Beauty Queen

look of gunmetal coolness and confidence; without these, she would have been a vapid kind of TV starlet pretty.
    "So you want to work as a bodyguard," Jeannie had said.
    Mary Ellen smiled cheerfully. "I read the newspapers, and I would imagine that you need one," she said. "I'm sure you already have some security people. But you need more than that. You need a personal bodyguard."
    "Why?" said Jeannie.
    "I would imagine that certain people write you threatening letters, and make threatening phone calls and so on," said Mary Ellen.
    They looked each other in the eye for a long moment.
    Very good, Jeannie thought.
    "It would involve a lot of traveling," Jeannie said.
    "That's okay," said Mary Ellen. "I'm not married, and I'm unemployed."
    "Why me, in particular?" asked Jeannie.
    "Because I am very struck by the things you say," said Mary Ellen quietly.
    Jeannie studied her, tapping her pencil on the desk.
    Then she tried a classic thing on her interviewee.
    "Tell me," she said, "if you died today, do you believe that you would go straight to Heaven?"
    "Oh yes, I do," said Mary Ellen, with such quiet fervor that suddenly the shivers were chasing up and down Jeannie's spine.
    "You accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour?" she said.
    "Oh yes," said Mary Ellen.
    "Are you a Baptist?"
    "No, I'm a Presbyterian, actually. But I believe in the Bible. My dad and I used to read the Bible together." She paused a moment, then added, "My dad was a cop."
    "Oh?" said Jeannie, the shivers still chasing. "Is he still on the police force?"
    "He's dead," said Mary Ellen. "He was shot and killed on duty, in Harlem."
    "Oh dear, I'm sorry," said Jeannie.
    Suddenly she felt that she could understand why this young woman, who obviously loved her father deeply, would want to be a policewoman.
    Still testing, she said, "You must be very sorry you were laid off."
    "Well, no actually," said Mary Ellen. "The force is tough for a woman, really. That's why I thought of being your personal bodyguard. Men politicians always have men bodyguards, right? Well, it's really more proper for a woman to have a woman bodyguard. I mean, supposing somebody tries to crack a shot at you in the ladies' room?"
    Jeannie was delighted. The girl had given all the right answers.
    "All right," she said. "We'll pay you three hundred dollars a week, plus all expenses. I presume you can start tomorrow?"
    Mary Ellen left that interview with Colter just a little shaken. She had gone into it with open eyes, coldly, knowing that the Colter organization would surely check with the New York Police Department about her. If the NYPD—above all, Captain Bader—had known she was a lesbian, and if they had laid her off for that reason, they would surely tell the Colter people about her "deviant tendencies."
    Of course, there was always the possibility that the NYPD would not admit to having had any gays in its true-blue ranks, not even to Jeannie Colter. They might fear further investigation. And if there was anything that Commissioner
    Manuella feared, it was outside investigation and interference in his department. Surely Manuella wouldn't want a Knapp Commission-type affair with sexual overtones.
    But the most likely possibility was that the NYPD would tell Colter that Mary Ellen Frampton was a lesbian—if they knew it.
    "Now is the moment," Mary Ellen had thought, "when I find out if this is why I was laid off."
    Instead, to her surprise, she had learned from Utley and Colter that Bader had praised her to the skies, and said he was sorry she was gone.
    So what did this mean?
    It meant either that the NYPD, in a panic about the discovery that it had harbored at least one homosexual in its ranks (Danny), was frantically covering up, and denying the presence of any others. It meant that Bader himself might be gay, and covering up for her if he knew she was lesbian. Or it meant that the NYPD had not known that she was a lesbian, and had therefore laid h6r off for economic reasons. And it raised the question of whether any of the NYPD Four had been laid off as gays.
    As she got ready to start her bodyguard job with Colter, Mary Ellen tortured herself with these thoughts.
    If she hadn't been laid off as gay, then why was she going ahead with her plans to kill Colter?
    But after she had spent several days in the midst of the Colter people, and heard all the casual anti-gay talk, especially the constant stream of colorful homophobic statements from her new boss, she found herself