Free 1975 - Night of the Juggler by William P. McGivern Page A

against the massive black arms and hands that held him like a rack on the narrow bed. Manolo enjoyed the feel of that warm male muscle against his body, and he savored his helplessness, the bondage and restraint imposed on him, and so he made no move to struggle against those powerful hands because that would only excite him and make Samantha’s victory inevitable.
    Manolo thought of his mother and the little white sugar cakes she had made for him. Sometimes she filled them with pinola nuts, sometimes with yellow raisins. He and his brother ate them watching TV after school. They watched old movies. Game shows. Fuck Samantha, he thought, his mood vicious and triumphant, surfacing to the present.
    But that was a dangerous indulgence. Dick Clark’s Bandstand . His thoughts went back to his childhood, where there was safety and where his mother was alive and where his brother was sweet and weak and not as yet in trouble.
    But to his shame and horror, he felt his flesh betraying him. Helplessly responding to Samantha’s sensual ministrations, his stomach muscles contracted convulsively and sent seismic currents of ecstasy into the very root of his sexual organ, and slowly the base of his spine began to dissolve in delicious agony.
    “Stop it! Stop it, you shit bitch!” he screamed into her face.
    Biggie and Coke chuckled at the signs of rut on Manolo’s slim, smooth body.
    But Samantha was disgusted and angry with herself. She stood abruptly and walked to the door.
    “Save it for somebody who’ll pay for it,” she said.
    “Samantha,” he said, barely whispering her name.
    But her heart wasn’t easy, and she didn’t know why. It was always that goddamn Emma and Missoura thing. Walk through the mud, you dumb niggers. But she was touched and moved by Manolo’s physical response to her. She wondered if it would be amusing to help him, to take care of him. Her own life was so full of dreck and pain, so tinted with the lavender of resignation that she was desperate for any emotional diversion.
    “Take care of business,” she said to no one in particular, and walked out of the room.
    On the street in front of Manolo’s building, Samantha’s chauffeur stood beside her Cadillac and scowled irritably at six or eight young Puerto Ricans who were admiring the loaded green Coupe de Ville.
    When Samantha came down the steps to the sidewalk, her chauffeur, whose name was Doc Logan, opened the rear door of the car, and said to her, “Got a call while you were upstairs, Samantha. Chuck from the poolroom. Gypsy Tonnelli is looking for you.”
    “Chuck say why?”
    “Yeah. Something about that psycho’s been wasting them little chicks.
    The Gypsy knows what he looks like, and he’s thinking maybe one of our sharks could maybe make the cat.”
    “Screw the Gypsy,” Samantha said, and slid her lithe, elegant body into the interior of the luxuriously leathered and perfumed Coupe de Ville.
    Seconds later Coke Roosevelt crowded in beside her and Biggie Lewis climbed into the passenger seat alongside Doc.
    There was a musing smile on Samantha’s lips. “Yeah, screw the Gypsy,” she said, and crossed her long, slimly booted legs. “You know. I went to the same school with him. Right here in Spanish Harlem, when there were a lot of ginzos around. He was way ahead of me, but I kind of hung out with his sister, Adela. I used to help her with her arithmetic.” Samantha laughed, displaying splendid white teeth.
    “Lordy, was she dumb.” She tapped her forehead. “Solid bone, solid. We called the Gypsy the Pope then, because he never scored as far as we knew.”
    The green Coupe de Ville moved smoothly and arrogantly into an intersection on the yellow, cruised on slowly and insolently against the red.
    In a squad car a young uniformed cop spotted the infraction and reached for the ignition key, but his partner, a seasoned old bull, looked at him and shook his head. “No way. That spook’s off limits to you and me.”
    The