Chapter 12
WHEN I WOKE UP, THE APARTMENT WAS dimly lit by the last rays of a vanishing sun. I was sick.
Then I was hungry, but I couldn't stand the thought of food. My head felt like a kettle on which some kid was pounding with a spoon.
I forced myself to take another drink along with a pair of aspirin. That helped.
Then I cleaned up, showering and shaving and getting into fresh clothes.
There were lots of things I could have been thinking about, I guess. I could have been worrying about what I was going to do with my life from that point on. I could have been wondering if Suzie was concerned because she hadn't heard from me or if she had perhaps run off with somebody else, the way she'd done before. I could even have thought about the young girls that Zimmer held in the country, and wondered if they would ever be rescued now that Zimmer had a firmer hold on the business and was going to have everything his own way.
Strangely, perhaps, I didn't worry about any of these problems. At least, not right then. What I thought about was Diana. Yes, Diana. Specifically, Diana and Zimmer. Or, more specifically yet Diana and Zimmer and George.
They would become a passionate threesome, I figured. And soon, too.
I reasoned this way:
First, Zimmer wanted Diana and I believed he "wanted" her in the only way he wanted any woman vicariously, with George or somebody like him as the intermediate instrument; second, Zimmer would be concerned lest Diana blow the whistle on him when she found out the way he operated, as she eventually would; therefore, in order for him to "have" Diana and to put her under his complete control at the same time, he would frame her in a nice little picture-taking session, just the way he had framed me.
He might even do it that very night, I thought Perhaps it was going on at that very moment.
I didn't take long to think it over. I left the apartment, got into my car in the basement garage, and took off for the house on Arapahoe.
Diana deserved whatever she had coming to her, you might say. But I didn't feel that way. What I'd said to her that morning had been true-the part about not hating her. I didn't hate her. I felt sorry for her because she didn't know what she was doing.
I had a gun-a neat .38-caliber revolver-which I'd purchased under a legal permit shortly after my violent run-in with Zimmer. I had figured that the time might eventually come when I would need it for self-preservation. It was locked, loaded, in the glove compartment of my car.
When I reached the neighborhood of Zimmer's house, I parked and then took the gun out. I released the safety catch and jammed it under my belt, the way I'd seen private eyes do it on TV. Then I left the car and walked quickly to Zimmer's place.
I wasn't afraid. Maybe it was just that I was still too sick and miserable to feel anything, or maybe I was actually looking forward to the opportunity of parting Zimmer's hair with a bullet, I don't know. But I was ready for whatever was going to happen.
Using the key to Zimmer's house which I still carried as a result of my two-hour tenancy of one of his rooms, I let myself in. There was nobody in the hall.
I walked to the rear of the house and opened the heavy sound-proofed door at the top of the basement stairs. Everything was dark down there.
I listened.
There was no sound, but then that didn't prove anything one way or the other. I started down the stairs.
Halfway to the bottom, I heard something. It was faint, but it had come from Zimmer's studio. Somebody was inside, all right.
I hurried the rest of the way and touched the metal door. It was closed tightly, of course, and I had no key to it. Zimmer had relieved me of that on the day of our ill-fated encounter.
My first thought was to see if George was in his own room and to use my gun to make him unlock the studio. But I discarded that. Dumb lout that he was, I couldn't be sure how he would react. If he tried to take me, I'd have to shoot him, and I didn't want to do that. Zimmer was the one I was gunning for.
So I pulled the .38 out from under my belt and moved close to the metal door of the studio. My eyes had accustomed themselves to the dark by that time and I was able to draw a bead on the Yale lock.
I squeezed the trigger.
The bullet tore into the metal and the door flew open. What I saw before me was a sight I'll never forget:
Diana was standing in front of the red-covered couch at the far side of the room, and she was naked except for brassiere, panty girdle and hose. The floodlights were on and Zimmer was standing a few feet away from her, not far from his camera. The human ape, George, was hulking in front of Diana, holding her dress, and she seemed too terrified to utter a sound. Her mouth was open contorted in fear, and her eyes stared wildly at the gargantuan man.
The scene was frozen in my memory in just the split second before all three persons turned to stare at the door where I was standing, gun in hand.
Diana cried out then. It was a moan of relief, signifying release of tension.
George grunted savagely.
Hugo Zimmer cursed, and then he did the one thing in the world that he shouldn't have done: He reached under his jacket for the automatic pistol he carried.
He didn't get it out.
My first shot ripped into his belly. Even as he buckled forward, the arm which he'd shoved beneath his coat continued to move. So I shot him again.
The second bullet struck him in the face. Blood squirted as he raised his hands and howled. He tottered a few steps, reeling, and then he collapsed on the concrete floor. He didn't move.
George was back-pedaling toward a far wall, yelling, "No ... no ... no...."
I said, "Shut up and get your hands in the air."
He did.
Diana was bent forward, her face in her hands, and her naked white shoulders were shaking with the power of her sobs.
I walked to her and encircled her with a comforting arm.
"Oh, Jack ... Jack...." She cried against my chest.
Before calling the police, I did two things:
First, I had a man-to-man talk with George. That is, if such a talk is possible between a fan and an ape.
I told him he was faced with a choice. He could let me hand him over to the police when they arrived, or he could clear out of the house and never come back.
He cleared out.
Next I went through Zimmer's studio-every cabinet and table drawer-and collected all the photos he had of the girls who'd fallen victims to his white slaving scheme. I stacked them together with all the records on his sex resorts and the photos he'd taken of Abby and me, which I found tucked between a cabinet and the wall. Then I went into George's room where I pulled down all his pictures and took the torn lingerie from his bureau drawers; all these I carried back to the studio and placed with the other stuff. I was going to destroy. Diana helped me load the crap into a couple of paste-board cartons, which we then carried out to my car and locked in the trunk.
As soon as we returned to the house, we went to the manager's apartment.
She gave us a blank look, having heard nothing of what happened downstairs. As I'd assumed, the basement was well sound-proofed. She evidently hadn't even noticed our comings and goings, or else, it was just that she'd been trained to ignore everything that happened, as far as Zimmer's basement activities were concerned.
When I told her Zimmer had been shot and that we wanted to phone the police, she came apart, starting to jabber like a monkey. I had Diana try to calm her while I walked to the telephone and placed the call.
The police came quickly, as Chief Parker's men always do.
Our story, which I had rehearsed with Diana while I ransacked the rooms downstairs, was that Zimmer had taken her to the studio on the ruse that he wanted to have a business discussion and that he had then tried to attack her; luckily I had been on my way over to see the old man to try to talk him into restoring our partnership, and I had arrived just as he was forcing Diana to disrobe; hearing through the studio door what was going on, I had shot the door open and killed Zimmer when he'd reached for his own gun.
Had George been on hand, his presence might have interfered with that story. Also, he might have babbled something about Zimmer's white-slavery operations. That's why I'd let him get away. I had hated to do it, but I'd figured it would be just a matter of time until he was picked up for vagrancy or something and that the authorities would probably then have him committed. Even if he were to blab about Zimmer at that time, it was reasonable to assume that the police would pay little attention to him ... particularly if the Zimmer case had already been disposed of.
It was my hope, of course, that no word about Zimmer's sex resorts would come out and that they could be quietly closed and the girls released. It would be difficult for the girls to make trouble for anyone, since Zimmer was dead and there would be no evidence of the way he'd blackmailed them. Anyway, to institute action they would have to go to the police and admit what they'd been doing, which would then become a matter of public record. I doubted that any of them them would do that. I assumed they would be only glad to be free from the hold Zimmer had on them and that they'd feel the less said about the whole thing, the better.
As it turned out, I was right.
The police accepted my story of Zimmer's kitting. Of course; they asked a lot of questions and nosed around, but what could they do except to believe me? Diana backed up my story completely and there was no evidence to contradict it.
When they finally let us go, we took a taxi back to Arapahoe to get her car-and my own, of course, although I hadn't told the police that I'd driven to see Zimmer. I hadn't wanted them looking in my trunk, so I'd said I had come by cab.
On the way. Diana told me, "I'll never be able to thank you enough or to get over how wrong I was about Hugo. If you hadn't come to help me when you did, I don't know what would have happened. It was awful!" She put her face in her hands again.
"I didn't do it only for you," I said. "It was for myself at the same time. Zimmer was blackmailing me, just as he was blackmailing the girls at his houses. You saw the pictures. That's why I couldn't tell you what I'd found out about him and why we couldn't cut him out of the partnership. When you decided to team up with him alone, I felt I had to help you. I figured I owed you that."
"It looks as if I've been foolish all the way around, doesn't it?" Diana said. "Can you ever forgive me, Jack. Maybe, if you can, we can get together again just the two of us."
"No," I said firmly. "It wouldn't work. But it was kicks while it lasted. Now you've got the business free and clear, and it's a damned sight healthier than it was when you first met me. That is, it will be as soon as we get those houses of Zimmer's closed down. We can take care of that little chore tomorrow."
And we did.
Also, Diana took back the thousand dollar check her lawyer had sent over to me and replaced it with one for five grand. I could have gotten more out of the deal, but that was all I wanted. It was enough to give me a good start somewhere else.
With Suzie, I hoped.
As soon as Diana and I got things squared away, I tried to call Suzie. But there was no answer.
I tried again later and still her phone continued to ring.
By the middle of the evening I was pretty worried and I went over to her apartment. The door was locked, so I camped beside it, smoking one cigarette after another.
I couldn't shake the fear that maybe she had run out on me for the second time. If she had, I knew I'd never be able to get over her.
I waited and waited.
It was about ten o'clock when she finally showed up. And she was alone.
As soon as we saw one another, she flew into my arms.
"Oh, darling," she murmured. "I didn't know what had happened to you. I waited all day yesterday for you call ... and today, too. I was just about out of my mind. Finally, this evening, I had to have someone to talk with, so I went to see a girl friend."
"I had big trouble to take care of," I told her. "Some day you'll hear all about it-well, maybe not all, but enough to give you an idea." I assumed she hadn't seen the small items the newspapers had run on Zimmer's killing. Since it had been justifiable homicide, there hadn't been much sensation value in it and neither of the metropolitan dailies had given it much of a play.
"Do you still feel the same way about me?" Suzie asked, her beautiful blue eyes searching mine. "I mean, the way you said you felt the other night?"
"I wasn't just saying it," I said. "I really meant it and I still do. In case you have any doubts," I added with a mischievous grin, "I know just how we can clear them all up."
She picked up on the play: "Well, maybe I do have some doubts, as a matter-of-fact. Maybe you'd just better prove things to me again."
I nodded toward the door. "You lead the way."
She took her key from her bag and handed it to me. I turned it in the lock and we walked inside, closing the door behind us.
"Speaking of the other night," Suzie said, "you don't have to prove it to me just the way you did then. I mean, not entirely."
"Don't worry," I said. "I'll never do that. Not unless you get naughty again."
"I think you knocked the naughtiness out of me," she replied.
Then I drew her soft warmth up against me and we kissed. Our tongue-tips touched, then circled each other and agitated in moist embrace. At the same time, I held Suzie tightly and after a while let my hands move downward along the graceful curve of her back until they reached the pert provocative mounds of her buttocks. The place I had spanked the night before I now caressed gently, and then I held the springy soft curves in my hands and kneaded them.
Pretty soon it became impossible for us to remain in our clothing, as close together as we were, and I released her so that we could get undressed.
But she didn't begin to undress herself.
She said, "One thing I've always wanted to do and have never done is to undress a man. Isn't that silly?"
"I don't think it's silly at all," I said, adding with a grin, "especially since I'm the man who's going to receive the honor."
She laughed softly and began to slip off my jacket. With my help, she succeeded in removing my coat, tie and shirt, after which she dropped her hands to the waistband of my trousers.
"Just one thing," I told her. "Since turnabout's fair, I get to undress you."
"I wouldn't have it any other way," she said. With that, she released the metal fastener at the top of my pants and drew my zipper down.
As I lifted first one leg and then the other, Suzie knelt in front of me and took the trousers off.
"There's another little matter of turn-about," she said as she looked up at me. "I mean, from the other night."
"You want to spank me?" I asked kiddingly.
"Certainly not," she said, as she continued lowering my shorts.
"Well, then, just what do you want to do?"
She didn't tell me. She showed me. And how she showed me!
In just a couple of minutes I was wound tighter than a very big and very powerful spring, and there was just one way in the world that I wanted to work the tension off.
I didn't strip Suzie slowly and lovingly, as a girl of her exciting dimensions deserved. Instead, I tore at the top part of her beige two-piece dress, pulling off a button, then all but shredding her skirt as I yanked it from her warmly rounded hips. It puddled at her feet, with her lacy white slip quickly landing right on top of it.
"God, but you're lovely that way!" I told her, filling my eyes for just a moment with the sight of her standing there in stockings, bra and panties. The stockings were a very sheer sandy-brown and the undies were white. The bra was cut low and was supported from underneath. I could have lifted her beautiful breasts out of it if I'd wanted to.
I didn't do that, however, but merely reached around her and popped the clasp. I pulled the bra away, flipping her lovelies as I did so. There was an awful lot of spring to them. They stood up and out, softly rounded below and almost concave at their tops. Her nipples, which were a delicate light pink, canted upward. But the nipples were not nearly thick enough or tall enough as yet. I took her breasts in my hands and began to minister to them.
"Oh, it feels wonderful when you play with them like that," Suzie said. "No hands ever made me feel so good before."
"And my hands never felt such goodies before," I replied with a grin. "So help me, I'd always thought that breasts were breasts, more or less, but yours are ... I don't know, but the very touch of them rocks me."
"Mmm." She leaned into my grasp and looked down at what my hands were doing to her. "See the nipples," she said. "Look at how they're growing. Oh, they really like that! They like your thumbs an awful lot."
"Is there anything they'd like better?" I asked. The nipples were swollen now, and I had my hands stretched around each breast, squeezing the tips up at me.
"Yes!" she panted. "Your mouth. They want your mouth."
But I didn't kiss them ... yet.
"All in good time," I told her, and I swept her up in my arms. I carried her to the bedroom.
When she was stretched out on the bed, I quickly stripped off her shoes and stockings. Then I rolled her panty briefs down and picked them from her pinktinted toes. I unclasped and began removing her garter belt.
"Now, Jack?" she asked, holding her tempting firm breasts in her hands and pouting playfully at me. "Will you kiss my tippies now?"
I answered her with a growl, coming down to the bed on hands and knees. And then I answered her even more positively by pressing my mouth around one of the lovely tips and drawing it upward onto my tongue. She moaned.
Kissing breasts is one of my favorite pastimes, and I can tell you from long experience that no two pairs taste just alike. Most all of them taste good, though. It's just that some taste better than others.
Suzie had the tastiest nipples I'd ever put my mouth to. Just slightly tart, they were-but sweet, too. The flavor was just right.
I pulled at them with my lips, going from one to the other-letting them slip out and then taking the rigid little shafts between my lips again and then, over and over again.
Finally Suzie said, "I can't wait any longer. Get on top now."
But I wasn't ready to get on top yet. I wanted to kiss her arms first-the tender inner sides of them-and then I wanted to kiss her belly. It was a smooth little pink-white rise, crowned at its crest by the cutest navel I ever saw, and adorned at its base by a delicate trace of gold. I kissed it all over.
And then I kissed up and down her tender thighs. The velvet flesh of their inner slopes was like honey sweeter by far than any thighs I'd certainly ever kissed before.
Now, to make it all complete, I lifted my face and began to turn her over.
"No, Jack," she said. "Oh, no!"
I chuckled. "Don't worry. It isn't that. I want to try to make amends."
And so I bent and kissed her there, as well. I kissed her right smack where I had spanked her the other night.
I had no sooner straightened up from that little excursion, then Suzie rolled onto her back once more and reached for me with her legs.
"Now make me happy," she said, her green eyes shining. "Make me know I've got a real man!"
Well, the time had come. I dropped to my elbows and moved, my midsection around until we were just right.
"Yes ... yes," she said. "That's it. Now go!" I drove up passion alley like a Ferrari with its throttle wide open, and this drew a joyful cry from Suzie.
"Is that man enough for you?" I asked.
"Oohhhh...." She kind of shivered the sound. "You're all man. Now make me feel it the way I want to."
In the minutes that followed, she felt it exactly as a normal healthy girl wants to feel the man she loves-aggressively, firmly, in slow steady motion that drove her insane with desire.
As for me, I was riding the thrill of thrills.
Every other girl I'd ever had seemed then to have been nothing but a warm-up.
Suzie was swiveling and thrusting, pounding up at me, and clutching me with her arms and legs. Her feet were very high on my back.
Man, it was good!
When I hit the finish wire, she was right there with me and we tumbled into the sawdust together, each of us satisfied to the very tips of our toes.
Later, as we lay talking, I told Suzie a little of what had happened-just that I had sold out my interest in a profitable business and that I had a fivethousand-dollar check lying in my wallet with nothing to do.
She got very excited over that: "Oh, Jack, that's wonderful! It means we can buy some new clothes and travel and play the horses and...."
"Hey, now wait a minute," I said. "This money's going to set us up in business somewhere. I haven't decided what I want to do just yet, but...."
"Maybe I can help you," she said. "I know this man-just a platonic friend, you understand-who has this investment deal open. I think he's looking for someone to take in as a partner."
I leaned over her and looked her right in the eyes. "Suzie," I said, "you wouldn't try to con me again, would you?"
She pushed me aside and sat up, so that we were face to face. "Con you? I don't know what you're talking about." Color had risen in her cheeks and her eyes snapped.
"Take it easy," I said. "I didn't mean anything by it, but there was the business with Pete Randle...."
"So you're going to keep throwing that up at me, huh?"
"No. But once burned, twice shy, they say."
"And you figure I burned you?"
"Let's not fight, baby." I could see she was getting sore.
"I don't know what to think about you, Jack. I don't know whether we can make it together or not. You're so suspicious."
"Let's just forget it, shall we?"
"I don't know if I can," she said.
"If I can forget about Randle, you can damned well forget about my suspicions," I told her.
"Well...."
I eased her down to the bed again and began to kiss her neck and then her cheeks. But, as I made love to her, I also made a resolution:
I was sure as hell not going to let her con me into anything from now on. What we had was too good to let money spoil it I only wished I could be sure about her.
But, then, you're never really sure of any woman, are you? At least, not the desirable ones.
After thinking it over, I decided that this was the way I liked it. It was the uncertainty of things that gave life its biggest boot.
So Suzie and I set out to make it together-me with the five grand and her with a gimmee complex that seemed to be aimed at the sole purpose of getting that dough from me by one means or another.
And what happened to us?
That, my friend, is another story.