SYNOPSIS: THE WHOLE POINT OF REVENGE    


     Detective Fred Moran is the first on the scene when the uniforms
radio in that they have a case of aggravated assault, battery, and
rape.
     The Dearborn living room is splashed with blood. The mother was
raped and beaten with a baseball bat, her spine crushed.  The daughter
raped over and over, her right shoulder twisted out of its socket.
     Moran is impressed by the girl's stoicism as the paramedic snaps
her shoulder back into place, and the bright, shining courage in her
eyes as she looks at the detective and states quietly, "I am going to
kill them."
     He believes her.
     From mug shots, Denise Dearborn identifies the four who savaged
her and her mother.
     George Vail, rich, pampered, and vicious.  Three previous charges
of assault quashed by his influential father.
     Sammy Bronson, pimp and sadist.
     John Vault, big, mean, and homosexual.
     Aaron Gaunt, already suspected by Moran as a murderer, but unable
to make a case.
     At the hospital, Mrs. Dearborn makes corrobatory identification. 
A solid case.
     While Moran is getting his warrant, a call comes in from George
Vail's father that his son and his friends want to turn themselves in. 
Patrolmen William Dargon and Daniel o'Casey make the arrest.

                                #

     Jakob Attenboro, counsel for the defense, is famous for his
ability to twist facts and confuse a jury, but even he can't do much
in the face of full confessions by the defendants.
     The case is nearing its end, when Attenboro suddenly recalls one
of the arresting officers to the stand.  "In light of new evidence, I
have a few more questions."
     The defense attorney has the officer repeat his testimony.  The
officer, William Dargon, tells how his partner, O'Casey, went around
to cover the back of the house while he, Dargon, entered the front. 
How he was led by the defendant Vail's father to the living room,
where George and his friends made full confession as to what they had
done in the Dearborn house.
     "And at just what point, Officer Dargon, did you inform the
defendants of their right against self-incrimination?"
     The judge is forced to grant the defense motion for dismissal.

                                #

     Moran looks at Denise Dearborn, who has occupied the same seat
throughout the trial.  The girl is crushed by the outcome.  Moran goes
to her.  "Let's get out of here," he says, "the whole place stinks of
perjury and payoff."
     Denny allows the detective to take her to a lounge, where they
have a drink and Moran curses the young cop who had obviously sold
out.
     "Are you sure Dargon sold out?"
     "Everybody knew.  The judge, the prosecutor, Attenboro."
     "Mr. Attenboro knew?"
     "Not officially until last night, as he said.  If he had known
earlier, he'd be subject to disbarment and charges of criminal
conspiracy.  But Attenboro's too sly a fox to get caught like that. 
He suspected, I'm sure, but had no official knowledge until George
Vail's father called him last night to say he didn't remember his son
being read his rights."
     Denny looks at the detective.  "Im going to kill them."
     "I know."
     "No.  You think I'm just hysterical."
     "I believe you.  I believed you the night it happened, and I
believe you now.  That's what's scaring me."
     After a long argument, Moran gets the girl to hold off taking any
action until he can see if he can bring the perps back to trial.  What
the detective can't tell Denny is that he has already made up his mind
that these particular four are finished.  He has been after them for
years, and seen the so-called justice system release them time after
time.  The savage assault on Denny, with whom he has fallen in love,
and her mother, has pushed him over the edge, and he himself 
intends to kill them.


                                #

     Moran drives Denny to the hospital, where she finds that the news
of the perps' release has put her mother into a coma from which she is
not expected to recover.
     When Moran calls her the next morning, Denny tells him that all
bets are off, and she will try to take down as many of the four as she
can before she gets caught or killed.
     To prevent the girl from destroying herself, the detective
reveals that he is going do the job.
     Denny insists that it is her right to be in on the action.
     Moran says all right, but they do it his way, and she takes
orders.  "We don't make plans," Moran tells her, "We wait for
circumstances to break our way, then we squash one of the cockroaches. 
Then we wait some more."
     Denny agrees.
     "I'm throwing one more fish into the pan," Moran says.  "Dargon. 
And I'll tell you why.  When these maggots start dropping dead, Dargon
is going to think you had a hand in their travel arrangements.  We
can't let that happen."

                                #

     Dargon is suspected by all his fellow cops of selling out.  His
partner O'Casey doesn't want to ride with him any more, and Dargon is
assigned to a one-man unit.  He gets a tip supposedly from a snitch,
but in reality from Denny, of the proposed robbery of a liquor store
by Bronson and Vault.  Dargon thinks if he can kill the two in the
commission of a felony, it will take the stink off him.
     Moran, in shapeless jumpsuit and ski mask overpowers the liquor
store clerk, and waits with a shotgun for Dargon to arrive.  Dargon is
given an honorable funeral.  "After all, he did charge single-handedly
into an armed robbery."
     Prior to this, Moran had located a secluded fishing cabin on a
small lake, where he and Denny had moved in together.  They dispose of
the shotgun, and disguises, everything that could tie them to the
shooting, and wait for the opportunity to take out one of the four.

                                #

     The opportunity comes when a little whore is savagely beaten. 
Moran knows Marilee Blanchard is one of the stable of teenage hookers
run by Sammy Bronson, and the beating has Sammy's trademark all over
it.
     The badly disfigured girl receives a phone call at the hospital
wanting to know if she'd like to take part in making funeral
arrangements for Sammy.  Indeed she would.
     Marilee is given instructions guaranteed to bring Sammy to the
hospital to kill her.  "Don't worry, Marilee, before he can get
anywhere near you, he is going to wind up very, very dead."
     "It don't matter," Marilee says, "with what he did to my face I
got no life anyway."
     Sammy is maneuvered into the hospital in the early morning hours. 
As he sneaks up the stairs, he is met by Denny who smashes his
windpipe with one blow of a piece of pipe, and shatters his spine with
a second.  "Are we having fun, Sammy?" she hisses, "Are we having as
much fun as the night you broke my mother's back?"
     Moran and the girl drag Sammy down to the parking garage.  Denny
gets into a heavy Buick, and drives around the block to get up speed. 
As she roars down the entrance ramp, Moran Heaves Sammy into the path
of the car.

                                #

     That was a Friday.  On Monday, two things worthy of note
occurred.
     Marilee is called to the office of the Chief of Surgery and
informed that he has received an anonymous donation of a hundred
thousand dollars to restore her face to its original prettiness, and
Moran also speaks with a man of medicine.
     The autopsy surgeon tells him that Sammy was dead before the car
struck him, and that Moran has a murder on his hands.
     It turns out that the autopsy surgeon, who never keeps up with
the news, knows nothing about Sammy.  By the time Moran finishes
filling him in, and shows him the pictures of Marilee, Denny, and her
mother, the surgeon says whoever killed Sammy deserves a medal.  "Do
we really want to find the civic-minded citizen who took Sammy from
amongst us?" Moran asks.
     The doctor revises his report to show that Sammy died after being
struck by a car driven by person or persons unknown.
     One down three to go.

                                #

     John Vault had been in and out of penal institutions since age
ten when the juvenile authorities removed him from the whorehouse
where his mother worked.
     Myra Vault had taught her young son to turn homosexual tricks to
augment her income.  The woman had wound up in womens' prison for what
amounted to life.
     When released at age eighteen from detention, where he had become
a confirmed homosexual, Johnny got a menial job at the Midtown
Athletic Club, where access to the club pool showed him his real love
in life ... swimming.
     The young man was so good at long-distance swimming that he
attracted the attention of an athletic scout who got him sponsored for
a try at swimming the English Channel.  But Johnny's homosexual
tendencies got him barred from the club, and cost him the channel try. 
     He was very bitter, blaming everyone but himself, when he met
George Vail.  He moved into the Vail house along with Sammy and Aaron
Gaunt.  George seemed to have some sort of hold over his father, who
seemed not to be able to refuse George anything, no matter what.
     The Vails owned a lodge up on Green Mountain Lake, and the Vail
property had some of the finest ski-slopes to be found anywhere. 
George took his cronies up to the lake nearly every weekend during the
summer, for two reasons.  So Johnny could swim ... and the summer camp
for girls aged twelve to eighteen just a short walk through the woods.
     George subsidized the camp mistress's cocain habit, and the woman
supplied a steady stream of young nookie for George and his friends.
     Studying John Vault's rap-sheet, Moran turned up the love of
swimming.  This led to the cabin on Green Mountain Lake, where the big
homo practiced a twenty-mile swim ... four laps between the cabin, and
a promontory opposite.
     A year had passed since the squashing of Sammy Bronson, and Denny
was getting restless to get on with it.
     Moran told her his plan.
     He and Denny swam and fished, and made love, on the little lake
behind the cottage they'd rented.  Now Moran bought SCUBA gear, and
they began long-distance underwater training.
     By the Labor Day weekend, they'd easily mastered a six-mile round
trip, and located a fishing camp on Green Mountain Lake just three and
a half miles down from the Vail lodge.  The summer tourists had left
and the fall contingent had not yet arrived, but George and his
friends were still partying with the young stuff from the camp, which
was scheduled to close in another week.  The time was ideal.  Not many
possible witnesses.
     Denny and the detective rented a cabin at Schwartz's Fishing
Camp, and set about establishing a habit pattern.  Every morning
they'd take their rented motorboat out and anchor a mile or so
offshore, swim and fish.
     On the Saturday chosen, they left two life-size inflatable dolls
tied to the thwarts of the boat, and swam the three and a half miles
to the Vail beach.  When John Vault passed over them, he was dragged
to the bottom of the lake.
     The newspapers carried the story of two defendants in a
sensational trial meeting untimely deaths, but nobody connected the
two events.
     Two down, two to go.

                                #

     Aaron Gaunt, fifteen, liked looking up the young teacher's dress. 
Helen Wilson reddened, and uncrossed her legs from that tomboyish
position of one ankle resting on the opposite knee.  Her father had
called her down for the unladylike posture many times, but she still
occasionally forgot when in deep thought.  And the new glass-top desks
the education department had bought failed to give her the protection
her old oak desk had done.
     Aaron grins at the young teacher's embarrassment. 
     Helen's one slip in an otherwise blameless life, had ben falling
in love with Tim.  They had put off getting married until after Tim
completed his Army duty in Viet Nam.  Tim had died there, never
knowing about little Timmy.
     The pretty teacher usually uses the faculty lounge to grade
papers until time to pick up Timmy from the sitter around six o'clock,
leaving her evenings free to be with the little boy.
     She is doing so when Aaron enters, locking the door behind him. 
He draws a switchblade.  "I've come to get some of that pussy you've
been showing me."
     Helen tries to talk the boy out of it.  "I'll scream."
     "Go ahead and yell, the night janitor's at Sullivan's Bar sopping
up suds."
     Helen tries to run, but Aaron grabs her by the hair, and yanks
her back, breaking her neck.
     He caresses the woman, lays her on the couch and has intercourse
with the dead body.
     Moran gets the case.  He knows Aaron has raped at least two girls
at school, and that he killed the teacher, but can't prove it.  He
tells Aaron.  "I'm keeping an open file on you, maggot.  One day
you'll make a mistake, and I'll be there to bury you."
     A year or so later, Moran receives a call from Aaron's sister. 
"Are you the detective who investigated the death of Helen Wilson?"
     "One of them."
     "Aaron told me you threatened to bury him."
     "Are you making a complaint of police harassment, Miss Gaunt?"
     "No.  If somebody wants to bury my brother, I know where I can
get a shovel."
     Moran goes to talk with Jessica Gaunt.  He finds that not only
did Aaron rape his own sister, but that she caught him at the wake of
their aunt, in the coffin, copulating with the corpse.  She wants
Aaron put away in a mental institution.
     "Will you testify to all this in court?"
     She wouldn't.
     "Then all I can do is wait for him to make a mistake."
     It comes to Moran's attention that Aaron has taken a job at a
mortuary in a small nearby town washing bodies at night.
     "It couldn't be better for us if Aaron were working on our side. 
I grew up near there."
     He explains his plan to Denny.

                                #

     Just outside the little town where Aaron had gotten his job, was
the old slave cemetery of a long vanished plantation, one kept in neat
repair, and used by the descendants of the slaves.  The small
graveyard had long since been filled to capacity, and the present day
families adopted the policy of burying several members of the same
family in one grave, placing the latest coffin atop the last.  So a
new or refurbished grave here would go unremarked.
     Under a full moon Denny watches while Moran digs down.  He
reaches a coffin, and pries off the lid.  All that remains of the old
gentleman inside are bones and a few musty rags.
     Denny looks around the peaceful graveyard.  "Do you think they'll
mind?"
     "All the folk buried here are kind and gentle people.  They'd be
appalled at Aaron.  But I think they'd understand."
     Aaron has finished defiling the body of a young girl, and is
shaving a fat man, when Moran saps him, and binds him with masking
tape.  "I told you I'd bury you some day."
     Aaron is taken to the cemetery, and dumped, screaming, into the
coffin.  Moran fills in the hole.
     Three down, one to go.
                                #

     Moran begins intensive surveillance of George Vail.  He manages
to plant a bug in the Vail den, and at long last hears some very
damaging information.  He learns the secret of George's hold over his
father.
     Anthony Vail is a very manly man, and secretly mob connected.  He
is almost paranoid about his macho image.
     Angela Vail's college roommate is visiting from Hawaii.  Anthony
comes home unexpectedly one night, and catches the two women in bed. 
He retires, unobserved.
     When he finds that his lovely young wife is cheating on him ... 
with another woman ... nothing but her death will satisfy him.
     As has been noted, the Vail property on Green Mountain Lake
contains some of the finest ski slopes.  Angela and her friend are
ardent skiers.
     A conversation Anthony had had with the county surveyor several
months prior laid the foundation of his plan to kill the two women.
     "That underlying fault, Mr. Vail, is very unstable.  It is highly
possible that a hard rain, or a heavy snow, could bring down half that
mountainside.  However, a few tons of concrete poured here ... and
here ... would shore it up safely."
     It had been too late in the year to pour the concrete, and the
project was scheduled for the following April.  Anthony had a ready
made alibi!
     He proposes a ski weekend, and Angela and her lover accompany him
to the lodge.  Anthony makes an excuse to leave the two women alone,
and returns secretly to spy on them.  He finds them making lesbian
love, and his hatred grows.
     He lays dynamite charges that will collapse the fault, and bring
several hundred thousand tons of rock and snow down.
     Returning to the cabin, he proposes a toast in drugged champagne.
     He spreads an oiled-nylon ground sheet to catch any blood. He
brutally strips the two women, and wires them together, each with her
face between the others' legs.  He lights a cigar, and waits for them
to return to consciousness.
      Then Angela and Eileen stir.  The wire cuts into their flesh. 
Anthony grips Eileen by the back of the head, forcing her face up into
the other woman's crotch until she smothers.
     He has just finished strangling his wife when his sixteen year
old son, George, walks in.
     George looks at the bodies wired together.  "You didn't have to
kill her for that, Dad.  Half the women at the Country Club are part-
time lesbians."
     George helps his father dispose of the bodies according to
Anthony's plan.  The unfortunate ladies went for an early morning ski,
and were caught in the avalanche.  George holds the murders over
Anthony with the threat of a letter he has written to be given to the
police should anything happen to him.
     George also wonders what happened to Aaron.  "He walked out of
here four months ago, and just vanished.  First Sammy, then Johnny,
now Aaron just disappears.  That Dearborn bitch swore she'd kill us
all, and I'm the only one left.  "I'm going to find her and get some
answers."
     Anthony tries to dissuade him, but George puts out word on the
street of a big reward for information.

                                #

     Moran has accepted a job with the San Francisco PD.  "Give me a
month to clear up my cases, and give notice, then we let George find
you.  We manipulate him up to the Vail cabin on the lake, finish this
off, and move to California."
     According to plan, George is allowed to find Denny.  He forces
his father to help him grab the girl, and drive them to the lake.  One
hitch occurs when George again rapes Denny in the car.
     At the cabin, George prepares to torture the girl with a hot iron
to get her to tell what happened to Aaron.  Moran, masked, breaks in,
knocks Anthony unconscious, and lets George look down the twin barrels
of a sawed-off shotgun.  Anthony is bound and blindfolded.
     The detective removes his ski mask.
     "You!" George gasps.  "Why?  My father paid you two hundred grand
to get us off."
     Without looking at Denny, Moran answers, "Because I didn't want
you four maggots locked safely away in prison where I couldn't get at
you personally.  I'm sorry, Denny, I had no idea that it would kill
your mother."
     Denny forgives him.
     Moran snarls at George.  "I was going to just put a bullet in
your head, but you had to rape her again."  He proceeds to kick
George's testicles to jelly.
     George, trying to crawl away, knocks over the can of gasoline
used to start the fire in the fireplace, and sets himself ablaze. 
Moran and Denny drag Anthony to safety, where he regains
consciousness.
     Moran keeps his face covered while Denny tells the man, "Anything
you tell the police about me will just make things worse for you. 
George really did leave a letter telling what happened to your wife
and her lover, and where to dig for the bodies.  You and George
destroyed each other."  She drives an open clasp knife into the tree
over the man's head.  "By the time you cut yourself free, we'll be far
away, and picking up speed."

                                #

     She and the detective trot swiftly away through the woods.



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