Chapter 18
MILLIONS of people have read accounts of the smashing of the sex syndicate in countless newspapers, but it is generally agreed that the stories in the Mornng Star were the most authentic. I do not, in any sense, begrudge George Castle whatever national fame he may have achieved. It is true that his success has been due, in large part, to the material I sent him through the mail; but it is also true that I might not be alive today had he not gotten the letter from the post office that same night and, convinced of its authenticity, enlisted the aid of the police commissioner in staging the raid.
"We almost marked it off as a farce," Castle told me. "We couldn't find anybody at the Westminister Drive address. The Tenth Street address, which you had mentioned, was an afterthought. It's a good thing we had it."
I have been in the hospital almost two months and, during this time, the police have been more than kind to me. Perhaps they regret having fractured my skull that night but, to be truthful, I think it was a stroke of good fortune. Had they not arrived when they did I am sure I would have killed Eudora Channing. Her death at my hands would have been just one more thing on my conscience. And, as you can imagine, I have enough to feel badly about without adding to my problems.
The trials are scheduled for the immediate future and no one has any doubts about how they will develop. Miller has made a thirty-thousand word statement, hoping to gain the mercy of the court, but even if he should go free, which he won't, he'll have to return to Maryland to stand trial for the murder of Eudora Channing's first husband. She has denied all, of course, preferring to take her chances with a jury. But she will find testimony directed at her other than that supplied by Miller. At least a half a dozen call girls are willing to appear against her. One of these is Judith Call. Judith's father, during one of his frequent visits to the hospital, has confided to me that he feels he can bear the shame of notoriety if justice is served. He has said, also, that he is changing his methods of dealing with the problems of youth.
"The girls need someone who can direct them wisely," he has told me. "If both Judith and I can grow above this terrible thing that has happened, and if she can be accepted in New Rockford for the fine girl she is, I believe she can fill the bill."
It is not my job to quarrel with Dr. Call or to point out how small-minded some people can be, but I feel more than certain that both the girl and her father have a tough assignment ahead of them. Yet, as I say, it is none of my business. The Reverend hired me to do a job and now that it is done, and I have been paid a fifteen hundred dollar bonus, I fail to see that I am entitled to express any opinion about the matter.
The only annoyance I have suffered since being confined to the hospital-aside from the usual discomforts of a patient with a fractured skull, forty-two stitches in one leg, and assorted cuts, bruises and cracked ribs-has been directed at me by Sam Terry from his office in the Central Building. I am, it would seem, delinquent three articles for Car Skill. I have tried to get the fellow who is customizing my Ford to send along some pictures but, so far, he has not been very cooperative. I've tried to make Sam understand this and I trust that I have. A free-lance writer, you know, can't afford to lose .a market and the sensational promises of big money from several other magazines may be only a passing thing. Once the trials are over and the sentences are passed I believe that most people will forget about the sex syndicate. They will forget about it, that is, until a new one comes along, destroying other lives, imposing upon a thoughtless society its legacy of sin and filth.
Perhaps you do not believe this is so. Perhaps you like to think that a ring such as the one with which I became involved cannot grow as a cancer grows in the breast of an unsuspecting patient. If you believe this, you are wrong.
The psychologists who were assigned to examine those arrested by the police arrived at varying conclusions. Only upon one point were they in agreement. They said that the human mind, once exposed to' good or bad, can either accept or resist within certain limits. The limits of acceptance or rejection are not the same in all people, nor are they the same in both sexes. It is, they pointed out, somewhat similar to the fine line that is drawn between sanity and insanity. The person who over-feeds upon sex is not unlike the person who cannot leave the dinner table following a reasonably balanced meal. His normal mental processes are disturbed-often destroyed-by a constant, yearning hunger that never knows complete satisfaction.
I have thought about these things a great deal and I believe that I know what the doctors meant. Many people who sell lurid sex for a living are no different from the rest of us-at first. But, slowly or rapidly, their moral senses blunt; they brutalize themselves and others.
Murder and suicide have already followed in the wake of the arrests. The same day of their release on bail, Andy Willis shot and killed Gladys Lord. Moments later he placed the snout of the gun in his mouth and took his own life. The double deaths made newspaper headlines since the twin tragedy took place near a crowded street corner in the downtown section. Not so spectacular was the overdose of sleeping pills taken by Elsa Lang or her death, hours later in City Hospital, while a stomach pump struggled to save her.
There have been many other repercussions, too. Several divorces have been filed by prominent men and women, directed at spouses who were trapped in the raid, among these an official of a newspaper distributing company, a radio disc jockey, a member of the district attorney's staff and a few well-known business people.
The state legislature, which immediately unleashed a full scale investigation into the scandal, has closed four model agencies and two placement bureaus specializing in models, and has called before the committee several sales managers of large corporations, charging them with having used attractive call girls to solicit orders from out-of-town buyers. The state attorney's office, riding herd over the city district attorney, has uncovered evidence of white-slave traffic across state lines and the FBI has been brought in. Of particular interest to Federal authorities is the disappearance of more than thirty young girls, among them Diana Sanderson's sister. While identification of the remains of the bodies discovered buried in the back yard on Westminister Drive is almost impossible, the police have predicted that they will, after exhaustive laboratory tests, be able to put a name on most of them.
Diana Sanderson was, of course, released from custody-with a severe warning I am told-and I suppose she has returned to her home in Pine Island. Some day, after I am released from the hospital, I may visit her. On the other hand, I may not. The past dies quicker if it is neglected.
Everybody is nice to me here in the hospital but I am not happy. I want to get out, to slip away for a while before the trials start. I am to be a witness for the state and I have been informed that I will be questioned severely by the defense. There is nothing I can tell but the truth but when I am forced to relate my own participation I know I will not find it easy. Looking back, I wonder how I could have done some of the things required of me. However, my course got results. I am told the police have confiscated more than two tons of pornographic material, which is scheduled to be destroyed as soon as the trials are concluded.
I am also told that I shall be discharged from the hospital in two weeks. The doctors inform me that my skull fracture has healed nicely but they have warned me that I may walk with a limp for quite a while. In anticipation of my release, I have written to the mechanic working on my car, insisting that the job be finished as quickly as possible.
I no longer think much about the injured girl on the ski slope or the minister's daughter who so closely resembled her. Frankly, I have been kept rather busy during my stay in the hospital and I have had very little time for memories. At the start, the police and newspapermen bombarded me with questions and requests for statements, but as soon as all of this stopped I had a typewriter sent in and I began writing this book.
Lucy Miller, who did the typing, agrees with me that the story I have put down on paper is one which should be told over and over again. And she ought to know. Her own father may have to pay with his life for his weakness and folly. I hope, however, that it doesn't come to that. I would not wish to see her suffer further. After all, she is now my wife and I love her very much.