The Black Duchess inclined her head, agreeing: “Yes, the Greeks are dark-minded. The rich Greeks. They bear the same resemblance to humans as coyotes do to dogs. Coyotes look like dogs; but of course they aren’t dogs—”
Aces intervened to comment: “But, Kate, you like to hunt. How do you account for that?”
“I like to play at hunting. I like the walking and the wilderness. The only thing I ever shot was a Kodiak bear, and that was in self-defense.”
“You shot a man,” Aces reminded her.
“Only in the legs. And he deserved it. He killed a white leopard.” Corinne appeared with a small glass of Verviene, and Aces was right—the liqueur matched perfectly the ultra-green of her eyes. “But what I started to tell you about was this amazing woman I met at Mingo’s fandango. She sat down next to me, and said: ‘Hello, honey. I hear you’re a Southern girl, and so am I. I’m from Alabama. I’m Virginia Hill.”
Aces said: “The Virginia Hill?”
“Well, I didn’t realize she was all that famous until Mingo told me. I’d never heard of her.”
“Nor I,” said Mme. Apfeldorf. “Who is she? An actress?”
“A gangster’s moll,” Aces informed her. “The Most Wanted woman. The F.B.I. have pictures of her posted in every post office in America. I read an article about her, it was called ‘The Madonna of the Underworld.’ Everybody’s after her, not only the F.B.I. but most of her old gangster chums, too: they figure if the F.B.I. ever catch her, she might talk and talk too much. When things got too tough, she fled to Mexico and married an Austrian ski instructor; she’s been holed up in Austria and Switzerland ever since. The Americans have never been able to extradite her.”
“Mon Dieu,” said Mme. Apfeldorf, making a sign of the cross.
“She must be a very frightened woman.”
“Not frightened. Despairing, even suicidal perhaps; but she wears a jovial mask very convincingly. She kept putting her arm around me, squeezing me and saying: ‘It sure is good to talk to somebody from down home. Hell, you can take the whole of Europe and cram it up your shithole. See my hand?’ She showed me her hand; it was wrapped in plaster and gauze, and she said: ‘I caught my husband in bed with one of these ladeda bimbos, and I broke her jaw. I would’ve broken his, too. If he hadn’t jumped out the window. I guess you know all about my troubles stateside; but sometimes I feel I’d be better off to go home and get it over with. I can’t be more in a jail there than I am here.’ ”
Aces said: “But what was she really like? Is she beautiful?”
Kate considered. “Never beautiful, but pretty, cute, like a cute little carhop. She has a nice face, but two chins to go with it. And I can’t imagine what her tits weigh—at least a couple of kilos.”
“Please, Kate,” complained the Black Duchess. “You know how I dislike those words. Tits.”
“Oh, yes. I always forget. You were educated by Brazilian nuns. Anyway, what I started to say was, suddenly this woman pressed her lips against my ear and whispered: ‘Why don’t you kidnap him?’ I simply looked at her; I had no idea what she was talking about. She said: ‘You know all about me but I know quite a lot about you. How you married that Kraut bastard and how he kicked you out and kept the kid. Listen, I’m a mother, too. I have a boy. And I know how you feel. With his money, and these European laws, the only way you’re going to get that kid back is by kidnapping him.’ ”
Mutt whined; Aces jingled some coins in his pocket; Mme. Apfeldorf said: “I think she’s quite correct. And it could be done.”
“Yes, it could,” said Aces. “A damned dangerous business. But it could be done.”
“How?” Kate McCloud shouted, pounding her fists into the pillows. “You know that house. It’s a fortress. I could never get him out of there. Not with old-maid uncles always watching. And the servants.”
Aces said: “Still, that part of it might be accomplished. With exemplary planning.”
“And then what? Once the alarm was sounded, I’d never get within ten miles of the Swiss frontier.”
“But suppose,” croaked Mme. Apfeldorf, “suppose you didn’t try to cross the frontier. By car, I mean. Suppose you had a private Grumman jet waiting for you in the valley. All aboard, and off we go.”
“To where?”
“To America!”
Aces was excited: “Yes! Yes! Once you were in the States, Herr Jaeger would be helpless. You could file for divorce, and there’s no judge in America who wouldn’t give you custody of Heinie.”
“Daydreams. Pipedreams. Mr. Jones,” she said, “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting so long. The massage table is in the closet over there.”
“Pipedreams. Perhaps. But I’d think about it,” said the Black Duchess, rising. “Let’s have lunch next week.”
Aces kissed Kate McCloud on the cheek. “I’ll call you later, darling. Take good care of my girl, P. B. And when you’re finished, look me up in the bar.”
While I was setting up the massage table, Mutt jumped on the bed and squatted to peepee. I started to grab her. “No harm. Many worse things have happened in this bed. She’s so ugly she’s adorable. I love her black face with those big white circles around her eyes. Like a Panda. How old is he?”
“Three, maybe four months. Mr. Nelson gave her to me.”
“I wish he’d given her to me. What’s her name?”
“Mutt.”
“You can’t call her that. She’s far too charming. Let’s think of something more suitable.”
When I had the massage table arranged, she rolled off the bed and dropped a gauzy short negligee, underneath which she was nude. Her pubic hair and her shoulder-length honey-red hair were an exact color match; she was an authentic redhead, all right. She was thin, but her body needed not an extra ounce; because of the perfection of her posture, she seemed taller than she was—about my height: five feet eight inches.
Casually, her perky breasts scarcely quivering, she crossed the room and touched the button of a stereo phonograph: Spanish music, Segovia’s guitar, relieved the silence. Silently, she approached the massage table and reclined there, letting her fascinating hair fall over its end-edge. Sighing, she curtained her brilliant eyes; closed them as though she were posing for a death mask. She wore no makeup, and required none, for her high cheekbones had a warm natural coloring and her pleasingly pouted lips a pinkness of their own.
I felt a stirring in my crotch, a stirring that stiffened as I gazed along the length of her healthy, sculptured body, her succulent nipples, the ample curve of her hips, and her supine legs extending toward slender feet flawed only by skier’s bunions on both her little toes. My hands were unsteady, damp, and I cursed myself: Cut it out, P. B.—this isn’t very professional of you, old boy. All the same, my prick kept pressing against my fly.
Now, nothing like this had so spontaneously happened to me before, though I’d massaged, and more than massaged, a fair share of arousing women—though none, admittedly, to compare with this Galatea. I wiped my wet hands against my trousers, and began to manipulate her neck and the upper regions of her shoulders, kneading the taut skin and tendons as though I were a merchant fingering costly fabric. At first she was tense, but gradually I induced suppleness, an easing.
“Hmm,” she murmured, like a drowsy child. “That’s nice. Tell me, how did you fall into the hands of our naughty Mr. Nelson?”
I was glad to talk; anything to get my mind off that mischievous hard-on. So not only did I tell her how I’d met Aces at a bar in Tangier, I continued with a brief resume of P. B. Jones and his journeys. A bastard, born in St. Louis and raised there in a Catholic orphanage until I was fifteen and ran away to Miami, where I’d worked as a masseur five or so years—until I’d saved enough money to go to New York and try my luck at what I really wanted to be, a writer. Successfully?
Well, yes and no: I’d published a book of short stories—ignored, unfortunately, by both the critics and public, a disappointment that had brought me to Europe, and long years of traveling, scrounging about while I attempted to write a novel; but that, too, had been a dud. So here I was, still drifting and with no future that extended beyond tomorrow.
By now I’d reached her abdomen, massaged it with a rolling circular motion, then descended to her hips, and then, with my eyes on her rosy pubic hairs, I thought of Alice Lee Langman, and Alice Lee Langman’s memories of a Polish lover who had enjoyed jamming her cunt with cherries and eating them out one by one. My imagination enhanced that fantasy.
I imagined soft pitted cherries marinating in a bowl of warm rich sweetened cream, and I saw Kate McCloud’s savory fingers selecting creamy cherries from the bowl and inserting them—My legs trembled, my
