“I understand,” she said, “that you are an executive in the organization.”
He grinned. “Yeah. I’m what you might call administrative.” And he found himself telling her all about his job, the responsibility it entailed, the problems hie faced, the kind of guys he had working for him.
And she responded with good questions, with an interested expression on her face, with intelligent comments. He talked on and on, knowing he was impressing her and interesting her, delighted with himself and with her, more animated and vibrant than he’d ever been before in his life. When next he looked at his watch it was seven minutes to ten.
He stopped in mid-sentence, struck by the stupidity of it. Two hours shot, gone forever, and this broad didn’t even have her suit jacket off yet.
It was time. It was way past time.
But how the hell was he supposed to start? He’d spent all this time talking, and this was a high-class chick. You didn’t just all of a sudden tell her to spread her legs, you had to be genteel about it. How the hell was he supposed to start?
She watched him, smiling, and said, “Is it all right if I take off my shoes? I’ve been wearing them for just hours.”
“Yeah,” he said, distracted. “Sure, go ahead.”
She crossed one leg over the other, nylon brushing nylon, and removed her shoe. She was half turned toward him, and in that position he had a clear view down the length of the crossed leg, the darker band at the top of the stocking and the creamy flesh beyond.
Impulsively he reached out, stroking his hand up the underside of her leg, squeezing the top of the thigh beyond the stocking. “You’re great, Linda,” he said. “You’re the goddam best.”
She smiled again. “Help me off with my stockings, will you, Mal?”
“You bet I will.”
He knelt before her, rolled the stockings down the perfect lengths of her legs. She took her jacket off and the green silk scarf and the white blouse with the lace at the throat. Her bra was white. That was better than red, he thought, looking at her — more discreet, more cultured.
She touched his jawline. “I suppose we ought to go to the bedroom now,” she said softly.
“Yeah.”
He followed her into the bedroom. She was barefoot, wearing gray skirt and white bra, the bra strap at the level of his chin. She asked him to unsnap her and he did, and then she stepped out of the skirt and the garter belt and the panties. He was by then out of his dressing gown and trousers and slippers, and when she lay back on the bed, arms up to enclose him, he was ready.
He should have known that a girl who could charge one hundred dollars for one night of her companionship would have to be worth it in every way. In appearance, yes. In ability to make her customer feel at ease and feel interesting and important, yes. But most of all, she would have to be worth it in bed. And she was.
Excitement and delayed expectation and her skill finished him almost at once. He lay startled and humiliated and enraged: the boy who got to the matinee just as the chapter was ending. He gnawed painfully on his lower lip, and she murmured, “That’s all right, Mal. That’s only warming up.”
But he knew himself, he was no champion: he wasn’t born to run relay races all by himself.
“Let me get up, Mal,” she whispered. “I’ll be right back, and don’t you worry about anything.”
He rolled over, and watched the grand fluidity of her body as she rose from the bed and left the room. To have had that, and only for those few seconds, that was bitter.
But when she came back, he found out at last what it truly was he was paying her for. To make him more a man than he was. With gentle smiling urgency she made him ready again, and for the second time he closed his eyes and had the time of his life. And afterwards he slept, content.
He awoke to find the nightstand lamp still burning, and her asleep beside him. The clock said twenty past three. She was lying on her back, one arm down at her side, the other bent, the hand on her stomach. Her hair was disarranged, the lipstick had been rubbed from her mouth, her body gleamed in the dim light. He looked at her now and felt only physical desire, stronger even than before.
He woke her, and she reacted at once, her arms coming around him, her body responding to him, and he just barely heard the sound of the window being raised.
He pushed up with his hands, arching his back, staring terrified over his shoulder, and saw Parker come through the window from the fire escape. His head spun around, and he saw the dressing gown on the chair beyond the nightstand. Desperately he pushed away from her, lunging headlong toward the dressing gown, knowing he would never make it.
Chapter 7
Like a machine, he felt a click and it was nine months ago. At the estate, when they came back from the island and he first approached Ryan about the double cross.
“You know Parker better than I do,” he’d said. “Tell me something. Would he ever try to grab the whole pie in a thing like this?”
“Parker?” Ryan shook his head. “Not a chance. I worked with him three, four times, and he’s straight. Don’t you worry about it.”
“Okay,” said Mal doubtfully. “If you say so. It’s just I heard him and Sill talking, and from what they said it sounded like — it must of meant something else, that’s all.”
Ryan bit right away. “Wait a second. What did they say?”
“Parker said something about a two-way split. At least, that’s what it sounded like. A two-way split was better, something like that. And Sill said something about you were the only guy who could fly the plane and Parker said there was still a car in the garage. The one Lynn came up in.”
