Jersey Bounce, page 5
part #9 of Cherry Delight Series
I had rented a car, a little red Volkswagen, that enabled me to get about more freely, and from time to time would drop into the cottage I had rented as Cherry Delight. I found the letter there amid some junk mail one morning.
Don Biagio Fedora was sicker than usual. Specialists had been to see him, it was rumored that he might be going into a hospital for an extended stay.
This could mean trouble. The capos who served under the Don might think this was a good time to begin establishing their claims to his empire. It was also thought that Sabbatino “Sass” Valerio might decide to move about now, too. I was to keep my eyes and ears open for anything that would give N.Y.M.P.H.O. a hint as to where the danger might explode.
One factor about all this bothered me. Where was Valerio? Sure, we had all decided that he was behind this Seaside Surf Club operation, that it was his brainchild and a stepping stone to greater things like taking over Fedora’s empire.
The only thing was, Valerio seemed to be non-existent. I had never seen him, never even so much as heard a hint of his existence. Augie Carpino ran the Club, his name was on all the checks, his word was law.
We couldn’t move against Sass without knowing where he lived, and with the proofs we had to have linking him to a Mafia operation to place before a judge. It was my job to get them and I was failing dismally.
Twice I went into Augie’s private office when I’d finished work and he was upstairs, presumably in the gambling rooms, to search for something that might tip me off as to the truth. I picked locks, at which I am an expert, I read checkbook notations and private ledgers, all without learning a damn thing.
It was discouraging. Maybe I was too impatient.
Then late Saturday night of that first full week of my employment as a hostess, Augie sent for me. It was almost eleven and my job was really over though I usually stayed on to supervise the cleaning and setting of the tables by the waitresses and busboys.
I found him in his office, staring out the big bay window at the cars in one of the club parking lots. His face seemed drawn, haggard, his shoulders were slightly slumped. He turned at my entrance and gave me a wan smile.
“You tired?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Not so very. But you look beat. What’ve you been doing to yourself?”
“Working too hard. Too damn hard. This kind of place keeps your nose to the grindstone, you know?”
“You need a vacation.” He snorted, “Fat chance!”
“Even one day would help,” I urged.
I had never seen him in such a downbeat state. He was normally bubbling over with energy. He shrugged, took his eyes away from me and contemplated the parking lot. I knew that there was something wrong with him.
For I was wearing a blue-and-white crocheted cotton, under which I was naked except for a pair of bikini briefs about my girlish loins. Any male with a single hormone in him just had to look at me. And enjoy. For a moment I was piqued. Then I told myself this was the opportunity I needed.
I moved toward him, put a hand on his arm. “How about a picnic tomorrow? I’ll make up some sandwiches, we’ll find a stretch of lonely beach if we can, and go swimming. Just laze around in the sun all day. It’s Sunday, neither of us has to work. What do you say?”
“A picnic,” he muttered.
“And a swim. I got a great bikini, it shows me off real good.”
He chuckled, but still he hesitated.
I went on, “You’re the boss. You’re the one who gives the orders. Who’s going to tell you you can’t take a holiday for Pete’s sake?”
His eyes were haunted, I thought. An inner voice whispered in my mind, Sabbatino Valerio is the boss! This man only takes orders from him. This was something more than a hunch: call it my N.Y.M.P.H.O. instinct.
“Yeah. Yeah, maybe you’re right,” he muttered. Then in a louder voice he growled, “You are right. I am the boss. We’ll do it. But I got to make a phone call first.”
I remembered that other time when he had been on the telephone and I had been sitting in this same office. Augie had not acted like a boss, then. He had done little or no talking. Instead, he had listened as a capo might listen to the boss of bosses, taking orders.
My face didn’t give away my thoughts. I threw an arm about him, pressed my breasts against him as I hugged him.
“Then it’s a date? You want me to pick you up in my Volks? Just say when and where.”
He laughed, said, “I’ll do the picking up and I’ll have a lunch basket all ready. By God, we’ll have a time. you and me.”
I got out before he could change his mind and to give him a chance to make that phone call. I would have loved to have left the office door open and to listen outside it, but Teddy was standing there and I didn’t dare.
Next morning I was up early and into a mini bikini that barely covered my main essentials. My breasts were spilling out of the bra, my buttocks oozed out under the bottom. When I peered closely, I could even see some errant pubic hairs. It was perfect, I told myself. I found a shortie terrycloth robe that would hide most of me from casual eyes, but would leave my legs exposed almost to my behind.
I gathered up those odds and ends that a girl carries in her beach bag and was ready ten minutes before Augie Carpino knocked at my boarding house door.
His face was glum. “This is a hell of a place for a girl like you. Why don’t you move into a classier joint?”
“I would if I could afford it.”
“I gotta do something about that, then.”
His car was a white Continental, the latest model. I went, “Hey, wow!” when I saw it and he laughed.
As I slid into the front seat, I undid the terrycloth robe and folded it back so my front was exposed to the sun. Also to Augie’s stare. His black eyes lighted appreciably.
The motion of the car, gentle as it was, rocked my breasts up and down, back and forth. Augie stole glimpses of them from time to time when the traffic permitted.
“Find a nice, lonely spot, if you can,” I told him, leaning back and stretching. “I feel like being a nature girl today.”
“I know just the spot.”
He did, too, much to my surprise. It took us an hour or more of driving, but we finally came to a lonely spot of beach empty of all life except for a few seagulls diving into the waves for food. There was a lot of dune grass growing wild and a sand fence that was bent and half-broken as though by the winds that sweep across this corner of the coast. It was desolate and beautiful and my eyes admired the patterns those winds had woven in the white sands.
“I didn’t believe such a place existed,” I marveled as I walked along in front of him.
“It’s a private place,” he told me.
I turned and glanced over my shoulder at him. “Yours? Don’t tell me you’ve gone into the real estate business.”
“It’s a good buy. We may even build another club somewhere around here, since the first one’s doin’ so good.”
Sabbatino Valerio was buying up property, I told myself. This meant that he was making profits, and not only from the Seaside Surf Club, I’d bet. I could hardly come out and ask Augie about this, so I soft-pedaled my interest in it.
The sun was warm which gave me an excuse to slip out of the terrycloth robe and carry it in the same hand that held my beach bag. My body was all but naked, the bits of cloth around my breasts only hid my nipples, while the bottom clung to me like a second skin.
I went on walking in front of my companion, knowing his eyes were sliding around my jiggling buttocks. This was the only way I could think of to get him to let his guard down, so I just went on piling it on.
Like when I took the beach blanket and spread it on the sand, I bent over so my breasts all but fell out of their tiny cups right before him. I heard the breath hiss in his throat and smiled to myself.
“Now you,” I said softly, straightening slowly. “Now me what?”
“Get undressed. You are wearing a bathing suit?”
“Sure, but I’m not tanned like you are. I been indoors a lot lately.”
I took a step toward him, put my hands on his pullover and started yanking it upward. “You want mamma to undress you, don’t you?”
His hands lifted to brush mine away but I think the idea of having a pretty redhead undress him really got to him because they went down and he didn’t stop me as I yanked the sweater off over his head.
He had a good build, with a lot of black hair on his deep chest and muscles in his arms and shoulders. His skin was a fish-belly white. He had been a long time away from the sun but I had a remedy for that.
My fingers worked on his belt buckle, I tugged his slacks down to pool at his feet. I knelt before him, I guess he liked the seeming subservience with which I did this because his black eyes gleamed.
He wore a Jantzen molded to his loins.
I took off his shoes and socks and eased the slacks onto the sand. Then I looked up at him, with my fingertips just touching something hard. The something hard was in his crumpled slacks and I knew without looking that it was a gun.
Not a big one, it would have been too noticeable. My fingertips crawled over it. A .32 revolver, on the small size, I told myself.
Before he could realize what I was doing I stood up and caught his hand. “A little dip, first. Then when we come back, I’ll rub Coppertone all over your body so you won’t get burned.”
We went in the water holding hands.
We swam about, I was a far better swimmer than Augie, though he splashed around and made sounds as though he were enjoying himself. I glanced around us, saw only sky and sea and sand and put my hands behind my back to undo snaps.
Next moment my breasts were bare and wet, bobbing up and down naked as I jumped around. Augie hissed in his throat and his eyeballs all but popped from his head.
“It’s private, isn’t it?” I yelled at him. “We could even go skinny-dipping later, if you’d like.”
I swam closer to him, pushed myself against his body. He would like, all right, a part of him told me so very stiffly, under his trunks. I giggled and rubbed myself to him.
His arms came around me, his lips found mine. His kiss was hard, hungry. I made my lips yield to it. I made my lips yield to it, I felt the touch of his tongue to mine. We clung like that, shaking a little.
It had been a long time for Augie, I guess. He was puffing and sobbing in the heat that ran in his veins and I half expected his fingers to rip the bikini bottoms off and take me right in the water.
He drew back, panted, “Let’s get back on that beach blanket, Donna. You and me got things to do.”
“I thought you’d never say it,” I laughed.
We hurried back to the dry sand, with me carrying my bikini bra in my hand. My white globes swung tantalizingly. Augie couldn’t take his eyes off them. I told myself I was scoring brownie points with Augie Carpino, but fast, which was the way I wanted it.
When we were at the blanket, he hooked his thumbs into his swim trunks, and pushed them down. A lot of man came into view and I paused with my bottoms half on and half off to eye him approvingly.
“On the blanket, kid.”
“Not me, you,” I smiled.
He scowled. To some men the succubus position is an inferior one. He opened his mouth to deny my request but I merely did a mild shimmy which caused my breasts to bounce and joggle.
“You can see these better with me on top,” I laughed.
He smiled wryly. “Okay, okay. What difference does it make?”
“A lot. I can control the tempo.”
He stared at me as if I was talking Greek but I knew what I was about. They don’t call me The Sexecutioner for nothing and sex was a big weapon in my arsenal. If I were ever to bind Augie to me, it would have to be by my knowledge of the love arts.
When he lay flat on his back I did a high kick to send my bikini pants flying. I straddled him, then sank down on him slowly.
His eyes were on my shaking breasts. I’d been right about Augie Carpino, he was a breast man, all right. He was strong as hell where it counted and I jogged up and down a few times before I began to understand that I could really let myself go.
I did a bump and grind, then a modified hula. Augie lay there with his mouth open, his face contorted in pleasure. He never took his eyes from my mammaries.
It went on and on. I orgasmed a couple of times, bent over him and convulsing, with my hands resting flat on his hairy chest. Not until I tightened and loosened the interior muscles of my girlish organs in that milking motion known as tertereh by Arab erotologists, did he dig his head back into the beach blanket and arch upward. He lifted me, held me impaled as he shuddered out his pleasure.
His eyes were closed, his face was twisted in his utter delight. His body shook spasmodically, again and again.
Then he sank back onto the sand and opened his eyes. They were peaceful, there was no longer that haunted look, deep inside them.
“You’re a heavyweight, kid,” he whispered:
I crawled off him saying, “Into the water. Wash off. Now come on. You can come back here and relax and I’ll smear suntan lotion all over you.”
He grumbled mildly but he did what I asked. We swam bare-ass in the ocean, then returned to the blanket. I rubbed Coppertone all over his back and chest, telling him he could have two hours of the sun at most, then he’d have to to put his pullover back on.
Augie grinned at me. “You’d think you were my wife.”
“Oh, do you have a wife?”
“Not me. I’ve played it smart all my life.”
“Me too. It’s better when there are no millstones around your neck.”
“I wouldn’t mind having you for a millstone.”
“Sure you would, Augie. You’d get tired of me in a year or two. Oh, maybe longer, but you’d get tired.”
“You’re a funny girl. I can’t make you out. You’ve been on your uppers and it seems to me you’d grab at the chance to get married to a guy like me.”
I sat back on my haunches and considered him. My palm was still streaked with the lotion, I rubbed it on the sand thoughtfully.
“Or maybe I’d get tired of you,” I told him. “All my life I’ve been footloose and fancy free.”
We were getting intimate. I felt in a little while Augie might even break down and spill a little of his background or maybe give me a couple of words and phrases on which to build an idea. He reached out and caught my hand.
“You know,” he said lazily, “I’m kinda getting hungry. It’s been a while since I been hungry.”
“Not enough exercise, nor enough fresh air. We’ll have to do this more often.”
He didn’t move a muscle to help himself, so I slid the wicker basket he’d brought from the car along the sand until I could open it and peer inside. He’d ordered enough food to feed an army. There were sliced tomatoes, about a dozen sandwiches, some hard-boiled eggs and four thermos bottles.
I handed him a chicken sandwich, took a roast beef for myself. I poured hot coffee for him, put a tomato and a couple of the eggs on a paper napkin.
Augie sat up and started eating. He wolfed down two sandwiches, a whole tomato and two eggs without drawing breath. I ate pretty good myself but I was no match for him.
“Lie back now,” I said when he showed signs of stopping. “Close your eyes and get some rest. We can save the rest for later, have supper out here under the stars when it gets dark.”
“You sure I won’t get sunburned?”
“I’ll cover you in an hour.”
He closed his eyes and in a little while was sound asleep. I wasn’t tired, but I got down there beside him and what with the sunlight and the fresh air, I dozed off myself.
I woke a little later to pull his sweater up over his chest and drape his slacks across his legs. Then I lay down and really slept.
It was going on four in the afternoon when I woke. Augie hadn’t moved, he must really have been tired. I watched him for a few minutes, thinking how innocent he looked in his sleep, like a little child, and how deadly he was when awake. At the flick of his finger, if the empire he was building should be threatened, men would go out and kill and be killed.
Eventually, I might have to kill this man myself. It was not a nice thought, for Augie Carpino was a likable guy. I had fun with him and I found him understanding and sympathetic. But he was Mafia, and all it implies, and I had him tabbed as Sabbatino Valerio’s first lieutenant.
I put my head back on the blanket and stared up at the cloudless sky. There was a restlessness in me which I could not explain; it was not a restlessness of body so much as it was that of the mind. My body was languid, but my mind was worried. There was no reason for that worry that I could discover, either.
We were alone here on an uninhabited beach. Nobody was within miles of us.
I turned over and scanned the dunes. Just grass waving, and sand rippled from the wind and the water, met my eyes.
And yet, there was a wrong note here.
I almost jabbed Augie with my elbow but he would only laugh at my female fancies. This unrest within me was something more than feminine instinct, it was that feeling I have gotten more than somewhat as a N.Y.M.P.H.O. agent when I have been in danger.
I sat up, put a hand out toward Augie’s slacks, pretended to cover him up. He stirred, breathing harshly, then subsided. My hand closed about the butt of his .32 revolver.
For now I knew what caused the sensation that was running up and down my spine and into my toes. It was that feeling we sometimes get when we are being watched and cannot find out who is doing the watching.
Chapter Five
They came up over the top of a sand dune, walking toward us, kicking tiny clouds of sand with each step. They were Mafia hit-men or I was a ring-tailed monkey. Each man had a gun in his hand, hanging by his side. They were grinning at me cruelly
Now I might have taken them for Carpino’s buttons if it hadn’t been for the guns and the looks in their eyes that told me they meant murder. There were two of them, big and beefy types, with thick necks and blue jowls.
