Message-ID: <7489eli$9801191714@qz.little-neck.ny.us> X-Archived-At: From: Morg105829 Subject: Kathy by Morgan (M/F) Chapter 13 Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Path: qz!not-for-mail Organization: The Committee To Thwart Spam Approved: X-Moderator-Contact: Eli the Bearded X-Story-Submission: X-Original-Message-ID: To: story-submit@qz.little-neck.ny.us From: morg105829@aol.com Subj: "Kathy" Book II, Chapter 13 (M/F) (290 lines) January 18, 1998 Thanks for the (mostly) friendly comments. This is the fifteenth section of a book that runs 26 chapters. Readers are most strongly urged to read Kathy from the beginning. It will make no sense otherwise. I hope to have the balance of the book posted within a week or so. Comments (of any kind) will be appreciated. Contact me at morg105829@aol.com. Although this is substantially more tame than many postings on A.S.S.M., the usual disclaimers apply. Permission is granted to repost, but only on non- commercial sites. Please inform me if you do so. "Kathy" (c) 1991, 1998 by Morgan. Book II Chapter 13 The next afternoon Kathy drove to Charley's place and parked in the lot. Most of the spaces were empty. Before going in, she carefully looked around. It was a perfect location for a bar, across from the main gate of the Naval Base. The building was large but visibly needed work. Paint was peeling and the neon sign needed refurbishing The parking area was pot-holed and in need of resurfacing. There was no planting, and the place looked barren and uninviting, particularly in the daylight. Kathy walked in and stood at the entrance. The establishment was really a single very large room. A partition rose to the ceiling beginning about ten feet back from the entrance which separated the bar and lounge area on the left from a table area on the right. There were a substantial number of customers around the bar, but compared with the large size of the place, Charley's appeared almost empty. As Kathy walked up to the bar, an older man tending bar at the back saw her. He wiped his hands on his bar apron, and came hurrying down to greet her. Kathy saw there were two bartenders work ing even with the small crowd; Kathy estimated there could be five or more working when the place was busy. Charley lifted a hinged section of the bar and came out to greet her. He stuck out his hand in greeting, "Hi! I'm Charley McCann, and I certainly recognize you as Kathy Smith." Kathy took his hand in a firm grip, while Charley studied her. He slowly shook his head. "Some people are going to be very surprised. We see you a lot on those television news shows and talk about you. We thought that it was the TV makeup and lighting that made you look so good. Boy, are the guys going to be surprised when I tell them that TV doesn't do you justice! You're much more beautiful in person. Can I get you something from the bar before we sit down?" Kathy smiled warmly, and Charley could feel his heart start to melt. "You're an Irish flatterer, Charles McCann! That's a lot of blarney! But I would love a cold beer." Charley blushed, retreated to the bar and returned with two bottles of Sam Adams and chilled glasses. He led the way around to the empty table section. After seating Kathy at a table he sat down across from her. "Miss Smith, you must be Sam Jenkins niece. I just don't understand why he never mentioned you to me, though. He was my closest friend. But you are just like him. You're so warm and friendly... so natural." Charley thought about the gloomy prospects for his place and his face fell. "I guess you looked around when you came in?" Kathy nodded. "I'm afraid it doesn't look too good. I made a mistake a few years ago. I don't take any money to speak of out of the business. The whole thing's paid for. Sam gave me some money to help me get going, but I paid him back a long time ago. But then I didn't notice that the old place was showing its age until it was too late. I guess I kept the prices too low for too long. When I realized I needed to fix it up, I got some estimates. I almost fell over when I learned what the cost would be. Now I don't feel I can raise prices until I fix the place up, and I can't fix it up until I get money. Everyone knows it's a great location. I have had some good offers to buy the property from some big operators. Their idea is to tear the place down and put up a new, much fancier place on the property. I guess word of their interest got around. When I went around to the banks, they didn't want to lend, they wanted me to sell." Charley looked at Kathy with sorrow visible in his eyes. "Kathy... Do you mind if I call you Kathy?" Kathy took has hand warmly and said, "Please do. And may I call you Charley? I feel I should call you Uncle Charley." Charley blushed and continued to hold Kathy's hand. "I would love it! Imagine having a niece like you. But Kathy, I don't want to sell! It's not the money. The offer is a very good one. But what can I do with money? Kathy, I'm a bachelor like Sam. This is my life! These are my friends! I just don't want to give it up." Charley's head dropped and Kathy could see tears forming in his eyes. She went around the table and took the older man in her arms. Charley started to cry in earnest as if his heart would break. She continued to hold him while he regained control. Then he sniffed and reached into his pocket for a handkerchief. He wiped his eyes and blew his nose, then looked up at the girl. "I'm sorry, Kathy. That was awful! My God, I don't think I've cried since I was six years old. I certainly didn't mean..." Kathy smiled at him warmly and held his hand in both of hers. "I understand, Charley. I really do. It's your life. Look, can I make you an offer? Will you let me give you the money to fix the place up? I would like to help you make Charley's the best damn Navy bar in the world! Would you like that?" Charley started to smile. It grew like the sun coming out from behind a summer cloud. "You would do that? For me? But my God, Kathy, you don't know what you're saying. The estimates are for over $750,000!" Kathy replied, "That's light for what I have in mind. I was thinking between a million and a half and two." Charley's jaw dropped. "I would like to see the exterior completely redone. You ought to have the area landscaped. Put in some grass and shrubs and trees. This is a naval base, Charley. Except for the sea, all the sailors get to see is asphalt! We need to have some green things around. Now the kitchen: The swabbies like to drink, but they love to eat, too. Nothing fancy, but the kitchen has to be serving as long as the bar is open. The only places you can get something to eat after ten o'clock are the top hotels that the sailors can't afford, or the fast-food joints. And you need a car to get to most of them. Then..." Charley interrupted her. "How long have you been studying this place, Kathy?" Kathy reddened with embarrassment, realizing that she didn't know the first thing about running a bar or a restaurant. She had never seen the place in her life until a few minutes earlier, and here she was trying to tell the man who had built it and run it for years how to do it. "I'm sorry, Charley. I was out of line. I haven't studied your place at all. I never even saw it until I came in this afternoon. I apologize. Forget I said anything." "The hell I will forget! I just heard more sensible ideas from you in two minutes than from these dumb, so-called hospitality consultants over the last two years. Honest, Kathy, you never saw the place before?" "Honest, Charley." Kathy smiled. "I just tried to put myself in the position of the sailors. We want to give them what they want to buy. Now, about the money. I'll loan it to you and you pay me back when you can, the way you did with Sam." She reached into her handbag and pulled out a check that she had prepared at Ferguson's office on her way over. "I didn't know how much you would need, but I brought a check with me that you can use to get started on." The check, payable to Charles McCann, was for $1 million. She passed it to Charley who glanced at it, then stared. "This check says $1 million," he said, overcome with awe. "Are you crazy? I mean... I mean..." "Charley, what's the trouble? I'm only doing what my uncle would have done if he were still alive. He loaned you money to get started, didn't he?" "But Kathy, that was a few thousand dollars. This is one million!" "But that was before inflation, Charley," Kathy said with a big grin. She put out her hand. "Is it a deal?" Charley looked at the extended hand and then down at the check. "No," he said firmly, "It's not." Kathy's face fell. 'I just don't know how to handle money. I've hurt this poor man's feelings, and I've wounded his pride,' she thought. Tears started to form and then roll down her cheeks. "I'm sorry, Charley. I was just trying to help," she said softly. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings." This time he held her while her shoulders shook with sobs. Charley smiled. "I didn't want to make you cry, Kathy. But it is a great excuse to get to hold you. It's not the money, it's the deal that's no good. You are buying the place for that money. Of course, I would like to stay on and run it for you..." Kathy smiled brilliantly. She hugged him and then gave him a warm, soft, lingering kiss on his lips. Charley reddened like a beet. 'My God, what a kiss!' he thought. 'This girl is a volcano. I wonder if I'll be around when she finds the right guy?' Aloud he asked, "Kathy, do you have a boyfriend?" Kathy was visibly startled by the question. "No, I don't. Why do you ask?" "Because you will!" replied Charley. "When the right guy comes and you hear the bells, there's going to be a volcanic eruption. I hope I live to see it." Kathy had an eerie feeling. Charley had almost exactly repeated John Robinson's words the night of the fraternity initiation at Yale. "Charley, I have a favor to ask?" "Anything!" he said. "I would like to work as a bar waitress tonight. I could put on one of those super-short little strapless outfits. My legs are good enough, don't you think?" She swung her chair so around so she could extend her legs out straight. She pulled her skirt up to the tops of her thighs so Charley could inspect them. "My bottom's small, but it's firm. I'm not as voluptuous on top as I should be, but the construction of the outfit usually pushes a girl's boobs up so she looks bigger than she is..." Charley was scandalized. "Not on your life! Is your figure passable, indeed!? Kathy Smith, you idiot! Your figure could win the Miss Universe contest, for chrissakes! Do you think I want to start a riot? The Shore Patrol would put the place Off Limits. Your bottom would be so black and blue from pinches, you couldn't sit down for a week. No! You may not work as a bar waitress!" Kathy was prepared to argue when he added, "Besides, how would it look? Do you think you're invisible? You may be the best-known woman in Tidewater with all the television coverage you're getting. How do you think it would look for the Assistant District Attorney of Norfolk County in charge of the Dangerous Criminals Task Force to be seen working as a bar waitress? I ask you!" Kathy pouted at him like a little girl. "You're just saying that to keep from hurting my feelings. My body isn't up to your standards." "And you, young lady, are just fishing for more compliments. 'Vanity, thy name is woman.' Besides, you know I'm right." Kathy grinned at him. "Okay, you win, I guess. But seriously, I would like to look at the crowd tonight. Could I sit at a table and just watch? Please? I'll be real good! Honest." Charley nodded and smiled. "I guess I can't stop the new owner from keeping an eye on the place she just bought," he said. Charley grinned. "Of course, that assumes she pays for her own drinks." * * * At eleven-thirty that night, Kathy was sitting at a small table in the back of the room on the bar side. She liked the friendly atmosphere of the place. She had been interested to learn that most of the employees were off-duty naval personnel, including a number of the waitresses. She was recognized and word of who she was spread quickly. Kathy was embarrassed when a pretty young waitress came up and asked for her autograph. The girl said that she was a yeoman first class assigned to the base legal office. She told Kathy that she wanted to go into law when she got out of the Navy, and Kathy was her personal hero. In response to Kathy's question, she said her name was Sally. As Kathy wrote the autograph she looked at Sally. The girl was wearing a uniform exactly like the one Kathy had been describing to Charley earlier; she hadn't realized she was being prescient. Out of curiosity, she asked Sally about pinches. The girl rubbed her bottom ruefully and grinned. "They mean well. If they give you a really hard pinch, they usually end up sticking some money down your top. Besides, it improves my agility. I think of it as an obstacle course. A hard pinch is when I didn't clear the obstacle." Sally moved off to serve the customers that were crowding the place. Moments later, two men entered the bar. For some reason, Kathy sensed that they didn't belong. Responding to her premoni tion she unobtrusively placed her purse on the table in front of her. The pair went up to the bar and suddenly guns were brandished. "This is a holdup!" one of the men yelled. "Nobody move!" At that instant a sailor sitting opposite the bar against the wall, got up and started towards them. "Hey, wait a minute, you can't..." The gunmen were about fifteen feet away from the sailor when both weapons fired. Kathy was sitting to their left out of their sight line. She slipped her weapon from its holster and squeezed off four shots in rapid fire. Suddenly it appeared that their weapons had become too heavy to hold and their bones turned to jelly. Before they hit the floor, Kathy was running towards the sailor who was on the floor. "Call the police and get an ambulance. This man's been hit," she yelled. She found that he had been hit in his right arm at a point just below the shoulder. The slug was imbedded in the muscle; there was no exit wound. Although she couldn't be sure, Kathy didn't think the bone had been hit. The young waitress, Sally, came running up quickly with a first-aid kit. She seemed to know what she was doing as she cut away the sailor's sleeve to prepare to bandage the wound. The sailor tried to smile at her. "That's not fair, Sally. Why did you have to cut off my sleeve like that? These are my best tailor-made blues!" Sally finished bandaging his arm and then gave the sailor a soft kiss full on the lips. In the meantime, Kathy had moved to where the two gunmen lay crumpled on the floor. Other sailors were keeping curious people away from the scene. Moments later, sirens were heard responding to the shooting report. At the same time a siren with a different pitch could be heard moving in their direction from the Naval Base hospital. Two policemen entered the bar with their guns drawn. When they realized that everything was under control, they holstered their weapons and examined the bodies on the floor. Both men were dead so they were left untouched awaiting the crime team. Navy corpsmen came in with a stretcher and carefully removed the wounded sailor to the ambulance outside. A moment later its siren screamed as it rolled back towards the base hospital. Charley and his people moved the customers around to the table side of the establishment to clear the area for police who were now arriving in numbers. A detective lieutenant took charge and asked what happened. Kathy went up and introduced herself. She drew her .38 and gave it to the officer. After relating what had happened so suddenly, she concluded her story by saying, "They started shooting, so I returned fire to protect lives." The lieutenant wrote down the serial number of Kathy's LadySmith in his notebook and gave it back to her. Surreptitiously, he dropped four fresh .38 rounds into her hand along with the weapon. "You may need it again, Miss Smith. Please keep it fully loaded." Television news crews arrived and set up their lights and cameras out front. The lieutenant had conclusively identified one of the dead men as a person high on the Dangerous Criminals List. Since over two months had passed since the list was placed in broad circulation among law enforcement agencies, all of the media now had copies of their own. Kathy was pleased that, even though they had obtained copies, no one had published it. The other dead man was identified as an associate of the first whose criminal accomplishments were not yet numerous enough to make the list himself. Kathy put on a coat and went outside to meet the press. She quickly related the events of the evening. A TV reporter identified one of the gunmen by name and asked Kathy if he was on the List. Kathy decided to break precedent by conceding what both she and the reporter knew. "Yes, he was," she said without elaboration. By this time, things were winding down at Charley's. The morgue wagon had taken the bodies away and the crime lab people had finished their work. One was overheard saying to the other that it was a waste of time. The whole thing was open-and-shut. Two dangerous hoodlums had been gunned down, and it couldn't happen to nicer guys. The other replied that they still had to fill out all the forms neatly to keep the paper-pushers happy. The last vehicle moved out and things started to get back to normal. Kathy whispered to Charley who announced that the bar was open and drinks were on the house until closing. Then he raced around filling orders. Meanwhile, Kathy went back to her table and sat down. Suddenly she felt her knees turn to rubber and she started to feel sick. As she did, Sally quickly came over and held her. Kathy absently noticed how clean the girl smelled. "Thank you, Kathy. They were going to kill Jim, you know." Kathy looked up, slightly dazed. Just then Charley came up with a glass filled with an amber liquid which he gave to her. He asked Sally when she needed to be back at the base. "Not until 0800 on Monday. Why, Charley?" she asked. "Sally, I would appreciate it if you would drive Miss Smith back home. I really don't think she's in any condition to drive now, and she certainly won't be after she drinks that cognac. I'll keep your time running on the clock until Monday." "Charley McCann," Sally exclaimed angrily, "That's an insult! On the clock, indeed! Look, she saved Jim's life! I don't know if I'll marry him, but I sure want him to stay alive while I make up my mind. Miss Smith, I would be honored to take you home, if it's all right with you?" "Sally, it would save my life. Thank you so much!" The girl went back to the dressing room to change out of her uniform. Charley sat down at Kathy's table while they were waiting. "Kathy, I just don't know what to say. Don't take it the wrong way, but when those guys pulled their guns, I looked your way to be sure you were safe. Then I heard the firing. Kathy, I don't think a cobra can strike as fast as you moved. You were sitting with your hand on your purse. The next instant there's flame coming from your right hand and those shits are on the floor. Sam and I were buddies during World War II and saw a lot of action together. He would have been very proud!" He held her in his arms until Sally returned. The two girls went out to the car with Kathy still carrying her cognac. Charley had told her that it was one of the best in the world, Remy Martin's Louis XIII. All she knew was it was delightfully smooth and was calming her down. Sally headed out the Virginia Beach Expressway. Kathy could hardly stay awake to give Sally the intricate directions to her apartment. Kathy showed Sally to the guest room, went to her room, removed her clothes and fell into bed. She was so tired that she left her clothes in a pile on the floor where they fell. -- +--------------' Story submission `-+-' Moderator contact `------------+ | story-submit@qz.little-neck.ny.us | story-admin@qz.little-neck.ny.us | | Archive site +--------------------+------------------+ Newsgroup FAQ |