Chapter 11
Rod Bradley was faced with only one alternative-he had to leave the house in Riverdale, Olga and everything she stood for as soon as possible. He was on the border-line between Heaven and Hell and if he had a spark of manhood left now was the time to act.
Olga had called him only last night.
"There's a big one tonight, prize lover," she had cooed into the phone. He still remembered how quickly her tone had turned to a frustrated snarl, when he begged off sick... and said vaguely, that he might feel better the next night... What would her reaction be when he told her he wanted to quit cold?
Actually Rod had nothing but hearsay to go on. That and remembrance of his interview with Olga Innstrom, that afternoon in what seemed ages ago now. He didn't really know what to expect when he faced her with the truth. Perhaps she'd smile in that calculating way of hers, shrug and wish him luck. Or, on the other hand, she might fly into a towering rage, bring up the incriminating evidence she had on him, threaten to expose him if he didn't get back into line. Then, he thought grimly, Lord knows what I'll do to the cockmaster.
It was a frustrating situation all around. For if she let him go, wished him Godspeed in the bargain, nothing would really be solved. The photostats and originals of the damning documents would still lie in that filing cabinet in her office, she could blackmail him, snatch him back as a hired lover at any moment she chose. And, trying to keep his new found happiness with Jean, would he be brave enough to call her bluff?
There was still another possibility. Perhaps, should he dare her to expose him, her menace would collapse like a house of cards. For in reality, didn't she have more to lose than he? Wouldn't she anticipate the face that he'd sing loud and long about the unusual house in Riverdale? All her bribes and police payoffs would do her little good against a very publicized outcry like that!
What was to keep him from stomping into her suite, demanding his dossier? Tearing it up before her very eyes?
One thing: the remembrance of her syndicate connections. That and a not-too-long-ago reference to another inmate of Olga's house. A man who had bucked Olga, who had never been seen again from that day to this. Rod definitely wasn't up to a showdown like that.
And round and round his troubled brain slowly spun.
Coming to only one clean-out conclusion. That he needed, somehow, to win Olga's graceful consent that he leave her employ, leave with her blessing. For she, and only she, could gloss things over, make his move away from her, smooth.
And one more thing besides: Get those papers.
Thus it was, on Saturday morning, finally working up his courage, that Rod called Olga requested an interview with her at three that afternoon.
"Something important, Rod?" she fished sarcastically. "I wonder what that could be? You got gripes about your cut or something?"
"No. Olga. Nothing like that. Something else entirely different."
"Oh? Give me a hint."
"This afternoon, Olga."
"I've got my ideas," she purred. "You been getting kind of restless lately, Rod. Haven't you? Well, if it's what I think, you're wasting your breath." She giggled tauntingly. "Three o'clock, Rod?" Then hung up.
She left Rod in an even more indecisive, dread-swamped condition. What if I can't convince her? But I have to. She had to let me go. So that Jean and I...
And as added insurance, he made a hurry-up trip to the bank, withdrew all his savings. If she wouldn't listen to reason, then perhaps the money would talk louder. Granted, it would leave him on his ass, but then, what other out did he have? He had to take his chances.
Such were his thoughts that afternoon as he slammed his car into the near empty garage behind the house, as he screeched to a halt, killed the engine, and walked purposefully toward the house.
But all his apprehensions, all his carefully laid arguments and plans were for nothing. He didn't need them. A merciful, though grisly, fate intervened in Rod's behalf.
He thought it strange that Mack Calabrio, didn't answer the door. Instead the puffy-eyed Jose Cruz admitted him.
"Where's Mack?" Rod challenged. "Don't tell me I caught the eternal watchdog napping."
"Search me, boss," Cruz said in his syrupy, lipped accent. "I ain't seen him all afternoon."
"Anybody around?"
"Ken and Doug are upstairs. Olga's in her suite. No trade though. No telling where Mack's gone to."
"Muchas gracias, senor," Rod baited him.
"Nuts, senor," Cruz retorted good-humoredly.
Rod waited for perhaps two minutes outside Olga's door for someone to answer his ring before he thought to try the door. He was vastly surprised to find it open. Olga's sanctuary was always locked, kept strictly off limits to the "boys".
Glancing up and down the hallway, finding it empty, Rod opened the door, entered quietly into the apartment. Quickly he checked the outer cubicle, saw everything in good order. Then he furtively advanced on the inner door, raised his hand to rap a curt signal.
At that moment his attention was arrested by a foreign, unidentifiable sound within, and his hand froze in mid-air. It was a sound that was a cross between an animal whine and bubbling soup. Again, throwing caution to the winds, Rod turned the knob, pushed the door open a mere crack.
There, in the room's center, sprawled on the luxurious, white carpeting, were two bodies. The two bodies belonged to Mack Calabrio and Olga Innstrom.
One living, one dead.
Rod wanted to retreat, to conceal himself completely. But he could not. The astonishing, unexpected scene froze him where he stood.
"Mummy, Mummy..." Mack Calabrio was blubbering, his face tear-streaked, his eyes glazed, an expression of sheer idiocy on it. "Wake up, please wake up. I didn't mean to hurt you. Mummy..."
While in his arms, the rag doll figure flopped and quivered, the once proud and erect head lolled and rolled aimlessly, proof positive that Olga's neck had been snapped by those same powerful hands that now sought to console and revive her.
But Olga wasn't to be revived. She was as dead as dead could be. She had been a final victim to her own lustful ventures, she had paid the ultimate price for providing cock for cunt-starved females-of any age. Even for herself.
They were both entirely naked, Calabrio's body still sweat-drenched, and there was no doubt left in Rod's mind they'd been fucking only minutes ago.
Looking at Olga's body, still beautiful, despite the marked pallor now invading it, Rod could not help but wonder at the discolored, red blotches, each the size of a large plum, that were scattered at random on her flesh. What kind of rotten rite had they been conducting when something had set the unpredictable Calabrio off?
Now Calabrio gathered the limp body in his arms, began to rock it, crooning to it in a monotone, the words a steady stream of gibberish. Rod's stomach reeled as he saw the head bounce and jiggle so grotesquely, as Olga seemed to fix him with a last contemptuous glare. But it was only imagination, for there was nothing in those wide, staring eyes but utter blankness.
It seemed that Rod would scream if he had to watch the macabre, sickening performance a second longer. Calabrio's lullaby abruptly turned into a dirge, and his sobs faster. He held the body closer, began to kiss and slobber over the dead lips. "Please, Mummy, wake up!" he howled. "You have to wake up now."
Rod clung to the door knob for support. Then, suddenly, he lost his balance, fell halfway into the room. God, he raged. Mack mustn't see me now. He'll kill me, he'll tear me limb from limb.
Calabrio stared directly at Rod. But shock had done its work on that shriveled brain. He looked through Rod, not really seeing him at all. Then returned to the limp doll in his arms. It was sure evidence of the lunatic horizon Calabrio had now passed over. It was explanation as to why he hadn't heard Rod buzzing at the door.
And finally, his trance broken, Rod staggered back, closed the door on the nightmarish scene. He fell against the wall, breathing raggedly, trying to focus his thoughts. Then his eyes fell on the modern file cabinet against the opposite wall.
His purpose in coming back today was recalled, the too-pat solution to his problem slamming at his brain like a sledge hammer. The file. The papers are in there!
Once more he changed into a decisive, sure automation, leaped for the outer door, locked it. Then he turned on the file, yanked at the drawers, found them sealed. He was looking around the office for some jimmying tool, when he recalled something one of his unsavory New York friends, a second-story man by happy avocation, had once told him.
"People will spend all kinds of jack to buy safes and vaults and stuff, and then they'll do some damn fool thing like writing the combination on the underside of a desk blotter, they'll hide a key behind the drapes. Talk about stupes."
Instantly Rod was prowling the office, praying that Olga had been just such a stupe, scouring every corner and drawer and ledge in the room. Minutes later he was successful. The key wasn't behind the drapes. But it was beneath one corner of the rug.
It took him only seconds to find his folder in the file. It was jammed in among the most awful collection of junk Rod had ever seen. Canisters of film, booklets, books, imitation rubber pricks and balls, pictures of nude men in all positions whose purpose he could only guess at. Quickly riffling through it, determining that everything was there, he took the entire folder, shoved it inside his shirt.
As he let himself carefully out of the office, his heart beating a maddening tattoo, he paused, listened.
In the other room Mack Calabrio was still blubbering for Olga to wake up.
Without a moment's hesitation Rod raced up the stairs, went to the room with the blue door for the last time. Inside, he methodically stripped it, removing any personal belongings that might serve to incriminate him, should the murder bring the law charging down on the house.
As he came downstairs again, he heard a female giggle break from one of the anterooms. Then a male voice, pleading and coaxing to be allowed to fuck. Bella and Cruz working up to a matinee.
Thus it was nobody saw him as he quietly let himself out of the house and ran for his car.
It was only as he roared out of the driveway that Rod first had time to think of anything beyond self preservation. And he wondered what would happen to the house now with Olga gone. Would Calabrio blunder onto the street, howl up a storm? Or would someone find him first, get him under control, inform certain higher echelon parties as to what tragedy transpired.
What would happen to the whorehouse in Riverdale? Was there a syndicate behind the whole operation who had merely used Olga as a front? If this were so then the loss of the hard-boiled, beautiful figurehead would mean nothing. After the excitement of discovery died down, a similar establishment with a new Olga would quietly reopen in an exclusive section of town. Rod knew there would always be male cocks and balls as long as there were prick-starved women, or those who wanted their kicks off the beaten path, women who were well-fixed and willing to shell out liberally for a few fucks or more of an evening.
Rod dismissed all these thoughts from his mind and concentrated on getting as far away from Riverdale as fast as he could.