The Hidden Journal,
Copyright © 1999, Kellis
File
D9105011.ZEN
Thursday, November 7, 1974
Tommy left the lab promptly at five today, the last except Laura. She came immediately to the debug table and leaned down on her elbows across from me. She was wearing a white low-cut, gathered blouse, which dipped wide open. I could see to her navel and I realized what had been bothering me every time I glanced at her today. She was brassiere-less. Must’ve noticed the points of her nipples.
Even small breasts look their best when dangling from a horizontal chest — and the women know it. I looked up into her grin at last. “I could swear that your nipples are erect.”
“They are,” she agreed.
“You like to show them, do you?”
“To a man who appreciates them.”
“What’s your game now? I never knew a man who didn’t.”
“Harry, you are so suspicious!”
After a glance at the door, though it was after five, I ran my hand into her blouse and fondled them. “Is this what you wanted?” I wondered.
“I knew you would,” she replied smugly, looking down at my hand.
“If someone came through that door just now,” I pointed out, “the word would be all over the lab first thing tomorrow. Hendrix would hear of it before nine o’clock, probably through his secretary.” As I spoke I twisted one nipple, then the other. Her aureoles were lumpy with arousal. But I suspect it’s not as great for women as men would like. I’ve seen a baby’s breath do the same. That was a woman in ’Nam, but doubt Caucasians are very different.
“Everyone’s gone,” she claimed.
“Except Jack?”
“Did you forget he’s off today?”
“More philanthropy?”
“What philanthropy?”
I winked at her. “That’s what he claims he’s up to.”
“I see.” Her lip curled. “He would look at it that way.”
“How do you look at it?”
“As opportunity.”
“Financial?”
“And fun, of course. That’s why I waited for you. Can you be standing in front of the Fisher building tomorrow evening at seven P.M.?”
“The Fisher building.” I released her tits and sat back. “Tomorrow’s Friday.”
“Yes. Can you?”
“Will you be there?”
“No. A girl with a rose in her hair will pick you up in a car.”
“Will she! Friend of yours?”
“She’ll bring you to Jack and me.”
I shook my head. “Why don’t you just tell me where to go?”
“Because your car is bugged and you’re likely being followed.”
“And you’re not?”
“I know how to dodge them.”
“They’ll just follow your girl with the rose. Red, I presume?”
“Red. She also knows how to dodge them. Do you have a fedora?”
“A hat? Yes.”
“What color is it?”
“Gray.”
“All right. Wear it, will you?”
I stared at her. “Will Jack finally tell me what he wants me to do?”
“That’s the idea.”
“What am I getting into, Laura?”
“Me, for one.”
I snorted. “Meaning, ‘wait and see.’ That reminds me: I asked Jack if you were a drug user. He said to ask you.”
Her lip curled and she shook her head. “My fatherly sergeant took me to the morgue once to show me what drugs can lead to. I’ve never touched them, but I’ve talked to the girls that do.” She frowned thoughtfully. “You know, they’re all missing something.”
“What is it?”
“Cock.” At my grunt she added hastily, “Oh, any girl can get cock! What I mean is, they’ve never learned what a cock can do for them — or two or three.”
I grinned. “Screwing beats sniffing coke?”
“Well, I never sniffed coke. But those girls were never properly boffed.”
“How do you know?”
Voice and eyebrows rose incredulously. “Because they claim to hate it!” She chuckled a little. “What fools they! Will you be in front of the Fisher building?”
Slowly I nodded. “The more fool I.”
When I got home I called Doris, wanting to hear her voice. Though we have an agreement that one will not disturb the other during the week except for emergencies, she seemed well pleased with my call, offering no hint of reproach. Is she lonely, too? From certain subtle sounds I believe she masturbated as we recited what we’d like to do to each other. Perhaps the listening federal agent did too. I wanted to charge him with it and would have if Doris knew about him, which she doesn’t.
At the end I said, “Marry me, Doris, and we can do it while we talk about it.”
She answered lightly, “You forget that a girl can’t talk with her mouth full.”
“Marry me anyway.”
“Despite that, you mean?”
“And because of it.”
“Harry, that would spoil it.”
“Not for me.”
“Ask me again when you mean it.”
“I mean it now.”
“No, you don’t.”
Guess I’ll have to ask her kneeling. What is it with me? Why do they all think I’m a good lay but a lousy husband?
My thoughts turn to Estri. God! What if her cover doesn’t hold up? Clearly the best I can do for her at this point is to stay the hell away.
Saturday, November 9, 1974
I checked my car into an all-night garage about two blocks away, thinking it might retain its wheels there, and arrived in front of the Fisher building a couple minutes early. It’s well I did. I was hardly on the bus stop curb before a green Buick glided up beside me, electric window already descending. The woman driver leaned toward me, looked up at my hat, and called, “Get in, Sport!”
She was wearing a red flower in her hair: a carnation, I believe. And she was no slip of a girl. An engagement ring plus wedding band glittered on the hand at the window button.
“Who sent you?” I demanded, leaning down to the window.
“Laura. Hurry up!”
With a shrug I snatched the door open and slid in beside her. She spotted a break and accelerated immediately, helping to slam the door. In a jiffy we were immersed in the heavy traffic of Friday evening.
I said conversationally, “Sorry for being cautious, but you aren’t quite as described.”
“I know, Sport: the flower.” Her eyes flicked back and forth between the road and the rear-view mirror. “Damned florist claimed he’d sold out of roses, that Armistice Day is a big call for them. I told him I never heard of such a thing. Who gives roses for Armistice Day?”
“Not I.” Armistice Day? I happened to know that a few years ago Congress changed the name to Veterans Day and the date to the last Monday in October, but I wasn’t about to challenge her.
She favored me with one glance. “You are Harry Stone, right?”
“Right. Who’re you?”
“Hilda, the school teacher. Ah, ha! There he is!”
Her eyes were glued to the mirror. I glanced back but saw only a sea of cars and trucks. “There who is?”
“The fed in the gray agency car. They always use the same gray Chevies. Let’s see if he’s following.”
Watching her chance, she slipped into the right hand lane without signaling. The next light was green. She turned right, tires hissing, flipping her signal just before the wheel. She gunned it, watching the mirror. “Yep!” she announced. “Whoo-ee! Didn’t he cut that car blind! All right, you little son of a bitch.”
Half a block down was an alley between the towering buildings. She slammed into it, nearly bouncing me out of my seat at the curb, and flew up the alley, missing garbage cans by inches. I braced myself on the dash and the passenger straps they always put in Buicks. In the side mirror I saw one or two empty cans roll in behind us, pulled down by the wind of our passage. A gray car turned in, but the fallen cans were bound to impede it.
At the end of the alley she blew the horn, slowing only a little and dashed right out across the sidewalk into the street. Fortunately there were few pedestrians. She’d’ve killed one if he’d come along at the wrong moment. Not so few the cars. She stole the slot from a white limousine, which darted into the next lane reflexively, horn blaring late. She squalled the rear tires in response.
That trick in the alley with the garbage cans was impressive. Did she know to do it or was it just fortuitous? Watching her drive for the next minute convinced me that she knew.
“You got away,” I observed, “but won’t they trace your tags?”
“Not far. They’re fake.”
“Fake! What do you mean?”
She grinned. “Guys who learn to make ’em don’t forget, you know.”
“Hilda, how did a sweet little school teacher get involved with fake tags?”
“Sweet!” she hooted, grinning at me. “Well, my kids do think so, most of them, I believe.” She leered. “If I had the chance, bet I could convince you, too, Sport.”
“What grade?”
“Sixth. Just when they’re getting difficult. And interesting.”
She was weaving smoothly across traffic lanes, accompanied by the blare of horns on either side.
“You really know these streets!”
“I should. I’ve walked them enough.”
“Your school is near here?”
“No. But I work around here. At night.”
“Well, that bit with the garbage cans was something else! Where’d you learn it?”
“Sport, I’m a schoolteacher on weekdays the same as Laura is a programmer.”
“Is that right! Do you know Laura well?”
She glanced at me, eyes twinkling. “Better than you do in some ways.”
“Implying that your evening occupation is similar to Laura’s.”
“Does that offend you?”
“Not a bit. But if what you’re implying —”
“Prostitution,” she announced serenely.
“— is true, what about the wedding ring?”
“Camouflage,” she declared dismissively, “though I’ve been married twice.” She grinned at me. “Can’t a wife be a whore?”
“I heard they retire to get married.”
“Yes, and I bet you heard they make good wives, too. The fact is, husbands make the best pimps.”
I shrugged. “If you say so. But I don’t think either of Laura’s occupations qualifies her to drive like this.”
“I don’t know about programming, Sport, but it’s for sure you don’t study evasive driving with your heels in the air! How I learned is a long story, but it’s really a matter of preference. In a car I’m good as a man — in fact better than most. I like it that way.”
“Whereas out of the car …”
She shrugged. “He’s the boss.”
She had slowed considerably after the last turn. Suddenly she turned without signaling into a large, brightly lit garage building. No, I saw, not a garage: an automobile and truck repair facility, full of bays containing vehicles in various stages of dismantlement. She pulled up with tire squawk beside a black Ford that sat facing the way we had come. A man in a gray fedora stood behind it. Not a man: tits under the shirt.
“Quick!” Hilda ordered. “Get in the back floorboards of that Ford.”
“Wh-what?”
“She’ll take you the rest of the way. That one in the hat will take your place and fool the feds in case we didn’t lose them.”
“Well, good-by then,” I called, obeying. A cheery, “Good luck, Sport,” wafted back.
As I entered the Ford, the woman with the hat like mine slid into my seat in the Buick. I had only a glimpse of a short person in a low-billed cap behind the wheel of the Ford. Doors closed with a pair of thunks.
“Keep down,” said my driver as she accelerated. Her voice was a husky contralto. I looked up and saw dark sky and lighted windows. We had come out on the same street Hilda had just left.
“What’s Hilda doing?” I asked from the floor.
“Going out the back door. Keep down while I look around. You can probably get up in a couple of blocks.”
She drove sedately down the street. I thought it over and commented after awhile, “I didn’t know Jack had such an organization as this!”
“Organization? I don’t know about that. All I know is I owe him a few.”
“Are you another schoolteacher?”
“Huh!” She chuckled. “Actually, I’m a great-grandma.”
“Are you! And a taxi driver?”
She laughed. “Laura called, said Jack wanted a favor. When I drop you off, I get to go home and wash the supper dishes. You can get up now.”
I raised up and looked around, mainly at my driver. She was black, at least seventy, heavily wrinkled, white hair pulled up under her cap, wearing a man’s work shirt.
“I’ll ask you approximately what I asked Hilda. How does a great-grandmother get involved in outwitting the feds?”
She glanced at me with a twinkle. “You’ll never guess.”
But I did. “Aren’t you too …”
She finished it for me. “— Old to be a whore?” She chuckled. “When I think about it, I have the same trouble. But a surprising lot of men enjoy old girls. Being black may help. Sometimes I ask them why, just to hear what they say.”
When she paused, I prompted her. “I’m curious about that myself.”
“All kinds of reasons, from mother lust to wondering what their wives’ll be like in thirty years.”
“Do you still … ah —”
“Enjoy it? Well, not so much as before the change, I guess. But you know, her coochy is the last part of a woman to quit.”
Coochy? I nodded. “Benjamin Franklin said something like that.”
“Benjamin who?”
“Father of our country.”
“Oh. Oh, yeah.”
But I don’t think she’d heard of him. I watched the turns carefully, meaning to learn them for future use, but of all places she turned into the lot of the Barclay Motel, which I remember well enough. I entertained a lady there — well, no, not a lady — to celebrate when NSI hired me. A seedy joint. We went right past the office with its red neon “No Vacancy” sign. The a and one c were dark. “No V ancy,” it said now.
Despite the sign, the lot was only a third full. The Ford coasted to a stop at a doorless opening between two of the buildings.
“Here you are,” she said, looking back at me expectantly.
“What room?”
“Right through there.” She pointed into the opening.
“All right. What’s the fare?”
“Fare?” She chuckled. “You do think this is a taxi service!”
“Sorry. Old habit. Thanks, then.”
In the process of slamming the door behind me, I heard her laughing. “The fare!” She didn’t stick around. Regretted I didn’t get her name.
The opening was one end of a roofed corridor. At the other a 25 watt bulb barely lit a sign, “Conference Room.” An empty cigarette pack had been ground into the bricks half way along the passageway.
Reaching the door, I heard voices beyond it. So I raised my hand and knocked. The girl who opened it was slim, brown haired and very young. Her face was blank though somehow familiar. She wore blue jeans and a fluffy brown sweater. Behind her were bright lights and the impression of several people, though she had opened the door only enough for her face.
“What do you want?” she demanded uncordially.
“To see Jack.”
“He’s busy.”
“Then tell him Harry Stone is here.”
“Harry.” She frowned. “Oh.” The frown became a sheepish grin. “I remember your dick.”
And I remember your mouth, I thought. This was “Bimmy,” the sixteen year old cocksucker. The acne spot beside her mouth had moved to her forehead.
“I might have known,” I said, realizing that I had known.
She nodded, misunderstanding me. “Each one is different. Come on in.” She threw the door wide. “He’s expecting you.”
“Where’s your sister?” I asked.
“Cassie?”
“The black haired girl.”
“Went back to her room. She’s got a test tomorrow. She’s not really my sister.”
“What kind of a test?”
She shrugged. “Plane geometry, I think.”
She led me into the room. It was surprisingly large, maybe a hundred feet square, with a high ceiling and the thin brown carpet typical of a motel conference room. Many folding chairs were stacked against one wall. The opposite one was hung with tan drapes. A dozen people or more stood around a couch before the drapes. Bright lights on stands provided illumination with electrical cables snaking over the floor. There was a lot of pink flesh.
“Come on,” she suggested. “You’ll have to wait till they finish this scene, but it won’t be long.”
The standing circle parted enough to let us join it. I saw two movie cameras on tripods, men bent behind them. A naked woman sat on the couch, leaning forward. Two naked men — wearing Halloween masks? — stood on either side of her. I moved around where I could look over a cameraman’s shoulder. Yes, she was mouthing both dicks. It was Laura. Despite the mask I recognized Jack as the man on the right.
“Fourteen seconds on this supply,” warned the cameraman next to me.
“Move the other one in,” Jack ordered from under his mask. “Are you close, Pistol?”
The other man mumbled, “I’m … trying …”
“Jerk him, Laura,” said Jack. Laura’s hands had been cupping both sets of balls. She released the mumbler’s and began to milk his dick.
I saw that the tripods were on rollers. The second camera slid in to replace the first, peering between the men’s hips. The first cameraman quickly opened his machine and made snapping noises with film cassettes, an operation that would have interested me greatly under other circumstances.
“Damn it, Pistol!” Jack warned.
Pistol spread his hands. “It just won’t work.”
“All right. Cut!”
Laura released the swollen organs, looked straight up at me and grinned crookedly. Jack said disgustedly, “We’ll have to fake it. Pistol, go off in the corner and jerk it until you think you can live up to your nickname. Martha, is that gun ready?”
“Yes, sir.” A surprisingly old woman, white-headed and bent, more decrepit than my last driver, wearing an ankle length dress over tennis shoes, shuffled forward. She sneered contemptuously at the departing Pistol. “Knew he was dry!”
“How’d you know?” asked Jack indulgently.
“He was humping Cassie when you was busy with the foursome.”
Jack turned to regard the retreating back, eyes glinting with a promise of future trouble.
I grunted when I recognized Martha’s “gun:” a full-size model of a man’s groin area, including pubic mound and inside thighs, sporting a large, realistic circumcised penis above hairy dangling testicles. The contraption was supported by a handle on the back plus a squeeze bulb.
“Did you put sugar in it this time?” Laura asked.
“No,” said Martha. “Thought you wanted it without.”
“I do.”
Martha muttered unintelligibly.
“Speak up!” Laura commanded. “You’re whispering again.”
“Said I can’t understand why you hate sweet cream.”
“You’re right,” Laura snapped, “you can’t.”
The old gal looked around, at me as it happened, grumbling, “’Snot as if it’s the real thing!”
Jack was also looking at me. “With you in a moment, Harry.” He pumped his dick, presumably to maintain the erection. “All right. Places! Pull the camera in tighter.”
Laura leaned forward and gaped. The old woman thrust the fake dick head into one corner of the wide mouth while Jack put a real one into the opposite. “Jerk them both, Laura.”
Her hands encircled the two dicks and began to pump.
“Roll ’em!” cried Jack. The camera began to whir.
“Remember, Martha,” he warned, “not until the second squirt.”
“Yes, sir.”
The second camera, reloaded, slipped around behind the couch and peered over Laura’s shoulder, careful not to get into the first camera’s scene.
“All right,” Jack said tightly, “here it comes.”
A preliminary dribble ran over Laura’s bottom teeth. She lapped it with her tongue. A white spurt followed, splashing off the fake dick head. “Hope that counts!” muttered the old woman, squeezing her bulb. The false organ erupted in a white fountain. Martha waited until Jack produced another, then began to squeeze regularly. A white liquid, clear in spots possibly because it had mixed with reality, soon overflowed Laura’s chin. I saw that her tongue was pushing it out of her mouth.
Her lips closed over both organs, then reopened to show both glistening but clean. She grinned at the camera as both withdrew.
“Cut!” Jack ordered. Both cameras fell silent. He asked the man behind the couch, “Was your framing good enough to use?”
“Yeah, but no action. Well, one glob runs back and drips off the gun. It shows up on the dark background.”
Jack nodded. “Good enough! That’ll make a cut.”
“I need a towel,” Laura proclaimed, getting to her feet.
Martha produced one and helped her wipe her face and breasts. She turned to me. “Wha’do ya think, Harry?”
“Up to your old tricks, are you?”
She grinned. “Would you believe I’ve got a fan club?”
“Oh? As Laura Emmersol?”
“Of course not. I’ll have you know you are speaking with the famous Tilly Pucker.”
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Pucker. Do you autograph dicks?”
She chuckled. “No, and don’t be jealous. Not everyone can do what Jack does.”
“And what’s that?”
“I mean for the movies. Who else can direct a movie and enjoy a frenching at the same time?”
“Not a common talent, eh?”
“I’ll say not!”
“Who knows? Maybe you’ve asked the wrong people. After all, he is a manager!”
She cocked her head at me. “I always supposed … You don’t mean that a man can fake it?”
“Fake what? The ejaculation? No more than a woman.”
“But a woman can fill … You mean, put something up the cock first? I never thought of that!”
I shuddered. “No, I don’t mean that!”
“Why wouldn’t it work? Did you ever try it?”
“No!”
She grinned. “I’ll bet it would work.” Her eyes became calculating. “Insert an ounce or two up into the prostate … With a small enough catheter it probably wouldn’t even hurt.” Her grin returned. “I’ll see you get credit for the idea, Harry.”
“Not me!” I declared, shuddering. “Every man in this business would be gunning for me.”
Jack shouldered next to me, grinning for a different reason. “How’d you like your rides?”
“Melodramatic,” I responded. “Hilda’s driving would impress a teenager.”
He chuckled. “She impresses them, all right, and not just driving.”
“I imagine so. And where’d you get the grandmas?”
“Can I help it if the women like me, Harry?”
“Guess not. Maybe you’ve found your calling.”
“You mean the movies? It is fun! Let me start the next scene and we’ll talk. I know this place isn’t bugged.” He raised his voice, looking around. “Grace, you’re next! Where’s George?”
Grace came forward and stood in front of Jack, one naked foot arched over the other: not up to Laura’s shoulders, no hair but on her head, where it hung blonde and straight half-way down her back.
“Good god!” I muttered to Laura. “What is she, about nine?”
“With those boobs?”
Indeed she had respectable tits, large as Laura’s, though the nipples were pale as the surrounding skin and nearly invisible. “What is this, hormones?”
She nodded. “In a way. She’s eighteen. She’s been off big H for three months.”
“Four months,” the girl corrected in a surprisingly deep voice, looking at me over her shoulder.
“I didn’t think you could quit that stuff,” I observed.
“I didn’t either,” she admitted. She smiled confidently, very much not as a child. “But I found out you can do anything if you really want to. And I do have hair in all the right places. It’s just so thin and light I don’t have to shave.”
A closer inspection verified that.
Martha shuffled up behind her and slipped a skin-colored band around her chest, pinning it in the back. The girl fingered the flesh above and below it. “Tighter,” she ordered.
“You’ll lose your breath,” the old woman warned.
“Tighter,” responded the girl inexorably. It certainly flattened her.
A little girl’s flannel robe, decorated with loops of ribbon, went over her shoulders, buttoned down far enough only to cover the chest band.
Jack yelled, “Roll ’em!” causing me to look back. A bearded, heavy man, wearing only a carelessly belted silk robe, now sat on the couch, ostentatiously reading a newspaper. His legs were splayed out. Flaccid penis and testicles dangled visibly beneath the parted robe. The camera dwelt on that exhibition as the man reached under the paper and scratched himself.
“Cut!” Jack called. “Okay, Grace. Are you ready?”
The child-like woman came under the lights. “Right over here,” Jack said, pointing. She moved to that position at the edge of the lighted area. He nodded, then looked at the man on the couch. “George, you going to have trouble with this?”
“I don’t know, Boss. She can get awful excited.”
“Well, before I waste the film, let’s find out. Grace, see what you can do.”
“Want me to act out the scene?”
“I want to find out if you scare him as much as he claims.”
She thought about it. At last she asked, “How?”
“How do you think? Suck him!”
She knelt immediately before him and bent her head. In five seconds she popped back up, sneering, “He ain’t scared!”
The penis was visibly enlarged, though not yet risen.
Jack called, “Okay. Places!”
The girl returned to the edge of the scene. The old woman handed her a couple of props and stepped back. At the command to roll the girl sauntered idly toward the seated man, sucking a lollipop, a large teddy bear tucked under her arm. The camera, which had pulled back to include the whole scene, dollied closer.
Jack said to an older guy standing near the camera, pipe clenched in his teeth, “You got it, Will?”
“Yeah,” was the answer, “if George can get it up.”
“Grace’ll fix him,” Jack retorted confidently. He swung around and took my arm. “Come over here and I’ll tell you what I want.”
Grace, as the little girl, had dropped her teddy bear in front of the man, still ostentatiously reading his newspaper. The second camera sailed in close from the side. As the girl stooped for the toy, her head came up. Clearly she was seeing what dangled between the legs spraddled under paper and robe.
The old man, acting I guess as Jack’s assistant director, ordered, “That’s it. You’ve never seen anything like that… Let the lollipop fall out.”
I resisted Jack’s pull. “Just a moment.”
The cameras were in my way. I shook off Jack’s hand and walked around to the left.
Grace spoke in her mature contralto. “What you got there uncle.” She said it the way kids talk in a grade school play.
Jack had followed me, grinning. I told him, “She’s no actress.”
“Of course not. She’s a porn star.”
George had said something I missed. Grace spoke in a memorized monotone, “What a roly-poly sausage.”
I guessed, “Of course, you’re not recording the sound.”
“We are, though it won’t be used. Speeches get dubbed later.” He chuckled. “But they don’t sound a hell of a lot better. You think the jerk-offs that watch this stuff care about what’s said?”
“Then why bother?”
“For Grace to talk? Got to have lips to sync to. If you mean, why bother with any speech, got to be legal, Harry. ‘Redeeming social value,’ you know.”
Between the cameras I could see Grace’s arm and hand, seeming indeed about nine years old, fumbling within the man’s legs. She declared, “Can I taste your sausage uncle.” She didn’t bother to include the interrogative lilt.
“If you don’t tell your mama,” George returned in a similar monotone, adding with real feeling, “And don’t bite this time, dammit!”
“No ad-libbing!” the acting director ordered around his pipe stem.
George’s difficulty had gained another explanation.
Grace disappeared among legs and cameras. I commented, “Well, that ends the conversation.”
“It becomes a monologue. Uncle tells her how to do it. Of course the cameras don’t care about uncle’s lips. In this scene his speech can be dubbed freely, so George has nothing to say. Good thing, too, he worries so. Come over here away from the crowd.”
I followed him. Bimmy looked up from a book as we passed, stuck out her tongue and wiggled it at me.
I tilted the book in her hands: History of Science and Invention. I wondered cruelly, “Teach you to suck better?”
It didn’t put her off. “Better cocks,” she retorted.
Jack chuckled. “She remembers you.”
“Yeah. My dick.”
“She didn’t get to know you. You wouldn’t stick around.”
“Not when I found out I’d just squirted a fourteen year old. Jack, I’m sure the feds have every groan on tape, and probably a lot more besides. Why aren’t you worried?”
“I told you.”
“You’ve got good local connections?”
“Excellent connections. Our chief of police owns this motel. The mayor’s a partner in our little production company.”
“But these are feds!”
“I tell you again, we’re not breaking federal law.”
“Then who supplies Bimmy’s H?”
“Ah, that. Harry, we know them, of course, and they know us. But they’re in a different business. By the way, for your information Bimmy has just about shaken her habit.”
“Has she!”
“Believe it or not, she hasn’t popped in more than a week.”
“How do you know?”
“She’s been staying with me.”
“I see. What was it you said about sucking better when they’re high?”
“I was smart-assing back at your sarcasm. Didn’t she let you in here? You can tell she’s come down.”
“Yeah. Funny how much brighter she is down than up!”
“Isn’t it! … Glad you mentioned her. I’ve got a bunch like Bimmy, Jack.”
“A bunch?”
“You know the Crazy Hat and the Swan Dive?”
He had named two roadhouses that I’ve visited once or twice. The Hat’s on the river, the other one across town. I always thought it was particularly well named.
When I answered in the affirmative, he added, “They both belong to me.”
I shook my head. “We can’t put off the big question much longer.”
“The big question?”
“What are you doing managing programmers for NSI?”
He chuckled. “Nothing, as you well know. You think that’s a big question?”
“It is to me. And Laura.”
“Laura’s a programmer for the respectability. You must’ve noticed. She spun you her orphanage yarn, didn’t she?”
I nodded. “Are you casting doubt on it?”
“Laura plays with people. Watch out for her. Whenever you think you’ve got her pegged, you find a deeper current. As for me, I’m in NSI’s idea of purgatory.”
“You mean —”
“I was hired fifteen years ago as a manager in Personnel. I was headed for a vice presidency when I fucked up. Nothing illegal, just sloppy. I’m putting in my time as a figurehead. Hendrix knows who’s really running the department.”
“So it wasn’t you who turned down the Fairchild job!”
“When it’s a computer, I don’t know a fair child from an ugly one. That was Hendrix, playing it cautious.”
Suddenly I had the key to several puzzles at NSI. “Thanks for telling me.”
He grinned wryly. “This situation is ironic. I was planning to give them notice, the bastards, nailing me for the most common sin on executive row! But now with the feds on my tail I need the respectability, too.”
He shrugged. “But that’s neither here nor there. What I want to know is whether you’ll write me a program that NSI doesn’t own.”
“Legally I can’t, you know.”
“Because of your patent agreement? That’s not clear. But let me put it this way: a program that NSI never heard of.”
“A program that does what?”
“Accounts for a lot of details: medical histories, financial expenditures, services rendered, compensation owed, people contacted, promises made, bills current and past due, defaults — just to get started.”
“For your roadhouses? Sounds like a typical accounting job. Lots of bookkeeping packages are out there.”
“I don’t care if you write it or buy it. What I need is for you to set it up, tell me what I need to run it, find somebody to manage it.”
“Hell, Jack, any CPA can do that for you.”
He chuckled, studying me. “No, Jack. No certified accountant can do it for me. A lot of it violates the laws of this state, in spirit if not letter. And aside from that, I want to know who and what I owe, as well as who owes what to me, without the damned governments knowing it, too.”
“I see. Where does this ‘bunch of bimbos’ come in?”
“Basically through the roadhouses. It’s a little-known fact, Harry, that this town is famous all over teenage America. Maybe ‘infamous’ is the better word. A hell of a lot of runaways comes here first, looking to become rock stars. A lot of them, especially the girls, ends up in the roadhouses.”
“As whores?”
He ducked his head. “There’s a lot of that, I’ll admit. You can’t find a more fundamental use for unskilled labor than taking in pricks. Or a better paying one. And — get this — they think that’s what rock stars do anyway. Why do they really run away, here in modern America, from homes full of labor-saving appliances? It makes no sense. They admit that only one in a million makes it into the big money. But they’d still rather fuck strangers than go home. If you send them home anyway, back they come. Every one of them is going to be that one in a million. Shit!”
His voice had risen. Apparently this was a sensitive subject.
“So what’s the net, Jack? How many girls in your two roadhouses?”
“I’m not sure, and that’s a fact. It’s one of the things your program might tell me.”
“About how many?”
“It varies. I’m acquainted with a couple dozen or so just now.”
“Acquainted?”
He shrugged. “We all have appetites. Mine is pretty healthy. Something to remember about girls, Harry: using them doesn’t use them up!”
I nodded. “Yeah. The madam’s hooray.”
“The what?”
“You never heard it? The madam says, ‘What a wonderful thing, this pussy! You sell it and, hooray, you’ve still got it!’”
He grunted. “Right.” He cocked his head, regarding me thoughtfully. “You’d have to work with them closely, you know. I need more than just financials. You can believe it or not, Harry, but I really want to look after their best interests.”
“You said they ‘end up’ in the roadhouses. Where do they really end up?”
“That’s another thing your program will tell me. I gather a lot of them, maybe the most, end up married. After that, well, you know how it goes with marriages.”
“Don’t a lot of them end up dead from drugs or violence?”
He nodded. “There’s some of that, of course. You may get to tell me how much. It’s curious how many teenagers seem to have a death wish. And they’ll chase it no matter where they are.”
“You don’t have to help them.”
“That’s a debatable point, Harry. I try to give them something to think about, something to live for, if you will.”
“Dick?”
“Sure. They say that’s a real high. Ask Laura! And if she’s looked after properly, a girl’s no worse off afterward than she was before, which you can’t say for the other things they take.”
“Maybe not,” I agreed reluctantly, “but what do you —”
I was interrupted by a commotion behind us. “Cut!” yelled the acting director. “God damn it, George —”
“Has she bit him again?” Jack asked aggrievedly, hurrying toward the scene.
“She actually bites?” I wondered, keeping pace.
“Grits her teeth when she gets excited.”
But the problem was more complicated than that. Listening to Jack examine the crew, I gathered that Will had let the scene proceed too long, that Grace had made up for yesterday’s bite with more loving tongue lashes and that these circumstances had combined to extract a flood of seminal fluid from George, who’d been inadvertently abstinent for three days. The script had called for Darling Jill, AKA Grace, to satisfy her lingual curiosity about Uncle’s sausage, which was intended subsequently to penetrate her bottom both fore and aft. Only after all that was it supposed to bathe her face.
“Damn it,” muttered Jack. “And you swallowed most of it?”
Indeed only a single streak remained on the girlish chin. Grace sighed acknowledgment under his glare.
“You know not to swallow the money shot!”
“Wasn’t supposed to be the money shot!”
“But you swallowed it!”
“I’m a neat person, Jack.”
He clenched his fists, relaxed them and turned to the near cameraman, whose machine had the best angle. “Wha’d’you think, Flickem? Could you tell he was popping?”
Flickem? I raised my eyebrows at Laura, listening nearby, who grinned in return. Now she was draped in a man’s overcoat, hanging open. Had she gotten cool? She must shave as regularly as I do; her pubic mound was still slick as a baby’s.
Flickem had considered his reply. “Have to see the film to be sure, Jack. When he pulled out, she closed up right behind it.”
“Shit. Only a frame or two, you guess?”
“If that.”
Jack turned to the hapless George, who was lying back on the couch, papers thrown aside, everything still hanging out. “Can you get it up again?”
It was anything but “up” now. Its owner shook his head. “Not soon. Sorry, Jack. It ain’t what it used to be.”
“How soon?”
“An hour, maybe. Need a night’s sleep if you want it to pop again.”
“Shit!” Jack heaved a sigh. “Okay, then. We’ll reschedule you tomorrow morning. Jenny, what’s open first thing tomorrow?”
A woman in thick, black-rimmed glasses rose from a folding chair and consulted a clipboard projecting from her chest, held in place by a hand over the clip. I wondered how I’d missed her to that point. Though of moderate build, she easily had the biggest tits in the room. She had dark, mousy hair, cut short, and wore a tan checkered shirt stuffed into blue jeans, themselves stuffed into cowboy boots that approximated the tan in the shirt. The shirt would barely meet over her massive mams. I decided that if she leaned back a bit, she wouldn’t need to hold the clipboard.
“Good god!” I exclaimed involuntarily.
Laura snickered. “Just noticed?”
“I can’t believe it, either!”
“Silicon,” she said dismissively. “And they screwed ’em up. She has no feeling in the nipples.”
“No feeling?” I repeated weakly.
“Dead as rubber balloons. They’re so large they’re grotesque.”
Maybe, but I’d rather judge that for myself.
The woman found what she wanted and looked up. “Nothing. It’s Saturday, you know.”
“When do we start?”
“Seven-thirty.”
Jack heaved another sigh and glared at George. “All right. We’ll reshoot the pedo bit at six-forty-five. I want everybody here at six-thirty.”
“Six-thirty!” wailed Grace, eyes enlarged.
“Six-thirty!” he repeated firmly. But his face softened on her. “You can leave earlier.”
“Oh. Oh, good. Vicki will like that.”
Jack turned back to Big Tits. “Anything we can do in the next half hour, Jenny?”
“Well …” She looked around. “We can move up one of the street interludes.”
“Good work!” He looked around. “Pistol, come here!”
The woman warned, “You shouldn’t use Pistol.”
“Huh?”
“Remember? These guys are supposed to be strangers that she flashes on the street.”
“So we move the sandwich shots after the interludes.”
“Won’t that screw up the logic?”
Jack grinned sourly. “Damn the logic! This half hour might be the straw that breaks the budget. Come on, people! Hawley, set up that reflector and make it snappy.”
Street interludes? Every profession has its own terminology. What’s a street in the movies? I imagined some metaphorical meaning, such as a straight action sequence without any “side streets.” The truth was even more wonderful.
The couch was gone. Two beefy guys stood a pair of tall heavy-duty tripods where it had sat, further apart than its length. Grunting, they fetched a massive cylinder that resembled rolled-up carpet. Standing on rungs integral with the tripod bases, they strained to raise it over their heads and affix either end to a tripod. Finally they unrolled it down to the floor. It formed the largest portable projection screen I ever saw, probably ten feet high by twelve or more wide. Then they arrived with another carpet-like roll: this time actually carpet, though a peculiar one. They spread it out on the floor, extending toward us from the backdrop, and smoothed out the wrinkles. Its peculiarity was an appearance similar to the screen. Its surface seemed to be glittery white scales.
Flickem was attaching another machine to the front of his camera. It contained 35mm film reels just like a movie projector: a large supply reel and an empty takeup reel. Most curiously it seemed to point across the camera’s bow, so to speak, as if it would project to the right while the camera shot straight ahead. Aha, I understood! A partly silvered mirror would be found in their common optical path, letting the camera see what the projector projected. But so what?
“Ready, Flickem?” Jack called.
“Testing the sync,” was the answer. Projector and camera clicked together briefly.
“What light does it call for?” Jack inquired.
“Blue shade.” The man cocked his head to read something pasted on the supply reel. “I’ve seen this one. They took it in the shade of a tall building.”
“Blue bounce ready,” called Will, the briefly acting director, without being asked. Apparently he had reverted to lighting manager and discarded his pipe. He flipped a switch and the ceiling, consisting of white acoustical tile, suddenly turned bright blue. The set lights for the previous scene had already been extinguished.
Laura murmured to me, “If you want to see what’s going on, stand right behind that camera.”
“First street interlude,” Jack announced. “Places, everybody!”
Pistol, now wearing boots, jeans and a shirt with the tails out, came to stand near the camera. Laura walked carefully onto the glittery carpet, wearing her overcoat, turned and faced the camera just before reaching the backdrop.
“Motion test!” called Jack. “Ready, Flickem?”
“Go!”
“Okay, Laura. Let’s see you strut.”
Laura stood there, solemnly picking up her feet and setting them down, pretending to walk but making no progress. She was wearing black patent high heels without stockings. Her hands had disappeared into the coat pockets, holding it closed across her front.
“Knees spread too much,” Flickem reported, peering into his viewfinder.
Jack grinned. “Don’t be so eager, Laura.”
She shot him a smirk while narrowing her pretend stride. I saw little improvement, but I was standing off to the side. Nearly everyone interested in the shot had beat me out on positions behind the camera.
“That’s good,” Flickem declared.
“Okay,” Jack responded, then checked a card in his hand before raising his voice. “Roll ’em! Laura, keep walking. Pistol, your cue is the man in the green jacket.”
Camera and projector were grinding away. Laura was stolidly picking them up and laying them down. I could see variations in light intensity on screen and carpet but no image was visible. What stupid kind of projector was this?
“Glide to your left about two feet,” Flickem called.
Laura moved to her left as ordered. What difference did that make?
“Excuse me,” I muttered, slipping between two breathless watchers behind the camera. Suddenly everything was clear. I remembered hearing of such screens used in highway signs. They reflect light anisotropically: that is, back towards the light source only, thereby concentrating it. The glittery carpet works the same way. From behind the camera Laura was obviously walking towards me on a wide city sidewalk, cars whizzing by her on the left, throngs of people on the right. Storefronts of mannequin-stuffed windows gradually receded on the right. Someone had once rolled a camera slowly backwards on a sidewalk probably in Manhattan; what it saw then seemed to surround Laura now. The projection was too dim to overlay Laura’s figure, but the anisotropic screen made it bright all around her.
I saw the difference her movement to the left made. If she hadn’t got out of the way a fat lady loaded with packages would seemingly have stumbled right into her. Flickem had indeed seen this film before!
“Come forward a step or two, Laura,” he advised from behind the viewfinder.
As she complied a man in green sport coat and brown fedora popped into view, heading towards her on the left in the same path as the fat lady.
“Okay, Pistol,” called Jack, standing at my elbow, “soon as he tips his hat, walk in. Keep your steps short and fast and lift your knees. You’re a New Yorker now. And remember to pass her on your left.”
The man’s figure dwindled quickly. Nearly Laura’s size, he inclined his head toward her, one hand on the hat brim, obviously staged; no one was near him in the film. Pistol stepped out.
“Faster and lift those knees,” Jack insisted.
As Pistol neared the woman, Jack cried, “Now, Laura!”
She jerked the overcoat open upon complete frontal nudity, having come to a standstill. She leered at Pistol, eyes wide, mouth open in a grin, tongue tip in a corner. He stopped, did a hammy double take, then proceeded past her — not far; she’d left him very little room before the backdrop. He turned around.
“Amazement!” Jack called. “And hope. You can’t believe your luck.”
I guess the expressions on Pistol face could be so labeled. In my opinion he looked more like someone about to sneeze.
“Enough! Come on around.”
He circled around her on her right. She stood still, the coat still wide open, watching him with a big grin.
“Go for it!”
Pistol sank to his knees in the middle of the apparent street, grabbed her around the hips under the coat and bent forward. We couldn’t see the details but I doubt he was withholding his tongue. Above him Laura’s eyes drifted closed. Excuse me. Tilly’s eyes. People continued to weave around them unconsciously. Of course.
“Jack,” I said disgustedly, “not even in New York —”
“That’s just it,” he answered softly to me: “a touch of satire.”
“Crap!” But I had to chuckle at the audacity of anything even that subtle in a porn flick.
“You zooming?” Jack asked the cameraman.
“Three point seven and rising.”
“Cut at six.”
“We’ll get grain at five.”
“Okay. Five, then. Film all right?”
“Oh, yeah. Sixty-two seconds.”
On the set Tilly’s butt was in motion, discernible by the flapping coat tails. Her face displayed the worried smile — wrinkled forehead and curled lips — that is sometimes associated with sexual arousal, at least in the fuck comics. In fact I’ve never discovered any real reason for that forced expression.
“Cut!” cried Flickem, rising up from his viewfinder as New York vanished. People around me took a collective breath. Pistol got to his feet. Laura grinned at him. She murmured something to him that sounded like, “Nice touch!”
I asked Jack, “How the hell do you fit something like that into a plot?”
He grinned. “That’s why it’s called an interlude. But you wait; that shot’ll get the best review of the whole flick. It’s arty, don’t you know!”
He turned away. “Jenny, we got time for one more?”
While Big Tits consulted her clipboard someone joggled my elbow. I turned to find Bimmy with a hopeful look, holding out her history book. “I don’t get this one,” she complained. “Will you help me?”
I regret to admit that I responded, “What makes you think I’m anything but a stiff dick?”
Her face fell. She explained before turning away, “Laura said you know more than all the rest put together.”
“Let me see it,” I growled, feeling I’d crapped in the punch bowl.
She returned the book, finger underlining a passage. It was one of those quizzes at the end of a chapter. It wanted my bezitted cocksucker to explain why the steam turbine of Heron, the Greek, couldn’t have been put to productive use.
“Because his society wasn’t ready.”
She shook her head. “That’s what the book says. What does it mean?”
“Well, for one thing, a steam turbine turns very fast, but most things it might drive turn very slow. At that time they couldn’t make the gears to change the speed.”
Her lips were parted. She stared at me blankly.
“Why can’t you shift gears?” I asked impatiently.
“Because I don’t have any,” she retorted tartly.
“Exactly,” I said, having anticipated her. “Put that down.”
“They couldn’t make gears,” she mused. “Why couldn’t they?”
“They didn’t have the tools and the tools to make the tools. It took a long time to get all that, nearly two thousand years. In other words, the society wasn’t ready.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widened. “Oh!”
By god, she made me believe a light had dawned.
“It makes sense,” she breathed.
I breathed a sigh myself. A teachable woman is hard to ignore, whatever her age.
I took Bimmy’s elbow and turned her away from the commotion. Behind us they were aligning a backless, glitter-covered chair with a projected image. The two slabs of beef were moving it slightly as directed by Flickem, peering through his viewfinder. It was interesting but Bimmy was more so.
“What’s your real name?” I asked.
She hesitated, staring at me. At last she admitted, “Jane.”
“Jane what?”
“Grier. But keep on calling me Bimmy, will you? Nobody knows my real name.”
“Bimmy is short for ‘bimbo,’” I declared. “No bimbo knows about Heron’s steam engine.”
“Oh.” She smiled slightly.
I indicated her book. “Why are you studying that? Where’d you get it?”
“It’s a textbook.”
“So I gathered. Pretty deep for a teenager in high school.”
She grinned smugly. “Wrong on both counts.”
“Huh? What do you mean.”
“I’m twenty. And I’m full time at Poly Tech.”
“What? But — but —”
She giggled, a peal of silver. I don’t think I ever heard her do that. I’m a sucker for high female giggles.
“Those … pimples …”
The giggle choked off. “Are money in the bank,” she snapped.
“But to have them still at twenty?”
“Some people would say my skin is unlucky.” She sniffed. “Not me.”
“Wait a minute! Do you have a twin sister who’s sixteen?”
“No.”
“Then were you pretending to be on dope the first time you … met me?”
“No.” She took a breath. “I do have a problem with that. But I’ll be ten days free of it tomorrow.”
“Think you’ll stay off?”
“I don’t know. I love the way it makes me feel. If somebody gave it to me again I’d probably shoot it.”
I murmured, “‘Sixteen,’ he said. He was trying to trap me!”
She nodded. “He wants you. I’ve heard him. He wants you to come in with him.”
“What? Whatever for?”
“He said Di … Diogenes would like you. What did that mean?”
“Jack said that?” I turned to look at him. He stood behind the camera, his hand on Flickem’s shoulder. We happened to be in line behind them. On the set was projected a scene from a huge bus or train station … That mural! By god, it was Grand Central. The camera was looking down a long bench. Pistol lounged on the near end, his britches around his ankles. Tilly crouched naked between his legs, blonde head bobbing on red dick, her overcoat crumpled on the floor beside her. Baggage stood behind them. People were thronging to and fro, unconscious of the oral spectacle, of course.
I muttered sarcastically, “Jack must be trying for an oscar.”
Bimmy sniffed. “They don’t give them for porn. But they ought to.”
“Why is that?”
“I bet no big time actress ever swallowed a sixteen incher.”
“Huh! Only because none that big was put to her. Why sixteen inches?”
“I did that! Every inch of it.”
“Good god!” I stared at her, then held my hands about that far apart. “Jane, the head would be in your stomach.”
“Almost.” Her voice dropped to fierce whisper. “I’m sorry I told you my name. Dammit, don’t call me Jane!”
“Okay, okay. Tell me: how did you breathe?”
“I didn’t. I’m a swimmer and I don’t smoke. I can hold my breath for two minutes. But I still had to learn how to swallow it.”
“Lots of practice, was it?”
“Lots.” She sighed. “Gagging was the big problem.”
“I’ll bet. Somebody made a movie of this?”
“Jack.”
“Jack! His is nowhere near —”
“Not his! It belonged to Big John.”
“Not the Big John!”
“It was, too. Big John Horde.”
“Yeah? Where’d you see him?”
“Right here. Well, at the Top Crown, actually. I’ll bet you don’t know what stops gagging.”
She had named another roadhouse, about half way between Jack’s two. Suddenly I had a suspicion about the gagging. “Heroin?”
“Yep.” She smiled serenely. “It stops shitting, too.”
“Are you saying they shot you up with big H so you could swallow all of Big John’s dick?”
“That’s right.”
“Son of a bitch!” I glared around at Jack.
She grabbed my arm. “Not Jack! Bailey Frome stuck me.”
“Who’s Bailey Frome?”
“He used to make movies, too. He left town.”
I took a deep breath, turning back to Bimmy. “But Jack gave you a fix last month?”
“Not Jack. I don’t think he had anything to do with it.”
“Then how’d you end up at his place?”
“I went over there with Cassie.”
“Do you claim it was just a coincidence that I came by?”
“Coincidence?” She shrugged. “Cassie wanted to go over. She had the stuff, said it was a party. But you pooped it. When you left Jack made us crash on his spare pad. I’ve been living there since.”
I studied her. “Bimmy, you’re a porn actress, right?”
“So what? I like men.”
“Did Jack write your script for you?”
She studied me. “Laura’s the writer.”
An interesting response. Jack had just said of that one, “She plays with people.” I had recognized the invitation to pawnhood but may have mistaken the propelling hand. Who questions a push where he wants to go?
“But now you’re a student.”
“Yes. On the weekends I still act. I’m in the orgy scene tomorrow. You’d love it. Why don’t you show up? They always need extra men.”
“I never learned to pop on command.”
She nodded sagely. “Lot’s of guys have trouble with that. I can help you; I know a trick for it.”
“Thanks. That’s the best offer I’ve had this week. How many girls live with Jack?”
“Well … Oh, you mean the roadhouses. A lot. He feeds them.”
“And screws them?”
“Everybody’s got to pay somehow.”
“I see.”
“Do you?” She licked her lips. “You know, Jack has saved a lot of us.”
“From what?”
“Starving … or worse.”
“How long has he owned those roadhouses?”
“I don’t know. He ran them when I got here four years ago.”
“Four years!”
“Just three more,” she declared.
“What happens then?”
“Then I graduate with a degree in applied mathematics.”
Which of course includes scientific appraisal. I grinned. “So you’re a girl who likes precise measurements, are you?”
She grinned back. “As a matter of fact, I am. Big John exaggerates.”
“How much?”
“It’s only fifteen and five-eighths from the pubic bone.”
I mugged, “Only about three times mine!”
“Twice,” she corrected with a sly grin.
“Okay. If you’re so smart, what’s the arctangent of one?”
“Pi over four.”
I shook my head. “Bimmy, Bimmy!”
“What’s the matter? Should I have said forty-five degrees?”
“That’s what’s the matter. This whole thing is a setup, isn’t it?”
She paused. “The whole thing?”
“You knew very well why Heron’s steamer was unusable.”
She turned her face so quickly I couldn’t read her reaction — unless that was it. She spun around and went to Jack, now engaged in conversation with Laura and Pistol. Apparently the station scene was concluded. Laura was wiping her chest with a towel. Pistol must have finally lived up to his billing.
Bimmy touched Jack’s elbow. He leaned down while she murmured something in his ear. He looked at me in calculation, said something to her. She nodded, turned and strolled back to me. Significantly she no longer held a finger in the book to mark her place.
“What did you tell him?” I asked.
“That you were on to us.”
“And what did he say?”
“To go on with the script anyway.”
I grunted. “You admit it, then.”
“He said to answer all your questions.”
“What if I don’t have any?”
“Then maybe we can do something without talking. Come on.” She took my hand, pulling toward the entrance door. I looked around. Both Jack and Laura were watching us. I remarked, “They’re who I need to talk with.”
She followed my gaze. “Jack’ll talk to you later, but first you need to meet some of my friends. You need to find out what’s really going on.”
“Your friends, eh? Males with brass knuckles or underage females?”
“Neither one. Well, Cassie, but if you want her gone she’ll be gone.”
“What’s your opinion of making pubescent girls fuck?”
“Who’s making them?”
I snorted. “They do it for love?”
She was unperturbed. “Or money, dope, whatever. Some girls like to screw, too, you know.”
“Strangers?”
Her chin rose. “Fucking doesn’t hurt them.”
“You’ve been listening to Jack. Most people disagree with that.”
She grunted. “At least, not so much as starving!”
I took a breath and shook my head. “That’s not the choice. You’ve been sold a bill of goods, Bimmy.”
Her face had blanked. “Maybe. Why don’t you come along and tell me about it?”
I stared at her. Her eyes shifted away. I shook my head. “Is a telephone in here?”
“Who’ll you call?”
“A taxi.”
She sighed. “Won’t you come with me? I’ll do anything you say.”
“For Jack’s benefit. Or Laura’s. When do you start working for Jane’s benefit?”
When she only stood silently, I repeated, “A telephone?”
“I have to do what they say, Harry.”
“No, you don’t. They’re not your custodians.”
“All right. The truth is, I want to do what they say!”
“Why?”
“Because it is to Jane’s benefit!”
“Bimmy’s, you mean.”
She shrugged. “And you don’t need a telephone. Hilda’s right over there.”
“Oh?” I hadn’t seen her come in. She was lounging with two other women, her feet up, shoes off, skirt riding up her thighs. She saw my gaze, smiled and flipped me a wave. I waved back. So she was watching me, too.
I turned back to the girl. “In this state twenty is adult. You make your own choices. If you go for all this, that’s fine, but if you have doubts, which you ought to, give me a call. Alternatives always exist.”
“What’s your number?”
“Harrison E. Stone. I’m in the book.”
I shook my head as I walked away from her, hating to’ve sounded like a goddamn preacher. I knew I was shunning a frolic that might surpass even the Meshir, but the more I saw of Jack’s operation the less attractive it became. Not what he does. That looks like fun! But how he does it.
The fact of his “excellent” protection only confirms it: this is a criminal enterprise. The trouble with such outfits is not that they flout the law; every speeder does that. It’s … Hell, the right word is slavery. Only a slave can’t quit. Every member, whether high or low, is in it for life, owned and controlled by the gang. If you disagree with the boss, your alternative is to shut up and jump as ordered — or to kill him and his close lieutenants. I don’t like either side of that, which was the first reason I told my captain “no” when he asked me to re-enlist after my Asian tour. And that one time I didn’t say “sir.”
As I neared her, Hilda called, “Hiya, Sport! Harry, these here are Nan and Sue.”
The two on her flanks regarded me with interest. I mumbled a howdy but my attention was for Hilda. “I hear you’re still playing taxi.”
“For you, Sport. Anything for you.” She craned her neck toward Bimmy, watching from across the room. “You’re not ready to go, are you?”
“I’m tired of the movies.”
She ducked her head, shuffling feet into shoes. “You’re the boss.” Getting to her feet she added, “See you, Poppy.”
As we approached the entrance, I noted, “Thought you said they were Nan and Sue.”
“They are.”
“Then who’s Poppy?”
“Sport’s a man, Poppy’s a girl.”
I nodded. “Of course.”
I grabbed my hat but didn’t look back to see if anyone noted our departure. Hilda led me to a dark Pontiac sedan. Taking my seat as she started the engine, I commented, “Staying with General Motors, are you?”
I saw her grin in the dash lights. “Had to leave the Buick. A tag problem.”
She made a couple of turns and lined us up on Chester Avenue, which thirty blocks ahead passes near the garage where I left my own wheels.
She’d been glancing often at me. I asked, “What is it? Egg on my face?”
“Sorry, Sport. It’s a habit of mine. I watch my man’s face for a clue to what he’ll want next.”
“Just transportation, Hilda.”
“No questions?”
Making conversation would be better than sitting like a lump. “What do you mean, ‘a tag problem?’ Did it fall off?”
“Might’ve been better if it had. No, the feds turned it in. One of the locals pulled me on the way home. Good thing he recognized me. So the Buick’s in the garage waiting for a new tag.”
“I see. Hilda, what’s your guess this is all about?”
“I’m not paid to guess.”
I pretended to grin. “Most people don’t charge for it.”
“They’ve got their reasons, Sport. I think you know what they are.”
“Well, I have an idea. Jack’s interested in computerizing his operation. What I don’t understand is why me.”
She flicked me a glance. “I know you work with them at NSI. How’d you tumble to their sideline?”
“Sideline! NSI is their sideline!” I shrugged. “Why shouldn’t I tell you, Hilda? I caught Laura blowing him in the hall.”
“You mean frenching?”
“I don’t mean dynamiting.”
“Didn’t think you did. And then she frenched you, right?”
“Right.”
“And you let her.”
“Right.” I had to grin. “Don’t think I ever turned down a blow job.”
“Even from a man?”
“Well …”
She chuckled. “You wouldn’t admit that, would you!”
“Laura is hardly a man.”
“Not in shape,” Hilda agreed, “but she thinks like one. I got a better question for you: what’ll it take to make you throw in?”
I shook my head. “They don’t have it.”
“Well, if it’s money or girls, they’re loaded.”
“Yeah, girls! Little lost self-made orphans, heading for the junk heap. Jack says you can’t use them up, but I think you can.”
“Some of them do get used up. Hell, they insist on it! But by no means all. Thirty years ago I was one of your ‘lost orphans.’ By and large I’m satisfied where I am now.”
“Where is that?”
“Nights of fun and excitement, days spent helping kids. Nothing is cuter than children. I also happen to like men. They can’t help being bastards; it’s the way they’re made. And I’ve got an investment portfolio you wouldn’t believe.”
Again she spared me a glance. “You’ve yet to see all the operation.” I heard a smile in her voice. “You’re young, Harry. Give yourself another fifteen years and those teenagers will look a lot better to you.”
“That’s how it works, eh?”
“Most of the time. You like mature women, do you? I know a dozen who’d enjoy entertaining you. Tonight or any other. Just say the word.”
“Sounds like it’s already been said: whatever he wants.”
“So what do you want?”
“You talk big, Hilda. What if I said stop the car and suck me off right now?”
“Say it and find out.”
Again she glanced at me, grinning, and stuck out a wet tongue, red in the light of an oncoming car. My dick stirred. I groused, “Remind me not to bluff with you.”
She frowned. “Why bluff at all? I’m clean, Sport.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“Well, then?”
“Hilda, you’re the first to know. I definitely won’t throw in with Jack and Laura.”
Her eyes narrowed. After thinking it over she asked, “Going to rat?”
“No. I won’t throw in with the feds, either. They’re on his tail for drugs. Jack swears he doesn’t deal.”
“You believe him?”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I think those laws are as wrong-headed as Prohibition.”
“What do you know of Prohibition?”
“My grandpa told me before 1930 almost all drivers obeyed the speed limits. He was of the opinion that Prohibition nearly destroyed respect for law in this country. The banning of recreational drugs may finish the job.”
She nodded. “It may be.”
“Got nothing to rat about. I’ve yet to see Jack break a federal law.”
“Oh, the feds will stimulate your memory!”
“Not mine.”
She was slowing a block from where she had picked me up. She pulled into a bus stop and glided to a halt. “Jack won’t give up so easily,” she warned.
“Then he’ll be wasting his time.”
She grunted. “I’ll let you out here, Sport. They’ll be watching up there.”
I regarded her with my hand on the door handle. “You know my address?”
“I can get it. Thought you wanted to pick up your car.”
“I do.” I repeated my apartment address twice. “So this evening’s not a complete bust for you and me, at least, how about dropping by in an hour? You don’t have to tell Jack. I’ll pay your standard rate.”
Her eyes sparkled. “Your place is bugged.”
“It was. I’m technically trained, too. I found both of them.”
“If you found two, there’s a third.”
“Then I’ll put on some loud music. What do you say?”
She chuckled. “I’d love it!”
“Good.” I swung the door open.
She asked, “Your car’s in the lot on Bakerview?”
“No, a garage on Aspen.”
“Close enough. Swing by here with your window down. If you do I’ll be there an hour later.”
“Okay, Hilda. Whatever you say.”
“Then it’ll be whatever you say!”
I glanced back after a dozen strides. She was still smiling at me.
* * * *
Though November, the evening was warm enough for the walk without an overcoat to be a pleasant leg stretch. This was a hotel garage, still full of cars even at this hour. When I slid the key into my car door, other doors slammed down the aisle of cars. I stood with my door held open as two men in business suits closed in on me, one in front and one behind. The one in front held up a credentials wallet as he neared. “F. B. I., Mr. Stone. We’d like to talk to you.”
The one coming up from behind was my old friend, Bill Garth. “Well, look who’s here,” I exclaimed. “Changed jobs, have you?”
Garth retorted mildly, “Agencies do cooperate, Mr. Stone.”
“My name is Gregory McVay,” said the one in front. “Would you mind following us down to the office, Mr. Stone?”
“Yes, I would.”
“Very good. I’ll ride with you, if you don’t mind.”
“Yes, I would mind, Mr. McVay. I won’t go anywhere with you voluntarily and you won’t enter my car without a search warrant.”
The polite smile vanished. “You’d be well advised not to resist arrest.”
“I am under arrest, then?”
The two agents exchanged glances. “I told you,” said Garth.
McVay raised his chin. “Mr. Stone, we are asking for your cooperation in a major investigation. I cannot believe that a man who risked his life for his country, who was wounded while saving his platoon from capture, who owns a chest full of medals, would fail to support his government in such a clear-cut matter as this.”
“It’s clear-cut betrayal,” I muttered.
“What do you mean?”
I shook my head. “I told Garth the next time I talked to you people I wanted my lawyer present. Now it goes double.”
McVay shook his head. “Give yourself a moment. Don’t be hasty. Don’t you realize you’re siding with criminals?”
He waited for my answer, regarding me earnestly. I shook my head. “Hardly anyone notices the third side to an argument. Shakespeare did. He said, ‘A plague on both your houses.’”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’ll tell you nothing. I won’t cooperate with the government in this matter. It also means I won’t cooperate with Jack. Now, gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going home.”
I put a foot in my car. McVay snapped, “Did you ever hear of the Mann Act?”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of it.”
“We can arrest you as a material witness to violations of the Mann Act.”
“Only if you believe I saw Jack force a girl over a state line, which is ridiculous. I repeat: I want my lawyer.”
He shook his head. “I see you want it done the hard way.” He backed away while a hand disappeared into his coat and quick as a flash reappeared, holding a blue service revolver. He leveled it on me as Garth came close behind.
“Get out of the car,” Garth ordered. “Face it with your hands on the top.”
I recalled his search warrant, realizing I shouldn’t have ignored it. With my hands pressed on the cold metal I looked around for witnesses. The hotel garage was full of cars but no other people. Of course these two would have checked that. The attendant’s booth was around the corner and fifty yards away.
Garth patted me down then went through all my pockets. He flipped through my pocket notebook, full of cryptic references. “What kind of code is this?”
“Code is right. That information is related to my job.”
He grunted, shoving the notebook into his own pocket.
“Now, wait a minute,” I protested. “Fun and games are one thing, but if you deprive me of that notebook you’ll cost NSI time and money.”
“Too bad you lost it, then.”
“I can’t afford to let that lie. NSI’s lawyers will be in touch.”
He snorted contemptuously. My wallet interested him next. “Quite a wad of money here! More than six hundred where most people carry about fifty. Jack paid you off, did he?”
He went through the business cards one by one and showed the Polaroid of Florrie and the small portrait of Estri to McVay. This was a shot of Florrie holding her housecoat open. McVay nodded appreciatively. “Like them plump, do you, Stone? Who are these females?”
“Ask my lawyer.”
“Not your wife and daughter, I’d say. The young one looks like an Arab or an Indian. Care to comment?”
“No.”
Garth pushed money and cards back into the wallet and tossed it on the car hood. “Stay where you are,” he ordered, taking my key ring to the back of the car. In a moment the trunk came up. He called to McVay, “Dust undisturbed on the spare.”
Around he came to the other side, opened the passenger door, rummaged in the glove compartment, looked at and replaced the owner’s manual and registration. He checked the ashtrays next, grimacing at the pile of coins in the main one. “No friends that smoke either, eh, Stone?”
Finally he felt under the front seats. Apparently it was only a cursory search. He missed the .45 automatic clipped among the springs. Else he already knew it was there.
He backed out of the car, closed the passenger door and straightened up. “Got to hand it to you, Stone. You keep a clean car!”
“Thank you. It’s one advantage of the new parking service at work.”
He came around the front of the car, stood beside McVay and crossed his arms. The FBI agent returned the pistol beneath his coat.
Garth declared, “This search has been conducted in accordance with the provisions of the warrant I showed you. We’re confiscating your notebook for analysis. Unless it proves to be evidentiary, you’ll get it back in a few days. You can take your hands down.”
I faced them. “Even a few days will be costly.”
McVay suggested, “Then suppose you explain it to us right now.”
“Does either of you know anything at all about programming computers?”
They stared at me stiffly. I smiled grimly. “Trying to explain it to you would be a waste of time.”
McVay shrugged. “It’s your call.”
I scooped up my wallet, turned away and slammed down the trunk lid. Then I remembered something.
“You’re supposed to serve that search warrant before executing it,” I said, returning to them.
“You’ve seen it,” Garth asserted.
“I want a copy.”
McVay looked at the other agent. “He’s right. Better get it.”
I waited in the car, window down, engine idling, for Garth to return. He passed the paper to me; it was just as I remembered. I laid it on the seat.
McVay sighed and shook his head. “I can’t get over losing a man of your quality to the crooks. Talk about a crying shame!”
I grunted. “I can’t get over how much better the so-called crooks have treated me than the agents of my government.”
“Of course. They want something from you.”
“So do you. I’m impressed by the huge difference between their carrot and your stick.”
He said something else, something about right on his side, lost in the muted roar of the engine as I pulled out into the aisle.
Hilda’s Pontiac was gone. I’d let her sit too long in a bus stop. Doubly damn the feds!
A dark car followed me home. Guess the feds don’t always use gray Chevies after all. I ignored it, parked, took a coke from the fridge and put my feet up. What an evening!
But it wasn’t over. About half an hour later I heard a tapping on my door.
More harassment? But no, it was Hilda after all! My eyes lit. I opened my mouth to welcome her but she immediately pressed a finger over her lips before whispering, “Where’s the music?”
I took her arm and pulled her into the room before closing the door. Went to the stereo, threw in an orchestral Tschaikovsky tape and turned up the volume, hopefully not high enough to wake the neighbors.
Hilda was standing beside me, purse slung over her shoulder. I lifted it off her, threw it on the couch and took her in my arms standing. She returned my kisses willingly, though I could tell she was laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
“The fed in your parking lot.”
“Huh! What’s funny about feds?”
“This one was putting something under your car when your dog got him.”
“Dog?”
“Ripped a hole in his britches and probably in his ass. Didn’t know you had a dog, Sport.”
“I don’t!”
“Well, one out there believes in guarding your car. Quiet dog, too. Didn’t even growl.”
“Black one?”
“Yeah.”
“Ms. Rider’s lab. What happened to the fed?”
“Back in his car like a flash. He’s out of here.”
“Well, damn! Have to give him a medal. Her. Believe it’s a female.”
“She deserves one. We girls have to stick together.”
“I think you do! How’d you get here, Hilda?”
“Sorry to see me?”
“Very glad to see you!”
“That’s what I saw in your eyes.” She kissed the hand I had left on her collar. “Dodging the feds is thirsty work. You got anything to drink besides coke?”
She accepted a beer. My kitchen has no window. She noted that, put down her bottle and began taking off her clothes.
“You were going to tell me how you got here,” I reminded her, unhooking on my own buttons.
When I was late, she drove to the garage on Aspen in time to see me roll out. Hers was the dark car that followed me home — with a gray Chevy behind us both. She passed on by; the Chevy turned in behind me. She returned in time to witness the incident with Ms. Rider’s dog.
“I liked your proposition, Sport,” she declared, smoothing wrinkles out of the skirt laid on the table, while leaning her mouth close to my ear. Her breasts swayed pendulously, showing veins and stretch marks. More such decorations appeared on her sides, hips and thighs, though curiously absent from the front of her belly. I guess at some time she’s been a lot heavier than her present 120, or thereabouts. I cupped one tit, gently tweaking the long nipple.
“Nice,” I murmured.
“Thank you.” She sighed. “They’re not what they used to be.”
“Nothing is. But you’re in good shape, Hilda.”
She nodded, smiling. “For the shape I’m in. But I prefer your shape.” One hand enclosed my dick. The other arm urged me to sit on the table. She immediately dropped to her knees and looked up at me with twinkling eyes. “Let’s get the first one out of the way.”
“Laura said I was fast, did she?”
“A ‘quick draw,’ we call it.”
She opened her mouth, my glans resting on her lower lip. I remembered the relieved expressions of other whores. “Aren’t quick draws the best kind?”
“Actually you’re right. They do lots better on the second pop.” She closed on me.
A woman kneeling in submission, dick in suckling mouth but careful not to bite, is particularly stimulating, as I may have mentioned. And this was a school teacher! By the sixth grade I already knew that people did such things to each other and had some appreciation of why. Once or twice I may have entertained the fantasy of such service by my harried but plump sixth grade teacher, whom Hilda much resembled in fact, but the idea seemed altogether too far-fetched then. Here a full time school teacher, not poor part-time Eunice, not mine but a real one nevertheless, was sucking me off in reality.
Her hands kneaded my balls. She didn’t mind that her mouth made slurping noises. Neither did I. I think she had my juice in about one minute. Every drop of it.
Fellatio can arouse women, I’m told. In this case it may have. In bed at last I found her well lubricated. She fucked enthusiastically with every sign of extended orgasm. The grasp of her vaginal sphincter was unusually strong. From deliberate exercise? I wonder if a woman can train it to the point of capturing a hard penis inextricably behind its glans. Probably not. It’s an amusing potential, however. She could imprison it only so long as it remained erect. Like dogs.
Afterwards we lay cheek to cheek, our talk covered by music spilling out of the den. She told me a bit of her life. Her first lover, the neighborhood rake, infected her with a particularly virulent strain of chlamydia at age 14. People react differently to diseases. Hers settled in her Fallopian tubes and sterilized her before the free clinic cured it with an experimental antibiotic. She reacted in typical Hilda fashion. With one large branch of the female experience closed to her, she embraced the other, flinging herself into prostitution. But after ten years and a few more infections — thank god for the miracle drugs! — she found that contact with children was essential to her happiness after all. She worked in a nursery, both for and under the owner, until a beating at the hands of the owner’s wife taught her not to mix business and pleasure. So she went to school, living on her savings, and graduated from a teacher’s college in less than three years, having also earned a high school diploma along the way. She’d been a careful, diligent and respected grammar-school teacher ever since.
In the daytime. At night — well, I’d seen how she was at night. Did I care to comment?
“Wow!” was the only appropriate response. But what about her future?
What about it? She intended to fuck so long as she could find a partner, which from the testimony of the sisterhood, would be late indeed. Didn’t Portia, the great-grandmother, talk to me at all? Portia was only “semi-retired” and much enjoyed bragging of her occasional tricks.
Hilda concluded with a smirk, “Hell, you know I love it! If it comes to that, I might even pay the johns. Financially I’m getting close to easy street, Harry.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it. But if you ever need a customer, just let me know.”
“You’re sweet. What if I make you a regular?”
“Long as you don’t tell Jack.”
She smiled but wouldn’t promise. And she refused my money when she left before first light.