Here's your O.R.G.Y.

HERE’S YOUR 0.R.G.Y.!

(Or it will be, if Steve Victor can come up to the

mark. Or the Mark can come up to the Victor. . . !)

Steve is off on a Wild, swing-a-ling search for

some prime O.R.G.Y. material, to wit: :

(1) One natural (Has to be proved!) blonde

(and busty) hippie.

(2) One sex-starved married woman. She's got

to be gorgeous, French, and a titled aristocrat.

(3) One well-developed Pygmy princess—with

a Ph.D. in psychology from Oxford University, yet!

(4) One redheaded Danish virgin—not pastry,

virgin.

(5) One shapely sabra, willing to lay down her

rifle for an O.R.G.Y.

If Steve can round up this fetching cargo for

Sheikh Ali Khat, he can pay off a real debt. The

elimination bouts are frenzied, it’s no-holds-

barred with the competition, and Steve’s only

hope lies in his ability to maintain a stiff upper

. . . lip!

HERE’S YOUR O.R.G.Y.!

Ted Mark

1969

CHAPTER ONE

Make love, not war! It should be so simple. . . .

“Twin beds!” the South Vietnamese siren demanded.

“One bed for all!” the Viet Cong chick countered.

“Equal space! Equal sheets! Equal status!”

“King-size and individual pillows!” The man from Hanoi backed-up the Cong cutie.

“Let’s compromise,” I suggested with good old Yankee common sense. “How about a round bed?”

“If you think I’m going to share the same mattress with these gangsters—!” The Saigon sexpot was intractable.

“American-made slut!” the NFL lovely snarled.

“There is an American Embassy emblem embossed on the pillowcases,” the North Vietnamese officer noticed. “I demand a pillowcase with the symbol of my country!”

“Why not dispense with pillowcases altogether?” I exercised American diplomacy.

It was an odd time, it was a peculiar place, it was a bizarre combination—for an orgy! The month was January of 1968, the first night of the first Tet offensive¹ . The locale was the cellar of a storehouse containing furniture and bedding in the Saigon American Embassy compound, main objective of the Viet Cong terrorist attack that evening. The characters were a sexy South Vietnamese secretary who worked in the Embassy, a curvy female Cong guerilla, a North Vietnamese officer with a Fu Manchu moustache, and me, Steve Victor. The orgy was my idea.

If that seems odd under the circumstances, the explanation is that lovemaking is a way of life with me, and in stress situations I find it an effective way of releasing nervous tension. Some people, faced with their own fear, take a drink. Others take a cigarette. I take a girl—if there’s one handy. This time there was.

Perhaps it won’t seem so peculiar if I remind you that I’m the man from O. R. G. Y. Infamy being as fleeting as fame, let me restate that O. R. G. Y. is the Organization for the Rational Guidance of Youth. It’s a one-man operation devoted to sex research with “guidance” actually a secondary function-—which, I admit, hasn’t ever really been exercised. Still, as the man behind O. R. G. Y., when I’m on an ego trip, I see myself as carrying on the traditions of Dr. Kinsey. The difference is that I’ve cut out the paperwork and substituted a personalized methodology. This demands a genuine dedication to my work. There’s no substitute for one-to-one (or one-to-more as special situations may require) research in my line. I try to be selfless in this respect, no matter how much energy I have to sacrifice.

Now I was prepared to go the limit in the cause of peace. So here we were, the four of us, enemies and hostile allies, thrown together in a noble experiment to seek peace through passion. (It’s no accident, but, rather, a semantic cosmic joke that the words “peace” and “piece” are indistinguishable when blown into the human ear.) To explain just how this came about requires, I suppose, a bit of backtracking.

Just how I came to be on the grounds of the American Embassy the night the Viet Cong launched the Tet offensive with an attack on the compound is a whole other story told in another book (Come Be My O. R. G. Y., if you’re intrigued enough to spring six bits for a complete telling of the enthralling details). For this account, it’s enough to know that I was there and that I was personally attacked by a Cong guerilla complete with bayonet, black pajamas, and breasts shaped like hand grenades, only bigger and better. Add a heart-shaped face, almond eyes, neatly defined hips, and a cushy derriere, and you’ll appreciate why after I’d disarmed her, I was in turn disarmed so that my hostility was sublimated into a more sexual form of aggression.

Grateful that I hadn’t killed her, the Cong cookie expressed her appreciation by responding to my advances. The result was that we made love, hidden behind a lorry in the Embassy courtyard, while the bombardment continued around us. U.S. Marine rifle fire, the spatter of Cong tommygun bullets, the whistle of mortar shells—all the raucous sounds of war assailed us as we coupled, oblivious to them, there on the grass behind the truck.

Both of us had forgotten the rifle and bayonet with which the girl had attacked me a few moments earlier and which now lay on the ground parallel to us, the blade, by chance, only a few inches from her face. The positioning turned out to be fortunate. On the downstroke of our lovemaking, I felt the cold muzzle of a pistol suddenly prodding the hot butt of my body. I reacted quickly, thereby saving my life. Maintaining the rhythm, on the up-thrust I swept up her rifle in one hand and held it so that the point of the bayonet was at her throat. “If I die, she dies!” I announced, ignoring the moan which my jerking away from the icy pistol muzzle had brought forth from her thrilled body. Only then did I dare to look over my shoulder.

The North Vietnamese captain stood with his pistol drawn and still pointed at my bare rear—aimed just low enough so that if he fired I’d be singing soprano for the rest of my days even should I survive the shot, which was unlikely. The look on his face said he was struggling with the dilemma of whether or not to sacrifice his Cong comrade in the interests of one more dead Yank. Since I was the Yank in question, I had a vested interest in influencing his decision. “Bad politics,” I told him. “Even if you smash me, how will it look if you sacrifice an ally in the process? The NLF doesn’t trust the North as it is.”

His finger relaxed slightly on the pistol’s trigger. My words had hit home. “Imperialist American aggressor!” he snarled. “Withdraw!”

I withdrew—slowly. Then I reached behind me with one hand and pulled up my pants. At the same time I was very careful to keep the point of the bayonet at the Cong girl’s throat. It was the only way I could withdraw with safety. It was my own personal enclave.

The situation had interesting parallels. First she’d collaborated with me while I ravished her. Now she was being “liberated,” but thanks to the bayonet; I was firmly enough entrenched to maintain the situation at a stalemate. And all around us the carnage was continuing.

The three of us were frozen in a tableau. The North Vietnamese officer continued to point his pistol at me. I continued to hold the bayonet at his Cong ally’s throat. The girl lay quiet, ready to accept what might come philosophically, resigned to the impasse for as long as it might last.

And then suddenly the tableau was shattered. But the impasse wasn’t ended; it was merely compounded. Another unexpected element was introduced.

The sexy Saigon secretary stumbled on the scene. She was a tall girl, not fat but well fed in contrast to the leanness of the Cong chick still lying underneath me. And there was a more Western cast to her features, testifying to a French colonial intrusion somewhere in her lineage.

She arrived on the run, flailing through a clump of bushes to one side of the lorry. Before the North Vietnamese officer realized it, she was on him, and the two of them went sprawling to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs. From her squeals, she must not have seen him either and was as surprised at the collision as he was.

I sprang up and dived on top of both of them, seizing the opportunity to turn the tables on him. But I wasn’t quite fast enough. My arm was locked around his neck in a stranglehold, all right; but his pistol was at the girl’s head, and it was plain that if I persisted in my grip he intended to shoot her.

Releasing him quickly, I fell back to my previous position. Now I had the bayonet at the Cong girl’s throat while he held the pistol at the Saigon secretary’s head. Once again we were stalemated.

A new tableau had been established, but it was also a more dangerous one. The mortar shells being lobbed into the courtyard were coming closer and closer to the clusters of lorries. The Cong was getting the range. It was plain that if we didn’t move-—and move fast!—--all four of us would be dead.

Circumstances, however, had tied us together. I was afraid that if we split up, the North Vietnamese officer would kill his hostage. It was obvious that he had the same fear regarding me.

The feeling was that neither of us could come unstuck from his satellite without sealing his doom. At the same time, to maintain the status quo meant we would all be destroyed by the bombardment. Life doesn’t just imitate art; sometimes life imitates life!

By mutual agreement, and without words, the two of us prodded our captives toward a building about a hundred yards from the lorry. The force of one of the explosions had blown open a door to the place. It was a large, square structure, obviously a storehouse of some sort.

Once inside it, we could see that it was half-filled with large crates. We could also see that the structure was pretty flimsy and didn’t really afford too much protection from the shells falling around us. Seeking greater security, we located a staircase leading to a basement under the building. Down here we were relatively safe.

By the flame of my cigarette lighter we located and turned on the light switch. The larger cellar was filled with a variety of beds and bedding. There was everything from folding cots to king-size bedframes. There were sleeping bags and innerspring mattresses. There was even a circular bed and mattress, doubtless slated for some VIP with the pull—-and push—-to gratify his rounded boudoir tastes. It seemed that nothing in the way of modern sleeping accommodations was missing.

For a long time the four of us just sat there. I kept the bayonet at the throat of the Cong girl. My adversary held his pistol at the temple of the South Vietnamese secretary. None of the four of us seemed able to think of anything else to do. And outside the fighting and the bombardment continued.

Finally the Viet Cong girl made a suggestion as to how we might break the deadlock. “If you both throw your weapons out that cellar window at the same moment,” she suggested, “this situation will deescalate.”

“All right.”

“Okay.”

We both agreed, albeit both reluctantly.

“I’ll count to three,” she said. “When I say ‘three,’ you each hurl your weapons out the window. Agreed?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah.”

“One. . . two . . . three . . .”

He didn’t throw his pistol out the window. So I didn’t throw the rifle and bayonet out either. .

“What’s the matter?” the Saigon girl asked. “She counted to three.”

“He didn’t throw his gun. He cheated!” I said accusingly.

“It’s an American trick,” he responded. “You had no intention of disarming yourself. It’s just like the 1954 treaty. We sign a truce and turn around and there’s an American with a knife at our throats again!”

“You agree to peace, and there you are with a gun at our countrywoman’s head again!” I responded.

“Look,” the Saigon girl said. “I have an idea. Each of you give your weapons to her and me, and we’ll throw hem away.”

“How do we know we can trust you any more than each other?” I asked.

“We have more to lose than you.” The Viet Cong girl surprisingly agreed with the Saigon secretary’s suggestion. ‘It’s our existence that’s at stake.”

“Okay,” I agreed.

“Agreed.” The North Vietnamese okayed it.

“One . . . two . . . three . . .” The Cong cutie gave the count.

And there I was with the sharp tip of a bayonet at my throat. There was some consolation-—but not much—in he fact that the North Vietnamese officer was flinching under the pressure of the pistol muzzle at his temple. The girls, however, were decidedly more comfortable in the new situation.

“Yankee coward!” The curvy Cong pinked the skin in the area of my jugular.

“Commie chicken!” The Saigon sexpot cocked the pistol against the head of the North Vietnamese.

“Hey! Wait a minute!” I protested. “Now you’re supposed to throw them away.”

“Yes,” the Red officer added, “that was the agreement.”

“I don’t know. It’s sort of nice to be in control for a change,” the South Vietnamese secretary mused.

“That’s true.” The Cong girl concurred. “It is nice not to have to depend on anyone else for power.”

“Maybe we should kill them,” Saigon suggested.

“Maybe we should,” the Cong agreed.

“And then kill each other,” I interjected hastily. “Once we’re out of the way, you’ll have no other choice but to turn on each other. You’re both committed to that.”

“He’s right,” the Commie officer concurred. “The only way you can make it work without us is if you’re both disarmed.”

I think we were both surprised when they finally agreed with this logic and did indeed toss their weapons out the window. I know we both sighed with relief. Also, in spite of ourselves, we found that we were grinning at each ether.

“Now what?” the Saigon secretary said.

“Yes. What happens now?” The Cong girl was also at a loss.

Make love, not war² . It was at that instant that the phrase popped into my head once again. Make love, not war. It had worked out before with the Viet Cong girl; why shouldn’t it work for the four of us? Make love, not war!

I explained to the others what I had in mind. The discussion that followed was prolonged and hairsplitting, but in the end there was agreement of sorts. Death might be imminent, and we weren’t the first to equate sex with life under such circumstances. Also, we were stuck down here and we had to do something to make the time pass. Add that the Cong chick and I had already been turned on, that the North Vietnamese had been in the womanless jungle for a long time, and that the Saigon secretary was having a hard time hiding the fact that she had eyes for him, and it wasn’t really‘ so surprising that we all agreed to have an orgy.

But agreeing on the orgy was one thing and settling the protocol of it was something else again. Outside men were dying, and in here we were all hung up on just which-—or which combination—-of the many beds available should be used in the proceedings. It wasn’t just a question of who was going to be screwed by whom, but also of which furniture should be used in accomplishing the screwing.

“A sleeping bag is the bedding of the agrarian revolutionary!” the man from Hanoi was insisting now.

“Separate bags!” the Saigon loyalist retorted. “I’ll go to bed with you, but I’ll never share my pallet with the Cong!”

“An innerspring mattress! King-size! We’ve got as much right to one as the American plutocrats. And one bed with equal representation for all!” The rebel girl stood her ground.

“Now look,” I told the Saigon chick. “If we’re going to get this orgy off the ground, you’ll have to put your prejudices aside. One large bed seems fair enough to me.”

“You’re selling me out!” she protested.

“Let her stay out,” the canny North Vietnamese suggested. “We’ll just make it a three-way orgy.”

“If I’m out, she’s out!” The Saigon girl pointed a quivering finger at the NLF nymph.

“Oh, no!” I protested. “I ‘don’t swing that way! He and I are not going to make this scene alone. You two will just have to cooperate.”

“I’m cooperating,” the Cong lass said sweetly. “I’m willing to get into bed with the three of you.”

“So am I,” the man from Hanoi said.

“And so am I,” I decided. “And if you don’t,” I told the Saigon holdout, “I’m going to go out and find another girl to replace you.”

She was still mumbling about being sold out as she finally crawled under the blankets of the king-size bed with the rest of us. “Whose hand is that on my groin?” she demanded after a moment.

“What difference does it make. This is an orgy,” I reminded her.

“Well, it’s squeezing awfully hard, and I don’t trust--”

“It’s mine,” I admitted.

“You’re the one I don’t trust most!” Saigon was bitter.

“It’s a caress,” I told her.

“That’s what I mean. That American caress turns into a pubic stranglehold before you can say Nhu³ !”

“Ky⁴ ,” I reminded her.

“Thieu⁵ ,” she corrected me.

“Don’t spit.”

“Can it that even Saigon is learning the nature of American friendship,” Hanoi interjected sarcastically. The Cong giggled.

I shifted position and stroked one of the Cong’s high, sharp breasts. She responded by kissing me. Meanwhile Saigon was bypassing me to make overtures to Hanoi. The Cong’s lips slid down my chest in a series of shiver-producing kisses. I put my hand on the back of her neck and pushed her lower. “Yeah!” I told her, my body tensing. “That’s it!”

But the Cong stopped to raise her head to Hanoi for a moment. “Will I lose face?” She asked his advice.

“Not if Saigon makes the same concession,” Hanoi answered, climbing over both the Cong and me to deal directly with Saigon.

Now the pattern of the sex truce was emerging. The Cong had me pinned down, was calling forth all of my erotic resources, which were being concentrated at the very spot where she was poised to deplete them. At the same time, I was stretching my neck to devour Saigon. Hanoi, steeped in Ho Chi Minh⁶ tactics, was attacking Saigon from the rear while at the same time stirring up the Cong’s passions with a finger that was being tantalizingly dipped and withdrawn.

After pursuing these courses for a while, as if by tacit agreement, we all shifted position. My head was buried in the fleshy quicksand of Saigon’s large breasts, my mouth eager and busy, but also gasping for breath as the velvety orbs seemed to envelop me. The Cong was at my rear, nibbing, scratching, biting, prodding the nether regions of my body. Her head was thrown back to receive sustenance from Hanoi who was crouched over her and holding her by the ears. Saigon kept trying to interpose her clutching womanhood between him and the Cong.

Again we shifted. Now Saigon crouched on all fours while I pounded her from the rear. The Cong lay flat beneath her, reaching up to squeeze Saigon’s breasts hard. Her legs were wrapped around Hanoi’s neck to allow him easy access to the area of her soft underbelly. We continued in this way, mindlessly, until there was a mutual four-way explosion so powerful that it actually broke the springs of the bed under us and sent us sprawling to the floor.

We were exhausted, our energies depleted, our resources drained, our strength of mind itself gone. We hadn’t the will to continue the orgy; we hadn’t the will not to continue it either. Rest was indicated, but we seemed incapable of rest as well. What was past threatened to flaunt our dreams, considerations of the future rendered us sleepless, and the present was hopeless ennui with the rumblings of war and destruction still growing closer beyond the door. So we stayed motionless, inactive, un-thinking, uncaring.

We were still in our state of oblivion when the door to the cellar burst open. A barrage of tommygun bullets was sprayed down the stairs. We made no move to avoid them, but miraculously none of the four of us was hit.

The barrage was followed by a dozen Cong coming down the stairs on the run. Their first impulse was obviously to shoot us where we lay. Only curiosity stayed their blood-lust. They hadn’t expected to run into what was obviously the aftermath of an orgy in the middle of a battle. One who seemed to be a leader, shouted out an order, and the others refrained from shooting. However, they did keep their guns trained on us.

The leader addressed the Viet Cong girl in their native tongue. She answered him. It was easy to see that she was sorting out our various positions for him. The North Vietnamese officer interjected something, but the Cong leader seemed to have some doubts as to whether or not he and the girl guerilla might not be defectors. Finally the two of them were led off by three of the Cong.

That left me and the South Vietnamese secretary. The leader stood us up against a wall and backed away. His men lined up facing us. There was no doubt about what was coming. This was a firing squad we were facing, and the execution was about to commence.

The leader barked out a command. I don’t speak Vietnamese, but it wasn’t hard to fathom it by the response. “Ready . . .” His men raised their guns. Beside me the Saigon girl was sobbing.

“Aim . . .”

I was feeling a mite teary myself. It was all so sudden. I would have liked a little time to put my affairs in order . . . or to beg for my life . . . or something. My body tensed, waiting for the final word and the impact of the bullets which would follow it.

But the word never came. It died on his lips. And he died with it there, unspoken. He died of lead poisoning, administered by a machinegun fired from the head of the stairs.

The short burst was followed by a hand grenade. It was tossed just to the rear of the firing squad. They were still trying to swing around to counter the sudden attack when the grenade exploded.

They took the full impact. However, since the hurler had been careful to toss it to the rear of them, the girl and I emerged from the blast shaken but unharmed.

There were footsteps running down the stairs now, and as the smoke cleared I could make out the figure of a large man in civvy clothes mopping up the bits and pieces of the firing squad with a machinegun. Then there was silence as he looked at us and we looked back at him across the bodies of eight dead Cong.

“You folks okay?” he asked finally.

“Yeah.” I found my voice.

“You an Amurrican?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“I am South Vietnamese. I work here at the Embassy as a secretary,” the girl identified herself.

“Those degenerate Commie sadists!” Our rescuer was angry. “They stripped you down before they were ready to murder you, hey? Those Red perverts!”

I didn’t bother to correct him. I found my pants and put them on while the South Vietnamese secretary got back into her clothes. I was still adjusting to the fact that I was miraculously still alive, and it took a few minutes before I was able to express my gratitude to our rescuer.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” I said finally. And that was the truth.

“Hell! Don’t try. I just happened to stumble in here and see the fix you were in, and I did what anybody would have done.” He moved closer, and I saw that he was older than I’d thought at first. In his mid-fifties, I judged, with steel-gray hair and the large, muscular body of a man who makes it a point to keep in shape. “What’s your name, son?”

“Steve Victor.”

“Ste-— Hey! Wait a minute! I know you. I saw your picture in a magazine just recently. You’re the fellow that does those sex surveys.

“That’s right,” I admitted.

“Is that what you were doing here?” Keen blue eyes moved from me to the girl and back.

“Not exactly,” I hedged.

“No skin off my butt.” He grinned. It was a Chamber of Commerce grin, and he began to look more like an American businessman to me and less like John Wayne playing a soldier of fortune. With obvious diplomacy -- like an American legionnaire determined to forget the seamier side of the convention—he dropped the subject. “My name’s Randolph P. Austin,” he told us. “Randy to my friends. I’m in toilets.”

“You’re in what?” I’d been through a lot and I was feeling confused.

“Toilets. Johnny fixtures, you know. I make ’em. Just installed five thousand units in a new development right here in Saigon. Government contract. Not our government; theirs. Ky and the rest, you know. Pretty sharp, those boys. The kickbacks I could tell you about!”

“You mean you work for a plumbing supply company?” I asked him.

“Work for it, hell. I own it. Lock, stock, and privy. I don’t like to blow my horn, Steve boy, but you’re looking at one of the biggest men in toilets in the whole world.”

“Gosh.” I tried to look impressed. It wasn’t hard. I was still pretty damn impressed with the way he’d saved my life. “I never met a toilet tycoon before,” I told him. “I never expected to meet one, either. And certainly not in the American Embassy at Saigon in the middle of a war.”

“Well, I just happened to be visiting here when the trouble broke out. So I grabbed a gun and pitched in to help. Hell, we’re Americans, and we’re all in the same boat.”

“Well, you sure kept our boat from sinking,” I said earnestly. “And I just want you to know that I appreciate it, Randy. If there’s ever any way that I can return the favor-—any time, any place—-you just tell me. I promise you that whatever it is, I’ll do it.” The thing is I only have one life and I felt pretty strongly about living it. I really meant what I said to him.

“Hell, Steve, I’ve got just about everything a man could want.” He chuckled. “But if I ever need a sex survey, I’ll take you up on that. And if you ever need a toilet-—” he winked-— “you call on me and I’ll see you get thirty off!”

“You’ve already done enough for me, Randy. But I mean it. I’m in your debt for life, and if there’s ever anything at all-—”

“Well, okay.” He was obviously embarrassed. “If I ever do need a favor from you, Steve, I won’t hesitate to ask.”

It was obvious from his face that he never thought the occasion would arise. Certainly-—although I was utterly sincere—I didn’t think it would either. But we were both wrong !

It was six months later that Randolph P. Austin called on me to make good on my offer. He needed a favor. And what a favor!

It was a doozy!

CHAPTER TWO

Randolph P. Austins call couldn’t have come at a more inopportune moment. I was between women when the phone rang. Literally -- like a glob of cream cheese trapped between two pieces of toast.

Below me it was wry-—a seemingly hip New York chick trying to accept the situation philosophically although embarrassed at our mutual nudity. Above there was a lot of crust—my mother, mad as hell at having discovered her son in flagrante delicto. Between them I was crumbling with indecision—-belly warmed by my fleshy perch, buttocks shivering from the icy wind of Mama’s rage.

“That I should find a son of mine like this, in bed, with a girl, naked yet!” She sucked in a breath on the last word and kept talking without a noticeable pause. “For such disgraceful things he’s got time, but for his mother does he have time? No! For a mother there is no time. An hour only on the subway to the Bronx and a lonely mother it takes from Greenwich Village-—why do you live in such a Godforsaken spot, no good could come of it, just look at the goings-on, I’m not surprised this hussy should wangle her way into your bed without clothes yet!—but you should take the hour and make the trip to find out if I’m alive or dead or maybe sick? Hah! I should live so long! You’re too busy maybe getting funereal disease or sinfulness or gono-who-knows to remember even you’ve got a mother! Your phone is ringing.”

“Now just a minute!” The young lady under me started to get indignant. “You can’t talk about me like that! What kind of girl do you think I am? Answer the telephone.”

“Such a question she’s got the chutzpah to ask and without a stitch on while the least the two of you could do is stop when I’m talking to you! That my son should forget he has a mother and take up with a shameless shiksa! Oy vey! So answer the phone already.”

“Mom, why are you talking this way?” I asked quietly. “You’re not even Jewish.”

“She doesn’t have to be Jewish to be a Jewish mother,” the girl reminded me. “Aren’t you going to answer the phone?”

“If you live in the Bronx as long as I have, you’re Jewish even it you’re Italian. So pick up the receiver.”

“You’re not Italian either,” I recalled.

“Even if you’re Irish! You’re not going to answer it, maybe it’s an emergency, how could you tell?”

“You’re not Iri-—”

“It’s a manner of speaking only. With the heartburn I got all the time from a son doesn’t even know I’m among the living, I might as well convert, but who needs to, even a Rabbi couldn’t tell the difference with my tsouris. Steven, answer the phone, it’s ringing in my head so I’m going out of my mind already yet.”

“Hello?” I answered the phone.

“Hello. Is this Steve Victor?”

“So what is it?” My mother clutched her breast. “Who died?”

“I don’t know yet.” I covered the mouthpiece. “He just asked me if I’m Steve Victor.”

“Don’t tell him without you find out first who it is. It might be a burglar, he’s -- what do they say?—-casing the joint, he should come up and kill you and steal Grandpa’s watch he said I should give you on his deathbed. Or maybe a mail order salesman, you get on their list, you can’t get off, they got you down for cancer and leprosy and infantile paresis with a hand in your pocket every time you go to the door, you couldn’t take time out to go to the bathroom. So don’t just sit there, the cat got your tonsils, ask. Ask who it is already. Ask!”

“Who’s this?” I said into the mouthpiece.

“This is Randolph P. Austin, old buddy. Randy. Remember me?”

“So who?” my mother demanded.

“It’s the man who saved my life in Saigon.”

“Aha! He wants something! Be careful!”

“Hi, Randy. What can I do for you?”

“Oy! Such a question! I tell him to be careful and he asks such a question! What do you think of that?”

“He’s not too bright.” The girl under me had decided to try to placate my mother.

“Who asked you?” Mama was icy even if she did agree.

“You remember you once said if I ever needed a favor . . .” Randy was saying.

“Sure. Name it.”

“You’re getting heavy,” the girl said.

“Stevie, you’ve got a macka on your heinie,” my mother noticed.

“It’s just a goose pimple,” I told her. “I’m cold.”

“A pimple is a pimple!” She was firm. “And cover up! You’ll catch pneumonia in your generals yet.”

“What did you say, Steve?” Randy was confused.

“Nothing. I was talking to my mother.”

“You wear a hat?” Mama asked the girl.

“No.” She stared at her, bewildered.

“Naturally. Why should you wear a hat when you don’t even wear a bra and panties, we wouldn’t even mention a nightgown.”

“Well, even if I wore a hat, I wouldn’t wear it to bed.” She was getting irritated again. I could sympathize. My mother can have that effect. But the girl’s curiosity got the better of her. “What do you want a hat for?” she asked.

“I don’t want a hat.” My mother shrugged. “Who said I wanted a hat?”

“. . . and in this situation you’re the only one who can help me,” Randy was saying. “I can’t go into the details, but with your specialized background . . .”

“Well, you asked me for one.” The girl squirmed, trying to cover herself with the sheet.

“Not the hat. The hatpin to hold the hat. That’s What I need. A hatpin and a match.”

“I have a match.” The girl groped on the night table.

“You’re ticking my armpits.” I giggled uncontrollably.

“Steve, this is no laughing matter!” Randy sounded hurt. “If you don’t want to . . .”

“I’m sorry. I do,” I assured him. “Anything. I owe you my life.”

“So what good’s the match without the hatpin?”

Mama’s logic poured ice water over the girl’s attempt to make friends.

“Why does she want the hatpin?” the girl asked me.

“I’ve got ears. You want to know, ask me!” Mama’s eyes shot fire.

“All right. What do you want with a hatpin?”

“Are you listening to me, Steve?” Randy was asking.

“Absolutely,” I assured him. “I owe you my life.”

“I wish you’d stop saying that and pay attention. Now I want you to hop on the first plane to Miami and . . .”

“I need the hatpin to lance the boil on his heinie, it shouldn’t get infected with lockjaw on the tookus,” Mama explained haughtily.

“No!” Mama’s words took me back twenty years to an adolescence spent between viselike fingers squeezing blackheads with the religious fervor of a Holy Roller high on hashish. “Don’t touch me!”

“Steve? Steve? Is something the matter, old buddy?”

Now Randy was becoming alarmed.

“I want to watch.” The girl was smiling sadistically. It must be something in the female hormones.

“It wouldn’t hurt but a minute only I don’t have a hatpin,” my mother assured me. “You’ve got maybe an icepick in your kitchen, Stevie?”

“NO!”

“Yes he does. In the second drawer.” The girl didn’t know it, but she’d just murdered our romance in the bud. If there’s one thing I don’t dig in the sack, it’s a female Benedict Arnold.

“I’ll be right back.” My mother headed for the kitchen.

“You’ve got bad breath!” I growled at the girl vindictively.

“You’re no rose yourself,” Randy answered. “But where I come from your best friend won’t tell you a thing like that. And I’d like to keep it that way.”

“I didn’t mean you. I’m talking to someone else. Look, Randy, I’ve got this emergency situation here. Just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it. We can go into the details later.”

“All right. Hop on the first plane to Miami. When you get there, call this number. It’s my helicopter pilot. He’ll pick: you up right at the airport and fly you down to my place on the Keys. Okay?”

He repeated the number and I jotted it down. “Okay,” I agreed.

“Make it fast, will you, Steve? I really need your help.”

“Check.” I hung up the phone. The girl was climbing out of bed. “Where are you going?” I asked her.

“I want to be where I can see,” she told me.

“What do you mean, ‘see’? You don’t think I’m going to let—”

“Now roll over on your stomach and lie flat.” Mama was back.

“I won’t.”

“Such a baby!” Mama rolled her eyes at the girl.

“He’s a big coward.” The girl’s eyes glittered with anticipation.

“Not my son!” Mama rushed to my defense. “He doesn’t have a cowardly bone in his whole body. He’s just high-strung is all. Come on now, Stevie, be a good boy,” she crooned. The icepick glittered in her hand. The point turned red as she held a lit match to it.

“I haven’t got time. I have to leave for Miami,” I told her.

“Miami?” Mama was distracted by the news. “You’re going to Miami? Such a coincidence! That’s what I came up to tell you in the first place. For next week I’ve got plane reservations to go down and stay with Mrs. Schwartz, you remember, the Mah-Jongg lady with the blonde hair—black roots-—she always loses. So now you’re going down, we could go together, what could be nicer?”

“Mama, I don’t want you to change your plans because of me.”

“So what’s the matter, you’re ashamed you should fly on the same plane with your mother?”

“Of course not. It’s just-—-”

“Then I’ll go make the reservations for both of us from this nice lady with the Come-On-Down Travel Agency, she’s a cousin from Mrs. Levine.”

“All right.” I resigned myself. “Get us out on the first available flight.”

“Such a hurry? I couldn’t even pack my mouton stole? You keep rushing around like this making your heart swell, next thing I’ll be saying kaddish for you.”

“But Mama,” I reminded her again as she went out the door, “you’re not Jewish.”

“With a dead son, it couldn’t hurt,” she called back. The door slammed behind her.

“Your mother isn’t Jewish,” the girl mused after Mama was gone.

“That’s right.”

“Then that means you’re not Jewish either?” Her voice went up a couple of notes.

“I guess not.”

“Oy! Vey!” she exclaimed. “What have I done?”

“What’s the matter?” I stared at her.

“I thought you were Jewish. I never would have come here with you if I’d known you weren’t. I never would have—” She collapsed in a river of sobs.

“What difference does it make?”

“How—how-—how—” she gulped. “How can I marry you if you’re not Jewish?”

“Who said anything about marriage? I don’t even know your name.”

“You didn’t ask! It’s Rebecca. Rebecca Liebermann. And I can’t marry a man who isn’t Jewish. My father would never talk to me again.”

“I don’t get it. What’s all this about marriage?”

“I thought you were Jewish. You see, I have this girl friend met a Jewish boy at a dance and went to his apartment and made love, and when he found out she was Jewish too, he said the only decent thing they could do was get married and so they did. And I thought if I did the same thing—-” The sobs took over again.

“I'm sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say.

Suddenly anger replaced her tears. “Well next time ask a girl’s name and tell her you’re a goy! It’s the least you could do! Common courtesy . . .” There was a lot more. As it came out, she picked up her clothes and got dressed.

“This is absolutely the last time I ever come down to the Village alone!” she snarled at me over her shoulder. The door slammed behind her.

Maybe I should have told her I’d convert, I thought to myself as I showered, shaved, and dressed. I was just buttoning my shirt when Mama called to tell me what flight we were on. Two hours later I met her at La Guardia Airport. Forty minutes after that we were in the air, Miami-bound.

The “No Smoking” light went out, and we unhooked our seat belts. “You can open your eyes now,” I told Mama as I fumbled in my pocket for a cigarette.

“T ell them they should turn around and go back for my stomach, it’s lying on the floor at the airport.” Mama took a deep breath and sighed disapprovingly. “If God had meant us to be up here, we’d have feathers,” she philosophized.

“Just relax,” I advised her.

“How should I relax dangling my feet who knows how many thousand feet up in the air with only the clouds for a rug? That Henry Ford—-he was an anti-Semite, you know?—no wonder he comes up with a contraption man should flap his arms and fly around like a sparrow.”

“Wright.” I corrected her.

“It’s no good agreeing with me. It wouldn’t make me any happier up here.”

“I wasn’t agreeing with you. I was trying to tell you it wasn’t Hemy Ford who invented the airplane. It was Wright, the brothers, Wilbur and Orville, the two of them.”

“If you’re asking me, two Wrights made a wrong!”

“If you say so.” I gave up on the discussion and started to light my cigarette.

“You shouldn’t smoke. It will aggravate your macka.”

“My what?”

“The boil on your behind. Nicotine will make it swell.”

“It isn’t a boil; it was only a goose pimple from the cold.”

“A canker!”

“A pimple.” I compromised. “Just a very small pimple.”

“I didn’t forget.” She fumbled in her handbag and held up the icepick triumphantly. “See? It has to be tended to.”

“Later. Not now. Not here.”

“Just as soon as we get to Miami,” she promised. “First thing when we land, I’ll turn you over on my lap and we’ll lance it.”

I wondered if it would be possible to bail out over Tampa. “Why don’t you try to take a nap?” I suggested. “It’ll make the time pass faster.”

“You think I could sleep up here with the angels? You saw that pilot driving the plane? A boy! He couldn’t be more than thirty, if that. You think I could just go to sleep and trust him, a boy like that should know what he’s doing? Believe me, I wouldn’t shut my eyes until we’re on the ground again!”

Five minutes later she was snoring softly beside me. I tilted the seat back and closed my own eyes. But I couldn’t go to sleep. My mind was too filled with considerations of just what might lie ahead of me.

Why, suddenly, months after that time in Saigon, should Randolph P. Austin, toilet tycoon, call on me for help? With all his money and prestige and influence, why should he need me? What could he possibly want that required my talents? And why all the rush?

Well, I supposed I’d know the answers soon enough. Meanwhile, my mind was distracted from the questions by a conversation going on in the seat behind me. It was shared by a suburban-looking man about my age and a slightly younger blonde woman, fresh from the beauty parlor and bulgy around the hips.

“Henry, this girdle is killing me,” she was complaining.

“If you hadn’t waited until the last minute, you wouldn’t be having problems getting into your clothes.”

“If I’d gone down earlier, before the season, everybody would have guessed. Everybody knows why a woman goes to Puerto Rico that early. The whole neighborhood would be talking. It would have been as obvious as crabgrass, and the gossip would have spread even faster.”

“I still say that’s no reason to wait until it’s almost too late. Look at the trouble. Usually you can fly straight to San Juan, but because you had to pick the height of the tourist season, we end up flying to Miami and having to change planes. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s not my fault. The airline didn’t have anything else available. But I must say I don’t care for your attitude, Henry.”

“I’m sorry.” Henry sighed. “I guess I’m just feeling guilty. Joyce gave me a hard time this morning.”

“What does she have to complain about? I’d like to have it as good as she does. A husband who gives her a real mink coat for Christmas! You know what George gave me? Six pairs of stockings! Every year since we got married, that’s what he gives me. For my birthday, for our anniversary, for Christmas-eighteen pairs a year. I’m drowning in stockings, but I don’t get so much as a lousy rabbit fur while your wife gets mink. And she has the gall to give you a hard time! About what, I’d like to know!”

“She wanted to come with me. And it’s really not so unreasonable, you know. I mean, every year for eight years I’ve been telling her I’m going to San Juan on business and refusing to take her along. She’s beginning to get suspicious.”

“Well, next year maybe we’ll go someplace else. Bermuda, maybe.”

“Can you get an abortion in Bermuda?”

“Maybe next year I won’t need an abortion.”

“Fat chance!” Henry grunted. “Every year for eight years I’ve been going through this bit with you. Why should next year be different?”

“It’s not my fault! Every May you get so drunk at the first Kiwanis picnic that you don’t even give me a chance to do what I should do to be safe. So I get knocked up and we have to go to San Juan to have it taken care of. If you were more careful, then maybe I’d get to spend my vacation somewhere else. Besides, Joyce isn’t the only one who’s getting suspicious. George is beginning to notice I get plump every July. He’s also started to suggest that maybe it would be nice if we didn’t take separate vacations one year. He says he’d like to see San Juan for a change instead of being stuck in Merrick, Long Island.

“But he hasn’t shown any signs of being suspicious about us, has he, Marilyn?” Henry sounded worried.

“No. He’s always talking about how much he likes you, Henry. I think it’s because he always beats you at golf.

“I let him beat me.” Henry corrected her. “Anyway, I’m glad to know he’s not suspicious. I have nightmares sometimes about George and Joyce putting two and two together—your vacations and my business trips--and what a mess we’d be in then.”

“We’ve been managing it for eight years. Why start worrying now?”

“I suppose you’re right. I just wish we weren’t cutting it so close this time. If we should be delayed by one of those Miami hurricanes or anything, it might be too late for you to have the operation by the time we got to San Juan.”

“There isn’t going to be any hurricane. There isn’t going to be any delay. Stop worrying, Henry. Just relax.”

“All right, Marilyn. Here comes the stewardess for the drink orders. I guess I’ll have a martini. You want anything ?”

“Never again! If it hadn’t been for those damn Kiwanis martinis, I wouldn’t be in this predicament!”

The stewardess was standing over me now. I opened my eyes as she spoke. She was right off the Rheingold Girl assembly line: pretty face, good figure, and a toothpaste-commercial personality.

“Would you care for a cocktail, sir?” she asked me.

“No, he wouldn’t!” Mama spoke without opening her eyes. “As much as he drinks with his kidneys, he could miss one it would be like vitamins for his whole system.”

I mouthed the words “scotch” and “double” at the stewardess, and she nodded her understanding and made a notation on her pad. When she returned with the cocktail, Mama was snoring again. I sipped my drink quietly and then leaned back and closed my eyes again.

“Are you a homosexual?” My eyelids popped open to find a small boy with very large horn-rimmed glasses planted in the aisle beside my seat. He was staring straight at me. He repeated the question. “Are you a homosexual?”

“Look, kid,” I told him, “I’m Steve Victor, the man from O. R. G. Y. I ask the questions; I don’t answer them!”

“You’re embarrassed,” he decided. “My question embarrasses you.”

“I am not embarrassed,” I assured him. But my voice had gone up and my face turned red when the people turned around in their seats to look at us.

“Then why won’t you answer the question?” the small boy asked logically.

“Melvin!” Halfway down the aisle a man leaned out of his seat to call the boy. “Stop bothering the gentleman. Come back here and sit down!”

“Why don’t you do that, Melvin?” I encouraged him.

“Why do you assume he’s bothering the man?” the woman seated beside the man who’d called Melvin wanted to know. “You always assume he’s doing something wrong without knowing the facts. Why can’t you just leave Melvin alone and let him develop his potential without trying to frustrate him every time he moves?”

“You are a queer, aren’t you, mister?” Melvin’s tone was soothing. “It’s all right. You can tell me.” More people were turning around to stare at us now. I could see them waiting for my answer.

“Cut it out!” I hissed at him. “Of course I’m not a queer!” I added, in a loud voice meant to satisfy any doubts the increasingly fascinated audience might have. Unfortunately my voice cracked shrilly, and they looked far from convinced.

I looked hopefully at Melvin’s parents. A young man seated across the aisle from them fluttered his eyelids at me seductively.

“He’s creating a scene,” Melvin’s father told Melvin’s mother. “See what all this permissiveness leads to!”

“That’s why I send him to a progressive private school,” Melvin’s mother told Melvin’s father smugly. “Just because of your ridiculous attitude!”

“But he’s bothering that man!”

“He’s only being friendly. He’s just asking him a question. How else is he going to enlarge his life experience if he doesn’t ask questions?”

“Kinsey says fifty percent of American males have homosexual experience,” Melvin informed me. “So why bother hiding it?”

“Why don’t you go pick on somebody else?” I pleaded desperately. “Why me?”

“Because I guessed you were a homosexual.”

“Why do you say that?” All those eyes staring at me!

“You’ve got an overprotective mother. I was watching you with her. Sociologists have found that an overwhelming percentage of homosexuals have overprotective mothers.”

“Melvin.” I took his arm in my hand and squeezed hard. “If you don’t go away and leave me alone, I’m going to –“

“Get your hands off that little boy, you lousy pervert!”

I looked up to find a mile of muscle hovering over me. The face on top of it was contorted into a snarl. The fist being raised was the size of a large salami.

“Now, wait a minute—” I dropped Melvin’s arm quickly. “You don’t really understand the situation.”

“The hell I don’t! I been pushing a hack in Manhattan for twenty years and I know a queer making a pass at a kid when I see it. Even when I’m on vacation for the first time in twenty years, I know it. And you know what I’m going to do to you, mac?”

Behind him the stewardess was fluttering futilely. Somebody had taken the fizz out of the Rheingold.

“Please, gentlemen . . .” The smile was still pasted over her fluoride-white teeth, but her eyes were turning glassy over it.

“I’m gonna give you just what you deserve!” The cab driver started moving in on me.

“Such a nice nap I had.” Mama chose that moment to open her eyes. “I was dreaming that already I was in the sunshine on the beach just across from Collins Avenue.

“It’s a shame to have to wake up. What’s the matter, Steven? You look nervous. You’re airsick, maybe?”

“If he’s nervous, it’s because I’m about to punch him in the nose, lady,” the belligerent cab driver informed her.

“Over my dead body you’ll hit my son!” Mama flung herself over me, successfully interposing her right shoulder between my nose and his fist. “And if you’re not leaving when I count three, believe me, you’re catching it from me!” She waved her pocketbook at him threateningly.

“All right, lady, I’m going.” Intimidated, the cab driver held up his hands.

“And take Melvin with you,” I suggested. But he didn’t.

“That’s the trouble with the world today,” Melvin sighed. “People draw the line when it comes to really getting involved. It’s because basically they’re apathetic.”

“Excuse me.” The man seated across the aisle from us, a well-dressed, youngish man with Spanish-Indian features, stood beside my seat and indicated that he wanted to get something down from the luggage rack over my head. “I’m sorry to inconvenience you.”

“It’s all right,” I muttered, still keeping a wary eye on Melvin.

“Go away, little boy!” Mama commanded.

I was surprised, although knowing Mama I shouldn’t have been, when Melvin actually did back off a few paces. The Spanish-Indian gentleman removed a large pistol from the luggage rack. “Your pardon.” He held the muzzle to my head. “Tell the pilot to fly directly to Havana,” he instructed the stewardess. “If he tries to set down in Miami or anyplace else except Havana, I’m going to kill this passenger. Go tell him that.”

“Go ahead and kill him!” my cab driver yelled bravely.

“Serve the lousy queer right!” There was a murmur of agreement from the other passengers.

“I never wanted to be a gold star mother.” Mama was frightened, but she stuck her chin out bravely.

“I don’t know.” The stewardess looked at me, and then back at the man with the gun doubtfully. “If the pilot asked me, I think I’d have to say this gentleman is expendable.”

“Then tell him I’ll kill this little boy unless he changes course.” The muzzle of the gun moved from my head to Melvin’s temple.

“Do you have an abnormally small penis?” Melvin asked the man as the stewardess moved forward to the cockpit.

“Quite the contrary.” The man’s composure was admirable. “Why do you ask?”

“Psychological studies show that men with abnormally small sex organs tend to overcompensate with large guns,” Melvin told him. “Since that’s a large gun you’re holding to my head, I wondered.”

“That man’s pointing a gun at our Melvin!” Down the aisle Melvin’s mother was pummeling Melvin’s father, trying to prod him to action. “Do something!” she insisted .

“Why should I interfere? You were concerned with Melvin enlarging his life experience. Well, this should enlarge it all right!”

“Twenty years I wait to get to Miami,” the cab driver groaned, “and now this! And they told me the hotel wouldn’t hold my reservations past four o’clock. It’s all your fault, you lousy queer!” he snarled at me as an illogical afterthought.

“You leave my boy alone, you big bully!” Mama told him.

“Henry!” Behind me Marilyn’s voice was thick with panic. “We won’t get to Puerto Rico in time for me in have-—”

“There won’t be any delays!” Henry interrupted her bitterly. “You were so sure! If you hadn’t waited until the last minute-—-”

“Spilt milk!” Marilyn started to cry. “It’s no use blaming me, Henry! You’ve got to do something! You’ve got to make them turn around so we can make our connection at Miami!”

“The man has a gun, Marilyn! It’s loaded!”

“So am I!” she reminded him.

“Ohmigod!” Henry had a sudden thought.

“What?”

“Do you suppose they release a list of the passengers when something like this happens? What if George and Joyce should see we’re on the same plane?”

“Oh, Henry!” Marilyn wailed. “And then on top of it I turn up pregnant! Oh, Henry!”

“I think I’m going to faint!” The pretty young man sitting across the aisle from Melvin’s parents turned very pale and the two dabs of rouge on his cheeks stood out like fever spots. The stewardess rushed to calm him. “Don’t touch me!” His voice grew very shrill. “I can't stand to have a female touch me!”

“Would anybody like some coffee, tea, or milk?” She turned from him and addressed the passengers at large. I had to admire the way her conditioning took over in an emergency.

However, her question went unanswered.

“I told my analyst I was apprehensive about this trip.” A new voice, female, floated down the aisle. “I told him I was worried about all these hijackings. And you know what he said? He said the fear was just symptomatic of my neurosis. He said it was unrealistic because only maybe one plane in a thousand got hijacked. And for that I pay him twenty dollars a session!”

“So when his next bill comes, don’t pay it,” a man’s voice advised her.

“My horoscope said I’d be taking a trip, so I took a trip,” yet another female voice wailed. “But it didn’t just say a journey, it said an unexpected journey! The stars are never wrong!”

“And I had to hitch my little red wagon to your star!” someone else commented bitterly. “My luck!”

“All year long I looked forward to getting away from the garment district and lying in the sun,” another man complained. “All I asked was two weeks without the Mafia hoods breathing down my neck. What’s the use? They follow me everywhere!”

“Would you mind showing it to me?” Melvin asked the man with the gun.

“What?”

“Your penis. I’d like to judge its size for myself.”

“Melvin! Stop pestering the man,” his father called down the aisle.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” The voice boomed out over the loudspeaker, and everybody quieted down to listen to it. “This is Captain Marvel⁷ , your pilot. We’ve had a slight change in flight plan, but there’s no cause for alarm. None whatsoever. If you’ll fasten your seat belts, we’ll be landing at Havana in about ten minutes. I am informed that the temperature in Havana is a balmy eighty-two degrees. That’s four degrees higher than Miami, which just goes to prove that every cloud has its silver lining. Heh-heh. Speaking for myself, the crew, and the Havana Chamber of Commerce, let me say that we hope your visit will be an enjoyable one. There will be no smoking until we disembark.”

“So put out your cigarette, you could live without it for ten minutes,” my mother told me.

I extinguished my cigarette.

“Your seat belt is fastened?” she checked.

“Yes.”

“Just as soon as we’re safe on solid ground,” Mama promised, “you know what?”

“No. What?”

“I’m going to lance that macka for you!” Her face was filled with the bliss of motherhood. “Just as soon as we’re down,” she vowed. “And believe me, it wouldn’t hurt just a little!”

Head held high, teeth a-grit, I braced myself for the dangers I would face in Castro’s Cuba!

CHAPTER THREE

“Greetings, American imperialist warmonger vacationers! The People’s Government of Cuba welcomes you to Havana.” The Cuban who greeted us was very young, sported an attempt at a beard that wouldn’t quite make it for at least another five years, appeared officious and a little pompous, yet friendly enough. He spoke to us in flawless English, and despite his pomposity, he seemed quite at ease, as if he’d been through this procedure many times before. He surveyed the crowd gathered in the large airport shed with what was almost a twinkle in his eye. “Now, Yankee plutocrat exploiters,” he added, “if you have any questions, as a representative of the Cuban InTourist Service, I will try to answer them for you.”

“Where could I go with my son, we should be alone I can lance a macka on his behind?” my mother asked.

“Is there any possibility of getting from here to San Juan in a hurry?” Henry wanted to know.

“If not, can you tell me if there are any gynecologists in Havana that are approved by the AMA?” Marilyn added.

“Are you a Libra?”

“Is there any way I can put in a long-distance call to my analyst? I don’t want him to accuse me of fantasizing?”

“My mascara is running. Do you have a mirror?” the pretty young man asked.

“Why don’t you ask him?” The cab driver jerked his thumb nastily in my direction. “Birds of a feather!” he muttered. “Can I call my hotel in Miami and ask them to hold my reservation?” he asked the Cuban directly.

“Do you know if I’ll get extra flight pay for the detour?” the stewardess wanted to know.

“Extra flight pay! We should get a refund, that’s what!”

“Are there any cultural side-trips I could take with my son to enlarge his horizons?” Melvin’s mother wondered.

“Or maybe you have a sleepaway camp we could put him in for awhile,” Melvin’s father added hopefully.

“How do you feel about incest?” Melvin asked the Cuban.

“I’m an embezzler,” the hijacker informed the official politely. “Will the Cuban government grant me sanctuary?”

“I will answer your questions.” The Cuban held up both hands for silence. Only when it was quiet did he resume speaking again. “The men and the women will be housed in separate quarters, so you cannot be alone with your son to lance his whatever-it-is,” he told my mother. I breathed a sigh of relief. “There are no direct flights from here to San Juan, and our gynecologists no longer perform illegal operations since the revolution.” Marilyn and Henry groaned in unison. “I’m a Taurus, the government frowns on psychoanalysis as the opiate of the bourgeois, and homosexuals are ostracized. I’m sorry, but phone calls to Miami will not be allowed,” he informed the cab driver. “As to extra flight pay,” he told the stewardess, “that is strictly up to airline policy and not in our jurisdiction. However, you and the rest of the crew will be cleared for take-off shortly and allowed to proceed to Miami.”

“What about the rest of us?” someone asked.

“Our runways are short, and so the jet on which you arrived cannot risk a take-off with a full load of passengers,” the Cuban explained. “Only the crew will fly out on it. Miami will have to send down a standard four-engine passenger plane for the rest of you.”

“How long will that take?” Henry’s voice quavered as he asked the question.

“Usually somewhere around twenty-four hours. Now, as to any other questions—”

“Cultural opportunities for my son . . .” Melvin’s mother reminded him.

“Sleepaway camp . . .” Melvin’s father was still hopeful.

“Incest!” Melvin demanded an answer.

“A collection of Premier Castro’s speeches will be prvided to enlarge your boy’s cultural horizons,” he promised Melvin’s mother. “If you should decide to leave Melvin here, we could place him in a labor camp,” he told Melvin’s father. “I disapprove of incest,” he told Melvin. “My sister is the ugliest girl in Havana.”

“A labor camp!” Melvin’s mother protested. “Not for my son! He’s a very delicate boy and he’s much too young to work!”

“I knew it was too much to hope for,” Melvin’s father sighed.

“Suppose your sister wasn’t ugly,” Melvin persisted. “Then how would you feel about it?”

“But she is ugly. Very ugly!”

“But suppose she wasn’t?”

“Then I wouldn’t hesitate to marry her,” the Cuban told Melvin with a perfectly straight face. “Any more questions?”

“Yes. What about me?” the hijacker wanted to know.

“How much money did you embezzle?”

“A hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

“In the name of the People’s Govermnent of Cuba, allow me to Welcome you to Havana, comrade. We will be happy to relieve you of your monetary burden.”

“That,” said the hijacker, “is what I was afraid of. I don’t suppose there’s any chance I could keep some of the money?”

“Well, no,” the Cuban told him pleasantly. “But we will do everything we can to correct your bourgeois attitudes.”

He stepped down from the platform on which he’d been standing while addressing us. The orientation session—if that’s what it was—was at an end. Now Cuban soldiers in Uniform -- male and female-—were moving through the crowd. The men were being separated from the women so that each group might be herded to its separate quarters.

“Before you’re taking him away,” Mama protested to the youthful soldier tugging at my arm, “we could maybe be alone for a little, there’s something has to be attended to?”

“I am sorry, Señora, but it is forbidden.” Gently he pushed me along. “The older ones, they really appreciate it when you take care of them, hey?” he asked me with a wink.

I looked at him blankly.

“She is good to you? She buys you many presents?” He was curious.

“Never forgets my birthday,” I admitted.

“And she is good in the bed, no? With many years also comes much experience.” He grinned slyly and nudged me.

“You don’t understand. She’s my mother!”

“Si?” He thought that over a minute. Then he nodded to himself as if he’d come to a decision. The next thing I knew, he guided me over to where Melvin was lining up with the other men. “Little boy,” the soldier said, “you will share a room with this gentleman. He will have many interesting answers for the questions you are asking before about incest.” The soldier patted me on the shoulder, beamed at the two of us with a Bless-you-my-children air, and walked away.

“Do you sleep with your mother?” Melvin wasted no time in getting down to the nitty-gritty.

“No.” I threw in the towel altogether. “Only with my father.”

“Somehow I was under the impression that he was dead,” Melvin mused.

“He is. It’s more satisfying that way.”

“This is going to be very informative,” Melvin decided. “I’ve never had a chance to interview an incestuous homosexual necrophiliac before.”

“It takes all kinds,” I told him.

The conversation was dropped as we were marched out of the shed and across the airfield to a large motel stand- ing at the edge of it. The women were ushered to the place separately and taken to a different entrance on the far side of the complex of two-story buildings. Melvin and I were shown to the room we would share. Here we dropped off

our things, washed up, and then proceeded down to a large dining hall where all the men were being fed cafeteria-style. The food was ample, but starchy and not exactly of the gourmet variety.

After dinner we were escorted back to our rooms. It was never made quite clear whether our status was that of guests or prisoners. However, it seemed likely that if we attempted to leave the motel we would be stopped.

During the evening we were lined up again—with our baggage this time—-and there was a customs inspection. The Cuban customs officials were thorough. Not only was all the luggage emptied out, but the linings of the suitcases were searched to make sure there were no false bottoms, et cetera. Afterwards, we were once again escorted back to our rooms.

Resigned to the situation, I was all for getting a night’s sleep. Melvin, however, seemed to be one of those hyper-thyroid kids who require no sleep. I dozed off muttering answers to his piercing questions.

“In the pursuit of your particular sexual idiosyncrasy, is rigor mortis an attraction, or a deterrent?”

“A stiff is a stiff is a stiff.” Dropping off, I Gertrude Steined an answer from my subconscious.

“Would you say you had a seductive father as a child?"

“He was more than a daddy to me,” I hummed, more than half asleep.

“Have you ever considered how all this relates to your own death wish?”

“Better dead than Dad. Or,” I reconsidered, “is it better bed than dead?”

I missed Melvin’s next query. I’d fallen into a deep sleep.

It was morning when I awoke. Melvin was still sitting there at the desk, making notes. As soon as he saw my eyes were open, he was ready with another question. “Do you have erotic, necrophiliac dreams?” he inquired.

“And how!” I told him. I’d had enough. I went on the offensive. “And what’s more, they were all about you.” I stared at him, licking my lips, my eyes gleaming.

“Uh, how do you mean?” He was taken aback, getting nervous, but still in there punching.

“Well, first of all”-- I got to my feet and stood over him, rubbing my hands together, my eyes raking him--“I strangled you. Slowly, you understand. Then with your body still warm, I took off all your clothes, and -”

“Stay away from me!” Melvin backed off.

“Oh, it was lovely!” I twisted my hands together and managed a little froth at the mouth.

“Leave me alone!” He was flat against the door now.

“So young! So dead! So succulent!” I poised as if to pounce a la Bela Lugosi.

“Mama!” Melvin flung open the door and fled down the hall screaming. “Mama! Mama!”

Laughing, I watched him go. That would teach the little so-and-so to badger his elders. I suppose I must have looked pretty fiendish standing there laughing. I was still chortling when I felt the hand tapping me on the shoulder. I turned around and slammed bravely into the cab driver’s salami fist with my nose. “I told you to stay away from that kid, you pervert!” He stood over me with his fist raised to strike again if I should get to my feet.

I stayed put. “My nose is bleeding,” I informed him.

“Why tell me, you degenerate? I ain’t the Red Cross Blood Bank!”

“You there!” A Cuban guard approached. “Why are you sitting on the floor?”

“That’s where I landed when I fell down,” I explained.

“Your nose is bleeding,” he observed. “Did he strike you?” The Cuban jerked a thumb at the cab driver.

“Of course not.” Well, hell, we Americans had to stick together, didn’t we? “I’m a bleeder. It runs in my family.”

“I do not wish to be inhospitable,” the Cuban said politely, “but you’re bleeding all over our clean floor.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to be inconsiderate.” Keeping a wary eye on the cab driver, I got to my feet. I fished a handkerchief out of my pocket and held it to my nose to stem the flow of blood.

“You will please get your things together now and assemble in this hallway,” the guard instructed. “Your plane has arrived from Miami, and you will be allowed to board it in about half an hour.”

I waited until the cab driver, still glaring at me, moved off to his own doorway before I reentered my room. A moment later there was a knock at my door. It was Melvin’s father, come to fetch his son’s things. He didn’t say much. But there was something in his attitude that said he was more sympathetic than condemning toward me. It was only as he was leaving that he finally asked me a question.

“What did you say to Melvin?” he asked. “It’s the first time in his life I’ve ever seen him frightened.”

“Nothing really,” I muttered, ashamed of myself now.

“All right.” He didn’t press the matter. “It’s just that I thought it might come in handy for me in dealing with him in the future.” He waited for further comment, but when none was forthcoming, he sighed and left.

I saw him again as we were boarding the plane. His nod was friendly. The look his wife shot me, however, was murderous. Melvin himself merely cringed.

“Your nose is bleeding,” Mama told me as I took the seat beside her.

“I’ve always said it, Mama. You’re one of the most observant people I know.”

“So be sarcastic. From a son like you all these years I’ve got a thick skin, you couldn’t hurt my feelings. But what I’d like to know is, why is your nose bleeding?”

“If I told you that man hit me”-—I pointed at the cab driver—“would you believe me?”

“He wouldn’t‘ dare!” Mama defoliated the cab driver with a glance. “Just tell me! He laid a finger on you?”

“No,” I lied. It was simpler that way. I didn’t want to start another ruckus. “It just started bleeding by itself. I don’t know why.”

“You don’t know why? I know why!” Mama nodded, sure of herself. “It’s from that macka on your behind not being lanced. Such a macka cuts off the blood and the pressure builds and it has to go somewhere. So your nose bleeds! Just as soon as we get to Miami—”

“Attention!” The uniformed Cuban official who’d greeted us the day before stood in the aisle of the plane and barked out the word, cutting Mama short, which was no mean feat. “The Cuban government hopes that you American capitalist pigs have enjoyed your stay with us and that when you return to your warmongering homeland you will tell your fellow slaves that you have seen the land of the socialist free and that the days of your imperialist government are numbered. Bon voyage!”

He bowed politely, and then the cabin door closed behind him and the engines began revving up. Ten minutes later we were taxiing down the runway. Then we were in the air, on our way to Miami.

Even without jet power, it was a very short flight. Disembarking, however, was an experience in itself. Everybody, it seemed, had a parting thought.

“If you should get down to Delicate Frank’s while you’re in Miami, look me up.” The pretty young man fluttered his eyelids at me insinuatingly and continued on down the aisle to the exit.

The cab driver was less friendly. “On account of you I lost my hotel reservation and I gotta catch the next plane back to New York,” he grumbled. “But one of these days we’ll meet again, you lousy queer!” He slammed a fist into the palm of his other hand. However, when Mama hefted her pocketbook threateningly, he moved along.

“Beware Jupiter in the ascendancy of the third moon!” The words were hissed in my ear. “False friends will betray you—and you weigh one hundred and seventy six pounds,” the voice added as an afterthought.

“You keep your hands off my boy!” Melvin’s mother snarled.

“Your boy started with him first!” Mama rushed to my defense.

“Thank you,” Melvin’s father muttered out of the side of his mouth. “I think maybe you taught the brat a lesson.”

“I’m going to do a thesis on you,” Melvin informed me, keeping his distance.

“I checked with the pilot.” Henry had just come back up the aisle and now he was reporting to Marilyn. “All flights to San Juan are booked solid for a week.”

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

“We’ll go horseback riding,” Henry told her. “Every day.”

“And if it doesn’t work? What will I tell George?” she sobbed.

“Tell him I can get cigars for him wholesale.” Henry led her toward the ramp.

“My psychoanalyst will tell me it was only a dream! I know he will!” The words floated back up the aisle to where my mother and I were inching toward the exit.

“At last!” Mama’s eyes sparkled happily as she fingered the icepick. “As soon as you’re off the plane you could take your pants down and it wouldn’t hurt a bit, you could sit without feeling it for a change.”

But Mama was thwarted. Randolph P. Austin in person was standing at the gate waiting for us as we disembarked.

“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded indignantly. “You were due in yesterday!”

“I was unavoidably detained.”

“That’s no excuse! At a time like this you’ve got no business taking side trips.”

“Hey, Mister Whatever-your-name-is, what is it you want with my boy?” Mama eyed him belligerently.

“Take it easy, Mama,” I told her. “This is the man who saved my life.”

“When?” The one-word question was delivered in her best courtroom manner.

“About six months ago in Saigon. I told you. Remember?”

“That was six months ago.” Mama delivered her summation. “So what has he done for you lately? ”

“Please, Mama. Don’t interfere. This is important.” I turned back to Austin.

“I canceled the copter and chartered a seaplane,” he told me. “I’d hoped to have a day to go over this business with you, but now we don’t have the time. We’re due at a meeting at Paradise Island in Nassau, by six tonight. So I’ll just have to fill you in on the plane. ”

“You mean we’ll have to leave right away?

“Yep.”

“Wait an instant!” Mama reared like a bucking bronco. “So what’s the big hurry, you couldn’t take a few minutes with the pants down to take care of that macka before it’s infected yet?”

“I’m sorry, Mama. I don’t have time.” I couldn’t hide my relief as I kissed her goodbye. “I’ll write you,” I promised.

“I wouldn’t sleep a wink knowing you’ve got a swell behind!”

“I’ll see he keeps his ass out of trouble,” Austin reassured her brusquely.

“A mother you’re not! To just run away like this! 0y! Vey!” She rocked back and forth on her heels. “0y! Vey!”

“Mama,” I reminded her wearily. “Remember, you’re not even Jewish!”

“Shh!” She looked over her shoulder nervously. “In Miami Beach, this is not an asset!”

“Goodbye, Mama.” I waved back at her as I followed Austin across the airstrip.

“A charming Jewish lady.” Now that I was here, Austin had calmed down and was making an effort to be friendly.

“She’s not Jewish.”

“Now, Steve, there’s no need for that. I have no ethnic prejudices -- not a one. Why, some of my best friends-—”

“So you should live and be well,” I told him. What the hell! Why argue?

We were boarding the monoplane now. It was a jazzy-looking job with a retractable landing gear and pontoons for landing on the water. The pilot had clearance to take off immediately. As soon as we were in the air, Austin proceeded to fill me in on the reason he’d summoned me.

Toilets!

In a word, that was the reason. However, it did take more words to explain the connection between the plumbing necessaries and what was being asked of me. These boiled down to a somewhat unusual business situation.

At the center of this situation was Ali Khat, an oil-rich Arabian sheikh with a pocketful of American pipeline contracts, an insatiable appetite for sex experiences which prompted him to change the ladies in his harem almost as frequently as most men change their socks, and a surprising social conscience. The first of these factors and the chance of cutting himself a slice of the Sheikh’s wealth were what naturally attracted businessman Austin. The second was the reason Austin had brought me into the picture. And the third tied them together in a way that was as immoral as it was intriguing.

Ali Khat’s social conscience had prodded him to philanthropy. He had set aside fifty million dollars—a mere drop from his oily bucket—to build a low-rental housing development for his subjects in his desert homeland. Three million dollars of this was set aside for johnnys and other indoor plumbing. It was a juicy contract, it was up for grabs, and Randolph P. Austin was in there grabbing.

Only he wasn’t alone. Five other international plumbing tycoons were also after the contract. And Ali Khat had come up with a diabolical means of deciding among them.

It boiled down to a scavenger hunt—a human scavenger hunt, a sexual scavenger hunt, a scavenger hunt for girls to replenish his harem. The rules of the game, the conditions of the hunt, the kinds of girls to be sought, the time limits to be imposed-—all of these factors were not yet known by Austin. But the winner of the hunt would be awarded the three-million-dollar contract for toilets.

The terms were to be spelled out at the meeting that evening. It would take place at Ali Khat’s villa on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, one of many such mansions he owned around the world. All of the competitors would be present. The Sheikh, evidently having judged correctly that Austin and the others were not themselves qualified to stock a harem, had granted that each of them might utilize the services of one “agent” to act in his behalf, and that these “agents” might also attend tonight’s meeting. I was to be Austin’s “agent.”

“I’m not a pimp!” I protested. “I’m a legitimate researcher.”

“Would you rather be a dead sex researcher or a live pimp?” he asked.

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Why did you come down here?”

“Because you saved my life,” I admitted reluctantly.

“That’s what I mean. I’m not the kind of guy would remind you of it, but you do owe me a favor.”

“You know,” I told him, “you’ve got a lot in common with my mother.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. I owe you a favor. I’ll deliver if I can.”

What the hell! So I’d be a pimp. “Fill me in on the competition,” I suggested.

“Well, I can’t tell you anything about those you’ll be competing with directly, because I don’t know yet who they are. I don’t know who my competitors may have hired for this job.”

“Tell me about your competitors then.”

“Okay. First of all there’s Larry Rustwater. He’s the biggest thing in bathrooms on the West Coast. Got a lot of political pull and used it to get this far with the Sheikh. He’s very active on the right-wing scene in Southern California, verging on the Birchy, if you know what I mean. His outfit’s nowhere near as big as mine, but it’s growing by pipes and bowls. If there’s any corners to be cut, old Larry’s as quick to slice them as a razor blade and twice as sharp. This contract could double the size of his business, and he’ll be after it with no holds barred. Incidentally, he’s our only domestic competition.”

“How’s that?”

“He and I are the only Americans after the deal. The others are foreigners. Seems like everybody wants to get into toilets these days,” Austin grumbled. “Even the Commies.”

“The Commies?”

“Yep. There’s a Soviet firm looking for a piece of the action too. Their representative’s a commissar name of Krapinadytch. Rough and shaggy, but probably a lot smarter than he looks. He’s got something of an inside track because he previously negotiated some oil contracts with the Sheikh.”

“I thought you said he was doing business with American oil companies?”

“He plays both sides of the street.”

“I see. Who else?”

“Well, there’s John Rank Privy. He’s Australian. Very distinguished. Upper-class Brisbane and proper as hell so maybe his convict ancestors will be forgotten. He’s the kind of man you’d give your power of attorney to without hesitation. But you’d live to regret it. He’s always careful to stay on the Establishment side of the law, but there’s a lot of jailbird enterprise left in our proper patrician from Down Under.”

“So far they sound like a delightful bunch of cutthroats.”

“Or just hard-headed businessmen. Take your pick.” Austin shrugged. “But the other two in the running aren’t so bad.”

“Who are they?”

“Well, first there’s Venugotago Ugotago. He’s Japanese. Probably the most honest of the bunch. Don’t get me wrong. He’s a shrewd, hard-driving businessman, and he’ll cut the prices out from under you if he can, but I’ve never known him to be underhanded.”

“And the other one?”

“A Brazilian. Senhor Luis Di Arrea. I don’t know much about him. He seems to have a helluva lot of money behind him though.”

“And you have no idea who’ll be working for any of them?”

“Not yet. But we’ll know soon. They’ll be sure to bring their operators tonight.”

We lapsed into silence. There was nothing more to be said. We’d just have to wait and see what developed. I dozed off after a while.

It was late afternoon when I awoke. The seaplane was just circling to land in the waters off Paradise Island. We were coming in on the opposite side of the island from the causeway which connects it to Nassau.

It was a Chamber of Commerce view. As oceans go, the Caribbean is effeminate, a soft, mint-jelly green, shimmering, but only turbulent on rare hurricane occasions. It’s a sissy, but it’s beautiful with the golden-boy beauty of a Lord Fauntleroy in a frilly sailor suit. Delicate and prissy, but one of Nature’s works of art nevertheless.

White sails were sprinkled over the offshore pastel waters like fallen confetti. The sun hung low in the sky, tropic, apple-cheeked, and beaming smugly. The sand was chicken, too much cowardly yellow in it; still, its sparkle was truly golden, lush, a seductive shimmer, irresistibly degenerate. This yellow—or gold, if you prefer—was also the primary color of the small islets falling behind us as we wheeled closer to the shore of Paradise Island itself.

Now the shoreline was broken by ribbons of pink-red coral, strands almost violet in hue which marked off the overripe lime sea and the lemon beach like the jagged definitions of a jigsaw puzzle. Inland a more ferocious green took over without overwhelming the multicolored electric flora. It was the kind of scene Gauguin had to invent colors to paint.

Yet this was a long way from Tahiti, and not far at all from the United States mainland as nautical distances are reckoned. This dark green had the feel of jungle black in it when seen from the sky; and even the hotel areas of Paradise Island, where the palms were planted in rows and dirt roads laced them neat as tic-tac-toe squares, couldn’t compete with the basically primeval feel of the landscape. Against the black-green the other colors were violent, overstated, floral wounds gashed out of the dinosaur’s hide.

The main hotel, with its casino and its motel building adjuncts some distance away, appeared dead white from the air, a flap of overcivilized underflesh, vulgarity rebuking its own vulgarity. The villa that was our destination, across the island from the hotel and the casino, blended more naturally into the landscape. Perhaps this was because it was constructed of rock and wood indigenous to the region. If Austin hadn’t pointed it out to me, I probably would have missed seeing it from the air. But as we came closer to it—our seaplane had set down now, and we were coasting toward a dock—-the villa looked more imposing. It wasn’t exactly a castle, but there was the feel of a royal edifice about it.

It was a dwelling fit for a king—or as in this case, a sheikh. When Austin and I were escorted from the dock to the inside of the villa, this impression was confirmed. No demand would be beyond the man who was master here. But would I, Steve Victor, the man from O. R. G. Y., be able to satisfy that demand?

CHAPTER FOUR

We were led up a wide, impressive circular stairway to separate, air-conditioned rooms. Mine had a connecting bathroom, plushly tiled. The first thing I did was to take a hot shower to wash off the grime of my hopscotch journey. Then I shaved, went back into the bedroom, and stretched out naked on the bed to rest for ten or fifteen minutes.

Outside, the dusk was hamming it up. The sun, an overripe tomato now, was resting its chin on an overemotional horizon. The line between sky and sea was a mouth gulping large chunks of the tomato so that the juice trickled over the setting and deepened in color like coagulating blood. I watched the scene blending into a scarlet-tinged gray, and then the door to my room opened.

A dark-skinned girl in an Arabic costume with a veil over the bottom half of her face entered the room. She didn’t react to the fact that I was lying there stark naked. She paused a few feet from the bed, tossed a long mane of lustrous black hair in a way that was more frankly questioning than coquettish, and spoke.

“Greetings from Sheikh Ali Khat.” Her voice was rich and warm. “I am Leila. I am here to serve you. In any way you desire.” The tone left no doubt as to her meaning.

“Uh—-yes-—well—-” I covered myself with the bedspread. I’m usually pretty urbane, but Leila had taken me by surprise. '“That’s very nice of the Sheikh.” I recovered myself somewhat. “Please extend my sincere gratitude for his consideration.”

“I will do as you ask.” Leila bowed from the waist. Her bosom swayed enticingly. If she was any sample of the mammary firmness in her native land, a brassiere manufacturer would have starved to death there. “There is a half an hour to pass before cocktails are served on the terrace,” Leila added as she straightened up. “Would Mr. Victor like me to bathe him, perhaps?”

“Uh, I’ve already showered, thanks.”

“A massage? Or maybe Mr. Victor would prefer to have me help him dress? Or perhaps some other divertissement to pass the time?”

“Gosh, no thanks. There’s really nothing at the moment.”

“Perhaps after the meeting?” She backed toward the door, bowing. “Would Mr. Victor like me to return then?”

“Yes. Why don’t you do that?”

She paused in the doorway. “May I say that I consider myself very lucky to be allowed to serve Mr. Victor rather than one of the other gentlemen?”

“Oh? Why is that?”

“I have seen the other gentlemen. None is as young and handsome and so much of a man as Mr. Victor.” Her eyes sparkled over the veil for a moment, and then the door closed behind her.

I was blushing! My host sure knew how to make a fellow feel at home. I wondered if Leila’s last statement was standard Arab buttering or if she really meant it. A half-hour later, when I went downstairs and met the other guests, I decided that she was probably more sincere than not.

They were gathered on the terrace. Turbaned male Arab servants passed among them with trays of cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. Randolph P. Austin came up to greet me.

“I’ll introduce you around, so you can get some idea of the competition,” he suggested.

“Okay. But don’t you think I should meet our host first?”

“He isn’t here yet. He sent apologies that he’d been detained, but will see us later at dinner. Actually, I think it’s that he doesn’t drink alcoholic beverages and likes to avoid cocktail situations.”

“Why doesn’t he just not serve drinks then?”

“Oh, no. That wouldn’t be in keeping with Arab hospitality,” Austin explained. He led me over to a distinguished-looking man, balding, with florid cheeks and the ramrod posture of a British colonial officer. “Mr. Privy, allow me to present my associate, Steve Victor.”

John Rank Privy measured me with hard blue eyes. “How do you do, Mr. Victor?” His bony hand took my measure with a steel grip. “Mr. Victor, Mr. Snoopleigh.” He introduced the man with whom he’d been talking.

“It’s a privilege to meet you, Mr. Victor.” Snoopleigh. was my age, tough—looking in that rawboned Aussie way, but there were crinkles of humor in his sun-leathered face. “I’m familiar with your work and I’ve admired you for some time.”

Something clicked. “Are you Archibald Snoopleigh?” I asked.

“Rain-right.” He grinned. “The very same.” He was pleased at my having recognized his name. His tone was warm now, in contrast to the impersonal coldness with which Privy was sizing me up.

“You two know each other?” Austin asked.

“We’ve never met before,” I explained, “but I know Mr. Snoopleigh’s work. We’re in the same business. You are the Archibald Snoopleigh from Australia who did that survey contrasting sexuality in the bush and sexuality in the suburbs of Melbourne, aren’t you?” I asked him for confirmation.

“Rain-right. That’s me, to a T. Archie to my friends.”

“I reckon we both had the same idea,” Austin remarked to Privy.

“I believe in hiring professionals,” Privy granted.

“Yep. Well, keep your cistern clean, John.” Austin led me away. “What do you think?” he asked when we were out of hearing distance.

“Privy said it. Snoopleigh’s a pro. He’s one of the top sex researchers in the world. He’ll be tough competition, all right.”

“Think he’s better than you are?”

“I’m not sure. We’ll see.” I avoided blowing my own horn.

“Here’s somebody I’d like you to meet, Steve. Mr. Ugotago.” Austin performed the introductions. The Japanese was tall and very handsome. He wore his dinner clothes with the air of a man who takes pride in his tailor. Yet there was none of the stiffness of Privy about him. He was very relaxed, very sure of himself.

This was in contrast to the other Japanese seated beside him. Unlike Ugotago, the other Oriental seemed out of place and ill-at-ease in these lush surroundings. He was short and fat, uncomfortable in his tuxedo, and sweating over the collar. He was introduced as Mr. Hauksho.

After exchanging a few words, Austin and I moved along. “Ugotago’s man doesn’t look like much in the way of competition,” I remarked to Austin. “He’s nervous as a hunk of fresh-cut blubber.”

“That’s a mistake, Steve.” Austin looked like he was disappointed in me. “Hauksho is far from the ineffectual little fat man he seems to be. I’ve made inquiries. He’s the top private eye in Tokyo. He used to be very high up in the Japanese Intelligence Service, but he resigned in protest over what he called the ‘Americanization’ of his government. Don’t let that bumbling manner fool you. He’s shrewd as they come, and he doesn’t like Americans one little bit. If you come up against him directly, remember what I’m telling you.”

I turned for a second look at the fat little detective. It was hard to see him in the new light cast by Austin’s information. He still looked like no more than the sort of fellow that might come back to haunt Spiro Agnew⁸ .

My gaze moved on past the pudgy Oriental and came to rest on a tall blonde girl in a low-cut evening gown. It was a soft, delightful resting place. She was stacked like a jam at Kennedy Airport. The curves were in all the right places, and when she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, everything moved in a way that was both arresting and erotic without being overstated. Her face was aquiline, aristocratic, intelligent.

“Who’s the lady?” I asked Austin.

“I haven’t been introduced yet,” he replied. “She’s with Krapinadytch, the Russian.”

“You mean she’s the Commie competition in this game?”

“I imagine so. He wouldn’t have brought her here otherwise.”

“Which one is Krapinadytch?”

Austin pointed out a man standing by himself on the other side of the terrace. The Russian was a large, bulky man with a shaved head. He looked like Erich von Stroheim.

“I hadn’t figured on female competition,” I told Austin.

“She’s not the only lady involved,” he answered. “Come along and I’ll introduce you to the other one.”

I followed him through the crowd toward what I thought were two men in evening clothes standing with their backs to us. But as we maneuvered to the front of them, I saw that one was not a man at all, but an imposing-looking redheaded girl dressed in one of those frilly Spanish dance outfits that look something like a tuxedo. She was taller than the man with whom she was talk- mg.

“Senhor Di Arrea.” Austin waited for a pause in the conversation and then interrupted. “I’d like you to meet Steve Victor.”

“Mr. Victor.” Di Arrea was a small Spanish type with a pampas moustache too large and bushy for his face. “Senhorita Nina Procura.”

“So you’re one of the Americans I’m up against.” The redhead was direct, her voice startlingly deep. She was certainly attractive, but there was that about her which told a man to keep his distance. I pegged her for a Lesbian right away. As things turned out later, I was right.

“I guess I am,” I admitted.

“And I’m the other one.” The voice came from over my shoulder. I turned around to find myself looking at six-foot-two of pretty-boy beef on the hoof. It took a few seconds for me to place the abundance of capped white teeth and the well-tanned profile. Then it clicked. “Cass Nova,” he introduced himself.

I’d never met him before, but I’d seen a couple of his movies. He was one of those muscle-rippling actors they throw into low-budget movies in a gladiator tunic. Spar-tacus-on-the-Make, only Cass Nova had never quite made it. He couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag, and his cutey-cute masculinity turned off as many male filmgoers as it turned on female.

It wasn’t about to turn on Senhorita Procura right now, though. She looked at him disdainfully. “You are the Hollywood glamour boy,” she identified him. “Why should someone like you be involved in this matter?”

“Because Mr. Rustwater here is paying me a lot of money. That’s why.” Cass Nova batted his eyelids in the gesture some director must have told him registered frankness. It was the kind of sincerity a TV shill pours over you with the hair tonic he’s peddling.

“But what makes you think you’re qualified to compete with Mr. Victor and myself?” Nina Procura persisted.

“Well, I certainly don’t want to low-rate a lady, but what makes you think that you and Mr. Victor are in my league when it comes to chasing down women?”

“Sex is Mr. Victor’s business.” Nina had done her homework. “And as for myself, I have a history of success in matters such as this.”

“Really?” I was curious. “How so?”

“The senhorita has been retained by many wealthy gentlemen in our native land,” Di Arrea explained. “In Brazil it is not unusual for a busy man of means to hire someone to obtain female companionship and erotic pleasure for him.”

“You mean she’s a lady pimp!” Cass Nova was shocked.

“It’s more honorable than being a male whore!” Nina shot back at him.

“You’ve got no call to pin a label like that on me.”

“I have seen some of your pictures,” she told him sweetly.

Austin changed the subject before it could get out of hand. “Steve, this is Larry Rustwater.” He indicated the hawk-faced man who’d been standing silently behind Cass Nova while the dialogue was ensuing. “Steve’s going to represent me,” Austin told him.

Rustwater’s eyes compared me with Cass Nova. He nodded—-more to himself than to me—as if to say he was satisfied he’d chosen the better man. “You from New York?” he asked me peremptorily.

“In a way, I guess I am.”

“It figures. Lots of crime and Commies and spic trouble in New York.” He turned his back on me ostentatiously.

My reaction must have shown in my face. I was wondering what would happen if I turned him around and busted him in the jaw. Austin put a hand on my arm as if to stop me, and I relaxed.

“Mr. Rustwater always speaks his mind,” Cass Nova was explaining.

“That would explain why he doesn’t say much.” Senhor Di Arrea looked as angry and disgusted as I was.

“He’s a very patriotic man, though. Takes a real interest in the welfare of the country,” Cass babbled on.

“God help your country.” Senhor Di Arrea nodded to us, took Nina by the arm, and led her away.

A few moments later, dinner was announced. Somebody on the Sheikh’s staff had a sense of irony. Rustwater was seated between the two Brazilians, and Nova was on Senhorita Procura’s other side. I was between Krapinadytch and the unidentified Russian beauty. But before I had a chance to make small talk with either of them, our host arrived. The assemblage was quiet as he greeted us.

“I am honored at the presence of each and every one of you at my table,” he told us with what I can only describe as arrogant humility.

I studied him for a moment after he sat down. Ali Khat was a powerful-looking man of indeterminate years. His manner was polished, his skin darker than many American blacks I have known, his features pronounced, well-defined, craggy almost. It wasn’t so much that he was handsome as that he exuded an aura of that overworked word “charisma.”

Business was not discussed during the lavish meal. I introduced myself to the Russian on either side of me and learned that the statuesque girl’s name was Natasha Jambonski. Neither she nor Krapinadytch was very informative. They were polite enough, but all my efforts to find out just what Natasha’s particular bag was met with a blank wall. Dinner was over, and I knew no more about her qualifications for the business to come than I had when I sat down.

After dinner we gathered in the Sheikh’s library. Here, over brandy, Ali Khat at last got down to the particulars. He recapitulated the terms under which he would grant the plumbing contract—they were just as Austin had explained them on the plane—and then got down to the specifics of how this scavenger hunt for females was to work.

“Each of those competing will be asked to supply five girls for my harem,” Ali Khat explained. “These will be no ordinary girls. Each of them will be defined in certain specific ways. The descriptions may be different in each instance. For instance, the subject might be described by race, nationality, height and weight, hair color. Or, she might be defined by political affiliation, employment role, psychosexual classification. In another case, the desired female might have to have certain background experiences, family connections, physical sexual qualifications. In each case, I repeat, the definition will be different.”

“Will each of us be given the same description in every case?” Archibald Snoopleigh asked.

I clicked off the fact that the Aussie had a knack for being pertinent.

“Yes,” Ali Khat told him. “That way, when it comes down to a final judgment, there will be a fair basis for reaching it. But that’s getting ahead of myself. I’ll explain what I mean by that in a moment. First let me explain how the contest will actually be conducted. Tonight, some time after this session, each of you will receive a slip of paper on which will be a description of the first girl you are to procure. As I’ve said, this will be the same for all of you. Presumably, you will then set out on your quest to find a suitable female. You will also be given a phone number to call. When you have found such a girl and she has expressed a willingness to join my harem—and only then—will you receive the description of the next girl to be procured.”

“Excuse me.” Senhorita Nina Procura interrupted politely. “Are we to understand that the girl must be willing to join your harem?”

“That is correct. She must come of her own free will. You may induce her to take such an action, but you may not force her.”

“Just what sort of inducements do you mean?” Nina Procura spoke as if she’d had experience in the use of both inducements and force. She went up in my estimation; her experience would be an asset in this contest, and I’d have to be ready to cope with it. “Can we offer them money? Will you pay? And how much?”

“I was just coming to that.” Ali Khat thought a moment. “I will pay five thousand dollars to each girl who comes willingly. Each of you will be free to use that as an inducement.”

Cass Nova whistled. “That could come to quite a tidy sum,” he whispered to me. “If each of us gets five girls, that’s thirty females for a total of a hundred and fifty grand! Maybe I should up my fee.” He eyed Larry Rustwater speculatively.

“How much are you getting?” I was curious.

“Fifteen G’s. And you?”

“I’m doing it as a favor.”

The look on Cass’s face said I was a liar.

“Remember,” the Sheikh continued, “that you will not be given the description of the next girl until you have fulfilled the current assignment. This will apply right down the line. Thus the terms of each assignment won’t be known to you until the one before is accomplished. Is that clear?”

We all nodded and murmured assent.

“Now, to get back to the rules by which the contest will be judged.” Ali Khat paused to stress that this was important, and then continued. “The contest will end on December thirty-first. This is mid-August, so you have about four and a half months. At that time the first disqualifications will be made on the basis of quantity. It three of you have obtained five girls and three of you have obtained only four, then the second three will be out of the competition. Or if two of you obtain five, and the four others supply less, then those four will be out of the running. Is that clear to everybody?”

“Suppose we all come up with the same number of girls?” Hauksho, the Japanese, spoke for the first time.

“I hope that you all do. I hope that you all come up with five. Then we come to the matter of judging. First, each girl will be appraised to ascertain if she really lives up to the terms of her selection. If there is a discrepancy, the girl may be disqualified, and that would mean that the firm who procured her would also be disqualified. The next standard will be beauty. The girls in each category will be matched against each other and each will be given a rating on a one-to-a-hundred scale. Thus the firm which accumulates the most points will win the contract.”

“Who will make this judgment?” Natasha Jambonski wanted to know.

“In the last analysis, I will,” the Sheikh told her. “My staff will help, of course, but the final scoring will be mine. So will the final judgment. And it will be final!”

“How much manpower can we put to work on this?” Larry Rustwater wanted to know.

“Only those of you who are present here may actually participate in the contest,” Ali Khat told him firmly. “This means that each manufacturer and his designated representative may take part and no one else. If others are used in any way, that manufacturer will be rendered ineligible by the rules of the contest.” The Sheikh looked at each of us with what amounted to a twinkle in his eye. “And now I wish you all good luck and good night.” Abruptly, he was gone.

By ones and twos we drifted out of the library and back to our rooms. Austin bid me good night outside my door. I had just gotten out of my clothes and was reaching for my pajamas when the door opened again and Leila entered.

The gauzy veil was still over the lower half of her face. The rest of her outfit was just as gauzy. Even in the shadows cast by the lamp beside my bed, I could see that she was little more covered than I was myself -- and I was nude.

“I have something for Mr. Victor.” She held up a sealed envelope. “Does Mr. Victor have something for me?” she added coyly, staring at where the buttons of my pajama pants should have been if I was wearing pajamas.

I was aware that biology had taken over without waiting for instructions from my brain. Still, I wasn’t embarrassed. If Leila was going to make a habit of dropping in on me when I was in the nude, I was damned if I was going to apologize for the results.

“Call me Steve,” I suggested democratically.

“Etiquette forbids.” It was interesting how Leila could manage to be both demure and provocative at the same time. “In matters of sex,” she added, “does Mr. Victor have a preference?”

“Mr. Victor prefers girls,” I acknowledged.

“That’s not what your fortunate servant meant. The reference was to matters of technique, position, variation, et cetera.”

“When Mr. Victor goes into a good restaurant for the first time, he prefers to let the headwaiter choose.”

“So be it.” Leila came up to me and stood so close that the tips of her large gauze-covered breasts grazed my chest. “It is hoped that Mr. Victor will not be disappointed with the meal.”

“With such delicacies to arouse Mr. Victor’s appetite, he could never be disappointed.” I was about a head taller than she was, and I had to bend over to kiss her. This hors d’oeuvre was superb, every bit as delicious as I’d anticipated, with just one slight flaw.

“Perhaps Mr. Victor would prefer to open this later,” Leila murmured. She set the sealed envelope down on the night table; she set herself down on the bed.

“About that kiss . . .” There was something bothering me and I decided there was no sense repressing it; that way lies dyspepsia.

“Mr. Victor was displeased?”

“Not exactly. It’s just that the veil gets in the way a little bit. It sort of cuts down the contact area, if you see what I mean. Couldn’t you remove it?”

“I am most abjectly sorry, but I cannot. It is forbidden for an unmarried girl to discard her face-veil. Everything else is removable, but not that.”

Well, half a loaf . . . And a most succulent half at that. I decided not to quibble. I stretched out beside Leila on the bed and kissed her again. Adjusting to the situation, the veil seemed to make the kiss even more interesting.

The liquid warmth of her full lips responding was lent an added tactile fillip by the tickle of the thin veil. Darting behind it, her knowing tongue was even more teasing. Nor did the veil blunt the insinuating love bites of her small, sharp teeth.

I blew the excess gauze out of my mouth and went on to explore other areas. The terrain of Leila’s body insured that my explorations would be pleasurable. It was a delightful fleshscape of velvety curves and mounds and hollows.

My lips tasted the large, firm, up-thrusting breasts. They were softer than they looked, but the nipples were hard and long and sweet-—two red buds set in the flowers of her pink roseates against the dusky background of golden-tanned Arabian flesh. The breasts rippled and the tips moved under my lips as if independent of their setting.

I proceeded to the hollows inland of each of her hips. They were semi-mysterious, shadowed female crevices on either side of the slight rise of her belly and falling away to the lustrous black curls which marked her womanhood. Leila tensed as I moved lower, and her slightly heavy thighs quivered with anticipation.

I stroked their inner surfaces, and they separated. Her small, round bottom rose from the bed and rotated like a spinning wheel in motion. The action brought her taut scarlet clitoris into prominence, and I strummed it between two fingers.

Throughout all of this, although I hadn’t been aware of it, Leila had completely divested herself of the light garments she was wearing. Her sensitive timing had kept me from noticing. As I proceeded from one erogenous part of her body to another, it would be bared to my caress as if by magic. Now she was completely naked-except for the face-veil -- and her body was like an expertly tuned violin moving in time to its own fiery and exquisite rhythms.

But Leila was an instrument designed to give pleasure as well as to receive it. Now, pushing me gently away, she reminded me of that fact. “Does Mr. Victor still wish the maitre d’ to select the piece de résistance?” she inquired.

I nodded.

“Then please lie back and relax,” she suggested.

I did that, and her long ebony hair fanned out over my shoulders. She kissed my neck and ears thoroughly, the veil’s tickling adding to the erotic arousal prompted by the expert lavings of her lips and tongue. The mane of hair tingled over my chest as she moved lower to bestow a series of butterfly kisses on my belly. She paused for one long, deep oral caress at my navel; the thrill of it made my very groin vibrate.

Her hands were under me now, the nails digging into my rear, the fingers gently kneading, pinching, probing. Then the face-veil was grinding into my thighs and the heat of her mouth mingled with the heat of the love-swollen sac of my genitals. She took my straining manhood between her two hands and then swooped down with her mouth forming a large O. It was all pure sensation for a little while, but she removed her lips before I released my passion.

Quickly, Leila scrambled to her knees on the bed. She rested on her elbows so that her head was a good deal lower than her provocatively protruding posterior. Her eyes gleaming, she looked at me over one shoulder and tossed her head in a way which invited me to assume the obvious position.

Grasping her hips, I plunged into her from behind. At the same moment Leila shoved backwards and the sheath of her womanhood grasped me firmly and with rippling muscles. Then her plump derriere started to rotate again — slowly at first, then faster—and the sensation was both a goad and a thwarting which urged me onward at the same time that it prolonged the action.

My hands slid up from her hips and cupped her breasts. Beyond being considerate now, I squeezed them roughly. Leila slipped forward until she way lying flat, her head dangling over the side of her bed, her legs tightly together. I was stretched out on top of her. The movement wasn’t violent now, but subtle, slow; it was a passion-building position rather than one designed to fulfill our lust.

Then Leila rose again to her former position. I was balanced on my toes and fingertips behind her, but still locked firmly. We moved together in a deep, sliding rhythm that mounted until we were slamming together with more and more force. Deep inside her, I could feel that I was hitting just the right spot. It was what the Arabs call the two-humped beast—the two-humped beast galloping to glory!

There was a final, wrenching movement, and we froze together—almost as if suspended in midair. No outer movement now; it was all happening at the joined source of our passion. We stayed that way for a long time -- an eternity. I could feel explosion after explosion deep inside Leila. And my own release at the same time seemed to go on forever. I don’t know where it all came from . . .

Finally Leila fell forward again, exhausted. I slumped atop her, contact lost now, but too drained to move my weight off her body. We stayed that way a long time, passive, inert, satisfied.

But when I did start to move, Leila reached behind her and stayed the motion. “If Mr. Victor will stay at table,” she informed me, “there is yet another course to be served.”

I doubted it. I was sated. That’s what I thought. But I was wrong.

Slowly, Leila was beginning to move that impossibly talented derriere again. She maneuvered the plump cheeks as if they were hands. My manhood was gripped by them, its length grasped, squeezed, enveloped.

Very slowly now-—it was hardly as if she was moving at all-—and using only the genius of her rump, Leila caressed me back to lust. With exquisite control, she pushed slowly higher and higher so that we had resumed our former position almost without my being aware of it. Using the muscles of her derriere, she guided my hardness to an alternate target from the one it had assailed before. Her hands reached behind her to separate those luscious cheeks and provide easier access. Very slowly she manipulated the impalement until I was firmly encased in that impossibly small space. Then she took her hands away and her cheeks locked at the root of my root.

Leila took one of my hands in hers and guided it around her thigh to her straining clitoris. When I stroked it, she moaned deep in her throat and began that long, sliding rhythm again. It was even better than before because the pressure was so intense.

I had started out being careful, afraid of hurting her. But as my lust mounted, as I felt the clitoris grow and move under my caress, I lost control and pounded at her wildly. Quake after quake shook the fount of her femininity, and when I finally climaxed a second time, she screamed her accompaniment and fell forward in a faint.

I was concerned, but she came out of it right away. She turned over and looked up at me with smoldering eyes. “Now let us rest,” she suggested.

“I’ll buy that.” I stretched out beside her and closed my eyes. Immediately I was asleep.

It was dawn when I awoke. Leila was stretched out beside me, naked. Her face-veil was still in place. She looked like a depraved angel, lascivious even in her peaceful sleep.

I took the sealed envelope from the nightstand and opened it. There were two slips of paper inside. One had a phone number written on it with instructions to call the number when I completed the first assignment. The number, I was informed, would put me in contact with a private line to Paradise Island. After calling it, I would be contacted by a representative of the Sheikh who would receive my “merchandise” and give me my next assignment.

The other slip of paper contained the description of the first girl to be supplied. I read it, and then turned over and went back to sleep.

I’d need my rest. Tomorrow the scavenger hunt for pulchritude would begin. I dreamed about it.

But my wildest dreams couldn’t approach the realities of what was coming!

CHAPTER FIVE

MAYOR RICHARD J. DALEY WELCOMES YOU TO CHICAGO

I was all choked up at the sight of the banner strung across the width of the terminal at O’Hare Airport. It was darned hospitable of the Mayor. I wondered how he knew I was coming.

He didn’t. In August 1968, just prior to the start of the Democratic National Commotion——I mean Convention! —the signs were everywhere in the Windbag—Oops! Windy—- City. The words leaped out from billboards, storefront posters, handbills plastered on telephone poles, even movie marquees. The greeting was repeated to the point of overkill—and all in the name of the municipal head.

(“Would you define ‘municipal head’ as the city crapper?” I asked Randolph P. Austin shortly after we arrived in Chi.)

The bathroom magnate and I landed in Chicago on Sunday, August 25, the day before the donkeys’ conclave got underway at the International Amphitheatre⁹ . We were there in response to the first assignment handed down by Sheikh Ali Khat:

“A bona fide American hippie girl between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one.” That was the first requirement; obviously the Sheikh had no hangups relating to Lolita complexes. “Long-legged and accustomed to wearing miniskirts,” the memo continued. “Minimum bosom requirements, thirty-six inches, C cup. May be experienced with drugs, but not addicted. Must be a true blonde,” the specifications concluded.

“Doesn’t sound so tough,” Austin had said when we discussed the task back on Paradise Island. “It should be easy to persuade one of those hippie chicks to join a harem for five grand.”

“Nix,” I told him. I’d spotted the clinker. “Forget about offering the five G’s. Any girl who accepted it would be automatically disqualified.”

“Why?”

“Because,” I explained, “she wouldn’t be a true hippie. Love, to a genuine hippie, isn’t something to be sold. If she showed any concern with money, it would raise doubts as to her hippie status where the Sheikh is concerned. True hippies are non-materialistic. She might accept the money afterwards, but if she dickered for it beforehand, it would belie her allegiance to the hippie philosophy.”

“I see.” Austin had nodded. “Well, I guess we’d better make a beeline for either New York or San Francisco, huh? Isn’t that where the hippies congregate? The East Village or Haight-Ashbury¹⁰ ?”

“Lots of cities have their hippie neighborhoods,” I told him. “But you’re right. New York or Frisco is logical. Too logical. That’s where the competition will be looking. But I have a better idea. The Democratic Convention’s about to tee off, and according to the papers, hippies from all over the country are flocking to Chicago. That’s the place to go.

So, here we were in Chicago. Austin had insisted on accompanying me. He had “connections” in Chicago, he’d boasted, and I hadn’t tried too hard to dissuade him from coming along.

It was late Sunday afternoon by the time we got to the Conrad Hilton Hotel. Austin really did have some influence in the town. Without it, we’d never have been able to get accommodations. I don’t know what strings he pulled, but they worked.

The hotel lobby was jammed with McCarthy¹¹ rooters. The Senator was due to arrive at any moment. Austin and I started elbowing our way through the crowd.

Suddenly there was a roar. “Here he comes!” The crowd surged forward, carrying us along. Then the roar changed to a groan. It was Lester Maddox¹² !

Austin and I started for the check-in desk again. Halfway there, another roar sounded——“Here comes Gene¹³ !” —-and we were thrown back once again. A flying wedge of beefy fuzz, and I could have reached out and touched -- William Buckley¹⁴ !

Finally we made it to the desk. We checked in and crossed over to the bank of elevators. Then-pandemonimn! “Here comes Gene! Here comes Gene!” the mob was screaming again. The throng behind us stampeded and we were pushed to the front. Here, in the van, I found myself nose-to-nose with—— Hubert Horatio Humphrey¹⁵ !

“Hubert! Hubert! Shake my hand!” a man beside me yelled.

The Hump smiled his drugstore bland smile and grasped the proffered hand. The man thrust his face into Humphrey’s and screamed, “We want Gene!” HHH dropped the hand as if it was an unexpectedly soiled diaper.

Too late. The crowd echoed the cry. “We want Gene! We want Gene!” they roared as Triple-H moved through them.

They sure knew how to hurt a fellow. I wondered what it was doing to his ego. I needn’t have worried. By taking advantage of the typical vacuum in the Veep’s wake, we managed to reach the elevators and get up to our rooms. I turned on the radio and listened to a local station while I unpacked. I learned that demonstrators were congregating in Lincoln Park. There were sure to be hippies among them. A little later, when Austin joined me, we agreed that time was of the essence and that we might as well start our hunt in Lincoln Park after dinner.

It was about eleven-thirty when we arrived at the Lincoln Park mall. We didn’t know it, but we were just in time for the opening battle of what would be the Chicago War. This First Battle of Lincoln Park laid the ground rules.

For the next week there would be no such thing as a “neutral” in Chicago.

The scene, when we got there, was still fairly peaceful. Protestors were sprinkled over the grass. There were almost as many cops there as people, but they hadn’t really gotten around to clearing the area as yet. We wondered if perhaps a decision had been reached to allow the kids to remain in the park.

Austin and I walked toward the trees fringing the mall. We were scanning the area for a blonde hippie chick, as per specifications. In the underbrush, small clusters of policemen were removing their badges and nametags.

Chicago cops, it seems, have this identity problem. A self-effacing lot, they’re shy as schoolgirls when it comes to accepting individual credit for the duties they perform safeguarding democracy. It was this spirit of modest anonymity which prodded many of them to take advantage of the privacy afforded by the bushes and trees deeper in the park.

The soft sounds of their embarrassed giggling wafted over the warm night air. The feeling communicated was of a small group of boy scouts hiding from the scoutmaster for purposes of clandestine mutual masturbation. But of course they weren’t doing anything of the sort—I think. I was too far away to tell for sure, but I don’t think they were.

Suddenly a bullhorn sounded. It was announced that the park, including the mall, would now be cleared by force. Most of the people, Austin and I among them, responded by trying to leave quickly.

It wasn’t that simple. The announcement was still echoing when a solid line of blueshirts stretching the length of the mall appeared as if from thin air and marched with military precision toward the sidewalk. Each of them wore a crash helmet and carried a wide-muzzled tear-gas gun held at the ready. People started running, trying to get out of their path. But now there were cops on the sidewalk as well, and they were driving the people back toward the marching phalanx.

There was an inevitable, brief shoving match. Then the demonstrators broke through the police line and the majority of them made it across the street. Immediately there were three or four ranks of blueshirts at the curb parallel to the now panicky crowd.

During the rush Austin and I had become separated. Now trapped on the sidewalk across from the park, I peered around me, trying to locate him. I couldn’t spot him anywhere.

“Move!” I found myself peering into the muzzle of a tear-gas gun.

I moved.

It should be noted here that all Chicago policemen are eight feet tall and weigh two thousand pounds. They breed them in the stockyards. Judging from the number of bulls stampeding over the scene now, someone must have left the corral gate open. It looked like they outnumbered the crowd by about three to one.

I took a deep breath and quickly appraised the situation. The crowd was milling about on the sidewalk across from the park. Behind them was the wall of some sort of building which ran the length of the block. In front of them were several phalanxes of police. To my right, at the far end of the block, the police had formed several more lines, sealing off the corner. To my left, close, more cops were just beginning to form into lines across a narrow intersection. The intersection led into a street that was more the width of an alley. I guessed that this might be where the police would eventually drive the crowd.

It was a good guess. As I moved to cross the intersection before it was closed off, I glanced down the narrow street and saw that there were ranks of police closing off the other end. By the time I slipped around the cops to the comparative safety of the sidewalk on the other side of the gutter, they had already moved to box in the rest of the crowd.

Most of the reporters and photographers had gathered in the place where I was now standing. At the far end of the block, now, we could see the police charging into the crowd. Panic took over. There was no place for people to run to avoid the swinging clubs and riflebutts of the cops, who shouted savagely as they waded into the mob.

Behind me flashbulbs were going off as the photographers tried to record the police action. Suddenly two lines of the police nearest us wheeled around as if in response to a command, charged across the gutter, and began clubbing the newsmen gathered there. I was lucky. The photographers were their main target. Together with some reporters, I managed to dash back toward the park. There was an island in the middle of the intersection and five or six of us found sanctuary there.

The main force of policemen, still shouting, had pressured the crowd from a rectangle into a square. From my vantage point, the tactic of forcing them into the narrow street they’d already sealed off was easy to observe. But once the cops had closed off the street, it was impossible to see what was happening there. I only heard the sound of clubs hitting flesh and the cries and screams of the wounded.

“You people move on!” A policeman came up to the island and waved his club at the newsmen threateningly.

“I’m a reporter.” One of them showed his credentials.

“A reporter?” The policeman repeated it loudly, like a mating call. Three other cops came up on the run.

All four of the cops held one hand in front of themselves carefully, obviously shielding their badges and nameplates from view. They surrounded the reporter. I couldn’t see what was happening. Then the cops vanished. The reporter lay in a heap on the traffic island. A few of his buddies picked him up and helped him move away. The power of the press!

“Get off!” My kidney backed into a policeman’s billy.

“I’m just an innocent bystander,” I protested. “I’m not involved!”

His answer was to hit me in the kidney again. I stepped down from the traffic island. Immediately there was another cop in front of me.

“Get out of the gutter!” He raised his club threateningly .

I stepped back on the traffic island.

“Get off here!” I was shoved into the gutter again.

“Get out of the gutter!” A club bounced off my kneecap.

I spotted a hole in the auto traffic piling up in the street and darted through it and up the block away from the park. I ran for about a block, then slowed down to a walk. Behind me, I could hear screaming.

When I got back to the Hilton, there was a message for me to call Austin’s room. He picked it up on the first ring. “I see you got away okay,” he greeted me.

“Just about. How about you? Did you get hurt?”

“One of Daley’s hoods tried to plant a riflebutt in my groin. I had to relieve him of his weapon.” Austin‘s voice was tight with anger. He was no protesting kid used to coping with angry cops. Toilets are part of the Establishment, and as far as Austin was concerned, cops were supposed to be protecting him, not assaulting him. “I never saw anything like it,” he told me. “Those cops went berserk; they went crazy for blood.” Little did he guess that this was only the mild beginning. The disgust left his voice as he changed the subject. “Come up to my room,” he said. “There’s someone here I want you to meet.”

The “someone” turned out to be an attractive blonde girl about eighteen or nineteen years old. There was a welt on her cheek with traces of dried blood under it. She was wearing a miniskirt which left a tattoo on her right thigh clearly revealed. The tattoo was of a dove with the word “Peace” in a half-circle olive branch above it. There was a button pinned to the sweater over her right breast. “Pig for President!” it proclaimed.

“Steve, meet Ginger.” Austin introduced us. “I think Ginger may be the answer to our problem.”

I studied her more closely. I could see what Austin meant. On the surface, Ginger fit all the specifications of the girl we were seeking. She was blonde, long-legged, and her bosom was obviously large enough to satisfy Ali Khat. But, there were still questions to be answered—- some of them fairly delicate.

How far had Austin gone in determining some of the answers? I cocked an eyebrow at him, not wanting to bring anything up prematurely. The look he shot back said he understood what was on my mind.

“I told Ginger she was welcome to use the bathroom,” he said diplomatically. “Playing games with the Chicago police can be a grimy business. Why don’t you go take a shower now, dear?” he asked considerately. “Mr. Victor and I have some business matters to discuss, and they’d only bore you anyway.”

“All right.” Ginger shrugged and vanished into the bathroom.

“Where’d you find her?” I asked when we were alone.

“Lying on the sidewalk. She’d been running away when a cop came charging up behind her and slugged her on the run. Pigs!” Austin’s face contorted.

“Law and order,” I reminded him.

“The hell you say! Pigs! If they act like pigs, then that’s what they are. Pigs is pigs!”

“All right. All right. Calm down,” I soothed him.

“Let’s get back to the girl. There are still some questions about her filling the bill, but putting them aside, what about her willingness? Just because she may fit the picture doesn’t mean she’ll go along with the harem bit.”

“I think the chances are good,” Austin told me. “I’ve been talking to her, and from what she says, she’s obsessed with the idea of experiencing new things. She says she wants to taste the full variety of life, and she says it with real fervor, like it was her religion. She wants to try a free fall from thirty thousand feet just so she’ll know what the feeling is. She’s taken a couple of LSD trips for the same reason. She even said she’d like to join a nunnery to get a taste of enforced celibacy.”

“Did you tell her that wasn’t what we had in mind?”

“Not exactly. But I did hint around the topic and she did look interested. I’m pretty sure she’d look at the whole harem thing as just another kick she ought to try.”

“What about that LSD bit,” I wondered. “Is she hooked on any kind of drugs?”

“She said she only did it a couple of times. As to other drugs, I don’t know for sure.”

“Well, she didn’t look like a junkie or anything,” I said.

“But at least we should check her over for needle marks.”

“Okay.”

“That brings us to the most ticklish qualification,” I remembered. “Is she a true blonde’?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Well, there’s one simple way of finding out,” I suggested. “She’s taking a shower. Why don’t we just go take a peek?”

“Why not?” Austin shrugged.

The bathroom door was ajar. From behind it we could hear the shower running. I eased the door open a little more. There was a lot of steam coming from behind the opaque glass door of the stall shower. The outline of Ginger’s figure was barely visible.

With Austin behind me, I went up to the door and tried to peer through the glass for a clearer view. It was no use; between the texture of the plexiglass and the steam, it was impossible to check the detail that interested us. Then I noticed that there was an aperture—about a foot and a half wide and six inches high—-between the top of the door and the frame set in the ceiling.

Silently I pointed it out to Austin, and he nodded. I went through another sign-language bit, and finally he nodded again. Then he knelt on the tile floor and got a firm grip on my feet as I climbed up on his shoulders.

From this perch I had a clear view down into the interior of the stall shower. Ginger’s back was against one wall with her body arched out from it so that her bosom strained almost straight up. The nipples—aureoles large as half-dollars—were distended from the water, maroon, pointy, quivering. She’d narrowed the stream of water and turned it on full force. The way she’d positioned herself, the fount of her womanhood was being pummeled by the stream. Her high, plump behind was bouncing frantically against the wall like a foam-rubber car seat on a very bumpy road. Her head was thrown back, eyes closed, breasts swelling with the gasp of her breathing. Both of her hands were buried at the juncture of her thighs. I couldn’t tell if she was a “true blonde” or not.

Under me, Austin shifted with the pressure of my weight. I motioned him to be patient. He raised his eyebrows as if to ask what was taking so long. After all, he seemed to be saying, one look should be enough; no need to be a voyeur about it. I moved my hand rapidly in a fist and then covered it with the other hand until he nodded that he understood. Then I turned my attention back to Ginger.

Her eyes were open now, rolling backwards, the pupils dilated, unseeing. Her hands were a blur of motion blocking her groin. Her pounding derriere was putting a permanent dent in the tile wall.

Then suddenly her lips curled back and her up-pointed breasts filled with air and held it. Her thigh muscles strained and her hands dug deep and held. A slow moan built from somewhere deep inside her. It grew louder. Small, sharp teeth crushed her lower lip. She stayed that way for a long moment. Then the moan became a loud exclamation—half laughter, half sob—and her body seemed to snap like the release of a taut bowstring. She fell forward with a release, crashing against the door of the stall shower.

The door smacked against Austin and he slipped from his knees, sprawling backwards. One of his arms flailed out and inadvertently grabbed Ginger’s ankle, pulling her forward through the doorway. I toppled from Austin’s shoulders and fell forward, my arms and legs tangling with those of the naked girl. My head butted her midriff and came to rest wedged between those sleek thighs.

Ginger was a “true blonde”!

No doubt about it. The evidence was right under my nose. It was pure platinum.

As I untangled myself, I took advantage of the opportunity to check for the needle marks of the drug addict. There were none. Ginger may have taken a few trips, but there was no sign that she was on the hype.

She got to her feet, panting. It was an impressive sight. “You cats are the limit!” she said, more surprised than angry. “A pair of voyeurs! But what were you so up-tight about? If you wanted to watch, all you had to do was say so. I wouldn’t have minded. The human body is a beautiful thing. It should be looked at.”

“But then think what I would have missed.” I couldn’t resist making the point.

“Hell, you wouldn’t have missed anything if you’d just been honest about it. Orgasm releases tension for me. It watching makes you less up-tight, I don’t mind. I just don’t like all this sneaking around corners. That makes it seem like it’s dirty when it’s not.”

“I’m sorry.” I apologized. Austin mumbled an echoing apology.

“It’s like you make it bad by putting a value judgment on it. ‘Thou shalt have no unauthorized orgasms,’ or some such silly rule. Why can’t people just be natural?”

While she’d been talking, I’d been mentally ticking off the requirements listed by the Sheikh. She seemed to have them all. Now the question was whether or not she was willing. But there was another point that Austin and I hadn’t really considered. Now, as Ginger, still wet and naked, marched brazenly into the other room and flung herself into the armchair, her continuing conversation brought the point into focus.

Austin and I had followed her. We sat down and listened.

“You know why you’re embarrassed about sex and the human body?” she was saying. “Because you’ve been conditioned by the media, that’s why. And you know who determines that conditioning? The Establishment!” Her voice rang with loathing as she spoke the last two words.

A faint suspicion clicked in my mind. “Maybe that’s true,” I said carefully. “But what can you do about the Establishment?”

“Burn it! Blow it up! Drown it! Strangle it with its own red tape! Work from without and from within to destroy it!”

“You mean violently?” I asked innocently.

“Hell yes! You can’t build without destruction. Confrontation is the only viable politics.”

“But won’t some innocent people get hurt in that kind of action?”

“You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.”

“Peace and love,” I reminded her.

“Oh, sure. But don’t tell me. Tell Daley.”

“Or don’t tell him,” I offered. “Let him find out by example. Put LSD in the water system, like Abby Hoffman¹⁶ said the other day, and you’ll pacify all Chicago. That right?”

“Right!” Ginger’s head bobbed in vigorous agreement. “The politics of the put-on. Right?”

“You’ve got it.” Her breasts bobbed along with her head.

“Yeah. Well, that’s very interesting.” I yawned ostentatiously. “But I’m afraid it’s past my bedtime, so I hope you two will excuse me.”

Austin looked from me to the voluptuously naked Ginger, and his face lit up. He patted me on the back all the way to the door as he saw me out. I drew him into the hall with me and motioned to him to shut the door so Ginger wouldn’t hear.

“She’s out,” I told him curtly.

“What? Why? She’s perfect. She fits all the specifications.”

“All but one.”

“What do you mean?” Austin was puzzled.

“She’s not a hippie.”

“Not a hippie? You’re nuts. Just listen to her.”

“I have been. That’s what I mean. She’s not a hippie. She’s a Yippie.”

“I don’t get it. What’s the difference?”

“Hippies are for peace and love,” I explained. “That’s primary. Hippies are always nonviolent. They really try to follow the Judeo-Christian ethic and turn the other cheek. Hippies are apolitical by definition. They drop out. Yippies believe in confrontation, in joining the battle, in the politics of the absurd as a means of tearing down the Establishment. Many of them are members of the Youth International Party, which is a sort of American version of the Dutch Provos¹⁷ .”

“It sounds to me like you’re splitting hairs.”

“I’m not. You enlist Ginger for the Sheikh’s harem, and in my opinion you’ll end up with a disqualification and lose the whole shooting match. I’m here because you value my advice.” I threw him the clincher. “Well, my advice is to forget Ginger and look for another girl.”

“Well, all right,” he said reluctantly. “But I guess it’s okay if I keep her around for tonight, huh?”

“Have a ball,” I told him permissively. “That is if you can get her to stop proselytizing long enough to have one."

I Went back to my room and went to bed. It had been a long day. The next one would be even longer.

It was early in the morning when Austin’s call woke me, but he informed me that he’d been up for awhile and busy. Sleepily, I asked him what he’d been busy doing. He told me he’d been in contact with a VIP friend of his who owned a chain of newspapers and that the friend had agreed to accredit us as correspondents to the convention, which was set to begin that evening.

“Why should we go to the convention?” I wondered.

“Because Ginger tells me that a lot of hippie kids have wangled passes to the balcony through McCarthy Headquarters.”

“You sure they’re hippies? Not Yippies?”

“Yep. I checked her out on that very closely. These kids aren’t going there to disrupt or anything like that. They just want to root for the seating of the Julian Bond¹⁸ delegation and the adoption of the minority peace plank on Vietnam. As a matter of fact, Ginger was pretty vehement at the way they were screened to keep the Yippies out. There’ll be some McCarthy kids there, but there’ll also be some genuine hippies according to her.”

“But what do we need press accreditation for? Why not just get us passes to the balcony?”

“Because they’re worth their weight in gold. I don’t have that much pull with the Democratic National Committee. This was the only way I could get us in.”

However, even with his pull, it turned out to be not at all simple. Our press credentials were in order, but having them validated by the National Committee was something else again. It took us all day, and even then we almost strangled on the red tape.

Finally we succeeded, but we were both dead by the time we dragged ourselves out to the International Amphitheatre for the opening of the Convention. We were held up at the gate, waiting at the end of a long line of people while the Secret Service frisked poet Allen Ginsberg¹⁹ . First they went through his russet bag. Then they reached under his floor-length cloak, to make sure he wasn’t packing an antitank gun there, I suppose. Ginsberg went “Om-m-m- m” at the groping hand of the SS man. The Fed looked interested.

Inside finally, I thought I recognized a political personage from back home in New York. “Aren’t you Paul O’Dwyer²⁰ ?” I inquired.

“Oy, vey, hev you got the wrong man!” was the reply.

Austin and I went up to the balcony, and we were lucky enough to find seats. For the next hour we listened to Governor Connally of Texas rumbling about the sanctity of the Unit Rule²¹ over the loudspeaker. His speech activated my bladder. I told Austin I’d be right back and went in search of the men’s room.

The Amphitheatre was immense, and I must have circled it eight times before I found out where those sadistic Democratic planners had hidden the john. By then my kidneys could have served as a transplant for a reservoir. I could hear Connally still sanctifying the Unit Rule as I entered the lavatory.

Inside there were forty men lined up at the forty urinals with another forty waiting behind them. Every one of them was wearing a Texas delegate’s badge. I decided it was Connally and not my faulty bladder after all. The Texas delegation flushed in unison, and the plumbing sounded out “The Yellow Rose of Texas”!

When I got back to the balcony, I told my toilet-minded companion about it. He made some notes and thanked me. Then we settled back for what seemed like a further eternity of hot wind blowing in from Texas.

I let it whip past my ears without listening. Concentrating on my reason for being there, I cased the balcony around us. My eyes kept returning to one blonde chick in particular who was sitting two rows behind us and off to the right. Many of the young people had left the balcony, drifting away by ones and twos, bored by the‘ tedious speech. More than half the seats were empty now. But this blonde—disapproval of Connally’s stand written clear on her face--was sticking it out.

She was thin, slim-hipped, and the leather miniskirt she wore showed off her long legs to advantage. The matching leather vest over her bosom couldn’t conceal breasts that were really too large for her slender frame. It was a nice body, even if somewhat skimpy, but it was her face which I found most intriguing.

She’d made a conscious effort to play down its prettiness. The total lack of makeup, the ultrashort and uneven cut of her blonde hair, the unattractive wire frame of the glasses she wore, even the tight set of her lips as if to emphasize their thinness—-all added up to a desire to make the face look even narrower than it was, to make it seem pinched and haggard, and intellectual and serious. Yet the effort failed. She couldn’t hide the natural vivacity sensual contour of her features. The green eyes twinkled with humor behind the glasses. The pink tongue sneaked out from behind the lips and silently opted for flesh over intellect. Red crept into the cheeks and denied them the paleness of profundity. Her mind may have cast her in an asexual part for the convention, but her basic femininity betrayed the role.

The betrayal became complete after Connally finally talked himself out and the convention took up the matter of the seating of the disputed Georgia delegation. With the taking of the vote to approve the compromise which split the delegation between the forces of Julian Bond and Lester Maddox, the gallery came alive. Sparsely filled now, it nevertheless erupted into a mighty roar, a thrilling chant:

“JULIAN BOND! JULIAN BOND! JULIAN BOND!”

The blonde was on her feet, face flushed, eyes sparkling, too-heavy breasts bouncing as she pounded her fist against her hand and yelled out the name which would become the symbol of what little righteousness there was to be found in the convention. Her intellect had fled before her passion now. And her fervor made her truly beautiful.

“JULIAN BOND! JULIAN BOND! JULIAN BOND!”

The convention was adjourned. Still the gallery shouted. Finally Bond left the floor. The shouts died out. I told Austin I’d catch up with him later and jockeyed to follow the blonde down the stairs. Outside the hall, I maneuvered so that we were pressed together in the crush of the crowd gathering in Bond’s wake. It wasn’t hard to strike up a conversation with her. All I did was mention Bond’s name and she responded.

She looked hungry. I asked if she’d join me for a bite to eat, and she accepted quickly and gratefully. I took her into the Stockyard Inn adjacent to the Amphitheatre and worked at building up our rapport through a steak dinner. She ate ravenously. Afterward, with the crowd dissipated, we caught a lift from one of the McCarthy campaign’s volunteer drivers and headed for the lake shore area.

Forbidden to sleep in the parks, many of the homeless hippies had spread themselves out thinly on the beaches. By not congregating in one spot, quite a few of them were able to snatch some sleep there. Periodically the cops might clear one of the beach areas, but it was impossible to keep the protestors off all of them. So we went to where the blonde had stashed her sleeping bag.

By now I’d learned her name was Jessica, that she was twenty years old, and that she was a bona fide flower child from Denver, Colorado. She had the word “Love” tattooed on her right thigh to prove it. She freely admitted she smoked pot, but was disapproving of other drug experiences. She offered to share her sleeping bag with me as naturally as if she were offering me a cup of coffee.

There were a few other sleeping bags strewn about the area, and occasionally one or two people strolled by, but for the most part it was quiet. Jessica slipped out of her clothes and into the sleeping bag without the slightest hint of self-consciousness. I followed her example, and our naked bodies entwined like crossed fingers in a mitten.

Jessica’s slim body was supple and warm. She accepted my kiss without protest and responded like she’d been expecting it. The nipples of her breasts dug into my chest. The knee of one of her long legs slid up to grip my hip. Her groin fluttered against me and my sex organ swelled to meet it.

But duty dictated an alternate course of action. I had palmed a small pocket flashlight in one hand, and now I slid down the length of her slim body to use it. I had to find out if she was a “true blonde.” Naturally enough, Jessica thought I was up to something else entirely. She squealed her approval. “Ohé l dig that more than anything,” she sighed, her fingers tangling in my hair.

It was very dark in the recesses of the sleeping bag, and even with the help of the pocket flashlight I had difficulty locating the target. It took a moment or two, and that time turned out to be crucial. Above me, Jessica’s face in the moonlight, protruding out of the sleeping bag all by itself, had attracted company. Intent on the job at hand, I could only dimly hear the voice of the newcomer and Jessica’s voice answering him.

“Maria. She of the cropped hair!” His voice was rich, throaty, masculine. It was the sort of voice calculated to intrigue a woman.

Jessica was intrigued. “My name is Jessica, not Maria,” she answered.

“Nevertheless, I shall call you Maria-—Maria of the cropped hair -- and you may call me Roberto.”

“Roberto? Is that your name?”

“No. But names don’t matter. With Maria of the cropped hair and a sleeping bag, it would be disrespectful to the late Ernest Hemingway to call myself anything but Roberto.”

“Oh, I see.” Jessica laughed. “You want to play For Whom the Bell Tolls Chicago style. You’re hip to the parallels between the Spanish Revolution and the struggle in Chicago. Is that it?”

“It is. And I need human warmth and understanding. The battle is too much with me. There must be an interlude. May I share your sleeping bag?”

“Well, since you’ve already taken off your clothes, I can hardly let you stand out there nude in the cold night air. But I should warn you that it’s liable to be crowded.”

“Two is always company, never a crowd.”

“But three is a crowd,” Jessica told him. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She giggled.

A man’s foot kicked me in the nose. Damn her! She could have been more specific with him. She needn’t have been so hospitable. He really didn’t know I was there. If she’d told him straight out, maybe he’d have gone away.

But she hadn’t, and he hadn’t. Now he straightened out in the sleeping bag so that I was forced to hunch up on the other side with Jessica between us. Shamelessly, Jessica’s hand was still pressing on my head, trying to guide me to the target. Cursing silently, I continued my investigations.

Above me, proximity had caused them to lower their voices to whispers. I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I flicked on the pocket flashlight and located the general area in which I was interested. However, partly because of Jessica’s position and partly because something was blocking it, I couldn’t get a clear view of the triangle of curls below her flat belly. I reached over to remove the obstacle.

Immediately it grew rigid in my grasp and began sliding back and forth. Disgustedly, I pushed it away. The man’s voice was momentarily loud, and his words came through clearly. “Don’t be shy, Maria of the cropped hair. That gives me much pleasure.”

I maneuvered for a better look. Jessica’s thighs closed over my ears and I couldn’t hear anything. I was able to check in depth. She was a “true blonde” without a doubt.

If I’d thought I was just going to look and pop back up, Jessica had other ideas. She held me firmly in place and moved her body so that there was no misunderstanding what she expected. It would have been ungallant, to say the least, to disappoint her. I lost myself in the liquid warmth of her passion.

The only distraction was the ardor of the other man poking me in the left ear. Evidently he thought Maria’s vibrations were a reaction to him, and so he pounded away more and more violently. Now his hand was in the action, groping around inside my ear, puzzled, seeking a biological familiarity which eluded it. Finally it settled for the passage to the eardrum and set about the impossible task of lodging his member there.

I redoubled my efforts and finished Jessica off quickly. None too soon! I barely averted a punctured eardrum. I surfaced just in time to hear the man’s disappointment.

“Why did you move, my shy one,” he was murmuring to Maria. “Your maidenhead is but a minor problem. Believe me, with only a little more time we might surpass it and then know ecstasy.”

Maria was clinging to him, panting, her shoulder blocking his face from my view. “Hey!” I tapped her. “Remember me?”

“Oh, that was good,” she turned toward me. “That was wonderful.”

“What the--!” For the first time the man became aware of my presence. “Where did he come from?”

“Oh. Roberto, meet Steve.” Jessica introduced us. “Steve, Roberto.”

We shook hands over one of her breasts. I peered through the darkness, still unable to see his face.

“Guess what, Steve.” Jessica continued talking. “I’m going to join a harem. A real harem.”

“What!” I roared the word. I extracted the pocket flashlight from the sleeping bag and shone it on the man. It was Cass Nova! “I’ll be damned!” I was angry. “What a dirty trick! You mean while I was—- You mean he has -- Haven’t you got any gratitude?” I demanded of Jessica.

“What do you mean?” She was bewildered.

“I mean he and I are competitors. I want you to join the harem for me, not for him.”

“But I promised him.”

“But I was the one who you-know-what.”

“That’s true,” Jessica granted. “But I can’t go back on my promise. And besides, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Steve, but I really dig him.”

“How does that grab you, Stevie boy?” Nova asked smugly.

“You bastard!”

“You shouldn’t feel too bad, Steve. Do you know who he is?”

“I know,” I admitted grimly.

“Well, I’ve always been a real fan of his. I’ve seen every one of his pictures. But I never thought I’d meet him in person.”

“How can you be impressed by this ham?” I demanded angrily. “Doesn’t the pleasure I gave you entitle me to priority?”

“He gave me pleasure too.”

“What do you mean? What could he have done that could compare with--”

“He blew in my ear. That just drove me wild, Steve. Cass Nova blew in my ear.”

That did it. I knew I’d lost. I scrambled out of the sleeping bag, cursing, picked up my clothes, and stomped away. Cass Nova called out after me mockingly:

“Blow in her ear and she’ll follow you anywhere!”

CHAPTER SIX

Back at the Conrad Hilton there was a message for me to call Operator Nineteen, Miami. It was marked “urgent.” I went up to my room, called Operator Nineteen, and a few moments later I heard Mama’s voice.

“Stevie, darling, I thought you were dead maybe, you didn’t return my call.”

“I just came in.”

“That’s an excuse? I shouldn’t even have to call you; you should pick up the telephone once in a century and find out your only mother is alive or dead and already buried.”

“Mama, I’m very tired.”

“So you think I could sleep with such a son?” She took a rare breath. “You took care of it before it festers?”

“What? Took care of what?”

“The macka! What do you think? You had it lanced?”

“I forgot all about it,” I told her truthfully.

“You’d forget your tookus if it wasn’t screwed on!”

“But it doesn’t bother me. I don’t even feel it.”

“Aha! It’s numb already! That means the infection is spreading. Listen, Stevie, it’s a mother’s duty—-I’ll fly out to Chicago and lance it for you before it’s so bad you’ll never sit again.”

“Don’t do that!” I exclaimed. I had enough troubles in Chicago!

“Your own mother you don’t want to see?”

“It’s not that, Mama. It’s just that I won’t be here much longer. Business. You could miss me altogether.”

“So what’s going to be?” she wailed. “A thing like that, you can’t just leave it. It has to be taken care of.”

“I’ll see to it first thing,” I promised her.

“I’ll call to remind you, you shouldn’t forget like you do everything,” she promised.

“All right, Mama.” I sighed, resigned. “I’ll talk to you. Goodbye for now.”

“So goodbye already. What are you waiting for? You’ve got money to throw away on long distance calls just to chat? You own stock in Bell Telephone, maybe? Hang up already! Goodbye!”

I hung up.

The sun was coming up by now. It was Tuesday morning. I hit the sack. The sun was going down again when I awoke.

For lack of any better plan, Austin and I headed out to the International Amphitheatre again. The word was that the McCarthy people would be trying to pack the gallery in order to lend vocal support to the minority peace plank on Vietnam. It figured that there would be some hippie chicks there as well. However, as it turned out, the Vietnam debate was cancelled until the following day. And most of the protestors that evening drifted away from the convention hall to join the demonstration assembling in Grant Park.

Meanwhile Austin and I mingled with the newsmen who were gathering around the NBC-TV monitor outside the convention hall in an effort to find out what was happening at the Convention. We listened to them separating rumor from fact, and we came away in possession of certain absolutely true data, as follows:

Item. There was no significant support among delegates for the presidential candidacy of Dr. Timothy Leary²² .

Item. Although Senator McCarthy’s wife was not staying at the same hotel as the Senator, there was no truth to the rumor that she was planning to run off with Governor Connally after the defeat of the Vietnam minority peace plank .

Item. Mayor Daley was not responsible for the shortage of toilet paper in the bathrooms at McCarthy Headquarters.

Item. Mrs. Humphrey refused to comment on the rumor that Mrs. Nixon was already shopping for an inaugural gown.

Item. The Illinois delegation would definitely not come out for Dick Gregory²³ .

Item. Hugh Hefner²⁴ would accept a draft if the Convention made it unanimous.

Item. Lyndon Baines Johnson²⁵ would under no circumstances allow his name to be placed in nomination for Vice-President.

Very interesting, but it was getting us nowhere. We decided to go to Grant Park where there would be more likelihood of connecting with a hippie chick. So we headed for the exit.

However, as we left the Amphitheatre, the machine at the gate refused to blink its green light when my electronically treated pass was inserted. I knew the dismay of rejection when it flickered red instead. A Secret Serviceman grabbed the cord around my neck which was attached to the pass and led me from machine to machine like a collie pup at obedience school. Finally one of the gismos proclaimed my Americanism in electronic green.

Behind me dozens of others were having the same problem. The TV cameras had affected the sensitivity of the electronically treated passes. Hapless hordes were caught in the War of the Machines!

Outside, the McGovern motorcade was arriving. A uniformed police captain came running up to the Secret Serviceman in the lead car. “Eight cars!” he gasped. “You’re supposed to have eight cars coming through. That’s what they said. Eight cars!”

“That’s right,” the SS man replied. “Eight cars.”

“But we counted ten cars!” The police captain had tears in his eyes. “Ten cars came through the checkp oints.

The Secret Serviceman considered this calmly for a moment. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said finally.

So much for Convention security!

Leaving the touching tableau behind us, Austin and I proceeded to Grant Park, across the street from the Conrad Hilton. The scene was Prague by night with elements of Kafka²⁶ . Police were lined up on both sides of the street, and barricades had been set up to contain the crowd. Shortly after we got there, the cops were replaced by National Guardsmen -- complete with jeeps with barbed wire strung across their fronts, flatbed trucks with guns mounted on them, and tear-gas cannisters. The Guardsmen stood at attention, their rifles held at the ready. Searchlights crisscrossed over the area.

Most of the crowd was sitting on the ground, and Austin and I separated to continue our search. After a while I found myself on the sidewalk between the Guardsmen and the protestors. I was behind a male Yippie who was taunting a very young Guardsman. “Put your gun down,” the Yippie sneered. “Put it down and then let’s see how brave you are!”

The Guardsman pointed his rifle and clicked off the safety. “Take it away from me!” he dared the Yippie. The young Guardsman’s hands were shaking so hard that the gun had wavered off target and was aiming directly at me!

“Father!” I yelped to a priest in the crowd behind me.

“Have no fear,” he soothed me. “Are you a Catholic, my son?”

“I am now!” I answered, the words coming out by the rhythm method in my eagerness for salvation.

Cowardice being the better part of valor, I faded back into the relative safety of the crowd. People were on their feet now. Suddenly my arms were grabbed from either side.

A beautiful and fiery black girl on my left explained what was happening. “We’re locking arms so when the pigs charge they won’t be able to bust up our P.A. system,” she told me from under her crash helmet.

“I’m not involved!” I told her, pulling loose.

A demonstrator wearing the black belt of a karate expert grabbed hold of my right arm. “You are involved!” he advised me.

I locked arms.

After a few minutes the anticipation of panic subsided, and I was released. I spotted a group of attractive antiwar chicks lining up in front of the Guardsmen. They shifted up and down the military line, talking earnestly to first one and then another of the boys, crooning words of peace and love at them.

The Guardsmen were evidently under orders not to respond. But their eyes moved from left to right like a slow motion shot of spectators at a tennis game as one blonde doll in a miniskirt moved down the line. I wondered if tumescence was grounds for court-martial in the National Guard.

I intercepted the blonde when the girls finally retreated back to the grass. On the surface she had all the qualifications I was seeking. I sat down next to her and established instant rapport by joining in with her and the rest of the crowd as they sang several hearty choruses of “This Land Is My Land.” Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary²⁷ was leading the singing from the makeshift podium the demonstrators had set up in the park.

“This land is your land,” I quipped to the blonde when the singing ended, “except maybe for Chicago.” I nodded ruefully toward the lines of National Guardsmen and their impressive equipment.

“Blimey! Hain’t none of it mine, ducks! You Yanks can bloody well keep it. Hi’ll be hever so glad to leave ’ere and get back to merry Hengland!”

That ended that. I needed an American hippie chick. This London derriere was fetching, but it would never do. I gave her the V signal for peace and walked off, moving around the park again as I resumed my quest.

Deeper in the park, further back from Michigan Avenue, there was a beautifully sculptured flowerbed. Around it, some of the demonstrators had built small fires to warm themselves. I noticed that the flowerbed hadn’t been touched. No flower had been picked; none had been trampled; as if by unspoken agreement, the crowd had circumvented it. I had occasion to look at it again the day after all the excitement was over, and it was still unharmed. It said something about the people gathered there. But Mayor Daley, for one, wasn’t listening.

Now I circled the flowerbed. I passed two girls huddled over a small fire without really getting a good look at them. I was still walking, my back to them, when one of them spoke. “You know what I’d like to do when this is all over,” she said. “I’d like to leave the country for a while. I’d like to go to the Mideast or some place like that and join a harem.”

BOING!

It stopped me in my tracks. Like a bloodhound who’s caught the scent, I wheeled around and walked over to them. The girl who had spoken looked up as I stood over them. She was a blonde!

“Who are you?” she asked, responding to my stare.

“I’m your fairy godmother.” I can’t help it. I have this flair for the dramatic. Sometimes I can’t resist it.

“I don’t dig queers!” the blonde told me firmly.

“Hear me out.” I refused to be dismissed. “I happened to catch what you just said—about joining a harem, I mean. If you really mean it, I can help you.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Nope. I’m absolutely serious.” I sat down beside her and explained the situation frankly and truthfully. I was too tired to mince words and beat around the bush. I gave it to her straight; I told it like it was.

“Are you for real?” The other girl, a brunette, couldn’t decide whether to buy what I was saying or not.

I assured her that I was in dead earnest.

“Well, look,” the brunette said, becoming convinced now. “I’d like to make that scene too. It sounds like a gas.”

“Sorry. The offer’s only open for a blonde.”

“Bigotry!” The brunette spat the word out indignantly and flounced away.

The blonde stayed. She was intrigued. When I questioned her in order to nail down her qualifications, she answered frankly and without hesitation. She told me her name was Norma Wilson and that she came from Kansas City. She was nineteen years old, and except for pot she didn’t use drugs. Her legs were long, and I didn’t have to ask about her bosom measurements because they were obviously adequate. She was wearing blue jeans, but she told me she often wore miniskirts because she knew she had nice legs and liked to show them off. That brought us down to the last, delicate question. I asked it.

“Of course I’m a natural blonde,” Norma replied, a bit rankled at my having doubted it.

“Uh, I’ll have to make sure of that for myself,” I told her.

“Is that what this is all about? Is that what you’re up to? Are you so hard up you go through this whole involved pitch just to get me to drop my pants? Man! You’re really too much!”

I assured her that I wasn’t pulling any such trick. It took a lot of assuring. I had to talk for about an hour before she’d believe I was anything but a Joe on the make trying out a new approach. Finally, still dubious, Norma agreed to let me see the proof.

We strolled into the shadows. Here, almost defiantly, she braced herself squarely on her feet, threw back her shoulders, and lowered her blue jeans. It was too dark to see clearly. I had to drop to my knees to get a look at the area in question. I peered myopically and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dim, flickering light from the small fire behind us.

Ah, yes! Norma was a “true blonde”! She was a true blonde hippie and then some! Her pubic hair had been cropped and sculpted into a circle with the familiar three-pronged figure inside it. The silky blonde down formed a perfect peace symbol!

My nose brushing the tendrils as I studied it, I was suddenly distracted by a hand on my shoulder. I looked up at a couple of yards plus of Chicago plainclothes bull. He was waving a badge in my face.

“I caught you, you Commie prevert!” The steel claw of his hand pulled me to my feet. “You’re both under arrest for immoral conduct in a public park.”

“Pee-eace and lo-o-ove everywhere!” Norma told the bull gently as she pulled up her pants.

I decided she was definitely a hippie. Only a flower child could have expressed such sentiments in the face of his bristling hostility. Holding us each firmly by an arm, he started to lead us out of the park:

“Infiltrator!” I yelled loudly. “Police finks!

Instantly a small crowd surrounded us. “Pig! Pig! Pig!” they started chanting. The crowd grew larger as others! picked up the chant.

The cop looked around nervously for help. There was none at hand. Intimidated, he let go of us. “I’ll let you off this time,” he muttered. “But don’t let me catch you again.” He walked off and lost himself in the crowd. The last I saw of him he was screaming “Pig!” at the top of his lungs and shaking his fist at the National Guardsmen. Just before I lost sight of him, he stooped to pick up a rock and let it fly in the direction of the Conrad Hilton Hotel.

“You can’t tell the provocateurs from the Yippies without a score card,” Norma observed beside me.

“Come on. Let’s get out of here.” I took her arm.

“What do you mean?” She didn’t budge.

“I mean I can have you on your way to Arabia before morning,” I promised her.

“Oh, no! I’m not leaving Chicago until this farce is over. I came here to spread peace and love at the convention and I’m staying just as long as it takes.”

“But___”

All my “buts” were to no avail. She was determined. It was damn frustrating. Norma filled the bill perfectly. But I couldn’t deliver her to the Sheikh until the Chicago scene, ended. She was set on doing her thing!

I did the only thing I could do under the circumstances. Having found the perfect girl for Ali Khat’s harem, I wasn’t about to take any chances of losing her again. I decided to stick to her like glue until she was ready to leave Chicago.

I spotted Austin in the crowd and explained the situation to him. He appraised Norma, and then agreed that she was definitely worth the effort. A blonde ringer for Raquel Welch²⁸ , she was the best that either of us had come up with yet.

Sticking to Norma meant spending the rest of the night in Grant Park. Neither of us slept. We listened to the speeches and joined in the singing and the chanting until daylight came.

With its coming, about half the National Guard troops pulled out. Small groups of demonstrators were moving over the park, picking up the debris and placing it neatly in trash cans. We helped them for awhile, and then I prevailed upon Norma to cross over to the Hilton with me. We intended to get a cup of coffee in the hotel coffee shop.

Our intentions were thwarted. Nobody with human nostrils could stand to get anywhere near the coffee shop. In the lobby outside it some anonymous Yippie had accurately labeled the politics of the day by aroma. A stink bomb had been planted there, and no amount of frantic early morning cleaning by hotel employees seemed able to dissipate the odor. It smelled like a diarrhea epidemic was in progress.

Norma agreed to come to my room instead. She couldn’t resist my offer of a hot shower. It relaxed her antiwar zeal, and after it she curled up on the sofa for a nap. Exhausted, I climbed into bed myself and was asleep, before my cranium hit the pillow.

When I woke up, Norma was gone. I swore at myself and looked at my watch. It was after seven o’ clock —- Wednesday, August 28. I figured Norma must have gone back to Grant Park to rejoin the demonstrators. I scrambled into my clothes and set out after her.

I should have looked out the window or my hotel room first. That, I found out later, was what Norma had done a short while before I awoke. What she saw was the beginning of the confrontation between demonstrators and the army of police and Guardsmen, the opening of the major battle of the War of Chicago. And she’d cut out to join her fellows on the firing line.

I, however, wandered into the action more innocently—-casually, almost. I emerged from the lobby of the Conrad Hilton with no idea of what had been happening. The first whiff of tear gas woke me up in a hurry.

As I hit the street, the police riot was just beginning. Late shoppers and innocent pedestrians were caught in it. Delegates and their families, starting out for the evening session of the convention, were trapped m the confusion. The rampaging bulls were making no effort to distinguish among antiwar protestors, members of the press, and inadvertent bystanders.

It was impossible to get back into the hotel. The entrance was sealed off by a combination of panicky guests, cops, and TV technicians. It was equally impossible, of course, to spot Norma in the melee. Like everyone else, I was forced this way and that by crowd pressures and police action without really being able to see the larger picture.

‘Then suddenly I was in the middle of it. Tear-gas canisters had exploded in the distance, but the wind had changed and the gas was floating back up Michigan Avenue. The cops were retreating from it and turning their wrath on those crowded on the sidewalks in front of the Sheraton Blackstone and the Conrad Hilton. The police shyness must have spread, for virtually no officer that I saw was wearing his badge or nameplate.

The cops were truly going berserk now. I saw two of them beating an alternate tattoo with their clubs on the skull of a middle-aged, gray-haired woman carrying a shopping bag. A reporter tried to come to her assistance. Two other cops descended on him and sprayed Mace in his eyes. As he was sinking to his knees, they continued spraying the chemical indiscriminately, felling a line of eight or ten people who had tried to back away against the front of the hotel.

There was the crash of plate glass as cops swung their billies at a second group trapped in front of a restaurant window. The cops were screaming profanity. They cleared a path with their clubs until they had isolated a press photographer, and then stomped on both him and his camera until he was lost to view in a sea of blue shirts. They were completely out of control and stayed that way for an hour or more.

It ended sporadically. Some of the white-coated medics with the demonstrators tried to carry the wounded into the Hilton, where McCarthy Headquarters had set up an emergency dispensary. They were met by more police from inside the hotel who came charging out to beat both medics and patients. Caught in the middle, I knew panic. I spotted a break in the police ranks and dashed across Michigan Avenue to Grant Park. Here most of the demonstrators had retreated to relative safety. Leaders like Sidney Peck were moving among them with bullhorns, trying to calm them, successfully preventing the kind of panicky flight which had already resulted in police action a number of times during that afternoon and evening. These leaders were also appealing to those in charge of the police to bring their men under control. Eventually this was done, and some time later lines of National Guardsmen moved in to replace the blood-crazy blue-coats. Relative order was restored.

Grant Park was like a battlefield medical aid station. Mace and tear gas still seeped up from its grass. Like everyone else, I had trouble breathing and my eyes kept watering. All around me were people tending to their wounds, or to the wounds of others.

Finally I found Norma. There was a bandage around her head, but the wound wasn’t serious. The skin was broken and there was a lump from a policeman’s club, but compared to others she’d gotten off lightly. However, she was still dazed and disbelieving. It didn’t seem possible that this could have happened in the United States of America in the year 1969-and in the name of law and order, no less!

We sat down on the grass to rest. Nearby someone had a portable radio, and it was turned up full volume. We listened as a newscaster described how Amphitheatre guards had plucked one pro-McCarthy delegate from the floor of the convention and knocked down several South Dakota delegates just before the nominations for Presidential candidates began. We heard how Paul O’Dwyer was grabbed by the Secret Service and held incommunicado for twenty minutes. And then we heard a statement issued by Humphrey headquarters which praised the Democratic National Committee for holding a truly open convention. I decided that at the first opportunity I would reread Alice in Wonderland.

Around midnight Humphrey was nominated and the man with the radio turned it off and moved away. A Japanese reporter, his eyes still streaming from the effects of tear gas, sat down next to us. “American police are incredibly brutal,” he observed. “And I am sure that they all smoke Marlboro.” He also commented on the many “Draft Kennedy” signs he’d seen earlier in the day. “If other American boys are being called up to fight in Vietnam, then why not Teddy²⁹ ?” he inquired. After a while he also moved away. I watched him as he crossed the street, giving a wide berth to a cop who was lighting up a Marlboro.

Later Norma and I also left Grant Park to get some coffee at the shop in the Hilton lobby. Our route took us past the balcony of McCarthy Headquarters, which over-looked the crowded lobby of the Hilton. We were caught in the throng for a few minutes.

Here, post-Huberty depression and the fear that the country faced a Hump-free future was being overcome. The McCarthy kids’ answer to the HHH “politics of joy” was to chant “Dump the Hump!” at the returning delegates. They were gleeful that Hubert had inadvertently gotten a whiff of tear gas during the police recreation period earlier. Humanitarianism has its limits, and no kleenex was to be found here to stem the Veep’s sneezes.

The coffee shop still smelled like decaying used diapers mixed with week-old vomit. Norma and I gave up on it and left the hotel by a side exit to seek sustenance elsewhere. Walking down the street we bumped into Yippie leader Abby Hoffman, whom Norma knew slightly. He was bleeding from the nose and ear and said he’d been given a going over in jail and had just been let out. We asked why he’d been arrested.

“Well, I’d printed this word on my forehead,” he told us.

“What word?”

He told us what word. Its four letters are the initials of the old English legal phrase “for unlawful carnal knowledge.”

Abby had covered the word with a crash helmet, but the cops had removed it and arrested him anyway. This puzzled him. He hadn’t figured they were that literate.

After coffee Norma and I went back to Grant Park and listened to more speeches and singing. Around three a.m. there was a candlelight procession of Convention delegates up Michigan Avenue to Grant Park. Their consciences stirred, the mostly middle-aged politicos were demonstrating their outrage at the police brutality which had taken place in the streets of Chicago.

Toward dawn I persuaded Norma to go back up to my room at the Hilton so that we might grab some shuteye. It was Thursday afternoon when she shook me awake. “What’s up?” I asked groggily.

“Come on. Wake up. Hurry. We’ve got to get over to the Bismarck Hotel.”

“What for?”

“The Wisconsin delegation is leading a march to the Amphitheatre and it’s starting from there.”

“I’m not involved,” I reminded Norma, turning back over on my stomach and burying my face in the pillow.

“If you want me for that harem, you’d better be involved. That’s my price. You’ve got to sacrifice your apathy!”

So I crawled out of bed and we made tracks for the Bismarck Hotel. But we arrived too late. The march to the Amphitheatre had already left.

“Excuse me.” I approached the doorman. “We seem to have lost our demonstration.”

“That way.” He waved vaguely. “They turned off up there.”

“Where?”

“By that sign that says ‘Mayor Richard I. Daley Welcomes You to Chicago.’ You can’t miss it.”

We missed it.

A couple of hours later, after wandering over half of Chicago, we met a couple of protestors that Norma knew. They told us that the march had been turned back by the National Guard and that the crowd was reassembling in Grant Park. Our route back there took us across Eighteenth Street to Michigan Avenue so that we ended up a few blocks down from the Hilton. I flashed the press credentials Austin had gotten me, and Norma and I were allowed to go through the barrier the National Guard had put up at the corner of Eighteenth and Michigan.

Our first view of Michigan Avenue stopped us m our tracks. It wasn’t to be believed. In front of us, going toward Grant Park, were line after line of National Guardsmen with rifles and tear-gas masks. In front of them were several ranks of policemen. We couldn’t see beyond their blue shirts. Behind us, stretching down Michigan Avenue, there seemed to be a thousand or more National Guardsmen held in readiness. As far as the eye could see were troops, tank carriers, jeeps with barbed-wire frames lashed to their fronts, machineguns, tear-gas canisters, troop trucks, even small cannons!

We were trapped in the middle of this military force, and even my press credentials couldn’t get us through the lines. The troops were under orders to let no one pass, and so we couldn’t reach the demonstrators. However, as the van of the small army, led by the police, marched up Michigan Avenue, we were able to follow in its wake.

When we reached Grant Park, there was some confusion between the police and troops already stationed there and those who had just arrived. Evidently there was some question as to whether the new men were to be considered replacements or reinforcements. While the point was being settled, Norma and I managed to cross the street and join the demonstrators in the park.

The crowd was packed quite densely, and about fifteen thousand strong. Judging by the way they were dressed, hippies and Yippies were in the minority. Also, in contrast to the last few evenings in Grant Park, there were many more over-thirty faces in the crowd.

Various personages were addressing it from a makeshift platform. We learned that we had just missed a speech by Senator McCarthy. Now Pierre Salinger³⁰ was talking. He commented on the suppression of liberty by Mayor Daley in Chicago and at the convention. Then he pleaded for the necessity of continuing to express dissent within the existing political framework. He Was booed so loudly that he was unable to continue speaking. Daley had accomplished that which no demagogue of the Left had been able to do. He had radicalized these people, many of whom had worked within the Democratic Party for the nomination of McCarthy, to the point where they had to choose between Establishment demagoguery and the hard line of the New Left. With the middle ground washed out from under their feet in a sea of tear gas, temporarily at least they were lining up with the militant Left.

Dick Gregory followed Pierre Salinger to the platform. His reception was more respectful. Looking like a bearded black prophet out of the Old Testament, eyes burning and yet somehow managing to twinkle at the same time, Gregory invited the crowd to dinner at his home-—-which just happened to be en route to the Amphitheatre. A large throng accepted the invitation and started back down Michigan Avenue. Norma and I fell in behind Mrs. Gregory, one of those rare women whom pregnancy really does make even more beautiful.

“I knew I should have gone shopping today,” she was sighing to herself. “Dick should really give me more notice if he’s bringing folks home to dinner!”

Moving very slowly, three abreast, on the sidewalk at all times, the crowd proceeded down Michigan Avenue as dusk turned into night. Black marshals, some of them Blackstone Rangers on the scene unofficially and out of love and respect for Gregory, maintained order and discipline without too much trouble. They may have had doubts about Gregory putting himself out on a limb for what was basically a crowd of white kids, but they couldn’t help admiring the ethical imperative which caused him to assume leadership.

Without him the crowd was a body without a head. All of the recognized leaders had been picked off by the Chicago police during the preceding days. The valiant Wisconsin delegation had had the guts to lead the march earlier in the day, but they hadn’t had the experience and know-how to handle the confrontation. Now Gregory, with many such confrontations behind him, inspired the crowd with a cool heroism that had long ago dispelled fear of personal physical harm.

The confrontation took place at Eighteenth and Michigan. Lights from a TV truck played over the crowd. The demonstrators responded by raising their fingers in the V symbol for peace. The throng remained quiet and orderly while Gregory spoke with the officer in charge of the National Guard troops.

It was agreed that the troops would break ranks so that the demonstrators might move past them to the waiting police. The cops would then arrest the demonstrators, who would submit peacefully. Police vans were already assembled to cart away those arrested. However, there obviously weren’t enough vans to begin to handle the crowd, which now stretched all the way back to Grant Park-still on the sidewalk, still lined up by three, still quiet and peaceful.

The cops were obviously concerned that no harm should come to the convention delegates among the crowd. Gregory was told that he and the delegates would be allowed to continue on to the Amphitheatre, but that the rest of the demonstrators wouldn’t. Many of the delegates went to the front of the throng to discuss whether they should take this option or not. Most of them opted to stick with the marchers. A few of them fell back in the ranks of the crowd and removed their delegate armbands.

The arrests began in an orderly fashion. Gregory and many of the delegates submitted to the police and were carted away in the vans. Then suddenly the National Guard closed ranks again and the arrests ceased.

An order was shouted, and the Guardsmen quickly donned their tear-gas masks. There was the pop of tear-gas canisters hitting the pavement. The Guardsmen charged into the crowd on the sidewalk, using their rifles like clubs.

Caught in the melee, I had only an instant to appreciate how strategically the military had chosen the confrontation point. On this particular block of Michigan Avenue, tall factory buildings rose on both sides. The mass of guardsmen was in front, the crowd of demonstrators pressing from behind. Because of the buildings, the tear gas just lay like a blanket, out of reach of any breeze which might have wafted it away. The first victims of the gas just lay there while the Guardsmen beat them. It was the perfect cul-de-sac!

Now jeeps shot up Michigan Avenue and Guardsmen tossed tear-gas canisters into the middle and back of the crowd. They went all the way back to Grant Park. Here the area was more open, and for the second time tear gas dissipated into the lobby of the Hilton. This was no police riot. All of this was done with careful military precision. The crowd had no place to flee. All the people in front could do was remain and be gassed and beaten again.

I’ll never forget the inspiring sight of those glorious American boys in their glorious American uniforms wielding their rifles and bravely charging those peacenik Reds who were armed to the teeth with bristling beards and long, treacherous hair, and vicious volumes of Dr. Spock. It brought tears of pride to my eyes! It really did! Or maybe it was just the tear gas. . . .

In the nightmarish confusion, Norma and I were separated. I thought I saw her darting through a hole in the National Guard lines toward the other side of the street where the TV truck was being held out of camera range of the action. I took advantage of the same break in the Guardsmen lines to follow.

But when I got there, I found that the girl I’d followed wasn’t Norma after all. She was much younger, just a child. Blood was streaming from her head. I helped her through an alley, choking on tear gas all the way, and finally left her with a medical aid team. They told me to take short, shallow breaths, and pointed me toward the other end of the alley where the tear gas was thinning out.

Choking, I reached the exit. I stopped in a bar and had three quick scotches while I recovered from the effects of the gas. Then I set out to hunt for Norma again.

It was about an hour later when I finally got back to Grant Park. The smell of tear gas was still thick in the air, but the gas itself had dissipated. Still, like everybody else, I dipped my handkerchief in water and kept it pressed to my mouth as I moved around the park and searched for Norma.

I searched for a long time in vain. Finally I decided to go up to my room and take a shower to wash away the grime of battle before resuming my quest. Just as I emerged from the shower, my telephone rang.

“Where the hell have you been?” It was Austin.

“Looking for Norma.” It would have taken too long to go into details.

“Well, she’s right here in the hotel,” he told me. “At that emergency ward the McCarthy people set up on the fifteenth floor.”

“Is she badly hurt?”

“No. They brought her in unconscious, but she’s awake now and the doctor says she’s not badly hurt. I just happened to spot her when they carried her into the lobby.”

I told him I’d meet him at the emergency ward and hung up. I threw on some clothes and grabbed an elevator. It was filled with cops. Like me, they got off at the fifteenth floor. Only I walked out of the elevator and they charged.

They went down the hallways, dragging people out of their rooms. When I reached the makeshift emergency ward, they were shoving the doctors out of the way and going for the patients. The medical personnel protested in vain. Bloody victims were hauled out of their beds to assume their roles as victims once again.

Austin was trying to shield Norma. I joined him. Between us, we managed to get her out of the room before the cops grabbed her.

We ducked down the hall and into a stairwell. Behind us we could hear the cops lining people up against the walls, clobbering an occasional one who protested, prodding the others with their clubs.

Somehow Austin had managed to arrange for a chauffeured car. It took us directly to the airport. We stayed there until we were able to get on a plane later that morning.

In the terminal, I left Norma with Austin while I put in a call for the number supplied by the Sheikh. The phone was answered by Leila. Evidently she was to be my contact each time I completed an assignment. She agreed to meet me in Miami, to take over custody of Norma, and to deliver my next assignment.

I’d thought Norma might have some objections to leaving so abruptly, but now that the convention was over, she figured correctly that the demonstrators would be leaving Chicago and there was nothing to hold her. She was just as glad to board the first plane to Miami as we were. The sun was well up in the sky as we joined the line at the ramp leading to the plane.