motley crowd of long-haired hippie boys and girls who were thronging the sidewalk.
It was growing dark and there was a chill nip in the autumn air that bit right through the white Angora wool coat she was wearing over her black chiffon cocktail dress. When Axel had phoned her unexpectedly that afternoon to meet him at the corner of Fifth and Eighth, she had expected to be taken to the opening of a new art show or a party, not shadowing some poor girl up and down the streets of Greenwich Village.
'Damn you, Borman!' she snapped, using his last name to indicate her exasperation, although she could hardly keep from laughing at the picture he made… the distinguished Wall Street broker staring earnestly down at the beads and sandals and other assorted junk in the window. 'Damn you!' she repeated when he didn't even bother to look at her. 'If you don't tell me why we're following that poor girl, I'm going home right now.'
'How'd you like to suck her pussy?' he shot back at her in a low voice gangster-style out of the side of his mouth.
'Oh, is that what I'm gonna do?' Nina retorted sarcastically, feeling nevertheless a little apple of excitement in her tummy. 'Well, what are we waiting for? Why don't we just take her home with us so I can get down to business?'
'Shhhhh,' Borman warned her. The brunette was coming out of the door of the brownstone and behind her an enormously fat woman with her peroxided hair up in curlers and her face beet-red with fury was screaming.
'Whore! Harlot! You're all whores and harlots. Out! Out of my house before God strikes you down as he surely will. Out! Out! Out!'
The young brunette half-ran, half-stumbled, down the steps with tears streaming down her frightened face and hurried off with Nina and Borman in pursuit.
'Did you set that up, you bastard?' Nina asked when they had slowed down again. The brunette had stopped and was fumbling in the large rectangular leather pocketbook which she was carrying suspended from her shoulder by a strap. She drew out a handkerchief and began dabbing at her eyes.
'Nope,' Borman replied. 'But it won't hurt. Soften her up a little more…'
Just then Nina felt someone jostle past her and caught just a glimpse of a long-haired, beetle-browed man who darted between the intervening passersby, ripped the purse from the brunette's shoulder and took off at a dead run down the crowded block.
'Stop, thief! Stop, thief!' Shouting loudly and brandishing his cane like a character in an old-fashioned melodrama, Borman surged after the running figure and a second later both of them disappeared around a corner. A few people turned to stare curiously in the direction of the brunette who was standing there with an expression of bewildered consternation on her face, but no one went up to her to comfort her, just as no one had raised a finger to stop the thief.
About par for Fun City, Nina thought angrily to herself. She suspected at once that her husband was behind the purse-snatching episode and was sure that it was just a gambit in whatever crazy scheme he had cooked up, but the indifference of all the other people to the robbery in broad daylight really got to her. Impulsively… and knowing at the same time that it was probably exactly what Axel would want her to do… she went up to the distraught girl and put her arm around her.
'Don't worry, honey,' she said sympathetically. 'My husband will get your purse back for you.'
'It-it had everything in it,' the brunette sobbed brokenly. 'All my money, my driving license…' She caught hold of herself and looked gratefully at the slim elegant blonde stranger who had taken pity on her. 'God, it even had the key to the locker where I checked my suitcase in it!' she suddenly remembered. 'I won't be able to get my suitcase out.'
'Don't worry,' Nina comforted her again. 'Here comes Axel now… my husband. Oh… oh! I'm afraid he doesn't have your pocketbook though.' She nodded toward Axel who was barging toward them through the crowd. He was panting like a winded bull, and his heavy square-jawed face was all ruddy with his exertions.
'Lost him, damn it all!' he growled thumping the tip of his cane on the sidewalk. 'Think anybody would try to stop him? They just got in my way, that's all. Stupid bastards!' Then suddenly his grim expression vanished and his face split in a charming smile. 'Well, I'll be damned,' he said to the distressed brunette. 'Aren't you Miss Wright from the realtor's office in Laketon, Maryland? I'm Axel Borman. Bought a farm there from Mr. Chisolm last summer. Remember?'
What a God-awful ham you are, Axel, Nina thought affectionately as she watched this minor miracle unfold right in front of her eyes on the sordid streets of Greenwich Village. Recognition dawned in June Wright's eyes and soon her hand was tucked under Axel's other arm as he towed both the women along Fifth Avenue toward Washington Square Park.
'We live just down the street,' he was saying to June. 'I'm afraid your purse is gone for good, but I'm sure I can get your bag out of the locker without any trouble. You just come up to the apartment and rest for a few minutes while I make a couple of phone calls…'
Wow, those few minutes had really stretched, June was thinking a little woozily to herself about four hours later as she sat cozily curled up in one corner of an enormous couch, warming her second large snifter of after- dinner Brandy-and-Benedictine in the palm of her hand. She was sitting in what was beyond doubt the most lavish and tastefully decorated living room she had ever seen. It was like something right out of the movies, only much better. In fact, the whole evening had seemed enchanted and unreal, right from the minute Mr. Borman had recognized her and brought her here. Why, she was almost glad her pocketbook had been stolen, even if there was over sixty dollars in it, just to get a glimpse of the way Mr. Borman and his charming wife Nina lived. The meal they had eaten, prepared by the Borman's personal French chef, was probably worth sixty dollars all by itself, she figured. She had never tasted such delicious food, and every time she looked out of the dining room window she felt as if she had the whole city of New York at her feet.
The Bormans lived in a duplex penthouse on top of one of the few high-rise buildings in that area. Standing on the terrace before dinner she had been able to look way down at the long rows of shabby brownstone houses and dingy brick tenements like the ones she had been looking for Tiffany in. After two cocktails she had broken down and told Nina and Axel… it was hard for her to call him Axel, he was so imposing, but he had insisted… anyway, she had told them about Tiffany's running away with Cliff. She'd covered up the real story by saying they had eloped together… And about the telegram and how when Cliff didn't meet her at the train as she had expected he would, she had gone to the address he had given. God, she certainly would never forget that place. She thought she had done a pretty good job of describing to Nina and Axel how sinister and awful it had been with all these freaky filthy people lying around in the most awful mess she'd ever seen. Empty yogurt cups and rotting fruit and vegetables in all the corners.
She was certain everyone there was on drugs, and the only one who had seemed to be in a halfway normal state had just laughed when she asked about Tiffany. Nobody has a name here, baby, he had said, and when she showed him the picture of her sister she had brought along, he explained that the place was just what they called a 'crash pad'. People came and went every day and he'd only been there a week himself.
Then there was the policeman she had asked where the Missing Persons Bureau was. He had snarled at her that Western Union was always making mistakes and that she should check numbers 62 and 52 and 27 and so on before she bothered the Bureau. Why not 18th Street, too and 108th Street, why not every building in the whole city of ten million or whatever it was…?
Axel had told her that he knew exactly how callous and indifferent the police appeared to be. It was really because they were overworked, he assured her, but he knew someone in City Hall who would see that her sister's case received the proper attention. Meanwhile, since it had been too late to contact the man he knew who could help about her suitcase, it had been decided that she spend the night with them. After the hostility… the downright inhumanity… of the city it had really been wonderful to meet such warm hospitable people, and June's protest that she didn't want to impose on them was pretty feeble.
'Oh, pooh,' Nina laughed. 'You're not imposing at all. I'm not as… uh… busty as you are but maybe you can squeeze into one of my nighties. How about a little nightcap before we turn in?' She leaned forward to take the decanter from the coffee table and poured some more of the amber liquid into June's glass in spite of her protests.
'I'm really not used to drinking so much,' she giggled a little foolishly. 'Cocktails before dinner, wine with dinner and three liqueurs after dinner. Goodness, what would the people in Laketon say?'
'What the hell do people in Laketon drink, for chrissake?' Axel growled suddenly in a surly overbearing voice
