“Well, thank you,” she said, not knowing exactly what sort of response was expected of her. “What are you going to do, beat me with whips?”
He ignored her attempt at levity, as though he hadn’t heard it. “How hypocritical can you get?” he asked her. “This is where I really live. But I seldom bring anyone down here. Except a couple of poker-playing pals such as Sam Sokolski over on the
She said, “I’d love one. Hey, I like this room. It looks, well,
“Quite sure,” he said wearily. “When I have a woman in my home we go through the usual bit, upstairs. Everything is the latest, from wherever the latest is from. And we usually wind up on the waterbed up above, from Finland. Why waterbeds have a status symbol when they come from Finland, I don’t know. But they do. Frankly, I hate water-beds.”
She was laughing a bit. “You mean you act the cad when you seduce a young lady to come to your home?”
He said, “I don’t have to. It’s all the thing, these days, if you have status labels, and she has status labels of approximately the same level, to climb into bed with each other, after a few vodka martinis.”
His back to her, he brought forth brandy and Cointreau from his liquor cabinet, and lemon and ice from the tiny refrigerator. He also surreptitiously dropped a small white pill into one of the glasses.
She had kicked her shoes off and now tucked her legs under her, making a very attractive picture on the couch where she had sat herself.
“What?” she said accusingly. “No auto-bar? I thought an auto-bar was mandatory these days. How could an ambitious young bureaucrat get by without an auto-bar?”
Larry measured out ingredients efficiently and then stirred the drink briskly, until the shaker was frosted. “Upstairs with the rest of my status symbols,” he said, pouring carefully into the champagne-sized glasses. “Down here, I live, up there, I conform.” He took one of the drinks over to her, kept the other for himself.
He put his glass down on the cocktail table before her and went over to the tape recorder. She sipped the drink, appreciatively, and looked over at him. “My, you really can mix a cocktail. I haven’t had anything as good as this for ages.”
“These days bartenders don’t have to know how to make anything but vodka martinis,” he said bitterly. “That’s my own version of a Sidecar.” He looked at his collection of tapes. “In the way of corny music, how do you like that old timer, Nat Cole?”
“King Cole? I love him,” LaVerne said, taking another pull at her Sidecar.
He placed a tape in the recorder and activated it. The strains of “For All We Know” penetrated the room. Larry turned it low and then went over and sat down next to her. He picked up his drink from the cocktail table before them and finished half of it in one swallow.
“I’m beginning to wonder whether or not this Movement doesn’t have something,” he said.
She didn’t answer that. They sat in silence for a while, appreciating the drink and the music. Nat Cole was singing “The Very Thought of You,” now. Larry got up and made two more of the cocktails and returned with them. This time when he regained his seat next to her, he idly put an arm around her shoulders.
He said, “Did anyone ever tell you that you are a very pretty girl?”
LaVerne didn’t resist. In fact, her breath seemed to be coming in little pants. She looked at him, her eyes a bit wide. “Not for a long time,” she said. “It seems that in this day and age, men steer clear of girls who don’t conform.” Her voice trembled a little.
Larry put a finger under her chin and bent over and kissed her very gently. Her lips seemed hot. She responded enthusiastically. It hardly seemed like the prim, sharp-tongued LaVerne Polk. Evidently, the gentleness of his kiss wasn’t called for.
He continued to kiss her, and put his right hand over one of her breasts. He could feel through the clothing that the nipple was already hard. She had ample breasts. He wondered how she looked in a bathing suit—or out of one, for that matter. She was probably stacked like a brick outhouse. She squirmed, but not in rejection. In fact, she pressed her mouth to his more firmly and opened her lips.
He let his hand go down to her knee, received no protest, and slid it up under her dress. She pretended to ignore it, continuing the hotness of her kisses.
He stopped kissing her long enough to say, “You’re a virgin, LaVerne?”
She had her eyes closed. “Yes… yes, I am,” she managed to get out. “I… hope you don’t mind. Please, darling, don’t stop. Don’t stop now.”
He kissed her again, stretched her out on the king-size couch and reached up and flicked the light to very dim.
She lay there, panting, and evidently a bit apprehensive, in spite of her passion. He folded her skirt up to her hips, took off her shoes, and gently pulled down her briefs. She made no protest whatsoever, indeed moved to help him in the rearranging of her clothing.
He tossed the panties to the floor and bent over her expertly for a moment. She squirmed and her breath became a series of gasps.
He sat erect for a moment and unzipped his fly…
He performed with her three times in all, finally deciding that she had reached saturation. Surely, he had. If she was not now completely relaxed, there was nothing he could do about it.
He rearranged their clothing, pulling her skirt back over her knees, and sat there on the couch with her, his arm affectionately over her shoulders. He reached up and flicked the lamp back to greater intensity; not to full brightness, but enough that he would be able to study her face. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
XIX
Finally he said softly, only a murmur, “When Steve Hackett and I were questioning Susan, there was only one other person who knew that we’d picked her up. There was, hence, only one person who could have warned Ernest Self to make a getaway. Later on, there was only one person who could have warned Frank Nostrand so that he and the Professor could find a new hideout.”
She said sleepily, “How long have you known about that, darling?”
“A while,” Larry said, his own voice kept deliberately low. “Partly, I figured it out when I also decided how Susan Self was spirited out of the Greater Washington Hilton before we had the time to question her further. Somebody who had access to tapes of me cut out a section and dubbed in a voice so that the Secret Service matron who was watching Susan was fooled into believing it was I ordering the girl to be turned over to the two Movement members.”
LaVerne stirred comfortably and let her head sink onto his shoulder. “You’re so warm and… comfortable,” she said.
Larry said softly, “What does the Movement expect to do with all that counterfeit money, LaVerne?”
She stirred against his shoulder, as though bothered by the need to talk. “Give it all away,” she said.
Inwardly he froze.
She went on sleepily. “Distribute it all over the country and destroy the nation’s social currency.”
It took him a long, unbelieving moment to assimilate that at all.
He said carefully, “What have the rockets to do with it? Where do they come in?”
She stirred once again, as though wishing he’d be silent and said sleepily, “That’s how the money will be distributed. About twenty rockets, strategically placed, each with a
Larry said, so softly as hardly to be heard, “What will that accomplish?”
“Money is the greatest social-label of them all. The Professor believes that through this step the Movement
