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Chapter One

I heard the yell as I was doing the Australian crawl in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean off the Jersey shore. It didn't register at first, my head was in the water and I was churning right along, but when the shout came again, I stopped swimming to tread water and look around me.

At first I didn't see a thing, then a head popped to the surface and a fist came up out of the water to land hard against it. Three more heads came into view then, and all three were dark of skin and with black hair.

Mafia buttons!

The man they were beating on seemed young, he had blond hair, worn rather long, and a suntanned face. I yelled, one of the dark types turned my way.

"Stay out of this, lady," he bellowed.

Now I work for the New York Mafia Prosecution and Harassment Organization, commonly known as N.Y.M.P.H.O., in which I draw a sizeable paycheck as part of the Femmes Fatales division. My name is

Priscilla Delissio, though I go by the moniker of Cherry Delight. I have fought the Mob in Europe and Asia, and right here in good old Uncle Sam land, and this seemed very much like a call to duty.

I ignored his warning to swim toward the men struggling in the saltwater. My feet kicked, my arms went into their rhythmic stroking, and then one of the boys was right in front of me.

He grinned at me, his face dripping, his black hair plastered to his skull. I was easy prey, his black eyes told me. He lifted a fist and got ready to ram it against my face. I guess he figured that if he gave me a bloody nose, I'd take that nose out of what he figured was none of my business.

Before he could move his fist, I formed a fork with the first and second fingers of my left hand and drove my fingernails straight for his beady little eyes.

My fingers went deep. He screamed.

One of the Family was out of action for the moment, so I turned my attention to the nearest of the other two. His back was to me, and either he hadn't seen what was going on or else he thought his buddy was big and strong enough to handle alone girl.

I swam right up to this button, I clamped my bare legs about his middle and hoisted my bod out of the water. With the grip my thighs had on him, I had my hands free to use against this man who was turning his head, startled, to stare up into my face.

"Naughty, naughty," I told him.

My palms slapped hard against his eardrums. During World War II, commando troops had used this stratagem against sentries. It will knock a man out and, in some cases, kill.

I didn't hit him hard enough to kill. He was wriggling about, trying to get at me, and my grasp on his middle was none too secure. But I hit his ears hard enough to stun him, and when he went limp I hit him again, for good measure.

I kicked away from him, using his chest as a pushing-off board, while I went for the third man.

The blond was fighting himself, now. He was a husky guy; I could see the muscles ripple in his arms and shoulders as he moved. But he was tired from a long swim, and had been caught by surprise and beaten half-unconscious before I could intervene.

There was a welcome in his eyes, plus surprise, when he saw me. He had been too busy defending himself to pay any attention to what had been happening to one side of him. I suppose he figured a husky man had come to help him. Instead of the man, he was looking at redheaded Cherry herself.

The button who was trying to pound him senseless was also surprised, because I came up behind him and raked his face with my fingernails. I got a part of his eyeballs at the same time.

He let out a screech and started flopping around. I waited a few seconds, sizing him up. He had black hair all over his chest and back, he was tough, and he was heavily laden with rolling muscles.

The typical Mob muscleman, I told myself.

I put a hand on the blond guy's shoulder and raised up out of the water. I formed a cone with the fingers of my right hand and drove that cone into the throat of the guy with the tan bloody fingernail slashes on his face. My fingertips went deep, they broke cartilage.

This blow will sometimes choke a man to death because it fills the throat with blood. I don't know whether the Mob muscleman died, but he did sink out of sight.

I turned to the blond man. "Hi," I said cheerfully.

He gulped and stared and finally found his voice. "You're a girl," he said accusingly.

"You'd better believe it," I grinned.

"But—but you handled those three gorillas without any trouble at all!"

"Takes years of practice," I nodded.

"I'm used to violence, I'm a cop myself," he said, "but you're something else again."

"Are we going to stay around here forever, or are we going back to shore? Seems to me, you could stand a rest."

"It's because I'm a cop that they attacked me," he went on as if he hadn't heard my advice.

"Tell me all about it on a beach blanket."

He looked a little beat, and I was sort of tired myself after all that exercise, so I was glad when he nodded and turned away from me to swim toward the beach. That stretch of sand was crowded with young people, families and kids. I figured we'd be reasonably safe in that multitude.

We swam along side-by-side, not breaking any speed records, but putting distance between us and the three struggling mobsters. When I turned once and stared behind them, all I could see was one of them, the man whose eyes I had gouged. He was floundering around, I doubted that he could see too clearly, and he was yelling to his friends.

His friends were out of sight under the surface. I got the feeling that they were either dead or drowning.

We swam on.

Pretty soon firm sand was under our bare feet and we came up out of the water to walk toward my beach blanket. I was in a bikini that covered the main essentials, leaving plenty of my girl-girl body

exposed to the sunlight and male eyes.

My companion touched my body with his blue eyes and ran them appreciatively over my curves. I am not a big girl, but I stay in good condition, and I have the right sort of curves properly put together.

He shook his head. "I don't get it. You're a beauty, you're like a Miss America. But you were hell-on-wheels out there. Where'd you learn to fight like that?"

"In the back seats of automobiles, while out on dates," I grinned, then added, "Seriously, though, I'm a sort of cop myself. I work for N.Y.M.P.H.O."

"You don't!"

"Sure do. The name's Cherry Delight."

I flopped down on my beach blanket, stretching out my bare legs with their coat of suntan, and sank back onto my elbows. My belly was bared to his inspection and much of my breasts, too, I'm afraid, because my bikini bra was pretty skimpy for the mammary enticements I carry around. My breasts partly oozed over the boundaries of the bikini bra, showing pale white, blue-veined flesh that stood out sharply against the tanned skin all around them.

Without taking his eyes from them, my companion lay down on the blanket beside me, leaning his weight on an elbow, so he could go on examining that which he found most interesting.

"I'm Jim Naille," he told me, finally getting to my eyes. "Most folks call me Rusty."

There was a tint of red in his golden hair. I saw. "Glad to know you, Rusty. Now tell me why those Mafia buttons were pounding on you."

"They were trying to kill me."

"That much I could figure out by myself. What I want to know is why."

Some teenagers ran past, shouting and yelling. Rusty glanced at them, frowned, and shook his head. "We don't have much privacy here. What I have to say can't be yelled out loud."

I lay back and closed my eyes. "Fair enough. Just relax, then. You can tell me later."

"Now why should I do that?"

"Because I'm from N.Y.M.P.H.O., and I take a deep interest in the Family's activities."

"You really from N.Y.M.P.H.O.?"

I opened one eye to squint sideways at him. "You really a cop?"

He laughed. It was a good laugh, honest and likable.

"Okay, okay. You've made your point. Disclosures will come later."

We settled ourselves to sun-bake. I was here on the Jersey shore between assignments; I often come here to swim and get some sunshine on my skin. I rent a little cottage back a ways from the beach proper, and sometimes take in one of the honky-tonk places at night for a drink and listen to some rock music.

I turned over on my front and let the sun caress my back. I wasn't in the least bit worried about the buttons who had tried to beat up on Rusty Naille. I hadn't seen them come out of the water. I figured two of them were dead by this time and the third one was in no condition to start any more trouble.

"What do you say to some hot dogs and root beer?" Rusty said after a time. "My treat."

"Sounds like fun," I nodded.

We walked together toward the boardwalk and one of the eateries that lined it. We brushed past men and women, youngsters, and people in their twenties. It was a Saturday afternoon on a hot August day, and everybody and his cousin seemed to be here to take advantage of the water.

"What are you doing here?" Rusty asked after a time. "You're stationed in New York, aren't you?"

"Sure, and everybody in New York goes to the Hamptons. I used to go there; I still do on occasion. Right now, I have a thing for the Jersey shore."

"I'm glad of that. I might not be here if you hadn't picked today to go for a swim."

We ate our hot dogs and drank our root beer at one of the little tables beside the eaterie. It was pleasant with the hot sun on us, the crowds all around, the taste of the food and drink giving us a lift.

Rusty Naille was a big man, around twenty-eight or so, I figured. He had an open countenance and a jaw that was almost square. There was a hardness to his eyes when he looked out at the ocean that told me he was still reacting inside to what had happened in the water. I liked him.

I said: "We'll go to my cottage after we have another swim. We can talk in privacy there. I want to find out why three hit-men tried to drown you."

He shrugged. "They want me out of the way."

"You have a bad habit of saying the obvious, Rusty. I want details."

"You'll get them, but not here."

I had to make do, and the man was right, of course. You don't go around talking about the Mafia where certain ears may hear, without inviting disaster.

We took our swim, and we stayed in the water about two hours, cooling off. Rusty helped me gather up the blanket—he himself had no such refinements, he'd come in a bathing suit and terrycloth robe—and we made our way to his car. I had walked to the beach from my cottage, so I figured a ride home would be in order.

"Park the wheels a block from my place," I told him, giving him the directions. "I don't want to be connected with you just yet, in case this little affair of yours leads to bigger things."

"It's big, all right," he growled.

Rusty drove an old crate that he kept polished and shined to perfection. Its motor purred sweetly, and he drove his Pontiac convertible as though he were a part of it.

"Work on it myself, every chance I get," he boasted. "Have to hand-make some of the parts in a machine shop not far from where I live. It's almost an antique. Not quite, but almost."

"And it's known all over Beach Point, I'll bet."

He gave me a side-wise glance. "It is. I begin to see why you don't want me parked in front of your place."

"Not for the reason you suspect, Rusty. It isn't that I don't want to be associated with you, I don't want you connected with me."

He raised his reddish-gold eyebrows at that, so I told him: "If anything develops from our little talk, and I'm assigned to this case, I don't want to be known as your friend. It's to protect you, and to preserve my cover."

He parked three blocks from my cottage, and we walked the rest of the way. "Aren't you afraid the neighbors will see us together?" he asked.

"Don't be snide. I know what I'm doing."

When we were in the cool interior with the air conditioner going full-blast, I relaxed long enough to make us a couple of drinks. I handed him a gin and tonic, kept a Tom Collins for myself.

"The place isn't bugged, I made a search of it myself to make sure," I grinned, sitting beside him on the worn sofa. "So you can speak without being afraid anybody's going to overhear us."

He drew a deep breath and said, "I think Sabbatino Valerio is coming out of retirement—here in Beach Point."

I damn near dropped my drink. I sat up straight, my eyes got big, and my mouth fell open.

Sabbatino Valerio had been a boss of bosses in the Family, some nine or ten years back. He had a powerful underworld figure to rank with old Biagio Fedora himself. Fedora was the Big Boss now, had been ever since he and his musclemen had forced Sabbatino Valerio into retirement.

"Oh my God," I whispered. "Do you know what this means?"

"Sure. It's going to ruin Beach Point and the neighboring communities. Already there's a big gambling parlor that also caters to the flesh needs of the citizens within a hundred mile radius. A private club that the police won't touch."

I eyed him carefully. "Won't touch—or can't?"

"All I know is that when I make complaints about it to my chief, he waves a hand and tells me it's my overexcited imagination."

The Tom Collins was cool going down my throat. Over the rim of the glass, I went on watching Rusty's gloomy face.

"That was why those buttons were after you today," I told him. "You're the fly in their ointment, you're the honest cop who won't be bought, and they're afraid you may make trouble."

"Something like that, yes."

"They won't stop with one attempt, you know," I told him.

"What do you want me to do, quit the force?"

"I want you to come with me, we'll go visit a man named Avery King. He's Coordinator of N.Y.M.P.H.O. I have a sinking feeling that we have trouble on our collective hands."

Rusty finished the last of his gin and tonic. "No need for you to get involved. This is my problem."

"It's also mine. Avery King will take a dim view of Sabbatino Valerio setting up shop again. He'll tell me to come back here with you and stop him in his tracks."

He put his huge hands together and made a fist. "Look. I don't have much to go on. This is my own idea, my own judgment from what little bits of rumor and gossip I've been able to pick up. I have no proof to give anybody."

"Three Mafia buttons tried to kill you today. That's all the proof I need that something fishy is going on around here. Avery King will feel the same way. Don't you worry your head about that."

Rusty nodded. "I don't have to report for work until midnight; I'm on the night shift."

"We have plenty of time then. I'll call Avery at the office—"

"On Saturday?"

I grinned. "Avery King is a dedicated person. If he isn't available at Headquarters, he'll have left a number. Leave that angle to me."

"I'll have to go back to the house to change. Oh, and tell my sister Jill where I'm going."

I put through a call to the New York office. Avery King wasn't there, but the office gave me his home number and I got him on the line after about ten minutes.

My Coordinator listened quietly to what I had to say. He knows me well enough to understand that I don't go off half-cocked, and that if I smell Mafia trouble, chances are good that Mafia trouble is there.

"I'll meet you in the city," he told me. "It'll take you a little longer than it will me. Say—six o'clock."

I hung up and turned to see Rusty watching me with troubled eyes. The guy was a good honest cop. He didn't have any proof to offer, only his hunch, and it bothered him. His eyes told me that he didn't want to appear a fool when Avery King started questioning him.

"Relax," I said. "I'm going to slip into some threads, so help yourself to another gin and tonic while I'm at it."

I selected a sweater and skirt combination with a broad Gucci belt, and then picked up my Gucci shoulder bag. It held my Gold Cup Colt Automatic, which I am never without on a case or off. It has become a companion, that shoulder bag, and it always carries that handgun.

I told myself I might need it, in Rusty Naille's company.

He had to go home and change, I knew, so I explained that it might be safer if we drove out of Beach Point in my car, leaving his at his house.

"I'll follow you, Rusty. At this point on the case if there really is a case, that is it won't do for us to be seen together."

He nodded his appreciation of that, and while he went to get his car, I slid behind the wheel of my rented Grand Prix. It was a late model with all the trimmings, and I switched on the air conditioner right after I buckled my seat belt.

I followed the Pontiac through Beach Point, to a white stucco house on its outskirts. I watched Rusty pull in the drive, and pulled over to the curb a few houses away.

I got out and walked back up the sidewalk.

At the same time, I saw a black car nosing its way along the street. There were two men in the car, and one of them held a tommy-gun.

They were looking right at Rusty Naille.