Flesh Pawns by Don Elliott aka Robert Silverberg (Sundown Reader #525, 1964)

Like Gutter Road, there’s a sexual blackmail con scheme at the center of this little crime noir softcore.

Charley is grifter making his way from New York to Florida for the winter, to pull some jobs.  In a Delaware roadhouse, he spots waitress Janey and knows she has what he needs: she can look fifteen or twenty-five with her looks, lack of make-up or too much make-up…

He picks Janey up in his smooth way, beds her, invites her to come with him Miami.  She has nothing better to do, so why not.

Charley tells her his con game: she dresses up nice, hangs out in hotel bars, acting like a sweet young lady who likes older men, men with money. She does not charge them, she is not hooking.  The men have a great time with a hot young number. The next day, Charley shows up to the mark’s hotel room and Janey is wearing bobby sox, pony tail and no-make up, looking like jailbait. Charley acts like the appalled older brother whose kid sister was seduced; he then says he will go to the cops unless the men pay up, say $500-1000.

Janey thinks it’s a good grift.  She’s hooked before so she’s no stranger to crime.  They make some money in Miami and all is well for the two crooks, but eventually they meet other people who lead them astray — Janey a more suave guy and future real romance, Charley two teen vixens who lead him to a bigger gutter road.

Not the best of the Don Elliotts, but even these lesser titles are often better reads than 75% of the sleaze published back then and even now.

Gutter Road by Don Elliott aka Robert Silverberg (Sundown Reader 514, 1964)

This one is structurally a little different than Silverberg’s otrher softcore titles, or even his work in general — generally, Silverberg keeps to the point of view of one character, either in the first or third person. Gutter Road is a multi-character multi-POV story that seems like the kind Lawrence Block did — and we might have thought this was a Block if it had Andrew Shaw’s byline, but there are too many tell-tale signs of Silverberg’s typerwriter.

The little novel concerns a variety of mid life and sexual crises. Fred baumann is a CPA who, one night, picks up a young female hitchhiker, Joanne.  They park.  She seduces him.  In the middle of it all, she tells him no and fights him off but his blood is boiling too much. When all is said and gone, Joanne tells Fred she will go to the cops and claim rape if he does not pay her $20,000. He realizes he’s just been had, and under blackmail. A rape charge would ruin his career and cause him to lose his wife and teenage daughter.

He doesn’t have that kind of money so they agree on a $5,000 down payment and $100 a week until the end of the year.  Joanne knows she is getting more than she expected; she usually gets a few grand for each sucker; she has been a stripper and a streetwalker since she was nineteen and blackmailing men is lucrative for her, and keeps her and her hood boyfriend in money. She freely gives him her money and lets him have other women as long as he comes by each night and loves her up a few times.

Meanwhile, Fred Baumann’s wife, having no idea that their savings has just been hijacked, is getting hot and bothered in her middle-years.  She is not getting attention from Fred, so she starts offering herself to delivery men and repairmen and anyone else who shows up at the door.

Their 15-year-old daughter, Karen, wants to be bad, wants to be ravished, but she only dates nice boys who won’t take her when she offers. She masturbates in her bed to common rape fantasies: of hooded men breaking into the house, crawling into her window and taking her by force.  One night, in the wrong neighborhood, she is grabbed by a street gang guy, a knife held to her, and taken to a clubhouse where she is gang raped by a group of boys. They are flabbergasted when she drinks beer and undresses and tells them to do it.  This is her fantasy come true, right? But reality is too much, and although in terror, she falls into lust, the gang bang goes on for hours with men from all over the neighborhood libing up, broken up by the cops who investigate what is going on. The scene pays homage to the intense, surreal gang rape scene in Last Exit to Briooklyn.

And then Fred decides to murder Joanne because he can’t keep paying her,

Another good vintage read from Robert Silverberg.

The Many Faces of John Dexter #8: Sin Psycho by Harry Whittington (Sundown Reader #512, 1964)

Of the few “Missing 38” I’ve read so far, Sin Psycho is the best, next to Sharing Sharon. The title is misleading, surprise there — the protagonist isn’t psycho, she’s desperate to save her family from the pit of poverty.

Ginny is a beautiful housewife who lives in the suburbs of Boston. She has two kids and a husband, Bob.  Bob, however, has been laid up sick in bed for months by an unknown illness, keeping him from his manager job at a bank.  They’re running out of money, and the bank that owns their mortgage is close to foreclosing, and the milkman can’t keep extending her credit even though her kids need to eat.  The elctricty will be turned off soon and although Bob is bed-ridden, he’s always horny…she’s cold, but when he touches her, she changes, she turns into a fiery sex-crazed naughty housewife…

But they need money and none of the jobs she’s offered will help pay enough…

Then her friend Aggie, who seems to always do well, lets her in on a secret, to help Ginny: Aggie really works for a beauty salon in Boston, but the salon is a front for a call girl service where a number of desperate housewives work out of…

And Ginny is desperate. And she does like sex. And men do find her attractive…

She’s nervous with her first client, but he’s grateful to have her because she seems to actually like the sex and have real orgasms…

Eventually she gets into the swing of things, and not only does she like the sex, and the adventure of being with strange men once or twice a day in their hotel rooms or homes, she likes the money… because she now can pay the bills, keep the bankers happy, feed and clothe her children, and have some left over to spend on herself.

She tells Bob she works at some office. When Bob gets well and goes back to work, he wants her to quit…stay home again…but she finds it hard to quit. She has become addicted to the life: the sex and money and excitement of strangeness…

One client, a rich old man, likes to pretend she is Martha, his dead wife…

Some like rough sex, and some like torture…when she gets a man who beats the hell out of her, she knows she’s gone too far, with a broken niose and swollen eye and bleeding…

And then she gets arrested by the vice cops (the cop had been one of her customers) and all goes to hell, exposed…

An interesting little story.  Whittington delves into Ginny’s psyche well, and tells of her sexual “affair” with a twenty-five year old Navy guy who rented a room from her parents, and she was ten years old. Whittington handles the pedophilia smoothly, we’re never quite sure if she had sex with the guy but we assume so, and Ginny never feels it was wrong.  All her life she has been trying to find a man just like that first lover…

Highly recommended, if you can find a copy — the Whittington Corniths are rare.

Sundown Reader Titles

Sundown Reader s was one of Greenleaf/Hamling’s many imprints…