Strip for Violence | Page 5

feeling you're
wanted in this crazy world. You work hard every day, building up to a
dance and it all turns out so dull and boring, lot of empty noise. And
you wake up to find a strange man driving you home, a blond-haired,
doll-faced little..."
"Cut that," I said, trying to push her away. My hand touched a great
deal of cool skin, and that lace bra strap.
"... And he talks tough and you don't believe him, only he is so hard he
frightens you. It's almost like a new thrill, gives the evening a new tone,
a sharp edge."

I was fooling with the strap and it broke or came apart and I had my
fingers on the heavy rise of her breast. I could still remember all the
reasons for not tangling with strays.
"Aren't you even going to kiss me?"
I moved my head down to duck her lips and ducked into her firm breast,
the hard nipple stabbing me in the eye. She giggled. "Now you'll have a
shiner."
"But this is the best way to get one," I said, my lips moving against the
lush smoothness of her breast.
Her laughter was a high note of hot triumph in the still room as her
hands tore open my shirt.
I could still remember all those reasons for skipping quickie affairs--but
I didn't believe a one of them.

5
THE SHRILL SOUND of an alarm shattered my head. I sat up. The
room was dim with the hard early gray light of morning. The alarm
claimed it was five-thirty. Louise got out of bed and shut the damn
thing off. She threw her arms back, stretched; even the morning light
couldn't change the comfortable curves of her strong body, nor the wild
red of her. I didn't object to seeing them, I don't believe in mixing the
two "B's"--business and bed. After I talked my last secretary into
working between the sheets, the office went to hell. In Anita's case
there was another danger--despite her saying she was nineteen, I was
sure she was jail-bait, and I'm not that sex-slappy.
Anita was a slender, almost skinny, dark-haired kid, with an eager,
sharp face that reflected her constant drive. She looked more like a
bobby-soxer than a secretary, but she was an efficient office worker,
and I wasn't paying the world's highest salary.

She was honest, a hard worker, and a nice kid--and she was driving me
nuts. Aside from throwing her young bosom all over the office (when I
once politely suggested she ought to buy a bra out of petty cash, Anita
said, "Hell, those two-piece jock straps are for old women.") the kid
also had the private eye bug. Her mother must have been frightened by
a comic book for Anita thought being a detective was strictly being a
super Humphrey Bogart. It was a source of painful astonishment for her
to learn that I'd never been on a big robbery, much less a murder, that
the private eye business is 99.99 per cent guard work, skip tracing, and
maybe now and then shadowing a two-timing wife or husband. Anita
lived in a private world of "big rewards," childish daydreams about the
"sensational capture of Public Enemy 1 to 10," and junk like that.
Taking my mail, three letters, I sat down at my desk, asked, "Anything
worth reading in these?"
"You got two bills, and a case--a great big one, a hundred bucks
worth," Anita said with mild disgust. "The boys called in, patrolled the
stores last night, everything okay. We're out of cards, so I called the
printer. I've also typed out four letters to dance-hall owners, usual
baloney. At noon you have a lunch appointment with a slob named
Boscom, owns the 5th Street Casino, a real fire-trap."
"Thanks," I said, opening the one letter that wasn't a bill. "Keep
working through the directory, sending form letters to the other dance
halls."
"Okay, okay, Hal, and don't think it isn't just all too, too thrilling. See
this?" She waved an FBI circular. "There's a two hundred grand reward
on that armed car robbery in Frisco. Gee, think of lifting two million
bucks... even bigger than the Brink's job up in New England. Two
hundred thousand bucks... reward." There was a far-away, dreamy,
quality to her voice.
I grinned at her. "I know, two more box tops and you can send away for
your tin badge."
Anita made a comment about my mother living on a diet of bones.

Talking tough was another of her charms.
Ê
6
THE CASE WAS from Guy Moore, who was my MP officer in Tokyo.
Now he was a struggling lawyer in St. Louis. An old man had died
leaving an "estate"--if you can call a