I'd Rather Fight Than Swish, page 14
“Don’t you see? Every person that’s been in this spy setup with me has been harmed. Whoever is doing all these terrible things, is out to get all of us. So I’m tired of sitting around waiting for the blow to fall. So let’s go for an oldfashioned ride and try to flush them out.”
But how?”
“By sticking our necks out. We’ll go to the remotest place I can think of. Seemingly defenseless and all by ourselves. Out for a little woo-pitching. But don’t worry. I’ve got a gun. I think they’ll take a crack at us if they see we’re unprotected and damn far from the madding crowd.”
“They?”
“Sure. Got to be more than one. Didn’t a whole gang of them abuse you at that bowling alley?”
“Oh.” She shuddered and the tremor made both her breasts stand out some more. “I’m afraid—”
“So am I. But are you game? After all, we will at least be doing what comes naturally, in case they do go for us . . .”
The prospect seemed to thrill her. She wet her lower lip with her pink tongue.
“Where is this remote place you picked?”
I nodded.
“The university owns a mansion out on the Parkins Road. It was left as a bequest by some eccentric millionaire. Big, rambling dump with stone turrets, iron picket gate and fence all around the property. It’s empty because the university hasn’t quite made up its mind what to do with it. Probably sell it for cash and throw it in the treasury. But it’s got about twenty bedrooms and I have the key.”
“You have the key.” She arched her back restlessly, stirred her legs and stood up. “Then what are we waiting for? You’ve talked a good one for weeks now, Rod Damon, let’s see if you can play one!”
“That’s the way I like to hear my women talk. Shall I prepare a picnic basket?”
“No,” she said. “I have found food a great deterrent when the main hunger is sexual desire. I don’t want any other sensation to interfere.”
I shook my head. “How did a doll like you ever become a call girl? With that kind of correct attitude, it must have been hell for you.”
“A woman has to eat,” she said simply.
I shrugged. “Anyhow, thanks for the guts to go and I’ll thank you more appropriately when we get down to cases. We don’t need a pass. You’re with me and they kinda give me a free run around here, you know.”
“Yes,” she laughed. “With hot and cold running coeds. You are a devil, Damon.”
“On the side of the angels. Come.” I held out my hand and brought her close to me. We kissed. One long, lingering, promising buss that held out a lot of hope for a grand spree in the sheets. I was glad. It would take my mind off Walrus-moustache and the whole damn mess. And if we did flush out any spies, what the hell. Johnson’s tailing car would be a big help. Meanwhile it was nice to have Walrus-moustache’s .32 calibre special in my hip pocket.
My own gun is quick. But I can’t stop a man with murder on his mind with it. A woman, yes—maybe.
Rita Cortez seemed as anxious as I was to get going so we locked up and scrammed down the corridor. I had decided to walk out the front of the building in broad daylight so we couldn’t be missed. A good idea. It was sunny outside and warm and as bright as a lighted TV studio, but unfortunately we ran into Clovis Lee.
Sweet, gorgeous, jealous Clovis Lee.
When she saw the Puerto Rican bombshell on my left arm, her mouth drooped and her eyes shot sparks.
“Well, well, well,” she purred icily.
“Hello, Clovis,” Rita Cortez said politely.
“Hi, kid,” I said airily.
Clovis looked ginger-peachy in culottes and sweater with a crimson scarf wrapped around her slim throat. But the look in her eyes was ugly. Her red hair was flaming.
“Going someplace?” she asked, ignoring Rita and giving me the Double O that said Drop Dead.
“You’ll never believe this, Clovis, but Miss Cortez and I are going to officiate at a Bird Watcher’s Outing in Ferry Park.”
“Really? Lovebirds, I’ll bet.”
Nobody owns me, of course, but can I help it if women sometimes think they do? And jealousy and being catty is something I have no control over. What man has?
Rita Cortez accepted the challenge. She smiled sweetly at Clovis, took my arm more firmly and said: “I’ve always wanted to see a yellow-bellied sapsucker make love to a sparrow. Haven’t you, Clovis?”
On that bitchy bon mot, I fled with Rita Cortez through the glass doors. Several passing students, fetching in shorts and school sweaters, giggled out loud, because they overheard the remark. Clovis Lee just stood her ground, frozen to the spot and two dabs of red that matched the crimson of her scarf, set her face on fire.
“You—you—call girl!” she hooted.
What a comeback.
We fled down the stone steps to my waiting Renault.
Across the parking area, I could see a dark sedan with no university sticker in the windows, suddenly pull out, motor going. Johnson’s man. That was good. I didn’t really want to wander out to a desolate place like Parkins Road without some police protection. After all, what if we really ran into the Glee Club? The idea made me shiver.
In the Renault, our knees touched and Rita Cortez, rubbing it in, just in case Clovis Lee was watching, rested her head on my shoulder. Her breasts mashed me, pleasantly.
“Please, not while I’m driving.”
“Oh, pooh. You can do anything.”
“Can I?”
“Well—” she admitted. “I hope so. Or else you’ve led me on so shamelessly.”
“Me?” I nosed the car out, giving Johnson’s tail more time before I zipped for the long, curving macadam lane bordered by tall pines that fronted the university. “You used the seventh method on me. It wasn’t the other way around. Tell me—did you really learn about it the way you said. From one of your customers?”
She took a moment before answering. The breeze was whipping her face, fanning her inky black hair beautifully.
“Don’t you believe me?”
“Sure.”
“No you don’t. I can tell by your tone. You think I made it up.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Then why argue. I believe you.”
“That’s better.”
We were both sounding like refugees from a Hemingway novel so I concentrated on my driving. The highway that runs by the university bears south to Parkins Road, but you have to navigate about five or six miles of hills and dales to get there. It was a lovely day for a drive. A great day to get laid.
Suddenly Rita Cortez’s hand was at my crotch, the zipper unzippering before I could stop her. Her cool slender fingers had me kind of trapped. She didn’t squeeze or grab. Merely fondled and caressed.
“Hey. No fair.”
“Why not?”
“I’m over-prepared already. I’ve got a picture of you in my mind, Rita—”
“Then develop it. Little by little.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Now who doesn’t believe who? Go ahead. Be my guest. I’ve got enough Kleenex to accommodate a prep school for boys.”
I flung her a look. Her lovely profile was chiseled, determined and almost as cool as a cucumber. Only a slight flush betrayed her inner restlessness. But I was suspicious as all hell now. I bit my lip.
“Care to tell me what’s bothering you, Rod? You seem annoyed. Angry, almost.”
“Not exactly. Can’t you wait? It’s only about fifteen minutes to the mansion. There’s more room there. Lots of big beds. We can go around in circles for hours.”
“Why should it bother you?” she said softly, her hands still making me grow bigger and bigger until I bulged. “Aren’t you the great Damon? The tireless one. The one who can’t get enough. I have heard that you can have a dozen orgasms and still want more. Can’t I test the theory?”
“So test. But I warn you. I don’t come easy.”
“Yes, I know. I remember. That’s what’s so wonderful about you, Rod, and it’s the one thing that can make a woman like me desire you all the more. Let me be a tease.”
“So tease. Enjoy, enjoy.”
“Doesn’t it feel nice?”
“Nice? Blow on it and I’ll follow you anywhere.”
She laughed. A soft, happy laugh. She sounded as content as a kitten with a fine meal of three mice.
“You’re incorrigible but—my sainted mother!—never have I had my fingers around so formidable a man. You’re in a class by yourself.”
“So they tell me.”
I was trying to drive the car, trying to assume an indifference I didn’t really feel. It didn’t work. Any dame who can do the seventh method is not going to allow a simple little thing like the masturbation bit throw her. Maybe, I wouldn’t have to make like Aragoli’s bull.
I mooed.
And mooed and mooed.
And she laughed softly and did a thoroughgoing job of attending me. I was wiped dry, recharged, revisited, re-bulleting, and then wiped dry again. I felt ten pounds lighter.
Finally she was satisfied. She nestled against my shoulder once more contentedly. The clouds raced along with the Renault, the sun trying to follow. The road snaked and dipped and dropped between the trees and the hills and the dales. Johnson’s man was still in sight.
“It’s true,” she whispered.
“What is?”
“You are. Your legend, your fame, your reputation. You are indeed the greatest man in America.”
“If you say so.” From the corner of my eye, I could see, just like in the living experiments room, she had gotten some kicks too; the fine stipling of perspiration was across her forehead.
“Rita,” I said sternly.
“Yes, Rod.”
“I’m going to pound your poop, scratch your snatch and hump you silly when we get to the old dark house.”
“I hope so. I’m counting on it. Anything less than that would be a crying shame.”
“Crying shame? Lady, you’re going to howl your head off.”
Her fingers dug into my arm. “Can’t you go a little faster then?”
My foot stamped the accelerator to the floorboards and we shot to the rambling, turreted mansion on Parkins Road in ten minutes flat.
But even with sex on my mind and my heart alive with anticipation, I hadn’t forgotten that the phone call which had taken me to Ferry Park last night had been a surprisingly inside matter. The telephone voice had known what he shouldn’t have.
The caller had known the secret passwords, the May Day and the whole shmeer. And how could that have been possible unless the caller was one of us? Of course, the vital information could have been wrung from one of the poor dead kids, prior to total slaughter. I still couldn’t forget the terrible going-over they had gotten.
The mansion on Parkins Road loomed in the sunlight, dark, turreted, feudal-looking, like something out of King Arthur’s time. The only thing missing was a drawbridge and a moat. And visored guys walking around on the ramparts with halberds poking into the air. It was some layout. The university ought to realize a pretty penny on it when they closed a deal for it
Rita Cortez was impressed.
A sigh escaped her.
“It will be like days of old, when knights were bold——”
“And toilets weren’t invented,” I ended it off for her. “Forget it. They got good plumbing here.”
“I didn’t mean that.” She almost blushed. “I meant something romantic and—oh, come on, for God’s sake, I’m tired of talking about it.”
I slammed on the brakes and the Renault rocked to a stop. She squealed in fright. Then laughed.
“Come on, Cortez,” I said levelly. “You’re about to be conquered.”
“I don’t want to be conquered. I want to be loved.”
“That too,” I promised. “All in good time.”
“A good time is what I came for.”
“This must be the place—in you go, woman. And an obscenity on trading punch lines. I say, let’s get this screw on the road.”
Her cheeks flamed red but she settled adroitly on my arm and allowed me to hand her out of the car. More and more it looked like I would not need Senor Aragoli’s three points.
I had a very big one of my own to make.
The biggest one I’ve got.
Sunlight warmed our faces as we walked slowly toward the big, old, sprawling mansion on Parkins Road.
I felt like we had come for a reading of the will or something.
It was that kind of place.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
So far so good.
I parked the Renault in a copse of evergreens just to the left of the big front door, making sure the Renault stood out in the sunlight. Rita Cortez, mind made up now and silent as if she were suddenly awed by the rapidity with which our long-awaited confrontation was dawning, kept looking at the ground as I led her up a long, pebbled walk to the house. The landscaping had gone to hell, row upon row of dying, uncared for shrubs looking sickly in the golden light of day. I spotted a couple of broken windows on the wide fieldstone front of the house. I also saw, again out of the corner of my eye, the dark sedan nosing quietly under a big chestnut tree some fifty yards to the right of the structure. Rita didn’t see the car. I was happy.
I wasn’t only going to get laid. I was going to have police protection while so occupied. The best Do Not Disturb sign in the world. like a busy call girl who’s paid off the local gendarmes to leave her alone.
Rita walked ahead of me into the house after I wrestled with the front door. The key I had was a big, heirloom sort of thing. I tucked it into my pocket after we got inside and re-locked the door. With a bolt and latch, just like in a Karloff movie.
The interior was dim but you could make out the sort of place it must have been with furniture in it. Walnut panel walls looked down on us, big patches of dust-free places on the high sides of the place showed where possible Renoirs, Matisses and Van Goghs might have hung. A fine mist of cobwebs clung to vaulted ceiling and cornices. There was even a broken chandelier dangling from a fixture. Something the former owners had left behind. A curving, walnut-colored ballustrade rose like a Zeig-feld staircase to the next landing.
“Want to see the rest of the rooms?” I asked.
“Later. Only the bedrooms for now.”
“You mean the bedroom.”
“Yes. Oh, Rod—” There was a catch in her voice.
“Steady. Don’t fall down until we find the bed.” I knew how she felt though. My heart was hammering like a tomtom. The call of the wild. I smelled meat Fresh meat and my nostrils were flaring. If I was a horse I would have whinnied.
“Come on, then,” she murmured anxiously. “Take me there. This instant. How much do you think a girl can stand?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out.”
We didn’t need a candle. The sunlight that found its way into the big house was light enough. I followed her up the curving stair, reveling in the gorgeous left-right, left-right, up-down, up-down of her fantastic rear end.
She was shimmering like the pot at the end of the rainbow. A double rainbow like they have in Hawaii. Only mine had two pots.
The upper landing was gloomier, naturally. Which only made things better. Suddenly Rita Cortez halted outside a heavy oaken door I had led her to. Her ivory complexion gleamed in the gloom.
“Wait a minute,” she whispered. “It’s deserted here. The house is empty. Many bedrooms, you said. But if that’s true, there won’t be any beds here—”
“Ah, but there is. At least one.”
“You bastard,” she hissed.
“Who me?”
“Yes, you. You’ve been here before.”
“Certainly. I told you. It’s great for—ah—unusual research. I had a bed put in months ago when the Ranselleermans moved out.”
“The who?”
“The Ranselleermans. The people who owned the place.”
“They sound like a Dutch union of some kind—”
“Never mind them. In you go. You’ll find everything you’ll need or won’t need in a wardrobe closet by the bathroom. I laid in some supplies. Just in case.”
She tittered and her fragrance was in my flaring nostrils. I pushed her into the room. I did remember to open the door first.
Once inside, she gazed humbly at the gigantic, four-postered antique with high, double-mattress and superb pink sheets and pillows. She chuckled, shaking her head.
“Turn your back,” she said. “When you turn around, I shall be ready.”
“Don’t go away,” I replied. But I closed the door and turned my back. All the while I undressed, but quickly, I could hear her making soft, feathery, feminine noises as she did whatever she had to do. I wasn’t kidding her about the room. At no small expense to the university, I had had them completely equip the room. With a pile of white rug, soft chairs, et cetera. It was a Playboy layout in an abandoned house. I had performed wonders and learned much in that room. I was about to learn more.
As I stood in the altogether, I was facing the windows. These were French doors leading out to one of the stone terraces that ran around the structure. The picket fence with its rusting iron points that were about ten feet high each stood out at a reasonable distance from the house itself but this one corner bedroom happened to pass almost directly over the picket line as it curved past the second floor. It was a cute gag. I used to tell the dolls that came there they had a fat chance of getting away from me if they changed their minds. I didn’t make that crack to Rita Cortez, though. It wasn’t necessary. We understood each other.
I think we did.
I don’t take off my clothes for just anybody who asks me. I didn’t imagine she did either.
I waited.
A few minutes ticked by. Wonderful, thrilling, horny seconds in which all I could think of was that splendid body which had first filled my eyes in the living experiments room.
“Rod.”
It was a fierce, low whisper. “Can I turn around now?”
“Yes.”
Slowly, I turned. Happily, I faced her. I took a long second to look. I am not the excitable type; I don’t have to be in the bedroom league but I knew this was something special.
But how?”
“By sticking our necks out. We’ll go to the remotest place I can think of. Seemingly defenseless and all by ourselves. Out for a little woo-pitching. But don’t worry. I’ve got a gun. I think they’ll take a crack at us if they see we’re unprotected and damn far from the madding crowd.”
“They?”
“Sure. Got to be more than one. Didn’t a whole gang of them abuse you at that bowling alley?”
“Oh.” She shuddered and the tremor made both her breasts stand out some more. “I’m afraid—”
“So am I. But are you game? After all, we will at least be doing what comes naturally, in case they do go for us . . .”
The prospect seemed to thrill her. She wet her lower lip with her pink tongue.
“Where is this remote place you picked?”
I nodded.
“The university owns a mansion out on the Parkins Road. It was left as a bequest by some eccentric millionaire. Big, rambling dump with stone turrets, iron picket gate and fence all around the property. It’s empty because the university hasn’t quite made up its mind what to do with it. Probably sell it for cash and throw it in the treasury. But it’s got about twenty bedrooms and I have the key.”
“You have the key.” She arched her back restlessly, stirred her legs and stood up. “Then what are we waiting for? You’ve talked a good one for weeks now, Rod Damon, let’s see if you can play one!”
“That’s the way I like to hear my women talk. Shall I prepare a picnic basket?”
“No,” she said. “I have found food a great deterrent when the main hunger is sexual desire. I don’t want any other sensation to interfere.”
I shook my head. “How did a doll like you ever become a call girl? With that kind of correct attitude, it must have been hell for you.”
“A woman has to eat,” she said simply.
I shrugged. “Anyhow, thanks for the guts to go and I’ll thank you more appropriately when we get down to cases. We don’t need a pass. You’re with me and they kinda give me a free run around here, you know.”
“Yes,” she laughed. “With hot and cold running coeds. You are a devil, Damon.”
“On the side of the angels. Come.” I held out my hand and brought her close to me. We kissed. One long, lingering, promising buss that held out a lot of hope for a grand spree in the sheets. I was glad. It would take my mind off Walrus-moustache and the whole damn mess. And if we did flush out any spies, what the hell. Johnson’s tailing car would be a big help. Meanwhile it was nice to have Walrus-moustache’s .32 calibre special in my hip pocket.
My own gun is quick. But I can’t stop a man with murder on his mind with it. A woman, yes—maybe.
Rita Cortez seemed as anxious as I was to get going so we locked up and scrammed down the corridor. I had decided to walk out the front of the building in broad daylight so we couldn’t be missed. A good idea. It was sunny outside and warm and as bright as a lighted TV studio, but unfortunately we ran into Clovis Lee.
Sweet, gorgeous, jealous Clovis Lee.
When she saw the Puerto Rican bombshell on my left arm, her mouth drooped and her eyes shot sparks.
“Well, well, well,” she purred icily.
“Hello, Clovis,” Rita Cortez said politely.
“Hi, kid,” I said airily.
Clovis looked ginger-peachy in culottes and sweater with a crimson scarf wrapped around her slim throat. But the look in her eyes was ugly. Her red hair was flaming.
“Going someplace?” she asked, ignoring Rita and giving me the Double O that said Drop Dead.
“You’ll never believe this, Clovis, but Miss Cortez and I are going to officiate at a Bird Watcher’s Outing in Ferry Park.”
“Really? Lovebirds, I’ll bet.”
Nobody owns me, of course, but can I help it if women sometimes think they do? And jealousy and being catty is something I have no control over. What man has?
Rita Cortez accepted the challenge. She smiled sweetly at Clovis, took my arm more firmly and said: “I’ve always wanted to see a yellow-bellied sapsucker make love to a sparrow. Haven’t you, Clovis?”
On that bitchy bon mot, I fled with Rita Cortez through the glass doors. Several passing students, fetching in shorts and school sweaters, giggled out loud, because they overheard the remark. Clovis Lee just stood her ground, frozen to the spot and two dabs of red that matched the crimson of her scarf, set her face on fire.
“You—you—call girl!” she hooted.
What a comeback.
We fled down the stone steps to my waiting Renault.
Across the parking area, I could see a dark sedan with no university sticker in the windows, suddenly pull out, motor going. Johnson’s man. That was good. I didn’t really want to wander out to a desolate place like Parkins Road without some police protection. After all, what if we really ran into the Glee Club? The idea made me shiver.
In the Renault, our knees touched and Rita Cortez, rubbing it in, just in case Clovis Lee was watching, rested her head on my shoulder. Her breasts mashed me, pleasantly.
“Please, not while I’m driving.”
“Oh, pooh. You can do anything.”
“Can I?”
“Well—” she admitted. “I hope so. Or else you’ve led me on so shamelessly.”
“Me?” I nosed the car out, giving Johnson’s tail more time before I zipped for the long, curving macadam lane bordered by tall pines that fronted the university. “You used the seventh method on me. It wasn’t the other way around. Tell me—did you really learn about it the way you said. From one of your customers?”
She took a moment before answering. The breeze was whipping her face, fanning her inky black hair beautifully.
“Don’t you believe me?”
“Sure.”
“No you don’t. I can tell by your tone. You think I made it up.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Then why argue. I believe you.”
“That’s better.”
We were both sounding like refugees from a Hemingway novel so I concentrated on my driving. The highway that runs by the university bears south to Parkins Road, but you have to navigate about five or six miles of hills and dales to get there. It was a lovely day for a drive. A great day to get laid.
Suddenly Rita Cortez’s hand was at my crotch, the zipper unzippering before I could stop her. Her cool slender fingers had me kind of trapped. She didn’t squeeze or grab. Merely fondled and caressed.
“Hey. No fair.”
“Why not?”
“I’m over-prepared already. I’ve got a picture of you in my mind, Rita—”
“Then develop it. Little by little.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Now who doesn’t believe who? Go ahead. Be my guest. I’ve got enough Kleenex to accommodate a prep school for boys.”
I flung her a look. Her lovely profile was chiseled, determined and almost as cool as a cucumber. Only a slight flush betrayed her inner restlessness. But I was suspicious as all hell now. I bit my lip.
“Care to tell me what’s bothering you, Rod? You seem annoyed. Angry, almost.”
“Not exactly. Can’t you wait? It’s only about fifteen minutes to the mansion. There’s more room there. Lots of big beds. We can go around in circles for hours.”
“Why should it bother you?” she said softly, her hands still making me grow bigger and bigger until I bulged. “Aren’t you the great Damon? The tireless one. The one who can’t get enough. I have heard that you can have a dozen orgasms and still want more. Can’t I test the theory?”
“So test. But I warn you. I don’t come easy.”
“Yes, I know. I remember. That’s what’s so wonderful about you, Rod, and it’s the one thing that can make a woman like me desire you all the more. Let me be a tease.”
“So tease. Enjoy, enjoy.”
“Doesn’t it feel nice?”
“Nice? Blow on it and I’ll follow you anywhere.”
She laughed. A soft, happy laugh. She sounded as content as a kitten with a fine meal of three mice.
“You’re incorrigible but—my sainted mother!—never have I had my fingers around so formidable a man. You’re in a class by yourself.”
“So they tell me.”
I was trying to drive the car, trying to assume an indifference I didn’t really feel. It didn’t work. Any dame who can do the seventh method is not going to allow a simple little thing like the masturbation bit throw her. Maybe, I wouldn’t have to make like Aragoli’s bull.
I mooed.
And mooed and mooed.
And she laughed softly and did a thoroughgoing job of attending me. I was wiped dry, recharged, revisited, re-bulleting, and then wiped dry again. I felt ten pounds lighter.
Finally she was satisfied. She nestled against my shoulder once more contentedly. The clouds raced along with the Renault, the sun trying to follow. The road snaked and dipped and dropped between the trees and the hills and the dales. Johnson’s man was still in sight.
“It’s true,” she whispered.
“What is?”
“You are. Your legend, your fame, your reputation. You are indeed the greatest man in America.”
“If you say so.” From the corner of my eye, I could see, just like in the living experiments room, she had gotten some kicks too; the fine stipling of perspiration was across her forehead.
“Rita,” I said sternly.
“Yes, Rod.”
“I’m going to pound your poop, scratch your snatch and hump you silly when we get to the old dark house.”
“I hope so. I’m counting on it. Anything less than that would be a crying shame.”
“Crying shame? Lady, you’re going to howl your head off.”
Her fingers dug into my arm. “Can’t you go a little faster then?”
My foot stamped the accelerator to the floorboards and we shot to the rambling, turreted mansion on Parkins Road in ten minutes flat.
But even with sex on my mind and my heart alive with anticipation, I hadn’t forgotten that the phone call which had taken me to Ferry Park last night had been a surprisingly inside matter. The telephone voice had known what he shouldn’t have.
The caller had known the secret passwords, the May Day and the whole shmeer. And how could that have been possible unless the caller was one of us? Of course, the vital information could have been wrung from one of the poor dead kids, prior to total slaughter. I still couldn’t forget the terrible going-over they had gotten.
The mansion on Parkins Road loomed in the sunlight, dark, turreted, feudal-looking, like something out of King Arthur’s time. The only thing missing was a drawbridge and a moat. And visored guys walking around on the ramparts with halberds poking into the air. It was some layout. The university ought to realize a pretty penny on it when they closed a deal for it
Rita Cortez was impressed.
A sigh escaped her.
“It will be like days of old, when knights were bold——”
“And toilets weren’t invented,” I ended it off for her. “Forget it. They got good plumbing here.”
“I didn’t mean that.” She almost blushed. “I meant something romantic and—oh, come on, for God’s sake, I’m tired of talking about it.”
I slammed on the brakes and the Renault rocked to a stop. She squealed in fright. Then laughed.
“Come on, Cortez,” I said levelly. “You’re about to be conquered.”
“I don’t want to be conquered. I want to be loved.”
“That too,” I promised. “All in good time.”
“A good time is what I came for.”
“This must be the place—in you go, woman. And an obscenity on trading punch lines. I say, let’s get this screw on the road.”
Her cheeks flamed red but she settled adroitly on my arm and allowed me to hand her out of the car. More and more it looked like I would not need Senor Aragoli’s three points.
I had a very big one of my own to make.
The biggest one I’ve got.
Sunlight warmed our faces as we walked slowly toward the big, old, sprawling mansion on Parkins Road.
I felt like we had come for a reading of the will or something.
It was that kind of place.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
So far so good.
I parked the Renault in a copse of evergreens just to the left of the big front door, making sure the Renault stood out in the sunlight. Rita Cortez, mind made up now and silent as if she were suddenly awed by the rapidity with which our long-awaited confrontation was dawning, kept looking at the ground as I led her up a long, pebbled walk to the house. The landscaping had gone to hell, row upon row of dying, uncared for shrubs looking sickly in the golden light of day. I spotted a couple of broken windows on the wide fieldstone front of the house. I also saw, again out of the corner of my eye, the dark sedan nosing quietly under a big chestnut tree some fifty yards to the right of the structure. Rita didn’t see the car. I was happy.
I wasn’t only going to get laid. I was going to have police protection while so occupied. The best Do Not Disturb sign in the world. like a busy call girl who’s paid off the local gendarmes to leave her alone.
Rita walked ahead of me into the house after I wrestled with the front door. The key I had was a big, heirloom sort of thing. I tucked it into my pocket after we got inside and re-locked the door. With a bolt and latch, just like in a Karloff movie.
The interior was dim but you could make out the sort of place it must have been with furniture in it. Walnut panel walls looked down on us, big patches of dust-free places on the high sides of the place showed where possible Renoirs, Matisses and Van Goghs might have hung. A fine mist of cobwebs clung to vaulted ceiling and cornices. There was even a broken chandelier dangling from a fixture. Something the former owners had left behind. A curving, walnut-colored ballustrade rose like a Zeig-feld staircase to the next landing.
“Want to see the rest of the rooms?” I asked.
“Later. Only the bedrooms for now.”
“You mean the bedroom.”
“Yes. Oh, Rod—” There was a catch in her voice.
“Steady. Don’t fall down until we find the bed.” I knew how she felt though. My heart was hammering like a tomtom. The call of the wild. I smelled meat Fresh meat and my nostrils were flaring. If I was a horse I would have whinnied.
“Come on, then,” she murmured anxiously. “Take me there. This instant. How much do you think a girl can stand?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out.”
We didn’t need a candle. The sunlight that found its way into the big house was light enough. I followed her up the curving stair, reveling in the gorgeous left-right, left-right, up-down, up-down of her fantastic rear end.
She was shimmering like the pot at the end of the rainbow. A double rainbow like they have in Hawaii. Only mine had two pots.
The upper landing was gloomier, naturally. Which only made things better. Suddenly Rita Cortez halted outside a heavy oaken door I had led her to. Her ivory complexion gleamed in the gloom.
“Wait a minute,” she whispered. “It’s deserted here. The house is empty. Many bedrooms, you said. But if that’s true, there won’t be any beds here—”
“Ah, but there is. At least one.”
“You bastard,” she hissed.
“Who me?”
“Yes, you. You’ve been here before.”
“Certainly. I told you. It’s great for—ah—unusual research. I had a bed put in months ago when the Ranselleermans moved out.”
“The who?”
“The Ranselleermans. The people who owned the place.”
“They sound like a Dutch union of some kind—”
“Never mind them. In you go. You’ll find everything you’ll need or won’t need in a wardrobe closet by the bathroom. I laid in some supplies. Just in case.”
She tittered and her fragrance was in my flaring nostrils. I pushed her into the room. I did remember to open the door first.
Once inside, she gazed humbly at the gigantic, four-postered antique with high, double-mattress and superb pink sheets and pillows. She chuckled, shaking her head.
“Turn your back,” she said. “When you turn around, I shall be ready.”
“Don’t go away,” I replied. But I closed the door and turned my back. All the while I undressed, but quickly, I could hear her making soft, feathery, feminine noises as she did whatever she had to do. I wasn’t kidding her about the room. At no small expense to the university, I had had them completely equip the room. With a pile of white rug, soft chairs, et cetera. It was a Playboy layout in an abandoned house. I had performed wonders and learned much in that room. I was about to learn more.
As I stood in the altogether, I was facing the windows. These were French doors leading out to one of the stone terraces that ran around the structure. The picket fence with its rusting iron points that were about ten feet high each stood out at a reasonable distance from the house itself but this one corner bedroom happened to pass almost directly over the picket line as it curved past the second floor. It was a cute gag. I used to tell the dolls that came there they had a fat chance of getting away from me if they changed their minds. I didn’t make that crack to Rita Cortez, though. It wasn’t necessary. We understood each other.
I think we did.
I don’t take off my clothes for just anybody who asks me. I didn’t imagine she did either.
I waited.
A few minutes ticked by. Wonderful, thrilling, horny seconds in which all I could think of was that splendid body which had first filled my eyes in the living experiments room.
“Rod.”
It was a fierce, low whisper. “Can I turn around now?”
“Yes.”
Slowly, I turned. Happily, I faced her. I took a long second to look. I am not the excitable type; I don’t have to be in the bedroom league but I knew this was something special.
