Too Hot to Hold

by Day Keene

  If possible, so as to give May no cause to wonder, he wanted to catch the 5:35 as usual and he had less than five minutes to get on the train.

  He stuffed the parcel back into the brief case and shut it. He left the stall and put the brief case into one of the lockers in the first bank of lockers that he came to. He was starting to close the door when something about the appearance of his brief case stopped him. Then he realized what was different about it.

  The plastic tag bearing his name and address and phone number, normally attached to the handle of the case, was missing.

  Brady lifted the case and felt under the leather. The tag hadn’t fallen off in the locker. He tried to remember when he’d last seen it and was positive it had been on the case when he left Stamford that morning. Otherwise he would have noticed it was missing.

  It could have dropped off on the train. It could have fallen off in the drawer. It could have fallen in the stall.

  The short hairs on the back of Brady’s neck began to tingle.

  It could have ripped off in the taxi when he’d had to force the zipper closed after stuffing in the parcel.

  There was no use minimizing the matter. A new, potentially dangerous element had been added to a relatively simple experience of finding a parcel of money. If anyone found the tag it could easily be traced to him. The lettering on the tag was specific. It read:

  James A. Brady

  1134 E. Elm Street

  Stamford, Conn.

  Stam. 3-4124

  SIX

  AS WITH THE REST of the house the dining room was small. May was telling an endless tale about a wrangle with one of the tradesmen.

  “Then I asked him if he thought I was a fool,” May droned on. “I told him right to his face that he wasn’t running the only meat market in Stamford. A dollar and twenty cents a pound for round steak. And not even a middle cut at that. So I walked right out of the store.”

  Brady transferred his attention to Alice. It wasn’t difficult to do. As usual, she was trying to play footsies under the table. Sitting beside her as he was he couldn’t help but see down her loose-necked dress every time she leaned forward to fork a bite off her plate. Intentionally or otherwise, she wasn’t wearing a brassiere and every time she leaned forward she made sure he saw the tips of her breasts. They were young and firm and solid. Brady wondered just how much a man was supposed to take.

  He was relieved when Jimmy broke in on his mother’s conversation. “About that bike,” he demanded. “Why can’t I have a new bike?”

  Brady pointed out that his mother was speaking and it wasn’t polite for a boy to interrupt his elders. May immediately defended her son.

  “All the boy did was ask you a question. Why can’t he have a new bike. All the other boys in the neighborhood have new bicycles. And he has to ride that old thing.”

  Brady started to say that a new bike was out of the question and to preserve the peace changed his answer to, “I’ll see.”

  “And about time,” May said. She speared another piece of the steak. “After all, now that we live in Stamford, we have a certain position to maintain.”

  Oh, for Christ’s sake, Brady thought but was careful to avoid saying it. He didn’t want to quarrel with May tonight.

  “When?” Jimmy wanted to know. “When will you see?”

  To keep the peace, Brady partially committed himself. “Perhaps next payday.”

  As he spoke, Brady felt Alice reach out under the table and knead his inner thigh, her hot little fingers gradually working higher. The child was getting bolder every day. He wished he knew what to do about it. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t

  “If you don’t, I’ll tell Mother you have. That you’ve been seducing me since right after you and she were married.”

  And wouldn’t that be a pretty mess. With Alice ten years old at the time. Any jury of adults would send him away for twenty years for child molestation, if they didn’t order him committed to a hospital for the criminally insane.

  “What are you sweating about?” May asked him. Brady reached under the table cloth and brushed his stepdaughter’s hand away. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  He refrained from looking at Alice. In an undeveloped way she reminded him of the girl in the red plastic raincoat. He still wished he knew why she’d been so frightened of him and made a mental note to read the evening paper thoroughly. The accident hadn’t been important enough to make the front page but he might find something about her on one of the inside pages.

  “Why do I have to wait till next payday?” Jimmy whined. “Why can’t I have a new bike right now?”

  His whine grated on Brady’s ears. Alice’s hand had found his thigh again. Brady pushed back his chair and stood up. “All right. For Christ’s sake you can have one. I’ll give your mother the money in the morning and you can buy one tomorrow.”

  May was hurt. “Well, you don’t need to use profanity in front of the children.”

  Brady wished he dared tell her what her beloved daughter had been doing to him.

  May added, primly, “Just because you had a bad day at the office is no reason for you to come home and take it out on us.”

  Brady started to tell her he hadn’t had a bad day at the office, that it had been the best day he’d had since he had started to work for Harper, Nelson and Ferrel and was afraid he might say too much. Instead, he walked into the living room, picked the evening paper from the table and lighted a cigarette. He felt hemmed in on all sides, as if he were in an elastic trap.

  The money he’d found could be the answer. Money could solve a lot of his problems.

  Alice followed him in from the dining area and stood beside his chair, running her fingers through his hair. Her voice was a conspiratorial whisper. “You liked what I did at the table, didn’t you? I could tell.”

  Brady whispered back fiercely, “You ought to have your dirty little mind washed out with soap. Don’t ever do that again.”

  “Why not?”

  “It isn’t right and I don’t like it.”

  Her voice was as hot as her eyes. “Yes, you did. I could tell.”

  “Stop saying that,” Brady said.

  The child was sick. She had to be. Normal fifteen-year-old girls didn’t act this way. He couldn’t think of the name but it was a form of mental disease, coupled with a too rapidly developed body and an over-active thyroid gland. She needed medical care.

  May came to the door of the living room and looked at them suspiciously. “What are you two whispering about?”

  “Nothing,” Alice said sullenly and left the room.

  When May returned to the kitchen, Brady opened his paper but couldn’t read the print. It was too blurred. He felt put upon and soiled, as if he’d been rolling in slime. If the child acted that way with him, God only knew what she was doing with boys of her own age. And if she was being promiscuous, it was inevitable she would become pregnant. And probably blame him. Perhaps she was pregnant now and that was why she was determined to be intimate with him. So she would have someone to blame.

  “He forced me,” the little bitch would tell May with a straight face. “While you were out of the house. I didn’t want to but Daddy made me.”

  And nothing he could say would convince May otherwise.

  He wondered if boarding school was a possible solution. If he could think of some way to explain his sudden affluence, there was plenty of money in the parcel to send Alice to a good boarding school. His mind raced on. He could tell May he’d gotten a substantial raise. He would. Just as soon as he had a chance to determine how much money was in the parcel. Ten thousand dollars? Twenty thousand? Thirty?

  His paper still unread, Brady forced himself to think.

  In the normal course of events no businessman transported so large a sum of money in cash. That was what banks and bank drafts were for. That could mean, it probably did mean, the sheaves of money came from some illegitimate source. He didn’t know whether to be pleased
or worried by the deduction. It was one thing to deal with an absent-minded businessman. It was something entirely different to become involved with the underworld. The boys on the other side of the fence played rough. They liked to kill people and would on the slightest pretext.

  Brady turned to the lost and found column in the paper. People had lost watches and rings and purses and cocker spaniels but there was no mention of anything resembling the parcel.

  Brady went through the paper thoroughly, scanning each page. He found what he was looking for in the second section.

  Miss Linda Lou Larson, 19, of the Clark Street Arms Hotel, Chicago, was admitted to the Bellevue Hospital this morning after being struck by a motor vehicle on E. 42nd St. Sgt. Joel Hooper of the 52nd St. station says no charges were filed against the driver of the vehicle.

  He rolled the name on his tongue. Linda Lou. It had a pleasant sound. There was almost magnolia and moonlight in it. Brady glanced back at the filler, wishing there were more details. At least a mention of how badly the girl had been injured.

  May finished the dishes and came into the living room. She noticed the tear in his trousers. “And just how did you do that?”

  “I fell down,” Brady said.

  “Your next to your best suit, too.”

  “I didn’t have time to change.”

  May sighed as she claimed the first section of the paper. “Sometimes I don’t understand you, Jim. I should think, having been a bachelor as long as you were, you’d appreciate having a happy family. But no. You want to quarrel all the time.” She asked, in sudden suspicion, “You haven’t lost you job, have you? Mr. Harper didn’t fire you because you were late this morning, did he?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you acting so strangely tonight?”

  “I wasn’t aware that I was acting strangely.”

  May settled herself on the sofa. “Well, you’re certainly not yourself.”

  The evening was as endless as the day had been. Still sullen-eyed, Alice sat on a chair right across from Brady, with her feet on the cushion of the chair and her chin resting on her drawn-up knees, managing, despite her mother’s occasional admonition to sit like a lady, to expose herself to Brady more than once. There was nothing unusual about the evening. They listened to Jimmy’s favorite television programs until he went to bed at ten o’clock. At ten-thirty, still sullen-eyed, Alice made up her bed in the so-called den and May announced it had been a long day and she, too, was going to bed. Brady wanted to sit up for the late newscast on the chance the newscaster might say something about the parcel of money or the girl in the red plastic raincoat but he hesitated to attract attention to himself and followed May into the bedroom.

  He’d taken to showering and shaving at night to save time in the morning and when he did manage to get into the bathroom he had to dodge wet stockings and a pair of May’s briefs to get to the sink. This was living? The money could change all this, if he could manage to hold on to it. He meant to.

  He deliberately took more time than usual in the bathroom but the bed lamp was still on and May was still awake when he finally returned to their bedroom. As he sat on the edge of the bed and set and wound the alarm clock, she regarded him thoughtfully.

  “Are you certain you’re all right, Jim?”

  “I’m positive,” he assured her. “Why?”

  “You act funny to me.”

  “It’s your imagination.”

  As he turned out the light and stretched out beside her, May’s voice felt its way through the stuffy darkness. “Are you catching one of your colds?”

  “I feel fine,” Brady assured her.

  He hoped May wasn’t in one of her rare amorous moods. After the business with Alice, despite the fact that he was a normal male and the child’s fondling had excited him, the very thought of sex at the moment was disgusting. He wanted no part of May or her daughter. May wasn’t amorous. Her goodnight kiss was slippery with face cream.

  “Well, if you won’t tell me, you won’t. But something is bothering you.”

  She turned on her side and a few minutes later she fell asleep.

  Brady lay staring up into the darkness. A half-hour passed, then an hour. Brady was waiting for the late newscast at midnight. At five minutes of twelve, by the luminous dial of his watch, he eased himself out of bed and tiptoed into the living room. Being careful to keep the volume very low, he turned on the television set. While he waited for the current commercial to finish and the newscast to begin he made himself a stiff highball.

  The foreign news came first. Sitting on the edge of one of the straight-backed chairs in the living room, Brady listened without interest to the latest machinations of Nikita S. Khrushchev & Company. Then he realized he wasn’t alone in the room.

  The girl’s hot whisper felt for him through the darkness. “Couldn’t you sleep, either?”

  Oh, God, Brady thought. Do I have to go through that again? The girl passed in front of the lighted picture tube and he saw that it was even worse than he’d thought. As far as he could tell the child was completely nude and she was no longer a child. She was a small woman complete with jutting breasts, concave stomach and a psychopathic obsession for him.

  “I haven’t any clothes on,” she said proudly.

  Brady started to get up and leave the room and couldn’t. Alice had plumped herself down on his lap. As her bare flesh touched his, Brady’s reaction was normal and immediate. He sat, rigid, ashamed of himself, ashamed of her. “You little fool,” he whispered, tersely. “What if your mother should wake up?”

  The girl’s voice was thick and sick with passion. “She won’t. But you know what I told you. You’d better. And right now. Oh, please. Please, Jim.”

  Why not, Brady thought. If I don’t she’ll he anyway. Perhaps this way she’ll give me some peace. After all, it’s not exactly incest. She’s no relation of mine. If she’s so hell determined, why not? Then reason asserted itself. Alice was just a child. He couldn’t let her do this thing. One hand still holding the highball glass, he tried to push her away with the other.

  “Please, Jim. Please help me,” she whimpered, then the whimper turned into a moan as she partially accomplished her purpose, only to have Brady turn sideways on the chair and push her away from him so hard she fell sprawled on the sofa.

  “You bitch. You filthy little bitch,” he cursed her. “Go tell your mother. Go tell her anything you want. But leave me alone. Understand?”

  Panting with the effort, he walked down the hall to the bathroom and closed and locked the door. Then he was suddenly and violently sick in the toilet. What kind of a nightmare had he gotten himself into? In another second or two he wouldn’t have been able to help himself. Male flesh could only take so much. In another second or two, with her enthusiastic consent and cooperation, he would have taken his own stepdaughter on the chair or the sofa or the floor of the living room.

  He ran cold water in the sink and splashed it on his face and body. One thing was certain. Things couldn’t go on like this. He had to find some solution.

  It was stifling hot in the small bathroom with the window closed. Brady cranked it open to let the cold night air come in and stood motionless, staring down at the street.

  A big, dark sedan was cruising slowly between the elm trees. As it passed under the street light in front of the house, Brady could see there were two men in it. One of them was doing the driving while the other studied the numbers on the houses.

  Two strangers looking for an address, perhaps the address on a lost plastic tag.

  James A. Brady

  1134 E. Elm Street

  Brady half expected the car to stop. It didn’t. It drove on slowly and as the twin red tail lights grew dim and merged with the night, he fought down another desire to be sick. He didn’t give a damn whose money it was. He wouldn’t give it up. It was his. He’d found it.

  After another five minutes he unlocked the bathroom door and looked out. The television was still on but
Alice was no longer in the room. He thought he heard her crying in the den.

  Still breathing hard, he turned off the television set and went in and lay down beside his wife.

  Sleep was out of the question. Brady didn’t even try. He was still lying rigid, his muscles tensed and twitching, staring hot-eyed at the ceiling he couldn’t see when the first faint tinkle of milk bottles served to herald the brightening dawn.

  SEVEN

  THE BIG ROOM smelled of medicine and antiseptic and sleeping women. Linda Lou continued to lie with her eyes closed for long minutes after she awakened, listening to the muted and unfamiliar noises, hoping the nurse on duty wouldn’t notice she was awake. She hadn’t meant to sleep so long. She hadn’t meant to sleep at all. It had been the stuff in the needle the nurse in the emergency room had stuck into her.

  The sedative had left a film of fur in her mouth. Her head ached in a dull way. As cautiously as she could she opened her eyes part way and studied the ward through her long dark eye lashes.

  The only light in the ward was over the night supervisor’s desk but judging from the steadily increased tempo of the muted sounds and the way the windows were beginning to brighten, dawn wasn’t far away.

  She was in a mess, a bad one. There was no talking around that. If Mr. Mike Scaffidi hadn’t found the parcel she’d left in his cab and turned it in, there was no telling what Mr. Dix might do or have done to her. As soon as the hospital released her and gave her her clothes and her money, she would take a cab from the hospital right to the office of the taxi company and ask for the lost and found department. If the parcel was there, well and good. If it wasn’t she didn’t know what she would do.

  She began to cry softly. Not even going back to Chicago and saying she’d changed her mind and she was willing to be his girl would save her from Mr. Dix’s anger. There had been more money in the parcel than she’d even seen before. She’d counted to sixty thousand dollars before she’d wrapped it up again and even then she hadn’t been but a third way through the sheaves.