CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Laura dreamed of Dan that night.

She dreamed that somehow the mistakes of the past had magically been undone—that she had never gone to McCarten's that day, had never been raped, had never embarked on the chain of events that had ultimately brought her to Phil Spinelli. And, so, Dan had never tried to kill himself on the East River Drive. But they had met, though—that much of the past remained unchanged in her dream—and they had fallen in love, and now they were getting married.

She dreamed of a small wedding, just a few friends on hand. She stood at Dan's side, gleaming in her white dress of virginity, and after the ceremony they made a quick escape, getting into Dan's little car and heading upstate for a honeymoon in a secluded mountain resort. By sundown, they had eaten and were alone in their room, and they smiled at each other shyly, Laura a virgin and Dan an inexperienced man, and with hesitant fingers Dan began to undress her, opening her bra, laying bare her young, full breasts that no man had ever touched, and finally her body was naked to his, and he was undressed too, his body slim and manly, and he took her uncertainly in his arms, just as frightened as she was, and they kissed, a timid kiss at first, then more passionate until it inflamed them both, and in one moment of blazing happiness she surrendered to him, and she heard him mutter "I love you, Laura" as her virginity vanished without pain, and their bodies were moving together in perfect accord, every motion bringing incredible pleasure to both of them, and they were moving faster and faster now, his hand resting on the rising sweep of her breasts, she gripping the firm muscles of his back, and she felt the great throbbing contractions of fulfillment, and above her he was breathing deeply, and in another moment they would reach a thundering ecstasy, a perfect climax to their first act of love—

She woke.

She sat upright in bed, trembling. She had put pajamas on before going to bed, and they clung stickily to her skin, pasted to her body by perspiration. Angrily she ripped the pajamas off and flung them to the floor. Her loins ached; the dream seemed so vivid that for a moment she could not understand why Dan was not right here, next to her in the bed, and then she remembered that he was lying in the hospital, on the borderline between life and death, and he had refused to let her see him.

The bedside clock said three A.M. Laura tried to return to sleep. But sleep would not come; she twisted and turned, moving from one position to another without finding any comfort. Every nerve in her body was drawn tight. The dream still hovered with her, and it was almost as though she could feel Dan's hand tenderly cupping the fullness of her breasts, Dan's body lying between her thighs. But it was only a phantom of the night. She had never slept with him—and now she never would.

The hours dragged mercilessly on. At half past five, Laura decided it was pointless to try to sleep any more. She sat up at the edge of the bed, her head bowed, supported by clenched fists, elbows on her thighs. She looked down at the heavy globes of her breasts. Her nipples tingled painfully from the imagined stimulation of her dream.

The sun was rising, now. Laura walked to the terrace and stepped out on it, still naked. The morning air was cool and fresh; the summer heat would not descend on the city for some hours yet. She stood there, feeling the river breeze caressing her naked breasts and bare loins, not caring whether anyone might look up from the street below and see her. For a long moment she stared down, many stories down to the street. It would be so easy to clamber up onto the little parapet and to float out into space, falling twelve, thirteen, fourteen floors. They would find her naked body later in the morning, the breasts flattened to ruin, the tapering flawless legs crushed and shattered.

Shaking her head, she walked back into the apartment and shut the terrace window. It was six in the morning now. The dream of love was far behind her, fading like the dream it had been. It no longer seemed to have even the semblance of reality to her.

She poured some juice, made some toast, put up a pot of coffee. She breakfasted morosely, too tired to care what she was eating or how it tasted. At half past seven she telephoned the hospital.

"I'd like to find out how Mr. Dan Bittner spent the night," she said.

"Just one moment," came the impersonal, disinterested voice from the hospital switchboard. "I will check on that information for you."

Laura waited. A moment or two later, the operator said, "Pardon me. Are you a relative of his?"

"I'm—a friend," Laura said. "A very close friend of his."

"I'm sorry, then. Mr. Bittner died during the night."

"Oh," Laura said, in a small voice. She had been expecting it. It came as no surprise. She had known he would not last the night. And I never even said goodbye to him, she thought sadly.

"His parents have been notified," the operator went on. "If you'll leave your name with me, I can give it to them when they arrive to claim the body, and they will get in touch with you concerning the funeral arrangements for him."

"That's all right," Laura said quietly. "It doesn't matter, about the funeral. I wouldn't want to see him dead. Thanks, though. Thanks."

She let the phone drop back into its cradle.

She felt no hysteria, no wild grief. There was only a lingering, festering bitterness, a cold rage against the universe that had designed events to turn out in this way.

I killed him, she thought acidly.

As sure as if I'd put a gun to his brain myself, I killed him. I ought to give myself up for murder. I knew all along that it would kill him to find out the truth about me. I should never have let him become involved with me. But I did. And I killed him.

She stared at the floor, thinking of the people she had known in New York, and what had happened to them. Marilyn ... dead. McDermott ... ruined. Dan ... dead. At least one of those deaths was unquestionably her fault. Marilyn's fate and McDermott's were simply coincidentally involved with her.

But still, it was a horrid trio of memories.

Rising, Laura paced the apartment, wondering about the course of her life since she had come to New York. She had earned a good deal of money, but that was her only positive accomplishment. On the credit side, money. On the debit side, betrayal of every ideal she had once known. She had sold her body, had deceived herself more than anyone else, had led a good and innocent young man to his death. She had mingled with lechers and perverts and pimps.

Not very pretty, is it? she asked herself.

Not at all. Somehow her life had gone off the track. Somehow instead of the show-business career she had come to New York to win, she had achieved success in whoredom instead. Nothing much to be proud of. Nothing much to wire home to the folks in Kansas.

She walked to the dresser drawer and opened it. A gun lay under a pile of blouses. It was a .22 that Spinelli had given her, to use as protection in case any burglar tried to force his way into her apartment. It was loaded, but she had never used it. It was a small, well-made, expensive-looking little gun. The low-caliber bullet it fired would not always kill, but it could cripple—and if it hit a vital area it could destroy.

She took the gun out and balanced it on her palm. All she had to do was wrap a finger round the trigger, lift the gun to her temple, and fire. She would die instantly. There would be none of the lingering horror of poison, or the deadly terror of the long wait before your hurtling body reached the street. A tightening of one finger, and death would crash through her brain, ending a useless and empty life.

She slid her hand round the cold butt and raised the gun. Her finger quivered over the trigger. Her hand shook.

For a long moment she remained poised, on the brink of pulling the trigger. No one would miss her, she thought. The Kansas folks had probably already begun to forget her. Spinelli would miss her, sure. He'd miss the money she brought him, that's all. Dan would not miss her. Not now. She was of no importance to the universe. She was an enemy of society.

She deserved to die, she told herself.

But the finger resting on the trigger remained relaxed. She did not fire. She sat motionless, hardly breathing, while the battle raged inside her mind. End it, end it, part of her shrilled. Why go on? Money isn't everything. Life isn't worth living if you can't respect yourself. You might just as well pull the trigger.

But the reply came quickly, anguishedly: No, don't. Death is too final. If you live, there's always time to repent, to change, to atone for the harm you've done. Suicide is a coward's way out. It would be the last sniveling act of a weak and worthless person. It takes guts to go on living from one day to the next. It takes courage to try to repair the mess you've made of your life.

Slowly, she let the gun down.

The tension broke. She was slick with her own sweat, and her heart raced dizzyingly. She went into the bathroom and got under the shower again, scrubbing the beads of sweat from her breasts and thighs and buttocks. She came out and began to dress—not in anything fancy, just a simple dress of the kind she wore back in the dim days before Spinelli.

By ten o'clock she was ready to leave. Almost as an afterthought, she dropped the .22 into her handbag.

The morning was warm and bright, a perfect late-summer day with just the merest hint of the approaching autumn in the soft breeze coming down from the east. Laura considered taking a taxi, but decided against it. Her own legs were good enough. Besides, she didn't have very far to go.

It was half past ten by the time she reached Spinelli's apartment house. She had not walked rapidly. In New York, everyone sprints, but this morning Laura had chosen to stroll. She had plenty of time.

All the time in the world.

The doorman in the palatial lobby of Spinelli's building recognized her and smiled.

"Miss Haynes to see Mr. Spinelli?"

"That's right," Laura said.

In this building, no one went up unannounced. Laura waited while the doorman rang upstairs on the house-phone and told Skalkottis that Miss Haynes was here to see Mr. Spinelli. Skalkottis rumbled an "Okay" so loudly that Laura heard it plainly. She walked into the waiting elevator and punched 20.

Skalkottis met her in the foyer as she stepped out of the elevator and into Spinelli's apartment. The hulking bodyguard said, "How come you didn't phone before you came over?"

Laura shrugged. "I didn't know I was coming. I was out taking a walk, and all of a sudden I realized I was right near Phil's place, so I figured I'd stop up and say hello. I haven't been here for a while."

"Phil has some visitors," Skalkottis said uncertainly.

"That's all right. He won't mind if I join them," Laura replied breezily. Before Skalkottis could stop her, she marched past him and into the long hallway, past all the rooms of breathtaking beauty, looking for Spinelli. She found him finally in the long room with the terrace, the enormous room where Spinelli had administered her final exam before graduating her into his staff.

He had two visitors.

He looked up in surprise as she swept into the room. "Laura—"

"Hello, Phil. I'm not disturbing anything, am I?"

She looked at the two visitors. One of them was a girl of about nineteen. She was stark naked. She was a tall, virginal-looking blonde, with thin soft golden hair. Right at this moment she was blushing practically all over. She was lovely, in a soft, pale kind of way, with round high breasts and tender-looking thighs. She was staring at Laura in surprise, and in an automatic gesture of modesty before another woman she was ineffectually trying to cover her loins with one hand and both her breasts with the other. She looked extremely naked, extremely young, extremely frightened. Obviously a new candidate for Spinelli's stable, being shown off by her discoverer to Spinelli.

The other person in the room was Ned McCarten. That was just perfect, Laura thought. It was better than she could have dared to hope for.

She sized the situation up: McCarten had found this girl and had brought her direct to Spinelli himself, McCarten now looked shamefaced and uncertain, as though he wanted to sink into the deep pile carpeting.

Laura said, "Hello, Ned. Long time no see."

"H-hello, Laura."

"You don't have to cringe like that," Laura said calmly. "What you did to me is ancient history, Ned. I've been through the mill plenty since the day you raped me." She smiled at the naked blonde. "And this is the new one, eh? Very nice, Ned. Phil, are you going to give her a job?"

Spinelli looked annoyed. "Now, listen, Laura, you can't come busting in here—"

"Sure I can. I just did." She realized Skalkottis was standing behind her. But Spinelli would not dare to have her manhandled—not in front of a potential candidate. The naked girl looked about to faint. She was cramming her full breasts into a bra, now, and reaching for panties. The audition had suddenly become much too public to suit her, it seemed.

To the girl, Laura said, "I'm Laura Haynes. I'm also one of McCarten's discoveries. Remind me to tell you someday about how he 'discovered' me. Maybe you got the same treatment yourself."

Spinelli was scowling. "Laura, I'll have to ask you to wait outside until—"

"I won't," Laura snapped. She stepped back and to the side, so there was solid wall behind her and not the possibly menacing Skalkottis. "I want to talk to this girl. I want to tell her to get her clothes on and get out of here before it's too late."

"Are you out of your mind, Laura?" Spinelli shouted.

"No! I'm in my mind, at long last," she tossed back at him. In a quieter voice she said, "He's dead, Phil."

"Who is?"

"Dan Bittner."

"And who the blazes is he?"

"I loved him," Laura said quietly. "Remember, you suspected I might be carrying on on the side? Well, I was. I never slept with him. He was too innocent for that. He loved me, I think, and he wanted to marry me. But he killed himself the day my picture got into the papers with the label whore underneath it."

Spinelli moistened his lips. "You're drunk, Laura. If you've got anything to say to me, wait until I can see you in private. George—"

"Don't touch me!" she warned Skalkottis. To Spinelli she said, "I'm not drunk. I just came here to tell you that I was through with the call-girl business. You hear me? Through. The only decent person I ever knew in my life is on a slab in the basement of a hospital right now, and you sit here like a bloated spider in your web, and here's some new girl ready to be turned into a whore."

"Get her out of here!" Spinelli grated.

Laura stepped back. "Keep your hands off me," she told Skalkottis. "I'm warning you, don't lay a finger on me, you ape."

"The boss wants you to wait outside," Skalkottis said in a surprisingly gentle voice. "Why you want to make all this trouble, huh? You shouldn't come in here and shout at him like that. You did all right by him, didn't you?"

Suddenly Laura knew what she had come here to do. In one quick flash of understanding, she realized what her purpose in existence was.

She opened her handbag. The cold little .22 leaped into her hand.

Skalkottis jumped back, startled. Laura's finger slid round the trigger.

She fired.

There was an explosion that seemed incredibly loud for so small a gun, and a violent shaft of pain ran up Laura's arm. A crater erupted in Skalkottis' throat. Hit at five feet's distance, the little slug practically blew his throat apart. A gout of blood coursed out of severed arteries; he uttered a thick, wordless moan and sank to his knees, clutching the wound and trying to hold it closed.

The half-naked blonde screamed. McCarten cowered. Spinelli rose to his feet in astonishment.

Smiling, Laura swung round to face Spinelli. He was groping in a desk-drawer, now, obviously searching for a weapon. His well-groomed face looked pale and frightened, and his eyes were very wide.

Laura fired again.

She aimed for his chest, but the gun kicked hard, and the bullet entered him low, in the stomach, hardly six inches above the top of the desk. He grabbed his belly and staggered back, away from the desk.

Shrieking, McCarten broke from his seat and dashed across the room. He presented his full back to Laura, who aimed with skill that surprised her, and squeezed the trigger a third time. The bullet caught McCarten between the shoulderblades; he howled and went sprawling. Laura took a deep breath. The blonde, with her panties still halfway up her hips, had fallen flat and was moaning hysterically. Skalkottis lay face-down in a pool of gushing blood, not moving at all. McCarten did not seem to be moving either. Spinelli, still alive, was writhing feebly and clutching his belly.

Laura walked calmly toward the girl and lifted her to her feet.

"Don't worry," Laura said. "I'm not after you. Just these worms." She looked at Spinelli. Her voice was rock-steady as she said, "The police could never stop you, Phil. You knew too many people, you had too much pull. They'd never pin anything on you that you couldn't wriggle out of. And you'd go on, getting richer and richer, leading girl after girl into filth and sin."

"Laura...." he muttered.

"You didn't expect this, did you?" she asked. "You figured you'd live forever, that no one could possibly catch you or stop you. Well, you were wrong. You're lying there in your own blood, and you're going to die, Phil. You're going to die right now. All the pull in the world can't save you, Phil."

She lifted the gun.

She fired again, aiming carefully.

The shot caught Spinelli in the chest. He had risen to his knees, but the impact of the bullet threw him down flat. He lay still.

Laura let the gun drop to the floor. She realized she was almost at the point of collapse.

Killing myself wouldn't have accomplished anything, she thought. But now I've done something for society, something that society couldn't do for itself. Maybe they'll send me to the chair for it, but at least Phil Spinelli is dead and the world's a cleaner place for what I've done.

She looked at the blonde. The girl was dazed and stunned.

Laura said, "Why were you here, honey?"

"They—they were going to give me a job, they said. And before I knew it they were taking my clothes off, and then you came in—"

"Are you a virgin?" she asked.

The girl shook her head. "No. Not really. There was this fellow back home—he said he loved me. But I only did it with him once. And then I came to New York. But—oh, I'm all frightened now! Did you kill them?"

"I killed them," Laura said. "Stone dead. Get your clothes on and get out of here, now. Go back home to that boyfriend of yours and marry him. And if anyone asks you, you were never here."

The girl nodded and hastily began to dress. Laura walked to the telephone at Spinelli's desk. She dialed the operator.

"Give me the police," she said.

There was a click. "Police headquarters."

"Hello," she said. "My name is Laura Haynes. I've just killed Phil Spinelli and two of his men." In a calm, mechanical voice, she gave the address and hung up.

She felt clean, now.

Perhaps they would send her to the chair; perhaps they would free her as a public benefactor. It didn't matter. She had absolved herself now of her personal sin, and if society insisted on her death she would not mind. At least she had bought back her soul from Phil Spinelli. At least she was pure again.

She smiled. She walked to the window, and sat down by the terrace to wait for the wailing sirens.

THE END

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ON SALE AT YOUR NEWSDEALER

ON THE STREET ...

was their affectionate way of saying, "I'm becoming a prostitute." And so Laura Haynes went on the street. It seemed the only way out after coming to New York to become an actress, after getting raped in an agent's office, after meeting Marilyn, the sad girl who could only find satisfaction in the arms of another woman. It was a way of making it big in the big town, and Laura wanted that. She also wanted to become a high-priced call-girl in the Syndicate, and if Spinelli could do that for her, she'd ...

... SELL HERSELF CHEAP!