Charley picked the girl up in a roadhouse in Delaware, not far from the Pennsylvania line. She was waiting on tables there. He took one long look at her and knew that she was exactly the kind of girl he was looking for, for his little blackmail project.
She was slender, even lean, but her body was full in the places that counted, with firm, high breasts and flaring hips and buttocks that jutted out nicely against the sheer fabric of her white waitress's uniform. Her hair was dark and long, her eyes were bright and smiling, her lips were full and kissable.
She looked bedable.
But Charley had more in mind than just a bed-able girl. He needed a girl whose looks were very special, and this one seemed to fill the bill right down to the last specification. What he was looking for was a girl who could seem mature and womanly wearing one kind of outfit, and young and immature dressed another way. He wanted someone who could seem adult while she was picking up suckers and taking them to bed, but who would look like a teen-ager when the time came to make the blackmail squeeze.
This girl looked right.
Charley couldn't really tell how old she was. Past sixteen and under thirty, that was all he could be sure of. The lush thrusts of her breasts, the ripeness of her buttocks, gave her a set of feminine charms that could easily be played up by the right kind of clothing. On the other hand, those saucy eyes, that perky smile, that long hair when allowed to dangle in a girlish pony-tail-
Sure. She'd do.
Charley leaned back, gave her the eye as she brought the menu over. He was a big, rangy man, almost thirty now, who earned his living in a variety of ways, none of them legal and none of them very taxing on the energy.
The girl smiled at him. Just a waitress smile, he thought, a mechanical thing. But Charley smiled back and put some oomph into it. His eyes flicked down the front of her uniform.
"Good evening," she said. "Would you like to order a drink?"
"I'd love to," Charley said. His eyes drank her in. "Make it a martini, very dry."
"Olive or lemon peel?"
"Lemon," he said. He grinned at her. "Mind if I make a personal remark, miss?"
"Depends on how personal."
"I just wanted to say that I've been driving for five straight hours since I left New York, and you're the nicest thing I've seen in all that time. It's a real pleasure to come in off the road and find a girl like you in a place like this."
She smirked at him. "I bet you tell that to all the waitresses."
"Scout's honor, I don't." He glanced around at the nearly empty roadhouse. "Business is pretty slow tonight, huh?"
"About normal for a Tuesday."
He eyed her fingers. No trace of a wedding ring. Good, he thought.
"What time do you get through here?" he asked.
"We aren't supposed to make dates with customers while we're on duty."
"I won't squeal," he said. "What time?"
"Nine."
It was eight o'clock now. Charley said, "Got anything going after work?"
"Nope. Why?"
"Just wondering. I thought maybe you'd like to go for a drive. Ride around the neighborhood a little, show me the sights. You a local girl?"
"From Philadelphia," she said. "I've only been here six months."
"That's probably long enough."
"Listen, you better let me go get you your drink. The manager doesn't like it if I stand around talking at the tables."
"Okay. But don't be gone long."
She gave him another smile, a warm, real one this time, and hurried away. Charley watched the motions of her buttocks against her tight uniform. He liked what he saw. He liked the sound of her voice, the smile in her eyes, the thrust of her breasts. He liked everything about this girl. Charley began to foresee a big future for himself and her, a future spangled with dollar signs.
The girl came back a few minutes later carrying a martini in the middle of a tray. As she put it down, one of her breasts pressed against Charley's shoulder. What he felt was firm and resilient and exciting-exciting simply as flesh, and exciting because he knew that the gesture had been deliberate.
She straightened up. "See if that's dry enough for you. Otherwise I'll bring you another one."
He tasted it. "It's fine."
"Good."
"I'm Charley Simmons. You?"
"Janey Vaughn."
"Hi, Janey. Do we have a date for nine o'clock?" Charley asked-
Her eyes were twinkling. "We sure do, Charley. Would you care to order now?"
He hadn't been planning to have an elaborate meal when he walked into the place, nor even a cocktail. A hamburger and a beer were all he had on his mind. But the sight of the girl had made him feel like splurging, and so he had ordered the martini. He was in the same mood when the time came to decide on dinner. He ordered the most expensive thing on the menu, sirloin steak, five bucks. Janey's eyes widened a little as he gave her the order. Obviously they sold a lot of hamburgers and not very many sirloin steaks in this place. But he figured it was a good investment. For one thing, he was hungry. For another, he wanted to show this girl that he was a big spender. For a third thing, he figured that she was going to bring him lots and lots of money in the very near future, so why stint himself now? He would splurge.
The steak wasn't bad. Charley had had better steaks in the past, and he expected to have much better ones in the future. But it was edible. That was about all you could ask, when you stopped off at an unknown roadhouse in the middle of nowhere.
He ate slowly, using up the time. By quarter of nine, he was finished. The girl brought him his check.
"I still got fifteen more minutes," she said.
"I know. I'll wait."
"You want another cup of coffee while you're waiting, Charley?"
"Why not?"
She brought the coffee pot and left it on the table. He handed her a ten-dollar bill, and she went to get change. The total tab was a little over six bucks. He left her a dollar and a half as her tip. He pushed the money toward her, and she looked at it in an embarrassed way, as though to say you didn't take tips from a guy you've made a date with for nine o'clock.
But she took the money anyway.
"I'll be back in ten minutes," she said. "I can't come to the table and get you. You follow me out when you see me go by, and I'll meet you in front."
"Sure thing," Charley said.
He poured some more coffee for himself and sipped it slowly, wondering what the girl looked like under that shapeless uniform. Two nice round boobs, ne thought, and long sleek legs, and a cute little rear end. His throat tightened. He hadn't had a woman for a while, and he was hungry for one. Especially one who was built like this chick.
The minutes crawled away. Charley finished his coffee. It got to be nine o'clock, and then five after nine. And then the girl came out. She crossed the dining room, smiled a bedroom smile at him, and went out the front door.
She looked a lot different now that she had shed her uniform. In its place, she was wearing a green sweater and a tight short skirt. The sweater clung to the lush contours of her breasts, molding and outlining them in an eye-opening way. The skirt glided over the curves of her buttocks in an equally agreeable fashion.
The change was dramatic. The girl seemed five or six years older than she had been when in her waitress costume.
Perfect, Charley thought. Exactly what he needed for his dodge-a girl who could shift her age back and forth like that with a few tricks of make-up and dress.
He got up, followed her out of the roadhouse.
She was waiting by the porch steps. It was a cool, crisp night in late November, with more of autumn in the air than of winter. The stars were out, and the moon was nearly full.
"My car's over there," Charley said.
"Ttot one?"
"That's right," he said, grinning. It was a big, shiny 'ol Imperial that he had picked up under complicated circumstances a few months before. The previous owner had dropped a big World Series bet and was trying to raise cash in any way possible. Charley had been glad to relieve him of his car for a fifth of its market price, in a quick straight cash transaction. It was an impressive hunk of merchandise. Charley felt like a stockbroker or a senator when he sat in it, instead of like the chiseling drifter that he knew he really was.
They got in. He started the car with a mighty rumble, and pulled it out of the roadhouse parking lot. "Where to?" he asked.
"I don't know," she said. "Do you have a motel room somewhere around here?"
"I didn't bother," he said. "I was figuring I'd just have dinner and hit the road again. I'm bound for Florida to pass the winter. Suppose we just drive around for a while."
"Okay," she said. "I've never been in a car like this anyway. I want to see what it's like."
"Sure. Why not?"
He showed her what the car was like. He took her over to the highway and ran a few test sprints for her, gunning the big car up to sixty and seventy and eighty miles an hour. On the return trip he nudged it to ninety-five on a straight-away stretch, and he sneaked a glance at her while he drove, just to see how she was reacting.
She seemed to be loving it. There wasn't a trace of fear on her face She seemed almost ecstatic as the miles rushed past.
Good, Charley thought. He needed a girl who liked to take chances, a girl who got a thrill out of moving fast.
He turned off the highway onto a country road and said, "You want to try driving it, Janey?"
"Sure. Why not?"
He got out, let her get behind the wheel. She started the car with a jerk, but after a moment she got the hang of controlling the monster, and it went purring smoothly along. She drove for about five miles, then pulled the car off at the side of the road.
"Nice," she said. "Real nice."
"I like a car that's got some zoom," Charley said.
"Let's get out. Get some fresh air."
"Okay."
They were in a lonely, deserted area, where the only sign of civilization was a billboard a few hundred feet up the road. They stood by the side of the road, looking toward a woodsy stretch of pines and spruces. The air seemed very mild even for this time of year.
Charley turned to her. She slid easily into his arms, and his mouth went to hers. She had a cooperative mouth, soft and warm and willing for him, and as he slid his lips against hers he felt her responding pressure from the opposite direction. She knew how to kiss, obviously, and just as obviously she didn't have any inhibitions about kissing a man she had met an hour and a half ago, and kissing him pretty passionately at that.
Charley brought his hand up and cupped that over one of her breasts. She didn't push the hand away Through the fabric of her sweater he could feel a firm, ripe globe of flesh. No falsies on her, he thought. Just good honest boobs there.
The kiss became more torrid as he caressed her breast. She moved her entire body at him, pushing to a close contact. Charley let his other hand slide down her back to her buttocks. Her skirt was thin, and the panties beneath offered no obstacle. He felt solid, resilient flesh there. Good, he thought. Charley was a big bottom man. He loved to look at a nice pink pair of buttocks. But he liked boobs too. Charley wasn't single-minded about such things.
Neither was she, that seemed. She left no doubts at all about herself when she slipped her hand between her body and his, and touched him. Apparently she liked what she found, because Charley didn't overlook her little hiss of excitement and pleasure.
They stood that way for a long moment, bodies clasped tight. Then he said, "There's a lot of room for two in the back seat."
"All right, Charley."
He opened the door. She got into the car, and he joined her on the back seat. She acted as though she knew something about how to love on the back seats of automobiles. Charley wasn't surprised. He didn't imagine that she was any virgin.
She kicked off her shoes and stretched out full length, resting her head against the arm rest of the far door. She arranged herself on the seat, letting one leg dangle down, leaving some room for him. Charley bent forward to kiss her.
Their kiss was a long, eager, enthusiastic one, just as passionate as the one outside the car. But this time Charley ran his hand down the front of her body and under the hem of her skirt, and then over stocking-clad legs to the place where her stockings ended, and then along the smooth, tempting bare flesh.
His hand was busy. She began to gasp.
Meanwhile his other hand was groping around under her sweater, looking for the clasp of her brassiere. He found that. Opening a girl's bra with one hand had always struck him as something of a trick, but she helped him, shrugging her shoulders together to give him plenty of slack on the strap.
The cups dropped away. Charley slipped his hand around to the front and felt firm, cool globes of taut flesh, very nice indeed. He couldn't see them, because she still had her sweater on, but he could feel them, and he liked what he felt. They were mighty fine boobs, he thought. The nipples were small and warm against his fingertips as he touched them.
They were both breathing hard, now. The girl shifted her position on the seat of the car and pulled her skirt up so that the material bunched around her waist. Charley looked at her and saw long, tapering, exciting legs.
She made a little panting, gasping sound of pleasure. He went on playing with her, one hand maneuvering around her legs, the other one gliding back and forth from one jutting breast to the other, unable to decide which he preferred.
She said, "If you want me I'm ready."
"Sure thing, baby."
Smiling, Charley pulled his hand away from her legs and began to roll her panties down. She arched her back, lifting her buttocks away from the upholstery of the seat to make matters easier for him. He got the panties past her knees and she reached down to pull them the rest of the way. They dropped to the floor of the car.
The moonlight filtering into the car gave Charley a good view of her. Her skirt was pulled up so high that he could see her navel.
Nice, he thought. Very nice.
Long legs. Soft flesh. Slim waist Her skin was creamy and inviting. The straps of her garter belt cut downward across her.
He pushed her sweater up to her arms. The hills of her breasts sprang into view. They were as easy on the eye as they had been to the touch. They looked as though they had been carved out of marble, two firm, white mounds of sensuous flesh, rising steeply, set close together with a deep valley. Charley grinned. He bad pulled himself an ace this time.
Her hand went to his trousers. She obviously wasn't afraic of seeming too forward. That was a point in her favor for Charley. He hated fake modesty. He hated that when a girl who had lost her virginity ten years ago suddenly came on big with the shy maiden routine. If a girl did things, Charley wanted her to do them with enthusiasm.
Janey seemed very enthusiastic.
Her hand went away. Charley moved forward and she adjusted her position on the seat for his convenience. She was ready to go.
Charley took her.
He was aware of warmth and softness, and he kept on the way he was going, and she responded to him. He got his hands underneath her, cupping her buttocks, gripping the taut springy flesh.
His lips went to hers for a deep kiss. Through his shirt he could feel the globes of her breasts with their tense little tips. Her body was moving eagerly now, and her eyes were closed, her nostrils wide as she sucked air into her lungs.
Charley worked diligently. He pulled his lips from hers as the gasping began, and his head went down alongside hers, his cheek to her cheek, his face on the upholstery, his big body alive with ever mounting frenzy and excitement.
He knew when she was about to achieve her fullest pleasure. She was fast to get there, he thought. Another point in her favor. Charley didn't like slow women much. If he had to, he could satisfy them, but he preferred the kind who got turned on right away.
Like this one.
She was turned on fit to beat the band, all of a sudden. Her slender, nearly nude body flew around wildly on the seat of the car, in constant motion, breasts jiggling and leaping around.
"Oh, yes," she cried. "Yes, go, man, got"
Charley went.
He went right to the top of the stratosphere, and she went right along with him. In another moment they were both flying high. There was a pounding in his eardrums and a throbbing in his chest and a thunder in his brain, and then there were jolts of pleasure, the hammer blows of ecstasy repeated again and again and again, and her trembling body shook and shivered and went through moment after moment of fulfillment.
Their bodies sought to wring the utmost from the moment of ecstasy. For one long timeless instant they worked with furious abandon.
Then they subsided.
Sweat rolled down Charley's husky body. He shifted his weight, trying to brace himself, not wanting to hurt her.
After a long moment he broke the silence.
He said. "How would you like to go to Florida with me, Janey?"
CHAPTER TWO
She had suspected that something like that was in the offering. She didn't know why she had thought so, but somehow she had expected that. Just as she had expected, when she first saw the big handsome man come into the roadhouse, that she would end up sleeping with him before the night was over.
She didn't answer right away. She pulled her skirt down, and twisted her body to a more comfortable position. Love on the back seat of a car was fun, in a way, but you needed to be double-jointed to enjoy yourself properly, Janey had always thought.
Not that she had done badly just now. Even with all the weird angles her body had been bent at, she had had herself a ball.
She pulled her bra back into place and yanked her sweater down. She smoothed her skirt down again over her legs. Her panties were still on the floor of the car, but she didn't bother with those. She sat up, leaned back. Charley was getting his clothing adjusted, and he was looking at her steadily, waiting for the answer to his question.
She said, "For how long?"
"All winter."
"What would I do down there?"
"More or less what you just did now," he said. "Only under more comfortable circumstances."
She said, "You got a job down there?"
"I've got a deal waiting for me."
She let that pass without questioning it. He was probably in some kind of illegal or semi-legal racket, but that didn't worry her too much. There was something flashy about him and about his expensive car. He didn't look very old, maybe twenty-seven, twenty-eight years old, and you didn't ordinarily get to drive a car like that at that age unless you had some special gimmick going for you.
Janey looked him in the eye. "We'd live together down there, huh?"
"That's the general idea," he said.
"In a hotel?"
"We'll get an apartment," he said. "In Miami, near the beach. It's better than working in a roadhouse in Delaware, believe me. You won't need to wait on tables down there."
"What'll we live on?"
"You leave that to me, Janey."
"How soon do we leave?"
"What's wrong with tonight?" he asked.
Janey thought that one over. Drop everything, go running off to Florida with a guy she hardly knew? Well, why not?
Why not?
She thought about the loose ends in her life. There weren't many. She wasn't seeing any guy in particular these days, just going out now and then, as the mood struck her, for casual pickups like this fellow Charley Simmons. She lived alone, in a boarding-house room on the edge of town, nothing that she'd miss leaving behind. She didn't have much in the way of personal possessions. It would all fit into a suitcase or two.
Her rent would be due in three days. Leaving tonight would mean skipping out on that. On the other hand, the restaurant owed her for four days' pay. She wouldn't be able to collect it if she left tonight. One thing would just about balance out the other, she thought. Let the landlady sue the restaurant.
She said, "Why don't we stay at my place tonight and leave first thing in the morning?"
"I'd rather not. I want to get moving."
"What's the matter, Charley?" she asked. "Are the cops on your trail?"
"It isn't that at all. I'm not in any trouble. But I'm itching to get on my way. Why stick around a drum-bum town like this an hour longer than you have to? It's half past ten, now. How long would it take you to pack, anyhow?"
"Maybe an hour."
"Okay. We can go over to your place, freshen up a little, get you packed. We'll be on the road before midnight. Drive for maybe six, seven hours, find a motel room in the morning. Sleep while everybody else is on the road. Then get going again. We can be in Miami day after tomorrow, maybe."
She looked at him closely. "What's the catch in all this, Charley?"
"No catch. You're a good-looking girl and I want company down there. That's the whole deal."
"There's got to be more."
"Well," he said, "just a little. I figure you can help me out down there. The kind of work I'm in, a pretty girl is useful. What do you say? We have a deal, or don't we have a deal?"
"One string attached," she said.
"Name it."
"Any time I want out," she said, "I'm entitled to it, just by telling you so. And if I decide to walk out on you, you've got to pay my bus fare back North. That's the only condition I'm tying on."
"Okay. Fair enough."
"We'll leave tonight, then," she said. "You got yourself a deal."
He grinned and leaned forward to kiss her. His hands went to her breasts. She had big breasts, but he had bigger hands, and he gave them a good squeeze. The kiss wasn't as fiery as their earlier ones, but that managed to stir a throb of excitement for her anyway.
Then he straightened up. "Come on," he said. "Let's get over to your place."
They got into the front seat of the car again. Charley drove, Janey directed him. She pondered this whole deal that had come up.
It sounded pretty good, she thought. Whatever the angles were, she was sure she could manage them. Anything was better than slinging hash in this road-house. She was averaging about sixty bucks a week, including tips. Big deal. And winter was coming on, now. Why spend the winter living in this nowhere town when she could be down basking on the beach at Miami?
Anyway, Janey was a restless girl. She had done a lot of wandering in her twenty-three years. Only once since she had left home at seventeen had she settled down for any length of time, and that had been the year and a half, from nineteen to twenty-plus, that she had been married. Marriage had bored her after a while. The idea of putting up with the same guy, night after night began to get to be pretty sickening, especially when she didn't love her husband, as she discovered after she had been married to him for a little while.
So the marriage had conked out. On and off, Janey had lived with other guys, before and after-maybe two, three months at best-then she felt footloose and took off for greener pastures. She had come to Delaware because a friend of hers offered her a job. The friend had gotten married and left town almost immediately, leaving Janey stranded with a lousy job in a lousy town. That had been in April. Now it was November.
Time to be moving along, Janey thought.
And this Charley Simmons, with his Florida proposition, provided as good an excuse for her to pick up and go as anything.
They cut across town into the street of old frame houses where she lived. The street was quiet and most of the lights were out. Around here, the sidewalks were rolled up pretty early on a week-day night.
"Here we are," she said. "Be it ever so humble, et cetera, et cetera."
They went in, and up the creaking stairs to her room on the second floor. Janey switched on the light. The place was pretty untidy. She hadn't made the bed all week, or even emptied the ash trays.
"It isn't much of an advertisement for my neatness as a housekeeper," she said. "But I haven't had much incentive, living alone."
"That's okay. I'm not the neatest guy in the world. I think we'll get along."
"I think so too, Charley."
She went to the closet and hauled her suitcase out. Janey believed in traveling light, not cluttering yourself up witl property. Personal possessions were evil, she thought. You thought they belonged to you, but really you belonged to them. What good was surrounding yourself with a lot of things? They crippled you when you wanted to get moving again. She would never have been able to make this spur-of-the-moment decision to travel with him if she were all encumbered with solid possessions.
She said, "It's not going to take me long to pack. Why don't we take showers before we leave, too? Make use of the facilities. I feel kind of sweaty."
"Good idea," he said. "Let's go take a shower together, right now."
"Uh-uh! My landlady would flip if she ever saw us going in there with each other!"
"She's probably fast asleep."
"Doesn't matter. She's a nice old dame and I don't want to shock her sensitive soul. You go take a shower and I'll start packing. Then I'D take a shower when you get back," she said.
"Okay."
He began to undress. Even though they had already made love, Janey felt a little odd about watching him strip in front of her. They were still really strangers, after all. The half hour of frenzied loving on the back of the car hadn't changed that. And though she had never objected to nudity as a preface to making love, this casual undressing of his was something else entirely, almost a domestic thing, like a husband taking off his clothes while the wife went about the t chores of packing.
But she kept an eye on him as he peeled. She wanted to see what kind of merchandise she was getting. He was a good lover, she knew that much, but she really didn't know what his body was like.
She liked what she saw.
He was a big guy, about six feet three, weighing well over two hundred pounds. There was some extra beef on him, but not much, considering how big he was. His muscles were big and well-developed, and she figured that the little paunch he was sprouting around his middle would begin to vanish under the Florida sun.
He was a powerful-looking guy, she thought. And masculine. Very much so. Almost startlingly so. No wonder he had been so good when he loved her.
"Here," she said, tossing him a robe. "That isn't much, but that'll keep you decent. The shower's just down the hall, the first open door on your left. Make sure you test the water before you get under it. Gets pretty scalding sometimes when you don't expect it."
He looked pretty comical wearing her robe. It came down only to the middle of his upper legs, and he had to hunch his shoulders inward to keep from bursting the seams. But he was covered, at least. He winked in a good-natured way and went out, carrying a towel and soap.
Janey got down to the business of packing.
It was a quicker job than she had thought. Just open the drawers, stuff the things in. Luckily, she hadn't sent a laundry bundle away yet this week. She didn't have so much clothing that she could afford to pull out of town leaving some of it behind. But all the dirty laundry was still in her closet. She stuffed it into the corner of her suitcase. She'd take care of it in Florida, she figured. Let him pay the laundry bill.
She was almost through packing by the time he returned from the shower, smelling fresh and faintly soapy. He wriggled out of her robe and said, "It's your turn now, baby. How's the packing?"
"Just about done," she said. "Just this stack of panties and I'm finished."
She loaded the last items into the suitcase and closed the lid. It didn't quite make it.
He said, "You want me to sit on it for you?"
"Do something, anyway. Get it closed. I'm going to take my shower."
She began to undress. He concentrated on closing the suitcase, and he managed to force the clasp shut by the time Janey had taken off her sweater. She unhooked her bra and started to remove her skirt.
He was looking at her.
She smiled, felt a faint tension in her muscles as his eyes came to rest on her bare breasts, and stepped out of her skirt. A moment later her panties followed, and then her stockings and garter belt.
She was nude.
He was drinking her in with his eyes. She could see his glance shifting from her breasts to her hips, her hips to her legs, her legs back to her breasts.
"What's the matter?" she asked. "Do I have three boobs or something?"
"You mind if I stare?"
"You're looking at me like you've never seen a naked girl before."
"I haven't seen too many that look like you," he said.
"You like, huh?"
He nodded. "Mucho. You don't get a very good idea of what a girl looks like when you're wrestling around in a parked car. The view's a lot better the way that is right now."
Janey smiled. She liked to be looked at by men. Especially when she was nude. She was tall and slender, with ramrod-straight posture, and she drew air into her lungs, making her voluptuous breasts swell outward. She was proud of her body, proud of the way she could make a man light up and glow the way Charley Simmons was doing right now.
She turned, picked up her bathrobe. She could practically feel the intensity of his gaze on her bare buttocks as she stood with her back to him. She started to get into the robe.
"Wait a second," he said.
He moved behind her. He was still naked himself. He took the robe from her hand and put that down. At first she thought he was going to love her again, but she realized all he wanted was a kiss. He really was in a hurry to hit the road, then.
He spun her around and she went into his arms. The tips of her bare breasts grazed his hairy chest, and then her breasts were being crushed against him ai he gave her a bear-hug. She felt his body firmly against hers, his hands gliding down her back to the ripe mounds of her buttocks, fingertips digging at the lush flesh. Then he released her.
He gave her a quick pat on the buttocks. "Go take your shower, now. I'll wait."
She put her robe on and went down the hall. The shower room was still steamy from his shower. Janey turned the water on and got in. She gave herself a brisk rubdown, getting the sweat of a long day's work off her, as well as the sweat of the back seat of Charley Simmons's car.
When she emerged, she was pink and clean and well-scrubbed. The heavy globes of her breasts were glistening. She swept her dark hair back and returned to the room. Charley was dressed and waiting for her. Janey had left a blouse and slacks out to wear as traveling clothes, and she put them on.
"Ready?" he asked.
"As ready as I'll ever be," she said.
He took the suitcase. Janey glanced around the room for the last time, and then they went out. As they started down the stairs, she warned him not to make any noise. She didn't want the landlady to find them sneaking out like this.
It was just before midnight. The air was crisp and mild, the stars brilliant. He loaded her suitcase into the trunk of the car.
"Away we go," he said.
She winked. "Florida bound."
They got into the car. He was behind the wheel. Janey stretched out comfortably. There was plenty of leg room in the spacious Imperial. The engine came thrumming to life, and they went zooming away from the curb.
He said, "I figure we'll stay in Florida till the end of the peak season. Say, around the middle of March."
"Where to then?"
"California," he said. "That's where I'd like to go next."
"I've never been out there."
"We'll drive across the country, baby. We'll do the real tourist bit. The Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Las Vegas-you name it, well go there."
"Sounds great, Charley!"
"It's going to be," he said.
After they had driven about a dozen miles in silence she said, "Aren't you going to tell me a little about yourself? I mean, now that we're on the road together, I ought to get some autobiography."
"Sure," he said. "Charles Simmons, white, male, aged twenty-nine. Born New York City. No convictions except in traffic court. High school diploma, no college. Variety of jobs. Unmarried."
"Never been married at all?"
"Never," he said. "You?"
"Once. It didn't work."
"It hardly ever does," he said. "I don't understand why people get married so much."
"For the loving?" Janey suggested. "You don't need a license for that, do you? At least, I never thought I did."
"Me neither."
"You're a good kid," he said. "How old are you, anyway, Janey?"
"It isn't polite to ask a woman her age."
"I'm not a polite guy," he said. "The next time we make love, do you want me to be polite?"
"No, sirree!" she said, laughing. "You just be rough and tough and mean. Even belch a little, if you like. I'm twenty-three."
"It's hard to guess your age," he said. "Do people ever think you're younger?"
"Sure," Janey said. "Depends on how I dress. Sometimes when I'm wearing shorts and a polo shirt people come around, salesmen, they knock at the door and ask if my mother's home."
"I sort of figured that would happen. They take you for a teen-ager, huh?"
"Sometimes. But when I'm dressed up it's a lot different. You didn't think I was any teen-ager tonight, did you?"
"No," he said. "I sure didn't."
"What kind of work do you do, Charley?"
"Whatever pays."
"Digging ditches? Cleaning out septic tanks?"
"Correction," he said. "I do whatever pays and whatever's pleasant to do."
"Such as?"
"Well, I've been a race track tout, and a gigolo, and a couple of other things, I guess. Mostly kind of shady things. But I've never been arrested for anything and I've never spent a night in jail."
"I have," Janey said.
He swung around and looked at her in surprise. "You have?"
Janey giggled, remembering it. "I sure have," she said. "For indecent exposure."
"Sounds interesting."
"A lot of other people thought so too. That happened when I was married. That was about three years ago. The second summer of my marriage, the last summer. The marriage was breaking up then. We were fighting all the time. My husband was a kind of boring guy, square as anything. We went on this picnic, him and me, two other couples. We went to a state park."
"What happened?"
"I got drunk," Janey said. "Dick and me, we had a big argument right there at the picnic, and I must have had eight or nine cans of beer, and he kept telling me to shut up, to stop singing and making so much noise, because it was embarrassing him. So I decided to embarrass him real good and proper."
"Oh-oh," Charley said.
The memory floated through her brain: the blazing sun overhead, the crowd of people picnicking by the lake, the yellow bathing suit she was wearing. "I had on a two-piece bathing suit," she said. "It wasn't really a bikini, because it was cut pretty wide, not skimpy at all. Just a bare midriff, you know. And when Dick began coming on with this shushing bit, I said I'd take my bathing suit off if he didn't stop annoying me. He said he'd divorce me if I did. So I took the top of my bathing suit off."
"And the cops hustled you away?"
"Like hell they did. I stood there with my boobs bare and walked up and down, and there must have been a thousand people there. Everybody stared, but nobody did anything. The place got very quiet. Dick tried to grab me and pull me away, but I threw my bathing suit top at him and ran away. He chased me up and down the beach. You can picture that, my boobs bouncing, all these people with their mouths wide open, little kiddies pointing and asking questions out loud."
"Must have been some show," Charley said.
"I guess that was. But Dick got disgusted and started to leave. So I went a step further. I took my bathing suit bottom off, too. I ran around without a stitch on. That was when the park police grabbed me. A couple of them had been watching, looking at my boobs, but I guess now they figured I had gone too far. So they hustled me away into the wagon, me stark naked, all the cops grabbing free holds as they dragged me off."
"Did the cops take advantage of you down at the station house?" he asked.
"Uh-uh. They all took a good look first, and then they put a blanket over me. They booked me for indecent exposure and drunk and disorderly, and since I didn't have any money on me, or anything else except skin, they tossed me in the jug overnight. Naked. And then in the morning one of the other people we had been with at the picnic came down and bailed me out. I was fined twenty-five bucks. And my husband divorced me, just like he said he would."
"That must have looked good in court," he said. "Grounds of divorce that you showed off wantonly in front of strangers."
"Oh, that wasn't it," she said. "I was unfaithful to him, and he knew I was. I loved all his friends. I die. that just to make him angry."
"The poor jerk."
"He deserved it."
"You sound like you're a wild one, girlie." Janey laughed. "I guess I am. Do you like them wild," Charley?"
"You bet I do."
"Then I think we're going to get along," she said.
He reached his right hand toward her as he drove, and snaked that around her shoulders, going under her arm to cup her right breast. She enjoyed the feel of his big hand holding her there. The car hummed along southward down the highway at a steady seventy miles an hour.
When they had been driving about two and a half hours, he pulled off into a service station and they changed drivers. She got behind the wheel, starting off cautiously at first but then pushed the speed up close to seventy as she got the feel of the car. She drove for an hour and a half, and then he took over again. By this time they had left Delaware behind and were slicing across Maryland toward Virginia.
About six in the morning, Charley said, "How about stopping?"
"Good idea. I'm getting pretty sleepy."
"So am I."
He turned off the highway. A row of motels greeted them, each one with its VACANCY sign lit. Charley passed two or three of them by, pulling into one that seemed to strike his fancy.
The night clerk checked them in, without any fol-derol about looking at marriage certificates. Charley paid for the room in advance, ten bucks. It was a nice, neat, modern room, with a double bed and pretty furniture and a gaily tiled shower.
They got undressed quickly.
Charley glanced at the big, bouncy bed. "Looks pretty comfortable," he said.
"More comfortable than the back seat of a car," Janey agreed.
He turned out the light. She closed the blinds. Dawn was breaking outside, but they weren't going to let that bother them. Nude, Janey slipped onto the bed. He was already there, waiting for her.
He didn't plan to go to sleep right away.
Neither did she.
She let him take her. He was big and burly, and her breasts, her nipples hard and rigid against his lips, his hand gliding to her, warming her, stroking her.
Janey put her head against the bouncy foam rubber pillow and drew his weight against her.
She let him take her. He was big and burly, and she shivered with delight as he began, and then their bodies began to work with rhythmic motion, and Janey felt the excitement of passion grow and swell for her. She thought back on the last few hours and how suddenly things could happen. At eight o'clock last night she had been slinging hash in a Delaware roadhouse, and now here she was between the cool clean sheets of a Virginia motel bed, being loved by a big husky stranger who had stepped into her life out of nowhere to take her off to Florida for the winter.
Her body moved. Trembled. Shook.
Her nipples responded. Her muscles tensed.
She tightened her arms around his body. She dug her fingers at the thick, ridged muscles of his broad, strong back. Her body still moved.
Ecstasy rose for her and overwhelmed her.
And after the wild tide of passion there was sleep, deep and dreamless.
CHAPTER THREE
They were somewhere in South Carolina when Charley decided to let her in on the nature of the deal he was going to be working in Florida.
The day before, he had been deliberately vague about the nature of the deal. But he didn't need to be any more, now that he knew Janey better. He had been traveling with her for two days now, and had been to bed with her four or five times, and he knew that she was his kind of girl from the word go. They were sim-patico.
And he also knew that she wouldn't be offended or moralistic about what he had in mind. He knew that because she had told him, yesterday along about sundown as they were hitting the road, that for a few months after the breakup of her marriage she had been a professional.
"I didn't like that much," she told him. "That wasn't the love part that bothered me. Love is fun, and I don't mind sleeping around. But I didn't like the work. I didn't like hunting up men and paying off cops and having to put up with five or six guys every time, never knowing what kind of kook I'd catch."
"Why'd you quit?" he had asked her.
"I wasn't making much money, for one thing," she said. "Maybe a hundred fifty a week, which sounds like a lot, but not when you have to earn that way. And the risks were too big. So I tried some other line of work."
She had worked as an artist's model for a while, posing in the nude, she told him. And as a waitress in a variety of cheap restaurants. And as a clerk in a department store. A lot of dull jobs.
She had the right qualifications for Charley's job, though. She had the looks and she had the temperament. She didn't mind showing her body off and she didn't mind sleeping with strangers-for the right price.
So as they motored southward through South Carolina Charley finally gave her the pitch.
"Basically," he said, "what it is is a blackmail operation.
"Blackmail?"
"Or extortion. Or something like that. I call it easy money."
"Tell me more."
"I'll fill you in on the background first," Charley said. "This time of year, Florida is full up to the brim with vacationers. A lot of them are married folks, but a lot of them are singles, too-men in their thirties and forties and fifties who come down to Florida looking for adventure. A lot of them have more money than brains. They're square rectangles."
"But looking for girls."
"Exactly. These aren't really sophisticated guys, mind you. The sophisticated ones are down in the Caribbean, down in the real islands. The guys who go to Florida these days are the hicks. But they're rich hicks, even though they're dopes. Even a dope can make a lot of money if he's got something to offer that people want to buy. What we're going to do down there, Janey, is let you get into romances with these boys. One at a time, I mean."
"What am I supposed to do?"
"Look good and let them pick you up. Put on a low-neckline dress and show them enough frontage to knock their eyes out. Put your hair up. Go to their hotel rooms with them and give them a good time."
"For free?"
"Sure," Charley said. "That's the whole gimmick. You aren't supposed to be a tramp. You're just a nice clean-cut girl down in Florida on a vacation, looking for adventure same as these guys. So you have your adventure with them in their hotel room, and then you smile and bat your long eyelashes and thank them for the pleasure, and you put your clothes on and leave."
"Then what?"
"Then we hit them with the squeeze. You let your hair down into a nice pony-tail. You scrub all the make-up off your face. You dress in a little-girl kind of outfit that doesn't cling tight to your boobs. Then you pay another visit to your boy friend in the hotel room, only this time you take your big brother along."
"You?"
"Me. And we explain the situation. We tell them that a terrible mistake has been made, that a seventeen-year-old virgin has been seduced and ruined." . "Me?"
"You," Charley said. "A clear case of statutory rape. A dirty old man picking up an innocent young vacationing girl and banging her. We intend to go to the police right away. Unless, of course, we can come to some kind of arrangement that will recompense you in some way for the terrible thing that's happened to you."
"A cash arrangement, of course."
"Of course," Charley said. "Five, hundred bucks, I think. That's a good price for a seduction. Then we move on to some other hotel and try the whole thing again We ought to be able to score every week. Five hundred smackers a week, and the rest of the time we're relaxing on the beach."
Paney said; "What happens with the money?"
"We split it."
"Who gets what?"
"Fifty-fifty," he said. "Could anything be fairer than that?"
"I've got to prostitute myself, though," she said. "I'm the one who provides the bed action."
"But I'm not the muscle who enforces collection," Charley pointed out. "Fair is fair. We each play an essential part in the operation. I can't work the deal unless you go to bed with these guys, of course. But you can't collect without me. They'll laugh in your face if you come on with the virgin act all by yourself. We need each other. So a fifty-fifty split is perfect."
"All right," she said. "Fifty-fifty."
"We ought to be able to clear four or five thousand bucks apiece by the end of the season," Charley said. "Then we head for California and enjoy ourselves. Maybe work the dodge a few times out there to cover expenses. In the fall, back to Florida for the new season."
"Now I see why you kept asking me if people make mistakes about my age," Janey said. "I've got to dress up first and catch them, and then I've got to look like a shy little girl afterward."
"Keerect."
"I think I can do it."
"I'm sure you can. I never doubted it."
"But answer me this," she said. "How did you know, when you picked me up that night, that I'd go along? Just because I let you love me in the car, that didn't mean I'd necessarily want to go for something like this."
"I had a hunch," Charley said.
"You could have been wrong. What would you have done if when you finally sprung the pitch on me, I'd said no and slapped you in the face for even daring to suggest such a shocking thing?"
He shrugged. "We had a deal. Any time you wanted out, you could get out, and I'd pay your bus fare back north. If that's how it worked out, that's how it worked out, that's what would have happened, Janey."
"But you guessed I'd play along?"
"I had a hunch."
"Your hunch was right," she said. "I think it's a terrific idea. Will it work?"
"Sure it will," he said. "Well be rolling in cash, speed. With your body and my brains-we'll rack 'em up, Janey, we'll rack 'em up."
The weather was warm and balmy as they pulled into Florida. It was still early in the season, with Thanksgiving still a week away. But Charley wanted to get a jump on the season. The vacationers would start thronging to Miami Beach the first week in December, and they would keep on coming in droves, until by the week before Christmas the place would be packed six deep. Then there would be a gradual dip after the first of the year, and a second spurt in February.
The Miami cops couldn't possibly keep up with all the swindlers, bunco men, and extortionists who descended on the city during the winter months. They had their hands full. Florida vacationers, like the dumb bunnies who go to Honolulu to get leis, are the biggest marks in the country-mostly rubes from the Middle West and from small towns, all gaga over the palm trees and the bikinis on the beach. They were ripe for plucking. Charley meant to do his share, with Janey's help.
They kept heading southward, and by nightfall they were in Dade County.
"We won't try to stay in Miami Beach," Charley said. "No sense running up the overhead for nothing."
"You're the boss."
"We'll get ourselves a little apartment in Miami, nothing special. And we can drive out to the hotels to work our routine."
They found a place that evening. It was no palace. It was a two-room apartment in a cheap boarding house, a little fancier than the place Janey had been living in back in Delaware, but not much. The rent was fifteen bucks a week. Charley had come south with just a couple of hundred dollars to his name, so he wasn't eager to make like the last of the big spenders until there was some money coming in.
"Well get a better place in a month or two," Charley promised her "As soon as die dough starts rolling this way, baby."
"I don't mind living here, Charley. It's okay," Janey said.
"You deserve a lot better."
She laughed. "That landlord was a scream, wasn't he? Didn't care a hoot whether we were man and wife, brother and sister, just a couple of good friends, anything. All he was worried about was were we both white."
"They're very sensitive about that down here."
"Maybe they've got a law about letting a man and woman of different races share an apartment."
"Wouldn't the Supreme Court throw something like that out, Charley?"
"The Supreme Court doesn't live in Miami. They've got to know about something before they can do anything about it," Charley said.
"I felt like telling him that my great-grandmother was mulatto. What would he have done, do you think?"
"Rented the apartment to someone else," Charley said. He walked to the window and looked out. Not much of a view, just a row of rickety houses across the street. But nearby lay that glittering sand bar known as Miami Beach, and Miami Beach was full of fools and their money, soon to be parted, Charley-hoped.
Janey had begun unpacking. Charley said, "I want to run a little rehearsal tonight. I want you to try on your costumes for me. First the pickup one, and then the little-girl one. Okay?"
"Sure, Charley."
She fished clothing out of the drawer. He settled down in the wobbly armchair that had come with the apartment, and watched her as she changed.
She peeled off the slacks and blouse that she had been traveling in. Then she took off her bra, too, revealing the ripe, luscious globes of her high-rising breasts. After some rooting around in her dresser, she pulled out a strapless bra and put that on. That was like carrying coals to Newcastle, making her already sumptuous breasts look even more impressive than they were to begin with, thrusting them up high and close together.
Then she slipped into a wine-colored dress that scooped practically navel-deep in front. The dress showed off the loveliness of her full breasts the way a fine setting shows off a valuable gem.
She tossed him a torrid, sizzling bedroom look, leaning forward a little to let the heavy globes tumble into prominent display.
Charley applauded. "Great! Terrific!"
Her voice was low and almost comically suggestive as she murmured throatily, "Hello, handsome. Want to show a girl a good time?"
"Sure thing, baby. Come to papa."
She crossed the room toward htm, hips swiveling, batting her eyes in a parody of sensuality. She melted into his arms, her lips seeking his, her kiss the bite of a treacherous serpent escaped from a cage. He held her tight. His hand crept across her body, fastening at the thrusting globe of her left breast. The tips of his ear, nibbling his earlobe. Her breath was warm his fingers enjoyed her yielding, resilient, satin-smooth flesh.
They kissed, fiercely, passionately. She pulled her lips from his, and, panting, ran them across his jaw to his ear, nibbling his earlobe. her breath was warm against his cheek. Her body was trembling with desire. Right now she was the incarnation of sin, she was walking passion. Her body twisted and turned in his arms, gliding voluptuously from side to side, rubbing against him the way a friendly cat might.
"Oh, baby," she whispered hoarsely. "Please, baby, show me what you can do."
He guided her toward the bed, keeping his hand to her breast. He sat her down. She looked at him, eyes turning to little slits of desire, nostrils flaring with lust, her whole expression steaming and tropical.
"Let's go," she said.
Charley grinned. "Later. We aren't through with the rehearsal yet."
"I've got a yen that needs to be satisfied, Charley. I need you bad."
"You fell for your own act, huh? You got yourself all worked up?"
"I'm easily excited, Charley."
"So I've noticed."
"You don't seem to mind."
"No," he said. "I don't. But I'm not going to love you just yet. I want you to show me the other part of the routine, now. The injured virgin act. Change into some different clothes and let's have a look."
She got out of the low-cut dress, out of the strapless bra. Charley eyed her with pleasure as she bent over the things in the dresser drawer, selecting her new costume. Her breasts, dangling forward, swayed to and fro like bells.
She put on a different bra, one that did absolutely nothing for her-a loose-fitting thing that covered her breasts without supporting them. Over that she wore a baggy white blouse. She pulled a pair of weather-beaten blue jeans over her legs.
"You look great to me," Charley said.
"Wait. I'm not finished."
She went into the bathroom. A couple of minutes went by. Charley began to wonder whether this deal would work out at all. Having seen her in her low-cut dress, with those magnificent boobs of hers jutting like firm melons, he knew that was going to be bard for him to fool himself into thinking that she was only a teen-ager.
Then she came out.
"Well?" she said.
"I'll be a monkey's grandma," Charley gasped in astonishment. "If it isn't Lolita herself!"
"In person," Janey said. Her voice was suddenly high, with an adolescent whine to it. "I think I'm very grown up for my age, don't you? Seventeen last week, that's what I am. I'm allowed to smoke two cigarettes a day and to stay out with boys until midnight on Saturdays."
The effect was amazing. She had wiped her face clear of make-up, and she had gathered her lustrous dark hair behind her head in a long pony-tail. That was all that she had done in the way of actual physical changes. All the rest was sheer acting.
Her eyes were wide open in a cutely innocent way. Her face wore a dumb-bunny grin. She held herself in such a way as to minimize the thrust of her bosom. The shirt and bra she was wearing did the rest, so that she looked almost skiimy, not at all remotely like the voluptuous creature whose glorious breasts Charley had been caressing so avidly five minutes ago.
She looked seventeen-at most.
"I'll do, huh?" she asked, still grinning. She was obviously pleased with herself, and she had good reason to be, Charley thought.
"You look terrific," he said. "You'll wow 'em, baby."
"Come rob the cradle now."
"I feel creepy about loving you now." he said. "You look so damn young-"
"But I'm not," she said, dropping her voice out of its bobbysocks register into the low, husky, exotic tone she had been using before. "You may think I'm only a child, my dear, but I've been around, I assure you. I've been made, relayed, and parlayed. I've made love all the usual ways and know a variety of mild perversions. This adolescent garb you see me in is but a mask. Take me. lover! Take me!"
She ended up on her knees by him with her arms flung wide like somebody out of a silent movie. Charley guffawed with pleasure. She was colossal, he thought. He couldn't have gotten a better girl for this job if he had tried Central Casting, She got to her feet.
She began to strip.
The fake teen-ageness dropped away from her as her clothing did. Oft came the girlish shirt, off came the loose-fitting baggy bra, and the high rises of her breasts returned to view, the nipples dark red and standing up tall in the agitation of her eager desires.
Off came the weather-beaten, faded pair of blue jeans, next.
Off came the panties.
She stood before him nude and desirable, her body fully mature, a woman's ripe and opulent figure. Only the lack of make-up on her face seemed to rob her of years. She swept away her barrette, and what had been a pony-tail turned into a cloud of dark, exciting hair.
"Get your clothes off," she said to him in a low, vibrantly throbbing voice.
Charley didn't need a second invitation. The rehearsal was over, and now was the time to get down to business. He stood up and began to peel. Janey helped. In a moment, he was as naked as she was.
They ran for the bed.
That was a dead heat. They landed oh the mattress, laughing and gasping, and the bed creaked in protest. They didn't pay any attention. Her body was soft and warm and willing against his. He caressed the hard-tipped breasts, ran his hands over the sleek front, caressed the silkiness of her legs, setting her afire with his caresses.
"Lie back," she told him. "Let me run this show, Charley."
He grinned at her. She pushed him down against the pillow. A moment later she was actively running the show, no doubt about that. Charley's breathing grew ragged as she bent forward, the big bells of her breasts dangling downward, the warm nipples touching him.
Her lips worked.
Her hands grasped at him.
Charley hissed with delight as she began to move her head, her hands still grasping him and playing a symphony of lust. Charley was particularly fond of having women love him this way. And what made him specially gratified right now was that he hadn't suggested that. Janey had decided to act of her own accord. That meant she was anxious to please him. That meant she was interested in making him happy.
Charley liked that idea.
For moment after long moment she paid homage to him, and Charley happily accepted the tribute from her. Then she raised her head. Her lips were parted and shiny. Her face was a mask of desire.
She crawled toward him until the)' were touching. Her hand helped him, guided him.
Then she began.
Slowly at first, again and again, her body in constant rippling action. Charley's eyes were still open, and he saw the heavy globes of her breasts swaying, saw the glittering beadlets of sweat that were bursting out all over her as she grew more passionate.
Her gyrations grew more violent. Her body trembled and shook. Charley reached out, caught the big globes of her breasts in his hands, squeezed them tight. He felt the nipples like little pebbles against his palms as he held her.
She was gasping, crying with pleasure now. Charley found, ecstasy rising like the temperature on a blazing summer day. He closed his eyes. He gripped her breasts even more tightly.
"Now," she cried in a lust-distorted voice. "Now, lover! Everything!"
He gave her everything.
His head swam, his brain reeling with lust, and he knew the ecstasy of her, the invisible pleasure gripping him, and an explosion of passion rocked him, and another, and another, and somewhere far away he was dimly aware that she was crying out, a high wordless wail of delight, and the sizzling flame of fulfillment enveloped them both.
Afterward, she lay quietly against him, her breasts warm and exciting against his chest.
He put his arms around her. He pressed his face into the depths of her black hair, and breathed deeply. She was fragrant, sweet as new wine.
She sighed and made a little purring sound of pleasure.
Then all was still.
CHAPTER FOUR
At the beginning of the following week, Janey began her new career.
She was edgy about it. Blackmail was more illegal than anything she had ever done before. She had hustled, sure, but that wasn't much of a crime. If they chose to enforce the law, they hauled you in and fined you a few bucks and told you not to sin again, and the next day you were right back on the streets. But extortion was different. Extortion was a real crime. They could put you away for a few years for extortion.
But she had promised Charley she'd go through with it. The way he lined it out to her, it seemed pretty foolproof, anyhow. The trick was to pick a mark who was so scared of a scandal that he wouldnt raise a fuss, but would simply hand over the blackmail money and and allow the whole business to drop quietly. That sounded like it ought to go off without trouble.
For the first couple of days in Florida, they didn't make any attempt at getting started. Charley didn't appear to be in any hurry.
They went out to the beach instead. Janey had a chance to wear a couple of her bikinis that she hadn't worn in two years. They were real riot-starters, little strips of fabric that covered her breasts and bottom and most of her buttocks and nothing else. A girl could get lots of sunshine in an outfit like that.
The beaches were crowded. But Charley had been right: the clientele here was pretty square. There weren't many young people in their twenties. Most of the folks on the beach were middle-aged, married couples in their fifties and sixties, and even older. Also a big family trade, men and women in their thirties and forties with small children. The college kids weren't here, because it was the season for pre-Christmas exams. And the hipsters weren't here, because Miami Beach was an out place to go in the winter.
A square crowd, all right, Janey decided. Full of likely marks.
The two of them lolled in the sun, and swam, and wandered up and down the row of towering, garish hotels, just feeling things out. Charley had his eyes wary for unattached males. "You've got to find somebody who's dopey but who wants adventure," he said. "If he's too timid, he'll never let you get near him."
Janey nodded. She had already spotted a couple of men who were likely prospects. But she didn't call them to Charley's attention. She was nervous about this whole routine, and she realized that she was stalling, trying to delay the opening gambit as long as possible.
But then the stalling ended.
Charley said, "Tonight's the night. We make our first score."
He drove her from the boarding house to Miami Beach and parked the car about a block from the elegant Boardwalk Plaza Hotel. They had earlier decided that they would try to make the first pickup in the hotel cocktail lounge, the next one on the beach, the next perhaps in a hotel lobby. You had to vary the routine a little each time if you didn't want to buy trouble.
The posh Imperial looked right in tune on the street where Charley parked it. There were massive Cadillacs and gleaming Continentals and even some foreign sports cars around. This was the Gold Coast; there was plenty of money lying around down here.
They got out of the car. Janey was dressed fit to kill, but she felt nervous despite her finery. Her newly tanned breasts rose magnificently out of her scoop-necked dress. Her body was scrubbed and polished, ready for love with an unknown man.
She told herself sternly to snap out of it, get rid of the edginess. She had been a ten-buck-a-trick streetwalker, hadn't she? So what was she kicking about now? This was a lot more dough than that.
She flashed an impish smile. "Let's synchronize watches, captain."
"Right. It's quarter after eight, now," Charley said. "Figure that you'll pick up your mark by, say, nine o'clock at latest."
"In only forty-five minutes?"
"It shouldn't take you that long," he said. "You'd be surprised how many hungry males are sitting around in there waiting for you to come along and fleece them. Pickup by nine, up to his room no later than half past, spend an hour there and make a lady-like escape-I'd say you ought to be back here by ten-thirty."
"To the car?"
"That's right. I'll be waiting for you."
"Okay," she said. He smiled. "Good luck, baby." Janey winked at him. "I think we'll be in the money tonight."
"I know so," he said.
She went teetering along toward the hotel on her high heels. It was a warmish, muggy night. Even the fronds of the palm trees that were all over the place looked droopy. But everything would be air-conditioned once she got past the front door of the enormous gold-and-blue palace that was the Boardwalk Plaza Hotel.
A few strollers paused to stare at her as she went by. Good, she thought. She didn't doubt that she was attractive in this outfit. A single girl walking around down here dressed in such a flamboyant garb was bound to attract attention. She knew that she looked like a high-quality B-girl. The men would come flocking.
Her nerves twinged a little. But as she got closer and closer to the hotel, she felt more and more confident that everything was going to work out.
She walked into the hotel lobby.
It was a swanky place, all plate glass and thick carpets and tropical vegetation growing out of porcelain pots. It was crowded, too, mostly with fat, dumpy middle-aged women who were standing around swathed in voluminous mink stoles and draped with acres of sheath dresses-maneuvered back and forth, carrying glittering jewelry. Their harried, paunchy-looking husbands stood by.
There wouldn't be any action in the lobby, Janey knew. A glowing green sign to her left said COCKTAIL LOUNGE, and she steered her course that away, ignoring the genial leers of the bellhops standing around in the lobby. The bellhops knew that she wasn't here for her health.
She entered the lounge.
It was crowded and noisy. Waitresses hurried with trays of drinks. Most of the people in the cocktail lounge were couples, though there were some little knots of businessmen, three and four to a table. Nothing to be gained from them, Janey thought. But here and there she saw a single man drinking alone and hopefully eyeing the waitresses.
Janey stood at the entrance for a moment, looking over the crop. It was very important for her to guess right the first time, she knew. This was a fashionable place, and the management didn't want B-girls buzzing around from patron to patron-at least not free-lancers who weren't kicking in with a cut. She would have to pick a winner the first time, or else clear out and try some other hotel along the tourist strip.
Charley had warned her not to go looking for the handsomest man available. It wasn't just simple jealousy that had prompted that advice. A slick-looking man, Charley had pointed out, was likely to be sophisticated and wise in the ways of the world. He probably wouldn't fall for the extortion stunt in the first place, and might make lots of trouble when the squeeze was applied.
Look for a schnook, Charley had told her.
So she looked for a schnook. And she found one. She spotted the mark sitting at the far side of the cocktail lounge, all by his lonesome. He was made to order for a swindle, Janey thought.
She headed toward him.
He was about fifty, she thought. Maybe fifty-five. A short, broad-shouldered man, it was quite likely that the breadth of his shoulders was due more to the cut of his jacket than to the build of his body. He was baldheaded and deeply tanned, his head so shiny it looked like it had been polished. He was wearing a trim gray suit that looked more expensive the closer Janey got to it. There was a glittering ring on his finger. He was plump and paunchy, obviously a successful man.
He had a look of money about him.
But he also looked like a schnook.
She could tell from the way he was eyeing a waitress that he was hungry for love. The waitress happened to be a cute blonde kid with a honey tan, and the tight black sheath she was wearing outlined the contours of what seemed to be a very nifty pair of boobs. She was standing about two tables away from Janey's mark, talking to a youngish couple nearby.
The schnook was gazing at her with obvious desire. His mouth was open, his eyes were glassy. It was possible to trace a direct line from his eyes to the jutting thrust of the waitress's profiled bust. But his mouth was quirked at the corners as though in self-disgust, as though he was inwardly chewing himself out for not having the nerve to make a pass.
Janey got close.
Close enough for him to notice.
She got in the line of sight, cutting off his view of the waitress. His head turned as though on a mechanical swivel. His eyes flickered greedily behind his horn-rimmed glasses. Janey flashed a smile at him.
It was a million-volt smile, and she could see him sizzle. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times. He was gaping like a fish yanked up into a rowboat.
Under the deep mahogany of his tan, Janey could see a blush beginning to sprout.
She walked over to his table.
"Are you waiting for anybody?" she asked, her voice a throb of lustfulness.
He goggled at her. "N-no-that is-I mean-"
She got him off the hook. "Mind if I sit down, then? You look lonely, and I feel lonely. Let's get to know each other."
He still didn't seem to believe that this was really happening to him. But he hopped to his feet-he was short, maybe five feet six-and started to bustle around to pull her chair out for her. Janey let him do that. She settled down comfortably and waited for him to get seated again.
She leaned forward, giving him plenty of breast action. He was funny to watch as he struggled to keep his eyes from diving into her cleavage.
He said, "Can I get you a drink, miss-miss-?"
"Janey Vaughn," she said. "And yes, I'd love a drink. A gimlet, I think."
He wigwagged to the blonde waitress. "Two gimlets," he blurted. "No, make that a Scotch on the rocks for me, a gimlet for the lady." He stared hungrily at Janey, practically drooling at her. "I'm Morton Kolb," he said. "I'm from New York. This is the first vacation I've taken since my wife died."
"Oh, I'm so sorry," Janey said.
"Last March, it was. From cancer. It just ate her up, like fire. We got the diagnosis in December and by March she was gone. Twenty-four years married, and now she's in the ground half a year."
Janey looked sympathetic. "You must feel strange down here without her."
Morton Kolb nodded. He was brightening, relaxing with each moment. All he had been waiting for, it seemed, was a chance to talk about himself. "We came down here every winter for maybe twenty years. Since right after the war, we were coming here. I wanted to go to the islands, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, but Esther said no, you had to fly to get there and she wouldn't fly. Not ever. We always took the train down from New York. Now she's dead and I still don't fly. I took the train. I've been here two weeks, but it isn't the same, a vacation without her."
"I can understand," Janey said warmly. "I know just how it is."
The drinks arrived. He gulped his down in a hurry, looking more at ease afterward. Janey sipped at hers. His eyes flicked toward her bosom again, then quickly headed for more demure territory.
He said, "Are you here on a vacation?"
Janey nodded. "Been saving all year for it. I just get here a couple of days ago."
"Alone?"
"That's right," Janey said. "All by my lonesome."
"It seems a shame, a pretty girl like you, not having a fellow down here."
"Well, you know how it is, these younger men," Janey said. "They give you a fast line but they get you in trouble. A girl's got to be careful. I prefer more mature men, myself. Men who've seen something of the world, men who know what they're doing. What kind of work do you do, Mr. Kolb?"
"Morton."
"Morton," she said. "I'm a stockbroker."
"That sounds interesting."
"Not really," he said with a rueful smile. "I'm with a small house. We specialize in over-the-counter stocks. I make a lot of money, but what good is money if you aren't happy?"
"True," Janey said sagely. "Very true. Do you have children?"
"Two of them," he said. "Both disappointments to me, I'm afraid."
"That's too bad."
"There's a boy, he's twenty years old. Lazy, doesn't want to work, asking for money all the time. Waiting for me to drop dead so he'll get it all. And a girl, she's eighteen. We don't get along. She's got a lot of rich friends, she's so stuckup she won't even talk to her own father. She doesn't think I'm cultured enough. All I'm good for is making money. Would you like another drink, Miss Vaughn?"
"Call me Janey. And yes, I would."
She had another. So did he. But she was drinking gimlets, which consisted mostly of lime juice. He was drinking Scotch on the rocks, which consisted mostly of Scotch. He was getting lit up. Evidently he had been here drinking and aiooning at the waitresses for half an hour or more before Janey had come along.
They talked for a little while. He seemed restless, straining at the bit. He wanted her to go to bed with him, obviously, but he didn't seem to know how to bring the subject up. So she brought that up for him.
She said in a soft, low voice, "Why don't we go somewhere where it's a little more private?"
"Well-ah-"
"I've had enough to drink, Morton. And I'd love to talk to you. But it's no noisy and crowded in here, don't you think?"
"Ah-well-"
"We could go to your room, maybe."
A glow of pleasure spread over him. His eyes seemed to give off sparks.
"Wonderful idea," he said. "Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!"
So they went to his room.
His room was on the sixteenth floor of the hotel. It was big, enormous, even, with a large bed and a gleaming picture window and a terrace overlooking the beach and the Atlantic, and a television set and a white telephone and all the other little gadgets that you see in the movies but never in a real-life hotel room. This was quite a place. Janey wondered how much it set him back. Thirty, forty, fifty dollars a day, maybe.
They went in and he locked the door and they looked at each other across twenty feet of empty space, and she said, "I've always felt more at ease with older men. I don't know why. I guess it's because my father died when I was very young."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"So I've been looking for substitute fathers all my life," Janey went on glibly. "Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not in the habit of going up to hotel rooms with strangers all the time."
"Of course not."
"It's just that when I meet a man, and I'm powerfully drawn to him, and something clicks for me right away-do you follow what I mean, Morton?"
"Of course I do," he said. He looked like a fat cat licking his chops, a roly-poly pot-bellied bald-headed fat cat.
"Such a powerful attraction," she said. "Immediately-instantly-"
"Yes. Yes."
She flung herself into his arms. "Love me," she said in a voice throbbing with passion. "Make me happy, Morton! We need each other. We've both been so lonely."
Their embrace struck Janey as a pretty funny one. She was an inch or so taller than he was to begin with, and her high heels made her tower over him. And he was nervous, hesitant, almost shy, so that it was she who had her arms around him rather than vice versa.
But his hesitation ebbed away as his passions rose.
She thrust her breasts against him and put her lips to his mouth. His arms encircled her, and he kissed her. Not a deep kiss, but a pretty passionate one all the same, Janey thought.
She wasn't enthusiastic about the idea of going to bed with a man more than old enough to be her father. But he was obviously loaded with dough. And he was a softie. He could be pushed around.
He could be blackmailed.
They broke the clinch. "Let me make myself more comfortable," Janey said. "Yes. Yes."
"You, too. Take your jacket off. Loosen your tie. Relax, and enjoy yourself."
He followed her with his eyes as she first kicked off her shoes, then unzipped her dress and stepped out of that. She wore no slip beneath. He got a look at her heavy, bulging breasts all but bursting out of the top of her strapless bra, and once again his face turned that deep, burnished red under the tan.
He was excited.
He wanted her.
But he also felt guilty about what he was doing.
He said, "I haven't been with a woman since-since my wife got sick."
"Life goes on, Morton. You can't lock yourself away from the world."
"I used to cheat on her sometimes. I'd hire girls, you know, that kind of girl. I'd call them up, fifty dollars, whatever that was. They'd go to bed with me. I got to tell you, my wife wasn't much in bed. T loved her with all my heart, but love never meant anything to her. So I had to take these other girls. But since the day she got sick, I haven't been with a woman. Almost a year now."
"That isn't fair to you," Janey said. "You ought to let yourself have some enjoyment. You're still a young man, Morton."
"Fifty-three."
"You think that's old?" Janey laughed and whipped her bra off. The bare hills of her breasts tumbled into view, red marks cutting across the white flesh where the brassiere had compressed her.
"You're beautiful," he whispered. "Gorgeous. But you aren't a bad girl. I know that. You aren't like those others."
"No," she said. "I wouldn't think of taking money. I won't kid you and say I'm pure. Morton, but I don't sell myself. When I meet a man, and I really and truly like him, I can give myself to him, but the emotion's got to be there. The emotion's got to be real.
"Yes. Yes, of course," he said, nodding vigorously.
What malarkey, Janey thought. But that seemed to be working. Hurriedly, she peeled away the rest of her clothing, the panties and the stockings and the garter belt. She stood nude before him. He was pathetically eager for her now, huffing and puffing, his bald dome gleaming with the sweat of desire.
He was undressing now, too. Janey had gone to bed with some middle-aged men in her brief career as a streetwalker, and she was prepared for all kinds of ugliness. But Morton Kolb seemed to have taken pretty good care of himself. He was big around the middle, sure, but he didn't have the varicose veins or the operation scars or the other mutilations that men of his age and general build might be expected to have. His legs were slender, out of proportion to the stocky top of him, as though once long ago he had been slim and graceful.
He stood there naked in from of her and said in a shamefaced way, "I almost hate to say this, but-but there's a way I like to love-"
"Tell me about that," Janey said, wondering what kind of weird kink he was going to spring.
He reddened again. "My wife never went for this. That's why I had to hire girls who'd do things my way. What I do is a kind of spanking. I don't really hurt the girl, but that's something I enjoy, that makes me get excited. Without that I don't have much fun."
"Of course," she said. "Anything you like, Morton. I want you to be happy with me."
"Move over here, then."
He sat down on the edge of the bed. She went to him, and he indicated by gestures that he wanted her to do: to he down across his knees with her buttocks upward.
She had had some experience with this sort of thing before. One of the men who had hired her, one night, had insisted on spanking her, and then she had had to spank him. He had been completely unable to love without those preliminaries.
So she sprawled out across Morton Kolb's skinny, bony knees. She could hear his hoarse breathing.
"So lovely," he murmured. "So beautiful-your skin, so white, so pale-"
He put his hands tenderly to her buttocks, rubbing his soft palms over the cool, fleshy globes, caressing them, stroking them, exploring them. He was snorting with excitement now. For two or three minutes he played with her, running the tips of his fingers along, toying with her dimples, cupping the firm flesh.
Then he lifted his hand.
And brought that down.
Crack! There was more strength in his pudgy frame than Janey had expected. She let out an involuntary howl of astonished pain as his palm slapped against the bare flesh of her buttocks. The blow stung. She shifted in discomfort.
Whack!
Thawack!
Again and again he brought the spanking hand down. Janey's buttocks began to glow. She imagined how the pale flesh was turning an angry red. The pain was spreading through her whole body now, making her throat tighten and tears start from her eyes.
He kept that up. He was gasping, grunting, moving around as he spanked her. And he was getting terrifically excited, she could tell. Turning her head, she looked up and saw him drenched with sweat, his head and shoulders bright red. She wondered what would happen if he had a stroke and dropped dead while he was whaling her. You couldn't blackmail a dead man, Janey thought ominously.
But he had had enough of that particular game now, anyway.
"Okay," he gasped. "Turn over, now. I'm ready."
He certainly was. Janey slipped over onto her back. Her buttocks were glowing. She lay back, head against the pillow. Morton Kolb crouched beside her, his chunky body inflamed with lust.
Then he fell at her.
She adjusted to him, and he took her, quickly, like a man possessed. Janey was more repelled than excited. She couldn't really adjust to the idea of loving a man who didn't attract her in any way. But she gave herself to him, and put on an act. He was so keyed up bv his excitement that he couldn't possibly notice whether or not she was faking, anyway.
So she moved and turned and twisted and shook. She gasped and grunted and sobbed and panted.
She worked very busily, hurrying him on to the fulfillment of his excited passions.
That didn't take long. A man who hasn't had any loving for a year isn't likely to have much self-control when he finally gets onto a bed with a breasty and cooperative chick like Janey.
No more than two or three minutes went by, at the very most, and then Kolb heaved a long sigh of satisfaction and shook himself and shivered a couple of times and had his pleasure from her. Janey made the moment a gaudy one by turning on all the gasps and cries of ecstasy at her command.
He lay there, panting, sweating. He rested a long while before he could speak.
He said finally, "Will you stay all night with me? I don't want to let go of you."
"No, I've got to get going."
"But it's early."
"This has got to be this way, Morton. I couldn't stay all night with you. I-I'd feel so cheap."
"But you've already loved me," he said. "If we just stay close on the bed-"
"No," she said. "I made up my mind long ago that I'd never spend a night with a man, not a whole night. Not until I was married. Maybe that's just a crazy quirk of mine, but-"
He swallowed her story. He didn't really have much choice about that. He sat up and modestly put a towel around his waist and watched her dress.
Janey dressed quickly. It was twenty-five past ten. Charley was waiting for her.
She kissed Morton Kolb good-bye. She promised that she'd see him again soon, and she wrote down his room number on a piece of paper.
She wasn't lying, either. He was going to see her again, all right.
A lot sooner than he was figuring.
CHAPTER FIVE
Charley Simmons had passed a peaceful, relaxing evening.
He had watched Janey toddle off to the hotel to do her bit. Then he had gone into another hotel just up the block to have a couple of drinks and while away the evening until she returned. He didn't doubt that everything would go smoothly. Janey had a good little head on her shoulders. She'd make out all right.
He had a couple of martinis, and watched television in the bar, and ogled a few girls who went by hunting for company. He didn't try to make any pickups. For the time being, Janey was woman enough for his needs. Maybe later in the winter, he'd step out a little on her as the mood took him. After all, she'd be getting plenty of outside love during the blackmail bit, so why shouldn't he have some variety too?
The evening ticked away. Around ten o'clock he went back to the car and got in.
Half an hour more went by. Then Janey appeared.
He knew at once that she had scored. She didn't have the neat, well-groomed look that she had had when he had last seen her. She looked rumpled now, her make-up smeared, her eye shadow blotchy, her hair askew.
She looked as if she had been had. He honked the horn. She waved to him and came up alongside.
"Well?" he asked.
She grinned and made a little circle with her thumb and forefinger. "That worked fine," she said. "I picked up a mark and we went to his room."
"Get in the car," Charley said. "What kind of guy was he?"
"Stockbroker from New York, name of Morton Kolb."
"Old? Young?"
"In his fifties. A widower since March. Very lonely. Very hungry for some loving."
Charley started the car. "I hope you took care of him properly."
"I sure did," she said. "So properly that my seat's a little sore now."
"What did he do?"
"He's a spanker," Janey said. "He gave my bottom a good tanning. But that wasn't so bad. And the main event was over fast. He didn't have much staying power. We've got this made, Charley. This guy's a natural. He's got loads of dough, but he's easy to push around. A schnook. A little bald-headed schnook."
"If you're right, we're in the chips, baby."
"Sure we are. I know we are." She grabbed his arm, squeezed the muscle hard. "The old cash register is going to ring and ring tonight."
They were back in Miami now, hurrying toward their own apartment. Janey rushed quickly through her transformation from seductive siren to seduced teenager. All her clothes had been laid out in advance, before they had set out on the evening's business.
Off came the wine-colored dress with the stunningly low neckline. Off came the fancy dan brassiere that thrust her breasts upward and forward. Off came the sophisticated-looking hairdo that she had adopted.
Charley watched with pleasure as she got into the new outfit.
A cheap yellow sweater, tight against her body, the kind of thing that a teen-ager proud of her newly sprouted breasts would wear. An ordinary plaid skirt. Bobby socks, loafers, a wide leather belt.
She bunched her hair into a pony-tail and put on a different colored lipstick, an unsophisticated orange color that a high school girl would be likely to go for. She made a mental change of gears so that she would be wearing a more innocent, less worldly expression.
The transformation was complete.
In the space of ten minutes Janey had blotted ten years from her apparent age.
"How do I look, Charley?" she asked, swinging round to give him the view.
"Like a perfect bobby soxer," he told her. "Like Lolita herself."
"In person."
"You bet. Ready to go?"
"Yeah," Janey said. "Just let me find the bubble gum and we can take off."
By quarter after eleven, they were on their way again, and by half past Charley was pulling the car into a parking spot outside the Boardwalk Plaza Hotel. They walked toward the hotel. Charley was dressed reasonably well, in a summer suit and Italian shoes. He looked like a vacationer. Janey looked more like a fugitive from a dragstrip movie, he thought.
They went in. As they passed a clump of bellhops near the entrance, Janey giggled.
"What's so funny?" Charley asked.
"The bellhops," she said. "The last time I came through here, in my low-cut dress, they were all giving me the eye. Now they take a quick look and that's it. I'm just another dumb kid to them now."
"Means the costume's a success," he said.
They walked to the elevator.
"Sixteen," Janey said.
The car zoomed them up, up, up. They emerged into a brightly-lit, deeply carpeted corridor. Charley said, "Remember, now, let me take care of this. You just stand around and look injured, and don't speak until spoken to."
"I hear and obey," Janey said.
"Which room is it?"
"Right over there."
Charley knocked. There was no response, so he knocked again, after a moment, rapping harder.
A sleepy voice from within said, "Who is it?"
"Mr. Kolb?"
"That's right. What is it?"
"Important message for you, Mr. Kolb."
"Just a minute, just a minute."
Silence again. "He's putting on his bathrobe," Janey whispered. "He must have gone to sleep."
Charley nodded. The door opened. He found himself facing a short, potbellied, middle-aged man wearing a purple bathrobe over bright green pajamas. He looked sleepy and bewildered at the invasion.
Charley didn't give him a chance. He pushed the door open before Morton Kolb could do anything, striding into the room. Janey followed him. Kolb stepped back a couple of paces, his face blank with confusion.
"May I ask-"
Charley cut him off. He pointed to Janey and said, "You ever see this girl before?" His tone was beligerent and loud.
"Why, no," Kolb said. "I never-that is-I mean-no, it can't be!"
"Hello, Morton," Janey purred.
Charley shot an angry glance at her. He didn't want her to say anything.
"It can be, Kolb," Charley said. "It is."
"Janey?" Kolb blurted.
Charley said, "It's Janey, all right. Only she was all dressed up before, but now she's wearing her everyday clothes. I made her change. A girl her age doesn't have any business dressing up the way she liked to. That's downright indecent. That's a crying shame."
Morton Kolb looked more and more baffled and distressed. He stared at Charley, then at Janey, then back to Charley again. He looked terribly pale beneath his tan.
"A girl her age?" Kolb repeated slowly, frowning.
"Just-how-old-is-she?"
"She'll be seventeen next month," Charley snapped, his eyes blazing with pretended anger. "Seventeen, Mr. Kolb!"
Kolb seemed to pull himself together a little. "This is some kind of joke you're pulling on me, huh? This is the kid sister of the girl who-who was here earlier. She has to be."
"She's my kid sister," Charley said. "And she's the same girl you put your lousy paws all over. I heard the whole story, the spanking bit, all of that. Show him the birthmark, Sis."
Janey had a small round birthmark on the inside of her left leg. Kolb had noticed that. Now she hiked her dress up to her hips and thrust her leg forward, sullenly demonstrating the mark again.
"You see that?" Charley demanded. "She's the same girl, you can't deny that now. And not even seventeen years old. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Of all the disgusting things, Kolb. Picking up a girl who's underage, making her amuse you in your perverted way-"
"No," Kolb said in a husky, shaken voice. "I didn't pick her up. She picked me up. I was sitting down there in the bar, minding my own business, and she walked in, said hello to me, started flirting."
"However that happened," Charley said, "the fact still remains that you seduced a girl in her teens."
"No. I tell you, I'm a victim in all this. She suggested coming up here! She led the way! She got undressed first. And anyway, how was I supposed to know how old she was? She looked like she was in her twenties. You saw her when she was all dressed up, mister. You must have known that she looks older than she is."
"But she's just a kid. There's a law against that kind of stuff, Kolb."
"How was I supposed to know? She didn't carry a badge saying she was too young."
"It doesn't matter," Charley said stubbornly. "It doesn't matter at all. The law is supposed to protect young girls against themselves, too. It doesn't matter who picked who up. It don't matter that she was willing. She's a dumb kid and she doesn't know what's right and what isn't, sometimes. You went to bed with her, and that makes you guilty of statutory rape."
The stockbroker's jaw sagged. He stared expressionlessly at Charley. He looked at Janey again, as though unable to believe the evidence of his eyes. After a moment he said bleakly, "Statutory rape?"
"You heard me. They can put you away a long time for that. And the story makes a noisy splash in the papers. Especially when that's a fat old man who sleeps with a pretty young girl."
"She wasn't any virgin. She told me so!"
"The law protects girls who aren't virgins too," Charley said. "Just so long as she's underage. I feel like busting your face in for you, Kolb. The only reason I don't do so is on account of your age. You're a dirty old pervert and I hope you rot in jail."
The stockbroker gasped. "Are you going to turn me in to the police?"
"Why not? Your kind ought to be locked up."
"But-but, no, I never dreamed-I've got a teen-age daughter myself, I wouldn't knowingly touch a girl underage I-I-"
Charley said, "My heart bleeds for you."
"It would ruin me if you turned me in. I can't afford a scandal. Not at my age, not in my kind of work. I've got to be above reproach. Look, be reasonable, whoever you are. I had no intention of seducing your sister, and I certainly would never have gone near her if I had any inkling how old she really was. She took advantage of me, not the other way around. I beg you. Don't turn me in to the police. It's not right."
"Well," Charley said, "maybe I will, maybe I won't."
"What do you mean?"
He shrugged. "It all depends on you."
"I don't understand you," Kolb said.
"All right, I'll spell things out," Charley said. "My sister here, she needs an education fund, something to set her straight, keep her from doing the crazy things she does. You can help contribute to that fund, if you don't want a fuss with the police."
Charley nodded smugly. "Meaning that I don't want my kid sister's good name to get ruined by being smeared all over the front pages. So I'm willing to let you get off easy."
"How easy?"
"Well, suppose you give me five hundred bucks in cash, and then get yourself out of town by tomorrow, and I'll forget all about the whole thing. And otherwise I go to the cops right now and tell them that you're the slimy old creep who seduced my underage sister."
Kolb's face became rigid. "Five hundred dollars is a lot of money."
"Not for you it isn't. You've got plenty. Anyway, that's not such a bad price for a round in bed with a girl built like her."
Kolb didn't make an answer for a long moment.
He stared sadly at both of them. Charley waited, his arms folded. This was the key moment, he knew. Kolb might call their bluff, decide to risk exposure. That would end it all, since for obvious reasons Charley couldn't actually go to the cops yelling statutory rape, not with Janey actually five years past the age of consent.
Would Kolb outmaneuver them, though? Charley waited.
And the short balding stockbroker said after a while, "I'm not carrying that kind of cash on me. Will you take traveler's checks?"
"Let's see them."
Kolb went to his luggage and took out a little black folder of traveler's checks. They looked okay to Charley, the familiar American Express kind. He riffled through the book. They were fifty-dollar checks, an! there were a lot of them. Janey sure hadn't picked any pauper for her first mark.
Charley handed the book back to Morton Kolb. "All right," he said. "Sign them and I'll take them."
Kolb nodded nervously. He sat down at the little desk near the window and took out his pen. Slowly, reluctantly, he began to countersign the neatly printed traveler's checks. One, two, three, four ... ten.
As he signed each, he tore it from the book. Finally he gathered up the whole stack of them and handed them in silence to Charley. Charley examined them, carefully comparing Kolb's new signature with the earlier signature on the checks. They matched.
"Everything okay?" Kolb asked edgily.
"Fine," Charley said. "Tomorrow you check out of here, you follow me? Take yourself to Sarasota or St. Petersburg or San Juan or any where you damn please, but don't stay around this town."
"All right"
"And in the future, be more careful when you sleep with pretty girls," Charley added. "Ask for a birth certificate before you do anything incriminating. That could get awfully expensive otherwise."
Kolb nodded. He was trembling now. "All right AD right. Would you go, please? Both of you. I-I've given you your money. Now leave me alone. Please? Please go away?"
Nodding in return, Charley said, "Sure, Mr. Kolb. Let's go, Sis."
They went out of the room. They walked down the hall to the elevator. Charley rang for the car.
"It worked!" Janey said in wonder.
"Of course it worked. What did you expect?"
"We made five hundred bucks?"
"On the nose. Two and a half bills apiece." He looked at his watch. "It's a little past midnight now. The whole caper took maybe four hours tops. That's better than sixty bucks an hour for each of us."
"I didn't even get sixty bucks a week at that road-house," Janey said.
The elevator came. They got in, and Charley shot her a warning glance to change the subject. Elevator boys have ears.
When they reached the lobby, Janey said, "I feel kind of sorry for him, though."
"Why?"
"He was a good sort. He's lonely, he misses his wife, his kids don't like him."
"So what? Everybody's got some kind of trouble," Charley said. "At least he's got money. More money than he knows what to do with. So he gave some to a charitable cause: us. It isn't as though he didn't get something in return. What's the matter, don't you think that's worth five hundred bucks to love you?"
"I've been known to settle for less," Janey said with a sly grin.
"You take what the market can bear."
"Where are we going to go to celebrate?"
"Home," Charley said. "I got a special kind of celebration planned."
"Can't we go somewhere and have a drink first?" Janey asked. "Champagne cocktails for two at the hotel bar right here?"
Charley laughed. "Look at how you're dressed! They won't let you in. They'll say you aren't old enough to drink there."
Janey grinned. "I guess you're right"
"We'll stop in a package store, though. We'll pick up a little something to brighten the night."
He bought a bottle of champagne. Not the domestic kind that the liquor store proprietor offered him, but the real thing, French champagne, a bottle of Piper Heidsieck that set him back nine bucks. Half of it would come from Janey's share, Charley figured thriftily.
Charley paid for the champagne with a traveler's check. The liquor store man looked at it suspiciously and said, "You've signed it already, Mr. Kolb. You're supposed to wait until you're in the presence of the person you're giving the check to before you sign it."
"I'm not Kolb," Charley said. "Kolb gave the check to me. In return for services rendered. I'm just passing it along, on account of how the banks are closed this time of night."
"Oh. Oh, sure. I get it."
He gave Charley forty-one bucks change from the traveler's check. They went out again and Charley drove them quickly to the apartment.
"Put the champagne in the icebox," Charley said. "Then go take yourself a good shower."
"Why? Do I smell bad?"
"You been in bed with another man tonight," he said. "You think I want you without you at least cleaning yourself up first?"
"I guess you're right," she admitted.
He watched her undress. Her slim form disappeared into the bathroom. He eyed the pert pink buttocks, the tapering legs. Then the door closed. Charley smiled in satisfaction. He had really found himself a doozie, he thought. Pure luck, too.
Carefully he counted out the money. He built two stacks of four traveler's checks each. On top he put the change from the liquor store, twenty dollars and fifty cents in each pile. He put the remaining traveler's check aside.
Janey came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, looking well-scrubbed and delicious. She stood nude in front of him, her breasts rising and falling gently. Her nipples were a pale pinkish color right now. But he knew that they'd turn a dark red pretty soon, when he got his hands on her boobs and stirred her up and made her blood begin to pound fast.
He pointed to the money. "Here," he said. "Yours and mine. I'll have to cash this last traveler's check tomorrow and we'll split it."
She riffled through the pile. "There's about five bucks short," she said.
"Your share of the champagne."
"We going Dutch treat on the celebration?" she asked.
"Fair is fair. I've been paying the expenses all the way down out of Delaware," Charley said. "Time we began splitting fifty-fifty."
"All right," she said. "If that's the way you want it to be."
"Fair is fair," Charley said.
"You think the champagne's ready yet?"
"Give it another five, ten minutes. I'll go take a shower first. If there's anything I hate, it's warm champagne."
She eyed him skeptically. "You an expert on champagne, or something?"
"I've had enough of it to know that it tastes better cold," he told her, as he began to undress.
"How come you forgot the caviar, then?"
"All the caviar stores were closed. Liquor stores stay open later around here."
"I've never had caviar. It's just eggs, isn't it? What's so special about fish eggs?"
"They taste good," Charley said. "Especially with champagne as a chaser. Don't go anywhere, kid. I'll be right back and we'll celebrate."
He stepped into the shower and gave himself a good rub-a-dub. The champagne had been a fine idea, Charley told himself. He was in a bubbly mood after tonight's successful caper, so why not splurge a little?
Five hundred cookies, and easy money. There was no reason why they couldn't pull the same kind of deal seven nights a week. Thirty-five hundred bucks a week? That sounded too fantastic to be real.
But of course Charley didn't plan to try it that often. He knew the story about going to the well with the pitcher once too often. And killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. It was a risky operation, this extortion bit, even if it had seemed easy tonight. The more frequently they tried it, the more likely it was that something would eventually go awry. There was no sense being greedy about it, Charley figured. If they worked the deal once a week, that would give them plenty of cash. They could spend the rest of their time loafing around.
He dried off and got out of the shower room. Janey was sitting in their combination living room-kitchen, and she was still nude.
She said, "We got problems."
"What kind of problems?"
"No corkscrew, honey."
Charley laughed. "Since when do you need a corkscrew to open a bottle of champagne?"
"Don't you?"
"I see you've led a sheltered life," he said. "Go get the glasses and I'll give you a little demonstration on how the upper crust lives."
She fetched two water tumblers from the closet. They had rented the place complete with furniture and some miscellaneous pots, pans, dishes, and glasses.
"They aren't champagne glasses," she said. "I'm sorry, it's the best I can do."
"We'll manage," Charley told her. He got the champagne bottle from the icebox. It was nice and cold now. He glanced at her naked body, at the pinkness of her, all that luscious flesh, the swelling breasts and firm legs and trim, succulent buttocks. His. All his.
Except for a few hours each week when he had to share her. But he didn't mind that. Not at the going price, anyway, he thought.
He picked up the champagne bottle and unwrapped the metal foil covering the cork. Then he unwound the twisted wire casing.
"Notice," he said. "The cork sticks out of the bottle. You grasp it thusly. Then you begin to turn the bottle. Always hold the cork and turn the bottle. If you try to hold the bottle and turn the cork, it'll pop out good and hard and maybe blow a hole in the ceiling."
The cork came out with a little popping sound. Janey held the glasses up, and Charley filled them. Then he put the open champagne bottle back into the refrigerator until they were ready for refills.
They stood nude in the middle of the room, gravely clinking glasses.
"To us," Charley said.
They sipped. Janey's eyes lit up. "Hey, it's good stuff!"
"The best," Charley said.
They clinked glasses again. "To Morton Kolb and his five hundred bucks," Janey said. They drank again. "To your kid sister," Janey said. "Yeah," Charley said. "Here's to incest."
"That isn't nice."
"Sure that is."
"What is?"
"Incest," he said. "With the right kind of sister, I mean."
"What's the right kind of sister?"
"The kind that isn't really related to you," Charley said.
"I'll drink to that."
"So will I."
"My glass is empty," she said. "That's easily fixed."
He went to the refrigerator and got the champagne. He filled both their glasses again.
They toasted some more. He pointed and said, "Here's to that."
She pointed to him and said, "Here to that."
They giggled. He toasted her breasts and her buttocks next. She toasted him in specific anatomic detail. He filled the glasses again.
Before they knew it, the champagne was nearly all gone. There was about one glass left in the bottle for each of them, Charley figured.
"Let's save the rest for morning," he suggested.
"A champagne breakfast. Good idea!"
He put the bottle away. He felt just a little high, not much, but enough. Reaching out, he scooped Janey off her feet, picking her up with one arm slung under her buttocks and the other around her shoulder.
He carried her into the bedroom. He dumped her down onto the unmade bed.
Her eyes were bright and shiny. Bedroom eyes, he thought. And a bedroom body.
"Over her," she said huskily.
"Careful, now. Remember that you're only seventeen and you mustn't do anything naughty."
"But you can," she said.
"Be delighted to."
He flopped down next to her on the bed. He filled his hands with the bounty of her breasts, enjoying the touch of the hard nipples against his palms. Her mouth was eagerly receptive to his kiss. She tasted of champagne. He couldn't imagine a better taste for a woman's lips to have.
Charley rolled over closer to her, and found warmth, the eagerness of her. He took her.
His body began the familiar rhythm, and she moved with him. Her nails dug at his back and her arms clutched him tightly as she gave herself to him as wildly as was possible. Charley showed his appreciation.
Their bodies trembled on the brink of the abyss of ecstasy.
Then they tumbled in, and fell down, down, bodies pressed, arms around each other, lips glued, down to the roaring volcano of bliss at the very bottom.
CHAPTER SIX
It was more than a week before Janey tried to pull a new caper.
It was an easy, loafing sort of week. Every morning they went out to the beach, swam, sun-bathed, dozed. They both began to get deep, rich tans. It was the beginning of December, now, and Janey got a big kick out of being able to swim and sun-bathe and snooze in the sun at a time when most of the country was shivering under the first icy blasts of the approaching winter.
It was a good life, Janey thought.
In the afternoons, they wandered around Miami Beach, sightseeing, watching the amusing antics of the tourists, listening to some of the old codgers on the public street benches loudly arguing politics. Most of them were big Goldwater fans, but there were plenty who weren't, and the shouting got pretty fierce at times. And then they went shopping. Janey had never seen stores like these. They only seemed to sell luxury goods, gay, fashionable, dashing merchandise.
She bad a couple of hundred dollars to burn. It didn't take her long.
Forty bucks bought her two French bikinis. When she modeled them for Charley he shook his head and said, "There can't be fifty cents worth of material in both of them put together."
"That's why they're so expensive," she said. "The more daring they are, the higher the price."
These were on the fantastic side. They were just one notch away from indecent exposure-a strip of cloth across the breasts, and a triangular thing below that covered some front and most of the buttock flesh, but left a good many square inches exposed.
Thirty bucks bought Janey a pair of airy, open Italian shoes, high-heeled and sophisticated.
Fifty bucks bought her a new low-cut evening dress, even more revealing than the wine-colored one, even more a body-hugger and a breast-barer. She bought a new bra to go with it: nine bucks.
Three-fifty got her a pair of bikini panties to wear as underwear in the warm weather. Thirteen dollars produced a sleek little handbag. Nine dollars gave her a reasonable quantity of new stockings.
That took care of her wardrobe, and it also took care of almost $150 of her first night's earnings. She had almost a hundred dollars left, but there were a lot of other things she still wanted to buy, frilly female things of a sort that she had had to deny herself while she was living on low wages-earrings and perfume and bracelet and necklaces and whatnot. The hundred dollars that she had left after her initial shopping spree wouldn't take her very far into her list of necessary luxuries.
"I think it's time we pulled another caper, Charley," she said.
"Fine with me. It's been more than a week."
"What about tonight?"
"No," he said. "Let's wait till tomorrow and make the pickup on the beach. We ought to vary our M.O. so the police don't get wise."
"Vary our what?"
"Our M.O.," Charley said. "Our modus operandi. That's Latin for our 'way of operating.' What's the matter with you, you ignorant or something?"
"I never learned any Latin," she said.
"How about Greek?"
"That neither. I'm not an educated girl, Charles. I lack the higher graces."
"You've got an educated body, though. You've got all the lower graces."
"Wouldn't you prefer it if I knew Latin and Greek instead?"
"No," he said, and reached for her.
The next day was a Thursday, bright and hot, without a cloud in the sky. The humidity was low, and the air was crisp, but the sun hung up there like a giant torch blazing just overhead. Even at nine in the morning the temperature was up in the middle eighties, and it looked like it was going to get well past that before it was time for lunch. Crazy kind of December weather, Janey thought.
They drove out to the beach, going a mile uptown from the Broadway Plaza Hotel, their last scene of action. This time they chose the strip of beach that belonged to the Tropical Beach Hotel. In theory, only paying guests of the hotel, and friends of paying guests, were supposed to use the beach. But nobody paid very much attention to the theory.
Janey was wearing one of her new bikinis. Might sis well make use of the investment, she thought. Over it she had thrown a beach robe, just for the sake of decency until she got on the beach. Charley parked the car and they crossed the street to the beach entrance.
"We'll go in separately," Charley said. "I'll keep my distance from you on the beach. I'll be watching you but don't you watch me."
"Okay," Janey said.
"Go on in. I'll wait a few minutes."
He hung back. She went through the gate and out onto the beach. It was about ten in the morning, but because of the heat the beach was already filling up. There were the usual family groups, and some fat women in bikinis almost as revealing as hers. There ought to be a law against women like that wearing bikinis, Janey thought. She wondered what would happen if she had come out on the beach wearing one of those new topless bathing suits. Probably start a riot, she thought Get herself arrested for indecent exposure. She didn't need that. She'd been there once already, and once was enough.
Janey found herself a vacant piece of beach. She unrolled the blanket she had brought along, spread it out, sat down on it.
Then she took out the sun-tan cream. In this bikini, she'd be exposing parts of her body that hadn't had a chance to get a tan before. Carefully she oiled the tops of her breasts. The bikini bared them almost to the nipples. The rosy upper circle of the aureole was just visible. Then she oiled the line along the top of the bikini pants, and oiled the chunk of buttocks that was newly exposed.
With that job done, she stretched out flat to get some sun and take stock of the situation.
She kept her eyes open, looking for unattached males. The first one that she saw was Charley. He came rambling across the beach, a big, husky, hairy man in purple trunks, took a casual glance at her, and kept on going. He settled down next to a palm tree about a hundred feet away from her.
Charley wasn't what she was after right now. She kept on looking.
She saw some middle-aged men who looked very much like last week's victim, Morton Kolb. But she wasn't in the mood for another middle-aged man right now. One of those was enough, for the time being, whatever Charley said. She wanted to pick up somebody with a little more life and oomph this time.
She looked around.
And she saw her man.
He was sitting about seventy feet away from her, on the opposite side from Charley. He was alone. He was reasonably young, that is, about forty years old. More important, he was reasonably good-looking.
He was a shortish, lean-bodied man with dark curly hair that was going gray at the temples. His body was trim and muscular, and he had a heavy tan and a little clipped mustache. It was the little clipped mustache that led Janey to think that this guy was a good prospect. It meant that he was a vain man. He had a prissy, fastidious look about him. Most likely he kept to a diet, got plenty of exercise, sun-bathed and swam-a man who was fussy about his appearance, Janey thought.
A man like that, she figured, was weak at the core. He would be a pushover for Charley's extortion demand.
And he was looking in her direction.
He wasn't exactly ogling her. He was just staring with considerable interest.
Janey rolled over, so that instead of lying on her stomach she was lying on her side, facing him. She propped her arm up on her elbow and used it to support her head. The heavy globes of her breasts strained against the bikini halter in that position, making the view all the more spectacular.
Mr. Clipped Mustache's eyes lit up a little.
Janey smiled at him. She put a twinkle into the smile.
He smiled back. Warmly.
The chemistry was working, Janey thought. She watched him take a deep breath, sucking air into his lungs to push his ribs out and make him look more muscular. He squared his shoulders.
He was showing off for her, Janey thought. Next thing, he'd get up and turn a few handsprings, she figured in amusement.
The bait had been cast and the hook had been taken. The victim was free to wriggle, but his fate was sealed now.
Janey rolled over again and lay on her back, looking up at the sky. She didn't want to flirt with him too obviously. He had seen her and he knew that there was something there for him if he cared to follow up that exchange of smiles. Now let him stew about her for a little while, Janey thought.
She closed her eyes and let the sun take her.
The sun's warm fingers caressed her body. They stroked her almost bare breasts, they passed over her legs, they penetrated her body, warming her, exciting her.
Janey counted off about five minutes. Enough time to let Mr. Clipped Mustache work up his nerve for a proposition, she thought.
She sat up and looked in his direction. He was staring at her in an earnest, contemplative way. Janey smiled at him again, making the smile another dazzler.
Then she got to her feet, facing him and bending forward as she did so, so that the heavy globes of her breasts swayed down and out, threatening to burst the flimsy fabric of the halter. She was quite an eyeful, and Janey knew that. Slowly, she straightened up.
She began to stroll toward the water.
She didn't spare the voltage as she walked. That was a kind of exaggerated parody of a stripper's stride, with plenty of hip action and a provocative waggle of the buttocks with every step. This was her turn to fill her lungs with air and make her chest expand.
Janey knew that a lot of eyes were on her as she made her sizzling, solitary promenade toward the water. Little boys were staring at her, and love-hungry fifteen-year-olds, and wistful husbands, and jealous wives, and paunchy old men who sighed for their youth. But. though she didn't look in his direction, she was pretty certain that Mr. Clipped Mustache was staring too.
She reached the edge of the beach. She waded out into ankle-deep water and stood there, letting the warm surf swirl up around her legs. That felt good. She stepped out a little further.
Then she allowed herself to look around. Mr. Clipped Mustache had gotten to his feet and was ambling down toward the ocean himself. He was a short, compact man, she saw, with weight-lifter's muscles. He wore tight red trunks that outlined his body with explicit clarity. An exhibitionist, Janey thought.
But he was interested, at any rate. He was coming after her for sure.
She turned and waded out into deeper water. Then she launched herself forward and began to swim, heading straight out for the open sea. Far away, there was a row of buoys that marked the borderline beyond which the hotel guests weren't supposed to go. Janey made for it. She wondered vaguely about sharks. She had heard some people talking before on the beach; they were having a lot of trouble with sharks along the beaches this season at Florida.
She swam powerfully. She was a good swimmer, though she hadn't had much chance to keep in practice lately. Stroke after stroke after stroke, slicing through the water, breasts enjoying the flow of coolness across them.
Then she paused and looked back. He was following her.
He was trying to be casual about that, as though wanting to swim after her without seeming to swim after her, just happening to head in her general direction. He was swimming effortlessly, but making pretty good time. Janey grinned and started to swim again. The white bobbing line of buoys was just ahead. The water was deep here. Were there large ugly beasts moving silently through the depths below her kicking legs, she wondered uncomfortably?
"Miss!" yelled Clipped Mustache. "Miss!"
Janey turned. "You calling me?"
"Yes. I wouldn't swim so far out there!"
Janey let herself tread water. He came swimming up to her.
"Why shouldn't I?" she asked.
"Sharks," he said "There's been some nasty shark trouble lately. You oughtn't to come all the way out here to swim."
"Oh, I don't know," Janey said. "Why would any shark want to bite me?"
"I could tell you," he said. "I saw you on the beach. You looked good enough to bite."
"Depends on your point of view. What looks good to a man might not attract a shark at all."
"We can discuss this further," he said. "But let's go closer to shore, shall we? Only last week a boy was attacked right by the line here."
"He get hurt?"
"Sixteen stitches. Shall we swim in? My name's Mark Avery."
"Janey Vaughn."
"Pleased to meet you, Janey." He flashed her a white, toothy grin. Then he began to swim in toward shore. Janey kept pace with him.
He was good looking, she thought, but in a phony, synthetic way-capped teeth, most likely, and a carefully built-up body, and maybe a nose job too. Probably he had left the gray at his temples only because he thought it made him look distinguished, which in a way it did. He was the sort of man who would attract a certain kind of girl. Not Janey. Ordinarily she would have fended him off without stopping to think about it.
But she wasn't looking for love, just now. She was looking for loving-and for cash.
They reached the shallow water. When they got to a point where they could stand, they waded in. Janey's upper half emerged from the water, her breasts all but bursting out of her halter. Mark Avery gave them a quick look, and then a not so quick look.
He said, "Are you here with anyone, Janey?"
"All by my lonesome."
"Care to join a bachelor's blanket, then?"
"Sounds like a good idea, Mark."
"You're a good swimmer," he said.
"So are you."
"Intercollegiate champ at Ohio State," he said. "Not exactly last year, you understand, but in my time I was pretty good in the sprints."
"Are you from Ohio?"
"Wisconsin," he said. "Fond du Lac."
"You've come a long way for a vacation, haven't you?" she asked.
"If you've ever spent one winter in Wisconsin, you'll know why," he said as they left the water. "Where are you from?"
"New Jersey," she said at random. "Trenton."
"Hey, really? I once knew a girl from Trenton. In fact, you might say I was in love with her. Maybe you know her. She's probably just a couple of years older than you are. Her name's Martina Holt."
"Sorry. Never heard of her."
"You haven't? The Holts are a pretty big family in Trenton, I thought."
"I'm from the south end of town," Janey said. "Practically the suburbs."
She stretched out on his blanket. He got down next to her. "That's quite a bikini you almost have on," he said.
"It's pretty cute. I was going to get the topless kind but I didn't have the nerve."
"This one is pretty near topless," he said. . "The extra couple of inches makes all the difference," she replied.
"Are you here on a vacation?"
"Uh-huh. Till next week. I've been down here about a week so far. Then it's back to the old grind. Stenography. I saved two years to come down here. And it's been pretty lonely so far, let me tell you. A girl comes down by herself, can't find the right kind of man to keep her company. Just these fat old lechers here. I've been at my wit's end for company."
"Maybe I can help out," he said. "Would you care to have dinner with me tonight?"
"I'd love to."
"We'll spend the morning on the beach. Then we can go for a drive, cool off during the hot part of the day. I've got a Jaguar you'll like to ride in. Drove all the way from Wisconsin in it. Are you staying at the hotel here?"
"No," Janey said evasively. "I'm down the beach a little way. Look, would you do me a favor? My sun-tan oil just about washed away while we were swimming. If you'll rub a little on my back-"
"A pleasure," he said.
"Thanks so much."
He went to work. His hand traveled over her smooth skin, oiling her, and she could hear his breathing rate pick up as the touch of her skin excited him. When he had oiled the area between her shoulder blades, she told him to go lower, and he went as low as the bathing suit would let him, oiling her back right down to the dimples that marked the beginning of the swelling globes of her buttocks. Then she had him oil the sides of her back, and she turned so that his fingers passed under her arms, and touched the flesh that was the edge of her breast.
He was hooked, all right. He was practically snorting and pawing at the ground by the time he put the cap back on the tube of sun-tan oil.
They sun-bathed side by side for a while. Janey looked around, caught sight of Charley looking at her. She winked at him. He made an annoyed-looking face, as though telling her to ignore him.
When it began getting hot and the beach started getting really crowded, Mark Avery said, "You want to go for a drive now?"
"Love it."
"Let's take off, then."
She put her beach robe on over her bikini. He wrapped a towel around his shoulders. They left the beach and crossed into the hotel parking lot. He got the car keys, and they entered a sleek, low red Jaguar that had dollar signs painted all over it in invisible paint.
"Lovely," she said.
"I'm rather fond of it," he told her.
They zoomed away. He was a reckless driver, but there was something exhilarating about his recklessness. As they drove, he did most of the talking, which was exactly the way Janey wanted it to be. The less she had to say about herself, the less chance there was that she might slip up and give something away that was better off hidden.
He was thirty-eight years old, he told her, and he was in the real estate business in Wisconsin, but actually he had inherited a pile of money from his father and didn't devote much of his time to the cares of business. He had been married, he told her, but it hadn't lasted. The divorce had come through last summer.
He talked on and on. He was his own favorite topic of conversation. Janey was a good listener, throwing in a word or two whenever it seemed necessary to keep the flow of wordage going. Eventually he swung in a big arc and doubled back toward the hotel.
And then he made the pass for which Janey had been waiting so patiently.
"I've got an idea," he said.
"Do ten."
"It's too hot to go back on the beach for a couple of hours yet. Why don't we go up to my room? We can order lunch from Room Service, something light and cool, and relax for a while, and then about two, three o'clock we can go down and swim some more. Then I'll take you back to your hotel and I'll pick you up again at dinner time. How's that?"
"Fine," he said.
So they went to his room. It was cool and airy, even bigger and sweller than Morton Kolb's room had been last week. He picked up the Room Service menu and studied it. Then he gave it to her.
"Whatever you like," he said.
"What about the open-face caviar sandwich?" she said. "I love caviar so much!"
It was the most expensive thing on the menu, four dollars, twice as much as any other sandwich. But he didn't bat an eye at the price.
"Good idea," he said. "I think I'll have one also. And a bottle of nice cold wine to go with it. White wine. Chablis, I think. Very good. I'll put the order in. How soon do you want to eat?"
"It's-umm-twelve-thirty now," Janey said. "I feel like taking a shower first, getting all the sand and stickum off. Why don't you ask them to bring the food up around half past one?"
"Will do." He gestured toward the bathroom. "The shower's right in there. Make yourself at home."
Modestly, she kept her beach robe on until the bathroom door was safely closed. Then she slipped it off, got out of her bikini, and took a quick shower, scrubbing away the sand that had clung to her oiled skin.
She wasn't modest at all when she came out. She didn't bother to put the beach robe back on. Or the bikini.
She stepped from the bathroom in the nude, her full-breasted lush body on complete display for him. Mark Avery was standing by the window, lighting a cigarette, and he glanced up at her and smiled, and then did a double take as the fact of her nudity sank in.
"This is so much more comfortable this way, I think," Janey said.
"How beautiful you are!"
"Take your trunks off, Mark. That isn't polite to stand around wearing clothing when a lady's undressed."
He grinned. His nostrils widened in desire. He seemed to tense like an athlete about to begin running a race. Quickly, he rolled down his red trunks and stepped out of them. His body was lean and firm, with a single narrow stripe of white across the middle Janey, with two bands of white at breasts and buttocks, smiled at him and walked toward him.
They met near the bed. He grabbed her in a stagy. Hollywood way, pulling her to him dramatically and pressing his lips against hers. His hand cupped the heavy globes of her bare breast. She was aware of the need of his lust.
They tumbled down toward the bed.
In silence they grappled, body moving against body, his hands roaming her, his lips going over every square inch of her body, resting now on the deep socket of her navel, going now to the hard rock of her left nipple, then to the satiny surface of her leg. He was snorting like a stallion as he caressed her sleek body.
In short order they were both panting and gasping in anticipation of ecstasy. Then he pulled his surprise. Without a word, he rolled her over so that she lay face down on the bed Then he fell at her.
She felt hands grasping her. Tugging at her tender flesh.
"Hey, what are you doing?"
"Please, darling. This is very important to me," he murmured.
"You're hurting me!"
"That'll just be for a moment. This is the way I most enjoy myself!"
Her heart pounded. She had never done anything like this before, not even when she was selling herself. Of all her luck, she thought. First the spanking bit, and now this. Why did she only pick up the quirky ones, she wondered?
But the spanking had been relatively harmless. This was agony.
He went at her like a madman, slipping his hands onto the round, dangling globes of her breasts, and holding her, drawing her toward him.
There was a moment of fire.
And then there were his hoarse gasps of wild ecstasy. Janey felt him shudder, move against her, with sudden burgeoning pain. And then, just as suddenly, that was over. They both slumped forward on the bed. The pain wasn't so bad, now. Just a kind of dull throbbing.
He was covering her with kisses. Her back, her neck, her ears, her cheeks, everywhere that he could reach. She lay on her side with her back to him.
He whispered, "Did I hurt you badly?"
"I'll live."
"I'm sorry if I took you by surprise. I didn't know if you'd agree to that or not, and this means so much to me, loving this way. I'll never forget this afternoon, Janey. Never in my life."
He cupped her breasts and kissed the nape of her neck. She was silent. The pain was ebbing away, but she suspected she was going to be uncomfortable for a few days afterward.
But he'd pay through the nose for his twisted little moment of pleasure, she thought. That was a comforting bit of knowledge.
There was a knock at the door.
"Room Service," a bellhop called.
Janey smiled. Mark Avery rose from the bed, got his bathrobe on. Nude, she stretched out voluptuously on the bed like a big panther.
He'd pay, all right. Five hundred bucks in cash for the pleasure.
Plus a caviar sandwich.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Charley watched her leave the beach with the short guy in the red suit. He didn't exactly approve of Janey's choice of victim, this time. This guy looked like a kook, with his well-developed weight-lifting muscles and his tight shorts and his little clipped mustache. Charley wished that she would stick to the middle-aged guys. They were safer. Somebody who looked like this was too unpredictable. Charley thought.
The arrangement he had made with Janey was that he would wait on the beach until she got back. If she didn't show up by six o'clock or so, he was to go back to the apartment, and she'd take a cab back. It was just about noon now, so there was plenty of time to go.
Charley relaxed.
He stretched out in the warm sunlight and dreamed sweet dreams of money.
After a while, he opened his eyes and glanced around. And he noticed a very interesting sight no more than a dozen yards away. Two girls had appeared and put down their blanket near him. The girl on the far side was a brunette in a bikini, sleeping with her back toward him, and he couldn't tell anything about her. But the one nearer him-
She was worth looking at.
She was a blonde, and a big one, in all possible directions. Her legs were long-she looked like a six-footer, Charley thought-and her skin was tanned the lovely deep honey color that only a blonde's skin can get. Her golden hair glowed like spun metal in the noon sunlight. She was wearing a bikini that was almost as skimpy as the one Janey had on, and he could see the firm side of one buttock half exposed by the suit.
She had opened the straps of her halter so that her back could get an even tan. And she was giving Charley the eye. He smiled at her. She smiled back. That was where matters stood for maybe three minutes.
Then, lazily, she lifted herself off the blanket. Not far. Maybe three inches. That was far enough so that Charley got a good side view of her nearer breast, round and pale, clearly visible in the curve of her arm. Then she turned, ever so slightly. The nipple, which had been hidden under the swell of the breast as she lay face down, peeked into sight.
Charley got a real good view. He could only see one of her breasts, but he saw that all, a firm, massive round of flesh, a mammoth boob indeed. The nipple was red and tall.
The view lasted perhaps thirty seconds. Charley was the only person on the beach in a position to take advantage of that, and he let his eyes rest on the delicious sight as long as he could. Then she shifted position again, turning the other way and lying down so that once again her breasts were covered by her body. But before she turned her face away from him, she winked.
Charley contemplated the situation for a long moment.
He didn't feel that he had any particular responsibility toward Janey. They weren't man and wife. The deal under which he had brought her down here hadn't said anything about fidelity.
He didn't particularly want to make Janey jealous, because, after all, she was his meal ticket. She was uniquely qualified for the kind of stuff they were pulling, because of her knack for looking like a teen-ager at the right moment. It would be impossible for him to work the routine, say, with this busty blonde over here He'd only get a horse laugh in the face if he tried to claim she was underage. But Janey looked convincing, and with Janey the gambit could work. So he needed her.
But she was off pleasuring a mark right now, and he figured there wasn't any reason why he couldn't make some time while she was gone. At least set up a deal for himself, a little amusement on the side.
After a while he got up and ambled across the short distance separating him from the blonde. He dropped down on the sand next to her and said, "You ought to be more careful when you turn over, miss. You might get arrested for indecent exposure."
She turned her head toward him, again displaying a bare breast, this time for a fraction of a second. She grinned and said, "Are you going to report me?"
"I doubt that."
"Some men find the sight of a woman's body repulsive," she said.
"I like girls," he said. "Honest, I do." Her eves sparkled. "What's your name?"
"Charley Simmons."
"Zelda Morton. This is my sister Doreen who's asleep over here."
"One blonde sister and one brunette?"
"Different mothers," Zelda said. "Same father. We're half sisters. Should I wake her up and let you say hello to her?"
"Not till I get to know you a little better," Charley said. "Where you from, Zelda?"
"New York City."
"That's a nice place to be away from at this time of year. What do you do?"
"Television. I'm an actress."
"Doreen too?"
"She's with a public relations company. How about you, big boy?"
"I'm retired," he said. "I clip coupons for a living these days."
"How'd you make your pile?"
"Selling falsies," Charley said. "I built a better falsie and all the women in the country bought a dozen. I was a millionaire when I was twenty-two years old."
"I can tell you one girl who didn't give you any business," Zelda said.
"So I noticed. Well, you can't sell 'em all."
"You're putting me on, aren't you?"
"How'd you guess?"
"Funny man. What do you really do for a living?"
"I'm a blackmailer," Charley said. "How exciting! Does it pay well?"
"So-so," he said.
"You could blackmail us, if you like," Zelda said. "We sleep together. We find each other very attractive, Doreen and I."
"Sure," he said. "I bet you do. You're such a tremendous Lesbian that you showed your body off to the nearest man on the beach."
"Mavbe I'm bisexual." she said.
"Hey, that sounds like fun!"
"That sure is," Zelda said. "Why don't you come up to our room for an orgy and find out?"
"What room is it?"
"Room 1114. Right here in the Tropical Beach. I'll wake Doreen up and we'll all go right now."
Charley couldn't tell whether she was pulling his leg or not, with this talk of sister-sister Lesbianism and orgies and whatever.
He said, "I can't go right now. Can I take a rain check until tomorrow?"
"What's the hitch today?"
"I'm waiting for someone to meet me here on the beach. I can't leave."
"Male or female?"
"Female, as a matter-of-fact. My-ah-sister," Charley said.
Zelda grinned at him. "Is she pretty?"
"I think so."
"Do you sleep with her?"
"None of your business," he said.
"That's a serious thing when a man sleeps with his sister," she told him. "Much more serious than a girl sleeping with her sister, I think."
"You're a real kook, aren't you?" Charley said.
"You started it. With your business about being a falsie millionaire."
"Just a false millionaire," he said. "Do we have a date for tomorrow?"
"Sure," she said. "Room 1114. You and me and Doreen."
"The three of us?"
"What else? Get there around one in the afternoon, okay? We'll be waiting for you."
"Will do," Charley said.
She winked at him. Then, just for encouragement, she pried herself up from the blanket and gave him a quick look at both breasts at once, two huge round globes of firm flesh, before she pulled her halter on.
"I'm going for a swim," she announced. "We'll see you tomorrow. Don't be late."
Charley stayed on the beach when Zelda and Doreen left, a few hours later. Janey still wasn't back. It had turned out that he would have had time after all to hop up to Zelda's room for a little action, but he hadn't had any way of knowing that. If Janey had come back and found him gone, there would have been trouble.
There was always tomorrow, he thought. He'd find some way to get rid of Janey-send her off on a shopping expedition. And then he'd have a ball with Zelda. With Doreen too, if she really was part of the deal, it was hard to tell whether anything Zelda said made sense.
The afternoon ticked away. Three o'clock, four o'clock, five o'clock. Charley was just about deciding to leave the beach and go back to the apartment to wait for Janey, when she showed up. She was alone.
She looked annoyed.
"What happened?" Charley asked. "Didn't you make out with him?"
"I made out all right," Janey said. "If you want to call what he did making out."
"I don't get you."
"He's got certain peculiarities."
"You mean he's a spanker, too?" Charley asked.
Janey shook her head. "Uh-uh. Not that again. He just has odd ways of loving."
"Like-?"
Janey told him.
"He talked you into that?"
"He didn't exactly talk to me," Janey said. "That was more like a rape. I didn't know what was going on until too late."
"Did he hurt you?"
"I'll live. But make him bleed in the checkbook, Charley. There ought to be an extra high price for that kind of thing."
"What arrangements did you make with him?"
"He's supposed to take me out for dinner at seven o'clock. I'm meeting him in the lobby of the hotel here for drinks first."
Charley got to his feet and began rolling up his beach blanket. He said, "Let's get back to the apartment, then. We'll get you into costume and pay a visit to him. What's his name?"
"Mark Avery."
"Sissy name. Mark."
"Hit him good, Charley. Hold him up for a thousand bucks. He deserves to pay big for that."
"You poor kid," Charley said. "You ever do that sort of stuff before?"
"Never. And never again. I hope."
He shook his head. "I don't understand what makes some guys tick. I just don't figure them at all. They get on a bed with a beautiful girl and they've got to pull a stunt like that."
"Did you ever make out like that with a woman, Charley?" Janey asked.
"Me?" He laughed. "Baby, I'm not perfect, but I'm not peculiar either. The good old way is good enough for me. Always has been. Come on, let's go."
They left the beach and went back to the Imperial. Charley's mind was not really on Janey or her problems with the new mark. He was thinking about Zelda and Doreen, and the possible delights they would have to offer when he went to their hotel room.
But that was tomorrow, and there was money to earn tonight. Big money, at that.
He took a shower and got into some decent clothes while Janey dolled herself up in her Lolita outfit. Then they drove back to the Tropical Beach Hotel, going in the main way this time instead of going to the beach entrance at the side.
The elevator swooshed them up to the floor where Mark Avery's room was. The time quarter to seven. Charley knocked.
"Who is it?" a voice called from within.
Charley nudged Janey. She said, "It's Janey, Mark."
"You're early."
"I know. I thought I'd come right on up to your room."
"I'm not quite ready."
"I don't mind," Janey said. "Let me come in. I'll wait for you,"
"Okay."
The door opened. Charley grabbed the doorknob and pushed it inward, and got the wedge of his foot in there too, and followed on into the room, with Janey right behind him. Mark Avery was wearing black slacks and a white shirt, and there was a white dinner jacket laid out on the bed. He blinked and goggled at Charley in surprise.
"What is this?" he snapped. "Who are you?"
"Janey's brother. I came to tell you a thing or two, you stinking little creep."
Avery stared at Janey. His eyes went wide at her looks in the teen-ager costume.
"What's going on?" he asked her. "Janey, who is he? Why aren't you dressed for dinner?"
"He's my brother," Janey said in her high-pitched little-girl voice.
"I feel like mopping up the floor with you," Charley muttered. "Of all the stuff to pull. Abusing a seventeen-year-old girl!"
"Seventeen?"
"That's right. Seventeen years old and you've got to try your perverted acts with her. Don't you have any decency? No, I guess you don't. She told me the whole story. How you raped her and all."
Avery seemed to be trembling. "Listen, you expect me to believe that she's only s-seventeen?"
"Take a look at her."
"I never dreamed-I had no way of knowing-"
"Well get the book thrown at you. Avery. Statutory rape, just for a beginning. And then there's the little matter of your abusive technique. I don't know what the penalty is for that in this state-maybe ten years, maybe twenty, something like that. To take a teen age girl and do that-they ought to put you away for life, you filthy stinking slob!"
Avery shrank back against the dresser. He said, "Look here, I didn't know how young she was. She acted like a sophisticated woman."
"She does that, sometimes. But she's really just a wild kid. That doesn't excuse you, though. There's no excuse for a guy like you."
"Have-have you called the police yet?"
"Not yet. I wanted to get a look at you first, see what kind of creep you were."
Avery's tongue furtively flickered out to moisten his lips. He seemed to be on the edge of a nervous collapse. He said, "Maybe we can keep the police out of this. There's no need to bring them in."
"You want me just to forget that you touched my sister?"
"I'll make this worth your while," Avery said. "If IVe done something wrong, I'm prepared to offer some-some compensation to the injured party. But if I go to jail, what good does that do your sister? Let me pay you something instead. You can use the money for-for anything, for sending her to college, whatever you like. That's much more constructive, isn't it? Isn't it?"
Charley slowly folded his arms. "What kind of compensation you got in mind?" he asked quietly. Avery shrugged. "Two hundred dollars?"
"Don't make me laugh."
"Two hundred's a lot of money," Avery said.
Charley turned to Janey. "Come on, Sis. Let's go file a complaint against this pervert."
"Wait! Let's make it three hundred!"
"You got yourself a six thousand dollar automobile, mister," Charley said. "You got yourself a thirty buck a day room in this hotel. And then you take an innocent little girl and scar her personality for life, and you're only willing to pay three hundred bucks for that? You make me want to spit in your face."
A muscle flickered in Mark Avery's cheek. "All right," he said. "How much do you want?"
"A thousand dollars," Charley said.
Avery seemed to sag. "A thousand dollars?"
"You repeat real good. Let's get out of here, Sis. There's a stench in here that I don't like."
"No," Avery said. "Don't go yet. Will you take five hundred?"
"A thousand," Charley said. He had settled for five hundred from Morton Kolb, but this guy seemed to be even wealthier. Besides, he had done a filthy thing with Janey, and Charley figured he ought to pay double for that, if not more.
Avery sat down on the bed and put his head in his hands. All the fight was gone from him. The heavy tan, the built-up muscles-they were nothing but a facade. He had no nerve at all
"I didn't mean any harm," he whimpered. "I had no way of knowing-"
"Okay, okay. Spare us the tears."
"I don't have a thousand dollars in cash on me," Avery said. "Can we work out an arrangement?"
"Such as?"
"I'll give you two hundred in cash and the rest by check."
"Which you stop payment on the moment I'm out the door. Uh-uh."
"What else can I do? How can I pay you?"
"The hotel will cash a check for you," Charley said. "Phone the manager. Work something out."
"That's a lot of money to ask them for."
"Phone them," Charley said.
Avery phoned. It took him a while to get the manager. It took him a longer while to persuade the manager to cash a check of that size. But finally he wangled a; agreement. Avery's credit was pretty good at the Tropical Beach, it appeared.
He put down the phone, finally.
"They'll have the money ready in half an hour," he said in a hoarse voice.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Back at the apartment, they divided the money.
No traveler's checks to bother about, this time. Just good old crisp greenbacks, straight from Washington, D. C. to the pockets of Charley Simmons and Janey Vaughn, with a minor detour along the way.
"Fifty for you, fifty for me, fifty for you, fifty for me, there we are," Charley finished. "Five hundred clams apiece."
"I can't believe it, Charley."
"You don't need to believe it. Just enjoy it. You oughta open a bank account now."
"You think so?"
"That's a lot of cash to carry around loose."
Janey grinned. "I expect to unload some of it tomorrow in the stores."
"You aren't going to spend the whole five hundred, are you?"
"A good chunk of it. I need some clothes. I don't have enough clothes."
"Right now it looks like you got too many?" Charley said. "On you, I mean."
"But I've been poor so long. I want to dress up fancy, Charley. I'm going to get myself all the things I've always wanted. An ounce of 'Joy' and a pair of gold Florentine finish earrings, and a couple of low-necked dresses, and a cashmere sweater, and-"
"I take it back," Charley said. "You don't need no bank account. What you need's a business manager to watch your money for you."
"There's no sense not spending it once you've got it, Charley. That's what it's for, isn't it?"
"Sure," he said. "But what do you do when it's all gone?"
"Go out and get some more. Look how fast we got ourselves fifteen hundred bucks down here. There were whole years I didn't make that much money, and here we have this inside of two weeks."
"It's not always that easy to get it."
Her eyes glittered. "I think it is," she said. "Once you learn the trick. You've got to know the ropes, that's all. Anyway, I've denied myself all kinds of goodies for too long. There's time to start saving money next week or the week after. Tomorrow I'm going to splurge."
"What time are you going on this shopping expedition of yours?"
"Oh, I don't know. The afternoon, I guess. I hadn't thought about it."
"Go around half past twelve, one o'clock," Charley said.
"Why?"
"Because you'll be by yourself anyway then. I got an appointment."
"Oh? With who?"
"An old friend of mine. A guy I used to know at the track, at Hialeah. I met him on the beach this afternoon while I was waiting for you to come back. He invited me to go over to his place and have a couple of drinks with him tomorrow."
"Okay," Janey said. "You go visit your pal, and I'll go visit the stores. And we'll all live happily ever after."
"Sure thing," Charley said. He gathered up his share of the night's haul and tucked it into his wallet. Then he stood up and began to peel away his clothing.
Janey stripped too.
When they were both nude, he reached for her, yanked her firm, taut-globed body against his, pulled her lips to his mouth.
"We're gonna have a celebration again now," he said. "I forgot to pick up the champagne, but that don't really matter, does that?"
"No," she said. "We can get along without the champagne, baby."
They tumbled down onto the bed. His hand went to the warmth of her. Her nipples began to rise and swell as he touched her.
He said, "I'm gonna make you forget all about what that guy did this afternoon. I'm gonna remind you what the real thing is like."
She sighed. The next moment her arms were around him. He moved, and she returned a counterassault of her own. And then they began to work, slowly at first, then more rapidly, racing with headlong frenzy toward the blazing culmination of their breathless passion.
After lunch the next day, Charley drove over to the Tropical Beach Hotel. He was a little queasy about revisiting the scene of the crime, because if he ran into Mark Avery there might be a sticky scene. He had told Avery to check out and leave Miami Beach, and most likely Avery was gone, since he had seemed so scared stiff of that statutory rape and the other rap. But there was always that one chance in a hundred that he had firmed up and called the cops to tell them about the extortion bit. In that case, it might just be that the cops were waiting in the Tropical Beach lobby to pick up anyone who matched Charley's description.
But he decided to risk it. The invitation from Zelda was too good to pass up. Anyway, there were ninety-nine chances out of a hundred that the sniveling little Avery had taken his weight-lifter muscles and clipped mustache out of Miami Beach on the first plane of the morning, afraid that Charley would pocket the thousand dollars and then report him for his misdeed anyway.
He didn't run into any cops in the hotel lobby, nor did he see Mark Avery, nor were there any hitches of any other kind. He went straight through to the bank of elevators and rode up to the eleventh floor.
It was exactly one o'clock when Charley knocked on the door of Room 1114.
"Coming, lover!" sang out Zelda's rich contralto voice.
She opened the door. All she was wearing was a kind of terry-cloth beach robe that came down to her legs. Her lower portion was exposed. She was pretty exposed above that point too, because she had left the terry-cloth robe unbelted and that hung wide open. Charley had an excellent view of the round, heavy, jutting mounds of her breasts, and of other things too. She had the blue eyes and the honey-tanned skin that went with a real blonde.
He stepped in. She closed the door.
"You're right on time," she said.
"I like to be punctual when beautiful women are involved."
Zelda smiled. In a deliberately provocative way she drew the front of her robe together and tied the belt. That hid her breasts from view, but not much else.
When she turned, he could see the lower halves of her buttocks exposed where the skimpy robe ended. She walked across the room and stooped to pick up something from the floor, bending forward so that the robe rode up on her hips and put the entire area of her buttocks on display.
That wasn't very subtle, Charley thought. But that was certainly plenty effective. She had ripe, firm buttocks, milky-white in contrast to the deeper tan elsewhere.
Straightening up, she said, "Doreen's taking a shower. She'll be out any minute. Relax and have yourself a drink. The bar's over there."
Charley followed her pointing finger. Along the top of the dresser were arrayed various liquor bottles. It was quite an assortment. Charley sauntered over and saw Scotch, bourbon, rye, gin, vodka, light and dark rum. Plus an ice bucket and a few bottles of miscellaneous mixers.
"You're all stocked up, aren't you?" he asked.
Zelda grinned. "We like to be hospitable to our guests. Fix yourself a drink."
"Can I fix you one first?"
"I've got one," Zelda said. She indicated a highball sitting on a low table next to an arm chair. She flopped down in the chair and picked up the drink. The hem of her robe rose four inches, baring her from the navel down. She seemed unconcerned about her semi-nudity.
Standing by the dresser, Charley glanced at her in the mirror, letting his glance ride over the reflection of her body from ankles to calves to knees to upper legs to bare middle. His hand shook a little as he reached for the bourbon bottle. He still couldn't figure this deal out. Zelda hadn't been kidding when she said that Doreen would be on hand too. Was he supposed to love them both? Or just make Zelda while Doreen stood by and cheered? Or what?
He dropped two ice cubes in his glass and lowered himself into another armchair just across the television set from Zelda. Zelda had pulled her legs up onto the chair with her knees flexed and just far enough apart to make the view both highly shameless and highly distracting. Charley figured there was no sense being prudish, so he took a good long look at the merchandise that was being so casually put on display.
There was a pounding in his chest as excitement rose for him. For the last couple of weeks he had been with a brunette, Janey. But blondes had a special fascination all their own. And he had always like variety in his love life.
He hoped that Janey had an entertaining shopping trip this afternoon.
He was pretty sure that he was in for an entertaining time.
The bathroom door opened. Doreen came out. All she was wearing was a towel wrapped around her middle, sarong-fashion, leaving her breasts bare. Charley looked at her. She was a tall, willowy brunette, built a lot like Janey, but with smaller breasts and narrower hips. Doreen wasn't a voluptuous girl like her blonde sister or half-sister Zelda. But she was anything but unattractive.
She took five paces into the room before she appeared to realize that there was a man present. Then she looked at Charley and smiled and said, "Oh, our company is here! Hello, company."
"Hello," Charley said.
Zelda said, "Charley Simmons, my half-sister Doreen Morton. Charley's the man I met on the beach yesterday while you were asleep."
"Pleased," Doreen said.
"Mutual," Charley said.
Doreen crossed diagonally in front of him and went to the bar to fix a drink for herself. He eyed the reflection to her breasts in the mirror. Small high pointed breasts they were. A nice contrast to Zelda's opulent fleshiness, Charley thought.
As Doreen busied herself with the drinks, Zelda snaked out a foot. She hooked a toe into the towel Doreen was wearing, and yanked. The knot in the towel opened and the towel dropped to the floor.
Doreen was nude underneath. She went right on mixing her drink without bothering to cover herself. Her buttocks were slender and very pink. Charley studied her from top to toe. He liked what he saw.
When she had put her drink together, the dark-haired girl, still completely nude, walked back across the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. She took a sip of the drink. Her nudity was apparently a matter of no concern at all to her. In a pleasantly conversational voice she said, "I hear that you're a blackmailer by profession, Mr. Simmons. Is that right?"
"Sure," he said, figuring that the best way to make it seem like a joke was to go along with the gag. "Sure, I'm a blackmailer. Though in the trade we prefer to refer to ourselves as extortionists."
"How exciting," Doreen said.
"And I hear that you and Zelda make love with each other," Charley said.
Doreen smiled. "That's right. We're very fond of each other. That's only half-incest because we're only half-sisters. But we also like men. Don't we, Zelda?"
"Naturally," Zelda said.
Charley frowned. Were they pulling his leg or not? He said, "Which do you find better? A man, or each other?"
"That depends," Doreen said.
"On our mood," said Zelda. "And on how good the man is. Are you a good lover, Charley?"
"I like to think I am," he said.
"Why don't you get undressed, then?" Zelda suggested. "After all, here are the two of us sitting around without clothes, and you're fully dressed. That isn't really proper."
"I guess that isn't," Charley said. He put his drink down, got to his feet, and began to undress. The two girls watched him with keen interest.
This was the craziest situation he had ever been in in his life. These two kooks were completely deadpan, and they seemed to be inviting him to a genuine orgy. But they didn't look depraved. Just two nice clean-cut kids from New York who liked their fun on the wild side.
All the same, he felt odd about that. Their nakedness, when they were so casual about that, was weird to him. And the idea of just undressing in front of two strange girls-
No sense being inhibited, he thought. He took off his shirt and his shoes, dropped his trousers, paused for a sip of his drink, and slipped out of his shorts.
"Very nice," Zelda commented.
"I think so too," said Doreen.
Charley said, "Now you're the only one who's wearing anything, Zelda."
"So I am, so I am." The blonde girl smiled, rose, shrugged off her bathrobe. For the first time Charley saw her completely nude. She was a stunning sight, six feet of utterly magnificent woman, heavy-breasted and heavy-hipped and heavy-legged, but yet not fat. Just big. A love goddess modeled along the lines of a movie star. Charley didn't make the comparison out loud. He figured that Zelda had heard that often enough by now to be pretty sick of that.
Now all three of them were naked. A cozy little cocktail party.
Zelda said, "How do you feel about Lesbians, Charley?"
"I've never really thought much about them, I guess," he said.
"Does that disgust you?" Doreen asked. "The thought of one woman going to bed with another?"
"Not really. That strikes me as kind of interesting, in a way."
"Have you ever seen two Lesbians loving?" Zelda asked.
"No. Never."
"Do you want to?"
Charley hesitated. "Are you two going to stage a show for me?"
"That's what we had in mind," Doreen admitted. "Of course, if you find the idea repugnant-"
"I don't think he does," Zelda said. "Look at him. Look how excited he's getting."
Doreen looked. Charley didn't need to look. He knew what was going on, knew that his state of excitement was becoming obvious. He reddened.
Zelda said, "What we thought was, we'd put on a show for you, and then you could love us afterward. How does that strike you?"
"I'm not able to love you both at the same time," Charley pointed out.
"Oh, we can work things out," Zelda said. "Don't worry about that."
"We've done this kind of thing before," said Doreen. "We've had experience at this."
Charley took a long gulp of his drink. Weirder and weirder, he thought. To fall into the clutches of two exhibitionistic Lesbo sisters, to get himself invited to a wingding of an orgy-
Well, why not?
"Sure," he said. "I'm game."
"Let's all have another drink first," Zelda said. "Then well begin."
Charley acted as bartender. He mixed a fresh drink for Zelda, then one for Doreen, carrying them to the girls. That seemed to him as though they were starting to shed their casual attitude. Now that the fun and conversation was over, they were getting excited, getting steamed up. Doreen's nipples rose tall from her small pale breasts. Zelda's big boobs were starting to go up and down with increasing rapidity.
They had their drinks. Quickly.
Then Zelda got to her feet, stretching voluptuously, her huge breasts swaying. She smiled warmly at Charley and said, "Any time you feel like joining us on the bed, go right ahead and pile on. Let's go, Doreen."
The blonde-haired sister rose and walked toward the bed, where Doreen awaited her.
The orgy was about to begin.
Charley detected a moment of self-consciousness as both girls stretched out on the bed. But only for a moment. They smiled at each other, and that was though an invisible curtain had come down, locking them off into a private room of their own without an audience.
Doreen reached out a hand, found the heavy globe of Zelda's right breast. Doreen's slender fingers cupped the breast, and a dark red nipple peeped through. Zelda began to gasp and move on the bed.
Charley leaned forward on the edge of his chair. His heart began to thump. There was something terrifically exciting about the sight of these two women, the blonde one and the dark, the voluptuous one and the slender, beginning to move on the bed, to entangle themselves in one another's arms, to twist and turn and gyrate.
They were kissing, now. Body pressed against body, lips meeting-a passionate kiss, Charley figured-hands clasped to breasts. Muscles tightening. Bodies beginning to produce the rhythms of passion.
A cold sweat burst out on him. The temptation was great, almost overpowering, to go over there and throw himself at those two nude forms, pull them apart, quench the fire of his lusts with one or the other. But he waited. He wanted to see the whole show first.
Things were getting more interesting over there. Doreen was flat on her back and Zelda was attending her diligently. Charley heard muffled gasping sounds of pleasure from Doreen. He stood up to get a better view of her face, and saw that her expression was distorted with excitement, the eyes tight shut, the nostrils wide, the mouth pulled down in a twisted slash.
Then the positions changed. Doreen was working, Zelda giving herself up to pleasure. Zelda lay on her side, her, firm ripe buttocks pointing toward Charley.
Doreen was very, very busy.
That went on and on for an endless time. Harsh, hoarse ragged sounds of ecstatic breathing filled the room. Charley had always wondered how Lezies performed, and now he was finding out. And how he was finding out!
And now Doreen was lying with Zelda, as though she were a man.
The scene grew wilder. Body worked against active body. Big firm breasts pushed against small hard ones. Nipples touched.
Then there was a long hissing cry of ecstasy. Charley couldn't tell which of the sisters had produced that. Perhaps both at once, he thought. They were all wrapped up, working at a frantic pace, working hard toward the summit of bliss. A moment later they seemed to get there, both of them at the same moment, and they subsided.
They lay limply in each other's arms, breathing hard, bodies dappled with sweat. Their nude forms seemed fantastically attractive to Charley Simmons.
He couldn't be a spectator any longer. He was bursting with desire.
Now was the time for him to join the fun.
Charley walked toward the bed. He stood over them for a moment, looking down. Their eyes were closed. Doreen had her hands to Zelda's big breasts. Zelda's hands were resting quietly on Doreen's breasts. The scene was very peaceful. Like babes in the wood, Charley thought. He ached with desire.
He put his hand to Doreen's buttocks. They were cool, satiny to the touch. He ran his fingers along her back. She stirred. Her eyes fluttered open. She smiled at him.
"Okay, big boy. I'm ready for you."
Zelda lifted her head. "And so am I."
"Who goes first?" Charley asked.
"I do," Doreen said. "I'm the older one."
"I do," said Zelda. "I'm better."
"Says who?"
"Says me."
"Let's flip for this, girls," Charley said. He pivoted around and picked up an ash tray that had the hotel's monogram on its upper surface. "Heads or tails," he said. "You call the turn, Zelda."
He threw the ash tray into the air. The disk spun as it rose toward the ceiling.
"Tails," Zelda said.
Charley caught the ash tray and pressed it against the back of his left hand. The monogram side was uppermost. He grinned at Doreen. "Looks like you're the lucky one," he said.
"I'll get my turn," Zelda said.
The two sisters pulled him down onto the bed. Charley was lost in a tangle of arms and legs, of warm bodies, of breasts and buttocks. He felt a hard nipple against his lips, and he moved his mouth to take advantage of the offering. From the bulk of the breast that the nipple was attached to, Charley guessed that must belong to Zelda. He groped out with his other hand and encountered smooth cool buttocks. Doreen's, he figured. He couldn't see a thing. The girls had him surrounded.
Suddenly he was aware of some very special action. A moment later, whoever had been obscuring his view moved, and as the body moved a way, letting him see again, he discovered that Doreen had begun her turn, had started to enjoy the passionate rhythms of love.
Charley worked with her. Once again he wasn't able to see what he was doing, because Zelda had wrapped her big arms around his neck, and all he could see was the generous swell of her breasts. That was all right. He didn't need to see in order to keep these girls happy. His body kept up a steady pace, satisfying Doreen. Meanwhile he pushed his face forward against the warmth of Zelda, loving her the best way he could at the moment.
Zelda seemed to enjoy his attentions. She gasped and cried and thrashed around. He got his hands to the heavy globes of her buttocks, cupping the firm flesh. In her ecstasy she tightened her throttlehold on his neck, nearly choking him, but he shifted to a new position where he could breathe again.
He didn't have much idea of how Doreen was getting along, since his view of her was completely blocked by Zelda. But he had the idea that Doreen was doing all right. She was still working, and he could sense the thrills of delight that went shuddering over her every few seconds.
In another couple of moments he had each sister gasping with delight. Doreen was the first one to reach her full ecstasy. She went into a wild frenzy, gripping him tightly, her body rolling and thrashing. She took her pleasure from him, and at the same exciting instant Charley took his, too.
And then Zelda let out a hoarse whoop of pleasure and clamped her arms tight around him once again. Charley closed his eyes and sucked in air. After a breathless moment she relaxed.
All three of them lay still. They were curled in a tangled knot on the bed. Charley felt exhausted, depleted. They were a pretty wild team, these two.
They rested.
He fell into a light doze. He knew that he still owed Zelda a round-the way he had pleasured her didn't really count as the full thing-but first he wanted to ge this strength back. Mercifully, Zelda wasn't in any hurry for her turn.
Charley dropped deeper and deeper into sleep. He didn't have any idea how long he was out, but he was awakened after what could have been ten minutes or five hours by the steady creaking of the bedsprings.
Zelda and Doreen were loving again.
He was lying diagonally across the bed, and they had settled down on the far corner. They were in each other's arms, and their bodies were busy, breasts pushing breasts, nipples touching with steady passion.
Charley propped himself up and watched. There was a creepy fascination to that. These two long-legged girls loving each other a few feet from him-all that sleek flesh.
Excitement swelled for him afresh.
Doreen and Zelda weren't paying any attention to him at all. They were off in that private world of theirs again, the world where nothing existed except the body of the other. Charley watched them, and waited until they were right at the peak of excitement.
Then, as they gasped through the intensity of their ecstasy, Charley moved again.
"My turn," he said to Zelda. "And yours."
He fell at her breasty blonde body. She was still dazed from her experience with Doreen. Charley took her so rapidly that that must have seemed to her like one continuous fling, different only in nature.
His body whipped into action. She was a big, strong, healthy girl, and she took his assault without any trouble. The giant cushions of her breasts were good to rest against. Her powerful arms held him in a wild embrace.
While he was loving Zelda, Doreen lay curled around them both. There didn't seem to be much passion left for Doreen, at least not at the moment. The brunette was content just to touch them. She had her hands resting lightly on Charley as though helping him with her sister.
The moment of pleasure was not long in arriving. For Charley, for Zelda.
They rested once again.
"Have a drink," Doreen said. "That'll pep you up, Charley."
"Sure," he said. "Sure."
They had drinks. Then they scampered into the shower, all three of them, and got under the nozzle together. That was the wildest shower Charley had ever taken in his life. The girls were prankish and playful, soaping him and running their hands all over him, Zelda letting him run his soapy hands over the swelling hillocks of her breasts and buttocks, cold cascades of water coming down over all three of them all the time.
After the shower, they went back to bed.
More loving was on the schedule.
Charley wasn't sure which girl he was loving at any one time. Everything was getting blurred, now. Reality was dissolving. He thought vaguely of Janey and wondered what time it was. Then she drifted out of his mind again and he busied himself with the small hard globe of Doreen's nearer breast.
The fun and frolic went on and on.
That went right on to the point of exhaustion-and kept going past that point. Charley drove his weary body to new heights of achievement. But there had to be a limit somewhere, and the limit was reached. He reached that while he was trying to love Zelda for the third or fourth time around. He just couldn't do that. Even with the skillful help from both girls, he couldn't manage. There was nothing to be ashamed of, he knew, not after what he had been through this afternoon. He was only human, after all.
With a goofy smile on his face, Charley lay back, pillowing himself against the thrusting mounds of Zelda's fantastic breasts. He patted the cool firmness of Doreen's nearby buttocks. Then he closed his eyes.
He dropped off into the bottomless well of exhausted sleep.
CHAPTER NINE
Janey had a busy day. And an expensive one, in the bargain.
She had pretty near run through the five hundred dollars that was her share of last night's take. She had distributed her money with gay abandon. It had been a heady, exhilarating feeling to togs twenty-dollar bills around like pennies. It was a wild and joyous thing to do, like stripping naked and getting loved by a whole regiment of movie stars in Times Square.
Now the apartment was festooned with the afternoon's haul. Dresses and jewelry and perfume, handbags and shoes, another bikini or two, frills and laces-Janey had bought as though all the stores for women were being shut down by government decree the next day. She couldn't wait for Charley to get home so she could show everything off to him, model her new clothes, prance around in her shortie nightgown and her practically off-the-bosom cocktail sheath and all the rest.
But where was he?
Janey had returned from her shopping spree at half past five. The apartment had been empty. Now, after everything was unpacked, it was well after six, and still no sign of him. He had said that he was going to spend the afternoon with an old pal from his Hia-leah days. All right, that was the afternoon. But the afternoon was over. Was he going to leave her stranded for the evening? They hadn't made any arrangements, but Janey had figured they'd go out together for dinner tonight, by way of celebrating last night's thousand-dollar kitty.
Seven o'clock came.
And went.
Janey was getting hungry, and more and more irritated with each passing minute. She waited until half past seven, feeling like a suburban housewife whose hubby has failed to show up for dinner. Angrily, she went into the kitchenette, opened a couple of cans, slung together a quick dinner for herself. She had counted on something much fancier than that for tonight.
Eight o'clock. Eight thirty. Nine.
Now Janey began to worry. At first she had simply thought he was out getting boozed up with his cronies, but it struck her now that it might be more serious than that. What if he had been arrested? Chilling thought! She could picture it clearly: Charley stepping out of his car on a busy street, cops closing in on him from all sides, handcuffs clicking into place on his wrists.
A tough voice saying, "All right, Simmons, come quietly. You're wanted on an extortion charge. We'll pick up that girl friend of yours later on."
Was that it, Janey wondered? Had Mark Avery filed a complaint? Morton Kolb, maybe? Had they been trying to track them all week?
Would they arrest her next?
She didn't think that Charley would give away the address of their apartment. So she was safe, for the time being. But for how long?
Of course, she realized, she was probably imagining the whole thing. It wasn't too likely that the police had picked him up. Maybe he had been run over by a car, she thought. Splat! A dead man in the middle of the boulevard. Janey shuddered. She couldn't exactly say that she loved Charley Simmons, at least not yet, but she was fond of him. He was a good guy and he was swell in the hay, and he had shown her how to make more money than she had ever dreamed of raking in. She didn't want him to be dead. It was half past nine, now.
Janey's thoughts swung to another tack. Maybe, she thought, he was with another girl. Maybe his "old friend" was female. And he was off in some Gold Coast apartment now, on a bed with a busty wench, banging her for the third or fourth time today, swilling down booze and blearily thinking about going home to Janey.
The idea made Janey seethe with inner fury.
She didn't know why it should. They weren't married, were they? They just shacked up together. He was entitled to step out on the side.
But that wasn't fair. What did another girl have to offer that she didn't?
The least he could do was stay faithful. Here she was, she thought, putting up with all sorts of creeps and sadists for the sake of earning money for him, and he was off having a good time with some other wench, letting her sit home alone at night. Standing her up.
Ten o'clock.
Ten-thirty.
Eleven.
Not knowing whether to be angry or worried, Janey began to undress for bed. She wasn't going to wait up till all hours for him. She got out of her clothing and took a quick shower. Then, just before getting into bed, she unwrapped one of her new necklaces and put it on.
She liked the effect, nude with a necklace dangling over her bare breasts. Too bad Charley wasn't here to see that, she thought. That curve of gold, arching across the rosy-tipped mounds of her bosom, would turn him on. Janey sighed in annoyance. She took the necklace off and put it back in its box.
She began to get into bed. Then the door opened and Charley walked in.
He looked rumpled and seedy and tired, and Janey could smell the liquor on him from across the room. He stood by the door, blinking at her, smiling a feeble smile. Janey, nude and angry, glared back at him.
"Hi," he said.
"You know what time it is?"
"Pretty late, I guess."
"It's almost half past eleven," Janey said. "I thought you were just going away for the afternoon."
"I was," Charley said. He shambled into the room, sat down heavily on a chair, and began to pull his shoes off. "I guess we got kind of tanked up, and I lost track of the time. I closed my eyes for just a second, you see, and next thing I knew it was ten o'clock at night."
"I see," Janey said sourly.
"Look, I'm sorry, kid. It wasn't my fault, really. It could have happened to anyone. An old friend, good liquor, you have a little too much, you doze off-you know how it is."
"Sure," she said. "I know. What's your old friend's name, by the way?"
The question seemed to catch him off balance for a moment "Uhh-Harry," he said.
Janey nodded. "Harry didn't have any girl friends along, did he?"
"What is this, twenty questions?"
"Okay, okay."
She turned and went back toward the bedroom. He stood up and began to pull his clothing off.
"How'd your shopping go today?"
"I spent a pile and I got some nice things. I'd model them for you, but you're probably too sleepy to appreciate them now."
"Show them to me in the morning."
"Sure," she said.
She got into bed and watched him moving around the room, putting his clothes away. Her anger was down to a low simmer, now. Maybe he really had dozed off at his friend's place, she thought. In any case, it wasn't really her business, though it had been inconsiderate of him to leave her alone all evening.
He joined her on the bed.
"You smell like a distillery," she told him.
"We did a lot of serious constructive drinking today," Charley said.
"I bet you did."
"Listen, Janey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to stay out so late."
"All right already."
"I'll make it up to you tomorrow. Well go out for a fancy dinner. Anywhere you like. Well have steaks and cold mashed potatoes and wine and all the trimmings. Okay?"
"Okay."
"Forgive me?"
"Just don't let it happen again," she said. "If you want to go off for the night, say so and I'll make arrangements of my own. But don't just leave me dangling like this. I thought you got killed by a car. Or maybe got picked up by the cops."
"No such luck," he said. "I just had a quiet afternoon hoisting the booze with my old friend Harry." He yawned. "And then a nice nap."
"Okay," she said. "Kiss me and I'll accept your apologies."
His arms curved around her. His lips went to hers. Janey moved against him, her nipples already responding to her passion. After the tension of the long, lonely evening of waiting, she wanted him to take her now, love her, send her off to dreamland.
But there was something casual and offhand about his kiss. He didn't seem excited by the nearness of her nude body. The nipples at his chest failed to draw any notice from him.
His mouth covered hers, briefly. Then he pulled away. That wasn't even a deep kiss.
They lay there quietly in the dark.
"Good night," he said.
"That all? Just good night?"
"I'm tired, Janey."
"You've been sleeping all afternoon. You ought to be wide awake now."
"Look-"
"Raring to go."
"Well, I'm not," he said
"Maybe I can fix that," Janey murmured.
Her body sidled against his. She took one of Ms hands and put that against the ripe globes of her breasts. He cupped them, but without enthusiasm. Janey let her hand steal over the front of his big body.
He wasn't at all ready for love. He was like an impotent old man of ninety.
"What's the matter?" she said.
"Nothing. I'm tired."
"That tired?"
"That happens sometimes," he said.
"Maybe I can do something about that," Janey said.
Her hand caressed him. But she failed to produce any effect. She had never known him to be like this before. He was always ready for love, night after night, two or three times a night, even.
And now-nothing.
"Let's go to sleep, Janey."
"No. I want you to love me."
"In the morning."
"Now."
"I can't. I'm tired."
"Tired from what?"
"Look, Janey-"
She hissed in annoyance. Taking her hand from him, she pressed her face against him. She moved her lips.
No response.
The caress failed to produce any reaction from him. Now she was certain something was wrong. This above all turned him on, she knew. But this sure wasn't doing any turning on tonight, somehow.
She said, "Harry had a girl for you, didn't he?"
"Come on, Janey. Cut this out!"
"That's the only explanation. This is the first night you haven't loved me since we started traveling together, Charley."
"All right," he growled. "So there was a girl. What of that?"
"You must have had quite a time with her, huh? Once wouldn't exhaust you like that."
"Stop this, Janey. I don't ask you to account to me for where you go when I'm not with you."
"How many times, Charley?"
"There were two of them," he said.
"Huh?"
"As long as you have to know, I'll tell you. I don't have any old friends named Harry. While you were up in the hotel room with that creep yesterday, I got picked up by two girls on the beach. Sisters. A blonde and a brunette, Zelda and Doreen. They invited me to visit them and have some fun today."
"Okay, Charley. I don't want to hear the gory details," Janey said.
"You listen, now. It turned out that they're gay, and when they're not sleeping with men they love each other. So we had a party. I don't know how many times.
But finally I fell asleep and when I woke up it was ten o'clock, so I got dressed and cleared out and came home."
Janey bit her hp. "You had yourself a high old time, huh?"
"I did."
"I'm not enough to keep you happy?"
"There was nothing personal to this. This was just a little amusement. Hell, you get enough loving on the side, don't you?"
"Sure," she said. "I sleep with bald-headed old men who spank me, and then I sleep with creepy guys who try disgusting things. Big thrill."
"Can we just drop the whole subject now? I don't plan to see those two girls again. It's you I'm interested in, Janey. You're my partner. You're my girl."
"You aren't much good to me tonight," she said.
"Tomorrow's another night. Just let me rest, will you?"
There was nothing to be gained by badgering him. Janey dropped the subject and let him go to sleep. He dropped off in a few minutes. Janey, in a tense and bitter mood, stayed awake for a while.
Jealousy curdled her thoughts. He had gone off and had an orgy, had he? All right. If he wanted to slip off and have fun on the side, she would too. There were plenty of non-creepy men around here that she could get some pleasure from, she told herself. She'd get even with him for tonight. Letting her stew in this dismal apartment all evening, then not being able to love her when he came home-She slept, finally.
In the morning, a lot of the tension was gone. She was in a relaxed and even cheerful mood. They slept late, past eleven o'clock, and when they woke Charley said, "How about modeling your new things for me now?"
"Okay," she said. "What do you want to see?"
She began with the jewelry. Nude except for her necklace and bracelet and earrings, she paraded before him, turning and pirouetting to show off the rising hills of her breasts, the firm mounds of her buttocks. His eyes gleamed as he looked her over. The night of sleep had done him some good, she thought.
"You aren't looking at the jewelry," she said, "There's all that pink stuff underneath," he told her. "Very distracting."
"Then I'll cover up," she said.
She took the new panties and bras out of their boxes and tried them on for him. She pulled her new stockings on over her long, shapely legs. She modeled her new cocktail sheath and her new dresses.
He lay there, watching her, appreciating the show.
"You really spent a mint, huh?" he asked her.
"Easy come, easy go. Money's just green pieces of paper. These things will last me a long time."
She took everything off, got down to scratch again, and tried on her new bikinis for him. He grinned in approval.
Then he said, "I like that all fine. But what I like most of all is what goes underneath the clothing."
"You mean that, Charley?"
"Get over here, baby."
Nude, she went toward him. He gathered her to him. Their lips met, and her breasts pushed against him.
He was still showing some of the after-effects of yesterday's orgy, Janey realized. He wasn't his old swaggering virile self. She got the impression that he was forcing himself, pushing for a love session that he could just as well do without.
But he was making the effort. That was what counted. He had slipped yesterday, but now he was going out of his way to even things up. She was still annoyed with him about yesterday, but not as much as she had been at bedtime.
She moved against him. His response was not very wild at first, but she didn't mind that. All of last night's frustrations were still simmering for her, and she was eager, hungry to have him rid her of them in one wild burst of passion right now.
Charley's enthusiasm grew as he worked. She was aware of that, and her own pleasure was increased. She trembled and hissed and clung to him fervidly.
Charley was snorting and gasping and bellowing like a water buffalo. There was nothing subtle about his technique, Janey thought. He was direct and un-subtle. His idea of pleasuring a woman was to get hold of her and work away.
There was nothing really wrong with that, Janey figured. So long as he could deliver the goods. And Charley could. He had never failed to give her pleasure in bed.
And he wasn't failing now.
Higher and higher she soared, her head spinning, her whole body tingling. Sensual delights radiated over her. She closed her eyes and let the thunder of ecstasy rumble through her.
When that was over, she lay back, alongside Charley. There was an odd sensation of tension still with her. That was strange, Janey thought. Love had always relaxed her in the past. What was the trouble now?
She thought about it and decided that she was still bothered with Charley about last night. That was it. Annoyed with him about staying out so late without telling her where he was going. Annoyed, too, about that wild orgy that he claimed he had taken part in.
Had he really? Two Lesbian sisters loving each other and then him?
There was no reason in the world why he should have made up such a fantastic thing, Janey thought. So he had really done that. Somehow he had made her feel rejected and unwanted. She didn't enjoy the sensation. She had thought that she meant something to Charley-meant something other than dollars and cents, that is.
Apparently not.
As she lay there by his side after their session, Janey began to rethink their whole relationship. She started to see that it was dangerous to get emotionally involved with Charley. Very dangerous indeed. She had been just on the edge of falling in love with him.
But you didn't want to fall in love with a man who was capable of going off and casually having himself an orgy with a pair of Lesbians.
Charley was a guy to live with, yes. To ball now and then, yes. Above all, a business partner. So long as she kept things on that basis, Janey thought, everything would be all right. But when she started getting delusions that there was more to their relationship than that, she knew she would be asking for trouble.
Charley said, "What are you thinking about so hard, baby?"
"Things."
"Like what?"
"Like where we're going to go for dinner tonight," Janey said.
"The best place in town. Whichever it is. You'll dress up in your new finery and we'll have ourselves a ball. We'll shoot the works."
"Dutch treat, I suppose?"
"Come on, Janey, don't be sarcastic!"
"We went Dutch treat on the champagne," Janey pointed out.
"Not tonight," he said. "Tonight's going to be my treat, And nothing spared."
He rolled toward her. His hands sought her breasts, cupped them, trapped them playfully. He played with the rosy little nubs of puckered flesh that jutted out.
He said, "Everything okay again now?"
"Sure, Charley. Sure."
But she couldn't forget about those two Lesbian girls and the things Charley had told her he had done with them yesterday.
CHAPTER TEN
They went out and had dinner that night at the Chateau Mazarin, the finest French restaurant west of Paris, south of New York, and east of New Orleans. Janey wore the sleekest and most daring of her new dresses. She donned her necklace and her gold bracelet. She put a dab of "Joy" between her breasts. At umpty-ump dollars per ounce, you didn't smear perfume on like eau de cologne.
Charley dressed up too, in his best suit and a sharp tie. They made an impressive-looking couple as the big Imperial pulled up in front of the Mazarin's striped-awninged front and they got out.
The doorman smiled graciously at them. Charley smiled back, every bit as graciously, and, arm in arm, he and Janey went into the restaurant.
"Do you think my neckline's too low?" Janey whispered anxiously.
"It looks great."
"I know that. But does it look too much like I'm an exhibitionist?"
"Low necklines are very fashionable in this set," Charley assured her. "Stop worrying about things. You look gorgeous, Janey."
"I don't want to be out of place," she said.
A slick-looking maitre de loomed up before them. Charley said glibly, "Reservation for C. Simmons, table for two."
"Of course, m'sieur. Would you come this way?"
Janey's eyes widened as she saw the interior of the restaurant. The walls were hung with mirrors, and between the mirrors there glistened marble columns, and red velvet hangings. Impeccably dressed waiters and busboys stood about. There were tables of goodies scattered through the room, groaning with cheeses and hors d'oeuvres and desserts and appetizers. At one of the tables a towering waiter was engaged in making some flaming dish, his long arms weaving through the air as he dumped brandy into the pot and touched off leaping blue flames.
The maitre d' led them to a banquette along one mirrored wall, and sat them side by side, facing outward so that they could watch the goings-on.
Janey was relieved to see that she wasn't over dressed for this place. Diagonally across from her was a woman whose neckline was just as low as her own-a big blonde, well along into her forties, with mountainous heavy breasts overflowing her black dress. It wasn't exactly a pretty sight, Janey thought, but the woman seemed fashionable and relaxed, as though she had no doubts at all about the Tightness of her costume. Good, Janey thought. She didn't want to seem out of place.
A tuxedoed waiter asked softly, "Wouldn't m'sieu and madame care for cocktails before dinner?"
"I think so," Charley said. He glanced at Janey and said, "What would you like?"
She felt flustered. She knew she ought to ask for some kind of sophisticated fancy-restaurant sort of cocktail, but she couldn't think of any. The only thing that came into her head was Scotch on the rocks. So she ordered that.
The waiter gave her a peculiar glance, as though she had asked for milk or maybe tomato juice.
Charley said, "I'll have a gimlet."
The waiter moved away. Janey said, "Why did he look at me like that?"
"I guess it's what you ordered. Scotch on the rocks isn't what he figured you for."
Her cheeks reddened. "What should I have ordered, then?"
"Something lady-like. A glass of sherry, maybe. Or sweet vermouth on the rocks with a twist of lemon peel in it," Charley said.
"My mind wouldn't work. I tried to think of those things and I couldn't."
"Should I call him back? You can get some sherry instead?"
"No," Janey said. "That would only make it worse. I don't want to start a fuss."
She felt very small, very ignorant, very unsophisticated. But it wasn't her fault, she told herself. She had never had a chance to eat in places like this. She'd learn. Give her some time.
The drinks arrived.
Charley said, "We'd like to look at the menu now."
"Of course, m'sieur."
The menu was about a yard long and sumptuously engraved. Just about everything on it was in French except the prices. The prices were in dollars and cents, and they were fantastic. Janey's eyes bulged as she looked at them. Everything was a la carte-everything. "Potage"-that was soup, she remembered-soup was a buck or a buck-fifty, depending on which kind you ordered. The appetizers ranged all the way from a dollar fifty for something with an incomprehensible name all the way up to seven dollars for caviar. How much caviar did they give you for seven bucks, Janey wondered?
And the main dishes-six dollars, seven, seven-fifty! Even a salad was a dollar. Coffee was seventy-five cents, she saw. Her head swam. Her idea of a really fancy meal was a five-dollar dinner that included everything from soup to dessert. Here you couldn't even get a main dish for five bucks, and all the rest was extra.
She glanced at Charley and said, "You eat at places like this very often?"
"Not really. Why?"
"I was just wondering. Looks pretty flossy. The prices, I mean."
"Don't worry. It's Mark Avery's money we're spending tonight."
"And I can't figure out what half the menu means," Janey said.
"What's troubling you?"
"Can you translate some of these things for me?" she asked. "What's-escargots?"
"Snails," he said. "They cook them in a kind of garlic and butter sauce."
Janey shivered. "Forget that one. How about coquille St. Jacques?"
"Beats me," Charley said. "Why don't you order it and find out?"
"It might turn out to be frog's heads," she said. "I'd rather not experiment."
Between them, they managed to puzzle out enough things to make a meal from. Charley knew a lot more about the meaning of the things on the menu than she did, but he didn't really know much, she discovered. He was best at translating the easy things. But about two items out of three on the menu stumped him.
And though he didn't mind pronouncing things out loud to her, he was wary about trying his French out on the waiter. Instead of naming things, he simply said, "We'll have this ... and this ... and this...." while pointing at items on the menu.
The waiter smiled as though he was used to American ignorance. "Very good, sir."
"And let me see the wine list."
"Certainly, sir."
They had played it safe and ordered filet mignon for the main dish, and cold mashed potatoes-that, at least, presented no translation problems. Charley leafed through the wine list, which was no simple card but an elaborate leather-bound book of about twenty pages. He frowned deeply.
"Let's see," he said. "With steak, you want red wine. Something good. A Burgundy, I think."
Janey peered over his shoulder. "Here we are. Red Burgundy. But there are twenty of them!"
"Well, pick one."
"Just in the dark?"
"Why not?"
"And look at the prices! Six, seven dollars a bottle!" Janey exclaimed.
"That's nothing. Here's one down here for fifteen smackers."
"Should we order it?"
"It would be wasted on us," Charley said. "Let's pick one in the middle here. Number 112. Chambertain. That sounds like a good solid wine."
It was. It was a sturdy red wine with plenty of oomph, and they toasted each other with it, grinning in mutual satisfaction. They hadn't really done badly in the ordering department, considering their abysmal ignorance of French restaurants. They had had oysters casino for their appetizer-a successful guess at the French on Charley's part-and then vichyssoise, which required no guessing, and the filet mignon, rare, with mushrooms and cold mashed potatoes. The big bottle of wine left them relaxed and happy, washing away their self-consciousness, and by the time they came to the end of the meal Charley was able to tell the waiter grandly, "Well have cheese for dessert, and some cognac with our coffee, please."
"Very good, sir."
Janey leaned back against the soft upholstery. "I'm stuffed fit to burst."
"So am I. But it was good, wasn't it?"
"I never knew food could taste like that."
"Some people eat in restaurants like this every night," Charley said.
"I bet they're fat as pigs."
"Probably they are. And rich as kings, too."
"I wouldn't want to eat some place like this very often," Janey said. "The thrill would wear off."
"I don't know," he said. "I can think of some other things where the thrill doesn't wear off when you keep on doing them. Unless you're a hog about them and do them six times a night."
Janey laughed. "I suppose. But it's different with eating."
She closed her eyes a moment, then carefully opened them and let them focus. All the drinking was making her woozy. The Scotch, the wine, now the cognac-it was quite a load to take on.
But when the check arrived it sobered her instantly. She stared at it in astonishment. It was for thirty-nine dollars!
"I never thought two people could possibly spend that much on dinner," she gasped.
Charley smiled unhappily. "It seems kind of high, doesn't it?"
"Add it up. Maybe they made a mistake."
"I don't think so. Six bucks for four drinks, seven for wine, fourteen for the steaks-heck, that's twenty-seven right there. And then the soup, the dessert, the salad, whatnot-sure. Thirty-nine bucks."
"Plus tip."
"Plus tip," he agreed. "Let's see-I guess six bucks is right. Makes forty-five."
"I used to work practically a whole week for that kind of money," Janey said. "And here we are eating it up in two hours."
"Funny how things change, ain't it?" Charley said. He took out his wallet and dropped one of the crisp fifty-dollar bills into the tray. The waiter scooped it up and carried it off, returning after a while with Charley's eleven dollars of change. Charley pocketed a five-dollar bill. "Not much left out of a fifty, is there?" he said ruefully.
The waiters and busboys and maitre d' bowed them out of the restaurant. Janey felt a warm glow of satiation as they emerged into the street. She had been wined and dined like a princess tonight. Here she was, wearing an eighty-buck dress and a twenty-buck bra, with a ninety-buck necklace around her throat and her share of a forty-five buck dinner in her stomach, getting into a plushly elegant Imperial limousine. She had come a long way from that Delaware hash house, she thought. A long, long way.
"You know what I want to do now?" Janey asked.
"Can't guess."
"First I want to go for a drive. Get on some highway and drive at eighty miles an hour. I want to feel the wind rushing past."
"And then?"
"Then I want to go home and take off every stitch of clothing I'm wearing."
"And then?"
"Then," she said, "I want to get some exercise. To burn up all these calories I ate tonight."
They did just what she said. First they drove, whooshing through the moonlit night at eighty and sometimes eight-five miles an hour, and the breeze coursing through the car's open windows helped to cool Janey, who was flushed and perspired from all her eating and drinking.
Then Charley turned the car homeward. It was something of a comedown to step out of the big, handsome automobile and enter their miserable little furnished flat It was like Cinderella's coach turning into a pumpkin again at midnight.
But this particular Cinderella didn't mind too much. The place of residence could always be improved later on. A few more jobs at five hundred or a thousand cookies per throw and they'd get themselves a more imposing apartment somewhere. There was time for all that. Things were moving quite fast enough as it was.
They went in.
Janey removed her clothing. Everything but the necklace. She stood in the middle of the room wearing the strip of gold that curved down over the high-rising hillocks of her breasts, and she smiled at Charley and held out her arms toward him invitingly.
"Come here," she said.
He went to her. He cupped her breasts, slipping his hands up under the necklace. Kissing her, he ran his hands around her body, to the taut globes of her buttocks. Then he led her to the bed.
"Take the armor off," he said.
"Don't you want me to wear my necklace while you love me, Charley?"
"That's got sharp edges. Anyway, I like my women naked in bed."
She giggled. Then she unclipped the gold necklace and put that aside.
They got onto the bed. His arms encircled her.
And then they put the topper on the evening, sealing that with a celebration of love that was the ideal finish for a night of luxurious carousing.
It was a couple of weeks after that before Janey went after the next mark.
She felt reluctant to do so. She wasn't in immediate need of cash-she had done all the shopping she wanted to do, for the time being-and the Mark Avery experience had been such a bruising one that she was in no hurry to subject herself to the whims of the next victim. And, so long as Charley had plenty of cash in his pocket, he didn't push her.
But the days went by, and the cash supply dwindled. They went to the beach a lot, toasting in the sun. They drove out to the race track a couple of times, Charley losing fifty bucks the first time, winning thirty bucks the second. They went sightseeing. They ate dinner out often, though not on the same extravagant scale as that night at the Chateau Mazarin. One way and another, they got all the benefits of a Miami vacation. And as the old year ebbed toward Christmas, the town began to fill up with vacationers.
Charley started to nudge her, now.
"Time for another bit," he said.
"Wait a couple of days."
"What for?"
"I'm not in the mood."
"Hey, come on! I'm down to a couple of hundred bucks. It's expensive loafing around down here."
"All right," she said. "All right. You don't need to nag me."
She made up her mind to go through with it. Like a visit to the dentist, she thought, except that you got a payoff at the end. She knew she couldn't duck Charley much longer. This was what they were down here for, after all. There were risks, sure-risks of arrest, risks that the operation would blow up in their faces, risks that she might get seriously hurt by one of her "lovers." But there were risks in any kind of business venture. And the potential profits here were high.
So Janey dressed up again and went out on the prowl. She picked up a middle-aged Milwaukee businessman at the Morley Plaza Hotel, went with him to his room, and submitted to about ten minutes of his sweaty, grunting lust. Then she rang in Charley.
He asked for a thousand dollars, on the theory that what he had been able to wangle out of Mark Avery he might be able to milk from the next sucker too. But the Milwaukee businessman wasn't Mark Avery. He didn't have that kind of money. He turned pink and purple, and paced up and down, and talked about jumping out the window to avoid the embarrassment of arrest or the pain of blackmail.
"Don't do that," Charley said. "What would it get you? You've got dough or you wouldn't have come here. What's the sense of killing yourself?"
After long haggling, he settled for four hundred dollars as the price of his freedom. Not bad, not good. It brought their take so far to nineteen bills during the month, but they had hoped for more.
"We'll make it up next time," Janey said.
"How about tomorrow?"
"Too soon. Remember, you wanted to space these jobs, didn't you?"
"I guess. All right, next Wednesday, then."
"So soon?"
"We got expenses, baby. You want to have more fancy dinners? We got to take in more than four hundred bucks a throw, then."
Charley bugged her all week. He was changing, Janey sensed. He was getting hungrier for the dollar. At the beginning, he had talked about not being greedy, about not killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. But now all he could think about was how soon she could get out there and pick up another sucker.
It was that night at the restaurant, Janey thought. That touch of luxury. It had wowed him as much as it had her, apparently. The thrill of being able to plunk forty-five bucks down on a tin tray and walk out without giving it a second thought. He wanted money, now. Lots of it. And the way he could get it was through her.
A week later, they played the game again. This time, their involuntary playmate was an accountant from Chicago. They shook him down for six hundred dollars. That rounded things off, making up for the four hundred that the other one had given them.
They had dinner at Mazarin again to celebrate. This time, Janey ordered caviar for her appetizer. Why shouldn't she? Mark Avery had taught her that she liked the stuff. And it was only seven bucks. Seven, and she had earned twenty-five hundred from her four suckers.
The check came to fifty-two dollars that night, including tip.
As they drove home, Charley said, "The last time I took you here it was weeks before I could get you to go out and work again. Is it gonna be the same way now?"
"Don't worry." It's New Year's. The height of the season. We ought to be able to pick ourselves a good one."
"All right," Janey said.
"Day after tomorrow?"
"That would be two this week, Charley."
"The season isn't going to last forever."
"I'll see. I'll think about it."
"What's the matter?" he asked. "Don't you like making money?"
"Some of these old guys, they're no fun to make love with," she said. "You ought to try an old bag sometime and see what she's like."
"So pick yourself a young one next time, then," Charley said.
"All right," Janey replied. "I will."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Janey stood in front of the mirror, combing her hair, admiring the youthful beauty of her full-breasted body Tonight she was going out on the prowl again. Before she saw this room again, she figured, they'd be another five hundred or a thousand bucks ahead.
It was a real sweet setup, Janey thought. Despite the risks and the nuisance involved. It was one of the niftiest, coolest cons anybody had ever thought up.
Behind her Charley said, "Hurry it up, Janey. It's after eight o'clock. We want to catch our mark before it gets too late."
She didn't look around at him. "Don't rush me," Janey said evenly. "I hate being rushed, Charley. You ought to know that by now."
Deliberately and slowly she finished doing her hair, and reached for the filmy underthings lying spread out on the bed. She smiled in pleasure at the sight of her nakedness in the mirror. Her body, she knew, was her biggest asset in life, lean but full in the places that counted, with firm high breasts and flaring hips.
It was almost as if she had been specially designed for the racket Charley had dreamed up for her. She had the body of a girl in the first ripeness of youth. When she wore her sweater-and-bobbysocks outfit and kept her hair pulled back in an adolescent-style pony-tail, she could easily pass for only sixteen or seventeen. And she knew how to turn on that dewy-eyed, virginal look, too.
"Come on" Charley said impatiently, as she fumbled with her buttons.
She glared at him. "I tell you, I don't like to be rushed."
"It's getting late."
"You're bugging me, Charley. Don't bug me, or I'll get sore at you. Remember, I can do this act without you, but you're nowhere without me."
"Is that a hint?"
"It ain't nothing. I'm just telling you not to get on my nerves," Janey said. "I got to look cool for this performance tonight, you dope."
He sighed in loud irritation at her slowness, but nothing else was said until she was finished dressing. Right now Janey looked nothing at all like a teen-ager, with her hair done up in a fancy coiffure, her eyes darkened by make-up, her dress cut low in front to show the ripe, tanned hills of her firm breasts.
This was going to be the fifth time in their eight weeks down here that they had worked the gambit. So far they were four for four, and you can't have a more perfect batting average than that. It was easy enough to make the suckers come across, Janey thought. Most of them were down here alone to get away from their wives for a while, or else newly divorced or widowed, and the last thing in the world they wanted was to get hauled up on a statutory rape charge.
Of course, if somebody ever called their bluff-
Janey didn't like to think about that.
"Okay," she said to the impatiently fuming Charley. "I'm ready now."
"Damn near about time."
"Remember what I said about getting me riled up?" she said.
Janey shrugged. "I always am," she said. "Just before an engagement."
They went downstairs, and out of the house, and into the car. Charley started the engine and they went off, toward the strip of glamorous hotels.
Who was it going to be tonight, Janey wondered?
Someone good looking and reasonably young, she had promised herself. Why not? The youngest and best-looking of the other four had been the one they had gotten the biggest payoff from. So why not have pleasure and profit mixed? She thought about her four victims. The first one, Morton Kolb, the bald-headed, pot-bellied stockbroker from New York. Then the playboy type from Wisconsin, Mark Avery, with his red Jaguar and his little clipped mustache. After that the gray-haired businessman from Milwaukee, and the accountant from Chicago. Four out of four. They had all coughed up the cash without too much of a squawk. They were all deathly afraid of getting dragged into court on the statutory rape charge. That one was murder.
Charley parked the car across the street from the swanky, elegant Palms Hotel. He said, "It's quarter to nine now. You ought to be able to get back here by eleven or so."
"I'll do my best, general."
"I'll be waiting for you."
She went into the hotel. It was as garish and as flashy as all the other Miami Beach hostelries, all tile mosaic and glitter, fountains in the lobby, birds cluttering in cages overhead, that sort of thing.
Janey headed straight for the cocktail lounge. That was the usual place to make a pickup, wasn't it? It was as good a place as any to begin her night's quest She didn't think it would take her very long to find her victim.
It didn't.
He was sitting at the far end of the bar, nursing what looked, at a distance, to be a martini. Janey studied him critically. He seemed to be pretty young-in his late twenties or early thirties at best-but his forehead was very high, and most likely he was sensitive about losing his hair. The best kinds, for the purpose of this sort of operation, were the sensitive ones, Janey had learned. They were easy to pick up, and they were vulnerable to Charley's pressure afterward.
This fellow wore sports clothes; he was tanned and broad-shouldered and pretty muscular, and he looked reasonably handsome except for the unfortunate thinning of his hair. Was he a singleton, or was he just waiting for wife or girl friend to join him? Janey couldn't tell that at a glance, of course. She would simply have to take her chances.
Most important, he looked well-heeled. He had that money look about him.
Janey walked over to him.
There was a seat at the bar that was empty, just to the right of him. Janey smiled sweetly, leaning ever so slightly forward to give him an ever so tempting peek at her bosom, and said. "Do you mind if I sit down here, or is it taken?"
"Go right ahead," he said. '.'You're welcome to it. More than welcome, matter-of-fact." His voice was deep and musical-sounding.
Janey wriggled into the seat, making sure to give him another good look at her bosom as she did so. The brassiere that she was wearing moulded her figure with seductive cunning, thrusting her ripe breasts upward and out and putting them on display. And she had a classy figure, no doubt about it.
The bartender, a swarthy, Spanish-looking man, was busy mixing drinks about a dozen stools away. Janey smiled warmly at the man next to her and said softly, "Do they make a good martini here? Some of these hotels give you a so-called martini made out of one-third gin, one-third vermouth, and one-third ice water, all for only ninety cents."
"This one isn't bad," he said. "I asked for extra dry. He gave me proportions of five to two, unless I miss my guess."
"Oh, a connoisseur, eh?"
He shrugged self-effacingly. "Oh, you get to tell the proportions by the way the drink hits your tongue," he said.
"I've never studied the subject that closely," said Janey.
"You ought to. It's quite interesting to develop your abilities. It's always a plus mark when you sharpen a bodily ability."
"I suppose it is," Janey agreed.
He smiled at her. His eyes flicked to her bosom for an instant, then to her face. "Would you like to start learning now?"
"I'd love to."
He waved to the bartender. "Carlos!"
"Momento, amigo!"
"The lady wants an extra-dry martini. The same kind you gave me."
"Si, Senor Martin."
Janey felt the warm glow of triumph, knowing that she had made her catch. And the feeling deepened as the man put a dollar bill down on the bar to pay for her drink. That was the first and essential step, getting him to buy her a drink. It meant he wasn't expecting any other girl tonight. The rest, Janey knew, would follow smoothly enough.
"Oh, no, you mustn't," Janey said as he paid for her martini.
"Don't worry about it, Miss, Miss-"
"Vaughn. Janey Vaughn."
"Janey. It's a nice name."
"Thank you," Janey said demurely.
The martini arrived. Janey sipped it without forming much of an opinion about it.
They talked for a little while.
His name, he said, was Ron Martin. He was an architect by profession, and he lived in Philadelphia, and he had come down to this resort city for a couple of weeks of fun and relaxation. He was, of course, unmarried. But that part was all right, Janey thought. If he came from Philadelphia, he would certainly prefer to pay up rather than to get involved in a scandal that might hit the local papers and ruin his architectural business. Janey knew Philadelphia. She knew how narrow-minded the people were, there, when it came to the private lives of professional men.
"And what about you?" he said.
Janey gave him a line that she made up on the spur of the moment. She told him that she was a local girl, that her father was dead and her mother quite poor, that a Hollywood producer had once met her and promised her a screen test if she went to Hollywood, but she had never been able to afford the fare across the country.
Ron Martin ate it all up, nodding sympathetically at every turn of the tale.
"Those Hollywood guys. They're all alike," he said. "They're just out for easy pickings."
"I didn't find that out until it was too late, though. I was only a kid. I had stars in my eyes, and he knew it."
"Took advantage of you?"
"Sure did."
"How old were you?"
"Just eighteen then," she said, not meeting his eye. "Some guys have no decency at all."
"You're so right," she said.
She kept her eye on the clock as she talked, and as the time ticked away, Janey began letting it be known less and less subtly that she was interested in going to bed with him.
Finally she said-she had had two martinis and he had had three, but every time he turned his head sh: had dumped a little of her drink into a nearby glass of water so that she could remain sober and in control of the situation-"It's getting pretty crowded in here, isn't it, Ron?"
"It is."
"And I think I've had about enough to drink, at least for now. How about you and me clearing out of here?" Janey suggested.
"Fine idea," he said. "Where to? A late movie? A stroll by the beach?"
"Don't pull my leg," she said. She grinned conspiratorially at him. "How about-upstairs?"
"How about that," he said.
And off they went.
His room was on the sixteenth floor, with the usual terrace and with the usual big picture window overlooking the ocean. It had the usual jumbo-sized bed, too. In these hotels, you just couldn't get a single bed. If you didn't like a lot of room when you slept, you were out of luck unless you found some company in bed.
He drew the blinds, shutting off the view, though there was nobody out there sixteen stories up over the ocean to peek, Then he pulled her to him for a passionate kiss. His mouth covered hers. His kiss was deep.
This was the best part of the whole routine, Janey thought.
She began to get excited. She hadn't had much fun with the middle-aged businessman or with the stockbroker from New York or with the accountant from Chicago, because they were clumsy, aging men who had no finesse with women. And she certainly hadn't had fun from the violent embrace of Mark Avery.
But this man held her as though he knew what a woman was for.
He caressed her tenderly, and then, slowly and almost reverently, he began to undress her. He was obviously delighted at the lush loveliness of her. Her dress came away, and then the bra, and the panties. She wore only stockings and garter belt, and she stepped back to give him the full view.
"Lovely," he murmured. "Absolutely lovely."
"Hurry," she said, her heart pounding with anticipation "Get your clothes off, Ron!"
He rapidly peeled his garments away. He was solidly built, muscular without an ounce of fat on him. For the first time in this routine Janey felt real and genuine desire for the man she was going to fleece. She was aware of warmth, of gathering need.
They moved toward the big bed.
The bed had plenty of bounce and supported them nicely. Their bodies twined. His hands went to her breasts, not gripping them roughly the way Charley might do, but cupping them delicately, the fingers spiralling inward to center on the nipples, which were now rigid with lust.
Then his hands trailed over her body, back and forth across her waist, then to the smooth satiny skin of her legs, round and round, coyly, tantalizingly, teasing her, playing with her.
His hands encountered her warmth.
His hands aroused her desire.
Janey gasped and panted. Her body twisted and turned in his arms. He was covering her with kisses now, expertly moving from place to place, now her earlobe, now the nape of her neck, now the excited little nipples.
He was a superb lover, Janey thought. He made every nerve in her body tingle.
"Take me," she whispered, when she could stand the waiting no more.
His firm, lean body moved to hers.
He took her.
She clung to him, gasping and panting, as he carried her toward the brink of satisfaction. There weren't many times in her life that she had been loved this way, Janey thought. This architect fellow really made a fine art of loving.
Her head whirled.
Her body knew frantic abandon as the ecstasy of ecstasies drew near.
Too bad this was only a con game, Janey thought. Too bad.
A sunburst of passion, a nova of bliss, blazed through her brain. Time and the universe were blotted out, and jolt after jolt of stunning ecstasy hit her, and then Janey lay still, resting in the arms of the man who was going to be the victim of extortion.
CHAPTER TWELVE
They were quiet a long time. Janey kept her eye on the clock by the side of the bed, wihle her delighted body gradually slid back to normal from the dizzying heights of pleasure.
At twenty minutes to eleven she gasped and said, "I'd better get going, Ron!"
"So soon? Stay all night."
"No," she said. "If I'm not home by eleven or so my mother gets terribly worred, and these days her heart isn't so good-"
"Do you have to go?"
"Yes. I have to."
"I thought you'd stay all night. The night's only beginning for us, Janey."
"I'm sorry."
"Not half as sorry as I am," he said.
His eyes followed her longingly as she got out of bed, a slim, nude, full-breasted figure, and began to gather up the clothes that he had slipped from her body an hour before. She dressed rapidly, now, three times as fast as she had dressed earlier this evening. Charley was waiting for her. There was business that had to be transacted.
As she donned her clothes and tidied her hair, he said, "This certainly was wonderful having you here like this-"
"I liked that too," Janey said, and she knew that she meant what she said.
"Will I see you again?"
"Of course."
"When?"
"How long do you expect to be in town?" she asked.
"Another week," he said.
"I'll meet you in the cocktail lounge at eight o'clock tomorrow night," Janey promised "I'll be looking forward to that."
"Me too," she said.
"But you won't be able to stay all night tomorrow either, will you?" he asked.
She shrugged. "Maybe I can work something out. Tell my mother I'm visiting a friend."
It was ten minutes to eleven when she finished saying good-bye to him and left him in his room. Hurrying to the elevator, she rode downstairs and walked quickly across to the place where Charley had parked the car.
He was waiting for her.
He looked unhappy, the way he always did when she came back from one of these sessions. He can't help feeling jealous, Janey thought. Even though he wasn't the first fellow she had made out with, not by a long shot, he hated that when she was cooped up with anyone else Only the thought of the five hundred bucks involved made him swallow his jealousy. "Well?" he said roughly.
"All is well," she said. "I picked up an architect from Philly. He was looking for companionship. I gave that to him." She didn't add that she had found thrilling physical pleasure in his arms. She doubted that Charley would appreciate that detail.
"You sure took your time about things," he grunted.
"I said I'd be back here by eleven, and her I am. So what are you moaning about? Come on, get this heap moving Charley."
"Okay. Okay."
They hurried back to the apartment. Janey sped through the transformation. Out of her Cinderella-goes-to-the-ball clothes, into her working costume, the teenager rig that was so effective.
By twenty of twelve, they were on their way again, back to the hotel. Janey had magically peeled the years away with a simple change of clothes.
Up to the sixteenth floor. Down the corridor to Ron Martin's room. She and Charley exchanged a glance. He looked nervous. He didn't usually look nervous when it was time to cash in.
"Go ahead-knock!" Janey urged him.
Charley nodded. He took a deep breath, rapped twice on the door.
"Who's there?" the architect's deep voice called from within.
"Mr. Martin?" Charley said. There's a message for you."
"I'm coming."
The door opened. Charley and Janey burst into the room, pushing past the puzzled-looking Martin. Martin was wearing only a silk dressing gown. He stared at Janey, frowning as though he couldn't believe the evidence of his eyes.
"You ever see this girl before?" Charley demanded in a tough voice.
"You're kidding," Martin said. "She looks just like-like someone I know."
"She is someone you know," Charley said.
He ran through the whole routine. It was a familiar spiel by now. He let Martin know that Janey was only seventeen, that he was her outraged brother, that he intended to bring the authorities in to deal with this dastardly case of statutory rape.
Ron Martin was bewildered and confused at first. Then he got angry, and insisted Charley was pulling his leg, that the girl who was here was some younger sister of the one he had gone to bed with. The birthmark on the leg bit settled that point.
The architect slowly shook his head as the truth got to him.
"She really is," he said. "Can you beat that? she really is!"
With that point taken care of, Charley began to touch on the most important theme: the blackmail. He worked round to the fact that he wanted to keep his sister's name out of the court records and out of the newspapers. He might accept some kind of payment, he let it be known.
"How much?" Martin asked.
"Give me five hundred bucks, cash down," Charley said. "And then get yourself out of town by tomorrow. You do that, I'll forget that you're the louse who seduced my kid sister."
Instead of answering, Martin began to laugh. His eyes twinkled with mirth. They had never gotten this kind of reaction from a mark before.
"What's so funny?" Charley growled.
"Nothing, really," the architect said. "Except that this is such a good dodge I wish I had thought of it myself."
Janey and Charley exchanged glances. This guy didn't seem as doltish as the others.
"Huh?" Charley said. "What are you talking about? What kind of dodge?"
Martin folded his arms. He looked relaxed, cool as a cucumber. "I mean, this business of sending the girl into a hotel to pick up wealthy strangers, and then dressing her up as a teen-ager to milk some dough. It's a lovely idea! Lovely! And I don't mind telling you, you pretty near fooled me, too."
Charley's face darkened. He took a step forward.
"Listen, mac. I don't know what you're chattering about, but I want five hundred bucks for what you did to my sister, and I want it-"
"Fast," Martin finished for him. "Listen yourself, mac," he said. "It's a good story, and you put it over well, and she sure looks the part. Only a little common sense tears the whole thing to pieces. If your kid sister's as young and as innocent as she looks and as you say she is, where'd she learn to be so good on a bed? That 'teen-ager' knows some pretty grown-up stunts, let me tell you. And she puts on a pretty sophisticated line in a bar, too, coming on with talk about the proportions of martinis. So I'm not swallowing your story. Tell it to the cops if you want. See where it gets you, huh?"
Charley was absolutely silent. Janey looked at him in surprise. This was the first time anyone had called their bluff.
They couldn't go to the cops, of course. Martin wasn't guilty of a thing except going to bed with her, and there was no law against that, not when she was five years past the age of consent. If he flatly refused to pay up, they couldn't do a thing.
Charley said uncertainly, "I want that five hundred bucks, or-"
"Or you'll go to the cops. So go to the cops, if you want to," Martin said. "Try telling them she's seventeen, and prove it. You got a birth certificate or something?" Martin laughed. "Suppose you two get the devil out of here, now, before I call the cops and have you both run in for extortion. It's been very pleasant talking to you, and it was very nice to get an hour in bed with your sister, or whoever she is. Now beat it. Scram."
Janey saw the anger flare up in Charley.
"Why, you lousy-"
He came rumbling forward. He was three or four inches taller than Martin, and maybe thirty pounds heavier. He brought one big fist up, but before he could do anything Martin's right hand came slipping in between Charley's fists and landed a blow in the middle.
Charley grunted and stopped advancing. Martin came in to attack him.
In short order Charley was cut to ribbons. He had weaved in and out, round about the confused Charley, all the weight and size on his side, but Martin fought with what was practically professional skill. His fists landing damaging blows on face, chest, midsection.
Charley's lip was split and bloody, his eye puffed, his cheek bruised-all within a moment. He hadn't landed a single blow himself.
Janey stood frozen, unable to do a thing, as Martin mercilessly battered Charley to a pulp and finally grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him, tottering dizzily, out into the hall.
Martin slammed the door. Janey said, "Let me out of here. You hurt him!"
"He asked for it."
"Let me out," she said. "Why are you keeping me in here?"
Martin stepped forward, grinning, and his hand shot out and dug into her shoulder. He said, "You've got a pretty good racket here, kiddo. It's too bad you picked the wrong customer to deal with. How old are you-I mean, really?"
"None of your lousy business."
"How old are you?"
"None of your lousy business."
Martin's open hand sailed through the air and collided with Janey's cheek. The impact of the blow nearly tore her head off.
"For the third time," he said. "Don't make me knock all your teeth out. How old?"
"I'm-I'm almost twenty-three," she said, stammering with fright.
"That's about what I thought. Though you make a very convincing teenager in this outfit, I must say. Okay. We leave for New York first thing tomorrow morning."
"New York? We leave?"
He nodded smilingly. "I was just handing you a line, about me being from Philadelphia and being an architect. I'm from New York. Down here on vacation. I'm not an architect, either. I'm-I'm in a number of businesses. And now I've got a new one."
"I don't understand you."
"You will, soon enough. You have any family here? Are you married to that goon I beat up?"
"I was just living with him," Janey said faintly. "I don't have any family."
"Okay, then. You're coming with me. I'll set you up in my place in New York and we'll run this statutory rape gimmick for all its worth."
"No-no," Janey murmured. "Charlie and I-we were partners . ."
"He's a nothing."
"I don't want to go away with you."
The so-called architect's face was suddenly menacing. "You'll leave with me or I'll fix you so you aren't good for anything after this. You hear?"
Thoughts pinwheeled wildly through Janey's head. She was afraid of this strange man, afraid of his strength, his cruelty. But he offered the mystery and adventure of New York, of money. Why hang around with-he said it-a nothing like Charley, when she could go to New York? She wavered half afraid, half tempted.
Suddenly the door burst open. Charley stood there a battered, bloody, disheveled figure. There was a knife in his hand. He had gone back to the car to get the knife, Janey thought.
"Okay, you wise guy," Charley muttered in a low, hate-filled voice. "You're pretty handy with your fists, ain'tcha? And you got cute ideas about my girl? Well, after I've carved you a little maybe you'll have different ideas."
He came forward, kicking the door shut behind him. Martin, unarmed, retreated into a corner of the room. He had gone very pale. Charley was like a hulking gorilla, moving slowly toward him with the knife.
"Nobody get to beat me up like that," Charley grunted. "I gonna cut your ears off first. And then-"
"Keep away from me, you ape!"
Janey watched, dry throated. In another moment Charley would reach him, would cut him up, and then the two of them would be free to leave. Suddenly she remembered the way Martin had talked to her in the bar, that smooth, slick way, and the way he had been later, loving her so excitingly. And she thought about Charley and his two Lesbian girl friends, thought about Charley fumbling his way through that French menu.
The decision took only a second to make.
Janey grabbed up the ornamental vase that was sitting on top of the television set, and smashed it down on Charley's skull.
He dropped like a felled oak. She looked down, seeing the blood welling out of his hair.
"Janey," he whimpered. "Janey-you hit me-"
His voice died away. He was out cold. Martin snatched the knife from his nerveless fingers and put it in his pocket.
"I didn't think you were going to do that," Martin aid in a hoarse voice. "I thought for sure that ape was going to cut me up."
Janey smiled. There was a strange, bright, new look about her. She looked down at the bloody, unconscious Charley.
To hell with him, she thought.
"We leave for New York first thing tomorrow," she said.
