SAMPLE THE STORY BY READING CHAPTER ONE

He was a big man, I saw as I came into the office where Avery King sat behind a big modernistic desk and watched me watching the stranger. His hair was golden and cut short, almost in a crew. His body was strong, very muscular, and he was tall.

He unfolded himself from the easy chair even as his blue eyes ran up and down my body. They showed appreciation for my legs, my hips enmeshed in a plaid skirt, and for my breasts under the beige sweater.

Avery King said, “Pete Henry, Cherry.”

I smiled and held out a hand to be shaken. His blue eyes glowed down at me. Then I glanced at my Coordinator for the New York Mafia Prosecution and Harassment Organization, arching my eyebrows.

“Pete’s up from Florida for help,” Avery King said softly. “He’s found some Spanish treasure, and he thinks the Family wants to take it away from him.”

I looked at Pete Henry with more interest. “Must be a lot of treasure if the Mafia’s interested. They don’t go in for two-bit stuff.”

“It’s a lot.”

“How much a lot?”

“Ten million. Maybe fifty million. I don’t know. I can’t tell. We’ve barely begun our diving.”

“You and who else?”

“My wife Jill and my partner Rod McCarty.”

Avery King cleared his throat. He lifted a file before him and shook it at me. “He’s telling the truth, Cherry. I have a report from a museum curator who saw some of the objects he brought up. They’re real and they’re historically priceless.”

He smiled faintly. “Not only that, but there’s a metallurgist’s report, as well. They’re real gold and real silver. Big bars of them. Ingots, really. Pure gold, pure silver.”

“Hey, wow!”

Pete Henry smiled at me. “Here, take a look at this.”

His hand dipped into his pocket, brought out a big thing that looked like a diamond. It was the size of a walnut.

My eyelids blinked at it.

Pete said, “It’s a diamond; it isn’t paste.”

My hand grabbed for it. I knew diamonds—any smart girl does—and so I studied it carefully. It was of that clear color they call blue. It gave off colors when I held it to the sunlight.

After a time, I found my voice. “You got this from a sunken ship?”

“That, and a lot of others. I brought that one to show Mr. King. The others are in a safe deposit box in Miami Beach.”

I stared at him. “You must be about as rich as God. No wonder the Mafia is so interested.”

“Well, that’s why I’m here. They made a couple of attacks on me and my partner, also my wife. I fought them off, but I know damn well I can’t keep on doing it. I need help. I’ve heard of your organization, so I figured I’d better come north and see you people.”

My Coordinator said, “Feel like a trip to Florida, Cherry?”

“Do I ever!”

Pete Henry looked startled. “Hey, now. You’re not sending her down there. A girl?”

“What are you, some kind of male chauvinist pig?”

He seemed to flush a little under his tan. “Hey, now, of course not.”

I couldn’t get angry at him; he seemed to be in so much inner distress. I passed it off with a laugh, saying, “You remind me about that story where the man comes to the Texas Rangers about a riot, and when the boss-man assigned one Ranger to go back with him, the man protested about getting only one Ranger. ‘You only have one riot, don’t you?’ the boss-man asked him. Well, you only have one part of the Family, right?”

The blue eyes looked at me steadily. Then he swung around on Avery King. “Are you really serious about this, or are you putting me on?”

Avery King smiled. “Let me tell you something about this girl, Cherry Delight. There was the time she went to Red China to get some Mafia hit men. She had quite an adventure in Italy with a man named Silverfinger. I’d say she’s killed about two hundred Mafia buttons, give or take a couple.”

He went on to talk about my cases over the past couple of years. Pete Henry sat there bug-eyed, hardly breathing. Every once in a while he would turn to stare at me, awe in his blue eyes.

When my boss-man was done, he croaked, “She’s really that good, is she?”

I swooned when Avery King said, “She is. She’s even better than I’ve made her out to be.”

This was high praise indeed, coming from the Coordinator. I wondered if I ought to hit him for a raise, but I was already making damned good money, so I figured he wouldn’t take kindly to the idea.

“Cherry has a further advantage, as you’ve already noticed,” King chuckled.

“Oh? What’s that?”

“Like yourself, nobody ever thinks she’s as deadly as she is. You didn’t. All you see is a sexpot, right?”

Pete grinned. “Well, I did notice a few things.”

I smiled at him sweetly. I crossed my legs high up to let him see the shape of my thighs.

“The Mafia boys see her the same way you do—until she goes into action.”

Pete nodded as though he’d just made up his mind. “All right. If she’s as good as you say she is, I’m satisfied. How soon can she join me?”

“When are you leaving?” I asked.

He glanced at his wristwatch. “I was hoping to make the plane from LaGuardia first thing in the morning, the ten o’clock flight.”

“I can be ready in an hour,” I told him.

“An hour?”

“Why wait? We can make a flight from Kennedy in the late afternoon, be down at Miami by dark, get a good night’s sleep, and be ready for action first thing tomorrow morning.” I sighed. “I won’t mind swimming off that Florida coast, I’ll tell you that. Be a bit of a vacation for me, before I go into action.”

Pete nodded his head. “The next flight from Kennedy then. I’ll pick up my things and meet you at the airport.”

“Correction. You’ll pick up your things, meet me at my place.” I reached for a piece of paper on the boss’s desk and wrote out my address. I glanced at him. “You eaten lunch yet? If you haven’t, I make a wicked club sandwich.”

“All this and Heaven too,” Pete laughed.

We went out of the office side by side, like old pals, parting on the sidewalk where we each grabbed taxis.

I keep a bag packed, usually, in between assignments. Since summer was almost on us, it was filled with beach robes, bikinis and the like. Just the thing for Florida. Of course, if I’d had to go to the North Pole, say, I’d have had to repack the Tourister. As it was, I just added a few things, then filled another bag with an evening gown or two, plus a few street dresses. I figured that if I were going to hang around a boat, I wouldn’t need good things, but if I got invited to a party or two, I wanted to be ready.

I had just taken off my clothes when the doorbell rang. I stared down at my naked body. I really shouldn’t answer the ring like this, I told myself, so I reached for a pair of black nylon and lace panties with a cut-open crotch that hugged my hips like loving hands as I slithered into them.

Pausing to stare at my mirrored reflection, I decided that this might be a little much. So as the door chimes caroled a second time, I snatched up a transparent robe (fashioned from sheer gauze) and trotted toward the door.

Pete Henry gulped three times as his blue eyes took me in. I was a melody in black, white and red.

“Hey, you’re early,” I laughed, stepping back.

He teetered there, muttering, “I could come back.”

“Nonsense, nonsense! You’ll see me in a bikini in Florida, so why not the preview?”

Of course, no bikini was as revealing as this, but I felt that was beside the point. I grabbed his wrist and yanked him forward.

He was blushing. Imagine that!

I turned and walked away, gesturing at my portable bar. “Make yourself a drink, I have the equipment for almost any kind you can think of. I won’t be a sec.”

He was still staring at me as I closed my bedroom door. The poor guy looked as if he hadn’t seen as much of a woman since he’d been born. I wondered about his married life. He had said he was married, hadn’t he? Yes, he had. What kind of a wife did he have, anyhow? Or maybe he just liked variety.

It didn’t take long to slide out of the sheer robe and slip an A-line dress over my girl-girl curves.

Pete had a double old fashioned in his hand as I emerged. He also had a relieved look on his face. I came up to him, eyebrows raised.

“You sure you’re going to be able to drive after that?”

He peered down into his glass. “Don’t see why not.” He gave me an engaging grin. “I needed it.”

I moved to the bar, made a martini over rocks for myself. I murmured, “You did say you’re married, right? Thought so.”

He felt impelled to defend his marriage. “Jill and I—well, we don’t hit it off too well. Nobody’s fault, you understand. Just a little tired of each other.”

I wondered what his wife was like. She sounded as though she was a cold dish. I studied this big man and began to wonder. Maybe he was sexually deficient. Some men are. He didn’t look it, though.

Still! This had nothing to do with the case.

“Tell me what happened between you and the Mafia,” I urged. “I’m going in to make us some club sandwiches in a few minutes, but before I do, I’d like to know the lay of the land.”

“What’s to tell? A few days, maybe a week after we made our find, some men came out of the shadows at Rod and me. We fought them off. Rod’s a big guy and just as muscular as I am, but that wasn’t the end of it. Next day we got a letter in the mail, telling us to pull up anchor and leave the plate fleet. Or what happened the night before would happen again. Only next time the hoods would have brass knuckles and there would be twice as many of them.

“I went to the cops, got protection for a few days. But the police couldn’t stay with us forever. They left and when they did—it was as if the Mafia boys were keeping their eyes on us, as I guess they were—somebody took a pot shot at Jill. Almost got her.”

I was sitting on the divan with my nyloned legs crossed. I nodded. “Scare tactics. The Family uses them at first, figuring there’s no sense in killing if they can get what they want a better way.”

He sipped his drink, trying not to look at my legs. “I guess so. Anyhow, we began to see a boat, a sleek cabin cruiser, near where we were diving. It didn’t attack us, nothing like that, but we could see the glint of sunlight on binoculars as they kept watching us all the time.”

Pete smiled wryly. “I guess they saw us bring up some gold ingots at some time or other, they were too far away for us to claim interference, you understand, but they were near enough for those high-powered field glasses to study our every move.”

He finished his drink, turned the glass around in his long fingers as if he were debating about having another, then put it down on the bar.

“As I say, they must have seen those gold ingots, because the next night they came aboard our boat as we docked late at night. They were waiting for us; they knew that we were at sea beyond our normal period.”

He paused and rubbed his jaw.

“That was a real battle, that one. Jill even got in on it, with a crowbar. We beat them off, but Rod and I were pretty well battered. We decided to rest up for a couple of days, and that was when I had the idea of coming north to see your boss.”

I smiled at him as I set down my own drink and rose to my feet. “Better get some food into you,” I announced. “Come in the kitchen and watch me work.”

I fried bacon and sliced tomatoes and some cold chicken I had in the fridge while I put him to making toast. There’s nothing like a homey atmosphere to make a male think he’s really getting to know you. I wanted Pete to feel that because I wanted to get to know him better, too.

He enjoyed my company, like doing the little chores I tossed at him. I could see it in his eyes. He was almost like a big, friendly puppy dog.

While we were eating, he said, shaking his head, “I still can’t get over the fact that you’re a girl and a N.Y.M.P.H.O. agent. It just doesn’t seem right.”

“You’ll learn, in time. Oh, by the way. While I’m in Florida, I won’t be staying with you. I’m going to a motel, and the reason for that is this.”

“Operating on my own as I do, I don’t want to be in anybody’s way. I especially don’t want anybody to be in my way. I need freedom to move around, to do what has to be done, if I decide on it.”

I stared hard at him. “How’d the Mafia learn about your treasure, anyhow?”

He looked surprised. “I don’t know. What difference does it make?”

“Maybe no difference. What I’m getting at is, how well do you trust this Rod McCarty?”

Pete stared at me, then threw back his head and laughed. When he quieted down, he said, “I trust Rod with my wife. You’re hinting that he may have blabbed to the Mafia. No way.”

“Maybe you’re right. If he were with the Family, they’d have wiped you out ages ago. And Jill?”

Pete smiled trustingly. “She’s my wife.”

“Okay, okay. I had to ask.”

We ate some more, then he said, “Sometimes we stay out at sea for a couple of days and nights. Easier to be on the job next morning. I figured you’d be with us then.”

“And I will. It’s only on land that I need that freedom to come and go. Fair enough?”

He nodded. “I know a damn nice motel about a mile from our place.” Pete frowned. “It’s expensive.”

“Never mind the expense. I bill everything to N.Y.M.P.H.O. when my job is done. A mile away? That ought to be just about right.”

We finished our meal and the coffee I’d perked, then Pete helped me pile the dishes in the sink. They’d be taken care of by the lady who comes in to clean up my place every so often. Frankly, I’m not much on housework.

He carried my bags downstairs and put them in the trunk of his rented car, alongside his own. Then we drove off to Kennedy airport through the late afternoon traffic with hardly a word between us.

N.Y.M.P.H.O. had arranged to have our tickets waiting for us. We walked straight through to the boarding gate and through a covered passageway into the plane itself. We found our seats without trouble.

The flight was smooth, easy. No problem.

When we put down wheels over Miami’s airport in the early dusk of evening, I stared from the window to see the lights go on like strings of lamps laid out in surrealistic patterns. Everyone about us was sitting clamped in seat-belts Even the stewardesses were seated.

The plane started its dip earthward. The motors hummed, the jet slipped lower, lower, as though dropping foot by foot. By peering sideways from the window, I saw the flares along either side of the runway. The plane dropped some more.

Tires caught with a screech of rubber. The motors roared now and the brakes took hold. We slowed our headlong run, and I heard a sigh or two of relief from two women directly behind us.

The rest of our trip was routine. We disembarked and moved with our fellow passengers to the terminal. Then we scattered in all directions. Pete Henry had left his car in a parking lot, we headed for it.

As we did, I saw out of the corners of my eyes that two men who had been lounging under the terminal overhang turned their heads and stared at us. They were dark men in fancy sports shirts and slacks. They looked like tourists.

They were Mafia.

At least, this is what my female intuition told me, and that intuition had been honed by years of recognizing members of the Family. I didn’t break stride, I didn’t betray by so much as the flicker of an eyelash that I was at all perturbed.

But my spine tingled, and I swung the Gucci bag around so that it was ready to my hand. This Gucci bag accompanies me on all my missions. It is specially made for me, it has an inner holster into which is fitted my Gold Cup Colt automatic. It also contains a lot of other things a girl like me might need.

I brought out my compact when we came to the car. Pete lifted the trunk and stowed away our luggage. My fingers opened the compact.

For once I wasn’t interested in my face but in those two characters in the sports shirts. I saw them walking in our general direction.

They weren’t following us, though, they angled their steps toward a maroon Cadillac in which I saw two other men sitting. They looked up as their lookouts neared them, and turned their heads to stare at us.

I knew Goddamn well they were Mafia, now.

They were taking too much interest in us, for one thing. It was not as if the two lookouts had told them, “Hey, there goes a gorgeous broad with great legs and terrific boobs.” Oh, no. Theirs was a calculated look, a sort of sizing up. I could feel their eyes boring into us from fifty yards away.

I slid into the seat beside the driver.

As Pete slid the key into the ignition slot, I said, “Don’t look up. Don’t pay me any attention. But we’ve drawn the attention of four buttons.”

He was very calm about it. “What do I do?”

“Act natural. Start the car and move away. Just drive. Leave everything else to me.”

I slid my hand in the Gucci bag and drew out the Colt. Pete gave it a fast look, then put his mind on the car. I let the gun lie in my lap with my fingers curled about it.

I didn’t know how or when the buttons were going to hit us, but my brain told me they were going to do just that. I felt reasonably confident they hadn’t tabbed me as a N.Y.M.P.H.O. agent, they probably thought I was some doll Pete Henry had found up north.

Pete drove slowly toward the exit gate, ready to pay his parking fee. The maroon Caddy came after us, just as slowly.

I had the compact mirror out and was following their movements in its mirror. No turning down the rear-view mirror, no craning around to stare back at them for me. I wanted them to believe we had no idea who they were or what they were after.

My common sense told me they were out to hit Pete—and me too, to eliminate a witness—so as to scare Jill and Rod McCarty into giving up their treasure. It was simple enough, they’d failed in their scare tactics, now they were going to get ugly.

Pete nosed his Buick into the heavy traffic that infests the Miami area. I always thought New York had a lot of cars but as I looked around me I marveled at how many were down here.

Pete said, “They’re following us. I can see them in the rear view mirror.”

“Don’t lose them,” I cautioned.

“Don’t lose them?”

“Of course not. I have to kill them.”

He stared straight ahead. A light mist was falling, he switched on the windshield wipers. As they brushed back and forth, flinging tiny drops of water, he cleared his throat.

“I did hear you right?”

“You did. Don’t you understand? I can’t have those men running back to their capo di tutti capi and telling him that a red-headed dish landed with Pete Henry at Miami International Airport and drove off with him.”

“They’re going to learn you’re with us, sooner or later. What difference does it make?”

“They’ll learn that, sure. But they won’t know that you brought me here from New York. It makes a big difference, not only to you and your plans, but to me as well. I can pose, as things are, as Rod McCarty’s girl friend. They won’t know any different.”

Pete nodded. “Makes sense.” He gave me a wry look. “You think things out, don’t you?”

“If I want to stay alive, I do. And I like life very much. How far are we going?”

“Some miles south of Miami, near a place called Seaport City. We take the Dixie Highway for most of the way.”

“Any little side roads you can turn off on?”

“Well, sure. There’s one that goes into the back country, not far from Perrine. Know it well.”

“Take it.”

We went south along the expressway until we came to the Dixie Highway, then swung onto that. Perrine isn’t too far south of Miami, and we reached it almost before I was ready. The rain had increased to a steady downpour by this time; I made a face at the idea of getting out into all that water.

But I was going to have to do it.

“Here it is,” Pete said after a time. He swung to the right onto a narrow road.

I gave him his directions. “Let me out about a mile inland. You go on without me, for about half a mile. Then get the hell out of this car and hoof it into the brush. Just in case I don’t do my job right, that’s all.”

His face was grave. “What are you going to do?”

“I told you. Kill men.”

He braked the car. I got out. In about five seconds, I was drenched to the skin. The fact didn’t make me happy. On the contrary. And it was all the fault of these four sons of bitches who were following us with the idea of putting hot lead into our bodies.

I saw the headlights of the Cadillac as they came along the road. Me, I was on the left side of that road, for a very good reason. Whenever I have to kill men riding in a car, I always try to kill the driver first.

The Caddy came on.

I lifted the Gold Cup.

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