Always Leave ’Em Dying

by Richard S. Prather

  "I think I'll sit on your lap." Smiling, she said again, slowly, "Shell, what'll we do?"

  There could no longer be any doubt that she knew damn well what we were going to do. She went on huskily, impishly, "You want me to tell you?"

  "Tell me? In—words?"

  "In words. Right out loud."

  "What you think we should do?"

  "Yes."

  "Yes."

  She told me.

  "Well," I said, "you bet. Yes, you bet."

  There is no telling what I might have said then, but Jo leaned forward and her lips brushed mine. She touched her lips to my mouth, just a feather touch, soft, gentle, and as I leaned toward her she drew back from me. At the moment when I thought she was going to get completely away, she snaked one hand behind my head and pulled our mouths together.

  After that first gentle, tantalizing pressure the sudden and almost brutal contact was like an explosion.

  All of a sudden she was pressing against my chest, pushing me away, and she jerked her mouth from mine. She smiled, a funny, hot, tight smile, and said, "Shell, I'll tell you something about me."

  "Fine. Swell. Tell me anything."

  "I'm a tease. I'm a terrible tease."

  "You're a what!"

  "Oh, don't go all to pieces. I'm a funny kind of tease."

  "Yeah? You sure are. You are an ex-tease. Baby, you don't know, but this sort of thing is like shooting a guy. You don't just kill a man a little—you kill him dead. You—"

  She put a finger over my mouth, and I stopped, but I figured she had sure as hell better have something more sensible than that to say.

  Jo said, "I mean, I like to tease you—for a little while. Just like when I kissed you. Understand? I really like it. It's more fun."

  I tried to analyze that, and before I'd finished she leaned forward, brushed my lips again. It was the same routine all over, only this time she managed to keep away from me; her hand didn't go behind my head, her lips didn't press against mine. It was always almost but never all, and the shape I was in, I was about ready to give her a bust in the snoot. But despite my momentary thoughts of busting her, I wasn't about to play any game she didn't want to play. Finally, I pushed her away, leaned back in the chair.

  But she had that same hot, tight smile on again. "Don't get mad," she said breathlessly, and then, still smiling, she put her hands on her dress, fumbled with three buttons at her middle, and shrugged her shoulders.

  The dark blue silk slid down to her waist. Then she raised her hips, pulled the dark silk over them, threw the dress to the floor. She wore nothing under it but a wisp of light blue nylon over her hips and stomach. She said softly, "Wait for me, Shell, don't rush me," and then we were pressed together. Her hands went to that nylon at her waist and stripped it down, and though my eyes were closed I felt her motion as she threw it from her.

  I rested my hands gently against her shoulders, let them slide down her back.

  And damned if she didn't scoot out of my clutches like an eel and tear across the floor. It was the prettiest sight you ever did see, but it wasn't exactly what I had been led to expect.

  "You come back here," I said. She kept on tearing about.

  Well, it didn't look like I was going to do much good sitting here all by myself, so I took out after her. Apparently she did everything the way she kissed. And it was only the memory of how sensational those kisses had been, once you got one, that kept me going. She would let me catch her, but just when I'd have everything practically fixed up she would somehow wiggle away.

  It wouldn't have been so bad if it had been a little room, but this was an enormous room, practically an auditorium, and all this running over a hard wooden floor was beginning to tell on me. But Jo seemed good for several more miles. The way this thing was shaping up, I was beginning to think maybe that was all she was good for.

  I caught her on the bear rug and a big dreamy smile was growing on my chops—and wiggle, swoosh, and she was gone. That was the third time, and I knew exactly how a mountain climber would feel if he got practically to the peak of Everest and Everest ran away.

  It had finally affected my sense of proportion. I was no longer chasing Jo. To tell you the truth, I didn't even see Jo. My world had narrowed down: my world excluded everything except my particular Everest. Once more I caught it, and I said to it soberly, "Look. Listen. Goddammit. Look."

  I said, "You fly through the air again and—well, you just keep on going, see? I won't follow you. Hell, there'll be no point in my following you. We haven't got all day, you know."

  I shut up for a moment, mainly because I had no breath left at all. Everest stayed right there. This was it.

  A little later my thoughts got disjointed, and I was even carrying on a kind of mountaineering dialogue with myself: Man, what a stupid thing this mountain climbing is, after all; takes you nine years to get up there, and before you know it you're right back at the bottom. So you've been there; so what? What you want to climb it for in the first place? Ah, you fool—because it was there!

  All of a sudden there was a noise like that of a space ship landing and Jo said the first intelligible words she'd spoken in quite a while. "Oh, Lord. Randy's back."

  Up till this minute I had liked practically everything about Randy, but now I knew I had no use for the way he drove. And there I was running like a fool again—only this time Jo was behind me.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I had scooped up my robe on the way out, and when I sauntered back into the front room Randy was just coming in the front door with Olive Fairweather.

  He marched up beside me carrying several packages, dropped them on the floor, and said, "That'll take care of you."

  "I've been—that is, thanks, Randy. How did you manage all this in so little time?"

  "Been gone over an hour, son." He peered at me. "Taken a shower, hey? Look like it rested you."

  "Feel better. Better than I have in days. Weeks."

  I dressed in the shower room, and since I'd told Randy to get unobtrusive stuff, I wound up looking somewhat like a pallbearer. Black suit, gray shirt, black tie, black shoes, and even a black hat and a dark raincoat. It was a perfect disguise. Nobody would recognize me in this outfit. Randy had stuck a twenty-dollar bill in a pants pocket. When I tried to thank him later he told me that was the way pants came nowadays and to shut up.

  I went back into the front room and Randy, Olive, and I spent twenty minutes talking. Olive was a bit nervous at first, patting her mouse-brown hair and blinking those peculiar gray eyes at me, but she soon calmed down. The big item of information, as far as I was concerned, was that Dr. Wolfe had been Nurse Dixon's sidekick in the abortion racket. Since I felt sure that only the two of them, except perhaps for a few cab drivers and bellhops, had been in on the deal, that meant the racket was all washed up now.

  By the time Olive finished telling me about Trammelism, I was well versed in Arthur Trammel's routine. Every night except Tuesday, Trammel's day of rest, he held a big meeting in his tent; after that there was another, smaller meeting in the black-painted Truth Room for any who wished "further instruction." Inside the Truth Room building itself was a small room at the end of a hall; this was the so-called Healing Room, and in it was held the last part of Trammel's nightly operation. There, after the final "instruction," could go anonymously any and all Trammelites in distress, or with problems and worries, for the sage advice and counsel of Trammel, the All-High. Olive also corroborated what Hunt had told me, that Trammel was always busy in the Truth Room from about nine to ten—and even after that he usually spent a half hour or so giving sage advice.

  I said to her, "He doesn't know who goes to this Healing Room, then?"

  "The Master?"

  "The Master."

  "Of course not. The Healing Room is in darkness, always."

  "Do you know if Felicity Gifford ever attended those after-the-tent meetings? The Truth Room jobs?"

  "Not so far as I know."

  H
unt said he'd never noticed Felicity in the Truth Room at any time.

  In a few more minutes, they'd told me everything I thought I'd need to know. Jo had come in by then and was seated in a chair, humming. Randy stood up. "Well, I'll take Olive home."

  Jo stopped humming and I saw a grin starting to grow.

  I looked at Randy. "So . . . so soon?"

  "I'll be back in time to drive you down to the meetin'."

  He left with Olive, tires screeching.

  Jo said, "We're alone again."

  I said, "So what?"

  She laughed. And told me.

  "Look," I said. "I just got all dressed, for one thing. For another, I had a tough night last night and I've got a big night coming up; and if I had any strength left, which I don't, I'd save it."

  She was gurgling and moving around over there, and my voice was getting weaker. "Tell you what," I said. "You just do a dozen laps or so all by yourself while I sit here and watch. It'll be something new, something different for you. Who knows? You might get a hell of a charge out of it."

  Damn that woman. She knew that the way to a man's heart was not through his stomach, but through his eyeballs, and she was walking toward me, slowly, artistically, hips swaying, everything swaying.

  "You're trying to sway me," I said, "but I warn you, I intend to be firm, I refuse to budge. Anyway, I'm all tuckered out. I'm pooped. Well, what do you know?"

  Jo wasn't walking toward me any longer. That would have been impossible, because she was sitting on my lap. Facing me, she said, smiling, "I'm not going anywhere, Shell. So stop worrying."

  "Who's worrying?"

  The Trammelite grounds had a different look about them at night. It was a quarter of eight when Hunt, driving me in his car, swung into the oil-surfaced road leading to Trammel's tent, the second time I'd been here in less than thirty-six hours. Other cars were ahead of and behind us; dozens of men and women walked alongside the road and over the grass, headed for the big tent where I'd beefed with Trammel and his Guardians yesterday. It was fifty yards ahead, brightly lighted, jazzy organ music pulsing from it.

  "Good enough, Randy," I said. "I'll climb out here."

  He pulled over to the edge of the road and stopped. "Sure you don't want me to go in with you?"

  "No, thanks. I'll let you know what happens."

  I got out and he made a U-turn and left. In addition to my black suit and hat, I wore the dark raincoat, collar turned up to shield my face. It wasn't raining, but already I'd seen guys dressed in everything from overalls to green suits and overcoats. I didn't expect a raincoat to set me apart.

  Inside the tent, I found an empty chair about halfway down toward the stage and scooted in. It was five minutes till eight, when the meeting would start, and almost all available seats were filled. I guessed that close to two thousand people were here, latecomers still straggling inside. The crowd looked like two thousand, but smelled and sounded like more.

  All along the tent's left side, the bottom six feet of canvas had been raised off the ground and folded back, then attached to the canvas above, so that there was a six-foot-high open space extending the length of the tent. There was nothing but blackness out there on my left now, but I knew from my talk with Randy and Olive that at eight o'clock there'd be enough light so the assemblage could feast its eyes on Trammel's customary exit from the Truth Room and his stately progress here. I'd assumed the canvas was raised so we could see him start his act, but it seemed likely now that the open space was at least partially for ventilation. The air was warm, heat from the massed bodies a cloak around me, the sound of hundreds of voices a constant murmur.

  Organ music still swelled above the buzz of conversation. Draped gray cloth hung from the tent top down to the rear of the stage where I'd jawed with the Guardians. Suddenly the organ swung into a spooky number that the assembled Trammelites seemed to recognize. The buzz of conversation stopped and I heard voices singing in harmony. At the right of the stage about twenty people clothed in gray robes were singing something about the All-High. This was the choral group, in which Felicity Gifford had sung just three nights ago.

  Most of the people present were looking past the open left side of the tent, and as I followed their gaze, light grew until it bathed the grounds, fell on the black mass of the Truth Room, and barely touched Arthur Trammel's house beyond it.

  I could see Trammel clearly as the doors of the Truth Room opened. He stepped through them and began to walk with slow, measured steps toward us. His approach was perfectly timed so that the choral group's song ended abruptly as he walked inside the tent. In silence, he mounted wooden steps at the left edge of the platform.

  As he reached the top step, he paused briefly to pick up something on a small table, then walked to the stage's center, adjusting the thing on the front of his chest. When I saw the length of fine wire trailing out behind him, I knew that he'd picked up a portable microphone; no good revivalist these days would be caught dead without a portable mike.

  Trammel stopped in the middle of the stage, faced the crowd, raised both hands palm-out above his head. He stood in complete silence for a moment, then lowered his arms to his sides.

  "My friends," he said.

  It sounded familiar, but by the time I remembered where I'd heard the phrase before, Trammel was going on: "My followers, my fellow Trammelites. I bid you welcome. Welcome to the house of the All-High."

  He went droning on, spouting similar stuff, all of it innocuous enough. He wore a black robe, but his face was still the same hungry-buzzard mess, even from where I sat. This far from him, those close-set eyes looked almost like one misshapen orb in the center of his narrow head; his bushy eyebrows waggled.

  There was a rustle of movement at my left and I saw the plate—actually a wicker job about the size of a bushel basket—being handed down the row toward me. I was broke, and I wouldn't have dropped anything into Trammel's kitty anyway, so I passed it along, keeping my head down and hoping nobody would notice and hiss at me. I saw a lot of bills covering the change, if there was any change. While the All-High intoned the information that any offerings would be used toward completion of the Eternal House, which would "last through the ages," I estimated the average tip, multiplied it by two thousand, then by six nights, then by fifty-two weeks, and got anywhere from a couple of hundred thousand dollars to a half million. At that point, I started listening more intently to what Trammel was saying. This guy was big business.

  He was just starting to give the business to his followers. The plea for offerings was over, the main event was on, and it was getting sexy. I soon admitted that Hunt had been right: This stuff really revived a man. The air was heavy, thick, and Trammel's voice cut through the silence. "Lust is the sin, the ugly sin of man. He lusts after all things, after the flesh of animals for his gluttonous belly, and the flesh of women for his evil loins. Woman, if with his hands he does not despoil your flesh, if with his body he does not violate your body, then with his eyes he strips you naked and sins on you in his mind." You would have thought he was talking about me.

  Trammel's voice, usually so melodious and smooth, had become harsh, gasping. His phrases rose and fell in the time-tested chant of the revival preacher who knows how to stir the blood but not the brain. From individuals in the crowd came cries of assent and approval; cries of "Oh, Lord!" and "Amen!" and "Hallelujah!"

  It wasn't difficult to guess that the women here were experiencing, in varying degrees, a vicarious ecstasy. For I had to admit that Trammel was good; he was sensational. If this had been in one of the books Trammel was so anxious to ban, he'd have banned it in a hurry.

  On my left, a fat woman stared toward the stage, her dry-lipped mouth half open, her breathing gusty. Beyond her, another woman wrung her hands nervously together.

  Trammel was charging about now, waving his arms and screaming, his words amplified by the microphone against his chest. "We have been chosen to cleanse the land. We must seek out sin and destroy it. Only then w
ill the Kingdom of Heaven be ours!"

  There was more, much more, the age-old emotional mumbo-jumbo. Then he left the stage and walked up the left aisle, still shouting and ranting, peering into the faces of those he passed. He walked right up toward the row where I sat, and before I ducked my head down practically between my legs, I noticed that the long thin electrical cord ran out neatly behind him so that none of his words would fail to be amplified through his portable mike. He walked clear around in back and down the other aisle almost to the front row of seats before he retraced his steps, gathering up the hellishly long cord, which reached to speakers up front. Finally, though, he was back on the stage and I started breathing normally again.

  By the time he finished—having included a few gasps about scarlet women and fallen women for the titillation of males present—there was more noise coming from the crowd than from Trammel.

  The verbal orgy was followed by half a dozen songs, among them "Open the Gates and Let Me In," and the All-High thing, which I now supposed was Trammel's theme song. After that, he called on those who were afflicted to come to the stage. At first I didn't know what he meant, but then I saw them: a man on crutches, a woman in a wheelchair, a blind man tapping the aisle before him with his red-tipped cane, a young boy with pimples on his face. Twelve people lined up on the stage.

  Trammel walked among them. Trammel cried that the healing power was in his right hand, and that he, the All-High, would heal the afflicted. Then he passed his right hand over the boy's pimpled face. The pimples didn't drop off. Trammel cried that sometimes the healing power had to work for a day or two. Trammel ran his hand over the legs of the man on crutches, who threw away his crutches, took two steps, and fell down. But he was helped to his feet, tottered off the stage unaided, and took a few more steps before he sank into an aisle seat. Trammel did pull off one good job, which wasn't bad for twelve tries. He spent quite a bit of time on the blind man, shouting in a booming, hypnotic chant that he would bring sight to the dead eyes. He pressed his hands for almost two minutes over the sightless eyes, repeating over and over that when he removed his hands the man would see again.