Evette had everything a man could ever want. She was passionate, beautiful and delighted in giving sensual pleasure. Her only problem was that she tempted any man who laid his eyes upon her.
Every male in town either had an affair with her, or wished he did. Her special way of loving captivated young and old men, powerful men, rich and poor men-her lust knew no social or age barrier.
One hot night, Evette was going to get what many men thought she deserved-she had made one too many men jealous!
CHAPTER ONE
Evette Warwick walked down Union Street in Thornton, California, on her way home from junior college. She was nineteen years old and blonde. She was a natural blonde, although she had assisted nature with bleach since she had been fourteen. The effect had always pleased her in spite of the fact her mother had mentioned that it made her look cheap.
Evette was not tall, but she had a firm body that was very well put together. She was a little overweight, even though her waist was not out of proportion to the rest of her body. She had large breasts that filled out her slipover sweater. They did not sag, even though they might have on another girl who did not possess Evette's muscle tone. Her hips were broad and her thighs generous, even though her legs tapered down to calves that were almost slender and ankles that were nearly delicate.
She stopped and looked into the window of the variety store. She didn't know why, but she had always like the five-and-dime store; as much as she liked anything in Thornton, California.
It was a dumb town where nothing much ever happened, she thought. Her life was passing by and she wasn't getting much out of it.
Evette had no girl friends; she didn't like other girls and they didn't like her ... and Evette knew why. She took their men away from them when she felt like it.
Boys and men liked Evette. And she liked them. Her life was empty when she did not have a man, and one man could not keep her amused or happy for very long. She had to have variety in her life and that diversity was always in the form of someone new.
At this point she felt some regret for her vacillating affections. There had been one man, less than a year ago, whom she wished she had not thrown away. But now it was too late. He was engaged to a rich man's daughter and that was probably that.
Evette wondered if she could get him back if she really tried.
Then, she wondered if she would actually want him back once he returned. Perhaps it was sweeter the way it was now. From time to time she could feel the regret of having lost someone she cared for, and the pain of it was not altogether unpleasant.
Thornton was too damned far from San Francisco, she thought. It was too far from everywhere. There wasn't any real reason it should have been here, but it was (like so many other things in the world) here anyway.
It bugged her.
And it wasn't just Thornton either. Her mother, her stepfather, men she had known in the past and didn't like anymore, men making a play for her whom she had never been able to stomach, old men who moistened their lips and looked at her funny, practically all the women....
Almost everything bugged Evette. She needed change in her life, constant change, and it wasn't forthcoming in Thornton.
She was nineteen years old and she wanted her life to be one big joyride. She wanted excitement, action, fun. That was her reason for being, her purpose in life. She wanted a good time from life, and she could give a good time to others.
But nothing ever happened to Evette in Thornton, and it never would, she thought.
She was wrong about that, though. There was no way for her to know, but she was wrong because she based her assumption on what had happened in the past.
But something new was going to come to her. It would be a new experience, a sensation not felt before, an event that would not cause her boredom. A something that would as nearly fill her demands for excitement in her life as almost anything could.
Someone was going to kill Evette Warwick.
CHAPTER TWO
Paul Moran stood up from his desk at The Blade and stretched. He had just finished his feature story for next week's paper and he looked down at it still in the typewriter. Tomorrow he would work on the news stories, the time-tested news stories they ran once a week in The Blade. He also had to do the thing about the new supermarket, but that could be done tomorrow.
Paul was tall, slim, and flat-bellied. At thirty his dark hair showed no gray and had receded only into a slight widow's peak that gave more character to his face. His cheeks were a little hollow and the bones in his face stood out. His face had not reddened from time, even though he had been a moderately heavy drinker for several years. He was not a problem drinker, but he drank a lot because he enjoyed it.
Thornton, California, was too near San Francisco to have a daily newspaper; there weren't enough advertisers to support a daily-two had already failed. The Blade had been in Thornton before the two dailies had tried, and it was still there, prosperous and making money. If The Blade went daily it, too, would go into the red; but remaining a weekly it was a good investment for Samuel Carlson, owner and publisher.
Samuel Carlson was not primarily a publisher; in fact, publishing was only a sideline with him. He had been in land most of his life and he was still in land. When he had graduated from Harvard in 1931, he came west to try his luck. His father, a successful New Hampshire farmer, had given him ten thousand dollars just for getting through Harvard, and he had come to California. Later in the thirties his father ran afoul of the Depression, but Samuel did not offer to help him because he believed in free enterprise and manifest destiny; his father had taught it to him.
The old man shot himself in 1936 and Samuel had cried.
Paul Moran did not like Samuel Carlson. He worked for him, was on his payroll, but he did not agree with the older man on much of anything. Particularly he did not agree with him on free enterprise and manifest destiny ... when it had pertained to his own father and a bullet in the head.
But Paul did not think too much about that. He got along with Carlson and Carlson got along with him. Carlson considered him a red-hot and Paul knew where the older man stood. They sometimes had a drink together at Carlson's and talked about the weather or the San Francisco 49'ers; Carlson was a pro-football fan.
The only reason they had drunk together or conversed at all was because Paul had become engaged to Carlson's daughter, Margaret, a few months before. Carlson had never warned him off the times he had taken Margaret out when she was home from school, and he had not warned him off when Margaret came home in February after she had tired of Stephens College in Missouri.
Paul thought Carlson like him, liberal or not. He could have fired him any time he pleased in the last three years, even though Gerald Pierce, the editor, had hired him in the beginning. Carlson was the boss and he could have given him his walking papers if he had been of the mind to.
Carlson was a pretty strange duck, Paul thought, as he fished for a cigarette in his vest (he was a thin, hard man who liked vests). He found the pack, pulled out the cigarette, and lit it. Pierce was a liberal, personally, but wrote right-wing trash for the paper. Stanley Hopkins, the young advertising manager, was a liberal but he got a lot of business for the paper and anyone would have expected him to hold his job because of that. The people in production and the front office had no politics, as far as Paul knew. But to old man Carlson's credit, he had three red-hots on the staff in the three top positions and it didn't seem to bother him a damned bit. Perhaps he didn't have much use for Democrats, but he did have use for men working for him who did a good job. Samuel Carlson was a hard but honest man who understood something about the world and about living.
Paul wondered if he were excusing Carlson because he was his prospective father-in-law. He wasn't. He didn't have any use for the bastard, but he had been fair with his help....Even if he wouldn't let them write what they wanted to write, it was his paper.
He had also been fair to Paul Moran. He could have thrown him off the place when Paul had come to take Margaret out, but he hadn't. He had introduced his daughter to every important man's son in eight counties but he had given Paul a decent chance. Maybe that was part of his rules of free enterprise. The best man wins. Tough for the guy who was a little bit weak, but what the hell!
Paul smiled a little when he thought of Margaret's father. He would probably have been a liberal in 1860 because he wouldn't have put up with slavery and he wouldn't have put up with dissolution of the Union.
Now he was a forthright enemy of the labor unions, but he had never had a major strike in any of his holdings because, at the last moment, he would bargain.
Samuel Carlson was a very practical man who didn't like reality but was aware that it was there and faced up to it.
Paul Moran drew on his cigarette and wondered if he could be as strong if he were in the older man's shoes.
Paul walked to the window and looked out onto Union Street. It was the main street of Thornton, and he had many times wondered why it hadn't been named Main Street. Perhaps it had, a long time ago, and Samuel Carlson had changed it because he read Sinclair Lewis.
Paul saw Evette Warwick moving down the sidewalk and he watched her carefully. She swung her arms as she walked and there was a single book in her hand. Just one book. She always carried one book after classes at the J.C.
He hated Evette. There were many reasons that he did, but the main one was because she had cheapened him and he could never forgive her for that.
Last spring, just a year ago, he had been one of her beaus. Beaus, he thought; he had been one of her lovers. Evette had been eighteen then and a freshman at Thornton J.C. She used to come by the newspaper office often and he had met her there. Her physical presence had attracted him first; didn't it always? And he had gone with her to the drugstore to have a Coke or some damned thing. He didn't remember. She wasn't old enough to go to Amsterdam's for a drink, but she was past the age of consent. No San Quentin quail, Evette; not when Paul had met her. Before that? He didn't know about that, but he had heard things.
He started going out with Evette-to San Francisco, to Jack London Square in Oakland. Her mother and stepfather never seemed to give a damn when she got home. Her stepfather was Harry McPherson, the attorney in town who made a living. The rest of them did not make it, but McPherson was very successful and owned a large home. He was even Samuel Carlson's attorney, and that alone made you a big man in Thornton. And McPherson was also a part-time builder of tract houses when he was not practicing law.
After their fourth date, Evette had come over to Paul's place to see it ... and she stayed there that night. He had not planned this, but it happened. He had never known a girl like Evette in his life and he doubted that he ever would. He had never thought it possible for a woman to drain him completely, to carry off all his energy, but she had. Then she had asked him why he was tired.
Her big breasts and wide hips had urged him on and on and on until there was nothing left in him, and she had wanted him to make love to her again.
But he knew that she, too, was tired, even though she did not admit it.
They went on seeing each other for a while, a few more times. There were reservations Paul had about Evette, one of them being that he was a friend of her real father. Not a friend of McPherson, but of Roy Warwick. However, there was little identification in his mind with Evette and Roy. He never thought of them as father and daughter, probably because Roy never mentioned her.
Then Evette got harder to see; she was always busy with something or somebody else. His desire and need for her grew, even as she appeared to lose interest in him. He wanted to marry Evette then.
But she avoided him, avoided him to be with eight other men, and it began to drive him a little crazy. He wanted her, needed her, but she no longer wanted him. She had to have others, new lovers, and he was one of the old.
After that, he had dated Margaret Carlson during the summer and at Christmas vacation. When she came home for good in February they dated frequently, and he had asked her to marry him in April, two months ago.
Margaret was tall and slim, her hair was dark, her complexion fair, and she was the daughter of the richest man in the county, his boss. Margaret was a beautiful girl in the sense that high-fashion models are beautiful, even though she did not dress in their chic style. Paul was glad of this. She had a quiet, personal charm that others did not immediately recognize. He was very fond of Margaret but he did not love her. Paul had asked her to marry him even though he was not in love with her.
He doubted if Margaret loved him. Then why were they engaged?
He did not know why; perhaps it was because there was a very good chance that they would learn to love each other. Perhaps it was because they were both of an age when they desired to be married. Perhaps they had both been lonely. Perhaps they had both loved someone else who had not returned that love.
Paul had been a friend of Roy Warwick, Evette's real father, for a long time before he had ever gone out with Evette. He had seen her in the newspaper office but he didn't know who she was at that time. Roy and his wife, Ann, had been divorced for ten years or more, and she had married Harry McPherson. Evette had only been eight or nine years old when Roy and Ann had separated.
Roy was the town drunk, but Paul had been a drinking friend of his for the five years he had been in Thornton. When he first came to town he met Roy Warwick and liked him from the start. Outside of Gerald Pierce, editor of The Blade, he was the only man Paul came in contact with who had read much or thought much.
Samuel Carlson, Margaret's father, was the most successful man in town, but he had never read Malraux or Joyce, or Glenway Wescott, either.
Roy Warwick had read more than Paul, and Paul respected a man who had done this, because he had spent a large segment of his life reading. Someday he hoped to do a serious novel but that day never arrived, it seemed. Perhaps he was too lazy, perhaps he did not have the ability or talent; he was never sure. All he was sure of was that he never seemed to do it, even though he probably wanted to, more than anything else.
Paul liked Roy Warwick a lot. Sometimes he did not enjoy being with Roy, particularly if he was very drunk. But most of the time he enjoyed sitting, drinking, and talking with Roy.
He didn't know why he couldn't associate Roy with Evette. He was her father, but not in Paul's time. Harry McPherson had been Evette's father for as long as Paul had been in town. Roy never talked about his daughter and Paul didn't mention her to Roy, not even when he had gone with her.
Paul watched the immediate image of Evette as she moved closer to his window. He looked at her bright golden hair and at her large breasts and at her slim legs; legs too slim for her heavier body. She was almost a Rubens model, almost Helene Fourment, if Helene had had lighter hair and not been quite so tall. He felt a slow movement within himself, a twitching sensation, and he hated himself for it but could not stop it. He wanted her body now as much as he ever had. It was a cheap, dirty need that moved through him but he wanted her just the same, and no amount of pious talk or pious thoughts or plans to marry Margaret could change that. He wanted to wallow in the filth of Evette Warwick more than anything else in the world.
When she was almost past the window, Evette looked up suddenly. "Hi, Paul."
He nodded, standing with his hands in his pockets and looking down at her.
"I don't see you around much any more," she said.
"No, I guess not."
"Why don't you call me some time, Paul? I never hear from you any more." He did not answer.
"Just because we had a little misunderstanding once shouldn't make any difference ... or do you think maybe sweetie-pie Margaret might not like it?" Evette paused. "Maybe I should tell her about you. Maybe I should tell her how good you were. Or have you already shown her, Paul? Have you-"
Paul whirled away from the window and walked to the other side of the room. He sat down at his desk and stared at the feature story he had written about a local grocer who had finally graduated to the supermarket class with the same store he had started with. He pulled a fresh cigarette from the pack in his vest pocket and lit it.
Stanley Hopkins came into the back office. He wore a light-gray suit even though it was still a little early in the year. He was only twenty-three, seven years younger than Paul, but he was a very good ad man. He was a little bit overweight, mostly around his chin line, but would not yet be called fat.
"Pow!" he said, "that wild duty."
Paul looked at him questioningly.
"Out there on the sidewalk."
Paul got up and left the office. He went to the washroom and bathed his face in cold water. Every man who came in contact with Evette caught the same disease. She primed every man in the world who saw her.
That wasn't much good. That made for a lot of trouble and it would be Evette's trouble, too. One of these days someone was going to do something to that girl. Someone would do her up so that she wouldn't be able to sing out, "Come on, let's do it again ... unless you're too tired."
King Virdon stood on the sidewalk in front of Greshin's department store, a block down the street from The Blade office. He stood with his hands on his hips and his stomach sucked in. He was six feet two and had weighed two hundred two and three-quarter pounds that morning on the scales in the county sheriff's office. King wore a skin-tight pinkish-gray uniform that was tightest across the chest and in the seat and crotch of the trousers. It was not completely a standard uniform, since he had had the shirt, with the size eighteen collar, cut down to fit his chest snugly; and the trousers, actually well-tailored slacks, had been purchased inside of Greshin's for thirty-five dollars.
King Virdon was a deputy sheriff at Roseboro County, first deputy. Thornton had a city police but their authority ranked second to the county sheriff's office. Clinton B. Bowers had been elected sheriff for five consecutive four-year terms, and it did not seem reasonable that he would ever be defeated within his lifetime. The first two times he ran he had been opposed and won by a landslide. The last three elections no one had bothered to run against him.
Eight years before, King Virdon came home from the Navy and had been undecided as to whether to go to college or learn a trade. He did neither, since Clinton B. Bowers was a friend of his father, or had been a number of years earlier, and Bowers appointed King a deputy sheriff. Today King was first deputy, the highest non-elective rank that could be held in the sheriff's office.
King Virdon was twenty-nine years old and a very proud and vain man. His life never actually lived up to his expectations but he never let anyone know it. His forty-four-inch chest and thirty-inch waist helped maintain his confidence, even though his waist would have measured two inches larger than that if he had not held it in.
King privately enjoyed being a bully, although he rarely let that part of himself be seen. He was never overtly a bully; he was a surreptitious bully, a bully in little things, forcing people to do his will although never having to use physical pain or the threat of it.
He was a big man with a big chest and he made the most of it. His tight clothes made him look lean and hard and hungry, even though massive. In his whole life he had never been completely sexually satisfied and it discolored his philosophy of sex and of women. His desires and wishes in life had been mainly frustrated. When he was in the Navy he had wanted to become a petty officer, even third class, but he had failed at that. He was never promoted beyond seaman, first, even though he had had enough intelligence and a good enough record for becoming a petty officer.
Perhaps an officer had not liked him; perhaps it had been bad luck, but King Virdon left the U.S. Navy with a bad taste in his mouth.
Being part of the sheriff's office in Roseboro County was important, more important than being a meager Naval petty officer. King often reminded himself of this and prided himself in the fact that he had risen to first deputy due to merit promotions ... and a little bit of luck along the way. He was a hard industrious police officer who never did anything the easy way, and was critical of any man in the sheriff's office or in the city police department who did. Of course he was not directly involved with the city police force, but he could be critical of them anyway.
King Virdon was a thorough and honest cop, even though he was a bully and, sometimes, a cheat and a liar in other phases of his life. He was a complicated young man who did not understand himself or others, but had very set opinions about both.
King Virdon was a first-class bastard, but he tried not to let this interfere with his job; he tried never to slough-off when he worked, even if it was a dull task. Sometimes he used his position in the sheriff's office to gain certain advantages for himself ... and he always felt guilty about it later.
King stood in front of Greshin's department store with his closed hands on his hips, his right hand a little above the holstered thirty-eight police special. His shirt moved evenly with his breathing, and his necktie, neatly knotted in a four-in-hand, was tucked inside his shirt.
He saw Evette Warwick coming down the sidewalk on the sunny side, his side, with the sun touching her golden hair. He watched her move her generous hips from side to side and he surveyed her voluptuous body for perhaps the hundredth time in the last few years, since she had grown into full-fl-edged womanhood.
Evette excited him every time he saw her. He felt that she was his perfect match physically and he longed for a woman like that. A man with his body should have a woman like that, he knew. But the other women in town with fine bodies were all married to thin, sickly-looking men or fat ones, and the men with the true man's body were always somehow married to anemic, flat-chested women. It wasn't sound biological reasoning. King Virdon needed a woman like Evette.
Only one thing bothered King as he watched the girl approach him: she had never given him a tumble. Evette did not apparently like him and he did not know why. She had never liked him, not even when he had first come home from the Navy eight years ago, when she had been a punk kid and had no body at all. A lot of girls, even ones her age, had crushes on him. He had been nearly a Mr. America in his tight sailor suit, and the ribbons on his chest hadn't hurt either. But Evette hadn't paid any attention to him then and she didn't now. The little kids, boys and girls alike, had gone in for some hero worship, but not Evette. That had been right after her mother and father had separated, maybe a couple of years afterward, he couldn't remember for sure.
King watched her near him and he felt his breath come shorter and faster. That was a dumb thing, he thought; that was the way high-school boys acted. He tried to take his eyes away from her and look at something else, but he was not able to do that.
She came nearer and nearer and his body became more tense. He sucked his stomach in a little harder and brought his jaw out some.
"Hi, Evette," he said.
Her eyes met his glance for the first time, it seemed, and she did not appear either surprised or glad that he was standing there.
"Oh, hello, King," she said nonchalantly.
She continued her pace, starting to pass him.
"Say, Evette."
She stopped, hesitatingly, as though she would move on again almost immediately.
"There's a great double-bill playing at the drive-in over in Webster tonight," he said.
"So? Outdoor movies bore me."
"We could take a drive."
She smiled nastily. "Not with you, dear boy."
"What's the matter with me?" he snapped.
"You want me to tell you all the things? Or just a couple of dozen?"
His right hand flashed out, reaching for her arm, but she moved away from him quickly. It was only two feet that she had moved, but it was as good as five hundred yards. If King reached fur ther for her, people would see and wonder. A police officer, a first deputy, couldn't be seen doing that in public.
"You don't have any right to talk to me that way," he cried.
"I've got every right. I'm a free American citizen and I'm expressing an opinion." She paused. "And my opinion of you is that you aren't enough man for me."
Evette turned abruptly and continued down the street, swaying her hips and making her buttocks rise alternately, almost like pistons in a two-cylinder engine.
King Virdon clenched his fists and stared at her, and Evette began to laugh, not looking back, continuing on her way down the street. She laughed harder with each step, cutting deeper into King Virdon's vanity, his area of fear.
Tears sprung to the young man's eyes, burning the tender flesh. He swallowed hard and brushed one hand quickly to his eyes, pretending dirt in the air had momentarily interrupted his vision.
He crossed the street quickly, still rubbing his eyes as though there was something in them. She had cut him where he lived, as expertly as any lamb-castrator had ever executed his trade. He walked rapidly in the opposite direction and on the other side of the street from Evette. He was trying to flee the pain and, even as he tried, he knew that flight from a blow already landed was not possible.
He came to Amsterdam's restaurant and went inside quickly to the protective darkness he knew was there. Amsterdam's was the only quality restaurant in Thornton and had the only bar that was not in the saloon class. King went to the neat, freshly polished mahogany bar that had only two customers now, and sat down by himself at the end nearest the door. He was off duty and was not infringing on the county's time by coming here. Things like this were important to him, even though telling the truth or outright cheating in other matters were not necessarily important.
"Hello, King," the fat middle-aged bartender said. His hair was receding and, even in the dim light, there was a gloss to the skin on his head.
"Yeah, George, make me a bourbon and water. A double, I guess." He paused. "I just got off duty ten minutes ago."
"Sure, King. You never drink on the job."
"That's right."
George pulled a bottle of bond bourbon off the back bar and began to mix King Virdon's highball, even though King had not indicated a preference for "call" whiskey; but George had a respect for the law, a law that had never given him or the management of Amsterdam's any trouble. After spending several hours at Amsterdam's, King's tab never went beyond two dollars. It was a house rule for anyone in the sheriff's office, although it didn't pertain to the city police, and no one from the sheriff's office had ever objected, including the conscientious cop, King Virdon.
George put the drink in front of King and King lifted it a little and nodded to the bartender.
"Luck, George," he said and swallowed from his double bourbon. The whiskey was the best in the house, but a double of hundred-proof bourbon was still a double slug, and the little water mixed with it had small effect on the burning sensation in King's mouth and throat. But it felt good.
He put the glass down and pursed his lips. "Nothing like a little cough medicine for a cold, George."
"Yeah." Balding George dried bar glasses with a clean, highly bleached towel. His hands moved quickly, making the glasses shine. It was a job he enjoyed doing, King thought; it was something to keep him busy when business was slack. There was very little else to do behind a bar when there were no customers, particularly when all the routine chores had already been done earlier.
"Why don't you have one with me?" King said, "and put it on my tab."
A slow smile crossed George's face. "Don't mind if I do, King." He laid down the glass and towel he was holding and mixed himself a drink from the same good stock. But he used only one shot. "Long night ahead. Have to go easy."
"Sure," King said. "I'm off duty but you're on for a long haul now."
"Yeah. I just came on. Have to go easy." He took another quick sip. Everything George did, from mixing a drink to drying glasses to having a drink, was done quickly and nervously.
The front door opened and King half-turned his head towards it, hoping it wasn't Clinton B. Bowers and some of his political friends. It wouldn't look right, he thought, for the first deputy to be sitting at the bar having a drink with the bartender, even though off duty.
King had little to worry about. It was Stanley Hopkins, The Blade's ad man who was a little bit fat, and Paul Moran, the reporter on the paper. Moran was a very thin man, almost but not quite skinny, King thought. He didn't weigh much and his face was thin and sunken under the cheekbones, but there was a hardness about him King did not like. Moran reminded him of the little skinny guy on the J.V. football team who made it and later became a star halfback on the varsity. He had not been heavy enough to be a football player but he had made it anyway.
King did not like Paul Moran. He was not from Thornton; he had come from San Francisco five years before to go to work for The Blade. He didn't spend much time with the general run of people and he was friendly with fat-face Hopkins, whom King did not like, Gerald Pierce, the editor of The Blade, whom King did not like either, and Roy Warwick, the town drunk. Moran had also made some time with Evette a year or so before, and King did not like that much either.
King didn't like skinny men with small chests who wore vests and looked hard. A man should carry a body that looked like a man's, not a corpse's.
He laughed a little as he pulled on his drink.
"What's so funny, King?" George said.
"Nothing. Just something I thought about."
Stanley Hopkins and Moran sat down several stools away from King and George went to take their order. They both asked for whiskey and water and got bar whiskey in their drinks. They talked for a moment or so; then Stanley said in a higher-pitched voice, "That Warwick kid is real wild duty."
Paul Moran did not answer.
"Every time I see that little bitch," Stanley said, King Virdon swung off his stool quickly and moved to where the other men sat.
Stanley looked up at him, puzzled.
"I don't like that kind of talk," King said. "I don't like it at all."
"I wasn't talking to you, big boy," Stanley said.
"Don't get smart with me."
"Why don't you go catch a child molester," Stanley said.
King's hand flew out and slapped the fat young man across the mouth. He fell back against Paul Moran.
Paul eased Stanley up and moved off his stool slowly. He came around his friend's back and eyed King Virdon.
"Don't hit people, cop," he said.
"I didn't like what he said."
"I don't give a damn what you don't like. You touch him again and I'll knock your brains out."
"Don't talk to me that way."
"I'm not talking to you any way. You just struck a man and you have no right to do that. You're a police officer. If you want to keep your job, keep your hands to yourself."
"You want to fight me, Moran?"
"If I fight you, you won't have a job in the morning. Even a cruddy politician like Bowers wouldn't keep a man who gets into barroom brawls."
King Virdon bit his lip, clenching and unclenching his big hands.
"Now I just did you a favor, fellow," Paul Moran said. "I did you a big favor. If you still want to fight, I'll go outside with you; but I think you'll be way ahead if you just leave."
"If I wasn't a deputy sheriff-" King spat.
"But you are," Moran said. "That's the point. If you don't understand it-"
King swung around abruptly, grabbed into his pocket for money, threw it on the bar, and hurried out the door.
He hadn't been able to put up with what the little fat guy from the paper had said about Evette. He talked about her as though she were the town slut or something. Even though she had never given King the time of day, he knew a real woman when he saw one. Just because a girl had the breasts and hips that all women should have, it didn't give the fat little s.o.b. the right to make dirty cracks about her.
But Evette shouldn't act the way she did. It wasn't good. She didn't understand things like that, but the way she twisted her hips gave a lot of men ideas. She didn't know she was doing it, but what about the little fat guy and his dirty mouth?
If she didn't look out, somebody might make trouble for her.
Some sex fiend might even ... might even try to kill her.
At that moment, King Virdon didn't know: Someone was going to kill Evette Warwick.
CHAPTER THREE
Otto Kramer lifted the pump out of the small tank where the strawberry topping was kept. It was nearly empty; there had been a lot of call for strawberry that day.
Otto wore a white cap, white shirt, and his dark trousers were covered by a white apron that strapped around his considerable girth. He was a big man with a huge pot belly, although no taller than average.
Otto owned and operated the only ice-cream store in Thornton, California. The drugstore across the street and down half a block had the other fountain in town, but they did not sell ice cream to take out.
Thirty years ago, Otto and his new bride, Hilde, had come to the United States from Germany and settled in Milwaukee because they knew a lot of people from the old country who had gone there to live. Otto found work as a waiter in a German restaurant and served sauerbraten for ten years, saving his tips and spending nothing on luxuries. He and Hilde dressed shabbily, ate leftovers he took home from the restaurant, and went to the park on Sundays to listen to the German band that played there. As Hitler gained power, Otto threw three pro-Nazi Bundists off his front porch one night in 1936 when they came to talk to him about becoming a member.
The owner of the restaurant heard of Otto's actions and quietly gave him a five-dollar-a-week raise. Within a week Otto became a hero in the German colony and his tips increased greatly. He lost a few of the pro-Nazis, but they didn't count.
By 1940 Otto had saved 14,000 pre-war dollars and went to California. He learned that the Tutti-Fruiti ice-cream store was for sale in Thornton, fifty miles from San Francisco. He went there, purchased it for more than he had hoped, and he and Hilde moved to Thornton, living behind the ice cream store.
At that time in 1940, Otto was thirty-eight and Hilde thirty-seven. They were childless then and they remained without children, even though they both had wanted them because it was expected of a good German marriage.
Otto did not like the name Tutti-Fruiti and, because he was a simple man, changed it to Otto's Ice Cream and Parlor Fountain. That was Otto's name for it, at least. The town's children, teenagers, young adults, and everyone else called it Otto's.
During World War II Otto bought more war bonds than any other small businessman in Thornton and, by the end of the war, was well-to-do because of his savings. Of course, he and Hilde still lived in back of the store and wore old clothes and never spent money foolishly.
When she was a bride, Hilde had been a dumpy, taffy-haired girl, not very intelligent. She had grown up in the same village with Otto, and when Otto decided to marry she had been the only girl available who was built strongly enough to suit him. But even though she was slow-witted and even stupid at times, she never disputed his judgment and was a good, willing hausfrau.
On their marriage night Hilde showed no sign of emotion, let alone passion, and had lain dumpily on her back and submitted to her new husband. She had never since shown any more interest in their marriage bed but also never repulsed him. Otto had hoped that she would learn to make love, but she never had. However, as long as she submitted to his desires whenever he felt them, this satisfied him. After all, he always reminded himself, in many ways he was better off than men with passionate wives who would have none of them when they weren't in the mood. Hilde was never in the mood but she was never against it either; or at least never said she was.
Otto filled the empty tank with strawberry topping. He did not love his business but he liked it. He did not love Thornton, California, but he liked it, too. He would rather have gone on living in Milwaukee where there were other German immigrants, but the winters had been hard and cold and the summers too hot and humid. California offered an easier climate.
The people in Thornton had never come to love Otto or Hilde, but they had accepted them when they arrived and they grew to like fat, slow-moving Otto. He put up with the kids who clowned in his store and never lost his temper with them, even when they spilled ice cream on the floor. They treated Hilde with respect and tried to like her, but she had been flat and unable to react to anyone she met, except the smaller children. Sometimes, when Otto had to go to the bank, she kept the store. When she did, she gave the kids ice cream without collecting for it. None of them understood her but they all liked to see her there when Otto went to the bank.
The store was empty and Otto puttered with his supply containers. He had never had any woman other than Hilde. When he was a young man in Germany he'd had many chances with the girls but always turned them down; he was afraid he would make one of them pregnant, have to marry her, and upset his plans for coming to the United States.
When he was ready to marry, and nearly ready to leave Germany, none of the eager young women were left and he took Hilde as his bride.
Otto thought about Evette Warwick, a nineteen-year-old female animal. She wiggled her behind when she walked and her huge breasts bounced up and down. She wore the kind of undergarments that made her big breasts bounce that way.
He wished that he did not think of Evette Warwick. He was an old man, thick in the middle and well-to-do. He had a good reputation in the community and was proud of it. One of the most important things in his life was the respect he held among the native-born Americans in Thornton, even the native Californians. The mayor at the Fourth of July picnic once had named him, Otto Kramer, as Independence Day American of the year; a pioneer from the old country who had lived the American Dream. Otto Kramer had been an American success story. Nothing else was more important in his life; his boyhood dreams in Germany had never approached the greatness he had been able to attain in his lifetime.
But Otto could not push the girl from his thoughts.
Every move she made from the time she arose in the morning until she fell asleep at night was to attract men. Every man in Thornton from thirteen to-what age did a man cease to be interested-found excitement in that girl. She brimmed over with physical lust. She cried out to the men of the world, Come take me!
He wished that she would not come into the store again. He would not look at her on the street when he went to the bank. And that would make things easier. If he didn't see her again, watch her young full body twist as it moved about, he would not think evil things.
Perhaps the next time she came into the store he would make her angry and she would not come back again.
The screen door to his shop opened and the little bell that was suspended on it tinkled. Otto turned around to greet the customer and faced-Evette Warwick! She was by herself and she carried one book loosely in her left hand. She was never loaded down with books as most of the students were from the junior college. She was not tall and looked almost short because of her large breasts and wide hips. Her hair was a deep golden color, very long. Her face was alive with a deep pinkness, accentuated by dark-brown eyes that, too, were large.
Evette wore a shaggy sweater that was a tight fit, making her large breasts more prominent than if she had worn a looser garment. Her skirt was straight and tighter-fitting yet than the sweater. Her legs below the skirt line were slim and tapered down to trim ankles above her flat shoes. She wore clothes that the younger girls, the high-school kids, usually wore. She was too old to dress that way, Otto felt.
"Hi, Otto," she said.
"Good afternoon."
She moved across the shop slowly towards him. He looked at her face and did not let his eyes see her body. He had seen her walk many times before.
Evette put her right hand on her hip and looked up at the list of thirty-six flavors on the wall.
"Let me see," she said carefully. "I think I'll have a Rocky Road ... if it has nuts in it."
"Marshmallow and nuts in our Rocky Road," Otto said.
"Okay. Rocky Road. Two scoops."
Otto nodded. "Two scoops." He picked up a cone, opened the big canister top over the Rocky Road and began to dig into the solid, frozen ice cream.
"Kind of quiet today, isn't it, Otto?" she said.
"It's early. The kids will be in later."
Otto held out the cone to Evette.
"That's ten cents," he said.
"I'm a little short today. I haven't got it."
"Pay me next time."
Evette laughed and licked at the ice cream.
"You're a nice old guy, Otto. I really haven't got it today. I ran out of the house without my purse this morning."
Otto shrugged and smiled a little. He hadn't meant to be nice to the girl today but he was never able to find it within himself not to be nice to people. Perhaps that was why he had not become a Bundist in the thirties.
Evette placed her book on the counter and raised her left hand to her hair. "How do you like it?" She fluffed the hair.
"Why do you dye your hair, girl?"
"I like it this way. How did you know I dyed it?"
"Yeah," Evette said. "That's right. Is Hilde pretty hot, Otto?"
"Young women shouldn't discuss things like that. They shouldn't discuss that with-"
"I do," she said and licked at the ice cream again.
"Ja, I know. I know you do."
"What's the matter, Otto?" she said, moving closer to the counter. "Don't you like me?"
"Hike all you kids."
"I'm no kid, Otto." Her tongue shot forth again, touching the coldness of the ice cream. "You're a kid," he said flatly. "You want to bet?"
"I don't gamble. But you're still a kid." She put her ice-cream cone down on the counter on its flat bottom and placed her hands on her hips. "Kids don't look like me. I'm nineteen and that's a year past the age of consent. More than a year."
"Kids in this country grow up too fast," Otto muttered.
"Well, what about Germany, I read all about that Hitler youth movement and free love. I read about it in Contemporary European History."
"Hitler was a monster," Otto cried.
"He had a lot of good ideas."
"He was a maniac."
"What? You mean like the Jews? I didn't like that either, but he had plenty of good ideas, if you ask me."
"You don't know," Otto said. "You don't understand."
"You Jewish, Otto?"
"No, I am not Jewish. I am-I was a Lutheran when I went to church."
"I thought you had it in for him because of the Jews."
"I have it in for him because of the Jews and because of a lot of other things. I hate him because I am a German."
"That's great," Evette cried. "It sounds like an old movie on TV. It sounds like an old man in the Underground."
Otto's eyes dropped to the floor and he did not speak.
"I guess that makes you all right, Otto. You must be three-hundred-per-cent American or something."
Evette turned away and started for the door, leaving her book and ice-cream cone on the counter.
Otto looked up. "Kid. You forgot your book."
Evette stopped and looked back at him evilly. She had seen a large milk container empty and open near the door.
She leaped to it, cupped her breasts in her hands, bent over the container and cried, "Get the churn, Otto. We'll make some real ice cream."
"You!" he thundered.
Evette rushed out the door and let the screen door slam shut behind her.
Otto Kramer clenched his fists and tears began to form around his eyes. He was an old man and he was susceptible to this and the girl had known it.
"Dirty little whore," he spat. "Dirty little...."
He turned to the back counter and raised one hand to his forehead. He rubbed his eyes and tried to stop the trembling in his body.
"Someone will strangle her," he gasped. "Someone will. Girls like that bring only trouble; here or in the old country."
Otto Kramer understood a little. He couldn't understand everything because he spent all of his time, except for trips to the bank and rare outings, in the store or in the living quarters behind the store. But he knew there was trouble surrounding Evette Warwick.
And knowing these things, he knew part of the truth.
Otto Kramer was not a busybody. He had too much respect for his social position to risk it for idle gossip or snooping. But with Evette, one didn't have to seek out the truth. It presented itself, naked and clear.
It had been around three months before. Otto had hired an itinerant laborer named Claude to help out with some odd jobs that had been stacking up. Otto let Claude live in the shed behind the living quarters. It was, after all, only a week's work.
It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. Otto had decided to close down early and take his wife to the movies. He wanted to give Claude the night off as well. He locked the front door of the store, then walked out the back to Claude's shed.
He heard the giggling laughter immediately. Quietly, he approached the shed. Peering in through the dusty window, Otto sucked in his breath with astonishment.
Evette Warwick was in there, naked and laughing.
On the army cot that Otto had provided, Claude lounged, naked as well, his enormous erection jutting from between his hairy legs.
Evette was prancing around in front of Claude, contorting her body in weirdly sexual ways, thrusting out her pelvis for Claude's admiring gaze, cupping her full breasts with her hands and squeezing the pink nipples hard, all the while moving, teasing, arousing Claude-and Otto-to the heights of sexual passion.
Then Evette approached the cot, a smile of obscene delight on her face. Claude opened his legs for her, whispered something that made her laugh, then roughly pushed her to her knees.
Evette grasped his thick shaft with experienced hands. Otto was shocked by the lack of coyness that Evette exhibited. She knew exactly what she was doing!
Then she bobbed forward, her mouth encircling Claude's hard flesh. Otto was breathing hard, certain that the two lovers could hear him, but he couldn't make himself move away from his vantage point at the window.
She had her hand between her legs, and as Otto watched, she began masturbating, slowly at first, then faster and faster as she brought Claude to orgasm.
Could this be happening? If word of this leaked out, Otto was finished, and he knew it. To allow a stranger in town, a no-account like Claude, to enjoy himself with a town girl, one barely of age-that would be too much for the good people of Thornton to swallow.
Claude's legs were kicking wildly, and he was making a lot of noise. Evette worked harder now, her face low in Claude's lap. Her own arousal was evident to Otto, and he wondered how such a young woman could be so wanton.
And then Claude's orgasm stiffened his back and he held Evette's head firmly in place as he grimaced in pleasure, and Evette's girlish laughter once again filled the shed. Otto hurried back to the store, sure of one thing: Someone was going to kill Evette Warwick.
CHAPTER FOUR
Evette walked down the hall to the living room and stopped outside the wide, door-less opening. Her mother was sitting on the sofa with a nearly full martini glass in her hand and she was looking up at Evette's stepfather, Harry McPherson, as he talked in his dry, clipped, Bengal-lancer accent. He was thin and middle-aged and had a Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. go-to-hell mustache. He had been in the lumber business in Portland before he had come to Thornton several years ago and started building tract houses and practicing law. He probably had been a lawyer in Portland, too, but she knew he had been in the lumber business some way or other. Harry McPherson was very British but had never been closer to jolly old England than Mil pitas, California. But one thing you could say for Harry, he knew where the geetus was.
Evette's real father, Roy Warwick, had been born with money and had blown it. Now he was a drunk nobody thought much about any more. Harry had started out from nowhere, Evette thought (even though he claimed to have come from a rich English family in Portland), and he had made a pee-pot full. He was a very fast guy with a buck and knew how to leave things out of tract houses he built that the people who bought them didn't know weren't there. Harry wore two-hundred-dollar suits and used cologne that smelled like billy-goat piss, just to prove he was all man, even if he pretended to be English.
Evette's mother, Ann Warwick McPherson, was unlike Evette in that she was tall and slim, and she was beginning to show her age. She was forty-five but looked perhaps a year or two older than that. The strange thing about this, Evette thought, was that only a year or two before her mother had passed for less than forty, for middle thirties or maybe thirty-eight.
That was the way it hit you, she thought. All of a sudden you were old. Well, it wouldn't matter a hell of a lot to her. By the time she was her mother's age, she would have lived a full life and would be ready to get old or drop over dead or lose her sex. She didn't really care much how she would be when she was forty-five. Probably she wouldn't live that long.
Harry McPherson interested her. She didn't like him, actually, but she didn't dislike him as she did King Virdon. He was a little like King in some ways. He had vanity that most men didn't, but he had other things, too. He knew how to make money and, even though making money didn't impress her, whether she liked to spend it or not, a man who had the capacity to make it had some abilities that the muscle-brained King Virdon who worked for the county sure as hell didn't have.
She stood outside the opening of the room, out of sight and listening to the conversation.
"I would just as soon stay home tonight," Harry McPherson said in his subdued English accent-a lancer too long in India to remember just how he had spoken the language at Sandhurst.
"Don't be silly," Evette's mother said. "We promised two weeks ago. It will be a good party."
"I'm not in the mood for a party tonight."
"Something went wrong today, didn't it?"
"No. Nothing went wrong today. I just feel like staying home for once. I get tired or running around all the time."
"I thought you liked parties."
"I do," Harry said, "but not every damned night. You know, once in a while I'd like to stay home and watch television or just make love to my wife."
Ann Warwick McPherson did not answer. Evette could not see her mother from where she stood out of sight and she waited to see what she would say to that. Harry wanted to slip the blocks to her and she hadn't said anything. Was that the way you got when you were forty-five? At nineteen Evette thought that people copulated until they died or became eighty-six.
"Don't talk like that," Evette's mother said.
"Well, I do talk like that. I'd like to have a little around here once in a while."
"Do you want me to crawl into bed with you? I will if you want me to."
"I want you to want to," Harry said.
"I can't manufacture something that isn't there, Harry."
"This change of life thing is a damn bore."
"Stop saying things like that. It sounds as if you read it in a book somewhere!"
Evette heard the sound of breaking glass. He must have thrown his martini glass into the fireplace. It was a very good Victorian gesture; almost as good as a partiotic V R shot into the wall, Sherlock Holmes style.
Evette came into the doorway. "Well, hello, everybody."
"Where the devil have you been?" Harry snapped. "Outside the door listening?"
"I was in the hall," she said innocently.
"Eavesdropping is no better than masturbation."
"Harry!" Ann cried.
"Well, she doesn't know what the word means anyway."
Nuts, Evette thought, but smiled sweetly to her stepfather.
"We're going out tonight," Harry said. "Harriet will get your dinner."
"I thought you wanted to stay home," Evette said.
"You were listening."
Ann McPherson looked into her daughter's face, wondering, trying to understand her a little. "Were you listening, dear?"
"I wasn't listening. I was in the hall. I just heard you yelling."
"We weren't yelling," Harry said.
"You were talking loud. I only heard you say you didn't want to go anywhere. Is that a crime? For God's sake, Harry, I-"
"Don't use the Lord's name in vain. It smacks of harlotry," Harry said.
"What's a harlot, Harry?"
Harry turned quickly towards his wife. "This girl needs discipline, Ann. She needs-"
"I'm of age," Evette said.
"Then why don't you get married or something and leave our marriage alone?" Harry said.
"I like to look after Mummy's best interests," Evette said coyly.
"Dear," Ann said, "You're baiting Harry and that's not a thoughtful thing to do. You love your stepfather and we don't say things like that to those we love."
"I apologize, Harry," Evette said brightly.
Harry glared at her without answering. Then he turned to his wife on the couch. "Come on, let's go to the party." He walked out of the room.
Ann McPherson stood up and kissed Evette on the cheek. "Don't stay up too late, dear. Remember, tomorrow is a school day."
"I won't."
Her mother left the room and Evette stood alone staring at the big empty doorway. She didn't understand her mother much. She knew something about good old Clive of India and he didn't deserve the razzing she gave him, but she couldn't help herself. As far as her mother was concerned, she really drew a blank. Her mother wanted to be kind and generous to her and always wanted to love her but had never learned how. Her mother was a colossal screw-up who had never grown mature enough to realize it or understand it. Now she was middle-aged and didn't want to make love with Harry or any man. Evette felt sorry for her mother and wished that the woman had been able to love her, because it would have been nice if somebody had.
Her father, Roy Warwick, had loved her when she had been a little kid before the divorce. His breath had always smelled hard or sour or sharp and she had not known why until a few years later. He had been a lush and it had been the juice she had smelled. But he had loved her. His arms had gone around her many times and he had squeezed her, and she could remember the times he had pushed her far out in the big swing and it had seemed as though the world were a trivial and small thing and that she, Evette, had been the most important person alive.
After her mother and father separated, after Roy was gone, Evette never had that special feeling again. Her mother and other people had pushed her high and hard in the rope swing afterward, but she had not been able to recapture that sensation she had known when her father had catapulted her towards the sky in the swing.
Because there was nothing better to do, she went into the kitchen and had flat-faced, old fat Harriet give her dinner. Harriet was probably high-grade moron, Evette thought, or at least she looked like the sample photos in the psych textbook. She was no pinhead or Mongoloid idiot, but moronic.
Evette did not bother to speak to her and Harriet went about her work. Harriet never talked unless someone said something to her.
Evette left the kitchen and went up to her room. It was a plain room and the walls were not covered with the adolescent foolishness many girls involved themselves in. There were two mundane pictures on the wall her mother had given her and the bed was covered with a heavy white chenille spread. The whiteness of the spread had been a joke with her ever since she had been fourteen.
The dressing table was a large one and the mirror over it was even bigger than the table. This was one thing about the room that Evette liked. She sat down slowly in front of the huge mirror and began to brush her hair carefully. She did not believe any of the stories of well-being tied to hair brushing; She only did it when she didn't feel like smoking a cigarette.
Evette's mouth turned down suddenly and she dropped her hand with the brush on the table. She needed men and she didn't have a man right now. Paul Moran would have been her natural selection at the moment, but she had lost him ... and it was probably a good thing. Eventually she would become bored with him again, and he had a girl; not much of one, but a girl, and he probably wanted Margaret Carlson. Frosty drawers, Evette thought; she probably couldn't go worth a damn but she would like the intellectual stuff Paul had to spout.
She needed a challenge of a sort. Going back with Paul could offer it, but she wanted somebody new.
Evette thought about Peter Wilson and this was really her kind of meat. He was a weird kid, a wild child. This guy was really nowhere. He chewed his fingernails and he had a lot of problems. Ordinarily, a boy like this wouldn't have attracted her, but this one did. There was something about him that attracted her and she didn't know what it was. He was afraid of her; he was afraid of all girls, as far as she knew. He was nervous and screwed-up. That interested her; well, maybe, anyway.
Perhaps she wanted to pick on him. Peter was weak and there was an infinite fascination in that weakness. He had limp brown hair and washed-out blue eyes and three or four little red pimples on his face. He perpetually had three or four pimples. But there was something else, she knew. There was a certain desperation, a certain malign threat of violence that throbbed through his personality. It attracted her ... and probably because of his weaknesses.
Peter was no numb-noggin, as a lot of the boys called him. There was a viciousness in him the other young men at the junior college couldn't generate; not the football players or any of the other athletes.
Peter was not the type, nor did he have the build, to run over anybody or to break jaws. He couldn't manhandle anyone. But with a good weapon he could kill; he had the kind of weakness that could give an excuse to a killer. Behind his weakness there was the determination of a young person who had been cheated in his life, and she understood something of this.
Evette thought about Peter Wilson and she knew that he would become important in her life. She would reach out, touch him, lead him, pull him toward her. She had already made overtures; he was afraid of her, a little anyway, but she hac made it hard for him and she had spotted that pretty quickly. He hadn't been able to ignore her even though he had appeared to try.
But Evette Warwick understood men; she'd had a lot of experience in the last few years. Peter Wilson wanted her. A lot of men did, but Peter had something she was interested in. He was a weak, little, crocked-up guy, but there was some thing about him. It was an inherent viciousness that perhaps only Evette saw or appreciated. But it was there. She needed a weak man who was dangerous.
Peter might even kill somebody someday. He probably would. She wondered if she would be that vague victim.
But this was only daydreaming on her part, thinking things that were probable but very un-likely.
She daydreamed too much, she thought; but she enjoyed doing it and continued it. What was the harm in daydreaming?
How else could Evette amuse herself at moments when she felt at odds with the world?
Evette remembered those first times with Paul Moran, when Paul was on fire with his desire for her. Evette smiled. Paul was really something, eager, superhuman in his virility and in his ability to excite her as she had never been excited before.
They had been walking through the park together, and Paul was still not sure that Evette was the thing for him. Not that he was that much older, just that he figured that the age difference was something he'd have to deal with.
The truth was that Evette had already slept with men far older than Paul, but he didn't know that. "Isn't that your place?" Evette said as they emerged from the park. "That's it, all right," Paul answered. "Let's go in and have a drink!" It couldn't really hurt, Paul thought. Most of the kids in town drank beer, and he knew it. A few minutes later she was finishing off a glass of beer, perched on Paul's living room sofa.
He was sitting opposite her, watching her with a smile on his face. When she finished, he stood up, thinking he would now finish walking her home.
Instead, his mouth gaped open in surprise as Evette calmly pulled off the sweater she was wearing, revealing the loveliest breasts that Paul had ever seen.
Her skirt followed, and then her panties. She wore no bra. Evette stood before him, grinning wickedly. "Here's your reward for the beer," she said.
Paul couldn't speak.
She walked over to him and gently cupped his swollen crotch in her warm hand. Paul groaned, his resolve melting quickly. He had never faced such a wanton, uninhibited woman in his life.
Nor one quite so young.
Evette fell to her knees and unzipped his trousers. Then she hauled out his swollen, thickening flesh, delighting in its size.
As she was about to put it in her mouth, Paul jerked her roughly to her feet. He kissed her hard on the mouth, feeling his shaft rubbing between her smooth, well-fleshed thighs.
Then he led her to the bedroom, and flung her on the bed. He had never been so sexually excited in his life, and it was with trembling hands that he completed disrobing.
Then he was on her, entering quickly, her sharp intake of breath music to his ears. She knew what she was doing, Paul understood that. He didn't want to know how or why he found himself in bed with Evette-all he knew was that he had to possess her.
She coiled her legs around his back, urging him on with her heels. He felt her warm interior and swayed gently in the saddle as she rocked her hips, working him in all the way.
Then he was stroking hard, trying to punish her for the ease with which she got her way with him. It wasn't right-a man should be in charge, Paul thought. He felt like a stud called upon to perform, and as much as he loved what he was doing, he didn't like the feeling that went with it.
His orgasm was swift and powerful but no match for the intensity of sensual pleasure that swept through Evette's body. She was delirious with joy, whimpering and crying, unaware of where she was, or who she was with.
At that moment, it never occurred to Paul Moran that someone was going to kill Evette Warwick.
CHAPTER FIVE
Thinking about Paul Moran proved to be a stimulating experience for Evette. She was surprised by the passion of her memory. She had to do something about it.
She walked through the house, looking for something to spark her sexuality. She found it in the kitchen. She picked up the ripe banana and smiled.
"Just the right size," Evette said aloud. She walked to her bedroom, stripping off her clothing as she went. She didn't bother closing the door behind her. Privacy was not a big thing with Evette.
Evette settled herself on the bed and gently fingered her demanding body. She loved to excite her self-there was something about doing it by herself that she could never get from a man. There was a hidden side to her pleasure, but she was unable to put it into words.
She cupped her full breasts in her hands and lifted them, then bent her head down, licking each nipple in turn. She tasted good to herself, salty and fresh. She shivered with pleasure when she remembered how many men had had their lips in the same spot.
She picked up the banana.
Evette stretched out her legs, loving the smooth, creamy look of them. She pinched herself, delighting in the pain. She was aroused and she felt herself, wet and hot. Then she licked the end of the banana, lubricating it nicely.
She gasped when she inserted the yellow fruit-it was larger than it looked. Almost as big as Paul Moran, she thought, and then giggled.
Evette knew how touchy men were about their sex. How would they feel if they knew they could be replaced this easily, she thought.
She had inserted about half of the banana's length, and already her pleasure had begun. She cupped her breasts again, leaving the banana wedged in place.
Her hips were churning, pulling in the banana by sheer muscular power. She smiled-men had told her how unusual she was, how talented with her sex.
She practiced hard.
Her breathing was ragged, and Evette felt perspiration break out on her forehead. It was the beginning of a powerful orgasm, and she tried to bring it on as quickly as possible.
With one move she pushed the banana all the way in, delighting in the way it stretched out totally. Then she grabbed the end and began jabbing herself, slowly at first, then quicker and quicker as her orgasm filled her being with hot, wet pleasure.
Evette withdrew the fruit, tossed it on the floor, and turned over onto her side. She slept lightly, warm from the sunlight that poured into the room.
While she slept, Evette dreamt of other men, former lovers, strangers, and friends, and when she awoke-fresh and red-cheeked-she knew that she had to find someone.
But who would it be?
Peter Wilson worked on a model airplane in his room. At eighteen, he was too old to be building model airplanes, but it was one of the few things Peter knew that relaxed him. It was something he had learned how to do earlier than other children, when he was six, and he was still practicing the art well beyond the time other young people had outgrown it.
He was working on a Fokker, a triplane. He was the only person he had ever known who could do a good job on such a dated aircraft as a triplane, what with the jet age and space age encompassing the world, but Peter had very quick and talented fingers with balsa wood. Peter had a delicate touch and, if he had been more intellectual or more inclined to bigger things, might have been an artist. But he was too involved in himself to be truly creative. Through quickness he could be an efficient artisan but he could never be an artist.
Peter knew this and hated himself because of it. He knew he was a failure and, when any man is intelligent enough to realize this, he reaches a certain impasse in his life. Where can you go when you know there is no place to go?
Peter was unhappy. He was a better-than-average student and could have been a very fine one if he had so desired; but this would have proved nothing as it always proved nothing. The hurdler who could win the one-twenty highs by ten yards but who wanted to be a physician and couldn't pass Biology I in J.C. would have known a little how Peter felt. But there would have been a difference even here; Peter had a high intelligence signifying nothing, whereas the hurdler had great form signifying, too, nothing ... if what you wanted was a particular objective not included within your realm of possibilities. If either had had a fine left hook and had wanted to be a fighter for pay, there would have been no problem. But neither could punch worth a damn. They would have been screw-ups under the articles of the Great American Dream. An important American, like Davy Crockett or Abraham Lincoln, had a special that fit the particular situation; otherwise they would have been Peter Wilsons or the unknown hurdler who wanted to be a physician. Without a little luck, the most famous man of all time would have been another screw-up.
Ability, standing alone by itself without other elements, is completely worthless.
This was not a new truth to Peter Wilson; he had known it ever since he was nine years old.
Peter's mind wandered as his hands touched the nearly finished Fokker. Usually his thoughts could remain completely blank while he built the model airplanes, but lately, the last month or two, he had not been able to have this solace. It was-seven weeks ago?-when Evette began to pay attention to him. He should have remembered the exact day, and probably did somewhere in his subconscious, but he would not allow himself to remember exactly. Evette Warwick was evil; she was a girl with a dirty mind who talked about things and did things that weren't right or just.
She had started a conversation with him in the library one afternoon; she was looking for a reference book in regard to Recent European History, a class which they both attended. He showed her where the book was in the stacks and, as he turned away, her hand came out quickly and touched him. A shock drilled through his weak, slightly soft body; he did not immediately realize what had happened.-He felt her hand and, seconds later, understood. He pulled away quickly and bumped back against a huge case of books. They were alone here between two long and high bookcases and far removed from the main desk, where the old-maid librarian sat with her pince-nez glasses and stamped library cards and collected three-cent fines when the books were returned late.
Evette moved to him and brought her arms around him. Her soft breasts pressed against the front of his white shirt as she brought her lips to him, kissing him; and he did not know what to do when her mouth opened against his closed lips.
But he did not retreat further from her. His arms went around her shoulders clumsily and his hands pressed hard against her flesh.
Her hand touched him again in a hurried second. Then she pulled away from him quickly, hopping backward three paces down the narrow aisle between the two big bookcases.
"Why, Peter Wilson," she cried. "You're nasty. I ought to tell the librarian."
"Wait, I-"
"Now, Peter," Evette said, backing up, still facing him. "Don't get hot-under the collar or anything. Peter, I'm surprised at you."
His face burned a harsh red and he felt the heat that perpetrated itself across his appearance. He clenched and unclenched his hands.
"Pete, you're the real billy goat of the campus," Evette said, "King billy goat."
"You're a bitch," Peter cried. "Whore. Harri-"
"Yea, but you'd like to have a little of it, wouldn't you, Wilson old man?"
Peter bit his underlip and did not answer.
There was a thud as one of the library monitors dropped books onto a cart near them, and Evette pulled back another step and darted away.
Peter stood by himself, silent and ashamed. He hadn't ever known any girls, not really known them, outside of having to dance with them when he was younger and had attended dancing school because his mother forced him. He had known his cousin from San Francisco a little when they were growing up, but he had never considered her a girl, but a relative, and he had not seen her for a long time now. Whenever her parents came down to Thornton on a Sunday she always had a date and didn't come with them.
Peter Wilson had enjoyed the brush with Evette, although he was not ready to admit it. She had made his body react; it had never reacted to a girl before. There had been reactions to dreams, many of them, but never to a live, attractive girl like Evette Warwick.
Phlegm formed in his throat and he did not actually understand the situation. He felt cheap and dirty on the one hand; on the other, he was excited and exhilarated. It was wrong, what she had done, but he wished she had not run away, but done it over and over again.
Peter Wilson needed, needed, needed.
When he was a little boy trying to grow up, the other boys made fun of him and called him a sissy because he wasn't any good at anything; he couldn't climb trees, couldn't fight, couldn't run very fast, and wasn't any good at baseball. One time they tied a bonnet around his head and dragged him down Elm Street, parading him in front of anyone who wanted to watch. He hadn't been strong enough to escape them and no one, not even the adults who passed, had offered him any assistance. Everybody thought it was funny.
Peter never forget that. He still remembered the ones who had done it to him, even though they had probably forgotten.
He opened the drawer of the desk, forgetting Evette for a moment, and looked at the target pistol his father had given him for his fourteenth birthday four years ago. His father had wanted to encourage him in a manly sport and had been greatly surprised when Peter took the weapon immediately and began going regularly with him to the range to shoot. On many Sundays Peter had asked his father specially to go to the range, and the man had been delighted.
His father had not known or understood that Peter wanted to pay back some playmates from a long time ago for a bonnet tied around his head. Even when Peter missed he always smiled after firing the target pistol, and he would hold the weapon up to his face and smell the burned powder.
"Born to steel," his father boasted one afternoon in the bar to his friends.
The men looked at Peter, a little mystified.
"I'd like to kill," Peter had said.
This took them off guard, and a look of horror came over three of them.
"In a war," Peter said. "I'd like to fight for my country in a war."
They all smiled at that and had another drink with Henry Wilson, Peter's father. The boy had some spunk and drive in him even though, and they never said this, he didn't look it.
Peter picked up the automatic target pistol in his hands and fondled it as he had the model Fokker earlier. He was almost as close to the gun as he had always been with his model planes. It was a sanctuary for him, being with it and near it; it was almost as close to him as if he had had a trunk full of earth to supply his grave with sacred soil.
What if he held the pistol against Evette Warwick's head? What if? She wouldn't run away then; she would stay.
But that was ridiculous.
He dropped the pistol to the top of the desk. He fired it on the range, nowhere else. If he had wanted to use it personally, he would have used it on one of those boys who dragged him down the street in the bonnet; and he had not.
He would never point it at Evette.
But what he did not comprehend, as none did yet really, was that:
Someone was going to kill Evette Warwick.
CHAPTER SIX
It was eight-thirty in the evening and Otto Kramer still worked in his ice-cream store. It was a warm spring night and the moths and other bugs clung tightly to the screen door, trying to get to the brightly lighted interior of Otto's Ice Cream Parlor. Otto replaced his old cash register tape with a new one. He didn't really need a cash register, could have gone on with the old cash box he'd had originally, but several years ago his accountant had told him a machine would be easier for tax purposes.
The screen door opened and Paul Moran came in by himself. Otto smiled when he saw him; he liked Paul Moran very much, even though he never knew exactly why. Some people you liked, some you didn't, but this young man was one of the people Otto Kramer liked. When he had first come into the shop several years ago, Otto called him Mr. Moran because he knew he worked for the newspaper. But Paul stopped him.
"That's what my mother always called me," he had said.
"Your mother called you mister?" Otto said, not believing it.
Paul shook his head. "No. And nobody else does. I'm Paul."
Otto was proud to call him Paul. Newspaper writers were important people.
"Hello, Otto."
"Hello, Paul."
"I'm about half-loaded. Hand-pack me a quart of vanilla to take home, please."
"Best thing in the world for drinking too much," Otto said, scooping ice cream into the cardboard container.
"That's what everybody says," Paul said a little fuzzily. "Personally, I think abstinence works a hell of a lot better."
"But that is always behind you when you're afraid of a hangover."
"Ja!" Paul said. "Unfortunately."
"Why were you drinking, Paul? Were you unhappy about something?"
"No. Nothing serious. Stan Hopkins and I just decided to have a few; that's all."
"Why were you drinking with him?" Otto said. "We work at the same place. Friends. You know."
"He's a nobody, Paul. You shouldn't waste your time with a boy like that. You're engaged to a very important girl now. You are going to be a man of substance."
"No, I'm not," Paul said. "I'm going to marry a girl because I want to and I won't get any of her father's money because I'm a Democrat ... and because I don't want it. I don't judge my friends by their bank accounts."
"Ja, I know," Otto said, smiling, as only a middle-aged man with a Prussian face could. "I just made a joke."
Paul laughed quickly, probably realizing he should have earlier.
"You're my friend," Otto said, "so I know you don't go around kissing the bottom end of important people. You are a man who likes people."
"Sure, we're friends, Otto, but you're one of my rich friends."
Paul stopped halfway down the counter of ice-cream freezers and picked up a book that was lying there and looked at its cover.
"Contemporary European History by McNalt," Paul said. "Some kid."
Paul held the book in his hands and studied the cover. "Must be a J.C. student. Younger kids don't study contemporary European history." He opened the cover of the book to the flyleaf.
Otto put his ice-cream scoop back into the container from which it had originally come. He brought his right hand up and touched the back of it to his forehead. Why didn't Paul put the book down and forget about it?
"Evette Warwick," Paul said. "Does she come inhere, Otto?"
"Who's that?"
"She's a college girl. A girl here in town."
"A lot of kids come in here," Otto said. Did Paul believe him? He didn't know. He didn't want Paul to know how he lusted after her. He would lose stature if Paul knew he whined after the town tramp. He didn't want Paul to know he was a weak man; he wanted him to keep the image of a strong-hearted Prussian who hated Hitler and loved the United States.
"Girl I used to know," Paul said. "Funny finding a book of hers her." Paul turned back to Otto. "Well, good night, old buddy. Pray for me. No hangover in the morning."
"I'll pray, old buddy," Otto said in a thick accent, something he hadn't had for many years.
"Auf Wiedersehen," Paul said softly and left the store.
Otto went to where the book lay open on top of the freezers and looked down at it. In bold handwriting was a girl's name, Evette Warwick.
Something always happened to teasers. Some thing always happened to them. He wondered if it could be true with this girl. Could it be? It couldn't be possible in the United States of America. Terrible crimes didn't happen here. But then he remembered a factual detective magazine someone had left in the store once. Brutal crimes did happen in this country but it was always in Detroit or New York or Chicago; never in Thornton, California.
Of course, there had been the girl kidnapped on Lover's Lane two years ago, and there had been the man killed by a husband's shotgun blast only last year....
No, Thornton was no different than any place else in the world. Evil was everywhere.
It was possible, even here.
If she didn't change her ways:
Someone might kill Evette Warwick.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It hadn't done Paul Moran a bit of good to stumble across Evette's school book. For one thing, it brought back a rush of jumbled, erotic longings and memories.
For another thing, Paul saw that Otto-for all of his pretended ignorance-knew exactly who Evette Warwick was. And from the look on Otto's face, Paul knew that the old German was longing for her.
Paul knew the symptoms. He had, after all, only recently recovered from the same disease.
Was he totally free of Evette? He smiled as he walked. Of course not. No man who ever knew her was. She was too hot for that-too available to flesh out a man's most erotic fantasies. No man can be free of a woman like that.
Paul remembered how it was. He had never been so sexually exhausted as he had been with Evette. She demanded sexual activity on the grand scale, sometimes four or five times a day. Paul was a strong man, but it was beginning to take its toll.
After work, walking through the park: Paul remembered the scene well. There was a chill in the air and darkness had fallen and he was hurrying home.
He heard her call him from the small stand of trees near the park's western edge. He walked over, and Evette was sitting on a blanket, lost in the darkness of the trees.
"Sit by me," she said. Paul thought for a moment that he was dreaming-the scene had that same remote quality to it.
Evette pulled him down onto the blanket and then flipped back her skirt. She was not wearing panties, and her nest seemed wide open to his eyes.
Evette was smiling. "Don't you like to do it out here like this?" she asked. She was rubbing his crotch, and then she unzipped his trousers and felt his flesh. Then she unfastened his belt and lowered his pants.
Paul felt foolish-what if someone saw them? But there was no denying his excitement. He stood his ground, and she knelt before him, eagerly ministering to his growing hardness with her wet, warm mouth.
He shivered in erotic delight and wondered how she could be so filled with sexual desire all the time. She was moaning, fingering her tender flesh as she brought him to full erection with her lips and tongue.
Then she pulled him down, made him lie on his back, and mounted him, guiding his shaft into her with one hand between her legs. She rocked in place, taking his entire length in one movement.
Then, gasping with pleasure, she opened her blouse and cupped each breast, offering them to Paul's hot and hungry mouth. He didn't care about being seen now. The thought excited him, and the wanton smile on Evette's lips excited him as well.
It was quick and brutal and then Evette buttoned her blouse and picked up the blanket and kissed him goodbye. "Got to get home," she said. "It's almost dinner time."
Paul was in a bar ten minutes later. Boilermakers would take the edge off the evening, he thought.
Paul Moran made his way home, not walking completely straight, but not staggering either. He was gentlemanly drunk and no man could ask for more than that. He enjoyed the feeling he had; the quart of ice cream would have him straight in the morning and it was a very cheap drunk, no matter what it cost you in the bar, if you didn't have to pay for it the next morning.
Paul turned down Ellsworth Street. He had to cross Thornton's skid row to get back to his boarding house. He passed this way every night. Paul had spent most of his life in San Francisco and knew something about skid rows; Thornton's wasn't especially hideous by comparison. It was only old, and not very dirty. It was a part of town that no one wanted to live in, but was still better than thirty per cent of any large city.
Paul passed men, sitting on steps, who smoked cigarettes and talked in low tones. They wore dark jackets mostly and old hats, and they usually did agricultural work when they worked at all. Most of them didn't want to work too much; just enough to keep eating and smoking and drinking. Thornton's skid row was different from a big city's because there were almost no men here who were on relief. It wasn't as easy to get indigent aid here as it was in a larger place, and the older ones who could collect Social Security liked San Francisco or Los Angeles better.
Paul walked easily and a little surer now. The booze was wearing off some and he could cut the peak right off the hangover mountain with the ice cream. He smiled to himself, as he always did when he was outlasting alcohol; it made him feel like an Irish Sweepstakes winner. It was something like a free lay with one of the prostitutes he had known in Japan during the Korean War. He had never had one them free but he knew it must be the same kind of feeling.
As he walked past a rooming house with an empty front porch he heard his name called.
"Paul," the voice hissed.
Paul stopped. He knew the voice and he looked toward the front porch that he had vaguely noticed was empty a moment ago. But it wasn't empty; there was a man there somewhere, a man whom he knew.
"Where are you, Roy?" Paul said. "Down here."
Paul glanced down to the steps in the blackness. He focused his eyes hard, fighting the darkness and the retreating effect of alcohol. Then he saw the man who had spoken to him. He saw, sitting on the bottom step with his knees almost up to his jaw, a man wearing what looked like a gleaming white shirt in the dark; but Paul knew it was not pure white but a dirty gray-white. Roy Warwick always wore a dirty white shirt. Paul often wondered why he didn't wear colored shirts that wouldn't show the dirt, but Roy never did. Perhaps he did not wish to hide the filth in which he lived.
"Where are you going, Paul?" Roy said.
"Home. Home sweet home. Had a load on about half an hour ago, but now I'm going to go home and eat my ice cream and go to bed."
"Stop and have a drink."
Paul's eyes had, become accustomed to the deeper darkness of the front steps now, and he saw that Roy Warwick had a bottle between his knees, rocking it.
"What are you drinking?"
"The cheapest port I could find. You know my drink, Paul."
"Thanks, anyway. But I've got to go to work in the morning."
"I'm lonesome tonight," Roy said. "I've been hoping you were out somewhere whooping it up and would be coming along. Why don't you sit down and just have one drink?"
Paul wanted to go home, had fully intended going home, but he couldn't turn down Roy's invitation. He didn't want any more to drink tonight but he liked Roy Warwick and could not reject his invitation. Paul understood something of the older man's loneliness and perhaps identified with him in it. Paul had known deep trouble of his own a few years earlier. Even though it was past and buried he never forgot it; and when he saw Roy he identified with the man, and he had been Roy's daughter's lover only a short time before. He had never said anything to Roy about that, but Roy had never talked about his daughter to Paul. It was a subject they never discussed because Roy wanted it that way.
"Okay," Paul said, dropping down to the steps alongside the older man. "Maybe we can eat the ice cream with our fingers."
"Ice cream?"
"Yeah. It's a quart of ice cream."
"I haven't had any ice cream since...." Roy stopped. "Since my kid and I ate ice-cream cones together."
Paul said nothing.
Paul opened the carton of ice cream slowly, feeling its softness and knowing it was melting fast. He dug in with his fingers and licked the ice cream. It tasted pretty good. For some reason or other he had not thought it would taste very good off his fingers.
"Try some," Paul said, offering the carton to Roy.
But Roy did not seem to hear and did not pay attention.
"You know, having a kid is a lot better than not having one," Roy said.
"I'm glad you have, Roy."
"Proud of her, too. She's grown into a fine woman. She really has." He tipped his bottle of port and Paul saw some of the dark red liquid run out around his mouth and trickle down over the stubble on his chin.
"Try some ice cream, Roy," Paul said.
"Oh," Roy said. "Okay." He dug his fingers of his left hand into the ice cream and plucked them into his mouth. He tasted carefully and tightened his lips hard.
"I guess it doesn't go very well with port," Paul said.
"No," the older man answered. "No, it's fine." He dropped his head and looked down into the darkness between his knees. "I just haven't tasted ice cream for a long time; that's all."
Paul sat helplessly, holding the carton of ice cream in his hands. He didn't know what to do with it now. He no longer wanted to eat the dessert and, never having had a lot of money in his lifetime, hated to throw it away. He also worried about the mess it would make.
Finally, he laid the cardboard carton down next to him on the steps as a compromise gesture.
"Try some port," Roy said, without looking up. He held the bottle out to Paul.
Paul took it and noticed for the first time that it was nearly full. It couldn't have been the first one Roy had opened today or tonight. Third? Well, it depended on when he had started. Maybe it was the fourth or fifth if he had started early enough.
Paul took a swallow from the bottle. The overpowering, heavy sweetness of the cheap port resounded through his mouth; it was far more sugary than the ice cream had been. He shook his head, but the wine hadn't cut him much, meaning he was still in the bag. That would mean some trouble for him tomorrow. Big hangover, maybe, and he didn't want that. Hangovers were a waste of time and he always felt like kicking himself in the ass whenever he fell into one. But that was part of the breaks if you weren't a teetotaler. Paul took another drink from the bottle, and even the sweetness didn't bother him now.
"You'll have to have some kids," Roy said. "You ought to have at least one, anyway. Nothing like a child, your own flesh and blood. I don't think I ever got over that part of it ... the miracle of your own species recreated. It sort of...."
Paul waited for him to continue, but he did not.
"I'm afraid she's going to get into trouble," Roy said finally.
"What kind of trouble?"
"Man trouble. It happens to girls like her."
"Everything will be all right," Paul said.
"She teases men all the time. She'd rather do that than anything. She teases and teases. Didn't she do it to you when you knew her?"
"She's just a kid who wants to have fun," Paul lied. What could he say to Roy?
"When she was a little kid she wasn't that way," Roy said. "She was a bright, sharp little thing. You know. She was sweet and not touched by the world's dirtiness yet."
Paul's arm went around his friend's shoulders and he gripped the lean scrawny frame. "Don't talk that way, Roy. Everything is going to be all right."
Roy cried for a little while and Paul waited beside him. It was useless to talk; words had no value now, and they would only disturb Roy's grief. He had a right to feel the way he did, Paul knew, and he would let him have his right.
After a few minutes Roy raised his head. His face was very wet from his crying. Paul had never seen him cry before, not about anything.
They talked about local politics, trying to forget what had been said earlier. It seemed that each desperately wanted to forget; perhaps for different reasons, perhaps for almost the same reasons. Their conversation became louder and more animated as the level of the wine bottle moved down and down.
Roy told a joke that was a pun on a dirty word in Latin and Paul laughed. Roy hit him on the knee and repeated the words of the punch line, and they both laughed loudly.
But no matter how much they drank or how much they laughed, neither was able to forget what Roy had said earlier. His words dominated their mood, no matter how drunk they became or how hard they tried to obliterate them in a haze of drinking and conversation. For Paul, it was agonizing, and he shortly thereafter bid good night to Roy.
But there was no rest for Paul. His mind reeling, he walked aimlessly for thirty minutes, not knowing what to do. He did not want to go home.
Yet the ghost of Evette was all around him, and he could not shake it on the streets.
Paul entered a small workingman's bar not far from his place. It was dank and dirty and he chose the bar rather than one of the grimy booths.
Already drunk, Paul still somehow managed to slowly sip a Scotch while the jukebox blared a country-western tearjerker. He needed something.
And there she was.
She was staring at Paul, and when he finally noticed her, a big grin lit up her face. She was a tall, well-built blonde, on the far side of forty, with enormous breasts and a hard, flashy look. Her name was Greta, and she lived two doors away.
Fifteen minutes later they were in her apartment, and she was slowly lowering Paul's trousers. He was so sodden that he could barely stand, but through it all that famous Moran virility was hard at work. "Never seen one big as that," Greta drawled. "Real hard, too!"
Paul grinned but his eyes refused to focus. "Where's the bed?" he managed to say.
It was a short walk, and Paul managed it well. Of course, Greta tugged him along, her hand wrapped around his thick, hard shaft.
She stripped while he watched and he let out a low whistle when she finally stood naked before him. She was tall, built generously through the breasts and hips. Her long legs were muscular but attractive, and her tiny, pinched waist looked unreal.
"I've had my eyes on you for a long time," Greta said. "I knew you were the kind of man I'd like."
She sprawled on the bed, her legs wide apart, and fingered herself furiously while Paul watched. "Just let me get it ready for you, honey," she said, her breathing ragged. "I love you to watch me-I'll get there real fast that way!"
But Paul could watch no longer. He lunged for her and almost missed, but landed safely between her legs. She adjusted to him immediately and fed his erect penis into herself with her hand, gasping with pleasure at the moment of penetrations.
Then she rocked him gently, easing him in all the way. He almost passed out from the pleasure of it but his drugged brain kept him going automatically, and when he heard her crying out in hot, juicy pleasure he sobered a bit and began working at it.
Greta's large breasts were pillowed under his chin and he lowered himself a bit and mouthed each erect nipple in turn, feeling Greta's hands on his head, guiding the movement of his lips.
Then she was groaning with orgasmic relief and Paul felt his own coming on, hot and fast, and the last thing he remembered was wondering how he was going to get home.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Paul Moran awoke the next morning and he did not open his eyes. Pain ripped through his head, and his stomach turned over slowly. He had a hangover of the first magnitude and there could be nothing gained by opening his eyes.
Why had he done it?
And where was the ice cream that he had intended eating?
He wondered if he would vomit. It was a bad one, no question about it. He had to go to work today; no chance of calling in sick. And it was part of playing the game. If he'd had a mildly upset stomach he might have called in sick. He was ten times sicker now, but it was a hangover, punishment that followed the pleasure of the jug, and he had to go to work ... if he were playing the game. He sat up.
He was hit with fourteen tons of nitroglycerine, but he expected that. It wasn't too bad. Fourteen tons was the minimum; actually he had been hit with twenty before ... and long tons at that.
Paul pulled his legs up and dropped them over the side of the bed. He brought his face down into his hands and held his head there. He shuddered.
Then he laughed crazily and it made him feel better. It was a ridiculous thing, but it always seemed to help.
He laughed again and leaped out of bed. He raced for the shower, stripping his pajamas from his body.
Forty-five minutes later Paul Moran was walking down Union Street towards his office. He was sick, but he was going to work. He walked rapidly and whistled a little as he moved along. The hangover he carried so well as a mantle on his shoulders was something that would not last; they always went away after a few hours. He whistled, not because he was happy with the state of his health, but because his health was going to improve in the near future.
As Paul Moran neared the office, he saw Peter Wilson coming down the sidewalk toward him carrying several books under his arm. Paul knew who he was; he was a screwed-up kid who was going to Thornton J.C.
Paul wondered if Peter Wilson knew Evette. No. Maybe he had heard of her or seen her, but a pimply-faced kid like Peter would never know Evette.
Paul started to turn into the doorway of the office. Peter Wilson passed him at this point.
"Hello, Peter," Paul said.
"Oh ... uh, hello, Mr. Moran." Peter hurried on down the sidewalk in the direction of Thornton Junior College.
Paul watched Peter Wilson moving away. He was a numb libido, Paul thought. The kid had a sex problem. Well, what the hell? Everybody had a sex problem. Or did they? Maybe Moran had a problem and judged people through an eye that was a little myopic, sexually anyway.
He laughed. The only sex problem P. Moran had was that he wasn't getting any. That was all that was wrong with old man Moran.
Except for a blazing hangover.
Paul went on into the newspaper office. He passed through the classified department and back into the editorial offices. Gerald Pierce, the editor, was sitting at his typewriter with an unlit pipe between his teeth. He was not really a pipe smoker but would have been a chewing man if it were acceptable. He was tall, thin, and gray-haired; he was sixty years old and not a soft sixty either. His forehead skidded, due to hair that was quitting, and his face was wrinkled. He would not have been happy if he had been a soft sixty; it would never have fit his personality. Probably nothing had ever been easy for him, whether being promoted in grammar school or finally getting through college. With some people, the hard way is the only way worth a damn.
"Good morning, Paul," Gerald Pierce said.
"Go to hell," Paul said and dropped down at his desk.
"Write an editorial on it."
"I will."
"You have a hangover."
"I have a hangover."
"Why do you drink, lad?" Pierce said.
"Why do you drink, old editor?"
"To feel better."
"Well, I tried it and went too far."
"It isn't the woman who always pays."
"Stick it up your nose, wise old one."
Gerald Pierce bit on his pipe. Paul thought he would rather be pressing his teeth into a cud of tobacco.
"Well, pee on it," Paul said, "I'm going to write a glorious, sexually perverted story about the P.T.A."
"Good boy."
"Yeah. I think I'll go to sleep."
"The P.T.A. isn't so important, but I need that story on the zoning variance the chain store is asking for."
"That was what I was afraid of."
"... Partnership of Kraus and Musso, known as Economy Marts, has applied to the city council for a zoning variance on the property at Juarez and Adams Streets." The fingers were moving in unison now. He didn't have to look at any notes; he knew the story completely and would write it easily if the hangover didn't kill him first.
As he typed, he remembered when he had the flu last winter; it had been sort of fun compared to this. Hangovers didn't last too long but they could take you out a lot neater than the flu ever would. With the flu you could get the chills and pull the blankets up a little snugger and feel a certain security from it. It was insane; he had never felt more secure in his life when he'd had the flu. With a hangover, he was ready to blow his brains out.
"Did you hang one one with Stan last night?" the editor said.
"No. I had some drinks with Stan, but that wasn't what did it. I ran into Roy Warwick on the way home and he wanted me to have drink with him and...." Paul left it there. There wasn't any reason to mention to his boss about how he'd been shaken by Roy.
"How is Roy? Drunk as ever?"
Paul shrugged. He didn't like to talk to other people about Roy, not even with Gerry, whom he liked and respected a great deal.
"I wonder how Roy feels about his daughter?" Gerald said. "I wonder about that a lot. Just how does a sensitive guy like Roy think about the town whore being his girl?"
Paul continued typing his story about the supermarket.
"Does he ever say anything about it to you?" Gerald said.
"No." That had been true, at least until last night.
Paul sat at his typewriter, grinding out the story. He had no interest in the story but it had to be written. It was his job. Paul had a determination that would carry him through almost anything. Almost. And almost haunted him. His determination had not always carried him. He expected too much of himself; he knew it, but he couldn't help himself.
"You're doing great," Gerald Pierce said. "I knew you could do it."
"Jump out the window," Paul said.
Somehow or other, Gerry always said the right thing.
Paul went on typing his zone variance story about the supermarket. As he worked, his mind came again to Evette Warwick and a new uneasiness moved over him. Why did he have to think of her? And thinking about her, why did he have to feel distraught? He was afraid. He was afraid that: Someone was going to kill Evette Warwick.
Otto was working in the shed. He found himself there more often than he should. He knew the reason: the place reeked of sexuality, and it excited Otto just to be there.
It was as if he could smell her there, a raw, sexy animal odor that was driving Otto crazy.
Otto sat on the cot, facing the window through which he had spied on Claude and Evette. He was hard, and he smiled in spite of himself.
At his age, any erection should be a source of pleasure. But the only erections he was able to have occurred when he was all alone in the shadows and dust of the shed.
He heard the footsteps but they came so quickly that he did not have time to leave the shed. It was Evette.
"Fancy finding you here," she said.
"Why? This is my place, you know. And what are you doing here? You are welcome in my store because you are a customer, but you have no business here!"
Evette was chewing gum. She smiled, then stuck out her tongue at the old German. "Relax, Otto," she said. "I'm looking for an earring."
"Here?"
"Yes-here! Don't act like such an idiot. I know you were peeping at Claude and me. I don't know, but it's possible that's the day I lost it."
She searched the floor carefully on her hands and knees. Otto's erection had attained the painful stage and wasn't helped by the show that Evette was putting on.
Finally she stood up and dusted her hands. "Don't see it," she said. Then she walked over to Otto and sat down on his lap. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. "I can feel you," she whispered. "It feels like a big one to me. I like big ones that I can feel all the way!"
Otto groaned.
She stood up and quickly removed her clothing. "I know that you think I'm awful," Evette said, "but the truth of the matter is that I need a lot of sex. I've never done it with someone your age," she continued. "I think I'll like it!"
Otto stood and tried to leave but the young woman stopped him cold with a smile. "I love to suck it," Evette said. "Here-let me do it to you!"
She knelt between his legs and unzipped his baggy pants and then hauled out his amazingly hard shaft. Otto's penis was long and thin and it delighted Evette. "I've never seen one like this!" she gushed, stroking it gently.
She leaned forward and encircled the hard bulb with her wet lips and Otto wanted to bellow with pleasure. He felt as if he were twenty years old, and the warm feeling was wonderful. He held her head in his hands, his face split with a smile of pure delight. He knew that he was possessed by her satanic sexuality and that no good could come of it, but for now he didn't care.
She worked back and forth, taking his entire length somehow. Then she withdrew his penis from her mouth, stood up, and turned around.
The she bent over, her legs straight, her hands resting on her knees. Her legs were spread wide apart and she said, "give it to me like that!"
He rammed into her with a fierceness he didn't know he had, and he worked it back and forth as quickly as he could, loving the hot, wet, young feel of her. His orgasm was powerful enough to bring him to his knees, and he heard Evette laughing as she dressed.
"I might be back," she said.
"Please," he said, once again in control of his senses. "Please-never come back!"
Evette pouted. "And I thought this was going to mean free ice cream from now on," she said, then laughed harshly at the old German's look of dismay.
After she left, Otto went upstairs to sleep. His mind was in a whirl, but one thing was perfectly clear:
Someone was going to kill Evette Warwick.
CHAPTER NINE
Evette Warwick sat by herself on the bench that curved in a circle around the big elm tree on the campus of Thornton Junior College. She sat there with her book next to her, waiting for a boy. He was a boy, not a man. It should have been a man at the junior college, but she liked the idea of boy; it was something that pleased her this week. There was a boy who was afraid of her, and nothing could have fascinated her as much. She had to see more of him, touch him again. She wanted to tease him again, as she had; perhaps it was the most important thing in her life now.
She had reached out with her hand and grabbed him in the library and he had reacted differently from any boy or man she had ever known. It would not have been that way with Paul; he wasn't afraid of anything. If there had been one thing wrong with him it had been his intenseness. That s.o.b. was always one-up. He was a skinny, weak-looking guy, but you always worried about his strength. He could pull a bull out of the cellar when he needed it ... and Evette had always been a little afraid of Paul. She wasn't afraid of him now; he was fair game for a little razzing, since she had heard about his engagement to Margaret Carlson.
But he was a guy you kept your eye on. You didn't push him too far. He looked scrawny, but he was hard and strong. His skinny arms were all muscle and his thin legs were like iron when you touched them, and she had touched them. As a lover he had been-there was one word-indestructible.
But his very intenseness had cooled her quickly with him. Whatever he did was done in complete seriousness, and she did not like seriousness. Love was made for fun, not because you had to or because you must. But she had never met a man as good as he was. His body had been like good steel; smooth but a little burning to the touch. And he did not tire. Every man she had ever known got tired quickly, but not Paul Moran. He was a crazy kind of stallion with all the funny things he said, but he was a stallion. No doubt about that.
But Peter Wilson was the person she was interested in now. She hadn't ever known a boy like him, someone so withdrawn, so shy, so attractive. His introversion drew her toward him, not because it should have, but probably because' it should have not. Evette was a girl who was fascinated by opposites; perhaps that was why she had dropped Paul Moran. He had been too much like her, too much like the part of her that she knew so well and did not like. Paul could be hard and deadly, she thought; he had the capacity to kill, as she had. She could not stay interested too long in a person that much like herself.
Evette wanted to shake up Peter Wilson's life. He was weak and involved in himself, but he could be stronger, quicker, and even more deadly than either herself or Paul Moran. Peter was a person she could never learn to trust, and that was more interesting than anything else; a weak man who could suddenly thrust forth strength because he was treacherous.
Classes let out and several hundred students began to pour onto the side campus where Evette waited under a tree. The girls didn't look toward her but nearly all the boys did. Some of them greeted her but she answered shortly and looked away, not wanting any of them to join her. She pretended to have an appointment, to be waiting for someone (which she was), but there had been no prearrangement.
She waited for ten minutes, eleven minutes, but did not see Peter Wilson. He always came out the side door when the eleven o'clock classes were over at noon. She could not remember if he came late or not; she had only noticed him casually, with no interest, until she had touched him in the library and had registered his bewildering response.
Other students sat down on the bench that encircled the tree and carried on their conversations. After a little while, Evette stood up; she did not want to listen to them or be bored by their presence. She could wait another day or two before she met Peter Wilson, although she didn't want to.
As she moved across the side campus with a single book in her hand, a book she never intended opening-something on the Russian revolution by a writer whose name she couldn't pronounce-she saw Peter come out of the side door into the sunshine.
As Evette watched the boy came down the steps, she wondered why she was interested in him. No one else could possibly be. No girl would be interested in him. He was strictly Joe Pimento from Sacramento. He even seemed a little effeminate; not so much that he was a fruit or anything like that but he fell a hell of a lot short in the man department.
But she was attracted to Peter Wilson anyway.
As he approached her, he was looking in the other direction, whether by chance or on purpose she didn't know.
"Hello, Peter," she said warmly and in a deeper tone than was her normal speaking voice.
He hesitated for a moment before he turned his head. Then he brought it around.
"Uh ... hello."
"Are you going for some lunch?" she said. "I was-I just left class."
"Why don't we have lunch together over at the drugstore?"
"I-I-" Peter stammered. "I don't have enough money."
"I have plenty of money, and besides, I can pay for mine and loan you yours if you want."
Peter's pale face turned a deep red. Saliva seemed to form around his teeth and he clenched his mouth against it. He was a little humiliated, a little scared, but he wanted to go with her.
"I'd like to have lunch," Peter said quickly. "I'm sorry I can't buy. I-I didn't realize I would have a date."
The gaucherie of his idea of a date struck Evette. She had grown jaded and tired of all the quick bright men she had known, or the ones like King Virdon who were clownish failures, but they were every bit as clumsy as Peter but lacked any charm whatsoever.
Evette slipped her arm through Peter's and touched her big generous breast against his elbow. She felt a movement in his arm, as if to pull away, but he did not. When he didn't, a slow excitement began to move through her body, a warm gradual liquid joy that she had never experienced before. Men, boys had always reached for her, grasped her, held her; now she could reach, hold, attain herself perhaps. She did not know.
Evette and Peter walked down to Union Street, passing Otto's, and on toward the drugstore. They crossed the street in the bright sunshine and entered the shade of the opposite side. As they walked in the warm grayness of the shade, Evette saw King Virdon walk out of the drugstore and stand in front on the sidewalk with his tightly gloved hands on his hips. The black belt with the pistol was strapped on over his hips and he stood with his stomach pulled in hard. His tight pants looked as if they might split right down the fly.
Evette and Peter approached Virdon and started to go into the drugstore.
"Hello, Evette," King Virdon said.
"Hello," she said flatly.
King looked at Peter with a blank, cold look in his pale water-wash hazel eyes.
Evette and Peter started to pass on their way into the drugstore.
"Say, I'll call you in a day or two, Evette," King said. "We ought to get out to the Jolly Boys' picnic on Sunday."
"Don't call me," she said. "I've got other plans. Pete and I are going somewhere Sunday."
King's eyes narrowed down to a thin squint.
"Maybe I don't like you running around with other guys."
"Why don't you go love yourself," Evette shot at him.
King's body snapped and his right hand came back quickly into a fist and ready to throw.
Peter Wilson dropped his books and stepped in front of Virdon. He was very pale and pimply-faced and soft-looking, but he stood between Evette and the deputy sheriff. He did not raise his hands; he did nothing. He only stood there in front of the tall muscular young man who had his fist clenched and cocked.
"Don't hit her," Peter said. "Hit me."
King stared at him for a long moment, not believing his eyes.
Evette laughed, pleased with what she saw. She enjoyed it fully; watching, appreciating. King Virdon was stymied as he would always be stymied. Inside all the muscles there was nothing; emptiness, shallowness, maybe even cowardice.
"My man isn't afraid of you, King," she said. "He's not afraid of you at all."
"I'll break you in two, punk," King cried. "I'll kill you."
Peter's pale, small hands came up. His voice quivered a little. "If you hit me, I'll hit back."
The sweat poured out into King Virdon's forehead. It leaked out around his eyes, about his ears, on his throat.
"Well, what are you going to do, doo-doo face?" Evette screamed. King's arm began to swing. "King!" a deep, masculine voice roared. King's arm stopped in the air, halfway to the target. He seemed to go into a coma, as if he had become paralyzed. He was frozen in motion and he stood there awkwardly off balance.
Peter Wilson hit him a little below the eye with a tiny fist. The blow had no force and did not change King's position.
A bulky middle-aged man with a dark mustache pushed both of them back. King staggered and stepped over the curb backwards. He stood in the street between two parked automobiles with his hands dropped down to the sides of his skin-tight trousers. His right hand was only a few inches from the service revolver in its holster. His breath came hard and deep and it seemed that his tight shirt might pop open.
"What the hell's come over you?" the older man roared. King did not answer.
The bulky man turned to Evette and Peter Wilson. "Well, what happened?" he grumbled. Peter said nothing.
"Pete and King just had a disagreement," Evette said. Then she added, "But I don't think your deputies should be allowed to hit private citizens, Mr. Bowers."
"Maybe he had his reasons," Sheriff Clinton B. Bowers said.
"Not on county time, I don't think," Evette said. "I don't think my stepfather would think so either."
Clinton Bowers looked back at King, who still stood with his hands at his sides between the parked cars. Then he looked again at Evette and Peter Wilson. He smiled one of his good political smiles and said, "Well, there was no harm done. Everything is all right."
"Sure, everything is fine," Evette said.
"I'd appreciate it if you didn't say anything to Mr. McPherson or your mother, Miss Warwick."
"I wouldn't consider it," Evette said, smiling eagerly and letting her eyes drift over to where King Virdon stood in the street. His boss scared him right out of his drawers, she thought.
"And I hope you will let this matter drop, too, young man," Clinton B. Bowers, county sheriff, the people's elected choice, said to Peter.
Peter said nothing for a moment. Then he said, "No, I won't say anything about it."
"Now, why don't you young people go on in and have a malt or something?" Bowers said with a big smile on his face.
"Sure," Evette said.
Bowers turned around and motioned to King with a snap of his head and started walking down the sidewalk. King began to follow him with his head down.
"You did fine, Pete," Evette said. "You made a monkey out of the big jerk. You called his bluff in a hurry."
"No," he said, "I didn't call his bluff. I just didn't want him to strike you."
She smiled and squeezed his hand hard. "That's sweet."
"Would you go out with me tonight?" he blurted.
"Sure. I thought that was all arranged."
He shook his head slowly. "I don't remember. We could go to a movie or something."
"Yeah. Let's go to a movie or something."
Pete attempted a smile that didn't quite come off, but Evette knew. She knew all about Peter. Outside, when he hit King Virdon with the little tap, his hand could have held a knife or an axe or a broken bottle. He hit King after King's punch had stopped in the air, when the sheriff had yelled at him. But he got his punch in, even though it was nothing. Peter Wilson was a screwed-up guy, but he could be dangerous. She knew men and she knew Peter. He had the impulse in him to kill; he might have put a knife into King Virdon outside if he'd had a knife. Everybody thought Peter was chicken, but she knew better. Maybe he was chicken up to a point, but after that point was passed he could be vicious.
Perhaps she knew everything about men; harlots were supposed to know the most, whether they do or not. And she was a whore, even though she had never been paid.
She left King Virdon with a parting sneer. Someday, she thought, she was going to tell King Virdon just why she wasn't interested in him. Some day when he was particularly vulnerable, like when he was standing around acting like a big shot with all of his he-men friends.
Then she would tell him.
It had happened the year before. Evette had taken a walk in the Heights, the gently rolling hills that lie to the west of town. It was beautiful there, and what little peace Evette had been able to find, she had found in the Heights.
There was a lover's lane there, a spot that Evette knew well. She decided to walk by and saw who was there, for she enjoyed watching others make love almost as much as she enjoyed doing it herself.
There was only one car parked there that day, and she recognized it immediately. It belonged to King Virdon, the strapping law officer who had been giving her a big eye lately.
He was interesting, by far the best-built man in town. But for some reason, Evette had held off with King Virdon. Now she was going to see if she had been right in her intuition. He was lying on a blanket with Sarah Thompson, a woman who worked in the diner by the railroad yards. At first she couldn't see what was going on, so Evette edged closer through the trees to get a better look.
King Virdon was forcing Sarah to suck his penis-not really forcing her physically, but telling her that if she didn't do it, he'd tell all of his buddies about her, and that would finish her in Thornton.
But what was worse, from Evette's point of view, was the size of King Virdon's penis. For all of his muscles and height, his penis was the size of young boy's.
It was perhaps four inches long, even when erect, and it took all of Evette's self-control not to burst out laughing from her vantage point in the trees.
But she watched anyway. King Virdon got Sarah to put it in her mouth and she sucked it quickly. He was so small that she was able to take his entire length into her mouth easily, and she bobbed her head on it as if it were a toy.
Then he made Sarah get on top of him while he lay on his back. He held her by the hips as she sat on his face, and then Evette saw one of his hands fondling his small organ as he orally satisfied Sarah, who rocked back and forth atop him, I obviously eager for any kind of payoff for her sexual misadventure.
I His orgasm was weak and he obviously barely felt it, Evette thought. He would be thumbs-down as a lover, obviously not suited to a strong, hot-natured woman like her.
When he was through he made Sarah lick him again, this time in places where she did not want to place her tongue. But King Virdon was insistent and Sarah was afraid of the large man's ability to ruin her life, so she did as she was told.
Someday, Evette thought as she watched, she was going to get even for Sarah. She was going to make King Virdon leave town.
CHAPTER TEN
Paul Moran walked down the sidewalk at 12:45 with his hands in his pockets. It was a little late for lunch, but he still had the hangover; he had hoped it would go away before lunchtime. He never liked to eat with a hangover.
He saw Clinton B. Bowers and King Virdon under the awning of the variety store. Bowers was pointing his finger against King's tight shirt and was talking loudly, although not shouting. Paul forgot his hangover and moved on down the sidewalk so he could hear what Thornton's most successful politican was saying.
"Conduct unfitting a police officer," Bowers rumbled.
Paul stopped in front of the stationery store next door and pretended to look at the display of paper party goods in the window. A papier-mache bride and groom leered up at him, and he thought of his engagement and future marriage to Margaret Carlson.
"You don't understand, sir," King said.
"Don't understand, my foot. I'm disappointed in you, King; terribly disappointed."
"It was what she said, sir. It didn't have anything to do with the punk kid."
"Don't talk that way about the boy. I think he's Emmett Wilson's son. Look, Wilson's no big shot, but for God's sake's, he's an accountant for Charnley Farms, he belongs to the gun club, and he's a registered Republican to boot. Sometimes I think you're a thick son of a bitch, King,"
"She was teasing me," King said.
"For the love of God, there's a first-class whorehouse across the county line in Ronson City. Why don't you go over there and get your ashes hauled, boy, and forget about the local girls?"
"I've never been in a whorehouse in my life and I never intend going," King said in a flat Puritan voice.
"Well, don't go around trying to climb the local girls."
"You don't understand, sir."
"I understand one thing," Bowers roared in a louder voice, "I'll fire your ass tomorrow if you get involved in anything else around here. Now either get married or go over to Ronson City, but don't play around here."
King saw Paul suddenly and his back stiffened against the building; he clamped his lips together. Paul watched him out of the corner of his eye and it looked pretty funny, hangover or not. King Virdon was a big muscle-bound blowhard, a guy who wandered through life half-scared. There had been plenty of them when he was in the veterans' hospital, Paul thought; then he wished he hadn't remembered that. But one thing he did allow himself to think about now; he'd like to bust King Virdon and see what would happen. Maybe he'd always had the desire to belt a muscle-man in the mouth. Was that good mental health? He didn't know. But one thing he did know-it would be sort of like taking a good physic.
"What's the matter with you now?" Clinton B. Bowers said.
"The guy from the newspaper," King hissed.
Bowers turned quickly and stared at Paul, who was still looking into the stationery-store window at the papier-mache bride and groom and hoping that marriage had more to offer than a stupid painted-on smile worn by paper dummies.
"Hello there, Paul," Bowers said. He walked down the few steps of sidewalk to where the reporter stood and held his big right hand out.
Paul took the hand. It was always fun to shake hands with Clinton B. Bowers. He was the finest hand shaker he had ever encountered, far better even than the Brigadier General in Japan, who had had political ambition and who knew every G.I. got to vote when he went home ... as long as the system stayed the same. Maybe after the Brigadier got in things might be different, but that would be a while yet. "Look fellas, keep the brown shirts in the trunks until later," he might say.
But this was a little cruel. Probably the Brigadier had only wanted a cushy job like Vice President in charge of P.R. with a big corporation when he retired; he didn't have the swinging stroke of an ex-housepainter to go the dictator route. He had been close to the top of his class at West Point and had only made Brigadier. The poor bastard had been disappointed in life, and he had known he wouldn't even have made Brigadier if it hadn't been for Korea.
Clinton B. Bowers had a much heartier shake than the Brigadier. He was only sheriff of Thornton county, but he was a man you kept your eye on because he wasn't thinking about a cushy corporation job where he could deliver a few government contracts. Bowers would always be a man backed by the people, even when he became president. And that possibility always hung in Paul's mind.
"Hello, Mr. Bowers," Paul said. "That's big-city talk. I'm Clint to everybody."
"Tight-pants over there called you sir."
"Well, now, really." Bowers slapped Paul across the shoulders; he had a very strong hand and it was as big as a full-grown gorilla's. "The men in the sheriff's office always address the first officer as sir. That's protocol, Paul."
"Yeah."
"Well it is, son. Didn't you call your officers in the Army sir?"
"I called them a lot of things."
Clinton B. Bowers laughed heartily. "That beats everything. You're always joking about something, Paul."
"I'm not joking. I just thought they were a bunch of bastards."
Clinton Bowers laughed again. "You patriots all try to talk tough just so people won't think you're a bunch of sentimental softies. You-"
"I was drafted, Mr. Bowers."
"According to a book I read, the draftees were the strongest part of the Marine Corps in-"
"I was in the Army."
"I know you were in the Army, Paul. I was just talking about something else."
"Don't wave flags in my face, Mr. Bowers."
"What are you talking about, son?"
"I went. I had to go. Don't shove it down my throat and don't call me a patriot. I work for a newspaper, that's all; I work for a salary now and I don't say sir to anybody who doesn't rate it. Your deputy just called you sir. That's what we're talking about, isn't it?"
"Well, not exactly," Clinton B. Bowers said. "What King and I were talking about was confidential and I don't want a news story about it. I don't think Mr. Carlson would either."
"Mr. Carlson doesn't work for the paper. He owns it, but he doesn't work it. And I didn't hear anything you were saying because I didn't care what you were saying." Which wasn't exactly true, but Paul enjoyed saying it.
Bowers smiled. "You understand. I see you understand."
"I don't understand a goddam thing. I just didn't hear all of what you were talking about, and your internal problems don't matter to anybody, I don't think."
"You think right," Bowers said.
"Okay," Paul said, "so what are you worried about?"
"I'm not worried about anything, son," he said, patting Paul across the shoulder blade again. "Then don't panic."
Paul turned away from them and walked on down the street to Amsterdam's. He wasn't in the market for a drink right now, but it was still the best place in town to eat when you could afford it, and he could about once a week.
Paul walked into Amsterdam's and came face to face with the bar in the darkened interior. When he saw it, he thought about his hangover and realized it had passed on, like all sorrows and griefs.
He laughed to himself and went to a booth. He opened a menu and checked over the food listed there. It had been printed for middle-aged widows who wanted to have a time for themselves at lunch. The waitress came and he ordered a deluxe cheeseburger, something a widow would never have ordered, and which wasn't on the menu.
"Would you like a cocktail, sir?" she said.
"No," he said.
She left with his order.
He tried to remember what Bowers and King Virdon had been arguing about. He had overheard some of it but not enough to make any sense of it. It had been something about girls or a girl, and Virdon had said piously that he hadn't ever been in a whorehouse in his life and didn't intend going. What girls? What girl?
Paul wondered if it had anything to do with Evette Warwick. Virdon had slapped Stan Hopkins last night here in Amsterdam's, at the bar, over something Stan had said about Evette.
Was King Virdon hot for her?
Why in hell wouldn't he be? Practically every man and boy in Thornton had been at one time or another. Was local gangbuster falling for town tramp? That would make a good headline. That would....
Then Paul thought about Roy Warwick. No, it wasn't something to joke about, Evette and her hot tail. It was damned serious and damned tragic to one man, anyway. She was breaking her father in half, the way she acted. She shouldn't be doing that to poor old Roy; he deserved better because he was honest and decent. You couldn't say that about many men.
Paul wanted to break her goddam neck.
The waitress brought him a beer and he sipped some of it as he waited for his lunch. Memories of Evette's good lush body came back to him-her large heavy breasts with the big nipples and her strong, good legs that had wrapped around his body.
"I'd like to knock her brains out for what she's doing to Roy," he cried to himself.
Then he remembered something else. He and Margaret were supposed to go to the movies if he didn't have to work late tonight. And he didn't have to work late because nothing new had come up; all his copy was up to date, hangover or not. And if something happened at the last minute, Gerry Pierce would make the kid, only a few months out of Cal, take care of it. That was the newspaper business; when you were new you got all the jobs at all the bad hours.
Paul got up from his table and went to the public telephone in the corner. He dialed Margaret's number.
After three rings she answered.
"Hi," he said. "I'm free tonight."
"That's wonderful," she said enthusiastically. Margaret was a tall, slim, attractive brunette who had the outward appearance of being cold, aloof and detached. But actually she was warm, personal, and had the ability to pump excitement into mundane things. Most people regarded her as a cold potato because they didn't know her. But this had always made Paul happy as long as he had known her. Perhaps he hadn't wanted to share the wealth. Perhaps he enjoyed a woman who could carry off a subtle deception. Perhaps one day he would be completely in love with Margaret Carlson because she was so very much like himself.
"'Love After Five' is playing," she said.
"Oh my God."
"It will be fine. Reinhardt Mason is the star and he's always tremendous. Admit it now; you said the other night that Reinhardt Mason had never made a bad picture in his life and that he never would."
"I must have been drinking," Paul said. "I hadn't heard about 'Love After Five.' "
"Don't be a stuffy intellectual about this, sweet. I want to see good old Reinhardt. I'm secretly in love with him."
"I thought I was the love of your life."
"I'm just going to have your babies," she said brightly. "Reinhardt brings out the real me in me."
"Why don't we rent a motel and forget about good old Reinhardt?"
"Liberal intellectuals aren't supposed to think about practical things like motels and sex. They're supposed to sit around with half-empty wine bottles and talk about Reinhardt Mason and great movie art."
"Crap," Paul said.
"That's more like the intellectual I know," she said. "Can you pick me up in time to make the eight-forty-five break?"
"I'll be at your place at eight-fifteen."
"I'll go to the motel with you and forget about dear old Reinhardt if you really want me to."
"Sure," Paul said, knowing she didn't mean it. She might do it, but she would never mean it. "I'll be there at eight-fifteen."
"'Bye," she said.
Paul walked back to his table and found his deluxe cheeseburger waiting for him. At Amsterdam's it was really deluxe, a whole meal with salad and all sorts of goodies. It would cost him a dollar and a half plus tip, but it was worth it once in a while.
He dug into his sandwich.
Then he thought once again of King Virdon and Evette. Why hadn't he been able to keep them buried somewhere and not have to think about them?
But it was interesting, the hassle Bowers and Virdon had been going through on the sidewalk. "But she was teasing me," Virdon had said. That sounded like Evette, but it could have applied to a dozen little bitches who ran around Thornton. But it was probably Evette.
Teasing was Evette's art. She even liked to tease former lovers. She never thought about how much she could hurt her father, even if he was the town's ace drunk. She just liked to tease.
He bit into his sandwich and tried to enjoy it, but he couldn't forget about Clinton B. Bowers and Virdon and Evette. There was something there. Something had happened.
If Evette wasn't careful....
He threw that aside, pushed it back, and tried to enjoy his sandwich.
What he wouldn't allow himself to think about was:
Someone was going to kill Evette Warwick.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
That evening, a little before eight o'clock, Peter Wilson was on his way to Evette Warwick's home. He was dressed in his blue cheviot, suit, white shirt, and plain necktie that was tied a little crookedly because he always made a poor knot in a necktie. He wanted to look well-dressed tonight and failed as he always failed. He looked like one of the young farmers who came to town with his girl and necked at the movies, but he lacked the animal quickness and animal bodiness that the farmer men always had. He had never castrated a sheep with his teeth; perhaps that was why he failed. No, it was more than that. He could never haved lived the rough, sun-hardened, strong-forearmed life of the valley farmer.
Peter Wilson was a product of a soft, civilized culture, the one the crossbow, gunpowder, and the atomic bomb had been invented for because the men were too weak to use a spear. But that was the culture that always won, wasn't it? Their heads grew too large, so large they could not balance properly, and their arms and legs withered. But they won because of their brains.
Peter had never felt like a winner; to himself, he was always one of the weakling castoffs. It probably was not true but, up to now, life had been moving faster than he was capable of moving.
At noon today his life had changed. Evette Warwick had asked him to have lunch with her, the Evette Warwick. She had been the girl friend of every important guy in school ... and the older man, Paul Moran, who worked for the newspaper. Moran must have been almost thirty. She had been interested in a mature man like Moran and now she was interested in Peter!
The idea awakened a whole new area of his life that so far had been untapped. It was an area of tremendous potential that needed an enzyme to activate it and Evette was doing that to him.
He had hit the cop this afternoon after he had swung at him. Before today he never would have had the courage; but today he had lunged out as one of his cavemen ancestors would have done, before the crossbow, gunpowder, or the atomic bomb. And it pleased him to know there was an animal part to him.
His punch had been light, but it could have been much heavier. The next time he lashed out, it would be quicker, harder, deadlier, because he now knew he had the capacity for violence.
Joy surged through his body with the realization of the animal in him.
Peter Wilson was happier tonight than he could ever remember, and he was on his way to meet a woman. How many crazy ideas he had about women when he was alone!
But Evette was far more than he had ever invented in his imagination; her breasts were greater than any he had dreamed about, her hips were wider, her mouth warmer, her hand stronger, her breath quicker.
However, he was afraid of her. He had always been afraid of girls, but this was even more acute fear. When he had talked to her today, when she had talked to him, he felt the shrinking of his organs. During his life when he had been scared, truly afraid, this always happened to him, and it was sharply uncomfortable. He was afraid he might lose his members when this happened.
Castration fear, he mumbled to himself.
He remembered the prof last year, talking about children, who had had a funny explanation for it; all the little boys in the world were standing around afraid they would be castrated and all the little girls were waiting, afraid they already had been.
Peter Wilson laughed aloud and it made him feel better. He hurried on towards her house. He had asked his father for the family car tonight but his father had to drive into San Francisco for a meeting. Peter had planned to take Evette to a drive-in movie; now he would have to settle for the movie house in town, although he would have prefered going out to the drive-in. He hoped she would be satisfied to walk; otherwise cab fare would dent his finances seriously.
Peter walked down Union Street on his way to Evette's home. He passed Otto's and glanced in. The thick, stocky German was wiping off the back counter behind the cash register. Otto was always rubbing, wiping hard somewhere. As far back as he could remember, Otto had always been here. But he could not always have been in Thornton. No one had the ability to have been always anywhere. Every man was only temporary; that was what living was ... a transient thing that only lasted for a little while. And after that, what? Peter did not pretend to know. He did not accept the religious answers, nor did he fully reject them. Perhaps he could have accepted the Roman Catholic faith if it had not been for ... for the model airplanes, for the gun, for what he knew, for what he feared, for what he hoped.
As Peter moved down Union Street he saw Paul Moran with another man, a few years younger and a little heavy. They were standing in front of the drugstore and talking. Peter, though almost a block away, stared toward Moran-he could see the hollowness in his cheeks and the sharpness about his mouth. Peter did not know him personally, but he had known who he was as long as he had been in Thornton. Peter, although he had never really known him, had always liked Moran. Perhaps it was because one day, when he was still in high school, he had walked out of the variety store after purchasing a model airplane kit and came face to face with Paul Moran.
Moran had said, "Hello, Peter. How are you?"
And Peter answered, "Hi ... Mr. Moran."
He had been flattered when the older man had greeted him and called him by his first name. He felt the older, thin, leathery man was a kind person who wanted to say hello to him.
Now, as he approached him, thinking of his meeting with Evette, knowing Paul Moran had been her lover, not understanding why she would be interested in him after once having been Moran's paramour, he felt another new sureness in himself. If she could have loved a man like Moran and now be interested in him, he knew that he was not one of the world's rejects.
Peter moved closer to Moran and the other man. The slightly fat young man worked for the paper, too, but he wasn't on the editorial staff. Peter had seen him around town often; he was probably in advertising. He was not well---liked but seemed to carry a certain amount of success and respect about him. Peter had heard him talking to local merchants.
Peter was actually a little surprised that Paul Moran would be talking with the other man. Were they friends? This man was superficial and a little gross; Moran was different.
Peter was ready to pass them now.
"Hi, Pete," Moran said casually, as if he had been a close friend.
"Good evening, Mr. Moran."
"Hi, kid," the overweight man said.
"Hello." Peter moved away from them now, liking the other man less than ever. What did he think he would gain by calling him kid? In the past he would have been hurt by what the man had said and he would have gathered his personal hatred together into one small lump and nurtured it. Now he wanted to go back and hit him as hard as he could in his little fat face.
Peter wanted to cry out as he moved down the sidewalk by himself. He wanted to scream, "Oh my God, I am a man. I am a man." But he did not.
It was not that he was uncertain of it; it was because he was civilized and an individual of taste. He was able to handle a victory and the emotion that accompanied an important win. It surprised him because he had never been able to control anything in his life previously.
The cognizance of it made him a little drunk as he walked towards Evette's home.
When he arrived there he wasn't certain what he should do when the door opened after he rang the bell. Would they have a butler? He knew that Harry McPherson was well-to-do, but he didn't know if he was that rich or if he even liked the idea of a butler. McPherson had more money than Peter's father and belonged to better clubs generally, even though they were both in Lions and Rotary. McPherson did not belong to the gun club where his father was the most important member, but his father was not a member of the Thornton Country Club, as McPherson was. Well, that was the club to belong to, no question about that.
Peter touched to doorbell button and waited for something to happen.
After a little while the door swung open and Harry McPherson stood there with a cocktail glass between his fingers that was so full of brownish liquid that it appeared ready to overflow.
"Hello there," McPherson said. "I suppose you're Wilson."
"Yes, sir."
"I'm trying to have my first drink of the evening. Would you mind awfully if I just took a sip off the top to keep from spilling it?"
"No, sir."
Harry McPherson sipped and brought the liquid level down a quarter of an inch from the edge of the glass. "Thank you," he said and held out his right hand.
Peter was surprised by the quick sharp strength in the man's hand, which was really only a little larger than his own. He himself could never have gripped that hard. Harry McPherson was thin in the chest and shoulders and was not nearly as heavy as Peter, but he had a big hand for a man his size and he was very strong.
Peter glanced down at McPherson's hand as it was withdrawn and noted that it was big-boned and thinly fleshed, covered with dark hair across the back.
"Evette said you were coming by tonight," McPherson said. "You're classmates at the college, aren't you?"
"Yes, sir."
"Come in. I don't suppose she's ready, but then they never are, are they?"
"I guess not."
"Of course they aren't." McPherson put his arm around Peter as they went inside the house.
The house was very nice, Peter thought, but not pretentious. Probably the drink McPherson held in one hand was more important to him than whether the furniture and drapes had come from the very best shops in San Francisco.
They walked together down the hallway and into the living room. It was empty of people; Evette was not there, as McPherson had said. Somehow or other, Peter thought she would be waiting for him.
"Can I fix you a drink, old fellow?" McPherson said.
Peter Wilson was flattered. "Maybe a beer, sir."
"You aren't of drinking age, are you?"
"No, sir."
"You're an intelligent boy. I'll get you a beer."
Harry McPherson got him a beer and handed it to him in an opened bottle, without a glass. "I hope I'm not contributing to...."
"No, sir. I drink beer. My father and I drink beer out of a bottle."
"That makes me feel better," Harry McPherson said.
"In two years I'll be twenty-one. I shoot." Peter stopped. "I've been shooting since I was fourteen."
"That's right. Your dad is treasurer of the gun club, isn't he?"
"Yes, sir."
"I have thought," McPherson said, turning his glass in his hand, "I have thought of joining the gun club ... but nobody ever asked me."
"I'll tell my dad."
"Isn't that funny?" McPherson said. "I've never been asked."
"It is, sir. I think they would consider it an honor if you were a member. Perhaps they are afraid to ask you."
"You are your father's son," McPherson said, laughing. "I think you are perhaps one up on your father. But you can tell him if I am invited I will jump at the invitation."
"Do you shoot, sir?"
"I can shoot both eyes out of a quail at a hundred yards ... if he's standing in profile. Is that any good?"
"That's pretty good."
"I might be a quarter of an inch off ... if I really had to do it."
Peter Wilson knew McPherson was joking but he did not doubt the truth of his statement. He could probably knock both eyes of a quail at a hundred yards. People almost invariably joked about subjects in which inwardly they were deadly serious.
McPherson laughed. "I'm not a bad shot. But I could get to be a hell of a lot better if I belonged to the club. Ask your dad about it."
"Yes, sir, I...."
Evette walked into the living room, wearing a skirt and sweater that seemed very casual and a little too young for her. Peter was disappointed.
"Hello, Peter," she said.
"Hi," he said awkwardly.
"Why don't we go?" Evette said.
"He hasn't finished his beer," McPherson said.
"Oh, yeah. Finish your beer."
Peter drank quickly from the bottle. He didn't like beer very much and he never drank it very fast, but she seemed to be in a hurry ... and it was all right with him.
"Your mother would like to meet Peter, too," McPherson said.
"She won't be down for an hour," Evette said quickly and harshly.
Peter was surprised at the way she talked to her stepfather.
"You can wait for her," McPherson said.
"I'm of age, Basil," Evette spit. "I don't have to wait for anybody."
Peter watched Harry McPherson maintain control of himself. He saw anger in his eyes, in his flushed face, in his hands with their tightened fingers. She was humiliating him in front of a stranger, but if he shouted at her or struck her would he not be more humiliated?
McPherson did neither. He turned towards Peter and held out his hand. "It's been awfully good meeting you. I hope you'll excuse me."
"It's been my pleasure, sir."
Harry McPherson turned around and walked crisply out of the room, almost as if he had stepped out of the pages of Gunga Din, Peter thought. He hadn't known McPherson was British.
"Come on, let's go," Evette said.
"I'd like to meet your mother. Really, I would."
"What in hell for? Do you want to take her out or me?"
"I don't know your mother. I...."
Evette began moving from the room and Peter followed her. They went down the long hall together and Peter opened the front door for her.
Outside Evette looked around and then back to Peter. "Didn't you bring a car?"
"My father had to take it to San Francisco for a meeting tonight. I thought we could walk over to the Downtown or take a cab."
"I don't want to go to the dopey Downtown. If we're going to the movies, let's go to a drive-in."
Peter felt helpless and a little impotent. "I'm sorry. I just don't have the car tonight."
"We can take my mother's car." She turned and started down the driveway toward the garages in back of the house. Then she stopped and turned back to Peter. "Well, what are you standing there for? The party's this way." She pointed down the driveway.
"Don't you think you ought to ask her first?"
"What for? She never uses it. They always go in good old Harry's Mercedes."
Peter did not move for a moment. He felt that they would be doing wrong if they took the car without permission, but Evette was so sure of herself.
He stepped down and walked towards Evette. She held her hand out to him and he grasped it eagerly, almost grotesquely desirous. He didn't really care about Evette's mother and her car.
The car in the garage that sat next to Harry McPherson's black Mercedes-Benz was a year-old, green, two-door, standard model Chevrolet. It was immaculately clean on the outside and Peter felt that Evette had told the truth when she said her mother never used it.
Evette moved to the driver's side and Peter opened the door for her. He had hoped that she would ask him to drive, but she didn't. She slipped into the car, smoothly and without effort, almost cat-like, and it was surprising because of her body's thickness. Her breasts touched the steering wheel and he saw the impression the wheel made against her sweater and against her softness. The flesh seemed to move about the body of the steering apparatus beneath the protection of the wool garment.
I want to kiss them! he cried to himself ... and he felt shame for his lasciviousness.
Evette slid on across to the passenger side of the front seat.
"What are you standing there for?" she said. "Drive it."
Peter stood firm, fighting the almost overwhelming urge of his manhood.
"You want me to drive?" he said vaguely, still thinking of her breasts pressed against the steering wheel of the Chevy.
"I don't like to drive," she said. "I never do it unless I have to. I always leave it up to the man."
Peter dropped into the seat and slipped his hands easily around the steering wheel. He put the Chevrolet into reverse and backed it out the driveway past the big house.
As he hooked backward into the street, he noted a deep scratch across the dashboard enamel, as though someone had viciously stuck a match against it, letting the heat of the friction cut into the finish. It was a wanton thing to do to a clean car like this, but someone had done it anyway.
Peter wondered if Evette had committed the vandalism. There was a viciousness within her; he saw it in they way she had spoken to Harry McPherson. He could not possibly have defended himself in front of a stranger. (And could he ever have against her under any circumstance?)
Peter pointed the green car down the street and stepped down slowly on the accelerator. It moved out easily and gently. He glanced toward Evette and saw boredom on her face. He would rather be the target for her wrath, as McPherson had been, then to elicit boredom in her.
He tromped heavily on the foot feed and Chevrolet lunged forward, as though it were a greyhound released from its box to the track.
"Go get 'em, Peter," Evette said.
Peter turned sharply at the corner, losing little speed, and burned rubber acridly.
"You're coming on, Pete," Evette said.
Peter had never driven in this fashion before. He was surprised by his bravado, but the act itself excited him. He stamped sharply again on the accelerator. He would never have driven this recklessly with his father's car.
Suddenly a late-model pink Ford with a middle-aged woman at the wheel pulled out from a stop sign, directly into their path.
Peter hit the brakes, flipped the steering wheel slightly, missing the rear bumper of the Ford by a quarter of an inch, and slammed his foot down against the foot feed again.
His heart did not pound, his breath did not come faster, there was no dryness in his mouth. It didn't frighten him ... and this amazed him.
His eyes moved a little and he saw Evette vaguely from the perimeter of his vision. She showed no fear, as he had expected, but he saw admiration on her face ... and now his pulse began to pound in the cords of his throat.
He felt her hand touch his arm and move down slowly, carefully, until it touched the back of his right hand on the steering wheel. Her fingers tightened hard and he felt joyous pain from the strength of her grip.
"You drive good, Pete," she said. "You're real good."
He did not answer and he did not look towards her. There had never been more satisfaction in his life"; not even when he had struck out at the big, stupid cop in the tight pants that afternoon. His life was coming to a climax and he was drinking the juices of success for the first time.
He had narrowly missed the car a moment before, but he knew he would miss it. Now there was no limit to his confidence. Evette had given him more than he had ever had before. There had never been anything in his life before except model airplanes, pistol practice, and ... hate!
Now there was confidence, even braggadocio, even lack of judgment ... but he had lost hate. At least for a little while.
Unfortunately, it was almost like ugly people who were able to forget for a short time that they were ill-shapen.
"I didn't think you could cut her that close," Evette said.
Peter shrugged.
"You're being modest. You took a chance, didn't you? You didn't know you could brush up like that without touching."
"I knew I wasn't going to hit her," Peter said quietly.
"I didn't think you were up to that, Pete."
"Don't ever try to estimate someone you don't know."
"Yeah, I guess so," she said.
Peter drove on. It was early twilight, not yet dark enough for headlights because of daylight saving time, but it was past seven o'clock. It was still far too early for a drive-in movie to begin, but they were going there anyway. Peter did not know what was playing and did not care. He wanted to neck with a girl in a car.
Paul Moran casually tied his necktie into a neat, lean four-in-hand knot and let the fabric drop from his hands down to his fresh blue oxford-cloth shirt.
He wore solid-colored shirts (never white) because he could get two days out of them unless, of course, he ran into trouble in the composition room. He had a knack for getting dirty even when he didn't touch anything.
He went to the kitchen table in the corner of his room and sat down. He unscrewed the cap from a nearly full bottle of whisky on the table and poured two fingers' worth into a glass. Then he picked up the glass and sipped some of the brown liquid. It was a blend from Canada which was his kind of drink.
Actually, there was no "his kind of whisky." Moran was the sort of man who would drink anything and probably enjoy it. He was not a connoisseur.
He had let the clerk in the liquor store talk him into the Canadian whisky because he had said over and over again how smooth it was. Paul wanted something "smooth" tonight after suffering through a hangover in the earlier part of the day.
He rolled some whisky around in his mouth and shot air in to stir it about, to give it mouthwash effect. Then he swallowed. He smiled a little. His boss, Gerald Pierce, always treated whisky as though it were mouthwash; he probably secretly felt it helped defeat tooth decay. Paul could remember when Gerry had held a sip from a shot glass for a long time in one spot in his mouth and had later admitted that he had a cavity on that side that was giving him trouble.
Paul liked Gerry. Gerry was more disorganized than Paul would have liked, and his weekly column was generally misunderstood, but in the end, he was a man who made sense, who had purpose, and who stood for something.
Gerald Pierce could have been his own father, at least age-wise. They both had many things in common, certainly. Paul's father, when he had been alive, was sincere, as Gerry was sincere. They both had an exaggerated sense of justice. They were both often wrong but were always wrong in a medium-grand sense.
But there was a difference, Paul thought; when Gerry was getting a kicking around he would sit and suck on his pipe and say something full of hidden invective-witty, hard, clever, and to the point. He could strip the pants off an adversary.
When his father became angry, truly teed off, he hit somebody.
Paul had always wanted Gerald Pierce to strike out with his hands, with his fists. You could carry civilization a little too far.
Paul himself was a very quiet man. He had never really been a street-fighter as a boy. He had always tried to talk his way out of every altercation. But when everything else failed, he had enjoyed fighting with his fists, even though he often came out second in a two-horse race. But even in defeat he had enjoyed the jarring, bone-jamming sensation of hitting another man with his fists.
He deplored this part of himself on one level and gloried in it on another. A man could not appreciate the tenderness of a woman's love it he did not somewhere in himself love the aches of physical contact, of viciousness to and from another human being.
Paul poured himself another drink.
Was this healthy thinking? It bothered him and it did not bother him. He had a great deal of faith in himself, but there were always the borderline doubts. When he had been captured in the hills of Korea, he could have died fighting instead. Even though he was wounded and bleeding. But he was captured and had to live with guilt and shame from then on.
Paul Moran stared down at the glass between his fingers. "This is very cornball," he said to himself, "but you are fighting for your sanity ... and you aren't exactly on top right now."
There was no comment from the empty room. He had almost expected the partly sick, injured other half of himself to come back with a rejoinder, but there had been none. This fight had gone on for a lot of years and there had never been a comment ... but he was still waiting for the first feedback.
Then he wondered why he had to bother himself tonight with his "problem."
Paul stood up from the table, slipped into his jacket, and left. The place was beginning to depress him. It often did, but most times not so much. And that was probably why he had kept it through five years in Thornton. It was like all things in his life, not altogether bad and not altogether good. Nothing was ever absolute.
Outside, the world seemed empty of people, empty of things, and it should not have felt this way on a spring evening. There was a nuance of fall in the air instead of the vernal season.
His thoughts had been too morbid tonight. He should not have let them wander. Spring was for the youth that was left in a man, and he should let nothing interfere with this.
He walked down the sidewalk toward Union Street. He had the drinks at his place to unwind him a little, but they had not done him a favor tonight.
Why did he have to fear that he was mentally ill? He had a date with a girl who was perhaps the most important girl in town. Perhaps she was not the sex symbol that Evette had been in his life, but he felt that she could probably hold her own in any competition.
No one particularly understood Margaret but everyone liked her more or less. She was a nonconformist without being a rebel; people thought her a little flat (but not too flat) and they regarded her as a little too intellectual to have both feet on the ground.
Probably she was the girl meant for him. Her money was not important to him, but her cognizance was. Her understanding of him was important and he wondered why she understood him.
He wondered if perhaps he wasn't in love with Margaret Carlson. If he were in love with a woman, he knew that she must be intelligent; he knew that she must be more than a copulating apparatus; she had to be more than that.
Margaret could excite him, even when she talked about a movie they were going to see. Oftentimes at night, when he was alone, he thought about her.
She was a lot like him (give or take her daddy's money). Paul marveled at having been able to find this kind of a woman.
But the attraction of the opposite, with Evette, had been strong in his life. He had needed someone that gross to have made his life complete; but he did not need Evette now.
Paul hadn't bothered taking the car tonight. It wasn't a long walk to Margaret's home, even though there were perhaps a million dollars between the neighborhood in which he lived and the Carlson home. He felt like walking. Margaret always liked to walk when they went out together, if they weren't going too far.
Paul passed Otto's Ice Cream Parlor and waved to Otto inside. The older man saw him and waved back, smiling. Otto was always there, night and day. Paul sometimes wondered when he had any time to spend with Hilde. After twelve or fourteen hours in the store, did he still feel like slipping between the sheets and raising a little connubial hell with his old woman?
The front door of Amsterdam's across the street opened and Clinton B. Bowers, the sheriff, and two tall, well-dressed, middle-aged men came out onto the sidewalk. The men with Bowers were political string-pullers from San Francisco whom Paul recognized. He had heard both of them speak at one time or another at service clubs in Thornton, and he wondered if they had come to see Bowers to promise him the presidency of the United States if he just kept his number-one deputy out of brawls with the local people. The thought of Clinton B. Bowers as president struck Paul with its full ludicrousness, and it raised his spirits suddenly.
Bowers saw him across the street and raised his hand immediately in recognition. "Hello there, Paul."
Paul raised his hand in answering salute and wondered if perhaps it would not be appropriate to cry out, "Bowers for president!" But he restrained himself and walked on down the street, choking down a silly laugh in the back of his throat.
He traveled nearly half a block before a chuckle coughed forth. Then he laughed aloud, but not very loud. It would have been bad manners to have laughed loud enough for Bowers and his friends to hear and it would have gained nothing. But "Bowers for president" nearly convulsed him.
But why laugh? Bigger idiots than Bowers had already slept in the White House for extended periods. And one thing he had to give Bowers credit for. He had been shrewd enough to remain the county sheriff for a good many years.
As Paul walked on, forgetting Bowers, the depression of the evening returned to him, and he wondered again why the night had to feel so much like fall instead of spring.
A little later, Peter and Evette sat in the Chevrolet at the Tower Drive-In Movie. They both ate popcorn from cardboard boxes which Peter had bought from the concession stand twenty yards from where they were parked.
Peter ate popcorn, watched the huge movie screen through the tinted glass of the car (making the picture seem somewhat darker than it should have been) and glanced toward Evette every few seconds.
He didn't want to be at the drive-in movie ... and he wanted to be there. The contradiction of the situation stuck in his mind but he did not bother trying to understand it. The nearness of Evette, just a few feet from him on the front seat, excited him; he wanted to be with her, but he would have preferred that they be alone.
The drive-in seemed not only lewd and in bad taste, but gauche as well. But on the other hand, he desparately wanted to feel his own lust and libido.
Why did these words have to come to his mind? He only wanted to free his capacity to love, and it didn't have to be lecherous.
And he had freed his ability to love and he was exercising that talent now; he was in love with Evette. He doubted that he had ever been able to love anyone or anything completely. Perhaps the pistol; but was he certain of this?
His right hand slowly moved across the seat towards Evette. It stopped once, halfway there, and remained still for several seconds, then moved forward again.
A few inches from her it stopped once more. It would not touch her because he lacked to courage in his mind to force the hand a few remaining inches to brush her person.
Evette rolled down her window and tossed the popcorn box out unconcernedly, and wiped her hands on a napkin. She glanced toward the screen but did not seem particularly interested in the action taking place there.
She turned her head and her gaze met Peter's. There was a slight question in her deep brown eyes as she looked at him, perhaps registering the change in him.
She glanced down to the seat and saw his hand, still dormant but very near her.
"Why, Peter," she said and grabbed his hand. She held it up to her face for a moment, looking at it, seeing its smallness, Peter thought. Then she brought it down slowly to her soft lower belly and rubbed it back and forth, carefully. He felt the yielding, submissive lines of her woman's stomach and was surprised that she did not wear a girdle. He didn't know why, but he thought all women wore them.
The blood rushed through his body and the heat of it hammered in the sides of his head. He lurched sideways toward her, bumping the steering wheel.
She released his hand and opened her arms to him, bringing her hands up to his neck. He came to her and he kissed her clumsily, crookedly across the mouth.
"No, silly," she whispered. "Like this." She opened her mouth roundly and proffered it to him.
He opened his mouth and their lips came together at first gently, then hard. His grip around her body tightened more and he drew her firmly to him.
After that moment, he eased his hold on her and their faces came apart. He panted from his emotion and from his lack of oxygen.
"You learn in a hurry." she said, her breath a little short.
He did not answer. He only gazed into her eyes.
She ran her hands up and down the back of his neck, touching the short hair there, arousing him even more ... if this were possible.
He was not in complete control of his erotic senses now. He knew this and there was nothing he could do about it.
"You learned so quick," she said; "maybe you deserve a little bonus, Pete."
He did not understand. He did not....
She brought her hands together behind his neck and snapped his head down sharply, burying his face against her breasts.
A short muffled cry crossed Peter's lips as his senses exploded.
In town, Paul had arrived at the home of Samuel Carlson and was standing on the front porch, ringing the doorbell. When the door opened he faced a familiar person, the serving man who always opened the Carlson front door. He was not in truth a butler, because he performed more sundry duties than would be expected of a butler. He was probably not actually anything in particular, but specifically a servant of the Carlson family.
"Good evening, Mr. Moran," he said, opening the door.
"Hello, Paul." It was awkward for Paul to be addressed as mister and reply with the other man's first name. His world was not really ready for this; he had spent most of his life addressing others as mister or sir and being called Paul in return, the same name the serving man bore.
Moran knew that he could never have servants, even if he reached a point in life when he could afford them.
Paul, the servant, led Paul, the caller, into the living room. Margaret was seated on the long couch with a book in her lap. She looked up and a long smile moved across her face; her mouth was too big, really, but it was a very good smile; it was the kind of smile the girl he had always wanted had to have. She was awfully good, he thought.
Margaret pushed the book out of her lap, stood up, and kissed him on the mouth.
It surprised him. He looked towards the serving man and noted that he was looking toward the fireplace.
Moran slipped his hands around her and they dropped down over the upper area of her hips. His fingers squeezed a little.
"That's the nicest thing you've ever done to me," she said.
"You just wait," Paul said. "Just wait."
"If I cannot be of any service, may I take my leave?" Paul, the serving man, said.
Margaret laughed. "I'm awfully sorry, Paul. Please, don't mind us. We ... we love each other."
"Yes, miss. I thought probably you did." He started to leave. "If you'll pardon me, Mr. Moran, I think you are a very lucky fellow."
"Thank you, sir," Paul said, forgetting that the other man was a servant. Paul was basically a gentleman, even though he was prone to involving himself in a barroom brawl if he felt like it.
Paul, the serving man, left the room.
Margaret wore a plain black dress with only an ordinary string of pearls for decoration. With some women, this could have been either a very conservative outfit or a very cornball one, but with Margaret it was neither. The clothes were subordinate to the woman; the girl was far more important than anything she would ever wear.
Margaret's hand moved out and touched his cheek.
She moved her body close to his and kissed him quickly on the mouth again. He desired her very much; he wanted her slim body, he loved her black hair and pale white skin. Her deep-red lips and dark eyes (were they really black or only deepbrown?) would trap him. He would fall in love with her; this he knew.
Paul looked down into her eyes. "You're putting me on."
"You don't want to be had, do you?"
"Yes," he said carefully. "I want to be had very much."
"I don't want to be the one to clip your bachelor wings. Really, I don't. I don't want to be the one to put a ring in your nose. But I want you ... and if I have to cut your bachelor cords, I will. I hate myself for taking something from you, but just being engaged, just being married to a man isn't enough for me. I'll have to have all of you. I'm a tough old bastard, Moran, to quote a great American-you."
Paul laughed shortly.
"I'm sorry, Paul, but I am a tough old bastard. That's the kind of person you respect. Well, I am; I have a hard nose. I want you. Is that too much for a girl to want?"
"No."
"Well, I demand everything; I won't settle for part." Paul kissed her quickly.
"You're just playing," she said. "What I need is you."
Paul dropped his head and kissed her throat. "Flattery will get you nowhere." Margaret said. He touched her.
"Exciting me sexually is only a cheap trick," she said.
"I'd rather have you than anything in the world," he said.
"Well, that is pretty good ... but I need a man who will love my soul."
"Souls, I know nothing about," he cried, as he touched her again.
She bit him on the lobe of the ear, not hard enough to bring blood, but sharply enough to make Paul feel it. "I suppose that will do for now," she said.
"Thirty seconds more and you are compromised."
"I know," she said, "and I have lost. I only wanted you to love me."
"I love you."
"But those are only words. Your touching me is only more words."
Paul's hands dropped from her body.
"You didn't have to lose interest completely," she said.
"Perhaps I'm not the man for you," Paul said. "You are," she said. "You are if...."
"If what?"
"If you really want me. If you really want to be married to me."
"I want to be married to you," he said.
"When you say it that way, I believe."
His hands came up and gripped her arms. "I am a very screwed-up guy, but I don't lie. At least I don't lie to you."
"Sometimes I nearly believe you, Moran," Margaret said.
"I know. Nothing worthwhile is ever very simple, it it? You understand a lot for someone as young as you are. What you have to come to know is that I am your man. I've already made up my mind to that. But you can't expect too much; if I am to be your man, there will always be certain drawbacks."
"That's the way girls get pregnant."
"Well, we want a family, don't we?"
He kissed her now delicately, gently. She was such a very soft girl. He was probably already in love with her; if he were not it was because he was a cautious man.
"Are you going to take me to the movies tonight?" she said.
"Yes."
"Good. I'd hate to miss Reinhardt Mason. He arouses me."
"And I don't?"
She smiled and touched his chin with her fingers. "You are touchy, aren't you?"
"Yes. I am jealous of Reinhardt Mason."
"He is a fine young stud."
"He's not young," Paul said. "He is getting on."
"Nymphs like older satyrs."
"B.S.," he said.
Paul's life was a confused one, and he knew it. But he was trying to play out his life, taking each task as it came, and making the most of it. The "problem" could only be solved this way. It was what the doctors at the veterans' hospital had told him and it was what he knew instinctively.
Paul remembered Evette Warwick again, and he could not recall why he had ever had any fondness for her, or been attracted to her.
Paul and Margaret left the house together. As they were leaving, he did not see Paul, the serving man, and it pleased him. He picked up his hat from the hall seat and was glad that it had not been handed to him.
As the young couple walked across town, with Margaret's hand hooked into the crook of Paul's arm, they could have been sweethearts from another time, perhaps 1894. There would have been horses in the street and no automobiles in Thornton, California, but the young couple would have been the same. Young couples in history have changed less than any other thing.
Paul and Margaret walked slowly over toward lower Union Street, where the Downtown Theater was located. They joked as they walked, and people who saw them nudged each other and winked, knowing that they were young lovers.
"If good old Reinhardt kisses the heroine on the earlobe, I'm going to puke in the aisle," Paul said.
"You've been know to be an earlobe kisser."
"I'm younger than Reinhardt."
"Let's not talk about age," she said. "That doesn't count anyway."
"I suppose not. It must be-"
"You're just jealous."
"Sure. I'm jealous."
"You don't have to be," she said.
"I know, but I enjoy it. I get a kick out of being jealous of you. It makes the juices run in my body."
"I suppose a man has to have that, doesn't he?"
"Not all men," Paul said. "I wouldn't want to be truly jealous. I only want to be jealous of Reinhardt Mason; I wouldn't want to be jealous of a real man; I'm too selfish."
"If you think you can make me mad talking that way, you're crazy." Margaret laughed and nudged her head against his shoulder.
As they walked together, Paul could no longer feel the depression of fall in the air. It was truly spring and the new things that were coming into life sprung in his body ... and he was a happy man.
At the Tower Drive-In, Peter had held Evette in his arms, he had kissed her, even though he had never really understood the term "necking."
They sat apart now because another car had pulled up alongside on Peter's side. There was a middle-aged couple in it who had obviously come only to see the double feature, cartoon, and short subject.
When they had first pulled in, Peter had been infuriated, but he contained himself and managed to force his desires back into the psychic trunk they had occupied through his whole life. He didn't want to suppress his desires again, as he had so often in the past, but there had been no alternative.
Peter and Evette stared through the tinted glass of the Chevrolet at the big screen. Peter glanced toward her time and again and she seemed to be watching the movie; then her eyes came about, saw him facing her, and she winked. His hand moved across the seat quickly and her hand met it and clutched it.
He wanted to bring her into his arms again, he wanted to touch her with his hands. He wanted to....
Oh, damn, why had the other people parked right next to them? The avidity within his body was ready to burn its way through his body wall ... but he could not let it. The pain was upon him and he bore it because there was nothing else he could do. If he had only been more worldly-wise, more sophisticated; if he had only been a little like Mr. Moran.
Peter would have given half the years of his life to have a little maturity of Paul Moran. He wore vests but was still a young man. He usually wore a hat, but he was not old. Peter had seen him many times with older men as they walked down the street and went into Amsterdam's. Moran had been talking and the older men had listened.
Older people never listened to Peter when he talked; they were always busy with something else. Who wanted to listen to a child?
Peter was cursed and he knew that he was.
Another car pulled alongside them, on Evette's side, and Peter's spirits dropped even more. They might as well be parked on the fifty-yard line at Kezar Stadium, on the Sunday the Forty-niner football team was playing the Cleveland Browns.
A young man no older than himself, with a large tattoo on his left forearm which hung out the window, was at the wheel. He looked over toward them and perused them carefully.
"Hi, Evette," he called out in a voice that was simultaneously tough and falsetto in the same breath.
"Hi, Clint," Evette said and raised her right hand.
Peter immediately hated this newcomer; he hated him because he knew Evette and because she had called him by his first name as though they were friends.
The car driven by the young man was full of people in their late teens. There were three other boys and two girls besides Clint. That meant that they had a shortage of girls, Peter thought, and they wanted to correct that. If they could add Evette to their number, they would only be one short, then.
Peter wished desperately that he had his target pistol. He could even up their number in no time at all. He could put a bullet into the temple of the one Evette had called Clint very easily.
However, they had a gas chamber in California for those who resorted to this, although he could not remember a single man to enter the death room at San Quentin who had the social position of his father (even though his father was not at the social top in Thornton). Only the poor and friendless were ever ushered in there.
Perhaps he did wish he had his pistol with him. (This was really only fantasy.) He was a boy who daydreamed a great deal and he was always the central character, the hero, of his daydreams. He knew this and it was bitter arsenic to his tongue.
"We're throwing a little party after a while," Clint called out to Evette. "You want to come?"
"Sure," she said. "Where?"
"Over at the White Withers Motel on the Alamitos highway. You know where it is. We rented cabin six; it's a big one."
"Sure, I know where it is. When does the party start?"
"'Bout an hour or so. We just bombed over to see some of the movie and smoke a little."
Evette turned towards Peter. "They've got some pot with them. They're going to smoke it."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Peter said.
"Marijuana. You know, marijuana cigarettes."
"Marijuana?" Peter said incredulously. He had seen all the narcotics movies his senior year in high school and he had even seen one shown in Men's P.E. at the Junior College. Young people copulated freely after having smoked them and were very sorry afterward.
Copulated freely, he thought to himself; venereal love. Oh, God. Would a puff or two make him lose his fears and anxieties?
"You want to go to the party, Pete?" Evette said.
"I don't know," he said, pretending casualness. "Why not?"
Evette seemed a little surprised. "I didn't think you'd want to go."
"Sure, I'm game for 'most anything," he said foolishly. People like Peter should never play the bon vivant; he knew this but he had done it anyway, regardless of the consequences or the fact he might sound ridiculous. "Yeah, I think a party is fine."
"We could have a real good time," Evette said. "I always have a good time at a party."
"Swell," Peter said, "let's go." He was apprehensive of the party but the lure of freedom from his own self-consciousness, the promise of relief from his neurotic, driven, walled-in world was more than he could resist. He distrusted the strange people, as he distrusted nearly everyone, but he was going to go. And he had been afraid Evette would have gone without him if he had resisted or turned down the invitation. He could not have endured her leaving him and going off with the others.
Marijuana! Did he want that? He did and he did not and he didn't know which part of himself clamored the loudest. He didn't have to go; he could retreat back to his room and build another model airplane.
And a newborn child could cease to breathe and go back to the blackness and deadness of the world of the unliving, the other world of the dead and the nonexistent. Never. Life cried out to be had, to be lived, even if it meant suffering, unhappiness, disaster, dishonor, and complete failure.
Peter was confronted with a new phase of his life. He knew that it was not completely right (perhaps not even partly so), but he looked at it with anticipation because it offered more than the old one. Perhaps he could lose his hatred of other men j if he could only be released from his personal prison. Peter knew that he was neurotic and he did not desire such a fate; it had been forced upon him through circumstance and not through his own doing. If he had his personal wishes fulfilled, he would be an athlete of some ability, and a popular boy among the girls in his school. But he was liked by no one. He had even heard one of the girls, who wore tight sweaters to attract boys, call him "The Mole."
If he had been castrated at that moment with a dull sickle he could not have suffered more. He wondered if the girl were so stupid as not to realize that he was within hearing distance. It had been a cruel thing to endure, but he had endured.
Now he wanted out of his cage!
"When do they want to take off?" he said quickly to Evette.
"In a little while. They want to watch the show for a few minutes."
Peter was staring straight ahead through the tinted glass at the subdued picture screen. His teeth were clenched. "I'm in the mood for a party."
At another party, given by the T. Emmet Folgers, in the best district of San Jose, California, Harry McPherson was at the punch bowl filling his little glass cup. He'd had three already and hadn't seen any results, which left him in a poor state of mind because he hated parties when he was sober. He knew he could halfway bear up when he was three-quarters stiff. At that time he always had a semi-moronic smile on his face and could accept almost anything that was said to him without disputing it.
The only time Harry McPherson got laid at a party occurred when he was totally smashed, and when things like that happen to you, Harry thought, you must be doing something right.
Harry had been single then, a dashing figure whose dry wit and continental good looks made him a welcome addition to parties in the San Francisco area.
That night, so long ago, Harry had decided to tie one on. His business affairs had suffered a setback and he found that business problems were beginning to nag him. He didn't want to think about business night and day, and he had found that the best remedy for getting your mind off business was a good heavy drunk.
He decided to start his binge at a dinner party, and after the meal, when brandy was served, Harry saw the lithe blonde across the room, eying him in a very direct manner.
He walked over and introduced himself. Her name was Samantha Perkins, and she was recently arrived from London. He loved it. His infatuation with the English was every bit as strong then as it was now, and even though Harry was suddenly conscious of the fact that he was bombed, he was determined to make time with the lovely English lady.
He walked her around the party, meanwhile casing the place for a secluded spot. Finally, entering a dark hallway, he ran his arm around her waist and pulled her close to him. Their mouths met and he was thrilled by the heated kiss that she gave him. Obviously, her cool British exterior concealed a core of molten passion.
Harry moved fast. He checked out the rooms that gave onto the hallway and found a deserted bedroom at the far end. "In here," he said, and Samantha dodged into the room with a giggle.
While he was closing the door she pulled her dress off over her head and when Harry turned around, she was naked, her arms out to him.
He led her to the bed and she sat on the edge while he stripped, and when she wrapped her hand around his throbbing shaft and then sank down on it, lips first, he groaned with pleasure and held her lovely blonde head between his hands.
Then he was on his knees and she had a leg draped over each of his shoulders and he was tasting her and delighting in it. She was totally uninhibited, a quality that he much admired in beautiful women.
She let him have his fill, experiencing several powerful orgasms along the way, then tumbled back onto the bed and once again extended her hands to him.
He was in her in a flash, sinking into her soft, hot flesh like a hot knife through butter. She gave in totally, wrapping her long legs around his back, moving him to orgasm so quickly that he was surprised and somewhat apologetic.
But she laughed and told him that he was wonderful, especially as he was an unexpected surprise that enabled her to enjoy an otherwise dull dinner party.
Harry's head was reeling as he escorted Samantha back to the party. He continued to drink and didn't sober up for four days.
But that was a long time ago, Harry thought.
Harry McPherson was basically an honest man. He talked with a British accent because he had always liked the English language better than the American variety. He had been accused many times (a thousand times by his stepdaughter) of being affected. Well, he did it on purpose, he admitted, but not on purpose the way Evette had accused him. He liked a broad "a" because it sounded better and he used it, too, because it was easier for him to pronounce. As a child, he had been a stutterer, although he would not have admitted it, and the clipped British way of speaking (which he had heard at a botany lecture in school) appealed to him because it wasn't all strung together and gave the speaker time to think and time not to stutter. If he didn't speak in the fashion he used today, he would still be a stutterer.
It was strange, he thought, that he had stuttered. He had always been very quick in class (got almost all A's, even through college) and had been a good athlete, even though slender. He had been first-string halfback on the grammar-school pickup football team, second string in high school, and even managed to make the squad in college, when his school had been notorious for recruiting good football players and paying them for playing. Even as a sub, he had run for the winning touchdown against U.S.C. his senior year, and the team gave him the game ball.
He wondered where it was now. He thought he had probably given it to one of his uncles who was a sports nut, but now he could not remember exactly which one. Scoring the winning touchdown in a big game had not meant much to him because he had never really been interested in games. He was more intelligent than the others on the team, although he never let them know it, and the game had never been very important to him. No doubt, the coach had never known, but Harry McPherson had never actually been concerned as to whether his team won or lost. His basic interest had been getting into the game, running the ball a few times, and perhaps throwing a pass or two. With all the preparation he was forced to go through (training, scrimmaging, calisthenics), he wanted to get something out of it that was fun.
He had only weighed one hundred fifty-five pounds then, two less than now, and he had been nearly six feet tall. If he had been twenty pounds heavier, he would have been an All-American.
Harry McPherson knew this, as he sipped from his punch cup, and it didn't mean a damned thing to him. He had always taken his good sound reflexes for granted. That he had managed to make money, a lot of money, wasn't important to him either. He accepted this as matter-of-fact. He knew that he was capable of making money, even as he had always known he would have been the first-string tailback in college if he hadn't been too thin.
Possibly the most ridiculous thing in his life was the most important to him: his marriage. It was ridiculous and he knew that Ann did not understand. She wanted to be free, she wanted to go to parties, she didn't much want to be a wife. Perhaps, underneath the outer layer, she simply wanted an escort to take her to parties and more parties.
Harry, on the other hand, had not married until he was middle-aged. He had spent a lot of time with cheap women and he had laid a lot whom no one had declared cheap (outside of himself, privately), but none of these had ever satisfied him. He had been on the verge of marriage a dozen times but something had always spoiled the match ... until he met Ann Warwick.
He didn't want a woman younger than himself, and he hadn't actually desired a divorcee, but he married a divorced woman who was nearly the same age as he because he fell in love with her.
And the woman he married was frigid. In the beginning he thought things would work them selves out (anything worthwhile takes time), but nothing worked itself out.
This troubled him; if he had been a younger man, it would have troubled him far more, but his sex drive was not what it had been twenty years before. Although he had to admit on occasions that there was no difference in the present man from the man of twenty years earlier. And at these times he would have preferred being a blind leper rather than having a wife who could not or would not respond to his advances.
Though few would have given him credit for this, Harry McPherson was a man of moral convictions. He had not always been completely honest or completely honorable, but he had always been a man of moral fiber. Since he had stayed unmarried through most of his life, he was a sincere believer in the familia connubium and had not gone to other women, since his marriage, to relieve his sexual compulsions.
Harry McPherson's marriage was complex, even though he had never allowed any single facet of his life to become so before. He had not been able to cope with it because he had mostly been accustomed to having things go his way.
He had been dropped into a quagmire and he did not know whether to try to swim or walk to escape being engulfed. On the one hand, he did not want to leave, and on the other, he would not allow himself to be destroyed.
During World War II he had been second mate on a freighter, and she had just taken two torpedoes. Men were leaping over the sides, forgetting about lifeboats or rafts, but Harry didn't follow them. The captain ordered him off and Harry told him to go fornicate himself.
"You're nuts," the captain said.
"Well, you're still here," McPherson answered.
"I'm the master of this ship. I'll go down with her."
"That's corny as hell, Matt."
"You're insubordinate. You don't have any right to address me by my first name. Particularly in the diminutive."
"Oh hell," Harry said. "This scow will be under in half an hour and we'll be with it."
"Then jump."
"I'm scared to jump," Harry said. "I'd rather go down with the old bitch than rat out."
The master of the ship held his hand out and Harry took it.
"Don't get me wrong," Harry said. "The only reason I'm staying aboard is because I'm too loving chicken to abandon."
"Yeah," the captain said. "I know." He held onto Harry's hand. "If I'd been left alone, I might not have had the guts to stay. Thanks, Harry."
"There's a tremendous suction when they go under, isn't there?" Harry said. "I mean, even if we gave up the ghost at the last minute, we'd be pulled under anyway, wouldn't we?"
"That's what I've heard, Harry."
"Then we don't have to worry about going yellow, do we? It's already a foregone conclusion. We're dead."
They threw their arms around each other and began to laugh. They laughed hysterically and neither of them worried about it because it didn't make any difference anymore. They were men of the world, soon to become defunct; they knew it and it was so strange, so clear ... and they knew they were very unique among men to know when they were going to die.
But then a Navy minesweeper saved them. Harry McPherson could remember it well. It had been almost an anticlimax, missing his appointment with death; it would have been so damned convenient and even a little romantic. "I have a rendezvous with death" and all that. (He had read it in high school and had not forgotten, even though it was a little corny ... but the guy did die after he wrote it.) He was almost sorry the minesweeper saved them. He had been prepared for death and the captain had been ready ... and could a frail human being ever expect to bring himself to that peak again?
Three hours after they had been rescued his captain suffered a seizure and died of a heart attack. Harry McPherson was very sorry; perhaps he grieved more than when his mother had passed on. He felt the older man had more guts than anyone he had ever known; probably it was because the two of them had been one ... when there was no place to go.
One night in a Portland bar several years later, a man who had been drinking stated that the merchant marine had been a bunch of cruddy draft dodgers who were afraid to go to war.
Harry hit him on the jaw so hard the man collapsed, and the proprietor of the bar thought him dead. The policeman who rushed into the place was also astonished when he saw Harry grind his heel into the fallen man's cheek. He arrested Harry for assault and battery, but the loudmouth in the bar never pressed charges and the whole thing was forgotten.
When Harry was released the desk sergeant asked him why he had hit a stranger ... and so hard.
"Natural enemy," Harry said. "Like a mongoose, you know."
The desk sergeant didn't know, but it didn't make any difference; not any difference he would have understood, at least.
Now, Harry McPherson was standing in front of a punchbowl at a party; he was bored clear to the bottom of his bowels, but he didn't say anything to anyone about it. He was worried about his marriage. There wasn't too much wrong with Ann, if she could ever grow into their marriage. They weren't going to be starting a family, there was no fear of childbirth (he felt that Ann had already passed the menopause, even though he didn't know this for certain). There should be no fear within her about her relationship with him. He offered her a great deal of security; what the hell, he did have money.
Then he thought about children. Evette would never be his child; this he knew, but he would like to have fathered a child. He did not think it possible or feasible to have a child with Ann and he had never touched upon the subject with her. Harry McPherson had nearly been a career bachelor, and he was very glad that this had not become his final fate, even though his marriage was a failure. But he would not accept this, and because he would not accept defeat there was always the chance of victory.
He wanted to stay married to Ann, he wanted to be able to get along with Evette, even though he knew it meant more humiliation at her hands. But he did not fear her. She could embarrass him, as she had in the past many times, but he would not retaliate.
Harry McPherson was a patient man who rarely lost his temper. Almost everything he did was calculated and thought-out before he ever did it. He found that his life was better balanced that way.
And he was basically a good guy. He had cut a few corners in his life, quite a few actually, and he had many times brushed the law when he had been involved in subdivisions and tract homes. Legally (he had been a member of the bar for a long time) he had come within six inches of being disbarred in Portland, even though he had been completely innocent of the chicanery of which he was accused. He hadn't understood what his client had been up to, even though he had been suspicious and would have dropped the case if he could have afforded it. But a young attorney with only one client, a high-paying one, could not afford it.
But he had not been convicted; in fact, he made a fool of the prosecutor at the hearing and had been enthusiastically welcomed back into the fold.
Half an hour later, he met the man who had prosecuted him in the hall. He looked him straight in the eye and brought his thumb up into his mouth; he hooked it into his upper teeth and thrust it forward.
The former prosecutor stared at him, not understanding.
"Don't worry about it, Alfred," Harry said. "It doesn't mean anything here; only in Sicily. But stay out of my way. You knew damned well I wasn't involved but you prosecuted me anyway in that hearing." Harry stopped. "In my opinion, Alfred, you are fecal matter, something that should be covered under the earth to kill its stench."
Harry had walked away.
As he thought back now, Alfred (whatever his last name was) never went anywhere. The disbarment hearing had drawn a lot of publicity; Harry had emasculated his prosecutor, and no one was much interested in a badly beaten loser.
Fate of all prosecutors, Harry reflected, and smiled. He dipped his cup into the punchbowl again and sipped from it; it was damned weak punch, he thought. He intensely disliked little people who tried to be accusers; it was a job for the very strong only.
His wife moved up to where he stood and stopped next to his left elbow. She was wearing a cocktail dress that made her look very attractive. He thought it was a pity that....
"Are you trying to soak up all the punch like a bank blotter, Harry?"
"That's an interesting allusion, Ann. It must be because you married money, since you know damned well I'm not a lush."
"You've been known to hang one on a time or two."
He nodded his head. "I apologize for what I just said."
"Why do you always apologize just before I get mad at you?"
"Planning," he said.
She shrugged a little. "I know you're no drinker, Harry, but do you have to stay over here all evening? If you sat in a corner by yourself, people would notice you were sulking; but if you stand by the punch bowl they just think you're getting drunk. Does it make you this unhappy just to come to a party, Harry?"
"Yes," he said.
"What do you want out of life? You have success; what else?"
"My wife," he said flatly. "You have a wife."
"Yes, I have a wife."
"And that wife doesn't meet up to your standards, does she?"
"No," he said, "she doesn't. If she relaxed a little bit she could be a certain middle-aged man's home life, but she never relaxes."
"Oh for God's sake, Harry. Grow up."
"Crap," he said and tossed the cut-glass cup onto the table. "I'm going home. Are you going with me?"
"I'm not ready to leave yet," Ann snapped quickly, even though there was a movement about her lips that seemed to say she hadn't meant it as sharply as she had said it. But Harry couldn't be certain of this; it might only be wishful thinking.
"I'll get a cab," Harry said, "and you can have the car."
"That's a terrible waste of money." I "I can afford it, "he said.
"Please don't do it, Harry. Don't do it to me. If you leave, you'll ruin the evening for me ... and I want to have a good time tonight. I desperately need to have a good time tonight."
"I'm damned if this isn't the first time you've ever really asked anything from me or needed me," Harry said.
"Oh!" Ann whirled away from him quickly and left him at the table by himself, watching her move out of the room, through a doorway and into the next room.
"Would you like more punch, sir?" said a servant who had come up to stand behind the table on the other side of the bowl.
"Well, not exactly. I don't think so."
Harry McPherson put his hands into his trouser pockets, turned around to look at the roomful of people who had been behind him, and let a short belch pass his lips.
He was staying at the party, he supposed.
Peter and Evette were now at their party, a party held in a three-room motel unit owned by someone who had not refused a very young person the right to rent it. The one who had made the rental had to be a minor, Peter thought, since there wasn't a single person of the ten or eleven present who could be more than twenty years old. Several of them appeared to be sixteen or seventeen but he did not know for sure because he was never certain of anyone's age. Peter and Evette sat cross-legged on the floor the way all the guests were seated, ignoring the available motel furniture.
The boy who had invited them at the drive-in raced around the room with a bottle of tequila, pouring the white Mexican liquid into glasses and acting as though he were the host. Peter privately thought that the party was probably a community effort, and he felt a little guilty that he had not chipped in for the expenses.
The boy with the bottle of tequila was the one from the car. He was short and dark; his cheeks had several pockmarks on them. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, displaying forearms tattooed in several places; they were very thick and strong-looking arms for an otherwise slender body, a body that was thin in the chest and did not boast broad shoulders.
Peter did not like the small thick-armed boy with the tattoos and the bottle of tequila in his hands. There wasn't anything precisely about him that annoyed Peter, but his general attitude toward the other people there and his particular attitude toward Evette annoyed him. He was familiar to Evette. But Peter was almost certain that he had not been one of Evette's lovers, though that didn't mean that he didn't intend becoming one of those chosen.
All of the young people in the room, Peter thought, looked scabby. He didn't know why he had conjured up the word "scabby" but he had; he was not actually a snob, but he found the others in the room somehow of a lower order of animal.
They were vulgar people and the reason he held it against them was that they didn't have to be that way. He knew by watching them that they were the way they were because they wanted to be, and this had made them scabby in his mind.
They weren't part of the healthy, sun-browned, white-short-wearing crowd around Thornton that was supposed to be normal. They were different, but they weren't different the way Peter Wilson was. Peter was sensitive to people and their ways and he saw the difference in the members of the party.
He did not feel a kinship with these other young people, even though he was a member with them on the outside of everything; part of the legion of the damned, part of the rejected of the world.
What was wrong with them? Didn't they know how to build model airplanes and bury their frustration in balsa wood and glue?
Why was he here? Peter wondered. Why was he here with these people? He didn't want to be with them but he wanted to be with Evette and he wanted the chance to lose his uneasiness with marijuana; what did they call it? Pot? But where was it?
Clint, the short young man with the frail chest and shoulders and immense forearms, came to them with the tequila. The pants he wore were very tight on him, about as tight as the dumb cop's, King Virdon, Peter thought. But the two men weren't much alike in any other way.
Evette held her paper cup out and Clint poured two or three ounces of tequila into it. Evette laughed and let out a little squeal when some of the liquid splashed out over the top of the cup and dropped down to her bare legs.
"You're sure free with the juice, Clint," she said.
"There's plenty, doll, plenty of juice. Don't you worry about that." He tipped the bottle a little and several drops fell onto her legs again.
She squealed again. "You're putting me on, boy."
"Yeah." Clint turned towards Peter. "Where's your cup, Sam? I'll fill up your crankcase."
"I'm not interested in drinking," Peter said bitterly.
"So?" Clint held his free hand up in the air. "I'm not making you."
Peter could see that Clint didn't like him; even if he had not been with Evette, Clint would always have disliked him, even as he disliked Clint. There was a natural animosity that flowed between the two of them and it interested Peter.
It was interesting that the two young men hated each other. Peter enjoyed it because he did not fear Clint, even though he was not a match for him physically and would probably take a severe beating if he had to meet the other on that ground.
"Maybe Pete wants something else," Evette said.
Clint's eyes jumped to her and covered her body slowly, a carnal grin slipping across his face. "Who don't?"
"Don't you ever get your mind out of the sewer?" Evette said, feigning indignity. "No, Pd be too lonesome if I let it out. Everybody else's I know is there." Clint laughed.
"Maybe Pete wants to do some smoking," Evette said.
"Sure, he can do that if he wants to," Clint said slowly, changing his manner now. He reached into his shirt pocket and brought out a pack of popular brand cigarettes.
"Pot, not butts," Evette said, as though he had insulted her intelligence.
"I don't know anything about any pot. What kind of pot? There's a bunch of them in the kitchen. Does he want one with a little chair...."
"Forget the comedy," Evette said sharply and a little cruelly. "He knows. Why do you think we came to this party? To drink Mexican joy juice?"
It delighted Peter to hear her cut Clint short. He smiled inside himself but he did not let it show.
"Later, doll," Clint said, jerking his head. "You know, a little later when the party gets swinging." Clint glanced down toward Peter again; this time there was more respect in his gaze, a little more unsureness.
"Sure you don't want to try some juice?" Clint said to Peter.
Peter picked up a dry empty cardboard cup someone had handed him earlier and held it up. "Thanks. I'll have some juice ... for now."
Clint poured tequila into Peter's cup and walked away from them to others seated nearby.
Evette glanced at Peter and held her cup out to him. "Let's drink to it. Better things are coming."
Peter nodded and touched his cup to hers. He looked at her lush body, her deep-red lips, her solid legs, her soft blonde hair that did not seem to possess the high sheen of bleach; he looked at her belly that was not held flat by a girdle.
He felt a wanting in his body. It was a yearning that he did not really understand but could only feel, a gnawing, grotesque pain that had carried him through one model airplane construction after another.
Peter was at the apex of his life.
He wanted, he had to have ... Evette Warwick.
Paul Moran sat with Margaret in the Downtown Theater. They had seen Reinhardt Mason in the main picture; then they saw part of a teenage rock 'n roll movie and decided to leave.
They walked outside together and laughed as they walked down the street. "One more slam and I would have thought that boy on the screen was trying to make me," Margaret said.
"One more and he would have been trying."
"Then you are protecting my honor by taking me out of that pit."
"Yes," Paul said. "I am protecting you. If you are to be violated, I think it should be done by me."
"I think you are right. Why don't you violate me? Or make overtures or something?"
"You are trying to excite me sexually," Paul said.
"Yes, I am. Probably, I want you to take me and this must be wrong. I'm sure my mother and father would think it wrong."
"Yes. This has always worried me because I think the way mothers and fathers do. I would like to take you but I always put myself into the position of the father of the girl. I am an uncertain father."
"I know how you feel and you don't have to feel that way. You carry the world's worries on your back. You're a man who represents good; it seems to be all that you know."
Paul's hand reached out, touching her. He withdrew it quickly. "If I am for good, I shouldn't be touching you."
"Please don't become over moral," she said.
"I'm sorry."
"I don't know what I'm going to do with you," she said. "I suppose I will have to marry you or be compromised."
"Yes," he said. "At heart I am a boodler."
"What's a boodler?"
"It's a breast fondler."
"That sounds romantic."
"Well, it is, "he said.
He held his arm out and she moved inside his grasp and they walked down the street together with his arm about her.
As they passed through the poor district of town on their way home, Roy Warwick pulled his window curtain aside a little and studied them. He had recognized Paul a block away but he didn't know the girl he was with. He waited until they were near him to pull the curtain aside, recognizing the girl as Margaret Carlson when they passed under the street light.
Roy liked his young friend's taste in women. She reminded him a little of Ann when they had first been married, but he choked this thought off quickly, not trusting it. So often, if a young woman was tall and slim and had dark hair, she reminded him of Ann as she had been. And this couldn't really be true; they couldn't all look the way Ann did and they couldn't all resemble her. It was a trick of his imagination.
He wondered how Ann looked now. He had not seen her for eighteen months-or was it two years or more-and even that had been accidental as he walked down the street. He had seen her standing at the magazine rack in the drugstore, leafing through a fashion magazine, stopping from time to time, then turning on. He had stood there for several moments staring into the store, looking at his former wife. Roy wanted to go inside; he wanted to greet Ann, ask her how things were and how Evette was, but he didn't. She would probably have rebuffed him, even if he had been well-dressed, cleanly shaven and sober, which he was not then and had not been for a long time. It nearly broke his heart to see the woman who had been the girl he married so close, and still not be able to talk to her.
He had wandered off down the street and bought himself another bottle of wine, and in the heat of the wine's grasp, he tried to forget that he had seen Ann that day, but it hadn't worked very well.
Paul Moran and his Margaret were gone from Roy's view now, and he let the fabric of the curtain slip free of his fingers and fall back into the grimy position where it always stood. The dirty, cheap curtain was almost like the filter that stood between him and the rest of the world-porous enough to see through, but not enough to distinguish the sharper and more subtle lines of the world, all the things that at one time had had meaning for him and were now only vague, shapeless things.
He turned away from the window and looked toward the kitchen table in the middle of the room, beneath the light bulb that hung down from the ceiling. He saw the filth that was there and it was not a bit hazy; he could even read the printing on the label.
He crossed the room and picked up the bottle.
At the motel, Peter Wilson was sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall in a slouched position. His eyes dropped and he opened his mouth a little every few seconds, saliva forming at the corners. His nose felt stuffed and he wanted to blow it, but he never quite got his hand back to his handkerchief.
In his hand, between his fingers, was a fat brown cigarette, burning slowly. His eyes moved down and he watched the smoke that curled up in the poorly ventilated room. A grin twisted its way across his lips and he thought about the way he felt; he was here and he was not here.
Well, that was a hell of a jump from building model airplanes, anyway.
He brought his hand up to his face and pulled on the cigarette again. Funny sensation; even tobacco had always made him dizzy. Marijuana made him dizzy and a few other things thrown in.
Some sparks came off the end of the cigarette onto his hand. He tossed his hand to throw them off and waited to feel the pain of the fire, but he didn't feel a thing.
He laughed hoarsely; the way he felt now nothing hurt him. The inner ghosts that had haunted him most of his life weren't with him; his Four Horsemen had all been unseated and their mounts had run away from them to frolic in a pleasant pasture, and the dreaded four had had to walk.
"I am risen," he cried to himself, and he did not know if he were committing blasphemy or only quoting D.H. Lawrence from The Man Who Died.
Peter had never felt this way before in his lifetime; he had never known he would feel this way. "Oh God," he whispered to himself, "for a little while I can breathe." He was not sure that he really wanted to continue living; gaining a temporary release from his obsessed life of failure gave him new insights and new ideas and he was not certain he actually wanted to go on being.
Then a vague distress moved through his nebulous senses. Evette must have gone to the bathroom, but it seemed that she had been gone for a long time, too long a time. He did not now trust his judgment of time; it might have been two hours or two seconds.
"Where?" he said, looking down at his hands. "Where Evette?" He giggled at his foolishness. His immense desire for her had been dampened by the smoke of the weed and he felt cheated, even though it had released him from his own personal demons.
Why was his desire now choked down to a plastic neutrality signifying nothing? He wanted that hunger, that appetite to go on burning in his body.
He heard loud, raucous, multiple laughter from the kitchen, and somewhere above the general tone he heard a girl's laugh; it might have been Evette. His eyes turned toward the open kitchen door, straining to see through the thickness of smoke that separated him and the noise. He attempted to rise from where he slouched but his muscles would not obey the command. His whole body had grown pulpy and he could not make it work for him.
"You put that record on, Clint, and I'll show you a dance that'll scorch your sideburns," the girl's voice cried from the kitchen.
A great cheer went up from the kitchen; was everyone in there? He glanced about and saw only two other people in the room with him, a boy and a girl. They were clinging to each other tightly, apparently unconscious.
There was a mass exodus of yelling people from the kitchen into his room.
Peter saw Evette among them, holding her hands above her head and screaming little bird-like cries.
He tried to say something but no sound passed his lips; once more he attempted to rise, but his legs would not obey him. He sensed that something was going to happen and he did not want the vapors that clouded his being to exclude him from it.
"Get that phonograph going," Evette cried.
Peter saw Clint putting a record onto a portable single-play phonograph. He watched him, almost as if he were in a dream-somebody else's dream that he had intruded upon.
He saw Evette being helped up onto a table; he saw her standing there with both hands on her hips; he saw her thick, well-made body, and some of the sexual hunger that had departed him came back a little-but it was only such a little.
The music began to play and Evette twitched her body back and forth across the tabletop, rubbing her hands against the abundant part of her thighs. The music throbbed and she slapped herself sharply with the flat of her hand and they cheered.
Peter stared, once more trying to rise.
Evette moved about the tabletop, twisting her body from side to side. The indistinct crowd around her began to clap their hands in unison with the music or her movements, Peter did not know which.
Peter struggled to his knees, feeling his weight pressing down on his kneecaps. That was something; it was more than he had been able to do a moment before.
He saw her wiggling, with her arms in the air; suddenly her sweater no longer covered her upper body. All that was there was a white brassiere encasing her large breasts, whose very fatness pressed out as a swelling around the white fabric.
Peter struggled; he felt one foot on the floor, but it was ninety feet from his eyes. He fought a deep sickness that clutched at his entrails, a sickness that made him want to vomit and roll on the floor, but he fought against it.
He had another foot on the floor (how many feet did he have?). He struggled forward, fighting the denseness in his unfeeling legs. He punched at people, elbowed, swore, and he got closer to the table.
Then he saw her hands going behind her back, he saw them going up toward the snaps on the brassiere, he saw them touching the cloth, he saw them beginning to work, he heard the cries of the cheap mob in his ears....
"No!" he screamed. "No!" He lunged past people and grabbed one of her legs; he grabbed again and again until her body toppled down on him and the others. He clutched her towards him, clumsily, numbly, senselessly, but with a feeling of protection.
"No!" he shrieked.
Suddenly he was hit in the mouth by a fist. He saw part of Clint, only part-the big thick arms-and another fist struck him in the face.
He released his hold on Evette and staggered against other people. Clint hit him hard in the groin; he cried out from the pain and the crowd yelled again, not from lust this time but from the sheer joy of the kill.
Clint slammed his fist in against the side of his head and Peter felt the clear ring of a silver bell through his brain.
Then he lunged straight forward, throwing all of his weight onto the lighter man and clutching with his thin bony hands, clutching for anything that was there to grab, searching for something that would stop the beating he was taking.
Clint crumpled under his weight (Peter was a little fat and overweight) and Peter landed on top of him, at last finding a grip; his thumbs were in Clint's Adam's apple and his fingers braced against the cords of the other boy's neck.
Clint smashed his fists into Peter's ribs, but Peter hardly felt the blows; the concussion recorded itself in his brain, but that was all. Peter was too heavy for the little man with the big arms to displace and he drove his heaviness down against the perimeter of Clint's ribs, the edge of the bird cage, and he clutched his hands tighter and tighter around his throat.
"Oh ... ahhh!" Peter screamed. "Ah ... ee!" His voice shattered the fog of the room as he saw Clint's eyes stare up at him, as he saw Clint's tongue slowly come between his lips as though he was sticking it out at him in disdain of his strength. But that was not true; Clint was dying in his very grasp and he screamed his blood cry again. "Ah ... ee!"
"Stop him," a girl's voice cried from a long way off. "He's hurting Clint."
"He's a sissy. He can't hurt Clint."
"But he is, he is, he's hurting Clint. Clint's tongue is hanging out."
There was male laughter that slammed against Peter's ears; laughter or derision, laughter or insult. They didn't think he was strong enough to kill Clint; he would show them. And when he had shown them they would know him for what he was-a killer of men, a man to be feared, a man not to be laughed at.
He pulled up, bringing Clint's head up from the floor ... then smashed it down hard.
"Pete!" the girl's voice cried in his ear.
He didn't listen; he only stared at Clint's twitching face, at his eyes that leaped out of his head, at his tongue that lashed back and forth like a lizard's.
"Pete, don't!" the girl cried again. "For the love of God, Pete, you'll kill him. Everybody knows you're the best man. They know he's no match for you, Pete. You're a hard guy, Pete, you're king of the hill."
Peter's eyes moved away from Clint's twisted, whitened face and he looked at Evette's visage, only inches away from him. He glanced toward her torso and saw that the white brassiere still held her breasts within its grasp.
"Let's cut out of here, Pete," Evette said. "I want to go somewhere else. Pete," she said, "they'll put you in the gas chamber if you kill him. He didn't mean any harm; he's just gassed-up on pot. He was crazy to hit you, he didn't know who he was taking on. He should have known better than to take on a big guy like you."
Peter's hands loosened a little on Clint's throat but he did not let go.
There was a deep, sucking, imbibing gasp as Clint had his first good draught of air in a little while.
"Put your clothes on," Peter said in a flat monotone. "I won't get up if you don't have your clothes on."
"Sure, Pete, sure." She grabbed her sweater and pulled it over her head and down. "See, all dressed. There wasn't any harm meant; it was just a party."
Peter looked down at Clint's face, at the throat that was still in his grasp. Clint's tongue had gone back inside his mouth now and he was breathing in short gasps.
Peter released his fingers from the throat.
There were sounds of relief from the others who stood around them. They had wanted a kill but, when confronted with it, were willing to compro mise and let it pass, even though they still desired it deeply.
Peter raised his right hand and smashed his fist into the side of Clint's face.
"Don't ever hit me again," Peter hissed. "I won't put up with people hitting me any more. I would just as soon kill you."
"Come on, Pete," Evette said. "Come on."
Outside, the cool night air dashed at Peter's face almost as if it were smelling salts thrown from a glass tube.
"You'll be okay," Evette said.
"Oh my God."
"Everything's going to be all right."
"She shouldn't have started taking her clothes off," Peter said. "She shouldn't have...."
"I'm sorry, Pete. I just got carried away with the party. It needed something and I was going to give it a shot in the arm."
"You're Evette!"
"Sure. Who'd you think it was?"
"I don't know. I don't know why I smoked the cigarettes."
He thought about Evette, tying things together now, and he didn't understand anything of what had gone on inside. If she had wanted to take her clothes off just to give herself a thrill, why had she interfered with his killing, which should have given her another kind of thrill?
But he didn't understand about her relationships with men; he didn't understand how she had consoled the boy-child when he had been struck in his privates ... or the boy-man either. But he had some of her respect. She had stopped him when he was going to kill Clint; that had meant she had respected his violence, at least.
She helped him into the passenger side of the car; then she slid into the driver's seat and drove away from the motel grounds. As she drove, Peter leaned back in his seat and breathed deeply.
"I'm feeling better," he said."
"Pot, baby. It's always funny the first time. You scared the hell out of me back there."
"Did I?"
"I was afraid you were going to kill Clint!"
"Did you care about Clint?" he said.
"No. I don't care anything about Clint. I just didn't want to see you in trouble over him."
"Why?" he said, searching, wanting her to say that she cared for him as his head was clearing from the marijuana.
"Why? Because I planned on you making love to me tonight. Is that a wrong reason?"
Peter did not answer. Her statement shocked him, caused him alarm, as he was escaping the effects of the drug, but he did not know what to reply.
Evette turned off the main road, down a dirt side road, and shortly pulled off to the shoulder. She snapped the keys and killed the ignition.
Peter stared at her.
"Why don't you kiss me or touch me or do something?" Evette said.
"You aren't scared of me, are you? You damned near killed Clint ... and just over me. Why did you do that?"
"I didn't want you to take your clothes off in front of all of them."
"You didn't want that," she said softly, "because you wanted me to do that just for you, didn't you."
"Yes," he said past a dry throat. "Yes." His nasal passages clogged against his speech. "Yes."
Her right hand came out slowly and touched his cheek. "I'll do it for you ... and just you," she said.
"Oh, yes," he cried.
She pulled her sweater slowly over her head and dropped it. She looked into his eyes and reached forward with her hands again and cupped his face within them.
She held his face for a long time, looking into his eyes. His mind was clearing by the minute now.
She pulled her hands away and brought them behind her back. She unfastened the first snap and looked at him. She released the second and did not look at him.
He waited, painfully on edge, painfully afraid of the waiting, painfully unsure of what was expected of him, painfully unsure of what he was supposed to do ... but a thousandfold certain of what nature was driving him to. He was like a young bull addressing a cow hidden and covered by a dark sheet; he hoped there was a cow there and one with which he could cope, but one thing was certain-within a moment or two he would move forward at full tilt no matter what.
Evette's fingers released the third snap, the brassiere collapsed down over her belly, and he stared at her immense breasts.
She grabbed his head and brought his face to her, burying it against her abundant bosoms, and he felt their softness against his face.
He cried aloud and he took her.
She was taken easily and he suffered no degradation or embarrassment in the taking. He did not understand but he took her anyway. He did not understand but this meant almost nothing, because she understood.
Peter knew little but it was of no consequence that night.
The important thing neither of them understood or knew about then was: Someone was going to kill Evette Warwick.
CHAPTER TWELVE
They found Evette Warwick in the stand of pine trees near the lover's lane in the Heights.
Thornton was not ready for it. Editorials, some written by Paul Moran, attacked society as a spawning ground for the kind of mind capable of such an act.
Privately, Paul knew full well that it wasn't society that spawned such viciousness, but Evette Warwick herself.
Officially, the law enforcement agencies of Thornton swung into action. But as Chief Bowers pointed out to King Virdon: "That bitch caused more bad blood than any woman that ever lived. Dozens of men in this town-some of them pretty damned respectable-had a good reason to see her dead. But anybody asks you, you tell 'em: We're workin' on it. Inside of a year or two, no one'll even remember."
The McPhersons, stunned with grief, sold their home and moved to San Francisco. Later, Paul Moran heard that Evette's mother had overdosed on booze and tranquilizers, and died.
Otto Kramer suffered a stroke two days after Evette's funeral. He was discovered by his wife, lying in the dust on the old shed in back of the store. She didn't know he was back there, and he had not been found for twelve hours or so after his attack. She never did figure out what Otto was doing back there.
Roy dropped out of sight, and it wasn't until two years later that he reappeared in Thornton. When told of his daughter's death, he seemed strangely unmoved. Everyone put that down to the effects of rotgut on the brain.
Peter joined the Marine Corps, served with honor, and was honorably discharged. He married Sarah Thompson, some say, just to get King Virdon's goat. Sarah had been engaged to Virdon at the time, and she broke it off to marry Peter.
King Virdon was eventually run out of town for sexually assaulting a high-school girl, and that same year Sheriff Bowers lost his first bid for reelection.
And by then, no one really cared about Evette Warwick anymore-no one except one. It was his flowers on her grave on the anniversary of her death, but no one knew, for no one else was there.
