“No.”
I wished all the guys standing out there in the rain would get the hell home.
“How many times did she go down on you, Dog?”
“Not too many.”
Make your play, stupid. I haven’t got time for games. It’s getting dark.
“Fuck her a lot?”
“Enough to round out the evening.”
“Was she good?”
“I had better. She was extremely prolific. Quite a comer.”
Cross nodded.
He was very close to being shot and he still stood there watching the day grow darker and I couldn’t see anybody around who could put me down. I was buried in the deep shadows with one hand on an army-style .45 with a round in the chamber, the hammer cocked and a clip in the handle. Two more full clips were in my pocket and it was going to be a ball when it started. Only nothing wanted to start.
“Sheila finally loved me, you prick. You gave her to me. She always loved me, now she loves me all the way.” The rain suddenly came down in a slashing stream, driving into our faces and neither one of us could care less. “Funny,” he continued, ”having you do it. The doctors couldn’t. The headshrinks couldn’t. Nobody could. Then you came along and sexed the hell out of my wife and you did it. You gave me the thing I was never able to buy.”
I just looked at him.
“Pretty silly, isn’t it, but you damn well knew what you were doing, you bastard.”
“Don’t die for wrong words, Cross.”
“Shut up, you silly bastard. I’m not afraid of you. Open that fucking envelope.”
I unfolded the manila packet and thumbed the top back.
“You own all of Barrin, my dick-happy neighbor. My fucking almost-shareholder. I give you a worthless pile of brick, a damn pack of old men trying to extrude aluminum, a house full of horse’s ass relatives, some contracts already assigned to my other companies, a dead city ... and your life.”
I threw my cigarette away and put the folder in my pocket. “Maybe I will bust your balls, friend.”
“Don’t try.” Cross said. “You’re in the shadows, but there are two of mine out there waiting too. They’ll kill you before or after. Your choice.”
Hell, I wasn’t even worried about them. I let my hand fall away from my jacket. It was starting to get dark.
Cross McMillan stepped back into the light and looked at the big old-fashioned clock in the tower above him, then glanced back to me and smiled. I owned the biggest pile of garbage in the world because he owned all the access roads and the garbage pile could produce nothing. They were in Grand Sita drunk and hurting, but tomorrow they’d be sober and reconstructed while the living things came out of the garbage pile to devour me for having resurrected it to start with and the worst thing of all would be having to face the faces, the sad, deadened faces that had all the hope in the world there just a few days ago.
The voice behind me said, “You see, Dog, it doesn’t always work out, does it?”
I looked at Sharon, but she still had those deadly eyes that said if she couldn’t kill me, she’d be glad when somebody else did and I automatically reached out my hand and automatically she took it. My fingers ran around hers. She had taken off the ring that used to turn her finger green.
“He’s dead,” she said.
“Aren’t we all?”
“Yes, we are, Dog.”
The guy who walked in the light kept waving for those behind him to step on up and when I saw his face I said,
“Hello, Stanley.”
Stanley Cramer. From way back. There were four more with him.
“Mr. Kelly.” He nodded toward Sharon. “Ma’am.”
“Who’s going to tell them, Stanley?” I asked him.
“Mr. Kelly ... we all know. Sort of .. well, hell, kid, we’ve been back and forth before you was born, y’know?”
“Sure.”
One by one they all stepped into the light so I could see their faces. Old men, but grinning old men and there was still youth there that read like the old motto, DON’T TREAD ON ME!, youth that wasn’t fighting youth, but the youth of knowledge written into the crazy warped smiles and Stanley Cramer, elected the spokesman, said, “We kind of figured what you were looking for. Your cousins couldn’t find it, but they weren’t even sure it ever existed. We thought that package Jason gave old Pat was just a gag until you started the shakedown and we started thinking.”
He held out a box big enough to put a pair of shoes in. “The papers are all in there. They’ll tell you how it works. It ought to keep Barrin going a long, long time.”
“What will, Stanley?”
There was a quiet murmur of laughter and he held out a shiny little ball about an inch around. It gleamed metallically in the dull light, a bluish silver with little rays of refracted yellow bouncing from it. Cramer laughed again and took his hand away.
The ball stayed right there.
He barely tipped it with his fingers and it came drifting toward me.
“The antigravity device,” he explained. “Now we’re in clover.”
Someone farted.
It was Cross McMillan.
And then the old cypress pillar chipped right out between my head and Sharon’s, leaving a tiny .22-sized hole in the wood so close it could have gotten either one of us an inch in either direction and nobody noticed but Sharon and me and I pulled her back inside leaving the chuckles of all the winners standing there in the rain and all I could think of was that word to say again.
XXV
“Dog.”
She wasn’t asking my name. She wasn’t asking an explanation. She was just saying it. I pulled the overhead lights out and pushed her into the office where I could see the small crowd milling in the rain, still laughing, going toward their cars.
That shot didn’t miss. That shot was as deliberate as hell.
Get rid of the crowd scene and come on in, it said. Arnold Bell is here to claim his inheritance. The killer of killers. Don’t make me do it the easy way because they all have to know it was face to face and you were not nearly as good as I am. The price goes up, Dog. I get more for my kills than you ever did for yours. You can’t lose me, you can’t even find me. I pick the time and the place and maybe to make the job even more exciting, I take the little blonde along with you ... and what would be better than telling the story of how you both went down pissing your pants and hurting like a son of a bitch with Arnold Bell laughing and able to spend his money at last. They’ll pay me anywhere, even in Madrid. In Marseilles. In Istanbul. In Paris. Shit, they’ll pay me anywhere, even in Moscow because you’re out and I’m in. Pussycat, kiss the tiger’s ass.
“Bend over, Tiger, the pussycat has big teeth.”
“Dog ... what did you say?”
“Nothing.”
Her eyes had changed again. “Dog ...”
“Look ...”
“No. Please ... Dog.’
They were all gone outside and I snapped out the floodlights that illuminated the area. Someplace in the far reaches of the building a motor was humming.
“Was it true about Sheila?”
One of the slats in the Venetian blinds was crooked and I straightened it out. “Yes.”
“Was she ... good?”
“They’re all good.”
“You didn’t ...”
“I don’t fuck broads because I love them, kitten. Shut up.”
“They told me about ... the ball. Before they showed it to you.”
I looked at her. I was starting to burn now.
“I told them not to give it to you,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“Stanley laughed at me. He said I was only a ... a ... woman.”
Hell, I had to laugh at that one. “You sure are, doll.”
“A little while ago I wanted to see you dead.”
“Somebody should have stepped on my mother’s egg. Knock it off, kid.”
“What are you going to do?”
&nbs
p; “Get the hell out of here is what.”
“I’m going with you.”
The dark was so nice. It didn’t show what I thought or felt and I could let my voice seep through my teeth with that same old whispery rasp that meant the game was in the last quarter and the outs still had a few minutes to beat the ins, only not many and if anybody got in the way they didn’t have any chance at all.
“No dice, my lovely.”
“Up your ass with a meat hook, man.”
“What kind of language is that from a lady?”
“I’m no fucking lady, Dog. All I am is your broad.”
I could see the whiteness of her hands in the darkness. “Don’t lay it on me because your guy is dead. That’s what you get for sending a fiancé to war, lady.”
“How about that?”
“You’re getting out.”
The damn laugh she let out was soft and nasty and I felt her hand wrap around my arm and the heat from her body was a living, scented thing that spelled booby trap all the way and I still couldn’t push her away because it didn’t matter how I died anyway anymore.
“Where you go, I go,” she said.
“I’ll take you someplace you’ll wish you hadn’t gone to,” I told her.
“Take me.”
I ran my hand over her face, then down across her breasts and let it nestle in the beautiful V between her thighs. I could feel the furry outline under her clothes, the woman crevice and nearly the moist heat before I let my hand drift back up to her face again. “I will when I get there,” I said.
We both liked the night, but this time it was on my side because I was letting myself be the hunted. I knew where I was and where I was going. The hunter didn’t. He had to think, plot and plan, then act accordingly, knowing the trap might be there. Ever wary. Ever deadly. He knew all the tricks too. He could find me, he could find my car. He could put a bullet next to my temple to say he was waiting, always knowing the chance he was taking and somebody started laughing very low and I damn near looked to see who it was until I remembered it was me.
When does the fox outfox the fox?
She had parked her car in the main lot and some of the others were pulling out when I shoved her into the Ford and got behind the wheel. I pushed her down, slumped in the seat and got out into traffic and made the circuit behind the others who were all going to Tod’s, and while I was making like I was looking for a parking place, backed into a driveway, turned around and swung back against traffic. I cut right into a deserted section, made a complete orbit, picked up the highway, headed toward New York, took the first intersection off and drove back into Linton on the old road.
It took a good hour and a half, but I finally found the right dirt road and turned the car into the area I was looking for and left the headlights on long enough for Sharon to see what I had to show her.
Leyland Hunter had hired a good crew. They had done a good job. Her old house was standing there sparkling white in the beam of my headlights with her old bicycle reconditioned and newly painted, leaning against the railing on the porch. A white envelope was tucked into the screen door and I knew what it was. I got out, walked around the car, opened the door and eased her off the seat.
She knew too, but she really wasn’t sure until she opened the envelope and saw the key attached to the deed.
“Yours, little bleachie.”
“Dog ...” I could barely hear her.
“All reconditioned. Like when you left it.”
“Why?”
“At least one of us has to have something to show for it all.”
She tried to say something, but the tears stopped her. She put the key in the lock and turned the knob. The door opened silently. When she reached for the light switch it flicked on and I heard her breath catch in her throat.
“I guess the counselor asked questions,” I said.
There was nothing pretentious about it. It was only an old-fashioned house so warm and comfortable you thought you could smell pies in the oven and hear kid voices from the yard while the older ones were slapping the cards down on the table with the women serving beer from pitchers and trading gossip in the kitchen. No place for women lib types at all. The paint smell still was there and the new carpet feel was underfoot and it was ready to be lived in if anybody wanted to live with all the nostalgia of a long time ago.
“It’s lovely, Dog.”
“You were lucky, honey. I wish I had had one like it.”
“But you had the big house on the hill.”
“Not me. I was a bastard.”
“Is ... upstairs ... ?”
I shrugged. “Go look.”
We went up the blue-carpeted stairs and when she opened the doors of each room she smiled and then she came to her own room. Where they had done their work only too well. Her eyes were wet and her mouth was wet and I had to leave her right then.
Outside it was totally dark and the target had to leave the congested area.
Very slowly, she turned around, looked at me a very long time and slid her jacket off. Just as slowly she unbuttoned her blouse and let it fall in a heap on the floor. She wasn’t wearing a brassiere at all and her breasts were full, pouting, and the tips of them perked up into delicious little knots.
“No, honey,” I said, and she hooked her fingers in her skirt so that it fell off too and all she had on was the little pair of bikini pants that lasted another few seconds before she was nakedly unashamed in front of me, her virginal pussy smiling with parted lips because it didn’t know any better, the brown hair in its delicious isosceles making fun of the blonde above and she lay down on her own bed where she slept as a child, legs spread in total invitation, but looking at her hands a minute before asking the question.
“Who are you, Dog?”
“You know me.”
“Nobody knows you, Dog. Not now. Maybe I know more than you think I do, but I want to hear you say it yourself.”
“Why? You wouldn’t believe me anyway.”
“Take off your clothes.”
“No.”
“I want to see your dick.”
“Damn it, stop that!”
“Let me see your dick.” Her legs twitched and she smiled at me. My fingers started reaching for buttons and zippers.
“Damn it to hell ...”
“Dog ... don’t fret. I couldn’t help myself either.”
My shirt and pants were gone and I had a hard-on I didn’t deserve and she was lying there naked in the light with one hand stroking her belly down into the fuzz and I heard my ears ring and felt my stomach tighten and went over next to her where she could reach up and feel me.
“Sharon ...”
She wet one finger and ran it between her legs. “Who are you, Dog?”
“Listen ...”
“Start from the war. Tell me about Roland Holland.”
I reached down past my fucking erection and picked up the .45 where I had dropped it and tossed it on the bed beside the pillow. It was an outlandish situation and I had to think and that was all I could do.
“Roland Holland,” she insisted.
“A business genius,” I said. “I gave him my savings and terminal leave pay to start up a company. I took out ten percent. He is legitimate.”
She was still looking at one hand until she decided she wasn’t wet enough, so touched her fingertip to her lips.
“Ten percent of many millions is many millions.”
“Smart, baby, now drop dead because I’m going to get dressed.”
She squirmed around and pointed it right at me. “You said you were going to take me.”
“Sharon...”
“That man in New York ... Vince Tobano. He’s a policeman.”
“Damn it to hell, will you ...”
“All you have to do is tell me. You turned me inside out to make me hate you. Why not just tell me?”
I wished my damn cock would go limp. The thing didn’t have any kind of conscience at all. I picked up my pants
, got a cigarette out of my pocket and lit it. Then sat on the end of the bed, my back toward her.
“They recruited me,” I said.
“Who did?”
“The government. My cover was perfect. I was already rich. They made me a black marketeer, I got into the big stuff and when everything went bust it was never my fault but some sloppy operation on the other end. I was always in the rackets. Only the agency and a couple of individuals knew I was on the other side.”
“In New York...”
“Doll, Vince Tobano is the straightest cop you ever met.
The guy I shook the shit out of was Chet Linden who heads up the big D.C. splash. He was all bombed out thinking I’d blow the picture and when I handed them that casket I damn near browned out trying to keep the laugh in. Don’t you know old Vince’ll get a promotion out of the deal and that idiot Chet will get his ass eaten out by the old man in the Pentagon for letting it go that far? Hell, Chet wouldn’t dare let his guys lay a gun on me or Vince’ll take him apart. Or I might get teed off, which could even be worse. The fucking syndicate lost their millions in heroin, the mighty have tumbled, the Establishment is sucking their thumbs waiting to see how they can get back at us, knowing they never can, and ...”
I looked down at my pants on the floor and she followed my eyes. One pocket where I had put the strange metallic ball was hanging up in the air.
“And I’d like to fuck you,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because I love you.”
“Then why haven’t you?”
“You’ve been engaged. Now you said the guy was dead.”
“Did you really have a moral obligation not to fuck me?”
“I prefer to think so.”
“Sucker,” she said.
I turned around and looked at her, one hand resting very lightly on her throat. “Don’t say that.”
“Tod almost told you.”
The Erection Set Page 35
