I was a teeny-bopper for the CIA

“Objection overruled!” he announced happily. He resumed his seat and picked up the puzzle again. “Go on, Mr. Leigh. Open it,” he instructed.

Will produced a key and unlocked the strongbox. There was a removable tray covering the interior of it. An envelope lay atop the tray.

“It’s addressed to Mrs. Lenzio,” Will announced.

“Give it to her,” the judge instructed. “Perhaps you’d better read it aloud to us,” he added to Zelda Lenzio.

“Zelda,” she began reading. “In the event of my death, you’re the last person I’d want to leave anything to. But I know you! You’ll fight your way into the act and probably get your hooks on this strongbox no matter how Will and the bank try to stop you. Since you’re reading this letter, you’ve already succeeded in doing just that. So I’m resigned to your having the fruits of your battle. Therefore, I bequeath them to you without animosity, secure in the knowledge that you’ve earned the right to a legacy you truly deserve. You’ll find this legacy under the tray in this box. If it were originally yours, rather than mine, I would suggest that you return it to its place of origin. But I’m content to know that it’s truly in keeping with our relationship. Sy.”

“That’s all there is.” Zelda looked up from the letter, perplexed.

“Remove the tray, Mrs. Lenzio,” the judge instructed her.

Zelda removed the tray.

“Now the contents.”

She reached inside the strongbox and came up with a large, well-filled plastic bag. “What is it?” she asked, bewildered.

“Let me see.” Will took it from her. He looked at it and sniffed. “Excrement!” He exploded with laughter. “It’s human excrement! Sy’s, I bet! Your husband left you a blag of-—”

“Hmm,” the judge mused. “What’s a four-letter word for excrement?”

Chapter Seven

Let he who is without sin stone the first cast!

That’s my advice to would-be directors of little theatre groups. What does “sin” have to do with it? I found out the evening following the Lenzio hearing. That was the night of our first full-cast rehearsal. It was the night I learned that for a novice director the wages of sin are compromise.

My first compromise was with Rusty Roundheels. It came during the opening scene, which I interrupted.

“You’re coming on too sexy, Rusty,” I told her. “You’re supposed to be more of a dedicated labor organizer than a joy-girl in this scene. Save the bosom-bouncing and hip-wiggling for later.”

“I think you’re wrong,” she told me flatly.

“Maybe. But let’s try it my way.”

“No!”

“Come on, Rusty baby. After all, I’m directing the play .”

“Now listen, Vance.” She sidled up very close to me and whispered. “You gave me this part because I’m erotic. Very erotic. Remember? So don’t try to hog it all to yourself!”

“But —”

“No buts!” Her voice got louder. Much louder! “I have to play it the way I feel it. And I feel it sexy!”

“Too damn sexy!” I was losing patience.

“I’m going to tell my husband what you said!” Her voice rose hysterically. “And,” she added, hissing into my ear, “I might tell him a few other things too if you don’t get off my back!”

“All right,” I said placatingly, “play it the way you feel it.”

So the first compromise wasn’t a compromise; it was a rout. I guess maybe that was true of the others as well. I was learning too late that a director has to be circumspect. Joy Boxx gave me my second lesson.

“Did you arrange to have the tickets printed?” I asked her during a break in the rehearsal.

“No,” she replied sulkily. “I forgot.”

“Joy, if you’re going to be my producer, I have to be able to depend on you.”

“I didn’t want to be the producer. I should be playing Blanche. You made love to me under false pretenses.”

“I never promised you the part.”

“Not in so many words. But after the way you seduced me—”

“I seduced you?”

“You seduced me!”

“Shh! Not so loud! Do you want everybody to hear? All right. Never mind the tickets. I’ll arrange to have them printed myself!”

“You fouled up a good thing, Vance,” she told me spitefully. “My husband’s gone out West on this new morality campaign of his and we could have spent a few evenings together. But after the way you double-crossed me, I’d sooner remain faithful!”

“Gosh, don’t do anything drastic,” I told her.

My third encounter proved something to me that I’d always suspected: there’s only one thing worse than paying for the sins you’ve committed—paying for the sins you haven’t committed! Cleo Taurus drove that point home.

“You’re too clinical, Cleo.” I broke into her love scene with Phil Anders to tell her. “Remember, you’re a Bronx schoolteacher and this is your first experience with sex. You’re awakened. For the first time in your life, you’re pulling all the stops out.”

“I am not clinical!” She strode over to me with her hands on her hips.

Phil Anders followed her. “I don’t think she’s clinical at all, Vance,” he panted.

“Well, I do. And watching from out here, I have more perspective.”

“You’re just getting even because I wouldn’t let you make love to me!” Cleo snarled vindictively.

“Don’t be ridi -”

“Did he try to make love to you?” Phil demanded excitedly.

“Did he? Just ask him!”

“Did you?” Phil demanded.

“Well, I -” I stammered.

“That’s not ethical!” Phil’s hand grabbed my necktie and twisted it into a garotte. “You ever lay a finger on her again and I’ll kill you!” He kept twisting like he was bent on plucking out my Adam’s apple.

“I’m a karate expert and I boxed in the Army,” I warned him, gasping.

“Yeah? Well, I never fight fair!” He kicked my shin hard by way of demonstration and backed away.

“A very violent man,” I observed to Cleo.

“Oh, he’s murderous when he loses his temper,” she told me sweetly. “And he’s sure to lose his temper if he thinks you’re being critical of me. But then you don’t really think my lovemaking is clinical, do you?”

“Perish the thought,” I told her. “Just keep up the good work.”

She and Phil went back to their passion. I watched, but my mind was busy. I was thinking that Phil was a violent man and trying to remember his exact position at the time of Sy Lenzio’s death. Could Phil have had a reason to kill Sy? He might have, if he was the one who’d latched onto the CIA money and Sy found out about it. And from the presents he’d been buying Cleo, Phil had come into some money from somewhere.

Where? I was distracted from the question by a fourth confrontation. This one demonstrated that you not only have to pay for the sins you haven’t committed, you also have to pay in advance for the sins you’re thinking of committing. That, of course, meant Lolly.

Her playing the part of a pure, chaste, naive girl was on a par with Mae West playing Joan of Arc. No matter how I viewed the rehearsal, Lolly came across about as innocent as Polly Adler in a men’s locker room. I don’t know. Maybe it was the miniskirt. But virtue was taking more of a beating than if I’d been viewing a Roman orgy.

“You’re overpowering Peter,” I told Lolly. It was the understatement of the century. “Remember you’re supposed to have had absolutely no experience with sex.”

“Daddy-O, this part slays me.” Lolly stretched voluptuously.

“Take a break,” I suggested. “Come over here, Lolly, so I can explain what I mean.”

We huddled in a corner. “The feeling I want to convey,” I told her, “is like when you were very young and sex was a new vista unfolding before your wide eyes.”

“I was never that young!”

“I want a childlike quality,” I persisted desperately.

“But I’m not childlike.”

“You’re pretty close to being a child,” I reminded her. “You can do it, Lolly.”

“I don’t think I dig. And its bugging me the way you keep telling me in front of all these people. Couldn’t we get together alone so you could explain it to me? My aunt and uncle are going out next Wednesday night and I’m baby-sitting. Why don’t you come over?”

“All right.” I couldn’t help it. I licked my lips. That’s what I mean about paying. I was feeling guilty as hell just because of all the things I could see myself doing with Lolly-—and I hadn’t even done any of them yet.

“You Mr. Powers?”

I looked up from my conversation with Lolly and found myself facing a geriatric disaster area. The fat old man facing me was molded from jello rejects, a-quiver with palsy and caked with the dirt of the ages. He was a barely walking challenge to the Sanitation Department. Besides which the milk of human kindness had been skimmed from his pudgy features and what was left was a mottled combination of dim-witted lechery (expressed in the way he stared at Lolly) and all-encompassing, evil hostility.

“Yes,” I admitted. “I’m Mr. Powers. Who are you?”

“Custodian of the building. You gotta start cleaning up. Half an hour you gotta be outa here.”

“What do you mean? Why?”

“Weight-Watchers comin’ in.”

“Huh?” I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Weight watchers got the main hall booked at ten o’clock. Dincha look at the calendar?”

“Joy!” I called. “Didn’t you check the calendar? I thought we had the hall all night tonight.”

“You should have checked it yourself,” she told me nastily.

“Better get a move on,” the custodian advised. “An’ make sure you don’t leave no mess.”

“You mean all thirty-eight pieces of this stage have to be lugged back down to the basement again?”

“They ain’t, I throw them out!” He turned his back on me and started to walk away.

“Thanks for being so obliging,” I called after him sarcastically.

“My pleasure.” He was just as sarcastic. “Oh, yeah, Mr. Powers, and there’s a call for you down in my office. Long distance, I think.”

“Nice of you to mention it.” I followed after him.

“You people ain’t supposed to get calls on my phone.”

“Sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I was silent as I followed him down to the phone in his office.

He folded his arms and stared at me nastily as I picked it up. He obviously had no intention of letting me take the call in private. “Hello.” I was uncomfortable under his frank scrutiny as I spoke into the mouthpiece.

“Vance? It’s Marcy.”

“How the hell did you know to call me here?”

The old man shook his head disapprovingly and clucked his tongue at me.

“You told me about joining the drama group. When I couldn’t reach you home, I took a chance you’d be at the Community Center rehearsing.”

“Well, I’m busy! What do you want?”

“Better hurry up,” the old man advised. “Them’s the weight watchers comin’ up the front steps. I can allus tell ’cause of how the boards creak.”

“I’m going away on a weekend with Hector,” Marcy told me. “I thought I should tell you. I didn’t want to do anything behind your back.”

“Who in blazes is Hector?”

“You leave that stage up with them weight watchers, they’ll sure as shootin’ bust it on you. They’ll go right through it, trample it like a herda elephants.” The custodian cackled.

“Hector’s the man who’s been wanting to make love to me. I’ve decided to let him.”

“So what?” I answered Marcy.

“So what?” The custodian thought I was talking to him. “So I ain’t responsible, that’s what.”

“Nobody’s blaming you,” I told the custodian.

“I should think not!” Marcy said indignantly. “After all, we’re legally divorced!”

“Why tell me about it anyway?” I asked her.

“You’re in charge of the drama group, ain’t you? That’s what they told me.”

“Look! Can’t you just wait?” I tried to shut the custodian up.

“Why should I?” Marcy wanted to know. “I’m a big girl now.”

“Yeah. A big girl,” I echoed dizzily.

“Every one of ’em,” the custodian said. “That’s why they changed organizations. They used ta be ‘Patties Anonymous.’ But they was too big ta stay anonymous.” He slapped his knee and chortled.

“Will you please shut up a minute?” I pleaded with him.

“Don’t you talk to me like that, Vance! We’re not married any more. I don’t have to take it!”

“I’m sorry.” I apologized to Marcy.

“ ’S all right.” The custodian was big about it. “I’m pretty thick-skinned.”

“Like a rhinoceros!” I told him.

“What was that? What did you say, Vance? Did you call me a name?”

“No, no. There’s someone here. I was talking to them. Look, Marcy, you asked my advice the other night and I gave it to you. Why did you decide to go against it?”

“Because Hector’s an entirely different sort of man than you are.”

“A man’s a man,” I told her.

“For all that,” the custodian murmured.

“Hector’s an outdoorsy type,” Marcy continued. “That’s how we’re spending the weekend. He’s got a camp wagon. We’ll spend one night on the road, and the next two at a campsite in the mountains. Making love under the stars. How does that grab you, Vance?” she asked sweetly, spitefully.

“Look, Marcy, just ask yourself why you’re finding it necessary to spell all this out for me.”

“I thought you’d be happy to know I’m adjusting to our divorce.”

“I’m delirious. It’s about time. Love under the stars, hey? I hope you catch poison ivy!”

“Go to hell, Vance!”

“You go to hell!” I shot back, slamming down the phone.

“I don’t take to cussin’,” the caretaker grumbled. “You’ll find out it don’t pay to talk to me that way, Mr. Powers.”

“I didn’t mean you,” I explained. “That was my ex- wife on the phone.”

“Oh. Well, you better get up there and get your stage moved.”

I followed his advice and went back up to the main hall. It was filled with about a ton of female avoirdupois on the hoof. I elbowed by way through the spreading calories, looking for the behemoth who must be in charge. One of the fat femmes pointed her out to me.

“Girls!”—a misnomer if I ever heard one— “Girls! Quiet down now so we can start the meeting. Tonight we’re going to discuss the interrelationship between sex and overeating.”

The hubbub subsided.

“Excuse me—” I tried to get her attention.

“What are you doing here?” She was indignant. “No men are allowed.”

“I just wanted to ask you—”

“You’ll have to leave.” She turned away from me. “Yes? What is it, Hilda?” She took cognizance of the waving hand of one of the stout sirens who was trying to get her attention.

“I have a question,” Hilda announced. “But I’m embarrassed. I don’t quite know how to put it.”

“We’re all in the same boat here, Hilda. What is it?”

Judging from the outsize cargo, I reflected, the boat was in imminent danger of sinking.

“I’ve been married two years,” Hilda said. “Before marriage, and during the first year, I was relatively slim —compared to how I am now, anyway. It’s only during the past year that I’ve put on weight.” She paused, blushing.

“Go on, Hilda.”

“Yes. Well, the thing is, I think it has to do with my sex life with my husband.”

“What do you mean, Hilda?”

“This last year, our sex life has- — umm-—changed.”

“Changed how?”

“Uh— Something new has been added.”

“What do you mean, Hilda? Be specific.”

“This past year, to please my husband, I’ve engaged in fellatio. And I’ve started putting on weight. So I was wondering if his -- uh, you know—-could be fattening. I mean, three times a week . . .” Hi1da’s voice trailed off in embarrassment.

“Well, Hilda, it would add to your caloric intake,” the chairlady said briskly. “But you know, our motto is one step at a time. If you try to overdo dieting, it becomes self-defeating. Why don’t you cut down on your—umm, snack-—to twice a week?”

“I’ll try,” Hilda said doubtfuly. “But he won’t like it.”

“Is it protein?” one of the other fat ladies wondered.

“I don’t believe so,” the chairlady opined. “But I’ll check it. In any case, I don’t really believe that the caloric intake involved is so great as to constitute a major contribution to obesity.”

“Could it work the other way around?” another lady wondered. “My Alfie’s getting awfully pudgy lately.”

“Well, that’s his problem,” the chairlady told her.

“That’s true. And anyway, better him fat than me frustrated.”

“Is that all you wanted to ask, Hilda?” the chairlady said.

“Yes.” Hilda sighed and sat down. “Nobody loves a fat girl,” she sighed. “But, oh! how a fat girl can love!”

“Look,” I approached the chairlady again. “I have to see about getting the stage—-”

“Are you still here?” She turned to me angrily. “Now, see here, you’ll have to leave. I told you, there are no men allowed at our meetings. You’re inhibiting the girls.”

“Not so I’ve noticed,” I told her drily. “But all I’m trying to tell you is that I want to take this stage downstairs and out of your way before you start your meeting.”

“Oh. Well, go ahead.”

“All right. But you’ll have to get the girls off it. And do you happen to know where the other men in the drama group went?”

“I think they’ve all left.”

“That’s a helluva note,” I grumbled. “What the blue blazes do they expect me to do? Lug thirty-eight pieces of stage down to the basement all by myself?”

“That’s your problem. But you’d better hurry up. It’s time for the girls to start their exercises.”

“Exercises?” I had a sudden idea. “Listen, I’ve got some great exercise for the ladies.”

It took a little more fast talking, but finally she agreed. I stood by beaming as an ocean of fat washed the pieces of stage down to the basement. I was so grateful that I treated the whole bunch of them to banana splits after the meeting.

“I can’t tell you what weight watchers has done for me,” one of them confided to me as she dug her spoon into the goo.

“Oh, I can see.” I beamed at her double chin. I felt about three thousand pounds lighter as I left them. I went home to brood about the lack of cooperation of drama groups. I forgot about brooding quick in a hurry as I came through the front door and into the darkened house.

The flashlight went off so quickly that for a moment I thought I must have imagined seeing it. But then I heard the unmistakable sound of someone moving near my desk in the livingroom where I’d seen the light. I started in the direction of the sound.

Halfway across the livingroom my nose smacked valiantly into a fist. It was a lucky thing I’d had boxing and karate training in the Army. I might have clobbered the other fist with the point of my jaw if defensive reflexes hadn’t made me duck low to avoid the fist’s partner. As it was, my scalp received a fist-wide part.

With an automatically Japanese grunt, I delivered a karate chop to where the intruder’s chin should have been. It was a good, solid blow. It split the leg of the lamp table neatly in half. The lamp landed neatly on top of my head.

I came up with the lampshade hanging rakishly from one ear. By then it was too late. The front door was already closing behind the intruder. I got to the window just in time to see his car gunning away from the curb across the street.

Despite the handful of swollen nose I was clutching, I managed to note the license number of the car. I turned on the light then, went over to the telephone and dialed the local precinct house.

“There’s a car blocking my driveway,” I told them. “I don’t want to get the owner in any trouble. I just want to call him and get him to move it. If I give you the license number, can you tell me his name and address?”

“What’s the number?”

I told him.

“Just a minute.”

After awhile he was back on the phone with the information I wanted. I thanked him and hung up. Now I had something else to think about. There were only two reasons for the intruder to have been rifling my desk. Either he was involved in the theft of the CIA money and possibly the death of Sy Lenzio. Or he was the CIA agent Senator Hawthorne had told me was in the drama group.

I opted for the second alternative. I told Senator Hawthorne so the next day when I spoke to him on the phone. “I think I’ve locked horns with the CIA man,” I told him.

“You mean you know who he is?”

“I think so; I can’t be sure, but I think so.”

“What’s his name?”

“Phil Anders. That’s his name. Phil Anders!”

Chapter Eight

I let my hair grow for Wednesday night. I bought a moderate mod shirt and tie. I listened to Bob Dylan records till my ears began to twang. I even strummed an imaginary guitar.

It didn’t help. I still felt like a dirty old man as I rang the doorbell to keep my date with the baby-sitting Lolly Popstick. Dirty, but determined!

“Hi, Pops!’ Lolly greeted me with her customary lack of sensitivity. “Come on in. The fogies are at the flick, so we’ve got the house all to ourselves. Park your arteries and teach me how to be pure for my art.”

“All right, Lolly.” I was hypocritically businesslike. “Now the thing about Leslie in this play is that she’s naive.” I rifled through the script. “Take this scene with her mother. She’s actually been living in the bordello, yet she doesn’t realize that her mother is a Whore.”

“But that’s just too square! How do you expect me to play that with a straight face?”

“Well, the first thing any actress has to do is relax.”

“I’m relaxed. But you look pretty tense to me, Vance. Your eyes are bulging.”

She was right. My eyes were not only bulging, they were bouncing around in their sockets like pinballs from trying to take in the multicolored, harlequin-style outfit Lolly was wearing. It consisted of hip-hugger short-shorts that started a good inch and a half below her belly button and a brief top that hung loose from her shoulders to the curve of the lower half of her breasts. It was no good trying to rest my eyes by focusing away from the bright colors either. When I did that, they became snagged on miles of long, curvy Lolly legs, or hooked by the peek-a-boo revealing of her breasts as she stretched—which she seemed constantly to be doing. I was obsessed with the youthful, uninhibited joys her body promised, and my eyes gave me away.

“You’re‘ right,” I admitted. “I’m tense.”

“I’ve got just the thing to relax you. Me too.” She found her handbag and fumbled in it. Finally she came up with two bedraggled looking cigarettes. They were loosely packed and dribbling tobacco. “Here.” She handed me one. “Have a stick.”

“What --?”

“Pot.” She lit up and held the match for me. “You smoke, don’t you?”

“Well, sure . . . ” Inanely, I held up a pack of Pall Malls.

“Not that, silly. I mean tea.”

“Oh, natch.” Jargon and all, I tried to be casual. I took a deep puff on the reefer.

Nothing happened, which surprised me. The truth was I’d never smoked marijuana in my life. Born twenty years too soon, I guess. Anyway, I’d expected some kind of effect from it. All that happened was my nostrils wrinkled from the smell of sour smoke.

“Ahh!” Lolly sighed. “Cloud Nine, here I come. I’m already beginning to float. Is it getting to you, Vance?”

“Not yet.” I shrugged. “I guess I’m too used to it.”

“Well, maybe it’s ’cause your system’s more accustomed to it. After all, you’re older.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” I told her drily. Bitterly, I took another deep drag on the reefer.

“Don’t get spooked. That wasn’t an insult. I told you, I dig older men. Just relax.” She knelt on the couch facing me and reached around to the back of my neck. Her fingers worked expertly at the kinks in the muscles there.

I tossed the script aside, took another puff on the reefer for courage and kissed her. She’d been expecting it. She kissed back like it was a matter of emergency mouth-to-mouth respiration. My hand slid under the convenient gape of her blouse and closed over her bare breast. She gasped and it inflated in my palm.

“Whatcha doing, Lolly?” It was a childish, piping voice. “You playing ‘Doctor’?”

I almost fell off the couch in my effort to recover my composure. Lolly, however, didn’t blow her cool. She puffed at her stick and looked at the little boy calmly. “What are you doing out of bed, Raymond?” she asked him.

“I have to tinkle.”

“Urinate, Raymond,” she corrected him. “I told you, it’s childish to say ‘tinkle.’ ”

“Well, I’m a child,” he replied logically.

“ ‘Tinkle’ is a word that turns me off,” Lolly confided to me.

“It turns me on.” Raymond giggled. “But I know some better words, Lolly. Like pi-—-”

“Never mind! Just do what you have to do and get back to bed.”

“Come with me,” Raymond insisted. “My hands are cold.”

“So?” Lolly looked at him inquiringly.

“Your hands are always warm, Lolly.”

“Males are males,” she sighed, “no matter how young they are. I’ll be right black.” She took Rayn1ond’s hand and followed him out of the livingroom.

I closed my eyes and puffed on the reefer reflectively.

As far as I could tell, I was still feeling no effect whatsoever from it. I opened my eyes and found myself looking at a second tot. This one was a girl, about five years old, maybe two years younger than Raymond.

“Are you Lolly’s boy friend?” she inquired.

“Not exactly,” I hedged.

“Are you the milkman?”

“No. Why?”

“Well, you were squeezing her. I was peeking before and I saw you. And that’s how they get milk from cows. My Mommy told me.”

“It’s not the same thing,” I assured her.

“Are you sure?” She looked doubtful.

“I’m sure.”

“Then why were you doing it?” she asked triumphantly.

“You shouldn’t ask so many questions.”

“Yes I should. My Daddy says I should. He says how else am I gonna learn?”

“Then ask your Daddy.”

“He never does that to Lolly.”

“That must be a relief to your mother.” I was running out of patience.

“Oh, he does it to Mommy. But not when he knows Raymond and me are watching. Only he doesn’t know we peek a lot of times.”

“Well,” I reflected, “I suppose everybody has to get their sex education as best they can.”

“Oh, I know all about sex,” the little girl assured me. “Mommy told me. I even know about birth control. Only Daddy’s funny about that. When Mommy talks about it, he scowls and mutters about how I was born laughing and my fist was clenched and when they pried it open there was this pill in it.”

I choked on my reefer.

“Lucinda! Now what are you doing out of bed?” Lolly was back with Raymond in tow.

“I can’t sleep. Tell me a story.”

“Yes!” Raymond chimed in. “Tell us a story! Tell us a story!”

“They won’t give us any peace if I don’t,” Lolly sighed to me. “All right,” she told them. “But a very short one.”

“The Princess and the Frog!” the children chanted. “Tell us the one about the Princess and the Frog!”

“All right.” Lolly took a deep breath and her too-short blouse billowed out interestingly. “Once upon a time there was this Fairy Princess who was like alienated from the whole scene. She didn’t dig her fogies, and they didn’t dig her. School was like nowhere and the way she glommed it, the kids were squarer even than the teachers. So one day she cut out, took it on the hook, and pedaled over to the local greenery. Here she nooked in for privacy behind some bushes and settled down for her daily hype. Well, she’s squeezing for a vein when she looks up and there’s this Frog looking up her dress.

“ ‘If there’s one thing bugs me,’ the Fairy Princess horns, ‘it’s a Voyeuristic Frog.’ And she pegs a rock at the bug-eyed toad.

“ ‘People without panties shouldn’t throw stones!’ says the Frog as he hops to avoid the rock. ‘And anyway, you shouldn’t judge by appearances. You can’t tell a book by its cover, you know.’

“ ‘You’re telling me!’ the Princess agrees. ‘I picked up this paperback the other day with this couple making out on the cover-—all naked and everything—-and it turned out to be Greek mythology. But wait a mo! If you’re a Frog, what’s with the lingo? Didn’t they fill you in in toad school, or wherever? Frogs can’t talk. They’re only supposed to like croak.’

“ ‘I’m hip!’ the Frog croaks. ‘But see, like I’m no ordinary run-of-the-pond Frog. I’m enchanted! Dig?’

“ ‘Enchanted? What’s the bit?’ It’s a new kick to the Princess, so she’s interested.

“ ‘I wasn’t always a Frog,’ the hopster tells her. ‘I used to be a handsome, young Prince, six-foot-four, big on shoulders, and dripping muscles from all the bar-bells I hefted. Then, one day, I’m workin’ out at Muscle Beach, and along comes this witch—only spelled with a B like, you know?—and she goes green ’cause the gay boy she’s with goes ape over me. So she casts this spell, and like the next thing I know I’m hopping like crazy just to stay off the menu in French restaurants.'

“ ‘That’s a cotton-pickin’ shame,’ the Princess opines. ‘I sure wish I knew you before she frogged you. I kinda dig tall, handsome young Princes with muscles myself. I guess it’s like a stage I’m goin’ through. Too bad. But then that’s life.’

“ ‘What’s life?’ asks the Frog with froggishly philosophical curiosity.

“ ‘Life,’ the Princess tells him, ‘is a bucket of manure with the handles on the inside.’ ”

“But you digress,” I pointed out to Lolly.

“Sorry.” She got back to the story. “Anyway, the Frog tells the Princess she can be heaps of help to him if she wants to be.

“ ‘Like how?’ the Princess asks.

“ ‘Like you can help me cast off this spell,’ the Frog tells her. ‘If you take me home tonight and put me under your pillow when you go to bed, when you wake up in the morning, I won’t be a Frog any more. I’ll be a big, handsome, young, muscle-dripping Prince again. I’ll be disenchanted!’

“ ‘With that kind of a build-up, Froggy, if it doesn’t work, I’ll be disenchanted!’ the Princess tells him.

“ ‘Will you do it?’ the Frog wheedles.

“ ‘Well, I never made it with a Frog before,’ muses the Princess. ‘It might be a new kick at that.’

“So the Princess takes the Frog back to her pad and puts him under her pillow when she goes to sleep that night. She wakes up the next morning, and there, sure enough, is a great big handsome Prince with muscles hanging off his muscles. And-—” Lolly paused and nodded to the children.

“—And do you know to this day her mother doesn’t believe that story,” they chimed in to supply the ending, chortling with glee.

“Wrong!” Lolly shook her head. “This was a very poor Princess. She was too poor to have a mother. But she did have this gleep she was shacking up with. So he comes in in the ayem and what do you think he does?”

“Raps her on the snoot,” Raymond suggested.

“Throws her out of the pad,” Lucinda offered.

“You’re both wrong. He keeps his cool altogether. Doesn’t even blink an orb-lash. And you know why he isn’t bugged at finding this Prince in bed with his chick?”

“No! Why? Tell us!” The children jumped up and down.

“Because he knows it’s a Fairy Prince!” Lolly told them. “And the moral of the story is never get involved with an effeminate Frog. Now get to bed, you two. And I don’t want to hear a croak out of you.”

I took one last puff and tamped out the reefer as Lucinda and Raymond trotted off to bed. I was waiting when Lolly turned to me.

“Baby-sitting has a deleterious effect on my love life,” she sighed. “Now, where were we?”

“My right hand was here.” I put it on the back of her neck. “My left hand was here.” I cupped her bare breast under the blouse. “And my lips were here.” I kissed her.

Lolly’s breast throbbed under my touch. Her sharp little teeth closed on my lip and drew blood. Her nails shredded my shirt. These kids were too much! I reflected. They liked their sex raw with violence! I made a mental note to let myself go, to be every bit as uninhibited as Lolly was. Then I let the action suit the resolve.

“Ouch!” She broke away from me. “You pinched my thigh!” She rubbed the spot gingerly. “What did you do that for?”

“I felt like it,” I panted. “You should do whatever you feel like doing in sex. Isn’t that what you believe?”

“I guess so.” She didn’t sound convinced. “But not so hard, huh. I bruise easy.”

I kissed her again and let my fingers trail up the inside surface of her leg. A muscle tensed under her soft flesh.

“Do you want to play ‘Trust me’?” she panted.

“Huh?”

“ ‘Trust Me.’ It’s a game the kids play.”

Well, I figured to myself, any game the kids played was good enough for me. Never too old to learn, I told myself. “Sure,” I told Lolly. “How do you play?”

“Like this.” She took my hand and put it on her knee. “Now ask me if I trust you.”

“Do you trust me?” I asked obediently.

“Yes. Now move your hand just a little higher and ask me again.”

I did as she said. “Trust me?”

“Yes.”

I moved my hand still higher. “Trust me?”

“Ummm . . . ‘Yes.”

Still higher and her thigh-flesh quivered hotly under my finger. “Trust me?”

“No.” She snapped her legs closed and pinned my hand where it had come to rest.

“Now what happens?” I wondered.

“Now it’s my turn.” Lolly put her hand on my knee. “Trust me?”

“Absolutely.”

“Trust me?”

“Completely.”

“Trust me?”

“Thoroughly.”

“You’ll be sorry if you don’t stop me,” she advised. “Trust me?”

“That I doubt,” I told her. “Yes, I still trust you.”

“Trust me?” She went for broke.

“I’ll say,” I gasped.

Her hand closed into a cruel fist and squeezed hard. “Ow! Hey! What’s the big idea?”

“I told you you’d be sorry,” she laughed. She eased up on the pressure but maintained the grip. “Trust me?”

“No!” I was learning.

“All right. Now it’s your turn again.” Her thighs separated.

“Trust me?”

“Ye-e-esss.”

I moved my hand higher. “Trust me?”

“All right.”

Now I was right on target. For a moment I toyed with the idea of revenge. But lust won out. The skimpy material of her shorts was pulsating under my hand. I groped for a few seconds and then I located the fluttering guardian of her womanhood. Her fist closed more gently around me now and started to move rhythmically. I pushed her blouse out of the way and kissed the long, cherry-red tips of her breasts. The pinkish aureoles around them darkened and the nipples became rigid. It was a prolonged, tender, passionate caress. The only thing wrong with it was that it ended with fangs. Canine fangs! Without a sound of warning, they embedded themselves in my jutting posterior and held on painfully.

“YOWEE!” I jumped up and spun around in an effort to dislodge them. “OHHH!”

“Hold still, Vance!” Lolly came to my rescue. “Let me pull him loose.” She finally succeeded and the pain let up a bit.

I turned to find her holding something that looked like the wrong end of a sick dust mop. “What the hell is it?” I inquired, rubbing my injured backside tenderly.

“This is Ming Toy, the family Pekingese.” She cuddled the monster. “Ming Toy, this is Vance. Say hello nicely now.”

The little monster snarled and bared his teeth at me.

“The same to you, buddy,” I snarled back. “You nip me again, and I’ll turn you into a stole!”

“Don’t be like that, Vance,” Lolly purred. “He was only trying to protect me. He didn’t understand, did you Ming Toy? He thought you were hurting me.”

“Maybe you should tell him about the birds and the bees,” I suggested drily.

Ming Toy growled and looked at me with a savage glitter in his eyes.

“I think he’s jealous.” Lolly giggled. “Isn’t that cute?”

“Adorable. Couldn’t we tie him on the tailpipe of a passing sports car or something?”

“Oh, you’re mean! But all right. I’ll lock him down the basement.” Lolly carried the mutt oil in the direction of the kitchen.

Alone, I reached behind me to investigate the amount of damage to the seat of my pants. It seemed considerable. Still groping, I craned my neck over my shoulder, trying to see it.

“Vance! Whatever are you doing?” Lolly had returned. I jumped guiltily. “My pants,” I explained, feeling silly.

“That cur ripped them.”

“Oh. Well, take them off and I’ll sew them up for you.”

“Do you think I should?” I looked nervously in the direction of the children’s bedroom.

“Do you have a choice?”

She had a point there. I took off my pants and handed them to her.

“Vance!” Lolly laughed openly. “Where did you get those?” She pointed at the purple polka-dot shorts I was wearing.

“My ex-wife used to buy my underwear for me,” I explained. “She had a vindictive nature.”

“Those are so square they’re mod,” she commented.

“Will you please just sew my pants!” I sat down stiffly, trying to hold onto what was left of my dignity.

“You’re upset. And you’re all tense again. Here, smoke another stick and relax.” Lolly handed me another bedraggled marijuana cigarette.

Well, what the hell! The first one hadn’t affected me at all. I puffed deeply and moodily at the second one. By the time I finished it, Lolly was done with my pants. I still don’t think I was feeling any effects from the reefers. However, my libido was operative again.

As Lolly handed me my pants, I grabbed her once again. She was leaning towards me to give me the trousers, and I guess she wasn’t expecting the pass. The result was that she sprawled across my bare-—and rather knobby, I’m afraid—-knees. Playfully, I swatted the plump derriére under my nose.

“That’s it!” She was suddenly excited. “Spank me! Do it again!”

Still just kidding around, I obliged.

“Wait! Wait!” She let my pants fall to the floor. Her hands were busy under her for a moment. Then she wriggled across my lap and the multicolored shorts she was wearing inched downwards until the pink lushmess of her delectable rear was completely exposed. “Now!” she gasped. “Hit me again! Now! Spank me! Now!”

I gave her a few whacks, feeling both stimulated and silly about it.

“Harder! Harder!”

I spanked harder. With each blow she moaned and writhed against my lap. It had its effect on me. I began aiming the smacks so that the sex fulcrums of our bodies came together each time she reacted. It still wasn’t actual sex, but every whack was bringing us closer to it.

Lolly clawed at my shorts until I was free of them. The spanking was driving her wild. She rose up a little so that the next blow couldn’t help but impale her. Quivering, she waited. I raised my hand and waited a few seconds, enjoying the anticipation. But I never delivered the crucial blow.

“Why are you spanking Lolly?” Little Lucinda was standing in the doorway, rubbing her eyes.

Hastily, I pulled Lol1y’s shorts back up over her plump nether-cheeks.

“Is she a bad girl?” Lucinda wanted to know.

“What are you doing out of bed?” Lolly recovered herself.

“I have to go.”

“Why didn’t you go before when Raymond did?”

“I didn’t have to then.”

“Well then go on,” Lolly told her. “And then go straight back to bed.”

“You have to take me.”

“Oh, all right. Go on into the bathroom and I’ll be right there.” Lolly realized that she was covering my excitation and wanted Lucinda out of the room before she arose and revealed it.

Lucinda obediently left. Lolly followed her. I scrambled into my pants and waited. Frustrated, I fished another reefer out of Lolly’s purse and lit it. I wondered why I bothered. The grass wasn’t doing a thing for me. I was halfway down the stick when Lolly returned.

“Is it always like this?” I asked her.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean with the kids and the dogs. I guess I’m too old for this sort of thing.”

“I must be used to it,” Lolly told me. “I hardly notice.”

“What I don’t understand,” I confessed. “is how you kids manage all this wild action we hear about with all the interruptions.”

“Well, we’re not always baby-sitting.”

“But the modern stereotype makes baby-sitting look like an orgy. How is it possible?”

“Things get worked in. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And how’s your will doing, Vance?” She wrapped her arms around me again.

I took one last deep puff and disposed of the reefer. Determined now, I moved fast. By the time the first kiss was over I’d pushed her top up over her shoulders and was tugging at her shorts. Lolly cooperated. She unzipped my pants, freed my manhood and got ready to straddle me. We were both more than ready now, and then—-

Suddenly the room was spinning. Dizziness, faintness, nausea all seized me at once. I slid out from under her feebly and staggered to my feet.

“What’s the matter?” Lolly asked petulantly.

“I— I— Where’s the bathroom?”

“Oh, no! Not you too! First Raymond, then Lucinda, and now you! It must be an epidemic!”

“Where— Where-—” With a great effort of will I managed to keep my gorge down. “Where’s the bathroom?”

“There.” She pointed. “I knew you were smoking those reefers too fast,” she called after me as I dived for the john.

I was there for a long time. Never again! I vowed. Where was this happy glow the kids said the grass gave them? I wondered between retchings. Cloud Nine was a Vomitorium, I groaned bitterly.

I was still in the upchuck slapping cold towels on my face when Lolly rapped on the door. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“Flaming youth stay away from my door,” I croaked back.

“But you have to come out.”

“Why?”

“My uncle and aunt just drove up. I don’t want them to find you here.”

“Why not? Aren’t you allowed to have boyfriends when you baby-sit?”

“Boy friends, yes. But they might feel differently about a man your age.”

“Which is about a hundred-and-six at the moment,” I groaned. “All right. I’ll leave.”

“Hurry up.”

I exited from the bathroom with the sick feeling that I might very well be leaving the better part of me behind. Lolly tugged me into the kitchen, gave me a quick kiss, and propelled me out the back door. “Next time we’ll make it for sure,” she promised.

Stumbling through the black void of the back yard, I wasn’t so sure about that. Her youth, the very thing that drew me to Lolly, might be too much for me. I was too old for baby-sitting and too unhip for reefers. Face it, Powers, I told myself, the Pepsi Generation has passed you by!

“OOF!”

The thought was pushed out of my mind as I smacked into someone in the darkness of the driveway. A hand reached out to steady me. But it was so dark I couldn’t see the face behind the man’s voice that spoke. From his words, I guess he couldn’t see me either.

“You don’t have to sneak out by the back door, Son.” The man’s tone was kindly. “We’d like to meet Lolly’s boyfriends. I’m Lolly’s uncle.”

“Glad to meet you,” I mumbled.

“Glad to know you too, Boy. You go to school around here?”

“Uh— No.”

“Well, it’s nice Lolly’s getting to meet some young people from the neighborhood anyway. See you again, Son.” He let go of my arm and vanished into the night.

Son! Well, maybe I wouldn’t be left out of the Pepsi Generation after all. I was going to make it with Lolly if it was the last thing I ever did! That’s what I told myself as I drove home.

The inevitable phone was inevitably ringing as I entered the house. Resignedly, I picked it up. “What now, Marcy?” I said for openers.

Wrong guess. It wasn’t Marcy. It was Senator Hawthorne. He’d had some checking done and he had two pieces of information for me. The first concerned Phil Anders.

“He’s definitely not the CIA man,” the Senator told me. “It’s been checked and crosschecked.”

“Then why would he break into my house?” I wondered aloud.

“I was hoping you might have an answer to that,” the Senator told me.

I did have some answers, but the trouble was they all raised more questions. Anders might have been the one in contact with Fink. The money he was spending on gifts for Cleo Taurus might be the CIA’s missing fifty Gs. Some of the curiosity I’d displayed to Cleo and other members of the drama group might have gotten back to him and aroused his suspicion. He could have been rifling my desk for some clue as to where I might fit into his own involvement. And there was still the possibility that he might have been the one who killed Sy Lenzio.

It wasn’t a very reassuring possibility. If he’d killed Sy, then he certainly wouldn’t hesitate to kill me if I got in his way. And if he had the missing money, then I was already in his way!

The second piece of information the Senator had to pass on was even more intriguing. “We’ve got a line on a girl that Arch Fink was involved with just before the CIA assigned him to set up Democratic Philanthropies, Inc.,” the Senator told me.

“Involved how?”

“Fink met this girl in California. They drove to New York together. Then she just seemed to disappear. She’s a very young girl, just a kid really. All we’ve got to go on is a sort of vague description.”

“Describe her,” I told him with a sinking feeling in my stomach.

He did. The sinking feeling was confirmed.

“Was Fink posing as a traveling salesman back then?” I asked.

“That’s right. How did you know?”

“I’ve met the girl,” I told him.

“You have? Who is she?”

I told him. Then I hung up. But the name still echoed in my mind.

Lolly Popstick!

Chapter Nine

Dress Rehearsal for a little theatre group is something like a noncombat jump for a paratrooper. It may not count, but you still hope the ’chute will open. And, somehow, the landing is always rockier than the jar of the bounce into actual battle. All jumps are a leap of faith, but none strain the faith, baby, quite so much as the rugged plummeting into production known as the Dress Rehearsal.

The weeks leading up to it were hectic. The Dress Rehearsal itself was sheer chaos. As the director, I approached it with the feeling of a commander who has just been told of a strategic necessity to shell his own position.

I took off from work the afternoon preceding it. Cass Novak, Phil Anders, Will Leigh, and Peter Putter met me at the Pine Glen Community Center to help me set up the stage and scenery. The custodian sat on his fat and watched us with an uncharacteristically happy expression on his dyspeptic, moon-cratered face.

That expression worried me. It made me feel like a pile of bones being staked out by a smiling vulture working up an appetite. There was something cunning in the look, something that enjoyed watching us sweat, something that said the labor would only mark the beginning of our troubles.

I pegged it right. The caretaker waited until we were all through. We were just about to go out for a quick beer before the ladies arrived when he finally spoke.

“You fellas sure worked hard,” he said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“But ain’t you kinda got your wires crossed?”

“What do you mean?” The sinking feeling in my stomach expanded.

“You can’t rehearse here tonight. They’s three other groups got the hall booked; seven to nine; nine to ten; ten to eleven.”

“What?! But that can’t be. Joy Boxx marked this night down for rehearsal on the Center calendar.”

“Miz Boxx didn’t clear it with me. It shoulda been cleared with me.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell us this before? Before we broke our backs setting everything up?”

“Ain’t my business.” He shrugged.

I held onto my temper with an eflort. “Then how come you’re telling us now?” I asked.

“You just got time to take everything down ’fore the Boy Scouts get here for their meeting. They got the hall first.”

“I’m damned if we will!”

“It’s up to you.” The custodian shrugged. “But them kids is pretty rough. They’ll probably tie knots in your curtains, mebbe set fire to your props. No telling. They teaches ’em to be resourceful, you know.”

“I’ll take it up with the Scoutmaster,” I told him frostily. “I’ll ask him to have the troop meet somewhere else tonight.”

“Might work. That’s ’tween you an’ him. But then, comes nine o’clock, the Scouts clears out an’ the Kiwanis comes in. They got a lecture here tonight, nine to ten. At ten the Women’s Society for Decent Literature takes over the hall. What you gonna do ’bout them two groups?”

“I’ll talk to them,” I told him. “I’ll straighten it out.”

“Well, I’ll be around to keep the peace when you do.”

“Thanks for nothing!” I told him. “We’ll be back.” I followed along with the others to get a beer. I really need- ed it.

When we returned, the female members of the cast had already arrived. They were backstage putting on each others theatrical makeup. They went at it like sailors painting a ship they detested.

“You're making me too red!” Rusty was protesting to Cleo. “I’ll look like a lobster!”

“No I’m not.” Cleo stood back and examined her handiwork. “Remember, I have perspective and you don’t.” She dabbed on some more red makeup.

“You have the perspective of someone who wanted the part I got!” Rusty told her. “Vance! Come here!” she called. “Isn’t she using too much red?”

“You look like a lobster.” I was in no mood to be diplomatic. “Take off some of the red,” I told Cleo.

“You’re wrong! It’ll blend under the lights.” Cleo defended herself.

“He’s the director! Take it off!” Rusty insisted.

“Take it off yourself!” Cleo slammed down the cover of the makeup kit and stalked off.

My attention was distracted by Wanda Humphrey and Lolly. Wanda was etching in lines on Lolly’s face. “You’re making her look too old,” I told Wanda.

“Dollink, a little mature, she should looking. Not so much contrasting with her and the other ladies.”

“Why not? She’s supposed to be young enough to be Rusty’s daughter. And the rest of you are supposed to be around Rusty’s age.”

“The ladies all are agreeing that too childically she shouldn’t looking.”

“The ladies are jealous! Take out the lines!” I insisted. I strode over to the curtain and peeked out from behind it to see if the Boy Scouts had arrived yet. Joy Boxx was already peeking. “Why didn’t you straighten out all this nonsense about the hall?” I asked her. “You’re the producer.”

“I marked it down on the calendar,” she told me stiffly. “It’s not my fault if the custodian didn’t tell the other groups.”

“Nothing is ever anybody’s fault,” I sighed. Looking out at the hall, I saw some twenty-odd people scattered around the auditorium. “Who are they?” I asked Joy.

“Relatives and friends’ of the people in the cast. They always come to the dress rehearsals. You’ll get to meet them all later.”

“They make me nervous. They look like they’re about to pounce.”

“They are. They’ll be sure to tell you just what you did wrong after the rehearsal.”

“Well, that’s something to look forward to.”

“Worse,” Joy continued, “they’ll tell the actors what they’re doing wrong. The actors will say the director told them to do it that way. And then they’ll convince the actors that you don’t know your posterior from your elbow.”

“What’s more, they’ll be right,” I sighed. “What the hell is that?” I added as the sounds of marching feet and voices raised in song reached my ears.

Joy’s answer was lost in a shouted version of “The Caissons Go Rolling Along” which I’d never heard before:

“OVERSEXED, OVER-RIPE,

“TAUGHT THAT BOY SCOUTS NEVER GRIPE,

“OUR LIBIDOS GO LOLLING ALONG!

“WARNED OF WARTS ON OUR HANDS,

“FIRES ARE DOUSED TO MARCH TO BANDS,

“OUR LIBIDOS WILL NEVER GO WRONG!

“FOR IT’S HUP-TWO-THREE!

“NEVER GRAB ABOVE THE KNEE!

“SAVE IT TO FIGHT THE VIET CONG!

“AND WHEN WE MATURE,

“YOU MAY E’ER BE SURE

“OUR LIBIDOS WILL KILL FOR A SONG!”

Twenty-odd marching Boy Scouts braked smartly to a halt hallway down the aisle in the auditorium. The drama group’s “friends” stared at them as if they weren’t sure it the Scouts were part of the play or not. In these days of Marat/Sade and Absurd Theatre, I guess they couldn’t really be sure. The Scouts stared back unperturbed. I darted out from behind the curtain to accost the Scout Master. It was easy to spot him from his outsize, khaki-covered girth and the thick clumps of hair around his bare, knobby knees. He had the dampish, humorlessly smiling face of an only half-sublimated faggot. His ears stuck out like handles under a too-young, too-short crew cut. Somehow he managed to look outdoorsy and pasty at the same time.

His expression remained unchanged as I explained the situation to him. “It’s just that we fouled up,” I wheedled, “and I know it’s an imposition, but just for tonight could you meet somewhere else so we can use the hall?”

“Well now, let me talk it over with the boys. Fellas,” he squeaked, “gather ’round for a pow-wow.”

The boys squatted in a circle around him while he explained the situation. “Why can’t we stay an’ watch?” one of the boys demanded. “I wanna stay and watch.”

“We wanna stay an’ watch!” the others chimed in.

“I guess they can stay if you can keep them quiet,” I told the Scout Master. I returned backstage as the boys scrambled for seats.

Behind the curtain the chaos had increased. Will Leigh and Wanda Humphrey were standing nose-to-nose and screaming at each other:

“Mugging is all you’re knowing how to doing!” Wanda was sputtering. “Is ruining what means scene where telling Madam girls are strike!”

“You’re trying to upstage me!” Will yelled back.

“Mr. Powers!” The custodian came running up to me. “That man has to leave!” He pointed a pudgy finger at Cass Novak. “We don’t allow no drinkin’ on the premises!”

“I don’t see him drinking,” I told the caretaker.

“He got a flask in his pocket. I seen him drinkin’ outa it before. When I tol’ him to stop, he just laughed at me.”

“Cass, give it here.” I held out my hand.

“Just direct the play, Powers. That’s enough for you to concentrate on fouling up. Butt out of this.”

“Either I confiscate that flask,” said the custodian from behind me, “or I’ll call the cops and have him put out.”

“Lolly!” I was suddenly distracted. “This is no place to change your blouse! Particularly when you’re not wearing a bra! Suppose one of those Boy Scouts wanders back here.”

Cass spun around to look. I grabbed the flask out of his hip pocket and silently handed it to the custodian.

“Now you’ve confiscated it,” I whispered as I edged him towards the curtain. “So why don’t you just sit down out front and enjoy the show?”

“Vance!” Rusty grabbed my arm. “If you don’t put a gel in that stage-left spot, I refuse to go onstage. It makes me look a hundred-and-ten years old!”

“And that’s not so very far off!” Joy Boxx murmured.

“I heard that!” Rusty wheeled around.

“There you are!” It was a roar from the rear doorway to the stage. Nicholas Taurus, Cleo’s husband, stood there like an enraged bull. He was glaring at Cleo and Phil Anders. In one hamhock of a hand he clutched a tape recorder as if it was a club.

“Oh, dear.” Peter Putter shrank back against the wall and shoved his hands even deeper into his pockets than usual.

“The tape!” Cleo hissed to Phil. “The other night when we were rehearsing, we forgot the tape was on.”

“That’s right!” Nicholas had heard her. “Now I suppose you’re going to tell me that what’s on this tape is part of the play.”

“It is.” Phil kept his cool. “Don’t make a damn fool out of yourself, Nick. Everything on that tape is from the play. Not direct lines, of course. It’s a method warm-up to put us in the mood. Don’t take my word for it. Ask Vance. He’s the director.”

“Oh, yeah? Just listen to this, Powers!” Nicholas Taurus set the machine down and activated it. He continued to glower at Phil and Cleo as the tape began to play.

“Back in the Bronx I never dreamed it was possible for a woman to feel the way you make me feel.” Cleo’s voice, reading from the script.

“Don’t talk any more, Shirley. Just kiss me.” Phil’s voice, also in character and reading the author’s lines.

“Ahh! Perfection! The moon, the desert, the warm air, nestling like this in your arms like a knadlach enveloped in chicken soup.”

“Kiss me again!”

“That’s not it. Your line is——”

A long silence. Then Phil’s voice again. “I’m sure glad you don’t wear a girdle. I can’t stand girdles. I always get my fingers caught!”

“Now you’re going too far!”

“For Pete’s sake, you can’t keep teasing me this way and expecting me to stop!”

“My husband--”

“—will never know! And if he did, it would make damn little difference if he found us like this, or going the limit. Besides, he’s so dense—”

Nicholas Taurus stopped the tape and Phil’s voice died out. “Well?” Taurus asked, enraged. “Is that in the p1ay?”

“It’s in the spirit of the play,” I assured him hastily. “You’re being over-sensitive. You should have more faith in Cleo. That sounds like a perfectly normal improvisation to me. It’s a rehearsal technique. Now why don’t you just simmer down and watch the play from out front?” I took the tape recorder from him, set it down in a corner, and poured on some more soothing syrup as I ushered him offstage. Behind us Cleo and Phil breathed a mutual sigh of relief.

“Places everybody!” I called as I returned. “Let’s get this show going before anything else happens. Quiet on the set now!” The hubbub died down. I killed the house lights and motioned to Cass to wheel the scrim into position for the first scene. When Rusty was in position, I turned the lights up slowly and raised the curtain.

“Mr. Powers!” It was a hiss from right behind me.

I turned around to face the custodian. “What are you doing here?” I asked him. “Why aren’t you out front watching the play?”

Rusty launched into her opening speech.

“There’s a phone call for you down in my office,” he snarled. “I told you I don’t like people gettin’ calls on my phone.” He took a long, surly pull from the mouth of the flask I’d “confiscated” from Cass Novak.

“But I’m the director. This is the dress rehearsal. I have to be here,” I protested.

“Well, I ain’t goin’ down them steps again to hang up the phone.” He took another swig.

“I’m sure glad drinking’s forbidden on these premises,” I told him. Sighing, I trotted out the back exit from the stage and down the stairs to answer the phone.

“Vance!” It was Marcy. “Vance, I-—”

“Look!” I interrupted her. “I’m busy right now. You called at the worst possible time. I’ll get back to you later.”

“No! Wait! Please, Vance! Don’t hang up! I’m in a terrible jam! Please, Vance! I need your help!”

“All right. But make it fast. What is it?”

She told me. Few are the times in a man’s life when he can feel that it was all worthwhile -- the marriage, the divorce, everything. Rare are the times when he can feel that somebody up there is paying off his old grudges, redeeming his lost marital arguments, meting out punishment in retrn for the battering he’s received over the years from a woman. Infrequent indeed the times when he tastes the sweetness of completely unplanned revenge, savors the justice of vindictiveness which had been aimed at him backfiring, drinks in the flavor of a once wifely torturer now in trouble and pleading with him for help.

This was such a moment. What had happened was this:

Marcy and Hector, her outdoorsy lover-to-be, had left for their idyllic outing in Hector’s camp wagon, a custom-made vehicle with a four-wheel drive which was half jeep and half station wagon. They had set out at sunset and the idea had been for Hector to drive for four or five hours, then pull off the road to sleep until after dawn and resume their journey in daylight. But in practice their plans had been altered.

Marcy had fallen asleep shortly after it grew dark. Hector had kept driving much longer than he’d planned and it was well into the ayem when he finally pulled the camp wagon over to the side of the road. His stopping had awakened Marcy.

There was a brief conversation. Marcy wanted to drive while Hector climbed in the back and caught some sleep. Hector objected that Marcy had never driven this sort of vehicle before and might not be able to handle it. Marcy had pooh-poohed his caution, pointing out that she had driven other standard shift cars in the past and that there was little but straight highway ahead of them. Finally Hector agreed with the stipulation that if they came to an urban area, Marcy should wake him so that he might take over the driving. He was afraid she mightn’t be able to handle the camp wagon in city traffic.

Hector climbed into the back of the wagon and took off his clothes. Being a deep-breathing, nature-loving type, he climbed into his sleeping bag naked. By the time Marcy had driven the first five miles, he was sound asleep.

Shortly after dawn Marcy hit the outskirts of a small city. She knew she was supposed to wake Hector, but he was sleeping so soundly she decided not to disturb him. She had complete confidence in her ability to handle the camp wagon. After all, she’d been driving it for the past couple of hours. So she headed into the city without waking him.

Halfway through the small city she was confronted with a red light. Inexperience made her buck the vehicle as she braked it to stop. Unknown to her, the jarring motion awoke Hector.

Still groggy from sleep, he got out of the sleeping bag, stood up, and pushed aside the canvass over the rear of the camp wagon to get his bearings. At that moment the light changed. The camp wagon lurched as Marcy took her foot off the clutch too fast and sped away. What she didn’t know was the lurch had thrown Hector from the back of the truck and that he was now lying stark naked in the middle of the street behind her!

Here the story becomes fragmented. There’s the version of Miss Agatha Twinkle, as told to the police, for instance. According to Miss Twinkle, she had just rounded the corner of Main and Third Streets at the head of a group of small children she was escorting on a nature walk when this stark naked sex maniac rose from the gutter and ran screaming towards them.

There’s the version of Lem Clemson, a local druggist, who claims to have been assaulted by a large drunk without any clothes on. According to Lem Clemson, the drunk was babbling incoherently and tried to pull the jacket off his body by force. Only the appearance of a policeman in answer to Lem’s cry for help kept the naked drunk from succeeding in his objective.

According to the policeman, who gave chase, his first thought was that the naked runner must be an escaped convict who had ditched his prison garb and was trying to steal other clothes. The policeman admitted that the man was a magnificent physical specimen in top physical condition. The proof was that he managed to outrun the cop and lost him going around a corner.

Here the story is picked up by one Mademoiselle Fifi who ran a small ladies’ boutique. According to Mademoiselle Fifi she was just getting ready to open for the day when a naked man—-“c’est magnifique!” in her words — smashed in her front window, grabbed a brassiere-—the handiest item of apparel within his reach—tied it ineflectually around his midsection, cursed, looked around wildly, and continued running up the street with one of the bra cups flapping against his thighs.

The bra cup was waving in the wind when Hector was finally apprehended by two State Policemen on motorcycles. By that time there was an alert out for him. Not that a description was needed. According to one of the state troopers, it would have been hard to miss him since there weren’t really too many six-foot-six, two-hundred-thirty-pound naked men with brassieres caught between their legs running around town that early in the morning. They took him to the local pokey where irate citizens were already lining up to file their complaints against him. Here, it was awhile before Hector could pull himself together enough to tell the gendarmes his version of what he assumed had happened.

By this time Marcy was some twenty miles away, still unaware that she’d violated a town ordinance by dumping two-hundred-thirty pounds of nude male into the middle of Main Street before the stores opened for the day. The first hint she had that she’d lost Hector came almost another twenty miles further on when a State Trooper pulled her over to the side of the road. She left the wagon parked there and returned to the city where Hector was being held in the trooper’s car. In her distress at learning what had happened, she didn’t think to bring any clothes for Hector.

When Marcy reached the pokey, the situation worsened. The local uplift society had gotten wind of things and piled on some more charges against Hector. Finding out that he and Marcy weren’t married, and taking into account his unclothed condition, they’d arrived at the obvious conclusion. The license plates on the camp wagon clinched it. When the trooper reported that they were out-of-state plates, the local better-than-thous dusted off the Mann Act and came up with a Federal charge against Hector for transporting a woman across the state line for immoral purposes. The cry of “White Slavery!” was raised.

“And the worst of it is,” Marcy wailed to me over the phone, “that we didn’t even do anything!”

“Yet,” I reminded her. “Is Hector still in the callaboose?” I asked.

“Yes. Bail hasn’t been set yet. They can’t take him into court because he doesn’t have any clothes. He’s so darned large they can’t find anything to fit him. And while they’re looking this damned crusader is stirring up even more feeling against him. I wouldn’t be surprised if they decided to lynch him.”

“What crusader?” I asked.

“The Reverend Billy Boxx. You’ve heard of him.”

“Oh, yeah.” The long arm of coincidence seemed to me to be making lewd gestures.

“Well,” Marcy continued, “he just happens to be here conducting one of those antivice crusades of his. Just our luck! And he’s latched onto Hector and me as an excuse to get everybody stirred up. He’s got one of those evangelist’s tents set up in the city park and when I passed by there before he was telling the crowd I was a Scarlet Woman. Oh Vance, you’ve got to help me. I don’t know what to do. Hector could go to jail. And it’s this Reverend Boxx that’s got everybody so fired up. If only there was some way I could get him off our backs, I think the cops would be reasonable and Hector could just get off with a fine for being a public nuisance. But this Boxx is insisting that the Mann Act charge be pressed.”

“I may be able to help you,” I told her cautiously. I was remembering that I’d done Billy Boxx a favor by not casting Joy in the play and I figured I might talk him into returning it. On the other hand, I was in no hurry. I was getting quite a kick out of the predicament Marcy and her boyfriend were in and I saw no reason to get them off the hook too quickly. “But it’ll take some time,” I added.

“Please hurry, Vance. I’ve never been in a mess like this before!”

“We-e-e-ellll,” I said smugly, “the wages of sin . . . ”

“Oh, please, Vance! Don’t! I’m so worried. Tell me what to do.”

“Just sit tight. Leave it to me. I think I can get Boxx to ease up on the pressure. But it’ll take time.”

“How much time?”

“I should be able to get him tomorrow morning.” I figured a night in jail would be good for Hector’s soul. “But right now I’m very busy, Marcy.”

“All right Vance.” She was satisfactorily meek and grateful. “I’ll call you again in the morning.”

I hung up the phone and went back up to the dress rehearsal. The curtain was just going down on the first act. I stood in the wings as the actors came offstage.

“How was it?” They clustered around me.

“Terrific. Keep up the pace.” Hell, I was the director. I couldn’t admit I hadn’t seen any of it.

“You must stopping Will mug so much!” Wanda Humphrey demanded.

“What are you talking about? That’s the only laugh we got!” Will protested.

“Not comedy! You please making this clear to him, Vance. Dramatic impacting he’s murder!”

“You think you’re so smart!” Will lost his temper. “Just because you were a two-bit hoofer in Europe.”

“Two-bit hoof-hoof!” Wanda sputtered. “All over the Continent they knowing me! Ignorantus! I so famous they having me speak to International Conference of Little Theatre Groups meeting of amateurs like you only better from all over nations!”

That clicked! Why hadn’t I thought of it before? Wanda had been a performer in Europe. That made her the natural one for Fink to have dealt with regarding American participation in the Conference. Was she the one he’d given the fifty grand to? She might be! She just might be!

From there my mind veered off to the manner of Sy Lenzio’s death. Where had Wanda been in relation to the switch activating the electric saw which killed him? I couldn’t remember.

As I was thinking of Lenzio, Cass Novak stepped into my line of vision. I remembered the fight he’d had with the mime that night. And I remembered what Will had said about Cass having had an affair with Zelda Lenzio. If Zelda thought Sy had been holding out money on her, might not she have connived with Cass to kill him? She could have figured she’d claim whatever assets Sy had. And if Sy had the CIA’s fifty Gs, or Zelda thought he had it, that would be an added motive for her to try to get Cass to kill him.

Still, there was no sign that either Cass or Zelda had come into any money. If money was the clue, then the evidence pointed at two other people: Phil Anders, with his lavish gifts to Cleo Taurus; and Rusty Roundheels, who’d been splurging on redecorating her house.

I found myself staring at Rusty speculatively. She was coming on strong with the Scoutmaster, who’d wandered backstage. Rusty had him backed into a corner and was toying with his orange neckerchief as she spoke.

“Of course I take a little kidding about it,” she was saying. “But actually the name ‘Roundheels’ has a very honorable historical background. It goes all the way back to a Dutch ancestor of Roger’s who was one of the first settlers in America. She was one of those indomitable widow-ladies, you know? Used to sit on a rocking chair on the front porch of her log cabin with a flintlock in her lap and pick off marauding Indians. The Indians gained a healthy respect for her marksmanship and because of the rocking chair-they’d never seen one before—they called her ‘Roundheels.’ And the name stuck.”

My attention was distracted from the discomfiture of the Scoutmaster at the way Rusty kept raking him with her breasts by Nicholas Taurus tugging at my arm. “Listen, Powers,” he said, “there was nothing in that first act to justify that tape. Are you trying to cover up for my wife and Anders? What’s the big idea? Do you maybe have something going with her yourself? Now just listen to this!” He dragged the tape recorder over.

“No time now,” I told him. “But believe me, Nick, it’s all in your imagination. I promise you I’ll straighten it out later. But right now We’ve got to do the second act.” I ushered him off the stage. “Places everyone!” I called. “Quiet now. We’re ready for Act Two.”

I’d just gotten the curtain up when this angry-looking, blustery businessman type confronted me. “You in charge here?” he demanded.

“Shh!” I hissed at him. “There’s a show on.”

“That’s just what I want to talk about.” He was just as loud as before. “Are you in charge?”

“I guess I am,” I admitted.

“Well what I want to know is—-”

“Quiet!” I dragged him out the back exit. “All right, we can talk here,” I told him. “But please keep your voice down. Now, what’s the trouble?” ’

“My narne’s Judge Kirby. I’m president of the local Kiwanis club. We’re supposed to have this hall at nine tonight. Lucky thing I got here early. You people will have to clear off and get that stage and scenery out of our way.”

“Now wait a minute, Judge Kirby. There’s been a foul-up!”

“I’ll say there has!”

“It’s our fault, but this is a dress rehearsal,” I told him. “Tomorrow this show has to be put on. Couldn’t your group possibly use one of the smaller rooms downstairs for tonight?”

“Do you realize our membership is composed of some of the most influential businessmen in the community? I can’t ask these men to huddle in some tiny room. We’ve already had one foul-up tonight, and now this!”

“What was the foul-up?” I was stalling for time.

“A top executive from the Long Island Railroad was supposed to come down and speak to us on how to maintain good labor-management relations. But now he can’t make it.”

“Why not?”

“He couldn’t get transportation. Haven’t you heard? The L.I.R.R. trainmen are out on strike. So our speaker had no way to get here.”

“I see.”

“So now we’ll have to have a business meeting. And for that we need the main hall.”

“Wait a minute.” I kept stalling. “Do you mean if you had a speaker you could meet in one of the other rooms?”

“‘I suppose we could. If we had a speaker. But we don’t.”

“Well how about just getting another speaker?”

“There isn’t time. And we can’t have a business meeting in a small room. Those meetings get pretty rugged. The fellows get hot under the collar. At close quarters it just might end in a brawl.”

“What do they get mad about?”

“The druggist gets mad about the supermarket carrying toothpaste. The candy store owner gets mad at the druggist peddling ice cream. The stationery store proprietor gets mad at the candy store stocking notebooks. That sort of thing. In a small room it can be murder.”

“Still, if you had a speaker—”

“All right. You get us a speaker, we won’t ask you to clear out.”

“Okay. Then you’ve got one,” I told him.

“Who?”

“Me.” I was desperate.

“You? What are you going to talk about?”

“The importance to the Pine Glen business community of the performing arts.”

And that’s how, some ten minutes later, I found myself wedged into a roomful of Kiwanis-ites, or Kiwanians, or whatever the hell you call them, giving an extemporaneous talk. “Little Theatre is good for business,” I began improvising. “It’s good for the liquor stores because amateur acting creates tensions which are frequently relieved by imbibing. It’s good for pharmacies because the proximity of amateur acting spreads germs requiring medicinal treatment. It’s good for lawyers because Little Theatre activities frequently strain marriages to the breaking point and create divorce actions. It’s good for . . .”

I raced through my speech and managed to finish it just as the second-act rehearsal was ending. I told the Kiwanis group they were welcome to come up and watch the third act when they finished discussing my speech and then raced upstairs just in time to greet my cast as they came offstage.

“Did it go all right?” they wanted to know. “How did it look from here?”

“Fine, fine,” I told them. “It was very moving. Keep up the good work.”

“Can’t you make those Boy Scouts stop throwing spit balls at us?” Rusty wanted to know. “It’s disconcerting.”

“They sure didn’t act like Boy Scouts when I came onstage,” Lolly added. “I think they’re a bunch of undersized sex fiends!”

“Boys will be boys,” I answered both of them.

“Shay, Powers, you’re ’sponsible for cleanin’ up them spitballs!” My friend the custodian was back. From the looks of him he’d “confiscated” every last drop of Cass Novak’s liquor. “I ain’t gonna clean that mess,” he added.

“It’ll be taken care of,” I sighed.

“Why the hell didn’t you pick your chin up?” Phil Anders voice was loud and he was glowering at Cleo. “I was supposed to kiss you.” He turned to me. “Did you see that, Vance? I was trying to pry it up with all my strength and I couldn’t budge it.” He turned back to Cleo. “What the hell was the big idea?”

“Be quiet,” she muttered. “I didn’t want you to kiss me, that’s why. Nick’s jealous enough. If I let you kiss me, he might have jumped up onstage and started taking you apart.”

“But it’s part of the play,” Phil protested.

“After that tape, I didn’t want to take any more chances. Now shut up. Here comes Nick again.”

Nick had the tape recorder again and he was bearing down on me angrily. But before he reached me, he was elbowed out of the way by a middle-aged Amazon whose determination was even greater than his. I’m a pretty tall man, but the lady was right up there with me as she started her harangue. *

“I understand your name is Powers and you’re the man in charge here. My name is Mrs. Barker and I represent the Pine Glen Women’s Society for Decent Literature. We’re supposed to be meeting here at ten o’c1ock. How dare you people impose on our time?”

“Powers! That second act doesn’t have anything in it about girdles! How stupid do you think I am?” Nicholas Taurus spluttered.

“You’re interrupting me, my good man!” Mrs. Barker brushed him aside. “Now I want this hall cleared for our meeting, Mr. Powers. I’ll give you five minutes!” She wheeled on her heels and started marching away.

“Just a minute, Mrs. Barker,” I pleaded. “Please. Just hear me out.”

“Very well.”

“Nobody’s gonna pin horns" on me, Powers!”

“Please, Nick, just wait.” I turned back to Mrs. Barker. “Certainly a group such as yours must have a deep interest in culture,” I told her.

“Well, naturally--”

“You ladies, I’m sure, have an appreciation of the arts.”

“We certainly do.”

“I was sure you did, Mrs. Barker. That’s why I was going to suggest that you stay and see the last act of our play.”

“But our meeting—”

“Culture, blah-blah-gobbledygook-blah,” I told Mrs. Barker. “Creativity, babble-babble-doubletalk-blah,” I pointed out earnestly. “Art, mumbo-jumbo-stuff-‘n’-nonsense-blah,” I pleaded earnestly. “Community-blah, tradition-blah, ethnic-blah, awareness-blah, classic-blah, and more blah.” I finally convinced her.

“You’re right, Mr. Powers,” she agreed. “The ladies owe it to themselves to see this work of art in which you’re engaged. I’ll go and tell them to be seated.”

“That was pretty sweet talking, Powers,” Nicholas Taurus piped up when Mrs. Barker had departed. “But you’re not going to put me off that way! Now you sit down and listen to this tape and tell me it has anything to do with your play.”

“All right,” I agreed. “All right. But we’ll have to take it downstairs somewhere. The third act has to go on now. Places everyone,” I called. “Curtain.” I hefted it up and as the actors started delivering their opening lines I allowed Nick Taurus to drag me out the back exit to hear the rest of the tape.

It was an eye-opener all right -- but not the way Nick Taurus meant it to be. First there was a replay of the bit where Cleo and Phil had strayed from the play into the dialogue about girdles and the density of husbands. After that came some more dialogue with Phil pitching hot and strong and Cleo alternately teasing him to egg him on and then fending him off just as it sounded like he was about to score. The most damning thing about the tape from Nick’s point of view was probably the long silences with only the sounds of heavy breathing.

“That’s all there is.” Nicholas switched off the tape. “The rest is just some nonsense Phil was telling her about his business.”

I perked up my ears at that, but I had to cope with first things first. And the first thing was to cool Nick down before he murdered two of my lead players before the show could be put on the boards for a paying audience. It wasn’t easy. He was pretty mad.

“Improvisation,” I told him. “Stanislavsky.” I launched into a long doubletalk improv of my own. I talked earnestly for a long time. “It mostly relates to the third act,” I told him. “And if you weren’t such a hothead, you’d be seeing it for yourself right now. Mind you, I don’t say that’s the actual dialogue. But it is fairly typical of a pair of actors preparing themselves by capturing the mood for the performance.”

He was only half convinced, but finally he went back out front to catch the last part of the third act to see if it really had the relevance I said it had. I knew it didn’t, but the play was so damn obscure anyway that I figured there was a fifty-fifty chance Nick might read the relevance into it for himself. If not, I’d just tell him it must have been the part he missed.

After he’d gone I turned on the tape again. I wanted to hear what Phil had told Cleo about business. This was the portion I mentioned before, the part that opened my eyes.

What happened was that Cleo had managed to turn off Phi1’s ardor by drawing him into a conversational rapport. She’d drawn him out on the sudden windfall his business seemed to be providing, the windfall which-—although it wasn’t mentioned on the tape-—must have been paying for the expensive gifts he’d been buying her. Phil was frank to the point of foolishness.

As Cleo had told me, Phil was an insurance adjustor. His recent riches stemmed from kickbacks he’d been taking from claimants and contractors. In particular, he’d been making deals with an electrical supply house among others. When he was sent out to check claims stemming from fires, Phil would over-figure the electrical fixtures and wiring and then take a kickback from the supply house. And this particular supply house was headed up by none other than Roger Roundheels, Rusty’s husband!

Phil told Cleo he was going to pack Roger in, though, because Roger took too much of a split off the top. Tax-free, Phil told Cleo, it had added up to enough for Roger to supply Rusty with the money to redecorate their home. So now I knew the source of both Phil’s and Rusty’s sudden wealth, and it left me no closer to the CIA’s missing fifty grand than I’d been before.

On the tape Phil even explained why he’d been rifling my desk that night. It seems Cleo had mentioned something to him about my interest in his finances, and that had aroused his suspicion. Phil had become frightened that I might be an investigator assigned by his own company to check on him. He knew I was a lawyer and they frequently used lawyers to investigate fraud. So he’d been looking for some proof of his suspicions the night I’d found him in my house.

There was one more point of interest covered by the tape. Phil told Cleo about a claim put in by Roger Roundheels on his own homeowner policy which had to do with the death of Sy Lenzio. When Phil asked Roger why he filed a claim. at all, the explanation was that Cass Novak had asked him to do it so that any insurance award might go to Lenzio’s estate. Cleo asked Phil what Cass Novak’s interest in the matter could be and Phil guessed that the affair between Cass and Zelda, Sy’s widow, might still be going hot and heavy. Phil also opined that Cass probably figured to romance some of the money out of Zelda once she got it.

So now two of my leads had been killed and one of the others looked even stronger. Cass Novak was shaping up as a prime suspect even if many of the pieces didn’t make any sense. I turned off the tape recorder and went back- stage to catch the end of the last act.

If the rest of the play was anything like the final snatch I saw, the PTA Easter pageant didn’t have to worry about the competition. It wasn’t easy to smile encouragingly as my cast came off the stage. Fortunately I didn’t have to smile for too long because their friends and relatives swarmed backstage as soon as the curtain fell.

“Vance.” Rusty tugged at my arm. “I’d like you to meet my Aunt Clara. Vance is our director, Aunt Clara.”

“How do you do?” I said.

“Pleased I’m sure.” Aunt Clara leaned very close and whispered in my ear. “With a talent like Rusty, you’re lucky,” she said, “but why did you ever pick such a dud for her leading man?”

I was saved from having to answer by Lolly tugging at my other elbow. “This is my best friend Marilyn,” she introduced me. “Tell Vance what you told me, Marilyn,” she urged.

“That fella plays the junkie I couldn’t understand,” Marilyn told me. “Does he always grunt like that or was it your idea?”

“He’s supposed to be inarticulate,” I told her.

“So you’re the director!” I found myself facing a man with a face like thunder and beetling eyebrows. “Well my daughter tells me you told her the inflection for that line about alienation and all I can tell you is I think you don’t understand the author!”

“Who does?” It was all I could think of to say.

“I enjoyed the performance very much,” a sweet looking little old lady told me. “I’m Peter’s mother. I want you to know I enjoyed it. But, please, if you’re directing, couldn’t you direct that teen-age hussy to not keep grabbing at him that way. It embarrasses him and he forgets his lines. That’s why he grunts.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” I backed away from her.

“Oh, there’s the director,” someone called.

I didn’t wait to see who it was. I bolted from the backstage area. I figured I’d be safer out front-away from all the expert friends and relatives. I was wrong.

The Boy Scouts had gotten out of hand. They’d traded in their spitballs for paper clips and rubber bands. The missiles went zinging around my head so dangerously that I finally fell to my knees and crawled up the aisle. On the way I stumbled over the custodian. He was out like a light, Cass Novak’s flask clutched in his hand the way a sleeping baby clutches its bottle.

At the back of the hall I encountered Mrs. Barker. She was livid. I found out why as soon as she spotted me.

“Culture!” she sputtered. “Art! Creativity!” She wagged her finger in my face. “The Pine Glen Women’s Society for Decent Literature will never let this play be performed. The very idea! Such language and such obscene lovemaking with little children here!” She waved her arm to encompass the savagely howling Boy Scouts. “I’m going to get an injunction tomorrow to stop your performance!” She stuck her nose in the air and followed the rest of her group out of the hall.

“But Mrs. Barker—” I tried.

“Don’t worry, son!” Judge Kirby had me by the arm. “She won’t get any injunction. I’m sitting tomorrow and I won’t issue it. And you know why?”

“No. Why?” I was dazed. Things were happening too fast for me.

“Because the Kiwanis loved the show. That’s what we need more of in Pine Glen. A little spice is the—umm-— spice of life. Know what I mean?”

“I’m not sure.”

“That little girl did the daughter part. Now that’s a hot number. You bring her into Pine Glen?”

“Well, no—”

“Don’t worry, son. You don’t have to pretend with me. I’m a worldly man. Only remember, we’re having a little stag in two weeks -- not an official Kiwanis’ function, you understand—and we’d like you to be there. Bring the little lady and any of her friends would like to come. And don’t worry about that injunction. By the time Mrs. Barker gets it your show will be long over.”

“Thanks.” I was still dazed. I excused myself and went downstairs. I needed fresh air. I was standing outside in the shadows when Will Leigh came out and spotted me. “Say, Vance,” he said, “you know it just occurred to me I haven’t issued a check for the rights to perform the play yet. I’m treasurer of the drama group, you know. We do have the rights, don’t we?”

“Joy was supposed to arrange that,” I told him.

“Well, you’d best check her and make sure.”

I took his advice. I went back upstairs and found Joy backstage and asked her about the rights.

“There should be a letter here confirming them,” she told me. “It’s nothing to worry about. It’s just red tape. Phil can send a check tomorrow.”

“Well, where is the letter?”

“I don’t know. Take a look down in the custodian’s office. That’s where it usually comes. I sent a letter asking for the rights and they usually send a confirmation and then we send the check. It’s really very simple.”

Very simple! I found the letter Joy was referring to in the custodian’s office easily enough. It was addressed to the drama group and unopened. I opened it. Very simple! There was only one trouble. The letter denied us the rights of performance because of a scheduled production by a professional group in the New York area. What they meant by the New York area was Trenton, New Jersey. Very simple! We didn’t have the rights! Very simple! The play was due to go on tomorrow night and we didn’t have the rights! Very simple!

I was pretty disgusted by the time I left the Center. Coming down the front steps I spotted a snazzy red sports car roadster parked in front. Lolly Popstick was behind the wheel.

“Hey, Vance,” she called. “I was waiting for you. Can I give you a lift?” *

“I have my car,” I told her. “But where’d you get this buggy?”

“It’s Marilyn’s. My friend. You met her back-stage before. Remember? Her boy friend drove her home, so I’m keeping the car for her until tomorrow. Come on. Take a ride with me. I’m dying to try it out. I’ll drive you back to your car later.”

“All right.” I had to corrugate my lanky body to fold into the bucketseat alongside her.

We roared away from the curb in a cloud of Pine Glen dust. Lolly handled the car like she was a suicidal astronaut. So help me, it felt like she took at least one curve on only one wheel. She went to high and low gears and back like the stickshift was a male yoyo she was out to castrate. Instead of the road, she watched my face, nodding happily as it turned from pale to deep green.

“Do you have a license?” I asked after one harrowing right-angle turn.

“Of course not, silly. I’m too young.”

I was not reassured.

She headed out the open road towards the wooded area which lines the beaches south of Pine Glen. Narrowly missing a tree, she turned off on a dirt road and cut her lights as we approached the end of it. There was a deserted clearing there and she parked.

“Just where are we?” I asked.

“This is the spot where all the hot-rodders come to make out. I guess they’ve all left by now. It’s late.”

“Yeah. We’re all alone,” I observed. I wasn’t feeling too original. Still, I remembered my duty. This might be a good chance to pump Lolly about her connection with Fink. “Tell me what kind of guy the fellow was who made it with you with that contraption,” I suggested.

“Oh, he was mature. Like you. Only he was more so. I really dig older men.”

“So you’ve said before. Did you see him after you got to New York?”

“A couple of times.”

“Why’d you stop?”

“He died. Choked on a fishbone.”

“What did you do when you saw him?”

“What do you think?” Lolly smirked. “You know you talk a lot,” she said. “What’s the matter? Don’t I appeal to you any more?”

“Sure you do.” It was the truth. “Did he ever help you out? With money, I mean?”

“What do you think I am?” She was indignant. “If you’re just going to sit here running off at the mouth, we might as well go.” She reached for the ignition key.

I intercepted her hand and reached for her with my other hand. As she leaned towards me to be kissed, I barked my elbow on the dashboard. She guided my hand to her breast and we inadvertently leaned on the horn. Hastily, I shifted position. The horn stopped blowing and the stickshift damn near impaled me. I changed position again.

“I love making out in cars,” Lolly whispered. “There’s something exciting about it, something that flips me.”

The jagged edge of the ashtray drew blood from my shin as I stretched my legs towards her side of the car in an effort to make contact with her body. “You have to be shaped like a spoon to make out in one of these bucket seats,” I muttered.

Lolly stretched her own legs across the console. Her skirt was all the way up now and her hips were bouncing invitingly. I reached to pull her panties down and the cover to the glove compartment of the consul almost snapped my fingertips off. Finally I just heaved myself on top of her.

My right foot was pushing the clutch to the floorboard. My left foot was half out the window. My head kept thumping against the canvas top of the roadster. The stickshift was trying to drill my belly-button through my backbone. Ah! The heat of youth!

“Wait!” Lolly panted.

“For what?” I was getting a cramp in my toes.

“Poppers. I have one.”

“Huh?”

“Poppers. Amyl Nitrate. It’s a gas. Just when we make it, I’ll break one and we’ll both sniff deep. Believe me, we’ll go right out of our skulls.” She held a small packet in a tinfoil wrapper under my nose. “Okay. Go ahead. I’m ready.”

This was it! I told myself. At last I was going to let go with my teeny-bopper, to let go everything and really make the scene. No more inhibitions! Just wild, wild sex --popper and all!

I raised myself up as best I could and then several things happened at once. First, the movement made Lolly break the popper prematurely. I caught a deep whiff of something that smelled like strong ammonia. Second, the motion made my rear end slam into the dashboard; the cigarette lighter popped out and lodged neatly between my nether-cheeks. Did I mention it was red-hot? Third, as I reacted by rolling wildly away from Lolly so I’d have room to claw the lighter loose, a blinding flashlight shone in on us from her window.

“You kids beat it out of here fast before I run you in!” The cop’s voice was gruff. He couldn’t see my face. He couldn’t see it because I was lying on it, reaching behind me gingerly to try to determine the extent of damage to my derriére. “You got that, son?” The cop reached across Lolly and patted my shoulder sternly.

“Yes sir.” I made my voice high, piping, the scared voice of an adolescent. The last thing I wanted to do was get run in for corrupting the morals of a minor—which is a laugh if I ever heard one.

“Then scram!” the cop ordered.

We scrammed.

We didn’t talk much as Lolly drove me back to my car. I don’t know what was going through her mind. I know I was incapable of thought, or speech. The popper had hit me with a delayed reaction. I felt like the top of my head was about to fly off. And I was having trouble not laughing and crying both at the same time. With it all was the realization that far from having an aphrodisiac effect, the popper seemed to have killed off my sex urge altogether.

Or maybe it was the cigarette lighter. Or perhaps the cop with his flashlight. Or maybe the roller-coaster effect of Lolly’s driving.

The amazing thing, I thought dizzily, is that the high-living, hot-loving kids of today ever manage to survive the hazards of their adolescent freedom!

Chapter Ten

The performance before an audience of The Mome Raths Outgrabe was to me as its director what the Vietnamese War must sometimes seem to Lyndon John- son. It was a nightmare catastrophe in the shape of a snowball rolling downhill, out of control and picking up speed as it plunged towards destruction. There was a moment before involvement in the disaster when I could have stopped it, but, like LBJ, I opted for commitment.

The moment occurred when I phoned the agent representing the playwright Hershel Pinkus to apply diplomatic pressure aimed at having him release this bomb to our group for production. The agent was as wily during these negotiations as a Mendes-France withdrawing after a Dien Bien Phu and impassively watching the first American “observers” tip-toeing into all-out war. He seemed reluctant to give up the territory, but beneath his reluctance there was a whispered sigh of Gallic relief.

“The rights are not available because the play is being performed in Trenton and that is considered the New York area just as Long Island is,” he told me. “I must protect the Trenton group’s interests.”

“We’ve poured a lot of manpower into this,” I pointed out. “Can’t you define the line of demarcation differently. Draw the neutral zone around Hoboken. Then let my puppets perform on their side of it.”

“But the lines have already been drawn,” he said doubtfully. “Trenton may feel you’re trying to infiltrate. We have to conciliate them. Why don’t you people consider complete withdrawal?”

“That’s not the American way!” I knew when to be firm. “With us, a commitment is a commitment.”

“But you’re asking us to give ground.”

“Don’t look at it as a surrender. Consider it a strategic retreat. Believe me, our interest in the play is the same as yours. We only want what’s best for the play.”

“When I think of the atrocities that have been produced by that attitude,” he sighed.

“It’s the democratic way,” I assured him. “Trust us.”

“Very well. Go ahead. It’s your headache now.”

Little did he know how prophetic his words were. I didn’t know myself until the play was actually on the boards. That was the first time I came to the full realization that my Vietnam of a play had been infiltrated by a cast of Cong bent on its total destruction.

At the time, when I hung up, I felt only satisfaction at overcoming another Cold War obstacle. I was smug as Henry Cabot Lodge pulling his first Vietnamese coup² and shyly eyeing the New Hampshire primaries. After the play I still felt like Lodge-—Only then it was the Lodge who faced the Fulbright Committee³ . Oh, well, that’s diplomacy!

Diplomacy was also called for in the second call I made that morning. It was a long-distance call to the Rt. Rev. Billy Boxx. He was surprised to hear from me. I explained why I was calling.

“I am familiar with the situation, Mr. Powers,” he told me when I’d finished. “Indeed, I have gone out of my way to take an interest in it. But then one must fight sin where one finds it.”

He should know, I thought. He certainly looked for it hard enough. “But this was really an innocent situation. An accident.” I explained about Hector being thrown from the back of the camp wagon and Marcy driving off.

“Innocent? Mr. Powers, you surprise me! The lady was transporting a naked man. Right now I’m investigating to see if charges can be lodged against her. And considering his nudity, you don’t expect me to be naive enough to believe his intentions towards her were other than carnal. They’re unmarried, Mr. Powers, and in my book that’s sin.”

“But the lady was married,” I pointed out.

“Really? I don’t see what bearing—-”

“To me,” I added.

“Oh. But she’s not your wife any more.”

“That’s true. But if the matter isn’t dropped, it will doubtless receive wide publicity,” I told him smoothly.

“And that would cause me great embarrassment. Professionally as well as personally. You, of all people should appreciate that, Reverend Boxx. It was just a few weeks ago that you came to me with a similar problem.”

“The situations aren’t at all alike,” he protested.

“Granted. But my problem has elements in common with the one you had. I am in danger of being professionally embarrassed by my ex-wife, just as you feared embarrassment if your wife appeared in the play I was directing. I’m only asking you to show me the same consideration I showed you. After all,” I loosed my heavy artillery, “it would be the Christian thing to do.”

“Very well, Mr. Powers. I cannot deny that I am in your debt. I will use my influence to have the case disposed of quickly.”

I thanked him and hung up the telephone. I hoped Marcy’s Hector didn’t get off too easily. I wanted to savor the satisfaction of Marcy’s discomfiture over the incident. There wasn’t much time for savoring that day. Besides playing David Merrick and I-Spy, I also had to earn a living. I had to spend the day in court trying to prove that a monopoly wasn’t behaving monopolistically. When I was done, I wandered into a Wall Street watering hole for some alcoholic vitamins to carry me through the ordeal ahead.

I beat out a worried looking stockbroker for the only barstool left unoccupied. Behind me the belly-up boys multiplied with the five-thirty egress until they were standing three deep. They were strictly a white-collar crowd, and the last type I would have expected to see in the place was a plumber.

Yet there, wedged into a little booth in the back, was Cass Novak! And wedged tightly beside him, like a spawning sardine, was Zelda Lenzio! That gave me something to mull over on the LIRR as I six-oh-sevened back to Pine Glen and our stellar production of The Mome Raths Outgrabe.

It still lacked an hour of showtime when I arrived at the Community Center. That hour was something like the time between the Geneva Accords and the landing of American “observers” in force on the shores of South Vietnam. There was a lot of tension in the air and the actors had a tendency to look at each other like you could never tell who might secretly be a member of the Viet Cong.

There were several repetitions of the makeup hassles which had taken place during the dress rehearsal. But there was also a grand unifying in which such petty differences were forgotten when it was discovered that the real Ho Chi Minh in our midst was my old friend the custodian. It seems he’d staged a night raid in which some of our carefully stored costumes had been scrambled, atrocities had been committed on our recently painted scenery, and certain of our props had been looted and had vanished altogether.

The fat old heap was as brazen as a one-man resistance movement. “It’s my job to keep this here place clean,” he told me. “You people leave a lotta junk lying ’round, I just throw it out!”

The hell he had! I figured him for a quick trip to the local junkyard to pocket whatever the filched props had brought. As for the damage to the costumes and scenery, that was probably just his natural bile asserting itself.

But I had no time to take him apart the way I would have liked. The play had to go on soon, and a quick patch job was needed. So I persuaded the cast there was no time for a lynching and put them to work straightening out the mess. It was chaotic!

“This one-piece foundation garment with the push-up bra I wear in the first scene is ripped right in the seat!” Rusty Roundheels wailed.

“Can’t you sew it?”

“The material’s too thin!”

“Then pin it with a safety pin!”

“This backdrop’s all splattered with red paint!” Peter Putter called to me.

I looked at it. “Touch it up as best you can,” I told him. “There’s some paint in the storeroom downstairs.”

“But it won’t dry in time!”

“That can’t be helped!”

“The wine glasses are missing for the seder scene.”

“Use paper cups.”

“Paper cups for a seder?” Phil Anders was indignant.

“If you can have a seder in a bordello,” I told him, “you can use paper cups.”

“I can’t find the rope to tie the platforms together,” Cass Novak yelled.

“Nail it!” I advised him.

“Somebody stole the electric light bulbs from the table lamps,” Lolly noticed.

“Run down to the shopping center and get new bulbs,” I told her.

“I can’t. I have to finish getting made up!”

“First get the bulbs! The time you’re taking up arguing, you could have been back already!”

That was the way it went right up to curtain time.

Somehow we got the set pasted together. Somehow we patched up the costumes. Somehow we found substitute props. Somehow the play started. I went out front to watch it.

I picked myself a rice paddy near the back of the hall where I could make a fast exit if the audience got violent. God knows they had every right to! Herschel Pinkus, the author, would have dropped dead if he’d seen it. He would have looked at the desecration of his work the way Betsy Ross might have eyed a flag-burning.

The opening scene found Rusty, as Blanche Bernstein, addressing a shadow-silhouette gathering of whores. The effect had been created by using a scrim and it called for delicate, filtered lighting from backstage footlights. The trouble was that the footlights also silhouetted method actor Cass Novak doing push-ups backstage in a modern version of An Actor Prepares.

Tittering from the audience made Rusty realize they could see the distraction. So she tried to block it. That was a mistake.

“Why should we unionize? I’ll tell you why!” Rusty pounded the lectern like Walter Reuther high on Dexedrine. “Because we have certain rights! That’s why!” She angled her body right and left, swung up and down in an effort to hide the exercising Cass. “Soft mattresses are a right! Time off for Passover is a right! A closed shop, safe from nonunion streetwalkers is a right! Compensation for on-the-job accidents is a right! Medical benefits until a girl can get back on her back again are a right!” Rusty jumped high in the air, partly to stress the point the character was making, partly to hide the now-leaping Cass from the view of the audience. “Fringe Benefits for Floozies!” she exhorted. As she landed the safety pin holding the seat of her foundation garment together parted. She screamed as it pierced her flesh.

The material ripped apart and her bare derriére thrust out at the audience. They roared with laughter. I hid my head in my hands.

Somehow Rusty managed to get offstage. The entrance lines of Will Leigh as the pimp and Wanda Humphrey as the Madam were lost in Rusty’s furious chewing-out of Cass Novak backstage. Finally she simmered down, leaving Wanda and Will still trying to outshout her in a scene which was supposed to be conspiratorial and hushed.

“Madam, the girls are planning a big labor tsimmis,” Will shouted into Wanda’s ear.

“Which is ringleading the stir-up?” Wanda shouted back, murdering the author’s lines.

“It’s that Blanche Bernstein!” Will bellowed what was supposed to be a hiss. He managed to get his shoulder in front of Wanda’s face and mugged for the audience.

“I know how to controlling that one!” Wanda clapped her hands together and contrived to catch Wil1’s nose between them.

“You do? How?” Will did a Jack Benny take and moved upstage so Wanda would have to turn her back to the audience to deliver her next line to him.

“Come here and I’m telling you,” Wanda improvised, outfoxing him. “I’m knowing what the Blanche isn’t. Her innocent daughter coming for visiting and I threaten telling daughter all, you see how quick is Blanche scrapping union lable.”

“Ahh, Madam, but you are diabolically clever!” Will leaned one hand against the backdrop. When it came away covered with paint, he patted Wanda’s cheek blithely.

She looked like an Indian about to go on the warpath. When she realized what he’d done, she set out to get even. “This is why I being boss and they common trollops,” she replied, scooping up a gob of wet paint with which to pat Will on top of the head.

After that the battle lines were drawn. The audience roared as they swapped more gobs of paint with the dialogue. By the time their scene together was over, they looked like a pair of Technicolor nightmares by Andy Warhol.

Somehow, Wanda managed to get herself cleaned up for the climactic scene of the first act. I could smell the turpentine from the back of the auditorium, but she’d managed to get most of the paint off her face at least. And Rusty, who was in the scene with her, had put on panties and a bra to replace the ripped foundation garment.

This was the symbolic scene in which the Madam dances while telling Blanche of her daughter’s imminent turn and how she’ll tell the daughter her mother’s a whore if Blanche doesn’t drop the idea of a union. It was a scene that ended with a bang.

Rusty, as Blanche, stood with her head bowed, defeated, as Wanda danced up behind her and violently leaped to show her exultation at the victory over Blanche. The entrechat was a bad idea. As Wanda came down, the platforms of the stage parted underneath the feet of both girls and they fell between them with a crash. They were still struggling to extricate themselves when the curtain finally fell.

I went backstage between the acts. Internecine warfare prevailed. Snipers were everywhere, and dissident elements threatened to topple the power structure.

Wanda was helping Rusty berate Cass Novak. “If you’re tying up the platforms properly, we not falling through!” she yelled at him.

“You loused up my opening scene with your goddam exercises!” Rusty screamed.

“Of all the vindictive bitches!” Will Leigh growled. “I’ll never get the paint off!”

“Help me get these platforms together before Cleo and I go on,” Phil Anders tugged at Will’s sleeve.

“Rusty stole my bra!” Cleo accused.

“I only borrowed it! I had to wear something!”

“Well give it back! I can’t go onstage without a bra.”

“With your bosom, who’ll know the difference?” Rusty sniped.

“I’ll tear it off you!” Cleo descended on her menacingly.

“TRUCE!” I yelled. “Places for the second act everyone.” I checked to make sure the scrim had been moved forward so Cleo and Phil could play their opening love scene behind it and then I went back out front.

The curtain rose on Phil and Cleo as the kibbutznik and the schoolteacher making love on the desert, a mood the scrim was supposed to create without depending on reality. The Madam stood to one side of the scrim and in front of it, making with the exposition needed to explain the scene and introduce the characters. Being an old pro, Wanda contrived to block the scrim and catch the muted floodlight full in the face.

However, Cleo spotted the maneuver. Furious, she cut the rope holding the scrim in place and it enveloped Wanda like a fishnet. She and Phil continued to make passionate love without benefit of narration as Wanda thrashed about in the folds of the scrim.

In the second scene the desert backdrop was replaced by an interior setting and Phil and Cleo were replaced by Cass as the sailor and Rusty as Blanche. Without the scrim, the audience could clearly see that their supposedly passionate love bout was really a vindictive wrestling match. There was nothing tender in the way Rusty nibbled Cass’s ear. She practically chewed off the lobe. He retaliated by biting her shoulder so hard he drew blood. She got him with a knee in the crotch that all but destroyed his simulated passion. He squeezed her breast like the Florida Chamber of Commerce discovering someone slipped in a California orange in a juice squeezing contest. She all but ripped the skin off the back of his neck with her nails.

Finally the script called for Lolly to enter and find them making love. She was supposed to turn on the lamp and discover them there. Only when she turned the switch, there was a crackling of electricity that bounced all three of them across the stage. Backstage someone had sense enough to drop the curtain ending the second scene in the second act.

The third scene was between Lolly as Leslie Bernstein and Peter Putter as the young junkie. She was supposed to be innocent; he was supposed to seduce her—inarticulately. Only the ringing of the telephone on the end table beside the couch was supposed to keep her from succumbing altogether.

The telephone was one of the props we hadn’t been able to find. At the last minute someone had come up with a small, toy telephone. This was the one being used in the play.

Peter gave one final grunt and Lolly murmured agreement. That was the cue for the telephone to ring and bring their passion to a halt. Only somebody goofed. The phone didn’t ring.

Peter Putter froze. Only his hands, deep in his pockets, moved. The missing sound effect left him hung up in mid-passion and he groped miserably for security.

Lolly had more presence of mind—-or perhaps only more sexual aggression. She grabbed Peter by the shoulders and pulled him down on the couch beside her. The innocence her character called for her to display was thrown to the winds as she tried to cover the flubby urging Peter to continue making love to her.

Peter resisted. His disinclination to cooperate gave him a sudden inspiration. “I thought I heard the phone ring,” he blurted out.

“That’s possible. It has a very soft ring.” Lolly went along. “I’d better answer it. Maybe it’s Mama.”

She picked up the phone. The cradle stuck to the receiver. She tugged to free it. She couldn’t. It was stuck fast.

The audience was having hysterics. Desperately, Lolly tried to bluff her way through. She turned her back to the audience and pretended she was speaking into the mouthpiece of the phone, trying to hide the fact that it still was stuck together by blocking it with her body. Somehow she managed to get her last line out, the speech that was the signal for the curtain to fall on Act Two.

The curtain, unfortunately, was a little slow falling. The audience clearly saw Lolly slam the phone down and glare at Peter. It was then that the phone began ringing insistently. The audience applauded wildly as Peter and Lolly both stared at it in dismay.

“Stop the bombing!” That’s what I felt like screaming when I went backstage after Act Two. It wouldn’t have helped. Nobody would have heard me. They were all too busy throwing grenades at each other.

“You deliberation dropping the scrim on me!” Wanda was accusing Cleo and Phil.

“Serves you right for trying to upstage us!” Cleo shot back.

“I’m bleeding!” Cass Novak grabbed my arm. “See what that bitch did to me?” He shoved his ear under my nose.

“Look, Vance!” Rusty gave him a vicious shove and pushed her bosom at me. “He could give a person cancer of the breast squeezing like that!”

“Maybe if you took your hands out of your pockets for a minute, you’d know what to do with a girl!” Lolly was yelling at Peter.

“It’s her fault the phone didn’t ring!” Peter scowled at Joy Boxx. “She’s supposed to be taking care of the sound effects.”

“I am not!” Joy replied angrily. “I’m working the curtain. Will was supposed to do it because he isn’t in that act.”

“I couldn’t find the jingle-thing for the telephone,” Will muttered.

“It’s all right,” I told them. “Calm down everyone. You’re doing fine,” I lied. “The audience is really with you.”

It only helped a little bit. I felt as frustrated as U Thant⁴ as I went back out front for the last act. They were really too angry to be anything but blind to my efforts at making peace.

Five minutes later the auditorium was absolutely quiet. You could have heard a pin drop on a pile of marshmallows. The trouble was it was as quiet behind the footlights as in front of them. Will Leigh had forgotten his lines.

Desperately, Wanda repeated his cue. Still Will just stood there looking blank. Another long silence as the audience waited expectantly. Finally someone backstage acted as prompter.

“I caught the junkie making love to Blanche’s daughter. I thought you should know.” Maybe the prompter meant to whisper, but his voice carried throughout the entire hall. It was clear to everybody—everybody but Will!

He cupped his hands to his ear. The prompter repeated the line-—even louder this time. Still Will didn’t hear it. Finally he walked to the rear of the stage and stuck his head into the wings. Again the prompter spoke the line, good and loud this time, his voice filled with exasperation.

Will returned to center stage. “Thanks,” he called over his shoulder. Then-— “I caught the junkie making love to Blanche’s daughter. I thought you should know.” He delivered the line.

It was a show-stopper. The audience gave him a standing ovation. Will actually bowed. Wanda’s face was filled with murder.

The next scene called for Phil to demonstrate the lust binding him to the prostitute Blanche, as played by Rusty. Portraying the kibbutznik, Phil had a phoney beard stuck on his face. You guessed it! When he got through kissing Rusty, she was wearing the beard and he was left with his bare face hanging out!

I wouldn’t have figured anything worse could happen. I was wrong. Fate had worked out the flub to climax all the others for the finale.

The script called for the daughter, Leslie, to find her mother in bed with the sailor, played by Cass Novack. In the world of Pinkus, all sailors carry guns: That’s known as dramatic license. Leslie was supposed to pick up the sailor’s gun off the nightstand and attempt to shoot him. At the last split second, the mother was supposed to throw herself in front of her lover and the bullet meant for him was to kill her. Accidental matricide! Curtain!

What happened was this: Lolly, in the role of Leslie, grabbed the gun. Rusty threw herself in front of Cass. Lolly pulled the trigger. The gun didn’t fire. Lolly pulled it again. No sound. She fired a third time. Silence.

Thinking fast, Lolly flung the gun away, pulled a nail-file from her purse and leaped on Cass to stab him. Rusty hesitated, obviously not too anxious to get between Cass and the blade. Lolly stabbed. Cass screamed with surprise. From backstage somebody fired three shots from a cap pistol in rapid succession. The curtain descended with the wrong casualty still squealing and the play left corpse-less.

It rose again for the cast to take their curtain call. The audience applauded wildly. Most of them being relatives of the cast members, I guess it proved that blood is thicker than water. After three curtain calls the curtain dropped for the last time and the audience rushed backstage to bestow individual congratulations on their loved ones. I followed along to watch the melee of backslapping. Each little family clique formed a group of its own, isolating the actors from each other--which was probably fortunate, all things considered. Looking around, it seemed to me like a series of sterling examples proving that the family that praise together stays together.

As for myself, I felt like nothing so much as a limp dishrag that’s just been trampled underfoot by a horde of peace marchers. I was glad that this time the drama group had decided to have the cast party on the following night, instead of directly following the play. It may have been only a pause in the hostilities, but battle-weary as I was, it was as welcome as a Christmas truce.

I spotted Lolly standing alone in a corner and went over to her. “Didn’t your aunt and uncle come?” I asked her.

“They were here. But they had to take off right away. Both kids are down with the mumps.”

“That’s too bad. Can I give you a lift home?”

“Sold, Daddy-O.”

I waited until we were in my car and driving down a quiet Pine Glen side street before I made my pitch. “Would you like to stop off at my place for a nightcap?” I asked her.

“You wear one of those? How fogey can you get, Pops? Me, I sleep bare-headed. Bare-headed all over, matter of fact.”

“I mean a drink.”

“Oh. Okay.”

I blush to confess it, but getting Lolly into my house was about as premeditated as an over-age would-be teeny-bopper can get. As a matter of fact, I’d even made— ahh—certain preparations for her visit. After two drinks, as per plan, I took her on a tour of the house, and when we reached my bedroom, she spotted the evidence of my planning as I knew she would.

“What’s that?” Lolly pointed.

“That’s my--umm—contraption. What do you think of it? Will it work?”

“Contraption?” She looked blank.

“Yep. Like the one you told me about. Remember? With that fellow who picked you up and brought you from California to New York?”

“Oh. . . Sure . . .”

“Have I got it set up right? Do you think it will work?”

She looked at the system of pulleys and cables I’d hooked over the ceiling beams with the harness descending over the bed and shrugged doubtfully. “I don’t know . . .”

“Well, shall we give it a try?” I didn’t wait for her to answer. I wrapped my arms around her from behind, kissed the back of her neck and osculated my way up to one of her ears.

“Ooh! Ooh! That makes me go ape all over!” She swiveled around and our lips met.

Yummy! That’s the only word to describe what Lolly was to me just then. Soft and young and on fire! Yummy! I shed ten years as I reached my hand under her sweater and cupped her pulsing breast.

“Ahh!” She moaned softly as I removed the sweater altogether and buried my face between those hot, white globes. She sank to a sitting position on the edge of the bed and locked her hands around the back of my neck, pressing me into her until I thought I’d suffocate.

“Wait!” Panting, I came up for air. I pulled off my necktie. The rest of my clothes followed as quickly as I was able to shed them.

“Don’t you think we’re rushing things?” Lolly shrank away from me a little.

“Let’s not hesitate. Let’s let ourselves go while we’re still young!” I flung myself down on the bed so that my head landed in her lap. I pulled her head down to kiss me. One blood-red nipple fluttered against my cheek.

Her thighs were warm to my touch as I pushed her skirt up. Her hands hesitated a little as I guided them down my belly. She gasped as I fixed them where I wanted them.

Suddenly she lunged downwards and her hands were replaced with her mouth. I bounced excitedly under her ministrations. Finally I pushed her away. “Take off the rest of your clothes,” I told her.

“All right.” She did as I asked. “I’ve never been naked with a man before,” she told me.

I did a double-take. “With all that experience you told me about? Don’t put me on, Lolly.”

“But — Oh, never mind.” She stretched out on the bed facing me and quickly rolled over to resume what she’d been doing before. The position created a certain proximity and I returned the favor.

“Nigee, tweggy, tweggy-wud . . .” She was mumbling.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m counting.” She withdrew her lips for a moment. “You’ll see.” She pursed them again and resumed. “Tweggy-doo, tweggy-dree, tweggy-fogr . . .”

I ignored her and fastened my own lips again. It wasn’t long before Lolly began thrashing about wildly. “Zigdy-ziggs,” I heard dimly. “Zigdy-zevah . . . zigdy-ayd . . . YES!” Her legs locked around my neck and an explosion shook her entire body.

It took all my will power not to release my own passion. Somehow I managed to hold back. I wanted to save it for the experience I’d planned.

“Hold it a minute.” I pulled away from Lolly. “Here. Slip this around your waist,” I panted. I handed her the harness suspended from the ceiling.

“But I don’t -”

“Come on! Hurry!” I buckled it around her and before she could argue any more I’d pulled her up so that she hung suspended a few feet above the bed. I stretched myself out beneath her and took a good grip on the pulley that manipulated the contraption.

I yanked. Lolly plummeted downwards and landed on my stomach. “OOF!” The wind was knocked out of me. It took me a moment to recover. “I guess I was just a little out of position.” I pulled her up slightly to relieve the pressure.

“Couldn’t we just forget—?”

“Let’s just try this out now.” I ignored her. “Here we go!” I pushed one of Lol1y’s shoulders and she spun around.

“No! Wait!”

“Don’t be afraid. It’ll hold you.” I twirled her again.

“I’m getting dizzy. Don’t—--”

“All right. All instruments operative now.” I pulled her up to the ceiling. “Landing field ready. On target. Now for the countdown. Ten-nine-eight-seven-six—”

“Why don’t we just . . .” Lolly’s voice floated down to me.

“Five-four-three-—”

“Honest, no matter what I told you, I never . . .”

“Two-one— Blast off!” I yanked the pulley and Lolly dropped once again. I spun her by one knee as she plunged right on target.

But at the last minute she flung herself to one side and avoided being impaled. Her knee caught me in the kidney. Her elbow got my windpipe. And the two of us rolled from the bed to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs.

“Why did you do that?” I demanded when I was able to speak.

“I can’t go through with it, Vance. I’ve been trying to tell you. I’m a virgin.”

“What do you mean? What about those stories? What about the bit you told me about with Fink?”

“Who’s Fink?”

“The guy who brought you from California.”

“That wasn’t his name.”

“Never mind his name right now. What about making love to him with a contraption like this?”

“That was a put-on, Vance.” Lolly hung her head.

“A put-on? You mean you never slept with him?”

“I never slept with anybody.”

“And all that business about having been pregnant and his fixing you up with a gimmick like this one?”

“I was only trying to impress you,” Lolly said in a small voice.

“Wait a minute! Hold the phone! What about before? You weren’t just impressing me then.”

“Oh, that was just making out.” She waved it away. “Us kids do for each other that way at parties and in parked cars lots of times. But that is not like having real sex. I’ve never gone all the way. I just lied to you because you got so excited and you thought I was such hot stuff.”

I stared at her. Teeny-boppers! Flaming youths! The generation that had passed me by! Uninhibited sex! Wild orgies! Bah! Double-bah! Give me Madame Du Barry any day. The whole wild and woolly teen-age bit was just one big put-on to make their elders eat their livers! The sex kittens were frauds, the whole image a make-believe fairy tale designed to turn the adults green! I’ll be damned if the little bastards weren’t all a bunch of secret moralists! I wouldn’t have been surprised to find that they sneaked into the high school johns to pray!

Well, no sense crying over a limpid libido. I snorted and got dressed. Then I put my disenchantment behind me and got back to the question of Lolly’s connection with Fink.

“What was the name of the man who took you from L.A. to New York?”

“Hale,” she told me. “Aaron Hale.”

“You didn’t make that part up then?”

“No. Just the sex part. He really drove me cross-country. I even saw him a few times after I came to Pine Glen.”

“Where did you see him?”

“I went to his apartment. He liked to cook. And he was lonely. We’d have dinner there and talk sometimes.”

“When was the last time you went there?”

Lolly guessed at a date. It roughly corresponded with the day of Fink’s death.

“Why didn’t you go back?”

“He died. He choked on a fishbone and died.”

That tied it up all right. Fink was the man she’d known. He and Aaron Hale had to be the same man. But as I questioned Lolly further, she seemed to know nothing else about him, nothing about his real work, his connection with the CIA, his interest in the drama group, his functions with Democratic Philanthropies, Inc.

Of course she could have been lying. But I didn’t think so. She was still all wrought up over her near devirginizing before. I just didn’t think she was a good enough actress to be anything but honest now.

I drove Lolly home. When we got there, she lingered a moment before getting out of the car. She looked at me wistfully. “Are you angry at me, Vance?”

“Not at all.” Hell, there’s no point in playing the heavy with the kids these days.

“Will I see you again?” Her voice was plaintive.

“Sure you will.” I patted her knee reassuringly. “Real soon,” I added as she got out of the car.’

Real soon! In about ten years when you grow up, Lolly. In about ten years when you either won’t appeal to me any more, or I’ll be too old to care if you do. So long, Lolly. You grew up fast, but not fast enough. So long, Lolly, you illusion buster, you unknowing, uncaring betrayer of the American dream! So long, you virgin teeny-bopper you! So long!

When I reached home again I went straight up to my bedroom, turned on the light and started to undress. A sudden, distinct click broke the silence. It came from the window. I dived for it and saw a man scrambling over the branches of the tree outside the window.

I dived for him and my weight made the branch crack. The two of us crashed to the bushes lining the side of the house below. I managed to get a grip on him just as we landed. He was hampered by trying to hold onto the cam- era clutched in his hands.

“Who are you?” I demanded as I struggled to hold onto him.

He didn’t answer until I’d subdued him. Then the answer wasn’t really necessary because I could see his ace.

“I’m Peter Putter,” he squealed.

“Why are you spying on me?” Not too original maybe, but I’d had a rough night.

“I’m Peter Putter,” he repeated. “Peter Putter of the CIA!”

Chapter Eleven

There’s a rumor going the rounds of anti-FBI circles that J. Edgar Hoover sleeps with a nightlight. I don’t know about Hoover, but if ever I saw a man who looked like he might need one, it was CIA agent Peter Putter. There was the decided impression of a man missing the rustle of a security blanket trailing behind him. He was a thumb-sucker kicking the habit by jamming his hands deep into his pockets. Well, everyone’s entitled to grab their security where they can find it.

Putter’s security problem was really handed down from the top echelon. Nervous about the Senate Watchdog Committee delving into their expenditures, they’d put a routine tail on Senator Hawthorne. They had no idea what they’d find, but if things got rough, it might be something they could use to make ease up the pressure on them. What they’d found was me.

So Putter was assigned to keep tabs on me. The camera had been his own idea. The CIA expects its men to show initiative. Putter had been out in the tree watching the scene with Lolly. But he hadn’t had a camera then. When I’d taken her home, he’d also left and returned with one. He wanted a picture of me with the contraption. I guess his thinking was that if it became necessary to put the squeeze on me, the picture might come in handy.

Some of this Putter told me freely. The rest I pieced together myself. I passed all of it on to Senator Hawthorne over the telephone the next day.

“Well, Putter’s no real problem.” The Senator dismissed the CIA man. “But what about that teeny-bopper and Fink? The one he brought from the coast. Lolly Popstick.”

“I’m pretty sure it was only coincidence,” I told him. “They were just schlepps that pass in the night. She doesn’t even know Arch Fink had any connection with the CIA. That’s the way I see it, anyway.”

“Then we’re right back where we started from,” the Senator sighed. “We still don’t know what happened to the fifty thousand dollars. And we don’t know who killed that fellow Lenzio.”

“If he was murdered,” I reminded him. “It really could have been an accident.”

“Yes. Well, keep at it, Vance.” He hung up.

Keep at it? Keep at what? I didn’t even know where to look next. I had to admit to myself that I was floundering. The play was over and I hadn’t really turned up anything that might point the way to the missing CIA money.

I mulled over the possibilities in my mind. There was only one bit of information that didn’t quite fit in, that might be a lead. It was Phil’s revelation which I’d picked up on the tape he’d inadvertently made with Cleo. It was the fact that Cass had acted for Zelda Lenzio in persuading Roger Roundheels to file an insurance claim for Sy Lenzio’s death. Phil’s explanation had been that Cass and Zelda were probably still having an affair and that maybe Cass figured to get some of the money if Zelda collected. It didn’t help where the CIA money was concerned, but it sure might establish a motive for Cass to have killed Sy Lenzio. A double motive: romance and money.

I decided the time had come to quit sneaking around corners. It just might be that the direct approach would turn up more interesting results. Also, the time had come to play the outside odds.

I played them that afternoon at cocktail time when I returned to the Wall Street cocktail lounge where I’d spotted Cass and Zelda Lenzio the day before. I figured that illicit lovers being what they are, it was likely that they met in the same place fairly regularly.

I guessed right. When I arrived, Cass and Zelda Lenzio were already snuggled at the same table in the back of the place. I walked straight up to them. “Hello Cass. Mrs. Lenzio. Mind if I join you?” Before they could close their jaws to answer, I’d pulled up a chair and sat down facing them.

“What do you want, Powers?” Cass found his voice. It came out truculent.

“Just thought I’d say hello,” I answered blithely.

“Like hell!” Cass Wasn’t friendly. “You’re after something. Otherwise you wouldn’t be bothering us. Now what is it?”

“He’s a lawyer,” Zelda murmured. “Maybe he’s working for your wife. Maybe she’s found out about us.”

“Is that it?” Cass demanded. “Did my wife sic you on us?”

“Suppose she did?” I played the cards the way they were being dealt.

“Then she knows about us!” Cass leaped to the conclusion. “Well, what’s the pitch? Does she want a divorce? Is that it?”

“It’s not that simple,” I fished. “She wants everything that’s coming to her. A fair share of everything.”

“So that’s it!” Zelda bit her lip. “She’s found out and now she wants to be cut in.”

“That’s right,” I improvised. “If she gives Cass his freedom, she wants a healthy cut of the insurance money.”

“She has no claim on that!” Zelda was angry. “It has nothing to do with her. Or with Cass either for that matter. It’s due me because I’m Sy’s widow. She has no right to a cent of it!”

“Suppose she refuses to give Cass a divorce?” I continued playing the role I’d been handed.

“Let her! She’s not going to get a penny of that money!” Zelda was firm. “It’s bad enough I have to share it with Cass!”

“What the hell do you mean by that?” Cass was indignant.

“Love conquers all,” I reminded them. “Keep your sights on Cupid, not cupidity.”

“After all I’ve done for you,” Cass grumbled.

“Like what?” Zelda asked sarcastically.

I spoke quickly before he could answer. “Like maybe getting rid of your ex-husband for you,” I suggested.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Cass seemed genuinely startled.

“You mean his wife thinks I had him murder Sy?” Zelda looked equally amazed.

Again I played the hand they were dealing me. “Mrs. Novak feels she has strong evidence to support that view. If you don’t cooperate, she may go to the police.”

“What kind of evidence?” Cass asked.

“She says you told her you were going back to the party to kill Sy Lenzio. She says when you left her that night you were still in a rage over the fight you had with him and that you said you’d finish him once and for all.”

“But that’s a lie!” Cass protested. “I never said any such thing.”

“Maybe not.” I shrugged. “But that’s what she’ll tell the police.”

“You mean just because she found out about me and Zelda -”

“Hell hath no fury, et cetera,” I reminded him.

“He’s bluffing,” Zelda Lenzio told Cass. She was very calm.

“Don’t be too sure.” I bluffed some more.

“I am sure.”

“Oh?” I looked at her quizzically.

“That’s right. I’m sure because Sy wasn’t murdered. I know that for an absolute fact.”

“That’s right.” Cass agreed eagerly. “His death was an accident.”

“No it wasn’t.” Zelda shook her head. “If you want to be absolutely accurate, his death was suicide. And I can prove it if I have to.”

“How can you prove it?” I wanted to know.

“Because he wrote me a letter the afternoon he died. A suicide note. I’ll produce it for the police if I have to. You can tell Mrs. Novak that.”

“You mean he deliberately killed himself?” Now it was my turn to be confused.

“That’s right. Sy was pretty sick in the head. He did it to get even with me for cheating on him. Also, he was a showman right up to the end. That’s why he did it the way he did. It’s all in the letter.”

“Could I see the letter?” I asked.

She thought about it a minute. “I guess so,” she said reluctantly. “If it’ll save Cass having to go to the police, I’ll show it to you and you can advise his wife that she can’t blackmail ‘us that way.” She fished in her pocket-book, came up with an envelope, and handed it to me.

I read the letter. It was filled with vituperation. The hate alone testified to its authenticity. And in it Sy Lenzio had detailed exactly the manner of his death. It left no doubt that he’d deliberately killed himself.

“All right, Cass,” I said when I’d finished reading it, “I’ll try to get your wife to be reasonable. But first I’d like to ask you something. Do you know anything about an outfit called Democratic Philanthropies, Inc.?” I studied his reaction closely.

There was nothing to study. He replied quickly, frankly, and openly. “I’ve heard the name mentioned,” he admitted. “But that’s about all.”

“Who mentioned it?”

“Joy Boxx. A long time ago.”

“Exactly what did she say about it?”

“I’m not sure. Something about a windfall. At first I thought she meant for her husband, the evangelist. Then it seemed like she was talking about the drama group. It was kind of confusing.”

“Did she ever mention a man named Arch Fink?”

“No.”

“Did she ever say anything about the CIA?”

“Only that her husband supports their efforts wholeheartedly.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“Say,” Zelda Lenzio interrupted, “What’s all this got to do with Cass’s wife wanting a divorce?”

“Absolutely nothing,” I admitted blandly. “Well, I’ll see you around.” I dropped three dollar bills on the table to cover my drinks and left them.

I got home just in time to shave and change for the cast party. The Pine Glen Drama Group wasn’t overly sensitive. Despite the mime-mincing, which had marred their last party, nobody objected to this one also being held at the Roundheels’ home.

It was already in full swing by the time I arrived. I stood in the doorway to the furnished cellar and stared for a moment. Could this be the same group of people that had been ready to tear out each others throats less than twenty-four hours before?

Was that Wanda Humphrey popping cashew nuts into Will Leigh’s mouth while he beamed back at her? Did my ears deceive me? Was Cleo Taurus really telling Rusty what a wonderful job of acting she’d done the night before? Was that conversation between Cass Novak and Joy Boxx for real?

“The flub with the curtain was my fault,” Cass was telling her.

“No, no,” Joy replied. “It was my responsibility and I goofed.”

“Well, what’s important is that the show was a smash hit,” Phil Anders interrupted them.

“Anyway, I don’t think the audience really noticed,” Peter Putter interjected. “They loved every minute of it.”

The euphoria was making me giddy. I needed a drink. I made my way over to the bar where my host, Roger Roundheels, was mixing martinis.

“That was a whale of a job of directing you did, Vance boy,” Roger told me as he handed me a cocktail.

“Thanks.” I looked around the room. It was just like the first cast party I attended-—only something was missing. After a moment I realized what it was. “Where’s Lolly?” I asked Roger.

“Oh, haven’t you heard? She came down with mumps today. Caught them from her kid cousins. Good thing it was today and not yesterday. That really would have put the kibosh on the play.”

“Are you two talking about poor Lolly?” Joy Boxx had come up behind me. “Mumps! Isn’t it a shame?”

“It might have been worse if one of the men caught it instead of Lolly,” Roger pointed out. “Do you know mumps can render a grown man impotent?”

“I think you mean sterile,” I told him.

“Oh? Do I? Well, I guess if I did catch mumps, that would be a relief.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me to dance, Vance?” Joy Boxx faced me boldly.

“Of course.” I guided her to where the dancing was and took her in my arms. “I thought you were mad at me,” I reminded her.

“Not any more. The play is over. From my point of view it was a big success. So I’m not angry any more -”

“A big success? What do you mean?”

“Rusty was just awful! I’m vindicated! So I’ve forgiven you.”

Female logic! Ahh, well! “I’m glad.” I held her a little more tightly.

We danced silently, closely for awhile. Our bodies telegraphed memories to each other. The signals were questions, the pressures affirmative answers.

“My husband’s still away,” Joy whispered to me. “I’m all alone in that great big house tonight.”

My first inclination was to turn aside the invitation. I could still remember how guilty I’d felt when confronted with the Reverend Billy Boxx’s faith in his wife. Tempting as she was with the fires of passion ready to burst into roaring flames beneath that cool, blonde, beautiful surface, I couldn’t forget that the evangelist had just done me a favor in regard to Marcy’s plight.

But I didn’t turn Joy down. Not because of lust, but rather because I also recollected what Cass Novak had told me that very afternoon about her once mentioning Democratic Philanthropies, Inc. to him. If I could get her alone under the guise of romance, then I might be able to pump some further information about the CIA’s fifty Gs from her.

So I played the game and we arranged to cut out early. Joy left first. I said my goodbyes, pleaded weariness from the strain of my directorial chores, and followed. She was waiting for me in my car.

We drove to her home. It was dark when Joy let us into the front hallway. She didn’t waste any time. She wrapped herself around me and we kissed a long, lingering buss. Then, without bothering to turn on any lights, she led me straight up the stairs to her bedroom.

“Take your clothes off,” she told me in a husky voice as she started to take off her own.

I got them off. But that was all I got off. Just as I slipped between the sheets and embraced her lush, naked body, a pair of bright headlight beams from a car lit up the darkened bedroom.

“My husband!” She shot up to a sitting position, her bare breasts shimmering in the glare from the headlights.

“I thought he was out West?”

“So did I! He must have decided to come back and surprise me.”

“Some surprise!” I dived for my pants. “Are you sure it’s him?”

“Yes.” She was at the window now, peering through the curtains. “That’s his car in the driveway. He’s pulling it into the garage in back.”

“That’s an exit line if I ever heard one.” I dived for the door.

“Not that way!” Joy grabbed me. “He’s coming in the back door. You’d never get down the stairs without running smack into him. Here!” She pulled me through a facing doorway and we were in a bathroom. She opened the door to a stall shower and pushed me through it. “That window there.” She pointed upwards. High in the wall of the shower was a small window. “Crawl out through there. It opens on the portico roof. There’s a trellis there. You can crawl down it.” And then she was gone, closing the shower door behind her.

It wasn’t easy, but I managed to chin myself up to the window by my fingertips. Using my nose as a lever, I poked the window outwards until it was open. Then I pulled myself up the rest of the way and started to crawl out head first.

I managed to wriggle out all right until it came to my hips. Vic Tanney, where pare you, now that I need you? I huffed and puffed and pulled and pushed and tugged, but no matter how much skin I scraped off, I still couldn’t make it. By now I was really wedged in the window. It took me twice as long to work myself loose and drop back to the floor of the stall shower.

What now? I could hear the voices of Joy Boxx and the Right Reverend from the bedroom. Hell, if Fate makes you an eavesdropper, you might as well eavesdrop. I listened.

“I was surprised to find you’d left the party so early,” Billy Boxx was saying.

“It was getting too wild for me,” Joy lied glibly. “So I decided to come home.”

“A wise decision. As my wife you really shouldn’t attend such affairs. I know that you wouldn’t participate in anything untoward, of course, but we do have an image to protect. Mine.”

“I never forget your image, Billy.”

“Thank you, my dear.”

“Why did you cut your trip short and come home?” Joy inquired.

“Circumstances made it impractical for me to pursue the particular moral crusade I had embarked upon.”

I guessed he was referring to the Marcy-Hector business.

“So I decided to come home,” he added.

“Did you miss me?” There was that in Joy’s tone which said she hadn’t quite cooled down yet.

The divine missed it. “Of course, my dear. But more than that I became concerned over the money I left behind. It occurred to me that I had really placed quite a temptation in your path. And I might add that you seem to have already succumbed to it.” He clucked his tongue sadly.

“What do you mean?”

“When I arrived home this evening, you’d already left for the party. The first thing I did was check the medicine cabinet. There was thirty-seven dollars and forty-two cents missing. Really, my dear, you should be ashamed!”

“That’s not very much, Billy,” Joy answered in a small, pensive voice. “Not out of fifty-thousand dollars.”

“Forty-five thousand, my dear. I disbursed five thousand on the trip from which I have just returned. But it isn’t the amount that distresses me. It’s the principle of the thing.”

“Well, Saks was having this sale, and I picked up the most darling dress. I meant to return it out of my house money. But you came back before I had a chance.”

“It’s still larceny. How would I ever explain it to the CIA if they demanded an accounting?”

“Well, you shouldn’t keep it in the medicine cabinet. Who ever heard of keeping fifty thousand dollars in a Kotex box anyway?”

“It’s the last place a thief would think of looking,” he explained. “Even second-story men have their sensibilities. And I can’t bank it. It would attract too much attention.”

“Well, if I can’t borrow it occasionally, I don’t see why you don’t just return it to the CIA.”

“Joy! You know I made a pledge to a man who has since passed over. Arch Fink was a great patriot, a great American who gave his life for his country.”

“I thought he choked on a fishbone.”

“He did. But he would have died for his country if he’d had the opportunity. Don’t be so literal, Joy.”

“If you came home before, Billy, where did you go?” Joy changed the subject.

“I went to the party to fetch you. But you’d already left. So I came home again. Did you take a cab home?”

“No. Mr. Powers gave me a lift.”

Well, I had tried to “give her a lift.” It wasn’t my fault if her husband’s arrival had scotched our plans. I continued to listen.

“That was nice of him,” the Right Reverend granted. “Still, the fellow makes me uneasy. His sudden involvement in the drama group. It’s suspicious. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised to find he’s a CIA man sent to keep tabs on me. That could explain his interest in you, my dear.”

“Could it?” Joy sounded just a wee bit insulted. The tone was typical of a wife whose husband showed no jealousy. Still, she wasn’t about to enlighten him. “Why should the CIA have you watched anyway?” she asked. “They know Fink gave you the money, don’t they?”

“At certain levels they may; at certain levels they may not. The CIA is a very complex organization, my dear. It’s in the nature of its work. Fink selected me because my patriotism is well known and beyond question. He rightly judged that since I traveled so much in my work, I’d have the opportunity to contact little theatre groups around the country without raising suspicion. Once he’d explained the purpose of their participating in the International Conference of Little Theatre Groups, I had no hesitation in committing myself to the disbursement of the fifty thousand dollars. Certainly I can’t renege on that commitment now. I keep seeing his face before my eyes, the way he looked that last day when he withdrew the money from the bank and gave it to me, the zeal in his eyes, drawing forth an equal zeal of my own, neither of us ever guessing that he’d be dead within a matter of hours.”

“That’s very sad.” Joy sounded like she was stifling a yawn.

“Yes. But you can see that I must fulfill my commitment. You can see that it’s a sacred trust. You can see that I can’t have you filching money from the cause for new dresses.”

“I’]l put it back in the morning,” Joy promised. “Can we go to sleep now?”

“I thought you wanted to—”

“Not when you’re sublimating with all that patriotic fire. I know you too well, Billy. Let’s just go to sleep.” Joy heaved a deep sigh.

“Very well, my dear.”

“Good night, Billy. Keep your nose to the brimstone.”

“Beg pardon, my dear?”

“Nothing. Good night.”

“Good night.”

I waited a long time until the sounds of regular breathing told me they were asleep. Then I opened the medicine chest and tucked the Kotex box under my arm. I tiptoed through the bedroom and down the stairs. I got into my car and zoomed away from the curb.

In my hurry to get out of the neighborhood, I shot past a “FULL STOP” sign at the corner. My luck, a patrol car was lying in wait there. They took off after me and pulled me over to the curb.

The cop shined his flashlight into the car. The beam hit directly on the Kotex box. He looked at it and then at me questioningly.

“I get nosebleeds,” I told

“That bad? You must be a hemophiliac.” He wrote out the ticket.

I accepted it and drove away more slowly. Ten minutes later I was home. I went directly to the telephone and put in a call to Senator Hawthorne.

I told him everything I’d learned. When I finished I added the icing to the cake. “What’s more, I’ve got the money!” I crowed. “Less five thousand dollars and a dress from Saks that is.”

“You’ve got it? Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.” Even though I knew the Senator couldn’t see it, I opened the Kotex box with a flourish.

“It’s right he--”

“What’s the matter?”

“I goofed,” I confessed miserably. “I must have grabbed the wrong box.”

“Oh well,” he consoled me. “We know who has it anyway. It won’t be any problem recovering it.”

“Yeah. Well, good night, Senator. I’m really bushed. I just want to hit the sack. Tell the truth, I don’t feel so hot.”

“I’m sorry, Vance. Nothing serious, I hope.”

“No. I just feel achy and a little nauseous. My neck is kind of stiff. I’m probably coming down with a cold.”

“Well, take care of yourself. Good night, Vance.”

I hung up the phone and went straight to sleep. It was mid-morning when the phone woke me. I felt awful. As I groped to answer it, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The glands in my neck were all swelled up and red. “Hello,” I groaned.

“Vance, darling, I just had to call up and thank you.” It was Marcy.

“You’re welcome,” I sighed.

“What’s the matter? You sound sick.”

“I am sick.”

“What’s wrong?”

“If I’m not mistaken—” I peered at myself in the mirror —“I have the mumps!”

“The mumps! How did you ever--?”

“You wouldn’t believe it,” I told her. Too old to make the teeny-bopper scene, I moaned silently to myself, but not too old to pay the price.

“My poor darling! You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to catch the first plane home and take care of you!”

“Won’t Hector object?”

“I’m through with Hector. I told him so. After the way you got me out of that scrape, I just couldn’t be unfaithful to you.”

“You wouldn’t be unfaithful. We’re not married any more. Remember?”

“In my heart we are. I’ll see you as fast as I can get there, Vance.”

“Who writes your dialogue?” I asked. It was too late. She’d already hung up.

I also hung up and stared moodily at myself in the mirror. Mumps! And Florence Nightingale on the way! My eye lit on the pile of nappy loot I’d dumped out of the Kotex box the night before. It reminded me of what being married to Marcy had been like. Its purpose had been transformed into a punishment for me that always seemed to take up about twenty-seven days out of any given month! And now she was flying back to succor — or was it sucker?—-me. I felt my swollen glands gingerly and brooded. One question kept going through my mind. The question was—

Can this divorce be saved?

Notes

[←1 ]

The Trylon and Perisphere were two monumental modernistic structures designed by architects Wallace Harrison and J. Andre Fouilhoux that were together known as the Theme Center of the 1939 New York World's Fair. The Perisphere was a tremendous sphere, 180 feet in diameter, connected to the 610-foot (190 m) spire-shaped Trylon by what was at the time the world's longest escalator. The United States issued a postage stamp in 1939 depicting the Trylon and Perisphere (pictured). Neither structure survives. Both buildings were razed and scrapped after the closing of the fair, their materials to be used in World War II armaments.

[←2 ]

Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (July 5, 1902 – February 27, 1985) was a Republican Senator from Massachusetts and. In 1963, President Kennedy appointed Lodge to the position of Ambassador to South Vietnam, where Lodge supported the 1963 South Vietnamese coup. In November 1963, President Ngô Đình Diệm of South Vietnam was deposed by a group of Army of the Republic of Vietnam officers who disagreed with his handling of both the Buddhist crisis and the Viet Cong threat to the regime. The Kennedy administration had been aware of the coup planning, but Cable 243 from the United States Department of State to U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., stated that it was U.S. policy not to try to stop it. The CIA's liaison between the U.S. Embassy and the coup planners, told them that the U.S. would not intervene to stop it. The CIA also provided funds to the coup leaders.

[←3 ]

As chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, senator James William Fulbright (April 9, 1905 – February 9, 1995) held several series of hearings on the Vietnam War, in 1966 and 1971. Fulbright became known for his opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War.

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U Thant was a Burmese diplomat and the third Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1961 to 1971, the first non-European to hold the position. His once good relationship with the US government deteriorated rapidly when he publicly criticized American conduct of the Vietnam War. His secret attempts at direct peace talks between Washington and Hanoi were eventually rejected by the Johnson Administration.

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