Hard Case Crime: The Vengeful Virgin (12 page)

The headlights had to be turned on. The hand throttle had to be released. The foot had to be freed from beneath the accelerator.

I stripped and walked into the water. The water was cold. The night was black, and the mud banks under my feet suddenly gave sharply away. I kept my feet, walking directly toward where the car had gone under. I slid abruptly down the slimy, steep bank to my chin. I took another step and went under. Holding my breath, I fought toward the car, smashed into it with my face against steel. It was deep. I hauled myself down fast to the dashboard, found the headlight knob, yanked it out. The lights didn’t come on; shorted out. But I had that much accomplished. Then I released the hand throttle.

I couldn’t stay under any longer. Out of breath, I fought for the surface, came up overly conscious of the possibilities of alligators in the water now.

I didn’t want to go down there again. I had to. I took another deep breath, and dove. I caught some of the convertible top, and pulled myself down to the car seat. She was still jammed the way I’d fixed her. I located her foot under the gas pedal, braced myself, and tore it free.

When I came up, a car’s headlights had brightened the night, moving slowly along the canal roadway. I ducked into the water again, waiting. When I came up, the car had passed. I swam for the bank, crawled up on the mud and lay there.

The sensation of being trapped was very bad now. Of what we had done. Of what I was doing. There was a moment of realization of how life had been before I’d met Shirley Angela, and I lay there on the muddy bank, and began to laugh. The laughter was bad, and it stopped as abruptly as it had begun.

I got sick.

Finally I lay there on the bank, panting. My head ached. The whole thing was an impossible business. But it had happened. And it had only begun happening. All I’d accomplished was to take care of one little point that wasn’t even supposed to have happened. A tiny flaw. A diseased speck in what lay ahead.

I got down into the water again and scrubbed the mud and scum away, then came up the bank and dressed.

After that I went over the ground carefully, wishing I had a flashlight, but making what moonlight there was do. I smoothed out my footprints, and obliterated the tire tracks enough so they wouldn’t be noticed, but would still be there.

Then I started down the road.

I’d taken maybe a hundred paces, when I remembered the blanket.

I ran back. I couldn’t find the place where I’d hidden it. I couldn’t even find the place where the convertible had gone over into the canal.

Another car passed. I hid again, then went on looking. Finally I found the blanket. I rolled it up tightly, and stood there. I couldn’t figure what to do with it.

Then I got to laughing again. For a minute or two, I couldn’t stop. It wasn’t really laughing. It was a kind of loud shouting. Then it stopped.

I started down the road with the blanket rolled up under my arm. Mayda Lamphier’s death blood was soaked into the cloth. I didn’t know what to do with it.

It was nutty. Everything was in order. Everything had to be in order all the way down the line. Except for this damned blanket.

I couldn’t burn it. I couldn’t tear it to shreds, and float the stuff away on the wind. If I threw it into the canal, somebody would find it. A fisherman would find it, maybe. So for a moment I was blocked solid.

There was only one thing to do. Bury it.

I cut off the road, on the opposite side from the canal. The land was wooded with pine. I walked and stumbled through the woods, until I thought I was far enough in. It would look different in daylight. Maybe I was in somebody’s back yard.

The hell with it. I dug with both hands. I scraped out a hole about four feet deep in the sandy, mucky soil, jammed the blanket down there, and covered it. I littered the spot with dried pine needles and leaves and ruck from surrounding ground, then hiked it back to the road.

Once on the road again, I ran.

“He’s dead, Jack.”

She was like a hunk of marble. The only thing that gave away what was going on inside her was her eyes. I didn’t say anything. I went into the bedroom and looked at him, there on the bed.

His knees were buckled, with those big feet sticking out, and he was on his side. His hands were shaped into large claws, the tendons in shadowed relief. The hands were stretched out at arm’s length, toward the oxygen tanks. But his face really got me.

From the neck up, he was choked with a kind of rich purple, blotched with blues and grays. The eyes were bugged right out of his head. It looked as if you would have to punch them back in order to close the lids. The mouth was stretched open as if he were screaming like an animal, with the purple lips drawn back away from the teeth as if they’d been stapled into his jaws.

All that eagle-like arrogance was gone now.

“He died a few minutes before you came, Jack.”

Her voice was flat and there was fear.

Well, I thought. This is what you wanted.

The bright white light glared down on the room. The oxygen mask was on the bed. The TV set was still turned on with the sound off. A guy on the screen was sneaking down an alley. It was raining in the alley.

I knew then that I hadn’t really wanted Victor to die. Only it was too late.

Maybe it was all wrong. Maybe we’d gone too far. But I knew this, too—it couldn’t be undone. So now was the time to make it pay.

I heard Shirley say something. She grabbed me with both arms. “Oh, Jack....”

All I thought of was the money. I didn’t want it that way. Here she was, scared stiff, like a little kid, wanting me to comfort her, needing me, wanting me to say something to her so she wouldn’t feel so bad. And all I could think of was the money.

It was strange. There were bright little moments of realization, knowing what was really happening. And with those brief interims came a hopeless trapped feeling I’d never had before.

I thrust her away, holding her shoulders. Her face didn’t look too good.

“We’ve got to have everything absolutely straight,” I said. “Are the volume controls turned up on the outside speakers?”

“Jack. He kept crying for air. He lasted and lasted. I stood there and watched him. I taunted him, Jack. I was crazy—I must have been crazy. I just stood there. I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to move—just to see him die.”

For a moment I thought she was going to crack.

“Easy, now, Shirley.”

I remembered something: I went back into Victor’s bedroom and checked the intercom unit. Sure enough, it was turned off. He must have turned it off after it stopped working. I turned it back on and up to full-volume. His was a master control. I flipped open all the remotes.

I went back to the living room. She hadn’t moved.

“Your story, Shirley—can you make it all right?”

She stood there with one hand clamped over her mouth, the round eyes staring at me.

“Shirley,” I said. My voice cracked a little. “I’ve got to get out of here. Remember. You were out back, sitting by the Gulf. You didn’t hear anything.” I pulled her hand away from her face and said slowly and harshly, “Will you get everything straight?”

“Yes. Jack. Mayda—?”

“Never mind Mayda. Don’t even think about her. Forget she was ever around here. The less you know, the...”

“I’ve got to know.”

“Okay.” I told her about Mayda, thinking again how if she’d ever found out about Mayda and me, things wouldn’t even be this good. “Now, forget her.” I wanted to forget her.

She said, “It’s all wrong, Jack.”

“Don’t think it for a second, Shirley. Now’s when we need strength. We’re in it. There’s no backing out now.” I glanced at the bedroom. “Listen,” I said. “Already we’re wasting time. You’ve got to call Miraglia now.”

“I called him, Jack.”

“You what?”

“I called him maybe five minutes ago, before you came.”

I didn’t speak.

She said, “I knew I had to. It wouldn’t look right unless I called. I had to do what was right. I didn’t know when you’d get back. I knew if you came back when he was here, you’d see his car out front. It’s all right, Jack—don’t look like that!”

I still said nothing.

She said, “It’s all right, Jack. It’s all over. Say you love me.”

I stared at her. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

“I told the doctor what had happened, how I didn’t hear him. And when I came in, he was having a bad attack. I told him the oxygen didn’t seem to do any good. I gave him a nitroglycerin pill, for his heart—but it didn’t seem to do any good, either. I said Victor fought the oxygen when I tried to help him. He said he’d known something like this would happen—that he’d be right over.”

“Listen,” I said. “Don’t call me. On your life. Don’t try to contact me. I’ll contact you.” I took her in my arms, then, because I needed somebody to hang onto, too. Only I let go of her right away, because it didn’t do any good. It was as if I were in a dream, and none of this had happened. Only it had happened. I knew I hadn’t meant it to happen. Isn’t that what they always say afterward? The whole business tumbled down over me like a big black wet tent.

Her eyes were glassy.

“Jack, don’t go and leave me all alone. I couldn’t stand it.”

“You’ll have to stand it. Right now is when we’ll both have to stand everything. Listen, the big thing now is getting that money. You hear? There’s no telling what’ll happen now. It won’t be easy. It’s going to be close, believe me. Start on that money as soon as you can. I’ll reach you, somehow.”

“But we’ll have to wait for the money. There’s always a waiting period.”

“Yeah.” I wasn’t even thinking about what she said. “We’ve got to be careful.” I ceased talking. Things were happening too fast. A car had pulled up out front, and I heard the low moan of a distant siren. Almost immediately a car door slammed.

“I’m all alone, Jack. You’re leaving me with this all alone. I can’t stand it. I don’t know whether I can do it.”

“You’ve got to do it!”

Her face took on that stunned expression. I thought she might start bawling. I shook her, listening, and knowing I had to run for it.

“I’ll get in touch with you,” I said.

I turned and ran for the kitchen.

“Jack—
please!”

She was nuts. There was the sound of another car out front. Maybe an ambulance. Voices. I went on through the kitchen. It looked clean. The carving knife was on the kitchen table. She called softly again. As I went across the back porch, somebody pounded on the front door.

I ran across the back lawn with the hounds of hell after me, thinking how she might crack. She couldn’t crack. She had to do it right, damn her. If she made even one mistake, it would be all they’d need.

I was sick and scared. I wished to God I’d never met Shirley Angela....

There hadn’t been time to really know what had happened back there with her.

It began to get to me as I reached the truck. The whole thing really got to me, then. I slid under the wheel and sat there and shook. I cried. I cursed Shirley Angela, and myself, and Victor Spondell, and Doctor Miraglia, and Mayda Lamphier, and her goddamned husband for being away in Alaska.

And all the time I was like that, I knew I wanted the money. Behind all the fear and the knowing, was the thought of that money. It was a curse. It was inside, from way back in my childhood, and I knew nothing would ever tear it up out of me, either. It had been my chance, and I’d taken it. That was that. There wasn’t anything else, now—just get that money.

I had hardly started back toward town with the truck when the rest of it began gnawing. How had she made out? What had she said? Did Miraglia believe her? Had he any reason to doubt what she said? But he wouldn’t have. There was no reason. Victor was dead, and he’d said himself that he had expected something like this to happen.

Then I wondered if that was what Miraglia really meant. Or was I reading something into it that I wanted there?

I knew I’d have to go home. I would wait. How in all hell could I stand it? Not knowing what was going on? I’d told her not to contact me. That had been wrong. I should have told her to contact me as soon as she saw how things were shaping up.

What was it she’d said about having to “wait for the money?”

I turned the truck around and drove past the spot where I’d hidden it in the copse of cedar, by the lake. I knew I shouldn’t go anywhere near her place, but I couldn’t stop myself. I drove down the street before I reached her street, a block away, trying to look across the block, between the houses. I couldn’t see anything.

I had to know something. Anything. Just to look at the house, see it—know it was there. See if Miraglia was still there.

I drove around the block and came back up her street. There were no cars parked out front, no sign of anything. The house was dark.

She wasn’t there. I sensed the house’s emptiness.

Well, it made things worse. I turned at the end of the block and drove back past the house again. It looked black and cold. It looked dead.

Next door, in Mayda Lamphier’s living room, the lights still burned. And out there in the night, cold water flowed across her dead eyes and through her hair.

I drove back to the store, picked up my car, and headed for home.

The minute that apartment door closed behind me, I was a goner. I stood there in the darkness for about a half a second, then I jumped for the light switch. I got the lights on, and began pacing.

In the kitchen, I stood by the sink with the water turned on, a glass in my hand. I set the glass down. The next thing, I was in the bedroom, undressing. The water was still running. I went out there, turned it off, and came back and sat on the edge of the bed.

I tried to take a shower. I was under the water for maybe ten seconds, then outside the shower stall, listening. Had the phone rung?

Well, you just wait in the bright silence.

I began to pray the phone would ring.

In the kitchen again, I got out a fifth of gin, and poured a slug down, straight from the bottle. I set the bottle on the drainboard, turned, and just made it to the bathroom in time. That gin bounced like a tennis ball.