Chapter 2
I awoke with a nipple in my lips and for an instant I could not remember which one of my drops I was with. Then it all flashed back. Cora Ayers was no drop. She was my Golden Girl.
I got up on an elbow and blinked down at her. She was wide awake and smiling lazily, a lighted cigarette caught in her fingers. Outside it was dark and raining hard now; inside there was lamplight casting a soft glow on the ripe body beside me.
She lay back, turned slightly into me so that the breast had fitted perfectly against my mouth. An arm was across her forehead. She wrinkled her nose impishly at me. "Hi, Detective."
"Hi."
"My Hot Dick," she gurgled. "My very own." I bent and kissed her.
"Easy," she said, talking against my mouth. "My lips are swollen, I think. At least, they feel puffed."
"Not bad," I told her with a grin. "You're an animal, I guess."
"Not really."
"Oh, you don't have to apologize, Mr. Law," she grinned. "I like animals. They make me come fast and often-and I like to come."
"Fast and often."
"Fast and often," she nodded. "And I like your mirror, too." She stabbed air with a finger, pointing to the bureau mirror across the foot of the bed. "I mink it is very strategically placed. Is that by chance or design?"
I found myself liking the teasing, the light banter. I twisted and looked at our reflections, and I thought Cora Ayers and I looked very natural together, very close and cozy and intimate. I liked what I saw. "Chance," I said.
"You won't mind if I don't believe you," she said with a soft giggle.
"Each to his own thoughts," I shrugged.
She smiled on me from the reflection and her finger came down to tap the end of my erect penis. She tapped lightly. "And just what is that, sir?" she asked.
"A hard-on, princess. What are we going to do about it?"
"Nothing."
"Ahh, then perhaps you are merely a tease?"
She laughed mysteriously and reached out and butted the cigarette in an ashtray on the bedside table. "Let's see if I am."
She locked her fingers on the back of my neck and moved my face down to her breasts. They heaved with her breathing. They were ripe swells, the brown nipples taut and alive.
"Kiss them," she said.
I took one of the nipples in my teeth, rolled it gently. She attempted to play it calm, but I felt the tiny ripple go through her body. I left the nipple, moved over to the other one. She pulled me down hard this time and I took as much of her magnificent breast as I could get into my mouth. I opened wide and I mouthed with authority.
"Good," she whispered, her fingers working against the back of my neck.
I left the breast. "Now. Shall I tease?"
"No!" she cried out sharply. "Don't be a meanie!"
I kissed her ear, shot my tongue inside, then moved my mouth around to her lips, danced across the fullness, moved up to kiss her eyelids, moved down into the pulsing throb of her throat, on down to the breasts again, nipping at one, plucking at the other, on down to her belly. And then I got serious. Her fingers were pushing now. She knew, and she wanted. I saw her legs spread slowly. The blonde hairs of her warm triangle glistened.
"Golden," I rattled.
"Wh-at?"
"I like you because you are golden," I said, skipping the hairs and kissing her thigh. "Golden?"
"It's how I think of you," I admitted. "The Golden Girl"
"Sometimes ... I'm reddish."
"Reddish?" I moved my mouth on down to her toes, kissed the tips of each individually. I felt her palm find me. She wrapped her fingers and began to manipulate.
"Sometimes I have a reddish cast," she said from far above me. "I've looked at myself."
"No." I shook my head vigorously. "No red. Just golden."
"You want me to be ... golden?" she faltered as I started to kiss my way back up her leg. "Just ... golden?"
"Just golden, doll."
I was at her juncture, but I didn't kiss it. Rather, I nipped at her thigh skin with my teeth. I was gentle. I did not bite. And her hand on me moved faster, her strokes growing in length. I felt the heat beginning to build in my loins and my hips started to lurch as I lost control of them.
"Matt?" she whispered suddenly. "What?"
Her legs went up into the air, stiff and straight. "Do something!" she hissed. "I'm going to come!"
"Let it go, baby."
"Oh, god!" she cried out. "I am, I am ... Matt, don't stop!"
Her hand was educated. It worked me frantically. And then I turned into her suddenly and she rammed me into her body. I went through the moistness and deep inside her. She wriggled up against me. Then she was clawing at me, her nails piling up the skin of my back as she pumped. Soon we were high in the air and banging at each other with no sense of direction. Each was on his own, each seeking fulfillment without thought for the other. I felt the explosion inside. It seemed to come up from nowhere suddenly and shoot like a jet stream along the track of my stiffness. It erupted and flared, spraying the inside of Cora Ayers as if I was painting her. And she rattled this time. It was a pure, long animal rattle as she opened wide inside and came. We shuddered and clutched and became mesmerized together, locked in the perfect love position high in the air-and then we tumbled. We spilled over on our sides and we lay close-eyed and gasping.
When I finally untangled from her, she had regained consciousness. But she was whipped. She made no attempt to leave the bed as I staggered into the bath. I poured water over my head. I still was breathing in gasps, but my senses were returning. I knew now I was not going down to the station. Crowder didn't expect me, so why go?
"You wanna shower?" I called out to Cora. "In a little," she managed. "At the moment, I don't think I can move."
"I'll wash your back."
"Promises, promises .. "Your behind."
"Promises."
Chit in the front room, my phone rang. The ring sounded urgent. I don't know what it is about phone rings. Most are innocent enough, I guess, but every so often you get that jangling sound and instinctively you know that when you answer you will be informed of an emergency, a tragedy, an urgency. That kind of call gives me willies.
"Do you have to answer it?" Cora frowned as I padded back through the bedroom.
"It stinks, all right," I muttered.
She didn't understand, of course, and I didn't attempt to explain. I padded on out into the front room and swept the receiver to my ear. It was Lieutenant Crowder. He wanted to know what I'd done with the widow. But that question didn't fool me. I could sense something else in his tone, something I wasn't going to like.
"She's here," I informed him. "She didn't want to go home. She was tired of people."
So he gave me the bomb: "I've gotta have you come in, Matt. We've got a stinker in the making. It hasn't jelled yet, but it has all the earmarks of being a genuine nutcracker."
"Like?"
"Murder. A guy cracks up a car. One of these expensive sports rods. Out on Kingman Road. He rams a tree, according to the traffic boys. Routine, they figure, until they look inside. They find a dead girl, she's naked, and there isn't one stitch of female clothing in the heap."
"The guy?"
"At Memorial. Guy named Archie Table. We're still checkin' out his I.D. He got a whop on the chest and on the head, but he's gonna be okay-unless he can't explain a dead and naked girl in his car. It's the clothes bit, Matt. Where the hell is the girl's clothing? Man, I can see a doll peeling while riding down the street, I can see a doll hot and eager and gettin' ready for the meat-but if she does that, how come we don't find her clothing somewhere inside the heap?"
Cora wanted to protest as I showered and dressed. She didn't utter a word, but the protest was there, in her expression, in the gray-green eyes, in the set of her jaw, the tiny twitch in the corners of her lips. It was as if she had been though all of this a million times and knew. It was as if she was acutely aware of the disappointments of being a cop's wife. I needed to say something to her, but I didn't have the words, so I kept my yap buttoned and clothed myself swiftly. I started out of the bedroom. "Hey?" she said gently from the bed. I whirled and looked on her. She lifted a finger, beck oned to me. I went to the edge of the bed. She continued to beckon, and then a half-mischievous smile formed. "Down here," she said. "You don't leave without kissing me."
I bent and put my mouth against her lips. We didn't grab or clutch or claw this time. We merely kissed. With our lips. And it seemed enough. No other area of our bodies had to touch now. The mouths were glued, and there were messages enough in the mouths.
When I finally lifted my face, she was misty-eyed. "I'm gonna miss you, Hot Dick," she said softly.
"Cora...." I began, but she put fingertips against my mouth, shook her head.
"Do you want me here when you come home?" she asked.
"I told you, honey, you can-"
"No." She shook her head. "That isn't what I mean. Do you want me here?"
I brushed my mouth across her lips. "I want you here," I said gruffly.
"All right," she nodded, as if accepting a simple fact. "Now tell me one more thing, and then you can go. What about me do you like the most? What area of my body?"
"Cora, I'm not Fletch," I said.
I felt bastardly again. I didn't move. I continued to hang over her, held my mouth just inches from her puffed lips, looked deep into her eyes. The words had come out almost reflexive, and I saw her flinch slightly, but they were words that had to be spoken. Cora Ayers and I had reached a plane between ourselves. I liked that plane. I wanted to be on that plane. But it was not a plane to be shared with anyone-including those who were dead.
"You are not Fletch," she breathed, the words barely audible. "I know."
"Then I like all of you," I said truthfully. "Every inch of your golden body."
"But isn't there some portion, some little corner, some small area of skin or swelling or curve or-"
"Yes"
"Where?"
"I think you know."
"Do I? Kiss it. Show me. Never leave me, Matthew Law, without kissing your favorite spot before you go. This is between us, only us."
"Only us?"
"Only us," she said, nodding somberly. "I have memories, too. Sharp memories. And there's no room for overlapping or repetition in my memories, either. Do you understand?"
I understood. And I jackknifed lower. She lifted her legs and gave me freedom and I kissed savoringly.
"Now," she breathed from a distance, "you can go."
Tooling the dented heap along the near-deserted streets, I discovered that it was ten minutes before midnight. The hour surprised me. Somehow I'd lost all track of time. Not that either the hour or the fact that I had lost track was important. But it forced me to think. I thought about Cora Ayers back there in my apartment, in my bed, naked, beautiful, mixed-up. That was it: Cora was mixed-up. With me gone, she'd come to her senses. She'd think about a dead husband, remember a mortgaged bungalow, reach out again for reason and sense of direction. She'd leave my bed, clothe her body, and be gone when I returned.
I might get a phone call in the next couple of days. She might attempt to explain over a phone-from a distance-but there would be no necessity for an explanation. I didn't exactly have scrambled brains. I knew that today could not continue between us. There was too much in our pasts, too many memories, and memories sometimes have ugly heads, memories rear those ugly heads and sometimes make present impossible.
See how mixed-up Cora was?
Well, she'd come to her senses soon enough. She'd be gone when I returned to my apartment. And we'd both realize. We'd accept. We'd had a session in the hay. It had been a good session, a memorable session, but that's all it was. Just a jump. A piece of ass. For the both of us.
Except that Cora Ayers wasn't just a piece of ass.
I shook my head and navigated a yellow light, the tires of the heap singing against the wet streets. It had stopped raining, but the air was heavy with moisture and the streets would not dry overnight.
Moisture. Cora. Cora was a moist woman. A warm, golden, submitting, giving, coyly demanding, desirable, pulsating, fragrant, moist woman. All woman. A woman of beauty and litheness and softness and long, active muscles, and full, tender lips, and tiny, intricate sounds of fulfillment deep in her throat. A full-blown woman who, long ago, with another man, had discovered a special closeness with four-letter words. Cora wallowed in the words. I knew. Even against my will, she had mouthed them. She had to mouth them. It seemed reflexive with her. And now I was not too sure I was so against her mouthing them. The words, the act, the speaking, were a part of her, perhaps even seeped into her physical makeup. Did she get extra pleasure from hearing herself speak them? I remembered a woman of prominence....
Her name was Cynthia. She had plum-rinsed hair and she was stocky and stout with age and her heavily powdered face had pampered lines in it. But she was preserved and coltish and bold in spite of what had to be sixty years of age. She also was wealthy and almost famous and hadn't even considered a grave. Her husband was a United States senator, seeking reelection, a controversial man, and he was making a pitch in the city. Cops were needed to protect him-and his wife-while he pitched from a podium in a downtown hotel.
The wife elected not to hear her husband's speech. She'd heard all that crap before, she said. Over and over and over again. The wife had a independent streak in her that was a yard wide and ten miles long. She also liked men. Young men. And cops were her special meat this day. Two young cops, named Matthew Law and Henry Anderson, had been assigned to her.
"While the Senator speaks, gentlemen, we'll stay here in the hotel room," she announced firmly. "Unless one of you would like to hear my husband." Her eyes darted between the two cops. And then she made a selection. "Perhaps, Detective Anderson," she said "you would like to listen to the Senator."
"Not really, ma'am," Anderson said frankly. He was a blunt kid, had just made Detective and still lacked tact.
"Go listen anyway," the Senator's wife said with a wave of her hand. She lit another cigarette, puffed jerkily. "It will do you good. The Senator is not all crap. Sergeant Law and I will get along fine together-won't we, Sergeant?"
"We'll do okay," I said, unsure.
"Yes, I'm sure we will," she said, looking directly into my eyes. "I'm sure we can find something to do to entertain ourselves."
Anderson departed. He was reluctant, but he knew he had been dismissed. He went downstairs to hear the Senator's speech, or into a public restroom to take a crap and contemplate, or maybe he went down to the bar to hustle tail. I didn't know, and I didn't care. Because the Senator's wife had sat in a chair opposite me, and now her heavy legs were spread slightly, and she was staring on me as if I was something to be eaten.
"You don't mind staying here alone with me, do you, Sergeant?" she asked.
"Not at all, ma'am," I said, still not sure of what was coming.
"Perhaps we can go to bed," she suggested. "Ma'am?"
"You're young," she said. "You look very young and virile. Are you? Are you a dandy with the young girls? Have you got a tool that makes young girls squeal like pigs? You look as if you might have. Let me see it. Open your pants, boy. I want to see you. I might even let you get inside me if you don't mind a piece of tail from an old woman. Actually, I'm not that old. I still have orgasms. It's my husband who is old. He couldn't get a stiff if six seventeen-year-olds were lined up naked in front of him.
"Am I shocking you? Well, no matter. You've got something inside those trousers, and that's what counts. I can see it. Come here. Let Mother feel it. I like to feel you young fellas. Especially when I get hot. And that's just what I'm doing, boy. You're not going to believe this, but it's how it is with me. The more I talk dirty, the hotter I get. I talk myself into an orgasm. That makes me some kind of nut, doesn't it? Nut or no, the words make me come. And I'm doing that right now. I'm creaming. Oh Lordy, that feels good!"
I stood before her. I was rooted. I had freed myself and I didn't even remember doing it. But there I was, standing proud and long and bobbing. And there the Senator's wife sat, just inches from me, her heavy legs spread wide now, her dress pulled up against her round belly, her thighs jiggling, her pink panties under a white girdle stretched taut over a juncture that had hills and valleys in it.
"I did it," she hissed, staring up at me. "Now you! Do you need help?"
She touched me and she was soiled instantly. I erupted. The semen leaped from me, arched and dropped to spread on the blue of her dress. She gurgled with pleasure and grabbed me just as Anderson returned to the suite.
He walked in without knocking, he stopped just inside the door, he gaped, he gulped, and he stood rooted-until Cynthia, hanging on to me with one hand, smiled crookedly and beckoned to him with the other.
"Next?" she asked innocently.
The Senator talked for an hour and a half.
I rolled into the parking lot at precinct headquarters. The Senator's wife had found eroticism in mouthing words; Cora Ayers found a closeness. There was a. difference.
I pounded up to the second floor squad room. Crowder was waiting. He looked harried, but he asked, "How's Ayer's wife taking it?"
I managed to keep a straight face. "She's doing okay."
"Well, we've got a bitch on our hands here. This Archie Table is awake in the hospital now and we've got the girl pegged, but that's all. Archie gave us her name, nothing else. The sonofabitch has decided to clam. The kick is, the girl is the daughter of William Darby Rivers. You ever heard of him?"
"Naw."
"Money. That's what he is. Moola. Up to and over his fuckin' ears. Stocks, the conglomerates, name it, William Darby Rivers is in it. He's in everything from importing coffee beans to exporting Hollywood whores. Getting the picture?"
"He's human, isn't he?"
"I dunno. I sent a couple of the boys out to his place to find out."
"Archie Table," I said. "Who's he?"
"A computer analyst-whatever that it."
"Who belongs to Rivers?"
"It seems that Rivers also has interests in the computer industry," Crowder sighed.
When the reports came up from the lab technicians, I had difficulty believing them. Harry Roberts, the lab chief, was esthetic. "The doll was dead before Archie-boy hit the tree," he said enthusiastically. "She died sucking something! She choked to death!"
"Suggestions?" I asked-although I already had a hunch.
"There's semen behind her teeth, more in her stomach. And her throat is swollen!"
"Are you sure?"
"Read the reports, man!"
"Your reports are medical garbage. What I have to know is-"
"I'm not puttin' you on. Matt. The girl choked to death on the stuff or the meat. Take your pick. What's the diff?"
"I guess it's murder, huh?"
"She was killed." Harry shrugged. "Maybe she was doin' what comes naturally, but she was killed."
"We could get a ruling of accidental death."
"Probably," Harry admitted. "But it's gonna be juicy stuff in the courtroom."
Archie Table denied my accusation. He lay in the bed in Memorial Hospital and vehemently denied that Michelle Rivers had been servicing him while he was driving the heap. He denied that her act was what had sent him shooting off the road and into the tree.
And then Archie Table clammed. He wouldn't say another word. He lay there with a lump on his noggin and another lump on his chest and he clamped his lips tight and shot daggers at me from his eyes. He was a small dude, not very long, not very wide, and not very heavy. He had thin, mouse-colored hair brushed back and a large nose and delicate mannerisms. He was effeminate at thirty-five, but he was determined. Cops were not priests in a confessional-and Archie wasn't confessing to anything anyway.
Archie got a visitor. He was a rangy, lean, athletic dandy with a deep sunlamp tan, handsome to women, probably, and dangerous to husbands. His clothing was expensive and his hair and fingernails had been pampered by a stylist. He was thirty, or fifty. He was one of those kind. He said his name was Tommy Polar and that he was a tennis professional at one of the clubs in the city. He also was Table's friend. I didn't like him. I didn't like his appearance, his manner or his confidence.
"You police ruined a perfectly groovy party," he told me. "W. D. was really turning it on tonight."
"William Darby Rivers?" I asked politely.
"There's only one," he said smugly.
"That's why you're here, huh? You heard about your friend Archie when the cops showed up at the party?"
"Everyone heard, Sergeant. They were very loud men."
"Didn't they also mention that Michelle Rivers is dead?"
"Yes, that was mentioned."
"And?"
Polar shrugged. "She's dead. Who can do what?"
"But Archie is alive, huh?"
"Thank God, Archie is alive," Polar said, smiling fondly on the little man in the bed.
"We think Archie killed the girl."
"Quite un-likely, Sergeant. Archie doesn't have a violent bone in his body."
"We think she choked to death while mouthing him."
"Michelle knew tricks," Tommy Polar admitted. "But Archie is a fag. Archie does not like women."
"That right, Archie?" I snapped, turning on him.
"I like men." He shrugged. "What's so wrong in that? Some men like women. Some women like men. Then there are women who like women, and men who like men. I'm one of the latter. I like men. It's my sex life. Everyone has one, you know. That much is biological. Don't condemn me, Sergeant, because my sex interest may differ from yours-or does it?"
"You make one lick toward me, creep, and I'll have your balls in a vise."
"Please, Sergeant," Tommy Polar broke in smoothly, "can't we refrain? There's already been enough violence for one night. Let me tell you what I know. Michelle was at the party, naturally. We all were at the party. Then Archie found Michelle bombed, naked and unconscious on the lawn. He came to me, asked what to do with her. I told him to take her for a drive. I thought she would regain consciousness eventually and that the air would do her good. Archie was the logical man to take her. He doesn't dig women. He wouldn't rape her in her naked state. So he did as I suggested. And the poor girl must have had a heart attack while they were driving. She was a high liver. She could go any time. She used grass, LSD, anything to give her a ride. Her sudden death doesn't surprise me. The unfortunate part about all of this is that Archie lost control of his car and hit a tree, thus bringing in you people."
"Did you help Archie put her in his car?"
"Certainly."
"And she was alive then?"
"She was breathing."
"Our lab people found semen in her mouth and stomach."
"So she had some fun before she passed out on the lawn. Michelle often made a practice of turning men into babbling idiots."
"Is that what it does to you, Polar? Make you a babbling idiot?"
"Does it you, Sergeant?" he shot back.
"Point," I said, controlling my anger, "if Michelle Rivers was alive when you put her in the car and dead when Archie hit the tree, how many men was she around on the ride?"
"Archie," he admitted.
"Archie," I nodded.
"Heart attack, Sergeant," Polar repeated confidently. "I say Michelle died of a heart attack while Archie was driving her. Perhaps she had been with someone at the party just before Archie found her on the lawn. I don't know. All I'm sure of is Archie didn't kill her. Archie wouldn't allow a woman to touch his sex organ."
From the bed, Archie said, "He speaks the truth, Sergeant."
"And now," Polar said, "I think we've talked enough. From this moment on, you can speak to our attorney."
"Our attorney, huh?"
"He's at the party. As for Mr. Rivers. Mr. Rivers will point to the attorney. It's the way the ball bounces, Sergeant."
I put a hold on Archie Table, and I drove out to William Darby Rivers' palatial mansion. There were lights and trees and grass and strewn lawn chairs and tables, but there were no servants, no cops-and no people. I wandered around the side of the mansion. More light came from behind the magnificent structure. I found a giant patio and a swimming pool. Still no people.
And then I heard a giggle and the splash of water.
Curiously, I went over to the pool. There was a table and chair and a padded chaise lounge off to my left. Draped on the lounge were two evening gowns. One looked red, the other looked black. Parked beside the lounge were two pairs of high-heeled shoes. One pair was red, the other was black.
I went to the edge of the pool. The water was a brilliant blue and calm. And down under the water, in the shallow end of the pool, were two female bodies. Each was clothed in hose and garter belt. No more.
They were sixty-nine, one on top of the other. Their arms floated, their legs worked slowly-and they were feeding.