With far less fumbling than you’d imagine, I unbuttoned the dress, and she sat atop me and peeled it off the upper part of her, the garment gathering at her tiny waist, revealing a formidable white bra into which considerable engineering had gone, and she asked me to undo that as well, and I did, and none of that engineering had been necessary because the full breasts were capable of standing up for themselves, large nipples dark against the pale rounded flesh, puffy soft nipples that got crinkly and hard under my kisses. I kissed her and kissed her, her salty face, her lips, her neck, her shoulders, and she let me do most of the kissing, as if basking in the affection; then she eased herself off me, and the couch, onto the floor, and stepped out of the dress, a pool of powder blue at her feet. She wore no nylons, no garter belt, no girdle, simply sheer panties, the pubic triangle vividly dark beneath the fabric.
I managed to say, “I’ll … I’ll get something.”
She shook her head. “No. It’s a safe time. It’s safe …”
Maybe she was a Catholic at that, though the nun part was starting to sound doubtful.
Then she tugged down the panties, and the blackness of the untamed tuft between her legs against the creamy flesh was startling. She was a stunning woman, petite but with that Botticelli body, and she stood there with the reflection of flames and shadows flickering crazily on her flesh, a campfire dancing around her.
“Now you,” she said.
I stood and yanked off my T-shirt, got out of my trousers, stepped out of my drawers. I started to take my socks off but she stopped me.
“Leave them on,” she said, with a new wickedness. “It’s dirtier that way.”
This nun concept was definitely flawed.
We did it on the carpet, near the fire, with me on top, with her on top, and then she stuck that heart-shaped bottom in the air and had me finish her from behind, me saying “Oh God,” again and again, her saying “Yes” over and over, building from a whisper to a scream.
And that was just the first time.
“You were wonderful,” she said, as we lay on the couch; she was back in her bra and panties, and I was in my skivvies.
“You … you’re not so … bad … yourself.” I was pretty winded; we won’t go into our respective ages.
“Of course, I don’t have much to go on,” she said, suddenly pixieish.
“Oh? You seemed to know what you were doing.”
“Really? Gee whiz. You’re only the second man I was ever with.”
Then, having kicked me thusly in the head, or somewhere, she fell asleep, leaving me to ponder whether it bothered me or not, playing substitute for that late fighter pilot husband of hers. Had I taken advantage of her, in her distraught state? Gee whiz-was
Had she mistaken my natural lechery for friendliness?
“Naw,” I said to myself, and fell asleep with her in my arms.
13
If Norman Rockwell were looking for a classic American small town to represent the Southwest for his next
Right down to the manure-rich aroma wafting in from surrounding ranchlands, this was a typical farm community, though distinctly modern, with wide paved streets and flourishing industry (meat-packing plant, flour mill, creameries), and oddly similar to the District of Columbia in its preponderance of shade trees, handsome public buildings and flower-filled parks. Of course in Roswell, it was not granite, but adobe; not cherry trees, but cottonwoods; not memorials, but playgrounds. There was even a Pennsylvania Avenue, with a few Federal-style houses, though mingled with Queen Anne, Tudor, Prairie and more.
In fact, Maria her-Selff (who this morning I had dropped off at her car parked at the recreation area of Bottomless Lake) lived on Pennsylvania Avenue. But I had orders not to come around her place unless it was after dark and she knew I was coming and I left my car parked at least four blocks away and slipped in back. I knew an invitation when I heard one, and-what the hell-it wasn’t like this was the first time I was a back-door man.
Right now, however, the sun was high and hot, the air still and dry, and I had people to see, starting with the sheriff of Chaves County. A risky proposition, walking right up to the local law and introducing myself; wasn’t this the sort of tumbleweed town where they didn’t cotton to my kind around these here parts? Where the man with the badge gave prying strangers a choice between the noon outbound stage or a one-way ticket to Boot Hill? The only proposition riskier would be
The Chaves County Courthouse, on Main Street, was a neoclassical tan brick structure dating to 1912, the year New Mexico joined the Union. A green-tiled dome loomed imposingly over a massive entryway, and the interior sported equally impressive Greek-key-design tile floors, brass chandeliers and ornate plasterwork. But the adjacent office of the sheriff proved as shabby and nondescript as is customary, bulletin boards sporting Mexican, Indian and white suspects in unprejudiced array.
I wanted to keep things casual and unthreatening, so I’d dressed like a tourist, in a two-tone shirt-tan with blue collar and sleeves-and lightweight blue twill slacks and two-tone brown-and-white shoes. Taking off my straw fedora and slipping my sunglasses in my breast pocket, I checked in with a thin, young, dark-haired deputy-his name tag said Reynolds-and asked if I could see the sheriff, telling the kid briefly who I was.
“If this is a bad time,” I said, “I can make an appointment. I plan to be in Roswell for several days.”
“In all the way from Chicago, huh?” the deputy said. He had bright eyes and a ready toothy smile. “Fly into El Paso?”
“Sure did. Pretty drive up here.”
“Get a load of them white sands? That’s as close to Christmas as it gets around here.”
“Never saw anything like it. Low crime rate around these parts?”
He snorted a laugh. “About as exciting as pickin’ a flea off a dog.”
I had figured as much, as long as this was taking. Finally, the chatty deputy scooted his chair back, rose and checked with the sheriff, who saw me right away.
Sheriff George Wilcox stood to shake hands behind his tidy desk in his doorless cubbyhole off the main office, which was taken up by the booking area and his two deputies at their desks. In a short-sleeve khaki shirt with a badge and Apache-pattern tie, Wilcox was a sturdy-looking, square-headed, jug-eared lawman of maybe fifty-five; his dark white-at-the-temples hair rose high over dark careless slashes of eyebrow, and his large dark eyes were somewhat magnified by wire-rim glasses; blunt-nosed, with a wide, thin mouth, Wilcox had a no-nonsense manner, gruff but not hostile.
“What’s the nature of your business here, Mr. Heller?” he asked; his baritone was as sandswept as his county’s terrain.
I had already shown him my Illinois private investigator’s license and my Cook County honorary deputy sheriff’s badge; neither seemed to impress him much.
Settling into a wooden chair no harder than the expression the sheriff was giving me, I said pleasantly, “I’m doing some background research for a nationally known journalist.”
“Who would that be?”
“My client requested I keep that confidential.”
“Why?”
“Frankly, he’s got a controversial reputation and he doesn’t want people to be put off.” That was about as candid as I could afford to be.
Wilcox rocked back in his swivel chair, digesting that. Then he said, “What’s the nature of the article? You’re too late for Rodeo Days.”
“Sounds like that would’ve made a fun story, but this one’s fun, too. You know, this flying saucer fad, in all the papers a couple years now-my client’s doing a kind of wrap-up, sort of a postwar hysteria angle. Looking into
