Chapter 1
"Well, what kinda mess we got here?" homicide detective Al Hicks asked the trembling little motel manager as they approached room seventeen.
"We got ourselves murder, that's what," the old man answered, waving his arms in the air. "Why they have to come to my place for it?"
"Well, they gotta go someplace for it, don't they? A motel is as good a place as any for a body to get itself killed."
Hicks had come over from Louisville when the murder was reported. In the investigation ahead he would learn that this was a crime of passion. He wouldn't learn all the passion that led up to the crime. Detectives deal in facts, not emotions. Had Hicks been a more sensitive man, he would come to know that this crime began months before, on a night when Bob Birmingham drove over to Kiwasi....
Bob Birmingham was drunk. Not falling down drunk, but nervy drunk. He'd been drinking since 7:00 p.m.-bourbon with a beer chaser-and now it was 10:30-time to go upstairs and see the girls.
He slumped over the bar. and sent a wizened smile at Mae, who was seated at her customary station in the gloom at the end of the bar to see that nobody got upstairs without her say-so. Now he looked back to his drink, chuckling thickly. He felt a yearning in his loins and slid his hand down the front of his trousers to appraise the throbbing meat he found there.
Dear Lord, he thought, feeling actual pain, if I don't get this into something tender and juicy damned soon now. The things I heard me about these gals of Mae's!
He sloshed the Kentucky bourbon in his shot glass and mused over the pretty amber color. Ardis--if she ever found out he'd driven to Kiwasi-
It was a little twist in the road, composed of a few stores, a filling station, some ramshackle houses. But still there was always a crowd in Kiwasi come nightfall. Cars drove in from every corner of southeastern Kentucky-all after some of Mae's good booze-after a taste of something even more satisfying.
No sweat. You paid your ten and went up. Out of that ten Sheriff Amos Greedle got his cut. Bob couldn't help but wonder what the poor whore, who did all the work, got. Unless her Johns left her a tip.
Lust bubbled hotly in his guts. I'll give the little dear a tip, he thought eagerly. Be right glad to. All she has to do is treat me right. If she's just the least bit good to me-
Better than some cold ass I know.
Instantly a picture of Ardis, his wife-plus an unsettling guilt-was back again.
And how come? Where did she get the power to put the fear of God into him? He wasn't afraid of Sheriff Greedle, or of Mae-even her uppity whores. But, just thinking about Ardis, he got the sweats.
He shook his head and swallowed the rest of the whiskey, sighing pleasurably as it burned his throat. Another sip of his beer.
Fool, he told himself. How's Ardis to know? Or care even. She's at the temple of hers, probably writhing and caterwauling by now-in the arms of her everlasting Lord. Once she gets like that the whole damned world could tip over and she'd never notice.
Even if she waits up for me. Tell her I was down at the gristmill. Played cards with the boys. The cards alone'll make her see red. The whiskey on my breath she won't even notice. And as for suspecting I'd drive thirty-five miles just to stick this aching tusk of mine into somebody new-
His head-bobbing reveries were interrupted as the bartender touched his arm. "Mae's wondering if y'r plannin' on goin' up, friend," he muttered. "She don't cotton to no drunks mauling her girls. Better pay y'r money and go up. Whilst y'r able. The sheriff usually comes by around midnight He-likes things quiet by then."
Bob grumbled inwardly. He didn't take to having a bartender tell him what to do.
As quickly his mood changed. Again his fingers grazed the hard, burning length in his trousers. He laughed to himself and pushed himself away from the bar. He saw Mae-fat and frumpy, perhaps forty-five, dressed in a baggy dress, a bulky sweater-glaring at him.
Again that sense of pride and self invaded. He might be driven to whores for his satisfaction, he conceded, but he was still a man; he could still hold his liquor. He drew himself up to his full six feet. His steps were slow and steady as he advanced to the table where she sat playing solitaire, a frosted glass of some pinkish-colored goo to one side. She paused in her card playing.
"Wanna go upstairs?"
"You know I do." Suddenly he found his heart beating fast. He was afraid of the idea of going upstairs, hopping in bed with some woman he'd never seen before. This, after all his horny dreams, his gut-knotting need? His mouth went dry.
The man who stood there in that indecisive pose was thirty-six and rangy. He was country stock, wiry, hard-muscled; his reddish-blonde hair was cropped close to his squarish skull. Hick though he might be, there was still something handsome about him, something animal and magnetic that got to a woman.
Even Mae, with the countless miles she had on her, suddenly found herself wishing she was fifteen years younger. With a stud like this one-
His arms were tanned from the spring sun; his muscles were like iron bands. His face looked like it had been carved from a block of stone. Those perfect, white teeth in that dusky-almost Cherokee-face. Then those unflinching brown eyes, the luster of his bushy, reddish-tan eyebrows.
He was a man. The kind of man who'd really give his woman a hard way to go.
Then there was an unmistakable spark of reticence in his expression. That reticence a real woman treasures. A reticence that denoted a singular sensitivity-a humanity-in the man's makeup.
There wasn't an ounce of fat on his body. Mae knew his hands would be hard and tough. Those white-fleshed, soft-handed men had never turned her on. Plowboys, wranglers, section crew studs-they were her meat.
The mercenary bitch quickly turned off the addle-pated thoughts. "That'll be ten bucks. In advance. You get a half hour if you need it." She snickered. "Or if y'r man enough. No rough stuff, hear. No weird tricks. We got a couple chappies on the premises who come running if anybody makes a fuss."
She took the ten-dollar bill from Bob and tucked it in the voluminous folds of her sweater.
"What..." Bob stammered foolishly. "I mean ... what...? "
"Hell, ain't you never been to a house before?" she snapped. "Up those stairs there. First door on the right"
Bob muttered a muffled thanks and clumsily started up the risers. There was a turn in the landing, and he saw a dim light glowing ahead. His heart suddenly hammered uncontrollably. It didn't seem real; none of it seemed real. Him? Bob Birmingham? In a whorehouse this May night? In a goddamned crib?
But it was real, all right for now a luscious, long-legged brunette appeared in the doorway and stared mockingly down at him. "C'mon up, lover, Don't be shy. Nobody here but us chickens." Her smile was grossly sensual.
The room was smallish, no more than ten-by-twelve. It was unimaginatively furnished. Chairs, a davenport, a long coffee table, drapes and blinds, a badly worn beige carpet on the floor. Some cheap pictures on the wall. He might have been in any middle-class living room in Kentucky.
Except for one thing.
Four girls stood and sprawled in various, insolent poses about the room. The brunette, who now stood close to Bob, deliberately pushed her petite, oddly sharp-pointed breasts toward him, almost as if inviting him to duck his head and suck the tempting tits right through her sheer sweater. The redhead was in black also, but with stockings and imagine garters. The dusky-skinned, raven-haired doll-Mexican or Indian certainly-was sprawled on the davenport, her legs blatantly spread to expose her thick, curly mat of dark fur that went halfway up her belly.
But the girl who really made him gulp, all but swallow his tongue, was a dainty blonde who stood near the window, the heel of one silver lame shoe seemingly dug into the wall. Her knee was provocatively cocked and gave a wicked flare to her legs, her hips, and belly.
She was in red bikini panties and a thin scrap of matching nylon passing for a brassiere. The latter item lifted her breasts to a high, saucy tilt, made them resemble melons on the verge of spilling from their basket. Her mound shone dully through the nylon.
He wanted that blonde bitch. If he couldn't have her, he didn't want none of the cheap whores! And now, as she deliberately licked her lips and sent him a lascivious come-on, he felt his cock throb involuntarily and a coolish trickle of his semen slithered down his leg.
The blonde's eyes were fixed on his crotch. "What's the matter, stud?" she taunted. "With your pants, I mean? You smuggling axe-handles or something?"
The other girls giggled. And taking in that massive length of meat, the animal maleness he possessed, they all wanted him. It wasn't just the money involved, either. They wanted him for himself; they wanted to drain a truly horny specimen, to hear him gurgle and curse while he pumped into their slots. But then as they saw the way he stared at their blonde sister in sin-
"Forget it, girls," the redhead snapped. "Mamie's struck again." She grimaced. "Christ, it's enough to make a gal get a bleach job."
"Go ahead, Romeo," the Indian sneered. "Take her outta here. Get it over with."
Bob stared about him confusedly. It was his first time in a whorehouse. He didn't have the least idea about protocol. "You mean, I just go off with her? That's all there is to it?"
"Oh, Mamie," the brunette snickered, "did you win yourself a plowboy this time."
Mamie's sneer matched theirs. She beckoned Bob by sauntering sexily toward another door. "C'mon, honey. This way for the sack race."
"Better take a pail along," Red hooted. "He probably ain't been milked in a month."
Moments later, Mamie leading Bob down a murky, door-flanked corridor, he followed her into a smallish, neat-as-a-pin room. It contained only a dresser, several chairs, a small bookcase, and the most important piece of furniture of all-a massive, sway-backed bed, relic of a thousand lust wars.
Bob should have known what he'd won the minute the door was closed behind her and Mamie matter-of-factly began tugging at her brassiere clasps. "Well," she snapped, "how do you want it? I sure's hell hope you don't want nothing special. It's been one of them nights."
His expression became stricken, and he made a pathetic, pleading move toward her. "Please, miss ... Mamie. Don't do that. Not so quick. I'd sorta like to look at you if I might. If you aren't the prettiest thing I ever saw. That underwear ... it's so nice ... so exciting."
Mamie's hands froze, then slithered down her side, mission unaccomplished. Her venal mouth curved into a sly smile, making her pinched face-in Bob's eyes, at least-more devilish and seductive.
"Oh," she smirked, "so you're one of those, huh? I suppose you'd like to take my frillies off yourself. Cost you another two bucks. Don't like my tricks handling me any more than they have to. Fucking's one thing. This other business..."
Momentarily Bob's heart sank, and in that instant he could have sworn that it was Ardis, not a prostitute, who stood before him, taunting and denying him. As quickly the notion fled, and, in a voice phlegm-blurred, he said, "be proud to pay the extra, miss. Small enough for the pleasure."
Mamie smiled and advanced on the bed, where Bob now sat. She stopped before him, tolerated his hands as they reverently meandered up and down her fair, smooth flesh her legs, her thighs her buttocks and back-as they worked up to touching her belly and breasts. Any other female would have flowered, softened under the man's gentle, adoring touch. But not Mamie. She only saw it as opportunity to coax even more dollars from the poor, red-necked hick.
"You like Mamie, don't you?" she trotted out the tired refrain. "Maybe you'd like Mamie to really give you a going over. She will, you know. But it'll cost you, lover."
Bob's tongue seemingly glued itself to the roof of his mouth. "I'm willing to pay, miss.
Within reason. I'm no rich man, you know ... I do like you. I think y'r the loveliest creature I ever laid eyes on."
Now his fingers finally dared to touch her turgid nipples through the flimsy nylon. "Do tell, honey," she sing-songed. "How you do go on." She collapsed one knee so he could get at her tits more easily. His fingers worked avidly, and she didn't miss the yearning, trembling pout of his lips.
"I've always wanted me a blonde girl," he stammered. "Always had it in the back of my mind to have one. But I never got the chance. Oh, Mamie ... y'r so blasted pretty. I could eat you alive."
"Go ahead," she giggled, "try. Start with my titty bumps. Go ahead, chew them if you like."
Bob Birmingham was in the tart's power; it was as if he had no mind of his own. Groaningly, he affixed his lips to first one tit, then the other, he clamped his ham-like hands around her waist, held her closer. And still closer. In a mindless frenzy, he deserted her breasts and let his lips slither down the silky surface of her tummy. Around her navel they went, headed toward the undulating, smallish bowl of belly. They stopped just above the hem of her bikini panties, where her hair protruded slightly.
He shuddered, raised his head, and then looked at the whore dazedly. "I reckon that wouldn't be very manly, would it?"
"I reckon not," she mimicked him gravely. She was becoming impatient "But it would be womanly if I did something for you. Would you like that, sugar? Five dollars. Ten, if you wanted me to go all the way. You ever had a woman do that for you? Ever had a woman blow you?"
Embarrassment, mixed with overwhelming lust, transformed Bob's face. "Can't say as I have. I've always hankered on it though. Are you sure...? I mean if you..."
"Show me your money and I'll be sure. I'll give you a lovin' like you've never had before." She moved away. "But first, I'll shed this underwear ... "
"No!" Bob lurched. "Let me. Is that too much to ask? If I could just say I'd undressed me a blonde woman..."
Mamie moved back and proceeded to dig the knife in still farther. "If that turns you on," she slurred, "just think of what it would be like to have a ... blonde ... woman ... go down on you. To see her blonde head goin' up and down on your big, fat prick." Deliberately she reached out and caressed his meat through his clothes. She smiled when her fingers encountered the place where his goo Had soaked through. "Ooh, he is a beauty! See, he really wants it"
"I don't know, Mamie," the man muttered confusedly, at a loss for words. "I just don't know."
"But why not, lover? All men like to ... to be sucked off. You any different?"
"No," he choked, his face a bewildered mask, "it ain't that It's just that if you did me that way ... well, then I'd..." He fell into embarrassed silence.
Mamie hooted in delight "Oh, you're afraid you couldn't do me regular, is that it? You're afraid of wasting yourself, ain't you?" She leaned forward and began undoing his buttons. "You are green as hickory, ain't you? Hell, that's included in the ten bucks extra. I bring you back, get you ready for the main event right after." Her cackle became really ugly. "Double your pleasure, double your fun."
Everything happened very quickly for Bob after that And though he'd much rather have gone more slowly, savored things, he was awed by the aggressive female. Then the whore was pulling off his shorts, gingerly wrapping her fingers about his huge tube.
At last when he was totally naked-another first for him, being undressed with the lights on-Mamie permitted him to undo her brassiere, to peel her panties off her. And then and there, not making the least move to turn off the lamp, she began dragging his head to her breasts, poking first one tit, then the other between his noisily sucking lips.
Bob surrendered himself and began to chew her nipples fanatically. Whore or not, he wanted to bury his face in that blonde muff of hers, to root and snort between her legs. But Mamie was still in charge, and every time he tried, she stalled him by jamming his face tighter to her breasts.
Then, even before he'd had his fill of her luscious, writhing body, of her stagy, sibilant pantings, she was climbing all over him, pushing him back on the bed. He groaned and went limp as he felt her hot breath, her velvety lips coursing down his belly. Then the devilish tongue was twining around his flesh like some searching serpent, climbing its rigid length to the head.
He wanted to bellow with pride and joy as he felt her mouth go down, as he realized that-for the first time in his life-a woman was actually sucking him off! It was so! She had him in her mouth; she was going up and down on him, her teeth and palate grating, her cheeks bellowing in and out in as erotic a display of lust as he ever hoped to see.
Dear God, but that was a feeling! So hot, so soft, so completely enveloping. So wringing. So exalting! This beautiful blonde sucking him.
Now, the no-nonsense whore truly latched onto his dick, pumping like some demented machine. And now he knew frustration; he wished she wouldn't suck so hard, run her teeth on the underside of his glans so cruelly. He wished she'd move more slowly, give him a chance to savor this most exquisite of all sex experiences. Bob wished she'd be gentle, let him get used to it. Only when she knew he was ready-then should she bear down, then should she-
But now Bob groaned and suppressed an agonized yowl. He found his hands in her hair, his hips pumping up reflexively to meet her mouth. He was possessed of the most insane urge to fuck her mouth, to rape her goddamned throat! "Oh, Mamie!" he groaned. "Please! Not so hard! Not so fast! Y'r hurting me ... y'r taking all the fun out of it."
If the whore heard him, she didn't let on. Her head continued to piston up and down; her lips and teeth and palate became even more merciless.
And what should have been the ultimate ecstasy was pure hell. He came all right, hot and hard and jetting, making Mamie choke and groan. But it wasn't ecstasy, it wasn't fulfillment of a lifelong dream. Instead it was pain and frustration. Pain piled on top of pain! And where she should have waited a stroke or two, let him spurt, let him enjoy that spurting, she continued to drag her teeth across his corona, to literally cut gashes in his flesh with them.
She had him hard again in minutes. "There! Ol' johnny's up. Plug old Mamie silly."
Almost reluctantly Bob did as he was told. This time he'd much rather have had the lights out. Suddenly fucking became a duty, a tiresome chore, and he had to see it through to prove his manhood, if not-as he strongly suspected-merely to get it over with so he could escape this corrupt hellhole.
A stranger thing happened then. Suddenly overcome by fatigue, guilt, liquor-by the very unnaturalness of the situation-Bob couldn't make himself come a second time. And there were times when he could jack off three times in a row-supreme testament to his eternal horniness.
In the first place, despite Bob's prodigious size, the whore seemed to be sloppy and loose; there were moments when he didn't feel the sides. After his own wife's narrowness (tight because of misuse) it seemed impossible to maintain contact, let alone enhance friction. He pumped vigorously, groaned, and thrashed.
"What the hell?" Mamie grumbled when it had gone limp. "Don't tell me you're fizzling on me. God, you are a plowboy, after all. You should go back home to your sheep. Fuck, will you? Concentrate, you sad-sack excuse for a man!"
The taunts stung terribly. Grabbing Mamie by the buttocks, grinding his chin into her neck, he used her cruelly. He gloried in the slam, in the electric fire of their colliding pelvises. And now-at long last-he came.
Mamie was a pure bitch. Even after humiliating him so grossly, she angled for a tip. "I earned it," she spat loudly. "All that work you put me to. The way you held me. I'll be sore down there for a week."
Bob became equally stubborn and mean. Ten for the fuck. Ten for the blow job. Two for the privilege of skinning off her undies. Twenty-two dollars. Only he didn't have change. And he wouldn't give her the twenty-five until she produced three ones. "Y'r no woman," he cursed her. "Y'r nothing but a rotten, money-hungry machine. I reckon there's more'n a little of lesbian streak in you."
"My, my," she sneered. "So the plowboy's learned himself a new word," She snatched at the money and tore it from his grasp. "I'm paid. Thanks for the tip. Now get the hell outta here before I let out a yell, bring the guys running."
Bob should have known he was licked. But embittered, furious, feeling curiously tainted, he wouldn't let go of it. Now he had Mamie by the hair; his fingers twisted it. "I'll tip you," lie snarled. "Right on y'r dirty, slutty ass. Here's a tip f'r you!" He tugged her hair until her eyes bulged and her mouth gaped open. His limp penis dropped into the yawning orif ice; he jammed his hips at her mouth.
When Mamie broke free momentarily, made that first move to bite him, he slapped her viciously and sent her spinning across the room. She began to scream at the top of her voice. Shortly, Bob heard male voices-the heavy tread of footsteps on the stairs.
Somehow he managed to get his trousers and shirt on before they got to Mamie's door. Stepping into his shoes, he bunched his underwear and jammed it inside his shirt. He held the door as long as he could, almost relishing the thought of the fight. It would clean some of the filth from his soul.
The first man who broke into the room received a staggering blow to the side of his head. He groaned and went down like a bag of stones. Mamie screamed from the corner. The second man was ready and clobbered Bob good. But Bob recovered and buried his fist in the intruder's belly to the wrist. The goon went down in a heap, gasping and hawking. The second man was up by then. Bob carried him, hanging and kicking, all the way down the stairs.
The bartender was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Bob was ready for him also. He reached up, caught the other man's wrists and locked them together. Then, with a contemptuous whirl of his powerful body, he brought his rider around like some sort of a bolo, his feet catching the bartender under the chin. Bob let his human pendulum free then, and he went sailing across the room, crashing into a table and a chair.
Before any of the others in the bar could gather their wits, he was out the door, running across the street to where his car, a 1970 Buick, was parked. A moment later he kicked it to life and tore out of the sleepy village at ninety.
He cursed himself all the way home.
Ardis was waiting for him when he got in. He attempted to sneak past her door, reach the guest bedroom-his "dog house bedroom" but, as she flung her door open and stared hatefully at him, it was obvious she'd been waiting.
"And where, Bob, have you been until this late hour?" There was some of that prissy, infuriating, schoolteacher edge to her tone. "It's after one."
He lied as best as he could. Falling back on his alibi, he told her there'd been some cheating in the game, and a fight had resulted.
Which was exactly what the self-righteous woman wanted to hear; it indicated all her presupposed beliefs about her wayward husband's whereabouts. Bob hadn't been married to the sanctimonious creature for eight years for nothing.
"I told you, Bob," she sighed, "that you'd come to no good, hanging with that gang of outlaws. The Lord has found a way to punish you ... to deliver a warning. Won't you ever learn? His way is the righteous way and..."
But Bob heard no more. He whirled away and headed down the hall. But he didn't reach his own room without first pausing to look in on Marcy and Craig. The cover had fallen off ten-year-old Craig, and he leaned, picked it up, and recovered the boy. He was about to kiss Marcy, but decided against it. He stunk of whiskey and beer. Among other things.
Softly he closed the door and went to his own room.
In the distance he could still hear Ardis muttering to herself. He washed, doctoring his gashed hands as best he could. Finally he fell into bed. Even so, after the wearying events of the day, he couldn't sleep. He stared into the darkness.
"What'n hell's the matter with you?" he groaned aloud, bewilderment clogging his voice. "Why'd you go and do a damned fool thing like that? Why, why? You fool, you miserable fool! Ardis is right. There ain't no hope for you. You got yer filthy brain between y'r legs."