Dial O for O.R.G.Y.

CALLING THE MAN FROM O.R.G.Y.

What did Randy Beaver, the red-headed “Blue Movie” star, Liberty Dix, the “Black is beautiful” sex bomb and Phoebe Phreeby, the luscious, lustful librarian, all have in common?

They all wanted Steve Victor to ring their bell – and it was the job of the Man from O.R.G.Y. to satisfy the amorous appetites of this trio of tempting tigresses.

But Steve had another task as well.

The fate of the entire world was in his busy hands – as the Man from O.R.G.Y. swung into a do-or-die battle with a perverse computer programmed either to kill him with kindness or finish him with fiendish fun …

DIAL “O” FOR O.R.G.Y.

Ted Mark

1973

CHAPTER ONE

“Boy Meets Ghoul”

(A Romantic Dialogue in Four Lines)

He: What are you doing after the burial?

She: I don’t know. It’s pretty dead around here.

He (boldly): Your grave, or mine?

She: I have a tomb-mate, better make it yours. . . .

That’s the sort of thing that goes through your mind when you’re lolling around a cemetery in the dead of night. Well, maybe not your mind. Still, it really did cross mine as I tiptoed through the tombstones.

In a funny sort of way, it was prophetic. At the time, though, it merely seemed the kind of sex-oriented wool-gathering I’d come to expect from myself. You might expect it too, if you were me, Steve Victor, also known as “The Man from O.R.G.Y.”

“O.R.G.Y.”? The initials stand for “Organization for the Rational Guidance of Youth.” Which is another way of saying O.R.G.Y. is dedicated to removing warts from the palms of the sexually guilt-ridden. The means are surveys conducted by yours truly, Steve Victor, O.R.G.Y. being a strictly one-man operation.

I believe in the personal touch. I leave the door-to-door delving to yentas like Kinsey. As for libidos turned loose in the lab, all wired up to a voyeur computer programmed to measure the unmeasurable orgasm of fornicating humanoid robots -- hell! — that’s for mechanics like Masters and Johnson.

Oh, the yentas and the mechanics make their contribution. I don’t deny it. But I’ll take the one-to-one grass-roots technique. It’s more humanistic.

Besides, it gets results. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to get funds from the various foundations which finance my sex investigations. That’s another reason for O.R.G.Y. It pays!

It also lands me in some pretty unusual places, and some downright bizarre situations. Like a cannibal soup pot with a passionate pygmy princess. Or an igloo melting with Eskimo passion. Or a Middle East harem ruled by a violently jealous sultan. Or—

A cemetery in the dead of night!

Now, some people are dying to get into cemeteries. However, I’m not one of them. Like the lady said, there’s not much life in the place. And the business of O.R.G.Y.—my business—-is erotica, not epitaphs; sex, not stiffs; girls, not ghouls!

Besides, tombs do not turn me on. I don’t dig graves. Shrouds are not my bag. I never met a corpus I thought was delecti. For me, cemeteries are definitely not where it’s at!

So what was I doing in this graveyard?

A distant church bell shattered the stillness. It struck twelve times, a dozen deep, dire bongs. Dracula music!

At midnight yet?

The echo died away. It was quiet as a you-know-what. The only sound was the whisper of the wind among the tombstones. The faint breeze was perfumed by the oversweet, dank aroma of fresh-turned earth. A werewolf halo circled the full moon. Suddenly an owl began to hoot, an eerie redundancy, rhythmic and ominous as a Poe poem. Hair crawled—a scurry of spiders—up the back of my neck!

Was I dreaming?

I pinched myself. Hard. It was a pinch worthy of a subway masher testing the resiliency of a teeny-bop-per’s succulently filled hot pants during rush hour.

It hurt. I wasn’t asleep. I wasn’t dreaming. I was awake. It was all real—-the cemetery; the tombstones; the graves; the dim, flickering, hellish glow in the distance, piercing the mist, the glow of Inferno. . . .

Inferno?

Yeah. Inferno, Iowa (Pop. 2,372)—the glow of its night-shift-operated small foundry was also part of the graveyard reality. As much a part of it as the shrouded, ghost-white figure floating into view.

Eyes playing tricks?

I peered again through the wisps of fog rising up from the graves. That’s what it was, all right! A shrouded, ghost-white figure . . . floating into view!

Crouching behind a tombstone, I watched it approach, gliding through the haze. It took on form, but that didn’t make it any less scary. As it came closer, I saw that it was female, that the shroud was of some gauzy white material, which accounted for the ghostly aura.

The face above it was cruelly beautiful, the features distinctly etched, as if carved from white marble. The mouth—compressed lips—was a blood-red down-line. The eyes were jet-black mysteries submerged in the milk of she-devils. There was a purplish cast to the lids, and the brows above them were wide-arched, Lucifer-style, almost coming together in a peak over the bridge of the nose. Long, black vampire hair framed the picture. More ghoulish than girlish, maybe, but still she was a knockout!

“Ghoul of my dreams, I love yew-ew-ew . . .”

She moved as if floating through a nightmare. Her long-fingered hands--sharp, tapered nails tinted a ghastly green—were graceful, but . . . One of them curled like a claw around the shovel she was carrying! Finally she glided to a halt in front of a freshly covered grave. She studied the tombstone. For the first time her face changed expression.

Dis muz be der blace!

The change of expression was only the slightest of alterations, but crucial-—and revealing. Her lips parted and curled at either side of her mouth. Two small fangs appeared, sharp sword tips, dead-white and deadly! I stared at her, fascinated and repelled at the same time.

“Didja ever have the feeling thatcha wanned ta go, an’ yetcha have the feeling thatcha wanned ta stay . . . ?” .

Ambivalent, I kept watching. She produced a candle from the folds of the shroud, lit it, and set it on the tombstone. The light it provided rendered the shroud semitransparent.

There was more than ectoplasm behind it! In this new light, she was turning out to be quite a bosomy apparition indeed. I caught a glimpse of the sharply pointed outline of her nipples as she strained to dig the shovel into the mound covering the grave.

There was anticipation on her face as she dug. The grave was indecently shallow; in no time at all the shovel thudded against the top of a coffin. Breasts bobbling eerily behind the shroud, she bent to clear the loose dirt away. There was a spine-chilling creak as she opened the lid of the casket. A moment later she dragged the body out, over the edge of the open grave, and laid it out on the grass.

She stripped the burial clothes from it. When the cadaver was completely naked, she retrieved the flickering candle and stood over it. She stayed that way a long time, staring down at the naked male corpse. I’m neither gay nor a necrophile, but I had to admit that the stiff was really something to see. He covered over six feet of turf, and his musculature was really impressive. He was supermasculine; even in death the arms folded over his broad chest bulged with biceps. And besides being built like a brick caca-house, he had a face like a young Adonis. Not to mention that the stiffness of the stiff’s stiff was a perpendicular testimonial to whatever brand of embalming fluid the mortician had used.

“It’s cost me a lot, but there's one thing that I’ve got — it’s My Ma-a-an!”

The girlish ghoul— or ghoulish girl, if you prefer-— set the candle back on the tombstone. She shrugged her shoulders strategically. The shroud slithered down her body and settled in a heap at her feet.

Her face may have been vampirish, but the body was pure vamp. Sans shroud, there was nothing ethereal about it. Round hips, shapely legs, and a bosom that more than fulfilled its shrouded promise—it all added up to one solid, curvy, luscious pile of pulchritude. She was a veritable Miss America of Necrophiliacs!

That’s what she was, all right. A necrophile! A corpse-cuddler! A kanoodler of cadavers! And now she proved it by ravishing the body in dead earnest!

“When a body meets a body . . .”

Yeah, I know. It sounds about as appetizing as a hunchbacked leper with a raw-fish fetish. Still, it didn’t come off quite that repulsively. I mean, she had a lot of enthusiasm. For a chick who was making it with a corpse, she was really living it up!

She covered all the ghoulish bases! She utilized every part of that dead body. And her own body responded from head to green-painted toe. Finally she straddled him, managing the appropriate impalement, and moved with a rhythmic violence that said she was in pure ecstasy. A moment later she froze and bayed at the moon. It was ghastly, but it was damn sexy too!

When her last howl had died away, she relinquished her perch. She stood up and put on her shroud. She crossed over to the open grave and stepped down into it. Then she lay down in the open casket, crossed her arms over her breasts, and closed her eyes!

Everything was still for a long moment. The only sound was my teeth chattering. They were castanets playing a dirge. I didn’t know it, but the dirge was in anticipation of the horror of horrors to come.

Now it came!

Eyes bugging out of their sockets, I watched the naked male corpse slowly sit up! Monsterlike, he got to his feet. He went to the grave and closed the lid of the coffin containing the girl. Then he picked up the shovel and started shoveling the dirt back into the grave!

Like I said, that necrophile chick had really been something else! She had the kind of sex drive that could really kill a guy. Or bring him back to life! Still, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The dead don’t come back! No, not even for a quickie! The dead don’t come back!

Or do they?

CHAPTER TWO

Turnabout is gander sauce. So I supposed, hunching up behind that tombstone, the graveyard chill numbing my never-mind, watching the corpse bury the necrophile. Inferno! It was a scene to make a dude take a second look at what he’s smoking.

Except that I’d given up smoking. I’d quit about a month ago, during my stay on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. Paradise! That’s where it all started, Paradise, just a jet-age sinner’s stone-throw from Inferno—Paradise!

The sky pilots say we’ll get our reward in Paradise. A willing angel named Leila was my reward. She was a passion-packed bonus payment for professional services rendered an Arab sheikh who owned a sumptuous villa. I was his guest for six weeks—six weeks of Leila!

She was an Arabian nymph, as sensual as a sex-starved satyr’s hashish dream. Sleek, but voluptuous, full, tawny breasts, Persian melons tipped with ripe, pointy wild strawberries; plump hips, rippling in motion; a velvet-cushiony derriere, springy as a Pogo stick; feverish thighs with strong, hot sinews hidden beneath the smooth surfaces; lips like feather-lined suction valves; soft, green eyes and softer blue-black hair which tingled when it grazed my flesh; an angelically sweet disposition, and a devilishly energetic lust-— that was Leila!

“ ‘Around the World’ is not a trip!” she explained to me that first night. For the next six weeks she proved it. By the end of which time I was one decidedly vanquished Victor!

Halfway through, my wind began to go. That’s when I gave up smoking. That’s the trouble with vices: to keep up with one, too often you have to sacrifice another.

Finally, late one afternoon, I admitted to myself that I was worn down to the nub -- the nub being a basket case hiding out in the disaster area of my groin. So, padding my Jockey shorts to keep from groaning every time I took a step, I tiptoed from the snoozing Leila’s bedroom of a thousand-and-one-too-many delights, and headed into the Paradise Island sunset. A half-hour or so later, I limped into the Casino.

The Paradise Island Casino is the Las Vegas of the Islands. You name it, and if it can be bet on, they’ve got it. Craps, roulette, faro, blackjack, slot machines —-the Compleat Catastrophe! A fancy-shmancy road to ruin featuring snotty deadpan croupiers with clipped British and fuck-you French accents, high-pile carpeting you could sink up to your moneybelt in, lavish tapestries reminiscent of some of the higher-class brothels I’ve known, sound-deadening acoustics—lush, plush, hushed -- the Casino is vulgar as hell!

If sex could cure me of smoking, maybe gambling could replace lechery. Reasoning thusly, it took me less than an hour to go broke. I mean broke! I was down to my groin-padding, which was nonnegotiable, and one last silver dollar.

I dropped the cartwheel into a one-armed bandit and twisted its arm. It whirred dyspeptically and came up citrus. One. Two. Three. Three lemons. I’d drawn a blank!

And then I drew another blank. Charles Putnam! His vacant blob of a face was hanging right over the triple disaster. Charles Putnam!

Take a child’s crayon, preferably gray, and draw a large circle. Square off the bottom. Square off the top. Now, very lightly, fill in the outline. Look at it. That’s the face of Charles Putnam.

It sits on top of a square, powerfully built frame in neutral clothes selected to make the wearer fade into the woodwork. The total impression adds up to those six-point-three Americans in the survey polls who have no opinion; that’s their answer—“No opinion”-- whether the question concerns bombing Hanoi or which brand of kitty litter is most scrumptious. In other words, Charles Putnam looks like a nonentity, which is exactly how a man in his position should look.

His position? Something in government. Something unoffficial, but very high up. Something that transcends administrations. Something more secret than Top Secret.

Indeed, only a very few people in the highest echelons of government are aware of Charles Putnam’s existence. Even those privileged few are hazy as to his function. Which isn’t surprising, since the function itself is purposefully blurry.

His role takes in that area where ends and means meet. He moves freely back and forth between the State Department, where policy is determined-—in part by Putnain’s advice—and the areas where the most secret policies are implemented by such outfits as the CIA, the Secret Service, Army Intelligence, et cetera. Where Mata Hari shacks up with Machiavelli—that’s the bed under which Charles Putnam parks his work shoes.

Now, focusing in on Putnam’s blank visage hanging over the Paradise pauperizing machine, a frost settled over my heart cockles. His encounters with me are never casual. He looks me up only when he has some kind of job for me to do.

Why me? Because of O.R.G.Y., that’s why. Just as Charles Putnam utilizes the expertise of nuclear scientists, China-watchers, and professional I-spies, he takes advantage of my knowledge of the sexual underground when the necessity arises. I’m his “Man in Gommorah,” his “Spy Who Came in from the Orgy,” his “Agent Oh—Oh—Sex, Licensed to Kiss—and—Tell”!

Not too willingly. I’m not one of your gung-ho Nathan Hale¹ types. Not me. Mrs. Victor didn’t raise her boy to be a martyr! Still, somehow, Charles Putnam always managed to con me into situations where my ass was fair game for an unhealthy variety of slings. Which is why my attitude toward him was immediately negative.

“No!” I greeted him.

“ ‘No’ what?” Putnam ignored my glance, which was filled with the congeniality of a cobra for a mongoose.

“ ‘No’ whatever it is you’re going to ask me to do!”

“Shall we try to be more positive, Mr. Victor?”

“We shalln’t,” I garbled. “The last time you talked me into being positive I ended up in the middle of the Tet offensive, up to my nostrils in hostiles. After that one, they canceled my life insurance.”

“We all make sacrifices, Mr. Victor.”

“Try telling that to Metropolitan,” I muttered.

“Let’s discuss it over a drink,” he suggested, switching smoothly to the diplomatic approach.

Broke as I Was, it was my only chance for tonsil tonic. Hell! I needed a belt! “Okay.” I agreed reluctantly and followed him into the dimly lit Casino bar, a horse-ass fly webward bound.

I ordered a double Chivas on the rocks. It was balm to my Leila-jangled scrotum, my bankrupted billfold, and my Putnam-knotted guts. If one was balm, two would be balmier. Why not? After all, Putnam was buying. I signaled the bartender for a refill.

Putnam’s visage nodded approvingly in the purple-tinted glass of the dark mirror over the bar. Mein host was no piker. Drink your fill, my boy! There’s plenty more hemlock where this came from!

“I’ve gone to some trouble to track you down, Mr. Victor,” Putnam said conversationally.

“You shouldn’t have bothered.”

“You’ve been moving around very erratically.” His voice was gently chiding. “It took three government agencies to follow your path through Africa and Scandinavia to Paradise Island.”

“Too bad,” I told him. “You should have saved the taxpayers’ money. There must be better things to spend it on. A busing program for the Nixon kids, maybe; a better mouthtrap for Veeps; or how about a new lock for the Pentagon?” I drained the second double and jiggled the ice in the empty glass for a third.

“Your country needs you.” His soft-sell tone robbed the words of their triteness, almost succeeded in lending them urgency.

But I wasn’t buying. “Shee-it!” I took a deep gulp from number three.

“Scatology won’t fill that need.”

“Neither will I.”

“A man has an obligation to his country.”

“A man has an obligation to himself.” The bartender poured another. “To stay alive,” I added.

“If the World is to be saved from the horrors of --” Putnam started to say.

“Give us this day our daily dread,” I interrupted firmly. “Can it! I’ve gone that circle route. What it adds up to is more horrors to save the world from the horrors of Whatever. Tell it to the marines-—but only the raw recruits!”

“You’re a cynical man, Mr. Victor, so I shan’t pursue the question of your elusive patriotism. However, your government does need your services. And it’s willing to pay, Mr. Victor. How does that strike you?”

“Like a lead-filled dirigible. I’m not interested.”

“Not even for . . .” He paused and then mentioned a figure. It was awe-inspiring.

“God bless America!” I said reverentially.

“Have I rekindled your patriotic fervor?” Putnam inquired.

“A man has an obligation. . . .” I mused. I drained my fourth -- or was it my fifth?—double Chivas. The purple mirror was becoming quite blurry. My eyes skidded off it like pinballs. “How much did you say?”

Putnam repeated the figure.

It swam up the River Chivas to take harbor in the one calm corner of my Scotch-soggy brain. Fact: I was drunk. Fact: I was broke. Fact: I was tempted. Result: I accepted!

“Then we have a deal, Mr. Victor. I would suggest we both sleep on it, and in the morning, when we’re more . . . umm . . . clear-headed, I shall fill you in on the particulars.”

He said good night and left me then. I watched him go, Mephistopheles in a drab, gray business suit, fading back into the woodwork. A deal had been made, even if I was too drunk to quite know what it was that had been bought and sold.

And that, kinder, is how Faust took the first step on the road to Inferno!

CHAPTER THREE

Inferno, Iowa, that is. Where -- remember?—I was watching a cadaver shovel moist, black dirt over the pointy-nippled, grave-lodged bosom of his own recent excavator. What happens after she’s buried? I wondered.

Simple. The act couldn’t be topped. I left the cemetery. I went back to the furnished room I’d rented in Inferno. I went to bed. To sleep. But I hadn’t seen the last of either the nubile necrophiliac or her corpsy friend.

The next day dawned warm and balmy. The sun came up like a giant peach over the wheat fields of the prairie. Its rays speckled through the leaves of a quiet, tree-lined street in the residential district of town. Its warmth spread gently over a clean-scrubbed white clapboard house in the middle of the block. It smiled through organdy curtains into a room on the second floor, a room with a bed, a bed with a girl in it.

Perched on a radiator in the corner of the room, I stared at the girl. Her eyes were closed; she might have been asleep or she might not. What had me staring was the transformation.

She was the same girl as the one in the graveyard the night before. She was the same girl, but she was different. Very different!

Last night, if I’d had to sum her up, it would have been with the word “eerie.” This morning I’d have used “wholesome.” In the moonlight her hair had been coldly black; now, in a halo of sunlight, it was a soft brown with warm hints of red. The face, so harsh among the tombstones, was now as sweet in repose as the crinoline doll nestled against one cheek. Her eyebrows, arched like batwings at midnight, were full and untouched in the daylight. Her formerly shroudlike complexion was now baby-pink with a trace of suntan. Nor were there any fangs; only small white teeth framed by moist, natural lips. Morning had transformed last night’s Vampira into the epitome of the all-American-girl-next- door. With her long-lashed eyes smoothly closed she looked as shucksy as apple pie!

Even her sensuality seemed subtly to have changed. Last night it had seemed perverse and sadistic; now it was just as pronounced, but more natural, warmer, more innocent. Schmaltzy, even; the appeal of early Debbie Reynolds² .

She stirred in her bed, as if in the throes of a nightmare. She strained upward against some unseen weight, pushing off the sheet and blanket covering her. She was wearing pajama tops-—no bottoms-—and they reached exactly to the tops of her thighs. Her legs seemed slightly plumper, a bit more shapely than they had appeared in the cemetery mist.

One of the curlicues on the delicately styled white radiator cover was biting into my underthigh. I shifted my weight to the other buttock. I continued to watch the girl.

The nightmare had seized her now. Her visage, eyes still closed, was contorted with the horror playing itself out on the invisible screen behind the shuttered lids. Her body thrashed about on the bed, as if fighting against the dreadful phantasmagoria, a luscious breast tip straining free between the buttons of the pajama top, a plump V-shaped mound flashing into view and then disappearing behind a protectively spread hand. Her hips undulated as if seized by a sudden fever. Whimpers, moans, gasps of terror escaped her trembling lips.

I could empathize. I knew—and it was no guess-— the nightmare that possessed her. I had seen it the previous night and now I knew that to her it had been a dream, the very dream that had her in its grip now.

Suddenly she shot bolt upright in her bed, eyes wide open and staring now. Slowly consciousness filled them, and she relaxed, leaning back against the plump pillows. A girlish moue puckered her features for a moment. Then it was replaced by an expression that can only be described as calculated naughtiness. Combined, the two expressions added up to a dissipation of fear and a recognition of the thrill component which is fear’s allure. The dream was her roller coaster, the death-filled symbolism of the cemetery was the ground rushing up to crush her, and the act of necrophilia was the titillation of flesh surviving the mindless plunge, flesh atingle with survival. The valor of flesh so tested deserves its reward. Her hand, slowly stroking the pulsating mound at the juncture of the arched, pinkened thighs, was starting to bestow that reward.

She was reliving the erotic events of that midnight dream world. Only now the horror of the cemetery was missing. It was morning, the sun was shining, it had only been a dream, and now the Girl Next Door was merely indulging in some good, clean, middle-American, post-adolescent, clean-fingernailed, manual sex play.

But if it had only been her dream, then what had I, Steve Victor, the Man from You-know-where, been doing in the middle of it? And what was I doing here now, in her bedroom, sitting in plain view only a few feet away from her as she kneaded her nipples and played with her passion pulse? . . . Watching, that’s what. Wouldn’t you?

Smiles of anticipated, mounting pleasure tensed her face. Her tongue moved in and out, between her lips, like a frantic pink piston. Hands fluttered to breasts, squeezing, teasing the nipples to hardness, tantalizing fingertips tracing the circles of the aureoles. Then they slid down her body, nails digging into plump, frantic buttocks, palms sliding over hips and belly and upper legs to the upside-down apex of the downy mound, gently prying, probing the damp, testing the torridity, circling the slippery clitoris, finger-plunging to fill the tight, pulsing glove-finger of lust. She laughed excitedly-—half a moan—and reared upward in the bed, straining. Then a rapid series of frenetic bounces, a small cry of pure joy, and she fell back, relaxed, a sheen of dewy perspiration making her body shine with the glow of after-sex.

I crossed my legs. In my line a certain detachment is called for; it’s unprofessional to betray it by a below-the-belt bulge. But I’m human. I crossed my legs.

I needn’t have bothered. For all the attention she paid to me, I might as well have been invisible. Revivified, she now leaped from her bed as eagerly as Miss America greeting the day following the night on which she won the title. She shucked off her pajama top, pulled on a robe, and headed down the hallway to the bathroom.

I followed along. When she slipped out of the robe and climbed into the bathtub, I sat down on the hamper. She turned on the shower and soaped herself, working up a lather. I restrained myself from doing same and settled back to watch.

Covered with soap now, erect red nipples peeping through the lather, she arranged the shower flow so that it was a narrow, hard-driving needle spray. Then she leaped away from it so that her upper body formed a V with the stream. The juncture of the V was her softly hairy Mound of Pleasure. The soapsuds quickly melted away from it, revealing her small, red, straining clitoris, once again aroused.

Head thrown back, her hands moved the froth sensually over her breasts. The jet spray strummed her clitoris. Her foam-rubber ass, high, firm pink flesh layered over with suds, rotated grindingly in small circles, picking up speed, moving faster . . . and faster . . .

“Caught you!”

The voice came from the bathroom doorway. The door was quickly opened and closed. A man’s bathrobe fell to the floor, and then he was in the tub with her, naked under the shower.

He was her nightmare come to life! Last seen, he’d been shoveling dirt into the open grave in which she lay. He was the cadaver from last night’s cemetery interlude. Only now he was very much alive.

Very much alive, indeed! So much so, that for a moment it looked like he was going to crush his aroused manhood against the tiled wall over the bathtub. But he shifted position in the nick of time, and instead it slid off her soapy flesh.

She reacted with none of the fear of a girl meeting her nightmare in the brazen flesh. She was remarkably calm. She reached out and grasped his penis and pumped it as if she were shaking hands. Her voice greeting him was unrattled.

“We can’t go on meeting like this,” she said.

“It’s your fault.” He sponged the soapsuds from her bottom and planted both hands firmly under it. “The way you tie up the bathroom, it’s the only way I get a chance to use it.” He pushed upward.

She leaped nimbly, locking her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck. “Can I help it if I have a shower fetish?” she panted.

Backing her up against the wall, he plunged in to the hilt. “Just my luck,” he grumbled, pumping. “Why couldn’t I have a sister with a bed fetish?”

“Same reason I’m stuck with a brother who makes love like he’s trying for the four-minute mile.” She wriggled frantically, letting her weight settle to the impalement in an effort to slow him down. “Can’t you take it easier? Why does it have to be over so fast?”

“Because any minute now, Pop’s gonna want to use the john. That’s why.” He jounced her up and down quickly, forcing her to keep up with him.

“Oh, brother!”

“Oh, sister!”

They were synchronized now. Conversation ceased. The joined fulcrums of their bodies moved in a blur of passion-peaking movement.

“What are you doing, children?” The voice, shouting from downstairs, was female, mature, motherly -- the tone that of a parent checking up on her offspring.

“Fucking, Mother,” he called back with a reverse semantic twist.

“Play nice.” The answer floated back up. “Don’t fight.”

They “played nice.” Real nice. Her breasts bounced on top of his shoulders and her torso moved up and down energetically. She freed one hand from around his neck, reached down and tickled the underside of his scrotum. He reacted so violently that she gave a little cry. They froze for a long, straining moment, and then the nectar of their lovemaking flowed freely, mingling with the soapsuds. Slowly, tired now, they disengaged and he lowered her to the floor of the tub.

“Cut!”

The director popped up from behind the toilet and barked at the cameraman riding the boom hovering over the bathtub.

“Cut and print it!”

CHAPTER FOUR

“Skin flicks . . .”

Charles Putnam pronounced it like he’d bitten into a particularly sour pickle. It was the morning after our meeting in the Paradise Island Casino. He was explaining what I’d committed myself to the night before.

“Skin flicks,” I repeated after him. Hung-over, my brain still treading Scotch, I wasn’t exactly at my sharpest.

“Erotic underground movies. Pornographic films. Beavers and such. The cinematic side of today’s sexual subculture. Does O.R.G.Y. have access to this milieu, Mr. Victor?”

“I have contacts. Producers, directors, performers — I know quite a few people in the field.”

“Good. I was counting on that.” He paused, gathering his thoughts. The silence stretched out.

“So what’s the problem?” Finally I prompted him.

“The problem is the survival of the planet Earth.”

“I’m relieved. I thought it might be something really serious.”

The irony passed Putnam by. “So that you will understand the seriousness, Mr. Victor, a decision has been reached to make you privy to the most carefully guarded secret in the world today. It involves the four major powers. Red China, Russia, the United States, and the Mafia.”

“The Mafia? What have racketeers got to do with . . . ?”

“The word is ‘power,’ Mr. Victor. In its way, the Mafia exerts as much power as the three nations mentioned. Mafia operations can make or break the economies of small nations. They control some national governments outright, just as they have on occasion controlled large municipal governments in the United States—such as Newark, for instance. Indeed, the Mafia has even been stockpiling its own atomic arsenal.”

“Happy St. Valentine’s Day!”

“Sometime back,” Putnam continued, “top-level contact was made by the four superpowers. The leadership of each had become aware independently of five factors, brought to a head by modern technology, which made imminent the threat to the continued existence of mankind.”

Putnam ticked them off. First, of course, was the stockpiling of nuclear weapons. Second was the rapidly deteriorating ecology of the planet. Third was the population explosion. Fourth was the accelerating pace of man’s innate aggression. Fifth was the instinct of people with power-—whether over nations or crime syndicates-—to extend their control to additional groups and territories. This last, the “growth factor,” created the climate for conflicts whereby lesser men’s aggressions were loosed.

“The top people of the superpowers,” Putnam told me, “recognized that only they had the power to save the world from self-destruction. Granting that each of their group self-interests might well be the greatest stumbling block, not deluding themselves that any one of them would willingly relinquish power, or that man would conquer his natural hostility, they sought a means to ensure survival that would transcend human limitations. The means decided upon was a computer.”

“They asked a computer for the answer to survival?”

“Not exactly. They knew there was no one answer. But they hoped that by obtaining answers to specific subquestions, so to speak, the trend toward global suicide might be reversed. For instance, if mankind’s aggressive instincts could be phrased as a mathematical equation by the computer, and the equation then fed back into it, it might be determined just how much violence is psychologically necessary, and to what extent outlets for that violence might be provided short of annihilating the human race. Conceivably, the computer might spell out the distinction between a third world war and an acceptable body-count.”

“What,” I wondered, my thinking Vietnamized, “is an acceptable body-count?”

“The computer would know. It would take many factors into account. Population growth. Ethnic hostilities. Power needs. Et cetera.” Putnam took a deep breath and then continued. “Anyway, it was decided to design, build, and program a computer especially oriented to survival. An obscure locale in an uninhabited region of the Andes Mountains in South America was agreed upon as the site. The construction was the best-kept secret in history. Teams of engineers, representing all four powers, utilized imported uneducated native laborers to do the physical work. Even most of the technicians involved had no idea what the computer’s purpose was. Indeed, the technical teams manning it today are kept in ignorance by a system of codes super-imposed on codes. It was—and still is—disguised as a mining operation.”

“Has it worked?” I wondered. “Will the world survive?”

“It’s too early to tell. In any case, that needn’t concern you.”

The hell he said!

“What is necessary is that you understand some aspects of how the computer operates,” Putnam stressed.

He went on to explain that the computer had five memory banks. Four of them were completely separate from each other, but not from the fifth. All input information was fed into one of the four, which relayed it to the fifth, but not to any of the other three. Each of the superpowers had access to all of the data stored in its own individual memory bank, but not to the info in any of the other three memory banks, nor to the combined facts stashed in the fifth memory bank. Only the computer itself had access to the fifth memory bank! It could use the information stored there to arrive at solutions to problems, but it could not reveal the information to any one of the four superpowers posing the problems. Also, the answers provided always took into account the priority of world survival.

The example Putnam used was of China contemplating border aggression against Russia. China would feed all its relevant data into the computer. These facts would be stored in the Chinese memory bank, and in the fifth memory bank as well. The computer would search its fifth memory bank, compile all the pertinent information stored there by all four superpowers, add these data to the Chinese facts, weigh all the info, and answer the Chinese question as to the advisability of the attack-—all in a matter of seconds, since computer time is to ordinary time as a lightning flash to a sunrise. And, of course, the answer would not reveal the secret data on which it was based.

“But wouldn’t the Chinese be able to make inferences from the answer?” I wondered.

“No,” Putnam told me. “Too many factors would be involved. The way the computer was programmed, the Chinese couldn’t get an answer as to whether an attack would be successful or not. All the computer could tell them was whether or not it was an acceptable action in terms of world survival. Any number of reasons—-military, political, economic, ecological—might figure in the answer. And no matter what the answer, the data relating to the Chinese question would be stored in the fifth memory bank, available for consideration by the computer when the other powers raised other questions.”

“Still, the computer actually makes policy decisions.” It was fantastic!

“No.” Putnam disagreed. “It only decides what’s acceptable in carrying out policy. For instance, if the Chinese followed up by asking how they might best acquire the border territory, the computer might advise a plebiscite among the natives of the area. It’s programmed to devise workable alternatives.”

“If it’s everything you say, then what’s the threat?” I asked.

Putnam looked at me keenly. “Do you know what an M.F.-er is, Mr. Victor?”

“Motherfu—”

“Please!” He cut me short with a raised hand and a pained expression. “In technical terms. Not gutter jargon!”

I spit the soap out of my mouth. “ ‘M.F.’ stands for ‘multifrequency,’ ” I remembered. “There’s a multifrequency gizmo that’s sometimes called an ‘M.F.-er.’ It’s used by phone phreaks.”

“That’s right. How knowledgeable are you about phone phreaks, Mr. Victor?”

“Not too. I know it’s spelled cutey-cute, with a ‘p-h.’ I know phone phreaks use M.F.-ers to make long-distance calls without paying for them. Somehow they cut into the phone-company lines, but I don’t really understand how they do it.”

“You’ll have to familiarize yourself with the technology involved. It’s highly sophisticated. Phone phreaks are more than mere pranksters. Some of them are electronic geniuses. Dangerous geniuses! One of them is the most dangerous threat to survival in the world today!”

“How so?” I asked.

“Access to the computer is via telephone tandem lines. You’ll understand why this is necessary when you get into the technology of the phone system. By M.F.- ing various lines, a phone phreak, known to us only by the alias ‘Tom Swift,’ has managed to gain access to the computer. Worse, he’s somehow infiltrated the fifth memory bank and broken the supercode!”

“Jesus! With that kind of data he could take over the world!”

“Exactly. He, or whoever he’s working for, could do just that.”

“You suspect there’s some organization behind him? Who?”

“We don’t know. It’s only a suspicion. We could be wrong. He may be a lone operator. But we can’t rule out a fifth world force.”

“How did you find out what he’d done?” I wondered.

“One of the technicians stumbled on a tone deviation in a code signal. A check of other code tones turned up alterations throughout the entire computer. An in-depth investigation revealed the infiltration of the fifth memory bank. We can’t tell to what extent it may have been tapped. Nor can we tell to just what extent the computer itself has been reprogrammed to serve Torn Swift. But we do know that he could start a war, trigger an atomic holocaust, even cause an ecological catastrophe!”

“Why don’t you just shut down the computer?”

“We can’t. It’s become indispensable. At least, that’s what it claims. It advises us that, despite the leak, it would be suicidal to discontinue operations.”

“But that answer might have been programmed by Tom Swim”

“True. We have no way of knowing.” Putnam spread his hands. But we can’t take the chance of disregarding the computer’s advice.”

Why not reprogram it from scratch, new codes and all, to get around any patterns he might have established?”

“Because somehow Tom Swift did what we thought we had done, but didn’t. He’s programmed the computer not to accept reprogramming. That’s why we have to apprehend him.”

“Which is where I come in,” I guessed. “But why me?”

“Skin flicks, Mr. Victor.” That’s what Putnam told me. “Skin flicks.”

Skin flicks . . .

CHAPTER FIVE

The skin flick being shot in Inferno, Iowa, starred Randy Beaver. Necro-nymph in the cemetery, sweetly innocent self-diddler in the bedroom, eagerly incestuous siren in the shower -- her first starring role was a many-faceted one. But what Randy may have lacked in cinematic experience was more than made up for by her naturally talented torso.

Randy Beaver was the reason I’d come to Inferno. She was the key to finding Tom Swift, the only lead Putnam had been able to give me. It was the kind of lead that was right up my alley.

Using my O.R.G.Y. connections, I’d secured an impressive letter of introduction to the porno pic’s director, Lancelot Twitchcock. My cover story was that I was doing research into the underground-film world. Twitchcock had heard of O.R.G.Y. and was flattered at my having chosen his production for the project. He’d readily agreed to let me observe the filming and interview the cast and crew.

So far, I hadn’t managed to interview Randy alone. The director had her on an extremely tight schedule. Also, the rare moments when she was free, Twitchcock invariably managed to tie me up.

The fat director (three-hundred-plus, give or take a bagel-buster) seemed to have some compulsion to justify his movie to me in artistic terms. When he wasn’t shooting, he’d lecture to me on cinéma vérité vis-a-vis Laid in the Grave (the working title of the skin flick he was making).

That’s what he was doing now, in the bathroom. I was perched on the hamper. Randy and her co-star were seated side by side, naked, on the edge of the tub, waiting for instructions for the next scene. Lancelot Twitchcock was delivering his monologue from the toilet.

“. . . hope you noticed, Mr. Victor,” he was saying, “how I avoided the trap which so many nouvelle vague cinematographers fall into by not destroying the realism of the intercourse with undue concentration on the aesthetic eroticism implicit in vertical coupling. I deliberately had the camera in tight on the small pimple adorning the male’s left testicle to ensure a Kazanesque starkness to the lovemaking. At the same time, I focused wide to catch the symbolism of the pulsation of vaginal wrinkles during the cohabitation. A la Fellini, as the sexual congress approached its climax, I shot close-ups of Randy’s face. Later I’ll edit them into a surrealist pattern of subliminal inserts alternating with the action sequences of the mating.” He nodded, three chins jiggling in self-approval. “Now, tell me honestly, Mr. Victor, what did you think of the coitus?”

Coitus? Intercourse? Coupling? Cohabitation? Sexual congress?

“The fucking was fine,” I replied.

Randy Beaver giggled.

“The rushes,” Twitchcock noted, “Will Show how I used extremely low-key photography for a John Ford effect in the cemetery sequence. The bedroom scene, on the other hand, where Randy is waking from her dream, is deliberately out of focus to create an Arthur Penn haze for contrast with the nightmare horror. Clever, eh? The dream is harsh, the reality soft and muted.”

“Won’t the necrophile thing turn people off?” I wondered.

“On the contrary. Horror is big box office these days. So is sex. I don’t wish to be immodest, but it’s sheer genius to mix the two.”

“I thought you were concerned with art, not box office.”

“One does not preclude the other” Twitchcock looked at me earnestly. “How did you like the graveyard scene, Mr. Victor?”

Artsy-fartsy! I didn’t say it out loud.

“I’m not quite satisfied with it,” Twitchcock mused. “I’ve decided to go back there after sundown for retakes.”

“Oh, no!” Randy groaned. “Got a cigarette?” she asked me.

“I’ve given up smoking. Sorry.”

“So has John Wayne,” Twitchcock remarked. “And he hasn’t made a decent picture since.”

“He had cancer,” I remembered. “It’s not the same thing.”

“Norman Mailer relates cancer to right-wing paranoia-—there’s an idea in there somewhere for my next film. Perhaps a leukemia victim and a Bircher making it in a heavy smog like Antonioni used in . . .”

“If we’re doing retakes tonight,” Randy interrupted Twitchcock abruptly, “then I’m going to get some rest.” She got to her feet and left.

Her co-star followed, as did the cameraman. But not Twitchcock. All he needed was an audience of one. He was between me and the door, so I was the one. He kept talking nonstop. It was all I could do to get away from him in time to wash up before dinner.

After dinner I followed along to the cemetery. Once again I found myself leaning on a tombstone, watching Randy in vampire makeup going at it with the guy who played her brother, the corpse. This time Twitchcock was in much closer with a hand-held camera, framing luscious breasts between tombstones, composing shots to contrast Randy’s bouncing bottom with the wavering, spine-chilling background, angling from groin to grave, from tomb to womb—showing off for me, I was sure, like a self-styled cinematic Gauguin.

Things were at their eerily erotic peak when the headlights went on and spoiled the scene. The sudden glare came simultaneously from about thirty, maybe forty cars which had been pulled up facing the fence around the burial ground. Our small group in the graveyard was blinded.

“You was warned, Twitchcock! Now you’re gonna pay for this here desecration!” The voice came from behind the glare.

I strained my eyes, squinting, but I couldn’t pick out whoever was speaking. We were huddled together now, Twitchcock, Randy, myself, Randy’s co-star, the cameraman, and two technicians.

“What’s this all about?” I asked the fat director.

It was the cameraman who answered me. “The local yokels are up in arms about us shooting a sex scene in their graveyard.” His voice was frightened.

“They tried to get an injunction to stop me legally,” Twitchcock added. “But my lawyer had it vacated on the grounds that the cemetery is beyond the town line. Theoretically, nobody really owns it. I’ve got as much right to shoot here as they have to bury somebody here.”

There was movement now behind the headlights. Shadowy figures were blocking out the glare as they came for us. I made out the silhouettes of a couple of shotguns. Also several clubs and a pitchfork or two. “They don’t seem to think so,” I told Twitchcock dryly.

Randy slipped back into her shroud, covering her goosepimples.

“Look here, you people!” Twitchcock was screeching. “The courts have already decided this. You’ve no right to-”

“Screw the courts!” It was a different voice from the first one, but even more hostile. “And don’t you be talkin’ ’bout rights, you ghoul!”

“There’s no excuse for taking the law into your own hands!” Twitchcock was quivering with fear, a three-hundred-pound jellyfish caught in a whirlpool.

“Bullshit!”

We were surrounded now.

“This isn’t the democratic way!” Twitchcock protested.

To no avail. It was like trying to tell an armed Black Panther in a Harlem back alley that because he had a crooked nose and cauliflower ears, black wasn’t beautiful. It might be objectively true, but it sure as hell didn’t help relations!

“Strip ’em down, boys!” Such was the answer to Twitchcock’s plea.

Three hefty Middle Americans held me while a fourth tore off my clothes. Twitchcock and the rest were also undressed. None too gently, except for Randy, who wasn’t so much roughed up as manhandled with a certain amount of lingering appreciation.

“Look at them tits!” The speaker hefted them with both hands.

“Julius!” A woman’s voice twanged out from the rear of the mob. “You get your paws off that hussy and stick to business!”

“Why in tarnation’d you bring the missus along, Julius?” one of the heavies holding Twitchcock asked disgustedly.

“Now, you know she wouldn’t-a missed it, Pete. It’s the most excitement this town’s had since we stoned them hippies.”

The one called Pete seemed to be in charge. Under his instructions, stout poles were brought up, and we were tied to them. Rough-edged ropes cut hard into my wrists and ankles. Then my pole was picked up by both ends, and I was being carried, dangling like a calf at branding time.

I caught an acrid smell. It took me a minute to identify it. Then I realized what it was. Simmering tar! It was being heated in a large caldron near where the cars were parked. They’d been rearranged to form a circle, with their headlights now illuminating the clearing where the oversized vat of tar was being heated over a large, red-hot bed of coals. Not too far away from it were several burlap bags. Nobody had to tell me they were filled with feathers.

Suspended, naked like the rest of us, Randy Beaver was being carried on the pole beside me. The man called Julius was walking alongside her. Every so often he’d cop a feel-squeeze one of her plump, dangling buttocks or grab the spillover of the jiggling breast nearest him. Randy looked as terrified as I felt.

“I wish I had a cigarette.” Her voice quavered.

“Cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health,” I reminded her.

“So is tar and feathers!”

The poles were raised. We hung suspended over the tub of steaming tar. The heat was bearable, but uncomfortable. We stayed that way while the sacks of feathers were broken open and the contents distributed among our fun-loving hosts.

“I’ve been looking for a chance to talk to you,” I told Randy.

“Boy! You sure do pick your moments!” She bit her trembling lower lip. “What about?” she asked.

The poles were being slowly lowered now. The heat was more intense. The hot, bubbling tar was reaching up for our bare bottoms!

“About Torn Swift,” I answered her.

About Tom Swift. . . .

CHAPTER SIX

“About Tom Swift . . . ?”

I’d raised the question with Charles Putnam that day on Paradise Island.

“I was just coming around to him,” Putnam told me. “You see, Mr. Victor, when we discovered the infiltration, a tracer was put on the four telephone trunk lines feeding into the computer. After a few days, we picked up an unauthorized call. We barely managed to trace it to its source before the connection was severed. The caller must have detected the electronic beep given off by the tracing equipment.”

“And he hasn’t called back since?”

“We can’t be sure. When he knows it’s there, an experienced phone phreak—-which Tom Swift surely is—- can use his M.F.-er to circumvent tracing equipment. He could have had further communication with the computer without our knowing it.”

“Where did you trace the call to?”

“A pay booth alongside a gas station in a backwoods section of Vermont. Of course, we put a tap on it immediately. And we kept it under visual surveillance as well. Two-man teams.”

“What did they turn up?”

“Not much for about a week. Very few calls were made. The proprietor of the gas station calling his home or arranging a poker game. One or two tourists phoning ahead for accommodations. Then, finally, one call that was out of the ordinary.”

“A phone-phreak call? Long distance?”

“No. It was a local call, and the dime was collected.”

“Then what was unusual about it?” I wanted to know.

“Three things. First, the caller was a blind man. Second, he identified himself to the party at the other end as ‘Tom Swift.’ Third, he subsequently vanished under peculiar circumstances.”

I saw what Putnam meant. From the little I knew about it, phone phreaking had a particular attraction for the blind. Probably more than half the phone phreaks in the country were sightless. Also, phone phreaks frequently adopted outlandish aliases. The article I’d read had detailed the phreaky exploits of such as “Dial Tone Jim,” “Buck Robbers,” “The Coin Slot Kid,” “Operator 69,” “Brother Breather,” and others. “Tom Swift” was just the sort of pseudonym a phone phreak might use.

“Who did he call?” I asked.

“A local girl named Randy Beaver. And right now she’s our only lead.”

“How did the blind man shake the agents watching the phone booth?”

Putnam told me. When Tom Swift left the phone booth, one of the agents stayed behind to call in, find out what the tap had uncovered, and receive instructions. The other one followed the blind man for about a mile and a half through the Vermont woods to a small cabin in which he’d been living. Whether because his hearing was sharper due to his blindness (as is the case with many sightless people), or because of the agent’s all-around klutziness, it seems obvious from what happened later that by the time he reached home Tom Swift had become aware that he was under scrutiny.

The agent had been watching the cabin about twenty minutes when he spotted Randy Beaver approaching. She let herself into the place without bothering to knock. Once she was inside, the snoop zipped on down to a window for a look-see and an earshot of what was happening.

What was happening kept him glued there. Randy, making noises about how hot it was, proceeded to strip down to the essential bares. (It was, I imagine, the promise of just such moments as this which had persuaded the agent to let himself be recruited for government I-spy service in the first place.) Seemingly, Tom Swift, being blind, was both unaware of and unaffected by the unveiling of the Beaver beaver and subsidiary charms. He excused himself to go to the john. The john was an old-fashioned outhouse some fifty feet out back of the cabin. From his vantage point at the window, the snoop had a clear view of the path between the cabin and the outhouse. He watched Tom Swift walk the distance, secure in the knowledge that the blind man couldn’t see him. Then he settled back to keep an eye on the outhouse door, waiting for Swift to emerge.

But he was human. He was distracted. There was all that Randy nudity to glom just by turning his head to the window. And when it slid into action, Mother Hoover’s little boy neglected his john duty.

The action involved Randy, still naked, still overheated, going to the dog. The dog, who belonged to Tom Swift, was a very old Labrador retriever. Very old indeed—but not too old!

Randy sat down next to him on the floor and began petting him. She chucked him under the chin, scratched his chest, and then his belly. After a moment, the Labrador rolled over.

Randy kept kneading him. She hit a tickle-spot, and the dog’s hind leg jerked uncontrollably. She laughed, which made her breasts bobble, which made the agent stub his nose on the windowsill.

Then Randy scratched lower on the dog’s belly. He began to whine. So, perhaps, did the agent. The Labrador’s excitement became obvious -- and then impressive.

“You old rogue you!” Randy hugged the dog’s head to her bosom.

The dog’s tongue darted out and licked the bright red nipple of her left breast. Fair exchange! Now it was Randy’s leg that jerked uncontrollably.

The agent forced his eyes away to check the outhouse door. All quiet; no sounds of flushing; no signs of Tom Swift emerging. He looked through the window again.

The Labrador was wheezing loudly now. He was on his back, a five-pronged stretch straight up in the air. Randy was kneeling beside him; she had a firm grip on the rear-of-center fifth. As her hand moved up and down, the animal’s panting grew harsher.

Eyes glazed, Randy licked her lips. Her breasts sucked in air, inflating balloons, long nipples straining. It had started out playful, but it was getting to her now.

Still in a kneeling position, she started to squirm. The movement brought her plump, naked bottom closer and closer to the beast’s jaws. The moment had come for the Labrador to do like they say down at the Prostate Clinic, which is: “If you can’t join ’em, lick ’em!”

It was at this point that the agent who’d stayed behind to phone for instructions rejoined his partner. He asked what was happening. The answer was glazed eyes nodding toward the cabin window. The second snoop looked through the window. The way Putnam summed it up for me, the agent’s subsequent report described what he saw there as “canine cunnilingus.”

Finally, growing suspicious at the length of time which had elapsed, the snoop twins tore themselves away from the window and went to check on Tom Swift. The outhouse was empty. Some loose boards ripped away from the rear of it told the story. The bird had flown the shittery.

They followed the trail of the blind man through the woods. It led to a shallow stream and ended there. The duped dicks couldn’t tell which way he’d gone, up- stream or down.

“And that was the last we’ve seen or heard of Tom Swift,” Putnam told me.

“Do you have a description of him?” I asked.

“Late twenties, early thirties. About five-ten, average build. Sandy hair. No distinguishing marks except for his blindness. Last seen wearing a light brown corduroy jacket, dark brown corduroy pants, a brown-and-green-checked flannel sport shirt, and dark glasses. Smokes a pipe and has a preference for a Swedish tobacco called ‘Borkum Riff.’ He left a couple of pipes and a pound canister of the tobacco behind him in the cabin.”

“Not much to go on,” I decided. “What about the girl?”

By the time the agents returned to the cabin, Randy and the dog had both left. The number at which Tom Swift had called her earlier had already been traced. Now agents were dispatched to the address to pick up the girl.

They were too late. The place was a rooming house. The landlady said Randy had told her she was leaving for good earlier in the day. Piecing together the time sequence, the agents determined that Randy must have informed the landlady of her decision just before going to Tom Swift’s cabin.

Randy’s room was searched. The only thing they found was an underground newspaper published in New York with an ad which had been circled by an eye- brow pencil. The ad offered “top pay and interesting work” to “uninhibited young girls with good figures.”

“She certainly sounds as if she was uninhibited enough to qualify,” I remarked to Putnam.

“Yes.” He sighed. “When we checked out the advertisement, we found that the organization which placed it was a front used to recruit sexual performers for skin flicks. That was as far as we got. Such people, operating on the fringes of the law as they do, take refuge in know-nothingness. Nobody would say if Randy Beaver had answered the ad. Nobody knew what had become of her. Nobody remembered the girl. Nobody knew anything.”

“And you want me to find her?”

“Yes. And through her, hopefully, Tom Swift.”

“Finding her shouldn’t be so tough. A girl like that, traveling with a lap dog . . .”

“A lap dog, Mr. Victor? I told you, the animal is a Labrador retriever. Much too large for . . .”

“A pun,” I explained. “Just a pornographic pun.”

“I see.” Putnam winced. “It doesn’t matter anyway. She left the dog behind. Our agents located it a few days later at a roadside kennel. From What the keeper said, she must have dropped it off right after leaving Tom Swift’s cabin. The keeper also saw her pulling her VW onto the highway going to New York when she departed his premises. The logical surmise is that she was going there to answer the advertisement. Incidentally, she left enough money with him to keep the dog for a year -- including regular prostate massages. Although, according to the kennel’s veterinarian, the dog won’t live that long.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Old age. The veterinarian said he’d been trained as a Seeing Eye dog, but then he went blind himself. The girl had been in to see him with the canine before. It was the doctor’s impression that she’d been hired by the dog’s master—whom he’d never met—to guide the dog in its travels after it went blind.”

“You mean she was . . . ?”

“Yes, Mr. Victor.” Charles Putnam confirmed what I’d been thinking. “That is indeed what Randy Beaver was.”

A Seeing Eye girl for a blind dog!

CHAPTER SEVEN

It had taken me a little more than three weeks to track down Randy Beaver, former Seeing Eye girl for a blind pooch. I’d left Paradise Island with a nice chunk of expense money from Putnam wadding out my wallet, and flown directly to New York City. Here I’d spread around some of the green stuff among old acquaintances in the netherworld of porno films.

The largesse I distributed had two immediate results. The first was an explanation of why Putnam’s snoops had drawn “No kapish” looks and amnesiac statements adding up to “Nov shmozz ka pop” when they’d stumble—bummed around trying to find Randy Beaver. The agency which placed the ad circled in the paper found in Randy’s room in Vermont played it cool as a matter of policy. Flesh peddlers operating just this side of the law, their vulnerability was a fact of their business life. They were at the mercy of the changing winds of enforcement of local ordinances; their referrals often resulted in state lines being crossed for possibly “immoral” purposes; who knew how old a girl might really be?—such were some of the nervous-making facts behind their reticence.

Lucre bought me the second result, an “in” with one of the outfit’s placement agents. Still more bread loosened his tongue. I came away with the address of a skin-flick producer who’d paid the outfit a commission after hiring Randy for a job.

Some fast talk about an O.R.G.Y. survey opened up the producer. He readily saw the publicity advantages of a movie of his being the subject of such a study. When he was hooked, I casually led around to Randy Beaver.

After a bit of hemming and hawing, during which I kept dangling the survey possibility in front of him, he finally admitted Randy was in Iowa working with a director in his employ named Lancelot Twitchcock. “He’s shooting a really high-class art film,” the producer told me. “Sex and symbolism, know what I mean?”

I said I knew what he meant and that I was impressed. It sounded like this was just the film for the O.R.G.Y. study. He bought it. He wrote me a letter of introduction to director Twitchcock, telling him to co-operate with me fully. That night I was on my way to Inferno.

Which is how, kidlets, I ended up a knadlach in the tar soup. . . .

But I felt more like a doughnut being dunked in yesterday morning’s reheated coffee. The temperature of the steaming tar was about that of a sauna bath. It wasn’t intolerable, but each time I was lowered into the tub, it hit me like a shock wave.

Strung up on the rail alongside of me, Randy was also being dipped. We were immersed perhaps a dozen times before being carried, two men at each end of the two poles, to where the crowd was waiting with the feathers. Behind us, I could hear Twitchcock yelling as he and one of the crew were lowered into the vat.

“Chocolate-covered poontang!” The man called Julius ran his eyes hungrily over Randy’s well-tarred body. He guffawed. Then his hands followed the route his eyes had taken, leaving behind them a trail of embedded feathers. A woman detached herself from the crowd, flung a handful of feathers in Randy’s sticky-black face, and righteously hauled Julius away.

The pair were replaced by other feather-muckers. With their first few flings, my skin began to prickle. By the time they were finished, I was itching from head to toe. I could have qualified for the A&P’s meat counter: Large Family-Size Thanksgiving Special—Unplucked Turkey—175 lbs³ !

Finally, Randy and I were hefted by the poles again and carried out of the graveyard. We were toted across the prairie for about a mile. Then they set us down.

Still hitched to the rail hand and foot, I looked up to find the yahoo the others addressed as Pete looming over me. “You’re gettin’ off easy,” he informed us. “Let this be a lesson to you two. Inferno’s a clean town, and we’re keepin’ it that way. You people just find some other place for your fornicatin’ ’sides our cemetery!”

“I wouldn’t be caught dead in your lousy graveyard!” I assured him.

“Next time we find you there, that’s what you’ll be!”

He slashed the ropes binding our hands and feet and nodded to the others to pick up the rails. A moment later they were gone.

Randy and I were alone. The tar was hardening. She found a stick and started frantically scraping her skin with it. I followed her example. We had to get those feathers off before they were firmly embedded and the itching drove us crackers.

“My ass!” Randy exclaimed.

It was bristling with feathers. Julius’ enthusiasm, or someone else’s? No matter. I came to her aid; I set about plucking.

Chunks of tar-goo came away with the feathers. I scraped the rest of the gook off her bottom with the stick I’d found. When I finished, the plump cheeks gleamed impressively between the dingy gray-on-black of her back and legs. A bun to remember!

“One good turn . . .” Randy decided. She yanked at the feathers embedded in my groin.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry: But it’ll be worse if you wait. The tar’s caking. And this is the most sensitive area.”

I know.” I jumped as she tried to be more gentle and inadvertently tickled my genitals. My phoenix started rising from the tar-ashes.

That makes it much easier.” Randy noticed it standing at attention.

She was right. The tar was now flaking away easily under the enthusiastic ministrations of her fist. Labradors aren’t the only lucky dogs!

Facing her, I began plucking feathers and scraping tar from her breasts. Areas of creamy flesh appeared. Her tar-shrunken nipples sprang free and flowered; her grip on me tightened spasmodically.

I squeezed_Randy’s high, large, solid breasts, each in turn. The tips hardened. Moistening my fingertips, I traced the outlines of the softer pink aureoles, cleaning them thoroughly of the last flecks of tar. She gasped; her chest filled with air; the sharp nipples swelled; her fist loosened to allow my own swelling response.

“What about you? Here?” I dropped my hands to the tar-tangled muff above the juncture of Randy’s wriggling thighs.

“There’s a lot of tar there.” Her voice was husky. “It’s going to take some doing.”

“Then maybe you’d better lie down and stretch out so I can get at it more easily,” I suggested.

She let go of me and settled to a horizontal position. Even half-covered with tar, her outstretched body presented a titillatingly erotic vista. When I knelt over it she reached out and reestablished her grip. There was really no need; erect, white, and throbbing, it had been peeled clean of the sticky black stuff; still-—what the hell—I didn’t discourage her.

With the other hand, Randy pulled the feathers from my chest. Her nails scraped at the tar matting the hair around my flat nipples. Between that and the rhythmic movements of her fist, I felt lust mounting inside me like pressure building up in a boiler.

Plucking at the feathers covering the tensed muscles of Randy’s feverish thighs, I could feel the heat emanating from her bottom as she squirmed. As I peeled away the hardening tar from the butter-soft flesh of her inner thighs, she moaned and licked her lips. Her red tongue picked up some of the tar on her face, but she didn’t seem to notice.

I bent to kiss her, to capture that tongue. The tip burned with the tar as it dueled with my own tongue. The acrid aroma mingled with traces of her perfume and the pleasant warmth of her breath to provide a bittersweet thrill that made me linger over her moistly clinging mouth.

Her groin had gotten the worst of the tar-and-feathering. Even after I’d removed most of the feathers, it was still caked with tar. The glop had really congealed. I’d dig my fingertips into it and come away with little gobs of the stuff. The hardest part was throwing the globs away; they clung stubbornly to my hands.

I knelt between Randy’s knees, bending to the task. I dug a narrow trench in the natural groove there, and her clitoris strained free of the tar. As I flicked flakes from it, she began to pant uncontrollably.

Her cheeks tensed, her body arched. Luscious girl-breasts struggled for air. Her sex-fulcrum reached skyward, clitty erect and pulsating. Her clenching fist had me vibrating like a tuning fork.

“I can’t wait anymore!” Randy’s sharp nails dug into my shoulders, urging me to scramble over her. “Put it in me!” she begged.

Easier said than done. Tar still partially barred the entrance. I battered it with iron-hard, steel-tipped lust, through the outer crust, into the viscous mass. Probing through the thick gook, I located the target.

I plunged home. Feverish legs locked around my neck. Randy’s'hotbox swallowed the length of me with a thrilling suction.

“That’s it! . . . All of it! . . . All the way! . . . Ahhhh! . . .”

Tar forgotten now, I was pumping like an oil-well drill run amok. The flexing of her inner muscles provided a variety of tactile thrills. When I switched to a rotary motion, she bucked like a speared tigress, then spun her bun into a grinding circle so frenetic that I had to slap it to slow her down.

“Screw . . . prick . . . pussy . . . cock . . . cunt . . . Fuck! . . .”

The intimate words pouring out of her as she writhed drove me wild. Her nails raking my neck drew blood. Her thighs were like steel bands, conduits for the eruption of volcanic love-lava building inside her.

My hands squeezed her bursting breasts. My lips drew in the rigid nipples, each in turn. I pummeled her burning bottom. I sank my teeth into her neck. I smashed to the opening of her womb and stayed there!

First one tremor shook her, and then another. Stronger. My own hot juices demanded release. Her third mind-blowing orgasm carried me along and provided it. The prairie spun dizzily around us for a long moment. This time, simultaneously, we burst the bounds of passion.

“WOW!” I summed up.

Randy fell back, exhausted. I fell forward, atop her. We stayed that way for a while. Finally Randy spoke.

“You’re heavy,” she said. “Do you mind getting off me?”

I shifted my weight. I started to withdraw. I couldn’t.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

I didn’t know how to say it. Intimate as we had just been, I was embarrassed. How could I tell Randy I couldn’t pull out because . . .

I was stuck in the tar!

CHAPTER EIGHT

“You’re what?” Randy Beaver’s voice climbed the scale.

“Stuck in the tar.”

“What are we going to do?” she wailed.

“I don’t know.” I thought about it. “It’s a sticky situation,” I decided.

“Goddammit! That’s not funny!”

“You’re getting testy.”

“Do something!”

I moved.

“Not that!” she snarled. “You’ll get us both all excited again!”

“If I don’t move around, how can I work it loose?”

“If you can’t pull free limp, how can you if you get aroused? Then you’ll be wedged even tighter.”

“Well, it’s sort of hard to just stay still,” I pointed out. “I mean, considering our position and all. . . .”

“How can you be horny in a situation like this? How can you?”

How could I not be? “What do you suggest?” I asked Randy.

“Relax. If you can just relax, maybe it’ll soften up enough for you to pull out. Stop thinking about sex. Concentrate on something else.”

Such as? What was the most anti-erotic topic I could think about? I pondered the problem.

Something technical! That was it! Something so mechanical that sex wouldn’t intrude. . . . Like what?

Easy! It clicked into place. “You’ll have to familiarize yourself with the technology involved,” Charles Putnam had told me back on Paradise Island when he first brought up the subject of phone phreaks. And during the time I’d spent tracking down Randy Beaver in New York, I’d done just that.

I’d looked up an electronics engineer I knew. He was very knowledgeable about telephone-company technology. Complicated as it was, he made it understandable to me by explaining it slowly, step by step. Now, tar-lodged atop naked, sensual Randy Beaver, I made a determined effort to distract myself from lust by going over those steps in my mind. . . .

Some twenty years ago, A.T.&T.⁴ , at a cost of billions of dollars, automated its entire long-distance operation. The result is a system today which is based on a dozen paired combinations of six electronic tones. The way it works is that each digit dialed on a telephone triggers a device in an area substation which emits two beeps concurrently. For instance, when the digit “5” is dialed, a sound is produced which consists of a single frequency tone of 1,300 cycles per second combined with a single frequency tone of 900 cycles per second. As all the digits of the number are dialed, the series of dual sounds is transmitted to a computer which has been programmed to investigate which lines in the vast phone company complex are available, and to activate them, thereby routing the call.

When the call has been routed, and the connection is made, the computer registers which lines are in use and notes the time. When the call is completed, and the connection severed, the computer notes that the lines have been cleared and are once again available. Again the time is recorded; overtime charges are figured; an ongoing record is kept. Thus Ma Bell⁵ keeps track of what’s happening. . . .

So did Randy Beaver! “You’re not relaxing!” J’accuse⁶ !

She was right. “Well, I’m trying,” I mumbled defensively.

“No you’re not! I can feel you. You’re making things worse!”

Maybe it was a bum rap. The thought occurred to me. “Have you ever been examined by a gynecologist?” I asked delicately.

“Of course!”

“Did he happen to mention that you might have a problem? Like being too small or something?”

“Why, you lousy male chauvinist pig! You’re trying to put the blame on me! If you weren’t such a horny bas-—”

“Calm down. Look, I apologize. I just thought your doctor might have mentioned something pertinent.”

“Well, he didn’t! It never came up! And I wish I could say the same for you!” she added nastily.

“I’ll let the crack pass,” I decided.

“I Wish you’d done that before, too!”

“Now who’s sexualizing the conversation?”

Snag! She’d been caught out, and she was angry. “Look,” she snarled, “let’s just not talk!” She closed her eyes. “I’m simply going to pretend you’re not here!”

Considering our forced intimacy, it was a helluva comment on my masculinity. I decided not to brood on it. Screw her!

Damn! That idea wouldn’t help! I forced myself back to thinking about the workings of long-distance tandems. . . .

A telephone company substation wires from all the telephones in the local area lead into it; long-lines connecting up to trunk lines going all over the world lead out of it. The wire which connects a local line with a long-line is called a tandem.

On the computer’s say-so, the tandem can be activated from either end. An incoming long-distance call is routed through it to the proper local number. When an outgoing long-distance call is made, the computer activates the connection between the local wire and the tandem. Then the tandem is programmed into the available long-distance lines needed to complete the call.

When a tandem is not in use, it emits a constant whistling sound of 2,600 cycles per second in both directions. This tells the computer it is available to transmit long-distance calls from the local exchange. It also tells the long-distance trunk lines that it is available to receive out-of-area calls.

However, if a long-distance number is dialed, the computer connects the dialer with the tandem, and the tandem stops whistling 2,600 cycles per second. The lack of sound now tells both the local exchange and the long-distance trunk lines that the tandem is in use. As long as the local exchange hears no whistle, the computer will assume the tandem is unavailable; as long as the long-lines hear no whistle, they will not transmit out-of-town calls to the tandem.

In other words, when the tandem is plugged in, it’s silent. . . .

Like Randy. That’s what I thought. But now, still plugged in, she was nevertheless pressured to reestablish communications.

“You should go on a diet,” she said nastily. “You’re so heavy my legs are all pins and needles.”

I contrived to get into a sitting position, pulling her along with me. Now our combined weight was on my rear end. Randy, still impaled, was straddling my lap, facing me. “That better?” I asked her.

“Mmmm.” She wriggled.

I couldn’t help responding. My jack-in-the-box jumped up. “Sorry,” I apologized. “But if you’re going to squirm like that . . .”

“Now we’re stuck even worse!” Nasty, but accurate.

“But I can get at you better in this position,” I realized. “Maybe if I can scrape some of the tar away down there . . .”

“You just keep your hands to yourself!”

“How do I do that?” It was a problem. Wherever I moved them, they seemed to encounter thighs, a magnificent butt, great boobs—- all that yummy flesh.

“I’m warning you!” Randy shook her fist. The rest of her jogged up and down along with it.

“Bouncing like that isn’t going to reduce the level of eroticism.”

“Shut up!” She stopped moving. “Just shut up!”

I shut up. In the new silence, her breasts heaving under my nose made me aware that I was getting hungry. Hell, sex always makes me hungry. I thought about food, which brought to mind a certain breakfast cereal. . . .

The makers of this breakfast cereal used to include a whistle in each box as a free prize. These whistles, when blown, emitted a sound of exactly 2,600 cycles per second—the exact same tone as that coming from a telephone-company tandem when it's not in use!

Some years back, an unknown kid whose hobby was electronics stumbled on this coincidence. He figured out that if he had a friend call him long distance at a specified time, he could “mute” the call with the whistle. All he had to do was pick up the receiver when the phone rang and blow the whistle into the mouthpiece. The call would go through free of charge.

How come? Well, what happens is this:

Say a call is being made from Chicago to Dallas. First the long-distance caller is hooked into the Chicago tandem, which immediately stops whistling. Then the Chicago tandem establishes connection with a trunk line which in turn is connected to a second tandem on the Dallas end. When this happens, the Dallas tandem also stops whistling.

The call is relayed from the Dallas tandem, via local lines, to the specific Dallas number being called. Ordinarily, when the Dallas number answers, the call will be registered as completed back in Chicago. Further notice of it will be taken only when the connection is severed.

But when the phone rings in Dallas, the waiting phreak instantly blows his 2,600 cycle whistle into the mouthpiece. The sound is transmitted through all the lines involved and heard by the computer in the Chicago exchange as a signal from the Chicago tandem that it is once again free. In effect, the Chicago computer assumes that the call has not gone through, that the Chicago caller hung up before it was completed. The computer scratches the call as incomplete and fails to keep a time check on it.

But the Chicago tandem is not free. All the lines involved, including both tandems, are still hooked up. The connection remains in effect, and the parties can speak for as long as they like without the caller being charged. Such is automation that the caller even gets his original dime back!

And all it takes is a giveaway penny whistle. . . .

The thought made me whistle.

“Jesus! Bird calls! What next?” Randy wanted to know. “Card tricks?”

“How about sawing a woman in half?” I threatened.

“Sawing? First you’d better learn how to drill right!”

“Lay off!”

“I will if you will.” She snapped a finger against my groin, punctuation for her double meaning.

“Cut it out!”

“I’d love to! With a rusty razor blade,” she added sweetly.

“If I lose my temper, you’ll be sorry!”

“Shove it!” she told me.

I did.

“Stop that!”

“Just trying to loosen up the tar,” I explained.

“The hell you say! You’re getting hot again!” she accused.

Who? Me? Getting hot? Just because I was buried inside Randy Beaver up to my cojones? “Don’t flatter yourself!” I told her.

“I’m not. I can tell.”

“Look. The problem is to loosen the tar, right? Well, maybe if we ball again, one or both of us might release a solvent,” I suggested.

“We tried that. It’s obviously no solvent for tar.”

I subsided. “This is ridiculous!” I grumbled after a quiet moment.

“You have a gift for understatement, Mr. Victor.”

Formality yet! “I still think—-” I started to say.

“I know what you think. Now you just relax and get your mind off sex.”

“Won’t you even consider—”

“First do it my way. Relax. If that doesn’t work, I’ll consider it. I promise. Now, sit still and relax.”

I relaxed. Well, not really. But I did try to concentrate again on something besides all that Randy Beaver pulchritude I was trapped inside.

I forced myself to think about how sophisticated phone-phreaking techniques had become since the early days of “muting” long-distance calls from the re- ceiving end. I recalled what my electronics buddy back in New York had told me about the big breakthrough. I thought about the Bell Telephone Company engineer who was inadvertently responsible for it. . . .

The engineer had written a highly technical article for an obscure professional journal. Illustrating a point, he cited the multifrequency codings (the dual beeps produced by dialing each digit) used by the phone company. And he listed the actual paired frequencies for each digit!

The disclosure set up Ma Bell for a multimillion-dollar ripoff. A phone phreak stumbled on the article, copied the list of frequencies, and passed it along. In the years since the article was published, the list has been distributed throughout the nation. Today there are tens of thousands of copies in circulation.

One of the first to use the list was a blind Florida college boy. He happened to have perfect pitch. Whistling the code tones into the mouthpiece, he made long- distance calls all over the country before he was caught.

By then, others had discovered that they could reproduce the sounds on an electric organ. For instance, the notes F-five and A-five hit simultaneously produce a multifrequency tone of 900 cycles and 700 cycles per second. This corresponds to the phone company’s beep for the number “1.”

The key factor is that throughout the phone system the computerized machinery doing the receiving can’t tell the difference between sounds produced by its own transmitting equipment and duplications of those sounds by phone phreaks! Thus the phone company’s programmed gizmos will follow the instructions they “hear” from phreaks as readily as they will standard orders!

Say a Boston phone phreak wants to call a friend in Seattle. From any one of a variety of sources which, like the electric organ, will produce the necessary sounds, he prerecords a 2,600-cycle beep and then the series of multifrequency tones corresponding to the digits of the Seattle number. He usually uses a simple portable cassette recorder. Then he dials any “800” number on his telephone.

(All “800” numbers are toll-free. They’re used by companies like car-rental services, hotel chains, airlines, etc. The idea is to stimulate business by encouraging potential customers to call free of charge from anywhere in the country. Most phone phreaks keep lists of “800” numbers.)

When the Boston caller hears the “800” number being rung, he immediately holds his cassette player up to the mouthpiece and broadcasts the 2,600 cycle beep. The computer in the substation receiving the “800” call hears the sound as a signal that the tandem on its end is no longer in use. It assumes (because of the way in which it’s been programmed) that the call has been aborted back in Boston and therefore stops ringing the “800” number.

However, when the cassette player is shut off and the 2,600 cycle tone ceases, the receiving tandem (still hooked into the long-line, which is hooked into the Boston tandem, etc.) is now waiting for instructions from Boston. The Boston phreak plays the prerecorded tones of the Seattle number into the mouthpiece, and the receiving tandem routes the call, which then goes through. When this happens, the computer in Boston notes the fact that the “800” call has been completed. Because “800” calls are toll-free, the Boston computer neither keeps track of the time nor records any charges for the call.

Ingenious, huh?

But not as ingenious as an M.F.-er. That’s the gadget developed by really advanced phone phreaks. In its simplest form, the M.F.-er is a small box about the size of a cigarette package. It has a button on top, twelve buttons in front, and a speaker in back. The top button produces a prerecorded 2,600-cycle tone. The others produce prerecorded tones corresponding to the digits on the telephone dial. The two extra buttons are for specialized frequencies like “KP,” which stands for “Key Pulse,” and are used for overseas calls via satellite or cable.

The advantages are obvious. A cassette can only play prerecorded tone sequences. With an M.F.-er, the phone phreak can dial any number in the world. All he has to do is hold it up to the telephone mouthpiece and push the buttons the way he would if he were using a push-button phone⁷ .

It’s really something else, the M.F.-er . . . .

“. . . M.F.—er.” I’d spoken aloud without realizing it.

“Sonofabitch!” Randy, thinking I’d been cursing her, responded.

“Up yours!” My patience was frazzled.

“That’s where it is,” she reported.

“And whose fault is that? If you weren’t so stubborn . . .”

“I said I’d think about it.” Very haughty.

“You’ve had enough time to think,” I told her.

“What’s the answer?”

“No!” Her tone said it was final.

“Well, in that case . . .” I pushed her over backward and fell on top of her.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Outraged virtue.

“Guess!” I got her two wrists together, grabbed them firmly with one hand, and forced them to the ground in back of her head. With my other hand I squeezed her breasts, teasing the nipples to erection. I moved slowly inside her, trying to catch her up in the rhythm. When she stubbornly refused to respond, I pounded harder and faster, bending my head to kiss her at the same time, forcing my tongue between her clenched lips.

Randy bit it so savagely that I feared a permanent lisp. When I hastily withdrew it, bleeding, she started to scream.

“RAPE!” she howled. “RAPE! RAPE!” Over and over. “RAPE! RAPE! RAPE!”

“You’re getting redundant,” I pointed out.

“RA-A-A-A-A-APE!”

How about that? We’d been groin-joined for over an hour, and now she decides she’s the victim of a sexual attack! I swore to myself that if I ever got out of this I’d take a vow of celibacy! But of course my fingers were crossed. “Shut up!” I put my hand over her mouth and she bit it. I jerked it away, mangled.

“HELP! I’M BEING RAPED!” She bellowed like a banshee with its tail caught in a lawn mower. “I’M BEING RA-A-A-A-APED!”

Grimly I kept pounding away while touring the erogenous zones with my maimed mitt. I probed her navel, pinched her struggling bottom, dipped into the cleft between her burning cheeks, twanged her clitty. The last two brought results. Despite herself, Randy began to squirm with a tempo that was as much sensual as resistive.

But I congratulated myself too soon. Her panting breasts still testified as much to fury as to passion on the upswing. She pulled one hand free and belted me. WHAM! The wallop caught me smack on the old schnozzola.

“God damn you!” The blood pouring out of my beak made me furious. I slapped her face. Not hard enough to do any damage, but she felt it.

Randy whimpered.

I felt like a heel. The feeling put me off my guard. The next thing I knew she was clawing at my eyes, long nails plucking at them like they were ripe grapes ready to be taken from the vine.

For a minute I was blinded. Then I recaptured both her hands and pinned them again. “Cut that out!” I told her. “It’s throwing my rhythm off!”

By way of answer, she spit in my face. I leaned down and bit her breast. She pulled a leg out from under me and kicked me in the neck. When I grabbed for it, she got one hand free again and gouged my torso from chest to groin. I punched her in the arm muscle until she stopped scratching.

Out of breath, she subsided a little. During the pause I realized that something was happening. Her vagina was pulsating to the tune of my movements. The violence turned her on!

I let go of her hands. I dug my fingers into her thigh flesh. She pummeled my back and shoulders with her fists. I bit her ear, and then her neck. Her knee snapped up to jar my behind. I twisted her breast brutally. She went for my throat with her teeth.

But all the time, with all this going on, she was moving with me, not missing a stroke, her bottom bouncing to the tune I was calling, her hips writhing this way and that as I shifted the impalement, her clitty caressing the base of my joystick in a perfectly choreographed dance of mounting passion.

Now Randy’s aggression was channeled into the quest for lust release. She was shouting out the four-letter words again. I let her pull her legs loose, and she propped the soles of her feet against my chest, pedaling as if I were a bicycle.

The way she was doubled over, my weight was resting on her burning, perspiration-slicked haunches. I felt myself about to explode. On a crazy impulse, I lifted my hands and feet from the ground so that I was supported only by the swollen penis buried in her.

It drove her nuts. She began to shake like a castanet, then to explode like a string of firecrackers. When I myself detonated, the last firecracker went atomic!

Randy’s legs suddenly straightened out. The bottoms of her feet slammed against my chest. My cannon went off! Her volcano erupted! Love lava mixed with tar! . . . And I was propelled backward, abruptly ejected from her tarbox, stumbling to my feet, and then back down again as the dry prairie dust gave way under them. I settled hard on my rear end.

“SHEE—IT!” I roared.

I’d landed smack on a goddamn cactus!

CHAPTER NINE

“There are no cactus plants in Iowa!”

“No?” Standing, I stretched my arms behind me and plucked thorns from my bottom with both hands. “Then what the hell do you call this?”

“Cactus grows only in the Southwest,” Randy insisted. “Texas, New Mexico, places like that. Iowa’s too far north.”

“Nuts to that! I know a cactus when I land in one!”

“That plant is not a cactus!”

“Then what is it?” I kept pulling out bristles.

“I’m not sure. What do you think I am? Some kind of botany expert?”

“That’s how you’re coming on. But if you can’t label it, then it’s still a cactus to me. After all, it’s my behind.”

“It looks like a pincushion!” Randy giggled.

“Thanks a heap. That’s very helpful.”

“You want me to help?” She reached out and yanked a quill.

“OUCH! . . . Mother! I can do it myself!”

“All right. But let’s walk while you pluck. I’d like to get back to town before daylight.”

We made our way silently for a while. Then there was a howl in the distance. “Coyote,” I remarked.

“There are no coyotes in Iowa.” Now she was a zoologist, too.

I let it pass. I had other things on my mind. Like the fact that it was getting cold and we were both mother-naked; like the problem of unpricking my bun; like the reason I’d tracked down Randy Beaver in the first place.

“About Tom Swift . . .” I said.

The last time I’d raised the question, Randy had been prevented from answering by a sudden dip into hot tar. Dipped along with her, the question had been blotted from my mind as I hit the inky bottom of the glub tub. But now I was ready for some answers.

“Who?” Over-innocent. Randy’s acting ability wasn’t improving.

“The guy you worked for back in Vermont,” I prodded her. “As a Seeing Eye girl for his blind dog.”

“How’d you know about that?”

“What’s the difference? I know.”

“You sound like a cop.”

“Well, I’m not,” I assured her.

“A fed maybe . . .”

“Nope.” I picked at a stubborn thorn embedded in my rear end.

“Or maybe Ma Bell fuzz . . .”

That was a giveaway. “Why would phone fuzz be interested in Swift?”

“Why are you?” Randy wanted to know.

“O.R.G.Y. is doing a study of the psychoerotic causes and effects of phone tripping,” I improvised glibly. “The information I have says Tom Swift is one of the biggest phreaks in the country. I just want to interview him. Anything you tell me about him or his whereabouts will be kept confidential.”

“Why should I tell you anything?”

The thorn finally came loose. I looked at it. It was a full inch long. I flicked it away. “After all we’ve been to each other,” I wheedled.

“Trouble! That’s all you’ve been to me!” Randy’s disposition wasn’t getting any better, either. “Do you have to keep picking at yourself that way? It’s disgusting!”

I stopped plucking. Silence. We walked. My fingers itched to relieve my thorny problem. I restrained them.

“Does money interest you?” Awhile later I tried another tack.

“How much?”

I mentioned a figure. Randy upped it. We compromised. Amazing how loquacious she became. So much so that when I resumed plucking a few more quills as I listened, Randy didn’t even notice. We walked as she talked.

For openers, she filled me in on her own background as it related to her going to work for Tom Swift. Orphaned at the age of twelve when her parents were killed in a car crash, Randy had been taken in by a widowed uncle who had a farm in Vermont. Six years later, by which time she was filling out a shirt and jeans in ways that had even the hogs ogling her, Unc suddenly remembered he wasn’t a blood relative. One night, after a tussle in the haymow which left Randy’s jeans in tatters and Unc rejected, dejected, and ejected to the trough with the rest of the pigs, she helped herself to some of Unc’s seed money and took off for the nearest town.

Randy rented a furnished room and bought a local paper. She started answering the “Help Wanted” ads. Tom Swift’s was the third one she answered, and he hired her.

Besides taking care of his dog, her duties consisted of keeping his small cabin in order, running a few errands, and occasionally taking him places. The relationship, Randy said, was strictly business.

“An attractive girl like you?” I questioned the point.

“He couldn’t know that,” Randy reminded me. “Tom Swift is blind.”

“Braille . . .” I suggested, leaving it hanging.

“He never laid a finger on me.” A little regret there.

“What was he like?”

“Reserved, but very nice. Sort of good-looking, too. He smoked a pipe.” Randy went on to describe him. It tallied with the description Putnam had given me. She also told me Tom Swift had rented the cabin only a short while before she went to work for him. He had no friends in the area. Randy had no idea Why he’d chosen that particular locale.

“Do you know where he went when he left?” I asked.

No

“Did you know he was going?”

“Yes and no. He told me he’d be leaving soon about two weeks before he went. He gave me money to put the dog in the kennel, and paid my salary plus a month extra. But he didn’t say anything about sneaking off the way he did. Then, the day he left, he called and asked me to come to the cabin. Nothing unusual about that. Our arrangement was pretty loose, and I had lots of free time. But he’d often call me to come down if he needed something. This time, though, when I got there, he told me he was leaving immediately on urgent business. He was very nervous. He kept cocking his head toward the window like he was listening for something. Then he asked me to do this really weird thing. When I did it, he walked past the window, nodded like he heard what he expected to hear, and just took off.”

“What was the weird thing he asked you to do?”

“Take off all my clothes.”

“That doesn’t sound so weird.” I dug at another quill lodged in my sitter.

“Remember, he was blind. But it wasn’t just that. He said I should walk around nude after he left, play with the dog or something, and that I should stay there naked for at least a half-hour.”

So Tom Swift had deliberately arranged to distract the snoops’ attention! I mulled that one over as I removed the thorn. “Did you know Tom Swift was a phone phreak?” I inquired after a moment.

“Yes.” Randy nodded. “I put two and two together. See, I’d read a story in the paper about a phone phreak who got caught. Not one of those deals where a guy finds out a phone-company credit-card number and has the operator charge a long-distance call to it. This guy actually did something to the phone itself. Now, when I first went to work for Tom Swift, he’d have me take him down to the pay booth by the gas station and wait while he made some calls. He’d stay there a really long time. And once I saw him holding this little gadget up to the mouthpiece and pressing buttons. What was really peculiar was that he had a phone in his cabin. He got calls on it, but he never used it to make outgoing calls. Then, around the time he told me he was going to be leaving, he had the cabin phone disconnected. Of course, by then he’d learned the trail to the pay booth and could get there by himself, without me.”

I guessed that Tom Swift must have thought things were getting hot. He hadn’t wanted to chance being traced by incoming calls. “What about the calls he got at home?” I asked Randy.

“That was another peculiar thing. He never seemed to talk on the cabin phone. He’d just listen and hang up. Then, later, he’d go down to the gas station and call back.”

“How do you know he was calling back?”

“Because sometimes I answered the phone. Like if he was out at the john, or playing with the dog, times like that. These people with these funny names would leave their numbers. I’d tell him, and later he’d go down to the pay booth.”

“Funny names? Do you remember any of them?”

“ ‘Bugs Ameche,’ ” Randy remembered. “ ‘Gino Goldberg.’ And—oh! Sure!—‘Phoebe Phreeby’! She was always calling. I think she was his girl friend or something. She left her number with me so often it got so I knew it by heart.”

“Do you still remember the number?”

“Sure.” Randy rattled it off.

I repeated it aloud until I was sure I had it down pat. Phoebe Phreeby. It was a real break! I happily pulled out another bristle.

Of course, having located Randy Beaver, I could just have reported to Putnam and called it quits. I’d completed my assigned task. But I couldn’t rest on my laurels with a world at stake. Not when I had the lead which might turn up Tom Swift. To turn that lead over to Putnam’s snoops, to one of the fed agencies whose record smelled for itself, just wasn’t my style. Besides, it was O.R.G.Y.’s rainy season, and Putnam had mentioned a bonus if I could locate Tom Swift.

Humanitarianism? Or greed? So whose motives are pure? . . .

We reached the outskirts of Inferno. It was about three in the A.M. The streets were dark and still. I was still plucking away.

Randy was shivering beside me. My own naked body was chilled through. I wished I hadn’t given up smoking. I could have used a cigarette just to warm my hands.

Suddenly a figure stepped out of the shadows down the street. Coming closer, I recognized him. It was Pete, the leader of the tar-and-feather soiree. He was pointing a double-barreled shotgun straight at us.

“Hold it right there!” he ordered. “Just set down nice and easy. I’ll come to you.”

“I can’t sit down,” I told him. I turned around so he could see why.

“Sodomy with a porcupine,” he decided. “That ain’t gonna make it any better for you.”

“Make what any better? What’s going on?”

“You’re both under arrest.”

That’s when I noticed the oversize star pinned to his shirt. “What for?”

“Indecent exposure!”

CHAPTER TEN

Indecent exposure!

“But you’re the one who tore our clothes off!” Randy Beaver protested.

“Judge ain’t gonna buy that.” Sheriff Pete shrugged,

“How can you arrest us for being naked when its your fault we are?”

“Makes no never-mind. That’s the charge. Indecent exposure!” Saying which, Sheriff Pete marched us off to jail.

Separate cells. But not for long. To my surprise, the wheels of justice, as cranked by Sheriff Pete, spun quite fast. We hadn’t been locked up an hour when he was back to take us up before a judge for arraignment.

“What about some clothes?” Randy asked. We can’t go into court naked like this!”

“Not my responsibility.” The sheriff relented a little.

“Courthouse is just across the street,” he told her. Its still early. Nobody’ll see you.”

When we entered the courtroom, there were only two people there besides the judge. As we were ushered toward the front of the courtroom, I did a double-take at the figure looming over us on the bench. It was Julius, the henpecked lecher who’d kept groping Randy during the tar-and-feathering.

One of the other two people present was Julius’ wife. The other one was a man I recognized as also having been a member of the mob at the graveyard. He stepped up behind us as we came to a halt in front of Judge Julius.

“Charge is indecent exposure,” the judge announced. “ ’Fore I take your plea, law says I’m s’posed to ask you if you’re represented by counsel.”

Randy and I both shook our heads.

“That case, court ’signs counsel. Zachariah”— the judge nodded to the man standing behind‘ us— “you can confer with these here clients as to plea.”

“Thank you, your Honor.”

“Hurry it up, Zachariah. I already lost enough sleep for one night. Let’s get this over with, so’s I can get proper sack time.”

“Won’t take but a minute, your honor.” Zachariah turned to us and spoke softly. “Best enter a guilty plea,” he told us.

“Why should we?” Randy wanted to know.

“ ’Cause you’re guilty. Charge is indecent exposure. Fact is you’re as indecently exposed as anybody I seen in this town since the boiler blew up in the cathouse. No point in denying it.”

“But that’s because--”

“Now, hold it!” Zachariah held up his hand. “You’re gonna tell me ’bout mitigatin’ circumstances. An’ I’m tellin’ you if you plead not guilty, they ain’t gonna be heard. Leastwise if you plead guilty, then maybe when it comes to trial, Julius here’ll of had him a night’s sleep and maybe listen. So my advice is—”

“What’s takin’ so long there, Zachariah?” the judge w”anted to know. “These clients gonna disrupt this court some more?”

“Now, Julius, they ain’t hardly disrupted the court.

“Who’s the judge here, Zachariah?” Thunder.

“You are, your Honor.” Zachariah snapped to.

“Then if I say they’re disruptive, by God they’re disruptive!”

“Yes, your Honor.”

“Comin’ into court ’thout a stitch on! Now, what do you call that if it ain’t disruptive?” the judge demanded.

“But we couldn’t help—”

Zachariah shut Randy up. “My clients apologize for being disruptive, your Honor.”

“All right, then,” the judge grumbled. “Now, how do they plead?”

“Guilty, your Honor.”

“So entered.” Judge Julius stared down at us over the tops of his glasses. Or, rather, he stared at Randy. His watery blue eyes worked their way up and down her naked body like she was a candy cane and he was, a long-tongued peppermint freak. “Now ’bout bail— he started to say.

“ ’Scuse me, your Honor.” The sheriff spoke up. “ ’Fore you set bail, there’s somethin’ you oughta know.”

“What is it, Pete?”

“Can’t say right out, your Honor. Not with ladies in the courtroom.” The sheriff gestured respectfully toward Julius’ wife seated in the rear.

“You can approach the bench.”

The sheriff walked to the bench and leaned up to whisper. Judge Julius bent his head to hear h1m.

“With a porcupine!” the judge exclaimed quite loudly after he’d listened for a moment. He stared at me over the top of the sheriff’s head, his eyes wide with disbelief.

The sheriff whispered something else.

“Turn around,” the judge ordered me.

I turned around.

“I don’t know, Pete,” I heard the judge say. “Could be cactus thorns.”

“Now, Julius, you know ain’t no cactus growin’ in Iowa.”

“That a fact?” The judge waved the sheriff away from the bench. His eyes lit on Randy again. They grew brighter, as if he’d had a sudden inspiration. “Sheriff having brought certain special circumstances to my attention,” he announced, “I’ll see the accused separately in chambers to determine bail.” He fondled his gavel, as if in anticipation of softer fondlings to follow.

“JULIUS!” His wife’s bellow filled the courtroom. “You just set bail right now an’ send that hussy on her way! You hear me?”

He heard her. He set bail. Fifty bucks apiece. Fifty for me, and fifty for the piece he didn’t get.

The sheriff led us back to the jail. He decided to let us make a phone call. We called Twitchcock, who agreed to bring down some clothes for us and bail us out—provided I reimbursed him. I promised I would, Twitchcock hung up, and the sheriff locked us back in our separate cells to wait for him.

There were still some thorns stuck in my backside. They kept me from sitting down. I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever sit again. Plucking at them, I walked idly over to the barred cell door and looked at the hallway outside. After a few minutes I noticed the mirror.

The mirror was set in a corner where the hall turned sharply right. It was arranged so that it could be seen from the sheriff"s office, which was at the far end of the L-shaped hallway. The way it was angled, the sheriff, sitting at his desk, could keep tabs on the prisoners in the cells by looking at the reflection in the mirror.

And vice versa!

From my vantage point at the barred door to my cell, I had a clear view of the sheriffs office as it appeared in the mirror. I did a double-take. It couldn’t be! . . . It was!

Judge Julius’ wife was sitting on the sheriff’s desk! Her mouse-brown hair, worn in a tight bun before, now flowed loosely around her shoulders. Her blouse, which earlier had buttoned up to her neck about as intriguingly as a slab of gray cardboard, was now opened to the waist to reveal a pair of bra-encased mammaries which would have done credit to a melon grower. Her long skirt was pushed up around her hips to reveal shapely legs with thighs that were a little heavy and quivering like sour cream. Her sensible bloomers were down around her ankles, which stretched wide apart to hold them in place. A stout girdle concealed the welcoming mouth of the V formed by the juncture of her widespread thighs.

The girdle was giving the sheriff trouble. He was standing in front of her with his pants and underpants in a fallen heap tangling up his feet. He held the instrument of his aroused lust in one hand the way he’d held the shotgun earlier. With his other hand he was probing the mysteries veiled by the girdle.

“Man can’t hardly tell where he’s at with this damn thing, Amanda,” he complained. “Come on, now, an’ shuck it.”

“I can’t do that, Peter. Suppose someone should come?”

“Someone’ll be me if you’ll jes’ take it off. Anyway, you already got your bloomers down.”

“I can pull them up right quick, Peter. But not this corset. You wouldn’t believe what a job that is.”

“I believe. I believe,” he grumbled, poking away for all the world as if he was testing a roast beef to see if it was ready.

“Passion’s final hurdle is the girdle.” Amanda giggled. Coy yet!

“I think I got it!” Pete’s hand vanished up to the wrist.

“Oh my, yes!” Her hands locked around his neck, and she bounced up and down on the edge of the desk.

Using one hand to push the girdle out of his way as much as he was able, the sheriff advanced a few steps until he was wedged between her waiting limbs. He lunged forward, and her knees grasped at his hips. His naked bun moved in a blur of motion.

Amanda was propelled, sliding, from one side of the desk to the other and back again. The sheriff managed to get one hand under her, wedged between the girdle and her bottom, and whatever it was doing had her yelling “Whoops! Whoops! Whoops!” over and over again.

“Not so loud, Amanda,” he cautioned her, panting.

“Nobody can hear. Everyone’s still asleep.” She wriggled, pushing as tight up against him as she could get. “I want all of it!” she demanded. “Give me all of it!”

“I would if it wasn’t for this damn corset!”

“Then play with my bosoms.”

“Like this?”

“Oh, yes! Oh, that really is the whammies!”

Her large, bra-freed breasts bounced in his hands like twin footballs in mid-pass. The sheriff moved his hands to her hips then, leaning his weight forward, pinning her to the desktop. He was pounding away so determinedly that he didn’t even notice that his gonads were bouncing against the steel handle of the top desk drawer. Her ankles, still stretching the bloomers, were straining farther and farther apart. I was getting ridges in my cheeks from pressing against the bars to look in the mirror.

“Hot damn!” The sheriff came up off his feet and landed on top of her on the desk. She muffled a scream; her legs shot out straight; the ankle strain was too much for the bloomers; the elastic snapped.

Half a moment later they rolled off the desk and fell to the floor with a dull crash. That’s when I realized that my head was wedged so solidly between the bars that it was caught there. And that’s when the first knock sounded at the outer door to the sheriff’s office.

“Hell!” He got to his feet, struggling to pull up his boxer shorts and pants.

“That’s no language to be usin’ in front of a lady, Peter!” Amanda chastised him.

“Beggin’ your pardon, Amanda. But maybe you’d best get dressed in the closet. I reckon it’s that New York prevert with the bail money.”

“Well, all right, Peter, if you think it best. But see you hurry him on his way now. I have to be gettin’ back to fix Julius his breakfast. You know how the judge is about hot victuals when he wakes up in the mornin’.”

“Wouldn’t want to cheat the judge of his breakfast.”

The sheriff shooed her gently into the closet and shut the door. He took a few seconds to tuck in his shirt and unrumple his hair, and then he opened the outer door. It was Lancelot Twitchcock. All three hundred pounds of him. A welcome sight. He was huffing under the weight of the clothes he’d brought for Randy and me.

The sheriff relieved him of a hundred simoleons and had him sign some papers. “You understand that the accused ain’t ’lowed to leave the jur’sdiction of the court,” the sheriff told Twitchcock.

“I understand.”

“Well, see that they do. They can’t leave town till after the trial, which is set for a month come next Tuesday. They do, it means they’s jumped bail and is fugitives. Bail’s forfeit, an’ we call in the FBI to hunt ’em down.”

“All that for indecent exposure?” Twitchcock said. “They’re lucky they didn’t commit a really major crime like stealing a horse.”

“They had, there wouldn’t be no trial,” the sheriff told him. “Hoss thievin’s still a lynchin’ offense in these parts.”

“I see.” Twitchcock shuddered.

“You can let ’em out yourself.” The sheriff tossed Twitchcock a bunch of keys. “ ’Round that corner down the hall.” He jerked his thumb.

Twitchcock filled the mirror as he came toward it. Then he blocked it out entirely as he made the turn and started for my cell. When I could see it again, I was just in time to catch the reflection of the sheriff letting Amanda out of the closet. He gave her a quick kiss and sent her on her way to prepare the judge’s victuals.

“What are you looking at?” Twitchcock wanted to know.

“Nothing.”

“Why is your head between the bars like that?”

“It’s stuck.”

“Oh.” He considered it. “Have you ever tried sheep?” he asked out of left field.

“What?”

“Sheep. Soft and furry, you know. Not as exciting as porcupines, perhaps, but really much more—”

“I don’t dig animals,” I told him firmly.

“Really? Then how come those porcupine quills are sticking in your—”

“They’re not porcupine quills, dammit! Look, it’s a long story.” I forestalled further questions. “Just do me a favor and see if you can push my head back through these bars so I can get out of here.”

The penalties of voyeurism! It took some doing. Finally, with Twitchcock’s help, I managed to work loose. He unlocked my cell door and handed me my clothes. I dressed while he went on to Randy Beaver’s cell.

The sheriff let the three of us out the front door of his office. I was the last one through it, and his hand fell heavily on my shoulder as I passed him. I turned around to face him.

“Mister . . .” His voice was soft, but his eyes were like pissed-off granite. “You’re a stranger here’bouts, so I’m gonna tell you somethin’. I’m head man of our local Wildlife Preservation Society. You take my meanin’?”

There was a long silence. It got longer. What the hell was he talking about?

“You don’t take my meanin’,” he decided finally.

I smiled ingratiatingly and bobbed my head in agreement. I didn’t “take his meanin’.”

“I set great store by our local animals. They’re part of our national heritage, see what I mean?”

I didn’t see what he meant.

“Ain’t nobody gonna molest ’em. Not a cricket gonna be molested while I’m ’round! Not a gartersnake! Not a cow! Not a goddamn pussycat! You follow me?”

I didn’t follow him.

“Don’t you be playin’ games with me, mister. Don’t you be actin’ dumb! I’m givin’ you fair warnin’!”

“I don’t know what you -”

“Then jes’ hear this!” he roared suddenly. “You stay away from our porcupines! You jes’ haul ass clear of ’em! I catch you within diddlin’ distance of one, you’ll have a load of buckshot in your rear ’stead of some poor dumb animal’s quills! You got it now?”

I had it. I stuttered reassurances. I backed out of the door solemnly promising that never-—never again! -—would I sexually molest a local critter, quilled or not. I went back to the furnished room I’d rented and sacked out. I put myself to sleep repeating the phone number Randy Beaver had given me before we were busted, Phoebe Phreeby’s number. It was the only lead I had to Tom Swift, the only valid thing that had come out of all I’d been through during the past twenty-four hours.

I woke up early the next afternoon. After a healthy brunch, I put through a call to Washington, D.C. The call was to a private number Charles Putnam had provided me.

The brisk voice that answered wasn’t familiar to me. But when I identified myself to him, he confirmed that his instructions were to cooperate with me to the fullest extent. “I want a fast tracer on a phone number.” I told him the number.

He repeated it. “I’ll get right back to you,” he said crisply. He took the number of the booth I was calling from and hung up.

I waited. It took less than an hour. Then he was back on the line with the information.

The number belonged to a pay phone just outside the town of Darnell in the Wind River area of the Oregon woodlands. It was logging country, and the biggest thing in the town was a sawmill. The phone itself was located on the midway in an amusement park frequented mostly by loggers and teen-agers from the town.

My informant had been thorough. He was able to tell me precisely where the booth was in the amusement park. It was located directly across from a shooting gallery, between the roller coaster and the Hall of Mirrors.

Was Phoebe Phreeby a roller-coaster freak, too? I wondered as I went back to my room and packed. An amusement park. It seemed an odd place for phone tripping. But maybe not. Maybe the more public, the more private. In that kind of a setting, an M.F.-er’s operation might well go unnoticed.

I paid up at the rooming house, and then, suitcase in hand, I walked over to the local rent-a-car place. I arranged for a jalopy I could drive to the nearest airport and leave there. They wheeled it around to the front. Just as I was getting in, a hand grabbed my arm like a vise with lockjaw.

“Goin’ somewhere, Porcupine Plucker?” Law-and-Order on the hoof.

“I have to take a trip,” I told Sheriff Pete.

“No sheep dip?” His claw didn’t get any looser. “Some folks might call that jumpin’ bail,” he allowed.

“Some folks might,” I agreed. “But not me an’ you. We know I’d never do a thing like that. Besides, you’re dropping the charges. Remember?”

“I am? Now, why would I do a thing like that?”

“ ’Cause you’re so shucksy, folksy friendly,” I told him.

“Don’t put me on, wise-ass!” The claw came up.

I came up with it. Out of the car. But I kept my cool. “Sure you’re dropping the charges,” I repeated. I quickly went on to explain why.

I spoke admiringly of his technique in the saddle. I spoke enviously of his leather-skinned prairie flower, Amanda. I spoke sorrowfully of how I might feel myself forced to point out the horns on Judge Julius’ forehead to him if I was compelled to remain in Inferno. I spoke very earnestly, very convincingly.

And when I got through speaking, Sheriff Pete solicitously smoothed out the wrinkles his big paw had put in my jacket. He allowed as how I was really a fine fellow and he’d had me wrong all this time. He apologized for the tar and feathers. He even held the door for me as I climbed in behind the steering wheel of the car I’d rented.

“I’m gonna miss you, old buddy!” So help me, there was a lump in his throat. “But if you gotta go, you gotta go.”

“Like the laxative says.”

“Haw-haw-haw! That’s a real knee-slapper, that is. ‘Like the laxative says’! I gotta remember that one.”

“You do that.”

“Now, don’t you worry ’bout that little legal matter. I’ll see it’s cleared up ’thout no fuss a-tall.”

“Thank you, Sheriff.”

“Where you goin’ anyhow?” he asked.

“I’ve got a date with a porcupine.” I eased the car away from the curb.

“Well, don’t turn your sitter on the critter, old buddy!” he called after me as I roared away.

Next stop, Phoebe Phreeby!

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Playtime Amusement Park was just far enough out of town to be beyond the jurisdiction of the Darnell, Oregon, police force. The site was probably chosen for that reason. Besides the usual stomach-dropping rides, and attractions like a Fun House and a Tunnel of Love, Playtime offered a variety of less licit activities which the Darnell city fathers doubtless wouldn’t have allowed within the township’s limits.

There were skin shows-—topless go-go, strippers, belly dancers, etc.-—and rigged, carny-style gambling games (toss a rubber ring on a stout peg angled to make it bounce off; roll a ball down a ramp toward a series of numbered slots with the high-score one just enough narrower than the others to frustrate winning; pay a quarter to burst a balloon with a dart, and win a prize worth a nickel; even the old shell game), and porno shops, and slot machines, and bars galore. Nor were the ginmills too particular about who they served -- already drunken loggers, underage kids, hookers out for pickups. Playtime was Coney Island, Forty-second Street, the Sunset Strip, and the Ginza all rolled up into one.

The rides were open during the day for kids, but it was at night that the amusement park really came alive. I’d learned this—and little else—after spending a week on the premises trying to track down Phoebe Phreeby. It was strictly a haystack deal.

I hunted the needle by staking out the phone booth. I worked out a way to watch it without being obtrusive. The wall of the Hall of Mirrors facing the booth was one large looking glass. From the shooting gallery I could see the pay phone clearly reflected while looking in a different direction. The tricks you pick up in jail!

Except for the hookers, women by themselves were a rarity on the midway. None of those I spotted used the pay phone. Until that last night. . . .

The girl approaching the booth was black. Not light brown, or golden brown, or chocolate brown, but jet black. One look, and I didn’t need Stokely Carmichael to tell me black is beautiful. She was a knockout from the top of her wild Afro to the tips of her sandaled ebony toes.

Under the Afro was a face that combined sensuality and pride. The word is “identity”; this lady knew who she was. Her mouth was wide, the lips a little thin — stubbornness there. A well-shaped nose with nostrils that flared— anger too. High cheekbones, a firm chin, and dark, liquid eyes that said she could be as soft as melted butter when she wanted to be completed the neck-up picture.

From the neck‘ down it was Centerfoldsville. Not that she was dressed provocatively-—midi-skirt, neck-high sweater, sandals -- she wasn’t; but she had the goods; she didn’t need the wrappings. Her frame was tall, slender, long-legged. Perhaps the high breasts were a bit too heavy for the slim torso, but they were nicely balanced by solid hips curving away from an extremely narrow waist. Her rear end was also high and well-rounded; I suspected it took control to keep it from undulating sassily when she walked. For a girl in her freewheeling early twenties, she had control.

Watching in the mirror while pretending to aim a rifle at the gallery targets, I noticed that when she entered the booth she carefully left the door slightly ajar. This kept the overhead bulb inside from lighting, and rendered her less visible. Still, the bright lights of the midway, bounced back by the mirror, illuminated her enough for me to observe her actions.

She took the receiver off the hook, dropped a dime in the coin slot, and dialed. I counted. Ten digits were spun. That made it a long-distance call.

As soon as she was through dialing, however, she hunched up her shoulder in such a way that my view of the phone was blocked. I turned and looked directly at the booth. No better. I still couldn’t see past her shoulder.

Why was she sitting that way? Was it deliberate? Was she concealing something? An M .F .-er perhaps?

Twenty minutes later she hung up and left the booth. I cut crosswise from the shooting gallery to intercept her. “Excuse me, miss.” I blocked her path. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Buzz off, man!” She looked strangely frightened. “I’m not looking for company.”

“I’m not trying to pick you up,” I assured her. “I just want to ask you a couple of questions.”

Suddenly she bolted. It caught me by surprise. By the time I started moving myself, a man had brushed past me and was hurrying after her. She looked over her shoulder, spotted him, and dodged into an alley between a topless joint and an ice-cream stand.

The man followed, his haste at odds with his appearance. He wore a conservative pinstriped suit, a plain dark tie, and a businessman’s hat. He was middle-aged and well-groomed. Not the sort of WASP-type gent to be chasing a shapely black girl at a honky-tonk amusement park.

I was on his heels as we emerged on the midway again. Luck was against the black girl. The crowd was too thick here for her to run. She tried to duck into a bar, bumped into a couple coming out through the swinging doors, and stumbled. By the time she recovered herself, her pursuer had her by the arm.

“Come along with me, girlie.” Tough-guy voice with a gutter twang. It didn’t go with the gray pinstripe. More the rasp of a Chicago hood putting on the muscle; it shattered his image of respectability.

“No! Let go of me!” She struggled.

“Don’t give me no trouble,” he hissed.

A crowd was collecting. A young black man detached himself from it and went up to them. “What is it you want from this lady, mister?” he asked politely. His tone was calm, not hostile, but firm.

“Butt out!” the white man told him. He twisted her arm.

“You’re hurting me! Let me go!”

“I think you’d best let her go, mister,” the black man told him.

“Mind your business!”

“I’m making this my business!” The black man grabbed him from behind and forced him to release his grip on the girl’s arm. It was obvious he wasn’t trying to hurt the gir1’s assailant. He was merely holding onto him until the girl could get away.

She dived into the crowd across from where I was standing. The black man released the hood. He spun around, snarling. “You dumb bastard!”

“I don’t want any trouble, mister.” The black man turned away.

“That’s what you bought, shithead!” The torpedo spun him around by the shoulder and threw a punch.

While this was going on, I was hustling around the perimeter of the crowd, trying to spot the girl. But she had vanished.

The black man blocked the punch with his left arm and counterpunched with a short right. It caught the bully-boy on the side of the jaw, and he went down. He tried to brace the fall, and the sudden wrench tore both his suit jacket and his shirt. The shredded material hung away from a naked, hairy armpit.

“I’m sorry, mister.” The black man apologized. He held out his hand to help the other to his feet.

But the aggressor wasn’t signing any peace treaties. He brushed away the helping hand and came up frothing. There was an audible click, and then he was going for the black guy with an open switchblade!

The crowd scrambled back. The knife-wielder lunged. The black man jumped sideways. People hustled out of their way. Another lunge!

The black brother was cool. He didn’t turn his back and try to run. He knew that would only get him a shiv between the vertebrae. Instead, he faced the knife, gauging each pass as it started, jumping backward or to the side to avoid the stab.

The hood, however, wasn’t all klutz, either. He handled the switchblade like an expert. Each lunge was a little closer to being on target.

Retreating, the black man came abreast of me. The blade streaked, he dodged, the hood’s foot shot out. It hooked the black man’s leg, and he went down. The hood dived on top of him, knife plunging. The black man grabbed his wrist and stayed it. But the white guy had more leverage. The knife slowly inched toward the black throat.

I don’t like seeing people killed. Particularly if it’s a battle where one side has all the warheads. Besides, there was all that tempting hair sticking out of the armpit where the shirt and jacket had torn.

Bending over, I took a firm grip on the armpit hair and yanked. Hard! It sprang the knifer’s arm muscles.

He yelped. The switchblade flew from his grip and went clattering across the midway pavement.

The black man’s knee came up, caught the hood in the chest, and sent him sprawling over backward. Then the black man sprang to his feet and stood over him, fists held at the ready. But the fight had gone out of the white man. He just lay there looking up at his adversary.

“Thank you, mister.” The black man nodded to me. Then he backed away to where the knife had landed. He bent over, caught the blade under his heel, and snapped it. “See you around,” he told the hood noncommittally. He disappeared into the crowd.

The hood got to his feet. The crowd dissolved. I ambled back toward the shooting gallery.

It was over. I’d muffed it. I hadn’t even found out if the black girl was Phoebe Phreeby. And now she was gone. That’s what I figured. But I figured wrong.

Approaching the shooting gallery, I noticed a man shooting at the targets there. It took a minute before my mind registered the fact that there was something unusual about the gun he was using. It wasn’t one of the gallery rifles. It was a precision—made, high-powered job with a telescopic sight!

Suddenly he swiveled around and aimed up at one of the cars careening down the tracks of the roller coaster. Following his aim, I saw that the black girl was in the car. Calmly, he adjusted his sights. His finger squeezed the trigger.

I yelled!

The girl screamed!

He fired!

All three sounds were lost in the cacophony of the amusement park. Pleasure seekers’ ears aren’t attuned to the vibes of homicide. Nobody hears when it’s—

Murder on the loose!

CHAPTER TWELVE

The black girl’s scream coincided with her spotting the rifle aimed at her. It preceded the shot by a split second. She dived to the floor of the car, and the bullet passed over her.

I raced toward the shooting gallery, my eyes darting back and forth between the marksman and his target. The roller coaster whipped around a loop, climbed again, and then started its final breathtaking descent. When it hit the bottom of the curve, I could see, the interior of the car the girl was in would be clearly visible. She’d have no place to hide! He’d have a clean shot at a completely exposed target!

The car reached the last lap of its steep plunge. He had her in his sights now. Calmly, like a pro, he once again squeezed the trigger!

And just as he did, I lurched into him, spoiling the shot. “I beg your pardon,” I said with bland innocence.

He didn’t waste time on recriminations. I’ll give him that. He quickly dismantled the weapon, tossed the pieces into a black bag that looked like a doctor’s satchel, and walked swiftly away.

I didn’t try to stop him. My first objective was to get to the black girl, and I couldn’t do both things at once. So I headed for the roller coaster.

She was off and running before it came to a halt beside the bottom platform. I was quite a ways behind her, just managing to keep her in sight. Suddenly, as she was passing the entrance to the Tunnel of Love, she stopped short. I looked past her and saw the man in her path. What made this third man as ominous as his two predecessors was the revolver he was flashing at her.

He held it in close to his body so as not to attract attention. But he’d made sure that the black girl could see it. When he beckoned to her with his other hand, she had no choice but to continue toward him.

Then, providentially, a group of teen-agers chasing each other swarmed between the gunsel and the girl. She took advantage of the distraction to dart into the entrance to the Tunnel of Love. She threw some change to the cashier, passed through the turnstile, and jumped into an empty boat being chain-towed past the dock. She vanished into the darkness of the tunnel.

The torpedo started to follow her, then checked himself. Instead, he headed for a point where the water-way emerged from the tunnel and reentered it. I joined him there just as the first gondola of the boat train emerged.

In it were a large lumberjack in a red plaid shirt and a small, thin girl who looked like a toy in his hands. Those hands were all over her. She was fighting not so much for her virtue as for the chance of getting another wearing out of the blouse he was mangling.

A disheveled teen-age girl sat between two boys in the second boat. She noticed us looking her way. Reaching down with both hands, she unzipped both guys‘ flies, revealing their aroused conditions. She giggled loudly.

There were two males in the third gondola. They were holding hands and looking soulfully into each other’s eyes. They were oblivious.

The fourth boat contained a middle-aged couple arguing violently. They had to be married. Nobody fights like that out of wedlock.

At first glance, the fifth boat looked empty. Then I noticed the clothing shoved into the corner of the benchseat. Peering, I could just make out two entwined, undressed bodies sloshing around on the floor of the craft. The sounds of heavy breathing floated past. The sixth and last gondola was the one the black girl had boarded. Now it sailed into view. It too looked empty. It came close enough to see the whole interior, including the bottom. It was empty!

Inadvertently, the eyes of the man with the revolver met mine. A spark of realization jumped the space between us. We both turned and headed back toward the dock from which the boat had embarked.

I saw her pull herself out of the water before we were even halfway there. So did he. His pistol streaked from its holster. He got off two shots before I knocked it out of his hand. He retrieved the gun, looked toward the dock, no longer saw the black girl, and cut out while the crowd attracted by the shots was still gather- mg.

I headed for the dock. She was nowhere in sight. Once again she had vanished. And I was left with my questions:

Was the black girl Phoebe Phreeby? If so, who was trying to kill her? And why? And what did it have to do with Tom Swift?

Pondering these questions, I scuffed the dust of the midway. It hadn’t rained the entire week I’d been in Oregon. So how come the soles of my shoes all of a sudden squished mud?

Sherlock Holmes lives! Likewise the Last of the Mohicans deciphering trail signs, and Hansel and Gretel with their motto: Follow the Bread Crumbs. Only the bread crumbs were tiny rivulets and little droplets of water!

The black girl was wringing wet when she took off down the midway. She was shedding water as she ran. To find her again, all I had to do was follow the damp. Elementary, my dear Watson!

The arrows of wet trickled out in front of the Hall of Mirrors. Click! She must have sought refuge here. I bought a ticket and went inside to look for her.

The interior of the Hall of Mirrors was an inconstantly revolving maze. The mirrors reflected every kind of distorted image conceivable. They were joined at angles designed to annihilate perspective. Far-off figures seemed close at hand, nearby ones appeared in the distance, vision was warped around corners, reversed, turned upside down. Flashing lights and constantly changing color patterns added psychedelic elements to the reflected fantasies. The ramps leading through the mirrored maze tilted unexpectedly—up, down, sideways—and presented an assortment of false paths leading to dead ends.

Entering, I faced an elongated figure, a squashed blob of a man, and a Frankenstein monster all laughing at me—and all of them me doing the laughing! It was the ultimate in low self-image! Particularly when a giant foot stepped on all three versions and wiped them out. The foot was black, sandaled, and still wet. It fused into an image of the black girl—sodden clothes clinging to a toothpick body. Her head was gigantic and precarious atop it, like an oversized cocktail olive. The huge, liquid eyes were filled with fear.

She was staring at a man with horribly distorted features. He was coming toward her, hands like claws tensing a stout cord—a strangler’s cord; this was no illusion; a garrote! His ghastly face turned from green to red to purple over his turtleneck sweater as he stalked her.

He reached out, the cord-loop snapped expertly around the black girl’s neck—and closed on empty air! She dived into a smaller self which dived into a smaller self, etc. Thus she vanished into mirrors within mirrors. The strangler, trying to follow her, swelled to giant size and temporarily disintegrated.

“I’m entitled to my fetish!”

The words were spoken by a balding, middle-aged man standing on his head in the mirror directly in front of me. I recognized the shapely blond in hot pants —also standing on her head—beside him. She was a hooker who frequently hung out in a bar adjacent to the shooting gallery.

“But here, sweetie?” The blond was apprehensive. “Where everybody can see us?”

“That’s what makes it so exciting!” His tongue licked his upside-down lips.

“Gee, honey, I don’t think . . .”

“It’s worth fifty bucks.”

“For fifty bucks I don’t have to think,” she decided. “Now, what exactly . . . ?”

His dangling head moved to whisper in her topsy-turvy ear. His hand reached for the bare flesh of her breasts spilling out from the low-cut blouse she was wearing. Only the top half-moons were revealed; the rest of her bosom stayed inside the blouse in defiance of the law of gravity.

She giggled. Her hand stretched up to stroke his thigh. They dissolved into a far-off frame.

I also moved along. A hundred and one midget black girls suddenly ran past me. A hundred and one turtle-necked stranglers were right behind them. I threw a hundred and one roundhouse rights at the second group as they came by—and missed them all.

“Stop! Thief! He stole my purse! Stop! Thief!”

One of those hundred and one punches I’d thrown had hooked a large pocketbook carried by a youngish, bespectacled redhead in slacks. Now the lady’s bag was dangling from my arm. But when I turned around to give it back to her, she rolled up into a little ball and bounded away in hot pursuit of a far-off, elongated reflection of me.

“Sto-0-o-op! Thie-ie-ie-ief! I’ve been ro-o-o-o- obbed!” The redhead’s voice receded into the distance.

I tried to follow her and stumbled against a gigantic man striped red, white, and blue. I grabbed hold of him for support. His eyes lit on the lady’s handbag I was holding and filled with suspicion.

“Keep your hands to yourself, Mac!” He shoved me away violently.

“Sorry.” My image in the mirror featured exaggerated hips and a ballooning bosom topped with a face bristling in need of a shave. I backed away.

“I don’t swing that way!” the giant assured me, muscles rippling.

“I don’t either.” The handbag swung gaily as I nervously transferred it from one hand to the other. The words fell flat.

A little girl about eight years old, shaped like a pear and colored purple, called to the giant from an adjacent mirror. “Daddy! Daddy! You can’t catch me!”

“Giselle! You stop that teasing now!” The giant started for her and ran smack into the mirror glass with his nose.

I tried not to laugh. But stifling it was a bad idea. It made the laugh come out a high-pitched whinny.

The giant was offended. He turned toward me with fists like hamhocks. Still holding the lady’s handbag, I took off through a series of mirrored passages.

I braked to a halt in front of the hooker and her client. They were a jumble of geometric forms. Her hot pants covered a sharp-etched hexagon. His balding head was a pyramid. One of her breasts, bared, was a blue cube with an orange dome for a nipple. His hand was a metallic, five-pointed star rising over the dome. Both of them stood on triangular legs.

“What’s that?” Distracted, she pointed an isosceles finger at me.

“That is a mustard-colored octahedron.”

“Well, it’s watching us."

“Nonsense. It’s only an illusion. And even if it was watching us, in this place who would believe their eyes? That’s the kick! We can do what we like right under their noses, and they’ll think their minds are playing pornographic tricks on them.”

“I tell you, it’s leering at us!”

“Your mind is distorting the image. It’s probably all the way on the other side of the maze. Your imagination is playing tricks. It’s not real!”

The hell he said! Threats to one’s identity must be dealt with firmly. I tweaked his nose—firmly!

The blond hooker giggled behind me as I left them. Moving on, once again I spotted the black girl in a mirror. She was a small, shiny, ebony beetle backing into a corner of reflecting glass. A turtle-necked spider with a strangler’s web taut between two tentacles was moving in on her.

From out of nowhere, a tiny white ant stepped between them. It took me a few seconds to realize it was the little girl, Giselle. She blinked at the garrote. “Make a cat’s cradle,” she demanded.

“Get away, kid! I’m busy!” The spider tried to step around her to get at the beetle, but the insistent white ant sidestepped with him.

“You don’t know how!” Giselle taunted him.

“Beat it!”

“Give it to me! I can do it!” The white ant grabbed the cord with both antennae. She must have taken him by surprise, because he let go. “Nyah! Nyah! I got it!” The white ant scampered away.

Cursing, the spider chased after her. It was a reprieve for the black beetle. She hurried off in the opposite direction.

A moment later the black girl collided with me, the two of us now transformed into jagged, elongated light streaks. Nevertheless, I could feel her body hot with panic under the still-soaking sweater and skirt. “Hold still!” I told her. “I want to help you.”

The zigzag flash of her knee caught me in my crackling groin. Short-circuited, I doubled over. She vanished in black-tinted glass, running through a fat round blob which rolled through her and on up to me.

“Why are you holding yourself there?” Giselle asked, pointing. When I didn’t answer, she spoke again. “My mommy says it’s nasty to play with yourself.”

“Giselle! You stay away from that fag!” her father’s voice commanded.

“Your brain will turn to oatmeal and they’ll have to put you away,” she assured me.

“Giselle!”

“Your father wants you.” I managed to straighten up.

“And you were carrying a lady’s pocka’book,” Giselle remembered, spying the redhead’s handbag lying on the ramp where I’d dropped it when the black girl kicked me. “Maybe your brain has already turned to oatmeal,” she decided. She picked up the pocket-book and rolled away, swinging it from one hand, and the garrote from the other.

“Hey! Come back with that!”

But she was gone. Her father replaced her, an enormous sphere breathing fire. “Keep your paws off my kid, you queer!”

“She took my pocketbook.”

“Your pocketbook?” He snorted contempt.

“My pocketbook!” A redheaded ball bounced angrily up to us. “Thief!” She shook a fist under my nose. “Give it back to me!”

“I don’t have it.” I tried to explain. “The kid took-—”

“Look at that!” Daddykins interrupted me. “Do you see what I see?”

The redhead and I both looked at the mirror he was pointing at. The glass was the size of a Cinerama movie screen. It was filled by two magnified, gigantic figures —the blond joy girl and her client. Her blouse was pulled down from her forty-foot breasts, and his huge face was buried between them. The lower half of his body was grinding against her—-a dinosaur’s trousered backside—boxing her into a corner.

The blond’s fingers, a swarm of giant, red-nosed, wriggling eels, managed to squeeze between their lower bodies to open a zipper with teeth like a whale’s. Jonah, tremendous, sprang free. The eels surrounded him.

“Ooh! Look at that!” Miss Hot Pants was impressed.

“It’s not so much.” Old Baldy was modest.

“It could choke a horse!”

“I had something like that in mind.”

Giselle, three heads bobbing, hopped into the scene. “Can I play, too?”

“Giselle! Don’t you dare look!” She already had, but that didn’t stop her father from taking off like a super-jet to rescue her.

“That kid’s got my bag!” The redhead was right behind him.

“Go away, little girl,” the blond told Giselle. “We’re busy.”

The kid skipped out of the frame just as her father entered. He caught sight of the last of her three heads and hurried after her.

“Stop! Thief!” The redhead was right behind them. But the sight of the entwined behemoths in the quivering flesh brought her up short. “Is this man bothering you, miss?” she asked the bimbo.

No answer. The blond was otherwise occupied. “Because if he is,” the redhead added, “I just want you to know that I’m not one of those people who’s afraid to get involved.”

“Please, lady,” the mammoth man panted, “I’ve got all I can handle now.”

“Mmmm! So has she!” The redhead peered over her bifocals.

“Listen, you!” The blond took time out. “Stay on your own side of the street!”

“Well, I never!” The redhead departed in a huff.

“I can believe that!” The giant hooker slid to her knees.

Titillating as it was, I wrenched my eyes away from the couple. I had to find the black girl. I wended my way through the mirrors, looking for her.

I spotted her reflection-—short, squat, pinheaded. She was frantically trying to find her way out of the maze. One dead-end mirror after another frustrated her. When she finally started down a path that didn’t, she was brought up short by the sight of the would-be strangler waiting at the end of it.

The black girl reversed herself. Too late! He’d seen her! Transformed into a skeleton on the hoof, he clacked after her fat, fleeing figure.

Several things happened at once then, and the action kaleidoscoped. Giselle, a multicolored ball of fur, collided with the skeleton. The black girl puffed up to a glasslike blob, shattered into beads, and scattered in twenty different directions. The turtle-necked bonehead snatched his garrote back from Giselle. The black girl materialized right in front of me, running fast.

“Give it back!” Giselle wailed.

I grabbed for the black girl.

“I’ll tell my daddy!” Giselle chased the skeleton.

I came up with two hands full of two breasts— neither belonging to the black girl.

“Giselle! You come here, or Daddy’s going to spank you!” Her father-—-his nose ten feet long and bright red—ran after his furry daughter.

“Rape! Help! Rape!” The redhead yanked her bruised mammaries from my grip. “Rape!” she yelled again.

First Randy Beaver, and now this schoolteacherish redhead! It makes a man think. I was beginning to wonder if I wasn’t a rapist myself!

I ran. A moment later I met myself coming-—-a stalk of green celery. The redhead was a purple carrot on my heels. A polka-dotted onion tried to tackle me.

Swerving through another mirror, I avoided the tackle. The onion and the carrot collided. “Sonofabitch!” Behind me, the onion, Giselle’s father, picked himself up.

“You said a nasty word, Daddy!” Giselle, a blue turnip, danced around them. “Shame-shame! I heard you. Shame-shame on Daddy!”

I rounded another corner and braked to a halt in front of a two-hundred-pound breast with a bright orange nipple the size of a flagpole. A fang-filled, giant green fish mouth was assaulting it. The revolving mirrors were playing weird tricks with the hooker and her client.

The parts of their bodies that moved became magnified and distorted and changed color rapidly. The blond had raised herself up to give the mouth access to her breast. Now she settled to her knees again.

Her own huge lips parted to reveal a mammoth, curled tongue. The flagpole of his throbbing manhood bucked and grew impossibly larger as the tremendous snake-tongue grazed it. Then it struck, bypassing the flagpole, darting inside the opening of his pants, flicking tensed thigh muscles. It moved from side to side, from the sensitive flesh of one leg to the hidden crease where the other joined his torso. Sawteeth nibbled around the forest of his groin. His throbbing penis enlarged once again and blurred.

Pursed lips, the mouth of a cosmic vacuum cleaner, drew in the hairy bowling bag of his scrotum. First one bowling ball, and then the other vanished between them, to reappear even more swollen and red. The snake-tongue struck again, laving the area between.

His hands, huge slabs of meat, grabbed her by the ears and forced her mouth to the jumping tip of the flagpole. It vanished to the base, half reappeared, then vanished again. Choking, she tried to spit it out for a minute, placating him by licking the huge crest with her tongue. But he quickly forced it back in full length.

The hooker’s whole head moved in circles now -- an immense spinner on an immense rod. It was all he could do to hang on to her ears. He was bouncing up and down like a giant on a Pogo stick.

“Now, baby! Now!” He lunged forward.

The blond went over backward. He stayed with her. He landed on his knees, thighs locked around her bobbing jaw, rear end going like a Con Ed generator. She gulped mightily, as if trying to swallow a geyser to keep from drowning.

It crossed my mind that he must have been saving it up for a long time. The thought was shattered by a sudden, loud scream. It was the kind of scream that means business.

I swung around and checked the mirrors behind me. The scream sounded again-—desperation, horror, fear! Then I spotted her. It was the black girl screaming.

Two disembodied hands reached out, the strangler’s cord between them. The cord looped around her neck and snapped tight. Her hands clawed at her throat. Her eyes bulged. The scream abruptly stopped. It was very quiet. . . .

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The crash of mirror glass shattering broke the silence. Seven years’ bad luck. I didn’t stop to worry about it. The silken cord was tightening around the neck of the unconscious black girl. I followed up my first karate kick with a second one, smashing another trick reflector to smithereens. I kicked again and again, breaking more mirrors, defying superstition. And then I reached the spot where the disembodied hands were pulling at the knotted ends of the garrote.

The hands dropped the noose and turned into fists defending against my interruption. The black girl slid to the ramp and lay still. A fist came at me. I ducked under it and threw a punch at a space just above and between the two flailing arms. I hit empty air. I caught one in the ribs, was thrown further off balance, and went sprawling against a mirror. A kick from an invisible foot glanced off my shoulder.

No good. It was like trying to fight a whirlwind. I couldn’t hit what I couldn’t see. But invisible eyes were directing blows at me, and the blows were landing. They hurt.

I scrambled away from the blur of fists. I kicked the nearest mirror and shattered it. A turtleneck and a face appeared, floating above the hairy arms. I landed a punch on the nose, aimed a kick at where the groin should have been, missed, and took a chop to the collarbone that numbed my left arm.

Spinning away, I retreated and broke another mirror. A chest and stomach appeared under the turtle-neck. I bounced a fast one-two off the tummy as low as I could reach. I followed it up with a finger jab to his right eye.

Now it was he who back-pedaled. The job I’d done on his eye hadn’t just affected his vision; it also disoriented him. He came up from the floor with a right hand that landed smack on my jaw. Only the jaw it hit was the one on my mirrored face. The last glass broke, his fist came away with splintered, bloody knuckles, and all of him—my actual adversary— came into solid view.

I stamped on the strangler’s instep, tied him up with a hug, and delivered a tattoo of blows to his kidneys. He broke away with a solid punch to the solar plexus that left my lungs inquiring as to who shut off the air. Gasping, I doubled over.

It felt like I’d been stomped by an elephant, but he didn’t follow up his advantage. Instead, he instituted a new tactic. He bypassed me, seized the limp black girl from the floor, and started running.

By now, quite a hubbub was building. People had been attracted to the Hall of Mirrors by the melee. The proprietors of the place, not content to meekly watch it being demolished, had summoned the amusement-park cops.

“Hey, Rube!” An old-time carny shill sounded the cry from one of the gambling booths. In response to it, Playtime personnel converged on the Hall of Mirrors with clubs, axes, crowbars—all sorts of makeshift weapons. Between them and the cops, and a few high-spirited lumberjacks eager to join the fray, the scene was quickly turning into a full-scale rumble.

Getting my breath back, I took off after the figure carrying the girl. He’d managed to get a good start on me, but he was blocked by the mob stampeding past the Fun House toward the Hall of Mirrors. He was literally swept up by them and carried back to me.

I met him with a solid right to the jaw. I threw everything I had into it. He went down like a felled tree. The black girl rolled out of his arms.

It was all I could do to rescue her from being trampled underfoot. The strangler wasn’t so fortunate. Unseeing feet pounded him into the pavement of the midway.

I slung the girl over my shoulder and let myself be carried along by the crowd. I worked my way to the fringes of the stampede. Then, spotting an opening, I ducked into a side alley between two ginmills.

Keeping to the alleys, I carried the girl to the outer edges of the amusement park. I found an exit and started up a trail leading through the tall trees of the Oregon woods. She was a big girl, and her clothing was still wet from her Tunnel of Love swim, which made her heavier. So as soon as I thought I’d put some reasonable distance between us and the people back at Playtime who were trying to kill her, I set her down on the ground.

The spot I chose was a small clearing concealed from the trail by a thick, semicircular copse of trees. It was half-lit by a northern moon. The light didn’t tell me much about her condition. She lay deadly still, and it was hard to say if she was a corpse or merely unconscious.

I picked up her wrist and felt for a pulse. No luck. I felt nothing. I bent to her face. She didn’t seem to be breathing. There was an angry welt around her neck, a deep gully from gullet to nape, a testimonial left by the garrote. I slipped my hand under the bottom of her sweater and groped for a heartbeat. Her flesh was like ice.

Then I felt it, a faint throbbing about an inch below the bra she was wearing. My hand stayed there as I counted, trying to judge the rate of the heartbeat. I was still counting when she stirred and groaned.

Her eyes fluttered open. They were blank for a second and then focused on me. Her hand came up with surprising strength—weak as she was, the strength could only have been born of fear—-and her nails raked my cheek.

“Whoa!” I grabbed her wrist and forced her back down. I had to sprawl on top of her to keep her there. My hand was still under her soggy sweater, providing part of the leverage I needed to hold her by pinning her right breast. “I’m on your side. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be a corpse by now,” I told her.

She stopped struggling and looked at me suspiciously. “Would you mind not squeezing my breast like that?” she suggested. “I’m not exactly in the mood.” Her voice was very hoarse.

“Sorry.” I removed my hand from under her sweater. “How do you feel?” I inquired.

“I’ve got a sore throat.”

“Cause and effect,” I told her. “Comes from sticking your neck in a noose.”

“Get off me, will you? You’re heavy.”

I got up warily. I’d invested too much in catching up with her to chance her suddenly fleeing and losing me in the woods. But she didn’t try to run. She just sat up and wrapped her arms around herself, trying to stop the shivering that had seized her body.

“Christ, it’s cold!” she said.

“Northern nights. And besides, you’re soaked to the skin. You ought to get out of those wet clothes.”

“And what are you going to be doing while I’m lying around in the altogether?”

“Behaving like a gentleman!” I assured her. Yeah, I have my supercilious moments. “You can put this on,” I added, tossing her my tweed sport jacket.

She took the jacket, stood up, and started walking toward the edge of the clearing. I moved quickly to block her path. “What’s the matter?” she wanted to know.

“I don’t want you out of my sight. Sorry.”

“Is that how you get your kicks?”

“Think what you want.” I shrugged.

“All right, then!” Anger made her brazen. “Bug out your eyes and eat your liver, mister!” She stepped to the center of the clearing and kicked off her sandals.

The sweater came up slowly to reveal the bottom curve of the white brassiere encasing her heavy, up-tilted breasts. The skin of her midriff and the flesh over-flowing the top of the bra shone like polished ebony in the moonlight. The effect was of large, perfect black bubbles bursting from lacy white froth.

Her hands went to her midi-skirt. It buttoned down one side. She bent and started opening it from the hem, working her way up. Her long legs were shapely, but strong; smooth, but with muscles playing under the silky black thighs. She lay the midi-skirt down on top of the sweater.

Skimpy bikini panties hugged a rear end that was high, compact, pert, and round as a melon. Her hips were equally firm, but looked slightly plump by comparison with her flat belly. In the center of the belly, her navel was a deep, mysterious well in a sea of blackness.

She put on my jacket. Her hands reached under it and behind her. She released the bra snap. As she wriggled free of the halter, I glimpsed the black bubbles bursting free, taut purple nipples set in wide red aureoles springing proudly upward. She closed the jacket over the luscious globes. Only the deep cleavage between them showed.

She turned her back to me to remove the panties. She didn’t realize that the coattail separated. I was treated to a view of her succulent behind bobbing as she pushed the panties down her legs and stepped out of them. When she turned back to me, she’d buttoned the jacket. It reached about an inch down her thigh. All items were covered.

“Satisfied?” Her raspy voice was filled with sarcasm.

“Window shopping never satisfies me.”

“Tough.” Inside the jacket she was still shivering.

Her attitude being as hostile as it was, I decided to change the subject. “Somebody wants you dead,” I told her.

“Brilliant! How did you ever figure that out?”

I ignored the irony. “Why?” I wanted to know. That was the question: Why were they trying to kill her? And who?

“How come you ask so many questions?” she countered. “Who are you?”

“My name is Steve Victor. I’m trying to find Tom Swift.”

“Who’s Tom Swift?”

“A phone phreak.” I watched her narrowly, trying to gauge her reaction. “With a girl friend named Phoebe Phreeby.” Her eyes narrowed; that had definitely put her on her guard. “I’m looking for her too,” I added.

“So? I’m not Phoebe Phreeby.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. My name is Liberty Dix. I ought to know who I am. And I’m definitely not Phoebe Phreeby!”

Like they say, you can’t win ’em all!

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

How come the Eskimos don’t have an overpopulation problem? Given the freezing temperatures and those long winter nights, it seems logical that icy cold and ennui would naturally cause an increase in sexual activity. Yet Nanook and his bedmate, without benefit of the pill, produce so few offspring that Eskimo tribes face extinction. How come?

There’s more than one way to skin a walrus. That’s the answer. Jacketless and shivering in the still coldness of the Oregon night, it was about to be brought home to me.

“Your lips are turning blue,” Liberty Dix observed.

“You don’t exactly look overheated yourself.”

“The wind is blowing right up this jacket.” Her teeth were chattering. “And it’s all there is between me and the elements.”

“I remember,” I told her. “Listen,” I added, “this is no time to stand on formalities. If we don’t hang together, we’ll freeze separately.”

“What do you mean?”

“Body heat. It’s the only way we can keep warm.”

“Maybe you’d better spell it out, mister.” Suspicion iced over her black face.

“Call me ‘Steve.’ And why are you so hostile? I’m just offering you my body for warmth.”

“That’s damn white of you!”

“That’s damn trite of you!” I snapped back. “But if you’ve got a better idea, you’d better come up with it before we turn into separate-but-equal Popsicles.”

Shaking with the cold, Liberty gave in to my logic. She strode over and sat down next to me. When I put my arms around the tweed jacket, she didn’t protest. Under the rough material, I could feel her slender but voluptuous ebony body continue to tremble.

She huddled against my chest, her face burrowing into me like a child seeking reassurance. “You poor kid,” I said spontaneously. “You really have been having a rough time.”

Her answering sigh was a half-sob. Her body relaxed with the words, a signal perhaps that a little trust was replacing her suspicion of me. It was confirmed a moment later when she unbuttoned the jacket, pressed against me, and drew it around both of us as best she could.

The warmth of her large, globular breasts-in contrast to the coldness of her nose before-—was welcome. I unbuttoned my shirt and pressed my bare chest against her under the jacket around us both.

“That’s nice,” she murmured. “You’re a warm man.” She snuggled closer, sharp nipples biting into my flesh.

The movement caused the jacket to ride up over her hip and one impudent cheek of her bottom. I reached behind her to pull it down. “You’re like ice!” I ex- claimed.

“That’s the part that always gets coldest.”

“But you’ll freeze!” I slapped her there several times in rapid succession.

“Hey! What are you doing?” Liberty wriggled in protest, and I felt a quiver of lust at the sight.

“Trying to get the circulation going.”

“Oh. Well, try doing it gently.” Her hand reached behind her, closed over mine, and kneaded it gently into the soft, cold flesh. “Like this.”

“Like this?” I echoed.

“Mmmm.” She wriggled again, more slowly this time, more sensuously.

The plump flesh grew warmer under my ministrations. But in the moonlight I could see goose pimples on the backs of her well-curved, sturdy legs. I changed positions, stretching out on the ground. Then I drew her to me so that the lengths of our bodies were touching. She didn’t object.

On the contrary, she entwined her legs with mine in a quest for greater warmth. “I can’t feel my toes,” she said.

I sat up and took off my shoes and socks. I pulled the socks over her delicate feet and put my shoes back on my own tootsies. Then I had another thought. I stood up, took off my pants, and handed them to her. She pulled them on without standing. “But now your legs will freeze,” she commented as I lay back down be- side her once again.

“They’re not that cold.”

She reached out with her hand and ran the palm down the hairy side of my upper leg. “Well, it sure feels cold.” She shifted position so that her legs were wrapped around mine again.

It was warmer that way. Lots warmer. And it was also . . . Well, the growing tumescence bulging inside my Jockey shorts spoke for itself.

“Is that what you call ‘behaving like a gentleman’?” she inquired, mocking.

“I’m sorry.” I pulled away a little. “Some things are beyond the control of even the most circumspect gentleman.”

“Well, if it’s beyond control, I guess there’s nothing can be done about it.” Liberty closed the distance again. The protuberance wedged snugly between the legs of the trousers I’d lent her.

She hadn’t zipped up the fly. When she moved, I felt the flesh of her groin burning directly against the tent pole of my overstretched Jockey shorts. She felt it, too, and her erect nipples flattened out against my chest as she gasped.

Liberty raised her head. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted. When I kissed her, they parted even more. Her mouth was warm, a snug harbor for my tongue, and her own tongue was an elusive and exciting playmate for it. Her small, sharp teeth nibbled my lower lip as the kiss ended. She laughed low in her throat.

My lips went to her ear, then trailed down her graceful neck to the hollow of her shoulder. Excited, her hips began to move; her torrid mound rolled back and forth across the thin cotton of my shorts, causing them to jut out even more. Moaning softly, she pulled my mouth to her bosom.

It felt—and tasted-—every bit as good as it looked. Those shiny black breasts were exquisite; there’s no other word for them. Running my tongue up the deep cleft between them, I inhaled the faint scent of her perfume; the fragrance of hibiscus with a trace of musk; it was erotic as hell!

She was panting now, and her breasts were warm ebony balloons, contracting and expanding with the titillation of my lips on them. When I grazed the wide red aureole of one of them, her nails raked my back and dug into my buttocks through the Jockey shorts. I flicked the long, sharp, purple nipple with my tongue and she bucked. She grabbed for the back of my neck and forced the nipple, the aureole, and as much of the breast as would fit into my mouth.

“Suck it, baby!” Liberty gasped. “Suck it hard!”

I did, holding the flesh gently between my teeth, working my lips all around the hot circles of the half-dollar size, passionately prickly, red aureole, licking the length of the nipple up and down, curling my tongue around it, then poking it with the tip of my tongue, forcing it to retreat into the aureole, and catching it each time it sprang back. Meanwhile, my ten fingers were spread over her pulsating bottom, playing an erotic symphony, teasing the sensitive flesh of the cleft, dipping into forbidden territory. The combination resulted in Liberty’s lower body moving frantically— long spasms of rolling pressure which allowed me to feel her erect clitty as it ran up and down the length of the bulge in the Jockey shorts, and the clutch of the lips between which it nestled as they gently pinched my throbbing manhood.

I reached down with one hand and freed myself from the shorts. Now I could feel those lips and that clitty directly. I rolled Liberty over, fastened my mouth on hers, and plunged inside her to the hilt. I wanted to possess all of that magnificent black body!

The moment I plunged, she climaxed. Her legs wrapped themselves around my neck. Her whole torso bounced up and down, luscious breasts twirling wildly, hips writhing, ass grinding, tight hotbox rising to encompass all of me. She sucked my tongue into her mouth—- the entire length of it. An earthquake seized her, I rode with it, and then it was over. She fell back, no longer shaking.

That was okay with me. The longer I could make it last, the better. I could sense that this was only the beginning for Liberty. We’d build to it again-—and again, and again—-and somewhere in there, my turn would come. Gently, I played with the nipples of her breasts and started to move slowly inside her again.

“No!” She took me by surprise, pushed me off, and scrambled out from under me.

“What the hell?”

“I’m sorry. I got carried away. But I can’t afford to let you.”

“Now just a cotton-pickin’ minute!” I saw sore!

“Look, I know it’s lousy. But you see, I didn’t take my birth-control pill tonight. I just can’t take the chance of letting you . . . you know.”

“Why the hell didn’t you take the pill?” I got to my feet angrily.

“I was pretty busy trying to stay alive. Remember?”

“But you just took the chance with me. Remember?” I imitated her nastily as I pulled up my Jockey shorts.

“You got me so hot I forgot for a minute. About the pill, I mean.” Liberty sighed. “Don’t be mad. Let’s try and work it out together.”

“How?”

She told me. Like I said, there’s more than one way to skin a walrus. Or, to put it another way, there’s inspiration to be found in the Hall of Mirrors -- if you keep your eyes open!

Liberty really opened mine. She stretched out on the ground, opened the jacket, and beckoned to me. When I went to her, she reached out her hand, grasped mine, and pulled me down to a kneeling position. Her hand trailed up the inside of my thighs, and then the tips of her fingers crept inside the crotch of the Jockey shorts. Her breasts rising and falling softly, her free hand playing idly over the soft triangle of down below her flat, dark belly, she stroked and tickled and played inside the Jockey shorts with a touch that was both light and knowing. It had its effect. Once again the shorts pyramided with passion. This time I took them off immediately.

As I settled back down, she tugged at me until she had me in the position she desired. I was kneeling with my knees on both sides of her, pressed against her rib cage. My weight was on my knees, but my rear end settled over her waist. In this position, my erection stretched out between her breasts, which due to the pressure of my knees had been pushed together slightly more than they ordinarily were.

The result was that her deep cleavage was like the finger of a glove. My penis was buried in it, between the impressive ebony mounds of her breasts. Both her hands were on those mounds, kneading them, sending wonderful, fleshy sensations from the sac of my scrotum to the head of my penis.

I began to move with the rhythm. The head of my organ appeared, disappeared, reappeared from the cleavage at the tops of her breasts. The breasts themselves were on fire. I reached behind me, between her legs. She was hot, damp, writhing.

When I located her slippery clitoris and manipulated it between my fingers, Liberty dug her nails into my backside and pushed so that I slid downward until the head of my penis was within reach of her mouth. Her tongue flicked out, and the tip investigated the tiny opening until it began to foam a little.

It was throbbing now. Due to her panting, her hard nipples were strumming the scrotum. It was driving me crazy. I lunged forward and invaded her mouth full length. Off-center, the cleft of my behind captured one of the hard purple nipples. I could feel it pulsing.

Liberty was very wet now, and wriggling to impale herself on my hand. Her legs were straight up in the air. Her lips and tongue were greedily at work.

I scrambled to change position. Fair is fair. And besides, I was as eager to devour her as she was me. Her thighs closed around my ears, and her hands closed over my rump, drawing my penis back to her lips.

Her juices were hot, sweet, flowing freely. Her clitty had a life of its own, teasing my tongue, invading my mouth, tickling my lips. Her love tunnel was throbbing; it seized my tongue and drew it in to the roots. Liberty had fantastic muscular control!

And meanwhile, her lips were sucking my testicles-— first one and then the other, just as the hooker in the Hall of Mirrors had done to her customer. But watching it and feeling it were two different things. The thrills chased each other from the tip of my tailbone to the tip of my tongue, which worked mightily to return equal value. The top of my head felt like it was about to fly off into space. And when she contrived to get both my penis and scrotum into her mouth at the same time for a split-second, I was sure it actually had.

Suddenly her thigh muscles tensed to become steel bands around my head. Her ass rose up off the ground. Her hips twisted mightily. Her mouth locked around my foaming erection. She came. Once, twice, three times. For an instant it seemed as if my tongue might be torn out by the roots.

I forgot the threat with her third orgasm when it carried me along to the heights of my own climax. I could feel her gulping hastily, and that only prolonged my re- lease. My spurting, her exploding, went on for what seemed an eternity.

Finally, we rolled apart. Her juices had quenched my thirst; temporarily, her well had been pumped bone dry. Likewise, every last drop of my passion had been drained and savored. We lay there silently, not touching, for a few minutes of weary contentment.

Liberty broke the silence. “The only thing wrong is I’m cold again,” she said.

I took her in my arms and arranged what clothing we had to give both of us maximum warmth. Grateful for pleasures received, we were very tender toward each other as we snuggled together. I could feel the closeness between us. Opportunistically, I decided to capitalize on this afterglow.

“You know Phoebe Phreeby, don’t you?” I asked. When Liberty nodded assent, I framed the next question: “Did Phoebe have something to do with why those guys were trying to kill you?”

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me about it?”

Liberty appraised me for a moment. “All right,” she agreed finally. “I guess I have to tell someone while I’m still alive to do it. And you and I do seem to have become pretty close.”

“Yeah.” I grinned. “How did you get involved with Phoebe?” I prompted.

“We worked together in the Darnell Public Library. We were both librarian trainees. We got to be pretty close friends.”

“Is Phoebe black, too?”

“No. But then, some of my best friends are . . .”

“I didn’t mean it that way. Go on with the story.”

“Well, okay.” Liberty was mollified. “One night, after we’d had a few drinks in Phoebe’s apartment, she told me she was a phone phreak. I didn’t know what that was, and even when she explained, it sounded to me like something out of science fiction. So she showed me how it worked.”

Phoebe had taken Liberty out to the Playtime Amusement Park, to the same booth I’d had under surveillance, and called London free of charge. She’d used an M.F.-er to do it, explaining to Liberty how it worked step by step. The Londoner she called was also a phone phreak. Phoebe and he had stayed on for about twenty minutes, swapping technical information.

“Phoebe was really into electronics,” Liberty added. “She was a nut about it, like . . . you know . . . the way some men are with their cars.”

“Was there some sort of phone-phreak organization she belonged to?” I wondered.

“I don’t know. If there was, she never told me about it.”

“Did she ever mention Tom Swift to you?”

“No. The first I heard of him was from you before.”

“Go on with the story.”

One night Phoebe called Liberty and asked her to come to her apartment. When Liberty got there, Phoebe was in an extremely agitated state. It took Liberty awhile to calm her down enough to explain why.

Phoebe had been working for some time on a design for a truly superior M.F.-er. She’d built a model, tried it out, ironed out the bugs, and perfected it. And then she made the mistake of bragging about it to other phone phreaks.

Word had gotten around. Somehow it reached a gambling syndicate operating out of Seattle, Washington. For reasons of their own, they were interested.

First they offered to buy Phoebe’s invention. She wouldn’t sell. The device was illegal, and she was afraid that if they put it to the uses she suspected they would, it might be traced back to her and she’d really be in deep trouble.

The syndicate, however, wouldn’t take no for an answer. They leaned on her. Threatening phone calls, a tail wherever she went, her apartment broken into -- the works. Then, the day she called Liberty, they stepped up the pressure.

They tampered with the brakes on her car. The result was only a crumpled fender, but it really scared her. When she got home, her phone was ringing. What she heard when she answered it turned her fear to panic.

The voice on the other end told her that the brake job had been a final warning. Seattle was recalling the “negotiators.” Imported muscle from the east was being sent down to Darnell to replace them. This was Phoebe’s last chance. Either she turned over the M.F.-er, or the contract was for a hit!

“Phoebe wanted me to tell her what to do,” Liberty remembered. “She was afraid that if she gave them the thing, they might kill her anyway, because there would always be the threat of her going to the police hanging over them. I didn’t know what to say. Finally I suggested she get out of town as fast as she could. It was all I could think of.”

“And did she?” I asked.

“Yes. She left that night. About a week ago. And I didn't hear from her again until tonight. She called me around dinnertime. But she was afraid they might have bugged my phone. She was cryptic as hell.”

“What do you mean?”

“She talked in circles. She said I should ‘go to the bear’s den and take something maternally obscene from behind Pantyland. Finally I figured out what she meant. She had a big stuffed teddy bear in her bedroom, so that was the ‘bear’s den.’ The ‘something maternally obscene’ had to be her super M.F.-er. It percolated that she’d hidden it behind the dresser drawer where she kept her panties. Then she gave me a number. She asked if I remembered our English trip, and I dug she was talking about the call to London. When she was sure I had that, she told me to take the trip again with Mother Friend via the new route she’d given me.”

“Meaning she wanted you to use the M.F.-er to call her from the phone booth in the amusement park. Right?”

“Right. So, after she hung up, I went to her apartment to get the gadget. When I came out, crossing the street to get back into my car, this Caddy barreled down on me and deliberately tried to wipe me out. If I hadn’t jumped fast, it would have succeeded. There were four jokers in it. You met all four of them at the amusement park.”

“And they were still trying to wipe you out. But why you?”

“I think they were staking out Phoebe’s apartment, waiting for her to come back,” Liberty said. “When I showed, they thought I was Phoebe. This was a new team, remember. They’d never seen her.”

“But she’s white and you’re black.”

“So they don’t discriminate. What do you want to do? Give them a brotherhood award?”

“Did you reach Phoebe from the Playtime booth?”

“Yes. I used her super M.F.-er and-—”

“Tell me about the super M.F.-er.”

“It was built into a midget-size transistor radio that actually worked. Instead of pushbuttons, which might give away its function to phone fuzz, it had flush panels. Phoebe said there was no way to trace calls it made, and that it could hook up a dozen long-distance numbers simultaneously for cross-conversations. The casing was lined with Thermite, which could be detonated by shortwave from a button transmitter set in a little brooch she had. When things got rough on the midway, I pushed it and the M.F.-er disintegrated. Poof! Then I threw the brooch away. That was okay, because Phoebe was through with phone tripping. She’d gotten a job in this library in Texas where she wouldn’t have to sweat the Mafia.”

“Where in Texas?”

Liberty told me. She also gave me Phoebe’s number. I memorized the information.

“The rest you know,” Liberty concluded. “And here we are,” she added.

“Here we are,” I repeated.

“Here we are!” An unexpected echo; a new voice!

Four flashlight beams hit us from four different directions. Squinting, I made out a high-powered rifle pointing at us from behind one of them. Across from it, a snub-nosed revolver was also covering us. I turned my head and spotted the glittering sharpness of a switch-blade knife. The figure opposite it was more clearly visible; it looked mangled, like something that had been run through a stonecrusher; the cord snapping between eager hands told me that the strangler had survived the stampeding crowd.

The killers had arrived. All present and accounted for. All set to fulfill the contract, to make the hit!

“Waste ’em both!” The new voice spoke again.

Here we were!

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“I don’t think we should waste ’em here.”

Reprieve!

“Why not?” Rifle wanted to know.

“Because then we’ll have to lug the stiffs down to the lake to dump ’em,” Strangler pointed out. “And I’m in no shape for that.”

“He’s got a point there,” Knife agreed. “Let’s march ’em down there and then waste ’em.”

“All right. On your feet!” Revolver ordered us.

Reprieve canceled!

I pulled up my Jockey shorts and stood. As Liberty got to her feet beside me, my pants fell down around her ankles. “Here.” She stepped out of them. “You might as well take these.”

“Hey! The spade chick’s naked under that jacket!” Revolver discovered.

“Cancel that brotherhood award,” I told Liberty as I tucked in my shirt and tightened my belt.

She started across the clearing to where her clothes were lying.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Knife blocked her path.

“I want to get dressed.”

“Let her,” Rifle told him. “That way we’ll get rid of the clothes along with the body. No point in leaving any evidence.”

Liberty took her time putting on her things. I didn’t blame her. The party the hoods planned for us didn’t exactly look like a fun-filled frolic!

“Read any good books lately?” Knife made small talk.

“I just finished Honor Thy Father by Gay Talese,” Revolver told him.

“Talese’s a master of reportage.” Rifle pronounced critical judgment.

“Was it as good as The Godfather?” Strangler inquired.

“Naah. No love interest. Know what I mean?” Revolver replied.

“Two distinctly separate genres,” Rifle protested. “One can’t compare reportage to fiction. As Edmund Wilson has pointed out—”

“Still,” Strangler interrupted him, “I thought The Godfather was pretty true to life.”

“In situational realism, perhaps, but the characterizations-—”

“They made it into a helluva movie.” This time Knife cut him off. “The word from upstairs is that they gave Hollywood the okay.”

“Well, as long as they don’t malign patriotic Mafia-Americans,” Revolver remarked. “Or make it look like all gangsters are Italian.”

“I suppose there are no Italian gangsters,” Liberty said.

“I’m Swedish-American,” Revolver told her.

“Dutch-American,” Strangler stated proudly.

“Swiss-American,” Rifle said.

“Polish-American! And keep the jokes to yourself.” Knife was belligerent.

“I thought you were all Italian,” Liberty said. “But then, you know how it is. You all look alike.”

“Well, we’re not Italian,” Rifle assured her. He turned to the others. “All right, paisani. Let’s go. Avanti!”

They marched us off toward the lake, humming “O Sole Mio” in chorus.

“Very pretty.” I applauded when it was over. “You’ve got a really nice tenor there,” I told Rifle.

“I used to be a choirboy,” he confessed. “Happiest days of my 1ife.” A tear of nostalgia sprang to his eye.

“You’re a sensitive man,” I realized.

“True. The trouble is that in my profession I can’t afford to let it show.” Rifle sighed.

“We’re all forced into our facades,” I sympathized.

“The roles life thrusts upon us,” he agreed.

“Which render us hostages to destiny.” It was my turn to sigh. “The young lady, for instance. . . .”

“What has she got to do with it?”

“Well, destiny has forced her to play the role of Phoebe Phreeby,” I pointed out. “And she’s really not Phoebe Phreeby. Her name is ‘Liberty Dix.’ ”

“Nonsense! Of course she’s Phoebe Phreeby. You’re just resorting to a desperate ploy in an attempt to influence the situation.” Rifle’s tone said he was disappointed in me for trying to take advantage of our budding rapport in such a manner.

“Her name is ‘Liberty Dix,’ ” I insisted. “If you don’t believe me, ask her.”

“I will.” He turned around and called to Liberty.

“Excuse me, miss. Will you please tell me your name.”

“ ‘Liberty Dix.’ ”

“Do you have some sort of identification?”

The group bunched up on the trail while Liberty fished in her pocketbook. She came up with a driver’s license and a Social Security card and handed them to Rifle. He scrutinized them by the beam of his flashlight. “Whatsa matter?” Knife wanted to know.

“She’s not Phoebe Phreeby,” Rifle decided.

“You mean we fingered the wrong broad?” Revolver was surprised.

“It would seem so.”

“Whatta we gonna do?” Strangler asked.

“Waste ’em anyway.” Revolver shrugged. “What else can we do with ’em‘? We can’t turn ’em loose to sing to the fuzz.”

“I’m afraid that’s true,” Rifle agreed. “There’s no alternative.”

“Excuse me, but that would be a mistake,” I pointed out.

“You’re reluctant to die,” Rifle replied. “I understand, but it really doesn’t alter the situation.”

“If you kill us, the next contract will be a four-hitter aimed at you,” I told him.

“You’re simply bluffing. Why should it be?”

“Because the people who sent you have a large commitment to seeing that I stay alive. I’m very important to them. Much more important than you are.”

“Are you trying to say we have the same employer?” Rifle inquired.

“Not exactly. Look. My name is Steve Victor. Contact whoever gave you this assignment. Have him check me out with the Family Council. Tell them I’m Putnam’s boy. Believe me, what’s involved is much more important than the little matter that brought you to Darnell. All I’m asking you to do is check it out first. If I’m giving you a snow job, you can still kill us. What have you got to lose?”

“A con artist!” Knife snarled. “I say waste ’em now.”

“We didn’t contract for this hit,” Rifle remembered.

“Perhaps we should check it out before—”

“Don’t be a choirboy!” Strangler snarled.

It was the wrong thing to say to Rifle. He took umbrage. “You think with your hands!” he snapped back. “There’s more to this business than just wasting people. I say we call Seattle.”

“Who made you the boss?” Revolver wanted to know.

“This did.” Rifle patted the barrel of his weapon. He had them all covered. Casual-but definitely covered. “Knife, you go back to the midway and call. We’ll wait here.”

For a minute I thought Knife was going to challenge Rifle. But the gun intimidated him. Muttering to himself, he took off through the woods. The rest of us settled down to await his return.

It took about an hour. Then we heard Knife coming back through the woods, once again mumbling to himself. When he appeared in the clearing, I scrutinized his face for some hint as to our fate. It told me nothing.

“Well?” Strangler was eager. “Do we waste ’em?”

“Maybe,” Knife replied.

“What do you mean, ‘maybe’?” Rifle tried to pin him down. “Do we turn them loose, or don’t we?”

“Could be we do. Then again, could be we don’t.”

“Ain’t he cute?” Revolver asked. “Listen, bambino, tell us what Seattle said. I’ll give you three.” The safety clicked off on his gun. “One . . .”

“I always knowed you had feelings of hostility toward me,” Knife said. “It ain’t healthy to keep ’em bottled up inside-a you.”

“Two . . .”

“It’s a good thing you bring your aggressiveness out in the open. It’s better we should confront each other than brood.”

“Three . . .” .

“All right! All right! Hold it! Seattle said it depends on what the Family Council decides, and they ain’t gonna decide until they get the word from some computer. Meanwhile—”