Whatever Goes Up

by Troy Conway

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 1969 by Coronet Communication, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Popular Library

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: May 2008

  ISBN: 978-0-446-54140-4

  Contents

  ROD DAMON TAKES OFF ON THE BIGGEST CASE OF HIS CAREER

  OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES BY TROY CONWAY

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  ROD DAMON TAKES OFF ON THE BIGGEST CASE OF HIS CAREER.

  The Coxeman has never before been faced with a mystery like this—three mysteries, in fact. Three beautiful, deadly agents who can take off into the air—just like that—and leave poor Rod high and dry.

  Rod must find out their secret—a secret heretofore known only to the birds and the bees. How can these gorgeous girls fly? And who—or what—is behind these flying fleshpots?

  Rod must uncover the answers or a valuable secret could drop into enemy hands. But the idea of girls flying like birds is just too much for the Coxeman. For a while he can’t lay a finger on the problem, but then he realizes that

  WHATEVER GOES UP . . . must come down!

  Other Books In This Series By Troy Conway

  THE BERLIN WALL AFFAIR

  THE BIG FREAK-OUT

  THE BILLION DOLLAR SNATCH

  THE WHAM! BAM! THANK YOU, MA’AM AFFAIR

  IT’S GETTING HARDER ALL THE TIME

  COME ONE, COME ALL

  LAST LICKS

  KEEP IT UP, ROD

  THE MAN-EATER

  THE BEST LAID PLANS

  IT’S WHAT’S UP FRONT THAT COUNTS

  HAD ANY LATELY?

  CHAPTER ONE

  I was fishing for a girl.

  I was cold, wet, hungry and tired.

  I had been on watch here on this Carolina beach the whole night long, and for a long part of this dull, gray morning. I was disgusted with myself, with my assignment, and with the fact that I had to fish without bait.

  Maybe I could have hooked onto a bluefish if I had been allowed to use anything more than an empty hook held down by a lead sinker as I reeled it in along the rocky shale in the rough waters off this Outer Bank beach.

  Gray driftwood, a leaden sky, the cold white sands of the seashore, were enough to dampen my enthusiasm for my job. I was the only person alive in a barren world, it seemed. A spattering of dun grasses, over which a cold wind was blowing, added to my discomfort. The water was a greenish-gray and came thundering in with ten-foot-high waves. Spray from those waves was drenching my cablestitch sweater. My hip-length boots had been running wet for hours.

  Where the hell was that girl?

  My name is Rod Damon. I am a sociology professor at a big university, and the founder of the League for Sexual Dynamics. I am also a member of the Thaddeus X. Coxe Foundation, which is an espionage establishment operating more or less independently of everybody except its boss, whom I know only as Walrus-moustache. Who he reports to is absolutely unknown to me, possibly as a security measure. It is enough for me to report to him. He is something else again; he might have modeled for the original ogre.

  I cursed him under my breath as I made a cast, sending the bare hook and the lead sinker out about fifty yards. My reel made a nice, whirring sound which would have been music to my lonesome ears if there’d been a bit of bait on that hook to attract one of the big bluefish that converge along the seventy-odd miles of unspoiled beach here at the Outer Banks off the coast of North Carolina.

  This was his idea—that I should be out here freezing to death and pretending to fish. One of our Coxe Foundation agents had made a big catch himself: he had tied onto an agent for the Opposition, and from him—with the help of truth drug or two—the Old Man had learned that something big was in the wind.

  The man our boy in Raleigh had come up with was a paid assassin. A professional killer. They do exist, you know; you rarely hear of them because they are pretty smart cookies, they are never seen. The deaths they cause appear to be accidental ones. There is rarely any reason to suspect murder.

  The Foundation knew somebody wanted a man killed. Otherwise, why employ a killer-for-hire? The question we wanted to find out the answer to was: Who was marked for death, and why?

  This was my job, to get that answer.

  So here I was, reeling in a wet line with an empty hook and cursing the Fates who had made me a secret agent responsible only to Walrus-moustache. He was sleeping the sound slumber of those with unspotted conscience, while I—

  “Hi!” a voice bubbled. “I’m Laura Ogden.”

  I turned my head and forgot to move the reel handle. A girl was walking across the sand, a big friendly smile on her gorgeous face. She wore a sweater under which her body must have been naked, because her ample breasts jiggled and shook with over ripe enthusiasm at her every sand-kicking step. Below the French-knit beige sweater with its low-cut cowl neck, her curving hips were held by a pair of hip-huggers that revealed the fact she wore a bikini panty under them. The dark brown hip-huggers were tight to her thighs and knees; under them, she showed lithe, long legs. There were red leather beach sandals on her otherwise bare feet.

  “Hi, yourself,” I grinned.

  She came right up to me, head cocked to one side so her brown hair could spill down over one shoulder. She had brown eyes, and her mouth was daubed with a brilliant shade of red lipstick.

  “Catch anything?” she asked softly.

  “I’ll make a killing yet,” I responded.

  These were the passwords, as reported by the paid killer our man in Raleigh had captured. I had not seen him, though I knew his name was Albert Frame. I just hoped he had been telling the truth.

  Her smile dazzled me, it welcomed me to the club. She put out her right hand, I gave it a clasp and smiled back at her.

  “Where do we go?” I wondered, waving my free hand at the beach to indicate this was one of the most Godforsaken spots I had ever seen, especially at this time of year.

  “Oh, not too far,” she answered, letting go of my hand and turning so I could take a gander at her behind cheeks in the tight hip-huggers. I looked, and was impressed. She appeared to frown when I stared at her plump buttocks, but in a moment her face was bland, except for the faint smile.

  I reeled in my line. I said, “Oh, damn. I lost my bait.” I fitted the hook to the line, bent and picked up a bait box and a short-handled net, as well as my small knapsack, and a green metal fishing tackle box.

  She was striding about ten feet ahead of me, glancing back over her shoulder. It seemed to me she was putting a little extra sexiness in her walk, because her buttocks jiggled somewhat more than they should have. I looked at them with appreciation. They were exciting buttocks. I know, because it was exciting me.

  True, I am afflicted with priapism. This means I am almost perpetually in heat, with my manhood constantly at attention. It takes very little to set me off, just the sight of a jiggling plum
p behind or a pair of breasts naked under a thin cashmere sweater—like now, with this lovely brunette on this lonely beach.

  She slowed her walk so I could catch up.

  I saw her eyes move to the front of my rather tight slacks. I was wearing an old pair for the fishing bit, and maybe they were too worn, too tight, because she got that frown on her face again—a look of deep puzzlement, as if she could not understand how she could excite any man this way. So she tucked her arm in mine, rubbing her breast against my arm and gave me a really sultry look.

  “You know, I didn’t expect to find anybody as handsome as you,” she cooed. “I’ve never seen Albert Frame before—his name was recommended to us by a mutual friend—but I admit I’d preconceived you in my mind. Somebody small and mean and sneaky, with pale blue eyes and thin blonde hair, that was how I thought you’d be. Instead, you’re a regular he-man.”

  I grinned. “I do my best.”

  She hugged me even tighter to her softness. “Midge will be glad to see you. Midge is very hard up at the moment.”

  “Ah? And who is Midge?”

  “My companion. We work in pairs, you know.”

  “Do I?”

  Her laughter rang out. “Not really. You don’t know any more about us than we do about you, isn’t that right? All our mutual friend did was set up the meeting and provide us with the passwords so we’d know each other at our rendezvous point.”

  This jibed with what the real Albert Frame had told Walrus-moustache when he had been interrogated. The boss had passed on the info to me when he’d told me I was going to become Albert Frame.

  The Old Man had added that I did not look like Frame, I was bigger and stronger, but I did have eyes, ears, nose and brown hair, so he figured I would pass. Besides, the girls had never laid eyes on Albert Frame.

  I passed all right. My brunette beauty kept nudging her heavy breast into my arm and giggling at sight of my reaction. She seemed to be getting an unholy delight from the fact that I was all man and obviously responsive to her charms.

  There was a tan Ford Fairlane parked on the one main road that runs along this length of beachland, from Whalebone Junction to Ocracoke. We headed for it with my girlfriend glancing at me inquiringly.

  “Where’s your car?” she wondered.

  “I took a taxi from Nag’s Head,” I lied: Actually it had been a Coxe Foundation car—disguised as a taxi, it is true—that had delivered me to the lonely beach designated as a rendezvous point by Albert Frame. I added, “It wasn’t necessary to have him come back to pick me up. I figured on meeting you.”

  She nodded, quite satisfied.

  I stowed my gear in the trunk, took off my wading boots, and made myself more or less presentable in my rugged sweater, my old slacks, and a pair of Hush Puppies I removed from my knapsack. Then I slid in beside my girl guide and let her take me where we could be alone.

  She drove with competence, handling the Ford with the delicate touch of a Mickey Thompson rocketing his Challenger along the Bonneville Salt Flats. Her eyes were turned straight ahead and she gave me no more glances. It was almost as if she had forgotten my existence.

  To make conversation, I murmured, “These Outer Banks are chockful of history, you know. Sir Walter Raleigh founded a colony here, the first English settlement in America. This was the same Roanoke Colony from which the second group of colonists vanished without a trace. The first batch went back to England, it was such an inhospitable place.”

  “I always thought that colony was on the mainland, for some reason,” she murmured, giving me a swift glance before her eyes went back to the road.

  “No, it was here, not too far from Kitty Hawk, where the Wright brothers made the first airplane flight. There’s always a good, stiff breeze blowing somewhere around these Banks.”

  “Like a hurricane,” she laughed.

  “The strongest hurricane of them all blew away the wind-velocity machines from Cape Hatteras weather station more than twenty years ago. Nobody knows how strong that blow was, but it was estimated at a hundred and ten miles an hour.”

  “You’re a regular encyclopedia,” she murmured. “I didn’t know paid killers were so learned.”

  “We have a lot of time on our hands between jobs. One has to do something. I soak up a lot of trivia.”

  “Tell me more,” she cajoled.

  I babbled more trivia because I was puzzled by my brunette companion and I wanted to cover up the searching glances I kept giving her. She appeared to be equally puzzled by me, for some reason I couldn’t figure out, as if she knew something about me I did not, and was perturbed by it.

  I couldn’t even guess what was troubling her, Albert Frame had been insistent on the fact that he had never seen the girls and they had never seen him, not even his picture. At last I told myself I was just imagining things.

  I went on talking a little longer. Then I saw Laura putting a sandaled foot on the brake and turning the wheel. We were some miles past Kill Devil Hill, moving on a small narrow dirt road winding in between oak trees and holly bushes, then along a narrow lane where I caught glimpses of a white picket fence from time to time.

  We drove a few miles more, into what seemed to be a forest. There couldn’t be any houses around here. This corner of the world was wild and remote, even for the Outer Banks. Yet, there was a house here, a small building of two storys and twin dormers, I saw when the car finally stopped. Its grayish, weatherbeaten shingles curled slightly, to add a touch of strange beauty to the beach cottage, half hidden behind a fence and some stunted oak trees.

  Laura Ogden had braked in a rutted driveway.

  She smiled at me and waved her hand at the house. “Thar she blows, Albert. Our little hideout. We can talk safely enough in there. Nobody will overhear us, you can bet on that. We’re three miles from nowhere, out this far.”

  “You picked a real good place,” I complimented her, sliding out to stretch my legs and fasten the details of this hideaway more firmly in my mind. The Foundation would want to know where it was and how its agents could get here to liquidate any members of the Opposition who might still be using it for a hideout, after I’d found out what Walrus-moustache wanted to know.

  Laura and her plump behind was moving along a flagstoned path toward a colonial front door with a fanlight over it and glass panes on either side. I went after her.

  As her forefinger touched a bell, I heard chimes.

  A blonde answered the door, looking at Laura and past her at me. Her blue eyes widened in what I took for surprise.

  “Here’s Albert, Midge,” Laura said. “Albert, meet Midge Priest.”

  Midge was wearing a wrapper, a bathrobe, which with her damp hair pushed up into a golden mop atop her shapely head suggested that she had just come from the bath. Her left hand held the robe together at her chest. A rope belt kept it closed around her midsection.

  “Hi there, Albert,” Midge said, but she was looking at Laura, as if trying to read some unspoken message in her eyes.

  “Glad to meet you, Midge,” I said, grinning and holding out my hand. She took her right hand from the doorknob to take it. Her face showed worry, I thought.

  “Albert’s quite a man,” Laura snickered, halting in the little hallway and turning to glance at me.

  “Oh?” Midge looked even more worried. “How so?”

  “Show her, Albert.”

  I laughed. “Hey, this isn’t part of the deal.”

  Laura Ogden giggled. “Of course it isn’t. I just thought you might like a little fun before we get down to the serious business.”

  Midge said weakly, “But I thought——”

  The brunette gestured airily, “You thought I was too devoted to the Cause to bother about such things as love-ins, didn’t you? Well, I’m not. Not when there’s somebody like Albert around. Come on, Midge, take off the robe and let Albert see what a doll you are.”

  Midge stared from Laura to me and back again. Her shoulders lifted and fell and her breasts mov
ed behind the light wrapper. I looked at them and started to get a rise out of them.

  Laura hooted, “You see? You see?”

  Midge saw, staring hard at my too-tight slacks. The yeast was rising fast. Midge whistled softly, and her eyes got bright. “Yeah,” she exclaimed softly, “I catch what you mean, Laura. He is a one, isn’t he?”

  Her hand fell away from its clutch on the lapels of her bathrobe. The lapels parted, showing that as far down as her belly button, Midge Priest was all girl. I could see the inner slopes of large white breasts to the circles of her red nipples. I could also make out faint blue veins under the taut white flesh.

  Laura said, “I don’t know about you, Midge, but I’ve been a good girl for too long a time. Seeing Albert there has started a fire in my forest.”

  The blonde girl chuckled, moving on bare feet toward a record player and bending over it to slide a record onto its spindle, taking her time. Maybe she knew that the thin fabric outlined her buttocks and she was letting me get an eyeful of their shapeliness.

  When she turned from the phonograph she held her arms out and bumped her hips from side to side. “Do you dance, Albert?” she wondered out loud.

  I stepped into her arms, caught her middle and we did a swing around the room while Laura applauded from the hall arch. She watched us for a few minutes, then said casually that she would whip together some sandwiches and a drink.

  The music changed to a fast bugaloo beat. Midge stepped back and went into the jerky rhythm, arms pumping. The action sent those flaps back even further, making them wave about, revealing the big naked breasts behind them that leaped and bobbed to her movements. She laughed when she noticed my interest.

  “I think Laura is a kind of genius, don’t you? I mean, finding you like that and you turning out this way. We can have fun, man.”

  Midge came closer, bending over a little so I could see all the way to her creamy belly and dimpled navel. Tiny devils danced in her eyes. When the music stopped, she jammed her softness up against me, fastening her arms about my neck and bumped her mons veneris against my manhood.