Circle of sin

Look at the she-witch! Standing there in front of the mirror and primping like she was getting ready to take on a platoon of butter-and-egg men! Fluffing up her breasts and pushing them out at the mirror just like she didn’t know that doorman was sitting on the couch right across the lobby from her.

Vance walked to the corner, wheeled around and went up to the entrance of the building again. He stood under the canopy trying to look as if he was just trying to stay out of the rain. He looked up and down the block carefully, but there wasn’t a soul in sight to judge his pretense. Casually, he watched as the blonde pushed the button for the elevator and then vanished inside it.

His heart pounding hard, he walked up to the doorway of the apartment house and peered at the doorman on the sofa. Yes, he was asleep. Sound asleep. Vance started to go inside the lobby.

But what if the doorman woke up? Hell, he’d just turn around and walk out again, that was all. It was no crime, was it?

He strode over to the elevator the blonde had entered. He studied the indicator. Fifth floor. It gave him a start. Dr. Golden’s floor! And there were only two apartments on each floor that were serviced by each elevator. Suddenly Vance realized that his mouth was very dry and he was finding it hard to breathe.

He glanced at the doorman again. Still sound asleep. Good. He pressed the button and waited for the elevator to come down.

When the door opened, he took one last look at the dozing doorman and stepped into the elevator. A moment later he got off at the fifth floor. The door to Dr. Golden’s apartment was ever so slightly ajar. She must be in there!

Vance tiptoed over to it and put his ear to the crack. “. . . removal of your other garments, won’t it?” Dr. Golden’s voice.

“Nope.” That must be the blonde.

“I beg pardon?” Dr. Golden again.

“Watch.”

Silence for what seemed a very long time. Finally Vance pushed his eye to the crack in the door. The tramp! She was doing a striptease. And Dr. Golden was licking her lips and watching her. Dr. Golden! The full import of what he was seeing struck Vance hard. His doctor! His analyst! A Lesbian!

But no, it couldn’t be Dr. Golden’s fault. That hot-eyed tramp must have seduced her! Sure! That was it! She was working Dr. Golden over! Oh, she‘d pay for that! Vance would make her pay for that!

His rage filled him so that it blotted out the muted conversation which had resumed in the foyer of the apartment. Filled with a mingling of lust and the desire for murderous revenge, Vance was incapable of listening to them. Finally it was quiet inside, and it slowly dawned on him that they must have gone into the rear of the flat.

Vance waited a long time, letting the blood-lust fill every corner of his being. Then, slowly, carefully, silently, he turned the doorknob and eased open the door to Dr. Golden’s apartment.

Thus murder trembled on the threshold!

CHAPTER 11

The Erotic Dream Girl

“. . . DROP YOUR socks and grab on, fellows; here comes little Lisa! One-hundred-and-fifteen pounds of dynamite crammed into a thirty-eight-twenty-six-thirty-six sack of willing skin, that’s me, Lisa Bourdon, glamor model by profession and all-round bed-bunny by choice. . . . Don’t look so shocked now. I’m a genuine, bona fide, watermarked nymphomaniac. Don’t take my word for it, ask Madame Headshrinker over there. And La Doc says I’m not to blame, either. Seems I got off on the wrong round heel when I was only thirteen years old and my libido’s been all bollixed up ever since. Yeah, I’ve been a swingin’ alley cat for nine years now and I’m still goin’ strong. I’m only twenty-two and I’ve already put in sack time with maybe fifty, sixty men and I enjoyed every minute of it. No charge—I’m not a pro; I insist on maintaining my amateur standing — but all for fun. Ask ’em down on MacDougal Street. Little Lisa ’ll roll over with any man just for the hell of it. So what’s my problem? That’s for you to guess! . . . ”

A little more than a half-hour after the group session ended Lisa Bourbon walked into Greco’s, a sawdust-on-the-fioor bar at the southeast tip of Greenwich Village, the section where the Village is reaching out to swallow up the bum-land of the Bowery and the immigrant sections of the Lower East Side. Her arrival — or, rather, her entrance, her breast-bouncing, hip-swinging, buttock-rolling entrance — was noticed by two men at the bar. One of the men wore a beard which was trimmed satanically, the other carried a pair of drumsticks with which he was beating out a constant low rhythm on the bar.

“Oh, Lord! Look what the wind blew in,” commented The Beard.

“Little Miss Hot-Hips/ Seeking new bed whips." The Drummer tapped out the rhythm of the words as he spoke.

“So she can screw them right out of their sockets, no doubt,” The Beard added drily.

“Little Lisa/ No mere teaser/ So hooked on sex/ She leaves men wrecks.”

“That says it.” The Beard chuckled. “I can see you’ve made that scene, too.”

“Breathes there the cat in Village East/ Who ain’t made Lisa once at least?”

“And once is once too often. Man, I tell you, this chick is right out of Havelock Ellis. When she wants it—and when doesn’t she?—she’ll take any man, drunks, junkies, Bowery bums, up to her pad. And once she gets a guy up there— well, I guess you dig.”

“Turn on her switch—/ A perpetual itch—/ One, two, three, four./ Still she wants more./ Five, six and seven./ Lisa’s in Heaven!/ Then eight, nine and ten./ She’s still got a yen!/ She never says ‘when’!/ Just bring on your men! ”

“You know," said The Beard with more bitterness than irony in his voice, “I was convinced there was something wrong with me because I wasn’t enough of a man for her. Talk about a castrating female! It wasn’t ’til I talked to a coupla other vipers who put in sack time with her that I found out this was her bit. She never even gives a guy a chance to get his second wind before she’s demanding more. She thinks the multiple orgasm is one of women’s rights and man’s duty to provide. And in the end she demeans every guy the same as she did me. As soon as he reaches the point of utter exhaustion, she lets him know in no uncertain terms what a flop she thinks he is.”

“Still, she never gets leary/ Of lovers who weary.”

“Oh, I’ll give her that all right. She’s always willing to give a guy a second chance. And with that body of hers, let’s face it, it’s a temptation . . . Speaking of temptation, here she comes.”

“Hi,” Lisa greeted them. “Who’s gonna buy me a drinkie-poo? ”

“My pleasure,” The Beard responded. “White wine for. Miss Melon-Sweater,” he called to the bartender.

“Why, thanks you,” Lisa purred. “I didn’t know you cared.”

“I’m always impressed by size.”

“How about quality?” Lisa stood in front of him and moved her bosom back and forth rapidly so that it brushed his chest.

“Please! I‘ve got a weak heart”

“How’s the rest of your equipment holding up?"

“Not worth the salvage,” The Beard told her.

“Don’t sell yourself short. Maybe it can be revitalized.”

“About as much chance of that as you being revirginized.”

“Now, don’t be sarcastic. That’s no way to talk when a lady’s busy trying to seduce you!”

“Me? Oh, come on now, Lisa. We’ve made that scene and it fell flatter than a pancake. Surely there must be somebody else around to quench the roaring fires of your unquenchable libido.”

“It’s a slow night,” Lisa admitted frankly. ‘The rain must be keeping all the lover-boys indoors.”

“Why don’t you just go home and go to sleep for a change?”

“I’m too het up. I just came from a group therapy session and somehow that always arouses me. You sure you wouldn’t like to make a scene?” Lisa moved in very close to The Beard and pulled down the top of the sweater she was wearing so that he could see her braless breasts.

“Sorry. It’s a real temptation, but I’m just not up to it tonight.”

“How about you?” She turned to The Drummer.

“I haven’t the strength/ Or even the length./ You’d outdistance me./ In the end I’d just flee.”

“You two guys must be turning queer! Well, the hell with you!” Lisa drained her wineglass and marched out of Greco’s.

She’d thought she might go over to the San Remo, but the way the rain was pouring down she decided against making the rounds. If only she had a man to crawl into bed with, all warm and cozy. But the prospects looked dim. Yes, she was hard up all right, or she would never have laid it on the line like that with those two creeps. just as well they cooled it. Either one of them-—even both of them—would have frustrated her in quick time.

Still, The Beard was probably right. It looked like little Lisa was destined to go manless this night. She might as well go home and go to bed.

Crossing over Second Avenue to her cold-water flat on East Sixth Street, Lisa, her head down against the force of the wind, almost bumped head-on into a small, fat man in a slicker. He grabbed her elbow to steady her and held her back as she automatically moved to go around him. It was then that she saw the leash he was trying to keep her from snagging. On the other end of it was a gigantic Great Dane.

“Don’t worry, Miss. He won’t hurt you. He’s harmless.”

“I’m not worried. I’m not afraid of dogs. I like them.” Lisa brushed the rain from her eyes to look at him as she spoke.

But he wasn’t listening. He was staring at her sweater with obvious interest. Lisa looked down. The rain had soaked the sweater through. The way it was plastered against her large breasts she might just as well not have been wearing it. The rain had actually parted the weave of the material over the tip of one breast and one of her nipples was peeping through redly.

Lisa watched as the fat little man’s eyes dropped. He was staring at the crotch of her stretch-slacks now, and she realized that the pounding of the rain had likewise made this garment bind tightly over her flesh. A quick glance downward told Lisa that her womanhood was easily discernible.

Lisa gazed back at him, making no attempt to move on, although she was getting drenched. Finally his eyes came up again and met hers. “Like what you see?” she asked brazenly.

“You’re gettin’ awful wet, Miss. You oughta get outa them soppin’ clothes before you catch your death.” The man licked his lips.

“I know. But I don’t live around here.” On the spur of the moment Lisa lied.

“I do.” The fat man took the bait. “Right down the block. Would you like to step outa this rain at my place an’ dry off?”

“That sounds just ginger-peachy.” Lisa took his free arm and pressed it to her breast warmly as he led her up the block. She reached around him and patted the head of the Great Dane heeling on his other side. He led her into a basement, dark, dusty, smelling of garbage.

“Hey, what’s this?” Lisa asked.

“It’s where I live. I’m the janitor here.” He led the way past an old-fashioned coal furnace and through a makeshift wooden door into a walled-off portion of the cellar. He pulled a cord and a light went on overhead, a naked, glaring bulb.

The room was cluttered with various junk, but its furnishings were spartan. A cot, a bureau, a small table, a standup cardboard closet — that was about it. There was a heavy, frayed drape over some sort of entrance on the wall opposite Lisa.

She pointed to it. “What’s that?” she asked.

“The johnny.”

“Oh.”

“Make yourself comfortable,” the told her. “Sorry they ain’t no place to sit but the bed. If you wanna get outa them wet clothes, you can go in there.” He pointed to the drape. “You’ll find a bathrobe hangin’ on the wall that you can put on.”

The bathrobe smelled musty and was ripped down one side, but Lisa put it on anyway. When she came out she saw that the fat man had poured some cheap gin into two water glasses and set them on the table along with the bottle. “Ahh! Just the thing to melt the icicles. Lisa strode over to the table and hoisted one of the glasses. “Well, here’s to sin, which rhymes with gin,” she toasted him. She took a sip, made a wry face and gulped the next mouthful. “Say,” she said, her voice a little squeaky from the raw liquor, “I don’t even know your name.”

“I’m Henry. And that’s Bruno.” He pointed at the Great Dane curled up on the floor at the foot of the bed. “What’s your name, Miss?”

Lisa told him. Then she finished off her drink, poured another, picked up both glasses and strode over to the bed. She sat down next to Henry, very close. “Here.” She handed him one of the glasses. He drained it in one gulp and turned to face Lisa. His eyes went immediately to where the bathrobe gaped, revealing her breasts.

Lisa smiled slowly and then stretched provocatively.

“Aren’t you awful warm in all those clothes?” she asked him.

“No.” Henry shook his fat face and his chins jiggled.

“Then what you need is another drink.” Lisa crossed to the table and this time she brought the bottle back with her.

They drank steadily until it was empty. And while they were drinking, Lisa gave Henry encouragement. Yet, except for the increasing boldness of the way he looked at her body, he made no move to make a pass at her.

They were both quite drunk by now. And Lisa was hungry for a man, even more hungry than before, for any man, even this fat, balding, middle-aged little ninny sitting beside her with his drunken mouth hanging open so naively. She turned to him and began to unbutton his shirt. “Little Lisa’s going to take off your clothes and get you into bed all comfy-cozy,” she told him.

He made no protest. He just sat there staring vacantly at her naked thighs where the robe had fallen away from them while Lisa removed his shirt and pants and then his socks and shoes. She pulled off his under shirt and reached for the elastic holding up his shorts.

“No.” He pulled away from her.

“Well, you’re a modest little Buddha, aren’t you? Come on, I won’t bite. Little Lisa just wants you to love her up a little.” She bent and kissed his lips.

Henry’s response surprised her. His arms went around her with surprising strength and his mouth was hard on hers. Then he pulled away and pushed open her robe at the top and his pudgy hands squeeze at her breasts. She reached down and the fingers of one of her hands trailed up the inside of his thigh.

“No!” Again he pulled away. “Lemme do it my way,” he insisted drunkenly.

“You’re so masterful!” Lisa giggled to herself. What a ludicrous little butterball!

He pushed the robe father apart and his blubbery lips moved over her breasts leaving a trail of gin-flavored saliva. One of his hands slid down her belly and his sausage-like fingers fumbled at the juncture of her legs. Lisa moved her hips so that he might have easier access to the target he sought.

Finally he’d caught it between. two of his blunt fingertips and Lisa felt it grow burning hot and distend as he manipulated it. Quickly now, her body jerked spasmodically and it was over. And it was just beginning. She pulled herself up and came down on his groping hand demandingly, seating herself as deeply as she was able. The fat man’s teeth were savage at her breasts now, but Lisa was too caught up in the piston-like movements of his hand to notice. This time a little cry of triumph escaped her lips as she captured the hand in a final vise-like clutch of joy.

“Again!” she demanded.

But the fat man pulled his hand free. “No. My way!” He slid to the floor on his knees and his face darted to Lisa’s lap like some bird of prey bent on plucking carrion.

His lips sipped deeply and his tongue provided the sweet torture of sandpaper abrading the most delicate flesh. Lisa’s hands clenched at his balding scalp and her thumbs fastened deep in his ears. She couldn’t contain herself. She bounced up and down on the sagging cot like a human pogo stick gone berserk. And she came close to suffocating him in a final paroxysm of delight. “I’m ready now!” she exclaimed less than a moment later. She tore the robe off and flung it halfway across the room. She threw her lush body back on the cot with the knees wide apart, her breasts sucking in breath deeply and expelling it rapidly. “Give it to me now! Give it to me now!”

“No,” Henry muttered. His voice said that he was both very drunk and very weary.

“What do you mean? Why not? This was just an appetizer. Now I want you to make love to me."

“I can’t.”

“Can’t?”

“That’s right. I ain’t got any— Don’t you dare laugh, you witch!”

“Don’t tell me it was shot off in the war,” Lisa jeered.

“It was an accident. When I was just a kid. And it ain’t funny.” Henry’s head was spinning and he lay back on the cot and closed his eves.

“You’re right. I’m sorry I laughed. Okay then, if you can’t, you can’t. But then do what you did before again.”

“The hell with you. I don’t feel like it. I shoulda known better than to frustrate myself that way. I done it before, but it’s always the same. I get excited, but there’s no relief for me. An’ I’m tired now.”

“You! You!” Lisa beat at him with her fists. “What about me? You can’t just leave me all hung up like this!”

“That’s your problem,” he said, ignoring the blows she was raining on him. His voice was very far away, very close to drunken sleep.

“Don’t you dare go to sleep on me!” Lisa raged.

The answer was a blubbery snore.

“Oh, I’ve got to get out of here!” She flung herself up from the cot. “I’ve got to get out of here and find a man. I’ve got to get a man before I explode!” Lisa ran across the room and through the drape to the bathroom where she’d left her slacks and sweater.

Attracted by the motion, Bruno, the Great Dane, leaped to his feet and bounded after her. His cold nose bumped against her plump, still burning buttocks as he came through the drape. Lisa wheeled around. Bruno sniffed at her and then licked her leg playfully.

A shudder swept over Lisa, traveling the length of her body. She reached out and scratched the giant dog behind the ears. He licked her again. Lisa’s heart was pounding like a triphammer now. She braced her back against the wall and angled her body. Her hand fastened under Bruno’s chin, guiding his mouth. This time when his tongue shot out, it was just where Lisa wanted it.

I must be mad! The thought crossed her mind, but she pushed it away as Bruno’s kisses grew longer and bolder. Then two things happened at once. Lisa’s body pushed down with the final crescendo of her passion and one of Bruno’s fangs snagged her flesh, drawing blood. Lisa screamed, a loud, long wail of mingled agony and erotic pleasure.

Perhaps it was the scream, perhaps the eruption of Lisa's satisfaction, perhaps the unmistakable odor of passion itself, but Bruno seemed suddenly to go berserk. He jumped so that his paws landed on Lisa’s shoulders and she was propelled to the floor under the giant beast. She caught a glimpse of his aroused desire and gasped at the size of it.

There could be no mistaking Bruno’s intent. He was determined, and for a crazy moment Lisa was consumed with the desire to let him have his way.

It was fear rather than disgust which changed her mind. His fangs snarling in her face and the pain where he had drawn blood before overcame Lisa’s desire for still more sex. She screamed loud and clear and Henry came scuttling in from the next room. He took in the situation at a glance and snapped out a command at Bruno. The dog obeyed instantly and backed out of the bathroom. Lisa grabbed up her clothes and fled naked from the janitor’s apartment.

She paused in the darkness of the basement and quickly dressed. Then she ran outside into the rain once again. Her brain was whirling dizzily as though snapped free of all reason by sex and fear. “I’m sick!” she kept moaning to herself. “I’m very sick!” “I need help before I kill myself! I need help!”

She thought of Dr. Golden. “That damn quack! Three years and I’m worse than I ever was! Yes, I am! I never would have done anything like this three years ago before I started with her! Damn her! She won’t help me! She made me sink this low! It’s all her fault! I’m paying for her mistakes! And she should pay! She should be made to pay! I should make her!”

Lisa hailed a cab. She gave the driver Dr. Golden’s address. “I’ll make her pay,” she muttered.

“Beg pardon, Miss?” The driver looked at her in the rear-view mirror.

“Nothing. Never mind.” Lisa pounded her fist against her still influenced womanhood and thought blackly of how she would make Dr. Golden pay!

CHAPTER 12

The Sticky Traffic Jam

“WHAT A BUNCH of kooks!” Detective Lieutenant Tomas Durango finished re-winding the last tape and put the reel neatly back into the cabinet.

“You can say that again.” Debbie Smith stretched carelessly in the mid-afternoon sunlight, and the provocative way the robe fell away from her body seemed aimed to tease Durango. “Well, Sherlock, what’s your next move?” she asked him.

“Check ’em all out. Find out what they did after they left the group session here last night. Follow through on their alibis. Make sure they’re susbstantiated by witnesses. All the usual standard procedure”

“What about me? What are you gonna do with me?” Debbie wanted to know.

“I know what I’d like to do.” Durango stared frankly at her.

“Well then—?”

“But what I really should do is take you downtown and book you like Connors said before.”

“Just make up your mind. will you?” Debbie shrugged. “I don’t care either way. Home or jail, it’s the same to me. Either way I’ll go to sleep.”

“That’s right, you poor kid, you haven’t been to bed all night.”

“Don’t go all maple syrupy with sympathy, Durango. I’ve been to bed all right. Just not to sleep.”

“Why don’t you lie down on the headshrinker’s couch here and rest a while while I decide,” Durango told her.

“What’s to decide? Either throw me a quick one, or don’t. Either book me, or let me go. Get off the pot already.”

“It’s not that simple. There’s all kinds of ethical considerations to be weighed.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Debbie giggled. “And you an ex-vice cop! Ethics, my royal rump! And as far as taking me downtown—- Well, you know damn well I didn’t kill Dr. Golden, but you’re just plain afraid how it’ll look if you don’t book me anyway. Right?”

“Right,” Durango readily admitted. “A man has to consider his career, after all.”

“Why not take advantage of what’s at hand and consider it later?” Debbie put her hands on her hips and swayed temptingly.

“Get thee behind me, Satan.” Durango’s eyes appreciated her pose. “For a girl who hates cops, you’re certainly eager to oblige.”

“If rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it.”

“Rape! That’s a laugh. I haven’t even laid a finger on you yet.”

“Yet. But you’ve been raping me with your eyes all morning. Oh, don’t bother denying it, Durango. I really don't mind. The truth is, I kind of go for you.”

“The truth is,” Durango corrected her calmly, “that you think if you seduce me I’ll be so overwhelmed by your talents that I'll let you go.”

“Well, it’s worth a try,” Debbie admitted.

“You sure think you’re pretty hot stuff.”

“I am, baby. I am.” Debbie crossed over to the armchair in which Durango was sitting. She stood with her feet wide apart so that she was straddling Durango’s outstretched legs without touching them and rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet. “Don’t you think so?” she added softly.

“If rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it.” Durango’s white teeth flashed a smile at her and his eyes sparkled in his tough, swarthy face.

Debbie moved even closer. Her hands fumbled at the bodice of the robe. One of her breasts swung free, firm and high and proud. Its dark red tip grazed Durango’s craggy features. He didn’t move. But the knuckles of his hands clenched white on the arms of the chair.

“Okay, so you’ve got will-power,” Debbie murmured.

“You don’t affect me in the least.”

Debbie smiled slightly and her hand dropped to Durango’s lap. “Oh, no?” she chuckled. “Then what do you call this?” Her fingers fumbled at the zipper of his pants, and soon she was gazing down on the proof of his excitation. Her fingers stroked Durango’s ears gently as she lowered herself, still facing him, laughing tremblingly in his face.

Durango moved then. His hips jerked upwards hard to meet her. His hands fastened over the robe still covering her haunches. His body began to move as though powered by a dynamo, urging hers on to faster, more frenzied rhythms.

Suddenly there was the slam of a door from the front of the apartment. Durango gave Debbie a hard shove and sprang to his feet. She landed on the floor and lay there, stunned by the unexpected rejection, still panting, her body still half-exposed. Durango just managed to close his zipper when the door to Dr. Golden’s office opened.

The man stood in the doorway and stared in amazement.

“What the hell do you want?” Durango yelled. “Who said you could come in here?”

“I live here!” the man answered indignantly.

“You what?”

“I live here! I'm Dr. Zachary Golden and this is my apartment. But who are you people?” He glanced down at Debbie lying half-nude on the rug. “And what do you think you’re doing here?”

“Wait a minute,” Durango calmed down. “You’re Dr. Mavis Golden’s husband? Is that right?”

“That’s right. And where is my wife? What are you doing in her office? Who are you?”

“I’m Detective Durango of Hom—of the Police Department. I think you’d better sit down, Dr. Golden. I have something to tell you. Debbie, cover yourself and sit over there while I talk to Dr. Golden.”

Durango led Zachary Golden over to the couch and sat down beside him. Debbie sat on the other side of the room, hugging the robe about her and completely covered now. As gently as he could, Durango told Zachary Golden what had happened.

The doctor didn’t break down. The skin over his distinguished features grew very tight, but his emotions were hidden behind the tightness. The shock told mostly in the way his hands were twisting together. Aside from that, he retained his composure.

“My wife murdered. It seems hard to believe,” he said dully. “And you’re a detective.” He looked at Durango and then his eyes moved slowly to consider Debbie. “But who is she? What is she doing here? And dressed like that? And what was she doing on the floor before? Wait! That’s my wife’s robe she’s got on.”

“I know.” Durango thought fast. “She’s Debbie Smith. A friend of your wife’s. She got caught in the rain and your wife gave her the robe to wear while her clothes dried out.”

“A friend of Mavis? But I never met her.”

“I know.” Debbie thought even faster than Durango as she spoke. “I wasn’t really a friend. Just a casual acquaintance. I came to her for help last night. She was very kind.”

“Then you were here when she was murdered!” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes, I was.”

“Then this girl is a suspect!” Zachary Golden turned back to Durango accusingly.

“Yes, I’m afraid so. One of many.”

“What were you two doing when I came in? he asked suspiciously. “Why was she lying on the floor with her body exposed that way?”

“She’d simply tripped on the hem of her robe is all,” Durango answered glibly.

Zachary Golden stared at Durango disbelievingly. Durango stared back, his mind racing frantically, searching for words to make the explanation sound more logical. He was saved from making the effort by the telephone bell ringing suddenly and loudly.

Durango answered it. It was Sergeant Connors, ready to go on duty and calling for instructions. Durango turned away from Dr. Zachary Golden and spoke very quietly into the mouthpiece so that he wouldn’t be overheard. “There’s some people I want you to check on for last night,” he told Connors. “I want their movements checked out thoroughly. They were all here together early in the evening. I want to know where they went and what they did after that. If they’ve got alibis, I want them verified. If you can’t verify, or if there’s any doubt of any kind, bring them downtown. Try to get them to go voluntarily, but if they won’t, arrest them.”

“On what charge?” Connors asked.

“Suspicion of murder.”

“Okay, let’s have their names.”

“I can give you their addresses and places of business, too.” Durango took the alphabetical index card file Dr. Golden had kept of her patients, looked up the information and rattled it off to Connors. “Wait a minute," he said after he’d given Connors the last name. “I just noticed something. There are some others I’m going to want picked up after you get through with this bunch.”

“Let’s have ’em,” Connors sighed.

“It will take a minute. See, I only just now spotted that Dr. Golden jotted down her patients’ problems by category on the corners of these cards. Let me run through them fast and I’ll tell you who I want.”

“But how will you know? Does she say they’re homicidal or something?”

“Nope, but in the group session she had with the list of kooks I gave you, it seems they had a cozy little discussion concerning murdering her.”

“A pleasant way to wile away an evening,” Connors observed drily. “But how do you know about it?” he asked as an after-thought.

“She taped these sessions. I played the tape.”

“Neat. And you found a clue on it?”

“Maybe. The fact is that since she said something about the group just before she died, I played the tapes of all her group sessions. The trouble is that judging from them, any one of the looneys she was treating might have been capable of killing her.”

“So we’re right back where we started. But who are these others you want me to check on? And why?”

“She said something to the group that just might point the finger at the murderer.” Durango eyed Dr. achary Golden across the room. He seemed to be leaning forward on the couch, trying to strain to hear. “I don’t want to go into it now,” Durango added to Connors. “Let me just give you the names.” He thumbed through the index cards slowly and gave five more names and addresses to Connors. “I’ll, see you downtown later,” he told Connor and hung up.

“Do you have a lead?” Dr. Zachary Golden asked as8 Durango crossed back over to him.

“Nothing definite,” Durango told him noncommitally. “By the way,” he added casually, “Where were you last night and early this morning?”

“Driving back from a medical convention upstate.”

“And you only just got into town?”

“Yes. I would have made it home early this morning, but the storm was so bad that I pulled over to the side of the road, pulled up my windows and took a nap until it got better. I was more tired than I realized, and I overslept. It was almost one in the afternoon when I woke up.”

“You say you could have been here early this morning,” Durango mused. “How early? That is if you’d driven straight through?”

“Oh, three o’clock or so, I guess.”

“Just about the time your wife was murdered,” Durango observed softly.

“Now look here! You’re not implying -”

“I’m not implying anything, Dr. Golden. But if you had gotten here then, I suppose you would have had a motive, all right.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Forget it. I guess I’m just getting groggy. My apologies, Doctor. Well, I guess I’d better be getting down-town with Miss — Smith.” Durango raised an eyebrow toward Debbie. “I wonder, Doctor, if I might call you later and ask you to come down?”

“What for?”

“I’m not sure. Nothing official. You just might be able to help us is all. You do want your wife’s murderer caught, of course.”

“Of course. I’ll cooperate in any way I can.”

“Good. You’ll hear from me later, then.” Durango turned to Debbie. “Get into your clothes and we’ll get moving,” he told her. -

She obeyed, and soon she was sitting beside Durango as he piloted his car through the traffic. “So you’re bringing me in after all,” she said.

“Don’t sulk. I didn’t say that. Let’s just say you’re coming with me voluntarily. If you don’t make a fuss, I’ll try to get away without booking you.”

Durango was as good as his word. When they were in the stationhouse, he told the sergeant that Debbie was there voluntarily and that as yet there were no charges against her. “Just show her to a nice vacant cell,” he instructed, “and let her get some sleep. She needs it. Now just behave yourself and play it cool,” he told Debbie as the officer led her away. “I’ll see you later.”

“I don’t know why I should trust you, but okay,” she replied. “Common sense tells me I should be screaming for a lawyer, but I never was one to follow common sense. just don’t forget about me, huh?”

“I won’t,” Durango promised. “I'm going to grab some shuteye, too,” he told the sergeant. “Don’t wake me until Connors gets here.” He went into his office, closed the door, and curled up on the couch. He was sound asleep within minutes.

“Tomas.” Sergeant Connors was shaking him firmly by the shoulder. Durango’s eyes opened and looked out the window. It was night again. “Get with it, Tomas,” Connors said.

“Yeah. Give me just a minute.” Durango crossed to the sink and splashed cold water in his face and eyes. He went to his desk and picked up the phone. “Send me up some black coffee,” he instructed. “A lot of it.” Then he sat down and turned his attention to Connors. “Okay, fill me in,” the told him, his voice strong and his eyes alert now. “What did you find our?”

“That we’ve got more could-be killers for this one than you’re gonna know what to do with.”

“Did you bring any of ’em in?”

“All of them from your first list. I haven’t started on the second quintet yet.”

“All of them from the group? You mean not one of them had an alibi?”

“Worse than that. Every one of them might logically be placed in the vicinity at the time of the murder. Some of them could even have been right in the apartment.”

“And each of them had his own kool motive," Durango mused. “But how close can we really place them to the time and place of the crime?”

“Too close. Right on top of it. They could have been tripping over each other. Put their stories together, and you come up with what sounds like a traffic jam.”

“A sticky traffic jam,” Durango sighed. “Well, all right, let’s see them.”

“All together?”

“Why not? Maybe they’ll trip each other up. Take ’em into the interrogation room. I’ll be right there.” A few moments later Durango entered the interrogation room. It was a large room, bare except for a large table and a dozen or so folding chairs around it. The eight suspects were already seated around the table. They looked up in unison as Durango entered.

“I’m Detective Lieutenant Durango,” he introduced himself, “and I have some questions to ask you. I presume you all know that Dr. Mavis Golden has been murdered?”

There was a series of somber nods. They knew.

“Good. Then my first question is simple: Which one of you killed her?”

There was a startled silence. All the faces were blank. Slow puzzlement spread over them. Killed her? it seemed to say. Why would any of us kill her?

Why indeed?

CHAPTER 13

All Hang Togetherness

THE SILENCE hung there for a moment, and then it was swallowed up in a babble of protests.

“Hold it!” Durango’s voice cracked out and he held up his hand. “None of you have any call to get so indignant. You all sounded downright eager to bump off Dr. Golden during the group session last night. Don’t be modest now.”

“But that was just talk.”

“Who are you?” Durango swung on the young man who had spoken.

“Dave Evers.”

“Ivers?"

“No. I’m Ivers.” A dapper, thirty-ish man in a Brooks Brothers suit and horn-rimmed glasses spoke. Reginald Ivers. You wouldn’t get us confused if you knew; anything about us. I’ve never had Dave’s problem.”

“Don’t be so smug!” Dave snapped out at Reggie.

“What’s the matter, pure boy, can’t you take it?”

“Why can’t you be leavin’ the laddie alone?” an Irish voice interjected.

“You mean leave him to your tender wiles, Kevin?” Lisa Bourbon purred. “What a waste of potential that would be!”

“He wouldn’t be any worse off than he would be with you,” Cora Williams interjected. “So why don t you just lay off Kevin? He can’t help being a homosexual any more than you can help being a strumpet.”

“Don’t call me a strumpet, you junkie tramp.” Lisa was trembling with anger.

“Look who’s calling who a tramp,” Brenda Haley murmured.

“And you stay out of this too, you lousy dyke!” Lisa wheeled on her.

“Calm down, Lisa. Take it easy,” Vance Thurmond said soothingly.

“Well, I’ll be!” Wonder shone out from Gloria An-drews sculpted ebony features. “Look who’s calming who down. I always thought you hated Lisa, Vance.”

“Well, he doesn’t! So just you mind your own business!" Lisa snapped at her.

“Don't you come on strong with me, honey! I don’t take that kind of talk from anyone!” Gloria replied.

Looks of hatred crossed and crisscrossed the table. Durrango sat back and watched. They’d all fallen silent again, but the very silence crackled with the promise of pent-up violence.

“Well,” Durango said finally, his voice heavy with sarcasm, “I can see that none of you would be capable of murder. Nevertheless, you all considered it quite seriously last night. And the victim you selected became a victim in fact not so long after. Quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you say? And one of you — one of the most volatile of you, if I’m any judge—even related a dream in which she killed this very victim.” Durango looked at Lisa.

“Wait a minute! just a minute!” Lisa responded in confusion. “That’s not fair!”

“Why not? It was quite a dream. Very vivid. Very much a portent of what really did happen.”

“How do you know?” Lisa’s confusion grew, and she responded to it with still more aggression. “You weren’t there!”

“I played the tape of the session,” Durango explained softly. “Yessir, that was quite a dream you had.”

“But she didn’t have it!” Vance Thurmond interrupted loudly, as though he’d been trying to hold back and his voice had gotten away from him.

“Wait, Vance! Don’t get involved. Let me tell him.”

“Yes, let her tell me,” Durango agreed. “What does he mean you didn’t have the dream, Miss Bourbon?”

“Just that. You see, I made it up.”

“Made it up!” Dave Evers was on his feet, his face red with excitement, his eyes staring furiously at Lisa. “What did you do a thing like that for?”

“I just felt like it. I thought the group sessions were getting dull. So I decided to liven them up a little.”

“You — You—” Dave Evers was struggling to find his voice. “You deliberately sat there and got me all hot and bothered and upset with that lousy dream and it wasn’t even true! You lousy—!” He lunged across the table toward Lisa, his hands outstretched for her throat.

Durango grabbed him first and shoved him back in his chair. He stood over him so he wouldn’t try it again. “Take it easy,” he said soothingly. “So she made it up. Why should that get you so upset? Why should it bother you?”

“She almost drove me nuts with that dream,” Dave said through clenched teeth. “She and my lousy hot witch of a mother. All the sex-and none of it for me!” He buried his face in his hands. “None of it for me!” he said through muffled sobs.

Durango took a deep breath and pulled Dave’s head up by the hair. “Where did you go after you left home last night?” He shot the question at Dave fast and hard.

“Downtown.”

“How?”

“By subway.”

“What stop did you get off at?” Durango spat the questions at Dave fast, not giving him a chance to think up lies for answers.

“Ninety-sixth Street.”

“You were going to see Dr. Golden!”

“Yes. No. I was, but I didn’t.”

“Why were you going there?”

“I don’t know.” Dave was both frightened and hysterical.

“You were going to kill her!”

“Yes. But I didn’t! I didn’t!”

“But you were going to! Why?”

“Lisa’s dream. My mother. Dr. Golden. All women. None for me. I don’t know. It was all mixed up.”

“All mixed up,” Durango repeated. “And so you killed her. Just like you wanted to kill Lisa just now. Just like you would have killed her if you hadn’t been stopped. That’s how you killed Dr. Golden. Only you didn’t use your hands. You used a gun.”

“No! I told you! I was going to kill her, but I didn’t!"

“No?” Durango’s voice was suspiciously calm now, almost purring. “What changed your mind?"

“I met a girl.” The fear subsided and a note of pride replaced it as Dave answered.

“You met a girl?” Durango looked at him closely. Somehow he found himself believing the answer. “Where? What girl?”

“I picked her up on Broadway. She was standing in a doorway. A hooker. I went up to her place with her.”

“Don’t believe him, Lieutenant,” Reginald Ivers interrupted. “He’s got to be lying. His whole problem is he’s never made it with a woman in his life!”

“But last night I finally did.” Dave drew himself up with a new dignity and looked Reggie straight in the eyes. “And what’s more, I can prove it. She said she really liked me and wanted me to come back again. So she gave me her name and address. You can check her, Lieutenant. She’ll tell you I was with her all night. From about one-thirty right through until this morning.” He handed Durango the slip of paper he’d taken out of his pocket.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Reggie said.

“Congratulations, laddie,” Kevin Connery told Dave sincerely.

“Pretty soon you’ll be ready for me,” Lisa Bourbon grinned.

“You stay away from her,” Gloria Andrews advised.

“And don’t get hung up on hookers,” Cora Williams added. “You deserve better, Dave.”

“I’m really happy for you,” Brenda Haley told him, her mannish voice making an effort to sound as if she really meant it.

“Yeah, kid, you’Il be all right from here on in,” Vance Thurmond reassured him. “Once you got your feet wet, the rest is easy.”

Durango studied the slip of paper Dave had given him. “All right, Dave, come with me. The rest of you wait here,” he instructed as he led Dave from the room. Outside he beckoned to Connors to join them. “Dave says he was with this dame last night,” he told Connors. “You check it out. If he was, let him go. And let me know what happens.”

“Okay. Say, Tomas, We just got word that they picked up that Negro dame’s husband last night.”

“You mean Gloria Andrews’ husband? On what charge?”

“D and D.” Connors used the abbreviation of drunk and disorderly.

“What time?”

“About two o’clock.”

“Then he couldn’t have done it. The lab guts the time of death at about three. Certainly no earlier than two-forty.”

“I know,” Connors agreed. “You might as well let his wife go, too. The husband was the only reason I brought her in. The neighbors told me they had a fight last night and he went roaring out. But they could hear her pacing back and forth the whole night, so she’s as clean as the husband is.”

“I guess ou’re right,” Durango agreed. “What about the other five names I gave you?”

“I have two of the boys out checking them. ”

“Okay. Check out the kid here and then report back, Durango told Connors. Then he went back into the interrogation room. “You’re free to go now, he told Gloria Andrews.

“What about us?” Reginald Ivers demanded indignantly as Gloria left.

“In due time, Mr. Ivers. In due time,” Durango singsonged. “Now, Miss Bourbon, getting back to you. So you made up a dream and it triggered a murder. Or should I say a murderer? Or did it just trigger you, yourself?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean maybe you enjoyed making up the dream so much that you decided to really kill Dr. Golden.

“Why don’t you just leave her alone!” Vance Thurmond’s voice cracked out angrily. “She had nothing to do with it!”

“Why are you so sure, Thurmond? Because maybe you killed her yourself?” Durango’s voice was very soft.

“Why should I have killed her?”

“I don’t know. Maybe for the same reason you raped and beat up a woman three years ago!” Durango snarled the words at him, trying to put Thurmond off balance.

“Okay! So I got a record! I don’t deny it! Does that mean I’m the patsy for every time a woman gets herself hurt?’

“This woman wasn’t just hurt, Thurmond, she was killed! And in my book your record pegs you as a prime suspect.”

“Let him be! He didn’t do it!” Lisa Bourdon spoke.

“What are you two lovebirds up to?” Durango demanded. “Are you trying to alibi each other?”

“Lovebirds!” Cora Williams exclaimed. “But they always acted as if they hated each other!”

“That they did, me lass,” Kevin Connery agreed.

“Is that so?” Durango said, interested. “Well, what changed your feelings, you two? A joint murder effort, maybe?”

“No,” Lisa told him. “But we know neither of us could have done it because we were together last night from about one-fifteen on.”

“Together how?” Durango asked insinuatingly.

“All right then, in bed together! Are you happy now that you know? I’m not ashamed of it,” Lisa shouted. “And it’s probably the only time I don’t have any reason to be ashamed either .

“And just how did that come about?” Durango asked.

“We met at Dr. Golden’s,” Lisa admitted in a low voice.

“You mean at the group session?”

“No. Later. I told you. About one-fifteen.”

“And just what were you doing there?”

“I went there to kill a girl,” Thurmond’s voice was calm and even as he spoke. “I followed her there and I was going to kill her. She was a prostitute. A Lesbian. And so was Dr. Golden.”

“And that’s why you killed Dr. Golden instead!” Durango shot back at him.

“No. I didn’t kill her. Lisa came out of the elevator just as I was about to go into Dr. Golden’s apartment. She probably doesn’t even know it herself, but she stopped me from killing one or both of them. You see, When I saw her, I decided she was the one I really wanted to kill.”

“Bloodthirsty fellow, aren’t you?” Durango observed mildly. “Well, tell us about that in a minute. First,” he turned to Lisa, “suppose you tell us what brought you back to Dr. Golden’s apartment.”

“I’m not sure. I’d had a rough night. A very rough night. I was very confused. I might have been going to her for help. I might have been going to a showdown. I’m just not sure.”

“A showdown? What kind of a showdown?” Durango wanted to know.

“I felt she'd somehow fouled me up worse than I was before I went to her for treatment. I was all shook up and mad as a wet hen. I suppose I thought I was going to have it out with her.”

“And so you joined forces with caveboy here and killed her.”

“No. After we bumped into each other in the hallway there, neither of us went inside. Neither of us killed her.”

“Why not?”

“Because Vance had something I wanted. And I guess I had something he wanted.”

“He says he wanted to kill you.”

“Maybe. But he didn’t. I’m still very much alive.” Lisa inhaled deeply and thrust her breasts out toward Durango with a flirtatious wink.

“Where did you go?” Durango ignored her.

“Down to my place. It was quite a night.” Lisa looked at Vance and they both grinned.

“I can’t think of any good reason why I should believe either one of you,” Durango said frankly.

“I can.” All eyes turned to Brenda Haley as she spoke. “You can believe them because they’re telling the truth and I can vouch for it.”

“You can? How?” Durango asked.

Lisa and Vance looked at each other, as surprised as the others at Brenda’s interruption.

“Because I saw them,” Brenda said calmly. “They didn’t see me, but I saw them in the hallway outside Dr. Golden’s apartment. They were too busy necking and petting up a storm to notice me.”

“And just what were you doing back at Grand Central Station?” Durango asked wearily.

“I’d been visiting a friend on another floor in the building,” Brenda explained in her deep, mannish voice.

“I pushed the button for Dr. Golden’s floor instead of the lobby—by mistake.” Her voice faltered at the lie of the last two words.

Durango’s experienced ear caught it. “And so the long arm of coincidence just manages to goose you into an alibi when you alibi the other two,” he said succinctly. “Very convenient, but what does it prove? If they didn’t see you, how can you prove you were there? And if you can’t prove you were really there, I can’t see how you can substantiate their story.”

“I’can prove I was in the building,” Brenda objected. “I’ll give you the name of the friend I was visiting.”

“Assuming you can, that still doesn’t prove you left the building.”

“Maybe not, but if you check the time with her, it will prove I could have seen Lisa and Vance when I said I did.”

“They said this was about one-fifteen. Is that the time you say you saw them?” Durango asked.

“I think it was about five or ten minutes later. But judging by the progress they’d made, they must have been there a little while at least.”

“What exactly did you see?” queried Durango.

“Now, wait a minute—-!” Vance interrupted.

“Yes, What difference does it—?” Lisa chimed in, her voice trailing away as the look on Durango’s face told her it was futile to protest.

“They were really going at it hot and heavy,” Brenda remembered. A touch of crueltly came into her voice and she began obviously to enjoy embarrassing the pair under discussion. “Lisa’s sweater was pushed up over her shoulders and she wasn’t wearing anything underneath it. Vance was squeezing and biting her naked breasts and they were getting all red and bruised. There was as much flagellation as sex in what they were doing, but Lisa seemed to be enjoying it as much as Vance. They were standing up, but she was wearing these stretch pants and they were so soaked through she might just as well not have had them on. She’s opened his pants and she was doing her damnedest to get him to do it to her right then and there.”

“Right there in a brightly lighted public hallway?” Durango asked disbelievingly. “Did you two really do that?”

“Yes,” Vance Thurmond admitted in a low voice.

“But why?” Durango wanted to know. “Why didn‘t you go somewhere where you could have had some privacy?”

“We did later,” Lisa told him. “But at the moment we were too hot to wait.”

“I’ll be damned!” Durango shook his head in amazement. “Go on,” he told Brenda.

“Well, I don’t know whether they pulled it off or not, because just then they were sidetracked into a bit of dialogue, and by the time it was over the elevator doors had closed and I’d left.”

“Let for where? No, wait a minute! Let’s get something cleared up first. You say they had a conversation and you overheard it?”

“Just an exchange of a few words. But it was sort of funny, and I remember it. It almost made me laugh out loud, and that’s why I left. I didn’t want them to see me.”

“Do you two remember what you said?” Durango asked Lisa and Vance.

They looked at each other. Vance grinned. Lisa giggled. “Yes, I think we do,” Vance said.

“All right. Don’t say it out loud,” Durango instructed. He handed each of them a pencil and a sheet of paper. “Just write down what you remember and give it here,” he instructed.

He read what Brenda wrote first. “Lisa bent way over and stuck her derriere out and said ‘Beat me!’ ” she’d penned in a neat, precise script: “Vance raised his hand, and then seemed to change his mind. He said, ‘No! You’d enjoy it too much!’ and his voice was very cruel. Then they both burst out laughing and went back to kissing and petting each other.”

Durango compared the other two statements to Brenda’s. “Well, they check out all right,” he said grudgingly. “I guess you all three were there some time between one-fifteen and one-thirty. But that still doesn’t prove you left.”

“I can prove we left,” Brenda said. “You see, I rode the elevator up-one floor, got out and stood there watching the indicator until the rang for it. It went down to the lobby. I waited another moment, then pushed the button for it and went down to the lobby myself. When I got there, the doorman was sitting on the couch looking like he was sleeping. I wanted him to call me a cab, so I walked over to wake him. But his eyes opened before I reached him and he greeted me by name.”

“Greeted you by name?” Durango asked.

“Yes. You see, he knows me both because I’ve been going to Dr. Golden for treatments for a long time and because I frequently visit this friend of mine in the building. Anyway, he remarked that Dr. Golden must he having a late night because two of her other patients had just left together. I knew he must have meant Vance and Lisa. I even kidded him about sleeping with one eye open.”

“If he had,” Durango remarked, “Dr. Golden might still be alive. Anyway,” he promised, “we’ll check your story out with him. But even it it’s true, any one of the three of you still might have returned in plenty of time to kill her.”

“Not Vance and I,” Lisa said firmly. “We were in the sack together from then on.”

“But without witnesses,” Durango pointed out.

“Wrong again. There was one witness,” Lisa remembered. “The square who lives over me came down to complain about all the noise we were making. He thought Vance was beating me up.”

“And was he?” Durango asked.

“If he was, I’m not complaining about it. I never had it so good.”

“Spare us any more details. What time did your neighbor complain?”

“Three-fourty-five on the button.”

“How can you be so sure of the precise time?”

“He was holding a wristwatch by the strap and waving it in my face and yammering about what time it was and how late and all. He’d still be at it if Vance hadn’t got mad and thrown him out.”

“We’ll check that out, too,” Durango vowed. “And what about you?” He turned to Brenda. “Can you prove you did'n’t come back?”

“I think I can prove I couldn’t possibly have made it back before four o’clock, if that means anything.”

“It might. Go ahead.”

“Well, it was a rainy night and it was a good half-hour before the doorman got me a cab. That makes it almost two o’clock. I live out in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn. The driver wasn't familiar with it and it was after three before he dropped me. I couldn’t possibly have gotten back to Dr. Golden’s before four. But, of course, I didn’t go back there at all.”

“All right, you three come with me and the rest of you wait.” Durango led Brenda, Lisa and Vance outside. “Sit over there.” He indicated a bench and crossed over to the desk at which Sergeant Connors was sitting.

The sergeant had his overcoat on the looked like he’d just come into the stationhouse. “That Dave Ivers kid checks out,” he told Durango. “He was with the broad, all right. Also, the other five names you gave me have been processed. Two of ’em have airtight alibis for last night. I got the other three waitin’ for you in there.” He pointed to the closed door of Durango’s office.

“Good. I’ll get to them in a little while. Now, I want you to check the cab companies for the trip sheet of a driver who made a pickup at Dr. Golden’s about two a. m. and took Brenda Haley out to Coney Island. Particularly, I want the times of pickup and delivery. Let me know if they show she couldn’t have made it back to Manhattan in time to commit the murder. Then check the doorman at Dr. Golden’s building to see if he saw Haley, Bourdon and Thurmond. And check the guy who lives upstairs over Bourdon to see if he complained to her last night and what time. Oh, and ring up the widower Golden and ask him in a nice way to get down here. You got all that?”

“I got it.”

“And, oh yeah, I almost forgot. The dyke says she’d got a friend in Golden’s building.“ Get the name from her and check out what time she left the friend’s apartment.”

“Anything else?” Connors asked with a touch of sarcasm.

“Nope. Just report to me on what you find. I’m goin’ back in with what’s left of the looneys.”

“Good luck.”

“Thanks.” The door of the interrogation room closed behind Durango.

Kevin Connery, Reggie Ivers and Cora Williams looked up apprehensively as he re-entered.

“Well, we do seem to be dwindling, don’t we?” Durango said cheerily. “Do you three happen to know what Dr. Golden’s dying words were?”

They shook their heads.

“ ‘Ask the group. The group knows!’ That’s what she said. And now the group is down to three, and I’m asking you.”

“Asking us what?” Cora Williams voiced the question for the three of them.

“Asking you who killed Dr. Mavis Golden, that’s what.”

“But surely you can’t think that any of us did it,” exclaimed Reggie Ivers.

“Sometimes I'm thinkin’ everyone’s a bit queer for murther but me an’ thee,” Kevin Connery murmured. “An’ I’m not so sure a-tall about thee!”

“Exactly!” Durango said.

The three drew away from one another. Somehow murder was once again among them!

CHAPTER 14

Three of a Kind!

“. . . EACH OF YOU wants to kill me . . . certain factors. Opportunity for one. Motive — which is to say the feeling of wanting to kill me finding its fullest expression due to some outside pressure—for another . . . Of course, some are more dangerous than others. I have one patient, suffering from the same thing as Brenda over there but in a far more exaggerated from, whose hostility verges on the paranoid. Close to the brink of violence . . .” '

Thus had Dr. Golden spoken to the group a few hours before she was murdered. Her words had been preserved on the tape. And when Durango heard them, these were the phrases which had become implanted in his mind as possibly having special import. These words, taken in conjunction with her dying stricture to “Ask the group!” seemed the most likely clue to the identity of her killer. And it was because of these words that the three women were now sitting and waiting in Durango’s office.

While they waited, Debbie Smith tossed restlessly on the hard cot of the jail cell and tried to sleep. Dr. Zachary Golden, in answer to the summons from Sergeant Connors, got into his car and started down the West Side Highway for police headquarters. And Durango continued to play cat-and-mouse with a trio which, while mixed, was probably not as mixed up as the trio waiting in his office.

They were an oddly assorted threesome. They didn’t even attempt to talk among themselves. They were strangers. The had never met before. Each of them was occupied with her own thoughts.

At first glance the trio seemed comprised of two women and a man. The one with the short, black hair trimmed in male fashion, wearing a man’s tie and a V- cut man’s white contour shirt tucked into neatly pressed, tapered trousers at the waist, the one with the broad shoulders and fiat chest, the hipless one with the strong, masculine face which eschewed make-up—this one was Jonnie O’Faye. She was a professional entertainer at a Village joint where her specialty was a male impersonation act in which she made passes at female customers, convinced them she must be a man, and then shocked them with the truth by revealing herself as a woman.

Jonnie was thinking of Dr. Mavis Golden. She had first started going to Dr. Golden for treatment about three years ago when she was twenty-two years old. Quite soon, Dr. Golden had shown her that her Lesbianism was only one symptom of her real trouble. It was only the expression of the contempt in which she held other women, of the raging, pent-up aggression toward anything female which filled Jonnie.

It stemmed from Jonnie’s relationship with her mother. Trite, but true nevertheless. Jonnie hated her mother for being weak. And this hatred spread to include all women. The weaker they were, the more Jonnie hated them. That was one reason she so enjoyed making them crawl with her act at the club.

But Jonnie had thought Dr. Golden was different. She’d thought Dr. Golden was strong. She’d thought so right up until that session with her the day before Dr. Golden had been murdered. And then Dr. Golden had slipped, and Jonnie had caught the slip, and inside Jonnie’s brain Dr. Golden’s strength had crumbled away, leaving Jonnie to look at just one more weak and foolish woman worthy only of contempt and loathing.

Jonnie had been on the couch, Dr. Golden behind her, out of Jonnie’s line of vision. Jonnie had been describing an incident which had taken place a few nights before.

“It was between shows. I had to rinse a kidney. The way that cheap joint I work in’s set up, the performers have to use the same plumbing as the customers. So I went into the little girl’s room.”

“Why do you say it so defensively?” Dr. Golden had interjected.

“You’ll see why in a minute. Just as I came out of the stall, this dame comes into the head. She’s a type, know what I mean. Not bad-looking, but all powder and goo and a face that belongs on a cherub hanging off a cathedral somewhere. Looks like Little Miss Innocence — but expensive. One of those frilly evening gowns cut right down the middle to the gut. Flounces and things, but not where they’d hide that obscenely fleshy bust of hers, or disguise those girly-girl hips and No-Cal waist. The dress looked like Bergdorf and the chick looked like Westchester—the right side of the tracks with a hairdresser that knows when to quit teasing.”

“Her femininity and the wealthy status you think you saw in her made you feel aggressive toward her,” Dr. Golden said in a measured tone intended to help clarify Jonnie’s feelings.

“Right away. Like I said, she was a type. You know, the hoity-toity dames who come down to the Village in all their finery once a year for a look—and a laugh-—at the queers. I suppose it’s their one fling at admitting to their own hush-hush homosexuality.”

“That’s very perceptive. And probably true. Go on,” Dr. Golden said.

“Okay. So right away my dander’s zooming as soon as I see her. Then two things happen to make me even madder. First I notice she’s wearing a wedding ring, and second she opens her yap.”

“Hold it,” Dr. Golden interrupted. “Why did her being married bother you?”

“Because I spotted her right away for what she really was. A dame who swings my way is one thing. But a dame who does, and knows she does, and then denies it while she’s looking down her nose at girls like me —well, I can’t stand that. And a butch who tries to hide what she is behind a husband and sneers at me —well, that’s just too much!”

“Are you sure you judged her correctly?”

“Am I ever! Just listen! As soon as she sees me she lets out a little female-type yelp. ’I thought this was the ladies’ room,’ she says. ’You thought right,’ I tell her. ’But-then what are you doing here?’ she simpers. ’You’re not a lady.’ And she gives out with a disgusting giggle. ’That’s for sure,’ I tell her. ’But I am female.’ She gives me a stare. ’You certainly don’t look it,’ she says with a sneer. ‘Looks are deceiving,’ I tell her. ‘Well,’ she says real firm-like, as if I give a damn, ‘I’m just not going to do anything until you leave.’ This makes me bristle, and I decide I’ll damn well stay as long as I like and longer. ‘It’s you risking constipation,’ I tell her. ‘I’m in no hurry.’ ”

“What happened then?” Dr. Golden asked.

“She was quiet for a minute or two, and then she tells me she didn’t really come in because she had to go to the bathroom, but because the elastic on her panties snapped while she was dancing and she wants to take them off before she loses them in public. I tell her to go ahead and take them off, but she starts on how she can’t undress in front of a man again. This time she gets me so mad I decide I’ll prove to her that I’m a woman. So, quick as a bunny-rabbit, I unzip my pants and drop them to the floor.”

“What did she do?”

“First she gives a great big gasp and twists at her wedding ring so hard she almost pulls it off finger and all. She sucks in a lot of breath like she’s getting ready to scream, but by that time I’ve got m underwear down too and I’m shoving it in front off her face to prove my point. When she sees I’m telling the truth, she decides against screaming. Instead, she grabs me around from behind and pulls me up real close like she has to be on top of it to believe her eyes.”

“What did you do?”

“I saw right away what she was after, and I’m always ready for a quick kick. If she was willing — and she was obviously a damn sight more than willing! — then why not. I grabbed her by the back of the neck and pushed her nose right into it. And I tell you, the way she went at it, she’d been that route more than once before.”

“Weren’t you afraid somebody might walk in on you?”

“Yeah. The idea occurred to me. But I figured she had more to lose than I did. But she was kissing and licking and sucking so furiously I don’t think she ever gave it a thought. I don’t think she ever saw a girl that was shaved clean down there the way I am before. It drove her wild. When I went over the top, it was like a vacuum cleaner had latched onto me. And she held on right down to the last drop and then some.”

“What happened after that?”

“She gets up on her feet and pushes me down to the floor. She pulls up all that flouncy organdy jazz of her evening gown and closes her legs just a little so her panties fall on the floor. The elastic really was broken. Then she bends over me and pushes down the top so that one of her girly-girl balloons is dangling right in my face. It’s obvious she wants me to wrap my mouth around it.”

“Did you oblige her?”

“Oh, sure. I kissed it and bit it until the tip was sticking out at least a long, red inch. She’s moaning away by then and trying to push my head down to where I want it. I gave the target a look first, and in fairness I have to say it was as pretty a sight as I’ve ever seen. Just like a plump mango that’s been split and waiting. The muscles on her creamy white thighs on either side of it are jumping like she just can’t wait. So I do what she wants, and in only a minute or so her nails are digging into my neck and she’s giving little yelps and I know she’s about to go over the top. That’s when I stopped.”

“You stopped? But why?”

“ ’Cause I wanted to teach her a lesson. I Wanted to show her that a perverted slut like she was can’t always have it her way. I wanted to show her that if she’s going to act the hypocrite most of the time and pretend to be a normal woman, she can’t sneer at girls like me and still expect to get her ashes hauled. I wanted to show her good—-and I did. I just walked out on her and left her panting—and crying. But you know something—” Jonnie had twisted around on the couch to see the effect of what she was going to say on Dr. Mavis Golden — “Later, when I was doing my act, I saw that slut playing with herself and she actually yelled right out loud when my act reached its climax. I guess hers did at the same time.” Jonnie sat straight up to look at Dr. Golden now. “Playing with herself! That’s twenty times more perverted than anything I do!”

Her sudden shift had taken Dr. Golden by surprise. The doctor started, but before she could cease what she was doing, Jonnie had seen. Shock spread over Jonnie’s face as she recognized the full import of what Dr. Golden’s hands had been doing in Dr. Golden’s lap.

Jonnie raised her dazed eyes, and they met Dr. Golden’s gaze, caught the expression on Dr. Golden’s face off-guard, before the doctor had a chance to change it. What Jonnie saw there, she had seen many times before in other faces. The lust of woman for woman, the vicarious titillation over someone else’s Lesbian experience, the secret hunger by which one Lesbian knows another and knows that she is wanted by that other — these things Jonnie saw in place of the professional detachment and understanding she had come to expect from Dr. Golden. And without another word Jonnie had risen from the couch and fled her analyst’s office.

But she hadn’t been able to flee the knowledge of what Dr. Golden was. It had turned rancid in her brain and bubbled forth in anger and frustration all through that night and the following day. By the next evening, the one just before Dr. Golden’s murder, Jonnie was trying to drown her contempt and hatred of the doctor, her fury at the weak femaleness she’d uncovered in Dr. Golden. She attempted to drown it in a first, and then a second, bottle of scotch, but the liquor had only seemed to make her reaction more acute. At least, that was all Jonnie remembered of the night. The rest of it was a blank, a dark cloud of mystery stretching from twilight to long after dawn, a question mark which had been under-lined by violent death!

This question mark still hovered over jonnie as she sat with the others in Durango’s oflice and waited for the detective to appear. Trying not to think of it, Jonnie looked out of the corner of her eye at the girl seated on the folding chair to her left. Another one! A pussycat female trying to hide the fact that she wanted other female! Jonnie noted the wedding ring she wore. Married! Just like the slut in the bathroom! just like Dr. Mavis Golden! A weak sister pretending to the frilly femaleness husbands want while all the time she really wanted was another woman! Jonnie stared hatred at the girl.

The girl intercepted Jonnie’s gaze without bothering to interpret it. To her the eye contact was merely an encouragement to ask Jonnie if she had a cigarette.

“No.” jonnie told her shortly. And a moment later she deliberately produced a full pack, took one out, and blithely lit it. The look she shot the girl was purposely hateful.

The girl — Mrs. Anne Yolan was her name-—recoiled from Jonnie’s gaze. Now why did she do that? Anne wondered. She looks at me like she really hates me, and I never even met her before. I wonder if she was one of Dr. Golden’s patients?

The question made her think of Dr. Golden -- and then of her husband, Paul Yolan. “He persecutes me constantly,” Anne had told Dr. Golden the first time she’d gone to her for treatment. “I married a man who’s out to destroy me. You wouldn’t believe some of the things he does.”

“Tell me about them,” Dr. Golden had said quietly.

“He—tells stories about me. To the neighbors and our friends and even our families sometimes, I mean. He tells them things to make it look like I'm out of my mind.”

“What sort of things?”

“I’m not sure. They won’t tell me. But I know he does. I can tell from the way they look at me.”

“How do they look at you?”

“As if they think I’m crazy. As if they think I should be put away. I know that’s what they think. All of them. They’re all afraid of me and think I should be put away. And they’re all plotting and scheming with Paul to do just that.”

“You think he’s setting them against you.”

“I don’t think it. I know it. And he does other things, too.”

“What other things?”

“He puts things in my food. In my coffee. Drugs. To keep me from sleeping nights. And to make me want sex.”

“I see. And do they work?”

“Oh, yes. Sometimes I go for a whole week without sleeping. And sometimes I’m just aching for sex all the time because of the drugs.”

“Do you feel that your husband takes advantage of your erotic state at such times?”

“Oh, he tries. He’s always at me to make love; Every night. But I outwit him.”

“How do you outwit him?”

“I pretend to be asleep so he won’t touch me. And then when the drugs are affecting me really badly, I get my relief somewhere it's safe.”

“Safe? Could you explain what you mean by that?”

“Not with Paul. Not with any man. They’re all the same. They’re all out to get me just like he is.”

“You have sex with women, then?”

“That’s right. It’s safer.”

“I see. Well, tell me about it. Why is it safer?”

“Other women are soft, like me. They don’t hurt like men do, like my father hurt my mother, like Paul hurts me. They make love gently. They’re not out to destroy me the way Paul is.”

It had taken Dr. Golden almost five years to bring Anne Yolan around to the realization that her husband wasn’t really out to destroy her. It took all that time to make Anne see that the persecution was something she’d imagined herself. And, throughout, Anne had continued to have regular Lesbian relations with other women. Yet, even with Anne’s intellectual acceptance of the reality, her emotional adjustment was tenuous. Her relations with Paul changed from hatred on her part and patience on his to timid confusion for Anne and growing impatience for him.

“I’m not afraid of him any more,” Anne had told Dr. Golden less than a week before the murder. “I don’t think he’s persecuting me any more. But how just the sight of him fills me with this terrible guilt.”

“What do you feel guilty about?”

“All those women I let make love to me. How Paul would hate me if her knew!”

“Are you sure that he’d hate you?”

“Of course!” Anne had thought a minute and when she spoke again her voice was unsure of itself. “Wouldn’t he?”

“Not necessarily. He might be much more understanding than you give him credit for being.”

“Then you think I should tell him?”

“That’s for you to decide,” Dr. Golden told her non-commitally.

“But am I well enough to make such a decision?”

“I think so. Your paranoid delusions seem well under control. You see them for what they are. And they recur far less frequently than they once did. Of course, only events themselves will show just how healthy you are. But I believe you’re capable of making your own decisions and facing the consequences of them.”

And that, Anne Yolan thought now as she waited in Durango’s office, was where she was wrong. If she had been able to foresee the consequences, she never would have made that statement. And I never would have told Paul the truth about myself.

Outwardly, Paul’s reaction had been calm. Too calm. He hadn’t shouted, or banged his fist on the table, or struck her, or anything like that. He’d heard out her confessions of Lesbianism in silence, only a little muscle twitching at the corner of his mouth giving away what he was feeling. And when she was through, he’d spoken only five words, and spoken them quietly:

“Anne, I want a divorce.”

She had pleaded, and he had repeated the words a few times. As her begging grew hysterical, he’d stopped repeating them and merely sat calm and silent. Her hysteria built on itself and she was screaming at him then, accusing him of torturing her, of having driven her to other women for sex, of not being man enough to satisfy her, of being a sex maniac whose demands on her were monstrous, of doping her food and spreading lies about her-—all the old paranoid convictions and some new ones. Still Paul merely sat there, making no attempt to defend himself against the heinous torrent of words she fired at him. Only when she ran out of words and began hurling objects—-an ashtray, a fruit-filled jar, a paring-knife—did Paul finally get up from his chair. He went quickly into the bathroom then and locked the door against her onslaught.

Alone, something snapped inside Anne. First she was filled with terror and crouched low on the kitchen floor. She fancied she saw faces peering in at the windows, hands holding weapons and pointing at her, Paul laughing and screaming her shame to the world. Slowly the fear subsided, to be replaced by her old paranoid cunning.

She saw it all now. It Wasn’t just Paul. They were all in on it. Yes, not just the men, but the women as well. All the women in whose arms she’d lain these past years. See heard the ominous echo of all the words of endearment they’d murmured to her, the ominous echo convincing the world that Anne was evil and must be destroyed. And she saw the face of the mastermind directing this whole monstrous scheme aimed at her destruction. It was the face of Dr. Mavis Golden!

That face had loomed up before Mavis like some monstrous focal point of the storm as she drove into the city much later that night. The lightning lit its insidiously understanding expression—that hypocritical expression by which Anne had been tricked — the thunder was its voice shouting victory over Anne’s naivete, the rain the rain of mendacity by which Anne would be drowned. But her hands, clenched tight on the steering-wheel, fought back. She felt the power in them to erase that expression, to silence the thunder, to hold back the rain. She felt the power in them to shatter the face of her persecutor once and for all!

Still sitting in Durango’s office now and waiting, looking for all the world like the suburban housewife she was, Anne Yolan remembered that drive and shuddered. There was no point in thinking about it. What was done was done. She turned away from Jonnie’s still hateful gaze and looked at the third girl in the room.

Karen Jorgenson did not look back at Anne. She was unaware of the glance. She continued to stare down at her strong hands clasped in her lap and to worry over what might happen with the police in the near future.

Would they search her apartment? She prayed that they wouldn’t. If they did, they’d find the ring she’d hidden at the bottom of her lingerie drawer for sure! Oh, why had she put it there? Why hadn’t she been clever enough to think of a better hiding place? If they found it, she was a goner! It would point to her as Dr. Golden’s murderer for sure!

Dr. Golden dead! Even now, with the vision of the dying body still fresh in her eyes, it was hard for Karen to accept the horrible reality. And, oh! the fear which filled her at the though of her part in that reality, at the memory of the unplanned violence. Karen couldn’t help comparing the somehow obscenely dying body with the pulsating warmth of it when it was fully alive.

The first time she’d seen and felt it, Dr. Golden’s body had been naked under a terrycloth towel at the ladies’ massage parlor where Karen worked as a masseuse. The massage parlor catered to well-off women, and it catered on a number of levels. It provided steam and poundings to shave the fat from the obese, supervised exercise classes for women trying to get their figures back post-natally, mud-packs and heat treatments for skin crumbling into forty-ish decay, facials for the jowly and regimens to restore muscle tone, plus very special private massages for the select and the knowing.

Among this last group, the name of “Miss Jorgenson” was a sort of password. To ask for her was to announce that one was interested in a particularly intimate sort of treatment. Dr. Mavis Golden had asked for Miss Jorgenson on her one and only visit. She had heard the name and learned what it stood for from one of her patients. The patient had since been discharged, and Mavis Golden had waited a while before visiting the massage parlor one afternoon on the spur of the moment.

Removing the towel, Karen had looked at this new customer’s torso admiringly. Slender and well-kept, in good condition, velvety to the touch and pleasing to the eye—-it was a welcome change from some of the rich women who came for Karen’s special service. Dr. Mavis Golden was lying flat on her stomach, and Karen began kneading the flesh at her neck and shoulders with strong and expert fingers.

She worked her way down the spine slowly. When she reached the base of it, she skipped down to the ankles and started up the backs of the legs. Dr. Golden’s legs were long and slender and lightly muscled. They were attractive legs, and the muscles flexed and unflexed easily in response to Karen’s touch. Finally Karen reached the well-defined crease separating the legs from the buttocks. Her fingers probed the crease gently, but deeply, and Dr. Golden gave a little sigh of contentment.

Then Karen began to the high, well-molded, solid-fleshed derriere and the fashionably narrow hips. As she rotated the flesh and delved into the cleft, Dr. Golden purred low in her throat. When she ran her hands down the sides of Dr. Golden’s body and manipulated the hips, the purr turned into an excited little thinkling laugh.

“You can turn over now,” Karen had told her softly, and Dr. Golden had complied quickly.

Dr. Golden’s breasts, small, but firm and pointing toward the ceiling so rigidly, yet shimmering with a golden sheen and the quiver of tapered scarlet tips, had impressed Karen. They were so different from Karen’s own breasts, which were quite large and milk-white and had large, dark-brown roseates the size of half-dollars. These breasts bobbled loosely under the white attendant’s gown which was the only garment she wore as she now bent to resume her ministrations to Dr. Golden.

Karen worked her way down from the shoulders to the breasts quickly, and soon they were nestling in the palms of her capable hands. Her fingers tiptoed around their circumference, pausing to tease a little pulse throbbing at the side of one of them. The middle finger of one hand investigated the deep valley separating them, and the length of it moved in an insinuating rhythmic motion that had Dr. Golden squeezing her arms against her sides to push them together in order to obtain the maximum sensation afforded by the caress. Then Karen laid her hands lightly over the breasts and palmed the tips gently until she felt them grow moist and burning.

Her hands moved downward, over the tiny waist to the flat belly. She massaged the belly for a long time, moving farther downward slowly to the trembling mound beneath it. And then her fingers were nearing their target, the tips becoming slippery with the dew of passion they found there. They caught the tiny polyp of flesh awaiting them and stroking it.

Dr. Golden moaned aloud. Her body grew suddenly rigid and arched up from the table like a bowstring. Her hand grabbed Karen’s wrist and directed Karen’s hand as the fulcrum of her body pressed down to meet it. And then she gave a long, low cry of triumph aloud as he body was shaken by spasm after spasm of joyous release.

Karen was with her, but as the tremors subsided, the masseuse became aware that the ring Dr. Golden was wearing was cutting into the back of her hand. It must have been turned around in Dr. Golden’s eagerness as she grabbed at Karen’s wrist before. Karen reached down with her other hand to twist it back.

The sight of the ring made her catch her breath. It was a large ruby, deep-red and flawless. Karen had some knowledge of jewelry, and she judged that it must worth at least ten thousand dollars. Possibly more, considering the gold setting and the eight tiny emeralds surroundings it. Karen had never seen anything like it before. It was perhaps at that very moment, with her very first look at it, that Karen decided she must have that ring. And the decision grew to an obsession with her.

She found out Dr. Golden’s name and address by checking the records kept by the massage parlor. She waited almost four months—the obsession growing stronger all the time—before she did anything with this knowledge. Then she dressed in a tailored suit, changed her hair-style, put on glasses and heavy make-up, and went to consult the psychologist. As she had hoped, Dr. Golden didn’t recognize her.

Karen had made up her mind to steal the ring. Becoming a patient of Dr. Golden’s seemed the simplest way to case the analyst’s apartment in order to plan the theft. She told the doctor she was a Lesbian — which was true enough – and Dr. Golden never had the vaguest notion of Karen’s real reason for coming to her for treatment.

After a few visits, Karen had admired the ring, commented on its value, and asked Dr. Golden if the idea of its being stolen didn't make her nervous.

“Not at all,” Dr. Golden had told her innocently. “At night, when I take it off, I simply lock it up here with the fees I’ve taken in during the day.” She’d taken a strongbox out of her desk and shown it to Karen. “I keep the key well hidden,” she’d added with a laugh.

Karen bided her time. It was three months more before her opportunity came. When it did, it was simplicity itself.

Dr. Golden’s cleaning girl interrupted Karen’s session to ask the analyst about some housekeeping problem. Annoyed, apologizing to Karen, Dr. Golden had accompanied the girl to the rear of the apartment. Alone in the office, Karen had quickly taken out the carefully wrapped block of wax she’d been carrying in her purse since the day Dr. Golden had shown her the strongbox. She had opened the drawer the strongbox was in, taken an impression of lock, and closed it. When Dr. Golden returned, Karen was lying on the couch just where she’d left her.

The next day, Karen had the key made. She carried it around with her until the day Dr. Golden had casually mentioned that her husband was away at a medical convention and she was all alone in the apartment. That night, Karen set out to steal the ruby ring. That night, Dr. Golden was murdered!

It was a night of sudden, sharp images for Karen. The door to the apartment surprised her by being open so that there was no need to use the key she’d long ago had made to fit it, the door opening on the pitch-black waiting room. The inner office then, and the montage of lightning-flash rememberings: the desk, the strongbox, the ring itself glittering in the palm of her hand, a shadow in the doorway, then sudden, glaring light and Dr. Golden popping out of the terrycloth robe she wore, standing there, not seeing Karen crouched behind the desk, and finally the unplanned shots and the blood and the dying gasps. Last of all, the remembrance of fleeing the room and bumping into the figure in the waiting room, and the scurry out the door to the blinding light of the hallway, and then the panic-stricken flight home.

Now the ruby ring lay at the bottom of Karen’s lingerie drawer. Now Karen sat and waited, filled with fear at the price she might have to pay for it. Now Karen sat in silence and remembered the pleading look on Dr. Golden’s face as she stood there dying.

So all three of the girls sat in Durango’s office in silence, each of them a prisoner of her own memories and regrets. Each of them so different in appearance, so different in character and background, yet each of them with the same unmentionable lust in common, each of them a Lesbian. This was the tie that bound them in hatred and in love. There they were-—

The Three Faces of Lesbos!

CHAPTER 15

Hang Them Separately!

“CAN I see you a minute, Tomas?” Sergeant Connors stuck his head into the interrogation room.

“Sure.” Durango followed him outside.

“You’ve had that trio in there a long time. How you doing with them?” Connors asked when they were a one.

“Getting nowhere fast,” Durango admitted morosely. “What’s up?”

“All your errands are taken care of. We found the driver who took Brenda Haley out to Coney Island. He happened to be in the garage when we called the dispatcher to check his trip sheets. He described Haley to us over the phone and he’ll be here soon to confirm it in person. Doesn’t sound like there’s much doubt. And from the time on his trip sheet, she couldn’t possibly have made it back to Manhattan in time to pull off the murder.”

“Okay. After the driver confirms, you can let her go. What else?”

“Bourdon and Thurmond are clean. The doorman confirms the time they left and Bourdon’s upstairs neighbor claims they were having such a ball they were keeping him from sleeping at just about the time the murder was committed. Should I turn them loose too?”

“Might as well.”

“And, oh yeah,” Connors added, “Golden’s here; he’s waiting in the squad room.”

“He’ll have to wait until I’m through with the three kooks.”

“Why don’t you try tackling them separately, instead of all together?” Connors suggested. “They might be more likely to talk than with the others listening.”

“Sometimes, Connors, you don’t have bad ideas. l will give that a try. Stand by, I may need you.” Durango went back into the interrogation room.

“. . . The luck o’ the Irish? Sure, an’ there’s no such thing,” Kevin Francis Connery was saying as Durango re-entered.

“Why do you say that, Connery?” Durango plunged right into the conversation.

“Sure, an’ aren’t you the proof of it? In a city full o’ friendly, smilin’ Irish cops, if there was anythin’ at all to an Irishman havin’ luck, would I be sittin’ here bein’ persecuted by a dark, Latin type the likes o’ you?”

“I’m sorry you don’t approve of my ethnic background, Connery,” Durango said bitingly. “But I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you. I’ll turn you over to one of those friendly, smiling Irish cops and we’ll see if he can get any further with you than I have.” Durango went to the door. “Connors,” he called, “come in here, will you?”

“What’s up, Tomas?” Connors looked at the three suspects seated around the table.

“I’d like you to meet Kevin Francis Connery. Mr. Connery feels that an officer of Irish extraction might be more sympathetic to him. Connors-Connery,” Durango mused. “Judging from the similarity in names, you two must have an ancestor in common somewhere back through the years. That practically makes you kinsmen. You should have no trouble at all getting a real rapport going. Take him into a nice quiet corner of the squad room, Sergeant Connors, and see if you can’t get a little meaningful conversation.”

“Sure, an’ we’ll get along just foine an’ dandy.” Sergeant Connors mimicked Connery’s brogue as he put an arm around his shoulders and led him out.

“You two wait here,” Durango told Cora Williams and Reggie Ivers. “I’ll be right back.” He walked back to the jail cells at the rear of the stationhouse.

Debbie Smith was awake and pacing the floor of her cell like a caged tigress. “just how long do I have to stay in this fleabag?” she demanded furiously when she saw Durango.

“Process your soul in patience, sweetie. You’re a lucky girl. There are no charges against you and you’re not officially under arrest. You’re just being cooperative.”

“I’m tired of being cooperative. I think maybe I should call a lawyer.”

“Now what do you want to be that way for? You call a lawyer and then we have to book you.”

“What’s the difference? I may not be under arrest, but I’m still in jail. What are you doing, just keeping me around until you’ve got the time to go to bed with me?”

“That’s the one bright thought in what’s been a pretty dismal day,” Durango replied, looking at her with self-satisfied lechery. “But, that’ll have to wait,” he added regretfully. “Right now, what I want from you is your help.”

“What kind of help?” Debbie was suspicious.

“The kind you’re best at. Back at ye auld scene of the crime before, you were all hot to play detective. Now I’m going to give you the chance to do it and put the talents of your harlotry to work at the same time.”

“Watch who you’re calling names.” Debbie sulked a moment. Then —“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

“I’ve got a fellow there named Reggie Ivers whose big weakness is women.”

“Yeah. I remember him from the tapes. He thinks he’s a real Lothario.”

“Exactly. I want you to encourage him in that opinion. I'm going to have him stuck in this cell with you and I want you to milk him the best way you know how—and I’ll bet you know lots of ways.”

“Wait a minute! Is that ethical?“ Debbie asked.

“Whose ethics are you talking about? Yours, or mine?”

“Yours, of course. I make it my business not to have any. But is it ethical for a cop to try to pull something like this?”

“Nope,” Durango admitted cheerfully. “Will you do it?”

“I guess so.” Debbie shrugged. “What have I got to lose?”

“Fine. I’ll have him brought back here.” Durango left her then and made the necessary arrangements with the guard in charge of the cells. He had a patrolman escort Reggie Ivers from the interrogation mom, and then he was alone with Cora Williams.

“So you’re a junkie,” Durango began.

“How can I deny it? You heard the tapes, and I guess it was mentioned at least once in each group session. Besides, the hypo marks on my arms give me away.”

“Okay. We’re alone now. Before I was taking it easy on you because I figured you might not want to talk in front of the others.”

“Thanks.”

“But now I want you to level with me. I’m not interested in getting leads for the Narcotics Division, but I am interested in solving this matter. So I want straight answers to my question. Understand?”

“I understand.”

“Good. First of all, Cora, you’re pretty calm for a junkie. ‘When did you have your last fix?”

“This afternoon. Just before I was picked up.”

“How strong are you hooked? How often do you need a fix?”

“Every day. I can stretch if for two days if I have to. And sometimes I have to.”

“It figures. Just how do you support the habit?” Durango asked.

“The best I can. It isn’t easy.”

“You’ll have to do better than that, Cora. I know you can’t afford it on your salary. Where do you get the money?”

“I scrounge for it. Sometimes Jeff-—the guy I shack up with—comes up with some bread. I’ve got friends. We help each other out.”

“Were you coked-up last night, when Dr. Golden was murdered?” Durango wanted to know.

“That’s a laugh! You don’t know how funny that is! No, I wasn’t. I couldn’t get the money for the Horse, and I thought I’d go out of my mind.”

“But you got it. You had a shot today. Where did you get it?”

“It was almost morning before I got it,” Cora said evasively.

“And you ran out of your place around two o’c1ock, according to your boy friend. Also, he told Sergeant Connors you were in quite an emotional state.”

“The louse!” Cora said bitterly.

“Where did you go?”

“Around. just around.”

“Not good enough, Cora. Did you go to see Dr. Golden?”

“I was going to. I thought she might help me out with some cash. But I changed my mind. I didn’t go to see her.”

“Why did you change your mind?”

“It was sort of changed for me,” Cora said evasively.

“How? Who changed it?”

She was stubbornly silent, refusing to answer.

“All right. Cora!” Durango’s voice was hard and ugly. “You don’t leave me any choice. I’ll have to book you."

“What do you mean?” She was taken by surprise by the sudden change in his manner.

“I mean if you won’t answer, I’m going to charge you officially with the murder of Dr. Mavis Golden.”

“But I didn’t kill her!”

“Now you hear me, you poor fish. The only clue we have to this murder is that she pointed the finger at the group before she died. Five of them are completely in the clear. The other two, Connery and Ivers, are having their alibis checked out right now,” Durango lied. “So that leaves you. You were in the neighborhood at the time of the murder. You needed money, so you had a motive. And you’ve admitted that you were going to see Dr. Golden. You refuse to answer my questions on top of all that, and you’re a junkie to boot, which means you’re just crazy enough to have killed her for a fix. Yep! You’re the best suspect I’ve got, Cora, and I might as well make the charge official right now.”

“Wait a minute. Please—”

“Are you going to tell me where you were and who you were with and what changed your mind about going up to see Dr. Golden?”

“Yes. I’ll tell you. I don’t want to go to jail. I'd die there.”

“Right you are. It would be cold turkey all the way. You can’t get a fix in the clink – at least not before you sweat your gut out. Come on now. Let’s have it.” Durango sat back to listen.

“It’s simple enough. After I ran out on Jeff I did start for Dr. Golden’s. But as I was going up Broadway through the rain, this man came up to me and started walking alongside me. He took me for a streetwalker, and he kept asking me how much.”

“What did you do?”

“At first I ignored him. Then I told him to get lost. But when he kept it up, I suddenly saw him as the answer to my problems.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was desperate for a fix, remember? I only needed ten dollars more. That’s, what I was going to try to get from Dr. Golden. So I told this guy okay for ten bucks and he surprised me by agreeing.”

“Five is the going rate in that part of town, plus two for the room.”

“I know. That’s why I was surprised. But don’t get the wrong idea. I never did anything like that before. I’m not a prostitute.”

“You stay on junk and you will be. Most of the hookers in this town got started supporting a habit. Anyway, where’d you take this John?”

“I didn’t have any place to take him, not with Jeff on cloud Nine up at my place. So he took me. Up to his place. A furnished room on West Eighty-Eighth street.”

“All right, Cora. We’ll have to check it out. What was his name?”

“I don’t know. But I could find the house again.”

“What time did he pick you up?”

“About two-thirty. Right after I left Jeff.”

“And how long were you with him?”

“Until after four. Then I went down—I went to get my fix.”

“Okay, Cora. Come with me.” Durango led her to the squad room. He called one of the patrolmen over and arranged for him to go with Cora to check out her story. He watched them leave, and then his eye was caught by some activity over on the other side of the long squad room. Durango strode over to see what it was all about.

Sergeant Connors was standing over Kevin Francis Connery and trying to keep him calm while another detective fingerprinted him.

“What the devil’s going on here?” Durango demanded.

“We’re booking him,” Connors explained.

“Booking him for what? What did he do, confess?"

“Don’t get your hopes up. He had nothing to do with the Golden murder. We’re booking him on a morals charge.”

“On a morals charge? Now look here, Connors,” Durango said acidly, “when I told you to get an Irish rapport going with him, I didn’t mean you were supposed to entice him into making a pass at you.”

“He didn’t make a pass at me,” Connors protested hotly.

“Sure an’ he’s a foine broth of an Irish lad,” Kevin Francis Connery interjected, “but all the same he’s not my type.”

“Suppose you tell me quietly what this is all about, Connors,” requested Durango.

“Well, we were settin’ here havin’ a chat about the auld sod, friendly as you please, when-—”

“My God!” Durango interrupted. “You’ve picked up his brogue!”

‘Tm sorry.” Connors actually blushed.

“I hope you haven't picked up any of his other habits.”

“Now, not all Irishmen are queer!” Connors objected angrily. “As a matter of fact, percentage-wise, very few of them—”

“All right. All right.” Durango soothed him. “I’m not casting aspersions on the Irish. Lord, how far do you suppose I’d get in the New York City, Police Department with that kind of prejudice. Besides, you know me well enough to know I’m not anti-Hibernian. Will you please just tell me what happened and why you’re booking your clansman over there.”

“Okay.” Connors took a deep breath. “So we were sittin’ there when all of a sudden this plainclothesman from the Vice Squad comes by, spots Kevin, does a double-take and marches over to us. Seems poor Kevin’s as queer as he comes on, which is somewhat more queer than a three-dollar bill. The dick from the Vice Squad caught him red-handed last night with a couple of under-age pansies. But when he went to arrest him, Kevin belted him and ran. So now he’s charging him with assault and battery and corrupting the morals of a minor to boot.”

“What time did all this happen?”

“It was almost four o’clock when Kevin knocked the vice cop on his ear and ran.”

“Too late for the murder,” Durango observed.

“Yeah. And he was with these kids up until then. Funny thought, Kevin was telling me he started out to see Dr. Golden after the mixup."

“What for?”

“Either to get help or to maybe belt her. He admits himself he isn’t sure. He was pretty mad. But when he got to her apartment house, it was crawling with cops, so he just turned around and went home.”

“Hell!” Durango said. “That means that if Cora Williams’ alibi holds up, Reginald Ivers is the only suspect we’ve got left out of the group.”

“Looks like it. Where is he?”

“Some place safe and warm and cozy,” Durango told him. “Some place, I hope, where he’s talking his guts out. I’m going to have me a cup of coffee, and then, after a while, I’m going to go see if my fondest hopes re Reggie-the-Romeo have come true.”

But Durango’s hopes had been doomed from the start. From the first, Reggie had been indifferent to the cozy arrangement and the sexy company Durango had provided for him. From the way he acted, Debbie might just as well have not been in the cell. Still, she kept at it, and finally she did learn something—but it wasn’t anything that anybody who knew Reggie would have expected in a million years.

“How long are you going to go on ignoring me, sugar?” Debbie bent over him so he could get a good look at the ripe breast-flesh bubbling over the top of her low-cut blouse.

“Just leave me alone. Please.”

“What’s the matter? Don’t you like girls? That isn’t what I’ve heard about you. I’ve heard you’re a real swinger. Or is it just me you don’t like?” She pouted her lips sultrily, very close to his.

“You’re okay.” He turned away from her. “Don’t get your feelings hurt. You’re a good-looking girl. It’s just that this sort of thing is the last thing I’m interested in at the moment. I don’t understand why that damn cop put me in here anyway. What am I, under arrest or something?”

“You’re not under arrest,” Debbie soothed him. “He just thought you might be read for a little relaxation and some congenial company.” Her fingers trailed over the nape of his neck.

Reggie jerked away. “You mean he thought you might get me so hot and bothered that I’d talk,” he said.

“Could be,” Debbie admitted. “But so what? What have you got to hide?”

“Nothing!” Reggie said in a tight, strained voice. “Not one damn thing that’s anybody’s business but mine.”

“Fine,” Debbie crooned. “Then why don’t we just forget all about Durango and enjoy ourselves? You know, this is the swingingest jail I’ve ever been in.” She blew lightly in his ear. “Come on, honey, get with it,” she cooed.

“Will you just leave me alone!” Reggie got up violently and walked to the other side of the cell.

“Okay.” Debbie shrugged. “So you’re not in the mood for romance. So all that talk they tell me you give out with about being such a great lover and oversexed and all is just so much hot air. So why don’t you just tell Durango where you were last night and stop playing coy? Unless, that is, it was you knocked off Doc Golden.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I had nothing to do with it. And I’m not just full of hot air. I was quite a hot-shot with the ladies. And the reason I don’t tell Durango where I was is because it’s nobody’s business but mine.”

“Were quite a hot-shot?” Debbie echoed. “What happened to change you? Or could that maybe be where you were last night? Were you with a lady and now you’re playing the gentleman and protecting her good name? Sounds out of character for you. Or maybe she’s married and you’re afraid of her husband. Is that it? Was she the one tired you out so bad you don’t even want to play a little with me?”

“I wasn’t with a woman,” Reggie said. “At least, not when the murder was being committed according to Durango.”

“But you were with one before that, hey?”

“Yes, I Was,” Reggie admitted grudgingly.

“Who was she?”

“Just a hooker. I don’t know her name.”

“We don’t have names,” Debbie said to herself.

“What?”

“Nothing. Go on. You were with a hooker. Where’d you pick her up?”

“At a street corner on Broadway. She was trying to hail a cab. I stopped for the light. She gave me a big come-on smile. I offered her a lift and she got right in. She didn’t mince any words. She wanted seven bucks and I agreed.”

“Damn price-slashers are mining the business,” Debbie muttered.

“She was no great shakes. She wasn’t worth any more than seven bucks. She didn’t really appeal to me at all.”

“Then why’d you go with her?”

“I was hot. Like a firecracker. I’d called a couple of girls and they were busy. I’d half decided to go see Golden and make a pitch for her. But this chick was handy and willing, so I changed my mind.”

“What time did you pick her up?”

“I’m not sure exactly. About one-thirty, I think. Anyway, it wasn’t two yet when we got to her place about twenty blocks downtown from where I picked her up. And I’d stopped off for a bottle of hooch on the way."

“With a seven-dollar number, you didn’t have to provide any hooch.”

“I know that. It was for me. So I could stomach making love to her without gagging.”

“Feeling that way, I don’t know why you bothered.”

“I was sort of — well, obsessed you could say,” Reggie explained.

“I dig, honey. I know your type. So what time did you leave her?”

“About a quarter to three.”

“A regular Paul Revere Minuteman, aren’t you, sweetie? Anyway, that was in plenty of time to bump off the Doc, wasn’t it? Were you drunk?”

“Yes. But I remember everything that happened. God, how I remember!” Reggie shuddered.

“Tell me about it.”

“No.” He said it flatly.

“Come on, sugar. You’ve gone this far.” Debbie sat down next to him on the bench in the jail cell and pressed her thigh warmly against his.

“I said no.”

“Come on now. You can trust me.” Debbie took his hand pressed it tightly against her breast.

Reggie yanked his hand away though it had been plunged into a raging fire. “Don’t do that! I can’t stand that—now! ”

“Now?”

“Yes. All right, you’re so determined, I’ll tell you. Just stay away from me while I’m talking. just don’t touch me!”

“Okay. I won’t.”

“Here it is, then.” Reggie’s voice was heavy with bitterness. “I couldn’t make it with the whore. I tried, but I just couldn’t make it. The more I drank, the drunker I got, but I just couldn’t make it. And then she—she—”

“Yes?” Debbie asked gently. “What did she do?”

“She laughed at me! That filthy slut laughed at me! I couldn’t take that! It was too much!”

“What did you do?”

“I ran out of the place. I ran down to my car and got in it. I sat there and I was drunk and my brain was exploding and I kept telling myself I was through with sex.”

“Then what did you do? Did you to see Dr. Golden then?” Debbie’s voice was very soft, and she thought she was being very shrewd and detective-like, slipping the question in that way.

“No!” Reggie shouted. “I didn’t go to Dr. Golden’s. You want to know what I did? You really want to know? Well, let me show you!” His hands tore at his trousers and his underwear and then clawed wildly to rip aside some bandages. “This is what I did! This! See!”

Debbie took one look and ran to the front of the cell.

“Durango!” she screamed. “Get Durango!” She rattled the bars. “Get Durango right away! Durango! Durango! Durango!”

It seemed like an eternity to Debbie, but Durango was there on the run in a couple of minutes. “What is it?” he panted. “What happened?”

“Him! Look at him!” Debbie gasped almost hysterically. “Make him show you!”

“What’s she talking about, Ivers," Durango demanded. “What did you do to her?”

“Nothing. I merely showed her my battle-scars. See!”

Reggie wheeled and lowered his pants so that Durango might see what he’d shown Debbie.

“My God!” Durango blanched in spite of himself. “How did that happen?”

“I did it to myself. I just decided I’d had enough of sex once and for all. I was drunk and I decided it was a rat-race. You see, I had this overpowering urge and I couldn’t even satisfy it when I had a woman to satisfy it with. So I took a pair of wire-cutters I keep in the dashboard compartment of my car and tried to cut it off.”

“That’s horrible,” Durango said feelingly. “Cover it up. Why did you pull the bandages off?”

“To show her. That’s what you wanted me to do, wasn’t it? Show her the truth?”

Durango ignored the question. Something had occurred to him. “Those bandages look like a doctor put them on,” he observed.

“A doctor did put them on. You see, after I did it, I sobered up in a hurry. I panicked. I was afraid I’d die from loss of blood, or sheer pain maybe. So I drove to this doctor I know in the neighborhood and he fixed me up. He said he was supposed to report this sort of thing to the cops, and I paid him off to keep it quiet. And that’s where I was from about ten of three or so until almost six o’clock this morning.”

“What’s the doctor’s name?” Durango asked.

Reggie thought a moment. “Well, why not,” he said finally. “Serve the louse right for squeezing me the way he did.” He told Durango the name and address.

Durango took him out to the squad room then and turned him over to one of the other detectives with instructions to check out his story. Connors came over to them, and after Ivers had been led away he spoke to Durango. “Cora Williams checks out,” he told him. “You can cross her off your list of suspects.”

“Ivers too, probably,” Durango told him.

“Yeah? That doesn‘t leave much, does it? Oh, by the way, don’t forget the victim’s hubby is still waiting.”

“I’ll see him right away. You know, Connors, that’s right. That doesn't leave much.”

“Well, there’s still the floozie. Maybe she really did it after all.”

“And then called us? Not likely. You can forget her,” Durango said.

“It might be better if you forgot her,” Connors murmured.

“Mind your business.” Durango regretted the sharpness in his voice immediately. “The thing is,” he said in a friendlier tone, “that it looks like the group’s all accounted for and the last thing Dr. Golden said was ’Ask the group! The group knows!’ ”

“And the group don’t know nothing,” Connors said firmly.

“That’s where you’re wrong. They know something. And l know it too. The only difference is that they don’t know they know it!”

CHAPTER 16

Paranoid Lost

“I DIDN’T get you,” Sergeant Connors told Durango. “What do you mean the group knows something and they don’t know they know it?”

“Dr. Golden told it to them when they were talking about murdering her during that last session. She said she had one patient with the same trouble as Brenda Haley whose hostility towards her verged on the paranoid. What she was really telling them was that this was the patient most likely to murder her.”

“Okay. So Haley’s a Lesbian and now I know why you had me round up the dykes.”

“Exactly. When Dr. Golden told Debbie the group knew just before she died, the way I figure it she was saying the one who murdered her was either a butch, or a paranoid personality, or both. The trouble is that paranoids are very cunning and it’s damned hard to spot them.”

“So you think it’s one of those three dames you got in there?”

“I’m not sure. But they’d seem to be pretty likely prospects. Give me a rundown on them and their movements last night.”

“Okay.” Connors ticked them off on his fingers. “First there’s this Jonnie O’Faye. She’s a bull dyke who dresses the part and makes her living as a male impersonator in one of those Village ‘queer’ shows. She claims she was dead drunk last night and doesn’t remember anything about where she was, or with who. Second is Mrs. Paul Yolan, first name Anne, a housewifely mouse who’s all frilly female. It’s hard to believe she swings both ways. She says she had a fight with her husband last night and just got in the car and drove. She was so mad she doesn’t remember where she drove, and she doesn’t think anybody saw her. Third there’s Karen Jorgenson, a big girl, blonde, Scandinavian extraction, works as a masseuse in one of them fancy massage-parlors. An apple-cheeked dame with muscles who looks like some dykes I’ve known, but with her equipment, What a waste! Her story is she was home alone all night, but she can’t verify it and neither, can we.”

“Add Dr. Zachary Golden, the deceased’s husband,” Durango mused. “He’s by no means in the clear.”

“Plus the pastry you’re keeping on ice. Don’t forget her. Which reminds me, she’s raising hell back there. The guard says to tell you that you either have to book her, or he’s gonna let her out.”

“Tell him to bring her out here,” Durango said. “She might as well sit in on this party.”

“Okay. That makes five possibles,” Connors said as he started for the cell block.

“Six. You’ve forgetting Reggie Ivers. He’s by no means in the clear. His story hasn’t been checked out yet. And I’d say any man who tried to castrate himself qualifies as a paranoid. What would you say?”

“Don’t ask me. I’m no psychology expert. I’ll go get your little yum-yum for you.”

“Thanks. And on your way back pick up Zach-the-quack too, will you?”

“Ain’t you got no feeling for bereaved survivors?” Connors chided Durango. “That’s no way to talk.”

Five minutes later they were assembled in Durango’s office. He sat on the swivel chair behind the desk. Connors leaned on the windowsill behind him. Debbie Smith sat in a leather armchair beside his desk, her hands clasped ostentatiously over her mouth in a silent and sarcastic acknowledgment that she was obeying Durango’s stricture to just sit quietly and keep her mouth shut lest he toss her back in jail. The three Lesbians sat in folding chairs spaced out on the right hand side of the room in front of the desk. Dr. Zachary Golden sat on the couch against the left-hand wall.

“Well, here we all are,” Durango began. He was interrupted by the door to his office being shoved open. A head poked in and a hand crooked a finger toward him. “Go see what he wants Connors,” Durango said, annoyed.

Connors went out, but just as Durango was about to resume, he reappeared in the doorway and beckoned to him. Durango cursed under his breath and stamped out of the office. “W hat the hell is it now?” he asked, slamming the door shut behind him.

“Calm down. This is gonna really interest you. One of the boys spotted that outsize dyke when she came in and thought he recognized her from a lineup.”

“You mean Karen Jorgenson?” Now Durango was interested.

“That’s the one. Anyway, he didn’t say anything ’cause he wasn’t sure. But he went back to the file room and did some checking, and look what he came up with!” With a grin and a flourish, Connors removed a large police file folder from behind his back and handed it to Durango.

The first thing Durango saw was the picture of Karen Jorgenson stapled to the corner of the folder. He reached inside, pulled out the dossier card and read aloud from it. “Karen Engstrom, alias Karen Lund, alias Karen Jorgenson. Born Minneapolis, Minnesota, March 3, 1939. Three arrests on suspicion of robbery, one conviction.”

“How do you like them apples?" Connors asked happily.

“Relax. They could be sour. There’s nothing paranoid about being a thief.”

“You’re going bugs on that word.”

“Maybe you’re right. What did she steal?”

“Jewelry. All three arrests were for second story jobs.”

“Interesting,” Durango admitted. “Have some of the boys go around to her apartment and give it a going over.”

“Should I get a search warrant?”

“Takes too long. Just tell the boys to be neat. I’ll see she doesn’t get home in time to interrupt them.”

“Okay. Will do.”

“By the way,” Durango added, “is there any word on that check we sent out with Reggie Ivers yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, tell them to let me know as soon as they hear anything one way or the other, will you?”

“Check.”

“Then come on back and join the party,” Durango told him as he went back into his office.

The five suspects were still sitting silently, just as they were when he’d left them. Durango went back to the chair behind his desk and decided to start with something simple.

“Dr. Golden,” he said.

Dr. Zachary Golden straightened with a start and looked at him. “Yes, Lieutenant?”

“I know this is painful for you, but there are some questions I have to ask you. If you’d prefer, I can ask them privately.”

“I have nothing to hide. I don't mind answering in front of these ladies.”

“Good. First, can you think of anyone who might have had reason to murder your wife?”

“No. Mavis had no enemies that I know of.”

“How about among her patients?”

The three women stared at Durango resentfully.

“That’s hard to say. By the nature of my wife’s work, the people she treated couldn’t be called stable personalities. There is always a certain amount of risk in dealing with neurotics—sometimes even psychotics.”

“Did she ever mention any one patient in particular as being dangerous?”

“No. Mavis didn’t discuss her cases with me.”

There was an almost audible sigh of relief from the female trio.

“Why was that?” Durango wanted to know.

“Firstly, she felt it was unethical. She felt very strongly that her patients’ confidence should be respected—even where I was concerned. And secondly, we decided early in our marriage that our careers should be kept separate from our personal life together.”

“I see. And how was your personal life together? Did you get along well? Were you happy?”

“I suppose we had the usual number of marital disagreements, but on the whole we got along very well.”

“Would you say your wife was a jealous woman?" Durango asked casually.

“Certainly not. Quite the opposite.”

“And you?” Durango asked more pointedly. “Were you jealous about her?”

“I had no cause to be.”

“And if you’d had cause? Would you have been jealous then?”

“That’s too iffy to answer. Mavis was always a loyal and faithful wife.”

Durango shot Debbie a quick sidewise glance. She was maintaining a careful poker face. He switched tactics. “You left your medical convention at about six o’clock at night; is that right?” he asked Dr. Zachary Golden.

“That’s right.”

And ordinarily it would have been a nine-hour drive to your home?”

“Yes.”

“Yet you didn’t arrive there until the next afternoon.”

“I told you. I pulled the car off the road because of the severity of the storm. I fell asleep until after noon the next day.”

“But we have only your word for that. Actually, you could have been home in time for the murder.”

“Yes. But I wasn’t.”

“But you can’t prove it,” Durango insisted.

“No, I—Wait! Maybe I can,” Dr. Golden said slowly. “I just might be able to establish the time I passed the Tappan Zee toll booth this afternoon. That’s almost exactly an hour from my home.”

“How can you establish that?”

“Well, I had a conversation with the attendant. You see, I found when I reached the booth that I had stupidly left myself with a fifty-dollar bill to change. I expected the attendant to be annoyed, but he was actually very polite about it. He must have noticed the MD on my license plates, because he addressed me as ‘Doctor’ when he handed me my change.”

“What time was that?”

“About two p. m. this afternoon. The attendant might remember it, too, because it was announced over my car radio as he was making change and he remarked to me that he only had another two hours to go before he’d be relieved.”

Durango thought a moment. “Even if he bears you out, I don’t know that it proves anything,” he pointed out. “You could have been home at three a. m. the morning before and made it back to the toll booth in plenty of time to pass through at two the next afternoon. And you wouldn’t have had to use the parkway, either. You could have gone home and come back on the side roads.”

“Yes, I suppose—” Dr. Zachary Golden started to agree. Then — “No!” he interrupted himself. “I think I can prove I couldn’t have done that.”

“How?”

“I had the car greased upstate just before I left for home. They put one of those stickers with the mileage on it just inside the front doorpost. If you check that against my mileage indicator, it should prove I couldn’t have driven home and back.”

“Have you used the car to drive anywhere else today?”

“Just down here. My car is in the lot across the street from here.”

“Okay. Wait a minute.” Durango went outside again and made arrangements to have Dr. Zachary Golden’s mileage checked and to try to locate the toll-booth attendant who might have changed his fifty-dollar bill. As he was about to go back inside, he saw Connors in conversation with some uniformed policemen across the room. Reginald Ivers was standing with them.

“Connors,” Durango called. “What’s Ivers doing back here?” he asked when the sergeant came over to him. “And how come you didn’t come back in for the circus?”

“Because I was busy getting the story on what happened with Ivers,” Connors explained. “They had to bring him back. The way things turned out, they couldn’t substantiate his alibi.”

“What happened?”

“It seems the doctor Ivers claims to have gone to last night turned out to be an abortionist.”

“That figures,” Durango siad. “Considering what we know about Ivers. I wondered how he happened to know of a doctor in that neighborhood.

“Well, now you know. Anyway, when our boys went up to check on the doctor, they caught him right in the act. But the quack was too fast for them. His office is on the ground floor and he was out the window and down the block before they could catch him. In his hurry, needless to say, he didn’t stop to confirm Ivers’ story.”

“So Ivers has no alibi,” Durango mused.

“Not until we catch up with the butcher. And that may take a while. Also, even when we do, he probably won’t be looking too kindly on Ivers for bringing the fuzz down on him. He might refuse to back him up out of pure vindictiveness.”

“Yeah.” Durango sighed. “Well, then he’s still a suspect. You might as well bring him in to join the party.”

Back in Durango’s office, lvers sat down next to the couch. Connors resumed his perch on the windowsill. Behind his desk again, Durango was thinking over his line of interrogation.

“Lieutenant.” Again the door was opened and a policeman stood there.

“Damn these interruptions!” Durango growled. He went outside again. “What is it?”

“Two things,” he was told. “First of all, the mileage checks out on the doctor’s car. Secondly, the boys are back from the Jorgenson dame’s apartment with something that should interest you.”

“Let’s have it.”

The policeman handed Durango an expensive-looking ring with a large ruby in the center of a lavish gold and emerald setting. “Now how do you suppose she affords this little doo-dad on her salary?” he asked Durango with a grin.

“Nice work.” Durango looked at the ring and palmed it. “How you coming on that Tappan Zee toll-booth attendant?”

“He’s off duty. The State Highway Patrol is trying to get him at home. They’ll call us as soon as they locate him.”

“Okay. Keep me posted.” Durango again went back into his office and sat down in the swivel chair behind his desk. His eyes scanned the suspects and then came back to fasten on Karen Jorgenson.

“Miss Jorgenson, would you come here a moment,” Durango requested. “That’s it. Stand right in front of my desk.” He stretched his arm out and lay his fist in the middle of the desk blotter. He opened his hand. The ruby ring glittered accusingly in the palm.

Blood rushed to Karen Jorgenson’s face. Her large breasts rose and fell rapidly as her breathing quickened in response to the shock. She said nothing, but the look of a trapped animal spread over her features.

“Well, Miss Jorgenson?” Durango said after a long, silent moment. “Do you recognize it?”

The question was unnecessary. The answer was written all over Karen Jorgenson. Her neck bent and she looked at the floor. She turned, went back to the chair in which she’d been sitting, and slowly sank into it.

The movement exposed the ring to the view of the others. “Wait a minute!” Dr. Zachary Golden got up slowly. “Just a minute.” He crossed over to the desk and stared down at the obiect lying in Durango’s hand. “That’s my wife’s ring. I gave it to her. I’d know it anywhere. I had it made especially for Mavis. There’s no other like it. How did you get it?” he demanded of Durango.

“It was found in Miss Jorgenson’s apartment,” Durango told him, looking past him at Karen.

“Then she must have taken it from my wife. She must have killed Mavis for it. She must be the murderer!” He stared at Karen and a little vein began to throb at the corner of his temple.

“It begins to look that way,” Durango admitted.

“Looks that way!” Anne Yolan interrupted excitedly. “What do you mean? It had to be her! The ring proves it!”

“It sure figures,” Jonnie O’Faye added. “It's always those big, bosomy types you have to watch. All apple-cheeked sweetness, trying to hide what they really are. They’re the sneaky ones who go off the deep end!”

“Well, it looks like the rest of us can go home now.” Reggie Ivers got to his feet.

“And about time, too.” Debbie also stood up.

“Sit down.” Durango told them coolly. “We’re not through yet. Nothing’s really been proven. Unless, that is, Miss Jorgenson would care to confess. How about it, Karen, are you ready to tell us how you killed Dr. Mavis Golden?”

“I didn’t kill her,” Karen said dully.

“Then how do you explain this?” Durango dangled the ring between his fingers.

“I-I don’t know.”

“Do you admit that you stole it from Dr. Golden?”

“I guess I can’t deny it,” Karen said in a low voice. “You’ve caught me with the goods.”

“Hey, wait a minute!” Reggie Ivers interrupted ex- citedly. “She must have taken it the night of the murder. She must be the killer. The doctor was wearing it during the group session. I noticed it on her finger.”

“Was she wearing it when you got there?” Durango asked.

“No. I don’t remember seeing it. And I’m sure I would have noticed.”

“Then you must have stolen it last night.” Durango turned back to Karen.

“All right! I did,” she confessed. “But I didn’t kill her.”

“She’s lying!” Connors interrupted. “She had motive and opportunity and she admits she stole the ring. What more do you need?” he asked Durango. “You might as well book her for murder.”

“I tell you I didn’t do it!” There was panic in Karen’s voice. “I may be a thief, but I’m not going to let you pin a murder rap on me!”

“If you didn’t, who did?” Connors asked skeptically.

“Wait a minute. I.et’s take it slow,” Durango said. “Suppose you tell us just what happened,” he instructed Karen. “What time did you get to Dr. Golden’s apartment?”

Maybe five or ten minutes before three. The apartment door was open. I went straight into her office. I took the strongbox out of the desk. I’d had a key made to fit it, and I was just opening it when I was interrupted.”

“What interrupted you?” Durango asked.

“Dr. Golden came into the room and turned on the light. I crouched down behind the desk and she didn’t see me. She went to take one of those window fans out of the window on the wall opposite the desk. While she was fooling with it, somebody else came in, called her name, shot her twice and ran out. I took just long enough to get the ring out of the strongbox, and then I ran myself. Outside the office, in the darkness of the anteroom, I bumped into somebody. I thought it was the murderer and I ran out of the apartment.”

“It wasn’t the murderer,” Debbie exclaimed. “That was me you bumped into.”

“Just a minute,” Durango said. “Did you see the murderer?”

“Yes.” Karen took a deep breath. “I was afraid to tell you before because then you’d nail me for the jewel theft. But now I’m not covering up for anybody.” She paused. “The murderer is right here in this room!” she announced dramatically.

“She’s just trying to pass the buck!” Reggie Ivers objected.

“Yeah!” Jonnie O’Faye agreed. “She’d pin it on any of us to get herself off the hook.”

“What does the word of a thief mean, anyway?” Dr. Zachary Golden murmured.

“She’s against me! Just like Paul! Just like Dr. Golden was!” Anne Yolan stood up and her voice was shrill, hysterical. “She’s out to get me! Don’t believe her!”

“It sure looks like she’s trying to wriggle out of it,” Debbie observed.

“All right, simmer down, all of you!” Durango told them firmly. “Now, Karen, if you really saw the murderer and can make an. identification, do it. Who killed Dr. Mavis Golden?”

Karen Jorgenson spoke a name.

There was a loud, hoarse yell. A mind snapped into paranoia and a body responded. The figure broke across the room in a sudden blur of motion and dived for the window. There was the crash of glass and the shocked reaction of the others.

Their voices sounded in a plea to stop the lunging figure before it was too late. And then there was a groan acknowledging that it was happening too fast. The figure was through the window.

Murder was plunging downward with arms outstreched to embrace Death!

CHAPTER 17

The Reform Movement

SERGEANT Connors cheated the piper. He was the only one with the presence of mind to dive for the murderer. His reaction almost cost him his life!

From his perch on the windowsill, he spun around and lunged for the fast-moving figure as it crashed through the glass. He got a hand around an ankle and the sudden weight almost pulled Connors right out the window after the killer. Only Durango’s quick action in grabbing him around the waist kept Connors from being pulled to his death.

Between the two of them, they finally managed to haul the slayer back to safety. “Whew!” Connors gasped. “Fourteen floors! That was a close one!” Now that he was safe, his body began to shake all over with the realization of his nearness to death.

“Good work, Connors,” Durango patted him on the shoulder.

“I don’t know why I bothered. I should have let her go and saved the state the expense of frying her.”

Durango looked at the figure huddled on the floor. “I don’t think they will fry her,” he said. “She’s a cinch to cop an insanity plea.”

“She sure seems bugs all right,” Connors agreed.

“Hell yes! She fits Dr. Mavis Golden’s description to the group of the one most likely to murder her to a T. A paranoid dyke all right.”

“Funny, she’s the last one I would have picked,” Connors admitted. “She sure doesn’t look like a killer.”

“She does to me,” Jonnie O’Faye interrupted. “It’s those little, cuddly married ones are the ones to watch every time.”

“You’re all against me,” Annie Yolan moaned from the floor. “My husband Paul set you all against me. He and Dr. Golden working in cahoots! She masterminded it! But I could have outwitted them if he hadn’t stopped me!” She stared daggers at Connors. “I took care of Dr. Golden and I could have escaped the rest of you. I know, you’re all in on it!”

“Nutty as a fruitcake,” Connors said.

“Yeah,” Durango agreed. “You want to take her and book her for me? And oh, yeah, take our sticky-fingered friend here, too.” He looked at Karen. “You got off pretty lucky,” he told her.

“Oh, sure. All I’ll get is five-to-ten,” she told him sarcastically. “Some lucky!”

“You could have been the pansy,” Durango told her. “Count your blessings.”

She shrugged her shoulders and let Connors lead her from the room by the arm. His other hand was fastened firmly on Anne Yolan. The murderess was still muttering to herself as he led her out.

“Okay,” Durango said, “I guess the rest of you can go now.”

They filed out silently.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Durango asked Debbie. She hadn’t moved from the chair beside his desk .

“You,” she told him.

“Me? What do you mean?”

“You’re not going to book me, are you?”

“You mean on a prostitution rap? Nah. Why should I bother? I’ve already got a murderer and a thief all in the one night. You’re a small fish. I’m throwing you back.”

“Then I owe you something,” Debbie said softly.

“You don’t owe me anything. You’ll be back turning tricks tomorrow, and you’ll probably get yourself picked up again within a week.”

“Could be,” Debbie admitted. “Still, I’m grateful. I’d like to show you just how grateful.” She moved from the chair now and slid onto Durango’s lap.

“I told you! I don’t like queer dames!” Durango stood up suddenly and she tumbled to the floor.

“And I told you! I’m not queer!” she shouted up at him

“So you swing both ways. It adds up to the same thing.”

“Never again!” she told him. “From what I, saw of those poor dykes you had in here tonight, I’m through making it with women!”

“Gonna reform, are you?” Durango jeered.

“I didn’t say I was gonna reform. I only said I was through turning queer tricks!”

“Well, that’s half a reform,” Durango pointed out.

“More than half, if you want to know the truth. I’ll tell you something, Tomas, I’ve never been able to make it with a man, only with women.”

“Maybe you never met the right man,” Durango said speculatively.

“Maybe.” She looked up at him challengingly. “How about it?” she asked after a moment. “You gonna be a gentleman and see me home?”

“Against my better judgment,” Durango said. “Come on.”

A half-hour later Debbie was pouring him a drink in her apartment. “Are all Maltese small like you?” she asked conversationally.

“I don’t know. I never took a poll.” He was obviously annoyed at the question.

“Now don’t go getting your feelings hurt, little man,” Debbie said. “It was only an observation.”

“Well, keep your observations to yourself. And don’t call me ’little man’ .”

“Then show me how grown-up you can act.” Debbie bent over him and her breasts grazed his cheek.

“Damn you, you little tease! I will!” Durango set his drink down hard on the table and pulled her to him. His lips fastened forcefully on hers.

The kiss lasted a long time. Her breath mingled hotly, with his and their tongues fought a duel of rising passion. “Oh! You’re growing up fast,” she gasped when the kiss was finally over.

“You talk too much,” he told her. His hands moved over the surface of her low-cut blouse, seeking out the tips of the fast-rising breasts beneath. He found them, and his fingers plucked at them gently until their rigidity distended the material and twin drops of moisture darkened it.

Debbie moaned. Her lips found his ear. Her breath seared it. Her tongue was a quick-daring flame, her sharp little teeth the instruments of sweet-nibbling torture. Her hands pushed against the backs of his, pressing them harder and harder against her breasts.

Durango became excited. In the heat of his passion he ripped Debbie’s blouse down the center and her plump breast sprang free. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

“It doesn’t matter. It was an old blouse. I was tired of it anyway. Don’t stop! Please don’t stop!”

His fingers continued to play with the bright red buds glistening in the lamplight. Then he lowered his head and his mouth moved expertly over her bosom. Debbie’s fingers clawed at his neck, urging him to continue.

Her moans became louder and took on a rhythm. Her hips picked it up and began moving in little up-and-down thrusts. Durango’s lips followed the rhythm, and then his hands.

They reached under the hem of Debbie’s tight skirt and caressed a silken knee. They pushed the skirt higher and then one finger circled the top of her stocking where it was connected to her garter-belt. Still higher and he was caressing the burning whiteness of her thighs eagerly. Debbie raised her hips, and then the skirt was up around her waist.

Durango touched her still higher and then looked down to confirm what he’d felt. No, she wasn’t wearing any panties. He reached around her and her buttocks contracted as his hand squeezed the plump flesh. Her hips moved faster now and Durango gently slid his other hand down her belly.

“Now!” she gasped aloud as Durango found his mark. “Let’s do it now!”

“No,” Durango told her calmly. “That’s the trouble with you pros. You always want to rush things. You’re always in such a hurry to turn the next trick it’s no wonder you never make it. Just you take it slow now.”

He continued to caress Debbie. She was rapidly becoming beside herself with the force of her mounting desire. But he continued to tease her and pause before she could find satisfaction.

“Oh, now! Please,” Debbie whimpered.

Durango took his hand away. Then he had to grab Debbie’s as it reached down to replace it. He wasn’t going to let her settle for anything less than complete womanly satisfaction.

“Come on. Let’s get undressed and get into bed,” he told her. “We don’t have to wrestle on the couch here like a couple of kids trying to get through before the folks come home and catch them.”

Debbie was in the bedroom and out of her clothes in a flash. She lay naked and writhing with impatience as Durango — purposely slow—undressed. She gasped and her eyes grew large as he finally dropped his underwear.

“My gosh! You’re Certainly not small all over are you?” she said admiringly.

“Good things come in small packages,” he told her.

“And that’s some thing! Who’da thunk it!”

“You still talk too much,” he told her. “Shut up now.”

He got into bed beside her and turned off the lamp on the nightstand. He kissed her and his hand slipped down and found her even more pulsating and eager than she’d been before they came into the bedroom. Slowly he moved over her.

“Aah!” It was half a scream from Debbie as Durango thrust home.

He moved with quick, hard, deep thrusts. Then he varied the movements so that the fulcrums of their bodies were rotating together. Then he changed back again and the two of them were seized in the grip of a consuming fire. It held them taut for a long moment and then their bodies shook in a long, drawn-out spasm of ecstatic satisfaction.

They lay there for a while, side by side, too drained to say anything. Then Durango fumbled a pack of cigarettes from his pants pocket and lit two of them. He handed one to Debbie.

“That’s the first time,” she murmured as she expelled the smoke from her lungs. “That’s the first time I ever made it with a man. Before this I could only make it with another woman.”

“I know,” Durango answered. “You told me before, back at the stationhouse.”

“And you said maybe I just hadn’t met the right man. Well, I sure met him tonight all right.”

“So now you’re half-reformed, are you?” Durango asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You said if you could make it with a man you’d give up the Lesbian bit. And we agreed that would make you half-reformed.”

“Then I guess I am.” Debbie giggled. “No girl could resist that reform movement of ours,” she quipped.

“Thanks. And what about the other half?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you going to go on as a hooker?”

“Gosh, I don’t know. It’s all I really know how to do” Debbie answered.

“I’ll bet. And you do it damn well, too. I’ll bet with your experience, you could write a book.”

“I’ll bet I could. And if I did, you know what?”

“What?”

“I’d make sure there was one straight sex scene in it like we just finished. ’Cause that’s the best way of all.”

“Amen!” Durango agreed.

“I think I’d make it the last scene,” Debbie mused. “I’d put it right at the end of the book.”

“Why at the end?”

“Because,” she said as her hands slid hungrily down Durango’s body again, “you should always leave ’em panting!"

“I see!” Durango panted.