Devil's Deals

Chapter Five: The Bigger Deal

A week went by before Rich heard from or about the Butlers again. He had a week to get into the groove of going to college; starting up the sailing season, including setting up new understandings with Hunter and Julio—no messing around with Rich involved while they were at college—and mastering Professor Coleman in a new way, Blake Coleman having let Rich know that he liked how Rich had done him in his office.

There was a concert on for that weekend—a men’s choir from the university, with Coleman conducting and Rich accompanying on a grand piano. It was well attended, including, Rich didn’t find out until after the last Amen, by Alma Butler, who appeared at the side of the piano on stage while Rich was gathering up sheet music; greeted him like they were the best of friends who regularly met, which raised Coleman’s eyebrows as he was gushed over by a couple of music patrons while he was trying to overhear his assistant’s conversation with Alma, and said she had driven up to deliver a new car to Hunter. “He wanted a new Mustang,” she said.

Why, of course he did, Rich thought. Although it had been Julio who he’d heard talking about wanting Hunter to get a new Mustang.

“I’ll need a ride back to Boston tomorrow,” she said, wiggling her false eyelashes at Rich. “Hunter can’t do it.” She looked at Rich expectantly. “You don’t have your next class until Tuesday.” And when he looked at her quizzically, she said, “Hunter told me what your schedule would be.”

“I’m not sure I—”

“Howard wants to see you at one of his Boston clubs. He said you would come when he said he wanted you to.”

That was different. Rich had been thinking ahead to the next year and Julliard all week. Howard was his ticket to that dream.

“He also said you would be at my beck and call too, as long as I didn’t interfere with your school or sports schedule.”

“Of course I am,” Rich answered, with a smile of surrender. He put a hand on her hip to assure her that he knew all that that entailed and she gave a little shudder and smiled back.

“I thought we’d go to dinner this evening,” she continued, apparently taking for granted that invoking Howard’s call for Rich’s presence was definitive, which it was.

“I’m not sure. Reservations are pretty tight on a Friday night,” Rich said. He was looking at Blake Coleman, who was giving him the evil eye. He had an after-concert “do” on at his house and expected Rich to be there.

“We have dinner reservations at the Hanover Inn right here on the campus,” Alma said. “It’s where I’m staying tonight.”

Well, of course it is, Rich thought.

He must have had Sonny Taggert and the position he’d used to fuck Susan with on his mind during the week, because that’s how he fucked Alma that night in her room at the Hanover Inn. It wasn’t the contrast in size and muscles that it was with Sonny and Susan, and after a while Rich had to admire how steady as a rock Sonny had maintained his three-point stance. He and Susan had fucked in that position longer than Alma and Rich managed. But Alma gave a smile and a low moan and nestled up under Rich on the bed when he came over her when she was on her back, his knees on either side of her chest. She raised her face to his crotch, took him inside her mouth, and gave him expert head.

When he was engorged it was just a short readjustment, scooting his knees down to outside her thighs and burying one hand in the mattress by her shoulder to be in position. She must have taken this stance before because she easily went into position, lifting her knees to his hips, and groaning as he encircled her waist, pulled her pelvis up to his crotch, penetrated her, and started to pump.

She was thinner and lighter—in model trim—than Susan was, which compensated a bit for Rich not being as big and bulky as Taggert was. She went right into position, sheathed him without any trouble, and quickly settled into the rhythm of the fuck. Rich briefly entertained the thought that maybe she’d been done by Sonny Taggert too, but he put that out of his mind, as nothing he should care about, and he did his duty with her, staying the night and fucking her in more conventional positions at periodic intervals. He left her purring, as he drifted off to sleep, trusting she’d report to Howard that Rich had satisfied her as Howard told him he was to do on demand.

She had him there at checkout the next morning like he was some sort of footman there to carry her luggage. The reception desk clerks surely knew how she had used him, but she was regal and “rich bitch” enough to pull it off.

Rich knew that Blake Coleman would be livid that Rich not only had missed the after-concert party but wasn’t in his bed that night—and probably wouldn’t be until the next Tuesday. Rich called to tell him he’d be out of town until then, but he had to leave a voicemail. Coleman didn’t pick up.

* * * *

“I want to broaden our deal.”

“Oh? How so?” Rich asked. He was sitting in Howard Butler’s office at a club he owned on Tremont Street, in the South End district of Boston. Most of Boston’s gay scene had fled the city for Providence, Rhode Island, years earlier, but some remnants of it remained here in the South End. Butler was trying to bring it back. The Berkeleynotsquare club was a partial move in that direction. It was a male stripper Chippendales type show venue that was dedicated to women patrons on the weekends and men on the weekdays. Although there were male strippers who worked only one or the other of those periods, Butler was interested in hiring bisexual hunks who would cover both—and who would cover paying patrons as well as dance for them. The club was a full-service venue. You could come and take in the show and drink to your heart’s content. For big bucks you could also get a male dancer to get you off by your choice of method, whatever gender you were.

Rich had driven Alma from New Hampshire back down to Boston in his aging 2008 red Volkswagen Eos Komfort convertible.

“This was a nice car once,” she said, “but it looks like you have a lot of miles on it and a good bit of wear and tear.”

“It’s a 2008,” he answered. “I’ve enjoyed it, but it’s on its last legs. I guess it’s just as well I’m moving back to New York City for school. I can move around there without a car.”

“But you’d like to have wheels, wouldn’t you? You’ll have to be coming to Boston now regularly, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” Rich answered. And, indeed, he was well aware of the belled collar the Butlers had put on him.

“Hunter has no use for his old car now that we’ve gotten him a new one. It’s a 2014 Mustang. A convertible just like this. Still in very nice condition.”

“Yes, I know. I’ve been in it,” he answered. The backseat had been a little tight for fucking, but he saw no need to mention that to Hunter’s mother.

“You can have that car.”

“For how much?”

“You can have the car.”

“Is this what being owned by the Butler family is about—free stuff like that?”

“Yes, that’s what being owned by the Butlers is like, Rich,” she answered. “you made the deal with Howard. Don’t spoil your enjoyment of its rewards for you by not taking advantage of them.” Rich realized that that was sound advice.

They were almost to the outskirts of Boston then and Rich’s attention went to maneuvering from north of the city down to the South End, but she had made her point. She left him at the club and Howard had given him a tour of the facilities before taking him back to his office.

“What do you think of what you’ve seen here at the club?” Howard asked.

“Very slick,” Rich answered.

“Could you see yourself dressed out like a Chippendales dancer? I can. You’d be a standout.”

“Is this what the bigger deal is about?” Rich asked.

“Yes. I’ve been doing deeper digging into your financial circumstances. The deal we already have will get you, personally, through your graduate studies at Julliard. But they won’t help your family’s finances. They won’t even keep the roof of that Riverside Park house over your head while you’re going to school.”

“There are far cheaper and smaller places than the family house for me to live.”

“Yes, but is this a good time for your parents to be tossed out on their tails? Just hear me out on this. You are a rare find for my needs—not only are you Old Family trained, but you are a fucking hunk and you are bisexual, both giving and taking cock from men and fucking women. That’s exactly what I need here—not just as a dancer, and the deal would be only for part-time service. You’d be more of a prize that way anyway. But it’s also for the sex you could give—anything any patron wants who is willing to pay top buck for it. And the snobs here would go apeshit in being serviced by a VonClief. Alma can’t get over the idea.

“What I’m proposing is that you train here to dance and give service every which way, which I’ll pay you well for. And then two or three times a month you’ll come up to Boston from New York to be a featured dancer here a couple of nights. I’d pay you $2,000 for a 24-hour day to dance and service patrons—to go out as an escort too, if that’s what’s wanted. That would be on top of our existing deal of taking my cock whenever I’m in the mood in exchange for your Julliard tuition.”

“So, you want me to be a rent-boy in your whore house for $2,000 a day?” Rich voiced it in its harshest terms for shock value. That had no effect on Howard at all.

“Yes. But you’d also be listed on an exclusive ‘any way’ escort service Web site too. We’d handle the money collection. You’d get a flat fee from us and be able to keep any tip you could fuck out of the patron. We could limit that to one or two throws a month, if you like. That would up your rates, make you more exclusive. You don’t have to answer now. My main interest today is to exercise the other deal. So, what do you think?”

“It’s something to think about,” Rich answered, “although I’m not all that interested in becoming a prostitute for money. What I do is for my personal enjoyment.”

“Other than the deal we already have—you taking my cock, as you will be doing in a few minutes. Which, by the way, is you prostituting yourself for money.”

“Which isn’t happening without my taking enjoyment from it,” Rich said, looking directly into Howard’s eyes.

“That’s what I like to hear. Shall we?” Howard answered with a grin. He stood up from behind his desk, pushed a button somewhere inside a desk drawer, and a bookcase across the room slid open, revealing a well-equipped sexual torture chamber, which they called the “taxing room.” “This is a part of the facility you haven’t seen yet,” he said. “There’s an entrance to it from here, but also from the suite of rooms we have at the back of the club. Are you afraid?”

“A bit, yes,” Rich answered.

“Good. Are you aroused?”

“Yes, very.”

“I’ll pay you $7,500 to let me film it and distribute the film on a for-pay site.”

“I don’t know about—”

“You can wear a mask. Although your body is beautiful, it doesn’t have distinguishing marks that will identify you.”

“Well, OK, I guess.” The heater had failed in his parents’ house. He needed the money. Howard probably knew that, Rich realized.

Howard put Rich, masked and naked, on his back in a black leather sling, with the young man’s arms and legs running up the four chains the sling hung from and his wrists and ankles bound. Then the heavy, beer-can-dick-hung, hirsute man crouched between the immobilized young man’s spread legs, worked his impossibly thick shaft inside Rich’s slowly opening channel, and as Rich cried out and babbled at the taxing taking, fucked him hard to an ejaculation while he stroked Rich off with his hand.

Rich could not—and didn’t bother to try to—deny that he enjoyed the dominating fuck. After Rich was bound, Howard had taken a hand whip off the wall and turned and grinned at the young man, causing Rich to moan, but saying, “No, not yet, I don’t think,” Howard had returned the whip to its place on the wall. Just that gesture had made Rich go harder, and the slight sensation of regret at seeing the whip go back on the wall surprised—and slightly concerned him.

“Eventually, though, if you take the bigger deal and you want to maximize your profit,” Howard said, as he approached, unzipping himself and stripping off his trousers. “And, if I have gauged you correctly, you will revel in it. You are a treasure.”

As Howard settled into the fuck, Rich closed his eyes and concentrated on the shaft inside him. Howard pulled out of him, but Rich didn’t open his eyes—until he felt the shock of the sting. His eyes flew open then. Howard had retrieved the whip. He struck once, standing at an angle so that he didn’t block the video camera. Rich cried out as the thongs of the whip stung him again—and then again.

“Oh, Fuck!”

* * * *

Rich had already decided to go on to New York from Boston and check on his parents as soon as Howard Butler released him from his obligations there. He was already half way there from Dartmouth. Butler did invite him home for the night, but with a view to being able to sleep that night under a roof shared with Howard and Alma, he decided that wasn’t a good idea.

“Thanks,” he answered. “That would be great, but I promised my father I’d check on them tonight.”

Regardless, he felt too hopped up from the attention Howard had given him to get back on the road right away, so he decided to stop over someplace for a drink first. The stopover was at a gay bar he’d heard of but hadn’t been brave enough to show at yet, Cathedral Station, on the Washington Street, across from Peters Park. A quick stop, a look about to see what was there in this bar, a fast drink, and back on the road, Rich thought. But it didn’t spin out that way.

He’d made it halfway into the place and was approaching the bar, which was only sparsely occupied, before he saw the extra-large, muscular body with the golden mane of hair descending to his wide shoulders. As if sensing that Rich was there, Sonny Taggert turned on his barstool, smiled, toasted Rich with a mug of beer, and gestured for the man he replaced with Susan Butler to join him at the bar.

“Good to see you, man,” he said. “What will it be? The first one is on me.” He called out to the bartender, “Set this good man up with a drink, Harry. On me.”

What could Rich do? He climbed up on a stool, leaving one between him and Sonny. It wasn’t a signal of keeping a distance between them. Sonny took up more space than just one stool. As Rich settled on his stool, Sonny hefted the one that had been between them and swung it off to the side so that now there wasn’t a barrier between them.

“I really am glad to see you,” Sonny said. “I feel kind a bad. I hope there aren’t any hard feelings between us.”

“No, of course not,” Rich responded, although he felt something hard between them. It was a surprise to find Sonny at a gay bar. “I understand you were brought in because it was what Susan wanted,” Rich said. That wasn’t necessarily what he thought. What he thought was that Alma Butler couldn’t stand the idea of Rich fucking her and her daughter too. But none of that had anything to do with Taggert. “I just want her to be happy.” He received his mug of beer and lifted it in Taggert’s direction both to thank him for the drink and to signal good will. Still, he seemed a little stiff and the bulky footballer caught that.

“That last bit came out a little reluctantly. You don’t think I’ll give Susan what she wants? You stood there and watched us fucking in their country house. You don’t think she was getting what she wanted or that I was holding back?” The words were blunt, but he didn’t deliver them belligerently, which was surprising, coming from a professional football lineman.

“I guess it’s just a surprise to find you in a place like this if you’re courting Susan.”

“You courted Susan, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but—”

“But what? You’re in a bar like this too. You’re bi. You fuck both women and men. I know you do. Susan knows you do. She knows you fuck her brother, Hunter. Well, her half-brother. She didn’t know it last week, but Hunter made sure she knows it now.”

“Do you fuck men too?” Rich asked.

“Yes. Do you want me to show you that I do? You’re a great looking piece of flesh. I’d do you in a minute. I know that Howard does you. And I know that you do Hunter.”

“And you go both ways too?”

“I have when I wanted a guy to do me.”

“Maybe—?”

“We shall see what we shall see.”

“And does Susan know you fuck men and that they sometimes fuck you? Did you tell her you do?”

“Did you let her know you fucked men—that you fucked her brother?” Sonny asked. Everything was still being kept calm. Neither one of them was going above the banter level.

“Touché,” Rich said and took a long drag on his beer. Sonny was treating this as an intellectual discussion and Rich had been stopped in his tracks when Sonny said he’d like to do him. Rich would die and go to heaven to be done by someone like Sonny. And he’d gotten a good look at what Sonny was packing. If Howard hadn’t already reamed Rich wide, someone like Sonny might just send him to heaven with bowed legs in a good drilling.

“Do we have to talk about this?” Rich said. “I’m conflicted about this . . . about Susan and all of the other Butlers. I feel bad . . . a little guilty. Shit, I don’t know how I got into this.”

“I think I know how you got into this. It’s probably something like my own case. Butler owns enough of the Patriots that he could make life really difficult for me. I need this gig. I need security and I need to play professional football. I bet you have something the same. Susan tells me that the VonCliefs are big shit in this country. But I don’t think you’d go after someone like Susan if you were really rich or something. I mean, she’s a good lay. But she’s not in your league. You’re a fuckin’ god. Sexy as hell. She’s a good kid and wants cock, but—”

“You think I’m sexy?” Rich asked. All he was really keyed into was that statement Sonny had made about wanting to lay him.

“Damn right.” He was turned toward Rich on the stool. He draped his right arm on the back of Rich’s stool and he placed a beefy hand on Rich’s left knee. Rich was trapped in the big man’s orbit. He wasn’t going anywhere. He didn’t want to go anywhere—at least not without Sonny. Rich wondered if the man could feel him trembling. “Which leads to the other point. But you needed to get close to someone like the Butlers, didn’t you? You need what they can give you.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Rich said. “But the other point . . .”

“We’re both sexual animals and not exclusive. Sex is sex is sex to us. That’s what it means to be a bi guy. You needn’t argue about that with me. I saw enough and heard enough about you to know we could be twins. We’ll fuck anything that moves. We’ve got to have our dicks in something or riding a dick ourselves. Men, women—it makes no difference.”

He slid his hand between Rich’s thighs, running his fingers up the inner thigh—not all the way, but high enough—and, shuddering, Rich involuntarily opened his legs, feeling them go to jelly. Sonny put his thumb down in the center of Rich’s basket—and left it there. Rich let him leave it there. Sonny couldn’t avoid feeling the stirring of the cock inside the material.

“Are you hung, Rich? If you are, you would be perfection. I’m hung, you know.”

“Yes,” Rich murmured, “I know.” It was an answer to both questions, but Sonny was continuing like he wasn’t listening, like it didn’t matter what Rich said—like Sonny was going to take what he wanted regardless.

The rest of Sonny’s hand went to Rich’s crotch and he traced the hardening shaft down the young man’s right inseam with his fingers. “Yes, very nice. I can see why both Susan and Hunter wanted you. You watched me. You couldn’t pull away. You came from watching me fuck Susan. That’s when I knew I could have you if I ever found you. Are you going to let me fuck you, Rich? Are you going to lay down and open your legs for me?”

“Right here, right now?”

“If that’s what you want. Are you going to let me put it in you?”

“Yes, I’m going to let you put it in me,” Rich answered, with a low moan. “Wherever you want to do it.”

* * * *

Sonny lived in the same block as the bar, at Laconia Lofts. In less than ten minutes they were inside his apartment and Sonny was growling, “Strip and I want you on your knees right here on the floor.”

When Rich hesitated, Sonny barked, “Now! I’ve seen you with Butler. You want to be controlled and manhandled when a man fucks you.”

A minute later he was hovering over Rich, who was on all fours, nuzzling and kissing Rich on the neck while he opened Rich’s ass up with his plump fingers, knowing that Rich would have to be taking a monster cock.

“Now! Now! Fuck me now!” Rich cried out.

“I’m big. I could split you.”

“Do it. Do it now!” Rich cried out, knowing that it had only been a little more than an hour since Howard’s beer can dick had been inside him.

“OK. You are really open,” Sonny said. A minute later, all lubed up, he was mounted on Rich’s tail, who was grunting and groaning at having so little preparation to take the shaft Sonny was stuffing inside him. But he was in such high heat for the footballer that he couldn’t wait longer. If he hadn’t been with Howard, a big-cocked man, just a few hours ago, he couldn’t have managed it. But he did manage it.

The big footballer was inside him. He slapped Rich’s ass. Surprised and stung, Rich jerked and gave a little cry. Sonny slapped his ass again—hard, which was painful coming from the strong athlete he was.

“What you really want is the whip,” Sonny growled.

“Yes,” Rich whimpered.

He was gripping Rich’s waist hard with the other hand, holding deep inside his channel, his cock pulsating, stretching Rich’s channel to the limit. He somehow, though, managed to pull Rich’s belt out of his puddled trousers and fold it over. He gave Rich’s buttocks a snap of the belt and Rich cried out in pain-pleasure.

“Shit, yes. Again!” Rich exclaimed, surprising himself that the snaps of the leather belt were so arousing. Learning that he responded well to a little cruelty. Another snap and Sonny was about ready to start pumping, when Rich called out in a hoarse voice, “Like you did Susan. Just like you did Susan, please.”

Laughing, Sonny went into his three-point stance, wrapping his free hand around Rich’s stomach and pulling the smaller man up into his torso. Arching his back, exhibiting admirable flexibility, Rich wrapped his arms around the big man’s neck, hooked his knees on Sonny’s hips, and rocked back and forth as Sonny stroked him hard, fast, and deep.

They fucked for the remainder of the afternoon and into the night—on the sofa, in the shower, on the bed. Rich didn’t even think about his plans to drive to his parents’ house in New York that day until he was stretched out on his side, with Sonny’s bulk enveloping him from behind, the big man’s monster dick still inside him, and darkness was descending through the floor-to-ceiling glass wall beside the bed.

Exhausted, he went to sleep. The sun was coming up again when he woke. What woke him, though, was that Sonny’s body was hovering over his. Sonny’s mouth was sucking on Rich’s cock and his dick was slapping on Rich’s face. Rich stopped the beating it was giving his cheeks by taking the cock in his mouth.

“What?” he exclaimed, taking his mouth off the cock momentarily, when Sonny pulled his shaft back and was repositioning himself. Rich was shocked, surprised, and aroused as the footballer straddled his pelvis, held Rich’s cock erect, descended his ass on it and started to rise and fall on Rich’s shaft.

He hadn’t been teasing, Rich thought. He did take as well as give—although when he took Rich’s cock he remained in command.

* * * *

Rich didn’t get to New York until early Monday afternoon. He was walking gingerly when he entered the Riverside Park brownstone, but he was humming. He’d only be able to spend a couple of hours with his parents, though, before he’d have to start back to Dartmouth. He hoped the Volkswagen would make it. He thought he heard another rattle or two from it between Boston and New York that he hadn’t heard going down from Dartmouth to Boston.

He’d accept the gift of Hunter’s old Mustang. Between fucks, he and Sonny had had discussions on the way of the world and the use of the assets that the two men had in their bodies. Most of the guilt that had been lingering below the surface was gone. If people wanted their bodies and were willing to pay for them, so be it. Sonny had said that the sex wasn’t any more the selling of his body than his football was. He was sure that would be the same. Rich wasn’t sure about that. He hadn’t told Sonny he was studying to be a composer. He wasn’t sure how that compared to using his body for sex—other than enabling him to get the education to be a composer.

The day’s mail was on the foyer floor, inside the front door, below the mail slot. He picked it up and glanced at the addresses as his ear tuned into his parents, talking in what seemed to be pleasant tones, in the lounge. Rich heard his mother’s voice. It sounded like she was speaking normally, something that was happening less and less these days, which made it more noticeable when it was happening.

His eyes stopped on an official-looking envelope, one with windows in it, addressed to his father’s very formal, four-segment name, each that of a famous family from early America. The return address was the city tax office.

Shit, he thought. His father had mentioned this—that he didn’t know how he was going to pay the next tax bill on the house. Rich began to sweat. The house had been valued at $8 million even without the upgrades needed to make it sell. What could the tax rate be on a 5,000-square-foot house in an exclusive section of New York? Surely it would be a small fortune, even though his father had said that the house was taxed at far less than its market value because it had never been on the market.

He couldn’t help himself. With one ear on the conversation in the adjacent living room, and assuring himself that his father hadn’t heard him arrive yet, he slit open the envelope and extracted the bill. Shit. $9,700 just for this quarter year.

They didn’t have the money. He didn’t want his visit to be ruined by this news. He slipped the bill back into the envelope, folded it over, and put it in his pocket.

“Mom, Dad, I’m home,” he called out and went to the door into the living room. His father came and met him there, whispering, “This is one of her good days. A really good day. No tiptoeing needed. And no referring to days that aren’t good, please. It will only distress her to think that there are such days.”

“Yes, I know the routine,” Rich said. He smiled, looked beyond his father, and was greeted with a, “There you are, Richard. How nice that you are visiting us. Your father said you might be here a couple of days ago, but now you’re here, and that’s wonderful.”

They conversed for a while over drinks, with Mrs. VonClief zoning out only periodically and briefly, a dazed look of slight concern and confusion floating across her face before she came back into focus, introducing a new topic, usually somewhere in the middle of a story. Rich didn’t care. There just for a while today, he had his mother back.

As it was getting dark, his father stood and said, “I’ll go fix us supper. You too continue talking.” He gave a look at Rich that conveyed that the young man should do his best to keep his mother with them as long as possible. He did so, trying not to show the strain it caused to carry that burden. His mother began to reminisce about all of the good times they’d had in the house. She rose and went to the ornate Victorian fireplace surround and let her fingers caress the carved figures there.

“Remember the time that . . .”

“Yes, Mother, I remember it as if it were yesterday.”

They used the best china and crystal and silverware. Rich’s father had set dinner in the dining room and lit candles. Mrs. VonClief was all aglow. When Rich’s father rose to clear the table, he suggested that Rich and his wife go back to the living room, that he’d do the dishes.

“Oh, why don’t you join us, Gerald?” she said. “We’re having such a good time. Maria can do the cleanup.”

They had had to let Maria go more than a year earlier. “It’s Maria’s day off, Grace,” VonClief said.

“Then I’ll help you with the dishes,” she said. “Richard can go to the piano and serenade us, just like the old days. Can you do that, Richard? I’d love to hear you play. We should give you more lessons on the piano. Playing well could be very useful for you someday.”

“Sure, Mom. I’ll do that.” He went to the piano and started playing Chopin.

He heard a laugh from the kitchen. “It’s cheating to put on records, Richard,” his mother’s lilting voice reached him. “Play ‘Moon River’ or ‘Deep Purple’ for me. You always were so good with those.”

“Sure, Mom.” He played “Moon River.” When he’d done that, he took out his cellphone and called Howard Butler. Butler picked up on the third ring.

“I’ve thought over your bigger deal, Mr. B,” he said.

“And?” came down the line.

“If you can advance me ten grand now, I’ll sign and do whatever you want.”

“Deal,” Butler said and disconnected.

Rich put his hands back on the keyboard and started into “Deep Purple.” “When the deep purple falls . . . over sleepy garden walls . . .”

“Yes, that’s so nice. You play it so nice,” Grace VonClief called from the kitchen. “We’ll have to get you more piano lessons. You’d be playing as well as that record in no time.”

“That would be nice, Mom,” Rich called back. He took a hand off the keyboard to touch his pocket, to ensure that the tax bill was still hidden there. And there it would stay until he paid it. He resumed playing, “And the stars begin to twinkle in the night . . .”

To be continued