by Judith Gould
Ruby shook her head. “That girl’s going to be the death of me yet.”
“Ruby,” R.L. broke in, “did Eds see the flowers yet?”
“No, but something tells me they are a waste of good money.” Ruby placed her hands on her hips, pushed out her imposing double-prowed bosom, and squinted with suspicion. “Hallelujah was right on the mark, huh? You’ve done something you shouldn’t have. That’s what all these flowers are for. To make up.”
R.L. didn’t answer. “I need to talk to Eds, Ruby,” he said solemnly. “It’s serious.”
She sighed deeply. “Wish I could help you, honey. She’s been locked upstairs in the study for hours. I don’t know what’s gotten into her. She won’t say. Hallelujah thinks it’s something to do with designing clothes.”
“Designing?” He perked up dreamily, the word music to his ears. “Did you say designing?’” Excitedly he grabbed Ruby by her thick upper arms and shook her. “For real?”
“What’s the matter with you?” Ruby shook his hands off with mock indignation and made a production of brushing her sleeves.
“Ruby, it’s important! Is she designing?”
“How should I know?” she sniffed. “She doesn’t talk about it to me. Just keeps that door locked like it’s the gold room in Fort Knox.”
“Which room’s the study?”
“Second door on the left upstairs.”
R.L. startled her by picking her up, whirling her around, and planting a big happy kiss on her cheek before setting her back down. Then, spinning around on the sole of one shoe, he leapt up the curving stairs, taking them three at a time.
“She won’t let you in!” Ruby called up after him.
It was as if he hadn’t heard. Eds is designing! was all he could think.
He pounded happily on the study door.
Edwina’s voice, distracted and muffled, came softly through it. “Hal, sweetie pie, how many times do I need to tell you? Will you please leave your poor overwrought mother alone?”
He chuckled to himself and knocked again.
An instant later the door opened a crack and one eye peered out with irritation before changing to a glare of malevolence. “You!” Edwina accused, her voice whisper soft, yet the word encapsulating all her fury. “Go away.” She started to close the door on him.
Quick as a flash, he wedged his foot in the doorway. “Eds,” he said quickly, “we need to talk.”
“We have nothing to discuss!” she stated emphatically. “As far as I’m concerned, you no longer exist. Now, would you please get out?”
“Look, Eds,” he said in a tone of humble reason, “after what we’ve shared these past months, wouldn’t you say the least we could do is communicate? I don’t want to throw away everything we’ve got. Do you?”
“Damn you!” A sudden tremor had come into her voice and her one visible eye was threatening tears. “You know just the right buttons to push, don’t you? But then, you always did.”
Everything inside him wanted to reach out, drag her from behind that door, hold her protectively, and keep the world’s hurt at bay— and yet, wasn’t it he who had caused her grief in the first place? How ironic! The shining knight who was prepared to slay dragons for her was himself the dragon.
“I’m just asking for a few minutes to talk,” he begged quietly.
Edwina iced him with her eye. “Aren’t we doing that?” she asked frostily. “Not that I seem to have much choice, with your foot stuck in my door.”
He looked down at his foot, took a steadying breath, and looked back up at her. “I flew down from Boston in the hopes we could work things out.”
“Then fly right back.”
“Eds, please,” he pleaded softly. “Just hear me out? Granted, I made a terrible mistake—”
“Mistake! Is that what you call it?”
“I admit you’re justifiably angry—” That was as far as he got.
“You bet your Boston Brahmin ass, I’m justified! There I was, in my greatest hour of need, and I call you. And what happens?” Her voice was thick and her silver-gray eyes had gone dull and cloudy. “Some two-bit floozy answers the phone and tells me she’s making it with you!”
“She . . . she wasn’t a two-bit—”
“Whatever she cost, she was a floozy!”
“Do we have to talk past this door?”
She looked at him a few moments longer, then seemed to make up her mind. “All right. I’ll give you two minutes, you cheating bastard. Then you leave. Okay?”
“Okay.”
She opened the door wider, came stiffly out in the hall, and snapped the door shut behind her. “I’m waiting.” Tapping her foot impatiently, she folded her arms tightly across her breasts, her long lacquered fingernails blurring like hummingbirds’ wings.
She looked so remote and unforgiving that R.L. decided he must fire up the famous Shacklebury charm a little. So he smiled.
R.L.’s smile.
It was a youthful smile, a choirboy’s smile, a smile so appealingly winsome and innocent and wholesome, so utterly warm and sincere, that it touched the lips last; it started in the deepest regions of his eyes and crinkled his laugh lines beguilingly, then slowly lit up his entire face from within, and then, and only then, curved his lips into that most impossibly engaging of slightly lopsided smiles. It was the most potent weapon of his considerable arsenal, that Shacklebury smile, and he knew it—experience had taught him that it melted even the hardest of hearts.
But it didn’t melt Edwina’s, because stones don’t melt. “You can put that smile right back where it came from,” she said, for once inured to his charms. “It won’t work this time.”
The smile left his face. “You’re one hell of a tough lady,” he conceded.
Her chin went up and she shook her head. “No, R.L., I’m not a tough lady. What I am is one hell of a fool for having gotten involved with you in the first place.” She gave a low, bitter laugh. “Not that it matters anymore.”
“Of course it matters!”
Her nostrils flared defiantly. “And pray tell, why should it?”
“Because . . . because we had something beautiful!”
“ ‘Had,’ “ she said, “is the operative word. We don’t have. The sooner you admit it to yourself, the easier it will be for both of us in the long run. It’s over.”
“Just like that?” he said sadly.
“Just like that.”
“So I meant that little to you.”
Her eyes darkened even more and became wet stones. “On the contrary, R.L.,” she said. “It’s because you meant so very much to me.
“And now it’s all over? Because I slipped?”
“Slipped” she growled in exasperation. “R.L.! An alcoholic slips. A drug addict slips. Slipping implies a preexisting condition one is successfully fighting.” Suddenly she clapped her hand over her mouth. “Or are you trying to tell me you’re a sex maniac undergoing therapy?”
“Eds—”
“Don’t you ‘Eds’ me! Do you have any idea of the dangers of sleeping around in this day and age?”
“Yes,” he said in a grieving whisper.
“But it didn’t make any difference,” she went on, “did it? Oh, no. You dropped your trousers all the same! And now you dare run back to me! Well, no dice. Ciao, baby.”
He sighed to himself. What was there to say? That he had almost, but not quite, gone to bed with Catherine Gage? Did it really make any difference that he hadn’t? For he’d intended to, no doubt about that.
Edwina glanced pointedly at her wristwatch. “Your two minutes,” she said with mock sweetness, “are up.”
“What? But I didn’t even get a chance to—”
“Out!” She pointed to the landing with a trembling forefinger.
“But I love you, Eds! I know things are in a mess right now, but I want to straighten it out!” Seeing her implacable obduracy, he said passionately, “Didn’t you hear me? I said I love you.”
She
was unmerciful—a female Genghis Khan. “Professions of love no longer cut any ice with me, R.L.,” she said in a clipped voice. “Now, will you get out? Or do I have to throw you out?”
In a defiant show of machismo, he stubbornly stood his ground. “You’ll have to throw me out.”
“Never say I didn’t give you fair warning.”
“Warning for what?”
She sighed painfully. “This.”
He didn’t see it coming. In fact, it was the last thing on earth he expected. One moment, her knees were where knees normally are—at knee level. The next, one of them flashed upward and slammed into that certain spot of male anatomy where it hurts the most.
Five things happened simultaneously:
His eyes bulged.
He let out a grunt.
He cupped his balls.
He went pale.
He fell heavily to his knees.
His reaction brought her exquisite gratification. She stood back and eyed him as he salaamed the floor in pain.
Finally he raised his head and looked up at her with a mixture of hurt and confusion. “Now, why did you have to do that?” he squeaked in a breathy falsetto.
“Because,” Edwina explained sweetly, “you just don’t listen. When I say get out, you get out.” She pointed a quivering finger down the hall. “Now, beat it, buster, before I cut them off.”
Prudently, he beat it.
Chapter 36
Fear and loathing rumbled down Second Avenue. Caught the red light at Fourteenth Street. Didn’t let it faze him.
Snake simply passed on the right, banked the big double-tank Harley into an illegal turn on red, and thundered west along Fourteenth. Satan’s Warriors weren’t sticklers for law and order—only white supremacy.
He cruised slowly, the Wisconsin-made engine snarling righteously. Cars whooshed past, hitting him with their slipstreams. He couldn’t care less. He wasn’t in a hurry. So what if the poor fuckers in their sardine cans passed him; it was no skin off his back. All he had to do was open the throttle and he could leave them all behind in a cloud of blue exhaust.
That knowledge gave a slow ride special pleasure.
A carful of teenagers came in on the left lane, rock music pounding, and stayed alongside.
He glanced over at them and grinned. A girl in the backseat caught his eye.
He blew her a hairy kiss.
Her conceit repelled it. In a huff, she haughtily raised her chin and turned her pretty face away.
“Well, up yours too, bitch!” Snake muttered, flashing her a birdie.
The car sped up and shot past him.
“So you want to show off, fuck-face? That it?” Snake laughed at the driver. “Well, try this on for size, asshole!” He twisted the accelerator and opened up. The sudden burst of speed filled him with an unholy joy and the wind stung his eyes as the big bike leapt effortlessly past the car.
He glanced back over his shoulder. Sure nuff, he had their full attention. Right on.
He downshifted to first and resumed his slow cruise. Then, moments before the car pulled back alongside him, he opened the throttle all the way and did a wheelie.
The result was awesome. The front wheel of the Harley rose impressively off the asphalt and hovered in the air at an impossible angle. He kept it up for an entire half block, crossing University Place before he let it land, smooth as a kiss.
No mean feat, that.
The driver of the car, miffed at being outdone, squealed his tires angrily and abruptly turned left down Fifth Avenue. The vehicle disappeared.
Snake roared laughter into the wind and moved his legs forward, resting his scuffed engineer boots on the custom-installed highway pegs.
Coming up on Sixth Avenue, he had to slow down. Ahead, the yellow light was just turning red, and a string of cars was slowing to a halt.
Suddenly his hard tawny eyes crinkled with pleasure.
Way at the front, right behind the crosswalk, he spied a bright red Ferrari shining like a newly polished apple.
He could feel the excitement stirring in his groin.
“Well, what do you know?” he said to himself. “Somebody sure thinks he’s hot shit!”
Snake’s lips widened crookedly at the prospect of a challenge. It had been too long since he’d enjoyed a good drag race.
And from experience, he knew that where there was a pricey sports car, he would find a foxy chick wedged in the passenger seat.
Might as well show her what a real man drove.
Billie Dawn froze the moment the shattering roar of what could only be an approaching Harley-Davidson rent the air. She grasped Duncan’s arm with such force that he could feel her fingernails digging through his sleeve. Then a single bright headlight beam stabbed through the rear window and flooded the car’s interior like a searchlight, before veering off sideways.
The roar decreased to a low menacing growl as the motorcycle pulled up alongside the passenger door.
Duncan sensed the potent fear coming off her.
“Billie, it’s all right.” But she knew better. Even with her head averted from the window, she knew whose bike this particular one was. From her years spent riding pillion as Snake’s ole lady, she knew every last squeak of his scoot as intimately as years-long residents get to know every creak and whisper of their settling old house.
“Doc,” she moaned, “Doc, it’s him! I know it is. Oh, for God’s sake, Doc—”
“Darling,” he began, “it’s only a bike—”
“It’s his bike!” She jerked as the snarl of the Harley’s engine suddenly crescendoed to ear-splitting volume and receded, crescendoed and receded. The motorcyclist was gunning his accelerator. It was show-off time—challenge to a drag race.
Duncan had to raise his voice to make himself heard above the din. “Darling, maybe if you just—”
The roar died to an idle, and knuckles suddenly rapped on her window.
She let out a cry.
The rapping continued. As if by its own volition, her head turned slowly to look out.
Her mouth gaped open in shock.
How well she had known that huge caveman with that long dirty black hair, that great unkempt greasy beard, those lips curved into a perpetually mirthless grin. How well, too, she had known that familiar glint of gold that flashed from his earlobe and nostril, and the nickel sheen of all those loathsome skull pins and iron crosses and swastikas and white-power fists that cluttered his denim overlay.
For a moment they just stared at each other through the delicate barrier of glass—Billie Dawn with terror, Snake with openmouthed surprise.
Shirl? She watched his lips mouthing her former name, and then she saw his squinty, mean yellow eyes hardening into sharp pinpoints. Remembering her escape from the clubhouse, no doubt; remembering Olympia’s fearless rescue of her. Remembering, above all, how a woman had broken up the hellish gang rape, making fools of them all before running off with the booty.
Terror writhed poisonously inside her gut. If there was one thing a Satan’s Warrior wouldn’t stand for, it was somebody getting the better of him. That a woman had done so was doubly unforgivable. Triply intolerable. Punishable by . . . what?
She didn’t want to know.
Snake’s initial surprise boiled into raging fury. He reached out for the door handle—the door was locked. Thank God.
But would that deter? Or would it provoke?
Without warning, he began pounding the window with his fist. The window quivered under the onslaught, but held.
He hit it again, harder, this time with the four huge skull rings sprouting from his fingerless gloves—rings that did double duty as brass knuckles.
With a dry-sounding crunch, the polymer-filled safety glass fractured into a sheet of opaque crushed ice.
“Doc!” she screamed, covering her head with her hands. “Doc, do something! Step on it!”
The pitch of her assertive demand threw some vital switch within Duncan Cooper. Gone was the mi
ld-mannered surgeon with the soothing bedside manner; this Duncan Cooper was Mario Andretti and Evel Knievel rolled into one. Heedless of the uptown traffic speeding through the intersection from the left, he shifted into first gear and jammed the accelerator down to the floor. The wide, thick-tread tires bit the avenue’s asphalt, the rear of the Ferrari fishtailed once, and with a squeal of rubber they were off. Cramping the steering wheel violently first to the left and then to the right, he swung into the school of approaching cars, found an opening, and tadpoled through.
Horns blared, braked squealed in their wake, and a loud report like a shotgun blast reverberated as two vehicles slammed into one another.
Duncan wasn’t about to stop for the accident he had caused, not with a crazed outlaw biker ready to leap into the car and drag Billie off to some festering urban cave. He pulled a hard right, heading up Sixth Avenue, and speed-shifted from first into fourth.
Vroom! The tiger under the hood roared and they were off. Burning the red lights and careening around cross-town traffic, they sped uptown like a bullet shot from hell.
Snake will always be after me! Billie thought as she stared ahead in a trance of bewildered fright. I’ll never be safe! Not as long as he’s alive.
Beside her, Duncan glanced into the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of a single high-beam headlight fast catching up. He drew his lips grimly across his teeth. Damn. All the fancy wheelwork had been for nothing. Snake was right on their tail.
The chase was on.
Chapter 37
Duncan drove with one eye on the rearview mirror.
He couldn’t have missed the single wobbly headlight gaining in size and glare if he’d tried. Even reduced in the mirror, it hurtled at them like a blinding sun—and he was doing eighty-five in a Ferrari, for Chrissakes!
“Damn!” he growled. How fast could a Harley go, anyway?
Ahead was Twenty-eighth Street. The flower-district wholesalers were shuttered; the riotous jungle of palms and ficus trees was indoors under lock and key. During daytime, these sidewalks were a veritable tropical rain forest, and the commercial side streets one huge traffic jam; now they were empty and desolate. Grimy and spooky and dark.
