“Think what you want. It makes no never-mind to me. I’ll just as soon my virtue stayed intact.”
“You must be kidding!” Durango’s face broke into a wide, humorless smile, displaying very white and even teeth.
In spite of herself, Debbie had to smile back. Her words did indeed ring oddly even in her own ears.
“There,” Durango said. “No reason why we can’t be friendly. Makes it more pleasant all around.”
“I guess you’re right.” Debbie subsided. “Durango,” she mused aloud after a moment.
“That’s my name.”
“Italian, or Spanish?”
“Neither.”
“Puerto Rican? Mexican?”
“Nope. I‘m Maltese.”
“Maltese?” Debbie was puzzled. “What’s that?”
“My parents came from the island of Malta—near Gibraltar, you know?”
“Then you are Spanish.”
“You better not ever let my father hear you say that. Spanish is a dirty word to him. We’re Maltese, and damn proud of it.”
“Maltese, huh? Like the cats,” Debbie teased.
“Sure.” Durango laughed tolerantly.
“Well come on over here, kitty, and let me make you purr.” Debbie stretched seductively.
“Later. Maybe,” Durango replied. “Not now. Now I got a murder to solve.”
“You don’t look like you’re solving it spread all over that chair.”
“You got a point there.” Durango got up and began strolling around the room.
He was a small man, Debbie noticed, but very athletic-looking. His shoulders were broad, his hips narrow, and he did indeed move like a cat. A Maltese cat. His complexion was swarthy, his eyes dark and flashing, alert and intelligent, his hair black and his features rugged.
Now he came to a stop before a cabinet and tried the door. It was locked. He extracted a bunch of skeleton keys from his pocket and tried them. After a moment one worked and the door swung open. Durango knelt and studied the reels of tape neatly filed inside the cabinet. He pulled one or two out and looked at the labels on them.
“Ask the group. The group knows!” The words cha-cha’d over the surface of his brain.
“What did you find?” Debbie asked.
“The tapes of Dr. Golden’s group sessions,” he told her.
“You mean she recorded them?”
“Evidently.”
“Is tonight’s session there?”
“Let’s see.” Durango knelt and pulled the last tape from the bank. He studied the date on the label. “Here it is,” he told Debbie.
“Why don’t you play it?”
“Let’s remember who the detective is around here,” Durango said acidly. “Anyway, I was about to do just that,” he added, grumbling. He found the tape recorder, fiddled with it, figured out the playback mechanism, strung the reel and turned it on. The babble of voices filled the room . . .
“All right, everybody’s here. Let’s begin.” (Debbie recognized Dr. Golden’s voice over-riding the others. It gave her a creepy feeling, hearing the voice of the dead woman.) The hubbub subsided. “Who would like to start?” Dr. Golden’s 'voice was loud and clear, the only one heard now.
“I would.” A female voice, young, sultry, deliberately intimate. “I have a dream, a gasser, one that should hit all you cats where you live.”
“Tell us about it, Lisa.” Dr. Golden’s voice again.
“Like that’s why I’m here, Doc. So anyway, snooze-time like four in the ayem and little Lisa’s in the hay all by her lonesome — which, as you know, is not per usual. There’s a goodly gurgle of scotch warming my tum-tum and the same old game is burning groinily, but, like I say, somewhere along the line the bed-partner I had had in mind copped out on me. So old Mother Sex is pastured out — only temporarily, to be sure—and it’s off to Dreamsville for yours truly.
“And who do you think I meet? You guessed it. None other than that old psycho-cat Doc Golden in person. Only the person’s a smidgeon altered like to pep up the dream. It’s Doc’s face all right, only she’s a he. Which, you must admit, from my man-hungry point of view is a decided improvement.
“So this he-Doc comes on looking like gangbusters. T-shirt, bathing trunks, and muscles busting out all over the place. And that isn’t all that’s busting out either, dig? The he-Doc’s all eager and bulgy over bosomy little me.
“But I don’t let any man hurry me. Well, at least not in my dreams. So I let him sweat a little while I bounce around in my shortie nightie—choreography by Minsky if you know what I mean.
“Oh, did I mention that this scene we’re making’s in my pad? Well, it is. It’s morning, dig? Sol, the voyeur’s, creamin’ rays through the window and all over the joint. And that sunlight’s splashing over little me like neon bouncing off the goodies in a high-class bakery window. And the he-Doc’s nose is pressed to the glass like he’s hooked on my French-style pastry but good.
“Just the look on his face is making me squirm for it, but the way this dream’s laid out, I have to play the tease. So I flash my gams at him and tug down my sweet little bodice and he’s all but bustin’ his britches. I mean, let’s face it, when it comes to legs and boobies, little Lisa leaves the crowd behind. Here, I’ll give all you hungry cats a look-see at what I mean. Go on. Take a gander at what a strictly female female’s made of!”
“Pull down your skirt, Lisa. And fix your sweater.” Interjection by Dr. Golden. Voice calm.
“No orgy tonight, hey Doc? Well, all right. Sorry men, show’s over. Back to Dreamsville.
“Okay, so I’ll cool the action. But I can’t cool the words. This was a steamy dream, dig? And it gets steamier.
“More fantastic, too. Like, where do you think the he-Doc’s come to fetch me to? A picnic. That’s right. Me, who can’t breathe without I smell Greenwich Village flushing its toilets, is going pastoral with this panting he-man.
“So when I get through the tease bit, I cram my yummies into a sunsuit that shows more than it hides and we’re off. A snazzy Jag with the top down—when I dream I dream big — and zip up the West Highway and into the hinterlands. Trees and flowers and all that jazz.
“We cut off the highway, and we’re driving along through all this Thoreau gook down a back road. Suddenly, the he-Doc says like why don’t I shift for him. One of these sports car shift-sticks from the floor, you know? He says like he’ll guide me in what to do and takes my hand.
“He guides my hand all right, but it isn’t to the shift-stick. He’s pushed down his trunks, dig? And he wraps my hand around the biggest— Well, it was a dream, remember. Every girl’s dream, by the size of it.
“Anyway, things have a way of jumping all out of proportion in dreams, and that’s what happens with this one. Soon as I touch it, it grows to almost twice the size. I have to use both hands to shift, dig? And it’s lucky the top’s down on the Jag, because it keeps getting bigger and bigger. Pretty soon we’re driving down the road with this thing waving in the breeze like the Leaning Tower of Pleasure.
“Don’t laugh. I know it seems funny now. It even seems funny to me. But it didn’t in the dream. In the dream it was like real serious. What I mean, it got to he frustrating. All my life I could never get enough of that item, and now that I did, it was just too much. Practically speaking, if you know what I mean. Like, what can a girl do with something that big?
“Finally the he-Doc pulls the Jag off the road and we get out. He picks a spot and it’s grassy, but not like grassy in real life. I mean, in real life when you find a grassy spot in the woods, it’s apt to be pretty messy. All weedy and overgrown and filled with burrs and bugs and all the other crap Ma Nature plants around. Anyway, that’s the way I remember it. But this was different. This was grass like feathers, short and even like it had been mowed, all manicured like you see sometimes in front of government buildings.