Chapter 7
At the end of two months on the job Jim Benton went in to see his boss. Harry Conklin was slumped in the swivel chair behind his desk, his nose buried in a copy of one of the competition papers. Conklin grunted when he saw who his visitor was.
"Yeah, whadda ya want?"
"I've been here two months now, Mr. Conklin," Jim said.
"Hooray! We'll have an anniversary party at the Waldorf. You think it's time to get a gold watch and retire?"
"No. Not that. But I do think it's time I did something else besides sweep floors and run errands."
"You think!" Conklin howled, straightening in his chair and putting the newspaper aside. "When you're the boss around here you'll do the thinking. Until then I'll do the thinking and if you don't like it I don't see any chains holding you down. You know where the door is."
Jim refused to be cowed by the older man's bluster. "I didn't take this job to be an office boy for the rest of my life. I could be a good reporter if somebody gave me the chance."
"Reporter! We have no reporters here. You want to be a reporter you go to work for the New York Times. Around here we got only hacks. And most of them are broken-down hacks, at that. You got a job pays sixty-five a week. You don't like that, go find yourself another one. See if you can get more money for less work anywhere else."
"I'm not afraid to work, Mr. Conklin. And it's not just the money. You're not giving me a chance to move ahead, to get anywhere."
"Maybe you want I should fire one of the other men and give you his job?"
"I don't say that. All I want is a chance to show you what I can do."
"You don't know anything about the way things are done around here."
"That's part of what I mean. Show me! Teach me! I learn real quick. You could let one of the others take some of the load off vonr shoulders and move me up a little."
Conklin was silent for a long moment. "All right, Benton. Let me think about it for a while. I'll let you know."
When Jim came out of the office Doreen waved him over to the switchboard. The relationship between the two of them had cooled somewhat as time passed. Their dates were fewer and they'd become slightly bored with one another. Through silent, buf mutual agreement, they were drifting apart. Their liaison had never been intended to have anything remotely resembling permanence. Things have been good, very good, between them; and now it was time for that to be over.
"What was going on in there?" Doreen asked when Jim came over.
"You heard?"
"I couldn't hear what he said, but the whole office could hear him yelling."
"I told him I was tired of being an office boy."
"Where're you going to look for a job now?" Jim smiled. "I wasn't fired."
"What!"
"He said he was going to think about it."
"Boy, that's the first time that ever happened around here. The last guy we had who had your job, he only asked for a small raise and he was fired on the spot."
"Well, if Conklin decides not to do anything for me I'm going to quit. Ht can take his office-boy job and sniff it up his nose. This is a job for some sixteen-year-old high school dropout."
Doreen grinned. "If I were you I'd start looking for another job right away."
"Ah, we'll see," Jim said, walking away.
He was quite confident. There was nothing tying him to this job. He baa no wife or children to worry about. Even if he got fired there would always be some kind of work to pay him enough to keep from starving. And, if worst came to worst, he could always throw in with Tommy Guising. That was a standing offer, good any time, and irrevocable.
The thought of that kind of business had become less and less reprehensible in the last few weeks. Jim had accepted Guising's reasoning that there was nothing inherently wrong with pictures of people engaged in the various acts of love. Oh, it might be bad if young kids were fed a steady diet of that material. But if you were in the wholesale end of the thing you had nothing to do with the final recipient. And the way Guising worked, only carefully screened adults could make purchases.
Jim knew there were some operators who sent their stuff through the mails, hoping it would fall into the hands of kids. A fourteen-year-old boy would spend his last nickel or steal to buy all the stuff he could get. But even there, who was really wrong: the man who supplied the need, or the society which fostered the need in the first place?
Three days later Jim got his first break. That morning Foster called in sick. When Jim brought in the first batch of mail from the post office Conklin told him to remain in the office.
"I'm going to teach you a little about the business, kid," Conklin said. "But don't let me catch you with sticky fingers. Inside all these envelopes there's money and more envelopes. The money goes into one pile at the end of the table and the envelopes go into other piles according to the numbers."
Jim emptied the mail bag and the two men set to work. The procedure was pretty much as Jim had thought; extract the money, stack the numbered envelopes, erase the numbers, and fill in addresses.
Conklin had the thing down to a science. The addresses were filed in sequence according to the box numbers. Once the letters were arranged Conklin stood at the file and Jim sat at the table. He could pick up an envelope, read off the number, and wait for Conklin to find the address. Then Jim would erase the number and fill in the address as Conklin read it to him.
It was dull, routine work, slow, boring, time-consuming. Some of the box numbers had drawn as many as a dozen replies. Many of the envelopes contained only a single sheet of paper. Others were thick and heavy. Some had instructions to the Post Office Department not to bend or fold the envelopes as they contained photographs.
The first time Jim ran across one containing photographs he was puzzled. Then he remembered that many of the ads, especially the ones in which couples sought other couples, requested that all repliers enclose photos and phone numbers. It made sense. Someone could describe himself as handsome and attractive in a letter, but if you sent along a picture you couldn't lie.
Every once in a while Jim would call out a box number and Conklin would tell him to put that letter aside. Jim was puzzled, but he did as he was told. When the last letter was properly addressed Jim sighed and lit a cigarette. Conklin closed and locked the file and sat down behind his desk He took out a fresh cigar, bit off the end, spat, and struck a light.
"Well," Conklin said, "you learn anything?"
Jim smiled at him "Not much. I had this part of the operation pretty well figured out just from reading an issue of the paper. The one thing that bothers me is this batch here on the side. What do we do with them?"
"Those I open, make a list of the return addresses, and sell to people who buy lists of names. The letters themselves get thrown out."
"But why don't you send them on to the advertisers?"
"Those are dead box numbers. Whenever we've got a short column I throw in some phony ads. There's no point in letting the space go to waste. It still costs us the same to print the paper. Any response we get for the phony ads is pure gravy."
"Don't these people get wise when nobody answers their letters?"
"We don't guarantee that advertisers will answer all letter?. How's anybody gonna find out? The files are confidential. Nobody can look in there and see which are the phony ads."
"How many dead ads do you run?"
"Not many, but there's at least one in every issue. In the last twenty issues I've probably run forty-five dead ads. And I've never had one that didn't bring in at least four responses. It's the ads that keep this paper going. Most people aren't really interested in the tripe we print. They want to know where to buy girlie pictures, or stag movies, or they're interested in the personals."
"What about the ether ads?" Jim asked. "Do they really sell illicit material?"
"Not straight off they don't. A lot of those are phonies, too. They don't have any real good stuff. The live ads are the ones from foreign countries. And even they're careful. A customer makes a first buy and he gets pretty tame stuff. But once they've got his name they send him a sample of the real merchandise from a different address. That way the postal inspectors don't get wise."
"But what's to prevent a postal inspector from answering an ad and then cracking down when he gets the second letter?"
Conklin laughed. "It's against the law to do anything that way. In order to get any real good stuff you've got to write them a letter stating exactly what you want. No punches pulled and you use the four-letter words. Now, a federal man can't do that and then arrest you for selling him what he asked for. That's called 'entrapment' and it's illegal. It's inadmissable evidence. And it works the same way with the wife-swappers. No entrapment. That's how we get to run ads like these in broad daylight The only way it can blow up is if one of the parties actually involved makes a complaint to the authorities. And the people are pretty careful about who they mess around with."
Jim laughed. "Now I'm learning something."
Conklin had been enjoying the discussion. Now the tone of his voice and his manner changed. "Yeah? Well, school's out for today. Get back to work. Run this batch of stuff down to the post office and bring back what-ever's come in."
Jim spent the entire day working on the mailing routine. And before quitting time that night Conklin told him he could expect five dollars a week more in his pay envelope from then on.
Foster was out of the office for more than a week with a very bad cold. By the time he came back to work Jim was firmly entrenched in the mailing job. And Foster didn't seem to mind. He'd always resented the drudgery of that part of his work.
Another month passed and Jim was working much more closely with Harry Conklin. The nature of the job had changed slowly and subtly. He was no longer merely an office boy. Every day he looked more and more like Conklin's assistant. There were some mumblings of resentment from the other men in the office but Jim ignored them and the men didn't have the courage to complain to Conklin.
After the box numbers Conklin introduced Jim to the procedures for handling the commercial ads. When a company contacted them about placing an ad they were referred to Jim. He was given a desk in the outer office and his own typewriter. Conklin raised him to ninety dollars a week, then. But Jim knew he'd really made the leap when Conklin hired a kid to fill the office boy slot. A few small suggestions on how to streamline and speed up the handling of the remailing without jeopardizing the security brought Jim a ten dollar raise and he was now earning a hundred a week.
Now, a hundred dollars a week is not a lot of money for the average white-collar worker. But when you are single, and when you were earning only sixty-five a week a few months before, a hundred a week is like all the riches of the Orient. And despite the additional money, Jim had managed to keep his expenses at their original level. Now he was banking at least thirty dollars a week and it gave him a good feeling to see the balance in the book increasing at such a steady rate.
Life was wonderful except for one thing. The affair with Doreen had come to an end completely and Jim had not yet found someone to take her place. He found it extremely difficult to meet people in this city. It wasn't just a matter of going out at night and picking up a broad in a bar somewhere. He wanted to have friends and acquaintances.
He was lonely.
It wasn't a new feeling. Jim had been lonely many times before in his life Way back in high school he'd been lonely; especially after the shame of overhearing Kris's betraying confession. He hadn't dated much in high school and he'd made no lasting friends. When he started college, of course, there'd been no time for social relationships.
Only in the Army had he escaped loneliness. And now his Army career was ended. But he did have one real friend in the city-Tommy Guising. And he realized that he hadn't seen Tommy in quite a while.
One evening he called Tommy at home.
"Jim!" Tommy exclaimed. "How the hell are you? I haven't heard from you in months."
"I've been busy working like a fiend."
"What's up? Anything I can do for you?"
"Nothing special. I've got a free evening and I wondered if we could get together."
"Sure. Why not? I'm not busy tonight. Why don't you hustle on over here and we'll see what we can scare up in the way of a little fun. Tell me, you still working for that newspaper for sixty-five a week?"
"Not any more. I'm still working there but I got a promotion. I'm the unofficial advertising manager at a hundred a week now. I'm getting up in the world."
"That's still peanuts," Guising said. "If you went to work for me you could be making a hundred a day. And it would be tax free!"
"Look, this is going to be a social evening," Jim said. "I don't want any more of that propaganda. I appreciate the offers but the answer's still no. And it will always be no."
"All right. All right. I'm sorry I mentioned it. Come on over. I'll expect you in about twenty minutes."
Jim showered, shaved, and dressed in a new suit, new shoes, and new overcoat. His old wardrobe had consisted of one cheap suit, a couple of pairs of beat-up shoes and one threadbare overcoat. It behooved a man earning a hundred dollars a week to dress a little more stylishly. The week before Jim had gone out and spent three hundred dollars on a new wardrobe.
But he took the subway uptown, rather than a cab. Taxis were not quite within his reach as yet. It took him forty minutes instead of twenty to reach Tommy Guising's plush pad.
The two friends shook hands warmly at the door and Guising ushered him inside.
"You look pretty good for a hundred a week," Guising said.
"Aw, come on now," Jim said. "I thought we agreed there'd be none of that."
"Just joking, pal," Guising said, slapping him on the back as he handed him a drink. "Take it easy. Relax."
Jim took a sip of the drink and sank into a chair.
"You had dinner yet?" Tommy asked.
"No."
"Good. I made a phone call. My chick is bringing a friend along for you. We'll grab a bite at one of the fancy restaurants, hit a couple of the clubs, then come back here for some fun and games. Okay?"
"Sounds swell," Jim said.
"I figured we'd eat at The Forum, then over to the Copa to catch the show there, and finish up at the Roundtable with a little of the dancing."
"Hold on," Jim said "It sounds a little rich for my blood."
"What're you worried about? The party's on me. If you won't let me give you a job the least you can do is let me treat vow to a night on the town."
Jim shrugged. "Go ahead. Throw your money away. See if I care."
Tommy laughed. "Money! What good is it if you can't spend it for a good time? I've been working my rear off for the last couple of weeks. I need a little relaxation. This broad I called, she's a show girl. Just finished fifteen weeks in the line at the Sahara in Vegas. A real knockout. And she knows the score. We ought to have a ball."
"I hope her friend turns out all right," Jim said. "I haven't been on a blind date like this in years."
"I guarantee it," Tommy told him. "One thing though."
"What's that?"
"Don't pull a bluenose on me. This is a wild chick. And I'm going to give her all the encouragement she'll take. I'm trying to talk her into coming to work for me."
"What do you need with a show girl?"
"Show giri, slimo siir! I need a beautiful body and this kid's got one of the best. I'm branching out now and I need a couple of models."
"Oh, you mean for your merchandise."
"Yeah."
"Does she know what it's all about?"
"She knows! She knows! She just can't make up her mind. Working for me she can make in one night what she makes now in a week. She says she doesn't mind the action, she just doesn't like the idea of an audience. We'll see what happens tonight. Maybe I can prove to her that an audience makes for bigger kicks."
"You don't have to worry about me," Jim said, gulping the remainder of his drink. He could feel a light tingling of anticipation beginning in the pit of his stomach. Tommy was planning on a four-way orgy, and that might be just what Jim needed to dispel his loneliness.
"What time do we pick them up?"
Guising grinned. "They ought to be here any minute now. This is not high school. Nobody picks up their dates any more. Either you meet them somewhere or they come to your place for a drink before you go out. Sometimes things get started so earlv you never go out at all."
Just then the phone gave a short buzz and Guising picked up the receiver. "Yeah," he said. He listened for a minute.
"Tell them to come on up," he said, then he hung up. Then, to Jim, "That was the doorman. The girls are here."
Jim waited in the living room while Tommy went to the door to admit the girls. He rose to his feet when they entered the room and was rocked back on his heels by their beauty.
Johanna Launay, Tommy's girl, was a redhead. But a redhead like Jim had never seen before. She was tall, probably around five feet ten inches. Her hair was like frozen fire. But she didn't have the fair complexion of most redheads. Her skin was almost olive colored, smooth and blemish free. She wore a white, sequined dress which fit tightly around her hips and upper legs and ended just at her knees. The bodice of the dress was held up by two thin silver straps which went over her shoulders. The material seemed to be gathered just beneath her breasts, pushing them up and out. The cloth swept around the sides to rise to the straps. In front her bosom was almost completely exposed There was a small panel of sheer material set into the bottom of the neckline which served to barely cover her nipples. It was quite evident that she was wearing no bra, and it was just as evident that she was wearing nothing else beneath the dress.
The other girl, the one for Jim, was named Rita Dennis. She was as tall as her friend, and as well built. Rita was wearing a black silk dress cut a little more demurely. There was plenty of cleavage showing, but there was plenty left covered. Where Johanna was a redhead, Rita was a brunette. And that seemed to be the only difference between them. Rita had the same slender figure with the out-thrust buttocks and the high, eager breasts.
Tommy made the introductions and mixed a round of drinks and Jim could see his friend was just as interested in the new girl as he was in Johanna. Jim didn't mind if Tommy wanted to play switch. With these two girls there was no good and bad. They were both perfection. A guy couldn't lose.
They finished their drinks and hopped a taxi to the restaurant. The girls wete suitably impressed by what was purported to be the most expensive restaurant in the world. It lived up to its reputation, too. Jim had a quick glance at the check when they were finished and the dinner for four, with wine and drinks of course, was one hundred and ten dollars. But, Tommy was paying and he didn't seem to mind.
Sammy Davis Jr. was appearing at the Copacabana. When Tommy and Jim and the girls got to the club the line was more than a block long, and the next show was due to start in ten minutes.
The girls were disappointed. With a crowd that big the President of the United States couldn't have gotten a table.
"No sweat," Tommy said, leading them right into the club.
The maitre d' approached them at the door. "Yes sir," he said smoothly, affecting a phony accent.
"Table for four, please," Tommy said.
"I'm afraid we have nothing right now," the man said. "You'll have to wait in line with the others."
"But we have a reservation," Tommy said, showing the man the corner of a fifty dollar bill.
"I'm sorry. Any other time your reservation ticket there would get you the best seat in the house. Tonight we're absolutely jammed. I couldn't give my mother a table tonight. Right now we're already two hundred over the fire department maximum."
The man started to turn away. Tommy caught his arm and leaned over to whisper something in his ear.
The change was remarkable. "Oh, yes sir," the man said. "Why didn't you say that right away? Of course I have a table for you and your party."
He snapped his fingers and two waiters hurried over. He whispered to them, they nodded and hurried off. A moment later Jim could see the two waiters carrying a table from a room in the back. They held it over their heads until they got right up to the edge of the low stage, then set the table directly on the stage while they moved the other tables around. They jammed and crowded the people who were already there until there was room for the small table and four chairs.
"Thank you very much," Tommy said to the maitre d', handing him the fifty dollar bill.
"No trouble at all," the man said. "Now, if you'll follow me please."
He led them to the table and Jim felt the stares and heard the whispers of the people all around them. Nobody knew who Tommy was, but they did know he had to be a big shot to get a table like this one when everything was so crowded.
Once they were seated and the waiter had taken their orders for drinks, Jim leaned over and asked, "What did you say to him to make him change his mind?"
Guising smiled. "I just mentioned a name. My business associates are very large behind the scenes in the entertainment business. Their organization owns a large piece of this club. It always pays to have friends in high places."
"I know one time your friends didn't do you any good."
Tommy laughed. 'Oh, I didn't know these people then. These are all new friends."
The drinks came but the girls were too excited to drink. They stared around them and whispered to each other as they spotted one after another of the top show business personalities. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were there with a small party. Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin were there with a very large party.
Jim was impressed by the celebrities, but he was more interested in the gowns on the women. It was as though each woman was trying to show more than the one before. The dresses, some of them, were cut so low there was practically no top at all. It was like a feast of bosoms. And there was one woman there, Jim didn't know who she was, who'd reversed the normal emphasis. Her dress was cut high in front, but in back it dipped all the way down. He could actually see the upper surfaces of the curves of her double-humped rear.
The lights dimmed and the hubbub died down. The band struck up a tune and the show began. For more than an hour the star danced and sang and cavorted about the stage, and it was a marvelous show. He quipped back and forth with friends in the audience, told jokes, played musical instruments. The man had more talent in his body than all the rest of the people in the room combined.
But when the act came to its normal end the audience wouldn't let the star leave. They whistled and cheered and yelled for one encore after another. The star was working and loving every minute of it. He took off his jacket, opened his tie, rolled back his sleeves, and performed some more.
Finally, when the show had run an hour overtime, he begged off with the excuse that there were a lot of fine people waiting outside to see him, too. He left the stage, the band stopped playing, and the lights came up. The waiters scurried around with orders for drinks and with checks and with money.
Jim and Tommy and the girls had had five drinks apiece in the two hours of the show. Tommy paid the check and the four of them joined the outward bound throng. They got their coats from the check room and joined the line waiting for cabs.