Chapter 2

One gray fall afternoon several days before this telegram was sent, in an exclusive club high above the dismal windswept streets of lower Manhattan, two expensively dressed gentlemen had just finished discussing the effects of the latest peace initiative on the stock market and were turning their thoughts to lighter subjects. Their relationship was broker-client, but over the years they had become close friends despite the enormous differences in their characters and backgrounds.

Axel Borman, the broker, was a massive bear-like gray-haired man approaching fifty who gave an impression almost of a ponderousness which, as his opponents on the handball courts of the club found out to their regret, was totally misleading. He kept his muscular, heavy-framed body in excellent condition and could still move faster than many men half his age. As for the quality of his mind, it was generally referred to as being of the steel-trap variety. The son of a poor Wisconsin farmer, he had put himself through college, won a scholarship to the Harvard Business School and gone on to become the top executive and driving force in one of Wall Street's most prestigious brokerage firms.

His client, Breckenridge Richmond III, known to his close friends as "Jock," was cast from a completely different mold. Scion of an illustrious old American family and heir to a considerable fortune, which, incidentally, he had more than doubled by having the good sense to take Axel Borman's advice, he was a trim slender man, about five feet eight, blond, blue-eyed, with a lazy indolent manner of moving and speaking which gave to strangers the impression that he was just one more of the brainless rich who had inherited their wealth and couldn't get a job as a messenger boy if he had to do it on his own. Only his closest friends knew that he had graduated from Princeton at the top of his class and had been one of the most decorated fighter pilots of the Korean war. Blessed with perfect coordination, wiry strength and apparently limitless endurance, he was one of the few members of the club who could trounce Axel at handball. This was a fact which often entered obliquely into their less serious conversations.

"I was just wondering, Jock," Axel was saying as he studied the long fine ash on the tip of his cigar, "what kind of shape you're in these days; for example, do you think you can still run fast enough to snatch a lady's handbag on a crowded city street and get away with it?"

"You should know what kind of shape I'm in," Jock reminded his friend pleasantly. "What was the score the last time we played?" He knew better than to ask the reason for this odd question, which had come completely out of the blue. Axel enjoyed taking people by surprise. "Anyway," he added, "if it's this city you're talking about, that's not much of a test. Nobody would bother to chase me."

"I would," Borman replied firmly.

"Oh well, if it was only you..." Jock let his voice trail off, waiting for Axel to come to the point. The older man opened his dispatch case, pulled out a manila envelope and handed it across the table.

"What do these say to you?" he asked, a faint smile of anticipation creasing his square-jawed, usually expressionless face.

Jock opened the envelope and gave a low whistle of astonishment. Inside there were three glossy photographs, close- ups of a young girl sucking a very hefty cock indeed. In the first shot only the tip of the swollen head was inside her ovalled mouth, and her eyes were wide open, registering shock or fear. From the way the photograph was cut it looked like her disembodied head had been stuck on the end of the mighty shaft the way warring South American tribes used to plant the heads of their victims on the ends of their spears.

In the second photo the girl's expression had changed completely, and her eyes were crinkled with pleasure as half of the thick tubular rod had disappeared into her mouth. In the third there was no more cock to be seen, just the girl's nose buried in a thick growth of pubic hair and her chin nestled against two gigantic balls. Her expression was both dreamily blissful and wistful at the same time.

"She looks like she could use more of the same." Jock commented dryly. "And damned if I wouldn't like to give it to her."

"Recognize her?" Borman asked.

"No..." Jock hesitated, studying the delicate heart-shaped face in the first photo carefully. "Say, this isn't the girl in that cruddy fuck movie you showed us last week, is it?"

"Right." Borman nodded emphatically. "And the reason you didn't recognize her at first is because she's such a lousy actress. With a cock in her mouth, she's Sarah Bernhardt. Unfortunately, even in those dumb movies you have to walk into a room sometimes or say hello and this kid is so stiff she's painful to watch. She takes your mind off sex, for Chrissake. I'm getting awfully tired of lousy fuck movies made by amateur actors and actresses," he finished irascibly.

"Sure, who needs 'em," Jock agreed. "Anybody in our group can do what they do better." They both belonged to an informal group of wealthy married couples who entertained at each others' homes on convenient weekends... Not a swap club really. The only requirements were an uninhibited attitude toward sex and a healthy understanding between husband and wife that at these get- togethers each was free to do as he or she pleased. Jock had fucked Nina, Axel's attractive young wife, many times, and he had it from no less authority than his own wife, Stella, that Axel was still one of the best lays she'd ever had.

"So I'm going to make my own goddamn movie," Axel said, still pursuing his train of thought.

"What?" Jock looked at the older man in surprise.

"Don't get me wrong, Jock," Borman chuckled. "I know my limitations. I'm not going to hold the camera or try to direct the actors. All I'm going to do is create a dramatic situation. Bring some people together in a situation loaded with potential dynamite and let a professional cameraman photograph whatever they do."