Chapter 10
SHE was seated at a ringside table in the club on the Sunset Strip which the tour visits to close out each evening.
It's an in place, meaning that all the trend-setters go there. Most any night you can spot at least one nationally-known movie or TV personality in the crowd; some nights they bloom there like daisies on a hill. And Suzie Bradford was among them. Dreamy-eyed Suzie Bradford. Blonde, lush-bodied Suzie Bradford. Thieving Suzie Bradford.
That last was all I could think about when I saw her. She'd taken me down the line for three thousand bucks, and now she was enjoying herself as if I'd never existed, while I was in trouble up to my eyeballs.
It wasn't Suzie's fault that I was in trouble, of course, except perhaps in a very remote and roundabout way. If Suzie hadn't beat me out of my loot, then I might not have picked up on the deal with Diana. But, on the other hand, maybe I would have done it, anyway. Then, too, it wasn't the fact that I'd made a deal with Diana that had gotten me in hot water. It had been my desire to cut corners-to try to get something for nothing. Specifically, I'd let Zimmer pay us more money than a simple one-third partnership was worth.
So it really was myself that I hated right then, I guess, and I was projecting that hate to Suzie.
All I know is that my temperature gauge shot up to the danger mark and I had to do something about it. The something I determined to do was to get back at Suzie.
She was not alone at the night club. She was with an older man-graying hair, thin mustache, most distinguished looking. I wondered who the luckless fish was and how much she had succeeded, or hoped to succeed, in extracting from him.
I stood at the side of the intimate smartly-appointed room, ostensibly watching over my tour-charges but actually staring daggers at Suzie's beautiful bare back and wondering how I could get her out of there and some place with me alone.
The first thing to do was to make arrangements with Ted Price, I decided. He would have parked our bus around the corner and would most likely be in a coffee joint down the street, slopping up Brazilian brew and ogling some waitress' boobs. Ted, as driver, wasn't permitted to drink intoxicants while on the tour, of course.
I headed out of the club and looked up and down the street. Half-a-block away was a glorified sandwich stand that looked like the sort of place Ted would have picked to while away an idle hour. I walked to it.
Sure enough, Ted was inside at the counter. And sure enough, again, he was looking right down the valley between a pair of hanging breasts as the overdeveloped waitress who owned them leaned on her elbows in front of him. Ted did all right with the broads. He had that way about him.
I walked in and settled on the stool next to his. Ted didn't glance at me, since his attention was still occupied in probing the softly shadowed cleft between the counter girl's knockers. But when she straightened up and turned my way, it caused Ted's head to turn.
"Jack!" he said. "What the hell are you doing here? Did you decide to give up booze for coffee all of a sudden?"
I grinned. "Nothing so drastic as that. But I met somebody in the club. Do you suppose you could shepherd the clients back home?"
A wise look came over his face. "Somebody, huh? Lovely and available, no doubt. Man, I don't know how you do it."
"I hear you do pretty well yourself," I told him. "How about that, for example?" I nodded in the direction of the buxom waitress who had moved a little way down the counter as soon as she'd discovered I hadn't wanted to order.
"I ain't got to that one yet, daddy, but I'm sure tryin'," Ted replied with a leer.
"So, how about it? Will you call in the club as soon as the show's over and herd the yokels out? Then I'll see you tomorrow."
"Sure thing, Jack."
"Thanks." I gave him a friendly slap on the arm and stood up.
As I headed out, Ted called after me, "Have fun!"
Fun! I thought. I was going to have fun, all right, but it was going to be a far cry from the kind of fun Ted had in mind ... or, at least, so I thought at the time.
When I reentered the night club, the main act was on. It was a well-known singing trio-a girl and two guys-and they were shaking the walls with a full-throated rendition of Funny Valentine.
I grabbed the arm of a passing waitress and she stopped. "See that blonde girl at ringside?" I asked, pointing.
The waitress nodded.
I handed her a bill. "Tell her there's somebody who wants to see her for three thousand reasons. Got that? I'll be waiting in back."
She shrugged and proceeded on the errand as I moved toward the back of the club. I could still see Suzie from there, so if she tried to run out I could follow her. I doubted if she would do that, however. She was too smooth to resort to running.
In less than a minute, Suzie was coming toward me. And-would you believe it?-she was smiling. That chick had all the self-confidence in the world. She was evidently figuring that she could get away with conning me all over again.
It was understandable that she should feel that way, I guess. After all, I was a man and Suzie possessed some of the best man-bait in the world. In fact, I had never seen better.
I studied her as she approached. She was wearing a captivating black dress that fit snugly above the waist, cut low on her bubbling bosom. The dress was held up by spaghetti straps. From the waist down, it flared, its wide hem hitting right at her knees. She had her blonde hair piled up on her head and a thin black ribbon around it which was ded in a small bow at the front. A gleaming choker of pearls encircled her throat.
She was gorgeous. I could appreciate that fact and still hate her.
I moved back a ways, so that we would be out of sight from the table Suzie had just left.
She threaded between a couple of chair-backs and moved up to me, a black clutch bag gripped tightly in a gloved hand. "Jackie," she purred. "How nice to see you."
"I'll bet," I told her dryly, and then I asked, "How's Pete Randle?"
(Randall, you'll recall, was the character to whom Suzie had steered me and who had relieved me of my three grand in a crap game as crooked as a Pike's Peak path.)
"Now, Jack...." She touched my arm.
Something happened at the contact, even though her glove and my jacket and shirt were between our flesh. I really felt it for this girl. I still felt it for her, in spite of everything.
That made me all the angrier.
"We're getting out of here," I said.
"But I can't," she protested, her blue eyes imploring. "I'm with a man."
"I saw him. How much do you figure on snaking him down for?"
"Jack, you don't understand me at all. It wasn't my fault you lost your money in Pete's game."
"Wasn't it!" I said. "Then how come you didn't sdok around to show me a little sympathy, huh? How come you disappeared just when the money did?"
"My mother got sick, darling. She was up in Seattle. I had to rush to her. Then, later-after Mama died...." She blinked rapidly a couple of times, as if holding back tears. " ... you just were nowhere to be found when I got back in town and started looking for you. I missed you a lot, Jackie."
"You did, huh? Well, goody! Then you should want to ditch that creep you're with and spend some time with me ... so that we can get reacquainted."
"I'd love to, Jack. You know that. But this man
-I can't just walk out on him."
"You'd better, honey," I told her. "Unless you want me to walk over to his table and tell him all about you."
She stared at me.
"I'll do it, cutes. So help me, I'll fix your wagon with him so that he'll never want to see you again!"
"I think you would," she said flatly, having dropped the pose she'd been trying to carry off.
"Now you're getting smart. Go back to him. Tell him something's come up and you have to rush off. Make up any story you want to-you're good at that
-but get back here in two minutes flat."
"Then what, Jack?"
"Then, my little pet, we're going up to your apart merit and discuss old times."
She gave me a calculating look. "What is it you have in mind?"
"I'm not going to kill you, if that's what you think. Losing three thousand bucks isn't worth a murder rap. Let's just say I'm going to teach you a lesson you won't soon forget."
She watched me a bit longer, then her eyes began to sparkle. "You still like me, don't you, Jackie? I mean ... way down deep. Maybe you won't admit it to yourself but you got antsie-pantsy again when you saw me just now."
She was right. I couldn't keep from admitting it to myself because that's the way I am. I'm basically an honest guy. But my desire for her wasn't going to stand in the way of my taking some sweet revenge.
"Just go talk to your friend," I said. "I'll be waiting. And if you try to cross me, maybe I will kill you. Who knows?"
Smiling now, she turned and headed back to her table.
I knew what she was thinking. She was telling herself that a quick roll in the hay would soothe my wounded ego. All she'd have to do, she thought, would be to let me ball her and that would get her off the hook.
You see, I never had slept with Suzie. I'd been hot on her trail-and I mean hot-when she'd ditched me those several months ago. Now she was probably prepared to deliver in order to keep me from hurting over the loss of the three grand.
Well, she had a surprise corning, I told myself as I smoked a cigarette and waited for her to return.
She returned ... and within the two minutes, just as I had instructed.
"Come on," she said, grasping my arm. "Let's get out of here before he sees you."
"Suits me," I replied.
We grabbed a taxi in front of the club and in ten minutes we were in Suzie's modern and expensive little apartment on a street called Cresthill Road, which overlooked the bright lights of The Strip.
She took off her gloves and dropped her bag on a muted green chair. The place was lighted indirectly, in a soft suggestive way, and the white carpet on the floor was thick and shaggy. A cute little love nest, I thought. I wondered how many suckers she'd brought up there ... and haw much she'd taken them for.
"Scotch, Jackie?" she asked. "It was Scotch, wasn't it?"
"Was and is," I told her.
She crossed to the small bar and began to pour it. She poured one for herself, as well.
I was seated on a small sofa when she brought the drinks, and she sat down beside me.
A hot blonde in a cool apartment at two o'clock in the morning-it was a setup. And yet there was something I wanted that wasn't part of the usual bill of fare at such a time. I wanted not just a measure of compensation for what Suzie had done to me-compensation in the form of Suzie's perfumed flesh. I wanted revenge.
We sipped our Scotch and I forced myself to chat with her like a couple of old friends. Then we had refills. This time I was the one to make them and I poured doubles.
We sipped those, also.
Finally I said to myself, Old buddy, the time has come!
Little Suzie was one surprised girl when I took the glass out of her hands and set it on a low table, then took a firm grip around the upper half of her nubile body and threw her face-downward across my lap.
"Jack!" she cried out.
"You'd better remember the neighbors, sweetie," I said as I began hauling up her wide skirt and the flouncy black petticoat beneath it. "They're yours not mine."
"Jack!"
The display now spread before me was one for connoisseurs, let me tell you.
I go slightly ape at the sight of a well-curved and lightly-clad fanny.
Suzie's bottom was the best I'd ever seen in my fife. And lightly clad? There just couldn't have been a pair of panties any thinner or more transparent than the ones she was wearing. And they were black sheer exciting black, through which the pinky whiteness of her rounded buttocks gleamed.
Below the panties, the bareness of her full thighs almost blinded me above the point where they were encircled by the taut black tops of her stockings. Said black tops were tugged tightly by blacker garters which traveled upward beneath her pants and fastened to a thin belt around her waist.
Indeed, it was a sight!
If I hadn't been intent upon revenge, I would have kissed it.
I would have started on her thighs, just above her stockings, and I would have covered every curved inch of them with my lips. Then I would probably have slipped down her panties and kissed the lovely buttocks that they contained. Yes, they were kissable buttocks, friend-and I guess I don't have to tell you that you don't see too many of that kind.
I didn't kiss them, however.
What I did was spank them.
With the first crack of my hand against their shimmering softness, Suzie squealed.
With the second spank, winch made them shake like exquisite molds of jelly, Suzie moaned.
With the third spank, which began to pink them beneath the black nylon, she shrieked.
Strangely, however, she didn't fight me very hard. If she had really fought, I might have had a rough time of it, because she was a healthy energetic girl. But she just lay there and hollered and dug her fingers into my legs.
I continued to spank her.
I'm no sadist-at least, not to an abnormal degree-but I have to admit that I got a hell of a charge out of the feel of that lush bottom as it bounced and shook and quivered beneath my open palm. It was really reddening now. I was paying Suzie back, but good! Revenge had never, never been so sweet!
Suddenly I knew that, in order to climax the punishment, I would have to take her panties off. A spanking, after all, is not much of a spanking unless it is delivered against a backside that is totally nude.
So I stopped swatting her for a moment and dug up beneath the rumpled folds of her slip and dress.
"Wh-what are you doing?" Suzie demanded in a tear-choked-or was it a passion-choked-voice.
"I should think it would be obvious," I told her. "I'm taking off your pants."
"No!" she cried. "You have no right."
"I have all the right in the world, baby," I said.
And take off her pants is exactly what I did.
I slipped the elastic down across the sweet smooth hemispheres of her behind-now quite pink from the spanking I'd been giving them. At that point, the diaphanous black nylon pulled inside out. I stripped the panties down her thighs, past her knees, and all the way to her ankles. I lifted the leg elastics over her high-heeled pumps and tossed the small garment across the room.
Then I got down to work with a vengeance.
Suzie cried out all the stronger, imploring me to stop and then cursing me for not doing so. But still she didn't fight very much. Her fingernails bit into my calves as she clutched them for dear life.
I pounded her bare buttocks. It was spank, spank, spank-again and again. They turned from pink to rosy red. They shook, yielding deliciously to the stinging force of my hand.
She shrieked, "Oh! Oh! Oh!"
I could only conclude from the way she was hollering, coupled with the fact that no one had come pounding on our door, that the apartment must have been sound-proofed. But that was her worry, not mine.
Finally, as I continued to pound her fanny, and as her cries changed from loud exclamations to sobbing moans, she did something that surprised me: She reached around her own back and grasped my left hand, which had been positioned in such a way as to hold her down, and she carried it underneath her and pressed it hard against the twin bulges of her bosom which were then all but falling out of her low-cut dress.
"Rip the straps!" Suzie cried. "Rip them off!"
I was surprised, but I didn't give her an argument. I grasped one strap and yanked it. It popped. Then I popped the other one in the same way. Her soft bosom tumbled free.
Then as I continued to spank her with my right hand, my left one toyed with the hanging naked glories of her breasts, hobbling them and shaking them in my fingers and finding and plucking at their stiffening tips.
Passion had risen within me to such an extent that I could no longer contain it. I thrust my feet out in front of me on the shaggy white rug, making a ramp out of my legs, and I gave Suzie a little shove. She rolled down my legs, her skirt winding around her middle, and her bare pink-nippled breasts tossing. She finally came to a stop, face-downward, in the middle of the room.
She lay there, her smarting red bottom bare, her long black-stockinged legs tight together, the pink nose of one naked boob showing beneath her body, her cheek pressed against the soft carpet, and her blonde hair falling down and curling over her neck and shoulders.
I stood over her and began tearing off my clothes.
"This way," Suzie said in a passion-charged voice.
"Do it to me this way!"
"What?"
"When I'm this way, you damned fool! This is the way I want it!"
Don't ask me why. Masochism? The desire to punish herself for what she had done to me or to others? I don't know.
But I knew I would do what she asked.
Nude and throbbing with lust, I bent over her nearly naked form. I parted her legs and, gripping her firmly around the hips, I lifted her up. She helped me.
"Now!" she cried. "Slam me! Hurt me! Kill me with it, I don't care!"
On my knees behind her, I moved up. We touched. And then I pressed forward.
She cried out-a harsh, open throated bellow of pain-but I kept thrusting. I was making headway. More. More. I had her now.
She kept crying out and I began to batter her. My motions were slow and short at first. I knew I was hurting her. She kept yelling. Pretty soon it was going good.
"Grab me by the breasts!" she screamed. "Grab them and twist them!"
I reached up beneath her and grabbed. I shook them first and then I twisted.
And all the while I kept ramming up and back. Up and back. Longer strokes now. Harder. Firmer. Savage.
It was crazy-not right, I knew-and yet it was wildly thrilling. It hurt me a little, and I knew it was hurting Suzie a million times more. She was not loosely built, this girl. Every inch of her body was finely molded and firm.
It was ram ... slam ... bam in back, and pull ... twist .. pull at her bosom.
And then all hell broke loose, shaking me and convulsing me and threatening to turn me inside out.
When I had finally quieted and fallen back away from her, I realized that she had not been satisfied at least, not physically. She was still smoldering with lust.
I wanted to help her.
There was no more hatred in me. What I felt for her now was not pity, eitiier; it was a feeling far more tender and personal.
I rolled her over, looked at her tear-stained but wondrously beautiful face, and then bent to her and began kissing. My hot mouth pressed against her twisting thighs and moved up.
I gripped her around the middle and kissed her more avidly and passionately and intimately than I had ever kissed a woman in my life.
Suzie responded quickly. Her hips thrust. She moaned and gasped and panted.
When she finally achieved completion it was in a magnificent burst of energy that made it almost impossible for me to stay with her. I stayed, however, right to the last.
After it was all over, we lay on the rug, our arms around one another and my lips against her ear: "I'm sorry ... sorry...."
"Don't say that," she told me. "Just say you forgive me."
"Angel...." I murmured. "Say you forgive me, Jack."
I said it. And then I said something else. Tt was, "I love you."
I'd uttered those words a few times before, during the course of my checkered career, but I'd never before meant them as I did now.
We spent the night together. All night. And I didn't care that when I returned to my apartment, in the morning, Diana would raise all kinds of hell.
I didn't care what Diana did because I had found something more important to me than her, the business, the mess with Zimmer-everything.
Yes, my cynical friend, I had found love.
Maybe it had been a strange way to discover it, but I knew it had happened to me. When it hits you like that, you can't help but know. And then there's not another thing in the cockeyed world that matters.