Vance smiled wryly as he saw her turn in under the canopy of the apartment house just off the Drive. Some coincidence! Dr. Golden’s building! The very same one he’d left only a few hours before. Vance recrossed the street and strolled past the entrance slowly, peering into the lobby.
Look at the she-witch! Standing there in front of the mirror and primping like she was getting ready to take on a platoon of butter-and-egg men! Fluffing up her breasts and pushing them out at the mirror just like she didn’t know that doorman was sitting on the couch right across the lobby from her.
Vance walked to the corner, wheeled around and went up to the entrance of the building again. He stood under the canopy trying to look as if he was just trying to stay out of the rain. He looked up and down the block carefully, but there wasn’t a soul in sight to judge his pretense. Casually, he watched as the blonde pushed the button for the elevator and then vanished inside it.
His heart pounding hard, he walked up to the doorway of the apartment house and peered at the doorman on the sofa. Yes, he was asleep. Sound asleep. Vance started to go inside the lobby.
But what if the doorman woke up? Hell, he’d just turn around and walk out again, that was all. It was no crime, was it?
He strode over to the elevator the blonde had entered. He studied the indicator. Fifth floor. It gave him a start. Dr. Golden’s floor! And there were only two apartments on each floor that were serviced by each elevator. Suddenly Vance realized that his mouth was very dry and he was finding it hard to breathe.
He glanced at the doorman again. Still sound asleep. Good. He pressed the button and waited for the elevator to come down.
When the door opened, he took one last look at the dozing doorman and stepped into the elevator. A moment later he got off at the fifth floor. The door to Dr. Golden’s apartment was ever so slightly ajar. She must be in there!
Vance tiptoed over to it and put his ear to the crack. “. . . removal of your other garments, won’t it?” Dr. Golden’s voice.
“Nope.” That must be the blonde.
“I beg pardon?” Dr. Golden again.
“Watch.”
Silence for what seemed a very long time. Finally Vance pushed his eye to the crack in the door. The tramp! She was doing a striptease. And Dr. Golden was licking her lips and watching her. Dr. Golden! The full import of what he was seeing struck Vance hard. His doctor! His analyst! A Lesbian!
But no, it couldn’t be Dr. Golden’s fault. That hot-eyed tramp must have seduced her! Sure! That was it! She was working Dr. Golden over! Oh, she‘d pay for that! Vance would make her pay for that!
His rage filled him so that it blotted out the muted conversation which had resumed in the foyer of the apartment. Filled with a mingling of lust and the desire for murderous revenge, Vance was incapable of listening to them. Finally it was quiet inside, and it slowly dawned on him that they must have gone into the rear of the flat.
Vance waited a long time, letting the blood-lust fill every corner of his being. Then, slowly, carefully, silently, he turned the doorknob and eased open the door to Dr. Golden’s apartment.
Thus murder trembled on the threshold!
CHAPTER 11
The Erotic Dream Girl
“. . . DROP YOUR socks and grab on, fellows; here comes little Lisa! One-hundred-and-fifteen pounds of dynamite crammed into a thirty-eight-twenty-six-thirty-six sack of willing skin, that’s me, Lisa Bourdon, glamor model by profession and all-round bed-bunny by choice. . . . Don’t look so shocked now. I’m a genuine, bona fide, watermarked nymphomaniac. Don’t take my word for it, ask Madame Headshrinker over there. And La Doc says I’m not to blame, either. Seems I got off on the wrong round heel when I was only thirteen years old and my libido’s been all bollixed up ever since. Yeah, I’ve been a swingin’ alley cat for nine years now and I’m still goin’ strong. I’m only twenty-two and I’ve already put in sack time with maybe fifty, sixty men and I enjoyed every minute of it. No charge—I’m not a pro; I insist on maintaining my amateur standing — but all for fun. Ask ’em down on MacDougal Street. Little Lisa ’ll roll over with any man just for the hell of it. So what’s my problem? That’s for you to guess! . . . ”
A little more than a half-hour after the group session ended Lisa Bourbon walked into Greco’s, a sawdust-on-the-fioor bar at the southeast tip of Greenwich Village, the section where the Village is reaching out to swallow up the bum-land of the Bowery and the immigrant sections of the Lower East Side. Her arrival — or, rather, her entrance, her breast-bouncing, hip-swinging, buttock-rolling entrance — was noticed by two men at the bar. One of the men wore a beard which was trimmed satanically, the other carried a pair of drumsticks with which he was beating out a constant low rhythm on the bar.
“Oh, Lord! Look what the wind blew in,” commented The Beard.
“Little Miss Hot-Hips/ Seeking new bed whips." The Drummer tapped out the rhythm of the words as he spoke.
“So she can screw them right out of their sockets, no doubt,” The Beard added drily.
“Little Lisa/ No mere teaser/ So hooked on sex/ She leaves men wrecks.”
“That says it.” The Beard chuckled. “I can see you’ve made that scene, too.”
“Breathes there the cat in Village East/ Who ain’t made Lisa once at least?”
“And once is once too often. Man, I tell you, this chick is right out of Havelock Ellis. When she wants it—and when doesn’t she?—she’ll take any man, drunks, junkies, Bowery bums, up to her pad. And once she gets a guy up there— well, I guess you dig.”
“Turn on her switch—/ A perpetual itch—/ One, two, three, four./ Still she wants more./ Five, six and seven./ Lisa’s in Heaven!/ Then eight, nine and ten./ She’s still got a yen!/ She never says ‘when’!/ Just bring on your men! ”
“You know," said The Beard with more bitterness than irony in his voice, “I was convinced there was something wrong with me because I wasn’t enough of a man for her. Talk about a castrating female! It wasn’t ’til I talked to a coupla other vipers who put in sack time with her that I found out this was her bit. She never even gives a guy a chance to get his second wind before she’s demanding more. She thinks the multiple orgasm is one of women’s rights and man’s duty to provide. And in the end she demeans every guy the same as she did me. As soon as he reaches the point of utter exhaustion, she lets him know in no uncertain terms what a flop she thinks he is.”
“Still, she never gets leary/ Of lovers who weary.”
“Oh, I’ll give her that all right. She’s always willing to give a guy a second chance. And with that body of hers, let’s face it, it’s a temptation . . . Speaking of temptation, here she comes.”
“Hi,” Lisa greeted them. “Who’s gonna buy me a drinkie-poo? ”
“My pleasure,” The Beard responded. “White wine for. Miss Melon-Sweater,” he called to the bartender.
“Why, thanks you,” Lisa purred. “I didn’t know you cared.”