“I don’t think so, Mr. Victor. I think that what I am going to do is discharge you. Mr. Victor, you are fired.”
'°Mr. Putnam.” Rhino spoke up. “If you fire Steve, I quit.”
“So be it.” Putnam’s haughtiness reached its peak. “You two will be so good as to leave the Baroquian premises immediately. If you delay, I shall have you removed.”
“It won’t wash,” I told him. “Not only won’t we leave, but if you don’t tell me what the hell is going on, we’re going straight to the newspapers and tell them everything that’s happened so far, including how you shot Terry up with a loaded hypo so you could kidnap her and bring her here.”
Putnam looked at me for a long moment and then sighed. “I had forgotten just how obnoxiously persistent you can be, Mr. Victor.” His voice was no warmer, but there was a note of resignation in it. “Very well. It seems you have me over a barrel. I will tell you the truth and throw myself and my Baroquian associates on your mercy.”
“Get out the handkerchiefs,” I advised Rhino, trusting Putnam no more than ever.
“ ’Scuse me.” Terry interrupted us. “I have to go to the necessary. I’ll be back soon as I finish my business.” She left.
“Are you going to listen to me, Mr. Victor? Or are you going to make wisecracks?” Charles Putnam wanted to know after she had gone.
“I’m going to listen,” I replied. “Shoot.”
“Very well. Now, you may remember, Mr. Victor, that on the occasion of our first telephone conversation regarding the Whittier Stonewalls I described how our little group had enfranchised the team as a tribute to the most famous malefactor of modern American politics.”
“You didn’t describe Kim that way back then.”
“Exactly. I was, I suppose, sugar-coating the truth.”
“You don’t mean that you lied to me, Mr. Putnam?” I mocked him. “I can’t believe that.”
“Not exactly. I sugar-coated the truth,” he insisted. “It is true that the team was set up to honor this man. It is true that we paid for it. It is not true, however, that we did so voluntarily. The fact is, we were forced into doing it.”
“Forced how?”
“The gentleman in question had come into possession of certain files compiled by a long-time head of the FBI, since deceased. These files contained certain unsavory information relating to each member of our little group.”
“Surely not you too, Mr. Putnam.”
“We are all of us vulnerable, Mr. Victor. I can only tell you that my own not inconsiderable files would have been enough to have silenced the original compiler, had he but lived.”
“But not enough to keep the whiz of Whittier off your back? You didn’t have anything on him?”
“Considerable. Enough, believe me, to have deterred a more savory man. But what is there one can threaten to reveal about him that could compare with what is already known? Alas, Mr. Victor, his threat had more weight than any counterthreat might have had for the simple reason that we are all vulnerable, whereas disgrace has placed his reputation beyond threat.”
“So, he blackmailed you into setting up the team, and you went along with it. Go on.”
“Blackmail is an ugly word, Mr. Victor. He did, however, persuade us against our will.”
“Call it what you will, it pissed you off.”
“We are not the type of men who get angry, Mr. Victor. We are the type of men who get even.”
“And getting even has something to do with snatching Terry.”
“Her pregnancy did indeed provide us with an opportunity to avenge ourselves. But timing, as you know, is everything. We do not want her condition known until the last possible moment. We do not even want it known that she has disappeared. You have a ringer, and that is working out. All I ask, Mr. Victor, is that you let us decide when to reveal the truth.”
“And all this is to get even?”
“Yes.”
“Is he betting heavily on the Stonewalls? Is that it?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
I thought about that. I had a flash of insight. “The stock market!” I exclaimed. “It always shoots up or down depending on whether an original AFL or NFL team wins the Superbowl. That’s it, isn’t it? He’s shifted his stock market holdings because he thinks the Stonewalls will win with Terry at quarter-back. He’s in deep, and you’re letting him get in deeper. You’re trying to ruin him completely!”
““It’s no more than he deserves.” Putnam confirmed my deduction in a soft tone of voice. “And we’re not really doing anything so wrong. We’re only delaying the inevitable revelation. Terry Niemath wouldn’t be able to play in any case. After all, she is pregnant.”
“Y’all hold on there a minute!” “Terry had returned and stood now in the doorway to the rehearsal hall with her hands on her hips. “That there doctor made a real bad mistake with that test. I just got my monthlies!”
“What did you say?” I was startled.
“I thank Doc Fink was put up to lyin’ to me. I’ll ain’t pregnant no more. Ask me, I never was!”
I stared at Terry. She wasn’t pregnant. The Whittier Stonewalls quarterback wasn’t pregnant.
Terry Niemath could play in the Superbowl!
CHAPTER TWELVE
Superbowl Sunday! The television was on and I was already guzzling the first cold brew. In the bed beside me, Stephanie Greenwillow was warm and willing. Whittier ‘kicked off to the Philadelphia Eagles. Stephanie stroked my balls. All was right with my world. But not quite . . .
“I’m still mixed up.” Stephanie’s voice drowned out announcer Engberg. “Why would Doc Fink tell Terry she was pregnant when she wasn’t?”
“So she wouldn’t make any fuss when she woke up at the Baroquian Orchard and realized she was missing practice for the Superbowl.” Distracted, I didn’t see the Philly runback.
“And Doc was working for this Charles Putnam and his Baroquian friends?”
“Yeah.” Montgomery picked up three yards.
“So he lied to the coach.”
“Yeah.”
“And Coach Newtrokni didn’t know anything about all this?”
“That’s right.” Jaworski’s first pass went incomplete.
“I see.” Stephanie kissed me. Her lips were soft, damp, parted. Her mouth was warm, inviting. Her tongue was teasing, clever. It was a long kiss. I missed the next play entirely. When I opened my eyes, it was to find that Philly, short of the first down, was punting.
“So what it really adds up to—-” Stephanie resumed talking, “—is that Putnam and the others built Terry and the team up all the way to the Superbowl just so they could yank the rug out from under Terry to make the Stonewalls lose.” Indignant, she popped up to her knees at the foot of the bed with her hands on her hips. Her red hair, cropped when she had been standing in for Terry, was like a fiery halo surrounding the anger in her face. Her high, round breasts heaved emotionally under the black silk of the nightgown she was wearing, their creamy top halves rising out of and then sinking into the bodice. The flare of her generous hips from her narrow waist blocked the TV set. This time I missed the Stonewalls’ runback and their first play.
“That’s what it adds up to.” I sat up and reached out to put my hands on Terry’s hips to move her so that I could see the screen.
She misunderstood and slid over me. Sharp nipples bit through the silk and into my naked chest as she lay over me. The warmth of her thighs blanketed mine. I stroked her warm, plump, jutting bottom as we kissed again. It was another long kiss and throughout it her body moved slowly and invitingly over mine. My penis began to rise between her squirming thighs. My next look at the TV set over Stephanie’s round shoulder showed me that the Eagles had regained possession of the ball. I never did find out how.