CHERRY DELIGHT

Cherry turns the energy crisis into an energetic climax when she finds a
gusher in death valley.

FIRE
in the
HOLE

by Gardner Francis Fox

Written as Glen Conway

Originally printed in 1974

Digitally transcribed by Kurt Brugel and Akiko K

2019 for the Gardner Francis Fox Library

Cover Illustration by Kurt Brugel 2019

Copyright © 2019 by The Gardner Francis Fox Library.
The Gardner Francis Fox Library has given Kurt Brugel the right to reprint
Fire in the Hole.
All inquires please contact [email protected]
 Gardner Francis Fox (1911 to 1986) was a wordsmith. He originally was
schooled as a lawyer. Rerouted by the depression, he joined the comic book
industry in 1937. Writing and creating for the soon to be DC comics. Mr.
Fox set out to create such iconic characters as the Flash and Hawkman. He
is also known for inventing Batman‘s utility belt and the multi-verse
concept.

At the same time, he was writing for comic books, he also contributed
heavily to the paperback novel industry. Writing in all of the genres;
westerns, historical romance, sword and sorcery, intergalactic adventures,
even erotica.
The Gardner Francis Fox library is proud to be digitally transferring over 150 of Mr. Fox’s paperback
novels. We are proud to present - - -
Kurt Brugel (1969 to Now) is the Custodian and Illustrator for the Gardner
Francis Fox Library. Kurt is a lifelong resident of Wilmington, Delaware.
All illustrations for this book were done in scratchboard. He considers the
Howard Pyle tradition his greatest influence.

www.kurtbrugel.com
Table of Contents:

PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
 PROLOGUE

They say that every Irish family has a banshee all its own. Kevin O’Reilly
always assumed he had one, too, though he’d never met him. Not until he
blew into Las Vegas and made her acquaintance.
Her, not him. The sex is important.
Actually, she wasn’t his family banshee at all, but was more of a fairy
godmother. She was a fairy godmother like you wouldn’t believe, as Kev
O’Reilly found himself admitting a few minutes after he saw her.
It happened this way:
Kevin O’Reilly was dressing for dinner and for a bout with the gaming
tables. He was a tall, husky Irish lad, with a fine pair of shoulders on him,
muscles where they should be, and blue eyes that twinkled as if laughing at
a perpetual joke. O’Reilly enjoyed life, and the pleasures it brought him
from time to time, but right now, he was down on his luck.
He was fixing his black bow tie, wondering if it went with his dinner
jacket, when a knock sounded on the door. Kev muttered a naughty word,
let go of the tie and moved toward the door. He opened it to see a gorgeous
blonde standing in the hallway and smiling at him, a mink wrap hanging
from a finger, a gown of gold lame clinging like wet silk to her body.
O’Reilly gulped once, then twice.
“You must have the wrong room, unfortunately, darling,” he said when he
could. “And, faith! It’s a crying shame.”
She smiled a dazzling smile, making Kev’s heart pound a little faster.
When she spoke, it was like listening to a brook in Conmare babbling, or
perhaps listening to a sweet wind sighing its way across Killarney. She had
perfect teeth, golden hair that was shaped into an up-sweep, and the bodice
of her dress showed the inner slopes of pale white breasts.
“You are Kevin O’Reilly, aren’t you? Of the O’Reillys who came from
Drogheda in County Meath?”
 Kev blinked. “Well, yes. At least, my grandparents did, a long time ago.”
She seemed to relax, standing hip-shot, which made her breasts push into
the gold lame, or almost out of it. Kev wished she wouldn’t stand like that;
she had very beautiful breasts, and he fancied he could see her nipples
standing up under the thin lame.
He had been a long time without a woman. The sight of her body in that
thin stuff was taking his mind off the gaming tables, and he believed that a
man, to win at games of chance, must have all his wits about him. He really
did try to look away.
“Aren’t you going to ask me in?” she dimpled.
Kevin O’Reilly backed up, swinging the door wider. “You must forgive
me,” he told her when he could. “It isn’t often that such a beautiful woman
comes knocking at my door. As a matter of fact, I can’t remember its ever
having happened before.”
She moved toward him, causing her breasts to bobble. Kev eyed them and
licked his lips. The lame gown was very low-cut, and they seemed like
globes of pure white marble. He drew a deep breath and stood to one side
so she could move past him and into his room.
“It took me a long time to find you, Kevin. A very long time.” She said it
accusingly, so that Kev felt almost guilty.
He grinned at her, saying, “If I’d known you were hunting me, I’d have
come to a dead stop long ago.”
Her thin golden eyebrows rose. “You aren’t the sort of man to stand still,
Kevin O’Reilly. Nor your grandfather before you, for that matter. He was
always on the go, that man.”
“You knew my grandfather?” he gulped.
“And his grandfather before him, and his grand-pap, too.”
Kev drew a very deep breath this time, and scowled. “It’s some sort of
trick you’ll be wanting to play on me. All right, I’m game for some fun
before the gambling starts. Just let me tie this damned bow and—”
“Oh, let me do that.”
 She came across to him, her hips swaying, breasts shaking richly, and
reached her dainty hands to touch his tie, to turn and twist it. Kev stared
down at her, at the valley between her full breasts, and found himself lost in
a sea of pale white flesh.
She stood very close to him, her thigh brushed his, and she radiated a
magnetism that O’Reilly felt throb through his body. He was faintly
embarrassed, but the woman did not seem to mind the fact that he was
reacting to her nearness so like a healthy young male.
She tied the bow, patted it with her fingers, then smiled up at him with
slanted eyes. Her eyes were green and sparkling. Kev lost himself in their
depths for a few moments.
“You don’t come with the room, by any chance, do you?” he found
himself saying.
“Oh, my goodness, no! You see—I’m your fairy godmother.”
O’Reilly thought about that for a moment. “Now this is a new approach,
indeed.”
She gurgled laughter and pushed his chest with her forefinger. “Oh, you.
Just like all the new breed of young people. You have no faith in the old
tales.”
He put his hand to his curly black hair and pushed it back, perplexed and
more than a little puzzled. “I don’t get it. I’m not rich, so you can’t be here
to play some sort of badger game. If you are, you’ve come to the wrong
room.”
It was her turn to seem dubious. “The badger game? I don’t know that
one. How is it played?”
“Never mind. Just tell me what you want.”
The thin blonde brows lifted. “Why, I’ve come to bring you luck, Kevin
O’Reilly. Much luck. You want to win money, don’t you? If you didn’t,
surely you wouldn’t come to Las Vegas?”
He eyes her, frowning. Then the frown went away and that irrepressible
Irish humor of his caught firm hold of him. “Faith, that I do. I need money
desperately.”
 “I knew it,” she declared, nodding her pretty head. “I caught the
vibrations, and came to make certain that you do.”
“I need a drink,” he muttered, moving his hand across his eyes. “A double
martini, for instance.”
“By all means, but don’t overdo. Your grandfather Sean could never
handle whiskey, he was always falling down drunk in a gutter somewhere,
before I finally cured him of the habit.”
She turned and moved toward an easy-chair Her buttocks wobbled gently,
outlined by the clinging lame. O’Reilly stared at them, picturing the lame
stripped away, and felt a dryness in his throat.
She sat down and crossed her legs. The gown was short, it was not quite a
mini, but the lame rode up on her thighs so that Kev saw plenty of nyloned
legs and a bit of bare thighs above the stocking vamps, as well as a fancy
garter-clasp
“What about yourself?” he asked, taking a few steps toward a bureau that
he had transformed into a portable bar with the simple addition of a bottle
here and there, plus an ice bucket.
“The martini sounds good.”
He made them doubles, stirring the Beefeater gin and the vermouth before
adding the ice cubes. He carried her glass to her, and sat on a hassock close
by her slippered feet.
They sipped, and eyed each other.
O’Reilly said, “How about having dinner with me tonight? I find I’m in
the mood for a celebration of sorts. If you really are my fairy godmother
and intend to grant me a winning streak, as you say.”
“I fully intend to,” she assured him. “I’ve been away from the family for
so long, trying to locate you, that I owe you something more than just a
piddling little winning streak. I shall make you rich.”
“Then we’ll have dinner?”
She smiled at him over the edge of her martini glass. “Not tonight. Some
other time. Tonight you must spend at the tables, doing what I tell you to
do.”
Kev laughed, shaking his head. “This really beats me. I’ve kicked around
the world a bit, me and my brother Sean, but this takes the cake.”
“You don’t believe me, do you?” she pouted.
She had very full red lips, and O’Reilly thought them the most kissable
lips he had ever seen. She uncrossed her legs and recrossed them. Kev felt
his eyes go wide, since she had no panties on, just a garter-belt and
stockings.
“Nobody ever had a fairy godmother like you,” he told her wryly.
Her eyes went sad. “That’s because no one really believes, any more. In
the old days—oh, I could tell you stories!—everyone from Balycastle down
to Bantry Bay believed in the leprechauns and the banshees, in the good
fairies and the bad. Today—pah!”
She shrugged and her breasts trembled.
Kev gulped air. “Wait a sec. Do you mean to tell me you’re here to make
me win at the tables downstairs? That you can really do that?”
“But, of course! It’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”
He stared at her, laughing despite himself. He had always considered
himself a hard-headed Irishman, nobody had ever pulled a fast one on him,
and he had made a reasonably good living by his wits. He was being taken,
in some manner that he could not discover, no matter how much he thought
about it, but since there is something fey in the makeup of every son of
Erin, he decided he might as well go along with this game.
She gave him a slow, heady smile. Her green eyes promised much. She
did not stir when he put his palm on her nyloned leg and stroked it slowly.
“You’re a very beautiful woman. I’m thinking that you and I could make
such music together that all the folks in County Meath would forget the
harp of Tara.”
She held the martini glass in both hands, nodding at him slowly. “It may
be that it will come to that. It has been many years since I’ve known the
embrace of a mortal man.”
 “We could start with dinner,” he hinted.
She shook her head this time. “No. You must go downstairs and play at
roulette, at blackjack and at the dice. I will be there in spirit, looking over
your shoulder. I will tell you what bets to make, if I must. But you should
be able to do it on your own, with no outward help from me.
“I shall have used my influence before you finish your meal. Whatever
you attempt tonight, you shall win at.”
Her pale hand put aside the empty glass. “I must go now. I don’t want to
overstay my welcome.”
“You could never do that,” he muttered gallantly.
She rose to her feet and Kev looked up at her, wanting very much to take
her in his arms, to cover her face with kisses, to strip off that gold lame and
see what her body might be like in just her stockings and that garter-belt
He did not, he remained the perfect gentleman. He saw her to his door and
watched as she walked down the hall, the mink wrap tossed casually over
an almost bare shoulder.
O’Reilly closed the door softly and stood a moment in deep thought.
Someone was working a bummer on him, or was about to. By rights, he
should forget this whole thing and go about his own way. Still! He had
intended to gamble here in Vegas; it was why he was here in the first place.
His fairy godmother had said he would win.
There was no sense in not playing.
First of all, she wasn’t his fairy godmother. He was Irish, he might be
slightly fey, but he wasn’t daft. She was a beautiful girl who’d popped in on
him out of the blue and told him he’d win big. With such encouragement,
what in hell was he doing, standing here in this room and moping about it?
On to the roulette wheel!
Kevin O’Reilly ate well in the hotel dining room, ordering oysters
Rockefeller and a filet mignon, topping off the steak with cherries jubilee.
He sipped coffee and smoked a cigar, and told himself he would risk a
thousand of the two thousand dollars he had brought with him to Nevada.
 He converted the cash into chips, and went into the glittering hall where
roulette wheels whirred, where men and women leaned over them,
watching the bouncing ball. He stared around him, then began his walk
toward a relatively unoccupied table.
A girl in fancy clothes that served as her uniform came up to him. “This
way, sir. If you please.”
O’Reilly had the giddy feeling that he was in the lap of the gods. He went
where the girl brought him, to a wheel that seemed almost surrounded by
people. A man pushed from the counter in disgust to make way for him.
“Place your bets,” the croupier muttered.
And a voice seemed to whisper in his ear, “Double zero.”
He put a hundred dollar chip on 00.
00 won, he left his money on it, and it won a second time. Kev stared at
the pile of hundreds he had accumulated, a faint dizziness working in the
back of his head.
“Try twenty,” said the voice.
Twenty won, three times in a row.
People were staring at him now, talking among themselves. The croupier
was scowling, muttering under his breath. A wild exultation was in Kevin
O’Reilly at this moment.
“Double zero again,” the voice counseled.
He pushed every chip he possessed onto 00.
He watched the spinning of the wheel, the bouncing of the ball. Oddly
enough, there was no tension in him, no worry. 00 would win, he was as
certain of this as he was that the sun would rise tomorrow morning.
And win 00 did.
“I think I’ve had enough,” he murmured weakly, staring at his winnings.
“Go somewhere else,” the croupier growled.
A girl came with a tray to help him carry his chips. Heads turned as he
pushed away and walked after the girl to the cage where he cashed in his
chips for more money than he had ever believed existed. He tried to count
it, but he was so excited, his fingers fumbled.
As near as he could guess, he had won something like a hundred thousand
dollars.
“Peanuts,” said a voice, almost in his ear.
He looked around him, but he was alone. He could never have overheard
that voice. Besides, it sounded very familiar. Was his fairy godmother
invisible? O’Reilly shook his head, annoyed at himself.
“I’m going daft,” he muttered.
“Try the dice tables,” said the voice.
He was positive of it, now. It was the voice of his fairy godmother. He
strolled around the room, between the tables, watching other people win, or
lose. Most of them lost. Almost against his will, his legs carried him into a
room where dice tables stood, row on row.
“Table ten,” said the voice.
He won three hundred thousand dollars at table ten.
O’Reilly was in a daze, by this time. He walked on clouds, he felt like
King Midas, whose touch turned everything to gold. There was nothing he
could not do in this mood. When he finally pushed away from the craps
table to follow the girl holding a tray containing his winnings, he felt as
though he owned a large slice of the world.
It was in this soporific daze that he noticed the redhead. She was just as
spectacular as the girl who called herself his fairy godmother; indeed, she
seemed even to have a somewhat more voluptuous body, to judge by what
he could see of it inside a white lace culotte dress, as she stood beside one
of the craps tables eyeing him.
She had a puzzled frown on her very lovely face, and a shadow of worry
lay in her green eyes. A pile of chips was before her, and she toyed idly
with them as she stared after him.
He wondered who she might be.
 At any other time, he might have gone up to her and asked her to have a
drink with him, for he felt a desperate need to celebrate his good fortune.
Instead, after he had cashed in his chips and stuffed his pockets with
thousand dollar bills, he wandered alone into the dimly lighted bar and sank
onto a stool.
“Dry martini on the rocks,” he told the barkeep.
He nursed the drink, occasionally sipping from it, as he tried to think out
what had happened to him. O’Reilly did not believe in fairy godmothers,
not really, though his disbelief had been severely strained in the past few
hours.
She had said he would win, but this was ridiculous! He must have hauled
in close to five hundred thousand dollars tonight, all told. He could not lose.
No matter what number he called at the roulette wheel, no matter what
number he had to make with the dice, those numbers always turned up.
Kevin O’Reilly believed in luck, but this was something more than that.
When he finished his martini, and rose to go up to his room, he saw the
redhead seated at the far end of the bar, hunched over a Planter’s Punch. For
an instant he hesitated, wanting to talk to her. Maybe she had lost money,
maybe she wanted to be consoled for her losses. He could make them up for
her, he’d never miss a few thousand out of the bundle he had won tonight.
He kept on walking, however, knowing that the redhead had turned her
head and was watching him. Kev had an uncomfortable feeling in the back
of his neck. Maybe she was a casino cop—did girls serve as cops in these
gambling palaces?—who had her eye on him, wondering if he might be
working in cahoots with croupiers and dicemen.
Like a good little boy, O’Reilly went up to his room and got into his
pajamas He was really too excited to sleep. He piled his winnings on top of
the bureau and stared at it. Piles upon piles of thousand dollar bills looked
back at him. Kev had a sense of unreality.
This couldn’t be happening to him.
It was a dream, it had to be. Half a million American bucks, all his! The
hell with the value of the dollar. He was a damn wealthy man.
 There was a knock on the door.
Kevin O’Reilly felt his heart lurch. Somebody had seen him win all this
loot, had followed him upstairs and was going to rob him. His hand went to
the bureau drawer, fumbled in it, brought out a Smith and Wesson revolver.
He had a license to carry it; he had been a messenger at one time, carrying
valuable securities, had asked for and received such a license. He had
renewed it religiously, every year, even though he was no longer associated
with the securities firm.
Gun in hand, he approached the door.
“Who’s there?”
“Your fairy godmother, of course.”
He opened the door after throwing back the locking bolt. The girl in the
golden lame dress was smiling at him, her mink wrap up about her throat,
hugging her body.
“Well? Everything work out as I told you it would?”
“Get in here,” he said, reaching out to catch her by the arm and draw her
into the room.
She laughed gaily, and did a few dance steps about the room. “It worked,”
she laughed. “I told you it would, but I was still a little dubious, inside me.
My magic sometimes doesn’t function too well, outside of the Emerald
Isle.”
“Come off it,” he grinned. “What’s the catch? There has to be a catch. I
realized that when I was looking at all that bread.”
“Bread? Oh! One of those American terms I’m not too familiar with. You
mean money.”
“Damn right I mean money. Now what’s the angle?”
She seemed to puzzle over that, her thin golden brows frowning. After a
time, she sighed. “I suppose you don’t believe me. Neither did your
ancestors, until I proved my magical powers again and again to them. Don’t
you like being rich?”
“Sure I do. But nobody gets something for nothing.”
 “You do, because you’re an O’Reilly.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, if you know so much, how about my brother Sean? How
come you’re not out there helping him?”
“I’ve already helped him,” she caroled.
Kev chuckled. “Sure, sure. That’s easy to say. But you don’t know a damn
thing about Sean—or what he’s up to.”
Her smile was dazzling. “Don’t I, Kevin? Suppose I were to whisper in
your ear that right now he’s somewhere in the Amargosa Desert, right next
to Death Valley? That he was searching for a rich oil field? That I helped
him find it?”
Kevin O’Reilly sat down. Hard. He stared at this girl with the golden hair
and the voluptuous body, his mind whirling.
“He found it?” he croaked.
“Indeed he did. But only thanks to me and my help.”
“I’m asleep. I’m dreaming.”
“Indeed you aren’t! What’s the matter with the new generation of Irish,
anyhow? They have no faith in fairies.”
O’Reilly hit his fist into his palm. “This is against all sanity. It’s
ridiculous. I shouldn’t be sitting here, listening to this. But I will. Because I
want to see where it ends.”
She nodded soberly. “Sean needs money to develop his oil field. You can
give him that money, by earning it here at the gaming tables. You see how
their fairy godmother helps the O’Reillys?”
He nodded helplessly. “So I’m supposed to keep gambling?”
“But only with my help. That way, you can’t go wrong.”
“I’ll do it. I can’t guess what’s going to happen, but I’ll do it.”
“Tomorrow night, then.”
As she headed toward the door, he sprang to his feet. “Hey, wait. Don’t
run off on me. Have a drink. Let’s talk a little more.”
 She patted his cheek. “You need your rest, Kevin dear. You must be at
your best tomorrow night when you try the roulette wheels and craps tables
again.”
He eyed her gloomily, especially the milky white breasts that appeared
about to burst out of the low-cut bodice. “I could think of better ways to
relieve my tension.”
She laughed softly. “Rest, darling boy. Rest and sleep. This is what your
fairy godmother tells you to do.”
When she was gone, he took a couple of Sominex pills. “I’ll need them,”
he told his bathroom mirror reflection gloomily.
He slept late next morning, ate a hearty breakfast of ham and eggs, toast
and coffee, got into his swim-suit and lay at the edge of the hotel-casino
pool, sopping up sunshine. He hardly even looked at all the pretty girls who
paraded around the pool in mini-bikinis. Not for him the tanned bellies, the
long legs and bouncing breasts, part of which were suntanned, part that
milky whiteness that he had always found so irresistible.
A man can resist temptation for only so long, however. O’Reilly had slept
well last night, had digested his food, and lazed in the sun until boredom
came. He sat up and looked around him with an appreciative eye.
And he saw the redhead.
She was in a lounge chair, her body just about naked in two wisps of
black cloth. His eyes goggled when he saw the size of her breasts, the
smooth flow of midriff into bared belly, and the extent of exquisitely shaped
legs. She was sitting very near him, almost as if she had known he were
there and wanted him to notice her.
“Hi,” he smiled.
“Hi yourself. I saw you cleaning up last night. Do you have a system, or is
it just plain, dumb luck?”
He laughed. “I have a fairy godmother. She tells me what to do, what bets
to make.”
To his amazement, she did not smile but stared at him quite soberly, very
seriously. “That explains it,” she nodded to herself.
 Kev was vaguely aware that his jaw had dropped. “You believe me?”
“Are you lying to me?”
“Well, no. But the whole thing is so cockeyed that I figured you’d laugh
like mad.”
The redhead said, “Why don’t we go for a little walk and you can tell me
all about it? You don’t want anybody else to know about your fairy
godmother, do you?”
His eyes ran up and down her all but naked body and O’Reilly found his
head nodding up and down. This redhead seemed so sympathetic, so
understanding—and Christ knows he needed somebody to talk to!—that he
found himself on his feet and walking along beside her, just about spilling
his guts.
The fact that her bare side and thigh brushed his own body, covered only
with a brief Jantzen swim-suit, added to his pleasure. This redhead didn’t
seem as stand-offish as his fairy godmother, and there was a tiny gleam of
wickedness in her green eyes that told O’Reilly she would be sweet hell
between the sheets. If he could ever get her there, that is.
They ate lunch together, swam the whole afternoon in the pool, and
stretched out quietly side by side, absorbing the hot Nevada sunlight. Her
name was Delight, Cherry Delight, and Kev was mildly aware that he was
falling head over heels in love with her. He had never met a girl quite like
Cherry Delight.
She agreed to have dinner with him, to watch him make the rounds of the
tables. She might even make a bet or two, just to pay for her vacation.
Nor did she object when he put his arm about her naked side from time to
time as they walked, or held her close in the pool, so that they touched just
about all over. She was soft and warm and she had a body that was making
him drool.
For a little while, he forgot his fairy godmother.
It was only when he was dressing, and having trouble with his bow tie for
a second straight night, that he remembered her. A knock sounded on the
door and when he opened it, his fairy godmother was there, scowling at
him.
“You told,” she accused, sweeping past him into his room.
“Told what?” he asked idiotically.
“Told that redheaded girl all about me. Don’t bother to deny it, I know
you did.”
“What if I did? Are you some kind of secret?”
“In a way I am, yes. If you go blabbing about me to people, you take
away my magic powers. Get rid of her.”
“But I like her. We’re going to have dinner together, then make the
rounds.”
“No way.”
The Irish can be stubborn. And O’Reilly could be as Irish as the next one.
His jaw jutted out, and he said, “The hell you say. I’ll quit right now. Half a
million bucks is plenty for me. Who needs any more?”
The girl in the gold lame gown sneered, “You just want to lay her.”
“So what if I do? I’m human. I don’t hear any other offers.”
His fairy godmother sighed plaintively. “You O’Reillys! Always giving
me more trouble than you’re worth.” She gave him a hard look, then asked,
“Well, can she keep her mouth shut, at least?”
“She can. I’ll vouch for it. She insisted we walk around so nobody could
overhear us when I told her about you.”
“Hmmmm. Maybe she has some good, common sense. She saw you
winning last night, and she wants in on it.”
“Only to pay for her vacation.”
The girl in the lame gown walked up and down. Her buttocks wobbled
and her breasts shook as much as they had at previous times, but Kev didn’t
notice. Not too much, anyhow. He was still thinking about the redhead.
“All right. But she mustn’t win too much. Or I’ll take away my magic
powers. Is it a deal?”
 He nodded. “Why is it so important that I win so much money?”
In exasperation, his fairy godmother snapped, “Because I promised your
brother to help him, too. I found the oil wells for him, I said I’d do what I
could to raise enough money so he could develop them himself.” “Sean.
Oh, yeah.”
She swept toward the door. “Remember, caution her. She mustn’t win too
much. Say, about ten, maybe twenty thousand. That ought to satisfy her
greedy little heart.”
As she went off down the hall, Kevin O’Reilly remembered too late that
she had forgotten to help him tie his bow. He wondered how good Cherry
Delight might be at such a task.
 CHAPTER ONE

I stood nude before the bathroom mirror and stared at my reflection. Long
red hair, still wet from the shower, cascaded down around my suntanned
shoulders, with a tendril or two half covering the milky whiteness of my
breasts. My nipples were up, long and brown, and I smiled to myself at the
thought of Kevin O’Reilly.
The poor slob didn’t know what he had gotten into. I wasn’t too sure
myself, but I had a sneaking suspicion, which was why I had put through
the call to New York. I was waiting for the operator to ring me, right now.
I moved a towel around my nudity, turning occasionally to study my
backside and the dark tan that almost touched it. Kevin had delighted in that
tan, or what the tan covered, and had been dancing about me all afternoon
like a stallion in heat.
When the bod was dry, I slipped into a terrycloth robe and moved into the
bedroom. My gown was on the bed, ready to be slid into; there were nylons
and a black lace garter-belt, with tiny red ribbons yet, beside them. O’Reilly
enjoyed the sight of a female body, I knew, so why should I hide myself
from him? I sat naked on the edge of the bed and started drawing on the
nylons.
The phone rang. It was the operator. She had finally found my connection
in Fun City.
Mark Condon was on the other end of the line.
As Cherry Delight, I work for the New York Mafia Prosecution and
Harassment Organization, which is more commonly called NYMPHO. I am
a member of its Femmes Fatales division. I am a crack shot, a judo and
karate expert, I have been anywhere and everywhere that my organization
sends me, when it comes to fighting that International crime group known
as The Mafia.
Right now I was on a vacation.
 Still… .
Mark Condon said, “You tired of having fun already, Cherry?”
“Mark, I’m onto something. I’m not sure just what. You’re Irish, Mark—
sort of. What do you know about fairy godmothers?”
“You been drinking, Cherry?”
“I’m damn serious.”
I went on to tell him about Kevin O’Reilly and his fairy godmother, not
leaving out the fact that O’Reilly had won half a million dollars the
previous evening, and that tonight he was out to win ten times as much.
Mark whistled softly.
I said, “It would be a clever way to siphon five million off the top, here at
Vegas, wouldn’t it, Mark? I mean, Kevin O’Reilly is as good as dead, the
way I look at it, unless I keep an eye on him.”
“It won’t happen in Vegas.”
I rolled my eyes at the ceiling. “Tell me something new, Mark. And—
Mark, there’s something else. A brother Sean who’s been hunting oil in a
place called the Amargosa Desert, which is somewhere in or near Death
Valley, or so close it makes no never mind.”
“Oil,” said Mark Condon softly.
“This fairy godmother says she helped Sean find that oil, and now she’s
financing his project by making sure Kevin wins a bundle.”
“What does this Kevin O’Reilly say about all this?”
“He’s in a daze. Wouldn’t you be if something like that happened to you?”
“I’d be suspicious as hell.”
“So he’s suspicious, but he isn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
This fairy godmother is a doll, I gather, and he can’t believe she’s up to
tricks. But Kevin’s a dead man, Mark. If what I suspect is really so, the
Mafia boys will have pulled off a big scoop.”
“How come these things always seem to happen to you, Cherry? Every
time you go on a vacation, you wind up in the middle of a Family plot.”
 “Just lucky, I guess.”
“Okay, okay. You’ve stumbled onto something. What do you want me to
do?”
“Tell the bossman, Avery King. Have him do some research. I’m working
blind, right now. I intend to stay with Kevin, see this thing through.
Besides, I’m getting tired of this vacation. All I do is lose money. There’s
got to be a better way, and I think I’ve found it.”
“I’ll get through to him at once, get him to start the ball rolling.
Meanwhile, you take care of yourself.”
We chatted a little more, but I kept an eye on my traveling clock. I didn’t
want to be late for my date with O’Reilly. I told Mark I’d be in touch, there
was no need for him to come out here because I wasn’t at all sure what I
might have uncovered. I hung up with the good feeling that I had
N.Y.M.P.H.O. behind me.
I slithered the other stocking on my leg, stood up and fastened the garter-
belt about my middle, then worked my way into a Courreges original
evening gown that was of the consistency of wet tissue paper, or just about.
It showed me off to perfection.
I snatched up my evening bag, a Gucci, and checked to make certain that
my Colt Gold Cup automatic was inside. I never go anywhere without that
gun; it has saved my life on a lot of occasions, and is like my right hand.
Then I went out to meet O’Reilly.
We dined on lobster tails and a chocolate souffle with coffee. We did not
hurry, but took our time. The night is unending, if you want it to be, here in
Vegas. Kevin O’Reilly I found to be as handsome as ever, in his dinner
jacket and evening shirt, with a rather sloppily tied bow tie. I promised him
that I would retie it for him, in a less public place.
I did so, and then we walked toward the gaming tables.
It was a night like you wouldn’t believe. O’Reilly won on every bet he
made. He put a hundred thousand dollars on double 0 at a roulette wheel
and 00 came up. I had followed his lead and bet a thousand, myself.
 Naturally, he could hardly stay at any one place. People flocked from all
over to bet the way he did. He won at craps, at roulette, at blackjack. The
man was unbeatable. I made a peso or two myself, while following him
around like a well-trained dog.
The House asked him to stay away from the craps table and the roulette
wheels, after a time. He should concentrate on the blackjack table. At least
there, he would win alone, without a lot of other people following his bets.
It came two o’clock, then three. The chips kept going from where
O’Reilly played to the cashier. By three o’clock, Kevin leaned back in his
chair and announced he was through for the night, that he was bushed,
pooped and done in.
I estimated he had won five million dollars.
“There will be newspaper reporters to see you in the morning,” I warned
him as we went upstairs together. “You’re a famous man, now.”
He gave me almost a frightened look. “What’ll I say to them? I can’t tell
them a fairy godmother came to me and whispered in my ear as to what bets
to make.”
“Why not?” I asked lightly. “It does away with your having to explain a
system. They won’t believe you, but then again, they don’t really expect
you to have an answer for them.”
He gave me that Irish grin of his. “Sure, that’s it. I’ll level with them.
Since it’s the truth, I won’t have to make up any lies. I’ll just stick to that
story. If they want to make fun of me in their papers, let them.”
He invited me in for a nightcap.
“I want to take a closer look at that check they wrote out to me.” He
fumbled in his jacket pocket, drew it out. He shook his head at the size of
the amount, then placed it very carefully back where he kept it.
“Better deposit that thing as soon as the banks open,” I told him. “You
don’t want to carry such an amount around on you. It’s very tempting.”
He opened his room door, ushered me in. I moved to an easy-chair, and
sank into it. “Scotch on the rocks,” I muttered, extending my legs and
crossing them at the ankles. “I find I’m in some need for liquid refreshment.
I won a bundle myself tonight.”
O’Reilly went to the bureau bar, selected a bottle of J&B. He poured out a
generous portion over ice cubes and made himself a double martini. He
came back with it, handed me my glass, and kicked a hassock closer so he
could sit on it.
I considered him as I sipped. The poor slob didn’t know—he wasn’t even
guessing—what he had let himself in for. I hadn’t the heart to tell him. Here
he had won five million iron men, or thereabouts, from a casino run by the
Family. And there wasn’t even a fuss made about it.
The fact there was no fuss was the tip-off
Anytime anybody takes five million clams from the Mafia and nobody
says a word, my antennae rise up and quiver. As they were doing right now,
because my head and my heart told me this was what the Family wanted to
happen. They were going to smooth his road for him. When he was least
suspecting, the Family would move in and take all that bread away from
him. They would kill him, put his body where nobody on God’s green earth
would ever find it—they might even cremate him—and use that money for
their own purposes.
It was a cute way to siphon off the cream.
So as I sipped, I murmured, “Instead of banking that bread, why don’t you
get the check certified, first thing in the morning? That is, if you don’t
intend playing some more?”
“I’m through playing. That is, for money.”
His eyes told me there was another game he wouldn’t mind playing, right
about now. But I had other plans. Not that I am averse to a roll in the sheets
with such a nicely set-up guy as Kevin O’Reilly. But I needed to keep my
strength for what was bound to come.
I smiled at him lazily. “Maybe another time, Kev. Right now, you need
your sleep. So do I. We have a long way to go tomorrow.”
“We?”
 “I’m going to ride herd on you for a few days, if you don’t object.
Something tells me somebody is going to try and take that check away from
you.”
He looked surprised. “But a check made out to me, in my name—”
“—can be deposited by somebody else who signs your name, right?”
“A check for five million?”
“Even so. There are ways and means. Mafia ways.”
“Ma—Mafia!”
“Who do you think runs this casino, Kev?”
“Well, I guess I never gave it much thought.”
“I have. I know. It’s why I came here, really—even though for all intents
and purposes, I’m on my vacation. Five men, all big winners, have never
been found after they left Las Vegas. But the checks they had with them
were deposited and the money collected. By whom, Kev?”
He looked sick.
My fingers opened my Gucci bag. I slid out my ident wallet, opened it, let
him see my picture (it doesn’t do me justice, but he recognized me), and the
N.Y.M.P.H.O. card and badge I carry with me at all times. He even saw the
Gold Cup Colt.
O’Reilly sat back on the hassock and groaned. “I knew it was too good to
be true! You mean they let me win. They’re setting me up for a kill. They’ll
take away my money and keep it.”
“And nobody’d ever know, if I hadn’t become interested in you.”
He waited a minute, then asked, “What do I do now?”
“Exactly what I tell you.”
He smiled in a sickly fashion. “And what’s that?”
“Go to bed, get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow, pack your bags, have
breakfast with me, and we’ll head out of town together. The Family won’t
get wise, they’ll see us leave but they’ll think I’m just a dumb broad who’s
latched onto you.”
 “Isn’t that dangerous? Wouldn’t it be better for us to go to the police?”
“What are you going to tell them? Just that you’re scared for your life?
There aren’t enough cops in the world to protect you forever.”
His eyes narrowed. “You think you can?”
“I know it. You and I are going to be like husband and wife, for a time.
I’m never going to leave your side, except for tonight, of course.”
“But somebody might come here in the middle of the night and put a
bullet in me.”
“No way. This is the safest place you could be, in this bedroom. The Mob
is smart, they don’t want to draw attention to you, which they’d surely do if
they shot you in a place they own. Oh, you’re fine here. Perfectly safe.”
His eyes touched my breasts where they bulged up and outward above the
low bodice of my Courreges evening gown. He could see a lot of them, and
my chest felt slightly chilly. When he finally got around to looking in my
eyes, I smiled at him.
“Tomorrow night, maybe. After the Family makes its play.”
Kevin O’Reilly grimaced. “I feel like celebrating tonight. I might not be
alive tomorrow night, if what you say is true.”
“Then neither of us will be. But don’t think about it that way, just relax
and leave everything to me.”
I patted his hand, finished my drink, and rose to my feet. I wriggled a
little, pulling down my gown, which made my breasts do a bit of a jig. I
giggled at the expression in his face.
“It’ll be fun, when we finally get together,” I whispered, cupping the back
of his head and leaning over him to plaster my open lips to his mouth.
It was quite a kiss. We held it for several moments while O’Reilly put his
hands to the backs of my nyloned legs and ran them up and down. He even
went beyond the stocking vamps to the bare flesh of my thighs, and I must
admit he had a nice, gentle touch.
When I shook free, he was glassy-eyed.
 “That’s to make sure you value your life and don’t go throwing it away
tomorrow.”
He stumbled to the door, opening it for me. I put down a hand to pat an
outstanding part of him and breathed into his mouth as I gave him a good-
night kiss, “Keep that for mama, honey. You’ll be needing it come beddy-
bed time tomorrow night.”
I wanted to give him nice things to think about when he fell asleep, and
didn’t want him to spend a sleepless night worrying.
It took me a little while to fall asleep myself. Not because I was being
bothered by flesh needs, but because my mind was so active. I lay there and
made plans. Having flown in from New York, I would need a car to take me
to wherever it was Kevin O’Reilly called home. That should be no problem.
I could rent one, or maybe even buy one. I had plenty of money, thanks to
that fairy godmother.
Naturally, I would charge its cost to the N.Y.M.P.H.O. The organization
was very good that way; they gave me carte blanche when it came to
operating expenses on a case. True, I had not come out on an assignment, it
had been in the nature of a vacation, but Avery King, the N.Y.M.P.H.O.
Coordinator, had been worried about a number of unsolved murders that
had taken place outside Las Vegas, and had sent me to check them out.
Each man who had been murdered had been a big winner at the gaming
tables, like Kevin O’Reilly. I had been told to keep my eyes peeled for just
such a winner, and luck had been with me.
I finally drifted into dreamland.
In the morning over a breakfast of ham and eggs, Kev informed me that
he had a beat-up Chevy; he had driven it here from Los Angeles. It was in
his mind to buy himself a new car with some of his loot.
“I still have that five hundred grand I won the first night, in cash. I can
buy any car you name and not feel it.”
“Get one that gives you the most mileage on gasoline,” I advised.
He seemed puzzled. “I can get all the gasoline I need.”
 “Well, I come from New York City, and you can’t get any gas, hardly,
there. Not without standing in line, that is.”
“Well, out west we can. You’ll see.”
I scowled. “Another inequity of the fuel shortage,” I grumbled. “But since
I’m out west at the moment, I won’t complain.”
We went shopping, and bought an Alfa Romeo.
“A sporty car, which suits me,” Kev grinned. “It gets great gas mileage,
which should please you.”
We paid our bills and tipped the bellboys who carried our luggage out to
the car. I kept looking around but I didn’t see any evidence that we were
being followed. Did I have this caper all wrong? Was there something to
this win streak of O’Reilly I didn’t know about? It was with a vague sense
of worry that I climbed into the suicide seat beside the driver.
O’Reilly knew cars and how to handle them. He eased through the Vegas
traffic and out onto the long road that would take us south and westward
past the Lake Mead National Recreation Area toward California. It was a
long, lonely stretch of road along which we would travel. If the Family
were to hit us, it would be on that route.
We drove for many miles, without anything happening. I kept turning
around, checking the empty road behind us without seeing anyone. After a
time my nerves relaxed a little and I found myself enjoying the vast
landscape all about us.
O’Reilly said, after a long silence, “I have a gun, you know. And a license
to use it.”
I glanced at him. “Are you a crack shot?”
“Well, no. Not exactly. Not from any great distance.”
“Then give it to me. I am.”
I have been exceedingly well trained by N.Y.M.P.H.O. I can drill the pips
out of the ace of spades at fifty feet. My expertise with guns has saved my
life, and the lives of others, on more than one occasion.
 Kev handed over the gun, which he had put into a shoulder holster. I stuck
it in the Gucci bag along with the Gold Cup.
We were almost to the California-Nevada line when the hoods struck.
Two cars were across the road, as though hurled there by an accident. Their
bumpers were locked, or so it seemed, because as the Alfa Romeo slowed,
we could see half a dozen men trying to free them.
“Here it comes,” I breathed.
O’Reilly looked startled. “You’ve got to be kidding. It’s an accident,
nothing more.”
“Believe me, Kev,” I snapped.
My hand brought the Colt out of the Gucci bag. Kevin stared at it as he
applied his brakes. The Alfa Romeo slowed, came to a halt about fifty yards
from the apparent accident.
The six men turned and looked at us. They left the cars and began walking
in our direction. They were Mafia, all right. Over the years that I have
fought them, I have come to know the types.
They were smiling, quite at ease. Obviously, they had been well coached.
They would appear to ask for help, and when Kev got out, completely
unsuspecting, they would draw their guns, and finish him off. Me, too, as
far as that went. They wanted no witnesses.
O’Reilly looked at me. “What’ll I do? Are you sure they’re—who you
think they are?”
“They are. No doubt about it. I’d open fire, but just on the off chance that
they’re respectable citizens, I’ll let them start the play.”
I slid the Gucci bag over the Gold Cup automatic so they wouldn’t notice
it. I sat back and waited, perfectly sure as to what was going to happen.
The man in front, big and husky, a typical soldier, had a big grin on his
face as he walked toward the window beside Kevin. As he came, his right
hand dipped inside his coat.
When his hand came out, it had a revolver in it. The others didn’t draw
their rods, there was no need for that. We were completely unsuspecting—
or so they thought—and one man with a gun was enough to get the job
done.
This man showed Kev the gun, then waggled it invitingly. “Come on out,
mister. This is the end of the line for you.”
“Wha—what are you going to do?” O’Reilly asked.
“Kill you. What else?”
“But why?”
The soldier chuckled. “You won five million bucks, didn’t you? At the
Vegas tables? You don’t think we’d let you get away with that, do you?
Now, come on.”
My right hand lifted. The Colt rose into sight. I aimed it and squeezed the
trigger.
I don’t think the guy even saw the Gold Cup, he was so intent on putting
the screws to O’Reilly. The bullet caught him in the mouth and plowed its
way through his head. He died on his feet, his face still twisted in that
cruelly mocking grin.
My hand swung about to my own window where two more hoods had
been lounging. They had a couple of easy marks, or so they’d believed. A
guy and a gal, what harm could they do to six tough Mafia soldiers?
I showed them, soon enough.
The automatic bucked twice in my hand, and the two hoods closest to my
window died when my bullets hit them. They had been drawing back, had
seen me gun down their capo, and their hands had been reaching for their
own guns.
The other three men yelled and drew their cannons.
I leaned out the window and let drive at the nearest man. A neat little red
hole appeared in his chest. He stared down at it a moment, then toppled
forward to lie motionless.
“Jeez.” I heard a white-faced Kevin O’Reilly whisper.
“Back up,” I told him.
 He threw the car into reverse.
The other soldiers were turning, running for their cars. I guess they
figured to make a stand there, with the car bodies to protect them.
“Drive around those cars! Yes, out onto the dirt. But to the left, to give me
a clean shot or two at them.”
The car responded beautifully. It swerved to the left and picked up speed.
It bounced when it went off the road, but I was prepared for that. My left
hand gripped my right wrist. I bumped and jounced, but those men were
running, they couldn’t shoot very straight, either.
I gave them two bullets.
They slid to a halt and turned toward us. There were big grins on their
faces. They figured I’d emptied the Gold Cup and we would be at their
mercy. Their guns glinted in the sunlight; they seemed in no hurry.
“Stop the car,” I yelled at Kev.
“Are you crazy? They’ll get us for sure!”
“Oh, stop worrying. I told you I knew what I was doing, didn’t I?”
My hand shoved the Gold Cup into the Gucci bag and brought out his
gun, a Smith and Wesson. “Those bastards don’t know I have two guns,
they think they’re perfectly safe.”
He hit the anchors, the car stopped.
The two hoods laughed and ran toward us. Not until they were ten feet
away did I lift the Smith and Wesson into view. They tried to slide to a halt.
They never made it.
The gun bucked in my hands, once, then twice. At such a distance, I
couldn’t miss. They collapsed and fell.
“Hold her right where she is,” I told Kevin. “I’ve got to make sure they’re
dead.”
He looked sick, but he nodded. I slid my gams out of the car and with the
revolver poised to shoot if need be, leaned over the two dead men. They
were dead, all right. I felt their pulses and put my compact mirror to their
lips. I went to the other bodies, making certain they were grave meat.
My eyes went to the two cars.
They were no more than window-dressing, to get us to stop, but they
might have papers or some such thing inside them. I beat feet toward them,
found some papers in the glove compartment of one, and grabbed them.
I ran back about a hundred yards and fired at the gas tanks. Quite a blaze
was going when I finally slid into the suicide seat alongside O’Reilly and
told him to get cracking.
We weren’t home free yet, the way I had it tabbed. This far out in the
boondocks, the Family would keep in touch with its soldiers by helicopter.
Or so I had it figured.
Pretty soon a chopper would cruise past the place picked for our demise.
Maybe it would have landed to take our dead bodies away for cremation, if
things had gone according to Mafia plans. It would not land now. It would
see what had happened.
It would come after us.
 CHAPTER TWO

Naturally, I didn’t breathe a word of this to O’Reilly. I didn’t want him

any more jumpy than he was. It’s all right to see men cut down in movies or
on the boob tube, but when it happens to you in real life, it is more than
somewhat unnerving.
“Drive fast,” I told him.
He needed no such advice from me, his foot was down on that gas pedal
just about as far as he could push it. We flew along the roadway, coming off
15 onto 91 and moving along it like a bat coming up out of hell.
I was hoping that we could run away and hide somewhere. I didn’t want
to risk a gunfight with Mafia soldiers in a helicopter. I should have known
better. For five million bucks, the Family would go to a lot of trouble.
My ears heard the drone of the chopper long before I saw it. I squirmed
around in the seat until I made it out at a distance, following the road and
gaining fast.
“Trouble’s breathing down our necks, Kev. Now don’t panic. You see that
group of trees up ahead, about a hundred yards off the road? Get the car in
under their branches.”
He had heard the chopper-craft now, and went white. “We can’t fight a
helicopter.”
“Sure we can. I’ll show you, just as soon as you do what I say.”
There was nothing else he could do, not really. The chopper would fill the
Alfa Romeo with lead, and us too, if he stayed on the road. He had to hide it
under the trees or die driving.
We bounced and bumped over uneven ground. The chopper saw what we
were trying to do and came fast for us, swerving away from the road and
racing low to the ground to give the man seated beside the driver a good
shot at us.
 Well, this worked both ways. If he had a good shot at me, I sure as hell
had a good one at him.
I crammed my body half out of the window, seeing the helicopter swoop
for us, watching the man sight his gun. He had not been expecting trouble
like this, otherwise he would have brought along a tommy-gun, or at the
least, a rifle. With a rifle he could have landed and picked us off at his
leisure and there wouldn’t have been a damn thing we could have done
about it.
But he had come expecting nothing but success, and all he had in the
weapon line was his shoulder-holster gun. He let fly with a bullet that
missed by ten feet.
The Alfa Romeo flashed in under the trees. I heard a bullet tear a path
through some leaves, then I was out of the car and running like Billy-be-
damned for shooting room.
I flopped belly-down on the dirt and waited, my eyes scanning the
cloudless sky. The chopper would be back. It would make a wide sweep,
then return with its blades rotating steadily, to give the man with the gun a
good shot at me. I had edged my body half under a tree, so that the bole
would hide me but still give me a good view of the sky.
I heard the chopper, and lifted the Smith and Wesson. I waited, scarcely
breathing. A shadow grew on the ground, and the next minute the chopper-
craft was there, half-tilted to give the gunman a good shot.
He lost precious time trying to find me.
My left hand was about my right wrist, to steady the gun. I squeezed off a
shot, then another, then a third. Two of those bullets went into the gunman,
because I saw his body jerk hard, twice.
He seemed to lean out the open door very slowly, as though he were
scanning the ground below him. The helicopter pilot tried to save him,
reaching out with a hand while trying to gain height with his craft. His hand
caught at his coat, slipped—and the dead man came plunging out to land on
the ground about fifty yards from where I lay, frantically stuffing shells into
the Smith and Wesson.
 I got the gun loaded in record time and began blasting away at the
chopper, hoping to bring it down. No such luck. The pilot wanted no part of
me. He gunned the motor for all it was worth and fled away to the north.
I watched him go, scowling.
Naturally, I wanted him dead, not out of a killing lust, but simply to
prevent him from telling his Mafia bosses where we were. It wouldn’t take
the Family long to send more soldiers to intercept us, to come against us
with such odds we wouldn’t be able to shoot our way out.
I ran toward the Alfa Romeo. O’Reilly was standing alongside it, staring
at me with big eyes.
“You’re some kind of girl, you know that? Jeez, you’re like a goddamn
six-inch battery in action.”
“All the better for you, pet. Now let’s get out of here.”
“Where to?” he asked, hopping behind the wheel.
“Anywhere so long as it takes us off this road. We’ve got to lose
ourselves. That chopper pilot will make a report and the mobsters will know
where we are.”
Kev drove as if tomorrow would never come. We made beautiful time all
the way to Baker, where we refueled. I reloaded both guns as he drove,
ready for any more action that might come our way.
It was dusk when we pulled away from the gas station. I was tired and
more than a little hungry. “The hell with going on, Kev. Let’s hole up
somewhere, find a motel and get us a bedroom.”
“You think it’s safe?”
“No, but I’ve had my bellyfull of fighting on an empty stomach. And even
the Mafia can’t start shooting us up where there are a lot of other people,
not without attracting attention and having the cops ask a lot of questions.
This last is what they don’t want, most especially.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Kev, they’ve found an almost surefire way of siphoning off millions of
dollars from their gambling palaces. Even if we should get away Scot-free,
which they won’t let us do, it would be worth it to them not to have to blow
their little scheme.”
“Mmmmm, makes sense.”
“You bet it does. Now the way I figure it, the mob won’t bother us unless
it can find us off by ourselves. Even then, they have to be sure about us.
They don’t go around murdering just any old body, on the off chance they
might have the right people.”
We found a posh motel, one of those with a big pool and built of aged
bricks and redwood. There was a small shopping center as part of the
complex. I felt, as my eyes ran over it, that I could stay here a day or two or
maybe even three and not mind it one little bit.
We registered as husband and wife. At least, Kev did, without asking me.
When he turned away from the registry desk with that silly grin on his face,
I knew he thought he’d pulled a fast one on me. I didn’t argue as we drove
to number 35, which was to be our home away from home. It suited me to a
tee, having Kevin O’Reilly in the same room with me. I could be on hand to
protect him, just in case the Family got lucky and found out where we were.
“First shower for me,” I told him as he was closing the room door.
I bent and slithered out of the dress I was wearing. This left me in bikini
panties and a sheer bra, plus garter-belt and stockings. Kev gaped at me; I
could see his reflection in the bureau mirror as I swivel-hipped my way
toward the bathroom. He even let out a startled yelp.
“You’re some kind of tease,” he yelled. “Just like that fairy godmother
dame.”
I paused at the bathroom doorway, turning to give him a profile view.
“Was she a tease, Kev?”
“You’d better believe it.” His eyes were all over my body. “You aren’t
much better, you know.”
I felt sorry for him, suddenly. Not only that, a tiny stab of jealousy seemed
to go through me. “What was she like, this fairy godmother?”
“Gorgeous,” he growled. “An absolutely ravishing body, with lovely
golden hair, and skin like peaches and cream.”
 “Oh! Is that so?”
He muttered, “A lot of good it did me. All she was interested in was
getting me to win money.”
“Poor Kevin. A blonde fairy godmother and a redheaded guardian angel!
And neither of them interested in him as a man. It’s a crying shame, it really
is.”
I slid into the shower and turned on the water. I rubbed soap all over
myself, I washed quite thoroughly, even my more intimate places. I hadn’t
quite made up my mind about O’Reilly. Sure, sure. I liked him, I wouldn’t
mind slipping between the sheets with him, but I had to keep my mind on
business.
The Mafia boys were out there in the dark somewhere, and I didn’t want
to get caught with my pants down, in a manner of speaking. When one
deals with the Family, it is a good idea to keep your guard up. And the
panties, as well.
Wrapping a big bath towel about my nudity, I stepped into the room to
select my clothes for the evening meal. O’Reilly was half dressed, scowling
bitterly, eyeing me as if I’d done him an injury.
Not only that, his clothes were scattered helter-skelter across the room. I
stared at them, eyebrows arched. “My God, you’re a real slob. Is this the
way your mother taught you to treat your things?”
His eyes were going over my bare legs, exposed all the way to their tops,
or almost. He merely shrugged.
I sighed. I didn’t know who took care of his things usually, but I saw that
if I didn’t want to live in a pigsty, I was the one who was going to have to
do the picking up here.
So I bent and picked.
Almost instantly, I yelped as something stuck my finger. O’Reilly had
turned away in haughty disdain or something like it, but he swung around
as I stared at the blood oozing from my finger.
“What is it?” he asked.
 “Do you always carry hidden pins on your evening jackets?”
I reached for the offending article, lifted it and turned back the lapel.
There was an electronic gadget there. Instinctively, I put my finger to my
lips and gave Kev a warning glance.
Very delicately I withdrew the thing from the lapel underside and studied
it. It was not the common or garden variety of electronic bug, but differed
from it in some way I couldn’t quite make out.
Across from me, Kev was making faces.
I said, “Talk away. This isn’t a listening device. God knows what it is.
How did you get hold of it?”
“My fairy godmother. That was how I heard her voice, like a whisper, as I
gambled. She must have been watching me from somewhere; she told me
where to go, what to bet.” Bitterly he added, “For a time there, I thought she
really was a family friend.”
I nodded. “She planted it on you when she went to your room for the first
time.”
“While she was tying that bow tie! Sure.”
I carried it into the bathroom, filled a glass with water and dropped the
gadget into it. Just in case it was a bugging device as well, I put the glass in
the medicine cabinet. I could have smashed the thing, I suppose, but I
wanted to turn it over to the N.Y.M.P.H.O. technicians in Los Angeles.
I went back into the room where Kev was just about ready. “Out,” I
ordered, making shooing motions with my hands. “Mama has to dress.”
His grin was elfin. “I thought I might stay to watch.”
I eyed him tenderly. “You want to tease yourself some more?”
“Well, no. Maybe not.”
“Then out. A girl needs her privacy at times like this. Go stare at the stars.
And—keep your eyes peeled for Mafia mobsters.”
He got excited. “You think they’re hanging around here?”
 “No, not really. They haven’t the faintest idea of where we are. I hope.
Anyhow, California’s a pretty big place in which to find two people.”
He gave my bare shoulders and legs a last, lingering look, but he went. I
told myself O’Reilly was a gentleman. He didn’t try to force me (not that he
could, you understand, as I’m an expert in judo and karate), and he
deserved something better than a shooing out of the motel room.
I giggled as I wriggled the flesh into a mini-skirted a-line dress and
slithered nylons up my gams. Maybe—just maybe—I’d be good to him a
little later. A tiny voice whispered in the back of my mind that I could stand
some lovemaking. All that violence today when I’d had to fight off those
Family soldiers had pumped plenty of adrenaline into my bloodstream. I
needed calming.
We ate in the motel restaurant, a rather imposing place, much to my
surprise, with fake cactus and Joshua trees here and there, and a sand-
covered floor with walls tinted to look like the sky with clouds. The effect
was supposed to make you feel you were dining out on the desert under the
stars. It was quite realistic, with the low lighting and all.
The food wasn’t too bad, either. You never know what kind of chef you’re
going to find in these wayside motels, but this motel had a good one. My
steak was thick and juicy, the salad crisp and seasoned to perfection.
O’Reilly felt like talking. He spoke to me of his boyhood in Klamath,
Oregon, of his older brother Sean—the one with all the brains, as he put it
—and of how Sean had called him at his apartment two nights before Kev
had left for Las Vegas.
“He’s hit it big, this time,” he grinned.
“Hit what? Is he prospecting for gold?”
O’Reilly gave me a dirty look. “Black gold, maybe. I’m talking about oil.
He’s made his surveys or whatever it is he does when he goes out oil
hunting, and he feels he’s sitting on top of an oil field that makes the Arab
oil look like a drop in the bucket.”
I sat up straighter.
“Here in Uncle Sam land?”
 “Right on. He did some preliminary studies, then leased a whole lot of
land. He confirmed his first beliefs. You know the Mohave Desert?”
“We-ell… .”
“It takes up big chunks of Nevada and California. I won’t go into all the
boring details, but it’s part of what’s called the Great Basin Province. This
includes the Great Basin desert, which stretches almost from Portland,
Oregon as far eastward as Rock Springs in Wyoming. It runs southward to
join the Mohave and the Painted Deserts, to form quite a stretch of land.”
“I think you lost me back there, but keep talking.”
O’Reilly grinned. “Sean thinks that this desert country is sitting on top of
the largest lake of oil the earth contains.”
I stared at him. “But that’s great! It means we’d be independent of Arab
and Venezuelan oil, if it pans out.”
“It’s why I went to Las Vegas, to try and get money for wells he could
drill,” he announced proudly.
“This can’t be,” I muttered.
I must have looked stricken, because Kev half rose from his seat and put
out a hand to me. I gave him a sickly smile, waved a hand to indicate I was
all right.
“Why do you say that? What’s wrong?”
“Everything. The Mafia knows about your oil wells, all about your
brother.”
“I—I guess they do. I mentioned Sean to that blonde bimbo who posed as
my fairy godmother.”
“Oh, they knew about you way before that. You don’t suppose they
picked you out of the blue to be their patsy, did you? The Family doesn’t
work that way. They had you investigated, Kevin. They knew all about you
—and Sean.”
I cocked my head at him. “As a matter of fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if
they met Sean long before they got around to you.” I nodded as I stared at a
fake cactus not far away. “Sure, that’s got to be it. They learned about him,
found out about you, that you were coming to Las Vegas… .”
“But—but what good would it do them to kill me?”
“They want the money you won. That, plus other monies they’ve
siphoned off from those gaming tables, will start them up in drilling for oil
—a legitimate business and a very lucrative one, mind you—without
costing them a damned cent.”
“But Sean owns the leases on those lands.”
His eyes got big as he stared at me. “Oh my God! You mean they’ve gone
after Sean, too? Killed him, as they tried to kill me?”
“I hate to say this, but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. Sean won’t be on his
guard, the way we were, and it’ll be a cinch to cut him down.”
“If they find him, that is.”
Interest quickened in me. “You mean he’s hiding somewhere?”
“Last I heard, he was coming to Los Angeles. He was going to stay at my
apartment.”
“Not very smart of him. That is, if he knows the Mafia are after him. He
may not, in which case your place would seem like a logical choice.”
His face got a hard, grim look on it. “If they’ve killed my brother… .”
“You’ll stay out of it. You’ll leave everything to me.” When he scowled, I
reached across the table to pat his hand. “I showed you today that I know
how to handle those buttons, didn’t I?”
His grin was boyish. “You sure as hell did. Frankly, I don’t know how I’m
alive right at this moment.”
O’Reilly got a sly look in his eyes. “As a matter of fact, I’m not at all sure
I am alive. Maybe I’m only dead and dreaming about this.”
“This sounds suspiciously like some kind of ploy. A line, as my father
might have called it. A trick whereby you hope to entice me into your bed a
little later.”
 “Not a bad idea. Not bad at all. It would certainly prove if I’m alive or
not, now wouldn’t it?”
We both laughed.
From the restaurant we wandered into the bar and listened to a pianist
tickle chords from a Baldwin, while we sipped a drink or two or three.
O’Reilly did most of the drinking, as a matter of strict reporting; I didn’t
dare for fear the Mafia might have its hoods waiting somewhere out in the
dark.
It was the drinks that did it, really. Until that moment when he finished his
third old-fashioned, Kevin O’Reilly was quite the little gentleman. Liquor
does strange things to men. Some it makes aggressive, some it turns
verbose or sentimental. Others—like Kev—it makes amorous.
Before I knew it, he was wrapped around me in the little booth where we
were sitting. His arm was about my shoulders, he had a hand on my right
thigh, and his lips were on my throat. His kisses felt good, I won’t deny it;
they sent little chills and ripples of delight up and down my girl-girl body.
That hand of his didn’t hurt, either. It slid up and down my nyloned thigh,
sometimes adventuring onto the soft flesh of my inner thigh. He didn’t go
all the way because I closed my legs on his wriggling fingers, keeping them
inches from their target.
He whispered sweet nothings into my throat, while all this was going on.
He told me he’d never known a girl like me, that I was more beautiful than
the Queen of Sheba—why her, I wondered?—and that if I didn’t fall in love
with him, he would go out and kill himself immediately.
Me, I told him, “Of course I love you, Kev. You’re the handsomest man
I’ve ever known. You have savoir faire and a knowledge of how to make a
girl feel great.”
“I do?” he asked rather tipsily.
I assured him he did while gathering up my Gucci bag, and signaling the
waitress for the check. I didn’t want O’Reilly to absorb any more liquor;
he’d had enough. When he had his wallet out, insisting that he was paying
for the tab, I took a twenty from his billfold and gave it to the girl.
 “Keep the change, honey,” I smiled, “and help me get this big lug to the
door for some fresh air.”
In the open, Kev seemed to snap out of it a little. “Feel fine,” he told me,
“just a bit tired, tha’s all. Didn’t get much sleep in Vegas.”
“That’s why they have beds in motels,” I assured him. “To let weary
travelers get their sleep.”
He leered at me. “Not sleepy,” he announced, veering slightly to the left. I
caught him, and hugged his arm.
O’Reilly leaned against the motel wall while I inserted the key and
opened the door. My hand switched on the light. I grabbed him, steering
him toward a bed.
He fell face-down across it and lay there. I studied him, put a pillow under
his head, dragged his feet up onto the covers, and smiled. O’Reilly was in
no mood to make love.
Too bad, too. I kind of felt like it, myself.
Morning came too soon for me. I growled under my breath, took a peek at
the snoring O’Reilly, and turned over for some more shut-eye. It was eleven
in the morning when I finally decided I might get bedsores if I stayed under
the sheets any longer.
O’Reilly was still snoring. Let him sleep, I figured, he needed all the rest
he could get. He would wake with quite a head, would need a cold shower
and a restorative.
I dressed in a slacks suit and phoned room service, ordering a big glass of
tomato juice for Kevin and a brunch of ham and eggs for me. Plus two pots
of coffee.
When the food arrived, I woke O’Reilly.
He took one look at me and groaned. I made him sit up and drink the
tomato juice and a cup of coffee.
“Strip down and shower,” I ordered.
He moaned and groaned, protested he was dying, that the Mafia had
poisoned his drinks, but he stripped naked and made his weaving way into
the bathroom. After a few seconds I heard running water.
When he came out in a towel, he was a little more his usual self. “Passed
out, didn’t I?” he asked bitterly, sipping black coffee and making a face.
“Trust O’Reilly to do something stupid like that, especially when he has a
gorgeous girl with him.”
“You’ve been through a lot,” I told him. “You were overtired, and just
weren’t up to a dozen martinis.”
“A dozen! Did I really have that many?”
“I lost count after ten. And stop looking so superior. You were maudlin
after three.”
He grinned shamefacedly. “I have a recollection of having kissed your
throat. It’s a nice throat, Cherry.”
“It’s a good throat for talking.” I reached for the telephone. “Call your
apartment in Los Angeles. I want to see if your brother is there.”
“Sean. Jeez, I forgot about him.”
“I haven’t. Go on, call.”
Nobody answered the ring, and O’Reilly looked stricken. “They’ve killed
him,” he moaned. “The bastards have killed him, same way they tried to kill
me, yesterday.”
“Maybe not. Maybe he’s out.”
“He said he would hole up and wait for me to call, to tell him whether I
had the money or not.”
“There’s only one way we’ll find out,” I admitted. “And that’s to go to
Los Angeles.”
An hour later, we were on our way.
 CHAPTER THREE

We headed west, past the dry surface of Soda Lake, the vast stretch of the
desert all around us. The air conditioner was on, but just looking out at all
that playa of sediment that was baked almost as hard as asphalt, was enough
to start the sweat glands working.
Cat Mountain was ahead of us, and the Cronise Lakes, and far beyond
these was the San Bernardino valley. Kev drove with his foot pushing the
pedal to the floorboard, despite my warnings that the national speed limit
had been lowered quite drastically by the energy crunch.
“I want to find Sean,” he growled. “I want to know if he’s all right. If I get
a speeding ticket, the hell with it.”
“Doing eighty isn’t going to change matters,” I informed him. But
secretly, I was glad he was pushing the Alfa Romeo. I wanted to find out
what had happened to Sean O’Reilly myself. I also wanted to pay my
N.Y.M.P.H.O. colleagues in Los Angeles a visit, to see what they might
have learned about the Family’s sudden interest in oil wells.
We swept through Victorville and Cajon Pass, slowing as we came into
the more populated areas. We came into Los Angeles with the bulk of
Mount Baldy and Morris Dam to our right, with Pasadena showing us the
way.
Kevin O’Reilly lived in an apartment building not far from Griffith Park.
He pulled the Alfa Romeo into the curb and took his hands from the wheel.
I expected him to open the door and get out, but he just sat there, staring at
the car ahead of us.
My elbow nudged him. “Let’s go, let’s go.”
“I can’t,” he whispered, and turned a white face toward me. His head
nodded at the building. “My brother may be in there. Dead. I—I just can’t
make myself go find out, Cherry.”
“Of course you can’t, Kev. Here, give me the keys. Let me go look first.”
 Sean O’Reilly was not in the apartment. As far as I could make out,
nobody had been in it since Kevin had left for Las Vegas. There was a very
slight film of dust over almost everything.
Kev was relieved when I told him. He grabbed me, held me. babbled
something about his gratitude. We went up in the elevator together, and
O’Reilly did what I had already done—as though he suspected the body of
his brother might be propped inside a closet—but found nothing suspicious.
“You can straighten up here,” I told him, “just as soon as you deposit your
money in the nearest bank.”
“Hey! You think the Mafia will stop payment on that check?”
“No way. That’s why I had you get it certified. Not only that, but if they
were to do that and you talked to reporters, it would give gambling in Las
Vegas a very bad name indeed. They don’t want that. Besides, they can
always get that money out by forging your signature—once you’re dead.”
“You sure know how to cheer a guy up.”
I chuckled and patted his cheek. “I have to go see my fellow Mafia
hunters. Kev. Now come on, let’s go put that bread in the bank.”
After our visit to the bank, during which the bank official who opened the
account for Kev damn near fainted at the size of the check, we went to eat.
Over a turkey sandwich and coffee, I told Kev to go back to his apartment
and wait. His brother might try to get in touch. I’d join him in a couple of
hours.
He didn’t like being parted from me, but I told him we might need help,
and N.Y.M.P.H.O. could furnish that. I flagged down a taxi, and gave him
the address.
The boys at N.Y.M.P.H.O. had been told I might pay them a visit. Mark
Condon had been on the phone to them, alerting them as to the
circumstances. I filled in the Director with some more info, about the oil
field Sean O’Reilly claimed to have discovered.
The director was a big man, blonde, whose name was Sven Thorson. His
blue eyes studied me as I spoke, then he pursed his lips. “If this is true,” he
said, “the Family could be onto something mighty big.”
 “Sean told Kevin that there’s more oil below the Amargosa than there is
in Saudi Arabia.”
Thorson nodded. “I’ll check into the leasing of the land, not that I think
there’s any hanky-panky about it; this Sean O’Reilly must know what he’s
doing. Our main concern is to keep him alive, to make certain the Family
doesn’t take over his discovery.”
“They know where Kevin O’Reilly lives, of course. They must know by
this time that we killed a goodly number of their buttons, too. I figure
they’ll send hit men to get Kevin, just as soon as they can make the
necessary arrangements.”
Thorson nodded. “We’ll keep an eye on his apartment. If we see any
suspicious characters hanging around, we’ll pass you the word, then move
in.”
I did some fast thinking. “By the way, I feel I ought to have a bit more
armament than my Gold Cup Colt. It would help to have a sub-machine gun
in my kit, with plenty of ammo.”
Thorson smiled grimly. “I’ll have one of the latest models ready for you,
any time you say.”
I stood up, slung my Gucci bag over a shoulder. “I’ll be in touch, then.
Just as soon as Kevin and I can decide on what course of action to take.”
Sven Thorson looked puzzled. “What do you mean, course of action?”
“We have to find out what happened to brother Sean, first of all. He was
supposed to be in Los Angeles, to meet Kevin. He wasn’t.”
Thorson made a face. I nodded.
“I think the same thing. That Mafia buttons got to him. If he’s dead, there
isn’t anything we can do, except try and get his interests in those leases
transferred to Kevin. If he is alive, he may be in bad trouble.”
As he walked me to the door, Thorson murmured, “Call on us for
anything, Cherry. And I’ll get that sub-machine gun for you. I’ll have
somebody drop it off at the apartment.”
 I went out into the California sunshine, walking briskly to a taxi stand. I
wanted to get back to Kevin O’Reilly to see what news he might have, if
any, about his brother. Could be that Sean had telephoned him while I was
at the N.Y.M.P.H.O. offices.
I paid the taxi driver and headed for the apartment’s front door. My head
was bent, I was deep in thought. I saw but paid no never mind to the two
well-dressed men standing in the apartment lobby, talking to each other.
As I stepped into the elevator, those two men came toward me. I glanced
up, saw their hard faces, and heard alarm bells going off inside my head.
Sven Thorson had promised to have other N.Y.M.P.H.O. agents watching
this apartment building, but there had been no time to send them here. The
Family had known where Kevin O’Reilly was living. They didn’t waste any
time, they must have learned the fate of their men I killed on the highway,
on the other side of Baker.
These men were here to get me, and Kevin O’Reilly as well. I told myself
that if I swung the Gucci bag around and tried to get at my Colt automatic,
they would be on top of me before I could do more than unzip the bag.
I had to play this cool.
So I crowded my curves into a corner of the elevator, eyeing the men as
they stepped inside the car. They waited until the doors slid shut before they
made their move, as I figured they would.
Then both of them whirled and lunged for me, their arms extended,
fingers apart to grasp and choke me. If I hadn’t been expecting something
like this, they would have had me cold.
But as they lunged, I dropped to the floor so all their hands had to grab
was air. At the same time I lunged forward, both arms apart, much in the
manner of a football lineman taking out two men with a block.
They hit my extended arms and fell forward.
As their hands struck the elevator car wall with a hollow thud, I rose and
leaped. My hand chopped toward a muscular neck, landing hard. I can
break six wooden planks with that blow.
 The man I hit sighed and slid down the side of the elevator, having lost all
interest in what was going on around him. I wasted no more time with him.
My hands caught the jacket of the second man and before he could turn, I
yanked back even as I drove my knee up into the small of his back.
He grunted and tried to grab me.
My hand came down across his nose. Since he was bent backward at the
moment. I had a perfect target. I heard cartilage crunch, saw tears spring
into his eyes. The nose is a very delicate apparatus. When you hurt it, tears
come by pure reflex action.
The man was blinded by those tears, for just an instant, but that was long
enough for me. I ignored the Colt in my Gucci bag to snatch the handle of a
revolver I saw protruding from his shoulder holster.
My hand yanked the gun free.
I jammed the barrel into his ribs.
“One yip out of you, buster, and you’re dead!”
The car halted, the doors slid open. I prodded the button with the gun.
“Pick up your pal and carry him out of this thing.”
He looked stubborn. I thought he might be going to risk a bullet in a
display of stupid heroics. He changed his mind when he looked into my
eyes. He saw death there. I wouldn’t have hesitated for a split second to put
a bullet in him, and he knew it.
He lifted his companion in a fireman’s carry and lugged him out, with me
behind him.
I had a problem. What was I going to do with these characters? I didn’t
want to gun them down in cold blood, but on the other hand I wasn’t about
to turn them loose. I did some fast thinking before I came up with the
answer.
“Tie up your buddy,” I smiled, reaching down to disarm the unconscious
man. “Use his belt, tear strips off his shirt, I don’t care how you do it.”
The man did what I told him. When he was done, I waggled the gun at
him. “Turn around, now.”
 I belted the back of his head with the revolver barrel. He sagged and lay
there. Then I rang the bell of Kevin O’Reilly’s apartment.
His eyes bulged when he saw the two bodies. “Tie up the man who isn’t
tied, then drag them inside.”
I waited to make sure he did a proper job. Then I gave him a hand and we
got them into the foyer. I looked over their inert forms at a white-faced
Kevin.
“Can you use a gun? Will you use it if they try anything funny?”
He nodded grimly, he was probably thinking of his brother, and of the
way other Family buttons had tried to kill us the day before yesterday.
He took the gun and stood back a few feet, scowling down at them. I went
and made a phone call, making sure I got Sven Thorson at the other end. I
told him what had happened, and he agreed to come and get the buttons, to
turn them over to the police.
“And bring the Tommy-gun,” I told him when we were about to hang up.
By the time Thorson arrived, the two buttons were conscious. They glared
at us, they muttered threats, but they went meekly enough. They knew
damn well a lawyer would have them out on bail almost before the jail bars
had closed around them.
The sub-machine gun was a beauty, a late model, complete with carrying
kit and a few bags of ammo. I patted it with a grim smile on my lips, even
as I thanked the N.Y.M.P.H.O. man.
Sven looked at us with worry in his eyes. “What now?”
I looked at Kev. “Did Sean phone?”
When he shook his head, sick worry in his eyes, I turned to Thorson.
“We’re going out to find him. I don’t know just where we’ll go; I don’t
even want to hint at it for fear the Family will learn about it. But we’re
going, we’re leaving in a few minutes, so we can get a head start.”
Kev would have protested but I cut him off with a look. I didn’t want him
to go blabbing, not even to Thorson.
“Just keep in touch,” Sven muttered as he left.
 When we were alone, O’Reilly said, “What do you mean, we’re going
looking for Sean? I don’t know where he is. Do you?”
“We know where he was,” I smiled.
He scowled over that for a few seconds, then his face brightened. “The
desert? Where he did his studying of the possible oil fields?”
“Sure. He must have left some traces.”
“He has a cabin there, he built it himself as a base. It isn’t very much, but
it serves him better than a tent.”
“You know how to find it?”
“I was there once, some months ago.”
“Get packed,” I told him.
While he was doing this, I went into the little kitchen and found a can of
coffee. I opened it, and made us a few cups. As we sipped, I told myself I
wouldn’t need any glamorous clothes where we were going, just cool
things. I had an old pair of hot pants in one of my bags, plus a sleeveless
shirt or two. I would take these, the clothes I was wearing, and the sub-
machine gun.
We would need one more thing.
“A different car.” I told Kev at the kitchen table. “The Family knows all
about the Alfa Romeo. They’ll be on the lookout for it. We’ll rent a
different one.”
He grinned at me, shaking his head. “You think of everything, don’t you?”
“It’s why I’m still alive, honey.”
It was dark by now, as I saw by a glance at the windows. I told Kev to go
out and get a car while I got ready. He looked startled.
“Do you think that’s wise? Suppose some more of those hoods come
while I’m gone?”
He didn’t mean that at all. What he had in the back of his head was the
fact that by going out into the night, he was making himself a target for the
Mafia. And maybe he had a point.
 “Okay. We’ll do it a different way. We’ll ring for a taxi to take us to a car
rental place. But first of all, I want to find one that’ll be open.”
It was no problem. What with the energy crisis, car rental outfits were
staying open longer, in the hopes of doing a little extra business. We found
a place and rang for a taxi. In half an hour we were hiring a VW Beetle and
cramming it with our gear.
We drove out of Los Angeles along the Pasadena Freeway, just about
retracing our drive from Vegas. I curled up on the suicide seat, told Kev to
wake me about one in the morning, when I would take the wheel.
I fell asleep at once. I am gifted this way, I can sleep almost anywhere. A
good thing, too, because with my schedule, my sleep habits are sometimes
most irregular. When I woke, we were in utter darkness, except for the
VW’s headlights, and moving along at a steady fifty.
“What’s the time?”
“Somewhere around two.”
“You let me oversleep.”
Kev grinned. “I’m not tired. Go on, sleep some more.”
“The hell with that. You need your rest, same as I do. Pull over. I’ll drive
now.”
O’Reilly may not have been sleepy, but ten minutes after we switched
places, he was snoring. It was a homey sound, that snoring, and it took us
past Soda Lake, where I made the turnoff onto 127. This was a more direct
way, and while the road was not as good, it served our purpose.
Dawn came up over the desert, tinting everything a sullen scarlet. I made
out cholla cactus and organ cactus in the distance, and once a sand lizard
scuttled across the roadway, right in the beam of my headlights.
I found a wayside gas station just as the owner was opening it.
Fortunately, he had gas. “Just got my shipment day before yesterday,” he
told me. “Got plenty now. Probably have plenty from now on, since not so
many folks come this way any more.”
 My thoughts turned to Sean O’Reilly. If he had really uncovered an oil
field, as Kevin claimed, our gasoline worries would soon be over. I paid
him, started up the Beetle, and off we went.
O’Reilly slept through all of this, mind. And he’d said he wasn’t sleepy.
Oh, well. Men!
He woke finally, stirring and grunting, groaning over cramped muscles.
He blinked at me blearily. then sat up.
“Hey, it’s full daylight.”
“Close to eleven in the morning.”
“Where are we?”
“You tell me, you’re the one who knows this area.”
He stared around him, got out the map, checked it, and then announced
we were very close to the state line between Nevada and California.
“Just keep going,” he told me.
I gave him a look. “I can’t really do much of anything else, you know,
unless I turn around and go back.”
We drove on, monotonous mile after monotonous mile. There is nothing
to see in the desert, except more of the cholla cactus and the organ pipes,
creosote bushes and a lot of sand. At any other time, I might have enjoyed
the scenery, bleak as it was, but I kept looking in the rear view mirror for
signs of a pursuing car, and occasionally scanned the blue skies for the
glimpse of a helicopter.
I saw nothing but road and sky and desert, so I felt we were reasonably
safe. The sub-machine gun was in the back seat, ready to my hand. It was
fully loaded, all I had to do was aim it and pull the trigger. Whoever came
hunting us would find more than they had bargained for.
It was in the early afternoon that Kevin gave a yell. “There! That dirt
road. Take it,” he shouted.
I swung onto it, glancing at him.
He grinned. “Twenty mule borax teams used to travel this way, who else
would use a thing like this?”
 I could well believe it. The road—if one could call it that—was rutted and
pitted. We bumped and bounced along at a slow rate of speed; I didn’t dare
do more than ten miles an hour.
I saw the cabin just as Kev lifted his hand to point. It was no more than a
shack, with a roof over it. It stood stark and lonely, framed against its desert
background. There was a door in its front wall, and a window. There was
also a tin smokestack jutting upward from the roof.
It wasn’t the Waldorf, that’s for sure.
Still, it was shelter, of sorts. As I braked the VW in front of it, I glanced at
O’Reilly. “Any port in a storm, right?”
He grinned. “It has a couple of beds and a stove. Sean didn’t need much,
out here. Just a place to keep his papers and his equipment. Sean’s a
bachelor, same as I am. There aren’t any curtains on the windows, you’ll
notice.”
I was prepared for grime and that messy look that seems to go with
bachelors, but as I opened the door —it creaked, on dried leather hinges—I
was surprised to find the interior neat and orderly.
The hut, it was no more than that, really, had an abandoned air about it. I
walked in, glanced around me, and said, “He hasn’t been here for some
time.”
I ran my finger over some dust on the table.
Kevin began searching, going to the desk and opening drawers. He went
to the twin bunks on either side of the cabin, ransacked the covers and lifted
the mattresses. His frown grew blacker, the longer he looked.
He turned to the shelves above the little stove where his brother used to
cook his meals. His hands went to the canned goods on those shelves,
pushing them here and there as his eyes ran over them. He turned to me
with a baffled look.
“His pantry is well stocked. Apparently he was ready to stay on here for a
long time. But his jeep is missing, and—his rifle.”
O’Reilly indicated an empty space on a nearby wall, where two wooden
pegs jutted out. “He keeps his gun there. In case he wants to do some
hunting. Or for protection against anybody who might want to rob him.”
I stared at him. “Does Sean carry a lot of cash with him?”
Kev gave me a crooked grin. “No, but he has his papers, his findings
about oil. They’d be worth more than any amount of cash he might have
with him.”
I felt stupid. “Sure. I forgot.”
I walked around the room for a few more minutes, then found my eyes
drawn to what looked like the scratches an animal might have made, on the
wooden wall below the empty rifle pegs.
“Kev,” I said slowly, “your brother has run away. The Mafia has been
nosing around, and he drove off somewhere into the desert.”
O’Reilly stared at me as if I were old Nostradamus come to life. “How
can you possibly know that?” he asked.
For answer, I pointed to the scratches.
 CHAPTER FOUR

His eyes went where my finger pointed, he grunted and came closer, to
bend down and examine those scratches himself. After a moment he
straightened up.
“You know Morse Code?” he wanted to know.
“It’s part of my job. You do too, or Sean wouldn’t have left those marks
for you to find.” I heaved a big sigh. “He must be all right, Kev. He’s just
gone away, to hide somewhere. He figured it wouldn’t be safe to drive into
Los Angeles.”
“We have to find him.”
He didn’t add, dead or alive, but it was in his eyes. They were sick with
worry. I went to him, patted his arm. My head jerked at the scratches.
“Chin up, Kev. Your brother’s a smart cookie. My money’s on him to stay
alive. He’s out there on the desert, holed up somewhere.”
“Without food, maybe. And without water.”
“So we go look for him.”
He nodded and went to the far wall, taking down a big canteen. He shook
it, then went to a pump that was fitted into a crude sink and worked the
lever. After a time, water gushed out.
“Trust Sean to find out where there was water before he built this place,”
he exclaimed. “Maybe he used a dowsing rod. He’s a great believer in
them.”
When the canteen was full, he slung it over a shoulder, giving the room a
last glance. “No sense in staying here. We’re going out to find him.”
“You know where to look?”
He said thoughtfully, “I think so. Last time I was out here, he showed me
a place—said it might make a great hideout if he ever needed one. I think
then he knew that there would be people who—might try to take his oil
fields away from him.”
“What are we waiting for?”
I got out the Thompson .45 caliber sub-machine gun, fitted a clip into it.
Kev watched me with wide eyes. I threw him a grin, saying, “Now we’re
ready. If anybody tries to stop us, this baby will do some fast talking.”
O’Reilly drove, and I sat in the car riding shotgun guard, so to speak. We
went along the narrow rutted road and made a turnoff toward the west. We
were in an area of barren soil and rocks, with just a few desert growths seen
here and there. The sun was hot. I felt baked inside the Beetle, which had
no air conditioning, and sweat stood out all over me.
In time the character of the land changed. We came to a riparian stream
where trees grew, and splashed our way through the water to continue on an
uplift, toward somewhat more hilly country. I am basically a city girl; one
part of this damned desert looked almost like any other part.
From time to time, I glanced at Kev. “You sure you know where you’re
going?” I asked.
“Isn’t very far away. I don’t want to drive the car too close, it’s a sure tip-
off from the air. We’ll leave it about a mile away, then walk the rest of the
way.”
“If I can,” I muttered.
He gave me a worried look. “Heat getting you?”
“I’ll lose twenty pounds before this is over.”
He grinned. “Take some water from the canteen.”
“No, that’s for Sean. He may need it more than I do.”
We saw the jeep, then, just as we came out of the shadows of a couple of
cactus plants. It stood alone, stark and gray with sandy dust.
A man lay sprawled beside it.
My heart came close to stopping. I whispered, “Oh, no!” Then I was out
of the VW before Kev had braked it and was running toward the dead man.
 Behind me, Kev yelled, “Don’t touch him!”
I skidded to a halt, shooting my eyes around me at the barren scenery.
There were plants and trees here, dried-up things that looked to be on their
last legs. It has always been a mystery to me how any life at all can exist in
a place like this, but I know life adapts itself to some weird climes.
O’Reilly came pounding up.
“It isn’t Sean,” he told me. “But Sean may have booby trapped him.”
“Yeah, man,” I breathed, skirting around the body of the dead guy. I took
a long look at what I could see of his face. “A Mafia button. No doubt about
it. I’ve seen too many of them not to know the type. But where’s your
brother?”
“Under the caliche.”
I stared at him. “How’s that again?”
Kev grinned with male superiority. “His hideout. A caliche. Okay, okay,
stop looking daggers at me. I’ll explain what I mean. You see that thing that
looks like a big rock?”
I stared at a huge boulder, somewhat flat, out of which shrubs were
growing. It was part of the scenery; it didn’t look out of place; your eye
would go right past it. Under it were some dark spots, like little caves.
“A caliche is formed by calcium carbonate deposits in the soil. It’s a layer
of hard-pan, really, that is many feet thick. It’s as hard as rock, almost. Well,
that’s where Sean is. See those dark places below it? They’re tiny caves. A
man could hide in there just about forever, if he had enough food and
water.”
Kev cupped his hands to his lips.
“Sean! It’s Kev. I have a girl with me, it’s all right to come out. Nobody
else is around.”
I stared as if hypnotized at those dark cave-mouths After a few seconds, I
saw something move inside one. A man came into view, lean, bearded, with
a mop of unruly black hair on his head like a lion’s mane.
 He had a hunting rifle in his hand, fitted with a telescopic sight. There
was a revolver in a holster at his side. He stood up, and stared hard at us.
His eyes were red, his mouth was twisted in pain. He nodded and started
stumbling in our direction.
I ran to him, setting my arm around him. “Lean on me,” I told him.
His black eyes smiled at me. “Good girl. I’ve been so cramped in there,
I’ve almost forgotten how to walk.”
Kev was beside us, hugging his brother with the arm that also supported
him. There was a delight, a pride, in his face that told me how much he
looked up to this older brother.
“You’ll need food. And water,” he told him.
“Just water. I drank the water from the jeep’s radiator, at night when it
was safe to come out. There’s not much left of it, now.”
“We have a canteen full,” I assured him.
We got him to the Beetle, made him sit inside it while I ran to fetch the
canteen. He took several sips, resting between each one, before taking a
longer swallow.
“What happened?” Kev asked.
“Strange men, three of them. Saw them watching me when I was making
my soundings. Felt there’d be trouble. Always carried my rifle and revolver
with me, after that first day I saw them. They went away after a time.”
He stared off across the desert, the canteen resting on a thigh. He was
weak. I got out our provisions and made him a bologna sandwich that he
wolfed down, then poured him coffee from a thermos. Kev gave him a
cigarette.
You could actually see some of the strain fade out of him, with food and
water inside him, and smoke coming from his nostrils. His eyes grew
brighter, glinted a bit with humor as he studied the two of us.
“Quite a worry to you, eh?” he chuckled.
“The main thing is, you’re all right,” I answered. “And your papers about
the oil field here. They’re safe?”
 Sean O’Reilly looked at Kev, questioningly. Kev O’Reilly chuckled.
“Don’t worry about her, Sean. She’s in this with us, whole hog. She saved
my life, she works for N.Y.M.P.H.O.”
We explained, between the two of us, everything that had happened since
the fairy godmother had visited Kevin. Sean kept staring at me the whole
time, nodding faintly every once in a while.
“So then, that’s it. The Mafia wants in.”
“All the way. They’re ready to set up a corporation to handle those oil
wells you haven’t drilled yet. Maybe they intend to do that. But Kevin has
five million dollars to help you finance your own corporation. We’ve got to
get you to Los Angeles and a lawyer to have him go to work for you.”
He nodded, saying heavily, “If we live that long.”
“We’ll live. You leave that part of it to me. It’s my job, and I’m used to it.
My main concern is making sure you’re all right, that you don’t have any
bad effects from your ordeal.”
“I’m a tough old bird. Take more than a few days under a caliche to do me
in.”
My head jerked toward the dead man. “You kill him?”
“It was him or me. He came walking out of the sunset only yesterday. I
think it was yesterday, it may have been the day before. No matter. He was
hunting me.
“He saw the jeep, of course, it was how he knew I was somewhere
around. I think a helicopter dropped him off somewhere, maybe came back
later to pick him up. Maybe the pilot saw him lying dead beside the jeep. I
don’t know.”
Instinctively, I glanced upward. “He may be back with reinforcements.
Might be a great idea for us to make tracks out of here, Kev.”
We climbed into the Beetle, Kev turned it and drove off. Sean sat there,
sipping from the canteen every once in a while. Me, I was hunched up in
the back seat scanning the skies. Sean was right about one thing, I felt. The
Family would be back, all right, had already been, in all probability. The
chopper pilot would have seen the dead man and made his report.
 Next time the Mob returned, they would come in force. And it wouldn’t
be long now, either. I rode with my hands on the sub-machine gun,
worrying.
We made it to the cabin without incident. Sean got out, walked up and
down, stretching his legs, his body. He felt a lot better, he reported. He was
coming back to normal. All he needed now was a bath, a thick steak, and a
good sleep in a real bed.
“You’re going to have to wait on all three,” I informed him. “We can’t
risk staying in that shack of yours, not even for an hour.”
Kev growled, “Don’t be silly. We’ll be safe enough in there. We can hole
up and fight them off, no matter how many men they send.”
“You listen to me,” I snapped, “and listen good. The Family buttons will
make mincemeat out of you if you stay in there. You two may know oil
fields, but you don’t know a thing about the Mafia. I do. I’ve fought them
everywhere. We’re going to travel by night, with our lights off, and if
anybody comes to bother us, we stop and fight them.”
O’Reilly looked at his brother. Sean studied me a moment, then smiled
faintly. “The lady speaks with authority, Kevin my boy. We do what she
says. She has become the general.”
Kev scowled, then shrugged. “Okay, okay. But what do we do until
darkness?”
“We go hide someplace, preferably under a tree that will cover us all, car
included.”
Sean frowned. “You expect an attack that soon?”
“Man, those characters are playing for billions of dollars, if I understand
the magnitude of your find. They’ll go all out to do us in, to get those
papers of yours.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, I think you’re right. Kev, I know a place where
we can hide until darkness comes. It’s something less than a mile away.”
“What about the cabin? Anything in it you’ll need?”
“I have it all on me.”
 We climbed back into the car and drove for a little distance, until we
sighted a stand of creosote bushes. They were tall, about twelve feet in
height, with interlocking branches under which something like the VW
could be hidden.
Sean said, “Usually these creosote bushes only go about three to six feet
tall, but nature favored them in this spot; they’re huge.” He grinned
suddenly. “If it rains, be prepared for a bad smell, however.”
It didn’t look like rain, for which I was very grateful. What with the heat
and our body sweat, we all smelled pretty ripe. I clambered out of the car
and pushed my way out of the creosote bushes to stand breathing in the
warm desert air.
Kevin came to stand beside me, grinning. He was a pretty happy guy; his
brother was safe, and we were alive. “You think we can make it back
okay?” he asked after a moment.
“That all depends on—”
The sound of a helicopter drowned out my words.
“Under the bushes,” I yelled, and we took diving leaps that scratched tears
in our clothes but hid us from the chopper-craft that came into sight a
second or two later. It was followed by a second and a third.
“They’ve brought a goddamn fleet with them!”
“Told you this was big business.”
We lay watching as the ‘copters swung above the shack, circling it. One
by one, they settled to the ground. Half a dozen men got out, each one of
them holding a tommy-gun.
I wriggled in ecstasy “Kev, get me your brother’s rifle, it has a telescopic
sight. And bring me my sub-machine gun.”
He eyed me as though I’d frothed at the mouth. “You aren’t going to start
trouble? They’ll go away if you let them alone.”
“Damn right I’m going to start trouble. If I don’t get them, we won’t dare
move away from here. They’ll follow and finish us off.”
“I don’t like it.”
 “Well, neither do I, if it comes to that, but I know my business. Now hop
to it.”
When he was back with the guns, I told him to stay in the car. “Just leave
this part of it to me. I’m an old hand at Mafia fighting.”
I began my crawl along the ground, aiming toward a slight rise in the
surrounding countryside that would give me a good view of the shack and
the men who were surrounding it and walking toward it very slowly.
My eyes scanned the terrain. There were some low, gray bushes, called
burro bushes, I believe, that would serve as camouflage. I crept closer,
closer, until they were all around me.
Then I slid the rifle forward.
A man leaped into view on the telescopic sight. I put my cheek to the
stock and let my finger curl about the trigger. I could see the man quite
clearly, the crossed hairs touched his chest.
I fired.
The man went sideways about three feet and fell heavily. His companions
thought the shot had come from inside the cabin, they turned their tommy-
guns on it and opened fire. Dust and splinters of shredded wood flew
through the air.
This gave me the opportunity to line up those hairs on a second man. He
went down like a pin before a well-aimed bowling ball. The others would
know pretty soon nobody in the cabin was shooting at them, they would
look around for the hidden marksman, and would maybe see me.
I got a third man before the other three woke up. They threw themselves
to the ground, they ran their eyes around the desert. This was fine by me.
The rifle was a good one, it was designed for big game hunting, and fired
a powerful bullet. Hidden by the burro bushes, I could pick my targets one
by one. The telescopic sight showed them up so I could hardly miss.
I sighted in on another.
Slowly, I squeezed the trigger. I watched as the man died with a neat
round hole in his head.
 It was as easy as picking sitting ducks off a fence. Then a bullet kicked up
sand at my elbow and I let out a faint yelp.
“Up there, up there,” a voice shouted.
I had forgotten about the chopper pilots. They were in their craft, one of
them was leaning out and pointing, shouting at the two gunmen who were
still alive.
My hands swung the rifle around. I got a good look at the pilot. He was
husky, with a blue-black beard stubble on his prominent jaw. His eyebrows
were thick, and he had a tight, cruel mouth. He was wearing a black leather
jacket, and his mouth was open, spewing words.
I fired.
He sank down out of sight. I wasn’t at all sure I had gotten him, to be
perfectly frank, because just as I squeezed off my shot, a bullet plowed sand
on my other side. I may have quivered just enough to the impact of that shot
to miss my own.
I wriggled backward until I was all but hidden by the little incline and the
gray burro bushes. I watched the two buttons, who were in the open. They
didn’t dare move. They didn’t dare stay there, either.
They must have been talking between themselves, because they leaped to
their feet and started running toward me. I guess they figured that one of
them would get me, even if I got his companion.
They didn’t know about the Thompson. I put down the rifle, shoved the
sub-machine gun into place. I waited then, letting them come closer,
closer… .
My finger hit the trigger.
The Thompson mowed them down as though they had been made of
cardboard. I swung about, aimed the gun at the choppers and let go. I could
see puffs where my bullets landed. One of the helicopters burst into flames.
A hand closed around my ankle.
I did a back-flip, or just about, and stuck the Thompson into Kevin
O’Reilly’s face.
 “You idiot,” I breathed.
He looked a little sick with the sub-machine gun muzzle almost up against
his nose. He swallowed a couple of times, hard.
“I—I had to know how you were doing.”
“So take a look.”
He looked, and let his breath out slowly. “Jeez! You’re hell on two feet,
you know that? You got ‘em all.”
I scowled. “I’m not so sure. One of those pilots—I think I missed him.
I’m going down and finish him off now.”
Kev put his hands on my wrists. “The hell you are. We’re getting out of
here. Nobody’s going to follow us.”
I turned from him to stare at the burning chopper, at the other two resting
beside it. The pilots were dead, I had caught them with my hail of bullets,
maybe Kev was right. It never paid to stretch your luck.
“I really ought to make sure.”
“No, come on back. We’re safe enough now, thanks to you. No need to
take any more chances. One of those men might still be alive—long enough
to put a slug in you.”
I let him drag me away.
Sean was out of the car, standing beside it, his face tight and worried.
When he saw that Kevin and I were all right, he eased up.
“It sounded like a battle,” he muttered, his black eyes going over me.
“You’re not hurt? Wounded?”
I shook my head, hearing Kev say, “Eight or nine men dead, back there,
Sean. You just can’t believe this girl. She looks like butter wouldn’t melt in
her mouth sometimes, but give her a gun or a Mafia button to get her hands
on and she damn near blows up.”
Sean smiled wryly. “A good thing for us, Kevin. We can never thank her
enough.”
 “Forget it,” I mumbled, getting into the Beetle, lugging both guns with
me. I sat in the back seat with the Thompson on one side, the big game rifle
on the other. “Let’s get moving, Kev. We have a long way to go tonight.”
Kev grinned at his brother. “She looks like Calamity Jane right now, with
all that armament, but you ought to see her in an evening gown. She’s
gorgeous.”
We drove all night long, stopping only to refuel at that same place where
we’d bought gasoline earlier today, tempting the owner to get out of bed
and pump for us by promising him a twenty dollar bill bonus.
He was so tickled he served us cold roast beef sandwiches and coffee. I
am afraid I ate like a little pig, but that roast beef was so good, the coffee
ditto, that I couldn’t help myself. With a full meal behind my panties, I slept
like a child all the long drive back to Los Angeles.
I woke up as we were going through Azusa. I blinked a little, took in our
location, then mumbled sleepily, “Better go straight to a hotel, Kev.”
“We have a perfectly good apartment,” he argued.
“Sure you do. And the Family knows all about it.”
Sean muttered, “She’s right, Kevin. The apartment is going to be off
limits for us, for a time.”
“But my clothes, all our things are there.”
“I’ll have them picked up, don’t worry,” I assured him. “You want to stay
alive to wear them, don’t you? Now do what mama tells you, like a good
boy.”
Sean chuckled, I heard Kevin grunt, and there was no more conversation
until I added, a few miles later, “Let’s stay at the Beverley Hills Hotel. It
has little bungalows as part of its complex. We can hire one.”
To the Beverley Hills we went, and after a bit of negotiation, managed to
register for one of these bungalows. It was set in a garden; the locale was
absolutely perfect. There were two bedrooms, one with twin beds.
“You boys can have the twin beds,” I offered. “I’ll stay in the other
room.”
 Kev glowered at me. I knew what he was hoping for, especially when his
eyes went up and down my girl-girl body, but we were here on business,
and I don’t mean funny business. I gave him a cheerful smile, but his scowl
grew even blacker.
I sat myself at the telephone and made some calls. I wanted N.Y.M.P.H.O.
to know we were safe, that we would wait on them to visit us. Sean listened
quietly, across the room, smoking a cigarette, and nodding his head
occasionally.
When I hung up, I told him, “They’ll fetch our things from the apartment.
At night, and quietly. If the Mafia have men watching the place, they won’t
suspect a thing.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“They’re experts.”
Kevin said, from the bathroom, “You want to shower first, Cherry?”
We were all showered and the boys were shaved when a delivery truck
pulled up with our luggage. Men in gray uniforms brought bags in, put them
on the floor. One of the men was Sven Thorson.
I introduced him to Kevin and Sean. He announced that he had made
arrangements with some lawyers and was going to take Sean O’Reilly with
him, to hide him out at a little ranch that N.Y.M.P.H.O. kept for just such
emergencies in the San Fernando Valley.
“You’ll want to set up your corporation, make the necessary contracts
with drilling outfits, do whatever it is you need to do to get those oil wells
gushing.”
Sean looked astounded. “You mean you’re going to help me?”
Thorson smiled grimly. “It’s to our advantage to help you. Our outfit
fights the Mafia, and if the Mafia wants those oil wells of yours, it’s up to
N.Y.M.P.H.O. to see they don’t get them.”
“But this is wonderful! I’ve been worrying how I’m going to go about
this, especially with those mobsters on my back.”
 “You’ll operate from our ranch. It’s heavily guarded, and no one can get at
you there. We can have lawyers out there first thing in the morning, and
have oil drillers contact you. Any other help you’ll need, don’t hesitate to
call on us.”
Sean glanced at me. “Then we’re home safe?”
“Well, not exactly. The Family will still be after you, but we hope—with
Cherry’s help, and that of your brother—to keep them in play elsewhere
while you go ahead with your plans.”
“Hmmm. Isn’t that dangerous?”
“It’s part of Cherry’s job.”
“But it isn’t part of Kevin’s.”
Kev O’Reilly cleared his throat. “Don’t worry about me, Sean. We’re in
this together. You go do what has to be done. I’m no good at that. I’ll be
better working with Cherry.”
He leered at me. I had changed into a jump suit with nothing on under it,
and the way Kev kept eyeing me, I got the idea I might have overdone it.
But a jump suit is comfortable, I felt at ease in it, and if Kev was getting an
eyeful of my breasts and the way my nipples were standing up, let him.
I wanted him to have the hots for me.
In a way, it was part of my plan.
 CHAPTER FIVE

Just as soon as the door closed behind Sean and the N.Y.M.P.H.O. agents,
Kev put his arms around me. He had been standing very close. I could feel
the nudge of his manhood, as a matter of fact, against my buttocks while we
were saying our farewells.
Now his arms enclosed me and his hands lifted to my breasts. His palms
slid under them, cradled them gently. I won’t be a hypocrite and say I
wasn’t affected by this big Irishman; I was. He had a nice touch, he didn’t
grab, but sort of caressed as he touched.
“Mmmm, that feels good,” I whispered, rubbing my behind against him
and feeling him respond.
“Faith, now. Can my ears be deceiving me?”
I giggled as I turned in his arms and put my own arms up around his neck.
“Kev, you darling! Don’t you realize how much I’ve been attracted to you?”
“You have?”
Surprise was in his blue eyes, and he gave a little gasp when I nudged him
where it counted, with my thigh. His arms tightened, holding me even more
closely.
“I couldn’t throw myself at you with those mobsters all around us, now
could I? Or with your brother present? We wouldn’t want to shock him,
would we?”
“Begorra, as my sainted grandfather used to say. You aren’t just feeding
me a line, are you, darling?”
I was, but I didn’t tell him so.
I let my red lips pout up at him invitingly, to take his mind off motives
and reasons and replace them with good, healthy lust. Kev caught on. He
lowered his mouth and we kissed.
 I’ll say one thing for O’Reilly. He sure knew how to kiss. Our lips melted,
our tongues slithered back and forth, and his manhood blossomed forth. I
nudged it some more with my thighs, kissing him back as best I could, and
my best is very good indeed.
When we broke apart to breathe, stars glinted in his eyes. “We have time
for—”
“Uh-uh,” I said with a shake of my head.
His hands closed on my arms, half lifting me off my feet. “Are you
teasing me? If you are… .”
“Of course I am, lover. But only to make you stronger for tonight.”
“Tonight, is it? What’s wrong with right now?”
There was nothing wrong with right now, really, except that I didn’t want
to rush things. I wanted Kev to be very attentive to me, I wanted him so
attentive that when we went out together, any Mafia buttons that followed
us would think we weren’t paying them any attention. I wanted them to
concentrate on us, not on Sean O’Reilly. In other words, I was using Kev
and myself as decoys. It didn’t matter if they picked up our trail, we would
never, lead them to Sean. But it would keep them busy, giving Sean the time
he needed to make those arrangements.
I didn’t dare tell O’Reilly this, however. He would overact, and maybe tip
off the mobsters.
I hesitated about answering him, then whispered, “I want you to need me
very much. It’s silly, I know, but I’m a girl and I like you and… .”
The helpless girl routine was the proper note to strike, I soon discovered.
Even sooner, because the words were hardly out of my mouth than O’Reilly
had his hands on my buttocks, was lifting me and pressing my pudenda
against his straining flesh.
“Doesn’t that feel as if I want you very much? Damn it, Cherry! How can
you let me suffer like this?”
“Oh my! Yes, Indeed!”
“Then, come on.”
 He swung me about, his arm at my middle, and practically ran me into
one of the bedrooms. My bedroom, as a matter of fact.
“Kev, give me a chance,” I exclaimed breathlessly, as he swung me
toward the bed.
“No way,” he growled.
His hand was on the zipper of the jump suit. He had run it down below
my navel before I had a chance to do anything more than catch my breath.
My breasts plopped out into view. They are big and white with large brown
nipples. They shook and jellied naked before his bulging eyes, an instant
before he bent his head to kiss them.
“Kev! Ohhh, Kevin!”
He was like a wild man, he couldn’t get enough of my mammaries. I
loved every second of it, I writhed and twisted against him. I unbuttoned his
shirt and started pulling it out of his trousers.
His hands were just as active as my own. In seconds the jump suit was
down to my hips, and he was kissing every part of my body he could reach.
He was panting like a stranded whale, and I wasn’t very far behind him.
I have a very low boiling point. I suppose it’s because so much of the time
my life is up for grabs while I’m fighting the Mafia. Danger does that to
people, increases the libido. It did to me, anyhow.
It took Kev a few seconds to strip me, even with me helping him. When I
fell back on the bed, my thighs more or less apart invitingly, and he stared
at me for a few agonized seconds before he began ripping off his clothes.
Honest, I don’t know whether Kevin O’Reilly had any love technique or
not. At the moment I didn’t care. He was like an overeager caveman, where
I was concerned. When he was naked, he paused a moment, then leaped on
me.
He plunged deep.
Our hips went mad, for a long time. He had staying power, and brought
me to a crashing crescendo again and again, before he finally melted in his
own bursting explosion. We held onto one another, clinging tightly,
murmuring sounds that made no sense.
 “My God,” he whispered after a time. “I never knew anybody like you.”
He rolled off me, but held my body in his arms so that he brought me on
top of him. We lay like that for a few moments, until I felt him beginning to
stiffen again, inside me.
“Kev, I don’t want to wear you out,” I whispered.
“You won’t, never fear. I’ve been in heat ever since that fairy godmother
visited me in that Vegas hotel room.”
“So! You got the hots for her and you worked it off on me.” I wasn’t mad,
I didn’t believe what I said, I was only teasing him.
O’Reilly took me seriously. “Don’t be a stupid gossoon, Cherry. You’re
the only girl for me. I’ll prove it to you, here and now.”
He did, too, with me on top of him.
After about half an hour we collapsed again.
I think we both slept for a little while, because when I finally stirred, it
was nearly dark. My stomach was empty. It told me I had been abusing it
lately. The last thing I had eaten was cold roast beef sandwiches.
Kev was sleeping soundly, so I ran naked to take a shower before I woke
him up. When I did, he took one look at me and reached. I darted to one
side, breasts jiggling, and shook my head at him.
“Oh, no you don’t. This girl is starving, Kevin O’Reilly. She wants to be
fed. A good meal, this time. Not just something to be gulped down.”
He grinned. “Faith, that’s not a bad idea. I think I’m empty myself. A
good steak would please my taste buds, I must say.”
“The shower’s free. Go on, get dressed. For good, Kev. I want to hit the
night spots.”
He glanced at me. “Is that wise?”
We could hardly catch the Family’s eye holed up in this bungalow, no
matter how much fun it was. I didn’t want to come right out and tell Kev I
wanted the Mafia to spot us, so I had to lie a little.
“I deserve a good meal and some dancing.” I pouted.
 “That you do,” he laughed. Then he added, a scowl darkening his brow,
“Isn’t there any danger? I mean, it seems all I’ve been doing lately is
running from the mob. If they see us, won’t they cut down on us?”
“And risk losing the only people who can lead them to Sean? Of course
not. They’ll give us plenty of rope, the only trouble being that we aren’t
going to have anything to do with Sean. We’ll give them a nice runaround.”
I hadn’t meant to tell Kev quite so much, I bit my tongue after I’d blurted
it out, but he took it with a nod of his head and a satisfied grin.
“Good. It makes me feel I’m doing something to help,” he told me. With a
wave of his hand he added, “Not that I wouldn’t like to just have a good
time with you. We’ll do that too, of course. But knowing I’ll be helping
Sean by being seen around town with you—well, it makes me feel wanted.”
“Oh, go get dressed,” I laughed.
Me, I slid my curves into a backless and almost frontless halter-top dress
of black chiffon, and locked a gold and diamond necklace about my throat.
The mirror told me I was absolutely adorable. So did Kev, when he saw me.
He was wearing mod clothes himself, having donned a suede pigskin suit
with a wool turtleneck under it, that made him look as if he’d stepped out of
the pages of a male fashion magazine. He seemed a little embarrassed at
first, muttering something about having bought this in a fit of weakness, but
I assured him it was just the thing.
“It’ll keep the buttons from recognizing us too soon,” I laughed. “We look
like a young couple on our way up the corporate ladder. Now on to our
evening off.”
We took a taxi, because Kev insisted he could have his hands free if he
didn’t have to do the driving. We went first to Chasen’s on Beverly
Boulevard, where we partook of their specialty—hobo steaks—and eyed a
couple of movie stars who chose to dine at a table not far from our own.
The meal was superb, the atmosphere congenial, and there wasn’t a mobster
in sight.
We made it to the Ahmanson Theater in the Music Center just seconds
after the curtain had risen. We enjoyed the show, it was like a vacation for
us, in a sense. No mobsters there, either.
I discovered as we taxied homeward, that I didn’t have to fight off Kevin
O’Reilly’s wandering hands; he was too pooped to pop. He almost fell
asleep before we made our way into the bungalow, as a matter of fact. I told
him to go to bed, that he’d need his rest for tomorrow, and he didn’t even
argue.
Me, I did a little worrying as I slithered out of the black chiffon number.
Maybe I expected too much of the Family. I figured for sure they’d have
spotted us, and would have made some sort of move to indicate to me that
they had their eye on us. It was no dice. Maybe our disguises were too
good, I told myself glumly, as I crawled between the sheets.
Next day we drove to Malibu in the VW, wearing casual clothes over our
swimsuits. We went swimming, and dawdled on the beach picking up a
suntan. I looked everywhere for some sign of a Mafia button.
Three days later, I was still looking. Unsuccessfully, I might add.
“Nobody knows us,” I complained to Kevin. “Maybe we ought to get back
into dirty clothes, and put grime on our faces.”
“What the hell. We’re having a ball.”
“That’s what bothers me. If the Mob isn’t after us, can they have found
Sean?”
He sat up straighter, giving me a hard look. We were on the beach, he in
his Jantzen, I in my Riviera bikini, which is very close to the minimum
allowed by law in public places.
“We’d have heard. Wouldn’t we?”
I nodded slowly. “I think we would, yes. Kev, I’m going to phone Sven
Thorson, and see what he can tell me.”
Thorson was all but hugging himself with glee. “Matters couldn’t be
going better. The O’Reilly Corporation is just about in full swing, lawyers
have been working around the clock, and drilling is to begin in about a
month.”
“All Sean needs right now is some money. And you tell me Kevin can
produce that.”
 “He can and will, whenever you say.”
“Good. I’ll be in touch.”
“Hey, hold on. Sven, I’m worried. We haven’t struck pay-dirt, not at all.
The Family should have spotted us by now. Surely they must have their
soldiers out hunting for us?”
“So they can’t find you. So what?”
“I don’t like it. This is too big an operation for them to have given up.
They must be planning something.” My teeth nibbled my lower lip. “I wish
I knew what it was.”
He was silent a moment. Then he said, “You know what I think? They’re
looking like crazy but they haven’t been looking in the right places.”
“Yeah,” I said slowly. “I dig you.”
When I hung up, O’Reilly growled, “What’s the big rush to get the Mafia
on our backs again? You ask me, it doesn’t make sense.”
I glared at him. “Just because you and your brother begin digging for oil
wells doesn’t mean this thing is over. The Family will keep after you and
keep after you until they find a way to break you and get those oil wells for
themselves—if I can’t stop them before they do.”
He goggled at me. “How can you stop them?”
“By getting the don behind the whole thing, the man who’s been
siphoning off that loot from Las Vegas, the man who has his eye on your oil
wells.”
He pondered that, nodding. “Yeah. Even after the business gets going
good, you mean they’ll still be able to hit us. Kill us, take everything away
from us.”
“Now you’ve got it. I want them to make a move so I can zero in on them.
And they never will—because they don’t know how to. They can’t find
hide nor hair of us, Kev. And I don’t like it.”
I was still in my bikini, I hadn’t changed when we’d arrived back at the
hotel bungalow. I walked up and down, thinking, vaguely aware that
O’Reilly had his eyes glued all over my bod.
 “Forget it, Kev,” I said as gently as I could, when he got to his feet and
moved toward me. “I have work to do.”
“Right now?” he asked plaintively.
I patted his cheek. “No better time to get going than this very minute. You
understand, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess I do. Where are we going?”
“Not ‘we’. Just me.”
I got dressed in the bathroom, so as not to tempt him any more than I’d
already done. I wriggled into panties and garter-belt, slid nylons up my
gams, and worked a simple shirt-dress over my curves. I made sure my
Gold Cup Colt was in my Gucci bag, then blew a kiss at Kevin O’Reilly
who was slouched down in an easy-chair, glowering at me.
“Back soon. pet. Keep the hormone fires burning.”
Then I went out and found a taxi, telling the driver to take me to the
O’Reilly apartment near Griffith Park. I sat back and did some fast thinking
as the wheels got under way.
I knew of no better way to put the Mafia bloodhounds on my scent than
by showing myself where one of them, at least, ought to be more or less
permanently parked, awaiting me. If I had the Family don behind this caper
figured right, he would be searching the city for me, but in order to make
sure he wasn’t missing out on any bets, would also have a lookout posted
near that apartment. It was the only place in L.A. that he knew for sure one
of the O’Reillys or I might show up.
I told the taxi driver to let me off a block from the luxury apartment. I
figured that by walking the rest of the way, I’d give the button who was
eyeing the place a good chance to see me.
My eyes were always moving as I strode along. I didn’t move my head,
only my eyes, not wanting to tip anybody off that I was expecting to see
anyone. I saw no one suspicious, there were people around, as there almost
always are, but I couldn’t pinpoint anyone as being Family.
I walked into the lobby, paused to make sure I had the key Kev had given
me, and made my way to the elevator. I remembered quite vividly the time I
had been in this elevator and two Mafia hoods had come in after me. I
tensed a little but relaxed when the doors closed with me alone inside the
car.
The doors opened. I went down the hall.
I let myself into the apartment. There was utter silence, but the short hairs
at the base of my pretty neck stood up. It was like an electric tension in the
air.
For a few deep breaths, I stood perfectly still. My hand unzipped the
Gucci bag, my fingers went around the butt of the Colt automatic. I told
myself I was being overly melodramatic, that my imagination was working
overtime.
Nobody was in here with me. My nerves were on edge, was all.
Then a voice said, “Drop it, you hole!”
Now, “hole” is the term the Mafia uses for a female. Inelegant, of course,
but there it is. I could see nobody, but I knew damn well I’d heard that
voice.
I said out loud, “You bet.”
The Gold Cup thudded to the floor. A closet door opened and a man came
out. He was slim, dapper, his eyes were set too close together, and he
looked like a snake in clothes. A hit man, my mind informed me.
Still, if he were a hit man, why didn’t he shoot? The answer came almost
as soon as I asked myself the question. He wasn’t interested in me. To kill,
that is. I was useless to the Family, dead. Alive, I might lead them to the
two O’Reillys.
So I said brightly, “What is this? I came here looking for Kevin O’Reilly.
I haven’t heard from him in a long time and—”
“Shut your face,” the dapper man snarled.
He came a couple of feet closer. His eyes were black and hard. He
wouldn’t have hesitated to pull the trigger, except that he’d probably had
orders not to.
 “We know you work with those two,” he said softly. “We know you were
with them out there in the Amargosa Desert.”
I stared at him. “How can you possibly know that? It isn’t true, you
know.”
He smirked. “We got ways. We know. So don’t give me any of that crap
about not being there. You killed a few of our boys. You. Not the O’Reillys.
I been warned to be careful around you. So march ahead of me, nice and
easy.”
I walked into the living room and stood there, waiting for orders. He came
up behind me, but not too close. When he told me to sit down, I did, and
crossed my nyloned legs. His eyes dropped to study them, even as he
reached for a telephone.
His finger dialed. He had to look at the numbers on the dial-face to do so,
but he lifted his eyes often enough to tell me I shouldn’t dare make a funny
move.
“Get me the boss. It’s Ricco.”
There was a little wait. Then: “I got her, boss. The dame, the redhead.
She’s the one, all right, just like Tony said. Naw, she don’t look dangerous,
not dangerous at all.
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be careful. I remember how Tony talked about her. I’ll
wait here for you.”
He put the phone down and grinned.
“Now, you bitch, we’re gonna find out where the O’Reillys are holed up,”
he told me. “You may not think you’ll tell us, but we got ways and means.”
“I’m sure you do,” I smiled, crossing my legs the other way so that he had
a good look at my nyloned gams and the bare skin of my thighs above the
vamps. “I’d be happy to tell you anything I know but the O’Reillys and I
parted some days ago. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of them since.”
He snorted, so I asked, “Mind if I smoke? Look—here, inside my bag. No
gun, just my wallet and the cigarettes and some various assorted female
things. Compact, lipstick, some tissues and—”
 “Go ahead. Smoke.”
I lit the cigarette. I smoked it. Then I began to wriggle around in the easy-
chair “Look, I have to go to the potty. Do you mind?”
“I come with you,” he said after a moment.
“So come ahead. When you gotta go, and all the rest of it. You know. So
you get an eyeful. Who cares?”
I walked ahead of him into the bathroom and left the door open. I lifted
my skirt and while he was gaping at my nyloned legs and bare thighs, I
started to pull down my panties.
The hit man sucked in his breath when he saw my red pubic bush. He
came a step closer. I sat down on the seat.
There was a rug in the bathroom, a tiled floor underneath. The hit-man
was standing on the rug, so I fastened my high heels in the shag, drew a
deep breath, and drew them toward me.
The hit man went over backwards, yelling.
 CHAPTER SIX

I came off the toilet seat like a missile off its launching pad. I rammed
into his body while it was still in the act of falling. My hands caught his gun
wrist and hammered it against the floor.
“Goddamn bitch,” he snarled.
I brought the top of my head down against his nose. He yelled. I kept
hammering him with my red-haired noggin as he tried to squirm free. His
gun-hand loosed its hold on the revolver, and he lifted both hands to grab
my hair.
For a second, I thought he’d tear out that hair by its roots. Tears came into
my eyes. I made a V for victory sign with the forefinger and middle finger
of my right hand and drove my red fingernails into his eyes.
He screamed, his body thrashing.
His hands let go of my hair to clasp his eyes.
I chopped down at his throat with the edge of my hand, in a blow that
would have splintered wood. You can kill a man this way, I wanted to kill
this bastard, but I wasn’t sure whether I’d done so. All I knew for sure was
that he was out cold.
I got to my feet, looked down at him. He was still alive, he was breathing
fitfully. I looked at his cannon, then away. I didn’t want to shoot him; the
shot would make too much noise. Then I saw the potty.
My hands grabbed his jacket. I dragged him back into the bathroom,
sliding him along the shag rug. I lifted him, bent him over, and stuck his
face down into the water.
I held him there a long time.
When I let go of him, he was dead. Drowned.
No sound, you see. I straightened up, took a couple of lungsfull of air,
then ran for the lobby. Whoops! Forgot, in my hurry to get away. Back into
the bathroom I went, searched the jacket and trousers pockets of the dead
man, and came up with a wallet. Nothing more except some car keys.
I stuffed them into my Gucci bag, snatched up the Gold Cup, and let
myself very carefully out of the apartment. Common sense told me the
Mafia buttons would come up in the elevator, so I used the stairs.
I didn’t dare use the lobby for fear I might meet the Mafia men who were
coming to get me. I ran out the back way and up a narrow alley where
refuse cans were stacked. I stepped out onto the sidewalk and did some fast
walking.
I had contacted the Family, all right. With a vengeance. But how did it
help me? I thought about that while I searched the streets for a cruising taxi,
without luck.
My feet carried me into Glendale before I felt it was safe enough to
telephone Kev to come and get me. He was full of questions.
As I paced up and down, waiting, I went over everything that had
happened in my mind. I told myself that maybe it wasn’t a total loss, after
all. The Mafia knew I was in Los Angeles, now maybe it would intensify its
search for us.
Maybe they hadn’t even begun to look, assuming that the O’Reillys and I
would go to the apartment, like idiots. At least, I’d stirred up something of a
hornets’ nest, I’d given the don who was in back of this caper something to
think about. He ought to have his buttons out all over the city, after this.
Kev was bubbling over with questions when he pulled to the curb. I clued
him in on the details while he groaned and shook his head.
“You take too many chances,” he scolded when I was finished.
“It’s what I get paid for, it’s my job. If I walked off and left you and Sean
alone now, those bastards would eat you up the way you do a good dinner.”
As he drove, I slid the dead man’s wallet out and checked its contents.
Outside of the driving license, that told me the dead man was Ricco Amelia,
and his address, there wasn’t very much. I shoved the wallet back into the
Gucci, and brooded.
 O’Reilly saw my frown, and asked, “Now what’s the matter? You look as
if you’d lost your last friend.”
“I hate delays. I get edgy. I’m a girl of action, in case you haven’t
guessed. When I see a problem I like to attack it. And these Mafia buttons
aren’t giving me a place to hit.”
“Jeez! You’ve hit them all over the place. What are you, some kind of
mass murderer?”
I shot him an icy look. “You miss the point entirely. You don’t kill the
spider by tugging at the edges of his web. You have to go into the heart of
the web, where the spider is. And this spider—the don—keeps himself
hidden away. All I’ve been able to get at is underlings.”
Kevin O’Reilly chuckled. “You’re stripping him of his men, at any rate,
Cherry.”
“That’s no help,” I remarked bitterly.
“It may be. You never know.”
“How? Just tell me how?”
He shrugged. “I can’t. It was just a crazy idea, I guess.”
It was not so crazy, at that. But I wasn’t to know this for quite some time
to come. I rode back to the Beverley Hills Hotel in something of a peeve. I
had hoped to lure the Mafia after me, to let them know where we were
staying, so that they might attack and we could learn the name of their don
and where to find him.
Instead, all I’d done was kill a hit man.
For the next couple of days. Kev and I went to Malibu Beach to swim, we
visited the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and went to the night spots like The
Troubadour and The Roxy. We danced and drank and sometimes made love.
It was a great life. I should have been happy. But I wasn’t getting
anyplace. This fact was driven home to me by my Coordinator. Avery King,
who placed a person-to-person call to me at the hotel bungalow.
“How’re things going, Cherry?” was his opening remark.
“Not so good, Chief. Things are too quiet.”
 “Stir them up.”
“I’ve tried. Honestly, I’ve done everything I could. But the Family doesn’t
seem able to find us.”
He made a sound of utter disgust. It was almost a Bronx cheer. Avery
King is too much the distinguished citizen to let himself emote with a
raspberry. But he can convey an awful lot with a snort. And with words.
“Are you holed up somewhere with a man? Don’t you ever go out on the
street? Let people see you, Cherry. This is—”
I broke in, blazing mad. I snarled, “That’s all I have been doing, goddamn
it! I’ve been here and there and everywhere. And nobody pays the slightest
attention to me.”
His chuckle alerted me to the fact that he had been giving me the business
for a purpose. His voice was honey itself as he murmured, “That’s my girl.
Get mad. You think better when you lose your temper, sometimes.”
“I’m mad, all right.”
“Then I’m satisfied. Bye for now. And keep up the good work. There’s
nobody I’d rather have on that situation out there than you.”
He hung up, leaving me staring at the phone. Avery King is and always
has been, something of a puzzle to me.
From the telephone, I glanced at my wristwatch. I could hear the shower
going, so I yelled, “Hurry up. I’m next. Tonight we’re going to Chavez
Ravine to watch the Dodgers play. There ought to be somebody there to see
us.”
We never went, however, because at that moment the doorbell sounded. I
yelled. “Are you expecting anybody?”
“Not me.”
I went to the door, opened it.
A Mafia button stood there with his hand raised to knock at the door. I
have quick reflexes, and I let them out in a single swooping movement. I
grabbed his upraised arm, his jacket, and yanked.
 He let out a squawk, falling inward. I hit his neck with the edge of my
hand as he went flying past me.
His body made a thud. Kevin came to the bathroom door with a towel
around his middle. “What in hell? Who’s that?”
“A member of the Family.”
“Are you sure?”
He came into the room on bare feet, staring down at the inert figure. I
gave him a scornful glance, then knelt and turned the man over.
I saw a familiar face, though I couldn’t quite place it. I had seen this face
before. Somewhere. Ah, but where? I stared down at the bluish-black
stubble on his prominent jaw, at the thick eyebrows and tight, cruel mouth.
My eyes ran over his short, husky body.
“Have you ever seen this hood, Kev?”
“No. Never.”
“Well, I have.”
I reached into his jacket, pulled out a gun from his shoulder holster and
passed it to O’Reilly. Then I sat back on my heels and waited for him to
open his eyes.
Frankly, I didn’t know what to make of all this. If the Mafia had finally
located us—it had taken them long enough!—why would they have sent
one man to come knocking on our door like a Fuller Brush salesman? They
should have come in force, with tommy-guns blazing.
The man groaned, stirred.
His eyelids lifted. I bent over him, and hissed, “If you so much as make a
move, I’ll slit your throat.”
He grinned up at me, stretching a little, then relaxing as though to make
himself comfortable. “Not me, lady. This is the O’Reilly residence, isn’t
it?” When I nodded, he added, “Then I’m right where I want to be.”
I digested that, still eyeing him suspiciously. “Where’s the rest of your
mob?”
 “Nowhere near here, I hope. I came alone because I need help. I figured I
could get it here.”
“Help,” I repeated. “What kind of help?”
“Protection from the boys.”
I said, “I’ve seen you somewhere before, I can’t recall just where.
Suppose you tell me, since you know all the answers.”
He chuckled. “I was one of the helicopter pilots, out there in the
Amargosa Desert. You put a bullet across my skull. Here, look.”
He held his head so I could see the gash, newly healed. I remembered him
now. I said, “I thought I’d killed you.”
“Lucky for me you didn’t. Or maybe not so lucky. The don suspects me. I
was in charge of that little outing, to nail your hides to the wall. We never
thought you could get away. But you did. Who was the one using that
rifle?”
“I was.”
Admiration came into his eyes. “You? A girl?”
“She’s hell on two legs,” Kev muttered.
The man nodded. “You sure are, lady. We’ve lost a lot of boys on account
of you. If you did for all the others too, that is.”
“I did.”
He became even more relaxed, if that was possible. He put his hands
behind his head and smiled up at me. “Looks as if I came to the right place,
all right.”
“What makes you think I’ll protect you?”
“Because I’m willing to talk. You want talk, don’t you? You want to know
who’s behind this oil well caper, right?”
I was suspicious as hell. He sounded honest and straightforward enough.
If he really was a defector from the Family, I would welcome him with
open arms, as the saying has it. On the other hand, I still didn’t believe I
could trust him.
 “And you’ll talk?”
“Tell you whatever you want to know. In exchange for protection and—
one million bucks.”
I got to my feet and looked down at him. “I don’t get it. You say this don
is after you, but instead of going to the police, you come to me. How’d you
find me, by the way?”
“Been looking for you. All over L.A. The don sent a guy to the O’Reilly
apartment, to keep an eye on it. Me, I figured you had to act differently.
You’d have been stupid to go there, you had to be holed up somewhere
else.”
He shrugged. “I looked. Day and night, I looked.”
“But why? If this don blamed you for what happened out on the desert,
why should you give him a helping hand by trying to track me down?”
“I was working for myself, not for Don Eduardo—”
He broke off, looking startled. He hadn’t meant to say so much. I felt my
mouth twitch as I grinned down at him.
“Don Eduardo Bencivenga? Eddie Ben?”
He was scowling. Finally he shrugged. “That was my ace in the hole, that
name. I didn’t mean to blurt it out like that.” His eyes glinted as he looked
up at me. “How come you knew his full name? You an expert on the
Mafia?”
“Everybody’s heard about Don Eddie Ben.”
“The hell they have. He keeps himself in seclusion the way Howard
Hughes does. He operates out of—well, never mind where he lives, he
doesn’t advertise the fact that he’s alive even. But you know his name.
You’re quite a girl.”
“I do all right. Maybe I’ll do even better, with your help.”
“Oh, I’ll help you, all right—in return for that million and protection.”
Kevin said, a big grin splitting his face, “This is just what you’ve been
waiting for, Cherry. You finally got your break.”
 “Did I?” I muttered.
The man on the floor said, “You don’t believe me. I don’t know what else
I can say to prove I’m what I am.”
“There’s something fishy about all this. It’s too easy. Nothing ever
happens easy, for me. It’s like Christmas morning, or your birthday when
you get everything you’ve had your heart set on.”
I scowled at my gift horse. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Tony Boletto.”
I frowned, trying to remember. “Tony. Tony. Somebody mentioned a Tony
to me, very recently. Sure. It was that guy in the apartment, Ricco
somebody.”
The Boletto eyes grew very large. “You know Ricco? Ricco Amelia?”
“I did. He’s dead now. I drowned him in the toilet.”
Tony Boletto swallowed. “Drowned him?”
“He was the man Eddie Ben left to stay on the lookout for me, right? He
caught me, but I got away from him.”
“Amelia was one tough cookie.”
“Maybe I was a little bit tougher.”
Appraisal glinted in his black eyes a moment before he nodded. “Yeah. I
guess you are. It’s a good thing I come to you, then. If anybody can protect
me, you can.”
“Let’s level with each other, Boletto. From what or from whom am I
supposed to protect you?”
“From the don, of course. He thinks I double-crossed him. Don’t ask me
how. All I know is that when I came back from that damned desert where
you got all my buddies, the don seemed to think it was all my fault. Jeez!
As if I was to blame for what happened.”
“Didn’t you tell him the way it was?”
“Didn’t I, though! But he looks at me with them eyes of his as if I’d led
the soldiers into a trap. Hah! Only the marines could have shot their way
out of that one. But me he blames. It wasn’t fair.”
I eyed him speculatively. “What did he say, as best you can remember it?”
“He says, ‘Tony, you let me down. You almost make me suspect you was
in on it, with them. They’re rich, Tony, they got better’n five million bucks
of mine from the Vegas operations, and they could’ve bought you, Tony’.
That’s what he said.”
“And you swore up and down you were innocent.”
“Well, wasn’t I?”
“I guess you were. We had no deal, you or I. So the problem remains.
What do I do with you?”
“Let me stay here,” he exclaimed eagerly. “I won’t take up much room. I
don’t eat so much. Besides, I can pay my way.”
He took a fat wallet out of his hip pocket and opened it. I saw a lot of
greenbacks, most of them fifties.
“I got plenty of bread. I’ll chip in on the food and the rent. Hell! I’ll pay it
all, if you want. What good is money to me if I’m dead?”
I put my hands on my thighs. “All right. You can stay here for a while,
until I make up my mind about you.”
Tony Boletto rose to his feet very slowly, cautiously. He moved to a chair
and sat down, smiling from me to Kevin and back again, looking very much
like the cat that swallowed the proverbial canary. There was much about
this man I didn’t trust; indeed, my nerves were screaming all along my body
when I looked at him.
Tony Boletto was a jarring note.
He wasn’t kosher, he was something that shouldn’t be, according to the
way I had the Mafia tabbed. Yeah, yeah. I could understand Don Eddie Ben
turning against him, I could understand the don hiring a hit man to get him.
But for Tony Boletto to run to me for protection just didn’t add up.
I said slowly, “You can help me make up my mind, Tony. If you’re legit in
your claims, you’ll be willing to help us put Eddie Ben away for keeps.”
He leaned forward in his chair. “Just name it. Tell me what you want.”
 “Where can I find this elusive don?”
His swarthy face wrinkled into a scowl. “I wish I could tell you; if I could,
I would. Like a shot. But he don’t stay in any one place, he’s all over.”
“You saw him, you reported back to him about that fight in the desert.
You had to meet him someplace. Where was it?”
“Al’s Restaurant. Before that it was a funeral parlor, in the office. Before
that, it was in a nightclub. He gets around, he has one of his capos make a
phone call to the men he wants to see, tells them where to be, then meets
them there.”
“I wish I knew whether you’re telling me the truth.”
“I am, I am. Look!” He hesitated for a fraction of a second, then plunged
ahead. “I want to convince you. I’ll do what I can. I know where a couple of
his capers are to take place. He won’t be there, but his buttons will.
“You go there, you see if I’m telling you the truth.”
I walked around the room, thinking. Kevin O’Reilly was sitting on a sofa,
staring at each of us in turn. I wished Mark Condon were here; I could use
his advice. As it was, I had to do my thinking, all by myself. And make my
own decisions. I thought of phoning Sven Thorson, but I had the feeling he
would order me to turn Boletto over to the police.
In my hands, Tony Boletto might be a good weapon to use against Don
Eddie Ben. I wasn’t sure just how, not yet. But the idea would come to me.
In the meantime, I could verify one thing, whether he was telling me the
truth.
I came back and sat down again. “What’s this caper you’re talking
about?”
“The boss is sending a couple of guys to do a job on a guy named Benson,
who won’t cut the Family in on his profits. He runs a string of restaurants,
fancy joints, some of them, others not so fancy. Strip tease, sex shows in
these cheaper ones, but they rake in the bread.”
“Where is the attack to take place?”
 “At the Skin Sin. It’s on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood.
There are topless waitresses and sex shows. You goin’ alone?”
“I always work alone.”
He scowled. “Those are tough joints. A hole without a man is fair game to
some of them guys down there.”
“You’re kidding!”
He looked at me, he laughed, shaking his head. “Yeah, maybe I am.
Looking at you, seeing what a beaut you are, I keep forgetting how deadly
you can be.”
“What are these bruisers like, the ones who are going to do that job on
Benson?”
“One of ’em’s big and blonde, the other is big and dark. You won’t have
no trouble pickin’ them out, they’re over six feet and they got muscles
nobody’s ever heard of yet. And brass knuckles so they won’t hurt their
hands.”
I gave him a happy grin, leaning over to pat his knee. “I sure hope so,
Tony. For your sake. If they’re there, if they try their caveman tactics on
this Benson, I’ll know you’re telling the truth.”
I went into the bedroom and stripped. In a terrycloth robe I went into the
bathroom and showered. Then I came back to wrap the bod in a black
slacks suit. Under it I wore a turtleneck sweater without a bra. I made sure
my Gold Cup was fully loaded and in my Gucci bag.
Kevin and Tony Boletto were having a drink. They had been talking, and
looked at me as I came into view with complete approval. Tony even
chuckled.
“You look like a society dame out for a night on the town,” he told me.
“You’ll have the boys flockin’ around you like hounds around a bitch in
heat.”
“They’ll make for perfect camouflage.”
Kev asked, “You sure you don’t want me to go with you?”
“Uh-uh. But thanks for asking.”
 I moved out into the early dusk of a Los Angeles evening. I had plenty of
time for what I meant to do; Eddie Ben’s boys would wait until it was late
in the evening before they moved in. So I drove the Plymouth Gold Duster
—we’d turned back the VW and taken the Gold Duster in its place—around
the city until I found a parking slot.
I dined alone at the Cafe Four Oaks, on a juicy sirloin steak and avocado
salad. I ate slowly, ordering myself a dry martini on the rocks to start the
evening off, and finished up with some cheese and crackers plus coffee. I
was in no hurry; it would have been somewhat gauche to arrive at the Skin
Sin much before eleven.
When I finally wandered in through the Skin Sin doors, into the smell of
whiskey and cigarette smoke, to the sight of topless waitresses moving
between the tables, bare breasts bobbling gently, I was keyed for action.
I caught eyes, of course. Men turned their heads and looked me up and
down. I had opened the suit jacket so my breasts would stand out a little
more, bouncing gently to my stride so everybody could see I didn’t have a
bra on.
It’s a funny thing, but when you cover something up, like breasts, it seems
to turn men on a little more than if you push them out naked for them to
ogle. There were a dozen waitresses bared to their hip bones all around me,
but the male eyes became riveted to my mammary development and didn’t
seem to want to leave.
I ordered a martini, fumbled in the Gucci bag for Virginia Slims and my
gold cigarette lighter.
Somebody pushed a Dupont lighter under my nose and a flame came
almost to the tip of my Virginia Slim. I slid my eyes sideways at a man in
his late thirties in a Pierre Cardin suit and ruffled shirt.
“My, that’s a beauty. Looks like solid gold,” I smiled.
He smiled faintly. “It is. You want it?”
I widened my eyes. “Indeed, no. I’m not that sort of girl.”
“What sort of girl are you?”
“Bored,” I smiled, blowing smoke into his face.
 It was not a bad face, as faces come and go. It was a bit too jowly, but
handsome enough. The face of an executive, I told myself, out cheating on
his wife. Looking for a pickup, and intending to show himself a good time.
He’d do as well as anybody else.
I crossed my legs and leaned forward so my breasts would catch his eyes.
They did, and he got that slightly glazed look in them when he saw the size
of my nipples standing up behind the black sweater.
“Are you bored?” I asked softly.
“I was. I’m not now.”
“You’re just saying that.”
He chuckled and eyed me with something like respect. “If you’re not
bored, what are you doing here?”
“Looking for some excitement. Can you show me any?”
“Not here. But I have an apartment that’s just dying to meet you. Oh, I’m
Bill.”
“I’m Cherry.”
“Not really?” He looked surprised so I leaned forward and placed my
hand on his thigh, high up.
“It’s a name, not a condition.”
He laughed, then offered, “Have another drink.”
“I will indeed.”
While he was signaling the bartender, I shot my eyes about the room. I
scanned faces and bodies here and there, but didn’t see two men who
answered the description Tony Boletto had given me. Well, it was a little
early.
I took my time over the second martini. I didn’t want to get so drunk I
wouldn’t know what I was doing. I exchanged banter with Bill, who seemed
even more eager, after about half an hour, to get me to his apartment. The
fact that those waitresses with their breasts shaking so richly moved back
and forth so close to us was giving him a full load of steam, and only added
to his impatience.
The lights dimmed.
“Floor show,” Bill muttered, putting an arm about me, resting his finger
on my right breast.
I wondered how the sex show would affect him.
The door opened. Two men came in. One was big and blonde, the other
was big and dark. They were my quarry.
 CHAPTER SEVEN

I watched the two Mafia bruisers move through the crowd, even as Bill
played with my nipple. I have to admit he was getting me worked up; he
knew his way around a female body, all right. But I concentrated on those
two men, keeping them always in view.
They were like panthers, moving easily. They weren’t rough, they didn’t
push anybody out of the way, but almost before I knew it, they were at the
door marked office. There was a small table there, unoccupied for some
strange reason, maybe because it was off so far from where everybody was
gathered. The two men sank into it, and beckoned to a blonde girl with
outsize mammaries.
The room was very dark, now. A spotlight showed on a velvet curtain that
hid a small stage. Outside of this, and the dim blue lights behind the bar, so
the bartenders could see what they were doing, blackness was everywhere.
The curtain lifted.
A girl was undressing on a stage that held a brass bed. She was getting out
of a dress, tossing it across the stage, and stood a moment in garter-belt and
stockings, panties and bra. She gave her audience a great big smile and put
her hands behind her back.
The bra snaps came undone, the cups fell a little to show some more of
her pallid breasts. She hunched her shoulders, slid down a strap. Then the
other. She caught the bra and drew it off, very slowly and teasingly. I heard
groans and subdued mutters from the men around me.
The hand on my right breast was sliding under my turtleneck, pulling it
out of my slacks. In a moment, it would be on my bare skin. It was.
I leaned closer to the man who was fondling me as I turned my eyes from
the stage to the table where the buttons sat. They were watching the girl,
they seemed very much at ease, and sipped their drinks from time to time.
There was no hint of trouble.
 They would wait until the stage show got going before they made their
move, I reasoned. They wanted every eye in the joint to be fastened on the
girl and her lover—he hadn’t showed yet, but he would—before they slid
into the office. I was waiting for just that time.
On stage, the girl was wriggling her hips, sliding down her panties. She
was clean-shaven, her pubic mound was pale and full, delicately creased.
Somebody sighed, close by.
Then she was sitting on the edge of the bed, legs a little apart as she began
to unfasten her garters. One by one, lifting her legs high, she stripped off
her nylons. She stood and undid the garter-belt and lifted her arms high.
Slowly she turned, showing off her nude body. It was a very good body,
indeed.
And a naked man walked into view.
You could feel the tension, now. It was an almost tangible thing. Bill had
his hand under my breast, was caressing it lazily. I had my eyes on the
Mafia soldiers.
The blonde one ran his eyes around the room. His elbow nudged his
partner. They got to their feet, stood motionless a moment. Then they slid
sideways toward the office door. One of them put his hand on the knob,
turned it very slowly.
I put my head against Bill’s face. “Mama has to go pee,” I breathed.
He muttered something, I wasn’t even sure he’d heard me, his eyes were
so busy watching the stage and what was happening there. I eased my
breast out of his hand and my behind off the bar stool. I bent over and
began to slide between the close-packed bodies. Nobody noticed me,
because the naked man and the naked woman were very busy doing
something to each other.
I had seen the door open just a little and had watched the blonde man slip
into the office. The other one was right behind him.
Me, I went there too.
I opened the door and stepped into an empty room.
 I couldn’t believe my eyes. Where the hell was everybody? The room was
richly furnished, with a deep pile carpet and an expensive desk and leather
chair behind it, with some file cabinets off to one side.
Then I saw the door. It must lead into an alleyway alongside the Skin Sin,
I told myself, and beat legs toward it. It opened. I stepped out into the
moonlight and saw three men.
One of them, the man whose spine was being pushed back into the
cement-brick wall, had to be Benson. He was a short, pudgy man given
over to fat, with quite a belly on him. His face was the color of chalk and
his eyes seemed enormous.
He was whimpering, “Look, can’t we talk this over?”
Blonde boy was grinning. “You had your chance to talk. You passed ft
up.”
The dark one was fitting brass knuckles on his right fist. He was smiling,
too, but it wasn’t a nice smile, not nice at all. I slid closer on soundless feet.
The blonde one stepped back and put his hand in his pocket. His
companion lifted his brass-knuckled fist and drove it toward the chalky face
of the cowering man. Had that gleaming brass thing landed, it would have
broken flesh and maybe bone. The buttons were big and muscular; they
could have killed Benson, here in this alleyway, if that were Eddie Ben’s
intention.
I lifted my right foot in a Garo Ypremian place kick. My toe caught the
dark man on his left leg, turned it just enough to make his fist whiz past
Benson’s ear and slam into the cement.
Just beyond the dark guy, I saw blondie’s eyes widen.
I lunged; I didn’t give the button a chance to turn on me. I caught him by
the jacket and his arm, and swung him sideways. His head went where his
brass knuckles had chipped the concrete, seconds before. His head didn’t
chip that cement, but it did bounce.
His legs sagged, and came near to falling.
I didn’t let him fall, but maintained my grip on him and threw him into
blonde boy. They went down in a heap with me leaping through the air at
them.
I came down hard with both heels, as near their bellies as I could aim. The
breath went out of one, the other grunted and tried to catch my ankle. I
jumped sideways, bent to drive the edge of my hand at his face.
He was a little too slow getting his face out of the way. I landed on his
cheek, slamming his head backward against the alleyway stones. I dropped
on him with both knees, one across his throat, the other on his chest.
I got to my feet. The owner of the Skin Sin was pressed with his back to
the wall, gaping at me. He hadn’t recovered as yet from the shock of seeing
me come to his rescue, but slowly, as we stared at each other, relief touched
his features.
“Who’re you?” he croaked.
“It doesn’t really matter, does it? You’re safe. I’d advise you to get out of
L.A. just as fast as you can. Go take a trip around the world or something.”
He nodded dully, looking at the two men who were starting to stir. My
hand dipped into the Gucci, bringing out my Colt automatic.
“You going to shoot them?” he gasped.
I gave him a cold smile. “No need for that. I just want to hold them here
until you’ve gone. Go on, now. Get moving. Take what papers you need
from your office, do your paperwork at home after this, or from a hotel
room. You’re just a sitting duck, coming here.”
He agreed gloomily. He hesitated a few seconds, then said, “I don’t know
how to thank you. Thanks aren’t enough, after what you did. You are a girl,
aren’t you?”
I gave him a smile. “I’m a girl.”
His head shook. “Those two big guys, you’re so small and—a girl. I’d
never have believed you could handle them so easily.”
He stumbled away. The rear door of his office opened and closed. The
two bruisers were sitting up, staring at me and paying very close attention
to my Gold Cup.
 “I could kill you dead right now, you bastards,” I told them. “But I won’t.
I want you to go back to Eddie Ben and tell him he’s finished. Sooner or
later I’m going to catch up to him and when I do, it’s curtains.”
Blonde boy sneered, “You talk big.”
“I act big, too. Big enough to take care of your don. Now—on your way.”
They made their way to the end of the alleyway, with me half expecting
them to yank their guns and turn to blaze away at me. I was ready for it,
poised on the balls of my feet, ready to fling myself sideways even as I got
off a few shots at them. But there was no fight left in them. They went
quietly.
I ran after them, just to make sure.
They got into a black Ford, and drove off. Eddie Ben would be hearing
about me in about half an hour or so, I figured. Which was just the way I
wanted it. He would know that I wasn’t just hiding from him and his men,
but that I was engaged in an active war with them.
I figured this would keep him off balance. It was one thing to send out
your buttons to beat up on a poor slob without fear of injury or reprisal, but
if those musclemen had to worry about getting beaten up themselves,
maybe Eddie Ben would think more carefully about how they went around
assaulting citizens.
Not only this, but it would give Sean O’Reilly the time he needed to set
up his corporation, to hire oil drillers and get them working.
I slid the bod behind the wheel of the Gold Duster and drove back to
Beverley Hills. Kevin and Tony Boletto were still awake, staring at each
other over glasses of scotch on the rocks as I came in.
Kev jumped up, and ran to me. “You okay? How’d it go?”
I told them all about it, sipping a glass of scotch that O’Reilly poured for
me. I watched Tony Boletto as I talked. He had a look of intense satisfaction
on his face while he listened.
“You did good,” he told me. “And you’re right in one thing. Don Eddie
Ben will know you’re out to nail his hide to the wall.”
 He chuckled, gloating.
My eyes studied his face, taking in his emotions. I asked, “You have any
more goodies like that for me?”
He nodded slowly. “Matter of fact, I do. But not right now.”
“Why not right now?”
“Because it won’t take place until tomorrow night.” He saw the glint in
my eyes, and waved his hand. “Okay, okay. Just so you’ll know I’m
leveling with you, I’ll tell you this much: a hit man is going to get a guy
named Dave Caldwell.”
“Who’s Dave Caldwell?”
Boletto waved a hand. “It don’t matter. He and the don had a falling out.
They was partners in a little venture and Eddie Ben thinks Caldwell cheated
him. Who knows whether he did or not? Maybe the don cheated him and is
feeling guilty about it. As guilty as Eddie Ben ever feels, that is. Anyhow,
he’s made the contract. Dave Caldwell gets hit—tomorrow night.”
I came off the chair where I had been sitting and walked around the room.
I was bone tired, and could feel the aches coming up from deep inside me.
My mind was a little numb, too. No more for tonight, I told myself.
Tomorrow morning, when I would be refreshed after a good sleep.
“All right. Tomorrow, then.”
I walked into my bedroom, leaving Kev and Tony Boletto outside nursing
their scotch. I got undressed and into pajamas, then crawled between the
sheets. I had done enough for what was left of today. Actually, of course, it
was already tomorrow.
I woke to the smell of ham and eggs and threw a robe around me. Tony
Boletto was at the gas range, doing the cooking. Kev was watching the
toaster, readying the butter.
A knock sounded at the door.
We looked at each other. Tony seemed scared, Kev merely curious. I went
and got the Gold Cup out of my Gucci bag before I put my hand to the
doorknob and turned it.
 Sean O’Reilly stood there, grinning at me. “I ran away from the ranch,”
he said. “Most of my work’s done, I just had to get away or I’d go stir
crazy.”
“Thorson know you’re here?”
“No, and don’t tell him. They’re like jailers, those guys. They keep their
eyes on me even when I’m sound asleep. I’m convinced.” He sniffed. “Hey,
I smell something good. I haven’t eaten breakfast yet, by the way.”
“Neither have we. Come on in. Tony, throw some more ham on the fire.”
“Tony?”
I told him about Tony Boletto as we walked into the kitchen. Sean seemed
very interested. He nodded at Tony and then shook hands with his brother.
“How’s it going?” O’Reilly asked.
“Good, except for one thing. Refineries. I don’t have any and they cost—
well, they’re beyond our means, Kev.” He looked exhausted, I thought, as
he stared down at the cup Tony Boletto was filling with coffee.
“Them gas companies will be glad to lend you the money, for a share of
the profits,” Tony told him.
“I suppose so. They say every Irishman’s a dreamer, and maybe that’s
what I am. Just a dreamer. I had it all laid out in my mind. I found the oil
field; I would drill for oil; I would change that oil into heating oil and
gasoline. I would be as rich as an Arab sheikh
“Now it’s no go.”
Kev squirmed. “You can’t give up, Sean.”
“Oh, I won’t give up, but I feel like doing just that. Do you folks have any
idea how complicated this oil business is? I thought I knew about it, all I
needed to know, anyhow. Now, I’m just starting to realize how stupid I
was.”
The ham and eggs were out before us. We ate.
Over his second cup of coffee, Sean picked up his conversational threads.
“You have to be what the trade calls a vertically integrated company to be a
success in the oil business these days. All that means, really, is that you
have to own everything, from the oil fields to the gasoline pumps, or just
about.
“There are five corporations that control four-fifths of the world’s oil. You
know their names, I don’t have to mention them. They own the oil wells,
and the pipelines that carry that oil to the refineries that they also own.
Trucks and barges, gasoline delivery trucks, the whole kit and kaboodle, are
part of the corporate entity.
“It’s what lets these big oil companies set their own prices for their
products, or just about. They get a big tax advantage, too. Depreciation on
used drills and other equipment give them another big break. Then they get
the well-publicized depletion allowance, taking twenty-two percent off the
top of every dollar they make.
“They also get a foreign tax credit.”
Sean O’Reilly sighed. “To buck a setup like that, to go into business for
myself, would cost more money than I could possibly borrow.”
Kevin O’Reilly looked sick. “Five million is just a drop in the bucket,
then.”
“And not a very big drop, either.”
I suggested, “Maybe the major oil companies would be interested in
buying your rights to those oil fields you found.”
“It’s the only answer I can see. Much as I’d like to start my own business,
I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to:”
Tony Boletto had been squirming in his chair while all this talk was going
on. His eyes were glued to Sean’s face. They never left it.
“Have you been in touch with them? With Exxon or Texaco or Mobil,
say?” he asked.
Sean smiled wearily and shook his head. “Not yet. But soon, I think.
That’s another reason I ran away today. I wanted to speak to Kev, to get his
ideas on what I should do.”
“This is your baby, Sean. It always has been, right from the beginning. All
I did was win some money in Vegas to try and finance what you were
doing.”
“The hell you say. Half of what I found is yours, it’s the way we arranged
it between us.”
“Well, that’s damn decent of you, but I still say when it comes to a vote on
what you should do, yours is the only one that matters. You decide, Sean.
It’s your discovery. You did all the work on it.”
“You’re sure?”
Tony Boletto was still listening as intently as ever. He squirmed some
more, opened his mouth and closed it. I watched him, wondering what he
might be thinking. He seemed very excited.
Finally he blurted out, “What about private money? Seems to me there
ought to be plenty of that around, willing to invest in such a project.”
“I suppose there is. I could drill and sell shares in the wells, I suppose,
then make some sort of deal with the major oil concerns. I will probably do
that.”
For some reason, this appeared to disturb Boletto. He scowled, shook his
head, then asked, “But you haven’t made any such deals as yet?”
“I’m giving it thought. I want more time to consider every facet. In a
week or two, I’ll have made up my mind.”
Tony Boletto seemed very relieved.
We spent much of the day wandering around the rooms of the bungalow,
though once Kev and Sean and I went for a stroll in the hotel gardens, to get
a breath of fresh air. Tony Boletto refused to come with us, saying he was
perfectly content to stay where he was, just in case any of the mob might be
hanging around looking for him.
We had no lunch, we’d eaten a late breakfast, but we ordered dinner from
room service. With the coming of darkness, I started getting on edge, and
sought out Tony when the others were busy in the kitchen.
“What about this Dave Caldwell and that hit man?” I asked, sinking onto
the sofa beside him.
 “I’ve been thinking about that. Caldwell lives out in Santa Monica, in a
fancy split level. He isn’t married, lives by himself, and sometimes he
entertains a woman.”
“Isn’t he afraid of Eddie Ben?” I frowned.
“He doesn’t suspect a thing. Thinks he and the don are still friends. Eddie
Ben doesn’t spill his guts, not to anybody. Far as Caldwell knows, there’s
nothing wrong.”
“Which makes him an easy target for a hit man’s bullet.”
“That’s the way Eddie Ben figures it.”
“What time is this hit to take place?”
“Around midnight.”
I had plenty of time, there was no hurry. Still, I felt I’d like to case the
place before I moved in to stop the killing. Tony Boletto described the hit
man to me so I’d know him. He was small and skinny, used a tommy-gun
almost as big as himself, and he dressed in casual clothes, usually blue jeans
and some sort of sweatshirt.
“The sweatshirt is probably filthy,” grunted Boletto. “Patsy isn’t a very
clean guy. He’s an animal, really—but he’s shrewd. Don’t let him fool you,
Cherry. It may not be as easy as it was last night. I mean, now that Eddie
Ben knows you’re on the warpath.”
That made sense. It might even be that Eddie Ben would pay this Patsy
off and give the contract to somebody else. He had to understand that I was
being tipped off, somehow or other, about his jobs.
I wore the same black slack suit and turtleneck sweater I’d had on last
night. It would hide me in the outside darkness, where I would be waiting. I
lifted the rifle with the telescopic sight from the closet where I kept it, and
used the sling to carry it out into the living room.
Sean and Kevin O’Reilly stared at me, so I gave them a bright smile. “Be
back in a few hours, hopefully. Meanwhile, you three boys stay put. I have
a job to do.”
 I walked to the Gold Duster, and put the rifle in the front seat. Then I
drove out onto the San Diego Freeway to Sunset Boulevard and went by
way of side streets until I came into the posh neighborhood where Dave
Caldwell had his home. As I usually did on a job like this, I parked a few
blocks beyond his place and walked back.
He lived in a very residential area, so I could hardly carry a big game rifle
with me, I decided, much as I would have liked to. Somebody would see me
and call the cops. This was not too bad, except that police cars would scare
off the hit man.
What I would have liked to do is hide myself somewhere behind some
bushes and wait for the killer with the rifle ready to fire. But if it wasn’t to
be, it wasn’t.
Nor could I linger around here, just pacing up and down. I scowled, bit
my lip, going over ways and means in my head. Finally I decided on the
direct approach. I walked up the flag-stoned walk to the Caldwell split level
and rang the doorbell.
A big man came to the door with a mane of graying black hair and a
handlebar mustache He was handsome; his face was red with a whiskey
flush, and he was in velvet slacks and a casual sweater.
“Yeah? What can I do for you?” .
I did a little paraphrasing. “Ask not what you can do for me but what I can
do for you.” I held up my hand. “Don’t bother asking. I’ll tell you. I’m here
to save your life. Now may I come in?”
He blinked a couple of times, but he was game. “Sure. Come on.” He
closed the door behind us, leaving us in a shag-rugged foyer.
Before he had a chance to ask the questions that were quivering on his
lips, I smiled at him. “Eddie Ben is sending a hit man here around midnight.
I want to stop him and save your life—if you’ll cooperate.”
Disbelief showed in his gray eyes. “Eddie Ben and I are friends. He
wouldn’t do that.”
“You want me to go?”
 His head tilted to one side. “We-ell, since you put it that way, no. You
seem to be a sincere sort of girl. But maybe you tell lies. Come on, what’s
the story?”
“The story is, somebody named Patsy is on his way here—my informant
tells me he plans the hit about midnight—after which he will go away and
you’ll be lying somewhere with a slug in your chest. Or maybe in your
brain.”
He thought a moment, then glanced at his wrist-watch. It was an
expensive one, a Piaget, and it told me Dave Caldwell was no pauper.
“We have maybe half an hour,” he muttered, “if what you tell me is true.”
“Oh, it’s true enough. If it isn’t, a man named Tony Boletto is going to be
damned sorry.”
“Tony-boy,” he said softly.
“You know him?”
He shrugged. “I know he’s on the outs with Eddie Ben. He’s disappeared
and the don is looking for him. Not much else.” His gaze sharpened. “Hey,
did he send you here?”
“He did. Does it make a difference?”
“I was just thinking. If Tony knows about this so-called hit, if he knows
Eddie Ben wants me out of the way—there may be some truth to it.”
The big man sighed and his mustache bristled. “Eddie Ben and I did some
business a little while ago. It was to be a fifty-fifty split. When the job was
done—it was legitimate, I’m in the shipping business and he made me a
deal I couldn’t turn down—Eddie Ben said he was to get sixty per cent. I
uh-uhed that. He got his fifty.”
“Would ten per cent make such a big difference?”
“Ten per cent was two million bucks.”
“It would make a difference,” I nodded.
Sweat came out on his face. “You’ve damn near convinced me. What do
you want me to do?”
 “Find me a place to hide, some darkened room where I can keep an eye
on the grounds. I have a gun, and I’m pretty good with it. As soon as I see
this Patsy, I’ll open up.”
I opened the Gucci bag, and showed him the Gold Cup. He shook his
head. “Can you use a rifle? I have plenty of those. There’s one that’s
equipped with a starlight scope. It lets you see in the dark and fire at a target
that can’t see you.”
“Yeah,” I breathed. “Lead me to it.”
He laughed, turning on a heel and walking into a big living room and
through that into a wood-paneled den. There was a weapons rack on the
wall, that held a number of rifles. He took one down and handed it to me.
“The scope has chemical coatings on lenses formed of tiny glass fibers
The chemical coating discharges electrons that pass through electrostatic
fields, building up the image. When the eye finally gets the light from the
lens, that light has been magnified forty thousand times.”
“I love it already.”
“Faint moonlight is all the light you need to see by, with that. I’ve tested it
myself on night hunts. Now I’ll take you upstairs and put you in a guest
room, a corner room. Feel free to run around if you want, if you have to.
The place is yours.”
We went out into the hall. I said, “What are you going to do?”
“Just act naturally. You want to get your man, don’t you? If he doesn’t see
me, he may not step into our little trap.”
“You’ve got guts,” I told him.
He shrugged. “I went into this deal with Eddie Ben knowing damn well
something like this could happen. For the money I made, I figured it was
worth the risk. I still do, even if this Patsy finds me with a bullet tonight.”
I tapped a fingernail against my teeth. “How are you at making dummies?
If we could rig up something that looked like you… .”
Caldwell winked. He lifted a hand to his head and pulled off a wig,
revealing a bald pate. He made a face. “I wouldn’t do this in front of any of
my girl friends, but to save my life, I will.”
We found a couple of cushions, and Caldwell stripped off his sweater and
the velvet slacks, leaving him in jockey shorts, and between the two of us
we fixed up what might have passed for Dave Caldwell, sitting in an easy-
chair with most of him hidden from the window.
I stood back and studied it. “If I know Patsy, he’ll see you sitting there—
or what he thinks is you—and will let fly. He’ll be using high-powered
bullets, the window glass and this chair won’t stop them. He’ll think he got
you.
“If I haven’t already put a bullet in him, I’ll do it then. Preferably, I’d like
to get him before he does any damage. This is a nice chair.”
Caldwell chuckled.
“The reading lamp,” I pointed out. “Let’s turn it on, and then get you
something to be reading.”
We found a book and propped it up before the cushions so that it seemed
the figure seated in this chair could be reading it. I stood behind the chair, to
one side of the big window, and studied what we had done. It seemed
realistic enough, so I nodded.
“Now we go upstairs and I take my place.” I lifted the rifle and carried it
with me as I made my way through the room with Caldwell on my heels.
On the wide staircase he muttered, “I’d offer you a drink if I thought
you’d take one.”
“Later. Right now I don’t want even a sip of scotch to distract me.”
We didn’t turn on the lights in the guest room to which he led me. I could
see well enough by the hall lights. I made my way to a window and raised
it. The cool night air came in as I swung the rifle around and then stood
with it, staring out into the front yard and as much of the street as I could
see.
Caldwell was behind me, breathing down my neck. “What can I do?” he
whispered.
 “Go lie down in a dark room. And stay there until I come to get you.
Don’t move around, don’t show yourself. If this Patsy sees somebody
moving around up here, he may not make his try.”
He went away on silent feet.
The breeze freshened, and blew against my face. I crouched there, far
enough from the window so as not to be seen. I breathed in slowly and
regularly, telling myself I might be here for a long time.
Outside, the street was very quiet. Faintly and from far away, I could hear
the hum of traffic moving along the Ventura Freeway. It was a quiet spring
night; one would never think there would be violence in such a residential
area as this. It was so peaceful, so quiet, that sounds traveled a good
distance.
A car went past. I tensed, but it kept on going.
The minutes passed slowly. I paid no attention to the time, but knelt here,
occasionally shifting my position so my muscles shouldn’t become
cramped. Once I even rose to my feet and walked around the room. I
listened as I walked, with all my senses alive and tuned in to the street.
I came back to the window, crouching down.
He came quietly, walking along the sidewalk, the tennis shoes on his feet
making no noise. He wore blue jeans and a dark sweatshirt. He had long
hair. He was out of place in these surroundings, or so I thought, but he
seemed not to hesitate, as though he had a certain goal in mind.
Only when he came directly before the Caldwell house did he pause to
stare in at the windows. He ran lightly across the lawn and I half rose where
I stood, the rifle lifting easily into my hands.
Yet I hesitated. He had no gun, and his jeans were so tight they did not
seem able to hide a revolver. He stared in the living room window for a
long moment, then whirled and ran.
I stood to watch him go, momentarily baffled.
He had a different plan in mind, I realized. I wished I knew what it was.
As he raced off down the sidewalk, I relaxed, and began to bite my lip.
 It seemed safe to say that he was on his way to get his gun. But would he
risk coming back here once again, where some neighbor, glancing out a
window, might catch sight of him? It didn’t seem likely.
Your real hit man takes no chances. Not if he’s good at his job. He cases
the joint, so to speak, making sure everything and everyone is where it
should be. Then he strikes, with an escape route always open to him.
An escape route.
Of course! That was the answer.
Patsy would never stand out on the lawn and get off his shot. He had to be
smarter than that! He would come in a car, brake it, lean out the window
and—A car was coming. The headlights stabbed the blackness, showing the
road. It was traveling slowly, as though someone were trying to read a
number. I come up on a foot and a knee, raised the rifle to my shoulder and
peered through the starlight scope.
I saw him plain as daylight.
He was thin-faced, with eyes set too close together, his hair hanging down
on either side. He stopped the car, and shook his head to free it of his hair.
Then I saw him lift the rifle from the seat beside him and shove it through
the window.
My finger went around the trigger.
His cheek pressed the stock. His own head bent. In another moment, he
would fire.
I squeezed my trigger.
The sound of my shot was deafening. Through the starlight scope I saw
the bloody face of my quarry, his skull shattered, as he collapsed sideways
and then toppled over.
I let out my breath.
At the same time I heard a pounding of feet and Dave Caldwell swung
around the doorway and into the guest room.
“What is it? What happened? Did you get him?”
“I got him. Come on, let’s go have a look.”
 I saw his shadowed face by the faint light from the hall. His eyes were
very intent on my face. “You’re pretty cool about all this,” he muttered
almost accusingly.
My hand went up to pat his face. “It’s all part of my job, honey. Just relax,
it’s all over.”
“What about the police? Shouldn’t I call them?”
“After I get through.”
“You? You’ve done your job.”
“Only part of it.”
He gave me a funny look but didn’t say another word as we ran down the
staircase and out the front door. By this time windows and doors were being
opened in nearby houses, men and women were calling out to Caldwell
asking what had happened.
I opened the car door, and felt in the dead man’s pockets. He had a wallet
stuffed with papers and greenbacks. I slipped it into my Gucci bag. I
investigated the glove compartment of the car, but there was only Kleenex
and some road maps in there.
The neighbors were coming out on their lawns, a few of them who were
still dressed onto the street itself. I told Dave Caldwell to call the police,
then tried to calm the nerves of the men and women about me.
“There’s been an accident. Man seems to have shot himself.”
One or two of the male neighbors seemed inclined to argue the point but I
told them sweetly that the police could answer any more of their questions
and let’s not get panicky, shall we? They gave me some funny looks, but
they seemed to know instinctively that this was no concern of theirs.
We didn’t have to wait too long. The L.A. police department is very
efficient, and they had a prowl car there in less than two minutes. I showed
the officers my N.Y.M.P.H.O. ident card and told them they could check
with Sven Thorson. They seemed satisfied, telling me only that I shouldn’t
leave until somebody from Homicide arrived.
 I went into the house and found Dave Caldwell pouring scotch over ice
cubes. “Now I’ll take one of those,” I smiled.
As he handed me the glass he asked, “You with the cops? I saw you
showing one of them your wallet. Seemed to be a badge of some kind inside
it.”
“And an identification card. I’m with N.Y.M.P.H.O.”
He didn’t know too much about that organization, so I explained enough
about it and my part in it to give him an idea. He sat quietly enough, sipping
the Ambassador and nodding from time to time.
When I was done, he handed me a big grin. “So you’re out to break Eddie
Ben. I wish you luck.”
“You’d better. You’ll sleep better nights if I do.”
“Yeah, I see what you mean.”
The Homicide man came very shortly, I explained what had happened. He
knew something of what was going on, and said there’d be no trouble, that I
was free to go but that he’d appreciate my dropping down to his office
tomorrow to make out an affidavit to cover all the details.
“Funny thing,” he said finally. “The guy had no driving license on him, no
cash other than forty-three cents in change.”
“Yes he did. I took his wallet. I’ll turn it over to you after I go through it.”
He gave me a horrified look. “You can’t do that. The wallet is evidence.”
“It sure is. And I want it.”
“I can’t let you have it.”
I sighed. I have run into these problems before. “Tell you what. I’ll come
down to headquarters with you, and bring the wallet. We’ll go through its
contents together. I don’t want any of it, all I’m after is addresses, some hint
of where I can go find Eddie Ben.”
The detective eyed me. “You’re after him?”
“I mean to get him, too. Now I’m not saying that wallet is important. It
may not be. But I have to see its contents and copy them.”
 He nodded. “I’ll have them Xeroxed for you.”
“That’s all I want, then.”
Dave Caldwell asked me to have another drink, but I had work to do. I
went and got the Gold Duster, drove to Police Headquarters and dictated my
affidavit. While it was being typed, the detective and I went through the
wallet. There was a drivers’ license, some other papers that might or might
not be important. I couldn’t judge that, so we Xeroxed everything.
It was a few minutes past five when I got back to our hotel bungalow. The
place was dark and very quiet as I let myself in. The boys were asleep. I
tiptoed across the thick carpeting, heading for my bedroom.
I was out of the slack suit and turtleneck sweater, was moving to get my
pajamas, when I heard the sound. I froze for a second, then dove for my
Gucci bag.
My automatic in hand, with only bikini panties, garter-belt and stockings
on, I opened my door and peered out. The living room was dark, silent. I
stood a moment, still listening. Maybe one of the boys was having a bad
dream.
My eyes touched the furniture, ran over the various pieces. There was
something wrong here. Hold on, now. Of course! Tony Boletto should have
been asleep on the divan. And the divan was empty. There weren’t even any
sheets or blankets on it.
The Colt made a reassuring weight in my hands as I moved forward. My
hand went out, switched on a lamp. I looked around me. There was no sign
of Tony Boletto, none at all. True, he hadn’t arrived with anything more
than the clothes he was wearing and a wallet stuffed with cash. All he had
to do to leave without a trace was to walk out the front door.
He wasn’t going to do that, not if he’d been telling the truth. Ah! But
suppose he had been lying in his teeth?
I heard the sound again. It was very much like a groan. “Kev?” I yelled.
“Sean? Tony, even?”
I moved toward the bedroom, the Gold Cup out in front of me. My hand
slid inside the door to the light switch. I flicked it on.
 Kevin O’Reilly lay on the floor almost at my feet, his head all bloody. My
eyes went around the room, and I saw it was empty.
Next moment I was kneeling beside him, touching his hair, pushing it
back, discovering that what I had thought was a mortal wound was no more
than a crease in his temple. It would hurt like hell when he came to, but he
would live.
There was no sign of Sean, and my heart sank.
I ran for the bathroom, got some cold water on a facecloth, and came back
to clean Kev up. I’m no nurse, but I’ve done some first aid in my time. I got
what I needed from the medicine cabinet and set to work. I cleaned the
wound, salved it, and made a gauze dressing.
By this time, O’Reilly was opening his eyes.
They were glazed, sick with pain, but they recognized me. “Boletto … got
Sean,” he whispered.
“Don’t talk,” I told him, though my heart was sinking into my toes and a
sickness churned my middle. “We’ve got to get you better. Then we’ll
worry about Sean.”
“I’m dying,” he moaned. “Boletto shot me.”
“You’ll live, but just to make sure I’d better get a doctor and have him
look at you.”
I had about as much chance of getting a doctor at that hour of the morning
as I did of jumping over the moon. My best bet was to call that homicide
detective I’d been with until about an hour ago.
His name, I recalled, was Manny Ord. I asked for him when I dialed
police headquarters. Ord was excited and sympathetic, he promised to get
somebody there in a little while.
Ord was there in less than twenty minutes. He told me a doctor would be
on the way. Not to move Kev until the doc had a chance to look him over.
Then Ord listened as I explained about Tony Boletto and Sean O’Reilly.
“I was so stupid! So stupid!” I castigated myself, walking up and down in
the living room. “I knew there was something phony about him. I knew it!
And I fell for his dodge. That’s what kills me.”
He tried to soothe me. “You did what you thought was best. You’re
playing for big stakes, both you and the O’Reillys. You can’t expect the
impossible.”
“At the odds I face I have to expect the impossible. Don’t you
understand? Eddie Ben has Sean. He’ll kill him, I think. But not until Sean
signs over all right, title and interest in his oil field to the Family.”
Ord said softly, “Maybe Eddie Ben doesn’t have him.”
I stared at him. “Do you know what you’re saying? Who else has him if
Eddie Ben doesn’t?”
“Tony Boletto.”
My hand waved. “Oh, sure. I know that. But Boletto is just a caporegime
under the don. His lieutenant. If Tony has him, so does Eddie Ben.”
“Not necessarily.”
I stared at him. My mouth was dry, suddenly, with excitement. I moved
toward the portable bar, poured myself a scotch on the rocks. I offered him
one but he said he was still on duty.
“At this hour of the morning? Hell, you need one, same as I do.”
I wouldn’t take his no for an answer and he didn’t put up much of a fight,
so I shoved the glass of J&B into his hand and sat on the edge of the sofa. I
took a sip, then another.
“Give it to me now,” I told him. “Slowly, so I can digest it properly. My
think tank is a little strained, right now.”
“The word around town is that Eddie Ben and this Tony Boletto have
quarreled. Something about a caper that Boletto was in charge of, that
didn’t quite go off. According to the story, there were a lot of buttons
killed.”
“I know. I killed them.”
His eyebrows arched. “Is that all you do, go around killing Mafia
people?”
 “Not quite, but it’s close enough,” I grinned. “So he was telling the truth
about that. No wonder I fell for it. His voice did have that certain ring in it
that told me he wasn’t lying. But I still couldn’t figure out why he would
run to me.”
“You know now, I guess.”
“I sure as hell do. He knew Sean O’Reilly would get in touch with me,
sooner or later. He figured if he could snatch him out from under my nose
and hold him as hostage, he would be able to make Eddie Ben a deal he
wouldn’t refuse.”
“Like trading Sean O’Reilly and his oil field for peace with the don.”
I nodded. I sat slumped on the divan, my head bent as I thought. I had put
on a robe as soon as I’d finished phoning to Manny Ord. I guess it hung
open in front a little because the detective cleared his throat and looked
away from me.
I glanced down. The robe hung open, I was all but on display. “Sorry
about that,” I muttered as I closed and rebelted the Cole of California
number.
“It was a smart move,” I said finally. “It leaves me out in left field in an
empty ball park.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” he murmured.
My eyes slid sideways at him, almost flirtatiously. “You’re full of little
hints and innuendoes, aren’t you?”
He laughed and I smiled. “You don’t know where Eddie Ben holes up. I
guess nobody does. That is, nobody but Tony Boletto and a couple more of
his once-trusted capos.”
“Yeah,” I breathed, getting to my feet. “If Tony is going to make a deal
with the don, he has to know how to contact him, right? For once, the
answer is right instead of wrong. And you know where I can find Tony
Boletto, don’t you, Manny?”
“The scotch is pretty good,” he told me.
 I raced to refill his glass. I would have given him a whole case of the stuff
at that moment. I brought back the glass brimming over with J&B. He
nodded, sipped, and smiled at me.
“Soon as you phoned me, I had men out to watch Boletto’s place,” he
said. “I figured it had to be that way, or something like it. Lucky for me you
told me what was going on.”
“Manny, I could kiss you,” I bubbled.
He considered this, head tilted so he could study my body through the
Cole robe. “Not a bad idea. I’m not a married man, and I’ve been working
pretty hard. I could stand a little diversion.”
I threw my arms about him. He had a glass of scotch in one hand but he
hugged me with his free arm and we didn’t pull our lips apart until
somebody coughed.
I had forgotten the doctor. He was a little old man, and there was a
twinkle in the blue eyes behind his glasses. I had a vague recollection that
Manfred Ord had told me he was a retired police doctor, but that he liked to
keep his hand in on emergency calls such as this, when no other medico
would respond.
“Your young man is sleeping soundly. He’ll be all right in about six, seven
hours. The wound isn’t deep. You did a good job of washing it and
bandaging it. It’s clean. There appears to be no infection, and now I’ll have
a scotch, too.”
I did the honors.
The doctor didn’t stay long. He finished off that scotch pretty fast, and
then muttered something about getting back to bed. I glanced at the little
clock on the wall. It was close to seven in the morning. I yawned as I let
him out. I was pretty bushed myself.
Manny Ord decided he’d better be on his way. I said goodnight to him,
turned off the lights, and after glancing in at Kevin O’Reilly, stumbled into
my own room. I didn’t bother with the pajamas I’d laid out earlier, but just
fell into the sack and closed my eyes.
I woke at noon, to the ringing of the telephone.
 CHAPTER EIGHT

I listened to the voice over the wires in something of a cold sweat.

Everything that could go wrong in this case was doing just that. I heaved a
sigh and started asking questions.
“How do you know they’ve disappeared? Didn’t your men keep an eye on
Boletto’s residence? How could they have disappeared?”
“There’s nobody where Boletto lives. His place is dark, empty. When no
lights showed, one of my men gave it a going over. Nobody was there,
nobody’d been there, as best as he could tell.”
“In other words, wherever Boletto took Sean O’Reilly, it wasn’t to his
pad.”
“Right. So what do we do now?”
“I need time to think,” I told him weakly.
“Yeah. Okay then. I’ll be in touch.”
I went in to see Kevin. He woke up as I bent over him. “Listen, Cherry—
that Mafia bastard made off with Sean after shooting me.” He tried to sit up,
but I pushed him back.
“I know, I know. You told me enough last night. We’ve been working on
it, ever since.” I told him about Ord’s phone call.
“Boletto has Sean, but we don’t know where. He’s using him as a club
over Eddie Ben’s head.” I told him about how the don had quarreled with
his capo, and how Tony Boletto wanted to get back into Eddie Ben’s good
graces.
Kev muttered, “Damn. Here I am in bed, not able to do a damn thing.”
“You stay out of this. Leave it to the professionals. If anybody can handle
the problem, Cherry Delight and the Los Angeles police department can.”
“You don’t know where they are,” he accused.
 “You have a point there. I have to think.” I eyed him. “You up for eggs
and bacon? I want some food in me. I think pretty good after I’ve eaten. Or
sometimes when I’m only scrambling eggs.”
His face lighted up. “Scrambled eggs sounds great. And orange juice. I
find I’m very thirsty.”
I went into the kitchen and put water and coffee in the pot. I fried bacon,
getting it crisp and golden. I scrambled eggs, adding milk to make them
fluff. I made toast.
When I was done, I carried the whole thing into the sick room and helped
Kev to sit up with some pillows at his back. We ate the food like famished
animals.
“Tell me about the guy you killed last night,” he said over the coffee.
I told him. While I was gathering up the dishes and cups, he said, “You
think this Dave Caldwell can tell you anything? If he’s had a deal with that
don, Eddie Ben, he might be able to give you a tip. He owes you.”
“Dave Caldwell? Might be.”
So after I washed the dishes, I gave Dave a buzz. He was very friendly,
but not much help. He talked about meeting Eddie Ben in bars, in honky-
tonk places, in restaurants and once even in a brothel.
“He gets around. That Tony Boletto you mention was always with him.
He was a good friend of the guy who tried to kill me, you know.”
I took the receiver from my ear and stared at it. Then I put it back and
said, “Boletto knew Patsy? But he was the one who told me he was to be
the hit man. It doesn’t make sense, if they were such good friends.”
“Well, all I know is, they were.”
I hung up and walked around the living room. This needed some thinking
out. I was getting the glimmer of an idea; I had to give it some
consideration. If Tony Boletto was such a good pal of this Patsy, why in the
world would he betray him to me?
On the face of it, according to what Boletto had said, he had been proving
his serious intention of playing it straight with me, to get me to offer him
protection. But he had given this up when he kidnapped Sean O’Reilly.
Tony Boletto didn’t need my protection, then. He was simply playing a
game.
I did some more thinking.
O’Reilly called from his bedroom then, and I went in to him. He needed a
glass of water, so I got it for him. As I was handing it over, he said, “That
was Caldwell you phoned. Was he any help?”
“I’m not sure. Could be.”
He caught the doubt in my voice, maybe even some of the worry, because
he squinted up at me and asked, “What is it, Cherry? You’re usually so sure
of yourself. Now you seem to be floundering.”
“I am floundering, goddamn it. What I’m thinking is so crazy that it just
might be true.”
“What might be true?”
“I think I know where your brother is.”
He sat rigid in the bed, his eyes blazing. “Where, Cherry? Where is he?”
“Somewhere a dead man won’t go.”
I started for the door. His yell made me turn. “What the hell kind of an
answer is that? Where a dead man won’t go! That doesn’t tell me anything.”
“Kev, there’s no sense in raising your hopes. I’ve got to go out to see if
what I’m thinking is the truth. If I’m wrong, then I’ll have to start all over
again. But if I’m right—then we’ll get Sean back.”
His fist pounded the bedclothes. “I wish I could go with you.”
I blew him a kiss. No sense telling them that even if he were in tiptop
shape, I would still go alone on this mission. Kevin O’Reilly, even a healthy
one, would be in my way.
In my bedroom I changed my clothes, slithered the body into a simple
shirt dress, with pantyhose under it and serviceable walking shoes on my
feet. I caught up those Xeroxed papers I’d taken from Patsy’s wallet and
stuck them into the Gucci bag, along with my Colt automatic.
 The day was sunny, with a few clouds overhead in a very blue sky. I made
my way to the Gold Duster, drove off into the traffic. My destination was a
house somewhere in the back country not far from Palmdale. I sped along
the Colorado Freeway, heading east.
My thoughts tumbled one over the other. I could be going on a wild goose
chase. On the other hand, it would be very smart of Tony Boletto to have
had me get Patsy out of the way for him—friend or no friend —so he could
use Patsy’s house as a hideout in which to keep Sean O’Reilly a prisoner.
I didn’t put it past Boletto. For my money, he was one smart cookie. He’d
come up with a surefire plan to get back in Eddie Ben’s good graces, by
offering him Sean O’Reilly and his oil fields. Part of that plan, of course,
involved Boletto’s coming to me for protection.
Since he would be living with me, he probably figured that sooner or later
an opportunity would present itself so he could get Sean in his power. And
the safest place to keep him away from the rest of the world was in the
house where Patsy had lived.
This was how I rationalized my mission. Sure, sure. I could be wrong.
Could I ever! But if Tony Boletto was as smart as I gave him credit for, it
would be an ideal spot.
From the Colorado Freeway I swung northward onto the Golden State
Freeway. There was a turnoff up ahead, onto the Sierra Highway that would
bring me to Palmdale.
I relaxed as I drove; I would need all my energies for what was to come. I
scanned the scenery. Antelope Valley loomed ahead, where fruit trees grew
close beside vast fields of alfalfa. It was wild country, in a sense, with
forested slopes showing in the distance.
It took me some time to locate the address that was on Patsy’s driving
license. I had to make a couple of stops at local stores and at isolated gas
stations. But finally, I learned what I needed to know.
The hit man had lived in a lonely little cabin back in what I would call the
bush country surrounding Palmdale. I could get there by a dirt road, and the
cabin was partially hidden by trees. I was happy to hear this last, for it
meant I might be able to sneak up on the cabin without being seen.
 I drove along the dirt road, then swung the Gold Duster between some
trees so that it was hidden by a lot of brush and thickets. I even spent half
an hour tearing some of the bushes up by their roots and piling them around
the car so it would be hidden from a casual glance.
Then I set off between the trees.
I heard a car motor as I walked and threw myself belly-down on the
ground in such a position that I could see the dirt road. A car came along it.
I lifted up and took a good look at the driver.
It was Tony Boletto, and he was alone.
I waited until he had gone around a bend, then leaped to my feet and
hotfooted it up the sloping ground. In less than two minutes, I found myself
at the edge of a clearing, staring at a ramshackle cabin that was no more
than planks nailed together beneath a tin roof.
My feet carried me to the front door.
Here I hesitated, wondering if Tony Boletto might have a friend inside,
with a gun. It was a risk I had to take. I had been lucky in the fact that
Boletto was gone from the cabin. Or maybe he was the lucky one.
My foot lifted. I kicked at the door.
It swung open to show me a single room. Sean O’Reilly sat in a rickety
chair, tied hand and foot, and there was a gag between his teeth. His eyes
bulged when he saw me.
“You alone?” I asked.
He nodded. I ran to him, removed the gag from between his lips. He said,
“He’s gone to get some food. That Patsy who lived here must have been an
animal. There’s nothing at all to eat in here.”
“And you’re starved,” I chuckled as I set about freeing him. “Well, don’t
worry. I have a car down below. As soon as I can get you to a restaurant,
you can eat all you want.”
He was weak, I saw as I helped him to his feet. “Can you make it to the
car?”
Sean nodded. “I’ve damn well got to.”
 We set off at a jog. I wouldn’t have cared particularly whether Tony
Boletto came back, for I felt I could handle him all by my lonesome. But I
didn’t want bullets flying around where Sean O’Reilly might get hurt.
I had to assist him for a little bit of the way. He told me he hadn’t eaten
since Boletto had kidnapped him.
“Don’t talk. Not yet. Let’s get us out of here.”
The way I figured it, I still had some time to get away. Boletto didn’t
suspect a thing, and he would be in no hurry. I got Sean into the car, then
slid behind the wheel. I backed out, taking the torn bushes along with me.
As we bounced along, I said, “I’m assuming Boletto went into Palmdale
for his provisions. I don’t want him to see us, so I think I’ll turn north
instead of south.”
When I came to the main road I put my foot down on the accelerator and
sped away. Lancaster lay to the north, about six or seven miles away. We
would eat there, wait for a time, then swing about and return to Los
Angeles.
Sean O’Reilly ordered steak and potatoes when we finally found
ourselves at a table. I didn’t disturb him until he was sipping his coffee,
sitting there with a satisfied grin on his face.
“Now tell me, did Tony Boletto say anything that might tip you off as to
what he meant to do?”
“He did. He made some phone calls. I didn’t overhear them, of course, but
he told me about them. It seems he had a falling out with Eddie Ben, and
meant to turn me over to him.”
“I guessed as much. But when? And—where?”
“I’m not sure. I gathered that this Eddie Ben was suspicious of what Tony
Boletto wanted to do. Oh, he agreed fast enough. For that much oil, he
would have agreed to practically anything.
“But I don’t think he trusted Boletto.”
I smiled faintly. “He’ll trust him even less, now. Because Tony Boletto
won’t be able to deliver.”
 I put my hand up to have the waitress fill my coffee cup, then lighted a
match for the Virginia Slim that I put between my lips. I stared past Sean at
the far wall, getting the glimmer of another idea.
“How would it be,” I said slowly, “if I got in touch with Eddie Ben, and
told him Tony Boletto was lying in his teeth? Then if I told him where
Boletto was hiding out—wouldn’t Eddie Ben send his men to get rid of
him?”
Sean muttered, “I guess he would, yes.”
“Then if I were there when the others came … to make certain that
Boletto got what he deserved … I’d have a chance to chop down on the
don’s hit men.”
Sean smiled faintly. “You’re pretty bloodthirsty, you know that?”
“I fight fire with fire. Men like Eddie Ben send his hit men to kill
innocent people. You, of all people, ought to know that. If I hadn’t been
there, his killers would have filled you with lead, back there in the
Amargosa Desert.”
He nodded soberly. “I remember.”
“The Family doesn’t understand anything but violence, because they lead
their lives in violence. They kill when a man gets in the way of what they
want. Or they beat him up. Or they threaten his family to force him to his
knees so he has to give in to them.
“It’s really all they do understand.”
We sat a few more moments while I sipped and smoked. I said, “It isn’t
that I want to kill. I don’t. I just wish everybody could live in peace and
friendship. But people aren’t built like that, there are always folks who will
try to get something that belongs to somebody else. The better it is, the
richer it pays, the more interested the Mafia is.
“As it is with you and Kev. You’re sitting on a gold mine. Black gold, oil.
The Family wants it.”
“Even if you get this Eddie Ben, will it stop the Mafia?”
 “It will. I think this is Eddie Ben’s thing. He got the idea of siphoning
money from his Las Vegas tables to finance the project. Your brother Kevin
was only one of his victims, remember. We may never learn who the others
were.”
“I just hope it all works out,” he sighed.
I waited until it was late afternoon before I got back in the car. By this
time Tony Boletto would have discovered that his prisoner was missing. I
smiled grimly to myself at the picture he would make, when it dawned on
him that somebody had come here and stolen Sean O’Reilly.
Tony Boletto was sitting on a powder keg. Not only was Eddie Ben out to
nail his hide to the wall, so was I and the Los Angeles police department.
And his hideout, which he must have considered so perfect, was nothing but
a house of cards.
Served the bastard right, I thought.
I made Sean get in the back seat and sit on the floor while I eased the car
back the way we had come, through Palmdale and along the Sierra
Highway. I didn’t see hide nor hair of Tony Boletto. He was either hiding in
that ramshackle cabin wondering what had hit him or he was speeding his
way toward points unknown.
We came into Los Angeles after dark. I told Sean that I didn’t dare take
him to the hotel bungalow where Kev and I were staying. I wouldn’t put it
past Tony Boletto to phone Eddie Ben and spill his guts out to him, hoping
to get revenge on me. Sean would be safer in a hotel room under an
assumed name.
“First thing tomorrow morning I want you to call up Sven Thorson. Tell
him to come and get you and take you to that N.Y.M.P.H.O. ranch where
you were staying before you decided to fly the coop. Will you do that for
me?”
He made the promise. I believe Sean O’Reilly had been considerably
sobered by what had happened to him. This wasn’t just some sort of game
he was playing. Apparently the message had sunk into him that this was in
deadly earnest.
 “You need some bread?” I asked.
“He didn’t rob me. I have some money with me.”
“Enough for your needs? If you don’t, I can let you have a couple of
hundred. Oh, don’t worry. I’ll get it from Kev.”
I passed him four fifties before I let him off at the Del Capri on Wilshire
Boulevard. “Get yourself a good meal, Sean, then go to bed. I’ll give
Thorson a ring, tell him where to pick you up tomorrow. Don’t answer the
door except to him.”
He nodded. I waited a few minutes, until he was safely inside the
building, before I eased the Gold Duster away from the curb and made my
way toward the hotel bungalow. As I parked, I saw a girl walking in the
gardens. Her eyes were turned away from me toward our bungalow. I turned
off the ignition and stared at her.
There was something vaguely familiar about her. I had seen her before,
but I just couldn’t place her. I sat there hidden by the Duster, and tried to
concentrate. She was a blonde, and beautiful. She walked with a graceful
swing of her hips and she was built, as the boys say, like a brick outhouse.
Even from this far away, I saw her breasts ride up and down to her every
stride.
Then it dawned on me.
This was Kev’s fairy godmother! Last time I had seen her at Las Vegas
she had been in a silver lame dress. O’Reilly hadn’t noticed her, but I had,
since every woman notices every other woman in her vicinity, studying her
mannerisms, her clothes, her way of walking and talking.
I slid from the car, sheltered by the shadows. I could be wrong, of course.
It was really only a hunch. Still, I was ready to bet more than money on it. I
slipped along the flagstones very quietly, and when she was at the entrance
walk to our bungalow —walking past it—I sidled up to her and caught her
arm.
“Why not go in?” I whispered.
She whirled, her face a mask of surprised dismay. She tried to fight, but I
had taken her in a bad moment, when she didn’t suspect that she herself was
under surveillance. As her hand came up toward my face, I caught her wrist
and twisted her arm.
She cried out. Not loud, just an exclamation of pain. I said, “I can break it
if I want. You don’t want a broken arm, do you?”
Her muscles relaxed. I read defeat in her face. “Now just turn around,
honey. Let’s go say hello to Kev. He’ll be mighty glad to see you.”
She was mutinous, with rebellion in her eyes. Maybe she felt she could
outwit me, that even if I brought her into the bungalow, she would be safe.
At any rate, she shrugged and went where I pushed her.
Kevin O’Reilly was reading a magazine as we entered. He took one look
at the blonde, then let out a yell. “It’s her, it’s her,” he shouted. “It’s my
fairy godmother.”
She sneered at him. “You were the easiest of the lot to fool. Did you really
swallow that crap I fed your Kev looked embarrassed, flushing. I gave the
girl a push. “Sit. And don’t move, if you know what’s good for you.”
I sat across from her, on a hassock. Our gazes locked, her lips thinned
rebelliously. Her eyes told me she wasn’t going to talk, that I could do my
worst and she would still make like a clam.
I said conversationally, “So Tony Boletto got in touch with the don.”
Her expressive face gave her away. Her eyes widened, her jaw dropped.
She sucked in her breath. I grinned. “Honey, it didn’t take much brains to
figure it out. The only man on your side who knows where Kev is, is Tony
Boletto. A little earlier I took Sean O’Reilly away from him—”
Kev burst in with, “Cherry! You did? Sean’s safe?”
“He’s safe, Kev. Well-hidden so nobody can find him. But right now I’m
more concerned with Eddie Ben. As I was saying, I stole Sean out from
under the Boletto nose. Tony Boletto had two choices. He could run like
hell, or he could try to mend his fences by leveling with the don. He chose
to level.”
The blonde hurled herself at me, her hands up and fingers rigid, her long
red nails ready to claw. I think she was scared witless, and reacted with
animal instinct. She was trapped; she would try to put me out of
commission, then work her wiles on Kevin O’Reilly. Or shoot him.
She got a hand on my face before I could fling myself sideways. I felt
nails scratch, but my mind and body have been conditioned to react to
danger. I was to one side of her and going away as she hurtled into me.
I take a very dim view of other females clawing at my face. It is a pretty
face, maybe even a beautiful one. I don’t like scratches on it.
I’m afraid I lost my temper. My hands stabbed out, they missed her hair
but grabbed handsfull of her dress. I landed on my side when I went off the
hassock, taking some of her dress with me.
I heard cloth rip.
Kev sucked in his breath. In a few seconds, I found out why. Because as I
scrambled to my feet, I saw that half the dress was in my hands. From her
navel up, all the fairy godmother wore was a sheer black bra.
She flung herself at me, her mouth open, intending to bite my leg. I let go
of the dress and reached for her blonde hair. I got my fingers in it and lifted.
The blonde screamed.
“You cheap little two-bit whore!” I yelled.
I drove her face toward the carpet. I played dribble with it for a few
seconds. When I let her go she lay there, whimpering. I stood over her,
panting.
“You want some more?” I asked.
She shook her head back and forth. “My nose is broken,” she wailed. “I
have a nosebleed.”
I caught her hair and raised her to her knees by tugging at those blonde
strands. The fight was out of her, she was beaten. To one side, Kev was
making protesting sounds, but I made a little gesture with my hand to
silence him.
While she was kneeling there and sniffling, I growled, “I was right,
wasn’t I? Boletto called the don, didn’t he? He told Eddie Ben where Kevin
was holed up?”
 “Yes, yes, yes!”
“And Eddie Ben sent you to make sure, to find out if this was one more of
Tony Boletto’s tricks. You were only supposed to peek in the bungalow
window, try and see Kev here. You’re the only one that really knows him.”
She nodded, sobbing.
My hands yanked at the rest of her dress, shredding it as I pulled it free of
her body. This left her in black panties and garter-belt and black nylons,
besides the bra that didn’t do much to hide her breasts.
Kev was ogling her near nakedness. I scowled at him. “I’m not playing
strip tease to give you an eyeful of her charms, O’Reilly. I just want to
make sure she doesn’t have a weapon of some sort on her.” To the girl I
said, “Go wash your face. Put some cold water on your nose. That’ll stop
the bleeding. If it doesn’t I’ll have Kev get you some ice.”
She stumbled to the bathroom with me on her heels. I wanted a look at my
own face in the mirror. I didn’t think she’d done too much damage with her
fingernails, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
We shared the bathroom mirror. There were four slight scratches on my
cheek, but they weren’t too bad, they’d clear up in a day or two. The
blonde, on the other hand, had a swollen nose and puffy eyes. I grinned at
her as she applied a cloth with cold water to her face.
“After you made sure it was Kev here, you were to ring up the don,
weren’t you? Tell him he was here for the taking?”
Her eyes met mine in the mirror. I read stubborn pride, so I nudged her in
her ribs with my fingers. “I can really do a job on that face, honey. So spill
your guts.”
She nodded, very glumly.
“Did the don make some sort of deal with Tony? To make friends with
him?”
“Sort of, I guess. At least, as far as Tony goes.”
I digested that. “Sure, that would be Eddie Ben’s way. Offer the hand of
friendship, then when Tony shows up, have him gunned down.” I shrugged.
“Hell, I don’t care about Tony Boletto.”
I thought for a few seconds. “Okay, then. You’ll do it.”
She stared at me above the facecloth. “Do what?”
“Make that phone call. Tell Eddie Ben where he can come and get Kevin
O’Reilly. Yeah, and me as well.”
The blonde nearly fainted. “Are you crazy?”
“Like a fox, sweetheart. I have a plan.”
I also had my fingers crossed.
 CHAPTER NINE

I marched the blonde back into the living room. Her backside wobbled
under the thin black lace panties. In front, her outsize mammaries were
gently bouncing. She looked like sin incarnate with those nylons on her
shapely gams. I didn’t blame Kevin O’Reilly for staring.
She made the phone call. I jotted down the number. There was a little
silence, then a voice answered.
“This is Rhoda. Will you tell the boss that Kevin O’Reilly is in that hotel
bungalow? Along with a redheaded girl. I—I don’t know her name.”
The voice said, “Hold on.”
The blonde was holding the phone so I could hear what was said at the
other end of the line. We waited. then a different voice began to speak.
“Nice work, Rhoda. You’d better get the hell away from there, so that
O’Reilly doesn’t see you. You sure nobody’s noticed you?”
“No. I was—very careful.”
“Okay. You know where to meet the boss to get your check.”
Rhoda opened her mouth to yell. I saw the panic in her eyes, I put my
finger on the phone and broke the connection. Very gently I took the phone
from her hand and replaced it.
“Where, Rhoda? Where are you supposed to meet Eddie Ben and get paid
off?”
She swallowed hard, looking sick. I murmured. “I don’t want to mess up
that pretty face of yours if I don’t have to. Now where is that meeting to
take place?”
“They’ll kill me,” she whimpered. “They’ll know I told you.”
“Nobody will know a thing,” I smiled grimly. “They’ll all be dead, if
everything works out the way I figure it will.”
 Her tongue licked her lips. It took her a few seconds but she finally
managed to whisper, “A private house outside the city, it’s owned by a
sculptor. There are statues all over the place, it’s off by itself, in the San
Joaquin Hills.”
“And when are you to go there?”
“Tomorrow night.”
“Okay, then. I’ll make arrangements to be there. Right now, I think we all
ought to get some shut-eye.” I let my eyes go over Rhoda. “You can bed in
with me—on the floor.”
She made a face, and I smiled faintly. “Tied up, too, love. You don’t think
I’d take any chances with you, do you? At this stage of the game?”
Kev muttered something about letting her have his bed. I eyed him
dubiously. “You want to stay up and watch for the Family when they send
their buttons?”
“Wha—what do you mean?”
“Just what I say, Kevin O’Reilly. The mob is going to hit this place,
maybe in the next hour. All depends on how fast Eddie Ben wants action.”
O’Reilly stared at me. “Are you kidding? If you aren’t, why aren’t you
calling the cops?”
“I’ve played this almost solo right from the beginning. I’m not about to
start yelling for help now. Besides, if the cops have a stake-out here, the
Mafia won’t come. They can smell cops better than I can smell rotten
eggs.”
Rhoda was smiling at Kevin. She was just about naked. If O’Reilly
wanted to look, he could even see some of her golden pubic hair where it
escaped in crisp little curls from the crotch of her black lace panties. I
nudged her with a hand.
“Cut it out, you. Kev isn’t going to take your side against me. He knows
better.”
O’Reilly looked at me, indignant. “I’m not taking her side. It’s just that I
figure she’d be more comfortable in a bed.”
 “Sure, with you in the other one, so she can wheedle you into freeing her
for a little nookie. And after she’s done that, she can jump me and her pals
the mobsters will be able to walk in here as if they owned the joint.”
“It isn’t like that at all.”
“You just don’t think it is,” I smiled, and patted his face. “Rhoda sleeps on
the floor in my room. Tied up very neatly, so she can’t squirm free. Now
let’s get cracking. I don’t have all night.”
I pushed the blonde, made her move ahead of me into my bedroom. She
lay down where I told her to, at the foot of the bed so I could tie her wrists
to the bed legs on one side and her ankles to the other. She was stretched
across the floor at the base of the bed, with one of her breasts escaping from
a bra cup, pale and white in the overhead lights.
I was about to put a gag in her mouth when she protested, “I can’t sleep
like this. It’s too uncomfortable.”
I nodded. “You’re right, honey. Kev, go get that bottle of sleeping pills
that doctor left when he fixed your wound.”
Rhoda snarled, “I won’t take them.”
My hand touched her blonde hair. “You want me to play basketball with
your head again? You’ll take them, like a good girl.”
She took them, all right, with me holding her head up so she could drink
the water that would help her swallow them. Then I gagged her with a
handkerchief.
I went to the closet and lifted out the sub-machine gun I had used in the
Amargosa Desert. I checked its clip to make sure every bullet was in place.
Then I took the Gold Cup automatic out of my Gucci bag and carried them
into the living room.
I went back and switched off the bedroom lights, calling, “Sweet dreams,
Rhoda.”
O’Reilly was staring down at the sub-machine gun. “Don’t you think we
ought to let your organization know what’s happening?”
 “No way. I’m in charge here, Kevin O’Reilly. So you march yourself into
bed and stay there. No matter what happens, you stay there. I’m going to
have my hands full as it is without worrying about you.”
He got a little huffy, at that point. “You’d think I was a baby, the way you
treat me.”
I put my arms about him, bellied up to him. “I just don’t want you to get
hurt, Kev. You’ll be safer in bed. I’ll be safer with you there.”
He started to get excited. I reached down and patted him where he was
most sensitive. “You be a good boy and do as mama says. Then maybe we
can have a party when this trouble blows over.”
We kissed, a juicy meeting of lips and tongues. It wasn’t fair to him,
maybe, but I had to take his mind off being mother’s little helper. After a
time, he nodded morosely, turned and went into the bedroom. He closed the
door.
I turned off the lamps in the living room and lay down on the carpet,
facing the door. The tommy-gun was in my hands, its muzzle was facing the
doorway. There was no other way into the bungalow. If the mobsters came
hunting Kevin and me, they would have to come through that opening.
The Los Angeles night closed in around us. For a time the light showed
under Kev’s bedroom door but after a time it went out. I squirmed around,
flat on my belly, trying to get as comfortable as possible. It was going to be
a long wait.
This might even be a false alarm, I realized. I had no way of knowing how
Eddie Ben was going to react to the news Rhoda had given him over the
telephone. He might send his buttons, he might not. In cases like this, I try
to think the way the opposition would.
The way Eddie Ben had it figured, nobody on my side knew that Rhoda
had come here to do some spying for him. We would think we were
perfectly safe. Consequently, we would not be on our guard. It should be a
great time to make his hit.
It really didn’t matter to him whether he had Sean O’Reilly or his brother
Kevin as hostage. Either way, he figured Sean would turn over his oil wells,
to save his own life or that of Kevin. It was good thinking, and normally it
would get him what he wanted.
The only fly in the ointment—that he didn’t know about—was that I knew
Rhoda had made that phone call. I would be here, waiting for him. The
more I gave it thought, the more I became convinced that Eddie Ben would
make his hit tonight.
I heard faint sounds in the darkness, the ticking of the clock, a faint snore
from my bedroom where Rhoda was in slumberland. After a time, Kev
joined her. I scowled and muttered under my breath because those snores
were disturbing my concentration.
After a time I realized that those snores would help me. When the buttons
came, they would hear those snores and come in the way a fly wanders into
a spider’s web: totally unsuspecting.
Trouble was, I almost fell asleep myself. I found my head nodding, and I
rested it against the stock of the sub-machine gun. My eyelids closed. I’d
had a busy day, and was fairly pooped.
Twice I did fall asleep, I’m sure.
I told myself this would never do. Fine thing if those buttons came and
found me snoring, too!
I got to my feet, made my way cautiously through the darkened living
room and into the bathroom. I ran cold water, doused my face. Listening all
the time, of course, to any sounds from outside that would tell me the
soldiers were here.
Refreshed, somewhat more awake, I went back to my vigil.
I don’t know how much later it was that I heard the faint, scratching
sounds. An hour, maybe even more. But when my ears picked them up, I
snapped wide awake. Somebody was outside the door, picking the lock.
My hands gripped the sub-machine gun, lifted it slightly, zeroing in on the
door. The noise of the pick-lock went on. After a time it stopped and the
door opened slightly.
My eyes caught the glimmer of moonlight.
 At almost this same moment, both Rhoda and Kev began to snore a little
more loudly. Whoever was outside that door must have heard those snores
because the door swung inward. I saw three bodies standing there.
There was a whispered consultation, the gist of which was that the coast
was clear, and that this was going to be an easy job. One of the men turned
and spoke to an associate outside the bungalow.
The three men came in, moving quietly. Their bodies were framed against
the faint light outside the bungalow as I raised the sub-machine gun. My
finger curled lovingly around the trigger.
They paused there, listening to make sure the people they were after were
sound asleep. They didn’t know Rhoda was doing any of that snoring; they
thought it was little old me.
They took one more step.
My finger squeezed the trigger.
The whole goddamn bungalow seemed to explode in my ears as the sub-
machine gun began to talk. The men came to an abrupt stop, their bodies
jerked and twisted as I poured round after round into their motionless
figures.
They were dead as they stood there. I could see little puffs of dust jump
from their clothes. My hands let go of the sub-machine gun, and I sprang to
my feet with the Gold Cup in hand even before they hit the floor.
My job wasn’t over yet.
I figured the fourth man would be running like hell, after all that racket. I
damn near ran into him as he stood outside the door, frozen motionless.
Everything had happened so swiftly, he hadn’t had time to react. I guess
he didn’t know what had hit him. Or rather, his fellow buttons. I came out
of the doorway with the automatic in hand, and got a good look at his
dumbfounded face seconds before I rammed the muzzle of the Gold Cup
into his belly.
His mouth opened to yell.
 He never got the chance. I pumped two bullets into him as he stood there
staring at me. He fell backward, over a bush of some kind and just lay there.
Lights went on here and there in nearby bungalows. I bent and grabbed
the dead guy, dragged him in through the doorway before anybody could
see us. I leaned my body against the door and waited, scarcely breathing.
I heard some voices, and somebody walked up and down in the gardens,
but nobody rapped on the door. I swung back into the room to find Kevin
standing in the doorway of his bedroom.
“You all right?” he whispered.
“Yeah. Go back to bed.”
“How in hell can I sleep around you? You’re like the Seventh Cavalry,
you know that?”
“The action is over for the night.”
I moved to the telephone, dialed a number. The night man at
N.Y.M.P.H.O. answered. I clued him in to what had taken place. I would be
here when he came with Sven Thorson and the Los Angeles police
department to do the mopping up. He would get in touch with detective
Manfred Ord.
When I put the phone down, I said to Kev, “There’ll be cops all over the
place tomorrow. Early. Get as much sleep as you can.”
“What about you?”
My thumb jerked at the bedroom where Rhoda was snoring. “I’m going to
try, in there. If that dame will only soft-pedal those noises.”
Her nose and throat continued to make sounds, but I was so tired, I really
didn’t care. I slept.
A hand shook me back to consciousness. It was still dark outside, thanks
to universal daylight savings, but I could make out Sven Thorson, and right
beside him, Manfred Ord.
“Go away and let a girl sleep,” I mumbled.
Thorson chuckled. “You’ve been busy, I admit. And you deserve your
rest. But we want to ask you a few questions.”
 I sat up, blinking. Rhoda was at the foot of the bed, one of my robes
around her. Kevin O’Reilly was in the bedroom door, looking in. I muttered
something naughty under my breath, then swung my legs to the floor. I
hadn’t bothered to undress last night, I’d just toppled onto the bed and
drawn the covers over me. My only concession to the amenities had been to
kick off my shoes.
“Okay, okay. I killed them all,” I told them. “That what you want to
know?”
“We know that,” Ord grumbled. “You’re worse than the Bubonic plague.
What we want to know is, how’d you know they were coming here? And
who’s the girl?”
Kev called, “There’s fresh coffee, Cherry.”
I could smell it now. I moved between Thorson and Ord and into the tiny
kitchen. I sipped coffee, then gave them a rundown of my recent activities.
Thorson nodded. “We’ve picked Sean up, we’ve taken him to the ranch.
He’ll be safe enough there.”
“Take Kevin, too. And Rhoda.”
Ord stared at me. “Don’t you think the police should take Rhoda into
custody?”
“Like hell I do. She’d demand her rights to make a phone call, and tell
Eddie Ben what happened.”
“We can’t kidnap her,” Ord protested.
I gave him a smile. “Certainly not. You’re taking her into protective
custody. Eddie Ben will guess she told a lie when she made that phone call
to him, since the men he sent here will never return. He’ll have men out
gunning for her.”
The detective cocked an unbelieving eye at me. “And what are you going
to do? That’s where the action always is, wherever you go.”
“I’m going for a joy ride.”
He asked some more questions, scowling at me, with Sven Thorson trying
to smother a grin. We N.Y.M.P.H.O. agents work hand in glove with the
police, always have, but we do things on a less formal level. The cops can’t
go around shooting Mafia hoods the way we N.Y.M.P.H.O. people can.
Their hands are tied by a lot of red tape and laws that seem always to
protect the criminal.
As a result, the police don’t ask us too many questions. That way, they
can always say they didn’t know what was going to happen. I think Manny
Ord thought about this, because he opened his mouth and then closed it,
grunting.
“You need a day or two off, at that,” he agreed, letting his face break into
a grin. “Have a good time.” He waited a moment, then added, “Let me
know what a good time you had, and where we can pick up the bodies.”
In time, they all left, with Rhoda still wearing my robe. I told myself to
remember to add its cost to my expense account. Kevin O’Reilly hung back
behind the others. In the doorway he took my hands in his.
“When you finally finish this case, remember that you and I have some
celebrating to do.”
Then they were gone, with some curious bystanders watching the dead
bodies being lifted into police vans, staring in unabashed delight at Rhoda
in my robe that was more or less transparent, allowing a pretty good picture
of Rhoda in her scanties and long black nylons. I stood a moment staring
after them, then closed the door.
I went into the bedroom and lifted the sub-machine gun from where I had
tossed it under the bed last night. I fitted it with a new clip of cartridges,
made sure it was in working order, and then went into the closet for the
telescopic rifle. This too, I went over in great detail.
I would need a full armament for my job tonight. Maybe I ought to take
along a detail of Marines, I told myself. It was a very daring thing I meant
to do, perhaps even stupid. But it had to be done, if the O’Reillys were ever
going to be free of Eddie Ben.
I got undressed and took a warm shower.
Very slowly and lazily I rubbed that bar of soap all over my female
curves, over my breasts and nipples, my belly, in between my thighs. I
luxuriated in the feel of the water cascading down to wash the soapsuds
away. And I did some thinking at the same time.
Most people sing in the shower. I think, or try to. Now I knew damn well
that Eddie Ben would realize that his plan to catch himself an O’Reilly had
gone wrong when his buttons never came back. He might have somebody in
the police department who would tip him off as to what had happened, or he
might not. In any event, he would be very suspicious of Rhoda.
He was to meet Rhoda at a private ranch somewhere in the San Joaquin
Hills. Instead of the blonde, he would get a redhead. I’d have bet money
Eddie Ben would come along to make that payment, one way or the other.
I dried my naked body on a Cannon towel, almost lazily. I applied some
perfume and powder. I was pretty damn tired of being dirty, and I reveled in
making myself as feminine as possible.
Then I selected pantyhose, black slacks and black pullover sweater. I wore
a jacket with the outfit, also black. When I was dressed, I stared at my
reflection in the mirror and made a face.
Not that I didn’t make a pretty picture. In all modesty, I admit I was rather
mouthwatering. But my red hair was out of place. If I were going to be
Rhoda, I had to be a blonde. A visit to a local wig store was called for.
In the Gold Duster, I went shopping. I chose a wig which as nearly as
possible, imitated the way Rhoda wore her hair. It cost a bundle, but
N.Y.M.P.H.O. was paying for it, so what the heck. I had the salesgirl adjust
it to my satisfaction, paid her, then ambled out of the store as a reasonably
authentic blonde.
There was a whole day to kill, or almost, so I took my time driving south
on the Santa Ana Freeway. The sun was shining, there were very few clouds
in the sky; it was typical California weather. I had the windows down, and
breathed in the fresh air—once I was past the city limits—with great relish.
After coming off the freeway, I drove along some back roads until I saw a
sign reading: The Marble Forest. I followed my nose, as the saying has it,
until I found myself staring at so many statues that they did indeed appear
to form a marble forest.
 There were fauns and dryads, men and women, free-form sculptures here
and there on a rolling stretch of ground. There was grass between the
statues that gave them a magnificent setting. It was an open-air studio, in
effect. If you wanted one of those statues for your lawn or back yard,
always assuming you had an estate big enough to handle them, you came
here and shopped around.
I kept on driving, fixing the location of the place in my mind. It was out-
of-the-way, with no other building anywhere near it for miles, excepting
always the little ranch house that was perched on top of a hill. It made an
ideal spot for a Mafia meeting.
I drove down to Laguna Beach. It was well past noon and my stomach
was informing me in no uncertain terms that I had neglected it shamefully. I
turned the Gold Duster into a seafood restaurant that looked out over the
beach and the ocean, and sauntered in to slip on the feedbag.
Keeping in mind the fact that I might not get the chance to do much more
eating today—I had a long hike ahead of me—I fed my face with shrimp de
Jonghe, served in little casserole dishes, then on rock lobster tails covered
with a butter sauce. Figuring that I’d need all the energy I could get, I had a
strawberry tart with my coffee.
I took a walk on the beach before I drove off. I went back the way I had
come, just easing the Gold Duster along, while waiting for darkness to
shroud the land. I didn’t want to be seen lugging a sub-machine gun toward
the Marble Forest, most especially by Eddie Ben and his buttons.
According to Rhoda, the meeting between Eddie Ben and herself wasn’t
to take place until close to midnight. The don was a very careful man, he
rarely showed himself in public places, but every once in a while he must
have felt the need for fresh air. Besides, the Marble Forest was about as
private as you could get.
I parked three miles away, leaving the Duster under a tree alongside the
road. It was dark now, the moon and stars were out, but they really didn’t
give much light. I caught up the sub-machine gun and the Gucci bag with
my Colt automatic in it, and beat feet toward the ranch house.
 It was a longish walk, and I paused from time to time to scan the
countryside, seeing the rolling hills and the meadows, the distant lights
along the shoreline, and to listen to the vast hush of nature all around me.
I keep physically fit. One has to if one works for N.Y.M.P.H.O., but even
so, my legs were a little tired when I came walking toward those marble
statues. I found one that curved a little at its base, and plopped my rear end
in the curve. It made a pretty good seat.
I didn’t have too long to wait.
Three cars came along the road, slowed and stopped. Eight men got out
and began their walk toward me.
 CHAPTER TEN

The men were in no hurry, they laughed and joked among themselves.
One man walked alone, paying no attention to the others. This was a short
man, rather lean, with a fedora hat and a dark tie on a white shirt. I had him
tabbed for the don, Eddie Ben. His head was lifted so he could look up at
me where I sat clearly outlined against the white marble of the free-form
sculpture.
I told myself it was a good thing for Rhoda that I was here in her place.
Eddie Ben would never have come with so many soldiers if he were here
merely to make a payment. No, no. Eddie Ben was furious, he had been
double-crossed, or so he fancied, and he was out for revenge.
I rose to my feet. The sub-machine gun was out of sight behind the
sculpture, but my Gold Cup Colt was in the Gucci bag, along with my hand.
I can make a pretty fast draw from that Gucci bag. I waited with
confidence, though I admitted to a faster beating of my heart.
It all narrowed down to this final meeting, the bit about the fairy
godmother and Kevin O’Reilly’s siphoning off vast sums of money from
the gambling casinos Eddie Ben controlled. Everything that had gone
before, all the meetings, all the killings, was concentrated now on the next
few minutes.
“Hello, hole,” one of the men called, with cruel laughter in his voice.
It set the tone of the meeting, I realized. They were here to play cat and
mouse with Rhoda. They wouldn’t kill her here, I didn’t believe, they
would take her somewhere else and play with her sexually, gang raping her
before they finally did away with her. This was their plan.
“What happened to the boys we sent to that hotel bungalow, like you said
to do?”
“You double-crossing bitch! We owe you for that!”
“How much did they pay you?”
 I didn’t say a word. In the darkness and with the blonde wig, I might look
like Rhoda, but once I opened my mouth, they would know for sure I
wasn’t. I wanted them a little nearer before I yanked the Gold Cup.
Eddie Ben halted. He was a smart cookie, and he smelled a rat. Yet he
made no move to halt his buttons. They came on as before, mounting the
slight hill where I awaited them.
“Cat got your tongue, Rhoda?”
“Or did you think you could get away with it?”
They laughed, harshly and with evident relish for what was going to take
place. My fingers wrapped around the automatic. In another few seconds, I
was going to pull it free of the Gucci bag.
One of the men growled, “We’re goin’ to have some fun with you, baby.
You ain’t gonna be so high and mighty when we get through with you.”
“You and your stuck-up nose ain’t going to like what’s about to happen.”
I drew a deep breath, then lashed out at them. “You cheap, two-bit crooks!
You don’t scare me, not one little bit.”
They halted, every mother’s son of them. They tried to peer through the
darkness to see my face. It was in shadow. For all they could tell, I was
Rhoda. Yet their ears had heard my voice, and they felt something was
wrong.
I glanced side-wise at the don. He had halted, and was leaning forward
slightly, also staring for all he was worth.
I said, “This is the end of the line, you punks. I didn’t come here to listen
to your cheap brags. I’m going to pay you back for all the other Rhodas
you’ve raped and tormented before killing.”
Somebody yelled, “That ain’t Rhoda!”
The Gold Cup came out and spit flame. I saw a man go down even as I
whirled and darted behind the free-form sculpture. My hand reached for the
sub-machine gun, yanked it upward. I dropped the Colt into my bag, then
slid my trigger finger into its proper slot.
 Eddie Ben yelled shrilly, “Duck for cover! We got her cornered. She can’t
get away. Whoever she is, we’ll get her!”
Before they could find any cover, I threw myself out from behind the
marble statue. The ground rose up to meet me. From this prone position, I
could see their bodies framed against the lesser darkness of the sky.
My finger squeezed the trigger.
Red flame ran from the muzzle of the Thompson. Its noise was deafening.
At this distance, I could hardly miss as I ran the sub-machine gun back and
forth in a figure eight pattern. I saw bodies jerk and shudder as bullets went
into them.
A man screamed, his scream fading into a gurgle. The others were yelling,
a couple of them got off a shot or two before my bullets bit through their
flesh. I heard a bullet thud into the ground, heard another whine as it sailed
past the top of my head.
Eddie Ben was running, stumbling and slipping as he sought to flee. I
wanted desperately to go after him, but I didn’t dare, not until I had
accounted for all his buttons.
So I forgot all about Eddie Ben for a few seconds and concentrated on
getting my job done. None of the buttons were standing up now, they were
all flat on the ground, either dead or faking dead to get me to expose myself
more fully.
I wriggled backwards until the free-form sculpture was hiding all but a
very little bit of me. By this time my eyes were fully accustomed to the
faint light from the moon and the stars, and I made out eight black blobs on
the ground.
My eyes sighted along the Thompson barrel. I fired a short burst at first
one blob, then another. I saw them quiver as bullets plowed into them, then
saw two of them spring up and run toward me, firing as they came.
I swung the barrel around, let go with a couple of bursts. I caught each of
them in mid-stride. They plunged to the ground and lay motionless.
Very cautiously, I rose to my feet, finger still on the trigger. Nobody
moved. I ran my eyes over those dead bodies, then turned my attention to
Eddie Ben.
He had made good time down the hill, toward the three cars. He was
about fifty yards from the nearest when I started running myself. I was
faster than he, but I’d never have made it to the cars ahead of him.
However, I had something that would. I lifted the Thompson and let go
with a couple of bursts. Bullets thudded into all three cars, in a cacophony
of shattered glass and torn metal.
Eddie Ben skidded to a halt.
He turned and waited for me to come closer. He was a small man, but he
was a power in the Family. It was rumored of him that he had ordered the
deaths of more than sixty men.
I didn’t think he was armed. Few dons go around with guns. They leave
that to the soldiers of the mob, the musclemen.
I walked down the hill to meet him.
His eyes never left my face. When I came closer, I saw he was quivering
in the grip of an anger so deep he could scarcely talk. His lips worked, his
hands shook, he fought to control himself.
“Who are you?” he managed to whisper.
“Cherry Delight’s my name, and fighting the Mafia is my game. You’re
Mafia, Eddie Ben.”
He stared at me. “Are you the same one that’s fought me all the way from
Vegas? In the Amargosa Desert, did you gun down my buttons?”
“I sure did. It was a rare pleasure. And speaking of those buttons,
whatever became of Tony Boletto?”
“That bastard!”
“Come on, Eddie. Level with me. Tony Boletto did his best to get back in
your good graces, the only trouble was, I stole Sean O’Reilly away from
him.”
“You did that too, did you?” he asked, cocking his head on one side. A
grudging admiration dawned in his narrow face. “I could use a girl like you,
I really could, in my organization.”
 “What organization? You’re about the only one left. And you aren’t going
to last long.”
He laughed. “For a smart hole, you sure are wide of the mark on that one.
Nobody can touch me, girl. My name doesn’t appear on any paper that can
be produced in court. I’m not connected in any way with anything, except
maybe my gambling activities in Vegas. And gambling is legal in Nevada.”
“What makes you think I’m going to turn you over to the cops?” I asked
him pleasantly. “My nickname is The Sexecutioner, you know.”
Fear touched his eyes.
Then a voice said from the other side of a car, “Drop the gun, Cherry.”
Tony Boletto rose into view, a gun in his hand trained on my breasts. I
stared at him in something like shock.
Eddie Ben chortled in triumph. “I picked up Tony a little earlier. We’ve
made our peace, haven’t we, Tony?”
“Sure we have, boss.”
The don reached out for the sub-machine gun. My fingers relaxed, and I
let him take it from me. He said softly, “I brought him along to let him
watch us work Rhoda over, as a lesson. I told him I’d reconsider my
decision to oust him from the Family, after learned what Rhoda had to tell
me. I see now that he isn’t responsible for losing Sean O’Reilly. You told
me you stole him away from Tony.”
I stared into his narrow face. Cruelty glittered at me out of his eyes. He
said softly, “I’m going to work you over, girl. Usually I let my punks do it,
but this is something special. I owe you, I owe you a lot.”
He sprang at me, the sub-machine gun upraised to slam me across the
face. In his raw fury, his cold hate, he forgot one thing. Tony Boletto was
behind him, so that as he leaped forward, he came between us.
Tony couldn’t shoot me without getting Eddie Ben.
I reacted instinctively. My hands went up, caught his wrist. I swiveled my
hips around, hoisting him on top of my back. I threw him five yards away.
 In almost that same motion, I hurled myself at the ground. My hand went
into the Gucci bag.
Tony Boletto fired, but he was aiming at a moving target, and I heard his
bullet plow into the ground. Then the Gold Cup was out there in the
moonlight, my trigger finger working overtime as I sent bullet after bullet
into the dark shape that was Tony Boletto.
He turned sideways, he shook all over, as my lead found him. There was a
startled expression on his face, his mouth was open and his eyebrows
arched, as he died. I think he was so confident that I was a dead one, that he
never gave a thought to the fact that I might turn on him.
I swung around toward Eddie Ben.
He had taken a hard fall, but he was on his knees, fumbling with the sub-
machine gun. He got it up and aimed at me. It was my Gold Cup against the
Thompson.
“If you fire that, Eddie, you’ll only kill yourself,” I told him. “When you
fell, you got dirt in its barrel. You know what that means. When you attempt
to shoot it, it’ll only explode. Killing you.”
He stared at me, hesitant. He didn’t know whether to believe me or not, of
course. But he had to turn the sub-machine gun around to look, and that
meant away from me. He didn’t dare fire it for fear I was telling the truth.
He did what I expected him to do. He swung the Thompson about and
stared into the muzzle. It was clean as a whistle.
His face contorted in swollen fury. “You goddamn hole!” he screamed.
His hands swung the barrel back toward me but he wasn’t fast enough.
My trigger finger beat him.
I put a bullet between his eyes that came close to blowing the top of his
head off. He went over backwards and lay there. I let out a sigh and went to
stand over him, staring at his crumpled body.
He didn’t look like much, dead. But when he had been alive, he had been
a power in the land. Men lived or died at his nod. I told myself the world
was better off without him.
 I picked up the sub-machine gun and started walking. It was three miles
back to the Gold Duster. Then I had to drive to a phone booth and alert the
cops and Sven Thorson where they could pick up the bodies.
The police fussed and fumed a little; they felt they had been left out of the
operation. Manny Ord told me to go back to the Marble Forest and wait for
him.
When he got there and stared around him, he shook his head. “The local
undertakers ought to pay you a salary, you know that? You’re a one-girl
army, for God’s sake!”
“Think of the money I save the taxpayers. No trials, no clogged
courtrooms, nothing but coffins and a grave.”
“Yeah. Maybe you have a point.”
We had everything cleared up by dawn. I made out my affidavit, then
signed it when a police steno had typed it. I wasn’t at all tired; I could have
gone dancing.
It was false energy, I told myself.
When I came back to the hotel bungalow, there was a strange restlessness
in me. I let myself in, tossed the sub-machine gun and my Gucci bag on the
sofa, then padded toward my bedroom.
A door opened. Kevin O’Reilly stood in his own doorway, in rumpled
pajamas. He grinned when he saw me. It was more of a leer than a grin,
actually.
“It’s all done, hey?” he asked.
I stared at him. “I thought you were off at the N.Y.M.P.H.O. ranch?”
“We were, but Thorson called up to tell us the case was over, Eddie Ben
was dead, and we could relax. I got in a car and headed straight here. I left
Sean dickering with some big-shots from several oil corporations for rights
to his oil fields.”
“You did, hey?”
“I wanted to be the first to congratulate you.”
 I shook myself out of the short jacket I had been wearing. I put my hands
on the black turtleneck sweater and yanked it off over my head. My breasts
bobbled in the sheer bra I had on. O’Reilly was all eyes, as well he might
be.
I walked past him, fumbling at the bra snaps. I got the bra off and kept
right on walking toward the bathroom. I said over my shoulder, “Even the
Sexecutioner gets dirty, sometimes. I’m going to take a shower.”
“Sexecutioner, hey? How about sexecuting me?”
I thought it was a pretty good idea, everything considered.

END
Thank you for purchasing and reading Gardner Francis Fox’s Fire in the
Hole.

Find out more about Mr. Fox by visiting

www.gardnerfrancisfoxlibrary.com
The First in the Illustrated Series.
10 Short Stories & 30 B&W Illustrations
in Softcover & Hardcover
 This file was downloaded from Z-Library project

Your gateway to knowledge and culture. Accessible for everyone.

z-library.sk z-lib.gs z-lib.fm go-to-library.sk

Official Telegram channel

Z-Access

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-Library