The Big Broad Jump

by Troy Conway

  “Never mind. It is enough that the woman evaded me. Come. We will go further up the street toward the end of town. More people there. For some sort of meeting.” I could see the knot of gaily dressed villagers at the end of the block. But she wasn’t” kidding me, either. She was evading me too. She hadn’t told me the truth about what she had asked in Russian. I was convinced of that. Miss Ketch was beginning to shape up as a bad risk. If I couldn’t trust her, I was really in hot water. What was her real game?

  I didn’t know. And when I don’t know, I get nosy. Very nosy. It’s the only way to stay alive.

  But I followed the tall blonde up the street. She was still in charge. I pay off on my bets, and until I caught her in a real double deal, I’d play my half of the bargain. After all, I am also a man of honor. In most things outside the bedroom.

  The crowd up ahead were having a kind of rally of some kind and as we drew nearer, the meeting was getting up a full head of steam. But Christina Ketch wasn’t only the killjoy of my life. No, sir. I was now witness to one of the most amazing switcheroos in history. No sooner had we elbowed our way through the packed peasants to see what all the shouting was about than everybody suddenly froze, stopped talking, and the crowd split. I couldn’t figure what happened until I realized that each of the hastily departing Betchnikians were looking back over their shoulder at us and shaking their heads fearfully. One look at the tall icy blonde and everybody all of a sudden wanted to be somewhere else. What the hell kind of whammy did she have over these simple bastards?

  “All right,” I said. “So it’s not bad breath. What is it? These people think you’re poison. I thought you said you’d never been here before. If you haven’t, your twin sister sure as hell has. This crowd hates the sight of you. Or us. Which is it?”

  For once, her face was drained of color. She was furious. She shook her head, snarling at me for a change. Her nostrils were flaring with rage.

  “Simpletons! All of them. They are just shy of strangers. See how they run!” Run wasn’t the word; they were dashing now—pouring down the street and around the corners like we had the plague or something. Dropping picnic baskets, wine bottles, flowers, the works. I haven’t seen such an Exodus since the night they raided Katz’s whorehouse in Racine, Wisconsin.

  “I got a great idea,” I said. “Let’s go back to the hotel, pack and get the hell out of here. I want to go home. This silver pill jazz is a myth. And those twenty-five old guys. Must have happened in some other town. Somebody has their wires crossed.”

  “No,” she said firmly, “it happened here, well enough. I give you my oath on that We will simply have to try another way to get our information.”

  “For instance?”

  “There are ways,” she said stiffly. “Come. We will go back to the hotel and formulate some kind of plan. We have wasted too much time already. Something must be done and quickly.”

  “After you,” I said, fagged out and defeated once again. She had answers and orders for everything. She must have been born saluting. All chicken, Christina Ketch. And a yard wide.

  We walked all the way back to the Hotel Betchnika. We weren’t that far from the place. Christina Ketch liked to walk. I didn’t argue. It was a nice sunny day with no clouds, but as I expected, we got a lot of dirty looks and quickly slammed doors along the route. Not that I was suspicious of her, you understand, but I no longer trusted her any further than I could have thrown her. She hadn’t leveled with me. Something was rotten in Betchnika, and I think it was Christina Ketch.

  She obviously knew something I didn’t, and she hadn’t told me. Right then and there, walking back to that crummy hotel, I silently broke my pact with her. I didn’t owe her a thing anymore. Screw her and her Indian hand wrestling matches both!

  Pretending to need some cigarettes, I stopped in a drugstore along the way. She was too bored with me to follow me into the store. So I had my chance and I took it. I bought some patent medicines, had the clerk wrap them up and tucked them into my side pocket. I bought some butts too, but the medicines were a secret. You see, very few people know it, but some of the stuff that’s on the market, when combined together by knowing hands, makes a very potent knockout potion. One of the things that working for the Coxemen has taught me. In fact, Walrus-moustache told me.

  Turnabout was fair play. If Christina Ketch had doped me the night before last, I was about to pay her back in spades. I had some private investigating to follow up on and I didn’t want her around, wide-awake, making waves. She was forever peeking over my shoulder, as it were. I wasn’t going to knock her out to make love to her. That’s not my speed, either.

  I don’t make love to clay pigeons. Only queers do.

  “What took you so long?” she growled impatiently when I joined her again on the sidewalk.

  “He had to break open his piggy bank to make change.”

  “I’m tired,” she snapped. “At the hotel you will draw a bath for me and wash my back. There’s no more we can do until tonight. Then we will work out a campaign of tactics.”

  “Okay, Boss!”

  “Don’t call me Boss!”

  “Okay, Chief!”

  “Don’t call me Chief—oh, you are impossible. Why they sent me a man like you is beyond me. No wonder we aren’t getting anywhere. Your intelligence is in your pants. Below your belt buckle. A man like you is doomed.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Shut up,” she said wearily. I could see the attitude of the town had somehow gotten to her. Pierced the sides of the Iron Maiden. Good. I was glad. And the little surprise I had in store for her made me feel like dancing right there in the cobbled streets.

  “I love you too,” I said. “And I’ll shut up.”

  I did too. All the way back to the hotel, in the elevator and up to the room, where she rapidly and efficiently undressed in her old Ninotchka way. I went into the bathroom almost gleefully, running the water, testing it with my elbow for temperature. Meanwhile, between peeks through the slitted door, I readied my homemade Mickey. It was easy. I camouflaged it all with a generous portion of red wine which the management had provided for us the day before. I filled a glass for myself and trotted out to the bedroom where she stood in all her glorious nakedness. With her back turned to me again. I felt like the second dog in a team of huskies. Only the first one ever gets a change of scenery, you know, to quote an old Hope-Crosby movie.

  “Drink up,” I said. “You’ll feel better.”

  She didn’t turn around. “Leave the glass in the bathroom. I’ll have it in there. Forget about my back, Damon. I’ll wash myself.”

  “Okay by me. I’m going to grab a nap. Maybe read a book.”

  “As you wish.” As I yawned theatrically, walking toward the windows, she slithered into the bathroom, that tremendous ass rising and falling like mad. What a rump! What a shame it was attached to such a cold-hearted broad.

  I lay down on the bed and waited, ear cocked to the bathroom noises. There was a pause, then a slurping sound. I was satisfied. She hadn’t resisted having a belt before taking her bath. It wouldn’t be long now. I started to count. Ten was the magic number. That’s how fast the stuff worked, give or take a second or the constitution of the victim. In Ketch’s case, I couldn’t be sure of anything.

  But before I silently counted to nine, there was a heavy thud of noise and a great crash of sound as if a tree had fallen. That and a liquidy whoosh of water splashing.

  It sounded like she had made a three-point landing in the bathtub. I didn’t hear the glass break, either. Maybe she still had it

  She had. You would have thought she just sat down in the tub.

  And the beauty part of it was, she was so big and so naturally placed, with the bathwater just rising above her crotch, that she would wake up later on thinking she had fallen asleep in the tub. It was perfect. I shut the water taps real tight so I wouldn’t drown her accidentally, took one last rueful look at the gorgeous mammaries bobbing like balloons on the
gentle water, and softly withdrew.

  It was high time to do some of my own snooping. I had eight hours of grace. That’s how long the Mickey would take to wear off. It’s plenty powerful stuff.

  I wanted to make the emergency contact, in more ways than one.

  Katrina Walsky, the commissar’s daughter.

  A rock and roll singer who wanted to go to Hollywood. Meanwhile, she spied for kicks. Okay. I’d make good use of that too if I could. The first thing I had to do was get in touch with her, though. Maybe she could tell me what the Betchnika caper was really all about. So far, for my dough, it was nothing but a gag. Something somebody dreamed up to waste the taxpayers’ money. Or the Coxe Foundation’s.

  Either way, it would be great just talking to a real woman again. Dames like Christina Ketch could ruin you if you stayed in their company long enough. They just aren’t natural.

  Boy, did I miss Suzanne and Annette. And Wilhelmina. And Gretchen Zimmer. Those were the days—and the lays.

  Feeling the battle call steam in my nostrils once again, I charged out of my room and flew down the stairs two at a time to the hotel lobby. I was too impatient to wait for the elevator. Not that anyone was ever using it. The Hotel Betchnika was not exactly doing an overflow business. It never would, unless the silver pills were real and were found buried somewhere in town under the cobbled streets.

  The first thing I had to do was find a telephone that worked.

  And call Walrus-moustache—collect.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Meeting Katrina Walsky was easy.

  I found her home number in the Betchnika directory, called up, found out she was out, but a maidservant of some kind answered the phone and I left a message sure to draw honey. I told the maidservant to tell Miss Walsky to meet me in two hours (she was expected back soon) in the Ice Cream Parlor on Plotkin Boulevard and Swann Street. I had seen it on my travels with Christina Ketch, so it was a good enough spot to rendezvous. I was sure the Walsky kid would show up. I told the maidservant my name was Damon and I was from Hollywood, California, and I had connections with Twentieth-Century Fox. I’m dumb like a fox, sometimes.

  Before the two hours were up, I did some investigating of my own around town. It’s funny, but without my tall blonde terror in tow, I did a helluva lot better. I didn’t learn anything but nobody gave me the cold shoulder and no one ran away when they saw me coming.

  After a fruitless hour of ‘No” and “What did you say?”, I parked myself in the Ice Cream Parlor, ordered some coffee and waited. It was a cozy little dump, with curtains, cane tables and chairs and a leitmotif of woodsiness and baroque wall paintings. The big plate glass window was comfortably curtained for semi-privacy. There were only a few customers on hand and everybody left me alone. Besides, the clothes I had bought in Betchnika were more in keeping with my surroundings. I could have been your favorite Alpine guide. Or Czech boyfriend. I had a Tyrolean hat, a tweedy sportscoat and short pants showing my nice legs. I was very much “in” for Betchnika.

  Katrina Walsky showed up early. Breathless, excited, looking all around the place. I couldn’t miss her. When she saw me, a face she didn’t recognize, her face lit up and she came bouncing over. Whatever she was, she was the direct antithesis of Christina Ketch. She was very young, just as blonde with the ends of her long hair in two neat braids falling past her shoulders down her breasts. She was yummy, all right. Walrus-moustache had not lied. The blue skirt, tight sweater of elk-design, contained a bountifully curved shape. The skirt was mini, but Miss Walsky’s legs were manifold. Strongly muscled, tanned and sexy.

  “Mr. Damon?” She was chewing gum and got right to the point, sounding more American than Judy Garland in one of those old Andy Hardy movies. Her face was pure pug-nosed but wholesomely bright and attractive. Everything was there except the freckles. “I got here as quick as I could—”

  “Sit down. Want an ice cream soda?”

  Her nose wrinkled. “Who can eat ice cream at a time like this? Say, if you’re really from Hollywood and Fox can it be because you heard some of the demos I cu with Roland’s Right-hand Men and maybe want to arrange a screen test?”

  I had to smile. “Sorry. Not this trip. But we will follow through on you, I promise. Fact is, I’m a Coxeman and I was told to contact you about the Betchnika lynchings.” My voice fell to a whisper, but it didn’t fall as far as her smile did. She slumped back in her chair and her twin, nicely pointed breasts poked out at me almost accusingly.

  “Oh—that old thing. Damn, I knew it was too good to be true. So you’re not from Hollywood.”

  “Sorry, but I have been instructed to tell you that the people you talked to are trying to arrange a test for you. I hear you have a great voice. Like Garland.” What harm could little white lies do?

  She brightened immediately. “Really? ‘Course I’m not as good as Judy. Or Streisand, either. I’m more in Nancy Sinatra’s class.”

  “Think big. Why not aim higher? Anyhow, we must get right down to business, Miss Walsky. You know how dangerous this all is—”

  “Call me Katie. Everybody does. What’s your first name? You’re cute.”

  “Rod. Like in McKuen.” She liked that too. I felt better already. She seemed a smart, perky gal and we ought to have a few laughs together before all this madness was done. “Now what about those lynchings and this silver pill business. The people who said they’d send you to Hollywood would be damn grateful if you’ve come up with anything.”

  She smiled. “Oh, I have. I know where the laboratory is. What they’re doing. Everything.”

  I stared at her. “You do?”

  “Sure. Poppa may be a Communist tool, but I’m not. I don’t like Pops much. He used to beat my mother up. And then she died. So I don’t care what I do to get him into trouble. See how it is?”

  “I see.” I looked around. We were almost alone. Nobody was close enough to hear us. And the counter people were all busy doing their thing. “Then please tell me what you know without further delay. The Coxemen are anxious to get moving on this thing.”

  “Not as anxious as I am to hit L.A. Gee, do they really have all those swimming pools and oranges?”

  “Tons. Now about these lynchings—”

  She made a face. “That was an experiment. You see, out at the Firnl Lab they were making tests. They came up with this pill. You just swallow it and zowie—you’re a kid again, and you can make love for hours. So they tried it out on the old men, twenty-five of them. I guess you know what happened. The old geezers turned the town upside down. The women were begging them for it. And then the men who didn’t get pills got mad and—well, one morning, the poor old fellows were found strung up. Lots of people think the jealous men did it. I don’t. I know who did it. An executioner for the MVD. Those bastards! Ugh. Anyhow—nothing’s happened since. You see, new experiments are going on all the time at Firnl. They haven’t perfected the thing yet”

  “How come you know all this?”

  She shrugged. “Poppa. The big domes from Moscow come to our house to set up their projects and things. This is still a Red satellite, you know. No matter how they spell it out.”

  She was a literal gold mine of information. I reached across and squeezed her hand. She squeezed back. For all her rapid-fire, big-girl spiel, she blushed and her breasts jumped. I filed the view for future study.

  “What about the new experiments? Can you tell me anything about that?” She nodded and brushed a braid away from one of her whim-whams.

  “Sure. Two Russian doctors at Firnl—Gekko and Orkoff—have come up with a solution to the pill’s bugs. You see, the pill is a fooler. Just the right amount of chemicals must go into each pill to match the metabolism of each man who gets it. You see? A man with low blood pressure, for instance, or high blood pressure, could die, otherwise. The pills contain strychnine, which you oughta know is a well-known but very dangerous aphrodisiac. So Gekko and Orkoff have the job of standardizing the pill. That’s why they had the tests
with the old men. And more are coming. Mark my words.”

  “You found all this out at your house?”

  “Sure. Gekko and Orkoff always come for a glass of beer and discuss their plans with Poppa. They bring their attaché cases with them and leave them lying around. I can read.”

  “I’ll say you can. It’s probably highly technical data. How come you can translate it?”

  “Majored in Biology at Prague University and then I had to come back to this crummy town to die on the vine. Still, there’s hope. I can sing. Wanta hear me do ‘These Shoes Were Made For Walking’?”

  “Later. I promise you. If you’re free today I want you to come to my hotel.”

  “Yeah?” Her eyes shone. “You like me? I like you.”

  “Yes, I like you. More than you know. And we’ll talk about that later too. Honest. But I want you to meet my partner, and then I want you to take us out to that barn where the old men were hanged. We might pick up another lead.”

  Her face fell. “Your partner?”

  “Don’t worry your head about her. She’s a cold fish who wouldn’t wipe her shoes on me. And vice versa. You want me, baby, you got me. But business first. And I do want to call in all this valuable dope you’ve given me. One thing more—are you a virgin?”

  She grinned at me. “Is it important?”

  “No. Just curious.”

  “Then the answer is—find out for yourself.”

  “Okay, I will. Come on. Time’s a-wasting. The sooner we close today’s investigation, the sooner I can find out Okay?”

  “Okay!” She stood up. Bright bouncing, and just bubbling over with good will and warmth and cooperation. I’d made a big score. “You really are an American, Rod. No boy in this town would ever talk the way you do.”

  “Don’t give me that. You can’t be the average Betchnikian maid, either.”

  “I’m not,” she laughed. “How’d you guess?”

  “It’s your eyes. Each one of your baby blues has a great big Yes in them.”