Chapter 6
Peter Trask did everything just as he had been instructed, with one exception. He went to the park an hour early. At nine-thirty he went in the entrance and walked down the path that lead to the lake. He walked right by the bench. There were trees bordering the lake and he sat on the bank beside one. He wore a dark suit and he sat in the shadows. He smoked a cigarette but kept it cupped in his hand so that the glowing tip did not show. There seemed to be no one in the park at this hour. It was too late for casual strolling and too early for the young people who came there to be alone. Actually there was a young couple there but Trask, for all his cautiousness, did not see them. This was not surprising, because they were well hidden. They had noticed Trask walking down the path and had been very quiet until he went past. They saw him sit down on the bank by the water. He wasn't too far away from them. They were in the bushes between Trask and the first bench on the right where he was supposed to pick up the package and they could observe both without moving. At the time, however, they did not know that there would be much to observe. They didn't know that they were going to see some rather unusual things.
The boy's name was John. He was seventeen years old, with dark hair and blue eyes. He was tall and slender and attractive to girls his age.
The girl's name was Anne. She was sixteen years old and had a well developed body for her age. She had short dark hair and nice eyes. And she found John very attractive. She had been dating him for two months and they had been lovers for the last few weeks. He was the first boy with whom she had gone all the way. And she was the first girl that he had ever had except for a girl that he had paid when he was sixteen. They were both very excited about being lovers. They found the idea even more exciting than the thrill. It made them feel grown-up. Someday they planned to go to a hotel and make love in a real bed, and they knew that that would be even better. But for the time being they had to be content with their private little spot in the park.
They had discovered the spot before they made love and they had gone there to neck a few times and one time they had necked a bit too long and had become lovers. But they had no regrets whatsoever.
It was a pretty, intimate, secluded place. It was near the path but quite hidden from view. They had found it by mere chance. It was an area at the base of a pine tree completely surrounded by shrubbery and bushes, but accessible if one knew the way. It was rather like entering a cave. The ground was soft and dry and covered with pine needles. It was invisible from the outside, even in daylight. At night a little light flickered in from the nearest lamp. There were a few lamps in the park because this was not the best part of town by far, and people had been known to be attacked there. There was just enough light to seem romantic.
Anne was sitting against the tree with her legs crossed beneath her. She wore a green sweater and plaid slacks. She had a scarf over her hair. She wore no make-up and she needed none to be pretty. At the moment, however, she was frowning. She was unhappy because the man had just come into the park and was sitting by the water. It seemed to her to be an invasion of their privacy, almost as though a stranger had come into their bedroom. They had just arrived a moment before, happy and laughing and expectant, and now she was disappointed a little. But not too much. The thrill of love was new enough to Anne that few things could truly bother it.
John was looking through the bushes toward the lake. He could see the dark water and the darker tree against it and he thought that he could see the man sitting on the ground but he wasn't sure.
"Is he still there?" Anne whispered.
"I think so."
"I wish he would go away."
"He just lit a cigarette."
"Why does he have to come here? Why should he want to sit in the park now?"
"Well, it is a public park, after all."
"I don't think of it that way." John laughed.
"Shh, he might hear you."
"He can't hear us or see us here, Anne. It doesn't matter if he is there."
"It just doesn't feel the same."
"Do you want to go?"
"Don't be silly," she said. "Of course I don't want to go. I'll forget about that silly man."
"That's my girl."
"Come here," she said. She stopped frowning. She smiled. She held her arms out and John moved silently across the pine needles to her.
"Kiss me," she said.
They kissed.
"Umm," she whispered. "That was nice. I think we are learning to kiss better, don't you?"
"Yes."
"I don't think that people really learn how to kiss each other until after they've made love. I mean, kissing doesn't really mean anything when you know that's as far as you'll go. It's just a childish thing, like playing spin the bottle and post office."
"I didn't know that you had played so many kissing games," he said, trying to sound comical-jealous and actually feeling just a little jealous.
"Silly."
"You never did anything but kiss, did you?"
"No, I told you. But that awful Clyde Williams tried to touch me one time in the movies."
"I'll punch him," John said.
"Are you really jealous?"
"No. You didn't let him?"
She giggled "I didn't really," she said.
"I'm going to punch him anyway."
"Good. Now kiss me again. Kiss me that way with your tongue."
They kissed. Anne put her arms around him and held him close and he let his tongue slide against her lips. After a moment her lips parted. Her tongue touched his. He touched along the roof of her mouth, carefully exploring.
When they parted they were both breathing hard.
"Maybe we ought to go," he said.
"You swine," she said.
Trask looked at his wrist watch. It was nearly ten o'clock. He lighted another cigarette, shielding the flame behind the tree. He waited patiently. He had no idea what he was waiting for. He was waiting to find out. He wanted to see who left the package and he wanted to make sure that Max Arnold was not playing games with him. It was a little uncomfortable sitting there. The ground was damp. Dampness was seeping through his clothing. It was a cheap blue suit; it wrinkled easily and the shoulders were too tight, but Trask did not care much about his clothing and even less about his comfort. He was very nearly impervious to discomfort and pain. He had felt a great deal of both in his life but it wasn't a matter of being familiar with them. They had never bothered him. Being played for a fool did bother him, however, and now he waited on the damp edge of the lake to make sure that he was not.
"Let me take your sweater off," John whispered.
"Just pull it up," Anne said.
He pulled the sweater up. She moved so that she was resting against the tree and let her legs extend before her. He reached behind her and unfastened the brassiere. He was proud that he no longer had to fumble inexpertly with the clasp. He took the brassiere off and placed it beside them on the ground. He looked at her for a while without touching her. She had very nice breasts. They were nicer than the hooker that he had bought, although not as nice as the pictures that he looked at in girlie magazines. They were tapering and pointed at the tips. The nipples were very pink and rather small but they stood out rigidly from the soft mounds.
"I like it when you look at me," she said. He touched her with his hand. "I like that even better," she said. He bent and kissed her nipples. "Oh," she murmured.
He kissed her stomach and then moved up to kiss her breasts again. She ran her fingers down his cheek. He took her nipples and tugged gently at them. He moved back, kneeling, and smiled at her.
"I wouldn't care if that silly man was right here beside us now," she said. "I couldn't stop now."
She was rather proud of being passionate.
She reached down and pulled the zipper at the side of her slacks. He placed his hand on her. She reached over and pulled at his clothes, too.
"Impatient?"
"Very," she admitted.
He undid his belt and tugged his pants to his knees. Then he pulled her pants down, and she raised her hips so that they could slide under her. He pulled them to her ankles and she kicked them off one leg and left them twisted on the other ankle. One knee was slightly raised.
They looked at each other. Her green sweater was pulled to her shoulders and the plaid pants were at her ankle. Her young body was very soft and pink. She wore nylon panties. She was a little ashamed because they were not bikini panties. Her mother bought her underclothes.
John unbuttoned his shirt .but did not take it off. They had never gotten completely naked. It might have been because they were afraid that they might have to dress in a hurry or it might have been a last vestige of self-consciousness.
He sat and took his pants off and left them on one ankle the same as she had. Then he knelt again. She reached out and touched his smooth chest. "Kiss me again," she said.
This time when he kissed her he lay down beside her. She slid away from the tree and stretched out on the ground, and after a moment he moved his body closer. He could feel her breasts flatten under his chest and feel the hard nipples rub over his skin. He could feel her round body moving and her legs shifting. She reached under his shirt and put one arm around his shoulders and she placed the other hand on his buttocks and held him to her. He touched her hips, her legs. It was a long long kiss. He placed one hand at her legs. She trembled. She gasped, a slight little sound right against his lips. She began to move with him and she raised her knees. Oh, it was wonderful to be grownup! It was wonderful to be a woman and to know a man, wanting her, pressing her down to the ground with his weight so that she knew the pine needles would leave little imprints on her back. She moved her hand to guide him. He raised his weight a little to make that easier for her, supporting himself on his knees and his elbows and keeping his lips to hers. And then they heard footsteps.
It chilled them. The urgency moved a bit further away, still as strong, but not quite so desperate to be satisfied. John moved away a little, leaving his hand on her and looking through the bushes.
Another man was moving down the path.
John swore inaudibly.
They couldn't be seen but still they could not seem to do anything when someone was passing within a few yards of them. She frowned and raised her head to look.
Trask heard the footsteps too, but he had seen the man before he heard him. He stubbed his cigarette into the dirt and flattened out and watched the path. The man was walking slowly and looking around him and behind him. He was well dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and hat. He looked very nervous and furtive. When he came to the first bench on the right he paused, looked about again, and sat down. He took a pipe from his pocket and began to fill it. He dropped it. He bent and picked it up and dropped the tobacco. He picked that up, too. He finally got the pipe filled and struck a match. It went out. He tried again and a very thin string of smoke came up from the pipe. It had only been lighted in one corner. But he put the matches away and settled back on the bench as though he were going to relax. He puffed two or three times and kept looking around. And then he took something from his pocket. He pushed his hand behind him, over the back of the bench. He hesitated again, as though he weren't sure if he should do this.
And then he let the package drop into the bushes.
He took two or three more puffs. The badly lighted pipe had gone out and no smoke curled up but the man didn't seem to notice this. He puffed away. He looked carefully around him once again and then he got up. He wiped his pants causually, as though he weren't used to sitting on dirty benches. This was the only casual action that he had made since entering the park. It was the only unconscious act that he had performed.
And then he walked slowly back the way that he had come and disappeared.
Trask scowled. He looked at his watch. It was ten minutes past ten. He stayed where he was, thinking.
"Is he gone?" Anne asked.
John nodded.
"I hate him," she said.
"I think he dropped something behind the bench. It looked like he did it on purpose."
"Who cares?"
"Somebody must."
"Never mind that now," she said. "Come back to me."
He moved to her side. He began to caress her with his hand. She stroked his legs. After a moment he spoke again.
"What do you want to do now?"
"I don't know. Let's experiment."
That excited him as much as her touch. "How shall we do it?" he asked.
She giggled. She was fighting to get her passion back. "Why don't we try the other way?"
John didn't understand.
"How?" he asked. And then he thought that he had sounded too abrupt, and he said, "I'll do it any way that you want me to. "
"From the back?" she suggested.
"All right."
"I'm not sure how. I suppose I have to turn over or something."
"On your knees, I think."
She giggled again, slightly nervous. She got on her knees and placed her hands on the ground in front of her. Her buttocks were very white. John moved behind her.
"I know a girl who says that she knows another way, too," Anne said, getting carried away with her desire to be passionate. "She said that she kisses her boy friend all over."
John blinked. Lust envelope him. "Do you want to?" he asked.
"No. I'd be ashamed, I think. Maybe sometime I will. Maybe when we go to a hotel."
John could wait no longer. He moved against her. Her buttocks pressed against his body. He reached and squeezed her breast, then moved his hand. She was kneeling and her legs were set. She lowered her head and rested it on the ground. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing very heavily. Her body was burning. She raised a little higher. John pushed. "Oh," she said.
His head was thrown back and sweat glistened on him.
Anne moaned again. They began to work, moving and working together.
They were both too ready for that to last.
They built to the heights, and stayed there for a long long moment, and then melted in the electric tremors that brought them back from the peak.
Anne's knees would no longer support her. She dropped to the ground and John followed, stretched out beside her. He kissed her neck. They were panting silently, their sides heaving. Their senses were dulled, unfeeling. They felt only the satisfaction.
They didn't even hear Pete Trask as he passed by and stopped at the bench.
He sat down and had a cigarette, as Arnold had told him. But it was only twenty past ten. After a moment he reached in the bushes behind him and took the package. It was flat and quite light. He put it in his pocket. He didn't get up right away, but sat thinking.
Trask didn't know what was in the package, but he had been surprised at the man who delivered it. He had been expecting a hood who would leave, perhaps, narcotics. It would have been an unnecessarily complicated way to make an exchange, but Trask had supposed that Arnold had reasons for that. Or, if not that, he had expected one of Arnold's own men to come and leave something as a means of testing him, to see if he followed instructions and brought the package back unopened. It would have been arranged in some way so that Arnold would know if it had been tampered with. But the man who had left the package had been no hood, that was obvious.
And he had been nervous or scared.
After a while Trask thought that perhaps he knew. He wasn't sure but he was pretty sure. He got up and walked slowly out of the park, still smoking. It was ten-thirty when he left by the entrance at which he had entered. There was no one on the street and no parked cars.
Trask didn't head directly for The Golden Parrot.
"Oh, that was wonderful," Anne said.
She was pulling her panties up. John was already dressed but she had wanted to stay naked, to retain every last thrill of having been loved.
They had not been aware of Trask at all.
She pulled her pants up and fastened them and then put her brassiere on, facing John so that he could see her nakedness until the last possible moment.
But John was wondering what the man had dropped into the bushes. He waited impatiently.
"I'd better get home now," Anne said, when she was dressed. "It's getting late."
They bent over and went out through the opening between the tree and the bushes. She went first and John looked at her buttocks as she bent and thought that it had been a very nice idea to try a new position. They walked down the path holding hands and at the bench he stopped and looked in the bushes. He bent over and searched while Anne held his hand and pressed it gently to her.
Trask stopped at the nearest bar.
He ordered a beer and took two sips. Then he went into the men's room, locking the door behind him.
He carefully opened the package.
When he saw what was in the package he blinked. He rubbed his long jaw and after a moment he grinned. He threw the wrapping paper in the toilet and flushed it down. He put the contents in his pocket after he had inspected it. Then he went back to the bar, finished his beer, and ordered another. He drank slowly. He was timing it so that he would get back to The Golden Parrot at ten minutes after eleven. He wanted to be ten minutes late. That was important. But he also wanted to make a stop along the way.
He left the bar and walked to the diner. Jeff Block was glad to see him. Jeff had been worried when Trask had left with Moose and Irving.
"Got a box?" Pete asked.
"Sure."
Jeff gave him one of the white boxes in which he packed hamburgers and coffee to take out. Trask put the contents of the package in the box and closed it. He gave it to Block.
"Keep this for me," he said "Important?"
"Yeah. But don't open it."
"All right, Pete." Trask trusted Jeff Block. He trusted him a great deal. The package that he had picked up in the park had contained ten thousand dollars in old bills.
"I guess he didn't drop anything after all," John said, as they left the park. "I could have sworn that he did. It must have been my mistake."
"You were pretty busy at the time," Anne said. She smiled in what was a rather wicked way for such a young girl from such a good home.
"Shall we go again tomorrow?"
"To the park? Sure," he said.
"It was nice tonight."
"Yeah. Very nice."
"It's a nice idea to try different ways."
He nodded.
"I wonder why I thought that guy dropped something though," he said. It worried him.
"Who cares about that?" Anne snapped. She frowned angrily at John. "The only thing that I want dropped in the park is our clothes," she said.
He squeezed her hand.
Trask was leaving the diner just as Sarah came in. She smiled at him. Block had put the package under the counter. He wondered what it was, and he wondered what Max Arnold had wanted with Trask, but he was a man who didn't let curiosity bother him. Sarah was looking attractive in a dress that was cut even lower than the one she had worn the night before. She was feeling good. Belle had just left her place. They had stayed there together all day, and a little variety was something that Sarah liked very much.
"Going to be around tonight?" she asked.
"Maybe," Trask said. He went on out. Sarah looked after him. He sure was a mean fellow, she thought. But he had given her ten dollars.
"What do you know about that guy?" she asked Block.
"Nothing," he said.
Just as Trask went into The Golden Parrot and walked through to Arnold's office, John and Anne arrived at her house. The both lived on the same street, on the other side of the park from the bad part of town. The two areas shared the park. That was why it was lighted.
They stopped on the front porch, by the door. The lights were on inside and they could faintly hear the television.
"Late?" he asked.
"Not very. Mother doesn't mind much when I tell her I've been with you. She thinks that you are a nice boy."
She giggled.
"I am," he said.
"Um, I know."
They kissed good night. They kissed without passion, as they always did when they were not in the park.
"Tomorrow," she whispered. He nodded.
She opened the door and then she paused. She looked at him and raised her eyebrows. The entrance to the house was dark behind her. She spoke softly.
"Remember what I told you about that girl who makes love to her boy friend?" she asked.
"Yes."
"I don't think that I'd really be ashamed to try that ... "
John gulped.
"Tomorrow," Anne whispered. And she went in.
John didn't remember the package again that night; he had other things to think about.