She was obviously in a state of sexual excitement, her face slack, eyes blurring. She was rolling her hips slowly from side to side, and her breasts were swollen, nipples thrusting, belly muscles twitching and rippling.
“Come on,” she said in a petulant smothered tone. “Come on!”
So I fumbled with buttons long enough for her to roll up and crawl toward me, reaching to help, and when she was positioned correctly I thought of the way Betsy’s face looked, and I hit Lilo Perris as hard as I have ever hit anyone, and as perfectly. I reached up as though getting my hands free of the shirt buttons, then I dropped my hand. It traveled about eight inches before it hit her on the left side of the chin, and kept going another foot and a half after it knocked her mouth open. Sensing a reluctance to hit a female, I had told myself to hit through the target and beyond, not hit at it. When you hit at something, you pull it. When you hit someone in the nose, you try to smash an imaginary nose on a person standing directly behind him. That gets the back into it.
She dropped immediately and bonelessly, face down, head hanging over the side of the bed, one arm dangling, legs splayed in frog posture. I put my fingertips against the pulse in her throat and it was fast but strong.
Now, honey, we get ready for visitors. Try the cupboards. Nothing. Nothing. Hmm, an extension cord. Box of Kleenex. Nothing in the next one. There now! Nice fat roll of black plastic electrician’s tape.
Roll you over in the clover. Feel the jaw, shift it about a little. No looseness. No gritty sound of bone edges. Didn’t even chip a pretty tooth. Beginning to puff and darken right there on the button, though. Thumb the mouth full of tissue, and draw a black X with tape across it. Bring your arms in front of you, and hold your elbows so they touch, and wind the tape around and around. A nice binding just above the elbow, another around the forearms, a third around the wrists. Now clasp the loose hands together and … around and around like this. An awkward attitude of prayer, dear girl. Up with the knees, close together. One binding just above the knees, one just below, and one around the ankles. Now, my muscular darling, we roll you up into a ball, into fetal position, and we put the extension cord around your legs under your knees, thread it up between your upper arms and breasts, and we tie it right here, at the nape of your neck, just firmly enough. Comfy? Special treatment for a very strong girl.
Radio blasting away. Sound protection works both ways. Stay down, so you won’t be seen by anybody looking in the windows, McGee. Careful with the door. Bit by bit. Nothing. Step down. Strategic window on the other side. Ease around the end. Nothing. Now up to the last corner, lie flat, stick head around the corner made of block.
And by God, what do you know, there is broad, brown Henry Perris, master mechanic, wife-stealer, and Sunday pronger of the stepdaughter, standing very tense, squatting below the window next to a handy pile of block. What has good old Henry got in his hand? Why, he has what looks like a short section of hoe handle with a short sharp piece of metal sticking out of the end of it. Head bent in attitude of listening. Fingertips against the aluminum love nest. What are you waiting for, Henry? A signal? Why, of course, how logical. In extremis, the lady yells to the unwary chap in the saddle, “Now! Now!” And good old Henry stands on the blocks and lifts the screen out and leans in the window and sticks that sharp piece of metal right into the back of lover boy’s head, right where the base of the skull fastens onto the neck, and for a lady who gets her jollies out of hurting people, if her timing is right, that must, indeed, be a memorable thrill. Same thrill as the lady spider devouring the mate while they are still coupled.
One might, in fact, suspect that Hutcheson and Orville both met this same fate in this same place at these same hands, because there was no time to set up anything so complex in the time she had on the phone.
I eased back and stood up. Insight is perhaps what pops to the surface of the mind after subterranean processes of logic have taken place. If Perris and Lilo were two of the team of five who took the money truck, then Frank Baither went to Raiford knowing they would stay right in the area, waiting for the division after he got out. And if Hutch or Orville showed up, they could not make Henry or Lilo tell them something they did not know. And it would be the assigned chore of Henry and Lilo to quietly take them out of the scene. Baither would certainly know that Lilo was, by inclination, a competent executioner. Unless Frank were out of reach, she could have no chance to get them off guard, to get close enough. And then, of course, the lie to Frank when he came back. They never showed up. Maybe something happened to them. They never showed up, Frank.
Then the dead men had been used to decoy Frank Baither. To send him clattering around in the night in the old pickup, so that they were in position for him when he came back.
Out of the delusion of their own irresistible male charm, Hutch and Orville, one at a time, had clambered so eagerly onto the deathbed, coupled with the strong brown spider. I realized that had I not found Betsy’s letter to Lew, had I not seen the sweat and pallor on Dori Severiss’s face when she told me of Lilo, I could have been less on guard. I could have bought her rationalization about it. “You’d be thinking I’d say more.”
No problem to phone Henry at the station. And he could scoot west on the Trail, turn onto the far end of Shell Ridge Road, be there before we got there. She had driven slowly. He could drive beyond the little causeway to the hammock, tuck his car away, come back under the cover of the noise of generator and rock radio.
I had revealed too much to her. But maybe it did not have to be very much, if she was that twisted. “It’s like I was helping them get past something or over something.” Helping them get over the problem of living, of breathing. And Dori saying, “… smiling at me and giggling and calling me love names and saying how much fun it would be to really kill me.”
Thoughts roaring through the mind like a train racketing through a tunnel, while another part of my mind flipped through the possible ways of taking Henry Perris. I did not know how well he would move. I knew he could be as powerful as he looked. And I knew he had a useful weapon in his hand.
Estimate the triangle. Henry was fifteen feet from me. The white convertible was parked twenty feet in back of Henry, and perhaps thirty feet from me. Burst out in a full run and I could almost be at the car before he could react. She had turned it around and parked it heading out. Driver door was on this side. Beach bag on the floor on the far side.
So run around the hood, yank door open, pick up bag, find shape of gun through the fabric, and come up with it with a very good chance of taking one step to the side and firing across the hood through the fabric. If he was too close, there’d be no time for shoulder or thigh. If he was far enough away, one into the ground at his feet might do it.
One and a two and a three and go, McGee. Don’t lose your stride by looking at him. Not until you round the hood. Now look. And he is down off the blocks, and he is yanking the bright rubberized beach bag open in fumbling haste, and you should think a little better, McGee. Your thinking is spotty. You work one thing out and get overcome with your goddam brilliance, and forget that she parked the car in a blind spot, where it could not be seen from any window of the trailer, and so he had to use that angle as his approach, and it would be natural to check the car, heft the bag, finger the distinctive shape, bring it along.
All the shots are going to do out here is startle the egrets and puzzle the brown girl, if she is awake yet. And unless you get smart very fast, they are going to make some very final and very ugly holes in a fellow you have often felt kindly toward over the years.
Fact: It is not accurate at any long range. Take a quick look into the car. Fact: The keys are gone. Fact: He has the gun out of the bag. Fact: It is too damned long a run for cover, if you want to get into that cypress. Probability: If you stay by the car, he will angle out to the front or rear, stay fifteen feet from it, and pot you in perfect safety.
I dropped and looked under the car. Coming at the predicted angle toward the rear
end of the car. Not running. Better if he was running. Plodding along. Patience and good nerves.
Find place with best clearance under the thing. Okay. Onto the back. Pull yourself along under it like a cat playing under a sofa. Out the other side, roll up onto the feet and into full speed for the first few steps, then sacrifice speed for that crouching zigzag, like long ago, when they’d put the old tires on the practice field. Absolutely ice-cold target area in the middle of the spine. Corner of the trailer apparently receding into the distance. Not coming close very fast. Bam. No impact. That thing would hit you like a small sledge. Bam. And you are around the corner, skittering, skidding, the comedy runner, sliding to a bulge-eyed frantic stop, yanking the door open, plunging into the trailer, falling to hands and knees, spinning, yanking the door shut, taking the wheezing breaths, feeling the tremble in the knees.
The red radio is hollering about “a little help from my friends.” Sidle to a window and try to spot him. Sudden silence. Music chopped off. Dying wheeze of the air conditioning, fading whir of fan. Methodical fellow. Taking his time and thinking it out. Avoiding mistakes.
I crept to the galley area, opened logical drawers, found a flimsy carving knife, a dull paring knife, four rustflecked oyster knives, steel blade and handle, rounded tip. Tried one. It balanced precisely at the juncture of handle and blade. Each was forged out of a single piece of mediocre steel. One in the right hand, handle outward, blade flat against the underside of the thumb and the heel of the thumb. Provided a little amusement that time I spent holed up with Miguel in the Sierras. He had the single throwing knife. Tree target. Basic lessons. Always the same motion, a long forearm snap. Always the same force. Let it slide away from the thumb, naturally. Useful only at reasonably exact distances. Make a half turn and chunks home at fifteen feet. Hold the handle end and get a full turn at thirty feet. Hold the blade and get a turn and a half at forty-five. Got arm-weary throwing it and footweary trudging up to yank it out of the tree and going back to the mark. I held the other three oyster knives by the handle in my left hand. Miguel said a man who tries for the target at thirty feet, when it is an important target, is frivolous. Fifteen feet is so much more certain. At the slow rate of spin, it will be blade first from twelve to eighteen feet, enough to slash at the outer limits of the range. At ten feet or twenty it will strike flat. Do not try to adjust. Throw always for the right-angle impact at fifteen feet.
A rattle of small stones under the nearby footstep, beyond the aluminum. “McGee?” Hoarse voice. No urgency. Calm and reasonable. “Want to do some dickerin’, McGee?”
I backed away from the side of the window, then leaned a little forward, cupped my hand to confuse the point of origin of my voice. “What are you selling, Henry?”
He was selling gunshot wounds. Not bam this time. More like braing. Hole at chest height a foot in from the window edge and an exit hole high on the far side. I thudded both feet on the carpeted flooring and moaned and backed away.
“No good, you tricky bastard. I heard it go whining off, tumbling. Couldn’t have touched you. What did you do to her?”
Lilo answered. She squalled behind the packed wad of tissue, a sound of pure animal anger, muffled, like a cat in the bottom of a laundry hamper.
“Tied and gagged, eh?” Henry said. “That would take some doing. That I would like to see. I really would. Getting warm enough for you in there?”
No point in answering him.
“I’ve figured out something, McGee. I think what I’ll do is go around and turn off the bottle gas for the stove at the tank and cut the tubing and shove the end back into the hole and turn the gas on again. Good idea?”
Yes, it was a splendid idea. Simple and effective. After a while he could figure some way of igniting it, if I didn’t come choking and stumbling out. It was such a good idea, that it did not seem logical that he would stand around and chat about it. He would go do it. So there was a factor that kept him from doing it. And that was most probably the serious effect it would have on the health of Miss Perris.
I moved back to the galley, put the knives down, and in one surge slid the small refrigerator out into the middle of the work space and crouched behind it.
“Henry, at the very first whiff of propane, I am going to take one of these dull kitchen knives and saw that throat open on your little pal. You had better believe it.”
“Now why should that make any difference to me?”
“I wouldn’t know. The abiding love of a stepfather for a high-spirited girl, maybe. It’s the only thing you left open that I could try, Henry.”
“Go ahead and cut away.” Just a little too much indifference.
“Henry, you could try to smoke me out. Or you could get a piece of rope or cable and fasten it low on one side of this thing, throw it across the roof, hook it to the Buick, and roll this thing over. Let’s see now. You’ve got a car here. You could swing the Buick around and get a good start and just run the hell into this hunk of aluminum. But if I smell smoke, Henry. Or feel movement. Or hear the Buick. Or hear anything else I can’t understand, I am going to start sawing.”
In the long silence Lillian made muted bleating noises, and even tethered as she was, managed to snap and flex enough muscles to bounce herself around on the bunk bed.
“She tied up good? Can’t get loose?”
“Guaranteed,” I said. I moved as quietly as I could, over to the bunk bed and sat close to her, and put the oyster knives on a shelf above the foot of the bed, blades outward. “Matter of fact, Henry, I’m sitting so close to her that if you try any more trick shooting, you can just as easily get her as me.”
I looked down at her. She was on her left side in her curled position, her feet toward me. She looked at me with a ferocity that was an almost physical impact. Then her muscles bulged and her eyes closed as she strained to stretch or break the tough tape. I could hear little poppings and cracklings of joints and sinews. Then she let her breath out and relaxed, snuffling hard. I reached and gave her a friendly caress along the flank, a little pat on the brown haunch. She snapped into the air like a shrimp on a dock, eyes maniacal.
“We can work this out, McGee,” he called.
“Now just how do we do that, Henry?”
“The thing you want to do most is stay alive.”
“I guess I’d give that the number one priority.”
“I could trade some time, maybe. I don’t know how much time I’d need with her, or how much time I’d need after I get through with her. If I back off, far enough, and get the car keys to you, you could get away from here. But there’d be the problem of you going straight to a phone and messing me up.”
“And you can’t take my word.”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
“And I can’t take yours, Henry. Stalemate.”
“What?”
“It’s a chess term. Neither player has any way to win.”
“Oh. By God, I sure messed up when I tried the idea of using that envelope. I guess I was edgy. I thought you were some dumb-dumb who’d look good to Mister Norm. Lilo told me it was a bad idea, but I told her to do it anyway.”
“You left the envelope in the phone book in the booth when you went to deliver the Olds, eh? Then she picked it up and took it to Baither’s place.”
“I guess you just fixed it so there’s no way I can leave you go now, McGee. Sure. Lew let her into Frank’s house to see where it happened. Gave her a chance to drop the envelope when Lew wasn’t looking. All she had to do was promise Lew a quick piece. Lew was so hooked on it, he’d have chopped up his old mother and sold her for cat food for a chance to get into Lilo’s pants. She kept that boy on short rations.”
Lilo was trying to tell me something with her eyes. Pleading. Working her mouth around. I leaned and got an edge of the tape with my thumbnail and ripped the X off her mouth. She tongued the spitty mass of Kleenex out and swallowed several times.
She said in a low voice, “I know where a lot of money is. He wants
to make me tell him. If you kill him, I’ll tell you. We can take it all and go away.”
“Killing is something I charge high for.”
“Your end would be four hundred and fifty thousand. Right down the middle. No tricks. I wanted to leave him out because he’s stupid. You’re not. I need somebody like you to help me with it.”
“No tricks.”
She smiled her happy smile, her pretty and disarming urchin grin. “No tricks, honey. Ever.”
“So tell me right now where it is. You know. Give me a motivation.”
“Afterward. I promise. Get this tape off, huh?”
Henry shouted from a new position outside the trailer, “Having a little talk, are you? She trying to sell you something, McGee?”
“She’s trying to sell me you, Henry.”
I saw her face contort, and I put my finger to my lips before she could join the conversation. I reached and heeled her jaw shut and put the old X of tape back on, tore some more strips and sealed her off, and once again she tried the bonds, in a convulsion so violent it seemed possible she might break bones in the effort.
“You know what she is?” Henry called.
“I’ve got a pretty good idea.”
“What she was doing to Frank kept making me sick to my stomach, McGee. I was over at the window, gagging, when he finally told her, his voice so weak I couldn’t hear it. She had that ice pick into his heart before I could take half a step. She wanted to make sure he wouldn’t say it twice. You want to trust her?”
“I don’t want to trust either one of you.”
Again he had changed his position. He was moving quietly. “It’s that word you said before. Stalemate?”
The Long Lavender Look Page 22
