"I know, baby," he said, gently stroking her face. "I know how it happened. It's OK, please, don't cry, it's OK." He was nearly crying himself, he was so happy to see her like this, spent and exhausted from wild, untamed sex. Now she was truly his, truly his wife; now their life together would be complete. He knew that she could never return to her old prudish ways now that she had experienced the ultimate in sexual fulfillment, knew that from now on the two of them were going to be real lovers, a very passionate pair indeed. "It's OK," he kept repeating as he gathered her in his arms. "It's really OK…"
"Come on," said Snyder, motioning to his two companions, "we got what we came for. This cop won't bother us again. In fact," he added as he looked at the happy couple on the bed, "he'll probably send us Christmas cards."
CHAPTER TEN
Judy Burton, said the card on the hospital room door. This must be it, thought Mike, knocking softly. A girl's voice, low and cool, came from the other side of the door: "Come in," it said.
Mike opened the door, saw Tim Huntley sitting on a chair next to the steel bed, talking to the astoundingly pretty girl who lay there, covered in white. So that's Judy Burton, Mike said to himself. No wonder the kid had been so anxious, so eager to protect her – the girl was a knockout. What kind of hard-luck story was it, Mike wondered, that had a girl like this as the main character, and in the role of a prostitute at that?
Tim got up from his seat when he saw Mike, rushed across the room to shake his hand. "Hi, Lieutenant," he said. "Glad to see you. Judy," he said, turning to the girl, "this is Lieutenant Mike Kramer, that good cop I was telling you about."
"Hello, Lieutenant," said Judy. Mike nodded to her.
"Well," said Tim, "any news?"
"Yeah, there's news," said Mike. "Good news for me, good news for both of you, good news for the citizens of Los Angeles."
"You got him," said Tim. "You got Jay Snyder."
"Right now he's in county jail, awaiting trial. With your testimony, and Judy's, and mine we should be able to get him, oh, I'd say about thirty years in Folsom."
"Great," said Tim. "Honey, did you hear that? We're free, they're going to lock Jay up, and we're free. We can get out of here and go see about that village in Italy."
"Hallelujah," said Judy, her face breaking to a broad smile. "I never thought I'd see the day."
"Me either," said Tim. "Lieutenant, I want to thank you for your help. It's the first time in my life that a cop ever did me a good turn, and it came at the best possible time."
"It's OK," said Mike, smiling. "I just hope it's not the last time. Besides, you two helped me as much as I helped you. It's not hard when you have a common goal."
"Right," said Tim. "Oh, say, that girl you told me about, the one who worked for Jay – what was her name?"
"Cindy," said Mike.
"Yeah, Cindy. What happened to her?"
"She's OK," said Mike. "In fact, that's my next job…"
"I don't blame you," Tom interrupted.
Mike grinned sheepishly. "No, not that kind of job," he said. "Now that I've got Jay Snyder into jail, I've got to get her brother out. It's a deal we made."
"Sure," said Tim. "I gotcha." He winked at Judy.
"Well," said Mike, suddenly embarrassed, "my working day is over, so I'm going to be on my way."
"OK," said Tim. "Listen, Lieutenant, thanks again for all you did for us."
"Yes," said Judy. "Thanks ever so much. I don't know what we would have done without you."
"Well, I don't know about that," said Mike, turning toward the door. "But I know you can do without me from here on in. Be happy, you two," he said as he opened the door. "You deserve it."
That's that, thought Mike as he merged his car with the traffic on the Santa Monica Freeway. Those two kids are going to do all right. He looked around, groaned as he saw a rush hour traffic jam forming in front of him. He was in a special hurry to get home that evening: Lisa was fixing his favorite meal, complete with champagne, to celebrate his promotion to Captain. The dinner didn't mean too much to him, and neither did the promotion – it was the after-dinner celebration that Mike was looking forward to so eagerly.
Since that horrible day when Snyder and his men had appeared, Lisa had truly become a new woman. For the past week they had been going to bed, the same bed, at seven o'clock or even earlier; and this at Lisa's insistence, not his. Jay Snyder may well have been an evil man, a wolf at society's door, but his evil had accomplished at least one thing in Mike Kramer's personal life: it had transformed Lisa completely.
Now, thanks to Snyder's brutality, she knew exactly what to do with that beautiful body of hers, and she was doing it at every opportunity, all night long and into the morning. Mike was tired as hell, but he didn't care, just so long as she kept on making love to him with such incredible vigor.
Her prudishness had been just as much his fault as hers, he realized that now. If he had just talked with her, treated her as gently as she had wanted to be treated, approached her with delicacy instead of like a bull in the meadow, perhaps all these years of abstinence could have been avoided. Now that he needed to be gentle now – Mike found himself smiling as he thought of it – she was just as eager as he, maybe even more so, and now they used gentleness as an interesting side-show, an intermission between full-out bouts of plain old fucking.
Maybe, though, maybe he would be gentle with her tonight…