Unbridled lust is the only law of the juvie jungles, where the toughest Stud rules his gang and harem until a tougher stud turns him chicken. Into such a torrid slum arena came Noelle Crane, virgin and desperate, a girl on the prowl for passions she hated, forgetfulness from the sordid life her parents had made for her. For she had come from a sick world of wild orgies in the plush mansion she lived in on the hill. And now she wanted to escape, run wild into the darkness of the juvie flesh-jungles. But she was shocked at what she found, and repelled by what was demanded of her. And yet she could not escape, for she had joined them and her body was forfeit. But if it had only been her body, only the innocence that was torn from her ... Yet it wasn't, for in this cesspool of sin she was thrown into a vortex of shame, with degradation her clothing, despair her cry.
CHAPTER ONE
At approximately nine-thirty on a Friday night in May a grey 1955 Plymouth drew up across the street from the Claymore Apartments. Parking was easy; it was partly night, and the beat-up Plymouth had a dozen spaces to choose from.
As the engine and lights were killed, the car's occupants forced themselves back into the shadows and gave themselves time to unwind. Their eyes, all the while, fastened unwaveringly on the apartment building's front entrance.
There were six of them; four boys and two girls, not one of them over eighteen. And yet there was a venal wisdom in their fevered eyes that belied their years. They knew the score. Oh, God, did they know the score!
The rare pedestrians abroad that unnaturally warm and muggy night couldn't have guessed that the hoodlum sextet was sitting in a stolen car. Even if they had known, they would have ignored the fact. Mind your own business had, over the past year, assumed the proportions of an inviolable city statute in Kingston Park.
One thing even the most witless passer-by would have gathered had he glanced into the Plymouth's shabby interior: the six kids were up to no good.
They were dressed casually, the boys in tee-shirts and open-collared sport shirts, one wearing a black leather jacket despite the heat, the two girls in slacks and too-tight blouses.
Kids out to take the balmy, fresh air.
Kids out to bop.
Two of the gang members stood out. The male specimen sporting the black jacket, jammed up against the door on the passenger's side, was a lean, swarthy type with oily, wavy hair and a steely coldness to his eyes. Revenge was written on his disturbed features in letters an inch high. A boy who was very obviously the leader of these renegades, a boy very obviously holding a grudge against the world. A boy named Vito Argente.
Beside him was a beautiful if cheap-looking blonde, all but poured into her clothes, her breasts seemingly on the verge of exploding from her sleazy blouse. Gloria Kovak by name, a girl whose gaze revealed a mordant outlook on life, a girl who'd already lived a lifetime in her seventeen years. Who, at that moment, turned on Argente.
"You sure this's the place? That your buddy won't be home?"
"Yes," Argente snapped, "I'm sure. I told you the jerk's at school. He's chaperoning one of them pansy dances. He won't be home until after midnight."
"It sure sounds crazy to me," Neal Wingo, one of the boys in back muttered. "Just 'cause you got a yen fair one of your teachers., "
Argente wheeled. "You chickening out?" he challenged. "If you are, there's the door. I can take care of this myself." He snickered thickly. "I just thought you'd like to be in on the fun and games at the end."
It was the one charge no gang member could let go unanswered. "No, I'm not chickening out. Only I'm wondering when you're gonna get with it."
Argente smiled slyly. "Well, how about right now?"
"Swell," the surly lad behind the wheel, a boy named Duke Defalco, intervened. "Let's get this gig moving."
Moments later the six juveniles were out of the car, loping in almost wolf-like furtiveness across the street. Luck was with them, for as they approached the building, a male tenant was on the verge of letting himself out. He regarded the six intruders suspiciously, momentarily looked as if he would block their way. But then, seeing the hard light in the kids' eyes, he thought better of it and scuttled into the night, leaving the main door ajar.
"Inside," Vito ordered sharply. "Teach lives on the fourth floor. Move it, damn you!"
Noiselessly, stopping on every landing, peering into the halls to see if their corning had been noticed, the gang fled to the fourth floor.
There they waited, their breaths coming fast, watching and listening. But the hall was empty, occupied now only by a sickish odor, residue of the evening's cooking, by the muffled sound of the TV sets in the apartments spaced at intervals along the murky passageway.
"Which one?" Glory Kovak hissed.
"The third door down. Four-C," Argente said.
"Well?" Defalco goaded. "Sometime tonight?"
"Nuts to you," Argente retorted. "In a minute."
Then, sure they wouldn't be interrupted, Vito slithered from the stairwell, started down the hall. The gang followed with equal stealth.
The dark-haired boy poised briefly before the door of 4-C. Then he pushed the buzzer. He tensed, put his accomplices on guard with a glare, as he heard the sound of footsteps inside the apartment.
The door was opened part way. A small brunette, pretty and self-assured, dressed in a blue wool dress, woolly slippers on her feet, looked out. "Yes? What is it?" And in that instant of realization her eyes widened, her mouth formed a small oval. "Oh!" she moaned. "No!"
Immediately Vito was upon her, kneeing open the door, his hands clawing her face, expertly muffling her screams. She fell back into the room, the boy holding her head like a handle, keeping her from falling. Behind them the others filed in, watched the silent struggle with eager smiles, Duke Defalco having presence of mind enough to lock the door behind them.
"Shut up!" Vito snarled, digging his fingers into the woman's cheek. "Shut up, or well kill you." He put one leg around her thrashing legs, held her in a painful arc. Little by little, the woman's struggles lessened.
"Please," she gasped when Argente removed his hand briefly. "I can't breathe. Please, please-"
"No yellin'?" he said. "Promise?"
"No, I promise. Only let me breathe." The woman's body sagged momentarily, then stiffened anew as she saw the ugly, hungry looks in the boys' faces. "What-? What do you want?"
Vito tossed his head at Glory Kovak. "The kid.
Check on him."
Instantly Glory raced into an adjoining room. "In there," she reported. "Sacked out. A little girl."
"My baby I" the woman wailed. "You won't hurt my baby? Oh, please! In the name of God-"
"Shut up!" Vito spat. The woman shrank before the cruelty in his eyes. "You play ball, Mrs. Whelen, understand? Play ball. All the way Or the kid gets it. We ain't fooling, honey. Not one bit."
"What do you want?" the stunned woman cried. "Why are you here? How do you know my name?"
"I know your husband," Vito sneered, releasing her, pushing her back onto the davenport. "He teaches math at Forrest High. He's been bugging me lately. Too much. He kicked me out of class the other day. I swore he'd pay for that. Nobody kicks Vito around I"
"You're out of your mind," the woman breathed, her face a terrorized grimace. "You don't mean just because Ken threw you out of class-"
"I do mean, Mrs. Whelen." He paused irritatedly.
"Mrs. Whelen. God, that's gotta go. What's your name, honey? Your real name?"
The woman cringed, averted her gaze. Said nothing.
"Oh!" she moaned, as Vito viciously slapped her.
"Your name, witch I What is it"
"Debra," she sobbed.
"Debby," he mocked. "That's pretty. Real pretty."
"What are you going to do to me?" she quailed.
"Well, Debby, you just guess. What do you suppose we're gonna do to you? Just guess."
"You're crazy," she wailed. "You mean just because of something my husband Cid to you at school you're going to-" Her sobs choked her.
"Honey, you're getting the idea."
"But I'll tell Ken, he'll know who yon are. The police will-"
"The police won't nothing. Neither will you. Or that precious, chicken husband of yours." He advanced upon her, brutally squeezed her chin in his hand, wrenched her head up. "Because you won't tell nobody about our little visit. If you do, well be back, police or not. This ain't all of us. Somebody'll get to you. They'll get to that little girl of yours." He chuckled mirthlessly. "And what they'll do to her ... won't be very nice...."
"You're animals !" she raged. "All of you. You wouldn't, you wouldn't dare!"
"Wouldn't we? Don't bet on it"
Abruptly he pulled the woman to her feet "Yon know what comes now, Debby. We want some. Get out of those pretty clothes."
She opened her mouth to scream, but the fanatic deadly glow in Argente's eyes stopped her. "No," she choked dropping her head. "This isn't real, it can't be happening."
"You heard me, doll. It's real. It'll be a helluva lot realer in a minute. Shag out of those duds, I said."
"No, oh please, no. You don't want-" She made a pathetic picture, small and vulnerable, completely helpless. "Please, have pity-"
Vito sniffed. "We're fresh out." He turned on Glory and the dusky-skinned Mexican girl named Esther Morales. "Go bring that baby out here. Maybe then...."
The woman leaped forward, clawed at Vito's hands. "No, not Cindy. Oh, please, no. Don't hurt hex!"
"You gonna do as y'r told?" The woman caved in. "There's no other way?"
"Take it off, Debby," he slurred. "You're wasting time."
"No, no," she chanted, nearly in shock. "You can't expect me ... just like this ... with everyone watching."
"For the last time...." Vito menaced.
Then without another word, terrified and dazed, suddenly thrust into a realm of emotions she'd never dreamed existed, Debra Whelen pulled away from the boy, went to the opposite wall. She reached behind her, began unzipping the back of her blue dress. Not looking at her hot-eyed audience, she let it slide down her hips.
"Hot dog," Neal Wingo slurped, "what a dish!"
Mechanically, her body swaying slightly, she leaned, raised the pale blue slip, pulled it over her head, to reveal the long-legged, satin-quilted girdle, the blue lace-etched brassiere.
"God," the fourth boy, Clancy Pollard, gurgled. "What kind of a rig is that? How come you don't wear a getup like that, Esther?"
Esther's face twisted. "Because I don't need junk like that, you slob."
Vito was smiling demonically as an idea presented itself to him. "You, Glory. Esther too. Go help little Debby take off her underwear."
"You nuts or something?" Glory snapped.
"You heard me."
"Don't touch me," Debra Whelen retreated as the girls approached her. "I can do it. All by myself."
"Knock it off, witch," Esther shot, grabbing the woman's hair, twisting it savagely. "Vito says help. So we help."
Then the girls hovered over the woman, Glory going behind to undo the brassiere, Esther pulling clumsily at the girdle, bringisg it and Debra's panties and stockings all down with one continuous stroke.
Now the abused woman stood before the smirking quartet of boys, completely naked, completely at their mercy. Hiding her face in her hands, she cried bitterly.
"Man," Argente said, "I'm gonna enjoy this. Look at the boobs on that, will you? To think she gives stuff like that to a yellow-livered schoolteacher." A shudder hit him. "Baby, I'll show you what it's like with a real man."
"Wait, no-" Mrs. Whelen looked up, saw Argente unzipping his jeans, stared in disbelief as he kicked them away and began working down his shorts. "Not here-just like that. With everybody...."
Vito didn't answer, only nodded at Esther and Glory, who twisted her arms and herded her toward the davenport. Throwing her down on the cushions, they held her immobile on her back. "No, no, no," she groaned.
"You gotta tell your husband to lay off Vito," the boy hissed in psychotic cadence, looking down on her naked body. "Use your influence, Debby. I'd sure hate to have to come back and rape you again...."
He fell beside her on the davenport, toyed with her nipples. "Nice, Debby. Very nice." He leaned over, cruelly nipped them. She arched and writhed to escape the ugly attention, but Vito only clung the harder, fastened his mouth to the puckered tips. Finally he fell over her.
"Give, baby," he hummed. "Give for Vito. Try it he-man style for a change." But the woman, frozen in panic, on the brink of complete breakdown, didn't move. "Her legs," Vito snarled at Duke and Clancy. "Get her legs."
They got her legs.
"You're hurting me," she wailed, "you're hurting me!"
"That's what a real stud's supposed to do to a woman, Debby. It's good isn't it, honey? Real good." His body burrowed itself deeper to hers. His hips rammed her thighs, his legs clenched and twisted and drove.
Deeper, harder, faster.
And still faster.
Until the woman was moaning incoherently, with Glory holding her hand over her mouth to muffle her cries.
Still it went on, with all the boys watching, Clancy was all but beside himself, breaking into thick, guttural moans. "Oh, baby, Vito, save me some of that. Hurry up, will you? Ride, you mother. Ride her good. Drive her right out of her ever-lovin' skull-"
Then Vito was pulling away from the ravish woman, chuckling obscenely at her searing sobs. "See, Debby," he taunted, "That's how it goes when a man's in charge."
He glanced at the other boys. Observing rank, he nodded to Duke Defalco. "Strip for action, compadre. you're next."
"Like you don't have to tell me twice, pal." Duke was out of his pants and shorts in thirty seconds flat.
"I'll go nuts waiting," Clancy Pollard said as the lieutenant of the Commandos advanced on the horror-convulsed body. "Lord, Lord. Hurry, will you?"
They left the brutalized woman on the davenport, fhrowing her clothes in her face as they went out. A last warning for her to keep her peace had been given. Then they were in the hall. Confidently they swaggered out onto the street, sure their threats had been effective. It was eleven o'clock; there'd been so sign of her husband. By the time he finally got home, she'd have pulled herself together. It was her secret And theirs. They'd scared her, but good.
Fifteen minutes later they were at Esther Morales's flat on Flagg Street. As they'd known, it was empty, Mrs. Morales working a seven-to-three shift at a downtown restaurant. A hard, vacant light in his eyes, Vito Argente swaggered into the kitchen, slapped down the two six-packs and the bottle of cheap red.
"We celebrate now, huh?" he grinned. "A real gig that was. The way that woman ate it up! Didn't that kill you? Especially the second time around."
By midnight they all had a glow on, the boys working on beer, the girls drinking wine. And the more Esther drank, the more she wanted Vito to take her into the bedroom. She had it for Vito. Real bad.
But she said nothing. When Clancy Pollard tried snaking his hand inside her blouse she fought him off savagely.
It didn't bother Clancy over much. His mind was on other things. Things like Debra Whelen. On how much he'd enjoyed the gang rape. God, it was almost better when you forced a jane....
And strangely, completely out of the blue, he thought of Noelle Crane at Kingston High. Rebuffed by Esther, be tortured himself, imagining similar rebuff from the high-and-mighty Miss Crane. Then, without thinking, the beer taking charge, he blurted out his thoughts.
"You know who I'd like to get alone sometime? Who I'd like to royally plank?"
"No," Neal Wingo said idly, "Who?"
"That Noelle Crane twitch, that's who."
Esther hooted. "That little snotnose? Are you out of your mind? Her dad's got money. He could have you put away for life for just looking at her."
"A real doll, huh?" Argente said.
"Some doll," Esther snorted. "A real baby. With boobs like dried-up plums. Never mind him, he'd had it."
"We should get her into the gang," Clancy persisted.
"Yeah," Esther spat, "and you should have a faucet on your head to let all the stupidity drain out."
But Clancy wasn't listening. A blissful smile on his face, he was sinking deeper into his wishful reverie. "I wonder what that little witch is doing right now," he said.
"Probably in bed enjoying herself," Esther snapped.
Anger blazed in Clancy's eyes. "Do you eat with that same mouth?"
"Up yours," she snapped. Rising, Esther went toward her bedroom. Standing hipshot in the door, she called. "How about it, Vito? You got some for me? That is," she looked pleadingly at Glory, "if Glory doesn't mind."
"Hell, no," Glory laughed. "Be my guest. I got my fill just watching the guys playing with that women."
"Hey," Vito protested, "Don't I have anything to cay about this?"
"What do you think we're made of, marble?" Esther shot. "If we had to watch you goats get yours, it's the least you can do. Coming?"
Vito rose and smirkingly strode into the bedroom. Moments later they heard him cursing and Esther moaning thickly.
Clancy was on wine now. Drunk, and getting even drunker, he maudlinly said, "I wonder what Noelle's doing right now."
Alone in an overstuffed chair, Glory lifted her wine glass to the light, studied it, and smiled a very enigmatic smile.
CHAPTER TWO
What Noelle Crane was doing at that very moment was being brought upright in her bed by a shrill outcry in the yard. Instantly shrugging off sleep, she recognized the disturbance.
The lawn party her parents were throwing was just roaring into high gear.
Slowly, quietly, feeling the eternal resentment ball inside her chest, grow and stick there, she slid out of bed, and padded to the window in her bare feet.
Looking down through a break in the foliage of the massive oaks surrounding the house, Noelle saw the panorama below-the elite of Kingston Park, the men in white jackets, the women in spring dresses-all glowing with the unearthly fluorescence which the expensive black-light setup gave white garments.
Instantly she recognized the culprit. The woman's backless and strapless gown was all but falling off as she threw back her head again and hooted her shrill appreciation of the undoubtedly off-color joke Max Wilkins had just told her.
Monica Hugeny. Loaded already at midnight.
The extent of her intoxication was made even more apparent by the way Monica permitted Max to edge her into a shadowed nook away from the others, let him kiss her, let him squeeze and roll her buttocks. By the way she allowed Max to grind his fat belly into hers.
Noelle's stomach constricted. That grown, married people would act like that....
She watched them for a long time, until Monica tired of the animal pawings, pushed Max away and returned to the party. Noelle found herself trembling all at once.
Still she studied the scene, totally awake now, her eyes darting to identify the other guests. The black light was old stuff; she could be very blase about it now. But there had been a time....
She'd never forget her delight that night when Dad and Mom had first taken her in the garden and Dad had operated the control panel, turning on the ultraviolet spots in awesome, enchanting sequence. The yard had brightened in breath-taking beauty, had become a veritable fairyland. The intense, fluorescent blues, yellow-greens, cherry-reds, oranges and purples had reminded Noelle of gorgeous, darting butterflies. The gravel was veined with ghostly translucence. For long moments she'd stood frozen, wordless.
But that had been a long time ago. A whole year. She'd been sixteen, a junior in high school, then.
Noelle had nearly died of curiosity the week the lights were installed. But wonder was all she could do, for Mom had declared the garden strictly off limits until it was ready. Noelle had obeyed her to the letter.
For she was an anachronism in her time-a dutiful child.
From a distance she'd seen the men painting the lawn furniture, stringing large Chinese lanterns, hanging geometric abstractions along the vines and trellises and on the branches of the willows. The gravel around the miniature cypresses had been taken up and special new gravel put in. The same had been done to the gravel terraces, to the paths wandering through the garden. The tile on the swimming pool rim had been chiseled out and a new, odd-colored mosiac laid in its place.
Finally wires had been buried beneath the sod, and the banks of special spotlights had been strategically placed.
Then that night, as dusk had come down and her parents had unveiled their surprise, Noelle had been entranced-especially by the necklace of eye-stunning magenta and green circling the pool. Noelle had giggled at the purplish-white coloration of her father's shirt, teeth and eyes, and at the way her freckles had been eerily illuminated.
But her parents had soon tired of the unusual indulgence and, after suffering Noelle's oohs and ahs as long as they could, had summarily ordered her to bed. After all, a party had loomed, and their daughter's sharing of this proud moment was certainly secondary to the impression they had hoped their new toy would make on their guests.
Obediently, the eternal sense of being unwanted crowding her, Noelle had gone to her room, where she'd watched the party from her window.
The story of my life, Noelle thought now, rousing herself from introspective vigil. The sullen bitterness mounted within her.
But at that moment further self-commiseration was aborted. For she heard a rustling in the hall, the sound of quick, stertorous breathing.
What?
Then she knew. Of course. The clandestine scurryings outside her door should bother her now? Not after the past two years.
It was Laura Nolte-Mrs. Raymond Nolte-who, assured her husband had drunk himself into a proper stupor, had crept upstairs to use one of the guest bedrooms.
But not with her husband. With Craig Halverson instead. It had been Craig the last few times, anyway. There'd been others before him.
Every time the Cranes threw a brawl.
Jack Selig had been Laura's playmate when Noelle had first tumbled to what the across-the-hall commotion was. Lord, was I ever that green? she thought now. That I couldn't figure that heavy traffic out there? Jack Selig hadn't lasted. His wife, Jane, had caught on fast.
And the Seligs didn't come to Brad Crane's parties any more.
Which hadn't deterred Laura in the least. After Jack there was a man named Ted Pett. Then Wally Reid. And now Craig Halverson.
Halverson revolted Noelle. She'd met him only once, but even so, he'd made a bad impression. He was a big man, going to paunch, his hair thin, his face coarse and puffy. Especially Noelle remembered his foul breath, his lecherous stare.
She often wondered how even his own wife could stand to get in bed with, be pawed by, the obscene pig.
But Laura Nolte. What else could you expect from a roundheels like that? She was real hot suff from the word go.
Momentarily Noelle was sliced by irritation. She hated the term; her use of it was evidence of the inroads the girls at Kingston High were making on her. The label was a virtual password at Kingston; any girl not ready to make love among that trashy crowd was considered a freak.
Noelle rose from her crouch at the window, and stood looking into the darkness of her room. A wave of confusion swept her. Just thinking about Kingston got her all riled up. It was one more problem added to the insurmountable wall that existed between her and her parents and her revulsion to the ugly sex thing that was going on at that moment across the hall.
All were symptomatic, indicating latent trouble.
With a despairing sigh, Noelle flung herself into bed, pulled the covers up, huddled into the pillow, and sought sleep.
But sleep wouldn't come no matter how still she lay, how hard she tried to make her mind a blank. Thoughts of her parents, of Kingston, of Laura Nolte and what she stood for seemed to become fluttering ribbons in her brain. Ribbons that were being wound in a maniac tangle about a Maypole until they were bound tight in a hopelessly inextricable clutter.
At last she knew there could be no escaping the dread thoughts tonight. Defeatedly, listlessly, she approached the Maypole and pulled at a silken end.
It came up Laura Nolte. And all the other Laura Noltes-adolescent and adult-she'd ever known.
How could any woman, even a tramp like Laura, tolerate-let alone welcome-the things Craig Halverson was doing to her across the hall? How could she let a slug like him undress her, caress and kiss her body? Noelle felt utter disgust And the rest of it? To open herself to him, to surrender to what must surely be the most loathesome indignity possible.
How could Mother and Dad have-For me?
More unsettling: Did they still-or have they found strength to withhold themselves from it now?
For even though Noelle's mother had never explained married love to her, Noelle knew well enough what happened. She had learned from two sources, one devastatingly graphic, the other the whispered, snickered, locker-room discussions and the filthy stories the girls traded at school.
Instantly a vision of Glory Novak came to Noelle's mind. Gloria Kovak, the flashy, overdeveloped blonde in most of her classes, the worldly-wise girl who seemed to be leader of the seamier element of the girls at Kingston. Glory, who always made Noelle feel ill-at-ease, like a naive, frightened kid, every time their eyes met. Glory, who was one of Kingston's most promiscuous girls and who always had a small cluster of sex-smirky boys hovering about her.
It had been Glory who had once given, with preening candor and the coarsest of gutter talk, a blow-by-blow account of her marathon sex event with Pete Lavaggio the night before. It had happened as the girls were dressing after gym class. Glory's gaze had darted often to the trapped and queasy Noelle Crane, her smile contemptuous and mocking. Some of her terms had all but turned Noelle's stomach.
Even worse was the giggling critique afterward, when several of Glory's cohorts had gone into raptures, wishing it had been they instead of Glory who'd entertained Pete. And could Glory fix them up?
This was completely beyond Noelle's comprehension. She could understand that a woman would cleave to her husband, even surrender to his sexual wants, if merely for security, to have a home, to have a baby by him. But now that she knew just what it was a man did to a woman during their lovemaking, she couldn't possibly see, by any stretch of romantic imagination, how a woman could actually enjoy a man rutting over her.
A strange fear grew within her whenever she assessed this lack within herself and she realized that she was almost a woman herself. That one day-if ever she should win anyone's love, she would have to lend herself to the degrading act.
Now Noelle twisted in bed, and tried to shut out the shameful pictures, quaking inside with an odd excitement that made her arms and legs feel weak.
She thought of her mother in bed with her father. Does she enjoy Dad? Does she scream and moan the way Laura does? Or does she merely tolerate him-pay the price of marriage?
She shook her head to blot out the sordid thought. No, not mother. Not my mother.
The image of Laura Nolte returned again. And engraved in Noelle's brain was a picture of two naked bodies, locked, charging, swarming over each other. It was a totally imagined picture, for though Noelle had once eavesdropped, she had never lowered herself to the tricks of a voyeur.
She'd been sleeping lightly when the ragged cries from across the hall had awakened her. Instantly she'd panicked, thinking someone was being hurt, and still in a fog had slipped into the hall. From an open window at the dark corridor's far end she'd heard music and the babble of voices, and had realized that the party was still going on.
As well as another kind of party in the guest room.
She had traced the hoarse cries to the third bedroom on the left, finally realized what they were and who was making them. Transfixed, not wanting to listen but unable to pull herself from the door, she'd leaned against the wall to steady herself-and had remained to the end.
"It's good, Jack," the plastered woman had choked. "Good, good, good, Oh, bay ... bee ... Make it last and last."
Selig's voice had come in muffled harshness. "Not so loud, damn youl You want somebody to hear? If Jane-"
"TTaell wi' Jane. F'rget tha' frigid witch. Think "bout Ml Laura. I wan' them to know. All of 'em ... how good you are. Oh, lover I Like that. Again. Tha's marvHous. Go, darling, oh, go!"
"Shut up, will you!" Selig had rasped.
"No, I won't shut up. I wanna tell you all about it. How it rips me up."
Her pulse racing, her stomach tossing in near nausea, Noelle had stood paralyzed, the thrashing of the bodies and the steady rumble and squash of the bed painfully audible. Then Laura's ecstatic squeals of deliverance. And finally her appalling deification of sensation, her gutter blandishments as she had striven to coax her partner's release.
When it had turned quiet, and Noelle had heard the rustle of clothing, the click and hiss of snaps and aippers, she had retreated to her room and lain numbly as Laura and Selig scuttled past her door.
It had been a definitive lesson in the ways of love.
Now, abruptly, a howl of laughter from tonight's party shook Noelle from her reflections, brought her back to the present. Another lull from below allowed her to hear the whimpers tearing from Laura's throat in the bedroom across the way, and drove another spike into Noelle's brain.
Dear God, she thought. Will that ever happen to me? Will I ever act like that?
It would be something, Noelle conceded bitterly, her thoughts suddenly veering in another direction. Even if I suffered that, at least there would be moments when my husband and I could share other things also. When I could be sure someone loved and wanted me. When I could turn my back on this sad excuse for a life I live now.
She recalled the brusque, unfeeling way her father bad dismissed her tonight, reminding her of the party, hurrying her to her room. Almost as if she were disfigured in some way, so that she must be out of sight. These were times when she resentfully wondered why her parents had ever bothered to have a baby in the first place.
It was something she'd gotten used to over the years.
When she was a child she hadn't noticed it. Perhaps her mother had had more time for her then, had showered her with love which is every child's birthright. Even later, when Mom had started neglecting her, it hadn't been so bad. There had been servants and live-in housekeepers who'd become second-almost real-mothers to her.
With each passing year Dad had become more successful, had worked himself up, at forty, to presidency of an electronics component manufacturing company at a comfortable salary of $100,000 per year. But with success had come the need to be away from home, and Noelle had seen less and less of him. When he was around he was distant, uneasy. Often she was ordered to her room because she made him nervous.
As an adjunct to her husband's career Joan Crane had become more and more involved in club and civic activities in Kingston Park, until her absences rivaled her husband's. And to top it off there was the never-ending round of entertainment, both Brad and Joan Crane throw-themselves into this diversion with such abandon that before long their parties were "musts" in Kingston Park.
It was a vicious circle of entertaining and being entertained. And Noelle had found herself shoved more and more into the background, a pretty, docile and somewhat timid child who was dusted off and pushed forward in strained situations when a guest arrived too early and then was promptly put back on the shelf and forgotten.
True, her parents had exhibited pangs of conscience from time to time and realized how they were shortchanging Noelle's life. At these times they had made concerted efforts to compensate for their neglect, lavishing attention, gifts, picnics and expeditions on her. The fluctuation from extreme to extreme had further confused the already insecure child.
But as Noelle had grown older, had passed her thirteenth and fourteenth years, the gap between her parents and herself had widened, become unalterable. Noelle had clearly seen the glaring truth, and had realized she'd been deluding herself in thinking things would ever change.
Sitters and housekeepers couldn't take the place of real parents for her now, and Noelle had become more and more withdrawn, had learned not to expect anything from her parents by way of affection, or even communication.
Her material wants (as they had been throughout her life) were generously attended. She had everything any girl could want in the way of clothes, toys, amusements. When she was thirteen her parents had given her a horse, a lovely two-year-old named Cinnabar. There were summer camps, trips to Wyoming dude ranches. There were her sumptuously decorated room, her records and hi-fi equipment. She was given a huge allowance, had unlimited charge accounts.
Yes, Noelle had everything money could buy. Every creature comfort was provided for.
But of spiritual comforts she had none. For the most basic, important gift was missing.
One thing she didn't have.
She mattered to no one. She didn't have love.
Now Noelle stared stolidly into the darkness as she finished the brutal and uncompromising self-inventory. She didn't cry, and she made not outer sign of grief. Tears were useless. She'd emptied her private well of loneliness years ago, when she was still a child.
There was no particular rancor in her heart at this moment. No hate or bitterness. Only one emotion reigned. That was an overriding fear of the future.
I'm almost a woman, she thought. I know it. Something's going crazy inside me lately. I can tell by the way the boys at school, even grown men on the street, look at me. But I'm afraid. So afraid.
I graduate in three weeks. Then in the fall, college. Suppose I meet a boy there. I won't know how to act, what to do. I'll ruin things, I know I will. If only someone had only taught me what love really is. If only....
It must have been at that point that weariness overtook Noelle and, her mind dulled by the haunting round of thoughts, she finally dropped into a fitful sleep.
She was awakened perhaps an hour later by the rising tumult from below, as the party stretched past one, and reached for two. But was that all? Wasn't there something else?
Then she heard the voices in the hall and stiffened on the bed, her heart suddenly going crazy inside her chest, "You're sure the kid won't hear?" the man said.
"No, Kirk," Joan Crane said. "Noelle's been asleep for hours." Her voice dropped to a passionate urging. "Hurry, darling. I can hardly wait."
Noelle lay in a stunned trance, her head ringing in disbelief. My mother. My own mother. With Kirk Powell. It can't be. It can't be.
But it was. Moments later, as Noelle stealthily opened her bedroom door and strained to hear down the hall, she recognized the strange, choking way her mother had of laughing. "Ooh, Kirk, baby. Your hands are cold."
"How can he, lover? He's so loaded he can hardly stand up. Forget Brad. Hurry, Kirk I"
Noelle wanted to shut her ears, to run away from this profanation. But she did nothing of the kind. Instead she stood listening, heard her mother betray her father in shamelessly barbaric fashion.
Until it was time.
"You stud," Joan Crane gritted. "You glorious stud. Shove it I Oh, shove it! Shove, shove-" And her mother did scream her pleasure. Repeatedly.
Then Noelle could endure no more. She closed her door, fell into bed, covered her head with a pillow.
Still she could hear the steady protest of her mother's bed, each squeak a jagged spear to impale her.
It seemed to last forever.
Noelle waited until she heard them go back downstairs.
Then, she fell back, exhausted and stunned, and waited for the sleep that never came.
CHAPTER THREE
It was a supreme inconsistency in Brad Crane's nature that accounted for the fact that Noelle attended Kingston High in the first place. He could have easily afforded to send her to a private school. In fact, his wife had often campaigned to have Noelle transferred to Chidester, a fashionable girl's school three miles north of Kingston Park. But invariably she'd lost out.
He held out sutbbornly, falling back on the head-in-the-sand excuse, "What was good enough for me is good enough for my kid." He was proud of his business success, of the fact that he'd pulled himself up by his bootstraps, and constantly credited his competitive, character-building days in a public high school as a contributory factor. This was despite his wife's insistence that Kingston was getting a notorious reputation as a tough school.
The truth of the matter was that Noelle herself had never wanted to transfer to another school. True, Kingston was gradually being invaded by a rougher element. But there had been no real violence, no attacks on teachers, no knifings, no rapes in the basement and in deserted storerooms, as was the case at Forrest High on Kingston Park's south side. Not so far, anyway.
Another asset was Kingston's excellent faculty, well-seasoned instructors who could, for the most part, cope with the more belligerent and disturbed students, retain order, and still effectively teach in the bargain.
Then there were Noelle's few friends, girls as quiet and timid as she, whom, though she'd never invited them home with her, she looked forward to seeing at school. A transfer would have been disastrous. It would have meant complete isolation once more, a long climb to be redone.
There was the matter of acceptance and recognition by her teachers, the fact that she was always in the honor roll's top ten. She had a quick, intuitive intelligence, and schoolwork came easily for her. This small triumph meant much to Noelle.
Noelle was an elfin girl, perhaps five-three in her stocking feet, with a slight, tardily developing figure. Her breasts were small and firm, and though she was aware they'd been filling out markedly the past few months, they were still embarrassingly insignificant. Comparing herself to Glory Kovak, she sensed severe irritation at her sluggardly maturation.
But if her breasts were still in chrysalis, her hips, waist, buttocks and legs were not. Small and compact, yes. But scrawny, no. Often Noelle paraded before the full-length mirror in her room, wearing only a pair of black lace panties (which she considered especially evil) and spike heels, turning and arching herself, posturing, examining her body from every angle, savoring the pert plumpness of her rear, the Oat line of her belly, the velvety ripeness of her legs and thighs.
It was only when she saw her stingy breasts that she became impatient. Lately, in desperation, she'd taken to buying padded brassieres, this too filling her with a delicious sense of evil.
Her hair was glistening brown, expensively coiffed by her mother's own hairdresser and worn three-quarter length, in massive curb at the side and wispy pixie bangs over her forehead. Her nose was perky, her eyebrows arched high. But it was her eyes and her ripe, full lips that were her best features, giving her a suggestion of petulance and attraction.
Noelle chose her clothing carefully, picking simple outfits which though high in quality were modest and unassuming. She did this so she wouldn't stand out among the other girls who couldn't afford things as nice as hers.
Whatever the reason-her inobtrusive quietness, her warm, ready smile, or her neat, fresh prettiness-the roughnecks at Kingston High never bothered Noelle Crane. Indeed, if they noticed her at all, it was with somewhat of a protective, big-sisterly concern. Noelle was a nice kid; leave her alone. Or else.
At least so things stood until that second week in May. After that Noelle's life changed rapidly and chaotically.
It was two days after the appalling revelation of her parents' latest party, on a Monday, just after first period, that Noelle was stopped by Gloria Kovak and gently but firmly edged against a convenient banks of lockers.
It was then that Glory made her initial pitch.
In that moment, Noelle, puzzled though she was, couldn't help but envy Glory's brash confidence. Cheap and flashy though she was, there was a basic, raw beauty about her that was irresistable. II only, Noelle thought, I could be that sure of myself.
Her black, nylon sweater was too tight, the cones of her overcrowded brassiere too sharp. The lavender pleated skirt flattered her trim hips and the proud jut of her buttocks. She wore sheer nylons with butterfly clocks on the ankle, and her feet were crammed into gold loafers. It was just too much. Hardly the getup for school.
Glory swished her long hair around and sent a fleeting, insinuating smile at the passing Clancy Pollard.
Noelle sensed a wrenching longing that life might be on such an elemental, helter-skeleter plane for her also. It was an existence where intangibles weren't worth a second thought. Only motion counted. Making the scene. That's what mattered. Kicks. The rest of it could rot.
An insolent smile played on Glory's mouth. "Hey, kid, you look beat," she said. "Who you been shaking it with?"
Noelle flushed. "Please, Glory, you know I'm not that kind of-"
"Maybe you'd better change, honey. You look like you was sacking wildcats and ran out of bags. It's good for what ails you. Don't sit around moping about it Go get some."
"Stop, Gloria."
"Stop, Gloria," she mocked. "Listen, kid. I wanna ask you a favor."
Noelle stared at her quizzically. "What is it, Gloria?-
"That chemistry paper that's due this aft. You got it done?"
"Yes...."
"What's chances of me glomming onto ft?"
Noelle was dubious. "I don't know, Gloria. I never let anyone copy my papers before."
Glory became impatient. "Did I ever ask you before? Just this once, kid. Ordinarily I wouldn't care, but today's different. The way that Malson creep's been riding me lately, I can't show up empty-handed today. He might just make one crack too many, and I'll tell him where he can shove his damned chemistry. You know what that means."
"They'll suspend you."
"Suspend, hell. I'm a three-time loser already. Once more and I'm out on my can. For good. C'mon, Noelle. I'll change it. Hell never tumble I copied from you."
Still Noelle hesitated. Then the too-familiar uncertainty speared her. "AD right, Gloria." She opened her chemistry folder, removed two sheets of paper and handed them over. "Here it is."
"Jeez, Noelle, you really believe in socking it to that jerk, don't you?"
"That's extra credit at the end. Don't copy that."
"Don't worry. Just the facts, ma'am. When I get through butchering this I'll have one page on one side. I'll return it in study hall. Okay?"
"Okay, Gloria. Don't forget."
"I won't. And thanks. Maybe I can do you a favor sometime."
Despite herself Noelle smiled wryly. "Yes," she said. "Maybe you can."
On Friday afternoon of the same week, just as they left gym class, Gloria Kovak again approached Noelle and walked down the corridor with her. "How's it going, kid?" she said. "Been behaving yourself?"
"I guess so, Gloria."
"That's not good. Gotta cut up now and then. Let things pop." It was Glory's turn to be ill-at-ease. "Say, Noelle...."
"Yes, Gloria?"
"I ... ah ... wanted to thank yon for slipping me that chem paper the other day. You didn't get burned, did you?"
"No. Mr. Malson never said a word."
Suddenly Gloria stopped, motioned Noelle to one side. "I don't know how to say this, Noelle, you being what you are and all," she murmured uncertainly.
"Say what, Gloria?"
"Call me Glory, like the others do."
"All right, Glory." Noelle felt a quick rush of un-explainable warmth inside her chest.
"What I mean, kid, is that you're okay. You act good, not stuck-up like some of the witches around here. You never queen it on any of us."
Noelle could hardly believe her ears. This from the tough Glory Kovak? "Why ... thank you, Gloria."
"Glory."
"I'm sorry. Glory."
This's what I'm getting at, Noelle. I don't know how to say it, but, well ... when's the last time you ever had any fun?" Her eyes glittered with dark mischief. "I mean any real fun?"
"I don't know what you mean, Glory."
"You know okay. With guys. Like wild." She came closer to Noelle, her tone secretive. "Here's the scoop. The rest of the kids think I'm nuts for even asking, but like I said, I dig you. To hell with them." She paused. "We're having a little blowout at Spit Point tonight. Some beer and eats. Maybe some dancing."
"With boys?" Noelle said stupidly. "I didn't-"
"Sure, boys. Since when do we ball without boys?"
"Well, I don't know, Glory-"
"Let me finish, will you? I didn't even ask you yet. Like I said, a little party. I think you'd enjoy It. It'll give you a chance to line up with some wild cats. What d'ya say, Noelle? Get out and let your hair down once in a while."
"There won't ... I mean, be any dirty stuff, will there?"
Gloria's smile was patently condescending. "That's up to you, kid. All depends on your style. Some of the bims'll be looking for stuff. But if you don't dig the action, just keep cool."
A sudden spurt of excitement, dark and forbidden, went through Noelle. Suddenly her heart was beating too fast and her hands were shaking. She gripped her books tighter. She knew she wanted to go. And yet she didn't.
"No," she said, her voice firming. "Thanks, Glory, but I'd better not."
"Aw, c'mon, Noelle. I promise, I'll stick to you like glue. If anybody tries anything I'll murder 'em. Come out, gander the scene, see how you like it. If it moves, come on back sometime. Join up."
Join up. The words had a prophetic, ominous ring to them. Join up with what? Was it a gang? One of those hoodlum gangs that had been played up in the local papers?
"Think of me," Glory continued. "The kids said you'd down me. Think of the horselaugh they'll give me when I tell 'em you passed. I told 'em you were a sport."
Noelle was surprised to find herself weakening. H Glory would be nearby-Tingling excitement filled her. What would be the harm?
"Clancy Pollard'll be there. He's a keen stud. He digs you too. Been asking about you."
For the first time in her life someone wanted her around, someone cared enough to stick his neck out for her. She couldn't let those girls think she was a snob, could she? And Noelle felt an almost desperate yearning to be in, to discard the outsider's role that had been thrust on her all these years.
Still the oppressive fear-terror of the unknown-clung to her. She'd be entirely out of her element. She wouldn't know how to act with those girls. And the boys-
"I don't know, Glory, I'd better not." A strange war raged inside Noelle. One side of her brain said mo, the other an eager yes.
Glory sensed Noelle was wavering and bore down. "We'll pick you up around eight. How's that?"
Noelle panicked. "Oh, no. Don't pick me up."
Glory's eyes were knowing. "What'samatter, Noelle? Don't you want your folks to know you're slumming?"
"Oh, no, that isn't it at all-"
"Don't con Glory, kid." She laughed. "It's okay. It don't bother me. If you want to come along, okay. If you don't want to, well...."
"I want to," Noelle blurted. "It sounds like lots of fun. But-"
"Tell you what. You know where Rexlar's Drug Store is, don't you? It's a mile down the hill into town from where you live. If you decide, be there at eight. Well drive by. If you don't show, okay. So we lose five minutes of our precious time. Will you think about it?"
"Yes," Noelle said, utterly confused. "I will."
Glory turned away, then stopped. "Another thing. Bring a swimsuit. The water's still cold, but some of those kooks might decide to take a dip. See you."
Then Glory was losing herself in the crowd, hurrying to beat the bell to her next class.
Coming to, Noelle hurried also.
But she was hard put to keep her attention on Mrs. Hawford's droning lecture on Modern European History. Her mind was a million miles away.
Repeatedly she reviewed the pros and cons of going to the beach party, telling herself it would undoubtedly get rowdy, that she was getting in over her head. After all, she countered, why shouldn't I go? Glory will watch out for me.
Mother and Dad are going out; they won't be back until late. Why should I sit around the house all alone? They're so wound up in themselves, in their friends, in their parties-And now-Mother with her bed-hopping-they'll be glad to have me out of the way.
She even found herself thinking the way Glory and her friends did. Her life had been a gray drag lately. Didn't she deserve some fun? Was there a law against rich kids balling once in a while? It had been a long time since she'd let things pop.
Inwardly she snorted. Long time, hell! All her life.
She even went so far as to formulate an alibi. She was meeting Alice Tennier; they were going to the movies. They'd take in the regular show, then sit through the midnight horror feature. They'd take a cab home after; there was no need for anyone to pick them up.
It was foolproof. Mother would never check back on her.
Suddenly Noelle was startled by the clanging of the bell, by the rush of students gathering books and papers. I'll go, Noelle decided quickly, the sudden commotion seeming to demand an on-the-spot decision. I will. No matter what, I will.
It was as she emerged from school and started across the parking lot toward the red Volkswagen her parents had given her for her seventeenth birthday that the glaring May sun hit her and brought her to her senses.
It was as if she abruptly broke from a trance. Idiot, the raged. Of all things! To even give it a moment's consideration! They're not your kind of people at all. Of course you won't go. Let Glory drive by Rexlar's Drug Store. Let her drive by all the drug stores in Kingston Park. I won't be there.
Almost hysterical, her eyes blurring, she ran toward her car. My God, Noelle, she charged, what's wrong with you? Have you flipped or something? It's absolutely out of the question.
And yet, that same Friday night at seven-fifty, Noelle found herself waiting before Rexlar's. Her head felt as if it wasn't fastened securely, and she was forced to refocus her eyes every time an auto approached.
She wore a black and white striped gingham dress and white flats, typical spring attire for a teen-ager going to the movies. Beneath the sleeveless gown she wore a full slip. But under that was an orange swimsuit that had cost her mother sixty dollars. In her small purse, hastily wadded into a tight ball, were her panties and bra.
The tension became unbearable. Finally she was forced to lean against the store's brick front for support.
Where are they? she agonized. It's eight now. Was Glory just putting me on? Why don't they come?
It was at that exact moment that Noell saw the white '60 Chevy Impala careening down High Street, doing forty in a twenty-five mile zone. Her heart leaped now as it slowed and pulled curbward.
Noelle pushed herself away from the brick wall with trembling eagerness.
CHAPTER FOUR
Glory Kovak sat behind the wheel, a cocksure, blazing smile on her lips. Her hair was disheveled, her eyes feverish. Beside her was Esther Morales, a junior at Kingston whom Noelle knew by name only She sent Noelle a resentful glance, then snapped, "Well, get in, kid. You gonna stand there all night?"
Too relieved to be angry, her legs wobbly, Noelle pulled open the door and flung herself beside Esther simultaneously inventorying the three girls in back and seeking Gloria's eyes.
"Hi, hon," Glory said. "Glad you decided to make it." And with a second squealing of tires, she slammed the Chevy away from the curb and headed back into the city. Noelle felt momentary embarrassment as she saw the other girls wore shorts or slacks. She recognized Linda Lundgren and Bonnie Sprague in the back. The third girl was a stranger.
Keeping her eyes on the road, Glory jerked her head toward the new girl. "Cheryl Warner, Noelle Crane," she grunted. "Cheryl goes to Forrest,"
"Hi, Noelle," the girl said.
"How do you do, Cheryl," Noelle replied, startled by the fact that the girl couldn't have been more than fourteen. She was a small blonde, her make-up clumsy and her body ripe beyond her years.
"Hi, Linda, Bonnie," Noelle finished lamely, merely staring at the olive-skinned Esther Morales. They failed to acknowledge her greeting.
Now Bonnie Sprague, an angular, sexless redhead, spoke. She was by far the most stupid girl in the car. Noelle knew; she'd seen her in action at school "What's with the dress, Crane? Trying to play grand duchess? Ain't slacks good enough for you?"
Glory's voice was like a whiplash. "Knock it off, you witch! I gave you the word. I asked her and that's all there is to it." She half turned. "Another word and I'll kick your rear out of this car. She had to sneak out, didn't she? You don't think her ma's gonna let her out in slacks, do you?"
Noelle tried glossing things over. "This is a real nice car, Glory. Is it your father's?"
Bonnie snorted in the back seat.
"No, it ain't her father's," Esther mocked. "She don't know who it belongs to."
"She doesn't know who it..
"It's hot," Glory smiled patiently, hitting the accelerator hard as they hit the lake road. "We found it in a parking lot. Some square left his keys in the ignition."
"Oh," Noelle said, feeling as if someone had just punched her in the stomach. "You stole it." Then she smiled and fell silent. They were kidding. It was just their way of putting her on. They hadn't really stolen the car.
"Who's gonna be there?"" Bonnie picked safer ground.
"Vito and the usual," dory replied. "Clancy and Duke. Maybe Ralph and Neal. Whoever else they pick op-Clancy Pollard and Neal Wingo were familiar names to Noelle. The others she didn't recognize. A stab of fear hit her. What if they were Forrest products, too? "What about food and stuff?"
"Vito and Duke are taking care of it The guys are splitting up."
"And beer? They bring beer?" Bonnie said "I like beer."
"Don't tell us," Esther snapped. "Just don't get all sauced up like last time. We hadda pour you outta the car."
"I like beer. I really go when I drink beer."
"We heard you the first time," Glory shot Esther fumbled with the radio and tuned in a local rock-and-roll station. She spun the volume up, drowning out further conversation. "Man," she crowed, tossing back her mop of jet black hair, "tonight we swing I We really swing!"
Spit Point was the popular name, for the Sandspit Cove, a silent, mostly deserted inlet on Lake Michigan approximately thirty miles south of Kingston Park. Noelle had heard Spit Point mentioned often at school, but had always imagined it was a regular picnic area set up and administered by the state. She was completely unprepared for the forbidding, dusk-shrouded woods now looming before them, into which Glory recklessly nosed the Impala, scraping several trees as she went, until the car was hidden from the highway.
"Here we are, kid," Glory addressed Noelle. This is it. Spit Point."
Noelle's voice was small and bewildered. "This?"
"Yes, this," Esther snapped. "C'mon, out!"
"You see Vito's wreck?" Linda asked.
"Yeah. That's it over there. The blue Caddy."
"He's moving up in the world."
"Nothing but the best for Vito," Glory chuckled. "Anyway, until the dope gets caught"
Ten minutes later the six puffing and sweating girls emerged from the woods to find themselves on a vast Stretch of beach, the sand interspersed with stands of grass and brush. On the left was a towering promontory, heavily wooded and uninviting. To the right a long finger of sand and rock stretched into the lake.
Noelle was awed momentarily by the vista before her. Painted by the last reflected rays of the sun as they were, the bluff, the beach and the placidly rolling water were beautiful. In the distance she saw the leaping flames of at least six bonfires. They wouldn't be alone on the beach tonight
"That path," Linda gasped. "It's murder."
"There they are," Glory said. "Out on the point The fire by the big driftwood log. There's Clancy waving.
"I sure hope they brought lots of beer," Bonnie said. "I'm so dry I could drink anti-freeze."
"Will you shut up about your damned beer!" Esther snapped. "Okay, let's go."
They started up the beach, running a gamut of wolf whistles as they passed the bonfire surrounded by four boys, obviously out on a stag. One rose and started to zero in on Cheryl. Glory glared menacingly. "Don't push your luck too far, sonny," she spat "Unless you're looking for a broken head."
The boy looked up the beach, saw the five boys at the farthest fire, and promptly made himself scarce.
At one fire Noelle saw four couples lying on blankets, beer bottles sunk in the sand beside them, all oblivious to the passing girls. They were wound in serpentine embraces, kissing and grinding themselves into each other, the boys' hands wandering and the girls not minding at all. Noelle's fear flared anew. Was this what their party would dissolve into before the night was out?"
"Well, dolls," Clancy Pollard said, coming forward to meet them, "it's about time. We were about ready to go out scouting. There's some nice stuff down the way."
His eyes fell on Noelle and glowed in sudden victory. "Well, hello, Noelle. You're the last person on earth I ever expected to see at one of our bashes. How'd Glory convince you?"
"She just asked me," Noelle said dumbly. "And here I am."
His smile was cockily licentious. "You won't be sorry, baby. Wait 'n' see. Later." His sudden intimacy made Noelle feel crawly inside.
Then the others joined them, and laconic greetings and introductions passed around the circle. Noelle knew Clancy and Neal, and found she knew Ralph Sullivan also.
The all-important Vito Argente proved to be a Forrest boy. He was of medium height, wiry and thin-waisted, and his hips were almost non-existent. He was dark, fairly handsome, and wore his black hair in a ducktail cut. He didn't look to be more than seventeen. Particularly disturbing was his arrogant manner, the way he regarded Noelle through slitted eyes, barely acknowledging their introduction.
The last was another Forrest boy, a short barrel-chested specimen obviously possessing bull-like strength, the perfect antithesis to his almost effete classmate. His name was Gregg Defalco, but everyone called him Duke.
Noelle was surprised as Clancy shoved a cold, wet can of beer at her. "Drink hearty, chick," he grinned. "Let's get this party rolling."
Noelle balked. She'd never had anything alcoholic to drink in her life. Well, hardly ever. Her mother had let her have half a glass of port once. It had made her woozy. She'd avoided alcohol ever since.
She smiled. "But I don't drink beer."
"Well, hell, I'm sorry, babe," Clancy said. "That's all there is. This ain't no cocktail bar."
"What I mean is that I don't drink anything."
She looked up to see the other girls staring daggers at her. Her eyes swept to Glory and read her warning glance. Be a good sport, the look said. Try it, anyway.
"Get a load of Bonnie," Neal Wingo said. "That's the way to slug brew."
Noelle got a load of Bonnie and felt her stomach twist as she saw how greedily the empty-headed girl chug-a-lugged her beer. Bonnie sighed and threw the can away "Man," she said. "That tastes like more."
Immediately Ralph Sullivan pressed another can into her hand. She drained a third of it nonstop. Then she leaned against Ralph and licked her lips, inviting a kiss. Quickly he complied, holding her close, his hands dropping to pinch her buttocks. Bonnie squirmed closer and held the erotic kiss. Ralph led her toward a nearby blanket and pushed her down on it.
"Go ahead," Clancy urged Noelle. "Try it. After the first twenty cans you won't even notice the taste."
"Isn't there a glass?" Noelle said in perfect seriousness.
"Oh, God!" Linda groaned. "A glass she wants yet."
Even Glory looked exasperated. Noelle caught the look and felt things closing in on her. She didn't want to drink the beer, but she didn't want to make Glory angry with her either.
"Tell me," Vito taunted, "where'd you dig this baby Bp? Is she for real?"
"Up yours," Glory spat. "Leave her alone. She'll drink it when she's good and ready."
Gathering courage from Glory's intercession, Noelle raised the can to her lips and took a small swallow. It was all she could do to keep from gagging. But she forced the vile stuff down and took another sip. This time she couldn't withhold her distasteful grimace.
"Atta girl, honey," Glory encouraged. "Not too fast at first. You'll get used to it."
"I doubt that," Noelle smiled wanly.
"Sure you will. Just like Bonnie. She used to-" Glory whirled, surprised to find that Bonnie, Ralph, blanket and all were gone. Then she saw them in the shadows, walking toward the woods. Following her stare, Noelle saw the white of Bonnie's back as she pulled her sweater tip over her head.
"Hey, you two!" Glory called. "Can't you wait?"" "No," Bonnie laughed. "We gotta get the first one outta the way."
The two figures faded into the encroaching gloom. To quell her disgust, Noelle took another long drag at the beer and choked it down. She realized now what she'd let herself in for tonight. Glory couldn't help her, despite all her fine promises. Not one bit. Not if these boys really wanted to-
Suddenly she felt her skin crawl. To escape the thought, she raised the beer can again. But Glory held her arm. "Not so fast, Noelle. Make it last, or you'll go out of your head. Even get sick in the bargain. You're not used to it like we are."
"I guess I'm not used to a lot of things," Noelle said in a small, tired voice, I want to go home-I don't like this at all-I want to go home-Over and over the frightened, babyish whine singsonged its way through Noelle's brain. Please, I want to go home.
It was ten-thirty, and for the moment Clancy Pollard had deserted Noelle and gone with Duke Defalco to find more driftwood for the fire. The bonfire was already too hot so far as Noelle was concerned. Her neck was a long, loose coil of spring, and her head floated idiotically, idly, back and forth on it She was having trouble focusing her eyes.
And this on only two beers?
Her impassive expression concealed the warring emotions within her. Though she longed to cry, to plead with Glory to take her home, she knew she'd do no such thing. She'd embarrassed Glory enough already with her naive protests.
After all, she thought maudlinly, what's at home besides bare walls? At least here someone wants me. Glory wants me. Clancy too. But in another way. I can tell.
She smiled thinly. But he's in for a disappointment. I won't let him. I won't let any of them. They'll have to rape me first.
Then the shakes were back as she looked up to see Vito staring at her with hungry, scornful eyes. They might do just that, too.
The girls had stripped to their swimsuits, the boys following their lead. The fire painted their exposed bodies scarlet. There was no contest as to which girl's figure was loveliest. Glory won hands down. After her came the pouty-faced Esther. Then, of all things, the barely nubile Cheryl Warner. Mentally Noelle placed herself fourth, then felt darting chagrin at the thought that part of her accessories was artificial.
Neal and Linda had placed the small transistor radio on a rock and turned the volume up full blast, and were now facing each other outside the ring of fire, vigorously doing the Twist. Noelle found herself amused at the sinuous wriggle of Linda's scrawny hips as she danced, at the way her breasts jiggled and swayed.
The Twist movements became more intimate. Inflamed by the beer they'd both drink, Neal and Linda shuffled closer and closer until they were touching. Neal gave a throaty chuckle, and still, holding themselves dose together, the two kept on Twisting.
"Go, go, go, baby," Bonnie, lying on her back, her head lolling drunkenly in Ralph's lap, screamed in a monotonous chant, waving her beer can in time to the music "That's the way to Twist Do it baby." She turned to Ralph. "Jeez, look at her little boobs bounce."
Ralph, a frozen smile on his face, slid his free hand down Bonnie's chest let it creep inside her suit and cup her left breast. Drunkenly Bonnie helped him, dropping the cup of her suit and exposing the brown-rubbed breast to the firelight. She let Ralph play to his heart's content.
Noelle turned away and picked up the freshly opened can of beer beside her. It was like restorative medicine now. She st ked at the beer, and felt a reckless irresponsibility and indifference gather in her brain. There. She wasn't so afraid now. The shock was fading.
Another sip.
She glanced toward Glory and saw her lying beside Vito, her eyes closed, her hands caressing his smooth, naked back as he poured a long, burning kiss into her. In a spate of passion he brought up his right knee and laid it across her taut belly. In the process his right hand found and clutched her breast began to knead it gently. Glory moaned softly and held him even tighter.
Sip three.
At that moment a shrill scream carried down the beach. "No, Nick! Please, no! I don't want-please don't, Nick." The cry grew more desperate. "Help me, somebody. Please, help-" The rest of the cry was snuffed out
"Damn you, Kitty," a male voice roared. "What d'ya think I brought you out here for? Just to roast wienies?"
Noelle froze. "Glory," she started, then fell silent. Glory and Vito were sitting upright, looking down the beach. When there were no more screams, they sank back. Vito snickered. "Somebody's getting his." He and Glory took up where they'd left off.
Four, five, six. The can was almost empty.
Suddenly the fear was totally dispelled, and Noelle found herself feeling silly, smiling for no reason at all. I feel so good, she told herself. Oh, I feel so good. She stifled a giggle.
She turned to watch Neal and Linda dancing still another Twist number. Moments later Vito was pulling Glory up and moving into the open space. They Twisted with a vengeance. And I thought Linda bounced, Noelle maundered.
"Hey, Noelle!" The voice interrupted her happy daze. "Looks like you're getting with it. That's what I like to see." Clancy was back. He threw a large log on the fire and the sparks spiraled wildly upward. It's pretty, Noelle thought. So pretty.
Clancy fell beside Noelle and pulled her experimentally into his arms. Noelle was surprised at how easily she capitulated. Then he was kissing her, his lips slippery, his breath hot. Noelle let her head flop against his chest, sensed an inner warmth and sense of well-being. It was all right, she mused foggily. If that was all he wanted. Everybody else was doing it, why shouldn't she? Besides, it was nice. Real nice. She felt all fluttery inside.
And in her intoxicated condition it never once registered on Noelle that this was actually the first time a boy-any boy-had ever kissed her.
She sighed deeply and began to make pleasurable hummings in her throat.
Much of the rest of the night was lost forever to Noelle. She had finished a fourth, then a fifth beer. Somewhere along in the evening they'd roasted and eaten hot dogs. Hadn't someone brought a bag of potato chips? The drinking had gone on, as had the purposely erotic dancing, each couple trying to outdo the other. Only then they were calling it the Fish, not the Twist.
Vaguely Noelle later recalled that Clancy had coaxed her to her feet and tried to teach her the rudiments of the dance. She'd been very clumsy, had fallen down twice.
Bonnie had passed out shortly after eleven-thirty. Undismayed, Ralph had promptly closed in on Cheryl Warner. She had happily answered his invitation to promenade down the beach, with a point-blank question about how his supply of safeties was holding out. She wasn't that drunk yet.
There'rJ been more beer; of that Noelle was sure. More dancing, more laughing and screaming commotion, much dirty talk. Once she'd looked up to see Glory and Vito stumbling back to the fire, Glory pulling at her swimsuit straps as they came, a sleepy, satisfied smile on her face.
Clancy had tried pawing Noelle; she remembered that also. But an instinctive something inside her forced her to rebuff him. "Hard to get, huh?" Clancy had laughed. "That I like. Makes for a better payoff in the end."
But there had been one devastating moment that evening that Noelle would never forget It was the moment when panic had closed in on her, and she'd reverted to her inherent babyishness, reacting like a child calling for its mother.
Sometime after midnight Vito had called attention to the fact that they all wore swimsuits, and when in hell were they going swimming? Then with a taunting snarl he'd turned on Noelle. "I suppose the princess there'll chicken out as usual."
Clancy had pounced upon the challenge. "Chicken out?" he'd blustered. "Not Noelle. She's got what it takes."' And, drunkenly irresponsible, he'd grabbed Noelle's hand and pulled her toward the water.
Noelle's breath had seared her throat as they'd reached the water's edge, and she'd pleaded for a rest before they plunged in. But Clancy hadn't listened. Caught up in masculine ego, he'd dragged her into the water. Water which even in midsummer was ice cold. And now in May-
The icy plunge had hit Noelle with pile-driver force, stunning her, leaving her gasping for breath. The water had paralyzed her. It had felt as if someone was driving needles through her bones. "Oh!" she had screamed. "I can't stand it! Take me in!" She had fallen backward into the clawingly cold water.
"Swim, damn you," Clancy had called. "That'll warm you."
"Take me in!" she had wailed, floundering, unable to move at all now. She had began to sink, had gone under twice.
"Well, f'r Chrissake...." Clancy had spat. Then he had lifted Noelle in his arms and carried her shoreward. Noelle remembered the curious sense of gratitude and warmth she'd felt toward Clancy for delivering her from the numbing water. As she'd clung to him, huddling in his arms for warmth, savoring the strength of his body, he had suddenly represented security.
And when he'd begun to kiss her, she'd answered with sudden, desperate fervor, unable to get close enough to him. Then finally, when he had drawn her farther down the beach, away from the others, and stretched her on the sand, she'd dumbly surrendered, still submerged in the curious dependency. She'd welcomed the hot, urgent kisses, even tolerated his probing tongue.
In a limp, helpless trance she'd lain silent and submissive as he'd carefully worked down the straps of her swimsuit, as he'd bared her breasts to the night air. She'd lain waiting, docile, almost impatient, wondering what strange insanity had overtaken her.
Clancy's hands had trembled, his voice had come with eerie huskiness from the darkness. "Such little ones," he'd whispered. "They're babies, just like you. But they'll grow. Oh, they're pretty."
Instantly his fingers had closed on the turgid nipples, and he'd begun to roll and stroke them. Then his lips had closed on them.
Noelle had felt as if she was on fire inside, squirmy and molten. She had known it was wrong, known she should fight Clancy, pull up her suit. But she hadn't been able. She had been swept by a delightful, delicious willfulness.
Then the arrogant boy had made his mistake. Roughly, brusquely, assuming Noelle was beyond the point of resistance, he'd begun to pull the rest of her suit off.
Noelle had awakened from her sensual trance and fought savagely. "No, Clancy I Nol Not that. Please-Clancy, no! Let me go, do you hear? Let me go!"
Then she'd fallen back on infantile resources. "Glory, please!" she'd shrilled. "Glory, help me. He's hurting me! He's hurting me!" And while the gasping, sobbing screams kept ripping her throat, she'd continued to writhe, to roll, to twist and scratch.
Suddenly Clancy had been pulled off her by Vito and Duke, and Noelle had pulled her suit up. Her head had felt terribly heavy all at once. She had hardly been able to stand up.
"The teaser!" she had heard Clancy's frustrated bellows coming from a vast distance. "The filthy little teaser!"
Then Glory's terse command: "Get that louse out of here, Vito. Now!"
Noelle had been conscious of Glory's arms around her, her cooing words of comfort. "It's okay, baby. It's okay. Why didn't you stay where I could see you? Don't cry, Noelle. He didn't hurt you."
Abruptly Noelle had shaken off her hands and spun away. Then she'd fallen to her hands and knees in the sand and been desperately and repeatedly sick.
She'd joined the casualities then, dozing by the fire beside Glory, the alcoholic content in her bloodstream still high enough to blitz her nervous system and render her helpless. The voices of the still carousing kids had swelled and faded in grotesque cacophony.
Finally she remembered the struggle along the tortuous path. She remembered Vita's drunken argument with Glory.
"But why not just ditch it?" Glory had raged.
"We wreck it," Vito had insisted. "It's hot. Why give the fuzz a chance to catch us with it? Well go to the quarry. We're out for boots, ain't we?"
Two cars had screamed crazily down the highway, the terrifying whine of the engines and the whoosh of air through the windows hurting her ears. "A hundred, baby," Duke had gritted. "A hundred. Now, now! That's it! You passed him. Watch it, he's cornin' back. Open her up. All the way!"
Later she'd awakened to find herself shivering convulsively in a chill, dark field to see figures scurrying from the slowly moving Chevy. As if in a nightmare the car had disappeared over the edge of the cliff. A splintering crash had carried up, then a rattling rumble of water.
It had been two when Noelle stumbled into the house, coming in the back way, thankful to see that Dad's Lincoln wasn't in the garage.
She'd fallen twice in the darkness as she had scrambled upstairs. Doggedly she had undressed, remembering to kick her wet swimsuit out of sight Then, naked, she had fallen into bed and pulled the covers up. As she'd dozed off her head had spun crazily, and she'd poised to dash to the bathroom. But the nausea had passed.
Her last thought, as her hands had come up to hold her breasts, had been of Clancy's attack. And disbelief had flooded her as she recalled the dizzy, pleasurable warmth that had possessed her. at that insane, helpless moment. Just before Clancy had-
What's happening to you, Noelle? she had raged What's happening to you?
CHAPTER FIVE
By rights Kingston Park should have had no Juvenile crime problem. It was fairly prosperous, self-contained city of approximately 90,000 population, ten miles south of the haphazard sprawl of Hanford. But the fallacy here was that the city had formed the last southern bastion to Hanford's growth, and had almost become a suburb. And when a city flees from itself-
What had happened was that Kingston Park had grown too fast. Big money and easy money had flowed into the once sleepy little city, had swelled its 30,000 to triple that inside of ten years. And police, civic administration and services simply hadn't been able to adjust, to cope with the population swarm. Those who had money could withdraw from the city proper, could lift their skirts, so to speak, as violence and crime infiltrated what had once been a decent, law-abiding community. They could, as Mr. Bradley Crane had done, build their mansions on zoned tracts on Kingston Park's outskirts and pretend the ugliness didn't exist in their city.
True, there had always been a slum concentration in the Flagg Street area. But it had been contained, patroled, prevented from spraying its toxic spores to other parts of the city. As the Hanford invasion continued unabated, the area, like a rotten spot on an apple, had grown, broken its ghetto barriers, and devoured respectable district after respectable district until its contamination was felt in every part of the city.
It was the age-old story: too little and too late.
So the patrol cars were there, the number of cops walking a beat was doubled, and harrassment of idle, congregating juveniles went on night and day. Patrolmen were stationed at schools where the situation was malignant, and the juvenile courts did a land office business, meting out harsher and harsher judgments against the delinquent youths. But somehow all these efforts did little good. The cancer had already gotten out of control.
And still Hanford disgorged its dissatisfied-the elite and the dregs alike-to the tune of ten and fifteen thousand a year. And Kingston Park, despite its adverse notoriety, kept growing. Rotten and crumbling at the core, its criminal contagion resisting all legal antibiotics until it was a hollow shell, it threatened to cave in at any moment, and to infect and swallow its respectable elements with it.
Again and again movements to increase and improve the police force and pay better salaries; referendums to reform the courts, to build new schools, to give their administrators and staffs a modicum of authority, went by the board.
And the disease continued to spread.
Noelle had the entire weekend to recuperate from the after-effects of her first real drunk. She had forty-eight golden hours to reassess and re-evaluate her life in a totally new light. There was time for remorse, for wonder, for the darkest of thoughts.
Oh yes, plenty of time. All the time in the world.
The sickness and bitter regrets, the orgy of self-castigation, occupied the best part of Saturday. Time and time again during that day she yearned to turn to someone, to lay her troubled thoughts before an adult mentality and beg for help and understanding. But there was no one. Not her mother, certainly (though the longing as instinctively strong), for she was in bed the best part of the day herself, regrouping for that night's party. Even if her mother had been available she knew she couldn't have had courage enough to confess the Spit Point incident to her.
Remembering the damning episode she'd overheard between her mother and Kirk Powell, she felt desperately alone-utterly betrayed. She knew that no matter what, she'd never to able to turn to her mother again.
On Sunday, an unmanageable restlessness and excitement pervading her, Noelle found herself almost avidly reconstructing the events of Friday night, digging deep into her subconscious, trying to recall every little detail of the beach party, almost wallowing in the things that had happened during the evening's finale. The things she'd seen the boys do to the other girls, the things Clancy Pollard had done to her.
She was filled with a monolithic feeling of emptiness and inadequacy. Compared to the shattering things she'd witnessed and experienced that night, her lite was a completely empty shell; she was alive in name only.
As a lonely dusk descended that Sunday night, her schoolwork untouched during the whole two days, Noelle was shocked to realize that she was actually wondering what Glory and the others might be doing, actually yearning that she might be with them, sharing their fun, no matter how ugly or sordid it might be.
No matter what, she thought, her heart racing madly at the recognition, evil or not. If only I could be with them, if only I could-And she found herself flushing with sudden shame. I wouldn't scream, I wouldn't stop Clancy this time. Anything he wanted.
And she felt subtle spearings in her breasts, her stomach.
The evil, lustful thoughts compounded in her brain, nipples turning stiff and hard. A liquid hotness grew in and the sinful fascination became overpowering. She went even further and sank into a sex fantasy in which she imagined the things Clancy might have done to her if she hadn't so childishly screamed and cried.
Then she broke from the trance and found herself trembling and squirming on her bed, an inexplicable fever coursing through her. What-she thought, What does it mean?
The loneliness hit her with sledge-hammer force as she sat up and felt the emptiness of the house close down on her. Her parents were gone-an afternoon cocktail party-and only Mrs. Quinlan lurked somewhere in the kitchen, awaiting Noelle's indication that she was hungry.
Now loneliness turned to bitterness of the fiercest kind as she thought how little her parents really cared about her. Even if Glory and her friends only wanted her for ugly purposes, at least they wanted her. She'd have to settle for that It was all she had.
Was it so bad, so wrong? If her own mother could be Kirk Powell's whore (and many other men's whore?) then certainly her father must be tumbling plenty of other women in the bargain. Even at this moment he might be-
If her parents could be promiscuous, why couldn't she? Why couldn't she be Clancy Pollard's whore? Anybody's whore? Who would she be betraying? Besides herself?
And even so, would it be such an awful loss? Who would even notice?
Now Noelle looked up and saw the first soft shadings of night blur the furnishing of her room. She realized she'd reached an important crossroads. A decision had been made. Disastrous thought it was, it was a decision just the same. She knew that from this moment on she'd never be the same girl again.
She was going after hers. She was going to take all she could get-with both pretty hands.
Glory was waiting for her after first period on Monday, a probing, malicious glint in her eyes. "Skip the cafeteria this noon," she said. "Well go downtown for lunch. I got some things to tell you. I'll meet you at your locker."
As suddenly, as she had come she was gone, giving Noelle no chance to argue, to even feign reluctance. Instinctively Noelle knew what it was Glory had to tell her, and knew that wild horses couldn't have kept her from meeting Glory that noon hour.
"I talked to Vito about it last night," Glory said in guarded tones as they crouched in a dark, dirty booth in a slovenly burger joint about six blocks from school with a greasy, undercooked hamburger and a double malt before each of them. "And he said if you're game, if you're willing to go through the initiation, you can come in with us." She laughed abruptly. "He said some other things, too. But I won't tell you that part of it."
Noelle's hands trembled. It wasn't that she hadn't expected it, but now that it was here she just didn't know how to react A rip tide of excitement washed over her. They had actually talked about it and they had decided they wanted her. And yet-Dark doubts assailed her. Initiation? What was that all about?
"I don't know quite how to take this, Glory," she said softly. "You mean that Vito and you-and all the others-actually want me in the gang? The Commandos, did you say? I don't know. I wouldn't fit You saw what happened the other night"
"Hell, Noelle, it was all new to you. You just got scared. Once you get to know the guys it won't be bad at all. You won't say boo to stuff like the other night"
"But me?" Noelle laughed, straining for diplomacy. "With a gang of toughs like that?"
Glory became defensive. "You think you're too good for us?"
"Glory, I didn't say that"
"Looks to me like you've got no crowd of your own. Most of the time you're wandering around the halls like a lost sheep." Her voice caught. "God, you'd think a , pretty girl like you, a gal with all that money and class, would really roll. But not you."
"Is that why you're asking me?"
"Partly. Maybe we feel sorry for you. Then again-maybe we figure you'd be a swinging deb. I do, anyway. And you sure made a believer out of Clancy. He's shot his wig on you."
Noelle felt a sudden hot glow in her chest. "I Just don't know, Glory. I feel flattered, of course, that you'd want me. Especially you...." Noelle dropped her eyes before the strange, burning stare Glory sent her. "But I wouldn't fit. I'm afraid. This initiation. What is it?"
Glory became evasive. "I can't tell you nothing about it. It's secret. Only this. We put you up against certain things. You do 'em to prove you're loyal to the gang. And if you chicken out, well...."
"What sort of things?"
"I told you, I can't tell. You'll just have to make up your mind beforehand. If you want in bad enough, you won't chicken out, no matter what."
The childish wonder was back in Noelle's voice. "These thing? Are they dirty?"
Glory looked at her levelly, an unsettling look of regret burning behind her eyes. "I won't con you, Noelle. Yes, some of them are."
Noelle paled. "And this initiation," she said. "When does it happen?"
"Any time you say. I can start things rolling this aft if you want."
"But-jwhat about school?"
"School's past tense, kid. It just don't figure when there are gang doings."
"Tell me more about the gang. Who all's in it?"
"There are about a dozen of us altogether. Seven guys and five girls. Six with you. That's inner circle, understand. We can call on about ten more guys when there's a rumble brewing. And we're tight with the Pythons, help each other out when there's trouble. The Commandos are small in numbers, but we roll, honey. We really roll. That Vito cooks up some dillies!"
Noelle pulled her shake closer and began sucking up the chalky concoction, not really tasting a thing. "Can I have some time to think this over, Glory?"
"Sure thing, Noelle. Take all the time you want. Just let me know when you decide."
But as they walked out of the odorous eat shop, Noelle knew she didn't really need any time. Her mind was already made up, and had been ever since last night. She was ready to break with her existing way of life, ready to ditch all the phony standards the world has shoved down her throat. She was ready to roll. With the Commandos. With anyone who wanted her-really wanted her. She'd been alone on the outside long enough. It was time she belonged somewhere. And if the Commandos cared enough to make a bid, then the Commandos it was.
Still she held back. She had to be positive. "I'll sleep on it. I'll let you know tomorrow."
That same burning intensity was in Glory's eyes. "I sure hope you decide to come in with us."
The girl was only fourteen, a gawky freshman and an utter stranger to Noelle. She certainly didn't attend Kingston High. The four of them-Glory, Bonnie and Esther accompanying Noelle-had jumped her in Dahl-man Park and dragged her into a woodsy, deserted section completely hidden from the paths.
Now her blonde hair was tangled, her pretty nylon skirt smudged and torn. Her school books were scattered on the ground about her in wild disarray. "Please, please," she was sobbing brokenly, "don't hurt me any more. Please, that's all the money I have."
"Hit her, Noelle," Esther Morales smirked, jerking the helpless girl's arms behind her viciously. "Mark up that pretty little face." The words became almost a chant. "Do it, Noelle. Hit the little witch. Cut her up."
Behind her Glory whispered, "Do it, Noelle. This is part of it. Don't chicken out now."
Noelle felt as if she was going to vomit. Her chest was heaving, and her stomach was going crazy inside her. Unused to violence of any sort, she'd already done things to the innocent, scared girl that had upset her terribly.
"Look at the little chicken," Esther goaded. "I told you she'd punk out. I told you she didn't have the guts. Why don't you cry, Noelle? Run home to your Mummy-"
An aberrated determination surged to life within Noelle, and she fought back her qualms. "I'm not chicken," she gritted. She approached the wet-faced blonde, lashed out at her cruelly with her open hand and was surprised to see blood erupt from her nose. Strangely, the violence served to trigger new violence. Noelle slapped the girl again and again. She raked the white cheek with her nails. She slapped her again.
"Fists," Bonnie gurgled. "Use your fists."
Noelle used her fists then.
"You aren't gonna tell anybody about this?" Noelle threatened. "Nobody? Not your father or the creeps at school? Because if you do, we'll get you. One of these days we'll get you. We'll make you wish you were never born. You'll be cat meat by the time we're through."
"Yes, yes," the girl blubbered, "I won't tell, I swear. Only let me go-don't hurt me any more. Phase!"
Noelle punched her in the belly, feeling a wicked sense of delight as the girl folded up, choked and coughed up gasp after gasp. "You'll tell your mother you fell down. That's how you got messed up, isn't it?"
"Yes," the child coughed. "I fell down, I fell down."
"Let her go," Noelle commanded. Esther released her, and Noelle doubled up her fist and hit her in the face with all her strength. With a soft shriek the girl fell down. A murderous, insane pulse throbbing in her brain, Noelle turned to face her new friends. "Is that good enough?" she challenged. "Am I still chicken?"
"Good enough," Glory grunted. "C'mon, let's get out of here before someone comes by."
Then they were sidling from the copse of trees, checking to see if anyone had overheard the ugly drama in the woods. "What'd she have?" Bonnie asked. "How much money?"
Smugly Esther reached into her slacks pocket and brought out the change. "Seventy, eighty, ninety-five cents."
"Not bad," Glory said.
Noelle felt stunned amazement. Ninety-five cents? We did that to the poor kid for ninety-five cents? Then she really had to fight nausea as she thought of the eighteen dollars she carried in her wallet I could have given them all of it and not even missed it, she thought.
Esther was laughing gutturally. "God, get a load of Noelle, will you? She's shaking like a leaf. What'samat-ter, baby, can't you take it?"
"Lay-off." Glory said, putting a protective arm about Noelle's shoulders "It was her first time You didn't come off so good your first time either " Her voice softened. "It's all right, Noelle. You did fine, just fine."
It was a rainy Thursday afternoon and Noelle wore a tweedy trench coat It was the perfect getup for what she, Glory and Bonnie had to do that day It was three o'clock, and the trio, having cut their last class, was in the hi-fi and radio section of the Marboro Shopping Center. Quickly casing the shop to make sure that the lone salesman wasn't watching them, Glory whispered to Noelle:
"That Zenith there. The eighty-dollar job. Cop it. Bonnie and me'll throw up a screen." And quickly they moved toward the record racks, leaving Noelle alone beside the display of transistor radios.
"Chubby Checker," she heard Glory's voice carry across the store. "Ya got any of his records? We dig the Twist, don't we, Bonnie?"
"Why, yes," the sales clerk smiled, his eyes fastening on the purposely displayed balloons of Glory's breasts. "Right over here."
Twice Noelle's hands snaked out and touched the radio, and twice she lost her nerve. It seemed to her that her heart must be booming so loudly it would drown out even the loud background music playing in the shop Dear God, she wailed inwardly, I can't, I just can't.
"Would you like to hear this?" the clerk was saying.
"If we could," Glory replied.
Noelle's hands trembled uncontrollably, seemingly held on by limp rubber hands. The radio seemed to weigh fifty pounds. Then, finally, it was in her coat pocket and the flap covered it. Certainly the bulge must be obvious to anyone who looked at her. Then, very slowly, she began to walk out.
She was at the door, just going out, when the clerk called to her. "Just a minute, Miss."
Her heart leaped, lodged in her throat, and she felt that she would faint right there. She paused and turned. "Yes?" She forced a smile.
"If there's anything I can help you with, I'll be with you in just a minute."
"No," she said coolly, smiling her prettiest smile. "I'm just browsing, thank you."
Beads of sweat stood out on her forehead and upper Bp when she finally escaped the store. Once out of sight, she walked rapidly to the designated meeting place a block away. There she waited for Glory and Bonnie.
"Great, great," Glory gloated when she arrived and felt inside the pocket for the radio. "You pulled it off like a pro. That jerky clerk won't tumble until closing time." She hurried Noelle down the walk. "Old Dutch should give us twenty for this thing easy."
"Dutch? You mean we aren't going to keep it?"
"Keep it? What for? We need money, not radios. Dutch Klein is our fence. He breaks square with us."
"I was all right?" Noelle fished, basking in Glory's praise. "Will there be anything else? I mean-"
"We could put you through lots more," Glory said, "but what's the point? There ain't nothing gonna shake you now."
"Then it's all set?"
Bonnie Sprague snickered.
"No, not quite," Glory said. "There's a little thing Saturday night The final part of the "initiation You went this far, you won't back out now It'll be rough, baby, but whatever you do, don't punk out Swear-"
Noelle was possessed of an intense, steely determination. The last step. No matter what, she'd go through with it. "No, Glory," she vowed. "Count on me. I won't punk out."
CHAPTER SIX
It wasn't until the third time Noelle was taken to the Commandos' hideout that she had the vaguest notion of where she was going. This first Saturday night, as Glory led her down Shattuck Avenue, a dirty, dark side street accommodating the most scabrous buildings Noelle had ever seen until they skirted the fenced-in, blank-windowed facade of the obviously deserted three-story brick warehouse, she was completely lost.
There was a sagging spot in the tornado fence where the top prongs had been hammered over. Glory led her to this spot and indicated that she should climb over.
Noelle hesitated, looking at the eight-foot wall of wire. "But my dress," she said. "These shoes-"
"Don't blame me," Glory retorted. "I told you. Slacks and a sweater. A pair of sneakers. But no. You gotta dress like it was a fancy ball or something."
Somehow Noelle managed to climb the fence without an accident, though she did scuff the pretty pair of party flats she'd worn. As she came off the fence she wondered what her mother would say if she could see her at this moment. But her mother couldn't see her; she and dad and some other friends had gone on an all-night cruise. They'd barely bothered to say goodbye as they'd hurried away at six. They didn't know, and they didn't care.
A specially hinged panel in one of the lower windows came open, and then they were groping their way through the darkness. Noelle became conscious of a muffled murmur from some place in the warehouse's depths. Glory switched on a small penlight sparingly to reveal what appeared to be endless, gigantic rolls of electric cable, stretching into the distance on the ground floor.
"Careful," Glory cautioned, holding her hand tightly. "There's some steps here."
Then a door was shoved open, and Noelle was blinking before glaring light. They were greeted by a loud chorus of welcomes and the tinny blare of a transistor radio. "Well, it's about time," Neal Wingo hooted. "We'd just about given you up for lost." He fixed a leer on Noelle. "Well, if it ain't the little virgin of Kingston High."
"Shut your face," Glory snapped. "Where's Vito?"
Arente shoved himself up from a battered, low couch, and put aside his beer. "Right here, doll. Where you been?"
"I'm here," she spat. "Ain't that enough?"
Esther Morales sauntered up and flipped the tabs at the breast of the cream-colored linen suit Noelle wore. "And what kind of a masquerade are you dressed for, kiddo? Still queening it, huh?"
Vito appraised her at length, his sneer a permanent fixture. "Lay off, Esther. It looks kinda nice to see a girl dolled up once in a while. Sometimes I forget. I might as well do it to my brother as to you."
Esther's eyes blazed. "I suppose you've tried lately?"
"Not so's you'd notice. Have you?"
The brief interchange gave Noelle time to take stock of the underground hideaway to see who was present. Despite its location in the basement, the room was snug and dry. An abandoned storage room of sorts, it was about twenty feet long by fifteen feet wide, and was furnished with the weirdest collection of junk she'd ever had the misfortune to stumble upon. There were two ruptured davenports, four overstuffed chairs, at least a dozen folding chairs, three coffee tables and one larger chrome-legged dining room table, which bore a burden of three cases of beer, two fifths of whiskey and several bottles of wine.
To her right another doorway led into a dark abyss, and Noelle wondered what was beyond it. Hanging from an overhead pipe, a spanking new Coleman lantern was softly hissing as it threw a flat, glaring light.
The room was dirty, the tables dusty and sticky and the glasses cloudy. Ring marks from previous parties were everywhere. Ashtrays overflowed, and the concrete floor-even the threadbare oriental rug someone had scavenged-was littered with butts, candy wrappers, cigarette packages and wrappers from still another necessary commodity.
On the wall were foldouts of full-length nudes torn from girlie magazines. Balanced against another wall was a sheet of plywood upon which someone had sketched crude representation of a naked female. The figure, haphazardly punctured with feathered darts, had its intimate parts numbered in heavy black pencil. Beside the dart board was a long, scrawled list of scores.
This, then, was the Commandos' pad and clubroom.
Now Noelle's frightened eyes swept the faces that were suddenly all turned in her direction. Bonnie Sprague, Cheryl Warner and Linda Lundgren were the other girls present. Duke Defalco was standing at the table, slugging down beer. Clancy Pollard stood in a rapt pose, smiling at Noelle. Ralph Sullivan and two others, complete strangers to her, were boredly playing a card game.
Noelle went cold inside and felt shudders run along her back as she saw the hard, anticipatory smirks on the boys' faces.
Even these swarthy strangers? she thought, already having a premonition of what the final initiation would involve.
She looked up to see Vito Argente regarding her with a disdainful smirk. "Ts the little virgin all set?" he addressed Glory.
"Yeah, she's ready." She sent Noelle an apologetic glance. "Better give her a few drinks first, though."
"After what happened last time?"
"That was on beer. Give her wine tonight."
He looked at Noelle. "That right, kid? You think you can handle wine?"
"I believe I ... can," Noelle murmured.
"I believe I can," Esther mimicked Noelle, "I believe I can." Immediately the others broke into loud laughter.
The cold hostility in the group's collective gaze cut Noelle to the quick, drove her to momentary panic. What am I doing here? she raged. They don't want me, nobody wants me. What ever made me think-?
Her self-pitying thoughts were interrupted as Glory brought her a generous glass of dark red wine. "Excuse the glass," she smiled "Dishwasher's night off."
"Excuse the glass," Esther mocked again. "God, quit babying her She's no better than we are. She can drink out of a dirty glass the same's the rest of us."
Glory whirled on the girl, her face livid. "Will you shut that filthy mouth of yours!" she shot from bared teeth. "Or do I take you apart? You'll be spitting teeth for a week straight when I finish with you. Now for the last time, lay off!"
The Mexican girl's face stiffened and went sullen. Recognizing Glory's threatening mood and not daring to push her luck farther, she subsided into silence. "What a grouch," she said lamely, turning away
"Drink up, honey," Glory advised Noelle "It's late already. You're gonna need that drink before you're through tonight. All the drinks you can get."
Acting as a self-appointed guardian, knowing what lay ahead for Noelle, Glory Kovak saw to it that she always had a drink in her hand, and almost forced her to drink herself into a forgetful, witless stupor.
By ten-thirty, Noelle was weaving noticeably, her words came in slurred fashion, and her face felt hot and flushed Still, it was not the sickish, dizzy intoxication the beer had given her It was a happy, carefree kind of drunkenness. The wine was sweet and delicious, and she wanted more and more of it.
Then, all of a sudden, her blissful peace was shattered as she heard Vito's voice thunder in the room. Instantly the others fell silent. She looked up to see the dulled luster in his eyes and the slackness of his mouth.
"Okay, gang," he ordered. "Cool it. It's getting to be time. We'd better get down to business."
Noelle's glance skittered about the room and found all other eyes trained on her. The alcoholic joy was drained from her as she read the lustful greed on Clancy's face. It's getting to be time. What does he mean, time?
"You all know why we're here. It seems we got a prospective deb here tonight. Is that right, Glory? She's passed, all the tests? She's high on being one of us?"
"That's right," Glory said proudly. "She never chickened out. Not once."
"And you, cherry," he faced Noelle, "is that what you want? You wanna be a Commando?"
Noelle's voice was slurred. "Yes."
"Speak up! Yes, what?"
"Yes, I want to be ... a Commando."
"And you're ready to go through with this last part of it? All the way?"
"Yes," Noelle quaked, her alcohol-induced bravado fading fast.
"You're willing to knuckle under, to show us you're with us all the way? No matter what we do to you?"
Noelle's lips trembled, and she felt like crying. Instead she breathed an uncertain, "Yes ... I am."
Vito sneered insolently. "Okay, kid, you said it. You agreed. You can't back out now." He glanced to Glory and Bonnie. "Take her out. Get her ready." To Esther he said, "Get the pad ready."
Then Noelle found herself being dragged to her feet and pushed toward the dark room opening off the main one. She heard a door close and someone rummaging in a tin box somewhere, and saw the glint of Glory's pen-light. Then a voice, Glory's, was near at hand. "Take down your pants," she ordered.
Noelle jerked upright where she stood. "What?"
"Pull down your panties, I said. Hurry up."
Noelle did as she was told. Then she recoiled in shock as she felt Glory's hands on her and a strange cold insertion. "Glory," she quaked, "What-"
"You don't wanna get knocked up, do you?"
Noelle was too stunned to answer. Then she became aware that Glory was pulling her panties up for her. "No," she sighed. "I can take care of it-"
"All done, honey." She turned Noelle in the darkness. "This way, Noelle. Out."
Noelle was amazed at the transformation that had taken place in the room during her absence. The bright lantern had been extinguished. Now only a half dozen strategically placed candles burned in the room, giving it a murky, mysterious glow. One of the couches had been pulled from the wall and opened to form a flat bed, its decrepit condition mercifully camouflaged by a fresh blanket and sheet that had been spread over it.
Around the impromptu stage all the Commandos had drawn up chairs, the better to view the proceedings. Vito was the only one still standing. He beckoned Noelle into the open space left before him. "Right here, doll."
He turned on Esther and Cheryl. "Undress her."
Eagerly, with almost sick glee, the girls advanced on Noelle and began unzipping and unbuttoning her, making a prolonged show out of the disrobing. The jacket came away, then the skirt and the blouse. Noelle stood in a white slip, dripping with lace, a more gorgeous garment than any of the girls present would ever own. They lingered a long time over the exquisite slip.
Noelle felt her heart thudding maddeningly in her head. She knew that despite her intoxication, her face was flaming red. A hissing sigh went up from the boys as the slip was raised and she stood in her brassiere, panties, garter belt and stockings. She felt Cheryl undoing the clasps and working her stockings down her legs.
There was a hesitant touch at her back as Esther undid the brassiere clasps. She braced herself, wanting to sob in mortification, as the filmy band was withdrawn. Reflexively her hands went up, covered her breasts. "Man," someone gloated. "Dig that. Modesty yet."
Her humiliation was complete as Cheryl slid down the gauzy panties, leaving her before Vito entirely nude. "Don't she wear the classiest undies?" Clancy chuckled. "Umm!"
Insolently Vito reached out and pulled her hands from her breasts. Teasingly, he toyed with the crinkled nipples. "Baby," he slurred, "are we gonna enjoy helping you make these little cupcakes grow " He raised her breasts and faced the others. "How about them boobs, gang? Cute, huh?"
"Please," Noelle stammered. "Do you have to-?"
Abruptly he dropped her breasts and turned her around. "Up there," he said. "Stand up on the couch so everybody can see what a real virgin looks like."
Dumbly, her eyes refusing to focus, knowing that she must obey Vito, Noelle stepped up and stood in the center of the blanket. She felt hot humiliation as all their eyes fastened on her and she heard the husky, sick taunts from her audience.
Clancy Pollard was particularly loud. "C'mon, Vito, hurry," he moaned. "Get with it. I c'n hardly wait. I get seconds, not Duke. After all, Noelle was my idea. I was the guy who wanted her in the most."
Vito smiled indulgently. "Sure, Clancy. You get seconds " His gaze shifted. "C'mon, girls. Undress me now." And giggling, making lewd cracks throughout, Glory and Bonnie did the honors for Argente. At last he was naked, the hard planes of his chest and shoulders glistening like burnished bronze in the soft light.
"Here's where it hits the fan," he smirked He jumped up onto the couch before Noelle, making no move whatever to conceal himself from her startled eyes.
Noelle swayed. It was the first time, the very first time, she'd ever seen a man like that She'd surprised her father in the bathroom at times when she was a child, and she'd seen the scatological sketches in the girls' John at school-but this, the actual thing-
The fear became appalling.
Again Vito snickered. "Get a load of those big saucer eyes, gang. She's never seen a real stud before " A muted chorus of laughs greeted this last. But their hearts weren't in it. They were thinking ahead.
"Okay, Noelle," Argente said. "Welcome to the Commandos. This is it. Go ahead."
"What...?" she quavered.
"Lay down, honey I can't do it to you standing up." Her eyes averted, her senses dazzled and dulled, Noelle slowly sank down onto the sheet. She jerked when he came to her and touched her. Then she went limp and let him do whatever he wanted to her.
Briskly his hands went over her body, toying with her breasts, with her stomach and legs. But the love play was of brief duration; he was anxious to get to the main event.
A terrible pressure built up inside Noelle's brain as she realized that the fearsome torture was only moments away. It felt as if her skull would explode, as if her breath was scalding her throat. And she remembered from somewhere-a book she'd read, perhaps-a mention of the horrible pain incurred the first time. When a man-
Then there was no time for further thoughts. For the smiling Vito hovered over her, adjusting her legs with his hands. Then he was kneeling inside her knees, lowering himself, fumbling with that most intimate zone of her anatomy.
"Welcome to the gang," he repeated again. And then Noelle screamed and writhed savagely as he brutally came down and tore away the traditional shield of her virginity. "Oh, oh...." she shrieked. The jarring, scraping contact felt as if someone had touched a red hot poker to her. "Oh, God-It hurts, it hurts-"
Her mind spun. Her eyes turned upward in her head as she fought to be brave, to stifle her agonized cries. The pain was stabbing and murderous. She screamed and moaned without pause. And still the boy's body plunged over hers, still it pounded and burned her. Still he laughed and taunted: "Cherry, cherry, cherry! No more, no more-"
Then finally his hard body stiffened and became immobile and heavy upon hers. Vito sighed thickly. "Oh, baby, that was great, great." He rolled away
"Now?" she pleaded. "Is it over? Can I have my clothes?"
He laughed "Honey, honey, what cabbage plant did your folks find you under? Talk about green. Over? Not by a long shot Things are just beginning to roll, baby."
Momentarily Noelle became hysterical. "No, no, not again. I couldn't stand-" Then, seeing Esther's scathing glare, she swallowed the rest of it. Don't punk out, she adjured herself wildly. Not now. Not when the worst of it's already over.
"Give her some more wine," Vito said. "That'll help straighten her out."
Glory brought her glass and held Noelle up as she greedily gulped it. Even in her misery Noelle couldn't help but see the sad look in Glory's eyes.
Then the naked Clancy Pollard was climbing up on the couch. He was kissing her breasts, leaving them wet and slippery. He was opening her legs. He whispered filthy, nauseating things in her ear as he came to her. With a sighing lurch he took her, and made the torture last a long, long time. At last Noelle couldn't restrain her anguished sobs a minute more.
There was more wine, then, as Duke Defalco stripped. Then he was over her, leering down. "Man, I've always wanted to make it with a rich witch," he murmured. "With a high-and-mighty rich witch."
Now, as the wine took complete charge, the pain was gone. It had faded into oblivion. She felt hardly any sensation as the next boy mounted her.
And the next-
CHAPTER SEVEN
Glory Kovak lived in the three-year-old Sturdevant Town development, one of Kingston Park's inefffectual peace offerings to the growing slum menace, located two blocks north of the infamous Flagg Street. But she had no kind words for Sturdevant Town; it had become just as much of a leprous pigpen as her former cold water flat on Flagg.
In that flat, when she was only twelve, she had been forced to watch her father, in the throes of drink, tie her older brother to a chair and beat him to death with a length of rubber hose. Or almost to death, for Casimir had died the next day at Kingston General. The beating was a punishment because Casimir had been skipping school and been running with a gang called the Dragons.
After that her father had benevolently taken a pistol and blown his brains out. The two acts had the sum effect of delivering the embittered child, body and soul, to the gang concept of life.
She joined the Commandos then. Her mother hadn't been able to do a thing with her since.
Duke Defalco bore scars on his back and the memory of a broken arm from a beating administered to him by the 14th precinct squad boys upon the occasion of his being picked up in connection with a rumble that hadn't even come off. Information, the police demanded as they gave him his bumps; that was all they wanted: information. But what information? Duke was only fourteen; he'd moved into the neighborhood from Hanford only two days before.
He was another ready-made recruit.
Esther Morales's mother was an unkempt, slovenly pearl-diver in a downtown cafe, a woman who didn't care whether Esther lived or died. Esther's father had deserted them (she had had three sisters, all dead now) when she was eight, and the reins of control had gradually crumbled away. She'd been cynical about it when she finally tumbled to the realization that the army of different men her mother kept bringing home night after night couldn't all be her uncles.
It was a crucifying blow. Her own daughter she couldn't tolerate the sight of. But with these strangers-
Vito Argente's story was almost identical. It slightly varied in that he'd lived with it through all his formative years. When his father had disappeared, when his mother had been forced to make it on her own, he hadn't understood the growing crescendo of taunts aimed at him in the streets by children not old enough to know what they were saying and adults too callous to care. "Puta, puta," they catcalled. "Your mother's a whore...."
It was true enough. Margarita Argente was a pretty if not very bright woman; it was only natural she'd choose the easiest way out. Nightly she drifted off, leaving Vito alone, to attend to her duties at a neighborhood brothel. It wasn't until he was older that Vito had fully realized the meaning of his mother's disgrace and had fallen into an easy truce with her, rarely communicating, only living with her. But there was love of a sort, and from then on the insults had not gone unanswered.
Vito had been fighting ever since.
Bonnie Sprague's mother and father were both hopeless lushes, who drank away every cent they had and barely knew if she was alive.
Cheryl Warner's father had been the first man to have carnal knowledge of her body. He had abused her all through her twelfth year, until Mrs. Warner had caught them. After that her father had been committed to Stateville. Things hadn't been pleasant at home since then, so Cheryl had chosen the street.
Ralph Sullivan's father was in prison for armed robbery. Neal Wingo lived with relatives who would have killed him themselves if they thought they'd get away With it. Linda Lundgren wore constant shiners and bruises from the beatings her father gave her. The two newest Commando members had both been recently released from the St. Francis Reformatory.
And so it went, with Clancy Pollard being the only strange bird aside from that orphan of another world entirely, Noelle Crane.
Clancy came from Tremont Plaza, a downtown section consisting of old, well-kept up residences in which a well-to-do middle class kept smug vigil over its children. He had money, clothes, a comfortable home, and the esteem and love of his parents. And still he chose the Commandos. He chose the high-powered excitement that dogged their every move. He chose kicks instead of respectability.
All these things and more Noelle learned in the weeks that followed her grim initiation into the Commandos. She learned them from long, bitter conversations with Glory and Esther, from asides caught when the gang gathered at the warehouse hideout, and from the intolerable braggings of Clancy Pollard.
Clancy, to all intents and purposes, had fallen into the role of being Noelle's stud.
Noelle learned fast-about the Commandos, and about a new way of life, entirely alien to the one she'd led up to now. In a way she was Clancy's twin; she was going along for the ride, looking for kicks to fill a long-existing vacuum.
She had learned a lot about the Commandos.
The Commandos had been responsible for the ten thousand dollars' worth of vandalism at Griffith High School on the city's south side. They had torn up the Sturdevant Youth Center one night after closing, merely because it had been declared off limits to the Commandos.
They had engineered the Marboro Center supermarket robbery, getting away with cases upon cases of cigarettes and beer, not to mention $320 in cash.
They had gang-banged the unfortunate Mrs. Kenneth Whelen, wife of one of Vito's teachers at Forrest.
They had wreaked similar vengeance upon one of the Scorpions' debs two weeks ago, catching her alone in the park, violating her, and leaving her beaten and bloody and without a stitch of clothing, an act which made a rumble all but mandatory if the Scorpions' rep was to go untarnished.
Various members of the Commandos had burglarized over twenty stores and homes in the Marboro district in the past six months.
They had stomped a "coolies" boy half to death one afternoon in front of Harkie's Ice Cream Shop.
They had taken over the Cochise turf in March. The coup was made possible with Python cooperation and they'd split the turf between them, "drafting" a few Co-chises in the bargain. As a final insult they'd captured the Cochise president and taken him into the park, where they'd staked him onto the grass, gathered about him in a tight, ritualistic circle, and performed a water ritual over him. It had been a total disgrace for him, and a week later the boy had fled Kingston Park, never to be seen again.
Some of the descriptions were pretty hard for Noelle to stomach, and she privately worried about her membership in such a primitive, sadistic clique as the Commandos. Then, realizing that she now had little alternative, she managed to submerge her doubts.
At times it was hard to blunt her mind to the ugliness to which she was lending herself, to the quicksand slime into which she was sinking. She simply couldn't make excuses fast enough.
It was hard not to see through the paranoic fantasy existence which Vito, Duke, Glory and the others constructed about themselves-a world of violence, of rumbles, of thrills, of guns and switchblades. In reality, they were immature, frightened animals, intoxicated with vainglorious dreams of power and grandeur, of bloody vengeance against an adult world which had rejected them. They attained status by hanging together, talking their wild argot, committing their animal violences, and trying to dream the world into their own peculiar focus.
Often, when she heard Vito launching into one of his obscene, fanatic harangues against the world, or when she saw him fondly sharpening his switchblade, she felt like crawling away and hiding, and never coming back.
Other times-when they were half high, when they were laughing and dancing in their dugout, the guys grinding Fish for all they were worth-everything was right with her worlds. Noelle was able to bury her fears and incriminations. If she drank enough she was able to tolerate and sometimes almost enjoy having Clancy take her into the pitch-black back room and the community bed the gang had cached there to take his way with her. The pain was now a thing of the past. The pangs of remorse were fading also. It was the way life should swing. So why any tears?
But mostly there was too much commotion, too many distractions for Noelle to spend too much time with morose self-questionings. For besides her life with the Commandos, there were the practical exigencies of making excuses to her parents and attempting to keep up a minimum passing effort at school. The lure of the gang capers made all else insignificant.
Capers like the deb bop she and the other Commando girls had had with the Lancer debs. A fight in which, under Glory's tutelage, she had kneed and gouged and bit and cursed with the best of them The fight had ended when Glory had ripped away the Lancer queen's blouse and brassiere, and they had ground lighted cigarettes into her nipples.
Another night she and Glory had lured a well-dressed but badly-potted lecher into an alley. There Vito, Duke and Clancy had jumped and beaten him, and robbed him of over sixty dollars.
Twice Noelle had acted as lookout while the rest of the gang pulled off burglaries-the first time at a liquor store where they made off with fifteen cases of Scotch, and the second at a drug store where their haul was mostly cheap watches and cameras plus a little cash. Another night as they went through an empty house in Tremunt Plaza (the job had been scouted by Clancy), Noelle was allowed to help them prowl the rooms, and it was she Who found the vacationing owner's small cache of jewels and full-length mink coat. Dutch Klein gave them $200 for the lot.
Still another night, Vito got wind of an unattended mansion outside the city. They, stole cars and drove out there en masse. Scrambling over the wrought-iron fence enclosing the grounds, they fell upon the caretaker, knocked him out, and tied and blindfolded him before he knew what hit him.
Then, taking as many of the negotiable valuables as they could carry, they set out to systematically wreck the house. They tore down drapes, slashed furniture and expensive carpeting, and stomped tables and chairs into kindling. Books in the library were thrown down and trampled. Beds were overturned, mattresses slashed, mirrors smashed. In the kitchen thousands of dollars' worth of expensive equipment was demolished. An entire collection of classical records was used for sailing about the massive living room. Someone found the water main, and when they left the house every faucet in the place was left running.
As final insult they defaced the walls with filthy words and crudely executed pornographic drawings. They left excrement in almost every room.
Blissfully drunk, Noelle joined in all of this with eager abandon.
Then there was the afternoon when, cutting a last-period class, more to prove her own bravado than anything else, Noelle stole her first car. In reality it was nothing; its owner had left the keys in the ignition and had parked in a deserted spot. She merely had to get in, start it and drive.
But it was a definitive turning point in Noelle's life. For now she was hooked. And as she drove recklessly about the city, daring anybody to challenge her right to be in the Cadillac, she thought that no matter how damning her doubts might be now, or might become in the future, she could never turn her back on the Commandos. Any other way of life would be maddeningly dull.
Noelle had noticed the change that had come over Vito during the past week. He was plainly irritated, constantly on edge, quick to take offense with any of the Commandos who happened to cross him. All except Noelle. With her he was the instant gallant.
Instinctively Noelle knew what it was. It didn't take the gang much longer to figure it out. He wanted Noelle; he wanted her for his steady. He was ready to dump Glory at the earliest possible opportunity. Only one thing stood in his way. A Commando didn't cut in on another member's steady, he didn't cheat behind a buddy's back. It had to be out in the open, decided by a fair shuffle or else through a chicken-out.
Vito knew he was no match for Clancy in a fair fight Pollard outweighed him by at least twenty pounds, and outreached him by six inches. A chicken-out was the only alternative.
It involved severe loss of face for a gang boy to even declare his intentions regarding another guy's deb. But Vito was hurting; it was a humiliation he'd willingly suffer. Every time he saw Clancy take Noelle into the dark alcove, he nearly went out of his mind.
So one Thursday night Vito loudly announced to Clancy, "I want Noelle, dad. All for my own. I'm dropping Glory; she's cold fish. I want that cherry witch of yours. I'm president of this gang. I should have her."
Instantly the room was deathly still; every eye was on Clancy and Vito.
Clancy smirked broadly. "And just how, chum," he challenged, "do you expect to get her? Over my dead body? She's mine. She's gonna stay mine."
"President's got a right," Vito persisted. "He can call for a test. Well, I'm calling. I want a chicken-out. With you. For Noelle."
"Hey," Glory bristled, "don't I have a say about this?"
Vito glared at her with satanic menace. "Shut up," he spat. Glory's jaw dropped. She shut up.
"What's in it for me?" Pollard said. "If I win? I've already got Noelle."
Vito went solemn. He shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. This was life and death to him. "Top man, dad. That's what you get. You take ever the gang. I'll fade out of the picture."
A gasp went up from the others.
These were exactly the terms Clancy had hoped for. He'd hankered after the head man's spot for a long time now. He grinned brazenly. "Okay, wise-guy. A chicken-out. You call it."
"Cigarettes," Vito snapped.
Momentarily Clancy's lips paled as he envisioned the eviscerating pain. "Okay, sport," he said, "you got yourself a deal." He glanced around. "Where?"
"Over there. On the table."
Noelle was too stunned to know what to think about the sudden turn of events. She thougnt of Glory, of Clancy-and of Vito. She'd had him only once, that first agonizing time. But even that could be forgotten in the light of the ugly things Clancy'd been trying to make her do lately.
Her resolve hardened. What did it matter who it was? It was all the same, wasn't it? Clancy or Vito, who cared? But if Glory should be hurt in the bargain-
Her qualms were routed by wonder at what they meant by "chicken-out." What kind of contest would it be? And beyond that she felt butterfly stirrings in her belly. That Vito should want me that badly-that he'd risk everything-for me.
She watched both boys remove their shirts, sit across from each other at the table, glare and assess each other. Then she saw them reach across the table, place their forearms tightly together and clench their fists.
"Okay, Duke," Vito shot. "Give us the cig."
His eyes half closed, smirking, Duke puffed his cigarette to fiery life. Then he advanced on the table, carefully and expertly laid the burning butt in the valley of flesh formed by their two forearms.
Instantly the sickening stench of burning hair and skin filled the air. Vito clenched his fist all the harder and gritted his teeth. "First guy moves loses," he said, sucking in deep breaths.
"You called it, chicken," Clancy gasped. After a minute, the stench grew stronger and Noelle had all she could do to keep from heaving. Yet she was mesmerized and couldn't look away. The two fists kept clenching and closing. Hoarse, uncontrollable groans broke from the boys' throats. Great beads of sweat stood out on their contorted faces.
"I won't chicken out," Clancy hissed as the second minute came and passed and the cigarette grew shorter. "Save your breath," Vito taunted. The third minute came-and with it Clancy's Waterloo. Now shrill animal whines escaped him. He closed his eyes, shook his head, called upon his last reserve of strength And finally, a monstrous groan of rage and frustration echoed in the room.
Pollard was standing. "You bastard," he choked, his humiliation complete. "You dirty, rotten bastard." He lurched toward the door. "Take the slut! You won her " Then he was in the darkness, bolting out into the warehouse.
"Congrats, Vito," Duke clapped his captain on the shoulder "I guess you showed him who was chicken."
Vito shrugged him off, stood, and pulled his shirt back on to cover the long, ugly red wound in his skin. He looked domineeringly at Noelle. "Get your jacket, kid. We're bugging out."
Noelle wavered before him, flushed, ashamed of the hot sense of pride and victory that was surging through her. She turned to Glory. "What about it, Glory? Is it all right by you? If you say-"
"She's got nothing to say about it," Vito snarled.
"It's ... okay, honey," Glory replied. "I was kind of expecting it. Go ahead, go with him That's the way guys are. You'll find that out one of these days. You gotta do what they say...." She sent Noelle that same unsettling smile, an apologetic something in her eyes.
Noelle tried again. "If you-"
"I said c'mon." Vito threw her jacket at her, pushed her toward the door. "We've got things to take care of."
They heard soft murmurs behind them as the door slammed shut. Vito gripped Noelle's arm, and she found herself trembling. Then they were in the darkness outside the warehouse. Vito was turning her roughly. His lips came down on hers brutally. Noelle was surprised to find him shaking too. A hot flame ripped through her and exploded in her stomach.
"We'll go to my place," he said. "We'll be all alone there."
Noelle felt rather than saw that the apartment was a nice one. There was an odor of furniture polish and clean linen about it. Whore Mrs. Argente might be, but slob she was not. Vito turned on no lights. There was only the click of the door lock; then he was leading her silently through the darkness, opening a door for her, settling her on a soft bed. Noelle heard an eerie whistling in her ears.
Vito said nothing as he undressed her, as he pushed her back onto the clean sheets. In the darkness she heard the sounds of his breathing, the click of his belt, the hiss of a zipper, the clump of shoes. And finally, the squeaking sag of the bed.
"Noelle," he said breathlessly as he fell beside her. "Don't hate me. I had to do it this way, I just had to. I'll be good to you, honest I will. I won't hurt you ... like last time." He held her close, his body feverishly warm, his legs shaking, twining in hers. Reverently he kissed the concavity of her neck and shoulder. "I've wanted to do this for so long...."
The wild heat burgeoned within Noelle, and she was hard put to understand what was happening to her. Why, at a time like this, was it so hard for her to get her breath-why did she feel like crying?
Gently his lips closed on hers-moist, soft, inventive, touching, compressing, pecking, exploring the responsive heat of her own lips. Noelle couldn't help but feel the masculine urgency that crowded him. Involuntarily she put her arms about his waist, drew him even closer.
She broke the torrid, suffocating kiss. "It's all right, Vito. I don't mind. Go ahead, do what you want to me."
A wracking shudder went through him, and he moaned softly. Then he let his lips slide-down to her breasts, let his tongue flick and torture her hard nipples. Noelle felt her pulse quicken, her scalp tingle from the delicious, heady sensation. Clancy had never been this gentle. He had always wanted to hurry things.
It was an awakening to her, a transfiguring revelation, as Vito hovered over her body for what seemed hours, and each additional minute, each new tender ministration turning her that much more wild and mushy inside. Caught up in the new-born, incomprehensible passion, Noelle held his head, guided his lips from breast to breast. She wallowed in his throaty adoration.
"They're the prettiest little breasts. So tiny, so tiny. I love 'em, I love 'em. Honest, I do." His tongue wrapped about each nipple, tossed and pushed it. He shuddered. "Oh, God, why did I let him take you? Why didn't I fight him for you that very first night?"
It felt like someone was driving darts into her breasts, golden darts which went spiraling down into her belly, deep into her loins. Dear God, she thought, it's wonder Jul, wonderful Why haven't I ever felt it like this before? Don't stop, Vito, never stop.
And even though she forbade him to stop, another part of her brain silently adjured him to hurry. I can't wait, I can't wait. Come in now, darling. Before I go crazy.
Her body betrayed her. Her breath came in long, sighing gasps, her legs began to twitch, her belly to heave and tremble.
"You want it?" he murmured. "You want me now?"
"Yes," she breathed. "Oh, yes, Vito."
But still he withheld pleasure Rocked by an overpowering desire, he drove his lips to hers again, let his tongue dart into that ingenuous mouth, probed and clung to her tongue. While his hands roved her belly, found her, and stimulated her still further.
Until Noelle, knowing the depths of sexual love for the first time in her life, moaned helplessly, "Soon, soon, soon...."
Then at long last his hands moved onto her thighs and signalled unmistakably. With a slivery sigh she moved her legs and drew up her knees. "Yes, baby, yes," she called, completely out of her mind with passion.
His lean, lithe body came up and hovered over hers. She sensed he was smiling tenderly at her in the darkness. And in an utterly wanton impatience, she reached up, found him, guided him to her body. Stunned, appalled at the involuntary action, she thought, That I'd ever live to see the day when I'd want a man so badly-that I'd curl up inside for it.
A long, grateful sigh issued from her throat as the liquid, warm, beautiful coupling took place. II this feeling of true completion could only last forever, she thought. It's sublime, so sublime.
And all at once she realized why Laura Nolte, and all those other women, even her own mother, had screamed so deliriously. She wanted to scream herself now.
The beautiful body rose and fell above hers in smooth yet jutting rhythm, stoking a raging fire inside her, a fire that threatened to turn her body to runny squid. And now her legs rose, twined in Vito's, pressed him closer, closer. They trapped him, guided him, spurred him.
Then, like lapping waves of silver beginning to cascade down a long, twisting stairway, the magnificent sensation grew within her. Nearer now, and nearer. Until-
Now the molten metal plunged over the last step, reached her, causing holy ecstasy to expand and bloat her inside. There was an awesome, torturing pain-a delectable, mind-snapping heat that she wanted never to end.
Then Noelle did scream-raggedly and unashamedly, preeningly proud of the miracle she'd brought to pass.
"Oh, darling, darling," she wailed. "It's beautiful, beautiful. Not ugly at all. Oh, again. Make it happen again."
Vito breathed heavily in her ear, plastering his body to hers like a second skin, his hips continuing to rise and fall, jarring and loving and brutal and tender and delicious and-
Indescribably magnificent.
She groaned in thick, mindless rapture, and locked her legs with all her strength. "You now, darling," she moaned, abetting his frenzied exertions, bringing her body to meet his with fanatic triphammer thrust. "You, you, you...."
Their final cry was simultaneous, the visionary staircase seemingly a virtual Niagara of liquid silver as her completion arrived, as she felt Vito deliver and deliver.
"I love you, Noelle," he gasped, lying still at last, his body heavy yet not heavy upon hers. "I love you. I guess I must have loved you right from the start."
And dutifully, mistaking physical passion for a love she'd never known, feeling totally alive for the first time in so long, Noelle repeated his words. "I love you, baby. I'm so glad you chose me, that you took me from Clancy. That you showed me it could be like this."
And she fell into the now-so-famiriar gang vernacular. "I'm your deb and you're my stud That's the way it's gonna be from now on." She clawed him tighter, reveling in the tenuous union existing between them. "I do love you, really I do."
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was the second week in June, and school was out in Kingston Park for another year. But for Noelle, Glory and Vito it was out for good. Somehow, Noelle had managed to graduate, most of her marks remaining at A, some dipping to B and B-plus. Perhaps it was her previous good record, the impetus she'd generated during the first three-quarters of the year, that had caused her teachers to be generous. During these past weeks she certainly hadn't given them cause to be forgiving and benevolent.
And maybe, when all the votes were in, it was the phantom influence of her father's position in the community that had swung it.
But it didn't matter. None of k mattered. Only her continuing existence as a member-in-good-standing of the Commandos mattered-that and her love affair with Vito Argente, the discovery of joyful physical love.
It was a bitter testament to the total indifference of her parents that not once in her five weeks of running with the gang had they ever denied her the so-necessary freedom, had they ever really questioned her suddenly quickened social life, had they even cross-checked her flimsy alibis. "It certainly seems odd that all of a sudden you're such a social lion at school and among your girl friends," Mother once had mused. But that was the extent of it.
As far as connecting her constant absences, her late hours with membership in a street gang-it was beyond the realm of their wildest dreams. Their shy, retiring Noelle? It was to laugh.
Lord, Noelle thought during those times when she was in the midst of a particularly nasty Commando caper, or when she was in bed with Vito, if Mom and Dad could only see their precious little baby now!
"Vito," she murmured drowsily one night as they waited between sessions at his mother's apartment, "you know who my father is, don't you? Who he really is?"
Vito shifted, in the process taking his warm hand from her right breast. "No," Noelle said, "don't take it away. Keep it there. I feel so snug and safe when you hold me like that."
He replaced his hand, chuckled as he heard her sigh pleasurably. "Sure," he said. "I know who your dad is. I know he's worth a hundred grand a year, if that's what you mean."
"What do you think he'd do if he found out I was in with the Commandos? If he knew I wasn't a virgin any more? If he knew about my initiation?"
Vito stiffened. "You still holding that against me?"
"No, baby." Noelle suddenly became solicitous. "Not at all. I've forgotten all about it. It was something you had to do. It doesn't matter at all. How come you're go touchy lately? I can't say anything without you jumping all over me." She ran her finger along the side of his smooth throat. "You aren't getting tired of me, are you?"
He snorted. "Did that thing we just finished with mean I'm getting tired of you?"
Noelle sighed, "Oh no, baby. Hardly."
"Well, then, knock off that kind of jazz."
"What I meant was, what do you think my dad'd do if he knew everything about his innocent lamb?"
"He'd flip."
"God, wouldn't I love to see his face? Mom's face?"
"Don't even talk about it. It gives me the willies. He'd blow the whistle, and the fuzz'd land on us so hard it'd take a shovel to scrape us off the sidewalk."
Noelle laughed softly. "I'd just like to see, that's all. He'd go right out of his mind."
"Change the subject, huh?"
"Okay, what should we talk about? The next one? You have got another one for me, haven't you?"
"Baby, you know it." His hands began to squeeze and roil her breasts. "And how."
"Vito?" '
"Yeah?"
"Do you think they're getting any bigger? You really like my breasts, don't you? Sometimes I'm so ashamed of them. They're so tiny."
"They should be getting bigger," he muttered. "The workout I've given them lately. And I do like your little boobs. I think they're the nicest ever. Times there with Glory I'd need four hands. You've got a perfect mouthful."
"Vito!" she feigned shock. "How you talk! I didn't ask you to be vulgar."
"Vulgar, schmulgar. You know it gives you a jolt."
"Don't talk about Glory like that, Vito. She's my friend. My best friend."
"She's dead. I never did get much out of making it with her. She never had half the spark you do."
"I thought we weren't going to talk about her." Her voice dropped to a seductive whisper. "Vito, are you about ready? It's been a half hour. I've got to go home soon."
"Why don't you check things for yourself?"
The bed rustled, and Noelle emitted a surprised giggle. "You are, baby! Why didn't you tell me? Here' you made me wait all this time." She fell back on the pillow. "Please?"
"Please what?"
"Please do it to me again."
"Please do what to you again?"
Noelle blushed. "Don't make me say ... that word."
"You gonna be a prude all your life? C'mon, tell me. Or you won't get a damned thing. Do what to you?"
She leaned close, whispered it in his ear.
"That's more like it," he gloated. "Now, honey, we're in business. Here I come, ready or not."
But abruptly Noelle was up. "Oh no, not so soon." She put her arms beneath his head, drew him up. "Love me a little, huh, dolly?" And then as his lips closed on one of her nipples, as his tongue began to whirl and probe, she sighed. "Oh, Vito, if you only knew how good that feels. Keep it up, keep it up. Don't be so impatient."
Vito's recent moodiness and bouts of temper were no figments of Noelle's imagination. She had noticed it, and so had some of the other more observant Commandos. He seemed paler than usual, was constantly yawning, and more important, he seemed disinterested in gang doings. The long awaited rumble with the Scorpions was on tap; a "meet" had taken place only a few days ago. The rumble was set for the Friday next at the deserted Forrest High athletic field-only with a treacherous variation.
The Scorpions didn't know the Pythons were in on the bop also. Another thing: they were unaware that the Pythons had had a "snake" on the Scorpion turf for over a week now and that, based on his reports, they intended to "jap" the Scorpions, surprising them as they gathered around Melnick's Eat Shop on Thursday night. The Scorpions were in for one big shock, for not only were they to be jumped a day early, but Vito intended to steal a car and drive through and blast them with his and Duke's "pieces" before the main body of hoppers had infiltrated the neighborhood.
It would be a rumble to remember.
Another drawback to Vito's sudden withdrawal from the mainstream of gang life was his attitude toward Noelle. He was no longer the ardent, patient lover. At times she got the distinct notion that he was only going through the motions, fumbling his way through the overtures, shamming his deliverance. And one thing for sure-he certainly didn't want her sexually as often as he had at first.
"Jeez, don't let a little thing like that bother you, honey," Glory had said when Noelle had mentioned the inadequacy to her. "They all get like that. Once they've had a gal they get sick of her, take her for granted. Why, do you know, someone once told me that when you're married you'll only want it once a week. Once a month even."
This latter Noelle couldn't bring herself to believe.
Of course, Glory or Duke, if anybody, should have recognized the symptoms, should have realized that Vito was on dope. Perhaps so badly that he was hooked through the bag and back again.
At any rate, it was a scant week later that Noelle got uncontestable proof of that truth. Not finding Vito at the warehouse, she had gone to his apartment uninvited and all but caught him in the act of "popping" a quarter grain of morphine in his living room.
There was a funny smell in the air as Vito finally opened up to her persistent knocking. She sensed immediately that something was wrong. His strange, almost idiotic smile, the furtive way he avoided her eyes, was tipoff enough. But when she saw the empty "cap" still lying on the coffee table, the smoke-blackened spoon, she knew what had taken place.
"Vito, honey," her eyes widened, "what's wrong with you? I thought you'd be at the dugout, and when you didn't show I came looking. You've been washed out lately; I thought you might be sick. What is it, darling?"
His lips curled in a snarl. "God, you're just like the rest of them. Always prying, always snooping around." He looked toward the capsule and spoon. "Well? Are you satisfied now that you've found out?"
Noelle's eyes darted to the odd equipment, "Found out what, Vito? What does it mean?"
Deliberately he rolled up his sleeve. As if in vengeful spite, he displayed the smudged imprints of past pinpricks, almost proud of the fresh, single drop of blood-stigmata-that glistened against his tawny skin. "I'm a junky," he said levelly. "A hophead. I'm on morphine. For two weeks now. I can't leave the stuff alone."
"Vito," she wailed, "no ... It can't be."
"Can't it?" He worked his arm back and forth to hurry the drug's circulation. He closed his eyes, smiled beatifically. "Oooh, that's good. Real good. Almost better than loving. Man, that sings...."
"Vito, please don't talk like that. I love you, don't hurt me...."
"I love you, too, doll. But let's be honest about things, huh? It's the greatest. When Old Doctor M takes care of Vito he doesn't feel sad, he isn't afraid any more. He forgets how to hate. Is that so bad? Can you do that good, honey?"
"You aren't...." the word was alien on her lips, "hooked ... are you? Not in two weeks. If you try you can break it. I know you can. I'll help you...."
He grinned smugly. "What makes you think I want to break it? When I'm on, I'm king of the mountain It's the greatest. How about you? You wanna try a jolt? I got an extra cap around here someplace." A tortured look crossed his features. "C'mon, baby, let me fix you up. Well sail together."
A wave of revulsion swamped Noelle. This isn't the Vito I know, she thought. Not at all. Not the tough, swaggering Vito. He's weak and craven. A whimpering excuse for a man. "No," she made her voice hard. "I don't want any, Vito. I don't want to try it."
"Suit yourself," he shrugged. "It costs too much to waste on prissy little saints like you."
Noelle's face was etched with despair. "What will we do, Vito? What's going to happen to you?"
"Going to happen? Nothing's going to happen. In a minute I'll be set up and we can go down to the dugout. I'll be A-okay. I'm still head man, ain't I?"
"Yes," she replied dully. "You're still head man."
And then, back at the warehouse, as she watched Vito arrogantly move among the others, watched him bluff his way through the planning session in which he hadn't the slightest interest, she became frightened. What was going to happen. She loved Vito, she couldn't just sit idly by and allow him to degenerate into a runny-nosed, rheumy-eyed addict.
She'd stick by him, she decided. After all, what good was so-called love if you ran out on your stud the minute he got into trouble? Perhaps there was still a chance. Maybe tomorrow he'd listen to her and she could persuade him to taper off, to lay off dope completely.
The words became a thrumming, hopeful chant in her mind. There was still a chance, still a chance-
But the next day she couldn't find trace of Vito anywhere. It was as if he'd dropped off the face of the earth. She and Glory roamed Flagg Street and all its side streets, checking the joints Vito usually hung out in. Not daring to visit his apartment while his mother was still home, they called again and again, asking for him, receiving the same answer: "No, he isn't home. He hasn't been home all day. Who's calling please?"
"Just a friend," Noelle said. "I'll call again."
Then, late that afternoon, back at the warehouse, she sat in sullen dejection beside Glory. They were alone in the room, both sitting on one of the battered davenports. Noelle sank deeper and deeper into gloom. Finally Glory cut the silence, lifting Noelle's chin with her finger.
"All right, honey," she said acidly. "You can tell old Glory what this is all about. You ain't just chasing Vito around because you need your ashes hauled. Something's wrong. Now level with me. What is it?"
"It's nothing," Noelle said, on the verge of tears. "I'm just looking for him, that's all."
"Cat manure!" she snapped. "Don't con me, kid. Give. What cooks? Or do I have to slap it out of you?"
Then, at last, wanting to share her misery with someone. Noelle broke into muffled sobs. "It's Vito . ."
"I know it's Vito." Glory gathered the small form into her arms and held her tightly. Almost too tightly it seemed to Noelle. "What is it with him? Has he given you the gate? Just like he gave me?"
"No," Noelle choked. "I wouldn't care if it was just that ... It's even worse. Glory, he's on dope. He's shooting up like a madman!"
And then, huddling in her friend's arms, she related the details of her nasty discovery at Vito's apartment the other night. Of Vito's determination to go on with the enslaving habit. Of her vow to stick with him, to try to help him kick it.
"You poor, mixed-up kid," Glory consoled. "You actually believe you can help a hophead once they're hooked? They don't want to be helped. They only want to continue that big love affair with their hypo. That's the only help they want."
Her arms closed more tightly about Noelle. She began to tremble uncontrollably. She pulled Noelle's head down on her large breasts, buried her lips in her hair. "You poor, poor kid. God, why did I ever get you into a mess like this? And you had to go fall for a junky creep like Vito besides. Him, of all people." A doleful note crept into her voice, almost as if she were pitying herself.
The shudders grew in intensity, Glory's kissing becoming even wilder. Then she kissed Noelle's forehead, her tear-wet eyes. "Poor Noelle," she cooed. "My poor baby."
Finally Noelle became uncomfortable under the dinging, suffocating attention and sensed that there was something unsavory about it. Gently, not wanting to hurt Glory's feelings, she disengaged her arms, drew away from her. "I'm all right now," she sighed. "I'll be okay."
"Don't worry about that louse. He isn't worth one of your tears."
"I ... then have to find him. I can't desert him now. I have to help him if I can. I ... I'm in love with him."
When she looked up now she was disconcerted by the sudden transition in Glory's mood. For now she was looking at Noelle with the most hateful expression imaginable.
But the most cataclysmic blow of all befell the Commandos on the Thursday night of the big rumble. Vito, like the bad penny, had turned up the previous day, had been evasive about his forty-eight hour absence. Seemingly he'd been enthusiastic about the plans for the rumble and had pointed out numerous weak spots in the plans.
Now it was Thursday night. Nine-thirty. Time they should roll in the decrepit Ford that Duke Defalco had stolen for the preliminary ambush. The gang had moved out already. Only Duke, Neal, Esther and Noelle still waited in the hideout.
"Where'n hell is he?" Duke raged. "Where is he? God, the Python'll be murdered if we don't go down first. Goddamnit, Noelle, where is the cheesy jerk?"
"I don't know," she wailed. "I just don't know."
Panic lit Duke's face. Then he rose, took the two guns, beckoned Neal and Esther toward the door. "We'll have to go without him." He looked back. "You coming with us, Noelle?"
"No," she said woodenly, looking through him. "I'm not coming. I'm going out to look for Vito."
She brushed past them, and ran into the cavernous darkness of the warehouse.
CHAPTER NINE
Noelle didn't find Vito on that disastrous night. He was nowhere to be found. And as she'd frantically loped across the Commando turf; checking every dive, the gang room and Vito's apartment two and three times, her confusion had mounted. What was happening to them? Why, now, when her life had taken on some small semblance of meaning, did this have to happen? Why couldn't Vito have been as strong inside as he appeared on the outside?
Vito, Vito-she called in hopeless lament. I love you, Vito.
She imagined him in some dingy, dark room, sitting or lying in a comatose state, dreaming his happy dreams, escaping this very real world for one cloaked in fantasy, one tinted in the wildest sort of colors. She imagined his sleepy, lazy smile. She imagined the effete, limp way he'd waved his hands about as he'd talked.
Vito where are you? Won't you let me help you? Please, Vito-
"Disastrous night" is used advisedly. For as Noelle returned to the warehouse for the third time, at ten-forty, she found most of the gang members, plus a few Pythons who'd been cut off behind their lines, huddled gloomily in the dugout. She saw sickening and concrete testimony to the life-and-death earnestness of a gang bop.
Glory's slacks were half torn off her, a bloody gash streaked down one side of her face; her lips were puffy and discolored. Duke Defalco's hands were gashed and bloody, his face was swollen on one side, his lips split wide. Ralph Sullivan lay on one of the davenports, a dirty rag wound about his forehead. Almost every member had his clothing torn. One of the Pythons sat in a chair, slowly turning his head back and forth to shut out the pain of his broken nose, doing his best to stifle his animal groans.
"There were too many of them," Duke muttered m answer to Noelle's stricken look. "Even with the guns, even surprising them like that, they took us. We wounded a couple of 'em, but by the time we came down in force they were waiting for us. We dumped Neal off in his doorway. He got knifed bad. Ralph got caught with a chain."
He winced. "One of the Python's got his head split open. Got japped with a piece of aerial. After I ditched the car I charged back. Somebody decked me. I caught a boot in the face."
He glared angrily at the knot of Pythons. "If only those Pythons hadn't chickened out. All of a sudden they were just gone."
"Watch your rotten Dago mouth," one of the Pythons warned. "Don't sound on us. The cops were comfag; we had to cut out. Besides, you got no place to talk-Where was Vito? Some gang you got, when your own prez punks out."
It was an unanswerable taunt. Duke fell silent, then turned on Noelle. "Did you find the yellow rat? Where was he when we needed him? He ain't president of this gang no more. Any guy who'll punk out on a rumble doesn't deserve-I'm taking over from here on in."
Despite her own doubts, Noelle came to Vito's defense. "He didn't punk out. He's sick, that's all. He's been sick for a long time now."
"Sick?" Glory taunted. "Junk sick. He's a hophead. We don't want no junkies running this gang."
"Besides," Noelle countered, her words sounding hollow even in her ears, "you just can't kick Vito out. You have to have an election."
Duke smiled sardonically. "Yeah? And what d'ya think an election'll prove? Who'll vote for that chicken bastard?"
"He's your best friend," Noelle struck out blindly.
"Was my friend. I got no punk-out friends. He can still swing with us if he wants. But there ain't anybody gonna lend him any money. He's back seat scum from now on."
Noelle had no retort for this. After all, what answer was there? Vito was gone, wasn't he? When the gang had needed him he'd made himself scarce, choosing instead to "shoot-up," turn his back on every responsibility. He had no right-none at all.
Her lips quivering, her eyes filmed over with tears, Noelle wheeled and bolted out of the room.
It was midnight when she reached home. Sick at heart, she entered the house, wearily climbed the steps to her bedroom. There was no sweat about alibis tonight. The house was empty; her parents wouldn't be home for hours.
Neal Wingo was in the hospital, his condition serious. Ralph Sullivan hadn't shown up for three days, and rumor had it that he was laid up at home, having a hard time remembering things. Other reports drifting in from the Scorpion turf verified Duke's brag that he'd "hurt" two of their boys. At least three Scorpions were also in the hospital.
Everyone kept his distance, giving the police detectives who roamed the neighborhood for two days following the bop little chance to collar individual members, let alone catch them congregating on some street corner, or, worse still, at their gang hideaway. Those few who were cornered disclaimed any knowledge whatsoever of gang activities, feigning surprise to hear that there was even a gang existing on Flagg Street.
And, of course, no police detectives called at the Brad Crane residence in fashionable Holly Hills.
The police had slim pickings indeed.
The word went out a week later that a meeting of the Commandos would take place on Thursday night, a special invitation being issued to Vito Argente.
It was obvious to Noelle what would happen that night. She smelled rebellion in the air the second she entered the dugout. But if the imminent coup d'etat bothered Noelle, it was seemingly of no consequence to Vito. For he sat apart from the gang, against the wall, chair tipped back, a cocky smile on his face.
Nor did he protest much when Duke Defalco sounded him before the others and called him yellow. The smile seemed to be pasted on his face. The election was duly called and executed. Of the ten members present only one-Noelle-voted to keep Vito as president. A second ballot gave nine votes to Duke as new Commando leader.
And still Vito smiled, refusing to take offense, as Duke announced his new status in the gang. "This is your last chance, Vito," he said. "You mess up on us once more and you run the gauntlet. We'll stomp you good."
Then, the eternal grin on his face, Vito had nodded, had walked out of the gang room. A few seconds later Noelle had jumped up, gone in pursuit of him.
During the next few days things seemed to return to normal between Noelle and Vito. The shock of being ousted from the gang's presidency seemed to bring him around, made him realize the enormity of his weakness. He'd been drifting too long, he realized, it was time to get back on the track.
And, fired with new hope, Noelle went on squandering her misbegotten love and trust on Vito, assured that it was her influence that was sparking the reformation.
It was like old times, Noelle thought, deluding herself, not recognizing the fact that Vito had only reached a plateau between the lows and highs of dope. And she lent herself to prolonged, uninhibited love sessions with Vito at his apartment, surprising even herself at the passion that welled from a hidden spring within her, at the excesses she permittted.
All of which she sugar-coated with one all-inclusive platitude. She was in love with Vito These were the things a woman in love permitted her lover.
But then, gradually, things soured again Vito turned tense and edgy, snapping at her for every little thing. When he made love to her he was often cruel, enjoyed hurting her in small ways.
Questioning the change, Noelle received an acid retort:
"What'n hell do you expect, kid? You wanted me to kick the junk, didn't you? Sure I'm keyed up. You'd be jumpy too if you were living the hell I'm living. My head's aching, I feel like I'm on fire in every bone in my body. Take your pick. You want a junky or do you want me clean?"
Noelle was immediately contrite. "Oh, darling, I'm sorry. I'm just not thinking. I know it's tough for you. I'm acting like a spoiled baby. It's all right, Vito. Hurt me, do anything you want. I'll understand." She fell into his arms, huddled against his chest. "I want you back so badly, baby. The way you were before...."
"Yeah, yeah," he answered sharply, pushing her away. "Just give it some time, that's all, give it some time."
Though the rejection hurt her, Noelle swallowed her pride, fought to understand. A few more days and the crisis would be over. He'd have kicked the incipient habit almost before it started.
She endured it, nevertheless, trying to be pleasant and helpful, hoping against hope that they'd caught it in time.
But seven days later, on a Friday night, her hopes were irrevocably dashed. She was dragged, screaming, from her pretty ivory tower.
It was time to come down into the hard, brutal world once more. Where the real living was done.
"Where are we going?" she asked, almost running to keep pace with Vito, the hard leather heels of her new flats tapping on the sidewalk. She wore a cotton dress tonight, a cute, innocent thing with a basque neckline, a cord belt lopping at her waist. The stockings she wore, her small breasts poking out in front of her, the fresh-scrubbed, happy look on her features, gave her a little-girl appearance, very much out of place for Holland Street, one of the feeders coming off of Flagg.
"Never you mind," Vito forced a smile. "You'll find out when we get there. Just a gig I've got planned."
It was explanation enough, and Noelle was content. If Vito was interested in parties again, it was a good tign. She smiled, increased her stride. "Who'll be there?"
Vito was evasive, and Noelle should have been warned. But aglow with happiness at Vito's sudden improvement, she didn't notice. "Lots of people," he said. "Well have a ball."
"Anybody I know? Have we ever been there before?"
He grinned curiously, the cruel expression sending a chill down her spine. "Why don't you wait and see?"
The apartment building before which they stopped was rundown, its small lawn littered with paper, candy wrappers and empty beer cans, just on the verge of deteriorating to a complete slum. "Is this it?" she quavered.
"Yeah. Johnny's place is on the third floor."
Johnny's place proved to be a stunning surprise to Noelle. She was not so much moved by its luxuriousness as she was by the fact that amidst all this dirt and poverty there could be a princely suite like this. After all, she'd been exposed to luxury all her life; it was the unexpected contrast that shook her.
The suite was air-conditioned, richly carpeted, the walls painted and papered in exquisite taste, the furnishings ornate and expensive. There was something about the place she found hard to describe-an almost obscene, sensual opulence in its plush appointments-the oriental lamps and details, the muted, oppressive colors, the soft, persuasive music hanging on the aromatic air.
Another surprise was Johnny himself. This, plus the fact that there was nobody else present in the apartment. Only the three of them. Momentarily Noelle panicked. What is this? she thought. Vito promised a party-
"Noelle," Vito grinned weakly, "meet Johnny Sarna." He looked deferentially to Sarna. "Johnny, this is Noelle. My steady. The girl I've been telling you about."
In the brief moment that Johnny bobbed over her hand and murmured a silky, "Charmed, I'm sure," Noelle had time to appraise the short, fat man. He was perhaps forty, partially bald, his face flat, squashed in. His skin seemed too shiny, his eyes too glittering. He was dressed in a white shirt, black bow tie, black pants. Over them all was draped a voluptuous, red, silk dressing-gown, an exquisite garment, expertly tailored to his gross little body.
Then he was standing, looking directly at Noelle, his eyes piggishly appraising her, making her feel crawly inside. "So glad you could come," he said. "Could I give you a drink? Something to occupy you while Vito and I transact some business?"
"Business? I thought. Where are the others?"
"Others?" He looked surprised He turned on Argente. "Vito, have you been conning our little girl again? There are no others, my dear."
"But...." Her pulse raced madly. What is this? she thought.
"Something to drink?" he persisted.
"Anything you have...." Noelle mumbled.
"I have some martinis ready." He questioned Vito. "Is the little lady up to martinis?"
"She has to learn sometime, I figure."
"Yes. A martini it is." He gingerly brought the glass, set it on a magnificent cocktail table which sat before the chair in which the bemused Noelle waited.
He stood, rubbed his hands. "Now, Vito," he smiled. "You said something about a fix?"
Noelle instantly jerked upright in her chair, spilled a few drops of the bitter-tasting drink. "Fix?" she said. "Vito, you didn't ... You brought me here for that? But you promised-"
He ducked his head. When he looked up, he was sneering. "I promised you nothing. I gotta have a fix. I'm about to pop my skull. You just don't know what it's like."
She put down her glass, rose. "I want to go, Vito. I won't stay and-"
Johnny Sarna went to the door, inserted a key and locked it from the inside. "You ain't going anywhere, Noelle," he menaced. "You stay right where you are He glanced at Vito. "Does she know about our arrangement?"
Vito smiled. "Not yet. But she will."
"Good. Then it's all set. Shall we go into the other room?"
Helplessly, her heart hammering deafeningly, Noelle sat and watched them leave the room. She bowed her head, fought back tears as she saw how eagerly Vito was unbuttoning his shirt.
They were back five minutes later, Vito pumping his arm, the old happy smile back on his face. He looked through Noelle.
Johnny was smiling also, his grin lecherous, anticipatory. He advanced on Noelle, stood before her, stared at her with fixed, greedy concentration. "You are pretty. Even prettier close up than from a distance." Noelle shrank in the chair, afraid that he'd reach out and touch her. She couldn't bear that.
"I saw you on the street one day with Vito," he continued. "I asked him to bring you up. You're much too nice a girl for a roughneck like Vito."
His voice took on a reptilian, coaxing tone. "Yes, my dear. Much too nice." He glanced up at Vito, the spell, for the moment, broken. "Are you still here, Vito? You got what you came for, didn't you? Well, get out!"
Vito smirked sleepily, started toward the door. Instantly Noelle stood, started after him. "Vito, wait!"
"No," Vito growled. "You stay. With Johnny."
"That's right," Sarna said. "You stay here with me."
"But-Vito, what do you mean?"
"Don't be so damned square," he snarled. "I had to have a fix, didn't I? What am I supposed to pay for it with? I'm busted. I told Johnny he could take it out in trade."
"Vito," she wailed, almost falling. "You can't mean ft. Yon don't know what you're doing to me-"
"Don't I?" He let Sarna open the door for him.
"That's all you know about it." Then he was letting himself out. "Bye, Johnny. See ya around. Have fun." Noelle flung herself at the door, tried to get past Sarna. "Vito, Vito," she called. "You can't! No, please don't do this. No, Vito!"
Sarna shoved her back brutally, locked the door.
"Shut your mouth, slut. You want the whole house to hear?"
Noelle was frozen with terror, transfixed by the demented threat in Sarna's gaze. Then she began to babble brokenly. "No, no-you can't-My God, what's happening? Why me? Why is it always me?"
The man shook her cruelly. "Knock it off, baby. That's enough. Or do you want me to slap your ears off? Calm down, before I get mad."
He wrung her wrist and dragged Noelle to the center of the room. Then he stepped back, sat on the arm of a davenport. His next words sizzled, cut the air, hung there in insane reverberation. "Undress, kid. Right now. I wanna see if I bought a pig in a poke."
"Undress?" she gasped. Then, the full weight of her predicament suddenly crushing her, she burst into wracking sobs. "No, no, no-please-I can't. Don't make me. Oh, dear God, no. I never did anything to you."
He tolerated her weeping only momentarily. Abruptly he lunged at her, his beefy hands open. He slapped her across the face. Once-twice-Noelle groaned and sucked in her breath sharply. Then she was on the floor, on her knees, her head bobbing aimlessly on her shoulders.
"Don't play with Johnny Sarna, you little tramp. I ain't got the patience. I paid for you, I'm gonna have you." He twisted her hair, jerked her head up. "For the last time. You gonna undress or not?"
This can't be happening, it just can't, Noelle's stunned brain repeated again and again. It's a bad dream. I'll wake up any minute now.
Again Sarna yanked at her hair, driving fiery daggers into her brain. It was no dream. And blindly, mechanically, too terrified to resist any longer, Noelle straightened, began undoing her buttons. Then the zipper at the waist. The dress rose over her head. Now the slip.
Sarna retired to his chair, watched her with piggish eyes. "Not so fast, babe," he bubbled. "Make it last. Make a hot show out of it." Noetle shuddered, forced her hands to fall at her sides. "Honey," he intoned, making something filthy out of the word. "What a trim little shape on that."
Finally she pulled away the last of her clothes, stood naked before him, goose pimples streaking over her body. Her head was down, she was unable to look at him. While he sat studying her, he directing vulgar compliments at her. "Turn around," he ordered. Noelle turned around. "Baby," he gurgled, "what a sexy little rear you've got. Wow!"
And finally: "Come here."
Docilly, in near shock, she came to the man's chair. "Move your legs," he said. "Wider. That's it." Besides herself, Noelle followed his directions exactly, as though they really didn't concern her at all. "Bend over. That's right. Put your hands on the arms of the chair. Bend over. More."
Noelle's stomach twisted as the man stretched his squat, ugly face to hers, as he drove his mushy lips against hers. She fought the queasiness, closed her eyes, submitted, knowing he'd hurt her seriously if she tried pulling away now. And while he forced the disgusting kiss, his hands roved unashamedly over her body, pinched and squeezed her breasts, her belly, her thighs. And even-
The depraved vilification seemed to go on for hours.
Sarna finally tired of it. He broke the kiss, took his hands from her body. He waved her away, pulled himself to his feet. With trembling hands he undid the sash of his robe, pulled it off. Then he came to Noelle. "My turn now, baby," he snickered. "Undress me now."
Noelle never knew where she got the strength and control to go through with the forced debasement, how she kept from screaming as she bared the obese body to the soft lights. How she forced herself to comply as Sarna gloated, "Look at me, baby. Right here. How do you like that? Really puts you in a sweat, don't it?"
There was a brief intermission as Sarna went to the ornate bar, brought back the cocktail shaker, poured fresh martinis for both of them. "All that commotion makes a man thirsty," he chuckled.
Deliberately and rapidly, wanting to get very drunk all at once, fighting to keep the fiery gin down, Noelle drained her glass. "My, my," Sarna mocked. "Is it that bad, baby?"
Noelle sent him a hateful, smoldering glance.
Now the man waddled back, to his chair, sat down in it. "Come here, Noelle. Daddy's go-a big surprise for you."
Woodenly Noelle went to him, stood looking down at his gross masculinity. "Kneel down," he commanded. "Right here in front of me."
"What?" Her eyes widened, horror gagging her, crushing her heart, as she realized what would come now. "What do you want?"
"Kneel down, I said. Daddy needs a little loving."
"Oh, please, no-" She'd seen the filthy pictures in countless women's restrooms. She knew.
"Down!" he roared. "Do as I say, damnit, or I'll break your jaw!"
Paralyzed, beyond conscience now, Noelle fell upon her knees. Let him pull her closer, let him clamp her head between his hands, let him guide her.
His palms muffled sound, and from a great distance she heard the rising and falling chuckles and squeals, the muted words of delight that drooled from the man's lips as she labored at her perverted commission. She heard her own heartbeat thundering in her head.
Still the man held her, tighter and tighter, giving her not a second's rest. Until finally-
Moments later he was dragging Noelle about the room as he extinguished the lights. In the darkness he led her toward the bedroom. "Oh, we're gonna have a night, honey. An extravaganza. I'll teach you flips you never dreamed existed."
Dumbly she followed, stumbling often, feeling very dizzy. II only I could have another martini, she thought I could forget-all of this.
It suddenly became the most important thing in the world to her that she should forget. Forget that she'd ever been born.
CHAPTER TEN
It was almost midnight before Johnny Sarna had had his fill of Noelle. Before he'd exhausted his resources, going, in the process, through every foul, rotten, perverted trick in his bag. In those few hours he gave Noelle an education it would take most people a lifetime to acquire.
Now she lay in bone-weary lethargy, feeling nothing, devoid of all emotions save despair. Hatred, outrage, humiliation-these were all things of the past. Now she was tired, sick, at the end of her endurance. "No more," she pleaded. "No more."
"Okay, dolly," he laughed "I'll call it a night. I'm all but out myself." He pinched her nipple cruelly, chuckled at her hiss of pain "You held up pretty good. Better than I expected for a seventeen-year-old kid." He put his foot in her back, nudged her off the bed.
"Get dressed, Noelle. Clear out. I'll even stake you to cab fare. I'm the generous type. Treat Johnny good and hell treat you good."
"Where? I can't see-"
He floundered about on the bed, turned on the light. "In the living room, remember? That's where you did that hot little strip for me."
Noelle was in the process of fastening her brassiere when Sarna, stark naked, sauntered into the living room Carelessly he threw on his dressing-gown, stood watching her. When she was finished, he contemptuously dropped a folded five-dollar-bill at her feet. Woodenly she leaned to retrieve it.
"Now, baby," he slurred slyly, "how about a return match? You've just about done me in for this week but-"
Noelle went rigid, sudden pain stabbing her heart "Return match?" she stammered. "You don't mean-No, I won't. You can't make me come back here. Vito won't get another chance to bring me up here."
"You won't need help, doll. You'll come all by yourself. On your own pretty little feet."
"No. I-"
"Shouldn't that fiver cover a ride out to Holly Hills? That's where you live, isn't it, Miss Crane?"
Noelle swayed as if she'd just been slapped again "You know my name-" she blurted.
"Sure I know your name, honey. I know lots of things about you. I know all about your dad and that fancy factory he runs. I know how you been running with that Commando trash, putting out to Vito regularly-Lord knows how many others-that you've got in pretty deep with them."
Noelle crumpled, her eyes awash with tears, "That's why I think you'll be coming around to see old Johnny again. Because if you don't, I'm gonna do some loud talking. I'll make some phone calls to Locust 2-4980. I'll ask for Mrs. Bradley Crane. Then will I give her an earful." He snickered. "You gettin' the message?"
Noelle bowed her head. "Yes, I ... I understand."
"So what say you drop by next Friday around eight? We can take up where we left off. Maybe I'll have thought up some more fun games by then. Is it a date, sweetie?"
A whipped, trampled Noelle slowly nodded.
Then she was turning away, walking toward the door.
He called her back. "Hey, ain't you gonna kiss your big daddy good-bye?"
Her stomach lurched. "Please, no...."
But when she advanced, he laughed at her, held her away. "Not there." He opened his robe. "Here."
"You rotten filth," Noelle spat, fighting the nausea she felt.
"Be a good girl, honey," be mocked, opening the robe further. "Don't make Johnny mad."-Noelle knelt. She was a good girl.
It seemed to Noelle she could hear Sarna's gloating, crackling laughter all the way home, even over the throb of her maddened pulse, over the roar of the taxicab. She knew that it would echo in the cavern of her brain all night long. Through the next day. And the days after that.
Noelle had come full circle. It had been through Glory's influence that she'd joined the Commandos in the first place. Now her only remaining source of counsel and consolation was Glory. There was no one else-no one in the whole world-to whom she could turn. Only Glory.
It was she and Glory. Against the world.
And she had to tell someone. No matter how ugly ft was. Or else she would go out of her mind.
Thus it was, on Monday afternoon, as Glory called Noelle at her home and invited her to her place for a chin, that she'd eagerly accepted. Now she sat in the disorderly, mold-stenched kitchen on Flagg Street, she on one side of the table, Glory on the other. But instead of baring her soul to Glory she was making small talk, her conversation leading nowhere.
Glory suggested wine. "You want some? I'm sure the old lady's stashed some around here someplace. Unless she's swigged it all herself." She rose, rummaged about in a cubbyhole under the sink, emerging finally with a half-gallon of port. "Here we are. Mall never miss a few shots. That's all it takes to make me easy. Especially in the afternoon."
She poured two small glasses. "Let's go into the living room. It's no better than this, but at least we won't have those dirty dishes staring us in the face."
"We could wash them," Noelle offered.
"Never happen," Glory smiled. "Ma'd flip."
The wine cut in fast, and shortly Noelle felt a happy buzzing in her head. She relaxed by gradual degrees. Now, she was sure, she could tell Glory about the thing that had happened Friday night.
Just give it a little time, she mused, "When will your mother be home?"
"Relax. Not until after six. We got all the time hi the world.
They lapsed into an uneasy silence. Glory finally took the initiative. "Well? What's on your mind? I know yon got things to spill It's Vito again, ain't ft?""
"In a way," she said timidly. "He's at the bottom of it at any rate." Tell her, tell her, a wild voice raged inside Noelle. You have to tell somebody.
"He always is, the cheesy rat"
"Johnny Sarna's in on it too."
Glory whistled, "Sarna? You know him? Yon ere in deep, aren't you? God, he's no man to fool with." She came closer to Noelle, placed her arm behind her, balancing it on the davenport's back. "Okay, kid, give. What's it all about?"
Noelle had firmly intended that if she could gather courage enough to tell Glory, she would relate the sordid story in as dispassionate a way as possible. There would be no tears-only a level-voiced, clear-cut narration. She honored her promise up to a point.
But when she came to the part where Johnny Sarna threatened to expose her to her parents, the crushing hopelessness of her plight became too great And for all her good intentions, she dissolved into tears.
It seemed the most natural thing in the world at that moment that Glory would put down her wine glass, take the miserable child in her arms, bold and rock her; compassion-and something else, utterly alien to compassion-causing her own eyes to glaze.
"What am I going to do?" Noelle sniffed as she finished the lurid tale. "I can't go on like this. I'll kill myself first"
Glory was at a loss. The spectre of Johnny Sarna was more than she could cope with. "I don't know, Noelle. Sarna's just too damn big for any of us kids to buck. Well have to give it time. Maybe something'!! turn up."
She rocked Noelle more feverishly now.
And wallowing in the mounting self pity, savoring and delighting in Glory's soft warmth, the security her arms, her soothing bosom granted, Noelle surrendered to the delicious lassitude.
Taking advantage of the moment, Glory went into an ecstasy of sympathy and held Noelle even tighter, beginning to caress the tear-streaked face with her lips. The drowsy peace compounded within Noelle, and she surrendered more deeply to the sensation. Someone cares, someone cares, she told herself, failing to see anything unnatural in the way she gave herself to Glory, the way Glory was tremblingly caressing and kissing her.
Until finally Glory whispered, "Don't hate me, baby."
Noelle's eyes fluttered open. "Hate you? Why should I hate you? You're my friend. My only real friend."
"Yes, Noelle," Glory quaked, "I am your friend. Always remember that."
"Then why should I hate you?"
Slowly, deliberately, giving Noelle a last chance to rebuff her, Glory lowered her lips to Noelle's. Saw Noelle's eyes go wide. "For this," she breathed.
And then she kissed Noelle full on the lips.
Noelle didn't struggle, she didn't protest. For that brief, stunned moment, it seemed to be all a part of the sympathy Glory was conferring. There was nothing unnatural about one teen-age girl kissing another. Then at last she realized. Almost reluctantly she pulled away. "Oh, Glory, what-? What are you doing?"
"Forgive me, Noelle. I couldn't help it. You're so sweet and soft and warm. I ... just couldn't stop. I've wanted to do that for so long. Don't hate me, baby. I don't hate you. I love you...."
Noelle's mouth formed a wandering O. "What do you mean, Glory? You love me? You're my friend, but...."
"I can't help the way I am," Glory's voice cracked. "I'm that way about girls. Not just any girl, though. I'm that way about you, Noelle. I want you. I want you to let me love you."
"I'm all mixed up, Glory," Noelle said. "I don't understand. You and all those boys ... Yet you say you're that kind of girl. How...?"
"What do you think would happen if the gang found out what I am? They'd hound me to death. That's why I joined up in the first place. So nobody'd ever suspect. That's why I let those guys-"
"And all the time you-"
"All the time I was hating every minute of it. I was thinking about you, wanting you, Noelle. That's why I tried so hard to get you into the gang. So I could have you around all the time. So maybe, someday, I could-"
She shook her head savagely, tried to pull the stiff, resisting form into her arms again. "Please, Noelle, let me. I won't hurt you. God, it's the last thing in the world I'd ever do to you. I love you so. Let me kiss you, let me love you-"
"It's wrong, Glory," Noelle breathed, "for girls and girls-" She was thrown into a monstrous whirlpool of bafflement, repelled on the one hand by the very idea of a girl kissing and caressing her, attracted on the other by the fact that she might lose Glory's friendship if she rebuffed her after this damning confession. Beyond that she was dismayed at the sudden heat in her belly, by the novelty of the proposition. To have a woman make love to me-to think that I'd give joy to Glory by mere surrender-
"Please, baby, please-"
"Will it make you happy," she said in guileless phrasing, "if I let you have your way? Will it make you really happy?"
"Oh, Noelle," Glory gasped. "If you only knew how happy it'd make me, how much I love you."
Noelle made up her mind. "All right, Glory," she said finally, appalled by the dazed, grateful light that ignited and exploded in Glory's eyes. Chagrin-wracked at the actual desire she herself felt "If I don't have to do anything. Only let you...."
"You won't" Glory rasped. "I swear you won't I'D do it aD. Every bit of it."
"What'll you do?" Noelle asked, her voice weak, "I'll show you, baby. Please I'll show you." Then she was slowly gathering Noelle into her arms, she was lowering her lips to hers. Where they seared and probed, twisted and consumed. Noelle's head felt very heavy; seemingly her spine had turned to jelly.
Now the lips unlocked. Glory was pulling her up. "In my bedroom," she urged. "Where I can undress you," Submissively, smiling strangely, Noelle went with Glory.
"You're so beautiful, darling," Glory keened as she came to Noelle, reverently began disrobing her. Then, her eyes tear-glazed, Glory stood and undressed herself. Noelle knew an all-consuming awe as she felt Glory's soft fragrant nakedness against her own-so different from the demanding, angular hardness of a man. for long moments their bodies clung together, Glory holding the interminable, devouring kiss, winding her arms and legs frenziedly about Noelle's slight body, grinding her belly to hers. Then, with a convulsive shudder, she pulled away from Noelle, sat beside her, adoring her body with her eyes.
"My precious darling," she sighed. "Oh, let me love you. Forever and ever."
"Yes," Noelle intoned dazedly. "Love me. Someone should love me."
Glory made it last for almost an hour, kissing and caressing Noelle everywhere, drawing the act out like a fragile thread, much like a glass-blower forms intricate glassware, making it a sacred, mystic ritual. Until Noelle's breasts, throbbed with pain and desire, until it seemed her bruised nipples would explode with desire.
Then, at long last, when Noelle thought she couldn't stand another minute of the exquisite torture, Glory twisted on the bed, she began kissing Noelle's belly. Her hands slid between Noelle's thighs, parted her legs.
And now-
As the glittering climax neared, Noelle was struck by a strange consideration. It was of some small comfort to her that for the first time in her brief history of lovemaking, she had now only to be passive.
Or almost anyway. For wasn't that her body writhing and jerking so uncontrollably? Wasn't that she screaming? Weren't those her hands twisting so savagely in Glory's hair?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The days following seemed to run together into a mush of aimlessness, of despair and remorse, Noelle, despite the realization that she'd taken a monumental wrong turn when she'd embraced the gang life, continued to swing with the Commandos, to participate in their pointless capers, driving herself to the brutalities with an almost wanton frenzy. Almost as if, by drowning herself in their psychotic sadisms, she could forget her mistake, the grisly truth of her bestialized existence.
She barely remembered the recent "jap" on two hapless Lancers who'd thought they could "short-cut" through Commando turf on their way to a movie. Saps, really, who'd taken a brutal pounding before the Commandos let them go. The two "hits" in one night (a liquor store and a dry-cleaners this time) seemed to be ancient history hours after they were committed.
Then the night she, Glory and Duke had stolen the high-powered Chrysler and, high on vodka, had cruised highway 116, delighting in seeing how many drivers they could force off the road before the state patrol was alerted.
She had been deeply impressed by the way the one woman, a pretty blonde of perhaps thirty, had pulled off, terrorized out of her wits by their game of tag wherein they'd crowded her, dropped back, crowded her, again and again. Then, unable to cope with her fear, she'd pulled over, collapsed on the wheel, sobbing hysterically, totally unaware of the steady blare of her car's horn.
But now, remembering, she was barely moved at in.
There was another drastic change in Noelle's life. For now that Vito was gone, Noelle's status in the group had dropped several notches. She was on the fringes of things now.
But it didn't matter, really. Just so long as they permitted her to hang around, to accompany them when they "rolled." Totally demoralized as she was, nothing much mattered anyway. If she could retain her gang identity, that was enough. What else did she have, where else could she turn?
She was drinking more, being more careless with her appearance, becoming reckless about her comings and goings at home. Then there was Duke, who had indifferently taken her into the gang's murky pleasure parlor twice in the past week and used her with casual efficiency. Not to mention Glory, who was always trying to get her alone and who had coaxed her up to her mother's flat three times since that first fateful afternoon.
It was evidence of Noelle's dangerous state of mind that she felt no remorse whatsoever at these Lesbian back-slidings. If Glory got her kicks that way, what was the harm? Let the poor kid have her way. Just so long as all she had to do was lay there, let Glory take care of the whole messy business. Who was getting hurt?
And, of course, another Friday night had come and gone. She had attended Johnny Sarna's perverted summons, gone to his apartment once more. Johnny, true to his word, had evolved more cute bedroom games. It seemed his supply of cruel, debasing tricks was inexhaustible, that he received more sensual jolt from the act of humiliating her, from his hold on her, than from the sexual act itself. There was no end to the ugly act, he'd forced Noelle to commit.
Was it any wonder she was drinking more, that she was growing daily more reckless?
It was on the Wednesday night following her visit to Johnny Sarna that Noelle met Garth Nelson. It was a catastrophic meeting, a meeting that was never intended to be much prolonged in the first place. For once the approach had been made, the trap sprung, Garth was to have been left unconscious, an anonymous bundle of rags in some dark alley. A "mugging" victim-that and no more.
Glory and Noelle were at the dugout. They had the whole place all to themselves, the other gang members obviously making the scene somewhere else this night. There was no sexual hanky-panky between them. Glory had been pacified only that afternoon in a particularly long, particularly erotic session. She was, for the moment, content.
But something else was bugging her. "Man, things are dead," she groused. "Where is everybody? Let's do something. I'm bored stiff."
Noelle's look was a mischievous taunt "Do something? What? Wait, let me guess..
"No, kid, not that. Enough's enough for one day. I mean something. A movie, a dance. God, something!"
"Okay. A movie. There's a good one at the Viscount. Some Kirk Douglas thing. You dig Kirk Douglas, don't you?"
"Money," Glory seethed. "What do we use for grease?"
"Don't look at me. I only got enough for cab fare, and you aren't getting that. What about your cut from the other night?"
"Gone," Glory frowned. "You know me. I'm a sucker for those big, fluffy sweaters."
"So? No money. What now?"
Abruptly Glory's eyes narrowed to scheming slits. "Hey, I got it. It's a perfect out. Let's go find ourselves a drunk. Coax him into an alley somewhere and tranquilize him." Agitatedly she went to the gang's war chest and brought out a small, leather covered sap. "This should do the trick."
"Have you flipped your wig?" Noelle snorted. "Us roll a drunk? Since when? Might as well crack Marine National."
"Don't talk so smart. I've done it before, I've swung this thing myself."
"Sure, with Vito and Duke backing you up. But they aren't around tonight, remember?"
"I tell you we can handle it. Promise the guy well sleep with him, get him into a corner and let him have it. It's simple."
"Simple? So's jumping in front of a truck."
"Are you chicken or something.?"
"No, I'm not chicken or something. But I'm not stupid either."
"I say we can do it."
Gradually a contagious excitement was generated in Noelle. The more she thought about it, the more she liked it. This wasn't a matter so much of getting money as it was of facing up to a heady challenge. It was a dull night, the caper would be something to do. And if it queered, what did they have to lose? They had legs-they could clear the scene in five seconds flat.
She shrugged and laughed nervously. "Okay. I'm game if you are. Better than going to seed in this hole. You sure you know how to handle it? Where we gonna find this sucker?"
"Well try Rummy Pete's. There's a raft of bums in there. After all, we just need a couple bucks. You ready?"
"Sure. After you, Alphonse."
Perhaps their headstrong recklessness could be attributed to the wine they'd drunk while waiting in the warehouse. At any rate, as Noelle was to realize later, the whole escapade was foolhardy; they should have had better sense.
Rummy Pete's was a hole-in-the-wall bar on Blake Street, a hostelrie serving the cheapest of rotgut beer, wine and whiskey, its patrons the dregs of Flagg Street. It was located on a poorly lit street, far enough from the mainstream so that there wasn't a police patrol car constantly cruising it Drunks had been mugged here time after time. It was an ideal area for panhandlers, streetwalkers, pimps-all the backwash of a degenerate city.
Ten minutes later Noelle and Glory had taken their stand across from Rummy Pete's. It was nine-thirty; many of the habitues who still hadn't been home for supper would be clearing out about now. Glory hoped to prey upon one of these.
They passed up two burly specimens, then waited a full ten minutes before anyone else came out. "That's him," Glory whispered as she saw a man weave slightly, stop, then balance himself against a building. "He's a natural."
Noelle, her heart thumping wildly, followed Glory across the deserted street.
Close up they saw he was a youngish man, perhaps twenty-five, dressed in a neat brown suit. Though he was a trifle seedy, he was a paragon of sophistication compared to the usual clientele of Rummy Pete's. He was handsome in a somewhat dissipated way, and now, reassured by the brick wall, he walked with a less pronounced list.
Noelle stopped Glory. "Shouldn't we wait?" she cautioned. "He doesn't look like he's too drunk. He might not be such a pushover as we think."
"Don't chicken now," Glory muttered. "He's drunk all right. Besides he's young enough so hell fall for the bedtime bit. Maybe he's good for more'n a couple bucks. C'mon. Before somebody else shows up."
Glory came up behind the man boldly, tapped him on the shoulder. "Hey, mister...."
He turned slowly, looked at the two girls with a rapid expression on his face. He was blond, his hair long and badly in need of cutting. His tie was crooked. But mostly Noelle noticed, in that brief moment's appraisal, the dark, wild torment in his eyes. "Yeah, honey," he said. "What d'ya want?"
"How about some stuff?" Glory smiled. "Could you use some tonight? We got a place if you got five bucks."
His face reflected drunken suspicion. "You kids look kind of young for whores."
"That's when it's best, dad," Glory smirked. "When it's factory fresh, before it's been all pawed over. What d'ya say? Five bucks? Either one of us?"
The man's eyes locked in Noelle's, and he studied her with blatant hunger, his look causing her to blush to the roots of her hair. She felt indescribably cheap.
"What're you kids trying to pull?"
"We ain't pulling nothing," Glory said. "You a sport or not? We got an apartment a block over if you want to come. Five bucks, no ups. How about it?"
The man shook his head as if to focus thought. After a pause he said, "Okay, baby. You got a sale. It's been a while since I had any loving. Which way?"
"Come along with us. It's just down the street."
Noelle sensed rather than saw Glory easing the blackjack from the pocket of her slacks. And her pulse racketed insanely in her brain as they neared the place where a jog concealed a shadowed alley. In just a few seconds. Not more than fifty paces away-Lord, she thought, can't he hear my heart t
"You girls're pretty young f'r this kind of business, aren't you?" he said.
"We grow up fast on Flagg Street," Glory said, the tension apparent in her voice.
"I'll bet you do." Then they were in the shadows. Glory was twisting, falling back, the sap raised high over her head. "Hey!" the man yelped, sidestepping instinctively, turning on Glory, "what the hell is this?"
The blow fell jarringly on the man's shoulder, squeezing a groan from him, but not dropping him. With one fluid motion he gripped Glory's wrist, twisted her arm down over his knee. Glory went one way, the leaded sap the other. "You dirty little tramp," he growled, pulling her upward, "you were gonna roll me. That was your game wasn't it?"
Then he let out an enraged shriek as Glory buried her teeth in his arm, bore down desperately. He kicked her away. "Witch! Rotten witch," he groaned.
"Run, Noelle," Glory rasped. Immediately there was a rapid, scuttling tattoo of footsteps in the darkness, and Glory was disappearing down the murky alley. Too late Noelle recovered, struck out after her.
"Oh no you don't," the man gritted, shooting out an arm like a steel bar, grabbing Noelle by the hair, viciously bring her back, the sudden stop throwing her onto her knees on the hard concrete.
Trapped and at the stranger's mercy, Noelle knew terror of the most debilitating kind. "Let me go," she pleaded. "Please let me go."
"No," the man said, breathing heavily, the fumes of intoxication partially blown away by the combination of activity and danger, "I won't let you go. Not for a while anyway. Not until I get what you gals were peddling. And no five bucks this time either."
He yanked her up, pulled her head back painfully. "C'mon, honey. Walk nice. I only live a ways from here. You let out one squawk and I'll break your neck. Then I'll tell the cops just what you and your pretty little friend tried to pull on me." He jacked her behind the knees. "Walk, I said!"
Harrowing fear crashed down upon Noelle. She walked, stumbling and swaying, as the man pushed her along the dark street. She knew she must go through with this extorted bargain, that she could not call out. Even with the police on her side, there would be notoriety. Her parents would find out about her double life.
You've done it again, she railed at herself. You stupid witch, you've done it again.
The apartment to which he herded Noelle was small, consisting of a sitting room, kitchen, bedroom and bath. Even though the building in which it was located was demolition bait, the apartment was neat and clean, well kept-up. There was comfort of sorts in this recognition. A newspaper was on the floor, a red-covered book on the plaid, cottage-type davenport. But otherwise nothing else was out of place.
But her captor gave her little time to evaluate his housekeeping. Leaving the small lamp burning, he pushed her immediately into the small, cramped bedroom. "In here, honey," he spat. "Here's where it happens."
Then he released her, stood looking at her. "God, you're real jailbait aren't you? You can't be over eighteen years old."
"Seventeen," Noelle corrected.
"Good God! What's this screwball world coming to anyway? You're just a baby."
For the briefest instant Noelle's fear of the man faded. He actually seemed concerned, felt regret for the rotten situation. Then the panic and disgust was back. It would happen now.
"Shag out of those duds, honey," he smiled viciousry, "Let's get this show on the road."
Slowly, her face an impassive mask, feeling as though she were not a part of this at all, as if she were sitting at a distance, watching, Noelle began to unzip her slacks. It isn't the first time, a tired voice goaded. And it won't be the last.
Then, as the man stood there, looking at her white, vulnerable body, he said a strange thing. "What's your name, kid? It's gonna be bad enough doing it to a baby, but I should know what to call you."
"Noelle," she said.
"Pretty name. Is that all? Just Noelle?"
"Just Noelle."
"Garth," he smiled. "Garth Nelson. I ain't ashamed of nothing."
Noelle couldn't resist the taunt. "Aren't you?"
The man's face went hard again. "All right. Get on the bed. It's time someone taught you a lesson, you little hoodlum." He smiled regretfully. "Only, God knows, you don't look like a hoodlum."
Woodenly, her limbs shaken by tremors as the variability of the man's moods, Noelle brushed past him, laid herself on the bed. Rolled onto her stomach.
"God, you're a cool one, aren't you?" he said as he undressed. "Is that all there is to it? You just gonna lay there and take it? Ain't you gonna cry and beg?"
"I've done all those things," Noelle said, surprised herself at the fatalism, the cold sense of remoteness that had come over her. "They don't help." Her voice snagged. "They don't help at all."
"Christ," the man breathed. Then he was turning out the lights, coming toward hex.
Noelle stiffened and waited for his touch. Brother, she vowed, this is going to be the coldest parcel you've ever laid. You're gonna be on your own. All the way.
Garth Nelson was, above all things, very direct. He came to Noelle briskly, pulled her limp body to his, gave her a long, demanding kiss, his hands, all the while, stroking and kneading her back and buttocks. A monumental shudder, testimonial to his intense need, shook him from his shoulders to his feet. Deliriously, as if by mere motion to banish the unsavory circumstances of his lovemaking, he turned and twisted his lips into hers. Then his tongue was battering at the portals of her mouth.
A sick resignation in her heart, Noelle permitted the excess and felt only minor revulsion as she tasted the second-hand whisky.
"Sweet Jesus," he groaned as he broke the kiss, buried his face in her throat, "you sweet slut. If you could understand, if you could only-understand."
Understand what? Noelle's mind prompted, while she, herself, uttered no sound, made no answering motion.
"It's been so long," he breathed fervently, "almost a whole year. Then when it happens, it has to be something like this. It isn't right, that's all. It just isn't."
"You're all mixed up, aren't you, mister?"
"Yes, I suppose I am;" He stopped. "But hell, what am I talking to you for?"
Again Noelle kept silent, wondering at the diverse drives within the man. What was with him anyway?
Another spate of uncontrollable trembling surged through him, and he dropped his head, brought his lips to her breasts. Somehow his hot tongue conferred comfort and helped to drive away the dispirited emptiness, the chill which had seized her. Perversely she said, "Do you have to?"
"Yes, Noelle," he whispered, "I have to. It has to mean something, it has to...." He didn't finish it. His lips formed a liquid tunnel, from which charged a famished, inventive tongue. A tongue to lave, to press, to swirl the unresponsive flesh, to revive it, to send out silken threads of sensation to all parts of her body.
And despite herself Noelle sensed the mind-robbing drowsiness, the pricklings of desire deep in her belly. No, she scolded herself, not with an absolute stranger, not to this blackmailed love! You unprincipled slut, no!
The man's sighings rose to a sibilant, slashing storm as he fervidly kissed and held her breasts, as he let his hands roam her belly, her thighs, as he touched and probed her everywhere.
Noelle heard an incessant, shrill hissing in her ears, coming from far, far away. It grew louder and louder. Don't, she warned, don't let it happen. Cool it, cool it.
It seemed the man was all but out of his mind, for now he called her name without stop. As he rose over her body, balanced his knees between hers. Noelle stiffened, awaited the cruel violation.
He was not gentle. In his addled need there was no time for gentleness. Consumed with desire, he wanted only one thing. Noelle would never again hear a man come so close to sobbing. His voice broke and become a choking wail as the union was completed. Still he was not content and sought even deeper envelopment. Then he lay motionless, his body heavy on hers and took his fill of the exquisite sensation.
"Oooh, ooh," he whined, "baby, baby, it feels so good, so good. I'd almost forgotten." For a second he forgot where he was, who he was with. "Joyce," he gasped, "sweet Joyce. Hold me. Dear God, hold me-"
Noelle was moved to the depths of her being by the tragic intensity of his cries and felt a shimmering, spreading torridness flood though her. Never had any man expressed his enjoyment of her body, his gratitude, in quite that way. But who was Joyce?
Then gradually Garth Nelson stirred and began to move about in slow, gentle motions. Almost breaking the delicate communication, then painstakingly, so painstakingly redelivering himself, filling her as she'd never been filled before. A red blur swam before her eyes; it seemed they would bulge from their sockets at the ecstasy, at the sheer sensuality that was ripping and snarling its way through her.
No man, no man-had ever-
"It's good, darling," he seethed, still caught up in his fantasy, "so good. I'm home ... all the way home. It hurts. But such a delicious hurt. Darling...."
Wallowing in the supremacy of her femaleness, rejoicing that she could give someone-anyone-so much delight, Noelle could resist the man, stranger though he was, no longer. Her legs rose, clenched in his, guided his slowly accelerating thrusts, her arms came around his back, tightened and slackened, lifting her body to meet his.
It was the most magnificent emotion she'd ever known, a transfiguring, shattering thing, beautiful beyond her frail power to explain. Vito had never made it this good. She only knew she wanted it, wanted it, wanted it!
And she shrilled her first climax hoarsely, clung to him with frenzied, digging fingers. She wanted to rake his back, to hurt him.
But the perverse notion passed and now, lost in mindless rapture herself, she pumped her body to his, pleading inwardly for eternal repetition of that holy release.
"Noelle," he groaned hoarsely, "you angel, you sweet angel. Again, please again. Before I...." The breathless whimpers tore from his throat again. "You're good, good ... You're tearing me up, killing me ... Baby, it's growing, it's balling up inside me. Hurry. Oh, please hurry."
His strong arms enclosed her like steel bands, squeezed the breath from her. But she didn't care. All that mattered was the shrieking response building within herself. She puffed in staccato bursts, amazed at the hot glow forming behind her eyes.
The silver again. Only this time mirroring the inside of her brain, blinding and hurting her. Now she opened her eyes, and the whole room was dancing with the same silver. A blizzard of flakes that slowly receded, turned the ceiling, the walls into a fantastic, mirror-lined box. A mirror in which she could see herself enmeshed with this man, their bodies surging and consuming.
"Sweet, sweet, sweet...." he was gasping, his hips thrusting at her with terrible, maddening speed. The sobbing cries again as his victory neared. And now-
It seemed his body would never cease its convulsive shudders.
"Thank you, thank you," he choked. "Oh, thank...."
The hard, masterful body went rigid, the arms tightened, tightened. "Dear God," he groaned.
While Noelle voiced simultaneous triumph, her gasps seemingly echoing, hanging on the air for a long time. And she went limp, noticing that the silvery coating on the walls and ceilings was blistering and peeling, falling away, jagged splinter by jagged splinter.
Until finally, only the walls remained. Only the mocking darkness.
Noelle was dressed, standing in the small living room, gazing with an unfathomable, confused expression at the man called Garth Nelson, who was also dressed and was pushing a twenty-dollar bill at her.
"I don't understand this," he said softly, not looking into her eyes, "not at all. There's a lot more to this than I can figure out. There's something different about you. You don't belong on Flagg Street."
"I don't want the money," she said hollowly.
"Take it. You must've wanted money before. For something." He opened her hand, tucked it in. "Take it"
Her mind stunned, unable to form coherent thoughts, Noelle wanted to be away from the apartment, and rather than argue, she took the money, absently tucked it in her bra.
"I'm here, most of the time," he said hesitantly. "I haven't worked for a long time now. If ... if you'd come and see me again, I'd be grateful."
"No," she said.
"Please ... just to talk. We don't have to ... Not again. I swear."
It was the weirdest turnabout conceivable. Noelle felt she must be lost in one of those whirling, shrieking nightmare sequences she'd seen in the movies. He actually expected her to come again?
"Friday?" he said timidly, his eyes glowing with dark, untamed longing. "I'll be here. Friday afternoon?"
Noelle backed out of the door. "No," she intoned.
"You'll remember where I live?"
Then suddenly, wanting to break the hypnotic spell of his eyes, she whirled, clattered down the stairs.
Then she was running down Blake Street as though all the hounds of hell were snarling and nipping at her heels.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Noelle did not go back to the Commando hideout on Thursday and Friday. Instead she stayed at home and hid in her room. Later, she worked off her energies in her swimming pool. But mostly she sat. Thinking, trying to understand what had happened to her that night with the stranger named Garth Nelson. What transfiguring, mysterious thing had happened to her in his bed?
Of course, Glory Kovak called first thing Thursday and asked Noelle for a report. Glory had streaked down the alley and gone directly to the warehouse. She'd recruited what remnants of the gang had now drifted in and had gone back to Blake Street, only to find that Noelle had disappeared without a trace.
"Oh, God, I was scared," Glory babbled. "I called the cops, asked them if they'd found any dead bodies, I hung on the radio news broadcasts all night. Noelle, you don't know how glad I am that you're all right What happened?"
Noelle told her, tersely and distantly, leaving out the description of the stunning emotions that had wracked her as the man had made love to her.
Glory had taken this report with off-handed relief. "He made love to you, huh? The rotten snake. Well, thank God, you're alive. It could've been lots worse."
Noelle had declined her invitation to come over that afternoon, pleading tiredness. And when Glory had gone into an insistent harangue, she'd hung up on her.
Noelle devoted herself entirely to her brooding.
It had been more than mechanical, response to erotic stimuli. She'd known physical response before-with Vito and Glory, even with the pervert Johnny Sarna, But the emotion she'd experienced with Garth had transcended those puny raptures and now rendered them totally insignificant in her memory.
The climax, the overtures, the mounting passion she'd felt as she'd clawed her way to those magnificent peaks had been a complete surrender of self, annihilation of ego, a wildly eager sacrifice and sufferance. All in all, a heretofore unknown ecstasy. An ecstasy, the rep-itition of which she couldn't help longing after. Once more-
Then the most incomprehensible doubts crowded her. How could such a thing have happened? With a total stranger, with a man who, to all practical intents and purposes, could just as well be called a rapist? What mesmerism had he employed with her?
And as much as she tried to fight the awful truth, to bury the ranging, unbalanced desire, she could not. It was the truth; she wanted him again, stranger or not She wanted him with all her heart.
With each passing hour, as Friday grew nearer, she became more edgy, she wanted to scream her frustration. If only she could understand what was happening to her. One moment she was determined that it was ended for good, the next she was in agonized impatience, an aberrated clawing deep in her bowels, counting the hours until-
The door was opened to Noelle at her very first knock. The man stood there, stone sober today, his blond hair freshly cut and combed to perfection, an expression of fear mixed with relief in his eyes. His anxiety helped diminish Noelle's, and she smiled crookedly. "Hi," she said.
"You did come after all," he breathed. "I'm glad." He looked apologetic. "What a word. It doesn't express any part of how I feel. It's absolutely meaningless. Come in, please come in."
This afternoon, as indication of his preparations, the apartment sparkled, everything was dusted and polished, with no trace of disorder anywhere. Further evidence was the blue suit he wore, the white sport shirt. Judged in this light he was handsome, though somewhat thin and hangdog. Noelle, imagining his preparations, was deeply moved.
Yet, they were awkward together, Noelle sitting stiffly across the room from him, neither of them knowing what to say. Certainly Garth must have noticed Noelle's preparations, interpreted their meaning. She was ravishingly lovely in a pink nylon print, wearing stockings, her tiny feet tucked into white, needle-toed pumps, They had both put their best foot forward, both wondering at this miracle that was unfolding before them.
While at the back of their minds-lurking and impatient-
"I don't know why I'm here, really," Noelle blundered, "after what happened the other night ... I....
"It's difficult to explain," he said. "I've thought about it constantly ever since, and...." He looked at the floor. "I ... I just get nowhere."
He shifted in his chair. "Of course, I'm sorry about what happened the other night. One way I am, another way I'm not. I was under the influence, as you well know. Anyway at first. Then afterward ... I...." He waved his hands in surrender. "Oh, I'm botching this all up terribly. Why can't I say what I really mean?"
For an instant Noelle was struck by the strongest impulse to go to him, to embrace him, to tell him it was all right. But instead she sat immobile, frozen, her heart paining her.
His hands were shaking. When he noticed, he pat them in his lap. "Perhaps you'd like a drink. That always seems to help. Anyway, it has these past few months. But then, you're too young to drink anyway, aren't you?"
Noelle smiled. "I do once in a while. But not today, thank you."
Then, suddenly, his face was contorted into a bleak, agonized mask, a battleground for a hundred different emotions at once. Now he leaped up from his chair and came toward Noelle. Roughly he took her into his arms, leaned her back. "My darling...."
Then he was passionately kissing Noelle, his arms conferring blessed sanctuary. Noelle was answering his kiss with all the urgency in her soul while unbidden tears sprang into her eyes and coursed down her cheeks.
"Baby, baby," he was groaning, holding her in a massive bear hug, "this is a miracle. I've needed you, I've been waiting for you. For so long. I love you, I love you...."
Noelle didn't protest; she couldn't protest. For a hot ball had crowded its way into her throat. It stung and burned there, blocking any speech at all. As answer, she twisted her head, offered her bps anew.
Then the wracking spasms started and worked their way up her body. She drove her lips more frantically against his, let her tongue take the initiative today. She fought to keep the tremors in control, but her need was a snarling, prowling thing and couldn't be caged.
"I love you, Noefle," he repeated. "Whoever or whatever you are. I'll love you forever."
"Don't talk," she said, her voice blurring. "Not now. I can't talk. There's only one thing. We can talk after-when you've-" The remainder emerged in a eerie wail. "Oh, Garth, take me into the bedroom. Undress me-" Then he was lifting her, carrying her toward the closed door. In her supreme impatience Noelle heeled off her shoes as he walked, heard them clatter on the polished oak floor.
Now the door was kicked open, she was lying full-length on the bed. She was trembling wildly, breathing in searing gasps as Garth's tremor-tortured hands moved over her body, removing her dress, her stockings and all the exquisite, arousing lingerie she'd worn especially for this afternoon.
Their lovemaking was everything Noelle had dreamed it would be during the past two days. Even more. For now she had come of her free will, knowing what would inevitably happen, all but willing it to happen. She had participated with wanton abandon from the outset, had known self-effacing glory all the way.
Again there was the stunning joy of total and sublime self-sacrifice, the pagan frenzy of giving, of having a man enjoy her body to the outer limits of his sanity. It was a reciprocal frenzy, for as Garth had unashamedly groaned his pleasure, as he'd so graphically described the beauty of her most intimate self, uninhibitedly painting the agony and ecstasy their coupling generated in him, she had wallowed in sensation herself, savored his body-the peculiar swarmings and spearings, the magic gift only a man can give to a woman-to the screaming heights of passion.
At the end it seemed their bodies had virtually fused from the heat of their frantic strainings and twinings, a heat stroked by the mindless outpourings of then-brains, their hearts, their souls. They told each other everything, almost vying with each other to make their deification the more revealing and pagan.
As Noelle climbed toward her fifth climax (or was it her sixth?), she said, in glorification of excess, "Darling, it's the most magnificent thing I've ever known. I feel like we're not here at all, not really. Only this. You ... here with me. Me ... holding you, wanting you, loving you. We're not here at all." She squeezed her hand between their bodies, touched him. "Only this is left We're just big, glorified...."
The paean to rapture went unfinished. She clawed his buttocks, slammed him deeper to her. Hoarsely and triumphantly she announced her climax.
Afterward she refused to release Garth. "Stay, baby." she murmured drowsily. "This is the best part. That feeling of letdown, like coming down a tall, tall ladder. Slow, slow ... That's when I need you most of all."
It was then that Noelle, wearied, satisfied, dropped into an easy doze, feeling secure in the cocoon the man's body seemingly formed about her.
She awoke perhaps a half hour later to find that Garth had pulled away, was laying in guileless sleep beside her, his face, for the moment, uniined, at peace, looking tragically vulnerable. She stared at him for a long time, a small smile on her lips, thinking how much she loved him.
A stabbing pain gripped her heart as she realized bow hopeless their love was, that their relationship could never consist of more than stolen hours like these. There was Johnny Sarna, there were the Commandos, her parents-a puzzle that she, and certainly not Garth, could ever begin to unravel. Disaster, as inevitable as night and day, was the only thing that could come of all this.
Minutes later Garth trembled, stiffened. The lines were back in his face, the torment shone in his eyes. He looked steadily at Noelle, reached to touch her breasts, to graze her nipples with his soft fingers. "Hi, baby," be sighed gratefully.
"Hi," she whispered. "Sleep good?"
"Wonderful. For the first time in months. No bad dreams." He grinned "I dreamed about you."
The reference again, Noelle wondered. To his past. What is it all about? What tragedy is he trying to exorcise with all this wandering, all this compulsive drinking!
She pulled Garth down beside her, felt the drowsy warmth reborn as his hungry arms came about her. "You want to tell me about it?" she murmured.
"Tell you about what?"
"Oh, things. About yourself. About Joyce."
She felt him stiffen in her embrace. "Joyce? How do you know about her?"
"The other night. You called me Joyce. When we were ... Who is she?"
"Not is," he answered, his voice going husky. "Was. She's dead."
Noelle's heart went out to him, and she held him closer. "Oh, I'm sorry, Garth. I didn't know."
"It's all right By all rights I should be over it by now. After all, it happened eight months ago."
"Do you want to tell me about it?"
"Yes," he said gravely. "I think I'd like that"
The story Garth Nelson told Noelle in the next ten minutes was not an unusual one. The only thing that was unusual about it was the circumstances under which it was narrated, the fact that they lay in a bed on Blake Street, in the heart of a slum ghetto, talking about something that had presumably happened in another kind of world altogether. There was a painful intensity in Garth's voice as he told it.
Joyce was his wife. A pretty, cheerful woman of twenty, totally devoted to her husband, a woman looking forward with bright optimistic daydreams to the day when their first baby would be born. Only she'd never lived to see that happy day. During the birth complications had developed-hemorrhaging of the most serious sort It had all happened too fast.
Garth Nelson had entered the hospital a proud, expectant (if somewhat frightened) man, looking forward to loving the child, to the reinforcement of love between Joyce and himself. He had owned the world.
But when he'd emerged a scant hour later he'd owned nothing. His life had been turned upside down, emptied of all meaning. Both Joyce and the baby-a frail boy-had died.
Fortitude hadn't been Garth Nelson's strong suit. Embittered beyond reason, he'd rebelled against life's dirtiest trick and gone off the deep end. Drinking and drifting had become his life then. He'd sold out, left California and wandered the length and breadth of the nation, trying to forget, trying to get hold of himself. But drinking had been an easier out-until now at least. Now, his savings all but gone, he didn't know which way to turn.
This explained the magnified importance of Noelle's entry into his life, the almost sacrificial sexual experience they'd shared. There had never been another woman, not since Joyce, even in his most degenerate drunken moments. But something about Noelle, as she'd stood in uncertainty before him on that dark night, had reminded him of Joyce, had stirred him, rocked him, brought him back to reality.
That night he'd had to have a woman. He'd had to have Noelle. This explained the mixture of brutality and reverence which he'd brought to their love. And now-
"Don't you see, Noelle?" he said excitedly, his eyes glowing with new hope. "It's fate, a miracle, call it what you will. Now that I've found you, I'm not going to let you go. I love you, whether you believe it or not.
I don't dare to dream that you'd marry me, but if someday...."
A bone-hollowing longing swamped Noelle. She fought it, realizing the absolute futility of following the proposition to its conclusion. "Stop, Garth," she snapped, "don't talk about love and marriage to me. It's out of the question. It can't be. I love you. If ever I've loved anyone, I love you. But I can't marry you, we can't ever mean any more to each other than this. Please, don't talk about it."
"But why, Noelle?" His eyes were hurt, bewildered. "I'm willing to wait if that's what you want. I'll get hold of myself, I'll kick the drinking. If that's what's bothering you. I swear."
"No. It's not that. It's something much more than that. Something that doesn't concern you at all."
"Tell me. I'll help you, I'll stand beside you. God, Noelle, I'll kill for you, I love you so. If anyone's hurting you, just tell me and I'll...."
"No, Garth." She was confused again, angry. "Drop ft, I'm warning you! There's nothing you, or anybody, can do. So forget it. Let's just leave things the way they are. Isn't that enough?"
"No, it isn't enough! I want you, Noelle. Not just for now, but for always. I know you're in some kind of trouble. You and that girl the other night ... that wasn't pretty. If you'd only trust me, let me help you."
Noelle was seized by an almost overpowering urge to ding to him, to sob, to tell him all. But she shunted it aside, hardened her mind, fell into a long silence. And finally, breathing heavily, she said, "Forget it, Garth. I'm sorry, but that's the way it has to be. I'm terribly sorry about what's happened to you, about Joyce ... But I can't help you. You can't help me. Well have to settle for this."
"But, Noelle, my God, listen to reason."
Her voice was cold and cutting. "Stop it, Garth. You'll ruin everything. I have to go in a little while. You don't want me to leave like this, do you? Can't we ... once more? Say good-bye that way?"
"Good-bye?" His eyes blazed. "No, darling, not just like that. You don't mean-"
Noelle's voice was determined. "It has to be, Garth. We're starting something we can't finish. We can't go on."
His face was a mask of anguished disbelief. "Please, Noelle, don't say that. Let me help you. I can't-"
"Stop it!" she shrilled. "I said it has to be. Now. Once more? Or shall I leave now?"
"Noelle, darling...." he murmured resignedly. "Yes, if that's how it must be."
"Once more," she smiled, wanting to comfort him, to comfort herself. "For good-bye . .
There was a tragic, despairing finality to their love-making this time. Garth, wanting to prolong their tenuous relationship as long as possible, adored her lips, her body, with demented fervor. "No," she gasped as he came to her belly, began to kiss her there. "Please, Garth, you shouldn't."
"I should," he groaned, touching her thighs. "Because I love you so very dearly."
And Noelle surrendered completely, all but going out of her mind at the attention, in the end reciprocating in kind, thinking how sweet the act was now, when done in the name of love, of eager self-sacrifice.
Then again their bodies were fused with molten heat, they were delivering and receiving, yearningly, gaspingly presenting and accommodating. It seemed to last forever. And it was extremely fitting that it did.
They dared not speak afterward as Noelle swiftly dressed, prepared to leave. She knew she would cry if she did. She looked back once, saw Garth staring into space with dead, shocked eyes.
That same night Noelle presented herself at Holland Street again. "C'mon in," Sarna called from inside, "the door's open. She entered to see Johnny lying on the davenport, wearing only the red silk robe.
"Lock the door, kiddo. Then come over here. I been waiting for you."
She stood beside him. "Don't look so sad, dolly," he mocked her. "You know you like it." His eyes glinted. "C'mon down here by me. Open up my robe. See what I got for .you."
Noelle wanted to scream and never stop screaming, but she did not. Instead she docilely knelt beside the davenport and began undoing the silken tie.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Noelle stayed home that weekend, keeping to herself again, making light of any superficial parental sounds her mother made over her morose state of mind. "I'm just tired, Mother," she alibied, "I'll be all right. Don't worry about me."
And as her mother, content with the excuse, went off, Noelle thought bitterly, Wouldn't you drop your teeth if you knew the truth? If you knew why I'm tired?
Her brain was full of Garth Nelson. Again and again she reviewed the devastating happenings of the past week. To think-Only one week. It had all happened in one week.
Death. Rebirth. Then death again.
She was alone that afternoon, her mother shopping, her father checking on things at the plant. Lying on her bed, tossing restlessly, she visualized herself back in Garth's bedroom again. She relived the frenzied love events of Friday afternoon and was filled with a terrible longing to go down to the garage, take one of the cars and go racing into town to surprise Garth, to recapture that mind-searing victory again.
Then, later, as the thoughts became more compelling, she went downstairs and drank some wine from her father's stock, in the end taking the bottle back up to her bedroom with her. When thoughts of Johnny Sarna and last night's debauch invaded her mind, crowding out the sweet reveries of Garth, she drank more than she should have. By five, she was quite drunk.
Her mother rattled her door a little later. "Time for dinner, honey," she called.
"I'm not hungry," Noelle answered. "I've got a headache. You and Dad go ahead without me."
She listened tensely as her mother's footsteps faded down the hall. New despair flooded her. How will this ever end? she thought. Here I am, on a Saturday afternoon, drunk, in my own bed. God, if Mother had come in, caught me. What's going to happen to you, Noelle?
Garth was back again. Lost in a muzzy mist, recalling the exquisite things he'd done to her, she became sexually aroused. If only he could be here, in this bed with me, she yearned. She became even more jittery and felt desire swelling her entrails.
There was something, she thought, something Glory had taught her. But she recoiled at the thought. It was ugly, forbidden. She entertained second thoughts. After all, if she couldn't have Garth-And weakened by her emotions, irresponsible from the wine, she decided.
Rising, she quickly undressed and crawled naked between her sheets. Caught up in an erotic trance, she began to twist on the bed, imagining herself with Garth. Her hands came to her breasts, began to massage them lazily, the hot glow expanding in her belly. Now she caressed her stomach, her thighs.
Tears welled up in her eyes and ran in trickling streams down her cheeks. This was wrong, so wrong, she accused herself. But still-good. It was an exciting substitute for a man. Drunkenly she ground her buttocks into the bed and gave herself completely to the simulated passion.
Garth, she thought at the supreme moment, Garth. I love you so much. Why can't I have you? Why couldn't things have turned out differently? Then she was sighing breathlessly in her throat.
On Monday, her damning thoughts getting the best of her, seeking activity to dispel the degradation that she felt, Noelle returned to Flagg Street. Looking up Glory, she went with her to the warehouse and found the boys busy planning a burglary-a shopping center caper again. Letting herself get caught up in their enthusiasms, she forgot the depraved animal that she'd become.
If she moved fast enough, made enough commotion, the real emptiness of her life could be camouflaged. Purposely she pushed her breasts against Defalco's shoulder, coaxing and wheedling. "Can I go in this time?" she pleaded. "Can I help carry your stuff? Please, Duke. I'm sick of being lookout all the time."
Duke looked up at her with lecherous interest. "Anything you say, kid. I'm sure that can be arranged."
Returning the look in kind, Noelle knew what his price would be for this "insider's" privilege, that before the afternoon was out they'd sneak into the dark grotto. It was small enough price to pay. Duke thought making a big deal out of a sex event was unmasculine. He always took care of things in two minutes flat.
The burglary went off the next night without a hitch, the night's work netting the gang a cool two-hundred at Dutch's. During the victory celebration at the dugout afterward, Noelle, out of her head with drink, went into the back room with Clancy, then with Benny Markaris, one of the gang's newest members. Afterward she remembered absolutely nothing about what had happened.
But somehow, even through her alcoholic stupor, she realized that what she was doing was rotten. As wrong as wrong could be. But what else did she have? She had a strange thought. She'd wished Vito had been around to offer her dope then. She'd have taken it gladly. Anything to help her forget.
The next day, a Wednesday, Noelle was badly hung-over. She stayed in bed all morning and was barely able to keep a minimal lunch down. Her mother was busy with plans for a bridge and lawn party that afternoon and paid her little mind.
In mid-afternoon Noelle was summoned from her room by Mrs. Quninlan. "Telephone," she called up the stairs.
Glory, Noelle grumped, starting shakily downstairs. Probably wants me to come over. Figures it's her turn now.
But as she recognized the voice, she suddenly felt even weaker. She fell back, steadied herself against the wall. "Garth," she murmured. "How ... how did you find me?" Instantly a new, scorching fear was ignited in her brain. He knows the truth about me! Is he going to turn into another Johnny Sarna?
Garth's voice was gentle. "Now don't get excited, Noelle. It's all right. I have to see you. This afternoon."
"It's impossible. I'm sick. I can't come out."
"You have to come out, sick or not."
"I can't, Garth. It's all over. I told you that the other day."
"It's very important, Noelle. You don't have to come to my place. I'll meet you halfway. How about Marquette Circle? There's a little rest area there, nobodyll see us."
"I can't, Garth. Honest-"
His tone was apologetic, but firm. "I hate to do this, Noelle. But you have to see how important this is." He paused. "Noelle ... I know about you and Johnny Sarna-"
A deafening thunder rolled in Noelle's mind. "You ... know? But how? I...."
"I'll be waiting for you, Noelle," he said curtly. "Three-thirty. Be there." Then he hung up.
Noelle could hardly think for the savage hammering of her heart.
She found Garth easily. He was sitting apart from the others, off to one side of the square, in the shadow of one of the fountains. When he saw her he stood and waved, a hesitant expression on his face.
He moved to embrace her as she sat beside him, but then thought better of it. "You are sick, Noelle. You look terrible. What's happened?"
Bitterly, her nerves raw, she slashed out at him. "Pm hung over, can't you tell? I drank myself silly last night. Will that do?"
"Noelle," he murmured, "that's not true. You-"
"It is true, like it or lump it. That's the kind of girl I am. It's about time you found out."
His lips thinned. "There are quite a few things I've found out already, even without your help. I think I'm beginning to understand what-"
"You understand nothing," she snapped. "You're so busy running around feeling sorry for yourself, yon haven't got time for anyone else."
"Noelle, that's not fair."
"Skip it." She turned partially away from him. She'd be a goner if she looked into his eyes. "All right, shoot. What's this all about?"
What it was all about was that on Friday, caught up in panic at thought of losing Noelle forever, Nelson had secretly followed her to her Volkswagen, had luckily flagged a passing cab and trailed her the rest of the way to Holly Hills. He'd kept vigil at a discreet distance until she'd fled the house again. Her red auto had been easy to spot when finally he'd got another cab. Again he'd been waiting at the Holland Street address when she'd emerged, looking as though she'd just stared heB in the face.
"I've done lots of checking, Noelle. On Sarna, on that gang you're running with. Everything. What I can't understand is why. With all you have, with your good name, why should you choose to travel with trash like that?"
"Like I told you, that's my business."
"And this thing with Sarna. I know what kind of filth, he is. Everyone on Flagg Street knows. Why, Noelle?" His voice broke. "Why?"
"Because he's got me over a barrel. He knows who I am, the trouble I'm in. He's blackmailing me. Hell tell my parents, spread it all over town if I don't do as he says." Spitefully, actually wanting to shock Garth, she said, "Oh you should see the cute little games we play."
His face was bleak. "I can imagine."
"Well," she snarled, "are you happy now? Now that you've found out what kind of a pig I am?"
"Don't, Noelle. Don't blame yourself. Whatever's happened, it wasn't your fault. Someone's taken advantage-"
"Not my fault? How blind can you be? Nobody made me join that gang. I went all by myself. With my eyes wide open. I helped dig my own grave."
"Noelle," he touched her hand. She pulled it away. "Don't go to Sarna again. Let me take care of him. I'll kill the pervert slime with my bare hands H I have to. But you stay away from him."
"You?" she sneered. "You're crazy. Johnny's got connections with the army and navy ... the syndicate. They'd gun you down so quick that-"
"I don't care. Just so long's you're freed from his threats ... the rest of it."
"No. I got myself into this mess, I'll see it through. Hell get tired of me one of these days. Then I'll be free. Besides, how do you know I don't like his style?"
"Noelle, don't. The expression on his face was tragic, . baffled. He looked silly. Noelle felt the urge to laugh. "You've got to face up to yourself. You can't go on like this. I love you, I want to help you."
"Love?" she mocked. "What's that? A word in the dictionary, that's all You talk like a fish."
Tell your parents, Noelle. He can't touch you then. Tell them everything. About the gang, the things you've done, about Sarna. They'll understand, they'll stand behind you."
She snorted. "You're dumber than I thought." She didn't care what she was saying now. None of it mattered any more. She was beyond redemption. Underneath she hated herself for what she was doing to Garth. She loved him, he deserved better treatment. But above anything else, she couldn't let him get involved in her messed-up life.
"What do you know about my parents? They don't even know I'm alive. If it wasn't for them I wouldn't be the way I am now-a slut on wheels."
"Noelle, don't."
"Noelle, don't," she mimicked. "Well, is that what you come to tell me? That you know I've been shacking up with Johnny Sarna? What else?"
"I thought you'd listen to reason, that you'd let me help you."
"So? You wasted your time."
"You aren't going back to Sarna," he said grimly.
"No? I've got a date with him on Friday. Who's to stop me?"
"I will." He sat very straight, averted his gaze. "I'll be there. I'll stop you. Hell have to have his mobsters kill both of us."
Noelle rose, feeling tired, drained. Another minute and she'd be sobbing. "You talk like you're drunk again," she snapped. "I'm going. But one last thing. Keep your nose out of my business."
"Noelle," he reached for her, "listen to me...."
But she twisted from his grasp. Ignoring the curious stares of the others in the park, she ran at full tilt toward her car.
It was Friday night-a sweltering Friday night in Kingston Park. In the cramped, rotten-smelling apartment maintained by Mrs. Ramon Morales, it was even hotter still. Stinking hot.
It was a party. A party that had been going on since nine o'clock, a continuation of the gig that had started at the clubhouse on Tuesday night, a wrap-up in which they'd polish off all the beer, wine and whiskey still left. But the weather was interfering. It was no fun dancing or necking-not when it was ninety-plus even at night.
From somewhere in ancient history Noelle vaguely remembered something about a guy called Johnny Sarna. Wasn't she supposed to meet him someplace? But it didn't register, the words kept sliding off the shiny surface of her brain. Besides, how could she be expected to remember, as drunk as she was, how could she concentrate when Clancy kept putting his hands under her dress, doing all those tickly things to her?
"Hot," Esther cursed, "too damned hot. This's no gig at all. We gotta get outta here. Hey, gang," she shouted over the tumult generated by eleven youths, "what ya say we pack up'n drive out to Spit Point? It's cool out there, I'll bet. We could swim 'n' dance 'n...."
"Fade into the bushes," Bonnie Sprague finished for her.
"That's out," Duke Defalco vetoed "It's too far. We're in no shape to drive. Even if we made it, it'd be too late. We stay here."
Abruptly Noelle's drunken voice cut through the disgruntled undercurrent. "What'samatter with my place?" she called, surprising even herself. "We got a fif ... ty foot pool jus' standin' idle. Nobody's home. My ... folks won' be home till the wee hours. We c'n have a ball."
"Lordee," Esther breathed, "wouldn't that be the limit! I've always wanted to get inside that barn-"
Immediately everyone was excited about the idea-Only Duke, ever cautious, was dubious. "You sure nobody's home? What about the neighbors?"
"They live a couple hundred yards off on both sides. They won' hear us. C'mon, le's go."
Esther settled it. For she appeared suddenly with a cardboard box, began packing bottles. "We're going, tha's all there is to it. I'm just dying for a swim."
"What do we use for swimsuits?" Cheryl Warner said.
"Wahoo!" Clancy hooted. "Bare-rear. That's for me I Let's clear this dump. But fast."
Moments later the Morales flat was dark. Down on the street the kids were packing themselves into Duke's car.
By eleven-thirty, a full-fl-edged bacchanal had developed in the Crane gardens and patio. The self-conscious awe that at first had inhibited the Commandos was now gone, and their awesome, luxurious surroundings notwithstanding, they were completely at ease in the new tttting, alcohol being the great leveler it is.
Upon their arrival the party had gone temporarily flat, the adolescents more curious about and interested in the house than in continued revelry. At their insistence Noelle had taken the gang on a grand tour, feeling a smug pride at their unabashed envy and admiration of the sumptuous house she took so much for granted.
"My bedroom." Noelle had made point of it. "If y'r gonna tangle, come in here. That way Momll never get wise to anything. Or if you wanna make it in the garden, tha's okay too. Lots'a soft grass out there." She giggled lewdly. "Only be sure'n hide the evidence."
The boys were greatly impressed with Brad Crane's fabulously conceived and stocked bar from which Noelle had magnaminously donated two fifths of her father's best bonded whiskey to the cause.
Everybody went way out.
The black light effects in the garden and around the pool were a particular source of amazement to the Commandos. To Bonnie Sprague, all but out on her feet, it was, "A fairyland ... it's jus' a God ... damned fairyland. Them colors ... they get me."
The vivid, surrealistic colors were something. Especially now that they were playing upon a scene the like of which they'd never before illuminated. Used to adults in formal clothing, to conventional soirees, they now achieved their true potential-in the eerie accents they gave to youthful bodies, in the madman's paintpot into which they dipped to paint the girls' naked, gyrating breasts, their bellies, their lovely thin legs and arms. The effect was no less startling upon the male figures, nude also.
Their eyes and teeth shone with a purplish-white translucence, their flesh seemed darker, tanned to a burnt ochre. Whatever oddments they still wore, wristwatches, bracelets, ankles chains, all glittered with over-brilliant sparkle. In contrast to their dusky bodies, those private areas not ordinarily exposed to the sun glowed with a hypnotizing, erotic light. The girls' breasts seemed to radiate an inner light of their own; they seemed to be haloed, throwing off a mystic scintilla. In the middle of those provocative, bouncing globes, the deep-magenta, crinkled nipples looked like surprised eyes.
It was fairyland, all right. Fairyland with a vengeance. The Disneyland scouts should have been there that night.
The kids swam and drank and played the most outrageous sex games in full view of each other, no trace of embarrassment affecting them whatsoever. Twice Gancy had tried coaxing Noelle up to her bedroom for an initial bout, but she'd refused. She was having too much fun at poolside, fending off the very frank grabs and holds the boys were trying on her, she was having too much fun watching the stunts some of the other girls were pulling.
Lying naked in a splash of water on the pool's edge, she fought off Clancy, who was rubbing water on her breasts with arousing playfulness. Now he was massaging her belly in like manner, letting his hands work farther and farther south. Finally, caught up in sexual need he pounced upon her, and sat on her belly, displaying himself unashamedly. His hands, all the while, squeezed her breasts.
Noelle laughed shrilly and twisted her hips. Clancy, caught off balance, went splashing into the pool. He immediately forgot Noelle and went after Cheryl Warner.
Noelle's eyes glowed with dark interest as she saw the frank coupling, the image refracted and broken through the clear water. She saw Cheryl let herself be driven into a corner, her eyes languorous, her arms permissively at rest on the splash rail. And then and there it happened. Cheryl, at the end of the pool, called upon the others to watch, her cries hard and shattering over the water's surface.
Obligingly everyone did just that, pausing in their diversions and yelling coarse encouragement. Everyone, that is, except Bonnie Sprague and Ray Larker, who were sprawled in a naked tangle on the end of the diving board. Bonnie's arms and legs were avidly clenched about Ray's body, her face twisted in joyful grimace, her head hanging at an awkward angle off the edge of the board.
The bodies charged and clenched, utilizing the whip of the board, the limber rise and fall giving Ray perfect leverage and letting him take her to the fullest extent. The two couples were in direct competition, Bonnie so drunk she was calling the vilest epithets and encouragements. The scene took on the aspect of a three-ring circus.
"You stud, you stud," she wailed, "oh lay it to me, lay it, lay it, lay it..
Finally, both bodies stiffening at the same time, both clenching in an unmistakable rapture, they celebrated their double victory by rolling off the board and plunging into the water where their bodies, still merged, seemingly revived and struggled anew.
A loud cheer went up, and Noelle was briefly shaken from her stupor. They shouldn't be so noisy, she thought. II the Murchisons would hear them-
"Cool it, you guys," she called "You wanna raise the dead?"
Momentarily it was cooled. But the venery went on full blast just the same. Noelle saw Glory coming out of the house wearing only a vapid smile, Benny Markaris walking behind her. From a dark cove in the garden she heard Linda Lundgren's protesting voice. "No, Ralph, I don't dig it that way. Regular or nothing. No guy's ever gonna make me...." Then she heard Ralph Sullivan's muffled pleadings. Linda's voice again: "Hey, gang, here's a guy who digs it French." She broke from the bushes, her hair a mess, a disdainful smile on her lips. "Who wants him?"
Bonnie Sprague immediately was fighting to climb out of the pool. "Me," she yelped. "I'll take it anyway I can get it Wait, Ralph, I'm coming."
The gang broke into derisive laughter.
Noelle's spectator activity came to an abrupt end as Duke Defalco fell beside her and began to towel her body. "Inside, sugar," he grinned, "I got some fires that need puttin' out."
"Not now, Duke," she pleaded. "Later. I'm having too much fun watching the others."
"Now, baby," he growled, pulling her to her feet. "Inside. Duke don't wanna wait no more."
Stumbling, Noelle let him push her toward the house. She was surprised at the passion that darted through her as his hand closed on her buttocks and played with them as she walked. "Oooh, Duke, you devil," she sighed.
But when she started for the stairs, he stopped her. "Uh-uh. In the basement. Down in that fancy game room of your old man's. I've got something I've always wanted to try."
"Downstairs?" She jerked away. "But what-" He shoved her hard. "You'll see Move it, dolly." Noelle saw. Duke led her to her father's massive billiard table and arranged her on the green felt covering.
She protested weakly, but Duke overpowered her.
"C'mon, baby," he coaxed, "just like you read in those books."
"Turn out the light anyway," Noelle said, referring to the bright, shaded hood that hung over the table's center.
"Hell," he laughed, "did ya ever hear of championship pool played in the dark? Not my kind of pool anyway."
He climbed up on the soft, green field and took her m a brutal, groaning fashion, thrusting and jerking his body at hers, prolonging it until Noelle forgot the ravishment's unique setting and suddenly became quite an avid pool fan herself.
A lull now settled on the party as everyone waited for certain regenerative processes to take place. The girls blatantly pored over their partners, letting them take the grossest liberties with their own bodies. All in the name of provocation-one thing all-prominent in their minds.
Some still swam, others lolled in chairs, on the grass, and on the tiled pool apron. They lazed and talked, sucking at the too-strong alcoholic drinks. In the respite, Noelle sat with Duke on a lounge chair, allowing his hands to roam as they pleased. Briefly Noelle had vision of Johnny Sarna, and was agitated. This was the night, wasn't it? I did go to his place, didn't I? In the addled chronology of the very drunk, she decided that she had. This party started afterward.
She smiled muzzily and returned to Duke, tuned in on the inflaming things he was doing to her. A slow sizzling beginning within her, she started to play also.
For the rest of her life Noelle was doomed to wonder, to struggle to recall the details and sequence of the tragic events that transpired next. It was supremely ironic that this train of events, so significant to the turn her life took afterward, were lost in a fuzzy alcoholic haze, forever shadowy, resisting all efforts to focus them to meaningful clarity.
She heard the chorus of shouts that echoed down the pool and looked up to see Vito Argente approaching. "Hi, Vito," Linda called shrilly, "welcome to the party. Long time no see. Where ya been keeping yourself?"
Noelle looked up in wild dismay, not believing her ears. There, walking toward the lounge in which she sat; was Vito Argente. But still the significance of his presence didn't register. She was seeing things; it couldn't be Vito.
Then her mouth gaped open and her breath caught in her throat as she saw the man following Vito. Johnny Sarna! An outraged, vindictive Johnny Sarna, judging from the grim, thin-lipped grimace on his face.
She seemed to turn to stone as he approached and stood before her chair. All the others instantly had gone into an ice-age silence. They all knew the violence lurking in Johnny Sarna. He'd been their idol for too long.
His voice was cold, emotionless. "Very pretty, baby. Very pretty indeed. You always run around like this on hot nights?"
Realizing her mistake, realizing why he was angry, Noelle struggled up, trying to think of an excuse.
"Johnny, I forgot, I-"
"Shut up!" he rasped. Then his voice turned velvety, dripping with reptillian malevolence. "Johnny waited all evening for you, dolly. And Johnny doesn't like to be kept waiting. You're gonna pay double for this." His hand flashed out. A splintering sound, the echo of his slap, hung on the air.
Noelle clung in painful shock to the back of a chair.
"Inside," he gritted. "In your own pretty little bed. That's where you'll pay, you witch. You're gonna perform like you never performed before."
"Hey, Johnny," Duke started weakly. "What-"
"Stay out of this, punk," Johnny shot, twisting Noelle's arm behind her back and shoving her toward the house. "All you kids sit tight, understand?" He fished inside his coat, brought out a small, blue automatic and gave it to Vito. "Cover 'em, Vito. Noelle and I don't want no interruptions. Not for a long time."
It was at that point that Noelle's recollection of everything went totally nightmarish. One moment Sarna was leading her toward the house, she struggling feebly, and the next moment she was dropped to the rough flagstone.
As if emerging from a hole in the sky, dropping onto the patio, Garth Nelson was there. Dear God, I don't understand It's all happening too fast. Garth, no-
"Let go of her," the new intruder barked. "You aren't taking her anywhere, you slimy scum You've hurt her for the last time." And step by steady step, the foolhardy Garth advanced on Sarna.
Instantly Sarna took back the automatic. "Stand off, jerk. I don't know who you are, but you'd better clear out, if you know what's good for you. I'm warning you, stand off!"
"You sewer filth," Garth gritted, "you haven't got guts enough to pull that trigger." Still he advanced. "Shoot me before I get to you. Because if I do, I'll kill you with my bare hands." The fanaticism on Garth's face was something awful to see. He couldn't be stopped.
Suddenly there was the shattering report of the gun and Noelle saw Garth stagger, take one step backward. It was almost like something out of a slow-motion movie. Then he was falling into the clear, blue pool, sinking, his blood trailing out in slow, swirling skeins.
Noelle lost all control. It felt as if someone had just driven a spike into her brain. The rage seemingly scooped out her guts and left her an empty, quaking shell.
An animalistic, incoherent screech exploding from her throat, she flung herself at Sarna, struggling with him for the gun. There was only one life force left her now. She must avenge Garth, she must kill Sarna.
Again the gun roared, deafening her. She fell, her shoulder on fire. It felt like someone had hit her with a hammer. "Oh," she said softly. She fought to rise, to attack Sarna again. But she was weak, so weak.
She heard further commotion in the distance and tried to clear her vision. But the picture was badly blurred. She saw her father's panicky white face; she saw the blue-clad men beside him. The police, she remembered thinking. Someone must have reported the wild party. Then she heard loud voices, a shrill whistle, a virtual barrage of gunfire. Sarna whirled, ran five steps. Then he collapsed in a lifeless heap. Noelle sensed a darting flame of victory.
The pain, Noelle's mind had shrieked in incessant refrain. The ungodly pain.
Then she knew blessed peace as she sank into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Garth was dead. Though the police had immediately fished him from the pool and attempted resuscitation and emergency aid, their efforts were futile. He had been dead the second he hit the water.
It was this grim certainty, this knowledge and emptiness, that attended Noelle all through those desolate, agonized days at Kingston Park General. Every time she struggled up from sleep, from the torpor of the drug" they were giving her, the knowledge was waiting for her. It was her first identification with reality.
Garth was dead. She would never see him again; she would never again know his soft smile, his gentle touch. She had no picture of him, no sentimental memento. He was irrevocably gone, as though he'd never really lived. There were only the scaldingly painful memories. These, too, she knew, would, in time, fade.
A more crushing truth than this was the one that told her that Garth had died trying to help and rescue her, that the onus for his futile death lay upon her conscience. If it hadn't been for her weakness, for her libertine questings, he would still be alive.
He loved me, she thought. He loved me more than it was within my feeble mentality to understand. He loved me so much he was willing to kill, to die for me.
At those moments the self loathing invariably crushed her. I'm not worth it. I never was, I never will be. The tears would turn the hospital room to runny planes of color. Oh, Garth, why didn't you stay away? Why didn't you listen to me?
Then the tears would flow and the burning pain would gather in her throat. As the intolerable emptiness inundated her, she realized that she was, in spirit if not in actuality, just as dead as he.
I loved you, Garth, she raged at these moments, with all my heart and soul. But I couldn't keep it up, I couldn't let you ruin your life along with mine. Then it seemed he was in the room with her, that she was uttering the desperate words directly to him:
"I love you, Garth. I'll always love you. There'll never be another I'll love as much. Believe that, darling."
Thus Noelle's days passed, the wound in her shoulder that would leave her left arm stiff the rest of her life, healing slowly. An even deeper wound remained open, sore and festering.
The aftermath to the wild party was well-known to Noelle by now. After all, there were newspapers, and though the nurses tried to keep them from her, she always managed to get hold of one.
She was in trouble, serious trouble and trouble that would be a long time unraveling. Despite the fact that Mr. Bradley Crane had spent staggering sums of money to buy silence from the newspapers, to buy police sympathy, to buy high-powered legal aid, the details of the story had leaked out. Noelle's membership in the Commandos was more than a whispered rumor in Kingston Park now.
It was almost certain that, once her part in the gang capers was fully revealed, she would appear in juvenile court. She would most certainly be sentenced to at least a year at Broadhurst, the state home for women, despite all her father's mighty influence.
She smiled, remembering Duke Defalco's expression for family influence. "Clout," he'd called it.
The gang was shattered, many of its principals already on their way to St. Francis. Noelle knew that Glory, Esther and Bonnie would be waiting for her at Broadhurst. She shuddered, wondering whether she'd be strong enough to resist the criminal influence of her incarceration wondering if she'd be able to hold the homosexual Glory at bay.
Of one thing she was certain: Garth had not died in vain. Somehow she would reclaim herself, she would break with her depraved past. She would become a useful citizen, she would work and fight to buy her childhood wrong-turnings.
If Garth could sacrifice his life to save her, could she do any less?
She recalled her parents' visit that afternoon and was glad that the break was finally behind her. Those first days, as they'd tried to ferret the details about her connections and activities with the Commandos, with Johnny Sarna, had been horrible. Noelle, still in shock at Garth's death, had only stared at them with wordless hatred and contempt.
But that afternoon, as they'd started the old refrain once more, she'd finally tired of it. She'd purposely set out to stun them to the core of their smug, pretty existence. She'd laid at least part of the blame at their own doorstep.
"Listen," she'd said levelly, her eyes blazing, "and listen carefully. This is the only time I'll ever tell you this. And no matter what happens from now on, I'll never mention it again. You want to know why I did those things. You want to know exactly what I did."
Her eyes had narrowed vengefully. "All right I'll tell you. But remember, you asked for it."
Her father had been forced to leave the room before she was finished, curses breaking from him, his shoulders heaving. Her mother had sat in a huddled pose, no longer looking chic and smart in her Balmain gown. She had suddenly looked ten years older, her face gray as ash, as she heard the story to its grisly close.
"What can I do?" she'd said after a long silence. "What can we do? To make this up to you?"
"Do?" Noelle had said. "You've done everything you could already. If you'll give me some money after ... after whatever happens to me ... if you'll forget you ever knew me, that'll be enough. I'll go away and finally stop embarrassing you. I'll go to college, get my degree, try to fit myself in some place. Just take care of me until I'm on my feet again, that's all I ask."
"It's so little," her mother had said, smitten with remorse of the most intense kind. "We want to do more. We want to make things right by you...."
"You want to salve your conscience," Noelle cut her off. "You want to buy peace of mind. No, that's all I want from you. Nothing more."
"Please, Noelle, won't you listen to reason? Can't we talk about this?"
"We've got nothing to say to each other. We stopped having anything to say to each other years and years ago." It was true; it was too late for amends. Noelle knew that the wall between them could never be torn down now.
"I'm no good," she'd continued. "At least at the moment. But if I'm no good, you know why. I came by it honestly, I had two of the best teachers in the world." She'd sunk back into her pillow. "Now, Mother, if you'll go. I'm very tired."
A single sob had escaped her mother's throat. Then she'd risen and had fled from the room.
Now, as the drowsy, night-time hospital sounds drifted back into her consciousness, Noelle was aware of the nurse standing beside her, a hypodermic on a small tray. She forced a smile. "Time for your shot. To help you sleep."
The nurse was gone. And Noelle was very sleepy, too tired for pain to touch her now. She thought of Garth with a small surge of warmth. Perhaps someday she'd find another Garth, someone to love her devotedly. Someone she could love deeply. It was too much to expect, but maybe somewhere-
