Chapter 9

The hectic frigging session on the turf with the beauteous Iris had left Ramey on the verge of exhaustion. When he got to his room he decided to put off talking to Moratta until morning, flopped into bed and fell soundly asleep.

He awoke refreshed early the next morning and turned over yesterday's events in his mind. There were some nagging uncertainties about this whole situation and instead of going to Moratta with his information, he dialed Lee in New York.

"When is my wandering boy coming home?" she asked brightly.

"I think I'll be winding things up here very soon, Lee dear."

"Is what you're winding up blonde, brunette or redhead?"

"Wrong on all three counts. I'm having a boy meets boy affair with Mike Moratta-he's so big and strong and handsome!" he jested.

"That I can never believe! I know you much too well," Lee said confidently.

"Good. And now, if we've had enough of this childish chit-chat, I've got a job for you."

"What's his name and where will I find him?"

"Stop it, Lee. This is serious. I want you to get into a cab and take a run downtown."

"What for?"

"You don't have to stop any place. I'm going to give you the address of a building. I want you to look it over-you don't even have to get out of the cab. I just want to know how high the building is-the kind of layout in general."

"That's ridiculous-to want me to do a thing like that."

His annoyance exploded in his voice. "All right. So it sounds idiotic. But it might mean a hell of a lot of money for us."

"It's not idiotic at all. Did you say us."

"I said us."

"Meaning you and me?"

"Who else?"

"That's the point I was checking. I'll leave right away. Where can I call you?"

"I'll call you. In an hour and a half...."

Ramey gave Lee an extra fifteen minutes while he paced the floor. Then he called back.

"I don't get It, darling," she said. "The place is a dump."

"What do you mean a dump?"

"It's a four-floor tumbledown with half the windows broken. The first floor is used by a trucking company without enough money to get a sign printed. Their name is smeared on the door by hand. What's so important about all this?"

"It fits in with some thinking I've been doing."

"Well, if our getting money depends on that place, forget it."

"On the contrary. If it had been a valuable building I'd have been disappointed."

Lee sighed. "I guess it's no use pumping you for information. When will I see you?"

"Soon. I hope."

"I suppose it won't hurry you any to tell you I can't wait to see you?"

"That's very pleasant to hear."

She paused and then her voice turned serious. "Darling-be careful, will you?"

"Of course. I'm a devout coward, you know that ... "

The new information geared perfectly into what Ramey had begun to suspect. The ten thousand dollars might have been logical as a price of the information if the building had indicated a comparative value. It didn't; not on the basis Moratta had stated-as an automatically valuable property that would become negotiable at a later date.

The location being valuable as a site for some future development didn't hold water either. The city would not have paid an exorbitant price. They would condemn and pay their own price if they wanted the land for a housing project.

But the clinching argument was the obvious fact that Lyman's creditors would not rate the place as collateral on anywhere near the scale necessary to make the loan it covered.

Therefore, Moratta needed the information for another purpose. What was it? Lyman owed money to Larry Strieker, whoever that was. Moratta had been unable to identify Lyman's creditor. He'd dreamed up a rather ingenious cock-and-bull story to tell Ramey in order to hide his true reason for wanting the information. So it now behooved Ramey-if he wanted to make a real score-to discover Moratta's secret.

There had to be a secret; a hidden truth worth far more than ten thousand dollars.

Ramey's mind began stringing clues together. The boy. He had seen something no child should witness. Violence of a brutal and terrible nature. Then too, there was the grave out on the estate and the flowers the boy watered regularly. This could spring from the child's guilt complex.

He could have been expiating his father's crime.

Also, the boy hated and feared Steve and Nina. Pure coincidence, perhaps, except that it was the Lyman's who were also somehow involved in the keyknot of the tangled skein.

Ramey was beginning to get an idea. There was nothing he could do about it, however, until after nightfall. Nothing except to use the daylight to locate a shovel....

Saturday passed uneventfully. Ramey was not required to face Moratta more than briefly. Around noon, when Ramey was lounging in the patio, four men came out of the house carrying golf clubs. Moratta veered away from the party long enough to approach Ramey, scowl at him, and ask, "Any luck?"

"There has been progress. But a thing like this takes a little time."

Moratta accepted that. "I'll see that you get another chance at her tonight."

With that, he strode away with his three guests, and Ramey thought he had never before met a more intensely bitter man. Something was eating at Moratta's foundations. Only a strong man would have stood up under the apparent load for so long.

Alone. Ramey again wandered off across the estate. He found the secluded grave without much trouble this time and was kneeling beside the geraniums when Phil Moratta broke onto the scene.

He was hostile and defiant. "What are you doing here?"

Ramey arose and smiled. "Why nothing, Phil. I was just taking a walk and I found this place. Is this the geranium you had to water yesterday?"

"Yes. But you got no right to be here."

"I'm sorry. I didn't see any keep out sign. You didn't have much luck with your other one."

"What other one?" he asked belligerently.

"The one that died. I saw it over there in the grass. Still in its pot."

Phil turned his scowl on the dead geranium and, at least momentarily, his hostility faded. "It died. I did everything for it, and it died anyhow." He looked back at the grave, his eyes sullen. "Everything dies."

"Oh, that's not true. Things live, too. This geranium is doing fine."

Phil dropped to his knees and cupped the blossom in his hand. "This one's doing all right."

It occurred to Ramey that he might possibly be able to shock the information he wanted out of Phil. But the decency in him shrank from this. It would be brutal. Phil was only a child and he didn't deserve it.

Ramey decided, instead, to ask a few logical questions and watch Phil closely for reaction.

"Why do you keep your flower so far from the house?"

Phil's head jerked up and hostility flamed anew, so Ramey quickly gave him an answer: "So people won't step on it and smash it?"

"That's right. They'd walk on it if I planted it near the house."

"This looks like a grave. Have you got a pet buried here?"

Again the hostility, with fright added. Again Ramey adroitly switched his line.

"When I was a boy I had a dog. A great big collie. He used to go out and bring in the cows."

"Did you live on a farm?"

"A pretty big one. I had a horse, too."

"I hate horses. What else did your dog do."

"He would shake hands and chase a stick. But mostly, he liked to chase rabbits."

"Rabbits get in here once in a while. I throw rocks at them."

"Did you ever hit one?"

"I almost did once. Then I quit throwing rocks. The rabbits never did me any harm."

"I never liked to kill rabbits either. My mother used to tell me it was cruel and I believed her. My mother was wonderful. She loved me very much."

"My mother was a bitch!" the boy cried.

"Phil! You don't believe that!"

"I do! I do! I do!"

The boy doubled his fists and jumped up and down in rage. He was near hysteria and Ramey took a quick step forward and stared hard at his feet.

It was a simple trick but it worked. Phil dropped his eyes in that direction.

"A worm," Ramey said. "You jumped on it. I was afraid you were going to kill it."

"You can't kill a worm. If you cut one in two, both ends live."

Ramey turned briskly toward the grave-like mound. "Well, you'd better water your geranium again. It's dry." He started back in the direction of the house. "Are you leaving?"

He turned. Phil's moody eyes were on him. "Yes. You said you didn't want me here." He waited and when Phil said nothing, added, "That's what you told me, wasn't it?"

"Yes," the boy admitted reluctantly. Ramey moved on. "No hard feelings?"

He turned. "Of course not. I'll see you later." He walked slowly back toward the house. There was something wrong in this picture; something definitely wrong. That, he had established to his own satisfaction.

Now, it was necessary to make a final decision. To take his ten thousand and walk away? Or to go all out to pry Moratta's secret loose-and try for a big stake.

There were grave risks in the latter course. He didn't fool himself about that. The secret was dangerous and Moratta was a dangerous man. Going ahead would take courage. Did he have it?

He wavered. Ten thousand dollars was a lot of money. Why be greedy? Why not take it and leave safely.

Then another thought intruded. Perhaps it was merely an excuse to push him in the direction he really wanted to go, or maybe it stood on its own merit. Anyhow, it was a fact. Moratta knew about the girl who'd jumped from the hotel window. This put him in a position to use it against Ramey if he saw fit.

Maybe, Ramey thought suddenly, Moratta intended to use it.

He had spoken of ten thousand dollars, but Ramey had yet to see a dollar. Once in possession of the information he wanted, Moratta would probably tell Ramey to beat it on pain of being turned up as the missing hypnotist a very efficient police department was looking for.

Thus did he find justification, even a necessity, for going through with his more ambitious plan. He would probably need Moratta's secret with which to protect himself and collect the money he had rightfully earned.

But still, with even these fine rationalizations to comfort him, he had to be honest with himself. He smiled without mirth and muttered, "To thine own self be true...."

The grave. What was in it?

After nightfall, he would find out....

In the meantime, there were other things he could do. He got a shovel from the gardner's tool shed and hid it, without being seen, in some bushes. Then he went to the patio by way of the front drive and around the front drive and around the house in order to avoid the swimming pool where, voices told him, everyone else seemed to be gathered.

All except Steve Lyman. He found Lyman sprawled in a chair on the patio. He appeared to be asleep but as Ramey entered, he opened his eyes and regarded him morosely.

"I feel lousy," he grumbled.

Ramey dropped into a chair. "A little too much to drink?" he asked pleasantly.

Lyman burped. "Ulcers-cancer maybe-everything. You seen my wife around anywhere?"

Ramey hesitated for a moment before saying, "No, I haven't seen her."

"She's a bitch," Lyman sneered. "She's probably off screwing in the bushes with some guy."

Ramey could see, now, that Lyman was drunk-probably as drunk as his conditioning ever allowed him to get. He didn't know quite how to answer Lyman's bitter comment, but the man seemed to expect an answer so he said, "Perhaps she's angry. She may be staying away just to irritate you."

Lyman burped a second time and looked even more miserable. "She couldn't irritate me. I couldn't care less. It's just that a guy doesn't like to have his wife frigging around with everybody in sight. It-it ain't ladylike."

Ramey almost exploded into laughter. It seemed incredible that Lyman had failed to see the humor in his statement. But obviously he didn't.

Ramey decided to risk moving a little closer to the obvious truth. He said, "It strikes me the moral level in general is pretty loose around here."

"You said it," Lyman agreed. "It's scandalous. Everybody fucking with everybody else. My wife wasn't around all night. It's gotten to be a hell of a world-what I mean. Sometimes I feel like going back to the grocery store."

"I didn't know you were in the grocery business."

"Are you kidding? I started out with a delicatessen in Manhattan."

"But now you're a financier-or that's what I've heard."

"Somebody's been flapping a loud mouth," Lyman said. "I didn't get nowhere till I got a lucky break. And sometimes I don't think it was lucky."

Ramey was elated. He hadn't expected an opportunity to pump Lyman. Nor had he dreamed that Lyman was in the least pumpable. Instead, the man seemed eager to unburden himself. But Ramey still realized that Lyman would shut up like a clam if he got the least idea that his outbursts interested his listener in the least.

Ramey yawned and said, "I'm afraid I can't agree with you. A lucky break is just that. It can't be anything else."

"Oh, can't it?" Lyman stopped to twist his face in pain. "Ow, my gut." Then he went on. "Suppose you got to keep an eye out all the time to keep from getting killed?"

"Everybody does," Ramey said. "Cross a street these days without looking and you can be dead."

"That ain't what I'm talking about," Lyman said with a contempt for Ramey's stupidity. "I'm talking about a real hit. If that wife of mine wasn't so greedy I'd be living a nice easy life." He waved an arm. "But she wanted this. She wanted glamour and a pack of men to fuck around with. So I got my lucky break. And we moved in."

"I don't quite understand," Ramey said lazily.

"We had a little place," Lyman said wearily. "A summer shack on a lake over that way." Again he waved an arm. "Then one night-"

There he stopped. Perhaps the memory sobered him enough to stay his tongue. He looked at Ramey as though seeing him for the first time, then he burped, closed his eyes, and went to sleep.

Ramey sat there for a few minutes. He wanted to be sure no more information would be forthcoming. But Lyman showed no inclination to talk in his sleep, so Ramey wandered off to be alone with his thoughts.

The thing smelled like blackmail. He took what clues he had and set up a hypothetical set of events. The boy, Phil, had given indications that his mother was not all she should have been. He hated her. Therefore, she had perhaps been unfaithful to his father whom he respected. He had seen violence. That could indicate that Mike Moratta had exacted vengeance for infidelity and the boy had witnessed this.

Everything pointed to that mysterious mound with the geraniums on it. Who was under that mound? Ramey had to know....

But there was to be an interlude. He'd hoped that activity would be at a minimum that night. This would have given him a comparatively early opportunity to venture forth with his shovel on the grave-robbing expedition.

The activity centered around the pool. There had been quite a little drinking during the afternoon and toward evening the spirit of recklessness began to break out.

It began when one of the girls, not particularly drunk, wandered too close to the scene. She was wearing conventional clothes-skirt, sweater, and stockings.

Two men seized her and began to strip her. She screamed, possibly from surprise, but soon found herself standing in her bra, garter-belt, and panties.

She broke away and began to run. They chased her. One of them dropped her to the ground in a football tackle while the other guests, craving excitement and happy that things had broken open, cheered the two men on.

The girl, a tall, beautifully built redhead, became panicky. Thinking, no doubt, that she was going to be fucked in full view of the entire gathering, she fought desperately, screaming to be released.

The two men picked her up by the wrists and ankles and carried her back to the side of the pool. There they put her down again and finished stripping her, throwing each garment into the pool as they pulled it off.

Roaring with laughter, they again seized the now nude girl by her wrists and ankles and began bouncing her on the grass. Each bounce shook her terribly. Tiring of this, they carried her to the pool and threw her in.

Instantly a man watching from the far side dived in after her. He was a good swimmer and as the girl came gasping to the surface, he dived under her, caught her by the ankles and pulled her under again.

Giving her just enough air to avoid a catastrophe, the man steered her, between dousings, toward the edge of the pool. He allowed her to get a grip on the edge of the pool and start to pull herself to safety.

Then, grinning, he helped her out with a vicious upward shove of his thumb right in her asshole.

The onlookers howled with glee. The girl landed on her hands and knees with the target still within range of her tormentor. He again reached toward her but she saw the movement, pulled in like a kicked pup, and crawled out of danger.

The pool-side mirth doubled.

Angry, confused, the girl got to her feet and ran toward the patio and the house. A male onlooker, wishing the fun to continue, started after her.

By chance, his path took him close to where Ramey stood scowling at the exhibition. Ramey's foot moved forward at exactly the right moment. The man bellowed and went headlong.

He got to his feet and whirled on Ramey. "Wise guy, huh?"

Ramey smiled. "Awfully sorry, old man. Didn't mean to get in your way."

The man was stopped by the disarming rejoinder. He hesitated, then turned and went angrily back to the pool.

The guests were disappointed. They'd hoped a fight would develop. When it didn't, three of the male guests started throwing girls into the pool.

Ramey watched this comparatively innocent roughhousing and wondered how long it would satisfy those who needed more brutal actions to satisfy their egos.

Through frantic effort, they finally had every girl in the pool, a squealing, struggling mass of feminitity.

The next phase was no doubt spontaneous, but the action moved so smoothly that it seemed planned. While the three men patrolled the pool-side to see that none of their wet captives escaped, two other men dived into the water and began systematically stripping their victims.

They picked one girl at a time, pulled her into shallow water and turned her upside down and pulled her trunks or panties off.

The remaining male spectators cheered each time the bottom half of a girl came naked and kicking above the water line, displaying a writhing wet cunt.

As each girl's turn came, she accepted her punishment, if that was what it could be termed, with the same struggling resistance as her predecessor. Or at least that was how it seemed to Ramey.

He'd long since given up any idea of championing the girls in their travail. They were still free American citizens and they hadn't been kidnapped and brought to the party.

He even held back while his disgust mounted; when one of the men after the naked girls had been permitted to climb from the pool, seized a small blonde and carried her, kicking and howling, into some low bushes.

"Have fun, Jack," one of the observers called.

In their sick need of abnormal thrills, they listened.

They heard the man's grunt of satisfaction as he obviously shoved his prick into her cunt that was followed by a sigh from the girl. The bushes shook as he began to fuck her. One of the girls giggled nervously.

Then, from behind the low bushes, the little blonde girl's feet appeared, twisting and turning.

They watched. The girl sighed again.

The man appeared a few moments later. There was a grinning look of satisfaction on his face.

"Score one hump for Jack," a voice called out, and the spell was broken.

The man strode back to the pool in triumph. A few moments later, Ramey saw the girl arise and run in the other direction with her head down.

The crowd at the pool was still in the mood for fun and games. Not to be outdone, the bull-like Tino Cavanne had grabbed the squirming, sexy little brunette called Delia and tossed her into the deep end of the pool. The terrified girl surfaced, managed to grab the side of the pool and as she spit water cried, "Don't Tino I can't swim and this is the deep end!"

Tino approached the struggling girl and sat down at the edge of the pool as if to help out. Instead, he rolled down his trunks and captured the struggling girl's head between his knees. Tino grinned evilly as his purpose became apparent to the frightened girl. He choked off her protests by a simple movement of his knees, pushing her head underwater. When she bobbed up again, he pointed to his enormous stiff cock, indicating what he wanted her to do to him.

The group watched spellbound as Delia's head bobbed rhythmically to comply with Tino's demand to be sucked off. They cheered and laughed as Tino grunted and shuddered as the helpless Delia chokingly finished her unusual task and had to swallow the load of hot scum Tino's cock shot down her throat....

Ramey had seen exhibitions and orgies, but Moratta's crowd could dream up sex gimmicks that were the wildest in his experience.