Chapter 1
If you drive up Atlantic Avenue to Forty-eighth Street, you will see an older hotel. It is still one of the finer hotels in Virginia Beach. The multitude of low, sleek motels have not taken away from its old, tidewater splendor; its rates are still phenomenally high during the months of June, July and August. It is away from the marauding sailors, the honky-tonk end of the boardwalk, and the women are available only to the wealthy.
For Sue Sills," it all began on the twelfth floor of this older hotel, the Butler Arms, at roughly seven in the evening. She was surprised that Howard Hardin, her boss at the bank, could afford fifty dollars a day.
"We could've gone to one of the cheaper motels," she told him as she sat next to him on the edge of the preposterously large bed. It, too, smacked of antebellum tidewater days; in an area crawling with jets and modern seagoing vessels, it was sadly out of place. "This is awfully, awfully expensive."
"Don't let it worry that pretty head of yours," he laughed, putting his arm around her. It was a pale arm, but sinewy and smooth with youth; in a week, it would be a well-tanned arm from lazy days on the beach.
Howard Hardin was a young man on his way up; twenty-nine years old, good-looking, big .title with no salary to match (all part of a business where you spend and save money that belongs to others) and as Sue thought, he had one decided flaw: he was married.
But he had talked, and she'd listened, and besides, he was a swell boss. She had no intention of blowing a good thing, so here they were, on the first night of a two-week vacation, that Howard had arranged to come simultaneously for both of them.
"I just think it's a lot of money for a place to sleep," she protested, but more weakly now.
"We'll do more than sleep here," he said pointedly, and the pressure of his arm tightened around her.
Sue got the message.
What the hell, you don't spend two weeks in a hotel with a married man to look at the ocean while you sleep in different beds-especially when the room only has one bed in the first place. If there were ten beds, the notion would still be patently absurd.
She leaned back against his arm and smiled.
"Yes," she answered with a soft, lilting voice, "of course we will. It's so wonderful being alone, Howard."
For months, they had been burning for this moment, and now it was here. Months of sidelong glances, seemingly casual lunch dates that wound up with knees and hands desperately touching under the table. And always the annoying obstacle of Howard's wife. But the woman, through no intentional kindness, had gone to Switzerland for. the summer, partly to get away from Howard, partly to taste the first blessings of a sudden windfall her grandfather had left her in his will: money that she had made plain was untouchable so far as her husband was concerned.
Sue knew it was wrong to be here.
She also knew that right and wrong had nothing to do with personal desire, and this was the accumulation of long-repressed urgencies. At twenty-two years of age', "she had decided it was time to chuck a few of the more annoying mores aside and revert to some of the hedonistic glories.
"Yeah, sure is," he answered after along silence. "You know, it's funny how we're just sitting here talking when all these months we've been waiting, waiting-maybe we're nervous, do you think?"
She laughed shortly and prevented himfrom saying anything more by putting her lips against his; her arms went around his neck and pulled him close. The heat of his body came through his thin, cotton shirt, through her summery, sleeveless blouse, and stopped agonizingly at the brassiere she wore. Suddenly she longed to feel nakedness against her nakedness, the closeness of her billowing, burgeoning breasts against his chest. Desire thundered through her loins and spread throughout her body until she pictured herself lying naked on the wide, cool bed, air-conditioned breezes blowing against her while Howard undressed and lay beside her, ready A small, animal whimper rose in her lungs and swelled inside her as she pressed her lips harder against his. She felt his lips loosen and then their mouths both went slack with desire. Their tongues met and the tips circled one another with tantalizing fervor while their hands accelerated wildly up and down each other's backs.
Sue went limp. Her breath came out of her rosy, sensuous lips in great gulps; through smoky, impassioned eyes, she saw Howard staring dully at her breasts. They were terrific, she knew, with their defiant upward thrusts, their cloud-like texture and weight, their flawlessly white expanse contrasted starkly by dead-center red nipples that were now stiffening with excitement. But Howard could not see that, not yet. Not until his hands busied themselves with removing blouse and bra, could he delight in those twin wonders separated by a deep, shadowy, perfumed valley.
Howard did not wait.
He didn't wait at all; it was remarkable and exciting how fast his hands applied themselves to the task of unveiling. Sue felt them there, firm, sure of themselves, yet feverishly excited as they unbuttoned the wispy blouse and unsnapped her brassiere, and her breasts plunged out of their captive, cloth cups like children finally let out to play.
He whispered reverently-something about their largeness, their whiteness, the delicate, red, bud-like quality of the nipples as they swelled and filled with pounding blood to his touch. Her eyes met his, and through their narrow, slit-like attitude, she could see the reflection of her own eyes. Raw, delicious lust.
His sandy hair tickled her lips, her neck, and then his lips closed with hungry possession around one of those small fireballs. In plain English, Sue Sills lost her cool completely, and groaned with unashamed pleasure as his lips carried her passion to a fever pitch.
"Howard, ooh, Howard!" she moaned, "We've waited so long!"
"Yes, darling-yes," he answered, and was silent again except for the gusts of breath that spilled over her breasts as he kissed them; his hand moved to her knee, and slid slowly up her leg until it rested warmly against her bare, white thigh.
She heard a zipper.
It was her zipper.
A sudden coolness, as air-conditioning caressed her naked flesh and mingled with its moistness, and she and Howard lay side by side on the gigantic bed, she naked altogether, rubbing hotly and nymph-like against his clothed body. Beneath his slacks (Archer, $21.05 plus tax), she felt his throbbing, disturbingly large maleness. Another burst of excitement assailed her and her tiny hands began tugging impatiently at his belt.
His trembling response frightened her as it thrilled her. It happened even as her fingertips touched his hard, flat stomach and moved downward until they reached home.
The rest happened fast.
Clothes flew helter skelter around the room on both sides of the bed, and the next time they pressed their bodies together, there was nothing touching on either side but hot naked flesh.
Man's flesh.
Woman's flesh.
Both on fire to taste the delights of the other as their lips again touched, scalded, promised and tasted the joys of-what months of repression now made unbearably suspenseful.
Sue Sills would have been a bargain at any price. Her body was as nearly perfect as one will find in this age of artificiality and compensation. Maidenform had no market in Sue. Her breasts were splendidly wrought globes of firmness, towering white monuments of female beauty; even a basketball player with large, well-trained hands would have a difficult time palming those spheres!
All the way down, her skin was smooth. Smooth and white, with blonde, downy fuzz hardly visible except under the harshest lights, covering her arms. Her legs were long, slim and firm; even the thighs were devoid of loose, flabby flesh, although they were muscular and ample in dimension. No man would be ashamed to be caught between them.
Her buttocks were wide and heart-shaped, with the same benefit of separating crevice to give them dimension and form that no artist could possibly improve upon. In conjunction with those pervert's dreams was a pair of hips which swelled and fell with roller-like precision and naturalness. All in all, Sue Sills was a perfectly constructed woman, and when you added a child-like, unscathed face and living, vibrant warmth of youthful desire, you had the woman.
Howard Hardin was aware of it.
Sue was aware only that months of repression were finally to find blessed, necessary release, and as she ran her hot hands over his trembling body, she quaked as he quaked.
His hand nestled between her thighs.
I'm ready for him, she thought, and with a final whimper, she rolled onto her back and reached her arms outward, hungrily entreating him to possess her, to mesh with her and drive himself home into the very core of her passion-starved being.
Howard hardly needed enticing.
Even without the memory of his jaded, artificially perfect wife, Sue Sills would have been a treat for him.
He indulged with the indiscretion of a little boy.
But it took a man to indulge, and Howard was happily well-equipped. Sue felt like liquid fire on the inside, parched heat on the outside. She was a bundle of flame, and only his manliness could put it out.
She was aware of being lifted.
Her heart jumped in her throat, as the awareness became more acute as to detail-hands, his hands, were stuffing full-feathered pillows beneath her, hoisting her buttocks high off the mattress. Instinctively, she bent her smooth, rippled back and lifted her firm-packed white thighs over her.
Eardrums exploding, she waited.
His flesh touched her.
Then, the awareness was deliciously complete-he strained and groaned, pushed hard against her, quivering as she quivered, and an unmistakable sound reached her ears, penetrating through the ocean-like, explosive sound.
They were together!
Gorging, trapping, capturing one another's starved flesh, they were together in the most ultimate way! Sue's heart thrilled and her flesh cried out for completeness. She gripped him hungrily with her smooth, adroit thighs and pulled him yet closer against her so her breasts squashed and almost flattened, nipples burning against his chest as their bodies rose and fell and swayed like ocean breakers at high tide. It was an old movement, perhaps the oldest in history of mankind, yet a movement that never loses its exciting quality of newness-his hands left her shoulders and moved between the pillows and buttocks, grasped the latter until their warmth spread through the heart-shaped mounds of perfection.
A faster crashing, now.
Faster and faster until "Howard, darling, my God!" Words, yet more than words tumbling wetly out of her lips as she kissed him and drew him deeper into her tormented, pleasured, warm, moist flesh-and then nothing but explosions, explosions everywhere as they momentarily became one organism, their sensations and fever Blending, whirling, sailing off into some mysterious vortex.
Then two people again, a man and a woman, lying aide by side, sharing the proverbial cigarette, listening to one another's rapid, shallow breathing and the silent hum of conditioned air.
The Butler Arms.
Twelfth floor, high above the sand and the surf, so high, so protected from nature that neither is discernible or audible. An air-conditioned reality where two people have had sex; yet another manifestation of our Twentieth Century dilemma, when you think that sex mingles far more nicely with clean white sand and cool, saltwater lapping at your feet, your body. But enough of dreaming.
Sue's dream was to last two weeks. Fourteen nights and thirteen days of swimming, fishing, eating, drinking, sex, night walks along the not-so-quiet sand, and more sex.
Howard gave her a dream.
Then suddenly, without warning or comprehension, Howard gave her a nightmare. When she awakened, Howard Hardin no longer existed. He was gone.
There were two police officers, complete with badges and tired, disbelieving eyes-a ride downtown, then another ride back to Norfolk, where the crime had taken place, and .a booking in that police station.
The charge: embezzlement of funds; specifically, one million, nine hundred eighty dollars and seven cents: for our purposes, close to two million dollars. Suspect number one, Susan Sills, employee of the bank with two year's service.
The evidence: insurmountable. Checks with her signature, money missing in slow hunks from her windows, every one that she ever operated. Innuendoes and nuances that can build up and construct an airtight case: her previous requests for raises, all of which had been denied, her sudden purchase of new clothes and not least of all her complaints to her co-workers about how tight the bank was with raises.
A nightmare.
She spent the night in the precinct jail, and in the morning called a lawyer. In her panic and excitement, she went quickly through the phone book and called a number attached to the name Farley Brock.
He came to see her within the hour. When he came into the cell, Sue saw a tall man, a young man, but a man with no frivolity written into his features. He had humor-cop-humor, cynical, grudging, but hardly resigned. She laughed inside as she thought He's kind of handsome, then realized how grossly unimportant his physical characteristics were at that moment, under those circumstances.
Howard had been handsome, too.
"Miss Sills, I'm Farley Brock. Guard, I'd like to talk to my client."
The guard let Brock in, who sat down on the wooden bunk beside her and extended a pack of cigarettes. Gratefully, she took one.
"You've been charged with embezzlement of close to two million dollars. Your name is Susan Sills, age twenty-two, employee of plaintiff, and in a helluva lotta trouble. Now tell me the important details."
"I didn't do it!" she cried, puffing on he cigarette nervously, "I didn't do it, I tell you!"
"Look honey," Brock said with mock gentleness, "Dillinger didn't do it either, until he got caught. I'm not here for you to impress with your flawless morals; now just tell me what happened."
Sue exploded.
"How can you make jokes at a time like this?"
"I'm not making with the jokes, Sue. I'm trying to build a case so you don't go to prison for ten or fifteen years-do you consider that a joke?"
"No," she said, "I certainly don't."
"Okay. Now maybe we can get down to cases, if you'll pardon the bad pun. Where were you when the fuzz picked you up?"
"At the Butler Arms Hotel, in Virginia Beach."
"Expensive place," Brock said sagely, and flicked his eyes at her.
"I didn't pay for it," she said. "Oh, your husband-but how can that be when you're a miss?"
"I was there with a man-he was-married-my boss at the bank, who wanted me to spend some time with him-"
"Okay, okay," Brock snapped, lighting another cigarette. "I said forget the morals, I'm not interested. "You were with your boss? Who is he and where is he?"
"Howard Hardin. I don't know where you can find him."
"Hell," Brock spat. "Now, did you ever suspect embezzlement? Did you smell anything that wasn't quite kosher?"
"Never," Sue said. "How-Mr. Hardin just gave me checks to sign and I signed them and he took money out of the cage or the vault-or wherever."
"Human."
"I didn't do it, Mr. Brock. I'm not smart enough to steal a dime, let alone two million dollars. I didn't believe what was happening-until now."
"Okay, Sue, okay. Sorry I was tough on you; but that's how jurors think. I wanted you to be prepared. llnless I can dig up Hardin, or interest the DA in him as a suspect, we're in tough shape. Not guilty, then?'
"God yes!"
"Okay. I'll be back. Want anything to read? Here, take these cigarettes and I'll bring a carton when I come back."
"Thanks, Mr. Brock."
"Haven't done anything yet," he smiled, and sauntered out when the guard opened the cell. Then he was gone, and she was alone and miserable, wondering how in the hell she ever got into the situation.
The trial: unbelievable. Howard Hardin showed up as a witness for the-prosecution, said yes, he had a short, meaningless affair with the defendant, and yes, he was her superior, and yes, he did suspect something to be amiss with her conduct. But nothing like this, sir, nothing like this!
Mountains of evidence.
Signed checks, loose behavior, on and on, until Farley Brock, in a blind rage, was threatened with contempt of court by the judge.
The verdict: the State of Virginia (County of Norfolk) finds the defendant Susan Sills guilty of embezzlement. Bang! Addendum: If the defendant will kindly tell the plaintiff where the money is concealed, the chances for parole will he infinitely greater.
No?
Bang!
Ten years in the state penitentiary, woman's section in Stockbridge, Virginia.
All the way up there, riding in the train, handcuffed to a woman officer, Sue Sills could not believe she was going to prison for ten years. She could not, did not believe Howard Hardin had lied sc blatantly against her. She knew now, that he was guilty, that it was he who had done the embezzling and had covered his tracks by using her. And lo think I wanted an affair with him, she thought. It was unbelievable.
"I didn't do it," she told the woman officer.
"Sure honey, I know. Be quiet so's I can snooze, huh?"
The train rolled on.
Farther and farther away from the coast, into southwestern Virginia, where Sue stared out into the night and wondered how on earth she would bear ten years of prison life for a crime she did not commit? She wondered even more how or if Farley Brock would get her trial appealed as he had promised fervently to attempt with everything in his power.
His last words to her: "It all stinks, Sue, the whole damned thing, and I'm sensitive to bad smells-I'll appeal your trial if I have to bust everything and everybody in this state!" Let it be true, she thought wildly, let it be true.