I was a teeny-bopper for the CIA

I WAS A TEENY-BOPPER FOR THE CIA

Lolly Popstick was the most sizzling teeny-bopper he had ever seen, and when Vance Powers first let his eyes rove over her shapely mini-skirted figure, he was glad he had taken this assignment... to find out if she was a double agent for the other side.

Here is espionage as you have never known it before, where the only skill a spy needs to use is the ability to make love— in a hundred “way-out” ways. A swinging novel about between-the-covers work by a new kind of undercover agent from the bestselling author of the “O.R.G.Y.” series.

I WAS A TEENY-BOPPER FOR THE CIA

Ted Mark

1967

“I AM NOT NOW AND HAVE

NEVER BEEN A MEMBER OF

THE CIA.”

—TED MARK

Chapter One

ALL EYES on the teeny-bopper! What there was of her miniskirt flared out to display bikini panties that gave the impression of being about to reveal more than they revealed. It was hard to tell because her bottom was in constant frenzied motion, a sort of derriére movement in double-time to the dance the rest of her was doing.

The dance was called “The Shing-A-Ling,” and it was done to Mo-Town music. Which is to say that the tempo was Detroit—-Motor Town; Mo-Town—-soul music with a pronounced R & B-—rhythm and b1ues—beat. What the melody lacked in structure it made up in loudness. The teeny-bopper lacked nothing in structure—particularly derriére-wise.

That was the focal point. High, round, firm with youth, it was a bobbling magnet creating an optic field. And male optics were fielding its curves from every corner of the party-filled room.

Indeed, the vibrating adolescent fundament had stolen the wingding’s thunder. The blast was to celebrate the presentation earlier in the evening of the Pine Glen Drama Group’s latest production. Now the glories of crabgrass theatrics were being obscured by the teeny-bopper’s performance and the suburban sirens were smouldering with resentment. After all, it was a cast party attended by amateur actors, actresses, and their respective spouses. As the date of an unattached male in the drama group, the teeny-bopper was an interloper.

So was I. I’d lived in Pine Glen, a typical split-level community on the South Shore of New York’s Long Island, for about five years, but I’d never been involved in little theatre. Also, like the teeny-bopper, I wasn't married to anyone in the Drama Group. These days I wasn’t married at all. I was nursing a divorce that was almost a year old and still struggling for life. And there was something else that set me aside from the others at the party, the teeny-bopper included. That something was my reason for wangling an invitation to the cast blast in the first place.

I was a secret agent!

It was lousy casting. A counterspy should be suave, handsome, debonair. I’m an over-tall gangling type with a fat Adam’s apple where a square and dimpled chin ought to be, and the sort of muscular coordination that keeps me tripping all over my two left feet. By profession I'm a corporation lawyer, junior partner in the firm of Birnbach, O'Neill & Powers. Powers is me — Vance Powers, Columbia, Class of '60 — an ordinary Joe who still commuted from Pine Glen to my Williams Street office in the heart of the Manhattan financial district because I’d been having trouble unloading my house since the divorce. Splitsville had been rocky, but outside of that my life was as unexciting as any of my neighbors. I wasn’t the type to develop delusions of Bond-eur. Yet here I was — in, of all unlikely settings, Pine Glen — trying to make like a male Mata Hari.

It began with the letter from Senator Hawthorne summoning me to Washington. I'd known Uriah Hawthorne many years before his election as junior senator from a mid-Western state. He'd been one of my professors at law school. In those days a rapport had grown between us which went far beyond the usual student-teacher relationship.

The closeness was such that shortly after graduation when I found myself catching a plane to San Francisco, the first leg of a journey that would end in Vietnam, Professor Hawthorne saw me off at the airport. “I wish there was some meaningful advice I could give you, Vance,” he said as we waited for the departure of my flight to be announced.

“No thanks,” I told him. “Your last advice to me was that I join the ROTC. I did, and here I am on my way to some God-forsaken dot on the map as a “Military Observer.” Just what the hell is a “Military Observer anyway?”

“I presume it means you observe the Vietnamese Army and report what you've seen to our military.”

About law the Professor knew a lot. About the ways of the Army, he knew but nothing. It didn’t take me long in Vietnam to determine that. Still, I did remember his parting words at the airport: “If things get very rough, my boy, let me know. I have a few friends in Washington. I can pull a few strings. So, if there's anything I can do -”

A month later, finding myself up to my nostrils in excrement, I took him up on it. As a “Military Observer” and First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, I was put in charge of a platoon of South Vietnamese soldiers assigned to fill in a series of latrine trenches so overloaded that they were a health hazard. As a graduate lawyer, I wrote Professor Hawthorne, I didn*t feel this duty was in keeping with my abilities. Also, the constant close association with the by-products of dysentery had brought on a condition of daily nausea which deeply affected my ability to swallow and retain K-rations. I urged the Professor to pull his string before my gorge itself was permanently disgorged.

I was transferred to an Army Intelligence Unit based in Saigon a few weeks after sending my letter to the Professor. Wonder of Wonders, the Army actually decided to utilize my talents as a lawyer. I was assigned to help prepare the defenses of accused South Vietnamese draft dodgers and deserters. A Vietnamese lawyer would represent the malefactors in court; it was my job to draw up the brief. Since roughly seventy-five percent of the able-bodied men in South Vietnam connive to avoid the draft, desert after they’ve been drafted, or belong to the Viet Cong, I was kept pretty busy.

When my tour of duty was up and I returned to the States, I didn’t get to see Uriah Hawthorne. By then he’d left Columbia for private practice in the Mid-West. I got involved with marriage, my own law practice, and then the divorce. We exchanged occasional letters, but that was it. I rooted from the sidelines when he ran for the Senate and sent him a congratulatory telegram after he won. After that I followed his career casually in the papers.

I was surprised when I got the letter asking me to come to see him in Washington. It sounded urgent and very hush-hush. There was also the implication that I owed him a favor-—which was true—-and so I went.

Our meeting took place late at night in a second-rate hotel room with only the two of us present. The Senator got right down to cases. “As you may know, Vance,” he began, “I’m a junior member of the Senate watchdog committee that keeps tabs on the CIA. Right now we’re faced with a very interesting question. We’re trying to find out just how much money the CIA gets every year.”

“I thought Congress appropriated their funds.”

“We do. But even the Congressmen and Senators who vote the appropriations don’t know how much goes to the CIA. It’s hidden in various other allotments, supposedly in the interests of national security.” The Senator scowled. “The CIA claims if it has to account for its funds, its effectiveness will be hampered.”

“What an opportunity for a boondoggle,” I observed.

“Exactly. Estimates of what they spend range in the billions. Our committee is actually working backwards. We’re trying to find out how much they spend so we can see how much Congress has given them. In particular, I myself have become intrigued with the fate of a specific fifty thousand dollars which has gone astray.”

“That’s a lot of greenbacks to go astray.” I wondered why he was telling me all this, what he was getting at.

“Have you ever heard of the International Conference of Little Theatre Groups?” He shifted abruptly.

“No.” I shook my head.

“It’s a Commie cultural front group that started in Poland back in ’61. At first the U.S. and friends boycotted the Conference. But the nonaligned countries sent representatives and soon we realized it was working out as a handy propaganda tool for the Reds. So we reversed our stand and granted permission for American little theatre groups to participate in the meetings of the Conference. The hope was that their influence would counter the Bolshie line.”

“And did it?” I asked.

“No. Because even with permission none of our drama groups sent representatives. The fact is that none of these little, independent groups could afford it. And the government couldn’t subsidize them directly without stirring up a public clamor.”

“So the CIA got into the act,” I guessed.

“Right. The money was channeled through them and it was understood that it would be disbursed in such a way that the recipients wouldn’t know it came from the CIA. A front operation called ‘Democratic Philanthropies, Inc.’ was set up to distribute the money to little theatre groups so they could participate in the Conference. By arrangement with Internal Revenue, this organization filed no tax returns; it had no offices, no phone; it was simply a mail drop, a name, and an address; most important, it was accountable to no one outside the CIA for the money placed at its disposal. The initial amount was the fifty thousand dollars I mentioned and it was handed over in cash—-small bills, unmarked—-to the CIA agent in charge of Democratic Philanthropies. He kept it in a safety deposit box in a New York bank. About six weeks ago he withdrew the entire amount. He was observed putting the bills in an attaché case and leaving the bank. About five hours later a doctor pronounced the agent dead. The attaché case was gone. It’s never been found—neither has the fifty thousand dollars!”

“Any clue as to who murdered him?” I asked.

“He wasn’t murdered. You’ve seen too many spy movies, Vance. You’re jumping to conclusions.”

“Then how did he die?”

“Eating salmon croquettes in his own kitchen. He made them himself, too. He choked on a fishbone. That’s how he died.” The Senator took a deep breath and then continued. “The only thing our committee’s investigators have been able to get out of the CIA is that their agent had an appointment to meet someone connected with a little theatre group on the afternoon of his death. But that doesn’t explain why he withdrew the whole fifty thousand. The money was supposed to be spread around. Why would he have planned to hand it all over to one person?”

“Did he keep the appointment?” I wanted to know.

“The CIA claim he must have, but that doesn’t mean he did. There are several other possibilities. He might have decided to steal it himself. Or there might be some hanky-panky involving the CIA. He could have returned it to them and they’re trying to cover up having to account to us for it. Or he could have hidden it somewhere until it was time to hand it over to whoever was supposed to receive it. The thing is that nobody in the particular drama group involved will admit to any knowledge of the money or the agent. Either they’re lying, or the CIA is. My guess is the CIA. I think they know who got the money and why. They’re hiding something and whatever it is I want to force them to come clean with the committee. And that’s where you come in, Vance.”

“You lost me going around that last turn,” I told him.

“The particular group the dead agent was in contact with is the Pine Glen Drama Group.”

“Oh!” I saw the dawn coming. “The bunch out where I live. But I still don’t see where I come into all this. I’ve never had anything to do with them, or with any other kind of amateur theatrics.”

“You know people out there. You’re a member of the community. You have experience in intelligence work-—-”

“Whoa! What are you talking about? What experience?”

“You were in Army Intelligence in Vietnam.”

“As a lawyer!” I protested. “I don’t know the first thing--”

“You must have picked up something.” He waved away my objections. “And anyway, the most important thing is that I can trust you, and the CIA will never dream you’re helping me investigate them. None of the drama group members would suspect you either.”

“Are you asking me to be some kind of secret agent?”

“You could call it that.” The Senator fell silent and looked at me for a long moment before he spoke again. “What do you say, Vance?” he asked then. “Will you do it?”

I had said yes. The result was that now, about ten days later, shrouded in a symbolic cloak and toting a symbolic dagger, I was playing I-Spy at the Pine Glen Drama Group’s cast party. But the only intriguing data my counterspy-honed eyes had uncovered so far was that disclosed by the teeny-bopper’s wild “Shing-A-Ling.”

The Mo-Town blare had subsided a bit by now. She’d slowed down with the tempo and her miniskirt had settled halfway down her slightly thin but curvy thighs. My focus switched to the upper part of her body. It was ripe beyond her years. Perispheres of flesh coming to sharp Trylon points¹ moved with uptilted youthful vigor against a tight cotton tank-top. The bright orange and blue stripes didn’t disguise the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Nor did her long, loose brown hair swirling over her bodice conceal the deep cleavage displayed by the low V of the tank-top.

Her swaying movements gave rise to a thought that was both intriguing and irritating. The teeny-bopper was more uninhibited than I was—or ever had been. Our roles had been reversed, despite the fact that I was much older than she was. I could learn more from her about sex than I could ever teach her. The idea was appealing, but it made me feel like a dirty old man.

It made me uneasy enough so that I deliberately turned my attention away from the teeny-bopper. I found myself looking at Roger, my host. Roger stood behind the bar of his furnished cellar, jiggling a martini shaker. He was a cipher sort of guy who didn't so much fade into the background as become absorbed by it. A blah personality, his chief social asset was his wife, Rusty.

Rusty was the one from whom I’d wangled the invitation to the cast party, since she was the one who belonged to the drama group. Originally, Rusty had been friendly with Marcy, my ex-wife. Following the split, she’d taken a neighborly interest in me that had overtones of being something more than neighborly. That’s when I first began lo wonder why she’d ever married Roger. He so obviously wasn’t her type. The law of opposites could have been the reason. But I came up with one I liked better. It suited my sense of whimsy. I decided that Rusty had married Roger mainly because she wanted to take his name.

Roger’s last name was Roundheels!

The prospect of being known as Mrs. Roundheels must have seemed a gas to Rusty. A few short years back I’d guess she had really been a knockout. With her flaming red hair and voluptuous figure she was still quite a sex-pot. Only now there was a hint of desperation in her face that wasn’t quite hidden by her artfully applied makeup.

We live in an age of packaging. She had the product. Roger provided the label. Only she might have had more foresight. She might have envisioned the day, now almost at hand, when the name Rusty Roundheels would be too descriptive of her. The label might have fit in with being a coquette in her twenties, but m her mid-thirties she was finding it an embarrassment and had taken to explaining it away with genealogical bushwah.

At the moment the explanation was aimed at Peter Putter. He was a shy looking, youngish fellow who seemed always to have both hands thrust deep in his pants pockets. Like Rusty, Peter was a member of the Pine Glen Drama Group. Now, with Rusty closing in on him, her bent knee moving against his calf, he looked very ill-at-ease.

“The origin of the name is really very interesting,” Rusty was saying in that deep, throaty voice of hers, green eyes locking Putter’s. “We’ve traced it back eight hundred years to the royal court of Spain where the Queen was so impressed by the dancing of one of Roger’s forebears that she knighted him. The name was bestowed as part of the title along with a substantial land grant. Of course the family Anglicized it when they came to America.”

Putter tried to look impressed and back away from Rusty at the same time. Her knee followed, maintaining contact, like the nose of a hunting dog which has hit on the scent.

“The selection of the name was a direct reference to his dancing agility, of course,” Rusty added.

Peter Putter struggled to jam his hands even deeper in his pockets. Rusty had him in a corner now. But he was saved by the bell — the opening bell of the fight.

It started very suddenly. The party had reached that point where the bubbly soaks in and the lights are lowered. The Mo-Town blare had given way to soft, slow music and then there was sudden, loud violence. The spark that lit the fury was the miniskirted teeny-hopper.

She’d been brought to the party by Sy Lenzio. A small, thin man of about thirty, Sy was, like myself, divorced. He’d been in Splitsville about five years longer than I had. During that time he’d developed an affinity for young chicks—the younger the better. As it turned out, his Lolita-lust was shared by Cass Novak.

Cass was the perennial leading man of the drama group. A ruggedly handsome type with unexpected dimples, he played the romantic lead offstage even more ardently than when he was in front of the footlights. Unromantically, Cass was a plumber by profession. But that didn’t turn off his leading ladies on either side of the curtain.

It was his dancing with the teeny-bopper that precipitated the brouhaha. With a plumber’s instincts for basics, Cass had maneuvered one of his hands against her un-bra’d bosom. It was a contact which would have inspired an impotent octogenarian. The plumber followed up by backing her into a corner and running his other hand up under what there was of her miniskirt. He had her flush against the wall when Sy Lenzio became aware of his date’s predicament.

When Sy attempted to interfere, the plumber told him to stick his head in the obvious plumbing fixture and followed up by swinging at the smaller man. Sy ducked. He was agile as hell. Cass was twice his size and had a left like a monkey-wrench, but Sy kept on ducking.

Known in the drama group for his ability as a mime, Sy was as light on his feet as a ballet dancer. There was an infuriating quality in the way he just managed to avoid the roundhouse punches Cass was throwing. Snarling, Cass charged with both fists swinging. Sy leaped gracefully to one side and his foot came straight up. It connected solidly with the plumber’s groin.

Cass doubled over. He bellowed with pure animal rage. He straightened up, still clutching at himself with one hand, and charged Sy, roaring.

At this point Will Leigh moved to break it up. Will was a fat, jolly type, a banker in private life who always grabbed off the comic character parts in the drama group productions. He was a lot stronger than he looked. He got a full nelson on Cass and dragged him away from Sy. Even so, he might not have been able to hold Cass if Mrs. Novak hadn’t popped up in front of her husband.

The plumber’s wife was a puzzle to those who knew Cass. She was a plain girl for such a handsome man to have married, And she had a constantly whiny expression on her face-—an expression he doubtless gave her good reason to wear. Still, her appearance now calmed down her husband. She announced that she was ready to go home and he followed her out lambily.

The tumult over, Will Leigh returned to the couch where he’d been chatting with Wanda Humphrey. His eyes were appreciative as they resumed their conversation. I didn’t blame him. Wanda was an attractive, very stylish girl who’d been a professional dancer in her native Austria before she married Tom Humphrey. She was flirtatious in a continental manner, but I guessed it was no more than automatic where Will Leigh was concerned. The way she garbled the English language was ultra-cute and I had a feeling she did it on purpose as part of the character she played to dazzle men. Wanda had directed the show the drama group had put on earlier in the evening.

Across the room her husband followed Will’s gaze to Wanda’s low-cut bodice. He smiled slightly, but it didn’t seem to bother him. Although I knew Tom Humphrey very slightly, I would have bet he wasn’t the jealous type.

Not so the man standing at the bar beside him. Nicholus Taurus had been following his own wife’s movements all night. He was staring at her now—squinting slightly in the dim light of the furnished cellar—and his face was dark with displeasure at what he saw.

Dr. Cleo Taurus was sitting in a corner with Phil Antlers. Phil had portrayed her lover in the drawing room comedy the group had done. From the way they were sitting so close together and whispering, the mood had carried over. Her dark eyes were smouldering on him intently and her ebony hair brushed his cheek just as it had when she’d been vamping him in the play. The lady physician was a small, well-built girl—a compact bundle of dynamite.

But her husband Nick was the one who looked like he might explode. I wondered if we might not be in for a repetition of the scene between Sy Lenzio and Cass Novak. I stopped wondering at the sound of a voice in my ear. It was a female voice, bell—like, a hint of upper class British in the inflection.

I turned around. “I’m Vance Powers.” I took her hand, squeezed it and released it.

“I’m Joy Boxx.”

I took a closer look at her as she went on talking. I liked what I saw. Joy was a slender blonde of about twenty-five. Her cool, ash-blondeness seemed to define her. Matching eyebrows labeled it genuine. Aquiline features and a delicate complexion were all part-and-parcel of it. It was that patrician sort of fairness carried so well by tall girls-—which Joy was—and which labels their origins as unmistakably Anglican. It showed in the sure, almost proud way she held herself, in the simplicity of the black dress and single strand of pearls she wore.

The style of the dress itself said a lot about her. It was high-necked—hers was the only covered bodice at the party—and there was just a touch of lace at the throat, a touch that was demure and stopped short of being frivolous. The hemline reached to the knee. Yet I knew without seeing them that her long legs would be sleek and tapered and attractive—just as the rest of her was.

“ . . . and so I don’t get to many parties with my husband away so much of the time,” she was saying.

So she was married. I was disappointed. Still, in this milieu it figured. “What line is your husband in?” I asked.

“Saving souls.” A small chuckle. “That’s his line.”

“Wait a minute!” It clicked. “You mean Billy Boxx? The evangelist? Is he your husband?”

“The Right Reverend Billy Boxx.” She nodded. “Yes. I’m his wife.”

“I see.”

“Now don’t look like that. Why do men always react that way when they find out I’m a minister’s wife?”

“What way?”

“Like my legs had just turned to stumps and my breasts dried up. It’s downright defeminizing!”

“Sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say. There was an awkward pause. It was filled in by the strains of a slow Sinatra coming over the stereo. “Would you like to dance?” I asked Joy.

She accepted. You can tell a lot about a girl from the way she dances. That’s even true for a flub-foot like myself. A friend of mine claims that at the age of sixteen he discovered that the dance-dip was the tip-off to whether a girl would or wouldn’t. Twenty years later he claims it’s still a valid test. Maybe he’s sublimating; maybe he’s got his knee confused with a more erotic item of his anatomy; still, his premise does have a certain amount of worth.

Joy danced comfortably close without attempting to lead the way some sensual women do when they dance. A tall girl -- almost five-ten in heels, I’d judge—-her cheek nestled comfortably against my shoulder. At six-four, I’m a long drink of water myself.

“Did you play basketball?” she murmured in my ear.

“Huh?” I’d been concentrating on the close warmth of her body and the question hit my ear as a non sequitur.

“When you were younger? I mean, tall boys usually——”

“Oh. No, I didn’t. Lousy coordination. My arms and legs kept getting all tangled up. Still do sometimes. I was a lousy athlete when I was a kid. I picked up some boxing and karate knowhow in the service, but before then I had very little physical confidence.”

“You don’t seem to lack physical confidence,” Joy murmured, moving her hips so that the subtle pressure against me pinpointed the “confidence.”

I exerted pressure back and we danced that way for the rest of the number and the next one. I was beginning to realize two things about Joy Boxx. First, she was more than a little drunk; second, she was a very passionate girl. Both facts were hidden under her demure, ladylike exterior, But both were betrayed by the frankness of the signals her body was transmitting.

Those signals were making me forget the reason I’d come to the cast party. What with the emotional upset of the divorce and all, there hadn’t been too many women for me this past year. The hints of Joy’s willingness were blotting out my sense of duty as a secret agent.

Somehow I knew that before this evening was over there would be a reckoning between us. What I didn’t know as we danced among the members of the Pine Glen Drama Group was that there would be a reckoning of another sort as well. There was no way for me to know that before the night was out one of these people would die a violent death.

Who would be the victim? Soon I would know. How would death strike? Unexpectedly! In a manner both shocking and bizarre! Why would it happen? That was the question which would truly launch my counterspy career!

There would be a lot more passion and a lot more violence before I found the answer.

Chapter Two

Violent death isn’t ordinarily Pine Glen’s cup of tea; illicit passion is its more usual pekoe. As swinging a crabgrass community as you’re likely to find on the South Shore of New York’s Long Island, its folk prefer sophisticated sex to mayhem and the atmosphere is more Noel Coward-ly than Hitchcock-esque. As a rule, Pine Glen is too civilized for either fidelity or homicide.

Hot-eyed housewives abound. The local supermarket is the trysting-place for young-marrieds not married to each other. Bent over the deep-freeze, or hidden behind the canned peas, they work out the details for the midtown lunches in intime Manhattan bistros, the three-cocktail preludes to motel passion. The PTA meetings are electric with silently swapped remembrances of backseat hanky- panky. The smoking cars of commuter trains are filled with fuming cuckolds, the bar-cars crowded with cuckolders drowning their guilt. On the outskirts of Pine Glen is a tavern where the younger, childless wives go to be picked up while their husbands work overtime at convincing stenographers that theirs is a marriage in name only —little dreaming just how true it is.

Yes, a swinging burg! And of all the swingers in Pine Glen, the Drama Group was the swingingest clique of all So rumor had it, anyway. Despite the fact that I’d lived in Pine Glen for five years, rumor was all I had to go by—- until now.

The first four years I’d been too busy fighting with Marcy, my wife—my ex-wife, I mean -- to become involved in the community kanoodling. We’d both kept too active stoking the fires of each others’ hostilities to think about joining the drama group. Since the divorce I’d been occupied with all the details stemming from it. Far from joining in the life of Pine Glen, I’d been trying to get out of the town. I was frustrated by the fact that my one-time honeymoon split-level had turned out to be a white elephant I couldn’t unload. So, what with alimony and all, I was forced to go on living there. Being thirty and wife-less, it wasn’t the milieu I would have picked for myself if I’d had any choice.

Still, as I was just beginning to appreciate, there was a lot of action available to a single man in the suburbs. The women at the cast party, for instance, had in common an aura of being sexy and available. Perhaps it was the culmination of twelve weeks hectic rehearsal for the show put on earlier that night that was now causing the drama group to let off more steam than a Turkish bath with busted valves. In any case, inhibitions were rapidly deteriorating in the Roundheels’ furnished cellar.

Dancing with Joy Boxx made me very aware of this. When the dance was over, she turned to me. “I should be leaving now,” she said.

“May I see you home?” I took the hint.

“That would be very nice.”

I followed her up to the bedroom where the guests’ coats had been stashed. They were piled impossibly high on the bed. We were alone in the room. Joy plowed through the pile, looking for her own. I moved to stand beside her and bent over the stack.

Bending over did it. There was a scatter rug beside the bed and we were both on it. Now it shot out from under our feet and we sprawled atop the bed in a tangle with the mish-mosh of coats. Our arms and legs flailed for a moment. My left hand came to rest on her right breast. Clutching for support -- or was she?--her hand held mine tight against her.

I wasn’t a member of the group as yet, but I picked up my cue quickly anyway. I kissed Joy. It was long-lasting, better than king-size, hot and unfiltered, deep and exploratory with lips, teeth, and tongue all active. By the time it was over I’d opened the zipper at the side of her dress and slid my hand under her bra. There was much more there than the demure dress had led me to expect. The flesh was warm and quivering, the nipple growing hard under my touch.

“The light!” Joy gasped.

I removed my hand, went over to the wall, and flipped the switch. The room was plunged into darkness. I closed the door, felt my way back to the bed and groped among the coats. “Joy? Where are you?”

A muffled giggle.

“Okay. So we’ll pay hide-and-seek.” I burrowed under the coats. Finally I encountered a pelt that felt more fleshy than furry. “Whaddaya know,” I remarked. “I was beginning to think I’d have to settle for mouton.”

“Responsive mouton,” Joy murmured.

I found her nose, traced it down to her lips and kissed her. The zipper was still open. Her skirt was pushed up over her hips. My hand slid over the silk of her panties. She sighed and bit my ear. Her fingers started to toy with the belt to my pants.

“I’ve had too much to drink,” she confessed. “This is indiscreet. And me a minister’s wife. It would be better to wait, to let you take me home. But I don’t want to wait,” she gasped. Her grasping hand turned into an eager, pulsating fist. “And you don’t either. I can tell that.”

I confirmed it by pulling her panties down to her ankles. Her derriére was smooth and tight as I clutched it. Joy was bouncing eagerly now and the bed rocked beneath us. We were buried under the pile of coats. She burrowed deeper under them in order to arch her legs. “Ahh, hurry!” she urged. “Please hurry.”

I sprawled over her and her legs locked around my waist. They were long legs and they established a rhythm, goading my movements as if they were driving a piston. She moved under me with complete abandonment, holding me to her in a fluttering vise, first rotating with a grinding motion, then rising and falling like an ocean gone berserk, Her nails were punching holes in my neck. Her body began reacting like a series of increasingly powerful charges of dynamite being detonated. Each explosion brought me closer to a major one of my own. I was on the brink of it when light suddenly flooded the room.

“Oh! That’s blinding!” The voice came from the doorway. It was the voice of Rusty Roundheels, my hostess. “Vance, are you in here?” Evidently she still hadn’t managed to focus. And then she did. “Oh, there you are.”

Under the circumstances, I was lucky. Joy was completely buried beneath the pile of coats. I was also completely covered, except for my head, which was poking out of the mass of garments. That was the only part of me Rusty could see.

“There’s a call for you,” Rusty told me. “Long distance. Marcy.” She looked at me quizzically. “What are you doing there anyway, Vance?”

“I guess the liquor got to me,” I improvised. “I was feeling a little dizzy. I just came up here to lie down.”

“That’s a pretty peculiar position for lying down. Are you comfortable?”

“Sure. My chiropractor recommended it to me. It’s the one position that relaxes every part of the body.”

Beneath me Joy muffled a giggle.

“Oh. Well, you’d better come now,” Rusty said. I put my hand firmly over Joy’s mouth. “I’ll be right there,” I told Rusty.

“All right.” She closed the door behind her.

“Hurry up and go before she comes back,” Joy urged when I removed my hand.

“Okay.” Reluctantly, I relinquished the position we’d established and got to my feet.

That was a mistake. My pants were bunched up around my ankles. I immediately toppled over and hit the floor with the impact of a felled tree. Joy laughed aloud. She was still under the coats and the laugh was muffled.

Sitting on the floor, I pulled my pants up and buckled the belt. I’d just finished when the door popped open again. “Now what are you doing?” Rusty asked.

“Just getting the kinks out. My chiropractor says -”

“Never mind your chiropractor. Marcy’s waiting and it’s long distance. I told you.”

“Okay. Right there.”

She went out again and I got to my feet. “Joy?” I stood over the pile of coats.

“Yes?”

“Will you wait here? I’ll come right back.”

“All right. I’ll wait. By the way, who’s Marcy?”

“My ex-wife.”

“She must have super-sensitive antennae. Her timing’s devastating.”

“Yeah. I’ll be right back.” I left then, turning out the light behind me and closing the door. I went down to the center hall and picked up the phone. “Marcy?”

“Yes. Vance? What took you so long? I’ve been waiting hours. And this is a long-distance call.”

“With the alimony I’m paying you can well afford it.”

“Don’t be bitter, sweetie. What’s the matter, did I interrupt something?”

“Don’t be silly.” That was the damnedest thing about Marcy. When it came to logic she was nowhere, but her intuition was almost always right smack on the button. It was infuriating; it was one of the reasons I divorced her. “What do you want anyway, Marcy?” I couldn’t keep the edge out of my voice.

“Then I was right!” She picked it up. “Well, I can see that being divorced hasn’t cured your lechery any more than marriage did.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Being married to you almost did cure my erotic impulses,” I told her sweetly, nastily. “Now would you mind telling me just why the hell you’re calling me?”

“My philodendron.”

“Huh?”

“My philodendron plant. This time of year it has to be moved around to the side of the house so it’ll get enough sun.”

“Marcy, if you’re so concerned about your phi1odendron plant, why the hell didn’t you take it with you? I told you that you could have anything from the house that you wanted. You could have had the house too, for that matter. But you decided you’d rather have cash.”

“And I haven’t changed my mind either. But that has nothing to do with this. I don’t want the plant. I just don’t want it to die. If you don’t take care of it, then it will.”

“What the hell do I care?” I was exasperated. This kind of can’t-wait, middle-of-the-night call to a neighbor’s house was typical of Marcy. It was an echo of how she’d bugged me when we were married. “Damn thing uses up all the oxygen anyway,” I added.

“It does not!” She was almost shouting. “You always used to say that. And it’s so damn unscientific! Plants do not use up oxygen! You just say that because you always hated my plants. You still hate them. You’re trying to kill the poor defenseless things. Now Vance, are you going to take care of that philodendron, or not?”

“Why should I?”

“Because you have custody of it, that’s why!”

“I hereby relinquish it. I’1l send you an affidavit to that effect if you like.”

“You legalistic bastard! You always pull that lawyer talk on me when you know you’re in the wrong. Just cut it out and tell me what you’re going to do about the philodendron!”

I told her. “I am going to go home and pull that monster plant out by the roots. Then I am going to shred the leaves into cole slaw. The rest I’ll burn and scatter the ashes over the Bronx Botanical Gardens. And when I’m through, I’ll repeat the action with every other oxygen-gobbling piece of flora and fauna I can find in the house!”

She was sputtering in my ear incoherently as I hung up the phone. Rusty Roundheels was standing a few feet away eyeing me quizzically. “You two should have stayed married,” she observed. “It would have been cheaper than fighting long distance.”

“What I’d like to know is how she traced me here,” I remarked.

“My fault, I’m afraid. We’ve been corresponding. I’ve been keeping her up to date on Pine Glen.”

“And on me?”

“Well, not exactly. But she does ask questions. After all, you were married. And I guess Marcy’s still carrying a bit of a torch.”

“A blow-torch. Or, rather, a flame thrower. And she’d like nothing better than to incinerate me with it.”

“I’m sorry.” Rusty was chagrined. “I’m afraid I did mention this party and that there was a chance you’d be here.”

“Well, never mind. It doesn’t really make any difference. Marcy’s got bloodhound blood. She’d have traced me down sooner or later anyway.” I patted Rusty on the shoulder and continued on up the stairs. I was eager to get back to Joy and pick up where we’d left off.

The room was dark when I opened the door. I closed it behind me and didn’t turn on the light. I fumbled my way over to the bed and began feeling around the pile of coats. I figured Joy must still be under them.

“COOKAROOKOOTOO!” a female voice whooped.

“Shh!” a man whispered urgently. “Do you want us to be discovered?”

“Then don’t do that! You know it drives me out of my mind! I just go ape when you touch me there!”

“Where?”

“There!”

“Cleo,” the man’s voice protested, “I wasn’t touching you at all. At least I don’t think I was. It’s hard to tell under all these damn coats.”

“The hell you say! You grabbed my you-know-what. You know you did, Phil.”

“Your ‘you-know-what’? That’s not very scientific terminology for a lady doctor, Cleo.”

“I didn’t think I was here in my medical capacity, Phil.”

While this conversation was going on, I was mulling over a dilemma. It seemed unlikely that Joy was also under the pile of coats, and so the diplomatic thing for me to do was undoubtedly to tiptoe out of the room as surreptitiously as I’d entered. However, my hand was wedged under the coat directly beneath the lady and I was understandably nervous about the motion required to remove it.

Still, I had to do it. I couldn’t stand there all night. Gingerly, I attempted to extricate the hand.

“COOKAROOKOOTOO!”

The cry echoed behind me as I silently closed the bedroom door. I went back down to the basement, hoping that Joy had rejoined the party and not gone home by herself. She had. She waved to me as I entered. Everybody was sitting around in a sort of very wide semicircle. The room was strangely hushed as I made my way over to her.

“Why did you duck out on me?” I asked.

“Nature called. I meant to go back. But a couple of other people took over our nest. So I came down here. I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about.” My eyes swept the room and I looked at Joy questioningly. “What gives?”

“Sy Lenzio’s going to do a bit. Have you ever seen him?”

“No.”

“He’s a wonderful mime. Really professional.”

“He must be if he could get this bunch of high flyers calmed down enough to watch him.” It was true. Glancing around the room again, I could see the expectation in the faces.

I noticed with surprise that Cass Novak was back. His mousey wife, however, was nowhere in sight and I guessed he must have ditched her at home and returned. He was whispering to Rusty Roundheels, probably apologizing to the hostess for his behavior. Rusty was looking at him, but her hand was surreptitiously stroking Peter Putter’s leg. He looked like he was trying to ignore the caress and stared straight ahead. I followed his gaze to the couch. Will Leigh’s stout frame was squeezed between the teeny-bopper and Wanda Humphrey and the banker was looking smug about the positioning. Tom Humphrey sat on the arm of the couch beside his wife. Roger Roundheels and Nick Taurus stood beside Tom, not talking

I wondered idly if Cass meant to cause any trouble when Sy went into his act. Then I wondered about the possibility of trouble from another quarter. Cleo Taurus and Phil Anders had just slipped into the room. Nicholas Taurus didn’t miss their entrance and his face clouded over.

There was vicuna lint on the bottom of Cleo’s skirt. Phil looked rumpled. The way they avoided sitting near each other was a trifle too obvious. Even more obvious was the smouldering way he looked at her. Nick Taurus didn’t miss that either.

Waiting for the mime to begin, I kept considering each of them in turn. If Senator Hawthorne had steered me onto the right track, then one of them had latched onto fifty Gs of CIA moola. The question was which one? I couldn’t even summon up a suspicion. I stopped trying as Sy Lenzio went into his act.

Joy had been right; Sy was damn good. His pantomime drew genuine giggles and guffaws right from the start. His timing was excellent. He would hold a pose, or an expression just long enough to let the laughter build to its peak, and then pass smoothly into the next phase of his pantomime.

The act was a parody of a guy going to a dance hall and looking for a girl to pick up. Sy began with the subject going over to the bar and having a drink while he sized up the available women. His facial expressions summed up one hilarious judgement after another. All were found lacking. A couple so much so that Sy pantomimed the need to gulp down a couple more drinks to wash them out of consideration. Finally he just leaned against the invisible bar with the look on his face of a man who feels he’s wasted the buck-fifty it cost him to get into the joint.

Then, slowly, Sy’s eyes lit up. He straightened his tie. An on-the-make expression took over his face. He kept it there, the laughter building around him, as he crossed the room and bent over an invisible girl seated at an invisible table. He rubber-faced an introductory pitch to the girl who’d attracted him. Success. He straightened up and pulled back an invisible chair and held out his arms for the girl to dance with him. His face crumpled as his neck craned way back and he parodied dancing with a girl at least a foot taller than he was. His audience broke up as he kept blinking one eye and pulling back to show that the tip of the girl’s breast, presumably at eye level, kept hitting him. Finally he ended the dance, got her back to her table, and mimed the embarrassment of backing away from her.

Two quick elbow-bendings at the nonexistent bar conveyed his disgust. Then he spotted another prospect. Another bit of silent mimicry and he was dancing again. This time his invisible partner was much shorter than he was. He drew a roar of laughter by resting his elbow on lop of her unseen head. Then he was back at the bar again.

Now there were elements of drunkenness in his mimicry. His face lit up as though he’d just spotted Brigitte Bardot in the raw. There was a slightly drunken swagger to his gait as he crossed over to the third invisible girl. This time his mimed pitch was more drunken and more lecherous. He parodied copping a feel as he pulled the girl’s chair out for her and the mimed apology with which he followed the maneuver was cocky. Then he was dancing again.

The illusion he created now was extremely clever. First, by arching his body and moving his hands and letting open lechery fill his face, he got across the impression of dancing with a live one. The erotic pantomime was not only suggestive, it was funny as hell. Then, when this had sunk in, he turned his back to us. His arms and hands turned into the arms and hands of his invisible partner as he wrapped them around himself. They played with the back of his ears and the nape of his neck. Then they slid down to his hips and around to his buttocks. Sy swirled around to show us the expression of a guy scoring on the dance floor. Then, with his back to us again, he let us see how one hand, supposedly egging him on erotically, was actually removing the wallet from his back pocket.

He ended the dance with a bump-and-grind, saw the imaginary girl back to her table and charged back to the bar. This time the way he gulped his invisible drink conveyed his need to cool off after the stimulation of the dance. Then he parodied reaching into his back pocket to get his wallet and pay for the drink. His face conveyed puzzlement at the absence of the wallet. Then suspicion crossed it. He quickly reparodied dancing with the tall girl and shook his head again. He repeated the parody with the short girl and shook his head again. Neither of them had taken it. Then he recapitulated the bit with the last girl and nodded to himself. She was the culprit all right.

Drunkenly, he swaggered across the floor to demand that she return his wallet. He mimed the argument which followed. His mimicry of the girl protesting her innocence had all of us laughing hard. Then he made a grab for the girl’s invisible bosom where the wallet had been tucked away. One of Sy’s hands was behind him and it tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and caught a fist -—presumably belonging to the invisible girl’s boy friend —-smack in the face. He spun around, sinking lower and lower, and finally collapsed face down across Roger Roundheels’s tool bench in one corner of the basement.

A pro to the end, Sy stayed in that position, frozen, while our applause mounted and mounted. It was only when it reached its peak that he started to straighten up and half-turned towards us. He didn’t complete the turn.

The tool-bench Sy had elected to sprawl across was set up with an electric saw, the blade inserted. Now, as he started to turn, the power tool suddenly buzzed into action. The end of his necktie caught in it. We all roared with laughter once again at the expression which filled his face at his predicament. It never occurred to any of us that it wasn’t just a postscript to Sy’s act. We roared as the electric saw seemed to gobble up his tie and pulled his head down towards the blade. What talent! His panic seemed completely unfeigned.

Only split seconds later we realized that it seemed that way because it was. Our laughter died abruptly as Sy’s neck was yanked down and the teeth of the blade bit into it. Before we’d completely realized what was happening, the furnished cellar was being splattered with pantomimist plasma and small chunks of minced mime flesh.

Roger Roundheels was the first one to come to his senses enough to take any action. He leaped across the room to the wall at a right angle to the power saw and pulled a cut-off switch. It was too late. We could all see that.

The mime was dead!

Chapter Three

Death by dicing! It jolted me into remembering why I was at the party. It reminded me that I was a spy, that it was always open season on spies and so I was vulnerable. It made me aware that there was danger bubbling under the jolly surface of the Pine Glen Drama Group.

Not that the surface was so very jolly after the life was sliced from Sy Lenzio. On the contrary, it sort of threw a pall over the festivities. What with the police coming and people answering questions and photographers snapping bulbs at the messy mime corpse, there was no doubt that Sy’s finale pooped the party. Like the others, I was glad when I was able to go home.

It was late when I got there, but the questions bouncing around my mind like bits of silly putty dropped by Alice in Wonderland kept me from sleep. Was Sy’s violent demise the accident it seemed, or was there more to it? Had somebody unobtrusively flicked the wall-switch activating the buzzsaw to deliberately murder him? Or was he simply an inadvertent victim of the do-it-yourself craze? And, most important as I lay awake in my bed and stared at the ceiling, was there any connection between Sy Lenzio and Arch Fink?

Archer Corliss Fink was the name of the dead CIA agent who’d handled—-or mishandled -- the funds for Democratic Philanthropies, Inc. Senator Hawthorne had provided me with a complete dossier on him. I’d read it thoroughly, and now I went over it in my mind, hoping to stumble on some hint of a Lenzio-Fink link.

At the time of his death, Arch Fink was forty years old. He’d been with the CIA about three years. Up until his final assignment, his duties had been routine and he’d performed them well. That last task represented something of a promotion for him.

Fink was made for the counterespionage game. Conspiracy and counter-conspiracy came naturally to him. In his earlier days, just after his graduation from college, he’d been a member of a Communist cell. After a year he betrayed his comrades to the FBI.

Thus he launched a career which successfully rode the coattails of the McCarthy era. As a professional anti-Commie turncoat he testified before all sorts of government committees. However, after McCarthy, Fink’s testimony proved a bit too imaginative to be swallowed and his usefulness petered out. He took a job with a small right-wing magazine as an associate editor and sank into obscurity. He gave up the position when he joined the CIA.

It was no secret that they were recruiting agents and Fink was quick to offer his services. Appended to the dossier Senator Hawthorne had given me on Fink was the transcription of a tape recording secretly made at the time of Fink’s interview with the CIA recruiter. Still unable to go to sleep, I now took out the transcription and idly re-read it.

The interview had taken place in an office of one of the administrative buildings of a New York college. Applicants didn’t know that the office was bugged -- although someone with Fink’s background might have guessed it. The transcription went as follows:

CIA RECRUITER: Show in Archer Corliss Fink.

SECRETARY: They’re just finishing with him in the infirmary, sir.

CIA RECRUITER: The infirmary? Why—?

SECRETARY: He tripped over one of the students sitting in the hallway and sprained his ankle.

RECRUITER: Damn Commie kids! Where were the cops when this happened?

SECRETARY: They were there, sir. They arrested the student responsible and charged him with felonious assault.

RECRUIT ER: Good. It’s tough enough trying to sell these wiseacre kids on the opportunities of a career with the CIA -- damn tough, let me tell you, What with having to compete with General Motors and General Electric and U.S. Steel, not to mention the FBI and Pinkerton with their spiel for private enterprise over government service and their damn puffed-up pension plan—yes, tough enough without those leftist bastards planting their asses all over the hallways, blocking the doors with their guitars, cluttering up the corridors with beard dandruff, singing “We Shall Overcome” through their noses, and off key too, and chanting their pinko slogans. If they don’t want to go to classes, why the hell don’t they get out and go to work. How can they afford these sit-ins anyway? Even if they are Commie front organizations, I can’t believe the Party has enough dough to finance them. Can it really be that individual contributions keep them going?

SECRETARY: Excuse me, sir. But the group that’s sitting in today, Students to Abolish the CIA, I believe they’re still operating on a grant we arranged for them to receive anonymously last year.

RECRUITER: We arranged it? Why’d we ever do a damn-fool thing like that?

SECRETARY: It was your recommendation, sir.

RECRUITER: It was? Hmm. Oh, yes, I remember. We set them up so anti-CIA feeling on campus could have an outlet. But the idea was to infiltrate them, to let them let offf steam, to bog them down in dialectics short of any real action. What happened to that plan? Why haven’t they been infiltrated?

SECRETARY: They were, sir. One of our agents joined the group, worked his way up and became president of it. I believe he’s the one with the red beard leading the demonstration outside.

RECRUITER: He is? But why? Is there some new policy they’re keeping from me? Damn bureaucracy! Those bigwigs never let me know what’s going on. How can we be expected to carry out policy when they change it every day and then don’t even tell us?

SECRETARY: That isn’t it, sir. What happened is that our infiltrator defected.

RECRUITER: Not so long ago he would have been shot. Yeah, those were the days. The Bay of Pigs, the Dominican fracas—nobody questioned orders then. You just did what you were told without getting bogged down in a lot of high-faluting morality. Nobody went around getting stomach cramps over the means in those days. Ends was what counted. We stuck to the nitty-gritty. The ends always justified the means . . . Uh! I mean—! that is—-—! Is that damn tape on?

SECRETARY: Yes sir.

RECRUITER: Oh. Heh-heh. Well, when I talk about means and ends, I mean it in a completely democratic sense. I mean it in a completely opposite context from the way the Bolshie Marxists use the words. Well, you know what I mean. Damn this semantic confusion anyway!

SECRETARY (coldly): Where would we be without it, sir? It's one of our most potent weapons.

RECRUITER: Yes-yes. Of course. I didn’t mean to imply-— Hasn’t that man Fink come up from the infirmary yet?

SECRETARY: I’ll see if he’s waiting outside, sir.

SIT-IN STUDENTS (chanting):

CIA GO AWAY!

DON’T COME BACK ANOTHER DAY!

DROWN YOURSELVES IN SOME NEW BAY!

CIA GO AWAY!

SECRETARY: Here’s Mr. Fink, sir.

STUDENTS (chanting):

WE WON’T SELL OUR SOULS TO THE DEVIL!

OUR MOM DIDN’T RAISE US TO BE SPIES!

THE HELL WITH YOUR DOUBLETHINK REVEL!

YOU WHORES WITH YOUR WHORE-HIRING LIES!

RECRUIT ER (excitedly): Obscenity! Obscenity! Go tell the cops to arrest them. All of them! Public obscenity. . .

SECRETARY (softly, wearily): I don’t think we should do that, sir. We'd only have to supply the money to bail them out and we’re over our budget now.

STUDENTS (chanting):

SEND US TO SAIGON, SEND US TO DIE!

V-I-C-T-O-R-Y!

WHOSE NU ORDER? WHOSE BAD GUESS?

CIA! CIA!

MESS! MESS! MESS!

RECRUIT ER (sadly): They sure know how to hurt a fellow. Close that door, will you?

SECRETARY: Yes, sir. I’ll be right outside if you want me.

RECRUITER: Hello, Mr. Fink. A pleasure to meet you. Now sir, I understand you’re interested in the career opportunities afforded by the CIA.

FINK (a little cagey): Well, interested enough to want to find out more about your program.

RECRUITER (enthusiastically): I see. Now, suppose I just point out some of the many advantages to you.

FINK: All right.

RECRUITER: You’ve read Ian Fleming, have you?

FINK: Yes. But what’s that got to do with the CIA? His hero’s an English secret agent.

RECRUITER (voice filled with innuendo): A spy is a spy, my boy. Irresistible to women by nature of his profession. Sex is one of the greatest fringe benefits we have to offer.

FINK: I don’t know. I tire easily. I have an allergic condition and sometimes women make me break out in hives.

RECRUITER: Well, of course there are all sorts of other benefits. We don’t insist that our agents make love to every woman they meet in the course of their work. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to encourage you if I thought you’d give the CIA a bad name. You’re not queer or anything, are you?

FINK: I am not!

RECRUITER: You’re sure? I mean, we have a personnel arrangement with the State Department. Exchanges can be worked out.

FINK: I am not fruity!

RECRUITER: All right. No offense intended. As I was saying there are many other advantages to a CIA career. Travel—

FINK: I don’t know. My mother doesn’t like me to go too far from home. I’d have to talk it over with her.

RECRUITER: Security—

FINK: Security?

RECRUIT ER: Yes, nobody is as secure as a CIA agent. No matter where he is, he knows he’s never alone. There’s someone watching over him all the time. The NKVD, The Chinese, the FBI, Army Intelligence, Navy Intelligence, and, of course, always another CIA agent.

FINK: That certainly does sound like it should give a fellow a secure feeling.

RECRUITER: We-e-elll, we don’t believe in taking risks. Except sometimes—

FINK: Gee, I don’t know.

RECRUITER: And then there's our mental health program. That’s very important.

FINK: Mental health program?

RECRUITER: Yes. There is no single group in America today which can boast of such a high degree of mental health as CIA personnel.

FINK: Why is that?

RECRUIT ER (warming to his subject): Why? I’ll tell you why. What is mental health anyway? Mental health is adjustment to society. Now, I ask you, who is better ad- justed to the world as it is today than the CIA? We are never torn psychologically by a conflict of interests. When such a conflict arises, we side with both sides. We finance the agrarian revolutionists—until they begin to win and show signs of Communist leanings, of course-—and we support the existing power structure--until it topples and is replaced by another power structure which we also support. It’s better to give than to receive; that’s a psychological truism. We give freely to both sides, which fills us with a sense of euphoric philanthropy, and yet there is no depression in the giving because it is the taxpayers’ money that we are dispensing. This euphoria extends into the realm where mind and morality meet. Again the result is mental health. Not only is God always on our side, but also we are always on the side of Right; this has to be so just because we are always on both sides. The dedicated CIA man has made the perfect adjustment to his environment. In a paranoid world there can be no such thing as paranoia; the true paranoid in such a world is the embodiment of the ideal mental adjustment. Where schizophrenia is a way of life, the so-called “normal” person is the real deviant. To side with labor and management at the same time, with Bircher and Trotskyite, with the Muslims and the Klan, with the university administration and the rebelling student groups, with the Torys and the anarchists, and so on, and to take pride in the duplicity, to have banished any feeling of guilt about it, that is the hallmark of the truly brain-scrubbed, mind-adapting man of our times. Such a man is never confused by political paradox, never disturbed by the juggling of opposites, never alarmed at the double faces—like his own—worn by the people around him. Such a man has found mental health. And the only place for such a man is the CIA. It is the womb from which the seeds of mental health are being delivered. In the CIA, we are all -- all of us! -- examples of true freedom from neurosis, real mental health!

FINK: Have you had that tic long?‘

RECRUITER: No. It just comes on me when I get overemotional.

FINK: I see.

RECRUITER: And, of course, there’s the added psychological reward of helping one’s country fight the Russian conspiracy, the Chinese conspiracy, the Cuban conspiracy, the Cambodian conspiracy, the Lebanese conspiracy, the-— Um . . .

FINK: The GOP conspiracy? You know, like Barry and Ronnie, say.

RECRUITER: You betcha! And the Democratic Party conspiracy. They spotted that one down in Dixie all right.

FINK (voice quivering): All the anti-American American conspiracies. They’ve got to be stopped!

RECRUITER: And only the CIA can stop them. What do you say now? Will you join us?

FINK: To fight conspiracy? Yes, I will!

RECRUITER: Then raise your right hand and prepare to take the CIA oath.

FINK: Like this?

RECRUITER: Not quite. Bend the elbow a little more. We used to hold it that way until someone pointed out it was a little too close to the old fascist salute. Now we bend the elbow more. That’s it. Now bend your thumb and pinky ’til they're joined and stick the three fingers straight up.

FINK: All three? I thought it was only one finger.

RECRUIT ER: No. That might be misunderstood. That’s it. All three straight up. Now repeat the pledge after me.

FINK: I’m ready.

RECRUITER: On my honor I will do my best . .

FINK: On my honor I will do my best . . .

RECRUITER: . . . to do my duty . . .

FINK (slight childish snicker): . . . to do my duty . . .

RECRUIT ER: . . . no matter what country . . .

FINK: . . . no matter what country . . .

RECRUITER: . . . gets hurt in the process;

FINK: . . . gets hurt in the process;

RECRUIT ER: . . . and to obey the CIA code without regard to changes in foreign policy;

FINK: . . . and to obey the CIA code without regard to changes in foreign policy;

RECRUITER: . . . to help other peoples at all times . . .

FINK: . . . to help other peoples at all times . . .

RECRUITER: . . . whether they want to be helped or not;

FINK: . . . whether they want to be helped or not;

RECRUITER: . . . to keep CIA fiscally Strong - - -

FINK: . . . to keep CIA fiscally strong . . .

RECRUITER: . . . mentally ambiguous . . .

FINK: . . . mentally ambiguous . . .

RECRUITER: . . . and morally square.

FINK: . . . and morally — square?

RECRUITER: Square.

FINK: . . . and morally square!

RECRUITER: Welcome to the CIA.

FINK: Yish! You got my cheeks all wet.

RECRUITER: Sorry, I was carried away by the beauty of the ceremony.

FINK: Your tic is ticking again.

RECRUITER: Merely an expression of joy (His tone becomes clipped.) Agent Fink, report back here at oh-six-hundred Friday for further instructions.

FINK: Yes sir.

SIT-IN STUDENTS (chanting):

IN MATTERS OF AFFAIRS OF STATE,

THE CIA E’ER GOOFS ITS ROLE.

THEY ARE THE FUMBLERS OF OUR FA TE,

'THE U-2 LEMMINGS OF OUR SOUL!

RECRUITER: Poets! They should all be shot!

SECRETARY: Yes sir. Shall I turn off the tape-recorder now, sir?

RECRUITER: Might as well.

STUDENTS (singing):

WE SHALL OVERCOME,

WE SHALL OVERCOME,

WE SHALL OVERCOME SOME--

That was the end of the transcription. Red-eyed, I sighed and continued to leaf through the rest of the dossier. There was nothing there to connect Fink with Sy Lenzio or any other member of the Pine Glen Drama Group.

It occurred to me that I might be tackling this bass-ackwards. If a study of Fink’s background had held any clues, then Senator Hawthorne wouldn’t have enlisted me. The key to the fate of the missing fifty Gs had to lie with some member of the little theatre group.

But which one? So far I didn’t really know too much about any of them. Still, it might pay to go over what I did know. I considered them one by one.

There was the mid-thirtyish sexpot Rusty Roundheels, my hostess of the evening. The redheaded runaround and her husband Roger had only recently finished the posh basement where the mime had been minced. It was an expensive looking playroom. Where had the money come from? Might it be part of the missing fifty thousand?

And there was Joy Boxx, the willowy and willing evangelist’s wife. Joy had played the ingenue role in the play put on earlier that fateful evening. With her husband away saving sinners a good deal of the time, the sleek blonde would have plenty of free time for all sorts of intrigue—romantic and otherwise. Could she have been Arch Fink’s contact in the drama group?

Or might the contact have been Wanda Humphrey? The Austrian dancer with her malapro English and Zsa Zsa-style coquetry and vagueness surely fit the popular conception of the femme fatale spy. Austria, after all, was a Communist neighbour. If the Reds had wanted to discredit the CIA and stymie American efforts to participate in the International Conference of Little Theatre Groups, the beautiful and exotic Wanda might have been just the girl to sic on Arch Fink.

Female-wise, as far as the drama group was concerned, that left Dr. Cleo Taurus. The petite brunette medico seemed a less likely prospect than any of the others, but you could never tell. If the healing arts paid off for her as well as for others of her profession, then money wouldn’t be a motive. But as a wandering wife, there was always the chance of another sort of liason between her and Fink.

If there had been such a connection, then it made her husband Nick suspect as well. And Phil Anders-—if he was her lover, as seemed likely. Jealousy might have brought either of them in contact with Fink. And any contact might be an arrow pointing towards the missing fifty thou. In Anders’s case, the money would have played a part. His job as an insurance claims adjustor couldn’t pay him much. An affair with Cleo just might be costing him more than he could afford.

But someone like Phil would have a rough time concealing fifty thousand dollars if he latched onto it. There was only one man I could think of in the drama group to whom handling the money would probably be no problem. That was Will Leigh. A banker by profession, the fat man with his comedy relief approach to life would have known just what to do with the dough until the heat was off.

Peter Putter, like Phil, probably wouldn’t have known how to handle it. Still, any man so obsessed with keeping his hands in his pockets might not hesitate to reach into the pockets of the CIA. And his fumbling shyness might be indicative of one of two other factors. It could be genuine nervousness because he was the one who’d taken the money. Or it could be a deliberate cover-up to disguise the shrewdness which would have been necessary for him, to con Fink out of the money.

Among the living, that left Cass Novak. There was nothing to connect him with Fink. But he had the most obvious motive to kill Sy Lenzio. He wouldn’t be the first man to kill because he’d been beaten publicly in a fight. He’d been close enough to that wall-switch to flip it and activate the power saw without any of the others noticing. The only trouble was that the same held true for all the others in the furnished cellar. Any one of them might have tripped the fatal switch without being seen. With everybody’s attention on the mime, it would have been simple. I couldn’t even be sure that Joy Boxx, who’d been y standing right beside me, hadn’t slipped away long enough to do it.

And what about the dead mime? He certainly could have been Fink’s contact as easily as any of the others. If he had taken the money, that was reason enough for someone to have killed him. That was particularly true if Lenzio had a confederate, or if he’d confided in someone where the moola was stashed. Was there a Lenzio-Fink link?

And that brought me right back to where I’d started. No hits, no runs, and search me how many errors in my reasoning. The hell with it! I was tired. Dawn was cracking through and I decided to go to sleep.

But my mind kept whirling in bed. It started with Sy Lenzio and then skidded away to the dead man’s date of the evening, the teeny-bopper. I didn’t even know her name, but I sure would like to have had her number. That Shing-A-Ling bounced around behind my closed eyelids like an aphrodisiac. I drifted off to sleep ogling the memory of that tantalizingly flaring miniskirt. The dream I had was a gasser . . .

It opened with a very old man—me! Gray-haired, balding, half toothless, skin like parchment, and trembling with age, I was riding the subway. Standing directly in front of me, strap-hanging, was the teeny-bopper. Under the tank-top she was wearing, her breasts swayed with the rhythm of the train. The tank-top was made out of cellophane. Each time the train lurched one of her healthy, uptilted breasts bounced against my chin. Cagily, I let my chin sink and then the long, red, cellophane-covered nipple of her breast slapped directly against my lips. I began timing my breathing with the lurches so that each time the breast-tip made contact I managed to prolong it, to hold it between my lips and even get in a lick or two with my tongue.

The teeny-bopper seemed not to notice. The train pulled into a station and the doors opened. Quite calmly, she reached into the deep V of the transparent tank-top and reddened the wide outlines of the aureoles around the nipples with her lipstick. Just before the doors closed again, my eyes dropped. Because she was stretching to hold onto the strap, the miniskirt had hiked up. She wasn’t wearing any panties. There was a fine, tan, soft down covering her pubis like baby fuzz. It enhanced rather than concealed. The mons veneris itself was high and plump, deeply bisected to lips that had also been reddened and shaped with lipstick. The lips seemed to move with the rhythm of her breathing, the starting motion of the train, to pulsate as if puckering and relaxing in the throes of a deep kiss.

One of my trembling hands was seized with a spastic compulsion. Creaking with age, the arm and wrist straightened and the gnarled fingers extended. After an eternity the knobby knuckles grazed the warm inner surface of the teeny-bopper’s thigh.

She continued to stare straight ahead, swaying with the train, seeming not to notice the touch. But under my feverish fingers the muscle of her thigh responded like a well-tuned violin. Her feet were braced apart for balance and the high heels she was wearing had tensed the tendons of her legs. Yet it was more than just the need for balance because a moment later her thigh muscles were fluttering so quickly that they alternately clutched and released my hand.

Encouraged, I groped higher. The teeny-bopper moaned and grasped the. subway strap with both hands. She leaned in towards me and I stroked the light fuzz gently until my fingers located the small, distended bit of flesh at the mouth of her femaleness. The lipsticked lips kissed my fingertips eagerly, seeming to draw them inwards. Soon my hand was moving like a piston and the core of her being was bearing down on it in a series of liquid slapping movements.

This went on for a long time. My arm grew tired and I became aware of what an old man I really was. But I continued. Finally the teeny-bopper let go of the subway strap and slammed down for one final impalement with all her weight. She writhed for a moment and then screamed aloud with her release.

Suddenly everything changed. Her scream made me look up. It wasn’t the teeny-bopper standing there anymore. It was my ex-wife Marcy in nun’s garb. She screamed again and pointed accusingly.

I followed the direction of her pointing finger to my lap. My fly was open and I was completely exposed. The evidence of my arousal pointed halfway to the ceiling of the subway car. I should be so well endowed when I’m awake!

“Pervert!” Marcy screamed again.

Somehow I managed to reel in my machinery and stuff it into my pants. I struggled to pull up the zipper. Something caught in it. It was the navy blue jacket flap of the man seated beside me. I tried mightily to free it, but couldn’t. Finally, I looked at him. The man was a policeman!

Abruptly, the scene changed. I was standing in a courtroom between two cops. Miles above me a judge sat on a bench. I recognized him. The judge was Senator Hawthorne.

“GUILTY!” His voice boomed.

I hung my head in shame.

“Vance Powers,” the judge continued in the same hollow, echoing tones, “age one-hundred and sixty-seven, profession Inept Spy Third Class, guilty of the crime of senile sexuality and hereby remanded to the Geriatric Psych-Out for the rest of his unnatural daze. Takimawaynexcase!”

Again the dream picture switched. Handcuffed, I was being taken out of a police van and escorted into an official looking structure by two cops. A group of adolescents was picketing the building and chanting. “GERIATRICS MUST GO!” they shouted. “STAMP OUT FUDDY FUTTERS! CASTRATE ALTE KOKKAS! BAN SEX OVER SIXTY! HELP PRESERVE THE AMERICAN CHANGE OF LIFE! DEATH BEFORE DIDDLING!”

I hung my head.

Just as I entered the building I saw her. At the head of the column as it swung around was the teeny-bopper. She was carrying a large sign which proclaimed “SEX KICKS ARE FOR KIDS! WHEN YOU’RE OVER THE HILL, STAY OUT OF THE HAY! DOWN WITH OVERSEXED OLDSTERS!”

She smiled at me provocatively, whirled around, and tossed her miniskirt like a can-can dancer. Her plump derriére was a teasing insult jiggling in my direction. It was flushed and round and high and extremely pinchable. I reached out my hand although it was too far away for me to reach it. One of the hefty cops guarding me cracked me on the wrist with his nightstick. I took one last, lingering look at the irnpudently naked nether-cheeks and then obediently entered the building.

Now I was in a psychiatrist’s office. I was strapped to a couch. The Shrink was operating a slide camera aimed at the ceiling. Before he inserted the first slide, he spoke. “Rehabilitation, not punishment, is our goal,” he said in a tone of molten marshmallow. “We want you to leave here cured and take your rightful place in society as a geriatric deadweight. Now we commence the cure.”

A picture appeared on the ceiling. It was out of focus. He puttered with the camera and in a moment it was sharp and clear. It was a picture of the teeny-bopper from the waist up, naked. She was cupping one breast and holding it out invitingly. The nipple was very long, giving the picture an erotic, three-dimensional effect.

“Now free associate,” the Shrink purred.

“Yum-yum.” I free associated.

A mild electric shock was transmitted from the couch to my body.

“Free associate,” the Shrink ordered again.

“Yum-yum.”

This time the shock was stronger.

“Ditto,” the Shrink yawned.

“Yum-yum?” I was doubtful.

Another shock.

“Not yum-yum,” I decided.

“Free associate!”

“Ugh! Ptu-ptu! Yish!” I was learning.

The picture changed. It was a picture of the old man that was me, nude. Only I didn’t have any genitals in the picture.

“Free associate!”

“Ouch!”

A shock.

“There’s something missing.”

Another shock.

“Good, good,” I said hastily. “Peaceful.”

No shock. The picture changed again. Once more the teeny-bopper appeared on the ceiling. This time she was stretched out full length, the miniskirt pushed up over her slender hips, the lower part of her body arched so that her mons veneris protruded.

“Free associate!”

“I’m sixteen years old and I jump on top of her and I go wild and she goes wild and we make it and then I kiss it and she goes berserk and goes at me the same way and we roll around and around and she makes it and I make it and I roll her over and she begs me to-—!”

The shock this time was a wowser! I recovered from it hearing the echo of the Shrink’s redundancy. “Free associate!”'

“Not for me! I’m too old! Dirty-dirty-dirty! Phooey!” And so it went for a long time. Erotic pictures and shocks and more erotic pictures until I found myself beginning to believe the answers that were shock-free. Finally it was over and I was led to a cell. When I entered it I found the teeny-bopper there.

She was writhing on a cot, her body undulating like a snake with an itch it can’t reach. There was a transparent white sheet over her unclothed body. The buds of her breasts strained against this material. Her body surged as if she was in the grip of an erotic dream. Her hands moved frenziedly over the sheet, stressing the curves Of her body. Her eyes were closed.

Now she opened them. She held up her arms towards me. The sheet fell away and she held her breasts out to me as she had in the slide picture. “Take me,” she moaned.

I started for her. With one trembling hand I reached for her breast. Clutching it, I bent and kissed her. Her tongue was a flame in my mouth. She kicked the sheet off. I sprawled over her and felt her legs encircling my body like bands of fire. I plunged.

Immediately, a thousand pinpoints pierced the flesh of my genitals. The pain was so intense that I lost consciousness. When I awoke, the teeny-hopper was gone. I was alone in my cell.

A uniformed guard came. “You have a visitor,” he told me. I followed him from the cell.

He led me to a room which was split by a counter down its center. The top of the counter was defined by bars, narrowly placed and running up to the ceiling. The guard left me alone. After a moment my visitor appeared on the other side of the bars.

It was my ex-wife, Marcy. “How are they treating you?” She seemed very solicitous.

“All right. Except for the Shrink.”

“Is that very rough?”

“I’d give anything not to have to see him.”

“That’s simply arranged. I’ll write you a note.” She took an eyebrow pencil out of her handbag and scrawled on the back of an envelope. Then she passed the envelope through the bars to me. “Send this to him,” she instructed.

I read what she had written:

“DEAR SHRINK,

“PLEASE EXCUSE MY BOY VANCE FROM HIS LESSON TODAY ON ACCOUNT OF HE HAS AN ERECTION . . .”

I looked down. It was true. I read the rest of the note:

“I AM TRYING VERY HARD TO CURE HIM OF THIS UNFORTUNATE CONDITION AND WHEN HE IS OVER HIS AFFLICTION, I WILL SEND HIM BACK T O SHRlNK-CLASS. THANK YOU.

“YOURS TRULY,

“MRS. POWERS.”

When I looked up from the note, Marcy was gone. The guard came and took me back to my cell. I gave him the note and he promised to give it to the Shrink. I went to sleep in the cell.

I woke up to find the teeny-bopper bending over me. Her breasts were grazing my thighs. Her lips were pursed. They found their target. Suddenly I realized that I was getting younger. As she continued her ministrations the years fell away and I became myself, a thirty-year-old man, no longer a codger. Then, just at the moment when I was about to explode with the passion she had suckled, it started to rain very hard outside the barred window.

The teeny-bopper stopped, leaped to her feet and dashed out of the cell. The rain stopped. The teeny-bopper returned.

“Why did you leave?” I panted, eager for her to resume.

“I had to go to the john. The rain . . . “

“The rain?”

“When I was a little girl and my parents wanted me to make, they always turned on a faucet. Ever since, the sound of running water activates my bladder.”

“I’m glad it stopped raining. Coitus interruptus may have certain advantages, but fellatio interruptus . . . ”

She bent over and encircled me again. But no sooner did I feel the pressure of her lips than it again started to rain. Again the teeny-bopper raced out of the cell.

It happened like that over and over again. After a few times I began to notice something. Each time she returned from the john, the teeny-bopper was a little younger. At last she was a mere toddler appearing in the door to the cell in diapers, her large breasts dragging on the floor.

Senator Hawthorne’s voice boomed from the walls of the cell. “GUILTY! INEPT SPY! GUILTY! LECHER! GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY!”

I woke up in a cold sweat. It took me a moment to get my bearings. Then, slowly, I realized that I had returned from the world of fantasy to the world of reality.

As things turned out, there wasn’t a helluva lot of difference!

Chapter Four

Why must the show go on?

The question was never raised. It was simply taken for granted that the old show biz saw held for amateur as well as professional groups. So, three days after Sy Lenzio was buried, the Pine Glen Drama Group met to decide upon its next production.

The meeting took place at the Pine Glen Community Center. It was my first experience with what’s involved in selecting a play. It was an eye-opener.

Before they got down to the matter of the play, however, there was the need to elect someone president of the Drama Group so that the meeting would have a chairman. Sy Lenzio had been the last president. Now someone was needed to replace him.

This interested me. It seemed likely that if Arch Fink had established contact with the group it would have been through an officer. I asked a few casual questions to try to determine if Lenzio had been president during the time just preceding Fink’s death.

Nobody could remember. It seemed the group changed officers almost as frequently as I changed my socks. In the immediate past, Rusty Roundheels and Will Leigh had also served as president. The current vice-president was Cleo Taurus. Will Leigh was treasurer, and Wanda Humphrey served as secretary. There had been a succession of others preceding them in these positions.

Nobody, it seemed, wanted to be president. People kept nominating other people, and the ones nominated kept declining. The job was a pain in the neck because it meant contacting everybody and getting them out to meetings, and then running the meetings, a frustrating business with a group of people opposed by nature to parliamentary procedure.

The stalemate was finally solved when Rusty Roundheels went downstairs to the ladies’ room. By the time she returned she’d been unanimously elected president. She grumbled, but she finally accepted in the interests of getting the meeting underway. Like the others, Rusty was eager to get down to the matter of deciding upon the next production.

The first suggestion came from Joy Boxx. “I think we need a new challenge,” she said in that cool, aristocratic voice of hers. “If we’re going to grow as a group, we have to try different kinds of plays. I think we should attempt something classical.”

“You mean like Shakespeare?” Will Leigh grimaced.

“Well, why not?”

“Sure, why not,” Will agreed unexpectedly. “At least it would solve the question.”

“What question?” Joy was puzzled. '

“The question of whether Shakespeare, or Bacon wrote the plays.”

“I don’t understand. How would our performing a Shakespearean play answer the question?”

“Simple. All they’d have to do is look at the graves and see which one of them was turning over.” Will chortled, his fat belly jiggling with appreciation at his own humor.

“It wouldn’t have to be Shakespeare,” Joy persisted doggedly. “We could do one of the Greeks.”

“That’s no good,” Cleo Taurus objected. “We should do something the people in the audience can identify with.”

“I agree,” Joy told her. “But why shouldn’t they identify with something classical? That’s what makes a play classical, what makes it last, its universality. Take Medea for instance.” ‘

“Medea?” Cleo looked blank.

“Certainly. It’s about a woman who murders her own children. I’ll bet that every housewife in Pine Glen could identify with that!”

“All right,” Rusty interrupted. “Now we’re going to do this methodically. I’m going to write down all the suggestions. Joy has suggested Medea. Now, anybody else?”

“Dollinx!” Wanda Humphrey claimed the floor. “We should doing a musical revue. This the audience loves. Song and dance and funny pitter-patter, dollinx. They’ll loving it.”

“But nobody has any musical talent but you,” Phil Anders pointed out.

“Thank you, dollink.” Wanda flashed her teeth. “This is true. However, I’m not minding. Main part I’ll do and rest of show we’re building around. I still have script from revue I’m doing in Austria. Was big hit. I teaching you all to dance, sing and all. I teach, you learn. Will be a bomb! ”

“A bomb?” Cass Novak asked.

“Meaning smash,” Wanda explained.

“You were right in the first place, if you ask me,” Cass told her. “It will be a bomb. And the only thing it’ll smash will be the existence of this drama group.”

“Let’s save the arguments until later when we see what the alternatives are,” Rusty decided. “I’m writing down ‘musical revue’ as Wanda’s suggestion. Now, who else has an idea?”

“I think we should do three one-acters,” Phil Anders suggested.

“Oh, Phil, you know how tough it is to find halfway decent one-act plays to do,” Joy Boxx protested. “Why should we get bogged down looking for them?”

“Because there’s one big advantage to one-acters,” Cleo Taurus backed up Phil. “You know what a drag it is trying to get all the people involved in a full-length play out to rehearsals on the same nights. If we split up into three one-act plays, we avoid that. The casts are usually small and they can rehearse separately.”

“I smell collusion,” Will Leigh murmured.

“Do you have anything specific in mind?” Rusty asked.

“As a matter of fact, Cleo and I have come across a one-act play we’d like to do,” Phil said. “Two characters, one set, no problems. Now all we need is two more one-acters to go with it.”

“It’s an early Missouri Billings play,” Cleo chimed in. “Slight, delicate, but very moving.”

“Some more Missouri misery,” Cass Novak sighed. “His stuff’s been done to death by amateur groups.”

“This one is different,” Cleo insisted. “It’s sort of nostalgic. About a man and woman who had their first sex experience with each other when they were teen-agers. Fifteen years later, they’re both married, they meet accidentally and make an assignation. All this comes out through exposition. The play actually begins in the hotel room where they’ve gone to recapture the love of their youth. The dialogue goes on while they’re getting undressed and making love. The climax is their disillusionment.”

“Wait a minute!” Will Leigh interjected. “You mean they make love right on stage?”

“No. That’s the whole point. In the end he’s impotent and she’s frigid.”

“And you and Phil want to do this play together?” Will asked slyly.

“Yes.” Phil and Cleo answered together. “That is if you all think we’re right for the parts,” Cleo added modestly.

“Perfect casting,” Will assured her. “The only problem is are you sure you’ll be able to carry off the last part?”

“What do you mean?” Phil asked suspiciously.

“I mean are you sure you’ll be able to cool it when the script says to?”

“What the hell kind of remark is that?” Phil exclaimed hotly. “Just because Cleo and I relate well--”

“I know guys got divorced for relating not a tenth as well,” Will Leigh told him.

“That’s enough kidding around,” Rusty interrupted smoothly before the exchange could flare up into violence. “What’s the name of this play, Cleo?”

“You Can’t Go Hum Again.”

“You Can't Go Home Again? That sounds fami—”

“Not ‘Home’! ‘Hum’! You see, in the play, they both reminisce about how it was that first time when they were kids and it comes out that what they remember best about their lovemaking is that at its peak there was this sound like a nightingale humming. The nightingale is really the bluebird of happiness, you know? Only they can’t recapture it. The first sweet sexy bird of youth can never be recaptured. The first time only happens once.”

“Thank goodness,” Will Leigh sighed. “When I remember how it was when I was a kid, under the boardwalk, the sand in the crotch—it was agony!”

“My first time was in the back seat of a car,” Cass Novak remembered. “We must have hit the wrong spring or something because the horn started blowing and we couldn’t stop it. Woke up the whole neighborhood. Some nightingale hum!”

“Never again,” Peter Putter murmured, his hands deep in his pockets.

“If you boys will stop reminiscing, maybe we can get back to picking a play,” Rusty suggested. “Now, I’m writing down this Missouri Billings one-acter plus two more as the suggestion of Cleo and Phil. Any other ideas?”

“Audiences love comedies,” Will Leigh opined. “We should do a comedy.”

“Who cares what the audience likes?” It was practically a chorus.

“If we start thinking about the audience, we’ll never develop our talents as a group,” Joy Boxx added.

“A comedy,” Will insisted. “You Can’t Take It With You. That’s what we should do.”

“That’s got a cast of thousands,” Rusty remembered, “And besides, it’s been done to death.”

“That’s the play I think we should do.” Will was stubborn.

“All right. I’ll put it down.” Rusty added the title to her list. “Any other suggestions?” She looked around the group. When nobody volunteered anything she came up with a suggestion of her own. “Well, I have a play that I think would be perfect for our group to do. Parts for everybody, but not so many parts that we can’t fill them. One set and simple lighting. Also, I’ve checked and the amateur production rights are available. It’s called The Momes Rath Outgrabe. It’s timely and relevant; it was done by a new, young Israeli playwright named Herschel Pinkus.”

“Wait a minute!” Will Leigh snapped his fingers. “I_remember that play. It opened off-Broadway last Spring. And it closed three nights later.”

“That’s true,” Rusty admitted. “But so what? Commercial success is no criterion of artistic merit.”

“The critics hated it.”

“What do the critics know? It was too experimental for them, that’s all. They haven’t caught up with Theatre-of-the-Absurd yet. I tell you this play has something to say!” Rusty was enthusiastic.

“You mean a message?” Cass Novak made a face.

“Yes. But one that even you would dig, Cass. It’s delivered by a virile sailor, sort of a Stanley Kowalski type. Handsome, masculine, animal! It’s a great part for the right actor,” Rusty purred.

“Hmm . . . Is that so?” Cass subsided.

“People are tired of that stream-of-consciousness crap,” Phil Anders argued. “They’d rather see something with romance in it.”

“There are a pair of lovers in here that put Romeo and Juliet to shame,” Rusty assured him. “And is their love scene ever torrid!”

“Well, it certainly sounds interesting,” Cleo said. “Don’t you think so, Phil?”

“I suppose it might have possibilities,” he agreed.

“I still think audiences would rather see something they can laugh at,” Will Leigh persisted.

“But they will laugh at this,” Rusty told him.

“Yeah, but will they laugh because it’s supposed to be funny, or because it’s so bad it’s funny?”

“There’s one character that’s strictly for comedy relief,” Rusty assured him. “And it’s a plum of a role.”

“Well, of course if it has humor in it . . .” Will stared at the ceiling reflectively.

“Dollink! If ve vant to doing an un-American play-wright, vy not Brecht, or even Molnar?” Wanda Humphrey asked.

“This is much more timely,” Rusty said firmly. “And it’s got everything. Not only conflict and drama and comedy, but also a female narrator who is a madam and who sings her lines and does a pantomime dance through the narration. I’ll be frank about it. It’s a role only you could do, Wanda.”

“Such frankness I’m thanking. Brecht! Molnar! Bah! This young Israeli sounding like a real find!”

“I don’t know,” Peter Putter said nervously. “Some of these modern plays are so vulgar. But then I probably shouldn’t say anything. I won’t be in it anyway. I just can’t manage to speak loudly enough to be heard on stage.”

“One of the characters in this play doesn’t say too much. He mostly grunts. He’s inarticulate. It’s the playwright’s way of showing the difficulties people have in communicating with one another. I think what he’s saying with these grunts is important, but if you think the play is too vulgar, Peter . . .” Rusty let the sentence trail off.

“No, no . . . ” Peter jammed his hands even deeper in his pockets and looked almost happy.

“Well, if nobody else has any more suggestions,” Rusty said, “then I suggest we vote on those we have. All those in favor of Medea raise your hands.” Joy Boxx raised her hand half-heartedly. “One vote.” Rusty marked it down. “A musical revue?”

“A singing madam, dances too?” Wanda checked. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” Rusty told her.

There were no votes for a musical revue.

“Those in favor of putting on You Can’t Go Hum Again and two other one-acters?” Phil Anders and Cleo Taurus raised their hands. “Two.” Rusty jotted it down. “You Can’t Take It With You?” Will Leigh started to raise his hand and then put it down again. “The Mome Raths Outgrabe?” Rusty raised her own hand and counted the others. “That’s it then,” she announced happily. “The overwhelming majority want to do ‘Momes’.”

“Since you’re the only one really familiar with it, Rusty, why don’t you give us a rundown on the plot and characters,” Joy suggested.

“All right.” Rusty took a deep breath. “Well, the time is today, the general locale a kibbutz area in Israel—”

“Sounds like Sholom Aleichem,” Will Leigh interrupted. “Is there anything in there like the Mostel part in Fiddler?”

“No. The actual setting is the inside of a brothel.”

“Is maybe like a Jewish Jean Genet?“ Wanda asked.

“Not exactly. The main character is a thirty-four-year-old prostitute named Blanche Bernstein. On one level the play is a study of the conflict between her highly fantasized past and the harsh reality of her surroundings.”

“Sort of an Israeli Streetcar, hey?” Cass Novak remarked.

“In a way. But there are other levels. It’s also an indictment of what the kibbutz economy does to the non-agrarian working woman.”

“Sounds like a steal from Arthur Miller,” opined Phil Anders.

“More like Odets,” Rusty told him. “The whole first act has elements like Waiting for Lefty. The girls in the brothel have this secret meeting to talk about improving their working conditions. Only the madam knows all about it. And to counteract the influence of Blanche, who’s a ringleader, she’s set up this situation where Leslie Bernstein, Blanche’s daughter, is due to come home to the brothel from finishing school in Tel Aviv. The madam leaks the news to Blanche and the strike meeting gets detoured because all the girls have a sort of proprietary interest in Leslie and they care so much about her that they forget about their own interests in anticipation of her visit. So it becomes a matter of ‘Waiting for Leslie.’ The climax of the first act is a soliloquy by Blanche in which she explains the symbolic meaning of Leslie’s return to the audience while the madam does a sardonic dance in the background. Just before this the two of them have a conversation m which they speak to each other and -- by means of asides—reveal their actual thoughts to the audience.”

‘That’s a strange interlude,” Cleo Taurus said sarcastically.

“Is maybe a Jewish Eugene O’Neill?” Wanda puckered her brow.

“In the second act,” Rusty continued doggedly, “Pinkus explores the existential situation. It boils down to a triangle with four sides.”

“Pinkus is maybe a Hungarian Israeli?” Wanda hazarded a guess.

“No.” Rusty held onto her patience. “As the plot evolves, we learn that Blanche is really hung up on this sailor who—”

“Wait a minute!” Phil Anders interrupted. “Didn’t you say this was in a kibbutz area?”

“That’s right. An irrigation project in the Negev Desert.”

“Well, what the hell’s a sailor doing in the middle of the desert?”

“Dramatic license.” Rusty waved it away. “Anyway, Blanche is ape over this sailor—-he’s sort of a steady customer of hers—-for purely bestial and erotic reasons.”

“The best kind,” Phil murmured to Cleo.

“However, the sailor doesn’t dig Blanche except for an occasional roll in the matzoh. Meanwhile, there’s a decent type who manages a local kibbutz who’s equally ga-ga over Blanche. He wants to take her out of the life and marry her. She’s tempted, but she doesn’t really dig him. Then there’s a girl who’s flipped over the kibbutz klutz. She’s strictly from Pollyana-ville. A Bronx schoolteacher spending her summer working on the kibbutz, typical wide-eyed American circa Fordham Road and she finds this Israeli charmer irresistible. But, of course, he can’t see her for sand because he’s all a-crumble over Blanche. In the end, the sailor flips for the schoolteacher from the Concourse and the circle is complete. Blanche wants the sailor, the sailor wants the teacher, the teacher wants the kibbutz manager, and the kibbutz manager wants Blanche. A perfect existential square hell with no way out.”

“Oy, vey, Jean Paul Sartre,” Will Leigh murmured. “What about this comic character you mentioned before? Where does he come in?”

“He’s sort of there throughout. He’s a stoolie for the madam. Only the girls don’t know it. He’s a homosexual pimp with hemorrhoids.”

“Hold the phone!” Will held up his hand. “The pimp bit I don’t mind and the hemorrhoids I can do something with, but ii you think I’m going to play a faggot -”

“He’s a very funny faggot,” Rusty soothed him.

“Even so—” Will calmed down and now his voice was plaintive. “If they ever got wind of me playing a queer down at the bank—”

“Is maybe threatening your manhood?” Wanda purred at him. “No having doubts, Will. Playing wrists limp you still plenty mannish. Take it from woman what’s knowing.”

“Well, all right.” Will subsided.

“Anyway,” Rusty continued, “this is the situation around the middle of the second act when the daughter finally arrives. Then begins a subplot with a romance between the daughter and this junkie who’s so inarticulate -—the part I thought Peter might be good for. Everybody else in the play tries to break up this romance, but by plumbing the psychological depths the playwright shows that they’re doing this because their own inability to communicate makes them jealous of the nonverbal communication between the junkie and the young girl. They can only communicate aggressively, like most people, you see?”

“Who’s afraid of Edward Albee?” Joy Boxx sing-songed. “Not the playwrights of Israel anyway,” she added.

“What about those lovers you mentioned?” Phil Anders wanted to know. “Where do Romeo and Juliet come in?”

“That’s a flashback sequence described by the madam,” Rusty told him. “Before the kibbutznik falls for Blanche, he and the Bronx schoolteacher have an affair going. Very torrid. He sweeps her off her feet. Pastoral passion in the dessert.” She laughed. “I mean the desert.”

“Well, I don’t know. Sounds like a pretty small part of the play.” Phil was only half-mollified.

“In the desert?” Cleo picked it up. “I thought you said there was only one set, the interior of the brothel.”

“There is. The desert scene is done behind a scrim. The backdrop is the same as the wallpaper of the brothel room. We just put a gel over one of the spots and turn down the rest of the lighting. It’s simply an illusion we create. That’s why the love scene has to be so strong—to make the illusion take on reality. In a way, that’s sort of the key to the whole play. Everything is illusions within illusions within illusions like the sort of reflection you get from facing mirrors. That’s what the playwright is saying. That one person’s illusion is—”

“— an actor’s poison,” Will Leigh suggested drily.

“—another person’s reality,” Rusty finished doggedly, glaring.

“One thing bothers me,” Joy mused. “The daughter. How old is she supposed to be?”

“Fifteen.”

“Do you really think one of us could play a fifteen-year-old?” Joy was doubtful.

“Well, no,” Rusty admitted. “I guess we’ll have to find somebody for that part.”

“I know just the girl!” Cass Novak snapped his fingers. “That girl who came to your party with Sy. She was telling me how she’d love to be in a play.”

“You mean Lolly?” Rusty raised her eyebrows. “Gosh, I don’t know. The girl in this play is supposed to be a sweet, naive, cloistered type just out of an all-girl finishing school in Tel Aviv. That’s a pretty far cry from that teeny-bopper.”

“Maybe,” Cass granted. “But she’s got one big asset. She’s available.”

“You mean for the play?”

“I mean for the play.”

“I hope that’s what you mean,” Rusty told him insinuatingly. “But in any case, that will be up to the director.”

“Are you going to direct?” Joy asked Rusty.

“I am not!” Rusty was indignant. “Why should I?”

“Well, you picked the play.”

“Then pick another play! I won’t direct! You conned me into being president of this lousy group, but you’re not going to do me out of a part by getting me to direct! I want to act in this play!”

“But the director should be a woman,” Cass Novak pointed out. “If you don’t count the daughter, there are only three female parts. And we’ve got four steady women in the group.”

“I don’t care!” Rusty was adamant. “I won’t direct!”

“Then one of the girls won’t get a part.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Rusty told him. “Besides, maybe one of the other girls would like to direct.”

There was a thundering silence from the women.

“Then it’ll have to be a man,” Rusty decided firmly.

“But there are four male parts in the play and four men in the group,” Cass reminded her.

“We’ve got another man here tonight.” Rusty pointed at me. “That makes five. Four of you can act. One can direct.”

“You said I could have the comedy part,” Will Leigh whined.

“That’s up to the director. The play hasn’t been cast yet.”

“Well, I won’t direct!” Will’s whine changed to resolve.

“Neither will I!” Peter Putter spoke up with unexpected firmness. “I’ve never been in a play yet and all of you have. I deserve my chance.”

“Well, I don’t want to sound immodest,” Cass Novak said immodestly, “but honest now, who else could handle that sailor role?”

“Don’t look at me,” Phil Anders piped up. “I don’t want to do the sailor, but I won’t direct either.”

There was a long silence. Then, suddenly, I realized they were all looking at me.

“You know, Vance,” Rusty said thoughtfully, “I don’t really think there’s a role in this play for you anyway. You’re too tall. You’d make the rest of us look ludicrous and that would ruin the play. You really should be the director.”

“But I don’t know the first thing about directing a play,” I protested.

“That’s good,” Cass Novak told me. “You won’t have any preconceived notions.”

“And I’ll helping you, dollink,” Wanda said warmly. “I’m directing the last show we’re putting on.”

“You will not help him!” Joy said firmly. “If he’s going to direct, he’s going to direct. The actors can’t have eighteen difierent people running around telling them what to do.”

“I’ll need all the help I can get,” I muttered.

“Let’s put it to a vote,” Rusty said quickly. “All those in favor of Vance directing raise their hands.”

“Now just a mi—” I started to say.

It was too late. It was unanimous. I was the director of The Mome Raths Outgrabe.

“Here.” Rusty handed me something.

“What’s this?” I was still dazed.

“The script. It’s the only copy I have right now. The first thing you’ll have to do is pick up another dozen copies. And I guess you should call a meeting next week and cast the play.”

“You think it might be a good idea if I at least read it first?” I asked.

“Yes, And let me give you one other piece of advice,” Rusty said as we walked down the hallway of the Pine Glen Community Center together. “Don’t take any advice from anybody.”

“I’ll remember that,” I promised.

Rusty dropped back to talk to Peter Putter and I found myself walking down the front steps with Cass Novak. “The thing to remember about directing, Vance,” he told me “is that you have to have a hand of iron at all times. You can’t vacillate or your actors will walk all over you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

We parted at the curb. Wanda Humphrey paused alongside me as I was unlocking the door to my car. “Telling as a professional, dollink,” she said, “you should remembering actresses and actors are being sensitive when you directing. The trick is being able to bending with them.”

“That sounds very sensible,” I told her.

“Hey Vance!” Will Leigh replaced Wanda as I was getting into the car. “I just wanted to give you a tip. When you go over the script, mark off all the funny lines. No matter how serious the play, it always pays to play it for all the laughs you can get.”

“All right, Will.”

“I heard what he said,” Cleo Taurus hissed as I got behind the wheel. “You do that and you’ll ruin this play, Vance. I beg of you, don’t let the easy laughs detract from the meaning of the play. With a play like this you have to aim to touch something deeper in people.”

“And concentrate on those love scenes,” added Phil Anders at her side: “Audiences like to have their emotions stirred—even titillated.”

“You’re both absolutely right,” I assured them.

They walked off together as I started the car motor. I was letting it warm up as Rusty, Peter Putter, and Joy trailed out of the hall. They also stopped alongside my car. “Remember, no advice from anyone,” Rusty reminded me.

“I’m deaf to all and sundry,” I promised her.

“Come on, Joy, I’ll take you home,” Rusty started for her own car.

“I hate to take you so far out of your way,” Joy answered.

“Where do you live?” I called after them. “Maybe I can drop you.”

They turned back to me and Joy told me her address. “It’s right on my way,” I assured her. “Get in.”

“All right. Night Peter, Rusty. Thanks anyway.” Joy turned to me as we pulled away from the curb. “This is awfully nice of you,” she said. “I appreciate it.”

“My pleasure.”

“What do you think of the play?”

“I’ll know better after I read it.”

“That main role. Blanche. The way Rusty described it, it sounds like a real plum. It’ll require a very good actress though. How do you think you’ll cast it?”

“Well, I won't really have too much choice, will I? It’ll have to be either you, or Rusty, or Cleo. It sounds like Wanda’ll be best for the Madam.”

"Rusty doesn’t really have the sensitivity for that part,” Joy said positively. “And Cleo lacks the range.”

“And that leaves you.” I laughed.

“Well, I’m not going to lie about it. I would like that part.”

“We’ll see. Next week I’ll have the three of you read for it. And I’ll have to send out a casting call to see if anybody else who’s participated in the group might be interested.”

“I suppose so. But tell me off the record, Vance, don’t you think I have just the right quality for it?”

“I don’t know. You might be too ladylike. After all, she’s a whore. I don’t know if you could put across that come-on-strong sexy quality.”

“Oh you don’t!” Joy was indignant.

“I mean, you’d have to be really vulgar.”

“I can be vulgar. And I can come on strong erotically.”

“Well, you’l1 get your chance to prove it.”

“I’ll prove it!” She was miffed. She was silent a moment. Then she reached over suddenly and grasped my thigh, her nails digging into the flesh through the material of the pants. “You wanna have a party, baby?” She shot me an up-from-under Anna Lucasta look.

“I like the way you make your points.” I laughed.

“Don’t laugh at me, sweetie.” Her hand moved up and down my thigh intimately. “I’m hot for your body.” She writhed in the seat.

I laughed again. “Sorry,” I apologized. “But you just seem so out-of-character, Joy. I mean, you’re a pretty cultured girl and you usually come off that way. Not to mention being an evangelist’s wife.”

“That didn’t stop you the other night,” she reminded me softly, her hand staying firmly where it was.

“Of course not. It wouldn’t stop me. I don’t mean you’re not sexy and attractive to me personally. But that’s a different thing. We’re talking about you playing a whore and convincing an audience.”

“Then you won’t give me the part?”

“I may. Let’s wait and see.” I pulled the car up in front of her house.

“I’d love to ask you in for a drink,” she said. “But I can’t because there’s no liquor in the house. It’s against my husband’s principals. It doesn’t usually bother me, but tonight I really resent it because I’m dying for a drink myself.”

“Well then, why not come over to my place and have one with me?” I suggested.

“I’d love to.”

We rode the few blocks in silence. I drove the car straight into my garage and we went into the house by the back door. I led Joy to the livingroom and asked her what she’d like.

“A hooker of scotch. Straight up,” she told me, striking a pose with her hand on her hip.

“Well, you’re certainly persistent anyway.” I chuckled at her posing and started to mix the drinks.

“I just know what I want, big boy,” she said in a purposefully husky voice. “And I usually get it,” she added. She flung herself down on the couch, arranging her skirt for maximum display of her long, slender legs., She arched her shoulders back so that her breasts thrust provocatively upwards against the demure sweater she was wearing. “We’ve got some unfinished business, baby,” she reminded me.

“Yeah.” I handed her the drink and sat down in an armchair across from the couch. “But I never mix business with pussiness. And I should warn you right now that you’re not going to seduce me into giving you the part.”

“Oh no?”

“No!”

“But think of the fun if I try.” She downed her drink in one gulp and held out the glass for me to pour her another.

I poured. “I‘m thinking of it,” I told her. “And I like what I’m thinking. But I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea. l won’t let any personal relationship between us influence me.”

“My gosh, Vance!” She laughed and took the second drink. “This is little theatre, not Broadway. You’re coming on like David Merrick with integrity. Relax.”

“All right. I’ll relax.”

She drank off the second drink. Then she set the glass down, stood up and stretched voluptuously. “You don’t mind if I get comfortable, do you?” she murmured.

“Not at all.”

“Good.” Joy ran her hands down the sides of her body. A moment later I realized that all my protesting hadn’t even dented her determination. She was out to prove to me that she could play a whore and there was no way I could stop her. And to tell the truth, I no longer even wanted to try.

Joy opened the zipper at the side of her skirt and let the skirt fall to the floor. She pirouetted as she stepped out of it and I had a brief moment of appreciating the outline of her derriére under the white slip she was wearing. It wasn’t a point she played up in the way she normally dressed. But she could have. It belied the ladylike attitude conveyed by her cool blondeness. “Why don’t you put on some music?” she suggested.

I put an old Sinatra album on the stereo. The numbers mostly had slow beats and Frankie lingered over them in his inimitably romantic style. Joy swayed slowly to the music, her hips undulating. She pulled oil her sweater. Then she held out her arms for me to dance with her.

Her body was warm under the silken slip. She moved it against me insinuatingly and breathed hotly in my ear-— still trying out for the part. When the first song was over she danced away from me and kept dancing to the second number by herself. Her movements were supple and sexy and they held my attention completely.

The third song had a faster beat. Frankie let himself go with it. So did Joy. Her hands tangled in her hair, mussing the careful blonde coiffure and leaving her looking wild. The way she was moving now had elements of a kooch dance. She ended it with a bump-and-grind, and pulled her slip off over her head.

Another slow number, and she eased into it clad only in her white bra and panties. The half-moons of her ample breasts rippled over the top of the bra. The globes of her derriére also rippled under the tight panties. She was moving slowly again now, but with abandon. She danced teasingly closer to me, trailed her fingers over my ears and neck, and then moved away. Still dancing, she poured herself another drink and downed it.

I followed her example. I needed the drink. Despite the slowness of the music, things were moving fast and I had some catching up to do.

Joy’s hands were on her hips now. She rolled down the waistband of the panties until the merest bikini triangle was left covering her. Her smooth stomach undulated. The top halves of her pink nether-cheeks kept the beat. Her hands reached behind her and unsnapped the bra.

It hung loosely in front of her as she followed along with Sinatra into yet another song. She twirled provocatively and the bra billowed out so that I caught a glimpse of her firmly uptilted breasts with their long ruby tips. I gulped another drink quickly and kept staring.

“Is this the quality you’re looking for in Blanche?” she crooned at me.

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Well let me know when you’re sure.” She slipped out of one of the shoulder-straps of the bra. Palming the cup, she held it in front of one breast for a moment, and then let it fall. Her other breast was still covered. The bared one rotated rhythmically as she continued to dance. Then she slipped off the other shoulder-strap and the bra fell to the floor. She stood absolutely still and only her breasts moved. It was a fantastic display of muscle control. It would have been fantastic for a professional stripper, let alone for a minister’s wife who came on as repressed as Joy usually did.

She arched backwards and the triangle of panties moved spasmodically. Her hands touched the floor behind her and the muscles stood out in her supple thighs. A moment later she straightened up and lay down on the couch.

One leg stretched straight up in the air and she kicked off her high-heeled shoe. She repeated the maneuver with her other leg. Then she slowly removed her stockings, still swaying with Frankie’s version of “The Lady is a Tramp.” She supplied more meaning to the lyric than I’d ever detected before.

Now she was standing again, clad only in the rolled-down triangle of panties. She came over to me and she drew me to my feet. She placed my hands on her hips, very low, just over the panties. Her arms went around my neck. Then she moved against me in such a way that my hands were encouraged to move downwards, pushing the panties with them.

When my hands were on her thighs, she stepped back and let the panties fall away altogether. She stood in front of me naked. I’d been right about her blonde hair not being touched up. Joy was a tall girl and much more voluptuous in the nude than she ever seemed with clothes covering her. She spread her arms wide and I went into them. It was like enveloping and being enveloped by a writhing torch. That first kiss of the night lasted a long time.

It would have lasted even longer if the phone hadn’t rung. “Answer it,” she whispered. “Then come back to me and I’ll show you ways you never even imagined!”

I grinned wryly. She was still pitching for the part of Blanche. I was beginning to appreciate just what ambition could mean in an amateur actress. “The bedroom’s upstairs,” I told her. “Wait for me there. It’s chilly down here. I wouldn’t want you to catch cold.” She shot me a long, lingering look as she started for the stairs. I answered the phone.

“Hello, Vance?” It was Senator Hawthorne. “How are things going? Have you found anything out?”

“Not yet. I’m working on it. I’ve-—ah—-infiltrated the drama group.”

“Good work. Do you think they’ve really accepted you? They’re not suspicious?”

“They’ve accepted me all right. I’m directing the next play.”

“Oh? Well, I guess you know what you’re doing. But don’t get sidetracked.”

“Who, me?” I glanced at the stairs. “Perish the thought.”

“Remember you’ve got a job to do.”

“More than one.”

“What? Oh, never mind. Just find out what happened to the CIA’s fifty thousand dollars. I’m not going to tell you how to do it. I trust you. Whatever means you think are necessary—”

“So far I’m just fishing,” I confessed. “Sort of feeling my way.”

“Well, before you hit pay dirt, you’ll probably have to come up against a lot of dead ends,” the Senator granted. “Just keep me posted.” He hung up.

He was wrong. The first lead I followed was far from being a “dead end.” As a matter of fact, it was one of the liveliest-— Well, what I mean is that Joy was waiting for me in bed when I got upstairs. I shucked my clothes and joined her posthaste.

“This is a wild casting couch you’ve got here,” she murmured as I wrapped myself around her.

“I’m a long fellow—so I have an extra long bed.”

“You mean a Henry Wadsworth?”

“Ouch! Shall I wax poetic?”

“Just don’t wane—poetically, or physically. You’re doing fine.” She pushed my head down and held it so that my lips were pressed against her breast.

Her nipples swelled, grew hot and rigid as I kissed them in turn. Her nails raked my back and she bent forward to bite my shoulder. We thrashed about like that awhile and finally threw off the covers. The night-light was on and I took a long look at Joy’s body. It was flushed pink with desire.

The way I was looking at her must have excited her. She threw herself on top of me and her mouth traveled over my flesh hungrily. She clasped my manhood with both hands and crouched over me so that she could feel it against her. A quivering polyp of red appeared amongst the triangle of blonde curls and a teasing contact was established. After a few moments of this she rose up high and started to come down hard—-right on target.

But the target moved. Yeah, you guessed it, the telephone rang again! I moved out from under Joy to answer it.

“Vance? I hope I didn’t wake you.” It was my ex-wife, Marcy.

“Don’t be silly. What would I be doing sleeping at three o’clock in the morning?”

“I just remembered about the rosewood tables.” She ignored my sarcasm. “I couldn’t sleep without calling you. When the cleaning lady comes in next week, make sure you have her wax them. The change in seasons always affects them. If they’re not waxed, the wood will warp.”

“Why should you care? They’re my tables. You could have had them if you wanted them, but you didn’t.”

“That’s no reason to let them warp.”

“All right!” I gave in wearily. “I’ll see that they’re waxed.”

“Good.” There was a long pause and then, as if she was reluctant to hang up, she started on another subject. “Why do you stay in Pine Glen, Vance? What can you find to do with yourself there since the divorce?”

“Lots of things.” I glanced at Joy. “Right now I’m involved with the local little theatre group.”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding. You an actor? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. It’s typical of you. You’ve just never grown up, Vance. Next I suppose you’ll decide to be a spy or something. How silly can you get?”

She had a point there, I admitted to myself. It was. pretty silly for a grown man to play at being a spy. But it was too late now to do anything about that. I put it out of my mind and corrected the assumption she’d made. “I’m not acting,” I told Marcy. “I’m directing the next play.”

“You? Directing? But you don’t know the first thing about it.”

I reached over and stroked Joy’s bare leg. “I’m learning,” I said into the phone. Joy muffled a giggle. “I’m learning.”

“Really, Vance.” Marcy’s voice was nasty. “Do you have to resort to directing a play to seduce those suburban sirens?”

“Of course not!” I answered hotly, holding onto Joy’s wrist so she couldn’t reestablish the grip she was after. “Sex has nothing to do with it. Directing is just a creative outlet for me.”

“This play I’ve got to see! Well, go on back to your directing.” Her and her damn intuition! “Night, Vance.”

“Good night.” I hung up and turned back to Joy.

She was sprawled out on the bed like an erotic feast I nibbled at it with my eyes and she wriggled under the glance. She held up her arms. Her back arched and her hips rotated so that the blonde triangle seemed to beckon an invitation. I Wrapped myself around her eagerly.

“My director,” Joy murmured. “Hurry up! Hurry up and direct!’ She pulled me over her. “Ready when you‘ are, C. B.!” she said urgently. “Ready when you are!”

Chapter Five

The following weekend I locked my front door and settled down to read The Mome Raths Outgrabe. It left me both laughing and crying—and both for the same reason. I called up Rusty Roundheels—-after all, she had picked the play--and told her the reason:

“It stinks!”

“Could you be more specific?” she asked a bit frostily.

“Well, let me put it this way. It doesn’t matter so much that the plot is obscure, the characterizations corny, and the dialogue stilted. What is important is that the story is corny, the characters are wooden, and the lines unclear. Is that specific enough?”

“You don’t understand. The author is demonstrating the difficulties of communication.”

“Ahh! I see! Well, he certainly does make his point. His play sure doesn’t communicate.”

“You’re making a hasty judgment, Vance. The acting will carry the play. If you cast it properly, the delivery will overcome many of the things that are bothering you. Look, maybe I can clarify some of those things for you. If you’re not busy now, why don’t I drop over and discuss it with you?”

“Come ahead.”

Rusty arrived about an hour later. She was wearing black net stockings, a very low-cut blouse and a skirt that had been carefully and recently slit up the side. “The ‘key to this play,” she told me immediately, “is in how the main character of Blanche, the prostitute, is portrayed.”

“I see what you mean.” I had to admit to myself that blatant as it was, she looked pretty good. Rusty might never see thirty again, but she was still built like the proverbial brick water closet and with a little help from Elizabeth Arden she sure knew how to make the most of what she had. In that outfit, and with that wild red hair of hers, I could really envision her bouncing around a bordello.

“Here, read it with me.” She picked up the script and settled down very close to me on the couch. For a moment, she thumbed through the pages. “Let’s try this scene in the second act where she’s trying to get the sailor she’s in love with to spend the night with her. You read the sailor; I’ll read Blanche.”

“Okay,” I cleared my throat. “ ‘I gotta get back to my ship,’ ” I read. “ ‘The Cap’n worries if I stay out late.’ ”

“ ‘You love that ship more’n you do me.’ ” Rusty’s voice was throaty. “ ‘But the ship can’t make love and I can.’ ”

“ ‘You can’t do twelve knots; the ship can.’ ”

“ ‘The ship can’t keep you warm; I can.’ ” Rusty threw herself into the part and her arms around me. “ ‘Don’t leave me!’ ”

“ ‘You’re like an animal, baby. You never have enough. Jeez, but you sure do enjoy your work!’ ”

“ ‘Only with you! I swear it! And anyway, We’re all animals. Sex is the only way we can really communicate with each other. And then not all the time. I don’t communicate with anybody the way I communicate with you.’"

“ ‘I hear you talking, baby!’ ”

“See the stage directions here?” Rusty stepped out of character. “ ‘She rips open the front of her blouse and throws herself at him.’ And then she says ‘Conversation is an art and I am an artist. But all art must spring out of real love.’ ” Rusty ripped her blouse open. “Conversation “Is an art . . . ” She went through the whole speech, rubbing against me throughout it. “I’m a method actress,” she confessed, panting, when she’d finished it.

“ ‘I don’t know from love, baby.’ ” I kept reading doggedly from the script. “ ‘But you sure know how to bring out the animal in me. I could eat you all up!’ ”

“Now! Now! Now!” Rusty flung herself back on the couch and tossed the script aside. Her skirt was up over her hips. She wasn’t wearing any underwear. “Now!”

“ ‘I could eat you all up.’ ” The line was repeated in the script.

“Hurry up. Now!”

“That isn’t what it says. Your line is—”

“The hell with my line. Come on!”

I sprawled over her.

“No! No! Stick to the script!” she pouted.

I stuck to the script . . . It was wild! For a few minutes there I wasn’t quite sure which mouth was going to devour who. Rusty’s heavy, bared breasts bounced audibly. Her hands almost pulled my ears from the side of my head as she guided my lips to the pulsating target. Her legs locked around my neck and I damn near suffocated before she attained a release that came close to strangling me.

“All right! Now! Don’t wait!” She pulled my face towards hers until our erotic fulcrums were in position.

“Don’t you think it might help if I took my pants off first?” I inquired.

“Well what the hell are you waiting for? Hurry up!”

I hurried. Then we were locked together. One explosion after another shook Rusty’s body as we rolled uncaring from the couch to the floor. We were like two prehistoric beasts locked in combat. Our bodies struck at each other with an eroticism that was truly brutal. When it came to multiple orgasm, Rusty had compounded the multiplication table. She outdid me six to one -- but that one was really something!

It left me exhausted. I lay quiet on the rug for a long minute, trying to catch my breath. Rusty spoke first.

“You see what I mean about the quality Blanche has to convey?” she said.

“I see what you mean.”

“Whoever plays the part has to really feel it. Only a truly erotic woman can do it right.”

“Like you?”

“Like me.”

“Little Theatre is certainly a competitive hobby,” I observed.

“Ours is a competitive society.”

“Laissez-faire lives,” I granted.

“Then you’ll let me do Blanche?”

“I don’t know yet. I have to be fair. I have to give some of the other girls a chance to read for it.”

“You bastard!”

I ignored the insult. “Joy wants it,” I told Rusty.

“She doesn’t have the right quality. This takes someone who knows how to be downright raunchy. Joy’s too ladylike.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” I remembered. “And Cleo might want to try out for it too.”

“You can forget Cleo. She and Phil Anders have something going. They’ll want to do the lovers—the kibutznik and the schoolteacher. If you cast her as Blanche, you’d have to cast Phil as the sailor. And he doesn’t have the physique for that part the way Cass does.”

“Well, we’ll see,” I said noncommittally.

“You’re really sort of limited anyway,” Rusty pointed out, “You don’t have that many people to choose from. Have you figured how you’ll cast some of the other parts?”

“Well, Wanda will be the madam and Will the pimp. That seems fairly well set. I’ll contact that teeny-bopper about doing the daughter. I think you’re right about Cass as the sailor and Phil as the nice guy. Oh, and Peter will be the junkie. That leaves Blanche and the teacher and three of you to fill the two roles.”

“Well, the one who’s left over can be your producer.”

“My producer?”

“Yes. You’ll need one to coordinate things. Not that the producer ever really does. The director ends up having to do it all himself anyway.”

“Would you like to be the producer?”

“Not on your life! Let Joy produce! I want to play Blanche.” She paused thoughtfully a moment. “Still, Vance,” she continued, “you have other problems besides casting this play. You’d better start thinking about a date to put it on.”

“Oh? Do I do that?”

“You’d better. You’ll be running into all kinds of snags. Figure about twelve weeks of rehearsals. You'll have to check the calendar of the Community Hall. I think that brings you right into the Chamber of Commerce Annual Dance. Then there’s the monthly meeting of the Pine Glen Women’s Society for Decent Literature, the weekly Boy Scout meeting of Boy Scout Troop 137, the Kiwanis lecture series, the-—”

“Whoa! What does all this have to do with our play?”

“You need the hall to rehearse and to put the play on. You have to coordinate with all of them.”

“That’s fine. Just fine.”

“And you should be arranging to have your tickets printed, and for publicity, and to sell them. Then there’s props and scenery and lighting and baby-sitter problems for some of your cast and making sure the rehearsal schedule fits in with their free nights and—”

“I thought the director just directed the play.”

“Not in Little Theatre. Oh, and there’s the stage.”

“The stage?”

“It’s in sections. Down in the basement of the Community Center. There are thirty-eight sections and each one weighs about fifteen pounds — maybe more. It has to be brought up and pieced together for each rehearsal. And after each rehearsal it has to be dismantled and stored away again.”

“Why can’t it just be left set up?” I wondered.

“Because of the other groups that use the center object.”

“Well, who brings it up and down?”

“You and the other fellows in the group - Its god exercise.”

“I’ll bet!”

“Don’t worry about it.” Rusty tried to reassure me. “Once you get involved you won’t mind. You’ll be a changed man. People who get involved in Little Theatre always change.”

“Has it changed you, Rusty?”

“And how! You’ve seen a good example of it today. Before I got involved in the drama group I was naive enough to think I owed my husband absolute fidelity. I used to mope around the house, thinking about having an affair, and telling myself I couldn’t afford it.

“Afford it?”

“That’s right, Vance. I’d tell myself that whatever extra money we had should go for new slipcovers, or draperies or wood-paneling the family room, or something like that - That’s how it is with a lot of women in their late twenties, you know? They either decide to have an affair or redecorate.”

“I still don’t see why an affair should have cost you any money. It’s customary for the man to pay whatever has to be paid.”

“There are expenses that a man never thinks about. Just before I joined the drama group, I was on the verge of having an affair. You know what stopped me?

“No. What?”

“Underwear.”

“Underwear?” I looked at Rusty blankly.

“That’s right. Underwear. I didn’t have a pair of Panties without a hole in them, or a bra that wasn’t frayed. I was ashamed for the man to see, so I wouldn’t go to bed with him. Oh, don’t get me wrong We weren’t poor. Just middle-middle class. But you’d be surprised how many women that sort of thing stops. A first affair looms as a pretty expensive thing to the average suburban housewife. A new hairdo; expensive lingerie; good perfume; new cIothes—it all adds up. I’ll bet the expense stops almost as many women as weight does.”

“Weight?”

“Sure. First thing any woman does before having an affair is go on a diet. I’ve known girls who weighed ninety-six pounds wringing wet who called off their first affair because they couldn’t lose weight. You see a pudgy girl redecorating her house and you’re probably looking at a faithful wife—although maybe reluctantly faithful.”

“Makes sense. But how did the drama group change things for you, Rusty?”

“It gave me confidence, made me feel more of a woman. It brought me into contact with extraverted men," the kind who made no bones about finding me attractive. It made me realize I was entitled to spend money just on myself without feeling guilty because it wasn’t being spent on the house.”

“But you did redecorate,” I remembered. “You finished off your basement and did over the rest of the house about a year ago. Roger must have fallen into a gold mine or something.”

“Roger?” Rusty hooted. “He’s got all he can do to meet the mortgage payments. I supplied the wherewithal for that.”

“Oh? Let’s see. That must have been around the time you were president of the drama group last time. Is that right?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember.” Rusty looked at me curiously. “Why do you ask?”

“I was just wondering where you got the money.”

“Well, I didn’t embezzle it from the drama group. We don’t have that kind of dough anyway.”

“Where did you get it then?”

“You ask a helluva lot of questions! I don’t see it’s any of your business where I got it.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I was just curious.”

“It was beginning to sound like you were cross-examining me.”

“I really am sorry. You get that way being a lawyer.”

“Well, all right.” Rusty was mollified. She glanced at her watch. “I guess I’d better be going. Roger will be wondering what happened to me.”

I saw her to the door.

“About my playing Blanche—” she started to say as I opened the latch.

“I’ll think about it,” I promised her.

But after she was gone, that wasn’t what I thought about. My mind was on the question of Rusty’s windfall. Where had she gotten it? She and Roger must have put about fifteen thousand into redoing their house. Could Rusty be the one who’d glommed onto the CIA money? Was she the one who received it from Fink? If she wasn’t, then why had she been so cagey about the source of the money?

My mind juggled what I knew about Rusty. In addition to the question of the money, I came up with the fact that Sy Lenzio’s death had taken place in her house. I remembered that she’d been sitting right near the auxiliary switch that turned on the saw that killed him. If she had the money and he’d found out about it, then didn’t that make Rusty a prime suspect in his murder? That is, if Sy had indeed been murdered.

It was all pretty iffy, but it was all I had to go on at this point. There were no other chinks in the case. Even the slightest clue tying in Rusty with Fink was better than nothing. Then, a few days later, another signpost was inadvertently put in my path.

It was in my office downtown when Will Leigh called. “I have some legal business needs attending to Vance,” he told me. “And I thought we might as well keep it all in the family.”

“What family?”

“The Drama Group. You’re one of us now. And if you’re going to direct—well, one hand washes the other.”

“What do you mean by that, Will?”

“Well, you know the scene where the pimp tattles to the madam about the strike the girls are planning? As I see it, that’s the big comedy scene in the whole play. But a lot depends on how it’s directed. Now, if I were directing, I’d keep the spot on the pimp and keep the madam back in the shadows. The pimp can sort of act it out with a lot of hilarious gestures and facial business. That way he can get across the whole comical idea of the strike—- the deprived customers—like suffering consumers, you know-—the beds atrophying from lack of use, the red lights going out all over the world as the strike spreads from bordello to bordello, the madam reduced to scrubbing floors for a living, lots more stuff like that. We can work it out together. How does that strike you?”

“I’ll think about it,” I said noncommittally. “But any legal business you steer my way won’t influence me.”

“Of course not, Vance boy. Perish the thought! The idea never crossed my mind. I know we’ve both got only the good of the play at heart. But this will get laughs, believe me. And, let’s face it, this play needs all the laughs it can get.”

“I suppose so. Now what was the matter you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Yes. Well, my bank handled many of Sy Lenzio’s financial transactions. I, personally, am the executor of his estate. However, he died intestate — No will. Now his ex-wife is trying to claim his estate. I know Sy hated her guts. He wouldn’t have wanted her to have a penny. I need a lawyer to fight her in probate.”

“I see. How much of an estate is there?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, roughly.”

“I don’t even know roughly. Outside of a couple of hundred dollars in his savings account, the only asset is a safety deposit box in our bank. We’re not allowed to open it without the permission of the court, and that means not before his wife’s claim is settled. Nobody can even guess what’s in the box. Stocks and bonds? Savings certificates? Cash? Nobody knows. Only Sy knew, and he’s dead. I can’t even say what your fee will be. If there’s a lot of dough involved, it should be substantial. If it’s only a little, it will have to be modest. It’s a gamble on your part. What do you say? Will you take the case?”

“All right,” I told him. “I’ll take it.” I made an appointment to see Will personally and discuss it and hung up the phone.

I leaned back in my swivel chair and stared at the ceiling. This might be even more of a lead than Rusty’s windfall. If Sy Lenzio had been the one with whom Arch Fink was dealing, then that safety deposit box just might be where the CIA’s fifty Gs was stored. Learning of Fink’s death, Sy might simply have decided to keep the money for himself. He might have rightly figured that the CIA would never be able to prove he had it.

Of course, if the answer was that simple, it wouldn’t really do much for Senator Hawthorne’s cause. From the Senator’s point of view it would have been much better if I’d come up with evidence that the CIA itself had misappropriated the funds than to prove that the money had simply been stolen. His aim was closer supervision of CIA spending. To get that, he wanted to show that they were untrustworthy. Well, I couldn’t help that. It was the Senator’s worry.

In any case, two possible leads to the CIA money were better than one. That’s what I told myself that evening as I settled down for a nice quiet evening at home. But the prospect went out the window when the doorbell rang announcing Cleo Taurus with yet a third lead to muddy up the picture.

She didn’t mention it at first. It came out later in the course of conversation. The reason for her unexpected visit was the same as Rusty’s had been, the same reason Joy had come on so strong. Cleo quite frankly wanted me to cast her as Blanche.

“I kind of thought of you and Phil as the lovers,” I told her forthrightly.

“Phil might be very good as the kibutznik.” She tossed her loose black hair back from her forehead. “But why should I have to play the schoolteacher?”

“Well-—” I floundered. “I just had the idea that you two worked well together and so—”

“You’ve heard gossip!” Her tone was accusing and her dark eyes smouldered.

“Not at all,” I lied.

“Oh yes you have! I know what they say. But it’s not true. Phil and I are just friends. I’m a happily married woman. Just because Phil and I have this rapport and I’m the only doctor in Pine Glen who makes house calls at night, people put two and two together and come up five. I know they say we’re having an affair, but it’s a lie.’

“I never meant to imply——-”

“And I’d make a good Blanche! You think because I’m a doctor I can’t play a whore? You think because I’m happily married woman I can’t let my inhibitions go? Well, you’re wrong!” She was working herself up into fury, a petite, curvy bundle of rage. All five-foot-two of her was quivering with indignation.

“Well, there’s no reason in the world why you shouldn’t read for the part,” I told her soothingly.

“Being a doctor would help me in playing it. I really understand sex. How many women know it as intimately as I do from being a doctor?”

“Not many, I’m sure. Still, Cleo, I wonder if you’re not just a little young for the part? Blanche is supposed to be thirty-four. That would make her about ten years older than you, wouldn’t it?”

“Only eight. I’m twenty-six.” Cleo looked pleased. But she kept pushing. “With the right makeup, it wouldn’t make any dilference,” she pointed out. “And you can’t deny that I have the right erotic quality, can you?”

I looked at her quivering bosom, her well-rounded hips, the flushed curve of her thigh where her dress had ridden up, the sensual face with its high cheekbones and dark, flashing eyes. “No,” I admitted. “I can’t deny that.”

“Just because a woman is faithful to her husband doesn’t mean she can’t be sexy,” she said. “Look, I’ll show you what I mean.” She got up, crossed the room and plopped down on my lap. There was a lot of experience in the way she kissed me.

“I see what you mean,” I told her when the kiss was over.

“Just because a woman doesn’t believe in playing around doesn’t mean she can’t arouse a man.” She reached down into my lap and grasped me firmly. “Does it?” she added knowingly.

“You’ve got a point there.”

“So do you. Speaking only as a doctor, you understand. I just want to demonstrate that men do respond to me even if I’m not like some of these bitches that go around throwing themselves at other men besides their husbands. You see what I mean?”

“I see.” I cupped her breast. It was soft as butter under the silk of her dress.

“There! What you’re doing proves it. You want to touch me because I have provided a stimulus quite high in eroticism. Go ahead. Touch me.” She unbuttoned the front of her dress and pushed her bra-strap to one side. Her breasts were very high and pointy, small, but firm. The tips were blood-red. One of them quivered in the palm of my hand. “You see? Just because I’m a doctor, and a good wife, that doesn’t mean I can’t act whorish.”

“You really throw yourself into the part,” I panted.

“You can depend on it. I’m a method actress. All I have to do is let myself go. Like this.” Cleo stood up and crossed back over to the couch. She flung herself down on it with her dress up over her hips. She lay there twitching, her arms outstretched to me. “Take me,” she whispered hoarsely.

I tripped trying to get over to her and out of my pants at the same time. I landed on her, my pants tangled around my ankles. I scrambled over her body to accept the invitation.

“OOMPH!” The wind went out of me as her knee went into my stomach. Before I could recover, Cleo had scrambled out from under me. “What the hell did you do that for?” I gasped.

“You were trying to have sex with me.”

“But I thought you wanted me to!”

“You thought wrong. I was merely demonstrating how well I could play Blanche. I told you, I’m faithful to my husband.”

“Oh yeah?” I was mad. “What about that night at the drama group party?”

“What about it?”

“COOKAROOKOOTOO!” I gave her a fair imitation; “Don’t tell me that wasn’t you and Phil under those coats. I know better!”

“I don’t deny it. But I’m still faithful to my husband,” she insisted stubbornly.

“Man! Talk about technicalities!”

“It’s not a technicality. I’m a doctor. These things have strict definitions. I have never had intercourse with a man, other than my husband -- Phil Anders included.”

“Then you must drive him out of his mind,” I grumbled. “If you lead him on the way you did me tonight—“

“I just don’t understand that attitude. What’s the matter with you men anyway? Don’t you see the difference between the actual act and a little harmless flirting?”

“Flirting!”

“It’s all ego with you; all of you. I swear, sometimes I think Phil doesn’t really care whether he makes it with me or not as long as people think we’re having an affair. At least I used to think that way. Lately,” she mused, “I’m not so sure.”

“Why? What’s happened lately?” I asked idly. I was really more intent on pouring myself a drink to plaster down my ruffled feathers than I was in her answer.

“Well, just between you and me, Phil’s becoming quite impossible. He’s more insistent every time I see him. At least you know how to take no for an answer.”

“With that field goal you kicked, lady, I lost interest in the game altogether.”

“He thinks that just because he gives me a few presents-—” Cleo continued muttering to herself.

“Presents?” My ears perked up. “What kind of presents?”

“Well, this for instance.” She held out her wrist and showed me a bracelet.

“Rhinestones,” I guessed.

“No. They’re real diamonds. I was curious, so I had them appraised.”

“Real diamonds!” I whistled. “What did the appraiser say they were worth?”

“Almost two thousand dollars.”

“No kidding! What else has he given you?”

“A ruby necklace. A sable stole. Other odds and ends. Phil is a very generous man.”

“I’ll say! Tell me, how do you explain gifts like this to your husband?”

“I tell him I bought them myself. I’m a doctor with a practice of my own, remember. I handle my own financial affairs. Nick never questions what I choose to buy.”

“I see.” I thought a moment. Then— “What line is Phil in?” I asked casually.

“He’s an adjustor for an insurance company.”

“Must be a pretty well-paying job,” I observed.

“I don’t know. He used to complain a lot about how hard it was to make ends meet. Lately he seems to be doing better though.”

“A lot better.” I raised an eyebrow at the bracelet.

“I guess so.” Cleo shrugged. “It’s really none of my business. I don’t pry into his financial affairs. I just wish he’d realize that buying me a few gifts doesn’t give him any special privilege. Why can’t a man and a woman just be friends?”

“They can,” I assured her. “And that’s what we are, Cleo. Friends. No matter how I cast Blanche, I hope we’ll continue to be friends. I want you to feel free to drop in on me any time, just the way you did tonight.” I edged her towards the door.

“Oh, Vance, I’m so glad you really understand. And you will think seriously about my playing Blanche, won’t you?”

“I will,” I promised her as I saw her to the door.

After she’d gone, I thought about what she’d told me about Phil Anders. Mink stoles on an insurance adjustor’s salary? No doubt about it. He went down on a list of possible filchers of the CIA money along with Rusty and the deceased Sy Lenzio. I even wondered if there might not have been some sort of conspiracy among the three of them to split the money. I was still wondering when my ever-active telephone ting-a-linged.

“Guess who?”

I didn’t have to guess. If I’d have been smart, when my divorce decree was granted I’d have run out and bought stock in Bell Telephone. I’d swear that half my alimony to Marcy was dropped into the long distance coin box. “I’ve defoliated your entire flower garden,” I told her by way of greeting.

“Vance, I need your advice.”

“All right. My advice is to take a penmanship course and write me letters. On the money you can save you can get a complete psychoanalysis with enough left over to buy out a whole seed catalogue.”

“Please, Vance. It’s about this man I met.”

“You met a man?” My heart skipped a beat. “Is it serious? Any chance of your marrying him?” If Marcy remarried, I could stop paying her alimony.

“There might be. He’s a wonderful man. He has all the virtues you lack and none of your faults.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“He wants to make love to me. Should I let him, Vance?”

“Absolutely not!”

“Why, Vance, you’re jealous.”

“Not at all.”

“Then why are you so positive?” Marcy wanted to know.

“I’m just sure it would be a mistake to let him make love to you before you’re married.”

“Now you’re being moralistic,” she accused me.

“Morals have nothing to do with it,” I assured her.

“Then what is it?”

“Having known you as intimately as I did during our marriage, I can assure you that once he makes love to you, he’ll never marry you.”

“Are you saying that I’m—?”

“A lousy lay.” I finished it for her.

“You son-of-a-bitch!”

“Why? You wanted me to be honest, didn’t you? Why else would a woman call her ex-husband and ask his permission to go to bed with her new boyfriend? I assume you really wanted my advice and I’ve given it to you.”

“It just bugs you that he’ll probably be better in bed than you ever were!” she told me viciously.

“Impossible,” I replied modestly.

“The hell it is! A psychologically impotent five-year-old eunuch would be better!”

“Marcy, if you could bottle your eroticism, you could make a fortune on the dry ice market!”

“And I thought that now that we’re divorced we might at least have a civilized relationship.” She gritted her teeth.

“Even that takes two.”

“I call to ask for advice and all I get is insults.”

“Insults? Nonsense. I only answered your question. I’m not a vindictive man.”

“The hell you’re not! You’re a knuckle-biting marital mafioso! That’s what you are!”

“All right. Is there anything else I can do for you, Marcy?”

There was a long pause before she spoke again. Finally-— “Was I really that cold in bed, Vance?” Little-girl voice.

Marriage had taught me. The plaintive note was just another phase in the battle. The sympathy it might evoke was a trap. “There are areas that could use improvement,” I told her tersely.

“Tell me what. Be specific.” Still that naive, pleading tone.

“The hell I will! Why should I tell you how to please another man?”

“Out of friendship.”

“I’m not your friend. I’m your ex-husband. And I’m not a counseling service either. If you should have problems in the sack with your new boyfriend, you’ll just have to work them out without my help.”

Marcy chose to ignore my firmness. “Maybe what I should do is go to bed with him and then have him call you for advice himself.” She slipped the shiv in with the little girl put-on.

“Maybe what you should do is go to hell!” I slammed down the phone.

Almost immediately it rang again. I picked it up and shouted into the mouthpiece. “You want advice? Tickle his left testicle!” I yelled. “He’ll love it!”

“Vance? What did you say?”

“I said ti—!” I started to repeat it with the same roar before it penetrated that it wasn’t Marcy calling back.

“Oh, sorry, Senator Hawthorne,” I caught myself and lowered my voice. “I thought you were Dracula calling back to order another pint of blood.”

“Are you all right, Vance?”

“Sure. Why shouldn’t I be?”

“You’re not making much sense.”

“Sorry. Just an attack of temporary insanity brought on by having exposed myself to marriage. It’s a recurrent condition that lingers on after the malady has gone. What can I do for you?”

“I was wondering how you’re coming with your investigations.”

I told him everything I’d learned during the past few days and outlined the suspicions to which the knowledge had led.

“It sounds like you might be making progress,” Senator Hawthorne said when I’d finished. “Keep on it. Meanwhile, I have a piece of information for you.”

“What’s that?”

“Our committee investigator has learned that one of the members of the Pine Glen Drama Group is a CIA plant.”

“No kidding! Which one?”

“We haven’t been able to find that out. But be careful. This agent might be trying to cover up the whole involvement with Fink.”

“On the other hand, he might be trying to do the same thing I’m doing and locate the missing money.”

“That’s a possibility,” the Senator granted. “You’ll just have to play it by ear. I’ll talk to you again later in the week.” He hung up.

So now I had something else to worry about. One of my prospective cast was a member of the CIA. One was a possible murderer. Three or more might be thieves. Another three were battling it out for the role of a whore. And I was stuck directing a turkey that probably couldn’t even capture the interest of a Pilgrim.

Yeah, there’s no business like show business!

Chapter Six

Hallelujah!

Enter the Right Reverend Billy Boxx, evangelist extraordinary, solid as the Gibraltar crag, modern as Birch-ish bumper stickers, silver-tongued spouter of gospel and laissez-faire, flag-waver on a transoceanic pogo stick, saver of souls from Setauket to Salonika, keeper of the faith, baby, and husbander to that secretly sinful Patrician Mrs. Joy Boxx.

Hallelujah!

He walked on top of the puddles as he came up my front walk. A Somerset Maugham rain, smelling faintly of hibiscus and straight from the South Seas, dripped from his slicker as he mounted my porch. There was the light of a zealous Rotarian in his eyes as I opened the door.

I’d been expecting him. He’d called to say he was coming, his voice over the phone sounding like a mixture of hosannahs, brimstone, and cherry-flavored childrens’ cough syrup. And all this came through a tone that was really impersonal.

I’d heard he was back from his evangelical travels, but why should he want to see me? I didn’t quite push the panic button, but I toyed with it. I had this hazy vision of a conscience-stricken Joy repenting her sins and confessing all to her reverend hubby. From what I knew of him, he’d Want to confront the devil who’d misled his wife face-to-face.

Now, as I ushered him into my livingroom, his opening words did nothing to reassure me. “I’ll get right to the point, Mr. Powers,” he said. “I’ve come to put my house in order.”

“Can I offer you something?” I played host.

“No thank you. I don’t drink or smoke and I’ve already eaten.”

“No apologies necessary.” I was big about his lack of vices.

Bushy eyebrows rose just enough to tell me he’d caught the put-on. Thin lips cracked a humorless smile. He looked at me with piercing eyes. He couldn’t help that. They were his stock-in-trade. “Despite my role in the service of religion, Mr. Powers,” he chided me, “I am a worldly man. I resist the impulse to indulge my worldliness, but I am not naive. There’s a difference between being worldly and being cynical and self-indulgent.”

“You mean the difference between knowing and acting upon what you know?” I couldn’t hide the fact that I didn’t like people to pontificate to me.

“That is not what I mean. I mean, for instance, the difference between the drive to rebellion in youth and indulging that drive in rowdy protests against the war in Vietnam, the burning of draft cards, and the like.”

“You’d suppress the drive altogether?”

“No. I’d rechannel it. I’d have our young people direct it towards fighting the world Communist menace where it would work for the forces of good. Instead of protesting the war they should be fighting it.”

“Even if their conscience tells them they shouldn’t sacrifice their lives in an undeclared war?”

“That’s a technicality.” He grimaced.

“Granted. What’s important is that they’re acting according to the dictates of their consciences. As an evangelist, you should agree that it’s their duty to do just that.”

“I don’t agree at all. Their duty is to God and to their country. Their duty is to fight against the ungodly Communist atheists who threaten the American way of life.”

“You certainly have a way with words, Reverend.” His last sentence had been right out of a speech he’d made to the American Legion the week before. I’d read it in the newspaper. “I wish I could share your enthusiasm for our young people dying a holy and patriotic death, but I’m afraid you’re right, I am cynical. I’ll opt for living every time.”

“Better Red than dead!” He snorted.

“There are other choices. Protesting the war doesn’t make you a Red—but it may keep you from being killed. Protest isn’t just a right; it’s a duty!” Now I was starting to pontificate myself. I brought myself up short. “But you didn’t come here to debate with me on our Vietnam policies,” I reminded him.

“No, Mr. Powers, I didn’t. I really came to ask a favor of you. It concerns my wife and this play you’re directing. You see, I’m embarking on a new campaign and there are reasons why my wife taking the particular role she’s after in this particular play might cause me great embarrassment. So--” He left it hanging.

I was damned if I was going to let him off the hook too easily. “Why don’t you simply ask Mrs. Boxx to bow out of the production?” I suggested.

“Ahh—My wife can be—ahh—strong-willed. Past experience has taught me that my career considerations do not easily dissuade her from what she wants to do. While, on the one hand she is a simple, virtuous woman of great breeding and character, on the other hand she too seems to be infected with the need to rebel which runs so rampant today. If I asked her to withdraw, she would, I’m sure, react most stubbornly. If she simply didn’t get a part in the play, however?”

‘A simple, virtuous woman of character‘! That was the phrase that did it! Thus conscience doth make compromisers of us all! Having collaborated with his missus in pinning horns to his brow, how could I be louse enough to give him a rough time about this? I couldn’t! “I won’t cast her,” I promised him.

“Thank you. You see, I’m heading up a new antivice campaign and you can see why it would be embarrassing to have my wife playing a lady-of-the-night. It would really leave me open to ridicule.”

“I see.”

“You can’t believe the threat pornography and such poses. I tell you frankly that it’s titillating to even the most mature and moral of people. I myself—-Well, it just has to be stopped!”

At least I wasn’t the only hypocrite in the house. “I can see where it’s a danger to morality,” I granted drily, noncommittally.

“The peril has never been greater than it is today! Miniskirts . . . young girls displaying their bodies to entice . . . promiscuity . . . the whole devil-inspired mystique of the teeny-bopper . . . ”

He was still spouting as I eased him out of the house. Still, he wasn’t all wrong. There was something to his appraisal of the teeny-bopper phenomenon, even if I didn’t see the evil in it that he saw. It could put a burden on an older man. I had to ruefully admit that a few nights later.

By then I’d decided on the final casting of the play. Rusty would play Blanche, Cleo would do the schoolteacher, and Joy Boxx would produce. Cleo and Joy Wouldn’t like the decision, but no matter how I decided somebody’s nose would be out of joint, so they’d just have to accept it. The only casting problem remaining was the role of Blanche’s daughter, the pure, untouched teenager back from the finishing school. I called Cass Novak, got the name and number of the teeny-bopper who’d been at the cast party from him, gave her a buzz, and asked her if she’d be interested in the part.

“Golly, I don’t know,” she told me over the phone. “I’d like to know more about it first, Dad.”

I winced. “Well, I’d like to hear you read it too,” I told her. “Could you make it over at my place tonight? Say eightish?”

She could and she did. It pains me to admit it, but as she flopped down on the couch in my livingroom that evening, I couldn’t help thinking that the Rt. Rev. Billy Boxx might have had a point with his frothing at the mouth about “young girls displaying their bodies to entice.” She oozed sex appeal; she was a dewy-eyed Lolita incarnate. Her name was Lolly Popstick.

“What’s ‘Lolly’ short for?” I asked conversationally.

“Lolita.”

“You’ve got to be putting me on!”

“No. That’s my name. Its a gas, I know, but what can I do? I couldn’t use it. I’d get pretty tired of the wise cracks. So I call myself Lolly.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“Damn straight! You’d be surprised how people pigeonhole a girl just because of her name.”

“Well--” I took a good look at her with her long brown hair fanning out and the purple-shadow eye makeup lending her eyes a smouldering depth. It was the only makeup, she wore, and in combination with her scrubbed-clean, little-girl complexion, her face was an irresistible combination of innocence and arrogant allure. “I can sort of see why they might pigeonhole you,” I told her.

“Well you’re wrong. I’m nothing like the ‘Lolita’ in the book. She was square.” Lolly arched her body. “I’ve been around, and I don’t mean to summer camps.”

Brazen! But she turned me on; I couldn’t deny that even if I was abashed by it. The lower half of her lush young body was pasted into a pair of levis as revealing as skin; even stretched out on the couch her hips and derriére were in constant motion as if she was playing game of jumprope with herself. Maybe it was only youthful energy that kept her bouncing around, but watching her uptilted, unencumbered breasts rippling beneath the too-tight white boy’s shirt she was wearing sure had a loosening effect on my arteries. She made me feel like a dirty old man, and the worst of it was that the feeling only made me more intrigued with her.

It wasn’t that long ago, but times had definitely changed since I was a teen-ager. On the one hand I envied Lolly for accepting sex so easily when I’d spent my own teens having to wrestle with desire and guilt feelings and all that jazz. On the other hand, she seemed so damned sophisticated and free-wheeling that I wanted nothing so much as to become her pupil in the ways of modern-day erotic techniques.

Nabokov was right! I told myself. The Lolitas of today knew far more about the delights of sex than the average mature man. Instead of begrudging them their know-how, why not endeavor to profit by it?

“What sort of girl is it you want me to play?” Lolly’s question snapped me out of my fantasies.

“She’s pure and innocent; she’s spent most of her life in an all-girl’s school in Tel Aviv.”

“A Jewish nunnery?”

“Sort of.”

“Is she a virgin? Is that the idea?”

“Yes.”

“Man! You sure don’t believe in type-casting!”

“You’re — umm—not chaste?” I asked delicately.

“I’m chased all the time.” She giggled. “And I’ve been caught too. That’s why I had to leave Los Angeles. A chick learns how to make the scene real fast along the Sunset Strip.”

“What do you mean that’s why you had to leave Los Angeles?”

“I had reason to think I was somewhat pregnant.”

“And you weren’t?”

“Well, I’m not sure. Even now I’m not sure. You see, it was my first time out. Never saw the boy before or since. But like six weeks went by and I still hadn’t come around. My fogies are big on the social scene, so I figured I’d do them a favor and skip town. They bought me a plane ticket so I could come visit my aunt in New York -- the one I’m staying with in Pine Glen now. Of course they had no idea of my predicament. Anyway, I decided I might need the money to have my oven debunned, so I cashed in the plane ticket and hitch-hiked to New York.”

“I don’t get it,” I told her. “How did you figure to get your problem taken care of?”

“I didn’t really know. I was pretty square about that kind of thing in those days. So I asked.”

“Who’d you ask?”

“This guy who gave me a lift. He was a traveling salesman -- honest! -- an older-man type. I just had to talk to somebody, so I told him my problem all the way across the Arizona desert. I figured he was pretty hip and might know a doctor I could go to.”

“Did he?”

“No. But he came up with another solution. He told me that the best way to handle it was to have sex again right away. He said doing it again would push out the impregnated ova, or something like that.”

“That’s a new approach.” I couldn’t help chuckling. “Did you buy it?”

“At first I did. He wanted me to sleep with him in this motel we stopped at. I said okay, if that would do the trick. But then I chickened out.”

“Why?”

“It occurred to me that if he was wrong, and if maybe I wasn’t pregnant—-I still wasn’t sure, you see—that might make me pregnant. Then I wouldn’t have any way of knowing who the father was, him or the first guy. I told him that.”

“What did he say?”

“He didn’t insist. The first night we had separate rooms. But he was even more convincing the second day. So that night I slept with him.”

“You mean you believed it would take care of your pregnancy?”

“It did.”

“Oh, come on now!” I raised my eyebrows. “You don’t believe that. You’re putting me on.”

“No. You don’t understand. He had a system—a contraption—-and it worked.”

“A contraption?”

“Yes. It was sort of like a sling that fit around my waist with a pulley attached. When we made love he had the pulley rigged to a beam in the motel room. You see, it wasn’t just simple sex; it was the mechanics involved and the intensified pressure that took care of my problem.”

“I don’t quite get the picture,” I confessed.

She explained. In detail. The man had been on his back. He had controlled the pulley which was suspended from a ceiling beam and attached to Lolly by a harness around her waist. By yanking the pulley he had been able to raise and lower her suspended torso so that there was added force behind her repeated impalements. Also, with his other hand he had pulled her by one ear so that she spun around in a complete circle each time they made contact. “It was really wild,” Lolly reminisced.

“It strikes me that he was so busy yanking the pulley and spinning you that he must have had a rough time sustaining the sex itself,” I commented.

“Not so I noticed. He had terrific coordination. Both hands and his you-know-what did what they were supposed to be doing without getting crossed up. And all the yanking and spinning didn’t hinder sexually. It was fantastically exciting.”

“But you don’t really believe it cured your pregnancy!”

“All I know is I came around the next day.”

“Then you weren’t knocked up in the first place.”

“Maybe. But then maybe you’re wrong too. You don’t know everything. Maybe it worked. Anyway, I’ll always be grateful to that salesman.”

My head was filled with erotic visions prompted by Lolly’s story. In one way she was right. I didn’t know everything. I thought I’d been around, but I’d never had an experience like the one she described. It Wasn’t just Lolly that lured me, it was the entry she could provide into her uninhibited World of sex. She was like a living invitation to relive my youth in the way I wished I’d lived it in the first place.

“You’re staring at me like I was an ounce of skag and you were a cold turkey junkie,” Lolly told me. “I thought you wanted me to read for this part.”

“Oh! Sure. Sorry. Why don’t we start with the scene on page thirty-six. That’s where she gets kissed and caressed for the first time.”

“Okay.” Lolly turned to the page and read. “ ‘I’ve never been touched by a man before.’ ” She giggled. “Do you really expect me to say that with a straight face?”

“You’ve got to erase your own identity and throw yourself into the part. It’ll be easier with a co-actor there to bounce lines off of.”

“Well, maybe if you read the other part . . . ”

“Okay.” I sat down beside her on the couch and peered at the script. “ ‘Touching’s just another hype, bubula,’ ” I read.

"Bubula?”

“He’s a Jewish junkie,” I explained.

“Oh.” Lolly shrugged. “ ‘You mean like a way of getting close?’ ” she continued reading. “ ‘Yes. I feel that when you touch me there.’ ”

“ ‘Sex is a fix, mein kind. It’s just another way for each of us to get out of our skins.’ ”

“ ‘Ahh! Boychik! When you do that, I forget all about being alienated.’ You’re supposed to grunt,” Lolly added. I grunted.

“And you’re supposed to stroke my body.”

“At this stage it isn’t necessary to follow the stage directions.”

“It is if you want me to throw myself into the part.” I ran my hands over the front of her shirt.

“ ‘Oy, Herschel! We’re communicating!’ Now you grunt again.”

I grunted again.

“ ‘We’re really making contact.’ You’re supposed to push her back on the bed and fall on top of her and grunt some more.”

I followed instructions. Her high breasts were like hard, ripe mangoes in my grasp. Her body was warm and active beneath me.

“ ‘Please, Herschel, don’t hurt me. I’ve never been with a man before.’ ”

I let out another eager grunt.

“You goofed. You’re supposed to kiss me.”

I kissed her. Cherry-sweet lips, warm and moist and clinging. The hesitant, teasing flick of her tongue. Ah, youth! Ripe berries, wild clover, and springtime!

“That’s the end of the scene,” she said breathlessly when the kiss was over.

“Is it?”

“Yes. You can let go of me now.”

“I can?”

“Why, Mr. Powers, what a way for a director to behave.”

“Do you really mind?”

“Not really. I dig older men.”

“Ouch! I’m not that much older.”

“No. You’re not. You’re just right.”

I kissed her again.

“Whoo-ee! I’ll bet you’ve had a lot of women. You really know how to kiss.”

“Their numbers are legion.”

“What are you doing? Those buttons unsnap, you know. You don’t have to rip them off.”

“Sorry.”

“You really are awfully impetuous for an older man.”

“I’m young at heart,” I panted, eyeing her uncovered breasts.

“You’re also the victim of very bad timing,” she told me.

“You mean--?”

“I’m afraid so. It’s the time of the tides.”

“You’re not just saying that because you don’t want to? Because maybe I’m too old for you?”

“Not at all,” Lolly assured me warmly. “I really dig you. You’re so tall, Vance. There’s so much of you. But biology being what it is, we’ll just have to wait.”

“All right.” I sighed and stood up. “But I do have a raincheck. Right?”

“Absolutely. And I can hardly wait. But I’d better be getting back to my aunt’s now. I’m baby-sitting.” She handed me the script. “I’ll do the part if you still want me to,” she said.

“I think you’ll be perfect.”

“ ’Bye now, Vance.”

Phew! She was gone. But my glands hadn’t gotten the message yet. They were still going full steam ahead on the inspiration Lolly had supplied. I spent an extremely restless night, my head filled with more and still more erotic visions of the torrid teeny-bopper.

It left me groggy the next morning. I was sorry about that because I like to be sharp when I have to play legal eagle. This was the day I had to appear to represent Will Leigh and his bank in the matter of Sy Lenzio’s estate.

A judge acting as referee heard the case in his chambers. Will Leigh was also present along with the opposing attorney representing Sy Lenzio’s ex-wife and the ex-wife herself. The ex-wife’s name was Zelda.

Zelda Lenzio was in her late twenties. The smile she wore was a permanent fixture; she smiled like a razor blade. Some beauty parlor had built a blonde pyramid on top of her head and she balanced it with great care; it was slick like the rest of her, shiny-hard, hair congealed like the smile. She had a good figure, but I would have bet it was tightly girdled and bra’d. No sag, but too stiff all over like a muscleman in tight, tense trim for the championship weight-lifting event.

Only her eyes gave her away. Under the mascara they were too small, too close together, and a combination of shrewd cupidity and anxiety over the proceedings looked out from them. They belied the confidence of her stance and her prominent jawline with its thrusting chin. She sat quietly with her hands folded on the conference table in front of her and waited for the proceedings to begin.

The judge ignored her, as he did the rest of us. He had a sheaf of papers in front of him and was holding them vertically while he presumably made some notations with a lead pencil. I assumed he was familiarizing himself with the case. I was wrong. As he shifted slightly in his seat I got a look at the paper he’d been marking out of the corner of my eye. It was the New York Sunday Times crossword puzzle.

He kept it in front of him as he tapped gently on the table and indicated that we might begin. The other attorney got to his feet. It was hard to tell the difference. He was barely five feet tall. Sitting down I was taller than he was. I felt like Goliatli as he opened fire with his slingshot.

"'This is an open-and-shut case, Your Honor. Seymour Lenzio died intestate. His wife of three years is certainly entitled to inherit his estate.”

“Umm.” The judge’s face lit up as he printed “ERS” for “Bitter Vetch,” 10 Across. “Mr. Powers?” He nodded to me.

“Deceased was divorced for almost five years at the time of his death,” I pointed out. “The executors of his estate, whom I represent, are of the opinion that he wished specifically to exclude his ex-wife as legatee.”

“Mrs. Lenzio will testify that such is not the case,” her lawyer promised.

“She’ll get her chance.” The Judge was biting his lip, stumped by 87 Down.

“And Mr. Leigh will attest to the fact that Seymour Lenzio had no intention of leaving his estate to his estranged wife,” I said firmly.

“He’ll get his chance too.” The Judge’s- brow unfurrowed and he quickly penciled in “KEG” to complete 127 Across. “Incidentally, just what is the value of the estate we’re concerned with here?”

“We don’t know, Your Honor.” My pint-sized opponent managed to sound indignant. “That’s the whole problem. It consists of a safety deposit box which the bank these people represent refuses to allow us to open.”

“According to the specific instructions of the deceased, the box can’t be opened until its disposition has been settled,” I told the Judge. “My clients had specifically been instructed to follow this procedure in case of Mr. Lenzio’s death.”

“Well then we’ll respect his wishes,” the judge decided.

“Aril,” Will Leigh spoke for the first time.

The four of us looked at him uncomprehendingly.

“Aril,” he repeated. “Eleven Down. Seed covering. A four-letter word. It’s A-R-I-L, Your Honor.”

“I don’t like that!” the judge snapped. “I take my crossword puzzles seriously and I can’t stand a kibitzer. Mr. Powers, will you please instruct your client that any further remarks of that nature may prejudice his case.”

“Shut up, Will!” I hissed.

“We’ll hear from Mrs. Lenzio first,” the Judge decided. Surreptitiously, he penciled in A-R-I-L. Then he administered the oath himself to Zelda Lenzio and nodded to her attorney that he might begin questioning her.

My mind wandered to Lolly Popstick as he led her through the preliminary questions. It snapped back again as he started building his case.

“Was there rancor between you at the time of the divorce?” the lawyer asked Zelda Lenzio.

“Yes. But no more than is usual in divorce cases.”

“Rancor!” Will snorted and mumbled in my ear. “That’s putting it mildly! She almost got Cass Novak killed!”

“Cass Novak?” I whispered back. “What did he have to do with it?”

“They were playing around. Sy found out. That’s how come they split.”

I filed that away in the back of my mind in the same slot with the memory of the fight between Cass and Sy the night Sy died. If he had been murdered, the motive for Cass to have been the murderer was looking stronger and stronger. It was something to consider, but right now I had to concentrate on the proceedings.

“Did this rancor lessen substantially during the period following the divorce?” the shorty shyster was asking.

“It did. Sy was a civilized person, as I think I am myself. We were friendly on those occasions when we met. There were matters like hospitalization, disposition of the household effects, other things like that, which concerned both of us, and so we spoke on the phone frequently. It was always friendly.”

“She’s lying in her teeth!” Will hissed. “Sy used to get ulcers on his ulcers after he talked to her.”

“Shh!” I hushed him.

“Did he ever express concern for your welfare?” Shorty asked.

“Oh yes. Frequently,” Zelda Lenzio replied. “Sy was always concerned about my health.”

“That’s true,” Will whispered. “He kept saying she should drop dead—but slowly, lingeringly, painfully.”

“Did he ever express concern for your financial well-being?”

“Yes. Particularly during the period just before his demise.” Her eyes were dry as dust, but Zelda Lenzio dabbed at them with a handkerchief anyway.

“What was that word, Mrs. Lenzio?” The judge’s head shot up.

“Demise?”

“Thank you.” The judge filled in 19 Down. “Go on with your questioning, Counsellor.”

“Thank you, Your Honor. Now, Mrs. Lenzio, did you have a conversation with your husband two nights before his death?”

“With her ex-husband,” I pointed out.

“With your ex-husband.” Shorty shrugged.

“Yes, I did.”

“Will you tell us what you remember of that conversation?”

“Sy was afraid I’d be running short of money. He was very concerned about this and offered to help me. He proposed to make some kind of arrangement to provide me with money for living expenses regularly.”

“In other words he wanted to share his assets with you?”

“Object!” I was on my feet. “He’s leading the witness. It’s an unwarranted conclusion.”

“Objection sustained.” The judge snapped his fingers. “Sustained! That’s it!” he cackled. He quickly filled in some more blank spaces.

“But Seymour Lenzio did indicate that he wished to provide for you. Is that right?” Shorty asked.

“Oh yes. I know that was his intention.”

“No further questions.” Her lawyer sat down. He was taller that way.

“Cross-examine, Mr. Powers,” the judge told me, gnawing at the eraser on his pencil and staring at the puzzle.

“She’s lying,” Will Leigh was mumbling. “Sy never offered her a nickel.”

“Mrs. Lenzio,” I began, “was there a financial settlement at the time of the divorce?” .

“No.”

“There was no cash settlement and no alimony. Is that correct?”

“That’s right.” The way her eyes narrowed told me she knew what I was driving at.

“What was the reason for that?”

“It was something we both agreed to.”

“How come you agreed, Mrs. Lenzio?”

“I was very distraught. I just wanted it over with. I didn’t want to bicker about money. At the time I didn’t want anything from Sy but my freedom.”

“But later you changed your mind?”

“I felt the financial pressure. But it was Sy’s idea to provide for me.”

“What were the grounds for your divorce?” I back-shifted.

“Mental cruelty.”

“And what was the real reason?”

“What do you mean?”

“Isn’t it true that your husband wanted a divorce because you were unfaithful to him?”

“I object!” Her pygmy attorney was so angry that he was standing on tiptoe. “Counsel is harrassing my client! His behavior is unethical and ungentlemanly!”

“Now let’s just watch that, Shorty!” I exploded.

“Stop right there, Mr. Powers!” The judge sounded as angry as we were. “And further name-calling and I’ll hold you in contempt!”

“I’m sorry, Your Honor.” I was puzzled at his harshness. “Shorty” didn’t seem like that strong an insult. “I’m merely trying to establish that the deceased didn’t ‘provide for his ex-wife for the simple reason that he knew she had been unfaithful during their marriage and so felt no responsibility for her.”

“Then rephrase your question, Mr. Powers.” The judge subsided and went back to staring morosely at the puzzle.

“Were you unfaithful to your husband during your marriage, Mrs. Lenzio?” I asked.

“Certainly not!” The look she shot me carved up my vital organs.

“No further questions.” I sat down.

“Why didn’t you ask her about Cass Novak?” Will wanted to know.

“Because we can’t prove it. It’s hearsay evidence. The judge wouldn’t allow it. And anyway, you don’t really want to drag Cass through the mud, do you?”

“I guess not.”

“If you’re ready, Mr. Powers, we’ll hear from the kibitzer now,” the judge said.

“I’m ready, Your Honor.”

Will was sworn in by the judge. I quickly guided him through a series of questions designed to show the interrelationship between him as executor, the bank of which he was an officer, and the estate of Sy Lenzio. That done, I got down to the nitty-gritty.

“You had a personal as well as a business relationship with the deceased?” I established.

“Yes. We were good friends.”

“He confided in you?”

“Yes.”

“Did he tell you the reason for his divorce?’

“Yes. He said he’d learned his wife was unfai—”

“Object!” Shorty hit the ceiling as I’d known he would. “Hearsay evidence! Not admissable.”

“Sustained!” The judge erased 39 Across.

“Did you have a conversation with Mr. Lenzio the evening of his death?”

“I did.”

“Can you give us the substance of that conversation?”

“Yes. Sy said his ex-wife had been trying to get money out of him. He said he’d fry in Hell before he’d give her a nickel.”

“Did he indicate any concern over her financial well-being at all?”

“He said he hoped she’d fall into a poverty pocket and pull the pocket in after her if that’s what you mean.”

“He mentioned no intention of providing for her?”

“He specifically told me he wouldn’t give her money and cautioned me to see to it that she didn’t ‘cash in’—as he put it-—on his estate if anything should happen to him.”

“Had he mentioned that this was his wish to you before?” I asked.

“Several times. And not just in friendly conversation. When he arranged for the strongbox at the bank he said his wife would probably try to get her hooks into it if anything happened to him and asked that all legal means be used to stop her.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“Yes. He said she’d probably succeed anyway. He cautioned me about her being very shrewd and determined. He didn’t think the bank would be any match for her.”

“No further questions.” I sat down.

“Hmm?” The judge looked up from the puzzle. “Oh, you’re finished are you, Mr. Powers? Cross-examine, Counsellor,” he added to the other attorney.

“Isn’t it possible that Mr. Lenzio expressed this doubt because he felt his wife was entitled to inherit his estate?” Shorty asked Will.

“Objection! Calls for a conclusion on the part of the witness,” I interrupted quickly.

“I’ll withdraw the question.” Shorty’s face said he felt he’d made his point. “I have no more questions.”

“Witness excused.” The judge quickly erased an R and substituted a T. “I’ll hear arguments now. Claimant first.”

“My client’s bereavement is so great,” Shorty began while Zelda Lenzio unmuffled a couple of muffled sobs in the background, “that the further hardship of depriving her of her legacy would be a cruel and unusual punishment not consistent with the great principles laid down over nearly two centuries of American jurisprudence during which it has been established that . . . ”

I tuned out. There were a lot of et ceteras while he worked his way through Clay and Webster and on up to the Warren court. Even Mrs. Lenzio looked bored. Will fidgeted. I conjured up visions of Lolly swinging from the ceiling. The judge dug his pencil savagely into the puzzle.

Finally it was my turn. I kept it short and sweet. I pointed out that there was no proof that Sy Lenzio had intended his wife to be his beneficiary, and that in the absence of a will the disposition of the estate should be left in the hands of the executor he’d appointed.

I expected the judge to reserve decision, but he surprised me. “There will be a fifteen-minute recess and then I’ll render my verdict,” he announced. He was still bent over his crossword puzzle muttering to himself about an eight-letter word for anteater as we left his chambers.

“Aardvark,” Will said as we lit up a cigarette in the hall.

“Huh?”

“That’s the word he’s looking for.”

“Well don’t tell him! You’ll blow the whole case.”

Little did I guess that I’d blown it myself. I got my first inkling when we came back into the room. Will and Mrs. Lenzio took seats at opposite ends of the table. Shorty and I stood up together in the center, facing the judge. I towered over him and it obviously made him uncomfortable. Maliciously, I stretched to accentuate the difference in our heights. Just at the moment the judge stood up to give us his decision.

A smile of triumph broke over Shorty’s face before the judge even opened his mouth. I followed his glance and knew I’d lost. Standing up, the judge was even shorter than my legal opponent. It was a long way up, but the judge craned his neck to look straight in my eyes as he announced that he’d found in favor of Mrs. Lenzio. “And,” he added, “I further direct that the representative of the bank unlock the strongbox here and now.”

“I object, Your Honor,” I said quickly. “We intend to appeal this decision and I ask that disposition of the strongbox be delayed until our appeal has been decided.” I had to go through the motions, but I was really hoping myself that the judge would deny my request. I was anxious to see the contents of the strongbox. There just might be fifty grand in CIA money there.

“How tall are you, Mr. Powers?” the judge asked conversationally.