Chapter 8
Tina shrugged. "Who cares? We're small time, and sipped Claret from a long-stemmed glass. The room was heavy with gray smoke and the place smelled like sewer gas. They watched the crowd surge and hunt for tables. The place looked like a bughouse as waiters charged madly with heaping trays of food for the customers. There was a mirror beside each table on the wall and as Tina stared around the room, everything she saw was double. She saw a man spit behind a table out of the side of his lower lip. Then he seemed contented.
Leslie said: "I'm not worried about the articles. They can't pin anything on us even if the D.A. decides to look into the situation. But I suggest we cool it for a while anyway."
Tina and Leslie stood at the crowded, noisy bar It makes good reading but not good hunting," she said indifferently.
"You know what?" said Leslie, lighting a cigarette and exhaling a mouthful of smoke. "I'd love to get my hands on that fancy uptown chick who wrote the stuff about us and give her a treatment she could never forget."
"That's all we need," said Tina. "The paper would really blow it's stack if we worked their girl over-although it's something to think about if things get hot, just to teach her a lesson."
"Have you seen the newspaper guy-the chick's friend-since you dumped him from your apartment?" Leslie asked her curiously.
"No," said Tina slowly. "He hasn't been back."
"In a way I'm glad," said Leslie.
Tina pulled her shoulders back. "He'll be back. I'm sure of it."
"You think he's hooked on you?"
"I've hooked better guys than him," Tina replied. "He's very confident about himself-thinks he's the great, imaginative lover with the women. To me he's all square and soft as jello. No springs. I think he wants to be sexually dragged down without actually knowing it. I was really riping him up for me, though."
"Is there any way he can be useful to you?"
Tina thought a moment. "It's possible, Leslie, very possible. I would like to use him to get through to the chick. If we could manage that we could get that straight-laced chick up to the country for the treatment. There wouldn't be any more articles after that-you can be sure."
Leslie wet her lips. "Wow ... would I like to get my hands on that dame and raise her temperature." Her eyes turned wide.
A noise like a high gong was clicking in Tina's head. "The more I think of it the better I like the whole idea. Now if we only could get our hands on her," Tina said thoughtfully.
Suddenly Leslie nudged Tina's arm. "Say, there, look what I see at the bar," she whispered.
Tina turned slowly and across the crowded bar she saw Lou talking to a tall man with brown, short-cropped hair. Lou was looking nervously about the room.
"That's a fuzz he's talking to, I bet," said Leslie.
"No doubt. He's got copper splashed all over him."
"What do you think, Tina? More trouble for us?"
"On second thought, Leslie, I should say no. I think he came down here looking for me and merely ran across the fuzz by accident. He's hot for me so he can't stay away. If his editor or any of his friends ever found out how he's been carrying on with me it would be curtains for him and his job.
"Sounds reasonable," said Leslie. She laughed slightly, sadly.
Tina maintained her stare of sustained inspection of Lou and the copper. A small secret smile adorned her red lips as if she were fitting the pieces in her mind into the right slots. Then she turned her head and looked around the room appreciatively, her face glowing in the golden light.
Tina's eyes suddenly bounced like ping-pong balls as she elbowed Leslie. "I've got a great idea," she said excitedly. "I'm going to spend some time with Lou. Tonight. I'll dump the whole thing in his lap. I'll hook him good. He's in too deep with me now to start pulling out. He'll do anything I want."
Leslie looked puzzled. "Exactly what are you getting at?" she wanted to know.
Tina's eyes danced. "I want to involve him further with me and then face him with the evidence."
"What evidence are you talking about, Tina?" asked Leslie.
Tina grinned and her deep set eyes burned like a simmering volcano. "Pictures of us both together. Instant stardom for us both when we show it to the guy's fancy chick reporter. Maybe he can't spell my name right but he knows how to look," said Tina with a sardonic smile.
"You think you can get it done?"
"Forget the question. Remember the answer. I'll do it somehow." said Tina determinedly. "Suppose you leave me now, Leslie. I want him to see me alone when the cop leaves."
Lou, meanwhile, had been glancing nervously around the bar as he spoke to the man, apprehensive that Tina might somehow approach them and start a conversation.
"So we don't have too much to go on except the lousy conditions and practices the girls here engage in. Not enough to start a real drive, Lou," Mulligan was saying. "Personally, I'd love the chance to bust this love racket wide open. I'm sure deep down it's not only love for sale-I think even beside the pot and LSD stuff they carouse with they got a bigger hobby going for them. I wonder what?"
Lou swallowed hard. "I've been hanging around here a little and as soon as I dig up some facts I'll give them to Marilyn for her articles." Lou said.
"Sure, Lou, do that. Now, I've got to get back to the precinct. See you about, Lou."
He said goodbye and watched the detective push through the crowd. He knew he was out of his mind to have come back here to see that dark-eyed mysterious Tina again. He winced as he contemplated the price Tina might want to extract from him this time. He stared at the empty glass on the bar. He was warm and the thick smoke enveloped him. The noise of the juke box blared and interrupted his now wavering thoughts.
Then he saw her. She was alone at the other end of the bar. His jaw squared as he wended his way toward her.
"Hello, Tina," he said, squeezing in beside her.
She turned her nose. "Sounds familiar-like the first time we met," she said indifferently.
She seemed to be dressed different this evening. Her clothes were shimmering colors of oriental brocades and she had a new stylish coiffure. A cloud of dark hair was neatly set over her forehead and she had the stare of cocky confidence. He felt a silent ache beginning to churn inside him.
"What are you back for now, Lou?" she asked. Then she laughed, deeply amused at his discomfort. It was a way she had of throwing her head back as she laughed-as if she wanted to taste her joy first.
His eyelids shrunk slowly. "Frankly, Tina, I tried to stay away from you but I couldn't. I kept seeing you everywhere."
"Sapped dry as a herring, already, so you come back to Tina?" she said smugly.
"I guess that's it, Tina." he said bashfully.
He knew she was whipping him into a state of sexual delirium and she was enjoying his discomfort.
"What's wrong with your uptown girl friend? Can't she satisfy you?"
"Not like you, Tina-never like you."
She cocked her head and mocked him with a twisting smile. "What do you want to do with me, Lou?" she asked.
He swallowed hard, looking away from the coal-black eyes haunting him, hoping he had a bullet-proof resistance to her sinister charms. Something about her engulfed him so completely.
"Let me make love to you, Tina, tonight. I need you," he said.
She laughed. "Not a chance, baby."
He leaned toward her. "I'm sorry about those articles she wrote about you and the girls here-I couldn't have stopped them," he said.
"I don't believe it."
"Believe me. I'll do anything to prove it." She stared at him as though he were an open wound.
"You are beginning to crawl, aren't you Lou, just like I told you the other night," she said.
He nodded. "With you I guess I'm a born loser," he replied.
"I can't forgive you for what you did. You put my ass on a poster and sold it to the highest bidder. Now you throw yourself at me and you want me to forget everything," she said derisively.
"It's not exactly that way, Tina. Stop shrivelling me-please."
For a moment there was a sudden bandaged silence between them. Then she said, "All right, maybe I'll give you the benefit of a strange doubt, Lou. I'll go upstairs. Give me a couple of moments. Then come in crawling-just as I said you would."
He licked his parched lips and watched her as she walked away and he thought no smuggled contraband could be so desirable to him at that moment as she. He waited some minutes, lit a cigarette and walked from the bar and up the stairs. At her door he stopped and listened, then knocked softly.
He heard her say, "Come in," and he opened the door. He glanced shyly down the corridor to see if there were any observers and seeing nobody was about, he slowly lowered himself to his knees and began to crawl on all fours into the room. Inside he stood up and shut the door. He gasped when he saw Tina spread on the bed in the nude-nothing on but the radio.
At that moment she became the awakening limb of his lustful imagination and he was at her side kneeling. His doubts suddenly vanished like early morning dew off the grass. He was madly, hopelessly aroused in a way he had only recently been iniated into and he began drawing his labored breath in shuddering gulps. He stared at her through drugged eyes and he felt on fire, as if a strange moment of truth was at hand for him.
"Is this the way you want me, baby?" she asked.
He buried his hand between her thighs. "Yes-yes, this is how I want you," he stammered.
"You're finished with all the uptown phonies, creeps, stiffs and bongs, Lou?"
He stared giddily, as though he were in a state of senseless mania. A wave of lust and desire swept through him. "I'm finished with them all. Let me be one of you, Tina?" he said, startled at the whine in his begging voice.
He moved closer to her-eager as a claim jumper. His heart pounded and warm flashes racked his body. He was now so close and yet so far. He wasn't sure yet what was in her simmering mind. He had to have her-here-now-tonight. A man without a woman like her is like a body without a soul, he thought. He would do any horse trading she wanted if he could share her bed.
She began taunting him with slow pelvic twists, and he stared at her. "You can take it all, Lou, but when you're finished I may ask you to pay a high price for taking me. I have my principles."
"Yes-Tina, you mention it when we're finished. I'll do whatever you say," he begged.
She smiled and took his hand and pulled him forward. He went to her. Tonight was to be his. He didn't mind begging for it. He invaded her slowly and she wrapped her hands around his back. He felt her shudder from her loins to her lips. He didn't want to rush her-to spoil everything. He wanted to avoid having his eagerness make him inadequate for her. Her body cleaved to his as though they were bonded to a sameness of flesh and bone operated by the same network of nerves and sensations.
His fire was building madly as she sank her teeth into his shoulder and she clung like a terrier, breath gusting heavily through her open mouth. He could feel her beginning to flood and bite down harder on him. He began to boil over as his body pounded hers and his fingers gouged her buttocks. She lifted herself higher toward him and he gasped at her reach. There came from her the convulsive jerk and she was suddenly out of control. His impalement was controlling her as she writhed insensibly, as eruption enveloped them simultaneously.
Later, as he lay beside her he could feel her move her hand caressingly down his chest and belly. He didn't move or speak. When she curled her slender leg over his hairy thigh, he knew she had him. She had settled on her prize like a brood hen on its nest. This was her definite victory. What, he wondered, would be the price she would soon demand of him?