Regina Blue

WATCH THE QUEEN RECEIVE THEM!

PRESIDENTS

PRIME MINISTERS

MAGNATES

MOGULS

KINGMAKERS

AND KINGS

What did they all have in common?

They all wanted to mount the throne of

REGINA BLUE

REGINA BLUE

Ted Mark

1972

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

Rule, Regina

CHAPTER TWO

Faith Springs Eternal!

CHAPTER THREE

Sisterhood Is Powerful!

CHAPTER FOUR

How to Skin a Tomato

CHAPTER FIVE

The "Bird" Watcher

CHAPTER SIX

This Whore for Hire

CHAPTER SEVEN

A Gay Lament

CHAPTER EIGHT

"I Love Ewe !"

CHAPTER NINE

The Sound of One Hand Napping

CHAPTER TEN

Have Gum, Wm Travel

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Short Cut to Success

CHAPTER TWELVE

Dogstyle!

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Double-Jointed Joint

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Spanish Hospitality

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Cranks for the Memory

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Liquid Sounds of Love

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

An Arresting Situation

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It‘s the Tooth, By Gum!

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Laid in the Grave!

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Fresh Lieutenant’s Domain

CHAPTER ONE

Rule, Regina

When Regina Blue was a seventeen-year-old high school senior and-—surprisingly-—-a virgin, she took an aptitude test. Her Grade Advisor scored the test himself. Then he made an appointment with Regina Blue to come to his office after school so that he might discuss the results with her.

“These interviews are strictly confidential,” he assured her when she arrived. “Please close the door.” Regina Blue shut the door.

“Turn the latch, please. So we won’t be disturbed.” Regina Blue locked the door. “It’s dark in here,” she observed.

“I always keep the shades down during counseling sessions. We don’t want any prying eyes.” He indicated that Regina Blue should take the chair beside him, then turned on the desk lamp. It spotlighted the smoothly tanned thigh-flesh revealed by the skirt riding up over her crossed and attractive legs. The teacher sighed.

“Is it that bad?” Regina Blue was anxious.

“Hmmm?”

“The test. Did I do that badly?”

“There’s no such thing as doing well or badly on an aptitude test,” the Grade Advisor explained. “It’s simply to get an idea of the career to which you’re best suited.” He patted her knee in a paternal fashion and left his hand lying there casually.

Regina Blue pretended not to notice. What did he test show about me?” she asked. “What kind of career?”

“Well-—” the teacher hedged. “Why don’t you tell me first what sort of career you had in mind.”

“My Daddy thinks I should go to Junior College and major in Home Ec, and then maybe teach it.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

“I love my Daddy . . .”

“Yes?”

“I want to please him . . .”

“Yes?”

“He’s a dear man. Gruff, but with a heart of marshmallow . . .”

“Yes?”

“He’s a slob retard!” Regina Blue blurted out. And I hate Home Ec!”

“I understand.” The counselor’s hand squeezed her high. “And what sort of career would appeal to on?” he asked.

“I’d like to be an automobile mechanic. I like fixing things so they work. And I like working with men.”

“Yes. Your test indicates that. But it also shows that you’re a little short of mechanical ability. It points in a similar, but slightly different direction.”

“What direction is that?” Regina Blue inquired.

“More—um—biological.” His hand slid imperceptibly up her thigh.

“Biology always was my best subject.” Regina Blue thought a moment. “Does that mean I should go into research?” she wondered.

“No. According to the test, you’re not temperamentally suited to research. Emotionally you’re a little short of patience and require a more active sort of work. Ideally, you should have the sort of career in which you would participate physically.”

Regina Blue wrinkled her brow and thought hard. “I don’t suppose there’s such a thing as a professional cheerleader,” she said doubtfully.

“I don’t suppose,” the teacher agreed, kneading the tan-gold skin.

“Then what—?”

“According to this test,” the Grade Advisor told her in a flat, pedantic voice, “the career in which you would be happiest is that of a professional prostitute.”

“A professional prostitute?” Regina Blue had reservations. “I don’t think my father would like—”

“We can’t live our lives for our parents, my dear.” He took her hand in his. “We have to do what’s best for ourselves.” He looked earnestly into Regina Blue’s green eyes.

“You know--” Regina Blue lowered her eyes demurely and confessed her naiveté. “I’m not really sure I understand what it actually is that a professional prostitute does.”

“She charges money for various sexual services, dear child.”

“But what does she do?” Regina Blue persisted.

“It’s a little hard to explain.”

“Could you show me then?” Regina Blue asked innocently.

The teacher was a casual lecher. This was more than he’d anticipated. Good Shanker forgive me! he prayed silently. “We’d have to take off our clothes,” he said aloud.

“All right.” Regina Blue stripped unself-consciously .

Resolved: Sex Education shall be taught in the schools. The Grade Advisor’s position was pro, and then, as he shucked his clothing and lay Regina Blue down on the rug, it was prone, following which he took a long look at her naked body, and it was pronounced.

“Isn’t that interesting!” Regina Blue opened her green eyes very wide. “Can you make it do that whenever you want it to?”

“When I was younger I could.” The teacher sighed. “Now it requires a certain amount of inspiration.”

“Do I inspire you?” Regina Blue wriggled into a more comfortable position on the rug.

“A dedicated teacher always takes inspiration from his students.”

It was true. The sight of Regina Blue’s naked young flesh would have inspired the marble statue of a eunuch. It was one of the most stimulating curriculums the teacher had ever studied.

The distribution of the hundred-twenty-three pounds on her five-foot-six frame was a classic of Female Anatomy. Her 36-25-35 figure added up to a series of curves which epitomized the Balance Theorems of Solid Geometry. The way her breasts rose straight up in the air, defying gravity, was a tantalizing challenge to the First Principle of Newtonian Physics. And the light covering of red-gold hair beneath her navel, matching the long tresses framing her heart-shaped face with its deep green eyes and slightly sullen, perpetually kiss-pursed lips, aroused memories of a graduate school class the teacher had once taken in Erotic Indian Temple Sculpture.

Yes, Regina Blue was a lesson to be savored! Regretfully, the teacher dared not spend as much time on his studies as he would have liked. The spectre of the Parents’ Association, the Principal, the School Board, and the legal concept of “Statutory Rape” hovered over the scene, hurrying the individual instruction he was administering. He proceeded through the preliminary precepts -- The Fingertips, the Tongue and the Lips as Tactile Stimulators; Basic Manipulations of the Nipple, the Clitoris and the Penis; Elementary Anal Investigation: General Survey of Erogenous Zones; etc.—-at a fast pace which allowed only the most surface introductions to these topics.

Fortunately, Regina Blue was the most apt of pupils. She had a natural grasp of the subject, and an instinctive appreciation of the inter-relationship of the various sub-topics. In no time at all she had mastered the basics and was ready for advanced instruction.

“Are you going to put that there?” The young virgin trembled.

“Yes.” He parted her throbbing thighs and moved into position over her.

“But it’s so big!”

“Thank you.”

“And I’m so small!”

“I know.” He licked his lips in anticipation.

“It will never fit!” Regina Blue was positive.

“Now, I’m the teacher and you’re the pupil. Trust me.” He moistened the tip of his penis with a drop of saliva on his fingertip. Then he separated the lips of her honeypot with his thumbs and forced his way in an inch or so. Shanker! Is she ever tight! He paused a moment, feeling her slippery clitty flutter against the top of his member. “How does that feel?” he inquired aloud.

“Good.” Regina Blue wriggled, excited by the contact. “What happens now?”

His answer was nonverbal. He grasped her high, plump buttocks and steadied her as he forced still further entry. He paused only when the tip of his joyrod encountered an obstacle.

The green eyes were very wide now. They sparked with a combination of passion and curiosity and fear. And Regina Blue found that her body wouldn’t remain still, that it persisted in writhing and rising and shivering with the thrills which chased one another over its hot surface.

The teacher slid back a little, took a firmer hold on her derriere, and then lunged forward violently. The flesh of her hymen was rudely torn and a few drops of blood spattered over the carpet. Regina Blue was no longer a virgin!

She screamed with the sharp pain. The teacher quickly covered her mouth, muffling the howl. Albert Shanker! Hope nobody heard that! Listening fearfully, his mind raced. Somehow he’d have to sneak the carpet out and have the bloodstains removed and sneak it back into the school.

Regina Blue was no longer screaming. The pain had subsided and her body relaxed. He removed his hand from her mouth.

“That hurt!” she said accusingly.

“It was necessary. How does it feel now?”

“Not bad.” Regina Blue sounded surprised. “A little sore.”

“Perhaps I should stop.” His voice lacked conviction.

“That sore it’s not!” Regina Blue assured him. He leaned clown and kissed her. Their tongues duelled. Her nipples burned against his chest. His penis slid easily in to the hilt. Her legs came up instinctively and wrapped around his waist. His testicles bounced hard against the bottom of her derriere as he pursued the attack, falling into a fast, piston-like rhythm.

Regina Blue was quick to pick up the tempo. Her hips rose and the cushion of her firm bottom bounced on the carpet. Then he was deep inside her, straining, not moving, and her whole body arched instinctively to receive him. With the gush of his release, Regina Blue felt the triggering of her own wellspring, and the room spun crazily as her intense orgasm merged with his.

When it was over, the teacher fell back on the rug beside her, drained. Regina Blue sat up and looked down at him. “Is that all?” she inquired.

“For now,” he gasped. “This is pretty risky, you know.”

“Oh.” Regina Blue pouted, openly disappointed. Then—“What about the other part?” she asked.

“What other part? What do you mean?”

“The other part of being a professional prostitute. The Economics of the profession.”

“Economics?” That topic hadn’t been on the teacher’s agenda.

“What you said before about charging money,” Regina Blue reminded him.

“But you haven’t really started your career yet,” he protested.

“It seems to me I have. I’d call this ‘On-the-Job Training’. Apprentices always get paid for that.” She bent over him and stroked his limp penis casually.

“I’ve never had to pay for it before!” the teacher told her huffily.

“I’ve never had intercourse before,” Regina Blue reminded him. “I know I’m a novice, but it seems to me there should be a premium on virgins. I mean they’re pretty rare, and in my Economics One class I learned that scarcity has an upward effect on the market price.” She palmed his testicles in her two hands and squeezed them gently.

“Oh, hell!” It occurred to the teacher that she could make quite a stink. “How about two bucks.”

“Ten.” Regina Blue squeezed his testicles a little harder.

“Call it five.” He reached for the wallet in his pants lying beside him.

“I said ten!” Her hands were a vise growing tighter and tighter.

“OUCH!” His eyes filled with sudden tears at the unexpected pain. “Hey! That hurts! Let go!”

“Ten!” Regina Blue maintained the pressure.

“All right! All right!” He handed her ten dollars.

Regina Blue released his balls and patted them gently. She stood up and quickly put on her clothes.

“Thank you for your advice,” she said formally, starting for the door. “And thank you for pointing the direction to the career for which I’m best suited.”

She unlocked the door and opened it. “Goodbye, Mr. Chips!”

Mr. Chips watched Regina Blue leave. Holy Shanker! he thought to himself. Teaching really is the most rewarding profession! There's nothing like guiding the feet of the young onto the proper path. Another career launched, he told himself smugly. His next thought as the door closed behind Regina Blue was more dramatic:

A whore is born!

CHAPTER TWO

Faith Springs Eternal!

When Faith Venable was seventeen (the same year as Regina Blue) she was a senior at Miss Wilkins F inishing School for Young Ladies. Like Regina-—will wonders never cease? Faith, too, was a virgin. Her brother Dwight Venable, two years younger, attended the exclusive Beauregard Military Academy where strict girl-lessness insured virginity without deterring other forms of erotic experimentation among the adolescent cadets. That summer was the first since early childhood that Faith and Dwight were not shipped off to separate -- and as might be expected—gender-segregated camps.

The children were orphans. Their parents had been killed in an airliner crash when they were mere toddlers. Their upbringing was taken over by the Hemisphere Guaranty Bank and Trust Company, which also administered the considerable fortune left in trust to them. The trust was the particular responsibility of Calvin Cabot, Esq., a member of the Board of Directors and an officer of the bank. He was also the legal guardian of the Venable children.

That summer Cabot was in his early fifties. Naturally reserved, he was a very private man with very private, or more accurately, “peculiar” tastes. He had little rapport with the children, but he was steadfast in his responsibility towards them. So it was that when both expressed dislike of their respective summer camps, Cabot arranged for them to spend their vacations with him at his sprawling estate in the Adirondacks.

Here Faith and Dwight found more freedom than they had ever known before. There were acres of trails to hike, trees to climb, trickling streams to follow, brooks to wade in, and hilly fields to wander over. They filled the lazy summer days with explorations-—and with their discovery of each other.

Although they were brother and sister, they’d been separated so much of their lives that they didn’t really know each other. Now they were surprised at the mutual liking which sprang up between them. They delighted in their similarities and in their differences.

Both were blond, fair-skinned and slender. Both were tall for their respective ages. Both were physically agile and well-coordinated, although neither was very strong.

Faith was more timid than Dwight, less talkative, more introverted. At seventeen she was still leggy, small breasted and virtually hipless, and she looked more awkward than she was. She gave a boyish impression, whereas Dwight, whose features were as delicate as hers, seemed a little effete.

One day in early August they set out to have a picnic. The sweltering sun, directly overhead, said it was around noon when they stumbled on a brook. It was a natural pond, fed by a narrow stream. One bank was shielded from the sunrays by a bower of inter- laced branches. Faith and Dwight spread their blanket out there and ate their lunch.

“Wow! Is it hot!” Dwight remarked when the meal was over. He took off his shirt and stretched out on the blanket.

“You’re lucky you’re a boy,” Faith said looking down at him and plucking at the blouse sticking to her skin.

“You could take your shirt off if you want.”

“No I can’t. I’m a girl.”

“So what? I’m your brother. Guys at school say they see their sisters’ boobs all the time. It doesn’t mean anything if you’re brother and sister.”

“I don’t know . . . ” Faith was doubtful. But she was also hot and sweaty. “I guess it would be all right,” she decided finally. Slowly, she unbuttoned the blouse.

“How come you wear a T-shirt underneath?” Dwight was disappointed. “I thought girls wore brassieres.

“I’m not big enough on top to need a bra.” Faith hung her head.

“Well? . . . Aren’t you going to take the T-shirt off?”

“I guess so.” Faith dawdled a moment longer and then brazenly pulled the shirt off over her head. Immediately she caught Dwight staring at her. “Don’t look at me like that.” She covered her small, pear-shaped breasts with her hands. “It makes me feel funny.”

“Sorry.” Dwight closed his eyes. But when Faith removed her hands, he squinted at her breasts from under the lids. “It sure is hot,” he said after a moment of silence. “Hey! Wouldn’t a swim be groovy?”

“We didn’t bring our suits,” Faith reminded him.

“We could go skinny-dipping.”

“You mean go in naked?” Faith was wide-eyed.

“Why not? That’s how we swim up at school.”

“But you’re all boys. Boys can do that. Not girls. Up at my school the girls aren’t even allowed to take showers together.”

“That’s silly. If you’re all girls, what’s the difference?”

“I don’t know.” Faith had never thought about it before.

“Why don’t we undress behind separate bushes,” Dwight suggested. “You here and me over there.” He pointed. “Then we could just slide into the water with neither of us seeing each other. It would be like we had on bathing suits. The water would cover us.”

“It’s not deep enough to cover me on top.”

“So what? I’ve already seen your chest anyway.”

“That’s true. . . . All right,” Faith agreed. “let’s do it.”

As soon as she was in the brook, Faith moved towards the center. But even there the water wasn’t high enough to cover her breasts. Her small bosom floated on the surface, the distended red nipples sticking straight out in front of her like two hard, ripe strawberries.

Dwight swam over to her and immediately noticed. “How come?” he asked, pointing.

“It’s from the coldness of the water.” Faith blushed.

Dwight splashed the water in front of her. The small waves he made caused her breasts to bobble. He splashed again more violently.

“Stop it!” Faith tried to swim away.

Dwight dove after her and grabbed hold of one of her kicking ankles, and tried to duck her. She struggled; they both lost their balance and slipped under the surface together. When they came up, Dwight had his sister’s arm twisted behind her back. With his free hand he splashed water in her face. But the splashing was only an excuse to press his thin, adolescent chest against her bare, hard nipples. He'd never felt anything like that before, never been so close to a girl before, and it excited him.

“Stop it!” Faith sputtered. “You could really hurt me poking me there like that.”

“Huh?”

“Please, Dwight! That’s a dangerous thing to do to a girl. Throw the stick away!”

“What stick! I don’t have any stick!”

“Then what’s this?" Faith dropped her hand beneath the water and grabbed. “Oh!” Her face turned red. “You should be ashamed!”

“I can’t help it,” Dwight whined. “I got excited.”

“Well, you’d better calm down. Let me go. You swim over there and I’ll stay here.”

Obediently, Dwight obeyed his older sister. They stayed in the water for another ten minutes or so, keeping their distance from each other, and then it was time to get out. That was when it first occurred to Faith that they had a problem. “We don’t have any towels,” she remembered. “We can’t put our clothes on wet.”

“The sun’ll dry us.” Dwight bounded out of the water and threw himself down on a grassy area that was bathed in sunlight. His erection had subsided and his penis curled placidly over his belly as he lay there with his face to the sky. He watched as his sister moved slowly and reluctantly to join him.

“What if somebody sees us?” She dropped to the grass and crossed her legs demurely.

“What if the sky falls, Chicken Little?” Dwight giggled. “Come on. Relax.”

Faith relaxed. She stretched her arms behind her and rested her weight on the palms of her hands so that she was half sitting with her crossed legs stretching out in front of her. With her back arched in this position, her pert little breasts stuck out brazenly. Despite herself, her eyes wandered to Dwight’s groin.

“Caught you!” Dwight clapped his hands.

Faith blushed. “I don’t know what you mean.” She tried to bluff.

“You were looking at my weenie. I saw you.”

“I was not!”

“You were so!”

“Oh, all right! I was. I’ve never seen a boy before. I was curious. That’s all.”

“It’s not fair,” Dwight whined. “I’m curious too, but the way you’ve got your legs crossed, I can’t see a thing.”

“You’ve already seen too much for a boy your age.” Faith fell back on the superiority of her being an older sister.

“Your tits aren’t so big any more, like they were in the water,” Dwight observed.

“Well, you’re not big any more either.” Faith forgot herself and stared at his member again.

“You can touch it if you want to,” he suggested. “Go on. Don’t be scared.”

“I’m not scared!”

“You are too!”

“I am not!” Faith reached out and gingerly lifted his penis between her thumb and forefinger.

“Hold it, Silly! It won’t bite.”

Faith opened her fingers and the penis slid down and nestled in her hand. Slowly, the organ uncurled under her scrutiny. It straightened and grew larger. It felt very hard against the skin of her palm. “Isn’t that amazing?!” Faith exclaimed.

“It feels good.” Dwight was short of breath.

“Do you ever touch it yourself so it gets like this?”

“Sure . . . and sometimes,” Dwight confided, “I rub it until— You know what I mean?”

“Yes.” F aith’s heart beat faster and her hand turned into a fist. “Sometimes the girls at school talk about what happens with boys. One of them had a dirty book with drawings.”

“Up at my school sometimes the fellows do it for each other.” Dwight’s slim hips began to rise and fall in a slow rhythm under the instinctive movements of Faith’s hand.

“Once in awhile at Miss Wilkins’ the girls play with each other’s breasts.” Faith matched confidence for confidence.

“Did you ever?”

“I squeezed them for my roommate once.” Faith’s curious fingertips trailed over the tight sac at the base of his organ. “But I never let anybody do it to me. I was ashamed because I was so small.”

“You wouldn’t be ashamed with me, would you?” Dwight sat up.

“I guess not. You’re my brother. Just not too hard. They feel very sensitive light now.”

“Oh yeah. The tips are swollen again.” Dwight reached out with both hands and gently fondled her breasts. “Gee, Sis, they’re so soft here.” He squeezed them carefully. “And so hard here.” Gingerly, he manipulated the nipples between his fingers.

“What else do the boys at school do?” Faith was panting. She had to concentrate to keep from uncrossing her legs. Her under-developed thighs felt slippery and the mound between them burned.

“Sometimes they go down on each other.”

“What’s that?”

Dwight told her.

“Did you ever do that?”

“Sure.”

“How do you do it?” Faith was trembling now. Her thighs fell apart of their own volition.

“Like this.” Dwight took her sharp, straining breast tip between his lips and sucked at it.

Instinctively, Faith pushed his head down so that her breast was forced further into his mouth. Feeling his tongue circle the nipple, she moaned and moved her fist up and down his erection. Her other hand slid from the back of his neck and found its way between her legs. She was startled at the wetness it encountered there.

Dwight raised his head. “Does that feel good?” he asked.

“Mmmm! Is that what it feels like for you? When somebody ‘goes down on you, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” Dwight admitted. “I’ve done it for other guys, but nobody ever did it for me. See, the stronger kids make me do it. But I’m not strong enough to make them do it back.”

“Poor Dwight.” Impulsively, Faith leaned down and kissed the tip of his penis. Dwight’s whole body tensed. Before Faith could protest, he had pushed her down so that his organ filled her mouth and she had no choice but to lave it with her tongue.

Dwight’s tensed body suddenly sprang upwards like an arrow released from its bow. His throbbing penis swelled mightily and for a moment Faith couldn’t breathe. Then he exploded and she found herself choking and swallowing just as fast as she was able. The effort left her quite dizzy.

“Are you all right, Faith?”

She opened her eyes and saw her brother staring at her anxiously. “Yes.” She smiled at him.

“Do you want anything? Some water, maybe? . . .”

“No.” Faith thought a moment. “I’d like it if you touched me here again.” She cupped her breasts.

“Sure.” Dwight palmed and stroked them. He bent and kissed the tips, flicking the nipples with his tongue. Then he put his hand between her legs and tried to insert his finger.

“No!” Faith pulled away. “I’m a virgin, Dwight. I want to stay that way. And besides, you’re my brother

“If I kissed you there-—just on the outside, I mean . . . that wouldn’t mean you weren’t a virgin any more, would it?”

“No.” A delicious shiver swept over Faith just at the idea. “I guess that would be all right.”

Dwight bent over and softly pressed his mouth to the damp, scarlet lips. A second later his tongue encountered her small, erect, well-oiled clitoris. Faith’s thighs squeezed spasmodically around his ears.

Gasping, she squeezed her breasts, teasing the nipples with her fingertips. Thrill after thrill welled up from her fulcrum and washed over her body. Her bottom writhed on the grass, rising and falling, moving in small circles. Finally she screamed and clutched her brother’s head between her legs with all her strength. It was like nothing she’d ever felt before. When it was over she fell back on the grass, spent and happy.

After that first time, Faith and Dwight couldn’t turn off what had been turned on between them. Their vacation days were filled with erotic play in concealed glens and hidden caves and even leaf-shielded branches high up in the trees. At night they often sneaked into each other’s bedrooms, leaving red-eyed but happy before dawn.

They imposed only one restriction on themselves. Neither by tongue, by finger, nor by penis was Dwight allowed to terminate Faith’s virgin status. They observed this restriction scrupulously.

So Faith was still a virgin when-—inevitably—they were caught. The pain from a piece of stringy meat lodged between his dentures and his gum had roused Calvin Cabot in the middle of the night and sent him downstairs to the bathroom in search of a piece of dental floss. Returning, he heard strange sounds coming from Dwight’s bedroom. Thinking the boy might be having a nightmare, he’d gone to awaken him. The fellatious sight revealed to him by the light from the hallway when he opened the door left him momentarily speechless.

“AygoodnzleesogahiddobewiDwigh.” Faith saw Cabot standing there and reacted with a hastily improvised, but ill-voiced explanation.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full!” Cabot remonstrated.

Faith sat up. “I couldn’t sleep.” She repeated her statement, articulating carefully as if trying to make up for the bad manners Cabot had deprecated. “So I got into bed with Dwight.”

It wouldn’t wash. Incest is the most potent of taboos. And Cabot had seen what he had seen.

He sent Faith back to her room. The rest of that long night-—the longest night in Dwight’s adolescent life-—Cabot spent impressing upon the fifteen-year-old boy the horrendousness of the sin he’d committed with his sister. (Was there something in the man that drove him to keep hammering away at the point even long after it had been made? Something that made it necessary for him to pump more—and yet still more-—horror and guilt into the boy’s mind? Something that enjoyed destroying the boy’s trust in his own instincts, and in himself?)

The next day Cabot repeated the process with Faith. As with Dwight, he overwhelmed her with his disapproval, struck at the very roots of her sexual nature, and left her with naught save distrust for her body. (But was there not perhaps a hint of lip-licking in the very intensity of Calvin Cabot’s disapproval?)

Cabot saw to it that throughout the remainder of the vacation brother and sister were never allowed to be alone together. He also contrived to keep them separated from members of the opposite sex through four more years of girls’ college, military academy and sex-segregated summer camps. This policy, inaugurated with the lacerating Cabot made on their guilt-ridden psyches, had two unexpected results.

The first was that Dwight extended his guilt feelings about his sister so that all members of the female sex were included. After that summer he never again had any sort of physical contact with girls. The second was that Faith felt so unclean in her soul, as well as her body, that from that day forward she retreated to the realm of the spirit whence her being might be restored. She never again gave in to carnal impulses, neither with others, nor solitarily.

Faith didn’t join a nunnery, but she might as well have. Her religious leanings pointed her towards the mystic East, rather than the orthodox West. But her life was as ascetic as if she had taken Carmelite vows. Faith was a virgin at the beginning of that summer of her seventeenth year. Due to the care she and her brother had taken, she was a virgin at its end. And she remained a virgin for the next seven years. Yes, she was a virgin on her twenty-fourth birthday, which followed the twenty-fourth birthday of Regina Blue by six weeks. What’s more, Faith Venable’s virginity was still intact some three months later when she was murdered!

The Medical Examiner from the Homicide Division of the New York City Police Department, after completing his examination of the corpse of the victim, succinctly—albeit cynically—paid homage to poor dead Faith Venable’s undisturbed hymen as follows:

“Who says you can’t take it with you?”

CHAPTER THREE

Sisterhood Is Powerful!

Regina Blue met Faith Venable the night before Faith was murdered. The next time Regina saw her, the willowy blonde girl was dead.

Faith’s corpsiness was an embarrassment to Regina Blue. The only door to Regina’s Park Avenue penthouse apartment, where the slaying occurred, was locked from the inside. Seemingly, Regina was the only one on the premises. Except, of course, for the cadaver, which had one of Regina’s Mark Cross carving knives embedded in its rather scrawny left breast. It lay sprawled just beyond the wood-paneled foyer, still oozing blood onto the Persian carpet in the sunken livingroom.

Sad. Regina Blue was quite fond of the Persian. It was one of the favorite possessions which had accrued to her through seven years of highly selective whoring.

Other rewards included a sizeable bank account, an impressive stock portfolio, a wardrobe of Paris originals, several Picasso prints (Limited Edition; signed in the stone), an authentic collection of pre-Columbian sculpture, a Steinway grand, and a maroon-and-beige Mercedes-Benz 280SL sports coupe. Which is only to scratch the surface of Regina’s fuck-fed affluence. The golden redhead had come a long way since cherryhood.

At twenty-four, Regina Blue was to Whoredom what Einstein was to Science, Shakespeare to Literature, Wagner to Music. Yet she had never walked a street, never hustled a bar, and only briefly worked in a bordello—a fancy New Orleans establishment where, as an apprentice, Regina quickly became expert at her chosen trade of turning tricks. Next stop was New York City with a letter of recommendation to a top mafioso.

The mafioso personally put her ability to the test. Then, impressed, he provided seed money for a wardrobe and a modest apartment. He also carefully selected her first patrons with an eye towards upward mobility. Quality of clientele, not quantity, was stressed. Gentleman jockeys, not bronc busters, are suitable for a thoroughbred.

First in the saddle was a wealthy Attorney General on his way to being Governor of a nearby state. A potency problem almost left him at the starting gate. It vanished when Regina Blue put on the feedbag. They went the distance thrice that first night, a track record for the rider.

The Governor (currently being touted as a dark horse candidate for the Presidency) was the first in a long line of notables who went to stud at the Blue paddock. They included industrialists, financiers, movie stars, labor leaders, Cosa Nostra overlords, high political and military mucky-mucks, and even as visiting royalty. All could afford the purse claimed by the talented filly. None begrudged the stakes, or the extra sugar they lavished upon her.

Such gifts were only some of the fringe benefits. There were also weekends in Palm Beach, excursions to Vegas, yachting trips and jaunts to the Riviera. Not to mention the social advantages. Regina attended exclusive Southampton debuts, lavish Hollywood premieres, select Washington cocktail parties.

Elegant in a Dior gown, she was presented at the Court of St. James followed by grouse-shooting in Scotland with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who assumed she was an American debutante and found her most charming. Once she was escorted to a Presidential Inaugural Ball by a bachelor cabinet appointee. Another time she spent three days on an isolated estate in a neutral European duchy as the guest of a vacationing Russian Premier. (He turned out to be not half so virile as the Arabian Sheik in whose palace she spent a memorable week.)

“The Life” had turned out to be quite a life for Regina Blue. Yet (take heart, moralists!) she wasn't happy. There was this dissatisfaction, undefined, a feeling of being somehow unfulfilled, of not living up to her potential. (Of course Regina was more than living up to her sexual potential; man after man confirmed that. Still, Woman cannot live by bed alone!) She felt vaguely that Life must have more Meaning, a Purpose, jazz like that—for females as well as males.

Jaunts aside, most of Regina’s time was spent in New York. Here, whie her nights were usually filled, her days were too often empty. Her male playmates were busy with more important matters between nine in the ayem and five in the p. So Regina was bored. Proof that no matter how frivolous the job, all work and no play makes jack, but dulls joy.

To fill the hours, and with an eye towards keeping in shape as well, Regina enrolled in a karate course for women. She had a natural talent for it, quickly won her first belt, and moved on to more advanced lessons. This was where she met Wilma.

Wilma was a short, squat girl with linebacker muscles and a sallow complexion. She was a manicurist by profession, and at that time was just becoming interested in the Women’s Liberation Movement. She communicated this interest to Regina, and one day she invited the glamorous redhead to a “Consciousness-Raising.”

"It’s an ice-breaking session,” Wilma explained. “None of the girls really know each other. Mrs. Breen - --she’s a regular customer of mine at the beauty parlor—said to bring along any girls that were interested. It’s eight-thirty at her place.” Wilma gave Regina the address.

“Is she the leader? Mrs. Breen?”

“There is no leader. The way I get it, we just sit around in a circle and each of us tells what it means to her to be a Woman. Then we sort of drift into a specific topic, and we each react to that—but always from our experience as women.”

That was pretty much the way it went. With Regina, there were seven women present, including Mrs. Juliano, who was Mrs. Breen’s aged grandmother, and who evidently lived with her. Mr. Breen, a burly man with pronounced five o’clock shadow, arranged the armchairs and the curved sofa in a circle in the living-room. Wearing a frilly apron, he passed around the little canapés he’d prepared. When the girls had settled themselves, he discreetly retired to the kitchen where he’d be within calling distance should his wife require anything further for her guests. There he perched on a stool and read the Playboy Adviser which instructed him as to how a man may escape the “male chauvinist pig bag” by tightening his anus during coitus, thereby avoiding premature ejaculation while providing the stamina needed to insure the female orgasm.

When he had gone, Mrs. Breen suggested to the girls that they introduce themselves. “First names only,” the chic, dark-haired hostess advised. “That’s what the New York Radical Feminists recommend.”

“Why is that?” someone wondered.

Mrs. Breen adjusted the crease in the pants of her stylish pink slack suit. “Because last names are men’s names,” she replied. “If you're married it’s your husband’s name. If you’re single, it’s your father’s.” She took a deep breath which swelled the generous curve of her bosom and revealed that she wasn’t wearing a bra. “I’ll start,” she continued. “My name is Barbara. I’m twenty-nine years old. I’m a housewife. My husband is a professional hockey player.”

“Why define yourself by what your husband does?” Wilma asked. Then, as everybody looked at her, the chunky manicurist blushed. “I’m Wilma,” she said hurriedly. “I’m twenty-two. I work in a beauty parlor. I’m not married. Maybe that’s why I made that crack. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, Dearie. Maybe you hit the nail on the old head.” The speaker was a blowsy girl with a brassy bleach job. She was dressed loudly, overly made-up, and carried ten pounds of overweight, all in her behind. “Call me Gertie. I’m twenty-eight. I should be thirty-two, but I was out sick a few years. I’m a housewife too. My lord-and-master’s a garbage-man. Hah!”

“Why are you self-conscious about your age?” Barbara asked.

“So who’s self-conscious? What they don’t know won’t hurt them. Shave a year here, a year there, you live twice as long.”

“By ‘they,’ you mean men,” Barbara said. “That kind of thing is just why we’re here. Let’s get back to it. . . . Your turn.” She smiled at the tall, slender black woman seated next to Gertie.

“Ellen. That’s my name. I’m thirty-two, married, two kids. I’ve got a Master’s in Industrial Engineering. I work by the day as a domestic.”

“You’re at the wrong meeting,” Wilma told her. “A black engineer doing somebody else’s housework! You should join the Panthers!”

“Not really. If I was a black man with my qualifications, even as bad as things are in engineering today, I might get hired over a white man. But a black woman? Forget it!”

“Say, honey,” Gertie seized the opportunity, “would you maybe have a free cleaning day Thursdays?”

“Gertie!” Barbara exclaimed.

“State of Maine to you,” Ellen replied sweetly.

“Huh?”

“Upper U. S.!” Ellen mimicked a thick Italian accent.

For some reason this roused Mrs. Iuliano, who had been dozing. Now she sat up straight in her rocking-chair and spoke. “My name is Mrs. Juliano—” she began.

“First names, Grandma,” Barbara told her.

“Mrs. Juliano!” the old lady insisted. “I’m ninety-two years old and I’m a retired housewife. Mrs. Juliano!” She glared at them and then subsided, closing her eyes, humming to herself as she rocked.

“Dear?” Barbara’s husband loomed muscularly in the doorway to the kitchen. His eyes focused on Regina Blue and then he looked away demurely. His hand automatically went to his crewcut and patted it into place. “What time would you like me to serve the coffee?” he asked his wife. “I have to know so I can put the brownies in early enough so they won’t get cold.”

“I’ll let you know in time,” Barbara told him.

“All right.” He stole one more furtive look at Regina, giggled nervously, and went back to the kitchen.

It was Regina’s turn to introduce herself. She told them her name, and that she was twenty-four years old, and then took a deep breath. “I’m a whore,” she announced.

“I know just what you mean.” Gertie broke the startled silence. “Sometimes I hold out on Stanley, my husband, to get what I want. Then when I get it, I feel like I’m being paid for putting out. All wives are whores!”

“I’m not married,” Regina replied.

“You don’t have to be married to be a whore.” Wilma was bitter. “I’m single. Lots of times I lay down just so some guy will ask me out again. Most single girls figure sex is what you give for what you get-— dinner, a movie, you know.”

“We seem to be saying we all feel like whores,” Barbara pointed out. “One way or another, we all sell ourselves to men. Do you suppose all women feel like that?”

“Not me!” Mrs. Juliano suddenly cackled. “I’m a widow. Husband’s been dead thirty years. Left me a bundle.”

“But when he was alive, he exploited you, Grandma,” Barbara said.

“Hogwash! I exploited him! Saw to it that he’d work himself to death and leave me well-fixed. And he did!”

“That only shows men are the victims as well as the exploiters, Grandma. But before we can help them, we have to help ourselves. Women have to get their heads together. They have to recognize the ways in which men exploit them.”

Regina thought of her plush apartment, her Mercedes, her trips abroad. “I don’t feel exploited,” she said doubtfully.

“You think it’s right to sell your body?” Gertie snarled.

“Do you? The only difference between us is that I'm better paid. You said yourself you have sex so your husband will give you things. I just have more variety. And I’ll bet I enjoy it more, too!”

“You must know Stanley!” Gertie was suspicious.

“I don’t remember any garbagemen among my clients.” Regina was haughty. “Besides, a prostitute is bound to silence—like a priest.”

“Let’s not go at each other,” Barbara chided them. “We have to join forces, support one another, forget our differences. We are all exploited.”

“Right on!” Ellen tossed her Afro. “Look—-” She turned earnestly to Regina. “It’s like one cat’s exploited as an advertising copywriter at twenty-five thousand a year, and another’s exploited as the office janitor for fifty bucks a week. Now the copywriter— that’s you—he’s pretty damn comfortable being exploited. But if he didn’t let himself be used, then the janitor couldn’t be exploited either. What I’m saying is that superior ability—or looks—is no excuse. And the fact that you’re well paid for degrading your-self is no excuse either. It just encourages other women to sell themselves -- one way or another. I don’t want to insult you, but actually you’re sort of a sexist version of an Uncle Tom. When you sell out, you sell us all out.”

The point hit Regina Blue hard. She recognized that she had everything she needed and that there was no good reason for her to go on prostituting herself. She could give up “The Life”; she could find some other career to pursue; she could and she should! But would she?

“You haven’t said anything.” Barbara tried to draw out the last girl, the blonde in the wool jumper with the faraway expression on her thin, intense face. “What do you think of the sexual role of women in our society?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Faith Venable answered. “I’m a virgin.”

They stared at her.

Gertie was the first to recover. “A whore I’ll buy," she said. “But a virgin-?!” Gertie snorted loudly.

“Tell us about yourself,” Barbara suggested.

“My name is Faith. I’m twenty-four years old. I’m-”

“Stop right there!” Ellen held up a firm ebony hand. “You’re twenty-four years old and you’re still a virgin?”

“Yes.”

“In New York City?” Wilma was disbelieving.

“That’s right.”

“A spinster?” Mrs. Juliano came to life. “In this day and age?”

“Who says amateurs are ruining the business?” Regina murmured.

“Honey—” Sallow-faced, square-built Wilma took Faith’s hand and automatically examined the fingernails. “Honey, you’re just not trying!”

“I have no desire to try. I don’t miss sex.”

Barbara quieted the hubbub which greeted this. “Maybe Faith has the right idea,” she said. “Maybe not having sex with men is best.”

“Right on!” Mrs. Juliano cackled. “Sex is piffle!” In the kitchen there was an angry rattle of pots and pans.

“If no sex is the price of being a liberated woman,” Gertie protested, “then I’ll take the shackles!”

“Hear me out,” Barbara continued. “Let’s be honest. Most men don’t satisfy a woman anyway. All they know how to do is—pardon the expression-—-hop on and off. Half the time they get their jollies and leave the woman hung up.”

“Men are piffle!” Mrs. Juliano interrupted, muttering.

From the kitchen came the sound of shattering crockery.

“For sheer physical satisfaction,” Barbara concluded, “masturbation is better most of the time!”

“I don’t masturbate,” Faith responded.

“What do you do?” Gertie demanded. “If you’ve got something new, let us in on it.”

“I meditate.”

“What?”

“I meditate,” Faith repeated. “Transcendental Meditation is the Only True Way to achieve Peace with the Inner Self. I practice it. And I teach others how to do it.”

“A religious nut!” Gertie decided.

“Hari krishna.” Faith’s placidity was undisturbed.

But they didn’t let up. Somehow Faith’s sexlessness bothered them far more than Regina’s promiscuity. They kept at her, without penetrating her calm, until Barbara suggested it was time to break for coffee. “Orville,” she called. “You can serve now.”

“Coming, dear.” Orville entered carrying a large, gooey lemon meringue pie. He smiled at the ladies shyly, innocently.

“Men are piffle!” Mrs. Juliano greeted him.

“Really?” Orville turned the pie on its side and mashed it into his wife’s face. “Power to the piflle!” he proclaimed.

“Up the revolution!” Mrs. Juliano clapped her hands.

“Male chauvinist pig!” Barbara sputtered through the meringue.

On that apt note, the meeting ended.

Outside, Regina Blue and the strange blonde girl were both trying to hail a cab. “Why don’t we share?” Regina suggested.

“All right. Thank you.” Faith agreed.

In the taxi, when she heard Faith’s address, Regina Blue laughed. What a coincidence. We live in the same building. That’s New York! Neighbors have to come clear across town to meet.”

Faith Venable agreed that it was a coincidence.

“I’m in the penthouse,” Regina told her.

“Fourteen-D,” Faith replied. “Directly below you.”

“Come up some time,” Regina invited. “We’ll talk Woman talk. It’ll be fun. Really. Make it soon.”

And Faith Venable did make it soon. Sooner than Regina expected. The next night, in fact.

Faith dropped up. She dropped in. She dropped by.

She dropped dead!

CHAPTER FOUR

How to Skin a Tomato

The next day, the day which would end in murder, Regina Blue woke up late in the afternoon. Stimulated by having had her female consciousness raised, she hadn’t been able to get to sleep the night before. She'd lain awake seriously considering the idea of quitting her profession.

The meeting had triggered the impulse, but there was more to it than that. She probably still had ten good years left—maybe more—-but Regina knew that eventually she must reach a point of diminishing desirability, and there is nothing more pathetic than an old whore living on past glories. As she thought of this empty future, she realized that the time to do something about it was now, while she was still young.

But what? Sleep brought no answer, nor did awakening. Regina sighed. It was three P.M. In eight hours a client would arrive. She knew she wouldn’t turn him away. All right. But that was no reason not to turn down other appointments, was it? If she really was going to quit, the only way to do it was to quit!

She thought about the client. He was a famous criminal lawyer, right up there with Belli and Bailey. He’d paid her many visits over the past couple of years, and was always generous. Regina recalled that she’d met him through Angus MacTeague. She thought about Angus then, and smiled, remembering . . .

Angus MacTeague, founder and head of the ATOMICS Agency, was a legend in his own time. At sixty, he was known around the world as the Edgar Hoover of private investigations. But to Regina Blue, MacTeague was the john who taught her what it meant to “skin a tomato.”

They had met some three years prior to the night on which Faith Venable was murdered. MacTeague called on Regina’s unlisted phone and mentioned the name of the mafioso who’d given him the number. It was introduction enough.

“I’d like you to come to Jamaica with me for two weeks.” MacTeague didn’t waste time. “My chauffeur can pick you up at six. That should give you time to pack. I’ve chartered a private plane for seven from LaGuardia.”

“Whoa!” Regina was impressed, but she’d long ago gotten over being overawed by any celebrity. “You don’t even know me. Shouldn’t we meet first? You might not like me.”

“Don’t worry. I know everything there is to know about you. And I approve.”

Regina thought about ATOMICS, the largest detective agency in the world, and realized he must have a complete dossier on her. Some of the pictures must be lulus! “Suppose I don’t like you?” she hedged.

“You will. Our computer checked it out. You and I are quite compatible.”

“There’s the matter of remuneration,” Regina said delicately.

“I never pay.”

There was dead silence over the phone for a full moment.

“Then I don’t think I can accept your invitation, Mr. MacTeague.” Regina was firm.

“Right.” He hung up.

Regina stared at the dead phone in her hand.

A half hour later it rang again. The slightly accented voice on the other end didn’t identify itself, but Regina had no trouble recognizing it. “You goofed,” it informed her. “MacTeague’s sensitive. He doesn’t have time for a wife or a girl friend, so he’s loft with swingers—but he can’t stand the idea of paying for it. It hurts his ego.”

“Well, giving it away hurts my bank account,” Regina replied. “I’m not in business for love, you know.”

“That’s exactly the business you are in, baby. Now you listen to Poppa. I’ll see if I can get him to call you back. If he does, you go. Don’t even mention money. And don’t look for any trinkets either. Minks and diamonds aren’t his style.”

“Then what—?”

“Maybe six months from now, maybe less, you get a phone call. The caller mentions the name of a stock. You hock your G-string and you buy that stock. Two, three weeks later, you get another call. One word: ‘Sell’. And baby, you sell! Do what I tell you and your two weeks in Jamaica might make you a wealthy girl.”

MacTeague called back. This time Regina accepted his invitation. That night they had a midnight dinner at the Casa Montego in Jamaica.

After that they ate in the villa MacTeague owned in the hills directly overlooking Montego Bay. The food was prepared by a French chef who had been flown over from Paris expressly for them; the rest of the servants were Jamaicans.

Mostly they stayed in the villa. MacTeague explained that he saw enough of people in his work, and that when he was on vacation he valued his privacy. Regina didn’t mind. The setting was beautiful, the weather perfect, and MacTeague was fascinating company. The ATOMICS Agency computer hadn’t been mistaken: he and Regina were completely compatible.

He was a lean, hard-muscled man with a zest for life that could only be described as youthful, despite the passing of his sixtieth birthday. His age, of course, didn’t overly concern Regina. In her profession she had frequent contact with older men. They were the ones who could afford her.

Their first three days at Montego, MacTeague made no amorous overtures to her. During the day they sunned themselves in the nude on the sands of the private beach edging the secluded cove at the foot of the hill where the villa stood. At night they retired to separate rooms.

By the morning of the fourth day, Regina had an all-over lobster burn. She knew that it would eventually deepen to a smooth, golden tan, but meanwhile it was red and itchy. “You look like a ripe tomato,” MacTcague told her as they spread their blanket out on the sand and settled down on it.

“I know. I’m starting to peel, too,” Regina sighed. They took off their swimsuits and lay nude, side-by-side, faces to the sun. They were comfortably quiet. Perhaps twenty minutes passed. Then Regina glanced over and saw that MacTeague had a most impressive erection, especially for a man of his years. It arched towards the sun like a young sapling straining skyward for nurture. It was the first evidence he’d shown of any erotic intentions.

“Shouldn’t we do something about that?” Regina asked in a soft voice.

“In due time,” he replied lazily. “There’s no hurry. I’m enjoying it. It doesn’t bother you, does it?”

“Not at all. I like to look at it.” Regina reached out and stroked the length of his bristling member. Immediately, magically, it curled up and went limp. “Oh dear! I’m soriy!”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve accepted the fact that at my age the damn thing is perverse. Any man over sixty who invests his ego in his potency is a damn fool. The strangest things stir it, and the most unexpected things make it shrink. It’s best to leave it alone for now, leave it to its own devices so to speak. It will function when it’s ready."

“I think you’re remarkable for a man your age.”

“Well, we’ll see.”

They fell silent again for a few moments. Then Regina sat up and reached behind her, trying to scratch a spot where her skin was beginning to peel. She couldn’t quite reach it.

“Let me.” There was an uncharacteristic breathlessness in MacTeague’s voice. It was almost as if he was responding to a cue for which he’d been eagerly waiting. He balanced on his knees behind her and gently scratched the spot just beyond her fingers.

“That feels good.” Regina wriggled. A stray tress of her red-gold hair was caught by the breeze, and blew across his face, tickling his ear. Her breasts, still as high and firm and well-rounded as when she was seventeen, swayed in the sunlight.

“Would you like me to peel you?” MacTeague’s voice was hoarse.

Regina identified the hoarseness as her own cue. “I’d love it,” she purred. She stretched out on her stomach. The impudent cheeks of her derriere were tight, sun-reddened hemispheres, high and teasing, capable of shimmying like gelatin when she moved, yet firm as sculptor’s clay when Regina was at repose. MaeTeague settled over her in a straddling position, his knees supporting him on either side of the well-padded hips flaring out from her narrow waist. His calves pressed against the sun-warmed hip flesh. The underskin of his scrotum grazed the cleft of her behind as he bent to his task.

Slowly, painstakingly, he peeled oft an inch or so of sun-blistered epidermis. Regina sensed his breathing quickening as he carefully picked at a second layer of loose skin. And when he slid further down to peel the area just above her derriere, she felt the prowling poke of his newly aroused penis.

He turned her over gently, squatted above her, and peeled the skin on her shoulders. The bright red tip of his member nestled in the deep, smooth cleft between the cherry-tipped ice cream scoops which were Regina’s breasts. If they had indeed been ice cream, they surely would have melted now at the heat which spread over them in response to MacTeague’s ministrations. As he peeled, he started sliding back and forth in a way that rendered her bosom-cleft a sheath into which his burning sword was being inserted and withdrawn.

Regina pressed the sides of her breasts with her hands. The maneuver sealed off the cleavage with him squeezed inside. Her breasts had captured his organ, and they clutched it with maddening fervor. MacTeague’s eyes closed. He separated one last layer of loose epidermis from her panting bosom. He bucked violently, and then strained. The muzzle of his cannon bursting free of the tops of her breasts, he climaxed.

MacTeague was a while getting his breath back. Regina sat beside him cross-legged and waited. After a few minutes she spoke. “Sunburn peeling really turns you on.” It was a statement of fact.

“Yes. I get a charge out of skinning a tomato.”

“Come again?”

“I can’t,” he admitted ruefully. “Oh.” He realized she hadn’t understood the ‘tomato’ reference. “Sorry, Regina. It’s a throwback to my slum boyhood. That’s what we used to call girls, ‘tomatoes’.”

“And when you peel their sunburn, that’s ‘skinning a tomato’.” Regina laughed. “How about the reverse?” she asked. “I mean, you’re pretty burned, too. What if I peel you? Does it turn you on?”

“I don’t know. I never had it done to me,” Mac-Teague admitted.

“Would you like me to try it?”

“Why not?”

“Turn over.”

MacTeague obeyed and Regina sat on him, her warm behind resting on his. She slowly peeled the skin on his back, working her way down. She talked in a low, sexy voice as she proceeded.

“I loved it before when you peeled my breasts and my bottom,” she crooned. “I loved the way your hands felt peeling away the loose skin around my nipples. . . . My hard, red, excited nipples! . . . And on my hot backside . . . stroking and peeling . . . peeling and stroking . . . getting me all lovey and creamy. . . .”

MacTeague groaned. His manhood dug a deep groove in the warm sand.

It sprang skyward when he turned over. Regina straddled his thighs and bent forward to peel the skin from his hairy chest. Her fingers tangled in the matting of dark grey hair there.

MacTeague was really excited now. Regina’s naked breasts swaying over him, glistening with moist heat, quivering, tips like red arrowheads-—-the mammarian effect enhanced the titillation of her peeling him. He could feel the hot lubricating of her fulcrum where it pressed against the muscle of his thigh. The muscle flexed in response to the pulsing of her clitoris.

Regina’s hands moved to the burned skin of his inner thighs. His penis jumped like it had been struck by lightning. It was too much for her. Still peeling, she raised up and moved forward. Before MacTeague realized what she was up to, she had impaled herself.

For a second he was afraid he’d go limp; the same thought had occurred to Regina. But it was unwarranted. As long as she kept peeling away epidermis, the erection remained firm.

“This is . . . the first time I’ve kept it up inside a woman in five years,” MacTeague confessed, panting.

“Then I must be the luckiest girl in the world.” Regina bounced up and down enthusiastically.

“You ought to write a book on geriatrics!” He grabbed her burning nether-cheeks, forcing her love-box down the base of his penis so it clutched him there like a suction pump.

“Oh! WOW! I’m coming!” Regina threw her head back in a frenzy. Her green eyes stared blankly at the sun. Her red-gold hair whipped around her heart- shaped face. “I’m coming!”

“Me too! Don’t stop peeling! . . . Don’t stop peeling . . .”

Now, in her penthouse, never dreaming that the deepening shadows outside her window were bringing sudden murder closer and closer, Regina Blue felt a small thrill chase itself over her body as she remembered that first time with Angus MacTeague and the times which followed. Nothing more pathetic than an old whore living on past glories, she recalled. And that’s exactly what I’ve been doingl Wanton wool-gathering! Well now, that will be just about enough of that!

Regina glanced at the clock. It was almost six-thirty. She remembered that it was her housekeep’s day off and that her lawyer-lover was due at eleven. She spent the next hour making the bed and straightening up the bedroom. Then she got out of her housecoat and pajamas, intending to take a shower and fix herself a snack for dinner.

It was warm, but not hot enough to bother with the air-conditioning. Regina opened the window in her bedroom and half-opened the one in her bath-room so the mirror wouldn’t steam up as she showered. She was naked, and just about to step into the shower-stall, when the telephone rang.

Regina answered it on the extension in her bed-room. It was Faith Venable. Regina had all but forgotten her casual invitation to Faith the night before.

Faith wondered breathlessly if it would be all right if she came up to chat for awhile. Regina explained that she was just about to shower and suggested that Faith wait about a half hour. She asked her to dinner, promising pot luck, and apologetically informed Faith that she had a date at eleven and might have to cut short their talk.

“That’s all right,” Faith answered. “Only the thing is I was expecting someone. Someone I’d just as soon avoid, if you know what I mean. So I was hoping I could come up now.”

“Come ahead.” Regina added that she’d leave the latch off the door so Faith could let herself into the apartment.

Expecting someone? A man? Faith hadn’t said a man, but it sure sounded like she meant a man. Regina wondered if Faith really was a virgin as she claimed.

Regina padded naked through the living room and foyer and unlocked the door. Then she returned to the shower. A few minutes later she was soaping herself when she heard Faith call out from the living-room.

“In here,” Regina shouted back. “Come on in and chat if it won’t offend your modesty.” She turned the water down low so she could hear Faith’s answer.

“I’m not alone,” came the reply. “I hope you don’t mind. Brother came by unexpectedly as I was leaving. I brought him with me. He won’t be staying, though. He has a dinner date.”

“Hi, Brother,” Regina called. “Make yourself and Faith a drink. You’ll find the fixings on the sideboard.”

“Hello, Regina,” a male voice answered. “Thanks. I will.” The antique grandfather’s clock in Regina’s foyer punctuated his words with eight loud bongs.

Regina turned the shower up, scrubbed her skin until it glowed, and then rinsed off. Finally she stepped out of the shower and toweled herself. She went into the bedroom, pulled on a pair of slacks and a sweater, and spent a few minutes combing out her red-gold hair. Then she opened the door to the living- room.

“Here I—” she started to announce as she made her entrance. “—am . . .” she finished automatically in a voice robbed of its liveliness by shock.

Regina stared at Faith’s body. She noted the bloodstains spreading over the Persian rug. She recognized her carving knife sticking out of Faith’s breast; it was part of a set she’d just bought. That, along with Faith’s staring eyes, left no doubt the girl was dead.

Then Regina remembered the brother. Where was he? There was no sign of him. Had he killed Faith? Perhaps he was still in the apartment! Regina was suddenly very afraid!

She went quickly back into the bedroom, closed the door and locked it behind her. She called the police. Then, numb, she sat on the edge of the bed and waited for them to arrive.

Door chimes announced them. Regina had to unlock the front door to let them in. Besides the two uniformed patrolmen, there were two detectives in plainclothes. The younger one, a shorter than average man with the lithe build of a fast quarterback, introduced himself as Lieutenant Rodriguez of the Homicide Division. Regina registered his handsomely swarthy face as Puerto Rican.

They examined the body. More men arrived, among them an official Medical Examiner. When he went to work, Lieutenant Rodriguez took Regina into the bedroom. Here he interrogated her at length.

“Your story doesn’t make sense,” he summed up after over two hours of questioning. “There’s no evidence of anyone having been here but the murdered girl and you. And your door was locked from the inside.”

“I tell you her brother was here! I heard his voice through the door!”

“And I’m supposed to believe he killed her, let himself out, and then locked the door from the inside? Come on now!”

“But that’s just what the murderer must have done,” Regina protested. “Otherwise he’d still have been here when you arrived.”

“Maybe the murderer still was here. Maybe he—or she -- still is.” Rodriguez stared at her steadily.

“Are you implying that I killed her?” Regina Blue stared back at him, her green eyes very wide. “But why would I? I barely knew her! What reason. . . ?”

“I don’t know that yet,” Rodriguez conceded. “But I do know that if, as we seem to agree, it’s impossible that the killer let himself out and then locked the door from the inside, then said killer must still be on the premises.”

“But I was the only one here until . . . you . . . came . . . ” Regina’s voice trailed off as she realized what she was saying.

“Exactly.” Lieutenant Rodriguez stood up and placed his hand on her shoulder formally. “Regina Blue, I place you under arrest on suspicion of murder. You are not required to say anything. You are entitled to contact counsel of your choice. And anything you do or say may be held against you . . . . Come along, Miss Blue.”

Regina Blue got to her feet, more dazed than ever. Under arrest? For murder? Of a girl she barely knew? It was ridiculous!

Ridiculous! as Sacco said to Vanzetti on the way to the electric chair; Ridiculous!

CHAPTER FIVE

The "Bird" Watcher

"Counsel-of-your-choice” arrived as Lieutenant Rodriguez and Regina Blue crossed the wide sidewalk between the entrance to her building and the unmarked police car. He was a distinguished looking man-—tall, well dressed, giving off the faintest whiff old expensive after shave lotion. He looked surprised to see Regina, and then angry.

“Where are you going?” demanded “Counsel-of- your-choice” in a voice he usually reserved for cross-examinations.

“Barry!” Regina snapped out of her daze. With everything that had happened, she had forgotten about her date. Now, seeing him there, it seemed like the first break she’d had all night. “Am I glad to see you!” she exclaimed. “If ever a girl needed a lawyer --”

“Evening, Counselor.” Rodriguez greeted him.

The lawyer looked at Rodriguez for the first time, placed him, and was immediately wary. “Lieutenant.” it was an almost formal acknowledgement.

“You know this young lady?” Rodriguez inquired.

The attorney was still sizing up the situation. “We’ve met,” he said carefully.

“Barry, please,” Regina babbled. “I need a lawyer! This girl was found dead in my apartment and—”

“Just how well do you know her, Counselor?”

“Are you questioning me officially, Lieutenant?”

“Of course not.” Rodriguez smiled engagingly. “Off the record, naturally. . . . Would you say you two know each other intimately?”

“Off the record or on, I’m a married man with two grown children,” was the stiff reply. “We’re acquaintances. That’s all.”

“They’re holding me for murder!” Regina wailed.

“I think she wants you to represent her, Counselor. How about it? Are you willing to go on record as her attorney?”

“What’s the official charge?”

“Suspicion of murder.”

‘Tm sorry, but the answer is no. I’m up to my ears in work. I can’t take on a new murder trial now.”

“Barry!” Regina was stunned.

“Mafia keeping you busy, Counselor?”

“Will that be all, Lieutenant?” Each syllable was an icicle.

“Not quite.” Rodriguez turned to Regina. “Did he have a date with you tonight?” he asked outright.

“Be careful, Lieutenant. If you involve me in this affair, if my name so much as appears in the papers in connection with it, I’ll sue for libel. The Department will be glad to give me your badge just to get me off their backs. Believe me, Lieutenant.”

“Go chase an ambulance, you cheap shysterl” Rodriguez blew his cool. “Did he have a date with you?” he repeated to Regina.

“No.” She lied dully. What was the use? Betraying Barry——the cop-out louse!—wasn’t going to help her.

“Good evening.” The lawyer turned abruptly on his heel and walked firmly away.

Depressed as she was, the physical sign of rejection was one straw too many for Regina. “I hope your Goddam prostate rots from lack of massage!” she called after him.

Ears burning at the reminder of his problem and Regina’s ministrations, “Counsel-of-your-choice” turned the next corner and was gone.

Men! Regina was bitter during the ride to the police station. She’d been coping with Barry’s prostate for two years. At the least she’d thought they were friends. And when she needed him the most, he behaved as if she meant no more to him than the wife who’d been refusing to sleep with him for the past ten years. Men!

The girls at the “Consciousness-Raising” session had been right. All men were exploiters; all women were exploited. And, Regina realized, with all the goodies which had come her way, she was as exploited as any of them.

It was true. Prostitution was a sell-out of her sex. If she ever got out of this mess, Regina decided, she really was going to quit the profession. Never again was she going to subject herself to the masculine callousness of a man like Barry.

This time she meant it! Really meant it! Her decision was made, and she would stick by it! Never again would Regina play for pay!

When they reached the stationhouse, the reporters and photographers were waiting. Word had leaked that an heiress had been murdered and a jet-set beauty taken into custody. It had all the elements of a front-page story, and the press was quick to close in on it.

“MURDER ON PARK AVENUE” was one paper’s headline the next morning. A quarter-page close-up of Regina Blue appeared under it. The lensman had snapped her turning her head, hair swirling around her face—a cat in mid-air, caught pouncing on a mouse. The up-from-under shot accentuated her breasts, sweater clinging to reveal them braless, nipples faintly outlined, a lascivious touch to liven up the libidos of morning newspaper readers.

One such reader was Hubert Knotts. He studied the picture carefully, read the dramatically beefed-up story, and glanced at the inside photo of Faith Venable’s body with the carving knife sticking out of it. Then he read the story again, slowly, and once more stared at the close-up of Regina Blue.

Hubert Knotts sighed to himself. He had no choice. He must go to the police immediately and confess!

An hour later Hubert Knotts wheeled himself into the Homicide Division office of Lieutenant Rodriguez, waving away a young policeman who moved to help him manipulate his wheelchair. Rodriguez sized him up: florid face, neatly combed sandy hair, close-trimmed moustache, square jaw, blue eyes clear and steady. Knotts’ tweed jacket didn’t hide the musculature of his upper torso; his chest was broad, his shoulders powerful, his hands large and strong looking. By contrast Knotts’ legs seemed thin and spindly. They looked useless, and indeed they were.

“Paraplegic.” Knotts answered the unspoken question. “Since Korea . . . I’m here about the Venable murder.” He spoke with a clipped, upper-class British accent. “But first I want to discuss diplomatic immunity.”

“Are you claiming such immunity?”

“Not officially. I’m an Undersecretary in Her Majesty’s delegation to the United Nations, so I qualify. I can’t be forced to give testimony. Neither here, nor in an American courtroom. But, frankly, it would be an embarrassment to me and to the delegation if I had to fall back on that right. It would be an even greater embarrassment to me personally if the information I have for you should reach the ears of my superiors. Do We understand each other, sir?”

“You won’t talk unless I promise to keep it confidential. Is that it?”

“Correct. And if you break that promise, I’ll deny everything I’ve told you.”

“I understand. You have my promise. Shoot.”

“Regina Blue did not kill Faith Venable,” Knotts stated firmly.

“I’m listening.”

“I read the newspaper account of the murder very carefully,” Hubert Knotts continued. “I paid particular attention to the time element. I ask you now if it was reported correctly?”

“Regina Blue says she received a phone call from Faith Venable some time between seven-thirty and eight.” Lieutenant Rodriguez rattled it off from memory. “She claims the victim and her brother arrived at eight promptly while she was taking a shower in the bathroom. She’s firm on the time because, she says, she heard her grandfather clock chiming the hour. She finished showering, dressed, combed her hair, went into the living-room and discovered the body. She called us at eight-twenty-seven. The desk sergeant who took her call logged the time. We arrived at eight-fifty. The Medical Examiner sets the time of death between seven-thirty and eight-thirty.”

“Then the newspaper report was accurate,” Knotts said. “And Regina Blue couldn’t have committed the murder. You see, Lieutenant, with two brief exceptions——which I’ll explain in a minute—Miss Blue was never out of my sight between seven-thirty and eight-fifty. I was watching her virtually every moment of that time.”

“You were watching her?” Lieutenant Rodriguez stared at the man in the wheelchair. “How? Why?”

“ ‘How’ first,” Knotts replied. “The answer is through high-powered binoculars. You see, I have a penthouse apartment about half a block away from Miss Blue’s building. On the side street. My rear study windows face the windows of Miss Blue’s bedroom and bathroom. My building is one story higher, so actually I look down on these windows. With binoculars the view is clear and unobstructed.”

“Binoculars? But why --?”

“I’m a bird watcher, Lieutenant.”

“A bird watcher? On Park Avenue in midtown New York? At night? Why, even the pigeons—”

“I use the word ‘bird’ in its slang British sense,” Knotts interrupted. “It means ‘girl’.”

“In other words you’re a Peeping Tom!” Rodriguez’ disgust was obvious. “You spy on women undressing! What do you do? Watch them through your binoculars and whack off?”

“If you mean do I masturbate while watching them, the answer is affirmative.”

“Jesus! Why the hell don’t you go out and get a girl like any normal man?”

“Because I’m not a normal man,” Knotts replied. “I’m a paraplegic. I can’t have intercourse with a woman. There is no way. Because of the nature of the damage to my particular ganglia, the most delicate manipulation is required. Nobody, no woman, can do it for me. Only I can do it for myself. Of course I have to be inspired. Don’t begrudge me my inspiration, Lieutenant.”

Rodriguez scowled. “All right. So you were peeping at Regina Blue. What time did you start?”

“A minute or two before seven-thirty. I had the radio on, and the seven-thirty news was announced just as I was focusing my binoculars. Miss Blue was already nude.” Knotts smiled, remembering. “Miss Blue is fantastically well-—”

“Skip the commercial. Then what?”

“After about fifteen minutes of puttering, she went from the bedroom to the bathroom and started to get into the stall shower. The way her window was raised, I could look down over the top of the shower door and into the stall itself. Anyway, the telephone must have rung because she went back into the bedroom and took it from its cradle. She spoke briefly, replaced the telephone, and went into another room where I couldn’t see her. She was gone perhaps thirty seconds—no more-—certainly not long enough to commit murder—and then she returned to the shower-stall.”

“That must be when she unlatched the front door so the Venable dame could let herself in,” Rodriguez surmised. “Then what happened?”

“She showered. At one point she turned the water down low—I could see the flow-—and her lips moved as if she were shouting. Then she turned the shower up again and soaped herself with a washcloth. Oh, yes, the radio announced the time as eight o’clock while she’d been shouting.”

“That ties in with her version.” Rodriguez had an afterthought. “You mean you were watching this naked dish, playing with yourself, and listening lo the radio, too?” he asked disbelievingly.

“I wasn’t really listening. The time registered subliminally. The change in voices, I imagine.”

“Go on.”

“She finished showering and dried herself with a towel. Then she went into the bedroom, donned a sweater and slacks, and combed her hair.

“If she was dressed, how come you were still watching her?”

“I hadn’t climaxed yet.”

“Jesus! It must take you a long time!”

“I told you, Lieutenant. I have a problem. Doubtless you hold the world’s record for three-minute orgasm, but I have to take my time.”

“Never mind the sarcasm. What then?”

“She left the bedroom and returned almost immediately. This time she locked the door behind her. She seemed agitated. Very. She ran to the telephone and made a call. Then she simply sat there on the edge of the bed. Some time passed and finally she left the bedroom again. A few seconds later a uniformed police officer appeared. At that point, I stopped watching.

“And you still hadn’t got your rocks off?”

“Correct, Lieutenant. But then, policemen don’t stimulate me. So I gave up.”

“Go back to when she first got dressed and went into the living-room. How long was she gone?”

“No more than a minute or two,” Hubert Knotts told him.

“But long enough to slip the shiv into the girl!”

“Not if the victim put up any kind of a struggle. Did she?”

“Yeah,” Rodriguez admitted reluctantly. “She’d been hit on the jaw and they found some skin under her fingernails. Also a lamp was overturned.”

“And Miss Blue probably didn’t hear the struggle because the shower was running,” Knotts pointed out. “Well, that’s all I have to tell you, Lieutenant.” He Wheeled around to leave. “I hope I’ve been of service,” he added as he propelled himself towards the door.

“Oh, sure. I had a murder case all wrapped up, and now I’ve got nothing. Some service! Do me a favor, Mr. Knotts. From here on in, keep your eyes where they belong!”

But Hubert Knotts did no such thing. When he returned from a late United Nations session the next evening, he noticed that the lights were on and the blinds up in Regina Blue’s bedroom. He immediately reached for his binoculars.

As Knotts adjusted the focus, the bedroom door opened and Regina Blue appeared. She was wearing a mink cape over a full—length evening gown, long white gloves, and low-heeled dancing slippers. Hips swaying, she walked halfway into the bedroom and paused, facing the window.

She removed the mink, revealing the bare roundness of her shoulders. Her gown was dark green, simply but daringly styled, and covered with sparkling sequins. When Regina turned around, Knotts saw that the back was cut so low as to display the twin top half-moons of her derriere. In front, the top consisted only of two wide straps joined at the nape of her neck. They revealed the solid roundness of breast-flesh at the sides, but concealed the nipples. The gown was slit from hip to ankle on one side, setting up an exciting game of hide-and-seek with Regina’s shapely legs as she moved. It was one helluva dress!

She sat on the bed, crossing her legs. Knotts zeroed in on an enticing expanse of thigh. Slowly, making a sensual rite of it, she peeled off her gloves. Then she lay on her stomach, her chin propped on her hands, the straps hanging so that Knotts had a teasing view of ‘now-you-see-them-now—you-don’t’ nipples, as well as of her half-bated behind.

Knotts groaned and fumbled at his zipper.

She turned on her back and kicked off her silver slippers. Then, one at a time, luscious legs pointing straight up, she peeled off her stockings. As with the gloves, it took a long, provocative time.

Get a grip on yourself, man! And he did!

Now Regina stood and untied the straps. She held them in front of her, unloosed breasts swaying behind them in a blur of tantalizing motion. Finally she dropped them and immediately crossed her arms in front of her bosom coyly. She tossed her head so that her long, red-gold hair tumbled over her shoulders and breasts. Then she dropped her arms.

The tresses formed a partial, rippling screen. The strands revealed and covered her breast-tips as she moved her head. A long, quivering, bright red nipple peeped out from between them and then retreated. A curl wrapped itself around the other aureole, accenting the pinkness. Regina’s hands moved to her hips. A clasp was released. She swirled around, the doffed dress held first in front, and then in back of her like a bullfighter’s cape.

Knotts felt a sharp throb of lust swelling in his fist as she tossed the dress away. The binoculars were filled with her now: purse-lipped, proud-breasted figure, perfection arched brazenly in the briefest of silken bikini panties. Knott’s grip tightened.

Regina propped up some pillows and lay down on the bed, half-sitting. She turned slightly on one side, accenting the smooth plumpness of one hip, causing the skimpy panties to stretch tightly over one cheek of her behind. She slid her hand under the elastic and the fingers vanished deep in the crevice. After a moment she removed the panties altogether and lay flat on her stomach. Her naked derriere jutted straight up, trembling like jello, flushed from her exertions. Slowly it began moving up and down . . .

Knotts’ hand slowed to accommodate her rhythm. He marveled at the rigidity pulsating in his clenched fist.

The redhead turned over. Her thighs parted so that her lightly-muscled legs formed a wide V on the bed. She stroked the erect polyp of passion at the base of the V. Both breasts hobbled, fully visible now, as she strained to peer down at her lower parts. Then she cupped one of them, pushing upward. Her long neck bent and her tongue uncoiled from her lips like a serpent. Its tip traced the circle of the pink aureole, and then flicked the rigid, trembling nipple. She caught the nipple between her lips, holding it gently with her teeth, sticking hard. Two fingers of her hand were lost deep inside the V now.

Knotts became so excited that he accidentally released the brake of his wheelchair and went rolling across the floor. Cursing, he positioned himself again and relocked the wheels. Then he picked up his passion-heavy penis in one hand, his binoculars in the other, and refocused.

Just in time. Regina’s lower body arched off the bed like a taut bow. It thrust upward to meet her frantically active fingers. Her lips tore loose from the lust- tormented nipple and she flung her head back. A wordless cry of sustained rapture escaped her. She bounced with wild abandon at the mounting thrills of her approaching orgasm. And then it came . . . and she came . . .

And so did Hubert Knotts!

It possessed him so completely that it was a few moments before he came back to himself. When he finally did open his eyes, he found that they were still pressed to the binoculars. And the binoculars were still trained on Regina Blue’s bedroom. Still naked, she was standing right in front of the window now. She looked directly up at the windows of Hubert Knotts’ apartment. She smiled a warm smile.

And then Regina Blue did something very odd indeed. Just before she pulled down the shade, she blew a kiss to Hubert Knotts. It was an open acknowledgement that she knew he’d been watching, an admission that the entire performance was Regina’s way of telling him-—

“Thank you!”

CHAPTER SIX

This Whore for Hire

The “Thank you” was the result of Lieutenant Rodriguez having explained to Regina Blue why he was releasing her. Of course he hadn’t revealed Hubert Knotts’ identity. But he had warned Regina to close her blinds since the Peeping Tom would undoubtedly go right on peeping.

Regina didn’t share the Lieutenants antipathy to voyeurs. She appreciated that the peeper had put his own neck in a noose by coming forward to clear her. And so she had ignored Rodriguez’ advice and shown her appreciation. After which she had gone to sleep.

The phone woke her at about ten the next morning. It was Angus MacTeague. He wanted to see Regina. “Business,” he specified. “

“I’m sorry, Angus.” Regina cut him short. I’m not in that business any more. I’ve quit. I’ve hung up my diaphragm.”

“Your diaphragm? But you always use birth control pills.”

“I was speaking metaphorically.”

“Oh. Well, the business I mean is mine, not yours. I’d appreciate it if you'd come up to my office, Regina.”

Curious, she agreed to be there that afternoon and hung up the phone. It was then that she realized she had actually turned down a good customer. She was going to quit. Knowing she had really decided made her happy. The next step was to choose a new career for herself.

But what?

Well, a wry thought, her experience should certainly qualify her to teach sex education in the schools. But they’d never hire her. They’d employ some computerized prude with a mechanized text to lay it on the kids sans joy, but never anyone who might teach them that sex is fun.

A Black Belt who had thrown her own instructor on more than one occasion, she could probably get a job as a karate instructor. But she’d been working with her body for seven years. For a change she’d like something that involved her mind as well.

Regina remembered the previous night and smiled to herself. Maybe she should become a stripteaser. Seriously, she had the looks and the contacts to be- come either an actress or a model. Glamorous as these professions were though, they couldn’t match the life of a call girl for excitement. But then what sort of work could be as exciting as what she’d been doing?

She stumbled into the answer during her meeting with Angus MacTeague. His office was in the ultra-modern ATOMICS Agency Building near Lincoln Center. As Regina approached the imposing edifice, she spied a helicopter taking off from the flat roof.

She passed through the main entrance which was framed by giant brass letters spelling out the name Of the detective agency as an acrostic:

A dultery!

T heft!

O bscenity!

M urder!

I nvestigations!

C onfidential!

S urefire!

The building had been under construction during the time Regina and MacTeague were in Jamaica. The detective-tycoon had spoken of it with pride. “ATOMICS is really a conglomerate of interlocking operations with offices around the world. For the past couple of years, it’s really been outgrowing itself,” he’d told Regina. “This new building will really allow us to coordinate things properly for the first time. It will be our main headquarters. All our files will be right there—-over three million dossiers detailed in ways you’d never dream; Credit information, family medical histories, sexual aberrations, political activities, etcetera; all cross-indexed. There will be a computer operation second only to the government’s space program. A department will be set up to maintain an ongoing evaluation of cases progress. One whole floor will be taken up by our billing and payroll division. We’ll have crime labs—chemical, biological, and so forth—modeled along FBI lines and quite probably even more expertly manned.

“There won’t be any room for your detectives, Regina said idly.

“Don’t need any. They can’t work out of there, shouldn’t even be seen anywhere near there. They have to maintain their anonymity. Even their reports will be delivered by courier. They use fronts like an ad agency, or a law firm, or an import house. ATOMICS has them all over the world. If a client calls ATOMICS, a special department handles the call and sets up an appointment with an investigator on the premises of the cover firm. The client’s anonymity is protected that way too.”

“What kind of cases do you handle mostly?”

“Adultery. And the loosening of the divorce laws hasn’t changed that, either. It’s human nature. A woman suspects her spouse is stepping out on her, she wants to know everything about the competition she can learn. A husband thinks he’s being cuckolded, he wants all the tawdry details. Human nature. Still,” MacTeague added, “while we handle more hanky-panky than anything else, that’s not our most lucrative business. What really brings the money in is industrial espionage.”

Regina remembered what she’d been told about receiving a tip on the stock market; she was quick to appreciate the connection. “What about regular espionage?” she asked. “You know. Like James Bond.”

“Nothing so glamorous. But we’ve been known to dabble.”

“Ooh! Tell me!” Regina clapped her hands.

“Sorry. Classified information.”

“Do you spy for other governments?” Regina persisted.

“Some times. But we never accept an assignment of that nature until after it’s been cleared with Washington.”

“Who clears it?”

“Somebody so high up that if I mentioned the name, I would immediately vanish before your very eyes,” MacTeague teased. “Poof! No more Angus! just like that. Poof!”

“Do you ever work with the CIA?”

“One time or another we’ve done work for all the government intelligence services. CIA, Treasury, Secret Service, FBI, Army Intelligence—-all of them. They call on us if they have to augment their own operations.” MacTeague chuckled.

“What’s funny?”

“Once it worked out that ATOMICS was working for two of them at once. Never mind which two. One government intelligence agency hired us to cross-check a second agency’s personnel who were engaged in infiltrating a militant segment of the anti-war movement. They suspected that the second agency’s infiltrators were really counter-agents delivering false information. Meanwhile, the second agency retained us to check on the finks placed in the peace movement by the first agency.”

“Sounds confusing.”

“It was. Two of the first agency’s operators were actually checking the agency itself out for a third government intelligence service. One guy working for the second agency was spying on it for a fourth one. At one radical meeting attended by sixty-seven people, fifty-two of them were infiltrators. The other fifteen were recruited by the agents. Where would the Militant Left be without government manpower?”

“And the taxpayer foots the bill!” Regina was indignant.

“Which is one reason we’re able to lie out here under the glorious Jamaica sun,” MacTeague had pointed out. “So stop stewing about it and start peeling. . . .”

Now, as Regina was ushered into Angus Mac-Teague’s richly understated office in the ATOMICS Agency Building, she remembered what he’d told her about the organization. MacTeague greeted her with his customary savoir faire, guided her to a comfortable chair, and mixed her a cocktail at the mahogany bar. Then he eased into his reason for asking her to come.

“I see you made the front pages.” MacTeague toyed with his drink.

“It was easy. Anybody who finds a murdered heiress in their living-room can make the front pages.”

“How well did you know this Faith Venable?”

“Why do you ask? Is ATOM I CS involved?”

MacTeague picked up a tabloid from his desk and handed it to her. The headline said “GAY BOY AC-CUSED IN SLAYING OF CULTIST SISTER.” Regina quickly read the story:

Dwight Venable, 22, sole heir to the multi-million dollar Venable estate since the knife-murder of his sister, Faith Venable, 24, on Tuesday, was arrested and charged with suspicion of murder last evening. Venable was taken into custody at his home, a lavishly restored brownstone at 32 Washington Square North, at about ten P.M. The surprise arrest followed the release of Regina Blue, jetset playgirl in whose Park Avenue penthouse the crime occurred. Homicide Division Lieutenant Raoul Rodriguez, in charge of the case, refused to comment on evidence leading to the charges against Venable.

A self-confessed homosexual, Venable was arrested three months ago and charged with assaulting a police officer during a disorder following a protest march by the Gay Liberation Front. Charges were dismissed when it was established that the alleged assault consisted of Venable’s kissing the officer on the lips while the policeman was attempting to club him. “He kissed back, and with his tongue, too,” Venable told reporters upon leaving the courtroom. The arresting officer, overhearing the remark, had to be restrained from attacking Venable.

Faith Venable, the victim, was the leader of a small, select religious cult practicing “Transcendental Meditation.” She was a disciple of the Mahareeshee Unguentinanina and is believed to have broken with him over the pronunciation of a holy mantra (chant). Following his arraignment, Dwight Venable was released in $50,000 bail provided by Mr. Calvin Cabot acting for the Hemisphere Guaranty Bank and Trust Company which manages the Venable estate.

Done reading, Regina looked up at Angus MacTeague questioningly.

“The Hemisphere Guaranty Bank and Trust Company, in the person of Mr. Calvin Cabot, has retained ATOMICS to prove Dwight Venable's innocence, and to find the real killer, if possible,” MacTeague explained.

“Why are you telling me this, Angus?”

“You’re involved. You knew the Venable girl. She was slain in your apartment. The police held you on suspicion and then released you. I don’t know what it is but I’m guessing you have some information that would be useful to us. Since you and I are friends, I thought-—”

“I see.” Regina interrupted him. “I’ll be glad to cooperate,” she said carefully, “if—” She deliberately left it hanging.

“If?”

“As I told you this morning, Angus, I’m quitting the profession. I need a job.”

“A job? You mean with ATOMICS?”

Regina nodded.

MacTeague thought about it. “A girl with your talents could be a great asset to ATOMICS,” he decided. “We could arrange tor you to have intimacies with certain men. As a result of such liaisons, you could doubtless supply valuable information for our files.”

“That’s out,” Regina said firmly. “I’m through whoring. If I won’t do it for myself, I certainly won’t do it for ATOMICS.”

“All right. Perhaps that won’t be necessary. It might be enough if you simply supplied data on your own clients, past clients, in whom ATOMICS has a particular interest.”

“That would be unethical!”

“Every profession has its ethics,” MacTeague agreed seriously. “But if people didn’t violate those ethics, private detectives couldn’t function. The violation of ethics, of confidences -- that’s one of the main principles on which I built ATOMIC S into the largest and most successful detective agency in the world.”

“I guess I’m one of those people who sticks to her ethics and keeps the confidences of her clients,” Regina replied. “I can’t see myself feeding dossiers of former customers—names, dates, compromising information -- into your data bank. If I went to work for ATOMICS, I might be willing to use my former contacts and experience on a selective basis without breaking confidentiality. Only I’d have to judge that for myself. Whatever I used, ATOMICS might get the results, but the raw information and the modus operandi would remain my personal business.”

“I don’t think I understand. Just what kind of job did you have in mind, Regina?”

“Special investigator.” Regina told him earnestly. “All I want is a chance to prove myself. “If I can solve the Venable case for you, will you give me a permanent job as a special investigator?”

“I don’t want you to solve it. All I want you to do is tell us what you know.”

“No soap!” Regina was firm. She had nothing to lose. If MacTeague knew how little she really knew about the ease, he probably wouldn’t even bother talking to her. The only thing she could do was bluff. “I want to work on the case. Look, Angus, I’ve got the inside track,” she lied. “Why not give me a chance?”

MacTeague laughed. The idea amused him. He didn’t see how Regina could do any harm. And-— who knows?-—she might just stumble on something useful. “All right,” he agreed. “I’ll hire you on a temporary basis. Just for this case. After that, we’ll see. Now will you tell me what you know about Faith Venable, and why the police held you, and why they let you go?”

“Am I hired?”

“You’re hired. Temporarily."

“Good. What’s my salary?”

“Avaricious wench!” MacTeague named a modest figure.

“Including expenses?”

“Yes. . . . Now will you—?”

Regina told him everything she knew. “That’s not much,” MacTeague grumbled when she finished. “I have the feeling I’ve been had.”

“You’re not going to renege?”

“No. A deal is a deal.”

“Good.” Regina relaxed. “Do you think the brother could possibly be innocent?” she asked.

“I have no idea. I’m not in the business of making guesses. I’m in the business of providing services for my clients.”

“Meaning that even if he’s guilty, you want to come up with proof that says otherwise.” Regina grinned wryly. “I’m beginning to understand the ethics of my new profession. Now then,” she added briskly, “what’s the brother’s story?”

“We haven’t had a chance to interrogate him yet. All we know is what Cabot says Dwight Venable told him. Venable claims he arrived at his sister’s apartment about eight o’clock. She wasn’t home. Since he has a key, he let himself in to use the john. Then-—”

“Urinate or defecate?” Regina interrupted in a “just-the-facts-Ma’am” tone of voice.

“Lord save us from amateurs!” MacTeague groaned. “What difference does that make?”

“It could have a bearing on the time sequence.”

“Urinate,” MacTeague grumbled. “Which Venable did. And then he claims to have walked upstairs to your place.”

“Why? How did he know Faith would be there?”

“According to Venable, she told him about you over the phone earlier in the day. Said she’d met you, that you lived right over her, and that she might drop in on you that evening. So he decided to see if she was there.”

“Did she know he was coming?” Regina remembered what Faith had said about expecting someone she wanted to avoid.

“No. He was in the neighborhood and he just dropped by on impulse.”

“I see. Go on.”

“Your front door was off the latch. He opened it and called his sister’s name. He heard a noise—- groan-—and went into the living-room. She was lying there with the knife in her. But she wasn’t quite dead yet. Venable claims she had a piece of paper in her hand and was trying to hold it up to him. She sort of shook the paper and said two words; ‘the murderer.’ Then she died. Venable grabbed the paper and ran.

“Did he leave the front door opened or closed?” Regina wanted to know.

“We don’t know yet.”

“Some story! It’s got more holes than a Bowery hooker’s underwear!” Regina snorted. “Why did he run? How does he explain my speaking to him through the bathroom door before the murder? What was on the piece of paper? What happened to it?”

“It was a list of names. Venable gave it to the police.” MacTeague took a photostat from his desk drawer and handed it to Regina. “This is a copy.”

“How—?”

“The long arm of ATOMICS.” MacTeague smiled. “A clerk in the Homicide Division supplies us with copies of all documents of interest.”

“It looks like the original was ripped over the top name,” Regina observed. “That means some names might be missing.”

“Venable told the detectives it must have happened when he pulled it out of his dead sister’s hand.”

“But then the police would have found the top piece there.”

“According to our man in Homicide, when Lieutenant Rodriguez pointed that out to Venable, he suggested that you must have removed it.”

Regina shrugged and looked at the four names on the list. “I know one of them!” she exclaimed.

“Intimately?” MacTeague inquired with a delicacy that didn’t quite make it.

“Wash out your mind with soap!” Regina suggested.

“Which one?” he persisted.

“Do you still beat your wife?” she ducked sweetly. “Hey, this list is alphabetical,” she noticed. “The first name from where it was ripped begins with ‘G’. Whatever names are missing must begin with the letters ‘A’ through ‘F’.”

“If you think that narrows it down,” MacTeague retorted sarcastically, “try checking the first two hundred pages of the Manhattan telephone directory. Be- sides,” he added, “there’s only one name missing.”

“How could you know that?”

“We checked the manufacturer of the original sheet. It only comes in one size. Given the consistency of Faith Venable’s handwriting, there would only be room for one name above the others.”

“So if we add one to the four names here, that means we have five suspects,” Regina said. “Not counting Dwight Venable.”

“Right. Also,” MacTeague told her, “a preliminary check of those names reveals that they were all disciples of the dead girl, members of her cult, or whatever you call it. They were—how do you say it—taking instruction from her on the road to Nirvana. Something like that. She saw each of them three times a week—privately.”

“I’ll check them out,” Regina assured him. “But first I want to talk to Dwight Venable. I want to see if he can plug up some of those holes in his story.” She shook hands with MacTeague and started for the door. “I’ll be in touch,” she promised.

Angus MacTeague watched the lovely redhead undulate out of his office. He was still bemused with the fact of her having conned him into the job. There she goes, he told himself. Regina Blue, ex-whore. There she goes: Regina Blue, ATOMICS dick. There she goes:

A dick in a mini-skirt!

CHAPTER SEVEN

A Gay Lament

“Hemorrhoids! Oh, cursed fate!

“Turned a passive fairy straight!”

“That’s not funny, Dwight! I don’t like words like ‘fairy’ , or ‘kike’, or ‘nigger’.”

“National Brotherhood Week."’ Dwight Venable snapped his fingers. “I forgot. What is it, Rev? A hundred dollars a plate at the Waldorf wedged between the rabbi’s kosher chicken and the priest’s Friday fish?”

‘“I wish you wouldn’t call me ‘Rev’! It’s--well—- disrespectful!”

Dwight guffawed. “Sorry about that, Petey-sweetie.”

“I don’t mean disrespectful to me. I mean to the cloth. The clergyman ran his finger around the inside of his stiff white collar. “Why do you keep this place so hot?” he complained.

“I m getting the steam room ready for you. It heats the whole place up. It can’t be helped. It’s an old house.”

“You really are too much, Dwight. Who else but you would build a steam-room and a sauna right into his house?”

“Petey-sweetie, you’ll be glad I did,” Dwight told him. “A sitz bath in the steam room will do wonders for those hemorrhoids of yours. And then maybe we can get back to a normal sex life.”

“Normal?”

“Just listen to the guilt in the tone of that voice! Lordy save us all from the Protestant Ethic!”

Dwight shook his head ruefully. “You wouldn’t feel so guilty, Petey-sweetie, if you’d just come out of the closet.”

“I could never do that! I could never compromise my religion that way!”

“Compromise your religion!” Dwight snorted. “What the hell do you think you’re doing now? Hypocrisy—”

“Please, Dwight!” Petey-sweetie held up a majestically ministerial hand. “I’ll simply go all to pieces if you make us have one of our scenes now, dear. Between my hemorrhoids and my aching jaw -”

“Your jaw wouldn’t ache if you weren’t so up tight!”

“I can’t help it. When we do that, it makes me feel used!”

“Used? Or abused?”

“Please, Dwight? Not today!”

“Oh, all right.” Dwight relented. “Take off your maxi-skirt, sweetie, and-—”

“Dwight! How many times have I asked you not to refer to my cassock as a skirt?”

‘Tm sorry, Petey. What I meant was if you take off your cassock, we can go in the steam room. You can have a sitz bath, and I’ll rub your back.”

“Oh! That would be Heaven!”

“Sacrilege!” Dwight chuckled. “Sorry.” He apologized again as Petey-sweetie started to react. “Peace.” He formed the V symbol with two fingers.

Petey-sweetie returned the signal and held up a third finger, a pinky. “And a little piece on the side,” he said in the good-fellow voice of camaraderie which ministers usually reserve for post-Rotary-meeting smut sessions.

“Peace on you, Padre!” Dwight replied, giving a fair imitation of a Mexican accent. Then he settled back and watched openly as Petey-sweetie divested himself of his clerical garb.

Despite his teasing, Dwight had genuine feeling for the minister. The Reverend Peter Norbert was something else again. Dwight really loved him, and had since the first night they’d met.

The meeting took place under the 95th Street overpass of the East River Drive. The spot was a gathering place for male homosexuals and Dwight had been parked there, lights out, hoping for a pickup with appeal enough for more than a one-night stand. He’d caught his breath at the sight of the Reverend Peter Norbert, in mufti, obviously cruising the area.

The pickup had been easy. They were both looking for the same thing. Mutual appeal was immediate. They made out in the back of Dwight’s car. Then they went to Dwight’s place where they spent the night together.

It worked out so well that Dwight asked him back. The relationship had begun. It wasn’t until after their third lovemaking date that Petey-sweetie confessed to Dwight that he was a minister of the cloth.

Dwight was floored. Petey-sweetie looked like a truck driver. It had been a surprise to find how compliant and passive he was when they made love, following Dwight’s lead, shy and fluttery, sometimes even coy. Even so, the revelation of his ministerial role was so inconsistent with the abundance of hair and muscles which so aroused Dwight that it took him awhile to get used to the idea that Petey-sweetie really was a clergyman.

Now, watching him undress, Dwight was reminded that Petey-sweetie had also been something of a jock in his college days. A three-letter man—wrestling, track and football-he’d come close to making All-American linebacker before going on to the seminary. Even today, as a minister, he was still involved with athletics, organizing “straight” adolescents into church teams, training them and working out with them, and taking them on hikes, and never—never!—getting out of line with them because Petey-sweetie really didn’t dig young stuff any more than most gay people did, and because in any case Petey-sweetie really did believe in most of the morality he preached.

And he looked like an athlete. Rock-muscled, in contrast to Dwight’s litheness of sinew; fur-covered as opposed to Dwight’s smooth skin; a voice that boomed with masculinity where Dwight’s tones were softly cultured—altogether, manliness to complement the effete aura which characterized Dwight. Yet it was Dwight who was the sexual aggressor in their relationship, and Petey-sweetie who played the role of malleable love object.

Smiling to himself at Petey-sweetie’s modesty in leaving on his jockey shorts, Dwight led the way to the steam room. Outside the door he removed the dressing gown he’d been wearing, revealing that he was naked underneath. Reluctantly, Petey-sweetie followed Dwight’s example and shucked off the shorts. Just as Dwight opened the steam room door, the front door chimes sounded.

“If that’s another reporter—!” Dwight gritted his teeth as he retrieved the velvet dressing gown and slipped into it.

“Poor Dwight. First your sister’s awful death, and now all these newsmen bothering you.” Petey-sweetie stroked him sympathetically.

“You go on in and relax in the sitz bath. I’ll see who it is.” Dwight left him and answered the front door.

“Mr. Venable?” His visitor tried a winning smile. “My name is Regina Blue.”

“Mr. Venable isn’t home.” Dwight tried to shut the door.

“Then you must be his twin.” Regina stuck her foot firmly in the doorway and held up a newspaper.

There was a picture of Dwight on the front page.

“Now, look! I’ve had just about enough of the press! If you don’t --”

‘Tm not a reporter,” Regina told him. “I’m on your side. I work for ATOMICS.”

“ATOMICS?” Dwight stepped back from the door. “The agency Calvin Cabot hired to investigate my sister's murder?”

“That’s right. Now may I please come in?”

“Just for a minute.” Dwight relented. “You caught me at a bad time.”

“I’m sorry.” Regina preceded him into the living-room, leaving him no choice but to follow, and settled herself firmly into an overstuffed armchair. “There are some questions I have to ask you.”

“Look, Miss-—- What did you say your name was?”

“Blue. Regina Blue.”

“Look, Miss Blue. It wasn’t my idea to hire you or your firm. Mr. Cabot did it without my advance knowledge or consent. I don’t want to go on being rude, but there’s really no reason why I should cooperate with --”

“You’re facing a murder charge!” Regina Blue reminded him. “You need all the help you can get. That’s reason enough to cooperate.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Dwight Venable told her calmly. “The police will come to their senses. They don’t really have a case against me.”

“Even if that’s true, don’t you want to find your sister’s murderer?”

“That’s up to the po—-” Dwight broke off and stared at her, suddenly remembering. “Regina Blue! You’re the one whose apartment my sister was murdered in! You’re the one the cops held and let go before they picked me up!”

“Yes, I am,” Regina admitted.

“And most likely you’re the one who killed Faith!”

“I didn’t kill her. That has been proven to the satisfaction of the police. That’s why they let me go.”

“Well, I didn’t kill her. And from where I’m sitting, that leaves you. Which means that you’re the last person in the world whose questions I want to answer. So you can just leave, Miss Blue.”

“No.”

“Miss Blue, if you refuse to leave, I’ll have to throw you out!”

“Then you’ll have to call the police to do it. Just think what a field day the papers will have with that story!”

“I don’t need the police,” Dwight said grimly. He walked over to Regina, grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her to her feet. He was stronger than he looked. Firmly, he started propelling her to the door. Regina resisted just enough to make him put his weight into it. Then, suddenly, she doubled over, swung her shoulder into his midriff and heaved. It was a maneuver Regina had learned in the judo classes with which she’d supplemented her lessons in karate. Dwight went flying across the room and landed on his left ear.

Red with rage, he shot to his feet and charged at her. Regina sidestepped neatly, stuck out a delicate foot, and yanked back on his arm as he went past her. Dwight turned a beautiful cartwheel and sat down hard. Considerately, Regina dived to save a Tiffany lamp knocked from its perch by one of his flailing arms.

Just as she replaced the lamp, he came at her again. This time his fists were swinging. She ducked inside a right hook and delivered a short chop to his Adam’s apple. Eyes bulging, Dwight fell to the couch and lay there gasping.

“You’ll feel better in a minute,” Regina assured him. She patted her hair into place and waited for him to get his breath back. When he did, she spoke again. “Now the first thing I’d like to ask you about --” she began.

Dwight got to his feet and managed an attempt at dignity. He drew his dressing gown around him and looked at her haughtily. “I have a friend waiting for me in the steam room,” he told her. “I can’t talk to you now.” He started out of the room.

“Then I’ll go with you,” Regina decided.

When they reached the door to the steam room, Dwight turned on his heel and faced her. With a flourish, he opened the dressing gown and let it slide from his shoulders to the floor. His attitude said that he expected Regina to be shocked, perhaps even to retreat in embarrassment.

“Very nice,” Regina told him calmly. “It isn’t often one meets a man with such a nicely jointed pelvic structure.”

Dwight shot her a look of pure malevolence and went into the steam room. A cloud of steam escaped in his wake. It told Regina that if she was going to follow him without ruining her clothes, she’d better take them off and leave them behind. She stripped quickly and went through the door.

The steam was so thick that she could neither see anything, nor get her breath. Beads of perspiration already glistened from head to toe. She sank to the floor where the vapor wasn’t quite so thick and strained her eyes to see through the cloud.

Across the steam room, Regina could just make out a large tub. The sound of rhythmic sloshing came from it, as if the water in it was being mechanically agitated. The upper torso of a man hazily sprouted from the tub. Behind it was the steam-blurred silhouette of another figure bending over slightly.

Still avoiding the rising heat in the room, Regina crawled towards the tub on her hands and knees. Petey-sweetie saw her coming. “Dwight! There’s a woman in here!” His gruff voice rose an octave. “A naked woman!”

“Ignore her,” Dwight advised. “Maybe she’ll get the message and go away.” He lathered Petey-sweetie’s hack and scrubbed it gently, sensually, with a sponge.

“I won’t go away,” Regina declared. “Not until you answer my questions.”

Dwight ignored her and rinsed off Petey-sweetie’s hack. "Your skin’s beginning to crinkle, love,” he observed. “You’d best get out of the tub.”

“I’m not going to get out with that woman watching!” he told Dwight.

“And I’m not going to leave until you answer my questions!” Regina told Dwight.

“All right, dammit!” Dwight relented. “What do vou want to know?” He shifted the tub around so that Petey-sweetie’s back was to Regina. Then he stood facing her with a leg on either side of the tub, and stroked his lover's head to soothe him.

“You told the police that you arrived after Faith had been stabbed,” Regina began. “Yet when she first came in, while I was still in the shower, she called out that she had her brother with her and I heard his voice. How do you explain that?”

“That’s your story.” Dwight shrugged and pressed Petey-sweetie’s head against his belly, comforting him. “How can I explain it?” He played with Petey-sweetie’s ears and thought a moment. “Is my voice the same as the voice you heard?” He threw the question back at Regina.

“I'm just not sure,” Regina admitted. “The water was running. The bathroom door was open, but the stall shower door and the bedroom door were both closed. The voice was muffled. But Faith did introduce the man as her brother.”

“Did she say ‘Dwight’?” He fondled the thick matting of hair on Petey-sweetie’s chest.

“No. She just said her brother.”

“Did she say ‘her brother’? Or just ‘brother’?”

Dwight played with Petey-sweetie’s nipples. Regina had to think about it. “I think she just said ‘brother’,” she decided finally.

“Then maybe he was one of her disciples.” Dwight braced himself as Petey-Sweetie’s nipples distended and he burrowed harder against Dwight’s flat belly.

“Disciples?”

“The people Faith was giving instruction to in Transcendental Meditation. ‘Brother’ was a sort of term of address she used with them.”

“Did she call the women ‘Sister’?”

“Yes. But not all. There was one lesbian she told me about who insisted on being called ‘brother’ like the men. Incidentally, Faith mentioned that this girl had a voice that sounded like a man’s.” Dwight took Petey-sweetie by the ears and pushed his head back. The movement released Dwight’s penis, which twanged to erect attention.

Regina sighed. What Dwight told her meant that she couldn’t rule out the female name on the list of suspects she’d gotten from Angus MacTeague. She tried another tack. “Did you know any of these ‘disciples’?” she asked Dwight.

“No. She met with them privately. Separately. There was no secret about who they were, but it wasn’t a group kind of thing. Faith saw each of them alone. I don’t know if any of them even knew each other.” Dwight’s quivering erection stroked Petey-Sweetie’s cheek.

Regina jumped to yet another point. “You say that when you found Faith's body, you panicked and ran. Now think carefully. Did you close the door behind you?”

“No. I left it open.” Dwight squeezed Petey-Sweetie’s cheeks until his mouth formed an inviting “O.”

If he was telling the truth, Regina realized, then the murderer was still in the apartment when Dwight left. Indeed, the killer might still have been there when Regina found Faith’s body, since Regina herself hadn’t noticed whether the door was open or closed then. “Let’s go back a little,” Regina decided. “Exactly what did Faith say to you before she died?”

“Just the two words: ‘the murderer’, and she held up that list of names.” Dwight forced his way into Petey-Sweetie’s mouth and began moving back and forth, rising up on his toes and rocking back on his heels. “Why don’t you leave now?” he suggested to Regina. “You’re distracting us.”

“I’m not through yet.”

“Doesn’t this embarrass you?”

Regina smiled to herself. She couldn’t remember the last time any sort of sex had embarrassed her.

“Not in the least,” she told Dwight honestly.

“You have no shame!” Dwight panted.

“That’s true,” Regina admitted.

Petey-Sweetie either groaned or growled low in his throat.

“After Faith said ‘the murderer’,” Regina continued stubbornly, “did she say or do anything else?”

“No. She just— Wait a minute!” Dwight remembered. “She sort of crooned her mantra. She died with it on her lips.” He dug his nails into Petey- Sweetie’s shoulders. “Oh, baby! Do that with your tongue again! Ahh --”

“Her ‘mantra’? That’s a kind of chant, isn’t it?”

“Yes. . . . Oh! That feels so goo-oo-ood! . . . In Transcendental Meditation, every person has his or her own individual mantra. Each person’s is exclusively his. Two people might have the same mantra, but they’d never know it because they’d both be sworn to secrecy . . . Yes—-yes——yes! That’s the Spo-o-o- ot! . . .”

“Where would someone get their mantra from?”

“Faith got hers from the Maharishi Unguentinanina. Her disciples got theirs from her. . . . Harder! . . . That’s it! . . . Su-u-u-u-uck! . . .”

“What was her mantra?”

“It was a secret. I told you. She wouldn’t even tell it to me. . . . Ah! . . . Your lips! . . . Heavenly! . . .”

“But she told it to you when she was dying.”

“She didn’t tell it to me. She just chanted it. As if it would help her departing soul on its way to Nirvana. . . . That’s it, Petey-sweetie! . . . Oh yes, love! . . . That’s the way! . . .”

“But you did hear it. Tell me what it was.”

“No. It was Faith’s secret. I’m not going to break her confidence. . . . Lick it! Lick it! Lick it! . . .”

“Even if it will help find her murderer?”

‘Tm not convinced of that. And I won’t tell you. . . . Ah, yes! All the way! Take it all! All of it! . . .” Dwight pushed in to the hilt.

“Yes you will,” Regina informed Dwight sweetly. She strode over to the tub. She put her left hand under Petey-Sweetie’s chin and her right hand firmly on top of his head. Then she pressed down with her right hand and up with her left hand. “What’s the mantra?” she asked again.

“Ouch! Stop that! I told you, I won’t tell you.”

“What’s the mantra?” Regina repeated. She pressed down harder with her right hand; she pressed up harder with her left hand.

“No!”

Regina increased the pressure.

“AHHHHHHH—LOO—OO—OO—OO—OO—OO! . . .”

Regina relaxed her grip. “All right now. Stop screaming and tell me the mantra.”

“AHHHHHHH—LOO—OO—OO—OO—OO—OO! . . .”

Regina took her hands away altogether. “I didn’t mean to hurt you that badly,” she apologized. “Now just take it easy and then tell me the mantra.”

“AHHHHHHH—LOO—OO—OO—OO—OO—OO! That’s the mantra! . . . AHHHHHHH—LOO—OO—OO—OO—OO—OO!”

“No further questions,” Regina said in a brisk, professional voice. She headed for the exit door. Behind her Petey-Sweetie sputtered and choked as Dwight climaxed.

“Did I satisfy you, honey?” Regina heard Petey-Sweetie ask as the door was swinging closed behind her. “AHHHHHHH-LOO—OO~OO—OO—OO—OO!”

CHAPTER EIGHT

"I Love Ewe !"

In show biz, image is everything. But image is a child of the times. The high profile of the ’Forties melts under the glare of the ’Seventies.

Needling yesterday’s Sacred Cow is beating today’s dead horse; bygone knee-slappers lay an egg on the youth culture; hep isn’t hip. If comedy isn’t now-geared, it isn’t funny. The Top Bananas motto must be “Pander, or Perish.”

Boob Roper was one Top Banana who’d had his nose rubbed in the slogan. He’d been a star comedian for thirty-odd years. His rise had been classic-—from the Borscht Circuit to baggy-pants burlesque to a stand-up routine in second-rate night clubs to a radio guest spot leading to a show of his own followed by a Hollywood break parlayed into top box-office stardom and ten years of top ratings on TV. Through it all he’d been conscious of image, as aware of the need to be loved as of the need to be laughed at, always keeping in mind the necessity for Peck’s Bad Boy to render unto Caesar while kidding the Establishment.

Nobody sold more War Bonds in the ’Forties than Boob Roper. Nobody played more benefits than Boob Roper. Nobody—but nobody-did more USO shows through World War Two, Korea, and Vietnam, than Mr. USO himself—Boob Roper.

His name was a household word. His cold, snag-toothed smile and sliding-pond nose were as widely known—perhaps more widely known--as the visage of the President, whom he resembled slightly. His outrageous puns were repeated by three generations of Americans.

And then came the next generation . . .

“First the Barbie Doll, and now the Welfare Doll,” Boob Roper quipped for the benefit of his millions of viewers. “You wind it up and it complains that you haven’t wound it up enough.”

Mom and Dad and many a Senator thought that was a real thigh-thumper. But not long-haired Sonny and his sister the social worker. “What’s funny about that?” they wondered.

“The Senate wants to ban biological weapons,” Boob Roper told an American Legion convention. “But two falsie manufacturers told them to stay out of their business!”

The Legionnaires roared while their bra-less daughters asked “What are ‘falsies’?”

“Know why so many hippies don’t want to go to Vietnam?” Boob Roper asked in a syndicated column he guest-wrote for Leonard Lyons. “Because they have only one * for their country!”

“Get it?” the businessman nudged his guitar-playing son.

“I don’t want it!” was the succinct reply.

In short, Boob Roper had fallen into the Generation Gap.

Full realization of this came to Boob Roper when he went to Vietnam to put on his annual Xmas show for the troops. His jibes at the brass—heretofore sure-fire with the men in the ranks—elicited sparse laughter. Worse, when he appeared in an open jeep on his way to put on a second show for the boys in the boondocks, the GIs along the road openly booed him.

Boob Roper returned home a shaken man. He closeted himself for two weeks with his personal p.r. man and with a top officer of a firm of p.r. consultants specially engaged by Boob to help him with his image problem. What emerged from these intensive discussions was a new Boob Roper.

For some years Boob had worn a pompadour toupee; now it was replaced by a hairpiece which straggled to his shoulders. His entire stable of gag-writers was fired, and word went out through the industry that only scribes under thirty need apply to fill the vacancies. The band which had supplied the music for his TV shows for ten years was replaced by a rock group, and his syrupy theme picked up a beat so strong as to render it unrecognizable. He turned down Muscular Dystrophy to do a benefit for Angela Davis. He told Earl Wilson he was in favor of legalizing pot. He invited Joan Baez to do a guest shot on his TV show and defended the anti-war statements she made on the air.

Most telling of all was Boob’s conversion to Oriental mysticism. He embraced Transcendental Meditation and became an ardent disciple of the Maharishi Unguentinanina. He arranged his schedule to coincide with the Maharishi’s, frequently traveled with the holy man, and appeared often—-the picture of humility—at the Maharishi’s lectures. (The rumor was that Billy Graham took this as a personal rejection and was furious with Boob.)

When the Maharishi came to New York, Boob was the most prominent member of his entourage. The newspapers carried pictures of them stepping off the plane at Kennedy together. One of these photos caught the attention of Regina Blue a few days after her steamy interview with Dwight Venable. The Roper visage staring prayerfully up at her from the tabloid took Regina back a few years. It conjured up memories of Hollywood, or, more accurately, Beverly Hills. It made her nostrils distend with the memory of the aroma of sheep-dip. . .

Regina Blue met Boob Roper at a party in New York. It was a casual enough meeting despite Boob’s compulsive wisecracking about the low-cut gown Regina was wearing. While everybody else laughed, Regina got Boob’s message loud and clear. She wasn’t surprised when he called her a few nights later.

It was a long-distance call from California. Boob had made inquiries and found out just exactly where it was at with Regina. He wanted her to fly out, all expenses paid, and be his “house guest” for a few days. He mentioned a figure that made Regina forgive the jokes he’d made at her bosom’s expense. She agreed to come.

His Beverly Hills mansion turned out to be a relic of the Hollywood days of overstated luxury. Ubiquitous palm trees formed a barrier between its ample grounds and the sightseeing buses which traveled the street beyond. The swimming pool was shaped like a five-pointed star. The furnishings were rococo but lavish. Gadgetry and gimmickry abounded, with buttons to push for hidden bars, movie projectors, escalator stairways and beds which rocked. And what a guest couldn’t get by pushing a button was readily supplied by the large staff of servants Boob employed.

Except for the servants, Regina was alone with Boob during the entire three days. Boob had planned it that way. Like many public figures who work on a tight schedule, he allocated his time carefully. And those three days were allocated to sex, not socializing.

Regina earned her generous fee. Boob drove himself from one orgasm to the next as if his performance was being rated by Gallup. Not that Regina minded. He wasn’t the first man who’d used her to try to prove something to himself.

However, on the last night, Boob came up with an innovation that Regina did mind. They were in his lavish bedroom when he made his desire known. “And now, for my last piece, the piece de résistance sans résistance,” he punned heavily. He opened the sliding doors of his mammoth wardrobe closet and rummaged inside.

Boob emerged with several items: a white sheep-skin costume with a headpiece like the head of a sheep; an overlarge pair of hipboots; a switch of the sort used by sheepherders; a red-and-black flannel shirt; and a collar with a small bell attached. “Put this on.” He threw the sheepskin to Regina. “And then meet me at the south pasture.”

“The south pasture?”

“That grassy clearing in back of the stables.”

“Hey! Wait a minute,” Regina called after Boob as he started out with the rest of the paraphernalia. “This outfit has holes in it!”

“I know that,” he called back. And then he was gone.

When Regina had donned the sheepskin costume, she immediately appreciated how strategically the holes had been placed. Her firm breasts stuck straight out, naked, from two of them. And the sheepskin had also been cut away to reveal her derriere and the pubic triangle at the base of her belly. With these exceptions however, viewing herself in the mirror, Regina saw that the illusion of sheephood worked remarkably well. She put on a robe over the sheepskin and went down to join Boob.

He was waiting, testing the resiliency of the switch, wearing the flannel shirt and the oversized hip boots and nothing else. He removed Regina’s robe, tossed it aside, and placed the collar with the bell around her neck. He stood back and looked at her. Then he whistled.

“Thank you,” Regina said before the appearance of a large sheepdog made her realize that Boob had not been whistling at her. “Oh! Isn’t he cute?” Regina dropped to her haunches to pet the dog.

Boob snapped his fingers. Immediately the sheepdog danced behind Regina and nipped at her heels.

“Ouch!” Thrown off balance, Regina scrambled away on all fours. “Make him stop!” she protested.

Boob snapped his fingers again and the dog heeled.

“What’s the big idea?” Regina wanted to know.

“I grew up in the city,” Boob told her. “When I was a kid, the idea of a farm seemed like ivories to me.”

“ ‘Ivories’?”

“Paira dice.”

“Paradise.” Regina translated. “So?”

“You know how it is when you hit puberty? Sex is a helluva lot more than just a number after five.”

“You lost me,” Regina told him flatly. “What’s the connection?”

“Chicks liked me. When I was in my teens, I got more lays than a Hawaiian tourist.”

“Then what was the problem?”

“They didn’t satisfy me. Nothing did. I had lots of girls, but that wasn’t what I wanted. You always want what you can’t have. I had these sex fantasies all tied in with making it on a farm. All I yearned for was to make love to ewe.”

“Me? But you didn’t even know—”

“Not you. EEE-double-you-eee. A female sheep,” Boob explained. “All these years, all the chicks I’ve balled, none of them ever satisfied me as much as what I used to visualize making it with myself when I was a kid. I guess farm kids dream of making it with chorus girls when they’re on the lamb. Well, with me it’s just the reverse. When I’m humping some hatcheck chick. I close my eyes and count sheep.”

“Sort of sexual wool-gathering,” Regina quipped.

“I’ll make the jokes,” Boob told her firmly. “Anyway, I figure I’m paying you enough to act out my fantasy.”

That was true. Regina sighed. “What do you want me to do?” she asked resignedly.

“Act sheepish.”

Regina hung her head and made a moue. “I mean act like a sheep. Stay on all fours.”

“Shall I lay down like a lamb?”

“No. Be skittish like a full-grown ewe.” Boob flicked the switch against one plump cheek of her naked derriere. He snapped his fingers again and the sheep-dog pranced around Regina.

There was a full moon and the sky was bright with stars. The bizarre scene was clearly illuminated. A light breeze stirred the long grass as Regina scampered across the field on her hands and knees.

The sheepdog barked, caught up with her and leaned hard against her shoulder with his. “What’s he doing?” Regina asked breathlessly. “What does he want?”

“He’s herding you. He’s making you turn back towards me.”

Obligingly, Regina made the turn and circled back towards Boob. When she reached him, he reached out with his switch and poked her bare breasts so that they swayed back and forth. The rippling grass parted with the motion and tickled the tips. Regina shuddered, causing the small bell around her neck to ding-a-ling.

“Udder delight!” Boob said. Even in his excitement he was unable to resist the pun.

Still on all fours, Regina cocked her head and looked up at him. There was something ludicrous in the way the flannel shirttails flapped around his scrawny, naked behind as he moved around her. But the size of Boob’s erection said he was in dead earnest. He knelt beside her and reached under her torso to squeeze her nipples.

“You don’t milk a sheep!” Regina protested.

“It’s my fantasy!” he reminded her.

“What’s that?” Regina sniffed. “What’s that awful smell?”

“Sheep-dip. It’s authentic.”

“Why don’t you make up your mind whether you want to be authentic, or imaginative?”

“Oh, all right.” Boob stopped squeezing her breasts and got to his feet. He balanced unsteadily in the too-large hip-boots. “But I never saw a sheep with red hair there.” He tickled Regina’s pubic hair with the switch. “You must be a dyed-in-the-wool sheep,” he wisecracked.

“It’s not dyed!” Regina objected. “That’s the natural color!”

“Then you must be a Commie dupe!” Boob cackled. “A Red sheep!”

“Are you just going to stand there making corny jokes?” Regina wanted to know.

“Critics I don’t need! You just stay sheep-y!” Boob bent over and grasped one of her wool-covered ankles. He raised it off the ground.

“Hey!” Regina almost lost her balance. “What are you doing?”

“Ewe’ll see.” Boob bent her leg straight and slid it into the hip-boot. He repeated the strategy with the other leg. Then he spread his feet wide apart.

The result was to force Regina to balance on her hands and head. Her straining breasts hung upside down, the ruby tips grazing the ground. Her derriere jutted out at just the right height, glowing pinkly in the moonlight, the cleft pronounced by virtue of the position she’d been forced to assume. Her legs were firmly ensconced in the hip-boots.

Boob looked with approval at her neatly jackknifed body. The sheepdog sniffed at her face and when Regina tried to jerk her head away the little bell sounded. Her rounded bottom quivered with the motion, a shimmering pink target. Boob took careful aim and lunged.

“No!” Regina screamed a protest. “That’s not where—!”

It was too late. Boob had already scored a perverse bullseye and was lodged solidly. Keeping a tight grip on Regina's hips, he pumped passionately with sure, hard strokes.

The dog licked Regina’s face sympathetically. The smell of sheep-dip was strong in her nostrils. The attack on her rear was more painful than erotic, but she was resigned to it.

“Great!” Boob panted. “Wonderful! That’s it, sheep! Move it! Wiggle it! Yeah! Ahhh! I love ewe! I love ewe! I love ewe!” He slammed against her plump rear with all his might. “Do ewe love me?” he demanded.

“Baaa!” Regina replied. “Baa-aa!” she responded.

“Baa-aa-aa!”

CHAPTER NINE

The Sound of One Hand Napping

Regina Blue didn’t feel the least bit sheepish about phoning Boob Roper when she read in the papers of his arrival in New York with the Maharishi Unguentinanina. Celebrity Service, to which Regina subscribed, provided her with the name of the New York hotel where Boob was staying. When her call to him was put through, Regina identified herself by name.

“Who?” Boob seemingly drew a blank.

Former clients who developed amnesia were frequent in Regina’s experience. “Regina Blue.” She repeated her name patiently. “I was your house guest in Beverly Hills a few years back.”

“Sorry, honey, I don’t think I—”

“Baa-aa!” Regina Blue whinnied. “Baa-aa-aa!”

“Oh.” The sound of recognition was followed by a long silence which communicated suspicion.

“Do you remember me now?” Regina asked finally.

“Maybe.” Boob wasn’t about to commit himself. Blackmail wasn’t unknown in his business or hers; telephone wires had been known to be tapped. “What do you want?”

“A small favor.”

Here it comes! Boob steeled himself. “Like what?”

“I’d like you to arrange for me to meet the Maharishi. Privately.”

“He doesn’t swing that way,” Boob told her. “He’s an ascetic.”

“Then he’s safe with me,” Regina promised. “I just want to talk to him.”

“Sorry. The Maharishi only grants private interviews to the Select Few.” Boob’s tone endowed the privileged disciples with saintly status.

“The word is that you’re quite influential with him,” Regina persisted. “I’d be very appreciative.”

“No sale. I too have forsaken the flesh.”

“Including mutton?” Regina asked sweetly.

The point wasn’t lost on Boob. “I’ve given that up too,” he whined. “Honest.”

“Really? Now that’s very interesting. Very! I’ll bet Earl Wilson would think that’s very interesting. What top comic, initials B.R., is cold-shouldering a red-haired lamb with whom he once ran wild in his Beverly Hills pasture’?” Regina improvised.

“You’re leaning on me!” Boob protested.

“Baa-aa—aa!”

“All right, dammit! I’ll see what I can do.”

Two days later Boob called Regina to tell her that the meeting with the Maharishi had been arranged for the following afternoon. It was to take place in the private quarters reserved for the Maharishi’s meditation at the small temple which had been built in his honor by subscription of his followers. Boob himself would pick Regina up at three and escort her there.

The room was small and dim, lit only by two candles in ornate holders, one on either side of a raised dais. The Maharishi sat cross-legged on a pillow atop the dais. He motioned for Regina to sit on the bare floor below and in front of him. “You may leave us, Brother,” he told Boob, who backed out genuflecting.

All was silent after Boob had gone. Yet the silence was tranquil, rather than strained. As it stretched on, it gave Regina an opportunity to study the Maharishi.

He was a small man, skeleton thin. His skin was light brown with a golden tint to it, translucent against the white of the simple robe he wore and the turban which framed his wizened features. The bare, crossed shins were gnarled, as were the long-fingered hands. The whole picture was one of inner peace -- with two off-notes: a sparse white goatee which lent the complacency of his demeanor a slightly puckish air; and deepset black eyes which burned like hot coals, feverishly, fervently, twin live embers in the bed of purified ashes which was the face of the Maharishi.

Finally Regina spoke. “There are some questions I’d like to ask you, Maharishi,” she said respectfully.

“To question is to set one’s foot on the Path of Wisdom,” the Maharishi replied in deep, rich tones.

“Yes. Well, what I wanted to ask you is—”

“If one could but find the serenity to know that which is the Right Question to ask.”

“Of course. Now what I’d like to know is—”

“To Know is to identify the Knowable. But the Knowable is ever Unknowable.”

“I see. But if I could just—”

“To Know that the Knowable is Unknowable is truly to take the first step on the Path of Wisdom. Such Knowledge stoppeth the Tongue which would question that Faith which must be accepted without being Known. Is that clear, my child?”

“Not exactly. All I want to ask you is-—”

“Hush. Meditate on it. The answers one seeks lie within oneself.” The Maharishi closed his eyes. Regina sighed. This was going to be harder than she’d anticipated. “Umm,” she said, fishing for words.

“No, my child. Not ‘umm’. Om. Now join me in the mantra of Oneness. Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm--”

“Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm—” Obediently, Regina sang along with him. Follow the bouncing ball. “Ommmmmmmmmm—-”

“Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm—” The Maharishi continued until he ran out of breath.

“I once heard Allen Ginsberg do that,” Regina remembered when they’d both stopped Omm-ing.

“The Brother Ginsberg means well, but his Om has an unfortunate Yiddish intonation. Understand, my child, that I remark on this in a Spirit not anti-Semitic, but rather anti-semantic. Some of my best friends . . .”

The Maharishi’s voice trailed off into reflection.

“I Wanted to ask you about Faith Venable.” Regina got it out before the Maharishi could sidetrack her again. ”

“May the Sister Faith have found Nirvana,” the Maharishi intoned piously.

“She was, I believe, a disciple of yours?” Regina persisted.

“We are all One,” the Maharishi replied cryptically.

“You had a falling out?”

“Error had disrupted Sister Faith’s Being; it had disturbed her Inner Peace; put her in conflict with Karma, which is the Oneness of the Soul.”

“The newspapers reported that you quarreled over the pronunciation of a mantra.”

“If the Pupil questions the wisdom of the Master, then is not the Lesson that when the Master is Lessened, the Pupil is Lessened as well?”

“Could you be more specific?” Regina’s head was spinning.

“Should a flat ‘A’ jar the Song of the Nightingale, then shall not the Universe echo with the dissonance?”

“Sister Faith mispronounced a mantra with a flat ‘A’?” Regina tried to pin it down.

“Flat? Oy, veg! Such an ‘A’!”

“I beg your pardon?” Regina was startled.

“Her pronunciation of the mantra was indeed a Sin of Pride, which is a separation of the Self from the whole. I bade her Meditate on it and banished her from My Presence until Illumination should once again Fill her Being.”

“How long ago did you banish her?”

“Time is a stagnant stream. There is no past, no present, no future. Time is Meaninglessness.”

“Six months? A year?”

“In Meaninglessness, there is Meaning.”

“Isn’t that contradictory?” Regina wondered.

“Yes,” the Maharishi granted. “And no,” he disagreed. “In True Truth the Opposite is Truly True.”

“Then that statement is false!” Regina thought for a moment that she was getting the hang of it. “And so the Opposite is false!”

“That is both True and Not True,” the Maharishi topped her with equanimity. “All Truth is True. All Truth is False. It is so simple, is it not?”

“Duck soup!” Regina muttered.

“We are all alien Knadlach in the Soup of the Duck.”

“Egg Rolls in the Minestrone,” Regina replied wildly.

“All Shish kebab lost in the Clam Chowder of Manhattan, born Strangers to swim and sink in the Universall Sea, and yet a part of the Vast Ocean, at one with it beyond our Discontent. We are all --”

“In the soup!” Regina summed up for the Maharishi.

“And not in the soup.” The Maharishi held out his hands palms up; everything had been explained.

“Soup aside, this mantra that Faith Venable mispronounced, was it her mantra?”

“Her mantra is thy mantra is my mantra is our mantra is one mantra. There is only the One. It is All. All is One.”

“All for one, and one for all,” Regina echoed wearily.

“All is One,” the Maharishi corrected. “One is All.”

“Is there only one mantra then?”

“There are many Roads to Karma.”

“All roads lead to Karma,” Regina guessed.

“I think that’s Rome you’re thinking of,” the Maharishi corrected her. “It’s a different bag.”

“Sorry. Now getting back to Faith Venable. You were her mentor, weren’t you?”

“We are all Pupils; and all are Masters.”

“But she did receive her initial instruction in Transcendental Meditation from you. Is that so?”

“I was her Guru.”

At last! A simple, direct statement! Regina followed it up quickly. “And you fell out over the mantra. Then what happened?”

“Sister Faith said ‘Guru, you’re thu-ru’.”

“And after the split she set herself up as a Guru?” Regina asked.

“She seduced some of my prize pupils away from the Right Path.”

The word “seduced” brought Regina up short. “Do you mean Faith Venable used sex?”

“No-no! Sister Faith strayed from Right Thinking, but I am sure that she remained Pure of Body, if not of Spirit. Indeed, her Purity of Flesh may have played no small part in luring my disciples from me.”

“How do you mean?”

“Abstinence makes the Heart grow Fonder.”

“Particularly somebody else’s abstinence,” Regina rerflected. “Did you see her again after the break?”

“No.”

“Where were you on the night she was murdered?” Regina tried to slip the question in casually.

“Where I always am. In the Universe. At One.”

“Could you narrow that down a little?”

“With the Allness of Love, Sister, I will tell you with specificity. I was in Los Angeles addressing a Band of the Faithful, in full view of two hundred people.” The Maharishi beamed at Regina beneficently. “So just can it, Sister,” he added with transcendental calm. “You can’t lay that on me!”

Scratch one suspect! It was easy enough to check out, which probably meant it was true. “You still haven’t told me if it was Faith Venable’s mantra you quarreled over,” Regina reminded him.

The Maharishi meditated. He shrugged. “It was not,” he said finally.

“Whose mantra was it?”

“If the Lips are Sealed, the Foot may not enter the Mouth.”

“Did you give Faith Venable her mantra?” Regina tried it from a different angle.

“Sister Faith did indeed receive her Holy Chant of Oneness from my Humble Self, her Guru.”

“Can you tell me what her mantra was?”

“The Stilled Tongue gathers no Blisters.”

“Can you tell me what her mantra wasn’t?” Regina pinged back to his pong.

“What is not, is not, and is not easy to define.”

“Was ‘AHHH LOO-OO-OO’ Faith Venable’s mantra?”

“In the East we have a saying: ‘Daisies never tell’.”

“Was ‘AHH LOO-OO-OO’ not Faith Venable’s mantra?”

“What are you, rneshuginah?” The Maharishi’s equanimity was disturbed. “Sister Faith was an Aries! ‘AHHH LOO-OO-OO’ indeed! What kind of Guru would hand down an ‘AHH LOO-OO-OO’ mantra to an Aries?”

“Sorry. No offense meant,” Regina apologized.

“Wrong Thinking!” the Maharishi grumbled. “Go and Meditate on it. You have disturbed my tranquility, which is to disturb the tranquility of the Whole. I must rejoin the Universe now.” He closed his eyes.

It took Regina a moment to realize that the interview was at an end. Her mind had been focused on the importance of what she had leamed. “AHH LOO-OO-OO,” the mantra which Faith had chanted just before she died, was not her mantra. Then why had she died with it on her lips? There could be only one answer. “AHHH LOO-OO-OO” was the mantra of the murderer! If Regina could find which of Faith’s disciples had been assigned that chant, she would find the killer! The right mantra, the right murderer! It was as simple as that!

Regina left. Outside, on the street, she bumped smack into Lieutenant Raoul Rodriguez of the Homicide Division. The dark-skinned, handsome plainclothesman was openly suspicious at Regina’s emerging from the Maharishi’s temple. “Are you mixed up with this Guru?” he demanded to know.

“No. I simply came down to ask him some questions.”

“Questions about what?”

“About the murder, of course.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Find out for yourself.” Regina found the Lieutenant’s attitude annoying. Then, as she realized what was facing him, she chuckled. “All Answers are Questions rearranged,” she told Rodriguez. “If it is the Right Question, it will be its own Answer.”

“Huh?”

“The Wisdom of the Questioner is the Knowledge of the Answerer.”

“Smart-ass!” Rodriguez snorted. He started to enter the temple and then turned back to Regina. “You’ve got no business fooling around with this case,” he told her. “And I’m warning you, if you get in my way, I’ll cream you!”

“Shame, Lieutenant! Always thinking of sex!” Regina wriggled her hips provocatively. “But I'll have you know that my interest is legitimate. I’m employed by ATOMICS, the most reputable agency in the business.”

“Is that so?” Rodriguez threw her the zinger. “And are you licensed to conduct private investigations?” he asked. “Because if you’re not, you could be in very serious trouble.”

“I didn’t know I had to be licensed,” Regina confessed.

“State law.” Rodriguez filed her reaction away in the back of his mind. He entered the temple, reassured with the knowledge that—-

Regina is not queen of all she surveys. . . .

CHAPTER TEN

Have Gum, Wm Travel

Tex Kincaid got around. Regina Blue first met him in Saigon. During the two years since then, Tex had turned up in such far-flung places as Nigeria, Brazil, Greece and Northern Ireland. At the present time, according to an ATOMICS check requested by Regina, Tex Kincaid was in Dacca, the capital city of East Pakistan.

“Tex Kincaid” was the second name on the list the dying Faith Venable had handed to her brother with the words: “the murderer.” He was one of the two people on the list whom Regina knew personally. That was why Regina decided to fly to the embattled city of Dacca to interview him.

It was a starting point. Not much of a starting point, but she had to begin some place. Tex had been in New York the night of the murder and had left for East Pakistan the following day. Prior to that he had met with Faith Venable privately on several occasions. The doorman of the building had identified him from a photograph which ATOMICS had also provided with Regina.

On the flight to Calcutta, where she would have to change planes, Regina went over in her mind all that she knew about Tex Kincaid. A native of Texas, twenty-five years old, he suited his name physically as well as if he’d been assigned to play the part by Central Casting. His appearance smacked of the open range, the prairie past, the good old days when the West was won by men who were men who sat tall in the saddle.

Tex was tall—a bootless six-foot-three—and rangy — one-hundred-ninety lean and muscular pounds-— and had eyes as blue as a prairie sky, the buck-toothed grin of a gopher, and wind-whipped skin like saddle leather. He was the son of a small cattle rancher, and had grown up outdoors, on the range. And while he was growing up, all around him, in the land of LBJ, oil wells were sprouting up and shooting off geysers of dollars in fulfillment of the American Dream.

Alas, the gushers missed the Kincaid ranch. Fate’s oversight might have made some boys bitter, but not Tex. If the Money Mountain wouldn’t come to him, he decided, he’d just have to go climbing after it on his own. So Tex enlisted in the Army and got himself sent to Vietnam.

Of the half-million GIs rotating their way through ’Nam at that time, only a canny few saw it as a Land for Milking Money. Tex was one of the select. He’d planned it that way.

As a volunteer, he’d been granted his choice of service: Ordnance. By immediately re-upping, he’d contrived to have himself stationed permanently in Saigon. He arrived with a footlocker filled with Chiclets, caught onto the ropes quickly, and parlayed his gum into a case of booze which he used to persuade a homeward-bound Lieutenant to assign him to the Purchasing Department of the PX.

From there on it was sheer Texas initiative and know-how. A crate of Baby Ruths here, a box of Hershey bars there, a swap for a side of beef with an obliging mess sergeant, a deal with a South Vietnamese Colonel for a crate of grenades which brought good American dollars from a Cong agent on the black market—it all added up to a Swiss bank account with regular deposits made in the name of Tex Kincaid. Before his first year in Saigon was out, Private Kincaid had established himself as the man to see, the man with the contacts to handle goods that were too hot even for the black market, the wheeler-dealer to whom all other wheeler-dealers paid deference—and a goodly percentage of the take.

He stayed a Pfc. Deliberately. Rank might have made him obtrusive, and he didn’t want that. So Tex himself killed all promotions before they could be officially tendered. Such modest string-pulling was easy for him since those with whom he regularly dealt included all ranks from Sergeant-Major through General.

Among these was a certain Major with important connections back home. One day the Major came to Tex with a problem. The Air Force was due to bomb out a certain village in the hinterlands. The Major didn’t want this particular village hit because he’d arranged to have a crop of copra stashed in it and a Cong agent was due to arrive at the village to pay hard cash for the copra the day after the scheduled raid. Could Tex do anything about having the raid delayed?

Tex could. And he did. The price was the wipe-out of a crap table debt incurred by a Lieutenant Colonel of the Air Force.

The Major was grateful. He was so grateful that he decided to give Tex a present. The gift was Regina Blue.

She was flown to Saigon especially as a surprise for Tex Kincaid’s twenty-third birthday. Naked, she was wrapped in cellophane, tied with a red ribbon, and delivered to Tex by an Army van commandeered by the Major. When Tex opened the package, she sang “Happy Birthday to you” while he guffawed heartily.

“Ah’ll be blowed!” Tex roared, wiping the tears of laughter from his eyes.

“If you like,” Regina replied.

He hadn’t liked. “Truth is all the gook poontang hereabouts has me plumb wore out,” he confessed to Regina. “Ah ain’t rightly got the strength to do justice by no American lady.”

“I feel like a barrel of coals that just arrived in Newcastle,” Regina sighed.

“More like rare diamonds, Ma’am,” Tex told her gallantly. “They’s many a high-rankin’ slope ’d pay high for the priv’lege.”

“Well then—?”

“No Ma’am!” Tex was firm. “You’re a white lady and it wouldn’t be fittin’.”

Why are we in Vietnam? Somewhere in there, Regina suspected, lay the answer. Depressing. She thrust the thought away from her. “As long as I’m here anyway,” she said to Tex, “isn’t there anything you’d like me to do for you?”

Tex thought about it a moment. Then his face broke into a wide grin and he ducked his head shyly. “Maybe we could have us some fun,” he suggested. “If you was willin’.”

“Try me.”

Tex did. He explained to Regina that he was a crack pistol shot. Then he produced a gun and told her what he had in mind. It added up to target practice-—with Regina Blue as the target!

“Now don’t you fret none,” he reassured her. “This here peashooter ain’t real. It's a toy. Looky here, an’ Ah’ll show you how it works.”

The toy gun was a replica of a large Luger. It shot rubber darts about the size and shape of a man’s finger. A suction cup was affixed to the snub nose of each dart.

Tex arranged several pillows atop a large packing case as a comfortable perch for Regina. He seated her so that she could lean back on her hands. He set two smaller crates on the floor about four feet from each other, and placed Regina’s feet on them. Then he stepped back to admire the arrangement. Regina’s breasts jutted straight out, and her pelvic charms were clearly revealed, purplish-red lips and maroon clitty nestling between straining white thighs.

Tex backed off about fifteen feet and surveyed the target. “You got a lipstick, Ma’amP” he asked, squinting .

“In my purse.” Regina pointed.

Tex got the lipstick, walked over to her and knelt. He outlined her knee caps with two bright red circles and colored them in. He then rouged the aureoles of her nipples and the nipples themselves. It tickled, and Regina wriggled as the tips of her breasts grew hard and distended. Tex drew a small red circle around her navel and then a larger circle around that one. Finally he traced an outline around the lips of her vagina, smeared the lipstick on his fingertips and applied it to her clitoris until it stood out bright red. Regina moaned under the manipulation.

Tex again backed off and nodded to himself, satisfied. “Now here's how we score it,” he declared. “A direct hit on the knee is worth ten points. Off the red, lose five points. A miss is zero on all targets. Titties are fifteen points, but only ten for a bazoom if the nip’s missed. Twenty points for the belly button, ten for a tummy hit ’tween the inner an’ outer circle. Twenty for the clitty, twenty for the lips, an’ thirty for a bullseye up the alley. That sound like fair scorin’ to you, Ma’am?”

“Fire away!”

Tex strapped on a holster, low over his hip.

“What’s that for?” Regina wanted to know.

“Gonna shoot on the draw, Ma’am.”

“I never saw a gunslinger use a Luger before,” Regina commented.

“Shucks, Ma’am. Can’t be helped. They don’t manufacture these here dart gismos to look like six-guns or Colts.” Tex stuck the Luger in the holster and drew it a few times. Then he inserted a dart and replaced it. “Ready, Ma’am?” he asked politely.

“Slap leather!”

Tex drew and fired in one swift motion. The suction cup fastened on Regina’s left knee and the long, slender missile quivered there like a misplaced dildo. “Ten points.” Tex reloaded, drew and fired again, and it hit slightly above the right kneecap, half in and half out of the red. “Five points.” Tex scored himself and scowled. “Ah’m a mite rusty,” he confessed. The scowl was replaced by a smile when his next shot scored a direct hit on Regina’s left nipple, the suction cup covering the aureole like a stripper’s pasty. “Fifteen.” But the next one landed in Regina’s cleavage and Tex decided it was a miss even if one edge of the suction cup was touching her breast. He redeemed himself with a bullseye to her belly button. When his last shot strummed her clitoris, Regina gasped with the sudden erotic thrill.

“Seventy.” Tex added up his score. “Ah’ll do better than that with a little practice,” he promised. He strode over to Regina and retrieved the darts. As he pulled the suction cup from her left breast tip, the nipple sprang free with a twang, stiff, vibrating a second or two, grown larger than its mate by the suction, a taut, lipsticked invitation. Tex fingered it a moment while Regina panted. But he withstood temptation. “Back to the O. K. Corral,” he ordered himself.

The second time around he scored eighty, barely missing the vagina and hitting an inch to the right of the navel. The third time he upped it to eighty-five, nicking her clitty again and missing the left nipple. It took several attempts before he finally scored a hundred.

By then Regina was quite frustrated, but not bored. As he fondled her lipsticked nipples while removing the missiles, she writhed openly. When he reached to remove the “bullseye” between her quivering thighs, her hand went to his wrist to prolong the withdrawal and to urge re-impalement. Her legs hooked around his waist, and she held him there, her pulsating honey-pot clutching at the missile until she had attained a measure of satisfaction.

“Thanks,” she breathed, finally releasing him.

“My pleasure, Ma’am.”

“Wouldn’t you like some more of your pleasure?” she inquired.

“Ah aim to have it, Ma’am.” Tex backed off, reloaded, turned around and shot over his shoulder for a ten point score to the left breast. He swung down and shot between his legs for a direct belly-button hit. Using a mirror, he shot backwards from the hip and picked off both knees. But his next shot, prone, on his back, was a miss.

“Damn!” Regina was disappointed.

“Don’t you worry, Ma’am. Jes’ a mite low. Next time’ll score.”

And it did. Tex got better and better at the trick shots as the evening progressed. Pretty soon Regina’s faith in his aim was such that she began to tingle at the core in anticipation before he even shot for the thirty point bullseye. The anticipation was as much for the prolonged withdrawal of the missile as for the thrill of the hit.

“It’s gettin’ late,” Tex said finally. “Maybe we’d best knock off for tonight.”

“All right.” Regina got up and stretched languorously. She shot him a long inviting look.

To no avail. Tex had meant what he said. They slept in separate beds.

Frustration made Regina irritable the next day. She was not in a receptive frame of mind when Tex outlined what he had in mind for that evening. “A contest!” she responded. “Now look, I don’t mind doing anything that gives you your kicks personally, but I never agreed to any gang shag. That’s not my style. It wears a girl out before her time, and, quite frankly, I’m too high-class for that kind of activity.”

“Whoa! My, but you’re a skittish filly. Who said anything about a gang shag? Why Ma’am, Ah respec’ you an’ your scruples too much to suggest any such thing. All you do is jes’ like you did last night. Only Ah want to invite a few friends for competition. Hell, it ain’t no fun lessen they’s someone for a feller to pit hisself against.”

In the end he’d prevailed. Albeit reluctantly, Regina agreed to serve as target for Tex and three carefully selected friends—-“all Texas gentlemen,” as Tex described them. The group gathered in the furnished basement of Tex’s swanky Saigon villa at nine that evening.

He introduced the “Texas gentlemen” to Regina. The tallest of them -- taller even than Tex—was a Marine Sergeant from Dallas. The fattest was a land-locked Navy Captain assigned as a p.r. liaison man who hailed from El Paso. The highest-ranking was a one-star General of Artillery who came originally from Houston.

After a few liberal rounds of bourbons, Tex handed out the toy Lugers and a generous supply of “ammunition” to each of them. He set Regina up as the target and explained the scoring system and the rules to his guests. When Regina dropped her robe to reveal her naked, strategically lipsticked body, the “Texas gentlemen” designation was immediately put to the test.

The General reached for his crotch. The Navy man sprouted a visible yardarm-—give or take a few inches. The Marine Sergeant reached out with both hands.

Tex repelled the Marine invasion before it could get properly underway. He scuttled the Navy with a warning. He told the General in no uncertain terms to secure his artillery.

“This here lady’s purely for shootin’ at!” Tex told them.

“I demand my choice of weapons!” barked the General.

“Maybe we could just play a little game of ‘Drop the Soap’,” suggested the Naval officer.

“Fix bayonets!” The Marine Sergeant charged again, and again Tex was forced to repel him.

“You can look, but you can’t touch!” Tex told them firmly. “Now them’s the rules! We all shoot, but Ah’m the only one does the retrievin’.” He pushed the Marine back behind the chalk line he’d drawn on the floor. “You first,” he told him. “Draw an’ shoot from the hip.”

The Sergeant slapped leather. The Luger fairly jumped out of his holster and into his hand. The upward motion to bring it to his hip was like greased lightning. The Sergeant really looked like a pro—-except that the barrel of the Luger encountered an obstacle on the upswing and went flying out of his hand before he could fire.

The Marine looked down at the protrusion responsible for the mishap. “Now how’s a man supposed to draw with a thing like that stickin’ out in his way?” he wondered.

“Jes’ simmer down an’ control yourself,” Tex told him. He turned to the Navy man. “Your turn,” he told m.

The fat Captain, showing off for Regina’s benefit, swung around and bent low in one smooth motion to shoot from between his legs. Alas, his filled scrotum hung lower than he’d realized. The momentum of the Luger carried it into sharp contact with the sensitive sac. The fat Captain sat down abruptly, took his swollen, injured testicles in the palms of his hands, and cried wracking sobs.

The General toed the line. He assumed the stance of a gunfighter, feet apart, hands tensed away from his sides. He eyed the target.

“Draw!” Tex gave him the go-ahead.

The General’s right hand slapped against the front of his pants. He pulled the zipper expertly. He drew. “Ain’t that cute?” Tex eyed the exposed organ.

“Smallest I ever seen,” the Marine remarked.

“Reckon that’s why he went into the Artillery," the Captain, who had taken some psych courses in his ROTC days, surmised. “Over-compensation.”

The General covered his mini-calibre cannon.

The contest proceeded by fits and starts, with moans and groans, lechery and frustration. Tex’s three friends seemed unable to stir up much enthusiasm for the competition aspect of it. The “target,” on the other hand, continued to claim their rapt attention.

One by one, they stopped participating, satisfied to let Tex’s marksmanship go unchallenged. They sat and watched his missiles score bullseye after bullseye, their hands straying groinwards as Regina reacted to the titillations of the darts. Surreptitiously, zippers were opened and hands turned into fists. Then, more openly, the three allowed their weapons the freedom for which they strained.

Nor was Tex himself any longer immune to the appeal of Regina’s sensual writhings. Removing the missile which had scored a thirty point bullseye, he found himself quite stirred by the pulsating of the warm, moist sheath in which it was embedded. The burning nipples grazing his cheek as he bent to the task seemed to send signals of acquiescence to the core of him. Tex wanted Regina, and he wanted her now!

He unbuckled his belt and let his pants fall to the floor. His shorts followed. His large hands fastened over her hot derriere and he pulled her to him, lifting so that her knees clutched his hips and the thirty-point target was brought into a direct line with his erect penis.

“Just you,” Regina panted. “Not them. Just you!”

“Damn straight, Ma’am.” Tex looked briefly over his shoulder. His three friends were all seated and staring at them, their fists moving in a blur of motion. “Eat your livers out, fellers!” he jeered. He plunged into the thirty-point target, scoring a bullseye. . . .

Now, on the flight to Calcutta, remembering, Regina Blue admitted to herself that for all his Texas clumsiness, Tex Kincaid had provided her with one of the most erotically memorable interludes of her professional career. What he lacked in savoir faire, he’d more than made up for in youth and enthusiasm and staying power. Even if she had given up prostitution, Regina told herself, that was no reason why she and Tex shouldn’t . . . She’d never vowed to give up her personal pleasure, after all!

Regina wriggled in her seat. The jet engines roared. Calcutta, and then East Pakistan and Tex Kincaid were drawing closer. Sex with Tex! It had been a long time. Too long! She conjured up visions of making love to Tex.

Alas! Regina was doomed to disappointment. The best planned lays o’ mice and men (and hot-blooded girls) gang aft agley!

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Short Cut to Success

Luck was with Regina Blue. With war raging in East Pakistan, she’d anticipated difficulties in making her flight connection to Dacca. At best she’d expected a lengthy layover in Calcutta. Instead, she was able to board a flight which was just leaving-—three days over-due—-only moments after her arrival in Calcutta. The plane took off while she was still looking for a seat-belt to fasten around her slender waist.

There was no seat-belt. The craft was a bucket-seat job, a converted bomber left over from World War Two. Regina was the only passenger.

The stewardess wore a sari. She also wore a parachute on her back. She stood in the aisle with a ghastly smile on her face and went through a rote explanation of how to inflate a life jacket.

“Why?” Regina wanted to know. “We’re not flying over water. “We’re flying over the Ganges Mountains. What good is a life jacket?”

“We cross the Ganges River,” the stewardess replied.

“It’s already behind us,” Regina pointed out.

“That’s no reason to alter the routine!” The stewardess was huffy. “You know a lot of research has gone into establishing these safety procedures. They’re designed to reassure the passengers.”

“I thought they were designed to show them what to do in case of emergency.”

“Well, they are! And some day when you’re flying over water and you have to abandon the plane, you’ll be glad you know how to inflate your life jacket.”

“I don’t even have a life jacket,” Regina reminded her.

“There’s always one creep to give you a hard time every trip!” The stewardess retired, muttering to herself.

The plane bounced roughly through the air, the four engines determinedly out of sync. Half the time Regina was bracing her hands against the cabin roof to avoid banging her head against it. The other half she was clutching the jagged edges of the bucket seat in order to maintain contact with her derriere. It was like trying to ride a bucking bronco in a doll’s house whirling through a tornado.

Just after they crossed the border into East Pakistan, there were several loud explosions close at hand. Puffs of smoke appeared in front of and behind both wings. The plane spun crazily on its back and whirled through the sky erratically. Regina bounced around the cabin, a pinball at the mercy of a tilt-crazy pilot.

The stewardess reappeared. “Nothing to worry about,” she said, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Just a little turbulence.” She buried her face in her hands as a mountain peak scrambled to get out of the way of the right wing.

“Turbulence!” Regina exclaimed. “Those are ack-ack bursts out there! Somebody’s shooting at us!”

“Calm yourself.” The stewardess checked her ’chute and moved towards the emergency exit door. “Would you like some coffee, tea, or milk?” she inquired.

“How about a stiff scotch?” Regina suggested.

“Sorry. The pilot just killed the bottle.”

“Then how about a parachute for me?”

“Now don’t get panicky . . .”

Regina looked out the window. The left wing was in flames.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” she said, teeth chattering.

“It’s not airline policy to provide parachutes for the passengers. It makes them apprehensive.”

“Then how come you’re wearing one? That makes me a helluva lot more apprehensive!”

“It’s part of my uniform.” The stewardess shrugged. “I’ll flip you for it,” Regina offered.

The stewardess shook her head. “Fasten your seat belt,” she said formally. “We’ll be landing in five min- utes.”

“I don’t have a seat belt!” Regina wailed.

“And no smoking, please,” the stewardess added.

“This is no time to worry about emphysema!”

“The pilot informs me that due to conditions beyond his control this will be a rough landing. So don’t be alarmed if we seem to bounce a little when we touch down.”

A few moments later the nose of the plane touched earth. The propellor dug a hole and the plane flipped over on its back, crumpling the tail section. The right wing burst into flames.

Regina beat the stewardess to the emergency door. She jumped from the flaming plane and ran across the field. Behind her there was the roar of an explosion and pieces of metal flew through the air.

When she finally got to her feet, the stewardess was being carried past her on a stretcher, her sari caked with blood. “I hope you had a pleasant trip.” She smiled her ghastly smile at Regina and fainted.

Regina wandered into the terminal and fished her baggage claim check from her handbag. C’est la guerre! She tore it in half and threw it into a trash basket. Her luggage had obviously perished with the plane. She still had her passport and her traveler’s checks, but the only clothes she had left were those she was wearing.

Hot pants! And a loose-knit see-through sweater sans bra! Plus thongs strapped halfway to her knee. The outfit was all the rage in New York. But in Dacca they’d never seen anything like it before.

As Regina emerged from the terminal and walked towards the hack line, a departing cab and an incoming cab collided head-on. The drivers, seeming not to notice the mishap, continued staring at the redhead in the short-shorts.

The drivers of two parked cabs jumped out of their vehicles to vie for her patronage. They danced around her bowing and chattering in Pakistani. They took turns trying to shepherd her into their taxis. .

“Does either of you speak English?” Regina wanted to know.

The shorter of the two shoved the other aside and stepped up to Regina proudly. His bare, brown bantam chest puffed up over the loincloth he was wearing. He re-arranged his turban and gave Regina a broad, gold-toothed smile. “I speak both English and American, Mem’sahib!” he declared proudly. He opened the door to his cab -- a 1938 DeSoto— with a flourish.

Partly to avoid the outraged protests of the other driver, Regina got into the taxi quickly. The driver jumped into the front and pulled away with even more haste. His competitor chased them for half a block or so, stabbing at the rear tires with a long kris.

When they’d outdistanced him and the excitement was over, Regina spoke. “I’m looking for—-” she started to say.

“—Sahib Kincaid.” The driver finished the sentence for her.

“That’s right! But how did you know?”

“Deductive reasoning. I majored in Logic at Cambridge,” the driver explained. “Your accent says that you are an American. Your garb testifies that you are completely alien to our culture. Had you come to visit a local citizen, you would surely have been forewarned as to the customary apparel. Americans do not think of such things. Ergo, you have come here to see an American. There are currently twenty-two Americans left in Dacca. Twenty-one of them are back at the airport, frantically trying to secure passage out of the country. The twenty-second is Sahib Tex Kincaid.”

“Suppose I’d been looking for one of the Americans back at the terminal?” Regina asked.

“Then I would have driven you back to the terminal.”

“But we started from the terminal.”

“I never let my PhD in Logic interfere with business,” the driver told her haughtily. “I would have taken you from the terminal to the terminal. A fare is a fare.”

“I guess cab drivers are the same the world over,” Regina sighed.

“Listen, lady, ya t’ink its easy pushin’ a hack in all kindsa traffic day in an’ day out, all kinda weather? Listenin’ to da people complain about da meter an’ den stiflin’ da poor hackie? Ya get ulcers from da Sunday drivers, an’ piles from da constant bouncin’, an’ snotty remarks from da passengers, an’ den on da way home chances are ya get mugged! Ya t’ink dat’s a bedda roses? Da hack bureau breathin’ down ya neck an’ da fuzz waitin’ for da chance to catch ya ridin’ da flag, an’ den da passenger t’rows some doorman a quarter an’ da poor hackie a dime! Da public don’t know what da poor hackie goes troo! Appreciation? Fa’get it! Da hackie is da fa’gotten man!”

“I’ll be damned!” Regina exclaimed.

“I told you I speak American as well as English,” the driver told her smugly.

“Well, anyway, you’re right. I am looking for Tex Kincaid.”

“Your beauty would have told me that in any case. Sahib Kincaid is the only man in Dacca at the present time who could possibly afford such beauty.”

“Do you know where I can find him?” Regina ignored the leer coming her way from the rear-view mirror.

“Yes. If it’s not too late.”

“Too late?”

“For Sahib Kincaid, I mean. He is at the Dacca General Hospital.”

“Is he ill?”

“He is due to undergo an operation.”

“An operation? Is it dangerous?”

“If it succeeds it is,” the driver replied cryptically. “But with you to inspire him, perhaps he will change his mind.”

Regina asked more questions, but received no further clarification. Finally she relapsed into silence. The cab entered the outskirts of the city. It turned a corner. All hell broke loose!

An army tank rumbled towards them, filling the street from crumbling sidewalk to crumbling sidewalk. The cab driver jerked his gears into reverse and started backing up to get out of the path of the tank. Too late! A bazooka team and several machineguns had sprung up behind them.

The bazooka lobbed shells at the tank. The shells fell short and exploded all around the taxi. The tank returned the fire, its missiles whistling past the trapped cab. The machinegun started to chatter. The window behind Regina shattered. She flung herself to the floor.

Molotov cocktails were being thrown, seemingly at random, from the rooftops lining the street. Two obsolete fighter planes dived low and strafed the buildings. On their second approach they came in lower and strafed the taxi as well. Snipers appeared in the windows of the buildings and fired at everything in sight. “See what I mean? It ain’t no picnic pushin’ a hack dese days!” the driver told Regina.

Now the tank was bearing down on the taxi. Suddenly the road seemed to fall away from under it. It just vanished from sight.

“We are lucky,” the driver told Regina. “That could have been us if we hadn’t been stopped from going up the street.”

“What happened?”

“The guerillas must have dug a tunnel under the road and then covered it over. It’s a tactic they use frequently. They have no mines to booby-trap the highways with, so they do it in a more primitive fashion.

From behind them a sewer cover was pushed up and rolled away. One by one, a group of young people pulled themselves up from the sewer. Then, wielding clubs and lances, shooting bows-and-arrows, they charged past the taxi and into the pit where the helpless tank lay. The crew of the tank had no chance to escape.

A swarm of heavy bombers came in low overhead and dropped their loads on the area. The bazooka team and the machine-gun crews scattered for cover. The driver of the cab seized the opportunity. With bombs hitting all around them, he backed the cab up at top speed until they were out of the block. Then the taxi shot forward, weaving crazily, dodging bombs and bullets and an occasional flaming arrow.

Two hours later they pulled up in front of the hospital. The driver checked the meter and told Regina the fare.

“Outrageous!” she protested. “You kept it running all the time we were bogged down there with the tank!”

“Whatsamatta? Ain’t I entitled to waitin’ time?"

“You’re supposed to go straight to your destination. You rode me all over Dacca!”

“It ain’t my fault some of da roads was bombed out.”

“And we sat behind those rickshaws for at least an hour with the meter ticking away!”

“Ya can’t blame me fa traffic conditions neither.”

“You’re a thief!” Regina told him. She paid him and got out.

“Sure. I’m a goniff. That, Mem’sahib, was the most important lesson I learned in Logic at Cambridge.” Regina flounced up the steps to the hospital, indignation setting her aquiver under her hot pants and see-through sweater. Inside, an orderly, staring at her, wheeled a stretcher through a plate-glass window. The patient on the stretcher also stared at the red-haired vision of pulchritude as he absentmindedly plucked slivers of glass from his flesh.

The male receptionist jabbed himself in the eye with his pen as he directed her to Tex Kincaid’s room The operator nearly shot the elevator through the roof before he could take his eyes off Regina long enough to locate the “stop” position on the lever-dial. It took him three tries to line up the cage with the floor and let her out. As she walked through the ward to Tex Kincaid’s private room, there was an epidemic of misjabbed needles, dropped plasma bottles and falling bedpans in her wake.

Finally she closed the door behind her and was alone with Tex in his private room. He was sitting up in the bed, wearing a white hospital gown. His face lit up with recognition when he saw Regina.

“Bullseye!” he greeted her. “Ah’m sure pleased to see you.”

“How are you, Tex?”

“Hale an’ hearty as a grizzly in the springtime.”

“Then what are you doing in the hospital?”

“A small operation, Regina. They’ll be comin’ for me any time now.”

“What kind of operation?”

“Well, it’s sort of related to my business, Regina,” Tex answered evasively.

“How is business, Tex?”

“Super-peachy. The situation here’s tailor-made for me. Chewin' gum’s goin’ for one dollar American a pack.”

“You must be a wealthy man, Tex.”

“Rich as Croesus. An’ gettin’ richer. But Ah’ll tell you somethin’, Regina. It’s no trick to make money. All it takes is determination an’ the willin’ness to sacrifice. Them fellers out there whinin’ how they can’t make it, they plain don’t wanna make it. They ain’t willin’ to sacrifice to make it. Anybody can get rich if they want to bad enough. Anybody can do anythin’ they wanna do. A very wise lady taught me that.”

“Was the wise lady Faith Venable?” Regina tried a shot in the dark.

“Now how’d you know that?”

“She’s the reason I came here to see you, Tex. She’s been murdered and-—”

“Ah heard ’bout that,” he interrupted. “It’s a real loss. Tell the truth, hearin’ ’bout her death made me decide to come into the hospital here for the operation.”

“Did she advise you to have it?”

“In a sorta way she did.”

“Were you a disciple of hers? Do you believe in Transcendental Meditation, Tex?” Regina found it incongruous that Tex should believe in anything but the Almighty Buck, but she asked the question anyway.

“Yes Ma’am. Ah’m a true believer. It works.”

“Works how?”

“Well, Ma’am, you may not believe this, but it’s good business.” Tex explained. “Business—makin’ money-—is all a matter of concentration. Concentration—now that’s really a combo of meditatin’ an’ transcendin’. Thinkin’ ’bout yourself-that’s meditatin’. Brushin’ aside all the crap that gets in the way—-that’s transcendin’. Now when Ah think ’bout myself, it’s ’most always a financial consideration. Some other teller, it might be sex, or fam’ly, or how smart he’d like to be, or wantin’ to reform the World. But with me it’s money. Them other things get in the way—particularly sex. The next teller, maybe the money thing is what gets in the way of somethin’ else. But Ah’ll tell you true, Ma’am, Sister Faith—what she taught me--it’s turnin’ me from a quick-money boy to a real Big Time Operator.”

“You mean because you’ve freed your mind of distractions?” Regina summed up.

“Yes Ma’am. Almost. An’ right soon now, all the way.”

Regina thought a moment and then plunged right into her reason for being there. “Faith had a list of names of her disciples. There’s reason to think the name of the murderer is on that list,” she told Tex. “You were in New York the night of the murder. And your name is on it,” she added.

“Shoot, Ma’am! You sayin’ Ah mighta killed Sister Faith? Why that’s plumb ridiculous. She done made me ev’rythin’ Ah am today!”

“Not everything,” Regina said out of deference to Faith’s memory. “But Sister Faith was your Guru, wasn’t she?”

“You might put it that way, Ma’am.”

“And she gave you your mantra?”

“Yes, Ma’am. She surely did.”

“W hat is your mantra, Tex?”

“Now you know Ah can’t tell you that, Ma’am. Ah done swore secrecy.”

“What did you and Faith discuss the last time you saw her in New York?”

“How to transcend. See, Ma’am, Ah had this problem. Ah could transcend ’most any distraction save one thing. An’ that one thing was keepin’ my mind offa business when it hadn’t oughta be. Sister Faith tol’ me how to get over that hump.”

“What was the one thing, Tex?”

“Sex.”

“And what did she advise you to do?”

“Have this here operation, Ma’am. At first Ah wasn’t sure. But Ah thought ’bout it, an’ meditated on it, an’ now Ah know she was right. It’s the only way Ah can get my mind offa poontang an’ keep it on business where it belongs.”

“What is the operation, Tex?”

“Ah’rn havin’ myself made into a steer, Ma’am.”

“You mean castrated?”

“Gelded. Yes Ma’am.”

“But that’s awful!” Regina exclaimed. “You’ll be a eunuch the rest of your life!”

“Yes Ma’am. But Ah’ll be the richest eunuch ever come down the pike.”

They were interrupted by the door opening. A stretcher was wheeled into the room. “It’s time,” one of the attendants told Tex. He climbed onto the stretcher and they wheeled him out.

Regina walked alongside the stretcher. She was impressed by the ultramodern facilities of the hospital. Everything was shining chrome and glass and antiseptic white. The place was the epitome of a modern medical institution. They came to a halt in front of a door marked “OPERATING THEATRE.”

“Please, Tex.” Regina tried one last time. “Won’t you tell me what your mantra is?”

“Ah’m sorry, Ma’am. Ah’d like to, but Ah can’t.”

Regina sighed and blew him a kiss as they wheeled him through the door. One of the attendants directed her to the glassed-in observation room from which she could watch the operation. He assured her that she would be able to see and hear everything that transpired clearly from there.

Regina looked down on a shining white operating table. Sterilized instruments gleamed in a tray. Nurses and interns huddled over Tex in antiseptic gowns and masks. The anesthetist checked out his ultramodern equipment. Regina heard one of the nurses assure Tex that the surgeon who was going to perform the operation would be there shortly. A moment later the door opened and the surgeon made his entrance.