Sin Hellcat

by Lawrence Block

  Yet she was always the one who first ended this preliminary bout, coming up gasping for air, her face bright with sweat, her mouth lax and passion-drugged. “Now,” she would whisper, unable to talk aloud. “Oh, now, Harvey, do it to me now, take me, do it!”

  And I would slap her ringingly, here and there, which only made her desire more intense, and she would squirm around, sitting now in position similar to the one she’d taken when unbuttoning my shirt, though now with a significant difference, and thus she would sit, writhing and pulsing, the muscles working beneath the skin of her flat stomach, her breasts bouncing with her exertions, her head flung back, eyes squeezed shut and mouth hanging open, her hands prodding me like a lifeguard performing artificial respiration. And I, lazy and comfortable and effete male, would lie in pleasant bliss upon my back, a silly smile upon my face, a passive but interested observer as Saundra agitated over me, working herself to a climax.

  What a wonder that girl was! Undoubtedly stupid, as I have earlier said, and full of all sorts of philosophical eyewash, Bohemianism interwoven with Doughboyism, but Lord love a duck was she good in bed! And making love was such a natural and basic thing to her that she crested more readily and more often than any other girl I have ever known, before or since.

  So we would continue, until she would suddenly go rigid, arms twisted upward and fingers curled, mouth wide-stretched in a silent scream, and my hands would rub her, finding every muscle taut and tense, her nipples fairly tingling beneath my touch, her abdomen as hard as a wall.

  Thus she would climb to the peak before I, but she was good about it. She always rushed back down the mountain to join me again, so that now we could climb together.

  And for our second stage, our positions would be more or less reversed. She would be tired now, worn from her labors, and I chivalrously would allow her to take my place. In legend, men have owed their strength to the length of their hair or the whim of some deity or some other such unlikely source. My own strength would arise much more directly. Saundra’s first exertions never failed to inspire me, and I believe that I have never risen to the occasion with any other woman as strongly or as well as with Saundra.

  Ah, if only she hadn’t been such an utter bean-brain! I might have never become involved with Helen. And who knows, then, what my future might have been. Surely not Jodi and her illegal proposition.

  At any rate, the day that I decided to remain true to Tom Stanton turned out to be one of the best encounters that Saundra and I ever had together. And the next day, refreshed in body and mind, I waited till I saw an important client enter Fetid Fehringer’s office—so I was certain he would be in there for a while, and wouldn’t see me leave my desk nor know my destination—and then I went up to talk to Tom Stanton.

  It was one of the very few times I’d seen the man since he’d hired me. Looking at him now, I saw the increased puffiness of face, laxity of expression, since that day so many months before when I sat unshod in the bar. Fehringer undoubtedly was right; Tom Stanton was drinking himself out of efficiency.

  But this was no time for soulless calculation. This was a time for loyalty. And I was full of loyalty, stoked to the gunwales with loyalty, fairly reeking with loyalty.

  Once I got past Tom’s receptionist—a nice bit that, and available from what I’d heard around the water cooler—and saw Tom himself, I got directly to the meat of the problem.

  “Tom,” I said, using his first name for the first time, “you’re the man who brought me into MGSR&S in the first place and I want you to know that I’m grateful.”

  “That’s good,” he said. A faint aroma of bourbon was in the air.

  “And so,” I continued, “when I heard of something in the wind that could be dangerous to you, I knew at once what my duty was.”

  He became a bit more alert. “Dangerous? To me?”

  “Your boy Fehringer came to see me yesterday,” I said, and went on from there, outlining everything that Fehringer had said and everything that Fehringer had implied.

  When I was finished my tale of deception and intrigue, a dejected and beaten man slumped in his easy-foam chair before me. “He’s right, Harv,” said Tom Stanton. “I’ve been slipping lately. I’ve left myself wide open for a back-stabbing like this. Old Fehringer! I might have known.”

  “I thought I’d let you know at once,” I said, “so you’d have time to plan your counterattack.”

  “Counterattack,” he echoed hopelessly. “What can I do? The man’s an intriguer, he’s been planning this for months. Old Fehringer! Got the knife out for me, and nothing I can do.”

  “Ah, but there is,” I said. “Tom, I’m loyal to you, you know that. I want to help.”

  He looked up at me, hope springing into his eyes. “Is there something cooking in your double-boiler, Harv, boy?” he asked me.

  “There sure is, Tom. Fehringer’s going to play the eager-beaver a while now, till he’s ready to spring the double whammo. All you have to do is let him swipe a project, and let the big men see him at it.”

  “Bad tactics, Harv,” he said, shaking his head. “Right away, they’ll know old Tom is slipping.”

  “For the nonce, Tom, for the nonce. But catch this: You work up a presentation anyway, you see? Meanwhile. I’m in Fehringer’s bailiwick, and I sabotagerooney his little effort, and at the next conference splat!”

  He sat up, the light of battle dawning in his eyes. “You’ll do that for me, Harv, boy?”

  “I’m loyal, Tom,” I said simply.

  …Now there was a thing that year called the sailor hat, only for girls not for boys. At a conference, Tom allowed Fehringer to grab the project away from him, and said only one sentence to Fehringer, which would ring in the big boy’s minds a few weeks later: “I’ll be glad to have you take a stab at this, boy; I want to know if you’re ready for the big time.”

  And Fehringer, poor Fehringer, smiled his little smile and said, “I think I’m ready, Tom.”

  Six weeks later, I had Fehringer’s job, and the sailor hat account was using Tom Stanton’s presentation. Don’t say no till you’ve seen the proposition from every side. No one told me that, I thought of it all by myself. If you’re going to be immoral, you really ought to be smart about it.

  Which was why I replied to Jodi, “Yes, I may like it. Let’s hear it.”

  “It’s a one-shot proposition, Harv,” she said. “There may be repeat jobs, but I’m not sure of that. Here’s the story: There’s a man in Brazil right now, and he wants something that happens to be in New York right now. This thing can’t just be sent to him, because the federal government would grab it, and there’d be a lot of trouble all around. So it has to be smuggled out of the United States and smuggled into Brazil.”

  “But surely,” I said, “there are regular smuggling routes already. For dope, say, or gold.”

  “There’s very little smuggling going out of the country,” she said. “Besides, this is too dangerous to be trusted to the regular systems. What the boys have been looking for is an honest Joe, a guy with no record and no file, and a guy rich enough to take a trip to Brazil anyway. He can carry the stuff, and nobody the wiser.”

  “And?”

  She smiled. “You want to know what’s in it for you. Five thousand dollars, and a two-week all-expense-paid trip to Brazil. With me.”

  “With you?”

  “A man traveling with his wife,” she said sweetly, “is less suspect than any other kind of man.”

  “And what is this cargo I’m supposed to deliver?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Except it’s valuable.” She lit a new cigarette. “Well, Harv? Are you interested?”

  I suddenly remembered the slogan in Fehringer’s sailor hat presentation and I burst into laughter. “Spend your summer under a great big sailor,” I said. “That means yes.”

  SIX

  Haste makes waste. Look before you leap. Rome was not built in a day. The mills of the Gods grind slow but they grind exceeding
small.

  I quote the above, not to demonstrate my familiarity with banality down through the ages, but to point out just how thoroughly our platitudes have lost touch with the era in which we live. Tell the twentieth century male that haste makes waste and he’ll reply—quickly—that ours is an economy of waste and he’s merely being economical. Look before you leap, friend, and the door will be shut before you’re through it. And, while Rome may not have been built in a day, it was certainly sacked in a day. As for the mills of the Gods…well, forget about them.

  Which is all just a lap-dissolve into the message of the moment. Jodi and I leaped quickly, without wasting time looking around. We leaped furiously. There was no time to play games.

  In the first place, the cargo, whatever it might be, had to be in Brazil in a hurry. This man in Brazil (and here I pictured a fat Sidney Greenstreet type with a tropical suit and overactive perspiration glands) was impatient. He needed this cargo. And, while I had a mental image of this Man In Brazil, I had no image whatsoever of the cargo. But he needed it, by Allah’s beard, and he needed it with bells on.

  In the second place, this was smuggling, and smuggling was illegal. Now neither Jodi nor I were traditional law-abiders, but smuggling in the eyes of the federal government is somewhat more serious an offense than either prostitution (Jodi’s crime) or false advertising (mine, repeatedly). Both Jodi and I, though more than willing to do the deed, echoed Macbeth in hoping that if it were done, would it were done quickly. The sooner we were in Brazil, and the sooner the cargo was delivered, and the sooner we were back from Brazil, the sooner we would be safe, again.

  “Passports,” Jodi said. “I think you have to have a passport to go to Brazil, Harvey. Or to get back from Brazil. I forget which.”

  “Either way,” I said, “we need them.”

  “How long does it take to get a passport?”

  “Months,” I said hollowly. “Many months. Red tape, and all.”

  For five or ten minutes we sat in Jodi’s apartment and thought about the many months we would have to wait before we could get our passports. For five or ten minutes we sat, chewing our tongues, and preparing to cry. And then, casually, I said: “Of course, I already have a passport.”

  “You do?”

  “Mmmmm,” I said. “I took Helen to Europe a year ago. We went and looked at all the things you’re supposed to look at, and I met a Pigalle whore while she went shopping for shoes.”

  “Is yours still good, Harvey?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Why, you silly! Then we don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “We don’t?”

  “I have a passport,” she said. “I have a perfectly fine passport, because six months ago there was this gentleman who was going to Europe, and he wanted me to—”

  She broke off, snapping the poor sentence right in the middle. Jodi, alas, was somewhat embarrassed to talk about her professional career in front of me. This embarrassment was something relatively new, since she’d been delighted to discuss the theory and practice of whoring the day we renewed our happy acquaintance. And, strangely, the same reserve was developing within me; I was unwilling to discuss my profession, a subtler sort of whoring, now that Jodi and I were fleshmates once more.

  “Wait,” I said. “We’re supposed to be husband and wife.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But we aren’t,” I said. “Your passport is in your name, and mine is in my name, and we’re not married. So how on earth can we travel as husband and wife?”

  She poured me a fresh cup of coffee, passed the Vat 69 bottle to me, and pointed from the Scotch to the coffee. I took the hint and sweetened my Brazilian brew.

  “Harvey,” she said, sounding a little like a melodious version of Al, “don’t be a stupid.”

  I looked at my watch. It was getting to be eleven o’clock, and around that time even a casual sort of person is expected to report to MGSR&S and get to work running somebody up some flagpole or other. I took a sip of the alcoholic coffee and squinted at her over the brim of the cup.

  “A stupid?”

  “A very stupid,” she said. “You have a passport and I have a passport. And all we need to travel as man and wife is a marriage license.”

  “A marriage license?”

  “Of course. Then everyone will realize we got married after we got the passports. Which is perfectly valid, and which leaves the passports every bit as valid.”

  Now she was beginning to make sense. I may or may not have been a stupid, but I could see the merit in what she was saying. Still, I had to get to the office. So all I had to do was hurry on to MGSR&S, while she went out and picked us up a marriage license—Wait.

  “Jodi,” I said. “Really, girl, that’s all well and good, but you don’t understand. I mean, girl, how can we come by a little thing like a marriage license?”

  “Easy.”

  “Have it forged?” I asked brightly. “I suppose Anthropoid Al knows someone who’s handy with a pen but—”

  “Not a forged one, Harvey. A real one.”

  “So much the better,” quoth I. “Very much the better. But how and where does one acquire a real marriage license?”

  “I’m not sure where,” she said. “Anyplace, I guess. But the how part is easy, Harvey “

  I watched while she carefully broke a seeded roll in two, spread butter upon each half in turn, and stuffed bites down her throat. When the roll was gone I was still patiently waiting.

  She said: “It’s simple, Harvey. We get married.”

  So I never did get to the office that day. Instead, I got married.

  First, of course, I explained to Jodi that I already was married, for better or for worse, as they say in ceremonies. And while divorcing Helen may have been an admirable notion, it was an unwieldy solution. It would take even longer than arranging for fresh passports.

  “You really ought to divorce Helen,” Jodi told me, her eyes calm and serious. “I mean afterward, when we get back from Brazil. Not now, but later on.”

  “Jodi—”

  “I know what you’re going to tell me,” she said. “You are already married. I know that, Harvey. And you know it, and maybe even your wife knows it, though from what you said about her it’s hard to tell. But somewhere in Maryland there’s a little guy behind a marriage license counter, and he doesn’t know you’re married.”

  “That,” I said, “is bigamy.”

  “So,” she said, “what?”

  So what indeed. I went, not to my office, but to the garage wherein I had deposited my ranch wagon the night before. Just a night ago, a night that seemed like ages. I took the car back, power-steered to Jodi’s hotel, power-braked at the curb, and went in for her. She came out with two suitcases. We were taking virtually nothing, but one suitcase, she insisted, would make a bad impression upon the Justice of the Peace. So we took two empty ones instead of a single full one, and we loaded them into the rear end of the wagon, and we loaded ourselves into the front end of the wagon, and I pointed the wagon at Maryland’s marriage mill, and we set out.

  The town for which we were bound was providentially named Cherry Park, for obvious reasons. It was on Maryland’s northern border, and it was the marriage capital of the area, since neither a blood test nor a waiting period was required there. This made it a paradise for impulsive souls and syphilitics, and Jodi and I qualified on the first count if not the second. Huzzah for Cherry Park, where all roads lead to City Hall, and where an as-tounding number of young things park their cherries every day!

  Huzzah, indeed.

  We went to City Hall, found the marriage license bureau (which was not hard, since it dominated two rooms of three-room city hall), and filled out brief forms. We walked next door, where there was a line at the Justice of the Peace’s little shantie. Finally it was our turn. She said she did, and I said I did, and he said we could. I gave the license, signed and duly noted in Maryland’s ledgers, to Jodi, who folded it neatly and
placed it in her purse. And back we climbed into the ranch wagon.

  “Now what?” I wondered aloud. “Back to New York?”

  “No,” she said.

  “No?”

  “No.” She let out a long breath. “I’ve never been married before,” she said. “And I have never before had a wedding night, and I would feel rotten spending my wedding night in my own apartment. Find a good motel, Harvey. And then we’ll have a good wedding night.”

  It was not hard locating a motel. The motel industry is a natural in a marriage mill, and the enterprising fellows of Cherry Park were missing no bets. We found a place called Honeymooner Lodge, and I parked the wagon and carried our two suitcases out of it. They were part of a set of matched luggage, which should have shattered the we-never-did-this-before illusion, but this hardly mattered. I walked to the desk and signed the book Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Christopher and only felt like half a liar. The son behind the desk didn’t even ask to see our license, and I could have killed him. I mean, we had a license, and I wished he would ask for it.

  Our room was clean and spacious. It had a huge double bed, and almost before I had closed the door Jodi was leaping happily upon the bed, bouncing hither and yon to test the springs.