Broard jump, p.1
Broard Jump, page 1
part #11 of Cherry Delight Series
Cherry Delight
With cold toes on her back or a gun in her belly, you oughta see that Broad Jump!
BROAD
JUMP
by Gardner Francis Fox
Written as Glen Chase
Originally printed in 1975
Digitally transcribed by Kurt Brugel and Akiko K.
2019 for the Gardner Francis Fox Library
Cover Illustration by Kurt Brugel 2019
Copyright © 2019 by The Gardner Francis Fox Library.
The Gardner Francis Fox Library has given Kurt Brugel the right to reprint Cherry Delight.
All inquires please contact gardnerffox@gmail.com
Gardner Francis Fox (1911 to 1986) was a wordsmith. He originally was schooled as a lawyer. Rerouted by the depression, he joined the comic book industry in 1937. Writing and creating for the soon to be DC comics. Mr. Fox set out to create such iconic characters as the Flash and Hawkman. He is also known for inventing Batman‘s utility belt and the multi-verse concept.
At the same time, he was writing for comic books, he also contributed heavily to the paperback novel industry. Writing in all of the genres; westerns, historical romance, sword and sorcery, intergalactic adventures, even erotica.
The Gardner Francis Fox library is proud to be digitally transferring over 150 of Mr. Fox’s paperback novels. We are proud to present - - -
Kurt Brugel (1969 to Now) is the Custodian and Illustrator for the Gardner Francis Fox Library. Kurt is a lifelong resident of Wilmington, Delaware. All illustrations for this book were done in scratchboard. He considers the Howard Pyle tradition his greatest influence.
www.kurtbrugel.com
Table of Contents:
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
PROLOGUE
Joey Abruzzi rolled over, encountered a warm, soft body in the bed with him, and came awake. He went up on an elbow, staring down at the tousled black hair on the pillow beside his own. He smiled gently, tenderly. For a few seconds there he had forgotten that he was a bridegroom of less than a week.
His Luisa slept like an olive-skinned angel, he told himself. She was a beautiful girl, her red lips were full and pouty, her nose slim and straight, there was a sensual fire in her body. She made him a good wife. Oh, a very good wife. Last night, for instance, when he’d suggested they try something different, she had been more than willing. And very appreciative, afterward.
Her tiny black nylon nightie had come down off one shoulder. Joey chuckled, leaned to kiss the sleep-warmed flesh, and felt a stirring in his genitals. There wasn’t much to that nightgown, it was no more than a teasing mist. Under it, half out of it, was his Luisa.
His palm touched her shoulder, slid down to a firm, heavy breast. He fondled it, discovering the hardening of the berry-red nipple. Luisa stirred, murmured something unintelligible as she turned over on her back. Joey put his hand beneath the covers, ran it up and down her thigh. He was becoming excited, in a few moments his bride would become excited, too.
Joey lifted his hand off her leg, frowning.
He must not. There was something he had to do today—something very important. Even more important than making love to Luisa, if he could believe such a thing.
His father. Of course, he must meet his father.
Anthony Abruzzi was a very important man in Little Italy. He was one of the foremost caporegimos under the Boss of Bosses, Alberto Digorio. There was trouble between his father and “the big man,” bad trouble. And this was not good, not good at all.
Joey rolled over on his back, staring up at the ceiling. His father needed help desperately, he was calling out to his son, to this man who lay beside his new wife, for that help. And Joey was going to respond.
He did not like what was going to happen in The Family, he had seen and heard of too many situations like this, when one capo or another decided he needed more power and began to make a play for it. The Gollos. The Collortos. They had been powerful, but where were they now? Joey hoped this wasn’t going to happen to the Abruzzis.
He himself felt that The Family should be satisfied with what it had. Instead, they were always reaching out for more and more, not content to live in luxury but wanting to dominate entire areas of society. It just wasn’t good; it made for trouble.
Joey Abruzzi was going to be caught up in that trouble, because of his father. Not that he would have it any other way, he owed it to the old man, who had done so much for him. He would go to meet his father, try to reason with him, try to make him see some sense. But Tony Abruzzi was proud, almost arrogant. He would see only what he wanted.
Joey sighed, eased back the bed-covers His wife wriggled against the sudden draft of air, the nightie didn’t protect her bare legs. And the nightie was rumpled into a wad about her middle so that her soft, plump buttocks were also naked.
He grinned, bent to kiss each cheek.
Luisa murmured something.
Joey covered her up, tucked her in, and stepped naked from the bed. On bare feet he went across the thick carpeting to the bedroom closet of his apartment. Sliding back a door, he lifted out a Clubman sport-coat in striped strawberry and a pair of Big Yank slacks. He liked good clothes, he spent a lot of bread on his threads, but then he made a lot of bread, working for his father.
From the closet he walked to a bureau, took out jockey shorts and a tee shirt, slid into them. From the same drawer he selected socks and sat down on a chair to slide them on his feet.
“What are you doing?” muttered Luisa, turning over in bed.
“Go on sleeping. I got to see Pappa, you know that.”
Luisa sat upright, turning her flushed face toward him. “I’d forgotten.” She paused, then asked, “You sure you have to go? I don’t like this, Joey, you know I don’t.”
His heart ached for her. There was nothing he would rather do than slide beneath the covers with her. Their eyes locked, she read the yearning in his face and smiled weakly.
“It’ll iron itself out,” he assured her. “I’m going to tell Pappa to retire, to go away for a little while, maybe to that place in Italy where he was born—what was it?—oh, yeah. Chieti.”
“He won’t go,” she muttered.
“He will if I tell him he’s going to get us all killed. Pappa doesn’t want that. Mamma’s dead, there’s me and Julia. Digorio won’t bother Julia but—”
Luisa sat bolt upright in bed, her black eyes wide in horror. “Joey! You mean the Don may strike at you?”
“Naw. At least, I don’t think so. I just run Pappa’s businesses, I’ve never been big in Mafia affairs. Now go back to sleep. Please?”
She shook her tousled black hair that tumbled down about her shoulders. “I’m afraid, Joey. I really am. Suppose your father won’t see reason?”
“I’ll make him, I tell you.”
She threw back the covers and padded barefooted and nearly nude across the room. Joey felt his heart leap at sight of her. All he wanted was his Luisa. They loved each other so much, dammit! He wished he could take her in his car and drive out into the country on a picnic.
“Now what are you doing?” he asked.
“Going to make you coffee. I got some cheese Danish you might like. You’re going to eat something, Joey.”
He wasn’t going to argue, his stomach felt empty, anyway—they hadn’t eaten much last night, preferring to make love. Coffee and cheese Danish sounded pretty good. He hurried his dressing, smelling the perking coffee.
When he came into the kitchen, he looked at Luisa where her body and sheer nightgown were framed against the morning sunlight.
“Hey, go put a robe on. How can I leave you when you’re like that? And you know I have to leave.”
She smiled, pleased that she appealed so much to him. “I shouldn’t,” she pouted, “but I will.”
As she walked past, he slapped her behind.
He was finishing the Danish when she came back into the little kitchen, her hair combed back and an old flannel robe gathered about her body. His eyes widened at sight of her and she giggled.
“This cover me up enough?” she asked, posing.
“Where did you get that thing?”
“I brought it along with my trousseau in case the energy crisis should get real bad and we wouldn’t have any heat.”
She poured black coffee, drank it while he had his second cup. “Come back when you’ve seen your father,” she told him. “I’m going to worry. I just want to know you’re all right.”
He nodded and finished the cup.
At the doorway he took her into his arms and kissed her soft mouth. It was a melting kiss that told him how much she loved him. It gave him a warm feeling that was with him as he went down the hall and into the elevator.
It was still with him when he went out onto the sidewalk and toward his car. He did not see the two men lounging near the Mercury, not until they began to move toward him.
“Don’t make any funny moves,” one of them said.
“Hey, what is this?” he laughed.
He knew what it was all right, but he fought against the knowledge. These were hit men, he could tell them a mile away. He wondered whether they intended to shoot him down on the sidewalk in front of his own apartment building, where Luisa would be able to see him if she looked out the window.
“Into the car. One of us’ll drive.”
He sat in the suicide seat beside the driver as the second man got into the rear. This man took out a gun with a silencer and pushed it against Joey’s neck.
“Just to show you we mean business,” the man growled, and took the gun away.
Joey Abruzzi sat frozen in despair. He was a dead man, he knew that, these were not his father’s men, they had not been sent to escort him to safety. His mind turned to Luisa, to her warm body that he would never hold in his arms again. He wanted to weep, like a little boy deprived of a treasured toy.
“Look,” he said after a time. “Can’t we talk this over? I was going to my father to tell him to go away, to forget about his problem, to give up his hold on some of his rackets.”
“Forget it.”
They rode past familiar places. He did not see them now, they did not register, all he could dream of was Luisa. She was young, she would marry again, maybe even be as happy as she’d been with him. His lips twisted wryly. At least, they hadn’t been married long enough to develop that strange hatred or apathy for each other, that he had seen in so many other marriages.
He did not think of resistance. He had no gun, he would be dead if he opened his mouth to yell for help. Besides, the windows were up. The man behind him was watching him as a hungry hawk watched a plump mouse.
They drove for about an hour, until they were on a wooded lane in New Jersey. The countryside all around them, the trees still full of leaves in the late summer of the year. Joey had always liked the country, even though he was a city boy. His eyes took it all in, the distant farmhouses, the steeple of a church, the cows on a sloping hillside.
The driver stopped the car. The other man said, “Get out.”
Joey turned and looked at him, the heavily jowled face, with its blue beard stubble, the hard eyes that seemed to be set too close together.
“You really going to kill me?” he asked.
“What do you think?”
“You’re bastards, you know that? You’re just prolonging it to make me sweat. You like to see me sweat, you’re both sadists.”
“We’re only doin’ a job. Now will you get the hell out of this car?”
Resignation touched Joey Abruzzi. He put a hand on the car door handle, pushed it. He stepped out into warm sunlight at the same time as the man in the rear seat. Joey turned to face him, surprised at his own calmness.
I ought to be afraid, to beg for my life, he thought. But this was never his way, even in his childhood he had never whimpered and whined.
“For God’s sake, get it over with!” he snarled.
The man raised the revolver with its silencer. His finger tightened on the trigger. Joey was wondering if there was an afterlife, as Father Melchionni had said, even as the bullets smashed into his chest.
Chapter ONE
I was standing before the mirror in my bedroom admiring myself in a black lace jump suit when the telephone rang. I ignored it for a second, turning slightly to get the effect of black lace over bare skin and telling myself that Mark Condon would appreciate it even more than I.
The phone went on ringing.
I turned my head, staring coldly at the princess phone. Who in hell was calling at such an hour, a little past midnight? I had learned from past, bitter experience that it would not be good news. It never was at that hour.
Sighing, I moved toward it.
It was Avery King. “Get over here at once, Cherry,” he growled. “And if Mark is with you, bring him along, too.”
“Now?” I howled.
“Right now. At once.”
Avery King hung up, leaving me to stare at the dead phone and whisper naughty words under my breath.
“Trouble on the home front?” asked a voice.
Mark Condon was standing in the bedroom doorway, a shoulder resting against the jamb. Mark never stands up straight when he can lounge. He is a handsome man, he is also my immediate boss in the New York Mafia Prosecution and Harassment Organization—more generally known as N.Y.M.P.H.O.—of which I am a working member. Mark and I have a thing going for each other, someday we may even marry.
“The boss wants us.”
He straightened. “Now?” he yelled.
I smiled ruefully. “That’s just the way I felt when I heard his dulcet tones. I’m sorry, Mark.”
“You’re sorry!”
I laughed at his expression. We had been in for a spot of love-making, after a wonderful dinner and a few hours at a Broadway theater seeing the latest smash hit. I’d just returned from Japan where I’d been on official business, and this was our special get-together.
On slippered feet, I moved toward a closet and lifted out a trench coat. I said as I slipped into it, “Maybe we can come back and pick up where we left off. It can’t be all that important.”
“You don’t think so, hey?”
“I do, but I’m trying to cheer you up.”
Mark said naughty words, came to help me into the coat. I sat on the edge of a chaise lounge and slipped peds onto my feet, then eased my feet into Pappagallos.
We went down in the elevator to the basement, where Mark had parked his car. He opened the door and I slid in and sat there, brooding. I paid little attention to him as he started up the engine and drove out into the early morning traffic.
Frankly, I was asking myself if this job of mine was worth all the trouble it caused me. Not that I minded hardships when I was on the job, they were a part of it, but it was just about killing my love life.
My name is Cherry Delight. Actually, I was born and christened Patricia Delissio, but my hair is long and red and the nickname just seemed to fit me. It was my official name as far as N.Y.M.P.H.O. was concerned.
I have been well trained for my job. I am a crack shot, I am an expert in judo, karate and even Burmese boxing. I can speak eight or nine languages. My entire body is a weapon, N.Y.M.P.H.O. has made sure of that. I am also paid a damn good salary.
Still and all… .
The traffic was reasonably light at this hour, and Mark made good time. We parked in front of the big office building that houses the N.Y.M.P.H.O. offices and walked into the lobby.
N.Y.M.P.H.O. never sleeps. An armed guard employed by our organization saluted us with a grave smile and a sympathetic nod of his graying head. It was nothing new to him to see our agents routed out of a warm bed and sent off somewhere in the middle of the night.
We emerged from the elevator into a posh corridor and made our way along to double doors. We walked through several empty offices until we came to the holy of holies, which was where Avery King presided over N.Y.M.P.H.O. like a gigantic spider in the middle of its web.
Not that Avery King is gross, he isn’t. He is tall and lean, very good looking, and has a British accent. He wears the latest clothes, he keeps on top of world affairs, and nothing seems to happen in Mafia that he doesn’t know about. My own personal opinion is that he has informers on his payroll, just about everywhere.
He sat behind his desk and watched us approach. His face was unlined, rather grave, but there was a twinkle in his eyes.
“I’m sorry to have brought you out into the night . air,” he murmured as we took seats, “but something rather important has broken.”
His wise eyes had seen my sexy jump suit, he could figure out for himself what Mark and I were about to do. He leaned forward, placing his elbows on the desktop.
“Joey Abruzzi was killed today,” he said softly.
Mark jerked. “Tony Abruzzi’s son?”
When Avery King nodded, Mark whistled. “This blows the lid off. What’ll his father do?”
“Who knows? Fight back, I’m hoping—in the only way he can.”
“And how is that?” I asked brightly.
“By turning informer.”
“Like Joe Valachi?”
Avery King nodded and shifted position in his chair. “I say, I hope this is what he does. He may not.” He shrugged those impeccably tailored shoulders of his, then added wryly, “I’m hoping we may be able to persuade him.”
