Chapter 6

Although the letter I received from Dr. Call was somewhat critical-what, actually, had I accomplished so far?-there was a check for one hundred fifty dollars enclosed. I folded the check, placing it in my wallet, and severely chastised myself for not having sent along a bill for my expenses to date.

My reply to the good Reverend required more than two pages of single-line typing and consumed an hour of my time. I outlined, in detail, my actions to date and related, in the most optimistic terms possible, that I had every reason to believe I would be able to obtain the address of his daughter in the very near future. Upon completion of the letter, I attempted to fashion a bill for the amounts of money I had spent on the photos and books but, unable to present the matter satisfactorily in writing, I finally gave it up and mailed the letter from the corner, special delivery.

I had by this time accumulated a rather imposing selection of questionable photographs and books. In fact, my inventory had now increased to a point where I found it necessary to carry a briefcase. Many of the photos I had received from the western outlets were duplicates of those I had purchased in the east, lending further credibility to my suspicions that the supplies originated from one central source. The association which I had managed to establish with several book stores was friendly, if not profitable, and I had, I felt, successfully implanted the thought in the minds of most of the store owners that I was in need of more appealing supplies.

As soon as I had mailed the letter to the Reverend I hailed a cab and asked to be taken to Darwin Circle. I reflected, during the trip downtown, that it would be far more convenient for me if I could get my forty-nine Ford into operation. This, however, remained for the distant future since the convertible was in a custom shop in Cannonsville and had been, for more than six weeks, in the process of complete engine and body modifications. I had made arrangements with the proprietor, an extremely competent hot-rod enthusiast, to take photos of every phase of the work. By the time the job was finished I would not only have a beautifully distinctive car but also material for a series of articles which would more than compensate for the expenses incurred.

I left the cab at Darwin Circle and walked crosstown toward the tiny store where I had made my first sale. The briefcase, which was quite heavy, banged unpleasantly against my knee.

The store, fortunately, was deserted and I was able to get right down to business with my client.

"Hell," he said, following a casual inspection of my offerings. "You've got nothing here that I want. This stuff is old hat."

"Well, at least it's something to sell," I said defensively. "If your own man doesn't come around you haven't got anything, anyway."

As I have said before, he was a grubby little fellow. The hand he brought forth from beneath the wooden counter resembled the hand of an auto mechanic after installing a new transmission.

"This is what you need, pal," he said. He broke open the cellophane bag and placed several photos before me. "Believe me, you're just an amateur without them."

There were eight pictures and the packet's price, I noted, was three dollars. The photos were in color and the reproductions were of good quality. All of the shots were of the same girl, taken against an outdoor background.

"Great," I admitted. "Just great!" I pushed the pictures aside and dug into my briefcase again. "Now, here are a couple of books that might hit your fancy. The first one-this one-is pretty well illustrated. It deals with a guy who has a dream about a pretty girl and-"

But he wasn't even mildly impressed. He'd stocked the book some months ago, and his customers would not buy the same thing twice. The current rage, of which he showed me a copy, was sixty-four pages in length and incorporated more than twenty erotic photos. The contents of the book, I might add, made me want to go out to the sidewalk, lie down in some desolate spot and heave my guts into the gutter.

"Five bucks," he told me. "And they go like crazy."

I shrugged and closed my briefcase.

"Well, I've had it." I said. "I can't do business if I can't get a hook-up. I wish you'd mentioned me to your friend when he was here."

"I did."

I casually examined the books on the shelves above his head. Some of them were good titles. "And what did he say?"

"He said to call him the next time you came in. If you want me to, I'll give him a ring and see what he says."

I felt elation building up inside of me, though I tried not to show it. Perhaps, at last, I might be getting somewhere.

"Please do," I said.

He went to the rear of the store, behind a huge rack of books, and I waited impatiently near the door. In a few moments the old man returned.

"Do you know where Sibyl's Cafeteria is on Parsons Boulevard?"

I told him I didn't but that I could find it easily enough.

"Hell be sitting at one of the tables near the back of the place.-Just past the door that goes down to the Johns, he said. Look for a man sitting alone with a silver-colored box on the table in front of him. Just go over and sit down and tell him that Harry sent you. All right?"

"Sure," I said, opening the door. "Fine. And thanks-Harry."

Parsons Boulevard wasn't quite as exclusive as the name might imply. It was located near the waterfront, not far from the fruit and vegetable docks. The names on the huge trailer trucks which were parked in the shadows of darkened buildings indicated far-away home bases such as Memphis and Mobile and Sarasota. A few warehouse hands, mostly colored, roamed narrow streets that were lined with closely arranged piles of boxes, crates and bags of outgoing merchandise.

Sibyl's Cafeteria was located on the corner of Percy and Chain Streets and not, as I had been told, on the Boulevard itself.-

"Watch yourself around here," the cab driver told me as I got out. "It's a rough neighborhood."

I don't know why it was called a cafeteria, unless it was to comply with some minor provision of the alcoholic beverage law. As I entered, I noticed that the interior Was mostly all bar, a horseshoe type affair that, at the moment, accommodated a couple of dozen men. Four girls, quite young, worked behind the bar. Their uniforms, pink and white, were identical: cut low in front and tight-fitting.

I saw the man with the silver box right away.

"Harry sent me," I said as I pulled out a chair and sat down. "I guess you know Harry."

The man at the table was rather large and dark-complexioned. A long, irregular scar swept down the right side of his face and disappeared beneath his chin. He stared at me for several moments, his dark eyes steady and unblinking.

"Wanta buy a book?" he inquired casually? lifting the top away from the silver box. "Best damned book in the world."

I looked at the book and felt a sense of shock. It was a beautiful white Bible.

"You can't go very wrong with something like that," I acknowledged. "That's for sure."

One of the girls from the bar approached our table but my companion told her to go to hell, that we didn't want anything to drink and that she should leave us alone.

"A cheap hustler," he said. His glance, dark and hard, lingered momentarily upon her retreating hips. "The whole bunch. They'd fall on their backs for any one of those guys who'd buy them a glass of wine."

I placed my briefcase on the floor and lit a cigarette. I wondered, idly, if any of the girls behind the bar had posed for some of the pictures. I decided, almost as quickly, that if they had it had been some time ago. The way they acted, leaning across the bar, letting the men fool with them, was evidence that they had long since passed the point of selling merely views of their bodies.

"Harry tells me that you're starting out on your own. How come?"

I leaned forward, my elbows on the table.

"It looks like a good chance to make a dollar," I replied. "Easier than trying to write for a living."

"You a writer?"

"Of sorts. But I don't make much money at it. This kind of thing seems to be all the go now. I thought I might, later, be able to work into the books. You know, do some of my own."

It ain't easy." He looked at the bar, as one of the girls giggled, and then back at me. "You have to have a printer who'll work with you. And you have to get distribution. It ain't easy."

"That's why I wanted Harry to speak to you about me. I thought we might be able to work together."

He seemed to consider that with some seriousness.

"Maybe," he admitted. "But there's some risk in it. You know that, don't you?"

"Yes, I'm aware of that."

"Fancy talker, ain't you?"

"Not intentionally. I guess it comes from my writing."

"You'd have to work on forty percent. I couldn't afford to give you more."

"That would be all right. This way, with the stuff I'm peddling, I make hardly anything."

We discussed my suggestion at length but I was able to gain very little information from him. I would be working on my own, he said, and in the event of any trouble he was not to become implicated in any way. It occurred to me then that I still didn't know his name and when I inquired about it he simply shrugged it off and said that it didn't matter. He eventually suggested that I accompany him to an address on Mercer Drive where I would be able to view a wide variety of material he had available.

Unfortunately, I never had an opportunity to visit the place on Mercer Drive if, indeed, there actually was one. In fact, after we went out into the street we had barely walked more than a third of the way along the block before I felt a terrible pain, accompanied by a roaring, hurtling blackness that sent me plunging forward into a pile of banana crates.

"A do-gooder," a faint voice said from a distance. "A lousy damn do-gooder."

Something else struck me on the head, this time higher up, and the blackness became thicker as a feeling of helpless nausea and blind terror swept through me.

When I came to, I was in a car. The car was bumping along over uneven pavement, tires thudding underneath. I shook my head and tried to sit up.

"Well, he's going to live," somebody said.

It was a cop. There were two cops in the car. One in front, driving, and the other in back with me.

"Christ," I said. I put my hand to my head. There was a lump on top, the size of a small lemon. "How'd I get here?"

"We picked you up," the one beside me said.

"Thanks." I found the package of Winstons in my coat pocket but changed my mind about lighting one. "I guess I feel pretty good,"

"I told them. "I'll get out anywhere you want to stop."

The cop who was driving turned his head part way around and laughed.

"You hear him, Oscar? He wants me to stop so we should let him out. How funny can a guy get, anyway?"

Nothing that I told them about myself, who I was or what I had been trying to do, impressed them in the least.

"Save it for the magistrate," advised the cop who was driving.

But I didn't have any better luck with the magistrate who was sitting in night court. The briefcase was mine, wasn't it? The pictures belonged to me, didn't they? Well, then, what could I expect?

"I ought to throw you in the can for sixty days," the magistrate told me. He glanced at one of the cops, the big fellow who had sat beside me on the way uptown. "He was trying to push his trash on some kids, wasn't he?"

"A fellow called up and said so. Somebody must've laid him out before we got there. He was all tangled up in a lot of bananas."

"Look," I protested. Several people stood around the chambers, gawking at me. They made me nervous. "I can tell you what happened. I had an appointment with this man downtown and-"

"What man?"

"I don't know his name." It sounded ridiculous. "All I know is-"

"Fifty bucks or sixty days," the magistrate informed me. "Take your pick."

I told him I would take the fifty dollars. There was no point in arguing the matter further. I had been neatly framed and I might as well accept it.

"I'll have to give you a check," I told him.

"Cash."

"I'll have to phone out for it."

"Go ahead. Use the one at the end of the hall."

I tried calling Sam Terry first but his wife said he had gone out to a meeting and she didn't know when to expect him. I thought of several other people I knew quite well-a doctor, a lawyer and an engineer who lived in my apartment building-but I rejected the idea of dragging them out at ten o'clock at night on such an errand. Finally, and in a moment of sheer desperation, I dialed Elsa Lang's number. Luckily she was at home and, while she did not have the money in the apartment, she could cash a check for fifty dollars and bring it down in a few minutes. She asked me what kind of trouble I'd gotten myself into but I told her that the matter was urgent and that I would explain when I saw her.

While I was waiting for Elsa, a plainclothes detective asked me a number of questions about myself, where I lived and things of that sort. He seemed reluctant to believe anything I told him and I, therefore, confined my replies to words of one syllable.

"I'd get out of town," he told me at last. "There's no place around here for you, Morgan."

Elsa arrived with the money a few minutes after he had completed his interrogation and it wasn't long before I was free to depart. My request, however, for the return of my briefcaseless the contents, of course-was promptly refused.

"How can they do a thing like that?" Elsa demanded, as we reached the sidewalk.

"I don't know. But they did."

We caught a cab and on the way over to her apartment she asked me why I had been arrested and all about it. I told her that I had been delivering some risque material for a disabled friend and that I had, during the trip, suffered an accident. My arrest, I explained, had been purely a matter of bad luck.

"Your friend ought to pay you for your trouble," she said.

"Maybe he will."

I don't know why I didn't confide in her. Perhaps it was because she had made arrangements for me to visit the model agency where she worked and I didn't want her to think that she had betrayed them in any way. I didn't believe there could have been any other reason. From the outset, she had appeared to be on the level with me.

"It's funny about Judith Call," I said, switching the subject. "You'd have thought she'd have called you by this time."

Elsa said that she would have thought so, too; but the girl hadn't and what could we do about that?

"Mr. Willis is giving a party Friday night," she said. "At the Oxford Hotel. I think I could arrange for you to go if you'd care to, Bill. The man who spoke to me about Judith might be there."

I told her I'd be happy if she could and, magnanimously, I felt like crushing her in my arms and kissing her bright red lips. She was, I told myself, in spite of all of her faults, a pretty good girl. I considered, as I told the cab driver to halt in front of a liquor store while I ran in and got a bottle, just what Sandy's attitude might be if she were alive and she knew I had been arrested for possessing indecent photos or that I was contemplating a few frolicsome moments with a girl who was willing to sell her body for money. There wasn't, I was forced to admit, much room for doubt about what she would have either said or thought.

My experience this time was considerably different from the first. To begin with, neither one of us had been drinking. And, secondly, we had, to a slight degree, come to know each other.

"It seems good to want a man just because he's a man," she confided, her lips moving against my mouth. "Unless you're a woman, you can't imagine the difference."

Her eyes completely unashamed.

"Am I pretty, Bill?"

For a reply, I seized her in my arms. Her warm body melted against mine, sending the fire of her flesh deep down into my belly. My mouth found her lips, crushing and bruising them. A long, shuddering moan escaped her....

Later, I fell asleep in her arms.