what the hell so young and attractive a girl was doing on this empty stretch of land. He slowed to zero when he came abreast.
The girl quickened her pace on the walk, staring straight ahead and ignoring Argon's car. In the trickling streetlight, he saw that she was ripe, tender and lovely. He cursed aloud in outrage. Even if she was a tramp, she was crazy to be walking this dismal and dangerous stretch. She had to be in some sort of trouble, he decided. It was the only answer.
He pulled over to the curb, got out of the car and approached her. He knew that it wasn't just a case of doing his duty as a cop. He wouldn't have been able to sleep that night if he didn't make damned sure she got home safely. He saw the girl turn slowly, fear in her eyes, and figured that she had every reason to be scared since he wasn't in uniform. A fine time to get scared, he thought annoyedly, fishing his wallet from his pocket.
"Police," he announced. "I'm off duty. Just the same, suppose you tell me what the devil you're doing out here at this hour?"
She drew the white coat tighter and reached for his wallet. After studying it, she handed it back and looked up at him. "Is it your practice to accost strange young women, Officer Argon? Or do I look like a suspicious character?"
There was breeding and intelligence in her voice and pose but Argon wasn't in the mood to give it more than fleeting admiration. "Don't get snippy with me, young lady," he snapped, glaring down at her. "In case you don't know it, we had four rape cases in this area only last month. Now, I suggest you get in the car and let me drive you back home where you belong."
She hesitated, her head tilted as she stared up at him. "I guess you don't know who I am," she murmured, almost as though it pleased her.
"I couldn't care less," he grumbled. "Now get in the car."
A smile flashed in the poor light and a giggle followed. "Whatever you say, Officer Argon. Actually, I'm rather glad you came along. I was visiting a girl friend and my car is in for repairs. I would have had a long and cold walk home."
In the car, Argon sensed her personality. He noted the subdued tension, the high-strung tone to her voice, the overly alert movements of her eyes as she stole glances at him while he drove. A mixed-up kid, he decided. Pretty as hell but mixed-up. "Where to?" he asked, steering with one hand while he lit a cigarette. Because of the pause that followed, he glanced at her. "Look, Miss, if you're worried about having me drive you up to the door, you can relax. I can drop you off a block away."
She smiled appreciatively and gave him an address. He grunted and headed in that direction. It was a good address but he knew it was probably a phony. Still, she'd probably live in the same neighborhood. "What's your girl friend's name?"
The little blonde giggled. "I lied to you. It wasn't a girl friend at all."
"I didn't think so."
"Does that make you curious?"
"As long as you didn't break the law, it's none of my business."
"Are you always so unfriendly?"
"Always."
"I bet you're a good cop."
"The best."
There was a short silence before she spoke again. "One thing, you've got to be the biggest."
Argon frowned and turned his head to look at her. The kid was gazing at his shoulders and arms and when she realized he was watching her, she blushed and averted her face. He decided it might be wise to keep her talking about herself. "You look as though you've got something on your mind. I'm a pretty good listener in case you're interested. Come on now, what were you doing out there?"
She smiled and shrugged in mild embarrassment. "Walking. I had to get out of the house. Maybe you can understand that. I began to feel blue and ... well, I just had to get out and walk."
"Why should you get to feel blue? You're young and-"
"I know. Pretty."
"It's true."
She stirred restlessly. "That doesn't mean anything. A pretty girl can get just as lonely as a homely one. She can have things that she wants to talk about to people and have nobody who has the time to listen. Do you understand what I'm trying to say?"
"I understand that you're young," he answered, his voice deliberately gentle. "When you get to be my age, you'll be glad when people leave you alone. Look, just promise me that the next time you get the blues, you'll pick a safer place to walk."
She seemed annoyed with him. "Everybody has the same answer. You're young. I'm sick to death of hearing it."
They drove in silence to the address she'd given him. Tennyson Circle, with its stately elms, was quiet and darkened, the expensive homes silent and impressive. "Here you are, Miss."
She touched the door handle and then paused. In the light of the dashboard, her face was hauntingly beautiful. It reminded him of another face, a face from the past. She'd been a girl at school, a bad girl, the kind that boys dated on the sly so their friends wouldn't find out and tease them. Argon had dated her once and when he'd used her young and pliant body the same way all the other boys had, she'd told him that she liked him most of all and that she always had and that she always would. Her face had looked the same as the face that he was staring at in that fleeting moment, the face of the nameless young blonde in the white coat and red kerchief.
Suddenly the girl leaned forward and kissed his lips. Before he could react, she jumped from the car and began to run up the quiet street. He listened to her shoes echoing in the dark and reminded himself that it was a safe neighborhood, maybe the safest in town. He felt an impulse to follow her, to destroy that safety, to drag her back into the car and possess the pretty body which she seemingly thought of no real importance.
He shook his head and touched his fingers to the lips she'd kissed. Crazy, mixed-up brat. Probably been had by every stud in school. No, that wasn't true. Not with those eyes. Not with that glow.
Argon started up the car and began to cruise down the street, still wanting her, still angry with himself for the wildness of his thoughts. He was glad he hadn't asked her name or pressed for her real address. A kid that young and pretty and confused could be big trouble.
Then Argon cursed aloud and admitted to himself that he was steering the car in a very definite direction. He was tailing her, damn it, following in the dark to be sure she reached her front door and hoping deep down in his heart that he'd catch up to her first and maybe have another chance to ... to ... to what?
CHAPTER THREE
Charlie Aiken let himself into his house as quietly as he could. He dropped his coat on a chair and walked up the stairs. Once upstairs in the bedroom he put on his pajamas, feeling shamelessly pleased with himself. At least he was no stuffed shirt. The girl had been a wildcat. He flattered himself that he was a different class from the usual man she met. Perhaps he would have to warn her that their alliance could lead to nothing. Poor kid.
After tonight, of course, there would never be a similar incident with another woman. He had noticed pretty faces before in his courtroom. There were class distinctions even among prostitutes-in fact, especially among prostitutes. He could get some very fancy stuff if he let down the bars. Sometimes inherently decent women were caught breaking the law. And for their sake as well as his own he had better watch his step. A housewife booked for drunken driving and terrified of her husband's reaction, a career girl who could not afford to jeopardize her job-they needed all the understanding that a judge could offer, not his basest weakness.
There were so many laws that no one could go long without breaking one. There were laws against doing something and there were laws against doing nothing. You couldn't make a move without breaking a law. He supposed he himself had broken one tonight.
"Is that you, dear?"
He watched his wife turn over in bed. There was a splendor about her even in the shadows. Not an ounce of fat on her anywhere. A cloud moved somewhere and moonlight glowed across her breasts, molding their contours and highlighting the soft hollow between. Once those breasts had inflamed him and he still thought them among the loveliest on earth.
"Yes, Helen. What is it? I was trying not to wake you."
"I just wanted to talk to you. Kathy came home tonight."
He echoed, "Kathy? But she wasn't due home till Thanksgiving. She isn't in trouble, is she?" Trouble. In his present frame of mind, he was not quite sure what the word meant.
"I'm not sure," Helen said. "You can have a talk with her tomorrow."
Charlie Aiken nodded and continued preparing for bed, his thoughts still centering more on his wife than his college sophomore daughter. Helen was quite a beautiful woman in something of an old-fashioned way. Full-bodied even when in her teens, her figure had never lost its firmness. As could be expected by Whitebank standards and customs, she had never cut her thick brown hair until years after their marriage and then, reluctantly so.
As he sat down on the edge of the bed, her perfume rose to meet him and reminded him of Helen's penchant for oiling and creaming her body all over. At times, she literally glistened from the delicate ointments she used for tone and fragrance. During the early years of their union, she had often allowed him the pleasure and privilege of oiling her naked body after her long baths and it had been a wondrously exciting task. "Charlie?"
He turned and saw that her eyes were open and that her lips had a reddish-purple color. "Yes, dear?"
"I've been thinking."
"About Kathy?"
"No. About us."
"Us?"
A bare arm rose toward him. "It's been a long time, hasn't it? Weeks."
Charlie felt his head being drawn down to the grape-hued mouth and a terrible panic gripped him. The episode with Julie Miller had depleted his energies, both mentally and physically, and it seemed cruelly ironic that this should be the night when Helen would seek out his love. He was also afraid that she might somehow be able to tell that he'd been with another female and it was this fear that prompted him to avoid her seeking lips and target his kiss on the hollow of her throat.
The scented and creamed breasts beckoned and he moved lower to them, unable to avoid a comparison with those he had briefly known in the privacy of his chambers during the night. Helen's breasts were larger and rounder and softer than Julie's, but of course, due to the age difference, not nearly as firmly resilient. Still, they were wonderfully comforting and pleasurable to kiss and nuzzle.
"Oh, Charlie, darling," Helen breathed languidly, "you know exactly how to kiss a woman."
Charlie Aiken smiled unseen, taking pride in having received two such similar testimonials in one evening. "Thank you, my dear."
Helen Aiken was reacting to impulse and she knew it. Less than an hour ago, the off-duty policeman had accompanied Kathy into the house and his very bigness had both startled and excited her. Playing the part of the worried mother and grateful parent, she'd asked him to stay for coffee but he had refused and she'd felt a very tangible disappointment.
He had just wanted to be sure, he said, that the young lady was safely home. His calm brown eyes in his strangely attractive face had been gently, but totally accusing. He had stripped from her every shred of pretense. She had felt naked before him, guilty of neglecting her difficult stepdaughter.
And, even as her husband groped for her, she tried to imagine what it would be like with the big policeman. What a brute he must be, with wonderfully hairy chest and long, powerful legs, and muscular arms that could crush the breath out of her.
She was being childish, she realized. She was getting even with Charlie for being Kathy's father, by the phantom infidelity-and she was answering the policeman's tacit accusation by making him a partner in moral turpitude.
Meanwhile her physical being was snug and happy and lawful in her husband's embrace. She could not help but wonder what had made him so late tonight but thought it best not to ask. She listened to Charlie's labored breathing as he worked over her, caressing, squeezing and kissing her sinless body. His lips on her breast, his fingers on her warm thighs, delighted her and served her in the simple carnal dream.
His body moved to hers. In an explosion of sensual pleasure she closed her eyes and clung to the stranger's image, all the way to the end, her loins filled with quaking need. She was being possessed by Ben Argon but when she cried out softly, she was clutching Charlie Aiken's body.
She remembered Argon's brutal face. Marked with old scars, lips twisting as he spoke, eyes brooding and dangerous. She wondered if he'd be as good a lover as he was a good policeman.
Across the hall, Kathy Aiken gave up trying to sleep. Her mind was spinning, the grooves and the tune familiar. The blues ... the way-out blues.
She sat up, lit a cigarette and turned on her bed lamp, in exactly that order. There was a certain impudence to smoking in bed in the dark. She might fall asleep and set the mattress on fire. She always started to take the chance, then turned on the light. She leaned back against the headboard and let smoke rise around her head like a restless halo.
What a disturbing man. It had been amusing at first to tease him. Finally she had read the seriousness in his eyes. He actually had believed that she needed an escort and he had really given a damn about what happened to her. She hugged her dimpled knees, saying his name to herself. Argon. Ben Argon. Probably her father would feel that an ordinary policeman was not good enough for her. No one would make a fuss about the classes she had cut to hitchhike home from college, but they might fuss about Argon.
Kathy Aiken was nineteen, a student starting her second year at Avery College, with less sense of direction than she had started the first. She no longer assumed, for instance, that she would fall in love some day, get married and be happy, all as a matter of course.
She had gone with many boys and was now theoretically going steady with Arthur Jamison, a successful contractor's son. Occasionally of late, she had found herself hopelessly bored with Arthur. His boyish pawing was a nuisance. He was presentable everywhere-but after you presented him, what did you do next?
A girl had to feel she was cherished. She leaned back, staring at the ceiling. If sometimes Arthur's kiss seemed to have tenderness in it, she half suspected that her own imagination was responsible. She touched her breasts, remembering when Arthur had touched them-and had a feeling of impatience even with the memory. Argon would be something else ... those hands of his ... huge, strong, frightening.
What was the use? She would probably never see him again.
She looked critically across the room at the dresser mirror. Her eyes showed her lack of sleep. She released the red ribbon that held her ponytail and her blonde hair fell to her shoulders. The hair was a legacy from her mother, the real mother who had married someone more important than Charlie Aiken when Kathy was five years old-and who now was beyond both Charlie's and Kathy's spheres. She supposed she loved Helen, her stepmother. But it was her real mother whom she admired and envied and hated and felt divorced from-and longed for.
More sleepily than she realized, she returned in thought to childhood. How odd, as a small child, to feel you were unworthy of your mother, no matter how well you behaved, how hard you tried. But part of Kathy's mother, the physical resemblance, could never be taken away. The finely molded breasts, the long thigh muscles, the golden hair.
Half-awake, half-dreaming, she stubbed out her cigarette and slipped out of bed. She whirled, her hair swirling in the light from the bed lamp, as she performed a silent dance with an imagined partner.
Her bedroom was generous in size, comfortable in a standard walnut-and-ruffled way. Her stepmother had taken good care of Kathy.
Nineteen and still a virgin. Many of her girl friends had known men and were intimate with their current steadies. She envied them in a way. Passion was still locked inside her, yearning to be free. The right man could have reached her-still might reach her-if she ever met him-and if he wanted, really wanted her.
She fell back to the bed, stretching tautly. Soon something would have to replace the empty loneliness within her. Arthur Jamison was no answer, he simply did not know the real texture and meaning of love. And she had so much love to give, she sensed. It would have to be matched in return in order for her to be truly satisfied. But what if that kind of love escaped her? Could and would sex be a substitute?
Ben Argon's brand of sex, for example?
He'd be rough and masterful and domineering and there would almost certainly have to be pain mingled with the pleasure. Kathy shivered uncontrollably and rolled over to lay on her stomach and hug her pillow, feeling a bit ashamed of her thoughts. Perhaps it wouldn't be at all that way? His eyes had been so wise and his voice so firm and gentle at times. Without even trying, he had reached her, created an unexpected longing in her.
One reason was that she believed the things he said. She believed in so few people lately, her father and stepmother, her professors, her friends at school. They said whatever it was convenient to say, letting the end justify the tiny falsehoods. But Ben Argon was incapable of falsehood, that much she had sensed almost from the moment he'd approached her on the shadowed street.
Kathy sighed tremulously and closed her eyes and thought again of his hands and of how they might feel on her body, rough and heavy and yet capable and exciting. He'd be able to lift her as easily as he would a doll. He'd be able to toy with her as though she was a plaything. And if she displeased him, he'd be able to punish her as thoroughly as if she was a small child again.
With her mind still lingering on the imagery of being spanked and then loved by Ben Argon, nineteen-year-old Kathy Aiken slipped into a troubled and restless sleep.
Far across town, in a neighborhood not at all similar to Tennyson Circle, a middle-aged man woke earlier than he'd intended. And knowing that he would not sleep again, he rose from bed and padded downstairs to an old-fashioned kitchen in the house where he and all his brothers had been born and raised. He prepared coffee, scratching at his scalp, feeling a weary depression as the silence of the old house pressed down on him.
Al Rudd figured he had to be the loneliest man in the world. His folks were dead and his brothers had all moved away and he didn't have any real friends to speak of. The house was too big for him and his job too small. Every year he told himself he'd buy a new tidy house with a new tidy woman to match and yet every year he watched his dream grow more desperate and impossible. He didn't have enough money for a house and he didn't have enough to offer a woman.
He was dead and he didn't know enough to lay down.
Still, as long as he kept moving, kept dreaming, maybe there was hope. Miracles were known to happen, even in a town like Whitebank. He might still get that house and that woman ... maybe even a woman like that young Julie Miller he saw that night in court ... pretty and soft and juicy and....
Al Rudd sighed tiredly, wiped his palms on his soiled flannel bathrobe, and poured himself a cup of black coffee.
CHAPTER FOUR
Judge Charles Aiken had an unexpected break before Thanksgiving. He was transferred to regular session, a change which he deeply welcomed. His position was an appointive and not an elective one and when his party scored well at the polls in November, Mayor Warren Bauer rewarded Charlie's supportive efforts with news of the transfer. Charlie was grateful to Bauer for several reasons. The biggest was his fear of another night court episode like the one with Julie Miller. Another was the more orderly routine of living that presiding in day court afforded him.
It was not long, however, before he discovered that there were cases involving tempting females coming up before him during the daytime hours, too. He found himself looking at each of them the way he had looked at Julie Miller and the self-awareness disturbed him. He wondered if he was reaching an age where he had to "watch his step, where he no longer had the same control over his instincts as before. He tried to keep a tighter rein on himself and managed to avoid temptation in admirable fashion until the Rita Grimek case came up in the docket.
The hearing came before him in December during regular session. It was a hit-and-run case and the charge was manslaughter. Rita Grimek had knocked an old man down with her car and he'd died a few hours later, either as a result of the injury or of a heart condition. The cause of death was debatable but not so, the defendant's callous actions. She had not been interested in going to his assistance or even telephoning anyone for help. As a matter-of-fact, she had not bothered to make any telephone call for assistance or legal aid even after arrested. From the police report, she apparently had refused to tell the authorities nothing more than the barest amount of information regarding her point of origin or destination.
Rita Grimek was a sensuously stunning woman. She had long hair that fell down her proud back in black waves. Her mouth was a painted scarlet wound and her lipstick thick and creamy. The hips were ample and the legs tapered into high, slim heels. Charlie noted that she wore a silver ankle bracelet. When she swayed on the narrow heels, her breasts seemed to stab straight up at him from beneath her tight, knit blouse. The tips were unbelievably sharp and Charlie stared at them as he listened to the details of her case.
"You haven't been very cooperative with the police, Miss Grimek," he said finally. "It's obvious you have something to hide. May I remind you of the seriousness of the charge? This silence is not acting in your favor, I assure you."
She merely shrugged and Charlie was struck by her cool indifference and detachment. He wondered if she was married and if she was trying to keep it a secret. She had a married look to her and yet, a look of animal sensuality.
He thumped the gavel and moved that the court be cleared while he questioned the defendant in his private chambers. No one seemed to think it unusual and as Charlie entered his chambers and doffed his robe, he tried to convince himself that he was only trying to be fair to the woman.
She entered, sat down and crossed her shapely legs. "Can I smoke?"
"Of course," Charlie replied, coming around to light the cigarette for her. She seemed to be a bit more nervous and tense than she'd been in the outer court and Charlie was secretly pleased. "I want you to know that I'd like to help you, Miss Grimek."
She glanced at him with open disbelief. "Oh, sure."
Charlie considered his words carefully. "I think you're more afraid of your husband than you are of this manslaughter charge."
Her glare showed both surprise and anger. "My husband is none of your business!"
"Then you are married."
She scowled and puffed hard on the cigarette.
"You were with another man last night, weren't you?"
She seemed to be weakening by degrees. "That's got nothing to do with what happened."
"How are you going to explain to your husband? To start with, why you were out so late last night?"
She gnawed on her lower lip, her eyes averted. "He's out of town on business. He won't be back until tomorrow afternoon. He doesn't have to know about any of this unless someone tells him."
Charlie smiled patiently. "But what if you're convicted of the charge and in jail tomorrow when he arrives home?"
There was panic in the dark eyes as she looked up at him. "You've got to believe me, Judge Aiken, that old man must have been trying to kill himself. He stepped right in front of me and as it was, I barely brushed him." She paused, the hand holding the cigarette trembling slightly. "Please, Judge Aiken, you have to help me. The only reason I didn't stop was because I didn't think he could be hurt and because ... well, I didn't want to get involved."
"I'd like very much to help you, Missus Grimek," Charlie replied flatly, "but it works both ways. You must help me, in turn."
She looked puzzled. "How can I help you? I don't even live in this town. I told you I was just passing through."
He looked down at the double-heart anklet around her lovely ankle and breathed in the scent of her perfume and wondered how often she had used sex to get what she wanted in life. Judging from the expensive car she'd been driving, her husband was wealthy. She was wearing a diamond ring that looked as though it cost more than a thousand dollars. Yes, she definitely looked the sort who was accustomed to trading on her lush beauty whenever in need or whenever in want.
"You can help by being completely honest with me, Missus Grimek," he stated finally. "I want you to tell me the whole story from beginning to end. Then, and only then, will I be able to judge your innocence or guilt. That is how you can help me."
"All right," she sobbed, the tears rolling down her face.
Charlie moved closer to her and touched her black hair in a soothing manner. "Easy now, my dear. I'm sure we can work this out together if we're honest with one another."
She sniffed and turned her head slightly toward the door. "Do I have to tell it all out there before all those people? I don't think I could, honestly. I think I'd rather take my chances. I don't mind telling you the truth but not ... well, my husband would find out for sure." She pleaded with him with her slumberous and moist black eyes and Charlie felt the blood rising and heating in him. She caught his hand and squeezed it against her cheek, her red lips parted. "Please, Judge Aiken, I'll do anything you say but don't make me tell the truth out there in court."
"Anything?" he echoed softly.
The long lashes fluttered. "Anything."
Without stopping to think of the possible consequences, he placed one hand on the sharp outline of her breast and squeezed the firm flesh testingly. The nipple felt like a tiny nail against his palm and he was amazed at the unsuspected fullness his hand encompassed. The knit blouse was utterly deceiving in that it only suggested the size of her breasts while emphasizing the fine sharpness of their uptilted shape.
Rita Grimek remained expressionless while he fondled her.
He let his hand fall away as he smiled down at her. "I think we understand each other, my dear." She nodded. "Perfectly."
"I'll have the case held over until tomorrow morning," Charlie stated purposefully. "You mentioned that your husband is not due home until the afternoon. That will afford us the opportunity to discuss the situation privately tonight. Let's see now ... where can we meet?"
"There's a motel on First Avenue and Ashland," she offered tonelessly. When he looked back at her, she lowered her lashes in mild embarrassment. "I was there last night."
"I see. All right, that will do fine."
Rita Grimek rose from the chair and straightened her skirt and sweater-blouse. "What happens now?"
Charlie felt all-powerful as he smiled at her. "Just leave everything to me, my dear. The important thing is what happens tonight."
The sultry brunette gazed at him for a moment and then smiled. "Just leave everything to me, Judge."
Charlie could feel himself beginning to tingle with anticipation and he had all he could do to keep from dragging her to the office couch right there and then.
There was a knock at the door and then the sound of the knob turning.
"What is it?" he asked roughly, turning sharply.
"You're wanted in the auditorium, your honor." The voice was familiar and so was the face. How the hell had bailiff Al Rudd drawn daytime duty? Charlie had last seen Al in night court. "Sorry. Didn't mean to intrude." Al looked at Rita Grimek appreciatively and went on apologizing and explaining to the judge. "All of the new appointees are down in the auditorium, your honor. Water Commissioner or somebody is going to speak, I think."
"That's ridiculous. Court is in session."
"Yes, your honor," Al said, meaning anything.
"Hell with it. All right, I'll go to the meeting. See to it that temporary release papers are signed for Missus Grimek, will you?"
A totally friendly smile spread over Al's foolish face. "Yes sir, your honor. Right this way, miss." He held the door open for Rita and she passed through like a princess-or perhaps, a judge's mistress.
The door closed quietly and Charlie Aiken was left alone, committed to an evening in the arms of a beautiful lady who had misencountered the law. Well, he'd done it again. What the devil was happening to him? What was he becoming in his old age? One thing of some consolation was that women certainly seemed to find him attractive of late. Rita Grimek hadn't seemed at all disturbed by his advances and Julie Miller's behavior on the leather couch had most vividly testified to her appreciation of him.
Now, if only he could manage to interest Helen only half as much as the others, perhaps he wouldn't be so susceptible to creatures that fell into his tangled web. Helen, with her civic affairs and social committees and dynamic drives for activity ... and so little time and desire to be just a woman.
Charlie sighed and went out to court to announce the delay in the proceedings.
"Hey, Argon, wait up!"
Ben Argon stopped on the steps of the courthouse and adjusted his winter police cap. "What's up, Joe?"
The other patrolman fell into step with him. "You see the crash on Whitebank Avenue?"
"Nope. Just came on duty. Something big?"
"I'll say. Some creep ran into a snowbank and couldn't get out. Another jerk came in too fast behind him. When the smoke cleared, eight cars were piled up in the snow. Geezuz, what a mess."
"How about some coffee?" Ben suggested, nodding at the cafe.
"Sure thing," Joe replied, shaking his head. "I could use it after seeing an accident like that. I don't think I'll ever forget it."
The cafe looked out at the passing traffic in the square. Trucks had muddied what was left of the snow. A big intercity bus turned into the depot, bringing a cargo of visitors. When had Whitebank changed from a town into a city? The two policemen talked shop over their coffee. "So tell me. What were you up to in the courthouse, Ben?"
"Witness for an over sixty-five ticket. This guy tried to beat the rap by claiming that his speedometer had been set wrong."
The air smelled reassuringly of fresh coffee and mass-produced pastry and people who used recommended soaps. Argon had a suffocating sense of adjustment, of absorption into a picture where his life had a ready-made meaning.
His colleague asked with flattering interest, "Did he beat it?"
Argon smiled wryly. The waitress brought refills on their coffee. "Not a prayer. He had a good spiel, though. The judge listened for all of three minutes, then cut him off like he was slicing salami in a delicatessen."
"Who was the judge?"
"Williams. He can think of more senseless reasons for cutting a case short than anyone I ever heard of. The whole room just laughed. If that guy had had a lawyer, Williams would be up in front of the Civil Service Board tomorrow morning. What about you? Up to anything exciting?"
The other cop sighed. "Just a dame I had to bring down from Thirteenth Street. She had too-fast-for-conditions written all over her. She killed an old man, but the judge let her off."
"She was driving?"
"Yeah."
"How old was the old man?"
"Oh, seventy or eighty. I guess they figure he died of a heart attack before her car bumped him. There was a chance he had crossed against the light."
Argon frowned thoughtfully. He was not sure why the simple story he just had heard seemed to fit with earlier information-he was a cop and he seemed to have instincts which he barely understood himself. He had learned to trust them, however.
The other man stood up. "Look, boy, I've got to run. I've got to be a street guard at Fulton School."
"Wait a minute. Who was the judge on this accident case?"
"The judge? Charlie Aiken. Remember, he used to be in night court?" Argon remembered.
His life and Judge Aiken's had brushed at the edges lately, he thought, not significantly, of course. He thought of leaves flowing downstream in a current. Every so often they would bob against one another. All that the contact meant was that both were caught in the same stream. If the stream was a quiet one, so was the casual contact.
But if there were sudden rapids or floods, then what?
Al Rudd had to tiptoe through the auditorium while the speech was going on. He tapped Charlie Aiken's shoulder. When the justice turned, Al whispered, "What about her car keys?"
No one in the audience had yet started to stare, but in a moment someone might. Charlie, not too unhappily, rose and left the auditorium with the bailiff.
In the corridor he asked patiently, "Tell me again. Car keys?"
"Missus Grimek." Al, a loosely built man, was taller than Charlie. He also had a habit of shifting his weight from one leg to another in a silent graceless way which gave Charlie the impression that a piece of Al might fall off at any moment. "She says they took her car keys when they arrested her and she wants them back. I don't know where they are, your honor. Maybe you know."
Charlie snapped before he thought of the consequence, "We'll mail them to her, of course. This was more than a parking violation."
Al shifted his weight again. The new carpet and the new acoustical ceiling in the recently built corridor seemed to absorb what should have been a grinding noise, as of machinery groaning. "I told her that, your honor. She's upset. She wants the car."
Charlie felt himself flushing. What a damned fool he was. Of course she would want the car keys-need them, in fact.
He handed Al the keys to his personal desk and gave hasty instructions as to which drawer would yield Mrs. Grimek's car keys. He was glad Whitebank still had traces of a small town about it-when the community became even larger, impounded car keys would be going through something like a computer on their way back to the motorist who had tangled with the law.
His step was buoyant as he returned to the auditorium. Golf and a sensible diet had kept Charlie Aiken hard-bodied and fit-he still could have worn the clothes that he had owned twenty years before. It was only recently, though, that he seemed to have become attractive to strange women. Maybe, he thought wistfully, Helen's treatment of him had left him with that unclaimed look, recognizable by other lonely souls.
Al Rudd decided that he did not like Rita Grimek. Pretty? Sure, but not when she opened her mouth and talked tough. Like when he'd told her that her keys would be returned in due course.
She hadn't protested or pouted. She had stared at him out of bold dark eyes and ordered, "Get 'em, old man. Know what I do to old men who annoy me? I run them over."
For a reason he could not define to himself, Al was sorry for Judge Charles Aiken. It was just a waste of a sermon.
CHAPTER FIVE
Charlie Aiken switched off his car radio and came to a stop in the motel parking lot. The lights on the huge neon sign blinked on and off like flame against the snowflakes. He shivered although he felt no chill.
He walked through the snow to the office. Rita, her teeth chattering, was waiting for him in front. She stepped into the light and put her hand on his arm. "I already registered us, your honor."
He grinned. "That's fast thinking, Missus Grimek. Which bungalow is ours?"
"I have the keys." She opened her purse and came up with them. "The bungalow keys were easy," she said levelly. "The car keys were a little harder, as you know. I hope I didn't embarrass you at that meeting."
Some comment was called for. "Not at all. I, eh, don't embarrass easily."
"I'm glad to hear it," she said, smiling vaguely.
The room was modern and clean. Charlie was pleased with the swift draft of warm air that met them at the open door. He held the door for Rita, then shut it behind them.
She wasted no time or words. After drawing the drapes and dumping her purse and overnight case on the bed, she took off her dress and folded it over the back of a chair. She drew out a negligee from her little bag and folded it over her arm. In the panties, bra and long silk stockings she wore, she suggested, suddenly, a high-class call girl. Why, Charlie wondered, had she been so eager for him? Was the manslaughter charge the whole explanation? He noticed again that her breasts were larger than he had at first imagined. Their fullness threatened to burst over the top of her tight bra.
"Let me make myself presentable, Judge," she said.
He nodded in fascination, watching her walk past him to the bathroom. The soft black hair rolled and shivered down her back with every step she took. Her rounded buttocks jiggled beneath the panties. She would be fat some day, but tonight she was ripe and lovely.
With faint amazement, he realized that he could hardly control himself. He felt simple physical lust with no involvement of spirit and hoped vaguely that the lust would see him through.
He stood in front of the mirror to undress. Not too bad, he said silently to his own familiar image. He tried to picture himself old, really old, but he could not. Part of him seemed to believe that he would be young forever. He credited abstinence from the aging vices-liquor, gluttony, laziness.
But beautiful women were different-they could keep a man young.
He hung up his coat and folded his trousers across the bar of a wooden valet. Even after he had stripped to his shorts, the room felt comfortably warm.
The mirror told him that some of the hairs on his chest, if not on his head, were turning gray. He frowned thoughtfully-he hadn't noticed the change before tonight. His eyes were cold and blue-except that now the cold look was somewhat in abeyance. Well, this was a date, not a trial of justice.
He sat down on the bed to wait for Rita Grimek, fretfully rose again, his flurry of lust on the wane. Odd that she should take so long. He peered through the window and saw flakes of falling snow. Just the beginning of winter-the end seemed years rather than months away. Charlie had never liked the cold.
Fifty yards away a car rolled into the parking lot and a man with a large commercial camera stepped out and locked the door. In the arc light, he read the name of the local paper on the sedan door. It's a trap, he thought in panic.
He turned with alarm just as Rita Grimek emerged from the bathroom.
The light behind her streamed around her luscious body, making her half-woman and half-goddess in the transparent negligee. He felt his breath catch as she walked toward him, her pointed breasts bobbing provocatively, her long black hair framing her sinfully beautiful face. The emotion he felt was part desire and part terror. Once more he glanced at the window.
The man with the camera was walking in the opposite direction, his attitude casual and rather tired, as though he had come to the end of a hard day's work. He didn't seem to have anything to do with Charlie's misadventure and Charlie slowly allowed his pent-up breath to escape his lungs.
Rita Grimek laughed with a soft hint of superiority. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were more interested in the weather than in me, Judge." She moved closer to him, scraping his chest with her nipples in a deliberate teasing movement of her round shoulders. "Do we really have to waste time talking about where I was last night and who I was with and what I was doing?"
Charlie trembled as she continued to tease him with her fingertips and lips and breasts. "No, I suppose not," he murmured, reaching up to part the front of the negligee and expose the twin peaks of her amazing breasts. He touched the nipples with his hands and then took firm hold, lifting them to meet his descending lips. He tasted lipstick and realized that she must have tinted them. The flesh was very warm and very firm and very musky in scent.
She leaned back, her fingers in his hair. "You're nice," she breathed, guiding his kisses. "I like a man who knows how to take his time and treat a woman the way she likes to be treated."
After a few moments of feasting on her ripeness, of ridding her wanton body of the negligee, of provoking her elongated nipples to rigid awareness, Charlie guided the naked brunette over to the bed. His lust had returned in force and with it, a searing impersonal sorrow. This incredibly lush and willing body had come into his experience but could never be a real part of his life. His work and his pleasure and his family and his sinning consisted of disconnected cases, appearing and disappearing one by one. There should have been a pattern, a continuity, but there was not. He was a disorganized man and he was living a disorderly life and he could neither change nor control either it or himself.
He tried to stop thinking and content himself in the wicked splendor of her legs and breasts and mouth. Rita Grimek was a most experienced woman and one who obviously had learned well from men the things that men most enjoyed. He found himself locked in erotic experiments that he'd never known existed and enjoying every moment of his abandon.
She was expert in everything she attempted and in everything she encouraged and he felt consumed by her, stripped of all volition and judgment, of everything but the capacity for pure physical feeling.
She made him change position constantly and her heated words goaded him to heights of virility that astounded him. The world became hungry red lips and silken black hair and moist pulsing flesh and guiding goading hands. Deep within her, he sensed a chill, like the snow falling beyond the cabin window, but the surface of her was red hot so he really didn't care that she might be feigning her pagan passion.
Afterward, he fell asleep for a while, comforted by her warm softness and fragrance. He awoke to the gentle caress of her hand and he lowered his mouth hungrily to her breasts instinctively. She allowed him the pleasure for a few moments before pushing him away from the glowing mounds. "No more, lover," she murmured smilingly. "It's getting late. Won't somebody miss you at home?"
"Sure," he bragged. "Everybody misses Charlie."
"Good for Charlie," she laughed, leaning over him so that her naked breasts hung down against his chest. "You know something? You don't look much like a judge right now."
He laughed and put his arms around her and drew her to him. "I don't feel much like a judge right now." He felt a need to know her better and he tried to show it in his kiss. When their mouths parted, he looked into her eyes. "Tell me about yourself, Rita. I want to know you."
She laughed and pushed the loose black hair away from her face. "I'd say you already know plenty."
"What does your husband do?"
"Stocks and bonds. He was in New York ail this week."
"Any children?"
"Two."
"Oh, I see."
She smiled mockingly. "Disappointed in me?"
"Who were you with last night?"
She ran her hands lightly and seductively over his naked body, her mouth teasing his chest. "A man. Want to know what we did? Want me to show you?"
Charlie started to speak but the words died in his throat as she slid her hot mouth slowly down his chest. He turned his head on the pillow and looked over at the mirror attached to the wall above the dresser. He saw himself and he saw Rita Grimek and the combined sensation of seeing as well as feeling ignited the fire of his passion. In the midst of it all, she paused to push at her black hair again and their eyes met via the mirror. The smile she gave him was the most wicked and sensual thing he had ever seen. Then her face was hidden from view again by the black hair and he knew he'd been foolish to bother asking her any questions. She'd told him no more than she'd wanted to tell and there was no point in her having told him any more. They were strangers and they would remain strangers after he dismissed the charges and set her free to return to her unsuspecting husband.
But in the meantime....
Charlie Aiken closed his eyes and surrendered himself to the newly discovered fringe benefit of his legal position. Beyond the window and hissing radiator, the snow kept falling on the motel grounds and nearby highway. It was growing colder as the night drew on but inside the motel cabin, the room temperature was mounting rapidly. Quite rapidly.
"Now!" she commanded, moving hungrily in the shadows. "Together!"
Charlie Aiken realized what was being asked of him. And he was only too happy to comply. It was only right that he reciprocate. The only thing that bothered him was that she hadn't given him very much choice in the matter.
But she was giving him pleasure ... every bit as much as she was forcing him to give to her ... so what did it matter who was master and who was slave ... what did it matter whose idea it had been as long as it was so delightful an idea ... what did it matter that somewhere along the line he'd lost control of the situation ... no, it didn't matter at all ... not at all ... not one ... tiny ... bit!
A wild hunch plus a cop's instinctive curiosity had brought Ben Argon out Route Twenty to the glorified roadhouse recently renamed Club Nocturne. He was out of uniform and he tried his best to remain as inconspicuous as possible as he weaved through the crowded and smoke-filled room to a corner table.
A youthful waitress in an abbreviated costume took his order while leaning over the table so he couldn't miss appreciating the plump fullness of her girlish breasts. She smiled and fluttered her artificial lashes and gave him a look of interest before easing away toward the bar. Argon tagged her for an out-of-town import and one who obviously supplemented her earnings as a waitress with an after-hour private enterprise. When she brought him the drink, he paid her and asked if Julie Miller was around. The waitress froze and then stated that she was due on stage in a few minutes. Ben scribbled a note, asking Julie Miller to join him for a drink after her number, and paid the waitress to deliver it. The young girl seemed unsure and unhappy but she disappeared into the crowd with the note stuck deep in the cleft of her powdered breasts.
Argon turned his attention to the floor show.
There was a redhead on stage, doing her version of the bump-and-grind to a blues number. She was short and flashy-looking and her belly undulations showed lots of practice, both professional and personal. The men in attendance expressed noisy approval but the women in the audience looked rather embarrassed as the redhead lost time with the music and struggled wildly to catch up.
As Argon looked away and lifted his glass, a small hand caught his wrist. It was the waitress. She smiled apologetically and set another drink in front of him. "I made a mistake," she explained, taking away the original drink. "Gets kind of confused in here on nights like this. Sorry." She was gone before he had the chance to ask her if she'd delivered his note.
The redhead finished her number and the emcee came onstage with a hand-microphone. Argon sipped the drink as he listened to the spiel introducing Julie Miller's specialty number. The lights dimmed and the music beat into a crescendo and the golden-haired Julie came into view, framed by a blue spotlight. She was wearing a white brocade gown that shimmered with her every step and her heavy breasts bubbled flirtingly at the plunging bodice.
Argon watched her dance movements grow increasingly more passionate and felt the audience moving forward to the edges of their chairs. Even before her fingers began to work at the hidden hooks of the gown, she had the men in the crowd frothing at the mouth. The music swelled and she turned her back to the room as the gown slid seductively down to the floor.
Argon grudgingly admitted to himself that she was good. He never would have believed that a stripper could have excited him but Julie Miller was doing a pretty damned good job of it. Watching the rhythmic undulations of her gem-studded buttocks, he found it difficult to justify the wild hunch and instinctive suspicions that had brought him to the club. They seemed totally impossible and he cursed himself for being a fool.
He drank steadily, never taking his eyes from the lovely young girl he'd arrested on a marijuana charge only a couple of months ago. She had turned again and her golden breasts stood out from her sinuous body like two unbelievably ripe fruits. Tassels dangled and danced from their tips and from her navel, adding to the illusion of sensuous movement. He forced himself to look at her face and decided he'd been right in arresting her. She looked high as a kite, stoned on either marijuana or something stronger. The pretty face was contorted in an agony of passion but the eyes were glazed and out of focus and remotely distant from what was happening on the stage. She seemed oblivious to the shouts of the men in the crowd, oblivious to the thumping accompaniment of the music, oblivious to everything but her own little fantasy.
She started moving toward the climax of the number and Argon wondered if it would give him grounds to close down the joint on a charge of indecent performance and illicit exposure. Then, even as Julie Miller began to sink backwards to the floor, her hips jerking to the music, the room began to spin and Argon felt himself losing contact with reality.
The last thing he saw was the floor coming up to hit him in the face.
CHAPTER SIX
Ben Argon was dimly aware of being lifted and dragged by more than one pair of strong arms. He heard voices in the far distance, some laughing, some joking, some mocking. An angry pain was running through his head and no matter how hard he tried to raise it, to pry open his eyes, he could not. Then suddenly he was no longer as far from the voices. He could hear them apologizing to other voices and explaining that someone had had one too many and that he needed fresh air. And then he realized that it was he who was being dragged.
He felt the hands propping him against a wall and holding him there while they went through his pockets. The noise was gone and the room that they had brought him to was quiet. He tried to open his eyes again but they were still weighted. He wondered who had hit him over the head and what they had used and how they had had the nerve to do it in a crowded nightclub.
He heard a door open and then a smooth voice speak. "Okay, who is he?"
Another voice, just to his left, answered. "His name's Ben Argon and he's a cop."
"Wake him up."
Argon felt his head clear as a hard hand jolted and stung the side of his face. His eyelids rose slowly and he had trouble focusing his vision. The room was small and dusty and a single bulb hung down from the ceiling. Two rugged characters flanked him, each holding on to one of his arms. They looked like professionals and he wondered what hoods of their type were doing in a town like Whitebank.
A third man stood across the room, half in shadows. He was tall and slender and impeccably dressed and vaguely familiar. He tossed Argon's wallet to one of the hoods. "Put it back in his pocket." He waited until his order was obeyed before speaking again. "What business do you have with Julie Miller, cop?"
Argon tried to formalize some plan of action. The dark-haired man's shadowed face continue to nag at his memory. "I wanted to ask her a few questions," he mumbled, finding his tongue thick and uncooperative and coated. "Who hit me?"
The tall man smiled. "Nobody hit you, cop. You just had one drink too many. You'll be all right in a little while." The smile faded and the dark eyes glittered. "Suppose you ask me those questions you wanted to ask Julie."
"Who are you?"
"Let's say I'm a friend of the family."
Argon drew a deep breath and estimated how much of his strength had returned. Not enough, he thought. Not yet. He forced a wry smile as he squinted at the darkly handsome stranger standing across the room. "Okay, so there weren't any questions. I was just trying to ... well, renew an old acquaintance."
The man studied him a moment. "I don't believe you, cop." He turned and opened the door of the room and stepped outside for a few moments. When the door opened again, he escorted Julie into the room. She was wearing a silken kimono and her face was still heavily coated with make-up from her performance. The man held her arm with unmistakable possessiveness. "You know this guy?"
The young blonde dancer grimaced. "And how. He's the cop who arrested me. He tried to put me in jail."
The dark man smiled. "I get it. You came back to see if you could do a better job the second time around, huh?"
Argon shook his head. "No, not really. As a matter-of-fact, I was bringing her a personal message."
"From who?"
Argon knew it was crazy but he also knew he might never have another chance to determine whether or not his wild hunch was right. He looked pointedly at the big breasted girl. "From Judge Aiken...."
The blue eyes sparked anger. "He's got a nerve, that old goat! What does he want from me anyhow? I gave him all he had coming and I'm not about to do it again. You tell him that if he tries anything cute with me, I'll ruin him. You tell him we're square and if he don't think so, he'd better get smart real quick."
Argon drew little satisfaction from the furious speech. In a way he was sorry that his suspicions had been proven valid. It made him a little sick to think of Judge Aiken and this wild-eyed and lustily formed young dancer together. Especially when he remembered the handsome Helen Aiken and the confused Kathy Aiken.
The dark stranger eased Julie to the door again. "Okay, that's it. Go wait in your dressing room for me, baby."
Julie smiled happily. "Yes, Marty."
The name rang the bell and suddenly Argon knew the identity of the well-dressed man who had such disregard for an officer of the law. It seemed impossible but it was true. Marty Jex was in Whitebank. Not New York or Miami or Chicago or Las Vegas or Los Angeles, but Whitebank. He watched Jex close the door and turn to face him again and realized that he was staring at one of the most celebrated and powerful racketeers in the state.
"You heard the kid, didn't you, cop? You got the message?"
"I heard."
"Good, I'm glad. Let me underline it a little. You tell your friend, the judge, that Julie Miller is off-limits to him or anybody else from now on. She's private property and there's a great big no-trespassing sign posted. That clear?"
Argon nodded slowly, his mind still whirling with guesses as to why a man with Marty Jex's contacts should be in Whitebank and involved with a scatterbrained young nympho like Julie Miller. "Very clear," he answered tersely.
Jex moved to the door. "You boys see that the officer makes it to his car. I wouldn't want nothing to happen to him." A final smile flirted at the edges of the handsome face and then he was gone, the door swinging shut behind him.
"Okay," one of the hoods grunted, "let's move, cop."
They led him out a side door of the roadhouse into the snow-covered parking lot and the frosty night air cleared Argon's head of the last lingering effects of the drugged drink the cute waitress had given him on Jex's orders. He caught the two hoods exchanging a meaningful look as they led him toward his car and he knew that they meant to work him over before releasing him. He continued his unsteady steps, hoping to lull them into a state of over-confidence, knowing that it was going to be rugged no matter how he conned them.
"This is my car," he mumbled, stopping with them.
They released his arms and stepped back a short distance, smiling with anticipation. The stockier one looked around and then inched forward. Argon jolted him with a sudden punch and quickly followed it with a vicious knee into the groin. The man groaned and crumpled. The second man had his automatic out and raised in clubbing fashion. Argon dodged but the butt glanced off the side of his head, bringing a blinding pain. Argon pivoted and hooked the taller hood in the pit of the stomach, pounding the breath from the man's lungs. A hard judo chop to the base of the neck doubled the hood over the fender. Argon turned him around carefully and applied the finisher, feeling the crush of bone as his fist hammered down on the hood's face.
A few moments later, Argon steered his car out of the parking lot and headed it back toward White-bank. His head was ringing and he could feel an ugly bump rising and when he took his hand away, his fingertips were wet and red. He put a folded handkerchief to the wound and held it there as he continued to drive with one hand.
Marty Jex. In Whitebank.
Charles Aiken and Julie Miller.
He had a lot to think about. Too much to entertain any thoughts of going home to bed. The ringing gradually turned to a dull and persistent throbbing, adding to his restless discomfort. He'd been lucky not to catch the blow squarely, damn lucky. It would have torn his face apart in its deliberate descent. Those boys played rough, but it figured considering who they worked for. He wondered what he ought to do about Jex.
He could go to the Chief or possibly to Mayor Bauer ... but then, Jex never moved into a town without prematurely greasing the path. Some sort of a fix would be in, the only question was with whom. Progress, he thought, was most certainly coming to fast-growing Whitebank in a big way.
And what about Aiken? It was obvious that Julie Miller had been let off the hook in return for her energetic favors. How many others? The hit-and-run case, for example. It had sounded peculiar, very peculiar, judging from the circumstances. Was she another young and beautiful and desperate female?
Okay, so it was true. What now?
What was the profit and how would he go about gathering the necessary proof of his charges? Julie would be the last to cooperate. Another woman, if there was another woman, would be equally as difficult to nail down. Hell, was it really any of his business? Being a cop was just a job, not a form of all-out dedication. What about Aiken's wife arid daughter? They'd have to be dragged through the mud if he started an investigation. The kid, Kathy, had enough troubles.
Kathy....
Her face continued to haunt him.
Crazy. Crazy. She was only a kid, only a brat, only an immature child. He'd met her once and then only too briefly and he was making a mountain out of one fleeting brush of her young lips. It had only been a kiss of gratitude, nothing more. She'd needed someone to talk to and he'd been there and she was showing him she appreciated his patience. That was it, period. He had to stop acting like a moon-struck schoolboy.
Argon saw the lights of the all-night diner ahead and slowed his car. The snow was falling heavier and he remembered hearing a radio report that afternoon that a cold wave was coming down from Canada. He looked at the blanketed road ahead of his lights and estimated there'd be four or five inches by morning at the pace it was falling. Bad, real bad, he thought, remembering the accident described to him earlier that night.
Argon laughed sourly at himself for thinking in such everyday police terms when his head was split open and a big-time mobster was in town and a respected judge was guilty of misusing his authority.
The diner was warm and thick with the smell of brewing coffee. Argon saw a familiar profile in the next booth and searched his memory, wondering whom he was about to meet.
It seemed that Al Rudd, the court bailiff, was also having a restless night.
Argon joined him, a move which seemed to please the older man. "Let me buy you a cup of coffee," Rudd urged. He sounded lonely, eager to hear the sound of his own voice. Ben accepted the coffee, not talking. Rudd filled the silence. "You look like you had an accident," he commented. "Somebody give you a fight?"
"Not really." It struck the policeman that Rudd was always in the neighborhood of Judge Charlie Aiken, at least during working hours. Was there some tie between them? In the days when older values had prevailed, the tie could have been a sentimental one. Before the likes of Marty Jex had come to Whitebank, there had been things like affection and loyalty in town. People took care of old acquaintances who were not doing well.
"Last couple years or so," Al volunteered, "I was in night court. Boy, did I gripe. Finally they transferred me. Now I have nights to sleep, I can't sleep. I like this place. They keep it clean."
"I didn't know you lived around here," Argon said.
"I don't. But nothing's open around my way. And these long nights can be murder." Except for Clem, the counterman, they were the only two people in the place. The snow outside was still constant.
"You're in Judge Aiken's court again?" Argon made it sound like casual shoptalk.
Rudd uttered a cackling sound that was meant for a cheerful laugh. "I sure am. You know something? He's a fine judge. I always admired Charlie. We went to school together. I don't mean we were close, but I knew him when. It makes me feel bad to see Charlie getting older. That means I'm getting older, too."
"How do you mean, older?"
Rudd waved his hands, as though to indicate that he meant something too obvious and axiomatic to bear explanation. Then a secretive hostile look crossed his face. He was angry, not at Argon, but at life. "Just older," he said sullenly.
"The town is changing fast," Argon helped him out. Rudd's problem, he guessed, was inarticulateness, sheer lack of practise in other than the most superficial communication.
"That's for sure." Rudd looked relieved. "My whole family used to be here. Now they're all gone but me. Some as far as Florida." He reached for a lump of sugar, tucked it in his jacket pocket and rose. "Nice talking to you. Now I can probably sleep."
He went to the counter and paid for Argon's coffee. Then he went into the snow and Argon had the diner to himself. The counterman, a youngster, leaned against a wall and let his eyelids droop. Suddenly too tired to do otherwise, Argon decided to stay where he was for a while and rest in the warmth.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Charlie Aiken came home out of the snow. Upstairs, he noted with interest the light under the bathroom door. Helen was still awake. There could be only one reason.
He considered running out and staying elsewhere for the rest of the night, but suddenly there she was, her hair and the light streaming about her shoulders, the honey of her perfume floating toward him, the familiar but infrequent cat-like gleam in her eyes.
"Hello, dearest," she murmured. She clicked off the bathroom light and they were in darkness.
What could he do? He wondered if she could guess when he had been with another woman. Her amative moments were fiendishly timed for his time of depletion, he thought. It had been weeks since she had had anything to do with him physically. But now she was ready, primed like a cannon for the touch of flame to powder. And never a question as to where he had been, never a reproach-just love, overwhelming, welcoming love. That was his punishment.
He tried to distract her by asking, "What's wrong, darling? I thought you'd be asleep by now." He mumbled something further about the political meeting he had attended. Did she know he was lying?
She moved to him in the dark. A strand of chestnut hair fell against his face. "Missed you," she said simply. Her perfume covered him and he felt like a damned fool-because in the final analysis, he wanted her.
Sometimes he forgot that she still had need for his body, of course. Who else was there for Helen when her infrequent times of passion came upon her? She was a civilized lady who could no more betray a husband than she could eat peas with a knife.
She helped him off with his coat. Her breasts pressed against his chest. Her fingers moved on the buttons of his shirt. The shirt opened and she let it fall to the floor. He felt tenderness and a terrible panic. Rita Grimek had had him for all he was worth. There was nothing left for Helen. Nothing.
She caressed him, her fingertips trailing across his chest, her mouth touching every sensitive inch. At the room's window, the snow was pale and constant. The winter world outside was dead but bright-here in the dark there was life and warmth. He had betrayed the living darkness, squandered himself for tinsel. He tried to find words to explain what could not be explained, to beg pardon for what could never be pardoned. "Helen, dear...."
"Hush, darling." She brought her arm around his neck, her lips against his. Her tongue traced the contours of his mouth. She pushed down his trousers and unloosened his belt. Suddenly she alerted. "What's wrong? What's the matter?"
"Nothing, Helen. It's just that ... well, it's been a long day and I'm cold and tired."
Her laughter was velvet-soft. "Come on, we'll try again. Just let me help you." She pushed him toward the bed. He sat on the edge, half-resigned, half-fearful. If he failed her now, would he lose her forever, even for the few times a month that he had counted on? He had to try-but whenever she touched him, the touch he remembered was Rita's.
"Let me help you." She began to kiss him, expert kisses designed to inflame and backed by the knowingness of marriage. He struggled to regain the old desire. It was hopeless. He spoke aloud in agony and shame, "Helen, I want to love you. Helen, I'm sorry. Forgive me."
Suddenly she stopped trying and whispered in a dead voice, "We're lost. We've lost each other." She left their bed and ran out of the room.
Charlie rushed to the door, calling her name. His last incredible glimpse was of her cloaked figure hurrying outdoors into the snow. She had put on boots and thrown a long mink coat over her negligee.
She had to come back quickly-for how could he call for help? What a scandal this could be, ruining them both. He turned back to the darkened bedroom, watched a fresh onslaught of snow against the window. The cold outside had come indoors to him.
Helen Aiken ran through the snow sobbing, her chestnut hair loose in the wind. With some immune part of her mind, she was shocked at herself, at her actions, at her behavior, at the fury within her.
She saw the lights of a crossroad corners at the end of the dim suburban road. The gas station and the antique shop were closed but the diner was always open. She ran toward it and went inside.
What was she looking for? A man? Any man? The flattery of being wanted?
Clutching her fur close, she walked into the diner and took a stool at the counter. There was someone in a booth, otherwise she was the only customer. The place felt unusually warm and friendly.
"What'll it be, ma'am?" the counterman asked. He was young, she noticed. Too young?
"Whatever you want," she said.
He looked confused. "Pardon me, ma'am? You want coffee?" He was a tall boy with a trace of southern accent and he assumed, as so many did, that she was a lady.
She caught her breath. She had walked nearly a mile in the cold and was now beginning to feel it. "All right. Coffee."
He placed cream and a spoon before her and poured coffee from an urn. "Would you like something with it?" he asked.
Her mink coat slipped open. The boy's eyes widened at the barely-covered flesh beneath. She realized he was staring and she spoke tiredly. "You. I'd like you with it. Are you interested?"
The cup fell from his hands. Helen uttered a brief little scream as drops of the scalding liquid spattered in her direction. The diner's other customer stood up in his booth.
"What's going on here?" he asked. He was tall and roughly-handsome. With a surge of sanity and embarrassment, Helen recognized him as the police officer who had brought Kathy home one night during the fall.
"She must be drunk," the counterboy stammered.
Argon took the stool beside her. "Are you drunk?" he asked calmly.
She shook her head, speechless with surprise at herself. The boy poured another cup of coffee for her and she raised it to her lips, as though to prove the steadiness of her hand.
Argon said, "You're shivering. What're you doing out dressed that way?"
"I'm not at all sure," she said. "I think I must have lost my temper. Until tonight I didn't know I had one." He was frowning at her appraisingly. She pulled up the fur collar against his stare and the diner's warmth threatened to become intolerable.
"I remember you," he said finally. "I brought your daughter home one night. You're Judge Aiken's wife." He turned to the young counterman. "I'll have another coffee, Clem. Make it black."
She was a mess, Argon thought, or at least as much of a mess as a beautiful woman could be. The melting snow had streaked her make-up and spoiled her hairdo. When he had last seen her, he had given her little thought, dismissing her as only another well-groomed and attractive suburban matron. But her eyes tonight showed the misery and wonder that could only have come from wild inner warfare.
"You're Ben Argon," she said.
"Yes."
"I'll call you Ben and you can call me Helen." She sipped her coffee moodily. "What do you think of my stepdaughter? She's pretty, isn't she?"
"She's a kid." Argon was unable to account for the irritation that rose in him. "Lot of half-baked ideas."
"What difference do her ideas make? She's young and beautiful and men are going to love her for a while." Helen Aiken paused and in the mirror behind the counter, her reflection showed tears. "I'm talking crazy," she muttered. "People my age ought to forget about love. All they really need is a place that's warm and comfortable. Is your place warm, Ben?"
"No," Argon replied. "I live in a drafty furnished flat."
She touched his wrist. "Would you take me there?" She dropped her gaze. "I mean it. There's a cold inside me worse than any snow storm. I'm going to die of it soon, if someone doesn't warm me."
He felt his heart pound wildly. "Okay. Let's go."
She was silent during the short drive and after he parked, they walked through the snow without conversation. Finally he followed his impulse and lifted her into his arms. Her body was light in the mink wrap. Her face came close to his as her arms went around his neck. She was arousing a frightening emotion in him, a want to make her happy and at the same time, a want to possess for an utterly selfish reason. Was it that thing in him that demanded that Judge Aiken be punished in whatever way possible for his sins? He tried to stop analyzing and concentrate solely on lust.
Once upstairs in his flat, he dropped her on his bed. The mink fell open, revealing the filmy nightgown. It was very quiet, the only sounds being the sounds of their breathing, and it seemed to him that they had succeeded in shutting out the rest of the world.
"Do you like what you see?" she asked throatily, softly.
He nodded and watched her wriggle out of the mink and stretch both her arms outward so that every line of her splendid body became outlined for his eyes. Her breasts rose like ripe melons and strained the fabric and the dark-tinted nipples were hard and thick. He began to undress as he stood by the side of the bed and she lay watching him, her dark eyes glowing in the shadows.
"Do you know my husband?" she murmured.
"Yes."
"Good. I'm glad."
"Is this to spite him?"
She writhed subtly. "Not now. It started that way but ... not now. This is for me. Just me." She shivered convulsively as he stripped away his final garment. "You're a brute. A brute," she whispered heatedly, passion slurring her words.
He knelt beside her and pulled the single garment up her generously curved body and over her head. He tossed it to the foot of the bed and ran his palm over the smooth line of her womanly thigh. She moaned and moved wantonly. "You act like you're in heat," he growled, speaking his mind without care.
Helen Aiken laughed and reached up to him. "That's it. That's my problem. Treat me that way. Treat me like a bitch in heat. No one has ever treated me that way. Never."
Their lips met in a brutal kiss and he claimed her without preliminaries or tenderness or consideration. He let loose of all inhibition and restraint as their bodies clashed together in agony and savage seeking. He knew he was acting more like some ferocious wild animal than a man but he also knew, she was letting him know, that it was what she wanted and needed and had never known before. And when it ended, she clung to him, quaking, her teeth fastened in his shoulder and he could feel her tears wetting his flesh.
"What can I say?" she whispered. "How can I tell you?"
"Say nothing."
She moved still closer against him. "Don't make me leave you yet. Not yet. I want to stay a bitch in heat a while longer."
She was lying, to a degree. Argon was sure of it. She wanted more than just sex. She wanted companionship and protection and domination. She was love-starved. He could tell it from the way she nestled against him, from the way she pushed her heavy breasts against his chest from time to time, from the way she moved her hand over his nakedness. Hungrily, like a starved woman.
"There's something I want you to know," she murmured, her open mouth sliding across his shoulder. "I wanted you the first time I saw you. I wanted you that night you brought Kathy home. I was jealous that you met her before you met me. That's strange, isn't it? I wanted you then and I'm with you now."
Argon felt her teeth nipping his body back to a state of awareness. She was handling him harshly, as though determined to hurry his return to desire. Once again she was acting the part of the wanton, a role he suspected she had never allowed herself to play in her marriage. He wondered if she had ever been unfaithful to her husband before and if she knew or suspected Charles Aiken's infidelity. Was that what had brought her out into the snow? Had she found out?
He turned her over, once again feeling the need to strike out at something nameless, once again feeling the rush of savage desire. She cried out softly as he took control of her musky ripeness, hurting her, ignoring the rhythm of her pleasure, and his inexplicable bitterness turned to a kind of cruel joy when she matched his aggressiveness with total acceptance.
And when dawn threaded through his window, he shook her awake and kissed her bruised mouth and found he was without a single regret. "Here," he murmured sleepily, handing her the gown and mink coat. "It's time for you to go home."
"Yes," she stated hollowly. "Yes, I know."
CHAPTER EIGHT
Helen Aiken sat in the front seat of the strange car and watched the snowflakes falling against the bleakness of the early morning sky. "Let me finish my cigarette and then I'll go," she stated softly, her head resting on the strong shoulder, the collar of her mink turned up around her cheeks. They were parked at the corner of Tennyson Circle and she could see the roof of her house far down the street. "I hate to leave you," she murmured truthfully, glancing at his rugged profile. "Once I'm gone, you'll remember me as a tramp. Or worse."
"That's not true," he stated firmly.
She smiled and brushed back a strand of hair. "I couldn't blame you if you did." She was thinking about her behavior in the strange bed, about her insatiable passion and the acts that were only blurred in her mind. "I didn't conduct myself in much of a lady-like fashion."
Ben Argon studied her soberly and she liked the honesty of his eyes. "You're quite a woman, Helen," he murmured softly.
"And you're quite a man." She caressed the line of his jaw and trembled inside with the memory of his power and mastery. "Know something? I am going to have trouble forgetting last night. You'll be my guilty secret for the rest of my life. I won't be able to forget you." She lowered her eyes, knowing it was impossible for a woman to convey in full the peace and serenity and wonderment that came to her in total completion and fulfillment. "Talk to me while I smoke," she said finally, snuggling close to his hard chest. "Tell me about yourself. Have you always lived in White-bank?"
"Yes, but I moved around a lot in the Army."
"How long have you been a policeman?"
"Five, six years."
"Do you like it?"
"It suits me, I guess."
"Why haven't you married?"
Argon laughed amusedly. "Scared, I guess. Beside which, I haven't found anyone I'd like to marry."
Helen indulged in a fleeting daydream, knowing it was a harmless one. "I'd be a good wife to you. I'd cook and clean and care for you. I think I could be a very good wife to you."
"You're already a good wife to someone."
She nodded slowly, the pleasure of the fantasy fading. "Yes, you're right." She blinked away the thoughts of the house down the street and glanced up at his rumpled hair. "How did you hurt your head?"
He seemed to hesitate and his eyes grew wary. "You ever hear of anyone named Marty Jex?"
"No."
He seemed then to dismiss his secret motivation for having asked her the question and she saw his gaze drop down to the parted coat and her silken nightgown. "It's your turn to talk," he smiled. "Tell me why you were running around in the snow dressed like that last night."
"I'd have to tell you the story of my life to answer that question," she replied bitterly.
"Try."
Helen inhaled on the cigarette and shifted into a more comfortable position. "Charles was a widower when I met and married him. I was impressed with him, his stature, his gentleness, his goodness. He was a little like my father and I'd always adored my father. It was enough for me to marry him. I suppose I thought I was different from other women, in that I didn't care much about the physical side of marriage that much. I enjoyed sex, of course, but not to any vast degree. I felt it was a perfectly normal and civilized attitude ... that's funny, isn't it?" She felt a twinge of pain pierce her heart as she thought of what her life would be like after having been given a glimpse of what real passion and pleasure were like. "At any rate, I was content with Charlie and Charlie seemingly was content with me and ... well, the years slid by. Lately, I've been restless and discontent even though I've tried hard to expend my energies in social and charity work. I didn't realize until last night what it was I needed ... what had been building up inside me over the years."
"I think I understand," Argon offered.
Helen knew he was trying to be helpful, that he was trying to put an end to her painful admissions, and she loved him all the more for his sensitivity. "How am I going to force myself to leave you when I finish this cigarette?" she stated honestly. "How can I go back to all that awaits me after all that happened last night?"
"You'll forget."
She shook her head, feeling the tears brimming. "No. Never."
"Well, you can't stay so you really haven't much choice."
"Ben?"
"Yes?"
"See me again, please." He frowned, troubled. "Please, Ben."
"Let's give each other time to think things over."
Helen sighed, knowing he was right and that she was being unfair. Reaching out to the dashboard tray, she deliberately snuffed the cigarette. Then, turning, she slid her arms around his neck and kissed his mouth. She felt his heavy hands through the thickness of the mink coat, moving on her back, and they reminded her of the thrills he'd given her during the hours of their intimacy. She wondered if she would ever know them again.
"Ben?"
"What is it?"
She trembled, her breasts throbbing again, her nipples hardening, her blood heating. "Let me make love to you once more. Let me make love to you right here in the car."
He eased her away from him. "Go home, Helen. Go home and think it all over. I'll call you, I promise. If it's still the same for the both of us ... well, let's give it time."
Shuddering with inward disappointment and yet knowing again he was right, she sagged and nodded. "Whatever you say, Ben." She didn't try to hide the desperation when she gazed at him, one hand on the door handle. "You will call?"
"I promised."
She smiled. "Will I have to wait very long?"
"I don't know."
She opened the door and the cold air slipped into the car. "Tell me one thing before I leave you. Just one thing."
"All right."
"Was I good, Ben? Did you like me?"
The powerfully built policeman stared at her for a moment before answering and the hesitation gave emphasis, wonderful emphasis, to the words that followed. "It's never been as good for me, Helen. I've never known a woman who ... who was so much a woman. I mean it."
A warmth spread within, replacing the despair and emptiness. "I know you do," she smiled, feeling laughter bubbling within. "That's the most wonderful part of it ... I know you mean it. Good-bye, Ben." She closed the door and began walking the quiet and deserted street toward her home. She was almost there when she heard the car motor start and it took all her resolve not to turn her head to watch him drive away.
Charlie was waiting for her at the top of the stairs when she closed the door and entered the house. She climbed the stairs slowly and saw the worry and confusion and guilt of his expression. He stepped to one side as she drew near and cleared his throat. "Are you all right, Helen?"
She nodded, suddenly very tired. "Yes, Charlie."
He followed her down the hall to their bedroom. "Where did you go? Where have you been?"
"Please, Charlie," she sighed, shedding her coat and moving to sit on the edge of the bed to pull off the boots, "no questions. Not now."
He said nothing as she slid between the sheets and tugged the blankets up to her chin. Finally, as if accepting the fact that he had no right to interrogate her, his shoulders slumped and he walked spiritlessly to draw the blinds of the window, putting the room in comforting shadow.
Helen watched him walk slowly out of the room and close the door behind him. Then she turned on her side and hugged the pillow and closed her eyes.
CHAPTER NINE
Spring in Whitebank tended to be beautiful and brief. The snow-melt revealed grass in hidden places. A million buds swelled on leafless trees and shrubs in a change as swift and certain as puberty. People had learned to watch for the day, the hour it sometimes seemed, that was neither winter-chilly nor summer-humid-the moment of spring.
The year that Charlie Aiken presided in daytime court, the moment of spring came early in May. The time was morning and he was seated on his bench, wearing his black robes.
Spring was a warmth in his loins, an absurd sudden sense of omnipotence. He looked down into the eyes of June Ryan, a beautiful redhead who, it was charged, had murdered a young travelling salesman named Sanford Douglas. The lurid aspects of the case plus the extreme attractiveness of the defendant had brought the trial a fantastic amount of publicity within the state. There were reporters in the courtroom from more than a dozen different newspapers and one who represented a national syndicate. The news photographers had a field day during the early hearings, their cameras flashing continuously. Finally Charlie had asked an officer of the court to confiscate all flashbulb attachments until after court adjourned.
June Ryan was twenty-three years old, a youthful twenty-three, despite her admitted experience in the ways of the world. Her hair was a natural shade of red and beneath her white blouse, her breasts rose like two luscious peaks. Right from the start of the trial, it was obvious that the spectators were more interested in her measurements than her innocence or guilt and Charlie could hardly find it in himself to blame them.
The nervous little-girl smile she occasionally flashed made the circumstances of the murder trial seem incongruous. It seemed equally unbelievable that such a delectable creature could be a prostitute, a girl who had toured the bars in search of a customer on the night when the crime was committed. Sanford Douglas had been that customer and it was charged that while together in a mysterious girl friend's apartment for purposes of being intimate, June Ryan had administered an overdose of drugs to her transient lover in order to rob him of his wallet and valuables.
The newspapers were already referring to the case as "The Love Nest Murder" and "The Call Girl Killings." A national magazine was already preparing a sensational story of June Ryan and the murdered salesman. It was all taking on the aspects of a circus and the young redhead seemed totally bewildered at what was happening to her.
The seriousness of her predicament seemed to hold neither meaning nor terror for June Ryan. Her constant expression was one of confusion and disbelief and incomprehension. Charlie wondered whether she was truly as stupid as she appeared to be or whether she was an extremely talented actress. Lately, he'd begun to doubt whether he was still capable of judging his fellow beings.
He was still surprised to find himself on the bench for such a publicized case. The call had come in the middle of the night, rousing him from bed and Helen, a veritable stranger since the fateful night of the snowstorm, from a deep sleep. The voice had been that of Mayor Warren Bauer and the politician had wasted no time in getting to the point of the call.
"How would you like to sit on the Ryan murder?"
Charlie had frowned at the prejudgment in Bauer's query. "Are you serious, Mayor? What happened to Greenspan?"
"Forget about Greenspan. He'll declare himself incompetent or something. Well, do you want it or not, Charlie?"
"Of course, Mayor."
"Good, good. Be there at nine-thirty tomorrow morning and don't be late. There will be an army of reporters covering the case. We have to set a good example, Charlie. We have to show the rest of the state that Whitebank is anything but a hick town."
"Yes, of course."
"Good-night, Charlie. Remember, I'm counting on you to handle this thing right."
Helen had already fallen back to sleep by the time he replaced the receiver on its cradle.
And now he was facing statewide publicity, feeling horribly alone.
The case, he supposed, was a real feather in his cap, the reward for years of tedious service. With all this publicity, he might land on the State Supreme Court-or, if he made a fool of himself, a junk heap.
Al R dd was swearing in the defendant.
"Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"
"I do."
"State your name."
"June Ryan."
Incredible oath. How could anyone promise truth? Who knew the truth?
The defendant was on the stand now, shaking him out of his reverie. She pulled her skirt over her knee and gave him another confused and self-conscious smile. Incredible that she could be a prostitute.
The defense attorney, painfully young and inexperienced, was giving her a chance to recite the facts in the case as she knew them. They were long and tedious, and for the most part, already well-known to everyone in the courtroom.
Charlie listened patiently as the girl stammered through her disordered and obviously untutored version of the events leading up to the death of Sanford Douglas. In need of money, she'd been making the rounds of the local bars in search of someone willing to pay for her favors. She'd met Sanford Douglas, a total stranger to her, and he agreed to accompany her to the apartment she'd arranged in advance to use that night. The friend who owned the apartment evidently existed but seemingly had disappeared from the face of the earth, much to June Ryan's dismay.
Once alone with Douglas, June had undressed and prepared for their intimacy. It was only then, according to her statement, that the salesman exposed his true desires, an act of a certain sexual nature which she refused to honor. They fought, verbally and physically, making considerable noise which prompted a tenant of the building to telephone a complaint to the police.
The appealing redhead went on to testify that after the fight, Douglas seemed to calm somewhat. She left him alone, going into the bathroom to repair the damage done to her during the struggle. When she came out she saw him face down on the floor, a bottle of bourbon loosely clutched in one hand. A few moments later, the police arrived and arrested her as she was about to flee the apartment.
She disclaimed any knowledge of the drugged bottle of bourbon and explained her possession of the victim's wallet by confessing that upon finding him dead, her first thought was to run away, leave White-bank. She needed money to get away so....
The defense attorney was so inept that Charlie felt obliged to guide him from time to time. It was obvious that the jury was unconvinced by the girl's rather incoherent and compulsively blurted testimony.
By contrast, the prosecuting attorney was cruelly and cleverly merciless in his cross-examination. He exposed every sordid facet of June Ryan's part-time prostitution and B-girl occupation, creating for the jury an image of a totally amoral female. He bewildered her to the point where she admitted having urged the victim to have a drink from the drugged bourbon. He refused to let her explain that the bottle had already been in the borrowed apartment upon their arrival. Charlie repeatedly looked at the youthful defense attorney for an objection to the prosecutor's tactics but the inexperienced man seemed too absorbed in the proceedings to realize what was being done to his client.
The prosecutor hammered and harangued the girl until her expression was that of a small child being brutally tormented by an overpowering adult. She began to contradict herself, to further incriminate herself, to cloud the basis of her defense. Charlie had to fight an impulse to Call a recess. He lectured himself silently and firmly, aware that it was June Ryan's lawyer who should be feeling such alarm. If he didn't know better, he'd swear the whole trial was taking on the look of a railroading.
He looked at the badly shaken girl on the stand and wondered what it was about her that had prompted such vehemence on behalf of the county prosecutor's office. In his eyes, there was more than sufficient evidence of her innocence and yet from the way things were going, that evidence was receiving only the most minute of attention.
So pretty. So ... vulnerable.
Suddenly, Charlie Aiken was remembering two other cases he'd heard during the past winter, cases which had also involved beautiful women. The memory frightened him and shamed him and strengthened his growing belief that he'd become too weak and too obsessed with his personal needs to hold such a responsible office. He mustn't allow it to happen again with June Ryan. There could be no private talks in his chambers, no secret midnight meetings at motels while the defendant was out on suspiciously arranged bail. The white-hot glare of public attention was too brightly focused on the young prostitute for him to even consider such a possibility.
He noticed tears glistening on her lashes as she attempted in pitiful fashion to justify taking the wallet from the corpse of her one-night paramour. Charlie felt his insides flutter with sympathy and his palms perspiring with unwanted excitement as his eyes followed the uneasy crossing of her shapely legs.
He also began to feel sick inside, knowing that he was weakening, knowing that he was watching the girl with all the avidity of a hawk watching a plump young lamb. He wiped his face with a handkerchief, his mind blurred and out of touch with reality. He realized dully that the prosecution had finished its deathly effective cross-examination and that it was the perfect opportunity for him to call a recess. He did so dully, mechanically, and winced as the photographers raced into action, their cameras exploding at June Ryan as she stepped down from the stand. Then, without warning, the beautifully curved redhead pitched forward in a dead faint....
Al Rudd had not meant to wrestle with the photographer, merely to take the man's equipment as he would have lifted an unresisting weight from an uneven surface. But the photographer had resisted. In his excitement, Al was near tears. "Authority of court," he babbled at the newsman in his outrage. "Judge's orders. Let go. By authority-by authority-"
The photographer was dark, plump and sloppy-looking. There was nothing sloppy, however, about the way he defended his camera, nor about his clipped diction. "The press," he told Al, using one arm to protect his treasure and the other to hold Al off, "has sacred rights. You're the one who has to let go."
Meanwhile, at the front of the courtroom, a cluster of people had gathered around June Ryan, cutting off Al's view. The noise was shocking, an affront to the dignity of the law.
"Behave," Al ordered the cameraman, his voice pitched too high. "You crums from out of state-why bother us? Swell little town, never had any trouble, all of a sudden-"
Suddenly he realized that the photographer was ignoring him, that the man was holding onto the camera without even looking at it. The other photographers, whose stance and expressions had suggested they might come to their colleague's assistance if necessary, also forgot Al Rudd. A murmur passed among them as they looked toward the back of the courtroom.
Al followed the direction of their concentrated attention and at first saw only a mass of swirling and pushing spectators. Then he noticed a flash of butter-yellow hair amidst the throng and his heart skipped a beat. He strained his eyes, standing on his toes, to get a better look at the girl in the dark glasses, the girl who was leaving the courtroom arm in arm with a tall and dark and impeccably dressed gentleman.
He heard one of the photographers speak a name. Marty Jex.
Al Rudd ignored it, paying attention only to the thinly disguised features of the young and beautiful Julie Miller. Yes, it was her. The cootch dancer, the one that had been on trial early last summer, the one with the juicy breasts. Julie Miller. Yup, it was really her.
He became aware that he was being shoved by the photographers and that they were moving as a unit toward the strikingly attractive couple. "All right," he mumbled crossly, "take it easy now. Court's in recess. Ain't no need to rush. Take it easy, dammit." They ignored him and he felt insulted, doubly so when he saw Julie Miller's lovely face turn toward him. No, it wasn't possible! Was she smiling at him? At him, Al Rudd? Did she remember him from her trial? Geezuz, it was true. The smile widened when he nodded to her in uncertain fashion.
He touched a finger to his chest, confused and excited. She nodded and tilted her head toward the doors of the courtroom. Outside, she was saying. Geezuz, she was asking him to meet her outside. And the good-looking guy with her seemed to know she was doing it.
Then they were gone, out the doors, escaping the army of photographers. Al Rudd let out his breath and shook his head in an attempt to clear it. What would a gorgeous thing like Julie Miller want with him? Especially when she was with a man who seemed to be as well known as he was handsome? Maybe she wanted to get a message to Charlie Aiken? Well, whatever it was, Al Rudd wasn't gonna let the opportunity to get another close-up look at those juicy boobs slip by him.
He darted across the emptying courtroom and scurried out a side door that led to the main entrance. He saw the cluster of photographers standing in the lobby, muttering to themselves and looking around in angry bewilderment. Al cackled happily, sensing that the dark-haired gent and the lovely Julie had given them the slip.
Serves them right, those big-city jerks....
Al Rudd paused on the building steps to scan the street. It took several seconds before he spotted a bare arm waving to him from the window of a parked car at the far corner. Wetting his lips, still afraid to analyze his good fortune, he hurried in that direction.
What was that name he heard? Jex? Marty Jex? He had to remember it so he'd make a good impression on Julie. He'd act as if he knew as much as those smart-alec photographers. The back door of the car swung open as he approached it and he saw Julie's magnificent legs and breasts leaning out toward him in invitation.
Oh, sweet geezuz ... don't let it be no mistake....
CHAPTER TEN
They propped June up on Charlie's couch.
Her attorney jabbered nervously. "Poor kid. She's been through too much."
The hastily summoned doctor closed his medical kit. "She'll be all right," was his verdict. "Where do I send the bill?"
"My office," Charlie told him. "Bill the county, attention Judge Aiken's court."
The doctor left but the lawyer and police matron remained. June Ryan gave signs of returning consciousness. She murmured, half in sleep, "I'm so tired."
Her attorney, John Gray, annoyed Charlie. There was an old-woman quality about the youthful and inexperienced defense counsel's solicitude which Charlie found disgusting. He snapped, "My office looks like the waiting room of a bus depot. Please, leave now. You can wait outside for Missus Ryan."
Gray obeyed. And after a slight hesitation, the stout matron followed him. The door closed and the room was quiet.
Jane stirred on the couch. By chance, her skirt had swirled about her thighs. Charlie had an impulse to pull the skirt decently to her knees, then realized that he dared not touch her. Her firm hard breasts rose and fell as she breathed.
He pulled open the second drawer in his new desk and drew out a bottle of brandy, broke the fresh seal and drank right from the bottle, achieving no calm.
Slatted blinds shaded his street-level office window from the scrutiny of the public-but not from the muddled warbling of spring. He could not see the docks on the river, of course, but he knew little boys would be skipping along the banks. Above the river was the railroad trestle, where open boxcars, virtual ovens in the sun, were sometimes left on the single siding. Charlie remembered childhood, while he watched June Ryan, who looked and acted so much like a child.
The telephone rang. He picked it up and identified himself in muted tones.
Again he was in telephone conference with White-bank's Mayor Warren Bauer, who worriedly asked, "What's going on over there, Charlie? Is the Ryan girl all right? What's she trying to pull? Did you get her a doctor?"
Charlie frowned at the concern and agitation in the Mayor's voice and looked over fleetingly at the unconscious girl. "She's fine, Mayor. Just a bit overwrought."
"Look, Charlie, I have to talk to you privately. When can we get together ... discreetly?"
"Whenever it's convenient for you, Mayor. Evening would be best, I suppose." Charlie paused, confused. "Is it in regard to this case?"
"I'll explain everything when I see you," Bauer stated briskly. "I'll stop by your place tomorrow night."
"Fine. Fine."
The phone conversation ended abruptly and Charlie slowly took off his robes, his mind occupied with thoughts of Mayor Bauer's strange interest in the case. What was his connection with the Ryan girl? The obvious one? The possibility surprised and shamed Charlie and caused him to turn and study the young female on the couch.
Lovely. A valley of soft and earthy promise. Nothing would ever rob that from her. A body so formed that it would still be seducing young men when it was in its forties. A body with the kind of excitement and allure that only death would destroy. Those legs, those breasts, those hips ... so intensely female ... and that face, so intensely youthful and alive.
A murderess? Impossible.
The girl on the couch uttered a muted cry of hurt, prompting Charlie to step closer and place his palm on her forehead. Dry. Warm. He looked at her lips and saw that they were moist and full. Her eyelashes moved as his touch seemed to calm her and he noticed a pulsing in her lovely throat. A tremor rippled through her limp body and he followed it from her slim calves up the muscles of her shapely thighs to her flat stomach and finally, her wonderfully firm breasts. The lashes moved again and lifted slowly.
"Where am I?"
"You're perfectly safe, my dear. You fainted."
"Oh, yes, I remember now."
He helped her sit up against the cushions. "I had them bring you here so we could talk. I want to help you but you have to tell me the truth about what happened that night. All of it."
June Ryan sighed hopelessly. "You won't believe me. No one wants to believe me, not even my lawyer."
Charlie frowned. "Couldn't you have secured the services of a more experienced man? He's not doing very much to aid you."
The young redhead shrugged. "The court appointed him ... that other judge, the one before you."
"Oh, I see."
She trembled convulsively. "He wouldn't even set bail for me. I hate being in a cage, locked up. It's not fair, not right. I never did anything to deserve what's happening to me." She looked up at him, her eyes misty and pleading. "I don't have a chance, do I? They want to put me in jail and they're going to do it, aren't they?"
Charlie Aiken felt his insides tremble. "Just remember that the state must prove your guilt. You don't have to prove your innocence." He crossed to his desk and took the bottle of brandy from his drawer. When June declined, he poured himself a generous portion and gulped it down greedily, his mind alive with his secret thoughts. "Tell me what happened, June, and perhaps ... well, tell me all that happened to you that night."
She settled herself, her skirt high on her lustrous thighs, her cheeks showing a return of color. "I won't lie to you, Judge Aiken. You know the kind of life I've been leading. I was working the Kit-Kat Klub as a B-girl, hustling drinks, me and about five other girls who came to Whitebank when we heard it was opening up. One night two men I never saw before came and told all of us that we'd have to put on private shows after hours for special guests. You know, dirty shows. A couple of the girls didn't care but me and a few others said we didn't need the money that bad.
They got sore and told us if we didn't do like they said, we'd be sorry."
Charlie Aiken was listening with true and avid interest. He sensed that the girl was telling him the truth and this belief only made her story all the more fantastic. Such things in Whitebank? "Go on," he muttered, sitting down on the couch beside her.
June Ryan leaned back wearily and closed her eyes. "The night they came and told me to stay late for one of those shows, I said no dice and one of them slapped me. I told them if they got rough, I'd go to the police. They laughed and ... well, theyleTrme walk out. Naturally I figured I was fired and that there wasn't any use in going back to work again. After a few days my money ran out and...."
Charlie was made to realize that the lovely girl sitting at his side was about to tell him of her prostitution. There was a curious appeal to it and he felt himself tensing with anticipation. "Yes, yes, I understand...."
The redhead smiled gratefully. "You do? Well, anyhow, I started making the rounds on my own. I called up one of the girls I knew from the Kit Kat, Julie Hart ... the one they can't find now ... and asked her if I could use her place while she was working. She said okay and told me that on account of how I stood up to those two goons, none of the girls were working the late shows. I felt kind of good about it, you know?"
Charlie blinked and nodded vaguely, impatience flooding him, only a part of his trained mind filing and sifting the girl's claims. "Please, child, go on."
June Ryan moistened her already glistening lips and shifted her position to a more comfortable one.
"Later on, I hooked up with this fellow, Sandy. You know, Sanford Douglas. He seemed nice and he had money so ... well, we went to my friend's apartment. Once we got there, he started acting funny ... not nice, if you know what I mean. He wanted something special and I told him I wasn't interested no matter how much I needed the money. He got rough and we fought and made a lot of noise ... I guess that's why the neighbors called the police."
Charlie had trouble finding his voice. "Eh, excuse me, my dear, but ... you say he wanted something special...."
The vibrant redhead moved her youthful eyes over him in dubious appraisal and estimation. "I don't want to shock you, Judge. I mean, it isn't very ... nice."
Charlie smiled nervously. "It might be important to your defense, June."
She nodded finally and leaned over to whisper in his ear.
Charlie Aiken felt an electric current race through his quivering body. The terse descriptives, added to the luxurious scent of her perfume, inflamed his desires and made it impossible for him to remain at her side a moment longer. He rose, trying his best to appear in control of himself. "I can, eh, understand your refusal, my child. Terrible, simply terrible. What happened then?"
The girl patted at her flaming hair. "Well, after he calmed down a little, I went into the bathroom to wash. I heard him fixing himself a drink. He asked me if I wanted one and I said no. A few minutes later, I heard a funny noise. I went back into the room and saw him on the floor. I didn't have to look twice to see that he was dead. I got scared. I didn't know what to do. I figured maybe he had a heart attack or something, you know? I never once thought of the drinks he'd taken while I was in the bathroom. Anyhow, the only thing I could think of to do was run, get out of town. I needed money so ... well, his wallet was right there in front of me ... I know it wasn't right but I was so scared, I couldn't think straight." June paused, hugging her arms to her rich breasts. "Before I could get away, the cops came and ... well, you know the rest."
Charlie believed her story. He believed every word of it. The little-girl words and phrases, the easy flow of them, the look on her pretty face, all contributed to the aura of sincerity which cloaked her confusion. He was aware that she was watching him at that moment, as if trying to determine his reaction, and that her eyes were again misty. He walked over to stand before her and without thought, he smiled and caressed her cheek. "I believe you."
June Ryan made a tiny sound in her throat and clutched his hand tightly. "Will you help me? Do you think you can do anything to make them believe me?" She pulled his hand down to the point of one round breast and pressed his palm against the softness. "Hold me, please. I'm so scared."
Charlie felt his head clouding as she drew him down to the couch beside her. He was glad that she had taken on the aggressor role, lessening to some degree the guilt he knew would come at a later time. Her warm breath was a warning of damnation as she leaned close to him and the feel of her pulsing fullness beneath his palm reminded him of two other females who had sat on this same couch under very much the same circumstances.
He closed his eyes, shutting out the guilt, and put his hands in her lovely hair. The scent of it was sweet and yet sensual and as it engulfed him he felt as though he was falling from some great height. Suddenly her mouth was against his and the lips were opening and a low moan brought her breath flowing into him. He could feel the silken magic of her body worming against his own and her fingers stroking the nape of his neck. Then, too suddenly, she pulled back and he felt sick with loss.
"I think I could use that drink now," she murmured softly, her eyes veiled by her lashes, her cheeks showing rich color.
Charlie obeyed mindlessly, carrying two glasses back to the couch in trembling hands. They drank and he was unable to take his eyes from the rhythmic rise and fall of her marvelous breasts, so fully pronounced beneath the white blouse. "June," he mumbled, feeling obliged to make some pretense of respectability, "I hardly know what to say to you. My behavior is inexcusable. Please forgive me. It's just that you're so terribly ... attractive."
The lashes still hid whatever expression lay in her eyes as she smiled. "Are you saying you like me, Judge Aiken?"
"Very much."
"Enough to help me?"
"Yes."
"You mean it? You're not just telling me that so I'll ... be nice to you?"
He wet his lips and emptied his drink in a convulsive gulp. It took a moment for him to chase the cobwebs of desire from his brain. "I have every suspicion that your girl friend, this Julie Hart, told those two men that you'd be using her apartment that night. They went there and drugged that bottle, intending it for you. They probably decided to use you as an example to keep the other girls in line with their demands. This is all conjecture, of course, but it has some ring of reality to it."
June Ryan was frowning deeply. "You mean, they were going to kill me?"
Charlie wanted desperately to quell the mounting terror he saw in the wide open and staring eyes. "Try not to think about it, my dear. They failed and you're safe so there's no need to be frightened. All we need do is locate this Julie Hart and apprehend those two hoodlums and you'll be free to start life anew in some other part of the country."
"But do you think you can find them?" June blurted desperately. "I don't even know their names."
"We'll find them, I assure you."
She seemed to relax by visible degrees and with the loss of tension, her young body took on a tangible invitation. The sight of her, lounging on the couch, was momentarily unreal. She seemed so terribly out of place with the bookcases of legal volumes, the mahogany and leather fixtures, the slightly threadbare carpeting. Charlie cleared his throat and with it, his detachment, and his mind registered the fact of her smile.
"Do we have time?" she whispered seductively. "Time?"
"For me to be nice to you."
Charlie gulped and looked at the heavy door that was shutting out the rest of the world. It was a good question. Was there time for just one more weakness? For just one more betrayal of his sworn oath? "It isn't necessary," he managed to croak, praying she wouldn't take him at his word. "I'll do all I can on your behalf simply out of-"
She cut him short. "We don't have much time, Judge."
Charlie moved toward the couch, knowing it was more than just an act of gratitude on her part. She was wise to the ways of the world, accustomed to paying the price for any favors. She was seeking to cement his promised assistance in the only way she knew how and somehow, he couldn't blame her for it. There was no other way for the June Ryans of the present-day world.
The blouse disappeared and the brassiere opened easily. He touched the naked nipples and glowing flesh, first with his hands and then with his lips. She continued to move beneath him, shedding her clothes with an artistry that allowed his pleasure to continue uninterrupted. Then she was ready and ardent and firing him with a hungry mouth and bold fingertips.
Charlie punished her with desire. The room seemed invaded by spring. Youth charged him, engulfed him, pervaded him. All of love and passion and pleasure and desire was his. Chains of lifelong inhibition snapped apart, freeing him, allowing him the glory of utter abandon.
And lust, like time, like war, like fire, consumed him in his victory.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ben Argon turned his attention from the courthouse window to the river where a barge skittered flirtatiously at the dock like a tipsy middle-aged woman at a cocktail party. He sighed tiredly and sought to loosen his bunched shoulder muscles in a stretch as he let his gaze travel back to the window of the building across the street.
The Venetian blinds were still drawn and he suspected that June Ryan was still in Judge Charles Aiken's office. It annoyed him almost as much as he was annoying himself with his unofficial vigil. What was the purpose of his private detective work? Who had asked him to turn the spotlight on corruption in high places? What was his real motive? Indignation, as a citizen? Instinct, as a cop? Guilt, as a man?
Was it Helen Aiken? Or Kathy Aiken, whose face continued to haunt his dreams and add to his guilt? Was he doing it for them or because of them?
Argon thought of Charlie Aiken's full-bodied wife. He hadn't kept his promise to her. He hadn't called. He hadn't seen her since that winter night when they met in the diner and went to his flat. He hadn't seen or talked to her but he hadn't forgotten her. It wasn't just sex. He could not dismiss his obsession with her by any one word. Sex was perhaps the core of her lingering effect on him but any woman might have provided the same fulfillment. No, it was more than sex.
It was almost as if Helen Aiken personified the mystery and frustration of his entire life. It struck him as being only fitting that she should belong to another. Added to this was the fact that she was the stepmother of a young girl whose face remained with him every minute of every hour when he awaited sleep in the darkness of his room. Could he destroy Charles Aiken and still hope to have either Helen or Kathy to himself? Would he still want them if he stabbed Charlie in the back? And the biggest question of all ... which of them did he really want?
Argon suddenly needed to get away from the crowded street. He walked away from the corner and toward the river, his back to the courthouse window. For the past month he had given thought to leaving Whitebank and becoming a policeman somewhere else. The idea remained a vague one, an expression of inner agitation, rising to the surface only when he thought of Charlie Aiken and of the unmistakable signs that organized crime was moving into White-bank on a big scale. Such a movement, headed by a man like Marty Jex, was never initiated without official encouragement and cooperation.
He passed a crew of eight-year-olds on their way from school. Startled, he realized how quickly the day was passing. Before he knew it, he'd be due back on duty without having an hour's sleep. He stepped into a drugstore, ordered a large orange juice and tried to organize his anxieties.
Why did he expect more morality at top level in Whitebank than he would have from a larger city? Morality, he decided, was a thing of contrasts and contacts. A man could be moral only within the framework of society, not living as a hermit-and when a community grew too large, everyone in it became a sort of hermit, responsible just to himself. Whitebank hadn't progressed, had it, to the point where people were all strangers together?
He had better get some rest-night duty was no picnic.
As he was about to get up, he felt a feather touch on his sleeve. Without thinking, he reached for a gun holster that wasn't there. Then he recognized Kathy Aiken.
"Officer Argon," she said. "How nice to see you again."
The face of the judge's daughter had no mystery in it-she looked merely like a pretty kid, a little spoiled, a little sad. He took her hand, "How are you, Kathy?" he asked.
"I'm fine," she said. "Except I may get kicked out of school."
"Too bad," he murmured. "I'm sorry to hear it."
The pretty girl shrugged. "I've been cutting too many classes. Lack of interest, I guess." She looked small and proud and lost and lonely as she drew a deep breath. "I don't admit this usually but I'm kind of sorry about it, too."
The crowd swelled behind them at the counter. High school kids in search of treats, momentary escape. But not in bunches, he noted uneasily, the way kids usually do at that age. They came one by one or two by two and departed quickly. Maybe in this day and age only the bad kids bunched and maybe all the good ones were like Kathy ... lost and lonely.
"You're not in uniform," she commented. "I'm not taking up your free time, am I?"
"Not at all."
Her smile was as he remembered it, warm and sweet. "Why are you in this part of town if you're off duty?"
Argon avoided her eyes, knowing he could not tell her the answer, that he was spying on her father, that he was amassing information that would create the biggest scandal Whitebank had ever known. He remembered the night he picked her up on the street and how red her cheeks had been from the cold. Now her skin was smooth and warm.
Spring had put a light in her eyes in spite of her look of loneliness. The light would have been easy to miss, a candle burning in the afternoon. Nevertheless, there was something stirring in her, the eternal life force-which for a woman, was man.
He said, "I was just walking around." He added abruptly, "How old are you, Kathy?"
She lost the earnest look. "I'm twenty-one. How old are you?"
He laughed. "I'm older. A lot older ... and you're only nineteen. Why lie to me? What's so great about being twenty-one?"
"That depends." Her voice was wistful. She looked around. "I wish we could go somewhere else together."
He spoke, barely conscious of his meaning, "I'd bore you after a while, kid." In a way-she was as alone as he was. It didn't mean a thing to her that she saw Helen every day. If there was a closeness between stepdaughter and stepmother, they were not warmed by it. "Let's go," he said, rising.
They walked north along the avenue. The wind changed to a chill uneasy whistling. The sunlight clouded. This too was spring.
"What's your full name, Officer Argon?" she asked.
They were holding hands-but she was wearing pale blue gloves, a fact that struck him as having random significance. "A kid like you doesn't need my first name," he answered. "But it's Ben."
"Do you make a lot of money as a policeman?"
He laughed. The wind grew chillier. Her skirt swirled and hugged her thighs. Her youthful hips were rounded-but she seemed thinner than she had during the winter. "Not much," he answered.
"Why do you stay with it, then? Is it because you like to boss people around?"
He grinned and told her, "Kathy, there are smart cops and there are dumb cops-"
"And?"
"And I'm one of the dumb ones. I never take an extra buck-or even a free apple from a grocer. I don't call in sick when I have a hangover. Sometimes-I hate to say it-but I think what I have is pride. The money I make doesn't matter. Crazy, huh?"
She giggled. "Is that why you've never married?"
He stopped short. She had angered him although he was not sure why. "Did I tell you that?"
She seemed frightened by the look on his face, by the way he was holding her arm. "No," she said.
She drew back, but he held her tighter than ever in his iron grasp. "Kathy," he said, in a confession that was also self-discovery, "I'm a sort of judge by nature-not like your father, who was legally appointed. There's a craziness in me that makes me want things clean and safe-"
And now she had forced the truth out of him. He was dogging Charlie Aiken, not because he coveted Charlie's wife and daughter, but because he suspected Charlie of betraying his high office. The thought was a curiously comforting one for a man who believed in justice. For every weakling, there was a matching strength, if not in the weak man, then in the one who watched him. The system would not collapse. Charlie might perish-and Ben might also perish while purging the world of Charlie. But the world would go on as he liked it to be, middling decent at least.
They continued to walk for a while. She pointed out the landmarks on the way-a child's ball dropped at the curb, now forever lost, a swallow floating with the wind above the paved street. When they reached the river, the water was iron-gray under a clouded sky.
"Do you want to tell me about it, Ben Argon?" she asked suddenly.
"Tell you about what?"
She tried to laugh. "What's on your mind. Your real reason for coming here today."
But his real reason was a chasm that separated their worlds.
"It's getting cold." She hunched her shoulders. He helped her back to the path that led away from the river. At this end of town the buildings were old and small, weathered under their paint. A few of them looked abandoned. Somewhere a cat complained. The sound was lonesome.
Kathy lifted her innocent face and asked, "Ben, will you take me to your place? I've wanted you ever since that night we met."
He spoke sullenly, "What do you think I am-a training ground for young virgins?" But if there had even been an argument in favor of such a status-there she was in all her beauty. The fine, high cheekbones, the tiny waist, the strong mouth with untouched lust written into it, the racehorse legs, the way her breasts rose and fell, the wistfulness--
She bowed her head. "I've made a fool of myself. Seems to be my destiny."
His arms closed about her. He ignored the scattering of passersby. Her thighs grew tense against him and she sighed in his arms.
He whispered. "You don't understand, Kathy. Sure, I'd enjoy being with you-while it lasted. But you could never mean anything to me. Do you understand that? Afterward I'd want to kick myself for getting involved with a fool kid." She began to say something and he covered her lips with his fingers. "Don't. You're too young to know the score. It wouldn't be fair of me-"
"Let me decide what's fair." Her breasts trembled as she clung to him.
He whispered in her hair, "I'm not the guy for you. I'm too old, too ugly. I make five hundred dollars a month. I'll probably never make more than that."
"I don't care." She started to weep silently.
"I'm not really your friend," he continued. "I'm a threat to your way of life, your security-"
She pushed away from him, fury in her eyes. "Okay," she said. "I'll find someone young and willing. Anyone. I'll pick someone up on the street since you won't have me. Good-bye, Argon-maybe I'll see you in jail."
She started to run from him, but he grabbed her arm and held her. A woman passed and asked indignantly, "What's going on here? You want me to call a
"I am a cop, lady," Argon said. The woman was short, stout, homely and unafraid. Kathy ungratefully told her to mind her own business. The woman looked in no mood to take the advice-in fact, she seemed ready to form a committee of neighbors to enforce law and order.
"You win," he told Kathy. "We'll go to my place. It's where I belong anyway. I haven't slept in thirty hours."
CHAPTER TWELVE
As always, upon opening the door, the bleakness of his living quarters registered on Ben Argon. Once Helen Aiken had transformed the place with her presence. Now he had brought Helen's stepdaughter to the same room and for some reason, he expected the room to be transformed again with something of the same magic. He waited for the change but none occurred. If anything, the flat seemed more drab than ever. Kathy's freshness and newness and youthfulness and prettiness made everything look absolutely grim. "I like it," she said softly.
He looked around, embarrassed. "It serves its purpose." He put his coat over the back of a chair and sat down on the bed without looking at her. The street outside was quiet in the sudden twilight. "Look," he muttered tonelessly, "this is crazy. I'm out on my feet. I need sleep."
"Ben, look at me, please."
He lifted his eyes to her.
She was opening the front of her ruffled blouse. Her gaze never left him as she shrugged out of it and reached back to unhook her brassiere. Her breasts were a soft white against the beginning tan of the rest of her. The nipples were small and pink and delicately formed. They hardened as he stared at them and Kathy trembled, her mouth slightly open. "I love you, Ben," she whispered tremulously. "I want you to love me."
He pushed off the bed, a crazy anger filling him. "Go home, dammit. It's no good."
She lifted her bare arms to him. "Please, Ben."
"Why me? Why the hell me?"
"Only you, Ben. Just you, Ben."
"You're crazy," he growled, moving to her. "You know that, don't you? This whole thing is crazy." Then he had her young body in his arms, crushing her to him, his hand opening the zipper of her skirt. It slid down her body and she whimpered, pressing against him, her cheeks hot and her mouth avid. "Damn you," he muttered, savoring the sweet taste of her.
"Take me, Ben," she gasped, straining. "Take me."
"I will," he promised bitterly. But he took his time. His mouth found her taut nipples and teased them. She went lax with desire in his arms, her head back and a gentle moan escaping her. He found the top of her panties and pushed down. Her thighs trembled and she threatened to lose balance. He lifted her to his bed.
She spoke again, "I love you. You're not like the others-all the liars."
He laughed without joy. "I'm worse. Why am I doing this, Kathy?"
Eyes closed, she sighed and rested her head on his pillow. "Because you need me," she whispered. "It's a weight I can bear."
The soft flesh of her thighs quivered under his touch. He kissed her. His strength passed into her body and she received him thirstily. He could feel her blonde beauty coming into womanhood. Her back arched toward him. Her golden hair was rich in hisv nostrils. Her moans grew more breathless. Pleasure and pain fused into a kind of delirium.
He heard himself. "Love you-love you-"
For all his need of sleep, the exercise of love proved no tranquilizer. In the awed silence they shared after the act was over, he remembered the outside world as though it had been another life-but one to which he must return shortly.
Shivering with pleasure, she still clung to him. He stroked her soothingly, trying to fix the contour of her body in his memory, to be evoked later in a lonelier drabber place. With shock, he kept hearing his own words of endearment. "Sweetheart-Kathy-I'm scared for you."
"Don't be," she murmured.
"But you're such a fool-and so damned young-"
"What makes me a fool?" she asked. "I wanted you. I have you."
He thought of her father.
He still felt tender toward Kathy. But now his tenderness surprised him by making him angry, just as it had surprised endearment from him a moment before. He seized her bare shoulders. "In about two minutes," he told her, "I'll have to get dressed and out of here and back to work. But there's something you've got to tell me before we leave. How close are you to your father?"
"Ben-what's wrong? What did I do?" She tried to pull free of his grasp.
"I don't know what you did-that's why I'm asking. Does your father confide in you? You're not here with me because he told you to spy on me, are you?"
"Ben, are you crazy? My father probably doesn't know you're alive. After all, he's a judge. And you-"
"I'm just a beat cop. A number, a nobody. That's what you mean, isn't it?"
Why was he talking this way? These were not the words he meant-or were they?
She stiffened. The yielding curves no longer strained to comfort him, to be part of him. "I see," she said. "You have an inferiority neurosis. That's why you were willing to make love to me-because I'm a judge's daughter and you had a sense of compensation through conquest. I thought you were the real thing but I guess I was wrong-and you were right, I'm a fool. I've made a terrible mistake. Let's get out of here."
She reached for her clothes. He stood up and went to his closet for his uniform. While his back was turned to her, he heard her heartbroken sob. He turned. Her arms were lifted to him. She still wore nothing but a pair of gold-colored panties that matched her hair. "I didn't mean that," she said. "I'm sorry. I'm not a fool. I'm smart. Smart to trust you, to love you-"
"Dumb kid. You beautiful dumb kid," he mumbled, holding her close, peeling the panties away again, easing her with him back to the bed.
She smiled and snuggled and kissed him as they settled on the rumpled sheets. "I love our bed, Ben. It is our bed, isn't it? Yours and mine."
Ben nodded and fused his mouth on the still warm breasts, a part of his brain admitting her claim to ownership, another part reminding him that another woman also held a similar claim. Then there was no longer time for thought of anything but the delightful pleasure her young body was evoking in him.
"Everything, Ben," she panted, matching his ardor. "I want to have all there is to have with you. Let me. Oh, Ben, I love you so much. Let me love you. Show me, teach me. Everything, my love, everything."
There could be no resisting such a love. It was too strong for him. Too intoxicating. Too overpowering. He gave way and let it conquer, let it take hold, let it erase all the reasons why it could not be.
Later, they left his flat together. The thought crossed his mind that they could leave more than his rented room together. They could leave Whitebank. Was it too late for him to make a new start? Could he escape the ghosts they'd leave behind?
The street was dark and windy as she looked at him. She was no longer the same. She was a woman and it showed in her eyes, in the smile, in the tilt of her head. Would the others see the change? Would they see and know and condemn this illicit alliance?
She was so damn young.
But the feel and taste of youth eluded him. Odd-he could evoke love from this young and lovely girl, accept all she willingly gave-but she could not give him the sense of being young. No one would do that again.
She ran her hand over her forehead, a faraway serious smile on her lips. She had pretty teeth, even and lustrous as a child's.
"We'll get my car," he said. "I'll drive you home before I show up for work."
She tucked her arm into his. "You're not still thinking I'm too young for you, are you?"
"No," he lied.
"Then what?"
They walked toward the corner and he found himself thinking of Helen.
What Helen brought to a love bed was experience. She had know-how, the ability to use her hands and mouth in a way that would have made most women ashamed. She was wanton, exciting. She made love to a man, not waiting for him to rouse her. She loved a man's body and let him know it. A woman like that was incomparable-and after you had known her, youth was beyond recall.
Kathy could still learn. She had a wealth of years before her like an open bank vault. She would only have had to pick and choose from among her happy prospects.
And she had chosen Ben Argon.
They got into his car. Her awesome serenity seemed to flood its interior. She asked as they headed toward her house, "Please tell me again that you love me."
Was love what you felt when a woman was sweet, inexperienced and clumsy? Or were you likelier to feel worship? He would have done anything for her, he realized, no matter how senseless the demand-and the senselessness of devotion could give his life a meaning. "I love you," he said simply, unsmilingly.
When they reached her house, the moon was out and the night was colder. She said a single word before she left the car. "When?"
"I'll phone you in the morning," he promised.
He saw lights go on in the house after she entered. Apparently there had been no one at home waiting. In some ways, he thought in sudden anger, Kathy had had a rough deal. For a while he stayed at the curb, watching the house, knowing he would leave any moment. Then he saw the figure in the darkened side doorway. He called softly, "Helen?"
She stepped out into the street light weaving from side to side, and advanced toward the car.
"What is it, Helen?" he asked. "What's the matter?"
"I've been drinking, if you must know." She was wearing a lambskin coat and her lipstick was smeared. She looked like a dignified ruin.
He got out of his car, grabbed her by the arm. "Come on, let me get you inside. It's cold. You'll be sick."
She shook him off and giggled. "Sick, sick, sick...."
He half-marched, half-dragged her to the front steps. She kicked out of his grasp and slipped onto the sidewalk. He swore and reached for her.
She uttered a muted cry. "I'm warning you. Touch me and I'll scream."
He backed away, sweating with fear. Helen was going to make trouble-and seeing her condition, he hated the thought of her being alone with Kathy.
"Pick me up," she commanded.
He gave her his hand and she pulled herself back to her feet. She kept his hand and asked plaintively, "What were you doing out with Kathy? Is it a standard practice to bring little girls back home? This is the second time you've done it."
He reminded her, "Helen, she's your daughter."
"My stepdaughter. Don't you dare say that a girl Kathy's age is old enough to be my daughter."
"Why not? She's almost old enough to be mine."
She thought that over for a second and tried to put her arms around him. He moved back and she gaped at him stupidly. "Why didn't you call me? I waited. God, how I waited."
"It didn't seem wise, Helen."
She sighed and leaned her head against his chest. "Do I disgust you tonight, Ben? I disgust myself. I'm drunk. I went out to find someone like you and I drank too much. Ben, don't be mad at me, please. Be kind. Love me. Take me away with you."
Argon frowned down at the top of her rich hair, knowing he didn't have much time before he was supposed to report for his tour of duty. He didn't like the idea of sending her into the house where she might make trouble for Kathy.
She was trying to work her hand inside his belt as she leaned heavily against him. "It's been so long, Ben. So long. Why didn't you call? Why didn't you let me come to you?"
He caught the hand and forced her away from him. "Helen, I want you to listen to me. Go inside the house and go right to bed and sleep it off."
She seemed to ignore his words. "I'm leaving him, Ben. I mean it. I'm leaving him. I can't go on like this. I don't even sleep with him now but I have to sleep with somebody. That's why I'm leaving him."
"You're drunk," he snapped, impatient and unnerved. "You don't know what you're saying."
She nodded jerkily. "Yes, I do. I know." She looked up at him and blinked dully. "You were with Kathy, weren't you? Why? Why Kathy, Ben? She's only a child. She doesn't know what it is to love a man. She can't do the things for you that-"
Ben slapped her. He held back most of the force but it sounded sharply and her head jerked sideways under the impact. He caught her arms to keep her from falling and held her face close to him so the words would register. "Listen to me, Helen, and listen good. It's no good for us. It would never work. It's over. Now I want you to go into the house and go to bed and so help me, if you say a word about us to Kathy, I'll ... I'll break your neck. You hear me, Helen? Stay away from the kid, understand?"
The misty eyes were wide and lucid. The tip of her tongue moved over her lips before her head moved in a short nod. "Yes, Ben, I understand. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I've been a fool. You can let me go now."
Ben Argon released her arms and watched her stagger back toward the dark house. The cold wind returned and the dark sky rumbled like an old man in the grip of obscene passion. A door opened and then closed and she was gone.
Helen was gone.
Ben Argon turned and walked away.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"What you have to keep bearing in mind, Charlie," Warren Bauer said crisply, "is that she did it. She's a slut, a whore, a clip-artist from the word go. She took this sucker up to that apartment for the express purpose of feeding him knockout drops so she could walk off with his dough. Her mistake was in letting him take too much of the stuff. It's that cut and dried, Charlie."
Charlie Aiken was confused. He stared across the desk in his study at the man he had known all his life, whom he had gone to school with and who was now mayor of this unpredictably growing community. It struck him as he studied Warren Bauer that without his realizing it, the position of mayor had grown in importance. It hadn't been that way over the years but somewhere along the line, it had changed ... just as Whitebank and the people of Whitebank had changed.
Warren Bauer had changed.
Naturally, in a small town, the citizen who accepted the honor of the poor-paying job as mayor had to have another full-time profession. Warren had been a jeweler, having inherited the business from an uncle a dozen or so years before accepting the mayoralty. The trade was not a demanding one and he'd had enough time and energy for community affairs. Charlie was only beginning to realize how much energy....
The well-dressed man seated across his desk was no longer a jeweler. He was the picture of the ambitious politician, a man with a future, a man with a goal, a man who wanted to be more than he was and confident that he would be. Yes, Warren Bauer had changed, and Charlie wasn't sure whether to be saddened or frightened.
"I really can't understand your attitude on the matter, Mayor," Charlie stated slowly, sweating, certain that this morbid conversation about the June Ryan case was only a fragment of a larger picture. "I wish you'd make your point."
Bauer's teeth clenched the cigar tightly. "Okay, Charlie, I'll spell it out for you. June Ryan is guilty. I know it, the town knows it, the whole state knows it ... and I want to be sure you know it."
Charlie was made to remember that in childhood, Warren Bauer had been a skinny boy with one annoying habit. He wanted all the kids to play only the games he was good at. He'd been a terrible baseball player but a champion at ping-pong. Charlie pushed the thought from his mind and cleared his throat. "I think you're out of order, Mayor. The trial, such as it is, is still in process. A witness vital to the girl's defense hasn't been located. The friend whose apartment she used that night. Besides, it will be up to the jury. A judge only presides, he doesn't control."
Bauer snorted derisively. "Don't tell me you believe that cock and bull story about a friend? What's the matter with you, Charlie? And forget that jury business ... a judge can steer any jury to whatever decision he wants and we both know it. Look, I'll say it again ... the girl is guilty, Charlie. You hear what I'm saying? Guilty."
Thinking of June, remembering the delight her creamy body had brought him, Charlie suffered guilt like a dozen razors scraping at his insides. Afraid that Warren.Bauer might guess at the true cause of his interest in the girl's welfare, he'd been purposefully pretending total detachment regarding her innocence or guilt. At the same time, he had to remind himself that he truly did believe she'd been framed by a group of hoodlums. What he still couldn't grasp was why Bauer was so vehement in his opinion.
"It's not right to prejudge, Mayor," he muttered tiredly, aware of the night sounds both in and out of the house, empty at this time except for Warren and himself. Distilled sounds of occasional traffic filtered in from the outer street together with an infrequent clicking of high heels on pavement. He wondered where Helen was ... and then, where Kathy might be. Neither of them had bothered to inform him of their activities before leaving the house earlier in the evening.
"Prejudge, hell," Bauer snapped, openly impatient and aggravated. "What the devil does it take to get through to you? I've come here tonight to set you straight on this thing for your own good. I wouldn't like to see you make a mistake on anything as important as this case."
"That's precisely what I don't understand, Mayor," Charlie offered bewilderedly. "Why is it so important? Why are you so upset about it? Is it just because of the notoriety it's been receiving?" He shook his head and leaned on the desk, wanting to understand and yet, feeling as though it would be best if he didn't. "Forgive me for speaking bluntly, but why are you meddling? Actually, this is a very definite violation of ethics." He stopped short, the word shaming him into abrupt silence.
Warren Bauer chewed his cigar in silence for a moment, his flint-hard eyes never straying from Charlie's face. Then, quite deliberately, he removed the cigar and settled back in his chair. "All right, I guess I have no choice but to level with you. We're in the process of change here in Whitebank, Charlie. You must know it. And whenever there's change, people have to adapt."
"Yes, of course, but-"
"Let me finish. I've been trying for years to attract new business to Whitebank. I think I've been doing a good job. All right, that's the background. Now let's get to the matter at hand ... the June Ryan case."
Charlie felt his stomach flutter in nervous anticipation. He'd never known that Warren Bauer could speak so authoritatively, so aggressively, so purposefully. It frightened him.
Bauer flicked the ash of his cigar. "One of these new business factions is ... shall we say, somewhat involved in this case. Oh, not in any way incriminating, but simply as a most interested observer. If we're to keep this person and the organization he represents in Whitebank, we're going to have to prove that we're cooperative. Cooperative, Charlie."
"I'm afraid I'm still confused," Charlie admitted.
Bauer sighed in exasperation. "This party wants to see justice done. It's that simple. He wants the Ryan girl to be found guilty."
Charlie blinked in astonishment as a wave of understanding flooded him. Could Whitebank have changed that drastically without his realizing it? Could lifelong friends like Warren Bauer have changed along with it while he remained a prisoner to the past? Was everything in his life to be tainted? He tried to clear his head and find the words to express his resentment. "I can't believe I'm hearing you correctly, Warren," he mumbled dully. "Surely, you can't-"
Bauer rose from his chair quickly. "Come down from your ivory tower, Charlie. Open your eyes and take a good look around before it's too late. Again, I'm telling you this for your own good."
"You sound as though you're threatening me."
"Take it any way you like, Charlie," Bauer retorted, slipping into his topcoat.
"Has it ever occurred to you that this girl might be innocent?"
Bauer stopped halfway to the door. "Don't even let that possibility cross your mind, Charlie."
"I happen to believe it."
A tiny nerve in Bauer's jaw twitched. "I see. Well then, I think it would be wise for you to meet that interested party I talked of a moment ago. Perhaps he could change your mind. You can find him at The Club Nocturne. You know where that is? I'll tell him you'll be dropping by tomorrow evening. He'll be expecting you. Just ask for Marty Jex. That name mean anything to you?"
"No," Charlie replied, overwhelmed by Bauer's flat directives. "Should it mean something to me?"
Charlie Aiken watched the formidable figure of Warren Bauer pass through the heavy doors of his study. A moment later, the front door slammed shut and Charlie felt the silence of the empty house closing in on him. He felt terribly alone and terribly frightened and yet he still did not know what it was that he had to fear.
Marty Jex. The Club Nocturne. Tomorrow night. He wished Helen was home so he could talk to her about it.
He wished he didn't feel so damned alone.
Al Rudd felt as though he'd lost control of his actions. The afternoon and evening were all blurred, unreal, incredible. Things were happening too fast, strange things, exciting things, fantastic things ... and he couldn't seem to catch up with them. They were carrying him along, like a tidal wave might carry along a man, and he couldn't seem to find time to catch his breath or organize his thoughts and make himself believe that it was all really and truly happening.
He looked around the luxurious office that was located on the upper floor of The Club Nocturne and shook his head in wonderment. "You must have made some kind of a mistake, Mister Jex," he mumbled perplexedly, turning to stare at the expensively-dressed man seated behind the desk. "You must have me mixed up with somebody else. There ain't nothing I could ever do for a man like you."
"That's where you're wrong, Al," the tall man drawled, rising to come around to refill Al's glass. "A man in your position might be very helpful for me to know."
Al Rudd had a fleeting moment of suspicion. "My position?"
Jex leaned against the edge of his desk. "Let's skip that for the moment, heh? I'd like to know a little more about you. Julie told me how nice you were when she got into trouble a few months back. I'd like to figure out some way to repay you for that kindness. Goon, Al ... tell me about yourself."
The drinks were strong and the attention heady and Al felt himself falling under the spell of the man's smooth voice. There was something fishy about it but for some reason, he didn't care at that moment. So, instead of asking questions, he found himself talking eagerly and helplessly about himself as though he had not had an audience in years. Hell, it was true. Who had there ever been for him to talk to? Why not take advantage of it? Of all of it, the flattering attention, the strong drinks, the expensive cigars, all of it? He didn't care if it was all real or genuine. He didn't even care if Mister Jex was listening....
"... so that's about it," he heard himself say in conclusion. He looked down and saw that he had already finished his third drink and it struck him that he hadn't even been aware of it during his disconnected ramblings. "Nothing very interesting, I guess," he mumbled. "I mean, to a man like you."
"You're too modest, Al," Jex smiled, pushing away from the desk.
"I, eh, still don't know why you figured I could help it you....
Jex walked to a side door and opened it. "Why don't we go inside where we can be more comfortable? Besides, it wouldn't be polite of you to visit and not take time to say hello to Julie."
Al Rudd felt his pulse skip a beat as he rose. He blinked at the unsteadiness of his legs and followed Jex out of the office and into the adjoining living quarters. The room was dazzling and every bit as intoxicating as the liquor that Marty Jex had served him. There was perfume in the air and music coming out of the walls and the rug beneath his feet felt like a carpet of sponge.
Jex was standing at a portable bar, mixing two drinks. "Make yourself comfortable, Al. Julie will be out in a minute."
Al lowered himself gingerly to a plush settee. "This is all mighty rich, Mister Jex."
Jex handed him the fresh drink. "Glad you like it, Al." He turned and looked over to an arched doorway in which a golden drapery hung. "Julie?" he called. "We've got company."
Al squared his shoulders and moistened his lips in nervous anticipation. He suddenly felt hot and itchy. The sumptuous furnishings and diffused lighting and perfumed music were infiltrating his system together with the imported liquor. He fidgeted, nerves taut as he awaited Julie Miller's entrance, and finally sought to ease the tension by gulping deeply and greedily from his glass.
The drapery moved and then she was standing there, smiling across the room at him.
At him ... AlRudd ... geezuz....
He stared. It was all he could do.
"Hello, Al," she murmured, red lips glistening.
Al could feel his body reacting sharply to the very sight of the gorgeous creature who was smiling at him. The yellow hair was loose and curling at her shoulders. She was wearing golden shoes with high heels and some kind of a gown that looked as thin as a piece of colored tissue paper. He could see her magnificent legs and hips and belly button clearly outlined and her heavy breasts were pushing high and free against the wispy material. He could see everything ... everything ... Geezuz.
She was moving forward and Jex stepped to her side, slipping an arm around her narrow waist. Al watched his hand roam upward until it was cupping the jiggly fullness of one breast in an idly possessive manner. He cleared his throat and blinked as Julie wriggled pleasurably under the bold caress. "Hello, Miss Julie," he stammered.
"I'm glad you could come, Al," she purred, leaning into Jex so that his hip was rubbing against her thighs.
Al was only partially conscious of what she was saying. His eyes were magnetized by the subtle movements of the manicured fingers that toyed with the shaded point of the rounded breast. He tried to clear his head, aware that Jex was talking, talking about him....
"... telling Al that I'd like to do something for him, honey. You know, work out some sort of a business arrangement. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
The luscious blonde undulated her hips against Jex sensuously as she nodded. "I'd like that a lot."
Jex laughed softly. "I bet you wouldn't mind doing something nice for Al yourself, would you?"
There was something choking him, Al decided. He couldn't seem to breathe freely and it was making him sweat. What was Mister Jex saying? Did he mean what Al thought he meant? Was it possible that Julie Miller might consider ... no, geezuz, no ... it couldn't be ... it just couldn't be ... and yet she was smiling....
"How about it, honey? Tell the truth."
The exciting young girl giggled throatily. "Well, I always did have a weakness for older men...."
Jex eased her away from him. "Why don't you give Al a little sample of how nice you can be to a man, baby? Go on ... we're all friends...."
Al tensed, his senses whirling crazily, as Julie swayed nearer to the settee. He heard himself laugh, a nervous cackle, as she slid down on the cushion beside him. He found himself shivering as he breathed in her perfume and stared in fascination at the smiling wet mouth and gleaming green eyes. The dark tips of the incredible breasts were almost scraping him as she leaned forward.
"Don't be shy," she whispered, breathing into his face.
Al threw a frightened glance at Jex. "You sure you don't-"
Jex waved aside his words. "Relax, Al."
There was a sudden sensation and Al jerked as it sliced through his body. He managed to keep from dropping his glass as he caught his breath and went taut under the bold movements of her hand. Then her wonderful mouth was at his ear, tickling and teasing and titillating him. He could feel the pressure of her breasts, rubbing, pushing. The perfume seemed to be drowning him. She continued to fondle him and his shivering became a shuddering and he couldn't believe that she was doing what she was doing to him right out in the open that way.
Then she was falling backwards on the cushions and pulling him after her. Al looked frantically at Jex but the slender man only smiled and sipped casually at his drink. Julie was undulating again and the thin gown was parting and her golden body was blinding him. He stared at her, entranced as much with the whole shocking situation as he was with the artful manipulations of her warm and brazen hands.
"Go on, Al," a masculine voice coaxed. "Help yourself."
He felt his glass being taken away and Julie's hands tugging at him and he feared that his heart was about to burst apart with the excitement that throbbed within him. She was pushing one pink-tipped breast up at him and guiding his head toward it and then he was possessing it and tasting it and feeding upon it like a starving man.
Who'd believe it, he thought wildly, deliriously. Who in hell would ever believe it? Him, old Al Rudd ... with a girl like Julie Miller. And she was loving it, every second of it, almost as much as him. She was tossing and turning and moaning and groaning like a backwoods bitch in heat. And her hands never stopped moving on him, never once, like he was the first man she had ever touched. They were driving him crazy, making him forget what he was doing and what he was saying. She was so damned hot, so damned soft, so damned sweet ... almost rabbit-soft in places, sugar-sweet in places, velvet-smooth in places ... and she was letting him know every one of the places.
Suddenly Jex was close to him, too close to him, distracting and disturbing his concentration. "You like that, don't you, Al? I don't blame you. Julie's quite a girl once she gets started. All I have to do is give her the word and she'll really let loose. You hear me, Al? She does what I tell her. Anything I tell her."
Al groaned, every nerve in his body protesting the interruption and the strong hands that were holding him apart from the golden-skinned girl who lay sprawled and wanton beneath him.
"All I have to do is give her the word and she'll be nice to you, Al," Jex continued, his voice low but firm. "She'll give you a night that you'll never forget."
"Oh, geezuz...." Al panted, quaking as her fingertips trailed away from him.
"Here," Jex stated sharply, "finish your drink, buddy. Cool off for a minute."
Al felt the glass being shoved into his hand and a sick despair swept through him as he saw Julie roll off the couch and rise to her feet and smooth the parted folds of her thin wrapper. He drank greedily, hoping to quench the fire that raged within him, unable to tear his eyes from the lusciousness that continued to peek out at him from beneath the gown. The drink helped a little and he drew a steadying breath. "What do you want from me?" he croaked, his hands trembling.
Jex laughed coldly. "I figured you'd get the message, Al. It's really very simple. You're in a key spot, a spot where you can do me some good. You do me a favor and I'll do you one. I can make you a happy man, Al. A very happy man. Julie, here, is only part of it."
Al stared up at the golden girl who was patting at her blonde hair and watching their conversation with only partial interest. "Just tell me what you want."
"Judge Aiken's personal and confidential files, Al, that's all."
"Charlie Aiken?"
"That's right, Al. You get them and bring them to me tomorrow and then...." Jex stopped and nodded toward Julie.
Al Rudd felt sick to his stomach. Julie was smiling down at him again. Jex was watching him carefully. Something in the back of his head was telling him to jump up and run out of the room as fast as his two legs could carry him but the voice wasn't loud enough to command obedience. He sat on the settee, vaguely aware of his own partial nakedness, and thought only of the sweet flesh and velvet-soft hands and white-hot lips.
"Tomorrow, Al," Jex repeated flatly. "It's got to be tomorrow."
Al saw a look exchanged between Jex and Julie. She turned and walked back toward the draped doorway. Halfway there, the flimsy gown floated down her body and fell to the floor and she was naked except for her high-heeled shoes and her fine-skinned buttocks were gleaming enticingly in the soft light. Then, at the door, she turned and smiled, the twin tips of her breasts jutting out toward him.
"Come back soon, Al," she cooed.
Then she was gone.
"How about it, Rudd?" Jex asked sharply. "We got a deal?
Al struggled to find his voice. "Anything," he answered hoarsely. "Anything you say. Anything at all."
Jex smiled and walked to the bar. "How about a nightcap, old buddy?"
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
She came out of the bathroom, her supple and lovely body outlined by the light, her golden hair a halo framing her shadowed face. Ben Argon reached out to crush the butt of his cigarette in the tray on the night table as he watched her moving toward him in slow, shy steps. It was that moment of day when dusk and dark were mingling and the blinds of his window were slanted just enough to allow grayish rays of dimming light to penetrate the drabness of his room. As a result, the sight of her in the half-darkness was dream-like.
"Was I long?" she whispered, kneeling on the side of the bed, the tips of her young breasts jiggling with the movement.
"Much too long," he murmured, aching with want and love.
She caressed his bare chest, as though memorizing the lines of his powerful body. "I'm cold."
Ben drew her down to him and kissed her parted lips fiercely, giving vent to the emotions within him. She clung happily and he could feel prolonged tremors rippling through her nakedness. It was as if she was seeking to draw warmth from him with her mouth and body. And when he eased his lips free to breathe, her face nuzzled and burrowed into the side of his neck as if in an attempt to get even closer to him.
"You feel so good," she sighed, covering his bigness with her slender figure and curling her arms around his neck. "So strong."
Argon kissed the fragrant hair and stroked the fine slope of her silken back and felt her relax. "I love you," he said simply, wanting to say it at that moment.
Kathy moaned happily and writhed so that she could capture his mouth again. It was almost as though she was trying to pour herself into him between his lips and her tongue caressed him with an ardor that belonged to an older woman. A wiser woman.
Ben held back his hunger, the same old guilt returning to torment him. He eased her to one side easily and cradled her in his arms as he adjusted the pillow beneath her blonde hair. "Let's talk a while," he mumbled stiffly, not wanting to take her until he was somewhat cleansed of worry and misgiving. "Did you have any trouble getting away this afternoon?" She snuggled close. "No...."
"Has your stepmother said anything to you?"
"Helen? What do you mean?" He hid his relief. "Nothing. I just wondered what you told her when you left ... where you were going ... you know."
Kathy toyed with the curling hair on his chest. "She seemed glad to see me go. As a matter-of-fact, she hasn't spoken to me at all the last few days. She's ... she's been drinking a lot." Kathy sighed and rolled over to lay on her back. "Let's forget my family, Ben. Let's forget everybody except ourselves."
Argon ran his palm across the tight skin of her flat belly and enjoyed the way she reacted to his touch. "Was your father home when you left?"
"He was going out. A business appointment, I think. Why?"
"Do you love him very much?"
Kathy's head turned so she could look into his eyes. "I suppose so. What's this all about, Ben? You look so ... serious. You're not still feeling guilty about me, are you? Because I'm so young?"
Ben shook his head. "It isn't that, Kathy. It's something else. I think your father is in trouble."
"Oh?"
"Big trouble."
"Does it involve you?"
Argon reached for a fresh cigarette. "It might," he murmured, flicking a match into flame.
Kathy studied him a moment. "I think I understand. It's police business, isn't it?"
"If I'm right about ... about my suspicions," Ben answered, looking into her worried eyes. "I could turn my back on it, I guess."
The young girl moved her blonde head in a vague manner before responding in a soft whisper. "No ... no, not you. You'd never be able to do that and I wouldn't expect it of you."
Argon stared at her. "You sure, Kathy? You mean it?"
She put her small arms around him and placed her head on his chest. "Yes, Ben, I mean it. You do whatever you must do. I love my father but ... but I love you much more and I wouldn't want anything to spoil what ... what we have." She was quiet for a moment, her naked body still under the gentle caress of his hand. "Now I know what's been bothering you whenever we've been together. I'm almost glad it's because of my father ... I thought it was me...."
"Never you," Ben muttered, losing himself in the soft texture of the golden hair. "Never."
"Tell me again, Ben."
"I love you."
"Really? Enough to marry me? You don't have to, you know. I don't care. I want to be your wife more than anything I've ever wanted in my life but I wouldn't care just as long as I could be with you this way."
"I'm going to marry you."
She stirred, kissing his throat. "When, Ben? When?"
"Soon."
She rose on her elbows and smiled. "Do you think you'll ever get tired of me? I mean, after a while?"
Argon grinned, aware that she was deliberately putting an end to the sobriety of their conversation and grateful to her for not having asked any questions about her father. "Probably...."
She scowled cutely. "That's what you think. I won't let you get tired of me. I'll see to it."
"Oh?"
She rose higher, her youthful body gleaming. "Don't you think I'm capable of it? Want me to prove it to you?"
"A good cop always demands proof."
She laughed and brushed her loose hair away from her radiant face. "All right, officer, you asked for it."
Argon blinked in honest surprise as the warm lips and moist tongue commenced a rapid-fire assault on his body. He heard her giggle muffledly as he caught his breath and sought to check the hot darting kisses that traveled wildly over his chest and stomach and thighs. "Where the hell did you learn to kiss like that?" he muttered gruffly, catching hold of her hair and pulling her mouth away from his aroused body. "And I want the truth, dammit."
Kathy laughed teasingly. "I'll tell you after we're married. Now be quiet and let me prove what a wonderful wife I'm going to be."
Her kisses came again, passionately alive, breaking through his resolution. Desire leaped within him and he muffled a groan as she greeted it with panting desperation and eagerness. The awkwardness of her lovemaking betrayed that she had already consumed the sketchily-superficial amount of experience she had put so brazenly on display for him but the unadorned and artless passion of her feverish love was doubly exciting.
"Come up here, you little minx," he growled, lifting her squirming body effortlessly in his arms.
She cried out with savage delight as he took possession of her and her supple body quaked in rhythmic convulsions of ecstatic completion before finally going limp. "Oh, Ben ... Ben , . ." she sighed heavily, beside him, one arm across his chest and her cheek against his shoulder. "Will it always be this way for us? Tell me it will be, Ben. Forever and ever and ever. Tell me, Ben."
"Always, baby," he whispered, holding her close, feeling the strange reverence that always seemed to come to him whenever she was near.
She closed her eyes and he watched her drift into a sated sleep. The room was faintly cold and he kept her warm with his body. The shadows gave a subtle magic to the sweet lines of her legs and hips. Her virginal and pointed breasts rose and fell in a gentle rhythm, accompanying the soft sound of her breathing. The blonde hair veiled her flushed and pretty face and her lips were parted and glistening.
Ben Argon had not known that anything could be so beautiful, that anything so beautiful could be so close to him, a part of him. He had never known that he could feel such love, such possessiveness, such contentment. He could not allow anything to taint the wonder of what he had discovered. He could not allow the corruption of others to mar the purity of the love this young girl had brought to him.
It was at that moment that Ben Argon decided to turn his back on the sins of Charlie Aiken. And, because one decision could not be separated from the other, it was at that moment that he made up his mind to marry Kathy and take her to start life anew in some other part of the state.
She'd made the telephone call the minute she realized that both Kathy and Charlie planned to be out of the house all evening. It had been a dangerous thing to do but she'd been drunk and the inner unrest had nagged until she'd been left with no choice. An hour had passed since she'd completed the call and hung up the receiver and she'd spent the long minutes drinking heavily and thinking morosely about her life, both past and present and future.
Ben and Kathy....
Helen and Charlie....
No, it wouldn't work that way.
Helen heard the knock on the back door and managed to push up from the couch without falling. She steadied herself and walked toward the kitchen, the liquor sloshing over the rim of the glass as she attempted to drink from it enroute. She stumbled and spilled a portion of the drink on the front of her robe. Brushing at the wetness and trying to clear the cobwebs from her brain, she reached the kitchen door and unlocked it.
There were three men standing in the outer darkness.
Helen squinted at them. "What is this?"
The only familiar face grinned. "I brought along a couple of buddies of mine, sweetie. I figured you wouldn't mind. They're real great guys, I swear. C'mon, let us inside."
Helen shook her head dully, sensing that she'd gone too far. "No ... no, not them ... just you...."
The one closest pushed by her and the other two followed.
"Wait," she mumbled, holding onto the door for support. "You can't come in here like this. It's not right for you to-"
The three of them laughed and ignored her. One of them moved her away from the door and closed it. Another went to the refrigerator and took out some cans of beer. She tried to speak to the one she had called, the one she had met that afternoon at the gas station, the one she had permitted to put his dirt-caked hands on her body. She tried to tell him he had gone too far in bringing his two friends but the words came out all jumbled and incoherent.
They were laughing again. "Ain't that something?" the mechanic chortled, his arm around her waist. "She forgot my name already. She invites me up here to have myself a ball and she don't even remember my name. Didn't I tell you she was a real swinger?"
Helen felt herself being ushered through the house by the three strangers. They kept her from falling and their hands were moving on her body and her dizziness was increasing. She thought of Ben Argon and of his huge hands and of how they could make her feel. Then she was drinking again and on the couch and they were taking the robe off her and her breasts felt heavy and swollen. She wondered where Charlie was and why he'd been so upset and nervous and mysterious that evening before leaving the house and taking the car. She felt someone kissing her and she tasted beer and garlic and hands were pushing her backwards to the cushions and she wondered if Charlie was meeting a woman somewhere.
Then she was being loved and there was no time for thought of Charlie or Kathy ... but only of Ben....
The man above her grunted annoyedly. "Tommy, sweetie, remember? Tommy ... not Ben...."
One of the other two who sat watching laughed. "Hell, what's in a name, huh?"
The other chuckled. "Maybe she calls everybody Ben?" he offered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Besides ... the way she moves, she can call me anything she damn likes."
Helen Aiken turned her face away from the sound of their crude voices and deeper into the enfolding softness of the cushions as her love-starved body continued to seek out its own appeasement there in the living room of the quiet house. She was glad she was drunk. She was glad she had found the strength to violate all that she'd always held sacred in her marriage. She was glad there were three men and not one. It would make her sin all the more unforgivable. It would insure the destruction of her marriage.
The heat began to suffuse her and she moaned hungrily.
"You can never tell about these rich ones, can you?"
"Geez, I ain't never seen a broad so wild."
"Hey, Tommy, save a little for us, huh?"
"Man, just look at her go!"
Come home, Charlie, she thought fleetingly, hazily. Hurry home, Charlie. Come home soon so you can see what you've done to me. Come and watch me destroy myself, Charlie. See the truth and then set me free. I haven't the courage to do it myself, Charlie. You have to be the one to break the chains that are pulling us both down into the dark waters. Hurry home, Charlie!
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Charles Aiken followed a beefy hoodlum-type the length of the nightclub to a stairway leading to an upper floor. They came to a stop before a paneled door and waited for a response to the hoodlum's discreet knock. A voice sounded and Charlie walked by the bruiser into an informal but tastefully furnished office.
The man seated behind the desk looked almost boyish in his slenderness. As Charlie drew closer however, he was forced to alter that initial impression. Marty Jex was not slender, he was lean ... the way a jungle cat was lean. The nerveless demeanor of the handsome stranger put Charlie on edge and made him feel suddenly ill-equipped to handle whatever was to transpire between them.
"Sit down, Judge Aiken," Jex said softly, his voice holding the residual inflections of a dozen cities. "My name is Jex, Marty Jex, as you probably already know. I understand Mayor Bauer gave you some idea of who I am and why I wanted to see you."
Charlie sat in the chair facing the desk. "I gathered that it has something to do with the June Ryan case."
Jex smiled thinly. "That's part of it, Judge. How's the trial going anyhow? Do you think we'll have any trouble getting the right verdict from the jury?"
Charlie stiffened resentfully. "I'm not at liberty to-"
"Never mind the ethics routine, Aiken," Jex snapped harshly, the cold smile disappearing with frightening suddenness. "I want answers to my questions, understand?"
The menacing and cat-like assurance of the man behind the desk stripped Charlie of his composure for the moment. He felt obliged to submit to Jex's arrogant commands even though he still did not know what he had to fear from the man. "All right," he mumbled confusedly, "I'll answer your question. I have reason to believe that the girl is innocent of the charge. Now, may I ask what business all this is of yours, Mister Jex?"
"It's very much my business, Judge," Jex drawled easily, his voice soft and lulling again. "Anything that happens in Whitebank is my business. I'm taking over this town."
Charlie was not sure he'd heard right and yet, for some unknown reason, he did not feel totally surprised. "Taking over?"
Jex nodded. "That's right. The town ... and everyone in it. That includes you, Judge Aiken. As of right now, you're working for me." Charlie started to rise from the chair but a curt gesture by Jex froze him. Jex stared fixedly at him over the desk. "Let's not waste time, Aiken. I had Bauer put you on this case so I could be sure June Ryan would be sent away for a stretch. And that's exactly what's going to happen, understand?"
A wave of despair swept through Charlie as he slumped down in the chair. It all fit, it all made sense. Mayor Bauer's attitude, the changing scene in White-bank, the steamroller tactics in the Ryan case. Jex was a racketeer and Whitebank was slated to be corrupted. It made him feel sick and helpless to think about it and yet the truth of it was sitting across a desk from him. He could feel what little honor and courage he still possessed seeping out of him and being replaced with a tremendous bleakness of spirit.
Jex lifted a familiar manila envelope and opened it. "I've been studying your private files, Judge Aiken. They're very interesting, to say the least." He paused to look up and smile affably. "I thought it might be worth the trouble after what Julie Miller told me about you. You remember Julie, don't you, Judge? The young dancer who appeared before you on a marijuana charge some time ago?"
Charlie stared at the floor. "Yes ... yes, I remember...."
"I thought you might," Jex drawled cynically. "She's willing to sign a sworn affidavit as to the reason you had for letting her off the hook. After checking through these records, I have a hunch I could come up with another situation just like Julie's. Let's see now ... what was that name again? Oh, yes, Missus Rita Grimek. A hit-and-run case, wasn't it? Shall I go on, Judge?"
Charlie felt a strange satisfaction, a perverse relief, in accepting the fact that the time had come to pay penance for his sins. "No ... it won't be necessary," he answered emptily. "What do you want me to do?"
Jex leaned back and tossed the folder to one side.
"It's not much, Judge. I want June Ryan sent up on at least a manslaughter charge, something that will put her away for a long time. I want you to see that I'm not disappointed. Is that clear?"
Charlie thought of the sweet-bodied young redhead and the moments he had spent with her in his office. Nausea rippled through his body and he realized that his face had broken out in a clammy perspiration. "Why?" he asked dully. "Why do you want to punish this girl? What has she done to you?"
The darkly handsome racketeer shrugged indifferently. "I never laid eyes on the kid before the trial, believe it or not. She's what you might call ... kind of a symbol. You see, Judge, we're just getting our organization rolling here in Whitebank and we've got to get started on the right foot. We've got to set an example to keep the other girls in line ... make them know what will happen to them if they don't do what they're told to do. This Ryan kid bucked us and we just can't let that sort of thing happen."
Charlie nodded. "I see."
Jex rose and walked around the desk. "It was nice meeting you, Judge Aiken. I'm sure we'll get along just fine now that we've had this little talk. Give my regards to your wife and daughter, heh?"
Charlie recognized the threat in the pleasantly voiced request. He wanted to hit the smirking face, to shatter the smug composure, to give vent to his self-disgust and despair ... but instead, he only rose and allowed Jex to usher him to the door.
"Remember what I said, Judge," Jex intoned flatly. "I don't want to be disappointed."
Charlie Aiken stumbled out of the office, down the stairs and through the noise and confusion of the nightclub into the hostile darkness of the night. He was not totally conscious of sliding behind the wheel of his car nor of starting it and swinging out to the highway. His mind refused to function, his brain refused to focus.
He rolled down the window and let the air flow against his moist face. A measure of clarity returned and he blinked, straining toward some purposeful measure of concentration. One fact stood out above all others. He had to send an innocent girl to prison. If he refused, if he exposed the cruel scheme behind the false charge, his own crimes would be exposed to the world. This was to be his punishment for the sins of the flesh he had committed.
Helen would learn of them. Kathy, his daughter. All of Whitebank. Relatives, friends, acquaintances, associates. Everyone.
He drove steadily, heading homeward, not knowing why or what was drawing him there. How could he send such a young and vibrant and undeserving creature to jail? How could he learn to live with himself thereafter? Wouldn't it be better to sacrifice himself in one glorious act of defiance? Might not that cleanse him of his transgressions and provide him the opportunity to start life anew with a clear conscience?
And by doing so, wouldn't everyone look upon him with less disfavor since his act might also cleanse Whitebank of corruption? No, it was cowardly of him to entertain such qualifying thoughts. He must bear the burden of his guilt in its entirety. But what of Helen and Kathy? Was it fair of him to expect them to shoulder some of the shame and disgrace as well?
No, he could not compound his sins.
It was enough that he be damned.
No matter what was to come, he must somehow spare Helen and Kathy.
They were all he had left. All he had to support him in the guilt-ridden years to come. They would be his haven, his momentary escape, his justification for doing what he was told and when he was told. As long as he had them, he could sustain himself.
He pulled the car into the driveway of his home and extinguished the headlights and motor. He sat quietly a moment, staring at the lighted living room windows and their protective drapes. Helen was home, he thought. Waiting for him. How would he find the strength to face her and hide the agony that churned within him? He must hide it from her, from Kathy, if he was to keep them ... keep their respect and loyalty. They must never know how unworthy he was of their love. Never.
Charlie climbed tiredly from the car, feeling old and weary and chilled by the night air. The front door was locked and he fumbled for his keys and when the door swung inward, he was startled by the unexpected sound of male laughter coming from the living room. He put aside his things on the foyer table, wondering if Kathy was entertaining a beau or if Helen had invited some of her charity board associates over for an informal meeting.
The laughter was strangely coarse.
Charlie walked to the entrance of the living room and looked inside. At first, he didn't recognize his wife as the naked woman on the floor. It was simply and starkly a naked woman, perversely engaged with two naked men simultaneously. The shocking tableau numbed his brain and froze his senses and only after the passage of a few seconds did he realize that the two grunting men on the floor were strangers and that still a third stranger was the man who was issuing the coarse laughter from a point just behind the straining and sweating trio on the floor.
The sudden spurt of outrage and indignation was choked high in his throat when the meshed bodies altered their position in a show of savage and bestial passion. Charlie's intended cry of anger was transformed into a broken whimper of sick recognition as Helen's flushed and contorted face turned toward him. The impact of her wanton expression was no less crushing than the wild fervor of her sweat-covered body and Charlie's vision blurred as his whimpering moan gained in texture.
Heads turned toward the sound and Helen's eyes focused.
Charlie could not speak.
"Hello, Charlie...." she laughed, her voice thick with lust and liquor. "Welcome home."
Then she was moving again, forcing her companions to turn their attentions back to her. The third man walked forward and held out a punctured can of beer. "Here, Charlie, join the party. The more the merrier, I always say."
Charles Aiken turned and plunged out of the house.
The car motor responded to his frantic efforts and in a few moments he was speeding away from the laughter, away from the ugliness, away from White-bank and all that Whitebank had come to represent for him. He was aware that he was crying and that he had no destination and that he was in no condition to be heading north on the upstate highway at so fast a pace. He was aware of all this and yet he didn't care.
He was beyond caring. He was beyond thinking. Everything was pressing down on him, crushing him, pulverizing his capacity for caring and thinking and feeling. It was easier to exist in a vacuum, to act without awareness, to avoid recognition of all the worldly evil that surrounded him. And so he drove thoughtlessly, hour after hour, until the night approached dawn....
He found himself seated at a rickety table in the rear of a roadhouse that had sawdust on the floor. He knew he was terribly drunk but he could not recall having had a drink. He knew that he was a homeless man and that he once had a name. Whatever else happened, no matter what the provocation, he sensed that he must not allow himself to remember his name ... for there was something terrible in it. He felt safe in his ignorance and he nurtured it.
He looked around and wondered how long he had been there and when he turned his head toward the door, he saw through the dust and grime that it was daylight. A man came to stand at the side of the table and stare down at him. "I have no more money," he heard himself saying. "I spent it all."
Hands lifted and propelled him into what seemed to be a side alley. He fell and struck his head on the brick wall. The pain came and then faded and he lay still. A few feet away a dog sniffed at an overturned garbage pail. Near the mouth of the alley, another figure lay slumped against the wall with newspapers covering its legs for warmth. He closed his eyes and tried to escape again in sleep.
Something disturbed him and he saw that he was being carried to a police wagon by two uniformed men. He sat on a wooden bench and bounced as the wagon rumbled through strange streets and he wondered how he could know that they were not familiar streets.
A little later, he heard the reverberating clang of a cell door with a knowledge that he had heard just such a sound somewhere in his past. He sat down in a corner and put his head in his hands, trying desperately out of the same unknown fear not to remember anything of his past.
"Hey, you!"
He looked up and blinked at the uniformed man standing on the other side of the bars. "Me?"
"Haven't I seen you somewhere before? What's your name?"
"I'm no one," he insisted, his head aching. "I have no name."
The officer grunted and walked away.
A shabby man nearby cackled. "I guess you told him."
He turned to look at the toothless creature. "Where am I?"
"In the drunk tank, buddy. Don't worry, you'll get used to it. It ain't so bad. They'll be bringing us some balogna sandwiches pretty soon."
He nodded and put his head back in his hands and closed his eyes. He slept but only for a short while. He was being lifted again and guided through the maze of bodies sprawled on the floor of the huge cage. The smell of decay was strong and he felt a terrible need for a drink of cold water. "In here, Judge Aiken."
He entered the office and sat down in the wooden chair and looked around at the faces that stared so soberly at him. "What name did you call me?"
"Aiken," the oldest appearing man answered softly. "Judge Charles Aiken of Whitebank."
He shook his head firmly. "That's wrong. Judge Charles Aiken is dead. He killed himself. I read about it in the newspaper."
The men looked at one another and then back at him.
He wet his lips and cleared his throat. "Can I have a glass of water, please?"
Someone handed him a glass and he drank greedily. He felt his stomach convulse and pain shoot through his body, but the water was cold and comforting to his parched throat. "It's true," he mumbled, wanting to repay them for their kindness by ending their confusion. "It was all in the newspapers. Big scandal. Didn't you read about it? Judge Aiken is dead. Killed himself. They tried to make him send an innocent girl to prison. They knew the terrible things he did with the young women who came before him in court. He killed himself so his wife and daughter wouldn't find out. They loved him very much, you know. His wife and his daughter. It was in the newspaper. Marty Jex and Julie Miller and Mayor Bauer and Rita Grimek and June Ryan and ... and all of them. It was in the newspaper." He stopped, exhausted by his speech, disturbed that they were still staring at him in sober confusion. "Charlie Aiken is dead," he repeated tiredly, covering his face with his hands. "Charlie Aiken killed himself."
He heard someone say something about telephoning the Governor.
Then they were taking him out of the room. He hoped they would bring him somewhere nearby. He was tired. He wanted to find a corner where he could sit and sleep. A corner all his own.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"Rough one, huh, Ben?"
"You know it, buddy. See you tomorrow."
"Right."
Argon waved farewell to his partner and climbed into his parked car. He was wet with perspiration and the inside of the car only served to aggravate his condition. The town of Whitebank was being broiled by a merciless midsummer heat wave, a fact proven by Argon's tour of duty report sheet. Since morning, he'd been in on two heat prostration cases, a near-drowning at the river, an indignant complaint regarding the indecent exposure of a female neighbor in her backyard and a daylight theft of an air-conditioning unit from the second floor office of a leading insurance agency.
Like old days, Argon thought, grinning despite his exhaustion and discomfort. Things back to normal, thanks to the bombshell Judge Charles Aiken had so unknowingly exploded when arrested as a vagrant up in the state capital.
As he cruised the near-deserted and parched streets, he could see the change in Whitebank. Almost overnight, the town had reverted to the Whitebank he'd known and loved all his life. The local taverns were enjoying an unusual run of business as the lagging residents sought to escape the blistering rays of the sun and sizzling humidity of the asphalt streets within the cool atmosphere of refrigerated air. It gave Argon a good and comfortable feeling to know that those taverns were no longer being controlled by men like Marty Jex. When a Whitebank man walked into a bar, he didn't have to be afraid of being hustled by the bartender or a B-girl or some rigged pinball machine. The town was clean again, thanks to the incoherent ramblings of a confused and tormented old man, and Argon felt a certain responsibility to keep it clean.
Someone had to do the job. That's what Kathy had told him when he broached the subject of staying on in Whitebank to her. The State Crime Commission had exposed the graft and the Attorney General's office had destroyed the Jex-Bauer combine with a swift stroke of justice. It was then left up to the citizens of the town, to Ben and others like him, to see that the same sort of corruption never again took root in Whitebank.
He steered the car up the familiar street, listening to the announcer on the car radio sadly state that no relief from the oppressive heat seemed to be in sight for their section of the state. As he parked and climbed wearily out of the front seat, Ben thought of his vacation and wondered if he ought to take it early. It would be nice taking Kathy up to the mountain district for a couple of weeks.
The apartment was cool and quiet and empty and Argon closed the door behind him with a frown, realizing that Kathy's absence meant she'd missed the early bus back from the sanitarium. He set the extra fan in motion and undressed slowly, peeling off the soggy uniform before padding into the kitchen and opening the refrigerator door. There was a scribbled note lying atop the stacked beer cans and he chuckled as he read the hurried warning that he was not to have more than two beers before dinner. He punctured one and tilted it greedily to his mouth as he headed for the shower.
The trip to the mountains lingered in his thoughts as he stepped under the icy spray. It could be sort of a honeymoon, a delayed honeymoon, the one they hadn't had time for when all the trouble exploded up in the capital and swiftly thereafter, in Whitebank. The news of her father's mental breakdown had shaken Kathy badly and the ensuing scandal, exposing Jex and Bauer and the railroading job on the Ryan girl, almost broke the kid's heart. It hadn't been the right time for a honeymoon, at any rate. It still astonished him that Kathy had agreed to marry him what with all the ugliness that suddenly came down around her young shoulders. He liked to think that it was their marriage that had given her the guts to stand up under all the emotional punishment she'd been forced to absorb as each sordid detail of her father's indiscretions came to light during the Crime Commission hearings.
Yeah, it was a good idea, he decided. He'd see what he could do down at headquarters about pushing his vacation up a month or so. He'd keep it a secret and then surprise Kathy when he was positive it was all set.
Chilled but revitalized by the shower, Argon was in the process of towelling his rugged frame when he heard the front door of the apartment open and close. He wrapped the damp towel around his waist, knotted it, and walked out into the living room where Kathy was setting down a bag of groceries on the table.
Something caught in his throat at the sight of her, just as it always did whenever freshly exposed to the blonde prettiness of her after a relative time of separation. She looked a bit bedraggled, her curls wilted, her frock stained by patches of perspiration, and yet at the same time, she looked beautiful to him. She turned and smiled at the sight of his hairy and wet body ludicrously and ineffectually clothed by the towel. Ben grinned and shrugged. "Okay, so I don't look good in a bikini."
"You look like a caveman."
"Is that bad?"
"Not to a girl who happens to have a weakness for the caveman type," Kathy laughed, rising up on her toes to kiss his lips as he moved to her.
Ben held her narrow waist lightly. "How'd it go today?"
The smile faded. "The same as always."
He carried the groceries into the kitchen, following her, knowing that the passage of time had done little to lessen the grief of her father's infirmity. "Did he know you?"
Kathy sighed wearily. "No, not really. He's accepted the fact that I'm his daughter but he doesn't really remember me."
Argon helped stack the dry goods in the cabinet. "The doctor said it would take time, Kathy."
"I know," she answered, leaning back against the edge of the table and brushing her hair away from her moist forehead. "I talked with him again today. He explained that the breakdown had been coming for some time. He seems to think it could account for ... well, for some of the things father did during the past year. You know, those women ... all of that business. Maybe he was only trying to make me feel better though...."
Ben was touched by how small and vulnerable and hurt his young wife looked at the moment. Cradling her in his strong arms, he stroked her silken hair gently. "He wouldn't say it if he didn't mean it, Kathy. Besides, it's better to believe it." He felt her relax slightly and lean more into him and the towel offered little protection against the soft warmth and yielding curves of her wondrous body. "Come on now, let's see a smile, huh?"
Kathy kissed his chest and tilted back her head, showing him the brilliance of her smile. "Better?"
"Much better."
She eased away from him and caught his hand, pulling him after her as she led the way into the bedroom. "Oh, by the way, I had company coming home on the bus. Mister Rudd went up to see father again this afternoon. You know, the fellow who used to be father's bailiff?"
Argon sat down on the edge of the bed and opened his second beer as Kathy moved to undress. "I never figured him to be such a close friend of your father's. I guess you can't tell about people though."
Kathy's voice suddenly took on a hardness as she answered, her back to him and her summery frock slipping down her slender body. "Helen's a perfect example of that, I'd say."
Ben stiffened. Despite all that had transpired since their marriage, he could still not suppress a twinge of guilt whenever Helen Aiken's name was mentioned. "Still no word from her?" he asked quietly.
Kathy crossed the room in her bra and half-slip to toss the soiled dress atop a chair. "Nothing. Not a word ever since she left Whitebank. You'd think she'd at least keep in touch with the sanitarium to know how he was doing. Well, maybe it's all for the best. Father wouldn't remember her anyhow." The young girl removed the pins from her thick hair. "I hope she's happy, wherever she is."
Ben put aside the beer can and lit a cigarette, easing his heavy bulk full-length on the bed. "Don't be too hard on her, Kathy. It was just as rough on her as it was on the rest of us. She was a pretty unhappy woman even before all the trouble. She deserves a chance to...." He stopped, fearful that he might sound overly-defensive of the woman who had once slept in his bed and who had once begged him to rescue her from a life of frustration and misery. "Hell, let's forget about her, huh?"
Kathy stood a few feet from the bed, unhooking the clasp of her brassiere, her golden hair tumbling to her bare shoulders. "Agreed," she smiled. "No more serious talk. What would you like to have for dinner, husband dear?"
Argon gazed adoringly at the sweetly formed and finely tipped breasts that became exposed to him. "Dinner can wait," he mumbled, lifting a hand toward her.
She smiled impishly. "I'm all grimy. I have to take a shower and we have to have dinner."
"I like you best when you're slippery. Come here."
"You're even beginning to talk like a caveman."
"Stop teasing me, damn you."
"My, but you're in a lecherous mood."
Argon grinned, enjoying the byplay, feeling his desire for her mounting as they played the word game. "I'm always in a lecherous mood when you walk around half naked."
She laughed and hooked her fingers in the elastic of the half-slip. "Then I guess I'd better do something about being half naked, huh?" The fingers peeled the slip and hidden panties down her body as one. She stepped out of their circle daintily, a mischievous sparkle in her eyes, the points of her swaying breasts already rising with awareness. "There, is that any better?"
Argon could feel his blood heating and his body tingling as he stared at her lovely legs and flaring hips and tiny waist and upturned breasts. It didn't seem possible that she was his wife, that so many hours of passion had passed between them since that first day he'd brought her back to his apartment. She was no less desirable, no less new, no less appealing, no less....
Kathy's giggle interrupted his thoughts. There was a definite wickedness to it and he realized immediately the cause of her amusement. Scowling at her boldness, he tugged at the damp towel knotted at his hip and made a menacing movement toward her. "Okay, you brat, you asked for it."
Kathy squealed and dodged his outstretched hand. "Why, Officer Argon, I never dreamed you were the shy type," she laughed, snatching at the towel adeptly and yanking it free of his body.
He grabbed her and pulled her down on the bed, the initial contact with the warmth of her flesh sending currents of pleasure coursing through his body. She struggled playfully at first as he sought to pinion her to the pillows but then, her smile fading and her eyes clouding, her tiny arms curled tightly around his neck and pulled his mouth down hard on her own.
The single kiss was enough to bring them both to a pitch of instant passion and Ben felt his body quivering with a need that never seemed to lessen no matter how often they were together. He kissed her breasts and the smooth flesh of her taut belly and ran his big hands over the wondrous curves of her ever-moving buttocks. She whimpered happily and arched beneath him in a constant show of want and impatience.
"Ben ... Ben...."
He caught his breath. "Wait."
"Wait?"
He rose and stepped to the window nearest the bed to draw the blinds. "This is a nice little town, remember. We don't want to shock the good citizens."
Kathy laughed merrily and embraced him joyously as he returned to her. "I hate to say this, you big lummox, but there is a limit to civic duty, you know. Now stop worrying about the morals of your precious town and start worrying about the morals of your sex-crazed wife."
"Yes, ma'am," Ben murmured muffledly, losing himself in the sweet tasting and sweet smelling softness. "Right away, ma'am...."
