"Can I help you?" she said.
"Yes. My name's Remo Barry. I'm the magazine writer. I've come for my appointment with Mayor Hansen."
"Oh, yes, we've been expecting you," said the secretary who, Remo thought, should give lessons on aging. She was a stunning woman with white hair, fine features and an alive face that was young despite lines.
She pressed a button and a door opened. It was not the mayor who appeared, unless the mayor had suddenly become five-feet-eight and was built like the Venus deMilo with a face of fine-cut living marble. The young woman had blondish hair with streaks, deep-brown eyes and a smile that would collapse a monk.
She wore a black leather skirt and a form-fitting gray sweater without bra, beads dangling over breasts. And for the first time since he had taken sex instructions, those dragging daily muscle and mental controls that Chiun had foisted on him, Remo felt an urge rising within him.
He dropped the pad over his fly.
"You're Remo Barry," said the woman. "I'm Cynthia Hansen, the mayor's daughter and secretary. I'm glad you came."
"Yeah," said Remo, surprised to find himself thinking that he could take the woman now, in the ante room to the mayor's office, then flee and probably never get caught.
This was not a healthy tiling to think, although it was the most pleasant idea he had entertained in months. But it would be a very nice way to be very dead. He refocused his thoughts and breathed deeply of the oxygen in the air, resting his consciousness on the eternal forces of the universe. It didn't do much, however, for his erection and he entered her office with his pad still genitally oriented. Then he got mad at himself, forced blood control, and it was gone.
Good. He felt strong and in charge. He obviously had had a similar effect upon the woman, because it became evident through the gray sweater that she was aroused too.
He would play that. He would use her arousal against her, pushing the line of conversation into areas she did not want to go, but would have to go because he was in command.
The office was relatively bare but for a desk, three chairs, a couch and political photographs on the wall. The blind was drawn.
She sat down on the couch and crossed her legs.
"Well," she said, fondling her beads, "where shall we begin?"
So much for blood control and the salvation of America and its constitution.
"Here," cried Remo and he was on her, his hands into the sweater, his body between her legs, forcing his mouth on hers, abandoning everything he had been taught. Just taking. And before he knew it, he was in her, she had put him in. And then, bang, it was over for both of them. Seven-second sex. A textbook disaster.
He smelled her perfume and felt close to the smooth skin of her cheek. She had not even removed her clothes. Neither had Remo.
He kissed her cheek.
"Don't do that," she said. "It was good. But don't do that."
"Yeah," said Remo and removed himself and zipped up, as Cynthia Hansen smoothed out her skirt.
"Well, now," she said as if nothing had happened, "where shall we begin?"
"At the beginning," said Remo. "Tell me about Hudson."
He settled down in a chair and began to take notes. Cynthia Hansen began her peroration as though the last minute had not existed.
She told how corruption had been endemic to Hudson, how the city had begun to die in the 1930s under one boss and how he was replaced by another boss who was worse because he was inept. She told of two decades of corruption, shuffling of governments, but nothing changing.
Then, just eighteen months ago, the city government had been decimated by indictments and convictions. There was an election, probably the last time Hudson would have a chance to redeem itself.
Her father, Craig Hansen, had faced another organization hack and an out-and-out Mafia thug, but please don't quote her on that.
Well, her father had won, barely won and now with the new election for a four year term, the city might have turned the corner.
"You see, Mr. Barry, he may not have wrought miracles in eighteen months, but he has brought hope. He is a dreamer, Mr. Barry, in a city shorn of dreams. He is a doer in a city governed, til now by the fix. In short, Mr. Barry, Craig Hansen is the last hope of this city. I think that tells it about as it is."
"How does he feel about being mayor of the heroin capital of the country?"
"What do you mean?"
"You know, the rake-off from the big heroin imports. How does he stand on that?"
Cynthia Hansen laughed.
"Mr. Barry, you're a very attractive man. But please, that's just absurd. Yes, we, like other cities, have a heroin problem. But we're finding new and more relevant ways to deal with that problem. Storefront therapy centers. My father is finding more relevant ways to deal with minority communities. Granted, with the means at his disposal and the apparent reluctance of the government to produce massive aid, progress is limited, but we feel it is meaningful and relevant."
"What about your father's personal involvement with the heroin trade?"
Cynthia Hansen shook her head and looked quizzically at Remo. "I beg your pardon?"
"You know, the big heroin deal. Stuff may be worth a billion dollars for all we know. Your father's involvement in it?"
"Just who the hell are you?"
"You ought to know. You checked me out."
"What are you after?"
"Story on heroin."
"Your editor told me it was to be a story on Hudson.
"It is. Heroin capital of the United States."
"Well, I'm sorry. There's nothing I can tell you about heroin that you couldn't read in any newspaper. Now would you care to discuss some of our basic urban problems?"
"Yeah. How are you going to get the heroin out?"
"Good day, Mr. Barry," said Cynthia Hansen dropping her fist to the couch on which they had made love and pushing herself up from it.
As she stepped toward the door, quick strong paces, vibrant strutting hips, firm young breasts, a face so classic it looked as if it fell off a Roman wall, Remo reached out for a wrist and flipped her back on the couch. This time he was going to do it better.
This time he took off his clothes and hers. He arranged her carefully on the couch. He was tender and gentle and he remembered all Chiun's tricks. He did not neglect the backs of her knees or the insides of her ears or the hair at the base of the neck.
He brought her along with him, slowly but fully, and when she was at a peak, he brought her to a higher peak, and then another higher peak until she could control herself no longer and exploded in a violent paroxysm of passion, shuddering convulsively down the length of her body.
And Remo put his face close to her ear and whispered gently, "What about the heroin?"
"HEROIN," she groaned in exultant relief. Remo felt her body tremble again. He had misjudged the timing again. Still time to salvage something. Maybe tenderness. So he nibbled her right ear, and whispered into it, "You know, hon. Who's dealing?"
"I just wanted you for your body, handsome," said Cynthia Hansen with a triumphant chuckle. "Women's lib frees a lot of us."
"Cynthia, did you ever realize how stupid you look when you come?"
"No. I'm enjoying it too much to entertain those self-defeating thoughts."
Remo kissed her once more, this time for real, then left her and got dressed in the office as he watched her dress. She took forty seconds to put on her braless sweater, panties and black leather skirt Then she put on makeup for seven minutes.
"Why don't you come around tomorrow about the same time, Remo. I like your body."
"I don't do this all the time for nothing."
"There's money in the upper right hand drawer."
Remo laughed. "Somehow I get the feeling I might get pregnant from this."
He opened her office door and stepped out.