Chapter 11
Lying in bed, Connie Satterlee had a way of being very cute. Her cuteness and guile, especially when she decided on a hump workout with Robert M. Satterlee, President of Intercontinental Electronics Corporation, was also very effective in getting her what she wanted.
"Bob, darling, what's this I've been hearing about a hospital checkup for Ralph Spofford? You know, your Vice-President at Harrison Home Products Division?"
"Well, Ralph's close to retirement age-and confidentailly, I think he's had a coronary."
"That means you'd have to replace him right away, doesn't it?"
"Looks that way," Satterlee replied.
He came to the bedroom. Connie was sitting up in bed. The sheets were turned down, baring her lush nakedness as far as her ass. The President looked at the volupuous curves of her titties with appreciation.
Connie said, "Have you talked to Jack Pierce about the job yet?"
"No. I guess I'll call him tomorrow, after I hear the hospital report on Spofford."
"The job's definitely his, then?"
"Oh, yes. You're suddenly awfully interested in getting him that job, aren't you?"
Connie shrugged, the shrug doing interesting things to the generous double mounds of her voluptuous knockers. "It's for Jean's sake. I told you. She wants Jack to have a different job. Something with more regular hours, fewer smoke-filled rooms."
"I didn't realize you and Jean were such close friends," Satterlee said.
"It's only recently," Connie said. "She's such a sweet girl. Jack is so lucky to have her."
The President made no particular reply, except to put his hands on the full, bursting swells of his wife's tits. Connie moved closer to him. Her nipples began to go rigid.
Then she took his rigid hard-on and sat her moist hot, cunt right down on it!
The President emitted a sigh of Presidental pleasure and squeezed her breasts all the tighter. Connie began to pun. She worked wildly against Bob Satterlee's cock.
Passion mounted for both of them.
So Jack would get his Vice-Presidency, Connie thought happily, while she moved through the early stages of the humping. That was nice. That was very nice. It had taken a little coaxing, but Bob had agreed, Bob never refused her anything, if she seemed to want it badly enough.
She was glad about it. Jack would be glad. Jack would think that she had obtained the job for him, as a favor to him, because he was her lover.
Jack could be wrong.
She was Jack Pierce's mistress because it pleased and amused her to be. But she had gotten him his Vice-Presidency simple and solely because she had needed to, in return for Jean's frigging, and it was Jean's cunt-lapping she really wanted.
Connie closed her eyes. Even while she worked with Bob, she imagined that she was really frigging with Jean. It took a fair amount of imagining. She had to pretend that the strong hands gripping her tits were actually Jean's soft, dainty ones.
In the end it took more imagining than Connie could handle. Try as hard as she could, it was impossible to summon up the image of Jean as the person with her. No matter what, she could not drive from her mind the fact that it was with her husband's cock and not Jack Pierce's wife, with whom she was enjoying the thrills of passion right now.
She would have to remedy that, she thought, by frigging with Jean at the earliest possible moment. Yes. To celebrate. To celebrate Jack's new job.
At eleven o'clock the following morning, Ralph M. Spofford telephoned President Satterlee to announce, in a quavery, barely audible voice, that he was resigning. "Make it effective as of September first. That'll give me a little time to get home from the hospital and clear out my office," the old I. E. C. workhorse said.
A little later in the day, the I. E. C. public relations office had a press release to hand out:
"Vice-President R. M. Spofford will bring more than three decades of Corporate service to a close on the first of September, when he will resign. The Senior Vice-President of Harrison Home Products Division has been in poor health for the past eight months.
"In announcing the resignation, President Satterlee declared, 'It's is a great loss to I. E. C. and I am deeply grieved to learn that this grand old man of business, must at last yield to the inexorable inroads of health, as must we all, and has decided to withdraw from business life. A successor to Mr. Spofford is expected to be named in several days.'"
A little later the same day, President Satterlee put in a person-to-person call to the office of Jack Pierce. Jack, as it happened, was already on his way up to confer with Satterlee on a routine matter of business. The call was relayed to the radio-telephone in Pierce's company car.
"I suppose you've heard about the Spofford resignation," the President said.
"I knew he was ailing," Pierce said, fighting hard to keep the exultation out of his voice.
"He phoned this morning from Morningside Hospital," Satterlee said. "He's stepping down as of September first. The press release went out a little while ago, and I guess the story'll be in the evening papers."
"He's ready sick, is he?"
"He won't last the year, I understand."
"Too bad," Pierce said. "He was really a good guy. We need more like him."
"Yes," the President said. "Listen, Jack, I was wondering if you had any suggestions about a replacement for him. Anybody down your way who merits a boost upward?"
Pierce nearly dropped the phone. Satterlee had slipped him an unexpected curve ball, and it took him unawares. Suggestions for a replacement? What the hell kind of business was that? Jean had said the job was supposed to be going to him. But he couldn't very well put forth his own name as a recommendation to the boss.
Faltering, Pierce said, "Well, yes, there are several people-I'd have to consider the matter more fully, of course, before I named any names."
"Why so modest, Jack?"
"I don't understand."
"I was thinking of you, Jack," the President said jovially. "Of course, if you think there's someone in your district more deserving of the job than you are, just tell me that name and I'll be glad to consider him."
"Thinking of naming me-"
"That's right. As of September one. For the full Senior Vice-Presidency at the regular salary. Subject to confirmation by the I. E. C. Board of Directors, of course, but I don't think you'd really have any problems on that score. On the other hand, if you prefer to maintain your present post, and let the Vice-Presidency go-"
So he had been joking, Pierce thought, when he had asked for "suggestions." The sadistic old goat! Pierce began to relax, now that he realized the job was in the bag.
He said, "Well, naturally, I'll have to talk to Jean about this, Bob. It's a tremendous step forward, and I feel a little humbled by it all. I simply hope that I'm capable of turning in the kind of job I know you're expecting of me."
"I know you are, Jack. Otherwise I'd never have brought the subject up."
"That's very kind of you, Bob."
"I'd like an official acceptance letter from you within forty-eight hours," the President said. "We'll make the appointment public by the middle of the next week. My congratulations, Jack. There wasn't a better man in I. E. C. for the job."
Jack Pierce doubted that. He could think of at least half a dozen who were better qualified.
But no matter. He had pulled the right strings-or had had them pulled for him-and the job was his. His!
Senior Vice President Jack Pierce. It sounded good. Good old Bob, he thought. Good old Connie! Good old Jean!
It had been a cooperative effort, he thought. Senior Vice-President Jack Pierce. In the bag!
The press release on the Spofford resignation reached the newspapers in plenty of time for that night edition of the Sun. A very junior reporter was put to work on the not especially difficult job of transforming the press release into a news story, which could be done more or less by copying the press release and throwing in a little biographical information on R. M. Spofford.
The Sun did not intend to give the story very much play-a place on the front page, yes, but way down where it wouldn't attract attention. The big story of the day was more of a house story: the disappearance of a star reporter named Bill Fogarty.
He had been missing a couple of days, now, car and all. At first, it was assumed that he was simply off on a bender; reporters do that, now and then, just as in the gaudy old days of hard drinking journalists. But Mrs. Fogarty, a pallid, pregnant, bewildered little girl, was sure he hadn't done anything of the sort. "He wouldn't have just gone away," she insisted over and over again. "He wasn't the type. He was hard working every serious and sober-minded-"
Everyone on the paper agreed that Bill Fogarty was hard-working and very serious and sober-minded. Which didn't explain a thing, really, because hard working, serious, and sober-minded young men were just as prone to going off the deep end as other sorts, and possibly even a little more so.
But then a story turned up that he had been seen at a roadhouse one night recently, that he had had a rendezvous there with a girl in one of the upstairs rooms. Nobody could identify the girl, and the people at the roadhouse weren't even sure that they could identify the reporter, though he "kind of looked like" the man in the newspaper photos.
Was it Fogarty? What was he doing at the roadhouse, then? Who was the mysterious girl? No answers.
A reporter named Ferdinand Hughes, who had been on the Sun for ten years, and who had long ago given up hope of getting promoted to some more desirable slot on the sister paper, was assigned to the Bill Fogarty story. He did some routine poking around, questioned a few people, drove out to the roadhouse and snooped a little, without accomplishing anything.
It was not until his third day on the assignment that he thought of looking in the missing reporter's desk-an oversight that did much to explain why after ten years Ferdy Hughes was still a nonentity in the world of journalism.
A quick look in Fogarty's desk turned up nothing.
But a more careful look, later the same day, produced something very interesting indeed. It was a small crackle-finish gray cashbox, locked. A gummed label had been affixed to its lid, and on the label, Bill Fogarty had typed: To Be Opened In The Event of my Death or Sudden Disappearance. B. F.
Ferdy Hughes' pulse pounded a little faster.
He fumbled with the cashbox, but it was locked securely, and not even a minute search of Fogarty's desk succeeded in turning up the key. A locksmith was called in, and he managed to get the box open in twenty minutes with a sliver of bent wire.
He began to lift the lid.
"That's okay," Hughes said quickly. "I'll take it from there."
In a private office off the dingy office, the reporter opened the cashbox. It contained only two things: a manuscript, typed single spaced on a cheap grade of yellow second sheet, and a black and white photograph.
Hughes looked at the photograph.
Hughes gasped.
Hughes blinked.
The photo showed a nude woman sprawled out with a muscular young man above her, just as nude. From their position, it was unmistakable that they were fucking, and the look on the woman's face was one of sheer joy.
The woman Ferdy Hughes realized in astonishment, was Jean Pierce, the business leader's wife screwing with some local kid!
Ferdy Hughes' hands shook so much as he unfolded the manuscript that he nearly ripped the sheets. He read, going over each sentence two and three times to be absolutely sure he was making no error. "To whom it may concern:
I have been playing an extremely dangerous game, and if you are reading this, it means that I have lost the game. I have been forced by circumstances of economic hardship to dabble in blackmail, for the first and only time in my life. But I am dealing with a powerful and ruthless man, and it is quite possible he will have decided to destroy me rather than let the risk I represent continue to exist. The enclosed photograph should tell much of the story. The woman is, of course, Mrs. Jean Pierce. Acting on a tip, I spied on her detected her in the act of adultery with a local boy named Jerry Trent.
I realize that such a story is dynamite. However, my private circumstances were such that I found it more suitable to approach her husband, Jack Pierce, and attempt to blackmail him. We agreed on terms of a thousand dollars a month for ten months, after which I was supposed to rum the negative of the photo over to him.
At the moment the negative is in Box 10 of the vault at the Harrison City National Bank, downtown office.
Jack Pierce is a clever and powerful man and he may think I represent too much of a danger to him. On that case he may choose to eliminate me, acting through thugs. I set this down in the hopes that he will be punished for such an act.
Tonight I am going to 'Manettie's Roadhouse,' north of town, to see the call-girl Dorinne Lee. She contacted me today, promising to reveal important information. There is the possibility that this is a trap, that she may be in the pay of Jack Pierce. In that case I may never return from the roadhouse. I suppose I will have brought this on myself, through my insistence on blackmailing him rather than going through more legal channels to bring his wife's immorality to public notice.
I hope that you who read this will see that the proper action is taken against this man and his henchmen, whoever they may be.
Bill Fogarty"
Ferdy Hughes read the document through several more times. Then he stared at the damning photograph, at the oh-so-clearly limned contours of Jean Pierce's frigging voluptuous body, the sleek lines, the ripe globe of her bare breast crushed lustfully against the chest of the boy whose cock was in her cunt!
He put the photograph in his breast pocket. He crossed the room, to the photocopy machine, and rapidly ran off two copies of Bill Fogarty's letter. He filed one in Fogarty's desk and one in his own. Then, taking the original and the photograph, he headed toward the cubicle of the City Editor.
The City Editor, a harried-looking, balding man named Mike Glennon, who regarded his job on the Sun as an advance installment of purgatory, was on the phone when Hughes approached. Hughes waited.
Glennon said, "Yeah, I've got it. Jack Pierce is in line for the Spofford job. Yeah. Appointment to be announced in a few days. Okay, we'll run it as a teaser. I'll have a man call Satterlee just in case, and Pierce too. The worst we can get is a no-comment. Yeah. Sure. Keep in touch and let's see how it breaks."
Glennon put down the phone and said, "What is it, Hughes? Anything on the Fogarty story?"
"I think I've got something pretty good," Hughes said.
"Well, let's get down to cases," Mike Glennon said impatiently. "We got a paper to get out today."
"Maybe I got something about that guy you were just talking about that will make you stop the presses," Ferdy Hughes said mysteriously.
"Who-Jack Pierce? Stop horsing around!" Glennon snorted impatiently.
"Maybe this'll change your mind," Hughes said and handed Mike Glennon his precious scoop, the photograph and the letter. "Bui Fogarty left these behind."
"Wow!" Glennon exclaimed, snatching the incriminating hump-photograph from Ferdy Hughes' hand, "little boys like you shouldn't be playing with pictures like that!"
He tore his eyes away from the picture and began to read Bill Fogarty's letter. Finishing, Mike Glennon turned to Ferdy Hughes and roared, "So you finally got us a 'stop the presses scoop', huh, Ferdy boy?"