Chapter 4
Carol buzzed the intercom and said sweetly, "May I come in, teacher?"
I pushed back the correspondence I was working on.
"Be sure to bring an apple," I informed her, equally sweetly.
The door opened and there she was, sweet seventeen from the top of her head to flats she was wearing in lieu of her usual high heels. She even carried the books.
I suppose I was ogling, but not at the textbooks.
That form-fitting red sweater dripped sex. Or I should have said what it covered dripped sex. That, of course, was Carol minus a bra-just that skin-tight fire engine sweater and two conical haystacks literally pushing out of their confinement
"You didn't walk down the street like this?"
"I most certainly did. All the way from Miss Wormsby's. What's so wrong about a red sweater?"
"Honey, I'm surprised you didn't get arrested for soliciting."
"I got two wolf whistles."
"You're a sensation!" I said, still aghast. It didn't describe her in the least but it was the only thing I could come up with at the moment.
She stood there, just out of reach, grinning like an elf. "What are you ogling at? You see me every day."
"Come closer!"
She wiggled her nose at me. "Oh no you don't! No touches!"
"You want my blood pressure to burst the bulb?"
She -edged forward with a very wise smile, and a very definite jiggle. She gave me a womanly kiss and just as quickly eluded my arms.
"Hot, hot!" she quipped. "Don't get your little fingers burned-"
"You are a-a tease," I said at last. It was the only word I could find that even approached my present state of mind.
"I've been glamorized," she said, and struck a pose.
"What happened?"
"What do you think, lover?"
"The guy drooled over you."
"It wasn't a guy."
"A dame?"
"A woman they called Julia Anderson-not a young woman either. I'd say she was at least forty."
"Did she make a pass?"
Carol didn't immediately answer. "She did-but in a far different manner than I was expecting."
"Explain, honey."
"She wanted to know if I would meet her, Friday night at eight-said she had a very lucrative position she could explain to me at that time."
"What did you say?"
"Naturally, I told her that I would meet her at the corner of Fourth and Main. She seemed like a phony to me and this is the only way to find out"
"It might be dangerous, kitten."
"It might"
I got up from my chair and walked over to her side. "Dammit Carol, I don't want you to take unnecessary chances!"
"I won't take a single chance."
"Of course you will. This dame might have an accomplice-a goon. Or she might be better at judo than you are."
"That I've got to see," Carol said.
I still was far from satisfied. "Honey, I forbid you to meet this dame."
Her smile suddenly was tight. "Say that again, lover."
"I mean it. You might get hurt"
The smile wiped off her face. Her eyes lost their devilment and got serious. "Mike, you actually mean that don't you? You're afraid for little old me."
"Why shouldn't I be afraid for you? Must I write it down or record it on a sound track? Don't you realize I'm in love with you!"
"Mike, are you in love with me so much that you'd back it up?"
"Yes, I'll back it up."
"With a ring?"
"With a ring-just as soon as we can clean up this mess."
I wasn't exactly ready to spill the news to her but she had pumped it out, very adroitly.
She came into my arms now, so spontaneously that it was little short of amazing. Her lips clamped on mine, and suddenly that sweater was right there where I could feel it as well as see it. I reached for her and the ecstasy built in a hurry.
A door clicked in the outer office and that meant company.
"Let the customer wait!" I said tugging at her.
"Mike, are you crazy?" She was struggling to get free. Her hands came up defensively as a last resort and I wilted. She stood there, adjusting her sweater, checking her lips. Then she wiggled her nose at me and headed for her own private sanctum. But there was something in her eyes now I had never seen before-something wonderful. It made me tingle.
I crawled back of the desk, wiping the lipstick off my face.
There were feminine voices outside, then Carol came back into the office, calm and unperturbed.
"A Miss Lisa Cummins to see you," she said. Then in an aside to me, "She's flat-chested as an old maid. You won't buzz with her, mister!"
I made a face at her. Lisa Cummins rang a bell dimly somewhere. Oh, yes, Sue Landon had mentioned a girl by that name.
"Send her in." As she turned on her heel to go, I wolf-whistled at her. "How long are you going to wear that red sweater?"
"About one more minute!" she mocked. "I have a change of clothes and there is a key on the bathroom door. How do you like that?"
Lisa Cummins was a tall girl, unusually slim. Her figure resembled the models of the fashion ads. But she was even slimmer, and Carol was right-the slight protruberances she called breasts were almost nil. She had a distinctive beauty of face that is best described as classic, but her cheeks seemed too hollow and her eyes, at the moment, lacked luster.
I got the idea as she walked toward the desk that she was a very sensitive girl, possibly equally neurotic. Right now, she had either just awakened from a bad dream or she needed a drink very badly.
"Mr. Bonner, you owe this visit to the insistence of Sue Landon. I believe Sue actually thinks I'm ready to jump off the wharf."
I pointed to a chair. "Please sit down, Miss Cummins."
"I like Lisa better."
"Very good, Lisa. Shorten me to a familiar Mike."
She nodded, toying with her purse. Her smile was tight, showing just a glimpse of good looking teeth. Watching her long fingers, I could see some nervous tension at work.
'Would you care for a drink?"
"I never touch it."
"I won't tempt you, in that case."
She leaned forward, laying her bag on the desk. It was a large, roomy black leather affair.
"Mike, I hope I don't sound dramatic when I tell you I had to literally drive myself to your office."
I'm listening."
"I started out to kill a person." That was pretty strong talk. I tried to keep a straight face and not show my surprise. "Does this person need killing?"
"I would say so."
"Even so, you're too pretty, too intelligent a girl to get tangled up with murder."
"Possibly justifiable homicide. But even so, it would be messy, dragged out in court, all that sort of thing."
"It might be worth it to me."
I leaned forward, eyes on her face. I held out my right hand.
"Let me have the gun, Lisa."
Her eyes came up quickly; there was surprise on her face. I was watching her lips; they started to tremble.
"I didn't mention a gun, Mike."
"No, you didn't, did you? But I'd say ifs in your purse, the usual place that women carry guns."
Without another word she handed over the purse.
I took it, eyes still hard on her own. She had really beautiful eyes that blended with her copper hair, but there was a jaded emptiness in them that I didn't like.
The gun was inside with the usual assorted drivel that women carry. It was a snub-nosed, blue barreled .38 and it was loaded. It fit my hand very nicely and looking at it, I couldn't help but wonder if it hadn't been particularly designed for a woman. It was light and not too bulky in size and still quite deadly at short range.
"Where'd you get the gun?" I asked.
She took her time about answering. There was a spark in her eyes, some resolve there.
"The gun is clean," she said. "I took it from my father's room."
I unloaded the weapon and handed it back. "I wouldn't carry that if I were you, unless I had a permit."
She was tightening up again. There was some terrific compulsion driving this girl and we wouldn't solve it sitting at this desk, glaring at each other. I glanced at my watch. It was 4:55.
"I haven't eaten since breakfast," I challenged. "How about you?"
"No, I suppose I'm in the same boat."
I stood up. "Let's go out and talk about our troubles over some good food."
She shrugged. "I'm afraid I wouldn't be very good company, Mike."
I grinned at her. "You look like you'd be terrific company, once we put some gas back in your motor."
"And you think you can do that?"
"I'm the best cheerer-upper in the business."
I turned to Carol's door.
"I'll be back in a moment," I assured Lisa.
Inside Carol's domain, I put my fingers over my lips, whispered low. "The chick in there is about ready to blow her stack. I'm going out and try the steak and coffee trick first"
"What's it all about?"
I shrugged. "Tell you in the morning."
Carol bestowed a quick kiss. "You keep your hands off, understand?"
"Already you're talking like a wife."
"You are in need of a long period of training," she said, "and I might as well start now."
"Yes, angel. If I go off the deep end tonight, that red sweater started it, remember!"
We wound up at Morini's, where the food and drink is just a bit better than ordinary, the lights are more subdued and the piped-in music is chosen with some degree of good taste.
All through the dinner she was quiet, attentive. I knew she was trying quite hard to be good company. But for some reason she couldn't unbend.
Finally the dinner was over.
"Are you in a particular hurry to get home?" I asked.
She shrugged. "My parents are out of town for several days. It's just an empty house."
I drove north. Well past the Morris home I turned toward the beach. I parked in the sand at a little promontory that poked its nose far into the bay, its cypress trees seemingly defying the rocky terrain.
I made no attempt to touch her.
Then, as the barrier seemed to grow, I reach-ed over and caught up her hand. It was cold as ice.
I'm still wondering why you were carrying that loaded gun," I said.
"I believe I intimated that I fully intended to use it"
"On a man?"
"On a woman."
That was news. I knew that she had been in the same class with Sue and Maria. I had presumed that if she had posed for a glamour photo, the person she would be after was Mario Ortega.
"What's the woman's name?"
"I don't know," she admitted. "All I know is that she drives a Lincoln hardtop, license JS-5465-7."
"You posed for a glamour shot and this woman made some sort of proposition?"
She turned quickly, her eyes scanning my face. "How did you know?"
"Sue and Mario-"
"This is a bit different."
"Want to tell me about it?"
Suddenly her eyes were imploring. "I was about ready to blow my stack. Then Sue cheered me a bit. She said you might be able to help me."
I squeezed her cold hand. "I'll try very hard to help you, Lisa, if you'll unwind and give me all the details."
She lay back in the seat, closed her eyes, breathed deeply as if she couldn't quite get enough oxygen in her lungs to sustain life. I decided she wasn't quite as flat-chested as I had first imagined. She was small in the bosom department, but she still was very much a woman.
"If only I could find some way to unwind."
I reached forward, kissed her very lightly on the lips. There was no response, just surprise in her eyes, as if I had done something that she didn't in the least expect
"What was that for?" she asked, her smile tight.
"Let's just say that you looked very wistful, lying there with your eyes closed. I couldn't resist."
Her smile was a bit freer it seemed. I believe she liked the kiss.
"We came here from Ohio," she informed me.
"When?"
"Three years ago. My father is a Baptist minister in a suburban church here."
"And he owned a gun?" I suppose the words were impulsive. But they were said before I quite realized it might have been a rude utterance.
Her eyes were questioning. "Does that seem so strange? We had two burglaries and my father merely got a permit to have a gun in the house."
That was understandable. Still, I told myself, you'd better reevaluate your minister friends, bud, they're not panty-waist any more.
"You took the gun."
"And I intended to use it!"
Looking at her, I didn't in the least doubt her words. There was a firm decision on her hollow-cheeked face.
"Tell me about the glamour picture?" I prodded.
She hesitated, as if she needed a bit more courage to tell me, a stranger, the things she must But finally her eyes met my own.
"I have never been too popular," she said. "Perhaps you can tell why. I have a complex, for one thing. It started back in grade school, when the boys called me 'Skinny' and "Bones' and names like that"
Very nonchalantly I put my arm about her shoulders.
"Know something? When I was a kid, I had one of those acne-peppered faces and it got so bad I didn't want to meet the gang."
She smiled. "So you, too, developed a complex."
"A dilly. But I got over the acne eventually, and the complex."
"Thanks," she said. "I know you're trying to cheer me."
I'm trying to tell you that you've been selling yourself short We're going to put an end to that"
There was a bit of life in the hand I held now-a faint grip.
"Who took the glamour pictures?" I prompted presently.
"This Mario Ortega."
"But there was a woman too?"
"The woman came later," she said.
My hand pressed her shoulder now. "Lisa, be honest Tell me one thing. Why did you pose for the picture in the first place?"
"I felt left out and unwanted. And then this school photographer breathed a bit of new life into me, on the glamour idea. I suppose I was desperate, clutching at straws."
"So you posed in the nude."
"Yes." Suddenly she pulled loose her hand. She sat there, and beat the closed fist against her knee. "I must have been insane!"
I pulled her face toward mine so she had to look into my eyes.
"On the contrary, you were quite normal. This man is a professional at this sort of thing. He sparked a desire for glamour. Every girl worships glamour. What did he tell you-it was a first step to show business or modeling?"
She nodded. "Mike, how can I explain the drab sameness of our home, my father's work, the pseudo-piousness of some of the people we mingle with?"
Perhaps she had a point. I let my hand massage the back of her neck.
"I wanted to do something on my own, to get away from it all. I had no close friends, outside of Sue and a few of the girls." Her eyes met mine bravely now. "So I went to that Spanish bungalow and took off my clothes, and posed."
"A lot of girls do that legitimately."
"But this wasn't legitimate."
"I'm afraid it wasn't."
"How well I realize the fact now!" she said, and her lips tightened.
"You haven't told me about the woman."
"I posed after classes, Tuesday. They told me to come back the next day for the print. I went back and this woman was there alone. Ortega wasn't around."
"And she made you some proposition?"
A shiver went through her body as if she had taken a sudden chill.
"The first thing she did was show me the print." Her eyes came up, imploring. Suddenly her hand was clutching my own. "Mike, it was hideous."
"Let me guess. You posed in some very innocent way, a straight nude."
"Yes. What I thought was a very inoffensive nude."
"But the print she showed me had a man in it."
"Ugh!" she said. "A man-and we were-" She couldn't go on.
"This woman?" I prodded, 'she threatened to send the print to your parents if you didn't play a-long?"
She nodded. "She was quite frank. She said she had looked a long time for my type of beauty. She would set me up in a good apartment, put me on salary-for just one concession."
"I'm ahead of you," I said. "She was a Lesbian."
Lisa nodded.
"What did you tell her?" I asked.
"I suppose I was too stunned to act intelligently at the moment. I told her that I would give her my answer tonight. And then I got the gun. That seemed the only way to end it all."
This thing was far more complex than I had first presumed. Its tentacles were spreading. When Edward Morgan had come to me it had seemed like a one shot job: to remove a ring of smut photographers who had invaded a very sacred field, the public schools. But now it seemed there were some added complications. Blackmail, for one thing. And now, Lesbianism.
The Lesbianism angle could mean only one thing. Either this smut ring was part of a Lesbian group or they worked with Lesbians who could use the fear of blackmail and exposure to drive innocent college kids into their clutches.
I had at first presumed that Mario Ortega was head man. Now it looked as if he was simply one of a ring. It looked too, as if perhaps some influential woman-herself a Lesbian-was prodding this thing, to get recruits for her abnormal sex desires.
The Lesbian, I very well knew, would do anything for satiation. She was compulsive. She was violent at times and as addicted to her strange sex desire as an alcoholic to his booze.
Lisa had mentioned that all she knew about this woman was the fact that she drove a Lincoln hardtop, license JS-5465-7.
That rang a bell and still the thing was so far in the background of my mind that, try as I would at the moment, I could not bring it into focus. Even so, I was positive that somewhere, in the past few days, I had seen a Lincoln hardtop with this license plate, somewhere within the city.
I turned to Lisa.
"You mentioned that your parents are at the moment out of town. When will they return?"
"Not until Saturday. Why?"
"Don't you see? This alone gives you a short reprieve. You can stall off the woman. Even if she got abusive, threatened to deliver the action print to your parents, you would still have her hogtied, because your parents are out of the city and can't be reached."
Watching her, I saw a new light come into her lusterless eyes. It was as if I had breathed new life into her. Then she did a very impulsive thing. She wound her arms about my neck and suddenly she was kissing me hard.
And the tears started. She had been so tightly wound up that her mind had been literally paralyzed thinking only of one thing, one consequence. And by a simple little sentence, she had found a loophole to her own immediate trouble.
"Oh Mike!" she said, and her lips pressed even harder.
I am only human. I tried to reciprocate.
And suddenly the kiss was an obsession and I felt myself caressing her not because it was a duty but because I wanted to. I realized something at this moment, too. Perhaps all of her life she had been a shy, reserved girl, sort of an introvert, keeping to herself, denying herself the normal companionship she wanted. She was starved for the companionship and love she was revealing physically at this very moment.
I felt her tongue, exploring now. It was a timid attempt at arousal. But in a moment her timidity was engulfed by a greater compulsion-passion. We were playing tag in each other's mouths now, and her body was tense. I rolled her into my arms and her hips arched to meet me.
Her breasts were small, erect cones, but now I felt them tightening and the rosebuds under my fingers were swelling into sizeable points.
And then, when the panic button was buzzing, she pulled away, breathing fast and the old dread was in her face again.
"Mike, I must be mad."
"What made you say that?"
"I'm disgusted with myself. I hardly know you."
I pulled her head into the crook of my arm and caressed her lips with the tips of my fingers.
"Sometimes two people know each other a century-in the span of an hour."
"You're coating the pill."
"Honey, look at it this way. You came out here, tense and wound up to the bursting point. You told me your troubles and the mere telling made them less hideous. So you relaxed. And then you did something you've been carrying around as a secret for a long, long time-"
"What did I do?"
"You showed me, almost unconsciously, that you were not a cold, frigid woman. You showed me that you didn't have a complex, a neurosis. Your arms told me that you were very human, wanting someone, a natural feeling."
Her lips were back on mine again. The desire was inside her, built into a flame and she was still trying to resist it.
All her formative years in her secluded home, the strict tone of morality, day by day, were beating at her conscience now.
But she was also a woman, with a woman's normal physical yearning.
She was fighting this battle, tight in my arms-and it was a hard battle to fight. But slowly the woman won.
I'll hate myself tomorrow," she said, pulling back.
"Why?"
"Let's call it years of carefully nurtured conscience."
"You will do nothing of the sort," I rationalized.
"Mike, don't you realize something in my-my clumsy attempt at love? Don't you realize I'm a virgin?"
"All people are virgins, until the first time."
"Mike, I'm even afraid, physically frightened."
I whispered something in her ear.
Out in the bay a ship's horn blasted. It was a lonely sound, augmenting the darkness. But it seemed to stir something within her, perhaps a familiar chord in her own loneliness.
We had wandered away from the car. Here, in a niche of rocks, the sand was deep and white and still warm from the day's sun.
Suddenly I was thinking of Luann Morris, the delicate half-Japanese doll woman.
But Lisa Cummins was a doll of a different texture. Let's call her a woman who had denied her natural longing for love for so long that it had built into a neurosis. But now the compulsion was being satiated.
I'm afraid," she whispered again.
"There is nothing to be afraid of," I reassured her, and kissed her gently.
Her face stared into my own, and it was passive now. Whatever had churned there when she came to my office had fully dissipated. There was a luster in her eyes and she was breathing fast.
I kissed her. Then she moved her body and I let my lips brush her breasts, first one, then the other. And suddenly she lowered herself and her mouth was hot and desirable.
I felt her hips, experimenting. The physical fear was still there in the background of her desire. Her body was trembling. There was a sound deep in her throat that was half pain, half joy.
Then she moved and the pain clouded her eyes and suddenly she was kissing me hard and her heart was pounding madly and we were together.
She was the protagonist, for various reasons. And now she showed me her true, warm self. The long denial was there, in each thrust of her body. She was proving to me that she wasn't a girl unwanted. She was proving that ecstasy lived within her and now it was released from its prison in a mad tumult of long pent-up desire.
At last the surf seemed to creast in a mad cresendo of sound. Or perhaps it was the tumult in our own bodies and she relaxed and lay against me, her heart hammering itself into a frenzy.
"Now, who is afraid of life or love?" I whispered in her ear.
She didn't answer. Her face had a new beauty in its relaxation. We lay there, tight in each other's arms, listening to the magical sound of the sea. There is something musical in the sound of the surf, if one only attunes his ears. It is the sound of time, inexorable and somehow there is in it a strange, comfortable humility in the mere listening.
Perhaps we both felt it now. Of one thing I was certain. It was good for her to be in a man's arms. Tomorrow would not be the spectre that she had supposed it to be. Tomorrow she would still have a problem to face, but I would help her face and lick it.
We walked out into the surf and bathed. I held her tight and the tingle started all over again, holding tight to each other as the water lashed at our bodies.
We were silent as we rode back to the city. There was utterly no need to talk.
And then, suddenly I saw something that didn't make sense, but still it was there, in dimension, a reality, not an illusion.
The Lincoln hardtop, at the Barry Morris home. Someone had just driven the car onto the driveway. The lights were still on. And there was that license number, JS-5465-7.
And suddenly I was thinking of Luann Morris, when we had hurried away from the house. "She's listening," she had said, referring to her stepmother.
Just who-and what-was Barry Morris' second wife?