“Don’t bite. Damn it, that hurts!”
He felt her tense beneath him, saw her mouth set with determination as she tried to force her strength against him. He relaxed, enjoyed her exertions, felt the fullness of her resolve as she managed to slide from beneath him, as she leaned over him, breathing quickly, glittering with triumph. She grinned down at him, leaned toward his face, then twisted suddenly and bit his shoulder and wouldn’t let go until he lurched over, his full weight on her, diminishing her now with his own strength.
She struggled against him until he found her moistness, entered her, moved relentlessly to his own rhythm until she began to follow, to become part of it, and he continued until he could feel her response grow, until he could feel her gasp and shudder and stiffen, a soft surprised moan from her mouth, and then, freed of all thought of her, he allowed his own physicality to overwhelm him.
“You know,” she mused, “it’s so damn strange.”
He ran his fingertips along the clearly defined segments of her spine, over the small, neat, hard roundness of her buttocks, under the curve where a buttock became thigh. He explored her quietly while she glanced over her shoulder at him.
“Why are you so thin?” he asked.
She lifted her face, rose on her elbow and started to turn onto her back but he pushed her lightly to her stomach again. “It’s part of the whole damn thing. I don’t come by this fleshless build naturally. God, I literally starve myself to stay thin for the almighty camera. If I gain so much as one pound, it shows up like ten. Tell me, who’d give a fuck if Cronkite put on twenty pounds?”
He slapped her sharply on the bottom with his open palm. “If you’re going to be my girl, you’ll talk the way I want my girl to talk.”
Karen laughed and rubbed her finger over her mouth thoughtfully. “That’s what’s so damn strange. You’re everything I’m opposed to in a man. There you are, a whole summation, the whole statement, the whole chauvinist thing. What I can’t figure out is”—she dropped her head to her arms and slowly stretched her body under his touch, then rolled onto her back—“that you do something to my body that is totally, completely, irrationally removed from my head. I don’t understand why I’m so damned attracted to you. Just plain old-fashioned lust, I guess. My God, you’ve got no subtlety, no love play, no preliminaries, nothing. Just the rough old jump and roll. Chemical, animal, have at it, wham hang.”
He moved up beside her. Her tough voice was incongruous; her body was elegant, her face childlike. But her barrage of words, her attempt to pinpoint him, to categorize him, annoyed him.
“That wasn’t rough stuff, baby.”
She pulled her mouth down, her brows went up. “Oh, that wasn’t ‘rough stuff.’ Drag and push and shove and rip the clothes off my back wasn’t rough stuff?”
“That wasn’t rough stuff, and you know it.” His hand caught in the thickness of her hair. “That was all careful and controlled and designed to please the lady.”
She had underestimated him and was puzzled by him. He was someone who did have unknown dimension and she felt she had lost the upper hand. Quickly, impulsively, she said, “How old are you, O’Malley?”
He shook the lock of hair. “You’re a real little bitch, aren’t you? I’m forty-nine.”
She ran her tongue along the edges of her lips and grinned. “That’s great. No, really, I’m not kidding. I’m twenty-seven and my father is just about your age. Hey, do you have a daughter?”
Carefully he said, “Yeah. Why?”
“How old is she?”
“About your age...Why?”
She moved closer to him and jabbed an index finger into him. “That’s absolutely great! Don’t you get it? I can screw my father and you can screw your daughter without any of the Freudian complications.”
He yanked her hair hard enough to force her head to the pillow, then pulled his hand free. “Jesus, you are really some kind of a nut.”
She could see it was an effort for him to control his anger, to leave the bed, cross the room for a cigarette. She began to laugh. “Oh, my God, O’Malley, you’re a prude! That’s terrific. I never would have expected it No, really, don’t be mad. I mean it as a compliment. Any man as good as you in bed, well, the whole puritan thing just doesn’t go with what you can do. Ah, come on, share the cigarette with me and stop looking like you want to strangle me.”
“I’m not mad, Karen, only let’s have a few guidelines, okay?”
She started to laugh again, a surprisingly fresh, young, relaxed, spontaneous sound, again reminding him of someone hauntingly innocent and vulnerable. She laughed so hard she began to cough. He pulled her into a sitting position, slapped her back while she caught her breath.
He watched her move from her closet to her bureau as she arranged her clothing casually over the back of a chair. She left the long folding door of the closet pushed back, displaying an array of colors and fabrics. As she came from the bathroom, easily moving naked about the room, seemingly unaware of him, he called to her.
“Karen. Do something for me, if you have time.”
“I have time. What?”
“Model for me. Put on some of those things for me. Come on. A private show.”
She took off the shower cap and tossed it to him. “Oh, boy, and I thought you were strictly a straight, O’Malley. Why, you’re nothing but an out-and-out pervo. All right, if it gives you a kick, I’ll parade around with my clothes on, for God’s sake!”
She moved with a model’s expressionless, gliding, stylized quick grace, stared blankly through him as she paraded past the bed. She spoke in a flat voice in a rapid tempo.
“You will notice the daring plunge of backline.” She turned, lightly touched the backless dress, which revealed the beginning curve of buttock, then slid around, ran her fingertips across the flat bustline. “Because of the superb construction of Monsieur Clondet’s creation, it would of course be sacrilegious to wear anything but oneself beneath this gown.”
She slipped into a one-piece outfit with tight little shorts and long narrow sleeves.
“You will notice that for this playsuit, one must possess the contours of a little boy; not necessarily frontwards, but”—she turned and shook her bottom at him—“from this point of view.”
Finally, she put on a floor-length bright-blue silk garment, narrow and elegant, with a high Chinese collar and full flowing sleeves. She changed. The blank model’s expression was gone. The flirtatious short-pants-clad gamine disappeared. She moved toward him serenely, her expression no longer remote. She took on elegance and cool desirability as she moved. The gown touched and brushed her body, hinted at her contours with subtle sensuality.
She started to speak, but something about Brian stopped her. His expression had changed as she had changed. His eyes moved over her body, then held on her face, and he stood up and came toward her and tilted her face and kissed her gently.
He moved his hands along the front of the gown, pulled each hidden snap, reached along her shoulders and removed the silk from her body and let it drop to the floor. He held her against him and for just one instant felt her tense and stiffen but he pressed her to him and whispered, “It’s okay, Karen. It’ll be good this way, too. Let me show you.”
This time he moved slowly, touched slowly, lightly, whispered to her, caressed her, tasted her skin, explored her, found her slowly rising need and again set a tempo which she at first struggled against but he persisted, encouraged her, controlled and directed and led her into the very center of herself, and this time it was perfect because he was right there with her and it was hard to separate their shared sensations.
“My God,” she told him, “I don’t know you at all, do I?”
“Maybe I’ll even introduce you to yourself.” Finally, he pushed her toward the edge of the bed. “Now, get the hell into the kitchen and make me some coffee.”
She looked down at him for a minute, then yanked the pillow from under his head and tossed it at him. “Make
it yourself, chauvinist. I have to shower and fix my hair. I’ve a show to do at eleven.”
She picked the yellow shower cap off the floor and pushed her hair into it. He heard her turn the shower on, then she came back into the bedroom. “You know, O’Malley, you’re a damn good lay.” She paused, timed it for the right effect, then added in a tough voice, “For a man your age.”
He threw the pillow at her and leaped for her but she managed to close the bathroom door and get into her shower.
“You little bitch,” he said good-naturedly. He heard her singing and she didn’t sound anything like her mother.
He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over her dressing table. For a man of his age, he was in helluva good shape. He put his hand on his flat stomach, admired his long body, which hadn’t gone to flab, had remained hard and muscular and responsive.
Christ, for a man his age, he felt like a man of any age. He pulled on his clothes and brushed his hair with her heavy brush.
Then he went into her kitchen and to surprise her, and to his own surprise, he put on a pot of coffee.
It lasted because they made no unrealistic demands on each other. She was absorbed in her career and Brian viewed her achievements with pride. She knew how to channel her energies and she moved ahead steadily to larger and more important news assignments.
He kept his private life separate and apart from her; she never pried but merely surmised. There were times when he was tempted to speak to her about certain things, but he knew instinctively what to keep private. He felt a new joy in his own achievements when he was with her, for she was not easily impressed, yet was impressed by him.
For two years, while neither took the other totally for granted, there had at least developed a sense of reliability. She was not a woman given to wounded feelings. A quick phone call canceling an expected meeting was as easily accepted by her as by him. She’d been in Los Angeles for three weeks on assignment and he felt slightly lonely and unfulfilled. She’d been preparing an hour-long special on sensitivity training centers and she’d called him once to announce that she was involved with the greatest collection of kooks ever assembled in one place at one time.
He was about to dial her number when she called him. It was one of the things that happened between them all the time and if either said, “I was just reaching for the phone to call you,” it was invariably true and they both knew it.
“Tonight okay?” she asked. When he said yes, that was all there was to say at the moment, but she added uncharacteristically, “Good. Hell, I think I missed you, O’Malley.”
He hung up the receiver and attacked the work on his desk in a lighthearted mood.
THIRTY-EIGHT
THE FIFTH ARTICLE IN the series in the Daily News was the one that caused the commotion they had been hoping to avoid.
“I had been at the precinct for four weeks,” the author asserted, “when I was approached about going on ‘the pad.’”
Lieutenant Fitzgerald was at his desk when Deputy Chief Inspector Brian O’Malley arrived at a quarter to eight. Fitzgerald had read the article in the first edition of the newspaper, which came out the previous evening, and he knew he could expect his boss early. He brought a cup of hot coffee to Brian’s desk and waited for instructions.
Brian scanned a list of notes he’d written to himself, glanced at his wristwatch, then instructed Lieutenant Fitzgerald.
“Get Chief Aaron Levine on the phone. If he’s not in yet, keep trying. I wanna get to him before Chief Pollack arrives.”
Aaron Levine, Deputy Chief Inspector in Charge of Internal Affairs, New York City Police Department, leaned back in the corner of his chauffeur-driven unmarked Department car and sighed. He was running a little late this morning. Probably the Commissioner would want to see him because of this dope’s article. As far as Aaron Levine was concerned, the less he saw of the P.C., the happier he was.
Not that he had anything against the Commissioner. The reverse was true. He was a fine man, if a bit of a dreamer, but truly, a better man than the Department he headed.
It hadn’t taken Aaron more than a month on his assignment to get the feeling that the Department was rotting from the center on out. He had no great inclination to take on a crusade for honor and integrity within the New York City Police Department. What he had in his mind, actually, was putting in the remaining year and four months that would make him eligible for retirement at three-quarter pay. Then, at fifty-five, he would be able to step into a position as Dean of Law Enforcement at any of three upstate universities which had been bidding for him for the last three years, ever since law enforcement began to excite academic imaginations.
In a way, Aaron regretted his decision to stick it out until the three-quarter pay. At least in this new capacity. It had been pleasant as a captain. He did his supervisory work in a nice, easygoing manner in his nice, easygoing, white, middle-class precinct in Kew Gardens.
He’d needed a promotion like he’d needed an ulcer. He’d never had any reason to anticipate either; now he seemed to have attained both.
The new Commissioner had approached him after a careful study of what the Commissioner called Aaron’s “fantastic academic achievements.” The Commissioner was known to be impressed by higher education and Aaron Levine, in the course of thirty-three years as a member of the New York City Police Department, in addition to having achieved the rank of captain, had simultaneously earned a master’s degree in criminology, a master’s degree in social psychology, a doctorate in urban planning and an LL.D. from Brooklyn Law School. He’d obtained his teacher’s license; he’d taught a few courses at the Police Academy; and when moonlighting became legal, he’d conducted courses in basic criminology and penology at John Marshall College of Criminal Justice.
He’d managed to raise and educate two daughters and one son; all three were married, professionals with graduate degrees, successful in their respective communities in Long Island, Connecticut and Westchester.
Aaron’s wife, a former schoolteacher, was kept very busy in her social involvements in Great Neck. She stressed his academic accomplishments and played down his “connection” with the Police Department among her friends. To her, Aaron was a scholar and an academic; she liked to feel that he was a police officer merely as a means of studying law enforcement at first hand to enhance his professional knowledge. At any rate, she referred to him as a “law enforcement specialist; one of the few in the country”; as such, her friends were most impressed.
When the new Commissioner appointed Arthur Pollack as his Chief Inspector, Aaron Levine nodded with approval. Good. He had more than just his showcase Jew. He had selected a thoroughly competent man who had always done a good job and who always brought credit to himself and his fellow members of the Sholem Society, which was an important consideration.
When Aaron was offered the assignment of Deputy Chief Inspector in Charge of Internal Affairs, there were two considerations he had to keep in mind. The first was that he, personally, had no ambition to rise to any great heights in the New York City Police Department He liked his small, cozy, safe office in Kew Gardens. The second consideration was more pointed.
“A Jew to head the spy squad, Aaron? You hafta be crazy to even consider it.” That was the opinion of Sergeant Sam Markowitz, president of the Sholem Society. “That’s all they’d need, Aaron, to point us out as their persecutors. Don’t give them any ammunition. Listen to me.”
“Bullshit,” volunteered Max Chumberg, a lieutenant and vice-president of the organization. “We gotta move when we can, where-ever we can. Look, Artie Pollack is right up there at the top. It’s time to stop being afraid of making a bad impression with these guys. Aaron, take the job.”
“Aaron,” their rabbi-adviser said, “do your duty. Go with God.”
Aaron took the job. His main tasks were to root out corruption in the New York City Police Department; to institute departmental charges against those derelict in their duties; to investigate civili
an complaints. In his new position, he heard plenty and took action wherever it seemed feasible.
Philosophically, Aaron Levine considered his position with a sense of ironic amusement. He’d spent a lifetime in the Police Department attending one course or another, taking one degree or another, often on city time and once, for a year on scholarship at Berkeley, on city money. He’d long ago decided that there was nothing intrinsically dishonest with how he’d spent his life. His accumulation of knowledge and academic credentials served the Department and the city well. He used his knowledge for the good of his job, in a way. Certainly, he tried to bring an enlightened approach to his job. He never harmed anyone.
That was about the only way to view his life: through rationalization, with a grain of humor and a smile at the turnings and twistings of life and fate or whatever it was that decided things for a man.
Patrolman Jacobs, the only other Jew in the office, since Aaron heeded the Society’s advice not to load the division with Jews, greeted him abruptly. Jacobs was a very tense young man, eyes always glowing with a sense of excitement and alarm.
“Chief, you got a call already from Chief O’Malley. He wants you to call him back. Right away as soon as you get in he said.”
“Okay, Stu. And relax. You’re making me nervous and it’s going to be a long nervous day. Go, type a report or something for the meeting.”
Aaron Levine sat and contemplated the telephone. Call Chief O’Malley. It was funny. He hadn’t thought of Brian O’Malley as any connection to himself for years; not since they’d both been appointed captain together had he even realized there was a Brian O’Malley in the Department. The son of his father. Well. It was a strange world all right.
He didn’t have much to do with O’Malley. They had an occasional conference about how to handle certain corruption issues with the media. O’Malley impressed Levine as being very much in the mold of that still strange, still remote hard breed of men whom Aaron had dwelt among all of his working life, yet had never come to feel anything toward but a sense of alienated wonder and curiosity. He never could figure how little Arthur Pollack had slid right into the midst of them, the strangers, and come up on top.
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