So that was another worry off my mind.
I had also put Paul Anson’s worries to rest. About ten A.M. when I’d gotten a free half-minute, I phoned to tell him, “I’m alive, I’m alive!” or words to that joyous effect. After mumbling a few hardly audible mumbles he had finally said, clearly, just before hanging up in my ear, “Damn you, Sheldon, I told you to give me a call at eight o’clock.”
It made me feel good all over. It’s nice to know people really care.
I let the hot water pound me for a long time, scrubbing off not only the dirt and caked mud and easing some of the aches, but maybe washing away the invisible film of Letch, Weeton, Lucky Ryan, Holyjoe Archibald.… Those last two were dead, of course. Weeton and Fleepo were in the hospital, Lecci and Ace in the clink. David Stephens and even Congressman Kerwin Stephens were being interrogated in a manner which might at the least be described as determined.
I knew now why his pals had given Lucky Ryan Frankie’s Colt .45—which wasn’t Frankie’s, but a heater used months before to knock down a liquor-store owner. Since the boys felt sensibly nervous about Lucky Ryan with his own heater handy, they had helpfully given him an automatic with only two cartridges in the clip, and instructions to “put three-four into Scott.” Along about number three, it could be surmised with great confidence, three-four would instead have gone into Lucky.
But his luck had held. Because when I took off running like a fleet hippopotamus, that saved me—and Lucky. Following which, Ace was able to take back the gimmicked Colt. They’d wanted so badly to kill him after he hit me, and it turned out I killed him myself with his own gun. Just, or almost, the way they’d wanted it.
And, finally, there was big, bald—now not so much bald as scalped—Bludgett. He, too, was in the hospital, with a rather unusual head. There was no question but that he would recover. He might, however, in the future, have a mite less self-confidence in his ability to dream the impossible dream and then do the impossible do.…
At last I stopped using up tons of the hotel’s hot water and, much refreshed rubbed down briskly with a towel, brushed my teeth, examined the new me in the mirror, peered into my eyes, stuck out my tongue, beat my chest like Tarzan, pranced out of the bathroom and hopped into bed.
And leaped out, emitting a great yell, like Tarzan.
There had been something in my bed.
That was enough to scare hell out of anybody.
God knows what it was, but it was something soft, and warm … and rounded … and … Come to think of it, whatever it was hadn’t felt that scarey.
She sat up in bed, holding the sheet an inch under her chin. “I hope you don’t mind,” Lucrezia said.
“Mind? Mind?” My mind wasn’t functioning smoothly yet.
“Well, that horrible noise you made.”
“I—won’t do it again.”
“I didn’t know you were afraid of girls.”
“I didn’t know it, either.”
“I thought I’d surprise you,” she said.
“You surprised me, all right.”
“I was afraid you might think I was mad at you—about Mary. But I figured that out.”
“Well, then I guess you’re not mad at me. Yeah, I guess—”
“I thought you’d be pleased.”
“Pleased isn’t quite the word. I’ll bet I could think of maybe a thousand—”
“Are you just going to stand there like that?”
It was the two words “like that” which started my mind clicking like a well-oiled machine again. Thus reminded, I looked at myself. Yeah, she had a good idea there. Wouldn’t do to just stand here like this. So I jumped into the bed and covered myself with the sheet.
And the sheet was pulled from Lucrezia’s fingers, brushed the magnificent, thrusting breasts as it fell, brushed and then bared them. It fell to her waist, crumpled upon her thighs. I held the sheet in one hand. For a long moment. Then I stripped it from us, threw it to the foot of the bed.
She sat silently, still erect, head tilted slightly back. And—something changed. Always before, before this moment, we’d been joking or half-joking, there’d been no time to be serious, no time for leisurely words, or glances, or caresses.
There was time now.
The air itself seemed changed. Heavier. Thicker. It was very quiet. Then it was something more than that. It was oddly still. Still the way it must be in the Garden of Kam when the wind dies suddenly and nothing stirs. It was a strange quietness, a stillness, a hush. A hush, here in my room. Or maybe it was merely that something changed in her, and in me.
Whatever it was, that hush was broken by the slow soft rise of Lucrezia’s breath, and the rise of her brazen breasts as she breathed. She didn’t speak, not then. Nor did I. I leaned toward her, saw her eyes half close, her lips soften and part. Then she was smooth loveliness against me, melting against me, her mouth on my mouth, her body pressed to mine, her lips my lips, her flesh my flesh.
I kissed her and held her close and breathed her name, and heard that voice born in dreams of houris and wantons and bawds, soft as night winds in my ear, “Oh, my darling. Oh—my darling,” and knew that unimaginably warm and wondrous body, the perfection of her breasts and thighs, the fire in her eyes and lips, and the sweet fast beat of her heart.
Much later—a little while after dark—she said to me, “Shell … you murmured something in your sleep. I liked it!”
“What did I—murmur?”
“My name.”
“Lucrezia?”
“Lucrezia.”
“Well, naturally,” I said. “You don’t think I’d dream about anyone else, do you?”
“You’d better not,” she said. And then she smiled that lotus-cooking smile, the smooth lids drooped, embers of burning Rome glowed brighter in velvet eyes, and she said, or murmured, “At least—not tonight.”
I didn’t, either.
About the Author
Richard S. Prather (1921–2007) was the author of the world-famous Shell Scott detective series, which has over forty million copies in print in the United States and many millions more in foreign-language editions abroad. There are forty-one volumes in the series, including four collections of short stories and novelettes. In 1986, Prather was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Private Eye Writers of America. He and his wife, Tina, lived in Sedona, Arizona.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1969 by Richard S. Prather
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
ISBN: 978-1-4976-4965-1
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Kill Me Tomorrow Page 26
