Chapter 9
I CLAMBERED FROM THE SWIMMING POOL with my teeth chattering and shivering like an excited poodle. One of the apes threw a big beach towel at me. I caught it and wrapped it around me and started prancing around to try to get warm.
I was soon herded to the elevator and back to the fifth floor. Minutes later, I was back in my room.
I climbed under a hot shower and stood there feeling like a lobster in a kettle of boiling water, but before long I began to feel human again. I climbed out and rubbed myself as red as the nose cone on a rocket.
I went back to the bedroom and climbed into a king-size bed. The mattress felt as if I were lying on a cloud. I lay there in the darkness, staring at the ceiling, and wondering about Barney Vestal and Gilligan's Raiders and whether the building had been blown up.
Frankie had said he and Manny would see to it that the clown trying to make a name for himself would not blow up the building or do any further damage. Without saying so, he probably also meant that he and Manny would see to it that the bar wasn't taken over.
But if I dropped out of sight indefinitely, wouldn't Dad's license be given to someone? I couldn't expect them to hold it and wait for me to pop up again, if ever.
It was entirely possible that Frankie had had me snatched because the Feds were on his back, but that didn't mean that Frankie would ever turn me loose. He probably had to keep some of his goons at that hideaway at all times, to protect it. His goons would get bored out there in the boondocks, so how nice it would be to keep me penned up there forever, to be a sex machine for the men he sent down from Chicago for guard duty at the hideaway.
Clodville was a small town. Everybody knew everybody else, so if Frankie and Manny had men in Clodville to watch things, they should be as conspicuous as a cat at a mouse convention. Lem Carlyle, the sheriff, was no fool. If he heard of strangers hanging around Clodville, he'd surely try to peg them. But if he did, and proved them to be Frankie's boys, or Manny's, that wouldn't necessarily mean that Frankie or Manny had snatched me.
What would everyone in Clodville think when I dropped through a hole in the earth so suddenly and no trace of me could be found, Would they figure I had been snatched?
Then another thought hit me. When I had walked into my apartment, the drapes and shades were pulled. When I didn't show up, Barney would no doubt have Lem Carlyle come over to investiage. When Lem went to my apartment, he would spot those closed drapes and shades. And he'd wonder why they were closed.
It was possible that the two gorillas who had grabbed me might have left clues behind, something dropped on the rug, or a crumpled book of matches they tossed aside, or something. If so, Lem might go looking for fingerprints and come up with the prints of the two hoods who had grabbed me. Then he could put out an APB for those two men, and then the hunt for me would be on.
I also wondered about Dad's funeral the next day. Even if the building weren't bombed, would someone take hold and organize the thing? Art Trumbull, at the mortuary, wasn't the man for the job, but perhaps Barney Vestal would take hold and carry it through. I hoped so, because I wanted Dad to have the appropriate farewell from Clodville.
And then I fell asleep.
Smooth warm hands lightly caressing my back awakened me. I was lying on my right side, and I could feel a warm fragrant body jammed against mine, belly to belly.
"Don't be frightened," a low sultry voice whispered. "I have come to help you."
"How?" I asked.
"That I don't know. We will have to decide that together. But we must keep our voices down. If I'm caught in here, it will be my life."
"But why do you want to help me?" I asked.
"Because if I help you, perhaps you will help me."
"This gets crazier and crazier," I whispered. "Help you to what?"
"To escape. I have been a prisoner here for months, and it is better that I be deported than to spend the rest of my life here being raped by these depraved monsters."
"Then Frankie will never let me go?"
She snorted. "You know better than that. Frankie never lets go of anything he gets his big fat hands on."
"But how did you get in here?" I asked.
She gave a low rippling laugh. "To survive, I learned how to pick pockets. I picked Augie's tonight, after I had seen him lock this door and drop the key into his pocket."
"How did you know I was in here?" I asked.
"I saw Augie taking you out of this room and to the elevator. I figured they were taking you down to see Frankie, so I slipped down the back stairs and went outside the window when they were having their fun with you. The longer I watched, the more angry I became. I know it's going to be dangerous, but, with luck, we shall escape."
"But how come you're not locked up as I am?"
"I was when I first came here, but I played it smart. I made no trouble. I didn't try tackling them, as you did tonight. That was very foolish."
"I know it, but I was mad."
"Anger will get you nowhere. Not with these brutes. And when they raped me, I made no protest and didn't fight back. So, before long, they stopped guarding me so closely, but I knew they were watching me. If I made any attempt to escape..."
"Yeah," I agreed. "So you played it cool. And then what?"
"They never told me I was free to roam around. I just started it, and they never stopped me. But I never made any attempt to run away. In fact, I never went far from the building when I was out on the grounds. I always stayed in view, because I knew someone would be watching me from a window. I've been a model prisoner. I lay on my back and submit whenever they want me to. They think they have me cowed, but wait until the right time comes. They'll regret what they have done to me. If you are smart, you will stop fighting them. They may never get over being suspicious of you, but after a while they may. And until they leave you alone, as they leave me, we can never hope to try to escape."
"Makes sense," I said. "But they make me so God damn mad..."
"I know. But what does it buy you except a broken nose or a black eye or something worse? There was a girl here a few weeks ago. She was a hellcat. She clawed and bit and kicked them and one night clawed ore of the monsters' eyes out. That did it. Frankie ordered her dragged down to the old well house. She's never been seen since."
I shuddered. "I didn't think they'd play that rough."
"You don't know Frankie. He's as cold-blooded as a shark. That's why I came in tonight, to warn you, and to ask you to not fight them, because you only make it worse for me. When Nadine was fighting with them, before she was thrown down the well, she would make everyone angry and then they'd come looking for me and tear me apart, too."
"I'll try to behave," I promised. "But there's a limit to what I can take."
"You haven't even seen what you can take yet. It will be more horrible than you ever imagine. I have seen it, with Nadine. They'd jab her breasts and nipples with lighted cigarettes. They'd carve their initials on her butt so she couldn't sit down."
"Frankie said he was leaving here tonight," I said. "When we're alone with those apes, are they as bad as when Frankie is here?"
"Depends on whether you cross them. If one of them tells you to get on the bed, get on the bed and don't fight him, or he'll go get the others and then you will really catch it. Just go along with them. You don't have to pretend you're enjoying it, just submit and don't fight them. That's all that's needed."
"You say you have been out on the grounds," I said. "Have you been able to get near any of the walls?"
"No. That's too far away."
"So you have no idea how we would be able escape?"
"No. I don't. But I know that if we keep our eye open, there must be a way. Perhaps you have never lived like an animal, fighting to stay alive, fighting have enough food to keep you alive, and fighting hang on and try to survive until things get better. Well I have. I've lived that way most of my life. So Frank and his monsters don't scare me."
"How did you get in this mess, anyway?" I asked.
She snuggled closer to me and shoved her left arm under my neck. Her right hand began lightly caressing my side and occasionally moving down to stroke buttock and thigh. How good it felt.
"My name is Tiki," she said. "My parents were from a tribe that came from one of the South Sea islands and settled on Hungdung, a little island off the coast of China. I was just a baby when my parents fled Hungdung and eventually landed in Mexico. They wanted to come into the United States, but they knew it would take years of waiting. They settled down in Mexico City and, like other refugees, scrounged for a living. At an early age, we kids practiced on our men and women and learned to pick pockets. Then we were sent out and came back with watches and money and other valuables. We'd take them down to old Sing Ling, who would give us little or nothing for them and then turn around and sell them for a huge profit. The police couldn't touch him, so we were fairly safe. We no longer had to scour the dumps and garbage cans to get enough to live on.
"I don't know how old I was when my mother took sick and died a few days later, but I do remember that it was shortly after I had begun to menstruate. Even today, I don't know how old I am.
"As we girls got older we were introduced to another way of making a living. In the cribs in the back alleys, on a filthy bed, whoring. What we were paid by the pigeon meant nothing, because we would roll him and take him for everything he had and then whistle for Pancho who would haul him out of there and dump him in another alley.
"I stole and I did everything possible to get my hands on money. And I'd hide it behind an adobe brick in my shack. The pile grew and grew.
"Then I heard of Kerserge. I went to see him. He was a huge giant of a man with black hair and dark skin and black hair all over the backs of his hands and up his arms.
"It was known that Kerserge, for money, would smuggle you in the United States. From long years of living in the jungle, I didn't tell him how much money I had. I just asked him how much he wanted to smuggle me. He told me five-hundred dollars, U.S. I gasped and let on that I couldn't ever raise that much money. So we haggled. And we finally settled for one-hundred and fifty dollars. But, for one of my kind, it would take a lifetime to raise it.
"And then Kerserge said he had a possible way for me to raise it in a hurry. He knew of a robbery that was being planned. They could use me. It was a bank. But the Federales knew about it, too. Everyone was killed except me. I managed to work my way down alleys and get back to my people. They hid me, and in a few days Kerserge came looking for me. He said he was ready to smuggle me to the United States.
"I left Mexico with the Federales looking for me. So I can't go back there again.
"A few nights later, Kerserge came again and took me to a big truck filled with straw. I was told to crawl under the straw and make no noise. I found that the bottom of that truck was jammed with others who wanted to be smuggled out.
"I don't know how many days we sweltered under that straw and how many nights we froze and huddled together for warmth, but we finally reached Nuevo, a dirty and sleepy little Mexican town across the border from Blanton on the American side. We were herded in a bar and made to crawl under more straw and stay there.
"We were there in that haymow for several days. We could look out through the cracks and the knotholes and see the Federales looking for us. They had evidently found the truck.
"Then one night I heard a man whispering my name. I answered, and he grabbed my arm and pulled me out and led me away. He was a small swarthy snake of a man with thick black hair and beady eyes and a toothbrush mustache. He told me to go with him and make no trouble, because the Federales were around.
"Well, I landed in a crib in Nuevo. And I was told with a sneer that there I was to stay or they would hand me over to the Federales.
"It was a dark rainy night when I slipped away and worked my way to the bridge and went under it. I swam across the river and huddled on the other side, shivering and wondering where I was to go from there. Then I finally got up and stumbled forward through the rain and the darkness. I found a highway and started walking down it. I was picked up by two men in an old car. They said they were going to Chicago. I don't know how many weeks it was that we were on the road. When the car would break down or we'd run out of money we'd have to stay in a town until we had picked pockets and gotten the car fixed. They found out what I had done in Mexico, so they became my pimps and I would set up shop in a fleabag hotel.
"My friends heard of a big store that could be robbed. They wanted me to be in the car to help them get away, but things went wrong. I started the car and roared ahead and broke through the police roadblock, and then they were after me.
"That must not have been very far from here, because I was nearly out of gas. And I saw a red light and heard a siren far behind me. Then a wheel came off the car and the car rolled over and over and landed in a ditch. I crawled out and hid behind some bushes. I kept on crawling the rest of the night, lying flat when the police would roar by. Then I found this place. When I touched the gate, of course, it sounded an alarm.
"Well, you know the rest."
My body was now responding to her caresses. My hand was roaming around over her back.
"So if you're sent back to Mexico," I said, "you will be sent to prison?"
"Or worse. Perhaps I will be shot. Federales were killed that night, and they will make me pay the penalty for that."
"And Frankie knows all this?"
"Not all of it. He had ways of finding out. He knew that I had no place to run."
"And you want to escape from here?" I asked.
"Yes. Somehow I will be given a chance to stay in the United States."
"Yeah," I said grimly, "in prison. I was a cop in Chicago."
"A cop? I do not understand."
"Police," I said.
Her body stiffened and she moved away from me. I grabbed her and dragged her back. I wanted her close to me, as she had been.
"I'm not police now," I told her. "And I'm not going to turn you in."
"Thanks," she said.
"How did you learn to speak English?" I asked.
"In Mexico we had men and women from every country. There were many Americans who had run away from the United States. So I learned your American language."
Her hand slid down from my side and onto my breast. It stayed motionless for a moment. I made no protest, so it began moving around. I rolled back from her a little so that her hand was free to roam.
"And what about you?" she asked. "How did you get here?"
I told her, in low whispers, all the while her hand was setting my body on fire.
Suddenly I was seized by a desire to see this wild creature from the jungle. So I said, "The drapes are closed. Can't we turn on a lamp?"
"But why?"
"Because I want to see you," I said.
She hugged me to her. "I'm not much to see. But if you wish to..."
I rolled away from her and sat up on the bed and my hand went out and fumbled for the lamp on the bedside stand. It finally found the lamp and snapped on the light.
I blinked in the glare and my hand went out. The bed was empty. I wondered where she had disappeared to.
And then I saw her standing at the foot of the bed. She was small and lithe and the color of milk chocolate. Her long straight jet hair cascaded down over her shoulders. She had big doe eyes and a pug nose and a rosebud mouth. Her breasts were firm and up-thrust, with erect pink nipples. Her belly was flat. And she was built along the general lines of a greyhound.
She stared at me and I stared at her.
"You are very pretty," she said.
"You are, too," I told her.
She ran to me with a rush and fell into my arms and we sat there side by side on the bed, hugging each other and thankful and joyous that we were no longer alone.
She pulled back her head and stared into my eyes. Her eyes were black and shimmering and they glowed, deep within them.
And then, suddenly, her left arm moved up and went around my neck. Her lips mashed down against mine and her right hand found my breast, to caress and to pluck the nipple.
When her tongue slithered between my lips my tongue shot out and began to spar with hers. My hand found her breast. We clung together, breathing heavily, and savoring each other to the fullest. Then she pushed me back on the bed, on my back, her lips planting sucking kisses on my throat while her free hand continued working on my breasts.
Her lips then moved downward and began kissing my breast at the same time her hand was kneading it. Her hot moist lips clamped on my nipple. I moaned and stifled a low scream and exploded.
She shifted around and her lips found my other nipple while her hand strummed the nipple her lips had just caressed.
Once more she shifted around and her lips began kissing my belly and finally found my navel. Her tongue bored in. I arched my back and bit my lip to bottle up a scream.
Her body slid farther down. I opened my eyes. She was on her knees on the floor, pulling my legs wide apart, and staring at me.
She shoved my legs up and wider apart. And then she began kissing my thighs, with her lips brushing the curls of my joybox as she went from thigh to thigh. I closed my eyes and drifted to dreamy ecstasy. I had never known anything so delicious and thrilling.
I felt her fingers fumbling. My pussy lips were opened. And then I felt something hot and warm enter and probe deep within me. I grabbed a pillow and drew it across my face and hugged it tightly to muffle my screams as I erupted as I had never erupted before.
Reality took flight. I was drifting high and free. From far away I sensed I had a body that was being loved as it had never been loved.
Then it was as if I were alone. I had no contact with those electrifying lips. I sensed her warm body next to mine, felt it shifting around. I opened my eyes.
She was astraddle me and her ass was slowly lowering. I raised my hands and supported it. Instinctively, I knew what was coming. I reached up and spread her elastic cunt-lips.
Our tongues made .contact at the same time. We locked our arms around the other and we rolled and flopped and thrashed all over the bed, never losing the other. Together, like two thistledown, we floated higher and higher together and were high above the savagery of this cruel world.
My body was now a vibrant, quivering mass of sweating flesh. I was having one long continuous series of orgasms such as I had never known before.
From sheer exhaustion, we rolled apart and she crawled around and we lay in each other's arms. "We shall find a way to escape," she whispered.