Peter Chambers waited while Goldie Dorn locked the apartment, and then he escorted the madame to the street. They picked up a cab to Fifty-third and Second, and all the way down Pete listened to her curse the errant Dorothy Steel. It wasn't so much that the girl had violated a rule of the stable; but Goldie highly resented being sold out to a blackmailer, no matter how high he was in the rackets.

There was no answer at the apartment, so Goldie tried the knob. The door opened, and Chambers followed her in. There was a small foyer end a large living room. Seated in an easy chair was a slender brunette with a surprised expression along the edges of her mouth and a small hole in the middle of her forehead.

lancer books ig| new york

TONY Starr was a new tenant in the Kips Bay Apartments on 32nd Street and Lexington Avenue. A month ago he had signed a two-year lease, depositing four months' rent as security, but even then he knew he would forfeit the security (he could afford it) because he had no intention of staying out the two year period. Once the estate was settled, he would return to London. He hated New York. He hated everything about New York. He hated every memory of New York. He hated

For a month now he had been a quiet, anonymous tenant, one among six hundred other tenants in the vast complex of the tall, modern, newly constructed, expensive high-riser. He knew nobody in the Kips Bay Apartments, and nobody in the Kips Bay Apartments knew Tony Starr, which was exactly the way he wanted it He had a satisfactory three-room apartment, but it was, in fact, temporary. His mother was dead—quick, so terribly sudden, a heart attack in London—and he was here in New York to wait out the settlement of the estate. He

had several times been to her lawyer's office (her lawyer —not his father's) and had signed all the necessary papers and had been advised that the settlement of an estate takes time.

For a month now he had been good, quiet, patient, anonymous. He had been drinking heavily, but he had not touched the white stuff. This evening, finally, he had indulged himself in the white stuff and he was feeling good. Good? God, he was flying. And he wanted a girl. And so at seven-thirty of this warm May evening he showered, and now at the bathroom mirror he was shaving: Tony Starr, twenty-eight years of age, tall and slender with regular features. He had black hair and dark eyes that now, because of the white stuff—the dilated pupils merging with the irises—appeared to be as black as his hair.

He finished shaving, and in the bedroom he dressed in a White shirt and a conservative tie and a fine suit in the latest of fashion. He put money in his wallet, plenty of money, and from a large metal box transferred a portion of the white powder to an ornate little snuffbox, a gift from his mother. He pinched a bit of the powder and sniffed it, a last sniff, and then snapped shut the little snuffbox. He looked in a mirror and grinned. He had big fine white teeth. He had a pleasant, engaging, comfortable, boyish grin. He did the grin again, and stopped it. He shrugged and went away from the mirror.

He knew, precisely, what his procedure would be. He would go uptown to a cheap hotel and there register under some assumed name—but as Mr. and Mrs. He would knowingly leer at the clerk, and pay in advance whatever exorbitant fee was demanded, take the key to the room and keep it with him. Then he would go to one (or many) of the hooker bars that John Edison had recommended. John Edison, his friend who owned the

Palisades Club in London, made frequent trips to New York and knew all the spots. (John had also given him the private numbers of some of the best madames in town.) And in one of the hooker bars he would find a hooker who pleased him. He knew, however, he was not easy to please. Unless the hooker suited his taste, she could be distasteful. She would have to be tall, blonde, willowy. His mother had been tall, blonde, willowy. And had had small breasts, and long legs, and a big behind. The hooker would have to have small breasts and long legs and a big behind. A big behind excited him terribly.

He resisted the snuff box, went out of the apartment, and locked the door. And then unlocked the door and went in again to find what he had forgotten. He rummaged through drawers and felt a thrill when he enclasped it, long and slim and graceful: a press-button knife with a six-inch blade. He dropped it into a pocket and went out to the warm May night, Tony Starr, tall and handsome and fashionably dressed, impelled by need and seeking his pleasure.

MARK Montague was a playwright and a pusher. One was his vocation, the other his avocation, but he did not quite know which was which. He had had two off-Broadway shows produced, but neither had produced any money for him. On the other hand, the pushing splashed down a steady stream of wealth like a small Niagara, and also gave him a splendid amount of free time which he devoted to the writing of plays. He liked his situation: it was pleasant, comfortable, and rewarding. One day when he made it big as a playwright he would give up the pushing. That day was not yet.

The pushing had begun during his freshman year at college. He had made a contact and had begun to peddle marijuana. He was a fine student, an enterprising peddler, and an excellent entrepreneur, and by the time he had graduated summa cum laude he had also graduated to peddling hard junk to a select, sophisticated, and growing clientele. Mark Montague, a playwright and a pusher—but not a user—was a happy man. He was young, rich, handsome, and at seven-thirty-five of this warm evening in May he was a very happy man, having just completed, in the lavish bed of his lavish bedroom, a delightful experience of sexual intercourse with a lavishly beautiful young woman named Sandi Barton. "Jesus," he moaned. "You are something!"

She was a dancer, a singer, an actress, but she too, like Mark, had an avocation. Hers was call girl, but Mark Montague had no knowledge of Sandi Barton's avocation because she had consistently and efficiently precluded him from that knowledge. She had met him during her soubrette role in Peas and Grass, his recent short-lived off-Broadway musical, and their acquaintance had ripened. She knew he was a playwright, but did not know he was a pusher. He knew she was an actress, but did not know she was a prostitute.

Now she leaned over him, kissed his chest, tapped out her cigarette, and got out of the bed. He admired the long graceful dancer's legs, the white concave belly with its slender slit of navel, the small tight pear-shaped breasts, the glowing, protruding, pink-red nipples. And she turned and went from him, and he admired. The wide shoulders, the white skin, the long cleavage of spine, the high hips, the big round firm dancer's ass, the buttocks enticingly undulant.

She went into the bathroom and closed the door. Chambers. Chambers was a beau, but not as insistent or as frequent a beau as she made him out to be for Mark Montague. Chambers liked her, no question, and did see her often, no question, but not at all as often as she pretended for Mark Montague. There was nothing, really, between her and Peter Chambers, but as far as Mark was concerned it was an affair, and as far as Mark was concerned, seeing Mark was cheating on Peter Chambers. That gave her room to move, and a lot of time off from Mark. Hell, business is business, and a girl has to'live. Chambers knew all about her: Mark did not.

She wanted to call Goldie Dom but of course she could not in his presence. An actress does not have a madame, does she? An actress has an agent, right? She was dying to call Goldie, but Mark was dressing.

"Yes," she said and was immediately sorry. Should have said she was going home, that Chambers was picking her up at home. Too late now. A good hump in the hay curdles the wit, and Mark Montague, with whom she was coupling in the interests of her professional career (the other professional career), was, no matter what else her course of action would develop, one hell of a curdler of wit

The big Caddy slid to a stop outside Chambers's apartment house on Central Park South. If Mark had gone off, she would have go«e off, but Mark did not. He went with her into the outer lobby and she pushed Chambers's button and hoped for an answer. If there was no answer she would say she was late, ask Mark to drive her home, say that Chambers would probably contact her there.

She took the elevator to the penthouse apartment. She touched a finger to the bell and the door opened. He was naked except for a pair of boxer shorts. Jesus, what a beautiful man! What a ruggedly handsome man! Tall and lean and with all the muscles. For a moment she thought about the muscle down there between his legs. She had never had it.

This was Peter Chambers the private eye, ear, nose and throat—the works. This was the guy, already a wild living legend in his own time, who knew all the questions, and most of the answers, and all the places to find any answers he did not have. This was the man for whom even Goldie Dorn had the highest respect, and there was no greater compliment. So why have I never laid the bastard? Because that's the kind of crazy game we've got going between us. We're both stubborn.

He knew what she drank and made it for her: Scotch on the rocks. For himself he fixed a Scotch with water. And they clinked glasses and smiled and drank and said nothing and he looked at her.

Exquisite. Bright blonde hair, enormous blue eyes, a tiny nose, a sensuous mouth, and a figure to drive you right up the wall,

"I think I've got him. His next show—and he's writing it right now—I'll be up there big."

Talent—maybe. Nice, clean, sweet—forget it. Mark Montague was high up there in the rackets now, a jobber in hard drugs, and making it pay big. Chambers knew all about Mark Montague, knew where his money came from, and knew a lot of his customers. She did not know, and he did not consider it his province to inform her. Could be there was love going there; certainly there was career, and he knew how much career meant to her.

This was a kid who had dropped out of Smith College in her junior year because career was burning her ass. She had made rounds, and done bits in shows, and then

Goldie Dorn had found her and latched on to her and taught her how to make money while still fostering her career. Now there was dough for dancing lessons, and acting school, and a voice coach, with a hell of a lot of dough left over. But a whore to be a whore has to be a whore, and this beautiful chick was a born whore, hot for money, avaricious.

"I'm only twenty-two," she had told him, "and I'm going to make it as an actress, but I'll be a rich actress. Two careers, and one doesn't really interfere with the other. Goldie's girls are expensive, and I'm very expensive. Pete, I can easy turn ten tricks a week—and I do more—and my minimum fee is a hundred bucks and I do better than that, believe me. Half to Goldie, and with all my expenses and everything—I still put away five hundred a week. Hell, I put away more. My goal is to have a hundred and fifty thousand bucks free and clear, and then I'll stop turning tricks for hire. Baby, IH have that by the time I'm twenty-seven, maybe before, but until then I don't fuck for free, not even with you, unless it's career. Jesus, why don't you get up that hundred? I swear I'll spend it on you that very same night."

"Man, when you take me out to one of your fancy night clubs, it costs you as much or more, doesn't it?"

the phone and called Goldie Dorn. "Hi, mama," she said. Goldie said, "Where the hell you been?" 'With Mark." "Fuck Mark."

"The Commodore. Suite 1701. Told him you'd be there at eight." Til be there. Who is he?"

"A nice old guy. A big wheel in motors from Detroit. He goes for a yard and a half. You'll stay all night, or as long as he wants."

"All night for a hundred and fifty?" "He figures to tip you, and the tip is all yours." "Right, mama. You're a smart lady." "You home now?"

"No. I dropped in on Peter Chambers." "ESP. That's ESP. I was just going to call him. Put him on, sweetie."

Sandi held out the receiver. "She wants to talk to you." He took it. "Hi, golden Goldie." "Pete, I'd like you to come over." 'When?"

"We've got to be somewhere else at ten, but I want like a half-hour alone with you first. Half-hour's enough to fill you in on the score." "Urgent, Goldie? From the way you sound . . ." "It's urgent, Pete." "I'll be there at nine-thirty sharp." "You're a doll, sweetie."

"Soft. Fm soft, honey, and you know it. Except when it comes to principle. I'm a professional, baby, and I'm against breaching professional standards."

"And I dig you. So get up the hundred and I'll call Goldie to send another gal to Commodore John. I'll be losing money, but I won't be breaching standards."

"Boy, you're the stubborn bastard, aren't you? Me, I'm patient. One day you'll come around. You'll get up the hundred, and I'll ball you to death. And don't think I'm not looking forward."

IT was an amber-lit tavern on 80tb Street near Madison Avenue. It was a rather pretty place, with dark-wood walls, red carpeting, and red velvet draperies, and the piped-in music was not the harsh discotheque stuff but soft, sweet, romantic ballads, most of them instrumental. It was called Tom's Pub, and the single bartender behind the bar was called Tom, and Tony knew from John Edison that the Tom behind the bar was the Tom of Tom's Pub, the owner, and he knew from John Edison just how the place worked.

There was a long dark-wood bar and there were small dark-wood tables. Tom's whores always sat at the tables, never at the bar. Strictly speaking, they were not, quite, Tom's whores: they were discreet young women, some not so young, who, for the privilege of working out of Tom's Pub, paid him in advance, on the nights they worked, twenty-five dollars, which completed their transaction with Tom of Tom's Pub. He did not pimp for them, nor did he have any personal connection with any of them. The girls made their own assignations, and could come back for more if they so wished, all for the same entrance fee of twenty-five dollars. Tonight, Tony had counted a baker's dozen, thirteen, and had done sums in his head and had decided that Tom of Tom's Pub did pretty all right for himself. Thirteen times twenty-five meant that Tom had already earned three hundred and twenty-five dollars, and all that aside from the sale of whiskey, which was quite brisk because the bar was crowded with men. Of course Tony's arithmetic might be a bit off: John had warned him that some of the women at the tables could well be ordinary customers rather than lively ladies with bodies for hire. But whatever the intentions of the thirteen, none of them pleased him, and he was beginning to think of moving on when the blonde walked in.

She was tall, she was slender, she had shapely legs, and when she turned toward a table he saw that she had a big round ass tightly encased in a shiny wet-look miniskirt. His heart began a wild thumping, and he made his move quickly, before she could be preempted by another. He did what he had seen other men do: he left the bar and went to her table. His bill at the bar was paid: Tom's procedure was pay-as-you-go. Awkwardly, he stood over her.

A little grin with the corner of her mouth. "Not while you're standing like a statue up there."

He sat down opposite her. It was a little table. His knees touched hers. His heart was thumping. His mouth was dry. "I ... uh ..." he began.

The waiter went away. His knees were touching hers. She could have moved hers away. She did not. Her grin was full now. She had gleaming little teeth.

She was not pretty. She had a long nose and thin lips and a sallow complexion and she was at least thirty-five years old, maybe more. But her teeth were good, and her affable grin made dimples in her cheeks, and her bare arms were smooth and firm. Inside that shiny black skirt was a crazy, wonderful ass; on top she was wearing a flimsy, see-through blouse trimmed strategically with lace. "Very pretty indeed," he said.

"That, yes. That, in all modesty, I have to admit. Once upon a time I was a bellydancer. But my damn hips got too big."

"Look, a woman, if she knows how, she can hang on to her figure. Like I'm a nut for calesthenics. I would say my figure's just the same as when I was a girl. But the backside, excuse the expression, that you can't do much about. When it starts bulging up on you, it's like, well, a despair."

"Oh now, cut it out," he said. "Look, I saw you when you came in, didn't I? Gorgeous legs and a gorgeous, er, backside."

The waiter brought the drinks, the Scotch in a shot glass, the soda on the side, and the bourbon in a shot glass, the Coke on the side. - Tony gulped the Scotch, sipped soda. As though taking, her cue from him, she did the same: gulped the bourbon, sipped Coke. The waiter was still there. "Two rrtore of the same," Tony said. -t'

"Met a guy and went out with him. Turned out to be a real creep, a square. Bored the agates off me. Turned him loose, and came back. Like I told you, I'm stoned. Figured I'd come back for a last look. If there was a guy around who pleases me, okay. If not I go home, knock down some more bourbon, and go to sleep."

"You're cute. You're a real cute kid, Franlde. You're very handsome. And you got crazy eyes. Real shiny crazy eyes. What are you on, Frankie?"

She laughed. "No wonder you got all the answers." And now the narrow brown eyes appraised him carefully. The suit was expensive, the tie was expensive, the shirt was expensive. He was too damn pretty for an easy john, but he wasn't a cop. A cop couldn't afford to dress like that. "Honey," she said, "you want a party?"

"Oh this cute kid, he's real cute. Okay. I already turned my trick with the creep. I already earned my pay-day with a nothing. You I'll epjoy. You're an ass-man, you're a crazy wild one, I know it It's no fast shack, you and me. We go for the night, right?"

"Don't apologize, out-of-towner. I know how you can get roped in. You got booze there?"

They walked until they found a liquor store. He bought a bottle of bourbon and a bottle of Scotch and the storekeeper wrapped the bottles into a neat package. They went out and waited at the curb until a cab came. They got into it and sat close together, she with her skirt hiked high, he with the neat package in his lap.

"Honey baby," she whispered, "you're going to thrill me to death. I know it, I feel it in my bones."

CHAMBERS arrived at Goldie's place at precisely nine-thirty. Goldie's place was on the fifteenth floor of 905 Fifth Avenue, a sumptuous apartment with four telephones, each with a different unlisted number. He rang the bell and Goldie opened up for him: golden Goldie Dorn wearing black lace briefs and a black lace bra and a luminous smile of expensively jacketed teeth.

She was something to stare at. She was a huge woman with straight sturdy legs and a pair of breasts like enormous pumpkins. She had a big round face and big round eyes and a thick mass of golden hair and a big wide enthusiastic smile. Everything about Goldie was big, including her heart. She was fifty, looked forty, and had all the flair and joie de vivre of a youthful thirty.

"Jeez, when it comes to time I'm a real dog." And she grinned the wide white-capped grin. "Okay, me not even dressed when I insisted you be on time—I'm will-ing to pay a forfeit."

"Goldie," he said, "you and I, we're past that kind of thing. We're dear old friends. Remember me?"

"Yeah, long ago and far away, and I weighed about seventy pounds less at that time."

She shrugged, the massive but shapely breasts threatening to escape the imprisonment of the lace brassiere, then buoyantly strode to the bar and made him a drink. "Enjoy," she said. "I'll go get dressed. Be back in a jiff."

He sat on a high stool by the bar, lit a cigarette, sipped the drink, and thought about Goldie Dorn. They were old friends, were in fact dear old friends. Goldie, in the business of providing pulchritude-for-pay, was honest as a clean salt breeze from the ocean, as straight as a rapier, as fair and square (in the good old-fashioned sense of the word) as a Chinese box. In her day, Goldie had been a ravishing beauty. Early in youth, she had married a very rich man who had died, and had twice thereafter married rich men who had died. Either Goldie Dorn was a killer or she had selected husbands unfortunately fated for untimely deaths. Whatever, after her third widowhood, Goldie, rather broke (rather broke because all her life Goldie had been an extravagant spender), had permanently retired from the marriage-go-round. But what to do? How to live? How to make the income necessary to pander to her extravagant tastes? There was only one answer, and Goldie Dorn eagerly responded to it: she became a whore. But a tiptop whore. Tip. Top. Topmost.

Goldie, still a svelte beauty then, had been, by virtue of three wealthy spouses, a flying jet-setter, and in the throes of the third widowhood had had a plethora of jet-setting contacts. When the masculine males of the jet-setting contacts learned that golden Goldie was willing to lay it on the line for loot, they laid their loot on the line to lay her, and her telephone tinkled ceaselessly, and golden Goldie Dorn became the most fabulously successful single practitioner in all of New York City—until age forty-one.

Smart Goldie, nine years ago one hundred pounds overweight, still lively and joyous but now beginning to age, had considered her future and had decided upon a more venturesome venture. True, the miss became a madame—but a madame with aplomb and discretion. She did not use professional prostitutes in her new venture: she sedulously applied herself to the recruitment of working girls on working jobs who had the need and the spirit to put out for a fantastic emolument to be garnered from a charmingly interesting sideline. She chose photographers' models, fashion models, nurses, airline stewardesses, dancers, actresses, nighttime entertainers, daytime receptionists, executive secretaries, salesladies, buyers, TV commercialists, filing clerks—even bookkeepers—provided they were young enough and dazzlingly attractive and bright in the head. Those were the criteria: youth, beauty, intelligence. Over the years she had interviewed a gross lot of palpitating applicants and had rigorously rejected most of them. Those selected had been intermittently supplied with rich, gracious, generous, discreet and gentle men for whom the girls in turn supplied their bodies and fifty percent of the take to Goldie Dorn. Her clientele was upper crust: society guys out for kicks, husbands whose wives were on vacation, wives (with lesbian tendencies) whose husbands were on vacation, Europeans in America, western businessmen east, southern businessmen north, statesmen from Washington, judges, politicians, senators, poets, artists, architects, Arab oil people, Israeli tycoons, faculty professors, militants black and white, moderates black and white, doctors doing field work in venereal disease, psychiatrists doing field work in self-analysis, and Hollywood stars anxious to be adorned by a beautiful girl. There were no rules. The gal was the guy's at a properly representative fee—for dinner, a play, the opera, a ballet, for a whirl at a discotheque or as companion at a sedate party—but whoever the man, if he desired the body dining its term for hire, that body was his at the asking.

From the vast mass of eager applicants, Goldie had selected an elite who met all of her exacting requirements. Goldie's girls reaped a golden harvest without the sowing of a single seed or running the risk of being cropped by the coppers. Goldie sowed all the seeds, and no vice squad guys complicated Goldie's life. Her girls were not hustlers, not streetwalkers, not B-girls, not bar-creeps, not pickups-for-a-price, nor, even, did they entertain for profit in their own apartments (or Goldie's). A call would come in on one of the four private wires, and Goldie would make contact with one of her girls, and the girl would go to the man, who would either be an old client or a new one recommended by an old client. And no private dates were permitted with any of the clients (and the girls knew that if they broke that rule they would no longer enjoy favor as one of Goldie's golden girls). If a man liked a girl and wished in the future to see her again, he was to call Goldie—not the girl.

Thus Goldie Dora had established a thriving but quietly confidential commerce in a service necessary in these times of our lives (and other times of other lives). She had waxed fit. but riot indolent; Goldie was always on the ball. She respected her girls and they respected her: she was the mother-image (so many of them called her mama), she took interest in their problems, advised and assisted in their personal lives. When one of them married, or for whatever other reason retired, Goldie recruited a replacement from the long waiting list of acceptable applicants.

And now Goldie Dorn, attired in an expensive but conservative linen suit, returned to the drawing room and joined Peter Chambers at the bar. She poured a brandy, sipped, said, "Do you know a guy by name Barry Burnett?" She drank down the brandy and poured more. "You, in your line of work, you figure to know these types."

"I do," Chambers said, "but you don't figure. How in hell does a Goldie Dorn come up with a Barry Burnett?"

Barry Burnett was rough, tough, mean, a momser, a professional killer high in echelon, an H-man rich enough to handle easily an $80-a-day habit, and he was one of Mark Montague's star customers, but he figured far outside the periphery of Goldie's respectable ken. Barry Burnett! That name belonged in Goldie's mouth like a decayed front tooth, and no decayed teeth at all belonged in Goldie's mouth.

"Honey, your kind of action is tight inside an exclusive circle. How does a Barry Burnett fit in?"

"I'm going to do that." She looked at her wristwatch. "We still have time. Oh, that bitch. That Dorothy Steel. Oh, that little son of a bitch."

He took a cigarette from the box, chain-lit it from the burning stub he was smoking. "How many girls do you have working for you?"

She squinted, thinking, wrinkling her nose. "Like at least ten a day. It's a big, busy city. There's eight million people in New York, sweetie."

"You betcha. Don't let nobody kid you about never on Sunday. That's for the movies or something. Guys

get horny on Sunday just like any other day. Maybe, with religious guys, after church."

"Correct. Half back to mama—who keeps it all sweet and clean, who runs the entire operation."

Supplying carnal recreation for the bigwigs mounts up to a large enterprise, Chambers thought as he clicked off the mathematics. Ten tricks a day earned a thousand bucks, and five hundred went back to Goldie. That meant thirty-five hundred a week (and all of it very beautiful because it was tax-free, and when it is tax-free it is very beautiful bread indeed). At a fast computation, Goldie's take was $175,000 a year, and that, even according to her, was the minimum. No wonder Barry Burnett was putting on the muscle and, in fact, his demand for $1500 a week was, for Barry, comparatively cheap. Barry Burnett was the Big Boy in control of prostitution in Manhattan. He collected from the pimps who collected from the hustling hookers, and in exchange he performed a service: he paid off the ice to the fuzz, he juiced the politicians, he provided the doctors who provided the pills and the penicillin, and he footed the bills for the coterie of lawyers who defended the hookers when on occasion there was a bust. An operation like Goldie's, however, was usually outside die scope of Barry Burnett's activities; but this one had quietly achieved such magnitude that Barry had got wind of it and was working his angles to latch on to a piece.

"So I want that bastard off my back. And you're the guy to do that. And you name your own fee, and whatever it is, I pay it. Right now. In advance. Cash on the barrel-head."

Not for Goldie Dom. First off, Goldie was a dear old friend. Second, Peter Chambers was anxious to make character with Goldie Dorn because Goldie was an invaluable source of business who, on and o£F, recommended valuable clients. Third, Goldie had frequently done favors for him and he owed her a few in return. In sum, free for Goldie was not really free, it was tit for tat: in the trade it is called professional courtesy.

"Sleeps with this Barry Burnett. A personal thing, y'know? Like Sandi with her Mark. Well, you don't have to be from the FBI to know that she tipped him to my action. That bitch is finished. Off my list. Like she's turned in her panties as far as Goldie's concerned. All washed up, the little bitch."

"Don't I, though? Hasn't the bastard been bugging me enough? Why, right now we got a date—■"

"Goldie, this guy's a big hatrack in the hooker business. An operation like yours, sooner or later this Burnett figured to get wind of it—with or without Dorothy Steel." "Well, we're going to find out about. . . with or without."

She looked at her watch. "Now. The bastard called me like about two minutes before I called you. Said he wanted to talk to me, said for me to come over to Dorothy Steel's apartment at ten o'clock. That's why I called you. If I hadn't gotten you, I wouldn't have gone. But I did' get you, didn't I, sweetie?"

"So we're going." Her grin was sly. "Think you'll be able to convince him I don't need protection?"

Goldie locked up, and a cab took them to 53rd and Second. The house was an old-timer, a refurbished brownstone, a walkup, and Dorothy Steel's apartment was on the second floor facing front. Goldie rang the bell and nobody answered. She rang again and nobody answered. She growled, "Son of a bitch," and tried the knob. The door opened. Chambers followed her in.

There was a small foyer and then a large living room. Seated in an easy chair was a slender brunette with a surprised expression along the edges of her mouth and a small hole in the middle of her forehead. Chambers did not have to touch her, but he did. She was stone-cold dead.

quickie number for cops, reported the murder, and hung up. Then he took Goldie's arm and walked her to a pub. They sat at a rear table where Goldie ordered a double brandy and Chambers a Scotch on the rocks. Goldie disposed of her brandy at a single gulp.

He ordered another double brandy. She was a big, woman; she could handle it. This time she sipped. She lit a cigarette. Her fingers were trembling but her eyes improved. "Jesus Christ," she said again.

She drank. Assurance returned to the improved eyes, and her voice was better. "A dead broad, and a private eye who doesn't even look around. Man, what is it with you?"

"Honey, you said you didn't need protection. He's just demonstrated that you do. What I mean about modus operandi. When there's no need for protection the putative protector creates that need."

"That's what I mean." "Jesus, then maybe it pays me to pay him the fifteen hundred per."

With four and a half brandies in her, Goldie Dorn was entirely recovered. Stoutly she said: "Don't call me madame!"

CARRYING his package, Tony Starr, in the company of tight-skirted Lois Maxwell, entered the seedy hotel and steered her to the left toward the automatic elevator. It pleased him that the elevator was far to the left and thus out of sight of the desk clerk, and it pleased him that the elevator was automatic because that resolved any possible problem of specific identification by an elevator man. Whatever he had to do he would do, but whenever he emerged from what he had done he would be unseen by any desk clerk or elevator man. The escape route was perfect. He would walk out unseen.

"Honey, you sure are the salesman. Honey, you sine got a sweet mouth." "Wait you taste it."

He opened the package. She turned on the radio, and turned the dial until she got jumping music, and then turned the volume down low. He poured bourbon in a glass, and Scotch in another glass. She drank, dancing to the music. He did not drink.

"Honey baby," she said, "your cock is busting right into me. Man, you have got something there." And they danced.

"Baby, I don't feel you like a customer. But business is business. Where's the filthy lucre, man?"

"Destroy me, lover. Man, you sure got the wang for it." And she danced to her pocketbook. And, dancing, put the money away.

Dancing, wriggling, her arms upraised. "If you got to go, you got to go. Come back quick, lover baby."

In the bathroom he pinched white powder from the snuff box and sniffed it. And pinched again and sniffed again. And put away the snuff box and glided from the bathroom. Gliding! God, I'm flying!

She was dancing. She was drinking direct from the bourbon bottle. And dancing. And drinking. And putting away the bottle. And dancing.

Nude, he took her and danced with her. Her left arm was around him. Her right hand held his penis. "God, you're so big! You're monstrous!"

"Like a striptease," she said. "Remember I told you I used to be a bellydancer?"

To the rhythm of the music, she opened her blouse and flung it off. To the rhythm of the music, she unzipped her skirt, let it drop, and kicked it away. And kicked out of her shoes. No stockings. A pink bra and pink panties around the big, broad, round, marvelous ass, and the musky odor of her encompassed him.

"Merchandise?" she queried. "I didn't lie to you? You didn't buy a pig in a poke?"

She unhooked the bra and dancing tossed it to him and he tossed it away. And wriggled out of the pink panties and tossed them to him and he smelled them, bit them, kissed them, and tossed them away. And now stark naked she was wildly dancing, arms upraised, breasts bobbling, stomach heaving, pubis churning.

He grabbed. He seized. He kissed her over each hip, kissed her spine, kissed down along the cleavage of buttocks, drove his tongue deep into her anus. She shivered.

He pulled her to the bed, turned her prone, mounted her and plunged his phallus at the orifice but could not get in. "Jesus, baby," she sobbed, "Oh, Jesus, fuck me. Fuck my ass, lover." He spit on his hand and applied the spittle to his penis as lubrication and was able to insert the head and pushed and his staff entered into her. "Oh, dear God, yes," she moaned. "Oh God, your wonderful big fat prick. Oh man, lover, hold it in there like that Oh, fuck me easy now, lover. Please, I beg you, just a little minute, just for me, I want to come, let me come first, honey baby. I can come and come after that. Now ride me easy, baby. Please, my come. First my come. Then I'm all yours. Whatever you want But, please, easy now, baby. This one, just this one, for me. Please?"

"Move your lovely ass, sweetheart. I'll hold it. This one for you." And he held it in her, moving slowly, the sphincter muscle of her anus throbbingly milking him,

and she screamed, she howled, "Oh Jesus, yes! Oh Godl Oh, lover, you got me! Oh, I'm coming! Oh, I'm creaming! Jesus, that wonderful cock of yours!"

And now it was going all the way, in and out, deep in and out, and she moaned and screamed and came and came, and then he did, flooding his semen into her, and her body flattened, and he remained in her and over her, and she whispered, her head sidewise on the pillow, "Jesus, it's still big in there. Jesus, don't it ever go down? Jesus, Frankie, a guy like you, you can kill me to death."

"Yeah, honey baby. Oh yes, sir, salesman fucker. Up shit creek, lover boy. Up the old dirt road. Up my gorgeous asshole. Jesus, your wild prick, your big fat wild prick. Fuck me, honey baby. And don't ever stop. Fuck . . . fuck . . . fuck . . . fuck . . ."

And he didn't stop. On and on, turning her, twisting her in positions she had never been in before. God, this kid was out of this world. God, a lunatic! God, what a lunatic lover! God, this kid was the best. Jesus, I want this one. Jesus, I want this one to stay with me forever.

Staggered to the bottle of bourbon. Drank from the bottle, staggered, dancing to the music.

Look at him. The lean, well-muscled body. The tremendous balls in the firm scrotum. That marvelous cock, even now limp, lying long and heavy like a snake in repose between his thighs. And look at that face, all innocent, smiling, youthful, no fines, no cares, a boy's face. Only the eyes. Only the eyes gave the clue to the lunatic-lover he was: the weird, shiny, black crazy eyes.

"Jesus, this salesman, he's got all the answers. Listen," she said. "Listen to me. Frisco and all. Do you have to be a salesman, Frankie?"

"Well, listen to me. What I mean." Danced to the music, drank from the bottle, staggered to the bed and stood over him. "I dig you. But I dig you, honey baby."

"Listen, I got nobody. I got no man. Fuck Frisco. Fuck the salesman bit. Fuck making a living."

Lazily. "If you don't make a living, you don't eat. Nor can you afford to spend for the likes of a Lois Maxwell."

And "she sucked the bottle. And wispily wavered, rocking to and fro on her bare feet. And sucked again, bourbon drolling down her chin. But then said fiercely, "Jesus, honey sweet, will you listen?"

"I ain't had a man, a real man, my own man, for one hell of a long time, but years, honey baby. This Lois, this is one tough bitch to please. You please me, Franlae. Man, do you please me. So . . . what I mean, you're for me. You be my guy, you be my sweet guy. I make a lot of dough. I earn big. I give you everything; I give it all to you. You will live like a fucking king, Frankie. Like a king with a slave, Frankie. I do the work, I turn over the money, and you hand out to me what you think I need—all the rest is yours."

Now she was sitting on the bed. Her body was glistening with perspiration. The hand holding the bottle was trembling. "This ain't nothing new, kid. It's an old story with girls like us—when we really like a guy. Sweetie, I'm drunk, I'm stone-ass drunk, but I ain't yelling down the drainpipe, you believe it. Skip the Frisco bit, skip the salesman bit—you be Lois's sweet man. Now how's about it, honey baby? Do you like what I'm telling you?"

"That's my boy." She leaned over his body. Her tongue licked along his penis and it reacted. "Jesus, what a man!" And she lay out on the bed. "Do it," she whispered. "Do it to me. Fuck your Lois, honey man." And her eyes closed, and the bottle fell out of her hand and thumped to the floor, and she was snoring, gurgling.

He smiled his boyish smile and got out of bed. Good! Oh, this was so very good! There would be no need to entice her into peculiar games, no need to tie her down; no need for trick or device. Sweating, naked, he padded to the closet. He extracted the knife from a pocket of his jacket and back in the room he pressed the little button in the hilt.

The blade sprang clean. It gleamed. The gleam was hypnotic. He stared at it, his smile fixed on his face. His breathing was rapid, shallow, noisy. His erection was massive.

He climbed on the bed. He straddled her, one knee on either side of her. He cut her throat, and as the blood burst from her, the ejaculation of his orgasm burst from him. Then, still straddling, he crawled on his knees down her body, plunged the knife deeply over the ridge of her pubis, viciously slashed upward, and had his way with her . . .

He showered, cleaning the blood from himself. He dressed carefully. He left the key in the room and walked quietly through a corridor. He took the elevator and went out to the street unmolested and unseen. He strolled for several blocks, hailed a taxi, and rode home to his apartment in Kips Bay. There he showered again and brushed his teeth. He donned a pair of crisp clean pajamas and slipped into bed. Before putting out the light, he looked at the clock on the bed table. It was ten minutes after two.

SANDI Barton's Commodore John was a charm-ing old gentleman, portly, fleshy, and florid, with twinkling blue eyes and a ready, cheerful, deep-throated laugh. He had a merry face, a bulbous nose, a bulging paunch, and a pink bald pate surrounded by a halo of frosty hair. He looked like Santa Claus out of uniform and without whiskers, Santa in mufti as it were. His name was Wilson.

"I've been in town for four days," he said. "Business. And this is my first evening free." He sighed gently. "And tomorrow night I go home." He had a pleasant, paternal, courtly, courteous manner of speech. "Goldie used to send the lady Barbara to me—Barbara White. Now Goldie informs me the dear girl got married."

"Good. Good for her. I'm a great advocate of marriage and hearth and home." He shook his head, jowls flouncing wistfully. "Must admit, though, I shall miss her. She . . . well, she knew my ways."

"I'm certain you will, my dear. I'm not difficult to please." A smile. "Let's get crass commercialism out of the way, shall we?" He opened his wallet and gave her a hundred and fifty dollars. "You share that with Goldie, don't you?"

"You're very beautiful, my dear." He ran a paternal hand down her back and pinched her rump. "Please put the money away, my dear. Let's pretend for the rest of the evening that we're . . . affectionate old friends." She put the money in her bag. He gently pinched her rump again. "Do you like champagne?"

"We'll go downstairs. They've a fine room down there, dancing and all. Would you like that, my dear?"

Downstairs, in the softly lighted cafe, the maitre d' led the decorous old gentleman and the charming young lady (his daughter, or a niece perhaps, with whom he was spending an innocent evening) to a table befitting them, a fine table not too near the bandstand. The maitre d' accepted the discreetly folded gratuity and took the gentleman's order which was, of course, champagne of excellent vintage year.

The waiter brought the cooler of iced champagne, popped the cork, and poured. He retired and they drank.

He talked. He was a talker. He was an amiable old man, a garrulous old man, and an awful bore. He told her all about his one wife, his two daughters, his three grandchildren. He urged her to drink and she drank and so did he. He took her to the dance floor and he turned out to be a hell of a good dancer, nimble, light on his feet.

They returned to the table, drank, and he talked, and ordered another bottle of wine, and they drank and she was beginning to get tipsy and then she had to go.

"Hold it. I want you to hold to it." And for the first time the amiable voice was peremptory.

She understood. She had had this kind before and was willing to grant his wish if it was only that: number one, not number two. If he wanted number two she would have to reject him, return his money, and get the hell out. Some girls can. Some cannot. She couldn't.

He waved to the waiter and paid the check and in the elevator she did a little mincing jig and he chuckled softly, and then inside his suite they exploded into action like a film running wild, double-quick time. He tore at his clothes, and she tore at hers, and she didn't look at him, and he didn't look at her, and then, both naked, he had her by the wrist and hustled her into the bathroom. He clambered into the tub and took her in with him. He stretched out on his back and had her

squat over him, her head facing his feet. His hands gripping her ample hips, her back to his face, he pulled her, adjusted her over him.

She urinated. She did not know exactly where on his person she was urinating but it was somewhere in the vicnity of his head, and whether or not his mouth was open or closed she did not care. Whatever his perversion, it was his not hers. She was relieving herself and if in the process of relieving herself she was also relieving him, so be it. And then she was done and she heard him splutter, "Ah, good, excellent, my dear," as though she had performed some wondrous feat of skill. "And now, please, if you'll wait for me in the bedroom . . ."

She waited in the bedroom. She heard him shower. And then, smiling and gracious, he joined her in the bedroom, and for the first time she really saw him. He was pink and pudgy with no hair and huge overlapping breasts and a big round Buddha-belly. And he saw her: tall, lissome, a white-skinned beauty with firm white hips and small high breasts, not a flaw or blemish on the smooth, youthful, glistening body.

"We can do with some more champagne, my dear. I've some bottles chilling in the refrigerator."

He waddled out and came back with an open bottle and two glasses on a tray. He set the tray on the dresser, poured into the glasses, gave one to her, took the other.

He went to the closet and took out a little black bag, and her heart jumped in panic. What in hell did he have in there? Surgical instruments or something? What kind of kook tvas this guy? But she thought about Goldie, and a modicum of reassurance returned to her. Goldie's customers were all fine, rich, respectable, solid citizens, and golden Goldie had a• full dossier on every one of them—name, address, family connections, the works— and none of them, the inside coterie which was the core of Goldie's business, figured to recommend a loony-bird. Of course, there was always the possibility, the one shot in a thousand. Goldie's business was not limited to the inside coterie. They recommended others, and on those Goldie did not have a dossier.

More reassurance entered into Sandi Barton. She remembered that Barbara had been his favorite, and Barbara White was not the type to subject herself to weird indignities. Hell, a guy wants you to piss on him, that's indignity to him, not to you. (But what's he got there in the little black bag which looks like the surgical bag that doctors carry?)

Wilson chuckled, drank champagne. A filmy sheen was on his eyes: the old boy was getting stoned on the wine. But his expression was one of amusement: the old boy was getting a boot out of her ill-concealed fright, her patent indecision. Look, she said to herself, easy does it. So the old bird has his kooky kinks, but all men have their kinks once they let their hair down, and a guy with a call girl figures to let his hair all the way down. And why the hell not? That's what he's paying his money for.

"My dear," he said, "I imagine you realize I have certain slight sado-masochistic tendencies. Slight. I'm afraid I don't have the courage for anything more than slight. In effect, rather, a symbolic sado-masochism. Do you understand?"

He smiled. He bowed courteously. He wobbled in admirable drunken dignity to an armchair and settled his big flabby body into it.

"Now, my dear, what I want you to do. Please take the bag and stand . . . let's see now . . . about five-six feet from me. Yes, that's it. Yes, just stand there." He swallowed. His tongue wet his hps. "My dear Sandi. There are thirty golf balls in the bag. I should like you to throw them at me." A chuckle. "One at a time, of course. Not too hard, but not too softiy either. The object is to inflict a thud of pain, but not to overwhelm me with pain, if you know what I mean."

"Let's try one. Please remember—not a soft girlish toss. But not a he-man heave either. And not at my head, please. At my body. Now let's have one, my dear."

"Perfect! My dear, you're not only beautiful you're a damned intelligent girl. You'll continue to throw just like that. And you will count to four between each throw. Am I coming through?"

His penis emerged from under the flap of the overhanging belly, a long, slender, quivering prong, and he enclosed it within a pudgy fist and rubbed as she threw the golf balls, silently counting to four between each throw. His eyes were closed. His fist resolutely jerked the spindly protuberance extruding from under his belly, he compressed, released, squeezed, delicately but spiritedly, like a man milking the teat of a cow, as she rhythmically threw the balls, but golf balls are not ping pong balls, they have weight and substance, and they left their marks bouncing off him, round red welts on the pink body, and then, at precisely the thirtieth throw, he achieved his orgasm, a viscous stream shooting high in the air, and she was immediately reminded of a proverb of her childhood: There can be snow on the roof but the house can be hot. Despite the white halo of hair upstairs, downstairs the old boy had powerful testes. It was a puissant, potent, copious ejaculation, and she had to duck away from the spray coming down, and then she just stood there.

"My dear, would you gather the balls back into the bag? Then we'll do it all over again."

"I want you on your hands and knees, my dear. Plucking the balls from the floor and depositing them in the bag. On all fours. That way I can observe you fully, every ripple, every movement of your beautiful body."

This old bastard was something elsel Outrageous demands, but always in the gentle, paternal tone; never once an obscenity; no four-letter words. Go down on your hands and knees, Sandi old girl. The old boy has paid two hundred and fifty bucks and has not laid a hand on you. He wants you to crawl—crawl. You're a call girl whose job it is to answer to the whims of the customers as long as they aren't hurtful.

She went down on her hands and knees. She crawled, collecting golf balls into the bag. When she stood up, the old boy was peacefully asleep. Goldie had said all night. Forget it. Chubby old Santa Claus, drunkenly slumbering, was finished for tonight. The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. Libido had been vanquished by encroaching old age and too much champagne. God rest you, merry old man. Sleep well.

She zipped the bag and put in on the bed. She looked at herself and smiled. Her hands, forearms, elbows, and knees were dirty with the dust of the carpet. She went into the bathroom and showered. She came out and dressed. She looked at him and made a curtsy. Good night, Mr. Wilson. Or is it Mr. Clinton? And female curiosity prompted a wrongful act (but without wrongful intent). His wallet was on the dresser near the tray with the bottle of champagne, and she opened it and looked. It was stuffed full of money. She by-passed the money and found an identification card. His name was Clinton Quentin Wilson. She looked further and found a business card. He was Clinton Quentin Wilson, president of Wilson Spark Plugs. Jesus Christ, even she had heard of Wilson Spark Plugs, whatever the hell a spark plug was—Wilson Spark Plugs were constantly sputtering their incomprehensible commercials on the TV, sponsoring the best of the stupid shows. He was a big shot. Her pissed-upon hand-job customer was a real big shot.

She went to the nice old guy, looked down upon him, and kissed his forehead. He did not move. He slumbered peacefully. She tiptoed to the door, went out, closed it quietly, and in the corridor realized she was hungry. God, she was famished. She looked at her wristwatch: twenty-five after two. She hated to eat alone. She took the elevator to the lobby and thought about whom to eat with. There was Mark Montague and there was Peter Chambers and both were night people. She liked Mark, who was the threshhold to her career as an actress, but she adored Chambers, the stubborn bastard, who was a threshhold to nothing. She walked across the lobby to the bank of telephone booths.

Chambers had had a long night of drinking with Goldie Dorn. He had assured her he would give full attention to her matter. He had consoled her on the loss of Dorothy Steel and had pledged, for free without fee, that no similar loss would be inflicted on her and that her worries about Barry Burnett were over. He had no idea where Burnett lived, but he knew how to find out. Barry was a junkie with a big habit and Mark Montague was his supplier. He made no mention to Goldie of what his methods would be, but he informed her the job would take time. After a hit, the hitter disappears. That is par for the course. The hitter gets rid of the weapon and then gets himself out of town for at least a week. Today was Tuesday. Barry Burnett would slip out of the city and work out an alibi going back to at least the past weekend. He wasn't likely to come back to town until next week. Starting next Monday then, Peter Chambers would be working for Goldie Dorn.

He took her home and he went home and the phone rang and it was Sandi Barton. He looked at his watch. Two-thirty.

They had bacon and eggs and coffee. She chattered gaily. She was bright, engaging, well-read, well-versed, an absolute delight. And so damn beautiful. He loved the tiny tilted nose, the limpid blue eyes. He loved the excitement that bubbled out of her, the animation, the . . . the innocence of her, despite her avocation.

Business is business and ethics is ethics and principle principle, and nobody can say this lovely girl ever once wavered from ethics or principle.

"Men! Men are mad! Honey, I'll break you down. One day, I promise, I'll break you down." "Possible."

A frown around the blue eyes, quite serious now. "Look . . . if . . . sort of, you're short of funds—hell, I lend you the hundred."

A crazy kid? Mixed up ethics? What a delightfully crazy kid! "Not short," he said. "Stubborn bastard." "Me? Or you?"

Silence now. They finished their coffee. She took the napkin from her lap, patted her lips, put it on the table.

Primly she said, "I'm past my bedtime. Will you take me home, sir?" "Yes, ma'am," he said.

AT seven o'clock in the morning, sunshine permeating the drawn blinds, Clinton Quentin Wilson roused up from his slumbers in the armchair. Blinkingly he looked about. The room was empty. He looked toward the bed. It was unoccupied. Good girl. A smart little girl. She was gone and he was thanldul.

He took the used bottle of warm champagne to the bathroom, set it on the sink. He removed his two plates of false teeth, placed them into a glass of warm water, placed the glass of water and teeth into the medicine cabinet. He gargled with the leftover champagne, rinsed, spat. He went back to the bedroom, sat on the bed, took up the phone and called down.

He took the little black bag to the closet, went back to the bed, slid into the cool clean sheets and slept until the ring of the phone woke him.

He showered. He brushed his teeth and put them back into his mouth. He felt good, calm and refreshed. Today was the day, the culmination of all the conferences in New York. Today at four-thirty he would meet with Richard V. Starr of Starr Conglomerates Ltd. He had met before with Richard V. Starr, but not this trip. This would be the first meeting this trip, and the last. It would either add a million dollars to the deal, or it would not. Starr's offer of fifteen million for the purchase of Wilson Spark Plugs was sufficient, but R. V. Starr did not know that and C. Q. Wilson had not let loose a hint to let him know it C. Q. Wilson had been advised, during this trip to New York, that R. V. Starr, despite his austere fagade, was a volatile man subject to a dramatic approach, and C. Q. Wilson had in mind a dramatic if puerile approach. Cripes, Starr Conglomerates Ltd. was a billion-dollar corporation. What in hell did a million more or less mean to them? And Richard V. Starr was the full boss of Starr Conglomerates Ltd. just as Clinton Quentin Wilson was the full boss of Wilson Spark Plugs, and Starr Conglomerates wanted Wilson Spark Plugs, and even at sixteen million they would be getting a hell of a good deal, and surely Richard V. Starr was wise enough to know that.

Well, we'll see what happens, thought Clinton Quentin Wilson. One way or another, I lock up this deal today. Hell, I'm a rich man. I've put in my time. After all these long years, ladies and gents, I have had it. You can't live forever. At my age the specter of the coffin shimmers imminent. But I'm still strong and healthy and ready for all play and no work. I am ready to go out and graze in green pastures. He grinned a cherubic grin of sparkling dentures at his reflection in the mirror, and shaved.

In the bedroom he put on a pair of lounging pajamas and called room service. He ordered brunch and it was a large order, fastidiously articulated. Orange juice, freshly squeezed. Six link-sausages, well done. Four eggs, scramble them lightly. Two English muffins, butter on the side. And a double pot of coffee. He was a big man with a big appetite, but, savoring in advance the food to come, he attended to business. He was a businessman and he had unfinished business, minor, but for him necessary. He oalled Goldie Dorn.

"Your selection of a substitute for Barbara couldn't have suited me more perfectly."

"For her nuptials, from me to her, a belated gift. Please give her five hundred dollars."

ing liberally. He ate, enjoying every morsel, called own to room service and had the trolley taken away. Then, promptly at two-thirty the masseur arrived as per appointment C. Q. was rubbed in aromatic oils, pounded and kneaded, bathed in hot water, showered in cold water, and vigorously curried within thick Turkish towels. Then the masseur, paid, departed, and C. Q. Wilson, dressed in his best went out to a taxi which presented him at the PanAm Building at twenty-five minutes after four.

Starr Conglomerates Ltd. was the fortieth floor of the PanAm Building and Mr. C. Q. Wilson was immediately ushered into an anteroom which was the office of Miss Belle Knight, Mr. Richard V. Starr's executive secretary.

He sat in a comfortable armchair and comfortably admired Miss Belle Knight. Miss Belle Knight had red hair and green eyes and an aphrodisiac figure, and if Mr. R. V. Starr was not executively humping his executive secretary, or had not in his time executively humped his executive secretary, then Mr. R. V. Starr was an unregenerate flying fairy; but, according to C. Q. Wilson's industrious industrial spies, and they were many, necessary, and highly paid, Mr. R. V. Starr was not a flying or creeping or stationary fairy: he was very masculine and all male.

C. Q. Wilson had quite a book on R. V. Starr. Stan-was forty-eight years of age, a Princeton graduate, once married, once divorced, and never remarried. There was a single child of the marriage, a son who lived with the ex-wife somewhere in Europe, the son and the wife both independently and fabulously wealthy. Starr resided strictly alone in an eight-room co-op on the eighth floor of a rigidly exclusive apartment house at 940 Park Avenue. His one permanent employee did not live with him, but lived near, around the corner on East 81st Street in an apartment for which R. V. Starr paid the rent. This employee was his chauffeur and sometime bodyguard, a burly factotum, surname Fran-zio, christened Benito but called Benny. Aside from Benny, according to Wilson's industrious industrial spies, there was no one close to the monkish Starr, although the monkish Starr was not in other respects monklike: he lived high, wide, and handsome, a debonair man-about-town, a distinguished know-all and be-all, a superb if discreet swinger among the swingiest of the international jetters, a member of the over-world best clubs, and a member of the nether-world worst clubs . . .

She hung up, stood up, and Wilson made a round mouth in tacit appreciation of a shape God-given but Lucifer-delineated in sexual temptation.

He came to his feet, silently compared her to his erstwhile Sandi, and fairly declared her the loser. Somehow, fleetingly, that made him happy. A touch of the occult, a shimmer of intuition, a metaphysical portent of things to come in this final encounter with Richard V. Starr. His entry in the beauty stakes was on top. He was on the winning side.

She led him to a door, opened the door, let him through and closed the door behind him, and as always, and this was not the first time, he was aghast. Not at the gorgeous furnishings, but at the goddamn size of the office. It was deep, long, broad, vast. It made his office in Detroit—and it was a big one—look like a cubbyhole.

A striking-looking fellow, thought C. Q. Wilson, a devilishly handsome man. Tall and slender and straight as a razor. Lean shanks, broad shoulders, and a full head of white hair fashionably cut. It was the white hair that made his appearance so striking, for his face was young, brown, strong-boned and tight-skinned with black eyebrows, black eyes, and a high-boned hawklike nose.

Wilson sat. Starr came around and settled into the high-backed leather swivel chair behind the desk.

"Well, Mr. Wilson, here we are, alone, no lawyers, just us. You've had time to think about my offer, now it's up to you, because you alone have the last say. Wilson Spark Plugs is C. Q. Wilson, a closed corporation, a family corporation—you are Wilson Spark Plugs and it's your decision that can make this deal or break it."

Wilson nodded, smiled. He put on his best, quaint, ingenuous Foxy Grandpa expression. He was playing his game in his own way. "I . . . er . . ." he stammered. "I'm not . . . quite . . . satisfied with the offer."

He let the old guy sit and stew. He took a long thin cigar from a humidor and took his time lighting it. He was very anxious to acquire Wilson Spark Plugs. His first offer had been ten million, he had permitted himself to be worked up to fifteen million, and he was willing to go to twenty million (if only the old boy knew that). He had many methods to cajole a prospective seller: his method with C. Q. Wilson had been to stay away, keep his distance, play him cool, and let the lawyers do most of the haggling. His book on Wilson had the old guy as a church-goer, a family man, a conservative, a pottering fat old fuddy-duddy, and he had therefore eschewed the personality treatment. He could have wined and dined C. Q. Wilson, taken him off on jaunty jaunts, bedded him down with some of the most luscious tail in all the land. He smoked his cigar and smiled. C. Q. Wilson had probably never been exposed to a twat other than his wife's, and even that must now be a dim faint memory. The old bird would probably throw a convulsion at the sight of a naked broad. And so he had played him with a cool hand, keeping his own flamboyant personality out of the way, and letting the lawyers hammer away at the bargaining table.

Good, thought Wilson, I made him come to me, I made him open up first. Now I will give him the dramatic touch, the childish little dramatic touch, because I'm a childish old man (who by this childish maneuver can add a million dollars to the purchase price; heck, if only he knew that I'm perfectly satisfied with the offer as is).

"Capital gains, Mr. Starr. Twenty-five percent to the government. Now that wouldn't leave me with a round figure, would it? I'm somewhat superstitious that way. I don't like rough edges hanging off the sides. Perhaps I'm a childish old man. But on a big deal I always like a round figure."

"Sixteen million. Four to Uncle Sam. Twelve to me. All clean. Smooth. No rough edges. All round figures."

Then Wilson said, "I've heard tell of your quick, sudden, hair-trigger decisions." And gently waved his jowls. "Must say I admire . . ."

"Simply, sir, I liked your approach. No bullshit. No cover-up of facts, figures, books, ledgers, statistics of profit and loss." He laughed. "Superstition. What a way to do business. Well, the hell, sir, I'm superstitious myself—but not superstitious enough to do a bad deal. At sixteen million I don't believe I've done a bad deal—and don't believe you have either." He came around the desk. Wilson stood up and they shook hands. "We have completed our transaction," Starr said. "You'll be in touch with your lawyers, I'll be in touch with mine, and they'll get together on the paper work. But the essentials of the deal are done. My congratulations, Mr. Wilson."

At five-thirty Richard V. Starr went down to the Rolls Royce waiting at the curb. Benny Franzio scrambled out, touched fingers to the visor of his car, gave his boss the late afternoon paper, opened the door for him, closed the door, and scrambled back into the front seat. The Rolls moved slowly. The traffic was heavy.

Starr lit a cigar and looked idly out the window. The window was closed, all the windows were closed, the air-conditioner working noiselessly, the din of the city shut away. Starr opened the paper, saw the feature story on the third page, and was no longer idle. He bit hard on the cigar and it stayed clenched in his teeth. His back grew rigid, he sat upright taut, a bitter burning assailed his eyes as he read.

It was a horrible crime, a grisly murder in room 501 of the Hotel Shirley on West 47th Street. A chambermaid had discovered the bloody mess on the blood-soaked mattress and the body had since been identified as that of Lois Maxwell, occupation unknown. Her throat had been cut from ear to ear, her belly ripped open, and she had been disemboweled. It was a sex crime, the sexual molestation patently evident, but the story hinted of worse. There were hints of cannibalism. There were hints that a section of the entrails had been eaten.

Richard V. Starr slowly folded the newspaper and set it down on the seat beside him. He rolled down a window, threw out his cigar, rolled up the window. He opened a compartment, took out an address book, peered, used the car-phone and called the office of Peter Chambers. He got the answering service, and he hung up. Once again he consulted the address book, and called Peter Chambers at home. After three buzzes, Chambers's voice came on. "Hello?"

A pause. Then: Tm en route. In my car. And the fucking traffic is miserable. Six-thirty? Can you make it at six-thirty?"

Chambers had done bits and pieces for Richard V. Starr at stipends that were always enormous. Starr paid big—but bigl He was a business acquaintance but also a social acquaintance; actually, they had met socially. Starr lived it up large in all the places in town: the best, the worst, the hip, the square. He knew evferybody and they all knew him, but whatever the site of his drop-in for amusement—best, worst, hip, square—he was fawned upon, licked, lapped, treated with trembling obeisance. Why? Who was Richard V. Starr? Did he know where important dead horses were buried? Were his political connections so powerful that they inspired fear? Did he own the goddamn joints, a silent partner? Or was it because he was youthful and handsome and showered down on all and sundry a blizzard of money like ticker tape at a hero's welcome. Hell,

about the blizzard of money, why the hell not? He was only a multimillionaire continuously engaged in adding millions to the multimillions. He was Richard V. Starr and Richard V, Starr was Starr Conglomerates Ltd.

Chambers removed his clothes, showered, and put on new clothes properly befitting a visit to Richard V. Starr. He went out and was lucky and got a cab quickly and arrived on time at 940 Park. He rode up to the eighth floor, pushed the mother-of-pearl button, was appraised from within through the mirrored see-through peephole, waited while three separate locks snapped, and then the door opened.

He led Chambers to a recreation room where a billiard table sat in the middle and an ebony bar ran the full length of one wall.

Starr's drink was already made. It was a big one. The guy was hitting it up. A huge snifter glass was half-full. Like Goldie Dorn, Richard V. Starr favored brandy.

"Health." The big snifter glass came up and through it Starr's face was hideously distorted. He drank, said, "Sit down, won't you?"

Chambers shuddered. "That's one crazy son of a bitch of a weirdo out there walking the streets."

Starr leaned across to the cocktail table, took a cigar from a silver humidor. He lit it and a fragrance filled the air.

"I got married while I was still in college," Starr said. "So was my wife still in college. I was Princeton, she was RadclifFe, we were both twenty years old. She was Edith Goddard of the Goddards. You know the God-dards I'm referring to?"

"Came over on the Mayflower and all that shit. High society, old society, the robber barons that built the railroads, flower of American aristocracy, DAR and all that crap, you know?"

"Edith was the last of the line. There was Edith Goddard and her mother Nancy Goddard and that was it with the Goddards. The old buzzard, dead now, fiercely resented me. I was not what she had planned for her high-society Edith, but her plans became radically changed when she learned that the apple of her eye was five months pregnant when I asked for the apple's hand in marriage. You with me?"

"The girl was high-society but also high-neurotic. We got married, she gave birth. Our son's name is Anthony. It figured to be a lousy marriage, and it was. Here I can skip a lot of the dirty linen. Suffice it to say that after ten years of marriage we were no longer sleeping together but we lived together because of the boy."

"The boy grew up," Starr said. "A brilliant lad, an absolutely brilliant lad, but, with that kind of mother —and perhaps with this kind of father—extremely neurotic."

"Dining the latter part of our marriage, although as I said, er, we had separate bedrooms, she did not take on any lovers although she damn well knew she had my full consent to do so. In time, I found out why." He puffed the cigar vigorously and thick blue smoke surrounded his face like a mask. His voice came through it. "She had a lover—and her lover was her son. More. She was addicted to cocaine, and I learned she had addicted the boy to the drug." He blew away the smoke. His face was visible. "She had corrupted him and there was nothing I could do about it short of open scandal. He was grown by then, of course, and I didn't want him in the middle of a public imbroglio. I loved the boy and I hoped, if I played it smart, played it cool and easy, in time he'd break out of the incestuous relationship and make a life of his own. Do you understand?"

"They didn't know I knew about them, and I let it go that way." Starr bent to his brandy, drank, put the glass back. "About his peculiarities now, his neuroses— very little showed. He had high periods and low periods, sort of manic-depressive, but most of the time it was manic, possibly because of the stimulation of the cocaine. He was a nervous kid, but most often he was full of fun—witty, intelligent, brimming with humor. But there was something in his adolescence—he was perhaps fourteen or fift^~n then—that was nsychotic." Starr puffed up the smoke again to hide his face. "We had an estate in Jersey at that time, there are some wild woods in Jersey. We used to hunt small game; he was a hell of a good shot. But when he wounded a little beast, and thought he was unobserved, he would make sure he was dead by slitting his throat, and then he would rip open the stomach and eat at the entrails. Like an animal in a jungle. Atavistic. Some kind of primitive throwback. Oh, there I put my foot down. I put a stop to that! And I thought it was over for all time."

Starr stood up. He took a cue from a rack and talked while shooting balls into pockets. "A brilliant kid. Magna cum laude at Yale, he was the salutatorian at graduation, but that week, that very week of graduation, there was a gory murder in a ghetto of New Haven. A prostitute's throat was cut, her stomach was slit from vagina to breastbone, and she was eviscerated. An unsolved murder to this day, but not unsolved for us, not for Tony's mother and father, not for Edith and Richard V. Starr."

"He came home and told us. A compulsion. An irresistible impulse. Jesus Christ, you didn't have to be a doctor to know this kid was way out, terribly sick. I wanted to have him quietly committed, put away in an institution. Either they'd keep him for the rest of his life, or, if ever they let him out, they'd have to assure us he was cured. But she wouldn't have that. She cried, she begged, she pleaded. She would take him out of the country. She would stay with him, close on top of him all the time. It wasn't as though he were some sort of raving lunatic. He was hale and hearty, perfectly rational, brilliantly objective. He had been overcome by a passing madness. He said he realized the enormity of his crime, he knew it would never happen again. And she begged, pleaded. For his life. That he wouldn't be incarcerated in a nuthouse for the rest of his life. What the hell could I do? I'm only human. I loved the boy. I gave in."

Starr drank his brandy. He lit a fresh cigar. He sank into hi^ chair. "We arranged for a divorce, put it through. That was seven years ago—the kid was twenty-one then. They moved away, settled in London; she kept in touch with me, and, discreetly, I had my own people keeping an eye on them." He shook his head. "No good. There was one of these murders in London, but she got him out fast. They traveled. They traveled the world; home base was London. But now and then, in remote places, like Hong Kong, Copenhagen, Istanbul, Belgrade, there was another of this same type of sex murder, but she quickly moved him out, to another city, another country. There you have it, Peter?"

Chambers drank Scotch and over the rim of the glass observed his client. A strong man, strong teeth biting into the cigar, jaw muscles working. An obscure, intricate man, was he throwing horseshoes, working a pitch, playing out recondite angles? Who in hell knows with Richard V. Starr?

"Climax," Starr said. "Edith Goddard Starr died a month ago in London, and Tony Starr is here in New York."

"No. Remember the guilt thing in him. He's rejected his father; hell, remember he was my wife's lover."

"Her lawyer—who's now his lawyer—informed me. Harry Epstein. Used to be on the Criminal Court bench. I'm sure you know Judge Epstein."

"An estate to be settled. There's a huge estate. She was very rich in her own right."

"Urn," Chambers mumbled. The kind of riches that were the riches of the Goddards (or of the Richard V. Starrs, for that matter) were far beyond his ken.

"Now this thing that happened," Starr said. "This thing at the Shirley, this precise type of insane murder. Tony Starr is here in New York. I have no idea where in New York he is, but I know—and now you know— who killed this woman, who ripped her open, who disemboweled her, and remember there's no mother now to hold him in check, to rush him out of the city, to soothe and placate him. Jesus, her very death—the total, irrevocable loss of the one person in the world he could cling to—must be driving him haywire." He stood up from the chair, pacing again. "I tell you there'll be more of these goddamn murders unless we get hold of him."

"That's what I want. Jesus Christ, he's my own flesh and blood, the poor bastard. That's what I want, for you to get him before the cops get him. I want you to bring him in—to me! That way I can have him adjudged insane and committed to an institution where they can take good care of him. If the cops lay hands on him first, an insanity adjudication won't be that easy; you know how psychiatrists on the witness stand can swing both ways. There are plenty of sex killers languishing in murderous jails rather than in hospitals where they belong. Jesus, my own flesh and blood, the poor bastard. Let him five out his days in comfort, the poor crazy son of a bitch." And now he was at the pool table again. He racked up the balls. He took up the cue and struck them. Expertly he ran off nine balls, then laid down the cue. A bit of nervous energy had been drained off. His jaw muscles were relaxed.

"Whatever you say," Chambers said and it was crafty. Whatever Richard V. Starr would say would be more than he would say.

"Sixteen thousand dollars," Starr said. "Bring him in and I'll pay you sixteen thousand dollars."

Chambers gulped down his Scotch. Sixteen thousand dollars was an inordinate amount of money for this kind of job no matter how difficult it might prove to be—but why that odd figure? He could not, of course, peer into the unconscious of his client's mind. Richard V. Starr had only recently closed a deal for sixteen million. Sixteen thousand was but a tenth of a hundredth of that figure, but the initial numerals were still strong within the psyche of Richard V. Starr.

"Forget it," Chambers said. "We'll include that in the fee. Now what does he look like, your son? Do you have a picture or something?"

"Yes I have. Excuse me." Starr went out of the room and returned with a color photo which he handed to Chambers. "It was taken six months ago. Edith sent it."

Chambers looked at a picture of a dark young man with regular features. There must be hundreds of thousands like that in New York City, nice-looking dark young men with regular features.

He put the picture in his pocket. He took his glass to the bar and embellished it with Scotch. He sipped thoughtfully, put down the glass. "Looks like the one lead is Harry Epstein."

"Look, Mr. Starr, Judge Epstein doesn't figure for a laose mouth. If I'm going to dig anything out of him,

I'm sure going to have to supply him with a damn good reason. The truth is the damn best reason I can think of. But unless you consent . . ."

A frown laddered the high forehead and the knuckles of a fist rubbed at the strong chin. Again he shrugged, and again the hands came up helplessly. "Epstein's close mouth works both ways. Anything you tell him won't go any further, I'm sure. On the other hand, I don't know how much progress you'll make with him no matter what you tell him. I wouldn't depend on Judge Epstein for a resolution of this thing." He was pacing again. Finally he said, "Okay. If you want to work that side of the street, give it a try."

"You may tell Epstein whatever you wish. I'm a firm believer in the delegation of authority. I selected you for this job—it's your job. Use whatever methods you like."

"I wouldn't figure on quick if I were you, even if I do get a lead out of Epstein. If your kid is the guy who did that thing at the Shirley, he's going to be watching out for himself pretty carefully."

"That's what I'm paying you for, my friend. I want him before the cops get him."

Chambers looked at his watch. 'The old boy's a family man, figures to be home now. May I use your phone?"

HARRY Epstein lived at 875 West End Avenue, and in the taxicab Peter Chambers chain-smoked cigarettes like the prototype of a candidate for lung cancer. Jesus, what a hell of a deal for Richard V. Starr, and what a powerhouse the guy was, holding up strong despite the occasional flickers of anxiety. Delegation of authority. You do the job. You're going to earn yourself sixteen thousand dollars, do your job, it's all yours, I wash my hands of it—which is the meaning of delegation of authority. Bring him in before the cops bring him in—that's your job.

He took out the picture, looked at it, put it back. A nice-looking kid, Anthony Starr, but a loon loose on the streets, and the thing at the Shirley didn't figure for a one-shot. There was no mother around now to protect him, to ride herd on him; hell, the very fact of the mother's death, the bereavement, was likely to shake up an already shook kid and further aggravate whatever the hell his aggravation was. If Richard V. Starr —tycoon, cool sophisticate, debonair man-about-town—

was correct in his estimation of his son, the kid was a way-out nut, and the present conditions would doubtless make him nuttier. Unless the cops caught,up with him quick, or Peter Chambers did, a pleasant-looking, innocuous-looking, nice-looking dark young man could wreak a hell of a lot of havoc in New York City.

A judge retired from the bench is like a general retired from the army: the tide sticks to the person like a freckle on the skin.

Epstein leaned over to a pipe-rack, took a pipe, filled it, tamped it, lit it, and produced evil-smelling fumes. He was a little man with a seamed face, a bald head, and a sepulchral voice. He was nearsighted and wore heavy-rimmed thick-lensed glasses behind which his eyes swam like fish in a bowl.

' Chambers told the story told to him by Richard V. Starr. He omitted the deeply personal angles involving the physical relations among father and mother and son, but told fully about the murder in the Hotel Shirley and about the longtime aberrations of Tony Starr.

There goes the ballgame, Chambers thought. There goes at least this part of the ballgame. "I want to know where I can lay my hands on the guy."

"Oh now come on, Judgie. Let's play fair. Tit for titty, as it were. I let my hair down for you . . ."

"I believe," he said, "that without transcending the proprieties I can acquaint you with certain of the facts of this matter."

Judge Harry Epstein, Chambers knew, was a stickler for the proprieties, for law and order, for the court decisions, for the hidebound statutes, for all the tight, narrow (properly protective?) legalistic amenities.

"Tony Starr, Edith Goddard Starr, an immense amount of money there," Epstein said. "The boy in his own right is worth a couple of million. Edith's estate, conservatively—thirty million. Let's put the whole package together as thirty million. Yes?"

"And has refused to make a will. Death is remote to young people, and wills smack of death. Perhaps superstition, perhaps eccentricity, young Starr has no will."

"But Edith Goddard Starr did have a will. No secret there either. Richard V. Starr is very well aware of the terms of his divorced wife's will, and that I am the executor of that will. Her entire estate is a bequest to young Tony Starr."

"Please remember I was Edith's attorney prior to my short tenure as Criminal Court Justice, and I was privy to certain of her confidences which, in limited fashion, and properly I believe in view of the alleged circumstances you have recited, I shall now divulge to you." He sucked the pipe. There was no smoke. The fire was out. "Richard V. Starr detested his wife and hated his son. The wife finally fled from him, taking the son. She procured a divorce and she and the son lived far away from him, expatriates in a foreign country."

"Look, I can understand a man detesting his wife. But why, by Jesus, would a man hate his own son?"

Human nature, my dear young man. Human nature is infinitely complex, and Mr. Richard V. Starr, whether or not you may know it, is an infinitely complex man. Thirty million dollars, Mr. Chambers. Perhaps he could have borne the wife, if not for the progeny. The son represented an insurmountable barrier to the acquisition of a vast fortune. Within the complexities of certain complex natures—would you not say that the seeds of hate were implanted at the very birth of the progeny?"

"Do you believe what Richard V. Starr has presently told you about the insane depravities of his son?"

Epstein reamed out the bowl of the pipe, filled it again, lit it, smoked. "The woman died. The son came home for the settlement of the estate. I admit to certain peculiarities on his part, certain eccentricities, but now, thanks to you, a comprehension is beginning to dawn on me."

"He came home to the United States, but refused to give me an address where I could reach him. I put 3ie will into probate, but he insisted that all her properties be turned into cash, which, as you may well imagine, will take a heck of a long time. But when that time came and the money was transferred to his name, he would once again quit the country."

"Of whatP" The little man bridled, contained himself, smoked his pipe. "Mr. Chambers, there is a constitutional privilege between attorney and client. An attorney has the right and duty not to reveal—"

"But, Jesus God, this guy is a killer, a bloody ripper, a kook, a sickie, a cannibal!"

Epstein, in his own realm, was very calm now. "Facts. Do you have facts, evidentiary facts What you told me, Mr. Chambers, is what was told to you. That's hearsay, my dear young man, not evidence, and I know that youre wise enough and experienced enough to • realize how perfidious that kind of mouth-to-mouth chatter can be. Hearsay is insufficient in a court of law, and insufficient in a conversation such as this, to convict an individual."

"I'm thinking. Jesus, am I sitting here thinking-" And he was sorry he had refused the earlier proffer of a drink.

Epstein said gravely, "According to the word of Edith —Richard V. Starr is a heinous individual capable of mortal sin."

Hell, he couldn't tell him that Edith Goddard Starr had committed adultery against her husband by taking her own son to bed with her. He couldn't tell him that Edith Goddard Starr, the villain of the piece, had raised a wall of villainy around the husband in sheer protection of herself. (The best defense is a good offense.) But he had told him all the rest of it—all! He had told him that the boy had committed a loathesome crime seven years ago, that the boy had admitted it, but that the mother had taken him away, had fled with him. That the boy had repeated this crime, always within the cocoon of the protective mother, at intermittent periods in different cities throughout the world. But now the mother was dead! And the boy was loose right here in this city! But the basic facts had been imparted to him by Richard V. Starr and these facts without corroboration were, according to the learned Mr. Justice Harry Epstein, hearsay, and hearsay could not legally stand up in a court of law and therefore could not stand up in the legalistic mind of the prim and proper (and well-intentioned) little lawyer.

"Please note," Epstein said, "that the boy has not been in touch with the father. He must have been forewarned, perhaps many times before her death, by Edith. She suffered with a bad heart. She must have warned the son—else why would he shun the father?"

Guilt, Chambers thought. When you are the lover of your mother, you cannot bear to face her husband: certainly the son would shun the father. If I thought it would help, he thought, I would tell him of the incestuous relationship, of the woman's addiction to cocaine, of the son's indoctrination through the mother to the drug, but that rewashing of Starr's dirty linen would still

"I believe I can understand now " Epstein said, "why the boy wouldn't even give me his address. He's frightened. I thought it to be a rich scion's eccentricity. Not eccentricity. Fear."

Chambers held on to himself. Mildly he said, "And why would I be sailing along on this fool's errand?"

"Sir," Epstein said, "an individual adjudged insane is an individual legally dead. Legally dead, your next of kin inherits. Tony Starr's next of kin is Richard V. Starr. He's a powerful man, he can command powerful psychiatrists. If he can commit the son, he commits himself to thirty million dollars."

But fool or no fool, errand or none, I'm finished here. The lawyer, by proper privilege of law, is protecting his client, and the proper privilege of law is goddamn proper here in the circumstances. He sighed. 'Thanks for the legal lecture, Judge."

"If you were in my place and I in yours—would your conscience permit you to skirt the sancrosanct privilege of communication between attorney and client"

"I thank you, Judge." Chambers stood up. "This conversation of course is absolutely confidential."

"Could it be otherwise?" The little man came to him, linked his arm through his, and led him to the door. "Please understand," he said. "If by virtue of your investigation you acquire evidence—not easily concocted hearsay, but evidence, even a scintilla of evidence linking this young man to the dastardly occurrence at the Hotel Shirley—then I ask you to come back to me and perhaps, then, there may be a diffusion of my presently obdurate, or seemingly obdurate, uncompromising attitude. Do you understand?"

Chambers went out, down, into a cab, and home, and there he studied the photograph of Tony Starr until it became imprisoned in his mind like a felon in solitary. Then he called the office of Felix Budd. He did not expect an answer, he expected an answering service, but Budd came on the fine.

He made it in twelve minutes. The bell rang and Chambers opened the door for a little lightweight jockey of a man with gray hair, gray eyes, a gray face, dressed in a gray suit. He probably wore gray underwear. He was Felix Budd, a man whose forte was a propensity for being invisible. He could merge. He was a chameleon who blended with background. Put him up against a wall for execution and the firing squad would be looking for which wall to shoot at. He was the best all-around tail-man east of the Mississippi—but he had never worked west of the Mississippi.

"Always fancy, this fancy son of a bitch. Quarry. Peter Chambers, the fancy Dan, he don't say this little prick is for you to get attached to, Felix. He says quarry. Okay, so is Felix fancy with the words. I know what's quarry. Quarry is stone. What's the name of this stone I'm looking at?"

(His day, on a similar job, would commence at five, but his job did not start until Monday.) "Okay, you bought me, quarry-baby. So what's the message on no-name?" Budd put the picture in his pocket and drank his gin.

"My one lead is his lawyer. Harry Epstein. Epstein's office is Two-eighty-five Madison Avenue. Sooner or later this guy has got to come to his lawyer. The lawyer's office hours are nine to five. So you'll be out there on Madison, nine to five, Monday to Friday, starting tomorrow, which is Thursday." '

"Once you spot the guy, then you stay along with him until you can provide me with his name, address—everything I might need to pick him up myself." Chambers drank gin, went to his desk, wrote a check and gave it to Budd. 'That's a week's pay in advance. If you get to him before the week is out, the balance remains with you as bonus. If not, that's the way we'll work— you'll get two-fifty every Thursday, a week's pay in advance. Any questions?"

Chambers was unaccustomed to gin. It was a good aperitif. He was hungry. He thought about a fine meal in a fine restaurant in the company of Sandi Barton. He called her and got no answer. He called Goldie Dorn and Goldie answered.

MARK Montague, lavish in his lavish apartment on the ninth floor of 440 East 77th Street, waited with waning patience. Where the hell was she? He smoked his thin cigarette and paced in tempo with the music from the stacked records on the stereo. And wandered into the bedroom and saw himself many times in the many mirrors, and growled.

Many mirrors. All four walls of the bedroom were sheets of mirror and the ceiling was a sheet of mirror and that was the way Mark Montague had dreamed of a bedroom as a kid and that was the way he had it now that he was a man and could afford it. A bedroom was for screwing, sleeping was incidental, and Mark Montague liked to watch himself when he screwed and taught his girls to like to watch when they were being screwed. It was a kick, it was a blast, it was wild. He was young, virile, highly sexed, and had many girls, but the best of all he had ever had was Sandi Barton. Where the hell is sheP He stood in front of a mirror and smiled at himself, white teeth whitely shining in contrast to the black beard, an artistic beard befitting a creative individual, a rising young playwright. Black Van Dyke, black mustache, thick black sideburns, curly black hair worn long in the latest of mod fashion, Mr. Mark Montague who had it made. Man, have I got it made! He admired his clothing in the mirror. Man, this Rudij is the best damn tailor in the city, and Freddie's the best damn shirtmaker, and Bernie is the best damn bootmaker. His clothing was a pair of pants, a shirt, and not boots, but sandals. But the pants, black, were of imported silk, and were tightly shaped to his slender contours and clung to his hips without benefit of belt. And the shirt, scarlet, was shantung, made of the silk from wild silkworms, a crazy sport shirt cut down deep in front, four pearl buttons on each high cuff, the wide sleeves rippling. And the leather of the sandals had once been the skin of an alligator.

He went out of the bedroom and into the living room and added ice to the shaker of martinis. It would dilute it, but it would keep it cold. Where the hell is she? Peter Chambers? Is she with that private eye bastard, knocking off a fast shack before her date here with him? He was tempted to call, resisted, paced the apartment.

There were four big rooms: living room, bedroom, kitchen, and the study where he worked. He had put in a good day's work today, and it had gone well. He had done a couple of real knockout scenes and was satisfied and ready to relax. He had no deliveries to make, no transactions with conservative customers at their homes or with surreptitious customers at out-of-the-way meeting places: he had all night to enjoy Sandi Barton and was already horny and high on the first thin cigarette. Hell, he had even, finally, gotten a title for the new play—Black Mass at High Noon—and he liked it, it fit. It was a corruption of the title he really wanted for the play—Black Ass at High Noon—but MacDonald Bernstein had talked him out of that. Hell, it was mo off-Broadway thing this time; this was the goods, this one was for the Real Wheel, the big time. MacDonald Bernstein didn't lay out money for the off-Broadway pleasures of playwrights, and Bernstein had bought the play after reading the first draft, Bernstein had plunked down option money and was now working with him on it and advising. MacDonald Bernstein was only numero uno on Broadway, with four hits presently running for him. Bernstein could do no wrong. Bernstein was Broadway's white-haired boy and Bernstein had picked Mark Montague as his white-haired boy. Mother, how sweet it would be! A successful Broadway play could mean a million to the playwright. Mother, what a pleasure to be able to bask in the increment that comes out of talent. Mother-fucker, what a pleasure it would be to give up pushing the hard junk in order to live high up on the hog—with Rudy, and Freddie, and Bernie, and a mirrored bedroom, and the best ass in the world at your beck and call.

Taxis," she said. "You hit a bad streak, you're really up the creek. I've been out on the street for a half hour, and going from street to street, and every time the damn loose taxi is on the other street."

"Yes, sirree. Somebody ought to. Somebody also ought to do something about like air pollution. And other things. It's always somebody ought to. When does somebody ever do?"

Always gorgeously attired. Expensive. She was a struggling young actress: where did the money come from? Chambers? She had said something once about a father who had left a little trust estate for her. Probably a crock of shit. Chambers must be laying the loot on her, even though she played the ingenue so nice and sweet and soft, wouldn't take a dime from you even though you offered dough often and plenty. Don't be jealous, Mark old boy. If you're sharing her with Chambers, you're only sharing the best, and with what she's got, if she extended herself, she could throw you both, you and Chambers, into the throes of a nervous breakdown. In the living room, he poured martinis.

Just like that. Mild and easy. And pulling in grass like her lungs were bellows. And knocking down the martini like it was Pepsi Cola. And all with those big blue eyes so innocent. Innocent eyes, innocent face, all so mild and easy, and this was the wildest hunk of hump in all the land, and I ought to know, Jesus, I have had them all.

And more martinis and more pot, and then they Were dancing to the music from the stereo, and he opened his pants, and they danced like that, fully dressed, but his big thick naked cock pressed between her thighs, and she whispered, "Honey, you'll soil me," and he whispered, "Not me, I know what I'm doing," and then he picked her up in his arms and carried her into the bedroom and gently set her down and she began to undress and he said, "No!"

He undressed her, and as he removed each item of clothing kissed the exposed parts, kissed her arms and her breasts and the navel of her stomach and on his knees down along her smooth thighs, and then when she was nude, pulled her to him, and had her stand over him as he sat on the edge of the bed, his hands holding her hips and his tongue lightly licking at the slit of her cunt, and she began to tremble and he tossed her on to the bed and started all over again. Licking her ears. And her neck. And down along her breasts. And holding her tits together firmly, his head oscillated as he sucked the nipples of her tits, and then down, down he went, licking her stomach, licking her thighs, licking around the hair of her pubis, and then his head was between her legs and he pulled them up and closed them around his head, and his tongue was in there, his hot tongue licking, and then his teeth gently nibbling at her clitoris, and she looked up at the mirror on the ceiling, and could see him, her headless man, his legs outstretched, the muscles of his buttocks taut, his shoulders quivering, and then she could not see him because her eyes were closed and she was rising to him and screaming, her hands pulling at the hair of his head, and she came—God, how she came!— but he was relentless, his tongue like a whiplash, and she tried to push him from her as she squirmed in the shrill ecstasy of after-climax, but his head remained there like a boulder which she could not dislodge, and then she liked it again, her tense body subsiding, and she writhed slowly to his endless oral expertise, and was able to watch again in the mirror on the ceiling, and thought that a beard and a mustache were excellent adjuncts in the performance of cunnilingus, and

then could not think, couldn't watch, because once again he had her in thrall, and again she was screaming, creaming, and could feel his wet face between her burning thighs, and then she tasted her own cunt, tasted it from his mouth, because he was up on her, his body over hers, his tongue in her mouth kissing her—this bastard was a lover all right, a remarkable lover—and his long big prick was in her, was within the post-orgasmic quiverings of her vagina, and he did it cleverly, slowly, grinding it in without force, gently, moving it in and out, his balls tapping against her as though asking for admittance, slowly in and out, as she watched in the mirrors and thought about Peter Chambers and imagined it was Peter Chambers fucking her now, and it went on and on like that—God, this bastard knew his fucking—God, the bastard was a wonderful lover—and it went on and on and time blacked out—God, how this one knew!—and he opened her, opened her more and more, and then his fingers were down there helping, and he got it all in, everything, his scrotum, his balls, his entire pudendum was in her, and her legs were high and wide up in the air, and she was groaning, moaning, fainting, swooning . . . and she came!—a shrieking orgasm!—fire along her spine!—her anus burning!—her cunt exploding!—her teeth biting his tongue! —his cock pouring semen into her—hot, burning!—' fire to quench fire!—fire fire fire—flames . . . Jesus Christ!

He took her from the bed. And she stumbled with him into the shower. And the water started warm and

then he made it colder and she was refreshed holding him, clinging to him, the one man in the world whom she fucked for free.

"We'll eat in the Chansonette," he said. "Well drink up a little;, listen to the music. Then we'll come home and sleep over."

"When it's a play, the author has the final say. The hell with Bernstein or anyone else. You fit. And you're a damn good actress—just remember that. Baby, I'm not looking to knock myself up. I wouldn't frig with my career—even for you."

She was no charity bum. A whore does not fuck for free—ethics is ethics. As Peter Chambers always said—a whore is a whore is a whore—and she was a whore. But for Mark Montague it was not for free. It was for the second lead in a Broadway show titled Black Mass at High Noon which would be a MacDonald Bernstein production and which would, once and for all, give her die kind of credit that would establish her.

HE had not touched the white stuff for three days, not Wednesday, not Thursday, not Friday. He longed for it, subtly tempting himself, but resisted. He had been taught well. Don't use it every day, day after day, because then the kick gets blunted, and you yourself become nothing more than a cringing slave to the habit. Space it. Use it like the real aficionado uses marijuana—occasionally for a high mofnent. Not like the creepy kids who keep banging the pot like a gong, but the bells stop ringing. As his mother used to say, "When the high is low, the kick is shitty."

Space it. Give your body a chance to recover. Resist. Tempt yourself, tease yourself, look forward but hold back, space it, long for it, and then give in and you will have yourself a celebration. Cocaine is not heroin, it does not create an imperative physical need. Unlike heroin, morphine, or any of the opiates, cocaine can be laid away, spaced, saved for another day, and you do not get the sweats, the shakes, the pains, the hellish bellybending tortures of withdrawal: cocaine is not physiologically addictive. She had taught him well. God, how he missed herl

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday—a quiet three days, restful and pleasant. But lonely. God, so lonely! All his adult life he had never been alone: she was always with him, close by, a watchman, a sentinel, but he did not resent it—and he knew why. On the rare occasions when he gave her the slip, he was so damn sorry afterward, contritely confessing, and she held him and whispered to him, talked to him, lectured him, and it helped, it did help. "It's passing," she said. "It's getting less and less, and you're getting better and better, and one day soon, soon, you'll be whole and strong . . ."

Wednesday evening he went to a movie, Thursday evening to a concert, Friday evening to a movie. He ate in off-hours in quiet out-of-the-way restaurants. He read his books and his newspapers, religiously scanned the personals column of the Times (nothing for him). Friday afternoon, from a phone booth in a restaurant, he had called the lawyer. The lawyer, an uninquisitive, kindly little man, had said, "Nothing yet, my lad. As I told you, these matters take a heck of a long time."

And now the beast was moving in him. Today he yielded, sniffing the white powder, feeling the rise, the high, the happiness . . . and the need. In the old days he had her, and she could talk him out of it. Except for the crazy times when he slipped away—and she was so right, she was helping, those times were growing fewer and fewer—he would tell her what was happening inside him, and she would work on him, laugh, joke, plead, cry, anything, even sex right then—but she would talk him out of it and it would pass.

It was beginning to be dark in the apartment, and he put on the lights. He was feeling good. Good! He went to a drawer, took out his little address book, looked at the names and addresses of the hooker bars John Edison had recommended, and at the names and phone numbers of the high-class madames. Not yet with the ma-dames, he thought. There's time for that. He selected a bar far away from Tom's Pub on 80th Street: he selected The Lamplighter on Bleeeker Street in Greenwich Village. John had said, "If you want them young, that's where you'll find them. A kind of cheapie pub. A lot of kids, youngsters from out of town trying to hustle a quick buck, sort of for eating money. Be careful in The Lamplighter."

One side of him knew exactly the risks he was taking, and another side negated them. Stirred by an ineluctable need, a drive of implosion, an insane thrust, he was nonetheless meticulously sane in his thinking. Eight million people in a vertical city: if you are careful, you will be unrecognized; if you are not, by some far-out chance, actually caught in the act, who can point an accusing finger at you? The victim? She can no longer point fingers. For all else, if you are careful, there is no one to point a finger. You do not stand out, you are one of many, you do not draw attention to yourself, you do not make a spectacle of yourself, you merge with the many.

But careful. If you are careful, you can protect yourself. Careful crimes are not easily solved. Years ago in England there was a Jack the Ripper who committed a long list of crimes and was never caught. The poor bastard, he thought. He too must have hated himself. Like water, he thought, like goddamned water, and you are shuffling on a desert, and you are parched of thirst, and the oasis may be polluted, it may be poisonous, but you drink because you must drink. He sniffed white powder, admired his metaphor, thought it absolutely brilliant, grinned, and got dressed. He took what he needed, went out to a cab, and told the man, "Tenth Avenue and Fifteenth Street." He glanced at his watch. Nine-thirty. It was half past nine, it was Saturday night.

During his daytime strolls around the city he had noticed The Tenth Avenue Motor Inn, a sprawling many-pathed complex, a rather new edifice, but strictly, he had judged, a screwing joint. You did not have to have a motor, he had judged, in order to be a guest at The -Tenth Avenue Motor Inn, and it turned out he was right. The man behind the desk was skinny, sleepy, pale, baggy-eyed, and uninterested.

He paid the money, signed the card Ross Mason The baggy-eyed man threw him a key and jerked his thumb. "You go out, turn to the right, it's the second entrance. All the keys open the downstairs door, but it's individual keys for the rooms, and every room has an inside twist-lock. You're two-oh-two. It's a nice room, the best in the house."

He went out, turned to the right, found the second entrance, unlocked the door, trotted up a flight of stairs, opened 202, and it was a nice room. Air-conditioning, wall-to-wall carpeting, a radio, a television, a big double bed, and a tile-floored bathroom with a big tub and a stall shower. He finished his inspection, turned down the slats of the Venetian blinds, went out and locked the door and pocketed the key, and outside in the night waved to a cab and rode to The Lamplighter on Bleecker Street, a loud, raucous, juke-box joint, long and narrow, with no tables and a six-deep, noisy, crowded, Saturday-night bar.

She was very tall, blonde, with white skin, and a long neck. She wore a green off-one-shoulder dress, which was at least seven inches above her knees. Her legs were straight and sturdy, her bosom was small, her hips were high, wide, round, and handsome. She was long-striding and was striding with purpose. He intercepted her, took her hand.

"Me either. My first trip, and my last." She was very young. She had a soft Southern voice. "Jeeps, at least you're tall. New York. Like they're all squat and fat and slightly Jewish. You a Jew-boy, eutie? Look, I got nothing against Jews, I mean not even niggers. You look like a doctor or something. No, an intern."

And outside on the street in the warm night air she said, "Jeeps, what a creep-joint. How come a nice guy like you in a creep-joint like that? You're cute. Wanna know something? You are cute."

"Yeah. Wanna walk a little? Let's walk. I know a nice little place, a Spanish place, not a creep-joint. Walking distance. Okay?"

"My girlfriend took me. Said this Lamplighter, we could meet some guys willing to spend a little, you know? Shoot, man. Nothing. A lot of little Jew-boys buying you a fast beer and rubbing up against you to knock off a dry one, you know? Look, sugar, I don't mean nothing with this Jew-boy stuff. I mean if it happens you're a Jew-boy, think nothing of it. It's just my way of talking."

"So I stick around that creep-joint, because my girlfriend she's like making out a little with some elderly guy, squat and fat. Jeeps, New York, it's like all dwarfs. So my girlfriend she asks me if it's all right with me if she blows out with the dwarf, and sure it's all right with me. They blow, and I fix up in the little girls' room, and I'm on my way out when there you are. I mean a guy like you. I mean what's a guy like you doing in a creep-joint like that."

"A pretty guy like you? Alone? Stumbling around on a Saturday night? I don't get it."

She squeezed his arm. "You're okay. You are okay, sugar. Like me girl friend says, and she's right. New York. The Big Apple. Don't never put it down. You jes' never know when you can run up against a real nice person. Even in a creep-joint—a real nice person."

The little Spanish place had a low ceiling, low lights, many round-topped little tables, and a small dance-floor. Two guitars and a piano played Spanish music.

A man in a torero's uniform took them to a corner table, and a waitress in black tights and a skirt that ended at the top of her thighs took their order.

"Listen," she said. "I mean like I don't wanna rope you in. The beer, she brings it in bottles and all. On a Satin-day night they charge a buck and a half a bottle. I mean if you can't afford, we'll stall along with the one bottle apiece."

She laughed. "Sugar, I'm gonna tell you something. Cuz, like my girlfriend says, I'm a stickler for the truth —and the truth, I happen to like you. Very much." She quaffed at the beer, a long quaff, and set down the glass empty. "I dig speed. Dig?" He nodded. "Am-phies, you know?" He nodded. "Liquor and speed, for me it's a bad mix. I jes' get sick, period. Beer's different. Goes great with speed. I'm on a high now, sugar. Got a Couple of crazy spansules clicking away like a clock inside." She emptied the bottle into her glass and drank. He ordered another beer for her.

"You just keep hitting home runs, hey? Dallas, Texas, sugar. Been up here by the Big Apple three months. Moved in with my girlfriend, share the rent and all. Reached my votin' age three months ago, and came up here. Modeling, you know. I'm registered with the Keith Agency. But it takes time, them things take time till you start earning the real money." She poured from the new bottle and drank. "You? What do you do for a living, doc?"

He thought quickly, lining himself up with her. "I'm with CBS. Liaison man. Work with the outfits that do the TV commercials."

"Like this I'm rich. My girlfriend's apartment, the rent's two hundred clams a month. This month I ain't paid her my half yet. Jes' don't have it this month to pay."

He took a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet, folded it, gave it to her. She looked at it, looked at him. "What's that for?"

Kings: 17 mg. "tar," 1.1 mg. nicotine; 100's: 19 mg. "tar," 1.3 mg. nicotine,-Menthol: 19 mg."tar," 1.3 mg. nicotine av. per cigarette, FTC Report Aug. '72.

Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined That Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Your Health.

"Well, first off, get this straight, I don't wanna get married. Got things to do, got a life to live, don't wanna get married yet. So. Dream man." She took cigarettes from her bag and lit one. "It's important he's nice looking. Tall. Gotta be tall. Okay. Now he's gotta be kind to me, he's gotta care for me. Care for me like all the way around the barn, you know? Care for me—like he's gotta like me. And care for me—like to take care of the bread. Look, I don't want no penthouse on Park Avenue. All I'd like is not to have to worry about the rent, food, clothes, you know? And he wouldn't have to worry about me running around too much. Honest, my nature, I really don't like to fuck around . . ."

"Reasonable," he said. "No extraordinary demands. But what would the dream man be getting in return?"

She had gold-flecked grayish eyes and they were filled now with a proud assurance. "Sugar, when Peggy Flanagan balls a guy, that's a guy has been balled!" She drank some beer and grinned impishly. "You got it in your head, maybe, to be the dream man?"

"Jeeps, I'm a real shit, hey, sugar? You with troubles, and me talking my head off. Tell Peggy, baby."

He put the key on the table. She looked at the embossed tag: THE TENTH AVENUE MOTOR INN. She said, "You from out of town?"

"No." He put the key back in his pocket. He lowered his eyes. "Married, but not working at it for a long time, and today we finally tore it, I walked out for good. Moved into this place, temporarily, while I look around for an apartment."

Her body was lithe, soft, strong, resilient. The floor was crowded and she pressed to him. They were cheek to cheek and she was naughty, subtly doing bumps and grinds, and he reacted.

In 202 of The Tenth Avenue Motor Inn he twisted the lock and she twisted into his arms, holding him, kissing him, her tongue, hot, sinuous, exploring his mouth. Her hand went down between his legs and her lips came away from his. "Jesus, what you got there! Jesus, a monster. Man, a cock like a rockl"

She broke from him, went to the radio, turned it on, turned the dial and found her station.

It's always the same, he thought. In all hotel rooms in every city all over the world the music that pumps from the radio is, somehow, always the same.

When he came back, carrying two six-packs of Miller's, her dress was hung away in the closet and her hair was pinned up high on her head. She was wearing tiny little green panties and a tiny little green brassiere. Her naked legs were long and smooth, her titties deliciously small, her rump high, round, plump and firm. Jesus, a woman! She was all woman!

"Oh yeah, man, gimme. Four times in my life I've had coke, and each time I climbed the walls, baby. Jesus, dream man, where did I find you? Jesus, coke! Oh shoot, baby! Coke makes out my amphie-spansules to be like aspirin tablets." She put away her pill box. "Gimme, tall-boy. Send Peggy up the wall, baby. Gimme gimme gimme!"

He gave her. Plenty. A big sniff up each nostril. And he sniffed, and pocketed the snuffbox, and she drank beer, and almost immediately the drug was working. "Oh, man," she breathed. "Baby, lover man." And tore off her panties, and flung away her bra. "Sugar, I'm going to ball your nuts off. I am going to ball your nuts off!"

Her delta of pubic hair gleamed blonde. The areolae of her small, full, uptilted breasts glistened pink. And his erection was a turret distorting his trousers. And she came to it and tickled it lightly. "Get off the clothes." She was panting. "Get naked for your Peggy."

He undressed, neatly hung his clothes in the closet, and when he came back she was sitting on the edge of the bed. The drug was working. Her eyes were wild.

"But baby, I suck. I'm the best. I love to suck and be sucked. Do you know how, sugar? Do you know how to suck a cunt?"

"But first you, sugar. Baby, I'm the greatest. In alT of Dallas, Texas, the greatest cocksucker is this here Peggy Flanagan. If I dig a guy, if I go for a guy . . She stood up. "Tell me you care for me. Please. Crazy? Tell me you care for me."

She pressed close to him, stood on tiptoe, hinged her crotch over his unrelentingly erect penis, kissed his ear. "I'm gonna lap you, Sugar. I'm gonna rim you, ream you, I'm gonna give you a trip around the world. And, baby, while I'm eating you, I come and come, I go crazy. Tell me you love it."

She led him to bathroom. She went with him under the shower, soaped him, soaped deeply into every crevice of his body, then wiped him with a towel, wiped herself, and took him back to the bedroom and pushed him to the bed. "On your tummy." Her voice was husky. "Lay on your tummy, sugar. Yeah, just like that."

He lay prone and she was over him, her breath sobbing, and the tip of her tongue flicked at his ear. And then the other ear. And then down along his spine, slowly licking down, and then her hands opened the cheeks of his ass and her tongue entered his anus, darting, flicking, rimming, reaming and a thrill like a chill shivered through him. And she maneuvered his body, turning him, her head coming up between his thighs, and she gently licked his scrotum, and gently, hotly, wetly pulled one of his testicles into her mouth, and then released it and took in the other, and then maneuvered him again and he was flat on his back and her tongue was gliding along the underside of his penis, and then her mouth opened over the head and the tip of her tongue was excruciating at the aperture, and then her hands were gripping his buttocks, fingernails piercing the skin as she pulled him into her, engorging the shaft all the way to the root, and then she was sucking, deep, in and out, her head rising and falling, bobbing up and down like a skifl in a storm, and noises emanated from her, ecstatic little noises, appreciative noises like those of a gluttonous child licking

a delicious lollipop, and then his orgasm came, semen ejaculating in powerful spurts, and she engulfed it all, swallowed it, and then neatly licked away every droplet of excess. She moved up along his body. She kissed the tip of his nose and then lightly his lips. His arm went around her and they nestled close and lay exhausted.

"But first I'm gonna get clean for you, real sweet and clean from head to foot."

She got out of the bed, and he went with her into the bathroom. He hinged down the cover and sat on the commode while she drew a bath. The head of the tub faced the doorway. He knew how he would do it.

She slid into the warm water. She giggled, "Sugar, don't jes sit there lookin' at me like that."

He went out and to the closet and clicked open the knife. He padded to the bathroom and stood behind her.

She closed her eyes. His left hand grasped her hair and pulled her head back. His right hand wielded the knife.,

He pulled her from the tub, laid her on the tiles of the toilet floor. The knife ripped into her wet belly...

Sandi the beautiful. Pert. Blonde. Expensively dressed in simple casuals. Shining. Glowing. Incandescent enthusiasm.

"Who cares? That's the title. He's now working on the second draft. The play, not the title. MacDonald Bernstein has the option on the first draft, and Bernstein's angels have already put up the money, and the opening date is set for October. And I'm in. Definitely. The second female lead. I'm the ingenue."

Mark or no Mark, play or no play, you sure are, Chambers thought. Ingenue. You look it, you express it, every inch of you. Ingenue means a young woman who is ingenuous, and ingenuous means innocent, artless, unworldly, naive. But ingenious, similar sounding, entails the opposite. Ingenius is the adjective for ingenuity, and ingenuity has to do with sharp skill, cleverness, resourcefulness and somewhere within that welter of similar-sounding words lay the description of his vis-^-vis bubbling over her champagne-brunch of Piper Heidsieck and a ham omelet. Sandi Barton, inconsistent. The ingenuous, ingenious ingenue. "Where does he get the time?" Chambers inquired of the ingenious ingenue.

"I'm launching you. We're having our launch together. On Piper-Heidsieck and ham and eggs."

And after launch he took her home and he went home and the phone was ringing and it was Bichard V. Starr. "Pete, can you come over here?"

Chambers sighed, lit a cigarette. Never on Sunday does not apply to the private eye. Not when the client is Bichard V. Starr who will peel off sixteen thousand bananas. If the guy wants his eye on Sunday . . .

He changed his shirt, went out to a cab, and on the eighth floor of 940 Park laid his thumb on the mother-of-pearl button. He was peeped at through the peephole, and the three locks snapped open, and the three locks snapped shut. Richard V. Starr, immaculate in white shoes, white socks, white slacks, and white shirt, led him to a study. He sat behind a mahogany desk, and Chambers sat in a mahogany armchair. Starr lit a slender panatela.

"No." (I was out working my points with the most unwhorish of whores, Miss Sandi Barton, ingenue.)

"A girl was found this morning in a room in a motel on Tenth Avenue. Same story, same situation, a duplicate of the other. Throat cut, stomach eviscerated. I checked it out, Peter, and most circumspectly, I assure you, with certain connections I have in the police department. It's exactly the same story, including the cannibalism. That aspect won't reach the public prints, and the whole thing happened too late for the Sunday papers. But tomorrow there's going to be one hell of a stink in this town."

"Lawyer privilege. The learned justice wouldn't accept what I told him. Gave him the whole bit on the kid —leaving out the . . . the personal family angle—but he rejected my information as hearsay. From you to me to him: that's chatter, conversation, pure hearsay unsupported by any corroboration. And he doesn't trust you one little bit. Your wife poisoned his mind. You're some kind of freak, a monster. She's dead and the boy has no will. If you can commit him, put him away as insane,

you stand to pick up thirty million bucks. Therefore Epstein hangs on to privilege. Without hard facts implicating the boy—incontrovertible, evidentiary facts— Epstein shies away from any cooperation whatsoever."

"A good man, a good lawyer, a sober legalistic mind. I can't fault the man. Now what about you? I assume you're proceeding by other means."

Part of the mystique is the aura of obscurity. A private eye earns his bread in that aura of obscurity.

"It may take time, but I won't miss." (I can't miss. The cops will be running up and down blind alleys. Not me. I know who he is, the cops don't. I know whom I'm looking for, the cops don't. I have a lead, the cops don't. And I've got the best guy in the business, Felix Budd, following up on my lead. The cops don't have Felix Budd.) "Figures to take time, but no matter the time, I'll bring him in before the cops get to him."

MONDAY'S papers had the story. The Times, of course, was conservative, with a dainty caption in thin print on the sixteenth page: Model Slain in Motel. But there was nothing dainty about The News: the entire front page was emblazoned in big thick black letters: MANIAC AT LARGE. And the lead editorial in The News had to do with the story. Hyperbole, of course. It warned that the police must mass their forces and quickly capture this killer or the city would be running in rivers of blood.

Tony Starr in his cool apartment read the newspapers with mixed emotions. As usual in these matters, his reaction was schizoid, divided, dichotomous. One part of him condemned the killer and deeply sympathized with the victim, but the other part of him deeply sympathized with the killer because he knew the killer was himself a victim of tortuous, inexplicable, undesired but irresistible compulsion. But he was shrewd. That part of him was shrewd, careful, protective, or else long ago he would have entrapped himself into the snare of the forces of law and order.

Lie low, he thought. Hold back, he thought. But how could he? When the moment came, when the need came, he was beyond control. But he would have to vary the pattern. These two had happened too quickly together. the city was aroused, the police on their mettle. Investigation into the background of the victims would disclose they were denizens of hooker bars. Therefore —no more hooker bars. When and if the obsession overcame him—no more hooker bars.

And on Monday afternoon Peter Chambers began his operation for free on behalf of Goldie Dorn. His operation for pay was in the capable hands of Felix Budd (although so far he was doing the paying: two-fifty a week to keep Budd in bud). But until Budd got trace of Tony Starr, Chambers was free for the free-of-fee for Goldie.

The operation was simple: a tail-job on the playwright. Monk Montague peddled the stuff and Barry Burnett was a buyer. And starting today, Barry figured to be back in town, and it was nighttime work, starting at five, so Chambers could daytime attend to office duties.

Nighttime work. The playwright pounded away at his plays during the day and pounded at peddling junk to his expensive customers during the night, and Barry Burnett was, of course, strictly a nighttime bird.

And so at five o'clock this Monday afternoon Chambers parked his black, battered, inconspicuous Volvo near Mark Montague's gaudy Caddy, and base of operations became the Volvo and also a window seat in a quiet neighborhood pub called Cafe Veda which was across the street from the Montague apartment at 440 East 77th, and at eight o'clock Mark Montague came out and Chambers stayed on his tail—no Barry Burnett —but by one o'clock, he became aware that he was being tailed.

So he did the switch, pulled out, turned the action around and tailed the tailer, and then realized that the tailer had not been tailing him, but, like him, was tailing Mark Montague, and so, by tailing the tailer, he was still working on his job for free for Goldie. It was a pleasant ring-around-the-rosy, but it did not develop a Barry Burnett.

Mark Montague went home at three o'clock and his tailor went into Cafe Veda for a bit of libation and Chambers joined him.

"Oh, these eyes, these rich private eyes, always buying. Double Scotch on the rocks."

'Two double Scotch on the rocks," Chambers said to the bartender who served and discreetly went away.

Bobby was Robert P. Miller, Lieutenant Miller of the Narcotics Squad. "Same as me?" he said.

"Only I'm on the guy's ass," Chambers said, "because I think he can lead me to another guy."

He was lanky and skinny. He had sandy hair and a pointy nose and eyes like a fox.

"Remember who went to bat for you? Pulled strings? Got you up on the list, over the stiffs who didn't have strings, when you made lieutenant?"

"I was tailing you tailing Mark. I got no interest in your mark. My interest is a guy the mark can lead me to. What's your interest, Bobby?"

"Grew up quick. A biggie on the junk scene these days. Wheels and deals in the hundreds of thousands."

"But we got him good. Did a long job on him, but got him good. Got figures, got statistics, got evidence that can't be budged, got a confidential-squad man working on the inside with him, we even got customers of his who'll testify because we'll give them immunity. We got this little wiseacre fucker wrapped up in a sealed package. When we hit him, he goes away foj: five years. Even with the best lawyer, even on a guilty plea—he goes away for a minimum of two."

"In case the chick is up there, I'd like to—off the record—get her out before you guys hit."

"We hit five o'clock this Saturday. He never comes out on the junk business before six." (So now Peter Chambers had an extra hour for office work.) "He's got a big delivery for Saturday, thirty plump glassine packages for thirty plump-paying customers. It'll be real nice to catch up with him with all that extra stuff as a haul. My crew meets here, right here, Cafe Veda, at four. Crew. Two of my guys and me."

"Can I stop you from dropping into Cafe Veda'at four o'clock Saturday afternoon?"

TUESDAY at six o'clock he picked up Mark Montague and was off again on the merry chase. Merry because of Bobby Miller. It had become a game with them. He knew Bobby was somewhere behind him tailing him tailing Montague, but Bobby was playing it coy now, using all his vaunted expertise, and Chambers could not get around to tailing Bobby tailing Montague. Of course, Bobby had it easy. Montague was a very visible guy, tall and bearded,-and carrying a beautiful shiny-black attache case. Chambers himself was traveling light. No gun for this job. His only added equipment was a thick roll of friction tape.

The game ended early. At six-thirty Mark Montague met Barry Burnett in Washington Square Park and when Mark departed from Barry, Chambers departed from Mark (and Bobby). He became engaged with Barry, and it was a short walk. Barry entered a sparkling-new apartment house at 42 Waverly Place. Chambers gave it a little time, then examined the bell-brackets in the lobby, and there it was, concise and to the point, alongside 12 G: BURNETT. He gave it some more time, smoked a cigarette, then rode up to twelve, and squeezed the button of 12G. The shield moved from the peekaboo slot and the eye within inspected the eye without.

A flicker of curiosity—was it a flicker of fear?—showed for a moment in the dark heavily-lashed eyes. "How the hell you know to come here, peeper?"

Barry led him through a carpeted vestibule into a gorgeous living room, all walnut, rosewood and ebony, every inch of it showing the skillful hand of an artful decorator. Why not? When you're the Big Boy in control of prostitution in all of Manhattan, you're likely earning the kind of cabbage that can bring you the best of everything. You also likely have brains, and Chambers was depending on that.

Barry was big, and running to flesh. Balding up there on top, but the rest of him hairy as a bear. In a way all that hair was like protective coloration: it hid the puncture-marks of the needle that delivered the heroin into the bloodstream.

Chambers went near, measured, drew a deep breath, and struck. It was a clean punctilious jolt, with all his weight behind it, straight to the chin. It was a haymaker, and it made hay. Barry went down and out and lay breathing stertoriously on his thick-piled carpet.

First thing, Chambers pulled the pants off the sleeping man. Underneath he was wearing jockey shorts and Chambers pulled off the jockey shorts. When you're naked you lose your dignity, and loss of dignity loosens the tongue. Chambers had other arrows in his quiver and he intended to use them all.

He dragged Barry to a massive armchair and set him into it. Then he used the friction tape to tie him into it. Then he tested. He had him good. Barry Burnett was firmly affixed. He was as much a part of the armchair as the upholstery.

He opened a bottle of Chivas Regal. He put ice and water into a pitcher. He took the bottle, the pitcher, and a glass to an end table beside a chair facing the immobilized Barry. He lit a cigarette, sat, drank, smoked, and waited. Finally Barry opened his eyes.

Barry attempted a wrestle at his bonds and gave up. He could not move, and the armchair containing him did not move.

"You're gonna be a dead eye, peeper. You're gonna be dead like a fuckin' doornail."

"I don't think I'll have to kill you, Barry boy. I've got you- killed already. But if you'll be nice—nice and cooperative—could be I'll give you back your life."

"Shit, man. Last Tuesday I was outa town. Been outa town like the last ten days. Livin' it up with a chick of mine in Hartford, Connecticut. She'll swear it on a stack of Bibles. Shit, man, are you on the bias!"

"Barry, baby, you put the arm on Goldie Dom, and Goldie consulted with yours truly. I've been around a long time, Barry. I know how to handle this kind of bit, and Goldie's a friend of mine." Chambers poured more Chivas Regal and drank. Barry wet his Hps. "Dorothy Steel," Chambers said. "She was your in, she was your contact, and Peter Chambers knows more ropes than you will ever know, big shot. So the minute you put the arm on Goldie, I put the arm on you. I rigged Dorothy Steel's apartment with infra-red cameras that were going day and night. Last Tuesday you called Goldie for a conference in Dorothy Steel's pad. I went along with Goldie, figuring I'd talk to you and talk you out of it. We found Dorothy like you left her for us to find her—"

"Barry baby, you're no dope. Forget it with the chick with your shack of bibles. Lover boy, I've got a strip of film in my vault that can put you away for the rest of your life."

"You're going to have to depend on me. Dorothy Steel is dead, she's out of it, she's through. Putting you away for the rest of your life won't bring her back. I'm no avenging angel, I'm a guy working a job for Goldie Dorn, a lady I like. You take the arm off her and my film stays in the vault. Maybe, if all goes well for a few years, I get rid of it. YouH be on my side. You'll appreciate. What in hell would I want with the film? But if I get dead suddenly, before you learn to appreciate me, then my lawyers open the vault and somebody screens that film and you wind up with your ass in the pokey for the rest of your life. There's no statute of limitations for murder. So how we doing, Bar? You with me? Is the arm off Goldie?"

The guy was beginning to fly distress signals. He was sweating, twitching, involuntarily nodding. His lips were dry, he was swallowing air. He was beginning to need his medicine, which was part of the plan of procedure: that was why he was taped to the armchair. Chambers drank. There was nothing else to do. The level of booze in the bottle was steadily depreciating. Time passed. A hell of a lot of time passed. Chambers wanted the time to pass. Part of plan. Weaken the guy. But it was also weakening him. He was getting drunk.

Silence. The hairy body strained against the tape. The veins of the neck bulged, jaw muscles clamped to tight knots. The eyes were filmy.

Vinnie Two! Chambers drank. Who in hell was Vinnie Two? In all his career, that name had never cropped up. If it was a name. Was it a name?

His body was quivering. He lurched against the tapes that bound him. The sweat on his body ran in rivers. Chambers could smell him.

"In my early days I pimped. Had a good stable. I did all right. Made a rep. When you make a rep, the biggies come to you. A biggie came to me."

Hal Napoli was big. One of the biggest. Now he was talking Chambers's language. "Okay, you're cooking, Barry. Napoli."

"Propositioned me. A beauty-deal. Brought me other stables, and I was in charge. All the cunt in the Borough of Manhattan, Barry Burnett is the boss. But I ain't no boss, baby. I run the bit, but I ain't no boss. I take my take off the top, which is plenny, and I run the works, but I deliver the cream to Hal, which he ain't no boss neither. The one boss for cunt in this town—that's Vinnie Two."

"I'm humpin' this broad, this Dorothy Steel. Hal comes to me with orders from Vinnie Two. This Steel, he tells me, is a part-time hook, works for a madame called Goldie Dorn. This Hal, he ain't nothin'—an errand-boy, a pickup-boy, a messenger-boy for the Vinnie Two. Shapes me up on the Goldie Dorn. Vinnie Two wants fifteen hunnert a week off this Goldie Dorn. I do it any way I like, but I gotta produce fifteen hunnert a week off this Goldie Dorn. That's why I can't promise you to take the arm off. It ain't my arm, man. It's orders from upstairs." His chin sank down. There was a froth on his Hps. "Jesus, I'm begging you. Lemme up."

Chambers rose, drunkenly. He stripped away the tapes and let the man up. Barry went away to another room, and Chambers depended on his brains. The guy was a hot pistol but he was a brain. He could come back with a gun and ventilate the private eye—if he didn't beHeve the story of the film in the vault. If he did—then his brain would work for his own self-preservation.

How quickly the medicine works! Barry Burnett was revived. The twitches were gone, the eyes were clear, the expression on the countenance as Hvely as a gypsy dance. He had showered, and no longer stank, and was no longer naked. He was wearing a pair of gray, custom-tailored, doeskin slacks. No cuffs, but pleats.

"Play along with me, Barry, and that's where it stays. In the vault. After a while—a good long while—I'll turn it over to you. And it'll be the only copy. No dupficate. What in hell would I need a dupficate? Once you prove out—then we're friends. For a proved friend, you don't hold a club over the head. I wouldn't need the film, would I?"

"I'm not asking you to go out on a limb, Bar. What I'm asking is that maybe you'll kind of make some discreet inquiries', maybe work out a hint or two for me. I'll take it from there."

"If your angle doesn't work, then I'll climb over you to the top of the heap. That's why."

"Paying me nothing. She's a friend, and I like to do favors for friends. Wanna be my friend, Barry?"

"My angle'll work. There's enough money around not to hafta tangle with fuzz. Gimme a couple of days, and I'll be able to give you the word definite."

"No, don' call." Barry was smiling. The medicine was working. Two medicines were working. A load of H in the bloodstream, and a phantom film in a vault. "The Vinne Two. Wouldn't put it past, there's a tap on the wire. Don' call. Come here Friday. Like four o'clock."

"And if you're not here? I don't like waiting around in the lobby like a lobby-boy."

Barry lumbered away and camp back with a key and gave it to Chambers. "If I ain' here, come right in. Make yourself to home, buy yourself a drink. How'm I doin on the friendship bit? How'm I doin' on the film?"

"You're cutting down the time period that IU be holding it. You're beginning to prove out. Thanks for the key. I'll see you Friday at four and give it back to you. G'bye, friend."

Downstairs a little wind made the night cool. He walked for a cab, his equilibrium bad. Looked at his watch. Twenty to ten. He had been drinking steadily for three hours. He was loaded like an elephant gun, stoned like a goddamn stucco wall.

He was bringing good news. Glad tidings for Goldie Dorn. She was off the hook, no question. Protection boys don't tangle with cops who are taking protection si-money. Cops are on top in the pecking order. Where the fuzz is on the take, the hoods look elsewhere. Barry's report to his higher-ups would scrub Goldie from their lists. The one remaining problem would be the phantom film in the vault. No problem there either. He could easily stall Barry for a year or more, a Barry committed to lay off Goldie by his own protective lie to his bosses, and by then he and Barry would be fast friends. Then he'd produce a roll of over-exposed film and they'd both laugh it off, and Barry's laugh would be better than his because Barry would be clean out from under on a murder rap. Only one thing rankled: Vinnie Two. It was a blow to ego and bad for business that there was something going on in his own town that he didn't know about, but business was business, and it was necessary business, although none of his business, to find out, however discreedy, who or what was Vinnie Two.

Goldie peeped through the peephole, opened the door, and gave him an exuberant welcome and a big fat kiss on the mouth which included a naughty tickle of tongue.

She was clad in silver slippers and a silver-sequinned housecoat open all the way down in front, the huge breasts protruding like cannon from a rampart. But you had to hand it to the old bitch, the figure was excellent, the stomach flat, the rough thighs gracefully tapered.

"Goldie, I'm coming to New York for the weekend. Friday, Saturday, fly home Sunday. Attending an opening Friday night, and a society party Saturday night. I want a real lady on my arm. Dig?'

"Diggeroo," Goldie said and laughed. Was it not to laugh? Larry Raymond owned the Red Robin Hotel in Vegas, and the Red Robin featured a show with fifty nudies hand-picked from all over the world—yet he was calling Goldie. Because Larry was bugged on culture. They had to be beautiful, but they had to be educated. "Got," Goldie said. "A Wellesley graduate with a master's in psychology. She don't figure to go cheap, and she doesn't. Five hundred a night. Two nights, that'll be a thou, plus whatever you want to add like a gratuity."

"A gentleman coming in from Vegas. Larry Raymond, owns the Red Robin Hotel. Tall, slim, handsome, white hair. You dig white hair. Like your boss, you know? Friday night—there's a show opening. Saturday night —some kind of society party. Two nights, that's a thousand bucks on the line, plus he figures to go big on extra bread because he's only a millionaire. You free for the weekend, sweetie?"

"Fuck 'em all," she said and went from phone to phone and turned them off. "I'm all yours, sweetie."

"What I'm telling—you and your hookers don't ever again have to worry about Barry."

She slid out of the housecoat and it fell to the floor. What a figure the woman had! You hardly ever saw them like that, diet being the fashion these days. Not in the flesh, you didn't see them. You saw them in the museums, on canvas, the glorious models for the Bubens paintings. Tits like watermelons, but shaped like tits. An ass like a hassock, but shaped like an ass. Thighs like tree trunks, but gracefully shaped like thighs. And the belly flat, and the waist slender, and the flesh firm. All woman. Massive like a mastiff, but all of it, all together, a shapely, flowing, firm, beautiful woman.

him to the bedroom, took him to bed. She undressed him and lay down beside him, kissed him. "Sleepy?" she said. "I'm sleeping," he said.

ON Wednesday evening Tony Starr, high on his happy drug, was a fashion plate of immoderate mod— flared-jacketed Edwardian suit with pencil stripe, sharp shaped shirt with stripes thick as thumbs, and a wild wide flowery tie. All out tonight, nothing conservative, because tonight was a night for innocent fun—no hotel room booked in advance, no slinking in and out of hooker bars. Of course he was carrying his snuffbox, because one does need an occasional lift during a night on the town. But why the knife? His boyish smile in the mirror was somehow crafty as he adjusted the Windsor knot under the stays of the spread collar. Heck, he answered himself, this town can be awfully dangerous at night and it's good to have an item of protection at hand against the ubiquitous muggers. He smiled again, left the lights burning, locked up, went out and down and took a taxicab to The Strip on the upper East Side where he drank Scotch in the singles bars, dancing with pretty young ladies in Gorgeous George's, Wednesday's, Thursday's, Harlow's, but it was not until eleven o'clock

in the Jolly Horseshoe that he saw what he wanted. She was tall, with short-cut blonde hair. She wore an elegant, clinging, yellow dress that neatly bisected the bulging nates of an admirable ass. She had slender arms, and slender shoulders, and long slender legs, and he was jealous, watching from the bar, as she danced with her date. Then the dance ended, and the guy was not her date. Tall and bald, the guy joined a group of men at a table, and she came to the crowded bar, and he quickly nudged through to her and she saw him and smiled.

"Were drinking. Martini. But the moment you leave, they snatch it away. I was asked to dance, and it's been snatched."

She had big brown limpid eyes, elegant eyebrows, a straight nose, smooth sun-tanned skin.

"In a way we're even. I had this dress made in Rome. Would you say we're . . . foreign-oriented?"

"I say let's get out of here, Tony. Shall we? Let's get out of this horrible little place where they snatch away your drinks."

"Other places, other snatches. Gosh, that sounded obscene, didn't it?" She laughed. High-pitched, a melodious laugh. Her teeth were very white in the sun-tanned face. "But that's me. That's I? I mean I can become quite profane when I'm in my cups—and I'm in my cups."

Haughtily. "Well, don't you? So good of you. We'll have a medal struck for tall Tony in his pin-striped London suit."

They went out and walked in the New York night. There was a moon. There were stars. She finked her arm through his. She said, "I'm rather stinko. When I'm on martinis, I get stinko. Does it show, Tony?"

"A reporter for the Times in a custom-tailored London suit? Are you shitting me prettily, Tony? On a first-name basis, incognito? You sure you're not slumming, looking to pick up an interesting piece of ass"

"Reporter." He bad said it, he was stuck with it. "Overseas with the London office. Only got back recently."

"Copy. I'm the world's marvel. A half-ass genius. Tell you later. Want to go somewhere nice?"

"Rosy and romantic. Violins and opera singers, and right around the corner from where I live. Want to go?"

A cab took them to 36 East 60th, and the maitre d' took them, the tall, handsome, well-dressed couple, to a secluded lovers' table. He ordered a Rob Roy and she ordered a dry martini, and then they ordered steaks, and they got their steaks juicy and succulent, and got string music juicy and succulent, and operatic voices, male and female, juicy and succulent, and then they settled down to serious drinking, he with Scotch and she with martinis.

"I'm with an advertising agency, and I'm real big, a hilarious success. The reason I'm being secretive is I'm engaged to be married, first time in my life. To a Wall Street lawyer, very rich, best of family, a pompous prick, but a lovely guy. We're getting married next month,

June eleventh. He's been away for a couple of weeks, to Paris on business, and tonight alone in my apartment I was beginning to be a bit sorry for myself. Goodbye to status as bachelor-girl, you know? Goodbye to reckless abandon and come what may, you know? I was also getting a little hot in the cunt. See what I mean about obscenity when I'm in my cups?"

"I'm from Michigan. Aristocrat from the best of people, top of the heap. Came to New York to conquer New York, and, ridiculously, I conquered. Talent, you know? Seems I'm a fucking bottomless well of seething talent. So. As I was saying. Sorry for myself and hot in the biscuit and my fianc6 doesn't return to the fold till Friday. Restless in the apartment, sucking martinis, so I went out to see what cooks. Bit of a fling, sort of last fling, you know? Moved around in the stupid bars and met dull people and then you came and you're dull too, but at least you're pretty. You are dull, aren't you, Tony?"

A sliver of nastiness was coming through. If it was in there, martinis would bring it out Martinis are notorious as the catalyst for nastiness. "Dull," he said. "Like a dish."

"No, you're not." Laughter. White teeth in a tan face. And under the table delicate fingers unzipped his trousers and a warm hand enclasped his penis. Her lips at his ear: "Oh, you're a big one, aren't you?"

"Don't sulk. It doesn't become you." Her lips caressed his ear. She whispered, "Would you like to four-letter me, honey?" She released him under the table and laughed aloud. "See? How prim and proper I can be if I try?"

"Prim and proper" she asked. "Decorous? Aren't I? You didn't answer my question."

"There's my boy. Straight and true and right to the point." She drank down her martini. "A one-night stand, baby, you and me, first names, incognito. Please remember the fiance returns on Friday. Please remember I'm engaged to be married June eleventh. We play a little crazy bingo tonight, you and me incognito, but that'll be it once and for all and forever. On those conditions, are you game?"

"A wit yet I found in the Jolly Horseshoe. Okay, reporter, pay the man and take little Liz home to bed."

He paid, and they went out and walked around the block to 33 East 61st, tall in the starry night, an imposing edifice with thick-glass doors, and they rode up to the fourteenth floor and she opened the door and led him into a lovely living room.

"That's better. Not great, but better." She put her keys in her bag and tossed the bag away and pointed to the bar. "Can you make martinis?"

"Don't shake, stir," he said obediently. ' "And make a lot. In the glass part of the shaker, not

He took out the snuffbox, dug- deep, and sniffed. Dug deep again and sniffed again in the other nostril. Good. So damn good. So damn blissful good. He put away the snuffbox, licked his fingers, and went to the bar. Plucked out a botde of Noilly Prat dry vermouth, plucked out a bottle of Tanqueray gin, plucked out a little bottle of Angostura Bitters (if she didn't like a touch of bitters in her martini, that was just too bad). The shaker was professional, a bartender's shaker, the metal container sitting within the tall thick-lipped glass container, and he took out the metal, and dumped cubes from the bar-refrigerator into the tall glass, and splashed a bit of the bitters onto the ice. Then vermouth to cover the bottom of the glass, and Tanqueray over the ice all the way to the top, and he stirred vigorously with the long bar-spoon. Found a lemon and cut shards of peel into a little shot-glass. Found a stemmed cocktail glass and set it out. Then made himself a Scotch and soda and sat on a tall stool and sipped and waited and admired the beautiful room and then he admired her.

She came back and acted as though she were fully clothed. She was, however, stark naked and there was so much, so damn beautiful-much, to admire. Long slender legs and slender long thighs. Buds of breasts like an adolescent, but a big round firm-pouting ass like a trampoline athlete, and all of it, all of her, tan-brown,

smooth golden brown, no demarcation of white where a bathing suit might have protected her from the kiss of the sun, and a natural blonde, no question at all about that, the tufted hair of her pubis exactly matching in gleaming color the now tousled short-cut hair of her head.

And he smiled despite the tumescence caught within his tight mod pants and paining like a strangulated hernia.

"No big conundrum to be solved. I'm a member of a nudist camp, and when I swim that's where I swim. Have you ever been?"

The smile. The white teeth in the brown face. And the haughty diction, so perfect it seemed affected. "From what I discovered back there at Chez Vito, you've nothing to be ashamed of. Au contraire. Are you a bashful-one, pretty Tony?"

"Too bad I can't indoctrinate you. But prim and proper, remember me?"'Engaged to my solid, stolid prick of a Wall Street lawyer. Getting with the nuptials come the eleventh of next month. Bemember me?"

The brown body, pivoting on the brown buttocks, turned to the bar. She ignored the shards of peel, ignored the long-stemmed cocktail glass, raised the tall thick-lipped shaker glass and drank from it "Hey," she said, "beautiful. You're a man who knows how to build ® martini. Maybe I ought to marry you."

(Shit no, he thought, suppressing the wrath beginning to rise in him. No! Be good!)

"Don't get waspish, pretty boy." She drank from the big thick-lipped shaker glass. "Wanna know something, pretty boy? I think you're a bartender, that's what I think. Don't crap me with the reporter bit." She laughed. Nasty, the bitch. There it goes again, the innate nastiness. "A bartender on his night off. Nobody but a bartender can mix a martini like you mixed, baby. Hey you, reporter. Tell the truth. Bartender?"

"Ground rules," she said. "I'm gonna lay out the ground rules." A slight slur in the beautiful diction. "I'm gonna talk, pretty-boy, and I want you to listen." (Watch out, Wall Street lawyer. Unless you're a pansy, watch your balls. This beautiful brownskinned lady is a castrater. This is a very authoritative lady, the cocksucker, the small-mouthed, high-talking, haughty bitch. And he held on to wrath, squeezing it away, as he was squeezing away the strangulation pain of the hard-on constricted in his tight pants.) "Fuck," she said. "That's what we're gonna do. Straight fucking, if you please. I'm sick and tired of fancy bartenders who want to suck, nibble, play bowling ball with two fingers, jerk off in the lotus position, or delicately work a vibrator at the seat of my passion, namely my clitoris. I'm an old-fashioned broad who desires a good fuck in the hole, reporter. The hole. That's the vagina. Not the rectum, not between the tits, not in my mouth or under the armpits. Straight old-fashioned fucking, bartender. Them's the ground rules, baby. Are we met?"

She drank from the shaker, gurgled a lot of it down, cocked her head in a kind of reverence. "Bartender, you sure mix a divine martini." (Jesus, how much could she drink?) "Well," she said, "fornication, anybody?" Moved off the stool, wavered, righted herself. Holding on to the shaker, she squeezed between his spread knees on the stool, kissed him lightly. "Come with me, pretty boy."

Enraptured with the smooth, brown, swaying buttocks, he followed her to a cool spacious bedroom done in golds and pinks and pale blues. She sat on a small gold chair.

"Oh, Lord, are you hung!" She put away the shaker on the carpeted floor. "Come here, you gorgeous hunk of man." She stood up, put her arms around him when he came to her, and kissed him. But a kiss this time, finally. Her soft lips writhed on his, and the tip of her tongue palpated his teeth, his gums, his palate, then thickly rammed into his mouth, swabbing. He could taste her martini.

And so they stood, body to body, his penis in the crotch of her thighs, and they rocked enclasped, quivering, body to body, tongues lashing, and then she broke from him and pointed to the little gold chair. "Sit down," she ordered.

The perfect diction was no longer perfect. It was slow, hesitant, drunkenly distorted. The martinis had reached the capacity level. "Sit, baby. You just sit like that." She straddled him, brown legs on either side of him, and sank carefully onto the upright pivot, moved up instantly, did that again and again until her lubrication made it possible for her to accommodate him. Then she settled on it, fully, and it was all the way in her. "Jesus, man," she groaned. 'That's a cock like a ramrod, baby." Her fingernails scratched his shoulders as she writhed, wriggled, oscillated, pumped. "Kiss my tits," she ordered. "Kiss me, baby. Suck my nipples. And don't come. Hold it, baby. Don't come." But she did. Time and again, and again and again, sobbing, moaning, sighing, trembling, gasping . . .

Then she was off him, the brown body gleaming in a sheen of perspiration, and she bent to the shaker and drank thirstily and took the shaker to bed with her.

"Sit there," she said. "You just sit there and let me look at you." And drank. "You're a good man, man. Man, you can hold it, baby. You've got . . . control. That's what you've got, pretty boy. A wonderful cock, but what's a wonderful cock without control?" She drank. She mumbled something incoherent.

"Me? Not me." She had misunderstood. "I'm insatiable. Honey, I'll fuck you right out of your mind." She finished what was left in the shaker, drunkenly tossed it away. "Cmere. Show you. Come to bed, bartender. What is it with you? You afraid of me?"

He went to bed with her and immediately she was at him, slobbering, kissing, biting, nibbling, and rolled over him, anxious fingers expertly guiding him into her. (On Jtop, always on top, this castrating bitch.) "Man, that cock! Fucking you, baby, oh I'm fucking you, riding that gorgeous cock, baby, and don't you come, don't you dare come, you hold it, hear?"

And then she was screaming, clinging, gripping, her nails tearing at him, her vagina convulsing in spasms . . .

He reached for her. "No. Go home. You've had it, bartender." She lay on her back, lifted her legs, and with the soles of both feet pushed him out of bed and he slid to the carpet with a thump. He rose and went at her angrily, but her eyes were closed. "Bitch!"

He shook her. Nothing. She was passed out cold. The bitch. The offensive, affected, selfish bitch. "Don't you come, don't you dare come, you hold it

The insatiable bitch, satiated, was drunkenly asleep. She had used him and literally kicked him out of bed. She had had her satisfaction, orgasm after orgasm, and had not even permitted him one. ,

Oh, but I'm going to have mine, bitch. I took care of you; now you're going to take care of me.

And he went to his clothes on the blue silk armchair and took out the knife . . .

THURSDAY morning at eight o'clock Chambers's bell rang, and it was Felix Budd, and Chambers knew why. He wrote a check for two hundred and fifty dollars, gave it to Felix, and said, "Anything?"

Chambers let him out, and as long as he was up he stayed up. He showered, shaved, ate breakfast, and came to the office early. His secretary, Miss Miranda Foxworth, sixtyish but effervescent, raised her eyebrows like they were flags on the Fourth of July, but made no comment. Disappointed, he folded his arms on his chest and stood there.

"Or something," he said and went past her into his office and worked on routine, of which there is always an overabundance. His mail was heavy but most of it was advertising for dildoes, coital devices, potency pills, sex training books with pictures, and orgy films for home showing in color. Somehow he had gotten on that kind of mailing list and once you're on that kind of mailing list, forget it—you're on it forever. But there was mail that was more pertinent, and there was also his bank statement. He did the bank statement first, knowing of course that in the end it would not tally and of course it didn't. But the discrepancy this time was small and in his favor, so let the bank worry about it. Then he paid bills. Then he called in Miranda and dictated on the mail (and on other accumulated mail) and she went out with her book and he did filing. Forever and ever, there is always filing!

At twelve-thirty she went out to lunch and came back with the afternoon paper and he knew he would be getting a call from Richard V. Starr. The front page proclaimed in thick, black, smeary headlines: MARAUDER STRIKES AGAIN. And on bottom in smaller print: Story on page 3. Photos on pages 4, 5. See editorial, page 31.

Page three had it all over again, the sickening pattern of deviate murder, throat cut from ear to ear, stomach ripped and eviscerated, but this time it had not happened in a cheap hotel room but in the stylish apartment of Miss Elizabeth Bristol, 33 East 61st Street Miss Bristol, twenty-seven, was a highly successful advertising copywriter with the firm of Kenton, Meers & Grey-stone, and was the daughter of State Senator J. Abner Bristol of Michigan.

The editorial on page thirty-one burned with threat and indignation. (Sure, Chambers thought When it begins to happen on the fashionable East Side to fashionable people, then the publishers and the chief editors, they themselves fashionable people, begin to shit in their pants and quake in their boots and bum with editorials because now they know it can happen to them and theirs.) The editorial was an open letter to the mayor. In substance it said shake up your police, shake them out of their torpor. There is a lunatic here in the city on the loose. Get him! If your police commissioner can't handle the job—remove him! if you don't remove him, and this lunatic-killer is not removed from circulation, then we'll have to remove you, Mr. Mayor. Bad enough the streets are not safe—now we're not even safe in our Own apartments. In November there will be an election!

Tough. Chambers put down the paper. Oh it's going to be tough now racing the cops to get to the guy first. Three hot, bestial murders—wide open. And this time the victim was the daughter of a senator. Now there would be a political squeeze all the way around, and the big shots would be worried about their jobs, all the way up to the mayor. The heat was on. The real heat the big heat—on!

The call came at four o'clock. This time Mr. Richard V. Starr did not ask; he ordered. He did not say can you make it. He said: "I want you in my apartment at six-thirty."

And at six-thirty he was there, leaning on the mother-of-pearl button, and being peeped at through the peephole. The three locks snapped open, and the three locks snapped shut, and Mr. Richard V. Starr, tall, elegant, fashionable attired, led him to the study, sat behind his massive mahogany desk, and lit a long thin cigar.

"I've put on two extra men at my own expense." (Two. Better than one. Exaggeration is a part of business.) "I've got one man outside Epstein's office. He knows what Tony looks like from the picture you gave me. So does my other guy who's stationed outside Epstein's apartment house." (Maybe he should have a guy outside Epstein's house. No. The little lawyer would transact his lawyer-business in his office.) "And I've got other irons in the fire." (Vague. Aura of obscurity. Starr was the guy to understand that. Business is business. Macy might let Gimbel in on a little—but Macy wouldn't let Gimbel in on all.)

The litde he had let him in on seemed to mollify him. He sat back, smoked his cigar more placidly. "Panic button," he said.

"I agree, but nothing will help them, Mr. Starr. I'll get to him first, I assure you."

"Not cocky. Simple logic, Mr. Starr. They've got a zillion more people, the whole police department, but I've got the inside track and I'm away out ahead of them. I know whom I'm looking for—they don't. I have a full description—they have nothing. And I've got the Epstein lead—and they know nothing, and wouldn't be interested if they did know, about Tony Starr's connection to Judge Harry Epstein. I told you it would take time, but I'll get him before they will. I can't miss."

Dismissed. But not yet. Chambers did have another iron in the fire, Goldie's iron, and this guy, possibly, might be able to help.

He was a hell of a handsome guy, and he looked pleased. Powerful men liked to show their power (even in small unimportant matters).

"I needed a favor from a hood by name Barry Burnett. A big shot in the hooker department, but turned out to be small apples. He couldn't do me the favor, he admitted, because, although he appeared to be the big shot, he wasn't. Lower echelon, actually. But he mentioned a name. Big, big! The top. Vinnie Two."

"I have no idea at all. Figured, maybe, you did. You've been around, Mr. Starr. You know this town like the palm of your hand. You know all lands of people; all kinds of chitchat can come your way; figured, maybe, shot in the dark, you could put me onto a lead . . ."

Starr turned down the corners of his mouth, shook his head. "Never even heard the name." The dark eyes smiled. "You sure your hookerhood wasn't telling a tall tale in order to avoid doing the favor?"

Starr stood up. Chambers took the cue, and he stood up. Starr smiled. "I'll keep my ears open. If ever the name crops up, I'll inform you."

'Thank you. I'll appreciate it. As I said, shot in the dark. Of course I'm not depending on you—"

"I'm depending on you," Starr said earnestly. "Three ghastly murders, and he's still out there . . ." "We can't stop him before we get him. Hell, the cops haven't stopped him either.

"Then get more burners, and work harder. Anything extra you need . . . money . . . anything . . ."

"Christ, I hope so. For his sake—the poor crazy bastard —I hope so. After this Bristol thing, he won't have a prayer. Police, prosecutor, judge, jury—they'll crucify him. If we can get him, and get him into an institution —it's his only chance. We'll get full confessions from him there, but then, in advance, he'll be an adjudged psychotic. The other way, at a trial . . . hell, you know how the prosecutor's psychiatrists can crawl through loopholes to declare the defendant legally sane . . •." He put an arm over Chambers's shoulders and took him to the door. "Anything you need from me that might help, don't hesitate to ask."

They shook hands and Chambers went out and walked along Park Avenue to 80th Street, turned east to Lexington, entered a drugstore and called Sandi. He was hungry. He hadn't eaten since breakfast.

for steaks, took her to see My Mama's a Whore in Calcutta off-Broadway, reluctantly released her at eleven-thirty, and hit the bars alone. He talked to affable nighttime customers, talked to old-time friends tending bar (he dropped in Vinnie Two here and there and getting nothing in return), talked to baseball players in Toots Shor's, and talked to charming hookers in Tootsie's Shore-haven but somehow didn't get hooked. Morosely at four-thirty he came home, sodden and unrequited, went to bed and slept deep into Friday afternoon. He called the office and Miranda told him there was no messages, and then he went to his appointment with Barry Burnett at 42 Waverly Place.

Promptly at four he rang the bell of 12G and there was no answer. He used the key Barry had given him and there was Barry on the floor, dead as a marinated mackerel, half his face shot away. Chambers sighed, took out his handkerchief, wiped the key and left it there, then wiped the doorknobs and left there. He went into a saloon for two quick shots of resuscitation and then into a phone booth where he dialed 911 for the cops.

ON Saturday at three-thirty Sandi Barton came to Mark Montague on business, career business. He had told her he wanted her for the rest of the weekend and she in turn had told Goldie she would be unavailable until Monday. Business could wait. Career was paramount.

Mark, in silk boxer shorts and hairy chest, opened the door, took her in and vented admiration. "You are one gorgeous bitcheroo, bitch."

Sandi Barton in a white silk suit, white blouse, white shoes, white nylons (she always wore stocking, hip-hugging pantie-hose).

"Baby, we're going to work on the play, and we're going to bivouac. We're going to picnic at home, dig? I got steaks, I got all kinds of crazy food, got everything. Six o'clock I gotta go out, be back late. You can sleep, rest, eat, do whatever you like. Then when I get back ^Were gonna stay in, we're not gonna move out of here, we're gonna fuck around the clock and around and around."

He read lines to her from Black Mass at High Noon, and she read lines back at him, and then suddenly he said, "I can't work with this hard-on. Got to knock my rocks off. A quickie, baby. Nothing for you, strictly for me. A fastie."

He took her to the bedroom. She undressed and he slid out of his silk shorts. "On the bed," he said. "I want you on the edge of the bed with your ass up."

He helped her onto the bed and directed her into position: knees up, head down, chest down—as though she were a Moslem prostrate in genuflection to Mecca. But no Moslem in the world, he reflected, ever presented as gorgeous an ass as this one protruding off the edge of the bed—smooth, round, white, the pink labia of the cunt glistened like dew-kissed rose petals. His scimitar quivered.

His hands held her hips, his toes gripped the floor, his prick stabbed into her open cunt, and he watched himself in all the many mirrors of the bedroom as the scimitar stabbed, with piston-like exactitude, in and out of her receptive receptacle, in and out of the silky, slithery, glabrous, marvelous tight narrow gorge of gorgeous cunt, plunging in and out, all for him, this one strictly selfish all for him, and then he shoved it to the root, all the way in her, virtually lifting her from the bed, and he shot his rocks, blew his lump, hot semen a geyser burning in her recesses, and then she was flat on her belly and he was flat on top of her and he was panting

Chambers arrived at four-twenty-five at Cafe Veda, hoping against hope he would be an interested observer rather than an active participant, but Lieutenant Bobert P. Miller quickly dissolved the hope against hope. "She's up there," Bobby Miller said. He was flanked by a couple of hard-faced narcotics guys.

"Call. Ask for her. Say you're a doctor from Bellevue. Say Peter Chambers got hit by a truck, he's in Bellevue in bad shape. He's asking for her; he wants her. Gave you her home phone; gave you Mark Montague's phone. Okay, Bobby?"

"Peter Chambers. Some kind of accident. Hit by a car. That was the hospital. He wants me. I've got to get over there."

She dressed, fixed her hair, fixed her makeup, took the elevator down, ran through the lobby, and outside Peter Chambers grabbed her wrist.

He pulled her away from the entrance, held on to her wrist, looked at his watch. Five to five.

He said, "The three guys just went in there. Cops. On a visit to your boyfriend."

"To lock him up, that's what for." He released her wrist. "I did a ruse to get you out, and got you. Wouldn't do your career any good, would it, to get yourself arrested with a junk pusher. Either of your careers."

"That wouldn't be very pretty right out on the street. Wanna faint? Come with me and faint in comfort."

She wasn't going to faint, not his indomitable Sandi Barton. Her color was back, her eyes were clear, her step was firm. He took her across to Cafe Veda and sat her at a window table. She ordered a double Scotch on the rocks, he ordered a double Scotch with water.

"He pushes junk, but big, and he's been at it for a long time. Like you—two careers. The playwrighting is the sideline. The main fine"—he liked that—"the main line is peddling dope, the hard stuff."

A small parade out of 440, Bobby Miller in front. Next came Mark Montague linked by handcuffs to one of Bobby's boys. And in the rear the other of Bobby's boys was carrying a valise. They went quickly to a car and drove off.

"If he's lucky he'll do two years, that's the minimum. Hard lucky, he'll go away for a full five."

They drank, smoked their cigarettes, and then once again she was insouciant Sandi the invincible. "I'll just have to find me another sponsor," she said philosophically. "Goodbye to Mark Montague. Fuck him."

"What a lovely relationship. A lovely relationship. Gosh, I'm so glad you weren't hit by a car or a truck or whatever the man said. I was scared to tears, scared to death. I love you, Peter, I really do."

MONDAY morning he called Detective-lieutenant Louis Parker of Homicide and set up an appointment for two o'clock. He had material to offer in trade, and his old friend Louie Parker, brusque, blunt, curt, sometimes officious, was nonetheless a wise and sophisticated minion of the law who appreciated the value of trade.

Parker lit a gnarled, black, evil-smelling cigar. He was short, thick, squat, built close to the floor, the one cop in all the world for whom Peter Chambers had unmitigated respect. He had a brilliant mind but didn't use it as a lash, nor did he use his badge as a bludgeon. In his own way he was kind and considerate, even to the criminal-types he apprehended. His job was to bring them in, and he did his job with remarkable consistency. He was honest, incorruptible, fair and square, and if ever in his youth he had had a pedestal under him, he had long ago kicked it away. His reputation was firmly established: he had no need to bolster his security by a big mouth, a rash act, a brash brush-off, or the usual coplike (almost involuntary) sadistic thrust of inured authority.

He went around a battered desk and sat himself in a squeaking swivel chair Chambers sat in an armchair alongside the desk, a hard, ass-hurting, wooden armchair. He lit a cigarette, and an idea knifed through him like a quick, sudden, fleeting nerve-pain. Why not? Maybe he could kill a couple of birds here.

"I mean . . . not what I came here for. Not our trade-thing. Something I'd like to ask you. May I?"

"Don't pop off with that name indiscriminately. Or you'll wind up on a dark street with a bullet in your head."

town. Maybe didn't know the inside, but knew what was going on. But never once in my life, until very recently, heard the name Vinnie Two."

"Fear. The boys have learned that whoever even mentions the name winds up very dead. Who popped Vinnie Two at you?"

Yes, sirree he is, Chambers thought, but I can't tell you I know that because that's part of the thing I came here to trade for.

"Occasionally." Chambers grinned. "Is this Vinnie Two some kind of inside sect in Cosa Nostra?"

"Why not? Hell, you're no baby. But keep the nose clean, kid. If you pop this information around we'll sine as hell pick you up off the dark street with the bullet in the head."

CHAMBERS slid off the wooden armchair but stayed on his feet Cigarette smoke got tangled in his larynx and he choked, coughed, brimmed bitter tears, and flailed his arms in the air, sucking for breath. Parker, out of the swivel chair, squeezed his left hand at the nape of Chambers's neck, and pummeled the flat of his right hand at Chambers's back until the rasping, choking coughing ceased.

Parker brought bourbon and a tumbler, poured into the tumbler, a big dose, and, watching Chambers dispose of it, he himself disposed of some, directly from the bottle. Then he sat in the squeaking swivel chair and Chambers sat in the ass-hurting armchair.

"Thanks. We're hale, healthy, and dying to hear about Cosa Nostra and Vinnie Two."

"Heard of him? Know him well. Hell, I've worked for him." (Play it by the old adage, baby. When you're going to he, tincture the He with as much of the truth as possible.) "But, Jesus, I don't beHeve it. I mean Richard V. Starr, distinguished, jet-set internationalist, Princeton graduate, Starr Conglomerates, Ltd. What in hell would he have to do with Vinnie Two, with Cosa Nostra, with the likes of Joe Valachi's criminal syndicate?"

"Cosa Nostra is not what it was. Upstairs in the high seats, not what it used to be. What do you know about Richard V. Starr?"

"An educated gentleman. An upper-bracket millionaire. Once married to a Goddard, the highest of high society. The president and the brain behind a powerhouse financial colossus—Starr Conglomerates Ltd. Are you putting me on, Lieutenant?"

"Don Vincenzo." It was a matter of pride now to recite knowledge. "A boss of bosses with the syndicate. Retired ten years ago. Went back to Italy. Died of natural causes about a year ago. He was ninety-one."

Chambers." He relit the gnarled cigar. "Well, sir. Richard V. Starr—name shortened—is the son of Vincenzo Starantino. The middle initial, the V, is for Vincent. Vincent is Vinnie. The second Vinnie—the son—is Vinnie Two. Are you with me, kid?"

"The modern Cosa Nostra is not the ancient Cosa Rostra, the old plug-ugly stuff is incidental—today a lot of it is big business and very legitimate big business. The old dons educated their sons in the best of schools—"

"—and these educated sons ran legitimate business with money that comes like from the skim of Las Vegas and the scum of narcotics. Vinnie Two is the biggest here in the East. He runs Starr Conglomerates, but he was also granted the prostitution rights in New York City." '

"Don't go naive on me again. Listen and learn from Papa Parker and say thanks. No, don't say thanks. One hand washes the other. There'll be a day, on something or other, you'll educate me."

"Of course Starr wouldn't stoop to it. He's appointed a man for each borough, and that man takes the cream off the top from the hookers."

"In legitimate circles, he's Bichard V. Starr. In underworld circles he's Vinnie Two—but even at that he put his keen, educated brain to work. He created a condition of fear around the name Vinnie Two. Most of the underlings don't even know what it is—what they do know is it's unmentionable. Shoot your mouth off about Vinnie Two and you're suddenly very dead." Parker grinned. "Get it?"

Brother, do I get it! I now know just how it operates. Barry Burnett opened his mouth and therefore got half his face shot away and I'm the boy that did it to him. I let the cat out of the bag for Vinnie Two who is Number One. Inadvertently, in my conversation with Richard V. Starr, I signed Barry's death warrant.

"Lieutenant, this question then. If you guys know so much, how come you've never caught up with him?"

"That brain wasn't polished in Princeton for nothing. Starr's worked out a procedure which, so far, we haven't been able to crack. We know about the procedure from confidential informers, but not us nor the Federal people have been able to do a fucking thing about it. Ever hear of the six-man system?"

"It's Starr's invention, and in its way it's goddamn brilliant. For each operation, a six-man system—six men under Vinnie Two. A capo, a lieutenant, and then four soldiers. Now here's the way it works. Suppose the word is out that you're to be hit—Peter Chambers is to be killed."

"Starr gives the word to his capo, the only one in the six-man system who knows Starr. The capo passes the word to a lieutenant who does not know about Starr. The lieutenant passes the word to soldier A who does not know about the capo. Soldier A passes the word to soldier B who does not know about the lieutenant. Soldier B passes the word to soldier G who does not know about soldier A. Soldier C passes the word to soldier D who does not know about soldier B—and soldier D, the last one down the line, does the hit If all goes well, that's the way it stays, period. But let's say we catch up with the guy that made the hit, soldier D. The best that we can ever get out of him is the name of soldier C —the man who gave him the contract—because that's all soldier D knows. And if we get C, he can give us B—because that's all that he knows. But by then another six-man system has knocked off C or B—and we're finished. Sounds complicated, but it's really, very simple. The moment they have any trouble, they eliminate a link in the chain and that cuts us off forever from Starr."

He put it down. "That's it for the lesson for today. State what you came for." He looked at his watch. "Fifteen minutes. Then I've got to get out of here."

Parker smoked his cigar. It was an open file and Chambers was not a shit merchant. Cooperation is the mother of solution. One hand washes the other. Over the years they had worked together to excellent mutual advantage and neither had ever shitted the other.

"Senator J. Abner Bristol. That son of a bitch has been eating our ass out. Swinging the big political stick and getting the brass to eat our ass out. Now he's got himself an eye, has he?"

Chambers looked wise, made a smirk, turned it down to a fishmouth, shrugged. (I didn't say it—he did. If that's what he wants to think, let him.)

(No line at all, Lieutenant. That Starr must be good. You've no idea at all that Barry Burnett was his man in Manhattan.)

"I know. Read it in the papers. That's why I can give you the bit on the Steel."

"Because I can tell you what he told me—and it can't hurt him now. He told me because he trusted me and wanted me to pass the word around where it could do him good—with prowl girls, pickup girls, call girls. Steel was an airline stewardess, and a part time humper for money, and also Burnett's personal piece of ass. When he found out she was hooking on a side, he wanted a piece of the action. He couldn't get a piece of the action —so, while she was sitting in an easy chair in her apartment, he shot her with a small-bore gun right in the middle of her pretty little forehead." (He knew he sounded coarsely casual but it had purpose. Parker had facts which were not public facts and Chambers, coarsely casual, was reciting facts that only the murderer and the police knew: the easy chair, the smallbore bullet, the tiny wound in the middle of the forehead.) "You can close your file on the Steel, Louie. I just gave you gospel."

"Because on this ripper-bastard we don't have a thing. He's like some kind of wraith, the son of a bitch."

Parker chuckled. "A plethora. And all his. The same in the hotel with Maxwell, the same in the motel with Flanagan, the same in Elizabeth Bristol's apartment—all his. But they don't match anything we have here, or anything in Washington, or anything anywhere. We've got the fingerprints—but in order to make the match we've got to make the catch."

"Let foe put something else to you, kid. A pattern, I think. And that'll cap it because—whatever it is—that's all we've got."

"Seems he prefers a certain type. All three girls were the same. Not the same in background, history, personality that we could dig up—but physically the same. All three were blonde, all three tall, all three similarly built. Long legs, a big ass, small tits. When it's three all the same like that, you've got to figure it a pattern. That's it; that's all we got. We've got his fingerprints, but not a single clue to him. And we think we've got a pattern in the girls he goes for—so what? We're no nearer to him now than we were after his first rip-job, but now we've got a politically powerful senator eating our asses out and unless we catch up with him, but right real quick, there's going to be a lot of changes in the department, with nobody inviolate—not me, not the commissioner himself. And with those happy words"—Parker looked at his watch—"I take my leave."

"On the Dorothy Steel. To lock up the file, I need your statement. A trade is a trade, right, trader? Could be you got the short end. I'll send in a stenographer." "Yes," Chambers said. "You do that." "I'll do that." Parker went away. Chambers sat and waited.

MONDAY went into Tuesday and Tuesday went into Wednesday and Wednesday to Thursday which was pay-day for Felix Budd, and Chambers wrote the check with stiff fingers and Budd said thanks and went to work outside Epstein's office building and the days merged, one into the other, and nothing was happening, nobody was cutting throats and ripping bellies. And Chambers had used, to the best of his ability, the information gleaned from Parker by calling all the ma-dames he knew, including Goldie, and instructing them, without undue alarums or excursions, to inform him immediately if a client expressed desire for a long-legged blonde with a big ass and small boobs, a shot in the dark into the call-girl world. And another Thursday arrived and with it Felix Budd, and Chambers made his fourth payment. He was out a thousand bucks now without having earned a single dollar, and on Friday he accompanied Miranda to a play for which she had charity tickets, and on this Friday, in his Kips Bay apartment, Tony Starr bestirred himself.

Since the night with Liz Bristol (he had learned who she was from the newspapers) he had not touched his drug. He had lived quietly, and very close to home. The storm that had burst after the discovery of the mutilated body of Elizabeth Bristol—the hue and cry, the devastating editorials, the whole damned brouhaha —had produced panic, fright, retreat, introspection.

God, it had never been like this—attack upon attack, headlong. Not while his dear mother was' alive. There had not been this kind of hellish, concentrated, unstoppable bestial drive. But he was alone; for the first time in his life, he was utterly alone. There was no one to contain him; no one to take him in hand, hold him, soothe him, console him, advise him.

And he thought, in the numbness of fear, about getting out, packing up and returning to England. He hadn't known it would take this long for the settlement of the damned estate. He would inform the lawyer, and get the hell out. Back to England. And travel from there to other countries, other cities. He would call the lawyer from time to time from overseas, and when he was needed here, he would fly over.

And therefore postponed. Without the lift of the drug, the reaction was torpor. Irresolution. Inertia. He would wait. Yes, he would wait. A few weeks. Another month or so. And then if the legal delays did not abate, he would inform the lawyer and take off—but in the meantime he must restrain the animal gnawing within him, he must be good, remain close to home, stay away from the damn drug.

He started in the morning and the lift came good and high and clear and with it a return of all the valiant hubris. What in hell was he all so funky about? Jesus, this is Tony Starr here, magna cum laude, genius type, leading the police a pretty chase and they were nowhere of course—despite the cacophonous fury of the fucking newspapers. They had no inkling as to their "ripper." Like looking for a hen's tooth in an elephant's trunk—seeking a ripper with nothing to go on. And they had nothing to go on—no possible connection between Tony Starr and Lois, Peggy, and Liz. Except fingerprints —and that just ain't no good, fellas.

He had long ago decided on the risk of fingerprints. He simply could not wear gloves all the time in the presence of his ladies without scaring them off as a crazy kook. And to wear gloves only at the vital time would be pointless: prior fingerprints could not be avoided—they'd be there somewhere on the premises despite his mopping up like a charwoman. Genius type, magna cum laude. He laughed, and sniffed happy powder. Fingerprints had to be compared to fingerprints, and his fingerprints were nowhere on record, and he did not intend that they ever would be. He was Anthony Starr, millionaire gentleman, a paragon of virtue, a patron of the arts, a scholar, and a rather timid young man with a horror of any infraction, however slight, of the legal rules and regulations ...

One. Just one, the last. One more, and he'd get out of this damn city. And he sniffed white powder and was happy and clever, energetic, purposeful and brave. One more, the last—and this time without hooker bars or blaring singles joints or smelly little crowded saloons— and then goodbye New York. Christ, this marvelous drug! How it clears the brain, stiffens the ego, props the psyche. He would do what he had to do today, tomorrow he would arrange with the airline for his flight, and on Monday he would fly to England without interfering discussion with the stupid little lawyer. Hell, the lawyer was working for him, he wasn't working for the lawyer. He would call him from London, tell him he was off on his travels again, and that he'd keep in touch. Fuck you, lawyerl You are working for me.

He went out to the bright afternoon sunshine, knowing exactiy his purpose. He purchased an expensive, commodious leather suitcase. He purchased a bottle of Scotch, a bottle of bourbon, a bottle of vodka, a bottle of gin, a bottle of brandy, a bottle of sherry—hell, whatever she wanted to drink he would have it, and it would all look good set out on a table. Purchased bottles of tonic and bottles of soda. The bag was beginning to get heavy. (He remembered people filling suitcases with bricks, even telephone books. But where in hell do you buy bricks or telephone books?) He bought cheap clothing, but heavy clothing: work shirts, work pants, work shoes (nothing that could ever be traced back to him). The bag was heavy, and he was satisfied.

He stuffed his wallet full of money, double-checked that he had his little address book, his snuffbox, his knife, and then carrying the heavy bag he went out to a cab and to the Waldorf Astoria. He arrived there at a quarter to nine, and signed up for an eighty-dollar-a-day suite. He registered as Stephen Stevens, put down a London address, nonchalantly paid cash for the full weekend, two hundred and forty dollars, was beamed at by the desk clerk and by the bellboy to whom in suite 1714 he gave a ten-dollar tip.

"Don't even call room service, Mr. Stevens. I will attend to it personally myself."

The bellboy came back with three kegs of ice cubes, tightly covered silver kegs. And six tall highball glasses, and six squat old-fashioned glasses. "There, that should do you, Mr. Stevens. Guarantee you'll have ice till tomorrow morning."

"Thank you." The bellboy pocketed another ten-dollar tip. "Anything else you may wish, Mr. Stevens, do not call room service, do not call nobody, just call the desk and ask for me, Jimmy Dayton. I'm on the rest of the night." He made a two-fingered salute, said, "Have a nice weekend, sir," and went out.

It was a lovely, well-furnished suite, thickly carpeted. There was a spacious living room, a spacious bedroom, a spacious dressing room, a spacious bathroom, and every room had every possible appurtenance for the convenience of the guest. (The medicine cabinet of the bathroom contained toothpaste, two sealed toothbrushes, a sealed comb, a sealed hairbrush, a sealed can of squeeze-a-spurt-of-shaving cream, a sealed Gillette razor, and a sealed packet of razor blades—the sealings all sparkling transparent plastic.) He finished his inspection of the suite, took out his little address book, and picked up the phone. Immediately the switchboard girl said, "Sir?"

He gave her the number. He heard her dial, heard the buzz of the ringing begin, heard her click out. It would be a free wire.

"Miss Dorn, this is . . . er . . . Stephen Stevens." He gave full play to his British accent. "I'm a friend of . . . er . . . John Edison . . ."

"Johnny Edison!" Enthusiasm shrilled in his ear. "Now there's a broth of a man. That's a man, that Johnny. How is he, my darling Johnny?"

"That's a great club he's got there. Last time I was over I lost a fortune in the upstairs gambling room. So you're a friend of Johnny's."

"A close and dear friend, ma'am." The British accent was failing. He had never quite acquired it. Hell, why put it on? He talked straight American. "I've been out of . . . er . . . the States for quite a while. Been living in Australia; then England. Yes, John Edison. A dear friend."

There was a subtle change in her voice. "Any friend of Johnny's is a friend of mine." He smiled. He was in.

"I've come over to the States for the weekend; some personal matters to attend to. I'm staying at the Waldorf, suite seventeen-fourteen. I'm . . . well ..." A chuckle. "A bit lonely."

It was code now: the code of customer and madame. By best she meant the price. "Three hundred," he said.

"I like my people blonde and trim. Tall. At home I do a bit of sculpting in my spare time. I favor models with long legs, high hips, and ... er ... a rather prominent backside. But the bosom must be small. The Indo-European type, you know?"

"Honey, get out your sculpting tools. You're gonna have a model that'll set you right back on your . . . er • . . backside. I know just the person."

Grinning, he went away from the phone, sniffed from the snuff box. He could have called her back, but he preferred the reverse. Let her, if she wished, check him out—Stephen Stevens in an eighty-dollar-a-day suite in the Waldorf Astoria. He unpacked the suitcase, set out the bottles on the side table near the glasses and the silver thermos kegs. He closed the suitcase and put it into a closet. He turned on the color TV, turned it off. He turned on the radio, found a station with pleasant music. The phone rang and the full-throated voice said, "You've got your model, Mr. Stevens, but just perfect according to specifications. You will love me, sir. She'll be there at eleven. And please remember to give my regards to Johnny Edison. Tell him if I were free to marry—he's the guy I would marry."

Goldie hung up, raised her big-bellied snifter glass, said, "Skoal," and drank brandy. This was one hell of a good night, business was booming, and she was slightly drunk. She finished the brandy, went to the bar and replenished the glass, then stood there frowning. What the hell is it bugging me? Sure! Chambers—that sweet-prick bastard! If a customer asked for a blonde with long legs and a big ass and small tits—she was to call him immediately. She had brushed it off. Chambers was an eye, not a madame. No customer was that specific. They could ask for a bright girl, or a dumb girl. They could ask for a beautiful girl, or an ugly one (there were guys that got horny with ugly women only). They could ask for a great cocksucker, or a great straight lay. They could ask for a blonde, a brunette, a red-head, even a gray-haired chick. They could ask for zoftig, or skinny as a rail. They could ask for a big ass. They could ask for big tits (and most of them did). But nobody ever got down that specific to four different fine points—it has to be blonde, it has got to have long legs, it has got to have a big ass, it has got to have small tits—but, bejazus, this prick in the Waldorf Astoria, this money-man who goes for five bills, this friend of good old Johnny Edison—this guy had laid out the four fine points, but exact.

She drank brandy, went to a phone, called Chambers, and there was no answer. Always out, the high-living, sweet-prick bastard. Well, okay, I done my duty. Like you told me, I called. I'll call again, if I remember. You're good, you're sweet, you're a nice guy—I hope I remember. But you got me on a hot night, baby. Must be a full moon, or something. They're horny like a toad out there, the fucking phones ringing like it's a stampede for cunt tonight. She laughed. She drank. Stoned, I'm goddamned stoned tonight, making money like hand over fist. Fist? Shit. With a fist you jerk off. And a phone rang, and laughing she_ took it. A customer, naturally. Business. Booming. Shit, man, I'll run out of girls. Full. Moon. Something. Crazy for cunt tonight. Hand over fist and drunk on brandy like a brick shithouse. Stoned. Jesus, sweet Peter, I hope I'll remember.

The show stank, a big brash noisy musical, but the people in the pews, a benefit audience, were more noisy than the people on the stage. Alone, he would have walked out, but Miranda appeared to be enjoying, and during intermission he tested her: she was enjoying. Okay, but there'd be nothing after the show, no sitting around for a drink, nothing. He would say he didn't feel up to par (up to bar?), a headache, malaise, something. He would take her home, and he would go home, because something was tickling in the psyche, the old unknown, the old magico, intuition, occult cognition, esoteric augury and all the rest of that pile-up of ESP shit—but he was restless, restive, nervous, fidgety, itching to get the hell out. Premonition poked at his ass like a proctoscope.

At eleven o'clock the buzzer buzzed and Tony Starr opened the door and opened his mouth and just looked. Jesus to God, what a beautiful girl! Jesus, leave it to John Edison!

A vision in lavender and black. A little black cape, a lavender dress. Black shoes, a black handbag, sheer black nylons glimmering along slender shapely legs daringly revealed to miniskirted thighs.

A lavender belt enclasped the lavender dress around a small waist and emphasized the high round symmetrical hips. It was a wide-shouldered, deep-neck dress, almost entirely exposing the alabaster-white pear-shaped titties. No brassiere, of course—it was an intricate, obviously expensive gown that obviated any possibility of a brassiere. You either had the figure for it, or it was not the dress for you. It was the dress for her, all right. Jesus, I want her! Right now this minute I want this beautiful bitch!

And turned—and oh God!—that big, beautiful, swaying, salacious lavender ass. He groped for the snuffbox, inhaled happy powder, and to hell with her if it bothered her. I'm paying for this merchandise. She's a commodity—for five hundred bucks a commodity—and for five hundred bucks I do as I please in the presence of the commodity. But she didn't even notice. She put ice in a short glass and poured Scotch on it. "Would you like something?" she asked.

She brought his drink, sipped her own, and the huge blue eyes appraised him. Tall, a handsome young guy —what a crazy world! Why would a guy like this have to put out five hundred bucks to have himself a girl! Goldie had said three hundred for the call, and a couple of hundred extra if she pleased him. Oh, I'll please him —but, Jesus, there must be rich women by the bushel-load who would do better than five hundred a crack to have this handsome young man all to their own. So why? Probably a kook. Probably wants me to jerk myself off hanging off the ledge from out the window or something. Well, for this kind of fee, why not? Half of three hundred is one hundred fifty, and a tip of two hundred makes three-fifty, and for three-fifty he can call his shots whatever they are.

It was as though he read her mind thinking of money. He took out his wallet and took out five hundred dollars and gave it to her. She put the money in her bag, put the bag on the table with the bottles, and then she said, "Goldie said the extra two hundred would be if I please you."

She kicked out of her shoes. She slid out of the dress, and that was it. All that was left was the tight-clinging nylon pantie-hose. She stuffed her thumbs in over the hips to take them off, but he stopped her.

God, how beautiful! The first real beauty since he was in the States. The hair like spun gold, the eyes blue as cobalt, the flesh of the body without a flaw. Look. at those breasts, small and firm, proudly pouting, the skin so perfectly white, the nipples so perfectly pink. And the contrast. The black and the white. The long legs, the shapely thighs, the round hips, the gorgeous rise of ass, all gleaming within the tight black nylon, and above the gleaming black, the gleaming white of the lissome torso.

A code-word in her profession (and she was damn glad he hadn't said discipline). Restraint meant to be tied into bonds, and she had no objection to restraint. Discipline was another matter. Had he said discipline, she might have protested. Discipline was the code-word for spanking, caning, even whipping.

"I enjoy whatever the client enjoys." She smiled, dimpling. "Who ties whom, Mr. Stevens?"

God, not only beautiful, but quick, intelligent. (Easy, now. Slowly. This was too good to be rushed. We have all night for fun and games.) "We tie each other, Miss Sandi, but one at a time."

A kook, she thought. Young and handsome, but a kook, which is why he has to spend for a girl. Here we are engaged in charming conversation, soft-spoken and civi-

Iized, except it's slightly off-beat, slightly cockeyed, the subject matter slightly weird, and die postures of the participants slightly odd—Sandi-girl standing up with her tits out and Stevie-boy sitting down with his cock out.

A cute, youngish, boyish grin. All of him was youngish, boyish—except the eyes. Deep, dark, passionate, glittering, they were beautiful thick-lashed eyes, but somehow, just a little bit, they frightened her.

He stood up, stuffed his penis into his trousers, but left the fly open. He went out of the room and came back—with a razor bladel She stood up tall. Her heart thudded. He smiled the boyish smile.

Suddenly she was embarrassed. She was entirely nude, he was fully dressed. "Look, why don't we go to the bedroom?" she said.

A lovely bedroom. A big bed, chairs, tables, a mirrored dresser, soft-glowing lamps. She sat in a comfortable chair and sipped Scotch while he cut the pantie-hose into long strips. My contribution, she thought, to the evening's festivities. Hell, why not? For three hundred and fifty dollars a pair of pantie-hose is a very small sacrifice.

He laid the strips on the bed, put the razor blade on the dresser, took a handkerchief from his pocket and laid that on the bed. Then he took a snuffbox from his pocket, pinched into it, sniffed into each nostril.

He put the snuffbox away, undressed, hung his clothes in the closet, and she felt better. When there are two, and one is naked, it's lopsided. Two—it's got to have balance. You're either both dressed, or both naked. He had a nice body, the kooky bastard, slim, well-muscled, well-proportioned, with big balls in a tight scrotum and a very pretty prick indeed. The dark eyes glittered.

"Like this," he said. "You'll gag me with the handkerchief. Then you'll tie me, wrists and ankles, spread-eagled to the bed. And like that, while I'm in restraint, you'll blow me. Eight?"

"After that, you'll release me. We'll sit around, talk, get acquainted a bit, and then we'll reverse it. I'll gag you and tie you to the bed and go down on you." He laughed. "Okay, Miss Sandi. Let's have a little sex around here."

She set down her drink, took the handkerchief, and tied it around his mouth. He lay on his back on the bed and she climbed over him, her heart pounding. In its own way, in its own crazy way, this madness was exciting. She tied a wrist to one corner of the bed, the other wrist to the other corner, and his ankles to the lower corners. Jesus, look at those eyes, the gleaming, glittering, passionate eyes. She spread her knees over him and began at his ears, at the lobes of his ears—for five hundred bucks this guy's going to get the job he's entitled to—and licked down the sides of his neck, and nibbled at the nipples of his breasts, and moved down, licking slowly, and the point of her tongue was deep in his navel, and down along the insides of his thighs, and gently around the taut scrotum, and then up along the tender underside of the upright penis—and his body writhed, quivered, his back arching upward—and then her mouth opened over the purple head of his prick, and she had him, took him, sucked him, and he held it, he held it back—and she was beginning to get hot in the cunt, her legs tight together now, grinding together —Jesus, if the son of a bitch doesn't come soon, I will come before he does—but then he did, the blood-hot metallic-tasting stream jolting at her throat • . .

In the bathroom she washed and cleaned. She came back and said, "Want me to let you up now?"

"Well, you just wait." He liked restraint; a bit of cruelty wouldn't hurt. "Don't go away," she said, and took her glass.

She went to the living room and got her cigarettes and matches. She put ice and more Scotch into her glass, and ice, Scotch, and soda into his. She came back to the living room and placed the cigarettes, matches, and glasses on a table. Then she took the gag from his mouth. His first words were, "You're wonderful. You're damn beautiful and wonderful."

"Just wonderful." He took his drink and sat near her. He was anxious, very anxious for her now. Easy, he thought. Time. Don't frighten her. He wanted a sniff from the snuffbox. Not now. Not yet. He stretched his legs, crossed his ankles. "But so am I."

"When I do for you what you did for me. You'll see. It's a wild thrill, bound and gagged, while I'm down on you, eating you." _/

"You're the client." She inhaled cigarette smoke. "Tell me about London, Mr. Steve."

CHAMBERS came home at ten to twelve. He took off his jacket, called Sandi Barton, and there was no answer. Disgruntled he hung up, and the phone rang. He picked it up on the first ring and Goldie Dorn said, "Hi, sweetie." .

Not me, he thought. Me, I've got a proctoscope up my ass all night. "So?" he said.

"Look, remember you told me to call you if a John of mine happens to ask for a special-type chick?"

"Guy called tonight. An Englishman. Recommendation from a great old pal of mine. Johnny Edison. You ever been to the Palisades Club in London?"

"Guy wanted a special-type chick. Very specific, this prick. A blonde, he wants. But the blonde has to have long legs. And a big ass. And small knockers. That's what you wanted me to call you about, didn't you?"

"Stephen Stevens at the Waldorf. Suite seventeen-fourteen. I sent him a date for eleven o'clock, and sent him exactly what he wanted, perfect. Sandi Barton. Perfect? You know how Sandi looks naked."

The chief security officer at the Waldorf was Moe Kahane, once with the FBI in Washington, then a private eye in New York City (to whom Peter Chambers had thrown a hell of a lot of business), and now chief security officer at the Waldorf. Chambers talked to him rapidly in an isolated corner of the downstairs lobby. "A big one, Moe, the biggest of your career. The ripper that's been knocking up this town—we got him. He's upstairs in seventeen-fourteen. Get the pass key, and let's go."

"The guy that's up there is an Englishman. Discreet inquiry at the desk. An eighty-dollar-a-day guy. From England."

"That's right. From England." (Tony Starr was from England.) "Come on, Moe. Move that square ass of yours."

"Kid, don't lower the boom on me. If you're wrong, it can cost me my job. An eighty-dollar-a-day guy—if you're wrong, it's my job.

"If it's a professional cunt up there, I'm protected. Kid, if you're pulling a freak on me, I'll put you out of business if it's the last thing I do. You swear to God there's a professional hook up there with the eighty-dollar-a-day Englishman?"

"I swear to God. Jesus, let's go. Moe, I tell you it's the biggest of your career."

"You just said it—I talked you into it. It's my gig— so I'm the front man—you're the backer-upper. Plus you got a wife and kids. What the hell do I have? Nothing. Gimme the key, square-ass."

Upstairs on the seventeenth floor Chambers pushed the key in the lock and turned it. He leaned on a door that opened silently. He preceded Kahane into an empty, silent, thickly-carpeted living room. Nothing. Nobody. He flicked a glance at Kahane, motioned him to follow, and went to the bedroom.

Sandi Barton, whitely nude, lay on her back, gagged and bound, tied to the bed. Above her a tall, dark, naked young man held a gleaming knife. He was unaware of intruders. The thick carpet absorbed all sound of their entrance.

But the dark young man did not drop it. He came at Chambers and they tangled. Kahane pulled his gun but could not use it for fear of hitting the wrong man, but in his heart he was not worried. The guy with the knife was out of his class. Peter Chambers knew every trick in the trade. A feint, a parry, a grab and twist, and Chambers had the knife in his right hand, shoving the guy away with his left, but the guy came rushing at him, and Chambers's right hand was outthrust, and the knife went into the guy's throat, all the way to the hilt, and Chambers released it, and the guy flopped to the floor, a spurting geyser of blood surging up all the way to the ceiling, and splashing down in droplets.

Chambers picked up the phone, called homicide, asked for Lieutenant Parker, and was told that Parker was off duty. He hung up and called Parker at home and Parker sleepily answered. "Got our guy," Chambers said. "Got our ripper. Lois, Peggy, Elizabeth Bristol. Come and get him. Waldorf Astoria, suite seventeen-fourteen. Got it? Bight. Get the engines going, square-ass."

"Tell her," Chambers said. "She's divine without her clothes on—but that divine is no way to receive company."

"Get dressed," Chambers said, "because real right soon we're gonna have ourselves a hell of a lot of company here."

THEY were there in ten minutes, and in time grew to be quite a gang, but the first contingent (shortwave-alerted by Parker) was a couple of patrol car minions in wrinkled uniforms. They viewed the body and talked to Kahane. Then they talked to the telephone for an ambulance and for the medical examiner and for the homicide people. The ambulance responded quickly, and the dead man was officially pronounced dead. Then came four homicide detectives and a police photographer and a fingerprint man. The homicide men asked questions but Chambers refused to answer until Detective-lieutenant Louis Parker arrived. The medical examiner put in his appearance and the dead man was again officially pronounced dead. Finally Parker joined the gang—poor Parker with that puffy, jowly, buttery look of a man rudely awakened from deep slumber— and they all went downtown, including the corpse.

Chambers, Kahane, and Sandi Barton were sequestered alone. Sandi, despite a woebegone expression, was exceedingly beautiful, and Kahane looked at her, and Chambers looked at her, and so they passed the time while waiting, looking at Sandi, and then Parker came and took Chambers to his office.

Parker was no longer sleepily jowly; he was bright and alert and broadly grinning. "Got him! You got him, baby! He's our guy—fingerprints match a hundred percent. Now lemme hear. I'm busting to hear. Let's have your tale, Peter."

Chambers told him about passing out the word to the various madames of his acquaintance. "Hunch," he said, "but I played it. You said the guy went along a certain pattern in his taste for chicks. On a hunch I gave the pattern to the madames. Hell, if a guy asked for four different specific characteristics in the whore of his choice—blonde, long legs, small tits, big ass—he figured to be our guy. Anyway, I got this call from this madame—"

"A very respectable madame," Chambers said and took it up from there and completed his tale. "Louie, I gave you the guy and I want no credit. You're official, you're with the department, you be the hero. All I want is a couple of tiny favors to smooth out my side."

"You tell me, Lieutenant. The big deal was catching up with the ripper, and you're going to get some wonderful publicity on that." They were old friends and Parker was a compassionate human being. If there was a way to do it, he would do it. "The madame put herself in jeopardy to work with me," Chambers said. "And the girl was an innocent—I mean what you might call an innocent—pawn in the game. In the circumstances— and, man, they did this deal for us—it would be a goddamn shame to show appreciation by crucifying them. Right?"

Parker looked somber. Then he looked thoughtful. Then he lit a gnarled black cigar. "How well do you know this Kahane?"

"A friend. A close friend, and a damn bright girl. She's an actress. The whoring is a sideline."

"Okay, listen." Parker chewed the cigar, laid it away. "Our guy, the ripper kook, signed in at die Hotel Shirley, and signed it at that motel on Tenth Avenue. I had photostats made—specimens of the handwriting. Nothing unusual about the handwriting, but, routine, I had copies delivered to most of the motels and hotels in the city, including, of course, the Waldorf. So, if your Kahane plays ball, he'll get in on the hero bit, and maybe even get a bonus from his bosses."

"Like this. Moe Kahane, chief security officer at the Waldorf, looking over the registration cards, got a feeling about the handwriting of Stephen Stevens. Compared it with my specimen, but wasn't sure.

"Now Peter Chambers wanders in for a bit of a chat with his friend Kahane at the Waldorf. Kahane expresses

his. interest in the similarities of handwriting, shows Chambers the registration card and my specimen. Chambers, rather an expert in handwriting, is certain they're the same, and Chambers is notorious for direct action once he's convinced direct action is necessary. He talks Kahane into the pass key deal, they go up there—and find what they found."

"And the girl . . . she's a girl, an actress. Gets a call from Stephen Stevens at the Waldorf. Somebody in London gave him the number. He chats with her, talks her int6 coming over. She finds him to be a very attractive guy. They have a few drinks, and she kind of flips out for him. The rest—the whole sex bit—she tells the truth.

"Now go in there and tell them. Explain what the hell you like. They've each of them got an ax to grind; they'll be able to deliver straight statements. And that's all we need from them, their statements—and they're through. And your statement. And their statements on your statement about how the guy got killed—self-defense. A lot of paper work and then you're all out of here. Me, IH stick around. We've got identification on the guy from his wallet. Lives up in the Kips Bay area. I'll supervise the inspection of his pad myself. But first I want to get through with everything here." Parker grinned and took up his cigar. "So move your ass, square-ass."

Chambers and Sandi Barton took a cab and Chambers gave the driver his home address and gave Sandi his keys. "You'll wait for me."

She shook his hand. "Jesus, that crazy kook with the knife!" And squeezed his hand. "You saved my life, Peter. I'll never forget it"

And now a wan little grin. "And down there with the police—you saved my reputation. I won't forget that either."

Silence now, and they rode in the night and then the cab stopped outside his apartment house on Central Park South and he said, "You know where the booze is, baby, and you can use it. See you soon."

He lit a cigarette, and wondered about his fee. Hell, why not? He had got to the guy before the cops. If Tony Starr wouldn't have attacked, or would have attacked with less vehemence—he'd have been delivered to daddy, or daddy would have come to pick him up. He had done the job he'd been hired for; unfortunately, he had done it too well. He had killed the poor bastard. But he remembered Harry Epstein's pronouncements: a dead Tony Starr meant thirty million dollars to a live Richard V. Starr. Wasn't that worth a measly fee of sixteen thou?

Richard V. Starr, at two in the morning, was not asleep. He looked through the peephole, turned the three locks, and admitted Peter Chambers. He was wearing black silk lounging pajamas, and he turned off the movie on the TV. He said quite casually: "A rather unconventional hour to come to visit."

He led Chambers to the study, sat behind the mahogany desk, and Chambers sat alongside the desk in the mahogany armchair. He knew he had to talk fast. Right now, in all probability, Parker was supervising the inspection of Tony Starr's pad in Kips Bay. No doubt Parker would come upon information relating to Judge Harry Epstein. Then Parker would work it in one of two ways. He would either go to Epstein in the middle of the night in order to develop the full background on the killer-kook, or he would not disturb the old guy and wait until morning. They had solved their Lois, their Peggy, their Elizabeth Bristol, and could afford to wait to round out minor details. They had their rapacious ripper on a slab in the morgue and could wait until morning for Harry Epstein. But if Parker chose not to wait, then Epstein, naturally and properly, would divulge that Richard V. Starr was the father of Tony Starr, and this lovely apartment at 940 Park would get flooded with cops. If so, by then, Chambers preferred not to be present. He talked fast. He told his story, and burnished his credits. He told of eliciting the cops' facts from the cops: that they had the killer's fingerprints and that they had a pattern, a set pattern, of the physical type the killer sought to kill. He told of his hunch and his spreading the word to his madames and then rapidly told the full story to climax.

"I had him," he said. "His death was fortuitous, an accident out of control. My purpose was to subdue him. In that case, I'd have called you, Kahane or no Kahane, and you'd have taken it from there. But he was dead. And Kahane was there. I had no alternative. I called the cops."

"Business," Chambers said. "Frankly, I want to be paid while it's still hot—before you think the better of it. I did my job. I got to him before the cops did. And I'd have gotten you to him before the cops, except, unfortunately . . ."

"Yes, you're entitled to your fee." Starr opened the middle drawer of the desk for his checkbook.

Push it, Chambers thought. Make character for future business: show him how good you are. It's a risk, but, actually, not much of a risk. Hell, I'm no layman on the street and no hoodlum tangled in the underworld: I'm a private eye who figures to pick up from little hints dropped to him. He's a big shot, a businessman, a brilliant mind. If I win in this challenge of disputation with myself, I'll have him forever. He'll be my most valuable client.

"The madame who helped," he said, "is Goldie Dorn and I'd like to show her my appreciation. She's been pushed for payment by Vinnie Two. I think Vinnie Two, in kind, should also show appreciation. I know who Vinnie Two is and I think he should strike her off his list. Don't you?"

Starr reached into the drawer and did not produce a checkbook. He produced a gun and used it immediately but used it against a moving target and missed. The bullet bypassed Chambers as he leaped across the desk, a hurtling missile striking Starr and knocking him out of his chair, and they flailed on the floor in embroilment for the trigger of the gun. The son of a bitch was strong, but so was Chambers. He held the hand holding the gun, held the wrist of the other hand, and they rolled, one over the other, all over the floor in a panting, hissing, roiling fandango whose climax had to be death. Now Chambers's finger was on Starr's finger on the trigger and the fandango turned into an Indian wrestle, each straining to point the gun at the other, and then Starr's elbow bent and the muzzle of the gun touched his temple and the explosion splattered his brains on the carpet. He lay flat on his back, the gun still in his hand, and Chambers got up, heaving for breath.

Cops? Calling to inform Richard V. Starr? Would they call again, or would they come? Or perhaps it was not cops. Perhaps a friend. Somebody. A woman. Whatever or whoever, he had to get out—fast. Like an undertaker's assistant, he neatly adjusted the dead man's apparel, and like a conscientious houseboy he cleaned up debris and set the room in order. He looked at Starr —a perfect suicide. The wound was a gaping hole surrounded by powder burns, the gun was clamped in the guy's hand, and the nitrate particles would be in his palm. What about the other bullet. The one Stan-had aimed at him and missed? Hell, a guy bent on suicide had a nervous hand. The first bullet had gone astray, but the second had done the job. Nothing new about that. Many a suicide, in trembling intensity, had missed with more than one bullet before accomplishing his purpose. And there was even a logical motive because Starr was a powerhouse with connections downtown. He had got a call about Tony Starr. He had reacted in shame that he was the father of this cannibalistic killer. Couldn't take it. Couldn't take the onslaught of heinous notoriety that was sure to come. Who can tell of the depths, or the depredations, of sudden emotional reaction?

He wiped with his handkerchief the arms of the mahogany armchair and then, on leaving, wiped the inside doorknob and then the outside doorknob.

Downstairs he got a cab and gave his address and then remembered his shortage of money. When he had arrived at 940 Park, he had paid the driver with a five-dollar bill, and had disconsolately noted that, somehow, it was the last of his money. The fare had been two dollars and seventy-five cents, and he had added seventy-five cents as a tip, and now his sum total of negotiable wealth was a single dollar and a single fifty-cent piece. Jesus, when it goes had, it goes bad all the way, wouldn't you know? He sat and stared at the clicking meter and prayed to God it wouldn't go over a buck and a half.

He had killed a guy in the Waldorf Astoria and had killed a guy in his study on the eighth floor of 940 Park Avenue. He had invested a thousand dollars in Felix Budd, and tonight had expected a fee of sixteen thousand dollars, which would have meant a net return of fifteen thousand dollars, but the return had turned out to be a big fat zero, and here he was in a corner of a cab, thinking in terms of thousands of dollars, but praying that meter would not embarrass him by going up over a dollar and a half.

He fit a cigarette. It tasted rotten and he threw it out the window into the dark night and thrust thoughts of money out of his mind and tried to shut his ears to the ominous clickings of the fucking meter and found a form of consolation in clicking off sexual visions of the svelte out-of-this-veldt Sandi Barton, comely, alluring, enchanting, and tonight contrite, appreciative, waiting in his apartment. Frustration in matters of money does not inhibit sexuality—it does, in fact, compensa-torily, enhance sexuality—and he was very sexual about Sandi Barton . . . and the taxi rolled to a halt at the curb outside his house . . . and send up a prayer, everybody, in thanks for devout prayer.

The figure on the meter was splendid, upright, uptight, and just under the line—$1.45.

Chambers did not turn. The cabbie threw the nickel at him. Two misses tonight. Starr had missed with a bullet and the cabbie missed with a nickel. It bounced dully on the sidewalk and rolled away.

Chambers rang his bell and Sandi opened the door and the dark night finally got bright. Sweet Jesus, what an absolutely beautiful girl! Exquisite! The terror was out of her eyes—huge, blue, limpid eyes—and she was smiling, dimpling, and no longer wan, up from under, shed of exigency, entirely recovered. Ah, youth. Ah, the resiliency of ijouth.

She had showered and smelled of the fragrance from the flacon in her handbag. The blonde hair was a shiny mass piled high on her head and she wore no makeup and no clothes except a shirt that belonged to him. The sleeves were folded above her elbows, the tails fluttered aphrodisically, the buttons in front were invitingly unbuttoned. He slid his hands under his shirt, pressed her warm body to him, kissed her and she kissed him, and he tasted the Scotch on her mouth and it reminded him of imperative need. First things first. He released her

and went to the bar and poured a Scotch and gulped it and poured another Scotch and gulped it and then he said, "Honey, let's not even talk. Nothing. Let's go to bed. Now."

"For God's sake," she said, "give in! I love you, I'm dying for you, I'm out of my goddamn mind for you."

191

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