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gotten cramps before when he was scared.
    Nothing to be scared of, he told himself. Nobody’s here.
    Probably.
    But this was the first time he had ever broken into someone’s house. Only natural to have a little indigestion at a time like this.
    Soon, feeling better, Albert hurried up the stairs.
    To his right was a bedroom with model airplanes strung across the ceiling in dogfights. The bed was empty. He started to enter
     the room, then stopped as he was gripped by more cramps.
    He leaned against the door frame and shivered.
    Getting worse! What’m I gonna do?
    Gonna crap my pants…
    Turning around, he saw the doorway of an upstairs bathroom only a few feet away. He hurried over to it, slapped the light
     switch, rushed to the toilet, jerked his jeans down and dropped onto the seat just in time.
    After the explosive diarrhea, he felt much better.
    He wiped his rear end. Then he wiped the sweat off his face. Then he stayed on the toilet and wondered whether to flush.
    Better wait. If I flush and somebody’s in the house, I’ll be up Shit Creek.
    He pulled up his jeans and fastened them. After washing his hands at the sink, he resumed his search of the house.
    There were two more bedrooms. One seemed to be a guest room, the other the master bedroom. Albert found nobody in either of
     them, so he returned to the bathroom, flushed the toilet, and sprayed the area with pine scented air freshener.
    Then he went into the boy’s bedroom. Using his penlight, he checked the cluttered top of the dresser. No money. He went through
     the drawers. He scanned shelves that were loaded with books, model ships, and Indian souvenirs: a tom-tom, a miniature teepee,
     a headdress full of colorful feathers, a tomahawk with a rubber head.
    He picked up the tomahawk.
    Too bad it isn’t real.
    On its handle was printed, WISCONSIN DELLS—VACATION WONDERLAND.
    Albert put down the tomahawk and continued his search.
    He found an ashtray filled with foreign coins, but no other money.
    On the bedstand, beside an empty drinking glass, was a Boy Scout sheath knife.
    All right!
    Keeping it, he went to the desk. The pencil holder held pencils, a gum eraser, an old crayon, and two pennies. He gave the
     top drawer a tug. Locked.
    “What have we here?” he whispered.
    Using the Boy Scout knife, he pried open the drawer and found a tattered copy of Playboy . He set the knife aside and pulled out the magazine. It was the September, 1973 issue. On its cover, a naked gal was crouching.
     Her right breast actually showed. Even her nipple.
    Hands trembling, Albert flipped through the magazine. Miss September was a great-looking blonde.
    Wow!
    He searched the small print for her name:Geri Glass.
    He started to grow hard, staring at Geri’s photos.
    I’ll take this with me, he thought. The little Boy Scout shouldn’t have a nasty magazine like this, anyway. I’ll be doing
     him a favor.
    Chuckling softly, Albert left Geri behind and searched the magazine for more treasures.
    Near the back, he found an article about a movie called The Naked Ape. It had a photo of Johnny Crawford stark naked.
    The kid from The Rifleman ?
    Holy shit, that’s him, all right! And you can see his peter!
    Not interested in any guy’s peter, Albert moved on and found that the article had a pretty good layout on the movie’s other star, a brunette named
     Victoria Principal.
    Not bad, he thought.
    But he liked Miss September better. Something about Miss September really got to him.
    He flipped back to the center section and gazed at her, then shut the magazine and slipped it under his arm.
    He resumed his search by trying another desk drawer. This one wasn’t locked. Inside, he found flat tubes of model airplane
     glue, bottles of paint, a few instruction sheets and an assortment of spare airplane parts.
    The third drawer was a catchall: it had caught just about everything except money. But in the bottom drawer, Albert came upon
     a tobacco tin. He shook it and