by Ed McBain
Her head fell back slowly until it was resting on my shoulder, and her golden hair was hanging down my back, and I could look down along the slim arch of her throat into the small valley of shadow under the white band she wore. Behind dark glass, her lids lowered, and she looked dreamily through slits into the brash blue of the sky.
"Acapulco, Tony. You and me and Acapulco. It's hot and beautiful there by the harbor in a ring of mountains, but it wouldn't be good unless you and I were hot and beautiful, too. It wouldn't be good if we were too old, Tony."
"He's strong as a bull,” I said. “He'll live forever."
A shiver rippled her flesh, and the tip of her pink tongue slipped out and around her oiled lips.
"It's a nice day, Tony. A hot, dreamy day with a blue sky and white clouds drifting. If I were old and ugly, I'd like to die on a day like this."
She remained quiet a minute longer, lying against me with her hair splashing down my back, and then she slipped away, rising in the hot sand.
"I want a drink,” she said. “A long, long drink with lots of ice and a sprig of mint. You coming, Tony?"
I stood up too, and we stood looking at each other across the sand of the artificial beach that had cost Grandfather a small fortune.
"I'll be up in a little,” I said. “I think I'll swim out to the raft and back."
Her breasts rose high against the restraint of the white band and descended slowly on a long whisper of air. She wet her lips again. “I'll have your drink waiting,” she said.
I watched her walk away up the beach, her legs moving from the hips with fluid ease, even in the soft sand, and after she was gone, I went down to the water and waded out into it to my waist. The water was cool on my hot skin and seemed to make everything clear and simple in my mind. Swimming with a powerful crawl, I was nearing the raft in almost no time. A few feet from it, treading water, I stopped and looked at Grandfather's motionless back. I wasn't worried about his hearing me. He'd been partially deaf for years and usually wore a little button attached to a battery. After a few seconds, I sank in the water and swam under the raft.
The first time I reached for his ankle, my fingers barely brushed it, and it jerked away. Reaching again, I got my fingers locked around the ankle and lunged down with all the force I could manage in the buoyant water. He came in with a splash, and even under the water I could see his veined eyes bulging with terror as my hands closed around the sagging flesh of his throat.
He was strong. Stronger, even, than I'd thought. His hands clawed at mine, tearing at my grip, and I scissored my legs, kicking up to a higher level so that I could press my weight down upon him from above. My fingers kept digging into his throat, but he put up a hellish threshing, and when I broke water for air, it was all I could do to hold him below the surface. It was a long time before he was quiet and I could let him slip away into the green depths.
There was a fire under my ribs. My arms and legs were throbbing, heavy with the poisonous sediment of fatigue. I wanted to crawl onto the raft and collapse, but I didn't. I lay floating on my back for a minute, breathing deeply and evenly until the fire went out in my lungs, and then I rolled in the water and crawled slowly to shore.
On the white sand where he had dropped it, Grandfather's towel was a bright splash of color. Leaving it lying there, I crossed the beach and went up through a sparse stand of timber to the eight room house we called the lodge.
Cindy was waiting for me on the sun porch. She had removed the dark glasses but was still wearing the two scraps of white lastex. In one hand was a tall glass with ice cubes floating in amber liquid and a green sprig of mint plastered to the glass above the amber. Her eyes were lighted hotly by their golden flecks. Between us, along a vibrant intangible thread of dark understanding, passed the unspoken question and the unspoken answer.
"Tell me more about Acapulco,” I said.
She set the glass with great deliberateness on a glass-topped table and moved over to me. Still with that careful deliberateness, she passed her arms under mine and locked her hands behind my back. There was surprising strength in her. I could feel the hard, hot pressure of her body clear through to my spine. Her lips moved softly against my naked shoulder.
"Was it bad, Tony? Was it very bad?"
"No. Not bad."
"Will anyone guess?"
"I had to choke him pretty hard. There may be bruises. But it won't matter, even if they do get suspicious. It's proof that hurts. All we have to remember is that we were here together all afternoon."
"What do we do now?"
"We have a drink. We wait until dusk. Then we call the sheriff and tell him we're worried about Grandfather. We tell him the old man went swimming and hasn't returned."
"Why the sheriff?"
"I don't know. It seems like the sheriff should be the one to call."
"The will, Tony. Are you sure about the will?"
"Yes, I'm sure. It's all ours, honey. Every stick, stone, stock and penny, share and share alike."
It was only then that she began to tremble. I could feel her silken flesh shivering against mine all the way up and down. Her lips made a little wet spot on my shoulder. Under my fingers, the fastening of her white brassiere was a recalcitrant obstacle, thwarting the relief of my primitive drive. Finally it parted, the white scrap hanging for a moment between us and then slipping away. My hands traced the beautiful concave lines of her sides and moved with restrained, savage urgency.
Her voice was a thin, fierce whisper.
"Tony,” she said. “Tony, Tony, Tony ... “
2
Out on the lake, they were blasting for Grandfather. All day, at intervals, we'd heard the distant, muffled detonations, and every time the hollow sound rolled up through the sparse timber to reverberate through the rooms of the lodge, I could see the bloated body of the old man wavering in terrible suspension in the dark water.
On the sun porch, Cindy stood with her back to me, staring out across the cleared area of the yard to the standing timber. She was wearing a slim black sheath of a dress without shoulders. Beautiful in anything or nothing, in black she was most beautiful of all. She was smoking a cigarette, and when she lifted it to her lips, the smoke rose in a thin, transparent cloud to mingle with the golden haze the light made in her hair.
"It's been a long time,” she said. “Almost an hour."
"What's been almost an hour?"
"Since the last explosion. They've been coming at half-hour intervals."
"Maybe they've raised him."
"Maybe."
She moved a little, lifting the cigarette to her lips again, and the sunlight slipped up her arm and over her shoulder. I went up behind her and trailed my hands down the black sheath to where it flared tautly over firm hips and then back up to her shoulders. I pulled her back against me hard, breathing her hair.
"Nervous, Cindy?"
"No. You?"
"A little. It's the waiting, I guess."
She turned to face me, her arms coming up fiercely around my neck.
"Sorry, Tony? Will you ever be sorry?"
I looked down into the hot, gold-flecked eyes, and I said, “No, I'll never be sorry,” and her cigarette dropped with a small sound to the asphalt tile behind me. Out on the front veranda, there was a loud knocking at the door.
I went in through the living room and on out through the hall to the front door, and there on the veranda stood Aaron Owens, the sheriff of the county. He was a short, fat little man with round cheeks and a bowed mouth, and it crossed my mind that maybe he'd been elected sheriff because the voters thought he was cute. Looking in at me through the screen, he mopped his face with a bright bandana and blew out a wet sigh.
"Hello, Mr. Wren. It's a hot walk up from the lake."
I opened the screen door and told him to come in. “My cousin's on the sun porch. She'll mix you a drink."
We went back to the sun porch, and Cindy put bourbon and soda and ice in a glass and handed it to him. He took th
e drink eagerly.
"We've been listening to the blasting,” Cindy said. “We haven't heard any now for an hour."
He looked at her over the rim of his glass, his face and voice taking on a studied solemnity.
"We've brought him up. Poor old guy. I came to tell you."
Cindy turned quickly away, looking again out across the yard to the timber, and the little sheriff's eyes made a lingering, appreciative tour of the black sheath.
"He'll be taken right into town,” he said. “Twenty-four hours in the water, you know. Didn't do him any good. We thought you'd prefer it that way."
"Yes,” I said. “Of course."
He lifted his glass again, draining the bourbon and soda off the cubes. He let one of the cubes slip down the glass into his mouth, then spit it back into the glass.
"The coroner'll look him over. Just routine. An old man like that shouldn't swim alone in deep water. Maybe a cramp. Maybe a heart attack. Never can tell with an old man."
"Grandfather was always active,” I said.
He looked wistfully at his empty glass for a minute and then set it down on the glass-topped table.
"Sure. Some old men never want to give up. Ought to know better. Well, time to be running along. Lucky to get him up so soon. Can't tell you how sorry I am."
"Thanks very much,” I said.
I took him back to the front door and watched him cross the veranda and go down across the cleared area into the timber. Turning away, I went back to Cindy.
She was facing me when I came in, black and gold against the bright glass. Her lips were parted, and her breasts rose and fell with a slow, measured cadence.
"Everything's all right, Tony. Everything's going to be all right."
"Sure. They can't touch us, honey."
"He was an old man. We didn't take much of his life away."
"Don't think about that. Don't think about it at all."
"I won't, Tony. I'll just think about the time when we can go away. I'll think of you and me and more money than we can spend in a dozen lifetimes. You and me and the long, hot days under a sky that's bluer than any blue you've ever seen. Oh, Tony.... “
I went over and held her tightly until she whimpered with pain and her eyes were blind with the pleasure of suffering.
"It won't be long, honey. Not long. After the will's probated. After everything's settled."
She snarled her fingers in my hair and pulled my face down to her hungry lips, and it must have been a century later when I became aware of the shrill intrusion of the telephone in the hall behind me.
I went out to answer it, and when I spoke into the transmitter my mind was still swimming in a kind of steaming mist. The voice that answered mine was clear and incisive but very soft. I had to strain to understand.
"Mr. Wren? My name is Evan Lane. I have a lodge across the lake. I see the sheriff's men have quit blasting. Does that mean they've found the old man?"
"Yes,” I said. “They found him."
"Permit me to extend my sympathy.” The country line hummed for a long moment in my ear, and it seemed to me that I could hear, far off at the other end, the soft ghost of a laugh. “Also my congratulations,” the voice said.
A cold wind seemed to come through the wire with the voice. The warm mist inside my skull condensed and fell, leaving my mind chill and gray and very still. Inside my ribs, there was a terrible pain, as if someone had thrust a knife between them.
"I beg your pardon,” I said.
The laugh was unmistakable this time, rising on a light, high note. “I offered my congratulations, Mr. Wren. For getting away with it, I mean."
"I don't understand."
"I think you do. You see, Mr. Wren, you made one small mistake. You made the mistake of acting too soon after your lovely friend had been sun bathing on the beach. A girl like that is an open invitation to a man like me to use his telescope. I have a clear shot from my veranda. Now do you understand, Mr. Wren?"
"What do you want?"
"I think you'll find me a reasonable man. Perhaps we'd better meet and discuss terms."
"Where?"
"Say the barroom of the Lakeshore Inn."
"When?"
"Tonight? At nine?"
"I'll be there,” I said.
I cradled the phone and went back through the living room to the sun porch. Cindy was standing at a liquor cabinet in the corner, moving a swizzle stick in the second of two drinks she'd mixed. She stopped stirring and looked across at me, becoming suddenly very quiet.
"Who was it, Tony?"
"He said his name's Evan Lane. He has a lodge across the lake."
"What did he want?"
"He wants to meet me at the Lakeshore Inn. Tonight."
"Why?"
"He has a habit of watching you on the beach through a telescope. He was watching yesterday. He saw me and the old man in the lake."
She took two stiff steps toward me, her slim body rigid in its black sheath. Bright spots were burning in her cheeks.
"Blackmail?"
"It looks like it."
"What shall we do, Tony? What shall we do?"
"Find out what he's after, first of all. After that, we'll see."
"He'll bleed us, Tony. He'll bleed us white."
"No,” I said. “It won't be like that. It won't be like that at all."
Then she came the rest of the way to me, but her body was cold and rigid in my arms, and it was a long time before it got back the way it was before the telephone rang.
3
The Lakeshore Inn was on an arm of the lake that was almost at a right angle to the main body. In the barroom, they'd tried to make an effect with rafters. After they'd finished, the effect was just rafters, but you felt friendly because they'd tried.
I crawled onto a stool. A clock on the wall behind the bar said five to nine. I looked at my reflection in the mirror below the clock and was a little astonished to see that I didn't look any different from the way I'd looked yesterday or the day before. Same brown hair. Same eyes a little browner. Same face in general.
The bartender said, “Good evening, Mr. Wren,” and cocked an eyebrow to show that he was tuned in.
"The usual,” I said.
He put a couple of cubes in a glass and covered them with White Horse. Down the bar, around the curve to the wall, a heavy man with a bald head was drinking beer. The bartender went down to him and resumed a conversation I'd interrupted. At nine precisely, someone came up behind me and got onto the stool on my left. I looked up into the mirror.
The face I saw went on from where mine stopped. Thin and dark, with a clean, chiseled look, burned mahogany by wind and sun. Above it, black hair was feathered with white around the ears and almost mathematically divided by a single white streak. It was a head to make the ladies itch. The head of a man who might have been a heavy actor but thought he was too good for it. I sat and watched it until the bartender had done his job and gone back to his beer drinker.
"You don't look like a blackmailer,” I said.
An incisive white smile flashed in the shadows of the mirror. “Thanks. You don't look like a murderer, either."
"It's a funny world,” I said.
We drank in silence, two congenial guys, and after a while I said, “You're a little previous. Right now I'm a poor relation. So's Cindy. You know Cindy, don't you? She's the girl you peep at through a telescope. We're just a pair of lovable young parasites, Cindy and I. We won't have any money for blackmailers until the estate's settled."
The smile reappeared in the mirror, growing to a laugh, the soft, substantial embodiment of the ghost on the wire.
"You think I want money? My friend, I have more of the stuff than I can ever use. More, I imagine, than you'll get from Grandfather."
"In that case, what the hell are you after?"
Our eyes came together, locking in the glass, and his, I saw, were darkly swimming with the amused and cynical tolerance that doesn't come from compassion or conv
iction, but from a kind of amoral indifference to all standards.
"Nothing that need worry you, if you're reasonable. Believe me, I feel no compulsion to see you punished merely for killing a man old enough to die.” He lit a cigarette, doing it neatly with a silver lighter. In the mirror, the light flared up across planes and projections, giving his face for a moment the quality of fancy photography. “I'm a tenacious man, Mr. Wren. I know what I want, and I'll use any available means to get what I want. In the light of yesterday's events, you should be able to understand that."
"You're talking all around it,” I said. “The point, I mean."
The coal of his cigarette glowed brighter and faded. “I'm thinking about the girl. Cindy, I believe you called her."
I guess I'd known all along what was coming. I guess I'd known from the instant I looked into the mirror and saw that thin, patrician face with its ancient eyes. Strangely, there was no anger in me. There was only a cold, clear precision of thought: This time it'll be easy. This time it'll be fun. Not just a job, like it was with the old man.
"You can go to hell,” I said.
His white teeth showed pleasantly. “My friend, you are the one in peril of going to hell. I can send you with a few words."
Killing the White Horse and turning to face him directly for the first time, I said, “You're lousy with dough. You said it yourself. Buy yourself a girl."
I got off the stool to go, and his hand came out to lie lightly on my sleeve.
"Since she's involved in this, it might be smart to let Cindy make the decision. She may not be as ready as you for that trip to hell. In case she isn't, I'll be here until eleven."
"You can stay forever,” I said. “You can stay forever and to hell with you."
I went away without looking at him again, because I was afraid if I looked at him that I couldn't resist ruining his pretty face. Outside, standing by my convertible in front of the Inn, I felt the cool wind come up off the lake and hit me, and all the strength went out of me. My hands began to tremble, and I clutched the edge of the door. After a long time, I got into the convertible and drove back down the lake road to the lodge.
In the drive, I killed the motor and sat quietly under the wheel. Beyond the timber, a cold slice of moon was rising. In the lodge, all lights were out except the one in the room where Cindy slept. Cindy, Cindy, Cindy. Golden, sultry Cindy. The thought of her and Evan Lane brought the hot trembling back into my body, and I gripped the wheel until I was quiet.
