Mike Fanning took the whorehouse stairs three at a time, the din of the gambling den below slowly receding. He came out on a long, heavily carpeted hall lit by hanging kerosene lamps. He found Room 14, anchored his rawboned six-foot-two and knocked-but got no answer.
Again his big knuckles lifted, fell. He knocked harder this time. He heard somebody inside come to the door but could hear no heels clicking so he decided the person was barefooted or walked on a carpet as deep as that he stood on.
The door opened a mere crack. The female who looked out was barefooted. She was also young, small-and stark naked.
Big Mike Fanning stared down on two beautiful huge breasts, sexual lust tormenting his strong loins.
In his twenty-six years Mike Fanning had of his own accord bummed around the world twice, not to mention the third time when Uncle Sam paid all his expenses to Vietnam. Therefore Mike Fanning had seen his share-or more-of the world's naked busts.
He'd seen bigger and heavier-nippled breasts than these many times. Sun Lo, back in Singapore, had breasts that would put this female's mammaries to shame, and he was suddenly lonesome for Sun Lo, but she was thousands of miles east in old Singapore.
"Well, what're you gawking at, country lad?"
Mike's eyes roved upward. He saw shimmering red hair, a firm little jaw, a strong little nose, and slightly slanted sea-green eyes.
"This is Room 14?" he asked.
"This is 14. Who are you looking for?"
Something about the voice irritated Mike. He was tired, too, from the long, endless air-trip to this Nevada desert. Christ, when had he last said goodby to Sun Lo? Seemed like years ago but it was only a few days. A man got all twisted up in time when he flew against the clock!
"I'm not looking for a naked female," Mike said. "I'm looking for a man."
Red lips twisted in a sneer. "God damned Hollywood fruiter, huh? So you like men, huh-and not women?"
Mike said, "Of all the god-damned twisted minds, baby, you've got the most twisted I've ever met!"
"Trot on, buster. Go downstairs to the gambling. You'll run into a queer there. Quite a few come out from Hollywood and L.A. to play around." The naked redhead started to close the door.
She didn't close it, though.
Mike's number twelve saw to that. She glared down at Mike's polished Florsheims. Anger glistened in the sea-green eyes. "You sonofabitch! Get your foot outa the door!" Mike's foot remained solid. He grinned at the irate female.
"You're drunk," the female said. She leaned forward and sniffled Mike's breath and then straightened, frowning. Mike's breath held no alcohol stink. "Hell, you're sober," she said. "You gone nuts, buster?"
Mike's grin widened. He found satisfaction in teasing this bitch. "I'm hopped up," he lied. "Marijuana. Pot. Heroin. Mainlined."
"Enough of this shit," the redhead snapped. "Just what the hell or who the hell you want, stranger?"
"Bartender down below told me this room was the private suite of Jake Fanning, and I want to see Jake."
"What about?"
"Jake Fanning happens to be my father."
"Good god, why didn't you tell me at first and-"
The nude redhead never completed her sentence. From the back of the apartment came a roar that would put the bellow of a turpentined Leyte water buffalo to shame. The building almost shook.
Mike winced. He hadn't seen his father for six years but apparently six years hadn't dulled the ege of Jake Fanning's vocal cords.
"My son Mike!" the as yet invisible Jake whooped. "My only son, my only get! My sole heir!"
The redhead put tiny fingers in tiny shell-like ears. "Come on in, then," she said.
Jake Fanning suddenly appeared, also stark naked.
Mike stepped into the room. Jake met his son head-on. Mike had a sick feeling inside.
Once again his father had lied to him. Jake Fanning was in perfect health!
Jake was four inches shorter than his son. His thick chest was matted with iron-gray hair. Jake was pressing sixty. His dong fell halfway to his knees. He had a very big prick, Mike noticed.
Well, that cock had had lots of use, even if it had sired only one get. Mike hurriedly corrected that statement to, one legal get, for old Jake had married his mother legally. He'd seen the wedding certificate.
Old Jake wrapped both big arms around Mike's torso. He tried to lift his son. He couldn't. One reason was that Mike didn't want to be lifted. He planted his thumbs against his father's cheeks and pushed the old man back.
"You bastard," Mike said. "The telegram said you were dying."
"The one the New York lawyer sent you?"
"What other would there be?" Mike said angrily. The old man had screwed him again, getting him halfway around the world on a trumped-up deal. But his getting screwed by old Jake was nothing new.
Jake went into a deep study. "I get it now," he said. "I called that lawyer when I was half drunk. I believe I mentioned I was dying to see my son. He must've got things twisted up. You were where when the telegram found you?"
"Singapore."
"Singapore ... That's in Northern California, ain't it? Seems like I remember playing Singapore with a carny when I was a young gink."
"Don't pull that old shit," Mike said. "You know god damned well what Singapore I mean."
"You mean the one in Asia?"
"None other, old man."
"You don't seem too happy to see your old pappy again," Jake Fanning said. "And it's been ten years since we laid eyes on the other."
"Six," Mike corrected. "You pulled me away from a twenty grand painting contract. Cover for Vida Magazine and a deadline booms down on me."
"Twenty thousand bucks! No painter living is worth that!"
"You calling me a liar?"
"No, but-That New York mouthpiece. He sure must've got confused. How'd he get your address? I've seen your name in print a few times, and the last was over a year ago."
"He somehow got the name of my New York agent," Mike explained. Old Jake was growing old fast. Well, the old fool had lived a hard, fast life filled with women and booze.
Old Jake was jobbing him once again, but his father hadn't called him halfway around the world just to pass the time of day with him, Mike knew. Something serious bugged Jake Fanning.
The redhead cleared her throat, for she'd been left out of everything. "You got a new wife?" Mike asked.
Jake put his arm around the female's naked waist. "No, just a good friend of mine. Angel, this is my only son, my only child, Mike."
Angel said, "I'd already come to that conclusion. I guess you boys'll want to talk so I'd best leave, huh, darling Jake?"
"Don't you dare leave," Jake hurriedly said. "We got something nice to finish, remember?"
"I don't even remember starting anything," Angel said.
Jake turned Angel, one hand in her lovely crack. "Follow me, son," he told Mike. "We can talk this over at our leisure."
Jake escorted Angel into the room Jake had just left Mike judged it to be a bedroom. Mike wondered what lay ahead.
You could never tell about Jake Fanning. You could never outguess the old fox. None of his four legally wedded wives had been able to out-trick him, nor had any of his shack-up females got the best of him.
Mike judged his father was now shacked-up with big-busted Angel.
"I kinda believe I know what you've got in mind," Angel told Jake, "and I can't honestly say I'm in favor of it."
Mike noticed his father had an arm securely around Angel's tiny waist "You're just running on assumptions," Jake told the lovely girl. "I might have a big diamond brooch I want to give you."
"Give me something!" Angel laughed shrilly. "All you've ever given any woman you've had is a dose of the clap or syph!"
"What terrible language," old Jake mourned.
Mike followed the naked woman and man into the bedroom. Heavy drapes killed the hot afternoon sun. The air conditioner made a soft purr. The big bed had not been disturbed, its fawn-blue chenille spread still unwrinkled. Evidently Jake and Angel had been on the verge of bedding down together the moment Mike had rung?
"Get down on your back," Jake told Angel. Angel shot a glance at Mike. "You mean we're going to have a party with your son looking on?"
"Why not?"
"Christ, I've got some scruples, man, even if you ain't I got a few morals left, you old sonofabitch. I'll...."
"You'll what, baby?"
Angel jerked out of Jake's grasp to flee but old Jake had apparently anticipated just such a move. Mike was surprised how quickly his father moved. Old Jake's strength also surprised Mike.
For Jake picked Angel up like a sack of flour. He dumped her on her back on the bed. Angel screamed. She tried to bite but her teeth clicked empty air. Her lovely legs flew high.
Angel's head conked the headboard. Jake immediately covered the nude female, sliding in between her upraised legs.
Mike saw that Angel had a big one and he remembered the tiny women he'd fucked and he recalled that all had had enormous boxes. He admired the irate Angel's rounded ass.
Angel's ass glistened, round and brown. Mike figured Angel as one of old Jake's whores, or else what would she be doing in a whorehouse?
Jake's rod was rock-stiff now. Mike felt envy for his father for old Jake was really hung. Mike figured Jake's was longer than his. He knew the exact length of his own weapon, ten and one-eighth inches, measured along the top.
Sun Lo had measured his prick. Yes, Jake had Mike beat in length, and Jake's cock was also bigger around, Mike had to concede.
Jake owned a small firehose. Just now that firehose's nozzle, round and big and red, was about to enter into the red warm womanly portal.
The redhead boiled. "Don't you dare screw me, you old bastard! I won't be screwed in front of an audience!"
"Shut up and let's go!" Jake roared. "I won't take it! Fucking is a non-spectator sport, Jake!"
"You got a bad habit," Jake said. "You believe everything you read. You should stop such nonsense!"
Jake suddenly decided to settle the argument once and for all. His back hunched, his hips shot forward. His knob disappeared in the forest of red hair. And Angel had Jake in her all the way.
Old Jake's hands went back. They cupped Angel's lovely buttocks. He laid his weight on Angel's hard big breasts, the nipples giving not an inch. His head lay beside Angel's, facing his son.
Old Jake began fucking vigorously. Angel still screamed that sex was non-spectator. Mike sat on a chair and watched with detached interest. He remembered reading that a poet-or some author-once said that the most ridiculous physical pose a man would attain was during the sexual act.
Now Mike was inclined to agree with that unknown author. For old Jake surely looked uncomfortable, pumping away on top of the beautiful Angel, who still screamed to high heaven.
"Sit down, son," Jake hollered. "Make yourself at home. This filly will quit neighing in a minute. When she gets hot she'll-Oh, oh, there she starts now, son!"
For Angel had begun humping Jake. She seemed to be impaled on the oldster's rigid wand. Her mouth closed and she shut her eyes, her arms around old Jake's flabby carcass.
"Jeezus, baby," the redhead purred, "but that's good ... Christ, you're some bedroom bull."
Angel's hips worked rapidly up and down. Jake looked at his son and grinned.
"She goes off fast. She's still young. What a goddam piece of ass!"
CHAPTER TWO
Mike watched his father screw. He'd only seen a dicking match once before. That had been when he'd been about sixteen, in Tijuana, Mexico.
He'd gone down from Los Angeles to get his rocks off in one of Tijuana's thousand bistros. He'd early learned that every cantina in the Mexican border town was the front of a whorehouse.
A big blackhaired Mexican female had extracted a hundred pesos-eight U.S. bucks-for the chore. She'd then asked Mike if he'd 'wanted to see the show."
The show consisted of a group sitting in a room looking through a one-way glass wall into a whorehouse crib where a naked whore teased a naked gringo customer.
The whore, of course, knew that others watched-persons she and the Americano couldn't see, but who saw them. She put on a show for the audience. The norteamericano thought she'd merely decided to tease him. He didn't know about the one-way wall.
Breasts bouncing, nipples black and solid, the whore ran around the bed, buttocks jouncing happily. Occasionally, when she was far enough ahead of her customer, she'd stop and point it at him. "I have taken your picture, my love!" she'd say.
One spectator, an Englishman, got so excited he'd leaped to his feet and screamed, "Grab her like you would a blooming cricket ball, chum!" but the running American, of course, had not heard or seen him.
Finally the Mexican whore figured her customer had had enough. Indeed, the fat American was breathing very deeply, and the whore probably hoped the idiot would not have a stroke while in her crib.
Mike's Mexican wanderings had early taught him that Mexican whores feared one thing: a gringo dropping dead in their beds. Such incidents almost invariably led in the American consulate and the Mexican police. Usually the whorehouse was shut down for a week or ten days afterwards.
The whore had thrown herself on her bed. She raised her legs high and had separated them. She'd had a very small box, much smaller than tiny Angel's, Mike thought, watching his father bang the little redhead.
The norte americano then had had other problems. During his chase of the whore his shaft had gone soft. He had to work hard to get it back in condition.
The American had mounted the whore, much to the delight of the audience. Now, for the second time in his life, Mike Fanning again watched a man prong a woman, but this time not through a one-way vision wall.
This was the real McCoy. And the man was no stranger; the man was his father. You could hear old Jake puff and snort. You smelled sweat and armpit and hot bodies.
Angel became violent again. She yelled and stormed and tried to buck old Jake off, but the oldster was solidly anchored on the redhead's lovely breasts, his long cock deep in her to hold him steady on her heaving, angry carcass.
"She'll quiet down soon," Jake repeated "and then we can talk, son. She's a hot one. I'm kinda slow in coming the last few years."
"You do all right for a man in his sixties," Mike said.
"Sixties, shit! You're a hell of a son! Don't know your father's age! I was fifty-eight last March!"
Jake fucked by sheer rote, hips rising and falling. Angel helped him. Mike gave himself over to thought.
From what he'd heard, old Jake had started this desert gambling town of Los Amigos about eight years ago. By coincidence, Jake had had an old carnival buddy, also another crooked promotor, in the Nevada legislature.
Old camy buddies don't forget each other. Within a few weeks old Jake had a desert homestead, a piece of land big promotors had tried to buy for years because of its springs, both cold water and hot.
Jake had no interest in the hot sulphur springs. His interest lay in the cold water springs. Cold water mixed well with drinks.
Always a showman, Jake then had had a wonderful idea. He remembered that Mackinac Island wouldn't allow a motor propelled vehicle on its streets. His new gambling town would allow only animal pulled vehicles.
Mike had flown from San Francisco to Los Amigos. His plane had been forced to sit down on the huge landing strips on the outskirts of the town's limits. He'd then progressed on to the gambling den section in authentic Wells-Fargo stagecoach pulled by four thundering wild broncs, the driver and shotgun guard yipping Apache fashion every wheelturn on the desert sand and gravel.
A band of Indians had attacked the stage just as it entered the gambling section, but townspeople had driven the redskins back. Mike had been openly bored but not so the stage's other inhabitants, men and women who'd come to Los Amigos to gamble and get drunk and screw each other or some of the many whores the gambling dens also sported.
These customers had really flipped their lid over the synthetic Indians and faked Indian fight. Once again Mike realized how stupid the average citizen was and once again he wondered if that citizen should be given the right to vote, if even for a dogcatcher.
No electric lights were allowed in town, although a town electric plant provided for the hundreds of beer chests from which cold bottles were taken at one buck a flip.
Therefore coal-oil lamps had lighted the unpaved mainstreet with its choking dust, for the grant given old Jake from the state stated no streets could be paved but could be graveled.
Mike had asked a drunk where Fanning's Fiesta was, and the drunk had obligingly pointed out the block long frame building. And here Mike was, sitting, watcing his father dick Angel, whom Mike figured as one of the Fiesta's whores, the one who currently was his father's wife.
What a shitty deal, Mike now sourly thought.
He and old Jake had never been close. Fact is, Mike reasoned, they'd never had a chance to really know each other. Jake was on the road promoting or doing camy work, stopping in occasionally to sleep with whatever wife he happened to have at that particular time, this wife being acquired through legal marriage or through mutual desires.
Mike's mother had been Jake's second legal wife. She'd abandoned Jake-and Mike-when Mike'd been three. Jake had put his son into various homes under the care of various females.
Once little Mike hadn't seen his father for three years. Finally Jake came around. "Who's that funny looking fat guy?" Mike asked the matron. Jake grinned sickly and said nothing.
Jake had always paid Mike's bills, though, until Mike, at sixteen, had figured the world was his, and had moved out on his own. He'd always liked drawing and drawing had led to painting and in Vietnam he'd painted a battle scene two years ago and here he was commanding twenty grand for a mag cover.
It sounded simple ... but it hadn't been simple. It had consisted of hard, sweating, ill-fed work, and then, by luck, he'd hit the jackpot.
Mike Fanning didn't kid himself. He knew he wasn't the world's best painter. He knew he wasn't even a good artist. He'd just happened to paint the right thing at the right time and the right agent had hit at the right time.
He'd been lucky, that was all.
Sourly he regarded his father fucking Angel. Angel said, embarrassed, "This old sonofabitch, Mike....He doesn't even cover our bare asses, the bastard. You can't see my-well, you can't, can you?"
"No, I can't," Mike lied.
Angel wasn't yelling now. She screwed with sure strokes, knowing her trade well, and Jake Fanning poked her in perfect rhythm, as her hips rose up and collided with his.
Mike wondered just how many women his father had intercoursed. He judged the number would be well into the thousands by now. The old man could drop dead on top of Angel and still be way ahead in the bed game.
Angel was a good piece, Mike noticed. Mike felt himself get a hard on.
He wanted, at that moment, to peel his father off this lovely redhead. He would then replace his father. He doubted if the change of cocks would make a bit of difference to Angel.
Angel was here to get her ashes hauled and she didn't care who did it as long as he did it right. Nevertheless, Mike held himself back out of respect of his father. Respect of his father? That made him grin. "Okay, Jake," he said shortly. "What the hell's wrong here in Los Amigos?"
"They're trying to kill me," Jake said, hips going down hard.
"Who's the they?"
Jake's hips rose. "Bunch of sonofabitching gangsters, son. No, not the Mafia. If the Mafia'd moved in, I'd been dead by now."
"And all my own goddamned fault," old Jake moaned. "I practically invited Ike Hayward in, son."
"Ike Hayward."
"Yeah, he bought out Blinky Moran. You didn't know Blinky, did you?"
Mike shook his head. "And undoubtedly I lost nothing by not knowing Blinky. One of your old carnival thief pals?"
Old Jake explained between lunges at Angel's hips. Once in Georgia a sudden storm had blown down the carnival tent, Jake being beaned by a falling pole.
"Blinky saved my life. Oh, that was about twenty years ago, I'd say. But I never forget. Of course."
"Of course not," Mike said.
The rest was much as Mike expected. Blinky Moran had been down on his luck. Jake had grown very tired of managing a town. "I'm no spring chicken no more, son."
Blinky had raised money to buy one of Jake's saloons. Within a few days he sold to Ike Hayward. "Then that shithead Blinky left town on the double. Bastard didn't even say goodby to me," Jake said.
"Just one saloon in foreign hands?" Mike asked.
"Just one, son. I called it The Second Front but Hayward changed the name to Square Deal House, the ironic sonofabitch!"
"So you want me to buck this Hayward bunch of gunsters for you, huh?"
"Hell, it won't come to much, son. You're big and tough and a ex-Marine and you'll easily run them out of town. Nah, not much'll happen, Mike."
"How'd you know it won't?"
"Well, son, a man has to die sometime, don't he?"
"Yeah, I've heard that crap, too," Mike said shortly. "But here's one who isn't dumb enough to get knocked off for a bunch of whores and pimps and gamblers, daddy mine!"
"I should never have had that shyster send for you," old Jake said. "I knew it was wrong from the start. You ain't got no love or respect for your old father."
"Why don't you pull the flesh and blood bit?" Mike asked sarcastically. "How are these gangsters affecting you to this point? You have no black eyes, cut lips-and from where I sit I can see you still have your testicles intact!"
"They're hitting me where it hurts the most-in my pocketbook."
"How?"
Jake explained briefly between strokes. Angel now lay with her eyes closed. Angel breathed very heavily, banging away with fine precision. She knew old Jake's methods well, for she rolled with Jake on her side, her back toward Mike, as she and Jake rutted.
Mike figured the whore had gone off many, many times.
Evidently Jake would go off soon. "Keep talking," Mike ordered. "Okay, here goes," Jake said.
Jake had managers managing his other whorehouses and gambling dens, which numbered six beside the Fiesta.
"This is a hard business to keep records in, son" the old man said. "First, you don't want to keep accurate records, and you can guess why!"
"Internal revenue," Mike said.
Old Jake nodded, giving it to Angel hard as he could.
"Federal dicks, for one thing," Jake said. "Another thing, it's impossible to keep accurate dollar and cents count. A girl is paid for a fuck, we say. She manages to steal it, nobody knowing she's got screwed but her customer, and he won't tell. Or she pays the madame a little on the side. She and the madame are in cahoots. You follow me?"
Mike nodded.
"Gamblers can chisel, too. People say some gamblers are honest. Shit, if a gambler was honest, he'd be out of gambling in ten minutes. If he didn't go broke the other gamblers would see he got his ass out. Blackjack dealers can make or break a house. A blackjack dealer gets a buddy across the table and he deliberately loses to this buddy. Well, you understand, huh?"
Mike again nodded.
"Well, since these Eastern boys moved in, my income's been falling down terribly. I've snaked up managers, moving one here, the other there, and it's still falling fast."
"My heart bleeds for you," Mike said.
"And I need a bodyguard, too," Jake said.
Mike said, "Count me out. I couldn't guard myself, pater."
"Okay, if you say so. I guess I got you here by a dirty deal, at that. I'll pay your round trip ticket, eats and all. Just send me the bill. But it was good to see you again, son. Don't make it so long the next time. You got a woman in Singapore?"
Mike almost told his father of Sun Lo, but decided against it. He'd like to introduce his father to Sun Lo's lovely mother, Nancy Lo. Nancy had once been madame of one of Hongkong's biggest whorehouses. She'd fled to Singapore because she was afraid of the Commies. She now lived in retirement with her lovely daughter.
Mike had sexed both Sun Lo, the daughter, and Nancy Lo, the mother. Both were good pieces. He was sure that Sun Lo knew he had banged her mother but, being Oriental and broadminded, the lovely Sun Lo had never mentioned this to him, not even in moments of anger.
Nancy Lo would really go for Jake, son Mike thought. She'd trim old Jake's feathers and hump him until he couldn't walk.
Mike decided he'd marry Sun Lo when he got back to Singapore. Nancy Lo would, of course, live with her daughter and sonin-law, and Mike would in reality have two lovely wives, both efficient in the arts of making a man happy sexually and otherwise.
"Occasionally a stray female falls into my bachelor bed," Mike told his father.
"Excuse me," Jake said. "I've got to come, son."
Jake turned all his attention back to Angel. He and Angel now lunged in complete and final accord, apparently paying no attention to their lone spectator, Mike's dingus surged against his pants and his heart beat dully.
Jake was an expert. His big hands expertly cupped Angel's full, flowing buttocks, fingers spread and digging into the whore's smooth flesh. His motions became faster and faster.
The gasoline lamp hissed, casting a yellow glow over the naked flesh of the interlocked couple. The bed didn't complain but held their combined weights easily.
Mike suddenly remembered the whorehouse beds he'd once occupied. He couldn't remember a bed squeaking. Whores kept good care of their beds.
He thought of motels where he'd made stands. He couldn't remember a bed squeaking in a motel, either. He considered motels a form of secondary whorehouses.
Angel had her lovely legs spread very wide and up very high, toes pointing at the ceiling. Mike studied what he could see of the whore's big boobies.
Angel had very delectable breasts, he again thought. He gave his attention over to his father, who now panted hard. He hoped old Jake had a good ticker. The old boy was really whooping it up on the lovely Angel.
Sweat popped out on Jake's hairy, naked back. Sweat coated the gray hairs under his arms.
Angel was a hot one. She had expression after expression. Mike wished his hard-on would leave. He'd liked to have sampled Angel's lovely feminine wares.
"I'm coming, baby!" Jake roared.
"Give it to me, papa!" Angel screeched.
Angel wrapped her legs around Jake's naked torso and gripped him fiercely.
"I can handle you, baby," Jake said proudly.
Jake evidently was really pouring his heart out.
Mike suddenly wandered how many brothers and sisters he had running around. He'd had the thought before, of course. He wondered if the number wouldn't be in the twenties, anyway.
Jake had balled everything that came his way. Mike's mother had divorced Jake because Jake had pronged her mother, Mike's maternal grandmother.
Mike got to his feet. He stopped at the door, glancing back.
He would get a stage to the airport beyond Los Amigos' limits. With any kind of flying luck he'd be back at his easel in Singapore in three days, the lovely Sun Lo hanging over him, sleek and full Oriental busts beckoning his hungry mouth.
He would not say goodby to his father. Old Jake would understand. Mike wondered if he'd ever see his father again. The thought bothered him not a bit. He looked at old Jake again.
Mike smiled wryly. The last thing he'd see on his father was his father's asshole, a good thing to remember old Jake by!
Softly, Mike closed the door. He went down the long stairway to the gambling den below, the din rising to greet him.
A half-naked big female and a drunken man climbed the stairs, a whore taking a customer to her crib. The whore winked at Mike, the drunk not noticing, and then she grabbed her breast and squeezed as though shooting milk at Mike, who rubbed his eye like milk had suddenly got into it.
"Meet you down below in a little while, big boy," the whore told Mike.
"Not me you won't.
The whore grimaced and continued climbing, the drunk heavy on her hands, and Mike crossed the big gambling den, glancing at the two bars at each end, hearing the bustle and hum of patrons and gamblers. He stepped outside into the soft darkness of the desert night.
Horse-and mule-drawn vehicles-buggies, cabs, wagons-cruised the streets. Kerosene streetlights cast dull yellow shadows over the filled barrels of water on each corner, placed there in case of fire.
Mike remembered the Western movies he'd seen and the few ghost towns he'd visited. His father had faithfully carried the old West atmosphere into Los Amigos.
Los Amigos consisted of three blocks of mainstreet, all gambling dens and whorehouses. Two side streets flanked the main drag. Here lived the card dealers and bartenders and the married working men, Mike guessed.
The board sidewalk was filled with whores and pimps and gamblers. Few men brought their wives to this gambling area, Mike guessed, and he could guess why.
He stepped off the high boardwalk into the dusty street, and it happened then. Later, it seemed illogical and completely crazy, like something coming out of a real cheap B grade Western movie.
He remembered the runaway team, slanting around the corner, the driver standing in the wagon's wooden box, sawing on his lines and calling for his terrified mules to stop.
Mike had a moment of clarity before the lead mule knocked him down and the team and wagon ran over him. And, in that moment, he felt sure the driver-a sour-faced big man-deliberately drove the crazed mules down on him. Then, only blackness.
CHAPTER THREE
When Mike Fanning came to his head lay in a woman's lap. Just like in Westerns, he thought again. Or was this a woman?
She had green hair. Her long eyelashes were purple. Her lipstick was yellow. Mike blinked twice, becoming aware of a pounding headache. Maybe he'd been killed? And gone to hell?
"Are you a devil?"
He guessed it was his voice that asked the question. Anyway, it had sounded something like his, although it had the dull tone of coming through a very long wind tunnel.
"Now I like that!" an irate female voice snarled. "The bastard asks me if I'm a devil, and Nita Graham trying to do mere act of mercy!"
"Can the bullshit, Nita!" a rough masculine voice said. "Who is the bucko, anyway?"
"I'm Mike Fanning," Mike heard himself say.
Mike now realized he was the center of a small crowd. He was also in some den of iniquity for he saw a kerosene lamp burning high overhead. For the first time he got a good look at the speaker.
Mike saw a big, rawboned man of about thirty-five. A three hundred buck suit graced square shoulders that needed no padding. The face was slightly hawkish, the nose big, the mouth wide, the blue eyes merciless and cruel. Mike thought of a Viking raider's hawked face.
"You any kin to old Jake Fanning?" the rough voice demanded.
Mike answered without thinking, for his head did not lend to clear thinking. "Jake's son. Why ask?"
"Well, I'll be goddamed," the big man said. "Ike Hayward helping save the life of Jake Fanning's son and Jake about ready to shoot my ass off. Nita, for Christ's sake, get out of his sight. The sight of that painted mug of yours will set him back unconscious again."
Mike Fanning's brain functioned somewhat erratically now, although fading in and out somewhat. He remembered Jake Fanning mentioning Ike Hayward. Ike Hayward had bought out Jake's blessed pal, Blinky Moran. Blinky had sneaked in and in-fringed upon Jake's friendship to get Ike Hayward and his mob stationed in Los Amigos.
"I love you, too, Ike," Nita said.
She got up and Ike Hayward and a blocky, hard-faced man of about thirty got Mike Fanning to his pins, Mike's knees wobbling and weak. Between them they got Mike seated at a card table.
Life continued on, as usual. Faro dealers bawled and bingo number dealers whirled the craps in the tin cage and yelped and somebody hollered Bingo and Mike cringed, for the sound knifed his tender brain.
Whores giggled and robbed customers and customers giggled and expected the prosties to rob them. Whores climbed this stairway also with customers, arm in arm. Roosters lined the three bars and the bartenders sweated despite air conditioning. Mike noticed, despite his limping brain and wavering eyes, that Ike Hayworth's joint apparently had more customers than the old man's Fiesta.
Mike saw a whore cleverly pick a few bills out of a customer's shirt pocket. This made him think of his wallet. His wallet was in his hip pocket
"Nobody got a chance to rob you," Nita said. "I was just behind you when those runaway mules knocked you down. I saw to it nobody lifted your wallet."
"Prob'ly saving it for herself," Ike Hayworth grunted.
"What was that crack?" Nita asked, sharply.
"I said that you thought very fast," Ike said, "and I compliment you. Now why don't you go look for a customer?"
"You sonofabitch, I'm off duty. I turned thirty-six tricks in eight hours. Show me one of your other girls that popular and I'll kiss your ass on the courthouse steps, mister, until your hat pops off!"
Ike shoved back his big Texas sombrero. "I never use a hat," he said.
"Fuck you, boss!" Nita said.
She turned. She gave her pretty ass a significant jerk.
Mike said, "Thanks a lot, Nita."
"What for?" Nita asked sarcastically, and left.
Mike looked at Ike Hayward. "Who was the sonofa-bitch in that wagon that ran me down?"
"I don't know," Ike said. "I was in the back. I heard them holler in front. You were on the ground, Nita helping you. The rig was already gone." Ike Hayward looked at a big young man standing beside him. "You see the rig, Tank?"
"Hell no. I was in back with you, remember?"
"Oh, yeah, that's right. Mike, this is Tank Ottenstraw, friend of mine."
Mike and Tank shook hands. Tank Ottenstraw put pressure in his grip and Mike returned it. A standoff, Mike figured. He disliked people who tried to break your hand by shaking it. And he disliked this big, rough-looking Ottenstraw, who apparently was Ike Hayward's bodyguard.
Tank Ottenstraw had a few bulges where he didn't have muscles, Mike noticed, meanwhile adding that the bodyguard had plenty of muscles. Tank Ottenstraw looked as though he'd be a tough customer in a man-to-man struggle.
Ike Hayward spoke to an onlooker. "Get Mike a drink. On the double. What'll it be, Mike?"
"Bourbon, straight-and thanks."
Mike put his head in his hands. His hair was matted with dirt and blood. Gingerly, his fingers examined his cranium.
He had about a two inch cut on top of his head.
"Nita said a mule kicked you there," Ike Hayward said.
Mike merely nodded. This runaway had been a frameup job, he knew. Old Jake was in trouble. Word had naturally got around Los Amigos fast that Mike Fanning had flown in to help his father.
"That dirty sonofabitch," Mike said.
"Who?" Ike Hayworth asked.
"That fucking muleskinner. He aimed to kill me."
"Hell," Ike Hayworth said, "that was only an accident, man. Runaways every day here in this goddamned one-horse town!"
"Anybody know who he was?" Mike asked.
Ike Hayworth called to Nita who sat at the bar feeling out a prospective client. "Anybody know who ran down the man here?"
"I never asked," Nita said, "and I don't remember seeing the man before. But those mules sure had the bit in their teeth running."
"Unless I'm plumb nuts," Mike said, "he was standing up beating them jackasses for more speed. He wasn't trying to hold them in."
"I'm sorry, but I have to contradict you," Nita said sweetly, "but the man was standing up pulling back on his lines for all he was worth."
"We must've seen two different sets of mules," Mike said.
"You mean to imply somebody tried to kill you?" Ike Hayworth asked.
"Forget it," Mike said. "Here comes the sawbones, judging from the bag he carries."
Doc Williams was a pot-bellied fifty or thereabouts.
He smelled like a distillery. He put an old black canvas bag on the table and unbuckled it. "You don't look much like your father," he told Mike.
"Thank god for that," Mike said.
Red flushed the whiskey-bloated jowls. "I don't like to hear a young one satirize his elders," the medico stated. "Each man has his strong points. Old Jake's strong character point is his cock, if I might be so rough as to speak in the vernacular. I dare say, young man, that you're not the cocksman that your sire is."
"God, I hope not," Mike said.
Rough fingers parted Mike's hair.
"I once considered myself a great cocksman," the doctor said, "but when I met your father, Mr. Fanning, I immediately realized that I, as a cocksman, was not even third class sir."
"Nothing to be proud of," Mike said.
"All in a point of view," Doc Williams returned. "You will need a few stitches in your scalp, sir. I shall give you a local."
"Okay," Mike said.
Doc Williams spoke to Ike Hayward. "A bottle of whiskey, please."
"You intend to use whiskey as a pain killer?" Mike asked.
"Indeed not, Mr. Fanning. Such a waste of wonderful bourbon ... I intend to imbibe the whiskey, sir."
"Jesus, that joke's got moss on it," Mike said.
Doc Williams worked with an open whiskey bottle beside him. He gave Mike's scalp four injections, then waited until numbness took over. The garrulous medico wanted to talk about anything in the world, finally ending up on Mike's painting, and Mike didn't want to talk about painting or anything related to it, and he answered in unintelligible monosyllables.
He shaved an area in Mike's crewcut, then stitched. Whores, pimps and drunks crowded around. Mike wondered where mules and wagons were kept. Somewhere would be a town livery barn, he felt sure.
Doc Williams finally finished the bottle and the sewing job simultaneously. Mike paid him. Doc then gave him some headache powders. Mike stood up and looked at himself in a backbar mirror. He looked one-half Iriquois with his haircut. Or is it a Mohawk? he thought sourly.
"Your father said you were leaving town," the medico said. "Right short visit, young man."
"How'd you know that?"
"Your father just called me in my office. He and I are old friends. Your father seemed rather down at the mouth."
"What the hell is there here?" Mike asked.
The doctor's eyes went wide. "What the hell, man, are you talking about, anyway? Just look at that over there?"
Evidently some form of floorshow was starting. Twelve naked females danced opposite twelve naked males. The heavy breasts of the females jounced up and down and the cocks of the males did likewise.
"You call that a dance?" Mike asked.
"The Dance of the Phallus," the medico mused. "You have a cult in the far east that worships the male cock, the phallus, have you not?"
"Yes, there's a branch that look upon the male member as a god," Mike said.
"Very intelligent people," the drunken medico murmured.
Mike winced as pain lanced his head.
CHAPTER FOUR
Mike Fanning stood in a stable stinking of horsepiss and looked at two mules in a double stall. "You dirty sonsofbitches," Mike told them.
The mules paid no attention. Neither even batted a long ear. They each ate of feed bins, oats hanging to their ugly noses.
"What's eatin' your ass out, stranger?"
The words came from behind Mike. Mike turned and saw a snort, ugly man standing watching, big hands on hips. The man wore a blue shirt and bib overalls and big Drogans. Mike judged him the barn proprietor.
"Can't I cuss out a goddamned mule without interference?" Mike asked shortly.
"I don't dig you, buster. You come in here and ask no questions and walk up and down between the stalls and then stop behind Dick and Jerry here and eat their asses out with cusswords. You've slipped your clutch, maybe?"
"Which is Dick?" Mike asked.
"One on the nigh side."
"Which is the nigh?" Mike asked.
"The one on the left."
"Dick almost killed me, the sonofabitch. He's the one that put the stitches in my scalp with his nigh front hoof. He's got a real heavy shoe on that hoof, and I know by experience."
"I don't toiler you, stranger."
Mike told him about being run over by Dick and Jerry and a lumber wagon with an idiot standing in the wagon pretending to hold back the mules but in reality egging them on to greater speed.
"When'd this happen, mister?"
"About an hour ago."
The man scowled. "Yeah, Dick an' Jerry was rented out about that time. Big broad gink rented them and a wagon. Said he had to haul some trash away, or somethin' like that"
"You know the man who rented them?"
"Nope, he was a stranger to me, and I thought that odd at the time because I started this barn for old man Jake Fanning, and I've been here as long as Los Amigos, and I figured I knew just about every citizen what lives in this town."
"What makes you believe the renter lives here?"
"Hell, he was goin' to haul trash, wasn't he? And strangers passin' through aren't in the habit of haulm junk away from yards, you know. A man don't just walk past a yard that ain't even his'n and say, 'I'm goin' haul the trash outa that yard!'"
"Do people who rent rigs and animals from you sign a register or something?" Mike asked.
"Yeah, they all have to sign my big book."
Mike's heart jumped. He might learn something from the register. Then common sense told him that no man wanting to hire a brace of mules and a wagon to run down-and possibly kill-would sign his real handle to a register.
"Here's his name, mister," the livery-barn tender said.
Mike read: Joseph Tumbleweed. He snorted disgustedly. "Did you read his name when he wrote it down?"
"Nah, he just went over to the book and wrote, like I asked him. He only rented Dick and Jerry and Wagon Number 11 for fifteen minutes, it shows here. Sure couldn't have had much junk to haul, huh?"
"He hauled my ashes in that short time," Mike grunted. "You sure you don't know the gink?"
"Never laid eyes on him afore or since."
Mike wondered if the man were not lying. He went to the front door and was ready to leave when the man said, "Lemme give you a bit of advice, feller, seein' you're new to Los Amigos, an' you look new because I ain't seen you before."
"Yeah, what is it?"
"You ask a hell of a lot of questions. And it ain't healthy to get too nosy in this burg."
Mike stopped, studied the man. "You know what you can do, mister?"
"What?"
"Go fuck yourself!"
Manure-covered big hands became hard fists. Pale blue eyes studied Mike belligerently.
"You're a hard looking bastard," the man's thick lips said, "but Poop Henders might take you, after all. Poop Henders ain't used to being talked to like this, 'specially by strangers."
"Who the hell is Poop Henders?"
"Me, of course. You talk as tough as one of them Hayward killers. What's your handle, stranger?"
"Mike Fanning."
"Did you say-Fanning?"
"I said Fanning, mister."
"Any kin to Jake Fanning?"
"I hate to admit it but Jake is my father." Mike turned and left, glancing back from the comer. Poop Henders still stood under the lantern-light before nis barn's door.
Mike felt ashamed of himself. He'd had no reason to speak so roughly to a stranger. He had let his raw nerves get the better of him. Still, one thing puzzled him.
Poop Henders said he'd not known the mule renter. Had the big muleskinner worked for Ike Hayward? Had he been some killer Hayward had shipped in to kill him, Mike Fanning?
Maybe Ike Hayward had already got the muleskinner out of town? The irony of the situation made Mike smile gingerly. He'd awakened in Ike Hayward's Square Deal. Did you hire some muleskinner to try to kill a man and, when the muleskinner failed, did you then take the man into your own saloon to await medical care?
Mike decided to keep an eye on the Square Deal, for the muleskinner might try to sneak in the back door. He stationed himself in the alley behind the gambling den.
Kerosene and gasoline lamps lit the upstairs cribs. Most cribs had no curtains. You could see into them easily. Mike saw whores of all colors, sizes, and descriptions, some naked, some half naked, some dressed.
He saw Nita standing naked in front of a mirror, big breasts bulging, her belly flat, her pubic hair a dark vee in her appealing crotch. A man, also naked, came in behind the little whore.
The man put his arms around the girl with the green hair, purple eyelashes and yellow lipstick, but Nita paid her lover little attention.
Mike had never seen the client, a fat man, before. He did a little silent arithmetic.
Nita had angrily told Ike Hayward she'd turned thirty-six tricks in her eight hour shift. Mike figured she made a minimum of five bucks a fuck. Within eight hours she'd cleared at least one hundred and eighty bucks.
Twenty-two fifty an hour, Mike figured. She makes as much per hour as a plumber who also lies on his back....
Nita reached back, catching her customer's pipe in her small right hand.
The fat client smiled widely as Nita gently squeezed. The customer didn't know that Nita squeezed his cock not out of affection. It was Nina's test for possible venereal diseases.
Mike judged that Ike Hayward's office was in the rear part of Hayward's saloon, somewhere near the alley. He saw windows with lights in them but blinds were down. He decided to case other saloons.
He found nobody faintly resembling the missing Joseph Tumbleweed. He, of course, asked nobody if they knew Mr. Tumbleweed, for he didn't want to make a fool of himself, for any idiot would know that Tumbleweed was an alias.
Mike was rather sure he'd recognize the muleskinner if he happened to see him. He'd got a rather good view of the big man standing there, legs braced, big hands clutching the lines of the thundering mules.
He watched a blackjack dealer deliberately steal about three hundred dollars from his own father, Jake Fanning. The dealer was not an adroit thief, for his motions were rough and cumbersome. Mike said nothing. Although this saloon was one of his father's it made no never mind to him if somebody stole it completely blind.
He later saw the blackjack dealer cut in the house manager for a part of the stealings. These managers were really coining money, Mike figured, for undoubtedly they were on Ike Hayward's payroll, also, were they not?
Mike ended up about midnight in Ike Hayward's Square Deal House, slightly drunk. He'd watched floorshows and whores in action and anybody with any kind of eyes could have seen that old Jake's help robbed him blind and that the big play was at the Square Deal House.
"Why does this joint have so many customers?" Mike asked a stranger standing beside him, glass in hand, watching the floor show of naked beauties, Nita included.
Mike noticed that the front of the stranger's blue pants bulged and his eyes were riveted on Nita's crotch.
"Drinks are a buck in any other house," the stranger said. "Here they're four bits. A girl in any of the Fanning houses costs twenty bucks. Here they flop-and put out better ass-at ten bucks. Figure it out for a night and a man's saved quite a gob of dough."
Mike wondered why his father didn't make his houses cut the price of drinks and girls. This thought amused him. He'd heard of chain store fights over prices, one chain cutting below the other.
Jake and Ike Hayward could have a whorehouse price-cutting fight. Mike wondered idly that, if such a price fight came about, would it not be the first time in history that competing whorehouses had lowered the price of this human commodity in an attempt to corner the entire market?
Nita saw him. She smiled at him. Mike realized that Nita seemed to like him. He lifted a little finger and she smiled again as she did the bumps and grinds, wide ass bobbing, breasts bouncing and cunt showing now and then through her thick hair.
Mike was getting a hard on. He had no scruples about fucking a whore. He'd early learned that many a man prided himself on being the one and only man to fuck a particular woman and everybody else in town knew that other men were laying the same female.
The cuckolded husband was always the last to learn. Mike had at sixteen been fucking a widow, the mother of one of his friends. She'd been a good piece of ass, too, having had much practice.
Mike had found the married women-the ones who stepped out on their husbands-the poorest fucking. Most of them just lay there and a man put it to them and they didn't bother to wriggle a muscle to help a man reach a climax.
Most of them, Mike had learned, didn't know how to fuck and had no desire to learn how.
He again thought of lovely, small waisted Sun Lo with her delectable breasts and tiny cunt. Sun Lo was a good piece of ass. She knew how to handle her hips.
Sun Lo had been trained to please men with the sex act and being congenial. Her education had been the opposite of that of the American girl who had been taught that men were made to please her and not she to please them.
Because he thought of Sun Lo, he also thought of Sun Lo's lovely mother, Nancy Lo, and his hard-on grew harder. Now there was a piece!
The floorshow ended. The nude girls danced away and disappeared around a screen. Mike had to admit that Nita had a very neat-looking little ass.
The next number-a singing trio-came on. Mike had no interest in such terrible yowling. He yawned.
The day had been endless. On top of that he'd been ridden down by mules and knocked cold, head cut. He decided against circulating around and lining up Nita for her bed. He'd head for the Fanning Fiesta. Old Jake should have a bed for his only get.
He decided once more to check the alley behind Ike Hayward's Square Deal House. He might run into something interesting and, besides, it was a short cut to his father's whorehouse.
Things looked the same. Shaded windows showing dim kerosene lamps inside, unshaded windows showing naked women and naked men.
He located Nita's room. It had the blind down, now. The alley still stunk of stale garbage cans and horse manure. He walked past an old shed. The shed's door, he noticed, was open, hanging on hinges.
Then, he heard footsteps shuffle in from behind. He turned swiftly, realizing that somebody had been hiding in the shed, but he turned too slowly. He glimpsed the dark figure of a man, an upraised pistol.
Then once again inky blackness....
CHAPTER FIVE
Consciousness returned suddenly to Mike Fanning. He realized he lay on his back. Somebody-or something-sat astraddle his thighs. He realized it was not a something, but a somebody. And, at the same moment, he became aware that the somebody astraddle his hips was a woman. She was screwing him.
He remembered having a hard-on when knocked out. Evidently he'd kept that erection while being unconscious?
Where was he? He put the question into words. "You're on a bed in your father's house," a sweet female voice said. "You're in the Fiesta."
"How'd I get here?"
"I found you in the alley. Actually, I watched you through my window, holding the blind aside. I saw you fall."
"You Angel?"
"No."
Her voice sounded familiar. Mike wished he could make out her face, but it was too dark. "Who are you then?" he asked. "I'm Nita."
"But you work for Ike Hayward and you told me this is my father's saloon. How'd I get here?"
"Two other girls helped carry you here, Mike. Girls who work for Hayward. Who knocked you out?"
"Damned if I'd know, Nita. Somebody come in behind me. I tried to turn but I was too slow and then the lights went out."
"And you never saw who slugged you?"
"Never did. You said you saw me fall. Didn't you see who cold-cocked me? Foray glimpsed a revolver raised ... and then boom----"
Nita humped diligently. "I'm sorry, Mike, but I couldn't make out who the man was, friend."
"My old man know I'm in his whorehouse?"
"No, but the madame does. Angel is old Jake's madame."
"Where is my father?"
"Angel said he passed out on her right after you left his room. He was fucking Angel when Doc Williams dropped by. Doc put old Jake to bed, saying Jake was only drunk as usual."
"I have a nice father," Mike said.
"There are worse," Nita said, fucking steadily and seemingly liking it.
Mike enjoyed her. Her thighs were soft on his, she smelled good. Mike hadn't been fucked since leaving Singapore.
He asked, "How come you climbed onto me, Nita?"
"You were on your back. You were naked. You were hard. We were alone, you and I. And I just fell victim to temptation."
"But you get plenty of ass. You said you'd turned thirty-six tricks in eight hours today."
"I sort of like you, Mike Fanning. There!"
"I don't understand women," Mike admitted.
Nita stopped going up and down. "You want me to quit?"
"Sure," Mike said, "but not right this minute. Did anybody ever tell you that you could really do this?"
"You're not so bad yourself, you know."
"But you've had me only on my back," Mike said, and rolled on his side, Nita going over with him, her full thigh lying under his bottom leg as his hips and her hips went in and out.
They kissed and their lips were warm and hung and they went at it slowly. They then rolled over with Nita underneath. She broke her knees, dug her small naked heels into the bed, and really began socking it to him with powerful thrusts.
Sweat popped out on Mike's broad back. Nita's breasts became made of fire, but never for one moment lost solidity, nipples jabbing upward against Mike's hairy chest.
"I'm coming, Mike! Oh, god, how I'm coming!"
Sharp nails dug Mike's back. Mike drove harder and faster. Nita gasped in pure bliss, chewing his ear. He jerked his head aside to escape her clicking teeth. Finally she quieted.
"Geez, that was good," she breathed, again seeking a rhythm, her hips meeting his.
"You sure gave it to me," Mike said.
"I like you. You're slow coming. I like men who are slow. They give a girl a much better time."
Mike found his thoughts straying. Who had buffaloed him down Wild West fashion with a six-shooter behind Ike Hayward's Square Deal House? Had Ike Hayward-or one of his men, maybe Tank Ottenstraw-followed Mike and delivered the coup-de-grace to him?
And where was the great Joseph Tumbleweed, the driver of the runaway mules that had almost ground one Mike Fanning to sausage? Who had hired Tumbleweed to drive over Mike Fanning?
Mike knew it all hinged back to his fathers trouble with Ike Hayward. Old Jake had said his income had dropped off terribly since the coming of Hayward to Los Amigos and judging from what Mike had seen this night in Jake's saloons, Old Jake was right.
Ike Hayward plainly had hired old Jake's help away from him. Jake paid their wages, they robbed from their boss, and pl-edged allegiance to Ike Hayward. Some of Jake's house managers must be really coining the dough, Mike thought as he fucked Nita automatically.
These house managers got paid from both sides. Jake paid them and so did Ike Hayward and they also robbed Jake while they worked. Mike wondered where Jake had his millions cached.
For common sense told Mike that Jake must have coined money here in Los Amigos before Ike Hayward had moved in. Jake probably had his dough hidden in Swiss banks?
Mike had no pity for his father. Old Jake was a born thief, liar and scoundrel, and another thief, liar and scoundrel was beating Jake at his own game. But Mike did want to know who had driven the mules and who had slugged him cold.
"Good jesus, I'm breaking them again, Mike!"
Nita's gasped words jerked Mike back to reality. Mike worked harder. She clawed him again. Again he jerked his ear beyond range of her clicking teeth.
Once again, Mike's thoughts drifted off.
Mike was not a revengeful person. He knew that certain things happened in life and a man had to accept some things regardless of how much he disliked the idea. But Mike Fanning wasn't going to accept being slugged and knocked cold two times in succession.
Vida Magazine would wait a few weeks more for its cover assignment. He knew Vida. Vida's editors wanted a thing right now ... and used it months later. He'd call his New York agent tomorrow. Tell the agent his father was seriously ill.
The agent would clear things with Vida. That's why a man had a ten percenter. He'd best put in a long distance call to Sun Lo, also.
Mike Fanning's fists tightened. He didn't realize he had a big part of Nita's rounded buttocks in each fist until Nita cried in pain, and he grudgingly released her pinched flesh.
"Sorry, baby," he murmured.
"Mike, you're sure slow, honey. How long does it take you to get recharged and stiff again?"
"Around you, baby, I'd own a hard all the time."
"What a lovely compliment," Nita said dreamily, "and also what a beautiful lie."
Mike once remembered reading a hot sex book while in Vietnam. The author of that book had said that prostitutes were definitely of a higher grade of mentality than the ordinary woman.
Mike realized that that author knew nothing about whores. Mike had been in and out of whorehouses all his adult life and he'd never met a whore who had more than an average IQ, if an average.
On the average the whores he'd met and lain with had been egoistic, egotistical, and selfish animals, a degree above a beast. They thought in very narrow channels, and that channel consisted of breasts, cunts and assholes.
Mike had found whores good for only one thing, and then some of them not competent at this. He'd never seen one who'd had a book of any kind in her crib, even a sex novel.
Nita had plainly tied onto him, a trait he'd found whores had toward anybody who treated them anywhere like humans. He wondered how he would use Nita to gain information from the Square Deal House.
Whores heard a lot. They heard other whores gossiping, their drunken customers blabbed to them, and they were gossips by nature themselves. Mike decided he'd keep being friends with Nita, although he now openly admitted he'd had much better pieces of ass in his twenty six years.
"Honey, I'm coming ... again ... You do things to me, darling! God, I'm giving you the works, angel."
Mike again jerked himself upward. He knew he would soon blast off.
His fingers tightened on Nita's buttocks. Nita squealed in new pleasure. Then he blasted. Boy!
"Leave it there a while, Mike. I like it that way.
"I'm not going to pay you," Mike reminded.
"Mike, darling, please ... When a girl likes a man she gives it to him with all her heart and body. I brought you here. I climbed on you, not you on me. Remember?"
Mike remembered. He tried another angle. "But for all you know I might be married and have a houseful of kids?"
"I'll gladly be your other wife, honey."
Mike scowled in the dark. He'd heard of such things happening but to date this was new to him. "I'm not married," he said, "and I think the world of you, Nita, and I like you a hell of a lot, baby!"
Her lips were blowtorch hot. Her soft right hand began playing with his prick. Her breath was blistering on his ear.
"You know what, Mike?"
"What?"
"I could make you want it again in no time, darling."
"How?"
Nita giggled. "I'll show you."
Suddenly, Nita's mouth froze. "What the hell was that?" her muffled voice asked.
"Somebody yelling inside this building," Mike said.
They listened. "Sounds like Angel's voice," Nita said. "And what's that she's hollering, anyway?"
Wild commotion held the hallway. Feet ran, voices were shrill.
"What the hell-?" Mike asked.
Nita said, "Somebody's fallen out the third story window."
"Who?"
They listened again to the babble. "Your father," Nita said. Mike leaped from bed.
CHAPTER SIX
"The damned old drunk," Doc Williams said. "So stewed he probably figured he'd gone to the bathroom to piss but he'd gone to the window instead and falls out!"
"He's still unconscious," Mike said.
"He shouldn't be sleeping alone," the medico said. "He's too goddamned old to take care of himself. Why the hell weren't you sleeping with him, Angel?"
"I had a customer."
"Which is the most important to you? The life of old Jake Fanning here or the twenty bucks or so you'd chisel out of a client?"
"Old Jake, of course.
Angel dried her eyes with a piece of unused kotex she'd grabbed from a box in her room before running to Jake's room. Mike looked at his father sleeping unconscious on the bed. He remembered his father diddling lovely Angel but a few hours before on that same bed.
Jake Fanning didn't have a hard-on now. His left arm was broken just below the elbow and at this moment Doc Williams was going over Jake's bare legs, one by one, feeling for possible other fractures.
Mike looked about. He counted eleven naked lovelies in the room. Some had their customers with them, the customers also nude. Mike liked what he looked at.
Mike leaned over and smelled Jake's breath. Jake's whiskey breath would burn the varnish off a Baby Grand. He walked to the window. The window frame was shut, the glass broken.
Mike Fanning scowled. Sure, old Jake was an alcoholic, saturated with alcohol. But would an alcoholic get so confused he didn't know a window from a bathroom door?
Jake had fallen through the window and torn out the screen. Mike glanced down at the heavy carpet.
Had somebody lifted his drunken father from the bed and bodily heaved him out the window, breaking glass and ripping off the screen?
He saw no footprints on the carpet.
Mike returned to his father's bed. Angel took command. "All girls and men out, and on the double. An accident has happened, nothing more. We can thank God the boss lived through it and isn't hurt worse than he is."
Nita didn't leave. Angel gave the Hayward whore a long, hard glance that plainly held dislike. "You heard me, didn't you?" she asked Nita.
Nita said nothing.
"What the shit you doing here anyway?" Angel demanded. "This is the Fiesta. You're Square Deal."
Mike sensed hostility between the two lovely prostitutes. He remembered talking about Angel while Nita had been screwing him a few minutes ago, and he'd judged Angel and Nita had been sort of half-assed friends.
Now the two whores were at sword points.
Mike corrected that statement. Not sword points, but tit points! The two naked prosties stood nipple to nipple, fingers spread and red long nails ugly in the dim lamplight.
What gave here, anyway?
Mike knew that prostitutes, at heart, hated the other prostitutes, although they played up to each other with smiles and compliments, like members of a woman's club.
Doc Williams said, "Send out for another bottle, Angel."
Angel stuck her head out the door and called to a passing pimp, and Mike admired the whore's good hips and the crack of her rather wide ass.
"You two girls bug me," Mike told the two whores. "Nita told me you knew I was in a room with her, Angel."
"That don't mean I like her," Angel said.
"I don't like you, either," Nita spat.
Angel said, "Fuck you, Square Deal."
"And double fuck you, Fiesta," Nita said.
Mike had had too much. "Knock it off, females, or you're liable to both go out the window my father fell out of!"
"Both at once?" Angel sweetly asked. "Or one at a time, darling?"
"Oh, shit!" Nita said. "Forget the crap, all of you!" She turned soft eyes up at Mike. "I never have had any luck!"
"What'd you mean?" Mike asked. "Hell, we were about to have another party, and then this had to happen-I'll go to our room and wait for you, honey."
"Our room?" Angel echoed. "How'd you ever get a room at Fiesta, woman?"
"Okay," Nita said, "Mike's room, then. That suit you?"
Angel spoke to Mike. "You don't have to go outside of Fiesta for a woman. Nita's not the only female here with an ass. There are plenty of Fiesta girls waiting for you."
"Like who?" Mike asked.
"Me, for one. Your father can't satisfy me. There's plenty of me to go around."
She lifted her big right breast and aimed it significantly at Mike, who wet his mouth without knowing it.
"You're a dirty two timer," Nita told Angel.
Mike had had plenty. "Get out of here, both of you, before I throw you out!"
The two whores left without grumbling. Doc Williams raised his new bottle and drank deeply. He handed the bourbon to Mike, who handed it back un-tasted.
"Not your father's son, eh?" the medico asked. Mike said, "I've been run over by mules and slugged with a pistol and knocked cold and I don't believe my poor aching brain could even stand a tough jolt of bourbon."
Old Jake snored, still out. Mike smelled his father's breath and winced "Is he out from the two story fall or from too much booze?" he asked Doc Williams.
"Undoubtedly a combination of both," the drunken medico said. "I'd best get him to my office and set his arm. Call me a couple bouncers, Mike."
"You'll need a stretcher."
"I got one in my office. One bouncer can go after it."
Mike stuck his head into the hall. He then returned to his unconscious father's beside. "Maybe he's got a head concussion, Doc?"
"Not a bump on his skull."
Mike said, "He must've fell on his left side, huh?"
"I'd judge so, Mike."
"You need me?" Mike asked.
"Hell, no. Go back to your screwing."
Mike grinned. Doc Williams was blunt. "It's a lot more fun than setting broken bones," the doctor said. "I should have been a pimp, not an M.D. I got a few beds back of my office. I'll keep old Jake there all night under observation."
"Post a guard over him, Doc," Mike said.
"Why?"
"I don't think he fell. He was thrown out that window."
A Fiesta bouncer said, "Casey an' me'll sit out the night over your dad, Mike."
"Thanks."
The guards left with the stretcher and old Jake. Doc Williams weaved ahead, drunk and staggering.
Mike returned to Nita who lay naked, legs spread wide and breasts pushing hungrily upward.
"Christ," Mike said, "the old man was thrown quite a ways, huh?"
"Thrown? I thought he'd fell?"
"Don't kid me, baby. Somebody heave the old gent out that window while the old man was passed out."
"Who'd do it?"
"Hayward. Either he sneaked in, did it himself, or had some of his stooges do it, for he's got inside men here at the Fiesta, just like he has in the other old man's saloons."
"You think Hayward himself would do a thing like that?"
"What's so odd about that, baby? Hayward wants my father out of Los Amigos. There's only about twenty million at stake. No mules accidentally ran over me. No gunnie slugged me just to keep in practice. You seem surprised to think I'd suspect the great Ike Hayward of such a bastardly thing."
"I don't think Hayward would do it himself. He has hired thugs, you know, and plenty of them. He does nothing but count his money ... and he makes lots of that."
Mike hid his smile. He trusted this big-breasted female as far as a man could heave an India elephant by his tail. Nita had no authentic reason for suddenly falling in love with him....
Mike figured everything Nita heard or saw at the Fiesta would be reported back to Ike Hayward. He made a promise that Nita would hear and see plenty, and a hell of a lot of it would be as phony as Nita's sudden love for one Mike Fanning.
"I still think the pater was heaved out," Mike said.
He also distrusted Angel. Whores were born suspicious and wary, he knew, and Angel was a whore, and Angel apparently was no damned fool. She knew where her dollars came from.
From all indications it would seem to even a mere passerby that Angel's source of good old American bucks was apt to soon be cut off, for the common sense of an idiot would arrive at the conclusion that Jake Fanning, old, abandoned by friends, drunk continuously, was bound to lose to the young aggressive hard-hitting Ike Hayward who, for all anybody knew, might have the millions of the Mafia behind him in his attempt to put Jake Fanning on the rocks.
Mike realized he'd made a mistake. He should have come into town incognito, sneaked in to see his father on the sly, and then worked from the standpoint of a stranger and not as Mike Fanning, old Jake's only get.
But that wouldn't have worked, either. For he'd have seen right away that his father wasn't going to get out of this the winner, and he'd immediately pulled stakes back to Singapore and the beds of Sun Lo and Nancy Lo.
He'd owed his father nothing when he'd entered this gambling hell here on the Nevada desert. He still owed old Jake nothing. And, by the same token, Jake Fanning owed his son nothing.
"Good Jesus," Nita said, "get your mind back on me."
Mike could dimly make out Nita's naked outline. He saw a rounded butt, feminine and alluring, and full female thighs, just made to encase a man's naked hips.
Her breasts hung, keenly-pointed and full, begging for his lips. He decided to forget his aching head and old Jake momentarily and concentrate on this bit of feminine loveliness that was begging him to screw her.
Nina's actions were fast and trained, her lips educated and clinging. A sudden surge of hot blood brought sweat popping to Mike's hairy chest.
His right hand went between Nita's thighs. Nita closed her thighs on his hand, imprisoning it. Mike realized this was part of the game. He kept shoving, Nita kept closing, but soon Mike's fingers were playing with the downy hair.
"My god, Mike! Your hand, man-it does things to me!"
"Bad things, maybe?" Mike teased.
"Oh, no ... lovely things, darling! Do you...?"
Mike knew what she meant. "I've been known to," he murmured.
Mike closed his eyes, bliss storming his muscles. He forgot his headache. He forgot the dangerous position he'd got into because he was Jake Fanning's son. He forgot where he was and what time it was....
Mike went and went and went, with Nita pulling and begging him for more. Nita then had another orgasm. She screamed with happiness.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Rawboned Ike Hayward sat alone in his ornate office, highly-polished black Florsheims resting on his desk as the owner of Square Deal's square jaw rested on a fifty buck shirt. Ike Hayward snored softly.
He had reason to sleep at two this afternoon. Last night he'd sneaked into the Fanning Fiesta and had visited old Jake Fanning, who's been dead drunk in his bed, alone.
Old Jake must be made of whalebone and rawhide, Ike Hayward had thought that morning at breakfast when his bodyguard, Tank Ottenstraw, had told him the news. Old Jake had got up out of bed drunk and headed for the John. He'd mistaken the window for the door of the can, according to Tank.
"He fell two stories," Tank said, and all he broke is a god-damned left arm, and the sonofabitch is on his feet right now in the Fiesta with his arm in a sling and the other around a floosy."
"You talk to him?"
"Sure, why not. He told me he didn't even know he'd fell, he was that tanked. Blacked out, I guess."
"Too bad," Ike Hayward had said. "You got business out in front, huh? I need to do some bookwork."
"Okay, boss."
Ike idly wondered if anybody had seen him enter the Fiesta by one of the back doors and sneak up to Jake Fanning's room. Fanning was a fool. He slept with his door unlocked.
And he should have had a whore in bed with him. Why the hell would anybody running a whorehouse sleep alone, be the proprietor male or female? Especially this time of the year, for nights got rather chilly now about four a.m.
He'd question Nita when she showed up, for she'd slept in the Fiesta last night.
Ike Hayward had just drifted off to a sound sleep when somebody rapped hard on the office's front door, the one facing the gambling den. The knock also awakened his bodyguard who'd also dozed. The big dumb Swede dropped his hand hurriedly to his hideout gun in his belt.
"Who's there?" Ike Hayward angrily asked, knowing that all future attempts at a siesta would be ruined today. "You sonofabitch, you woke me out of a sound sleep!"
"This is no sonofabitch," Nita's voice said. "This is a daughterofabitch. I just want to report that your trusted lieutenant, one Tank Ottenstraw, is so drunK he's sleeping outside your door in the middle of the alley, and a team might come along and run over him!"
Ike Hayward frowned, wide awake now. Christ, this cunt was crazy! He'd talked to Tank only a few minutes ago and Tank hadn't had a drink all day. Impossible for even a stupe as ignorant as Tank Ottenstraw to get dead drunk in such a short time!
"You're full of shit, Nita," Ike Hayward said.
"Okay, but look out your window, wise guy."
Ike Hayward pushed his swivel chair around, pulled the heavy drapes back slightly, and then stared. Sure as shit, Tank Ottenstraw lay on his belly in the alley dust, right in the hot sun, too.
"Tank," Ike Hayward called.
No answer. Hayward called again. The bodyguard went to the door and let in Nita, who was beating in the door's center panel. The three of them went into the alley.
"Sonofabitch," Ike Hayward said. "I never in my life seen a man get that drunk in such a short time unless he was fed a Mickey Finn."
"He's been fed something else," the bodyguard said. "Look at the blood on his head!"
Hayward started to kneel but caught himself in time. He'd get the knee of his expensive suit dirty.
"Roll him over," Hayward told his bodyguard.
Soon sleeping Tank Ottenstraw lay on his back, eyes closed. "Look at his head," the Square Deal's owner told Nita.
"I'm no doctor," Nita snapped.
Nevertheless, the whore knelt, parted Tank Ottenstraw's thick hair, and reported a cut on the bodyguard's scalp.
Hayward looked about. "Not a rock or anything sharp he could've cut himself on when he fell," he said. "How's his breath?"
"Stinks, but he has bad breath," Nita said, "but there's no booze smell on it."
"Some sonofabitch has slugged him," Ike Hayward said. "Go get Doc Williams, Nita."
"Poor old drunken Doc," Nita said, and left.
"Shall I carry the stiff inside?" the bodyguard asked.
"Doc's got a stretcher. We can load him on that. He might be hurt somewhere inside and we might make it worse if we moved him."
"He's been slugged," Ike Hayward said.
Ike Hayward walked about a little. Directly behind Tank Ottenstraw was the open door of a shed where the people who lived behind the Square Deal stored winter wood. Ike Hayward looked at the ground just inside the door.
He saw no footprints, but it looked as though a shoe had made a swipe across the ground, obliterating all marks and leaving a swept surface in the dust. Ike Hayward rubbed his jaw thoughtfully.
He entered the shed. It smelled of packrats and old wood. He saw some cordwood stacked up against the far wall. A few lengths of cordwood lay around. He picked these up and examined them but found no hair or blood on any.
He came back to the alley. He dusted his well-manicured hands. "God damned sun's sure hot," he said. "You watch things here." He entered his air-conditioned office.
He watched Doc Williams enter the alley, fairly held up by Nita. Doc really had a load on, Ike Hayward thought wryly. Behind Doc came an old swamper who sometimes sided drunken Doc. The old swamper carried a collapsible canvas stretcher, the one used last night for old Jake Fanning.
"Another prone body," Doc said, intending to kneel beside the unconscious Tank Ottenstraw, but falling over the prone bodyguard instead. Quickly, Nita and the swamper and the bodyguard got the doctor to his knees beside unconscious Tank.
"Where the hell's the patient?" Doc Williams asked.
"God damn it," Nita said, "you're on your knees right beside him."
Doc Williams wiped his sweaty brow. "World full of nuts," he said. "Mules run over nuts. Nuts fall out of windows. Nuts lay in alleys." He lurched to his feet, swayed, but managed to stand upright. "I'm hot! Sun's terrible! My throat's a desert. I'm going into the Fanning Fiesta."
He started for the Square Deal's back door. "That ain't the Fiesta," the guard said. "That's the door of Mr. Hayward's private office."
"Ike's my buddy. He'll get me a drink."
Hayward went to the door. "Bring the stiff in on the stretcher," he said, and then, to Doc Williams, "Come in, pal, and I'll have my bartender get you a long cool one. You name it, please."
"Screwdriver. Double shot vodka. More ice than orange juice. My bones are getting stiff. Too god damned much citric acid."
Hayward went to the door and bawled the order out into the saloon. The prone and dusty body of Tank Ottenstraw was laid on the single bed against the far wall, the thought coming to Hayward that Ottenstraw might be dead, for Tank Ottenstraw had not made a single motion since being found.
Nita evidently had the same idea. "He might be a corpse," the whore said.
Ike Hayward nodded. He hooked a chair and put Doc Williams onto it, at the same time taking the cold screwdriver from the bartender and gently wrapping Doc's stubby fingers around the glass.
He then moved the glass up to Doc's lips. Doc drank deep, long, noisely, and when the glass came down, it was empty.
Ike Hayward handed the glass to the bartender. "Another of the same, Mack." The Square Deal owner then gently placed Tank Ottenstraw's limp left wrist in Doc Williams' chubby right hand.
"Human wrist," Doc mumbled. "Pulse, too. About eighty beats a minute, maybe seventy six. Who's the corpse?"
"Listen, you old shit!" Ike Hayward clipped his words. "You're not drunk, savvy? You're stone sober. Who does this corpse look like?"
"I'll be damned, Ike, but it's Tank Ottenstraw, and he's been slugged over the head, huh?"
"That's for you to determine," Hayward said.
Doc Williams was now all business. He took open Ottenstraw's shirt. His stethoscope listened to heart, lungs, other things. "Got a heart like a horse," the medico mumbled. He let his stethoscope drop. He peered at the cut on Tank Ottenstraw's head. "That'll need some stitches."
"Will he live?" Ike Hayward asked.
"Certainly he'll live. He's coming out of it now. I should put him to sleep and sew up his head."
"Let him come to first," Ike Hayward said.
Tank Ottenstraw came out with bleary eyes and his fists working ahead boxer-fashion as he sat up, eyes beginning to clear. Everybody stood clear of the bodyguard's flailing fists.
"He was once a rather good heavyweight," Ike Hayward said. "He's never forgot his days in the ring."
Suddenly, Tank's big fists dropped. "What'd he tag me with? A right or a left?"
Ike Hayward coldly and soundly slapped the big man's jowls. "Wake up, you stupid asshole," the sa-loonman said.
Tank Ottenstraw stared about. "Hell, how'd I get here? I'm in your office, boss, on your bunk. How come?"
"You were found in the alley, knocked cold. What happened?"
Tank Ottenstraw's eyes showed sanity. "Christ, I remember now. I'd been over to the Fanning Fiesta, looking around. Nothing happenin' there so I says to myself, I'll take a short cut and come in the boss' office door,' and when I was just opposite your door, boss, the ceiling caved in."
"What happened?" Ike Hayworth demanded.
Tank Ottenstraw's wide forehead screwed up into deep thought. Nita looked at the bodyguard who was looking down at her breasts. Nita wore shorts that left nothing for imagination and a halter that was very thin and just covered her big nipples, if that.
Nita looked at the beltline of the big bodyguard. He sure had a hard-on, she thought-just look at his pants bulge. To Nita the guard looked as though he had a big one.
Nita wet her lips. She'd have to try this, later. Did she know him? She couldn't remember him. But when a girl screws or has some form of sex with some three dozen men a day-well, no woman alive has a memory that could remember each customer.
She was aware of a man's hand on her ass, creeping up her crack. She looked up at the young bodyguard who smiled and she made her lips say, "Later, buster, later," but no sounds came out. Then, carefully, she removed the big hand from her crack, much as she hated to.
The hand didn't return. Evidently the stupid bodyguard had got the message. Nita looked again at Tank Ottenstraw. Doc Williams pushed a bottle of bourbon under the slugged bodyguard's nose.
"Christ, no," Tank said, pushing the bottle aside.
Doc then drank deeply, recapped the bottle, restored it to his bag. "I ain't got no idea what happened after that," Tank told Ike Hayward.
"I scouted the shed behind you," Ike Hayward said, "but I never found a hunk of cordwood with blood on it, although I do think that's a bit of bark hanging in your hair, Tank. Isn't that right, Doc?"
Doc Williams dug a bit of bark from Tank Ottenstraw's hair. "Yes," the medico said, "it's bark all right."
"You never got a glimpse of who slugged you?" Ike Hayward was persistent.
"I told you once and I won't tell you again," Tank said angrily, "I never saw who laid the wood to me. I never knowed I was knocked out until you told me."
"Who'd you figure did it?" Hayward asked.
"Your guess is as good as mine," Tank said surlily. "I ain't made friends throwing out drunks and rolling a few of them afterwards so it could be one of a few thousand people."
Doc Williams said, "I'd best get some gut in his head before I pass out, 'cause I'm a drunk mother's son, people."
"Start sewing," Ike Hayward said and to Nita, "get out of here and close your big mouth and keep it closed as you rustle some paying customers."
"Fuck you," Nita said.
"That seems to be your favorite saying," Ike Hayward said, and Nita sailed out in a huff, slamming the door hard behind her.
Head high, Nita hustled down Los Amigos' main-stem, moving in and out of whores, pimps, gamblers, customers, and other of those ilks, still smarting and angry at Ike Hayward.
She'd spent most of last night in bed with Mike Fanning. Quite casually, she'd asked Mike if he really knew who had knocked him cold behind the Square Deal, and Mike had said he didn't.
Now, suddenly, Tank Ottenstraw had been knocked unconscious in almost the identical spot. To a practical minded whore like Nita Graham, this didn't make logic.
Who'd cold-cocked Tank?
Had Mike Fanning suspected Tank of buffaloing him? And had Mike come in behind Tank and dropped him cold?
And had Tank knocked Mike unconscious? Nita knew Tank carried a pistol. And a pistol had knocked Mick kicking.
Right before Mike had been knocked out, Tank had had a bed session with her. Tank had been drunk, too. And usually Tank talked too much when stewed. But he'd mentioned nothing to her of getting Mike Fanning.
Still, she felt sure Tank had slugged Mike. Ike Hayward would leave such a job for an assistant, she reckoned.
Dust rose as a loaded stagecoach rocked into town, wheels kicking gravel, another lunging stage with four horses following the first. The stagecoaches had just fought off the Indians who were now in full retreat across the desert, a handful of drunks chasing them on horseback, the drunks dressed like U.S. Cavalry men.
Nita thought about old Jake. Old Jake was finished, done, kapoot. Ike was bound to win. Ike had the Mafia behind him. Ike fronted for the Sicilians. She'd accidentally heard that a few days ago. For once Ike had got drunk and talked a little too much.
Nita Graham swung her neat little butt into the swinging doors of the Fiesta, the sing-song of the faro dealer assailing her ears, her nostrils filled with the stink of bad booze and naked bodies.
Still, the Fiesta had few customers when compared with the Square Deal. Customers still went where their dollars bought the most.
She saw Mike sitting on a stool at the bar's far end, cradling a cold drink, and Mike saw her. She lifted a hand to him, heart beating a little too fast, and once again she realized what a big, handsome man Mike Fanning really was, just her type, too.
The stool this side of Mike was empty. She smiled and slid her sleek behind over the stool.
She squeezed Mike's hand. "I like you," she said, white teeth dazzling. "I like you, too. What'll it be?"
"Just bourbon and water, please." Nita looked about.
"Not the trade the Square Deal has, huh?" Mike asked.
Nita patted her new hair-do. "Not quite. How's your father?"
"The old fool's gone nuts," Mike said. "Right before he fell out of the window last night he had a girl named Mabel in bed. He went to sleep with her in his bunk."
"Yes?"
"Well, Mabel pulled out on him when he slept. Jake claims that if she'd stayed with him all night he'd not fallen out that window."
"What does Mabel say?"
"Mabel's gone. Evidently she got scared and pulled out when she heard about my father's accident."
"One of the Square Deal girls told me Mabel flew out early this morning," Nita informed. "She was afraid Jake would beat the hell out of her."
"Jake finally heard that, too. That made him even madder. He then beat up on four of his women."
"What four?"
"Well, Angel was first. He knocked her down and kicked her in the gut. He didn't hit her in the face because she's a good whore and makes good money ana he didn't want her face bruised up."
"How thoughtful of him. Who was second?"
"A black-haired girl named Margaret."
"I know her."
Jake liked Margaret sitting astraddle him. "He kicked her around and threw her down the stairs," Mike said. "Who was third?"
"A woman named Lucy."
Nita also knew Lucy. Jake liked an occasional blow job and always called on Lucy to give it to him. Jake said Lucy was the best he'd met in his fifty-eight years.
"And the fourth and last?" Nita asked. "A little blonde. Rosalia."
"I know her."
"He blacked Rosalia's left eye, blacked Lucy's right eye, and gave Margaret double measure-two black eyes," Mike said.
Nita glanced at Angel. Angel was coming down the stairs with a spent customer, a middle aged man.
When Nita had entered, Angel and her client had been going upstairs. Angel had had an arm around her customer's waist, kissing him every time he bent his head, but now Angel walked ahead of her man, completely ignoring him.
Angel sure cracked his nuts in a hurry, Nita thought. She didn't have time to go around the world with him. She might have blowed him off, though.
The customer put a hand on Angel's bare shoulder. Angel pushed his hand away, her eyes roaming over the gambling den in search of another sucker.
She got all his dough, Anita thought, or she'd still be buddy-buddy with him.
Angel's eyes met Nita's. Mike didn't see each girl covertly wink at the other. Angel sidled up to a young man alone on a bar stool. Nita decided to tell about finding Tank Ottenstraw behind the Square Deal knocked cold.
"You don't say," Mike said. "Tank see who slugged him?"
"He says not."
"That's odd," Mike said. "And he got slugged in broad daylight, too. Who does he figure laid the cordwood onto his thick skull?"
"He wouldn't say, if he did have a suspicion. Said he was walking along and boom-the sky fell in. He claims he didn't know a thing until he woke up in Ike's office."
"Oh...."
"He came up with his dukes ready, fighting. He thought he was in the ring. He used to fight heavyweight a few years back."
"Seems odd he didn't see who slugged him."
Nita carefully and covertly watched Mike's face, but no emotion showed in the handsome visage of Jake Fanning's son and heir.
"He sure didn't," Nita said.
"I'll be a monkey's uncle," Mike said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jake Fanning was sick. "I'm hungover," he told Mike. "First time I've had a hangover since Christ was a pup!"
"How come?" Mike asked.
"I stopped drinking, you young shit! If I hadn't stopped, I'd still be drunk-and whoever heard of a drunk man having a hangover!"
"Why'd you stop drinking?"
"Doc said my arm would heal faster if I quit the bottle for a while. I'd rather have it heal more slow than to have these pains ripping through my goddamned skull!"
Mike picked up the house phone. He ordered a bottle of bourbon sent up. "Water for chaser."
"For you?" Jake asked.
"For you," Mike said.
Jake said, "Sometimes I consider you a real son, Mike."
Mike was surprised at his father's physical condition. Old Jake could really take it. The whiskey arrived and Jake trembling poured a water glass half full and just as hurriedly tossed it down.
"Nectar of Zeus," he breathed. "Already I can feel those evil fumes leave my skull. In other words, my goddamned headache is leaving." He looked at Mike, eyes narrowed and evil. "I already hurt my bum arm."
"How?"
Jake went into detail. He'd offered Lucy fifty bucks to give him a blow job.
"She must ve known I'd already beat up on Rosalia, Margaret and Angel, and Lucy's got a heap of dough, but you know a whore-she could be sitting on a gold mountain and she'd want more."
He'd got Lucy, a heavy-set young girl, in his room and, in a matter of time, Lucy had been naked, and then he'd hit her flatly in the face.
"She landed on her ass on the floor. I jumps off the bed to give the bitch more."
"Why'd you beat up on her and the others?" Mike asked.
"I just wanted to give vent to my innermost turmoil," Jake said. "And I like to beat up the bitches, anyway. And they like it, too. You know that? Most women really like to get beat up. Makes them feel like the man wants them, one told me."
"Can the whorehouse psychology," Mike said.
Lucy had run terrified through the apartment, Jake in pursuit. "Goddamned bitch must've been on the Olympic track team." Jake finally caught up with her.
"Forgot all about my busted wing. I started beating the bitch with my cast. Doc says I never hurt my bones none, though."
"How about Lucy?"
"I really worked that big titted bitch over. When it was through she crawled to me and bawled with her arms locked around my bare legs and she begged me to screw her. You know, that girl's a pretty good piece of tail."
"She been with you long?"
"About a year, I guess."
"You've screwed her man-woman before, haven't you?"
"Never have. Not the regular way."
Mike had a moment of wry thought. What a titillating conversation between a son and a father who'd not seen the other for six years?
"Who threw you out the window?" Mike suddenly asked.
"Threw me? Did somebody have to throw me out? Couldn't I have headed for the John, blind stupid drunk, like Doc said?"
"Really, Jake, do you know what really happened?"
"I don't, son. Honest injun, I don't. I black out at times. I've been that way the last few years. I blame it on this high altitude. This climate ain't good for me. Doc says so, too. Altitude too high. Air is too dry, doesn't have enough humidity. My goddamn lungs are dry all the time. That's why I always have a humidifier working in this room."
Mike thought of Singapore. Sea level and much rain and humidity. But could he stand this old craphead around all the time? Then he remembered lovely Nancy Lo. She'd love a priest if he had the money Mike figured the old man had.
Mike said, "Those mules didn't run over me by accident. I got slugged and knocked cold. All these things have been warnings. The real thing is ahead ... if I stick around here."
"You mean somebody'll kill you?"
"That's the deal. Unless I knock them off first. You don't figure you can win this, do you? Honest now, no whiskey talk, please."
"I need a woman," old Jake said, reaching for the house phone. "Send up Lucy right now, Joe," he said, and hung up.
"You asked me a question," Jake said, "and I'm not ready to answer it yet, but I'll shoot the same question back at you, Mike."
"You won't win," Mike stated flatly.
"Give me reasons?"
"First, your hired hands have sold you out. I've bummed around your joints some. I'm not a gambler and I don't know all the ways a gambler can steal from his boss, but I have got good eyes and, I hope, a little common sense."
"I know the cocksuckers have sold me down the river," Jake said shortly. "And I babied some of them along since kids when they come to me wet behind the ears and I started them out at small jobs and they worked up to be house managers. Sometimes I think the whole goddamned human race is a bunch of double-crossing skunks!"
"You're not alone in that," Mike said.
"What do you think of Ike Hayward?"
"Hayward is a tough sonofabitch, Jake. He acts smooth as Neatsfoot, but he's all killer underneath. I might be wrong, old man, but I think there's more than Hayward in this."
"Mafia dough?"
"I don't know. Might be some other big syndicate, you know. Mafia doesn't own all of Vegas and Reno, they tell me. The biggest part, but not all. You've made a lot of money here in these eight years, huh?"
"A little...." Evasively.
"Where you got it?"
"Why should I tell you?"
"Okay," Mike said. "You're fifty-eight. Two years, sixty. You drop dead. Too much booze, maybe. Screwing too hard and your ticker kicks out. Or you never live to be sixty, and that seems more logical ... if you keep bucking Hayward and whatever or whoever's behind him."
"Go on."
"All right, you die. I'm your only flesh and blood, much as I dislike using those three stupid words. By rights all you've got would go to me, wouldn't it?"
"I wouldn't leave a whore or a pimp the smell of a fart," old Jake growled. "My will reads you, my boy."
Mike realized that at long last he and his father were having a serious talk. For once he felt strong empathy toward his wayward father. The feeling of closeness surprised him. Was he growing soft in his old age?
"All right," Mike said, "we've got it this far. But lawyers will handle your will. Lawyers are not noted for honesty, you know. And there I'll be, completely at a loss, at the mercy of a man-or men-who could steal a few million from me, and me not even knowing it."
"I see your point of view," Jake said thoughtfully.
Jake had over six million bucks in a numbered Swiss bank account. He gave his son the account's number and said that later on today he'd get his papers from his bank vault and show Mike the whole thing. At that moment, a knock came at the door.
Jake hollered and a naked woman entered. Lucy was a short girl with abundant curves and enormous breasts.
Lucy's shoulders sported black and blue stripes. "Look what you did to me with that god-damned cast," the whore told Jake. "You sure hit me hard. You won't beat me now, will you?"
"You sound hopeful?" Jake said.
"Honey, Jake, darling, Jake, please, sweetheart."
Lucy dropped to her knees beside Jake's bed. She took his hands in hers and kissed each independent finger. Plainly she loved old Jake very much. Mike was perplexed.
What hold did his father have over females? He looked at his father's naked, gaunt, ugly body, the legs bony and hairy, knees completely ugly.
Lucy was a lovely young female. With the proper clothes, she could move into any society she wished, and get practically any man she wanted. But here she was, a whore, naked and kneeling beside an old cocks-man's bed, kissing that old hound's gnarled dirty hands?
And about ready to give Jake a blow job....
Again, Mike thought, the world isn't crazy, it's nuts, and he heard his father say, "Can the preliminaries, darling. Look down there and see what a lovely surprise I have for you."
Lucy glanced significantly at Mike.
Jake said, "My boy's all right. He can watch. I want him to see an expert in action. You've got time, huh, Mike?"
Mike realized he should go, but something made him say, "All the time in the world, pater," and he thought of six million bucks, and he wondered just what he'd do with all that jack.
Sun Lo and Nancy Lo would live the rest of their lives like queens. Why did he think of his two concubines? Mike realized that, for the first time in his life, he had a home, and the two Orientals had made it. He'd been thinking of marrying Sun Lo. Now, half a world away from his slant-eyed, slim-waisted lovely, he realized he was very lonesome for Sun Lo, and also for Nancy Lo, the best piece of tail he'd ever had....
He'd marry Sun Lo when-and if-he ever got back to noisy, stinking, bustling Singapore. By marrying Sun Lo, too, he'd have easy access to her mother all the time, for mother and daughter were very close, and Nancy Lo would live with her daughter and son-in-law after marriage.
But how about Jake hooking up with Nancy Lo?
Nancy Lo would have old Jake toeing the line in a short time and Jake wouldn't even realize what had happened for Nancy Lo was no Occidental woman foolish enough to issue direct orders to a man, orders that raised a man's hackles and turned him angrily against the female issuing them.
Nancy Lo was Oriental. She'd work old Jake around so slowly and carefully that old Jake would be bowing and kowtowing to her before he knew it, and Nancy Lo would be in the saddle ... and old Jake Fanning would like being ridden....
Mike had a disturbing thought. If Jake and Nancy Lo hooked up legally, Nancy Lo might have Jake's six million. With this disturbing thought was a momentary fear, and then Mike realized he was getting the cart ahead of the horse.
And even if Jake and Nancy Lo hooked legally, Jake would see that his son had plenty of money, Mike realized.
Mike had nothing to fear.
Jake's words now cut into Mike's thoughts. "Keep an eye on this girl, son," Jake said. "She's an expert, and how...."
"Okay," Mike said.
This Lucy woman knew her business.
"Do that again, Lucy!" Jake pleaded.
"Darling, you're the world's best round-tripper," Jake said, "but I haven't got time for the full treatment now. Gotta check the books on the joints today, so just a quickie, huh!"
"Okay." But Lucy's voice showed disappointment.
"God," Jake said.
Mike stood up. He'd already quit himself of shoes and socks; now his pants and shorts dropped, followed by his shirt. He stood naked. Now the room held three naked people-two men and one woman.
An idea hit Mike Flanning.
CHAPTER NINE
Lucy was an expert, Mike quickly realized. Her muscles were powerful and trained.
Mike screwed happily, mentally comparing Lucy's ability with that of Sun Lo and Nancy Lo, and he had to admit that, competent though she was, Lucy had to come out third best.
He'd heard men say that whores never came. Those idiots hadn't known whores, Mike realized. A whore was just like any other woman. They wanted to be played with, fucked lovingly, and if this were done they rewarded their partner, stranger though he might be, with a deluge of ovary secretions, just as other women-non-whores-did.
The secret lay in a man's technique. If a man crawled on, bulled his way in, grabbed and pounded, then exploded right away-what woman could have possibly gained sexual satisfaction from such rough, short treatment?
Whores were human, although some of their customers claimed otherwise. They liked to be shown consideration and kindness, just as did ordinary women. Mike was as polite to a whore as to a housewife.
It paid off, too. He'd had whores fuck him for free when he'd been down and out and busted. Now, he played with Lucy's cunt, soft and lovingly, and Lucy rewarded his long forefinger with orgasm after orgasm, each time grunting around Jake's big cock as passion spilled her ovaries.
Mike glanced over Lucy's big ass at his father. Jake lay on his back, eyes closed, nostrils flared, mouth slightly open to show dirty teeth. Occasionally he grunted.
Mike wondered when his father would have an orgasm. Jake had said he'd been hungover. When Mike was hungover he had a hard on continuously. With a hangover he usually spent the day behind or on top of either Sun Lo or Nancy Lo, or had either of the two women over his nude body.
Therefore, if Jake took after his son, Jake should soon shoot.
He'd had the old saying twisted, he realized. But that was nothing new. Ever since stepping out of the stagecoach here in Los Amigos, all things had become twisted and perverted.
Of one thing, he thought, I am sure....
When before in history had a father and son screwed the same woman simultaneously? Of course, it had happened before, he felt sure-history always repeated itself, did it not?
More ironic thoughts hit him. Those that play together stay together? No, that wasn't the stupid slogan, but it was a fair takeoff. Well, here was Jake Fanning, the father, and Mike Fanning, the son, and both were playing together, were they not-and were they not miles apart instead of being close, as the slogan stated?
Suddenly, Lucy's body gave a tough twist. This brought young Mike Fanning back to the present, killing all stupid barroom philosophy surging through his sweating, lust-filled body.
The third twist worked the charm. Mike broke in wild happiness. And, at the same moment, Mike heard a mad grunt of happiness.
Had that sound come from his lips? No, he was sure it hadn't; it had been jerked from Jake Fanning's white lips. And then the reason for the grunt hit Mike.
He and Jake had gone off at the same moment!
Coincidence, Mike thought wryly.
Mike made his dismount, withdrawing slowly.
Mike thought, christ, what a combination that must of been, huh? Jake sat up, holding his head, "My goddamned hangover," he moaned, and took another long drink. "Nothing seems to help it."
"Want me to take you around the world?" Lucy asked.
"No. You leave and send in Margaret."
Lucy shrugged naked shoulders breasts moving. "As you say, boss." She smiled at Mike, made her ass do a double jiggle, and the door closed behind her.
Jake took another big swig. "Might just as well spend the day fucking," he said. "I'd be no good at figures, anyway." He laughed shrilly, and Mike knew his father was getting drunk again. "Not the kind of figures that's on paper, anyway. You've met Margaret?"
"No," Mike said.
"She's good. She'll trot all directions. Anyway you want it, she'll take it. One of my older wives. You sleep alone at home, son?"
"All alone."
Jake raised his bottle again. "I learned to he early in my life, too," he said. "Ring up another bottle for me, huh?"
Mike reached for the phone. At that moment the door opened and a beautiful dark haired young woman entered, stark naked. Her long hair hung almost to her waist.
Mike had seen her around the bar downstairs, but hadn't known she was Margaret. He'd wanted to get into her pants the first time he'd laid eyes on her. Now here she was, naked and big busted, hair hanging down, buttocks rounded and full, and she was his at his beck and call....
Suddenly, Mike envied his father. Old Jake was quite a man, no two ways about it. Here he was at the age when most men play completely out, but not Jake Fanning-for Mike noticed his father was twitching, for Jake had his eyes riveted on Margaret's crotch.
"Oh," Jake said, "forgive me, both of you. You've met my son Mike, Margaret?"
"I've had him pointed out to me," Margaret said, "but I never had the honor of meeting him."
Mike and Margaret shook hands. Margaret's breasts were so protruding Mike wondered if she could lie in bed and read a book without balancing the book on her nipples. Then he realized that maybe Margaret probably didn't even know how to read.
Margaret's dark eyes probed Mike's. Her breasts pitched to deep breathing. She seemed in a trance. Mike watched her, fascinated. He felt something rounded, deliciously hard, touch his chest. Margaret's breasts had made contact.
Her nipples were like steel marbles. Each breath moved them up and down Mike's hairy chest. She came closer, eyes still locked with Mike's. Mike smelled her healthy body.
Mike felt the magnetism of her sex.
"Oh," Margaret said.
Her right hand went down and Mike's willing cock went into its damp circle as her fingers closed around Mike's penis. She began skinning his foreskin back and forth as her left arm encircled his neck.
Mike braced his legs wide, loving what her hand did to his cock. His arms went around her small waist, fingers splayed on the curvature of her lovely buttocks, as her lips, hot and perfumed, turned upward, seeking his lips, which came down to meet hers.
Her hips played against him, driving tingling devils dancing. Although Lucy had, but a few moments before, depleted him of his manhood his strong body, young and resilient, now was ready for another go, his body miraculously became charged again.
Her tongue met his. Their tongues dueled in his hot mouth, then in hers; she had an educated tongue, and Mike hoped the rest of her was just as educated.
"Once again father and son coupled to a hot, full-breasted young woman," old Jake said. "Now don't you think I live a good life, son?"
"A sky pilot would say otherwise."
"Fuck the preachers, all of them. I want your opinion."
"You're living in heaven on earth," Mike said, hands on Margaret's plunging and rising head.
"Thank you, son," Jake said, "I appreciate those kind words," and Jake Fanning, whoremaster, drove deep.
"And some idiots want to get to heaven," Jake Fanning said.
"You usually go so slow a girl'd think you were half dead. Today you're slower'n ever. I've gone off about six times and you haven't gone once."
"I'm thinking, woman."
Nita laughed bitterly. "Thinking! Christ, that is something new ... for you. Tell little mama what her little boy is thinking about, huh?"
"That Mike Fanning was the one who coldcocked me with that hunk of kindlin'!"
"I tried to dig something out of him," Nita said, "and we were in bed at the time, too, so we were closer than ever, but I couldn't get a thing out of him about if he slugged you or not. He just had a straight face that showed nothing, darling."
"I've thought it through from all angles. Who the hell else would it have been?"
"Well, as the boss said-you've made a lot of enemies. Any bouncer does, heaving out drunks and unruly gents, you know."
"Nope, it has to be that young Fanning."
"What'd you intend to do?"
"I believe I'll clean his clock ... with my fists."
"You're not registered as a professional fighter in Nevada, are you?"
"Not in this state. Why'd you ask, honey?"
"Most states say that a fighter's fists are lethal weapons. If a fighter hits a civilian, it's like the fighter has used a gun. And if he kills a civilian with his fists, it's just plain murder."
"You ain't tellin' me nothin'. I'm registered as a pro in California but not in Nevada. But don't say nothin' to nobody, honey."
"I won't, of course."
Nita now had something to hold over Tank. A girl had to use subtle blackmail in this game.
"Yep, I'm goin' beat hell out of Mike Fanning."
"I wish you wouldn't, darling. I don't like to have my lover getting into brawls."
"Jesus christ, woman! I'm in a bad spot. I'm low down on the boss's totem pole. It looked bad me get-tin' knocked out like that, and me not seein' who did it!"
"Will beating up Mike Fanning boost your stock with Ike Hayward?"
"Why shouldn't it? Ike's playing for million buck stakes. He wants all of Los Amigos. I beat up on young Fanning. He leaves the country. That leaves only ol' Jake Fanning left."
"Maybe Ike's got somebody behind him?"
"Like the Mafia, you mean? Or some other big gob of gangster money? I don't know. But I gotta hang close to Ike. Where else could I live like this, baby?"
They went at it for a long time. Tank went not a bit faster. Finally Nita quieted. "I went off, and how," she said.
Tank merely grunted, not missing a stroke, big hands spread under Nita's buttocks. Suddenly, Nita hated the big bodyguard.
Something had come over her since she'd screwed Mike Fanning. She'd had her share of clients since Mike but her heart-and her ass-had not been in her work.
She'd had orgasms with none of the clients, not even an old regular who'd been on her list for years and who had flown in from New York to do her. Her orgasm with Tank had come about because Tank was so slow that a girl just had to do something within that long length of time!
Today Nita had blue hair and green eyelashes and her lipstick was dark black. She'd even died her pubic hair blue for a change. But still, she felt rotten inside, a feeling that she should be working in the Fanning Fiesta and not Ike Hayward's Square Deal.
She had to get her mind off Mike. She had to get Tank's weight off her. Usually she loved the solid weight of a muscular man on her but today Tank's weight threatened to smother her. She dug her heels hard into the bed.
Tank dug in as deep as he could a few times, then lay prone and heavy on her belly and breasts.
"My god," he said, "I sure loaded you down, baby."
Nita almost screamed. She'd expected exactly those eight words and in just that order. Tank said the same thing after each bent. He couldn't vary his line.
Tank was through. He was a one shot man. Nita held her raw nerves and didn't try to push his big bulk off her nipples as her insides screamed she should do. Tank had beat up on one girl one day for pushing him off her. The girl had been anxious to get a new client on her. She'd been a money-mad female, that girl.
"You seem to know quite a bit about this Mike Fanning gink," Tank said.
"Oh, we girls exchange views, you know."
"Fanning working with his old man?"
"He and his father screwed all day yesterday, one of the Fiesta girls told me."
"Who? Each other?"
"I doubt that. Old man Fanning has a string of favorites, you know. Those are the girls he beats up occasionally. He whips them because he loves them, he says."
"That seems funny to me. I'd think he'd hate them if he had to beat them."
"You're awful heavy," Nita said. "You're a real big he man, Tank. You crush me, honey."
"Oh, I'm sorry, darling."
Tank got his weight off her. She never felt his cock leave her. He had such a small thing. Tank began slowly dressing, pulling on his shorts.
"Well, who'd the Fannings screw?" he asked.
"First they got Lucy. While she sucked off the old man Mike cornholed her," Lucy reported. "She reports that Mike has a great big one."
Nita winced inwardly. She disliked such lewd talk but she wanted to get rid of this big blundering ass as soon as possible and if vile conversation would hasten the deed then rough and tough her talk would be.
"Father and son went through the list, the girls reported. Angel is used by the old man for regular work. She got a double dose yesterday. Margaret also got the works, both Farmings working on her at once, and the same happened to Rosalia, they told me."
"Jesus, I'd like to get in on a party like that," Tank said, knotting his tie, squinting into the mirror.
"Why don't you and some pimp rig up such a deal?" Nita asked. "Lots of the girls here would go for it, I feel sure."
Tank straightened, completely dressed. Nita thought, you can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy. No tailor in the world could make Tank Ottenstraw look comfortable in a dress suit.
"Would you go for it?" Tank asked.
Nita had caught herself in her own trap. "Hell, yes," she said, "as long as your pal didn't have a v.d.!"
Tank laughed, bent, kissed her, hugged her right bare tit and stalked out, again a man of the world. Nita lay back, lit a cigarette, blew smoke, considered what Tank had told her, and decided she'd warn Mike Fanning that Tank Ottenstraw intended to "kick the snit' out of him.
Nita Graham reached down and scratched her butt That side had been itchy all day. She'd awakened at noon with it itchy.
She'd gone to the doctor a few days before. Doc had made her completely disrobe. She'd lain on his high bed with her legs in the air. She'd closed her eyes for his hand had felt good, playing around her. Then, she opened her eyes, and stared down at the fat medico in amazement.
For drunken Doc had dropped his trousers. He stood between her spread upright legs.
"What're you doing?" she said.
That sounded crazy. It was a nutty thing to say. Even a dullard like Tank Ottenstraw could see that Doc was putting it to her all the way.
But it had been the only thing she'd been able to think up. To the best of her knowledge Doc had never done any of the other whores. When he examined a girl he examined her in cold professional attitude. And here he was, hands clutching her ass, delivering the meat to her.
"Let us be more refined," he said. "Let us drop from our vocabularies the dirty word fucking and use instead the nice word of intercourse?"
"Use any word you want," Nita had said, "but I'm getting fucked...."
Doc grabbed her buttocks. "What do you mean by that?"
"You've got a big one, Doc, and what is more you know how to use it. My god, there I go ... again!"
"I thank you for the compliments," Doc said, stabbing away, "but I must admit my techniques are rusty. A long time has passed, you know, since my last piece."
Nobody understood Doc. Had he banged one of the other whores the whore would have immediately spread word, Nita knew, for she knew prostitutes always bragged, and getting Doc to fuck you was a rather highly prized thing.
Nita had heard that Doc Williams had come to Los Amigos directly after the first building in town-Fanning Fiesta-had been built. Jake Fanning had got Doc to be the new town's medical advisor for state laws required that each whorehouse section should have a medical doctor in charge.
And Doc had been-and was-a good whorehouse doctor. Girls said he could smell a case of syph or clap before it got undressed in his office. Prior to the last two years Doc had left Los Amigos about every three months and spent a week or so on the outside.
Some said he had a wife and visited her. Some said he just left to get stewed in a different environment. But two years ago he'd quit taking his vacations. He'd been off Los Amigos' limits but once or twice in these two years and these times had been mere excursions for a few hours to Reno or Las Vegas.
"When did you get humped last?" Nita had asked.
"About two years ago, my dear. I do hope I didn't take advantage of you. But of all the hundreds of female boxes I inspect each week I have always admired yours the most."
"I thank you, Doc. Any time you want more, just come to me. Maybe we can spend a night together sometime?"
"At my age, darling, I couldn't last a night, but thanks for the kind offer."
"Oh, quit kidding!"
"Heavy drinking also cuts down on a man's sexual ability, you know."
"I don't know about that. Look at Jake Fanning. He's stiff all the time. And he tries out every new girl that comes to the Fiesta and at least one a day comes in. Besides that, he's got a regular harem, the girls tell me.
Doc sighed, hips working. "Yes, Jake breaks my theory to pieces, does he not? I guess some of us are constructed differently than others. I am about ready to come, darling Nita."
Nita's buttocks became very busy. Doc wasn't going around saying she'd not given him a real good party! Nita thought of Doc Williams suddenly having sex with her, and marveled at the sweetness of Doc when he wanted to be sweet.
She knew why she itched. She needed the big Mike Fanning. She was rather angry with Mike. Here he and his father had screwed all day and hadn't called her in. Nita wondered if she shouldn't change her bed from Square Deal to the Fanning Fiesta.
While bedded at the Fiesta, she could still report back to Ike Hayward. During the dull hours of the day-the mornings-many girls worked in saloons other than where their regular cribs were located. A girl had to hustle to make money in this racket.
Yes, she'd move in on Mike. And she'd also tell Mike about Tank saying he'd clean Mike's clock.
She wouldn't forget that.
She looked at the dresser alarm. Time she got up and went into the bar and began hustling. She bathed, washing good under her breasts, and she bent down, sucked both her nipples, remembering Mike's strong lips loving those same buttons.
She bathed. A girl had to pay special attention to the parts of her body that paid her freight, you know. She toweled and put on a faint perfume, squatting so the atomizer would get right in there.
The perfume felt cold on her buttocks. She didn't put on panties or bra. Her breakaway dress had a built-in brassiere and panties just slowed up a girl. She admired her beauty in the mirror.
She patted her waves of bright blue hair. She checked the adjustment of her long green eyelashes. She prayed for forty clients tonight. A girl had to work fast to take on forty, but she'd done it before and could do it again ... if forty presented themselves.
She made five bucks a man. Forty cocks a night meant two hundred clams. Then a girl always picked up forty to eighty bucks in the day time. But expenses were high. Politicians had to be paid. There was this and that charity to donate to, and these requests came two or three times a day.
Some girls kept pimps. She didn't. She didn't need a pimp. You needed a pimp when you got older and lost it.
She ran her hands over her sleek hips. She turned slowly, admiring the swish of her green dress against her full buttocks. If you looked closely you could see the dress was tailored so tightly you could see the dim outlines of the crack of her lovely ass.
She put her hands under her breasts. Each lay on the built-in bra with only part of each nipple covered. She pushed her breasts up higher, debating about next time getting a higher bra in her new dress.
Fear struck her. Were her breasts beginning to sag? Lately she'd allowed some males to suck them, a thing a whore should never, never do.
For most of the men a whore entertained were drunk or had been drinking, and some couldn't control their passions. Mona had had an entire nipple bit off in a Reno bistro. Ann had had worse luck.
Ann had danced in a Las Vegas bare-breasted line. She'd got drunk and allowed two men to suck her nipple, a nipple in each mouth simultaneously. And each man had at the some moment bit off a nipple.
Ann wasn't dancing, now. What boss wants a girl who has dark scars where she should have full blown nipples?
Yes, too many men had sucked her nipples lately, Nita told herself. From this night on, she'd allow no client to suck her tits.
Pleased with herself and her appearance, she strutted from her room, lovely and fragile and appealing, swearing she'd clear fifty men tonight ... if there were fifty available.
She remembered her pledge that no man would suck one of her nipples. She altered that pledge. She'd let one man suck her nipples whenever he wanted, and she hoped that would be soon. And who would that man be?
Mike Fanning....
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Next afternoon the four of them convened in old Jake Fanning's combined living-quarters and office. Mike had been surprised when a knock had come at Jake's door and he had admitted rawboned well-dressed Ike Hayward and tough Tank Ottenstraw.
Ike Hayward held up a big right hand, palm out, in the Indian sign of peace. "We come in peace," he said, "and don't want to leave in pieces."
His joke fell flat. Ike Hayward's hard face went even harder.
"Sit down, boys," Jake invited. He closed one of his big whipcord bound ledgers. He'd been showing Mike how much proceeds had dropped off since he'd made the mistake of selling a saloon to Blinky Moran. "Drink, boys"
Each named his poison. Mike phoned down below.
Hayward sat with his legs crossed. Ottenstraw sat with big legs wide, staring down at the carpet as though trying to trace its design.
Mike looked at his father. Neither Fanning had been expecting this visit. Jake shrugged.
For once, Jake wasn't very drunk. He'd begin his serious drinking a little later, Mike knew.
The drinks came. A center table was pushed in and the four men grouped around it and Jake said, "Okay, Ike, what's the deal?"
"You ready to get out?" Hayward asked.
"No," Jake said. "I started this burg and I'll go down with it ... if it goes down."
"It won't go down," Hayward said. "It'll go up and up and still up, but it does need new management."
"How'll you get that management?" Jake asked.
"Hell, people sell out, you know," Hayward said. "Where there's money-and enough money-everything's for sale."
"Maybe you ain't got enough dollars," Jake said.
"How much?" Hayward asked. "For the whole town.-all buildings, commercial or dwelling, all land."
"Maybe twenty million, huh?"
Hayward laughed shrilly. "Are you joking, Jake?"
Jake shook his head.
Tank Ottenstraw took his gaze from the carpet but he didn't put it on Jake. Ottenstraw looked flatly at young Mike Fanning, who caught his gaze.
For one long moment Mike's eyes held Ottenstraw's and then the bodyguard looked down at the carpet again, and Mike smiled uneasily and remembered the stitches Doc had put in his scalp.
Unthinkingly, Tank Ottenstraw started to reach up and scratch his head, for his stitches were itchy. He caught his hand in time.
"Let's start at a reasonable figure," Hayward said. "Let's start at twelve million, huh?"
"Cash?"
Hayward bit his bottom lip. "I think so."
Jake Fanning said, "In other words you ain't got twelve million. There's a rumor floating around that somebody big is backing you. That right, Hayward?"
"That's my business, Jake."
"Twenty million," Jake said, "and cash."
Hayward said, "You're a tough man to deal with, Jake," and got to his feet. "I can't say I didn't try. Good day, gentlemen. We might talk this over later, after your father comes to his senses." Ike Hayward spoke the last to Mike, who merely nodded.
Ike Hayward left, blocky Tank Ottenstraw trailing.
Mike poured himself a bourbon. "They never came to buy. If Hayward had been serious he'd had lawyers with him and not a two-bit muscle man."
Jake drank from his bottle. "The visit made it look good for Hayward. He can now say he tried to buy me out and I wouldn't sell."
"He's a hard sonofabitch," Mike said.
"I'm going to get my bank to run a financial statement out on me so I'll know exactly what this town is worth. I've been way behind on things like that. Drinking and screwing too much, I guess."
An hour later Jake was visited by a member of the state legislature. The young, fat man was the son of Jake's only carnee pal who'd helped Jake get hold of this desert land.
Jake's old buddy had died three years ago. The son had won his father's political seat and the son was all politics ... and unhappy about Jake's conduct.
The son went right to the point. The state had received complaints that Jake had goon squads working inside Nevada and outside.
Jake's jaw fell. "That's a god-damned lie!" he said emphatically. "And if I know my right hand from my left, that was started by that damned Ike Hayward!"
"Please explain, Mister Fanning?"
Jake stated that none of his establishments gave a nickel's worth of credit to broke customers. Once a customer went broke in one of Jake Fanning's houses, that customer stopped playing.
Jake didn't accept checks or IOU's. All his business was cash and carry. Goon squads collected from people who owed a gambling den money and then reneged on payment. If a gambling house was owed no money what use, then, would be a goon squad?
The politician opened his portfolio. He had affidavits signed by three persons who owed Jake Fanning money for gambling debts incurred in Los Amigos. They couldn't pay those debts. Fanning goon squad members had beaten each man very severely.
Jake carefully studied the signatures. One affidavit was presumably filed by a man still in the hospital in Salt Lake City, the other from a bed-ridden hospital patient in San Francisco.
The third affidavit had been filed by a Los Angeles man just released from a hospital.
Each person signing affidavits certified he'd been beat up by Fanning goons because he'd either passed a bad check at one of Jake's joints or had run up credit he couldn't pay.
"Lying sonsofbitches," Jake said.
"Here are some more," the legislator said.
The rest of the legal papers were sworn statements by dealers that they had allowed these three men to run up gambling debts.
Jake tossed the papers back. "Those three dealers worked for me over a year ago. I canned all three. They had their arms in my till to the elbows. They want revenge for my canning them. I blackballed them from ever dealing again in Nevada."
"Then you state this is all a frameup?"
"I do. And if your father was alive he could have smelt a rat right away and he'd never had to drive way out here on the desert."
The young man gathered papers. "You say that Mr. Hayward wants to run you out of Los Amigos, Mr. Fanning, and he has taken this means to draw attention of the state gambling board in hopes of having that august body revoke your gambling licenses? Goon squads are against Nevada law, you know."
"They're still in operation," Jake said. "All big Las Vegas and Reno houses have squads in this state and outside. But that's not the point. I'll fight these complaints and get to the truth if it costs me a million."
The fat, well-dressed young man nodded slowly. "My committee shall look further into the matter. You are aware of opposition against Los Amigos, are you not?"
"You mean that rat Ike Hayward?" Jake asked.
"Mr. Hayward has not mentioned a thing against you, Mr. Fanning." Mike noticed the young legislator always referred to old Jake as Mr. Fanning and his voice was always cold.
"Then who has?"
"There have been no formal charges filed against you, Mr. Fanning, unless you want to call these affidavits such."
"They're not charges," Jake said. "They're just nuisances. Every big gambling house has the same trouble sooner or later."
The politician drummed fat fingers on the table, heavily lidded eyes roaming around Jake's ornate apartment. Finally he cleared his throat.
"Let us review your case, Mr. Fanning. You and my late father were very warm friends."
"One of the best I ever had," Jake said.
"I understand. My father apparently owed you some debt incurred in bygone days."
"I saved his life once," Jake said.
The fat man again cleared his throat. He evidently didn't enjoy Jake's interruptions. Mike saw a slight smile cross his father's face. He then realized Jake was deliberately interrupting to break the egoistic front of this pompous young ass.
"So my father, through perfectly legal means, helped you to procure this land, Mr. Fanning."
"He never forgot a friend, God rest his good bones," Jake said.
"This land was state land, tied up by the state, but my father got a special bill passed, giving title to the land to you."
"Oh, oh," Jake said, "I catch the drift. Maybe somebody would like to go to court to try to declare void my deed to this land?"
"Mr. Fanning, you are putting the cart ahead of the horse, please!"
"You mean that the problem hasn't been discussed to this point among you politicians, huh?"
"You are correct, Mr. Fanning. Why don't you have a talk with Mr. Hayward, ask him bluntly if he is double-crossing you through his hiring goon squads outside the state in your name?"
Jake laughed. "You're an optimist," he said. "If your father was alive he'd straighten this Hayward out for me, and do it real sudden like!"
The young man got to his feet. "My father, god rest his thieving soul, is six feet under Nevada sod. It has been a pleasure to have met you, Mr. Fanning." He spoke to Mike. "I have enjoyed a few magazine covers you have painted. In fact, I have an enlargement of your hunting scene of Good Game in my den. I wrote to the editor for he offered enlargements for sale."
"Thanks," Mike said, shaking hands.
The politician left and Jake growled, "Christ, I didn't know you were that famous," and Mike said, "And I didn't know you were so lowdown you hired goon squads to beat up non-paying customers."
"This whole thing is a frameup but I'll be hard pressed to prove it. Only the Mafia and good outfits like that-the Vegas and Reno mobs-can afford to hire goon squads and they got these all over the U. S. and in some foreign countries. A customer signs IOU's-or welchs on a debt-they warn him first and then if he doesn't come across they beat him up and break a leg or two and the stiff then has a hospital bill besides having to mortgage his house or car or kids or go in debt to pay off another debt."
"This is a very honest racket," Mike said.
"So is politics," old Jake snapped back.
"What're you going to do?"
"I don't know. I'll think of something. I got money to hire smart mouthpieces too, you know."
"You think this politician might be working in cahoots with Ike Hayward, or whoever backs Ike, if anybody does?"
Jake shook his head solidly.
"What makes you think so?" Mike asked.
"This deal the kid's old man and I pulled off stunk to high heaven," Jake assured. "The only reason my old carnee buddy got it through was because he had more on the legislature than it had on him. But a few newspapers fought the deal and quite a stink was raised."
Mik nodded, listening carefully.
"A couple of newspapers kept track of the deal even after the wind blew the stink away. Then like a goddamned idiot I got soft in the head and sold a hunk to Blinky Moran. These newspapers hollered again, for my deed said I couldn't resell a grain of sand."
"How come your deed wasn't pulled back at that time?"
"I spread some dough around in the right places. But then came the election last fall. The whole deal changed over night. Most of the old boys got booted out on their asses by the voters. A new young bunch came in. And you can't buy off these young bucks."
"Are you sure-damned sure?"
"I've never tried to bribe the kid that was in here. I've heard others have tried and got it in the bunghole ... and deep. One reason he's hard to touch is because his old man so openly sold himself all over. That kid's got his eye on the governorship and he wants clean skirts."
"I hope he makes it," Mike said. "He sounded like a damned nice guy, something strange for a politician. I know a woman who could fuck your eyeballs out and put them back into place again before you knew what the hell happened to you!"
"Can't remember if I ever put it to Nita," Jake said. "My memory's bad lately and I can't remember 'em the day after I diddle them."
Mike snorted. "Not Nita, Jake."
"Who, then?"
Mike told his father about his fiancee, Sun Lo, and her lovely, high-breasted mother Nancy Lo. He didn't, of course, tell his father that Nancy Lo was a retired madame, that she'd once had the biggest string of whorehouses and joss-houses in Hong Kong, and that he whacked her besides screwing her lovely daughter.
He painted Nancy Lo in glowing colors, using all his skill. He watched his father's watery bloodshot eyes. First they'd held mild interest and then that interest had grown until now old Jake batted his eyes and for once looked as though interested in something besides sex.
"And this lovely ain't never been married, son?"
"Never."
"Then how can she have this pretty daughter you go around with if she weren't ever married?"
"Christ, wake up!" Mike growled.
"Hell, I know many a females has a kid without being helped by a preacher or J.P. but I figured maybe people did things different back there in Tokio."
"Singapore," Mike corrected.
"I'll have to do me some map looking," Jake said. "Newspapers sometimes carry maps of Vietnam but I don't look at them. But these females-that biggest and oldest one-she interests me. Will she put out, do you suppose?"
"Thanks for your bluntness," Mike said, "but she's had a daughter, remember?"
"If they once fuck they'll fuck again," Jake said philosophically. "What chances are there in the gambling and whorehouse game in that country?"
"With the money you've got you'd be king of that game in no time. You can buy politicans there, Jake."
"Yeah...."
"Then there's dope, too, Opium, heroin, all that."
"I read somewhere where the English got a monopoly on dope. That's why the Red Chinks let England hold Hong Kong open. Hong Kong is the big dope center of the world. Red Chinks sell to the English who retail all over. Chinks won't take Hong Kong because then the British would be gone and the Red Chinks don't know where world markets are."
Mike wondered if his father knew the geographical location of Hong Kong, but let that ride and said, "You can make a few more million without peddling dope."
"This Nancy Lo-You think she'd agree to me opening or buying out a string of gambling whorehouses?"
"Oriental wives always help their husbands," Mike said.
Jake's face fell. "Christ sake, man-I don't want to get married!" Mike had said the wrong thing. "You'd marry Nancy Lo to get into her pants," he said, "because she's got about the prettiest ass I've ever seen anywhere, and I mean just that."
"You mean she might not put out until she's got the ring?"
"I don't know," Mike said.
Jake rubbed his jaw. "She sounds like a real interesting piece," he said.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Nita Graham lay naked in Mike's bed, a nude Mike sleeping soundly beside her. Nita saw her nudity in the dresser mirror. She lay high on her pillow, breasts protruding upward, and she admired her yellow hair, pink eyelashes and green lipstick in the glass.
I look like a frizzing witch, she told herself sourly.
She looked down at her large breasts. They were very huge, black nipples jutting upward, wide bases anchored to her small chest.
Nita Graham loved her enormous breasts. They were the only real things she had that the other whores envied.
Her mammary glands were so huge, so big, they didn't have an open valley between them, like the breasts of most women. Nita's bosoms pressed hard against each other, making only a thin line of cleavage.
In fact, it looked as if one breast hated the other, and both breasts struggled for space on her small chest, each trying to shove the other off.
"You two big things get along now," she told her breasts.
She started to shake her head, but instantly stopped. My god, I could shake my brains out, what little I've got! Christ, I'm hungover. Mike and I must have got drunk in every joint in Los Amigos.
She looked at her watch. Four o'clock in the morning. She and Mike had got in about two, dead drunk.
We sure screwed after we hit the bed, she thought.
Old Jake had bedded Mike down in a room used by a whore. Nita saw a jar of cold cream on the dresser, one the prostitute had left behind. Carefully, she climbed out of bed, not awakening Mike.
She swayed, head reeling, caught the bed post, stood until her head cleared, then went to the dresser, her full hips bobbing, each step causing asshole-chafe.
She unscrewed the top of the cold cream jar....
Somebody knocked lightly on the door.
"Who is it?"
"Angel."
"Just a minute." She rubbed in more cold cream and got to her feet, feeling better. She opened the door a crack. Angel was naked. "Mike's sleeping, so don't make no noise!"
Nita slid into the hall. Because it was Sunday every whorehouse and joint in town was jammed with. San Fran and L. A. customers who'd flown over. Naked whores and naked customers filled the hall, going and coming from cribs.
Nita's eyes fell on a big whore named Jennie. Jennie's pubic hair had been recently shaved, making her crotch look blue-black. Nita realized Jennie had had a dose of crabs. She'd shaved to get rid of the graybacks and their eggs.
"What gives with Jennie?" Angel asked.
Nita suppressed a giggle. "Whoever gives it to her will have rough going, with all that stubble rubbing his cock."
"Most of these ginks are so drunk they don't know what's going on or where they are," Angel said. "I just got a minute. A customer passed out on top of me. I'm getting a bouncer to heave him out of my room. I hear you and Mike really threw one earlier tonight."
"We really tied one on," Nita assured.
Angel's voice lowered to a husky whore-whisper. "Mike get so drunk he told you anything I can pass on to Ike?"
Nita almost laughed out loud. Mike had indeed been very drunk, so drunk he'd even told Nita he'd been the one who'd slugged Tank Ottenstraw with the hunk of cordwood.
Tank would give his back teeth to know this, and Ike paid her extra money for stooling on Mike and Jake Fanning. Still, she'd not tell Angel this, and give Angel the credit of passing it on to Ike and Tank.
"I tried my best, darling," Nita said, "but I could pry nothing out of the bastard!"
A fat pimp came out of a crib. Both whores saw him. Their friendly attitude immediately changed.
"Fuck you, you Square Deal bitch!" Angel spat at Nita. "Why the hell do you hang around the Fiesta? You belong with Hayward and his bastardly, backbiting crowd, not over here with white people!"
Nita stormed, "I'll dig your god damned eyes out, whore!"
They stood, two naked young women, breast to breast, fingernails poised, long and red and deadly. Yelping for help, the obese pimp forced his bulk between them. Within a minute, two big bouncers arrived on the scene.
One bouncer took Nita, the other Angel. They pulled the cursing, screaming whores apart. Nita's bouncer threw her in Mike's room and closed the door. Nita leaned against the door. Somehow, Mike had slept through the din.
She began to laugh. She and Angel had really put on a convincing act! Then, suddenly, her laughter died.
She stared ahead, seeing nothing. Mike had confessed to slugging down Tank Ottenstraw. She'd not tell Ike or Tank. But if one of them found out she'd held back on them-
Tank Ottenstraw was a dangerous man. Nita had heard that he'd killed a few men the Syndicate had wanted eliminated. He was really hot against the unknown person who'd slugged him.
Nita looked at Mike, who slept soundly on his back, lips vibrating slightly. You darling man, the yellow-I haired whore thought as she brushed a tear away from beneath her pink right false eyelash.
I always bawl easily when I'm hungover, Nita thought.
Nita knew now she loved Mike Fanning. She'd only been in love once before when she'd been fourteen. And then she'd had the tough luck to fall in love with a procurer, a flesh peddler.
The handsome young flesh peddler had taken her virginity, written up a glowing report of her sexual ability to his superior, then had delivered her to a whorehouse, received his fee and departed, not even kissing the heartbroken Nita goodby.
Since then, Nita had watched her heart. But here she was, in love again, and-
A low knock on the door behind her. The fat pimp stuck in his homely head. "You free, Nita?"
"Yeah, a quickie. Forty bucks." The pimp looked at Mike, sleeping the sleep of the drunken just. "He's out for some time, it looks like."
"I'll take the man on."
Nita and the pimp hurried down hall to a room where the customer was undressing, with Nita wondering why she'd taken this chore directly after swearing eternal love for Mike Fanning.
I must be awful weak, she thought. When a woman's in love she should fuck her lover and no other man....
The pimp opened the door and she entered, the pimp closing the door behind her bare ass.
The man was middle-aged, fat, bald and-she noted quickly-very limp and short of cock.
She went into his arms. "Darling," she said, "I'm Nita, and I'm so happy to see you!"
"I'm Joe.
Joe ... She repeated the name four times to herself. Her memory lately was bad. One gink had hit her in the face the other night. She'd sold him her entire night for two hundred bucks and they'd spent six hours together boozing before they'd hit the sack and she'd helped him put it into her cunt and she'd murmured, "Oh, what a big one you have, Mark."
The client's name had been Hank. Hank had just hit her flat in the mush with a right and then climbed on her and almost broke her ass in two, he'd fucked so hard and angrily.
"You'll remember my name from now on," Hank said savagely.
He'd loosened one of her front top teeth, but those teeth had been loosened before and, in time, had grown back solid again. He'd gone into her from everywhere, and he'd made her give him a 'round the world,' making her spend a great deal of time licking and cleaning what really had needed cleaning.
Joe was drunk and couldn't get an erection. Nita told him he had fifteen minutes. Joe worked hard against the deadline but it would not respond. When the fifteen minutes were up Nita was on her hands and knees and Joe was draped drunkenly over her buttocks, desperately trying to keep awake long enough to get his limp penis in any orifice.
The bouncer led Joe away. Angel came down the hall and gave Nita a slip which she'd cash in next morning after work downstairs with Jake Fanning's bookkeeper. Nita started back for Mike's room.
Hot sex flashes lightninged through Nita's compact, big-breasted young body. Playing with Joe had made her hot. She'd suck a hard onto Mike-if he didn't already have one-and then mount him with her on top, his penis in her cunt while she raised her body up and down on bent knees, the lips of her cunt dragging hard on Mike's big cock.
That was Nita Graham's favorite form of sexual intercourse. Being on top made her feel masterful, as though she ruled the world.
The fat pimp came out of a room. "Got a man in here for you, Nita," he said. "Usual rate. Fifteen minute go, darling."
Nita hesitated, thought, shrugged, said, "Why not?" and entered the room finding a tall, bony, rather elderly man awaiting her, long and rigid cock sticking out of his gray pubic hair.
"I'm Nita."
"I'm Bill."
Bill ... That was an easy one ... Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill....Nita squeezed the client's cock rather roughly. All these whore houses had nurses-registered nurses, too-who gave each male a short-arm inspection before the male was admitted to the cribs, but Nita wanted to be sure.
The customer winced slightly but no bit of liquid gathered at the end of his pee-hole. He hadn't anything but a hard-on and he wouldn't have that long, Nita told herself with pride, for she considered herself a trained and expert whore.
"How do you want it?" she asked.
"All the same price? I've paid forty down at the desk."
"For you, Bill, all at the same price, darling." Nita went into his arms, which enfolded hungrily about her. She went up on tiptoe to reach his descending lips, her breasts dragging against his hairy chest. She felt his rigid cock dig a trench in her belly as she arched upward, kissing Bill as though he were the only man left on the globe.
Nita considered herself a salesgirl. She didn't sell drapes or clothing; she sold her physical favors. If you treated a customer right he came back for more. She prided herself that she had perhaps the biggest return trade of any girl in Los Amigos.
Many of her customers returned time and time again. Now, to an onlooker, had there been one, Nita would have appeared deeply in love with Bill.
"Let's do it man-woman style," Bill said.
"Okay, darling."
Nita led her man to the double bed. She allowed Bill to push her down on her back, for she knew that men liked to pride themselves on being the sexual aggressors.
She looked over her big breasts at Bill's cock. Yes, he'd get quite a ways back but her vagina was a deep one-Bill's cock was not as long as Mike's, nor was it as big around, either.
Now why did she have to think of Mike?
Bill got behind her ass on his knees. He raised her legs high, bent them back so her nipples touched her knees, and then he spread her legs wide. Nita accommodatingly opened and closed her cunt.
Bill's right hand left her leg. He put his fingers around his prick. He looked down at her opening and closing cunt. She opened her cunt to its widest point and then made herself give a synthetic gasp as Bill slid all the way into her.
"Oh, but you have a big one, Bill!"
Christ, how many thousands of times had she repeated that same old moss-draped prostitute lie?
Bill came down on her, hips working his prick in and out. Nita caught the smell of cunt and decided she should douche more often, but some men like that smell-in fact, some loved to get their noses in her box and sniff and sniff, their tongues lapping come from her pubic hair.
Bill's body came down on hers, her nipples feeling his scraggly gray chest hair. Nita bent her knees, dug in her heels, and pretended to fuck as though she enjoyed it, Bill's cock pushing and pulling in her vagina.
Her body fucked but her mind wandered. She thought of having a home with Mike. His studio, of course, would be close and there'd be a bed in it and when they could sidetrack the kids she and Mike would have some ass on that studio bed, for she'd fuck her husband every time she had a chance, whether he wanted to fuck or not.
She'd read that a woman held a man through her fucking ability. When a man roamed from marriage, it was because he wasn't getting enough of the proper stuff at home. Mike would never have to complain of that.
Her cunt closed and opened around Bill's rising or plunging shaft. Bill now fucked faster. She came back to earth. She felt Bill's heart hammer. She hoped he had a stout heart. He wasn't a spring chicken. It always proved embarrassing to a girl when her man's gun and heart went off simultaneously.
A few of the older stiffs had died on her, as they eventually did on any girl if she stayed in whoredom long enough. That was just normal and natural. And each time her man had gasped, stopped poking, and had rolled to the floor clutching his heart, her own heart had turned to molten fear.
It was also bad for a girl's reputation and business if too many clients died on her. Other men stayed clear of her for a while, believing she was bad luck.
Bill jabbed short and hard, now. She felt him smashing against her. She'd felt better since she'd cold-creamed it. He tickled her. Then, Bill had an orgasm.
His muscles stiffened, his cock exploded. Nita staged an orgasm, pretending she too had come. She grabbed Bill around the buttocks and rammed a thumb into him, Bill not noticing her amused smile.
Finally Bill's cock lay still. "Sister," he panted, "that was a fuck-and how! How many times did you come?"
"Three times, I think. I couldn't keep track. I just can't think when-well, something nice like this happens to me."
"I counted five times, anyway," Bill complimented himself.
Nita hadn't come once. She seldom if ever came with a client. If she felt close to one, she might have an orgasm occasionally.
Bill climbed out of bed, completely depleted. Nita kissed him, licked him quickly, then kissed him again and slipped out into the hall, where Angel gave her another slip and the pimp told her Room 12 had a fat man who wanted something special.
Occasionally she glanced in on Mike, who slept peacefully. Before eight in the morning-the end of the night shift-she'd gone round the world four times, not to mention the regular man-woman tricks with the female, of course, on the bottom.
She never had a single orgasm. She'd save that for Mike, when she got off shift. She made over two hundred dollars that night. At eight five she slipped into Mike's bedroom, stretched in weariness, and locked the door behind her.
She found a douche and douched carefully. Then she showered and perfumed and powdered. On tiptoes, she approached Mike's bed, peeled back the single cover, praying that Mike would have an erection.
Her prayers were answered. Mike slept nude. His cock stood on end, jabbing upward.
Without thinking, Nita bent to kiss it but caught herself in time and jerked her head back-for her lips might awaken him, and she had other plans for Mike Fanning!
Carefully, she mounted the bed, putting a leg over Mike's cock, her knee becoming anchored on Mike's other side as she straddled his hips, his prick finally becoming centered just below her cunt.
Mike slept on, totally oblivious of her position. Nita debated: should I take him here or there? She decided on the latter. She was sexually hot.
Carefully, her lovely hips descended, her hand holding Mike's rigid shaft. She fitted his knob carefully between the open lips of her cunt. Mike stirred, mumbled something, opened his eyes-and saw her sitting over his prick.
She smiled. Mike, half-awake, also smiled. Then, like lightning, her hips shot down, her cunt encasing his prick. And, within a second she had an orgasm, for Mike's prick, long and hard, hit the right spot immediately.
She threw back her head. Sexual desires sounded in her throat, gurgling and mad. Her femaleness spoke and spoke, coating Mike's prodding prick, for Mike had both of his hands on her hips, and she was going up and down, skinning and reskinning him.
She smiled, her orgasm finished. Mike felt her come drip down on his pubic hair as her educated cunt pulled and tugged at his cock.
"What a lovely way to wake up," Mike murmured.
"It can be yours, Mike honey. Every morning of the year. And in between times."
Mike realized he'd made a boner. He imagined this painted, garish bitch around him twenty-four hours a day. He'd be so bored and sick of her he'd kill her the second day. Early in the day, too....
Nita was only a third-class fuck to Mike Fanning. A second-class was a screw like Sun Lo put out. A first-class was a fuck like Sun Lo's lovely mother, Nancy Lo, had given.
"I woke up about five," Mike said, "and you were gone."
"I was in the John, lovey. I heard you move."
God damn liar, Mike thought. I went to the John and you weren't there. Out turning tricks, no doubt.
That Nita had been with other men made no difference to Mike. Nita was a whore. Fucking naturally, sucking off, all these were part of her profession.
Mike bent his knees and dug in his heels to raise his hips higher. Nita did all the work, rising and falling on her rounded knees, her cunt pulling up and sliding down. ;
Mike's pubic hair became whiter and damper. Evidently this whore had had another orgasm. Mike didn't like her having orgasms with him. She'd had two in quick succession. That could mean that she loved him? And had saved all her come for him?
The thought made him sick. Still, waking up with a full-busted, small-hipped, big-assed young woman astraddle his cock was far better than Waking up alone, and he fucked with closed eyes, loving the drag of Nita's cunt's strong lips on his cock, thinking that when he went off in her cunt he'd next have an orgasm deep somewhere else.
He was very hungover. His belly roiled from too much booze. He tried to remember what he'd said and done while drunk with Nita. He dimly remembered doing it to her and how she'd sucked him off and they'd fucked man-woman, too. And hadn't he told this bitch he'd slugged down Tank Ottenstraw?
My god, he'd better stay away from whiskey. No, he hadn't told her. He'd just dreamed he had. Or had he, really?
"Darling, I've come four times, honey. And you-"
"You want it, Nita?"
"Way up in my cunt, darling. I want a baby put there. A baby of yours, Mike sweetheart. Am I a good fuck?"
"The best I've ever had," Mike said.
"Mike you say the sweetest things?"
Mike knew he'd soon launch his gizzum into her dampness. He had the come feeling in his stormy belly and now it was creeping into his balls. He rammed up, doing a little fucking now as passion's heat grabbed him.
"I'm coming-soon," he gasped.
Nita redoubled her efforts. Her cunt became a small vise, opening and closing as her beautiful hips slid up and down, massaging his rigid penis. Then, with a burst, Mike flung his seed upward, going off into her damp and hot female receptacle.
The world blurred, his headache was forgotten. He reached down and found Nita's crack. He lifted her a little and she laid on him, her hips twisting to pull every bit of white from him.
Mike felt the last of himself rise. He exerted every effort he could, muscles of his thighs bunched. And then a voice called, "Mike Fanning. Oh, Mike Fanning," from the hall.
A man's voice....
Who the hell? Mike thought angrily. A sonofabitch" wanting me just as I'm kicking out my last....
It wasn't Jake Fanning's voice. Mike coudn't place the deep voice, which again repeated his name.
Anger grooved Nita's lips. "Answer him!" she said.
Suddenly, the whore quit Mike's cock, which fell limp and damp on Mike's heaving belly.
"Who's there?" Mike called.
"You alone?"
"No, I've got a cunt here with me!"
"Cunt!" squealed Nita. "So I'm no more than a cunt to you, huh!"
"Throw her out. I have to talk to you alone. I'll come back in five minutes."
Mike scowled, sitting in bed. Nita looked at Mike's white-coated cock. "And I wanted to clean you up, too," she said. "Okay, I'll leave, darling! Sorry I blew my top!"
Nita left, buttocks lifting and falling. Mike looked into the hall. It was vacant.
He .eft his door open. He sat naked on the bed, toweling himself dry. He threw the towel aside. He heard somebody coming. The man entered his door. He was shaggy and dirty and smelled of manure.
"I'm Poop Henders," the man said, shutting the door.
Mike nodded. "You run the town livery. I met you the day I looked over your register for the gink who ran his mules and wagon over me."
"I asked some questions," Henders said. "I know who that guy was, now."
Mike's blood leaped. "What's his name?"
"Joe Thistle."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Joe Thistle squinted into the mirror as he adjusted his tie, one eye on the image of the naked young woman lying on the bed behind him. The blood quickened in Joe Thistle's young, heavy-set body.
This girl had all the requirements: beautiful and stupid. For once hanging around the bus depot had paid off. Besides being beautiful and stupid, she was broke. Otherwise she wouldn't have been gracing his bed at this moment, for only a girl who counts pennies will consent to shack up with a lowly bodyguard and bouncer.
The alarm pointed ten to twelve, and Joe Thistle went on shift in the Slot Machine at twelve sharp. His toilet finished, he looked at himself in the full-length mirror-and found his image, pleasing.
New two hundred buck blue suit, blue shirt, black shining shoes. How he wished the help could enter the Slot Machine through the front door and not the back, for there was a hell of a lot of Nevada dust in that alley, and a man had to always clean his shoes and polish them again before going out on the floor.
He stood there, big and clean-shaven, whisker stubble blue against his jowls as usual, and he looked at the girl, who'd rolled in her sleep on her belly. Joe Thistle felt the stirrings of an erection.
He was a man ... all man. He'd met her at four, dined her, got her half-tanked, and had climbed her soft, curvaceous frame six times since then, each time depositing the Thistle load in her inexperienced cunt, for the girl didn't know the least thing about fucking.
Well, I'll sure be glad to teach her, Joe Thistle told Joe Thistle.
The girl had admitted being fucked twice previously, both times by the same high school senior and both times hurriedly in the seat of his old jalopy. "You can sure do it," she'd complimented Joe.
"Thank you, sweetheart," Joe had demurely said.
The girl's crack was open. Joe stared at it. He'd not entered anything tonight but her cunt. He'd break her in gradually. She needed lesson after lesson.
When he got done with her she'd be a trained whore. She'd suck and give a man 'round the world' and love to be cornholed and would be expert in dealing with a man in her saddle.
Then she'd go out on the line for him. Maybe she'd make him enough money to allow him to buy a small joint in some little Nevada burg with a bunch of slots.
She could take on customers and he could tend bar and milk the slot machines.
But what he hadn't had intrigued the big Joe Thistle. He moved over silently and stood looking down at it. He had lighted a big cigar and he flicked the half-inch of gray ash the cigar sported and then he looked down at it again.
He started to dump hot ashes into it, using it for an ashtray, but he caught himself in time, for she'd be mad and she'd sail out and where would Joe Thistle's little saloon in some little town be?
He didn't know what bugged him. He always wanted to dump cigar ashes in a female whenever he saw one open. He'd succumbed to the avid desire the last time he'd been in Los Amigos, the time he'd been sent there by the Syndicate to hire those mules and wagon and run down the son of the old guy who owned Los Amigos.
He had dumped hot ashes into a whore in Ike Hay-ward's Square Deal. He'd told the naked prossie he'd wanted a back gate entrance and she'd obligingly rolled on her back preparatory to getting on all fours. And, for one second, it had been directly below him....
And his cigar had been nearby on the ashtray....
The big whore had gone hog-wild. She'd leaped cursing from the bed, clutching her buttocks. She'd jumped and howled like a turpentine bitch as she ran screamingly into the bathroom to stick herself under the shower.
Her screams and antics had surprised Joe Thistle. Cigar ashes were cold ashes, and nothing more. Then he noticed he'd flicked all the hot coal off his cigar. No wonder the whore had leaped and screamed.
Then, the nude woman came from the bathroom. She'd had a knife hidden there. She had the long blade raised, her face twisted with rage-and wisely, Joe Thistle had taken it on the lam.
Ike Hayward had eaten Joe's big ass out over the affair. The whore went to the hospital and spent the night there and would be out of work for at least three weeks, Doc Williams had reported.
"You crazy sonofabitch," Ike Hayward had raged. "You never came here to blowtorch a whore, Joe. You came here to run a team of mules and wagon over that young Fanning. Old Jake Fanning don't need no help. Either kill young Fanning or scare him outa town, remember!"
Later, Joe had seen Mike Fanning on the Los Amigos short main street. He'd heard Mike had served a hitch with the Marines in South Vietnam. He got the impression Mike Fanning wasn't the type who ran away.
How he'd bunged that job, for good. ... Young Fanning hadn't been killed and he hadn't run and word had come down from Los Amigos that somebody had colcocked his old buddy, Tank Ottenstraw, with a length of stove wood, and it had to be Fanning-young Fanning-who had cold-decked tough old Tank....
Joe Thistle stepped out of his apartment, thinking he'd shown brains to sign that barn register by the name of Joe Tumbleweed. He hadn't been back in Los Amigos since the mule episode.
Not that he was afraid of Mike Fanning. Joe Thistle was afraid of no man alive. But the Syndicate had thought it best he stay away from Los Amigos, and who else but the Syndicate would pay an eighth-grade graduate two hundred clams a five-day week for throwing out belligerent drunks?
Overhead the Nevada sky was clear. Las Vegas neon lights threw a blanket of color upward. The Strip was jammed with suckers drifting from one skinjoint to the other, currency burning holes in wallets. Street slot machines made a merry click heard occasionally above the honk of cars.
Carbon monoxide hung over the desert gambling town. Joe Thistle left the Strip and went into the alley that led to the Slot Machine's back door and the time clock there, the vision of the girl's bare butt strong in his memory, complete to all details-the small waist the strong wide hips, the crack spread open....
Joe Thistle wet his lips. He'd be off-shift at eight. The girl would be asleep, hot and hungry, and he'd get her on her knees and make his entry. His blood jumped in anticipation. Did he have any vaseline at home? He'd used a hell of a lot the other night when he'd gone in that strip dancer.
He remembered the stripper. She had been older, wider, more experienced, had had many pricks introduced into her. He compared the experienced with the inexperienced. For one moment, both were clearly limned in memory.
"Hello, Mule Skinner Tumbleweed!"
The words came from the dark shadow of a doorway across the dusty alley. Joe Thistle came to a hurried stop, the vision of two lovely females hurriedly leaving to be replaced by the vision of mules running over a defenseless man with him, Joe Thistle, dressed in old farming clothes in the wagon, trying desperately to get a wagon wheel to run over the fallen Mike Fanning's head.
Mike Fanning, sure as shootin'! How had Mike discovered Joe Tumbleweed was Joe Thistle?
The answer roared in immediately. Maybe somebody in Los Amigos had recognized him despite his farmer makeup?
Joe Thistle had a brass knuckle in each pocket of his swank suit. His hands were in his coat pockets when he turned and faced Mike Fanning as Mike moved out of the shadows and into the open alley light.
"Who the hell are you?" stalled Joe Thistle, covertly slipping fingers into the knucks, "and what'd you mean by calling me a tumbleweed?"
Mike stopped a few feet away, wariness settling him on the balls of his feet, his eyes never leaving Joe Thistle's.
"Jesus christ," Mike said, 'look at the boy-and that suit! All dolled up! What'd you do with the farmer getup, Tumbleweed...?"
"My name's Thistle." Joe Thistle had his fingers in the knucks, now, and the knucks felt very comforting. "Who the hell are you?"
"You mean you don't recognize a man you tried to kill, Tumbleweed? Surely you remember Los Amigos ... and a team of mules ... and a lumber wagon?"
"Get out of my way," Joe Thistle said, "or I'll beat the living daylights out of you!"
But Mike Fanning didn't move. His physical appearance disturbed Joe Thistle. Mike wore no shirt. His trousers were skin tight. He wore baseball shoes with cleats. He looked fast, lithe, dangerous and deadly ... and Joe Thistle had a moment of strong doubt.
Joe knew he was not in good physical shape. You don't need anything but bulk to push a small civilian drunk around or throw him into an alley or car. And Mike looked in top physical shape.
The cold feel of the brass knuckles encircling his fingers brought assurance to Joe Thistle. One pop with either fist-just one good swipe!-and he'd lay Mike Fanning's handsome face wide open, scarring Mike for life, the good-looking sonofabitch!
He'd get Mike this time. Mike had walked into his trap. Mike's goose was cooked!
Joe became aware of two women who'd come in behind him and now stood against a building, watching and listening. He was not the only Slot Machine help that was late, evidently.
"Start something," Joe growled.
Mike made a pass at Joe's head.
Joe instinctively ducked, hands flying from pockets, alley light reflecting on the polished knuckles.
The girls screamed.
But Mike Fanning had not been caught asleep. You don't slip through a wet jungle on a stormy night and sneak in behind a Viet Cong and cut his throat without first having some intensive training.
Joe Thistle led with his left, which was what Mike wanted. So far, Joe had acted according to the book, the formula.
Then, something happened to Joe Thistle. Joe felt hard fingers grab his left wrist. He felt himself jerked forward, for he'd been off blanace, following his left hook through.
Joe Thistle felt his big feet-polished shoes and all-suddenly leave the alley dust. He flew through the air like a bird. And then something round and bone hard whammed up.
This something hit him exactly in the crotch. Excruciating pain tore through him. He'd never be able to come again!
He was as flat as silver dollars!
Through red, searing pain Joe Thistle realized that Mike Fanning had grabbed his left wrist with both hands, flung him through the air, then whipped him down on Fanning's braced knee, flattening him.
Then, Joe Thistle slammed, head first, into the brick wall ahead. He hung suspended for a moment and then collapsed to land sitting down, back to the wall, hands clutching himself as he screamed in pain, all his bluster and fight gone.
"You denutted me, you sonofabitch!" the big bouncer screamed. "You castrated me, you god damned painter!"
He saw Mike Farming's face. Mike stood on braced legs, grinning widely.
"You've still got your rocks, Thistle," Mike said. "Ii you're lucky, you'll fuck again, and be able to come ... but you'll be damned lucky, friend."
Joe Thistle rolled in pain, hands holding himself. Everything was gone, lost-the new stupid piece of ass, the little corner saloon and slots and the new girl peddling cunt, maybe even his soft bouncer job at the Slot Machine....
For what boss would want a bouncer who couldn't even touch a man, while that man maimed the bouncer for life?
He heard a woman giggle. Damned stupid bitches they always felt happy when they saw a man seriously hurt or very sick or even dying! He recognized the giggle as that of a Slot Machine waitress. She'd tell everybody about this embarrassing incident!
"I leave you now," Mike Fanning told Joe. "Just stay out of Los Amigos, huh? And forget you can skin mules?"
Joe spoke to the waitress. "Get a doc, please."
"Why?"
"For me, of course!"
"Screw you," the waitress said. "You got what was coming to you. Come along, Mamie."
The two women went into the Slot Machine. Joe hollered to retreating Mike Fanning. "Fanning, for the love of god-help me, man!"
"Help yourself," Mike Fanning said, and went out of sight around the corner.
Mike returned to his motel. He bathed, shaved, changed to a brown suit, white shirt, brown tie and brown shoes. He had his shoes polished while he waited at the bus terminal for the bus to Los Amigos.
He slept on the bus. He dreamed he was in his home in Singapore, in bed with both Sun Lo and her mother. He jazzed Sun Lo first, then climbed onto Nancy Lo's lovely body-and again found the mother better than the daughter.
He realized his work here in Nevada was done.
Somebody had knocked him cold behind the Square Deal. He'd figured Tank Ottenstraw had belted him unconscious, therefore he'd knocked out Tank in repayment.
Mules had been driven over him. He'd found out who had driven those mules. That man now nursed a swollen part.
Of course, somebody had hired Joe Thistle to try to kill him. Joe Thistle had acted under somebody's orders ... with somebody's pay in his pocket. All signs pointed to one person: Ike Hayward.
Dawn lighted the east when the slow bus pulled into the depot on the edge of Los Amigos. Stagecoaches stood waiting to take the suckers inside the fence where they'd run into the synthetic Indians and the real chiselers.
Clients crowded out of the bus, some drunk, some near-drunk, some going to get drunk. With the exception of two whores coming to look for work the bus held only men-young, middle-aged, old-all coming to give the girls and the games a whirl.
They crowded into the mule-pulled stagecoaches, jostling and grumbling, and finally the stage moved through the gates, the guards giving it the go-ahead, and wheels ground madly toward Los Amigos, whose dim early-morning shadow lay to the west.
A blinding sandstorm had roared up out of nowhere, slinging sand and small rocks against the coach, whipping the manes of the mules.
"A Santa Ana," a man said, and Mike asked what a Santa Ana was, and the man said it was a strong, tornado wind that occasionally swept the desert at a high rate of speed.
"Why are they called Santa Anas?" Mike asked.
"Named after that phony Mex dictator," the man explained. "Sam Houston whipped him with a couple hundred men while Santa Ana had thousands. Santa Ana blew better than he fought."
Sand filled Mike's ears, lay in all his orifices, coated his pubic hair. Gradually, Los Amigos hove closer, man's scar on nature.
One of the males was a rabble-rouser, and he discoursed loudly about how sinful Los Amigos was, and how he'd come to wipe it-and its sin-from the map. Two young men, both drunk, discussed in loud voices what they intended to do to a certain Los Amigos whore.
Seemingly, the whore had sucked one of them off three months ago and had bit him, just because the youth being sucked had, in a moment of mad passion, jammed a thumb into a sensitive spot on the whore's anatomy.
"This town," said the preacher, "is the abode of the devil incarnate, the house of sin. What it needs is a good fire and a strong wind."
Mike agreed with the preacher. Los Amigos was built of frame houses and the desert sun and wind had dried the wood to tinder.
They fought off the synthetic Indians, and rolled on into Los Amigos, the cavalry hightailing after the redskins, now on the lam. Dogs barked and a mule kicked one cur, sending him rolling.
Mike listened to the rabble-rouser drone on. Jake had told him about thirty a year came to reform Los Amigos. Jake had even built them a pavilion to rave from. Jake thought them interesting. He had mentioned that listening to them broke the monotony of listening to silver dollars click.
According to Jake, the preachers hadn't reformed a single Los Amigos sinner. Three months ago two women evangelists had come to reform the town. They were in whoring in the Fiesta.
Mike decided to pack his things and get the next stage back to the outside. Old Jake had taken care of himself alone for fifty-eight years. He could continue to look out for Jake Fanning the rest of his days.
He'd leave the old man a note. That was enough. He and the old man had never been close, anyway. And the old bastard had deliberately tricked him to come halfway around the globe to this god-forsaken wind-hammered Jackrabbit Kingdom, one of the dirtiest-if not the filthiest-tricks Mike had had pulled on him in his life, and he'd had some looloos pulled....
Mike opened the door to his room.
The bed lamp was on. To his surprise a woman slept in his bed. He thought, That goddamned Nita, and if it were Nita he decided he'd throw her out, for she was becoming a nuisance.
He silently approached the bed. The girl was half-uncovered. He saw huge nude breasts with rose-tipped nipples. He breathed easier. No Indian painted face with green, blue or yellow hair met his gaze. This girl was not Nita.
Had he ever seen her before? Mike stood there and felt his erection grow, for this girl was young and soft and warm. His mind went back over the saloons he'd visited in Los Amigos. He couldn't remember seeing this young one before.
Slowly, carefully, he peeled the covers down, leaving the naked girl exposed. She slept soundly, legs spread slightly, dimpled knees bent, soft thighs alluring and smooth.
Mike stooped slightly so he could clearly see her. She looked small and efficient. His eyes roamed lower. He could just make out that her heavy pubic hair was red.
Mike's cock was now rock hard, fighting to escape from his trousers. His heart hammered like a distant drum.
He forgot his plan to pack and leave.
Mike undressed quietly and soon stood naked, penis standing up stiffly as he looked at the girl's sweet cunt. Who had sent this lovely to his bed?
Had his father deposited this beauty here to welcome his son on returning home?
Mike had told his father he had gone to Las Vegas to see about some painting supplies. He might also call Singapore from Las Vegas. Jake demanded that Mike mention Jake's name to Nancy Lo.
Mike promised to do this. He hadn't told his father that Poop Henders had told him that Joe Tumbleweed could be found in Las Vegas.
Carefully, dong ready, Mike got on his knees behind the beauty's bare ass. Slowly, he raised the lovely legs high, parting them as he lifted them, and the girl's eyes fluttered open. Strangely, she showed no surprise.
She had a deep, whorehouse voice. "Are you Mike Farming?"
Mike wet his lips. "I am Mike Fanning."
Red lips smiled. "I'm Jackie, Mike. I came to work for your father. One of his regulars is going to another house. But the girl isn't moving until morning. There was no other empty bed but yours."
"My gain and my pleasure," Mike said.
She looked at Mike's prick. "You know what?"
"What?"
"You're hung like a studhorse."
"Thank you, Jackie."
"And you know something else?"
"I'll bite. What?"
"I'm going to give you a hell of a good fuck, Mike. I haven't been with a man for six days. I tried to sell some as I drove out from New York. No house would take me. All houses are Syndicate. Your father's got about the only non-Syndicate house of any size left. I tried Hollywood but who wants to sleep with another woman? I'm a hot little mama, Mike sweetheart!"
Jackie suddenly trembled with happiness, her breast, hard and strong, nipples pointing upward. Mike bent over. His mouth caught the left nipple, his tongue massaged.
Jackie squirmed, eyes closed. Her hips moved this way, then that, dragging her pubic hair against Mike's lustful knob. A thousand thrills shot through Mike making his breath quicken, bringing hot sweat to his warm back.
Jackie gulped in air, nostrils flared, long synthetic lashes trembling on her full cheeks, red lips opened to show white, even teeth. Her nipple rose and fell in Mike's damp mouth. Her hands tripped down his heavy flanks, found his pubic hair, and both hands gripped his prick.
"Oh, it takes both my hands," she cooed, eyes still closed.
Mike said, around her breast, "But you've got very tiny hands, Jackie," and he imprisoned both her full breasts, pushing them together until both nipples were as one-and his mouth then encased both glorious hot bulbs.
His tongue loved, sucked, tantalized. Jackie had both legs very wide now, spread out and drawn back. She gasped in supreme pleasure. She pulled Mike's cock forward, burying Mike's bulb in her deep pubic hair as she moved his prick up and down, seeking to open her little cunt and let his cock enter.
Mike felt her dampness wet the end of his cock. She did indeed have a small opening, and he imagined her cunt lips pulling on his prick, grasping and loving. Now, she had his bulb centered over the middle of her cunt.
Holding his emotions in savage check, Mike sent his hips moving carefully ahead, for he was afraid that if he made the savage, lusting entry his body demanded, he might seriously hurt the girl. He felt her cunt move ahead and his knob became submerged in hot, pulsating flesh.
Her cunt's lips opened, closed. Mike pushed a little harder, lips still loving the full two nipples blessing his mouth. Jackie's hips moved down, then up; Mike's knob slid in. The biggest part was in her. Jackie sent her hips up flat and hard against him, and she took his prick to his testicles.
Jackie immediately went berserk. Her hips rose, pitched, fell; she sucked him with her cunt's lips, the lips hard and pulling. She immediately creamed him, her ass bobbing and pitching. Then, she settled down into a good steady rhythm of fucking.
"Did I holler, Mike?"
Mike had released her nipples. Her breasts had sprung apart as though pushed by springs. His head now lay beside hers and he breathed deeply the glorious perfume of her hair.
"A little, darling," he said.
"Is that why you kissed me? To keep me quiet?"
"One reason...."
Jackie's hips lifted, loved his prick to his balls, then fell and skinned his cock as his prick moved up. Now at the bottom stroke, Jackie hesitated, ass rotating this way, then that, avid as Mike's hips came down her buttocks rose and once again she felt his testicles brush her most sensitive spot.
"Another reason?" she gasped.
"I just wanted to kiss you," Mike said.
"I sure went off. I told you I was a hot one, didn't I?" Jackie didn't await an answer. "Am I good whore, Mike? Will I get a lot of trade here in Los Amigos?"
"You're wonderful." And Mike meant it. Nita could fuck but this girl made Nita look like a rank beginner. Jackie was better than Angel. Or Margaret. Or Lucy or even blonde Rosalia, who could really fuck.
"I need money bad, too," Jackie said.
"Why?"
"My mother. She's sick. Cancer, in a rest home. She costs me so much. I'm the only child."
Mike thought, This is a new one. But they all have some big lie for an excuse to evade themselves and the real issue. Why don't they admit they're whores because it's easy money and they love to be fucked?
"That's too bad," Mike said.
"You really like me, Mike?"
Why were they so unsure of themselves? But not only whores had this problem, Mike knew, for more than one woman-not a whore-had asked him the same question. He'd shacked up with a Vietnam bitch for a week or so in Saigon.
All had been, "Am I really good? Do you really love me?" the latter being asked at least twenty times a day.
"You're delicious and wonderful, Jackie."
"You'll speak to your father-? See that he puts me on as a regular girl? And you'll have all of this you want ... free, Mike. Kiss me, Mike, 'cause I'm going again ... and how, baby!"
Again, the deliciously built body stiffening, curves becoming muscles as her need spoke. Jackie's hips pushed hard upward, seeking and receiving Mike's penis to its very roots. Then, with a final wriggle, she settled down again, fucking mechanically and competently.
"I could do this all night, Mike.
"There isn't much of the night left," Mike said, "but what remains will see us doing this all the time. Do you suck or like it up the back gate?"
"I've sucked and had it up the rear, but I like it just like we're doing it-man and woman, man on top. But I do feel as though I'm not satisfying you, sweetheart!"
"What makes you think that?"
"I've gone off a number of times and you haven't cracked even once, and if I were really good by now I should have had you all in me and you'd be empty."
"I'm coming ... in just a little while," Mike gasped.
Already Mike felt the forces of creation arise in his bowels. Soon his need would demand expression. Jackie's cunt dragging on his cock made a sucking sound. He smelled cunt, good and clean and lovely, tantalizing his hard-breathing nostrils.
His hips found faster rhythm. Jackie, good whore that she was, sensed him close to coming and she, being adept in whoredom, also sent her hips into more active movement, her cunt's lips pulling solidly on Mike's rigid bayonet.
Then, the flush hit Mike, and he heard a man's voice say, "I'm coming, baby! Take it, baby! Together now, baby! Give my cock that extra twist ... honey!"
Jackie took him, loved him, and his gizzum shot into her, filling her vagina, mingling with her come. Afterward, they lay face to face, kissing deeply, with Jackie's hand down low, loving his damp and beginning-to-stiffen prick.
T once was so foolish, Mike."
"In what way, darling."
"I used to think I'd have to be in love with a man to really fuck him like I just fucked you. I was nuts."
"Where'd you get that idea?"
"Movies, the TV, radio and the god-damned stupid love magazines. You know, I'm only selling a commodity. And my product has to be better than my sister whore's or clients won't return again."
Mike thought, What deductive thinking....
Jackie's small hand skinned Mike back and forth. She kissed him, her tongue a robber, hot and burning, and she said, "I want to climb on top next time. I feel like a queen when I'm up there going up and down polishing a man's cock. Can I get on top, Mike?"
"Why not, honey?"
Jackie kept her mouth locked to Mike's. Her hand kept skinning. Sometimes she played with Mike's balls when her hand sought the base of his prick.
Mike kept thinking of Nancy Lo. Sun Lo's mother was a real piece of ass, and Sun Lo was good, but this Jackie was better than Sun Lo, and almost as good as Nancy Lo, if that were possible.
Doubts plagued Mike. If he took his father to Singapore and Nancy Lo tied onto the okd fart....Or would Nancy Lo go for homely old Jake?
Mike grinned at his stupidity. Jake Fanning had over six million bucks. If he sold out here in Los Amigos he'd have at least twenty million. And Nancy Lo wouldn't immediately fall in love with Jake?
Jake would then move into Nancy Lo's bed and cunt. And where would Mike be? On the outside looking in?
No, Nancy Lo was a young, healthy woman. There'd be plenty there for both Fannings, father and son. Mike knew he'd still have many sessions with the high-breasted, slant-eyed, lovely mother of Sun Lo.
"Mike, I just don't seem to be able to work up a hard on you with my hand. I just can't, darling.
Mike came back to the present. "It's getting there."
But not fast enough, lover. Mike, would it get hard faster if you stuck it in my mouth?"
"We could sure try." They did, and it got hard immediately.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Big Tank Ottenstraw lay naked on his back, prick sticking upward. Over it were suspended the good whore hips of Nita Graham, also nude. Tank studied Nita's enormous breasts. He wished she were on her back, not he. He wanted to get a nipple in his mouth. Tank Ottenstraw liked sucking nipples and a few other sexual items.
Nita today had green hair, her false eyelashes were blue, and the only item of clothing she wore-her earrings-were turquoise. She had both hands on Tank's cock, holding it upright as her hips came down.
Her face looked calm, but Nita was boiling inside. Angel had sneaked in that morning and, ear to Jake's door, had heard the Farmings talking. Mike had told his father about beating up Joe Thistle in Las Vegas the previous night, and she'd heard Jake Fanning ask how the new girl was in bed-and as there was only one new girl that morning in the Fiesta, Angel knew the Fannings talked about Jackie.
She'd learned that Jackie was, in Mike's words, 'a good fuck,' and that Mike had recommended Jackie for steady employment, after tyring her out that morning in all three positions.
"She knows her trade," Mike had said.
Angel had immdiately passed this information onto Nita, feeling very happy when Nita became angry-for Angel knew that Nita was really gone on Mike Fanning. "The two-timing sonofabitch!" Nita had said.
"Who?"
"That goddamned good-looking Mike, of course."
Angel had said no more. She'd sowed the seed. She'd seen whores fall in love before, and she'd fallen in love once herself before she'd learned that prostitutes couldn't afford to fall in love.
Now naked Nita suspended her full body over naked Tank Ottenstraw, her small hands holding Ottenstraw's prick against her cunt. And Nita knew of a way to get even with Mike Fanning.
"You gonna fuck me or ain't you?" Tank growled.
Nita said nothing, but her lips hardened. She wriggled her hips slightly, got Tank's cock in her cunt, and slid down it, a warm feeling entering her vagina. Nita gasped with happiness.
Nita Graham was meant for whoredom, and whoredom only-and Nita would have been the first to admit this, for Nita loved to fuck. She didn't care who she fucked, her body's passions overcame her logic, and Nita rucked as if there were no tomorrow.
Her hips rose and fell. She made her cunt tighten when she slid up Tank's prick. When her buttocks came down, she made her cunt's lips loose. She knew better than to land hard on Tank's testicles.
Once, in wild passion, her ass had come down too hard, too rapidly, and she'd flattened Tank's nuts, and Tank, enraged and in pain, had bucked her off him. He'd beat her around the belly so her face would show no bruises and then had heaved her bodily out in the hall, where Nita had landed screaming on her buttocks, slid along the carpet, and received what she later told a basketball-player client was 'a floor burn on my ass."
"Mike Fanning went to Las Vegas yesterday and kicked Joe Thistle in the ass and threw him against a wall and almost denutted Joe and laid him low in just a second or two," Nita now told Tank.
"Christ, no," Tank said.
"I heard all about it from Mike himself this morning," Nita lied, trying to make herself important. "I guess he really cleaned Joe's clock."
"Why?"
"Mike learned that Joe had been the one that tried to kill him by running over him with those mules and that wagon!"
Slow thinking Tank Ottenstraw frowned. He'd known all the time that Joe Thistle had been the driver of the death wagon. He'd not thought much of the plan to start with, but Ike Hayward had been an advocate of it, for the plan had apparently come from the brains of the Syndicate, and the Syndicate was using Ike as a trial-horse, and Ike knew it. Ike had to prove his merit to the Syndicate.
Therefore every order that came down from the Syndicate was carried out to the exact letter by Ike Hayward, who hoped to eventually become Los Amigos boss.
How had Mike learned that Joe Thistle had driven the wagon? Even slow-witted Tank could think of only one person who'd told Mike who the driver was, and that person would have to be Poop Henders.
"Where's Poop Henders?" Tank asked.
"Some say he left town last night for good. Said something about he'd been on the desert long enough and it was time for him to move on."
"Where'd he go?"
"I don't know. Fact is, darling, I don't know if he even mentioned to anybody where he was going."
Yes, Poop Henders-goddamn his long nose!-had alerted Mike Fanning, and then Poop had jerked stakes for good. Pop had hated Ike since Ike had tried to muscle into Los Amigos, for Poop was a damned good friend of old Jake Fanning, Tank knew.
Joe Thistle and Tank Ottenstraw were close friends. Both were of the same low intelligence-water finds its own level-however, Tank wasn't concerned one bit about Joe's present state of health.
"What else do you know, Nita?"
This time Nita Graham frowned. "You're losing your hard, Tank," she told the prone bodyguard. "I can hardly grab what you've got and you've not got too much and when you get soft-"
"Fuck you!" Tank said angrily. "Don't make fun of me, female! You got a cunt so big you could put Poops mules and wagon in the goddamned Dig hole!"
"I shouldn't even fuck you," Nita said angrily. "If I didn't think the world of you I'd not let you touch me even if you offered to pay!"
"I'm sorry," Tank hurriedly said.
Tank deliberately took his thoughts from Mike and Jake Fanning, from Ike Hayward, from Poop Henders and the maimed Joe Thistle, concentrating his attention on the lovely young woman poised over him, naked and with big breasts bouncing with each up-and-down movement as she slid up and down his prick.
Jeezus, this Nita was a beauty, even if she always did look like a Sioux buck on the warpath with her different degrees of paint and wigs and all that shit, Tank Ottenstraw thought. I'm a lucky sonofabitch. I'm lucky I tied in with Ike, for look at the money I got and the fucking I get free....He realized his prick was getting hard again, for Nita was doing wonders with it.
"What else do you know?" he repeated. "Mike Fanning was the one that knocked you cold with that hunk of stovewood."
"How'd you know?"
"Angel told me. She got Mike drunk and he talked. He told her." Nita wasn't going to tell him that Mike had told her this. This big oaf was very jealous, one reason she liked him. Nobody else ever got jealous over her. "You're letting your prick soften again," she said.
Tank stopped fucking completely. "That big sonofa-bitchin' Mike Fanning," he said. "So he was the bastard what did me."
"And he bragged about it."
"Bragged about it! Why, the dirty-" Filthy words spewed from Tank's filthy tongue until Nita, who'd disengaged Tank's prick without him being aware of her dismount, stuck a full nipple in Tank's mouth.
"Suck and fuck, darling," Nita said.
Tank finally had an orgasm but he was astraddle Nita in regular woman-man fashion when his testicles finally spoke, Nita's small hands deep in his crack as she spread his buttocks in passion. To make matters worse, Joe Thistle came up from Las Vegas that evening.
He and Tank sat drinking whiskey in Tank's room. "I aim to kill me a man here in Los Amigos," Joe Thistle said, "and his handle is Mike Fanning."
"Fanning's my meat," Tank Ottenstraw growled.
"Your meat? Hell, he almost denutted me, friend. Doc in Vegas said it'll be months before I lose my swelling. I had the best little would-be whore in Vegas-new dumb cunt-picked out to make me a living, and how! But when she saw my condition she pulled out on me!"
"You don't say!"
"I do say. Doc says I might never fuck again. Get that, slow wits-never fuck again!"
"Let's keep this meetin' on a friendly basis," Tank said, "and forget such words as slow wit and half wit and slow thinker, huh?"
Joe Thistle disregarded the request. "So I lost a good woman, and Doc says I might never be able to make a baby-and all because of this Mike Fanning bastard!"
"You're lucky you can't make no kids," Tank said. "There's too many kids in the world now in this population explosion. They say that inside a few years the whole world will face starvation."
"Fuck 'em! They're so stupid they deserve to starve."
"But you ain't gettin' Fanning first, my friend," Tank Ottenstraw maintained. "First whack at Mike Fanning goes to me."
"What's Fanning ever did to you?"
"What hasn't he done, you mean?" Tank Ottenstraw thereupon told Joe Thistle about Mike Fanning slugging him cold. "And that sonofabitch is going to pay-and pay hard and fast," Tank finished.
Joe understood. Tank had a reputation to uphold here in Los Amigos. Here Tank was considered Tough. Mike Fanning had dropped him. "Of course, I buffaloed him first, with a pistol barrel, from behin' too," Tank said, "but I got to get mm, Joe."
Joe Thistle considered this request over a long cold drink. "Okay, but do it soon, savvy? I haven't got days to hang around here. Wanna look at my condition?"
"Why not?"
Joe stood up and dropped his hundred-dollar blue trousers and pulled down his five-buck silk shorts.
"Jesus, his knee did that to you?" Tank Ottenstraw marveled.
Joe pulled up his trousers and buckled them, drunk enough to tell the truth for once. "Honest, Tank, I don't know how he did it! Goddamnedest thing I was ever in!"
"What'a you mean, pal?"
"Things just happened too damned fast. Was like I was caught in a hurricane, I tell you. I dealt some damage, of course," Joe Thistle boasted, "but it was to his belly where it didn't show 'cause you know and I know a man's belly is his weakest part."
"Then what?"
"Well, he got hold of my arm, and I went over his head, and somehow when I was in the air his knee-or something-came up and hit me and brother-Have you ever really been kicked there?"
"Playin' basketball. High school. Game got rough. I had the ball. Guy blocked me and his knee hit me. I went down front of all them people, grabbing myself!"
"Well, you got a slight idea of what pain really is," Joe Thistle said, sipping slowly. "Okay, you have first whack! But, like I said, make it damned soon-and watch the sonofabitch close, pal!"
"Wonder if the bastard's roaming around now?" Tank asked.
Each went his own way looking in the saloons for Mike Fanning but didn't find him for Mike was in Jake Fanning's combined office-apartment with Jake bellyaching about his high insurance bill for Los Amigos, for with his frame structures the insurance rate was very high.
"When's the insurance lapse?" Mike asked.
"Oh, about a year from now, if not longer. All's paid to date. Burg is insured to the hilt."
"Why do you tell me this?"
"You might inherit this town any time now, son. My ticker ain't so good, you know. Getting old, Mike boy."
Jake was half-drunk. He hadn't been drinking so much lately, Mike noticed. Mike had seen the doctors' health report for Jake carried almost a million in life insurance. Jake was sound as a Swiss watch, according to the doctors who'd recently examined him.
"You're nuts," Mike Fanning said. "I'm going to bed." He paused, hand on doorknob. "Don't send in a test girl tonight, please. I need a good night's sleep."
"Poor young man!"
Mike left and old Jake took a long drink, thinking of Ike Hayward, the sonofabitch. He was no fool. Ike Hayward worked for the Syndicate, or Mafia, or the Hollywood bunch of thieves. But that made no difference. Some sonofabitch had thrown him-Jake Fanning-out of a third-story window and hadn't even had the courtesy to open the window first, to say nothing about the screen....
Jake had given this matter lots of thought the last few days. The reason had been simple: each time he moved, somewhere a bone or joint ached from the fall. His belly was upset, too, from the jarring thud when he'd hit the alley dust. His bodily functions were irregular. His broken left arm was in a cast.
The last few days he hadn't had success for three days until he'd taken a laxative. Prior to his being thrown out the window he had been able to count on success each morning somewhere between eight and eight thirty.
Also there was the disgrace. They'd claimed he'd been so tanked he'd mistaken the window for the door of his John. That was an insult against him and his drinking ability.
He had analyzed it. Ike Hayward had thrown him out that window. He'd questioned his help closely about seeing a man sneak into his room. And the old janitor-the eighty-year-old retired pimp-had mumbled something about seeing a man who looked like Ike Hayward in the halls that night.
Jake went to his medicine chest. He reached for a small box and from the box took a cellophane envelope that held some powders. On second thought, he took two of the small envelopes.
He put them in his coat pocket, grinned, went to the phone, rang Ike Hayward's office, and found Ike alone. "Good you're alone," Jake said.
"What'd you mean?" Ike suspiciously asked.
Jake Fanning had a hand in his coat pocket, playing with the cellophane envelopes. "Well, I want to talk to you and you alone, Hayward."
"About what?" Still suspicious.
"I've come to the conclusion I should sell out to you. I'll make you a good price. Can I see you tonight?"
"Sure can, Jake." No suspicion now. "When?"
"Okay with you if I trot over to your office right now?"
"Suit me to a T. I'll look for you in five minutes."
"Five mintues," Jake said, and hung up, grinning widely.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Except for a long-tailed nightcap, Doc Williams slept nude. Now he held the phone angrily and sat in bed and hollered, "God damn, man, talk louder. I can't hear you. You're mumbling, man!"
The man kept talking. Doc Williams heard the word shouting and then as loud as I can and the medico discovered he had the tail of his red nightcap between his ear and the receiver.
He jerked the cap angrily aside and heard the man holler, "You goddamned deef fart!" and Doc said, "Look, you bastard, what'd you mean waking me up at one-thirty in the morning, and who the hell are you-and what do you want?"
"Tank Ottenstraw here. Ike Hayward just fell out of his office window and landed on a garbage can in the alley!"
"What the hell kind of a joke is this?"
"Honest Injun, Doc, it's so."
Doc had been in Ike Hayward's office. The office was on the fourth floor. "He still alive?"
"He breathing, yes-but he acts like he's doped."
"When'd this happen?"
"I don't know for sure," Tank said. "I went out in the alley to piss because I like to piss under the stars and there was Ike out cold over that garbage can-He bent it all to shit, too."
"Where's he now?"
"In the alley."
"Don't move him," Doc Williams said. "I'll be right over."
Doc dressed slowly. He had no great love for Ike Hayward. To him a pimp was the world's lowest and Ike was one small degree above a pimp.
Doc picked up his bag and walked the short distance to the Square Deal, a full bottle of bourbon in his coat pocket.
Quite a group was gathered around prone Ike Hayward. Doc in passing gently tweaked the right nipple of a bare-breasted show girl. The girl patted him on the butt. He'd aborted her three times.
"You shouldn't be running around naked in this cold wind, Fanny," the medico advised.
"Looks like another Santa Ana coming up," Fanny said.
"They start like this," Doc admitted. "Light wind that grows stronger and then a howling gale for a couple of days."
He bent over prone Ike Hayward, bones creaking. Getting old, the medico thought, gently wagging the saloon-man's head. Neck not broken. Just knocked out. He felt Hayward's pulse. Heart like a stud horse's.
"Stretcher in my office," the medico said. "Here's the keys, Tank. Send a couple of stiffs after it, huh?"
"Okay. How is the boss, doc?"
"Tell you in a few minutes."
Doc Williams looked at the garbage can, off to one side. Evidently Ike Hayward had landed directly on the can. The can had been empty and thus had folded under the man's plunging body. Doc figured the can had broken Ike Hayward's fall and possibly saved his life.
"Anybody been in Ike's room?" the medico asked Tank.
"I went up there but the door was locked and I couldn't get in. I think the key must be in Ike's pock-et.
Doc Williams found a lone key in Ike Hayward's pants pocket. "That looks like the key," Tank said. "He keeps his other keys-the ones on the ring-in nis suite. Says they're too damned heavy to tote around."
"Here comes the stretcher," Fanny said.
They rolled the limp Ike Hayward on the stretcher and two men carried him toward Doc Williams office. Doc had a small hospital and a regular night nurse De-hind his office.
"Let's me and you look at Ike's room," Doc told Tame.
"Maybe we should call in the deputy?" Tank said. "He's drunk somewhere, so what's the use?" The county had stationed a deputy-sheriff at Los Amigos, a man so drunk all the time he didn't know his address. He had nothing to do. Each saloon owner tended to his own disturbances.
They found One empty glass in Ike Hayward's plush suite. Doc smelled of it and took it into the kitchen and washed it. Apparently another glass had just been washed for it rested on the drying rack, still a little damp.
Doc walked to the window.
Ike Hayward had fallen through the glass and screen. Doc Williams suddenly remembered old Jake Fanning tumbling from his window a few nights back.
Jake had also plunged through glass and screen but he'd fallen a shorter distance and broken his left arm, while Doc felt sure no bones were broken in Ike Hayward.
But Ike Hayward was much younger than Jake Fanning and, therefore, much tougher.
Doc said, "Probably drunk like Jake Fanning the other night. Couldn't tell a window from a door."
"Bull," Tank Ottenstraw said, "I don't believe that crap! Somebody's heaved Ike out that window. And the bastards weren't even considerate enough to open the window and swing back the screen."
"Jake went through glass and screen, too," Doc pointed out. "Then you believe somebody heaved old Jake out?"
"Damn right!"
"Uh huh," Doc Williams said absently.
To the medico's surprise, the deputy was in the hall questioning whores, pimps, bouncers and other of such saloon ilk, and so drunk he had to lean against the wall as he mumbled questions.
"You're up early, lawman," Doc said.
"Not up early," the deputy corrected, "but up late. Ain't been to bed yet. Doin' a little card playin' in the Fiesta" The deputy hiccupped. "How's Ike?"
"He's in my office. I got to give him a complete checkup. Right now I'd say no bones are broken."
"He must've landed on his head."
"I don't like that," Tank Ottenstraw told the deputy. "Ike's a good boss."
"Screw you," the deputy told Tank.
Doc Williams thought, Screw you seems to be popular lately, and took the irate Tank's sleeve. "Let's check on your beloved boss, bouncer."
Tank moved away with, "I don't like that guy," and Doc Williams gently said, "Seems as if you don't like lots of people, Mike Fanning included."
"Someday soon I'll clean Mike Fanning's clock."
"I'll be around with a bottle of iodine," Doc Williams said "Well, here we are in my office. Good to be out of that cold wind, huh?"
"The boss has come to," Tank said, looking at Ike Hayward, who lay on a table, shirt off and ribs showing white and plain. "How'd you feel, Ike?"
"With my fingers!" Ike Hayward growled. "What happened to me, Doc?"
"Fell out your living quarters' window into the alley," Doc Williams said. "Sure bent an empty garbage can all to hell. What happened?"
"That goddamned old-!" Ike Hayward suddenly stopped speaking. "I must have blacked out. I remember standing by the window-with a glass of booze in my hand-then I remember no more until waking up here."
Doc Williams knew Ike Hayward lied. Had the saloon-whoremonger had a glass in his hand while standing at the window, the glass would have fallen to the carpet-but the glass was on the coffee table.
"Here, let me look you over," Doc Williams told Ike Hayward. "Where do you hurt the most?"
"All over," Ike Hayward groaned.
X-rays showed four broken ribs, and Ike Hayward's back ached, but the X-ray showed nothing wrong with Ike's spine, although Doc Williams said he'd get a chiropractor in to check Ike's vertebrae.
"I thought chiropractors and m.d.s hated each other," Ike growled.
"This back-bender's female and very pretty," Doc said.
"Good god, get her here pronto," Ike said.
"You'll owe Jake Fanning for one broken garbage can," Doc said. "You flattened that one all to hell."
Suddenly, Ike Hayward's savage face went bieaK, lips trembling. "Screw Jake Fanning!" the Square Deal man gritted.
Doc said nothing, binding Ike's ribs preparatory to putting Ike's torso in a cast. Doc had gained his point. For one moment Ike Hayward had let his stern mask slip, had forgotten his years of poker training, and had allowed his emotions to show at the mention of Jake Fanning's name.
Doc worked, wondering idly where Jake Fanning nad spent part of this night, and later that day, in early afternoon, he put the question bluntly to Jaice, wno regarded Doc Williams through small and narrowed eyes.
"Since when did you appoint yourself my guardian, Pill Pusher?" Jake growled.
Doc Williams tried another angle. "They say you can sure mix a good Mickey Finn, Jake."
"Mickey Finn!" Jake said. "I never hoolihanned a client in my life. I know nothing about knockout drops."
"They tell me different."
"They tell you wrong. You're as full of shit as a Christmas goose. What you driving at, anyway?"
"Not a damn thing, Jake."
"Then close your trap or talk sense. Too bad about Ike Hayward, huh? Damn, Ike had the same kind of accident I had! I broke a wing and he busted ribs!"
"And he busted hell out of one of your town garbage cans. Here's to higher and better and more deadly falls."
"Waterfalls?"
"No, falls from windows."
Mike joined Doc Williams and Jake, putting Doc between him and his father. Doc spoke to Mike. "Gink named Joe Thistle came into my office late yesterday."
"Odd name," Mike said, "Thistle...."
"Thistle's all swollen," Doc said.
"Clap or syph?" Mike asked.
"No, something or somebody's kicked him. They're as big as small oranges. He might never make any more babies."
"The poor sonofabitch," Mike said.
Doc drank. He'd warned Mike. He liked Mike. Mike was a hell of a good artist. He hoped Mike wouldn't go alcoholic, like he and Jake.
One drunk in a family was enough.
Poop Henders and Doc Williams had been longtime friends. Poop had told Doc right away that Joe Thistle had driven the mules that had tried to run down and kill Mike Fanning.
Doc also knew Mike had beat up on Joe Thistle. A friend of his-another m.d.-usually called each week from Las Vegas. This doctor had treated Joe for his rupture and had reported that Joe had been worked over by somebody named Mike Fanning.
Now Jake Fanning said, "Maybe Ike Hayward never fell from that window because he was drunk?"
"I don't follow you," Doc said.
"You say the window was up, the glass in, the screen closed, when he fell through it. Maybe somebody heaved him out?"
"Why?"
"I don't know," Jake said, "but it's possible, ain't it?"
"It is," Doc Williams answered, "but following that same line of reasoning maybe somebody tossed you out your window, too?"
Jake Fanning snorted. "Nobody heaved me out! I blacked out and fell! Ike mention as how he come to fall into that alley?"
"Ike claims he blacked out, too."
Jake Fanning managed to keep from smiling. He had wondered if anybody had seen him sneak up to Ike Hayward's apartment. He'd taken precautions, even to wearing a false beard and mustache he'd bought for kicks once in a Vegas fun shop.
"Nobody seen anybody go into Ike's apartment, then?" Jake asked.
"Not to my knowledge," Doc Williams said. "Deputy questioned people, too, but nobody saw anything suspicious, it seems."
Jake Fanning said nothing. He'd had quite a time dragging big unconscious Ike Hayward to the window. Jake's broken left arm had hindered him.
"How long!! Ike be in bed?" Jake asked.
"Couple of days, no more."
Jake knew that Ike Hayward would be out to kill him, now. Jake packed a derringer sewed inside his belt.
"I hope the sonofabitch dies," Jake said. "Such language," Mike chided. Suddenly, Jake laughed.
Mike looked inquiringly at his father, as did Doc Williams. Mike asked, "What's so funny, pater?"
"I'd like to see Ike Hayward's face," Jake said. "When?" Mike asked.
"When he reads the bill for my garbage can!" Jake said.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ike Hayward spent most of the next two days in bed grumbling and swearing he'd kill Jake Fanning for mickey-finning him and then heaving him out the window. In between times, he tried out a few new girls, but the physical effort hurt his ribs terribly.
He tried the girls under him. When his hips went up and down he had to move his torso and pain tore through his broken ribs, making his spine a mass of agony. He had to withdraw from the girl and somehow get on his back and she got on top of him.
That was better ... if the girl worked carefully, slowly, and didn't come down too hard on his hips, for if her buttocks came down hard the shock jarred his spine, and his ribs howled in their tight plaster-of-paris cast.
During the two days Ike Hayward tested four whores who wanted work in his Square Deal. Three were experienced girls who had had a little trouble in Las Vegas and wanted to lie low for a while. Ike hadn't had to test them, they were old hands, but he still liked to say he'd had intercourse with every woman working for him, even his cocktail and cafe waitresses.
It was, to Ike Hayward, a matter of pride.
He tried the oldest whore on her back but it was no soap-he just couldn't perform with his ribs in the cast. She then mounted him in professional quickness. Within moments, she was skinning him up and down.
She was the best whore of the lot. She went about her business with clock-like rapidity; she could turn out many, many tricks in one shift, Ike knew'. And those were the kind of prossies the Square Deal-or any other progressive house-wanted and needed.
The whore had developed powerful cunt muscles. She seemed to have a suction machine deep inside. Within seconds she had Ike Hayward bonehard. A minute or two and she'd pulled him off, so that he was shooting up into her as his big hands grabbed her naked waist and as she fairly twisted his cock from his body.
Finally, he stopped ejaculating. "My god," he told the girl, "loose up and let it get back into ordinary shape again, baby!"
"Oh, it's not that bad," the whore chided, cunt opening and closing around Ike Hayward's fading member.
"How'd you do it?"
"It's just a matter of practice and exercise. Actually, most women don't know how to fuck. They haven't developed proper muscles. It takes muscular development, just like a fighter trains in a gym."
Ike Hayward thought momentarily of his hired stooge, Tank Ottenstraw. They'd told him that Tank hadn't taken a drink since Ike had been found cold in the alley beside the ruined garbage can. Ike had learned that Tank spent most of each day down at a local gym sparring and exercising.
What bugged that stupid ass, anyway?
The whore made her dismount, giving Ike's knob a faint twist as a parting gesture. Ike decided he'd keep her as his pet whore for a few days. She'd drawn down good pay-two hundred at least a week-and be only his whore, and when he got tired of her she could then go out into the field.
"Suits me," the whore said, "but I want two fifty a week, boss."
Ike shrugged, winced-shrugging hurt his ribs. "Okay with me," he said. "Two fifty it is." What the hell? The Syndicate paid it, not Ike Hayward!
The whore had been very easy on Ike's ribs. The one that really dealt him pain had been a rather heavy-set girl of eighteen, a farm girl who'd been fed cream and eggs, and who had just started in whoredom-an unexperienced female as Ike learned to his pain.
First the girt had lain on her back, legs spread and reared, and Ike had mounted her in normal fashion, prick rigid and probing, but his up-and-down motions hurt his ribs terribly, so he asked the girl to mount him.
"I've never been on top before," she said.
"First time for everything," Ike joked and lay on his back, holding himself upright in one hand. Ike had always prided himself on "being hung heavy' but actually he was below normal in size.
The girl looked at his prick, then slowly swung up and mounted him, her cunt suspended over his knob. She seemed puzzled. Ike Hayward knew she'd been left behind the door when brains had been distributed.
He'd worked all his life with whores, starting pimping for a grammar-school teacher when he was in the eighth grade. The grammar-school teacher had taken Ike's cherry and Ike to a New Orleans whorehouse, where Ike had become an experienced pimp. Pimp-dom led to a tie-in with the Syndicate and gradual promotion to managing Syndicate gambling dens and whorehouses.
Ike had long ago come to the conclusion that all whores were born delinquent in brains, including his grammar-school teacher who had a college degree. Her owning a college degree convinced him that a dog could be graduated from a college if the dog just stuck around long enough.
But he had immediately judged this big-breasted, full-hipped farm girl as being low on the intelligence scale and he said roughly, "Don't look so god-damned surprised, baby. Your job is simple. Just slide yourself down over my prick, understand?"
"I've never had it ... that way."
"I don't mean I want to put it there," Ike explained. "I want you to put your cunt around my cock, understand?"
"Oh, I get it. Well, here goes!"
The girl had a cunt big enough to take five pricks like Ike owned. Her hips came roaring down, Ike disappearing in her forest of pubic hair. She landed with a thud on Ike's sensitivity.
His broken ribs screamed in pain, as did their owner. Ike's hips shot upward to buck the girl off, but the girl was too heavy. He finally quieted with her sitting idly on his cock.
"What made you yell?" she asked.
"You goddamned whore," Ike said, "I've got broken ribs, remember."
"But your ribs aren't down here," the girl said.
Ike said, "Fuck and fuck slow, or I'll beat your goddamned brains out," and he added, "if you have any."
"I've got plenty of brains!"
The young whore was a poor piece, Ike immediately realized. For one thing, her cunt was too big and she orgasmed immediately, making it sloppy going, and she didn't know how to fasten her cunt around a man's prick, like a good whore-or housewife-should, Ike soon discovered.
But Ike decided to keep her on. She had enormous breasts and bragged she needed a bra 42, and Ike didn't doubt her a bit. And men-especially middle-aged men-went nuts over big tits. Her tits alone would make her a money-making prossie.
She also was heftily built. Square Deal needed a big, heavy shocktrooper. The last one had quit two days ago. A whorehouse always needed a shock-trooper, a big female that took on the big rough guys that wanted to tear a whore's ass apart when they rode her.
Also many of the drunks thought themselves real he-men, rough and ready, and a good shocktrooper could soon calm them down with her big, solid hips, hips like this country bumpkin had.
Ike had an amusing thought: He just hoped no customer would fall in this female's cunt and suffocate.
"I don't want the joint sued," he said, thinking aloud.
The girl asked, "What did you say, darling?" as she went up and down, heavy hips rising and falling, her cunt outside of Ike Hayward's cock.
"I said you're doing all right," Ike Hayward lied.
"I'd like to fuck faster and harder," the big girl said, "but I sure don't want to hurt your ribs. Oh, ho, I creamed you, honey!"
She certainly had. Her cunt oozed whiteness. Ike Hayward's pubic hair became saturated and slowly turned white. He put both hands on the girl's big hips. Her skin was very smooth and her flesh hard. Ike liked hard-butted women, women with solid asses, for a man could get his hands under them and really dig, and now his forefinger played with her.
She shivered and gasped, "Oh, that's so good!" and added, "Some day when you're well will you do it that way, please?"
"I sure will, sweetheart."
Ike Hayward finally came. He grasped her hips harder, fingers pressing deep into her flesh, and he gasped as he spewed his manhood high into the young whore's throbbing loose womb.
"Oh, my god," he moaned in complete bliss, momentarily forgetting his hatred toward Jake Fanning and his broken ribs.
The girl lifted her hips and his prick fell free. She then got on her knees and licked her come from Ike's cock, her tongue long and possessive as it wrapped around the man's knob, sending little delightful shivers through Ike Hayward's flesh, "Where'd you learn that?" Ike Hayward demanded.
"My high school superintendent. He took my cherry when I was a frosh. I diddled him all through high. I got aborted twice, his kids. ... Now my ovaries are cut and I can't have any more pregnancies."
"Not ovaries," Ike Hayward corrected. "Your Fallopian tubes were cut."
"I get them confused," the girl said.
She kept sucking and licking Ike's prick, which began to stand up again, and this time she didn't put his cock in her cunt, but kept it in her warm, delightful mouth.
A knock came at the door. Tank Ottenstraw's deep voice answered when Ike Hayward called. "Come on in, Tank. Door ain't locked."
The girl glanced at Tank, then continued sucking. Tank sank into the big overstuffed chair. Sweat covered his forehead. He wore a sweatshirt and old trousers.
"How are you?" Tank asked.
Ike Hayward lay with his eyes closed. He merely grunted something indistinguishable. Tank looked at the big breasts of the new whore, down at her ass and cunt, then at her mouth working on Hayward's cock.
"Now girl?" Tank asked.
"Yeah...."
The girl had her big ass pointed toward Tank. Tank looked at her and felt his thighs tighten as he began to get an erection.
"Want to try her?" Ike Hayward asked.
"Can't."
Ike Hayward opened his eyes in surprise. "Can't? What the hell bugs you, buster? You got the clap or something?"
"Just ain't doing no screwing for a couple of days," Tank said. "I got a reason."
"What's the reason?"
Tank lit a cigaret. "I'd rather not say, but I've got a reason-and a good one, boss."
"Damn, you are mysterious."
Tank Ottenstraw grinned and rubbed his head where Doc Williams had shaved it. Doc had pulled the stitches this morning. The spot itched. Tank had gone into a crash-training program. He was training to tackle Mike Fanning.
Tank didn't want to end up with what his old pal, Joe Thistle, sported. Joe was still in Los Amgios, hanging close to the Square Deal though, for apparently Joe wanted no more of Mike Fanning.
Not alone, anyway....With a good strong pal like Joe Ottenstraw, maybe yes....
Still, Tank's big eyes were riveted on the new girl's crack. He studied her carefully. It looked small and the hair around it was long. Usually when a girl liked it that way the hair there was short and stubby, worn down by the penetrating penises.
This girl apparently hadn't taken it that way yet or had taken it so long ago and so seldom her hair had grown back. Tank felt his prick begin to stiffen. Each time the girl bobbed up and down Ike Hayward's cock, she opened and closed.
This intrigued Tank.
He studied the girl's twot. It had a very heavy coat of hair. He saw that the hair was matted and white. He looked at Ike Hayward's pubic hair. It also lay curly, matted, and stained white.
Tank understood. Ike had already taken the girl on. Ike and the new whore had copulated in accepted man-female fashion.
Tank studied the girl's pussy carefully. He couldn't see it all but what he saw looked terribly big to him. He decided he'd not like to screw her in a normal fashion. But in that way, now....
Then he heard Ike grunt, "I'm coming, honey! Suck harder, darling-and pull harder, too!"
Tank Ottenstraw had sworn off women until after his fight with Mike Fanning, for the bouncer had heard that intercourse weakened a person and he wanted to be in top physical strength when he clashed with Mike, but the naked lure of this girl's lovely buttocks was too great.
With gasping moans, Ike ejaculated into the girl's throat. Ike quieted and the big girl began sucking him again. At that moment, Tank's penis hit her in the crack.
The girl jumped in surprise. "For crists's sake," Ike Hayward growled, "don't bite off my prick, female! What the hell you doing, Tank?"
"I'm behind her," Tank said.
"Which hole?"
"I'd need grease for the upper one, and that's the one I want to hit, and I ain't got no grease," Tank said.
"There's a big jar of vaseline under the bed," Ike Hayward said.
"Go easy," the girl said.
Tank asked, "First time, lady?"
"I'm no lady," the girl said. "Men don't do this to ladies."
"If you only knew," Ike Hayward said.
Tank found the new girl very tight. He closed his eyes and sent his hips in and out with her asshole dragging on his cock. He forgot his vow of no sex until after he'd trimmed Mike Fanning. He forgot Joe Thistle sitting up in his, Tank's, room, swollen and blue.
Ike Hayward was slow the second time. Tank had three orgasms before his boss again came. The girl became -rimmed with white and Tank's prick made sucking sounds.
Outside the wild howled. This was developing into a real hell-bender Santa Ana, like the weather bureau had predicted, but the roaring desert wind had no effect on Tank Ottenstraw, his balls bouncing against the girl's butt in happy abandon.
At exactly 11:18 that night he jumped Mike Fanning in an alley as Mike took a short cut to one of his father's gambling dens. Tank stepped out and accosted Mike. Tank and Mike talked until 11:21.
Tank said, "I'm getting you, Fanning, for slugging me cold with a hunk of cordwood!"
"You don't say," Mike said.
Mike realized immediately that Nita-and only Nita-had told Tank he had slugged the Hayward bouncer, for he'd only told one person he'd whammed down Tank, and that person had been Nita Graham.
"Maybe you knocked me cold first," Mike said.
"Maybe I did," Tank assured.
Mike said, "I heard tell your bosom buddy Joe Thistle is in town and he's swollen as big as oranges."
Tank thought, Nita's told the sonofabitch that Mike spread his legs wide. He looked at Tank Ottenstraw in the dim alley light, the wind whipping dust. Tank was in the crouch of a professional boxer.
"Okay," Mike said wearily, "come ahead, buster!"
Tank led with a left. The whore named Nita witnessed the ensuing tragedy.
Nita Graham had seen Mike Fanning go into that alley. She'd been in a diner sipping on a cup of coffee, wondering why she'd ever told Tank that Mike had slugged him, and why she'd told Mike that Tank had maybe given him, Mike, the works with a pistol.
Nita realized her big drunken, jealous mouth might have got her in trouble. She slid off her stool and discreetly followed Mike Fanning. As fights went, she'd seen better.
At 11:26 Nita told a Square Deal bouncer that Tank Ottenstraw was out cold in the alley. She didn't tell that she'd seen Mike Fanning handle big Tank as though Tank were a mean little boy getting a paternal spanking.
When 11:35 came Nita Graham, clothes jammed into an old suitcase, was on the stagecoach going to the fence, where a plane was due to leave in minutes for Reno.
Nita was on that plane when it departed.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Mike Fanning and his father sat in a booth for two in the back of the Fiesta's huge dining room when Doc Williams pulled over a chair and sat down, glancing at his wristwatch.
"One eighteen," the medico said, "and I saw him-whole and nearty-in a bar at eleven ten. One hour and eight minutes ago and now the man is swelling up like nobody's business."
"Which man?" Jake Fanning asked.
"Tank Ottenstraw."
Jake Fanning growled, "What the hell you blabbing about, Doc?"
Doc Williams signaled a waiter, ordered a double bourbon water chaser, and explained. Ike Hayward had called him at about eleven thirty to the Square Deal. Tank Ottenstraw had been found cold in an alley.
"Bouncer told Ike. Bouncer said Nita Graham had told him about Tank lying knocked cold."
"What happened to Tank?" Mike Fanning asked.
"Well, he had a big bump on the top of his head. I guess somebody threw him against the wall of a building and knocked him cold."
"Maybe he stumbled over something in the dark," Mike said, "and hit his head on something and cold-cocked himself?"
"Wasn't even a garbage can around. Wind had blown them all out of the alley. Maybe he fell, lurched ahead, hit a building? But how come he's swollen and swelling faster?"
Mike shrugged. Jake Fanning rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. "Things sure have busted out unlucky for the Square Deal, what with Ike Hayward falling out of that window and getting laid up and now Tank Ottenstraw meeting with this unfortunate accident."
Doc ordered another double bourbon. "Sure keeps this old man busy. Damn, this is a terrible wind."
"Radio says it's going to get stronger," Mike said, "and last another three days."
"Somebody's kicked Tank below the belt," Doc said.
"What makes you think that?" Mike asked.
"Somebody's given the old Marine heave-ho, the kind the Leathernecks are handing the Viet Cong. Then right in midair, they knee a man and he's out of commission."
Jake looked at his son. "You were in Viet Nam, son. Did you learn them tricks Doc mentions?"
"I never even heard of them," Mike said.
Doc ordered another double bourbon. "Guess I'll mosey back to the Square Deal and see how much Tank's swollen since I last saw him. You boys come with me?"
"Hell, yes," Mike joked.
Old Jake was getting pretty drank. He stared at Doc's retreating back. Doc went out into the roaring Santa Ana whipping in from the northeast, throwing dust and gravel before it.
Somehow, street lamps kept lit, though. They stood on their poles, their kerosene-burning wicks protected from the wind by glass chimneys. Kerosene lamps and gas lamps lighted gambling dens. Because of the Santa Ana the gambling crowd was thin. Radio reported planes would be grounded soon in this section of Nevada, Doc had heard.
Doc pushed into the Square Deal and went to Ike Hayward's room. A big, fresh milk-looking country girl, naked as when born, slept beside Ike, who lay on his back staring up at the gas light
"Got a new one?" Doc asked.
"Even an old flea-bitten whore is new to some guy," Ike Hayward said. "How's Tank?"
"He's got some big ones," Doc said.
"Somebody kicked him, huh?"
Doc restored his thermometer to its case. "I'd say he was kneed, not kicked. A hard kneeing can raise more trouble than a kick."
"Mike Fanning?" Ike Hayward said.
The new whore kept on sleeping, big breasts rising and falling to her measured breathing. Doc Williams looked at her fresh, enormous breasts with their dark, enticing nipples.
"What makes you say that, Ike?"
"Mike Fanning worked over Joe Thistle, too. Joe's got big ones. You've looked at them, Doc?"
"Yeah, he's got quite a set."
"How long will I be bedridden, Doc?"
"You can get up and walk around tomorrow. You'll have a little pain when you breath too deeply."
"Good."
Doc went to Tank Ottenstraw's room. Tank sat up in bed and Joe Thistle sat on the chair. The two had been talking in a quiet voice. Doc might have been wrong, and could have been, of course, but he felt sure he'd heard Joe mention the word mike.
Doc had a sadistic streak, the mark of a good medical doctor. "You boys might have to undergo operations," he told the pair of bouncers. "Sometimes they refuse to go down. A doctor has to open a man's bag and peel the outside off the testicle just like you peel an orange. Then the pressure is gone and the testicle seeks normal size."
"Sonofabitch," Tank said.
"Bastard," Joe Thistle said.
"So they peel a gink," Tank Ottenstraw said, "and it goes down to normal and what does it do to the gink?"
"He can't have kids, for one thing."
"I never was meant to change diapers," Tank said. "Does a gink still like to fuck after this operation?"
"All desire to have copulation ceases in the man."
"You mean," Tank asked, "after this operation the man doesn't want to fuck no more?"
"That's right."
"I stay with my big ones," Joe Thistle said, "and take the chance they come back to normal. When a man shrinks down, Doc, he likes to screw then, doesn't he?"
Doc Williams' sadism was given full play. "I've read up on that since I've seen Tank. And from what I've read the doctors find that when a real beat-up one goes down about ninety-three times out of a hundred the man loses all desire to copulate."
"Copulate means fuck, don't it?" Tank asked.
"To put it in the vernacular, yes," the medico said.
"I'm going to kill that dirty sonofabitch," Tank said.
"If you don't I will," Joe Thistle assured.
Doc Williams played dumb. "What sonofabitch?"
"Wouldn't you like to know," Tank Ottenstraw said. "You leaving me more of them pain-killin' pills, Doc?"
"Me, too," Joe Thistle said.
Next day Tank Ottenstraw was on his feet although somewhat shaky. He and his bosom buddy-bouncer discussed things to great lengths.
"That Nita bitch's gone," Tank said.
"Who's Nita?" Joe wanted to know.
She's the whore who told me that this Mike Fanning hammered me down with that cordwood," Tank said. "She was a go-between and stooled on the Fannings. She must've got cold feet and drug her ass out for good."
"Smart girl," Joe said.
Ike Hayward hobbled in and held his breath as he carefully sat down in a straight-backed chair. He looked at crippled Tank Ottenstraw, then turned cold eyes on Joe Thistle, and Ike Hayward's hawkish face was hard and immobile.
"It looks," said Ike, "that the Square Deal bunch is getting nowhere in a hell of a hurry...."
Neither bouncer spoke. Joe Thistle looked at his big hands. Tank Ottenstraw. They needed a new shine.
"We were going to run old Jake Fanning out of Los Amigos, remember?" Ike Hayward directed his question to Tank Ottenstraw.
"I remember," Tank mumbled, still admiring his new shiny shoes.
"We're all laid up," Ike Hayward said, "and Mike and Jake Fanning are in tiptop shape, 'cept for Jake's broken arm."
"Screw 'em," Tank said.
"This isn't Hollywood," Ike Hayward said. "Men don't do it to men here, as a general rule-although I suppose there are exceptions, but that isn't the point, men."
"Okay, boss," Tank said.
Jow Thistle shifted. His right one hurt even worse than his left, and that was saying something for his left pounded and ached despite the pain-killing pills Doc had given him.
"You talk," Ike Hayward told big Tank.
Tank filled with pride. "We could kill both of them Fannings. Bury them out on the desert and nobody'd ever be the wiser and the Law would look a little but with no evidence couldn't do nothing."
"Law'd do nothing anyway," Ike Hayward said. "The boys behind us are too strong. They control too many Senators and Representatives."
"Let's lay cards on the table," Tank said. "Me an' Joe got kneed and knocked cold by Mike Fanning. Them Marines must be tough bastards!"
Ike Hayward grinned tightly. "And old Jake called me up, made sure I was alone, sneaked into my living room, mickey-finned me and threw me knocked out out of my window."
"You had a good idea with them mules," Joe Thistle told Ike Hayward.
"Yeah," Ike said, "and that backfired."
"But it'd still work," Joe said persistently.
"Somebody should get the two Fannings together on the street," Tank Ottenstraw said, "and run them both over at once with the same car."
"That's a good idea," Joe Thistle said. "It's been done by the Mob a few times and always works!"
"Only thing wrong is that there ain't a car in Los Amigos," Ike Hayward said. "And the guy who sneaked one in would have to pass the gate guards and right away he'd be under suspicion."
"Mules are the things," Tank said. "Sharp shod with special shoes that'll cut a man's skull in two like a razor. With the mules turpentined and mad, and they tell me a turpentined mule don't care what he does, where he goes ... or what he runs over...."
"How'd you turpentine a mule?" Ike Hayward asked.
"Them I drove wasn't turpentined," Joe Thistle put in.
Tank Ottenstraw smiled. "You know them pumps that they pump up gas lamps with? Them little round pumps-about an inch around-and about eight inches long, with the pointed tips?"
Joe Thistle and Ike Hayward nodded.
"You suck turpentine up into these pumps. Then you jam the tip into a mule's ass and push down on the lever. Turpentine shoots into it and burns him and he goes wild."
"How'd you find that out?" Hayward asked.
"You know the night watchman at the Thimble? Pete Phalen? Pete and his wife five on the outskirts of town. They raise a few chickens. Coyotes get the hens. One night Pete cornered a coyote in the hen-coop. He gave him a shot of turpentine from his gas lamp pump. Pete claims the coyote ain't stopped running yet and that was six weeks back!"
"How about the mules?" Hayward asked. 'Them two I used last time are big and tough," Joe Thistle said. "I just made a miscalculation in time, that's all."
"We can have the blacksmith make some special shoes for them, front and back," Tank said. "He won't blab. He's our man."
"Now'd be the time to run them Fannings down," Joe Thistle said. "With this wind there're few suckers in town. Even air in is grounded, radio and TV says. Only thing hard to be did is get both them Fannings on the street at one time."
"It can be did," Ike Hayward assured.
Next day the two mules were shod front and back with specially made shoes with one continuous line of steel along the bottom, this steel pointed and sharpened to razor perfection. When led over a cowhide the shoes cut the stiff old cowhide to small pieces.
The wagon's steel rims were also rebuilt. Around each rim had been welded a steel flange that had been honed sharp. When the mules and wagon moved over a big expanse of canvas thrown on the ground the canvas was cut to ribbons by the combined points of the mule-shoes and the wagon's wheels.
There was a barn in the alley behind the Square Deal that hadn't been used for years. Tank Ottenstraw and Joe Thistle stationed their wagon and team in this barn. That night the bouncers had the mules hooked to the wagon, ready to go.
Each had a small pump filled with raw turpentine. From where they hid they could see the main drag. The wind howled terribly. Radio said at times the wind attained eighty miles an hour velocity.
"Wind's going to quit in a few hours," Tank said.
"How'd you know, wise guy?"
"Notice how every once in a while it just like that dies down? Then it comes from another direction?"
"Yeah."
"That's a sign it's going to die before morning. I've been through these Santa Ana's before."
"And it looks like they've affected your so-called mind," Joe Thistle said.
Tank Ottenstraw held back a hot retort. There were a lot of things he didn't like about this big, blustering, swollen jerk.
Discretion held Tank's tongue. Right now he needed Joe Thistle. He kept his eye on the main street, which had very few occupants. It was a Tuesday night-and Tuesdays were always dull-and this wind kept planes from flying in, although buses still traveled from the highway to the outside gate.
All gas and kerosene lamps were out on all streets. Because of the wind, there was danger of fire and, once one building caught on fire in this gale, all of Los Amigos would be doomed.
Gambling dens and whorehouses had lights, though, but all inside and protected.
"You'd better drag ass to the corner and watch for the Fannings," Tank told Joe, "because it's about two o'clock, man."
Joe laid his turpentine-loaded gas-lamp pump on the seat. He climbed slowly down, clearly favoring his swollen testicles.
"Hope everything works out all right, Tank."
"It will," Tank Ottenstraw assured.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Jake and Mike Fanning played draw poker in Jake's ornate apartment. Back in the bedrooms two Fiesta whores slept in separate beds.
Jake studied his cards. "That new girl's a good whore. She sucks and goes up the rear gate and loves both. These Chi girls that my old buddy Eggbert Wilson sends out have always been good whores."
Mike nodded. His luck was sour. Time seemed to be rushing in on him, building frustration. He remembered his studio and easel overlooking the bay in sprawled-out, stinking Singapore.
After a few days away from his work, his nerves were raw. They were on edge now. He thought of Sun Lo's lovely behind, and then he remembered the still lovelier derriere of Sun Lo's mother, Nancy.
"How was your girl?' Jake asked.
"So-so," Mike said. "Loved to suck. Maybe a bit above average, I'd say. Big girl and can take a lot of abuse. Should make a good whore unless she gets knocked up or syphed up."
"Both impossible." Jake scowled at his cards. "Pill against the former and Penicilin shots against the latter. Los Amigos hasn't had a pregnant whore for three, four years. And a v. d. dose hasn't taken place since I started this town eight long years ago."
Jake was a little deaf and Mike thought he might miss the phone's low buzzing so Mike said, "Phone, Jake."
Jake said, "Who?" and Mike watched his face as the old whoremonger listened. Jake's face changed from bland curiosity to narrow-eyed outright interest.
"Okay, Ike," he said, and hung up.
"Ike Hayward?" Mike asked.
"Only Ike around here," Jake said. "He's coming over."
"When?"
"Right now."
"Why?"
"Something he wants to talk over," Jake said. "Christ, you dealt me a card ... at last!"
Soon came a low knock on the door. Jake leaned over, pulled out a drawer, checked the pistol therein, then shut the door. "Who?" the whoremonger asked.
"Ike Hayward, of course."
"Alone?"
"Alone."
Jake gestured to Mike. Lately Jake had always locked his door. Mike unlocked it, glanced out, saw that Ike Hayward was alone, then admitted the owner of Square Deal.
"You take precautions," Ike said. "Keep the door locked all the time?"
"I sure do," Jake said.
"Why?"
"I fell out a window once. I sure don't want to fall out of the door!"
"Hell," Ike Hayward said, "you don't make sense."
"Lots of things around here don't make good sense," Jake said. "I pride myself on wasting no words. What's on your mind?"
Ike Hayward sat down on the davenport. "I'll spread my cards, men. I've got outside money backing me. Tonight at two sharp one of these outside money men want to talk to you, Jake, in my apartment."
"Hell, the sonofabitch can come over and see me, can't-he?" Jake said shortly. "I'm the guy he's trying to soften, ain't I?"
Mike said, "Play it cool, Jake." Jake was more than half-drunk, Mike realized.
"Your son's right," Ike Hayward said. "Let's keep our cool. Why not soothe jangled nerves and be at my apartment at two sharp, Jake?"
"Mafia?"
"I can't say."
"Syndicate?"
Ike Hayward got to his feet. "I can't say that, either, You'll be there, Jake?"
"Why the early hour of two tonight?" Jake asked. "Early?" Ike Hayward's brows rose. "Two a.m. is the beginning of the night for me," Jake said. "Why not make it around six or seven when my brain operates better?"
Ike Hayward looked at Mike. "He'll be there," Mike said.
"The man with the money wants you, too," Ike Hayward told Mike. "You're his only heir, I understand."
"We'll both be there," Mike promised. "Two sharp."
Ike Hayward left. Outside the Santa Ana curled around the Fiesta, threatening to lift it from foundations. "I've seen Santa Ana's before," Jake said, "but this must be the worst. Sometimes the goddamned wind comes from all directions at once!"
"You'd better gather up your tax statements and some other junk," Mike said, "so you'll have facts at hand to bargain with."
"Like seemed right sociable, didn't he, though?"
"Like a rattlesnake before he strikes," Mike said.
The poker game forgotten, Jake started digging in records, laying them on the center table. Mike picked up the insurance policy for Los Amigos. Everything in town-except Hayward's Square Deal-was insured for face value against fire and other destruction.
Mike tossed the insurance policy onto the center table, "You won't need this," he said.
Jake put the policy back in his safe. "No, don't reckon I will," he said.
Mike watched his father. Old Jake seemed reluctant. Finally Mike asked, "You don't really want to sell out now, do you?"
Jake downed three fingers of bourbon sans chaser. "Sometimes I'm ready to move on. Sometimes I'm not I've been terrible healthy here in this desert. Seldom even have a cold. Then I built this town. When I come here this was no more than chanizal, greasewood, sand and occotio."
"Don't forget kangaroo rats and jackrabbits," Mike said.
"When a man builds something, he sometimes hates to leave it. Then again I think of being fifty-eight. And of being here eight long, hard years."
Hard years ... Mike managed to hide his grin, remembering Jake in bed with lovely Angel, the day he'd come to Los Amigos, and in bed with other beauties since that day....
And now Jake called these times hard years? Maybe there was an intended pun.
Jake rubbed his upper lip. "Naw, it's time to move on, son. Hit new stomping grounds before I get too old to stomp. You think this Nancy Lo woman would be able to have a little regard for me?"
Mike did some quick silent arithmetic. If Jake made any kind of a deal for Los Amigos he'd leave the U. S. with around twenty million in cold cash ... And Jake asked if Nancy Lo would consider him? Did being fifty-eight soften a man's brain?
"I think so, seeing you're my father," Mike said.
Again, Mike had misgivings about taking his father to Singapore, but then the thought came that when Nancy Lo and old Jake hooked forces, the two would live apart from him and Sun Lo, and therefore a nuisance like Jake wouldn't be underfoot all day.
Jake put his necessary papers in a leather briefcase. He and Mike then continued their poker game for a buck a hand. Jake called downstairs for another fifth.
"How's the booze in this Singapore town?" he asked.
"Some of the world's best." Mike meant it too. "But don't you think you ought to slack off a bit right now?"
"Why?" Belligerently.
Anger touched Mike. "Screw you, pater," he said distinctly. "It's your ass, not mine."
"I think best with a quart under my belt," Jake said. "Don't try to reform me. I'm too old a dog to learn new tricks. This Nancy Lo, now-this lovely female-she ain't the bossy type, is she?"
"Hell, no."
No, Nancy Lo wouldn't issue direct orders. Nancy Lo wasn't as ignorant as the average overbearing American housewife. She'd use her brains and wiles and soon old Jake would be thinking her way without old Jake being aware of his changes in thinking!
"Don't like bossy women," Jake said.
The clock crept toward two. At five to two Mike said, "Let's go, pater," and Jake put his bottle-his third-in his coat pocket and picked up his briefcase. "Here we go," Jake said.
Father and son left the Fiesta by one of the Dig front doors. The big gambling layout was almost deserted, some blackjack dealers having already closed their booths and gone home from lack of trade.
Mike and Jake stepped out into a roaring, sand-laden wind that bent each double, made each gasp for breath. Neither saw Joe Thistle stationed across the street and hidden against the corner. Joe ran back to Tank, who dozed on the wagon seat in the sheltered shed.
"The two of them just left the Fiesta" Joe jerked out. "Shanghai these god-damned mules and get them moving!"
Joe grabbed the pump. He jammed the nozzle into a surprised mule, which jumped slightly, as did Tank's mule as he, too, received the pump in the same place.
Both pump handles went down. Turpentine, raw and biting, shot into the mules. And the mules, ears back, left the barn on a dead run, farting and kicking, heads down as they tore down mainstreet, dust whipping up from deadly wheels into the howling Snata Ana.
The lunging wagon and terrified mules were downwind from Mike and his father as they plodded across the street, head down against the gale. It was Mike who first heard the mules and wagon.
Mike jerked up his head, hardly believing his ears. The grade-B Western was being reinacted, huh?
The mules, were only forty feet away, if that. They came like a comet, streaking forward, and briefly Mike glimpsed two men standing in the swaying, lurching wagon box.
My god, Mike thought hurriedly, Joe Thistle, sure as hell, and that damned Tank Ottenstraw, and they've got us trapped, sure as shit!....
Suddenly, Mike Fanning's long and arduous Marine training-survival training-came into instinctive being. He was hardly aware of slamming his father in the back, for Jake Fanning stood in petrified surprise staring at the mules and wagon thundering in for the kill.
Mike's flat hand smashed into his father's spine, just above Jake's belt line. Jake lurched ahead, bent over backward, and crashed forward, catching a foot in the edge of the plank sidewalk. Jake fell out of harm's way on his face on the splintery planks, quickly rolling on his right side to protect his broken arm.
Now Mike Fanning was directly in front of the mules. He had no time to leap aside to safety. Again his Marine training came to his command. He leaped onto the wagon tongue between the two hard-running, farting and plunging mules.
Luckily, he landed directly on the tongue. He was sandwiched between the hard-running long-eared mules. He smelled dust, sweat, the stink of turpentine, and then he had the reins, grabbing them just behind the hame-rings of each mule.
He was now in command. He heard Joe Thistle shout something, and fear caught him, for Thistle and Ottenstraw might be armed. He sawed on the reins, and the mules turned left.
They thundered across the plank sidewalk toward one of the Square Deal's big front doors. The front wheels of the wagon hit the edge of the sidewalk. The mules were jerked to a momentary, lurching halt.
For one long moment, all lay in tableau. Tank Ottenstraw and Joe Thistle, still in the wagon box, legs spread wide to absorb the blow. Old Jake Fanning, sprawled beyond the wagon, beginning to climb up from the sidewalk, spewing curses into the howling wind.
A man stared through a Square Deal window, the dim gasoline lamplight inside outlining his surprised face. Mules ... trying to get in to gamble, huh? And then, the tongue ripped loose from the wagon.
The mules, suddenly freed, lurched ahead, smashing into the wide, swinging door, Mike Fanning still anchored on the wagon tongue, which now dragged behind the terrified mules.
Huge Tank Ottenstraw fairly flew from the wagon. He landed on his back on the plank walk, legs flying up and out, and then, to Tank's pain and surprise, the flying body of Joe Thistle landed between Tank's legs. For one moment, Tank and Joe looked like two fags having a party, Joe on the top.
"Oh, no, my balls!" Tank screamed.
Then Mike and the mules were inside the Square Deal gambling den and bar.
Mike remembered a fear-frozen Ike Hayward, standing in the stairway, arm around a naked whore's waist, and then all became lost in blurring action, for the mules stampeded around the room, steel-shod hoofs cutting the expensive carpet to pieces.
They snorted, farted, brayed-and ran. Mike was bucked off, landing sitting down beside an overturned card table. Whores screamed. Gamblers ran for their lives. The mules ripped through bottles, overturned bars-and then, with a sickening lunge, went out the back door, tails high in the air.
And then, Mike saw the fire.
The mules had knocked over a gasoline lantern that apparently had sat on a table. The lantern broke in two, spraying gasoline-and hungry flames shot along carpets, up walls.
Wind whipped in the shattered window, smashed through the torn-off door, and, within a second, the interior of the gambling den-whorehouse was a mass of roaring flame.
Coughing, Mike lurched outside. Tank Ottenstraw still lay on his back. Tank clutched his injured part.
Mike kicked him hard there. Tank screamed and rolled out into the street.
Clutching himself, Joe Thistle was hobbling away. Mike grabbed the bouncer by the shoulder, whirled him-and Joe's hands went up in a fighter's stance to protect his face.
But Mike Fanning wasn't interested in Joe Thistle's ugly face. Mike's right foot lifted, hard. The toe of his polished Florsheim smashed into Joe Thistle's swollen part.
Joe screamed, grabbed himself, fell and rolled to the middle of the street, where Jake Fanning, now on foot, foolishly hit Joe and Tank with his briefcase, inflicting absolutely no damage on the bouncers.
Mike's hard fingers taloned in on his father's shoulder. "Get out of here, you idiot!"
"Why?"
"Look at the Square Deal, you fool! All ablaze-and in this terrible wind. Los Amigos will burn to the ground. Nothing can stop this fire!"
"Damn!" Flames already danced across Jake Fanning's seamed face. "I pray nobody burns to death."
Mike said nothing, jaw hard.
Jake said, "Man, I'm glad I got it insured!"
Eighteen days later Mike flew in from Singapore and met his father at the Reno airport. Jake looked stylish and clean-shaven in a neat brown suit, blue shirt, Dlue tie and brown oxfords.
"I got your visas," Mike said, "and you've got your passport?"
"All set for Singapore, son. You finished your Vida job?"
"Finished, accepted, check on the way to Singapore," Mike said. He thought of the terrible fire that had burned every building in Los Amigos to the ground. Miraculously, no people had been incinerated, for Mike had hurriedly sent runners to awaken house occupants.
The state had conducted quite an inquiry into the fire. Mike had filed affadavit from Singapore, for he'd left Nevada the afternoon after the fire. His written testimony had sent Tank Ottenstraw and Joe Thistle to the state pen for from five to ten for arson.
Ike Hayward was banned from Nevada gambling for life. Now, the Sierra Nevadas of California below the big plane, Mike asked, "You collect your fire insurance?"
"To the cent, son. I've got over twenty million in Switzerland. I'm getting three million transferred to this Singapore bank you gave me the name of."
Mike nodded. "Sun Lo and Nancy Lo will meet us in Tokyo. We're flying the Japanese route."
Old Jake grinned. "I've lived a clean life since seeing you last, son. Not a single female. I had some dream last night, so help me hanner."
"Yeah. Who was the woman in the dream?"
"She had slant eyes, a small waist, hellish big breasts and a good solid butt-and her name was Nancy Lo!"
