Chapter 1

Doctor Blake got up on the morning on June 15 and decided not to go into the goddamn office this lovely morning. He was assistant coroner in Victory, Missouri, and he did not really have to go in when he did not want to. There was hardly enough murder in Victory to keep one coroner busy, and he was only the assistant, the one who got the killings and the strange deaths that occurred in the middle of the night.

He got the shit work in the office, he thought again.

And he became even more pissed off at himself because he was over forty years old and had been a top student in medical school and now he was dealing with the shit work in a fucking coroner's office.

Life had not been fair to Dr. Leo Blake, he thought.

When he woke up feeling this way, he knew that there was only one thing to do, one thing that would arouse his spirits in any way. He padded across his bedroom in his bare feet and looked at the clock. It was six-thirty in the morning. He knew that Kitty, his daughter, would still be asleep at that hour.

Kitty was sixteen years old and blonde and cuddly. She was the only pleasure that her father got in life.

Dr. Leo Blake pulled off his pajamas and touched his own cock. He thought about his daughter and he felt the cock begin to pulse. He knew that he would be able to give Kitty just the kind of treatment that she deserved that morning.

He moved out into the hallway and stood there naked for a few seconds and took several deep breaths.

No matter how many times he did this to Kitty, he thought, he was always excited and anxious about the prospect. His daughter was so sexy in the morning and she was the only thing that he had had for the past five years, since his wife had run off and left him for a college dance instructor, a guy that he had always considered to be a fucking fag.

And Kitty was so much like her mother, blonde with big, firm tits and that cute little mouth that just seemed to fit his cock, her father's cock.

And she was turning into a whore, just as her mother was a whore. She went out with boys and stayed out until dawn and she did things with them. Doctor Blake was sure of that. Kitty was too popular with the boys in town to be some kind of fucking virgin.

She could not be a virgin anyway, he reminded himself. He had taken her virginity himself, on the morning that he had awakened and found that silly, good-bye note from his whore wife. Doctor Blake liked to think of his wife on mornings such as this one. It helped him with Kitty when he was really and truly angry with her and all of her sex. That helped him to overcome the slight inhibitions that he still felt when he thought that, after all, she was his daughter, his only daughter. He stood there in the hallway naked and let the anger build up in him, let it rise to his head and knock out any doubts that he had about what he was going to do to that girl.

When the anger was boiling in him, Doctor Blake knew that he was ready to do it.

He walked confidently to his daughter's bedroom and opened the door silently and moved into the room. He stood there at the door and looked at her lying there in her bed.

Kitty was asleep, and she even slept like a young whore, he thought with disgust.

He knew that she was naked under that sheet and he could see the outlines of her legs there. She slept with her legs spread, slept on her back with her little, girlish arms thrown back over her blonde hair.

She slept quietly. That was one way in which she was not at all like her mother. Her mother, the original whore of Leo Blake's life, snored like a locomotive when she slept. He thought about her now, snoring in some dance instructor's ear while the guy lay awake in the bed and wished that he had been a fag, just like he was supposed to be.

Leo grinned when he thought of that strange and kinky and wonderfully funny vision. It would serve them both right for messing up Leo's life like they did, he thought. It would serve both his wife and that other man right.

But, at least, the doctor thought, his wife had left him with Kitty. At least she had done that much for him and he had started to use Kitty that very morning that his wife left. And he discovered that he liked it better with Kitty than he had ever liked it with his wife. Kitty was softer and more frightened. Even now, two years later, his daughter was still a little frightened whenever her father came into her room in the morning. You would think, Leo thought, that she would have gotten used to it by now. But she had not. She would let him have his way finally but there would always be those sweet, short seconds of fright, fear that showed in her blue eyes when she looked at her father standing naked over her, fear that turned into something else when she finally surrendered to her father's will like a good daughter should.

And Leo had to admit that it was that fear that he loved as much as anything else. As long as she feared him and then surrendered to him, he thought, he did not really care how much a whore she was with those other males, those high school boys she dated. She could do whatever she wanted with them as long as she did not forget her dear daddy.

Then Leo figured that he had waited long enough. He wanted that little bitch to wake up. He slammed her door and watched her jerk on the bed. She sat up and rubbed her eyes and then she saw him and that fear came into her blue eyes.

You would think that, by now, she would be used to it, he thought, but she wasn't.

She held the sheet over her ripe, firm tits and looked at her father with her eyes wide and she whimpered when she saw him standing naked there.

"Oh, Daddy, not today, please!- I am so tired."

"You are tired, you little whore," the loving father said, "because you stay out until dawn fucking boys and refuse to come home to your father."

Kitty did not say anything. She had been out fucking until dawn and she saw no reason to deny it. Her father was the one who had introduced her to fucking, so she figured that he had no right to tell her what was right and what was wrong. But she was beginning to really hate these mornings with her father. With boys, she had such fun and she was always cheerful when she fucked, cheerful and hot for cock. But, with her father, she never laughed, never made herself cheerful. She knew that he would hit her before he fucked her because he always did it that way. She got hot for cock, but it was not the same and she knew that what she did with her father was not right at all. She sat there on the bed and looked at him and sighed.

"Daddy," she said, almost scolding him with her tone, "you forgot your belt. Aren't you going to want to use your belt on me this morning?"

"Oh, yes," the man muttered. "My belt. That is right. My belt. I will be right back, Kitty. Don't go away. I will, be right back."

And then her father dashed out of the room like a silly, little man.

And Kitty almost wanted to cry because she knew that that was what he had become. He was nothing but a silly, little man now. But he had not always been that way, she thought.

There had been a time when her father had been the king of the house, when she had worshipped him and thought that he was the greatest, most intelligent man in the world. She had been just a little girl then and she had loved being around her father and her mother too. She thought that they made a good family.

But then strange things started to happen, things that the little girl could not understand.

Her father started to drink a great deal and argue with her mother late at night.

"Why don't you want to?" he would scream. "You never want to do it any more, you fucking bitch! Have you got some young stud on the side?"

And then her mother would tell her father to shut up because Kitty was asleep.

But Kitty was not asleep. She could never sleep in those days. She would just lie in bed and listen to her mother and her father argue like that and she would get very scared and wonder if they were going to kill each other some night and leave her all alone in the world.

Her father had been a regular doctor then, a good doctor too. But the liquor took over and he lost all of his patients because he could not be depended on to be sober when she was needed by one of his patients. That was when he got the job as assistant coroner. Kitty had heard other doctors laugh about her father. She had heard them at parties in the town and they said that Leo Blake could not hurt any of his patients now, not now that he would just be working on dead people.

And Kitty thought that that was very cruel of them to say, but she had to admit that they were probably right.

She just wished that she could understand what had driven her father to drink like that.

Even now, when she was sixteen, when she had been servicing her father in a sexual way for nearly two years, she still did not know what caused him to drink so much. She had never worked up the courage to ask him about it. Her father had become a silly man but he still had a fiery temper.

Kitty sat on the bed and waited for her father to return to the room with his belt. He seemed to be taking a very long time, and she wanted him to get in there and get it over with. Then, she thought, she would be able to get back to sleep.

She almost called out to him and told him to hurry up and get in there, but she kept her mouth shut. She knew that, on mornings such as this one, her father was angry at every woman who ever lived and he would be even angrier with her if she tried to order him around. Her father was a proud man, and Kitty knew that he was going to make her suffer for the sins of her mother and for the sins of all the other women who had hurt him. She would also suffer for some of her own sins too, she thought. That was the strange thing about the whole relationship. Although Kitty hated to think about what she had done with her father, she still had to admit that in the deepest part of her soul she enjoyed what he did to her. And the teen-ager could not understand at all how she could enjoy such a thing. To her, she seemed vaguely sick or perverted when she enjoyed the treatment that her father gave her.

She shivered there on the bed and waited for her father to get back into that room.

But Leo Blake was standing outside the door to his daughter's bedroom with his belt in his hand and he was thinking that she had already humiliated him that morning, that she was probably in there laughing at him because he had forgotten his belt. It was not his fault, the coroner thought. He had just been so excited by the prospect of being with his daughter this morning that he had forgotten. It was a sign of his father's love, he thought, and she was probably laughing at that sign in that room at that very moment. Leo almost turned around and went back into his room and forgot about the whole thing. He could not stand to think that Kitty was in there laughing at him. It was not fair, he thought, nothing was fair any longer in his wretched life. He should leave his daughter alone and let her have a good time with the boys from high school. He should not infect her with his own bad luck, he thought.

But then he looked down at his cock. It was getting hard as he stood there with his belt in his hand. He closed his eyes and thought of Kitty as she had looked so many times in that bed when he had worked with her, frightened but sex-driven to do what her loving father told her to do. When she got over her fear every morning that he went to her, she actually seemed to enjoy what he did for her. She was that much of a fucking, little whore, just like her fucking whore mother.

But he was her father and he could not let his little daughter down. She probably expected him back in there, he thought. She probably wanted that joy that only her father knew how to give her.

He had to saunter back into that room and do what he could for his sexy, little, blonde daughter. It was his duty to her.

And he was really all that she had now, now that her mother had run off with that guy who should have been a faggot if he had only had the sense enough to realize it.

Leo Blake opened the door and walked back into his daughter's bedroom quietly. Then he shut the door behind him and leaned against the wall. He held the belt out and let her look at it. He knew that she wanted that belt a great deal.

And Kitty looked at that belt and shivered again, sighed to her father with a voice that was soft.

"You are really going to do it to me again, aren't you, Daddy?" she asked.

"Yes," he said. "I could not let you down. You are my only daughter and I am your father."

His voice was soft too and he seemed dazed, more dazed than usual on these mornings, Kitty thought. She wondered if her father had already been drinking. She looked at the clock. It was not even seven o'clock in the morning, and she felt very tired when she knew that.

She had not gotten home until five and then she had collapsed on her bed, well-fucked and exhausted. She had intended to sleep all day. It was summertime and she did not have to go to school.

But her father had come in and had told her that he was going to do it to her again and she knew that she could not deny him his pleasure, although she was not sure what pleasure he actually got out of what he did to her.

But she knew that there was some pleasure for him in what he did. After all, she thought, she felt pleasure that she could not understand. If she felt that kind of strange warmth, she was almost certain that her father would feel something much the same.

She looked at the window and waited for him to attack her. She knew that it would take her father a few seconds to work himself up to the attack. She knew that he had to think about all the wrong that had been done to him by women before he could work out part of that wrong on his daughter's body. She closed her eyes and waited for him to start.

Leo Blake leaned against the wall and grasped his stiffening cock in his hand.

She was a little whore, he thought, so much like his wife, her mother had been.

She was a worthless, little piece of sexy scum, her father thought, and she would hurt him just as his wife had hurt him.

There would come a day when Kitty would leave him too, just as her mother had left him.

There would come a day when she would run off with some boy and never want to see her father again.

And then he would be all alone in the world. Leo did not understand how a girl could leave her father all alone that way after all that he had done for her, but she was going to leave him alone. He knew that for certain, and he knew that it would probably be one day very soon.

The god-damned bitch was going to leave him alone for the rest of his life.

When he thought about all that loneliness that waited for him after Kitty escaped him, the assistant coroner got very angry with her. She had no right to leave him like that! She was his daughter and he had done so much for her! She had no fucking right to leave him for some fucking high school boy who was not even going to be able to support her! The fucking bitch!

And, thinking those thoughts, Leo Blake charged his daughter, screaming at her the word that had become his battle-cry.

"Slut! Slut! Slut!"

And Terri tensed her body and waited for the belt to fall on her flesh.

Her father leaned over the bed and tore the sheet from her tits and pushed her back on the bed. Then he pulled the sheet off the bed and threw it on her bedroom floor.

She lay there naked under her father and waited for the belt to fall.

And he took his time then, standing over her and looking down at her fine, naked body. He looked at that little growth of pussy hair between her legs, and he knew that that was a sign--a sign of her whoredom. He hated that pussy hair more than he had ever hated anything else on any other body, either living or dead.

And he raised his arm and brought the belt down right on that soft, light-colored hair.

The girl squealed when he did that and reached back and grabbed the pillow that her head rested on. The blow had given her great pain, a sharp, shooting pain that went through her cunt and up into her stomach and her lungs. She tossed on the bed and she cried with the pain that was in her.

"Daddy! Don't! Don't and I'll be good!"

She made that vow every time she shared a morning with her father, and she never kept the vow. She was usually out that night fucking around with some high school boy that she had picked up somewhere. Leo knew that the vow meant nothing, but he was again surprised that she had such pain when he hit her and she made that vow again. Didn't she ever learn? He wondered why she did not get used to this kind of treatment. It had been going on for nearly two fucking years.

But he really could not spend his time wondering about things like that, lie remembered.

He had a fatherly duty to do, and he meant to do it as well as he could.

Leo Blake, raised the belt again and brought it down on his daughter's stomach and she squealed and twisted there on the bed and started to weep. But he could not let that stop him. He had more places that he had to whip. The belt came down on her big, slut tits. She squealed again and the belt slapped her body with a hard, whip-like crack.

Leo loved those cracks. They were like music to him, the music that he shared with his own, little daughter.

The assistant coroner thought that those cracks were a symphony for him and Kitty. He remembered the advertisement that he had seen as a boy as he continued to beat his daughter. In that advertisement a handsome father was sitting in his easy-chair and a little girl was sitting on his knee with her little arms around her neck. They were obviously father and daughter and they were both listening to a new phonograph, listening to the music that they shared. That was the kind of sharing that Leo Blake had always wanted to have with Kitty, and he could only have that music with her when he beat her, when he worked up his anger and went after her whore ways with courage and fire and his belt in his hand.

It was the closest thing, he thought, that he and Kitty ever got to real father-daughter happiness. But soon the symphony was over and the father was tired from the beating that he had given his daughter. His arm ached with the tension that he felt there-- And his cock was hard with another kind of tension, a tension that he knew he would have to work out now.

Leo Blake dropped the belt on the floor and looked down at his daughter and sighed.

"Now 1 must do it," he told Kitty softly. "I must do it to you just as I used to do it to your mother. I know that you understand, Kitty." The girl was still weeping and heaving with the fire that the belt had caused in her body.

Yes, she thought, she understood. She understood that this was what the beating really led up to. She understood that her father was going to fuck her and get rid of some of his anger with her that way. She knew that that was the only way that he could really rid himself of the anger, the terrible anger that he had against her mother and all women.

And she knew that she was going to enjoy it in a way. At these times, when the beating was over and the fucking was about to begin, she felt very tender towards her father, thinking that she wanted to help him in this way, thinking that she wanted to give him something to live for, something to feel good about.

She felt tender toward him at this moment and she held up her arms and urged him to come to her.

"I will fuck you, Daddy," she said. "I will fuck you and make you feel better."

Leo Blake looked at her as she lay there and he was confused, as he was always confused at moments such as this one, when she offered herself to him. Was she being a whore or being a good and loving daughter? Was it right for him to fuck her? He always asked himself those questions and he never had any answers. He just knew that he had to do it. He had to fuck her and get rid of all that tension that filled his body, that tension that was in his cock.

Leo moved onto the back and pressed his body against his daughter's soft sexiness.

He kissed her passionately, not like a father kisses a daughter but as a lover kisses his beloved.

She was all that he had in life, he reminded himself and she was offering her body to fill the emptiness, the need that he felt in his own soul.

And Leo knew that it would work too. He knew that he would enjoy fucking his sexy, blonde Kitty. And then he would be better able to face the day and be a good man. He had already decided that he would not go into his office that day and he wondered what he would do. He knew that he would do something good that day. He felt that any day that started with his fucking of his daughter would have to be a good day, filled with good deeds.

"Fuck me, Daddy,"the girl whispered. "Fuck my pussy and make us both feel better."

Kitty could still feel the heat on her body that had been caused by the belt, but she felt something else too. She felt another heat in her body, a heat that was wet and yearning, that started in her girlish cunt and worked its way up her body and invaded her mind with its softness and its desire. She knew that that heat came to her from the need to fuck, and she knew that she felt that same heat with a lot of boys, the boys she fucked until dawn.

But, with her father, things were different and the heat was even more intense.

The boys in high school did not need her cunt the way that her lonely, silly, aging father did. And she did not need those boys as much as she needed the man who had created her with his sperm, the man who had given her life in her mother's womb. She was sorry that he felt so bad about his own life, sorry that he had made a mess of his own existence, but she knew that she could fuck him and make things a little better for the man.

Knowing that, she spread her legs and let her father move over her. Knowing that, she reached down and touched his cock with her girlish fingers.

She liked the feel of her father's prick. It was more manly and masculine, more mature and harder with need, than any of the other cocks that she touched.

She sighed as she wrapped her fingers around that organ and she spoke to her father with all of her own need in her voice.

"Fuck me, Daddy. Please fuck me. I need it too."

And it was no lie. She did need this fucking, almost as much as her father needed it. She did not understand why. She knew that she usually dreaded this time with her father before they started, but at times like this she needed his fucking, no matter how many other "men she had fucked the night before. She needed her father because he was special to her-- And, because, she had to admit, that he had beat her with that belt. There was something in her that needed that belt too. And she could not figure out that need either.

But she knew that that need was there, deep inside her, and she knew that only her father could beat her the way that she liked.

She pulled the cock toward her young pussy and guided it into her as her father moved on top of her. She whispered in his ear again and pushed him up so that he could fuck her with power, the kind of power that a father should use with his daughter.

"Fuck me, Daddy. Fuck me good. I know that you can do it."

It always happened to Leo Blake at that very moment, something that he could not understand.

Always, just before the real fucking started, he would lie on his daughter like a corpse.

She would push him up and he would try to raise up but it was difficult. He seemed weak, almost paralyzed with the lust that he felt for her. But then that moment would pass and he would be able to raise up and he would move his cock into her well-fucked, young pussy as he had done so many times before and she would raise her ass and her legs and wrap those legs around his waist and she would sigh with great emotion as the cock slid into her gently.

It was a big cock, a daddy cock. But she could take it all into her because she hail fucked so many boys and because she had fucked her own father so often and because her own pussy was so wet with desire for the man who was on top of her.

When he was in her cunt, filling her up, she tensed her body and cried out to him with all of her daughterly love.

"Fuck me, Daddy! Fuck me! Fuck my pussy!"

And that gave him the charge that he needed, the shot of power that he needed to give Kitty the kind of fucking that she desired.

Leo Blake started to fuck his teen-aged daughter, started to move his cock into her pussy and then pull it out as her young legs tensed about his body and as she sighed with girlish frenzy and started to toss under him.

"Oh, fuck me, Daddy. Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me." And he fucked her, just the way that she wanted him to do.

Leo rammed into her sweetness again and again and fucked her with great desire.

And he started to growl down at her just the same way that he always did when he fucked her. He told her what he thought of her at moments like this, he told her what he thought of all women.

"Fucking little whore," he snarled. "Fucking, little bitch."

"Yes," she moaned as she worked under him and felt that cock move deep into her snatch again and again. "Yes, I am a fucking, little whore, Daddy, but I am your fucking, little whore."

"It would break my heart to know that you were not mine," he growled. "It would break my father's heart to know that you fucked all of those boys and you didn't fuck me. You know that, don't you, Kitty?"

"Yes, Daddy, but 1 am fucking you. That is your cock in my pussy right now, Daddy."

And he looked down and saw that it was true. Her pussy seemed to tighten around his prick. It was so tight and wet that he almost felt that the pussy would never let his cock go.

And he did not mind that idea at all. He could think of worse ways to spend the rest of the days of his life than being stuck to his daughter in this sexy way, with his cock deep in her pretty, blonde-haired snatch.

The father watched with sexual fascination as his cock worked back and forth in that pussy.

It seemed to fit so well, Leo Blake thought. Why would he ever want another woman? Why would his daughter ever want another man?

And then he was reminded that she did fuck other men, high school boys.

And he remembered that she would leave him one day and go off with some guy and leave her loving father all alone for the rest of his life. When he thought about these things, he felt that old anger rise up his throat his again and he started to spit out the curses that he always gave her, the curses that Kitty had grown to expect from him. He did not want to let his blonde, little daughter down.

"You fucking, little slut. You worthless bitch. You would fuck anybody, even your own fucking father."

"Yes," she moaned, tossing under him as she felt the cock drive her on to orgasm. "Yes. Even my own father."

"Fucking slut." "Yes. Yes."

And the fucking reached its most outrageous peak, reached the peak as the man growled and as the girl whimpered and tightened her legs around her father so that she could hold him into her and then the father and the daughter froze them in a second of real and honest passion for each other. They froze as they both came. His fatherly cream was shooting into her cunt like bits of flame from a fire-throwing machine. And her own heat was battling his heat and giving him what he desired too.

When it was over, they knew that they had pleased each other immensely. They knew that they had given each other what they both needed. They sighed and separated there and Leo rolled off his daughter and lay next to her.

In a few seconds, Kitty was asleep. She had been exhausted by all the fucking the night before and she was even more exhausted now, now that she had fucked her own father and felt his cock in her and his belt on her sexy, young flesh.

Leo turned and looked at his daughter. He was glad that she was asleep now, lying there on the bed, naked and spread out on her back. Leo curled into a little ball and lay on the bed with her. Usually, he got up and left her immediately after the fucking was over, but this time he wanted to stay with her. He wanted to be near his daughter for a little longer as he remembered one of the fine moments of his life.

He closed his eyes and thought about that moment.

It had been in New York City twenty years before and he had been a young medical student at the time. He did not know why he had gone to view the celebrity's body as it lay in state in the church on Fifth Avenue. He supposed that he was just curious. But now he thought that some unseen power had drawn him to that place and had told him that someone in the crowd around the celebrity would change his life.

The dead man was young, only twenty-nine, Leo remembered.

He had been a singing idol for a couple of years and had had many gold records, many hit recordings. And then one day he had just died. He had been found in his bed one morning in New York City by his maid. There were no drugs around, not even any liquor. He had just died peacefully in his sleep, although he had not even been sick.

Leo later learned as a coroner that that often happened. Death came and there was no real reason for it. It just seemed to show up and say howdy-doo and crawl right into bed with the most healthy people. Leo had learned to look upon death as a silly, little girl, a girl who did not know what she wanted but who was willing to try anything with anybody. To the assistant coroner, that image of death made sense and nothing else really did.

The young bride of the singing star had decided to let the public view his body. She said that the people out there loved him too and should have a chance to see him as he lay in his coffin. That really did not make much sense to Leo when he was a young medical student and he wondered again why he had gone to see that body. Perhaps he had known even then that he would be a coroner. Perhaps he had felt some force call him to go to that church and be there to meet her. It must have been something like that, for Leo had never even bought any of the idol's records. He did not even own a record-player.

Leo did not like music that much at all, except for the music he had discovered with his daughter, the singing belt that landed with cracks on her body.

He had gone to Fifth Avenue and had seen the long line there waiting to get into the church and he had almost turned around right then. He knew that he would have to stand in line for a long time to see the body and he did not think it was worth it. But he did not have a chance to make a graceful exit.

For, just as he arrived, a man came out to the front of the church and made an announcement to the hundreds of people who were out there.

The young bride of the singing idol had changed her mind. She had decided that, when he was put in his coffin, her husband was just too dead-looking to view. It depressed her to see that body, the man told the crowd, and the bride wanted to save all of his fans from that same depression.

"We think that it would be better if you would all go home and remember him the way that he was," the man said to the crowd through a portable microphone.

His voice boomed out on Fifth Avenue, and, by the time that voice got to the place where Leo was standing near the edge of the crowd, the sounds that the young medical student heard made no fucking sense at all. They seemed like traffic noise or echoes of traffic noise from somewhere over on the west side of the city.

But the people who were standing closer to the church, the people who heard what the man had said, started to get very angry.

"Fucking bitch!" one man yelled. "We want to see him!"

And, for some reason, that yell that was not carried by a microphone and a speaker down the street was clear to everyone there. And the crowd started to push toward the door of the church, demanding to see the idol that they had worshipped from afar so long- The man who had made the announcement retreated into the church and slammed the doors behind him. But that did not stop the people on the street.

The riot had started in full force and it was going to be a long time before New York City ever forgot this one.

The crowds slammed against the doors of the church: They were cursing and screaming and crying out in their anger and Leo found himself moving forward too.

It did not make sense, he thought to himself as he pushed against the shoulders of the fat woman in black in front of him. It did not make sense for him to join in the riot. He had never even liked that singing star. It did not make a shit's worth of difference to him if he saw that dead body or not.

But he pushed just the same and he found himself thinking that he was a human being, that he was an American, by God, and that he would not allow himself to be denied.

The cops came quickly and tried to move through the crowd and break it up, but, by then, the people were too close to one other and too angry. None of them would be denied. They were hammering and pushing on the doors of that church and everyone knew that it was just a matter of time until they broke those old doors down.

The church was a landmark building in New York City.

It would become even more of a landmark after that afternoon.

It would be the sight of the great riot of death, a strange and convulsive mob action that the great thinkers of New York still tried to figure out to this day.

The people in the crowd pushed closer and closer to the door and finally the door did break with a crash that even Leo heard at the back of the crowd.

And the hundreds of mourners cheered when the door moved out of their way and ran like devils into the church.

Leo pushed forward. He wanted to get inside that church too. He did not even think about the dead star that was lying in there, or about the young bride who had changed her mind and tried to bar Americans from the mourning place.

He only thought that this was a great moment in history.

And he thought that he would not be able to tell his children about it unless he actually got inside that church and stood there as the moment in history happened.

Leo became crazed with the need to get inside that church.

He started to push people aside, people who were in his way, people who blocked his way from that great moment in history, from that story that he would be able to tell his children about.

Lying next to Kitty, Leo suddenly remembered that he had never told Kitty about that moment. She had never asked about it. He looked at her. She was sleeping now and she really did not care about the history of his meager life. No, he thought, he would never tell her about that time of triumph when he got into the big church on Fifth Avenue.

The fat woman in black actually bit his hand when he pushed her out of the way.

But it was not until he had fought his way up the steps of that church, not until he had actually gotten into the building, that he noticed that his hand was bleeding from the woman's bite.

He stood there as the crowd rushed past him and he heard the men yell out to one another.

"Lynch the bitch! Lynch that whore that tried to keep us out of here!"

And Leo found himself laughing at that cry as he took his handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapped it around his bleeding hand.

Then he walked toward the front of the big church, moving through the crowds of mourners, the people who were ripping up the seats and stealing anything that they could get their hands on.

"I have a hymnal," one woman gasped at Leo in the second that it took for their eyes to meet before they were both swept up in the angry crowd. "I will cherish this book always," she cried to Leo as she was taken away. ' And Leo thought that that was very strange because that hymnal had nothing to do with the dead man in the church. She could have stolen that hymnal any day, he thought.

And then he reached out and grabbed a hymnal for himself.

But he dropped it as he moved closer to the front of the church and saw what was happening up there. The survivors of the dead singing star had run for safety, but they had not had time to move the coffin that was up front.

And a group of angry men were lifting that coffin and turning it over.

Leo turned around and started toward the back of the church. He did not want to see that. But he heard the cry go up and knew that it had happened. They had emptied the singing star onto the floor and they had cheered their American victory.

As he was struggling to get to the door of the church in the back, a young girl pressed herself against him and moaned to him through her tears.

"Please, hold onto me," she said. "Get me out of here."

He looked at her. She was a blonde with blue eyes and she was shaken up by the whole thing. He grabbed her arm and pulled her through the crowd that was still rushing through the doors of the church.

"Why did you come?" he yelled at her over the noise of the people, knowing that, if anyone had asked him that question, he would not have had an answer for it at all.

"I loved him!" she screamed in answer. "I have all his records at home!"

So this blonde was a real fan, he thought, not some crazed New Yorker out for a good time and a bit of destruction. He knew that he owed it to her to get her out of that church.

They almost fell down the steps outside, but somehow they both kept their balance as they ran by the people and the cops and then they ran down Fifth Avenue.

They ran for several blocks, with Leo holding her hand and pulling her along with him. He could not let this girl go until he knew that she was safe, he determined. He could not let her leave him now that he had saved her.

By the time that they finally stopped and looked at each other and gasped at each other as they tried to catch their breaths, Leo was in love with this girl. He knew it for certain. He wanted to marry this fan and be her good husband for the rest of his years.

"What is your name?" he asked, still gasping for air as the words popped out.

"Molly," she said, and her eyes shined in the afternoon sun.

She was so lovely and so pure, he thought, pure enough to be the best fan in the world.

"Where do you live?"

"Brooklyn," she said.

"Can I go home with you and listen to his records?" he asked her.

She smiled at him and took his hand in hers. "Of course," she said.

And they walked down Fifth Avenue like the lovers that they were.

They took the subway to Brooklyn and went to his little apartment and listened to the singing star's records, songs that Leo had never heard before. Molly cried a little bit but then she regained her composure and fixed Leo some coffee.

She thanked him for saving her and kissed him and just naturally assumed that he was a fan too. He did not tell her differently. He wanted this girl to think that they had something in common.

And he made love to her that night in her apartment in Brooklyn.

And they were married the next week by a judge who ran the couples through his office as if they were items on a conveyor belt. They went to a hotel and checked in and spent their honeymoon there for the weekend.

It was the beginning of a very happy life for Leo. He was in medical school and Molly had a nice job and loved him every night.

It was the closest thing to heaven that Leo ever felt.

Now, remembering the heaven that he had had in New York City as he lay there naked beside the only daughter of the union with Molly that he had enjoyed so much, he felt that he was going to cry.

Leo got off the bed slowly, so as not to disturb his sleeping, naked daughter.

And he went down to his own room. It was not until he got to that room that he realized that he had forgotten his belt, the one that he used to beat his daughter.

He could have gone back for it, but he did not want to do that.

It would have made him seem even more silly than he actually was, he thought.

And, naked, Leo threw himself on his own bed and cried like a baby, cried because he was such a silly, daughter-fucking man.

And he cried because he knew that he would never have that heaven again, that heaven that he had felt in New York City with his wife, Molly.

He recalled how sweetly she used to cry out his name when she came.

Crying out: "Leo! Leo! Love me! Fuck me!"

Never again would he hear that voice.

But his daughter's voice was so similar.

It was the same voice, in the young girl.

And it was so sweet to his ears.