SAMPLE THE STORY BY READING CHAPTER ONE

I was wearing a Coty Originals Body Paint job.

No more, just smears of paint across my female flesh, fashioned to represent a dress. It was a short dress, with a painted micro-skirt across my upper thighs, the bodice brushed on over my breasts and torso. I was fully costumed for my part in an underground movie being made in a big, empty barn in a remote comer of Suffolk County on Long Island.

There were other girls with body paints splashed artfully across their naked flesh. A redhead playing the part of a writer was the living canvas for an old-fashioned inkwell with a long, Colonial quill protruding from it across her left breast and shoulder. A brunette who portrayed a fashion designer was tinted as a bolt of psychedelic material and a pair of scissors. A housewife was painted with pots and pans and diapers all over her lushly curved bare body. Two men were part of the cast; one wore brush-on overalls and flannel shirt, the other was covered by painted nickels, dimes, quarters and half dollars. He was the money-man in the movie.

The name of the movie was Turn-on For a Raindrop-out.

A silly put-on, an allegorical representation of phases right out of our mod-mod society. This sort of thing is avant-garde It is what turns on the world, it is what brings the money in at the art theaters that show this stuff. Actually, this underground movie had a bit of a plot to it.

I was not interested in the plot, good or bad.

My attention was focused on a lean man in a baggy tweed suit who was the producer and director of Turn-on for a Raindrop-out. His name was Henry Creegan. He was a real brain, as evidenced by his high, bulging forehead. His job in real life was as a chemist in the Loki Laboratories; this movie-making of his was only a sideline.

But it was only as part of his underground-film life that I could make contact with him. Henry Creegan was suspected of being a turn-coat. He had discovered a new chemical formula, and he was going to turn it over to the Other Side.

It was my job to prevent him from doing any such thing. I am Eve Drum, special girl agent for L.U.S.T., the League of Underground Spies and Terrorists which is a by-blow of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. We L.U.S.T. boys and girls do what those more austere agencies of the national government cannot.

We meet fire with fire, theft with theft, death with death.

So I cavorted about inside the big barn, playing my part as farmer’s daughter with the man with the nickels, dimes, quarters and half-dollars painted on him. The fact that our garments were only paint added to the seductive attraction of the movie, I am sure.

We did a bugaloo framed against a false-fronted stage drop covered with luminous paint. When the lights went out, the movie viewer would see us as black silhouettes, stark naked against a glowing ferris wheel that slowly revolved, painting our shadowed bodies with flecks of light.

The racing colors were symbolic of the fact that my money-man and I were tuning in on one another. Black ultra-violet light and flashing psychedelic lights gave the whole thing a sense of unreality, showing we were lost in a dream world of our own. Slowly, to indicate the fact that we were coming out of our love-daze for each other, the lights came on again.

Money-man walked me across the changing backdrop, an arm about my middle. He was whispering choice tidbits into my ears, on which earrings had been painted. The mike was following us to catch his words, the camera kept filming us.

“Come join the revolution with me, little rebel.”

“My father needs me here, to milk cows.”

“You shall milk a greater thing than a cow, with me. I am the outer world, the great put-on which mankind calls society.”

Living theater on film. Magic, man!

The only trouble with this sort of thing is that you need an interpreter with you when you see it. Unless you can interpret for yourself. And when you can do that, you dig the radical image, you swing the shock stage of the theater of today.

My seducer was stroking my breasts, right before the camera. He had to be careful not to get paint on his fingers, but he did all right with his feathery touch. My nipples were standing up out of my painted-on bodice.

“Oh sir—you make me feel so strange!” I gasped.

“I’m making you feel the love of man for man, the love power of mankind. It permeates our world, it has the force of earthquakes, of tidal waves, to reshape our Earth. Yield to its power, pretty one.”

What a line! And my money-man meant what he said, too. You could see it down there where he was all man, as the camera dollied in. The wag with the paint brush had covered his manhood with a painted-on dollar bill. Well, let me tell you! Talk about the inflated dollar! This guy was in the middle of a real inflation spiral.

He grinned under his coloring when he saw my eyes drop.

“Let me slip a dollar in your purse, honey,” he wheedled.

“Cut!” yelled Henry Creegan.

The man I was to keep an eye on came loping over. His uncut tawny hair bounced to his strides, and there was a faint flush on his cheeks. I felt a little sorry for Henry Creegan, even if he was double-dealing with the Opposition. He looked so gaunt, so much like a cadaver with skin on, that I just couldn’t help it.

“That isn’t in the script, Windom,” he protested crossly, fluttering a dog-eared manuscript “I can’t find it anywhere. You can’t go around ad libbing like this.”

“It should be,” the money-man chuckled. “I like that line. It has zip.”

“It isn’t bad,” I chimed in.

Creegan looked from me to the money-man and back again. He ran his long, artistic fingers through his mop of dirty yellow hair. He opened his mouth to say something, and closed it. I saw a glint of laughter in his eyes suddenly.

“Oh, hell—all right. Go ahead. Sometimes these ad libs are more honest than the script.” He waved a bony, tweed-coated arm. “Go ahead, Eddie. Roll ‘em.”

The camera ground away.

My seducer raised his eyebrows. “How’s about it, sweets? A dollar for your purse? Just let me slip it in slowly, so nobody but you will notice.”

I decided to take it from there. “You sure it isn’t counterfeit?” I wondered, putting my hand to his dollar. I stretched it a little. “Looks like rubber to me.”

Money-man doubled up, laughing. Even Creegan chuckled.

The cast was standing around, grinning. I guess they wanted some more free entertainment. I waited for Henry Creegan to interfere, but he was apparently thinking of something else, because he kept looking at his wristwatch.

“It’s rubbery, maybe,” said money-man, staring at my hand and what it was doing, “but it’s also legal tender. Tell you what. Why don’t you take the inflation out of it? You can do that by putting it in your purse.”

“And have it shrink in value?” I demanded as if horrified.

Creegan shouted, “Okay, okay. Enough’s enough. Get back to the script, you two. We don’t have all day.”

Money-man sighed and put his arm about my middle as he began to lead me toward another prop layout, a field of glowing green grass. He helped me sit down, then he got down beside me.

The camera panned away from us toward an older woman in a painted house-dress She was my movie mother, and the tears were coming down from her eyes, thanks to some deep breaths she had been taking near a cut-up onion in the hand of a prop man. The camera showed those tears falling, then dollied in on a sheet of glass where water was blurring the pane.

Overhead, a sprinkler system went to work. Water began falling on me and my money-man like a gentle rain. There must have been a detergent or some other chemical in the water, because my painted-on dress began to run. It formed big colored drops and slid down my otherwise naked body. The camera was grinding away, getting it all in.

At the same time, money-man was being shorn of his nickels, dimes, quarters and half-dollars. Even his dollar was losing color. In a few moments, he was as naked as I was.

My face assumed a horrified expression. I covered my 38-inch bust with my forearms and slithered around on the imitation grass so my thighs could cross and hide my mons veneris. The water falling on us represented my mother’s tears. They were showing me for what I was, and what money-man was.

I was naked greed. My money-man was naked lust.

I had lost my innocence, as represented by my painted dress. The money-man had lost the power of his millions, as represented by his painted coins and dollar bill. Allegory with a message. I wondered if those who came to view Turn On for a Raindrop-out would get turned on by what they were seeing and hearing. Or would they be too interested in seeing my wet breasts bouncing around as I moved, or too intrigued by seeing money-man lose his painted-on dollar bill, to care about messages and shock values.

This was no concern of mine.

Worrying about this was up to the director.

And Henry Creegan shouted, “Cut! Cut!”

The cameras went silent. Creegan got up and stretched. He yawned and said, “All for today, everybody. We’ve got a lot in the cans. We’ll get more tomorrow.”

All of which was my cue to get up off the wet grass and scamper for the paneled-off cubicles that were laughingly known as our dressing rooms. Henry Creegan was already dressed. In a few minutes, he’d be on his way. I had to be where he went, to keep an eye on him.

My naked money-man was at my heels. “Hey, honey. How about it? This is tough work on a guy, you know that? I’m kind of up tight about you, baby.”

“Save it for the picture, Clyde,” I yelled back.

I ran on naked feet across the prop backdrops until I was at the green cotton curtain that hid my street clothes. I ducked under it and reached for a washcloth. From my two weeks’ association with Henry Creegan, I knew he would futz around a few minutes, putting away his precious manuscript and the notes he had made on the day’s shooting, before leaving.

I dipped the washcloth into warm water and soap and began dragging it across my body. These were non-colorfast paints, they ran with soap and water. I had maybe five minutes before Creegan left, so I moved the washcloth back and forth with all the metronomic rhythm of a windshield wiper at full speed.

When I was wet but no longer in full color, I snatched at a big Cannon towel and wrapped my girl-girl bod inside it, my hands working the fluffy stuff across my breasts and belly. Once dry, I snatched up my garter-panty, lifted a pink leg and poked it through the proper opening. A moment later I was wriggling the Drum hips and drawing the thin Accentuate garter-panty up over them. I ignored the garters, it would take too long to slip on my cobwebby nylons; I just stuffed them in my bag. Then I slithered myself into a Vera shift dress.

I was halfway across the barn before I saw Henry Creegan getting into his battered Jaguar. He folded himself in behind the wheel and touched his ignition key. I was flying by this time. His Jaguar was ten yards away when I slammed into my rented Pontiac Firebird 400.

It was easy to keep him in sight after that.

Henry Creegan was a good driver, a little over-cautious, but that was the way he lived. No frantic bursts of speed and then a short slow-down, he kept his foot steady on the gas pedal. When the Jaguar was doing sixty along the expressway, he let it stay at that mile-a-minute pace for close to half an hour.

He made no turn-off, he kept the Jaguar on the expressway through the midtown tunnel and along Park Avenue until he turned west and pulled into a parking lot. I went in right after him. He was paying me no never mind, he was too intent on his business.

He got out of the Jaguar carrying a thin attache case.

I pushed a five dollar bill into the hand of the attendant, telling him to put the car away for me, that I was late for a date. He grinned and nodded.

My pink Pallizzios carried me along the sidewalk ten feet behind the chemist until I saw him turn into a bistro on West 51st Street Its neon sign blazed with red and blue light, telling the city this was the Harem Haven. The Harem Haven was a night spot famous for its honest-to-God belly dancers. I walked into a smell of roasting meat and beer just as my underground movie director entered a telephone booth at the rear.

The diners were too busy watching the gyrations of a plump girl whose belly was swinging and looping above a gilded belt and a stripper’s panel of gold satin to bother looking at me. The overhead spot was on, highlighting her flesh but turning the rest of the Harem Haven into a darkly shadowed dimness. I was grateful to the belly-dancer because the darkness served to hide me as I shrank close to the bar.

A couple of business men relaxing after a tough day creased their necks to ogle me hopefully. I ignored them; I pretended to be watching La Belle Turque as she twisted and bobbed in rhythm to the Turkish darbouka drums being played by two dusky-skinned men in fezes and brocaded vests.

Creegan came out, looking thoughtful

I moved toward the door. If he stayed to eat, I would be forced to do the same, and his chances of seeing me would be increased. He apparently had no appetite, he kept coming for the door. I ran out and into the darkness of the New York sidewalk ahead of him.

There was a store window half a dozen steps away, I posed in front of it, staring at the reflection of the Harem Haven doorway in its glass window front. Henry Creegan showed me his back as he turned away and began walking toward Sixth Avenue.

I followed him to the southeast comer of the Avenue of the Americas. On the far side of the street, I watched a man move out of the shadows and advance on him. Creegan held out his hand, the man took it, shaking his hand. Then Creegan handed over the thin attache case.

In my purse, there was an infra-red camera. I got it out and started snapping pictures. I had several good shots of Creegan, even better shots of his drop. We knew all about Creegan at L.U.S.T. headquarters, it was the other man we know nothing about.

Well, we would know all about him as soon as our photographic experts got their grubby little paws on the film I was using up. Copies of those pictures would be on their way all over the country minutes after the super-xx panchromatic film had been processed.

Eve, honey, I congratulated myself, you’ve done it again!

It was at this precise moment that somebody shoved a gun in my spine. “Easy, doll,” a voice whispered. “Say one single word, utter so much as a groan, and you get a bullet between your spinal discs.”

A hand reached past me, snatched at my Canon FT-QL camera.

‘Walk, doll,” said the voice.

You might think that on the comer of Fiftieth and the Avenue of the Americas, at about seven-ten pm of a cool summer night, I would be safe from danger. There were hundreds of people all around me. They were rushing to keep dinner appointments, or racing to get home after working late in their offices, or scurrying to get to the theaters before the curtains lifted. They paid me absolutely no attention at all.

So I walked, doll, like the man said.

“We won’t hurt you,” my so-far-unseen captor murmured. I gathered then that he was not alone.

I was so right. As we moved along the sidewalk—he had his arm about my waist so that we seemed to be lovers wandering through the crowds—I could feel the muzzle of his gun pressing into my ribs. He had a sports coat across that arm which hugged me. The sport coat hid the gun.

I have been a L.U.S.T. secret agent too long to panic. I was waiting for an opportunity to wheel on him, to get a judo hold and flip him sideways through a store window.

No such luck. His companion came up to us, halfway down the block. He was the same tall blonde man I had seen meeting Henry Creegan. He had the thin attache case in a hand.

“Trouble?’ he asked brusquely, staring hard at me.

“None we can’t handle, Sven. Just walk along with us as if we were all out for a little stroll.”

Sven did just that, pushing against my right side where the gun was stabbing into my ribs. I could smell Hai Karate male perfume on him. He was wearing a smart suit, he looked like a VIP to the onlookers who bothered to glance at him. One girl even glared at me with jealousy in her eyes. She was going home to an empty bed, I suppose, and she was envying me my two companions.

Honey, I’ll gladly trade positions, I thought.

The gun nudged my ribs. “Into the car. The Cadillac.”

A gold El Dorado was slowing at the corner for a light. My captors had timed this thing perfectly. Sven grabbed my arm, shoved me into the back seat He got in the front after my companion with the gun slid in beside me without taking the gun away.

‘Look, fellows,” I said.

‘Quiet,” snapped Sven.

‘All I want to say is—”

The gun jabbed my ribs, hard. I grunted, wincing. Sven murmured, “Not so hard, Ulf. You will hurt the lady.”

Ulf was another big blonde Swede. So was the driver. At any other time I would have been deliriously happy to be here with these big guys. But the revolver in my ribs and their pale, hard faces were somewhat more than discouraging. I subsided against the back seat and played dumb.

The Cadillac headed north along the Deegan Expressway, past the United Nations buildings, and up onto the New York State Thruway. The men were just as quiet as I was, but Ulf seemed to be relenting a little. He was no longer scratching my ribs with the muzzle of his gun.

I cleared my throat. I whispered, “Can I talk now?”

The windows were closed, the traffic was light, going north. Sven nodded his head. So I said, “I don’t know what I did wrong fellas—but I’m sorry. You see, I’m a photographer. I wanted to get some snapshots of New York night life I was hoping to sell to some small town newspapers. You know the routine, how people act in the big city, the types you see, that sort of thing.”

Ulf grunted. Sven just glared at me.

I tried again, “Look, if it’s rape you’re after, maybe we can work something out I dislike being roughed up, even in defense of my maidenly virtue.”

It was a bee-sting right smack on tender epidermis. Ulf snarled, “We have no intention of raping you!”

“Completely out of the question!” added Sven.

I let my baby blues go big. “Then what’s it all about, fellas? Oh! Sure. You made a mistake in identity, huh? You think I’m a prosti and you boys are vice squad cops and—”

“Shut up,” grated Sven.

I pouted, letting my shoulders wriggle back into the lovely golden upholstery of the big beautiful car. I had to think of something to get myself off this hairy hook.

“A publicity gag?” I asked weakly. “For a movie named Kidnap? N-no. Not that, I guess. You can’t possibly be from some rival photographers, now, can you? I knew about the competition up here in the big city, but this is positively ridiculous. If the folks back in—”

“Will you shut up?” snapped Ulf.

I stayed quiet for maybe a minute. I have learned long ago that, if there is one thing a man understands about a woman, it is her need to yak. So I started yakking again. I had my competition sized up; basically, they were gentlemen, these Swedish males. I didn’t think they’d go so far as to slam me one with the revolver Ulf was holding.

They might shoot me, yes. Regretfully and with apologies, but maim my lovely girlish face? N-nn. No. At least, I hoped not.

“We can work this out, fellas. Come on, whatta ya say? Clue me in on the situation. What am I supposed to have done?”

Ulf growled, “You took pictures. Of Sven.”

“Ahhhh—so! And Sven is camera-shy; he is incognito. He does not want to have his picture taken. I’m sorry. I didn’t know that. But you took the camera, so why do you want to take me, too?”

In utter resignation, Sven spoke to his driver. “Can’t you go a little faster, Kaarlo? This woman is driving me crazy with her constant talk.”

“There is a speed limit. Soon we will be in the country. Keep yourself calm, Sven. Be grateful the girl has a pleasant voice. It is not hard to listen to her. I have heard some female voices that really grate on your nerves.”

“Why, thank you, Kaarlo,” I replied. “I’m glad one of you is a gentleman.”

Ulf groaned. He had relaxed his concentration so that I was almost tempted to make a dive for his gun. But no sooner had I turned to get into lunging position and crossed my legs, giving him the benefit of a shapely thigh and dimpled knee naked under my mini-skirt, than he growled and told me to sit with my legs together facing the front.

The car was moving along the New York Thruway at a good clip. We were beyond the Tappan Zee bridge, heading up past New Paltz for a nice, remote country road where I would be killed. I thought and thought, but there didn’t seem to be any answer to my problem.

Kaarlo swung his wheel to the right at Exit 19. Sven paid the toll. I sat quietly, without speech, because Ulf had his left arm about my shoulders and his right hand held his gun, hidden under his topcoat, pressed into my soft belly. I drew a deep breath as the Cadillac headed away from the toll booth and along the Stony Hollow road toward Ashokan Reservoir.

Five minutes later, Kaarlo was pulling off the road and in between some trees. He drove far enough so that it was damn near pitch black inside the car, there were so many trees and high bushes around it.

“Out,” said Ulf, jabbing me with the gun.

I got out and stood shivering. It was early summer, but this far north of the big city, the nights were pretty damn cool. Sven went around to the back of the car and unlocked the trunk.

“In,” growled Ulf, jabbing me again.

I gawked at him in dismay. “In there? Me? You’ve got to be kidding!”

Sven just grinned at me, nodding his head.

“I’ll keep quiet, fellas,” I pleaded. “No more talk. Honest!”

“You don’t understand, lady,” smiled Ulf. “We’re going to leave the car with you in it, locked within the trunk. It’s well off the road, hidden by thick underbrush and tree-boles You can yell all you want; nobody will hear you.”

I looked at him in utter horror. “I’ll smother! Even you three rats wouldn’t do this to me! It might be days before anybody found me—if then.”

Sven nodded complacently. “That’s the idea. You’re out of our hair, we can go on with our business. Now get inside.”

He reached out to grab my arm and push me in that yawning, gaping car trunk. I guess my wails had convinced him I was not dangerous. My hands flew up, caught his reaching wrist. And then my bod was turning to ram my behind into his loins as I bent forward.

Sven yelled in dumb surprise as he felt his body being lifted off the ground in the ippon seoi nage of my judo instructors at the L.U.S.T. training center. Those boys would have been proud of me. My Swedish opponent rose upward gracefully, head toward the ground and flew forward.

I am a wearer of the Sixth Dan red and white belt, in judo. So that shoulder throw was just a routine move in my arsenal of randori tricks. Before Sven slammed hard into a cursing Ulf, knocking him and his gun to the ground, I was sending a foot right smack into the middle of a goggling Kaarlo’s belly.

The foot kick is a part of judo training, when you are offering yourself as an opponent There is a counter to it, you make a quarter turn so the foot sails past you, you grab the leg and pull forward, the direction of the pull being parallel to the ground. The kicker will go off the ground, and when he lands, he hurts.

Kaarlo did not know the counter, as I’d figured. So my low-heeled Palizzio caught him two inches above the belt buckle. He went backward, doubled up as if he’d been kicked by a Missouri mule. He landed flat on his back in the underbrush and flopped around gasping for breath, the wind knocked out of him.

I whirled.

Ulf was lying on the ground, gun in hand, staring at me over its sight. I dove for him, flying through the air.

The gun erupted with a red explosion, right in my face.

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