by Gil Brewer
“Tate,” she said softly. “I had to. There was nothing else—I had to.”
She reached up with one hand and twisted her fingers into the wealth of auburn hair at her shoulder, holding it back away from her head.
My brother had taken my wife.
“Don’t move,” Sam said.
Janet lifted one leg from beneath her and turned more toward me, then sat back on the bed again. Her face flushed with blood, then slowly paled again. She was in a strained position, but she held it, watching me. The suitcase slowly slipped and fell to the floor, spilling Sam’s clothes out.
“Do something!” Janet said. “Don’t stand there like that!”
I didn’t say anything.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. All you think. Yes, yes!”
“You don’t have to say anything, Janet,” Sam said. “Get off the bed and put some clothes on.”
She did not move.
Sam did not once take his eyes off me. He held the gun in front of him, pointed at my chest, standing in a slightly strained crouch. He was like a rock, standing there, watching me. He looked very healthy and satisfied.
There wasn’t even much excitement in Sam. I didn’t figure there would be, not after what Janet and he had been through on that bed. There wouldn’t be much of anything left in Sam. He had probably spent all the crazy years of waiting and longing on that bed in the last couple of days with her—they had spent them together. You could see it in them, what they had done, and that they did not regret: the gross satisfaction—the endless spending.
The hellish thing was that when I looked into her eyes, I felt that she still loved me. That was the hellish thing.
“I’m going to have to kill you, Tate.”
I ignored him, looking around the room. It was a good-sized room and I had been in it many times before. But it had never looked as it did now. It showed what had gone on in it. A sheer nylon stocking lay on the floor at my feet with a garter belt still attached to it, pink and twisted and stepped on. A pair of black lace pants hung over the white shade of the lamp by the bed. On the table with the lamp and the pants, was a half full bottle of Old Overholt whiskey and two tall glasses with amber liquid puddled at the bottoms and lipstick smears all around the edges of both. The ash tray was full of butts. A black brassière hung by one strap from the bedpost at the head of the bed, on the side toward the lamp. A white brassière hung over the other post. On the center of the bed, just to the right of where Janet squatted, watching me, was a squashed pillow and another nylon stocking peeking out from beneath it. Over under the window was the money sack, rolled up, empty. They would have the money packed probably in the big brown leather bag on the floor at the foot of the bed where the crumpled pair of gray men’s slacks also lay.
“Tate,” she said.
I looked at her.
“Don’t talk to him, Janet,” Sam said. “I don’t want you to talk with him. I’m going to kill him—just before we leave. So get ready.”
She still didn’t move.
“You can’t kill him,” she said.
“I’ve got to,” Sam told her softly. “It’s the only thing left to do.”
“He’s right, Janet,” I said. “Because if he doesn’t kill me, I’ll kill him. You see? He knows that.”
“I had to do it,” Janet said again. “When I called Sam at the office, he came by the apartment and I told him about the money and we planned it this way. We were going to wait still longer, but we decided we’d better go now.”
“Why?”
“Because I couldn’t stand it with you any more.”
“Don’t kid me. How long has it been going on?”
“She married you,” Sam said. “But she belongs to me.” He took a step toward me and Janet glanced at him. “She always was mine,” Sam said. “I’ve loved her—she never really loved you—” He ceased.
“You killed Alex Morrell,” I said.
He nodded. “I went back for some of Janet’s things and found him searching the apartment. He caught on—I had to kill him.”
“You didn’t take any of Janet’s things from the apartment.”
“He wouldn’t,” she said from the bed. “He said it would help throw you off. He said it was the little things. He’s right. It was the little things that destroyed us, Tate—I couldn’t stand it with you any longer. So now we’ve got that money and we’re going away. To another country. It doesn’t matter where. But Sam will take care of me.”
“He should be able to—with all that dough,” I said.
“Janet,” Sam said. “Get off the bed and get dressed!”
He had snapped it at her.
“Don’t tell me you’ve worn out this thing you call love already,” I said. “Is that any way to talk to her?”
Sam was wrong behind his eyes. He took another step toward me. “I’m going to kill you now, Tate.”
“You can’t kill him,” Janet said. “We don’t have to do that. Not that, Sam.”
“Yes.”
She came to her knees and looked at me and then at him. “No, Sam—don’t do that.” She spoke almost as she might speak to a child. “We can handcuff him—you have cuffs. Leave him in a closet. But don’t shoot him.”
“I’ve got to, Janet.”
“I won’t let you, Sam.”
I looked into his eyes and there wasn’t anything else to explain. It was all there. He was going to do it now. He didn’t care about the noise of the shot; all his venom and vengeance was directed against me and he had to eliminate me. I stood for something he could no longer endure.
“No—Sam!”
She leaped toward him from the bed. At that same instant he fired, and the slug plowed into the wall beside me. I jumped in toward them. He was cursing her. She swung on his arm and he tried to bring the gun around again. She clung to his neck, pleading with him not to shoot. He swept her aside. She struck the bed and he brought the gun up and she came back at him.
He fired again.
I was over against the wall. He tried to turn toward me and she took his gun arm in both hands and sank her teeth into his wrist. I could see her bite his arm, her jaws working. He tried to back away and they both fell toward the bed and the gun fired again.
I did not move.
Janet stood up, staring at Sam. He slipped slowly down from the bed to the floor, a blackened, torn hole in his chest.
We stood there and watched him die.
• • •
They take me to see her occasionally. The trial is still going on and it will probably last for some time. They caught Morrell and his men and we’re all in the same cell-block. You see, there’s a new law in Florida—and it’s a difficult one to beat. The law says that anyone connected with a robbery in which a killing occurs is as much responsible for that killing as the murderer himself. A man got the chair up at Raiford just the other day because he was tripped by this law. It’s very interesting.
They take me to see her occasionally, as I said. And it’s a queer thing, the way this is. Just yesterday, when I last saw her, it struck me and I’ll never be able to forget.
You see, I know she still loves me. I could tell when I saw her. It was still there, in her eyes, in the way she looked at me. They say she’s mad, and maybe she is; but back there in those eyes of hers, she still loves me.
When I visit her, we sit very quietly and look at each other that way. Sometimes she tries to speak, but nothing comes out. Only I can tell by her eyes.
Something, isn’t it?
My own wife. My own brother. My God, who can you trust?
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Copyright © 1958 by Gil Brewer, Registration Renewed in 1986
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4209-0
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4209-1
Cover art © 123RF/Andreas Gradin
