Chapter 3

TRYING to learn anything from the local newsdealers was like attempting to run through the Notre Dame line without any interference.

"You want to buy these pictures for yourself wholesale?" one man demanded. "Hell, I can't help you, mister. A guy just comes around, maybe once or twice every two months. Not always the same man. Just a guy. He asks what I want and I tell him. He gets them out of his car, brings them in and I pay him. That's all."

I wasted two days running around corners and then I decided to return to the city.

"I'll keep you posted," I told Doctor Call.

He gave me a check for three hundred and I put it in my wallet.

"You won't find anything here," he said. "It comes from outside. And-Mr. Morgan, let me know about my daughter, won't you?"

"Just as soon as I get something."

I went out onto the porch and stopped.

"She mentioned an Elsa Lang once. Would her parents live in town?"

He gave me an address on Grove Street, not far from where I was staying.

On the way back to the hotel I gave the situation some serious thought. How did you work your way into the guts of something like this? How did you find out the truth? And, after you had unearthed the truth, what did you do with it?

The time spent with the newsdealers, however, had not been altogether wasted. I had learned a few things.

Most of the magazines that featured draped and un-draped female figures were delivered by truck. The use of a truck, of course, prevented the publishers from being cited by the postal department. Some of the magazines, such as a few of those dealing with the nudist movement, carried unretouched photographs of both men and women. These magazines, I had been informed, were perfectly legal because they were aimed at a specific group of people. A mixed gathering of snickering boys and girls in one of the stores, a hole-in-the-wall billiard place on Ramson Avenue, had given me some serious doubts about the wisdom of this ruling.

Not so generously to be judged, in any case, were some of the one and two dollar books which I had managed to pick up in a couple of places in town. These books, consisting of about thirty pages of very poor offset work, featured some equally poor typesetting and a few rather clear photographs. The text of each book concerned itself with the swift pursuit of the opposite sex, the immediate capitulation of the victim, plus a graphic account of the ensuing gratification. Some of the books were from the man's point of view and some detailed the woman's feelings. All were written in the first person and most of the books dwelled heavily upon unusual practices.

The photographs, seldom related to the content of the story in any way, leaned heavily toward the unorthodox. The men in the photos usually wore fake moustaches and the eyebrows of the women were changed to make recognition impossible. Some of the books lacked a publisher's imprint while others purported to have been printed in Paris, France, They were, individually or as a group, shoddy literature.

Upon my return to the hotel I packed my suitcase and typewriter-I had destroyed the several books which I had purchased because they were of no possible value to me-and prepared to leave. However, before departing the room I looked up the phone number of the Lang residence on Grove Street and placed a call to it. I was 'greeted by a woman who said that her daughter was not at home and there was no telling when she would be there. It was quite evident that the woman cared very little about whether Elsa Lang ever showed up again or not.

When I reached the lobby I checked my bags at the desk, paid my bill, and went out into the street.

Grove Street, I soon discovered, was in a sorry neighborhood. The houses were ancient and uncared for and old newspapers and discarded tin cans littered the pavement. The Langs lived on the second floor of a house that smelled of fish and beer and poverty.

"I'd like to see Mrs. Lang," I told the woman who answered the door.

"I'm Mrs. Lang. What you want?"

She wasn't an old woman, perhaps in her late forties, but the ravages of the years had left their marks upon her. Her face was dirty and wrinkled and her body sagged beneath a faded wash dress.

"I was looking for your daughter, Elsa Lang."

I told her that I was an agent for one of the large model agencies in the city and that I had seen a picture of her daughter. I said that I didn't know where she worked but that somebody had given me her address and I thought that I might be able to locate her if I called at her home. I gave it quite a build-up, bearing down on the possibilities of a good future for the girl, and after a while I began to get results.

"Well," she said finally, "I'll give you her address. As long as you're not a bill collector. God, but I'm tired of having them bother me! I just got rid of one a couple of minutes ago." She stared at me silently for a moment, her eyes belligerent. "By God, if you're another one, mister, you can go to hell."

I assured her again that I wasn't.

"Well, all right, mister. I just hope she makes enough to pay her bills and get straightened out. Anybody thinks I'm going to do it for her is nuts."

The address Mrs. Lang gave me was in a part of the city with which I was not familiar. I told the woman thanks, dropped the slip of paper into my pocket and left.

I reached the city shortly after four and took a cab from the station up to the Central Building. Sam Terry had gone out early so I left the manuscript with his secretary and told her that the pictures would follow in a couple of days.

Back on the street, I wondered if Sam was at the little bar around the corner but I decided against conducting an investigation. On occasion, Sam can drink rather heavily and I didn't have the time to sit around and listen to him express his theories about why a magazine did or did not sell. I caught a cab, while I was still thinking about it, and told the driver to take me up to my apartment on Channing Boulevard, two blocks from Edison Park.

Channing Boulevard isn't the most exclusive section of the city but it isn't down in the slums, either. I guess you could call it a happy compromise between wealth and poverty. Most of the apartment buildings are redbrick and clean, with green lawns in the front during summer and playgrounds in the rear. There is elevator service, a television rental service and most of the buildings have a private dining room. The building in which I lived, the Cottonwood, also featured a barber shop on the first floor and a swimming pool in the basement.

The first thing I did after depositing my stuff in the apartment was to change into trunks and ride the elevator down to the basement.

At that time of the day, between five and six, many of the male residents descended to the pool. They were a pretty good crew, moderately successful doctors and lawyers and insurance men and people like that. I'd never gotten too friendly with any of them but I had a speaking acquaintance with several and I found their conversations both amusing and relaxing. This evening, however, I am afraid I proved a rather dull companion and, sensing it, I remained only long enough to enjoy a good swim. But even the cool lash of the water did very little to relieve the tension I felt building up within me, a tension which had first manifested itself when I assured Dr. Call that I would do everything I could to get at the truth behind the filth campaign as quickly as possible.

Back in my room I dressed hurriedly, retrieved my topcoat from the bedroom closet and took the elevator to the street level.

There was a magazine and book store on Fanning Street, just around the corner and the proprietor, a man whom I knew only casually, greeted me as I came in. He seemed mildly surprised at my choice of reading material.

The bill was four dollars and seventy cents and when I returned to the hotel I had a fine collection of magazines featuring gaudy covers and lurid titles.

Many of the pictures and advertisements were repeated in the various magazines and I noted that several were published by the same firm. All of the girls pictured were young, many of them quite pretty and I wondered how they must feel after reading some of the blurbs assigned to them:

"Long time, no see" hardly applies to curvaceous Dolly Dawn because anybody with eyes can see MOST ALL of red-headed Dolly.

"SHADOW DANCE. These lovely scenes were taken from the window shades of a lovely dancer's apartment. It was fun to catch Kathy in the act!"

Pages toward the front of each magazine featured an assortment of blondes, brunettes and red-heads in various stages of undress. In nearly every case the reader was furnished with the vital statistics of the girl: her age, size of her hips, tummy and bust; plus suggestive comments about her aspirations.

But it was not the girls, attractive as they were, that were of primary interest to me. The ads, toward the backs of the books, captured most of my attention. "Party Pix ... An Unusual Fun Package."

"How to Kiss-More than 50 love techniques fully revealed."

"New Photos of Kantly Kane, Titillating Strip-Tease Sensation."

"50 Daring, Exotic Poses For Only 2 Bucks."

"Men! Free Samples Of The REAL STUFF!"

"Censored Photos Of That 'Girl Next Door'."

"Unique Figure Studies To Please The Most Discriminating Collector." These, plus hundreds of other ads, cluttered the pages of each magazine. It seemed ironic that several of the magazines had donated space for public service ads instructing the-reader to "Help Fight Cancer."

I worked until after eight o'clock addressing envelopes, writing out check's and ordering a wide variety of-party pics, nudes for artists only, and four or five books with promising titles. Some of the firms were located in the east, an equal number in the west while several were in small towns scattered across the country. Just what I might accomplish by spending this money was highly doubtful, but it had occurred to me that I might learn more in the local outlets if I approached them as a seller rather than as a buyer. While I did not expect the photos which I would receive to meet the requirements of the smut trade, they might establish a basis for friend-ly conversations which could accidentally point the way to at least one of the sources of supply I was seeking.

I figured up the total amount of money which the checks represented and grinned. It was probably the only time in history when a church would be billed for more than ninety dollars for the express purpose of purchasing borderline sex material.

The dining room off the lobby was about to close but since I was a frequent visitor there the hostess obligingly seated me at one of the tables near the window.

I ordered steak and a rye-and-soda, and contemplated my next move.

I am not a prude and I hope you will understand that. As a matter-of-fact, I could not be a prude even if I cared to become one.

I was born in Philadelphia, on October 27, 1931. My childhood was neither happy nor unhappy. I was an average student, I suppose, and my father, who worked in a local glass factory, wanted me to become a lawyer. But his death, when I was fifteen, prevented this and when I was graduated from high school, two years later, I went to work to help support my mother and younger sister. Two years after that, while riding with friends near Monticello, New York, both my mother and sister were killed in a head-on collision which also claimed the lives of three other people. I remained in Philadelphia only a few months following their deaths.

Korea beckoned and I served there with the infantry, I believe with honor, until my discharge in 1952. Following this I worked for, a year with Atlas Constructors in Casablanca and, upon completion of my contract with them, I went on to Greenland for another year. Back in the States once again I entered the insurance business, sold a little life and accident and sickness coverage for a few months, and then took a job as shipping clerk with a hot-rod mail order firm. While working for the automotive concern I became acquainted with all of the parts used in souping up cars and, for want of having nothing better to do with my spare time, began writing about them. Strangely enough, my work began to sell and, a few months later, I quit the firm and devoted all of my time to writing about the special parts which people should use in their cars.

The women in my life, until meeting Sandy at a holiday party given by mutual friends, had been several and of little consequence. There had been a cute little thing in Germantown about whom I had been serious but an Air Force uniform had outranked me and she had married the lieutenant. During my army and overseas carreer there had been many adventures, most of them one-night affairs of the type where the girl seldom told me her name or asked me mine. Not until Sandy had there been anybody real, anyone really worthwhile. And, of course, Sandy was dead. Fate, and some of my foolish insistence that she learn to ski, had been responsible for that.

The steak that the waitress brought was fairly good but I didn't enjoy it. My glance kept straying to the pile of envelopes on the table and they served as a reminder of the job I had to do. It was not a pleasant job, in spite of the money Dr. Call and his associates were willing to pay. It was a job which would force me to look into the twisted lives of many people and, of course, that is never a happy task. Lucrative and perhaps exciting, yes; but, truthfully, nothing to feel very good about.

I left the apartment building and mailed the letters at a drop box on the corner. A cab lurked nearby. I motioned to the driver and the car slid smoothly forward.

Bolton Road was on the south side of the city, near the river. As we rolled down the parkway I could see the lights of the ships in the bay, the illuminated skyline of the suburbs beyond the opposite shore. A freighter pushed wearily upstream, heading for the big docks at Wind Hollow. When we reached the Yankee ferry slips, the cab swung down off the parkway, turned sharp right and rumbled along over rough brick pavement.

Twenty Bolton Road was a couple blocks away from the river front, near one of the small parks. The building featured walk-up service and I was pleased to note that Elsa Lang's apartment was on the first floor, right rear.

I pushed the button and waited. The wail of a phonograph sounded faintly in the distance and from behind one of the doors a woman giggled. I pushed the button again.

The door was opened almost immediately by the cute little blonde I had seen on the train.

"May I talk with you a moment, Miss Lang?"

This, I discovered, was the wrong approach since she merely frowned and began to close the door.

"It's about Miss Call. I'd like to speak with you a moment about her if I may."

Slowly, the door opened again. This time I got a better look at her. She wore a long powder-blue housecoat that swept down over her body to her ankles. Her hair, though neat, held several pin curls and I assumed that I had interrupted one of her feminine chores. While it was rather difficult to see her face in the dim light I noted that she wore hardly any lipstick.

"Oh," she said, stepping aside. "I thought you were a salesman."

I entered the apartment and waited for her to close the door.

"I'm a friend of her father," I said.

"Oh." She smiled and her smile was just as nice as it had been on the train. "But you do look like that man who was here last week. He had one of those talking Bibles and he played and played the thing until I almost went out of my mind."

I had, quite by accident, heard of the talking Bible and I had even written an article about it, slanting the material toward one of the Sunday newspaper supplements. But the piece had been rejected as being too commercial and I had let the matter drop. It had been, I thought, a gentle reminder that my most profitable field of writing was for the automotive markets.

"Won't you be seated, Mr.-"

"Morgan. Bill Morgan."

She smiled again, and I noticed that her teeth were very white.

"I'm Elsa," she said.

I sat down in one of the low chairs opposite the davenport. Silently I watched her as she went over to one of the end tables and picked up a cigarette. The housecoat, which was made of some soft, shiny material, clung to her thighs and legs as she walked. She had a rather small, compact shape.

"What did you want to know about Judith?"

She sat down on the davenport and the split in her housecoat traveled to a point midway between her knees and thighs, revealing a pink slip underneath.

"Well, I'm a writer," I said. "And a friend of her father. Dr. Call asked me if I would be kind enough to send him her address. I thought you might be able to help."

Elsa Lang sighed and blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling. Her breasts, whenever she took a deep breath, pushed out round and full against the housecoat.

"I don't have her address," she said, still smiling. "Therefore, it would be quite impossible for me to help you."

"I see. But I thought you were her friend."

"When I met Miss Call, Friday night, she spoke of the possibility of coming to the city to work. She mentioned your name to me at that time and it was only natural I would assume that you might know where she had gone. She said you were trying to get her a job."

"I did get her a job."

"Where?"

Some of the friendliness in the girl's face disappeared and she crushed out the cigarette in an ash tray.

"Look," she said. "I don't know why you came here and I don't know why you're so interested in Judith Call. But I'll tell you this. Judith was so sick of her life in New Rockford that she didn't know what to do. She asked me to find her a job. And I did. But where she went or who she's working for I couldn't say. All I know is that I phoned her on Friday night and made an appointment to meet her downtown near the theatre. She got there, about five minutes late, and I gave her the name and the address of a man who said he could use her. I haven't heard from her since that time and I haven't seen her. And that, Mr. Morgan, is all I know."

"Incredible," I said, staring at her.

"What is?"

"Not knowing where she is."

"Well, I'm not her keeper, am I? I just did the little thing a favor, making it possible for her to get out and get started on her own. What am I supposed to do, put a leash on her so she can follow me around?"

I frowned and lit a cigarette. My first impression on the train about the blonde had been wrong. She was no reflection of the young, schoolgirl type. Kind words or flattery wouldn't get me very far with Elsa Lang.

"Well, the hell with it," I said, reversing my tactics. "So I can't find her. So what?"

The blonde favored me with another smile.

"So her old man'll blow his cork, that's what. And it'll serve him right. He never did treat her the way he should have."

I don't know why I felt obligated to find Judith Call. Certainly it had no direct bearing upon the work I was doing for the church. And surely it wasn't because I felt that her father's attitude toward her had been just and fair or that she didn't have a legitimate right to seek out something better for herself. Perhaps it was simply a haunting regret that she should feel that part of her own personal world was against her when, in fact, it was merely a matter of misunderstanding. Or perhaps it was because she reminded me of a very beautiful girl who no longer lived. Rut, whatever it was, I was under a compulsion to find this girl. What might happen after that I didn't know. It didn't seem to matter very much. Finding Judith Call seemed to be the big thing I had to do.

"Judith told me that you're a model, Miss Lang."

"Stockings and bras."

"I guess you do quite well at it."

She shrugged and got to her feet.

"You can always do better." She looked around the apartment. "Money. A person can never have enough of it."

The apartment, by almost any standard, was comfortable and modern. It would have pleased most people. Rut I could tell that it wasn't satisfactory to Elsa Lang.

"You're a writer, Mr. Morgan?"

"Yes."

"I guess you do quite well at it," she said, in mimicry of my own remark.

"It has its ups and downs."

She took another cigarette from the end able and lit it.

"Now we know all about each other," she said. "Isn't it a comfortable feeling, Mr. Morgan?"

She was laughing at me and I knew it. Frankly, I don't like to have people laugh at me. We all have a niche in this little old world. Some of us are important Some of us aren't. But, sooner or later, we all revert to the status of being very unimportant. It hardly seems worth fighting about.

"You've forgotten me," I said. "I saw you on the train Friday night."

"No. I didn't forget you. I thought you were a student."

"And I thought you were a high school girl." She laughed, pleased with my observation, and much of the tension seemed to leave the room. "Would you care for a drink?"

"If you have rye and soda."

We had a couple of drinks together and talked a little. She was older than I had thought, almost twenty. She told me that she had been ill for two years as a youngster with rheumatic fever and, therefore, her graduation from high school had been delayed. I gathered from her conversation that she had a great dislike for New Rockford, her family and almost everybody in the town. She returned there for week-ends occasionally, possibly to gloat, and the thought of ever living there again was revolting. She was, I decided, an unhappy girl. Unhappy and brittle and hard.

"Well," I said finally, "I've made a thorough nuisance of myself and have drunk quite a lot of your whiskey. I'm wondering if I might be able to interest you in dinner."

Actually, I wasn't at all hungry but I thought if I could talk to her further, get to know her better, that I might be able to learn something about Judith Call's whereabouts. The mystery surrounding the girl had intrigued me.

"I have a ravenous appetite," she said, without the slightest hesitation. "You'll be sorry, Mr. Morgan."-I waited while she went into the bedroom and dressed.

She called out to me once, telling me to help myself to the rye, but I didn't bother with another drink. I had picked up a photo album from one of the end tables and I was looking at that. There were several pictures of Elsa in a bathing suit, a couple of good commercial shots of her legs which, incidentally, were mighty attractive, and two or three of her modeling a popular-priced bra. I happened to be looking at one of the photos of her in a peek-a-boo strapless bra when she came out.

"I never wear one myself," she said matter-of-factly. "Rut that doesn't mean to say that the day won't come when I'll need an assist."

From the appearance of her figure under the sheer black dress that time was a long way off. Her breasts were wide apart and slightly uptilted, their generous cones thrusting boldly outward. The dress was tight around her narrow belly but it flowed out in soft waves over her rounded hips. She had applied a very dark lipstick to her mouth, not too much, and she had added some color to her cheeks. Her hair, now that the curlers had been removed, fell down across her shoulders, framing her face in a blonde semi-circle of loveliness. She was, I was forced to admit, an extremely attractive and desirable woman.

"You ought to do well as a model," I observed. "You have all of the necessary equipment."

"Now, now, Mr. Morgan," she cautioned laughingly. "Don't let your emotions get the best of you."

We left the apartment and while we were on our way out to the street we decided it would be much simpler if she called me Bill and I called her Elsa. It's funny, but you always get around to that sooner or later.

There was a little place on Fourth Avenue, near the Mall, where I went frequently. It was an unpretentious restaurant specializing in Italian food, but it had a cozy atmosphere and one which I felt would meet all the requirements of the occasion. Elsa accepted my suggestion quickly and when we finally caught a cab I told the driver to take us over to Ruby's.

Dinner was good and although I had tussled with a steak only a few hours before I managed to consume most of the spaghetti. Elsa ordered a fillet, medium, and she said it was by far the best she had had in a long time. During dinner we consumed a bottle of Italian wine, both enjoying the deep, rich flavor age had given it.

"You're a funny guy," she said finally. "You walk into my apartment, ask a lot of questions about another girl and then take me to dinner. What's your angle, Bill?"

I grinned. "Who knows? I told you I'm a writer. Maybe that explains it."

"Maybe it does," she agreed. "And I'm a model. Perhaps that tells a little bit about me, too."

She was beginning to feel the effects of the wine and when she started talking about her work I didn't interrupt. She worked for one of the agencies in the mid-town section. Not a large agency, but one with several connections in the garment industry. Most of the work was in stockings, bras, girdles and things like that. Sometimes she got an assignment to work one of the showrooms, demonstrating the latest in feminine unmentionables to out-of-town buyers.

"A lot of the girls won't do it," she said. "Of course every firm has its rules but you can't keep the hands of some of those buyers off you. It isn't enough that they see a bra at a distance of six inches. They want to feel of it, too. And they want to hang on."

Once in a while, she said, she was asked to help entertain some of the buyers and, frequently, a buyer would insist upon additional favors before he would consent to placing an order.

"I don't know why I'm telling you all this, Bill." The wine had long since disappeared and we were drinking rye and soda. Her eyes were quite dull by this time and she gave every indication of having difficulty focusing them on my face. "But I kind of like you. I don't know why. But I do."

"And I think you're all right, too, Elsa."-I don't like to lie to people. I hadn't been brought up that way and I'd never accomplished very much whenever I'd tried it. But this situation with Elsa was different. I either went along with her in everything she did and said or I left her alone. There wasn't, as far as I could see, any other choice.

"We get a bonus if we help get an order," she said. She thought about that for a moment and her mouth twisted at the corners. "Well, it's a living. What more can anybody expect?"

Quite often, she said, she went to parties. Not that she always enjoyed them but it was one way, of meeting different people in the trade, part of the price that you had to pay if you wanted to stay in the rat race. The week before, on Wednesday, she had been to one and she had met a man looking for a new face, someone who might be able to pose for still shots. She couldn't remember his name or his address or anything about him but she'd taken his card and she'd given it to Judith Call.

"Hell," Elsa said tiredly. "I didn't know everybody was going to get excited about it. She wanted a job, any kind of a job, and I found her one. What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing, I guess."

"You acted like there was when you came barging in on me. You acted like I should know all about her. God, Bill, this is a big city. You make one left turn when you should go right arid you wind up a long way off."

In a way, she was expressing my feelings and worries. Judith was a small-town girl accustomed to small-town living. And she was bitter. It was a combination which, if she failed to be prudent, could get her into much trouble. One left turn....

"Does Judith have your telephone number?"

Elsa regarded me without interest for a moment. I noticed that she was breathing very heavily, her pointed breasts rising and falling beneath the dress. Her hands, as they reached out and touched mine, were warm and damp.

"You worry too damn much," she told me. "Of course, she has my number." Her hands circled my fingers, squeezing them. "Let's get out of here, Bill. God, I can't stay in the same place hour after hour!"

I paid the check and when we got outside I asked her where she wanted to go.

"My apartment," she said, clinging to my arm. "Can you think of a better place?"

She sat very close to me in the cab, her thigh against mine, the deep musk smell of her perfume all around us. It occurred to me, rather suddenly, that in many ways Elsa was like Judith Call. She was bitter, too, but it was a different kind of bitterness. She found relief in taking from the world what she wanted when she wanted it. At the moment, it seemed, she wanted me. Or, perhaps any man would have been acceptable. Any man who could give her the feeling of being wanted, of being needed.

"You can kiss me, Bill."

I kissed her, not because I wanted to kiss her but because, at the moment, it was the thing to do.

Her lips were warm and parted and soft. Somewhat surprised, I found myself enjoying the kiss, holding it long after she had ceased to respond.

"Bill," she whispered. "Let's wait. Not here in the cab."

"And not if you don't want to."

"But I do. You know I do."

It had been a long time since Sandy. I gripped Elsa's hand.

The cab stopped in front of the apartment and I paid the driver. As we went in through the darkened entrance she leaned against me, her one arm partially circling my waist. Upon reaching her door she emitted a tiny sigh, pulled my head down with both of her hands and kissed me eagerly on the mouth. Then she pressed the key into my hand and smiled.

"A writer needs experience," she said impudently. "Let's live it up a little bit."

Once we were inside the apartment there were no further preliminaries. She removed her coat, dropped it across the back of the nearest chair and motioned for me to follow her into the bedroom.

I knew, from the way she stood in the middle of the bedroom and casually lifted the dress over her head, that this was old stuff with her. I wondered, as I shrugged out of my coat, how much bonus she picked up each week entertaining buyers. I decided, a few minutes later, that it was undoubtedly a considerable amount. She was violently clever in bed.

Every curve of her soft and willing body, every generous tremor which passed through it, seemed dedicated to delivering complete and lasting pleasure. Every demanding kiss, every moan and practiced movement, was designed to incite an overwhelming desire.

It was almost morning before I left her apartment.

I still did not know what had happened to Judith Call.

But I now knew where a woman lived.

A woman who cried because no one man would ever be enough.