Afterwards she washed the few dishes and turned up the hi-fi set before we went into the bedroom. Julie pulled off her shirt and blue jeans and, clad only in her bikini panties, flung herself onto the waterbed that took up most of the small room. There were a dozen throw pillows of all sizes, shapes and colors at the head of the bed. The bed itself was covered with a patchwork crazy quilt. Julie sat with her knees drawn up, her back against one of the larger pillows. She patted the bed beside her.
I had nothing much to take off, but I couldn’t let her see either Hugo or Pierre. Fortunately the light was dim and I turned partially away from her, so when I dropped what was left of my slacks, Hugo and Pierre were wrapped in them. When I turned back, Julie saw the effect she was having on me and smiled.
She rolled a double cigarette paper deftly with the fingers of her left hand, sprinkling the finely-ground marijuana into it in a thin line. Licking the paper with the tip of her tongue, she sealed it and twisted the ends.
“Nicaragua Red,” she said, grinning proudly at me. “It’s hard to get these days.” She picked up the sheet of paper in her lap and shook the spillings neatly into a small film cannister. She lit the joint, inhaling deeply, sucking air around the end of the butt to mix with the smoke of the weed.
She took another drag and then held out the joint to me. I took it from her and placed it between my lips, inhaling as deeply as she had.
I’ve had hashish in North Africa. I’ve snorted cocaine in Chile and Ecuador. I’ve chewed peyote buttons in Arizona and Mexico. And I’ve smoked more than one pipe of opium in Viet Nam, Thailand, Singapore and Hong Kong. As a secret agent, you do whatever you have to do to blend in with the group you’re with, and the people I’ve had to mix with aren’t the kind that would meet with the approval of Elks, Lions and Rotarian Clubs in the States.
Marijuana has different effects on different people. It made Julie feel like talking.
She waved the joint in the air and said, peering at the smoke as if she could discover a great, important meaning in the drifting, formless wisps, “You know something, whatever your name is?”
“Nick,” I told her. “Nick Carter.”
“That’s a nice name,” she observed. “I like it. You know something?”
“What?”
“I used to think I was a rebel. Boy, did I rebel! Against my father and mother. Against the snobbish finishing school they sent me to for a couple of years before I walked out. Against the whole damn society!”
“You burned your bra,” I said.
She laughed. “Hell, I don’t have a bra to burn. You think I need one?” She touched her small breasts.
I smiled, shaking my head slowly. “Never. Did you need to rebel?”
“I thought so. I marched in protest parades. I led demonstrations. They kicked me out of one college.”
“And?”
She turned on her side and looked at me sadly. “But I’m not a rebel. All I am is rebellious, Nick. And that’s a damn shame!”
I touched her face gently.
“Not really,” I said. “There are very few rebels in the world. But there are a lot of rebellious people. If you understand what you’ve just said to me, it’s a sign you’ve stopped being an adolescent and become an adult.”
Very carefully Julie considered what I’d said.
“Hey, man,” she exclaimed. “You’re right!”
“What were you really rebelling against?” I asked.
“Oh,” she said casually, “mostly it was against my father and his friends. You know, they’ve got loot. They’ve got so much loot they don’t even bother to count it. I used to think — all that money and it’s not helping anyone! That used to tee me off. But what was worse — they’ve got power. Power, man, like you wouldn’t believe! And they never used any of it to help anyone! Now, that really got me!”
“What kind of power?” I asked, the first stirrings of interest coming alive in me.
“Don’t you know who my old man is?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t even know your last name,” I pointed out.
Julie nodded soberly. “That’s right. You don’t. Alcott Chelmsford is my father.”
“I don’t know him,” I said, disappointed but not surprised. Well, hell, it would have been too much of a coincidence if her father had been one of the men whose names Calvin Woolfolk had given me.
“No reason you should,” she said. “He tries to keep out of the public eye. Did you ever hear of Frank Guilfoyle, or Alexander Bradford or Arthur Barnes?”
It was like hitting the jackpot in a slot machine in Las Vegas. Three out of the five names!
“I’ve heard of them. They’re biggies like Mather Woolfolk and Leverett Pepperidge, right?”
“Right,” she said. “The whole bunch of them! My father’s one of that crowd. Man, did they bug me!”
“You know them well?” I asked.
“From the time I was born. Alexander Bradford is my godfather. Would you believe it?” She laughed bitterly.
“Tell me about old Bradford,” I suggested, trying to be as casual as I could.
Julie turned away.
“Oh, hell,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about them! I’ve spent the last five years of my life running away from that bunch. You don’t want to hear about them.”
“I want to hear about Alexander Bradford,” I said, reaching out to stroke her neck. It was the first chance I’d had to get some inside dope on Sabrina’s employer.
Julie shook her head in refusal. “No way, man,” she said. “I don’t want to spoil the mood. I dig you too much!”
She clipped the remnant of the joint into a spring holder, inhaled deeply and handed it to me. “Let’s ball,” she suggested, as simply and as innocently as a child would say, “Let’s go play.”
I knew there was nothing I could do right then to make her talk, so I took the final drag on the joint, put it down and turned to her.
Julie made love as simply and uninhibitedly as she talked. My body was a plaything for her, to be explored and enjoyed as if I were a giant panda toy she’d taken to bed. At the same time, she gave herself to me completely, to do with as I wished. She derived as much pleasure from pleasing me as I did in making her discover the little, uncontrollable excitements the female body is capable of.
Her breasts were small. My hand covered each completely, and then my mouth, and I looked up to find an expression of ecstasy on her face so acute it almost seemed she was in pain. I kissed the taut, smooth skin of her stomach, and as I moved down, Julie squirmed around so that she could match each of my actions.
We became the yin and yang of that ancient Chinese symbol of completeness. Our bodies were intertwined in a tangle of soft and hard flesh, of smoothness and roughness, of skin so moist that we slid easily into one another.
There was no moment when it was suddenly over. We reached peaks and then quieted down slowly, until, finally, we felt no more urgency to explore each other. She snuggled into me.
“Hey, man,” she said tiredly, “that was good.”
I kissed the tip of her nose. She brushed away a lock of my hair that had fallen over my forehead.
“Who are you?” she asked. “How come you want to know so much about Alex Bradford?”
It really didn’t take me by surprise. Julie was too bright to be fooled for very long. I decided to take a chance because I could use whatever information she had.
So I told her. Not all of it. Specifically, not about AXE or my role as Killmaster in that supersecret organization. I did tell her about the Russian who’d almost died because of what he’d learned. I told her about the plot and about the organization that had been trying to kill me. Julie listened carefully and seriously. When I was through, she said, “That’s big trouble, man.”