Free Ordeal by Linda Lovelace Page B

receiver.
    “No, no, no!” His voice was shrill. “No coppers, absolutely no coppers here. Look, miss, you don’t know my sister. She don’t want no coppers, and no crazy people, in her house. You girls go and get out of here now and just leave bygones be bygones.”
    As the two of us came up to the arches, I began to flip out. I have never been so scared. Then I saw that Chuck had moved his car and was parked about a hundred yards away from the entranceway. He seemed to be dozing behind the wheel. There was a chance and I took it. I felt that I had nothing to lose, there would be a beating no matter what.
    “ Chuck! Chuck, hurry up!” I could hear Kitty screaming. “Chuck, she’s trying to get away. Hurry! ”
    I might have made it. If Kitty had remained quiet just one minute more—even a half-minute more—I would have had a shot. But before I reached the corner, Chuck Traynor caught up with me and his grip burnt itself into my upper arm.
    Once we were back in the car, Chuck asked me no questions. He didn’t have to. What I had done was self-explanatory. Besides, Kitty was only too anxious to fill in the details. She told Chuck what I had said on the way into the building, what I had told the old man, even how I had tried to call the police.
    At first I gave Kitty the benefit of the doubt. I thought that it must be panic that made her talk, fear of Chuck’s anger. But that wasn’t the reason. She took too much relish in telling the full story. She was just making brownie points. She wanted to be numero uno with Chuck.
    Later, when Melody heard this story, Kitty got a comeuppance of sorts. She was blacklisted by all the other hookers in the Miami area. It doesn’t seem like such a terrible punishment at this moment, but Kitty was drummed right out of the business.
    My punishment was somewhat harsher. Chuck dropped Kitty off and then he took me home. I remember being icy with fear. However, whatever Chuck did to me that afternoon—the details—are gone from my memory. They’re completely blocked. I can’t remember a word that he said. I don’t remember him throwing a punch or kicking me, but I do know it was the worst beating I ever got. It was a day before I could walk again. And once I could walk, there was nowhere to go. What had been prison was now solitary confinement.

seven
    And so we got married.
    Maybe.
    I’m still not sure. It was that kind of a marriage. But I’ll get to that in a minute.
    Chuck Traynor spent much of that summer preparing for his upcoming trial on drug-smuggling charges. It seems that 400 pounds of marijuana—bales of pot wrapped around coke, hash, speed, LSD and assorted pills—had been dropped in a wooded area south of Miami, not far from the town of Homestead. Chuck and a friend had been caught carrying their bales to their cars, and a third confederate—this was Worth Devore—had gotten away uncaptured. The newspapers were all calling Worth “Mister X.”
    Since Chuck was not letting me out of his sight, I accompanied him on all his visits to his lawyer, Phil Mandina. Mandina seemed as slick as Chuck was crude—always immaculately dressed, flashy and glib. Mandina and Chuck had once been partners in a tiny airline that made daily runs to the Bahamas. Despite their many surface differences, the two men had much in common, as I was to learn.
    “What’re you doing for bread these days?” The lawyer looked over at me, then up and down. “Back in the old business?”
    “Back at the same old stand,” Chuck said.
    I disliked Phil Mandina at first sight. And, as time went on, this dislike was to ripen into hate. This was also my introduction to the legal system, and I didn’t find much to like there either. We all knew, of course, that Chuck was guilty.
    “Well, now,” Mandina said, “what we’re going to need here is a nice solid story. Fortunately, there’s that one fellow who got away, this mysterious ‘Mister X.’ There’s no doubt in our minds that he was