Chapter 1
THE FIND....
Her skirt was raised above her belly button, her nylons rolled down almost to her knees and there was nothing in between except gleaming, naked, white flesh and nature's usual adornments.
The big, swarthy, bald-headed guy standing in front of her in the darkened doorway raised the long white chef's apron he was wearing; loosened his trousers and closed in on her; breathing like a racehorse that had just gone a fast six furlongs.
She emitted a long, muffled moan of acceptance and flattened her back against the closed door as he pressed into her. She shifted a couple of times until he was properly adjusted then she stood stiff and straight, her hands holding up her skirt so it wouldn't interfere and let him have his way with her; his grunts of passion filling the alley as he moved against her. Occasionally he'd grab at her breasts through the material of her dress and squeeze and joggle them.
Of course, neither of them had, the faintest idea they had an audience. When they came out of the alley, there wasn't the slightest indication that anyone was there.
Certainly Jeff Harlow wouldn't have lingered if he'd known what was going to happen. He had no desire to play Peeping Tom.
He was tucked away behind a row of trash barrels and garbage cans when they came out. His head pillowed on his rolled up jacket, he was well on the way to sleep when the door opened. At first he thought it was just two of the employees of the club that the building housed, coming out to say "goodnight".
It wasn't until he saw the big, swarthy guy start feeling her breasts and running his hands over her body, that he guessed what was going to happen. She lifted her skirt and took off her panties, and the big guy lifted his white apron and withdrew his aroused joy. Jeff began to look around for a way out but he was hemmed in by cans and barrels and a tall brick wall. All he could do was lie there and try not to watch.
That wasn't easy to do for a guy who hadn't had a woman in eight years. Especially since his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness and he could make out the two of them very clearly only a few feet away. To make it even more difficult to ignore, she had beautifully shaped legs. The gleam of her naked, white flesh caused a sudden awakening and heaviness in his own loins.
Without being aware, Jeff was caught up in their passion. Memory told him exactly what emotions the man was feeling as he watched the guy's big frame go rigid and his two hands grab the girl's buttocks and hold her tight against him. He saw the girl's body jerk violently as each blast hit her ... once ... twice ... three times. Then it was over and, as the sensation receded, they both slowly relaxed.
It was at that moment, that Jeff's foot accidentally kicked against one of the garbage cans. The insecure lid went clattering to the ground; re-verberating through the length of the alley like the boom of a cannon.
"Bastard," the big guy in the doorway thundered as he stepped back from the girl and let his long white apron drop into place covering him. "Who's there?"
Jeff saw him coming forward to investigate and climbed to his feet.
The big guy spotted him, grabbed him by the front of his shirt and dragged him from behind the cans and barrels. "What-the-hell you doin' here?"
Jeff swallowed. "I-I was sleeping. I didn't know anybody would be using the alley tonight."
"Goddam bums crawlin' all over the city, sleepin' in alleys ... eatin' outta garbage cans. Somebody oughta take 'em and dump 'em in the ocean with the rest of the shit!"
He pushed Jeff backwards into the brick wall and lifted a menacing fist. "I gotta good mind to bust your goddamn jaw...."
"Stop it, Roy!" the girl cried out as she came forward. "Let him alone. He told you he didn't know anybody'd be here."
Roy emitted a stream of obscenities and let Jeff go. Then he went past the girl toward the door.
She looked after him with mild disappointment. "Just once?"
"Who the hell can screw anybody with a goddam audience watchin' 'em?" Roy rumbled, then opened the door and went inside.
Jeff straightened away from the wall and studied the girl from behind. She was of medium height with dark hair cut to about the lobes of her ears, with a well-stacked body. That was all he had time to observe before she turned around.
"I'm sorry I broke up your party," he apologized.
She didn't comment, as she opened her handbag and fished a package of cigarettes. She offered him one in the darkness.
"Thanks."
"Got a match?"
He dug a book of matches from his pocket, struck one and held it first to the end of her cigarette and then his own. She got her first good look at him before the match went out. In spite of the dirt that streaked his face and the several days growth of beard sprouting on his sweeping jaw and chin, she obviously was impressed with what she saw.
"I'll bet with a shave and a bath, you'd turn out to be quite a hunka guy!" she declared. "What do they call you?"
"Jeff. What do they call you?"
"I'm Freda Kale."
He nodded and drew deep on his cigarette, letting the smoke wash around in his lungs-the first one he'd enjoyed in a long time.
"What you said about sleeping here in the alley, that on the level?" She wanted to know as she kept looking at him in the faint glow of his cigarette each time he inhaled.
"On the level."
"But you don't sound like the usual run of bums. You speak kinda nice." He smiled.
She continued to look at him as she dropped her cigarette to the ground and put it out with the sole of one of her high-heeled shoes. "You ain't a sex fiend?"
"No, Ma'am."
"A homo maybe?"
He chuckled amusedly.
"What I mean is-if a girl was to ask you to go home with her, she wouldn't wake up in the morning DEAD or somethin'"
He shook his head. "No, Ma'am."
"A gal can't be too careful, y'know."
"I know," he agreed as he flipped the stub of his cigarette into the garbage can with the lid off.
"Okay, let's go," she said.
"Where?"
"Home."
"But I couldn't."
She looked at him in the darkness to which her eyes had now become more or less, adjusted. "You rather sleep here with a lotta garbage cans and trash barrels?"
"But you don't even know me."
"You're a man, ain't you?"
"Yes...."
"And you ain't queer, or a sex deviate?"
"No...."
"Then let's go." She started to take his arm then remembered. "My pants. I hung 'em over one of the barrels.
He went back to help her look for them. When she found them, she put them on under her skirt.
"I don't like walking around with no pants on, especially at night," she told him as she took his arm and walked him out of the alley. "A breeze comes whistlin' along and first thing y'know the little man in the boat starts sneezin'."
Freda lived about five blocks from the alley. On the way through the dark deserted streets, she filled him in on a few facts of life.
"That doorway Roy and I were in, that's the rear entrance to BRUNO'S PLACE. It leads into the kitchen."
That much Jeff knew. He'd sort of cased the joint before he went around back to the alley. He'd seen the elaborate front entrance to the night club with its neon-lighted marquee, uniformed doorman and glass-encased billboards that announced the talent appearing three times nightly.
"I work in the club," Freda went on to explain as they continued to walk along through the darkness. "I wait on tables."
"And your boy friend with the white apron?"
"He ain't my boy friend. He's Roy Marshefski. He's married with five kids and another due any day. That's why I do him a few times a week in the alley. If Bruno ever caught us doing it inside, he'd can both of us. I mean there's nothing romantic a-bout it. He just does it a couple of times and that's that."
"And what do you get out of it?"
"Roy gives me full-run of the kitchen. Anything on the menu I wanna eat, plus all the food I can carry home," she told him quite frankly.
Freda's place turned out to be a two-room kitchentte affair furnished with a mixture of "early Salvation Army". While she went into the bedroom to "change into something a little more comfortable", Jeff walked to the window and looked out. The apartment was on the top floor of an old-fashioned, five-story, walk-up fire-trap situated on the high ground of the city of Hoboken.
Directly across the river, Jeff could see the myriad of Manhattan's lights extending all the way from the Battery to midtown. He had travelled three thousand miles to get to the big city because somewhere in those twenty six square miles was a man and woman who had stolen eight long years of his life. Now he was going to get them!
For a long time he stood there as if mesmerized by the lights, lost in his thoughts until Freda shattered his thinking.
"Remember me?" she asked.
He turned to face her. She'd put on an imitation leopard-skin robe made of suede cloth. It zipped up the front and had black cuffs and a black Peter Pan collar and fit her like the too-small skin of a sausage. Only she wasn't built like a sausage. If all those bumps and curves under the robe were hers, she was really put together. Even in the darkness he knew she had big tits. A slim waist helped accentuate their size, even though she spread out a little through the hips and thighs.
Topping all this was a pretty face, framed with brown hair that was so dark it might pass for black, and cut to her ears. Her eyes were dark brown, too. She had rounded features, and fairly high cheekbones. Her mouth wasn't very large, but was sensuously shaped with corners that were perpetually turned up as if in a smile.
"You'd better get in the bathroom and get shaved and under a shower, before I think I'm entertaining a hippie or a communist or something," she said.
He went into the bathroom and closed the door. He looked at himself in the mirror over the washbasin. He looked more like the Neanderthal man at that moment than someone you'd care to have sharing your apartment. His face was covered with heavy black whiskers and he hadn't put a comb to his thick, straight, light brown hair in almost a week and it was a tangle of snarles.