Chapter 6
David let the phone ring again and again, his brain reeling with shame and remorse for what he had agreed to in Harvey Sears' office. Gripping the telephone in his fingers so hard he thought they would break, he hoped and prayed he was not too late, but little by little the chilling realization crept into his mind that it was no use. He let it ring ten more times, counting them like the fading pulse of a person slowly dying, and then with a deep sigh of despair, he finally hung the phone on the hook.
Oh God, he was thinking as he stepped out of the telephone booth into the pedestrian traffic on Broadway. What have I done, what will happen to my wife, to us, now?
He stopped into the first bar he came to and ordered a straight double Scotch on the rocks, gulping it down almost in one swallow before shoving the glass to the back of the counter for the bartender to fill again.
He had had no idea what it was that Harvey Sears was going to say to him when he had met him in the gambling club. If he had known in advance, he would have told Angela to pack her clothes immediately and the two of them would have left the city as fast as they could get away. But by then he was trapped and there was no way out.
As he stared at his worried, haggard expression between the liquor bottles in the mirror behind the bar, sipping slowly now at his second double Scotch, the young morose insurance man ran over the whole scene that morning for what seemed the thousandth time.
Jeanette Sawyer had given him that special treat she had promised, expertly sucking his cock until he had finally felt an explosion in his swollen balls and had spurted his built-up semen into her moistly clinging lips. As soon as the voluptuous redhead had finished, almost as if it had been planned that way, there had been a metallic rasping noise from the sitting room.
"Oh my God," Jeanette had whispered in a nervous voice. "That's the bell Harvey uses to call me when he wants me. He must be back in his office already, waiting for you. Hurry!"
She began dressing as fast as she could, and even though his legs were still trembling from the effect of her sucking him to completion, David had struggled desperately to put on his own clothes before Harvey Sears might get suspicious and come barging in to find them.
To stall him off, Jeanette had gone to the intercom in the front room and pushed a button to talk. "We'll be right in, Harvey, darling. We're finishing our drinks right now."
"Well, hurry it up," came the harsh voice over the open line. "I haven't got all day.
What have you two been doing anyway?" the voice asked suspiciously. "I told you to entertain him, but if he's gotten fresh or anything . . . "
"Don't worry, honey," she had laughed in a false-sounding attempt to be jovial and innocent-seeming. "David is as clean and pure as the driven snow. Besides," she said in a lower voice, "you know I wouldn't let anyone touch me but you."
"All right," came the hesitant reply. But get him in here now!" And then the connection was broken by Jeannette when she saw David signaling frantically to her that he was ready.
When they had entered the office where he had first seen Jeanette lying on the couch, David was sure what he had just done with Sears' mistress in the other room was written all over his face. The gambling boss seemed to scrutinize both of them carefully with his eyes from his seat behind the huge desk, and then apparently satisfied nothing untoward had happened, finally relaxed and told them to sit down.
"Sorry to keep you waiting, David," he said in a flat, unfeeling voice that belied his words. "I had to talk to another guy who insisted he couldn't pay up." Harvey's face had screwed up in a look of sadistic glee as he remembered. "Poor fellow, I hope he'll be able to collect a little insurance while he recuperates," he chuckled, his lips pulled back in a contemptuous grin.
"Harvey!" Jeanette had gasped as if in horror at the suggestion of violence he was making. "You don't mean you and the boys beat him up . . . ! "
"I mean he had a little accident, that's all honey," he had reassured her. 'There was nothing we could do about it. He just kept falling all over the place. Every time one of the boys tried to pick him up, he would run into something else and land flat out on his back again. Sammy's on the way to drop him off at the hospital now. Looks like he might need a few stitches."
"A few stitches?" David heard his own voice say in a softly tremulous inflection. His whole insides had been quivering violently by that time, and he was ready to agree to practically anything Sears demanded from him at that moment.
"Yeah, nothing permanently disfiguring, but nasty cuts all the same," Sears had answered. "I doubt if his own wife would recognize him right now, but he should be as good as new in a few weeks."
David had sat glued to the leather cushion, his eyes glazed over with fear. What was he going to say to Harvey Sears to keep him from turning him over to his obviously ruthless thugs? He would promise anything, anything at all, if only he could get out of that club. Then he would either come up with the money or quietly disappear and start a new life somewhere else. But he no longer had any doubt that if he did run away without settling his account with Sears, they wouldn't hesitate to hunt him down and perhaps kill him like an animal.
Harvey Sears had sensed his uncontrollable trepidation and had abruptly changed the subject he had been enjoying with such relish. "All right, Davey boy, let's talk about your problem. Do you have the money on you?" Harvey had asked in a soothing relaxed tone.
"No-no," David had stammered. "Give me a couple more weeks, and by then I think I'll have it. I could give you five hundred of it this afternoon, but that's all I have," he added hastily, seeing the glowering look spreading over Sears' face.
'That's no good," he had growled. "My people want the money all at once, and within the next twenty-four hours."
Sitting at the bar dazedly remembering back to that terrible morning, David's heart fell into his stomach again when he recalled those words, and he took another longer drink from his Scotch. There had been no possible way to get hold of three thousand dollars within twenty-four hours, and he had had to tell Harvey Sears just that, a pleading tone of desperation in his voice.
'That's too bad," Sears had said without a shred of pity. "But I think I've worked out a plan that will serve us both a good turn," he had added in an insinuating voice, looking at David as if measuring him to see how he would take to it.
"What plan?" he had asked hopefully, clutching at the idea like a drowning man at a floating straw.
"I'll tell you in a minute," he had said in a calm voice. Then he had looked at his mistress, Jeanette, who was still sitting with them in the room. "Baby, be a good girl and disappear for a while so we can talk in private, okay?"
Looking surprised that he wanted to prevent her from hearing what he was going to say to David, Jeanette had silently gotten up from her seat without a word and had opened the door leading back into her apartment. Just before she closed the heavy wood door behind her, while she was in a position where Harvey couldn't see her, the sultry redhead had given David a warning handshake not to let Sears know what had taken place between them only a few minutes before on her bed.
As far as David had been concerned, she needn't have bothered to warn him. He was already so afraid of what might happen that he could have been tortured for hours before he would have breathed a word about him and Jeanette. She gave a further little signal with her fingers indicating that he should agree to whatever Harvey had in mind, and then the door had closed with a slight whisper of air behind her, and he was alone with Harvey Sears.
"Quite a piece, huh?" Harvey Sears had winked at him when she was gone.
"She sure is," David had agreed without thinking, and then he cringed as Sears gave him another sharply scrutinizing glance to see if he could detect anything in his face.
"That's sort of what I want to talk about," Sears had begun. "I, uh, couldn't help noticing how attractive your wife was the other night," he was going on, his eyes watching David's reactions like a hawk watching his prey. "And I thought we could maybe work out a deal."
In the almost empty bar where he was now sitting, David heard the ice clinking in his glass from his shaking hands, and he quickly threw back the rest of the amber colored Scotch into his parched throat. He shoved the empty glass over for the bartender to fill again. He noticed the quizzical look passing over the bartender's face as he decided whether David was drunk yet or could handle another, finally pouring a generous amount as if in commiseration with whatever was troubling him so much.
Sears' words that morning now rang in his mind like echoes in a well. "What kind of deal?" he had croaked out in a shaken voice, already half understanding why Sears had sent Jeanette from the room. He had wished at that moment that he could sink through the thick carpet into the floor and disappear from sight forever. He had known deep inside from that first moment of comprehension that he would eventually agree to the ensuing proposition, and he was already hating himself for his cowardice, but he had not protested in any way.
"I think you can see what I'm getting at," Sears had snarled meaningfully. "There's no need to go into any more detail than absolutely necessary. It'll be better that way for everyone concerned."
"You-you mean you want me to let you have my wife, Angela?" David had stuttered in disbelief, at the same time thinking how ironic it was that he himself had just been in bed with Sears' mistress, Jeanette.
"A thousand dollars a night," Sears continued. "Three nights and you're out of debt. Won't that be a relief, Davey-boy?" he had smiled shrewdly at him.
"B-but how . . . ? " David had tried to ask.
Harvey Sears waved his hand as if there could not possibly be a problem. "Leave it all to me. She'll be kidnapped, and three days later, you'll give me the ransom or that's what she'll think."
Like a sped-up movie, all kinds of lewdly obscene pictures had started running through David's spinning, confused brain as he thought of Harvey Sears running his thick-fingered hands all over Angela's naked body, touching her softly rounded breasts and flaring hips, putting his penis up between her long, tapering thighs but then he had had to stop. He couldn't bear to think of all the things the man might force her to do.
"How do I know you'll cancel the IOU's?" David had asked, stalling for time to think of a way out.
"You mean these?" Harvey had pulled the tiny slips of paper with David's signature out of his breast pocket of his jacket and before David could say a word, he had torn them all into little shreds and had set fire to them in a huge ashtray. "That's what I call a fair deal," Sears had barked. "Payment in advance."
David had watched the IOU's go up in a thin cloud of smoke as if in a dream, the final threads of his hope floating up toward the ceiling as the flames gradually flickered and died. He had felt like a trapped animal with no escape. Without these original IOU's in his possession, Harvey Sears would expect him to go through with the perverse, even criminal bargain he had been trying to make.
"You've still got a choice," Sears had said sensing his continuing hesitation. "Either you go along with what I offered, or I get my three thousand dollars worth in easy installments down in the basement like I did earlier today from the other ass." The threatening sadistic look on his face had chilled David to the bone, and he felt his palms sweating profusely.
The sudden thought had occurred to him then that it was entirely possible that Harvey Sears would someday find out what David and Sears' mistress, Jeanette, had done in her private apartment, and if that happened, God only knew what would become of him. It was even conceivable that Jeanette herself might break down and tell Sears. On the other hand, he had rationalized to himself, if Sears had had a chance at his wife Angela, and then found out about Jeanette, he might just shrug it off as a fair exchange. To further protect himself in this way, David had finally given in.
If I agree, Angela won't be hurt?" he had asked, his voice almost cracking as he forced the words through his lips. "Believe me, after I get through with her, she'll probably be in better condition than you've ever seen her," Sears said, licking his lips at the prospect. "I've had a lot of practice breaking women in to do what men like in bed. Jeanette, for instance, is as talented in that way as she is lovely to look at. As a matter-of-fact, perhaps as a little bonus for your cooperation I could arrange you a few hours with her," Sears had said, noting with a glint of amusement in his eyes the eagerness with which David had leapt at the bait in spite of himself. He obviously hadn't had enough of her in the brief span of time in her bedroom, Sears had thought.
"I suppose I have no choice," David had muttered, letting his mind wander momentarily to the physical charms he had just begun to taste when Harvey had called them in. "But if anything happens to Angela, I'll.. . "
"Look, Davey-boy, I told you . . . nothing will happen that you haven't already wanted to do to her yourself. Is it a deal or not?" he added impatiently, slapping both his heavy palms flat on the desk top. "And you can have an hour or two with Jeanette, if you can take it."
Sensing that he had just been given his last chance to accept or reject the offer, and certain he had no other alternative, David quickly responded, "Okay. It's a deal." The words had echoed in his head like distant thunder while he listened to what he had to do to set things up for Sears.
Now, finishing his third drink at the Broadway bar and starting to feel slightly drunk, David signaled to the bartender that he was ready to pay. While he was waiting for his change, he stared directly into his own eyes between two bottles of Gil by's Gin in the mirror behind the bar. After all, he told himself in his own mind, there was nothing I could do under the circumstances. And Angela will never know she might even enjoy herself, he added to himself to rationalize away his continuing sense of guilt and shame.
Suddenly in his quickly increasing drunken state, it seemed to David that his face in the mirror was strangely different. He squinted his eyes to look more closely and leaned forward over the bar, unable to believe his eyes. There in the glass was that pudgy, reddened, somehow evil-looking face that belonged to Harvey Sears. As David continued to stare in horror, his image seemed to wink back at him, and he knew the thoughts going on in that lewdly lascivious mind as well as if they were his own. As he imagined the thoughts, mentally running first his eyes and then his hands over Angela's curvaceous young body, pressing his fingers into her ripely tender breasts and down between her warmly moistening thighs, David was mortified to feel the beginning quiver of an erection in his pants.
For what seemed an eternity of time, David stood transfixed by the obscenely grinning image in the mirror, the warm hardness between his legs steadily growing in size.
The bartender broke the spell.
"Hey, buddy. You okay?" He then repeated his words when David failed to respond.
Finally David managed to break his contact with the reflection he was viewing in the mirror.
"What, oh, yeah, I'm okay," he said, fumbling with the coins to leave a tip on the bar. "I just thought I was somebody else for a minute," he slurred the words from the alcohol he had been drinking.
As he left the bar moving slowly and carefully, but still swaying slightly, a little unsteady on his feet, the bartender watched him go with a cynical frown on his face.